Around the World

Google will be having a permanent sidebar

2009-11-22T16:03:00.000-08:00

The vice president of Google Search Product & user experience- Marissa Meyer has recently announced that Google will be permanently adding a sidebar to its search pages. She thinks that the users of Google are unhappy with the same design of Google's search interface. So, they are now testing a few changes in the Google's Search interface by adding a Sidebar on its left side and is going to soon visible to a small portion of users.

The sidebar will be consisting of some options to access content like Orkut, Google images, books, news, maps etc. There will be another option which will remember the Search History Keyword for fast search.

This will be a great change in the history of internet as the Google Search Interface is changing which was untouched for many years and millions of users are quite habituated with its daily search interface.

Einstein's Telescope: Searching for Dark Matter and the Future of the Universe

2009-10-14T14:49:00.001-07:00

“Such stunning cosmic coincidences reveal so much about nature.”

~ Leonidas Moustakas, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

The Hubble Space Telescope has revealed a never-before-seen optical alignment in space: a pair of glowing rings, one nestled inside the other like a bull's-eye pattern. The double-ring pattern is caused by the complex bending of light from two distant galaxies strung directly behind a foreground massive galaxy, like three beads on a string. The foreground galaxy is 3 billion light-years away, the inner ring and outer ring are comprised of multiple images of two galaxies at a distance of 6 and approximately 11 billion light-years.

The discovery was made by an international team of astronomers led by Raphael Gavazzi and Tommaso Treu of the University of Californi, Santa Barbara. Treu says the odds of seeing such a special alignment are so small that they “hit the jackpot” with this discovery. “When I first saw it I said ‘wow, this is insane!’ I could not believe it!”

But this sight is more than just an incredible novelty. It’s also a very rare phenomenon that can offer insights into dark matter, dark energy, the nature of distant galaxies, and the curvature of the Universe itself. The discovery is part of the ongoing Sloan Lens Advanced Camera for Surveys (SLACS) program.

The phenomenon, called gravitational lensing, occurs when a massive galaxy in the foreground bends the light rays from a distant galaxy behind it, in much the same way as a magnifying glass would. When both galaxies are perfectly lined up, the light forms a circle, called an “Einstein ring”, around the foreground galaxy. If another more distant galaxy lies precisely on the same sightline, a second, larger ring will appear.

“Such stunning cosmic coincidences reveal so much about nature. Dark matter is not hidden to lensing,” added Leonidas Moustakas of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasaden, California, USA. “The elegance of this lens is trumped only by the secrets of nature that it reveals.”

The dark matter distribution in the foreground galaxies that is warping space to create the Einstein's telescope, the gravitational lens, can be accurately mapped. In addition, the geometry of the two Einstein rings allowed the team to measure the mass of the middle galaxy precisely to be a value of 1 billion solar masses. The team reports that this is the first measurement of the mass of a dwarf galaxy at cosmological distance.

A sample of several dozen double rings such as this one would offer a purely independent measure of the curvature of space by gravity. This would help in determining what the majority of the Universe is made of, and the properties of dark energy.

Original observations made in 1970 revealed that gravitational motions of gas clouds in the Andromeda galaxy were occurring at speeds far greater than the entire observed mass of that galaxy could account for. Similar problems detected in the 1930's involving motions of entire galaxies had long been disregarded. Later observations confirmed that so-called "ordinary matter" is insufficient to account for observed gravitational effects in the cosmos. Thus the universe must contain huge amounts of "dark matter," that we cannot observe and the composition of which we do not know.

In 1998 reports of observations of distant supernovae revealed that the expansion of the universe was not slowing, as would be expected from long-term effects of gravity, but was instead accelerating. Something was overcoming the gravitational power of all of the matter in the universe. The acceleration, moreover, has not been present from the Big Bang on. For billions of years the speed of expansion slowed. Then, about 5 billion years ago, acceleration began. Obviously energy--a lot of it--- was required to explain these phenomena. This is "dark energy." We cannot detect it and currently know almost nothing about it.

Today scientists believe that 5% of the universe consists of "ordinary" [observable] matter, 23% of "dark" matter and 72% of "dark energy."

Einstein's Telescope: Searching for Dark Matter and the Future of the Universe

2009-10-14T14:49:00.000-07:00

“Such stunning cosmic coincidences reveal so much about nature.”

~ Leonidas Moustakas, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Sex In The Caribbean: Environmental Change Drives Evolutionary Change, Eventually

2009-10-13T04:08:00.000-07:00

Hungry, sexual organisms replaced well-fed, clonal organisms in the Caribbean Sea as the Isthmus of Panama arose, separating the Caribbean from the Pacific, report researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The fossil record shows that if a species could shift from clonal to sexual reproduction it survived. Otherwise it was destined for extinction, millions of years later.

Image:Tiny bryozoans in sediments dredged
up from the bottom of the Caribbean Sea
reveal that environmental change drove evolution.

Closure of the Isthmus of Panama involved a protracted sequence of volcanic and tectonic events. During the final phase, between about 4.5 and 3.5 million years ago, the Caribbean underwent a major change from a pea soup-like environment, fed by nutrient-rich waters surging up along South America, into a crystal-clear, nutrient-poor environment.

"As the Caribbean Sea was cut off from the Pacific Ocean, many new species appeared in the fossil record, and all reproduced sexually," said Aaron O'Dea, who holds a Tupper Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

Well-preserved fossils show that cupuladriid bryozoans, colonial animals similar to corals that walk around on the sea floor, reproduced either by cloning or by sex. To clone a new colony requires immediately available energy, so when nutrients are scarce, it's better not to fragment. Nutrients to form eggs and sperm needed for sex can, on the other hand, accumulate slowly over time.

O'Dea, with Jeremy Jackson, emeritus staff scientist at the Smithsonian and director of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, measured the relative amount of cloning and sex occurring in species over the last 10 million years in the Caribbean. "The two forms are unmistakable," explained O'Dea. "You can clearly see the first individual that founded a sexual colony, while a clonal colony preserves the fragment from the previous colony from which it cloned."

As predicted, clonal bryozoans rapidly disappeared from the record as the Caribbean was isolated. Species that survived did so by becoming increasingly robust to reduce the chances of fragmentation while those that failed to evolve went extinct. They are still found in the nutrient-rich eastern Pacific.

But not everyone agreed that the extinctions which occurred 1-2 million years later in the Caribbean were caused by the formation of the Isthmus—a pattern also seen in corals and molluscs. Now these authors have the evidence to be sure.

"It's important to distinguish between ecological extinction—when these organisms stopped being important players in the game—and actual extinction, when they disappeared from the geological record," said Jackson. "The idea that extinction may be delayed by millions of years after the cause is worrisome. Today an overwhelming number of species are being reduced in abundance. The forecast from the fossil record is that even if they survive now, the ultimate cause of their extinction may already have passed us by."

35 Years of the World’s Best Microscope Photography

2009-10-10T19:24:00.000-07:00

This image of the male sex organ of a flowering plant took first place in Nikon’s annual Small World photomicrography competition this year.

Chosen for both its scientific and artistic qualities from among a record 2,000 entries, this image was captured by Estonian scientist Heiti Paves.

“As part of my work as a research scientist, I have been taking photographs through the microscope for almost 30 years to observe the processes in living cells,” Paves said Thursday in a press release.

Nikon honored 20 images this year including an anglerfish ovary, cotton fibers and fish scales.

Winning the popular vote online out of 137 finalists was the image below of a bundle of fluorescent actin protein filaments captured by Dennis Breitsprecher of the Institute of Biophysical Chemistry at Germany’s Hannover Medical School.

Images: Above: Arabidopsis thaliana (thale cress) anther (20x) Confocal / Heiti Paves, Tallinn University of Technology, courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Below: Fluorescent actin protein filaments. / Dennis Breitsprecher, Institute of Biophysical Chemistry at Germany’s Hannover Medical School. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Previous winners:

2008: Pleurosigma (marine diatoms) (200x), Darkfield and Polarized Light. / Michael Stringer, Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, United Kingdom. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 2008 runners up.

2007: Double transgenic mouse embryo, 18.5 days (17x), Brightfield, Darkfield, Fluorescence (GFP and RFP). / Gloria Kwon, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Insititute. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 2007 runners up.

2006: Mouse colon (740x), 2-Photon. / Paul L. Appleton, University of Dundee, UK. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 2006 runners up.

2005: Muscoid fly (house fly) (6.25x), Reflected light. / Charles B. Krebs, Charles Krebs Photography, Issaquah, Washington, USA. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 2005 runners up.

2004: Quantum dot nanocrystals deposited on a silicon substrate (200x), Polarized reflected light. / Seth A. Coe-Sullivan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 2004 runners up.

2003: Filamentous actin and microtubules (structural proteins) in mouse fibroblasts (cells) (1000x), Fluorescence. / Torsten Wittmann, The Scripps Research Institute. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 2003 runners up.

2002: Sagittal section of rat cerebellum (40x), Fluorescence and Confocal. / Thomas J. Deerinck, National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research, University of California, San Diego. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 2002 runners up.

2001: Fresh water rotifer feeding among debris (200x), Darkfield. / Harold TaylorKensworth, UK. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 2001 runners up.

2000: Avicennia marina (mangrove) leaf (40x), Fluorescence and Differential Interference Contrast. / Daphne Zbaeren-Colbourn, Bern, Switzerland. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 2000 runners up.

1999: Newt lung cell in mitosis (5 different structures) (240x), Fluorescence. / Alexey Khodjakov, Wadsworth Center, New York State Department of Health. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 1999 runners up.

1998: Endothelial cells (100x), Fluorescence, Double Exposure. / Jakob Zbaeren, Inselspital, Bern, Switzerland. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 1998 runners up.

1997: Mouse fibroblasts (160x), Fluorescence. / Barbara A. Danowski, Union College. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 1997 runners up.

1996: Doxorubin in methanol and dimethylbenzenesulfonic acid (80x), Polarized Light. / Lars BechNaarden, The Netherlands. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 1996 runners up.

1995: Larva of Pleuronectidae (20x), Rheinberg Illumination and Polarized Light. / Christian Gautier, JACANA Press Agency, France. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 1995 runners up.

1994: Cross-section of very young beech (40x), Brightfield. / Jean Rüegger-Deschenaux, Mikroskopische Gesellschaft, Zurich, Switzerland. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 1994 runners up.

1993: Fossil Fusulinids in limestone (8x), Polarized Light. / Ron Sturm, Construction Technology Laboratories, Inc., Illinois, USA. COurtesy of Nikon Small World. The 1993 runners up.

1992: 10-year old preparation of barbital, fenacetine, valium and acetic acid (35x), Polarized Light. / Lars BechDeurne, The Netherlands. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 1992 runners up.

1991: Polyurethane elastic fiber bundle (25x), Polarized Light. / Marc Van Hove, Centexbel, Belgium. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 1991 runners up.

1990: Crystals evaporated from solution of magnesium sulfate and tartaric acid (50x), Polarized Light. / Richard H. Lee, Argonne National Laboratory. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 1990 runners up.

1989: Multiple exposure of a knitting machine needle (10x), Brightfield. / Marc Van Hove, Centexbel, Belgium. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 1989 runners up.

1988: Gold residue and gold-coated bubbles in glassy matrix (20x), Brightfield. / David Smith, Queensland, Australia. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 1988 runners up.

1987: Crystals of influenza virus neuraminidase isolated from terns (14x), Brightfield with Colored Filters. / Julie Macklin and Dr. Graeme Laver, Australian National University. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 1987 runners up.

1986: Live water mount of Hydra viridissima capturing Daphnia pulex (10x), Darkfield. / Steven F. Lowry, University of Ulster at Coleraine, North Ireland. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 1986 runners up.

1985: Formalin-fixed whole mount of a spiral nematode, multiple exposure (160x), Darkfield. / Jon D. Eisenback, North Carolina State University. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 1985 runners up.

1984: Inclusions of goethite and hematite in Brazilian agate (30x), Transmitted light with reflected fiber-optic illumination. / John I. Kolvula, Gemological Institute of America. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 1984 runners up.

1983: Suctorian attached to stalk of red algae, encircled by ring of diatoms (125x), Darkfield. / Elieen Roux, Bob Hope International Heart Research Institute. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 1983 runners up.

1982: Silverberry scaly hair whole mount (400x), Brightfield. / Jon D. Eisenback, North Carolina State University. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 1982 runners up.

1981: Collapsed bubbles from an annealed experimental electronic sealing glass (55x), Reflected Light, Nomarski Differential Interference Contrast. / David Gnizak, Ferro Corp., Independence, Ohio. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 1981 runners up.

1980: Larvacean within its feeding structure dyed with red organic carmine which the larvacean syphoned in while filter feeding (20x), Underwater camera with multiple extension tubes. / James M. King, Marine Science Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 1980 runners up.

1979: Stalked protozoan attached to a filamentous green algae with bacteria on its surface (160x), Nomarski Differential Interference Contrast. / Paul W. Johnson, University of Rhode Island. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 1979 runners up.

