INFORMATION WATCH

Climate chief admits error over report of Himalayan glaciers

2010-01-21T11:37:00.000-08:00

The head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been forced to apologise for including in its 2007 report the claim that there was a "very high" chance of glaciers disappearing from the Himalayas by 2035.
Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC, conceded yesterday that "the clear and well-established standards of evidence required by the IPCC procedures were not applied properly" when the claim was included in the 900-page assessment of the impacts of climate change.
The paragraph at issue reads: "Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high."
Single source
The report's only cited source was a 2005 report by the environment group WWF, which in turn cited a 1999 article in New Scientist.
The New Scientist article quoted senior Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain, the then vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, who was writing a report on the Himalayas for the International Commission for Snow and Ice. It said, on the basis of an interview with Hasnain, that his report "indicates that all the glaciers in the central and eastern Himalayas could disappear by 2035". The claim did not, however, appear in the commission's report, which was only made available late last year.
This week a group of geographers, headed by Graham Cogley of Trent University at Peterborough in Ontario, Canada, have written to the journal Science pointing out that the claim "requires a 25-fold greater loss rate from 1999 to 2035 than that estimated for 1960 to 1999. It conflicts with knowledge of glacier-climate relationships, and is wrong."
The geographers add that the claim has "captured the global imagination and has been repeated in good faith often, including recently by the IPCC's chairman". The IPCC's errors "could have been avoided had the norms of scientific publication, including peer review and concentration upon peer-reviewed work, been respected", they say.
Several of those involved in the IPCC review process did try to question the 2035 date before it was published by the IPCC. Among them was Georg Kaser, a glaciologist from the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and a lead author of another section of the IPCC report. "I scanned the almost final draft at the end of 2006 and came across the 2035 reference." Kaser queried the reference but believes it was too late in the day for it to be reassessed.
Publicly available IPCC archives of the review process show that during the formal review, the Japanese government also questioned the 2035 claim. It commented: "This seems to be a very important statement. What is the confidence level/certainty?" Soon afterwards, a reference to the WWF report was added to the final draft. But the statement otherwise went unchanged.
Grey literature
One of the IPCC authors, Stephen Schneider of Stanford University, California, this week defended the use of so-called "grey" literature in IPCC reports. He told New Scientist that it was not possible to include only peer-reviewed research because, particularly in the chapters discussing the regional impacts of climate change, "most of the literature is not up to that gold standard".
The Himalaya claim appeared in the regional chapter on Asia. "There are only a few authors in each region, so it narrows the base of science," Schneider says.
This week Hasnain has claimed, for the first time, that he was misquoted by New Scientist in 1999.
New Scientist stands by its story and was not the only news outlet to publish Hasnain's claim.

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2010-01-19T11:55:00.001-08:00

www.gurumia.com
to explore Bangladesh

in reference to: Google (view on Google Sidewiki)

good service

2010-01-12T09:23:00.003-08:00

i appriciate - www.gurumia.com

in reference to: Google (view on Google Sidewiki)

good service

2010-01-12T09:23:00.001-08:00

i appriciate - www.gurumia.com

in reference to: Google (view on Google Sidewiki)

Christian Bible Goes Digital

2009-07-07T03:33:00.000-07:00

Christian Bible Goes Digital

Time is never kind to paper manuscripts, particular those written more than 1600 years ago. Some 800 pages remain of the Codex Sinaiticus, a version of the Christian Bible written in the fourth century, and the original text is thought to be nearly twice as long. Historians believe the book may be world's oldest Christian Bible.

to today's online publication of the Codex Sinaiticus, scholars can examine the entire book from the comfort of their desks. Curious? You can explore the document yourself. Stephen Bates of The Guardian explains the significance of the online edition:
". . . so sophisticated is modern technology that scholars will not only be able to read the document on their screens using a standard light setting, but also separately by a raking illumination that highlights the texture and features of the very parchment on which the 800 surviving pages of text were written."
It's fair to say the online edition of Codex Sinaiticus won't have mainstream appeal. But the project does illustrate the power of the Internet to advance educational pursuits.

why you'll want to play Batman's gritty upcoming adventure

2009-07-05T05:38:00.000-07:00

Batman Fans Will Go Bat-Crazy ..
Kevin Conroy possesses the kind of voice that could probably part the Red Sea. It's only fitting that his acting prowess from Batman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond and five seasons of the Justice League series would bring the Caped Crusader to life in Arkham Asylum, and it's good to have him back. That deep, baritone pitch has been something that Christian Bale likely weeped at his inability to mimic, although it probably doesn't help that Conroy's normal civilian speech sounds like the voice of God with a touch of Clint Eastwood (also God).

On the other end of the spectrum, Mark Hamill, who is arguably more famous for voice acting than his lightsaber skills, is providing the voice of the Joker. It doesn't get much better than that. Unlike goofy incarnations of Batman's less threatening foes, Mark Hamill makes the Joker sound straight up psychotic. How psychotic? Expose some small children to Batman: The Animated Series, and it's 90 percent certain that they'll develop a sudden, volatile fear of clowns.
Play with Insanely Cool Bat Tools like Explosive Jelly and Razor-Sharp Batarangs
Even if they don't always get the combat right (cough, Batman: Dark Tomorrow), most Batman games don't skimp on those wonderful toys. Arkham Asylum's no slouch either, as you've got everything from grappling hooks, mid-flight-controlled Batarangs and explosive Bat-Jelly that can pretty much turn anything into rubble. Heck, even the Joker's packing some heat, and by heat we mean face-searing, skin-melting acid. Oh, and he has a gun. Just in case the acid wasn't painful enough.

Google is hoping to dissuade the Department of Justice from bringing an antitrust case.

2009-06-11T07:12:00.000-07:00

Increasing scrutiny of corporate behavior, Google is hoping to dissuade the Department of Justice from bringing an antitrust case.
For several months, Google has been explaining to regulators and journalists that, contrary to the predatory image painted by competitors, the company is fragile. It has made its case in Washington, D.C., New York, and Brussels, hoping to dissuade the U.S. Department of Justice and European regulators from bringing an antitrust case against the company.

After the lax regulatory atmosphere of the Bush administration, the Obama administration appears to be increasing its scrutiny of corporate behavior. The new head of the Justice Department's antitrust division said in a recent speech that the department would be taking a more aggressive approach with companies that use their dominant position to stifle competition. In a speech last year, before her appointment to the Justice Department, she said that Google had acquired a monopoly in online advertising.
Google also faces Justice Department scrutiny over its proposed settlement with book publishers and authors, Federal Trade Commission scrutiny over board members who also serve on Apple's board, and a Justice Department inquiry into the possibility that Silicon Valley companies such as Google and Apple colluded to avoid poaching employees from one another. Last year, Google abandoned a planned advertising deal with Yahoo to avoid an antitrust showdown with the Justice Department.

During the Google presentation, Adam Kovacevich, the company's senior manager of global communications and public affairs, acknowledged that the company's success has brought increased scrutiny. But he insisted that Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) was in a similar position a decade ago, citing a 1998 Fortune article that declared, "Yahoo has won the search engine wars."

"We also know our position is fragile," he said.
In keeping with Google's emphasis on data and metrics, Google legal counsel Dana Wagner, who coincidentally used to work in the antitrust division of the Justice Department, offered an anecdote in support of this claim.

Microsoft is adding a "Windows XP Mode" to Windows 7

2009-04-27T04:27:00.000-07:00

Now Windows 7 gets built in XP mode..
Microsoft is adding a "Windows XP Mode" to Windows 7, in a move to encourage users to make the switch to the software vendor's forthcoming operating system.

The firm has built its XP mode into Windows 7 by using the Windows Virtual PC technology Microsoft acquired in 2003, to make the OS compatible to run apps designed for Vista's predecessor.
Redmond was keen to emphasise in a blog post late on Friday that it's hoping to woo small businesses to move to Windows 7 by bigging up the XP mode feature.

"Windows XP Mode is specifically designed to help small businesses move to Windows 7," said Microsoft. "Windows XP Mode provides you with the flexibility to run many older productivity applications on a Windows 7 based PC."

Users can install apps directly into the virtualised XP environment. The applications are then published to the Windows 7 desktop and they can be run from within that OS.

Microsoft said it will release a beta of Windows XP mode and Windows Virtual PC for Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate "soon" but wasn't more specific about when the test builds will land.

When Microsoft released Vista over two years ago, many businesses and individuals complained about compatibility snafus with applications that simply wouldn't work within the new OS

Nokia ready to change its fortunes in the U.S. market

2009-03-29T22:01:00.000-07:00

NOKIA HITS US MARKETS.....
Nokia has steadily lost ground in recent years, watching its market share shrivel to single digits.
Nokia hopes to reverse that trend. On Mar. 30, AT&T (T), the largest wireless carrier in the U.S., plans to announce it will soon carry Nokia's e71x, the thinnest smartphone available in the U.S. The phone is similar to traditional BlackBerry devices in looks, but is a sleeker 0.39 inches thick. It has a Qwerty keyboard, allowing for Web browsing and corporate e-mail access via regular wireless networks and Wi-Fi hotspots at cafés and airports. The device also has a built-in Global Positioning System, a music player, a video camera, and a memory card slot. The Nokia e71x is expected to hit the U.S. market in May and should cost $100 after rebate with a two-year contract.

"We believe this is a great opportunity for Nokia," says Hugo Hernandez, Nokia's head of E-series marketing for North America. "We are bringing in a device with the right [features] and the right price point."

Investing more in the U.S. market
To gain back market share and prove it's serious about the U.S. market this time, Nokia needs to follow up the e71x with comparably promising phones. In particular, the company needs to develop more phones with the CDMA wireless technology used by Verizon Wireless and Sprint (S). "It'll be difficult [to increase their market share] due to their [near] lack of CDMA presence," says Hughes De La Vergne, a principal analyst at Gartner (IT).

T-Mobile felt the time was right to roll out its new webConnect USB Laptop Stick.

2009-03-24T22:31:00.000-07:00

WebConnect USB Laptop Stick on T-Mobile ..

Manufactured by Huawei Technologies Co., this small, portable modem lets you connect to the Web on your laptop using T-Mobile's 3G network or Wi-Fi, and comes with built-in T-Mobile Connection Manager software to automatically detect the best available Internet connection.
In addition, the WebConnect laptop stick offers tri-band 3G connectivity (HSDPA/UMTS 1900/AWS/2100), so you'll be able to use it on compatible networks overseas. If you're in an area where there is no 3G coverage, it is compatible with GPRS/EDGE networks, so you're not left to search out a Wi-Fi hot spot as your only option of getting online.
Aside from connectivity, the T-Mobile WebConnect laptop stick can also double as a portable storage device. Similar to the AT&T USBConnect Mercury, it's equipped with a microSD/SDHC expansion slot that can accept up to 8GB cards. The accessory features a swivel USB design and measures 3.5 inches tall by 1.1 inches wide by 0.4 inch thick and weighs 1.5 ounces.

The T-Mobile WebConnect USB Laptop Stick will be available in select T-Mobile retail stores and online starting March 25. There are various pricing options available: $49.99 with a two-year contract after rebate; $99.99 with one-year contract; or $249.99 with no contract.

If you have a Sony Reader, you have a lot of reading to catch up on.

2009-03-19T05:26:00.000-07:00

Sony EBook Store to present standard Books Digitized by Google.

How does it work?

Reader doesn’t have to replace your traditional books - it’s just a new way of enjoying reading. With Reader you can carry far more books with you wherever you go, so whatever mood takes you you’ll have a book that fits it.

And using Reader couldn’t be simpler:
When you buy a Reader, install the supplied software on your computer, connect Reader to it with the cable provided and voila!

Create and manage your eBook library on your PC and transfer your eBooks to Reader exactly like you do with your music on your mp3 player.

Need a new book? Choose from thousands of titles available from waterstones.com the online store of Britain's best-loved bookseller. Simply buy the ones you want and import them into your PC’s Reader library.
Store up to 160 books at a time on your Reader. If you’re a real bookworm add to your collection and store thousands more using a Sony Memory Stick Duo™ or SD memory card.

Bookmark pages or magnify text on a page; Reader will also remember where you last left off – even if you don’t.

It’s slim and light so you can take it with you wherever you go and the long battery life means you can enjoy nearly 7000 page turns without recharging – that’s like reading War and Peace five times over.

Sony Electronics has struck a deal with Google to distribute half a million titles through the Sony eBook Store -- for free.
The books, all published before 1923 and now in the public domain, were digitized by Google as part of its Google Book Search program. Sony will offer them alongside the 100,000 or so books still under copyright that it sells through its eBook store.
It's already possible to download public domain books from Google Book Search as PDF files and copy them onto a flash memory card for use in e-readers such as Sony's, but this partnership will simplify the process for users by integrating it into the eBook Library Software for PCs that ships with the Sony Reader.
The service won't give Reader owners free access to the much greater number of books still in copyright, many of which Google Book Search has already digitized, however.
To access the public domain books, owners of Sony's PRS-505 or PRS-700 readers will need to install the PC software and create an account on the eBook Store if they don't already have one. Owners of the older PRS-500 are out of luck, though: the service won't work with that device.
The expanded library won't address one key difference between the Sony Reader and Amazon's Kindle e-readers: the Amazon devices don't need to be tethered to a PC to download and install new books. Instead, the Kindles download books over the air via Sprint Nextel's 3G (third generation) mobile network. However, the wireless technology Amazon has chosen for the Kindle -- and the Kindle 2, released Feb. 9 -- is little used outside the U.S., and is incompatible with mobile networks in Europe and most of Asia.
That leaves an opening for other e-reader manufacturers to provide devices that work with European mobile networks, perhaps linking to other online bookstores. Dutch company Endless Ideas is planning just that with the next version of its BeBook e-reader. It showed a prototype of the device at Cebit, but the new model was absent from its small stand at the Paris Book Fair last week, where Sony had a major presence.
Google's partnership with Sony is not the first time it has simplified access to Google Book Search for mobile devices. On Feb. 6 it opened up the service to the Apple iPhone and to phones based on the Android software platform it backs.

Obama's administration is putting $19 billion toward "Health IT,"

2009-03-15T04:18:00.000-07:00

Obama's administration is putting $19 billion toward electronic health record systems to get better treatment and inferior costs.
When Saver begins to examine his patient, however, the 56-year-old physician does something that four out of five doctors in America do not: He pulls out a computer.
The little black Toshiba, its edges worn to the bare metal, gets more use than the stethoscope and has become key to the care Saver gives his patients -- organizing medical histories, test results, prescriptions and other data that were once a jumble of paper records.

Saver's laptop, and the system behind it, put him on the cutting edge of what President Obama and many experts say is a critical step to improving the nation's healthcare system while also reining in cost.It is known as "Health IT," an idea that promises to use information technology to cut medical errors, avoid unnecessary tests and procedures and identify better treatments.

The New York system, which links more than 800 providers, also allows public health officials to quickly tap patient data to track disease outbreaks and send doctors up-to-the-minute advisories.

"There are just huge opportunities here," said Farzad Mostashari, an assistant health commissioner in New York.

Apple unveiled the new iPod Shuffle

2009-03-13T07:17:00.000-07:00

Apple iPod Shuffle....
Apple unveiled the new iPod Shuffle, which is only half the volume of the previous iPod Shuffle, which itself was about the size of a quarter. The new one looks like a sleek aluminum tie clip, or maybe a slightly elongated stick of Trident gum; a AA battery hides it completely. There's just enough room on the back for a mirror-finish spring clip for fastening to your clothes. (If you order from apple.com, you can get a custom message laser-etched onto the clip.)
Apple's third-generation iPod Shuffle MP3 player ($79) is the smallest MP3 player you can buy. Its unique size and uncommon, remote-controlled design won't suit every purpose, but people looking for the next best thing to an invisible iPod will appreciate the player's minimal approach.

Design
At first glance, the iPod Shuffle looks almost like a practical joke--as if someone is trying to convince you that their tie clip plays MP3s. The aluminum-encased hardware measures just a few hairs larger than a paper clip (0.7 inch by 1.8 inches by 0.3 inch) and includes not a hint of button, knob, or screen. The headphone jack sits on the top edge of the Shuffle along with a switch that controls playback mode (shuffle playback/consecutive playback) and power.

Fortunately, Apple doesn't expect you to control the Shuffle's volume and playback using mind control (not yet, at least). The earbud-style headphones bundled with the Shuffle include a remote control on the cable, just below the right ear. The remote offers three buttons: two for volume control (up/down); and a central button with multiple functions. You press the center button once to pause music playback, twice to skip forward, and three times to skip back. Of course, the downside to this headphone-controlled design is if you lose your headphones, you also lose control of your iPod. Apple's own replacement earbuds for the Shuffle run $29, but it's possible to grab third-party headphones and adapters for less.
The headphone cable reaches 3 feet, which should be more than enough length considering that the Shuffle is meant to be clipped to your clothing. A hinged chromed metal clip runs the length of the Shuffle on one side and includes a slot for attaching a lanyard or keychain. An Apple logo is engraved on the clip, and custom engraving is offered on orders placed through Apple's online store.

Features
The Shuffle is purely a digital audio player. There's no FM radio, no voice recording, and--obviously--no photo or video playback. Audio formats supported include MP3, AAC, Audible, WAV, AIF, and Apple Lossless, but no hope for WMA or FLAC.

The third-generation version of the iPod Shuffle offers a few new features over previous models, though. For one, this is the first Shuffle that tells you what you're listening to, which is no small accomplishment considering the player doesn't have a screen. The Shuffle uses a synthesized voice to announce artist and song title information whenever you hold the headphone clicker down. Apple is calling this feature VoiceOver and offers support for 14 languages, with voice quality hinging on what type of computer and operating system you're using.

First robotics contest Makes Science chill!

2009-03-07T20:59:00.000-08:00

Robot No. 219 was designed and built by Warren Hills Regional High School students in six weeks.

High School students participate in FIRST robotics competition.
Blair Robot Project competes at Washington, D.C.
regional.Blair team already preparing for tough future competitions.The Blair Robot Project placed 23rd among 65 participating teams at the 2009 FIRST FRC (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology Robotics Competition) Washington, D.C. regional in the Walter E. Washington Convention Center on Feb.

The FRC challenges students around the country with a game design from which teams have six weeks to assimilate their engineering, programming and constructing skills into a robot to accomplish the game's objectives. This year's game, "Lunacy," required team robots to work in alliances to score balls into baskets attached to opposing robots while driving around on a slick arena track.

With four wins and three losses in the qualification matches at the D.C. regional, Blair was not picked to move on to elimination matches, the next step of the competition. Problems attributed to the camera sensor detecting for the robot's shooter hindered the team from scoring. The shooter ended up calculating the distance and power needed to score too slowly at the competition since all targets were moving, according to senior member William Shepherdson.

The team plans to participate again at the Chesapeake regional on March 19. "We can bring 40 pounds of parts and things we build to modify our robot for Chesapeake," Shepherdson said. "We want to retweak the code a bit and are thinking about redoing our scoring mechanism." Teams from the winning alliance of each regional competition move on to the national championship in Atlanta, Ga. on April 16.

The Blair Robot Project, sponsored by physics teacher Joseph Boettcher and computer science teacher Mary McManus, began the build season on Jan. 3 by dividing and conquering their task through smaller groups - electronics, programming, drive, specialty and public relations. Three thousand dollars in parts, $9,000 in prototyping and hundreds of hours of work later was a 119-pound, five-foot tall robot complete with an automated-camera controlled turret shooter and a smooth drive system. "Some of the most dedicated members put in over 200 hours over build season," junior vice president Eric Van Albert said

Microsoft: Lots to turn off in Windows 7

2009-03-06T19:54:00.000-08:00

Microsoft will expand the list of "features" that can be disabled when the Windows 7 Release Candidate becomes available, including the ability to turn off Internet Explorer 8.
The next version of Windows is giving Microsoft Corp. watchers a peek at how the software maker plans to keep European antitrust regulators from marring a crucial software launch.

Windows 7, the successor to the much-maligned Vista, isn't expected to reach consumers until next year, but more than a million people are already testing early versions. A pair of bloggers tinkering with settings stumbled upon one they hadn't seen before: The ability to "turn off" Microsoft's own Internet Explorer browser.

Microsoft lost a long-running battle with EU antitrust regulators in 2007 over the way it bundled media player software into the Windows operating system. The dust had barely settled when a similar claim was filed, this time over Internet Explorer's place inside Windows. Opera Software ASA, a Norwegian competitor, claimed the practice gives Microsoft's browser an unfair advantage.

In a preliminary decision in January, the EU agreed. Since then, makers of the open-source browser Firefox and Google Inc., which entered the browser market six months ago, have offered to provide more evidence that Microsoft is stifling competition.

In the media player dispute, the EU heavily fined Microsoft and forced it to sell a version of Windows without the offending program installed. This time, Microsoft appears to be offering the check-box solution as a way to head off a similar ending.

The company declined to comment Friday on the connection between the check boxes and the EU's preliminary decision. But in a recent quarterly filing, it said the European Commission may order PC makers to install multiple browsers on new PCs and force Microsoft to disable parts of its own Internet Explorer if people chose a competing browser.

The check boxes, which were described on Microsoft enthusiast blogs http://www.aeroxp.org and http://www.chris123nt.com, also give Windows 7 users a way to disable the media player and hard-drive search programs, among other components, both of which have drawn scrutiny from regulators.

After Windows Vista landed with a thud, Microsoft needs a hit, said Michael Cherry, an analyst for the research group Directions on Microsoft. Beyond appeasing the EU, he said he didn't see much use for the Internet Explorer check box.

Universal Music Group & Google to create a joint music video venture.

2009-03-05T19:17:00.000-08:00

Universal, Google in talks about music video partnership..Google Inc. and Universal Music Group are in talks to enter a partnership that would create a new music video hub powered by YouTube, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal .
Under the partnership, Universal would use YouTube technology and ad sales to distribute content around the Web.

when Google-owned YouTube is searching for ways to monetize its vast amounts of video content and Internet traffic. The major record labels have also been exploring a number of online strategies for monetizing their music content as compact disc sales continue their steep decline.

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) paid $1.65 billion for YouTube a few years ago.
Google's stock was down 4 percent to US$306.10 per share in mid-day trading on Thursday.
No deal has been officially announced by YouTube or Universal Music Group yet.

YouTube and Universal Music are reportedly trying to hash out a deal to create a premium music video site. Currently, many music videos can be found on YouTube, but a deal with one or more major record companies could create a more easily monetized and managed music video portal. YouTube may be looking at the model followed by Hulu, which pairs professional TV content with video advertisements.
Moving away from the current model of labels receiving licensing fees or a share of ad revenue for their videos, Universal wants a new relationship in which music videos are displayed in "high-quality" and are ad-supported. The site would be separate from YouTube's main site.

Google has also notified Warner Music Group, Sony and EMI about the plans but they are not part of the current negotiations.

The talks are still in their preliminary stages, despite beginning in January.

Universal CEO Doug Morris is said to be at the head of the talks and the move makes sense being that Universal's licensing agreement with YouTube is set to expire on March 31st.

The Universal Music Group channel on YouTube is by far its most popular, generating 3.6 billion views so far.

Nokia announced the new Nokia 5800 Xpress Music's availability in the United States

2009-03-02T20:07:00.000-08:00

Challenging the iPhone is apparently easier said than done. RIM’s Blackberry Storm has plenty of software and interface issues, SonyEricsson’s Xperia X1 is way too expensive and those who hoped that Nokia’s 5800 phone would provide a contract-free alternative may be disappointed as well. The phone came with faulty earpiece speakers and cannot find AT&T’s 3G network, prompting Nokia to remove the phone from store shelves again.

Technical problems with the U.S. version of the newly launched Nokia 5800 music mobile phone have led flagship stores in New York and Chicago to pull the model, according to PC World. For now, U.S. customers have to settle for a European version instead.
Positioned as a rival to Apple's iPhone, the phone is a music device with a touch-screen interface, priced at $399 before taxes and subsidies in the U.S.
But according to PC World, the U.S. launch has been interrupted by consumer complaints that the earpiece is not properly protected against moisture, which ruins the speaker. Users have also reported difficulties connecting to AT&T's 3G network, and many customers have reportedly already returned their phones.

Following its introduction in October 2008, the Nokia 5800 Xpress Music has seen successful sales in a number of markets, including Hong Kong and Moscow, where the device sold out within hours of the sales kickoff, Nokia said.

Many consumers have returned their 5800s to the Nokia stores in Chicago and New York, which eventually convinced Nokia to stop selling the phone for now. Nokia did not say how many 5800s have been sold in the U.S.

Meanwhile there is also talk about Nokia’s Comes with Music service, a major selling point of the 5800, which was promised to allow users unlimited access to the service’s entire music library one year free of charge.
U.S. launch likelihood: Very Strong.

Internet pioneer Yahoo! is open to selling its Web search business

2009-03-02T07:29:00.000-08:00

Internet company's chief financial says any deal needs to be done for the right reasons.

Internet pioneer Yahoo! is open to selling its Web search business or entering into a partnership with another company, but doing a deal would be hard.
Microsoft has expressed interest in Yahoo!’s search business and made a bid for the Sunnyvale, California-based firm last year but Jorgensen did not mention the US sofware giant as a potential partner.
He stressed the difficulties of doing a deal.
“What people don’t quite appreciate is the complexity of the business, and how these businesses are intertwined,” he said. “For example at a data center, we don’t parse between search or non-search.
“It’s extremely difficult to draw a line down the middle of the organisation and split it in two pieces,” Jorgensen said. “It doesn’t say we couldn’t do it, we certainly could, but we want to do it for the right reasons and the right economics.”
Yahoo! rejected a takeover bid by Microsoft last year but Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has said the software giant remains interested in a search partnership with Yahoo!
Speculation of such a deal has been revived with the departure of Yahoo! chief executive Jerry Yang, who opposed the Microsoft bid, and his replacement by new CEO Carol Bartz.
Hilary Schneider, another Yahoo! executive, said that with Bartz’ arrival “it’s really clear there’s a new sheriff in town, and it’s a sheriff with a consumer outlook.”
Google is the overwhelming market leader for Internet search with a market share of more than 63% in January according to research firm comScore, followed by Yahoo! with 21% and Microsoft with 8.5%

The search business is deeply intertwined with Yahoo's other online products and properties, and so any deal, whether a partnership or a sale, would be done for the right reasons and the right economics.

"It's extremely difficult to draw a line down the middle of the organization and split it into two pieces," Jorgensen told the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet conference.

He did not mention specifically Microsoft Corp. (MSFT, Fortune 500), which has repeatedly said it was interested in doing a search deal with Yahoo to compete against market leader Google Inc. (GOOG, Fortune 500)

The comments come as Yahoo is rumored to be on the brink of undertaking a major corporate reorganization under Chief Executive Carol Bartz, who took the reins in January.

Yahoo rebuffed a $47.5 billion acquisition bid from Microsoft last year, and saw a deal to form a search advertising partnership with Google fall apart amid antitrust concerns.

Bartz has said she did not join the company to sell it, nor did she have a preconceived notion of doing a search deal, but that "everything is on the table."

Yahoo's stock (YHOO, Fortune 500) was up 2% or 27 cents, at $12.75 in after-market trade, after closing down 27 cents in the Nasdaq session.

Scientists have developed safer way to alternative to embryonic stem cells

2009-03-02T00:39:00.000-08:00

Scientists have developed what appears to be a safer way to create a promising alternative to embryonic stem cells, boosting hopes that such cells could sidestep the moral and political quagmire that has hindered the development of a new generation of cures.

The researchers produced the cells by using strands of genetic material, instead of potentially dangerous genetically engineered viruses, to coax skin cells into a state that appears biologically identical to embryonic stem cells.

"It's a leap forward in the safe application of these cells," said Andras Nagy of Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, who helped lead the international team of researchers that described the work in two papers being published online today by the journal Nature. "We expect this to have a massive impact on this field."

In addition to the scientific implications, the work comes at a politically sensitive moment. Scientists are anxiously waiting for President Obama to follow through on his promise to lift restrictions on federal funding for research on human embryonic stem cells. Critics of such a move immediately pointed to the work as the latest evidence that the alternative cells make such research unnecessary.

