Gizmorama
February 7, 2011
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You will wonder how you lived without this handy device
http://pd.gophercentral.com/u/1165/c/186/a/474
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Good Morning,
Kicking a habit can be one of the most challenging stages
in one's life, especially substances such as tobacco. Do you
have what it takes to quit? A new scan studies brain activity
to predict whether or not you are a likely candidate to quit
smoking. Read all the details in the third article.
Until Next Time,
Erin
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Low-orbit space plane may test in 2012
BOULDER, Colo. - A Colorado company's space plane could
carry astronauts into low Earth orbit in a test next year,
NASA says. The space agency, Sierra Nevada Space Systems of
Denver and the University of Colorado trumpeted their part-
nership in Boulder Saturday, The Denver Post reported. Sierra
Nevada received $20 million from NASA's Commercial Crew Dev-
elopment Program Space Systems to develop the Dream Chaser,
which will be able to carrying seven passengers into orbit.
Deputy NASA Administrator Lori Garver said the program proved
"that the government doesn't need to fund everything itself
and that we don't have the answer to every question." Sierra
Nevada said the project is ahead of schedule and it hopes to
test the Dream Chaser in May 2012. The company has been
testing a scale model at the university, with students' help.
"To have a chance to have hands-on experience while you're
still in school, that is indeed a dream come true," said Luis
Zea, who is helping design the cockpit.
Number of Web domains about to expand
MARINA DEL REY, Calif. - The world of Internet suffixes,
such as .com and .net is about to expand in a big way, the
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers said.
ICANN, a non-profit organization in Marina del Rey, Calif.,
said it will host a three-day conference in San Francisco
next week to lay out plans -- and prices -- for how doling
out new domain suffixes. ICANN said the existing pool of
domain names is depleted and new suffixes are needed to keep
the Internet working properly. ICANN approved the expansion
in 2008 but has since been debating implementation, including
who would run the new suffixes. The cost to apply for a new
designation, such as .eco isn't cheap. The application fee
is $185,000 and successful applicants will pay ICANN $25,000
annually to keep the designation. Critics say the prolifer-
ation of new domain suffixes will cause problems for trade-
mark holders and confusion for Internet users, said Lauren
Weinstein, co-founder of People for Internet Responsibility.
Just the opposite is true, said ICANN's top official. "Our
job is to protect competition and give extra choices for
consumers and entrepreneurs," Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman
of ICANN's board of directors, told The Washington Post.
ICANN said companies such as IBM would have first dibs on
the .ibm domain name.
Scan predicts those likely to quit smoking
ANN ARBOR, Mich. - U.S. researchers say neural reactions to
pro-health messages -- as shown by brain scans -- may predict
those most likely to successfully quit smoking. Study leader
Emily Falk of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor finds
activity in the brain's medial prefrontal cortex -- while
watching pro-quitting television ads -- predicted less smo-
king in the weeks ahead. "What is exciting," Falk says in
statement, "is that by knowing what is going on in someone's
brain during the ads, we can do twice as well at predicting
their future behavior, compared to if we only knew their
self-reported estimate of how successful they would be, or
their intention to quit." The findings, published in Health
Psychology, suggest functional magnetic resonance imaging
could be used to select the messages that are most likely to
affect behavior change both at the individual and population
levels. "It seems that our brain activity may provide infor-
mation that introspection does not," Falk says. Falk and
colleagues tested 28 heavy smokers, recruited from an anti-
smoking program. In addition to the brain scans, each person
completed a questionnaire on their smoking history, cravings
and intentions to quit and was tested for exhaled carbon mon-
oxide -- a measure of recent smoking.
Meteorites yield Mars water clues
LEICESTER, England - Rare fragments of martian meteorites
have revealed evidence of how water once flowed near the
surface of that planet, U.K. researchers say. Scientists
at the University of Leicester have examined five samples
of nakhlite -- a form of meteorite known to have originated
on Mars and named after the Egyptian village of el-Nakhla
where the first one was found in 1911 -- using an electron
microscope, a university release said Wednesday. The samples
showed veins created during an impact on Mars and filled
with clay, carbonite and other materials probably carried
there by water from ice melted in the impact, John Bridges
of Leicester's Space Research Center says. The discovery
closely ties in to recent geological discoveries of clay
and carbonate on the surface of Mars made by NASA and Euro-
pean Space Agency probes, and suggests how some of it prob-
ably formed. "We are now starting to build a realistic model
for how water deposited minerals formed on Mars, showing that
impact heating was an important process," Bridges said. "With
models like this we will better understand the areas where
we think that water was once present on Mars."
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