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Tuesday, October 23, 2007

NASA Hails Smooth Launch


NASA officials and launch managers were pleased Tuesday following a clean countdown and flawless launch of space shuttle Discovery from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Launch Director Mike Leinbach said the launch team at NASA's Kennedy Space Center was able to study a potential problem of ice buildup without jeopardizing the shuttle while still launching on time.

"It was one of the cleanest countdowns we've had since I've been launch director," Leinbach said.

Discovery and its seven astronauts have a tight schedule that calls for placing the new Harmony segment to the International Space Station, moving a tower of solar arrays already in space to a new location and overseeing the station crew rotation that will see Discovery astronaut Dan Tani and station resident Clayton Anderson switch places.

"(There is) just a tremendous set of challenges in front of us," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for Space Operations.

There won't be much time to savor the liftoff, though, because preparations are already under way to get Atlantis over to the launch pad for a Dec. 6 launch.

"This is exactly what the (launch) teams have trained multiple years for," Gerstenmaier said.




Comments from news:


The 26-year-old U.S. space shuttle program has launched 120 flights -- including Discovery's mission on Tuesday -- and has 13 to go before the fleet is retired.


Discovery's launch sets the stage for the arrival of partner laboratories to the International Space Station.



Here are some facts about the mission.



* Space shuttle Discovery is on its 34th flight and the third of four shuttle missions planned for this year.



* The shuttle's fuel tank originally was to fly on the first mission after the 2003 Columbia disaster. It served as a test article before it was rebuilt and recertified for flight.



* The Harmony module aboard the shuttle is the first new addition to the space station's living space since September 2001.



* The Harmony module was built in Italy by the European Space Agency, which took on the cost of building it in exchange for NASA launching its lab and other components to orbit.



* Harmony joins three U.S. station segments -- the Destiny lab, Unity node and Quest airlock.



* The spacecraft with which NASA intends to replace the shuttle, called Orion vehicles, are being designed to dock at Harmony.



* During Discovery's 10-day stay at the station, five different astronauts will make spacewalks.







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Space Shuttle Discovery blasted off at 12:00 a.m :Discovery Reaches Orbit :HURRAY !!


HURRAY !! Discovery Reaches Orbit


+ View this Video


Image Above: Space shuttle Discovery leaps from its launch pad Tuesday morning to start STS-120. Image credit: NASA + View larger image




The crew of STS-120 is safely in orbit and on their way to the International Space Station following a flawless liftoff from NASA"s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The seven astronauts aboard space shuttle Discovery are to spend 14 days in space during the mission. Objectives for the flight include delivering a new segment called Harmony to the station, along with new station crew member Dan Tani. Tani will stay on the orbiting laboratory and Discovery will bring current station resident Clayton Anderson back to Earth. Discovery's crew will also move a tower of solar arrays to its new position on the orbiting laboratory.

Space Shuttle crew leave the Crew and Check-Out building at the Kennedy Space Center, Fla. Tuesday Oct. 23, 2007. From left to right: First row: Pilot George Zamka, left, Commander Pamela Melroy. Second row: Mission Specialist Stephanie Wilson. Third row: Astronaut Daniel Tani , left partially hidden, and Douglas Wheelock. Last row: Astronaut Scott Parazynski and European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli. Space Shuttle Discovery is scheduled to lift off Tuesday. (AP Photo/Terry Renna)




Discovery blasted off at 12.00 a.m., ducking through clouds. It carried a giant Tinkertoy-type link that must be installed at the space station before European and Japanese laboratories can arrive.


Despite a forecast calling for rain right at launch time, the weather ended up cooperating. And a chunk of ice on plumbing between the external fuel tank and Discovery 4 inches by 1 1/2 inches was deemed too small by NASA to pose a serious launch hazard. It appeared to be melting as the countdown entered its final minutes.


Launch director Mike Leinbach wished the crew good luck and Godspeed just before liftoff.


"We're ready to take Harmony to her new home," replied commander Pamela Melroy, referring to the new space station compartment aboard Discovery.


Discovery's fuel tank was modified following the last mission to prevent dangerous ice buildup from the super-cold liquid hydrogen and oxygen, and reduce the potential for launch debris. The patch of ice that had NASA scrambling less than two hours before launch cropped up on a pipe that carries the hydrogen from the tank into the shuttle.


The shuttle wings, however, were not altered in any way, even though a safety engineering group pressed for a delay because of concern over three panels with possible flaws.


Melroy, only the second woman to lead a shuttle mission, expressed her confidence late last week about flying Discovery, as have many of the senior managers who decided to skip wing repairs. A possible cracking problem with the protective coating on three of the wing panels was deemed an acceptably low risk.


A hole in the wing brought down Columbia in 2003, the result of a strike by a slab of fuel-tank foam insulation at liftoff.


Discovery and its crew are embarking on a two-week mission that is considered the most challenging and complex in the nine years of orbital assembly of the international space station.


The shuttle is carrying up an Italian-built live-in compartment, about the size of a small bus, that the astronauts will attach to the space station. The name Harmony was the choice of schoolchildren who took part in a national competition. About 130 of those youngsters traveled to Cape Canaveral to witness the launch.



Also on hand for the launch was "Star Wars" director and writer George Lucas. Packed aboard Discovery is the lightsaber used by the character Luke Skywalker in 1983's "Return of the Jedi" to mark the 30th anniversary of the first "Star Wars" film.


Europe and Japan's laboratories will link up with Harmony once they are launched by shuttles over the next few months. The European lab, named Columbus, is targeted for a Dec. 6 launch. Discovery's on-time departure Tuesday kept the Columbus mission on track.


"Congratulations everybody. The beans are on," an animated Leinbach told his team once Discovery safely reached orbit. NASA has a postlaunch tradition of celebrating with beans and cornbread.


"Let's get on to the next launch in December," said Christopher Scolese, NASA's No. 2 man.


After they arrive at the space station on Thursday, Discovery's astronauts also will move a massive girder and set of solar wings from one part of the orbiting complex to another. That work will involve extending radiators as well as the folded solar wings 240 feet from tip to tip when outstretched.


In all, five spacewalks are planned, four to complete this construction job and one to test a method for fixing damaged shuttle thermal tiles using a caulking gun and high-tech goo. The demonstration with sample tiles was added after Endeavour suffered a gouge to its belly during the last launch in August from a piece of flyaway fuel-tank foam.


Once Discovery leaves, the three space station residents one of whom will be dropped off by the shuttle will face even more construction work to prepare for the European lab's arrival.


Discovery's crew includes an Italian astronaut making his first spaceflight, Paolo Nespoli.



About


+ STS-120 Mission Overview
+ Harmony Node 2
+ Space Shuttle Discovery




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Shuttle Luaunch Images



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Out of clouds of smoke and steam, space shuttle Discovery hurtles toward space on the 23rd assembly mission to the International Space Station. Photo credit: NASA/Debbie Odom.




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The STS-120 crew members wave to spectators as they head for NASA's Astrovan that will take them to Launch Pad 39A. Leading the way at right is Commander Pamela Melroy. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett




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Space Shuttle Discovery blasted off at 12:00 a.m :Discovery Reaches Orbit :HURRAY !!

HURRAY !! Discovery Reaches Orbit


+ View this VideoImage Above: Space shuttle Discovery leaps from its launch pad Tuesday morning to start STS-120. Image credit: NASA + View larger image




The crew of STS-120 is safely in orbit and on their way to the International Space Station following a flawless liftoff from NASA"s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The seven astronauts aboard space shuttle Discovery are to spend 14 days in space during the mission. Objectives for the flight include delivering a new segment called Harmony to the station, along with new station crew member Dan Tani. Tani will stay on the orbiting laboratory and Discovery will bring current station resident Clayton Anderson back to Earth. Discovery's crew will also move a tower of solar arrays to its new position on the orbiting laboratory.

