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Sunday, February 24, 2013
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Curiosity makes history with scoop ? and begins Mars mission in earnest
NASA's Curiosity rover has successfully drilled into bedrock and scooped the sample ? a first for Mars exploration. It was the rover's last systems test, meaning the training wheels are off.
NASA's Curiosity rover collects a sample after drilling into a Martian rock.
NASA/AP
EnlargeIn drilling a small hole into bedrock on the floor of Gale Crater and tucking the sample into a scoop, NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has made space-exploration history and passed a significant mission milestone.
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It's the first time any rover has done more than scratch the surface of rocks on the red planet. And it's the first time a robotic craft has drilled on any planet other than Earth since the then-Soviet Union put two landers on the surface of Venus in 1981, each of which drilled into soils and returned data during their brief operation on the planet's harsh surface.
The test represented the final step in the rover's commissioning period, which began shortly after landing last August. As Curiosity slowly exercised its robotic arm and each of the other nine science packages it carries, researchers grew increasingly excited by the results ? not just as confirmation that the experiments and tools were working, but that the evidence these tests gathered pointed to a landing zone where water once flowed.
The drilling "is a real big turning point for us," says John Grotzinger, a planetary geologist at the California Institute of Technology and the mission's lead scientist.
Like a teenager eager to slip behind the wheel of her first car, the scientists received the figurative keys to the rover last week from controllers overseeing these initial months of systems tests. Unless problems arise, destinations will now be picked more for their scientific interest than their value as a spot to test hardware.
"We're excited because from here on out what we're going to do is a repeat of something we've done before," Dr. Grotzinger says. "With that comes more confidence, a chance for fewer surprises, and increased efficiency."
Yet even the tests were a bit like movie trailers, giving researchers hints of discoveries to come ? yielding evidence for an ancient stream bed and rock types paving parts of the crater floor that appear to have formed in the presence of water.
Geological models of the surface, based on data from Mars orbiters, pointed to Gale Crater's floor as a once-watery site.
"But we had no idea that we were going to find the rest of this stuff," he says, referring to the types of rocks and their flagstone-path-type layout at Curiosity's current location ? a zone on the crater floor the team has dubbed Yellowknife.
If Curiosity had "gone long" and landed on the flank of Mt. Sharp instead of its planned landing site, "and we would have found stuff like this, we could have considered it to be very much the stuff we chose the landing site to go find," Grotzinger says.
Mt. Sharp is a towering summit inside Gale Crater. Its strikingly layered slopes hold the promise of revealing much about the early history of Mars's climate and the geological forces that built the mountain. Near the base, Curiosity will be hunting for signs that the crater might have been a suitable place for life to emerge shortly after Mars formed and its climate ? it is believed ? was warmer and much wetter.
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Google laptop for those who live in cloud
Is the world ready to live in the cloud?
Google is betting yes, unveiling Thursday morning its widely rumored touch-screen Chromebook, a high-end laptop designed to propel the shift toward a computing model where most of our applications and data live online.
The Chromebook Pixel, starting at $1,299, represents the most ambitious push into hardware yet for the Mountain View search giant, which designed and built the computer in-house. Its touch-screen capability, flash hard drive, fast processor and super high-resolution display put the product in head-to-head competition with the top offerings of chief rivals Apple and Microsoft.
But the Pixel's use of Google's Chrome operating system, lightweight software that relies on online processing, services and storage, represents a move in a distinct direction. It's a path that may well lead to the future, where all of our computing is done online. It's just not clear yet whether it looks enough like the present to be a breakthrough product.
Earlier versions of the Chromebook were positioned largely as second computers, accompaniments to a full-fledged desktop or laptop. At a San Francisco news conference Thursday, Chrome Senior Vice President Sundar Pichai argued that the Pixel is itself a primary device, at least for power users who already do most of their computing online.
Rethinking laptops
"The idea was rethinking everything in the laptop," he said. "To design something that we believed was the best laptop possible for these users, people who want to live in the cloud."
