A humanoid robot in the International Space Station

A companion robot to the International Space Station astronauts...

A humanoid robot in space! The International Space Station for a few hours, has a new occupant in the presence of Robonaut 2 (R2 to his friends) has been enabled by the cosmonauts. This since the month of February in the station, this robot is the result of a fifteen year collaboration between Nasa and General Motors has come "to life".

It is of course experimental and programmed to play the role of an assistant on board in the daily missions of astronauts. According to Nasa, if all the tests go well, it could even be entrusted with certain filters and a few exits space cleaning around the station instead of the astronauts.

But before work, this robot must acclimate to the environment of the station, and succeed to not interfere with the human inhabitants by managing properly the severity. Many adjustments to the level programs that it brings and that control will thus be made in the coming weeks. R2 has a camera instead of the eyes and Nasa would like to distribute, on a dedicated Facebook page, first image (unfortunately in poor quality) that sees the robot in the station. After these first tests, Robonaut 2 has been re-off, it will be in service in a few days for a new battery of tests.

 

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A humanoid robot in the International Space Station

A companion robot to the International Space Station astronauts...

A humanoid robot in space! The International Space Station for a few hours, has a new occupant in the presence of Robonaut 2 (R2 to his friends) has been enabled by the cosmonauts. This since the month of February in the station, this robot is the result of a fifteen year collaboration between Nasa and General Motors has come "to life".

It is of course experimental and programmed to play the role of an assistant on board in the daily missions of astronauts. According to Nasa, if all the tests go well, it could even be entrusted with certain filters and a few exits space cleaning around the station instead of the astronauts.

But before work, this robot must acclimate to the environment of the station, and succeed to not interfere with the human inhabitants by managing properly the severity. Many adjustments to the level programs that it brings and that control will thus be made in the coming weeks. R2 has a camera instead of the eyes and Nasa would like to distribute, on a dedicated Facebook page, first image (unfortunately in poor quality) that sees the robot in the station. After these first tests, Robonaut 2 has been re-off, it will be in service in a few days for a new battery of tests.

 

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NASA: a new app and two smartphones in space

The last flight of a space shuttle will be marked by two first concerning especially under Google Android smartphones...

NASA had launched its first "app" for iPhone a few months ago. This was followed by an iPad application, and together, have since been downloaded more than 5 million times. The US space agency has been just a portage for smartphones running Google Android. Already downloaded over 50,000 times, this new app allows to track in detail news from NASA, its various centres and various missions. You can also view the fantastic library of images of the Organization, follow different Twitter accounts, or even the international space station! You can also have access to the information concerning the launch of rockets of NASA, and follow online from different video streams.

Also note that two smartphones are gone a few days ago in the space shuttle Atlantis: a Samsung Nexus S, and an Apple iPhone! The first is part of experience carried out in conjunction with the famous MIT (the Massachusetts Technology Institute). It is installed on a SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Vieworientationreorient, Experimental Satellites): a small device about the size of a bowling ball to help astronauts in their daily activities. These "satellites" are present in the station since 2006, and they will benefit significantly different modern smartphone capabilities, with its sensors and probes in any kind. Will the iPhone be at the heart of an experience designed around the application "SpaceLab for iOS". The conclusion of the STS-135 mission will also mark the end of this program for NASA. Visitors coming to the ISS will leave Russia, in a capsule on a Soyuz rocket.

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Can You Get More Space Or Speed From Your SSD?

With the market for solid-state drives continually expanding, we wanted to explore some of the most popular tweaks enthusiasts use to purportedly improve performance and free up capacity. We break out the benchmarks and put them to the test.

Solid-state storage is generally faster than mechanical disks. Sure, once you get down into the 40 GB boot drives, write performance really suffers. But for the most part, SSDs rule. However, they're also much more expensive. Every gigabyte of capacity on your SSD is precious space. And while SSDs are very fast inherently, there are plenty of folks online who'll try to convince you that they can be made even faster with simple adjustments.

Today's story is the product of our own efforts to maximize the amount of useful space you can squeeze from your valuable SSD. We also want to put some of those performance claims to the test using a couple of different drives in order to gauge whether performance-oriented optimizations are specific to a certain vendor's hardware, or if they're universally-applicable. Or, maybe they're entirely untrue, and there's no way to make an SSD any faster.

We'll launch our exploration into the potential of solid-state drive tweaking by testing nine of the most commonly-recommended optimizations we see tossed around once an SSD is up and running with Microsoft's Windows operating system. These include the following:

Disable System RestoreDisable drive indexing Disable the page fileDisable HibernationDisable prefetching in the registryDisable Windows' write cachingDisable the SuperFetch and Windows Search servicesDisable ClearPageFileAtShutdown and LargeSystemCacheAdjust power settings

View the original article here

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