Space Shuttle crew leave the Crew and Check-Out building at the Kennedy Space Center, Fla. Tuesday Oct. 23, 2007. From left to right: First row: Pilot George Zamka, left, Commander Pamela Melroy. Second row: Mission Specialist Stephanie Wilson. Third row: Astronaut Daniel Tani , left partially hidden, and Douglas Wheelock. Last row: Astronaut Scott Parazynski and European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli. Space Shuttle Discovery is scheduled to lift off Tuesday. (AP Photo/Terry Renna)




Discovery blasted off at 12:00 a.m., ducking through clouds. It carried a giant Tinkertoy-type link that must be installed at the space station before European and Japanese laboratories can arrive.


Despite a forecast calling for rain right at launch time, the weather ended up cooperating. And a chunk of ice on plumbing between the external fuel tank and Discovery 4 inches by 1 1/2 inches was deemed too small by NASA to pose a serious launch hazard. It appeared to be melting as the countdown entered its final minutes.


Launch director Mike Leinbach wished the crew good luck and Godspeed just before liftoff.


"We're ready to take Harmony to her new home," replied commander Pamela Melroy, referring to the new space station compartment aboard Discovery.


Discovery's fuel tank was modified following the last mission to prevent dangerous ice buildup from the super-cold liquid hydrogen and oxygen, and reduce the potential for launch debris. The patch of ice that had NASA scrambling less than two hours before launch cropped up on a pipe that carries the hydrogen from the tank into the shuttle.


The shuttle wings, however, were not altered in any way, even though a safety engineering group pressed for a delay because of concern over three panels with possible flaws.


Melroy, only the second woman to lead a shuttle mission, expressed her confidence late last week about flying Discovery, as have many of the senior managers who decided to skip wing repairs. A possible cracking problem with the protective coating on three of the wing panels was deemed an acceptably low risk.


A hole in the wing brought down Columbia in 2003, the result of a strike by a slab of fuel-tank foam insulation at liftoff.


Discovery and its crew are embarking on a two-week mission that is considered the most challenging and complex in the nine years of orbital assembly of the international space station.


The shuttle is carrying up an Italian-built live-in compartment, about the size of a small bus, that the astronauts will attach to the space station. The name Harmony was the choice of schoolchildren who took part in a national competition. About 130 of those youngsters traveled to Cape Canaveral to witness the launch.



Also on hand for the launch was "Star Wars" director and writer George Lucas. Packed aboard Discovery is the lightsaber used by the character Luke Skywalker in 1983's "Return of the Jedi" to mark the 30th anniversary of the first "Star Wars" film.


Europe and Japan's laboratories will link up with Harmony once they are launched by shuttles over the next few months. The European lab, named Columbus, is targeted for a Dec. 6 launch. Discovery's on-time departure Tuesday kept the Columbus mission on track.


"Congratulations everybody. The beans are on," an animated Leinbach told his team once Discovery safely reached orbit. NASA has a postlaunch tradition of celebrating with beans and cornbread.


"Let's get on to the next launch in December," said Christopher Scolese, NASA's No. 2 man.


After they arrive at the space station on Thursday, Discovery's astronauts also will move a massive girder and set of solar wings from one part of the orbiting complex to another. That work will involve extending radiators as well as the folded solar wings 240 feet from tip to tip when outstretched.


In all, five spacewalks are planned, four to complete this construction job and one to test a method for fixing damaged shuttle thermal tiles using a caulking gun and high-tech goo. The demonstration with sample tiles was added after Endeavour suffered a gouge to its belly during the last launch in August from a piece of flyaway fuel-tank foam.


Once Discovery leaves, the three space station residents one of whom will be dropped off by the shuttle will face even more construction work to prepare for the European lab's arrival.


Discovery's crew includes an Italian astronaut making his first spaceflight, Paolo Nespoli.



About


+ STS-120 Mission Overview
+ Harmony Node 2
+ Space Shuttle Discovery




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Microsoft Research Reveals New Trends in Cybercrime



Microsoft Corp. today released research showing an acceleration in the number of security attacks designed to steal personal information or trick people into providing it through social engineering. Microsoft's most recent Security Intelligence Report, a comprehensive analysis of the threat landscape, shows that attackers are increasingly targeting personal information to make a profit and are threatening to impact people's privacy. The report found that during the first half of 2007, 31.6 million phishing scams were detected, an increase of more than 150 percent over the previous six months. The study also shows a 500 percent increase in trojan downloaders and droppers, malicious code used to install files such as trojans, password stealers, keyboard loggers and other malware on users' systems. Two notable families of trojans detected and removed by the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool are specifically targeted at stealing data and banking information.



MORENEWS........



Microsoft shows off security in Server 2008.


.Microsoft has been giving more details of the forthcoming Windows Server 2008, due for release on 27 February next year.


The code will be Microsoft's most secure yet, Microsoft's vice president of development for Windows Ben Fathi promised. It had been rigously checked and the compny wouldn't release it if it wasn't secure.


"Lest year we pulled three launches back because we weren't happy with the security of the product," he said.


"That effected our release cycle but it was the right thing to do for our customers."


The new operating system will include Windows Server Virtualisation, which is being built in for the first time. It allows virtualisation of servers in a single machine but keeps each virtual machine entirely separate to reduce security risks.


BitLocker, which encrypts the entire drive as a security measure, is being included. The technology was originally designed for laptops but Fathi said the demand for it in PCs was so strong Microsoft transitioned the technology.


"Once we had it in laptops our customers said wait a minute," he continued.


"We want to use this in branch offices, so if our server gets stolen the thieves can't get the data off there."


Servers are increasingly being targeted by criminals, as evidenced by the attack on First Response Finance, who then sell the personal information they contain on to criminal gangs or use themselves.


Microsoft is also building in Network Access Protection, which is its version of Cisco's Network Access Control. This sets security policies for machines allowed on a network and unless a new computer meets the criteria it is either kicked off the network or has reduced access.


Controls are also being included into the use of USB sticks and the data they can access, and a PKI management console is being added


McAfee Inc. exposes the psychological warfare used by cybercriminals; New research reveals the mind games used by cyber fraudsters to exploit human nature to gain money and personal information.






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Astronauts board U.S. space shuttle ahead of launch :Hatch Closed and Locked


Astronauts board U.S. space shuttle ahead of launch


The seven astronauts on the U.S. space shuttle Discovery scrambled aboard their spaceship on Tuesday to await blastoff on a construction mission to the International Space Station.


Liftoff remained targeted for 11:38 a.m. (1538 GMT) although forecasters predicted a 60 percent chance of a delay due to clouds and rain.


Discovery is carrying a connection hub to the space station so NASA can attach laboratories owned by Europe and Japan to the orbital outpost. The new module, called Harmony, will be the first expansion to the station's living space since 2001.


If Discovery's 14-day mission unfolds with few problems, NASA plans to launch the European Space Agency's Columbus laboratory on December 6.


Earlier Tuesday, technicians filled Discovery's fuel tank with 500,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen to feed the ship's three main engines during the 8.5-minute climb to orbit.


NASA then dispatched a team of inspectors to survey Discovery for signs of ice or cracks in the tank's foam insulation.


"There are no technical issues that would preclude launch at this time," said launch commentator Mike Curie.


Both ice and foam pose a threat to the shuttle if pieces fly off during liftoff, as happened during Columbia's launch in 2003.
The impact damaged the ship's heat shield, which failed during the descent through Earth's atmosphere for landing, causing the shuttle's breakup and the deaths of seven astronauts.


