Saturday, June 30, 2012

FOXNews.com: Your body heat could power future devices

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Your body heat could power future devices
Jun 30th 2012, 09:15

This week at a technology show in New York City brimming with colorful gadgets, Jerry Wiant of Perpetua stood over a table with a few black armbands and an old quartz watch.

But Perpetua (a developer of green power sources for wireless sensors  where Wiant is vice president of marketing) wasn't there to show cool devices. The company was showing a new way of powering gadgets using simply a person's own body heat.

It's not, strictly speaking, a new way. The technology is based on a principle discovered nearly 200 years ago by physicist Thomas Johann Seebeck, who found that a combination of materials, when warmer on one side and colder on another, produces electricity.

Current heat wave notwithstanding, the human body's temperature of around 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit is usually hotter than the air around it. So Perpetua has developed an armband, soon to become a wristband, that produces enough power for small electronics — not smartphones, but items that connect to them, such as Bluetooth devices. Wearing a mock-up wristband connected to a meter, Wiant put out enough body heat for a consistent 3 to 4 volts. Headsets using a technology called Bluetooth Low Energy need only about 2 volts, he said.

What else uses that level of power? A traditional watch does, he said, as do medical and fitness devices such as heart monitors.

Perpetua's first products are for the U.S. government. The Department of Homeland Security's Science & Technology division, for example, is funding a power-conducting jacket to monitor the health and safety of first responders — with sensors for heart rate, breathing rate and levels of pollutants such as carbon monoxide, for example.

But Perpetua is also aiming for consumer products — for example, a watch with a wrist strap that also doubles as a wirelss power source. By early 2013, the company hopes to have prototypes that companies such as makers of watches and heart monitors can start experimenting with.

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Friday, June 29, 2012

FOXNews.com: New Mayan calendar artifacts discovered

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New Mayan calendar artifacts discovered
Jun 29th 2012, 17:59

In what is considered to be one of the most significant hieroglyphic discoveries in decades, archaeologists in Guatemala, announced the uncovering of panels reportedly showing the second-known reference to the Mayan 2012 "end date."

The 1,300 year-old panels uncovered in Guatemala City, Guatemala, featured inscriptions showing a military victory visit to the city La Corona by the ruler of the Mayan city of Calakmul, Reuters reports.

"I was very amazed and amused yesterday to notice that that panel records the date of the end of the 13th baktun (20 cycles of the Mayan long count calendar), which for us is coming up in just a few months time in December of 2012," Dr. David Stuart of the University of Texas at Austin told Reuters.

"Here we have a Mayan monument that was carved 1,500 years ago that's talking about the year we're in right now," he said.

The inscriptions also predict that the ruler's lineage will continue, the report said.

The Mayan calendar count begins in 3,114 BC and is divided into approximately 394-year periods. Mayans held the 13 sacred, and the13th period ends on December 21, 2012.

"When we take into account how the monument originally was, we can see that it's the largest concentration of inscriptions in the country, and one of the three or five most important in the Mayan world," Thomas Barrientos, director of the Centre of Anthropological and Archaeological Investigations at the Univsidad del Valle, told Reuters.

A May poll says that nearly 10 percent of people believe that the year 2012 on the Mayan calendar signifies an apocalyptic collapse.

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FOXNews.com: Chinese astronauts parachute land safely after mission

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Chinese astronauts parachute land safely after mission
Jun 29th 2012, 15:06

BEIJING –  China's first female astronaut and two other crew members emerged smiling from a capsule that returned safely to Earth on Friday from a 13-day mission to an orbiting module that is a prototype for a future space station.

The Shenzhou 9 parachuted to a landing on the grasslands of the country's sprawling Inner Mongolia region at about 10 a.m. (0200 GMT). China declared the first manned mission to the Tiangong 1 module -- the space program's longest and most challenging yet -- a major stride ahead for the country's ambitious space program.

About an hour later, mission commander and veteran astronaut Jing Haipeng, 45, emerged from the capsule, followed by crew mates Liu Wang, 43, and 33-year-old Liu Yang, China's first female astronaut.

The three, all experienced air force pilots, were lifted on to folding chairs and appeared in good health. They smiled, waved, chatted and saluted as state television ran live footage from the landing site.

"Tiangong 1, our home in space, was comfortable and pleasant. We're very proud of our nation," Liu Yang told national broadcaster CCTV.

Space program commander, Gen. Chang Wanchuan, declared the astronauts in good health and declared the mission "completely successful."

He was followed by Premier Wen Jiabao, who said the mission marked "absolutely important progress" for the space program.

The mission had included both remote control and piloted dockings with the module and extensive medical monitoring of the astronauts as part of preparations for manning a permanent space station.

China's next goals include another manned mission to the module originally scheduled for later this year but which may be delayed depending on an evaluation of the Shenzhou 9 mission and the condition of the Tiangong 1. China has been extremely cautious and methodical in its manned missions, with more than three years passing since the previous one, and all four have been relatively problem-free.

Chen Shanguang, director for the Chinese Astronaut Research and Training Center, told a news conference that preparations and selection of astronauts were already under way for the Shenzhou 10 mission.

