Soviet Mars spacecraft possibly spotted in photos

This image released by NASA shows a set of pictures taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter showing what may be parts of a Soviet spacecraft that landed on Mars in 1971. Scientists say more work is needed to confirm that it is hardware from the Mars 3 lander. The spacecraft transmitted for 14.5 seconds on the Martian surface. (AP Photo/NASA)

This image released by NASA shows a set of pictures taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter showing what may be parts of a Soviet spacecraft that landed on Mars in 1971. Scientists say more work is needed to confirm that it is hardware from the Mars 3 lander. The spacecraft transmitted for 14.5 seconds on the Martian surface. (AP Photo/NASA)

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Space fans from Russia scanning NASA images have spotted what may be a Soviet spacecraft that landed on Mars in 1971 and then mysteriously stopped working.

Photos taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter circling the red planet pointed to what may be the Mars 3 lander along with its parachute, heat shield and other hardware that it jettisoned during the descent through the thin Martian atmosphere.

While scientists said the find appeared promising, more follow-up was needed to rule out other possibilities.

Mars 3 operated for only 15 seconds on the Martian surface before it suddenly stopped communicating. It was part of a double mission the Soviet Union launched in 1971. Its twin, Mars 2, crashed.

The Russian space enthusiasts were part of an online group that followed the Curiosity rover, NASA's latest Mars mission. They used crowdsourcing to pore through publicly available archive images and contacted scientists about their find.

Earlier this year, at the group's request, the reconnaissance orbiter passed over the region where Mars 3 was thought to have landed and photographed the site.

While the pictures showed features that appeared consistent with a spacecraft landing, scientists said they could just be rocks or other natural geological formations.

There are future plans to take more pictures and talk to Russian engineers about the mission to get a better idea of the landing process.

There's always the chance that "we may not get a definitive answer," said Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona, Tucson, who is in charge of the camera aboard the reconnaissance orbiter.

During Curiosity's landing last year, the reconnaissance orbiter was able to locate its parachute, rocket stage and cables that were cast away as the car-size vehicle touched down inside an ancient crater. In that case, engineers knew where Curiosity would land, allowing scientists to direct the spacecraft to be in the right place to capture the landing.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/b2f0ca3a594644ee9e50a8ec4ce2d6de/Article_2013-04-11-Old%20Mars%20Lander/id-88e025aa51d342f7b898f619ca7870d8

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Greenhouse gases make high temps hotter in China

Smoke is emitted from chimneys of a cement plant in Binzhou city, in eastern China's Shandong province on Thursday, Jan. 17, 2013. China, the world's largest producer of carbon dioxide, is directly feeling the man-made heat of global warming, scientists conclude in the first study to link the burning of fossil fuels to one country's rise in its daily temperature spikes. The study appeared online in late March 2013 in the peer reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters. (AP Photo) CHINA OUT

Smoke is emitted from chimneys of a cement plant in Binzhou city, in eastern China's Shandong province on Thursday, Jan. 17, 2013. China, the world's largest producer of carbon dioxide, is directly feeling the man-made heat of global warming, scientists conclude in the first study to link the burning of fossil fuels to one country's rise in its daily temperature spikes. The study appeared online in late March 2013 in the peer reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters. (AP Photo) CHINA OUT

WASHINGTON (AP) ? China, the world's largest producer of carbon dioxide, is directly feeling the man-made heat of global warming, scientists conclude in the first study to link the burning of fossil fuels to one country's rise in its daily temperature spikes.

China emits more of the greenhouse gas than the next two biggest carbon polluters ? the U.S. and India ? combined. And its emissions keep soaring by about 10 percent per year.

While other studies have linked averaged-out temperature increases in China and other countries to greenhouse gases, this research is the first to link the warmer daily hottest and coldest readings, or spikes.

Those spikes, which often occur in late afternoon and the early morning, are what scientists say most affect people's health, plants and animals. People don't notice changes in averages, but they feel it when the daily high is hotter or when it doesn't cool off at night to let them recover from a sweltering day.

The study by Chinese and Canadian researchers found that just because of greenhouse gases, daytime highs rose 0.9 degree Celsius (1.7 degrees Fahrenheit) in the 46 years up to 2007. At night it was even worse: Because of greenhouse gases, the daily lows went up about 1.7 degrees Celsius (3 degrees Fahrenheit).

