Curiosity's Mars exploration: Is it worth the money?

The search for life on Mars has captivated the imaginations of many, but it is costly. Some say it's time to cut spending on NASA's Mars missions, while others say the research is important in the quest for understanding the 'meaning of life.' ?

By Eryn Brown,?Los Angeles Times (MCT) / July 30, 2012

In this photo, Rob Manning, chief engineer, speaks to media at NASA Mars Yard at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Beside Manning is a model of the Mars rover, Curiosity.

AP Photo/Nick Ut

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Saturn has its famous rings and Jupiter is the granddaddy of the solar system, but no planet has entranced earthlings quite like?Mars.

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Humans have launched 40 spacecraft to the Red Planet, lured by the prospect that life might once have existed in what is now dry rocks and sand. The latest machine to make the journey is NASA?s?Mars?Science Laboratory, a hulking, souped-up lab-on-wheels that will plunge toward the Martian surface next week.

But even as excitement builds, some wonder: Is?Mars?exploration a good investment?

It certainly doesn?t come cheap. It?s hard to calculate a total price tag, but over the 48 years that NASA has been launching missions to?Mars, Americans have spent a significant sum. The Viking missions alone cost nearly $1 billion ? in 1970s dollars. The twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity cost a total of about $1 billion to build and operate as well.

Curiosity, as the?Mars?Science Laboratory rover is known, is over budget at $2.5 billion.

Some in the federal government have suggested it?s time to roll back the spending. President Barack Obama?s fiscal plan for 2013 would cut NASA?s funds for?Mars?exploration from $587 million to $360 million.

Proponents insist?Mars?science is vital for the U.S. More visits to our next-door neighbor could answer lingering questions about Earth?s history, reinforce U.S. prestige and get more children interested in science.

It also could bring humanity closer to answering the ultimate question: Are we alone in the universe?

?It?s the search for the meaning of life,? said Alden Munson, a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, a science and technology think tank based in Arlington, Va.

America?s love affair with?Mars?can be traced to astronomer Percival Lowell, who turned his telescope to the Red Planet in the 1890s and thought he saw an intricate system of canals that must have been built by intelligent beings. He never found them, of course, but Martians became a science fiction mainstay.

Earthlings got their first up-close view of?Mars? rocky surface in 1965, when Mariner 4 flew by and photographed a surface that appeared as dead as the moon?s ? lacking water or active geology, two prerequisites for life.

But later missions, from the Mariner 9 orbiter to Spirit and Opportunity, helped establish?Mars?as a useful comparative laboratory for studying climate and geophysics on Earth. They demonstrated that the planet was once warmer and wetter than it is now. Long ago, it may have been a hospitable cradle for life.

When planetary scientists assembled recently at the behest of the National Academies to set research priorities for the next decade, the search for conditions that would allow life to emerge on?Mars?topped the list.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/zGgiSQNghEg/Curiosity-s-Mars-exploration-Is-it-worth-the-money

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Figuring out and Picking Small Business Accounting Providers ...

Learn about General Ledger here. If you are outsourcing accounting perform for the initial time, you may possibly want to purchase small business accounting providers for 1 week or one particular calendar month.

If the solutions shipping and delivery turns out wonderful, you can commence producing lengthier contracts with your preferred company provider. If you believe that there is a crucial condition or stipulation lacking in a contract, truly feel cost-free to negotiate for its inclusion with your greatest outsourced organization. Even though there are several outsourced organizations in the US, you want to deal with a firm that has done accounting for many small companies in the earlier. Possibly you can request the contractor you intend to use to give you genuine get in touch with facts for customers it has served in earlier. Whilst modest business accounting solutions are really important, it is up to you to identify sensible and respected accountancy corporations.

Accounting companies for tiny enterprise are principally supplied to secure the potential of little enterprises. Accounting is the core of almost everything that an company does. By way of it business people are able to know if their corporations will be effective. Without suitable and standard maintenance of accounts, a businessman is very likely to generate loopholes for embezzlement of funds. If you have no believe in in your recent entire-time accountant, you could appear for exterior Accounting solutions for tiny organization. They are typically made available by completely proven companies that specialize in all accountancy issues. These self-governing firms do not call for regular supervision to work effectively as your in-property accountant does.

