Lockheed Martin's F-35 Achieves First Vertical Landing-PHOTOS

Shortly after 1 p.m. on March 18, F-35B BF-1 performed the first  STOVL landing at the Pax River hover pad. "Today's vertical landing onto a 95-foot square pad showed that we have the  thrust and the control to maneuver accurately both in free air and in the descent  through ground effect," said   F-35 Lead STOVL Pilot Graham Tomlinson.  Tomlinson performed an 80-knot (93 miles per hour) short takeoff from Naval  Air Station Patuxent River, Md., at 1:09 p.m. EDT. About 13 minutes into the  flight, he positioned the aircraft 150 feet above the airfield, where he commanded the F-35 to hover for approximately one minute then descend to the runway.   "The low workload in the cockpit contrasted sharply with legacy short  takeoff/vertical landing (STOVL) platforms," said Tomlinson, a retired Royal  Air Force fighter pilot and a BAE Systems employee since 1986. "Together with  the work already completed for slow-speed handling and landings, this provides  a robust platform to expand the fleet's STOVL capabilities."  Today's vertical landing confirmed the aircraft's required ability to land in  confined areas both ashore and afloat.  "Having the F-35B perform its first vertical landing underscores the reality  of the Marine Corps achieving its goal of an all STOVL force," said LtGen George J. Trautman III, Deputy Commandant for Aviation.  "Being able to  operate and land virtually anywhere, the STOVL JSF is a unique fixed wing aircraft that can deploy, co-locate, train and fight with Marine ground forces  while operating from a wider range of bases ashore and afloat than any other TacAir platform."  On April 2, Marine Fighter/Attack Training Squadron - 501 (VMFAT-501) will officially stand up as part of the Joint Integrated Training Center located  at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida.  The work being done at Patuxent River will  enable the Marine Corps to start training Marine pilots and maintainers during  the fall of 2010.   The Marine Corps anticipates reaching JSF F-35B initial operational capability  in December 2012.  IOC assets will include the first F-35B training squadron  of 15 aircraft in VMFAT-501 at Eglin AFB, an operational test and evaluation detachment of 4 aircraft at Edwards AFB, and VMFA-332, the Corps' first  operational squadron of 10 aircraft at MCAS Yuma.  The VMFA-332 aircraft  will be equipped, manned and trained to execute Marine missions and deploy  ashore or afloat.  The STOVL F-35B Lightning II is scheduled to replace three different variants  of USMC combat aircraft (F/A-18, AV-8B and EA-6B).  This 5th generation  multi-role fighter has significant advantages over the Marine Corps' current tactical fixed-wing squadrons and will dramatically amplify strategic agility, vastly  enhance operational flexibility and capabilities, provide tactical adaptability for  basing options ashore and afloat, and reduce aviation training and maintenance  costs across the Corps.  The STOVL JSF is expected to carry more ordnance with greater range than the  F/A-18 Hornet, operate from austere expeditionary environments like the AV-8B  Harrier, and ultimately possess electronic warfare technology similar to the EA-6B Prowler.  BF-1 is one of three F-35B STOVL jets currently undergoing flight trials at the  Patuxent  River test site.

Desperate Efforts to Save Endangered Bats May Fail.

The effort was prompted by the discovery of white nose syndrome, an extremely virulent disease that has killed more than a million bats since 2007, in one of the handful of caves where Virginia big-eared bats live. Of 40 bats moved to the Smithsonian National Zoo last November, only 11 have survived.
"We were not under the illusion that it was going to be easy. It's certainly not a surprise to us that the bats died. But the number of bats that died is greater than we had hoped," said Jeremy Coleman, white nose syndrome coordinator at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The captive colony project was controversial from the start. With only 15,000 Virginia big-eared bats in existence — up from 3,500 in 1979, but far below historic levels — risking even a few is no small matter. The project also cost $300,000, a big chunk of the $1.9 million allotted by Congress for research on white nose syndrome, or WNS.
In the three years since its original detection in an upstate New York cave, WNS has spread south as far as Tennessee, exterminating bat colony after colony with almost total efficiency. The disease appears to be caused by a fungal infection that rouses bats from hibernation, leaving them weak and unable to find food.
There is no known cure, and scientists say that many cave-dwelling bat species — including the little brown bat, the most common bat in North America — could be extinct in a decade. They call the bat die-off "the most precipitous decline of North American wildlife in recorded history" (.pdf).

