The weak signal can cause a ship's instruments to gradually drift out of true, without setting off any alarms, leaving the ship in a different position to where it "thinks" it is.
But they experienced renewed hopes last week after Stanford scientists reported that a review of data revealed what might have been an extremely weak signal from Mars during tests on December 18 and January 4.
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That rather obvious problem accounted for 185 of the cases, with damage to the unit by the offender, problems with the black box in the offender's home, and a weak signal rounding out the technical difficulties.
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Called UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access), the technology is designed to provide better call quality indoors (where your cell shouldn't otherwise work, natch) by switching over from a weak cell signal to a stronger in-home WiFi signal.
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The New York Jets, meanwhile, selected West Virginia quarterback Geno Smith, a college star who was considered among the best quarterbacks in a relatively weak class of signal callers.
One of the complications with the MicroCell is that in order to avoid interference with local cell towers, it adjusts how strong the signal that it generates in your house is based on how weak your actual cell signal is at the time of initial activation.
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He was supposed to be the frontrunner, but his first quarter was weak, and every signal from his campaign is the quarter two won't be any better.
For instance, Toshiba says its robot has a wireless network that can be controlled in high radiation, looking for a better signal when reception is weak.
Another headache is possible "moral hazard", in that helping Greece would send a signal to other financially weak countries that they need not make tough spending decisions.
Banks that were weak would not have wanted to signal that fact widely in markets by submitting honest estimates of the high price they would have to pay to borrow, if they could borrow at all.
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Housing is the result of otherwise productive economic activity, not the driver of it, so when real estate markets reached frothy heights from 2004-06, some, including this writer, warned that the rush to the real (authored by a weak dollar) was an ominous signal.
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Meanwhile, an engineer who is concerned with getting every passenger a really good network signal can see if the weak signals are propagating through the airplane with enough power to provide a good usability experience.
Others trap workers in low-paid fields such as child care, and some even signal to employers the holder's weak academic record.
Early on, it did not help that her first policy pronouncements were to signal a retreat from Kevin Rudd's mining super profits tax, which made her look weak, and to ditch her predecessor's "Big Australia" policy, which went down well with the tabloids but seemed indicative of a lack of national ambition.
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