Tiangong 1 is due to be retired in a few years and replaced with a permanent space station around 2020 that will weigh about 60 tons, slightly smaller than NASA's Skylab of the 1970s and about one-sixth the size of the 16-nation International Space Station that China was barred from participating in, largely on objections from the United States. Possible future missions could include sending a rover to the moon, possibly followed by a manned lunar mission. Launched June 16 from the Jiuquan center on the edge of the Gobi desert in northern China, Shenzhou 9 is the latest success for China's manned space program that launched its first astronaut, Yang Liwei, into space in 2003, making China just the third nation after Russia and the U.S. to achieve that feat. China would also be the third country after the United States and Russia to send independently maintained space stations into orbit.

Earlier in the week, a spokeswoman said China spent 20 billion yuan ($3.1 billion) on its space program between 1992 and 2005 -- a rare admission for a program with close links to the secretive military. By the time the next Shenzhou mission is completed, Beijing will have spent an additional 19 billion yuan ($3 billion), the spokeswoman said.

Wang Zhaoyao, director of China's manned space program office, said the program mirrors the rising global status of China.

"For any country, for any people, a space program is indispensable," Wang said.

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FOXNews.com: Wait for it: Earth adds leap second Saturday night

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Wait for it: Earth adds leap second Saturday night
Jun 29th 2012, 14:09

WASHINGTON –  Saturday night will stretch longer by a second. A leap second.

International timekeepers, directed from headquarters in Paris, are adding a second to the clock at midnight universal time Saturday, June 30, going into July 1. That's 8 p.m. EDT Saturday. Universal time will be 11:59:59 and then 11:59:60.

U.S. Naval Observatory spokesman Geoff Chester said a leap second is needed because the Earth is slowing down a bit from the tidal pull of the moon.

Timekeepers add a leap second every now and then to keep the sun at its highest at noon, at least during standard time. This is the first leap second since January 2009 and the 25th overall.

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FOXNews.com: US rocket launches carrying secret satellite

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US rocket launches carrying secret satellite
Jun 29th 2012, 13:50

CAPE CARNAVAL –  A new U.S. clandestine satellite has rocketed into space.

An unmanned Delta IV-Heavy rocket lifted off Friday morning from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It carried a satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office.

The office is keeping quiet about the satellite's purpose.

This was the second rocket launch for the NRO in the last two weeks. An Atlas V rocket carrying another secret satellite was launched June 20.

Friday's launch was delayed a day because of concerns about weather conditions caused by Tropical Storm Debby earlier in the week. The launch was delayed three hours for several technical issues with a sticky valve.

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Thursday, June 28, 2012

FOXNews.com: Chinese astronauts return to Earth after 13-day mission to module

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Chinese astronauts return to Earth after 13-day mission to module
Jun 29th 2012, 04:05

BEIJING –  A Chinese space capsule with three astronauts aboard returned to Earth on Friday from a 13-day mission to an orbiting module that is a prototype for a future permanent station.

The crew of the Shenzhou 9 parachuted to a landing on the grasslands of the country's sprawling Inner Mongolia region at about 10 a.m. (0200 GMT). China declared the mission to the Tiangong 1 module a major stride ahead for the country's ambitious space program.

The crew included China's first female astronaut, 33-year-old Liu Yang, who was joined by mission commander and veteran astronaut Jing Haipeng, 45, and crew mate Liu Wang, 43. All are highly experienced air force pilots.

The mission had included both remote control and piloted dockings with the module and extensive medical monitoring of the astronauts as part of preparations for manning a permanent space station.

China's next goals include another manned mission to the module originally scheduled for later this year but which may be delayed depending on an evaluation of the Shenzhou 9 mission and the condition of the Tiangong 1. China has been extremely cautious and methodical in its manned missions, with more than three years passing since the previous one, and all four have been relatively problem-free.

Tiangong 1 is due to be retired in a few years and replaced with a permanent space station around 2020 that will weigh about 60 tons, slightly smaller than NASA's Skylab of the 1970s and about one-sixth the size of the 16-nation International Space Station that China was barred from participating in, largely on objections from the United States. Possible future missions could include sending a rover to the moon, possibly followed by a manned lunar mission.

Launched June 16 from the Jiuquan center on the edge of the Gobi desert in northern China, Shenzhou 9 is the latest success for China's manned space program that launched its first astronaut, Yang Liwei, into space in 2003, making China just the third nation after Russia and the U.S. to achieve that feat. China would also be the third country after the United States and Russia to send independently maintained space stations into orbit.

Earlier in the week, a spokeswoman said China spent 20 billion yuan ($3.1 billion) on its space program between 1992 and 2005 -- a rare admission for a program with close links to the secretive military. By the time the next Shenzhou mission is completed, Beijing will have spent an additional 19 billion yuan ($3 billion), the spokeswoman said.

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FOXNews.com: Serial slaughter: Bear kills 70 sheep in Montana (Warning: graphic photographs)

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Serial slaughter: Bear kills 70 sheep in Montana (Warning: graphic photographs)
Jun 28th 2012, 19:45

A female grizzly bear was captured after going on a predatory spree, killing more than 70 sheep around Montana in a two week period.

