Cosmic Log : The spaceport Race

Cosmic Log : The spaceport Race

If you think the commercial space race is grueling, consider the hurdles that lie ahead for Spaceport America, a 16,600-acre stretch of ranchland that New Mexico hopes will become a world center for space tourism by 2010.

State officials will have to appoint a new spaceport director, hammer out a deal with the spaceship operator, win a license from federal regulators, get $200 million in financing in order and break ground for construction - all within the next year.

Not only that, they have to convince voters in two rural counties that the project is important enough to merit tens of millions of dollars in new taxes. Kelly O'Donnell, chairwoman and acting director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, admits that won't be easy.

"I feel very, very confident that we will get past this particular challenge, and that the many local governments that stand to benefit from the spaceport will share the burden - er, the honor - of funding this project with the state of New Mexico," she told attendees here today in Las Cruces, N.M., at the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight.

New Mexico's Spaceport America, situated 40 miles north of Las Cruces, serves as a test case to see if the public will voluntarily accept the costs as well as the benefits that come with space travel. We know people will do it for baseball stadiums, but will they do it for launch pads?

About $140 million is already being put up by the state for building Spaceport America, but local governments will have to kick in the other $60 million, O'Donnell said. And that puts the burden - er, the honor - on three counties in the job-hungry southern part of the state: Dona Ana, Sierra and Otero counties.

Dona Ana voters narrowly approved new taxes in April, but at least one more county or city has to approve its own tax by the end of next year in order for the spaceport plan to move forward. Sierra County is planning a ballot next March or April, and Otero County is due to vote in November 2008, O'Donnell said. In the meantime, Dona Ana is trying to hold off on collecting the tax.

"A delay in those elections could be very bad for the spaceport," O'Donnell said.

That's just one of the hurdles that New Mexico has to negotiate:

Today, O'Donnell is asking the state legislature to approve a $1.9 million budget for the spaceport authority, which she said would represent a fourfold increase.


The authority is finishing up interviews for the new spaceport director this week, and should make its selection sometime early next month, she said.


New Mexico has "accelerated the process" of nailing down a long-term lease agreement with Virgin Galactic, which pledged to operate its SpaceShipTwo rocket plane from Spaceport America in a nonbinding pact last March. Some New Mexicans are rankled by the fact that Virgin Galactic still hasn't made a binding commitment - but the company's chief operating officer, Alex Tai, said a firm agreement is very close. "There's no way we're backing out," he told me.


Due to some snags that hung up an environmental assessment of the spaceport site, New Mexico has not yet completed its application for a launch site operator license from the Federal Aviation Administration, O'Donnell said. But she voiced confidence that the application would be finished by early next year. That timetable is important, because the FAA can take up to 180 days to approve a license - and O'Donnell said construction could not begin until that license is in hand.


The current plan calls for construction to start in September or October of next year, and for operations to begin in early 2010, O'Donnell said.
Those are a lot of hurdles to jump over, so it's no wonder that O'Donnell looked a bit high-strung as she ticked through her to-do list. But she voiced confidence that the spaceport authority will get through the list, even if some items are taking longer than officials expected two years ago. "Our record of meeting those challenges is very strong," she said.

Once the spaceport goes up, local officials hope more construction crews and tourist attractions will follow. The region is already being targeted for a potential new development called Hot Springs Motorplex, which will offer auto racing activities, a resort center and other goodies.

Research conducted for the state indicated that the spaceport alone could generate economic activity resulting in more than $750 million in revenue for New Mexico and more than 5,000 new jobs by 2020.

All this is music to the ears of local officials, and that could turn the tide when taxpayers render their verdict next year.

"Biggest thing on the agenda is to make our folks happy. ... What we're looking for is jobs," said Judd Nordyke, the mayor of Hatch (pop. 1,650) in Sierra County.

Lori Montgomery - the mayor of Truth or Consequences, another Sierra County town that's close to Spaceport America - said her constituents are already seeing the benefits of heightened economic development. Those benefits include a new hospital, a new 18-hole golf course and dozens of new houses.

"I've lived there 41 years, and I've never seen the type of interest that I've seen in the past couple of years," she said.

Having a spaceport nearby will shine the spotlight even more brightly on an area that's already a tourist magnet, said Rick Holdridge, chairman of the New Mexico Space Authority Community Advisory Committee.

"This is one of the most beautiful parts of the country here," he said, "and we want to show it off to the world."

Cosmic Log @ The spaceport Race

An artist's conception shows Virgin Galactic's terminal at Spaceport America near Upham in New Mexico's Sierra County. The facility is due for completion in 2010.

---

If you think the commercial space race is grueling, consider the hurdles that lie ahead for Spaceport America, a 16,600-acre stretch of ranchland that New Mexico hopes will become a world center for space tourism by 2010.

State officials will have to appoint a new spaceport director, hammer out a deal with the spaceship operator, win a license from federal regulators, get $200 million in financing in order and break ground for construction - all within the next year.

Not only that, they have to convince voters in two rural counties that the project is important enough to merit tens of millions of dollars in new taxes. Kelly O'Donnell, chairwoman and acting director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, admits that won't be easy.

"I feel very, very confident that we will get past this particular challenge, and that the many local governments that stand to benefit from the spaceport will share the burden - er, the honor - of funding this project with the state of New Mexico," she told attendees here today in Las Cruces, N.M., at the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight.

New Mexico's Spaceport America, situated 40 miles north of Las Cruces, serves as a test case to see if the public will voluntarily accept the costs as well as the benefits that come with space travel. We know people will do it for baseball stadiums, but will they do it for launch pads?

About $140 million is already being put up by the state for building Spaceport America, but local governments will have to kick in the other $60 million, O'Donnell said. And that puts the burden - er, the honor - on three counties in the job-hungry southern part of the state: Dona Ana, Sierra and Otero counties.

Dona Ana voters narrowly approved new taxes in April, but at least one more county or city has to approve its own tax by the end of next year in order for the spaceport plan to move forward. Sierra County is planning a ballot next March or April, and Otero County is due to vote in November 2008, O'Donnell said. In the meantime, Dona Ana is trying to hold off on collecting the tax.

