Poor SuitSat didn’t have a very good first launch, appearing to freeze before returning any good data. NASA TV reports that it made two orbits before going completely dark. Check out the list of comments, none of which were positive, from various coordinates below.

The official SuitSat website leaves the following message: “Thanks to everyone that participated, and hopefully the failure will result in knowledge that can be applied to the next attempt.”

Update 6:02pm PST: SuitSat not dead? The SuitSat monitoring website was redeployed 2 hours 58 minutes ago and: “Current thinking is SuitSat is transmitting, but far weaker than expected. Several reliable reports of short snatches of the voice and SSTV signals have been reported. It is recommended that you continue to listen during passes over your area. Please report any positive contact only.”

Is it just me or is it kind of haunting thinking of an empty space suit orbiting earth?

How about an empty space suit that is actually broadcasting back prerecorded messages?

Launching Feb 3, courtesy of those incredibly brainy NASA folks and Russian partners, comes SuitSat:

“We’ve equipped a Russian Orlan spacesuit with three batteries, a radio transmitter, and internal sensors to measure temperature and battery power,” says Bauer. “As SuitSat circles Earth, it will transmit its condition to the ground.”

Earthlings with the right equipment will be able to tune into SuitSat with a big, big antenna on their FM dial at 145.990 Mhz FM. By using NASA’s J-Pass program, you can find out when SuitSat will orbit over your home town.

More will be forthcoming at the official SuitSat website.

Who would have thought that plants were emitting methane? A group of scientists have discovered that since 1760 the concentration of methane has almost tripled:

IT’S not just farting cows and belching sheep that spew out methane. Living plants have been disgorging millions of tonnes of the potent greenhouse gas into the atmosphere every year - without anybody noticing.

The study also finds that plants might be responsible for as much as 30% of global methane production, so it’s not just grandma’s chili. Although some 60% of the world emissions, according to the methane entry in the Wikipedia: “… are from sources affected by humans. They come primarily from agricultural and other human activities. ”

Sources of methane include out decomposition of organic wastes, swamps, marshes, aging process of asphalt, digestion in animals, bacteria found in rice plantations and industrial sources.

And now: plants.

Here is something concerning space travel to keep an eye on over the next five years:

The hypothetical device, which has been outlined in principle but is based on a controversial theory about the fabric of the universe, could potentially allow a spacecraft to travel to Mars in three hours and journey to a star 11 light years away in just 80 days, according to a report in today’s New Scientist magazine.

Warp 7, Mr. Sulu!

And speaking of space, Robert Scoble thinks the Celeston SkyScout (pictured above and to right) was “hands down the coolest thing” he saw at CES 2006. This device when pointed up at the sky will instantly identify the object or choose an object from its 6,000 object database to guide the user.

The Skyscout will be available on March 26 for $399.99 USD . You can preorder through Amazon now (affiliate), if you like.

Today Samsung showed off a 7-inch flexible LCD screen:

… the plastic LCD module is designed to maintains its thickness uniformly even when it bends as well as enabling higher-definition quality than the firm’s five-inch products, the biggest one up until now.

The idea of wearing a computer might seem super geek, but with the advent of Tablet PCs and thinner and more flexible screens this really isn’t that futuristic or cutting edge any longer. Before wearing full blown computers, how about LCD shirts that can change information from: “I’m blogging this” to “Not blogging this.” Beats changing shirts at events.

A Lucent spinoff company called InPhase Technologies will distribute 300 GB discs in 2006 through Hitachi Maxell using holographic storage:

The discs, holding 300GB each, use so-called Tapestry holographic memory technology to store data by interference of light. They are also able to read and write data at 10 times the speed of a normal DVD.

This doesn’t seem to be the same holographic credit card sized storage that I heard about a year or two ago. The one where there were no moving parts and people could carry a TB of storage on a credit card. There are two beams, a reference beam and a signal beam which are flashed in a single burst of light. A motor spins the disc so all sides of the disc can be written or read.