Their accounting solutions for tiny company are offered in accordance to the details of a agreement that you make with them. The contractor and you should choose almost everything, which includes an arbitration process to be adopted if factors go incorrect. It is really crucial to function with a registered firm that possesses offices in the U.S. This can give you an assurance that such an organization understands the local organization way of life, IRS tips about enterprise taxes, accounting criteria and conventions and so on. Even if these kinds of as a company has overseas branches, you can rest assured that their accounting services for tiny organization are exceptional. There is absolutely nothing complicated about the component of these solutions. Perhaps the process via which they are offered is what you could consider unfamiliar to you.

Accounting companies for tiny business are based mostly on outsourcing, in which you farm out your entire accounting operate or portions of it. To improve the functionality of your company speedily you can outsource bookkeeping and actual accountancy work. These are two essential but extremely wearisome functions of your firm that you can not do on your own. Even even though you could employ 1 or two accountants, they will grow to be a load to you since they need constant supervision. Apart from, your company will be needed to comply with OSHA (Occupational Basic safety and Overall health Administration), a labor laws that shields the security and well being of workers. The much more workers you add, the more the price of jogging your business will escalate. This explains why outsourcing costly features can be a way of steering clear of all the duties that your organization is required to satisfy by the regulation.

Source: http://www.yapperz.com/diediklinge37/blog/figuring-out-and-picking-small-business-accounting-providers-companies/

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Grin and bear it -- smiling facilitates stress recovery

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Contact: Anna Mikulak
amikulak@psychologicalscience.org
202-293-9300
Association for Psychological Science

Just grin and bear it! At some point, we have all probably heard or thought something like this when facing a tough situation. But is there any truth to this piece of advice? Feeling good usually makes us smile, but does it work the other way around? Can smiling actually make us feel better?

In a study forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychological scientists Tara Kraft and Sarah Pressman of the University of Kansas investigate the potential benefits of smiling by looking at how different types of smiling, and the awareness of smiling, affects individuals' ability to recover from episodes of stress.

"Age old adages, such as 'grin and bear it' have suggested smiling to be not only an important nonverbal indicator of happiness but also wishfully promotes smiling as a panacea for life's stressful events," says Kraft. "We wanted to examine whether these adages had scientific merit; whether smiling could have real health-relevant benefits."

Smiles are generally divided into two categories: standard smiles, which use the muscles surrounding the mouth, and genuine or Duchenne smiles, which engage the muscles surrounding both the mouth and eyes. Previous research shows that positive emotions can help during times of stress and that smiling can affect emotion; however, the work of Kraft and Pressman is the first of its kind to experimentally manipulate the types of smiles people make in order to examine the effects of smiling on stress.

The researchers recruited 169 participants from a Midwestern university. The study involved two phases: training and testing. During the training phase, participants were divided into three groups, and each group was trained to hold a different facial expression. Participants were instructed to hold chopsticks in their mouths in such a way that they engaged facial muscles used to create a neutral facial expression, a standard smile, or a Duchenne smile. Chopsticks were essential to the task because they forced people to smile without them being aware that they were doing so: only half of the group members were actually instructed to smile.

For the testing phase, participants were asked to work on multitasking activities. What the participants didn't know was that the multitasking activities were designed to be stressful. The first stress-inducing activity required the participants to trace a star with their non-dominant hand by looking at a reflection of the star in a mirror. The second stress-inducing activity required participants to submerge a hand in ice water.

During both of the stressful tasks, participants held the chopsticks in their mouth just as they were taught in training. The researchers measured participants' heart rates and self-reported stress levels throughout the testing phase.

The results of the study suggest that smiling may actually influence our physical state: compared to participants who held neutral facial expressions, participants who were instructed to smile, and in particular those with Duchenne smiles, had lower heart rate levels after recovery from the stressful activities. The participants who held chopsticks in a manner that forced them to smile, but were not explicitly told to smile as part of the training, also reported a smaller decrease in positive affect compared to those who held neutral facial expressions.

These findings show that smiling during brief stressors can help to reduce the intensity of the body's stress response, regardless of whether a person actually feels happy.

"The next time you are stuck in traffic or are experiencing some other type of stress," says Pressman, "you might try to hold your face in a smile for a moment. Not only will it help you 'grin and bear it' psychologically, but it might actually help your heart health as well!"

