Monthly Archives: January 2014

Gameday: Comets vs Syracuse

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January 31, 2014 - American Hockey League (AHL) Utica Comets UTICA COMETS (15-20-2-4) vs. SYRACUSE CRUNCH (17-19-2-4)

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Utica Memorial Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Radio: 94.9 K-Rock

Tonight's Game: The Comets host the Syracuse Crunch for the second time this season as the second of their three game homestand. Utica has amassed a point in five straight games entering tonight's action, dating back to Jan. 18 against Hamilton.

When They Last Met: The Comets earned their first point of the season in a 2-1 shootout loss to the Crunch at The AUD. Colin Stuart scored Utica's only goal, while Comet netminder Joacim Eriksson stole the show with 32 saves on 33 shots. Syracuse winger Nikita Kucherov scored the lone goal in regulation for the Crunch. Benn Ferriero beat Syracuse goaltender Cedric Desjardins in the shootout, but the Crunch were victorious in six rounds as Cedric Paquette potted the game winner. Desjardins finished with 19 saves through 65 minutes of play and saved five of six in the shootout.

Comets Outlook: The Utica Comets forced their third straight game to overtime, but failed to extend their winning streak to five games as they dropped a 3-2 shootout decision to the Lake Erie Monsters. Forward Benn Ferriero improved his scoring streak to nine games with a goal and an assist, while Patrick Mullen also lit the lamp for the Comets. AHL Player of the Week Joacim Eriksson turned aside 34 of 36 shots as he earned his team a point for the eighth time in his past nine starts.

Crunch Outlook: The Crunch dropped a 4-0 decision against the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins on Wednesday evening at the Mohegan Sun Arena at Casey Plaza. Eric Hartzell turned aside all 20 Crunch shots he faced on the evening. Penguin captain Tom Kostopolous led the way offensively for the Penguins with a goal and an assist, while defenseman Simon Despres added two assists of his own. Paul Thompson, Harry Zolnierczyk and Denver Manderson also scored for WBS. Goaltender Kristers Gudlevskis made 21 saves in a losing effort for Syracuse.

The Tooth Ferri: Winger Benn Ferriero has recorded points in each of his last nine games, dating back to Jan. 9 against Oklahoma City. Ferriero, remains in possession of the longest active scoring streak in the AHL, four games shy of Vladislav Namestnikov's season long streak of 13 games. The Essex, MA native has collected 12 points (6-6-12) over his current run.

Sanford and Eriksson: CCM/AHL Player of the Week Joacim Eriksson has earned points for Utica in eight of his past nine starts, including seven victories. The Galve, Sweden native is now over .500 for the season at 11-10-1-2. Eriksson has amassed a .940 save percentage and a 1.74 goals against average over his past nine appearances.

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Gameday: Comets vs Syracuse

Comets and Woolly Mammoths

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New evidence suggests that a comet collision might have been the trigger for the Younger Dryas, contributing to North America's megafauna extinction. UC Santa Barbara's James Kennett, professor emeritus in the Department of Earth Science, posits that such an extraterrestrial event did occur killing off woolly mammoths, giant ground sloths and saber-tooth tigers 12,900 years ago.

Originally published in 2007, Kennett's controversial Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB) hypothesis suggests that a comet collision precipitated the Younger Dryas period of global cooling, which, in turn, contributed to the extinction of many animals and altered human adaptations. The nanodiamond is one type of material that could result from an extraterrestrial collision, and the presence of nanodiamonds along Bull Creek in the Oklahoma Panhandle lends credence to the YDB hypothesis.

More recently, another group of earth scientists, including UCSB's Alexander Simms and alumna Hanna Alexander, re-examined the distribution of nanodiamonds in Bull Creek's sedimentological record to see if they could reproduce the original study's evidence supporting the YDB hypothesis. Their findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

"We were able to replicate some of their results and we did find nanodiamonds right at the Younger Dryas Boundary," said Simms, an associate professor in UCSB. "However, we also found a second spike of nanodiamonds more recently in the sedimentary record, sometime within the past 3,000 years."

The researchers analyzed 49 sediment samples representing different time periods and environmental and climactic settings, and identified high levels of nanodiamonds immediately below and just above YDB deposits and in late-Holocene near-surface deposits. The late Holocene began at the end of the Pleistocene 11,700 years ago and continues to the present. The researchers found the presence of nanodiamonds is not caused by environmental setting, soil formation, cultural activities, other climate changesor the amount of time in which the landscape is stable. The discovery of high concentrations of nanodiamonds from two distinct time periods suggests that whatever process produced the elevated concentrations of nanodiamonds at the onset of the Younger Dryas sediments may have also been active in recent millennia in Bull Creek.