For Discovery's flight, NASA carved an hour off the amount of time the tank is filled before launch in the hope of minimizing ice buildups.


After Discovery's mission, NASA has 11 construction flights to the station remaining and two resupply flights before the $100 billion outpost is finished.


NASA needs to have the work completed within three years when the shuttle fleet is due to be retired.



Image Above: STS-120 commander Pamela Meroy gets strapped into space shuttle Discovery. Image credit: NASA TV


Technicians working at Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida have closed the hatch, or doorway, leading into space shuttle Discovery's crew compartment. The shuttle's seven astronauts are running through pre-launch tests and checks. Technicians are putting the finishing touches on the white room itself so it can safely fold away from Discovery in the last few minutes before launch.

The countdown is proceeding towards an 11:38 a.m. EDT liftoff.



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Near-Earth


Near-Earth


Near-Earth Space Bubbles Mapped


Enormous bubbles of plasma trapped within Earth's magnetic fields have been fully mapped for the first time.


Scientists now think the bubbles of ionized gas, called convection cells, are strongly affected by pummeling from the sun's solar wind. Future observations of the cells could be used to monitor violent solar outbursts, such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, which can harm satellites or astronauts in space.


"The results are a great achievement," said Philippe Escoubet, the European Space Agency (ESA) project scientist for the experiments aboard the Cluster spacecraft.


Escoubet and his team used six years of data gathered by the two satellite missions to create the maps. "They show data collected over years is helping deepen our understanding of the Sun-Earth connection," Escoubet said.


Convection cells exist high above Earth's polar caps and are made of plasma, which is electron-stripped gas that is highly erratic. Earth's magnetosphere and atmosphere shelter the planet from high-energy solar particles, but the protective shells form an incomplete cocoon-so some of the radiation leaks in, is trapped and forms convection cells.


Scientists think understanding how such particles are trapped is crucial to safeguarding astronauts and satellites, such as GPS and telecommunications platforms.


Prior to the Cluster and Double Star satellites, only poor observations of convection cells could be made. The new statistical maps show that numbers of convection cells fluctuate between two and four, and that their shapes change as solar wind output fluctuates.


Stein Haaland, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, said the maps will inform future monitoring of convection cells. "It will be possible to map the region at any altitude, under any conditions with satellites, making our task easier," he said.





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LUSH LIFE


LUSH LIFE:


What Early Land Plants Can Tell Us About Earth's Family Tree


The plant pioneers that moved from water to land had to change their way of life in order to adapt and survive. A team of biologists aims to find out which came first and how they evolved.


Half a billion years ago, the land on Earth was barren rock and ash. Only the water-the oceans, shallow seas, and lakes, teeming with simple aquatic plants, invertebrates, and primitive jawless fishes-held the secret of life.


Then somewhere, somehow, a brave new kind of green algae got a grip on the rocky shore. That momentous step, which may have happened in many places in various ways, made possible the world we know. We owe our existence to the land plants that evolved subsequently-to the oxygen they pump out, the nutrients they make and store, the soil they build, the animals they feed and shelter.


How did plants get that initial toehold on land, survive, and go on to diversify into the lush life we take for granted? A group of scientists dubbed "Deep Green" is dedicated to finding out.


"Deep," in this case, means deep in time. These biologists are fascinated with the "green" family because of its age and its central place in life on earth.


How did multicellular aquatic plants evolve? Which plants first colonized land? How are the early plant lineages related to each other? What genetic, cellular, and structural changes did they undergo?


With funding from the National Science Foundation's "Tree of Life" initiative, nine "Deep Green" scientists at SIUC and other institutions are tackling these questions to reconstruct in detail the family tree of the plant kingdom. The five-year, $3 million "genealogical" study is focusing on plant groups with an ancient heritage, such as algae, mosses, and ferns, where evolutionary relationships are fuzzy at best and where the most dramatic biological changes had to occur.


"If we can understand the relationship of living organisms-put together a 'big picture' of how life evolved-we can answer some important biological questions, which could influence everything from improving human health to managing the environment effectively," says SIUC plant biologist Karen Renzaglia, a member of the team.


Renzaglia, who will receive $375,000 from the NSF for her part of the research, studies cell-level changes in early land plants. "The constraints of living on land are pretty incredible," she says. "You have to figure out how to hold your body up against gravity, how to keep from drying out, how to move water and chemicals around in the body-and how to do sex out of the water!"


The earliest land plants to begin solving those problems are still the smallest: mosses, liverworts, and hornworts. Collectively called bryophytes, they're found on every continent but Antarctica. They hug the ground, absorbing water and nutrients directly through their cells. Skinny threads called rhizoids, precursors of root systems, anchor them to the soil.


Only after plants evolved true root systems and veins to ferry around water and nutrients could they grow very big. Giant tree ferns lifted their fronds up to the sun; rush-like horsetails and club mosses developed tall spore-bearing cones. These new types of plants, collectively called pteridophytes (Greek for "fern plants"), changed Earth's landscape dramatically.


Bryophytes and pteridophytes may have conquered the land, but they still rely on a film of water for reproduction. In mosses and their relatives, the plant produces sex organs containing sperm and egg cells. When the sperm are released, they "swim" to eggs on the same plant or nearby plants. Each fertilized egg sprouts a thin, shortlived stalk that bears spores along its sides or in a capsule at its tip. The spores fall to earth, where they germinate and produce new plants.


In ferns and their relatives, that sequence is reversed: The mature plant makes the spores. Turn over a fern frond and you'll see neat dots of spores bracketing the veins. When those spores fall to the soil, they each sprout a tiny plant-a mere speck on the forest floor or even underground-that exists to make egg and sperm cells. The sperm wiggle their way through water drops to fertilize nearby eggs, which then sprout new ferns.


Not until the evolution of seed-bearing plants, some millions of years later, did plant species free themselves from the need for water to get sperm and egg together. Seed plants-the trees, flowers, and grasses so familiar to us-package sperm in pollen, an ingenious solution that also enables them to reproduce at a distance.


Beyond these broad outlines, little is known for certain about early plant evolution.


"Major portions of this evolutionary tree are ambiguous," says Renzaglia. "There are so many gaps in our knowledge about the life cycles, structure, and development of early land plants. And almost nothing is known about the cellular details. These plants have evolved some fundamentally different mechanisms for [cell division and reproduction] that will give us information about evolutionary relationships."


Renzaglia studies the morphology (form and structure) and cell biology of plants. She has gained a worldwide reputation for her studies of sperm cells in bryophytes and pteridophytes. "Nobody knew the diversity of sperm in plants before we started doing this work," she says. Similarities and differences in these cells across species tell her a lot about when different groups of plants evolved and how they are related to each other.


Renzaglia suspects that the lowly hornwort, which coats itself with a water-holding layer of slime, was the earliest land plant that still exists today. In a separate project also funded by the NSF, she and biologist Joel Duff at the University of Akron are piecing together the family tree of the world's 150 or so kinds of hornworts.


So little is known about hornworts, she says, that "it's hard to know what defines a species or genus." Her morphological work, plus Duff's data on gene sequences and proteins that occur in these plants, are overturning current classification schemes.


"We never predicted the relationships we're coming up with," she says, "but they make sense in terms of which is the oldest hornwort and how the group developed."


Why sort out the hornworts? Why try to figure out the evolutionary pathways of the earliest land plants at all?


On an economic level, this information will help efforts in, for example, drug prospecting. If you identify one hornwort that produces a pharmaceutically useful compound, you'll want to zero in on that species' closest relatives so that you can analyze them for similar compounds.