China is the world's biggest producer and consumer of coal, which is the largest source of man-made carbon dioxide emissions. While the country has made huge investments in alternative energy such as wind, solar and nuclear in recent years, its heavy reliance on coal is unlikely to change any time soon.

About 90 percent of the temperature rise seen by the researchers could be traced directly to man-made greenhouse gases, the study said. Man-made greenhouse gases also include methane and nitrous oxide, but carbon dioxide is considered by far the biggest factor.

The study appeared online in late March in the peer-reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The study uses the accepted and traditional method that climate scientists employ to attribute a specific trend to man-made global warming or to rule it out as a cause.

Researchers ran computer simulations trying to replicate the observed increase in daily and nighttime high temperatures in China between 1961 and 2007. They first plugged in only natural forces ? including solar variation ? to try to get the heat increase. That didn't produce it.

The only way the computer simulations came up with the increase in daily high and low temperatures that occurred was when the actual amounts of atmospheric heat-trapping greenhouse gases were included.

"It is way above what you would expect from normal fluctuations of climate," study author Xuebin Zhang of the climate research division of Canada's environmental agency said in a telephone interview. "It is quite clear and can be attributed to greenhouse gases."

China did not become the largest emitter of greenhouse gases until 2007; for much of the period studied, it had a smaller economy. Because carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for about a century, China and its defenders maintain that the U.S. and other developed nations bear more responsibility for climate change.

Outside experts praised the research as using proper methods and making sense. An earlier study didn't formally blame the proliferation of U.S. heat records to a rise in greenhouse gases but noted that they were increasing substantially with carbon dioxide pollution.

"The study is important because it formalizes what many scientists have been sensing as a gut instinct: that the increase in extreme heat that we've witnessed in recent decades, and especially in recent years, really cannot be dismissed as the vagaries of weather," said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann.

China has rapidly grown from a nation of subsistence farmers at the end of the 1970s into the world's second-largest economy behind the U.S., and the environmental costs of such change are often visible.

Beijing is no longer dominated by bicycles but by cars, and the skyline is barely visible at times because of thick pollution. More people are living in cities, buying air conditioners and other energy-hungry home electronics and consuming more energy for transportation and heating.

China passed the United States as the No. 1 carbon dioxide emitter about six years ago and "the gap is widening, it's huge," said Appalachian State University professor Gregg Marland, who helps track worldwide emissions for the U.S. Energy Department.

When developed countries around the world in 1997 agreed to limit their greenhouse gas emissions, developing countries, including China, were exempted.

U.S. Energy Department statistics say that China gets 70 percent of its energy from coal, compared with 20 percent in the United States. China is also a world leader in the production of cement, a process that also causes greenhouse emissions.

___

Associated Press writer Louise Watt in Beijing contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/b2f0ca3a594644ee9e50a8ec4ce2d6de/Article_2013-04-12-China-Changing%20Temperatures/id-f64f5f6fee544cd5bf0eb6687485e490

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Ed Sheeran Injects 'A Twinge Of The Ginge' Into MTV Movie Awards

The fire-haired singer thinks up his own category for this Sunday's show at 9 p.m. ET on MTV.
By Jocelyn Vena, with reporting by Christina Garibaldi

Ed Sheeran
Photo: MTV News

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1705434/ed-sheeran-2013-mtv-movie-awards.jhtml

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Fossilized teeth provide new insight into human ancestor: Species identified in 2010 is one of closest relatives to humans

Apr. 11, 2013 ? A dental study of fossilized remains found in South Africa in 2008 provides new support that this species is one of the closest relatives to early humans.

The teeth of this species -- called Australopithecus sediba -- indicate that it is also a close relative to the previously identified Australopithecus africanus. Both of these species are clearly more closely related to humans than other australopiths from east Africa, according to the new research.

The study, published in the journal Science, revealed that both africanus and sediba shared about the same number of dental traits with the first undeniably human species.

"Our study provides further evidence that sediba is indeed a very close relative of early humans, but we can't definitively determine its position relative to africanus, said Debbie Guatelli-Steinberg, co-author of the study and professor of anthropology at The Ohio State University.