"Nanodiamonds are found in high abundances at the YDB, giving some support to that theory," Simms said. "However, we did find it at one other site, which may or may not be caused by a smaller but similar event nearby."

Read more at University of California of Santa Barbara.

Woolly Mammoth and comet images via Shutterstock, merged and morphed by Robin Blackstone.

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Comets and Woolly Mammoths

Can Super Micro Computer (SMCI) Continue to Surge? – Tale of the Tape

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One company that should be on your radar is Super Micro Computer, Inc. ( SMCI ). The stock of this computer storage device company providing high performance server solutions as well as networking devices and server management software has seen its Zacks Rank surge over the past four weeks, moving from Neutral territory to its current position as a Strong Buy.

A key reason for this move has been the positive trend in the earnings estimate revisions picture. For SMCI's full year estimate, we have seen 2 estimates go higher in the past 30 days with no downward revision over the same time frame. Nonetheless, the trend has helped the consensus estimate to trend higher, increasing from 88 cents per share a month ago to its current level of $1.02.

This positive shift in estimates has made some investors take notice and buy the stock. In fact, SMCI has seen some pretty solid trading lately, as the company has moved higher by 23.2% in the past month.

If Super Micro Computer can keep up this great momentum on the earnings estimate front and continue to impress analysts, we could see more gains ahead for this company, suggesting that you might want to put SMCI on your watch list for the future.

Other top-ranked stocks worth considering in this space include Dot Hill Systems Corp. ( HILL ), Datalink Corporation ( DTLK ) and Western Digital Corporation ( WDC ). Dot Hill Systems carries a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), while both Datalink Corporation and Western Digital Corporation hold a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

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Can Super Micro Computer (SMCI) Continue to Surge? - Tale of the Tape

5 Super Bowl tech tips

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An aerial view shows MetLife Stadium this week as crews ready the East Rutherford, New Jersey, venue for Super Bowl XLVIII.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

(CNN) -- The Super Bowl has gotten so big it's outgrown the trusty old television. Today's fans can enjoy the bloated spectacle on computers, mobile devices, Twitter and more.

For most, crowding around a TV with salty snacks, cold beer and good friends is still the classic way to experience America's biggest sports event. Fox has secured exclusive U.S. broadcast rights to the game, with the telecast beginning officially at 6 p.m. ET Sunday, although pre-game coverage will start four hours earlier.

Fox is adding a splash of high-tech wizardry to this year's event -- being played outdoors in chilly northern New Jersey -- with infrared cameras that will show the players' body temperatures.

You can employ your own tech tools to enhance the Super Bowl viewing experience -- especially if you can't get near a TV set. Here's a tech primer to enjoying Sunday's festivities:

Buildup to Super Bowl XLVIII

Buildup to Super Bowl XLVIII

Buildup to Super Bowl XLVIII

Buildup to Super Bowl XLVIII

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5 Super Bowl tech tips

More Super Bowl airtime than ever is devoted to ads

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If it feels like youre watching more commercials during this Sunday's Super Bowl than ever before, your hunch is right.

The most valuable advertising time on television has surged almost 20 percent, to about 50 minutes of ad time last year, up from fewer than 42 minutes per Super Bowl a decade ago, according to Kantar Media.

Its not only beautifully crafted ads from top marketers such as Anheuser-Busch that are taking up more ad time. The NFL and the network airing the Super Bowl have also given more time to their in-house ads, Kantar found. Driving the longer ad time is demand from advertisers each shelling out a record $4 million for a 30-second spot as well as a desire from the NFL and TV networks to strut their in-house promotions, given the game reliably draws more than 100 million viewers.

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Running security for this year's Super Bowl is a multi-front challenge that has New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and FBI Assistant Direc...

For marketers, the Super Bowl can be a make or break event. Apple (AAPL) captured the imagination of a generation with its lauded 1984 ad, which ran the same year and introduced the Macintosh computer.But others werent so successful, such as athletic shoe company Just for Feet, which ran a reviled ad in the 1999 Super Bowl. It later went out of business.

Part of the time bloat is due to advertisers opting for longer commercials.

Take Chrysler. In each of the last two Super Bowls, the automaker has opted to air two-minute ads, a length thats rarely seen on television. Last year, the automaker won kudos for its moving spot featuring a voice-over from the late radio legend Paul Harvey.

Chrysler wasnt alone in going long -- it was one of 15 advertisers last year airing spots that ran for 60 seconds or longer. By comparison, only 10 commercials were longer than one minute in 2010, Kantar found.

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More Super Bowl airtime than ever is devoted to ads

KSP – KSS Dres SLSS (Single Launch Space Station) Constructed In Orbit Over Dres (SLSS Ep 3) – Video

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KSP - KSS Dres SLSS (Single Launch Space Station) Constructed In Orbit Over Dres (SLSS Ep 3)
I do not own the rights to any of the music used in this video. Watch the construction of KSS Jool http://youtu.be/ZuJxoYLKKUw Watch the construction of KSS ...