The sow slaughtered sheep throughout ranches within a 20-mile radius of Great Falls, Mont. None of the sheep appeared to have been killed by the cub travelling with her, and only two sheep appear to have actually been eaten.

"Sometimes the predatory instinct of grizzly bears just kicks in and they go to killing livestock," Carol Bannerman, public affairs specialist with the U.S.D.A.'s Wildlife Services told FoxNews.com. She explained that it isn't clear why the bear went on the rampage. 

"The problem is, once they discover how easy it is to kill sheep in particular, they seldom stop killing [them]."

The depredations occurred at three ranches within eight days. Between June 16 and June 22, some 72 sheep were killed and at least four more were injured. At one site, 50 sheep were killed in two nights.

"She wouldn't go back. Some animals will go back to the location where they have depredated and eat. That did not happen," Bannerman said. 

'Once they discover how easy it is to kill sheep in particular, they seldom stop killing [them].'

- U.S.D.A. Wildlife Services spokeswoman Carol Bannerman

At one point, wildlife services were able to capture the grizzly cub, place a GPS tracker on it, and released it in the hopes that it would return with its mother.

There was an initial struggle to locate the cub once it had reunited with the sow, however -- so much so, that they had to start a helicopter search.

On June 24, the two were finally tranquilized.

"The sow wasn't in very good shape," Mike Madel, grizzly bear management specialist at Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, told FoxNews.com.

"It was the youngest mother and the smallest cub I had ever found," he continued. "She was four and a half years old and the cub was 32 pounds. Usually at that age they weigh around 50."

When the bears were recovered, researchers saw that the sow had ear tags from 2010, when she was captured by Madel. Grizzly bears can be euthanized if they have previously been captured for depredating. Luckily, the sow had been captured for research purposes, so the team of biologists opted to relocate the two.

The four year old sow and her cub were placed 160 miles from the incident, around Frozen Lake, near British Columbia.

The tracking and relocation of the animals was a collaborative effort between the  U. S. Forest Services, Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services, and U.S.D.A. Wildlife Services.

Even though in a recent depredation incident, a male the bear was euthanized, Madel said that wildlife departments handle incidents on a case by case basis. 

"We've moved towards fast recovery because we've protected the female grizzly population that grows over time," Madel remarked.

Grizzly bears are currently listed as threatened on U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Threatened and Endangered Species List, but Madel says that at a growth rate of three percent, they could soon be removed from the list.

"Going through that capture event usually makes them wary of other people. She's less likely to do this again."

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FOXNews.com: Hands-on with the Jelly Bean-fueled Google Nexus 7

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Hands-on with the Jelly Bean-fueled Google Nexus 7
Jun 28th 2012, 17:30

Hot on the heels of Microsoft's Surface, Google on Wednesday unveiled its first branded tablet, the Nexus 7 at the I/O developer conference. 

With a powerful quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 CPU, a bright 1,280 x 800 screen and the brand new Android 4.1 Jelly Bean OS on board, this is one slick slate. 

We had the chance  go hands-on with the tablet at a Google demo station and then unbox a review unit we received and use it from first power-on.

At just 0.7 pounds, the Nexus 7 feels pretty light in the hand, but still has a very solid base with a little heft. With its rubberized back, which appeared dark gray in a demo unit on the show floor but white in our review unit, the tablet is really pleasant to hold in the hand. 

As you might expect from a tablet this size, the device doesn't have much in the way of ports as there's only a single 3.5mm headphone jack and a micro USB charging port. However, we really appreciate the choice of standard micro USB for charging. That means you don't need proprietary cables; any standard USB cable and AC adapter will do fine. The right side of the device houses a volume rocker and the power button and the left side has a four pin gold contact area that could be used for docking in the future.

As with most tablets, the screen is incredibly glossy and reflects overhead light back you. When filming videos of the tablet, it was hard to avoid reflections. The display is also a fingerprint magnet, prominently showing smudges. Above the screen sits the front-facing 1,280 x 960 resolution camera; there's no back facer so forget about shooting photos or videos. This device only takes pictures for chat. 

When turned all the way up, the screen appears colorful and vibrant. However, we haven't had the chance to put it next to competing devices like the Toshiba Excite or the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 to see how it compares. 

Operating System and Software

There's a reason why Google assigned Android version 4.1 to its new Jelly Bean OS, rather than going all the way to version 5.0. The new UI looks nearly identical to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, with only a few subtle changes here and there. As with Ice Cream Sandwich, the bottom of the screen has three software menu buttons for back, home and recent apps.

On the home screens, there's a nav bar with 7 icons, the first of which is a configurable folder that opens to reveal several apps including YouTube. Other default icons along the bottom include Google Books, Google Magazines, the apps menu button, Google Movies, Google Music and the Play Store. You can remove or change any of these but the Apps menu button.