"A delay in those elections could be very bad for the spaceport," O'Donnell said.

That's just one of the hurdles that New Mexico has to negotiate:

Today, O'Donnell is asking the state legislature to approve a $1.9 million budget for the spaceport authority, which she said would represent a fourfold increase.

The authority is finishing up interviews for the new spaceport director this week, and should make its selection sometime early next month, she said.

New Mexico has "accelerated the process" of nailing down a long-term lease agreement with Virgin Galactic, which pledged to operate its SpaceShipTwo rocket plane from Spaceport America in a nonbinding pact last March. Some New Mexicans are rankled by the fact that Virgin Galactic still hasn't made a binding commitment - but the company's chief operating officer, Alex Tai, said a firm agreement is very close. "There's no way we're backing out," he told me.

Due to some snags that hung up an environmental assessment of the spaceport site, New Mexico has not yet completed its application for a launch site operator license from the Federal Aviation Administration, O'Donnell said. But she voiced confidence that the application would be finished by early next year. That timetable is important, because the FAA can take up to 180 days to approve a license - and O'Donnell said construction could not begin until that license is in hand.

The current plan calls for construction to start in September or October of next year, and for operations to begin in early 2010, O'Donnell said.
Those are a lot of hurdles to jump over, so it's no wonder that O'Donnell looked a bit high-strung as she ticked through her to-do list. But she voiced confidence that the spaceport authority will get through the list, even if some items are taking longer than officials expected two years ago. "Our record of meeting those challenges is very strong," she said.

Once the spaceport goes up, local officials hope more construction crews and tourist attractions will follow. The region is already being targeted for a potential new development called Hot Springs Motorplex, which will offer auto racing activities, a resort center and other goodies.

Research conducted for the state indicated that the spaceport alone could generate economic activity resulting in more than $750 million in revenue for New Mexico and more than 5,000 new jobs by 2020.

All this is music to the ears of local officials, and that could turn the tide when taxpayers render their verdict next year.

"Biggest thing on the agenda is to make our folks happy. ... What we're looking for is jobs," said Judd Nordyke, the mayor of Hatch (pop. 1,650) in Sierra County.

Lori Montgomery - the mayor of Truth or Consequences, another Sierra County town that's close to Spaceport America - said her constituents are already seeing the benefits of heightened economic development. Those benefits include a new hospital, a new 18-hole golf course and dozens of new houses.

"I've lived there 41 years, and I've never seen the type of interest that I've seen in the past couple of years," she said.

Having a spaceport nearby will shine the spotlight even more brightly on an area that's already a tourist magnet, said Rick Holdridge, chairman of the New Mexico Space Authority Community Advisory Committee.

"This is one of the most beautiful parts of the country here," he said, "and we want to show it off to the world."

Technorati : Cosmic Log, space

Technology's 10 most mortifying moments

Tech history is full of moments that make you say 'ouch.' Check out our favorites, then cast your vote for the most mortifying moment of all.

We've all had excruciatingly embarrassing moments. We say something loud and inappropriate at a party and the room abruptly falls silent and stares. Or we misbutton our shirt and it takes half a day to figure out why everybody's giving us funny looks. That sort of thing.

For most of us, these mortifying moments pass quickly. But when they occur in the relentlessly interconnected world of technology, they spread through the Internet like a bad cold that won't go away.

Here are our nominations (in no particular order) for the 10 most mortifying moments in technology history. These aren't bad business decisions or introductions of lousy products.

Rather, they're incidents in which deep, red-faced embarrassment by specific individuals and companies was -- or should have been -- the order of the day. These are the moments when the technology world stops and stares.

Let the nominations begin

Let's start our list with mortifying Microsoft moments. Oh, where to begin? There was the time Bill Gates obfuscated so severely at the DOJ vs. Microsoft antitrust trial that he made the judge laugh, and the time Gates, while demonstrating Windows Media Center, couldn't get a remote control to work while Conan O'Brien provided running commentary.

Or how about the photo of a very young Bill draped moony-eyed over a monitor?

For our money, though, here are the three best Microsoft mortifiers:

1. Bill Gates gets a BSOD

Windows 95 provided a much spiffier interface than its predecessor, Windows 3.1, but it was neither very feature-rich nor very stable. Microsoft promised that Windows 98 would be much more solid.

However, we should have gotten a clue about what the future of this operating system held when Gates' presentation at Comdex Spring in 1998 went seriously awry, ending in a very public BSOD (Blue Screen of Death).

2. Monkey Boy runs amok

Bill Gates might be the visionary behind Microsoft, but CEO Steve Ballmer has long been the suit behind the vision. So what got into this billionaire that made him dance around like, well, a monkey boy when coming on stage at a 2001 employee gathering?

Was he trying show he's more fun than Steve Jobs? Was it job stress? Had he joined a cult? We may never know.

3. Vista has trouble with peach speech recognition

Bill Gates once predicted that speech recognition would someday equal the use of keyboards as a leading input technique. It seems, however, that we have a ways to go.

The technology has rarely been put in a worse light than in a nightmarish 2006 presentation of Windows Vista's speech-recognition capabilities, in which nearly every word spoken by a Microsoft executive came out wrong on-screen.

Although Gates and Co. seem to have had more than their share of embarrassing missteps, we'll stop picking on Microsoft now. To be perfectly fair, many other companies have had disastrous demos as well -- including the ultrahip Apple and its leader Steve Jobs. And demos are just the beginning -- there are plenty of other highly awkward moments in technology, as the rest of our list shows.

4. IBM exec inflates resume

Jeff Papows' tenure as head of IBM's Lotus Development division was successful from a business standpoint, but in 1999 it emerged that he had falsified his resume and made some less-than-truthful claims to co-workers through the years. Instead of being a Marine captain and a heroic jet fighter pilot, he was a lieutenant air-traffic controller. Rather than a Ph.D. from a prestigious university, he had a degree from a correspondence school. And it turns out he wasn't really an orphan after all.

With an upper lip apparently made of steel, Papows refused to be publicly embarrassed, claiming that the errors were the result of water cooler talk that took on a life of its own. Nor was IBM particularly mortified, allowing Papows to stay on the job until he resigned in 2000 to lead an Internet start-up.

