NRP Post www.researchpark.arc.nasa.gov 13 Taksha University – The Opening Months by Ravi Deepak Taksha University (TU) offers technical short-courses (6-18 hours) that aid workforce development and capacity building in a variety of subject areas. Courses are taught by renowned educators and research experts. Since opening our NRP Silicon Valley office in Feb. 2011, we have hosted local courses. In March, Dr. Don Edberg taught a 3-day course on Spacecraft Design in San Jose to a class from around the country. In May, Dr. Ben Herman presented a smaller 2-day course on Atmospheric Radiation at NRP . Both courses, and more on atmospheric/space science, are currently offered on the east coast and in Albuquerque, NM. See www.taksha.org for more information.
Last Fall 2010, in cooperation with Science and Technology Corporation (STC), TU helped manage six student intern research projects at Ames under the Science and Technology International Education Program (STIEP , www.STIEP .org). It was STIEP’s first class at NASA Ames in its 17 years of sponsoring interns at other US research labs. This Fall STIEP will sponsor more students from Technical University, Delft-NL here. For more research opportunities, please contact [email protected].
Upcoming Taksha courses: TRS122: Introduction to Spacecraft Design and System Engineering – Dr. Don Edberg • August 17-19, 2011: Newport News, VA • September 14-16, 2011: COSMIAC, Albuquerque, NM • December 14-16, 2011: Greenbelt, MD
TRS101: Fundamentals of Atmospheric Radiation -- Dr. Ben Herman • October 2011: Greenbelt, MD • November 2011: Hampton Roads, VA Wish You Were Here… Postcard from the Zeppelin! by Rachel Loya NASA Research Park and NASA personnel may have noticed the absence of the Zeppelin “Eureka” since the start of April. She left on a six month tour of the USA on April 5 and is now officially on the Farmers “Covering Communities” Tour. Barnstorming the world’s largest airship across the US is no mean feat, and the on-the- road team averages around 22 people, with two mast trucks and numerous ground support vehicles! Of course we’ve had all those tornados and storms to deal with, and that got us stuck outside New Orleans waiting for the worst to pass. We’ve since been through Florida and up the East Coast, flying over the Big Apple and making a stop to honor the past at NAS Lakehurst. We celebrated July 4 in Chicago (The Windy City!) and at the end of July were at the EAA AirVenture at Oshkosh, inspiring kids of all ages. The full schedule of the tour is at www.farmersairship.com
Aside from covering Farmers events such as golf, NASCAR
and charitable flights, Eureka is flying passengers in most of
the locations we are stopping. We are also managing to do
some special mission work too, testing some new cameras
and detectors as well as doing some pilot training. We also just
finished our tests of a new LIDAR system that we look forward to
offering on a regular basis once we return to Moffett in October.
Inquiries should go to [email protected].
Speaking of our return, now is the time to think about booking
your fall or holiday season 2011 flight aboard “Eureka”
if you haven’t already. We continue to have specials for
locals and our flights are starting to fill up. Send inquiries to
[email protected] and, in the meantime, know
we’re also thinking about a ‘welcome back’ event so watch for
more details!
June 6, 2011 our airship became the first Zeppelin to sail the New York City skies since the
Hindenburg more than 70 years earlier. We also made a special flight to Lakehurst Naval Air
Station, where the Hindenburg made its final “landing.” While there we hovered over the memo-
rial marking the site of where the ship went down.
Photo courtesy of Airship Ventures
Five9 Network Systems Collaborates with
Fusion-io to Deliver 2.1 Million Input/Output
Operations per Second in a 20 Terabyte
Memory in Slim 3.5 inch Appliance
by Laleh Mohseni, Five9 NS, edited by K. Burton
NRP Tenant Five9 Network Systems has announced a
collaboration with Salt Lake City-based Fusion-io, pioneer
of a next generation storage memory platform, for high-
density placement of Fusion io’s drive technology in
Five9 NS’s systems.
Five9NS designs server, software, storage and networking
products with lifecycles that meet the exacting requirements
of Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) customers in key
vertical industries including energy, government, healthcare,
printing and telecommunications.