Apps

The Nexus 7 comes with all the basic apps, but nothing extra. These include the calculator, calendar, clock, Google Earth, Email, Gmail, Gallery, Google+, Maps, Messenger, Play Magazines, Play Movies, and Search. In  a brief look through these apps, most looked the same as their Ice Cream Sandwich counterparts, but we did notice a couple of differences off the bat. The YouTube app has a left pane that helps you find new channels and the Google Search app now takes voice commands.  

On the floor demo unit, we were able to get a Google Now button by swiping up from the bottom of the screen. However, it only took us into the search app, not any kind of special Google Now Area. The review unit did not the Google Now functionality enabled.

We haven't had a chance try out all of Jelly Bean's new features yet, but our favorite so far is the enhanced notification drawer. When we received an email in our Gmail account, the notification bar showed the first few words of our message. However, when we dragged the notification down, we were able to read several sentences of the messages,without leaving the drawer.

Inside the Box

The Nexus 7 comes in a thick black cardboard box with a colorful sleeve over it. Inside, you'll find the tablet itself, along with a small box that contains a micro USB cable and an AC adapter. There's also a tiny Quick Start guide.

When we first powered on the device, it took less than 30 seconds to power on and bring us to a welcome screen. After that, we had to pick a wireless network, log in to our Google account and decide whether we wanted to back up the device to the cloud. Within a couple of minutes we were at the desktop and had a free $25 Play store credit to boot.

The five desktops contain a lot of entertainment widgets. The furthest right desktop is filled with music recommendations. The second from the right has the My Movies widget which has a free copy of Transformers: Dark of the Moon while the center screen has the My Library widget, complete with a few free magazines including Popular Science, Shape and Esquire. The second to the left desktop has more My Books and My Magazines widgets and the far left desktop has the recommended apps widget. It's clear that Google wants to push its Play store pretty hard.

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FOXNews.com: One-third of Americans believe in UFOs, survey says

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One-third of Americans believe in UFOs, survey says
Jun 28th 2012, 15:28

A new survey finds that 80 million Americans, or 36 percent of the population, believe UFOs are real. One in 10 respondents say they have personally witnessed an alien spaceship. And if aliens were to invade the country sometime in the next four years, 65 percent of survey respondents said President Obama would be better suited for handling the invasion than Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

The market research company Kelton Research conducted the survey by polling a random nationwide sample of 1,114 Americans ages 18 and older, who were representative of the demographics of the nation as a whole. The survey was commissioned by the National Geographic Channel to promote its new series "Chasing UFOs."

'79 percent of people think the government has kept information about UFOs a secret from the public.'

- NatGeo survey

To the question of whether they believe aliens have visited Earth, 36 percent of Americans who were surveyed said they do, 48 percent aren't sure, and 17 percent said they don't believe so. More than three in four Americans (77 percent) think there are signs that suggest aliens have visited the Earth, whether or not they've made up their minds about the question.

The results align with other modern studies of UFO belief. For example, a 2008 survey of 1,003 adult Americans  conducted by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University also found that a third of adults believe it's either very likely or somewhat likely that intelligent aliens from space have visited our planet. One in 12 said they had personally seen a mysterious object in the sky that they thought might have been an alien spaceship. [7 Huge Misconceptions about Aliens]

More surprisingly, the new NatGeo survey found that a whopping 79 percent of people think the government has kept information about UFOs a secret from the public, and more than half (55 percent) believe there are real-life "Men in Black"-style agents who threaten people who spot UFOs.

Regardless of the government's methods, Obama won out over Romney in the category of readiness to handle an alien invasion. Incidentally, many survey respondents picture that invasion as an "Independence Day"-style attack on Washington, D.C.: Nearly one in five think the nation's capital is the most likely landing zone for a UFO.

Copyright 2012 Lifes Little Mysteries, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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FOXNews.com: Rare 'green rust' offers glimpse of ancient seas

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Rare 'green rust' offers glimpse of ancient seas
Jun 28th 2012, 15:14

A rare and highly reactive iron mineral called green rust appears to have played an important role in ancient oceans, suggest new findings, which may have implications for the formation of Earth's early atmosphere.

The research team identified green rust in an Indonesian lake where conditions mimic those of the ancient oceans, and found the rust played an important role removing an important element, nickel, from the water.

If green rust accomplished something similar in ancient oceans, it could potentially have played an indirect role in the accumulation of oxygen in the atmosphere, a process that picked up speed about 2.3 billion years ago with the first great rise in atmospheric oxygen, called the Great Oxidation Event. The oxygenation of the atmosphere allowed more complex life, including humans, to evolve.

"The link between green rust, nickel uptake and the oxygenation history of the planet requires further investigation, but our finding is a major step forward," study researcher Simon Poulton, a professor of biogeochemistry at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom, told LiveScience in an email.

Green rust, like the better-known, red-orange stuff, is an iron mineral, first identified only about a decade ago, according to Poulton.

Since then, green rust, which is indeed a pale green, has been found in only a few places, including water-logged soils, groundwater, and, now, the oxygen-free water of Lake Matano in Indonesia. The deep waters of this ancient lake contain iron-rich and oxygen-free waters like those scientists believe filled Earth's deep oceans more than 580 million years ago. [In Living Color: Gallery of Stunning Lakes]

The discovery of green rust in the lake suggests this rare mineral may have been more common in Earth's ancient past, Poulton said.