1978: Gold, vaporized in a tungsten boat, in a vacuum evaporator (55x), Vertical Illumination - Normarski Differential Interference. / David Gnizak, Independence, Ohio. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 1978 runners up.

1977: Crystals of rutile (titanium dioxide) and tridymite (a polymorph of quartz) in a cobalt-rich glass (350x), Combined oblique illumination and reflected light. / James W. Smith, Independence, Ohio. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 1977 runners up.

Have Humans Entered a New Stage of Evolution?

2009-10-10T18:39:00.000-07:00

Although It has taken homo sapiens several million years to evolve from the apes, the useful information in our DNA, has probably changed by only a few million bits. So the rate of biological evolution in humans, Stephen Hawking points out in his Life in the Universe lecture, is about a bit a year.

"By contrast," Hawking says, "there are about 50,000 new books published in the English language each year, containing of the order of a hundred billion bits of information. Of course, the great majority of this information is garbage, and no use to any form of life. But, even so, the rate at which useful information can be added is millions, if not billions, higher than with DNA."

This means Hawking says that we have entered a new phase of evolution. "At first, evolution proceeded by natural selection, from random mutations. This Darwinian phase, lasted about three and a half billion years, and produced us, beings who developed language, to exchange information."

But what distinguishes us from our cave man ancestors is the knowledge that we have accumulated over the last ten thousand years, and particularly, Hawking points out, over the last three hundred.

"I think it is legitimate to take a broader view, and include externally transmitted information, as well as DNA, in the evolution of the human race," Hawking said.

In the last ten thousand years the human species has been in what Hawking calls, "an external transmission phase," where the internal record of information, handed down to succeeding generations in DNA, has not changed significantly. "But the external record, in books, and other long lasting forms of storage," Hawking says, "has grown enormously. Some people would use the term, evolution, only for the internally transmitted genetic material, and would object to it being applied to information handed down externally. But I think that is too narrow a view. We are more than just our genes."

The time scale for evolution, in the external transmission period, has collapsed to about 50 years, or less.

Meanwhile, Hawking observes, our human brains "with which we process this information have evolved only on the Darwinian time scale, of hundreds of thousands of years. This is beginning to cause problems. In the 18th century, there was said to be a man who had read every book written. But nowadays, if you read one book a day, it would take you about 15,000 years to read through the books in a national Library. By which time, many more books would have been written."

But we are now entering a new phase, of what Hawking calls "self designed evolution," in which we will be able to change and improve our DNA. "At first," he continues "these changes will be confined to the repair of genetic defects, like cystic fibrosis, and muscular dystrophy. These are controlled by single genes, and so are fairly easy to identify, and correct. Other qualities, such as intelligence, are probably controlled by a large number of genes. It will be much more difficult to find them, and work out the relations between them. Nevertheless, I am sure that during the next century, people will discover how to modify both intelligence, and instincts like aggression."

If the human race manages to redesign itself, to reduce or eliminate the risk of self-destruction, we will probably reach out to the stars and colonize other planets. But this will be done, Hawking believes, with intelligent machines based on mechanical and electronic components, rather than macromolecules, which could eventually replace DNA based life, just as DNA may have replaced an earlier form of life.

Scientists identify bacterium that helps in formation of gold

2009-10-09T08:45:00.001-07:00

Australian scientists have found that the bacterium Cupriavidus metallidurans catalyses the biomineralisation of gold by transforming toxic gold compounds to their metallic form using active cellular mechanism.

According to Frank Reith, leader of the research and working at the University of Adelaide, “A number of years ago we discovered that the metal-resistant bacterium Cupriavidus metallidurans occurred on gold grains from two sites in Australia.

“The sites are 3500 km apart, in southern New South Wales and northern Queensland, so when we found the same organism on grains from both sites we thought we were onto something,” he said.

“It made us wonder why these organisms live in this particular environment. The results of this study point to their involvement in the active detoxification of Au complexes leading to formation of gold biominerals,” he added.

The experiments showed that C. metallidurans rapidly accumulates toxic gold complexes from a solution prepared in the lab.

This process promotes gold toxicity, which pushes the bacterium to induce oxidative stress and metal resistance clusters as well as an as yet uncharacterized Au-specific gene cluster in order to defend its cellular integrity.

This leads to active biochemically-mediated reduction of gold complexes to nano-particulate, metallic gold, which may contribute to the growth of gold nuggets.

By determining what elements there are, scientists can see where the gold is located in relation to the cells.

For this study, scientists combined synchrotron techniques at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) and the Advanced Photon Source (APS) and molecular microbial techniques to understand the biomineralisation in bacteria.

It is the first time that these techniques have been used in the same study, so Frank Reith brought together a multinational team of experts in both areas for the success of the experiment.

This is the first direct evidence that bacteria are actively involved in the cycling of rare and precious metals, such as gold.

These results open the doors to the production of biosensors.

“The discovery of an Au-specific operon means that we can now start to develop gold-specific biosensors, which will help mineral explorers to find new gold deposits,” said Reith.

Scientists identify bacterium that helps in formation of gold

2009-10-09T08:45:00.000-07:00

What's Left in the Cosmic Fuel Tank? Hundred Thousand Million Billion Trillion Quadrillion Quintillion Sextillion Septillion J/K

2009-10-09T04:17:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows that everything ends, with the possible exception of Madonna's career, but only scientists can take omniversal extinction and put it into equation. Some scientists have summed up everything that ever was, is, or will be, and put a number on how much can be done before "Heat Death" stops being an awesome name for a band and starts an eternal reality.

The idea is based on entropy, an incredibly important term which - just for kicks - has at least three different definitions. You can simply understand entropy as a measure of irreversible changes: you can move a vase back and forth between coffee table and shelf forever, but you can't undo dropping it. Entropy measures this kind of change in which energy wasted, the number of possible configurations, or the simple number of un-undoable anythings increases. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that this value is always increasing - and in combination with the fact there's a finite amount of energy, it indicates that everything will eventually run down and stop. Or we'll have to feed the entire universe through a singularity (as in the Big Crunch) and start all over again - either way, the old universe is screwed.

Now Dr Charles Lineweaver and PhD student Charles Egan of the Australian National University have calculated how much entropy there is to "use up" - and it's a mere 10^104 Joules per Kelvin. Sure, a hundred thousand million billion trillion quadrillion quintillion sextillion septillion J/K might sound like an awful lot of whatever-that-is, but it's the ultimate finite supply. Forget oil - once you're out of entropy the game is well and truly over.

Of course this all about as relevant as ADD-afflicted mayflies calculating the thermonuclear lifespan of the sun, but it's fascinating in implication. The philosophical effects of their being a hard physical limit on how much can actually be done in any one universe are mind-blowing, as well as somehow making Dancing With The Stars an even worse affront to existence than it already was.

Your life is limited, fuel is finite, and even the ability to act itself is now a non-renewable resource. So make yourself worthwhile!

Powerful Ideas: Military Develops 'Cybug' Spies

2009-07-20T23:02:00.000-07:00

Miniature robots could be good spies, but researchers now are experimenting with insect cyborgs or "cybugs" that could work even better.

Scientists can already control the flight of real moths using implanted devices.

The military and spy world no doubt would love tiny, live camera-wielding versions of Predator drones that could fly undetected into places where no human could ever go to snoop on the enemy. Developing such robots has proven a challenge so far, with one major hurdle being inventing an energy source for the droids that is both low weight and high power. Still, evidence that such machines are possible is ample in nature in the form of insects, which convert biological energy into flight.

It makes sense to pattern robots after insects — after all, they must be doing something right, seeing as they are the most successful animals on the planet, comprising roughly 75 percent of all animal species known to humanity. Indeed, scientists have patterned robots after insects and other animals for decades — to mimic cockroach wall-crawling, for instance, or the grasshopper's leap.

Mechanical metamorphosis

Instead of attempting to create sophisticated robots that imitate the complexity in the insect form that required millions of years of evolution to achieve, scientists now essentially want to hijack bugs for use as robots.

Originally researchers sought to control insects by gluing machinery onto their backs, but such links were not always reliable. To overcome this hurdle, the Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (HI-MEMS) program is sponsoring research into surgically implanting microchips straight into insects as they grow, intertwining their nerves and muscles with circuitry that can then steer the critters. As expensive as these devices might be to manufacture and embed in the bugs, they could still prove cheaper than building miniature robots from scratch.

As these cyborgs heal from their surgery while they naturally metamorphose from one developmental stage to the next — for instance, from caterpillar to butterfly — the result would yield a more reliable connection between the devices and the insects, the thinking goes. The fact that insects are immobile during some of these stages — for instance, when they are metamorphosing in cocoons — means they can be manipulated far more easily than if they were actively wriggling, meaning that devices could be implanted with assembly-line routine, significantly lowering costs.

The HI-MEMS program at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has to date invested $12 million into research since it began in 2006. It currently supports these cybug projects:
Roaches at Texas A&M.

Horned beetles at University of Michigan and the University of California at Berkeley.

Moths at an MIT-led team, and another moth project at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research.

Success with moths

So far researchers have successfully embedded MEMS into developing insects, and living adult insects have emerged with the embedded systems intact, a DARPA spokesperson told LiveScience. Researchers have also demonstrated that such devices can indeed control the flight of moths, albeit when they are tethered.

To power the devices, instead of relying on batteries, the hope is to convert the heat and mechanical energy the insect generates as it moves into electricity. The insects themselves could be optimized to generate electricity.

When the researchers can properly control the insects using the embedded devices, the cybugs might then enter the field, equipped with cameras, microphones and other sensors to help them spy on targets or sniff out explosives. Although insects do not always live very long in the wild, the cyborgs' lives could be prolonged by attaching devices that feed them.

The scientists are now working toward controlled, untethered flight, with the final goal being delivering the insect within 15 feet (5 m) of a specific target located 300 feet (100 meters) away, using electronic remote control by radio or GPS or both, standing still on arrival. Although flying insects such as moths and dragonflies are of great interest, hopping and swimming insects could also be useful, too, DARPA noted. It's conceivable that eventually a swarm of cybugs could converge on targets by land, sea and air.

Greening the Internet: How much CO2 does this article produce?

2009-07-14T08:29:00.000-07:00

Twenty milligrams; that's the average amount of carbon emissions generated from the time it took you to read the first two words of this article.

Now, depending on how quickly you read, around 80, perhaps even 100 milligrams of C02 have been released. And in the several minutes it will take you to get to the end of this story, the number of milligrams of greenhouse gas emitted could be several thousand, if not more.

This may not seem like a lot: "But in aggregate, if you consider all the people visiting a web site and then all the seconds that each of them spends on it, it turns out to be a large number," says Dr. Alexander Wissner-Gross, an Environmental Fellow at Harvard University who studies the environmental impact of computing.

Wissner-Gross estimates every second someone spends browsing a simple web site generates roughly 20 milligrams of C02. Whether downloading a song, sending an email or streaming a video, almost every single activity that takes place in the virtual environment has an impact on the real one.

As millions more go online each year some researchers say the need to create a green Internet ecosystem is not only imperative but also urgent.

"It is part of the whole sustainability picture," Chris Large, head of research and development at UK-based Climate Action Group, told.

"Scientists are saying to us that we have 10 years to take some serious action to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change so taking some sort of initiative is absolutely vital."

A number of studies have highlighted the growing energy demands of computers. A 2007 report from research firm Gartner, for example, estimates the manufacturing, use and disposal of information and communications technology generates about two percent of the world's greenhouse gases -- similar to the level produced by the entire aviation industry.

Anti-virus software firm McAfee reports that the electricity needed just to transmit the trillions of spam emails sent annually equals the amount required to power over two million homes in the United States while producing the same level of greenhouse gas emissions as more than three million cars.

"Most people don't appreciate that the computer on your desk is contributing to global warming and that if its electricity comes from a coal power plant it produces as much C02 as a sports utility vehicle," said Bill St. Arnaud of Canarie, a Canada-based internet development organization.

"Some studies estimate the internet will be producing 20 percent of the world's greenhouse gases in a decade. That is clearly the wrong direction. That is clearly unsustainable," added St. Arnaud.

What do you include when working out IT's carbon footprint?

Calculating the carbon footprint of the entire web however is not as easy as measuring the greenhouse gas emissions of a car.

Data centers -- massive buildings housing hundreds, if not thousands, of power hungry servers storing everything from Facebook photos and YouTube videos to company web sites and personal emails -- are often labeled as the worst offenders when it comes to harming the environment.

In 2002, global data center emissions amounted to 76 million tons of carbon dioxide -- a figure that is likely to more than triple over the next decade, according to a 2008 study by the Climate Group and Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI).

The footprint of network infrastructure, which is responsible for transporting information from data centers to personal computers, mobile phones and other devices, is harder to pinpoint.

However the same study estimates fixed broadband accounts for around four million tons of carbon emissions and could account for nearly 50 million tons of emissions by 2020.

The manufacturing, transport and use of personal computers and laptops also has what some say is the most significant impact, producing roughly 200 million tons of emissions in 2002.