The research was led by Joel D. Irish, professor of natural sciences at Liverpool John Moores University.

The sediba fossils were found in South Africa in 2008 and first described in a series of articles published in Science in 2010. That study was led by Lee Berger of the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, who is also a co-author of this new study.

In this study, Irish, Guatelli-Steinberg and their colleagues extended that work by examining the teeth from sediba and comparing them to eight other African hominin species, which include modern humans from Africa, and extinct species of Homo, Australopithecus, and Paranthropus. In all, the researchers examined more than 340 fossils and 4,571 recent specimens. They also examined teeth from 44 gorillas for comparison.

The focus was on 22 separate traits of tooth crowns and roots that can give clues as to the relationship between the different species studied.

For example, they measured how much one of the incisors was shovel-shaped. Depending on the species in this study, the incisor may have no depression in the back of the tooth, a faint shovel shape, or a trace of that shape.

Researchers use standardized measurements from the Arizona State University Dental Anthropology System to compare the teeth on these 22 traits.

The researchers found that on 15 of these traits, sediba and africanus scored the same. Sediba shared 13 traits with Homo erectus, an early human species, which was comparable to how africanus scored.

Sediba and africanus shared five dental traits that weren't found in earlier australopiths, further showing their close relationship. Both also share five traits with early humans -- Homo habilis/rudolfenis and Homo erectus -- which weren't shared with earlier ancestors, demonstrating the close relationship between these two australopiths and the first humans.

Teeth are an excellent way to study relationships between different species, Guatelli-Steinberg said. They are well preserved in the fossil record, and researchers can compare large samples, at least for many ancient species.

In addition, most of the dental traits the researchers used in this analysis don't have a selective advantage that could help one species survive over another. That means if researchers see a similar trait in two species, they can be more confident that they shared a common ancestor and that the trait didn't evolve independently.

In many ways, these new dental data support the earlier research on sediba, which included analysis of the inside of the skull, hand, spine, pelvis, foot and ankle, Guatelli-Steinberg said.

"All of the research so far shows that sediba had a mosaic of primitive traits and newer traits that suggest it was a bridge between earlier australopiths and the first humans," she said.

Guatelli-Steinberg said their dental analysis showed that both africanus and sediba are more closely related to humans than the famous "Lucy" skeleton fossil found in East Africa in 1974. This fossil represented a species, Australopithecus afarensis, that was at one time was thought to be the closest relative of humans.

Lucy is estimated to have lived 3.2 million years ago. Sediba lived 1.977 million years ago, while africanus lived between 3.03 and 2.04 million years ago.

"Our research on teeth can't definitively settle if either sediba or africanus is more closely related to humans than the other species," Guatelli-Steinberg said. "But our findings do suggest that both are closely related to each other and are more closely related to humans than afarensis.

"We need to find more sediba remains to help fill in the missing pieces of this evolutionary puzzle."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Ohio State University. The original article was written by Jeff Grabmeier.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. J. D. Irish, D. Guatelli-Steinberg, S. S. Legge, D. J. de Ruiter, L. R. Berger. Dental Morphology and the Phylogenetic "Place" of Australopithecus sediba. Science, 2013; 340 (6129): 1233062 DOI: 10.1126/science.1233062

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/eILjvDpis7Y/130411142935.htm

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Intel looking to turbocharge its NUC with Core i5 and i7 CPUs, according to leak

It looks like Intel's planning on bringing its Next Unit of Computing (NUC) mini-computer upmarket, if a leaked roadmap from ComputerBase.de is to be believed. The documents look highly tentative, but if they come to fruition then Intel will start offering new NUCs (code-named "Skull Canyon" and "Horse Canyon") with Intel Core i7-3537U and Core i5-3427U processors along with its current Core i3 model during the first half of the year. New motherboards would be used that alter the slot configurations substantially: the Thunderbolt connector would be dropped in favor of USB 3.0 -- three on the i7 model, one on the i5 -- with DisplayPort 1.1a added to each along with HDMI 1.4a connectors. There's no pricing yet, but we found that you'd need to nearly double the price of the original NUC to create a working computer, so bear that in mind when you're looking at the leaked slides after the break.