Now, the Five9 NS “S” series computer platform, integrated
with Fusion’s ioDrive, ioDrive Duo and ioDrive Octal
technology, is available to Five9NS OEM channels. This
new series meets the requirements of OEMs, Value-added
Resellers and Independent Software Vendors dependent
upon extreme applications performance for competitive
differentiation, the companies say.
The Five9NS “S” series platforms will now deliver up to 20
terabytes of data, in a slim 3.5 inch high rack mountable
package, delivering as much as 2.1 million Input/Output
operations per second with a choice of Fusion’s ioDrive,
ioDrive Duo or ioDrive Octal systems.
The benefits of the speedy new system are increased data
center efficiency, reduced operational cost by reducing
expensive storage infrastructure and reduced power and
cooling expenses, noted Five9 NS CEO Souheil Saliba.
“Fusion-io is pleased to work with strategic Alliance
Members like Five9 NS to offer customers appliances
that can be tailored to suit the needs of their individual
organizations, while at the same time increasing the
reliability and efficiency of their IT infrastructure, ” said Jim
Dawson, EVP Sales for Fusion-io. “We believe that the high-
performance, low latency “S” series systems bring flexibility,
scalability and reduced capital and operational expenditures
to enterprise organizations to meet increasingly demanding
needs, while working within their IT budgets. ”
Fusion-io is a provider of system, application and database
acceleration, allowing companies to rethink the way they
architect their data systems.
NRP Post
14 www.nasa.gov
A dozen leaders of EPA Region 9 in San
Francisco were briefed by NRP Director Michael
Marlaire and given a tour of various NRP partners.
Former Secretary of Defense William Perry
(second from left) toured NRP Partner Skytran
with CEO Jerry Sanders (left) and Dr. Robert
Baersh (right), joined by NASA Ames Acting
Deputy Chuck Duff.
Ames Center Director S. Pete Worden (center)
with KleenSpeed Technologies’ President Tim
Collins (right) and CTO Dante Zeviar (left)
at the Director’s Dinner held May 7 at NASA
Ames Conference Center.
NRP Post
www.researchpark.arc.nasa.gov 15
At NRP–With reQall Rover,
Your Phone as Personal Secretary
by Kevin C. Tofel
Each day I have the same morning routine: The alarm sounds;
I reach over to shut it off, and then I grab my smartphone.
Before even jumping out of bed, I’ll likely spend 15 – 20 min-
utes with my handset, checking app after app to see what
happened while I was sleeping and what’s going to happen
as the day progresses. A tap here for the e-mail queue to see
what’s important and actionable. A tap there for the calendar
and appointments for today. Another tap, tap, tap for the
weather, Twitter messages and maybe the traffic if I’m plan-
ning to venture into town. Sound familiar? If it does, then
listen to the sound I heard from my handset this morning: it’s
a new Android app called reQall Rover that’s meant to turn
your smartphone into an intelligent information assistant.
Hello Personal Assistant
ReQall Rover, currently in private beta, is the newest software
from the folks behind reQall, a natural language memo ser-
vice spun off from MIT’s Media Lab, that helps manage per-
sonal information. And in under 90 seconds, it just told me
some key data about my upcoming day. The weather helps
me choose my clothes. I know what my first appointment is,
understand what my email queue is like, and I learned that
a Facebook friend takes photos of popcorn showers. OK, so
maybe that last bit isn’t important, but you get the idea. This
Voice Summary feature is available on demand with a button
tap or can be scheduled up to three times per day in
the software.
I’ve been using the software for nearly a week, and I can
already see huge potential because it aggregates important
data from the various web services I already use. That may
be the best description of how reQall Rover works: combin-
ing natural language processing with APIs from third-party
services, it delivers personalized information to keep me on
track, ranging from upcoming appointments, action items,
local trending terms on Twitter, traffic nearby, and more.
Upcoming appointments generate information on meeting
attendees through LinkedIn and other sources. You can also
speak to the software to ask questions as it builds up a data-
base of web links and user-generated answers.
Essentially, reQall Rover is bringing important, personal
information to me, instead of me having to open app after
app just to get the data I need. In that regard, it shares
similarities to Siri, Vlingo and Zazu, all of which are trying
to sift through personalized data and bring us relevant
information. Given all the data on our smartphones and in the
cloud, shouldn’t we expect that from our handsets? Indeed,
why haven’t we already seen our smartphones become more
efficient assistants?
