Wow! Mars orbiter captures rover in midair

NASA

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spots the Curiosity rover and its parachute during its descent on Sunday night, just a minute before landing.

By Alan Boyle

NASA's Curiosity rover may be the star of the Martian show, but it was the Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter that wowed the crowd this morning with an incredible picture of the rover at the end of its parachute, six minutes into its "seven minutes of terror."

The orbiter's imaging team had planned the shot for months, and the payoff came Sunday night when MRO snapped the picture from a distance of 211 miles (340 kilometers). At the time, Curiosity was about 2 miles (3 kilometers) above the Martian surface, still protected inside its Mars Science Laboratory back shell and heat shield.

Journalists applauded when the image was unveiled at this morning's news briefing by Sarah Milkovich, a scientist on the team for MRO's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE.


"If HiRISE took the image one second before or one second after, we probably would be looking at?an empty Martian landscape," Milkovich said in a news release.?"When you consider that we have been working on this?sequence since March and had to upload commands to the spacecraft about 72 hours prior to the?image being taken, you begin to realize how challenging this picture was to obtain."

Milkovich said the image resolution was 13.2 inches (33.6 centimeters) per pixel. The operation was more difficult to take than expected, due to the relative positions of the two spacecraft as their paths crossed, but MRO managed to get the shot and send it back overnight. In the days ahead, the orbiter has been programmed to take additional pictures of the rover on the ground, within Gale Crater.

"Guess you could consider us the closest thing to paparazzi on Mars," Milkovich said. "We definitely caught NASA's newest celebrity in the act."

By the way, this isn't the first time MRO has caught a falling star on Mars: Back in 2008, the orbiter snapped a similarly amazing picture of Phoenix Mars Lander during its descent to the Red Planet's north polar region.

More about Mars:


Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's?Facebook page, following?@b0yle on Twitter?and adding the?Cosmic Log page?to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out?"The Case for Pluto,"?my book about the dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Source: http://photoblog.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/06/13146951-mars-orbiter-captures-rover-in-midair?chromedomain=cosmiclog&lite

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DARPA Creates 0.85 THz Solid State Receiver

Another terrible article summary.

In 2010, a solid-state device at 0.67THz was achieved. [irconnect.com] In 2012, that effort is up to 0.85 THz. Progress is slow, but continuing.

Diode-type CMOS imagers for terahertz radiation [laserfocusworld.com] have been built. Those convert terahertz radiation into DC, which can then be amplified by standard techniques. But diodes don't have gain. That's why the original article emphasizes that this new device has gain.

There are terahertz lasers, waveguides [sandia.gov], antennas, and other components that work up there. The situation is much like radar during WWII; there were a few components that could do specific things at radar frequencies (then 60MHz to 1.2GHz), but general electronics wasn't there yet. Most of the electronics in radars of that period ran at far lower speeds. They still worked.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/nompUiI3JiQ/darpa-creates-085-thz-solid-state-receiver

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Writing a Business Plan - Interinfo.in | Get All Tech News

Writing a business plan is vital for having a profitable real estate investing business. There are several approaches to get industry planning tools free. The Net provides a variety of paid and free software. Many applications focus particularly on real estate and contain layouts that can be tailored to match your needs.Writing a small business plan allows their real estate ambitions to be determined by buyers. The principal goal of making a plan is to create a road map for starting or expanding a successful business.A strategic plan helps investors establish a plan of action and identify goals. If you are uncertain of which course to get your real estate business, strategy planning software can help you determine a real estate business software is pre-programmed with questions about numerous kinds of investment opportunities. These questions are designed to help customers determine if they are better suited to retail or commercial projects, rental houses, home flipping or wholesaling.When creating your strategy, it is important to stay centered on the requirements of your business. As an example, a start-up company can have different needs than an existing business.Writing an estate investing business strategy needs patience and time. This is particularly true when the program is going to be used to obtain start-up capital or development capital. On average, company plans consist of 20 to 30 written pages which include financial projections.Typical plans, charts and graphs focus on seven issues and should include the next information:1. Executive Summary ? Typically, the summary may be the initial thing buyers, lenders and potential business partners may read. The executive summary should be brief and include attention-grabbing information while outlining the general plan.2. Objective Statement ? This section expresses the focus of one?s organization, what you are a symbol of, your target audience, and what sets you besides competitors.3. Products and Services ? Give a step by step description of the goods and services provided through your real estate business. Do you buy properties in a niche market? Are you able to guide people through difficult situations such as bankruptcy, foreclosure or short sales?4. Market Analysis ? Utilize maps and maps to emphasize specific market research. Examine both future and present developments and illustrate how your business may capitalize on these trends.5. Strategy and Implementation ? Detail techniques which is applied to build up a lucrative and successful business. Reveal your real estate objectives and how you plan to obtain them.6. Management Team ? Whether you intend on company or developing company as a sole owner, partnership, it is important to add a resume of one?s management team. Include details of each member?s requirements, knowledge, and tasks they?ll conduct. Even though you?re flying solo, chances are you?ll require assistance in some areas.7. Financial Projections ? Considering real estate is really a strong market, this step could be one of many most challenging. Use the information provided within the last sections to assess financial forecasts. If the presentation can be used to have money, include revenue estimates for at the least three years.Writing a business strategy can seem to be a frustrating task. Breaking it on to pieces makes it more feasible. Real estate business strategies are intended to provide insight for expanding and developing your company. Three to four times are evaluated 3 to 4 times each year to make certain you?re on course and must certanly be not written in stone.

