Everyday Carry Bags ? Bill Henderson

This entry is part 6 of 5 in the series

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2013/05/19/everyday-carry-bags-bill-henderson/

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Mars rover Opportunity examines clay clues in rock

May 18, 2013 ? NASA's senior Mars rover, Opportunity, is driving to a new study area after a dramatic finish to 20 months on "Cape York" with examination of a rock intensely altered by water.

The fractured rock, called "Esperance," provides evidence about a wet ancient environment possibly favorable for life. The mission's principal investigator, Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., said, "Esperance was so important, we committed several weeks to getting this one measurement of it, even though we knew the clock was ticking."

The mission's engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., had set this week as a deadline for starting a drive toward "Solander Point," where the team plans to keep Opportunity working during its next Martian winter.

"What's so special about Esperance is that there was enough water not only for reactions that produced clay minerals, but also enough to flush out ions set loose by those reactions, so that Opportunity can clearly see the alteration," said Scott McLennan of the State University of New York, Stony Brook, a long-term planner for Opportunity's science team.

This rock's composition is unlike any other Opportunity has investigated during nine years on Mars -- higher in aluminum and silica, lower in calcium and iron.

The next destination, Solander Point, and the area Opportunity is leaving, Cape York, both are segments of the rim of Endeavour Crater, which spans 14 miles (22 kilometers) across. The planned driving route to Solander Point is about 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers). Cape York has been Opportunity's home since the rover arrived at the western edge of Endeavour in mid-2011 after a two-year trek from a smaller crater.

"Based on our current solar-array dust models, we intend to reach an area of 15 degrees northerly tilt before Opportunity's sixth Martian winter," said JPL's Scott Lever, mission manager. "Solander Point gives us that tilt and may allow us to move around quite a bit for winter science observations."

Northerly tilt increases output from the rover's solar panels during southern-hemisphere winter. Daily sunshine for Opportunity will reach winter minimum in February 2014. The rover needs to be on a favorable slope well before then.

The first drive away from Esperance covered 81.7 feet (24.9 meters) on May 14. Three days earlier, Opportunity finished exposing a patch of the rock's interior with the rock abrasion tool. The team used a camera and spectrometer on the robotic arm to examine Esperance.

The team identified Esperance while exploring a portion of Cape York where the Compact Reconnaissance Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had detected a clay mineral. Clays typically form in wet environments that are not harshly acidic. For years, Opportunity had been finding evidence for ancient wet environments that were very acidic. The CRISM findings prompted the rover team to investigate the area where clay had been detected from orbit. There, they found an outcrop called "Whitewater Lake," containing a small amount of clay from alteration by exposure to water.

"There appears to have been extensive, but weak, alteration of Whitewater Lake, but intense alteration of Esperance along fractures that provided conduits for fluid flow," Squyres said. "Water that moved through fractures during this rock's history would have provided more favorable conditions for biology than any other wet environment recorded in rocks Opportunity has seen."

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Project launched Opportunity to Mars on July 7, 2003, about a month after its twin rover, Spirit. Both were sent for three-month prime missions to study the history of wet environments on ancient Mars and continued working in extended missions. Spirit ceased operations in 2010.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. For more about Opportunity, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/rovers and http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov . You can follow the project on Twitter and on Facebook at: http://twitter.com/MarsRovers and http://www.facebook.com/mars.rovers .

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/LelUYtxz7xM/130518100641.htm

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New study recommends using active videogaming ('exergaming') to improve children's health

May 17, 2013 ? Levels of physical inactivity and obesity are very high in children, with fewer than 50% of primary school-aged boys and fewer than 28% of girls meeting the minimum levels of physical activity required to maintain health. Exergaming, using active console video games that track player movement to control the game (e.g., Xbox-Kinect, Wii), has become popular, and may provide an alternative form of exercise to counteract sedentary behaviors. In a study scheduled for publication in The Journal of Pediatrics, researchers studied the effects of exergaming on children.

Dr. Louise Naylor and researchers from The University of Western Australia, Liverpool John Moores University, and Swansea University evaluated 15 children, 9-11 years of age, who participated in 15 minutes each of high intensity exergaming (Kinect Sports -- 200m Hurdles), low intensity exergaming (Kinect Sports -- Ten Pin Bowling), and a graded exercise test (treadmill). The researchers measured energy expenditure. They also measured the vascular response to each activity using flow-mediated dilation (FMD), which is a validated measure of vascular function and health in children.

They found that high intensity exergaming elicited an energy expenditure equivalent to moderate intensity exercise; low intensity exergaming resulted in an energy expenditure equivalent to low intensity exercise. Additionally, although the low intensity exergaming did not have an impact on FMD, high intensity exergaming significantly decreased FMD, suggesting that the latter may improve vascular health in children. High intensity exergaming also increased heart rate and the amount of energy burned. Participants reported similar enjoyment levels with both intensities of exergaming, which indicates that children may be equally likely to continue playing the high intensity games.

