NASA Budget Bill Passes House GOP With Surprising Reinstated Funds

The White House, having made several deleterious cuts to major NASA initiatives, may have inadvertently led their foes in the GOP to maintain their adversity towards Obama by (gasp) aiding the greater quest for science.

According to the 2015 NASA budgetary report, passed this week by the House, $100 million has been set aside for the preliminary efforts at exploring the Martian moon of Europa, which is a target of interest due to its watery composition beneath an icy surface.

The report also maintains that the SOFIA infrared telescope continues to produce "good science" and will not be defunded, claiming, "Instead, the recommendation provides $70,000,000 for SOFIA, which should be sufficient to support the aircraft’s fixed costs (flight crews, required maintenance, etc.) as well as a base level of scientific observations."

While still requiring compromises and a vote of approval from the Senate and the White House, the bill maintains a startling level of scientific care, atypical to the GOP's usual platforms. An additional $15 million (previously slashed by the White House) has been proposed for education and public outreach, a crucial component of inspiring the engineers, astronauts, and adventurers who will carry out these projects in the coming decades.

Read more about the 2015 NASA Budget here.

Source:http://blog.agupieware.com/2014/06/nasa-budget-bill-passes-house-gop-with.html

Reprinted On The Red Planet: Could We "Grow" Humans To Colonize Mars?

Martian exploration is a tempting challenge for space agencies worldwide, but NASA's current budgetary woes and the extensively dangerous elements of such an operation are keeping any advanced projects on the red planet still firmly in the realm of science fiction.

However, scientists have pondered a fascinating plan to colonize Mars much in the way that they suspect life arrived here on earth: first send bacteria to terraform the harsh environment, then send bacteria encoded with DNA plans.

The Huffington Post quoted Harvard biologist Gary Ruvkun as saying, "If we could also send along assembly instructions, for the bacteria to produce an array of descendent organisms that assemble the genome segments over some time period into a human, it is a way to 'print' humans remotely."

The ability to "encode" the human genome into bacteria may be within our reach in the next few decades, and though it may be some time before the human-printing "instructions" can manifest, the idea offers an interesting option for the beginning of Martian colonization.

Source:http://blog.agupieware.com/2014/06/reprinted-on-red-planet-could-we-grow.html

Hemp-Composite Cars Could Roll In Eco-Friendly Transportation Future

With many Americans waking up to the fact that oil is politically, economically, and environmentally unstable as a continued abundant resource, alternatives for automotive transportation are manifesting some interesting new "green" ideas.

According to www.lamag.com, "The first car manufactured in an eco-friendly manner was supposedly prototyped by Henry Ford in 1941, with a plastic composite of organic materials including hemp. That was over 70 years ago." They hasten to add that a variety of concept cars built from hemp composites could soon be ready to roll as viable new auto options. With bodies that don't necessarily sacrifice style to include sustainability, the various modern models focus on hemp composite-based, eco-friendly construction, rechargeable battery or compressed-air power, and clean emissions.

With the topic of marijuana legalization still a hot-button political issue (despite creating millions in tax revenue in Colorado, where is has been legalized), the notion of industrial hemp as a constructive fiber continues to prove itself strong and versatile.

The Lotus Eco Elise

Source:http://blog.agupieware.com/2014/06/hemp-composite-cars-could-roll-in-eco.html

NASA Plans To Test Heavy-Payload Martian Parachute In Hawaii

Don't worry, Earthlings, this is not a flying saucer, though it may someday help colonize a distant world.  NASA is test-dropping a new and improved parachute system, simulating space in the thin high-atmospheric air over the Hawaiian island of Kauai. The supersonic parachute, twice the size of the current parachute used to land the Martian rovers on the red planet, will be tested today in hopes that larger payloads (hopefully someday to include humans) can be delivered safely to Mars.

Robert Braun, a former NASA technology chief and current space technology professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, says the new tests are "advancing capabilities and creating the engineering knowledge needed for the next generation of Mars landers."

With the space agency's funds and efforts frequently embattled by political issues, it is inspiring to see them looking towards a major project for the future.

Source:http://blog.agupieware.com/2014/06/nasa-plans-to-test-heavy-payload.html

Oxymoronic GOP Science Committee Claims Global Warming "Debunked"

Despite many reputable, repeatable reports on the topic presented to the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, the GOP Science Committee chairman Rep. Lamar Smith informed the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Process that their facts were wrong.

Claiming that the figures (accepted by 97% of scientists) that global warming is primarily man-made have been "debunked", Rep. Smith went on to blame Obama for the misrepresentation.

Human contributions to global warming are vast, including the excavation and burning of fossil fuels, as well as the acceleration of deforestation, both of which are tied to financial interests of the Republican party.

Despite placing blame elsewhere and burying their heads in the non-scientific sand, the GOP Science Committee's claims are refuted by many studies, including one by NASA, that base their findings from technological readings, well-observed weather issues, and changing environments worldwide.

Source:http://blog.agupieware.com/2014/06/oxymoronic-gop-science-committee-claims.html

June 5th: Reset the Net

Proponents of an open and secure internet are pushing back against indiscriminate surveillance this week. Tech Crunch has the details:

A number of websites for Internet services, businesses and even several nonprofits, including Amnesty International, Greenpeace, MoveOn.org, and others, will participate in a series of online anti-NSA protests this week. The websites, which also include Reddit, Imgur, BoingBoing, DuckDuckGo, and several others are taking part in an online campaign called “Reset the Net,” which is specifically aimed at encouraging website owners and mobile app creators to integrate increased security protections into their services, like SSL and HSTS, for example. The overall goal is to make it more difficult for government agencies to engage in their spying activities.

Explains the campaign on its website, ResetTheNet.org: “The NSA is exploiting weak links in Internet security to spy on the entire world, twisting the Internet we love into something it was never meant to be: a panopticon.” While it’s not possible to stop the attacks, the site adds, those who offer users online services could help cut down on the mass surveillance by building proven security into the “everyday internet.”

Source:http://blog.agupieware.com/2014/06/june-5th-reset-net.html

OmniFaces 1.8.1 released!

OmniFaces 1.8 1.8.1 has finally been released!

Also this release had some unscheduled delay for various reasons. Great programmers are also just humans with a "life" next to all the development work. I personally had after all a lot more time needed to acclimatize myself to the Netherlands after having lived in Curaçao for almost 6 years (still don't really feel home here outside the working hours, still want to go back once the kids grow out the house). Arjan had among others also some unforeseen issues with his new home.

As usual, in the What's new page of the showcase site you can find an overview of all what's been added/changed/fixed for 1.8. The three most useful additions are the , and @Eager.

Update: during fixing issue 35 for MyFaces, I accidentally removed a line necessary for deferred script from combined resource handler, causing it to combine those scripts twice (once in head and once in deferred script) :( OmniFaces 1.8.1 was quickly released with a fix. Reminder for the future: don't release on a Monday.

Installation

Non-Maven users: download OmniFaces 1.8.1 JAR and drop it in /WEB-INF/lib the usual way, replacing the older version if any.

Maven users: use 1.8.1.

    org.omnifaces
    omnifaces
    1.8.1

Defer loading and parsing of JavaScript files

If you've ever analyzed the performance of your website using a tool like Google PageSpeed, then you'll probably recognize the recommendation to defer loading and parsing of JavaScript files. Basically, the recommendation is to load JavaScript files only when the browser is finished with rendering of the page. This is to be achieved by dynamically creating a