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"When the Curiosity Rover was launched onto its nine-month-long journey to the planet Mars on Nov. 26, 2011, the rover carried as one of its many scientific packages a calibration target; a 1909 Lincoln cent. The cent is mounted near the bottom of the target, with its obverse facing outward."

Early voting in Illinois got off to a rocky start Monday, as votes being cast for Republican candidates were transformed into votes for Democrats. Republican state representative candidate Jim Moynihan went to vote Monday at the Schaumburg Public Library. “I tried to cast a vote for myself and instead it cast the vote for my opponent,” Moynihan said. “You could imagine my surprise as the same thing happened with a number of races when I tried to vote for a Republican and the machine registered a vote for a Democrat.” He notified the election judge at his polling place and...

The number of atoms in this silicon sphere is known given or taken 20 atoms each 10^9. The atom distance was measured by the X-ray interferometer on the left. Credit: Enrico Massa and Carlo Sasso ================================================================================================ An ongoing international effort to redefine the kilogram by 2018 has been helped by recent efforts from a team researchers from Italy, Japan and Germany to correlate two of the most precise measurements of Avogadro's number and obtain one averaged value that can be used for future calculations. Their results are published this week in the Journal of Physical and Chemical Reference Data. Avogadro's...

In the past week we've see votes cast on machines in Illinois' Cook County and in Maryland switch from Republican to Democrat due to "calibration errors." Watchdog.org has done phenomenal work in documenting changed votes. Now, a new report from The Weekly Standard shows that votes cast in Illinois for Republicans are being changed yet again in favor of Democrats. ... So what do we do about this? If machines in different states repeatedly changed votes from Democrat to Republican, Eric Holder would have launched a federal investigation under suspicions of fraud and I doubt "calibration error" would be accepted...

A “calibration issue” that reportedly flipped Republican votes into the Democratic column isn’t the only problem plaguing Maryland voting machines. State officials say two touch screens malfunctioned during early voting, too. Now the Maryland Republican Party is calling for an investigation. “No matter what the reason, steps must be taken to protect the integrity of this election,” state GOP Chair Diana Waterman told the Baltimore Sun after Watchdog.org reported the glitches. Nikki Charlson, deputy administrator of the Maryland Election Board, said the problems were limited to a handful of machines in just three counties. “We took three machines out of...

Voting machines that switch Republican votes to Democrats are being reported in Maryland. “When I first selected my candidate on the electronic machine, it would not put the ‘x’ on the candidate I chose — a Republican — but it would put the ‘x’ on the Democrat candidate above it,” Donna Hamilton said. “This happened multiple times with multiple selections. Every time my choice flipped from Republican to Democrat. Sometimes it required four or five tries to get the ‘x’ to stay on my real selection,” the Frederick, Md., resident said last week. Queen Anne County Sheriff Gary Hofmann said...

If a pair of Transportation Security Administration officers strolling by a Sea-Tac Airport ticket counter wish you happy holidays and ask where you're traveling, it might be more than just Christmas spirit. Travelers at Sea-Tac and dozens of other major airports across America are being scrutinized by teams of TSA behavior-detection officers specially trained to discern the subtlest suspicious behaviors. TSA officials will not reveal specific behaviors identified by the program -- called SPOT (Screening Passengers by Observation Technique) -- that are considered indicators of possible terrorist intent. But a central task is to recognize microfacial expressions -- a flash...