As millions of people buy new laptops and computers every year, this figure could triple by the end of the next decade, according to the Climate Group report. And it is also true that, like driving a car compared to taking public transportation, some online activities produce more greenhouse gases than others.

More electricity is needed to store, transmit and download a video compared to a simple email, for example. A single search using Google releases 0.2 grams of C02 into the atmosphere, according to Google.

"And what that includes is the energy that we at Google use to be able to receive your search, process it and then send it back to you," Erik Teetzel, one of Google's "green" engineers, told.

"If people are counting things outside the activity that we do, then we don't have control over that so we don't factor that into the equation," said Teetzel.

"We can measure exactly the number of queries that we service and come up with a very accurate estimate and answer from measured results of our actual emissions or energy use per query that we serve."

The drive for energy efficiency

Citing competitive reasons, Teetzel declined to divulge Google's annual power bill, yet he said the internet company has been taking steps to make its main six, five megawatt server farms green as well as the other, smaller data centers it has around the world. It is doing this by using more renewable energy, recycled water and efficient software that requires less electricity to run.

"From a business perspective, it makes sense to get the most what you want to call useful work done using the least amount of resources," said Teetzel.

"Our energy efficiency efforts really did stem from us making our business more competitive."

A number of other companies are also working to take the various pieces that comprise the infrastructure of the internet in a more sustainable direction. Wissner-Gross of Harvard has a company called C02Stats that enables businesses to monitor and manage the environmental impact of their web sites and then purchase renewable energy certificates based on their sites' monthly carbon footprint.

Netherlands-based Cleanbits lobbies web sites to go green by either by purchasing carbon offsets or switching to green hosting providers, like AISO.net, a solar-powered data center based in California. And, like Google, Yahoo also incorporates renewable power and other efficiency measures in its data centers.

However as more of the world joins an age characterized by global flows of information and communication, some say the role the internet plays in making the lives of millions not only more efficient but also environmentally friendly should not be discounted.

"I don't think we've done a good deal with articulating the fact that IT is inherently an efficiency tool," said Teetzel. "That is why you and I use the internet now to find out a lot of information that would have previously been found by us getting in a car and driving somewhere."

"It is a little bit unfair to say that you have this huge carbon cost of the IT industry without articulating the fact that in many, many cases it offsets what I would call heavier, more carbon intense activities that we do in our daily lives," he added.

"Moving electrons is far more efficient than moving atoms. It is actually a paradigm change."

Teen with two hearts makes amazing recovery

2009-07-14T08:24:00.000-07:00

Girl's heart heals itself 10 years after transplant

Hannah Clark is a 16-year-old with a shy laugh and a love of animals. She likes to go shopping with friends and dreams of a career working with children.

But Hannah Clark is no ordinary teenager and her normal life today could not have been possible without a unique, life-changing heart surgery.

In 1994 when she was eight-months-old, Hannah was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy -- an inflammation of the heart muscle that impairs the heart's ability to work properly.

Hannah's heart was failing and she needed a transplant. But instead of taking her own heart out, doctors added a new donated heart to her own when she was just two-years-old.

The so-called "piggyback" operation allowed the donor heart to do the work while Hannah's heart rested.

But Hannah was not in the clear yet. As with any organ transplant, Hannah's body was likely to reject her new heart and she had to take powerful immune suppression drugs.

Those drugs allowed her body to accept the donor heart but also led to lung cancer and yet another medical battle for Hannah that lasted for years.

Nearly 11 years after receiving the extra heart, there was more bad news: The immuno-suppression drugs were no longer working. Hannah's body was rejecting the donor heart.

In February 2006, her doctors tried something that had never been done before: They took out the donor heart. Doctors theorized that the donor heart had allowed Hannah's heart to rest, recover and grow back stronger.

Now for the first time Hannah's father, Paul Clark, describes the agonizing decision the family had to make at the time: "If she'd never had it done, she wouldn't be here.

"In the very beginning it was a 50/50 chance she wasn't going to make the operation. But in the next one it was even greater because it had never been done before. But we had to take that risk," he told.

The doctors were right. Three years later, Hannah has no need for any drugs and has been given a clean bill of health. The operation was a success.

"It means everything to me," Hannah told after the pioneering operation. "I thought I'd still have problems when I had this operation done. I thought after the heart had been removed I thought I'd have to visit hospitals. But now I'm just free," she said, smiling.

Dr. Magdi Yacoub performed Hannah's original transplant and came out of retirement to perform the second.

"The possibility of recovery of the heart is just like magic." Dr. Yacoub said at a media conference. "[We had] a heart which was not contracting at all at the time. We put the new heart to be pumping next to it and take its work, now [it] is functioning normally."

The findings have been published in the British medical journal, the Lancet.

Hannah's amazing recovery would not have been possible without a donor. Both Hannah's doctors and her family made an appeal for more people to consider organ donation.

"When it happens to someone close to you or yourself, you don't realize until then how important it is to be a donor and not to be selfish like, I need that part. You don't need that part. Give it to somebody else that needs it," said Clark.

"It just proves that if you can, be a donor. This can happen."

Dr. Yacoub now advocates "presumed consent" -- a policy by which anyone can be considered an organ donor unless they specifically request to opt out.

"All you are asking is please make up your own mind. Do you or do you not want to be a donor? My own family, my kids, everybody wants to be a donor. But if you don't, then say so," he said.

"Just please tell us what you want to do. So, presumed consent is a good thing."

Hannah has made a full recovery and looks forward to doing what many teenagers do during the summer holidays: Work at a summer job. Her family jokes that it's difficult to keep her from racing out the door now that she has so much energy.

For Hannah, it took the strength of two to help heal a broken heart, something she could have never done alone.

Jet makes landing with football-sized hole

2009-07-14T04:28:00.000-07:00

A Southwest Airlines jet made an emergency landing in Charleston, West Virginia, on Monday after a football-sized hole in its fuselage caused the cabin to depressurize, an airline spokeswoman said.

There were no injuries aboard the Boeing 737, which was traveling at about 34,000 feet when the problem occurred, Southwest spokeswoman Marilee McInnis told.

The sudden drop in cabin pressure caused the jet's oxygen masks to deploy.

Southwest Flight 2294 was en route from Nashville, Tennessee, to Baltimore, Maryland, with 126 passengers and a crew of five aboard, McInnis said.

It landed at 5:10 p.m. after the crew reported a football-sized hole in the middle of the cabin near the top of the aircraft, McInnis said.

What caused the damage to the jet had not been determined, she said. Both the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the incident, FAA spokeswoman Holly Baker said.

"There is no responsible way to speculate as to a cause at this point," Southwest said in a statement Monday night.

"We have safety procedures in place, and they were followed in this instance to get all passengers and crew safely on the ground," the airline said. "Reports we have are that our passengers were calm and that our pilots and flight attendants did a great job getting the aircraft on the ground safely."

Southwest dispatched a replacement aircraft to take passengers on to Baltimore. Charleston airport spokesman Brian Belcher said a local pizzeria provided food for the passengers as they waited.

The damaged jet will remain on the ground there until federal inspectors can examine it, he said.

In addition, all 181 of Southwest's 737-300s -- about a third of the airline's fleet -- will be inspected overnight after the emergency landing, McInnis said. Southwest does not expect the inspections to create delays, she said.

Scooter may be world's smallest dog

2009-07-14T04:16:00.000-07:00

Scooter "stopped growing at six months" - Can fit into owner's cups - Eats out of an egg cup

SOMEWHERE inside this tiny ball of white fluff is a dog.Perhaps the world’s smallest.

His name is Scooter and his New Zealand owner Cheryl McKnight is sure he’s stopped growing at the princely height of 8cm.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, that’s a full 2cm smaller than the current record-holder, Boo Boo – a long-haired Chihuahua from America.

Ms McKnight drinks from cups of tea that are bigger than her Maltese pup, and has had to make a jumper for Scooter out of a purple sock just so she doesn’t accidentally step on him.

"It really is quite something. I can't take him for a walk or put a leash on him,'' Ms McKnight told NZPA.

She said six-month-old Scooter appeared to have stopped growing at roughly the size of a stick of butter.

Originally named Pee Wee, but later renamed due to fears of an inferiority complex, Scooter eats out of an egg cup three times a day and sleeps in a shoebox.

And to think Ms McKnight nearly gave him away.

"For the first 10 weeks or so I didn't really want him,” she told NZPA.

“I thought nah, someone else can have him. But over time I've fallen in love with him.''

NASA hacker launches last-ditch plea

2009-07-14T03:59:00.000-07:00

Admits to hacking into 97 computers - "Looking for evidence of UFOs, aliens" A MAN who hacked into NASA computers will launch a last-ditch effort in Britain's High Court to avoid extradition to face charges in the US.

Gary McKinnon, who suffers from Asperger's Syndrome, has admitted to hacking into 97 US computers from his London home in 2001 and 2002 following the September 11 terror attacks.

The 43-year-old claims he was looking for evidence of UFOs and aliens on the high-security computer systems belonging to the US Army, Navy, Air Force and Department of Defence.

Former home secretary Jacqui Smith granted requests for Mr McKinnon's extradition in October 2008, with the Crown Prosecution Service backing up her decision in February.

Two High Court judges will now begin a judicial review of the decisions after requests by Mr McKinnon's lawyers who hope he can instead face trial in Britain.

If the unemployed computer administrator is extradited, he faces up to 60 years in jail if found guilty.

However if he stands trial in Britain Mr McKinnon is likely to face a much less severe sentence.

His mother Janis Sharp said she feared for her son's mental health if he was extradited.

"It's very frightening because you can feel that the end is very close," she told the Daily Mail.

"I am very scared because when I walk into the court it's like waiting to hear the death sentence."

Mr McKinnon's lawyers claim prosecutors failed to take into account medical advice warning that their client could commit suicide if extradited.

They also argue it's inconsistent with previous cases involving Britons who hacked into US computers but were prosecuted on home soil.

The Crown Prosecution Service has stood by its decision to recommend extradition. Newly appointed Home Secretary Alan Johnson said it was up to prosecutors to decide whether to Mr McKinnon should stand trial in Britain or the US.

Mr McKinnon's attacks on the US Government computers allegedly caused mass chaos and caused an estimated $US900,000 ($A1.15 million) worth of damage.

US prosecutor Paul McNulty described it as "the biggest hack of military computers ever - at least ever detected".

Co2 Increasing, but Global Temperatures aren't - Steve Fielding wants to convince Al Gore he's wrong

2009-07-14T03:36:00.000-07:00

THIS is the chart climate change sceptic Senator Steve Fielding hopes will convince Al Gore that global warming is not real.

Senator Fielding is trying to score a one-on-one meeting with Mr Gore, who is in Australia promoting several environmental causes, to prove to him that climate change sceptics are right.

Senator Fielding has promised to clear his schedule for any chance to meet the former US vice-president and Nobel Prize-winning environmental campaigner. "The ball's in his court," a spokesman for the senator told news.com.au.

The spokesman has said Mr Gore is aware that Senator Fielding holds a crucial vote in Parliament and that any major green schemes - such as the Government's model to reduce carbon pollution in Australia - essentially rely on his support.
"(Mr Gore) said 'look, the schedule's tight but hopefully we can work something out'," when Senator Fielding approached yesterday for a meeting on the issue, the spokesman said.

"We're clearing our schedule to see him. If he calls at three in the morning, we'd go," he said.

It is believed Mr Gore will only be in the country for another day or so.

Senator Fielding wants to present a graph to Mr Gore which argues global temperatures have stabilised during the past 15 years, even as carbon emissions have risen.

The graph was used by the UN in its reports on the effects of climate change. UN scientists say the world has warmed in the past 150 years, but temperatures have plateaued at warmer-than-normal levels in the past decade after a particularly hot year in 1998.

It is the same graph Senator Fielding showed Climate Change Minister Penny Wong when the pair met to negotiate on the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, which will set a price on carbon emissions.

"The Government needs to explain to the Australian people why global temperatures have remained steady over the last 10-15 years despite skyrocketing man made carbon emissions," Senator Fielding said on his website.

Senator Wong and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd have set a targets of cutting emissions by five to 25 per cent by 2020. Mr Gore said that was not enough.

Burger King Apologises

2009-07-10T00:02:00.000-07:00

China quake hits thousands of homes

2009-07-09T18:57:00.000-07:00

Chinese television showed scenes of emergency teams setting up shelters at the site

A magnitude 6 earthquake has hit southwest China, injuring more than 300 people and destroying 10,000 homes, state media says.

Thursday evening's quake, centred in Yunnan province's Yao'an county, damaged another 30,000 homes, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Thirty people suffered severe injuries while another 305 were slightly injured, it said, adding that eight aftershocks were recorded.

Reporting from Urumqi, Al Jazeera's Melissa Chan said no confirmation of any deaths were coming through yet and officials would probably take some time to get information out of the relatively remote area.

