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Saturday, March 2, 2013

2018 Mars mission: Who should go?

Billionaire Dennis Tito announced plans Wednesday for a two-person private mission to Mars, in 2018. The project seeks a married couple with technical backgrounds and a healthy dose of courage.?

By Clara Moskowitz,?SPACE.com / February 28, 2013

A drawing provided by the Inspiration Mars Foundation shows an artist?s conception of a spacecraft envisioned by the private group, which wants to send a married couple on a mission to fly by the red planet and zip back home, beginning in 2018.

Inspiration Mars/AP

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A new, privately funded campaign is on to launch a manned mission to fly by Mars in 2018. Of the numerous open questions about the voyage, one of the most pressing is, who should go?

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Space tourist?Dennis Tito?announced the plans Wednesday (Feb. 27) during a press conference in Washington, D.C., at which he described a new nonprofit organization he founded, the Inspiration Mars Foundation, to plan the mission.

Tito envisions sending two crewmembers on a roughly 500-day trip to Mars and back. To combat the isolation and loneliness that could set in, the Inspiration Mars team hopes to recruit a married male-female couple to make the?private Mars mission in 2018?together.

"It's important that this is a man and a woman because they represent humanity," said Jane Poynter, president and chairwoman of Paragon Space Development Corporation, and a member of the Inspiration Mars team. "After all, we are more or less 50 percent men and 50 percent women [on Earth]. It represents our children ? whether they are a girl or a boy, they see themselves reflected in that crew." [Dennis Tito's 2018 Human Mars Flyby Mission Explained (Infographic)]

Married couples

Poynter and her husband, Taber MacCallum, who is chief technology officer for Inspiration Mars, spent two years living inside the Biosphere 2 experiment, and learned the benefits of having a close companion to lean on.

"It was extremely helpful to have somebody that I could problem solve with," Poynter said. "It was also fantastic to have the opportunity to be there and share the experience when we had those wondrous moments."

Inspiration Mars plans to recruit highly qualified crewmembers with the technical background necessary to serve as space mechanics on all aspects of their vehicle, should it need repairs.

For their part, Poynter and MacCallum aren't just mission planners ? they also plan to throw their hats in the ring as crew applicants.

Spartan conditions

The trip, which would capitalize on a rare planetary alignment that allows for a boomerang mission around the Red Planet much more quickly than normal trajectories, would largely use existing hardware, spacecraft and rockets, but with some modifications to support a crew for such an extended period.

Thus, whoever signs up for the trip will be in for some Spartan conditions.

"This going to be a very austere mission," MacCallum said, comparing the?Mars?voyagers to Lewis and Clark, blazing a trail through the unknown.

"It scares me a little bit," Poynter told SPACE.com. "I'd be lying if I said it didn't. But the opportunity to look back at the Earth from Mars ? that's an experience not to miss."

The right stuff

Whoever undertakes the mission will need "the right stuff times 50," Tito said.

The successful applicants must be resilient, even-keel, and able to maintain a happy attitude in the face of adversity, Poynter said.

Despite the challenges, though,?Inspiration Mars?is expecting a flood of applications from people eager for the chance to make history by traveling farther into space than ever before.

The team's medical expert, Jonathan Clark of the Center for Space Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, said the crewmembers must also be prepared to face some health challenges. In addition to the havoc that a year and a half of microgravity will wreak on the human body, the Mars travelers will face a strong dose of radiation, which could elevate their risk for cancer by about three percent.

"The crew would know about it, they would have to decide, 'I realize that I'm going to have an excess cancer risk," Clark said. "Ultimately it's going to have to be those personal decisions."

Follow Clara Moskowitz on Twitter?@ClaraMoskowitz?or SPACE.com?@Spacedotcom. We're also onFacebook?&?Google+.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/QSCOTVgAops/2018-Mars-mission-Who-should-go

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Yahoo to shut down 7 products

Alexei Oreskovic , Reuters ? ? ? 9 hrs.

