DISCOVERY tech news

Worm attack bites at Apple iPhone

2009-11-09T05:52:00.000-08:00

The first worm to infect the Apple iPhone has been discovered spreading "in the wild" in Australia.

The self-propagating program changes the phone's wallpaper to a picture of 80s singer Rick Astley with the message "ikee is never going to give you up".

The worm, known as ikee, only affects "jail-broken" phones, where a user has removed Apple's protection mechanisms to allow the phone to run any software.

Experts say the worm is not harmful but more malicious variants could follow.

"The creator of the worm has released full source code of the four existing variants of this worm," wrote Mikko Hypponen of security firm F-secure.

"This means that there will quickly be more variants, and they might have nastier payload than just changing your wallpaper."

The picture of Rick Astley is believed to be a nod to the internet phenomenon known as Rickrolling, where web users are tricked into clicking on what they believe is a relevant link, only to find that it actually takes the user to a video of the pop star's song "Never gonna give you up".

'Stupid people'

The worm has so far only been found circulating in Australia, where the hacker - Ashley Towns - who wrote the program lives.

The 21-year-old told Australia's ABC News Online that he created the virus to raise the issue of security.

It only exploits jail-broken phones that have SSH installed, a program that enables other devices to connect to the phone and modify the system and files. The worm is able to infect phones if their owners have not changed the default password after installing SSH.

"What's clear is that if you have jail-broken your iPhone or iPod Touch, and installed SSH, then you must always change your root user password to something different than the default, 'alpine'," wrote Graham Cluley of security firm Sophos.

"In fact, it would be a good idea if you didn't use a dictionary word at all."

After a phone becomes infected it disables the SSH service, preventing reinfection.

The code contains numerous comments from Mr Towns about his motivation.

One comment reads: "People are stupid and this is to prove it."

"It's not that hard guys. But hey who cares its only your bank details at stake."

The worm can be removed by changing the phone's password and deleting some files.

Some estimates suggest that up to 10% of all iPhones and iPod Touch are jail-broken.

The practice allows a phone user to install software and applications that have not been approved by Apple.

"Phone users may rush into jail-breaking their iPhones in order to add functionality that Apple may have denied to them, but if they do so carelessly they may also risk their iPhone becoming the target of a hacker," said Mr Cluley.

"My prediction is that we may see more attacks like this in the future."

Taking Care of Your Gadgets

2009-10-31T03:29:00.000-07:00

One of the hottest and the most popular gadgets today are the iphones. These are no ordinary phones because they have features that are way far better than those of ordinary phones. Both in terms of design and functions, they tend to be better than our ordinary phones. Having one of these iphones makes you be recognized by your peers because as we all know, not all are given the privilege to have this gadget, it is then important for us to take care of these kinds of gadgets because they are priced at a considerably high rate. Damaging them even just a bit could probably mean replacing them. We should be very careful when it comes to these things.

If we want to take care of these, we should be able to learn or know more about its parts such as iphone dock to and the proper ways of taking care of them. Having this knowledge would probably mean that we are much capable of taking care of our gadgets. If in case you want to make your iphone have a look that would make others envy it, try having blackberry case for it. This casing will surely give it a look that will make it look great. These products also come with accessories like the bluetooth Headset. This is another one thing that we should be careful about because these accessories are very much sensitive.

Having the latest gadgets is such a great thing that can happen to a person. But if so happen that you have one, see to it that you can properly take care of it because if you don't, there will come a time when these gadgets will be damaged and gone from you. I am pretty sure that you don't want that to happen so I guess, you should really learn on how to take care of these things or else, it will be your great lost. You will lose not only money but also something of great value.

Awards offered for map mash-ups

2009-10-29T11:19:00.000-07:00

A competition aimed at making the most of map data has been launched.

Backed by UK mapping agency Ordnance Survey, the GeoVation competition aims to find new ways for geography to empower citizens.

Ideas already submitted include a service that lets pedestrians map safe routes based on the location of CCTV cameras.

Another suggests a text alert service to alert 999 callers to their nearest defibrillator.

The initiative comes as the Home Office releases nationwide crime maps.

The map proved so popular that the website initially struggled to cope with demand.

Dragons' Den

There are three broad themes for the GeoVation prize - crime, health and the environment, although entrants can come up with other ideas.

"This is all about investing in worthwhile, exciting and innovative uses of geography," said GeoVation founder John Abbott.

"We believe geography can play a real part in addressing some of the world's big challenges and we want to unleash people's creative potential," he added.

The competition is open to anyone and entrants are free to suggest the use of any resources, such as Google Maps or OS OpenSpace.

The ten shortlisted candidates will be asked to pitch in a Dragons' Den style arena at the end of January.

The outright winner will claim a prize fund of £10,000 to develop their idea. Two runners-up will be awarded £5,000 each.

The closing date for entries is 4 January 2010.

End of an era for early websites

2009-10-26T03:39:00.000-07:00

A service that gave many people their first taste of building and owning a web page is set to close.

Yahoo-owned GeoCities once boasted millions of users and was the third most popular destination on the web.

The free site has since fallen out of fashion with users, who have switched to social networks.

Yahoo, which acquired the site for $3.57bn (£2.17bn) in 1999 at the height of the dotcom boom, said sites would no longer be accessible from 26th October.

'Fascinating experiment'

However, many of the pages have been archived and will still be available to view via the nonprofit Internet Archive project.

The giant digital library, which has been archiving the public web since 1996, has set up a special project to archive GeoCities before it is lost forever.

"We've collected a lot of GeoCities sites over the years - but might not have every site and every page," the Internet Archive said.

It is asking for GeoCities users to check whether their site has been archived before Yahoo pulls the plug.

"GeoCities has been an important outlet for personal expression on the web for almost 15 years," it said.

A number of firms - including Yahoo - have also tried to woo GeoCities users to move their pages to paid-for hosting services.

GeoCities started life in 1995 as Beverly Hills Internet, a small web-hosting firm.

The company allowed users to host their web pages in themed cities. For example, "WallStreet" hosted business related sites, whilst "SiliconValley" was used to host computer and technology sites.

Users, known as homesteaders, could build and host their own sites in these online spaces.

At its peak, the site had millions of users.

In April this year, Yahoo said that it was closing the site and would now focus on helping "customers build new relationships online".

When Yahoo announced the end of the site earlier this year, Rupert Goodwins, editor of the ZDNet website, said it was the end of an era.

"I think GeoCities was the first proof that you could have something really popular and still not make any money on the internet.

"It was a fascinating experiment in the pre-industrial era of the internet."

Sales of virtual goods boom in US

2009-10-22T07:18:00.001-07:00

Americans look set to spend $1bn (£600m) on virtual goods in 2009, claims a report.

The cash will be spent on add-ons for online games, digital gifts and other items that exist only as data.

Total spend on such items is expected to be up by 100% over 2008 and to double again by the end of 2010, said the analysts behind the report.

In related news, Facebook is updating its gift store so it offers a wider variety of virtual presents.

Social games

Written by games analysts Justin Smith and Charles Hudson, the report says that virtual goods are proving ever more popular with gamers and users of social network sites such as Facebook.

Many players of massively multiplayer online games such as World of Warcraft, spend real money on virtual currency to ensure their in-game avatars have the best gear.

Some games in Asia also use the so-called micro-payments model to fund their games in lieu of a monthly subscription fee.

Now, people playing social games such as virtual agriculture simulation Farmville on Facebook are using real cash to purchase game dollars for additions to their farm. Firms such as Zynga, Playdom and Playfish are all growing fast on the back of the rise in social gaming.

The purchase of virtual goods on smartphones, such as Apple's iPhone, are also starting to take off, said the report.

The figures in the report deal only with sales in the US. Introducing the report, the authors said: "While virtual goods have been driving revenues in Asia and Europe for years, 2009 will be remembered as the year virtual goods-based businesses began to scale in the United States."

Facebook has announced an overhaul of its virtual gift shop to expand the range of digital presents members can buy and send to friends, family and colleagues.

As well as virtual birthday cakes and pints of beer, Facebook users can now also send music tracks to each other.