On the environmental level, efforts to conserve biodiversity and save species will rely on knowledge about genetic relationships. Because we can't save everything, we should try to preserve the greatest genetic diversity, Renzaglia says. Species that are very distinctive genetically, with no close relatives, should take higher priority than species with abundant close relatives.


On a broader level, determining the history of early land plants will tell biologists more about how life forms function and have developed (see sidebar).


The "Deep Green" team has chosen for in-depth analysis some 50 species of plants that they believe represent major lineages among green algae, bryophytes, and pteridophytes. The team's leader, Charles O'Kelly of the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences (Maine), is studying the morphology of the algae species. Renzaglia and her students are doing the same for the others.


To understand all the developmental stages of these plants, they're scrutinizing spores and spore capsules, egg and sperm cells, embryos, and mature plants. They're documenting dozens of characteristics, photographing specimens, comparing and compiling details previously reported about the species in the scientific literature, and archiving everything they find.


It's a huge amount of data. Take spores, for example. Renzaglia's team is recording, among other information, their shape and color, their "ornamentation" (whorls and ridges), their internal structure and development, and what types of molecules, such as proteins and sugars, are stored inside.


Using a scanning electron microscope, which bounces electrons off the surface of a sample, they're looking at plant structures such as stomata (pores) and sperm cells enlarged some 4,000 to 7,000 times-big enough to study the whip-like tails called flagella that enable the sperm to swim to their destination. Using a transmission electron microscope, which shoots electrons through a thin section of tissue, they're viewing the inner workings of cell nuclei and chloroplasts (the cell bodies that carry out photosynthesis). This work is being done under the aegis of SIUC's IMAGE facility.


Two tiny bryophyte species whose microanatomy differs considerably can look virtually identical to the naked eye. Conversely, one species can vary considerably in its outward appearance depending on environmental conditions. So cellular features will be key to learning how these early plants evolved.


For example, some hornworts have big chloroplasts that look identical to those in green algae, Renzaglia and Duff have found, while other hornworts have smaller chloroplasts but more of them. The latter species are farther away, evolutionarily, from the algae/hornwort split.


If this work sounds esoteric, consider that most advances in knowledge start out that way-and that life forms have surprising connections.


As an undergraduate in Renzaglia's lab, Kelly Wood studied plant sperm exposed to a mutation-causing chemical that damaged their flagella. As a result, these cells had trouble swimming. Fast forward: Wood went on to medical school, where she learned about human reproductive and respiratory cells with damaged cilia (hairs that move the cells themselves or surrounding material). She discovered that these cilia had the same kinds of damage as the plant flagella, which are structurally similar. Medical researchers now have a new experimental model that may shed light on the nature of the human disorder.


Intriguing information also will come from genetic studies of early land plants. Other team members are analyzing DNA from the same plant specimens that Renzaglia and O'Kelly are working with. Among other things, they are creating "reference libraries" of thousands of chromosome snippets from each specimen for cross-species comparison. The more genes that two organisms have in common, the more likely it is that they fall on the same branch or twig of the evolutionary tree. "If we understand these gene sequences [from early plants], it will help tell us how genomes change over time," Renzaglia says.


The genetic analyses will generate gigabyte after gigabyte of valuable data to be combined with the morphological data. Both are needed.


"Genes don't tell you what the plant looks like or how it functions," Renzaglia says. "And without information on morphology, you won't know what structural changes have taken place during evolution." Gene studies will help morphologists focus their efforts, and vice-versa. Although scientists ultimately will tease out the function of many genes, particularly those that are shared by many species, such analysis is time-consuming, and it can't be done for every gene in every kind of organism.


The fact that many species and even entire lineages have gone extinct over millions of years also complicates genetic analysis. "It's possible that all of the early hornworts died off except for one branch, which persisted unchanged for a long time and then underwent recent speciation," Renzaglia speculates by way of example. "Then the group would be old, but much of the genetic diversity would be recent. In colonizing land, probably thousands of successful species died off. It's frustrating-we only have bits and pieces [of evidence]."


Why not just study fossil plants? "You can't get DNA out of fossils," Renzaglia notes. "You can't see development; you can't see sperm. You can't, in many cases, see cellular details. And we don't have a good fossil record of the bryophytes-they're small and fragile."


Pinning down the details of plant evolution will take a grand synthesis of fossil, genetic, and morphological evidence. And that poses the team's biggest technical challenge: how to wade through all that data. The team will develop new methods of organizing, combining, and analyzing diverse data sets to draw conclusions about evolutionary history. Their Holy Grail, and a major goal of the NSF initiative, is an analytical model that can be applied to determine the evolutionary relationships of other organisms.


Besides Renzaglia and O'Kelly, scientists at the University of California - Berkeley, the University of Washington, Yale University, Utah State University, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are working on the project.


Renzaglia is passionate about this work. "It has the potential to uncover all kinds of new information," she says. "There's biodiversity at every level of life, including the cellular level. This research has opened up a world nobody's known about.


"We don't know what we're going to discover, but we know it will rewrite the textbooks."




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High-Speed Internet Through Your Toilet


 High-Speed Internet Through Your Toilet



Google's April Fools' Offering: High-Speed Internet Through Your Toilet


Presiding over a company with a market value of $143 billion apparently gives Silicon Valley's most famous billionaires a good sense of humor - and a case of corporate potty mouth.


Senior executives at Google Inc. (GOOG) launched their annual April Fools' Day prank Sunday, posting a link on the company's home page to a site offering consumers free high-speed wireless Internet through their home plumbing systems.


Code-named "Dark Porcelain," Google said its "Toilet Internet Service Provider" (TiSP) works with Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) new Windows Vista operating system. But sorry - septic tanks are incompatible with the system's requirements.


• Click here to read the "Dark Porcelain" press packet. May be slightly offensive to anyone no longer in third grade.


The gag included a mock press release quoting Google co-founder and president Larry Page, a step-by-step online installation manual, and a scatological selection of Frequently Asked Questions.







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Driving Innovation


Driving Innovation


Genius is 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration." We've all heard that famous Thomas Edison quote before. But did you know that Edison, one of the most productive inventors of all time, only received three months of formal schooling? Father to more than 1,000 inventions - including the phonograph, the light bulb and motion pictures - Edison was self taught and focused on continuously improving his intellect throughout his amazing career. His quote explains how he did it: with hard work.


Innovation isn't easy, but in today's competitive environment, companies must excel at it in order to grow and succeed. Done right, innovation will deliver significant financial and operational benefits, such as asset utilization, new opportunities through expanded markets to grow revenues and improved ways of doing business to increase margins. Quite simply, innovation moves forward businesses, industries and even cultures.


But make no mistake, innovation today isn't only about inventing new products and services. According to a recent survey of top executives sponsored by software leader SAP, 55 percent of corporate leaders report that new business models - organizational structures, competencies, processes and partnerships that determine how an organization operates - will provide greater strategic advantage than new products and services by 2010.


Innovation involves entirely new ways of thinking about issues and solving problems that really matter. It's our job to cultivate that culture in our organizations, and today technology is increasingly playing a key role in our success.


To see how, let's first look at enterprise innovation in three basic ways:


Traditional product/service innovation, which focuses on eco-system R&D to generate product revenues
Continuous operational process innovation, which maximizes the utilization and efficiency of resources
Disruptive business model innovation, which concentrates on the creation of quantum leaps in business margin
Although the lower levels of innovation - actually, extensions of existing services or products - are important, the innovations that will most likely create new industries and growth potential are at the highest levels of innovation. And that innovation requires thoughts, processes and technologies that break with our existing norm.


