Science

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Solar Storm Dumps Gigawatts into Earth's Upper Atmosphere

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A surge of infrared radiation from nitric oxide molecules on March 8-10, 2012, signals the biggest upper-atmospheric heating event in seven years.

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Planet under pressure: taking stock of scientific data

UNESCO will join with scientists, political leaders, academics, health specialists, representatives of other intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, the private sector and the media, at a conference in London from 26 to 29 March to take stock of the health of the planet. Over the four days, they’ll examine the latest data on key indicators including climate change, declining biodiversity, food security and governance.

The “Planet under Pressure Conference” is considered a key event in the lead up to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro (Rio+20, Brazil, 20-22 June, 2012), with participants identifying concrete ways for society to tackle planetary challenges and provide a scientific contribution to the UN Conference.

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NASA GRAIL Returns First Student-Selected Moon Images

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This image of the far side of the lunar surface, with Earth in the background, was taken by the MoonKAM system board the Ebb spacecraft as part of the first image set taken from lunar orbit from March 15 - 18, 2012.

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NASA's 'Eyes on the Earth' Gets Sharper Vision

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An improved version of NASA's popular "Eyes on the Earth" interactive virtual reality visualization with a host of new features is now available.

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Dawn Sees New Surface Features on Giant Asteroid

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Bright Rays from Canuleia Crater
In this image from NASA's Dawn spacecraft, bright material extends out from the crater Canuleia on Vesta.

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New Wireless Technology Transforms the Remote

New remote control devices that use radio frequency rather than infrared to communicate are under development and making their way to market. The new devices overcome limitations of the IR-based devices and could greatly expand the functionality of the traditional remote control.

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Remote control devices using RF4CE technology could be used as a dashboard that monitors all types of systems in the home.

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Motion Control Vaults Augmented Reality

Augmented reality (AR) dazzled consumers at the recent Mobile World Congress (MWC 2012, Feb. 27-Mar.1, Barcelona) where splashy "x-ray-glasses" revealed hidden content. However, new behind-the-scenes motion-processing developments promised that there is much more to come.

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Novel AR demo developed with Qualcomm's Augmented Reality SDK by independent gaming developer Sahar Fikouhi reveals 3D objects hovering above an iPad's screen when scanning it with an iPhone's camera

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At 10, GRACE Continues Defying, and Defining, Gravity

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On March 17, 2002, NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) launched the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), a novel space mission that has given scientists a new understanding of changes in Earth's natural systems.

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Astronomers Find Cosmic Lenses with Feeding Black Holes

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The Hubble Space Telescope's sharp view was used to look for gravitational arcs and rings (indicated by arrows), which are produced when one galaxy acts as a lens to magnify and distort the appearance of another galaxy behind it. In this case, the foreground galaxies contain actively accreting black holes called quasars.

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Intel Courts Green Datacenters

Intel’s first server processor designed exclusively for the "green" datacenters of the future features eight cores per chip, a supercomputer-on-a-chip architecture, and novel new turbo- and energy efficiency-modes.

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Intel's newest Xeon E5-2680 processor offers a 70 percent improvement in performance for the same power consumption.

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