5. iPhone Bills kill trees

If the iPhone had been introduced a few thousand years ago, it would have been carried into the capital city on a palanquin and those en route would have prostrated themselves until it passed.

Fortunately for those who rebel against that sort of pomp, there were also a few embarrassing moments for Apple, such as when the company eliminated its 4GB model and cut the price of the 8GB model by $200 just two months after the devices had launched. Even ardent fanboys and girls used language that was so surprisingly sharp that Apple agreed to give early adopters a $100 store credit.

But the most embarrassing iPhone moment came at the expense of the device's U.S. cellular carrier, AT&T Inc. The company's extraordinarily detailed billing process resulted in some users receiving bills this August that ran dozens or even hundreds of pages long, as captured in blogger Justine Ezarik's video of her unwrapping a 300-page phone bill. (It came in a box.)

Without actually admitting embarrassment, AT&T said it would start sending out more svelte bills to iPhone users.

6. Kid cracks porn filter

It goes without saying that it's a good thing to protect our children from pornography and other unsavory elements available on the Internet. So who could blame the Australian government for a project that would provide a so-called porn filter to parents?

The problem was that the software, released in August of this year, cost $84 million -- and that a 16-year-old Melbourne boy, Tom Wood by name, cracked the filter in about 30 minutes. Young Tom's assessment: "It's a horrible waste of money."

A federal official responded by saying that the government knew all along that some kid would come along and crack the scheme and that "the vendor is investigating the matter as a priority."

7. Sony hacks its customers' PCs

Cynics will tell you that the recording industry is paranoid and slow to enter the digital age. The industry insists it is merely trying to ensure its artists are fairly compensated.

But Sony BMG came down squarely on the side of paranoia in 2005 when, in the name of copy protection, it placed invasive rootkit software on an estimated 15 million music CDs by more than 100 artists. When a CD owner put one of these CDs in a PC drive, the software was automatically installed on the computer without the user's knowledge. Perhaps this system provided copy protection, but it also opened the user's computer to various types of spyware, malware and other nuisances.

number of users and states sued the bejabbers out of Sony, which paid out big bucks to settle the matter. Apparently Sony wasn't too embarrassed, though -- it recently pulled the same stunt again, this time placing rootkits on USB drives it was selling.

.Tech reporter reveals too much

Many of us have had nightmares about being out in public without our clothes on. So you can only feel for somebody when that really happens, as it did in a virtual sort of way to TechTV reporter Cat Schwartz in 2003.

The gist of the story is that Schwartz had a photographer take provocative pictures of her. The pictures were taken while she was topless, but she cropped the images to be more modest and posted them online.

The problem was that she didn't realize how Photoshop, or possibly the camera itself, included the original image as a viewable preview of the cropped image. Not surprisingly, this mistake spread around the Web rapidly, giving Cat Schwartz an additional 15 minutes of fame, or at least of mortification.

9. NSA offspring cripples the Internet

Let's take a trip down memory lane, back to 1988. This was a time when widespread security threats were starting to become known, but we hadn't yet reached our current hypervigilant state. That's also when a Cornell student, Robert Morris, Jr., released what many believe was the first major worm to be spread via the Internet. He claimed it was a relatively innocent exercise.

The so-called Morris worm brought down a big chunk of the Internet. Of course, in those days the Internet was a relatively small network, largely limited to academics and the military establishment, so the worm didn't do nearly as much damage as it would today. Still, it caused, by some estimates, $15 million in damage. Morris apologized for releasing the worm, was convicted and received probation.

Now the truly embarrassing part: Morris' father, Robert Sr., was a well-known, highly regarded security expert who worked for the National Security Agency. However, while Dad was undoubtedly mortified at the time, he surely must be proud of his progeny, who is now a professor at MIT.

10. Just about everybody shines up their Wikipedia write-ups

What do Microsoft, the Vatican, the FBI, Al Jazeera, Exxon Mobil and Amnesty International have in common? They -- and many other organizations with household names -- have been busted for altering Wikipedia entries that don't flatter them.

This practice came to light earlier this year thanks to a program called WikiScanner. Developed by CalTech grad student Virgil Griffith, WikiScanner can discern the origins of edits made to the user-editable online encyclopedia. And, sure enough, what his program found was that many people and organizations edit Wikipedia to suit their own needs. With this one, there's plenty of mortification to go around.

A good starting list of who changed what is at MaltaStar.com. Wired also keeps an ongoing, user-contributed list of edits. And you can always try WikiScanner yourself.

Technorati : 10 most, Technology's, moments, mortifying

Fatty acids promote brain growth

The groundbreaking results of a recent study have shown that the long-chain fatty acids in VegEPA promote brain growth in children, as well as leading to major benefits in memory, concentration and behaviour. The research has produced irrefutable evidence demonstrating the importance of EPA and EPO (both found in VegEPA) for children's learning ability.

As well as conducting psychometric tests to assess learning ability, memory and concentration, the researchers decided to look at brain structure and functioning directly. Therefore, all participants underwent MRI scans before and after the trial, which involved supplementation with VegEPA and dietary changes to improve the children's nutrition. (Each child took two VegEPA capsules each day during the three-month trial.)

As well as impressive feedback from both teachers and parents, and remarkable improvements in learning ability, memory, concentration and handwriting, actual biological changes were identified in the brain scans. Over a three-month period, the children's brain grew at a phenomenal rate - that which would typically be expected over a period of three years!

Technorati : Fatty, acids, brain, growth, promote

Brain Device

Brain Device May Trigger Impulsiveness

Brain Implant That Stops Tremors of Parkinson's Disease May Block Impulse-Control SignalDon Falk looks at the CAT scan showing the implant into his brain to help control his Parkinsons disease. Falk's condition started to get better with the emerging class of medical devices called neuromodulators. He is shown Feb. 3, 2006, in St. Louis Park, Minn

Michael Frank did what any thoughtful person would. He asked a patient suffering from Parkinson's disease if he would like to sit in a more comfortable chair across the room.

However, instead of taking a moment to think about it, the patient immediately stood up and tried to get to the chair -- completely ignoring the fact he was unable to walk.