New Technology Enablers
For that answer, I turned to Don Norman, a twice-retired
consultant on human-centered design interaction, book
author of “The Design of Everyday Things” and the “Chief
Mentor” to reQall. In a phone conversation, he explained
that we finally have three key elements that will enable
such solutions:
Today we have
advanced micro-
processors
and
memory
that
offer
computing
capabilities
we
could only dream
of 30 or 40 years
ago. We also have
fast communica-
tions
networks
so that we can
offload
heavier
processing to the
cloud. And finally,
we have artificial
intelligence
and
natural language
abilities that can
put all of the infor-
mation together.
We haven’t seen
prior
solutions
such
as
reQall
Rover
due
to
two
constraints.
These
advances
are all relatively new in terms of hardware; it simply wasn’t
possible before. Most importantly, two types of knowledge
are needed: technology and psychology, which is a rare com-
bination. The technology has advanced, but we’re only now
pairing it with the understanding of what information people
need and how they track their day.
So how does all of this technology come together to make a
smartphone smarter? As I alluded to before, it’s all in the APIs
from services I’m already using. Google knows who and what
is important to me based on Gmail and my Google Clendar.
My phone knows where I am, so reQall Rover can sift though
local information such as Yelp recommendations, nearby
Dealmap or Groupon deals, Google Map traffic issues, and
where to find the best cup of coffee, no matter where I am
and in any weather. Indeed, the more you connect to reQall
Rover, the more it learns about you and the better it can assist.
The reQall Rover aggregates data from
websites you use for easier access
Image courtesy of reQall
In Memoriam Long time NASA and NRP friend Nobel Laureate Dr. Baruch Blumberg succumbed to a fatal heart attack during a conference at NRP on April 5, 2011 at 86 years of age. Michael Marlaire, Director, NASA Research Park, addresses Danish CEOs on June 27, 2011 during their visit to NRP as part of Denmark’s Executive Leadership program. NRP Post 16 www.nasa.gov Moon Express Announces Dr. Alan Stern as Chief Scientist by Daven Maharaj Mountain View, CA July 21, 2011 Moon Express, a Google Lunar X PRIZE contender, announced July 21 that internationally recognized planetary scientist Dr. Alan Stern will be the Chief Scientist and Mission Architect for the company. The announcement was made as lunar scientists from around the world gathered at NASA Research Park for their annual Lunar Science Forum, convened by the NASA Lunar Science Institute.
Dr. Stern is the former NASA Associate Administrator for Science and an outspoken advocate for com- mercial space who believes in the power of private enterprise to complement government efforts. While at NASA he presided over $4.5B of planetary science, astrophysics, heliophysics, and earth science missions while also serving as the Principle Investigator of the agency’s New Horizon’s mission to Pluto. “I am thrilled to be working with the Moon Express team as Chief Scientist, ” he said. “Moon Express has the business model, talent, and the resources to blaze a commer - cial trail to the Moon and revolutionize the way we do lunar science and exploration. The lunar future is bright. ”
Named by Time Magazine as one of the world’s most influential people, Dr. Stern has pushed many boundaries of science with innovative experiments and mission initiatives, including booking 8 sub - orbital spaceflights on Virgin Galactic and XCOR spaceships for space research. As Chief Scientist of Moon Express, Dr. Stern is helping the company design lunar missions that will support the com- pany’s commercial operations, leading the com- pany’s research into materials on the Moon that could have scientific and economic value for Earth and space exploration.
“We are honored to have a scientist of Alan Stern’s caliber working with us, ” said Moon Express co- founder and CEO Dr. Robert (Bob) Richards. “Alan’s unique combination of optimism, deep experience, and no-nonsense style helps propel Moon Express forward while remaining focused on the achievable. ” E d i t o r ...................D i a n e F a r r a r Layout and Design. . . . . . . . . . . Carol Le Phone: (650) 604-2NRP Email: [email protected] Website: www.researchpark.arc.nasa.gov NRP Post