By: Jeb Kerman

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KSP - KSS Dres SLSS (Single Launch Space Station) Constructed In Orbit Over Dres (SLSS Ep 3) - Video

Space station ‘farm’ successfully grows a variety of crops

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MOSCOW, Jan. 31 (UPI) -- A variety of crops successfully grown and harvested on the International Space Station have been verified as safe to eat, a Russian scientist says.

Space-based agriculture has long been of interest, as plants not only scrub carbon dioxide exhaled by astronauts but could be a renewable food source, scientists have said.

"The experiments with peas have been very promising," Margarita Levinskikh, a researcher at the Institute of Biomedical Problems, told an annual space conference in Moscow in describing the ISS "farming."

Russian cosmonauts have grown Japanese leafy greens and a variety of dwarf wheat that has produced seeds of "just extraordinary quality," RIA Novosti quoted her as saying.

Russian cosmonauts will sow rice, tomatoes and bell peppers in the station's Lada greenhouse next year, she said, a cooperative effort between the institute and the Space Dynamics Laboratory at Utah State University.

Currently all food onboard the space station is flown there on periodic resupply missions. Long-duration deep space missions without agriculture would require many months' or years' worth of food, greatly adding to their launch weight, the institute said.

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Space station 'farm' successfully grows a variety of crops

NASA announces funding for space station physics research

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PASADENA, Calif., Jan. 31 (UPI) -- NASA says it will fund seven proposals for physics research using its new microgravity laboratory, set to launch to the International Space Station in 2016.

The Cold Atom Laboratory will provide an opportunity to study ultra-cold quantum gases in the microgravity environment of the space station, a frontier in scientific research expected to reveal interesting and novel quantum phenomena, the space agency said Thursday.

Operating experiments in space makes it possible to conduct research in a way unachievable on Earth because atoms can be observed over a longer period and mixtures of different atoms can be studied free of the effects of gravity, where cold atoms can be trapped more easily by magnetic fields, it said.

The chosen proposals came from seven research teams, which include three Nobel laureates, in response to NASA's research announcement "Research Opportunities in Fundamental Physics." The proposals will receive a total of about $12.7 million over a four- to five-year period and development of selected experiments will begin immediately, the agency said.

The Cold Atom Laboratory is a joint partnership of three NASA branches; the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., the International Space Station Program Office at the Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Space Life and Physical Sciences Branch at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

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NASA announces funding for space station physics research

AIP FYI: International Space Station to be Extended Until 2024; Asteroid Mission Reaffirmed

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We are pleased to announce that the Obama Administration has approved an extension of the International Space Station (ISS) until at least 2024,wrote Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Holdren and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden earlier this month. This announcement extends the station for four additional years beyond its previous schedule.

In hisstatementand in a speech at the International Space Exploration Forum at the U.S. Department of State, Holdren outlined the benefits of research on the station and the four year extension. He said the station is critical as a research laboratory for a human mission to Mars in the 2030s. NASA has identified 32 human-health risks likely to be encountered on long-duration flights. Research conducted on the station is necessary to mitigate fully 21 of these risks, he said. Holdren also described medical and other societal benefits from station research. Extension of the ISS will require more commercial cargo and crew flights to the station. This should, to some extent, reduce doubts that some Members of Congress have expressed about whether commercial providers would be willing to undertake robust development of servicing hardware for only a few years. The extension will, Holdren predicted, reduce the per flight cost of servicing the station, and make this investment even more attractive. He also spoke of the stations importance to Earth science research and its role in fostering international cooperation.

Bolden reiterated Holdrens statements about the station in his comments to the forum:From a NASA perspective the ISS is absolutely essential to the goals of sending humans to Mars in the 2030s, developing and establishing a robust U.S. crew transportation capability to low Earth orbit, achieving a self-sustaining commercial use of space in LEO, and returning benefits to humanity through research and technology development.

The Ranking Member of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), released the following statement regarding the station extension: I am pleased that the Administration is initiating an important dialogue with its international partners on the extension of ISS operations to at least 2024. The ISS has been a critical element of our nations human space exploration program, and it is important that a decision on its potential extended operations be made in a way that enables NASA and its partners to ensure its effective utilization and operation. I look forward to further details on the Administrations proposal and on the planned priorities and objectives for ISS activities during the proposed extension.

Holdren and Bolden both reiterated their support for the proposed Asteroid Redirect Mission to retrieve a near-Earth asteroid and put it into orbit at the L2 gravitational-equilibration point where it would be visited by astronauts. Holdren described this mission as one that will significantly raise the bar for what humans could accomplish in space.

