Murphy’s Law always applies when we attempt major leaps in space exploration, and the Phoenix Mars Mission is no exception. Soon after landing, the NASA lab on the Martian North Pole had trouble filtering soil into a collection area because it was clumpy. The unit was shaken in an effort to break the clumps. The shaking is believed to have caused an electrical short circuit on one of the ovens designed to analyze chemicals in the soil. New material was expected to be deposited in the Lander’s wet chemistry lab as early as today and it’s possible the oven will short circuit again. “Since there is no way to assess the probability of another short circuit occurring, we are taking the most conservative approach and treating the next sample to TEGA as possibly our last,” says Peter Smith, Phoenix’s principal investigator.
Here Peter Smith discuss the Lander’s goals in a Design News podcast.
Ford and Unifi, maker of Repreve, will gather and recycle 2 million plastic bottles at CES and other shows for conversion into the Repreve seat fabric used in the 2012 Focus EV.
Thanks to embedded electronics, medical devices are getting smaller and smarter than ever. Pacemakers and implantable defibrillators are now able to call physicians. MRIs, CT scanners, and ultrasound machines are gaining mobility. And the venerable Band-Aid may soon be able to detect illnesses ranging from fevers to heart arrhythmias. On February 21, join Design News senior editor Charles Murray for a wide-ranging discussion, "Embedded Angles for Medical Products," which will explore the latest developments in medical electronics. The discussion will examine advances in medical device technology and offer an inside look at the embedded electronics behind it.
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