The music service will initially only be available in the US. One Facebook credit (10 US cents/6p) buys one streamed song. Ten credits buys a downloadable MP3.

Real-time search rivalry hots up

2009-10-22T07:10:00.000-07:00

Twitter has signed deals to put messages sent via the microblogging service into the Microsoft and Google search indexes.

The deals will see messages, or tweets, show up in Bing and Google search results almost as soon as they show up on Twitter.

Microsoft has moved quickly to set up a stand-alone Twitter search page accessible via its Bing site.

Google said its Twitter search service would debut within the next few months.

While some parts of Twitter already show up in some search results they tend to be for individual accounts or messages that have been archived. Both deals will take a feed of all public Twitter streams to make them searchable almost as soon as they are sent.

Rank results

The deals underscore the growing importance of real-time search and intensify the rivalry between Microsoft and Google.

Microsoft announced its tie-up with Twitter at the Web 2.0 conference currently under way in San Francisco.

The Bing Twitter page shows the most popular topics mentioned in the 140 character tweets that are the signature of the micro-blogging service.

Visitors to Bing can also search for specific terms and see relevant messages ranked chronologically.

Soon after the Microsoft announcement, Google unveiled its deal with Twitter via its official blog. In a post written by Marissa Meyer, Google's vice president of search products, she said the inclusion of Twitter's up-to-the minute results would roll out "in the coming months".

Ms Mayer said the inclusion of real-time results could aid some searches.

"...the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favourite ski resort, you'll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information," she wrote.

The financial terms of neither deal were disclosed during the announcements.

Both Microsoft and Google are coming slightly late to real-time search. Already there are companies such as OneRiot, Crowdeye and Collecta that provide such feeds. In addition, firms such as FriendFeed offer real-time updates within groups of friends and colleagues.

Broadband test offers street view

2009-10-19T04:49:00.000-07:00

There are big variations between broadband speeds in the same street, a new broadband speed test has revealed.

The test, launched by comparison site Top 10 Broadband, allows users to zoom in on their postcode area to see what speed their neighbours net runs at.

It will be a wake-up call for internet service providers, thinks Alex Buttle, marketing director at Top 10 Broadband.

"One person at 1Mbps [megabit per second] could be next door to someone receiving 8.5Mbps," he said.

"We know that broadband speed will vary depending on things like distance from the exchange and the way the wiring and equipment in your house is set up but we do not believe this explains all of the variations we have seen between people in the same street," said Mr Buttle.

"We think some of this may be due to outdated technology some providers use in their local exchanges, as well as the fact that some providers use traffic shaping or throttling at peak times while others do not," he added.

The service, dubbed StreetStats, collects speed test data from users to build an interactive map.

More than 170,000 speed test results have so far been added to the map and the firm hopes to have two million by the end of the year.

Future plans

While many consumers remain focused on their current speeds, the debate about broadband has moved on to how quickly, how far, and at what cost next-generation speeds can be rolled out.

Entering this debate, Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said that a Conservative government would scrap the proposed broadband tax, which was intended to provide a fund for next-generation access in difficult-to-reach areas.

The £6 a year tax was aimed at every home with a fixed line phone.

Mr Hunt told the BBC that the Conservatives had a different vision of how to make sure superfast broadband was available across the UK.

"We're saying that this is the wrong time to decide about how to fund comprehensive coverage when we haven't even got the infrastructure in place in the main areas," he told the BBC.

"We accept that to make coverage comprehensive might need public funds at some stage but we need to look at other things too, such as the regulatory framework," he added.

It could be that the UK follows France's example and forces BT to open up its ducting to other parties, he said.

Laptop for every pupil in Uruguay

2009-10-18T05:59:00.001-07:00

Uruguay has become the first country to provide a laptop for every child attending state primary school.

President Tabaré Vázquez presented the final XO model laptops to pupils at a school in Montevideo on 13 October.

Over the last two years 362,000 pupils and 18,000 teachers have been involved in the scheme.

The "Plan Ceibal" (Education Connect) project has allowed many families access to the world of computers and the internet for the first time.

Uruguay is part of the One Laptop Per Child scheme, an organisation set up by internet pioneer Nicholas Negroponte. His original vision was to provide laptops at $100 (£61) but they proved more expensive.

The Uruguay programme has cost the state $260 (£159) per child, including maintenance costs, equipment repairs, training for the teachers and internet connection.

The total figure represents less than 5% of the country's education budget.

Around 70% of the XO model laptops handed out by the government were given to children who did not have computers at home.

"This is not simply the handing out of laptops or an education programme. It is a programme which seeks to reduce the gap between the digital world and the world of knowledge," explained Miguel Brechner, director of the Technological Laboratory of Uruguay and in charge of Plan Ceibal.

"A revolution"

In the run up to Uruguay's general election on 25 October, the project is being promoted as an achievement of the Tabaré Vázquez government.

"It's been a revolution, which has helped us enormously, but it hasn't been easy," explained Lourdes Bardino, head teacher of School 173 in Las Piedras.

Ms Bardino said that some teachers were originally opposed to the introduction of the XO laptops.

"We have a lady who's been teaching for 30 years and when they gave us the computers and the training, she asked for leave because she didn't want to have anything to do with the programme. Later she changed her mind and now computers have changed the way she teaches."

All the teachers have been given training, but the extent to which they use the laptops in the classroom is up to them.

Research carried out recently by the State Education authorities revealed that some teachers have chosen not to include computer-related work in their lesson plans.

Confused message on UK broadband

2009-10-17T00:53:00.000-07:00

Finland has made broadband a 'legal right', leading experts to question whether the UK government is similarly committed.

In a speech to MPs this week, Digital Britain minister Stephen Timms seemed to firm up the government's plans.

He told MPs that the government's promise of broadband to all homes by 2012 was "an obligation".

Previously the government has spoken only of a "commitment", which would not be legally binding.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said the comments were "a slip of the tongue" and that the plans for broadband remained a "commitment", meaning they would not be legally binding when they enter the statute book.

The idea of providing a baseline of broadband to all citizens was first touted in the government's Digital Britain report, which lays out its strategy for broadband.

It said that the government would "commit" to a minimum level of 2Mbps (megabits per second) for all homes by 2012.

But in a speech to the All Party Parliamentary Communications Group, Digital Britain minister Stephen Timms appeared to strengthen that commitment.

It comes in a week which sees the Finnish government move a step further than other nations by making 1Mbps broadband a "legal right".

Fibre plans

"As yet the USO [Universal Service Obligation] or USC [Universal Service Commitment] has not been defined properly, the forthcoming Digital Economy bill and various groups working to implement it should hopefully flesh out the detail, but as is often the case we see grand plans announced, which are slowly watered down to cope with those harder-to-deal-with areas," said Andrew Ferguson, editor of broadband news site ThinkBroadband.

"In the UK we are at a juncture where a minister is calling for something tougher than what the original Digital Britain report laid out, but is certainly more in line with what many of the public we suspect always believed the report meant," he added.

The UK already has a USO for fixed line telephones, which means BT must provide service to every home.

However, there are clauses in it which allow the telecoms provider to ask for a contribution from the home-owner if the costs of installation are greater than £3,000.

Finland is also promising to make 100Mbps (megabits per second) broadband via fibre available to citizens by 2015, two years earlier than the UK's plans.

EU consults on Microsoft pledges

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

The European Union has begun an investigation to determine whether Microsoft is upholding pledges to curb anti-competitive practices.

It is consulting PC makers, software firms and consumers on Microsoft's offer to allow users to pick different browsers when they install Windows.

The bloc ruled in 2004 that Microsoft had abused its dominant market position by freezing out rivals.

It said Microsoft must let competitors' products run on its operating system.

"The commission will formally market test proposals made by Microsoft to address concerns regarding the tying of Internet Explorer to the Windows PC operating system," said the EU's competition commissioner Neelie Kroes.

"The preliminary view is that Microsoft's commitments would indeed address our concerns," she added.

"PC users should have an effective and unbiased choice between Internet Explorer and competing web browsers."

Long history

In July, Microsoft proposed a consumer choice screen that allowed users to pick from a number of different browsers.

The commission then asked Microsoft to improve the choice screen, which it has now done.