Inphase makes available a couple videos like: Data at the Speed of Light.mov (Quicktime) which goes through how the process works and explains that holygraphic storage data has a lifecycle of 50 years compared to 7 years for traditional DVDs. The video also says “at a competitve price” which is what will truly make this format mainstream.

No idea what the actual price will be, but if it is competitive with DVDs and DVD drives, watch out. 300 GB discs are definitely enticing.

Scientists have been slicing, dicing and studying worms trying to figure out what allows their ability to regenerate and have made at least a small breakthrough: smedwi-2. That’s the name of the gene that when silenced, doesn’t allow the worm to regenerate. There’s more, but beware it’s kind of brainy for first thing in the morning:

Elimination of smedwi-2 not only leads to an inability to mount a regenerative response after amputation, but also to the eventual demise of unamputated animals along a reproducible series of events, that is, regression of the head tip, curling of the body and tissue disintegration. These defects are very similar to what is observed after the planarian stem cells are destroyed by lethal doses of irradiation.

In other words, not only does the silencing of this smedwi-2 gene stop regeneration, it also kills the worms with the silenced gene that weren’t cut on. Already, people with amputated limbs are being helped by robotics, but wouldn’t it be cool if it would be possible to regrow these limbs organically? It’s coming someday. Wonder if I’ll be here long enough to see it happen?

Don’t laugh, at the end of those study findings it indicates that genes similar to smedwi-2 are found in humans.

In a parallel world, I must be a scientist conducting studies that can change the world. Either that or I’m just a sucker for a good scientific discovery. Bumblebees getting a one-up on our souped up computer brains? Say it isn’t so!

eurekalert.org:

“Our study shows that the tiny brain of the bee can not only solve this difficult task, which the most sophisticated computers still can’t resolve, but suggests they do so by using the colour relationships between objects in a scene that were statistically most useful in their past experience. Because this same strategy is also used by humans, our work on bees, in conjunction with our work on humans, may enable us to understand the general principles by which any visual system (natural or artificial) can construct useful behaviour from ambiguous sensory information.

Something else to note is how freakishly good the brain is at recalling memories despite the passage of time triggered by sensory experiences. Like when I went back to the house I grew up in a couple months ago and the memories flooded back on me long believed to be forgotten. Howupon seeing, smelling, hearing or tasting do we recall memories long believed to have been lost? It’s like there is a second hard drive in our brains that has unlimited write capabilities and limited read capability based upon unique sensory sensations.

If only we could tap into that more often, imagine the capacity of learning and instant recall?

er, maybe collides with earth:

There’s a 1-in-300 chance that a recently discovered asteroid, believed to be about 1,300 feet long, could hit Earth in 2029, a NASA (news - web sites) scientist said Thursday, but he added that the perceived risk probably will be eliminated once astronomers get more detail about its orbit.

Perhaps it is just my own fears talking here (and sorry to do this around the holiday season, but it’s kind of a slow tech news week), but though I’m not that familiar with the above source, I’m more familiar with USA TODAY:

The asteroid’s chance for hitting Earth on April 13, 2029 has now been categorized as a 4 on the Torino Scale. The level 4 rating � never before issued � is reserved for “events meriting concern” versus the vast majority of potentially threatening asteroids that merely merit “careful monitoring.”

15 months ago March 21, 2014 was also linked as a possible day an asteroid would collide with earth and my comments still stand:

Something about the prospect of an asteroid actually, really, plausibly colliding with earth like had reportedly wiped out the dinosaurs millions of years ago seems more of a threat than nuclear war to me

Don’t try to say this one too fast but this plastic technically named: polyethylenedioxythiophene can hold memory in a very small package. US researchers have found that this material could let them pack a gigabyte of data into a sugar cube-sized device. The researchers predict they’ll have this in working devices within a few years.