4 Stranded Pilot Whales Treated at Fla.... - ABC News

Two male and three female whales were brought to Florida Atlantic University's Harbor Branch Institute after becoming stranded. Officials say one of the males had been stable Monday morning but died unexpectedly around noon.
The other whales, including one calf whose mother did not survive, show signs of inflammation and infection, but they are swimming on their own and accepting a thin fish formula fed through tubes every four hours.<br />http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/stranded-pilot-whales-treated-fla-institute-17149493

Mars Rover Curiosity's Circular Marks Explained As 'Fiducials' - Huffington Post

"I talked to the engineers who specialize in computer vision, and we came up with the design for the fiducials [on Curiosity]," Leger said. "We wanted something that would be easy for either a computer program or a person to accurately pick the center of. Having that intersection in the middle makes it easier for a person -- they can zoom in on the image and click exactly on that intersection -- and [the design] also makes it easy for a computer, because it can compute the center of a circle."The circular markings are a staple of engineering that can serve two parallel purposes, Leger said: to calibrate cameras and to calibrate various mechanisms on the rover. They're a common feature in high-tech photography and robotics here on Earth, but the use of fiducials on extraterrestrial robots is relatively new. The technique started informally on the Mars Exploration Rover mission, which landed Spirit and Opportunity on the Red Planet's surface in 2004.<br />http://www.huffington!
post.com/2012/08/30/mars-rover-curiosity-fiducials_n_1844679.html

Made 'Giant Leap' as First Man to Step on Moon - New York Times

John Schwartz contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
<br />http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/science/space/neil-armstrong-dies-first-man-on-moon.html?pagewanted%3Dall

Mars rover Curiosity, JPL win praise from Jerry Brown - Los Angeles Times

“If the idea is when you got a problem you don’t do
anything, then you shut this place down, that’s stupid,” he said during
his visit to the campus in La Cañada Flintridge. “You’ve got to do more
than one thing. We have to invest as well, as we take care of all these
other problems.Brown
acknowledged that he didn’t take any science courses in college but
reminisced about his involvement with the space industry over the years
and the reputation he earned for proposing far-out ideas during his
first term as governor, from 1974 and 1982.<br />http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/08/mars-rover-curiosity-jpl-win-praise-from-jerry-brown.html

Earthlings Look for Signs in New Photos of Mars - Wall Street Journal

Wilmer Faust, another Mars enthusiast, was the first human to spot the parrot formation in 2002, according to a website about the parrot research project. But he wouldn't have seen anything had it not been for his pet parrot's wild squawking and "bobbing his head" at Mr. Faust's computer monitor while he was examining images from Mars, according to an introduction on the website.He and his colleagues have been criticized by some in mainstream academia for their research. But Mr. Haas holds his ground. "I know art when I see it," says Mr. Haas, a past president of the Sculptors Association of New Jersey. He knows it is a hard sell. "The American public, they may not be ready for the parrot," he says.<br />http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443855804577599851584093374.html

Mars landing: Like NASA Curiosity rover, family switches to Mars time - Newsday

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Every mission to Mars, hundreds of NASA scientists and engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory make the time change for three months. But it's unusual for an entire family to join in. The kids will be on Mars time for about a month.<br />http://newyork.newsday.com/news/world/mars-landing-like-nasa-curiosity-rover-family-switches-to-mars-time-1.3913837

Massive galaxy cluster spawns more than 700 stars a year - Los Angeles Times

Further study of SPT-CLJ2344-4243 and massive galaxy clusters like it could also help astronomers figure out how unique Phoenix actually is, added Bradford Benson, a University of Chicago astrophysicist and study co-author. He said studying more clusters could lead scientists to determine whether star-making phases like the one observed in this study tend to be relatively brief (say, a few million years), or extended (100 million years).At first, astronomers didn't realize how unique the cluster was.&nbsp; But in the months that followed, McDonald and his co-authors analyzed a variety of signals from the cluster including X-rays, optical light, and infrared radiation it emitted &mdash; and realized they had a "remarkable" object on their hands.<br />http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-phoenix-galaxy-cluster-20120815,0,2484591.story?track%3Drss

Confirmed: Mars rover Curiosity took photo of craft crash-landing - Los Angeles Times