China CCTV footage showed residents staying outdoors for fear of aftershocks

But she said national officials should be better prepared for disasters following a quake in Sichuan last year that left almost 90,000 people dead or missing.

The authorities said they were sending 4,500 tents, 3,000 quilts and other relief materials to Yao'an along with hundreds of policemen.

Xinhua said medicine and food were also being distributed to people, many of whom had gathered outdoors for fear of more aftershocks.

The US Geological Survey said the a 5.7 magnitude quake struck at 7:19pm (11:19 GMT) on Thursday at a depth of 10km and was centred 98km east-northeast of the city of Dali.

Quake-prone area

Yunnan is a quake-prone, mountainous region that lies on China's southern border with Thailand and Myanmar.

It also borders Sichuan province, where a little more than a year ago a massive earthquake left nearly 90,000 people dead or missing.

About 375,000 people were injured in the May 12 quake, which left five million homeless and up to 1.5 million people displaced.

The deadliest quake to strike China in over 30 years flattened entire cities and towns, and destroyed hospitals, homes, buildings and factories in nearly 50,000 villages.

Thousands of children were buried alive when some 7,000 schools collapsed in the quake.

Southwest China sits on two tectonic plates - the Indian and Asian plates - whose constant collision created the Himalayan range and the Tibetan plateau.

Will falling sales see the death of the PC gamer?

2009-07-09T18:46:00.000-07:00

True measure of PC gaming is the fanbase, Blizzard says. Australia video game sales grew 47.6 percent in 2008. PC game sales only increased 4.2 percent in 2008.
Read more NEWS.com.au technology news

At first glance, Blizzard Entertainment’s headquarters in Irvine, California looks like any other business campus. Neat paths and fresh cut lawns separate the unremarkable low-rise office buildings.

But that’s when you notice the 12 foot high bronze statue of an Orc riding a wolf and the beach volleyball court it becomes clear - this is the house that Warcraft built.

Video game development studio Blizzard is one of the most successful around, with a string of iconic franchises under its belt.

Its fanbase is rabid and its coffers are full – thanks in large part to the phenomenal success ofWorld of Warcraft, an online role-playing game with 11.5 million subscribers worldwide.

So why is the supposedly impending death of PC gaming regular news? Is Blizzard’s success an aberration on a doomed gaming device?

Staunch PC supporters needn’t get out the black armbands just yet. The PC platform will survive, but it will certainly look a little different.

While computer and video games in Australia grew 43.9 and 47.6 percent in 2007 and 2008 respectively, PC game sales grew only 6.4 and 4.2 percent respectively.

As a result, shelf space for the platform continues to shrink leading to lower sales.

But president and co-founder of Blizzard Mike Morhaime said that while the outlook may look bleak, the time spent playing PC games is a measure of the true size of the genre.

“If you look at how much time people are spending entertaining themselves on the PC, I think that by any measure, other than PC retail sales, it’s got to be through the roof,” Mr Morhaime said.

“Even if you just look at micro-transactions, subscriptions and everything like that on the PC, I think from a revenue standpoint it’s growing.”

Current retail figures do not include ‘digital sales’ – games purchased or downloaded online, games with monthly subscription fees and micro-transactions within games.

Digital sales represent an increasing percentage of PC game revenue. When a PC game hits the shelves, you’ll be able to pick it up at the same time online, via services like Steam and Direct2Drive.

According to the Interactive Australia 2009 report, 19% of Australian gamers download games from online vendors.

CEO of the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia (IEAA) Ron Curry said that while retail sales have slowed, the genre has seen a shift in demographic.

“Traditionally PC gaming has been a male dominated platform,” Mr Curry said.

“We see more mums playing games on a PC. This female audience are more likely to play social games on the PC which then serves as an introduction to more traditional PC gaming.”

Director of Asia-Pacific business for PopCap, Giordano Contestabile, said that new PC games are made for players and non-players alike.

“With every new gaming platform or ‘way to play’ that comes on the market, PC gaming gets issued a death warrant,” Mr Contestabile said.

“Everyone – from mothers to hardcore gamers - is a potential player of casual games.”

“PC games have been a stronghold of PopCap’s offering since Day 1 and in fact, far from dying, our North American PC sales grew by 85% in 2008 - so the ‘end’ is a long way off.”

PopCap is the studio behind casual games such as Bejeweled and Peggle.

PC gaming, then, isn’t dying, it’s changing.

The resurgence of the platform will rely on developers and publishers making the most of the modern PC landscape.

“With the PC we can store huge amounts of data, we can provide large updates on the fly; all these things add a huge amount of flexibility,” Mr Morhaime said.

“You’ve got the keyboard and mouse, which is a much more powerful interface for certain types of games.”

“It’s a big advantage for a game like World of Warcraft, which would be technologically challenging to implement on any of the other platforms.”

True measure of PC gaming is the fanbase, Blizzard says. Australia video game sales grew 47.6 percent in 2008. PC game sales only increased 4.2 percent in 2008.

Teacher 'tried to kill' student, 14, in class

2009-07-09T18:34:00.000-07:00

Student attacked in class, badly hurt. Teacher arrested for 'attempted murder'. 'Traumatised' classmates witnessed attack

A 14-YEAR-OLD student is in hospital with serious head injuries after a teacher allegedly attacked him in the middle of a lesson as shocked classmates looked on.

Jack Waterhouse, 14, was taken to hospital after the incident in a classroom at All Saints' Roman Catholic School in Mansfield, England on Wednesday.

Science teacher Peter Harvey, 49, has been arrested on suspicion of attempting to murder the boy and assaulting two other children, police have said.

The Sun reported the boy was found in a pool of blood.

Police said a weapon was used in the attack and the whole class had been "traumatised" by what they had seen. The Guardian website reported a weight from a set of scales was believed to have been used.

The Daily Mail reported Mr Harvey, a father of two, allegedly snapped after the boy swore at him.

Police said there were initial grave concerns about the boy's condition but he was now said to be stable, although still serious.

"I can say that, allegedly as part of the incident, a weapon was used against the child. We are investigating exactly what did happen," Detective Superintendent Adrian Pearson said.

"Obviously the whole class is traumatised by what has happened."

The other two children - a boy and a girl - who were allegedly assaulted did not need hospital treatment, he said.

"The school have been working very closely with us to cooperate and to gain the full assistance of the children who were witnesses to what took place," Det Supt Pearson said.

Local news site Mansfield Chad reported that the boy's family was at his bedside in hospital.

It quoted a parent as saying his son had been in the lesson. "You don't expect something like that to happen in a school," he said.

"My son phoned me to tell me what happened and said all the kids in the lesson were just in shock."

The school has offered counselling to students.

Other media reports said former pupils and parents had expressed surprise that the teacher, who taught science, was the one suspected of being involved.

"I didn't think the pupils would give him stick," ex-pupil Tom Blythe, 19, was quoted as saying. "He was actually a decent bloke and got involved in school plays."

On its website, the school said it had been a Performing Arts College since 2002 and had been described as "rapidly improving" in a 2009 Ofsted inspection.

"All Saints' School is a lively, Catholic comprehensive school with a very special, warm ethos which is recognised by all who visit," the headteacher said on the website.

Det Supt Pearson said the incident was out of character for the school. "It's a school where people send their children from a wide catchment area. There have been no similar incidents before," he said.

Gadget Watch: First USB 3.0 Devices Set for Late-2009

2009-07-07T18:05:00.000-07:00

News reports from Asia indicate PCs with USB 3.0 will be shipping to consumers before the end of 2009.

USB 3.0, with speeds 10 times faster than USB 2.0, will offer transfer speeds of up to 5 gigabits of data per second. Manufacturers are expected to introduce a new generation of USBflash drives, external hard drives, and other devices that will make use of the significantly faster transfer speeds.

NEC Electronics is expected to lead the pack among companies adopting USB 3.0, with the company recently becoming the first to introduce a USB 3.0 controller. The company began shipping host controller samples last month, and in September will begin manufacturing an expected one million units per month.

In 2007, Intel unveiled USB 3.0 during its Intel Developer Forum (IDF) conference, but was accused by AMD and NVIDIA of keeping the open host controller specifications a secret to create an unfair advantage against competitors. Intel later released the open host controller specifications in November 2007, with companies expected about the increased speed of the technology.

There has been some talk about whether or not the PC industry will be ready for USB 3.0. During the SuperSpeed USB Developers Conference, held two months ago in May, manufacturers outlined their aspirations to utilize the superior USB 3.0 — devices also were shown to be faster than eSATA, which offers 3Gbits/s transfer speed.

NEC anticipates 140 million PCs will ship in 2011 using USB 3.0, with that number expected to climb up to 340 million in 2012. Microsoft Windows 7, which launches in October, will not support the standard at launch, but will add in support later.

Both home users and businesses will benefit by using the faster technology, with large-scale data backup becoming much faster thanks to the 5Gbit/s transfer speeds. Expect external HDDs with increased storage capacity from Western Digital, Seagate, Iomega, and other companies specializing in storage.

Young Engineers Take LEGO 'Bots For a Swim

2009-07-07T17:34:00.000-07:00

HOBOKEN, N.J.—Leaning over the edge of an inflatable pool, a team of five teenaged girls guided their underwater craft made of Legos to dart among sunken aluminum pans and Wiffle Balls.

Their pointy-nosed submersible plucked the point-scoring balls from the pool's floor and deposited them in the pans. With that confluence of dependable design and expert driving, the team from Lincoln Park Middle School in New Jersey won the Build IT Challenge in their division.

The Stevens Institute of Technology hosts this competition annually on its campus here, gathering students earlier this month from more than 40 middle and high schools to pit their designs against one another in kiddie pools on the banks of the Hudson River. In dozens of such competitions around the world, young people build, program and drive vehicles made of Legos and other more rugged materials. These events are a bid to interest a new generation in careers in engineering and robotics, and they are becoming more sophisticated.

At Stevens, the twist is the water.

"By doing it underwater we were hoping to be a little bit different than other Lego robotics projects that have land-based vehicles," said Jason Sayres, who runs Stevens' Build IT program. This way, the lessons are in science and engineering, specifically concepts like buoyancy, stability and 3-D motion, he adds.

Teams scored points for depositing the balls in the pans, for swimming speed, innovative design and other factors. One student of Cranford High School in New Jersey, Bob Fallerjoked that in spite of a faulty propeller on his team's vehicle, "we can still score points for buoyancy control because we're just that good."

Designs of the "'bots," as some teams called their vehicles, ranged from wide and meandering to small and agile. Some were boxy, some bristle-y. One of the more unusual designs came from Tenafly High School in New Jersey — a Lego boat that never dipped below the surface of the water; instead, it scooped balls from the floor of the pool with a long mechanical claw.

New control

Upping the ante this year, Build IT introduced Lego's NXT programmable control box. At least one student on each team learned to program the NXT. The programmer determined which of the vehicle's propellers would spin and in which direction when the driver moved the levers.

Holding up the device, Abigail Symons from Lincoln Park Middle School demonstrated her work. "Those are the controls and those are the touch sensors and this is a rotation sensor," she said. She had never used such technology before she joined the team.

"I thought I was going to be bad at it because I wasn't sure if the right motor would go with the right propeller, but in the end I got it so, it was good," she said.

Like some other students at the event, she entered the competition on a whim. "We were in the class [learning to use computers] and they kind of just threw it at us. We were like, 'Oh my God it's going to be technology' and everything but then it came out good, so, it was definitely fun in the end," she explained.

Going global

The Build IT program is funded by a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundationwith further funding by the Motorola Foundation. It is one facet in the NSF's scheme to entice students into future careers in engineering and other sciences.

So far, the plan is working, said Beth McGrath, the science and engineering education director at Stevens. "The whole goal of this project is to hook students into pursing higher level courses," she said. "We've seen a jump in student interest in engineering as a possible career path and in their enjoyment in science."

McGrath expects to launch a more technologically sophisticated international version of the challenge within the next two to three years. Teams from around the world would cooperate in online forums to design and build distinct parts of the robotic crafts, testing their designs and posting videos for their foreign counterparts to see.

"It's aimed to give middle and high school students some of the 21st century skills, where teams from different countries who speak different languages would work together," she said. "We're taking the 'world-is-flat' world of work and embedding it within a middle or high school project."

The Incredible Shrinking Sheep

2009-07-07T17:14:00.000-07:00

Like a wool coat in the rain, sheep are shrinking. But it's not rain that's doing it.

Researchers have found that milder winters are causing Scotland's wild Soay sheep to get smaller despite the evolutionary benefits of having a large body.

The results highlight how wide-ranging the effects of global climate change can be, adding further complexity to the changes we might expect to see in natural populations in future, according to a summary of the work published by the journal Science.

Arpat Ozgul at Imperial College London in Berkshire and colleagues analyzed body-weight measurements and life-history data (which record the timing of key milestones throughout an individual's life) for the female members of a population of Soay sheep. The sheep live on the island of Hirta in the St. Kilda archipelago and have been studied closely since 1985.