The latest proposal, and the one which the EU is consulting on, features a choice of 12 browsers.

"Today's decision is a significant step toward closing a decade-long chapter in competition law concerns in Europe," Microsoft said in a statement.

Back in 2004, the EU fined Microsoft and forced it to offer a version of its Windows operating system without Microsoft's own media player.

The company was also told to give rivals more information about how Windows works, so they could make their own software integrate better with the operating system.

Microsoft appealed against the decision but lost its case in 2007.

Robot fish could prevent crashes

2009-10-04T17:22:00.001-07:00

Robots that mimic the behaviour of fish have been developed by Japanese car firm Nissan, who believe the technique can be used in crash avoidance systems.

The tiny robots, called Eporo, can move in a fleet without bumping into their travelling companions.

It is the second time the firm has looked to the animal kingdom for inspiration for its designs.

Last year, the manufacturer unveiled its BR23C robot, which was modelled on the behaviour of bumblebees.

The bee also displays anti-collision behaviour but tends to fly solo.

The new three-wheeled robot, which will be shown off at Japanese design fair Ceatec on 6 October, is designed to travel in a group of up to seven vehicles.

Each uses a laser range-finder to measure the distance between obstacle.

The data is constantly shared between peers via radio, allowing the group to travel as a "shoal" without bumping into each other.

The technique allows the cars to travel side-by-side or quickly switch direction as a group.

"We, in a motorised world, have a lot to learn from the behaviour of a school of fish in terms of each fish's degree of freedom and safety," said Toshiyuki Andou, principal engineer of the project.

Court order served over Twitter

2009-10-02T22:33:00.001-07:00

The High Court has given permission for an injunction to be served via social-networking site Twitter.

The order is to be served against an unknown Twitter user who anonymously posts to the site using the same name as a right-wing political blogger.

The order demands the anonymous Twitter user reveal their identity and stop posing as Donal Blaney, who blogs at a site called Blaney's Blarney.

The order says the Twitter user is breaching the copyright of Mr Blaney.

He told BBC News that the content being posted to Twitter in his name was "mildly objectionable".

Mr Blaney turned to Twitter to serve the injunction rather than go through the potentially lengthy process of contacting Twitter headquarters in California and asking it to deal with the matter.

UK law states that an injunction does not have to be served in person and can be delivered by several different means including fax or e-mail.

Danvers Baillieu, a solicitor specialising in technology, said it was possible for anyone to approach the court about any method of serving an injunction if the traditional methods are unavailable.

"The rules already allow for electronic service of some documents, so that they can be sent by e-mail, and it should also be possible to use social networks," he said.

Mr Blaney decided to use Twitter after a recent case in Australia where Facebook was used to serve a court order.

The blogger, who is also a lawyer and owns the firm serving the order, said that he thought that it was the first time Twitter had been used to deliver a court order.

The injunction - known as the Blaney's Blarney Order - is due to be served at 1930 BST and will include a link to the text of the full court order.

Sony shows off 3D TV technology

2009-10-02T07:02:00.000-07:00

Sony has shown off a new single-lens camera able to capture 3D images.
The majority of existing 3D set-ups use two-camera systems to record images tailored specifically for the left and right eye of the viewer.
The new camera takes a single image that is split by mirrors and recorded on two sensors, resulting in a "smoother" picture, according to Sony.
The prototype camera will be unveiled at next week's Ceatec electronics show in Tokyo, Japan.
Viewers will be able to watch the 3D images using special polarised glasses. Without them, they will just see normal 2D television, according to the firm.
The firm said the camera, which is able to capture images very quickly, is especially suited to sporting events.

Desalination Closer to Reality in California

2008-08-27T21:49:00.000-07:00

Salt Be Gone | Get Discovery Earth Video

California is closer to hosting the largest desalination plant in the country, but not everybody thinks it's a good idea.

Some environmental groups remain concerned about the impacts of the plant on the coastal environment, despite attempts to mitigate these concerns by Poseidon Resources of Stamford, Conn., the company that wants to build the plant. The plant would turn seawater into drinking water and provide a drought-proof water supply for about 300,000 people.

Whether or not the plant goes forward may have an impact on similar proposals around the country. There are, for example, an estimated 17 other proposed desalination plants just in California. Interest in desalination is likely to grow as pressure increases on the nation's water supply, especially in the West.

Late last week the California State Land Commission granted the last remaining permit that Poseidon needed to go ahead with construction of the 50-million-gallon-per-day facility in Carlsbad, Calif., near San Diego, which they aim to have running by 2011.

But Marco Gonzalez, an attorney representing the Surfrider Foundation, a non-profit environmental group based in Encinitas that focuses on waves and beaches, said Surfrider would continue to work to block the plant's construction by following up with lawsuits.

"We recognize that desalination is a likely part of our future water supply portfolio," he told Discovery News. "But our concern is that its time has not yet arrived."

The environmental concerns with desalination are threefold.

The first concern is that the desalination process produces one gallon of super-salty water -- twice as saline as normal seawater -- for every gallon of drinking water. Discharging this hypersaline water back into the sea would create a zone of extra salty water that could harm marine organisms.

To get around this, Poseidon plans to locate their facility in the same spot as a power plant that uses seawater for cooling. The power plant uses several times as much water as Poseidon needs, so Poseidon can dilute the salty water with the water from the power plant before returning it to sea.

However, there are concerns with the environmental impacts of such power plants, too, and several sources suggest that the lifetime of this plant is limited. Poseidon has agreed to maintain the lagoon where the plant would be located if the power plant leaves, and to continue to dilute the water before releasing it.

The second environmental concern is perhaps the biggest, according to Jeffrey Graham, a marine biologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who consulted with Poseidon on the project. "I think the major issue that still is a bone of contention is the extent to which organisms are killed by the process of withdrawing seawater."

Sucking up large amounts of seawater brings with it tiny fish larvae and plankton that are killed as they pass through the desalination process. The need to dilute the saltwater means larger quantities of water must be pulled through the system, increasing the larvae and plankton losses.

"It was dealt with by Poseidon agreeing to pay for the reestablishment of 55 acres of wetland, which is a big commitment," Graham said.

However Surfrider finds this tradeoff unacceptable. He argues the company should draw water from beneath the sand, rather than from the open ocean since that would prevent the entrainment of marine life. Such intakes are more expensive.

Finally, desalination is an energy-intensive process, so Poseidon will purchase carbon offsets for the difference in energy between pumping the equivalent amount of water in from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the amount needed for desalination.

This is also controversial, because introducing new water from the desalination plant may not actually reduce the amount of water taken from the Delta. "The problem is, well, maybe people are going to want to do both," Graham noted. "That's the whole issue of growth."

"We clearly have an emerging water crisis here in California," said Scripps oceanographer Scott Jenkins, who also consulted with Poseidon. "Excessive requirements for mitigation could render these plants infeasible. It's a fine line between avoiding a water crisis versus coming up with a rational balance of protection for the environment."

Coming up with realistic regulations for such plants now, Graham and Jenkins argue, will make it easier to construct environmentally appropriate plants down the line as the water crisis deepens.

"When we get into emergency situations, it's easy to suspend the normal rules that apply," Graham added. "We quickly get into a situation where we're making a decision to solve a problem without thinking about the long-term effects."

Gonzales disagrees and Heather Cooley of the Pacific Institute in Oakland argues it's not yet time to cede conservation-minded restrictions.

"My sense is that in California there are still a lot of other alternatives at lower cost with fewer environmental impacts," said Cooley. "We have made some progress on water conservation and efficiency, but we still have a long way to go."

Recovering storm water and recycling municipal water for non-potable or potable use are other options, she noted.

The controversey around the Poseidon plant may be an emblem of what's to come. Cooley notes that there are 17 other proposed desalination plants in California and, as she said, "Many have been waiting to see what happens with this plant."