Funding for the International Space Station is provided through NASAs Space Operations budget. The FY 2014 request was $3,882.9 million, of which $3,049.1 million or 79 percent was for the station (the remainder being for Space and Flight Support.) The FY 2014 appropriation for Space Operations is $3,778.0 million, approximately 97 percent of the request. The agreement maintains strong support for the ISS declared the Explanatory Statement accompanying the bill.

Congress has been much less enthusiastic about the asteroid mission. The FY 2014 Explanatory Statement included this passage:NASA has proposed a new mission known as the ARM that would engage both scientific and human exploration activities. While the ARM is still an emerging concept, NASA has not provided Congress with satisfactory justification materialssuch as detailed cost estimates or impacts to ongoing missions. The completion of significantpreliminary activities is needed to appropriately lay the groundwork for the ARM prior to NASAand Congress making a long-term commitment to this mission concept.

Richard M. Jones Government Relations Division American Institute of Physics rjones@aip.org 301-209-3095

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AIP FYI: International Space Station to be Extended Until 2024; Asteroid Mission Reaffirmed

Half A Million Pieces Of Debris Are Orbiting Earth — Here’s How We’re Going To Clean Them Up

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ESA

Debris lost in space.

A dramatic illustration of the dangers of space debris is given in the film Gravity. It may have taken someartistic license with scienceto craft a good story, but its main premise is plausible. What Gravity showed was the worst case scenario, known as the Kessler syndrome, where a collision between two objects generates a cloud of smaller debris, which triggers a chain reaction of further catastrophic collisions, thereby rapidly increasing the amount of debris. This could make the low Earth orbit unusable for spacecrafts.

Most of those are useless fragments of once-useful objects, which were created by explosions, collisions or missile tests. For instance, an accidental collision between the Iridium-33 and Kosmos-2251 satellites in 2009 caused them to shatter into 2,200 (recorded) fragments. Smaller space debris is much harder to track, but NASA estimates that up to 500,000 objects larger than 1cm, and 135 million particles over 1mm in size may now be orbiting the Earth.

NASA

Catalogued objects in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) larger than 10 cm.

Space debris is becoming a serious issue, and many space agencies have started working on solutions. One approach being taken by JAXA, Japans space agency, is to use a magnetically charged 700m-wide net made from aluminium and steel wires. If used at the right height it will attract floating space debris to it. When enough has been caught, the system can be ordered to fall out of its orbit back to Earth. During that process the debris, along with the net, will burn up as it enters Earths dense atmosphere. JAXA will be doing a test launch of the system next month.

The other approach is to remove existing inactive satellites from orbit. A prime target for this experiment would be the European ENVISAT satellite which stopped functioning in 2012 and now drifts uncontrolled in orbit. At an altitude of 800km and with mass of more than 8,000kg, the ENVISAT satellite would take more than 150 years to deorbit that is, drop out of its orbit naturally.

Throughout that time the satellite would be at risk of colliding with other objects and generating further debris. A more sustainable solution is to remove future satellites from orbit after they have served their purpose, thereby mitigating the growth of the amount of space debris. This is why international guidelines have been proposed which will restrict post-mission deorbiting time to 25 years for all new satellites.

Most satellites designed today take will take longer to deorbit, and new technical solutions are necessary to meet the guidelines. This is where Surrey Space Centre (SSC) working with the European Space Agency (ESA) have developed aGossamer Sail for Satellite Deorbiting. The idea is to attach a large and very light, or gossamer, sail to a satellite, which can be deployed after its mission is over.

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Half A Million Pieces Of Debris Are Orbiting Earth — Here's How We're Going To Clean Them Up

Huntsville looks at the past and future of space exploration

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DeKalb Co. Sheriff's Office reports major drug bust DeKalb Co. Sheriff's Office reports major drug bust

Updated: Friday, January 31 2014 8:40 PM EST2014-02-01 01:40:14 GMT

Updated: Friday, January 31 2014 8:39 PM EST2014-02-01 01:39:16 GMT

Updated: Friday, January 31 2014 8:29 PM EST2014-02-01 01:29:42 GMT

Updated: Friday, January 31 2014 7:05 PM EST2014-02-01 00:05:04 GMT

Updated: Friday, January 31 2014 6:59 PM EST2014-01-31 23:59:06 GMT

Many people in Huntsville spent some time looking back, and forward, in space exploration.

Space campers, local students, and the director of the Marshall Space Flight Center gathered at the US Space and Rocket Center Thursday morning to remember the astronauts killed in the Apollo, Challenger, and Columbia tragedies.

Organizers displayed a wreath and a candle lit in memory of the Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia crews. Students from the very schools named for those crews and those missions said they know that they are the future for human space flight.

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Huntsville looks at the past and future of space exploration