###

For more information about this study, please contact: Tara Kraft at kraft.tara@gmail.com or Sarah Pressman at pressman@ku.edu.

The APS journal Psychological Science is the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. For a copy of the article "Grin and Bear It: The Influence of Manipulated Positive Facial Expression on the Stress Response" and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Anna Mikulak at 202-293-9300 or amikulak@psychologicalscience.org.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Could not connect to DB: 1040: Too many connectionsCould not execute 'UPDATE pressrelease SET r_hits = r_hits+ 1, r_total_hits = r_total_hits+ 1, r_pub_hits = r_pub_hits+ 1, r_total_pub_hits = r_total_pub_hits+ 1 WHERE r_id = 217965' on database eurekalert:
2002: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/mysql.sock' (2) [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 30-Jul-2012
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Anna Mikulak
amikulak@psychologicalscience.org
202-293-9300
Association for Psychological Science

Just grin and bear it! At some point, we have all probably heard or thought something like this when facing a tough situation. But is there any truth to this piece of advice? Feeling good usually makes us smile, but does it work the other way around? Can smiling actually make us feel better?

In a study forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychological scientists Tara Kraft and Sarah Pressman of the University of Kansas investigate the potential benefits of smiling by looking at how different types of smiling, and the awareness of smiling, affects individuals' ability to recover from episodes of stress.

"Age old adages, such as 'grin and bear it' have suggested smiling to be not only an important nonverbal indicator of happiness but also wishfully promotes smiling as a panacea for life's stressful events," says Kraft. "We wanted to examine whether these adages had scientific merit; whether smiling could have real health-relevant benefits."

Smiles are generally divided into two categories: standard smiles, which use the muscles surrounding the mouth, and genuine or Duchenne smiles, which engage the muscles surrounding both the mouth and eyes. Previous research shows that positive emotions can help during times of stress and that smiling can affect emotion; however, the work of Kraft and Pressman is the first of its kind to experimentally manipulate the types of smiles people make in order to examine the effects of smiling on stress.

The researchers recruited 169 participants from a Midwestern university. The study involved two phases: training and testing. During the training phase, participants were divided into three groups, and each group was trained to hold a different facial expression. Participants were instructed to hold chopsticks in their mouths in such a way that they engaged facial muscles used to create a neutral facial expression, a standard smile, or a Duchenne smile. Chopsticks were essential to the task because they forced people to smile without them being aware that they were doing so: only half of the group members were actually instructed to smile.

For the testing phase, participants were asked to work on multitasking activities. What the participants didn't know was that the multitasking activities were designed to be stressful. The first stress-inducing activity required the participants to trace a star with their non-dominant hand by looking at a reflection of the star in a mirror. The second stress-inducing activity required participants to submerge a hand in ice water.

During both of the stressful tasks, participants held the chopsticks in their mouth just as they were taught in training. The researchers measured participants' heart rates and self-reported stress levels throughout the testing phase.

The results of the study suggest that smiling may actually influence our physical state: compared to participants who held neutral facial expressions, participants who were instructed to smile, and in particular those with Duchenne smiles, had lower heart rate levels after recovery from the stressful activities. The participants who held chopsticks in a manner that forced them to smile, but were not explicitly told to smile as part of the training, also reported a smaller decrease in positive affect compared to those who held neutral facial expressions.

These findings show that smiling during brief stressors can help to reduce the intensity of the body's stress response, regardless of whether a person actually feels happy.

"The next time you are stuck in traffic or are experiencing some other type of stress," says Pressman, "you might try to hold your face in a smile for a moment. Not only will it help you 'grin and bear it' psychologically, but it might actually help your heart health as well!"

###

For more information about this study, please contact: Tara Kraft at kraft.tara@gmail.com or Sarah Pressman at pressman@ku.edu.

The APS journal Psychological Science is the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. For a copy of the article "Grin and Bear It: The Influence of Manipulated Positive Facial Expression on the Stress Response" and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Anna Mikulak at 202-293-9300 or amikulak@psychologicalscience.org.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-07/afps-gab073012.php

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BitTorrent Tests New Ad Model (And Revenue-Sharing With Artists) In Its DJ Shadow Bundle

bittorrent_djshadow6b copyFor many readers, the name BitTorrent may be synonymous with online piracy, but there's plenty of legal file-sharing too ? and the company says that it's actually experimenting with new business models that allow artists to make money. Today, for example, it's launching a new bundle created in partnership with digital marketing company Fame House and its client DJ Shadow. The bundle is supposed to include exclusive content from and inspired by DJ Shadows' archival release Hidden Transmissions From The MPC Era (1992-1996), and yes, it will be available for free.