"Stem cell research that requires destroying embryos is going the way of the Model T," Richard M. Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said. "No administration that values science and medical progress over politics will want to divert funds now toward that increasingly obsolete and needlessly divisive approach."

Scientists, however, while praising the work as a potentially important advance, said it remains crucial to work on both types of cells because it is far from clear which will turn out to be more useful.

"The point is, we don't know yet what the end potential of either of these approaches will be," said Mark A. Kay of Stanford University. "No one has cured any disease in people with any of these approaches yet. We don't know enough yet to know which approach will be better."

Because embryonic stem cells are believed capable of becoming any kind of tissue in the body, scientists believe they could eventually lead to treatments or even cures for a host of ailments, including heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. In 2001, President George W. Bush restricted federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research to prevent taxpayer money from encouraging the destruction of human embryos, which is necessary to obtain the cells.

The alternative cells, known as induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, appear to have many of the same characteristics as embryonic stem cells but are produced by activating genes in adult cells to "reprogram" them into a more primitive state, bypassing the moral, political and ethical issues surrounding embryonic cells. Until now, however, their use has been limited because the genetic manipulation required the use of viruses, raising concerns the cells could cause cancer if placed in a patient. That has triggered a race to develop alternative approaches.

"These viral insertions are quite dangerous," Nagy said.

In the new work, Nagy and his colleagues in Toronto and at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland instead used a sequence of DNA known as a transposon, which can insert itself into the genetic machinery of a cell. In this case, the researchers used a transposon called "piggyBac" to carry four genes that can transform mouse and human embryonic skin cells into iPS cells. After the conversion took place, the researchers removed the added DNA from the transformed cells using a specific enzyme.

"PiggyBac carries the four genes into the cells and reprograms the cells into stem cells. After they have reprogrammed the cells, they are no longer required, and in fact they are dangerous," Nagy said. "After they do their job they can be removed seamlessly, with no trace left behind. The ability for seamless removal opens up a huge possibility."
A series of tests showed that the transformed cells had many of the properties of embryonic stem cells, Nagy said.

The researchers did their initial work on skin cells from embryos but say the approach should work just as efficiently in adult cells, and they plan to start those experiments.

"We do not expect that adult cells would behave significantly differently than the ones we are using currently," Nagy said.

In addition to producing safer cell lines that would be less likely to cause cancer in patients, the advance will enable many more scientists to begin working on such cells because they require no expertise or special laboratories necessary for working with viruses, he said.

"This opens up the possibility of working in this field for laboratories that don't have viral labs attached to them. A much larger number of laboratories will be able to push this field forward," Nagy said.

Other researchers praised the work.

"It's very significant," said George Q. Daley, a stem cell researcher at Children's Hospital in Boston. "I think it's a major step forward in realizing the value of these cells for medical research."

"It's very exciting work," agreed Robert Lanza, a stem cell researcher at Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass. "With the new work, we're only a hair's breadth away from the biggest prize in regenerative medicine -- a way to create patient-specific cells that are safe enough to use clinically."

Kay agreed that the work is promising but cautioned that much more research will be needed to prove that cells produced this way are safe. Many scientists are working on other approaches that may turn out to be safer and more efficient, he said.

"This is a step forward. The research is heading in the right direction. But there still may be room for improvement," he said.

more...
New Method For Creating Stem Cells
Mount Sinai Hospital's Dr. Andras Nagy discovered a new method of creating stem cells that could lead to possible cures for devastating diseases including spinal cord injury, macular degeneration, diabetes and Parkinson's disease. The study, published by Nature, accelerates stem cell technology and provides a road map for new clinical approaches to regenerative medicine.

U.S. consumers are already watching broadcast TV shows on free websites such as Hulu.com,

2009-02-24T00:33:00.000-08:00

"OnDemand Online" will be available free to Comcast cable TV subscribers, Business Insider reports. That means only customers inside Comcast's cable zone can sign up, but the service itself is available anywhere. For example, a user could still watch on demand videos away from home (the company is working on a way to verify subscriptions). Also of note, the service would count against Comcast's 250 GB monthly bandwidth cap.

The major difference between this service and Hulu is content. While Hulu's videos come from NBC, Fox and their cable channels like FX, Comcast is inking deals with other cable networks, possibly providing a streaming opportunity for channels like the Food Network and Discovery. In other words, Comcast is going to focus on content that isn't already online.
Because Comcast and other cable providers pay fees that account for roughly half of cable channels' revenue, it's in the channels' best interests to keep providers healthy, Business Insider notes. By comparison, hardly any money comes in through online viewing, so its more likely for a channel to give its content to Comcast than to an online-only service like Hulu.
U.S. cable, programmers set for Web TV by summer,,,
Cable and satellite TV providers are working on a free online video service to deliver up-to-date cable shows to computers and mobile phones, but the industry is worried the project could cannibalize pay-TV's long-standing revenue model.
cable network programing is available primarily on cable and satellite TV services, such as Comcast Corp (CMCSA.O) and DirecTV Group Inc (DTV.O), or nascent video services from phone companies.
This is about bringing new amounts of content to the Internet in a business model that continues to support the creation of that content," said Sam Schwartz, executive vice president of Comcast Interactive Media.

Comcast is leading talks with programmers like Viacom Inc (VIAb.N) and Discovery Communications Inc (DISCA.O), with Time Warner Cable (TWC.N), DirecTV and others involved. Their plans are at different stages, and cable operators will likely discuss putting cable programing online at an industry meeting this week according to people familiar with the plans.

The project would let cable and satellite TV subscribers watch up-to-date cable shows on the Web, and possibly on mobile phones, for free possibly as soon as this summer, the sources said.

The idea is to give customers added flexibility to view their favorite shows. It is also seen as a preemptive strike against possible 'cord-cutting' of video services, particularly by younger subscribers used to watching other programs online.

But the project presents a number of business and technology challenges to both operators and programmers.

Cable programmers like Viacom's MTV Networks make money from advertising sales, as well as affiliate fees that cable and satellite TV service providers pay.

TECHNOLOGICAL ISSUES

Whatever business models are agreed upon will depend to some extent on overcoming technological challenges.

One involves identifying which customers have the right to view a show, and managing digital rights to avoid over-wide distribution. There is also the need to accurately 'time' the content so it is available to users for a restricted period -- so as not to jeopardize other media content distribution systems such as video on demand and DVD releases.

Yet executives also acknowledge the risk of ignoring the Web, as seen by the music and newspaper industries that have suffered as consumers change their media consumption habits.

Comcast sees the project, which it calls On Demand Online, as a natural progression from digital video recorders and video-on-demand channels.

It is working on technology to authenticate subscribers who go to Comcast's Fancast and Comcast.net websites for video. This would effectively create a "wall" behind which programmers might feel comfortable keeping some of their premium shows.

Offline web applications allow people to store data on their own computer

2009-02-22T06:20:00.000-08:00

Working offline can come with an unexpected risk
A security expert has sounded a warning on features that allow offline access to websites. so that they can use services like web-based e-mail when not online.
Be cautious when you get an email that says "there's a problem with your password, click on this link and we'll fix it"
But sites with poor security that use the feature put their visitors at risk of being robbed of their data.

Michael Sutton disclosed the threat at the Black Hat security conference in Washington, DC.

Offline web applications are taking off because of services such as Gears, developed by Google, and HTML 5, a new HTML specification that is still in draft form.

It was introduced to many web users in January, when Gmail introduced a Gears-powered offline mode. Offline Gmail lets users read and write e-mail when they're not connected to the internet.

Mr Sutton stressed that Gmail, Gears and HTML 5 are considered secure, but websites that implement offline features without proper security could put users at risk.

"You can take this great, cool secure technology, but if you implement it on an insecure website, you're exposing it. And then all that security is for naught."

Mr Sutton found that websites which suffer from a well-known security vulnerability known as cross-site scripting are at risk.

A hacker could direct a victim to a vulnerable website and then cause the user's own browser to grab data from their offline database.
Unlike phishing, the whole attack could take place on a reputable site, which makes it harder to detect.

As a proof of concept, Mr Sutton was able to swipe information from the offline version of a time-tracking website called Paymo. Mr Sutton alerted Paymo and it fixed the vulnerability immediately.

Web developers must ensure that their sites are secure before implementing offline applications, said Mr Sutton.

"Gears is fantastic and Google has done a great job of making it a secure technology. But if you slap that technology into an already vulnerable site, you're leaving your customers at risk," he explained.

Security expert Craig Balding agreed that it was up to developers to secure their sites, as the line between desktop applications and web applications becomes more blurred.

"Every website wants to keep up in terms of features, but when developers turn to technologies like this they need to understand the pros and cons," he told BBC News.

Hackers have been exploiting a critical bug in Adobe Reader Acrobat

2009-02-21T05:47:00.000-08:00

Hackers are exploiting an unpatched security hole in current versions of Adobe Reader and Acrobat to install malicious software when users open a booby-trapped PDF file, security experts warn.

These types of attacks are frequently the most damaging and it is only a matter of time before this exploit ends up in every exploit pack on the Internet," Shadowserver volunteer Steven Adair wrote on the group's blog.

Adobe's advisory lacks any advice users can follow to mitigate the threat from this flaw. But those at Shadowserver say Adobe Reader and Acrobat users can significantly reduce their exposure to such attacks by disabling Javascript within the application. To nix Javascript, select "Edit," "Preferences," "Javascript," and uncheck the box next to "Enable Acrobat Javascript."

Why does Reader even need Javascript?

With Reader, you can sometimes fill out forms. Those forms might use JavaScript. For example, you might a form asking your height: You plug in 6'1".

Then the form will also calculate your height as 185 cm (centimeters) for those using metric.

A better example is an order form. You indicate which things you want to purchase, and the form automatically sums the total amount of the purchases.

Some forms are dynamic in the sense that they don't have a fixed length. If you add more items to purchase, add more beneficiaries to an insurance policy, or add more text to a survey, the form add another page. The page numbering might be driven by JavaScript.

Adobe said that users should expect to see a fix for the vulnerability by March 11. In the meantime, researchers at both Shadowserver and the US Computer Emergency Response Team recommend that users disable the ability for documents to execute Javascript code in both Acrobat and Reader through the application's preference panel.

Xbox Live is being targeted by malicious hackers

2009-02-20T05:46:00.000-08:00

Halo 3 players are a popular target for the Xbox attacks
Hackers target Xbox Live players.The booting services are proving popular with players who want a way to get revenge on those who beat them in an Xbox Live game.

The attackers are employing data flooding tools that have been used against websites for many years.

Microsoft is "investigating" the use of the tools and said those caught using them would be banned from Xbox Live.

"There's been a definite increase in the amount of people talking about and distributing these things over the last three to four weeks," said Chris Boyd, director of malware research at Facetime Communications.

Attack tool
"The smart thing about these Xbox tools is that they do not attack the Xbox Live network itself," he said.

He said the tools work by exploiting the way that the Xbox Live network is set up. Game consoles connecting to the Xbox network send data via the net, and for that it needs an IP address.

Even better, said Mr Boyd, games played via Xbox Live are not hosted on private servers.
"Instead," he said, "a lot of games on Xbox Live are hosted by players."

If hackers can discover the IP address of whoever is hosting a game they can employ many of the attacks that have been used for years against websites, said Mr Boyd.

One of the most popular for the Xbox Live specialists is the Denial of Service attack which floods an IP address with vast amounts of data.

The flood of data is generated by a group of hijacked home computers, a botnet, that have fallen under the control of a malicious hacking group.

When turned against a website this flood of traffic can overwhelm it or make it unresponsive to legitimate visitors.

When turned against an Xbox owner, it can mean they cannot connect to the Live network and effectively throws them out of the game.

"They get your IP address, put it in the booter tool and they attempt to flood the port that uses Xbox traffic," said Mr Boyd. "Flooding that port prevents any traffic getting out."

Skill set
The hard part, he said, was discovering a particular gamer's IP address but many malicious hackers had honed the skills needed to find them.

Some interconnect their PC and Xbox and use packet sniffing software to hunt through the traffic flowing in and out of the console for IP addresses.
Others simply use con tricks to get the target to reveal their net address.

The technical knowledge needed to hunt down IP addresses was quite high, said Mr Boyd, but many of those who had the skills were selling their expertise to those keen to hit back at their rivals on the Xbox Live network.

For $20 (£13) some Xbox Live hackers will remotely access a customer's PC and set up the whole system so it can be run any time they need it.

Some offer low rates to add compromised machines to a botnet and increase the amount of data flooding a particular IP address.

Defending against the attack could be tricky, said Mr Boyd: "There's no real easy solution to this one."

Although IP addresses regularly change, people could find it takes hours or days for their ISP to move them on to a new one.

In response to the rise in attacks, Microsoft said: "We are investigating reports involving the use of malicious software tools that an attacker could use to try and disrupt an Xbox LIVE player's internet connection."

It added: "This problem is not related to the Xbox Live service, but to the player's internet connection. The attacker could also attempt [to] disrupt other internet activities, such as streaming video or web browsing, using the same tools.

In its statement Microsoft warned: "This malicious activity violates the Xbox Live Terms of Use, and will result in a ban from Xbox Live and other appropriate action.

It urged anyone falling victim to such an attack to contact their ISP to report it and get help fixing it.

In January 2009 Microsoft announced that Xbox Live had more than 17m members.

Updates for Windows 7 Beta Users

2009-02-20T02:13:00.000-08:00

5 test updates to PCs running the Windows 7 Beta (Build 7000) via Windows Update. These updates allow us to test and verify our ability to deliver and manage the updating of Windows 7. We typically verify servicing scenarios during a beta.
Next week Windows 7 beta users will get a variety of updates, only they aren't really updates.

Instead, Microsoft said in will sending the patches to test the operating system's updating mechanism.

The company stressed the updates won't actually add new features or update anything.

Brandon LeBlanc explained the nature of the updates in a blog posting .
This is not something we will support in Windows 7. We've talked about and shown a great many "personalization" elements of Windows 7 already, such as the new themepacks which you can try out in the beta. The reasons for this should be pretty clear, which is that we cannot guarantee the security of the system to allow for arbitrary elements to be loaded into memory at boot time. In the early stages of starting Windows, the system needs to be locked down and execute along a very carefully monitored and known state as tools such as firewalls and anti-virus checking are not yet available to secure the system. And of course, even though we're sure everyone would follow the requirements around image size, content, etc. due to performance we would not want to build in all the code necessary to guarantee that all third parties would be doing so.
Most should not be surprised about this decision, not only because of the security and performance concerns, but because Microsoft has not supported customizing boot screens on its previous Windows operating systems.
Personalization
Many of you might be asking if you could include your own animation or customize this sequence. This is not something we will support in Windows 7. We’ve talked about and shown a great many “personalization” elements of Windows 7 already, such as the new themepacks which you can try out in the beta. The reasons for this should be pretty clear, which is that we cannot guarantee the security of the system to allow for arbitrary elements to be loaded into memory at boot time. In the early stages of starting Windows, the system needs to be locked down and execute along a very carefully monitored and known state as tools such as firewalls and anti-virus checking are not yet available to secure the system. And of course, even though we’re sure everyone would follow the requirements around image size, content, etc. due to performance we would not want to build in all the code necessary to guarantee that all third parties would be doing so. One of our design goals of Windows 7 was around making sure there are ample opportunities to express yourself and to make sure your PC is really your PC and so we hope that you’ll understand why this element is one we need to maintain consistently.

This was a quick behind the scenes look at something that we hope you enjoy. With Windows 7 we set out to make the experience of starting a Windows PC a little more enjoyable, and from the feedback we’ve seen here and in other forums, we think we’re heading in the right direction. In addition to our efforts to make boot fast, we also have a goal to make the system robust enough, such that most of you will not see this new boot animation that often and when you do it will be both enjoyable and fast!

Complicated Nano-structures Assembled With Magnets

2009-02-18T20:57:00.000-08:00

Duke University and the University of Massachusetts have created a unique set of conditions in which tiny particles within a solution will consistently assemble themselves into these and other complex shapes.
By manipulating the magnetization of a liquid solution, the researchers have for the first time coaxed magnetic and non-magnetic materials to form intricate nano-structures. The resulting structures can be "fixed," meaning they can be permanently linked together. This raises the possibility of using these structures as basic building blocks for such diverse applications as advanced optics, cloaking devices, data storage and bioengineering.

Changing the levels of magnetization of the fluid controls how the particles are attracted to or repelled by each other. By appropriately tuning these interactions, the magnetic and non-magnetic particles form around each other much like a snowflake forms around a microscopic dust particle.

"We have demonstrated that subtle changes in the magnetization of a fluid can create an environment where a mixture of different particles will self-assemble into complex superstructures," said Randall Erb, fourth-year graduate student. He performed these experiments in conjunction with another graduate student Hui Son, in the laboratory of Benjamin Yellen, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and lead member of the research team.

The results of the Duke experiments appear in Feb. 19 issue of the journal Nature.

The nano-structures are formed inside a liquid known as a ferrofluid, which is a solution consisting of suspensions of nanoparticles composed of iron-containing compounds. One of the unique properties of these fluids is that they become highly magnetized in the presence of external magnetic fields. The unique ferrofluids used in these experiments were developed with colleagues Bappaditya Samanta and Vincent Rotello at the University of Massachusetts.

"The key to the assembly of these nano-structures is to fine-tune the interactions between positively and negatively magnetized particles," Erb said. "This is achieved through varying the concentration of ferrofluid particles in the solution. The Saturn and flower shapes are just the first published examples of a range of potential structures that can be formed using this technique."

According to Yellen, researchers have long been able to create tiny structures made up of a single particle type, but the demonstration of sophisticated structures assembling in solutions containing multiple types of particles has never before been achieved. The complexity of these nano-structures determines how they can ultimately be used.

"It appears that a rich variety of different particle structures are possible by changing the size, type and or degree of magnetism of the particles," Yellen said.

Yellen foresees the use of these nano-structures in advanced optical devices, such as sensors, where different nano-structures could be designed to possess custom-made optical properties. Yellen also envisions that rings composed of metal particles could be used for antenna designs, and perhaps as one of the key components in the construction of materials that display artificial "optical magnetism" and negative magnetic permeability.

In the Duke experiments, the nano-structures were created by applying a uniform magnetic field to a liquid containing various types of magnetic and non-magnetic colloidal particles contained between transparent glass slides to enable real-time microscopic observations of the assembly process. Because of the unique nature of this "bulk" assembly technique, Yellen believes that the process could easily be scaled up to create large quantities of custom-designed nano-structures in high-volume reaction vessels. However, the trick is to also be able to glue the structures together, because they will fall apart when the external field is turned off, he said.

"The magnetic forces assembling these particles are reversible," Yellen said. "We were able to lock these nano-structures in their intended shapes both by using chemical glues and by simple heating."

The Duke team plans to test different combinations of particles and ferrofluids developed by the University of Massachusetts team to create new types of nano-structures. They also want to try to make even smaller nano-structures to find the limitations of the assembly process, and study the interesting optical properties which are expected from these structures.

The Ethics of Nanotechnology
What kind of world do we wish to inhabit and leave for following generations? Our planet is in trouble if current trends continue into the future: environmental degradation, extinction of species, rampant diseases, chronic warfare, poverty, starvation and social injustice.

Are suffering and despair humanity's fate? Not necessarily. We have within our grasp the technology to help bring about great progress in elevating humanity. Or we can use our evolving knowledge for destructive ends. We are already immersed in fiery debates on genetic engineering, cloning, nuclear physics and the science of warfare. Nanotechnology, with its staggering implications, will create a whole new set of ethical quandaries. A strong set of operating principles is needed -- standards by which we can guide ourselves to a healthier destiny.

The following are some ethical guidelines gleaned from both Foresight and our own philosophy and experience in this field:

* Nanotechnology's highest and best use should be to create a world of abundance where no one is lacking for their basic needs. Those needs include adequate food, safe water, a clean environment, housing, medical care, education, public safety, fair labor, unrestricted travel, artistic expression and freedom from fear and oppression.

* High priority must be given to the efficient and economical global distribution of the products and services created by nanotechnology. We recognize the need for reasonable return on investment, but we must also recognize that our planet is small and we all depend upon each other for safety, stability, even survival.

* Military research and applications of nanotechnology must be limited to defense and security systems, and not for political purposes or aggression. And any government-funded research that generates useful non-military technological advances must be made available to the public.

* Scientists developing and experimenting with nanotechnology must have a solid grounding in ecology and public safety, or have someone on their team who does. Scientists and their organizations must also be held accountable for the willful, fraudulent or irresponsible misuse of the science.

* All published research and discussion of nanotechnology should be accurate as possible, adhere to the scientific method, and give due credit to sources. Labeling of products should be clear and accurate, and promotion of services, including consulting, should disclose any conflicts of interest.

* Published debates over nanotechnology, including chat room discussions, should focus on advancing the merits of the arguments rather than personal attacks, such as questioning the motives of opponents.

* Business models in the field should incorporate long-term, sustainable practices, such as the efficient use of resources, recycling of toxic materials, adequate compensation for workers and other fair labor practices.

* Industry leaders should be collaborative and self-regulating, but also support public education in the sciences and reasonable legislation to deal with legal and social issues associated with nanotechnology.

Microsoft unveiled a new mobile phone strategy.

2009-02-17T06:32:00.000-08:00

The software giant announced that at the Mobile World Congress being held in Barcelona, Spain, the company and its key mobile partners were unveiling new smartphones with upgraded Microsoft software.
The next generation of phones will be based on Windows Mobile 6.5, Microsoft's new version of operating system for handsets, which is expected to be available in the later half this year

Microsoft wants to create software buzz on mobiles
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's mobile phone strategy: sell a lot of devices.

Even Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer knows that it's the hardware that gets people to buy a mobile phone.

"The thing that people buzz about is the actual thing they go and buy, which is the phone, which comes from one of our partners," Ballmer said in an interview Monday.

Microsoft aims to change that with its new effort unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona: to persuade consumers to buy smart phones - the fastest-growing segment of the handset market - because they are running Microsoft operating system.

The new software will be Microsoft 6.5 in the series _ but will be marketed to consumers simply as Microsoft Phone, with a new user interface and a new browser. Windows also is launching two new services, one that allows users to synch their text messages, photos, video, contacts and more to the Web and an on-line applications store that will bring together the 20,000 applications developed for Microsoft-based phones.

"It is important for us that we have a strong presence and position on the phone," Ballmer said.

More than 20 million devices carrying Microsoft's operating system were sold in 2008. Ballmer said he expects to grow the market share, but he declined to make forecasts.

"The most important thing we'll do is we're going to work with the guys who build phones that are exciting ... that are hot and tell the story of their Windows phone," Ballmer said. "The Windows phone from HTC, the line of Windows phones from Samsung, from LG, really getting with the partner and telling the story of the partner and their device."

To that end, key partners HTC, LG Electronics and Orange also unveiled new Windows phones based on the new Windows operating system in Barcelona. LG said it will dramatically increase the number of phones it offers running Windows, making it the primary operating system for its smart phones. LG said its volume of Windows phones would increase 10 times this year.

Telecoms operators _ notably Vodafone _ have signaled that they want fewer, not more operating platforms.

But Ballmer thinks Windows Mobile is better positioned than the other operating systems because it can run on phones for a range of prices _ from the $600 smart phone to the $250 model.

"Many phones times a small amount of money, hopefully is enough to make this all make sense," Ballmer said in an interview on the sidelines of the four-day GSMA's World Mobile Congress, where Microsoft unveiled a new mobile phone strategy.

The company that best-known for its PC software, but which has been playing in the mobile field for the last seven years, wants to persuade consumers to buy smart phones — the fastest-growing segment of the handset market — because they are running Microsoft operating system.

That may seem counterintuitive. Even Ballmer knows that hardware — not software — is what creates consumer excitement, something in shorter supply as the world economic downturn has dramatically cut consumer confidence.

"The thing that people buzz about is the actual thing they go and buy, which is the phone, which comes from one of our partners," Ballmer said in an interview Monday.

The new software will be Windows Mobile 6.5 in the series — but will be marketed to consumers simply as Windows Phone — will include a new user interface and a new browser. Windows also is launching two new services, one that allows users to synch their text messages, photos, video, contacts and more to the Web and an applications store that will bring together the 20,000 applications that have been developed for Microsoft-based phones.

"It is important for us that we have a strong presence and position on the phone," Ballmer said. While the mobile business is relatively small part of Microsoft's business, it

More than 20 million devices carrying Microsoft's operating system were sold in 2008. Ballmer said he expects to grow the market share, but he declined to make forecasts. Microsoft doesn't say how much it sells the software for, but analysts at the GSMA put it in the ballpark of $5 to $7 per handset.

"The most important thing we'll do is we're going to work with the guys who build phones that are exciting ... that are hot and tell the story of their Windows phone," Ballmer said. "The windows phone from HTC, the line of Windows phones from Samsung, from LG, really getting with the partner and telling the story of the partner and their device."

To that end, key partners HTC, LG Electronics and Orange also unveiled new Windows phones based on the new Windows operating system in Barcelona. LG said it will dramatically increase the number of phones it offers running Windows, making it the primary operating system for its smart phones. LG said its volume of windows phones would increase 10 times this year.

Telecoms operators — notably Vodafone — have signaled that they want fewer not more operating platforms.

But Ballmer thinks Windows Mobile is better positioned than the other operating systems because it can run on phones for a range of prices — from the upper $600 smart phone to the $250 model.

IDC Analyst Francisco Jeronimo said while Microsoft's numbers are pretty good, the battle for operating system (OS) dominance is still wide hope. The big industry players in the increasingly key smart phone market are Google's Android, Nokia's Symbian — which has opened up to outsiders through the Symbian Foundation — the Linux-based open-source software being developed by the LiMo consortium and Palm OS.

"Definitely, Android, Symbian and Windows Mobile will be top OS in terms of smart phones. The challenge now for Microsoft is: No one wants to pay for an OS when they have Symbian and Android for free. What is the point?"

While 20 million devices last year shipped with Microsoft's OS, Nokia shipped 17 million smart phones to western Europe alone, along with 59 million traditional devices. While the big manufacturers seem to be waiting to make their Android announcements during the second half of the year, Jeronimo said Google's open-source software is sure to be a big player in two or three years.

"Microsoft are the ones challenged now," Jeronimo said. "My question is how long will they continue with a proprietary system?"

Michael Gartenberg, vice president of strategy and analysis for Los Angeles-based market research group Interpret LLC, didn't discount the importance of actual sales. But he said the software maker still needs to build buzz among consumers, rather than relying on the device's reputation as a workhorse that synchs up well with Microsoft's Exchange server.

"I think what they're doing now is reminding the market that these devices are the intersection between business and consumer, personal and work life," Gartenberg said.

mobile technology to provide better healthcare worldwide

2009-02-16T22:10:00.000-08:00

A resource for activists using mobile technology worldwide.

Using mobile phones has enormous potential for increasing access to healthcare for poor people aroundd the world, and for improving clinical outcomes. Now a new association, the mHealth Alliance, has been launched to support this emerging field and increase the scale and impact of the many small prokects around the world.

So new, the Alliance has so far no website, press release, or organizaton yet, it was announced to the BBC as part of the GSMA World Congress in Barcelona. The mHealth Alliance is currently under the auspices of three foundations, the UN and Rockefeller Foundations in the United States, and the UK-based Vodafone Group Foundation.

Deploying mobiles in health care in developing countries is not only promising for health outcomes, it is also a hot and potentially lucrative business area. There is enormous interest by NGOs, donors, telcoms, mobile vendors, researchers, and governments in the the use of mobile phones for increasing healthcare for the poorest people in the world.

Three foundations have announced their intention to join in a "mobile health" effort to use mobile technology to provide better healthcare worldwide.
The UN, Vodafone, and the Rockefeller Foundation's mHealth Alliance aims to unite existing projects to improve healthcare using mobile technology.

The alliance will guide governments, NGOs, and mobile firms on how they can save lives in the developing world.

The partnership is now calling for more members to help in mHealth initiatives.

The groundbreaking "mHealth for Development" study produced by the UN/Vodafone Foundation Partnership lists more than 50 mHealth programmes from around the world, showing the benefits that mobile technology can bring to healthcare provision.