True innovation addresses impediments to business success, while adding practical value. That requires understanding all of the variables of the business, because without that understanding, it's impossible to identify needs. Understanding the business opens the door for improvement.


Every industry has its own individual marketplaces and the issues of automation, visibility, quality and complexity. Understanding how these variables interact allows businesses to identify which ones are out of tune, which then allows for the creation of new processes or technologies that will get that business back in tune.


If you fail to understand the processes within an enterprise, it's unlikely that you'll be able to invent anything meaningful to that organization. All of the old schools of thought about understanding the value chain still ring true today: If you don't know what truly drives an enterprise, and what elements are on the value chain, you'll be unable to improve it.


To be sure, the highest order of innovation receives the glory, but it also comes with the most risk. In many cases, third-party outsourcers can deploy processes, people and techniques to minimize the amount of risk in developing new technologies or ideas. The need for innovation must be balanced with the amount of risk a company is willing to take at this stage in its evolution.


Feeding the Innovation Pipeline
In his book, Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers, Geoffrey Moore makes a case for the Technology Adoption Lifecycle, which divides the population into three groups: the techies and visionaries, the pragmatists and conservatives, and the skeptics. Using a Bell curve to illustrate these groups, he places techies and visionaries at one end and skeptics at the other. In the middle, we find the largest segment - the pragmatists and conservatives.


The secret to making these groups work together is to create a pipeline of ideas. We need projects attuned to both ends of the spectrum, which requires a lot of ideas in the pipeline. Many of those ideas may never make it to the market, but the pipeline provides an incubator in which they can grow. At EDS, this process is called CtO, or Concept to Offering.


The CtO pipeline has about 160 elements in it, and all of those ideas are in different stages. Some are in the early stages and are being tested by our techies and visionaries, while others are less risky service offerings ready to be implemented for our pragmatist/conservative team. The key to the success of this pipeline is to have a lot of ideas, to have varying degrees of risk associated with them and to have them at various stages of development. The most successful combination for a business is a blend of those who create innovative improvements on existing products and services, with those who are able to think far ahead into the future, take some risks, and then hand the offerings over to the delivery people - once they've put the process through the wringer and proven it to be successful.


One thing about new products and new technology is that with innovation comes high risk - and a tendency for things not to work the first time. This is actually a good thing because it forces the visionaries to roll up their sleeves and build tools and processes that reduce risk while improving quality. It's a key part in the process that is known as reducing ideas to practice. It's when an innovator takes a wild idea, wrings out the problems and reduces it to practice. The innovator produces the procedures and the tools that will make it happen-and trains the people who are going to use or deliver it.


Working with Trends
Three technology trends that help drive enterprise innovation today are interactive visibility, automation and simplification. Each of these is equally important and builds upon one another because true innovation exists when all three of these work together for change.


The first trend, interactive visibility, is powered by portals and dashboards to provide real-time information when and where it's necessary. It needs to be kept simple. Each business has maybe five or six things that really matter, and at the end of the day, those measurements will tell you whether you had a good or bad day.


However, to create these dashboards we must take complex business processes and simplify them. There must be complete visibility into what those processes demand and what's demanded of them. This requires understanding business processes from end to end, knowing what functions a particular system supports, and truly understanding what the consequences are if a system fails.


For example, when a service company fully understands the business processes it's supporting for a client, the systems people have a much better chance of creating new ways to automate those processes. The more a business understands about what clients need, the more leveraged solutions that business will be able to develop.


The value of our second trend, automation, is seen on a daily basis in enterprises around the globe. Every time a human being is involved in a Process - no matter how well trained or dedicated they are - the opportunity for something to go wrong increases.


Automation drives down the cost of a process while at the same time minimizing the risk of human error. It opens the door for machines to minimize human shortcomings while at the same time allowing humans to do what machines can't do: allocate more time to serve clients. More energy can be spent increasing business instead of solving problems.


Automation is the direct shortcut to our final trend, simplification. The two are intertwined so closely that it's sometimes difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. As mentioned earlier, complexity has always been the adversary of quality, which means simplification is its champion.


A simpler, more modernized system is easier to manage while it lowers costs.


Successful modernization can create new business opportunities in addition to increasing employee productivity.


As enterprises wrestle with the issue of legacy modernization, they find the need to balance cost against risk. Enterprises face the critical choice of investing in a new system to keep up with changing technology, or putting off that action and risking losing information when the technology becomes so obsolete that it's unrecoverable.


However, there are alternatives for simplification. We have tools available, called automated "system understanding tools," that allow us to parse old systems' source codes and find the hidden business rules within the systems. That allows us to use the old systems as our entry point and reduce development time, even if it still requires manually rewriting all the code. The important thing to keep in mind is that all the requirements, system definitions, and system design can be gained by looking at the old system this way.


A second alternative is to take the existing source code and move it to a less expensive platform. In addition to using the old platform to understand business requirements, it can be rewritten to a more contemporary platform or simply be moved.


Flawless Execution
To be considered successful, once innovation is ready to be delivered into the mainstream, it must work 100 percent of the time. To do that, a business and its processes must operate in a flawless execution environment. In EDS' case, when we develop a new product or service, or when we change one, we follow specific procedures for how our delivery organization should operate. The output of our product development becomes another process all its own. It develops processes, tools and trained people specifically for that new product or service.


Then people are trained and motivated so they know exactly how the small piece that they're delivering directly affects the client. Armed with that knowledge and charged with that sense of ownership, we can create an environment of flawless execution.


Innovation without implementation is wasted effort. If we innovate and have truly great ideas but never implement them or make money on those ideas, the effort has been for nothing. And innovation and implementation work hand-in-hand. After something is successfully implemented for a business, it may provide the money to fund the next innovation. In today's business world, it boils down to one simple point: We've got to understand the business variables of how we operate and how our clients operate. Innovation can't exist in a vacuum.


Feedback from clients can be the best source for finding out which real-world problems exist and need to be solved, and they can then be added to the pipeline, where the techies and visionaries can work to find a solution.


As with most business successes, the biggest key to enterprise innovation lies in the people you hire and nurture. I like what Edison's longtime friend, Henry Ford, had to say regarding his employees: "I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done." Taking that cue, assemble the right people, give them modern tools, develop an innovative culture and see what develops.-EDS




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changed U.S. landscape


changed U.S. landscape


Glidden's barbed wire changed U.S. landscape



There is an old adage that says, "Change begins at the ballot box," which could not be further from the truth. Change begins with human ingenuity, which affects how we live our lives, which - at some future point - affects how we vote.


A perfect example is the invention that Joseph Glidden, an Illinois farmer, patented on Oct. 27, 1873. He called it barbed wire because, unlike the single-strand fencing wire then in existence, Glidden used two strands of wire twisted together, which resulted in what Glidden called "barbed" wire spurs. Not only was barbed wire stronger, but also Glidden's design proved to be conducive to mass production, meaning barbed wire became plentiful and inexpensive.


TREES SCARCE ON PLAINS


Which changed the American landscape forever. Before Glidden's invention, relatively few farmers or ranchers settled the central or western part of the Great Plains because they had no practical way of fencing in their property. Trees on those barren plains were scarce, meaning wooden fence posts had to be shipped by train and wagon from distant forests. This made fencing prohibitively expensive, and without fences around their property, ranchers could neither prevent their own herds from roaming, nor prevent other herds - especially the herds of hungry cattle moved by the famous cattle-drives of the late 1800s - from encroaching on their lands.


But Glidden's barbed wire changed all of that. Suddenly farmers and ranchers had an affordable way to fence their property, and, by 1880, Glidden's Barb Fence Company - which he formed in 1875 - had sold more than 80 million pounds of barbed wire. As one rancher wrote of Glidden's invention, "It takes no room, exhausts no soil, shades no vegetation, is proof against high winds, makes no snowdrifts and is both durable and cheap."


