USAJobs.gov Hit By Attack On Monster.com

USAJobs, the official job search site for the federal government, said Wednesday that more than 146,000 users had their account information stolen as a result of an attack on job search giant Monster.com earlier this month.

In mid August, attackers compromised Monster.com accounts gaining access to the company's resume database. With the help of a Trojan horse program targeted at Monster.com users, the attackers made off with the name, address, telephone number, and email address of at least 46,000 Monster.com users. Anti-virus giant Symantec later stated that as many as 1.6 million people may have had their information stolen in the attacks, which used e-mails that addressed recipients by their real names.

A snapshot of the letter Monster.com mailed to users affected by the attack.

Turns out that Monster Worldwide is the technology provider for USAJobs, which is run by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Peter Graves, an OPM spokesperson, said 146,000 USAJobs users were affected by the Monster.com attacks. Graves said OPM has received assurances from Monster that Social Security numbers were not compromised.

OPM is in the latter stages of alerting all two million USAJobs.gov users to be on the lookout for phishing scams that might try to take advantage of the stolen data to make their scam e-mails appear more legitimate. Graves said the first signs of the attack surfaced in July, after the organization received a complaint from a USAJobs user.

USAJobs users who receive a suspicious e-mail regarding a search are advised to forward it with the full header information to mayday@fedjobs.gov.

While it's nice to hear that Social Security numbers were not compromised in this attack, it's important to note that even an attack that compromises only names and e-mail addresses can be extremely useful for attackers in future scams. In April, Security Fix wrote about a highly successful phishing attack against Indiana University employees that was later determined to have been aided by a previous attack in which scammers made off with an e-mail address list of some 24,000 IU students and faculty. That attack netted up to 80 victims (while most phishing scams are spammed out to many thousands or millions of people, experts say it is unusual for scammers to haul in more than a few dozen victims).

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Acid rain may hit coastal waters hard

Carbon dioxide (CO2) isn't the only atmospheric pollutant making the oceans more acidic and threatening the health of coral reefs and plankton. New research suggests that nitrogen and sulphur released into the air by human activities may be driving down the pH more than expected in some coastal waters.

Increasing CO2 levels are expected to change the acidity of the Earth's waters from 8.2 to about 7.8 by the end of this century. But less attention has been paid to the effects on the acidity of ocean waters of the nitrogen and sulphur compounds emitted by fertilizers and fossil fuels.

The reasons for this neglect are simple. Although atmospheric nitrogen and sulphur compounds are well known for showering the Earth with acid rain, the vast volume and mighty buffering power of the sea was thought to makes oceans resilient to this effect.

Added to that is the simple issue of scale. Humans add 6 teramoles of reactive nitrogen and 2 teramoles of sulphur to the atmosphere every year, says geochemist Ken Caldeira of Stanford University in California. In contrast, yearly release of CO2 is 700 teramoles. "Based on this consideration alone, one might expect the acidification from CO2 emissions to be nearly 100 times greater than the acidification resulting from nitrogen and sulphur emissions," he says.

When Scott Doney of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and his colleagues modelled the impacts of nitrogen and sulphur compounds on ocean acidity, their results supported the idea that, in general, nitrogen and sulphur contribute only a small percentage of the effect of CO2 to ocean acidification. But, they report in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences USA this week1, in some areas these gases have 10-50% of the impact of CO2.

Local impact

"On the global scale, if you add them all up, the impacts of nitrogen and sulphur are small," says Doney. "But when you start looking at spatial and regional impacts, they can be pretty important."

The hardest-hit areas would be those closest to the sites where air pollution is taking place, because reactive nitrogen and sulphur compounds tend to come raining back down to Earth within days to a week of being emitted, giving them little time to travel.

Oceanographers say it is clear that these elements can increase acidity. But the scale of the effect predicted by Doney is surprising.

"I would be surprised that coastal areas are so sensitive to this input," adds biological oceanographer Ulf Riebesell of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel, Germany. He says he would expect physical and biological effects to mediate the acid - adding nitrogen also stimulates plankton productivity, for example, which in turn lowers the concentration of dissolved inorganic carbon and makes water more alkaline. But Doney's model accounts for such effects and still comes up with a hefty impact on ocean acidity.

While nitrogen and sulphur may contribute more to acidification of coastal waters, they remain only a small part of the full picture, adds Caldeira. "There are plenty of good reasons to curtail emissions of both sulphur and reactive nitrogen," he says. "However, if we are concerned about diminishing the threat posed by ocean acidification, we must work much, much harder to decrease our CO2 emissions - these must be decreased dramatically and soon."

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Magnets harnessed to clean artwork

Sponges filled with iron nanoparticles make lifting dirt easy

When a priceless work of art becomes dirty, running it through the dishwasher obviously isn't an option. But even the most sensitive of modern cleaning techniques come with problems - which one researcher says he can solve with a gel sponge and a magnet.

