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