Science | WPN World People News

If you heard cheering as the new year kicked off, it wasn't all about the arrival of 2012. Some applause was from developers and data administrators welcoming the arrival of Hadoop 1.0, the open-source software framework from the Apache Software Foundation.

Where does the Denver Broncos' star quarterback Tim Tebow turn to ensure his Websites keep up with user demand and stay secure? He huddles up with Jacksonville, Fla.-based MSP and cloud-solution provider Peak 10.

This artist's concept depicts an itsy bitsy planetary system -- so compact, in fact, that it's more like Jupiter and its moons than a star and its planets.

This new image shows the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy in infrared light as seen by the Herschel Space Observatory, a European Space Agency-led mission with important NASA contributions, and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

This enormous section of the Milky Way galaxy is a mosaic of images from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The constellations Cassiopeia and Cepheus are featured in this 1,000-square degree expanse.

Why create an operating blueprint? It provides two strategic enablers:
• 360˚ Enterprise Models (business, process, organization, technology, etc.), provide the ability to visualize the end-to-end business goals and execution strategies before beginning costly and often irreversible strategy implementations. These models create the opportunity to ask “what-if” questions and test scenarios that help vet problems and issues early on.
• Impact Analyses and Scenarios, with which to alter factors, create multiple output scenarios, evaluate the end-to-end impact of each scenario, and arrive at the optimal solution.

There is a global transformation underway that represents extraordinary risk. Business strategies that embrace new socio-economic models and couple powerful, far-reaching new technologies, are transforming the way we do business and the very nature of the 21st-century marketplace. The economic and business models of the 20th century are inadequate today to ensure tomorrow’s business success. It is time to move forward. Nothing short of a total new thinking will assure the essential opportunities to move forward.

Titan and Dione
Saturn's third-largest moon Dione can be seen through the haze of its largest moon, Titan, in this view of the two posing before the planet and its rings from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

This image shows one of the most distant galaxies known, called GN-108036, dating back to 750 million years after the Big Bang that created our universe. The galaxy's light took 12.9 billion years to reach us.

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has spiraled closer and closer to the surface of the giant asteroid Vesta.