Learning from the Brain: Computer Scientists Develop New Generation of Neuro-Computer

They have been co-ordinating the European Union research project "Brain-i-Nets" (Novel Brain Inspired Learning Paradigms for Large-Scale Neuronal Networks) for three years, and are launching a three-day meeting of the participating researchers in Graz. The scientists want to design a new generation of neuro-computers based on the principles of calculation and learning mechanisms found in the brain, and at the same time gain new knowledge about the brain's learning mechanisms.
The human brain consists of a network of several billion nerve cells. These are joined together by independent connections called synapses. Synapses are changing all the time -- something scientists name synaptic plasticity. This highly complex system represents a basis for independent thinking and learning. But even today there are still many open questions for researchers.
"In contrast to today's computers, the brain doesn't carry out a set programme but rather is always adapting functions and reprogramming them anew. Many of these effects have not been explained," comments IGI head Wolfgang Maass together with project co-ordinator Robert Legenstein. In co-operation with neuroscientists and physicists, and with the help of new experimental methods, they want to research the mechanisms of synaptic plasticity in the organism.

Instant Expert: Robots

Ever since the Czech writer Karel Èapek first coined the term "robot" in 1921, there has been an expectation that robots would some day deliver us from the drudgery of hard work. The word - from the Czech "robota", for hard labour and servitude - described intelligent machines used as slaves in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots).
Today, over one million household robots, and a further 1.1 million industrial robots, are operating worldwide. Robots are used to perform tasks that require great levels of precision or are simply repetitive and boring. Many also do jobs that are hazardous to people, such as exploring shipwrecks, helping out after disasters, studying other planets and defusing bombs or mines.
Robots are increasingly marching into our lives. In the future, robots will act as carers, medics, bionic enhancements, companions, entertainers, security guards, traffic police and even soldiers.

BACKFLIP: AT&T Announces Availability of First Android Device with Motorola

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MOTOBLUR offers AT&T customers a new way to connect to their favorite people, content and applications, whether it’s work or personal email, messaging or social networking. Motorola’s exclusive Android experience syncs contacts, posts, messages, photos and much more — from sources such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Gmail, Picasa, work and personal e-mail, and Last.fm — and automatically delivers them to live widgets for immediate reply, right from the home screen. And, for customers who prefer multi-tasking, AT&T’s 3G network offers the added advantage of talking and surfing the Web and accessing applications at the same time.
BACKFLIP features a unique form-factor with an original reverse flip design, spacious keyboard and BACKTRACK touch panel, allowing the display to be hands-free while one’s fingers work behind the screen. BACKFLIP runs on the nation’s fastest 3G network and is powered by MOTOBLUR, Motorola’s Android-powered content delivery service created to make phones more personal and socially smart.
MOTOBLUR keeps track of contacts so it’s easy to keep up. Users can flip through messages and updates on the BACKFLIP and respond in a flash, without having to log in and out of applications. MOTOBLUR helps consumers keep a pulse on what’s happening on their social and news networks. Only MOTOBLUR can sync Facebook, MySpace and Twitter with phone book and email contacts, while threading status updates and profile pics through calls, messages and address book. From the home screen, consumers can update their status to Facebook, MySpace and Twitter at once.

Range Rider Lawn Tractor

The Range Rider lawn tractor features a powerful Kohler engine and a hydrostatic transmission with cruise control that allows for an infinite range of speeds. With a 42" deck, cast iron front axle and comfortable controls like a Soft Touch steering wheel and rubber foot pads to reduce vibration, the Range Rider has the power and convenient features you're looking for in a lawn tractor. **Available at Lowe's by special order only**
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42" dual-blade side discharge mowing deck
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Automatic transmission with foot pedal controls and cruise control - drives like a car!
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Cast-iron front axle for durability and strength
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Infinite range of speeds and superior control with hydrostatic transmission
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Cruise control lets you lock in the perfect pace
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Rubber footpads help reduce vibration
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Heavy duty StepThru frame for easy on and off
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Standard cup holder
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Accepts optional FastAttach mulch kit, bagger or bumper with no tools required
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2-year limited warranty
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20 HP* Kohler engine
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*as rated by engine manufacturer