Motorcycles Designed to Run on Air

2008-08-15T06:54:00.000-07:00

We may be driving on air in the next few years. That is, we may be driving vehicles powered by compressed air, instead of gasoline or diesel fuel.
Researchers Yu-Ta Shen and Yean-Ren Hwang of the National Central University in Taiwan have developed an air-powered motorcycle, which uses the energy in compressed air, rather than gas, to drive the motor.
"In Taiwan, air pollution is a very serious problem in the city," Hwang said. Twenty percent of all air pollution comes from motorcycles, he added, especially carbon monoxide and unburned hydrocarbons. These emissions are worse from motorcycles and scooters than cars.
Since the only thing coming out of the new motorcycle's tailpipe is air, large-scale adoption of the new technology could take a big bite out of air pollution in Taiwan, where motorcycles are the most popular form of transportation, or in other places where motorcycles represent a large proportion of traffic.
The motorcycle would still require energy to compress the air needed to power the engine. The amount of pollution associated with that energy will depend on what kind of a power plant provides electricity to the area in question.
The current prototype can hold a little more than two and a half gallons of compressed air, which would carry the bike and driver about three-quarters of a mile.
In the future, the tank size will be increased three to four times, and the maximum pressure the tank can hold will be increased so that the motorcycle could go almost 20 miles without a refill, Hwang said, "which would be adequate for usage in the city. We would need an air compressor to refuel, most likely at a fueling station."
They published their work in the journal Applied Energy.
Other air-powered vehicle experts are not convinced that a motorcycle is the best use of the technology.
"We don't think it's a viable product because you're talking about a very, very limited amount of compressed air you can put on a bike," said Shiva Vencat, Executive Vice President of MDI, Inc. in Newport, N.Y., and CEO of Zero Pollution Motors, who has licensed MDI's air vehicle technology."We have a vehicle that will address that market, but it's not a motorcycle," Vencat added. He can't release more information about that yet, but it will be a smaller vehicle that would fill a similar niche in countries like Taiwan where motorcycles are prevalent.
Zero Pollution Motors plans to bring a six-seater air-powered car to the U.S. market after competing in the Automotive X Prize race in September 2009. The X Prize offers $10 million prize to a marketable vehicle that exceeds a fuel economy of 100 miles per gallon.
The ZPM car runs on compressed air only when traveling under 35 miles per hour. At higher speeds, the car burns fuel to warm up the air, expanding it and allowing the vehicle to travel on less air per mile. Some of the expanded air also goes back to the air tank, recharging the compressed air supply.
This system can operate at more than 100 miles per gallon, Vencat said. With an eight- or 10-gallon fuel tank, the cars should have a range of 800-1,000 miles.
The motor can also be plugged in and operated as a compressor to refill the air tank.
Vencat expects that fueling stations will arise as the car gains popularity.
"The good thing is you could put a compressed air station on campuses, in malls," he said. "You don't have the security situation that you do with gasoline."
ZPM plans to start a plant to manufacture the cars by late 2010 or early 2011.

Ocean Dead Zones Going Global

2008-08-15T06:44:00.000-07:00

Like a chronic disease spreading through the body, "dead zones" with too little oxygen for life are expanding in the world's oceans.
"We have to realize that hypoxia is not a local problem," said Robert J. Diaz of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. "It is a global problem and it has severe consequences for ecosystems."
"It's getting to be a problem of such a magnitude that it is starting to affect the resources that we pull out of the sea to feed ourselves," he added.
Diaz and co-author Rutger Rosenberg report in Friday's edition of the journal Science that there are now more than 400 dead zones around the world, double what the United Nations reported just two years ago.
"If we screw up the energy flow within our systems we could end up with no crabs, no shrimp, no fish. That is where these dead zones are heading unless we stop their growth," Diaz said in a telephone interview.
The newest dead areas are being found in the Southern Hemisphere -- South America, Africa, parts of Asia -- Diaz said.
Some of the increase is due to the discovery of low-oxygen areas that may have existed for years and are just being found, he said, but others are actually newly developed.
Pollution-fed algae, which deprive other living marine life of oxygen, is the cause of most of the world's dead zones. Scientists mainly blame fertilizer and other farm run-off, sewage and fossil-fuel burning.
Diaz and Rosenberg, of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, conclude that it would be unrealistic to try to go back to preindustrial levels of runoff.
"Farmers aren't doing this on purpose," Diaz said. "The farmers would certainly prefer to have their (fertilizer) on the land rather than floating down the river."
He said he hopes that as fertilizers become more and more expensive farmers will begin seriously looking at ways to retain them on the land.
New low-oxygen areas have been reported in Samish Bay of Puget Sound, Yaquina Bay in Oregon, prawn culture ponds in Taiwan, the San Martin River in northern Spain and some fjords in Norway, Diaz said.
A portion of Big Glory Bay in New Zealand became hypoxic after salmon farming cages were set up, but began recovering when the cages were moved, he said.A dead zone has been newly reported off the mouth of the Yangtze River in China, Diaz said, but the area has probably been hypoxic since the 1950s. "We just didn't know about it," he said.
Some of the reports are being published for the first time in journals accessible to Western scientists, he said.
Nancy N. Rabalais, executive director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, said she was not surprised at the increase in dead zones.
"There have been many more reported, but there truly are many more. What has happened in the industrialized nations with agribusiness as well that led to increased flux of nutrients from the land to the estuaries and the seas is now happening in developing countries," said Rabalais, who was not part of Diaz' research team.
She said she was told during a 1989 visit to South America that rivers there were too large to have the same problems as the Mississippi River. "Now many of their estuaries and coastal seas are suffering the same malady."
"The increase is a troubling sign for estuarine and coastal waters, which are among some of the most productive waters on the globe.

First Greek Mummy Once Led Privileged Life

2008-08-10T06:20:00.000-07:00

The Perks of Privilege

The first evidence of artificial mummification in ancient Greece lies in a lead coffin at the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, according to a Swiss-Greek research team.

Dating to 300 A.D., when the Romans ruled Greece, the partially mummified remains belong to a middle-aged woman. Her Roman-type marble sarcophagus was unearthed in 1962 during archaeological excavations in the eastern cemetery of Thessaloniki, which was used from the Hellenistic to the Byzantine Periods for burials and other rituals.

Wrapped in bandages and covered with a gold-embroidered purple silk cloth, the woman lay on a wooden pallet.

"Besides the clothes, remnants of soft tissue as well as the individual's original hairstyle and eyebrows were exceptionally well preserved," Christina Papageorgopoulou of the University of Zurich and colleagues wrote in a paper to be published in the Journal of Archaeological Science shortly.

Using scanning electron microscopy, X-ray analysis, gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, the researchers discovered the probable means of mummification.

"The embalming technology was quite sophisticated," said study co-leader Frank Röhli, head of the Swiss Mummy Project. "We found different chemical components, mostly originating from oils. There were also spices. It looks like the embalming technique was partially taken over from the Egyptians."

Up to now, only written historic sources referred to embalming in ancient Greece. For instance, Alexander the Great is reported to have been preserved in beeswax.

The analysis of the mummified remains showed the presence of various substances including myrrh, fats and resins.

"This is the first time that such substances were identified in material from this specific geographical and temporal setting," the researchers concluded.

Although there are no written accounts describing the practice of mummification in ancient Greece, it is known that the Greeks were familiar with the extraction of essential oils and resins from the plants and were aware of their antimicrobial and bactericidal properties.

The researchers believe the lead coffin might have helped protect the mummy. However, since no lead -- a natural disinfectant -- was found within the tissues, the coffin did not play a key role in the preservation process.

Made specifically for this corpse, the lead coffin indicates a high social status. "This is also confirmed by minimum osteoarthritic lesions and complete lack of musculoskeletal stress markers. It suggests less intense labor activities during life," Röhli told Discovery News.

Analysis of the mummified remains revealed that the woman was between 50 and 60 years of age and 5 foot 3 inches tall. She had brown hair and good oral hygiene and did not suffer from infectious disease, inflammation or malnutrition. Some mystery, however, remains.

Intact Mastodon Skeleton Unearthed in Romania

2008-08-10T06:18:00.000-07:00

Artist's Conception

Miners in Romania have unearthed the skeleton of a 2.5 million-year-old mastodon, believed to be one of the best preserved in Europe, a local official said Friday.

They stumbled on the remains of the mammoth-like animal during excavations in June at a coal mine in the village of Racosul de Sus, around 100 miles northwest of Bucharest, according to Laszlo Demeter, a historian.

