Day: July 18, 2012

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From Geeks are Sexy Technology News: Smartphone Skin Cancer Dermatology

The University of Michigan recently released a new smartphone app that’s designed to help you do self-examinations for skin cancer.

The free app, called UMSkinCheck, works by taking 23 (naked) pictures of yourself and analyzing them for moles and legions. The app will also have useful information and tools associated with skin cancer.

I wonder if smartphone cameras are really of a high enough resolution yet for this to be truly effective. Of course, it’s never going to be infallible, but will this really detect skin cancer unless it’s already quite far along?

Better to have something than nothing I suppose.

[UMSkinCheck | Via Gizmodo]

 

from Geeks are Sexy Technology News

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From Ars Technica: Your very own ARM-based Ubuntu servers in the cloud… for free

Not content with dominating the world of smartphones and tablets, makers of low-power ARM chips are setting their sights on the server market. While x86 servers are still the norm, there have been hints for some time that ARM might become a presence in the data center. Another small, early step toward an ARM future was taken this week as the makers of an infrastructure-as-a-service testbed added ARM servers as a free option for developers.

The free cloud service is called TryStack. It works a lot like Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud, except that it runs on the open source OpenStack software, and is intended as a sandbox, not to run production code. Although OpenStack supports ARM, TryStack was initially set up to run just x86 servers, and is powered by 156 cores, 1,040GB memory, and 59.1TB of disk storage. What’s being added now is free access to HP’s Calxeda-based Redstone servers running Ubuntu Linux, ARM chipmaking startup Calxeda announced today.

In addition to HP and Calxeda, the hardware, software, and hosting is being provided by OpenStack, Canonical, Core NAP, and Rackspace. The servers use Linux containers, or LXC, a form of virtualization that improves server efficiency but allows only one operating system instance per processor core (akin to Solaris containers and FreeBSD “jails”). The shared, virtualized nature of the resources makes TryStack unsuitable for benchmarking and power measurements, but dedicated hardware access is planned for the end of this year.

 

from Ars Technica

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From Ars Technica: NASA awards four launches to SpaceX and United Launch Alliance

In case you missed the math, SpaceX is charging $30 million LESS than ULA!  I don’t know how ULA will stay in business if SpaceX delivers…
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NASA’s JASON-3 Satellite maps ocean height to within a few centimeters

A lot of speculation takes place concerning what SpaceX and United Launch Alliance charge for all the various services surrounding the launch of a spacecraft. An announcement late Monday by NASA provides some more information for those who are trying to nail down the costs.

NASA announced four Earth Science satellite launch awards that included a first NASA satellite launch for the SpaceX Falcon 9 and three new launches for ULA’s venerable Delta 2. The SpaceX contract for launch and services is worth $82M; the ULA contract will be $402M for all three satellites. All four rockets will launch into polar orbits from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the coast of California.

SpaceX gets even busier

SpaceX picks up the $82M launch services contract for the Jason-3 mission. Jason-3, a NOAA satellite designed to make highly accurate measurements of ocean surface height, follows Jason-1 and 2. NASA says the mission applications include “ocean and weather forecasting, ocean wave modeling, hurricane intensification prediction, seasonal forecasting, El Nino and La Nina forecasting, and climate research”. NASA and the French Space Agency have collaborated on a series of satellites to gain more accurate measurements of what the world’s oceans are doing since 1992.

 

from Ars Technica

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From Ars Technica: NASA partners with Microsoft to launch its first console game

NASA / Microsoft

In the past, NASA has used everything from websites and mobile apps to coverage on its own TV network to get the public excited about its space exploration efforts. But the run-up to the planned August 5 landing of the Mars rover “Curiosity” includes the organization’s first foray into the world of console game development.

Mars Rover Landing, available this week as a free download on the Xbox 360, was inspired by “the entirely factual and amazing sequence of events to land Curiosity on Mars,” Jeff Norris told Ars (Norris is the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab manager for planning and execution systems). Using the Kinect, players help adjust the landing module’s angle as it enters the Martian atmosphere, handle timed explosive charges to discard the heat shield, and deploy a parachute before applying thrusters to gently touch the rover down on the Martian surface (that last bit is in a mini-game somewhat reminiscent of the arcade classic Lunar Lander). It’s not the most complicated game on the market, but it does a good job of showing just how many things have to go exactly right to land a robot on another planet.

In real life, that entire automated process takes place during what NASA engineers refer to as “seven minutes of terror” when the Rover is unable to communicate with Earth. While NASA had previously detailed that sequence in a dramatic video from earlier this year, the organization felt there might be better ways to get the public involved in the story.

 

from Ars Technica