Early in 2009, WNS was found in a West Virginia cave where Virginia big-eared bats lived. Though infected bats belonged to other species, the discovery was frightening. The Fish and Wildlife Service decided to found a captive colony.
"There were many scientists who didn't think it would work at all, and are philosophically opposed to captive bat populations anyway. The other school of thought is that desperate times call for desperate measures," said Peter Youngbaer, WNS liaison for the National Speleological Society. "If this species was going to get WNS, and if you didn't start an intervention now, you'd never have a chance."
Unlike fruit-eating bats, insect-eating bats like the Virginia big-eared are notoriously difficult to raise in captivity. Accustomed to catching insects on the wing, many of the bats refused to eat worms from pans. Stressed from relocation and habituated to cave-specific temperatures and humidity, others developed runaway bacterial infections. Despite constant attention from researchers, 29 of the bats died.
The Fish and Wildlife Service is now preparing a report on lessons from the experience, though these may be uncertain. "I think they have more unanswered questions than lessons now," said Youngbaer.
And trouble for the remaining wild bats keeps coming. In February, the first cases of WNS were found in West Virginia's Hellhole Cave, home to populations of Indiana bats, little brown bats and almost half of all Virginia big-eared bats.
There are no plans to add more bats to the colony, but Coleman said captive breeding remains an option for other species threatened by WNS. In the meantime, it remains to be seen whether the 11 captive bats will survive and even breed.
"There are so few members of that species left. With the captive colony, the thought was, let's see see if we can get this to work. And then we'll have done what we can to save them," said Youngbaer. "At least we won't have regrets for not having tried."
Image: Healthy Virginia big-eared bat. /USFWS

Solar Slumber May Have Been Caused by Magnetic Flows

From 2008 through the first half of 2009, the sun had a puzzling dearth of sunspots, flares and other storms, extending the usual lull at the end of the 11-year solar activity cycle for an extra 15 months. Findings from the study, which relied on the orbiting Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, may also suggest a better way to forecast the intensity and duration of future solar cycles.
Better predictions could be critical because some solar outbursts can blast Earth with massive, magnetized clouds of charged particles capable of knocking out electrical power grids and harming communications satellites.
In the March 12 Science, David Hathaway of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and Lisa Rightmire of the University of Memphis in Tennessee analyzed 13 years of SOHO measurements that tracked the movement of ionized gas from the solar equator to the poles. The researchers found that the relatively slow gas movement, known as the meridional flow, sped up a few years before the last solar minimum began in 2008. What's more, the flow was substantially faster than the speed at the previous solar minimum, a more typical and less extended downturn in solar activity some 11 years earlier.
Hathaway and Rightmire suggest that the faster meridional flow produced weaker magnetic fields at the sun's poles, which extended the solar minimum.

Magnetic fields carried by the meridional flow typically oppose much stronger flows of magnetized material on the surface, Hathaway says. The faster the meridional flow is, the greater the opposition is to those other flows. As a result, the sun's polar magnetic field can't become as strong, the researchers propose.
"It is possible that the delayed start of the present cycle, 2009 to 2010, was caused by the relatively weak polar field in 2007 to 2009," comments Neil Sheeley of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C.
The strength of the magnetic polar fields plays a critical role in determining the onset of the next solar cycle, Hathaway notes. These fields dive beneath the solar surface, building up the deep sunspot-generating magnetic fields that signal the beginning of the next solar cycle. Weaker polar fields take more time to reach the strength required to produce sunspots, prolonging the lull in activity from the previous cycle. In addition, weaker-than-usual polar fields are likely to produce less activity during the subsequent solar cycle, Hathaway and Rightmire predict.
"The fact that the meridional flow plays a key role in setting up the sun's polar fields for the next cycle suggests that future observations will help us predict [the duration and intensity of] future cycles," Hathaway says.
One caveat is that physicists have only an incomplete understanding of the solar cycle and the transport of magnetic material below the solar surface, Sheeley says.
"This is certainly an interesting result and may help discriminate between different classes of models of solar magnetism," notes Natchimuthuk Gopalswamy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Other models, says Hathaway, which also embrace the importance of the meridional flow but rely on the complicated magnetic dynamics that happen below the surface, come to just the opposite conclusion: A fast meridional flow leads to strong polar field and a shorter solar minimum. Those models may now need to be revised, he says.
Image: NASA/ESA

Fwd: Style is Eternal

Twitter Hits 10 Billion Tweets

More than 10 billion tweets have been posted on microblogging service Twitter.

This clearly indicates Twitter's growing popularity, as it was only in November 2008 that the one billionth tweet was posted. Volume reached 50 million daily about a year ago.

The Web user behind the 10 billionth tweet and the content hasn't been revealed.

The news comes as Virgin Media Business revealed that one in five tweets contains a reference to a product or a brand.

Furthermore, while 57 of the FTSE 100 companies have signed up to the microblogging service, 72 percent have not used their account to respond to consumers that enquire or make comments about their service.

"With so many people sharing their thoughts online, it's no surprise that many are talking about companies. Clearly this presents an excellent opportunity for companies to engage with customers, but many are missing out," said Phil Stewart from Virgin Media Business.

Virgin Media Business said it believed many signed-up to Twitter to stop cyber squatters getting their first.

"Creating a Twitter account and leaving it dormant or not responding to tweets by your customers is no better than opening a contact centre and not picking up the phone. In fact it is a lot worse as this lack of interaction can be viewed by millions."

wooden-computer-workstation

Marlies Romberg's Wooden Computer Workstation incorporates a desktop system into classic furniture using a laser cutting system to make a working keyboard, accompanied by a wooden mouse and monitor.

Coolest USB Drive?

1) The Sawed Off USB Drive

4) The Lighter and USB Drive

5) Gold Bars

First Window Phone

Window Phone is a concept phone by Seunghan Song. It makes accurate predictions and even changes its display to reflect the climatic conditions outdoors.

Avatar everyone!!!