"This is one of the most spectacular finds in Europe," paleontologist Vlad Codrea, who examined the skeleton, said. "For Romania it is unique."

The mastadon became extinct in Europe two to three million years ago. Codrea, of Babes Bolyai University in Cluj, said 90 percent of the skeleton's bones were intact, with damage to the skull and tusks.

He also said that he hoped the find would help paleontologists to form a better image of the animals and vegetation present in the area 2.5 million years ago.

"(This find) will open up an area of (paleontological) research in the area," said Alexandru Andresanu, a professor at the Bucharest Geology Faculty in a telephone interview.

"It is sensational. To discover a near complete skeleton (like this) is unique in Romania and a rarity in the world," said Marton Wentzel, a researcher of vertebrates at the Three Rivers Land museum in Oradea, western Romania. "It is important because it can give us complete information about the flora and fauna or the era."

The animal -- 10 feet high and 23 feet long -- was a forefather of today's elephants. It is related to the mammoth, but fed on leaves instead of grazing and had straight tusks, instead of curved ones. The reason it died out was probably due to climate change, said Codrea.

The skeleton will be fully dug out in two months' time, Demeter said. Research will be conducted on the bones and the skeleton will then be displayed in the nearby museum of Baraolt.

Phoenix Lander Tastes Martian Water

2008-08-02T06:09:00.000-07:00

Phoenix From Above | View More Phoenix Images

Exposed

Aug. 1, 2008 -- The Phoenix spacecraft has tasted Martian water for the first time, scientists reported Thursday.

By melting icy soil in one of its lab instruments, the robot confirmed the presence of frozen water lurking below the Martian permafrost. Until now, evidence of ice in Mars' north pole region has been largely circumstantial.

In 2002, the orbiting Odyssey spacecraft spied what looked like a reservoir of buried ice. After Phoenix arrived, it found what looked like ice in a hard patch underneath its landing site and changes in a trench indicated some ice had turned to gas when exposed to the sun.

Scientists popped open champagne when they received confirmation Wednesday that the soil contained ice.

"We've now finally touched it and tasted it," William Boynton of the University of Arizona said during a news conference in Tucson on Thursday. "From my standpoint, it tastes very fine."

Phoenix landed on Mars on May 25 on a three-month hunt to determine if it could support life. It is conducting experiments to learn whether the ice ever melted in the red planet's history that could have led to a more hospitable environment. It is also searching for the elusive organic-based compounds essential for simple life forms to emerge.

The ice confirmation earlier this week was accidental. After two failed attempts to deliver ice-rich soil to one of Phoenix's eight lab ovens, researchers decided to collect pure soil instead. Surprisingly, the sample was mixed with a little bit of ice, said Boynton, who heads the oven instrument.

Researchers were able to prove the soil had ice in it because it melted in the oven at 32 degrees -- the melting point of ice -- and released water molecules. Plans called for baking the soil at even higher temperatures next week to sniff for carbon-based compounds.

The latest scientific finding is the first piece of good news for a mission that has been dogged by difficulties in recent weeks.

An electrical short on one of Phoenix's test ovens threatened the instrument, but scientists said the problem has not recurred. The lander, which spent the past several weeks drilling into the hard ice, also had trouble delivering ice shavings into an oven until the success this week.

NASA said Phoenix has achieved minimum success thus far. The space agency on Thursday announced that it would extend the mission for an extra five weeks until the end of September, adding $2 million more to the $420 million price tag, said Michael Meyer, Mars chief scientist at NASA headquarters.

Unlike the twin rovers roaming near the Martian equator, Phoenix's lifetime cannot be extended much more because it likely won't have enough power to survive the Martian winter.

The science team also released a color panorama of Phoenix's landing site using more than 400 images taken by Phoenix. The view "was painstakingly stitched together," said Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, who headed the effort.

The portrait revealed a Martian surface that was coated with dust and dotted with rocks.

First Star in Universe Grew Fast

2008-08-02T06:07:00.000-07:00

Star Light, Star Bright, First Star...

Aug. 1, 2008 -- Star light, star bright. The first star grew fast, but began slight. The first cosmological object formed in the universe was a tiny protostar with a mass of about 1 percent of our sun, according to U.S. and Japanese researchers who spent years developing a complex computer simulation of what it was like after the Big Bang that formed the universe.

This protostar was surrounded by a giant mass of gas and it grew to 100 times the sun's mass over about 10,000 years, according to Naoki Yoshida of Nagoya University in Japan. That is very rapid growth on a cosmic scale.

"The first stars were very different from stars like the sun," explained Harvard astronomy professor Lars Hernquist, co-author of a paper describing the findings in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

While the sun is mostly hydrogen, it also contains oxygen and carbon, he said. The early stars were primarily hydrogen and helium, and were much more luminous and had a shorter life.

"These differences have important implications for what happened afterward," he said at a teleconference.

"This general picture of star formation, and the ability to compare how stellar objects form in different time periods and regions of the universe, will eventually allow investigation into the origins of life and planets," Hernquist said.

The study may prove to be a "Cosmic Rosetta stone" suggested Volker Bromm, an assistant astronomy professor at the University of Texas.

Bromm, who was not part of the research team, said in a commentary that the findings could help researchers finally unlock the problem of understanding star formation, much as the Rosetta stone led to the understanding of ancient Egyptian writing.

The typical lifetime of these early stars was a million years or so, while a star like the sun can continue for 5 billion years.

Because of their short lifespan, none of the first generation of stars is still around, Hernquist said. But "we do see stars in our galaxy that have very different properties than our sun, and it's possible these are second-generation stars."

In the simulation, gravity acted on tiny variations of the density of matter, gases and the so-called "dark matter" of the universe after the Big Bang, forming the early stage of a star. That protostar would evolve into a massive star capable of synthesizing heavy elements, not just in later generations of stars, but soon after the Big Bang, according to the analysis.

Hernquist said the "abundance of elements in the universe has increased as stars have accumulated, and the formation and destruction of stars continues to spread these elements further across the universe."

"Dr. Yoshida has taken the study of primordial star formation to a new level with this simulation, but it still gets us only to the halfway point toward our final goal. It is like laying the foundation of a skyscraper," Bromm said. "We must continue our studies in this area to understand how the initially tiny protostar grows, layer by layer, to eventually form a massive star."

The research was funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Science and Technology of Japan and the Mitsubishi Foundation.

A Point of No Return for Greenland's Ice

2008-07-26T09:59:00.000-07:00

Every molecule of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere brings Greenland's ice sheet closer to irreversible melting -- and a sea level rise of more than 20 feet.

A new analysis suggests that if we pass a certain threshold of total emissions, the ice sheet will melt completely, no matter how high or low a peak CO2 concentration is reached or how quickly emissions are reduced afterward.

"A peak warming for a very short period will have an impact, but it might not be enough to cause long-term melting," said John Church of the Center for Australian Weather and Climate Research in Hobart, Australia, who was not a part of the study. "It's a matter of getting the temperatures up and keeping them up."

"We show that it's not really a question of how much CO2 in terms of 700 or 800 ppm [parts per million] in the atmosphere," said study author Gilles Ramstein of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Gif-sur-Yvette, France "It's really about cumulative doses. That means you can get a deglaciation of Greenland at 700 ppm if you reach this value and stay on that value for a long time."

The researchers used a climate model designed to reach over very long timescales -- tens of thousands of years -- to test the effect of different emissions scenarios on the extent of Greenland ice melting over millennia.

Their results indicate that regardless of the peak CO2 concentration, if total emissions surpass 3,800 billion tons of carbon, the Greenland ice sheet will melt completely over thousands of years. So far, humans have emitted about 380 billion tons of carbon from fossil fuel combustion, according to the researchers.

It will take longer -- perhaps thousands of years longer -- to melt Greenland completely, the longer it takes to reach the threshold. But once the threshold is passed, the melting will be irreversible, because CO2 stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, and because positive feedback cycles -- where loss of snow increases heat absorption by darker, exposed surfaces -- will propagate melting.

And, the researchers emphasize, the true threshold may be lower than they calculate.