Many current conservation techniques use specially designed gels that can be placed on isolated dirty spots of a painting. In this way, specific cleaners can be applied to a small area of an artwork without the cleansing gel running or removing the paint along with the dirt.

But getting the sticky gel off at the end can be tricky. Residue of gel and cleaner can remain both on and under the surface being cleaned, marring the art. And using any kind of abrasive removal technique on a delicate painting comes with its own problems.

Piero Baglioni, a chemist at the University of Florence, Italy, says he has found a way around these problems - by creating a gel that can be removed with a magnet.

"It will replace the old method because it's easier," Baglioni says.

Baglioni and his colleagues detail their production of a gel sponge containing magnetic nanoparticles in the latest issue of the journal Langmuir1.

Sponge bath

Baglioni's gel consists mainly of a polymer (polyethylene glycol and acrylamide) impregnated with iron nanoparticles. This gel is firm enough to be cut with scissors into 'sponges' of specific shapes required for cleaning. Such sponges can be loaded with a wide array of cleaning materials, as required for oil paintings or marble sculptures for example, and applied to the parts of the artwork that need cleaning.

Once applied, the cleanser leaches onto the top surface of the artwork, where it should dissolve the dirt to be removed. As the upper surface of the gel dries during the cleaning process, an osmotic pressure gradient is set up within the gel that then pulls the cleaning solution back into the sponge and away from the surface of the painting or sculpture. This trick works thanks to the fact that the gel is generally more inclined to soak up water-based substances than the surfaces being treated.

Simply placing a magnet above the piece of gel then removes it from the painting's surface without damaging the art.

"To the best of our knowledge, the ... responsive chemical gel represents one of the most advanced, versatile systems for cleaning works of art, avoiding any side effects," the researchers write in their paper.

Aviva Burnstock, head of the Department of Conservation & Technology at London's Courtauld Institute of Art, notes the importance of being able to remove the sponge as well as the cleaning material that the sponge was impregnated with.

What's interesting about Baglioni's system, she says, is how his sponge can be used to treat such small areas; other gels are not necessarily so good at limiting how much of the painting is exposed to the cleaner. "It's not a bad idea," she says. "It could be useful for very delicate surfaces."

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India cheers satellite launch-INSAT-4CR

Indian space scientists were celebrating yesterday after the successful launch of a new communications satellite, INSAT-4CR, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre.

The satellite was originally to launch on Saturday, but bad weather meant officials had to delay proceedings for 24 hours. A technical hitch almost caused the launch to be scrapped again as the rocket's computers reported anomalous readings. However, engineers were able to get everything back in shape, and the launch was only delayed a further two hours.

The rocket, a 49 metre, three-stage vehicle with two liquid stages and a final cryogenic stage, carried the satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit. Once there, its on board thrusters will fire to move it into its final orbit at 36,000km altitude. It will spend the next 11 years relaying direct to home (DTH) TV services that observers say will revolutionise the television industry in the country.

Another DTH TV satellite was scheduled for launch in July, but the launch was aborted half way through, when a faulty liquid propellant stage meant the rocket veered off course. That failure to launch meant India's digital TV rollout had to be delayed.

According to the Hindustan Times, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) officials were also mourning the loss of three colleagues in a car accident last week in the temple town of Tirupathi in Andhra Pradesh.

The car was carrying two senior officials, Rajeev Lochan, scientific secretary, and S Krishnamurthy, director of publications and public relations. The driver was also an ISRO employee, named Chandran. He and Lochan died immediately, while Krishnamurthy passed away in hospital on Saturday.

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INSAT-4CR in orbit, DTH to get a boost

High drama marked the launch of Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) F04, which blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre here at 6.21, pm after a technical glitch and a two-hour delay, to place India's communication satellite INSAT-4CR in orbit.

The GSLV-F04, the country's third operational GSLV flight, was all set to take off at 4.21 pm, but barely 15 seconds before take-off the signals relating to readiness of the cryo-stage failed to reach the automatic launch sequence programme and the systems put a hold on the mission.

Finally, the launch which had already been delayed by a day due to inclement weather, finally took off.

Later, ISRO chief Madhavan Nair said: "This mission from all point of view has been highly dramatic. But within two hours all the corrections were carried out, and it was a very nice take off." The ISRO team had been weighed down heavily by the previous failure of the GSLV F02 in July 2006. So the success of the Rs 310 crore GSLV-F04 mission had been all the more vital.

"We had really gone through the mill. On one side we had the anxiety coming from the previous failure. There were a series of tests, retests, validations and corrections. But, when the countdown began on Sunday everything went precisely until the last 15 seconds when the check out computer did not receive the readiness signal from the cryogenic stage. The computer promptly put a hold and the entire operation was stopped," explained Nair.

Corrective action took two hours before the vehicle took off at 6.21pm.