CERN Gears Up Its Computers for More Atom Smashing

A deluge of high-energy physics data is headed toward servers in Geneva, Switzerland, later this month. That's because the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) now says it plans to restart its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) soon for a run that could last as long as two years at a collision energy of seven TeV (tera–electron volts, 3.5 TeV per beam). As CERN ramps up the world's most powerful particle accelerator to operate well beyond its previous best performance, the lab's computer systems must likewise be tuned so they can properly capture and analyze all of this new output.Rather than adding a platoon of new computers, and possibly overextending the information technology infrastructure's power and cooling capacity, CERN is testing a virtualized server environment that it hopes to have in place by the end of the year. Server virtualization, which involves using software to segment a server machine's processing and storage capacity, has become a popular technique in recent years to make better use of underutilized machines and drive up efficiency in data centers.CERN plans to divide its 4,000 servers (which run about 32,500 processors) into about 35,000 virtual servers by the end of the year and manage the subsequent workflow with the help of software from Platform Computing Corp., in Markham, Ontario. Over the next two or three years the lab could further slice up its servers into as many as 80,000 virtual servers.Simply adding more server machines to CERN's data centers was not an option. "We are limited in the amount of power and cooling available," says Tony Cass, group leader of the Fabric Infrastructure and Operations group at CERN. "We want to wring every last drop out of the resources we have to do physics. Even 10 percent more capacity means that much more toward improving the physics."In addition to the particle accelerator itself, LHC has several particle detectors—including ATLAS and CMS—on site that capture data produced during the collisions. "To produce physics results, scientists at CERN first have to turn the 1s and 0s produced by the detectors into meaningful pictures showing the tracks of the different quantum particles produced in the collisions," Cass says. "Then they need to analyze these images to understand what they mean."Detector data capture and analysis requires tremendous computing power, but not always in equal amounts. Sometimes more crunching is needed to create the images, other times it is necessary for the analysis. To allocate and reallocate processor resources, Cass and his team have to determine how many servers would be required to perform a certain task—analysis, for example. If they find that more computing resources are needed elsewhere, they have to stop the batch-processing work being done on the servers, reconfigure them, and then start them again. Virtual servers, however, can be allocated and reallocated dynamically using Platform Computing's software, without the need to interrupt processing work already in progress.The LHC, which first went online in September 2008, is designed to accelerate bunches of protons to the highest energies ever generated by a machine, colliding them head-on 30 million times a second, with each collision generating thousands of particles at nearly light-speed. If successful, the LHC could help physicists answer questions about the subatomic composition of matter and energy in the universe.Unfortunately, the LHC's first run lasted little more than a week before it had to be halted due to a problem with two superconducting magnets. The device was brought online again briefly in November to conduct a few experiments but has been down since December while CERN upgrades the equipment. More than 10,000 researchers in 85 countries plan to use the world's most powerful particle accelerator to test different predictions concerning high-energy physics.

'Thinking' robot to explore depths of Arctic waters

Engineers at Indian Arm, B.C., troubleshoot Explorer's communications link to reduce the risk of the robot failing to find its way home after mapping the Arctic in spring.PAUL_handleError, google_render_ad);
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Video: Canada's Yellow Submarine
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By Paul Watson Arctic-Aboriginal Affairs
INDIAN ARM, B.C.–Through a hole cut in the High Arctic ice, Canada's latest pioneer will dive to lightless depths to fathom a mountainous undersea world unseen by human eyes.
Shaped like a six-metre-long torpedo, Explorer will creep through the darkness at the speed of a briskly paddled canoe, under pressure so powerful it would crush a car into a block of steel scrap.
In March, a small team of Canadian government and industry experts plans to launch the autonomous unmanned vehicle (AUV) from an ice camp north of Borden Island, in the eastern Arctic, more than 4,100 kilometres northwest of Toronto.
The yellow craft will be on a critical mission to map the sea floor, at a depth of some five kilometres, as Canada rushes to compile evidence supporting its claim to a vast northern territory before a 2013 deadline.
For close to four days at a time, Explorer will be prowling like a lone shark, a multi-million-dollar trailblazer on a perilous voyage with no one to watch its steel-hulled back.
If the robot runs into trouble – like a massive seamount rising up into the darkness, turbulent currents or a curious sea creature – it won't be able to call for help from humans high above on shifting ice. Explorer will have to think for itself.