Like other iron minerals, green rust readily absorbs dissolved elements onto its surface, but green rust is not only particularly efficient at this — in many cases, it can also react with toxic dissolved trace metals to make them insoluble, and as a result, renders them in nontoxic forms. This is something most normal iron oxides cannot do, Poulton said.

In the modern world, some hope to use green rust to remove toxic metals and radioactive elements from the environment.

In the ancient oceans, green rust's ability to pull nickel out of the water would have been critical for some life forms, since nickel is an important nutrient for microbes that produce methane. Methane reacts with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide, so less nickel means less methane, which would mean oxygen could remain in the atmosphere and accumulate over time, Poulton explained.

The research has other implications for understanding the composition of ancient oceans. To understand the nutrient composition of the ancient oceans, it's important to know which iron minerals were around at the time. Iron minerals take up dissolved nutrients and carry them to the seafloor, where they eventually become preserved in rock. But because different iron minerals behave differently, scientists must know what iron minerals were present, according to Poulton.

In Lake Matano, they found that green rust played a dominant role in taking up nickel. In the future, Poulton hopes to look into green rust's interactions with other nutrients.

The research is detailed in the July issue of the journal Geology.

Copyright 2012 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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FOXNews.com: Daredevil ready to plunge from outer space, break sound barrier

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Daredevil ready to plunge from outer space, break sound barrier
Jun 28th 2012, 14:29

Faster than a speeding bullet: This is space-diving.

Daredevil adventurer Felix Baumgartner's plans to plunge 23 miles from the edge of space back to Earth -- a Red Bull-sponsored stunt that would be the world's highest freefall -- and after successfully completing a battery of tests, his team is nearly ready for the big jump in Roswell, New Mexico.

"The development phase has been successfully completed," was the confident announcement that Baumgartner posted on his Facebook page. "After 3 weeks of capsule tests, emergency procedures and high altitude test jumps in Taft, we're done!"

"One mile every 5 seconds – this is how fast you travel at supersonic speed."

- Felix Baumgartner, daredevil adventurer

The attempt to break the record of 102,800 feet for the highest altitude freefall set in 1960 will take place shortly after the completion of the final manned test jump.

"One mile every 5 seconds – this is how fast you travel at supersonic speed," Baumgartner said, somewhat astonished himself at that particular measurement of how quickly he will be falling from the heavens.

"It's hard to believe it if you put it that way, but I love it," added the 43-year-old adventurer, who is looking forward to the historic jump from the edge of space, which will also collect important data for the advancement of medical science. "Will I break the sound barrier this summer? We think it's possible, and I'm putting everything into making it happen."

The launch window for the 120,000 jump starts in July in New Mexico, Baumgartner told FoxNews.com earlier this year.

With air temperatures of -70 F degrees, his very blood would boil if exposed to the air. So what could compel a man to make such a dangerous attempt?

"I like the challenge," Baumgartner said. "I have a passion for aviation, and I love working on things that start from scratch," he explained.

Dr. Andy Walshe, the mission's high performance director, has helped Baumgartner overcome the trying psychological challenges of being inside a space suit for hours on end, noting, "Felix is intense, he's in control, he's resilient – these are the characteristics that really match the project."

To do it at all required a custom supersonic spacesuit, designed by the David Clark Company, which made the first such pressurized suits to protect World War II fighters during high-speed maneuvers.

In the process of his leap, Baumgartner hopes to become the first parachutist to break the sound barrier, plummeting toward the ground at 760 miles per hour. Other world records up for grabs: the highest manned balloon flight (120,000 feet); the highest skydive; and the longest freefall (about 5 minutes, 30 seconds).

Joe Kittinger, retired U.S. Air Force colonel who holds several of the long-standing records that Baumgartner is determined to break, is delighted to be a mentor for his Austrian protégé.

"He'll be making a significant contribution to future astronauts and future space travelers," Kittinger said.

"He's using a pressure suit that will be the next generation of pressure suits. He'll be gathering valuable data for future space travel."

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FOXNews.com: Amazing Spider-Man tech will let soldiers scale sheer walls

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Amazing Spider-Man tech will let soldiers scale sheer walls
Jun 28th 2012, 15:45

Soldiers will soon be able to scale any vertical surface without slipping, just like Spider-Man -- with help from cutting-edge technology rather than a spider bite.

Without the use of ropes, ladders, or glue, the tech makes it possible to climb a wall carrying a full combat load. News reports earlier this month touted one such technology from Utah State University, which relies on suction cups to ascend sheer walls.

Vacuums are just one approach, however.

Several other programs seek to enable Spidey powers in warfighters, many inspired by the humble gecko: The tiny, 5-ounce lizard can scale a wall carrying 9 pounds of weight -- a whopping 18 times its body weight.

If this super power could be extracted from nature, mimicked and applied to humans, Peter Parker's secret powers become very real.