The researchers plugged their data into a numerical model that predicts how a trait such as body size will change over time due to natural selection and other factors that influence survival and reproduction in the wild, according to the statement from the journal. They selected body size because it is a heritable trait, and, although larger sheep should generally have a better chance of survival, the sheep have, on average, been decreasing in size for the last 25 years.

The results suggest that the decrease in body size is primarily an ecological response to environmental variation over the last 25 years; evolutionary change has contributed relatively little. More specifically, lambs are not growing as quickly as they once did. As winters have become shorter and milder, lambs now do not need to put on as much as weight in the first months of life in order to survive to their first birthday. Even the slower-growing ones now have a chance of surviving.

Over 100 killed in ethnic unrest in China

2009-07-05T23:21:00.000-07:00

BEIJING, China -- At least 129 people were dead and more than 800 others injured after weekend violence in China's far west Xinjiang region, the regional public security department said Monday, according to state-run media.
Ethnic Uyghur residents in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang, took to the streets Sunday afternoon in a rare public protest that prompted a police lock-down of the city.

"Traffic control was partially lifted Monday morning in parts of Urumqi ... but tension still exists in the city," China's official Xinhua news agency said. "Debris has been cleared from the roads and normal traffic has resumed. Workers are still pulling away damaged vehicles from the worst-affected roads in the city."

Most businesses in the area where the violence took place remained closed on Monday, Xinhua said.

State-run media reported that protesters attacked passersby, burned public buses and blocked traffic on Sunday. The report did not say how many people took part in the protest or what their grievances were.

But a witness in Urumqi told that, soon after the protest started at about 5 p.m., hundreds of protesters "grew into easily over 1,000 -- men, women and children, all ethnic Uyghurs -- screaming and chanting."

Police arrived quickly and tried to control the swelling crowd by erecting barriers in the street, but "people pushed them over," the witness said. "They were throwing rocks at passing cars and buses." As the violence escalated, hundreds of riot police arrived, the witness said.

"They used tear gas and fire hoses to disperse the crowd. I saw fire trucks, ambulances, armed personnel carriers and what looked like tanks. I heard random gunshots."

Late Sunday, the witness said, Urumqi was in a lockdown, with hundreds of People's Liberation Army soldiers in the streets. He reported seeing riot police chasing protesters into alleys and rounding up many of them.

The witness speculated that the protest, which took place in the predominantly Uyghur-populated Bazaar district, may have been a reaction to racial violence in southern China.

The violence reportedly happened at a toy factory in Guangdong province, where many migrants, including Uyghurs, have moved in search of work. A massive brawl reportedly broke out between workers of Uyghur and Han nationalities. Two Uyghurs reportedly died. Watch more on the Xinjiang riots »

Xinjiang is home to many Uyghurs. China's constitution guarantees ethnic minorities equal rights and limited autonomy. However, ethnic tensions run deep. Minority groups such as the Uyghurs complain that they are treated as second-class citizens and are subjected to discrimination by the majority Han nationalities.

"What was clear was, the Uyghur protesters were not happy," the witness in Urumqi said. "They broke windows of public buses, threw bottles and rocks at the police, and harassed what looked like Chinese of Han or Hui nationalities. I saw a Uyghur man kick a Han woman in the behind as she tried to get away from the crowds."

A spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress, a dissident Uyghur group based in Munich, Germany, told that Uyghur people in Urumqi and Xinjiang had told him by telephone that they had seen bodies thrown into military vehicles.

Dilxat Raxit added that tens of thousands of demonstrators had gathered in every Uyghur neighborhood in Urumqi to protest peacefully against what he described as the government's ethnic cleansing in Guangdong Shaoguan.

After about 40 minutes -- during which the crowd shouted slogans, calling the incident in Guangdong Shaoguan a planned ethnic cleansing -- the Chinese military began to crack down by sending more than 50 military vehicles, including tanks, carrying troops into Urumqi.

All Uyghurs were ordered off the streets, he said.

Sources in Kashgar said a "massive number" of Chinese People's Liberation Army forces entered that city as well, and that students were ordered to remain inside.

People were also arrested along roads leading to Urumqi, he said.

"According to the Chinese law, people have the right to protest peacefully," the World Uyghur Congress said in an appeal. "We call for attention to this kind of ethnic discrimination."

O M G I G P Internet Explorer 8 Puke Vomit Girl

2009-07-05T23:07:00.001-07:00

The Czech Prime minister slaps the Health minister

2009-06-30T02:32:00.000-07:00

No newspaper printed this ............strange
Take a look at the video

Sphere UFO reported by three witnesses in two states

2009-06-27T21:06:00.000-07:00

An odd-shaped sphere UFO was reported by three unrelated witnesses in two states recently that could be the same object, according to information gathered from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) database. A fourth case near Roswell, New Mexico, may also be related.

On April 22, 2009, near Dallas, a witness at an auto repair shop looked to the sky when he heard the sound of a military fighter jet and very soon he saw two more fighter jets moving across the sky.

But then two more objects caught his eye - and these were not jets. The witness said both objects appeared to be triangular in shape, but there was a sphere at each of the three points "joined by what looked to be black tube or beam structures that formed the triangle shape."

The witness went inside to get binoculars, but when he returned 20 seconds later, the two objects were gone, but the three fighter jets were heading into the direction where they were last seen.

Then on May 23, 2009, in Crockett, Texas, a woman looked up in the sky and saw "a huge multi-leveled triangular object" hovering. She reported that the object was "in the shape of a triangle with white orbs illuminating its 3 points."

After observing the silent object as it hovered for about 10 minutes, she said "a small white orb quickly shot out of the left side." The object remained hovering for another 15 minutes, and then "just disappeared."

Crockett is located in Houston County in northeastern Texas with a population of 7,141, and is named after Davy Crockett who reportedly camped here on his way to the Alamo.

Fast forward now to Kansas City, Kansas, on June 16, and a witness who was standing in her back yard and looking into a wooded area saw "three large spheres connected together with a large arm or protrusion extending out at an angle underneath the craft." I previosly reported on this story in Military jets spotted searching for sphere UFO over Kansas City, Kansas.

Marge Padgitt, the MUFON state section director for Kansas City, reports that she is investigating the Kansas City case and that the witness is working on an illustration of the object. Texas Field Investigator Fletcher Gray is investigating the Crockett, Texas case. Gray said that the witness near Dallas is also working on a sketch of the objects that he witnessed. Texas Field Investigator Jeremy Ray is investigating the case near Dallas.

Who’s behind the social network’s computing power? You’d be surprised!

2009-06-27T20:57:00.000-07:00

Who’s behind the social network’s computing power? You’d be surprised!

There is a long history of companies pooling their resources to achieve a common goal. Sometimes the goal is to sell a comprehensive system to an end user. Sometimes the goal is to assemble a nifty service. The base premise is: one service provider or product offerer cannot provision the final product without the aid of others.

Today we see mashups. A web mashup is a web page or application that combines data from two or more external online sources. Rather than reinvent the wheel, for instance, a company who has agreat weather prediction tool might mashup the software provided by Google Mapping to produce one clean web site where you can search both for weather conditions and the geographies in question.

Long before mashups, there were white label products. A white label product or service is a product or service produced by one company (the producer or manufacturer) that other companies (the marketers) rebrand to make it appear as if they made it. Examples may include DVD players. There might be one gigantic DVD manufacturer in Korea knocking out the devices and Sears, Amazon, Kmart, Wal-Mart all buy them, put their own private label on them and resell the products as their own. It may look like a Best Buy brand DVD player, but it also looks remarkably like a Wal-Mart DVD player at the same time if you just scratch off that name badge and look underneath.

Another example often cited in the social networking space is a white label social network or community. This different than the branded social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace. If I think my company would benefit, I could offer a social community or network on my web site for my customers and prospects to discuss areas of joint interest. If I’m a travel company, I could use Ning, for instance, set up a community for all those cruise ship enthusiasts to discuss past cruises, future cruises, the best cruises, exotic cruises and best priced cruises.

If I’m a clever moderator, I can learn a lot about my market and create a loyal following of travelers who rely on my social community as one of their primary sources of travel information. It also gives me a chance to correct problems or soothe upset customers in almost real time. If my company is Ron’s Cruises (I should be able to come up with something better hopefully) I could call my new found social network “Cruise Net” and none of the members need to know I used a white label social networking software product to roll out the technology.

These concepts are not new. They were preceded by reseller organizations and alternate channels. When I started in the computer hardware business over twenty years ago, we sold proprietary computers. That means software designed to run on them wouldn’t run on any other brand’s devices. If I could partner with a great bond management package, I could sell all the bond managers on using that partner’s software and they would have to buy my hardware. And they’d have to keep on buying my hardware as they grew and needed more horsepower to run the system. Prime Computer, Digital Equipment, Data General were all built on this premise.

Some proprietary computer hardware companies didn’t bother with a partner program. Their company was so well known that they could sell their proprietary hardware and the buyers would put their software programmers on the task to write applications to run there.

In the mid eighties, UNIX appeared as an operating system and changed the game. Suddenly all computer hardware manufacturers offered a commodity computing device. You could buy a UNIX box from company A, B or C. You could shop price, service and performance. The hardware companies with strong software partners could still drive sales. If you like the bond management software, my long standing relationship with the software company would encourage you to buy my hardware with an endorsement from the software vendor.

The hardware companies who were really clever encouraged those niche software vendors to resell our hardware bundled into the turn key system. The end user bought the application software, the hardware and the team deploying it all from the same reseller: one stop shopping. This is an early example of white label product offerings.

All this activity promoted alternate channels within the sales organization. You could buy my product directly from my company, or you could buy my product from one of my resellers. It behooves me to make sure the partners in my alternate channel reseller organization are happy. In fact supporting my resellers turned them into my customer.

One of the reasons the iPhone is such a big success is that Apple has opened up the device so thatdeveloper partners can easily write applications for the iPhone. Apple worries about turning out a reliable, well priced and cool looking device. Their partners think up great new applications that run on the iPhone and lead consumers to find the device indispensible. In search of a revenue generating model, Facebook opens up their social network to application developer partners. These Facebook “apps” help make money for the developers as well as the Facebook people.

Some of these distributions of responsibility can even exist within a single organization. So if a big computer company is pursuing a solution on behalf of their customer, (selling an enterprise webcasting solution for instance) they may use the “matrix” team that exists internally (a storage drive expert, a desktop computing group, a database expert, and a custom deployment solution team). On those same pre sales conference calls might be a channel partner team member that sells the streaming video software and another from the company that makes the web cams. All these partners figure out which channel the customer will ultimately buy from. The biggest problem is figuring out who’s in charge and leading the team.

The natural evolution of all these patterns of partnering is today’s cloud computing. It may even be transparent to the end user from exactly where the horsepower or tools are coming from…they all appear local. Because I only get to use my software through a browser, it doesn’t make a difference if my accounting software is really run on systems in India; that most of the computing hardware is farmed out to several large virtual computing companies; nor that I’m only charged when I use them instead of investing in hardware and software installed in our company’s computer room. For all I know, today’s company computing room is completely empty except for a couple of guys managing all the contracts and traffic.

Next steps in partnering? Well the lion’s share of the revenue and skill sets still resides in a group of heavy hitter computer companies. They have the marketing dollars and smart people to support and nurture the success of their channel partners. Who better to create social communities for their channel partners to share information? Who better to lever today’s social networking technologies in order to help their channel partners market their wares to end users?

How I'm going to use social networking to steal your identity!

2009-06-27T20:52:00.000-07:00

How I’m going to use social networking to steal your identity

I think about all my trusted advisors in real life: my attorney, my doctor and others. There are questions that if posed by my insurance agent, I’d react by getting up from the table, letting him know it’s none of his business. But in the spirit of connecting socially, I easily answer these same questions in a Facebook quiz. It’s a cathartic release, a confession. Sometimes it makes up for the close mouthed, private way I act in real life. I know it seems great to “share” with others. And social network communities are the perfect place to dive in. Somehow sitting alone at the computer gives us license to answer some very intimate questions.

So the first thing I’ll do to steal your identity is find out everything I can about you. I can take a quiz, as apparently 34 million others did and with almost 200,000 fans, for “How Well Do You Know Me”? I’ll find out your birth date, where you were born, the names of your parents, your spouse, and your children. And I’ll find out their birthdates. I’ll find out your hobbies and your interests. I’ll see who all your friends are.
I’ll read “25 things you didn’t know about me”. I’ll know what sports you like, what your middle name is. I’ll know what your favorite stores are. I’ll figure out where you live by seeing where you shop. Your grammar school and your high school will be listed. It won’t be long until I find out the name of your first pet. Oh look, you used to have a space between your two front teeth!

I’ll read what Greek god you are, what Sex In The City character you think you are and who is your celebrity twin. Then I’ll figure out your childhood nickname, in what city you met your significant other, the name of your favorite childhood friend, the street you lived on in third grade. It won’t be long before I know your oldest sibling’s birthday month and year, the middle name of your youngest child, your oldest sibling's middle name, the school you attended for sixth grade, and your childhood phone number including area code. You’ll have listed your oldest cousin's first and last name, the name of your first stuffed animal and the city or town where your mother and father met.