"What we found here is largely an underestimate," Ramstein said. "We have a model that is quite simple, with coarse resolution so that it can simulate for thousands of years. You might actually get complete melting for lower carbon emissions." The work was published in Geophysical Research Letters.

Scenarios below the 3,800-billion-ton threshold led to a reduction in the ice sheet size of 10 to 63 percent over the course of the simulations, still a concerning loss. "Even one meter of sea level rise is a complete catastrophe," Ramstein said.

"Rates of a meter per century are feasible," Church said, so it will not take thousands of years to feel the effects of melting.

"This is only the northern part of the story," Ramstein added. "There is also a southern part, in Antarctica. In the south there is the ice shelf. This makes west Antarctica very vulnerable to changes."

Pharaonic Boat to Be Excavated, Reassembled

2008-07-26T09:56:00.000-07:00

Ancient wood hidden for millennia in an underground chamber beside the Great Pyramid of Khufu in Giza will soon be excavated and reassembled into a unique pharaonic boat, according to Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The glorious heap of beams and planks can now be seen for the first time by the public just as it was left by the ancient Egyptians 4,500 years ago -- fully disassembled and carefully stacked. Tourists can view images of the inside of the boat pit from a camera inserted through a hole in the chamber's ceiling.

View a slideshow about the boat here.

"We are currently reviewing a Japanese proposal to fully excavate the wood fragments and rebuild the boat. The project will take five years and will cost $10 million," Hawass told Discovery News in a phone interview.

Archaeologists have long known the existence of a boat buried 10 meters (33 feet) below the last resting place of the 4th dynasty Pharoah Khufu (2589-2566 B.C.), or "Cheops" as the Greeks called him.

Two pits carved into the bedrock came to light in 1954, when a mountain of debris was cleared from the south face of the Great Pyramid.

Almost perfectly preserved, the cedar timbers excavated from the first pit were painstakingly reassembled into an extraordinary boat. About 142 feet long and made of 1,224 components, Khufu's first ship now stands resurrected in a specially built museum near the Great Pyramid.

While evidence of a second pit very near to the first one was noted first in 1954, it took some 31 years before Egyptian authorities investigated the underground chamber by inserting a camera through thick slabs of stone in 1985.

Now a Japanese team from Waseda University, led by Egyptologist Sakuji Yoshimura, has submitted a proposal to excavate, restore, rebuild and transport the boat along with its mate to the Grand Egyptian Museum. Without a prompt intervention, the vessel would be at risk of serious damage, the Japanese team said.

"Although the boat has been sealed in the pit for the last 4,500 years, it seems that in 1954 the archaeologist who discovered it opened a small hole, and insects were able to get inside. These insects may have caused some damage to the wood," Hawass said.

Similarities between the timbers of the first ship and what archaeologists have been able to see from video footage, support the theory that the two were sister ships.

"There is no question about that. The ships are about the same size and probably have the same overall appearance. Both have similar measurements for plank dimensions and fastenings, and both have pre-fabricated cabins for the deck," Cheryl Ward, one of the maritime archaeologists who evaluated the first video footage back in the 1980s, told Discovery News.

Ward, the author of "Sacred and Secular: Ancient Egyptian Ships and Boats," confirmed that the wood, mainly cedar imported from Lebanon, is rather damaged.

"There seems to be less volume of wood compared to the first pit, not because the boat is smaller but because there is more degradation. We did not see any evidence for termites, but one of the first things that we saw actually was a large beetle. So there is an opening somewhere that lets the insects come and go," Ward said.

Beautifully engineered, the boats reveal a level of skill that rivals the pyramids themselves. And like the pyramids, they raise many questions: What was their purpose? Was the embalmed Khufu taken to his pyramid in one of these ships? And why were there two boats? But most of all, why did the ancient Egyptians first build and then disassemble and buried two expensive, full-sized royal ships at the base of the Great Pyramid?

According to Hawass, the boats were symbolic vessels, and were not used in the funerary procession to carry Khufu's body from his palace at Memphis to his tomb at Giza.

"It is my belief that the boats were buried to serve symbolically -- they would transport the dead king on his daily journey with the sun god across the sky," Hawass explained.

The ancient Egyptians believed that the sun traveled from east to west in a "day boat," moving to a "night boat" for the return trip to the underworld.

"The second boat was intended to carry the king across the daytime sky, while the first one was for his night voyage," Hawass said.

He believes that the king would have been thought to travel through a channel that leads from the south side of the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid.

"The oars would have been used symbolically by the sun god to kill the wild creatures that threatened him on his journey," Hawass said

As for the boat being disassembled -- that wasn't a problem.

"The sun god knew how to reconstruct it. That's why they dismantled these ships and buried them in a pit," Hawass explained.

One of the most interesting aspects about these boats is the technology with which they were built and then dismantled. Basically, they were stored like Ikea furniture -- pre-fabricated and ready for assembly.

In the case of Khufu's first ship, the timbers were carefully placed in the underground chamber, and stacked in a sequence that basically led to the vessel's finished form.

"The Egyptians had a very strong understanding on how to treat, conserve and recycle wood timbers," Ward said. "Amazingly, they were able to take these boats apart and package them for travel."

Oldest Bible Pieced Together

2008-07-22T17:57:00.000-07:00

The oldest surviving copy of the New Testament, a 4th century version that had its Gospels and epistles spread across the world, is being made whole again -- online.

The British Library says the full text of the Codex Sinaiticus will be available to Web users by next July, digitally reconnecting parts that are held in Britain, Russia, Germany and a monastery in Egypt's Sinai Desert.

A preview of the Codex, which also has some parts of the Old Testament, will hit the Web on Thursday -- the Book of Psalms and the Gospel of Mark.

"Only a few people have ever had the opportunity to see more than a couple of pages of the (Codex)," said Scot McKendrick, the British Library's head of Western manuscripts. The Web site will give everyone access to a "unique treasure," he said.

Discovered at the Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai by German Bible scholar Constantine Tischendorf in the mid-19th century, much of the Codex eventually wound up in Russia -- just how exactly the British Library won't say, citing lingering sensitivity over the circumstances surrounding its removal from the monastery.

The British Library bought 347 pages from Soviet authorities in 1933. Forty-three pages are at the University Library in Leipzig, Germany, and six fragments are at the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg. And in 1975, monks stumbled on 12 more pages and 40 fragments stashed in a hidden room at the monastery.

Biblical scholars are thrilled at the news that the Codex Sinaiticus -- divided since Tischendorf's trip to the monastery in 1844 -- is finally being put back together, albeit virtually.

In the past, anyone wishing to examine the document first hand would have had to approach the British Library "on bended knee," said Christopher Tuckett, a professor of New Testament studies at Oxford University.

"To have it available just at the click of a button is fantastic," he said. "You could do in two seconds what would take hours and hours of flicking through the leaves."

Handwritten in Greek more than 1,600 years ago -- it isn't exactly clear where -- the surviving 400 or so pages carry a version of the New Testament that has a few interesting differences from the Bible used by Christians today.

The Gospel of Mark ends abruptly after Jesus' disciples discover his empty tomb, for example. Mark's last line has them leaving in fear.

"It cuts out the post--resurrection stories," said Juan Garces, curator of the Codex Sinaiticus Project. "That's a very odd way of ending a Gospel."

James Davila, a professor of early Jewish studies at St. Andrews University in Scotland, said the Codex also includes religious works foreign to the Roman Catholic and Protestant canons -- such as the "Epistle of Barnabas" and the "Shepherd of Hermas," a book packed with visions and parables.

Davila stressed that did not mean the works were necessarily considered Scripture by early Christians: They could have been bound with the Bible to save money.

The Codex itself is a fascinating artifact, representing the best of Western bookmaking, Garces said. The parchment was arranged in little multipage booklets called quires, which were then numbered in sequence.

"It was the cutting edge of technology in the 4th century," he said.

The British Library bound its quires into two volumes after their purchase from the Soviets, one of which is kept on show in a climate--controlled, bulletproof display case. Visitors can peer at the ancient book, but only see two pages at a time.

Dead Baby Penguins Wash Ashore by the Hundreds

2008-07-20T23:18:00.000-07:00

Hundreds of baby penguins swept from the icy shores of Antarctica and Patagonia are washing up dead on Rio de Janeiro's tropical beaches, rescuers and penguin experts said Friday.

