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Saturday, April 14, 2007

A complex series of events, including a five month-old computer error, was responsible for the battery failure that led to the loss of NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor last year, an internal review board says. Findings from a preliminary report released on Friday say that while NASA controllers followed procedures while operating the craft, the procedures did not cover the types of errors that occurred.

According to NASA, on November 2, 2006, the Global Surveyor was ordered to perform a routine adjustment of its solar panels. However, the Global Surveyor reoriented to an angle that exposed one of its two batteries to direct sunlight. The battery overheated, which led to the depletion of both batteries. An incorrect setting in antenna orientation prevented Global Surveyor from relaying its status to NASA controllers. Its preprogrammed systems did not take into account the need to maintain a thermally safe orientation.

That was the last communication that NASA controllers had with the spacecraft.

The Global Surveyor was the first US mission to Mars in twenty years, For ten years, the craft returned detailed information to NASA scientists providing new insights, including evidence that appeared to show the presence of water on Mars and identification of deposits of water-related minerals, which led to selection of a Mars rover landing site.

“The loss of the spacecraft was the result of a series of events linked to a computer error made five months before the likely battery failure,” said Dolly Perkins, board chairperson and deputy director-technical of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

The board concluded that NASA controllers had followed procedures, but that the procedures did not adequately cover the type of errors that occurred. In its final report, the board will offer recommendations applicable to future missions.

“We are making an end-to-end review of all our missions to be sure that we apply the lessons learned from Mars Global Surveyor to all our ongoing missions,” said Fuk Li, Mars Exploration Program manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The Global Surveyor was the longest operating spacecraft at Mars and had lasted four times longer than expected.

Monday, June 2, 2008

Leading up to the 2008 COMPUTEX show, the “2008 WiMAX Expo Taipei” is being held. Co-organized by Taiwan External Trade Development Council, Taipei Computer Association (TCA), the Industrial Development Bureau of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), M-Taiwan Office, and WiMAX Forum, the expo will be held in Taipei Show Hall two. It is planned to run for five consecutive days commencing on June 2. In addition, the 2008 WiMAX Forum Operator Summit will be also held at Far Eastern Plaza Hotel on June 2 & 3.

According to the Taipei Computer Association (TCA), there will be sixty networking companies and manufacturers participating in this show. Their aim, to demonstrate the telecommunications technology in Taiwan. About seventy world-class operators from the networking industry will be invited to join the Forum Summit.

Following the Ministry of Economic Affairs signing an extended Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Intel on April 21, both will work together to promote the WiMAX industry in Taiwan. Intel, participating in both COMPUTEX and the WiMAX expo has a number of WiMAX Segways to demonstrate the technology. Their involvement will also include acting as hosts for the 2008 e21FORUM where Mobile Web 2.0 will be discussed.

A bus promoting the WiMAX expo will also be in service with Far EasTone Telecommunications and First International Telecom doing live demonstrations of their enterprise offerings.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Viktor Schreckengost, the father of industrial design and creator of the Jazz Bowl, an iconic piece of Jazz Age art designed for Eleanor Roosevelt during his association with Cowan Pottery died yesterday. He was 101.

Schreckengost was born on June 26, 1906 in Sebring, Ohio, United States.

Schreckengost’s peers included the far more famous designers Raymond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes.

In 2000, the Cleveland Museum of Art curated the first ever retrospective of Schreckengost’s work. Stunning in scope, the exhibition included sculpture, pottery, dinnerware, drawings, and paintings.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

FIFA, the world governing body for association football, yesterday announced it was setting up a working group to conduct an inquiry into the introduction of assistant referees and technology into the world game, in the wake of the reactions to the controversial handball committed by French captain Thierry Henry during the 18 November France vs Republic of Ireland qualifying play-off game for the 2010 World Cup.

Yesterday, at the request of FIFA President Sepp Blatter, FIFA held an emergency meeting of its 24 member Executive Committee in Cape Town, to look into various issues which had recently affected the world game, including the Henry handball.