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

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Pakistani singer Shafqat Amanat Ali Khan announces new digital ...

Published: July 23, 2012Posted in: ANI News, EntertainmentTags:

Renowned Pakistani singer Shafqat Amanat Ali Khan, who gained recognition across the border, has announced the release of a new digital album.

Shafqat said the demand for music in the modern market is for digital, and added he is frustrated with the issue of CD piracy.

"One cannot explain the issue of piracy. Why someone illegally uploads or downloads an album is beyond me. It?s been really damaging to the industry. In Pakistan, the government is clearly not focused on the issue of piracy. Record labels really aren?t offering much either," The Express Tribune quoted Shafqat, as saying.

Shafqat said his new album, which is yet to be titled, will represent shades of his personality. He added that some of the songs were composed by him when he was still a student in college, struggling to become an artist. Other songs on the album are based on more recent experiences.

"Whenever you hear that you are the most sought-after singer, you feel honoured, especially when you?re working abroad. You are looked at as an ambassador," said Shafqat, humbled by the praise he received in India and across the globe.

"You have to live in peace and prosperity with your neighbours," he added.

"More Pakistani artists are focusing on Bollywood because of the circumstances in the Pakistani music industry. The Indian music industry keeps you on your toes, and even if you?re a good singer, you have to keep improving or you won?t survive," Shafqat said. (ANI)

-->

Source: http://hamaraphotos.com/news/entertainment/pakistani-singer-shafqat-amanat-ali-khan-announces-new-digital-album.html

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Stewart Mandel: Sanctions against Penn State show backwards priorities of NCAA

Fate worse than 'death'
Source:SI
Stewart Mandel discusses the long-term ramifications of the NCAA's severe penalties against Penn State.

NCAA president Mark Emmert announced crippling sanctions against Penn State, shifting the focus from Jerry Sandusky's heinous crimes to the ability to win football games.

AP

Children were raped. Lives were destroyed. High-level administrators stood back and enabled the crimes. A once-revered coach betrayed his followers.

But the legacy of the Penn State scandal will no longer be Jerry Sandusky's heinous crimes or the courageous victims who stood up to him. Thanks to a brazen power play and a carefully orchestrated p.r. extravaganza, this human tragedy will take a backseat over the next four years (or longer) to a more trivial narrative: Whether Penn State football can recover from crippling NCAA sanctions.

To anyone who has ever contended that the Penn State story was about more than football, take a look at where we've arrived. In the 11 days since the Freeh Report condemned four university leaders for failing to protect the welfare of victimized children, the following corrective measures have occurred: the student section at Nittany Lions homes games was renamed; a statue was removed from Beaver Stadium; and now, the football program will be stripped of its parts, with players forced to find a new school if they ever want to sniff the postseason.

"No price the NCAA can levy will repair the grievous damage inflicted by Jerry Sandusky on his victims," newfound NCAA disciplinary czar Mark Emmert said Monday. "However, we can make clear that the culture, actions and inactions that allowed them to be victimized will not be tolerated in collegiate athletics."

And so, for the sins of Joe Paterno, Graham Spanier, Gary Schultz and Tim Curley, the NCAA dropped the hammer on Bill O'Brien, Matt McGloin, Silas Redd and 20 players who won't be able to receive scholarships from Penn State over the next four years (the NCAA stripped the school of 10 scholarships in each of the next four seasons). It assured that the Nittany Lions won't be a contender in the Big Ten for half of a decade -- if not longer -- and that their idol-worshipping fans will no longer cheer for a winner.

Justice has been served, assuming your idea of justice for rape victims is to deprive a school of its next four Outback Bowl invitations.

Emmert made plenty of meaningful and inarguable points in announcing these sanctions Monday. To wit, no one could dispute his message that: "If you find yourself in a place where the athletic culture is taking precedence over academic culture then a variety of bad things can occur."

