FAA Creates Center Of Excellence For Commercial Space Transportation

New Mexico State University Tapped For New Program

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced Thursday that the FAA has selected New Mexico State University (NMSU), Las Cruces, NM, to lead a new Air Transportation Center of Excellence for Commercial Space Transportation. The center is a partnership of academia, industry, and government, developed for the purpose of creating a world-class consortium that will address current and future challenges for commercial space transportation.

“The Obama Administration is committed to making sure the United States remains the world leader in space development and exploration,” said Secretary LaHood. “This new center underscores that commitment, and will ensure that the commercial space community can meet our current and future space transportation needs.”

The Obama Administration recently released its new National Space Policy, which recognizes opportunities and advancements in commercial space transportation and lays out specific ways to use commercial capabilities.

“Commercial space flight is ready to play a greater role in the nation’s space program,” said FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt (pictured, right). “Universities working with industry partners will fuel the research necessary to help keep us in the forefront of both technology and safety in space.”

READ MORE: Aero-News

ATA: U.S. Airlines Post Seventh Consecutive Month Of Revenue Growth

But The Pace Of Growth Slowed From June

Whether or not the economy is actually recovering is still the topic for some debate, but more people do seem to be flying, at least commercially. The Air Transport Association of America (ATA) reported Thursday that passenger revenue, based on a sample group of carriers, rose 20 percent in July 2010 compared to the same month in 2009, marking the seventh consecutive month of revenue growth. The pace of improvement slowed from the 25 percent year-over-year gain realized in June.

READ MORE: Aero-News

FAA’s Circuit Breaker policy could change

The FAA issued a draft policy memorandum that would change circuit-breaker layouts in aircraft electrical systems, as well as how pilots deal with tripped ­circuit breakers. Comments are due by September 12. Principal changes would be for manufacturers to group and identify essential and non-essential circuit breakers in Part 23 aircraft and to publish flight manual guidance about when to reset circuit breakers. According to the FAA, it has allowed resetting of circuit breakers or replacement of fuses while in flight, but current Part 25 advisory information “is to recommend that no pilot should reset any ­circuit breaker more than once.”

Original Article from: Ainonline.com

B787 Simulator Ride

Video Courtesy of Cnet.com

Ok, Nice Simulator.... I realize this is Simulator Instructor, just fooling around with a guy from Cnet

but my Pilot/Flight Instructor training just has to point out a few things.

On rotation the nose of the aircraft goes right. Call gear positive rate, autopilot on a 200?  Maybe that's a 787 callout?

It seems like he's slow in getting the flaps up to their first retract position?

What do you think?

Thank the Microbes for cleaning the BP Oil Spill

Berkeley Lab research study shows that microbes have been degrading the underwater plume created by the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico at a much greater than predicted rate.

(Credit: Hoi-Ying Holman group)

Humans may have naturally occurring nanotechnology to thank for partially cleaning up the oil spill from BP's Deepwater Horizon rig.

Researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have found that previously undiscovered ocean floor microbes have literally risen to the occasion and begun degrading the giant underwater oil plume in the Gulf of Mexico.

While there was belief that some ocean microbes might aid in the degradation of the oil spill, the process has happened more aggressively than anyone predicted it would, according to a report from environmental biotechnologists at the Berkeley Lab.

One of the giant oil plumes that formed due to the oil spill has been degraded at a much more significant rate than first anticipated. The change is attributed to a previously undiscovered species believed to normally reside at the bottom of deep ocean waters, but catalyzed to multiply by the ocean's pollution.

"Our findings show that the influx of oil profoundly altered the microbial community by significantly stimulating deep-sea psychrophilic (cold temperature) gamma-proteobacteria that are closely related to known petroleum-degrading microbes," said Terry Hazen, a microbial ecologist who is leader of the Ecology Department and Center for Environmental Biotechnology at Berkeley Lab's Earth Sciences Division and the principal investigator with the Energy Biosciences Institute.

The PhyloChip--invented by Gary Andersen, Todd DeSantis, and others at LBNL--made the study possible.

(Credit: U.S. Department of Energy)

"This enrichment of psychrophilic petroleum degraders with their rapid oil biodegradation rates appears to be one of the major mechanisms behind the rapid decline of the deepwater dispersed oil plume that has been observed," Hazen said.

READ MORE: Cnet.com

Microsoft makes a return to Flight!

Microsoft posted a teaser video for its forthcoming Microsoft Flight title, but has offered few specifics on how the simulator will work.

(Credit: Microsoft)

One of the casualties of last year's layoffs at Microsoft was the Aces game studio responsible for the company's long-running Flight Simulator game.

At the time, Microsoft promised that the flight simulation franchise would continue in one form or another. This week, Redmond confirmed that it is indeed following through with a new title: Microsoft Flight.

The game is in its early development stages, with an alpha version nearly ready for internal testing, according to Kevin Unangst, a senior director in Microsoft's game unit.

The company is offering few details on Flight, but Unangst said that it is looking to appeal to flying enthusiasts with the realism, accuracy, and fidelity they expect, but also imagines including other types of gameplay that might appeal more to novices.

"It's an opportunity for us to branch out even more into something that's approachable," he said.

It will mark the first new flight simulation title for Microsoft since the 2006 release of Microsoft Flight Simulator X. The company's first version dates back to 1982. The company has also licensed some of its technology to Lockheed Martin for a forthcoming military training program called Prepar3d.