The report also outlines how such programmes offer value to the mobile industry.

That, said UN/Vodafone Foundation Partnership head Claire Thwaites, is a crucial step in an industry that like so many others stands at the edge of a downturn.

"I think there's a real need to have an alliance," Ms Thwaites told the BBC at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona.

"It's looking at scaling up and bringing governments together with NGOs and corporations, and it will commission pretty rigorous research on what the market opportunity is for mHealth, answering the question: why should a business get involved in this area?"

Bringing a "value proposition" to network operators is what could bring together the individual, small-scale efforts that so far have existed as purely humanitarian endeavours.

Andrew Gilbert, European president of Qualcomm, says that his firm has launched 29 different programmes across 19 countries, involving some 200,000 people, as part of its Wireless Reach campaign.

"It's not a charitable thing, it's very much aimed at allowing these solutions to become self-sustaining," he said.

Connecting areas
Because 3G mobile technology is cheap and easily made widespread, Mr Gilbert added, comparatively small amounts of investment can wreak great change in these so-called emerging markets.

Connecting areas
Because 3G mobile technology is cheap and easily made widespread, Mr Gilbert added, comparatively small amounts of investment can wreak great change in these so-called emerging markets.

In India, there are 1m people that die each year purely because they can't get access to basic healthcare," said Dan Warren, director of technology for the GSM Association, the umbrella organisation that hosts the MWC.

"The converse angle to that is that 80% of doctors live in cities, not serving the broader rural communities where 800 million people live."

Simply connecting rural areas with city doctors using mobile broadband would allow the provision of better healthcare to more people, and many of the initiatives to date have focused on that kind of connection.

In 2007, the GSMA supported Ericsson in its Gramjyoti project, providing broadband to the remote Indian villages in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

A band of paramedics in a mobile broadband-equipped van visited the villages and were able to cover vast areas, referring many queries back to doctors in major cities.

Fragmented market
Yet mobile technology, as much as it can multiply the efforts of city-dwelling doctors and bring diagnoses to far-flung villages, cannot make up for some shortfalls.

"There's 4 billion mobile phones now in the world, 2.2 billion of those in the developing world," said Ms Thwaites. "Compare that to 305 million PCs and then look at hospital bed numbers: there's 11 million of them in the developing world."
As a result, mHealth projects must also be able to provide an ounce of prevention, and the report sheds light on some particularly successful initiatives.

In South Africa, the SIMpill project integrated a sensor-equipped medicine bottle with a SIM card, ensuring that healthcare workers were advised if patients were not taking their tuberculosis medicine.

The percentages of people keeping up with their medicine rocketed from 22% to 90%.

The medium of text message can overcome sociological barriers as well.

The Project Masiluleke SMS message campaign provided people with free text messages, with the remainder of the 160 characters used to provide HIV and Aids education.

In Uganda, the Text to Change text-based HIV quiz campaign resulted in a 33% increase in calls to an HIV information hotline.

"There are a couple of interesting benefits that the project brought to light," says UN Foundation spokesperson Adele Waugaman. "One of them is the benefit of talking to people in their local language.

"Also, HIV is very stigmatised in South Africa, so people don't like to discuss it publicly. The benefit of getting these private text messages is it's a new form of access that addresses these stigmatisation and privacy concerns."

Healthcare includes improving quality of life as well. One case study from Qualcomm's Wireless Reach programme, - 3G for All Generations - shows how mobile broadband has brought the company together with the Spanish Red Cross and Vodafone Spain to provide a custom software solution for Spain's elderly.

They can have video calls with care providers, call for help, or simply have a chat, providing real social interaction without anyone needing to travel.

Each of these and the many more in the new report showcases the potential of the technology but underlines the significant stumbling block of mHealth so far.

"The biggest problem is fragmentation of small projects," says Ms Thwaites.

"A lot of the work being done on the ground is NGO- and foundation-led, but let's join those efforts with the Microsofts and the Qualcomms and the Intels and the Vodafones.

"There's a business case for it now; you have to have the experience of the NGOs on the ground talking to the big corporates out there and creating real business models, and that's why I think the mHealth Alliance can tackle that."

JavaFX Mobile is a software layer that handles user interface elements

2009-02-12T03:46:00.000-08:00

Sun renews phone ambitions with JavaFX Mobile

Sun Microsystems announced the release of the JavaFX Mobile platform. Built on top of the existing Java ME platform, JavaFX Mobile allows developers to create immersive mobile content while leveraging their existing investment in Java.
JavaFX provides a unified development and deployment model for rich applications across the desktop, browser, and mobile devices. Sun developer Joshua Marinacci describes it this way:
When you write JavaFX desktop apps with the common profile you are also writing for mobile devices. Desktop and mobile aren’t different platforms…
It struck me this morning how much of a big deal this is. I don’t know anything about Java ME, but I know JavaFX. Even though I’m not a mobile developer I can write mobile apps with JavaFX. I couldn’t do that before. One SDK, one set of tools, one language, one set of APIs. There is no JavaFX Mobile. There is only JavaFX.
Joshua believes JavaFX is a fundamental shift in the way user interfaces are developed for Java programs. “I see JavaFX as Swing 2.0: rewrite from the ground up”, he wrote in a recent twitter update. He should know: he’s a member of Sun’s Swing team and co-author of the popular book, Swing Hacks. Swing is currently Sun’s preferred API for building user interfaces for desktop applications, but it’s not supported on Java ME. Now JavaFX can be used for all systems.
On the business side, Sun has lined up an impressive array of partners that plan to deliver JavaFX enabled devices. They include Sony Ericsson, LGE, Orange, Sprint, Cynergy, and MobiTV. Here are a few quotes from today’s announcement:
“Sony Ericsson expects that JavaFX will have a great impact on the mobile content ecosystem and plan to bring JavaFX to a significant part of our product portfolio.” — Rikko Sakaguchi, corporate vice president and head of creation and development at Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications
“We look forward to being the first company to deliver a JavaFX enabled handset so we can build new and exciting features that benefit our customers.” — Woo-Young Kwak, executive vice president, head of LG Mobile Handset R&D Center at LG Electronics, Inc.
“”Sprint, in its continued support of an open framework and ecosystem, views JavaFX as an additional strategic platform in its open toolkit.” — Mathew Oommen, vice president, device and technology development, Sprint
“JavaFX really allows us to leverage our Java ME investment, and reinforce our core mobile video streaming value proposition.” — Cedric Fernandes, vice president, Technology at MobiTV.

There is only JavaFX.

I know I haven't been blogging, twittering, or doing the FaceBook very much lately. That's because I've been very, very busy working. As we promised last summer, the next release of JavaFX coming out soon. For desktop developers you won't notice too many changes, mostly bug fixes (and a feature or two). The big news is that this will be our first release with full mobile support. Of course this really isn't news either, since it's what we promised last summer. In fact, mobile support has been the driver for this release. Pay attention for news coming out soon with the details. So with no news for you, why am I writing this blog?...
I'm running a sample JavaFX app on a demo phone (yes, a real phone). I won't tell you what phone it is but I will say that it has a very nice high resolution screen (no, it's not an iPhone). As I've been working with this device it struck me how easy it was to code for. And there's a very good reason for that. When you write JavaFX desktop apps with the common profile you are also writing for mobile devices. Desktop and mobile aren't different platforms. There is only one JavaFX. Even though there is no mobile emulator for Mac, I've done all of my mobile samples work on my Mac. I write my desktop apps to support window resizing, resize to the approximate size of a mobile device, then save my code. I only switch to Windows every now and then for a quick test in the real emulator. As long as I only use the common profile everything just works.

Google adds tracking tech to Gmail signatures

2009-02-12T03:13:00.000-08:00

Google must be on a location-aware kick this month. Just a week after the search firm released its Latitude mobile device friend-tracker, Google Labs has a new tool that lets Gmail automatically include your location in an e-mail's signature.

"Sometime ago, I noticed how all mail systems tell you when an email was written, but not where it was sent from," said Marco Bonechi, the author of the tool on Gmail's blog. "Because I love to travel, the first question in many messages I receive is 'where are you?' and by the time I answer I am often somewhere else."

The experimental feature can be switched on by going to the Labs tab in Gmail settings. Users also need to have their email signature enabled and have the "append your location to the signature" option clicked in the general settings tab.

you can always just delete the location info in the email if you don't want the recipient in the location of your secret bunker – or just embarrassed about what a shut-in you've become.

Gmail give away your location...

Google Inc. certainly is focused on where you are and letting others in on that information.
A week after unveiling Google Latitude, which enables people to track the exact location of friends or family through their mobile devices, the company today announced that its Gmail software can now show the location of e-mail writers.

"Some time ago, I noticed how all mail systems tell you when an e-mail was written, but not where it was sent from," said Marco Bonechi, a Google software engineer, in a blog post. "Because I love to travel, the first question in many messages I receive is "Where are you?" and by the time I answer, I am often somewhere else. So in my 20% time, I wrote an experimental Gmail Labs feature that detects your location and appends the city region and country names to your signature."

Bonechi noted that people can use the new Location in Signature feature by going to the Labs tab in Gmail under Settings and then clicking on Signature Preferences.

"It'll use your public IP address to determine your location, so it may not always be that accurate," he noted. "For example, if you're at Heathrow Airport, IP detection may put you in Germany. If you want more accurate location detection, make sure your browser has a version of [Google] Gears that supports the location module. That way, Gears can make use of Wi-Fi access-point signals to recognize that you're actually in London."

Bonechi also added that users who want to keep their locations private can disable the option or delete their locations from specific e-mails.

Google's tracking technology hasn't received full support from security experts.

Just a day after Google Latitude was released, Privacy International called Google's new mapping application an "unnecessary danger" to users' security and privacy.

Simon Davies, director of the London-based privacy rights group, said in a statement that Google Latitude could be a "gift" to stalkers, prying employers and jealous partners.

But Google was quick to respond. Replying to Computerworld questions in an e-mail, a spokeswoman said the company's engineers and designers took privacy and security concerns into account when they created Google Latitude.

mobile phone networks has crossed the 4 billion mark worldwide

2009-02-11T07:52:00.000-08:00

The number of connections on mobile phone networks has crossed the 4 billion mark worldwide, industry association GSMA said on Wednesday, forecasting additional growth to 6 billion by 2013. painful issues.

The number of connections does not translate directly into the number of users, however, because in many mature markets, one user may have two mobile phones, or a phone and a mobile data device, which would both count as two connections.
In Western Europe, about a fifth of connections are estimated to be due to one user having more than one device, a figure that probably applies to many developed markets, a GSMA spokesman said.
In developing countries, by contrast, phones are often shared.
In the run-up to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona -- the wireless industry's biggest trade show which starts next Monday -- the GSMA said some 100 million connections were "mobile broadband" connections. This refers to mobile data connections using the high-speed HSPA standard.
The figure reflects the popularity of "dongles" which connect laptops to the Internet via mobile phone networks, as well as phones with high-speed data connections made by Nokia or HTC or the latest version of Apple's iPhone.

How many dimensions are there in our universe?

2009-02-10T06:34:00.000-08:00

Viennese scientists are trying to grasp the mysteries of the holographic principle: How many dimensions are there in our universe?
"A hologram, as you find it on bank notes or credit cards, appears to show a three-dimensional picture, even though in fact it is just two-dimensional," Daniel Grumiller explained. He is at the Institute of Theoretical Physics, Vienna University of Technology.
For decades, scientists have been wondering about the existence of additional dimensions so far hidden to our senses.
Grumiller and his colleagues are trying the opposite approach: Instead of postulating additional dimensions, they believe that our universe could in fact be described by less than four dimensions.
Grumiller is currently working on gravitational theories which include two spatial dimensions and one time dimension. They can be mapped onto a two-dimensional gravitationless quantum theory.
Such theories can be used to describe rapidly rotating black holes or "cosmic strings" — spacetime defects, which probably appeared shortly after the Big Bang.
In such a case, reality has fewer dimensions than we would think it appears to have. This "holographic principle" plays an important role in the physics of space time.
Instead of creating a theory of gravity in all the time and space dimensions, one can formulate a new quantum theory with one fewer spatial dimension.
That way, a 3D theory of gravitation turns into a 2D quantum theory, in which gravity does not appear any more. Still, this quantum theory correctly predicts phenomena like black holes or gravitational waves, said a Vienna release.
We perceive the space around us as three-dimensional, in terms of length, width and depth or height. According to Einstein, time and space are inseparably linked. Adding the time axis to them makes our space-time-continuum four-dimensional.

Creating a unified theory of quantum gravitation is often considered to be the "Holy Grail" of modern science

Viennese scientists are trying to understand the mysteries of the holographic principle: How many dimensions are there in our universe?

Some of the world's brightest minds are carrying out research in this area -- and still have not succeeded so far in creating a unified theory of quantum gravitation is often considered to be the “Holy Grail” of modern science.
Daniel Grumiller from the Institute of Theoretical Physics, Vienna University of Technology, can now at least unravel some of the mysteries of quantum gravitation. His results on black holes and gravitational waves are pretty mind-boggling - to say the least. Only recently he won the START prize and will use these funds to engage even more young physicians at the TU Vienna.
We perceive the space around us as three-dimensional. According to Einstein, time and space are inseparabely linked. Adding the time axis to our three-dimensional space makes our space-time-continuum four-dimensional. For decades, scientists have been wondering about the existence of additional dimensions so far hidden to our senses. Grumiller and his colleagues are trying the opposite approach: Instead of postulating additional dimensions, they believe that our universe could in fact be described by less than four dimensions.
“A hologram, as you find it on bank notes or credit cards, appears to show a three-dimensional picture, even though in fact it is just two-dimensional,” Grumiller explains. In such a case, reality has fewer dimensions than we would thinkit appears to have. This “holographic principle” plays an important role in the physics of space time. Instead of creating a theory of gravity in all the time and space dimensions, one can formulate a new quantum theory with one fewer spatial dimension. That way, a 3D theory of gravitation turns into a 2D quantum theory, in which gravity does not appear any more. Still, this quantum theory correctly predicts phenomena like black holes or gravitational waves.
“The question, how many dimensions our world really has, does probably not even have a proper answerprobably cannot be answered explicitly,” Grumiller thinks. “Depending on the particular question we are trying to answer, either one of the approaches may turn out to be more useful.”
Grumiller is currently working on gravitational theories which include two spatial dimensions and one time dimension. They can be mapped onto a two-dimensional gravitationless quantum theory. Such theories can be used to describe rapidly rotating black holes or “cosmic strings” – spacetime defects, which probably appeared shortly after the Big Bang.
Together with colleagues from the University of Vienna, Grumiller is organizing an international workshop, which will take place from April 14 to 24, 2009. Renowned participants, like scientists from Harvard, Princeton, the MIT and many other universities, reveal that the Viennese gravitation physicians are held in high regard internationally.

US Broadband Infrastructure Investments necessitate Transparency

2009-02-10T00:46:00.000-08:00

broadband infrastructure investments planned as part of the economic stimulus package need transparency if they're to be effective

The key public policy problem with broadband is that citizen-consumers and policy-makers still lack basic information.

Government investment in broadband networks has emerged as one of the more contentious parts of the economic stimulus legislation slated for a Senate vote Tuesday. Already, at least $2 billion of a planned $9 billion for broadband has apparently been cut from the latest bill, as legislators and interest groups squabble over who should control Internet communications funding, and under what rules.

What should be less controversial is that intelligent spending decisions about funding for high-speed Internet connections can't be made without excellent and transparent data about our broadband infrastructure.

The key public policy problem with broadband is that citizen-consumers and policy-makers still lack basic information. The Bush administration set a goal of achieving universal broadband by the end of 2007, then declared "mission accomplished" without providing much evidence to substantiate its claim. And under former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin, the agency refused to release what data it did have about competitors in the broadband marketplace.
President Obama's commitment to "change" has included a more hands-on approach to promoting broadband. Throughout the presidential campaign, and repeatedly since the election, Obama has emphasized the importance of "expanding broadband lines across America." With input from his telecommunications advisors, the House stimulus bill included $6 billion for broadband. Early versions of the Senate measure raised the total to $9 billion.
Statistics?
Equally important is Obama's commitment to empirically-driven policymaking. In January, Obama became only the second president—after William Howard Taft in 1909—to invoke "statistics" in an inaugural address, when he spoke of "the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics."

The US spends more than $8 billion a year on statistics. Much of that goes to fund the Census Bureau and data collection about agricultural and labor markets, such as the monthly unemployment report, which on Friday brought the grim news that the economy had shed 598,000 jobs in January. Last week, when the Agriculture Department released its own census, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack reminded reporters: "Numbers and data are very important. They direct policy; they shape policy. They can tell us what we are doing right. They call tell us what we are doing wrong."
Yet almost none of this $8 billion in statistical spending goes to compiling information about broadband, the infrastructure of the knowledge-based economy. And the data that has been collected has been made to mislead.
The FCC—the official record-keeper on private-sector telecommunications—for years claimed that there was adequate competition in broadband because the median ZIP code was served by eight separate providers. The Government Accountability Office's assessment of the same data found a median of two providers per ZIP code. Worse, the FCC refuses to release the information that it has about competition.
A variety of organizations—including my own free web service, BroadbandCensus.com—have stepped in to do our best at collecting, compiling and releasing public broadband information. We believe that if you want to build a road, you need a map that tells you where existing roads lie before you begin taking construction bids, let alone start pouring concrete. Where will our nation's new broadband highways, by-ways and access points be built? Who's going to let the contracts? Who will own this infrastructure?
These questions can't be answered without detailed broadband data. To that end, I've supported a proposed "State Broadband Planning and Assessment Act," which could be introduced as an amendment to the fiscal stimulus measure. The goal of this effort, as of BroadbandCensus.com, is to unleash the Internet as means of sharing information about the Internet itself.
For two-and-a-half years, I've been trying to get access to basic broadband data for the public, including citizen-consumers, businesses, and local policy-makers. I've been seeking to identify which carriers offer service in a particular ZIP code, as well as smaller units, like census blocks. In September 2006, when I headed a project at the Center for Public Integrity that investigated the telecommunications industry, we filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the FCC to force them to release basic broadband data about carriers by ZIP code.
The project obtained and displayed similar location information about broadcasters and cable operators from the FCC's cumbersome web site. But our attempts to get broadband data were thwarted by the FCC and by industry. AT&T, Verizon Communications, and the lobbying organizations representing the Bell companies, the cable companies, the cell phone carriers, and wireless broadband providers all asked the FCC to deny information to the public. Even though every consumer who buys broadband knows the name of the company that provides them with service, the telecoms argued that compiling this information into a single location would reveal "proprietary" data. The FCC agreed.

The FCC did not want disclosure, and neither did the telecom incumbents and their lobbyists. They did not want successful broadband competition.

In its legal briefings, the FCC argued that releasing the data would lead to competition in communications—which was why it couldn't release the data! "Disclosure could allow competitors to free ride on the efforts of the first new entrant to identify areas where competition is more likely to be successful," the agency told the federal district court in Washington.

The once-vaunted virtue of competition in federal telecommunications policy—the underpinning of the 1996 Telecom Act—had taken a back seat to the privilege of supposedly proprietary information. The FCC did not want disclosure, and neither did the telecom incumbents and their lobbyists. They did not want successful broadband competition.
Congress was critical of the FCC's meager broadband statistics. In October it passed the Broadband Data Improvement Act to prod the agency to collect broadband data at a level more granular than the ZIP-code. The FCC began doing just that in June, as the bill was working its way through Congress.
But under pressure from telecom lobbyists, Congress dropped a core provision from the House version of the bill: the requirement that a separate agency, the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, take responsibility for conducting a national broadband census and producing a public map with the names of individual carriers and where they offered service.
The House version of the stimulus bill reintroduces the NTIA broadband map. But it takes out any mention of publicly releasing individual carrier names. Worse, the Broadband Data Improvement Act enshrined the business model favored by the carriers: providing information to an entity like Connected Nation, which agrees to excise the names of broadband providers from the maps they produce.
The House stimulus bill allocated $40 million to this business model. Last week's version of the Senate stimulus bill upped the total to $350 million.
President Obama has the opportunity to make broadband a priority in his administration by ensuring that the NTIA creates a public map of our national broadband providers and infrastructure. Map in hand, the Obama administration's broadband policy should be guided by three important principles:
1) Use the Internet to empower citizens and consumers.
With the FCC keeping broadband data out of the hands of the public, I started BroadbandCensus.com to publish the same information that any consumer can know: the name of their Internet service provider and type of broadband connection, how much they are charged for service, and the Internet speeds they are promised and actually delivered. The government of Ireland publishes exactly the same information on its communications ministry web page.
Some broadband data efforts focus on the needs of telecommunications carriers and their unionized employees. Based in Kentucky, Connected Nation has been promoting their state-wide maps of broadband availability as a means for providers to sell more service. The Communications Workers of America's Speed Matters campaign has collected random speed tests from Internet users to provide a snapshot about download and upload speeds. Both of these initiatives are good, so far as they go.
But to rigorously understand the condition of broadband, we can't rely only on the information provided by the carriers. It needs to be verified by Internet users. To truly unlock the power of Internet-enabled "crowdsourcing," an effective broadband strategy must focus on citizens. Empower them by releasing basic information and letting citizen-consumers add to the mash-up. It's about making citizens contributors as well as constituents.
2) Ensure that infrastructure investment is made on the basis of cost-benefit data.
In 1790, the United States was the first country to institute a periodic national census. What started as a questionnaire seeking only demographic information had broadened by 1840 to information about employment in mining, agriculture, manufacturing, and the "learned professions and engineers." Such information has enabled our government, our universities and our business sector to rely on good-quality statistical information.
We're going to need that kind of data, and a lot more of it, to make sound investment decisions about broadband. Because of our nation's agricultural origins, our statistical agencies provide far more data about crop production than they do about broadband availability, speeds, or prices. In the absence of good data, the temptation is to make public infrastructure investment decisions based on political pressure or lawmaker influence, rather than upon solid cost-benefit analyses.
3) Use the transparency of the Internet to regulate incumbents through public disclosure.
The regulatory philosophies of the New Deal—maximum and minimum wages and prices, hands-on federal regulation—have faded and are not likely to be revived even in the current crisis. Yet one Depression-era innovation of Franklin D. Roosevelt remains as valid as ever: the disclosure-based regime of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The SEC is vigilant in requiring punctilious compliance with requirements that public companies disclose details of their operations. By and large, the SEC doesn't require substantive actions so much as it requires procedural compliance and full disclosure. Open information flows mean that poor corporate decisions are punished in the marketplace.
Equally important is that role that independent efforts, like those of BroadbandCensus.com and others, can play in collecting and aggregating public broadband data about speeds, prices, and reliability.
For more than a year, BroadbandCensus.com has provided a platform allowing Internet users to compare their actual broadband speeds against what they are promised by their carriers. We use the open-source Network Diagnostic Tool (NDT) of Internet2. All speed test data is publicly displayed under a Creative Commons license. This approach to public monitoring Internet traffic has recently been followed by Google and the New America Foundation and their "Measurement Lab" initiative, which also uses NDT.
Ultimately, broadband carriers that offer good speeds and good service will see the value in an objective and transparent broadband census. Fortunately, consumers don't need to wait on the carriers to begin collecting and publishing broadband of their own.
Neither should the government. No matter how much Congress decides to allocate to stimulate broadband, it should insist that information about speeds, prices, technologies, and specific locations of high-speed Internet availability are publicly available to all.

more.......

Guiding principles for U.S. broadband infrastructure economic stimulus

As Congressional leaders and the incoming administration of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama mull economic stimulus legislation including a portion of which is expected to be devoted to telecommunications infrastructure to boost broadband Internet access, I offer these guiding principles:
1. The focus should be on the so-called "last mile" or local access network portion of the system. There's a broad consensus that the lack of adequate broadband access in the United States is due to technological shortcomings on this segment of the telecommunications infrastructure, its weakest link. The overall goal should be full build out of this currently incomplete but vital infrastructure to serve all residents and businesses.

when it comes to advanced vehicle batteries :innovation and a little stimulus money could head off another OPEC scenario

2009-02-08T01:58:00.000-08:00

An array of 88 lithium ion batteries sits in the rear of this Johnson Controls i3 plug-in hybrid.

There's a saying as the nation pushes for cleaner electric cars: The United States will end up trading dependence on Saudi oil for dependence on Asian batteries.
Most of the big players in advanced batteries - the ones used to power the cars of tomorrow - are from Japan, South Korea or China.
America's battery industry is in need of a shock. Enter Stimulus.
As part of the nearly $900 billion economic lifeline, lawmakers plan on spending $2 billion in loan guarantees and grants for makers of advanced batteries. They don't necessarily have to be U.S. companies that get the money, but they need to set up shop on American soil.
Industry observers have high hopes for the plan, but worry that the money won't be doled out fast enough or that it will be eaten up by a few big players.
Stimulus money: Not chump change
The money involved may seem small by stimulus standards, but for the nascent high-tech battery business it's serious cash.
Two billion is more money than what's flowed into the sector from venture capital and private equity firms over the last four years combined, said Heather Daniel, a power storage analyst at the research firm New Energy Finance.
"It could be a significant boost," said Daniel. "If there's a little guy that's got the technology, it could have big implications."
Most advanced batteries for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, like the Chevy Volt set for debut in 2010, rely on lithium ion batteries.
Lithium batteries - where the ultra light metal lithium is used as the conducting material - are more efficient and lighter than the nickel-metal hydrate batteries currently used in the hybrid cars of today.
Having a light and efficient battery is essential if cars are to move from current hybrids - which use battery power only for low speed driving - to plug-in hybrids where battery power is the only thing turning the wheels.
Getting the right battery is key to making plug-in hybrids commercial - current batteries are still a bit too heavy and a bit too expensive. (There may also be an issue with getting enough lithium - much of it appears to be concentrated in a few South American counties, but that's another story.)
King of battery hill
The company or companies that nail the technology are potentially set for big profits and big hiring sprees. And currently, while many foreign firms have manufacturing operations in the United States, most of those companies are not headquartered here.
Japan's Panasonic, NEC, and GS Yuasa; South Korea's LG; and China's BYD are the main players in this market, and account for nearly all current lithium ion sales.
"The United States is alarmingly vacant from this list," said Rob Wilder, manager of the WilderHill clean energy index, an investment fund. "It's painful as a patriotic American to see just how far behind we are."
That said, U.S. firms are not out of the game.
Companies like Johnson Controls (JCI, Fortune 500), Ener1 (HEV), Maxwell (MXWL), Valence (VLNC), and privately held A123 Systems are noted for innovative, advanced-vehicle battery technology, if not a huge amount of current sales.
General Motors is working with A123 Systems on the Volt, although it seems LG will make most of the initial batteries.
There's also an array of smaller American startups that are scraping by while they search for venture capital funding.
Wilder said that for the stimulus money to be effective, it should be available to these smaller companies that might have good designs but lack lobbying power.
"They just don't have the resources to get the money like GM or Ford, who came late to the game anyway," he said.
What are companies' eligibility requirements for this money, what projects will get funded, and over what period of time is what the industry wants to know, said Joseph Muscat, a clean tech director at the accounting and advisory firm Ernst & Young.
A spokesperson for the House subcommittee that wrote the battery portion of the bill said those specifics would be hammered out by the Department of Energy if and when the bill gets approved.
"Clearly, it's a help," said Muscat. "There are a lot of companies here, and it will be interesting to see how the technology plays out."

Economic rescue plan would increase payments and extend benefits for the unemployed. It would also provide access to subsidized health insurance.