Your MySpace or Facebook Info page will tell me your email address and your employer. The “Who Are You Related To” will tell me all your relatives. It’s great to know what cities you’ve visited, so when I start using your credit cards I won’t set off any suspicious behavior.

Somehow or another, one of the eight thousand eight hundred and eighty four Facebook quizzes that everyone’s taken will provide me with the answers I’m looking for.

Because your bank, your credit card, your school, your payroll company and your employer might ask these security questions, I’ll read your blog so I can find out the first name of the boy or girl that you first kissed, the last name of your third grade teacher, where your nearest sibling lives and your youngest brother’s birthday. After reading your blog, even if I don’t have a direct answer to any of the security questions, I’ll know enough about you to start making really good guesses.

On LinkedIn you’ve listed the name of your elementary / primary school and the city or town where your first job was. I can see your college history and even all the people who connect with you doing business.

Even without all this data I could probably figure out what your passwords are. Most people use the same password for every web site. Here’s the top ten according to PC Magazine:
1. password
2. 123456
3. qwerty
4. abc123
5. letmein
6. monkey
7. myspace1
8. password1
9. link182
10. (your first name)

Didn’t have to do any research for those. And the default password usually included from your vendor will also let me try: sun123, Cisco, Alcatel, Kyocera, McAfee and IBM. A surprising number of people never change the password from the default after installation. If it’s a six character requirement I can guess, and likely be correct with shadow or summer. Eight characters? Then desklamp or portable. I’m guessing people start looking around when they have to come up with a password quickly. If the password requires a number, it is almost always “1”.

But unless you’re using a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols in a random order, I can either try a top ten favorite from above or dig into your (not very) private life and figure out your password. Or if I can’t figure out your password, I can answer the security questions that let me reset your password to one I like. Then you can’t get in, but I can.
My first step will be to break into your email. Most of us have had our email addresses for a very long time, so it is likely the password we used was a product of that time period. I signed up for my Yahoo email when it came out, probably a decade ago. I wanted to grab my name before other computer savvy “shulkin”s did. These were eras with less security concerns about password strength.
I’ll do this hacking into your email account late at night, so when the notifications of password changes come in, I can delete them before you wake up and check your email. Hopefully you’ll have a folder in your email system called “passwords”. That will make the rest of this identity theft easier. And if there’s anything good in your inbox, I’ll read them and mark them “unread” before I go.

Once in your email system, I’ll crack your credit cards and bank. I’ll answer the security questions to change the password, “in case I forgot it”. Then they’ll send that notification to the email address and I’ll delete those too. I’ll know what web sites you subscribe to, so I’ll go on eBay, Hoovers and all your other resources. This will let me know more about you, as well.

My next pass will be to get into your cell phone account. You manage it on line, so I can get that password with security questions. I can look up all the phone numbers you get calls from and to whom you call. These friends of yours might be my next targets. Maybe your girlfriend is using a combination of your first name and your birthday as her password. Worth a try. It will still be hours before either you or she wakes up.

So if you wake up one morning and all your credit cards are cancelled or you’ve bought some airplane tickets or a nice HDTV (and had it drop shipped to an address one door down from yours where I’ll be waiting wisely informed as to when with the results of the record tracking on shipping); if your cell phone has ordered a bunch of custom ring tones or if your bank has had most of its funds transferred to my favorite charity, you’ll know that you answered one too many questions on that Facebook quiz.

Some things are meant to stay private. When you get on Facebook, stick to reminiscing about high school.

Michael Jackson Death Stops the Web, Causes Wikipedia Editing Chaos

2009-06-27T20:39:00.001-07:00

Music icon Michael Jackson died Thursday in a Los Angeles hospital, causing millions of fans to overwhelm traffic servers and dominate the conversation of the most popular applications online, including Twitter.

Early news reports had reveled the so-called ‘King of Pop’ had suffered a cardiac arrest in his home prior to being rushed to the hospital. This caused many sites to announce the singer’s death hours before the hospital or the family had made any official statements. One of the biggest problems facing publishers online is enforcing strict source-based quality control over the news, especially when anyone is a simple blog sign-up away from spreading lies.

This is especially true when not-sourced allegations get into increasingly legitimate information resources, such as Wikipedia. As news of the singer’s stroke came in without true, a few volunteer editors of the web encyclopedia overrode protocol and kept changing Michael Jackson’s page to include his date of death. AsCNet noted, opposing editors tried to keep the page lie-free, noting they were “premature edits,” and some pleaded for responsible web behavior: “ONCE AGAIN, HE IS NOT DEAD, JUST STOP.”

Once Jackson was rushed to the hospital and passed away, most of the comments were gone and his final date on the site was established.

But many blogs around the net didn’t wait for the official word, either. TMZ.com was the first site to publish the singer’s death, about 3 hours before any major site. It received so much traffic that it went down a few times throughout the day.

Jumping off from TMZ.com’s lead, people logged on to social networks en masse and crashed several sites. Within three hours of the heart attack news, nine out of ten terms on the trending topics on Twitter were about Michael Jackson. Most tweets expressed sadness and grief over the news, while many used the service to publish links sending out users to other Jackson-related news around the net. In a statement to the New York Times Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said the site saw “double the normal tweets per second the moment the news broke—the biggest increase since the US presidential election.” According to many users, the site crashed many times throughout the day.

News aggregators also reached very high levels of participation. On Digg, news of the singer’s death reached over 12,000 diggs within four hours.

PC World reported that instant messaging service AIM appeared to have more problems than most dealing with influx of traffic. Around 2:30PM PST, the service was blocked and failed to work for a long period of time.

In addition, Google noted earlier this morning that there were so many searches for ‘Michael Jackson’ that the site’s crawling robot believed it was under attack by a malignant bug. The company said that when the site receives a large volume of similar requests, CAPTCHA and malware-protection programs are automatically launched. This led to many people landing on a user-alert search page, instead of the news they were seeking.

And of course, video and music sites saw a huge spike in Jackson-related content. By the end of the day yesterday, Jackson’s Thriller album was the top album on iTunes and his videos on YouTube (including coverage from TV feeds) led the site on page views.

Michael Jackson was a child prodigy who became famous along with his brothers as part of the R&B group The Jackson Five. Later on as a solo-artist, he recorded Thriller, the best-selling album of all time with sales of more than 100 million. He was 50 years old at the time of his passing.

Twitter tears for 'King of Pop' Michael Jackson

2009-06-26T06:25:00.000-07:00

THE internet was flooded with electronic tears for Michael Jackson today, with micro-blogging site Twitter notching up hundreds of tributes every minute including many from fellow celebrities.

The dead singer's official website, www.michaeljackson.com, carried just a single red page of tributes from his record company.

Official and unofficial fanclub sites from India to Germany also paid tribute to the star with single solemn pages or requests for condolences via email.

Users of social-networking site Facebook quickly created new pages in his honour, with a page called Michael Jackson RIP notching up more than 28,000 members in just a few hours.

The dead singer shot past the Iranian election on the list of most popular topics on Twitter as news of his death ricocheted around cyberspace.

The top two "trending topics" on Twitter were Jackson-related within hours of his death, pushing Farrah Fawcett, the Charlie's Angels star who also died this morning, down to number three and the Iranian election down to number five.

RIP MJ, MichaelJackson and Thriller were among the so-called hashtags being used by Twitter users to group messages about his death.

A host of celebrities led the electronic outpouring of grief.

RIP MJ he lives forever in my heart. I will never forget the day he came to see me in the studio and I played him music," wrote Wyclef Jean, formerly of The Fugees.

Two-time Oscar winner Jane Fonda wrote: "I am stunned. My friend, Michael Jackson is dead."

"Michael Jackson showed me that you can actually see the beat. He made the music come to life!! He made me believe in magic. I will miss him," US rapper-actor P Diddy wrote.

Actress Lindsay Lohan wrote: "Sending my love and prayers out to Michael and his family."

Tearful messages in several languages from all over the world hit the Twitter thread #MichaelJackson every second or so. But several other Twitter threads also clocked up the grief from its millions of users.

Cswint wrote: "Dancing around listening to MJ the way he would have wanted it. Everyone dance."

Infinitespace wrote: "We danced to #MichaelJackson records at my 7th birthday party. His music will last longer than Beethoven."

Others, meanwhile, lamented the fact that they will not now see their hero live in concert.

Twitterer Bensong wrote: "Just cancelled my London hotel booking. I was only going for the Michael Jackson concert."

Others refused to accept their hero had simply died of a heart attack.

Hinasafi wrote: "Autopsy will tell the truth - reliable sources told me about al-Qaeda's planned involvement in the death of Michael Jackson."

A brand new Facebook page called Michael Jackson Isn't Dead was created For those of us who refuse to believe the king of pop is dead and who are willing to begin a quest to find him!"

It had only six members.

Another site called "Michael Jackson Isn't Dead, Just Preparing for a Strong Come-back," had 34-members.

It stated: "Michael Jackson isn't dead! This is just all part of his plan for a super surprise come-back tour!! It's the perfect plan!"

Michael Jackson, pop music legend, dead at 50

2009-06-25T20:48:00.000-07:00

Michael Jackson, the show-stopping singer whose best-selling albums -- including "Off the Wall", "Thriller" and "Bad" -- and electrifying stage presence made him one of the most popular artists of all time, died Thursday

He was 50.

He collapsed at his residence in the Holmby Hills section of Los Angeles, California, about noon Pacific time, suffering cardiac arrest, according to brother Randy Jackson. He died at UCLA Medical Center.

Lt. Fred Corral of the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office said an autopsy would probably be done on the singer Friday, with results expected that afternoon.

"Michael Jackson made culture accept a person of color," the Rev. Al Sharpton said. "To say an 'icon' would only give these young people in Harlem a fraction of what he was. He was a historic figure that people will measure music and the industry by."

Jackson's blazing rise to stardom -- and later fall from grace -- is among the most startling of show business tales. The son of a steelworker, he rose to fame as the lead singer of the Jackson 5, a band he formed with his brothers in the late 1960s. By the late '70s, as a solo artist, he was topping the charts with cuts from "Off the Wall," including "Rock With You" and "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough."

In 1982, he released "Thriller," an album that eventually produced seven hit singles. An appearance the next year on a Motown Records 25th-anniversary special cemented his status as the biggest star in the country.

For the rest of the 1980s, they came no bigger. "Thriller's" follow-up, 1987's "Bad," sold almost as many copies. A new Jackson album -- a new Jackson appearance -- was a pop culture event. iReport: Share your memories of Michael Jackson

The pop music landscape was changing, however, opening up for rap, hip-hop and what came to be called "alternative" -- and Jackson was seen as out of step.

His next release, 1991's "Dangerous," debuted at No. 1 but "only" produced one top-ranking single -- "Black or White" -- and that song earned criticism for its inexplicably violent ending, in which Jackson was seen smashing car windows and clutching his crotch.

And then "Dangerous" was knocked out of its No. 1 spot on the album charts by Nirvana's "Nevermind," an occurrence noted for its symbolism by rock critics.

After that, more attention was paid to Jackson's private life than his music career, which faltered. A 1995 two-CD greatest hits, "HIStory," sold relatively poorly, given the huge expense of Jackson's recording contract: about 7 million copies, according to Recording Industry of America certifications.

A 2001 album of new material, "Invincible," did even worse.

In 2005, he went to trial on child-molestation charges. He was acquitted.

In July 2008, after three years away from the spotlight, Jackson announced a series of concerts at London's O2 Arena as his "curtain call." Some of the shows, initially scheduled to begin in July, were eventually postponed until 2010.

Rise to stardom

Michael Jackson was born August 29, 1958, to Joe Jackson, a Gary, Indiana, steelworker, and his wife, Katherine. By the time he was 6, he had joined his brothers in a musical group organized by his father, and by the time he was 10, the group -- the Jackson 5 -- had been signed to Motown.

He made his first television appearance at age 11.

Jackson, a natural performer, soon became the group's front man. Music critic Langdon Winner, reviewing the group's first album, "Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5," for Rolling Stone, praised Michael's versatile singing and added, "Who is this 'Diana Ross,' anyway?"

The group's first four singles -- "I Want You Back," "ABC," "The Love You Save" and "I'll Be There" -- went to No. 1 on the Billboard pop chart, the first time any group had pulled off that feat. There was even a Jackson 5 cartoon series on ABC.

In 1972, he hit No. 1 as a solo artist with the song "Ben."

The group's popularity waned as the '70s continued, and Michael eventually went solo full time. He played the Scarecrow in the 1978 movie version of "The Wiz," and released the album "Off the Wall" in 1979. Its success paved the way for "Thriller," which eventually became the best-selling album in history, with 50 million copies sold worldwide.

At that point, Michael Jackson became ubiquitous.