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Source: http://interinfo.in/writing-a-business-plan-techniques-for-developing-a-real-estate-investing-plan

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Report: Knight secures $400M rescue from investors

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Knight Capital Group reportedly has a deal to secure $400 million in financing that may enable it to avoid bankruptcy, days after a disastrous software glitch shook stock trading and jeopardized its future.

CNBC reported that the battered trading firm has an accord involving the brokerage firm TD Ameritrade Holding Corp., private-equity firms General Atlantic ? parent of trading firm Getco ? and Blackstone, and brokerage and investment bank Stifel Nicolas.

The rescue calls for the companies to purchase a $400 million convertible preferred security that gives them the right to buy Knight shares at $1.50, according to CNBC, which cited unnamed sources close to the deal.

That price is 63 percent below Knight's closing at $4.05 on Friday, and represents a significant dilution for existing investors, but it will allow the firm to open for business Monday.

The company spent the weekend in intense negotiations to put together a long-term deal to assure investors ahead of Monday's market opening.

A Knight spokeswoman said she could not confirm the deal.

CNBC said the four buyers would own 70 percent of Knight Capital Group Inc.

The Jersey City, N.J.-based trading firm takes orders from big brokers like TD Ameritrade and E-Trade. It then routes them to the exchanges where stocks are traded, like the New York Stock Exchange.

The company has been fighting for survival since Wednesday, when a problem with a newly installed piece of software wound up funneling erroneous orders for some 140 stocks to the market for the first 45 minutes of trading. That caused shares of some stocks to swing wildly.

Those 45 minutes have been devastating for Knight, which has scrambled to reassure clients and investors that it's got things under control. The head of the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday publicly called the incident "unacceptable."

Knight was left on the hook for some $440 million to cover the mistaken trades, or nearly four times what it earned last year. That expense, it said, "severely impacted" its capital base, and the company said it might be forced to sell itself.

Knight's blunder revives a thorny debate in the financial system about the merits of high-speed trading, where lightning-fast mathematical models trade stocks in milliseconds and, as recent mistakes indicates, strain the system that is supposed to handle them.

The foul-up was the latest in a string of high-profile technical problems that have left some investors convinced they can't trust the financial markets. The biggest was the "flash crash" in May 2010, when a computer problem caused the Dow Jones industrial average to drop nearly 600 points in five minutes. The most recent was Facebook's debut on the Nasdaq stock exchange in May, when technical problems at Nasdaq kept some investors from knowing if their trades had gone through.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/report-knight-secures-400m-rescue-investors-224907204--finance.html

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Consumer agency probes mortgage insurance deals - seattlepi.com

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The government's consumer finance watchdog is investigating deals that transferred billions in premiums charged to mortgage borrowers from mortgage-insurance companies to the banks that made the loans.

The deals amounted to kickbacks, because the banks pressured insurers into them in exchange for a share of the banks' mortgage-insurance business, according to civil lawsuits filed by borrowers and legal experts.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has served subpoenas to American International Group Inc., MGIC Investment Corp. Genworth Financial Inc. and Radian Group Inc., the companies said in public filings this week. The CFPB asked for documents and answers to written questions about captive mortgage reinsurance deals, they said.

The companies did not respond to requests for comment Friday.

Mortgage borrowers whose down payments are less than 20 percent typically must buy private mortgage insurance that protects the bank in case they default. Because mortgage insurers charge roughly the same rates, borrowers generally choose an insurer recommended by their lender.

Lenders routinely steered borrowers to their preferred mortgage insurers, said Mike Calhoun, who was the lead attorney on a class-action suit about the practices in the early 2000s. In return, the insurers shared their premiums with the lender by buying reinsurance from a company owned by the lender at vastly inflated rates.

"It's just a grossly overpriced reinsurance that is many times more expensive than what arms-length reinsurance costs in the general market," said Calhoun, who now is president of the Center for Responsible Lending, a consumer advocacy group. Banks were typically insulated from any real possibility of loss on the reinsurance, he said.