The final seconds of Curiosity's eight-month-plus journey to Mars called for a spacecraft to lower the rover to the surface using a "sky crane" &mdash; three ropes. The ropes were then cut, and the last of the spacecraft, known as the "descent stage," cast itself toward the horizon. It crash-landed, on purpose, about 2,000 feet away.Many had dismissed the plume as dirt on the camera lens, but engineers pointed out that the initial photo was taken in stereo, with two side-by-side lenses. Both images picked up the same blotch. That eliminated the possibility that the lens was simply dirty, and confirmed, Sell said, that "the artifact was real."<br />http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-me-0811-mars-curiosity-photo-confirmed-20120811,0,5983256.story

University Structure

The current island-structure of universities is a way of wasting invaluable potentials. The existence of various disciplines in university is a golden opportunity, but people usually ignore it.

http://higher-education.criticpen.com/article/university-structure-m4z3

The Photo-Geek's Guide to Curiosity Rover's 17 Cameras - Wired News

The two nearly identical MastCams will combine to take 3-D stereo images. They can focus on objects as close as about 7 feet from the rover and see details down to roughly a few hundred microns. They will see in “true color,” or approximately what your eyes would see if you were there with Curiosity. Natural lighting on Mars tends to be slightly redder than on Earth because of the high amount of dust in the air. So the rover will be taking images with a slight adjustment that gives them a warm, orangey glow similar to sunlight at sunset on Earth to capture this effect. The MastCams will also be taking images without this feature.One of the biggest requests that scientists had for Curiosity was the addition of a telephoto lens. The previous rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, could see details about as well as a person would on Mars. But MastCam’s right camera has a 100-mm focal-length lens that provides three times the resolution of previous Mars rover cameras. It can dist!
inguish between a football and a basketball from seven football fields away. While the left camera, with its 34-mm lens, can’t see as well, it will provide much wider views â€" about 15 degrees versus the right camera’s five degree field-of-view.<br />http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/curiosity-mars-rover-cameras/

Social and Cultural Activities in University

It should be taken into account that the main goal of attending universities is to experience academic life and culture; thus, students should not only look for their degree and graduation. Instead, they should enjoy their academic life, and degree is a consequence of their studies. To this aim, it is necessary to have solid cultural programs, providing a delightful environment for students. The design of social activities should not be independent programs for students’ free times; instead they should be designed as a part of the university united program. In other words, social activities are not extra services to students, but part of their academic programs.
http://higher-education.criticpen.com/article/social-and-cultural-activities-in-university-m4z6

Earth to Mars to the moons of Saturn - The Trentonian

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<br />http://www.trentonian.com/article/20120731/OPINION03/120739931/earth-to-mars-to-the-moons-of-saturn

Music today bland, but louder - UPI.com

Study leader Joan Serra, a researcher at the Institute of Artificial Intelligence Research at the National Research Council, said a computer analysis was performed on songs from a public database of more than 1 million songs recorded from 1955 to 2010, produced by Columbia University. In the 1960s, there was more experimentation with chords, rhythm and instrumentation. However, the songs today are louder. Another trend is the gradual increase of the intrinsic volume recorded, Serra said. <br />http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2012/07/28/Music-today-bland-but-louder/UPI-50341343533572/?spt%3Dhs%26or%3Dsn

Lab-Made Jellyfish Hints at Heart Fix - Wall Street Journal

The robot, named "Medusoid," was placed in salty fluid that can conduct electrical currents. When the engineers oscillated the voltage in the fluid, the muscle-coated membrane began to contract in a synchronized manner. (By contrast, a real jellyfish obtains nutrients by feeding on plankton, eggs, larvae, small fish and other jellyfish, which then enables specialized tissue to electrically activate the muscular contraction.)The engineers used a silicone polymer to build a centimeter-long jellyfish consisting of a membrane with eight armlike appendages. They overlaid muscle cells, obtained from a rat heart, on this membrane in a particular pattern. "We coaxed them to self-organize so that they matched the [muscle] architecture of a jellyfish precisely," Dr. Parker said.<br />http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444097904577539081426736516.html

Institutional Mission and University

University administration should generate a pool of creative ideas for faculty members. When designing an academic research project, professors know the general preferences of a university, but not necessarily specific policy of their own university.

http://higher-education.criticpen.com/article/institutional-mission-university-priorities-m4z9

In Preventing Alzheimer's, Mutation May Aid Drug Quest - New York Times

<br />http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/12/health/research/rare-gene-mutation-is-found-to-stave-off-alzheimers.html?pagewanted%3Dall