In sum, Glidden's invention made farming and ranching practical in the Great Plains, helping to pave the way for a significant migration to that part of the country (granted, another byproduct of human ingenuity, the railroad, also made possible that migration).


Just as the cotton gin and mechanical cotton picker had fundamentally changed the economic, social and - finally - political arrangements in the Deep South, so did Glidden's invention help do the same in the Midwest and West.


The western population rapidly increased, resulting in new states joining the Union, while increasing the economic and political power of existing states. Soon after, the nation experienced a shift westward of both the balance of power and the political priorities of Congress.





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Fueling starts for space shuttle launch try Tuesday


CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Oct 23 (Reuters) - Technicians began filling shuttle Discovery's fuel tank for a launch attempt at 11:38 a.m. EDT 1538 GMT on Tuesday, officials said.

Loading the ship's external fuel tank with 500,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen began at 2:13 a.m. EDT 0613 GMT. The process was expected to take about three hours.

Discovery carries a new module for the International Space Station, which is a little more than 60 percent complete. NASA has 11 construction missions to the outpost remaining and two resupply flights before the $100 billion station is finished.

NASA needs to have the work completed within three years when the shuttle fleet is due to be retired.

The new module, called Harmony, will be the first expansion to the station's living space since 2001. It will serve as a connecting point for new laboratories owned by Europe and Japan, which are scheduled for launch in December and in 2008.

Once Discovery's fuel tank is full, a specially trained team of inspectors will head to the launch pad to scrutinize the tank for ice buildups and cracks in its foam insulation. Both ice and foam pose a serious risk to the shuttle if pieces should break off and hit the ship during liftoff.

NASA has been tweaking its launch procedures and shuttle equipment to avoid repeating the kind of damage shuttle Columbia sustained during its launch in 2003, which ended in the shuttle's breakup and the deaths of seven astronauts.

The shuttle's heat shield had been damaged by a chunk of falling tank insulation during liftoff and it failed as it flew through the atmosphere prior to landing.

For Discovery's flight, NASA carved an hour off the amount of time the tank is filled before launch in hopes of minimizing ice buildups.

Microsoft to announce new server software

Microsoft to announce


Microsoft to announce new phone software


Microsoft Corp., trying to get more companies to use Windows Mobile phones, is introducing new server software for managing the devices, and revealing a relationship with a startup that specializes in rolling out mobile phones inside businesses.


Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, is expected to announce the new "Microsoft System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008" server product Tuesday morning at the Cellular Technology Industry Association convention in San Francisco.


Microsoft also will disclose that it helped form a company, Enterprise Mobile Inc. of Watertown, Mass., that helps companies deploy Windows Mobile phones. Microsoft has a financial stake in the company, acknowledged Scott Horn, general manager of Microsoft's mobile communications business, declining to give details.


Enterprise Mobile, founded by industry veteran Mort Rosenthal, started working in conjunction with the Microsoft sales force in July, Horn said.


"We'll have our regular sales force that calls on all the companies around the country, and whenever they find a customer who is very interested in deploying (Windows Mobile devices), they'll funnel them through to Enterprise Mobile to help get it going," Horn said.


Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system is used by a variety of mobile device makers. The company's competitors include market leader Symbian, and Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry devices.


The company says the new server product will be available in the second quarter of next year. It won't replace Microsoft Exchange in serving e-mail to devices.


It will focus instead on aspects such as device management and security settings. Microsoft isn't yet disclosing pricing for the server software.



In other news at the convention, Medio Systems said it has signed a deal to provide mobile search and advertising technologies to CBS, including its CBS Sports Mobile and CBS Mobile News offerings. Seattle-based Medio, which provides search technology to Verizon, T-Mobile and Telus, raised $30 million in venture funding last year.


P-I reporter Todd Bishop can be reached at 206-448-8221 or toddbishop@seattlepi.com. Read his Microsoft blog at blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft.




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Broccoli Protects Skin


Broccoli, Protects, Skin


Scientists report that humans can be protected against the damaging effects of ultraviolet (UV) radiation by topical application of an extract of broccoli sprouts



/Broccoli Extract Reduces Redness, Inflammation Caused by Sun Exposure


Add sunscreen to the list of broccoli's health benefits. A new study suggests the potent vegetable may help protect the skin from sun damage.


Researchers found the compound sulforaphane, which is derived from broccoli sprouts, reduces the skin redness and inflammation caused by exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation.


Repeated sunburns are linked to a higher risk of skin cancer, and researchers say controlling the redness, known in medical terms as erythema, may be another way to fight skin cancer and sun-related skin damage.


Broccoli Skin Booster


In the study, researcher Paul Talalay of The Johns Hopkins University and colleagues examined the effects of sulforaphane on UV-induced erythema in six adults.


A solution containing sulforaphane derived from three-day old broccoli sprouts was applied to their skin before exposure to UV radiation using sun lamps.


The results showed the broccoli extract reduced redness by an average of 37% compared with untreated skin following UV exposure.


Researchers say the broccoli extract did not physically absorb the UV rays, but it appeared to work at the cellular level to prevent erythema. They say sulforaphane induces the formation of protective proteins in the skin and protects the skin from sun damage for several days.


MORE NEWS....



Extract of broccoli sprouts protects against UV radiation


A team of Johns Hopkins scientists reports in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that humans can be protected against the damaging effects of ultraviolet (UV) radiation - the most abundant cancer-causing agent in our environment - by topical application of an extract of broccoli sprouts. The results in human volunteers, backed by parallel evidence obtained in mice, show that the degree of skin redness (erythema) caused by UV rays, which is an accurate index of the inflammation and cell damage caused by UV radiation, is markedly reduced in extract-treated skin.


Importantly, notes investigator Paul Talalay, MD, professor of pharmacology, this chemical extract is not a sunscreen. Unlike sunscreens, it does not absorb UV light and prevent its entry into the skin, so applying it to the skin will not give an immediate effect. Rather, the extract works more methodically, boosting the production of a network of protective enzymes inside skin cells to defend them against many aspects of UV damage. Consequently, the effects are long-lasting; the protection lasts for several days, even after the extract is no longer present on or in the skin.


As skin cancer incidence is rising dramatically due to the escalating exposure of aging populations to the UV rays of the sun, Talalay says that 'treatment with this broccoli sprout extract might be another protective measure that alleviates the skin damage caused by UV radiation and thereby decreases our long-term risk of developing cancer.'


The protective chemical agent in the broccoli sprout extracts is sulforaphane. It was first identified by Talalay and his colleagues more than 15 years ago and has been shown to prevent tumour development in a number of animals treated with cancer-causing chemicals.


After first testing mouse models of skin cancer to confirm sulforaphane's protective effects, Talalay and his team tested six healthy volunteers. Each one was exposed to a pulse of UV radiation on small patches of their skin (less than 1 inch in diameter) that were either treated or untreated with different doses of broccoli extract.


At the highest doses, UV-induced redness and inflammation were reduced by an average of 37 percent. The extracts were protective even when applied three days prior to UV exposure. The protection did vary considerably among the subjects, ranging from 8 percent to 78 percent, which Talalay notes may be due to genetic differences among individuals, local differences in the skin, or other factors such as dietary habits. He also points out that conventional sunscreens were essentially ineffective in these experiments.