But while Penn State may be the most extreme and horrific scandal we've seen in terms of its human tragedy and consequences, let's not be na?ve. Athletics regularly trump academics at campuses across the country, and NCAA rules are regularly violated because of them. Never before has the NCAA's image-conscious president felt the need to personally intervene. But of course, none of those other scandals made NBC Nightly News for a week.

And so, Emmert made sure his organization responded accordingly -- even if that meant revoking the traditional due process afforded every other school that's ever been punished by the NCAA; invoking a nebulous, generalized bylaw about promoting integrity that could easily apply to hundreds of lawbreaking players, coaches and staffers across the country every year; and creating a precedent for dictatorial-like intervention that must now be considered every time a scandal of any proportion arises in college athletics.

"While there's been much speculation about whether this fits this specific bylaw or that specific bylaw," said Emmert, "it certainly hits the fundamental values of what athletics are supposed to be doing in the context of higher education."

No argument there. Perhaps this truly is a turning point in the history of the NCAA. Perhaps this is the beginning of a new era where Batman Emmert flies in and saves the day every time the forces of athletic evil make a mockery of academic virtues.

He'd better. Otherwise, this will instead prove to be a crowning moment in NCAA hypocrisy.

Remember when most college football fans assumed Auburn and/or Cam Newton would endure some sort of penalty when the quarterback's father openly solicited six figures from Mississippi State? The NCAA couldn't do anything, Emmert insisted, because there was no rule on the books addressing that specific scenario. We'd best not hear that excuse again.

Remember the 2003 murder of Baylor basketball player Patrick Dennehy by a former player, and head coach Dave Bliss' subsequent attempt to falsely portray Dennehy as a drug dealer to cover up for illegal tuition payments he'd made? Would Emmert (who was not yet with the NCAA at the time) step in if that indisputably heinous case arose today? If not, why? What's the threshold in determining whether something is special-jurisdiction-caliber repulsive or leave-it-to-the-enforcement-department-level disturbing?

And have you read about the ongoing academic fraud scandal at North Carolina? Since at least 1999, athletes have repeatedly been steered toward a specific professor's African and Afro-American Studies course that no one actually taught or attended. Last year's NCAA investigation only scratched the surface. Considering how highly the NCAA portends to value academics, shouldn't Emmert step in here, too?

"We don't see this opening a Pandora's box at all," said Emmert. "This was a very distinct and very unique set of circumstances."

That's easy to say now. Nothing in the history of NCAA scandals has come close to the level of allowing a serial pedophile free reign to a school's football facility, and basic faith in humanity make us inclined to believe that it will never happen again.

But there will undoubtedly be another high-profile college scandal, involving yet another unthinkable scenario, whether it's three months from now or three years from now. And the precedent has now been set. Will Emmert send that program back to the stone ages, too? Or was this a one-time-only, made-for-TV display of power?

Monday's one truly punitive action against one of the figures implicated in the Freeh Report was vacating Penn State's victories from 1998-2011, thus stripping Paterno of 111 wins and demoting him from the sport's alltime leader to 12th place. It seems fair and just, but here again, the NCAA seemingly rewrote its rulebook on the fly. Traditionally victories are vacated when schools are found to have used ineligible players. Nothing of the sort happened here.

But of course, that didn't fit Emmert's message.

"One of the grave dangers stemming from our love of sports is the sports themselves can become too big to fail and too big to even challenge," he said. "The result can be an erosion of academic values that are replaced by hero worship and winning at all costs."

And so, by waving his magic wand and making Penn State football non-competitive for the next many years, he hopes that all athletic programs will take notice and ensure they don't fall into the same trap.

Here's betting a $3 billion television contract and a $600 million-a-year playoff that he won't deter a darn thing. Instead, Penn State will remain at the front of the news for many years to come, not for the criminal acts of a former assistant coach or its leaders' abhorrent inaction in handling him, but for its football players' inevitable on-field futility.

Source: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/stewart_mandel/07/23/penn-state-ncaa-sanctions/index.html?xid=si_ncaaf

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Sennheiser MM 550-X

Can't decide if you want a wired or wireless pair of headphones, or one with active noise cancellation or without? If you've got the cash, you can have it all with the Sennheiser MM 550-X ($499.95 direct), an extremely well designed set that covers practically every situation you'd ever encounter. It also sound pretty amazing. It's not the best $500 pair of headphones we've heard?wired models still win in the end?but it certainly sounds fantastic, even over Bluetooth. Sennheiser's active noise cancelling is somewhat less successful, as it's not the most effective we've heard and also affects the otherwise pristine sound quality more than it should. But even so, this headphone pair is still an easy recommendation.