The 49-metre-tall GSLV-F04 is the fifth flight of India's GSLV and the third operational flight. It has a lift-off mass of 415 tonnes and is a three stage vehicle with solid, liquid and cryogenic stages.

The INSAT-4CR to be launched into Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) carries 12 high-power Ku-band transponders designed to provide communication services such as Direct-To-Home (DTH) television services, Video Picture Transmission (VPT) and Digital Satellite News Gathering.

The satellite is designed for a mission life of 10 years. The INSAT-4CR, weighing 2.130kg is to replace an identical satellite, INSAT-4C that was lost following the failure of the GSLV-F02 in July 2006.

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Star Leaves Enormous Streak Across Sky

Galaxy Evolution Explorer has spotted an amazingly long comet-like tail behind a star streaking through space at supersonic speeds. The star, named Mira after the Latin word for "wonderful," has been a favorite of astronomers for about 400 years. It is a fast-moving, older star called a red giant that sheds massive amounts of surface material.

The space-based Galaxy Evolution Explorer scanned the popular star during its ongoing survey of the entire sky in ultraviolet light. Astronomers then noticed what looked like a comet with a gargantuan tail. In fact, material blowing off Mira is forming a wake 13 light-years long, or about 20,000 times the average distance of Pluto from the sun. Nothing like this has ever been seen before around a star.

"I was shocked when I first saw this completely unexpected, humongous tail trailing behind a well-known star," said Christopher Martin of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. "It was amazing how Mira's tail echoed on vast, interstellar scales the familiar phenomena of a jet's contrail or a speedboat's turbulent wake." Martin is the principal investigator for the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, and lead author of a Nature paper appearing today about the discovery. To view the outlandish star, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/galex/20070815/a.html.

Astronomers say Mira's tail offers a unique opportunity to study how stars like our sun die and ultimately seed new solar systems. As Mira hurtles along, its tail sheds carbon, oxygen and other important elements needed for new stars, planets and possibly even life to form. This tail material, visible now for the first time, has been released over the past 30,000 years.

"This is an utterly new phenomenon to us, and we are still in the process of understanding the physics involved," said co-author Mark Seibert of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Pasadena. "We hope to be able to read Mira's tail like a ticker tape to learn about the star's life."

Billions of years ago, Mira was similar to our sun. Over time, it began to swell into what's called a variable red giant - a pulsating, puffed-up star that periodically grows bright enough to see with the naked eye. Mira will eventually eject all of its remaining gas into space, forming a colorful shell called a planetary nebula. The nebula will fade with time, leaving only the burnt-out core of the original star, which will then be called a white dwarf.

Compared to other red giants, Mira is traveling unusually fast, possibly due to gravitational boosts from other passing stars over time. It now plows along at 130 kilometers per second, or 291,000 miles per hour. Racing along with Mira is a small, distant companion thought to be a white dwarf. The pair, also known as Mira A (the red giant) and Mira B, orbit slowly around each other as they travel together in the constellation Cetus 350 light-years from Earth.

In addition to Mira's tail, the Galaxy Evolution Explorer also discovered a bow shock, a type of buildup of hot gas, in front of the star, and two sinuous streams of material coming out of the star's front and back. Astronomers think hot gas in the bow shock is heating up the gas blowing off the star, causing it to fluoresce with ultraviolet light. This glowing material then swirls around behind the star, creating a turbulent, tail-like wake. The process is similar to a speeding boat leaving a choppy wake, or a steam train producing a trail of smoke.

The fact that Mira's tail only glows with ultraviolet light might explain why other telescopes have missed it. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer is very sensitive to ultraviolet light and also has an extremely wide field of view, allowing it to scan the sky for unusual ultraviolet activity.

"It's amazing to discover such a startlingly large and important feature of an object that has been known and studied for over 400 years," said James D. Neill of Caltech. "This is exactly the kind of surprise that comes from a survey mission like the Galaxy Evolution Explorer."

Caltech leads the Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission and is responsible for science operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena, manages the mission and built the science instrument. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. The mission was developed under NASA's Explorers Program managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Researchers sponsored by Yonsei University in South Korea and the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) in France collaborated on this mission.

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Microprocessor Specification Language

A breakthrough microchip specification language will allow ambiguous English to be replaced by a mathematically precise description of processor functions and design. Better yet, it applies to every stage of microprocssor design. The upshot could be millions of euros saved by microchip producers.

Microchip design is a tricky business. First, there is a question of functionality. Engineers describe, in minute detail, what a particular microchip must do, in plain English. It is an essential task detailing the chip specifications for each stage of the microchip creation process: design, fabrication and verification.

Unfortunately, English is not a mathematically precise language. So, problems of interpretation are rife. Worse, at each development stage engineers are obliged to render the English specification or 'spec' list into a mathematically precise function set.

But worst of all, each stage uses different languages, and those languages vary between microchip companies. It is hugely inefficient and prone to error.