Seven of "Thriller's" nine cuts were released as singles; all made the Top Ten. The then-new cable channel MTV, criticized for its almost exclusively white playlist, finally started playing Jackson's videos. They aired incessantly, including a 14-minute minimovie of the title cut. ("Weird Al" Yankovic cemented his own stardom by lampooning Jackson's song "Beat It" with a letter-perfect parody video.)

On the Motown Records' 25th-anniversary special -- a May 1983 TV extravaganza with notable turns by the Temptations, the Four Tops and Smokey Robinson -- it was Michael Jackson who stopped the show.

Already he was the most popular musician in America, riding high with "Thriller." But something about his electrifying performance of "Billie Jean," complete with the patented backward dance moves, boosted his stardom to a new level.

People copied his Jheri-curled hair and single-gloved, zippered-jacket look. Showbiz veterans such as Fred Astaire praised his chops. He posed for photos with Ronald and Nancy Reagan at the White House. Paul McCartney teamed with him on three duets, two of which -- "The Girl Is Mine" and "Say Say Say" -- became top five hits. Jackson became a Pepsi spokesman, and when his hair caught fire while making a commercial, it was worldwide news.

It all happened very fast -- within a couple years of the Motown special. But even at the time of the "Motown 25" moonwalk, fame was old hat to Michael Jackson. He hadn't even turned 25 himself, but he'd been a star for more than half his life. He was given the nickname the "King of Pop" -- a spin on Elvis Presley's status as "the King of Rock 'n' Roll" -- and few questioned the moniker.

Relentless attention

But, as the showbiz saying has it, when you're on top of the world, there's nowhere to go but down. The relentless attention given Jackson started focusing as much on his eccentricities -- some real, some rumored -- as his music.

As the Web site Allmusic.com notes, he was rumored to sleep in a hyperbaric chamber and to have purchased the bones of John Merrick, the "Elephant Man." (Neither was true.) He did have a pet chimpanzee, Bubbles; underwent a series of increasingly drastic plastic surgeries; established an estate, Neverland, filled with zoo animals and amusement park rides; and managed to purchase the Beatles catalog from under Paul McCartney's nose, which displeased the ex-Beatle immensely.

In 1990s and 2000s, Jackson found himself pasted across the media for his short-lived marriages, the first to Elvis Presley's daughter, Lisa Marie; his 2002 claim that then Sony Records head Tommy Mottola was racist; his behavior and statements during a 2003 interview with British journalist Martin Bashir done for a documentary called "Living With Michael Jackson;" his changing physical appearance; and, above all, the accusations that he sexually molested young boys at Neverland.

The first such accusation, in 1993, resulted in a settlement to the 13-year-old accuser (rumored to be as high as $20 million), though no criminal charges were filed, Allmusic.com notes.

He also fell deeply in debt and was forced to sell some of his assets. Neverland was one of many holdings that went on the block. However, an auction of material from Neverland, scheduled for April, was called off and all items returned to Jackson.

Interest in Jackson never faded, however, even if some of it was prurient. In 2008, when he announced 10 comeback shows in London, beginning in July 2009, the story made worldwide news. The number of concerts was later increased to 50.

Seventy-five thousand tickets sold in four hours when they went on sale in March.

However, when the shows were postponed until 2010, rumors swept the Internet that Jackson was not physically prepared and possibly suffering from skin cancer.

At the time, the president and CEO of AEG Live, Randy Phillips, said, "He's as healthy as can be -- no health problems whatsover."

Jackson held open auditions for dancers in April in Los Angeles.

He is survived by his three children, Prince Michael I, Paris and Prince Michael II.

Two-year-old 'world's youngest smoker'

2009-06-25T01:41:00.000-07:00

A TWO-YEAR-OLD boy from the city of Tianjin in China is the world's youngest smoker.

Well, at least the youngest to admit it.

Except he didn't admit it, his dad did, after proudly teaching Tong Liangliang how to spark up between tantrums and milky vomits.

Liangliang's dad said his son was born with a hernia, and being too young for an operation, has taken up smoking to help him deal with the pain.

Now he's a pack-a-day man. Pack-a-day toddler. And he won't give up, screaming and throwing himself on the floor if he's refused a durry.

"The father wasn't aware how serious the toddler's habit had become until the child began to increase the number of cigarettes he smoked per day," news agency CRI said.

The Guinness Book of World Records is unlikely to accept the feat, as it has refused such requests before on the grounds that it "promoted a harmful habit".

Girl killed by Internet 'Lover'

2009-06-24T09:34:00.000-07:00

A schoolgirl who went to a cake shop to break up with her Internet "lover" died after being taken hostage and stabbed by the man.

The man was shot in a police attempt to save the girl and is recovering in a hospital.

IMAGE : "An injured girl is carried to a nearby hospital Monday afternoon after she was rescued from a man who took her in hostage in a food shop in Nanjing, Jiangsu province. The girl, surnamed Fang, died in hospital from loss of blood. "

The girl, believed to be about 16 years old, met the man in a cake shop near her school around 5:30 on Monday in Nanjing, Jiangsu province.

"I was told Fang (the school girl) was there to meet her Internet 'lover', who came to see her from Shenzhen," said a schoolboy surnamed Wang who goes to the same school as the girl. "Don't know what went wrong."

According to police, the man stabbed the girl because she wanted to break up with him.

Fang had previously skipped school to visit the man, said her teacher, who rushed to the scene after receiving a call regarding the incident.

The girl had already been stabbed several times before the emergency call was made, but she was still alive when police arrived. All three shop employees and customers had escaped.

The man held Fang close to his body as a shield and pointed the knife against her throat to resist arrest. Fang had several stab wounds and was bleeding heavily, according to police.

When police were unable to arrest the man, two snipers in position outside the cake shop fired two shots at him around 6:50 pm. Both the schoolgirl and the stabber were then taken to hospital, but Fang was confirmed dead due to excessive blood loss.

Her Internet "lover" was still hospitalized. No other information has been released about him.

Flying car to be unveiled in 2011

2009-06-24T09:30:00.000-07:00

TORONTO: The flying car is on its way.

An American company Terrafugia Transition, based near Boston, is set to unveil the dual-purpose car-cum-plane vehicle called 'The Flying car' as early as 2011. The two-seater vehicle can let you fly if you wish to avoid the congested city traffic.

If you want to drive on the road, just touch the road. The vehicle will fold up its wings in 30 seconds and transform itself into a car.

"The Flying Car" can travel up to 725 kilometres in the air at a speed of more than 115 kilometres per hour.

Fuelled by gasoline, it has front wheel drive on the road and a propeller for flight.

With its wings folded, it can be parked in your ordinary car garage.

Its initial cost is expected to be around $200,000 (nearly Rs.1 crore), says the company which has already orders for 60 vehicles.

The CEO of the company told Canadian TV (CTV) network here that they have successfully test-flown "The Flying Car" as many as 28 times.

The tests have shown that the vehicle can drive, fly and switch from being a plane to a car in just 30 seconds.

"It (testing) has been very successful," Carl Dietrich, co-founder and CEO of Terrafugia, told the television network.

" We have got a very good handling vehicle and our test pilot said that the flights were just remarkably unremarkable - it just flies like a really nice, little airplane,” he said.

He said this miracle vehicle will ease problems for pilots who currently face problems like weather which sometimes doesn't allow them to take off or land.

"This vehicle allows a pilot any time, if the weather changes, to divert to the nearest airport, fold up their wings and drive safely under the weather."

"The Transition (the name for "The Flying Car" is not designed to replace the automobile. However, it will solve transportation issues for a variety of circumstances,” company vice president Richard Gersh said.

Asked whether the vehicle will be mass produced one day, he said: "That is certainly a possibility, but a number of years away."

He said the vehicle will be able travel on ordinary roads.

"Our depositors represent a wide-cross section in terms of age, interests, and intended use of the vehicle. We have deposits from both experienced pilots and non-pilots who intend to earn their Sport Pilot certificate," said the vice president of Terrafugia.

Set up in 2006, Terrafugia is run by trained aeronautical engineers and MBAs from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

World drugs in graphics

2009-06-24T09:13:00.001-07:00

A UN agency has published a comprehensive report on the worldwide illicit drugs market, the World Drug Report 2009. The graphs and maps below show the extent of the problem and measures to tackle it

Some argue that strict controls have created a thriving black market that breeds violence and corruption.
In the report's preface, UNODC Executive Director Antonio
Maria Costa calls for greater investment in drug treatment and crime control. He says legalising drugs would be "an historic mistake" as a free market would spark a drug epidemic. "Societies should not have to choose between protecting public health or public security: they can and should do both."
GLOBAL USE AMONG YOUNG PEOPLE
Cannabis is still the most widely produced and used drug in the world. It is also a drug that is increasing in potency. In the last decade, the amount of THC (the harmful component) found in marijuana from North America - grown using the latest techniques - has almost doubled.
The World Drugs Report shows consumption of both cannabis and cocaine, at least in the western world, remains steady or is in decline. In the last decade, cocaine use in the USA among 10th and 12th grade high school students fell by 40% and 30%.In Spain, Europe's largest cocaine market, annual prevalence of cocaine among secondary school students fell from 7.2% in 2004 to 4.1% in 2006. The picture is less clear in developing countries where data is limited.
Use of amphetamines, methamphetamine and ecstasy has levelled off in developed countries but production and consumption in developing countries may be growing.

Passengers asked to balance plane

2009-06-24T09:07:00.000-07:00

Dozens of holidaymakers returning to Newcastle refused to fly after they were asked to act as human ballast.

A jammed hold door meant luggage could only be loaded into the front of the Thomas Cook plane at Mallorca airport.

Passengers were asked to move seats to distribute the weight, but 71 left the plane, fearing for their safety.

Thomas Cook said it was standard procedure for airlines to ensure cargo and passengers were evenly distributed, and there was no safety risk.

Those who refused to fly on Saturday had to arrange alternative transport for themselves.

Safety concerns

Rowen Laybourne, 17, from Cramlington in Northumberland, was with a group of five teenagers.

She said: "People were refusing to fly.

"They were saying it was not safe enough if we had to move

about to balance the plane.

"The pilot came out to speak to us and told us it was perfectly safe.

"When someone asked if the hold door could open when we were in the air at 20,000ft, he couldn't understand and walked away."

Her group were among those who left the plane. They spent the night in the airport before catching another flight.

A Thomas Cook spokeswoman said: "It is standard for all airlines to ensure cargo and passengers are evenly distributed on an aircraft and there will be times when passengers will be asked to move to the front or back of a plane.

"This is a routine industry procedure and poses no safety issue.

"We are disappointed that despite reassurances from the captain and crew, a number of passengers decided not to travel."

Microsoft offers free anti-virus

2009-06-24T09:05:00.001-07:00

A trial version of Microsoft's free anti-virus software has been launched in the US, China, Brazil, and Israel.

Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) promises to provide people with basic protection against viruses, trojans, rootkits and spyware.
The software giant has been criticised in the past for failing to include free security software with Windows.
Its first security package, Windows Live OneCare, failed to attract many customers and will be discontinued.
Microsoft is hoping that MSE, available as a free download from its site, will prove more popular. It has said it will automatically update it for users.
However, rival security vendors have questioned whether Microsoft can compete with more established anti-virus players.
Family doctor
"Early reviews of the beta are showing that it under-performs when compared to existing freeware products, and well below paid solutions," said security firm Symantec in a statement.
"Referring to Microsoft's basic anti-virus and anti-spyware product as an essential security solution is misleading. Consumers need firewall protection, web protection, anti-spam and identity safeguards," it said.
J.R Smith, chief executive of security firm AVG, said Microsoft's entry into the security market could "further confuse consumers about the inherent security of their computer".
"It's important to recognise that Microsoft's role in the internet security realm is much like your relationship with your trusted family doctor. They can help diagnose the problems. In addition, they treat many general ailments. In the end, though, they are not a replacement for a specialist when you need one," he said.
Initially 75,000 trial versions of MSE, codenamed Morro, will be available in the US, Brazil, China and Israel.
The software will be rolled out in other countries later this year.

Iran: Neda gunman mistook her for terrorist

2009-06-24T08:51:00.001-07:00

TEHRAN, Iran : Iran said the gunman who killed Neda Agha-Soltan may have mistaken her for the sister of an Iranian "terrorist," the Islamic Republic News Agency reported Wednesday.

Iran blamed the death of the woman known to the world simply as Neda squarely on "those groups who want to create division in the nation," saying they planned the woman's killing "to accuse the Islamic republic of ruthlessly dealing with the opposition," according to IRNA, Iran's state-run news agency.

The report said the investigation into her death is ongoing, "but according to the evidence so far, it could be said that she was killed by mistake. The marksmen had mistaken her for the sister of one of the Monafeghin who had been executed in the province of Mazandaran some time ago."

Monafeghin refers to the People's Mujahedin Organization of Iran, or PMOI, which promotes a secular, Marxist government for Iran, and has waged a violent campaign against the fundamentalist Islamic regime, including bombings that killed politicians, judges and Cabinet members.

Also known as Mujahedin-e-Khalq, the group initially was formed to oppose the Shah of Iran but fell out of favor with the Islamic Revolution of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini after 1979.