"He couldn't walk without a wheelchair, and I had to help to prevent him from falling down," says Frank, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Arizona at Tucson. "He saw the chair, thought it was a good idea, and got up to walk toward it without really thinking about his condition."

This kind of impulsive behavior may be a side effect of deep brain stimulation that is used to treat Parkinson's disease. Deep brain stimulation helps some patients control debilitating tremors, but new research suggests it may also impair decision making.

In a new study to be published in the journal Science, researchers found that when Parkinson's patients received brain stimulation, they had trouble making hard decisions. However, when the stimulation was turned off, patients responded like the healthy individuals in the control study.

"From a scientific point of view, this research provides light on how some of the circuitry involved in decision making works in the brain," says study co-author Scott Sherman, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Arizona.

"For Parkinson's patients, this study highlights the fact that there are side effects to most interventions," he says. "Even though patients know they have balance problems and are at risk for falling, they may still act impulsively. Patients may gain more mobility with deep brain stimulation, only to experience more falls."

A Shock to Block Tremors
Parkinson's disease is caused by the degradation of nerve cells in the brain that produce dopamine, a signaling chemical that is necessary for smooth and controlled muscular movement.

When these dopamine-containing cells are destroyed, people experience tremors, muscle rigidity and difficulty walking and balancing -- symptoms that only worsen with time.

MORE.......

Looking for hidden signs of consciousness

A team, led by Adrian Owen of the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, UK, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to show that a woman left in a vegetative state after a car accident could respond to requests to imagine playing tennis or navigate around her house (A. Owen et al. Science 313, 1402; 2006)... Laureys, a member of this team, has now tested this technique on 24 healthy volunteers, who were similarly instructed to imagine either walking around their house or playing tennis. The tasks activate separate networks in the brain, and the scans proved able to tell correctly which task was being performed (M. Boly et al. NeuroImage doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.02.047; 2007)...showing that the method works reliably in healthy brains proves its robustness. "Our challenge is to find markers that tell us 'this is a hopeless case' or 'this is a case where we should increase our therapeutic efforts'," says Laureys.

Technorati : Brain, Device

Astronauts Begin Shuttle Mission's First Spacewalk

Two astronauts stepped out of the International Space Station to begin the first spacewalk of the Shuttle Discovery's mission to the orbiting outpost.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration astronauts Scott Parazynski and Doug Wheelock opened the station's hatch at 5:02 a.m. Houston time as they passed over Chile. Parazynski entered the frigid vacuum of space, followed by Wheelock, footage aired live by NASA's online television station showed. The sortie is the first of five planned in eight days, a record for a shuttle mission.

During the outing, the men will remove a broken antenna for return to Earth and begin preparations for the installation of Harmony, an Italian-built module that will increase the living and working space in the orbiting outpost by more than 2,600 cubic feet (78 cubic meters) and provide docks for Japanese and European laboratories, NASA said in an e-mailed statement.

Parazynski and Wheelock docked yesterday at the space station aboard Discovery, which lifted off on Oct. 23. Discovery's seven astronauts joined three crewmembers aboard the space station.

The two spacewalkers spent the night in an airlock to purge their bodies of nitrogen. Their outing today, scheduled to last 6 1/2 hours, is being coordinated by European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli, of Italy. They'll move the Harmony module from the shuttle into a temporary position. The unit won't be installed in its permanent location until after Discovery departs on Nov. 4.

New Laboratories

``Harmony is the first addition to the station's pressurized volume since the arrival of the Russian Pirs docking compartment in 2001,'' the European Space Agency said today in a statement on its Web site. ``The installation of Harmony paves the way for the addition of the European Columbus laboratory in December 2007, and the Japanese Kibo laboratory in April next year.''

During the remaining four spacewalks, the combined crew of the shuttle and space station will carry out electrical work, test repair techniques on Discovery's heat shields, and further prepare Harmony for installation.

Technorati : Astronauts, Begin, First, Mission's, Shuttle, Spacewalk

Worms offer clues to human sexuality : Sexual Orientation Hard-Wired in Worm Brains

Sponsor : www.lustnews.blogspot.com Sexual orientation seems to be wired into the brains of nematode worms, and tweaking this sexual wiring can result in worms attracted to members of the same sex.Biologists at the University of Utah have engineered worms that are attracted to worms of the same sex, bolstering evidence that sexual orientation may be hard-wired in the brain.

"The conclusion is that sexual attraction is wired into brain circuits common to both sexes of worms," said researcher Erik Jorgensen, scientific director of the Brain Institute at the University of Utah and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

The blue spot on the left contains sexual attractants from nematode worms that are hermaphrodites, or have male and female organs. The other spot does not. (Courtesy of the University of Utah )

---

While the study involved only worms, Jorgensen and his colleagues considered how the results shed light on sexual attraction throughout the animal kingdom.

"We cannot say what this means for human sexual orientation, but it raises the possibility that sexual preference is wired in the brain," Jorgensen said. "Humans are subject to evolutionary forces just like worms. It seems possible that if sexual orientation is genetically wired in worms, it would be in people too."

Sensual scents

While most nematode worms (Caenorhabditis elegans) are hermaphrodites, having both male and female sex organs, one in 500 nematodes is a true male.

The hermaphrodites are essentially females," said lead study author Jamie White, a member of Jorgensen's lab. "It just turns out they make a little bit of sperm during development that they store to fertilize their own eggs."

The ability to reproduce without a mate is crucial for the slender worms, which reside in the soil, where it's hit or miss as to whether they come across a sporadic bacteria bloom - a meal.

This way, when a lone worm spots such a feast, it doesn't have to wait around for a mate to take advantage of the nutrition and reproduce.

Male nematodes, however, must seek out a mate in order to reproduce.

Since like all nematodes the males lack eyes, they sniff out sex-attractant odors called pheromones to find potential mates.

This olfactory obligation could explain why males have a nervous system that includes eight sensory neurons (out of 383 total nerve cells) that aid in pheromone detection.

Female nematodes, however, only have four of these sensory neurons, general sensory neurons which they use for finding food and other sweet-smelling substances.

