Month: December 2016

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

The end is nigh for Cassini, the venerable probe that NASA launched to Saturn way back in 1997. The probe has dazzled us with views of the diverse planetary system since 2004. Now engineers want to send the aging spacecraft out with style, and as part of its final maneuvers Cassini will skim through Saturn's iconic ring system 20 times during the coming months before the mission's end on September 15, 2017.

Cassini performed the first of these maneuvers last weekend. As part of this re-positioning to a new flight path, Cassini has captured new photos of Saturn's northern hemisphere and its distinctive, hexagon-shaped storm. These images were taken with the spacecraft's wide-angle camera on December 2, just before the first graze of Saturn's rings, from a distance of about 640,000km.

Enlarge / FAYETTEVILLE, NC - DECEMBER 06: President-elect Donald Trump shakes the hand of retired U.S. Marine General James Mattis after nominating him for Secretary of Defense. (credit: Getty | Sara D. Davis )

Over at Theranos, some big names are out, one notable name is staying put, and some others were accidentally outed.

On Thursday, the disgraced blood testing company announced that members of its distinguished yet puzzling "board of counselors" would be stepping down January 1. Those members include former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, former defense secretary William Perry, and former senators Sam Nunn and Bill Frist. Also going is Riley Bechtel, chairman of the country’s largest construction and civil engineering company, who served on Theranos’ board of directors.

Notably absent from the list of high-profile departures is retired Marine Corps Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis. The four-star general, who joined Theranos’ board of directors in 2013, just so happens to also be President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary. Trump formally announced the nomination Tuesday evening.

Enlarge (credit: Eli Christman)

A Virginia state court has decided that a license plate number is not personal information—essentially validating law enforcement’s use of license plate readers in the commonwealth.

In a recently published opinion letter, the 19th Judicial Circuit of Virginia ruled against a man who sued the Fairfax County Police Department (FCPD) and its chief of police. The man alleges that the agency has been "unlawfully" collecting information about his license plate in violation of state law.

Circuit Court Judge Robert J. Smith ruled that a license plate number is not “personal information,” as defined under Virginia law, essentially because, as license plate numbers must be made publicly visible, there can be no privacy interest. Therefore, according to Judge Smith, license plate numbers cannot be considered “personal information.” (It is worth noting however, that in Google Street View, all license plates are blurred.)

Enlarge (credit: Getty | Dan Kitwood )

Scientists have been investigating the potential effects of climate change for years. Though many of the predicted changes are now occurring, such as loss of sea ice, accelerated sea level rise, and more extreme heat waves, not all effects are well understood.

Most of us are aware that the global temperatures are creeping upward as a result of heat trapped in the atmosphere due to greenhouse gas emissions. But we may not know the full extent of changes this rise in temperature could have on our world. In a recent investigation published in the scientific journal Nature, scientists have explored the influence of global warming on soil carbon stocks located in the earth’s soil, which is still unclear to the scientific community.

Soil carbon stocks have a role to play in climate change because of the many biological processes of organisms living in the soil. Plants, microbes, and animals that live in the soil require exchange of carbon with the atmosphere, resulting in either sequestration of carbon through processes such as photosynthesis or liberation of carbon through processes such as decay. Scientists believe that the rate of these processes could be accelerated by global warming.