July 2, 2012

Good Morning,

A meteor that landed in Mexico harbors the oldest metal material in our solar system. Check out the details on this exciting find in the second article.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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Computer 'brain' learns to recognize cats

MOUNTAIN VIEW - U.S. scientists say one of the largest neural networks for machine learning, with 16,000 computer processors, taught itself to recognize cats on the Internet. The network, created by researchers at Google's X laboratory and intended to simulate the working of the human brain, "learned" to recognize cats among 10 million random digital images found in YouTube videos, The New York Times reported Tuesday. In the Google research, the machine was given no help in identifying features, scientists said. "We never told it during the training, 'This is a cat,'" said Google fellow Jeff Dean, who helped Google design the software that lets the neural network easily break programs into many tasks that can be computed simultaneously. "It basically invented the concept of a cat." The neural network result appeared to support theories developed by biologists suggesting individual neurons are trained inside the brain to detect significant objects, researchers said. However, researchers said, despite the immense computing capacity of their network it was still dwarfed by the number of connections found in the human brain. "It is worth noting that our network is still tiny compared to the human visual cortex, which is a million times larger in terms of the number of neurons and synapses," they said. Still, they said, the research suggests existing machine learning algorithms can improve considerably as the machines are given access to large amounts of data.


Meteor metal one of solar system's oldest

PASADENA, Calif. - U.S. scientists say they've discovered a new primitive mineral in a meteorite that they believe to be among the oldest minerals formed in the solar system. Researchers from the California Institute of Technology studying a meteorite that fell in Mexico more than 40 years ago report they discovered the new mineral, dubbed panguite, embedded in the space rock. The mineral, a titanium oxide, is named after Pan Gu, a giant of ancient Chinese mythology said to have established the world by separating yin from yang to create the earth and the sky. "Panguite is an especially exciting discovery since it is not only a new mineral, but also a material previously unknown to science," Chi Ma of Caltech's Geological and Planetary Sciences division said. The Mexican space rock, dubbed the Allenda meteorite, is considered by many the best-studied meteorite in history and has yielded nine new minerals including panguite. "The intensive studies of objects in this meteorite have had a tremendous influence on current thinking about processes, timing, and chemistry in the primitive solar nebula and small planetary bodies," said Caltech study co-author George Rossman, a professor of mineralogy.


Research improves old battery technology

PALO ALTO, Calif. - A rechargeable battery technology developed by Thomas Edison more than 100 years ago is gaining new interest with research improvements, U.S. scientists say. Stanford University scientists report they've breathed new life into the nickel-iron battery by dramatically improving the performance of the century-old technology. Designed in the early 1900s to power electric vehicles, the Edison battery largely went out of favor in the mid-1970s. "The Edison battery is very durable, but it has a number of drawbacks," chemistry Professor Hongjie Dai said in a Stanford release Tuesday. "A typical battery can take hours to charge, and the rate of discharge is also very slow." The Stanford researchers say they've created an ultrafast nickel-iron battery that can be fully charged in about 2 minutes and discharged in less than 30 seconds "We have increased the charging and discharging rate by nearly 1,000 times," graduate student Hailiang Wang, lead author of the study, said. "We've made it really fast." A high-performance, low-cost nickel-iron battery could some day be used to help power electric vehicles, much as Edison originally intended, Dai said. "Hopefully we can give the nickel-iron battery a new life," he said. Most electric cars now run on lithium-ion batteries, which can store a lot of energy but typically take hours to charge. "Our battery probably won't be able to power an electric car by itself, because the energy density is not ideal," Wang said. "But it could assist lithium-ion batteries by giving them a real power boost for faster acceleration and regenerative braking."


SpaceX tests new engine in Texas

MCGREGOR, Texas - U.S. commercial space company SpaceX says it has successfully tested the next-generation rocket engine for its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. In a test firing at SpaceX's facility in McGregor, Texas, the Merlin 1D engine achieved a full mission duration firing and multiple restarts at target thrust, the company reported Tuesday. The engine fired for 85 seconds with 147,000 pounds of thrust, the full duration and power required for a Falcon 9 rocket launch, SpaceX said. "This is another important milestone in our efforts to push the boundaries of space technology," SpaceX head Elon Musk said . "With the Merlin 1D powering the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, SpaceX will be capable of carrying a full range of payloads to orbit." With nine Merlins on the first stage, the Falcon 9 rocket will produce nearly 1.5 million pounds of thrust, the company said. The Merlin 1D engines will first see their first use on Falcon 9 Flight 6, expected to launch in 2013, it said.

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