Yahoo is shutting down seven products, including its mobile app for Blackberry smartphones, as new Chief Executive Marissa Mayer takes a page from Google's play book by eliminating unsuccessful products en-masse.

The product shutdowns, which Yahoo announced on its official company blog on Friday, are part of what the company said are regular efforts to evaluate and review its product line-up.

"The most critical question we ask is whether the experience is truly a daily habit that still resonates for all of you today," wrote Jay Rossiter, Yahoo's executive vice president of Platforms.

The announcement represents Yahoo's second group shutdown of products since Mayer, a former Google executive, became CEO of the struggling Web portal in July. So-called "spring cleaning" announcements, in which multiple products are shut down, have become a regular feature at Google in recent years.

Mayer signaled the company would prune its line-up of mobile apps at an investor conference last month, noting that Yahoo would reduce the 60 to 75 disparate mobile apps it currently has to a more manageable 12 to 15 apps.

Yahoo said its app for Blackberry smartphones would no longer be available for download, or supported by Yahoo, as of April 1.

Yahoo also said that on April 1 it will stop supporting Yahoo Avatars ? the cartoon-like digital characters that consumers create to depict them on Web services such as Yahoo instant messenger and Facebook. Consumers who want to continue using their avatar on Yahoo's online services must download the avatar and then re-upload the information to their personalized Yahoo profile.

The other Yahoo products set to be terminated include Yahoo App Search, Yahoo Sports IQ, Yahoo Clues, the Yahoo Message Boards website and the Yahoo Updates API.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/gadgetbox/yahoo-shut-down-7-products-including-blackberry-app-1C8650562

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Web pioneer Vint Cerf envisions a futuristic Internet where people communicate with aliens

Vint Cerf

One of the Internet?s founding fathers envisions a bright future that one day may?involve?communicating with animals and even aliens using the Web. During a speech given at the annual TED conference, Internet pioneer Vint Cerf described how technology can be used to communicate with other?species,?explaining that the Internet isn?t just a way of connecting machines but a way for people to interact.

[More from BGR: Time Warner Cable?s arrogance perfectly illustrates why the cable industry is so disliked]

?Now what?s important about what these people are doing is that they?re beginning to learn how to communicate with species that are not us ? but share a common sensory environment,? he said about the other event speakers. ?We?re beginning to explore what it means to communicate with something that isn?t just another person.?

[More from BGR: BlackBerry coup confirmed: iPhone, Android users make up half of Z10 sales in Canada, one-third in UK]

Cerf noted that developments like the ?Internet of Things,? which refers to objects and their virtual representations in an Internet-like structure, will bring more connections to the Internet.

?All kinds of possible sentient beings may be interconnected through this system,? he said. ?I can?t wait to see these experiments unfold,? adding that projects like the ?interplanetary Internet? system used by the Mars Curiosity rover to transmit imagery to Earth will further help humans interact with other species.

?What that means is that what we?re learning with these interactions with other species will teach us, ultimately, how we might interact with an alien from another world,? he said. ?I can hardly wait.?

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pioneer-vint-cerf-envisions-futuristic-internet-where-people-010021999.html

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Friday, March 1, 2013

Video shows paid sex act by Maine Zumba teacher

FILE - In this Jan. 18, 2013 file photo, Mark Strong Sr., leaves the Cumberland County Court House in Portland, Maine. The jury in Strong?s trial watched a video Thursday, Feb. 28, 2013, showing a sexual encounter between Zumba fitness instructor Alexis Wright and a man who left cash on her massage table. Strong is charged with 13 counts that relate to promoting prostitution. He contends he had an affair with Wright and helped her launch her Pura Vida dance studio in Kennebunk, Maine, but his lawyer has said he was unaware of any paid sex. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, File)

FILE - In this Oct. 9, 2012 file photo, Zumba fitness instructor Alexis Wright turns towards her attorney Sarah Churchill, left, during her arraignment in Portland, Maine on 109 counts including prostitution, violation of privacy and tax evasion for allegedly providing sex for money at her Kennebunk fitness studio and office. In the trial of her business partner, Mark Strong Sr., the jury watched a video Thursday, Feb. 28, 2013, showing a sexual encounter between Wright and a man who left cash on her massage table. Strong is charged with 13 counts that relate to promoting prostitution. He contends he had an affair with Wright and helped her launch her Pura Vida dance studio in Kennebunk, Maine, but his lawyer has said he was unaware of any paid sex. (AP Photo/Joel Page, File)

ALFRED, Maine (AP) ? Prosecutors have shown jurors videos demonstrating that an insurance agent was familiar with paid sex acts involving his mistress, but a defense lawyer said it doesn't prove that the man promoted prostitution.