Pichai said Google intends to earn a profit from the product, but it's trying to sell more than a new computer. The company is trying to sell a new way of computing: Shifting more of it online means nudging more people into Google's Web services, including the Google Drive applications that compete with the popular Microsoft Office suite.
At this point, though, it's unclear how large the market will be for the Pixel. Earlier versions of the Chromebook generally ran in the $200 to $300 range, a low enough price to justify some obvious sacrifices.
Most notably, applications written specifically for Microsoft or Apple's dominant computer operating systems don't work on Chromebooks. That includes popular software like Photoshop, Reader and Final Cut, as well as competing Web browsers.
The other big drawback is that use is limited when a primarily Web-based device runs offline, as anyone with a Wi-Fi-only tablet will quickly learn riding BART (where the Wi-Fi almost never works these days - ahem, WiFi Rail of Sacramento).
Google has made significant strides in these areas since late 2010, when it handed journalists Chromebook prototypes that didn't even have an accessible hard drive.
Notably, Google's suite of online productivity tools, Google Drive, now automatically stores 100 of the most recently accessed documents to the Chromebook drive. That enables users to continue working productively when they're offline on BART, airplanes or mountaintops. The number of files will go up to 1,000 in the weeks ahead.
In addition, Chromebook users will soon be able to open popular Microsoft file types like Word and Excel in their browsers, edit the documents and e-mail them back in their original format. (Previously, you could only open a Microsoft file and edit it as a Google document. Users still won't be able to create a Word or Excel document from scratch.)
Meanwhile, a growing number of developers are building online versions of their products that run within the Chrome browser, known as Web apps, including Dropbox, Evernote and TweetDeck (to name three of my favorites). Google hopes to continue getting more developers to do so.
Too big a cost?
Still, a clear gap remains between the usability of a Chromebook Pixel and, say, a MacBook Pro with Retina display. And yet the latter starts at just $50 more. The MacBook Air and many Windows laptops cost far less.
The advantage of an online operating system is that it starts up in a flash, runs software and security updates automatically and shouldn't require as much hardware storage and processing power.
But as long as we live in a world without ubiquitous Internet access, and where developers find it more profitable to write software for better-known operating systems, it's not clear that those are big enough advantages to offset the downsides. At least not without a steep discount.
A Pixel portrait
Some fact and figures about the new Chromebook Pixel computer:
-- It features an Intel Core i5 processor, 4 gigabytes of RAM and a high-resolution screen that just edges out Apple's MacBook Pro with Retina display in terms of pixel density. A terabyte of free online space on Google Drive is included for three years.
-- The entry-level, Wi-Fi-only model includes a 32-GB solid-state drive and starts at $1,299.
-- The top-end model, with a 64-GB flash drive and Verizon LTE wireless service, is $1,449.
-- Design improvements in the keyboard and touch-pad are aimed at making it comfortable to use over long periods. A set of three microphones boost noise-canceling during operations such as video chats.
-- In tests, the fully charged battery lasted more than five hours.
-- The Pixel can be ordered at https://play.google.com/store or Bestbuy.com, and is expected to ship in the first week of April.
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Vonn ahead of schedule after knee surgery
Lindsey Vonn's right knee is healing quicker than her feelings over a world championship race she says should have been called off.
The four-time overall World Cup champion remains unhappy about how she sustained a season-ending injury ? two shredded ligaments and a broken bone ? at the world championships in Schladming, Austria. She believes organizers should have postponed the super-G race on Feb. 5 because of deteriorating course conditions.
In a conference call Friday, Vonn said she "did not think it was safe" to race on the soft snow and that "athletes safety should come first."
"I do not think the jury made the right call," said Vonn, who underwent surgery to repair the ACL and MCL nearly two weeks ago. "It was definitely not safe to run with that fog."
The start of the super-G was delayed by 3 1/2 hours because of fog hanging over the course. During that time, conditions dramatically changed, said Vonn, who noted that she inspected the hill early in the morning.