That is all set to change. "Before property specification language (PSL), there was no industry standard for describing microchip properties," says Cindy Eisner, coordinator of PROSYD and Senior Architect for Verification Technologies at the IBM Haifa Research Laboratory. "Now the IEEE has adopted PSL as a standard specification language. So, we now have an industry standard for microprocessor design."

PROSYD's mission was, first, to create tools to deploy PSL for chip design, fabrication and verification. The project then used these tools to demonstrate PSL's benefits. Finally, it sought to foster a revolution in chip design by promoting PSL as a new industry standard.

Mission accomplished, with aplomb. The EU project sought to reduce design errors by 50% but also increase design efficiency. At the end of the two-year €7 million project, PROSYD demonstrated a staggering reduction in design errors of up to 100%, at the same time increasing design efficiency by 16 to 22%.

After designers become more familiar with the new toolset and language, an even more impressive gain in efficiency can be expected, suggests Eisner.

It seems obvious now. If one stage of microchip development needs a precise description language, then should we not describe every stage the same way?

Or perhaps not so obvious…
Not quite. PSL grew out of IBM's verification language SUGAR created in 1994 to standardise just the verification stage. Before SUGAR, there was no standard way to verify a chip. Developers made up their own languages and passed them down, like grandma's prized soup recipes.

But once SUGAR arrived, microprocessor design hit upon a Eureka moment: why not describe every stage of chip creation the same way! Then the IEEE, the professional association for electronic engineers, took up the task and PSL/SUGAR became the standard.

PROSYD's key contribution is the large suite of tools that link PSL across the microchip production process. There are over 16 tools in the set, which make PSL easy to deploy.

This is not the only achievement by PROSYD, though. The project's case studies offer firm proof of the benefits of PSL and the PROSYD tools.

The project also led to unexpected benefits. PROSYD developed a very cool tool that will take a list of desired properties and actually design a microprocessor sub-circuit with those functions - something like machines creating themselves.

"It's a very early version of the tool," remarks Eisner, "you couldn't use it to design a whole chip, but it could be useful to design a simple sub-circuit. It would be very useful for circuits that are fairly simple, but time-consuming to do."

PROSYD's long-term goal, not envisioned for the lifetime of the original project, was nothing less than a revolution in the microchip industry. That seems to be happening already. Actors outside the project are taking PROSYD and running with it, setting up conferences and producing materials to disseminate PSL and PROSYD tools. So now, finally, microchip design gets a unified, mathematically precise description language.

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IBM Claims New Nanotech Breakthrough

To explain how much storage capacity IBM's new breakthroughs in nanotech might mean somewhere down the line, IBM said that storing data on small clusters or individual atoms could mean that almost 30,000 feature-length movies, or all of the millions of videos on YouTube, could be stored on a device the size of an iPod..
If you already think your fingers are too big for some of today's small electronic devices, you likely won't be happy to know that new discoveries from IBM could make such devices much, much smaller and more powerful.
On Thursday, the Armonk, New York-based company announced what it called "two major scientific breakthroughs." Its researchers took a big step toward figuring out how to get individual atoms to hold a specific magnetic direction, which would allow them to store data. And they got closer to developing a logic switch between molecules, and even between individual atoms inside a molecule, which could lead to molecular or submolecular processors.

The research, detailed in two reports in the journal Science, does not mean that we'll soon be seeing a supercomputer the size of a grain of sand. But the research does take several important steps in that direction.

All YouTube Videos on an iPod

The work toward getting a single atom to store data involves measuring a property called magnetic anisotropy, which is how well an atom can maintain a specific orientation, representing the one or zero used in digital storage. The company said that, before the new breakthrough, no one had been able to successfully measure the magnetic anisotropy of individual atoms.

To understand how much storage capacity that could mean, it would be best if you were sitting down. IBM said that storing data on small clusters or individual atoms could mean that almost 30,000 feature-length movies, or all of the millions of videos on YouTube, could be stored on a device the size of an iPod.

"We are now one step closer to figuring out how to store data at the atomic level," said Gian-Luca Bona, an IBM manager of science and technology.

Speck of Dust

In addition to highlighting the storage breakthroughs, the researchers pointed the way to enormous processing power in extremely small sizes by developing a single-molecule switch that "can operate flawlessly without disrupting the molecule's outer frame."

Keeping the outer molecule intact is a critical advance of the new research. Among other things, it enabled researchers to use atoms inside one molecule to switch atoms in another, nearby molecule -- a basic logic switch. Earlier research at IBM and other labs has been able to switch inside single molecules, but it always changed their shape -- something you don't want to do if you're building logic gates or memory elements.

If single-atom storage didn't take your breath away, consider submolecular switches as the basis for logic gates and electrical circuits. IBM said some researchers speculate that such miniaturization could mean computer chips as small as a speck of dust.

While shopping for the fastest new piece of dust on the market is still some years away, researchers are moving on to the next step for the switches -- building a circuit, and then figuring out how to create a chip.