The jury in the trial of Mark Strong Sr. watched a 45-minute video Thursday showing a sexual encounter between Zumba fitness instructor Alexis Wright and a man who left $250 cash on her massage table.

Testimony indicated Strong watched the sexual encounters in Kennebunk through a live video call to his office 100 miles away in Thomaston.

Defense lawyer Daniel Lilley contends Strong committed no crime because he neither recruited clients nor profited from the operation.

"Observing a person in a criminal act is not a criminal act itself," Lilley told reporters Thursday outside the courthouse.

After a week of testimony, the lead investigator, Kennebunk police officer Audra Presby, testified briefly late Thursday afternoon, and she was due to return to the witness stand on Friday.

Strong, 57, of Thomaston, faces 13 counts that relate to promoting prostitution. A judge previously dismissed 46 counts of invasion of privacy over prostitution clients who were said to have been videotaped without their knowledge.

Prosecutors have more than 150 videos but showed jurors only a single 45-minute recording Thursday that depicted Wright chatting with an older man who arrived and immediately began undressing. After their sexual encounter, she used disposable wipes to clean up, escorted the man to the door and then spoke to another man, believed to be Strong, at the other end of a Skype chat.

Jurors showed little reaction as they watched the sexually explicit video on a large screen. One looked away during parts of it, one fiddled with an eyeglass case, another twiddled his thumbs and several stole glances at a clock.

Also Thursday, computer expert Frederick Williams told jurors how he recovered a ledger from Wright's computer that described entries for sexual encounters from Oct. 5, 2010 through Feb. 13, 2012, the day before police raided her office and studio in Kennebunk and her home in Wells.

One ledger entry showed a payment of $500 for a sexual encounter, Williams said.

Williams, a Saco police detective, was able to match videotaped sexual encounters recovered from Wright's computers and hard drives with Skype video snapshots of the same encounters on Strong's computer in his Thomaston office.

Other videos shown to jurors indicated Wright and Strong chatted via Skype before and after her sexual encounters, discussing scheduling and birth control, among other topics. Wright provided clients' license plate numbers to Strong, who also was a private investigator.

Before each of the encounters, Wright took a moment to ensure the video camera was hidden. "OK, here we go. I'm locking my screen," she told Strong on one video call.

The prostitution scandal attracted attention last fall after it was reported that Wright's ledgers indicated she made $150,000 over 18 months.

Strong contends he had an affair with 30-year-old Wright and helped finance her Pura Vida dance studio in Kennebunk but didn't promote prostitution. Prosecutors contended the videos proved he was familiar with the details of Wright's business. She will be tried separately later.

___

Follow David Sharp at http://twitter.com/David_Sharp_AP

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-03-01-Zumba-Prostitution/id-3840e5c6ed404acea8b3ec883338c5c3

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Tech firms cash in on Yahoo's telecommute ban

By Martha C. White

Forget the corner office. In 2013, the most coveted workspace is a worker?s own kitchen table or home office.

Nearly a week after a leaked memo?revealed that Yahoo employees with work-from-home arrangements would need to show up in the office every day starting in June, smaller tech companies are attempting to woo disgruntled telecommuters.

Earlier this week, Drew Anderson, CTO of digital media startup Hitlab USA Inc., posted an ad on Craigslist with "Yahoo Telecommuters Welcome" in the title.

Within two days, Anderson received between 100 and 200 replies ? up to 10 times his usual response rate. "A handful" of applicants, he said, were current Yahoo employees.