The federal stimulus package is designed to create millions of jobs, but it also provides many benefits to those who just can't find work.
The measure, which congressional leaders hope to finish next week, currently proposes:
increasing and extending unemployment insurance;
expanding coverage to more low-income and part-time workers;
subsidizing health insurance coverage;
and recharging state unemployment insurance trust funds, which are running dry as layoffs climb.
A growing number of people are depending on unemployment benefits, with continuing jobless claims hitting a record 4.79 million in late-January. The figures are sure to grow with companies shedding more than 250,000 jobs so far this year.
The federal government releases January's national unemployment rate on Friday. Currently at 7.2%, it is expected to rise to 7.5%.
Bigger checks: The unemployed would see their checks rise by $25 a week, paid for with federal funds. The current average weekly benefit is $297.
The increase would have a big impact on those at the lower end of the pay scale who are likely to spend it all, said Wayne Vroman, economist with the Urban Institute.
Mike Grigsby of Portland, Ore., would certainly welcome another $25 a week. The political organizer is scraping by on a weekly pre-tax benefit of $304, which barely covers his $545 monthly rent and other expenses.
"I could have fresh fruits and vegetables in the house, instead of canned goods," said Grigsby, 37, who has been unemployed since November. "I could buy a new interview suit at Goodwill."
The Senate version would also forgive income taxes on the first $2,400 of benefits.
Extended benefits: The bill push back the deadline to apply for extended benefits.
The jobless typically get 26 weeks of unemployment insurance, paid for by the states. Last summer, the Bush administration and Congress added an additional 13 weeks of benefits, paid for by the federal government.
In November, federal officials added another seven weeks of benefits in all states. Those who live in states with unemployment rates higher than 6% -- 34 states meet that criteria as of December -- could receive a total of 20 additional weeks.
The federal program is set to expire in March, but under the stimulus package, the jobless could apply for the extended federal benefits through Dec. 31.
With the deepening recession making it harder for people to land new positions, extending benefits is crucial, said Heidi Shierholz, economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
Randall Paynter depends on his $320 weekly unemployment check to support his family. Even though his wife works full-time, they are living on half of what they did before Paynter lost his job as a warehouse supervisor in May.
A Rome, Ga., resident, Paynter is back in school studying computers in hopes of getting a job in automated manufacturing. But he doesn't graduate until 2010 so he hopes the federal government keeps extending the benefits.
"I need as much time as I can get to get retrained," said Paynter, 54, who has an 11-year-old son.
Expanding coverage: The package would enact the Unemployment Insurance Modernization Act, which provides $7 billion in incentives for states to expand the ranks of jobless that qualify for benefits.
States that allow workers to count more recent wages in their applications could share in $2.3 billion. The remaining funds would go to states that adopt additional reforms, including providing benefits to those seeking part-time work and those who quit because of a family member's illness or relocation of a spouse.
States would also divvy up $500 million to cover administrative costs.
This expansion would allow more women, part-timers and low-wage workers - who are often the most vulnerable of the unemployed - to collect benefits, Vroman said.
Subsidized access to health insurance: The bill would allow many workers to continue coverage under their former employer's health insurance, known as Cobra, by subsidizing 65% of the premiums for as long a year. The benefit would apply to those who lose their jobs between September 2008 and the end of 2009.
The typical family premium under Cobra is $1,000, according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
The House bill would also allow workers who are 55 and older, or have been with their employer for at least a decade, to extend their Cobra until they become eligible for Medicare or secure coverage with another company.
Also, those unemployed whose family's gross income is below 200% of the federal poverty guidelines could temporarily receive Medicaid, under the House bill. The benefit, paid for by the federal government, would apply to those who lose their jobs between September 2008 and the end of 2010.
Assistance for states: The package would temporarily waive interest payments and accrual of interest on loans taken by states to pay unemployment benefits. Five states - Indiana, Michigan, New York, Ohio and South Carolina - are currently borrowing from the federal government.
Safety and stimulus
Advocates for the jobless are hailing the provisions in the package, saying they will help those struggling to survive while looking for work, said Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project.
On top of that, it will help stimulate the economy, since most people receiving unemployment benefits spend the money quickly, economist said.

UK developing a low-cost rocket capable of putting small satellites in orbit.

2009-02-07T21:14:00.000-08:00

Plans for UK satellite launcher

Virgin Galactic is not only looking to put space tourists into orbit but satellites as well, with the company joining forces with another UK firm to come up with a cheaper way to launch the devices.
Along with Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL), Virgin Galactic will look to use a system that is comparable to the United States' Pegasus system – launching satellites into orbit from a plane.
The idea is that the same transport that takes the tourists – WhiteKnightTwo – could serve as the platform to put satellites into orbit for a fraction of the current cost.
Cheaper
"Hopefully we can do it for a lot less money than the current providers," SSTL's Dr Adam Baker told PA.
"It costs something like five million to 10 million dollars at the moment to get one of our smaller satellites into space. What we are targeting is to see if we can do this for a million dollars.
"I think that's a very challenging number but I'm confident we can get very close to that - and if you could build the satellite itself for a couple of million dollars, all of a sudden you've got a very attractive package for well under five million dollars that lets your customers do something pretty capable in orbit."

The idea is being promoted by SSTL, a firm in Guildford, Surrey, best known for its Earth observation spacecraft, in conjunction with Virgin Galactic.
It is 38 years since the UK government abandoned its successful satellite launcher programme, Black Arrow.
The new venture would be an entirely commercial exercise.
It would see a two-stage rocket launch from underneath a carrier aircraft.
The concept would look similar to the US Pegasus system, which uses a former airliner to lift a booster to 40,000ft, before releasing it to make its own way into orbit.

"In 1971, we cancelled our launch-vehicle programme and have never gone back into it despite the fact that launch vehicles are an essential part of a healthy space industry," said Adam Baker from SSTL (Surrey Satellite Technology Limited).
"If we had our own launcher - something modest, not an enormous vehicle - for a reasonable price, we could service our own needs, both scientific and military, and we could also sell the service on the open market."
SSTL's ideas are being developed with Virgin Galactic, the company set up by billionaire Sir Richard Branson to take fare-paying passengers on short, weightless hops above the atmosphere.
Galactic has a carrier aeroplane, known as White Knight Two. Its primary function will be to lift the space tourists' rocket plane to its launch altitude.
But Galactic also wants to pursue other uses for the White Knight craft, and the idea of using it as a platform to release a British satellite launcher is an appealing one.

"The Black Arrow decision was a tragedy," said Will Whitehorn, the president of Virgin Galactic.
"It was based on a then civil service that thought there wasn't going to be a market. They were wrong."
SSTL and Virgin Galactic are hoping to get the backing of the UK science and innovation minister, Lord Drayson, in trying to see if there is interest in government in helping to fund a short feasibility study.
But any launcher system that did eventually emerge would be a commercial service, not a government operation.

SSTL envisages a vehicle capable of taking at least 50kg of payload into a polar orbit with a minimum altitude of 400km (248 miles), but engineers would aim to get significant additional performance.
"We'd be looking at a range from 50 to up to a maximum of 200kg because you'd want to do different sizes of satellite," said Mr Whitehorn.
Dr Baker added: "Hopefully we can do it for a lot less money than the current providers.
"It costs something like $5m-$10m at the moment to get one of our smaller satellites into space. What we are targeting is to see if we can do this for a million dollars.
"I think that's a very challenging number but I'm confident we can get very close to that - and if you could build the satellite itself for a couple of million dollars, all of a sudden you've got a very attractive package for well under $5m that lets your customers do something pretty capable in orbit."
Dr Baker is convinced all the expertise - in composite structures, guidance and avionics, propulsion, etc - exists in the UK to make it happen, but a study would have to prove the technical case and a viable business model.
Although a number of other groups in the UK have pursued a satellite launcher capability, the pedigree of SSTL and Virgin Galactic is likely to make potential investors sit up and take notice.
'Live' science
SSTL is perhaps best known for its Disaster Monitoring Constellation satellites which map the Earth at times of emergency at resolutions between 4m and 32m.
It also produced Giove-A, the first demonstration spacecraft for Europe's forthcoming sat-nav system, Galileo.
SSTL is owned by EADS Astrium, Europe's biggest space company. Astrium is the prime contractor on the mighty Ariane 5 rocket, which lofts some of the biggest satellites in the world.
Virgin Galactic has yet to start its space tourism service. It unveiled White Knight Two last year, and expects to roll out its tourist spaceliner, SpaceShipTwo, later this year.
Mr Whitehorn said the rocket plane also had great potential for doing microgravity research.
"You could take scientists up instead of space tourists and they could conduct their experiments 'live' in the period of microgravity you get on SpaceShipTwo, which is greater than you can get currently with zero-G aircraft.
"And of course you would have the scientists there in a way you couldn't with a sounding rocket, for example."

silicon chips used to repair damaged tissue in the human body.

2009-02-04T06:15:00.000-08:00

Computer chips may 'revamp nerve

Researchers have enthused closer to creation silicon chips which could one day be used to fix damaged tissue in the human body.

Edinburgh University has developed a technique, which allows neurons to grow in fine, detailed patterns on the surface of tiny computer chips.

Neurons are the basic cells of the human nervous system.
The scientists said the development may eventually enable chips to replace damaged nerve or muscle fibres.
They also said the development could possibly be used in the development of prosthetics in the future.
During the chip manufacturing process, the scientists printed patterns on the smooth silicon surface.

The chip was then dipped in a patented mixture of proteins, and neurons grew along the patterns on the surface.
The technique also works with stem cells.
It is hoped the method will eventually enable any type of tissue to be grown on a tailor-made pathway and implanted as prosthetic tissue in the body.
Professor Alan Murray, head of Edinburgh University's School of Engineering and Electronics, who led the research, said: "This is a small but important step on the path towards the long-term goal of many scientists and medical experts - to develop surgical implants using silicon chips.
"We can now make silicon chips with circuitry as well as pathways where cells can grow in the body.
"One of the areas this could be used in is prosthetics - if we can cause cells from damaged tissues to grow where we want.
"It is going towards the realms of science fiction - there is a definite Incredible Hulk feel about it."
He added: "We also hope that, rather sooner than this, the technique will allow better methods of drug discovery and reduce the need for animal testing, as new medicines could be tested on chips rather than in live creatures."
The research was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

where your kid is just now Do you know it?Check Google's maps

2009-02-03T22:32:00.000-08:00

A screen grab showing Google's upgraded mapping system is seen in this photo provided by Google Inc. The new software to be released Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2009, will enable people to use mobile phones and other wireless devices to automatically share their whereabouts with family and friends

Recorded on Google Street View

When you follow the street view scene (intermittently unavailable due to high demand) down Five Points Road, in Rush NY, you first see that the deer runs out in front of the vehicle, it gets hit, and then it can be viewed on the side of the road prior to the car pulling over, and then, you see no more footage on Five Points Road.The sequence has been captured also on Gizmodo. I warn anyone visiting that site that it's not the most pleasant as the dear is seen injured lying on the ground.Maybe the photographer felt bad, and couldn’t take any more photos for the day. One would think he would have held out on turning these in too.

With an upgrade to its mobile maps, Google Inc. hopes to prove it can track people on the go as effectively as it searches for information on the Internet.
The new software to be released Wednesday will enable people with mobile phones and other wireless devices to automatically share their whereabouts with family and friends.
The feature, dubbed "Latitude," expands upon a tool introduced in 2007 to allow mobile phone users to check their own location on a Google map with the press of a button.
"This adds a social flavor to Google maps and makes it more fun," said Steve Lee, a Google product manager.
It could also raise privacy concerns, but Google is doing its best to avoid a backlash by requiring each user to manually turn on the tracking software and making it easy to turn off or limit access to the service.
Google also is promising not to retain any information about its users' movements. Only the last location picked up by the tracking service will be stored on Google's computers, Lee said.
The software plots a user's location — marked by a personal picture on Google's map — by relying on cell phone towers, global positioning systems or a Wi-Fi connection to deduce their location. The system can follow people's travels in the United States and 26 other countries.
It's left up to each user to decide who can monitor their location.
The social mapping approach is similar to a service already offered by Loopt Inc., a 3-year-old company located near Google's Mountain View headquarters.
Loopt's service already is compatible with more than 100 types of mobile phones.
To start out, Google Latitude will work on Research In Motion Ltd.'s Blackberry and devices running on Symbian software or Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Mobile. It will also operate on some T-1 Mobile phones running on Google's Android software and eventually will work on Apple Inc.'s iPhone and iTouch.
To widen the software's appeal, Google is offering a version that can be installed on personal computers as well.
The PC access is designed for people who don't have a mobile phone but still may want to keep tabs on their children or someone else special, Lee said. People using the PC version can also be watched if they are connected to the Internet through Wi-Fi.
Google can plot a person's location within a few yards if it's using GPS or might be off by several miles if it's relying on transmission from cell phone towers. People who don't want to be precise about their whereabouts can choose to display just the city instead of a specific neighborhood.
There are no current plans to sell any advertising alongside Google's tracking service, although analysts believe knowing a person's location eventually will unleash new marketing opportunities. Google has been investing heavily in the mobile market during the past two years in an attempt to make its services more useful to people when they're away from their office or home computers.

Victory of MS stem-cell treatment

2009-02-03T01:41:00.000-08:00

Stem cells are showing more and more potential in the treatment of MS and the challenge we now face is proving their effectiveness in trials involving large numbers of people.

Not one of 21 adults with relapsing-remitting MS who had stem cells transplanted from their own bone marrow deteriorated over three years.
And 81% improved by at least one point on a scale of neurological disability, The Lancet Neurology reported.
Further tests are now planned, and a UK expert called the work "encouraging".
MS is an autoimmune disease which affects about 85,000 people in the UK.
It is caused by a defect in the body's immune system, which turns in on itself, causing damage to the nerves which can lead to symptoms including blurred vision, loss of balance and paralysis.

At first, the condition mostly causes intermittent symptoms that are partly reversible.
Over a 10-15 year period after onset, most patients develop secondary-progressive MS, with gradual but irreversible neurological impairment.
It is not the first time this treatment - known as autologous non-myeloablative haemopoietic stem-cell transplantation - has been tried in people with MS, but there has not been a great deal of success.
The researchers at Northwestern University School of Medicine in Chicago said most other studies had tried the transplants in people with secondary-progressive MS where the damage had already been done.
In the latest trial patients with earlier stage disease who, despite treatment had had two relapses in the past year, were offered the transplant.
Immune system
Stem cells were harvested from the patients and frozen while drugs were given to remove the immune cells or lymphocytes causing the damage.
The stem cells were then transplanted back to replenish the immune system - effectively resetting it.
Five patients in the study relapsed, but went into remission after receiving other therapy.
The researchers are now doing a randomised controlled trial in a larger number of patients to compare the treatment with standard therapy.
Study leader Professor Richard Burt said this was the first MS study of any treatment to show reversal of damage.
"You don't want to wait until the horse has left the barn before you close the barn door - you want to treat early.
"I think the reversal is the brain repairing itself.
"Once you're at the progressive stage you have exceeded the ability of the brain to repair itself," he said.
However, he cautioned that it was important to wait for the results of the larger trial.
And that he would not call it a cure but "changing the natural history of the disease".
Dr Doug Brown, research manager at the MS Society, said the results were very encouraging.
"It's exciting to see that in this trial not only is progression of disability halted, but damage appears to be reversed.
"Stem cells are showing more and more potential in the treatment of MS and the challenge we now face is proving their effectiveness in trials involving large numbers of people."

Google Earth goes underwater

2009-02-03T00:56:00.000-08:00

Google Earth dives in the sea

Google dove into the sea on Monday by releasing an updated 3-D mapping service that lets users discover the ocean as if they were dolphins, swimming past flooded volcanoes and throughout underwater canyons.

You can now dive into the world's ocean that covers almost three-quarters of the planet and discover new wonders.

Google Ocean expands this map to include large swathes of the ocean floor and abyssal plain.
Users can dive beneath a dynamic water surface to explore the 3D sea floor terrain.
The map also includes 20 content layers, containing information from the world's leading scientists, researchers, and ocean explorers.

Al Gore was at the launch event in San Francisco which, Google hopes, will take its mapping software a step closer towards total coverage of the entire globe.
In a statement, Mr Gore said that the update would make Google Earth a "magical experience".
"You can not only zoom into whatever part of our planet's surface you wish to examine in closer detail, you can now dive into the world's ocean that covers almost three-quarters of the planet and discover new wonders that had not been accessible in previous versions".
Approximately 70% of the worlds surface is covered by water and contains nearly 80% of all life, yet less than 5% of it has actually been explored.
Google Oceans aims to let users visit some of the more interesting locations, including underwater volcanoes, as well as running videos on marine life, shipwrecks and clips of favourite surf and dive spots.
The new features were developed in close collaboration with oceanographer Sylvia Earle and an advisory council of more than 25 ocean advocates and scientists.
Sylvia Earle, the National Geographic Society's explorer in residence, said the new features would bring the blue planet to life.
"I cannot imagine a more effective way to inspire awareness and caring for the blue heart of the planet than the new Ocean in Google Earth."
"For the first time, everyone from curious kids to serious researchers can see the world, the whole world, with new eyes," she added.
There are also updates on the terrestrial side, including GPS tracking, virtual time travel (where users can observe changes in satellite images, such as the 2006 World Cup stadium or the desertification of Africa's Lake Chad) and narrated tours of imagery and content in Google Earth. There are also updates to the Mars 3D section, so if users have had enough of the blue planet, they can always look at the red one.

The enhanced Google Earth, available for download at earth.google.com, offers everything from photographs and videos of sea life to models of shipwrecks to water temperature data collected from buoys. Dozens of partners - including the National Geographic Society, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and the Scripps Oceanographic Institution - contributed information to the project, which is aimed at fostering learning, promoting conservation and, no doubt, increasing Google's popularity.
By plunging underwater, Google is adding a new dimension to Google Earth, which previously showcased only the terrestrial world. Premiered four years ago, it was probably best known as a tool for users to get a bird's-eye view of their homes and to peep on their neighbor's backyards.
The omission of the liquid two-thirds of the planet prompted Sylvia Earle, the former chief scientist at NOAA and noted oceanographer, to quip once that Google Earth should be renamed "Google dirt." On stage Monday at a Google kickoff event at San Francisco's California Academy of Sciences, she declared the enhanced version a "fantastic new rendition of the earth."

Google Earth lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings, from galaxies in outer space to the canyons of the ocean. You can explore rich geographical content, save your toured places, and share with others.

Scientists akin to Obama's environmental diagram

2009-02-02T07:07:00.000-08:00

President Barack Obama with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson

Environmentalists are encouraged by President Barack Obama's focus this week on renewable energy and stricter emissions standards, although some economists are skeptical he can pull the country out of the recession while cleaning up the planet.

Obama must strike a careful balance between stimulating the economy in the coming months and investing in the long-term future of the environment, said Raj Chetty, professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley.
"If you spend money too quickly, you lose site of the long-term vision," Chetty told CNN. "If you focus too much on the long term, you may not act on spending money."
Framing his remarks with an eye on the recession, the president on Monday announced a plan for "a new energy economy that will build millions of jobs." Obama proposes to put 460,000 Americans to work through clean energy investments, increasing fuel efficiency in vehicles and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
By 2025, the Obama administration hopes one-fourth of the nation's energy will come from renewable sources. Over the long term, the president hopes to create millions of new jobs by investing $150 billion in taxpayer money to help private companies develop new sources of clean energy, such as wind, solar and geothermal power.

It's about time, say scientists who often clashed with former President George W. Bush on environmental policy.

"By repowering our nation with clean energy, we will create millions of jobs that can't be sent overseas. By harnessing the energy of the sun and wind, we can refuel our nation and end our addiction to oil," said Wesley Warren, director of programs for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Environmental scholars, however, say the changes Obama seeks are not easy.
"These technologies are not new. They have been around for 10 to 15 years," said Bill Chameides, dean of the Nicholas School of Environment at Duke University. "Government can push new policies, but it has to prove to be economically competitive or else it will not happen."
"It is going to require massive investments," said Joseph Romm, former acting assistant secretary of energy under the Clinton administration and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. "The only question is, are we going to be the leader and export our technologies or a follower and continue importing our resources?"
Some economists question whether spending government money on new energy technologies is the best way to stimulate the economy in the short term.
Opponents of Obama's proposals say renewable energy would be expensive, take up large amounts of land, and might not even be able to generate sufficient energy given the aging infrastructure of the nation's electric grid.
"If the private sector will not invest in these technologies, it will not be efficient," said Alan Reynolds, senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
"Creating jobs by switching from one form of energy to another is a bad idea," he added. "You don't need subsidies for anything that is free. Getting a $7,000 rebate on a $100,000 plug-in electrical hybrid that gets its power from a coal plant doesn't make a lot of sense."
Several events in Washington this week underscored the Obama administration's commitment to environmental issues. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday named a special envoy to pursue global agreements combating global warming. On Wednesday, former Vice President Al Gore urged Congress to approve Obama's stimulus package and said the United States needs to join international talks on a climate-change treaty.
"For years our efforts to address the climate crisis have been undermined by the idea that we must chose between our planet and our way of life, between our moral duty and economic well-being these are false choices," Gore told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
"In fact, the solutions to the climate crisis are the same solutions that will address our economic and national crisis as well."
Obama may have science on his side. By overwhelming consensus, scientists agree that our warming planet poses a greater global threat with every passing day.
The replacement of current technology with energy generated from natural resources, such as sunlight and wind, could help reduce CO2 emissions by 50 percent by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency.
"Frankly the science is screaming at us," said Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, at Wednesday's hearing. "Carbon dioxide emissions grew at a rate of four times faster in the Bush administration than they did in the 1990s."
Even so, experts agree the faltering economy will complicate any discussion about investment in clean energy.
"The country is running two deficits," said David Orr, a professor of environmental studies and politics at Oberlin College, "the economy in the short term, which will take one to five years to figure out [and] the environment in the long term, which if we don't do anything about it will see catastrophic effects."

cybercrime is rising sharply, experts have warned at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

2009-02-02T06:31:00.000-08:00

Cybercrime threat rising stridently.
The threat of cybercrime is rising sharply, experts have warned at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

They called for a new system to tackle well-organised gangs of cybercriminals.

Online theft costs $1 trillion a year, the number of attacks is rising sharply and too many people do not know how to protect themselves, they said.

The internet was vulnerable, they said, but as it was now part of society's central nervous system, attacks could threaten whole economies.

The past year had seen "more vulnerabilities, more cybercrime, more malicious software than ever before", more than had been seen in the past five years combined, one of the experts reported.

But does that really put "the internet at risk?", was the topic of session at the annual Davos meeting.

On the panel discussing the issue were Mozilla chairwoman Mitchell Baker (makers of the Firefox browser), McAfee chief executive Dave Dewalt, Harvard law professor and leading internet expert Jonathan Zittrain, Andre Kudelski of Kudelski group, which provides digital security solutions, and Tom Ilube, the boss of Garlik, a firm working on online web identity protection.

They were also joined by Microsoft's chief research officer, Craig Mundie.

To encourage frank debate, Davos rules do not allow the attribution of comments to individual panellists

Threat #1: Crime

The experts on the panel outlined a wide range of threats facing the internet.
There was traditional cybercrime: committing fraud or theft by stealing somebody's identity, their credit card details and other data, or tricking them into paying for services or goods that do not exist.

The majority of these crimes, one participant said, were not being committed by a youngster sitting in a basement at their computer.

Rather, they were executed by very large and very well-organised criminal gangs.

One panellist described the case of a lawyer who had realised that he could make more money though cybercrime.

He went on to assemble a gang of about 300 people with specialised roles - computer experts, lawyers, people harvesting the data etc.

Such criminals use viruses to take control of computers, combine thousands of them into so-called "botnets" that are used for concerted cyber attacks.

In the United States, a "virtual" group had managed to hijack and redirect the details of 25 million credit card transactions to Ukraine. The group used the data to buy a large number of goods, which were then sold on eBay.

This suggested organisation on a huge scale.

"This is not vandalism anymore, but organised criminality," a panellist said, while another added that "this is it is not about technology, but our economy".

Threat #2: the system

A much larger problem, though, are flaws in the set-up of the web itself.

It is organised around the principle of trust, which can have unexpected knock-on effects.

Nearly a year ago, Pakistan tried to ban a YouTube video that it deemed to be offensive to Islam.

The country's internet service providers (ISPs) were ordered to stop all YouTube traffic within Pakistan.
However, one ISP inadvertently managed to make YouTube inaccessible from anywhere in the world.

But in cyberspace, nobody is responsible for dealing with such incidents.

It fell to a loose group of volunteers to analyse the problem and distribute a patch globally within 90 minutes.

"Fortunately there was no Star Trek convention and they were all around," a panellist joked.

Threat #3: cyber warfare
Design flaws are one thing, cyber warfare is another.

Two years ago, a political dispute between Russia and Estonia escalated when the small Baltic country came under a sustained denial-of-service attack which disabled the country's banking industry and its utilities like the electricity network.
This was repeated last year, when Georgia's web infrastructure was brought down on its knees during its conflict with Russia.

"2008 was the year when cyber warfare began.. it showed that you can bring down a country within minutes," one panellist said.

"It was like cyber riot, Russia started it and then many hackers jumped on the bandwagon," said another.

This threat was now getting even greater because of the "multiplication of web-enabled devices" - from cars to fridges, from environmental sensors to digital television networks.

The panel discussed methods that terrorists could use to attack or undermine the whole internet, and posed the question whether the web would be able to survive such an assault.

The real problem, concluded one of the experts, was not the individual loss.

It was the systemic risk, where fraud and attacks undermine either trust in or the functionality of the system, to the point where it becomes unusable.

What solution?

"The problems are daunting, and it's getting worse," said one of the experts. "Do we need a true disaster to bring people together?," asked another.

One panellist noted that unlike the real world - where we know whether a certain neighbourhood is safe or not - cyberspace was still too new for most of us to make such judgements. This uncertainty created fear.

And as "the internet is a global network, it doesn't obey traditional boundaries, and traditional ways of policing don't work," one expert said.

Comparing virus-infected computers to people carrying highly infectious diseases like Sars, he proposed the creation of a World Health Organisation for the internet.

"If you have a highly communicable disease, you don't have any civil liberties at that point. We quarantine people."

"We can identify the machines that have been co-opted, that provide the energy to botnets, but right now we have no way to sequester them."

But several panellists worried about the heavy hand of government. The internet's strength was its open nature. Centralising it would be a huge threat to innovation, evolution and growth of the web.

"The amount of control required [to exclude all risk] is quite totalitarian," one of them warned.

Instead they suggested to foster the civic spirit of the web, similar to the open source software movement and the team that had sorted the YouTube problem.

"Would a formalised internet police following protocols have been able to find the [internet service provider] in Pakistan as quickly and deployed a fix that quickly?" one of them asked.

How Soon Will Cybercrimes Be Punished?
In criminal offenses, there would be no crime when there is no law punishing it. That explains why various crimes done through the internet still persist these days. In cases where the offenders are caught, court proceedings won't go so well because only the part of the offense which is governed by the Revised Penal Code (RPC) is being litigated. The main bulk of the offense, the cybercrime, is usually left untouched. This is the main issue; yet, the current RPC is still inadequate to deal with such matter. Hence, the government's highest monitoring body for the conditions and status of Information Technology in the Philippines is now putting pressure on the legislature to propose a bill against cybercrimes.
The Commission on Information and Communication Technology (CICT) define cybercrimes as those offenses done in the realm of the internet which, just like usual offenses, have grave and concrete effects to the ones who are affronted. The crimes identified are hacking, identity theft, phishing, spamming, website defacement, denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, malware or viruses, child pornography, and cyber prostitution. Such crimes are not yet punishable under the country's criminal law. That is why there is a need for a legislative action to eventually make each of the aforementioned offenses become a felony in order for perpetrators to be punished in accordance with the law.
CICT is very hopeful that increased awareness and support will push the Congress to finally pass a bill against cybercrimes. The commission endorsed the "Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2008" wherein four cyber-related bills authored by different lawmakers are consolidated. A representative from the Council of Europe, an organ of the European Council, also joined the technical working group in refining the bill a year prior to the endorsement. Such representation is meant to "harmonize" the bill with European standards on cybersecurity. It has to be considered that such crimes are not solely confined to one nation but rather that they traverse territorial boundaries considering that the crimes are committed in the World Wide Web..
Currently, CICT feels that there is an increasing support from private sector groups. The Business Process Association of the Philippines (B/PAP) which represents the outsourcing industry is an example. The said umbrella organization supports such bill because it infers that once the country is secured from different forms of cybercrimes through existing and enforceable laws, it would be easier to sell the services that are done in the country to foreign investors. The bill would ensure that the clients are well covered when we speak of cybersecurity in the Philippines.
With these, it can be said that the current conditions the country is facing calls for progressive and up-to-date legislations. Neighboring countries like Singapore and Malaysia have already adopted such measure. Unluckily though, the bill is hampered by the other so called "more important" considerations discussed in both Lower and Upper House of the Congress in the Philippines. It is already five years since the bill was endorsed, yet, the Congress still fails to accommodate it. While increased support and awareness regarding cybercrimes becomes more apparent, hopefully ,the legislature will finally act on this issue.