According to Dr. Naylor, "Higher intensity exergaming may be a good form of activity for children to use to gain long-term and sustained health benefits." These findings also support the growing notion that high intensity activity is beneficial for children's health, and high intensity exergaming should be considered a means of encouraging children to become more active.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Elsevier Health Sciences.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Andrew Mills, Michael Rosenberg, Gareth Stratton, Howard H. Carter, Angela L. Spence, Christopher J.A. Pugh, Daniel J. Green, Louise H. Naylor. The Effect of Exergaming on Vascular Function in Children. The Journal of Pediatrics, 2013; DOI: 10.1016/j.jpeds.2013.03.076

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/living_well/~3/A4udVYB2O8g/130517085817.htm

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U.S. House lawmakers in last-ditch bid to save immigration bill

By Richard Cowan and Rachelle Younglai

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives trying to write an immigration bill met on Thursday in a last-ditch attempt to resolve their differences over a temporary worker program and healthcare benefits for illegal immigrants.

The group of eight Democratic and Republican lawmakers has been attempting to craft a bill to overhaul the immigration system and deal with the millions of immigrants living illegally in the United States.

But disputes over border security, work visa numbers and healthcare provisions have risen to the point that there are fears some lawmakers might be on the verge of dropping out.

"I am concerned that the bipartisan group has been unable to wrap up their work," House Speaker John Boehner told reporters, adding, "I know there are some very difficult issues that have come up."

Lawmakers have been arguing over the "triggers" that would define when additional border security steps under the legislation would be sufficient to start legalizing some of the 11 million unauthorized foreigners, sources said.

There also continued to be disagreements over several other policy issues central to an immigration bill, including the number of foreign high-tech workers who would be allowed in, as well as low-skilled construction and service industry employees.

Congressional aides were describing the meeting as "one last-ditch effort" to stay together and produce at least an outline of a bill following about four years of private talks.

All of the House's issues were negotiated in a carefully crafted bipartisan bill now being debated in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

That panel is also struggling with the work visa program in the bill and is under intense pressure from technology companies to make it easier to hire foreign workers.

The committee hopes to complete work on the nearly 900-page bill by the end of this month, clearing the way for debate in the full Senate as early as June.

One of the members of the House group, Republican John Carter, repeatedly told reporters that there was no way the Senate bill would pass the Republican-controlled House.

Immediately following the November 6 elections, in which Hispanic voters roundly rejected Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Boehner called on his party to pivot on immigration.

After years of blocking moves to put the 11 million on a pathway to citizenship that many conservatives call "amnesty," Boehner, the top elected U.S. Republican, urged his party to work for a major revamp of immigration laws.

While citing concerns on Thursday about the lack of progress in the House so far, Boehner said: "I continue to believe that the House ... needs to work its will. How we get there, we're still dealing with it."

STRATEGY DEBATE

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, has expressed his preference for doing individual bills tackling parts of the immigration policy problems, instead of a comprehensive approach.

But Democrats in both chambers have rejected such a strategy, saying it would indefinitely delay the pathway to citizenship for undocumented residents, many of whom have been in the United States for decades and are raising families here.

Besides policy disagreements, individual members of the House group have differed over whether it would be productive to unveil a House measure while the Senate is in the midst of debating its bill.

Democrats, for example, have been hesitant to embrace a more conservative House immigration bill, which they fear would undercut their fellow Democrats in the Senate.

(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan; Editing by Fred Barbash, Cynthia Osterman and Eric Walsh)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/senators-hit-snag-tech-provisions-u-immigration-bill-200807223.html

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Mars Rover Opportunity Breaks US Record for Off-Planet Driving

NASA's long-lived Opportunity Mars rover is the new American champion of off-planet driving, breaking a distance record set more than 40 years ago by an Apollo moon buggy.

The six-wheeled?Opportunity rover?drove 263 feet (80 meters) on Wednesday (May 15), bringing its total odometry on the Red Planet to 22.220 miles (35.760 kilometers), NASA officials said. The previous mark had been held by the Apollo 17 moon rover, which astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt drove for 22.210 miles (35.744 km) across the lunar surface in December 1972.

"The record we established with a roving vehicle was made to be broken, and I'm excited and proud to be able to pass the torch to Opportunity," Cernan said a few days ago in a conversation with Opportunity team member Jim Rice, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,?Md., space agency officials said.

Opportunity still trails another robot for the international distance record. The Soviet Union's remote-controlled Lunokhod 2 rover traveled 23 miles (37 km) on the moon in 1973.