Design, Accessories, and Controls
The MM 550-X is a closed, around-the-ear design, and weighs 6.3 ounces with the battery inserted. Both the earcups and the headband are heavily padded, and the soft padding feels quite comfortable. You get quite a lot of passive noise cancelling just from the tight seal the earcups form with the MM 550-X on your head. The headset is also a bit lighter than some larger pairs of wired headphones, like the venerable Sennheiser HD 650 ($499.95, 5 stars) and the Bose QuietComfort 15 ($299.95, 4 stars). Even so, it feels quite rugged; the plastic, folding hinges in the headband and around the earcups in particular look especially sturdy.?

Sennheiser packs in a number of accessories. In addition to the headphones themselves and the rechargeable battery, you get a USB charging cable, a power plug with adapters for different countries, a stereo audio cable (2.5mm to 3.5mm) for use in wired mode, a 1/4-inch headphone adapter, an in-flight adapter for use with double mono jacks on airplanes, and a rugged, zippered cloth carrying case. The manual comes as a PDF file burned onto an included CD-ROM.

The controls are extremely easy to use even with the headphones on your ear. The center of the oversize five-way control-pad on the right earcup is large enough for an entire fingertip, and features a raised plastic circle around it, so that you can't miss it. Top and bottom control the volume, while left and right skip to the next track in either direction, all on devices that support remote control over Bluetooth. You can also hold down the Skip buttons to fast-forward or rewind the track. The bottom of the right earcup houses Bluetooth, NoiseGuard, and SRS buttons (more on these in a moment), as well as a 2.5mm jack for using the headphones in a wired configuration. The left earcup only has a covered micro USB charger port.

Hold down the multifunction button for five seconds, and the MM 550-X goes into pairing mode. You'll never miss that; not only does the control pad pulse red and blue, but the SRS and Bluetooth buttons light up as well. I had no problem pairing the MM 550-X with an Apple iPhone 4. The Multifunction button also handles accepting, rejecting, and ending calls, and you can transfer the ongoing call between the phone and the headphones?or activate voice dialing by pressing and holding the Bluetooth button.

Sound Quality and Noise Cancellation
Sennheiser's big pitch with the MM 550-X is apt-X audio encoding, which the company claims delivers wireless audio quality that is indistinguishable from the highest quality wired connection. Here's the trick, though: It only works if the sound source also supports apt-X. My iPhone 4 doesn't, but even so, I heard pristine audio in both wired and wireless modes. Both modes sounded virtually identical. I heard the tiniest bit of compression artifacts in wireless mode, in a slightly more closed soundstage and a touch of occasional harshness, but I had to strain to hear it.

Aside from that, sound quality was excellent overall. In The Knife's "Silent Shout," our standard bass test track, I heard a touch of distortion at top volumes, but none at normal listening levels?or even beyond. The overall sonic signature was warm, with a full-bodied low-end, exceptional low-end extension, a smooth midrange, and airy highs that didn't stick out but were still full of detail. On Queen of the Stone Age's "The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret," it was easy to hear the multiple guitars and other instruments across the soundstage, while the rhythm section still had plenty of punch.

Pressing and holding the NoiseGuard button for two seconds activates the MM 550-X's active noise compensation system. It does this via a pair of tiny mics near the earcups that focus on ambient noise in the 20Hz to 1KHz range, and then use this noise as a template for generating an opposite wave, 180 degrees out of phase, to cancel the noise out. Press and hold a second time, and you'll turn NoiseGuard off.

With NoiseGuard on, the MM 550-X did a nice job of muting some strong office fans of various sizes. But you could still hear them more than you could with, say, the Bose QuietComfort 15. My main issue with NoiseGuard, though, was the reduction in fidelity; it turned the MM 550-X into an average pair of headphones you could buy for about $50, in terms of sound quality. The warmth disappeared, I heard the typical artifacts in the midrange that often betray active noise compensation, and nearly all of the MM 550-X's marvelous bass extension vaporized. Bose QuietComfort models are by no means musically neutral, but they seem to do a better job of compensating for the active noise cancellation circuitry.