Mortgage insurers called their payments to banks reinsurance because it is illegal to pay fees or kickbacks in exchange for referrals of business related to mortgages, under a law called the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, or RESPA.

Creating costly reinsurance and splitting the borrowers' fees and premiums was "primarily a way to get around the RESPA referral fee situation," Calhoun said.

Reinsurance usually is used by insurance companies to transfer some of their potential risk to another company. In these cases, they claimed that the risk was transferred in exchange for a reasonable fee. But several civil lawsuits filed by borrowers argued that the risk was not truly transferred and the fees were merely a way to attract business from banks.

The mortgage insurers didn't necessarily want to transfer that risk, because that meant sharing the premiums and fees collected from borrowers.

"The mortgage insurers were bullied into this," said Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance, a trade publication. "The lenders would say, 'Hey, if you don't take this, we won't even give you any business.'"

The reinsurance deals unfairly add to people's monthly payments while offering them no direct benefit, said Adam Levitin, an authority on consumer finance and a visiting professor at Harvard Law School.

"There really isn't any insurance here, it's just cash going around in a loop," he said. "It's really as if you're paying a higher mortgage rate."

The CFPB's subpoenas, called Civil Investigative Demands, mean that its enforcement division has launched a preliminary probe of the matter. The investigation could result civil charges against the companies, or might be resolved without any formal action.

A spokeswoman for the CFPB said the agency does not comment on, confirm or deny activities by its enforcement team.

The companies already had responded to similar inquiries about mortgage reinsurance from the Department of Housing and Urban Development's inspector general, they said in their filings. The HUD probe was transferred to the CFPB after it took over enforcement of the law that allegedly was violated.

AIG said in its filing that the CFPB had allowed it to delay its deadlines for submitting the information because AIG is close to settling a formal enforcement action with the Minnesota Commissioner of Commerce. The company said that "could resolve the investigation." AIG shares closed up 50 cents, at $31.34.

MGIC shares fell 4 cents, or 4.6 percent, to close 84 cents on Friday. The company had said Thursday that its second-quarter loss widened as homeowner defaults forced it to pay out more insurance claims. MGIC has posted annual losses since 2007, and expects the losses to continue.

Genworth rose 20 cents, or 4.9 percent, to $4.32. Radian rose 17 cents, or 6.3 percent, to $2.86.

___

Daniel Wagner can be reached at www.twitter.com/wagnerreports .

Source: http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Consumer-agency-probes-mortgage-insurance-deals-3760206.php

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Justin Bieber Searches For One Fan To Dance On Believe Tour

"We're gonna make you believe in magic," tour director Jon Chu says in online casting call.
By Jocelyn Vena


Justin Bieber in his "Boyfriend" video
Photo: Island/Def Jam

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1691181/justin-bieber-believe-tour-lucky-fan.jhtml

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Virgin Digital Help Survey: 61 Percent Find Today's Tech Too ...

Virgin Digital Help Survey: 61 Percent Find Today?s Tech Too Confusing

Posted on August 3, 2012 by Guest in Technology

Virgin Digital Help, a new personal tech support service available to anyone in the US and UK, announced the findings of its survey conducted to gauge consumer stress levels associated with everyday technology.

When initially asked whether the technology they encounter in their everyday lives stresses them out, 27.6 percent of survey participants said yes. But when presented with a list of technologies ranging from computers and printers to social networking and mobile phones, respondents changed their tune, with 60.5 percent admitting to being stressed out by some form of technology in their life.? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ??? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

?According to our Digital Stress survey, most consumers do not believe they are digitally stressed by technology until they are reminded or presented with specific technical issues they cannot resolve on their own,? said Mustafa Khanbhai, Director of?Virgin Digital Help.

Virgin Digital Help?s research suggests that consumers take particular issue with the fact that technology keeps changing (18.6 percent) as well as compatibility issues (15.2 percent). Women (31.4 percent) in particular are more likely to be stressed out by tech than men (20 percent), while 27.3 percent of 55-64 year-olds say technology is just too complicated.

In order, the technologies that stress people the most are:

    • Wi-Fi (12.4 percent)
    • The cloud (11.4 percent)
    • Home networking or syncing devices (10 percent)
    • Desktops, laptops, tablets (8.6 percent)
    • Social networking (6.7 percent)
    • Printers (6.2 percent)
    • Mobile phones (2.9 percent)
    • The Internet in general (1.9 percent)
    • Email (.5 percent)

When it comes to technology providers themselves, 31.9 percent blame unhelpful customer service while 17.6 percent say they are bombarded with too many confusing software updates and rapidly evolving product lines. But, in a more positive turn, only 10 percent of survey participants went so far as to call technology providers ?untrustworthy.?