People assume geckos achieve their climbing capabilities through suction cups on their feet or by secreting a sticky goo. Instead the stick is achieved by millions of tiny hairs on the soles of the gecko's feet. These hairs keep its toes in contact with the surface, creating molecular forces of attraction.

Each hair has a mushroom-shaped cap less than one-thousandth of a millimeter across at the tip; the attractive force for a single hair may be miniscule, but multiply it by the millions of hairs found on each foot and you get solid footing, straight up a wall.

Geckos simply peel their feet away from the surface to release a foot.

BAE System's Advanced Technology Center has one of the top programs and it closely mimics the gecko. The center has succeeded in creating a material that is a sort of artificial version of the bottom of the gecko's foot.

Their material has polymer layers comprised of thousands of microscopic stalks with splayed tips like the gecko hairs.

When the material's ability to stick to glass was tested, the result was a pull-off force of 3,000 kg per square meter.

Put BAE's material on the palms of human hands and it's strong enough to support a person's weight. If you went bigger and used a T-shirt made of the material, it could hold the weight of a family car.

The far-out research group known as DARPA (short for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has an extremely cool Z-Man program meant to develop new climbing aids that are biologically inspired by geckos as well as by spiders and small animals. One of the Z-Man results has been the "Geckskin," developed at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, with partial funding by DARPA.

While many efforts like BAE's have focused on replicating the qualities of those microscopic toe hairs, called setae, to mimic their adhesive capability, this promising research has gone in a different direction.

Geckskin looks like a 16-inch square of rubber-coated fabric. It doesn't feel sticky yet it can be used to climb supersmooth surfaces, even glass.

Relying on the Van der Waals force, which describes the attraction between molecules on the two surfaces, it can hold a maximum force of about 700 pounds while still adhering to a vertical surface. Van der Waals force is basically reversible adhesion or the electrostatic attraction of the molecules on the two surfaces.

Geckskin has already been fabricated and demonstrated proof of concept with a 16-square-inch sheet sticking to a vertical glass wall -- while holding 660 pounds. 

To maximize van der Waals interaction with the surface, tests have been run on Z-Man adhesive pads that mimic the gecko foot, from the tendons through to the microscopic setae and spatula.

DARPA's efforts are also concentrated on nano-adhesives; the agency's goal this year is to demonstrate a soldier with operationally relevant equipment at 250 pounds climbing a 25-foot tall wall. Next year the goal the research agency aims to hand over prototypes of the nanoadhesive to the initial Service users.

According to DARPA's budget, $20 million this year and next will be invested into the program.

Gecko-inspired technology could be used a number of different ways well beyond wall climbing. BAE Systems has been looking at other military applications, including a way to rapidly repair holes in aircraft skins or fuel tanks and a technique to instantly attach stealth or armor to vehicles.

From tethering aircraft to carrier decks through to improving robots, the defense potential from this tiny creature is immense.

Ballet dancer turned defense specialist Allison Barrie has travelled around the world covering the military, terrorism, weapons advancements and life on the front line. You can reach her at wargames@foxnews.com or follow her on Twitter @Allison_Barrie.

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FOXNews.com: Big win for Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom in New Zealand court

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Big win for Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom in New Zealand court
Jun 28th 2012, 12:15

WELLINGTON, New Zealand –   A New Zealand judge has ruled that police warrants used to seize computer hard drives from Kim Dotcom's mansion weren't legally valid.

Police executed the search and seizure warrants during a January raid on Dotcom's home near Auckland.

Dotcom is the flamboyant founder of Hong Kong-based file-sharing site Megaupload. He is accused by federal authorities of racketeering and money laundering, and facilitating Internet piracy on a massive scale. He's fighting U.S. attempts to extradite him from New Zealand.

Justice Helen Winklemann ruled Thursday the warrants were overly broad and that New Zealand authorities also acted unlawfully by handing digital copies to the FBI.

Winkelmann has not yet decided upon any remedies. What impact her ruling, which is likely to be appealed, will have on the complex case will likely become clearer in coming weeks.

"You don't just shut down the whole street because somebody is speeding."

- Steve Wozniak, Apple cofounder

Despite the looming threat of extradition and Federal charges, Dotcom has seen growing support for his case -- both in legal arenas and in the public eye.

Yesterday, Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak came out in support of the Internet entrepreneur, saying the U.S. piracy case against Kim Dotcom is "hokey" and a threat to Internet innovation.

Wozniak said he was visiting New Zealand last month to give a speech when he learned Dotcom couldn't come to see him because he was under house arrest. So Wozniak said he visited Dotcom and the two have kept in touch by email since.

"It's just kind of ridiculous what they did to his life," Wozniak said in a telephone interview. "An awful lot of Kiwis support him. The U.S. government is on thin ground."

Wozniak said plenty of people used Megaupload for legitimate purposes before federal authorities shut it down in January and filed criminal charges against seven of its officers, including Dotcom. In a dramatic raid the same month, New Zealand police swooped down in helicopters onto the grounds of Dotcom's mansion and cut their way into a safe room where they found him hiding. He was jailed for a month before a judge decided he could be monitored from his home.

