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NASA has updated a planned call for proposals for lunar landers to enable a human mission in 2024, broadening the scope to include integrated lander concepts. In a procurement filing issued late April 26, NASA updated an earlier notice published April 8 that announced plans to solicit proposals for an ascent stage for a human-rated lunar lander. Instead, the upcoming procurement will seek proposals for “a complete integrated lander” that includes an ascent module as well as a descent module and transfer stage. A formal call for proposals, part of NASA’s Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships, or NextSTEP, program...

Concepts—Simple Basic Principles and Nature of Concepts by Reginald Firehammer In the brief introduction to concepts I explained that a concept is a complex consisting of two components, a word and a definition, and that its only function is to identify something which is isolated or indicated by the definition. What a concept identifies are existents, and existents can be anything: entities, events, qualities, relationships, or other concepts; concrete or abstract. Our simplest, and earliest, concepts identify existents we can directly perceive, things we see, hear, smell, taste, and feel both externally and internally. Such existents include objects, events, qualities,...

Introduction to Concepts The Building Blocks of Knowledge by Reginald Firehammer Not all our knowledge is absolutely certain, but much of it is, and all the knowledge we must have to live successfully and happily in this world we can know with absolute certainty. One barrier to knowledge is not knowing what knowledge itself is. The purpose of this introduction is to clear up from the beginning one major problem with all attempts to understand the nature of knowledge which is the confusion that surrounds the terminology that must be used in any discussion of knowledge or epistemology. It is...

SCIENCE Notebook Five-month-old babies can comprehend concepts for which they have not yet learned words, suggesting that some types of thinking precede language, researchers have found. A simple experiment probed what has become one of the most complex questions in psychology -- the role of language in learning. Some scholars believe language directs the ways people think, so that learning one language produces a different conceptual view of the world than learning another language. Susan J. Hespos at Vanderbilt University and Elizabeth S. Spelke at Harvard University found that 5-month-old babies being reared in English-speaking homes were able to grasp...

  A Universal Mistake One of the most important of Ayn Rand's contributions to the field of epistemology is contained in the seventh chapter of her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology entitled, "The Cognitive Role of Concepts." In it she explains how the world we are conscious of is comprised of an infinite complexity of existents, events, and relationships and why it is not possible for us to comprehend this complexity simply by perceiving it. To understand it, we must "break it up," into manageable pieces we can identify and understand. This, Ayn Rand explains, is the role of concepts."The essence...

FACT SHEET UNITED STATES AIR FORCE Air Force Research Laboratory Office of Public Affairs 3550 Aberdeen Avenue S.E., Kirtland AFB NM 87117-5776 (505) 846-1911; Fax (505) 846-0423 ACTIVE DENIAL TECHNOLOGY Directed Energy Non-Lethal DemonstrationPhotograph of the demonstration hardware Active Denial Technology is a breakthrough non-lethal technology that uses millimeter-wave electromagnetic energy to stop, deter and turn back an advancing adversary from relatively long range. It is expected to save countless lives by providing a way to stop individuals without causing injury, before a deadly confrontation develops. The technology was developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Department...