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IBM and TDK Spinning New MRAM

A problem for widespread adoption of MRAM, or Magnetic RAM, has been capacity at a reasonable cost, but the partnership between IBM and TDK aims to change that with the new spin momentum transfer technology, which reduces the cell sizes in MRAM chips, thereby increasing MRAM capacities while maintaining MRAM's nonvolatility benefits.

A smaller, high-capacity, nonvolatile memory cell is the intended offspring of a joint research and development endeavor announced Sunday by IBM and TDK. The companies said they will use "spin momentum transfer" technology to develop high-capacity Magnetic RAM.
MRAM technology, which uses magnetic fields instead of electrical charges for memory storage, offers several advantages over other memory technologies. Like flash memory, nonvolatile MRAM memory does not need continual electrical power to keep its data stored. But MRAM is faster than flash, has lower power requirements, and provides unlimited read-write cycles.

A key problem for widespread adoption of MRAM, however, has been capacity at a reasonable cost.

'Best of All Worlds'

According to the companies, the new spin momentum transfer technology will enable MRAM chips to have smaller cell sizes, thereby increasing memory capacity while maintaining the low power, endurance, and nonvolatility advantages. Such fast, nonvolatile memory could find uses in cell phones and other mobile devices, cars, industrial controls, and other markets.

One type of MRAM is spin-transfer torque RAM, or STT-RAM. This type of memory could be competitive against flash memory within a few years, according to Santa Clara, California-based Grandis, a company that has been a pioneer in this field. President and CEO Farhad Tabrizi has written that the STT-RAM technology offers "the best of all worlds," in that it combines nonvolatility, scalability, and endurance with low power requirements and fast read-write times.

In STT-RAM, an electrified magnet is used to change the direction of a magnetic field in a storage layer, such as up becoming down or left becoming right. This change results in a change in resistance, and the resistance levels can be read as the ones and zeroes needed to store data.

New Approach Needed

With all of the advantages that a higher-capacity, reasonable-cost MRAM might have, some observers have suggested it might lead to the holy grail of a single memory technology to replace the many kinds available now. But Gartner analyst Martin Reynolds predicted that, while there might eventually be fewer memory technologies, possibly replacing flash or even DRAM, there will never be only one kind of memory.

Both IBM and TDK are well-positioned to launch a new approach to MRAM. TDK officials noted that magnetic materials have been its core technology since 1935, and that it has been a leader in applying magnetic tunnel junction, or MTJ, technology for hard drive recording heads. IBM has been a pioneer in the R&D of magnetic tunnel junction technology and of the spin momentum transfer effect.

The research work will be conducted at IBM's TJ Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California, IBM's ASIC Design Center in Burlington, Vermont, and TDK's subsidiary R&D Center in Milpitas, California.

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Google Interest in Spectrum Part of 'Ambitious' Plan

Google's emphasis on openness -- free speech, network neutrality, universal broadband, and government transparency -- is part of Google's plan to control the network and trivialize competitors, said analyst Rob Enderle. "It doesn't matter who you get your phone from, whose operating system you run, if the only one making money is Google."

Google will "probably" participate in the Federal Communications Commission's upcoming auction of the 700-MHz spectrum, CEO Eric Schmidt said Wednesday. Speaking at the Peace and Freedom Foundation's Aspen Summit, Schmidt seemed to contradict earlier statements that Google would only participate in the auction if the FCC adopted its proposed rules.
In a decision a few weeks ago, the FCC declined to adopt Google's proposed open access rules, voting instead for more limited rules proposed by FCC Chair Kevin Martin. Under the approved rules, one of five spectrum blocks to be sold will carry rules making it more open to devices and applications. The spectrum, formerly used by television broadcasters, is especially valuable because it can travel long distances and isn't impeded by buildings.

Since losing at the FCC, Google has largely changed its tune. Wednesday, Schmidt said that the FCC "got the spirit of what we were asking for" in approving Martin's proposal.

The Net: Google's Platform

The announcement touched off speculation about why Google wants to bid on the spectrum. Rob Enderle, principal analyst for the Enderle Group, said that Google's interest in the spectrum is part of a "very ambitious plan" to turn the Internet and mobile networks into "their platform."

"They clearly want to be the nation's contact to the Web and communications," he said. "It's a very ambitious plan -- they could be vastly more powerful than any technology company has ever been." While it might seem hard to conceive of Google as running a mobile phone network or broadband network, Google's plans do extend that far, according to Enderle.

"They would deliver telephony and data solutions over the network," he said. In this scenario, every other company's services turn into commodities, while Google "makes sure the value is close to where they get their money."

Commoditizing Everything?

Google's emphasis on openness -- and Schmidt's talk Wednesday stressing the themes of free speech, network neutrality, universal broadband, and government transparency -- is part of the plan to control the network and trivialize competitors, Enderle said. "It doesn't matter who you get your phone from, whose operating system you run, if the only one making money is Google."