The golf-cart-size Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, landed on Mars in January 2004 on three-month missions to search for signs of past water activity on the Red Planet. They found plenty of such evidence, then kept on roving.

Spirit stopped communicating with Earth in 2010 and was declared dead a year later. But Opportunity is still going strong, exploring the rim of Mars' Endeavour Crater.

Opportunity had been working at a section of the rim dubbed "Cape York" since the middle of 2011. But this week it began trekking toward an area called Solander Point, which lies 1.4 miles (2.2 km) away, NASA officials said.

So the rover could soon put Lunokhod 2 in its rear-view mirror, claiming the overall off-planet driving mark as well. Opportunity's handlers have said they'd like to add this milestone to the rover's resume, though science remains the mission's top priority.

"I want to beat that record," John Callas, Opportunity's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told SPACE.com last year, at a time when the rover's odometer read 21.35 miles (34.4 km).

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter?@michaeldwall?and?Google+.?Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebookor Google+. Originally published on SPACE.com.

Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mars-rover-opportunity-breaks-us-record-off-planet-224734811.html

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Barns Are Red Because of How Stars Explode

We all know that barns are usually red. But why? Well, the answer is a little more complicated than you might think, but basically it's because of nuclear fusion.

Googler Yonatan Zunger took the time to explain the whole thing in great detail on Google+, and the train of thought goes a little something like this:

• Barns are red because red paint is cheap.
• Red paint is cheap make because the ground is loaded with an iron-oxide compound called red orche that makes a good pigment. (or basically, rust)
• The ground is loaded with red ochre because when stars die, physics dictates they generate a bunch of iron and explode.

It's that step where things get a little more complicated. Zunger explains it this way:

[When a star dies, it] starts to shrink. And as it shrinks, the pressure goes up, and the temperature goes up, until suddenly it hits a temperature where a new reaction can get started. These new reactions give it a big burst of energy, but start to form heavier elements still, and so the cycle gradually repeats, with the star reacting further and further up the periodic table, producing more and more heavy elements as it goes.

Until it hits 56. At that point, the reactions simply stop producing energy at all; the star shuts down and collapses without stopping. This collapse raises the pressure even more, and sets off various nuclear reactions which will produce even heavier elements, but they don?t produce any energy: just stuff.

This stuff-generation just continues for a while, churning out material with an atomic mass of around 56 (iron) until eventually, it meets its final demise and explodes (sometimes), seeding that material through out the cosmos.

It's that rusty startdust that litters the ground of this planet we live on and makes it cheap and easy to get a whole bunch of red paint for our barns. Crazy, right? You can dig waaaaaay deeper into the nitty gritty details by reading Zunger's wildly in-depth post. [Yonatan Zunger via Smithsonian Blog]

Image by MaxyM/Shutterstock

Source: http://gizmodo.com/barns-are-red-because-of-how-stars-explode-501906503

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Maintain Good Vision By Performing Regular Eye Exams At Optical ...

Keeping our eyes functioning at peak performance is possible by having a regular eye exam at optical Columbus. By using technologically advanced equipment, optical Columbus provides eye exams that give a complete and accurate analysis on your eyes? health.

Professional optometrists can detect any changes to the eye and whether there are issues that require referral or are benign. Certain more grave conditions include cataracts, glaucoma, macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy and dry eye that have a better chance of recovery with early diagnosis. Many eye examinations just look at the surface of the eye for changes, whereas many conditions can happen at the back of the eye, the retina. Optical Columbus has technology that gives a quick, painless retinal scan to determine the eye?s state.

Getting an eye test at optical Columbus is as simple as calling or going online. It is never a good idea to wait until there is a problem with your eyes before arranging an exam, as early detection of an irregularity is beneficial. As we get older so do our eyes, and vision becomes affected and we develop near-sightedness or farsightedness, perhaps with astigmatism. Youth, even infants, would benefit by an exam from optical Columbus to test for focusing, object tracking, depth perception and congenital defects. Vision accounts for up to 80 per cent of a child?s learning, and approximately 3 out of 10 children need some kind of vision correction.

In most situations, corrective eyewear answers any issues identified in an eye exam. Optical Columbus has a wide range of glasses and contact lenses that restore good vision and can be fashionable as well. You can choose frames from major manufacturers in-store, or from the convenience of your home online. There have been many technological breakthroughs in eyewear, including having bifocals without lines, or the wavefront lens that automatically changes to light and environmental conditions.

For eye tests and eyewear needs, contact optical Columbus by phone or online to give your eyes optimal care.

Learn further info about this matter by clicking optical Columbus Ohio and also visit to Northwest Vision Center.

Source: http://hotarticledepot.com/maintain-good-vision-by-performing-regular-eye-exams-at-optical-columbus-2/

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