Anderson said his ad also was yielding a better caliber of job applicants. "The range of experience is wider and just the general response has been very good," he said. "I?m using the event as leverage... It?s a great tool for me."

Shortly after the memo was leaked, some companies took to Twitter to invite Yahoo employees to come work for them.

Marc Garrett, CEO of software developer Intridea, touted his company?s flexible arrangements:

Hey #Yahoos: if you're being forced to quit come work with us @intridea. We all work from home!

So did Sara Rosso, an employee of Automattic, which runs the popular WorldPress content management system:

Disappointed in @marissamayer's ban on working remotely ow.ly/hZOzn Yahoo peeps, come to @Automattic! :)

?You want to be able to give people the freedom to work,? said Silke Fleischer, CEO of mobile app developer ATIV Software, based in Santa Rosa, Calif. Ativ?s 11 employees all work remotely. Daily meetings and even job interviews are all conducted over Skype, she said.

While Yahoo?s telework ban might bring back the water cooler conversations, Fleischer said, ?We?re on Skype all day long... we?re communicating.??

What CEO Marissa Mayer did right, experts say, was realize that Yahoo struggled with productivity and collaboration issues, and take steps to fix them. Her mistake was taking those steps in the wrong direction.

?You could have that situation regardless of whether teleworking was going on,? said Dayna Fellows, president of consulting company WorkLife Performance, Inc. Yahoo?s blanket ban on working from home is ?a little baby-and-bathwater,? she said, ?It?s not going to solve what I think they?re trying to solve.?

On average, office workers spend about 80 percent of their time working on tasks that require concentration and focus, with the remainder collaborative, said Richard Kadzis, spokesman at CoreNet Global, which works with clients on?strategic management of corporate real estate and workplace resources.?Working from home part of the time lets employees be in the most productive environment to do both, he said. "Distractions are minimized," he said.

Aside from increasing productivity, a good telecommuting program also helps businesses cut costs. Companies in which around a quarter of the workforce works remotely save 10 to 15 percent on their real estate overhead, Kadzis said.?

Fleischer said companies like hers could benefit from Yahoo's new policy. "It could actually free up talent from Yahoo. Smaller companies can?t necessarily offer all these other options," she said. "However, they can offer you the freedom."

After the leak of an internal memo telling Yahoo employees they will no longer be allowed to work from home, CEO Marissa Mayer is receiving intense criticism, particularly from fellow working mothers. NBC's Kristen Dahlgren reports.

Source: http://lifeinc.today.com/_news/2013/03/01/17134518-work-from-home-with-us-tech-firms-cash-in-on-yahoos-ban?lite

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Globalization of Businesses and Cloud Technology Drives the ...

GIA announces the release of a comprehensive global report on the Video Conferencing Services markets. Global market for Video Conferencing Services is projected to reach US$2.5 billion by 2018, driven by current economic uncertainty in developed markets and the subsequent need to drive down costs on business travel.

San Jose, CA (PRWEB) March 01, 2013

Follow us on LinkedIn ? Advancements in communications industry over the years have been transforming the way people connect and interact. Video conferencing especially has been revolutionizing the art of communications by allowing people from different locations and in different time zones to communicate in real time, and at short notice. This saves considerable time and expenses that would have otherwise been spent on travelling and meeting each other. Capable of offering visual remote communication, video conferencing is leaving behind traditional means of communication including face-to-face meetings, e-mail and telephone conversation by providing life-like communication experience. Video conferencing is currently used as a vital means of communication by a range of end-users from enterprises, government, educational institutions, financial service companies and legal agencies to consumers.

In today?s work culture that is largely dominated by business meetings, companies across industry segments are increasingly adopting videoconferencing services as an alternative to traditional communication channels. Modern businesses operating at a global level especially are beginning to rely heavily on video conferencing services for establishing communications between corporate headquarters and regional offices spread across the globe. Globalization of businesses and emergence of workforce mobility as key enterprise strategies are especially fueling growth in the world video conferencing services market. In addition to cost savings, the technology?s ability to ensure business continuity is also helping strengthen the business case for video conferencing services in enterprises. With enterprises now realizing that the best way to achieve profitable growth is by enhancing operational efficiency, taking immediate and quick strategic decisions, and avoiding business disruptions, video conferencing services are increasingly being adopted by companies both large and small as a tool to achieve these goals.