More than 400 penguins, most of them young, have been found dead on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro state over the past two months, according to Eduardo Pimenta, superintendent for the state coastal protection and environment agency in the resort city of Cabo Frio.

While it is common here to find some penguins -- both dead and alive -- swept by strong ocean currents from the Strait of Magellan, Pimenta said there have been more this year than at any time in recent memory.

Rescuers and those who treat penguins are divided over the possible causes.

Thiago Muniz, a veterinarian at the Niteroi Zoo, said he believed overfishing has forced the penguins to swim further from shore to find fish to eat "and that leaves them more vulnerable to getting caught up in the strong ocean currents."

Niteroi, the state's biggest zoo, already has already received about 100 penguins for treatment this year and many are drenched in petroleum, Muniz said. The Campos oil field that supplies most of Brazil's oil lies offshore.

Muniz said he hadn't seen penguins suffering from the effects of other pollutants, but he pointed out that already dead penguins aren't brought in for treatment.

"Aside from the oil in the Campos basin, the pollution is lowering the animals' immunity, leaving them vulnerable to funguses and bacteria that attack their lungs," Pimenta said, quoting biologists who work with him.

But biologist Erli Costa of Rio de Janeiro's Federal University suggested weather patterns could be involved.

"I don't think the levels of pollution are high enough to affect the birds so quickly. I think instead we're seeing more young and sick penguins because of global warming, which affects ocean currents and creates more cyclones, making the seas rougher," Costa said.

Costa said the vast majority of penguins turning up are baby birds that have just left the nest and are unable to out-swim the strong ocean currents they encounter while searching for food.

Every year, Brazil airlifts dozens of penguins back to Antarctica or Patagonia.

Web-Crawling Program ID's Disease Outbreaks

2008-07-18T22:21:00.000-07:00

Scientists are searching within the virtual world and finding real viruses.

Every hour, HealthMap, an infectious disease-tracking Web site, culls through news Web sites, public health list servs, the World Health Organization's online pages, and other Web sites in six different languages to pinpoint outbreaks of disease that real-world doctors can then act on.

"We were originally thinking about how we could expand disease surveillance and pick up outbreaks earlier than traditional methods," said John Brownstein of Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital Boston, who created HealthMap in September of 2006 with Clark Friefeld, a software developer at Harvard Medical School.

"It was a pilot project, a side gig for us," explained Brownstein.

About nine months ago, HealthMap came to the attention of Google.org, the philanthropic arm of the Internet search giant, which began to fund the team. Then, as Brownstein recalled, "all of a sudden, it just took off."

HealthMap gathers information from the Internet and filters it, removing, for example, duplicated or irrelevant information. It can pinpoint an incident of bubonic plague in Siberia, for example, while ensuring that a "plague" of home foreclosures in northern California doesn't show up on the free access Google Maps.

So far the program identifies about 95 percent of all disease outbreaks, sometimes days before the World Health Organization or the Centers of Disease Control announce them.

The most recent example of this is the ongoing salmonella outbreak in the United States that has sickened more than 1,000 people and the cause of which is still unknown. HealthMap detected the outbreak before the CDC announced anything.

"This will definitely save lives," said Larry Madoff, editor of ProMED, an infectious disease monitoring Web site run by the International Society for Infectious Disease.

"This is a good step forward," said Madoff. "[HealthMap] helps us predict how disease outbreaks will happen."

ProMed, unlike HealthMap, uses human moderators, not mathematical algorithms, who specialize in geographic regions or specific areas of disease to identify public health outbreaks.

HealthMap isn't just for doctors, specialists and public health officials, however. If travelers are heading to Paraguay they can see if there is an instance of Yellow Fever, for instance, and get vaccinated before they leave.

There is room for improvement however, says Madoff -- and Brownstein agrees. The HealthMap team is expanding operations and increasing the amount of detailed information for each particular outbreak and incorporating more "noisy" sources of information, such as blogs and chat rooms.

These sources can be less reliable than traditional sources but could alert authorities to outbreaks much sooner than traditional detection methods.

"We hope to improve that score of 95 percent by picking up that needle in the haystack, the quiet, early indication of potentially serious outbreaks," said Brownstein.

Giant Laser in the Works to Achieve Fusion

2008-07-18T06:27:00.000-07:00

In the movie "Spiderman II," the web-slinging hero stops the creation of a tritium-fueled laser fusion machine. Doctor Octopus's theory was right, but his machine was too small.

Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California are building their own laser fusion machine that is 10 stories tall, 400 feet long and fueled with tritium (and deuterium).

The goal of the project, known as the National Ignition Facility (NIF), is to create such intense heat and pressure that the fuel, both isotopes of the element hydrogen, will fuse together to form helium.

Researchers expect that reaction will release massive amounts of energy that could one day provide nearly unlimited and environmentally friendly power to the world, advance basic scientific research and ensure the effectiveness of the nation's nuclear warheads.

"It is absolutely essential that we try this," said Richard Petrasso of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Plasma Science and Fusion Center who is also working on the NIF.

"If we can in fact achieve fusion and make copious amounts of energy, that would be a clear achievement."

To achieve nuclear fusion, scientists will cool samples of deuterium and tritium -- two isotopes of the element hydrogen that have extra neutrons -- to just above absolute zero in a glass-capped cylinder about the size of a quarter.

Then 192 laser beams, split into two groups, will shine onto the fuel, heating it up to about the point of ignition.

Some of the energy will explode outwards, but some of the energy will further compress the innermost core of the fuel, compressing it so much that two hydrogen atoms will fuse together and create one helium atom.

Nuclear ignition, as Petrasso explains, is like a smoldering log suddenly bursting into flames.

"Once you reach certain conditions of pressure and temperature that log will spontaneously start to burn," said Petrasso. "But the fuel for NIF is nuclear, not chemical, and because of that we will get much more energy."

That reaction powers and creates similar, but controlled conditions found in huge supernovae many times the size of the sun and thermonuclear warheads, both of which will also be research focuses at the NIF, said Bob Hirschfeld, also at the NIF.

Since exploding nuclear warheads both above and below ground is now forbidden, the military has a difficult time telling if its stockpile of nuclear weapons works.

For those worried about the prospect of either a supernovae or thermonuclear explosion stemming from the project, Hirschfeld says not to worry.

"The amount of fuel being used is smaller than a BB," said Hirschfeld. "And the reaction is not self-sustaining," meaning that without the lasers the reaction will fizzle out harmlessly.

The target chamber is also encased in aluminum, then in 16 inches of concrete, which is then encased with another round of concrete.

The lasers can only fire every few hours because of the extreme heat generated by the 500 trillion watts, more than 1,000 times the power generated in the United States at any moment, necessary to power the lasers.

Despite its size and energy consumption, the goal of cheap energy has attracted other countries to nuclear fusion as well.

Scientists in France and the U.K. are working on other laser-based fusion plans. Other groups, notably the ITER experiment to be based in France, are trying to reach ignition through magnetic fields.

However nuclear fusion is achieved, the result would be a boon for humanity.

"The great thing about fusion is the fuel is widely available to all nations, it's a relatively benign form of energy, and there isn't long-lived radioactive waste," said Ron Davidson of Princeton University who is not involved in the NIF.

"It would be a great scientific step forward if the NIF achieves ignition and I personally believe that they will."

Fast-Spoiling Pear Mystery Solved

2008-07-17T08:47:00.000-07:00

Pears spoil more quickly than apples because they're out of breath, according to European researchers.

The finding could lead to new ways of storing pears to prevent them from rotting on the way to the fruit bowl.

Pieter Verboven and his colleagues from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) have published the findings in the journal Plant Physiology.

After being picked from the tree, apples and pears continue to 'breathe.' To keep the fruit healthy, a minimum level of oxygen must be supplied to all of its cells. If this does not happen, the fruit turns brown.

To understand why pears spoil more quickly than apples, Verboven and his team placed samples of each fruit in the path of a synchrotron beam. The beam was used to create 3D images that have a resolution of one thousandth of a millimeter.