This research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, American Cancer Society, American Institute for Cancer Research, and the Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Foundation. Authors on the paper are Jed Fahey, Zachary Healy, Scott Wehage, Andrea Benedict, Christine Min, Albena Dinkova-Kostova and Talalay, all of Johns Hopkins. Paul Talalay and Jed Fahey are unpaid consultants to Brassica Protection. Products LLC (BPP), which licenses the technology to produce broccoli sprouts. Talalay, Fahey and The Johns Hopkins University are equity owners in BPP (whose chief executive officer is Antony Talalay, son of Paul).




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ALARM - World's carbon dioxide emissions rising at alarming rate


Carbon dioxide - the greenhouse gas considered most responsible for global warming - has been emitted into the Earth's atmosphere at a dramatically accelerating pace since 2000, researchers reported Monday.
"Carbon dioxide is rising at a much faster rate than before," says study co-author Christopher Field, director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology in California. "In the 1990s, CO{-2} emissions increased by about 1.3% per year. Since 2000, the growth rate has been 3.3% per year." The researchers calculate that global carbon-dioxide emissions were 35% higher in 2006 than in 1990.


What's especially troubling, notes lead author Josep Canadell of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, is most climate scenarios used by scientists and policymakers to predict temperature increases are based on the 1.3% rise. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide warm the planet by trapping heat in the atmosphere.


Canadell says that while the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts "we will have temperature increases of 3.2 to 7.1 degrees by the end of the century, … we're well on the way to the higher temperature increase if the emissions keep going up at this rate."


Higher global temperatures have been predicted to cause rising sea levels, more frequent heat waves and wildfires, and huge losses of ice in the Arctic and Antarctic.


Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) growth has increased 35 percent faster than expected since 2000, report scientists writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Worryingly, more than half the increase came from a decreased efficiency of natural land and ocean sinks to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. The reminder came from a slowing in the efficiency of use of fossil fuels.


The research, which was conduced by the Global Carbon Project, the University of East Anglia (UEA), the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), and a number of other institutions, reported that global CO2 emissions were around 9.9 billion tons of carbon in 2006, or 35 percent above emissions in 1990, the year used as a reference year under the Kyoto Protocol. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels climbed an average of 1.93 parts per million (ppm) between 2000 and 2006 compared with an annual growth rate of 1.58 during the 1980s and 1.49 ppm in the 1990s. Annual emissions from the burning of fossil fuels -- the largest source of anthropogenic carbon -- increased from 6.5 billion tons in the 1990s to 7.6 billion tons between 2000 and 2006. Emission from deforestation and other land-use change were 1.5 billion tons in 2006, or around 15 percent of total anthropogenic emissions.


Saturated carbon sinks



A power station in Australia. Credit CSIRO
The researchers say that climate-induced shifts in wind patterns over the Southern Ocean have brought carbon-rich water toward the surface, reducing the ocean's ability to absorb excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. On land, extensive droughts have reduced the uptake of carbon by plants.


"Weakening land and ocean sinks are contributing to the accelerating growth of atmospheric CO2," said co-author Chris Field, director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology.


"The decline in global sink efficiency suggests that stabilization of atmospheric CO2 is even more difficult to achieve than previously thought," explained co-author Dr Corinne Le Quéré of the University of East Anglia and British Antarctic Survey. "We found that nearly half of the decline in the efficiency of the ocean CO2 sink is due to the intensification of the winds in the Southern Ocean."



Global carbon sinks and sources 1850-2006. Courtesy of the Global Carbon Project.



Carbon efficiency of economic growth declines



Anthropogenic carbon emissions: World carbon intensity of GDP. Courtesy of the Global Carbon Project
The research also showed that improvements in the carbon intensity of the global economy have faltered since 2000 after improving by about 1.3 percent per year for prior 30 years.


"Because practically all proposed scenarios for managing future emissions postulate improvements in carbon intensity in the global economy, this deterioration of carbon intensity presents a serious challenge in stabilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide and mitigating climate change," warned the Carnegie Institution in a statement.


"What we are seeing is a decrease in the planet's ability to absorb carbon emissions due to human activity," said the study's lead author, Dr Pep Canadell, executive director of the Global Carbon Project. "Fifty years ago, for every tonne of CO2 emitted, 600kg were removed by land and ocean sinks. However, in 2006, only 550kg were removed per tonne and that amount is falling."


"The longer we delay reducing emissions, the more restorative capacity will be lost," added CSIRO scientist Dr Mike Raupach, a co-chair of the Global Carbon Project.


CITATION: Josep G. Canadell, Corinne Le Quere, Michael R. Raupach, Christopher B. Field, Erik T. Buitenhuis, Philippe Ciais, Thomas J. Conway, Nathan P. Gillett, R. A. Houghton, and Gregg Marland (2007). Contributions to accelerating atmospheric CO2 growth from economic activity, carbon intensity, and efficiency of natural sinks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , October 2007.





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MySpace Debuts Original, Interactive Reality Series


24hoursnews


MySpaceTV, the video wing of the online community network, today unveiled its first original web series to give users a television-like experience with the interactive benefits of the internet.


The series, Roommates, will track the lives of four women in their 20s who have recently graduated from college and are living together in Los Angeles.


The web show debuts tomorrow and runs until December 21 for a total of 45 episodes.


A new, three-minute segment will play each day, from Monday to Friday. Fans are expected to engage characters online and influence the plot.


"There is an opportunity to interact with a show in different ways than have been done before," said Jeff Berman, general manager of MySpaceTV.


Roommates will utilise a real-time "polling tool" in which viewers' opinions on characters and plot developments will be sought.


Fans can chat online, as well as post comments on the characters' individual web profiles. The information will be scrutinised and the plot changed, accordingly.


Berman said MySpaceTV and the show's producers, Iron Sink Media, had enough episodes to get the program started, and future segments would be taped as it progressed.


"This was an opportunity for us to take some of the lessons from online series to date and apply them in a show where we are directing the creative development and working with an established internet producer," Berman said.


Iron Sink has produced several Los Angeles-based web series, including WeHoGirls, and VanNuysGuys.


With the success of video-sharing sites like YouTube, the web is seen as an emerging medium where advertisers can find viewers who previously might have been drawn to TV.


Web shows like LonelyGirl15 and Prom Queen have built loyal followings among teenagers and young adults.


MySpace is owned by media giant News Corp, which also operates the Fox TV network, and most US TV networks are rapidly ramping up production of short "Webisodes" to recapture viewers they may be losing to the web.


Berman declined to comment on the show's production cost or revenue MySpaceTV will receive from sponsor, Ford.


From Another source:


MySpaceTV will debut its new interactive Web series, Roommates, today.
The show will air three-minute mini-episodes Monday through Friday until Dec. 22. The show takes advantage of the online exchanges between MySpace users and encourages fans to add characters to their list of friends, send messages, and weigh in on the roommates' activities.


The show features eight friends just out of college -- four women living together in Los Angeles and four out of town. Each has a profile on MySpace. Roommates, sponsored by Ford, will feature interactive polls, online discussion, chat, and comments.


Fans can subscribe to the series. They also can download four songs from the show's soundtrack for 99 cents each.


As of Monday morning, the show listed 508 friends, offered viewers introductions to the characters, and provided a video tour of the home. Chloe, one of the out-of-towners, says on her profile that she doesn't watch television. It's unclear whether she watches MySpaceTV.


MySpace, the most popular social networking site on the Web, is owned by News Corp., which also is the parent company of Fox. The site's airing of Prom Queen proved popular, but Roommates has something the earlier show did not. Its content is original, which is a first for MySpaceTV.


In addition to its creation of content for entertainment, MySpace has also recently jumped into political issues, launching election pages and fund-raising tools. The site teamed up with MTV to hold interactive debates on college campuses and candidates created profiles on the site long before their first debate.