Microsoft patent makes smart phones like more then pc

2009-02-02T00:36:00.000-08:00

'Smart system' includes cradle that allows smart phone to connect to peripherals, networks, through a USB connection.

Microsoft Corp. has patented smart phone-docking technology that would allow the devices to connect to peripherals and networks similar to the way PCs do.

According to a filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Microsoft has patented a "smart system" that includes a smart-phone cradle that allows the device to interface to peripherals, networks and large video displays through a USB connection.

Some of the peripherals the cradle would allow the smart phone to link up to include printers, TV screens, cameras, external storage devices and speakers, according to the patent, which Microsoft acquired Jan. 22.

For years Microsoft executives -- particularly Chairman Bill Gates, who is no longer on full-time duty at the company -- have discussed publicly how PCs and smart devices are reaching an intersection, and how PC technology will be available in smaller devices.

The patent filing reflects this notion. "The cell phone is rapidly evolving into a smart communications device that can provide sufficient computing power and functionality to drive a wide variety of peripherals as well as access network services," according to the filing. "A major impediment to taking advantage of this evolving technology in the cell phone, for example, is the inability to connect the phone to peripheral devices and systems."

Apple Inc.'s iPhone, introduced in mid-2007, was probably the first and best example of the intersection between PCs and smart phones; it's more like a mini-PC than a mobile phone. With devices based on the Windows Mobile operating system that third parties sell, Microsoft also offers a similar hybrid of PC and smart phone.

Microsoft also released a Zune music and video player to compete with Apple's iPod, but the device has garnered only lukewarm customer interest, leaving the future of the product uncertain. Rumors swirled that Microsoft would unveil a combination Zune/Windows Mobile device to rival iPhone at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month, but that did not happen.

Microsoft did not immediately comment on the patent Friday. The company doesn't typically comment on technologies it patents, which may or may not end up as products or as a part of products Microsoft sells.

Scientists apply Darwin theory to develop new technologies

2009-02-01T20:16:00.000-08:00

What drove Charles Darwin to his extraordinary ideas on evolution and human origins? Adrian Desmond, with co-author James Moore, argue in a new book that the great scientist had a "sacred cause": the abolition of slavery.

It makes one's blood boil," said Charles Darwin.
Not much outraged the gentle recluse, but the horrors of slavery could cost him a night's sleep.
He was thinking of the whipped house boy and the thumbscrews used by old ladies in South America, atrocities he had witnessed on the Beagle voyage.
The screams stayed with him for life, but how much did they influence his life's work?
Today you can still read of Darwin's "eureka" moment when he saw the Galapagos finches.
Alas, his conversion to evolution wasn't so simple, but it was much more interesting. It didn't occur in the Galapagos, but probably on his arrival home.
And new evidence suggests that Darwin's unique approach to evolution - relating all races and species by "common descent" - could have been fostered by his anti-slavery beliefs.

Development of Darwin's theory.....

The Development of Darwin's theory began with a search for explanations of contradictions in current faith based ideas, and led him to formulate his theory of evolution which was eventually published in his book On the Origin of Species, a turning point in the history of evolutionary thought.
Following the inception of Darwin's theory in 1838, he worked on explaining the species question through natural selection as his “prime hobby” in the background to his main occupation of publishing the scientific results of the Beagle voyage. Publication of his Journal and Remarks (now known as The Voyage of the Beagle) brought him success as an author. He was settling into married life, but suffered from bouts of illness and they moved to rural Down House away from the pressures of London. He discussed his theory with friends, and wrote up an essay setting out his basic ideas as well as continuing with experiments and wide investigations.
In 1846 he completed his third geological book, and turned from supervising the publication of expert reports on the findings from the voyage to examining barnacle specimens himself. This grew into an eight year study, establishing his expertise as a biologist and finding support for his theory. His treasured daughter suffered a long illness and died, shaking his dwindling faith in Christianity. In 1854 he resumed work on the species question. This would lead to the publication of Darwin's theory.
Charles Darwin became a naturalist at a point in the history of evolutionary thought when theories of Transmutation were being developed to explain discrepancies in the established faith based explanations of species. He considered these problems at first hand during the Beagle survey. On its return in 1836 his ideas developed rapidly. His collections and writings established him as an eminent geologist and collector.
Darwin read Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population in the context of his findings about species relating to localities, enquiries into animal breeding, and ideas of Natural "laws of harmony". Around late November 1838 he related breeders selecting traits to a Malthusian Nature selecting from variants thrown up by "chance" so that "every part of newly acquired structure is fully practised and perfected", thinking this "the most beautiful part of my theory" of how species originated.
His theory of how species originated had now come together in principle, but he was vividly aware of the difficulties he would face in getting it accepted by his friends and colleagues in the scientific establishment. On 19 December 1838 as secretary of the Geological Society of London Darwin witnessed the vicious interrogation by Richard Owen and his allies of Darwin's old tutor Robert Edmund Grant in which they ridiculed Grant's Lamarckian heresy, showing establishment intolerance of materialist theories.

Darwin theory to develop new technologies......

Still a flash point among fundamentalist Christians, the theory of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin 150 years ago has become an indispensable tool for biologists to comprehend the natural world.
Yet as scientists mark Darwin’s 200th birthday this month, evolution is no longer simply a narrative of life. Scientists have begun using it as a tool to develop new technologies.
By doing so, they have improved law enforcement, created smarter computer programs and are remaking the field of medicine. There have been quirkier applications, such as cleaner clothes, too.
Only recently, though, have scientists begun calling attention to these breakthroughs, as the ideas of the iconic English naturalist have faced renewed attacks.
In Texas, controversy over Darwin’s work resurfaced last month when the State Board of Education narrowly voted to delete a provision that required the teaching of the weaknesses and strengths of evolutionary theory. The board is to act soon on a proposal that would require students to consider the evolutionary principle that all organisms have a common ancestor. Supporters say they want children to understand there are viable alternatives to evolution.
But Andy Ellington, a University of Texas evolutionary biologist, called that argument “almost amusing.”
“You have these folks who are trying to suggest that we shouldn’t teach evolution as something our kids need to know,” he said. “But at the same time, there are these new technologies out there shaping our lives every day.”
Darwin, born Feb. 12, 1809, sailed from England in 1831 on a five-year voyage around the world. During the journey, he took copious notes about the variability of flora and fauna.
Darwin’s observations in A Naturalist’s Voyage Around the World eventually led to the notions of natural selection and evolution, theories he laid out in On the Origin of Species, the 150th anniversary of which comes in December.
Thanks to the discovery of DNA’s structure in 1953 and the mapping of the human genome half a century later, biologists now say they understand the mechanisms by which genes mutate and species evolve. And they’re using that knowledge in increasingly powerful ways.
One of the first and most well-known uses of evolutionary theory has come in law enforcement.
Among the 3 billion or so chemical bits, or letters, in human DNA are those that change slowly and those that mutate rapidly. Scientists realized that short segments of DNA vary greatly from person to person as a result. The finding gave rise to the concept of DNA fingerprints to identify individuals.
Crime-fighting, medicineBy the late 1980s, scientists were testifying in court about the reliability of DNA evidence to convict criminals. Such evidence has become a powerful forensic tool.
“It’s had a tremendous impact on criminal justice, not the least of which has been to free a lot of innocent people,” said Rusty Hardin, now a defense lawyer who in 1988 prosecuted the first Harris County case that used DNA evidence.
In recent years, the concept of genetic identification has been extended to such areas as vintage wines and Beluga caviar, where buyers want surety that what they’re buying is authentic.
Evolution also has helped scientists become smarter about the development and use of medicines such as antibiotics and vaccines.
Physicians now understand that bacteria mutate over time. When attacked by antibiotics, some bacteria become resistant to certain antibiotics and thrive.
“Evolutionary theory has definitely guided us, and now we as a medical community know to be much more careful about the use of antibiotics,” said Dr. James Versalovic, a Baylor College of Medicine professor and the director of microbiology at Texas Children’s Hospital.
The evolution of viruses also is critical to the development of vaccines. Some viruses, such as polio, have genetic material that changes slowly over time, allowing physicians to create a vaccine that will last for life.
Other viruses, including influenza and HIV, are constantly changing. This requires annual changes to the flu vaccine and has prevented development of a successful vaccine against HIV.
“We know we are in a world where we are in a constant competition with bacteria and viruses,” said Dan Graur, a University of Houston biologist. “We need to use evolutionary principles just to keep them under control.”
Some scientists also use evolution to develop drugs to combat disease, an approach called “directed evolution.”
Biologists employing this method generate a large batch of random segments of DNA — short strips of biological material — which are then tested to see whether any will perform a useful function inside cells, such as binding to a protein. The DNA segments that fail at the task are eliminated; those that succeed are copied in such a way that new mutations are introduced. These new variants then are tested. The process is replicated many times until an optimal sequence is found.
Computer programsThe approach has led to treatments for an eye disease called wet macular degeneration and other diseases, said Ellington, the UT-Austin biologist whose lab conducts directed evolution experiments.
Computer scientists use a similar process, called evolutionary or genetic algorithms. This technique involves many people writing computer programs for a certain task, such as managing air traffic or weather forecasting. Just as members of a species compete for resources in the wild, the programs compete with one another, mixing and matching lines of code and ultimately producing the most efficient algorithm for a certain task.
A company called Maxygen has applied this process to basic household goods.
Enzymes help speed up chemical reactions and are often good at digesting fats, starches and proteins — the kinds of materials that stain clothes. Maxygen collected enzymes from different bacteria, chopped and mixed them, and created new enzymes.

Solar power a ventilation system that can cool the car without help from the engine.

2009-01-30T05:02:00.000-08:00

Solar cars still a way off

Toyota's third-generation Prius, due at dealerships this spring, will have an optional solar panel on its roof. The panel will power a ventilation system that can cool the car without help from the engine, Toyota says.
But it's a long way from the 2010 Prius to a solar-powered car, experts told CNN. Most agree that there just isn't enough space on a production car to get full power from solar panels.

"Being able to power a car entirely with solar is a pretty far-reaching goal," said Tony Markel, a senior engineer at the federal government's National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colorado.

In the new Prius, the solar panel will provide energy for a ventilation fan that will help cool the parked car on sunny, hot days. The driver can start the fan remotely before stepping into the car. Once the car is started, the air conditioning won't need as much energy from a battery to do the rest of the cooling.

"The best thing about using solar is that regardless of what you end up using it for, you're trying to use it to displace gasoline," added Markel.

The question is, how much gasoline can solar power offset? Markel said his lab has modified a Prius to use electricity from the grid for its main batteries and a solar panel for the auxiliary systems. He believes the car gets an additional 5 miles of electric range from the panel.
According to recent articles in Japan's Nikkei newspaper, Toyota has bigger plans for harnessing power from the sun. Nikkei reports that Toyota hopes to develop a vehicle powered entirely by solar panels. The project will take years, the paper reported.

When contacted by CNN, however, a Toyota spokeswoman denied the existence of the project.

"At this time there are no plans that we know of to produce a concept or production version of a solar-powered car," said Amy K. Taylor, a communications administrator in Toyota's Environmental, Safety & Quality division.

Motorists don't have to wait for a 2010 Prius to drive a solar-enhanced car, however. Greg Johanson, president of Solar Electric Vehicles in Westlake Village, California, said his company makes a roof-mounted panel for a standard Prius that enables the car to travel up to 15 additional miles a day.

The system costs $3,500, and it takes about a week to make one, Johanson said. Billy Bautista, a project coordinator at the company, said Solar Electric Vehicles gets so many requests for the system that there is a backlog of several months.

The company's Web site says motorists can install the panels themselves, although it recommends finding a "qualified technician."

The system delivers about 165 watts of power per hour to an added battery, which helps powers the electric motor, Johanson said.

But others said it would take a lot more power than that to replace an internal combustion engine.

Eric Leonhardt, director of the Vehicle Research Institute at Western Washington University, said that even if solar cells worked far better than they do today, they wouldn't generate enough power for driving substantial distances. The best cells operate at about 33 percent efficiency, but the ones used on vehicles are only about 18 percent efficient, he said.

Leonhardt said it would be more practical to use solar power to help charge a car's battery and use the more efficient panels mounted on a roof or over a parking area to supply the rest of the electricity needed to drive the engine.

"Solar panels really need a lot of area," he said.

Leonhardt thinks Toyota's new Prius is a good first step toward using renewable energy. Some cars get hotter than 150 degrees inside when parked in the sun, so reducing the temperature could mean Toyota could use a smaller AC unit, he added.

Johanson of Solar Electric Vehicles said he'd like to see Toyota bring the weight of a Prius down from 3,000 pounds to 2,000. He also hopes for a small gasoline engine and a larger electric motor. That will probably come in the future, when Toyota unveils a plug-in engine.

In the meantime, Solar Electric Vehicles sells its version of a plug-in Prius, with a solar panel installed, for $25,000, Bautista said.

Toyota is the largest automaker to incorporate solar power into a mass-produced car. But its solar panel is not the first for a car company. Audi uses one on its upscale A8 model, and Mazda tried one on its 929 in the 1990s.

In addition, a French motor company, Venturi, has produced an electric-solar hybrid. The Eclectic model costs $30,000, looks like a souped-up golf cart and uses roof-mounted solar panels to help power an electric engine. It has a range of about 30 miles and has a top speed of about 30 mph.

ABOUT Solar vehicle

Borealis III leads the way during the 2005 North American Solar Challenge passing by Lake Benton, Minnesota.A solar vehicle is an electric vehicle powered by a type of renewable energy, by solar energy obtained from solar panels on the surface (generally, the roof) of the vehicle. Photovoltaic (PV) cells convert the Sun's energy directly into electrical energy. Solar vehicles are not practical day-to-day transportation devices at present, but are primarily demonstration vehicles and engineering exercises, often sponsored by government agencies.

Solar cars
Solar cars combine technology typically used in the aerospace, bicycle, alternative energy and automotive industries. The design of a solar vehicle is severely limited by the energy input into the car (batteries and power from the sun). Virtually all solar cars ever built have been for the purpose of solar car races (with notable exceptions).

Like many race cars, the driver's cockpit usually only contains room for one person, although a few cars do contain room for a second passenger. They contain some of the features available to drivers of traditional vehicles such as brakes, accelerator, turn signals, rear view mirrors (or camera), ventilation, and sometimes cruise control. A radio for communication with their support crews is almost always included.

Solar cars are often fitted with gauges as seen in conventional cars. Aside from keeping the car on the road, the driver's main priority is to keep an eye on these gauges to spot possible problems. Cars without gauges available for the driver will almost always feature wireless telemetry. Wireless telemetry allows the driver's team to monitor the car's energy consumption, solar energy capture and other parameters and free the driver to concentrate on just driving.

Electrical and mechanical systems
The electrical system is the most important part of the car's systems as it controls all of the power that comes into and leaves the system. The battery pack plays the same role in a solar car that a petrol tank plays in a normal car in storing power for future use. Solar cars use a range of batteries including lead-acid batteries, nickel-metal hydride batteries (NiMH), Nickel-Cadmium batteries (NiCd), Lithium ion batteries and Lithium polymer batteries.

Many solar race cars have complex data acquisition systems that monitor the whole electrical system while even the most basic cars have systems that provide information on battery voltage and current to the driver.

The mechanical systems of a solar car are designed to keep friction and weight to a minimum while maintaining strength. Designers normally use titanium and composites to ensure a good strength-to-weight ratio.

Solar cars usually have three wheels, but some have four. Three wheelers usually have two front wheels and one rear wheel: the front wheels steer and the rear wheel follows. Four wheel vehicles are set up like normal cars or similarly to three wheeled vehicles with the two rear wheels close together.

Technorati : car engine, carscience, engine, information, informationwatch, science, solar power,

Google's new online tools that will diagnose your network connection & performance.l

2009-01-29T08:20:00.000-08:00

Google and a group of partners have released a set of tools designed to help broadband customers and researchers measure performance of Internet connections.
The set of tools, at MeasurementLab.net, includes a network diagnostic tool, a network path diagnostic tool and a tool to measure whether the user's broadband provider is slowing BitTorrent peer-to-peer (P-to-P) traffic. Coming soon to the M-Lab applications is a tool to determine whether a broadband provider is giving some traffic a lower priority than other traffic, and a tool to determine whether a provider is degrading certain users or applications.

Think your Internet Service Provider (ISP) is messing with your connection performance? Now you can find out, with Google's new online tools that will diagnose your network connection.
Here's a quick walkthrough on how to make the best of them.
Google's broadband test tools are located at Measurementlab.net. On that page, you'll see an first icon that says "Users: Test Your Internet Connection". Click that, and then you'll be taken to a page where there are three tests available, and two more listed as coming soon. However, out of the three available tests, only one of them is fully automated and easy to use.
Glasnost , second on the list, will check whether your ISP is slowing down (like Comcast) or blocking Peer2Peer (P2P) downloads from software such as BitTorrent. P2P apps are commonly used for downloading illegal software and media content like movies and music, but also are used for legal purposes as well, such as distributing large software packages to many users at once.
To use the measurement tool, you will be redirected to the Glasnost site. You'll need the latest version of Java installed, and you should stop any large downloads that you may have running before you begin the test. If you're on a Mac, a popup message will prompt you to trust the site's Java applet.
When you're ready to start, you can choose whether you want to run a full test (approximately 7 minutes long) or a simple test (4 minutes long). When I tried to test my connection, Glasnost's measurement servers were overloaded and an alternative server was offered, but that was overloaded as well. After a short while I was able to run the test.
In the tests of my connection (my provider is Vodafone At Home, in the UK) all results indicated that BitTorrent traffic is not blocked or throttled. But I'm looking forward to hearing from you in the comments how your ISP performed in Glasnost's diagnostics. Meanwhile, make sure you keep an eye on the other tests that will be available soon from Measurementlab.net.

Britannica reaches uncovered to the web

2009-01-28T23:44:00.000-08:00

The Encyclopaedia Britannica has unveiled a plan to let readers help keep the reference work up to date.
Under the plan, readers and contributing experts will help expand and maintain entries online.
Experts will also be enrolled in a reward scheme and given help to promote their command of a subject.
However, Britannica said it would not follow Wikipedia in letting a wide range of people make contributions to its encyclopaedia.
User choice
"We are not abdicating our responsibility as publishers or burying it under the now-fashionable 'wisdom of the crowds'," wrote Jorge Cauz, president of Encyclopaedia Britannica in a blog entry about the changes.
He added: "We believe that the creation and documentation of knowledge is a collaborative process but not a democratic one."
Britannica plans to do more with the experts that have already made contributions. They will be encouraged to keep articles up to date and be given a chance to promote their own expertise.
Selected readers will also be invited to contribute and many readers will be able to use Britannica materials to create their own works that will be featured on the site.
However, it warned these would sit alongside the encyclopaedia entries and the official material would carry a "Britannica Checked" stamp, to distinguish it from the user-generated content.
Alongside the move towards more openness, will be a re-design of the Britannica site and the creation of the web-based tools that visitors can use to put together their own reference materials.

Tech analysts expect Amazon.com (AMZN) to open the cover on Kindle 2

2009-01-28T03:32:00.000-08:00

Get ready for the next chapter. Tech analysts expect Amazon.com (AMZN) to open the cover on Kindle 2, the second generation of its groundbreaking electronic reader. On Tuesday, Amazon invited members of the media to "an important" news conference Feb. 9 at New York City's Morgan Library & Museum.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is expected to attend. But Amazon won't reveal the plot. "We are not sharing details," Amazon director of communications Drew Herdener wrote in an e-mail. The company has said there will be a new version of Kindle sometime this year.
Paperback-size e-book readers such as the Kindle or rival Sony Reader let bookworms cart a boatload of titles — more than 200 in the case of the first Kindle. But Kindle's real advance was in its wireless Whispernet network (built on top of Sprint's speedy EV-DO wireless network). Readers could search for and sample books, blogs and periodicals (including USA TODAY) right on the device and purchase new content in under a minute. Best sellers typically cost $9.99.
Amazon won't disclose Kindle sales. Mark Mahaney, director of Internet research at Citigroup Investment Research, estimates Amazon sold about 400,000 units last year and that Kindle hardware and book sales will contribute about $1 billion to Amazon's revenue in 2010. "It's pretty clear this is the iPod of the book world," he says. Mahaney also expects the new Kindle to drop to around $300, from $359. Minor design glitches will likely also be addressed. Pundits have criticized Kindle for its clumsy button layout and homely appearance.
Amazon underestimated demand for the first Kindle, which is still difficult to come by. Amazon's website says Kindle is sold out due to "heavy customer demand." Orders are expected to be shipped in four to six weeks, the website indicates.
What isn't clear, of course, is whether buyers will receive the first Kindle or the sequel. Whatever Amazon trots out, Tim Bajarin, president of the Creative Strategies consulting firm, doesn't expect shortages to be a major issue. "This time they at least know what the sales cycles have looked like," Bajarin says. "I have to believe they're going to be smarter about building and managing inventory."

Amazon's Kindle 2.0 could have color screen, longer battery life, sleeker design..

Is a Kindle 2.0 on the way? Amazon.com today set the stage for fingers to start tapping out online rumors about a new version of its e-book reader. The Seattle company sent out invitations for a Feb. 9 press event at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York. The last time Amazon held such an event was in 2007 to introduce the Kindle.
"We're fairly sure that it will be a new Kindle, one that will feature a color screen and a better battery life," said Richard Doherty, a consumer electronics analyst with the Envisioneering Group.
Doherty, who keeps close tabs on companies that supply parts for the Kindle and other devices, said Amazon had been working for much of 2008 on a successor to its unexpectedly popular reading device. But Amazon's plans to release the product in time for Christmas were derailed when the online merchant was overwhelmed with orders, Doherty said. As a result, those who ordered a Kindle in December were told to wait until February or March for the device.
The Boy Genius Report has some photos it says are of the next version of the Kindle.
Another possible change: a sleeker design that relocates the page-forward and page-back buttons so users would be less likely to hit them accidentally. That's a major complaint about the current Kindle, said Tim Bajarin, electronics analyst with Creative Strategies.

You ready for Kindle 2.0?

Amazon has sent out word of a press event Feb. 9 at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York. The last time it did something like this, it was for the release of the original Kindle in Nov. 2007.
The new device is expected to update the Kindle's rather clunky looks and add some design touches aimed at making it easier to use. It should probably get the color screen treatment but it's unclear if it will go to a touch screen. One of the gripes has been inadvertent page turns, which most observers expect will get addressed.
The Boy Genius Report has some pictures (featured above) from last fall that show a new Kindle with rounded edges and buttons.
Despite its awkward looks, the Kindle has sold well even at its $359 price, down from its original $399 price. Amazon sold more than 250,000 units in the first year and the device is still shipping with a 4-6 week delay.
People have enjoyed the way the Kindle offers easy access to 225,000 books, which can be downloaded wirelessly over a cellular connection. The Kindle, however, faces competition from Sony's eReader and also down the road from devices like the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Hidalgo County, Texas is considering $500,000 project that would blanket the city with a wireless Internet system

2009-01-28T00:11:00.000-08:00

Pharr is considering a $500,000 project that would blanket the city with a wireless Internet system geared toward serving city workers and emergency responders.
Negotiations are still in extremely preliminary stages — and both the city and contractor say a timetable isn't set — but leaders have expressed intrigue at the prospect of a system that can seemingly meet their wildest high-tech fantasies.
"The possibilities for the future are really interesting," Pharr City Manager Fred Sandoval said.
Bobby Vassallo, a wireless Internet consultant, has met with the City Commission twice over the last six weeks to help pitch the concept of a wireless Internet "clothesline" that could help the city handle everything from police video surveillance to wireless water meter-reading.
Behind the pitch is Brownsville businessman Oscar Garza, who leads the corporation Valley Wireless Internet Holdings.
Sandoval emphasized that the city hasn't made any decisions yet.
"It's a very interesting concept," he said. "We definitely want to be at the forefront."
REGION-WIDE
Pharr isn't alone in its consideration of wireless systems.
While wireless Internet is already the standard in some large cities, the technology now seems to be taking root in the Rio Grande Valley.
Cities across the region are pursuing high-tech, wireless Internet options that have the potential to promote efficiency in virtually all municipal departments by keeping workers in the field connected to City Hall.
Using wireless "mesh" systems, cities can provide Internet access over a large area to their employees through a series of nodes attached to structures like water towers or streetlights.
That means building inspectors could send reports back to City Hall from a work site, traffic citations could appear in court computers almost instantly, and police could set up surveillance cameras without fear of their cables being cut.
McAllen is already moving forward with plans to install up to 120 surveillance cameras throughout the city, which will be connected wirelessly to a fiber-optic cable running through the city.
The cameras would be served by a downtown wireless network, which could also provide support to other city workers in the area.
Last summer, a pilot program provided wireless to city workers in Bill Schupp Park. McAllen is currently soliciting proposals from vendors and is scheduled to meet with them today.
The focus of McAllen's project would be city usage, but eventually it could be opened up to residents, said Belinda Mercado, McAllen's information technology director.
Meanwhile, Hidalgo leaders are examining the possibility of creating a citywide blanket of wireless Internet similar to the one Pharr is examining. The system would provide access to emergency responders and residents on two separate networks, explained Rick Mendoza, Hidalgo's information technology director.
He said the talks are in preliminary stages and price estimates aren't available. But the city would like to offer Internet service to residents at no cost.
"We want to offer Internet service to members of our community who don't have the means of getting either DSL or cable," Mendoza said.
He added that a citywide wireless network would help Hidalgo compete with neighboring cities.
Edinburg leaders have also discussed the possibility of creating some sort of wireless system that would include various hot spots throughout the city, though they are only in discussions and the city hasn't started talks with any specific vendors.
Brownsville officials, meanwhile, expect their $6.6 million wireless project to be operational within four months, Mayor Pat Ahumada said.
The city is erecting signal towers, which will provide wireless access to city employees, utility workers and emergency responders, though it remains to be seen how much access the general public will have.
COST
The systems don't come cheap, however.
The network being pitched to Pharr could cost as much as $500,000 for the initial infrastructure, $25,000 a month to operate and even more for cameras, wireless water meters and other high-tech equipment needed to actually take advantage of the system.
At a time when cities across the region are struggling financially, at least some have questioned whether the cost of such an ambitious undertaking can be justified.
Pharr is just starting to climb out from under its financial woes after it wiped out its reserves last year.
"I believe the No. 1 question we should be asking, besides ‘Can we afford this?' is ‘Do we need it?'" said Pharr Finance Director Juan Guerra at a city workshop earlier this month. "From what I'm hearing ... I'm not sure if we do."
TIMING
Interestingly, the Valley's pursuit of wireless comes as cities elsewhere are struggling with their Wi-Fi projects.
Internet service provider Earthlink, which has partnered with Philadelphia, Houston and other large cities on wireless programs, announced layoffs within its municipal division in November. The company told shareholders it no longer makes sense for Earthlink to invest in municipal wireless.
As a result, some community wireless projects have been put on hiatus.
Earlier in the decade, companies like Earthlink offered to provide wireless systems at virtually no cost to cities. In exchange, the networks were privately owned, and the companies could charge subscription fees to consumers or hit them with advertising.
That model is changing, as it has become apparent that broadband access is becoming more readily available and affordable to consumers.
Today, cities are designing the systems for themselves to meet their own needs, such as giving support to emergency workers or keeping public works employees connected while in the field.
Those purpose-driven networks — as opposed to ones that are simply designed to give residents Internet access — are the ones that are now poised to succeed, writes Governing magazine's Christopher Swope, an expert on municipal wireless systems.
Vassallo, the wireless Internet consultant, emphasized to Pharr leaders that the city could create some public hot spots, but providing all-encompassing Internet service to residents isn't worth the cost or stress to the city.
Regardless of how, exactly, Pharr and other cities' projects takes shape, advocates say it's high time the Valley embraces wireless.