The European Union removed the group from its list of terrorist organizations this year, prompting outrage from Tehran. The Iranian Foreign Ministry accused the European Union of "making friends and cooperating with terrorists" by removing the group from its list.

Neda, 26, rose to prominence within hours after a crudely shot video documenting her final moments was uploaded to the Web. Shortly after she died Saturday from a single gunshot wound to the chest, she emerged as a powerful symbol of opposition to the Iranian government.

"It's heartbreaking," President Obama said Tuesday, referring to the video of Neda, which means "divine calling" in Farsi.

"And I think anyone who sees it knows there's something fundamentally unjust about it."

The Iranian government has sought to minimize the impact of her death.

IRNA reported Wednesday that the killer, or killers, may have "thought that they were targeting one of the government opposition people and that is why they immediately distributed the video of the aftermath of the killing through the official and unofficial media in order to reach their murderous objectives against the Iranian government and revolution."

Obama in Action

2009-06-23T18:59:00.000-07:00

Does a 4-year-old Need a Cell Phone?

2009-06-23T18:43:00.000-07:00

Amid worries over sexting (sexually-oriented text messages among or to young people who use mobile phones) and the revelation today that one-third of U.S. teens have used cell phones to cheat on tests, many parents face a tough decision of when to get a kid a mobile phone (insert tug, tug, tug onthe shirtsleeve visual here).

Meanwhile, mobile phones are being actively marketed to young kids now, with phones that glow and age-themed ring tones, whilst preying on parental fears with the ol' "peace of mind" pitch.

IMAGE : "Mommy? Hi! I just wanted to tell you that it's pink, and I love it! I feel so grown up now!"

In Britain, a toy-like phone aimed at kids as young as 4 will soon be launched ("The brightly-coloured Firefly handset has just five buttons - including two which call mum and dad directly.")

On the Web site of Firefly, the "mobile phone for mobile kids," the stock photos show kids who look to be about 8 years old. Aimed at the U.S. market, the Firefly site touts its "Pay-As-You-Go rate plans designed to give parents financial control." Any parent who's ever paid the mobile phone bill of a teen knows why that's attractive.

So what's wrong with toddlers having phones?

"We are continually eroding childhood and making children miniature adults," Margaret Morrissey, of the lobby group Parents' Outloud, told the Daily Mail. Indeed, on many fronts these days, modern society is ruining childhood — at least if you buy the argument that a carefree childhood is the aim.

Washington Metro Train Crash Kills Six

2009-06-22T18:30:00.000-07:00

Six people were killed and more than 70 were injured on Monday when one Metro subway train slammed into another on the outskirts of the city during the afternoon rush hour.

“It looks to be the worst Metro accident in D.C. history,” said Mayor Adrian M. Fenty. “We’re going to investigate this and find out what happened.”

IMAGE : "A rush hour collision occurred between the Fort Totten and Takoma Park stations in Washington on Monday."

The general manager of the Metro system, John B. Catoe Jr., said one train had stopped at a platform — and was waiting permission to proceed — when it was hit from behind by the second train. He did not speculate on whether safety devices intended to prevent such crashes had failed, saying authorities were still focused on rescuing passengers.

At the scene, one subway car sat fully on top of a car from the other train. One of the trains had part of its roof sheared off, but the wreckage was a jumble of twisted metal. Seats from the smashed cars had spilled onto the tracks.

IMAGE : "Two Red Line Metrorail trains collided during the evening rush hour on Monday in Washington."

Several passengers were carried off on stretchers while rescue crews used ladders and heavy equipment to cut into the wreckage and get at passengers stuck inside. Helicopters buzzed overhead. The police scrambled to coordinate the traffic, onlookers and the rescue workers.

The crash took place about 5 p.m. on a heavily traveled Metro route known as “the red line” that shuttles thousands of commuters every day from the suburbs into the city. It occurred between the Takoma Park and Fort Totten stations, where there is a long stretch of track, meaning trains often reach high speeds.

“It was a huge impact,” said Maya Maroto, 31, from Burtonsville, Md., who was in the third car of the trains that hit the standing train as she headed into the city to see a movie. “Our first inclination was that we hit another train or car.”

An elderly woman standing near them flew out of her seat and was sprawled on the floor. She said that she did not realize the seriousness of the accident until she looked out the door and saw the front of her train wedged on top of the other train. Minutes later she looked again and saw a body on the tracks.

Passengers said it took about 15 minutes before officials showed up or announcements were made to the passengers.

“It was kind of scary that no one was there,” said Allison Miner, 49, a nutritionist from Silver Spring who was with Ms. Maroto on the train that hit the stopped train.

Much of the Metrorail system, which opened in 1976, runs below ground, including a section that goes under the Potomac River from Washington into Virginia, and part of it goes over the river. The trains were above ground when they collided.

“This an aging system and one that needs to be looked at very closely,” said Peter Goelz, former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board, referring to the city rail system which he added has had several accidents this year, mostly involving rail workers.

It was the third time in the last 15 years that two Metro trains have been involved in major accidents. The last time in November 2004, when a Red Line train rolled backwards down a stretch of track, and crashed into another train at the Woodley Park station. Twenty people were injured.

In September, a commuter train collided with a freight train in Los Angeles, killing 25 people and injuring more than 130. Federal investigators later said that the engineer on the commuter train was sending text messages on his cellphone seconds before the crash.

Microbe Wakes Up After 120,000 Years

2009-06-22T18:05:00.000-07:00

This electron micrograph shows cells of the recently revived bacteria, Herminiimonas glaciei. Credit: The Society for General Microbiology.

After more than 120,000 years trapped beneath a block of ice in Greenland, a tiny microbe has awoken. The long-lasting bacteria may hold clues to what life forms might exist on other planets.

The new bacteria species was found nearly 2 miles (3 km) beneath a Greenland glacier, where temperatures can dip well below freezing, pressure soars, and food and oxygen are scarce.

IMAGE : "This electron micrograph shows cells of the recently revived bacteria, Herminiimonas glaciei. Credit: The Society for General Microbiology."

"We don't know what state they were in," said study team member Jean Brenchley of Pennsylvania State University. "They could've been dormant, or they could've been slowly metabolizing, but we don't know for sure."

Dormant would mean the bacteria were in a spore-like state in which there's not a lot of metabolism going on, so the bacteria wouldn't be reproducing much. It's possible the bacteria could have been slowly metabolizing and replicating.

"Microbes have found ways to survive in harsh conditions for long times that we don't yet fully understand," Brenchley told LiveScience.

To coax the bacteria back to life, Brenchley, Jennifer Loveland-Curtze and their Penn State colleagues incubated the samples at 36 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) for seven months, followed by more than four months at 41 degrees F (5 degrees C).

The resulting colonies of the originally purple-brown bacteria, now named Herminiimonas glaciei, are alive and well.

"We were able to recover it and get it to grow in our laboratory," Brenchley said. "It was viable."

Such vigor is partially due to the microbe's small size, the scientists speculate. Boasting dimensions that are 10 to 50 times smaller than Escherichia coli, the new bacteria likely could more efficiently absorb nutrients due to a larger surface-to-volume ratio. Tiny microbes like this one can also hide more easily from predators and take up residence among ice crystals and in the thin liquid film on those surfaces.

H. glaciei is not the first bacteria species resurrected after a possibly lengthy snooze beneath the ice. Loveland-Curtze and her team reported another hardy bacterium in the same area that had survived for about 120,000 years as well. Chryseobacterium greenlandensis had tiny bud-like structures on its surface that may have played a role in the organism's survival. Another bacterium survived more than 32,000 years in an Arctic tunnel, and was brought back to life a few years ago.

The harsh conditions endured by these microbes serve as models of other planets.

"These extremely cold environments are the best analogues of possible extraterrestrial habitats," Loveland-Curtze said, referring to the Greenland glacier. "The exceptionally low temperatures can preserve cells and nucleic acids for even millions of years."

And studying such microorganisms may provide insight into what sorts of life forms could survive elsewhere in the solar system.

The new bacterium is described in the current issue of the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.

New 'Urban Car' claims to slash CO2 emissions by two thirds

2009-06-16T19:38:00.000-07:00

A former motor-racing engineer has unveiled a prototype of a new hydrogen-powered city car which claims to emit less than one third of the carbon emissions produced by its nearest rival.

The creators of the 'Urban Car,' UK-based company Riversimple, say the vehicle emits less than 30 grams per kilometer of carbon dioxide, less than one third of the carbon produced by the Polo Bluemotion.

Riversimple founder Hugo Spowers has spent nine years researching and developing the prototype car.

Spowers told, "I think that the auto industry is focusing a lot of money on research and development at a basic science level on hydrogen storage and fuel cell technology. We don't think it's necessary to do that"

"We can use existing technology and integrate it into a whole system design approach -- that is where the breakthrough has come."

Spowers is searching for extra funding to put the 'Urban Car' on the streets, but he says at this stage they won't be for sale. Riversimple plans to lease the car to customers for a monthly fee of £200 ($330). Hydrogen fuel for the cars will cost just 15 pence (25 cents) per mile.

It's a long way from the fuel-guzzling world Spowers used to inhabit as a designer and developer of high-powered racing cars. It was the industry's appalling environmental record that encouraged him to leave to try to find a way to make driving greener.

"Certainly the first five or six years were hard work because I did have an awful lot of people telling me I was mad," Spowers told at the launch of the Riversimple Urban Car in London.

"Gradually it all sort of gathered steam," he said, adding "I'm absolutely convinced that we're offering a better solution for a segment of the transport problem and we'd be crazy not to pursue it."

The Urban Car's power comes from hydrogen fuel cells which are linked to four electric motors situated over each of the car's wheels. Almost all of the braking is done by the electric motors, which then capture the energy of the car in motion and store it in a bank of ultracapacitors. In conventional cars, the energy generated through braking is lost as heat.

The energy stored in the Urban Car's electric motors is enough to power 80 percent of the car's acceleration. That reduces the energy demands on the hydrogen fuel cell, meaning it can be one fifth of the size of one used in a normal car. The lighter fuel cell also makes it more energy efficient.

A large part of the funding for the car's development came from the family of Ernst Piëch, the eldest grandson of Ferdinand Porsche who founded the motor company of the same name in 1931.

Ferdinand Porsche's great-grandson Sebastien Piëch is a partner in Riversimple. He says the company's nimble size has given it an advantage over larger car manufacturers whose future he says concerns him.

"It concerns me massively, because I don't see that the model they have now is very relevant to where consumers are going. Consumers are looking for a different solution. I'm not sure if what they're producing is working," he said.

Riversimple plans to share the designs for its car through open-source licence agreements, a system more commonly used in the software industry. Designers and manufacturers will be invited to make improvements so the car evolves into the most efficient vehicle it can be.

Piëch told, "We don't believe that making money on IP (intellectual property) is really what's actually happening even now. We believe that service and providing the solution for customers will be where we make money"

The next step now is to find further financing, another £20 million ($33 million), to build and test ten cars. Fifty prototypes will then be built for a pilot project in a small city. The location is still to be confirmed, but Riversimple has narrowed down its options to small towns in the United Kingdom, perhaps Oxford or Peterborough.

"I'm very confident we'll get it to market," Spowers said. "I couldn't say hand on heart that I'm confident that we'll achieve what I think technically can be done. That's a bit in the lap of the gods and it's all to do with people, politics and business -- all a bit more unpredictable."

Plane Crash in Upstate N.Y. Kills 2

2009-06-14T17:50:00.000-07:00

Filed at June 14, 6:15 p.m. ET

SCOTIA, N.Y. (AP) -- A small plane plunged into the Mohawk River in eastern New York with three people aboard Sunday, and at least two were found dead after the aircraft sank in 30 feet of water, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said.

The Piper Cherokee went down near Scotia around 2:30 p.m., shortly after taking off from the nearby Mohawk Valley Airport, FAA spokesman Jim Peters said. Scotia is about 20 miles northwest of Albany.

The third person's condition wasn't immediately known. Peters said divers were still searching early Sunday evening to see whether anyone else was aboard.

A skydiving instructor at Mohawk Valley Airport told the Times Union of Albany he and others who were in the small airstrip's restaurant heard the crash, ran down the airstrip and jumped into the river to help a fisherman drop an anchor to help rescuers find the downed plane.

''There's nothing we wanted to do more than get into that plane,'' said Michael McGuire.

The aircraft was registered to Kolath Airlines LLC of Bear, Del., Peters said. A woman who identified herself as Kolath's registered agent said she didn't know about the crash and had been unable to contact anyone with the company.

FAA records show the plane, a PA-28R-180 model, was manufactured in 1969. The model is part of the Piper Cherokee family of small planes, made by Vero Beach, Fla.-based Piper Aircraft Inc.

It wasn't immediately clear whether Kolath is a commercial venture or a corporate name for an owner's personal aircraft.

The telephone rang unanswered Sunday evening at the airport. State police, who were leading the emergency response, had no immediate information.