Microsoft resurrects classic games (images)

In an interview on Tuesday, Unangst said that with the rise of social gaming, online services, and cloud computing, Microsoft saw an opportunity to bring back some classics.

The company is also bringing back another venerable title--Age of Empires--in a new online version.

READ MORE: Cnet.com

Rich exoplanet system discovered

By Victoria Gill
Science reporter, BBC News

The researchers say the finding marks a new phase in the hunt for exoplanets

Astronomers have discovered a planetary system containing at least five planets that orbit a star called HD 10180, which is much like our own Sun.
The star is 127 light years away, in the southern constellation of Hydrus.

The researchers used the European Southern Observatory (Eso) to monitor light emitted from the system and identify and characterise the planets. They say this is the "richest" system of exoplanets - planets outside our own Solar System - ever found. Christophe Lovis from Geneva University's observatory in Switzerland was lead researcher on the study. He said that his team had probably found "the system with the most planets yet discovered".

The discovery could provide insight into the formation of our own Solar System "This also highlights the fact that we are now entering a new era in exoplanet research - the study of complex planetary systems and not just of individual planets," he said.

The research has been submitted for publication to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. Eso's High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (or Harps) instrument was responsible for the discovery. Harps measures the wobble of a star; this gives a measure of how much it is being tugged on by an orbiting planet. "If there is one planet it will induce a little movement - the star will come towards us and move away," Dr Lovis explained to BBC News. "And what works for one [planet] works for many."

READ MORE: BBC

Pre-Crime Technology To Be Used In Washington D.C.

Computers predict what crime will be committed where, by who and when
Steve Watson
Infowars.net

Tuesday, Aug 24th, 2010

Law enforcement agencies in Washington D.C. have begun to use technology that they say can predict when crimes will be committed and who will commit them, before they actually happen.

The Minority Report like pre-crime software has been developed by Richard Berk, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
Previous incarnations of the software, already being used in Baltimore and Philadelphia were limited to predictions of murders by and among parolees and offenders on probation.

According to a report by ABC News, however, the latest version, to be implemented in Washington D.C., can predict other future crimes as well.

“When a person goes on probation or parole they are supervised by an officer. The question that officer has to answer is ‘what level of supervision do you provide?’” Berk told ABC News, intimating that the program could have a bearing on the length of sentences and/or bail amounts.

The technology sifts through a database of thousands of crimes and uses algorithms and different variables, such as geographical location, criminal records and ages of previous offenders, to come up with predictions of where, when, and how a crime could possibly be committed and by who.

The program operates without any direct evidence that a crime will be committed, it simply takes datasets and computes possibilities.

“People assume that if someone murdered then they will murder in the future,” Berk also states, “But what really matters is what that person did as a young individual. If they committed armed robbery at age 14 that’s a good predictor. If they committed the same crime at age 30, that doesn’t predict very much.”

Critics have urged that the program encourages categorizing individuals on a risk scale via computer mathematics, rather than on real life, and that monitoring those people based on such a premise is antithetic to a justice system founded on the premise of the presumption of innocence.

Other police departments and law agencies across the country have begun to look into and use similar predictive technologies. The Memphis Police Department, for example uses a program called Operation Blue CRUSH, which uses predictive analytics developed by IBM.

Other forms of pre-crime technology in use or under development include surveillance cameras that can predict when a crime is about to occur and alert police, and even neurological brain scanners that can read people’s intentions before they act, thus detecting whether or not a person has “hostile intent”.

It is not too far fetched to imagine all these forms of the technology being used together in the future by law enforcement bodies.

The British government has previously debated introducing pre-crime laws in the name of fighting terrorism. The idea was that suspects would be put on trial using MI5 or MI6 intelligence of an expected terror attack. This would be enough to convict if found to be true “on the balance of probabilities”, rather than “beyond reasonable doubt”.

The government even has plans to collect lifelong records on all residents starting at the age of five, in order to screen for those who might be more likely to commit crimes in the future.

Another disturbing possibility for such technology comes in the form of a financial alliance of sorts between Internet search engine giant Google and the investment arm of the CIA and the wider U.S. intelligence network.
Google and In-Q-Tel have recently injected a sum of up to $10 million each into a company called Recorded Future, which uses analytics to scour Twitter accounts, blogs and websites for all sorts of information, which is used to “assemble actual real-time dossiers on people.”

The company describes its analytics as “the ultimate tool for open-source intelligence” and says it can also “predict the future”.

Recorded Future takes in vast amounts of personal information such as employment changes, personal education and family relations. Promotional material also shows categories covering pretty much everything else, including entertainment, music and movie releases, as well as other innocuous things like patent filings and product recalls.

Those detached from any kind of moral reality will say “If you’ve got nothing to hide then what is the problem with being scanned for pre-crime? If it keeps us all safe from murderers, rapists and terrorists I’m all for it”.
How far towards a literal technological big brother police state will we slip before people wake up to the fact?
——————————————————————-
Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor at Alex Jones’ Infowars.net, and regular contributor to Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/pre-crime-technology-to-be-used-in-washington-d-c.html
Pre-Crime Technology To Be Used In Washington D.C.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/pre-crime-technology-to-be-used-in-washington-d-c.html

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