Google will begin to offer browser-based offline contact to its Gmail Webmail application

2009-01-27T22:46:00.000-08:00

Google announced the release of a new system which allows users to access their accounts offline.

Google Delivers Offline admittance for Gmail

Google will begin to offer browser-based offline access to its Gmail Webmail application, a much-awaited feature.
This functionality, which will allow people to use the Gmail interface when disconnected from the Internet, has been expected since mid-2007.
That's when Google introduced Gears, a browser plug-in designed to provide offline access to Web-hosted applications like Gmail.
Gears is currently used for offline access to several Web applications from Google, like the Reader RSS manager and the Docs word processor, and from other providers like Zoho, which uses it for offline access to its e-mail and word processing browser-based applications.
Rajen Sheth, senior product manager for Google Apps, said that applying Gears to Gmail has been a very complex task, primarily because of the high volume of messages accounts can store. "Gmail was a tough hurdle," he said.
Google ruled out the option of letting users replicate their entire Gmail inboxes to their PCs, which in many cases would translate into gigabytes of data flowing to people's hard drives. It instead developed algorithms that will automatically determine which messages should be downloaded to PCs, taking into consideration a variety of factors that reflect their level of importance to the user, he said. At this point, end-users will not be able to tweak these settings manually.
"We had to make it such that we're managing a sizable amount of information offline and doing it well in a way that's seamless to the end-user," he said.
For example, in Gmail, users can put labels on messages, as well as tag them with stars to indicate their importance, and Google can use that information to determine which messages to download. Sheth estimates that in most cases Gmail will download several thousand messages, preferring those that are more recent as well. Depending on the amount of messages users have on their accounts, they may get downloads going back two months or two years, he said.
Google will begin to roll out the Gmail offline functionality Tuesday evening and expects to make it available to everybody in a few days, whether they use Gmail in its standalone version or as part of the Apps collaboration and communication suite for organizations.
While the feature was "rigorously" tested internally at Google, it is a first, early release upon which Google expects to iterate and improve on. That's why it's being released under the Google Labs label. Users are encouraged to offer Google feedback.
Users have been able to manage their Gmail accounts offline via other methods for years, since Gmail supports the POP and IMAP protocols that let people download and send out messages using desktop e-mail software like Microsoft Outlook and others.
However, the Gears implementation will let people work within the Gmail interface without the need for a separate PC application. When offline, messages will be put in a Gears browser queue, and the desktop and online versions of the accounts will be synchronized automatically when users connect to the Internet again. This will come in handy for people who travel a lot and often find themselves without Internet access, Sheth said.
To activate the offline functionality, users of standalone Gmail service and the standard Apps edition should click "settings" after logging on to their Gmail account. There, they should click on the "Labs" tab, select "Enable" next to "Offline Gmail" and click "Save Changes." A new "Offline" link will then appear in the right-hand corner of the account interface. Users of the Education and Premier Apps versions will have to wait for their Apps administrators to enable Gmail Labs for everyone on the domain first.
Google is also rolling out Gears-based offline access for its Calendar application. However, it will be for now read-only and exclusively available to Google Apps account holders. Previously, Google introduced read-only offline access to the Spreadsheet and Presentation applications in Google Docs, which is also part of Google Apps.

release of offline Gmail.

The early version of the app is available now to users with the U.S./U.K. English version of Google Labs.
Pegged as an "experimental" feature, the app is aimed at maintaining Gmail's functionality even when you're not online. Built on Google's Gear's platform, once enabled the feature downloads a cache of your mail to your PC. When you're logged on the Web, it syncs the cache with the Gmail servers.
While you're offline, you can read, star, and label messages. If you send a message when you're offline, Gmail places it in your outbox and sends it as soon as you log back in. A special "flaky connection" setting splits the difference between on and offline modes ("when you're 'borrowing' your neighbor's wireless," says Google), utilizing a local cache while syncing it with the online version.

UCLA researchers have reprogrammed human induced pluripotent stem cells

2009-01-27T06:28:00.000-08:00

For the first time, UCLA researchers have reprogrammed human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells into the cells that finally become eggs and sperm, possibly opening the door for new treatments for sterility using patient-specific cel

The iPS cells were coaxed into forming germ line precursor cells which include genetic material that may be passed on to a child. The study appears today in the early online edition of the peer-reviewed journal Stem Cells.
“This finding could be important for people who are rendered infertile through disease or injury. We may, one day, be able to replace the germ cells that are lost,” said Amander Clark, a Broad Stem Cell Research Center scientist and senior author of the study. “And these germ cells would be specific and genetically related to that patient.”
Theoretically, an infertile patient’s skin cells, for example, could be taken and reprogrammed into iPS cells, which, like embryonic stem cells, have the ability to become every cell type in the human body. Those cells could then be transformed into germ line precursor cells that would eventually become eggs and sperm. Clark cautioned, however, that scientists are still many years from using these cells in patients to treat infertility. There is still much to be learned about the process of making high quality germ cells in the lab.In another important finding, Clark’s team discovered that the germ line cells generated from human iPS cells were not the same as the germ line cells derived from human embryonic stem cells. Certain vital regulatory processes were not performed correctly in the human iPS derived germ cells, said Clark, an assistant professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology.
So it’s crucial, Clark contends, that work continue on the more controversial human embryonic stem cells that come from donated, excess material from in vitro fertilization that would otherwise be destroyed.
When germ cells are formed, they need to undergo a specific series of biological processes, an essential one being the regulation of imprinted genes. This is required for the germ cells to function correctly. If these processes are not performed the resulting eggs or sperm, are at high risk for not working as they should. This has significant consequences, given that the desired outcome is a healthy child.
“Further research is needed to determine if germ line cells derived from iPS cells, particularly those which have not been created by retroviral integration, have the ability to correctly regulate themselves like the cells derived from human embryonic stem cells do,” Clark said. “When we looked at the germ cells derived from embryonic stem cells, we found that they regulated as expected, whereas those from the iPS cells were not regulated in the same way. We need to do much more work on this to find out why.”

Humanitarian goals, science get new life

PRESIDENT Obama's inauguration has led to the resumption of aid to international groups that perform or give information about abortions and should open the door to important scientific research. Both developments are a boost to humanitarian and medical advances that should expand during the Obama administration.
The new president signed an executive order on Friday that ended the ban on giving taxpayer money to international family groups that offer abortions or provide related information. The assistance was available from the Agency for International Development during the Clinton administration but banned during the Reagan and both Bush administrations.
Obama also is expected to restore funding for the U.N. Population Fund, which George W. Bush had rejected on the contention that it supported a Chinese family planning policy of coercive abortion and involuntary sterilization, an allegation that the agency vehemently denied. In fact, the lifting of the bans will reduce unintended pregnancies, abortions and the deaths of women from high-risk pregnancies.
The signing came a day after the Food and Drug Administration allowed the world's first clinical trial of a treatment derived from human embryonic stem cells for spinal cord injury. The therapy uses an old embryonic stem cell line that was allowed under the latest Bush administration but the approval might have been delayed until Bush left office.
The Bush administration restricted federal financing for embryonic stem cell research because creation of the cells entailed destruction of human embryos, even though they had been destined for the trash. President Obama has pledged to remove some of the financial restrictions.

Flow cytometric analysis of Stem and Lineage Cell Markers

Research on stem cells is the subject of intense investigation, both from a basic science point of view, as well as a basis for cell-based therapies to treat disease. The ability to study and characterize stem cells has been aided by the identification of specific markers which allow researchers to characterize and enrich these cells. The use of immunophenotyping is an important technique to distinguish one population of cells from another. eBioscience is dedicated to providing you with a choice of innovative primary antibody reagents and flurochromes to accelerate your stem cell research using multicolor flow cytometry.

"Camera Phone Predator Alert Act" to protect citizens from being photographed illegally, without us knowledge

2009-01-27T06:11:00.000-08:00

Congress Intros Bill to Force Cell Camera Sounds
The Camera Phone Predator Alert Act (H.R. 414) is the real deal. Fresh off the legislative desk of New York Representative Peter King (R), the bill--currently cosponsored by goose egg--would require an audible tone to accompany all cellular phones with an installed camera that are created in the U.S. This tone, likely a clicking noise of some sort, would sound, "within a reasonable radius of the phone whenever a photograph is taken with the camera in such phone." And don't think that evildoers would be able to conceal their predatory ways by flicking an iPhone-style audio toggle switch. Any mobile phones built after the bill becomes a law would be prohibited from including any way to eliminate or reduce the volume of said noise.
Camera Click Sound to be Legal Requirement
The draft of the legislation also mentions that the click sound should be audible within a sensible" distance.

The US is reportedly readying the "Camera Phone Predator Alert Act" to protect citizens from being photographed illegally, without their knowledge.While the topic has been mulled over for years, it is only now that the country is planning to put forth a legislation to make the camera click sound audible when a picture is clicked. While some cell phone manufacturers already have compliant devices in place, there are others where simply putting the phone into silent mode would let voyeuristic photography go undetected. Even for those phones on which the camera click sound cannot be turned off, users have been able to hack into the phone's firmware and remove the sound.The proposed bill would fall under the domain of the Consumer Product Safety Commission and is expected to be provided the status of a "safety requirement". Additionally, the draft of the legislation also mentions that the click sound should be audible within a "reasonable" distance.Similar laws are already in place on countries like Japan and Korea and most device manufacturers have been able to comply with the same.

Micro Camcorder - 'World's Smallest'

Things are getting ever smaller. If you doubt this, just check out the Micro Camcorder - a spy camera developed by Spy Gadget. The camcorder has claimed the spot for the 'World's Smallest Camcorder'.

The camcorder is so small that it can be hidden in a chewing-gum pack. It's a one touch record function and records videos at 15 fps (frames per second). The captured video is stored on a flash microSD card. It has built-in batteries and charges via USB. The camera can record video for over 30 hours with a 1GB card installed. The price quoted for the taking is USD 295 (Rs.11,800).

The world's best coolest ear buds

2009-01-26T22:36:00.000-08:00

Skullcandy veered away from standard-issue black and white headphones - and struck gold.

Skullcandy is using fake alligator skin and rhinestones to shake up the headphone market, giving Philips and Sony a run for their money.

The half pipe tucked in a corner of the office is the first clue that Skullcandy is not your average company.
Other clues: In the teeth of the worst recession in generations, the five-year-old private company is growing like a weed. And it just scored a round of funding, from private-equity shop Goode Partners, at a time when investment dollars are scarce.
If the name Skullcandy doesn't register, it will with your kids (so will the term half pipe, which is a ramp, in this case for skateboarding, shaped like a pipe cut in half lengthwise).
Skullcandy's business is headphones, and they dominate the 12- to 25-year-old demographic with a line-up of gear covered in faux gator skin, gold foil, rhinestones and hip hop-inspired graphics. Pull back the hoody on any kid riding a snowboard in Park City, Utah and chances are pretty good, a pair of Skullcandy headphones, probably the top-selling "Smokin' Buds," will be pumping music into their ears.
Making electronics cool
From a distant No. 10 three years ago, Skullcandy is now North America's third-largest manufacturer of headphones by unit sales, behind consumer electronics giants Philips Electronics (PHG) and Sony (SNE), according to NPD Group. "We'll be No. 2 soon," predicted Skullcandy president Jeremy Andrus, legs dangling from the office half pipe. "My guess is some time next year."
After that, Skullcandy and the band of snowboarders, skaters, surfers and DJs that founder Rick Alden has assembled in Park City, will be gunning for No. 1. That is, if Alden, the CEO and creative madman to Andrus' operations guru, can figure out a way to do it without diluting the company's cool factor.
Skullcandy didn't invent headphones; what the company has done is make them into a fashion item. Kids don't want one pair, they want five. "We're like sunglasses," Alden said. "Except we sit on top of your head, and you wear them a lot more."
Skullcandy headphones are not the type you will hear audiophiles gushing about. They are mostly solid-sounding pieces of affordable gear that, unlike Sony's grey and black headphones, or Apple's white, don't disappear into the background. On the contrary, they make a statement. The snowboard, surf and skate inspired graphics and colors ask for attention, and speak to a lifestyle, or in most cases, a wannabe lifestyle.
Successful clothing brands are able to evoke that lifestyle magic, but it is the rare consumer electronics company that does it. Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) with its iPod is the obvious and most successful current example. Skullcandy has pulled it off so far, and in doing so sent revenue from essentially zero to approaching $100 million in just a few years. Sales more than doubled in 2008.
To put in perspective Skullcandy's momentum, when many consumer electronics companies saw sales fall off a cliff in November, Skullcandy's quadrupled year over year, according to Andrus.
That success is obviously gratifying to Alden, but it also has him worried about overexposure. "I was at the mountain riding with my son the other day, and everyone I saw was wearing Skullcandy headphone, I mean they were everywhere," Alden said. "I may go back to wearing black Sony's just to be different."
He's kidding, but his concern is real. Alden and his design team need to keep Skullcandy fresh, so it doesn't fall out of fashion and black becomes the new black. Fortunately the Skullcandy team has a secret weapon when they seek inspiration, design-wise and business-wise.
"We head to the mountain," Alden said, checking for the latest snowfall report on his laptop. "No good ideas ever come from sitting in an office, not around here at least."

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The Potential of Earbuds
There is great disagreement about:
Whether earbuds could potentially sound good, given their small size.
Whether any actual earbuds sound good, or whether the whole idea needs further development.
Which earbuds sound good and which sound bad.
Which of the expensive ($40-$80) earbuds sound so good that the extra cost is justified.
After testing many headphones and earbuds and applying my extensive experience tweaking equalizers, I think that earbuds actually have the potential to sound even *better* than standard headphones. In any case, all headphones and earbuds need a new approach: a calibrated equalization curve built into the player, to yield flat response. Megabass is a step toward such a compensation curve.
Like the Etymotics, earbuds have the potential to have smoother response than even the best popular standard headphones, such as the Sennheiser 580's. I've dialed in some truly vibrant, open sound using equalization together with $10 earbuds. It is easy and straightforward to equalize earbuds; just do anti-rolloff to a greater or lesser degree, and leave the rest flat; there aren't mysterious jags hidden along the entire spectrum that need unique shapes of compensation. I'd rather trust my ears than the common assumption that earbuds are inferior. If the conditions are right and the appropriate, ordinary EQ compensations are made, earbuds can be superior, rather than inferior, to good standard headphones. It's simply a matter of starting with a decent earbud driver, and providing the inverse of the earbud driver's frequency response.
If someone shows me a measured response curve of an earbud and it's rough and jagged, I will change my view somewhat, but in any case, I think that eq-compensated earbuds at least *can sound* unusually smooth and natural. Players need more fancy curves to compensate for specific earbud models.
"Though I like the R3 stock earbuds even better than the 888's, I can't stop seeking for even better sound, as I believe it can be a lot better. If I press against an earbud I get very powerful bass, so it is possible. I will keep on looking, and if I find something interesting I will let you know. Please let me know your findings on this matter." (from a private email to me)
Some people haven't been lucky and haven't heard the one or two models that are really good. No wonder they think earbuds are a poor packaging and sound poor. I was starting to suspect that *some* Sony stock earbuds (included with the player) sound great, and some sound lousy.

Internet Explorer 8 Focuses on better Security and Privacy

2009-01-26T20:20:00.000-08:00

Some of the features of liberate Candidate 1, now existing to the public, are similar to functionality that’s already included in Firefox 3.
Microsoft's updated browser, Internet Explorer 8, promises an assortment of new features designed to help make Web browsing with IE safer, easier, and more compatible with Internet standards. We looked at the first release candidate of the new browser released to the public today, Release Candidate 1 (RC1). On the surface, IE 8 seems to be a lot like IE 7, but Microsoft has made a number of changes under the hood. You may have seen some of these new features already, however, in IE's no-longer-upstart competitor, Mozilla Firefox 3.
Tabbed Browsing

If you accidentally close a browser window in IE 8, you can opt to restore it when you reopen the program (just as you can in Firefox). IE 8 will use color coding to group related tabs together. If you open a link from pcworld.com in a new tab, for example, it will open adjacent to the original tab, and the tabs themselves will have a matching color. You can move tabs from one group to another, but if you have three unrelated pages open, you cannot create a group out of them.
Perhaps the most novel addition in IE 8 is what Microsoft calls tab isolation. The feature is designed to prevent a buggy Web site from causing the entire Web browsing program to crash. Instead, only the tab displaying the problematic page will close, so you can continue browsing.
Of course, IE 8 RC1 retains some of the features introduced in the first beta, including WebSlices and accelerators; see "Updated Web Browsers: Which One Works Best?" for more details.
Searching

IE 8 can use multiple search engines besides Windows Live Search, and you can add other search engines to the mix. Also, IE 8 will give you search suggestions as you type. For example, I can type in 'PC World' into the search field, and IE 8 RC1 will give me Live Search suggestions such as 'pc world magazine' or 'pc world reviews'. In addition, IE 8 lets you switch between search engines on the fly by clicking an icon at the bottom of the search field's drop-down menu. IE 8 can search Yahoo and Ask.com, and you can install add-ins that give IE 8 the capability to search Wikipedia, Amazon, and the New York Times, among other sites.
Improved Security
Microsoft touts IE 8 as its most secure browser to date, and Microsoft has indeed added a good number of security features to the mix, ranging from phishing detection to private browsing, plus a new feature to prevent clickjacking, an emerging data theft threat.
IE 8 RC1 includes two security features under the 'InPrivate' label: InPrivate Browsing and InPrivate Filtering. Both existed in earlier prerelease versions of IE 8, but IE 8 RC1 lets you use the two features separately, whereas before each relied on the other.
If you enable IE 8's InPrivate Browsing feature, the browser will not save any sensitive data--passwords, log-in info, history, and the like. Afterward it will be as if your browsing session had never happened. This feature is very similar to Private Browsing in Apple's Safari browser, except that an icon in IE's address bar makes InPrivate Browsing's active status more obvious.
InPrivate Filtering--called InPrivate Blocking in earlier IE 8 builds--prevents sites from being able to collect information about other Web sites you visit. This feature existed in IE 8 Beta 2, but you could use it only while using InPrivate Browsing. In RC1, you can use InPrivate Browsing at any time.
The browser's phishing filter--called SmartScreen--improves on its predecessor's filter with such features as more-thorough scrutiny of a Web page's address (to protect you from sites named something like paypal.iamascammer.com) and a full-window warning when you stumble upon a suspected phishing site. SmartScreen relies largely on a database of known phishing sites, so new, unknown phishing sites may slip through the cracks.
IE 8 displays sites' domains in a darker text color, so you can more readily see whether you're visiting a genuine ebay.com page, say, or a page simulating an eBay page on some site you've never heard of. Microsoft could still put a little more emphasis on the domain name (using a different color background, for example), but the highlighting is a welcome addition.
Finally, IE 8 RC1 includes a feature designed to prevent clickjacking, a method in which Web developers insert a snippet of HTML code into their Web page code to steal information from Web page visitors. When you use IE 8 to view such a page, IE 8 can identify an attempted clickjacking and will warn you of the attempt.
Web Compatibility
Creating a site that looks identical in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari can be a challenge. IE 8 Beta 2 offers better support for W3 Web standards--a set of guidelines developed to ensure that a Web page appears the same in all browsers. The downside is that IE 8 will break some pages designed for earlier Internet Explorer versions.
To counteract this problem, Microsoft has added a compatibility mode: Click a button in the toolbar, and IE 8 will display a page in the same way that IE 7 does. In my testing, I found that most pages worked fine with the standard (new) mode, and that most errors were minor cosmetic ones. Unfortunately, the Compatibility Mode toggle button may not be obvious to most users, because it's pretty small; a text label would have helped.
Though it probably won't convince many Firefox users to jump ship, Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1 shows promise, and may be worth considering for people who have not yet solidified their browser loyalties. (Keep an eye out for our report on the final release of IE 8.)
See more like this: internet explorer, browser security, online privacy.

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Microsoft on Monday released a near-final "release candidate" version of Internet Explorer 8, the next version of its Web browser.
The software maker plans to say more on its Web site around noon, but, as noted by enthusiast site Neowin, the code is already available from Microsoft's download center.

With IE 8, Microsoft is hoping to regain some lost ground by adding features such as private browsing, improved security, and a new type of add-ons, called accelerators.
On the security front, Microsoft is adding a cross-site scripting filter, as well as protections against a type of attack known as clickjacking.
In an interview, IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch said there will be little change between the release candidate and the final version, though he declined to say when the final version will be released.
"The ecosystem should expect the final candidate to behave like the release candidate," Hachamovitch said.
Internet Explorer 8 will work with Windows XP (Service Pack 2 or later) and Windows Vista. A version of IE 8 is also being built into Windows 7.
However, the IE code in Windows 7 is a pre-release candidate version.
"Windows 7 enables unique features and functionality in Internet Explorer 8 including Windows Touch and Jump Lists which require additional product tests to ensure we are providing the best Windows experience for our customers," the software maker said in a statement. "Microsoft will continue to update the version of Internet Explorer 8 running on Windows 7 as the development cycles of Windows 7 progress.

The future 3D holographic television to become realism

2009-01-26T02:26:00.000-08:00

Picture this: you're sat down for the Football World Cup final, or a long-awaited sequel to the "Sex and the City" movie and you're watching all the action unfold in 3-D on your coffee table.

It sounds a lot like a wacky dream, but don't be surprised if within our lifetime you find yourself discarding your plasma and LCD sets in exchange for a holographic 3-D television that can put Cristiano Ronaldo in your living room or bring you face-to-face with life-sized versions of your gaming heroes.
The reason for renewed optimism in three-dimensional technology is a breakthrough in rewritable and erasable holographic systems made earlier this year by researchers at the University of Arizona.
Dr Nasser Peyghambarian, chair of photonics and lasers at the university's Optical Sciences department, told CNN that scientists have broken a barrier by making the first updatable three-dimensional displays with memory.
"This is a prerequisite for any type of moving holographic technology. The way it works presently is not suitable for 3-D images," he said.
The researchers produced displays that can be erased and rewritten in a matter of minutes.

To create television sets the images would need to be changing multiple times each second -- but Peyghambarian is very optimistic this can happen.
He said the University of Arizona team, which is now ten-strong, has been working on advancing hologram technology since 1990 -- so this is a major step forward. He believes that much of the difficulty in creating a holographic set has now been overcome.
"It took us a while to make that first breakthrough, but as soon as you have the first element of it working the rest often comes more rapidly," he said. "What we are doing now is trying to make the model better. What we showed is just one color, what we are doing now is trying to use three colors. The original display was four inches by four inches and now we're going for something at least as big as a computer screen."
There are no more great barriers to overcome now, he said.
The breakthrough has made some long-time researchers of the technology believe that it could now come to fruition.
Tung H. Jeong, a retired physics professor at Lake Forest College outside Chicago who had studied holography since the 1960s told NJ.com; "When we start talking about erasable and rewritable holograms, we are moving toward the possibility of holographic TV ... It has now been shown that physically, it's possible."
And what might these holographic televisions look like?
According to Peyghambarian, they could be constructed as a screen on the wall (like flat panel displays) that shows 3-D images, with all the image writing lasers behind the wall; or it could be like a horizontal panel on a table with holographic writing apparatus underneath.
So, if this project is realized, you really could have a football match on your coffee table, or horror-movie villains jumping out of your wall.
Peyghambarian is also optimistic that the technology could reach the market within five to ten years. He said progress towards a final product should be made much more quickly now that a rewriting method had been found.
However, it is fair to say not everyone is as positive about this prospect as Peyghambarian.
Justin Lawrence, a lecturer in Electronic Engineering at Bangor University in Wales, told CNN that small steps are being made on technology like 3-D holograms, but, he can't see it being ready for the market in the next ten years.
"It's one thing to demonstrate something in a lab but it's another thing to be able to produce it cheaply and efficiently enough to distribute it to the mass market," Lawrence said.
Yet, there are reasons to be optimistic that more resources will be channeled into developing this technology more quickly.
The Japanese Government is pushing huge financial and technical weight into the development of three-dimensional, virtual-reality television, and the country's Communications Ministry is aiming at having such technology available by 2020.
Peyghambarian said there are no major sponsors of the technology at present, but as the breakthroughs continued, he hopes that will change.
Even if no major electronics company commit themselves, there is hope that backers could come from outside of the consumer electronics industry, he said.
"It could have some other applications. In training it's useful to show people three-dimensional displays. Also it would be good to show things in 3-D for defense command and control and for surgery," he said.

Wireless power technologies are moving closer to becoming feasible options.

2009-01-25T21:54:00.000-08:00

PowerMat Wireless Charging Plate

A vision of our wireless future, courtesy of PowerMat. The company teamed up with Michigan-based HoMedics to introduce more than a dozen products at this year's Consumer Electronics Show.

This year probably won't be the tipping point for wireless electricity. But judging from all the new techniques and applications of this awe-inspiring technology, getting power through the airwaves could soon be viable.
Fulton Innovations showcased blenders that whir wirelessly and laptops that power up without a battery at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) earlier this month. The devices are all powered by electromagnetic coils built into the charging surface, and there's not a plug in sight.

Fulton's wireless electricity technology is called eCoupled, and the company hopes it can be used across a wide rage of consumer devices. Fulton was one of half a dozen companies that wowed consumers at CES.
10 Wireless Electricity Technologies
ECoupled uses a wireless powering technique called "close proximity coupling," which uses circuit boards and coils to communicate and transmit energy using magnetic fields. The technology is efficient but only works at close ranges. Typically, the coils must be bigger than the distance the energy needs to travel. What it lacks in distance, it makes up in intelligence.
In conjunction with the Wireless Power Consortium, Fulton, a subsidiary of Amway, has developed a standard that can send digital messages back and forth using the same magnetic field used to power devices. These messages are used to distinguish devices that can and can't be charged wirelessly, and to relay informtion like power requirements or how much battery is left in a device.
Using this technique, an industrial van parked outside the Fulton booth at CES charged a set of power tools from within its carrying case. The van was tricked out by Leggett & Platt people )--a diversified manufacturing company based in Carthage, Mo., and an eCoupled licensee--and is designed to solve its customers' biggest headache: arriving at the job site with a dead set of tools. Fulton, which teamed up with Bosch to design the setup, already has test vehicles rolling around in the field and plans to sell them to utility and other industrial companies by the end of the year.

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Bosch Wireless Powertool Set The eCoupled setup uses a technique called close proximity coupling, so the devices can remain in their case while charging. Generally, the efficiency of the wireless-electricity transfer decreases with distance.

In another area of the vast CES show, cellphones, videogame controllers and a laptop charged wirelessly on a silver and black mat created by Boulder, Colo.-based WildCharge.
The mat uses a conductive powering technique, which is more efficient than inductive powering but requires direct contact between the devices and the charging pad. Though most of the mats or pads on display are intended to power only a handful of devices at a time, WildCharge says the product design is certified for up to 150 watts--enough to power 30 laptops.
Across the room from WildCharge, PowerCast displayed Christmas ornaments and floor tiles glowing with LEDs powered by ambient radio waves. The devices harvest electromagnetic energy in ambient radio waves from a nearby low-power antenna. Because of the dangerous nature of electromagnetic waves in high doses, Pittsburgh-based PowerCast is targeting its application for mall devices like ZigBee wireless chips, which require little power.
Perhaps the most promising wireless power technology was the latest iteration of WiTricity, the Watertown, Mass.-based brainchild of MIT physicist Marin Soljacic, on display in a private suite high in the Venetian hotel tower.
The technology uses a technique developed by Soljacic called "highly coupled magnetic resonance." As proof that it works, an LCD TV is powered by a coil hidden behind an oil painting located a few feet away. Across the hotel room, WiTricity Chief Executive Eric Giler walks in the direction of another coil holding an iPod Touch in the palm of his hand. Power hungry, it starts to charge when it gets within two meters.
Soljacic has already earned a $500,000 genius grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for his work, but Giler said the technology is at least a year away. In the meantime, WiTricity has obtained an exclusive license from MIT to bring Soljacic's idea to market and hopes to have an estimated 200 patents.
But because Soljacic published his academic paper in Nature magazine, companies like Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) have been able to replicate the effect in their labs based on his principles.
Elsewhere at CES, PowerBeam showcased wireless lamps and picture frames. Located in Sunnyvale, Calif., the company uses yet another wireless-powering approach. Its technology beams optical energy into photovoltaic cells using laser diodes. Although the company says it can maintain a constant energy flow across long distances, the difficultly of targeting a laser means that it's not ideal for charging moving devices.
So, while 2009 may not be the year wireless electricity takes off, the nascent sector is certainly on its way.