Just as Google has aggregated the news content created by media companies and moved advertising across hundreds of thousands of blogs and Web sites, he pointed out, several other industries are in danger of being similarly commoditized out of business.

YouTube is a perfect fit for Google, Enderle said, because amateurs create most of the content and Google can sell advertising on top of it. As with AdWords, Google decides how much revenue to share with producers and it's typically a very small cut. "Google controls the stream," he said.

Seen as part of a strategy to make the Internet itself into the Google platform, the impact of Google's participation in the spectrum auction affects more than the telecom industry. "When they're done, there isn't a tech company that won't be affected," Enderle said.

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Toshiba Gives Laptops a Storage Boost

Toshiba's 320-GB, 2.5-inch hard drive will double the maximum size available from the company less than two years ago, while Toshiba's new 200-GB, 2.5-inch drive adds to the increasing number of 2.5-inch drives that can hit a rotational speed of 7,200 rpm. Toshiba expects to begin mass-producing the new 2.5-inch hard drives this November.

Toshiba has announced it will soon begin offering manufacturers the ability to choose models from a new hard drive line that is specifically designed for use in high-end laptops and media players.
Achieving maximum densities of 320 GB and speeds of up to 7,200 rpm, the new 2.5-inch drives will incorporate some of the latest advances in hard disk technology. For example, Toshiba said it has made improvements to the head and the magnetic layer of the disk to increase the disks' "areal density" -- the amount of data that can be placed onto any given area of the storage medium.

For many prospective laptop buyers, the expanded capacity will be arriving in just the nick of time. Given the latest moves on the part of various online companies to distribute feature films and other video content over the Internet, such high storage capacities might become an absolute necessity sooner rather than later.

Boosting Performance

In addition, the improvements that Toshiba has made with respect to overall system performance in support of high-speed data transfers will be most welcome on high-end notebook PCs for business applications.

According to industry observers, the portable PC market has a voracious appetite for larger data capacities that is far from being sated. And as more laptops begin to incorporate digital TV tuners, WiMax chipsets, and even HD video recording software , the demand for extra storage capacity will only continue to escalate.

Toshiba's new 320-GB drive will double the maximum size available from the company less than two years ago. The new device will spin a pair of 160-GB platters at a speed of 5,400 rpm. At the time of the announcement, the new drive was the industry's largest commercially available capacity in a 2.5-inch format.

Another new drive with a maximum storage capacity of 200 GB adds to the increasing number of laptop drives that run at 7,200 rpm -- the current fastest speed for a mobile 2.5-inch product to date.

Speedier Transfer Rates

Toshiba claims the new 200-GB drive will be capable of improving internal data transfer rates over the company's previous 2.5-inch products by a maximum of 46 percent as well as increase the average random access time by some 8 percent. In addition, the device will ship with 16 MB of buffer memory to more effectively support high-speed transfers.

Toshiba's entire new line of 2.5-inch drives will incorporate an optional "free fall" sensor function that is capable of detecting abrupt changes in gravity. In such an event, the drive will automatically park its read-write head before the device crashes to the ground, Toshiba said.

Last but not least, Toshiba said its new disk offerings are fully compliant with the European Union's RoHS Directive, which places restrictions on the use of hazardous substances such as cadmium, lead, and mercury in electronics equipment. Toshiba expects to begin mass-producing the new drives this November.

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Intel Releases New Generation of vPro

Intel's vPro platform is part of the company's quest to offer products that are differentiated by features other than raw performance, said Mark Margevicius, research director at Gartner. Margevicius said he expects wider acceptance of this version of vPro because the previous version of vPro was "not opened to the standards bodies."


Emphasizing security and enterprise management, Intel released a new version of its vPro technology. The company said that the latest vPro, which was formerly codenamed Weybridge, will "add better protection against hacking, viruses, and other threats" and help improve large-scale enterprise administration and power management.
For instance, Intel's newest version of its Active Management Technology lets a supervisor repair vPro PCs "out of band" by talking directly to the hardware , even if the PC is off, the hard drive is dead, and the OS has crashed.

In addition, the new version of vPro gives I.T. admins the ability to increase power savings by remotely turning off machines. Intel maintains that the systems can achieve a 30 percent greater performance at lower power levels than the previous vPro generation.

TXT, 'Embedded Trust Agent'

To address different kinds of security threats associated with virtualization, vPro technology includes Intel's TXT, or Trusted Execution Technology. Formerly codenamed LaGrande, TXT is designed to help secure data by ensuring "that virtual machine monitors are less vulnerable to attacks that cannot be detected by today's conventional software -security solutions."

In particular, TXT is designed to keep data in one OS secure from attacks coming from another OS. Additionally, vPro has what the Santa Clara, California-based company said amounts to improved system defense filters to identify a wide variety of threats.