Wozniak likened the Megaupload site to a highway and those who shared pirated movies and songs to speeding motorists.

"You don't just shut down the whole street because somebody is speeding," he said.

In an email interview, Dotcom said the charges are bogus.

"The more people learn about this case the more they realize that this type of copyright disagreement between Hollywood and new cloud storage technology is a political debate, not something that belongs in the criminal court and certainly not something to justify breaking down the door to my house," he said.

Dotcom said Megaupload had been applauded for its content removal policies. But he also acknowledged the site could host pirated files.

"What people uploaded and downloaded in their storage areas was up to them. One person's licensed music MP3 file is potentially another person's infringing file," he wrote.

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FOXNews.com: Asteroid hunters seek to launch private telescope

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Asteroid hunters seek to launch private telescope
Jun 28th 2012, 12:00

Who will protect us from a killer asteroid? A team of ex-NASA astronauts and scientists thinks it's up to them.

In a bold plan unveiled Thursday, the group wants to launch its own space telescope to spot and track small and mid-sized space rocks capable of wiping out a city or continent. With that information, they could sound early warnings if a rogue asteroid appeared headed toward our planet.

So far, the idea from the B612 Foundation is on paper only.

Such an effort would cost upward of several hundred million dollars, and the group plans to start fundraising. Behind the nonprofit are a space shuttle astronaut, Apollo 9 astronaut, former Mars czar, deep space mission manager along with other non-NASA types.

Asteroids are leftovers from the formation of the solar system some 4.5 billion years ago. Most reside in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter but some get nudged into Earth's neighborhood.

NASA and a network of astronomers routinely scan the skies for these near-Earth objects. And they've found 90 percent of the biggest threats -- asteroids at least two-thirds of a mile across that are considered major killers. Scientists believe it was a six-mile-wide asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.

But the group thinks more attention should be paid to the estimated half a million smaller asteroids -- similar in size to the one that exploded over Siberia in 1908 and leveled more than 800 square miles of forest.

"We know these objects are out there and we can do something to prevent them" from hitting Earth, said former Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart, who helped establish the foundation a decade ago.

Asteroids are getting attention lately. NASA nixed a return to the moon in favor of a manned landing on an asteroid. Last month, Planetary Resources Inc., a company founded by space entrepreneurs, announced plans to extract precious metals from asteroids within a decade.

'We know these objects are out there and we can do something to prevent them [from hitting Earth].'

- Former Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart

Since its birth, the Mountain View, Calif.-based B612 Foundation -- named after the home asteroid of the Earth-visiting prince in Antoine de Saint-Exupery's "The Little Prince" -- has focused on finding ways to deflect an incoming asteroid. Ideas studied include sending an intercepting spacecraft to aiming a nuclear bomb, but none have been tested.

Last year, the group shifted focus to seek out asteroids with a telescope.

It is working with Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., which has drawn up a preliminary telescope design. The contractor developed NASA's Kepler telescope that hunts for exoplanets and built the instruments aboard the Hubble Space Telescope.

Under the proposal, the asteroid-hunting Sentinel Space Telescope will operate for at least 5 1/2 years. It will orbit around the sun, near the orbit of Venus, or between 30 million to 170 million miles away from Earth. Data will be beamed back through NASA's antenna network under a deal with the space agency.

Launch is targeted for 2017 or 2018. The group is angling to fly aboard SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, which made history last month by lifting a cargo capsule to the International Space Station.

Experts said the telescope's vantage point would allow it to spy asteroids faster than ground-based telescopes and accelerate new discoveries. NASA explored doing such a mission in the past but never moved forward because of the expense.

"It's always best to find these things quickly and track them. There might be one with our name on it," said Don Yeomans, who heads the Near-Earth Object Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which monitors potentially dangerous space rocks.

Aside from the technological challenges, the big question is whether philanthropists will open up their wallets to support the project.

Nine years ago, the cost was estimated at $500 million, said Tim Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center at Harvard University who was part of the team that came up with the figure for NASA.

Spahr questions whether enough can be raised given the economy. "This is a hard time," he said.

The group has received seed money -- several hundreds of thousands of dollars -- from venture capitalists and Silicon Valley outfits to create a team of experts. Foundation chairman Ed Lu said he was confident donors will step up and noted that some of the world's most powerful telescopes including the Lick and Palomar observatories in California were built with private money.

"We're not all about doom and gloom," said the former shuttle astronaut. "We're about opening up the solar system. We're talking about preserving life on this planet."

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Wednesday, June 27, 2012

FOXNews.com: 1950s cargo plane crash wreckage found by an Alaska glacier

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1950s cargo plane crash wreckage found by an Alaska glacier
Jun 27th 2012, 21:35

ANCHORAGE, Alaska –  Military officials say the wreckage of a plane found near an Alaska glacier this month is that of a military plane that crashed in 1952, killing all 52 people aboard.

Army Capt. Jamie Dobson says evidence found at the scene positively correlates with the crash of the C-124A Globemaster.

The Alaska National Guard discovered wreckage and possibly bones June 10 on Colony Glacier.

