Christine Fox : Inspiration for ‘Top Gun’ character gets top-level Pentagon post

The inspiration for the leading female role in the 80s blockbuster movie “Top Gun,” has soared to new heights in real life.

Christine Fox has become the first woman appointed to the Pentagon’s No. 2 job, set to serve in an acting capacity until a permanent successor is named.

Her boss, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, called Fox, "a brilliant defense thinker and proven manager."

Fox most recently held a top-level defense post where she played a large role in determining budget priorities.

"She helped identify the challenges, choices, and opportunities for reform facing the department during this period of unprecedented budget uncertainty. She will be able to help me shape our priorities from Day One because she knows the intricacies of the department's budget, programs and global operations better than anyone," Hagel said in a statement.

A long-time civilian defense employee, Fox held several influential positions over the years.

But she is perhaps best known for serving as the inspiration for Tom Cruise's love interest in the 1986 film, about a hot shot pilot's experience at the Top Gun Naval Flying School.

According to a People Magazine profile published shortly before the film's release, Fox was working as a mathematician at the Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego when she was introduced to movie producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer.

The two had been brainstorming a possible love interest for Cruise's character, Maverick, and thought Fox fit the bill.

The result was Charlie, a beautiful astrophysicist played by Kelly McGillis, who instructed the Top Gun candidates.

The movie was a hit with viewers. Off screen, Fox continued to advance through the ranks at the Defense Department, serving as a scientific analyst to the Chief of Naval Operations and as president of the Center for Naval Analyses.

As acting deputy secretary, Fox will take over the role being vacated by Ashton Carter until a permanent successor is named and confirmed by the Senate.

http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2013/12/03/inspiration-for-top-gun-character-gets-top-level-pentagon-post/?hpt=hp_c3

The potato battery kit could provide LED-powered lighting for 40 days

What do you do with a boiled potato? You slice it, insert it between two electrodes, place an alligator chip, and turn it into a battery. The device has been used to provide LED-powered lighting for 40 days (and at a fraction of the cost of a typical AA battery). The potato battery kit could be used in remote regions and, because spuds are starchy and rich in phosphoric acid, they will last for several months and won’t attract insects. 

The idea for TAK Studio's Turbine Lights

The idea for TAK Studio's Turbine Lights works like this: cars drive by on the highway, creating wind that spins the turbines built onto the streetlights.

The turbine then turn and generate electricity, which powers the streetlights at night or, we hope, gets fed into the grid.

The Most Important Image Captured By Hubble

In 1996, scientists took a huge risk when they pointed the Hubble telescope to an inky field that they believed to be void of stars and planets. As images from Hubble are in constant demand, the worry was that devoting so much time to a black space would prove futile. Once the photons finally registered, though, that leap of faith proved fruitful: light from over three thousand galaxies illuminated the image. A few years and missions later, Hubble’s glimpse into what is known as the deep field has revealed that we are just one tiny part of a vast system comprising 100 billion galaxies.

http://beyondblindfold.com/the-most-important-image-captured-by-hubble/

Moon gardens: NASA to sow 1st seeds of future habitat

NASA is bravely venturing into new scientific territory with a plan to start growing plants on the moon no later than 2015. The experiment is designed to yield important knowledge about life’s long-term chances in space – including for us.

The initiative comes courtesy of the Lunar Plant Growth Habitat team – a small group of scientists, students, volunteers and contractors – who plan to install specially-designed containers about the size of a coffee can, in which the plants will be encased, complete with sensors, cameras and other devices that will be relaying information down to Earth.

This is to be the first life sciences project conducted on another world and is ambitious about exploring opportunities for future human life support, apart from the obvious benefits of learning more about growing life in extreme temperatures.

The dream is to be able to freely live on the moon for decades on end – instead of hours. Follow-up experiments are already in the making.

The idea, according to the space scientists, is “to develop a very simple sealed growth chamber that can support germination over a five-10 day period in a spacecraft on the moon,” with filter paper used to feed dissolved nutrients to the plant.

NASA wants to start off with basil, turnips and Arabidopsis. The latter has been described by scientists as the ‘lab rat’ of plant biology.

The habitats will have to regulate their own water consumption, temperature and power supply.

“Upon landing on the moon a trigger would release a small reservoir of water wetting the filter paper and initiating germination of the seeds. The air in the sealed container would be adequate for more than five days of growth. No additional air supply or air processing would be necessary. The seedlings would be photographed at intervals with sufficient resolution to compare with growth in Earth controls. We would use the natural sunlight on the moon as the source of illumination for plant germination as a first ISRU (in situ resource utilization) demonstration,” the scientists reported on the space agency’s website. 

Interestingly, the experiment is quite cheap. This is in part due to technological advances, but also owing to NASA’s adventurous idea of crowd sourcing the initiative. Instead of copying the experiment hundreds of times over, the special kits and growth habitats will be distributed to schools, as well as budding scientists. The space agency will then collect all the data from their experiments and compare it to the results on the moon. This will also give schoolkids the opportunity to personally contribute to the study.

Such a lighthearted approach has never been taken to an experiment of such magnitude, and the crowd sourcing initiative is already being praised for its ingenuity.

The only question remaining is – how do we get the plants up there?

The agency’s best bet is to send the plants on a commercial spacecraft.

Google has been instrumental in spearheading the commercial space race, with its Lunar X-Prize 2015 being sought after by many takers.

The prize will go to the one who safely lands a vessel on the moon, travels at an altitude of 500 meters above, on, or below its surface and transmits two ‘moon casts’ back to Earth by December 31, 2015. Bonus prizes will also be available.

The beauty of the Google-prize approach is that NASA no longer has to spend hundreds of millions of dollars or wait until the next space ship departs for our satellite.

Speaking to Singularityhub.com, prominent planetary scientist, Dr. Chris McKay, explained that just 20 years ago, the project would have cost $300 million, while now it can be done at literally less than a hundredth the cost. It is a victory for both NASA and the private space industry.

“Just like we buy tickets on commercial airlines, why shouldn't we buy space on commercial flights,” he explained.

Even if NASA fails, a new door has been opened to undertaking incredibly ambitious projects at negligible costs.

source:-http://rt.com/news/nasa-grow-plants-moon-420/

Varun Agarwal: From failing in engineering to co-founding a million-dollar company

http://www.inktalks.com/discover/656/varun-agarwal-from-failing-in-engineering-to-co-founding-a-million-dollar-company

TAMA the cat super station manager at japan railway station