One of the new features, an "embedded trust agent," has been developed in conjunction with Cisco to provide what Intel called "the industry's only 802.1x compatible manageability solution not dependent on OS-availability." It enables Cisco customers to manage their systems, even if off or with the OS down, without reducing security.

Other Than Performance

The vPro platform is part of Intel's quest to offer products that are differentiated by features other than raw performance, said Mark Margevicius, research director at Gartner . He pointed out that the differentiators highlighted by vPro include power savings, better management capabilities, and better security.

Margevicius said he expects a wider acceptance of this second generation of vPro than the first because the previous version was "not opened to the standards bodies." Proprietary is "not necessarily bad," he said, but customers have become used to at least some open standards in PCs. It was a primary reason that Dell did not introduce products using first-generation vPro, he added.

This new release, he noted, is designed to comply with DASH 1.0 draft interoperability specifications from a standards body, the Distributed Management Task Force, and Dell is now releasing vPro-based products. Customers want to "simplify I.T.," Dell vice president Vivek Mohindra said in a statement. With the vPro processor technology, he said, "I.T. professionals can focus on innovation rather than system maintenance."

In addition to Dell jumping on board, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo are releasing vPro PCs.

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2008 Ford Shelby GT500KR

Launching next spring, the 2008 Ford Shelby GT500KR model features a 5.4-liter supercharged V-8 with a Ford Racing Power Upgrade Pack that boosts engine output to an estimated 540 horsepower.

Produced in a limited edition of 1,000 units, the Shelby GT500KR coupe comes with a custom carbon composite hood with scoops and stainless steel twist-down hood pins, a lower front air dam with chrome-trimmed functional brake ducts and large 14-inch Brembo front brakes. The suspension has been modified with an emphasis on race-inspired handling.

Each KR model is identified by special 40th Anniversary KR badges on the fenders and grille, distinctive body colored mirror caps and Shelby lettering stretching across the front of the hood and along the rear portion of the deck lid. A special Shelby VIN tag is affixed to each vehicle, mounted in the engine compartment.

2008 Ford Shelby GT500KR - Specifications and Design Highlights:

# 5.4-liter supercharged V-8 producing an estimated 540-horsepower and 510 ft.-lbs. of torque
# Ford Racing Power Upgrade Pack featuring revised calibration and cold air intake system
# 6-speed manual transmission with 3.73:1 rear axle ratio
# Ford Racing performance exhaust system
# Unique performance suspension tuning: springs, dampers, and stabilizer bars
# Shelby-designed 'GT500KR' 20-inch wheels (18-inch version for production)
# Ford Racing short-throw shifter and front strut tower brace
# Unique carbon composite hood featuring classic Shelby 'KR' design
# Front brake cooling ducts
# 'Shelby' lettering across the front edge of hood and rear decklid
# 40th Anniversary badges on the front quarter panels
# Carroll Shelby signature embroidered headrests and floor mats
# Official Shelby CSM 40th Anniversary GT500KR dash plate.

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Crash-Activated Headrests, BMW

Crash-Activated Headrests

In autumn 2007 occupant safety in BMW cars is being optimised through the introduction of crash-activated headrests: All models in the BMW 6 and the BMW 5 Series, as well as the BMW X5 and BMW X3, now come as standard with these newly developed headrests significantly reducing the risk of cervical vertebra injury in the event of a collision from the rear. Masterminded by the car's safety electronics, these crash-activated headrests move up to 60 millimetres or 2.36" forward and up to 40 millimetres or 1.57" upward within fractions of a second in the event of a collision, reducing the gap between the headrests and the occupant's head before his head can be thrown back by the forces acting on the car. This enhances the stabilising safety function of the headrest and minimises the risk of injury or over-stretching the occupant's cervical vertebrae.

The cervical vertebra (CV) syndrome also referred to as the whiplash trauma is one of the most common types of injury in traffic accidents and is caused by sudden impacts from behind.

Highly painful in many cases, such a trauma may even result from a rear-end collision at low speeds in city traffic. To avoid collisions of this kind, BMW introduced two-stage brake lights back in 2003, the illuminated area of the brake lights becoming larger whenever the driver applies the brakes particularly hard, thus giving motorists following from behind an absolutely clear and informative signal, telling them to brake hard too. And now the new crash-activated headrests offer the occupant of a BMW additional protection in such a situation, whenever a collision can no longer be avoided.

From outside the crash-activated headrests can be clearly distinguished through their two-piece look formed by the headrest support and the impact plate together with its padding moving variably as required to the front. At the side, in turn, the padded section features a button for manual adjustment of headrest depth in the interest of enhanced driving comfort, enabling the user to vary the position of the padding within three different levels by up to 30 millimetres or 1.18". In a collision the impact plate together with the padding will instantaneously move forward by up to 60 millimetres or 2.36", reducing the gap between the headrest and the occupant's head. And at the same time the impact plate and padding will move up by up to 40 millimetres or 1.57".