Downadup worm replicates itself at astonishing speed!

2009-01-25T00:10:00.000-08:00

Call it Conficker, Downadup or Kido - the fact is the nasty worm is spreading at a very rapid speed! There is no checking the pace at which it is infecting PCs; and with already more than 9 million victims, including corporate networks worldwide, the worm is still going strong!
The Downadup worm made its first appearance two months back, exploiting a critical Windows flaw in the way the Server Service handles RPC requests. A blended threat, the malware relies upon many attack vectors - from brute-force password guessing to hitching rides on USB sticks - for replicating itself to spread throughout a network.
The unique rate of speed at which the worm replicates has perplexed experts. Security researcher, Derek Brown, of TippingPoint's DVLabs Team, said: "The notion of using multiple attack vectors is not terribly new. The unique thing about this worm is the speed at which it has spread and I think that's a result of the big size of the Microsoft vulnerability."
Experts also opine that though the Downadup malware got started because of the Microsoft flaw, it later proliferated quickly through the unpatched Windows operating systems of the users.
Though the malicious worm knows no land barriers, the hardest hit countries, as per Symantec Security Response, are China and Argentina. According to the Symantec vice president, Alfred Huger, China accounts for almost 29 percent of the infections tracked, Argentina was next in line with over 11 percent infections.

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Computer worm called 'authentic risk

If you’ve never heard the words “Conficker” or “Downadup,” wait a few hours.

They’re rapidly becoming household words for personal computer owners.
Various major newspapers and television news shows reported Friday morning that the latest computer worm might now infect as many as 10 million computers worldwide.
According to a report in the Detroit Free Press, the worm is so virulent because it seems to “mutate” and launch “brute force attacks” that relentlessly try thousands of letter and number combinations in codes to steal personal passwords and login information.
Because most computer users choose passwords that they can remember easily, the words might also be something the worm can guess easily. Once in control of a computer the worm can launch spam, phishing attacks, shut down the Internet with massive traffic or access bank records.
According to F-Secure, an antivirus software company, the Conficker worm is spreading at a rate of 1 million new machines a day. It can be spread by USB stick also.
F-Secure has updated its Downadup removal tool, and the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team has issued Alert TA09-020A, which describes how to disable AutoRun on Microsoft Windows systems in order to help prevent the spread of Conficker/Downadup via USB drives.
According to Symantec, the top infected countries in order of infection are: China, 28.7 percent; Argentina, 11.3 percent; Taiwan, 6.7 percent; Brazil, 6.2 percent; India, 5.8 percent; Chile, 5.2 percent; Russia, 5 percent; Malaysia, 2.8 percent; Columbia, 2.1 percent; and Mexico, 1.9 percent.
Philip Templeton of PT Technologies in Athens said everyone should keep his or her virus protection and software updates current.
“I have seen in the last four to six months more people getting viruses,” said Templeton. “But no matter what antivirus software you buy, nothing is 100 percent. Make sure your Windows Firewall is on, and it doesn’t hurt to change passwords periodically. I usually advise to make this a quarterly chore.”

Windows 7 beta to be offered through Feb. 10

2009-01-24T21:06:00.000-08:00

Hints at weaker-than-expected demand since Jan. 10 launch

Microsoft announced Friday night that computer enthusiasts will have a while longer to get their hands on the beta version of Windows 7.

In a blog posting, Microsoft said that the test version of the operating system will be available for download through February 10. Previously, Microsoft had said that the OS would only be open through late this month.

We are at a point where we have more than enough beta testers and feedback coming in to meet our engineering needs, so we are beginning to plan the end of general availability for Windows 7 Beta," Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc said in the blog posting. "Because enthusiasm continues to be so high for the Windows 7 Beta and we don't want anyone to miss out, we will keep the Beta downloads open through February 10th."
Those who start the download process before February 10 will have until February 12 to finish the task.
The deadline applies to the general public, while members of Microsoft's TechNet and MSDN developer programs will continue to have access to the code, LeBlanc said.
CEO Steve Ballmer announced the beta of Windows 7 during his speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on January 7. After a slight hiccup, Microsoft made the code available on January 10.

Keep Your laptop data safe,now fix it.

2009-01-24T06:39:00.000-08:00

Follow InfoWorld's encryption-based data-protection plan, which can safeguard your most at-risk PCs .

The largest single type of security breach is the stolen or lost laptop, according to the Open Security Foundation, yet these computers are among the least protected of all IT assets. The costs of a data breach can be huge, including the loss of trade secrets, marketing plans, and other competitive information that could have long-term business damage, plus the immediate costs of having to notify people if their personal information was possibly at risk from the breach. Particularly in a recession, enterprise management can't afford to take these risks lightly.

There is a way for IT to protect those laptops and the confidential information they contain: encryption. Without the combination of password security and encryption, any halfway-competent hacker has no problem siphoning hard drive contents and putting it to nefarious use.
[ Stay up to date on key security issues and solutions in InfoWorld's Security Adviser blog. Keep abreast of the latest mobile developments in the Mobile Pulse blog. ]
Perhaps the most important advantage of full disk encryption, though -- beyond the peace of mind it gives your business's lawyers -- is the "safe harbor" immunity that accrues under many data privacy regulations. For example, credit card disclosure rules don't apply to encrypted data, and even California's strict data-disclosure statute makes an exception for encrypted records -- provided you can prove they're encrypted. That's trivial with full disk encryption but not so easy with partial encryption techniques, which depend on user education for safe operation.
A key challenge for IT in deploying encryption on its laptops is the sheer number of encryption options available. Some Windows Vista editions, as well as the forthcoming Windows 7, support Microsoft's built-in BitLocker encryption, and numerous third-party encryption products cover the range of mobile operating systems from XP through Windows 7, Linux, and Mac OS X. Encryption granularity is widely variable as well, ranging from protecting individual files to encrypting virtual disks to deploying fully armored, hardware-based full disk encryption. Prices range from free to moderately expensive.
If you've put off laptop data security due to perceived technical shortcomings or high costs, you need to take another look at the field -- before you lose another laptop.

The maximum encryption protection possible: TPMIdeally, you'll deploy the full-metal-jacket approach to laptop data protection: full disk encryption using the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) technology. If you can afford the cost, waste no time with inferior methods. All you need is a laptop containing a TPM security coprocessor and, optionally, an encryption-enabled hard drive from one of the major hard drive manufacturers.
The TPM is a chip soldered on to the laptop's motherboard, providing hardware-based device authentication, tamper detection, and encryption key storage. The TPM generates encryption keys, keeping half of the key information to itself, making it impossible to recover data from an encrypted hard drive apart from the computer in which it was originally installed. Even if an attacker gets the user's part of the encryption key or disk password, the TPM-protected drive's contents can't be read when connected to another computer. Further, the TPM generates a unique digital signature from the motherboard in which it's embedded, foiling attempts to move the TPM chip itself to another machine.

TPM-enabled full disk encryption, especially hardware-based implementations of it, provides one other key benefit to enterprises: data erasure upon laptop decommissioning or repurposing. A common bugaboo in the enterprise is the accidental disclosure of data when seemingly worthless outdated laptops are discarded or sold, or transferred to another employee. Erasing sensitive information in such situations is not trivial, and even removing and physically mangling a laptop's hard drive is no guarantee against disclosure. However, because TPM has absolute control over the encryption keys -- remember, half of the key information is stored with the TPM itself -- you can simply tell TPM to forget its keys, and the hard drive is instantly reformatted and effectively rendered nonrecoverable. Disk sectors aren't zeroed, but no computationally feasible method exists today to decrypt the residue.

A great many enterprise-class laptops manufactured in the last two to three years shipped with embedded TPM chips; Apple's Macs are a key exception, as none since 2006 include a TPM chip. But the TPM chips must be explicitly enabled to use them as the authentication mechanism for encryption.
If your laptops have a TPM chip, don't try enabling it without carefully following the vendor's instructions -- otherwise, you could accidentally wipe out the laptop's hard drive. Before enabling the TPM chip in a laptop, you must first take ownership of it, a process that establishes user and management-level passwords and generates the initial set of encryption keys. The management password lets IT administration monitor the inventory of TPM devices, recover lost user passwords, and keep track of usage.
A TPM works with the laptop's resident operating system to encrypt either the entire hard drive or most of it, depending on the OS encryption implementation. (Microsoft's BitLocker, for example, requires a small, unencrypted initial-boot partition). Alternatively, a TPM can interoperate with encryption-enabled hard drives to perform encryption entirely outside of, and transparent to, the operating system.
The TPM technology isn't perfect, but it provides very solid protection in the most common incident, where a laptop is lost or stolen and the user has not left it logged in. If the laptop is powered off, TPM protection is absolute. Most implementations use 256-bit AES encryption, which is considered uncrackable for the foreseeable future. Powering up the device requires entering pre-boot credentials in the form of a password, a PIN, a smartcard, biometric data, a one-time-password token, or any combination of these. If the lost laptop is powered on (but not logged in), or just powered off, an attacker would have to use extraordinary procedures to recover the encryption keys from live memory.
However, if a lost device is powered up and logged in, a TPM provides zero protection. An interloper can simply dump the data off the hard drive in the clear using ordinary file copies. Thus, it's essential that TPM-protected systems have noncircumventable log-in timeouts using administrator-protected settings.

To achieve the ultimate in full disk encryption protection requires hardware-enabled encryption on board the hard drive. Drive-based encryption closes all of TPM's loopholes, since the encryption key is no longer stored in OS-accessible memory. Hardware-based full disk encryption also eliminates the performance penalty incurred by software-based full disk encryption, although with today's fast, processors, that software encryption overhead is not noticeable to most users.

The cost for TPM protection starts at zero for Microsoft's BitLocker, which is built into Vista Enterprise and Ultimate, Windows Server 2008, and the forthcoming Windows 7. Major laptop manufacturers also sell software bundles that enable TPM in any Windows version, including XP, such as Wave's Embassy Trust Suite and McAfee's SafeBoot. The advantage of bundled software is sole-source support and pre-tested configurations.
You can also roll your own software protection using stand-alone packages such as PGP Whole Disk Encryption.
All these products support a wide range of enterprise-class management tools that let you enforce uniform policies and centrally store encryption keys, including special data-recovery keys that solve the problem of lost passwords and prevent employees from locking employers out of their hard drives.

If you can't do TPM, here's your plan B for encryptionAlthough the deployment of TPM-based full description is ideal, you may count the cost of full disk encryption and come up short-funded, especially if you just refreshed your enterprise laptops with non-TPM models. Forklifting your entire laptop population is an undeniably expensive proposition, as is replacing the non-TPM laptops if your company has a mix of TPM and non-TPM laptops. If you can't go all TPM, there's a plan B that can give you much of the encryption benefits you need.
You might think that plan B involves partial disk encryption, typically deployed by designating specific folders on a laptop as encrypted; as files are moved into that folder, they are automatically encrypted. Apple and Microsoft have long offered this form of encryption, via FileVault on the Mac and the Encrypted File System tools in Windows XP and Vista. But this approach has a major flaw: It depends on users to properly store sensitive data only in encrypted form.

A variation of folder-level encryption is virtual disk encryption (VDE), in which a single disk file contains a virtual disk image that the user can mount when needed; this virtual disk collects all sensitive files in one location. Microsoft's BitLocker offers this feature in all Vista editions, as well as in Windows Server 2008 and Windows XP. Third-party products such as PGPDisk and even free open source software programs such as TrueCrypt have VDE capabilities. Many of these third-party utilities are easier to use than BitLocker, so they can save you some implementation expense.
Another form of partial disk encryption is to apply encryption to specific files, typically those residing on corporate servers that users want to open locally. In this approach, users must enter a password every time they open a protected file. IT not only is on the hook to ensure that all sensitive files get encrypted but also has no way to stop users from simply saving the opened file as an unencrypted copy. Still, this protection is better than nothing and is widely available via free disk utilities. But key management can be a problem, and these file-level encryption tools generally don't support multifactor authentication.

But the best plan B to TPM-enabled full disk encryption isn't any of these partial disk methods. The best plan is software-only full disk encryption, in which either the operating system or a third-party program performs the same encryption as with TPM but uses another method to store the encryption keys, such as a thumb drive or a smart card.

The good news is that virtually all-TPM full disk encryption suppliers' offerings, including BitLocker, can operate in this software-only mode, which relies on a removable hardware token so that you can use this approach for your non-TPM devices while having a consistent encryption method to manage across all your laptops.
It's true that software-based full disk encryption is less secure than if you have a TPM-equipped laptop: The entire drive can still be encrypted, but a determined hacker will have more opportunities to gain access through compromised keys. For example, if the key-storage token is left with the notebook computer (how likely is that?), the hacker may be able to simply plug the token in and gain access to the drive contents. Even multifactor authentication in this scenario is subject to attack by inspection, since the key token is not tightly bound to the system motherboard.
Still, when TPM-enabled encryption is not an option, pure software full disk encryption can still give you considerable peace of mind, as well as provide the "safe harbor" benefits afforded encrypted systems in data-privacy regulations. Software full disk encryption solutions have also been around long enough that they're available for most mobile computing platforms, including Linux and Mac OS X.
TPM technology changes to comeAlthough TPM full disk encryption with hardware-based encryption in the hard drive is the best you can do for data protection today, security researchers are constantly testing TPM's mettle and devising improvements to it.
One potential vulnerability of today's separate TPM chip implementation is that keys must be transported across conductors in the motherboard to the CPU for software-based full disk encryption, or to the hard drive for hardware-based full disk encryption. That could provide an entry point for a hacker. That's why a major vendor trend is to move all TPM-oriented data manipulation on to the CPU chip set in the form of customized silicon. Intel has advertised its vPro solution, which is part of the upcoming Danbury processor and Eaglelake chip set. This feature will perform all encryption and decryption for SATA and eSATA drives without involving the CPU, OS device drivers, or even the hard drive itself.

Such an approach could make TPM even more secure. But there's no reason to wait until such chips are standard in laptops. With today's TPM-equipped laptops, and with the software-based fallback option for non-TPM laptops, you have a platform for a consistent, manageable, secure deployment strategy.

Google Beats Estimates, Profit Takes a strike

2009-01-24T05:42:00.000-08:00

Just 13 Months Ago, Google's Stock Hit an All-Time High of $747; Today $314.

Internet giant earns $5.10 a share, topping estimates, despite a dreary economy. Net income drops 68% on charges.

Internet advertising behemoth Google continued to show strong sales and profit against a thorny economic backdrop.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company reported an 18% jump in fourth-quarter revenue to $5.7 billion for the period ended Dec. 31. That's up from $4.83 billion in the year-earlier quarter.
Excluding commissions paid to advertising partners, Google posted sales of $4.22 billion, better than the $4.12 billion in sales expected by analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.
Google reported fourth-quarter net income of $382 million, down 68% from $1.2 billion a year ago. However, excluding certain charges, such as the cost of employee stock options, the company earned $5.10 a share, much better than consensus estimates of $4.95 per share.
"We had tight control over costs" in the quarter, said Google chief executive Eric Schmidt in a conference call with analysts.

"We don't know how long this period will last," Schmidt said, but he added that Google remained focused on long-term growth.
Schmidt pointed to the scaling back of non-profitable Google projects such as Google Video, Google Notebook, and status update service Jaiku. He also mentioned a quarterly decline in costs paid to advertising partners.
"Google continues to take market share, and they continue to have any number of levers to pull on both the revenue and the cost side that makes them very formidable in any economic environment," said Derek Brown, analyst with brokerage Cantor Fitzgerald.
Over the last quarter of 2008, Google said it spent about $368 million on capital expenses - mostly on data centers, servers and networking equipment.
As of Dec. 31, Google said it employed 20,222 full-time workers, slightly up from the 20,123 it employed at the end of September.
In order to retain employees, Google also announced that it would be starting a stock option exchange program from the end of January through early March.

more...

Google joined Apple and IBM as one of the few tech companies to report good news in its most recent earnings report. The search giant beat analysts' estimates today, though it reported a sharp drop in net income for the fourth quarter to $382 million, or $1.21 a share, well below the $1.2 billion, or $3.79 a share from a year ago.
Revenue for the fourth quarter rose 18 percent from the same period last year to $5.70 billion and three percent from the previous quarter. Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) also suffered significant non-cash-impairment charges of $1.09 billion related primarily to its investments and AOL and Clearwire, a wireless broadband service that has partnered with Intel to build WiMax services across the country.
"The results were better than I expected," IDC analyst Karsten Weide told InternetNews.com. "Google is doing great because about half of the online ad spend in the U.S. is search and they have about half that market. They are leveraging the biggest market out there."
On a conference call with financial analysts, Google CEO Eric Schmidt noted "strong search query growth year on year." He also credited "tight control over costs that may have eluded us in the past, but I think we've got the formula down now."

Schmidt acknowledged AOL and Clearwire were "significant writedowns," but thinks there's a longer term payoff to come. "Both deals made sense for us and continue to fit with our business philosophy."
While neither Schmidt or other Google executives on the call got very specific about new initiatives or product plans, he did say the company is looking at new ways to recognize the contextual meaning of a search phrase, which it would be rolling into its market leading search engine.
The past year saw Google branch out significantly beyond its original model of text-only results. In 2008 Google tripled the number of non-text only results, which includes video, images, blogs and books, said Jonathan Rosenberg, Google's senior vice president or product management.
He also said Google's $125 million settlement in October with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers promises to make content from millions of out-of-print books accessible online and even create a new market for the sale of those books.

Analyst Weide said Google still faces challenges growing the display side of its ad business. He said Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) is the online display ad leader with about a 16 percent share in a very fragmented market. "Search advertising isn't always going to be the biggest segment. It probably will still be in five years, but not always and right now Google is essentially a one-trick pony," he said.
Weide also said YouTube's been "a sinkhole" for Google, which bought the video site for over $1.65 billion in 2006. "User generated content can work as an advertising source, but it's going to take a while," said Weide. "I think Google is going to have to acquire long form, professional content because big name advertisers want premium content not grainy, amateur video."
Rosenberg said Google continues to experiment with different ad approaches for YouTube. "It's hard to match the right format with the right content," he said. "We have to come up with a standard format to make it easier."
New employee stock options
Google also announced a new stock options plan, beginning January 29, that's designed to help retain employees. Schmidt said about 85 percent of its 20,000 employees had stock options "under water," or priced higher than the current trading price of stock.
Under the voluntary plan, employees can exchange all or a portion of their existing stock options for the same number of new options. Google said it expects the new options to have an exercise price equal to the closing price per share on March 2, 2009. Stock options with exercise prices above the March 2 closing price would be eligible for exchange, though Google said details of how the plan will work could change.
In after hours trading Thursday, Google shares were down $8.18 to $298.32.

New York City & Google starting a new trend in city-oriented tourist Web sites

2009-01-23T20:01:00.001-08:00

Google and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg have launched a new initiative today, designed at helping tourists and residents to get around New York without feeling like they’ve missed any of the city’s exciting places and events.

In what could be a model for other cities, New York has partnered with Google to launch a Web site for tourists and a high-tech visitor's center. Interactive tables and a Video Wall let visitors explore New York, get local opinions, and save information. An forecaster called New

York's high-tech center an development of "out-of-home" marketing.

New York City may be starting a new trend in city-oriented tourist Web sites. In partnership with Google, it has launched the NYCgo.com site, a portal to promote tourism, and opened a high-tech information center for visitors. The Web site uses Google Maps and other information to make it easy for a visitor or a local resident to quickly find things to do, places to go, restaurants and other points of interest. The site also provides discounts and promotions.
Just Ask the Locals
The information center at 810 Seventh Avenue offers touch-sensitive horizontal screen tables that also use Google Maps. In a statement on The Official Google Blog, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wrote that the new Web site and information center will "help make it easier for both visitors and residents to explore the energy , excitement and diversity of New York City's five boroughs."
Visitors can move around a table's map of the city's five boroughs. If the user has selected a category such as Museums & Galleries or Dining, the map will flag those places as a token is moved around. Each flagged item can then be opened to reveal photos and more information.
Since there are probably 10 million opinions about the city, no visitor's center would be complete without at least a few virtual New Yorkers. A visitor can browse a Just Ask The Locals section, where famous New Yorkers give recommendations.
'Custom Itinerary Flyover'
Visitors can save sites, recommendations and more to a physical disk and take it to a Video Wall where a "custom itinerary flyover" soars virtually over a detailed, three-dimensional map of the city. The wall also offers yet more advice from celebrities and local experts, and the visitor can send the itinerary to his or her cell phone, e-mail, or print it.
Andrew Frank, an analyst with Gartner, said such a high-tech center for visitors could be a marketing tool for other cities.
If done with an eye toward ease of use, as New York's appears to be, Frank indicated that such centers could appeal to the wide range of technological sophistication among visitors and locals in any city. He also said New York's center is another indication of "the evolution of out-of-home" marketing experiences, which increasingly are accompanied by ways to measure how people use them.
But, Frank noted, an issue with these centers -- and even Web sites -- is keeping them up to date, not only with data , but with the latest technology and fastidious, shining surfaces.

MORE..

Google powers new NYC information hub

Google Maps and Google Earth are the centerpiece of NYCGo, a new information and reference project launched by the New York City government to provide resources to both visitors and locals. Wednesday's launch announced the debut of NYCGo.com, a Google Maps-fueled local search and reference site, as well as the unveiling of the renovated New York City Information Center a few blocks north of the tourist-heavy Times Square district.
NYCGo.com contains not just Google map and search data, but also travel deals from Travelocity and local content from what-to-do powerhouse Time Out New York, nightlife culture magazine Paper, the New York Observer, and eco-living guide Greenopia.
The information center, located on Seventh Avenue between 52nd and 53rd streets, is equally Googly. The city's technocratic mayor, Michael Bloomberg, even contributed a guest post to the official Google blog to announce it: "The Information Center features interactive map tables, powered by the Google Maps API for Flash, that let you navigate venues and attractions as well as create personalized itineraries, which can be printed, emailed or sent to mobile devices," the blog post explained. "Additionally, there's a gigantic video wall that utilizes Google Earth to display a 3D model of New York City on which you can map out personalized itineraries."
Bloomberg has been aggressive about promoting tech initiatives during his time in office, from a wind power plan (part of the much bigger "GreeNYC" project) and a city-run venture firm. Under his watch, the Mountain View, Calif.-based Google opened its New York satellite office, taking over several floors of the historic former Port Authority building downtown.

World's biggest software company to preserve the jobs of Americans to the lead of foreigners working on visas.

2009-01-23T19:42:00.000-08:00

Microsoft has announced that it will be laying off up to 5000 employees within the 18 months.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer wrote a lengthy letter to all Microsoft employees and e-mailed it to them. In the letter he insists that although the company is financially strong, the profits aren't up to what's been expected so 5,000 jobs have to be cut within 18 months, with 1,400 jobs to be eliminated immediately.

US senator asks Microsoft about job cuts, visas

A U.S. senator has asked Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) about its plans to slash up to 5,000 jobs, urging the world's biggest software company to preserve the jobs of Americans ahead of foreigners working on visas.
"I am concerned that Microsoft will be retaining foreign guest workers rather than similarly qualified American employees when it implements its layoff plan," Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said in a Jan. 22 letter.
Microsoft shocked investors on Thursday when it released quarterly results that missed Wall Street expectations, announced up to 5,000 layoffs and said it would no longer give forecasts for the rest of the fiscal year.
The company has been a champion of expanding the H-1B visa program, a temporary visa program that lets American companies and universities hire foreign workers in a category considered by the government to be a "specialty occupation."
Microsoft employs thousands of workers through the program, according to Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee.
A spokeswoman for Microsoft said the company has not yet received the letter, but it would respond to Grassley directly.
The letter asked Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer to provide a breakdown of the jobs to be eliminated, and how many of those are individuals with H-1B visas and how many are Americans. Grassley also wants to know what the breakdown will be when the layoffs are complete.
"Microsoft has a moral obligation to protect these American workers by putting them first during these difficult economic times," Grassley said in the letter, copies of which were provided by his office on Friday.

Erick Schonfeld has reported on TechCrunch.com that to date, Apple has sold 17 million iPhones but even with numbers like that, Apple is not beyond the reach of the faltering economy. Recently, Apple had to lay off 174 folks from its Elk Grove, Calif., campus, according to the Sacramento Bee newspaper, which had its first-ever layoffs last summer.
What interests me is that somewhere there is somebody who takes delight in the news of the employment lost by others. Just read the Soundoff forums for this paper and you'll notice a regular influx of non-well wishers who are thrilled at the thought of no more P-I and don't mind being rather mean about it. I've read scores of "ha-ha on you left-wing freaks" type sentiment and quite scathing remarks directed at the upper management of this newspaper and, frankly, I find it to be rather un-American at this time in history. No doubt there are people doing the secret snicker because Microsoft is laying off and although Ballmer makes my scalp twitch, I will temper my animosity with a huge dose of sympathy for the newly laid-off subexecutives of Microsoft.

Microsoft earnings slump; 5,000 jobs eliminated
Software giant's shares plunge to 11-year low on surprise news.

Microsoft Corp. rattled investors early Thursday by releasing a disappointing quarterly earnings report and announcing that it will lay off as many as 5,000 workers, a startling development for a company that has taken pride in avoiding such sweeping job cuts even during the lowest points of its roughly 33-year history.

Revenue grew slightly to $16.6 billion from $16.4 billion last year. Analysts had been expecting revenue of $17.08 billion.
"We are certainly in the midst of a once-in-a-lifetime set of economic conditions," Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said during a conference call with analysts. "The economy is resetting to a lower level of business and consumer spending."
Shares of Microsoft fell sharply lower, responding to the disappointing financial results, as well as to the abrupt timing of their release. Microsoft had not been expected to post its numbers until after the market's close. The stock fell nearly 12% lower Thursday to close at $17.58, its lowest level since Jan. 1998.
"It's mostly the shock of the early release," analyst Robert Breza of RBC Capital Markets said of the sell-off.
A company representative said news of the results and layoffs were released early so that affected employees could be briefed "face to face" by their managers. An email from Ballmer to employees announcing the cuts was sent out at roughly 6 a.m. in Redmond, Wash., where Microsoft is based.

'The economy is resetting

to a lower level of

business and consumer

spending.'
— Steve Ballmer, Microsoft.

observatoryNANO

2009-01-23T10:18:00.000-08:00

Nanoscience and nanotechnology is now a burning science that changes the world of science and technology .concentrate the UK dissemination event for the observatoryNANO in London on the 19th March 2009 and gain knowledge of new nanoscience and nanotechnology developments in different industrial sectors and what socio-economic impacts these are having on the global market.
European decision-makers in government, industry, and finance lack objective information for their decisions when considering a rapidly changing field of technology such as nanoscience and nanotechnology.
The observatoryNANO project aims to address this through extensive engagement with the global expert community to supplement its review of scientific literature, patents, and reports from different organizations and projects. Developments in ten broad technology sectors are being mapped and analyzed: aerospace, automotive, and transport; agrifood; chemistry and materials; construction; energy; environment; health, medicine, and nanobio; ICT; security; and textiles.
This event provides an indication of the work performed within the first year of the project and the chance for participants to meet project partners and get a better insight into how nanotechnology is evolving, not just in terms of scientific, technological and socio-economic opportunities, but also the moral and communal aspects, and the prospective environment, health and safety issues. It also provides a platform for individuals to become involved in future engagement processes and have their opinions included in reports and analyses presented to EU policy makers.