?While today?s technology brings so much in terms of efficiency and connectivity, the results from our survey also suggest that our embrace of the latest gadgets are not always as seamless as we?d like them to be,? continued?Khanbhai.

Conducted throughout the month of June 2012, the survey collected the responses of 210 consumers in the US and UK via Twitter, Facebook, email and phone. The majority of respondents (78.1 percent) were 18-34 years of age. To view an Infographic highlighting all survey responses, please visit:?http://bit.ly/O3lWEG.

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Source: http://www.genpink.com/virgin-digital-help-survey-61-percent-find-todays-tech-too-confusing/

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Skin cancer identified for the first time in wild fish populations

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Widespread skin cancer has been identified for the first time in wild marine fish populations, new research has shown.

A collaborative study between Newcastle University, UK, and the Australian Institute of Marine Science published today in the academic journal PLoS ONE- reveals the incidence of melanoma in the coral trout, a species found on the Great Barrier Reef and directly beneath the world's largest hole in the ozone layer.

This is the first time skin cancer has been diagnosed in wild fish populations and the team, led by Newcastle University's Dr Michael Sweet, say the appearance of the melanoma is almost identical to that found in humans.

"Further work needs to be carried out to establish the exact cause of the cancer but having eliminated other likely factors such as microbial pathogens and marine pollution, UV radiation appears to be the likely cause," explains Dr Sweet.

"Studying disease in wild fish populations is very time-consuming and costly so it's hard to say how long the disease has been around. However, what we do know is that it is now widespread in the coral trout population effecting three different species of this type of fish and we would not be surprised to find it in other species as well."

The study, which involved experts from Newcastle University, the Australian Institute of Marine Science and James Cook University, Australia, looked at Plectropomus leopardus, otherwise known as the common coral trout.

The coral trout is an iconic and highly valued species that occurs throughout the western Pacific and in Australia supports a high-value fishery on the Great Barrier Reef.

Diseased fish were caught in two locations in the southern Great Barrier Reef Marine Park ? Heron Island and One Tree Island ? but its occurrence throughout the rest of its range is currently unknown. Anecdotal evidence suggests minimal occurrence in other regions of the GBR and in other coral trout species, but further research is required to confirm this.

Of the 136 fish sampled, 20 (15%) showed dark lesions on the skin ? the lesions covered as little as 5% of the skin ranging to full coverage and an almost entirely black appearance.

Dr Sweet said the numbers were significant.

"The individuals we looked at had extensive ? but only surface ? melanomas," he explained.

"This means the cancer had not spread any deeper than the skin so apart from the surface lesions the fish were basically healthy.

"Once the cancer spreads further you would expect the fish to become quite sick, becoming less active and possibly feeding less, hence less likely to be caught. This suggests the actual percentage affected by the cancer is likely to be higher than observed in this study."

UV-induced melanoma in fish has until now only been seen under laboratory conditions and has been used as a model to study the progress of human skin cancer due to the similarities in the disease.

In the lab, hybridised fish were found to be more susceptible to UV radiation due to exposure of the so-called 'Xmrk' gene. In the case of coral trout cross-breeding ? or hybridisation ? may also be occurring and play a role in the coral trout's susceptibility to the disease.

Dr Michelle Heupel from the Australian Institute of Marine Science stated: "This is a crucial finding in an iconic and high value reef species.

"Given climate change scenarios and continuing alteration of coral reef environments understanding the cause of this disease is important to continued conservation and management of reefs and their inhabitants."

The next step in the study is to look at a much larger sample and determine the extent of disease presence and causation within the populations.

###

Newcastle University: http://www.ncl.ac.uk

Thanks to Newcastle University for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/122279/Skin_cancer_identified_for_the_first_time_in_wild_fish_populations

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Quick Spin: Shelby Cobra 289 FIA [w/video] | Icowobas.com

Filed under: Classics, Convertible, Performance, MISC, Quick Spins

The Best Way To Remember Carroll

Shelby Cobra 289 FIA

For the ultimate rush, drive a Shelby Cobra. It is about as close as one can get to climbing on top of an American V8, wrapping gloved fingers around red-hot exhaust manifolds and then holding on for dear life as it tries to buck you off.

We just spent an hour behind the wheel of a brand-new fiberglass-body Shelby Cobra 289 FIA. The CSX7000 is a faithful recreation of the legendary race cars that circled tracks around the world from 1962 through 1965. Under the hood of this particular Jet Black sports car with a bright yellow transverse stripe is a stroked Ford Racing Boss 302. With its side pipes cackling, the 347 cubic inch eight-cylinder generates more than 400 horsepower to motive a featherweight 2,200-pound chassis. ?Overpowered? is an understatement.

Continue reading Shelby Cobra 289 FIA [w/video]

Shelby Cobra 289 FIA [w/video] originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 11:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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