Soon after her crash, Atle Skaardal, women's race director for the International Ski Federation, defended the decision to go ahead with the event, saying, "I don't see that any outside factors played a role in this accident."
Vonn disagreed. She hit a jump along the course faster than anyone else and flew a lot farther, landing in a patch of snow that was much softer. Her right ski abruptly stopped and then buckled as she flipped over her ski tips.
"I feel like that loose snow was 100 percent the reason why I crashed," she said.
As she lay in the snow, in pain and waiting for a helicopter to lift her off the mountain, Vonn called U.S. women's head coach Alex Hoedlmoser and told him to inform race officials to stop the competition.
"They apparently didn't do that," Vonn said. "I was definitely disappointed they decided to run the race."
Organizers eventually did stop the event, though not immediately after Vonn's crash. With conditions varying from racer to racer and the light fading, the race was halted after only 36 of the 59 skiers had come down the hill.
"I hope in the future they really think hard about running races and what the conditions are like," Vonn said.
Vonn is on pace to return to the slopes for the beginning of the World Cup season in late November. That's her aim, anyway.
"But that could be a month or two earlier or it could be a month later," she said. "It's all dependent upon how my knee responds. So far, I'm ahead of schedule ? the swelling looks great, everything looks great.
"I'm not concerned about when I'm going to be back. I just want to make sure when I do get back on snow, that my knee is 100 percent. It doesn't take a lot of training for me to be ready to race again."
Already she's setting up to be the comeback story of the 2014 Sochi Games, when Vonn will defend the downhill title she won in Vancouver. She even joked this injury makes her "the underdog now."
"That will help ease the pressure a little bit," Vonn said. "I have no doubt I'm going to be back and be able to ski the same, if not better, than I did before. It's just going to take some time."
Comebacks are hardly anything new for Vonn, who has been plagued by injuries at her last six major championships ? from a thumb she sliced on a champagne bottle at the 2009 worlds in Val d'Isere, France, to a bruised shin that she treated with the unorthodox remedy of Austrian cheese at the Vancouver Olympics.
She's attacking rehab with the same vigor as if it were a course, going as fast as she's allowed. She's attending physical therapy sessions for her knee twice a day, seven days a week. Most of the work involves simple tasks, like moving her knee cap around to gain back motion. She's also working on her upper body strength, vowing to come back stronger than ever.
"I'm channeling most of my energy into workouts," she said.
In between sessions, she's hanging out with her sister, Laura, and watching movies. She's trying to enjoy the down time she's never really had.
"It's a change of pace. But it's hard for me to sit around," Vonn said. "I feel pretty helpless sometimes. Going to the gym and staying active, that makes me feel a lot better."
Although Vonn was open about all things concerning her accident and recovery, she didn't want to address the rumors that she was dating golfer Tiger Woods. That topic was off limits.
"I'm only two weeks out from the worst injury I've had in my career," Vonn said. "At this point, I'm not going to talk about my personal life."
As for her emotional state, she said it's steadily improving. She had a hard time after the accident, especially with her bus so close to the finish line ("I could hear everyone cheering," she said). But once she arrived in Vail, Colo., and had the procedure to fix her knee, she's quickly perked up.
"I'm in a pretty good state. I'm taking it one day at a time," she said. "It's important for me to be really patient. It's going to be a long process. I'm really looking forward to Sochi and I'm going to do everything I can to be stronger than I was before. That's definitely keeping me positive at this point."
So are all the well-wishers. She's talked to her teammates, along with exchanging emails with friend and rival Maria Hoefl-Riesch of Germany.
"It's just the ACL, which is bad enough, but for sure she will be back," said Hoefl-Riesch, who is planning a trip to Vail to visit Vonn. "I'm looking forward to seeing her back next winter."
___
AP Sports Writers Jerome Pugmire and Andrew Dampf contributed.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/vonn-ahead-schedule-knee-surgery-200223964--spt.html
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Friday, February 22, 2013
SEC Storied - the tournament tornado
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Which way Apple ticks on the iWatch will show how gutsy the firm remains
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