ObservatoryNANO
The FP7 project observatoryNANO is funded for four years and includes 16 partners from 10 European States. Its mission is to create a European Observatory on Nanotechnologies to present reliable, complete and responsible science-based and economic expert analysis, across technology sectors, establish dialogue with decision makers and others regarding the benefits and opportunities, balanced against barriers and risks, and allow them to take action to ensure that scientific and technological developments are realized as socio-economic benefits.
European decision-makers in governments, industry, and finance lack objective information for their decisions when considering a rapidly changing field of technology such as Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (N&N). The observatoryNANO project will help address this issue. It will collate and analyse data regarding scientific and technological (ST) trends (including peer-reviewed publications, patents, roadmaps, published company data) and economic realities and expectations (including market analysis and economic performance, public and private funding strategies). The ST and economic analysis will be further supported by assessment of ethical and societal issues, impacts on health, environment and safety, as well as regulation, standardization, and legislative issues. Although much of this work will be performed within the consortium, observatoryNANO has established liaisons with international organizations including the EPO, OECD, and ISO, and will establish liaisons with relevant European Technology Platforms (ETPs), ERA NETs, and other relevant EU-funded projects, to ensure that effort is not duplicated and that resource sharing and output are maximized. The purpose of this integrated approach is to develop validated methodologies that yield accurate indicators of the socio-economic impact of N&N RTD.

The final goal of the observatoryNANO project is to establish a permanent European Observatory on Nanotechnologies, to provide ongoing, independent support to decision-makers. This will take account of the methodologies developed and validated during the project, the functions and activities of other similar initiatives, and input from a balanced Governing Board of high-level stakeholders that will be formed during the second year of the project.

UGA gets $18.7M -largest medical grant in its history

2008-12-19T07:04:00.000-08:00

UGA Research Foundation receives $18.7 million Gates Foundation grant to improve control of schistosomiasis, a debilitating and neglected tropical disease

The University of Georgia Research Foundation has received a five-year, $18.7 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to research ways to reduce morbidity from schistosomiasis in low- and middle-income countries in Africa, the Middle East and the Americas. Researchers will develop and evaluate research-based approaches and diagnostic tools to identify, control and even eliminate schistosomiasis where feasible
The five-year grant will fund research into ways to reduce morbidity from the disease, which is caused by several species of flatworms. Schistosomiasis can damage internal organs and impair physical and cognitive development in children.

Dan Colley, director of UGA's Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases, is principal investigator for the project, which will provide critical tools and an evidence base for decisions about controlling schistosomiasis. Colley, a microbiologist and immunologist in UGA's Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, has researched the disease for nearly 40 years.

"This grant significantly bolsters the University of Georgia's growing strength in public health and medical research," said UGA President Michael F. Adams. "It holds promise for great progress in eliminating a disease that causes suffering and economic hardship for millions around the world."

This is the largest grant UGA has received from the Gates Foundation, the first for medical research and the third-largest grant in UGA history.

The project grew out of a consensus research agenda developed in 2007 with broad input from the schistosomiasis research and control community. It focuses on operational research, and its overall goal is to answer key strategic questions about controlling schistosomiasis to ensure that future programs operate with increased efficacy, cost-effectiveness and sustainability.

"This grant will support and advance pioneering work on schistosomiasis under the technical guidance of Dan Colley," said UGA Vice-President for Research David Lee. "With his international leadership, this award will make great strides in addressing the widespread, debilitating impact of this infection. The University community is proud of Colley and others at the Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases who work tirelessly to improve health conditions in the developing world."

Secondary goals for the project are to integrate global schistosomiasis control efforts with other programs, monitor the effectiveness of current treatments, develop survey and diagnostic tools and overcome barriers that currently prevent effective control.

Caused by several species of flatworms of the genus Schistosoma, this neglected tropical disease affects some 200 million people worldwide. It is most common in Africa, and to a lesser extent in Asia and South America. It is transmitted through a species of freshwater snails, which become infected through contaminated water and then multiply and release infected worms into the water. The worms enter through the skin as their human hosts wash clothes, swim, or fish.

While it has a relatively low mortality rate, schistosomiasis can damage internal organs and impair physical and cognitive development in children. Symptoms of infection include abdominal pain, cough, diarrhea, fever, fatigue, pulmonary hypertension and often an enlarged liver and spleen. The worms can live in the blood vessels of people for up to 40 years, leading to chronic illness.

"Mass drug control programs in several African countries already use the drug praziquantel to reduce mortality from schistosomiasis and to help stem the suffering," said Dan Colley, principal investigator on the grant and director of UGA's Center for Tropical and Global Emerging Diseases. "And while controlling schistosomiasis is a World Health Organization global priority, most endemic countries still lack adequate control programs, and the sustainability of existing programs is tenuous."

Colley will oversee a management team based at the Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases, University of Georgia, but the consortium will involve partners from around the world. Much of the research will be carried out through subgrants to investigators at several federal, state and private institutions and laboratories and field sites in North America, South America, Europe and Africa.

Engineers' new microfluidic device could help with drug development with 3-D cell growth

2008-12-18T06:58:00.000-08:00

MIT engineers have built a device that gives them an unprecedented view of three-dimensional cell growth and migration, including the formation of blood vessels and the spread of tumor cells.
The microfluidic device, imprinted on a square inch of plastic, could be used to evaluate the potential side effects of drugs in development, or to test the effectiveness of cancer drugs in individual patients.
Roger Kamm, MIT professor of biological and mechanical engineering, and his colleagues reported their observations of angiogenesis -- the process by which blood vessels are formed -- in the Oct. 31 online issue of the journal Lab on a Chip.
Microfluidic devices have been widely used in recent years to study cells, but most only allow for the study of cells growing on a flat (two-dimensional) surface, or else lack the ability to observe and control cell behavior. With the new device, researchers can observe cells in real time as they grow in a three-dimensional collagen scaffold under precisely controlled chemical or physical conditions.
Observing angiogenesis and other types of cell growth in three dimensions is critical because that is how such growth normally occurs, said Kamm.
Working with researchers around MIT, Kamm has studied growth patterns of many types of cells, including liver cells, stem cells and neurons. He has also used the device to investigate the pressure buildup that causes glaucoma.
The device allows researchers to gain new insight into cell growth patterns. For example, the researchers observed that one type of breast cancer cell tends to migrate in a uniform mass and induces new capillaries to sprout aggressively toward the original tumor, while a type of brain cancer cell breaks from the primary tumor and migrates individually but does not promote capillary formation.
The system is configured so that researchers can manipulate and study mechanical and biochemical factors that influence cell growth and migration, including stiffness of the gel scaffold, concentration of growth factors and other chemicals, and pressure gradients.
Two or three channels imprinted onto the plastic square contain either a normal cell growth medium or a chemical under study, such as growth factor. Cells growing in the scaffold between the channels are bathed in chemicals from the channels, and the effect of the chemicals can be evaluated based on various measures of cell function.
Kamm and his colleagues first described their microfluidic device in a January 2007 paper in Lab on a Chip. Vernella Vickerman, a graduate student in chemical engineering, and Seok Chung, a postdoctoral fellow in biological engineering, played critical roles in developing the device, Kamm said.
The research was funded by Draper Laboratory

About:Draper Laboratory

Draper Laboratory Profile, Cambridge, MassachusettsHeadquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Draper Laboratory is a research and development laboratory, employing more than 750 engineers, scientists, and technicians on a broad array of programs for government and commercial sponsors among its 1,025 employees.Its sponsored work encompasses capabilities in the following business areas:
Strategic Systems
Space Systems
Tactical Systems
Special Operations
Biomedical Engineering
Geospacial Solutions
Energy Solutions
The Laboratory’s unparalleled expertise in the areas of guidance, navigation, and control systems remains its greatest resource. Draper is among the leaders in fault-tolerant computing, reliable software development, modeling and simulation, and MEMS technology. It applies its expertise to a broad range of domains, including autonomous air, land, sea, and space systems; information integration; distributed sensors and networks; precision-guided munitions; air traffic flow management; military logistics; and biomedical engineering and chemical/biological defense.
To this end, Draper has nurtured a highly skilled and motivated work force supported by a network of exceptional design, fabrication, and test facilities. This combination of highly trained technical talent and state-of-the-art facilities enables the Laboratory not only to deliver the design and development of first-of-a-kind systems incorporating innovative technology, but also to offer high-value-added engineering services to a broad range of government and commercial sponsors.
These efforts are enhanced by our robust Independent Research and Development (IR&D) program through which we invest more than $20 million each year, supporting both internal efforts and collaborative projects with the country’s leading universities. IR&D enables us to work on projects focused on technologies that we anticipate will meet the future near-term and long-term requirements of our sponsors, while allowing us to continuously refresh our core competencies.
PurposePioneer in the application of science and technology in the national interest
VisionNational center of excellence in the application of technology to the analysis, development, measurement, and control of complex, dynamic systems
Mission To serve the national interest in applied research, engineering development, education, and technology transfer by
Helping our sponsors clarify their requirements and conceptualize innovative solutions to their problems
Demonstrating those solutions through the design and development of fieldable engineering prototypes
Transitioning our products and processes to industry for production, and providing follow-on support
Promoting and supporting advanced technical education

Year 2020- Internet and interactivity-Pew

2008-12-17T04:14:00.000-08:00

By the year 2020, marketing and manipulation will have merged on the Internet, encouraging consumers to trade privacy for discounts. Copyright will be "dead duck," virtual reality sanctuaries will provide an escape from cyberspace, and viciousness will prevail over civility.
These are some of the predictions offered by "experts" in "Future of the Internet III," a study released on Monday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

By 2020, the mobile phone will be the primary connection tool to the Internet and it will be so integrated into our daily lives that it will be difficult to imagine what life was like without one, according to new research by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. In addition, respondents thought Sixty percent of the experts interviewed disagreed that content control through copyright-protection technology would dominate the Internet of 2012.
But the majority view appears to discount the popularity of the locked-down iPhone eco-system. Given the extent to which Apple's competitors in the mobile arena have committed to copying the iTunes App Store model, it wouldn't be surprising if mobile customers traded freedom for the promise of phone security. That might keep copyright alive until nano-assemblers make it feasible to copy objects on an atomic level

The Pew report expects continued blurring between work life and home life and between physical and virtual reality. Respondents were divided, 56% of whom think that future is okay, with the rest expressing some reservations about the potential added stress of being at work all the time.
The study includes a number of quotations from those who submitted their thoughts on what's to come. Their observations make other dystopian visions of the future, as seen in the 1982 film Blade Runner, look almost rosy.
"We will enter a time of mutually assured humiliation; we all live in glass houses," said Jeff Jarvis, a blogger and professor at City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism.
"Viciousness will prevail over civility, fraternity, and tolerance as a general rule, despite the build-up of pockets or groups ruled by these virtues," said Alejandro Pisanty, ICANN and Internet Society leader and director of computer services at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. "Software will be unable to stop deeper and more hard-hitting intrusions into intimacy and privacy, and these will continue to happen."
"By 2020, the Internet will have enabled the monitoring and manipulation of people by businesses and governments on a scale never before imaginable," said writer and blogger Nicholas Carr. "Most people will have happily traded their privacy -- consciously or unconsciously

BLADE Network Technologies' -2009 Most Valuable Performers Award

2008-12-17T00:23:00.000-08:00

BLADE Network Technologies' President and CEO, Vikram Mehta, With Technology Industry's 2009 Most Valuable Performers Award.

BLADE Network Technologies, Inc. (BLADE), the trusted leader in data center networking, announced today that Network Product Guide, a world leading publication on technologies and solutions, has honored BLADE President and CEO Vikram Mehta with the information technology industry's 2008 Most Valuable Performers (MVP) recognition. This prestigious industry award recognizes senior executives from around the world with the essential characteristics of leaders that exhibit the qualities of most valuable performers.
Vikram Mehta has been at the helm of BLADE since its inception. Through his passionate commitment to customer service and product innovation, BLADE has become the trusted leader in data center networking, the industry's leading supplier of blade server switch solutions and a pioneering provider of the new breed of 10 Gigabit Ethernet data center switches. Prior to establishing BLADE as a privately held company in 2006, Mehta held leadership and executive positions at Nortel Networks, Alteon Web Systems, Ensim and HP. Mehta is an electrical engineer from the Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi, India.
Network Products Guide also has named BLADE as a 2009 Hot Companies finalist. Selected from a global industry analysis of information technology vendors that included established large companies, mid-size and new start-ups, BLADE has advanced to the finalists stage based on the "4Ps" selection criteria -- namely Products, People, Performance, and Potential. The coveted 2009 Hot Companies award criterion encompasses companies in all areas of information technologies including security, wireless, storage, networking, software and communications.
Over half of Fortune 500 companies rely on BLADE's Ethernet switches to equip their essential data center infrastructures. BLADE has shipped 5 million Ethernet switch ports to more than 5,000 customers worldwide. Through its partnerships with HP, IBM, NEC and Verari Systems, BLADE has delivered more than 220,000 Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches to enterprise data centers to connect over 1.1 million servers. BLADE's market share of data center switches for blade servers now stands in excess of 48.5 percent combined on HP and IBM blade servers and 66 percent on NEC blade servers. To date, BLADE's market share and Ethernet port shipments on both IBM and HP platforms are more than 2x greater than the nearest competitor's.
"The new economy leaders are essentially those that are adapting best in the current economic environment and will emerge with higher standards," said Rake Narang, editor-in-chief, Network Products Guide. "We are proud to honor Vikram Mehta with this year's 2008 Most Valuable Performers award and recognize BLADE as a 2009 Hot Companies Finalist."
Network Products Guide 2008 MVP leaders have a clear vision and mission, have set measurable goals and objectives for themselves, are selfless and mentors to others, and most importantly demonstrate respect and trust for their staff, employees and the high-technology industry. Senior executives were honored from companies around the world which include Ingres Corporation, Cisco Systems, Inc., IBM, AppGate Network Security, Crossroads Systems, Lumeta Corporation, SECNAP Network Security Corp., Dyadem International Ltd., Permabit Technology Corporation, M-CAT Enterprises, Google, Inc., BLADE Network Technologies, CaseCentral, ONStor, SolarWinds, BlueCat Networks, Inc., Rohati Systems, Inc., VirtualPBX, IBRIX, LogMeIn, Inc., GTB Technologies, Inc., Kazeon, Riverbed Technologies, Protegrity, Everyone.net and Xiotech Corporation.
The 2009 Hot Companies winners will be announced and honored at the 2009 "World Executive Alliance Summit" in San Francisco on March 26-27, 2009. BLADE will be among other key industry players at this event. CEOs of finalists will be presenting their company's 4Ps criteria live to an audience of leading entrepreneurs, IT companies, venture capitalists, corporate strategists and media. To see the complete list of finalists please visit http://www.networkproductsguide.com/hotcompanies/
About Network Products Guide Awards
Network Products Guide, published from the heart of Silicon Valley, is a leading provider of products, technologies and vendor related research and analysis. You will discover a wealth of information and tools in this guide including the best products and services, roadmaps, industry directions, technology advancements and independent product evaluations that facilitate in making the most pertinent technology decisions impacting business and personal goals. The guide follows conscientious research methodologies developed and enhanced by industry experts. To learn more, visit www.networkproductsguide.com
About BLADE Network Technologies
BLADE Network Technologies is the leading supplier of Gigabit and 10G Ethernet network infrastructure solutions that reside in blade servers and "scale-out" server and storage racks. BLADE's new "virtual, cooler and easier" RackSwitch family demonstrates the promise of "Rackonomics" -- a revolutionary approach for scaling out data center networks to drive down total cost of ownership. The company's customers include half of the Fortune 500 across 26 industry segments, and an installed base of over 220,000 network switches representing more than 1,100,000 servers and over 5 million switch ports. For more information, visit www.bladenetwork.net.
BLADE Network Technologies and the BLADE logo are trademarks of BLADE Network Technologies. All other names or marks are property of their respective owners. CONTACTS:
Tim Shaughnessy
BLADE Network Technologies
(408) 850-8963
Email Contact
Zee Zaballos
ZNA Communications
(831) 425-1581 x201
Email Contact

Mine of 1,000 new species

2008-12-16T07:19:00.000-08:00

The "dragon millipede" (pictured here) is one of more than 1,000 new species discovered around the Mekong River in Southeast Asia over the last 10 years. Scientists suggest the millipede uses its bright color to warn predators of its toxicity. According to a new report by conservation group World Wildlife Fund (WWF), between 1997 and 2007, at least 1,068 new species have been discovered in the Greater Mekong, at a rate of approximately two new species a week.

In all, roughly 25,000 species call the Mekong River basin home. On a species-per-mile basis, the region's waterways are richer in biodiversity than the Amazon, according to "First Contact in the Greater Mekong," a report released today by WWF International.
"This region is like what I read about as a child in the stories of Charles Darwin," Thomas Ziegler, curator at the Cologne Zoo in Germany, said in a news release. "It is a great feeling being in an unexplored area and to document its biodiversity for the first time ... both enigmatic and beautiful."
Nicole Frisina, communications officer for WWF's Greater Mekong Program, told me that "the rate of species discovery is quite prolific as you compare it with other areas of the world." The average works out to two new species every week - and if anything, the pace is accelerating.
From war to wonderThe Greater Mekong Program's director, Stuart Chapman, told me there are a couple of reasons for that quickening pace.

WWF
The colored areas represent different parts of Southeast Asia's Greater Mekong region, draining into Vietnam's Mekong Delta. Click on the map for a larger version.
First, the Greater Mekong region - which takes in areas of China's Yunnan Province as well as Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam - includes some incredibly remote areas, such as the Annamite Mountains on the Lao-Vietnamese border.
Under the best of circumstances, traveling to these frontiers is difficult and expensive. And during the region's decades of conflict (including, of course, the Vietnam War and Cambodia's wars), scientific exploration was nearly unthinkable.
"In some regions, there haven't been a lot of scientific expeditions purely because there's been a lot of [unexploded] ordnance around," Chapman said.
That's all changing now: Many parts of Southeast Asia are undergoing intense economic development. Just to cite one example, more than 150 large hydroelectric dams are being planned in the region. And that raises a huge challenge for scientists scrambling to explore the Mekong's lost world.
The 'race against time'"This poorly understood biodiversity is facing unprecedented pressure ... for scientists, this means that almost every field survey yields new diversity, but documenting it is a race against time," Raoul Bain, a biodiversity specialist from New York's American Museum of Natural History, said in today's news release.
Rising populations and greater economic development are putting wildlife habitat in danger. The World Conservation Union has already added 10 species from Vietnam to its extinction list, and another 900 species are considered threatened.
The WWF (fomerly known as the World Wildlife Fund) issued today's report as part of its effort to preserve the region's biological riches even as the 320 million people living there reach for new economic riches. "You don't have to have people choose between the two," Chapman said. "You can have both, with careful planning."
The organization called on the region's six governments to work together on a conservation and management plan for 230,000 square miles (600,000 square kilometers) of transboundary and freshwater habitats. Chapman said the governments already have identified corridors of land in need of cross-border conservation.
However, he said, "having them identified on the map hasn't resulted in transboundary planning. ... That kind of thinking hasn't really taken hold yet."
Coming attractionsThe biological riches could eventually yield new medicines and sustainable food sources for the region's needy populations - or perhaps new attractions for the world's eco-tourists. And for scientists at least, there are plenty of attractions out there, hiding in plain sight.

ITN's Chris Rogers reports on the Greater Mekong's biological riches.
For example, a new rat species was discovered as a delicacy in a Laotian food market - and scientists traced its evolutionary lineage back to a group of rodents that were thought to have gone totally extinct 11 million years ago. It turned out that the Laotian rock rat (listed as Kha-nyou on the menu) was the sole survivor of that ancient group.
Another previously unknown species of pit viper was first seen by scientists as it slithered through the rafters of a restaurant in Thailand's Khao Yai National Park.

Intel is to manufacture car battery

2008-12-12T20:55:00.000-08:00

Intel the world leader company on technology is going to introduce battery for car ! Good news ,also its a alternative fuel innitiative ,"strategic objective is tackling big problems and turning them into big businesses." He said Intel, with its cash resources, can invest in battery technology and manufacturing to bring down the cost of car batteries, which would drive adoption of plug-in electric cars.
Intel is arguably the world's most important technology company ,Andy Grove former Intel chairman told Rebecca Smith and Don Clark that he has been urging the company to get into the business of making car batteries. Like so many in Silicon Valley, Grove is apparently an electric car booster, and he has been evangelizing car batteries as a potential growth industry—one that he'd like to see Intel get in on the ground floor of.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal published Friday, Grove said he is urging Intel to invest in battery manufacturing as a way to diversify from its core chip business.
Grove told the Journal that Intel's "strategic objective is tackling big problems and turning them into big businesses." He said Intel, with its cash resources, can invest in battery technology and manufacturing to bring down the cost of car batteries, which would drive adoption of plug-in electric cars.

Batteries are the most expensive component in plug-in electric vehicles, a market being pursued by a few U.S. companies.

General Motor's 2011 Volt is testing batteries from lithium-ion maker A123 Systems. Other U.S. companies include Ener1 and Valence Technology. Notebook battery maker Boston Power also intends to enter the auto market.

But battery makers and analysts say that U.S. manufacturers lack the financial means to meet the anticipated demand of electric cars.

"The technology exists today to put (electric drives) into an automobile," said Ener1 CEO Charles Gassenheimer at last week's Electric Drive Transportation Association's Conference & Exposition. "But it is not doable without the ability to drive down the cost of manufacturing."

Intel has invested in battery technology through its venture capital arm and other energy-related firms. Earlier this year, Intel also spun out SpectraWatt, which intends to lower the cost of manufacturing solar cells.

Grove has become an advocate for government policies that promote plug-in hybrid cars. This summer, he published a manifesto, called "Our Electric Future," in The American magazine, where he called for transitioning the American auto fleet to electricity for national security reasons.

"Because electricity is the stickiest form of energy, and because it is multi-sourced, it will give us the greatest degree of energy resilience. Our nation will be best served if we dedicate ourselves to increasing the amount of our energy that we use in the form of electricity," he wrote.

In a speech at the Plug-in 2008 conference in August, he called for a goal of putting 10 million plug-in vehicles on the road in 10 years.

Over here, or over there?
The WSJ piece leaves the reader with the impression that Grove might like to see Intel making batteries in the US. I'd love a transcript of the interview that underlies the piece, because it's not clear to me if this is the authors' takeaway, or if "let's make them in the US" was a point that Grove himself wanted to emphasize.

I bring this up because Intel doesn't actually make as many chips over here as they used to. Most of the company's sales are overseas (Asia is the biggest market), so that's where a large and growing percentage of its workforce is, as well. The company's pronounced shift in moving jobs abroad has been a sore spot for American Intel employees over the past decade, but I hear that, internally, the Intel top brass makes no bones about the fact that they have no qualms about moving the plants closer to the customers.

But regardless of where Grove wants to see these batteries made, Intel CEO Paul Otellini can't be too happy that his former chairman is exercised enough about this battery scheme that he's talking to the press about it and instigating a news cycle's worth of "should Intel make car batteries?" stories.

New room extended at space station

2007-10-26T14:08:00.000-07:00

24hoursnews
The US space shuttle Discovery linked up with the International Space Station (ISS) yesterday on a mission to prepare the orbital outpost for new European and Japanese laboratories.
With shuttle commander Pamela Melroy at the controls, Discovery eased up to the station and latched onto a docking port at 8.40am EDT.
Working both outside the station and within it, the astronauts moved the Harmony module, which will serve as a connection point for two new laboratories for the station, to a temporary location on the side of the station.
The space station’s robot arm, operated by Stephanie Wilson and Daniel Tani, smoothly moved the 16-ton module out of the shuttle and onto the station, where automatic bolts secured it in place in a temporary home on the left side of the station’s living quarters.

The work outside was more strenuous. Astronauts Scott E. Parazynski and Douglas Wheelock began their spacewalk shortly after 6 a.m. Eastern time. They prepared the Harmony module for its removal from the shuttle’s payload bay and performed some of the preliminary work for the other big task of the mission, moving an enormous set of solar arrays and the truss they stand on from their initial position atop the station to the permanent home on the far end of the truss on the station’s left side.

So far, technical difficulties on the mission have been minor.

So little insulating foam was shed from the shuttle’s external tank that mission managers have determined that a more focused inspection of the shuttle’s heat shield is unnecessary. When that word was passed up to the shuttle on Thursday afternoon before the crew sleep period was to begin, the shuttle commander, Pamela A. Melroy, responded enthusiastically, ”Oh, man, that is fantastic news.”

She said that it was a relief to know that tile and panel damage was not a concern and that they would be able to take the time that would have gone to inspection and use it to further prepare the Harmony module for entry. “We just can’t wait to get inside,” Ms. Melroy said.

The spacewalk, for the most part, went smoothly. The astronauts struggled occasionally with balky bolts and hose connectors, which are optimistically called “quick-disconnect” devices. They were wary of the small amounts of frozen ammonia that drifted away from some the hoses, because they could contaminate the atmosphere within the station if brought in on the space suits. The amount of ammonia, which is used as a coolant, was small.

At one point, Paolo Nespoli, the Italian astronaut who was coordinating the spacewalk from inside the station, asked his colleagues to take a small break to enjoy what might be the greatest perk of working in space: the view. He asked them to look over the starboard side as the station passed over Houston.

The two spacewalkers oohed and aahed as the familiar coastline slid by below.

“Hello, Houston!” Dr. Parazynski said.

The spacewalkers were back in the airlock before noon.

Over the communications system, Ms. Melroy congratulated Dr. Parazynski and Mr. Wheelock on the work of the entire team, which she said she watched while making lunch for the crew.

The new room Expanded at Space Station

2007-10-26T13:51:00.000-07:00

(24hoursnews)

The US space shuttle Discovery linked up with the International Space Station (ISS) yesterday on a mission to prepare the orbital outpost for new European and Japanese laboratories.
With shuttle commander Pamela Melroy at the controls, Discovery eased up to the station and latched onto a docking port at 8.40am EDT.
. Working both outside the station and within it, the astronauts moved the Harmony module, which will serve as a connection point for two new laboratories for the station, to a temporary location on the side of the station.
The space station’s robot arm, operated by Stephanie Wilson and Daniel Tani, smoothly moved the 16-ton module out of the shuttle and onto the station, where automatic bolts secured it in place in a temporary home on the left side of the station’s living quarters.

The work outside was more strenuous. Astronauts Scott E. Parazynski and Douglas Wheelock began their spacewalk shortly after 6 a.m. Eastern time. They prepared the Harmony module for its removal from the shuttle’s payload bay and performed some of the preliminary work for the other big task of the mission, moving an enormous set of solar arrays and the truss they stand on from their initial position atop the station to the permanent home on the far end of the truss on the station’s left side.

So far, technical difficulties on the mission have been minor.

So little insulating foam was shed from the shuttle’s external tank that mission managers have determined that a more focused inspection of the shuttle’s heat shield is unnecessary. When that word was passed up to the shuttle on Thursday afternoon before the crew sleep period was to begin, the shuttle commander, Pamela A. Melroy, responded enthusiastically, ”Oh, man, that is fantastic news.”

She said that it was a relief to know that tile and panel damage was not a concern and that they would be able to take the time that would have gone to inspection and use it to further prepare the Harmony module for entry. “We just can’t wait to get inside,” Ms. Melroy said.

The spacewalk, for the most part, went smoothly. The astronauts struggled occasionally with balky bolts and hose connectors, which are optimistically called “quick-disconnect” devices. They were wary of the small amounts of frozen ammonia that drifted away from some the hoses, because they could contaminate the atmosphere within the station if brought in on the space suits. The amount of ammonia, which is used as a coolant, was small.

At one point, Paolo Nespoli, the Italian astronaut who was coordinating the spacewalk from inside the station, asked his colleagues to take a small break to enjoy what might be the greatest perk of working in space: the view. He asked them to look over the starboard side as the station passed over Houston.

The two spacewalkers oohed and aahed as the familiar coastline slid by below.

“Hello, Houston!” Dr. Parazynski said.

The spacewalkers were back in the airlock before noon.

Over the communications system, Ms. Melroy congratulated Dr. Parazynski and Mr. Wheelock on the work of the entire team, which she said she watched while making lunch for the crew.