After the meeting, FIFA announced it will set up an inquiry to investigate the introduction of goal line technology and the global experimentation of using additional referee’s assistants to officiate during a match, already being trialled in Europe. FIFA did not however take the widely expected action of announcing there would be extra assistants in place for the upcoming 2010 World Cup, stating this was “too soon” to be made possible. Blatter also re-iterated his long-standing opposition to the adoption of video refereeing used in many other sports.

Blatter confirmed yesterday that Thierry Henry would be investigated by the FIFA Disciplinary Committee. Blatter also apologised to the FAI for his handling of their request to become the 33rd team at the 2010 World Cup.

There was a worldwide reaction after the Henry handball incident, which was missed by the referee Martin Hansson, with FIFA coming under pressure to make changes to avoid such a recurrence.

Henry’s illegal handball had led to the decisive goal being scored in the game by William Gallas, which saw France qualify for the World Cup ahead of the Republic of Ireland. The Irish football federation (“FAI”) first called on FIFA and the French for a replay, but this was rejected by FIFA. They later requested to be allowed to be given an extra place at the World Cup.

Yesterday, Blatter appealed to all players and officials that would be appearing in the upcoming 2010 World Cup to observe the principles of fair play. Henry had been criticised for admitting the handball after the game, but not informing the referee at the time.

File:2014 FIFA Announcement (Joseph Blatter) 6.jpg

Blatter said of the crisis in refereeing in the world game that:

The committee was of the opinion that we are at a crossroads: where shall we go with refereeing in the future? The game at the highest level is so tense that it is impossible for one referee and his assistants to see everything…The executive committee came to the decision that the referee is not any longer consistent with the quality and the speed of the game, and the interest of television and 32 cameras as we will have in the World Cup

To address these issues, FIFA announced they were going to set up a committee of inquiry to “look at technology or additional persons”. Blatter confirmed the inquiry would involve a cross section of FIFA personnel, involving the referee, football, technical and medical committees.

On the subject of assistant referees, FIFA said:

… the Executive Committee expressed its support for the current experiment of including two additional referees behind the goal lines. However, the committee stressed that it would be too soon to implement this new system at the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa

Blatter said FIFA was not ignoring the ongoing trials of extra assistant referees, which would continue in the Europa League into the 2010 knock-out stages, but the executive was of the opinion that with these trials only occurring on one continent, any experiment should “be carried out globally” before being adopted in a World Cup, and that the six months remaining until the 2010 World Cup starts was too short a time to prove any such system. The 2010 tournament, to be held in June and July, would instead remain with the normal FIFA appointed officiating team consisting of four officials led by the match referee.

On the issue of what types of technology might be investigated, Blatter confirmed that two companies looking at goal-line technology were due to report to the rule-making International Football Association Board (IFAB) in March. According to AFP, the meeting also ‘ruled out’ the adoption of the type of video refereeing as used in rugby, cricket and tennis.’, while Blatter stated such a system would ‘damage the flow’ of the game and “take away talking points”.

FIFA confirmed the FIFA Disciplinary Committee would “examine the case of Thierry Henry related to the play-off match”. Blatter said:

I have not said that Thierry Henry will be punished, I have said that Thierry Henry will be examined by the disciplinary committee of FIFA”, but he added “it was a blatant unfair playing and was shown all around the world, but I don’t know what the outcome will be, let them make the decision. Fair play must be maintained in our game

No timetable was given for when the Disciplinary Committee, headed by Swiss lawyer Marcel Mathier, might make their decision on Henry. According to the Associated Press, the committee has the ‘authority to impose a one-match suspension on Henry, which would take effect at the start of the World Cup in June.’ According to the BBC, there was no certainty that Henry would even be banned if found guilty.