A second variant of the crash-activated headrest has been developed for BMW's comfort seats, in this case featuring side supports stretching along the entire height of the headrest padding. This new version replaces the former active headrests on the comfort seats.

The interior of both types of crash-activated headrests comprises complex, spring-driven mechanical operating units activated by a pyro-actuator. As soon as the pyro-actuator ignites, it propels a release stick moving a release plate and setting two adjustment springs free. These springs, in turn, move the impact plate and the headrest padding both forward and upward.The pyro-actuator receives its ignition signal from the airbag control unit as soon as the sensors detect a relevant impact at the rear of the car, this system developed by BMW thus acting very quickly and efficiently in protecting the occupants from whiplash trauma.

The new crash-activated headrests enhance not only the stabilising and safety functions of the headrest, but also the level of comfort while motoring. Conventional headrests set to the right position are often perceived as too close to the occupant's head and therefore appear to limit his freedom of movement. The new crash-activated headrests, in turn, provide not only enhanced safety, but also an improved feeling of space, since they are not required to rest directly on the occupant's head while driving.

Once the safety mechanism in the crash-activated headrests has been actuated, an appropriate Check/Control message will appear in the instrument cluster, reminding the driver to go to a BMW workshop in order to renew the pyro-actuator in the release system.

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The Voyager Spacecraft

NASA's two venerable Voyager spacecraft are celebrating three decades of flight as they head toward interstellar space. Their ongoing odysseys mark an unprecedented and historic accomplishment.

Voyager 2 launched on Aug. 20, 1977, and Voyager 1 launched on Sept. 5, 1977. They continue to return information from distances more than three times farther away than Pluto.

"The Voyager mission is a legend in the annals of space exploration. It opened our eyes to the scientific richness of the outer solar system, and it has pioneered the deepest exploration of the sun's domain ever conducted," said Alan Stern, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. "It's a testament to Voyager's designers, builders and operators that both spacecraft continue to deliver important findings more than 25 years after their primary mission to Jupiter and Saturn concluded."

During their first dozen years of flight, the spacecraft made detailed explorations of Jupiter, Saturn, and their moons, and conducted the first explorations of Uranus and Neptune. These planets were previously unknown worlds. The Voyagers returned never-before-seen images and scientific data, making fundamental discoveries about the outer planets and their moons. The spacecraft revealed Jupiter's
turbulent atmosphere, which includes dozens of interacting
hurricane-like storm systems, and erupting volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io. They also showed waves and fine structure in Saturn's icy rings from the tugs of nearby moons.

For the past 19 years, the twin Voyagers have been probing the sun's outer heliosphere and its boundary with interstellar space. Both Voyagers remain healthy and are returning scientific data 30 years after their launches.

Voyager 1 currently is the farthest human-made object at a distance from the sun of about 9.7 billion miles. Voyager 2 is about 7.8 billion miles from the sun. Originally designed as a four-year mission to Jupiter and Saturn, the Voyager tours were extended because of their successful achievements and a rare planetary alignment. The two-planet mission eventually became a four-planet grand tour. After completing that extended mission, the two spacecraft began the task of exploring the outer heliosphere.

"The Voyager mission has opened up our solar system in a way not possible before the Space Age," said Edward Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. "It revealed our neighbors in the outer solar system and showed us how much there is to learn and how diverse the bodies are that share the solar system with our own planet Earth."

In December 2004, Voyager 1 began crossing the solar system's final frontier. Called the heliosheath, this turbulent area, approximately 8.7 billion miles from the sun, is where the solar wind slows as it crashes into the thin gas that fills the space between stars. Voyager 2 could reach this boundary later this year, putting both Voyagers on their final leg toward interstellar space.

Each spacecraft carries five fully functioning science instruments that study the solar wind, energetic particles, magnetic fields and radio waves as they cruise through this unexplored region of deep space. The spacecraft are too far from the sun to use solar power.
They run on less than 300 watts, the amount of power needed to light up a bright light bulb. Their long-lived radioisotope thermoelectric generators provide the power.

"The continued operation of these spacecraft and the flow of data to the scientists is a testament to the skills and dedication of the small operations team," said Ed Massey, Voyager project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Massey oversees a team of nearly a dozen people in the day-to-day Voyager spacecraft
operations.

The Voyagers call home via NASA's Deep Space Network, a system of antennas around the world. The spacecraft are so distant that commands from Earth, traveling at light speed, take 14 hours one-way to reach Voyager 1 and 12 hours to reach Voyager 2. Each Voyager logs approximately 1 million miles per day.

Each of the Voyagers carries a golden record that is a time capsule with greetings, images and sounds from Earth. The records also have directions on how to find Earth if the spacecraft is recovered by something or someone.

NASA's next outer planet exploration mission is New Horizons, which is now well past Jupiter and headed for a historic exploration of the Pluto system in July 2015.

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