Sex change

Jorgensen and his colleagues were interested in finding out how the nervous system, which is directed by genetics, affected the sexual behaviors of the worms.

The researchers activated the so-called "fem-3" gene in the brains of hermaphrodite worms.

The gene is responsible for the development of male-specific features of cells in the body and nervous system, but the scientists only switched on those in the worms' brain cells.

"The body cells are expressing the genes it normally would in the hermaphrodite," White told LiveScience. "The neurons themselves - we flipped this genetic switch to turn them into male."

Before the brain-sex change, the hermaphrodites showed no interest in the pheromones of other hermaphrodites - members of their own sex.

The genetically altered hermaphrodites (or transgender ones), however, crawled toward the same-sex scents.

Most of the transgender worms still lacked the male-specific sensory neurons, even though the fem-3 gene was activated.

White suggests they relied on the four general sensory neurons for pheromone sniffing.

The study is detailed online today in the journal Current Biology.

Technorati : Worms, human sexuality

Inside Leopard :There's plenty of things to love about OS X 10.5

It's easy to focus on the big stuff in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard--Time Machine, Spaces, Stacks, Cover Flow, the changes to the Desktop's look-and-feel-but what interests me most about any major OS X update are the little things.

There's plenty of things to love about OS X 10.5 that are flying under the radar. Here are Macworld's 10 favorite low-profile features

These are the enhancements and additions that will increase OS X's usability and make me more productive long after the hype over the marquee features has died down.

After walking through Apple's Guided Tour, and the 300-plus New Features page, and playing with the release version for a few days, I've come up with a list of 10 lesser-known gems to look for after you've installed Leopard.

Quick Look
I know that Quick Look has been given prominence in some of the Leopard presentations, but its role has mostly been as an aide de camp to Cover Flow. I'm withholding judgement on Cover Flow's utility until I've had a chance to live with it for a while, but Quick Look is already one of my new best friends.

To get a full preview of a file or a group of files, without having to launch multiple applications, all I will need to do is select them and press the space bar. And this works in the Finder, Time Machine, and Mail, among other places. How simple and elegant can something be? I love this above everything else.

Add Attachments to iCal
There's a lot to love in the new version of iCal, including support for the CalDAV networked calendar standard. I'm particularly interested in the Event Dropbox feature, which lets you add multiple attachments to meetings, and then share those files when you e-mail invites to attendees. And you can use the Quick Look feature to preview those documents right in iCal. Even if you're only managing your own events, attaching related documents (with things like Google maps, for example) means you'll have less searching to do when the event arrives.

Resizable Partitions
In Leopard, you can create and resize hard disk partitions on the fly, without having to erase your drive and start over. For people looking to create temporary workspaces for projects, or to boost productivity in Photoshop, this will be huge.

Smarter Dismounts
In the same vein, Leopard is smarter about ejecting partitions. In the past, if you ejected a volume from a partitioned drive from your desktop, Mac OS X assumed you wanted to unmount all the partitions on that drive. With Leopard, you'll get the option of only unmounting the volume you selected, or you can eject the whole disk. And, if you hold down the Control key when you eject a partition, it will only unmount that partition, bypassing the dialog box.

Integrated Sharing
The new Finder makes it easier to connect to Macs on your network, either via file sharing (to look at volumes you have access to) or via the new Screen Sharing application (which is also used in conjunction with iChat). The controls to do both are built right into the folder windows on your desktop. You have to have access to the Macs in question, but it's a great way of blasting open your home network for sharing files and troubleshooting. And, if you have a .Mac account, you can set Leopard up so that you have access to your home computer from your notebook or remote computer when you're away from home.

Technorati : Leopard, OS X 10.5

Dresselhaus wins prize from American Physical Society

MIT Institute Professor Mildred Dresselhaus has been named winner of the 2008 Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize from the American Physical Society.

Dresselhaus, who will receive $10,000 for the prize, was cited "for pioneering contributions to the understanding of electronic properties of materials, especially novel forms of carbon."

The prize was endowed in 1952 by AT&T Bell Laboratories (now Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies) to recognize and encourage outstanding theoretical or experimental contributions to condensed matter physics. It is named in memory of Oliver E. Buckley, an influential president of Bell Labs.

MILDRED S. DRESSELHAUS, Institute Professor and Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering
Email: millie@mgm.mit.edu

Phone:

(1) (617) 253-6864
(2) (617) 253-6867

Fax: (617) 253-6827

Address: Room 13-3005

Related Links:

Prof. Dresselhaus's Home Page

Dresselhaus Group Homepage

Dresselhaus Group and Family Photos

Research Interests

Recent research activities in the Dresselhaus group that have attracted wide attention are in the areas of carbon nanotubes, bismuth nanowires and low dimensional thermoelectricty.

Regarding carbon nanotubes, which were previously predicted to be either semiconducting or metallic depending on their geometries, we have been developing the method of Raman spectroscopy as a sensitive tool for the characterization of single wall carbon nanotubes, one atomic layer in wall thickness. This work started in earnest with the initial observation (with Rao et al. at the University of Kentucky in 1997) of the Raman spectra from bundles of single wall carbon nanotubes and showing a strong enhancement of the spectra through a diameter selective resonance Raman effect. Next we showed characteristic differences between the Raman profile of the G-band depending on whether the nanotubes were metallic or semiconducting. This work eventually led to the observation of Raman spectra from one single nanotube, with intensities under good resonance conditions comparable to that from the silicon substrate, even though the ratio of carbon to silicon atoms in the light beam was approximately only one carbon atom to one hundred million silicon atoms. All Raman features normally observed in single wall nanotube (SWNT) bundles are also observed in spectra at the single nanotube level, including the radial breathing mode, the G-band, the D-band and the G'-band. However, at the single nanotube level, the characteristics of each feature can be studied in detail, including its dependence on diameter, chirality, laser excitation energy and closeness to resonance with electronic transitions. Of particular importance is the uniqueness of the electronic transition energies for each nanotube, which are described in terms of two integers (n, m) which uniquely specify the geometrical structure of the nanotube, including its diameter and chirality. The high sensitivity of the Raman spectra to diameter and chirality, particularly for the characteristics of the radial breathing mode, which are also uniquely related to the same (n, m) indices, thereby providing a structural determination of (n, m) at the single nanotube level. The (n, m) assignments made to individual carbon nanotubes are corroborated by measuring the characteristics of other features in the Raman spectra that are sensitive to nanotube diameter and chirality. Raman spectroscopy potentially provides a convenient way to characterize nanotubes for their (n, m) indices, in a manner that is compatible with the measurement of other nanotube properties, such as transport, mechanical and electronic properties at the single nanotube level, and the dependence of these properties on nanotube diameter and chirality.