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Space Shuttle Discovery is Ready; Weather Remains a Concern


The countdown to launch of space shuttle Discovery on the STS-120 mission is proceeding smoothly at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA Test Director Steve Payne announced at this morning's countdown status briefing.

"At this point in the count, we're on schedule, our systems are all good and we're in great shape," Payne said, adding that the launch team is not tracking any technical issues.

Image Above: Space shuttle Discovery stands at Launch Pad 39A, where it is undergoing final preparations for launch on the STS-120 mission. The shuttle is protected by the pad's rotating service structure. Image credit: NASA TV




However, the weather forecast for Tuesday continues to pose a threat to NASA's launch plans. Shuttle Weather Officer Kathy Winters reported that the seabreeze could begin developing by the 11:38 a.m. EDT launch time. There is a 60-percent chance that cumulus clouds, showers and a low cloud ceiling could keep Discovery grounded.

Because launch times are earlier each day, the forecast improves slightly for Wednesday and Thursday, with a 40-percent probability of weather prohibiting liftoff.

Discovery's crew of seven astronauts arrived in Florida on Friday and have been going through final checklists and preparations for Tuesday's liftoff.

Discovery is scheduled to return to Kennedy's Shuttle Landing Facility at 4:47 a.m. Nov. 6.



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MIT alumna to command a space mission


Astronaut Pamela Melroy (S.M. 1984) is set to become the first MIT alumna to command a space mission this week when the space shuttle Discovery lifts off Oct. 23 from Cape Canaveral, Fla.





Discovery will deliver fellow MIT alum Daniel Tani (S.B. 1984, S.M. 1988) to the International Space Station where he will serve as flight engineer. Tani will perform three spacewalks and numerous robotic arm operations supporting space station assembly before his scheduled return to Earth in mid-December.


Tani will join ISS Expedition 16 commander Peggy Whitson and flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko, who were launched aboard a Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Oct. 10. When Discovery reaches orbit, it will mark the first time women are simultaneously commanding two spacecraft.


Discovery's primary mission is to assemble the Node 2 connecting module, Harmony, to the space station. Harmony will later be utilized to attach two new scientific research laboratories, Columbus, built by the European Space Agency, and Kibo, built by the Japanese Space Agency, during the next two space shuttle missions.


"I'm just really excited to actually get going," Melroy said Friday during her crew's arrival at the Kennedy Space Center.


While pursuing her B.S. degree in physics and astronomy at Wellesley College, Melroy participated in the Air Force ROTC program at MIT where she became ROTC cadet commander during her senior year.


"My ROTC experience at MIT was the groundwork for my leadership training," she said.


Her master's thesis under the direction of Professor James Elliot involved studying the atmosphere of Neptune by observing the occultation of stars by the planet.


She was commissioned as an Air Force officer after graduation from MIT in 1984 and received her pilot wings in 1985. Melroy flew the KC-10 tanker in the Persian Gulf War and was a test pilot for the C-17 cargo aircraft. She has flown more than 5,000 hours in 45 different aircraft. Melroy retired earlier this year from the U.S. Air Force with the rank of colonel.


Melroy was selected as a NASA astronaut in 1994 and became the third woman to pilot a space shuttle in 2000. In 2002, she piloted her second space shuttle mission, and has logged more than 562 hours in space. Melroy is the second woman astronaut chosen to command a U.S. space mission. Eileen Collins previously commanded missions in 1999 and in 2005.


"I think the future of human space exploration is never ending," Melroy said in a preflight interview. "I think there's something that is profoundly moving about the idea of exploring. I find the exploration of space to be so inspirational and fascinating."


In addition to Melroy, four other MIT-educated astronauts have commanded U.S. spaceflights.


Astronaut David Scott (S.M. and E.A.A. 1962) was the first MIT graduate to command a space mission. He led the Apollo 15 lunar landing mission and spent more than 18 hours exploring the lunar surface in 1971.


Frederick Hauck (S.M. 1966) was the first MIT graduate to command a space shuttle mission in 1984. He also led a mission in 1988 which successfully returned the shuttle to flight after the Challenger disaster.


Kenneth Cameron (S.B. 1978, M.S. 1979) commanded two space shuttle missions in 1993 and 1995.


William Shepherd (S.M. 1978) commanded the crew that began the permanent human presence onboard the International Space Station in November 2000.




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MIT gel changes color on demand


Material could lead to fast, inexpensive sensors


MIT researchers have created a new structured gel that can rapidly change color in response to a variety of stimuli, including temperature, pressure, salt concentration and humidity.


Among other applications, the structured gel could be used as a fast and inexpensive chemical sensor, said Edwin Thomas, MIT's Morris Cohen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering. One place where such an environmental sensor could be useful is a food processing plant, where the sensor could indicate whether food that must remain dry has been overly exposed to humidity.


Thomas is senior author of a paper on the work to be published in the Oct. 21 online edition of Nature Materials.




Photonic gel crystals demonstrate the 'tunability' of materials made from alternating layers of hard and soft polymers. The soft polymers are easily swollen with liquid or vapor causing the materials to reflect different colors of light based on the way their molecules are chemically


Structured gels are those that feature an internal pattern such as layers. A critical component of the structured gel developed at MIT is a material that expands or contracts when exposed to certain stimuli. Those changes in the thickness of the gel cause it to change color, through the entire range of the visible spectrum of light.


Objects that reflect different colors depending on which way you look at them already exist, but once those objects are manufactured, their properties can't change. The MIT team set out to create a material that would change color in response to external stimuli.


"We wanted to develop something that was 'tunable,'" said Thomas, who is head of MIT's Department of Materials Science and Engineering.


To do that, they started with a self-assembling block copolymer thin film made of alternating layers of two materials, polystyrene and poly-2-vinyl-pyridine. The thickness of those layers and their refractive indices determine what color light will be reflected by the resulting gel.


By keeping the thickness of the polystyrene layer constant and altering the thickness of the poly-2-vinyl-pyridine layer with external stimuli such as pH and salt concentration, the researchers were able to change the gel's color in fractions of a second.


"This is an ingenious and easy-to-implement method for making photonic materials whose optical properties can be readily tuned over a wide range," said Andrew Lovinger, director of the Polymers Program at the National Science Foundation, which funded this research.


The key to manipulating the thickness of the poly-2-vinyl-pyridine (2VP) layer is to give the nitrogens on each segment of the 2VP block a positive charge, yielding a polyelectrolyte chain that can swell to more than 1,000 percent its volume in water.


If the charges along the chain's backbone are electrically shielded from each other, for example by adding a high concentration of salt ions to the water that has permeated the gel, the 2VP chains collapse into disordered tangles, like balls of string. When the salt ions are washed away, the 2VP positive charges again repel each other and the chain extends, causing each 2VP layer to expand and the material to reflect a different color.


Because the diblock polymer film is a one-dimensional periodic stack, swelling is limited to one dimension, yielding a color shift of 575 percent in the reflected wavelength, a dramatic improvement over earlier color-changing gels that are made of charged colloids in a 3D lattice structure. Those gels expand in three dimensions, giving a much smaller range of color change.


The new gels are also sensitive to changes in pressure, humidity and temperature. "You can use mechanical or chemical forces to get really big responses, going through the entire range of light from ultraviolet [300 nanometers] to infrared [1600 nm]," Thomas said.


The research team is also working on a gel that changes color in response to applied voltages.


The lead author of the Nature Materials paper is former MIT postdoctoral associate Youngjong Kang, now a professor at Hanyang University in Seoul, Korea. Other authors are Joseph Walish and Taras Gorishnyy, MIT graduate students in materials science and engineering.


The work was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Science Foundation




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