Growing popularity of hosted and cloud based video conferencing services as cost efficient alternatives to expensive full-scale video conferencing system deployments among enterprises is additionally fueling growth in the market. A type of an arrangement whereby live video conferencing is run directly on a vendor?s network, cloud based video conferencing services especially are growing in popularity. The main value proposition for enterprise users is that they can even access videos-as-a-service over the internet for a simple subscription fee.

Capable of offering a host of advantages for users with the most primary benefit being radically lower IT costs, cloud based video conferencing is set to drive significant revenue over the next few years. SMBs especially are forecast to emerge into a lucrative customer base for cloud services as the ?pay-as-you-go? subscription based business model is a perfect fit for small enterprises with limited IT budgets, which typically prefer basic conferencing facilities that too on a ?need? basis. In addition, the realities of the tough economic and financial climate is encouraging organizations to move from in-house infrastructure to accessing on-demand services as and when required, and this thereby bodes well for the services market as a whole.

As stated by the new market research report on Video Conferencing Services, the US is the largest regional market worldwide. Asia-Pacific is the fastest growing market with revenues waxing at a CAGR of more than 17.3% over the analysis period. While IP based Video Conferencing Services represents the most prominent market segment with revenues projected to grow at about 14.8% over the analysis period, ISDN based Video Conferencing Services is steadily waning.

Source: http://www.virtual-strategy.com/2013/03/01/globalization-businesses-and-cloud-technology-drives-global-video-conferencing-services-m

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Hair stylists fight in court over $9.5 million lotto jackpot

By Jeff Black, Staff Writer, NBC News

Seven hair dressers from Indianapolis have taken a coworker to court claiming she cheated them out of their share of a $9.5 million Hoosier Lotto jackpot.

For her part, the woman claims it was her ticket that won, not an office pool ticket, so she wants to keep all of the winnings.

Marion County Superior Court Judge Heather A. Welch heard testimony on Wednesday and said she would rule on the case by the end of the week, the Indianapolis Star reported.

According to NBC station WTHR-TV, eight stylists who work at a local salon pooled their money to buy lottery tickets for the Feb. 16 drawing.

One of the women, identified by the Indianapolis star as Christina Shaw, was sent out to buy the tickets at a local gas station, but also apparently bought tickets for herself.

Shaw then discovered she'd won, but before making the trek to the Hoosier Lottery headquarters to claim her jackpot, stopped by the hair salon to inform her fellow stylists that her ticket had won, not theirs.

The coworkers called attorney Scott Montross who filed a restraining order to freeze the money. The court action, Montross said, was not against Shaw herself but only to keep the jackpot from being paid out.

?We are concerned that the winning ticket may have been purchased with the group?s money," Montross earlier told the Star. "There?s a dispute about it, but until there is something more definitive, we were trying to keep a low profile. But we needed to slow the train down."

Montross, the Star reported, said the coworkers at Lou?s Creative Styles routinely each contributed $5 each for lottery tickets, and that they agreed that whoever bought the tickets for the group couldn?t buy tickets for themselves in the same place.

Shaw did not comment on the case, though she did indicate to the Star that she had hired an attorney.

A Marion County judge decided to place a hold on the winnings, which after hearing from both sides on Wednesday, she extended until Friday.

According to the Star, the coworkers filing the case were identified as: Lucy Lewis-Johnston, Melanie Ann Bonar; Margie Day-Braugh; Judith Kay Pallatin; Patricia L. Pohlman; Linda Sue Stewart; and Edna M. Thomas.

A voice message left for Montross by NBC News wasn?t immediately returned.

Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/27/17119705-hair-stylists-fight-in-court-over-95-million-lotto-jackpot?lite

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