[Image credit: ComputerBase.de]

Filed under: Desktops, Intel

Comments

Via: FanlessTech

Source: ComputerBase.de

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/09/intel-next-unit-of-computing-roadmap-leak-i7-i5/

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Movile Helps Users Get Connected With Apps To Find And Share Access To Free Mobile Hotspots

Mobile content company Movile has over the last several years distributed content and applications for a primarily Latin American audience. But what happens when a mobile user isn't connected to a wireless data network? To help solve this problem, Movile has introduced a pair of applications that will help users connect to free Wi-Fi networks.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/5Mfipm7MDcU/

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U.S., others boycott Serbian politician's "inflammatory" U.N. session

By Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States boycotted as "inflammatory" a meeting on international justice on Wednesday organized by a Serbian politician who heads the U.N. General Assembly - a session some nations say was intended merely to complain about the treatment of Serbs in war crimes tribunals.

The meeting and panel discussion were set up by former Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic, who is serving as president of the 193-nation assembly. Some U.N. diplomats have privately accused Jeremic of using the General Assembly to promote his own career and his home country.

European and other Western nations have said Wednesday's session on international justice was a thinly veiled attempt to attack the international war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which Serbia has criticized. Jordan and Canada joined the United States in boycotting the debate.

"The United States strongly disagrees with the decision of the president of the General Assembly to hold an unbalanced, inflammatory thematic debate today on the role of international criminal justice in reconciliation and will not participate," said Erin Pelton, spokeswoman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations.

"We believe that ad hoc international criminal tribunals and other judicial institutions in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone and Cambodia have been critical to ending impunity and helping these countries chart a new, more positive future," Pelton said in a statement.

Pelton added that it was especially problematic that the day's events "fail to provide the victims of these atrocities an appropriate voice."

A senior Western diplomat said on condition of anonymity that Jeremic's decision to organize the meeting on April 10 - the day that Croatia's Nazi puppet state was established in 1941 - ensured that the "whole event took on a Serbian feel."

He added that Jeremic had refused to change the date after he was requested to do so by a number of delegations.

'ALMOST AN IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE'

Jordan's U.N. Ambassador Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid al-Hussein told a small group of reporters that Serbia's approach to the session on international justice was "almost an impeachable offense" - ostensibly referring to Jeremic's largely ceremonial post as the head of the General Assembly.

Since it was set up in 1993, the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has indicted 161 people for crimes stemming from the wars that shattered the Yugoslav federation, of whom 15 have been acquitted. Several dozen suspects remain on trial.

Serbia and its ally Russia have sharply criticized the tribunal over recent decisions to free two Croatian generals and a Kosovo Albanian former guerilla commander.

Jeremic did not explicitly attack the Hague war crimes tribunals in his speech, though he told the assembly that international justice could be misused in a way that prevents reconciliation between former adversaries.

"Such outcomes would harm efforts to strengthen the rule of law, for no legal tradition recognizes the guilt or innocence of an entire nation," he said.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon defended the war crimes tribunals, the International Criminal Court (ICC) and other methods of ensuring accountability.

"The system of international criminal justice has ... given voice to victims and witnesses," Ban said.

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic hammered away at the Hague tribunal in a roughly 45-minute speech to the assembly, telling participants that the "prosecution has been favored over the defense" and the court was guilty of the "most flagrant violation of human rights."

Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch said Nikolic is well known as a denier of the Srebrenica genocide. More than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in July 1995 by Bosnian Serb forces under the command of Ratko Mladic, who is currently on trial for crimes against humanity and other war crimes.

Jordan, Britain and others complained that the victims of Srebrenica had no voice in Wednesday's debate.

Croatian Ambassador Ranko Vilovic also criticized the session, saying "truth, justice and reconciliation were not the values for which this debate was organized."

Some diplomats say Jeremic may be jostling to become the next president of Serbia. If he does not get Serbia's presidency, he is likely to try to become the next U.N. secretary-general, a position that is expected to be filled by an Eastern European, envoys say.

U.N. diplomats say Jeremic's name has been mentioned as a possible candidate to replace Ban after his term ends in December 2016. While Russia would support Jeremic, U.N. diplomats said there are less divisive candidates from Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and elsewhere.

The European Union's 27 member nations are attending the event but sending junior diplomats.

(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Will Dunham)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-others-boycott-serbian-politicians-inflammatory-u-n-173529221.html

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