After FIFA rejected an Irish request for a replay of the game, the FAI had asked Sepp Blatter to privately raise the issue at the FIFA meeting of whether the Irish could be entered into the 2010 World Cup as a 33rd team. According to the BBC, the FAI ‘knew all along that there was very little chance of their request being granted but had decided to make it anyway on principle’. The FAI withdrew it before the meeting, after Blatter made their request public during his opening address of the Soccerex conference in Johannesburg on 29 November. Blatter yesterday apologised to the FAI for how he had handled their request, saying:

In this connection I would like to express my regrets – my regrets to a wrong interpretation of what I have said in the Soccerex. I have only announced they have asked it, but the presence in the Soccerex they don’t took it very, I would say, seriously. So I regret what I have created and especially towards the Irish Football Association, I am sorry about these headlines going around the world. Contrary I have nothing against the Irish, they were very sporting people when they came to FIFA and it is a pity that it has been now communicated in this way. Sorry again.”

Thursday, August 16, 2007

The name Robert Cailliau may not ring a bell to the general public, but his invention is the reason why you are reading this: Dr. Cailliau together with his colleague Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, making the internet accessible so it could grow from an academic tool to a mass communication medium. Last January Dr. Cailliau retired from CERN, the European particle physics lab where the WWW emerged.

Wikinews offered the engineer a virtual beer from his native country Belgium, and conducted an e-mail interview with him (which started about three weeks ago) about the history and the future of the web and his life and work.

Wikinews: At the start of this interview, we would like to offer you a fresh pint on a terrace, but since this is an e-mail interview, we will limit ourselves to a virtual beer, which you can enjoy here.

Robert Cailliau: Yes, I myself once (at the 2nd international WWW Conference, Chicago) said that there is no such thing as a virtual beer: people will still want to sit together. Anyway, here we go.

Monday, September 3, 2007

Peace talks between between Sunnis and Iraqi Shi’ites in Finland aimed at ending sectarian violence in Iraq have ended.

The talks, organized by Finnish non-profit NGO WCrisis Management Initiative (CMI), took place over four days in a secret location in Finland. The discussions were aimed at demonstrating to the two sides what lessons could be learned from successful peace talks in Northern Ireland and South Africa, and were attended by more than 30 participants, of whom 16 were from Iraq and the rest from Northern Ireland and South Africa.

The CMI has now released a document called the “Helsinki Agreement”, detailing agreements reached between the two groups to work collaboratively to achieve common goals democratically and without violence. One key recommendation in the Helsinki Agreement, which one Northern Irish lawmaker Jeffrey Donaldson described as a “road map” to Iraqi peace, is that the groups will disarm, and that the disarmament process will be overseen by an independent, neutral organization to ensure it is conducted “in a verifiable manner”.

Martin McGuinness, former Provisional Irish Republican Army leader and now Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, was also present in the talks, as were other former enemies from both sides of the former divide in Northern Ireland. South African representatives included African National Congress activist Mac Maharaj and National Party reformer Roelf Meyer. Although no Iraqi participants have been positively identified, reports suggest they included representatives of the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the largest Sunni Arab political group, Adnan al-Dulaimi and Humam Hammoudi, the Shiite chairman of the Iraqi parliament’s foreign affairs committee.

Another vital agreement reached was that the groups would unite against militia groups, forming “an effective national force,” and encourage armed organizations “not classified as terrorist” to instead adopt “peaceful political means”, the reward for which would be positions within the state administration.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

NASA’s Cassini–Huygens spacecraft has discovered evidence for a large-scale saltwater reservoir beneath the icy crust of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The data came from the spacecraft’s direct analysis of salt-rich ice grains close to the jets ejected from the moon. The study has been published in this week’s edition of the journal Nature.

