Hasta La Gadget!

Dennis Tito is planning an ambitious private flyby of Mars for 2018 that will carry all kinds of logistical challenges during its proposed 501-day span, not the least of which is shielding the crew from radiation without consuming valuable resources. The team’s solution is a clever one, if not especially pretty: human waste. While the walls of the Inspiration Mars spacecraft will initially be lined with water-filled bags to guard against cosmic rays, their contents will be gradually replaced with er, byproduct that will be dehydrated through the bag (possibly using polyethylene) to reclaim and purify water for drinking. As water-based materials are better at stopping radiation than metal, the approach theoretically represents the best of all worlds with less bulk, a simpler life support system and maximum room for supplies. If the Inspiration Mars group can keep the bags working at high efficiency in space, it won’t have to worry about its travelers’ safety; their comfort with being surrounded by their own waste may be another matter.

Filed under: Transportation, Alt

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Source: New Scientist

NASA’s Curiosity rover has mostly had smooth sailing since it touched down on Mars last year. Unfortunately, it’s in a more precarious position as of this past Thursday. After noticing corrupted memory files on the robot’s primary computer, overseers have kicked Curiosity into a “safe mode” with a backup computer while they determine what’s wrong and deliver any viable fixes. Don’t think of this like you would the Safe Mode on a Windows PC, though. While the backup can serve as a replacement for the main computer, project manager Richard Cook warns Space.com that it will likely take “several days” to supply enough information that the failsafe can take over. NASA will switch back to the main computer if and when it’s ready; if it is, the agency hopes to harden the code against future flaws. Curiosity will effectively stay on ice in the meantime… and not the variety it might want to find.

Filed under: Robots, Science, Alt

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Source: Space.com

Some would say the internet already lets us share every minute detail of our thoughts, much to our followers’ dismay. Duke University isn’t deterred by our behavior — if anything, it just took oversharing literally by connecting two rats’ minds in an experiment, first in a lab and ultimately online. Electrodes attached to the brain of a host “encoder” rat in Brazil processed the motor-oriented mental activity for a desired behavior, such as pressing a lever on cue, and converted it into a signal that was then received by a “decoder” rat as far away as Duke’s US campus. The majority of the time, the decoder rat performed the same action as the encoder. Researchers also found that rewarding the encoder alongside the decoder created a virtuous loop, as treating the first rat for a job well done focused its attention and improved the signal strength.

We’re not sure that Vulcans would endorse this kind of mind meld, though: apart from immediately depriving the decoder rat of self-control, prolonged testing led to the same rodent developing additional sympathetic reactions to the encoder. There’s also concerns that the test was too binary and didn’t reflect the complexity of the whole brain. All the same, Duke’s study is proof enough that we can export brainwaves in a meaningful way.

Filed under: Science, Alt

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Via: Discovery News

Source: Nature

Sure, the next wave of gaming consoles may be arriving pretty soon, but while we wait for the PS4 and whatever Microsoft has in store for us, why not have yet another Xbox 360 bundle to choose from, right? Today the Redmond-based company released its Spring Value set, which includes that slim console with 250GB of storage space (as well as the accustomed peripherals, of course), one month gratis of Xbox Live Gold and, perhaps to make it all worthwhile, Darksiders II and Batman: Arkham City — although the latter of the two will be available via download code rather than as a physical copy. Folks that call the good ol’ US of A home can snag the fresh bundle starting today for $299, which is on par with similar bundles that Microsoft’s released in the past — granted it’s not as sleek-looking as some of the pricier ones.

Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Microsoft

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Source: Major Nelson

Trust. It’s a valuable commodity. But serial twitter-sleuth evleaks has done enough to earn ours for this latest leak. A Windows Phone 8 device — apparently known internally as the Tiara — which will be one of the first to run the next revision of the mobile operating system (GDR2). With a reported 4.3-inch display, a 1.2GHz Snapdragon processor, 1.6-megapixel front-facing camera and 1GB of RAM, it bears more than a resemblance to another recent addition to the HTC fold. If you had hopes that it might also borrow from the firm’s latest Android flagship design, then sorry to dash them, as the sources suggest otherwise. The Tiara moniker is unlikely to remain, with evleaks taking a stab at it coming to market mid-May, possibly as the HTC 8W. Not a bad guess. Now it’s just a matter of waiting to see if all that trust is truly well placed.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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Source: Unwired View