Fwd: Mars

'NASA has already begun trying to figure out where its first Mars astronauts should touch down, about two decades before the pioneers are scheduled to launch toward the Red Planet.

Trace looks at the top theories for how Mars could be terraformed. Just don't expect for there to be a nice new red planet to move to before the next Super Bowl.

The space agency will hold a workshop in Houston this October to kick off serious discussions about possible landing sites for NASA's first manned Mars mission, which the agency aims to launch by the mid- to late 2030s.

At the four-day meeting, researchers will propose roughly 62-mile-wide (100 kilometers) "exploration zones" that they believe would be scientifically interesting and possess enough resources, such as subsurface water ice, to support human explorers.'

http://news.discovery.com/space/nasa-ponders-where-to-land-astronauts-on-mars-150626.htm

Seems deeply inspirational.

The first 20 hours -- how to learn anything

My comment on Facebook about evolution.

I'm sorry that you feel that evolution is a religion. In my opinion, evolution says nothing about the existence or non-existence of God. There are two facts that are irrefutable: The earth is very old and simpler organisms came before more complex ones. If you want to say that God made things happen that way, I'm fine with that. That would be philosophy. Science only deals with what we can observe, predict and reproduce. Evolution is the best explanation for what we observe. It is also supported by evidence from several sciences.

Darwin did not invent evolution. Many people of scientific bent believed in and proposed evolution before Darwin. i.e. Lamark in 1800 and Darwin's grandfather. Darwin's great contribution to science was Natural Selection. He wasn't the first to come up with that either. So did the ancient Greeks.


Best wishes,

John Coffey

The printed organs coming to a body near you : Nature News & Comment

http://www.nature.com/news/the-printed-organs-coming-to-a-body-near-you-1.17320

Fwd: NRAM

'A new low-power, high-speed memory technology on the horizon could replace solid-state drives, hard drives and DRAM in PCs, and bring higher levels of storage capacity to mobile devices and wearables.

The new memory from Nantero, called NRAM (nonvolatile RAM), is based on carbon nanotubes. The memory is hundreds of times faster than flash storage used in mobile devices and SSDs, claimed Greg Schmergel, CEO of the company.

Carbon nanotubes are cylinders made out of carbon atoms, with a diameter of one to two nanometers. The nanotubes are known to be stronger than steel, and better conductors of electricity than other known materials used in chips, making the technology an excellent candidate for storage and memory.

Nantero's NRAM operates at the speed of DRAM and is nonvolatile, meaning it can store data. The small size of carbon nanotubes allows more data to be crammed into tighter spaces, and the storage chips will consume significantly less power than flash storage and DRAM. That could bring more storage and longer battery life to laptops and mobile devices…

Nantero, which was formed in 2001, has spent 14 years refining carbon nanotubes, which has been researched for decades by universities, the U.S. government and companies like IBM and Intel. Many top chip and device makers have shown interest in NRAM, which is now ready for manufacturing, Schmergel said…

Nantero won't make the NRAM, but license the technology to device makers and manufacturers. The first NRAM chips will appear as DRAM-compatible modules that can be plugged directly into memory slots on motherboards.

"We are designing chips that are DDR3 and DDR4 compatible, you just put in carbon-nanotube memory," Schmergel said.

Devices makers will be able to put carbon-nanotube storage on top of NAND flash circuitry so it fits in mobile devices and PCs. The technology will be compatible with storage, memory systems and protocols that exist today, Schmergel said.

The NRAM chips should arrive in the next few years, Schmergel said, adding that chip and device makers are designing the memory into new products. '

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2930152/nanteros-carbonnanotube-memory-could-replace-ssds-and-dram.html

VIDEO: Origami Drone Folds Itself, Self-Destructs

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2485084,00.asp

Question - Quora

What do the astronauts think about the movie Interstellar?
http://www.quora.com/What-do-the-astronauts-think-about-the-movie-Interstellar