Data from Cassini’s cosmic dust analyzer show the grains expelled from fissures, known as tiger stripes, are relatively small and usually low in salt far away from the moon. Closer to the moon’s surface, Cassini found that relatively large grains rich with sodium and potassium dominate the plumes. The salt-rich particles have an “ocean-like” composition and indicate that most, if not all, of the expelled ice and water vapor comes from the evaporation of liquid salt-water. When water freezes, the salt is squeezed out, leaving pure water ice behind.

Cassini’s ultraviolet imaging spectrograph also recently obtained complementary results that support the presence of a subsurface ocean. A team of Cassini researchers led by Candice Hansen of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, measured gas shooting out of distinct jets originating in the moon’s south polar region at five to eight times the speed of sound, several times faster than previously measured. These observations of distinct jets, from a 2010 flyby, are consistent with results showing a difference in composition of ice grains close to the moon’s surface and those that made it out to the E ring, the outermost ring that gets its material primarily from Enceladean jets. If the plumes emanated from ice, they should have very little salt in them.

“There currently is no plausible way to produce a steady outflow of salt-rich grains from solid ice across all the tiger stripes other than salt water under Enceladus’s icy surface,” said Frank Postberg, a Cassini team scientist at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.

The data suggests a layer of water between the moon’s rocky core and its icy mantle, possibly as deep as about 50 miles (80 kilometers) beneath the surface. As this water washes against the rocks, it dissolves salt compounds and rises through fractures in the overlying ice to form reserves nearer the surface. If the outermost layer cracks open, the decrease in pressure from these reserves to space causes a plume to shoot out. Roughly 400 pounds (200 kilograms) of water vapor is lost every second in the plumes, with smaller amounts being lost as ice grains. The team calculates the water reserves must have large evaporating surfaces, or they would freeze easily and stop the plumes.

“We imagine that between the ice and the ice core there is an ocean of depth and this is somehow connected to the surface reservoir,” added Postberg.

The Cassini mission discovered Enceladus’ water-vapor and ice jets in 2005. In 2009, scientists working with the cosmic dust analyzer examined some sodium salts found in ice grains of Saturn’s E ring but the link to subsurface salt water was not definitive. The new paper analyzes three Enceladus flybys in 2008 and 2009 with the same instrument, focusing on the composition of freshly ejected plume grains. In 2008, Cassini discovered a high “density of volatile gases, water vapor, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, as well as organic materials, some 20 times denser than expected” in geysers erupting from the moon. The icy particles hit the detector target at speeds between 15,000 and 39,000 MPH (23,000 and 63,000 KPH), vaporizing instantly. Electrical fields inside the cosmic dust analyzer separated the various constituents of the impact cloud.

“Enceladus has got warmth, water and organic chemicals, some of the essential building blocks needed for life,” said Dennis Matson in 2008, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

“This finding is a crucial new piece of evidence showing that environmental conditions favorable to the emergence of life can be sustained on icy bodies orbiting gas giant planets,” said Nicolas Altobelli, the European Space Agency’s project scientist for Cassini.

“If there is water in such an unexpected place, it leaves possibility for the rest of the universe,” said Postberg.

Monday, March 28, 2005

Sri Lankan Ministry Of Foreign Affairs said the government accepts Beijing’s “One China” policy and that Taiwan is an inalienable part of the People’s Republic Of China, according to a March 17 press release.

The current foreign Ministry communiqué, recollects the press communiqué issued by the Foreign Ministers of China and Sri Lanka in Beijing in December 2004. Sri Lanka reiterated its support for Chinese legislative measures to oppose forces seeking to secede from China.

In the communiqué, the Sri Lankan government categorically mentioned, Sri Lanka opposes secessionist actions in any form and fully supports a process of peaceful national reunification. The Sri Lankan government further said, it welcomes growing cross-Straits economic and other exchanges such as the promotion of direct trade, mail, air and shipping links.

In the mean time, Chinese President Hu Jintao issued a presidential order regarding the promulgation of the Anti-Secession Law on March 14, which was adopted at the Third Session of the Tenth National People’s Congress, China’s top legislature.