University as a Country

The structure of a university is very similar to a country, and its management system too; a smaller society but utopia, due to its sophisticated community. Factors like national benefits, patriotism, and nostalgia are all (and must be) the case in a smaller scale. Even outsiders (usually in administrative roles) are expected to behave like loyal alumni, learn the school alma mater, and become interested in in the major sport teams, and other traditional functions of the university. This practical allegory is to utilize available models. The athletic success in Olympic is of political important (not just fun) for a country, it is the same for a university fame (for attracting students). The reasons and motivations of students for attending a university are like those of immigration. Thus, university leadership should empower its own country through united national strategies. This is the reason that today’s university essential needs to implement change. The ratio of people living in developed country to those living in developing countries from one to two (in 1995) is approaching one to four (in 2010). This is the case for higher education too; universities which focus on traditional models soon will lose the ground, regardless of their history. In the past, difference of universities was due to the quality of their programs; but today’s universities need to offer new features, as this is the crucial expectation of all parties (students, families, employers, governments, etc).


http://higher-education.criticpen.com/article/university-as-a-country-m4zc

New studies nix report of arsenic-loving bacteria - Wall Street Journal

The saga began when scientists led by Felisa Wolfe-Simon of NASA's Astrobiology Institute published a paper that said the bacteria, found at Mono Lake in eastern California, could grow by substituting arsenic for phosphorus. The researchers had looked at Mono Lake because of its high arsenic levels, and they reported their conclusions from lab experiments.For both new papers, scientists did their own tests of the bacteria. One team, led by Rosemary Redfield of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, reports that arsenic does not contribute to the bacteria's growth. Maybe the original results came from some sort of undetected contaminant in the arsenic the researchers used, they suggest.<br />http://online.wsj.com/article/AP452b9db03a74414bb2240f4208c5fbd1.html

New Science Papers Prove NASA Failed Big Time In Promoting Supposedly Earth ... - Forbes

Today, Science Magazine, one of the top scientific journals and the original publisher of the GFAJ-1 work,is publishing two new papers that completely demolish the argument that GFAJ-1 is a completely new form of life. Early on, the magazine’s editors make the point quietly: “Contrary to an original report, the new research clearly shows that the bacterium, GFAJ-1, cannot substitute arsenic for phosphorus to survive.”&nbsp; Later,they repeat it for emphasis, in stronger terms: “In conclusion,” they write,&nbsp; “the new research shows that GFAJ-1 does not break the long-held rules of life, contrary to how Wolfe-Simon had interpreted her group’s data.”Flash back to December 2010. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) called a press conference. Rumors circulated that the agency was about to announce that life had been discovered somewhere other than planet Earth. The real news wasn’t that big, but it was close. A 33-year-old biologist, Feli!
sa Wolfe-Simon, had discovered a bacteria that seemed to break a cardinal rule of biology. All life forms on earth use six elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur. But in Mono Lake in California, Wolfe-Simon and her colleagues had found a type of bacteria, GFAJ-1, that seemed to have replaced phosphorus with arsenic.<br />http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2012/07/08/new-science-papers-prove-nasa-failed-big-time-in-promoting-supposedly-earth-shaking-discovery-that-wasnt/

Scientists unveil cause of massive plankton blooms in North Atlantic - The Bunsen Burner

WHOI describes the study as being conducted by a specially designed robot that can float just below the surface like a phytoplankton (only much, much larger). Other robots, referred to by WHOI as “gliders” dove to depths of 1,000 meters to collect data and beam it back to shore. Together, the robots discovered a great deal about the biology and nature of the bloom. Then, using three-dimensional computer modeling to analyze the data, Ms. Mahadevan created a model that corresponded with observation of the natural phenomena.“Springtime blooms of microscopic plants in the ocean absorb enormous quantities of carbon dioxide, much like our forests, emitting oxygen via photosynthesis. Their growth contributes to the oceanic uptake of carbon dioxide, amounting globally to about one-third of the carbon dioxide we put into the air each year through the burning of fossil fuels. An important question is how this ‘biological pump’ for carbon might change in the future as our cli!
mate evolves,&#8221; said researchers.<br />http://www.thebunsenburner.com/news/scientists-unveil-cause-of-massive-plankton-blooms-in-north-atlantic/