The military says an eight-man Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command arrived last week. The team completed its work Tuesday at the glacier about 40 miles east of Anchorage.

The team recovered materials like a life-support system from the plane's wreckage and possible bones. The evidence was taken to a lab in Hawaii for analysis.

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FOXNews.com: Google to sell prototype of futuristic glasses -- just $1,500

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Google to sell prototype of futuristic glasses -- just $1,500
Jun 27th 2012, 20:03

SAN FRANCISCO –  Google is making prototypes of its futuristic, Internet-connected glasses available for people to test out.

The company is selling the device, known as Project Glass, for $1,500 to people attending its annual conference in San Francisco for computer programmers. It will ship early next year and won't be available for sale outside the three-day conference, which started Wednesday.

"This is new technology and we really want you to shape it," Google co-founder Sergey Brin told about 6,000 attendees. "We want to get it out into the hands of passionate people as soon as possible."

'We want to get it out into the hands of passionate people as soon as possible.'

- Google co-founder Sergey Brin

With the glasses, directions to your destination can appear literally before your eyes. You can talk to friends over video chat, take a photo or even buy a few things online as you walk around.

In development for more than two years, the project is the brainchild of Google X, the online search-leader's secret facility that spawned the self-driving car and could one day let people ride elevators into space.

Isabelle Olsson, an engineer on the Glass project, said the company created the glasses for people to interact with the virtual world without distracting them from the physical world. It's designed to interact closely with your senses, without blocking them.

She said Google had two broad goals in mind: communications through images and quick access to information. The device has a camera to capture fleeting moments and allow others to see the world through your eyes.

Google demonstrated the device by having parachutists jump out of a blimp above San Francisco. The audience got live video feeds from their glasses as they descended to land on the roof of the Moscone Center, the location of the conference.

Google had given a glimpse of the technology in a video posted earlier this year.

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FOXNews.com: Dinosaurs may have been warm-blooded after all

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Dinosaurs may have been warm-blooded after all
Jun 27th 2012, 19:15

Dinosaurs may not have been the slow, sunbathing reptiles researchers used to think. In fact, they may have been warm-blooded, new research suggests.

The researchers studied the "growth lines" on animal bones, which are similar to the growth rings in tree trunks. During slow-growing times like during the winter, they are darker and narrower, while in fast-growing times the bones have lighter, wider bands.

Figuring out if dinosaurs were warm-blooded endotherms (made their own body heat) or were "cold-blooded" ectotherms that relied on outside sources of warmth could illuminate a lot about how they lived, grew and evolved. How warm an animal is has an impact on their metabolism, and therefore how quickly they can grow and have babies.

Of bones and blood

Previously, scientists had thought that growth lines showed up only on the bones of cold-blooded animals, since these animals grow in fits and starts. Warm-blooded animals, like mammals and birds, are assumed to grow continuously, because they keep their temperatures up and have high metabolic rates, continually making energy to grow.

As such, researchers took the growth lines on dinosaur bones as evidence of their cold-bloodedness. Until now.

In this study, the researchers compared the bone lines from the leg bones of more than 100 wild ruminants (warm-blooded mammals like sheep and cows that have multiple stomachs) with seasonal rainfall and temperature cycles and with the animal's core body temperature and resting metabolic rate. The researchers showed that these warm-blooded animals also have bone growth lines indicating fast, yet interrupted yearly growth that depended on how long the "unfavorable" season lasted. [Image Gallery: Dinosaur Fossils]

Hot dinos

The growth lines they found on the ruminants were similar to those seen in previous studies of dinosaur bones — indicating that both ruminants and dinosaurs have periods of high growth punctuated by "unfavorable" seasons with limited resources and little growth. This means that dinosaurs were likely warm-blooded like the ruminants.

"The argument we are giving in our paper, rather in favor of endothermy in dinosaurs, is that between the growth and rest lines, there's always a big region of highly vascularized [infiltrated with blood vessels] tissue that indicates very high growth rates," study researcher Meike Köhler, of the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain, told LiveScience. "This is typical in dinosaurs and very different from reptiles, which have slow growth between the rest lines."

Sauropods were the only dinosaurs where researchers haven't seen growth lines similar to those of ruminants. Previous studies of their teeth indicate they would have had high body temperatures as well, though they might have been big enough for their mass to generate that heat — what researchers call a "gigantotherm." Researchers don't know what their growth lines would have looked like, since no animals alive today are gigantotherms.

Fast growth?

This indicates that "dinosaurs also had very fast growth rates and needed to eat a lot and maintain high generation of heat internally," Kohler said, so they were most likely warm-blooded.

The theory that dinosaurs were warm has been gaining traction in the last few years in multiple fields, but the researchers admit that other, non-bone-based arguments for cold-bloodedness still stand. Endotherms should have the physical ability to move quickly, and lung volume to pump oxygen to muscles needed for running, which researchers can't be sure dinosaurs had.

"There are a lot of arguments in favor and against endothermy in dinosaurs," Kohler said. "It could be that they have some traits that are clearly endothermic," but others may be muddled.

The study was published June 27 in the journal Nature.

Copyright 2012 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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