TalkThrough, Other Features, and Conclusions
The TalkThrough function takes the audio recorded from the tiny mics and actually pumps it in the earcups. This way, you can hear what's going on around you without removing the headset, while still filtering out more distant background noise. You activate this by just briefly pressing the NoiseGuard button, instead of holding it down. When you do this, it pauses the music so you can talk to someone in the room; turn off TalkThrough, and the music will begin playing again.

Meanwhile, the SRS button is, well, as the SRS button. With SRS WOW HD engaged, the highs are exaggerated in the 5KHz region, as if you're listening to a cassette on a car stereo, with little top-end air or detail around them. The button also amplifies the bass even further, but with extra mud, as if the "bass" control on a cheap mini system is turned up without much in the way of granularity. My recommendation: Leave it off.

In my tests, MM 550-X wasn't that great at handling voice calls. I heard the other caller, but their voice sounded computerized, and I could barely hear my own words because of the tight seal of the earcups. I was hoping TalkThrough would be a good workaround for this problem, but if you activate it during a voice call, it does the same thing as it does with the music?it mutes the audio source and turns on the external mics, so you can't hear the caller anymore.

According to Sennheiser, the battery should provide 8 hours of continuous listening with Bluetooth and NoiseGuard (active noise cancellation) enabled, 10 hours over Bluetooth without NoiseGuard, and 20 hours in wired mode with NoiseGuard activated. It will last forever in wired mode without noise cancellation, because then it works just like a regular pair of headphones. The LED indicator flashes red when the battery is almost dead.

One other minor quirk: You need to take care when disconnecting the micro USB charging cable. Otherwise, you'll pull the battery clear out of the left ear cup, which isn't good if you don't notice it, and then leave the house without the battery inside. But there's a reason for this design: You can charge the battery pack either when it's inside the earcup or out, since the battery itself contains the micro USB charger port.

Overall, the Sennheiser MM 550-X is an extremely flexible set of headphones. You're paying for all of this technology, of course, and not all of the money is going into the actual sound quality. The MM 550-X sound good enough that you'll feel like it's money well spent, especially when using it wirelessly. Its active noise cancellation, while not class leading, is still fairly effective; if you want the best and don't need a wireless pair, the AKG K 490 NC ($249.95, 4.5 stars) or the older Bose QuietComfort 15 will still perform better there. If you don't specifically need Bluetooth compatibility or active noise cancellation, the Sennheiser RS 220 ($599.95, 4.5 stars) remains our Editors' Choice for high-end wireless headphones, with its stellar sound and comfort, although it is really designed for home use. The Sennheiser MM 100 ($149.95, 3.5 stars) is a more affordable and practical wireless option that still delivers solid performance. And if you don't mind an in-ear design, the wireless Sony XBA-BT75 ($299.99, 3.5 stars) sounds good and is very easy to tote, although it's still a little big when compared with standard stereo earphones.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/VZmS88Go75k/0,2817,2407259,00.asp

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President to comfort families of movie theater victims

WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama again steps into the role of consoler-in-chief during a visit Sunday with distraught families of those gunned down in a minute and a half of horror at a midnight movie showing in Aurora, Colo.

While authorities gather evidence on the suspect and the nation tries to fathom what drove the gunman, Obama planned to meet with loved ones struggling with pain and grief.

"We need to embrace them and let them know we will be there for them as a nation," Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address.

Aurora's police chief, Dan Oates, told CBS' "Face the Nation" that the families "need that kind of contact by our elected leader. It will be very powerful and it will help them. As awful as what they've been through and what they're going through has been having the president here is very, very powerful."

During the brief visit, just under 2 ? hours, he planned to meet with officials in Aurora, where the shots rang out at a multiplex theater early Friday. Twelve of the victims died, and dozens were injured.

"I think the president coming in is a wonderful gesture," said Aurora's mayor, Steve Hogan. "He's coming in, really, to have private conversations with the families. I think that's totally appropriate."

Hogan told ABC's "This Week" that it "certainly means a lot to Aurora to know that the president cares."

After the Colorado stop, Obama was to fly to San Francisco, where on Monday he'll begin a previously scheduled three-day campaign trip that includes a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Reno, Nev., fundraisers in California, Oregon and Washington state, and a speech to the National Urban League convention in New Orleans.

The shock of Friday's rampage brought the sprawling and sometimes vitriolic presidential campaign to a virtual standstill.

