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Education

Take a Sonic Tour of the Brain 16

Posted by timothy from the all-in-your-head dept.
Duncan J Murray writes "Currently exhibiting at The Barbican, London is an exhibit on Neuroscience, which includes this 20-minute auditory exhibit looking at (or should that be listening to) — sounds of neurons firing, simulations of cochlear implants, the mosquito frequency, neverending scales, phantom words and speech reconstructed from intracranial electrophysiological recording, as well as other auditory illusions. It is worth a listen."
Space

Beyond Kepler: Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite Set For 2017 Launch 43

Posted by timothy from the it-is-in-fact-made-of-starstuff dept.
astroengine writes "NASA has selected a $200 million mission to carry out a full-sky survey for exoplanets orbiting nearby stars. The space observatory, called the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, is scheduled for a 2017 launch. Like the currently operational Kepler Space Telescope, TESS will be in the lookout for exoplanets that orbit in front of their host stars, resulting in a slight dip in starlight. This dip is known as a "transit" and Kepler has revolutionized our understanding about planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy by applying this effective technique. As of January 2013, Kepler has spotted 2,740 exoplanetary candidates. "TESS will carry out the first space-borne all-sky transit survey, covering 400 times as much sky as any previous mission," said TESS lead scientist George Ricker, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. "It will identify thousands of new planets in the solar neighborhood, with a special focus on planets comparable in size to the Earth.""
Software

Extended TeX: Past, Present, and Future 300

Posted by timothy from the 30-years-of-chugging-away dept.
First time accepted submitter Hamburg writes "Frank Mittelbach, member of the LaTeX Project and LaTeX3 developer, reviews significant issues of TeX raised already 20 years ago. Today he evaluates which issues are solved, and which still remain open and why. Examples of issues are managing consecutive hyphens, rivers of vertical spaces and identical words across lines, grid-based design, weighed hyphenation points, and overcoming the the mouth/stomach separation. Modern engines such as pdfTeX, XeTeX and LuaTeX are considered with regard to solutions of important problems in typesetting." Note: When TeX was first released, Jimmy Carter was president.
Space

NASA's Bolden: No American-Led Return To the Moon 'In My Lifetime' 233

Posted by timothy from the how's-the-heart? dept.
MarkWhittington writes "A clash over the future course of American space exploration flared up at a recent joint meeting of the Space Studies Board and the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board. In one corner was Al Carnesale of UCLA, who headed the recent study issued by the National Research Council that found fault with the Obama administration's plan to send American astronauts to an asteroid. In the other corner was NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who has been charged with carrying out the policy condemned by the NRC report."

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