Gizmorama - February 18, 2013

Good Morning,

Did you know that 'unfriending' someone on Facebook has its consequences beyond the realm of cyberspace? Oh, boy!

Learn about this and other interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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*-- Online 'unfriending' has consequences --*
DENVER - Unfriending someone on Facebook has repercussions beyond cyberspace, U.S. researchers say, with some people avoiding in real life anyone who unfriended them. Computer science researchers at the University of Colorado Denver report a study in which 40 percent of participants said they would avoid further personal contact with someone who unfriended them on the social networking site. "People think social networks are just for fun," study author Christopher Sibona said. "But in fact what you do on those sites can have real world consequences." Sibona said he studied factors that predicted whether someone would avoid a person who unfriended him or her. "The number one predictor was whether the person who said the relationship was over talked about it to someone else," Sibona said. "Talking to someone is a public declaration that the friendship is over." Traditional face-to-face communication is giving way to more remote online interactions with their own rules, language and etiquette, he said. "The cost of maintaining online relationships is really low, and in the real world, the costs are higher," Sibona said. "In the real world, you have to talk to people, go see them to maintain face-to-face relationships. That's not the case in online relationships." In the real world when a friendship ends it usually just fades away, he said, while on Facebook it can be abruptly terminated by one party declaring the friendship over. "Since it's done online there is an air of unreality to it but in fact there are real life consequences," he said. "We are still trying to come to grips as a society on how to handle elements of social media."


*-- Martian rover drills first rock --*
PASADENA, Calif. - NASA says its Mars rover Curiosity has used its drill for the first time to hammer briefly into a rock targeted on the floor of its Gale Crater landing site. "Before and after" images beamed to Earth showed the results as an indentation on the surface of the rock. The drill instrument is capable of both hammering and rotating drilling action, and if the rock is determined to be a good candidate for the rover's scientific work, a number of test holes will be drilled, NASA said, to create samples for delivery to the rover's onboard laboratories. They would be analyzed as part of the rover's main mission to determine whether the Gale location has ever been capable of supporting bacterial life in the past. "The rock is behaving well and it looks pretty soft, so that's encouraging," Curiosity project scientist Prof John Grotzinger told BBC News. The first drilling is being carried out on a very fine-grained sedimentary rock, NASA said. "The drilling is going very well so far and we're making great progress with the early steps," Grotzinger said.


*-- 3-D printing could create lunar base --*
PARIS - Setting up a lunar base could be made simpler by using 3-D printing technology to build it from local materials in the lunar soil, European researchers say. The European Space Agency reports it has joined with industrial partners to test the feasibility of using 3-D printing to create a structure with material from the lunar surface. "Terrestrial 3-D printing technology has produced entire structures," Laurent Pambaguian, heading the project for ESA, said. "Our industrial team investigated if it could similarly be employed to build a lunar habitat." For the test, British company Monolite supplied its D-Shape printer with a mobile printing array of nozzles on a 20-foot frame to spray a binding solution onto a sand-like building material. "First, we needed to mix the simulated lunar material with magnesium oxide. This turns it into 'paper' we can print with," Monolite founder Enrico Dini said. "Then for our structural 'ink' we apply a binding salt which converts material to a stone-like solid." In the test the printer was able to create a 1.5-ton structural block from the simulated lunar soil.


*-- Sabotage may have felled U.K. wind turbine --*
BRADWORTHY, England - A 115-foot wind turbine that collapsed in Britain last week may have been sabotaged, and a second has been found toppled 18 miles away, officials said. An investigation into the collapse of the turbine in Bradworthy, Devon, during a 50-mph wind last weekend discovered bolts were missing from its base, The Daily Telegraph reported Friday. A 60-foot turbine was spotted Friday, "lying crumpled on the ground" 18 miles away in North Petherwin, Cornwall, authorities said. The larger turbine was thought to have been collapsed by wind, even though it was designed to withstand gales as strong as 116 mph. The missing bolts suggested possible sabotage, investigators said. The $400,000 Endurance Wind Power E-3120 50kW turbine was installed in July 2010 in the face of fierce opposition from local Devon residents who protested it would spoil the landscape.

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