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If you have a "smart" mobile phone, then you have a digital camera in your pocket, backpack or purse. The camera sensor built into these phones provide high resolution images that are captured in a digital format readily displayed, saved and shared with others. This same technology is now being built into flexible scopes for inspecting the internal channels of medical devices. This approach to flexible scope design offers a number of advantages over traditional fiber optics.
First, and foremost, is an incredible improvement of the image quality. With fiber optics, as the number of glass fibers are reduced, the resolution or quality of the image is also reduced. In very small bundles, below 5mm in diameter, the image can be blurry. Conversely, with the use of modern digital camera technology, the optical imaging sensor is actually placed right at the tip of the scope, delivering a clear, well defined image.
Another issue often experienced with fiber optics, is their delicate nature. A fiber optic scope has thousands of individual strands of glass. These strands are very delicate and when flexed and bent, they easily break. Not so with modern digital camera technology. The only thing running through the shaft of these flexible inspection scopes are wires that relay the bits and bytes from the image sensor at the tip - and deliver the power to that image sensor as well as the LED light also located at the tip.
Power and lighting bring up another important advancement made possible by digital imaging technology - unlike with traditional fiber optic systems that require a separate light source and some kind of individually powered camera coupling mechanism - the digital imaging technology found in flexible inspection scopes, including the lighting, camera and image capturing system, are all powered by the USB port of a desktop or laptop computer.
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We consider local news programming a service to the community, and we take that responsibility extremely seriously. So we’re always looking at different ways to wrap technology around journalism to create more timely and compelling stories and videos for viewers.
#BlackHistoryMonth #tbt: Being the first African American woman to travel to space is one of Mae Jemison’s many accomplishments. A dancer, Peace Corps doctor, public speaker and astronaut, Mae went to college at age 16, holds 9 honorary doctorates and has founded many STEM-related programs for students.
Carbon and Our Changing Climate
Carbon is the backbone of life on Earth. We are made of carbon, we eat carbon and our civilizations are built on carbon. We need carbon, but that need is also entwined with one of the most serious problems facing us today: global climate change.
Forged in the heart of aging stars, carbon is the fourth most abundant element in the Universe. Most of Earth’s carbon – about 65,500 billion metric tons – is stored in rocks. The rest is in the ocean, atmosphere, plants, soil and fossil fuels.
Over the long term, the carbon cycle seems to maintain a balance that prevents all of Earth’s carbon from entering the atmosphere, or from being stored entirely in rocks. This balance helps keep Earth’s temperature relatively stable, like a thermostat.
Today, changes in the carbon cycle are happening because of people. We disrupt the cycle by burning fossil fuels and clearing land. Our Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite is providing our first detailed, global measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere at the Earth’s surface. OCO-2 recently released its first full year of data, critical to analyzing the annual CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.
The above animation shows carbon dioxide released from two different sources: fires and massive urban centers known as megacities. The animation covers a five day period in June 2006. The model is based on real emission data and is then set to run so that scientists can observe how greenhouse gas behaves once it has been emitted.
All of this extra carbon needs to go somewhere. So far, land plants and the ocean have taken up about 55 percent of the extra carbon people have put into the atmosphere while about 45 percent has stayed in the atmosphere. The below animation shows the average 12-month cycle of all plant life on Earth (on land and in the ocean). Eventually, the land and oceans will take up most of the extra carbon dioxide, but as much as 20 percent may remain in the atmosphere for many thousands of years.
Excess carbon in the atmosphere warms the planet and helps plants on land grow more. Excess carbon in the ocean makes the water more acidic, putting marine life in danger. Forest and other land ecosystems are also changing in response to a warmer world. Some ecosystems – such as thawing permafrost in the Arctic and fire-prone forests – could begin emitting more carbon than they currently absorb.
To learn more about NASA’s efforts to better understand the carbon and climate challenge, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/carbonclimate/.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