We have devised a way to prepare arrays of aligned bismuth nanowires down to 7 nm diameter (embedded in an anodic alumina template), 50-100 microns in length, with a wire density of ~ 1011/cm2, with their wire axes along a common crystalline orientation, and preserving the crystal structure of bulk bismuth. We previously predicted a semimetal-semiconductor transition in bismuth nanowires as a function of nanowire diameter due to quantum confinement effects, and we have now succeeded in observing this effect through transport measurements. We are now studying the transport and optical properties of the nanowire arrays with particular relevance to enhancing their thermoelectric properties. For scientific studies we are developing techniques to make measurements of the resistance of single quantum wires as a function of nanowire diameter using a 4-probe method. The doping of bismuth with antimony, which is isoelectronic to bismuth, is of special interest for achieving an enhancement in thermoelectric performance, especially for p-type legs in thermoelectric devices. For this reason we are now studying the structure, electronic and transport properties of bismuth-antimony nanowires as a function of nanowire diameter and antimony concentration

Technorati : Dresselhaus, physics award

Adult stem cells lack key regulator

The protein Oct4 plays a major role in embryonic stem cells, acting as a master regulator of the genes that keep the cells in an undifferentiated state. Unsurprisingly, researchers studying adult stem cells have long suspected that Oct4 also is critical in allowing these cells to remain undifferentiated. Indeed, more than 50 studies have reported finding Oct4 activity in adult stem cells.

But those findings are misleading, according to research in the lab of Whitehead member and MIT biology professor Rudolf Jaenisch.

In a paper published online in Cell Stem Cells on Oct. 10, postdoctoral fellow Christopher Lengner has shown that Oct4 is not required to maintain mouse adult stem cells in their undifferentiated state, and that adult tissues function normally in the absence of Oct4. Furthermore, using three independent detection methods in several tissue types in which Oct4-positive adult stem cells had been reported, Lengner found either no trace of Oct4, or so little Oct4 as to be indistinguishable from background readings.

This means that pluripotency, the ability of stem cells to change into any kind of cell, is regulated differently in adult and embryonic stem cells.

"This is the definitive survey of Oct4," said Jaenisch. "It puts all those claims of pluripotent adult stem cells into perspective."

Oct4 is essential in maintaining the pluripotency of embryonic stem cells, but only for a short time before the embryo implants in the uterine wall. After implantation, Oct4 is turned off and the cells differentiate into all of the 200-plus cell types in the body.

"We have convincingly shown that Oct4 has no role in adult stem cells," said Lengner.

He initially set out to determine how tissues previously shown to express Oct4 (the intestinal lining, brain, bone marrow and hair follicle) functioned without

Top panels: Cells of the intestinal lining of mice lacking the embryonic pluripotency regulator Oct4 stop dividing and die after radioactive exposure. Middle panels: Intestinal stem cells then become activated and begin dividing rapidly. Bottom panels: The intestinal lining is completely regenerated, with stem cells relocating to the bottom

---

the protein. To do so, he bred mice in which the Oct4 gene had been deleted from a given tissue type.

Next, Lengner stressed the tissue in several ways, forcing the adult stem cells within to regenerate the tissue. All regenerated normally. Lengner and his fellow researchers then tested to confirm that Oct4 had indeed been deleted from these cells. Finally, the researchers set out to validate the previously published reports claiming Oct4 was expressed in these adult stem cell types. Using highly sensitive tests that could detect Oct4 at the single-cell level, they were unable to confirm the earlier reports.

"This is a cautionary tale of believing what you read in the literature," said Lengner, who suggests that earlier studies may have misapplied tricky analytical techniques or worked with cell cultures that had spent too much time in an incubator.

"We now know that adult stem cells regulate their pluripotency, or 'stemness,' using different mechanisms from embryonic stem cells, and we're studying these mechanisms," he said. "Is there a common pathway that governs stemness in different adult stem cells, or does each stem cell have its own pathway? We don't yet know."

Other authors of this paper are from Massachusetts General Hospital, the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine and the Russian Academy of Science.

Technorati : Adult stem cells

The pylon's move is "a daunting task," NASA will do it

NASA scientist are now facing a new challenge.NASA's about to get into the moving business.
Over the next five days, astronauts are scheduled to shift a giant power pylon from the top of the International Space Station to the station's outermost tip. It's among the most complex jobs NASA has attempted as it builds the station, a scientific laboratory orbiting about 200 miles overhead.

The pylon is a tower twice as tall as a football goal post and, at 35,000 pounds on Earth, as massive as a city bus. It supports solar panels to help generate electricity.

The pylon's move is "a daunting task," says Kirk Shireman, deputy chief of the station program. "We'll all breathe a little easier when we've installed it." He has a long wait before he can relax. Even if all goes smoothly, the move won't be finished until Tuesday.
Astronaut Scott Parazynski, who is doing today's spacewalk and two more, likens the task to moving a house. "We're going to power down every system, all the computers, the lights, the air conditioning," he says, and "take all that apart and move it with cranes." The "cranes" are two sets of sophisticated robotic arms.

The move and an addition of a room to the station are the main goals of the crew of space shuttle Discovery, which is at the station for an 11-day visit. Inspections of Discovery show its heat shield is in good shape, hief mission manager John Shannon said on Thursday.

The pylon was added to the station seven years ago. NASA had to fold solar panels attached to it to make room for new solar-panel pylons installed in 2006 and 2007. The location change will allow the old panels to be unfurled so they can generate electricity.

NASA has never relocated such a big item in orbit.