Obama cut short a political trip to Florida to return to Washington. Republican challenger Mitt Romney canceled interviews. Both campaigns pulled ads off the air in Colorado out of respect for the victims.

But with election activities set to resume in the new week, Vice President Joe Biden was to speak to the National Association of Police Organizations in Palm Beach County, Fla., on Monday, and Romney is to address the VFW on Tuesday.

For Obama, the unhappy task of articulating sorrow and loss has become a familiar one.

Indeed, for modern presidents, it's become an accepted facet of the office ? and for some, an opportunity for soaring words that rise above the partisan trench warfare of day-to-day governing.

Not 10 months in office, Obama led mourners at a service for victims of the November 2009 shooting at Texas' Fort Hood. In January of last year, he spoke at a memorial for the six victims killed in Tucson, Ariz., when a gunman attacked Rep. Gabrielle Giffords as she met with constituents.

The following April, when some 300 people were killed in a multi-state series of tornadoes, Obama flew to Tuscaloosa, Ala., to commiserate with residents whose homes were in ruins. A month later, Obama went to Joplin, Mo., after a monster twister claimed 161 lives. This year, he came back on the storm's anniversary to give a commencement speech at Joplin High School.

In between these public observances have been countless private meetings with families of troops who fell in battle in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For Obama, the Colorado visit was to be his second in just over three weeks. Last month, he flew to Colorado Springs to share the pain of homeowners whose houses had been turned to charred heaps by a record outbreak of wildfires.

Obama had already been a frequent Colorado visitor, which is no surprise given the state's key role in his re-election bid. He won the state by more than 8 percentage points over Republican nominee John McCain four years ago. But neither Obama's nor Romney's camp expects that big a margin this time. Recent polls place Obama's lead inside the margin of error.

But for one more day, at least, electoral considerations remained on the back burner.

"This weekend I hope everyone takes some time for prayer and reflection," Obama said in his Saturday broadcast, "for the victims of this terrible tragedy, for the people who knew them and loved them, for those who are still struggling to recover."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-comfort-families-movie-theater-victims-085328909.html

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Robotic co-pilot makes dangerous drivers safer

3 hrs.

The day when we leave the driving to robots may yet be in the distant future, but we could soon have robotic co-pilots to keep us safe on the road.

The technology works similar to an airplane?s auto-pilot, only in reverse. Instead of a human pilot taking the controls when a plane encounters danger, the intelligent co-pilot kicks in when a driver?s about to crash.

For example, a driver could crank the wheel to the right to avoid a pothole, but cranked so far that he's about to run off the road. The system will catch the unsafe trajectory and adjust the wheels accordingly.

"We make sure we honor the driver?s intentions as far as possible, but with the obvious caveat that we won?t allow a driver steering input that will cause a collision,"?Sterling Anderson, a Ph.D. student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is developing the system, told me today.

That honor system could help bridge the gap to the day when we trust autonomous technology enough to spend our commute time doing anything but actually driving.

In fact, Anderson said, the co-pilot technology he?s working on is "totally capable of autonomous driving."

"Autonomous driving is a much simpler problem than semi-autonomous for the simple reason that you don?t have to worry about a human, you don?t have to worry about obeying their intentions,"?he said.

The system uses cameras and a laser range finder to determine the car?s current state ? such as?its velocity and?direction?? and predict where it's going.

An algorithm uses all the information from the current and predicted state to make a danger assessment and "determine how much to intervene and when to intervene," Anderson explained.

He and his colleagues have run more than 1,200 trials of the system driving through a field lined with barrels and experienced only a few collisions that were blamed on hardware issues.

"We think with better hardware, the system should be fail-proof," Anderson said, adding the "legal disclaimer" that the system is not road-ready.

Using such a system, he added, could give drivers overconfidence in their skills ? making them think they are better drivers than they really are.?

To prevent that from happening, the team is working on feedback technology such as a torque in the wheel to "give them some indication of what you were just doing was actually not safe," he explained.

If we take those lessons in stride, how much longer until we just let the robots do the driving?

John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. To learn more about him, check out his website. For more of our Future of Technology series, watch the featured video below.

Source: http://www.futureoftech.msnbc.msn.com/technology/futureoftech/robotic-co-pilot-makes-dangerous-drivers-safer-880834

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