Researchers have hypothesized that apples and pears contain microscopic pathways between each cell, thereby allowing oxygen to pass into the fruit.

The synchrotron images revealed that apples contain large, irregular cavities between cells, while in pears the cavities have the shape of tiny, interconnected channels.

They found the voids in apple were often larger than the surrounding cells, and some cells were not connected to voids.

In comparison, the voids inside pears were smaller than the cells. Each cell was surrounded by a tight and continuous network of voids.

"It is still unclear how airways in the fruit develop and why apples have cavity structures and pears micro-channel networks," said Verboven.

"The micro-channels are so small that oxygen supply to the fruit core is very limited, and cells are quickly 'out of breath' when oxygen levels fall below the safety threshold," he added.

The researchers believe their results provide a better understanding of how the fruit degrades after harvest and explain why pears are more susceptible to decay during storage.

It is hoped the research can also be used in computer models to calculate oxygen concentration in individual cells of fruit tissues.

Sleep-Deprived? You Might Sound Drunk

2008-07-17T08:42:00.000-07:00

Lack of sleep alters the brain to such a degree that it can be heard in the way a person speaks, according to a new study that found sleep-deprived people sound almost drunk.

Bystanders might describe this type of speech as "tired-sounding" or "slurred," but experts studying the phenomenon say those descriptions aren't quite accurate.

"Slurred speech is an extreme form of unclearly articulated speech," lead author Suzanne Boyce told Discovery News.

"The differences we pick up are much less extreme, but they go in the same direction," added Boyce, a professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Cincinnati. "We'd call it 'faintly blurred,' rather than 'slurred,' speech."

Boyce and her team theorized that the differences between the speech of people lacking sleep and those who had a good night's rest would be comparable to the differences between conversational and "clear" speakers.

"Clear" speech occurs when a person articulates or even over-emphasizes syllables, words and phrases -- such as when addressing a formal gathering, talking to people who are hard of hearing or for whom the spoken language is not their native tongue.

A word like "police," for example, might sound more like "blees" in conversational speech, but like "poe-lees" in clear speech.

Boyce explained that "the process is largely subconscious," but when people articulate more "they add more acoustic information bits to the acoustic signal." Computers can then detect these bits of information and note "landmarks," such as marking the puff of air released by the mouth when producing "t" or "k" sounds.

The researchers documented these changes and then applied the same analysis to recordings of test subjects who read sentences aloud and were asked to give driving directions approximately 10 hours since last sleep, then 34 and, finally, 58 hours.

The participants were allowed to eat and drink water, but not coffee or cola.

The findings were recently presented at the Acoustics08 meeting in Paris.

As expected, the sleep-deprived speakers gradually lost their ability to articulate, producing fewer detectible landmarks. Oddly enough, however, when such people hear themselves, they think they sound fine.

Boyce explained that "people lose awareness of how clearly they are speaking when they are tired." In the future, the research may be used to train 911 employees, communication professionals, and therapists who work with the hearing impaired.

Outside listeners, however, appear to have no trouble figuring out that the speaker missed some sleep.

"Listeners seem to clue in on other aspects, like sighs, long breaths and pauses in the recording, or even yawns, if they are audible," Boyce said, adding that if the person can see the speaker, they may also detect visual cues, "like posture, skin tone, eye gaze" and more.

Although not an optimal solution, Wake Forest University School of Medicine scientists have shown that the effects of sleep deprivation can be reversed when given a dose of the naturally occurring brain peptide orexin-A. This chemical, normally secreted by brain neurons, regulates sleep. The brains of sleep-deprived people produce it, but often not enough to achieve full alertness.

"These findings are significant because of their potential applicability," said Samuel Deadwyler, a professor of physiology and pharmacology at Wake Forest.

"This could benefit patients suffering from narcolepsy and other serious sleep disorders," he said, "but it also has applicability to shift workers, the military and many other occupations where sleep is often limited, yet cognitive demand remains high."

'Middle Earth' Mountains: Steep and Strong

2008-07-17T07:46:00.000-07:00

It's the composition of the rocks, not elfin magic, that makes New Zealand's mountains some of the steepest on Earth -- without being particularly prone to landslides.

A new survey of the mountain ranges that form the spine of New Zealand confirms the steepest are made almost entirely of tough but otherwise unexciting rocks called greywackes and schists.

The lack of variety, paired with a great range of climates and mountain growth rates throughout the ranges, makes the region an ideal test of the importance of rock types in determining how often the slopes fail and generate killer landslides.

"They're pretty boring rocks," confirmed avalanche and landslide researcher Oliver Korup of the Swiss Federal Research Institutes in Davos, Switzerland. They are simply petrified deep sea sediments that have been pushed up to form the mountains, he said. "They don't even have fossils."

Korup is the author a paper on the New Zealand mountains in the July issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

In general, there are three things that control the steepness of mountain slopes: 1) the rate the mountains are being uplifted, or growing, 2) the rate that erosion is wearing the mountains away, and 3) the strength of the rocks, as measured by their ability to pile up without collapsing as a landslide.

By measuring slopes and landslide frequencies in New Zealand, Korup found that regardless of the growth rates or rainfall in a particular mountain range, the slopes tend to be steeper than mountains elsewhere in the world. That suggests the only other variable -- rock type -- is especially important.

That is not, however, the way many geomorphologists have seen it in recent years, particularly when using computers to model landscape changes, explained geologist David Montgomery of the University of Washington.

"The funny thing is," agreed Korup, "a lot of these sophisticated models know a lot about the physics of erosion, but not rock types."

His New Zealand study suggests that's a big omission. In fact, it turns the erosion-based approach to interpreting landscapes almost on its head.

"You might be able to look at a mountain range and explain the slopes by the different rock types," said Montgomery.

Korup hopes that someone will look at another fairly homogeneous mountain belt somewhere else to see how well this idea holds up. The Olympic Range in Washington, he suggested, might be a good candidate.

Invisible Carpet Idea Close to Actual Invisibility

2008-07-17T07:28:00.000-07:00

Invisibility cloaks are cool, but an invisibility carpet is more practical.

That's according to scientists from Imperial College London, who recently published a paper detailing the creation of a material that would be the first to hide objects in visible light, something no cloaking device has ever achieved.

"We've given a prescription for how to cloak something in visible light," said John Pendry, who, along with Jensen Li, wrote the paper that appeared recently on ArXiv.org. "It will be difficult to make but it is also practical."

Cloaking an object requires structures, often referred to as metamaterials, that channel light in a specific way.

The only way to channel light in that fashion is by using structures smaller than the wavelength of light being used to detect an object. In 2006, Duke University scientists cloaked an object from light centimeters long by creating a metamaterial with structures millimeters in size.

To cloak an object in visible light, which has a much smaller wavelength, around half a micron, scientists would have to create structures nanometers in size, which, according to Pendry, "requires some clever nanotechnology."

That nanotechnology would come from combining special layers of common silica and silicon, each of which reflects light differently.

"It's a lot like a mirage," said Pendry. "The sun heats the air above the desert and creates a temperature gradient, so when light from the sky comes down the graded refraction bends the light and it enters your eye and you see a mirage the looks like water."

Instead of creating a temperature gradient that only partially reflects light, the silicon and silica mix would create a physical gradient that instead makes light do a complete U turn, exiting in the same direction it entered.

The result would look like a mirror. If you looked at it you would see your reflection. The difference is that this mirror would let you check your reflection from any angle, not just one.

"This new cloak is not perfect," said Vladimir Shalaev, a professor at Purdue University in Indiana involved in metamaterial research who did not contribute to the ArXiv.org paper.

"Instead it leaves an observer with illusion that there is only a flat mirror on the ground with some transparent dielectric box on top of it, whereas, in reality, there an object concealed in the "transparent" box which is not visible for the observer."

Perfect or not, it's still an important result according to Shalaev.

"This 'invisibility carpet' can be fabricated and it's indeed an important step toward making the dream of invisibility true."

Theory and actual fabrication are far apart, however. Pendry estimates that with appropriate funding and expertise, invisibility carpets could be produced in one to two years.

"We are theorists; we have an easy life," said Pendry. "The difficult stuff is to actually make this."