Among the challenges:

•Restricted vision. The pylon will be eased into place by astronauts who can't see what they're doing. They'll use the station's robotic arm, which is controlled with two joysticks, to position the pylon. But they won't have a view of the arm and its load. They'll have to rely on directions from spacewalking crewmates hovering nearby.

•Time pressure. Before the move, heaters in the pylon will be turned off. Without heat, electronics boxes on the pylon will freeze if exposed too long to the chill of outer space. So the crew can't make mistakes as they reposition the pylon and reattach its power cables.

•Uncooperative equipment. Once the pylon is moved, two spacewalkers will have to attach coolant pipes. That job is "notoriously difficult," says astronaut Dan Tani, because the pipes are so stiff. The robotic arm is also a concern. To plug the pylon into place, the arm will be stretched almost to its limits, which could make it unstable.

Despite the many things that could go wrong during the move, the astronauts express confidence that their work will be a success - and fun.

Technorati : nasa, pylon

Missing Black Hole : Hundreds Found!

Missing Black Hole Report: Hundreds Found!

Astronomers have unmasked hundreds of black holes hiding deep inside dusty galaxies billions of light-years away.

The massive, growing black holes, discovered by NASA's Spitzer and Chandra space telescopes, represent a large fraction of a long-sought missing population. Their discovery implies there were hundreds of millions of additional black holes growing in our young universe, more than doubling the total amount known at that distance.

"Active, supermassive black holes were everywhere in the early universe," said Mark Dickinson of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Ariz. "We had seen the tip of the iceberg before in our search for these objects. Now, we can see the iceberg itself." Dickinson is a co-author of two new papers appearing in the Nov. 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal. Emanuele Daddi of the Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique in France led the research.

The findings are also the first direct evidence that most, if not all, massive galaxies in the distant universe spent their youths building monstrous black holes at their cores.

For decades, a large population of active black holes has been considered missing. These highly energetic structures belong to a class of black holes called quasars. A quasar consists of a doughnut-shaped cloud of gas and dust that surrounds and feeds a budding supermassive black hole. As the gas and dust are devoured by the black hole, they heat up and shoot out X-rays. Those X-rays can be detected as a general glow in space, but often the quasars themselves can't be seen directly because dust and gas blocks them from our view.

We knew from other studies from about 30 years ago that there must be more quasars in the universe, but we didn't know where to find them until now," said Daddi.

Daddi and his team initially set out to study 1,000 dusty, massive galaxies that are busy making stars and were thought to lack quasars. The galaxies are about the same mass as our own spiral Milky Way galaxy, but irregular in shape. At 9 to 11 billion light-years away, they existed at a time when the universe was in its adolescence, between 2.5 and 4.5 billion years old.

When the astronomers peered more closely at the galaxies with Spitzer's infrared eyes, they noticed that about 200 of the galaxies gave off an unusual amount of infrared light. X-ray data from Chandra, and a technique called "stacking," revealed the galaxies were, in fact, hiding plump quasars inside. The scientists now think that the quasars heat the dust in their surrounding doughnut clouds, releasing the excess infrared light.

"We found most of the population of hidden quasars in the early universe," said Daddi. Previously, only the rarest and most energetic of these hidden black holes had been seen at this early epoch.

The newfound quasars are helping answer fundamental questions about how massive galaxies evolve. For instance, astronomers have learned that most massive galaxies steadily build up their stars and black holes simultaneously until they get too big and their black holes suppress star formation.

The observations also suggest that collisions between galaxies might not play as large a role in galaxy evolution as previously believed. "Theorists thought that mergers between galaxies were required to initiate this quasar activity, but we now see that quasars can be active in unharassed galaxies," said co-author David Alexander of Durham University, United Kingdom.

"It's as if we were blindfolded studying the elephant before, and we weren't sure what kind of animal we had," added co-author David Elbaz of the Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique. "Now, we can see the elephant for the first time."

The new observations were made as part of the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey, the most sensitive survey to date of the distant universe at multiple wavelengths.

Technorati : : Hundreds, Black, Found!, Hole, Missing

Halo boost Microsoft

Microsoft Corp. on Thursday said earnings for the fiscal first quarter jumped 23% amid strong revenue growth, solidly beating the forecasts of Wall Street analysts. ......profit rose 23 percent compared with last year, bolstered by brisk sales of the new "Halo 3" video game, Windows and Office.

The better-than-expected results pushed it stock up sharply in after-hours trading.

For the quarter ended Sept. 30, the software maker's profit climbed to $4.29 billion, or 45 cents a share, from $3.48 billion, or 35 cents a share, during the same period last year.

The results topped Wall Street's expectations. Analysts, on average, had forecast a profit of 39 cents a share, according to a Thomson Financial poll.

Revenue grew 27 percent to $13.76 billion from $10.81 billion in the year-ago quarter. Analysts were looking for $12.57 billion in sales.

The business unit responsible for the Windows Vista operating system contributed $4.14 billion in revenue, while the unit that makes the Office 2007 software suite brought in $4.11 billion.

Sales of the "Halo 3" video game and the Xbox 360 console that Halo is played on pushed the company's entertainment and devices division to a profit of $165 million in the quarter.

The division responsible for online advertising posted a loss of $264 million.

Microsoft increased its guidance for the fiscal year, saying it expected to earn $1.78 to $1.81 a share on revenue of $58.8 billion to $59.7 billion. Earlier, the company predicted it would earn $1.69 to $1.73 a share on $56.8 billion to $57.8 billion in sales.

Shares of Microsoft gained 74 cents, or 2.4 percent, on Thursday before the earnings announcement to close at $31.99. In early after-hours trading, the stock was up $2.86, or 8.9 percent, to $34.85

Technorati : Halo boost Microsoft

Chip Update : Intel Accelerates 45nm Chip Production

Intel Corp. on Thursday is expected to open a new factory to accelerate the production of chips using a 45-nanometer manufacturing process, slated to be used for its upcoming Penryn chips.

The 'Fab 32' in Chandler, Arizona, will use the 45-nm manufacturing process to produce chips for servers, PCs, mobile phones and consumer devices, according to Intel.

"The opening of this fab means that we've now moved into high-volume production of our 45nm chips," said Kari Aakre, an Intel spokeswoman. Intel's been making 45nm chips for a year now in a development fab in Hillsboro, Oregon, which isn't high-volume, Aakre said.

Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini said last month that Intel plans to introduce 15 new 45-nm processors by the end of the year and 20 in the first quarter of 2008. Penryn chips for servers and workstations will be introduced on Nov. 12.

Intel will also use the 45-nm manufacturing process for Silverthorne, a low-power Intel architecture designed for ultramobile devices, mobile Internet devices and low-cost PCs. Silverthorne chips will appear early next year.

Next year it will add factories in Kiryat Gal, Israel and Rio Rancho, New Mexico, to produce 45nm chips. The new fabs will help Intel meet its projection to ship more 45nm chips than 65-nm chips by the third quarter of 2008, Aakre said.

Intel currently ships 65nm chips, and Penryn is the code name given to the 4-5nm "shrink" of Intel's current chip designs. The measurements refer to the size of the features on the silicon chip.

Penryn's successor, the 45-nm 'Nehalem' processor, will appear in 2008. At Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco last month, Otellini demonstrated Nehalem, saying it would deliver better performance-per-watt and better system performance through its QuickPath Interconnect system architecture. Nehalem chips will also include an integrated memory controller and improved communication links between system components.

Technorati : 45nm Chip Production

The sensation of space travel

Space travel :

Off-planet travel is an experience like no other, say those that have already travelled into orbit. And that's just what ticketed, still-to-fly customers for future suborbital treks want to hear.

Space travelers - those that have flown, as well as patrons-in-waiting for commercial spaceline operations to begin - spoke at the 2007 International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight (ISPS), held here October 24-25.

Reda Anderson, the first customer to sign up for a suborbital sendoff courtesy of Rocketplane Global, Inc., listed the "three R's" of commercial personal spaceflight: Risk, Reward, and Responsibility.

Anderson doesn't see herself as a tourist.

"That's because they are not serving coffee on this flight. I see myself as a pioneer ... one of, say, the first 100 people that certainly are pioneers, maybe the first 500," she said.

"We are the ones who'll begin this movement," Anderson added. "Darn right I know I could die there."

Opening up the market

For Craig Willan, a future passenger on Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic suborbital spaceliner: "I'm not worthy to be called an astronaut or an astronaut candidate. I'm a space traveler ... that's basically it." His official job here on Earth is President of Omega Research and Engineering, Inc. of Justin, Texas.

Like Anderson, Willan also said that he readily accepts the risks associated with public space travel.

As for the current price tag to fly aboard the suborbital SpaceShipTwo, now being built for Virgin Galactic, Willan's seat into space is costing $200,000. He'll be one of the first 100 to ride that vessel and believes that, potentially, ticket prices are going to come down - way, way down in the future.

Earlier in the day, Alex Tai, Chief Operation Officer for Virgin Galactic, noted that the company now has $31 million in deposits from future suborbital space travelers. "When we start flying people from Spaceport America here, and we show people exactly how wonderful it is to go to space and the wonderful experience you can have ... the market is really going to open up," he said.

Like a dream

There are two things you'll remember about being in space, explained Michael Lopez-Alegria, a veteran NASA spaceflyer with 10 spacewalks to his credit, as well as a stint aboard the International Space Station.

"The first is that it's better than you ever imagined. And the second is that you can't go back in your mind ... it's like a dream, like a parallel existence that you just can't get your arms around," Lopez-Alegria said. He said that once you've lived in space, the experience you'd like to bottle up so you can take a sniff of it every once in a while.

"Space is very addicting ... so be ready for that," Lopez-Alegria suggested to the audience. Launch and the speed needed to reach Earth orbit are truly amazing events, he said.

The sensation of floating - whether you equate that to a fish or a bird - "it doesn't matter. The sensation is unbelievable ... and the amazing thing is that it just never stops," Lopez-Alegria said.

In viewing the Earth from space, Lopez-Alegria said that our planet takes on many faces. "It looks fragile. It looks sturdy. It looks inviting. It looks hostile," he suggested.

From a spacewalker's perspective, with the freedom of looking at the sky during a night part of an orbit around the Earth, Lopez-Alegria pointed out: "Instead of seeing a black sky with pinpoints of light, it's almost as if you see a white sky with pinpoints of black. That's how many stars there are," he said.

Exceeds all expectations

A little over a year ago, Anousheh Ansari, attracted worldwide notice as the first female private space explorer to board the International Space Station. The high-tech businesswoman and co-founder of Prodea Systems of Plano, Texas paid some $20 million for her orbital adventure in September 2006.

The actual experience "exceeds all expectations" and is something that's hard to put to words, Ansari advised. "A lot of people say that diving is the closest thing to being weightless. It comes close, but still, it's not the same."

Ansari's suggestion, for those taking suborbital flights of short duration, is that future travelers need to make the whole journey the experience - and not just focus on the moment of weightlessness or the moment you see Earth. The entire preparation and mental preparedness is part of the journey, she said.

"There are a lot of new sensations that you'll be introduced to, and you need to mentally be prepared for that," Ansari said.

In her mission into Earth orbit, being able to observe the Earth from space had an impact on her. "It sort of reduces things to a size that you think everything is manageable. All these things that may seem big and impossible ... we can do this. Peace on Earth - no problem. It gives people that type of energy ... that type of power, and I have experienced that."

Stellar-traveling species

Retired NASA astronaut, Dan Barry, has a trio of spaceflights under his flight helmet. His take home message regarding the importance of taking risk in order to fly through space boiled down to one word: adaptation.

"Life is something that modifies its environment ... changes things around in order to succeed," Barry explained. The obvious adaptation of the human race to all of the issues that are confronting us on the planet is to leave - to develop a spacefaring society, he said.

Mars is Barry's object of choice in regards to human expansion outward, on the drive to eventually become a stellar-traveling species.

"It is more than just nice. It's an obligation for us to get off this planet - to make it no longer possible to wipe out the species with a single event, an asteroid, or a crazy virus or an ecological runaway," Barry said. "It becomes not a destiny, but an absolute necessity for us to establish a place on Mars that is permanent, independent ... and capable of sustaining the species without Earth."

Technorati : space travel