San Francisco, U.S.A – When game maker Doug Arduini received a cease and desist order from the largest board game company in the country, he agreed to stop selling his award-winning game, change the name and start all over. However, with no cash flow, he turned to crowd funding to save the day.

His inspiring story has a lesson worth learning for all entrepreneurs who find themselves in a cash flow crunch.

“I had orders for my game in hand from our distributor and the best way I could think of to meet new orders was to change the name of our game, and redesign the artwork to fit the new name,” said a hopeful Arduini. “Because I had already spent $130,000 of my own money dealing with the legal issues on our previous game’s name, I was not sure where to turn. Then a colleague told me about Kickstarter.com and I knew I’d found the answer to my prayers,” said Arduini excitedly.

Arduini thinks big. He is an electronic engineer with a passion for writing and developing games that turn serious learning into fun. He sees a need and fills it and began his quest with a solid purpose to turn important things people need to know into fun and create games with a social purpose.

His original game was called Non-Trivial Quest. Now it is called Non-Trivia Quest. It helps kids and adults learn things like history, geography, finance and math. The concept is noble — as kids grow up into adulthood, they need to know these things to be well-rounded, good communicators and to fit into society. The game is not a test, but an education and experience. It is intended to open up discussions, be interesting, and improve memory and develop awareness.

“I started working on Non-Trivial Quest in the summer of 1987. After I took early retirement from Cisco Systems, I thought I could finish the game in three months, but quickly discovered it would take me several more years. I finally introduced the game in March, 2011.”

Arduini’s first lesson for entrepreneurs is that things take longer than you think, but you can always go from hopeless to hopeful.

“If you run into cash-flow problems as we did, this economy makes it tougher to find funding. However, a brilliant site like Kickstarter.com really changes the name of the game for entrepreneurs,” said Arduini.

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On March 17th, NASA’s spacecraft MESSENGER revealed surprising details about Mercury’s interior and topography, changing astronomers’ understanding of the small planet and how it was formed.

MESSENGER (MErcury Space Surface ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) is the first spacecraft sent to orbit and study Mercury, which orbits the Sun a mere 36 million miles away. It’s the innermost and hottest planet in our solar system. MESSENGER was launched in August 2004. Before traveling to Mercury, it made a series of flybys around the Earth (once) and Venus (twice).

MESSENGER finally arrived at Mercury on March 18, 2011 and went around three times. Using radio signals, the spacecraft studied Mercury’s gravitational field, magnetic field, topography, internal geological structure, and chemical composition. Because the results of MESSENGER’S flybys around Mercury were so valuable, its mission was extended to last for another year in November 2011.

Mercury’s topography has changed many times since Mercury was fully formed, meaning that there has been a considerable amount of geological activity. For that reason, before studying any of the planet’s internal structure and history, MESSENGER first produced an accurate map of Mercury’s gravitational field using information derived from the planet’s topography and spin state.

Thereafter, two studies were conducted simultaneously, examining Mercury’s internal structure and geography. In one study, the researchers involved with MESSENGER discovered that the planet’s core was much larger than previously thought: it takes up 85 percent of the planet’s radius. Furthermore, it is liquid instead of solid. Previously, scientists assumed that Mercury would have been cooled enough by now for the core to be solid.

Above the core lies an unusual layer that is composed of solid sulphur and iron – a layer not found in the other rocky planets in the Solar System. The outer layers of the internal structure consist of a solid silicate crust and mantle. It is thought that inside the larger liquid core lies a smaller solid core composed of sulphur and iron.

The other study of Mercury’s topography produced other surprising discoveries. When MESSENGER’s Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA) produced a topographic model of the northern hemisphere and areas in the mid-latitude range, researchers learned that the elevation spread is smaller than similar regions on the Moon and Mars. The area that sticks out the most is lowlands that contain the northern volcanic plains.

Moreover, according to the Carnegie Institute for Science’s press release,

“… the interior plains of Caloris impact basin — 1,550 kilometers (960 miles) in diameter — have been modified so that part of the basin floor now stands higher than the rim. The elevated portion appears to be part of a quasi-linear rise that extends for approximately half the planetary circumference at mid-latitudes. These features imply that large-scale changes to Mercury’s topography occurred after the era of impact basin formation and large-scale emplacement of volcanic plains had ended.”

This new knowledge of Mercury’s internal structure and topography gives insight as to how Mercury formed thermally and how the planet’s magnetic field is generated. Details of the findings of each study from MESSENGER’s mission will appear in two separate papers, which will appear on March 23 in the journal Science.

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