Distance from Earth to Moon

The Earth has only one natural satellite in the form of the Moon. The distance from the Earth to the Moon can be measured in terms of km, miles, light years. It takes 1.2 seconds for light to travel the distance from the Earth to the Moon. The average distance between these celestial bodies is 384,400 km...
The Moon which revolves around the Earth is the fifth largest of all moons present in our solar system. Its diameter is 3,474 km and is slightly greater than a quarter of the Earth's diameter. The total surface area of moon is less than 10% of Earth's surface area. The gravity experienced on the surface of moon is 17% of the Earth's gravitational force. The volume of the moon is 2% that of the Earth. The gravitational interactions which take place between the Earth and the moon slows down the rotation of the former. The transfer of kinetic energy which takes from the Earth to the moon is the reason behind this slowdown. It also causes tides on the surface of Earth. The effect of this gravitational interaction on the moon is seen in the form of its orbit being raised. Information about the distance from the Earth to the Moon is provided in the following paragraphs. Read more on facts about moon.

AT&T to invest $2B in mobile network

(CNET) -- AT&T said Thursday that it will invest an additional $2 billion in its network in 2010 to make sure it keeps up with the growing demand from new smartphones and other 3G data devices, such as the Apple iPad, on its network.
During its fourth quarter 2009 conference call, Chief Operating Officer John Stankey said AT&T plans to spend between $18 billion and $19 billion in 2010 upgrading its wireless and backhaul networks to handle the onslaught of new traffic. This is roughly $2 billion more than the company had invested in the previous year.
Specifically, Stankey said AT&T will add 2,000 new cell sites and upgrade existing cell sites with three times more fiber links than it had in 2009. This will increase capacity for the backhaul network that connects the cell towers to AT&T's main network. The backhaul portion of the network is a critical component to AT&T's network; with these upgrades in place, Stankey said the company will be able to easily upgrade in the future to 4G wireless technology.
AT&T will begin testing its 4G network using LTE, the same technology Verizon Wireless is using for its 4G network, starting in 2010, with a few commercial deployments ready in 2011 and more commercial deployments in 2012.
AT&T, which is the only wireless operator in the U.S. selling the iPhone, has been the target of much criticism over this past year, as many iPhone subscribers, particularly in densely populated urban areas, have complained about dropped calls, slow Internet access, and poor all around service. Some critics claim the company has not been spending enough on network upgrades to keep up with growing demand.
Stankey acknowledged that AT&T has faced some difficulties, particularly in cities like New York and San Francisco. But he said the company is "closing the gap."
He said there are periods of time during the week in some sections of Manhattan where nearly 70 percent of the phones active on its network are data-intensive devices. He said to deal with this surge in usage, AT&T is increasing 3G radio capacity in those trouble areas by more than one third. The company will also add additional radio network controllers on existing cell sites.

Why Was Haiti Earthquake So Devastating?

Washington ― More than 3 million people in Haiti are estimated to have been affected by the earthquake that struck January 12. Registering at magnitude 7.0, it is the most violent earthquake to hit that island nation in a century. Deaths, injuries and damage are yet to be tallied.
According to experts, magnitude 7 earthquakes ― considered “severe” by seismologists ― occur around the world 12 to 15 times each year. What made the Haiti earthquake especially devastating?
In addition to the magnitude (strength) of an earthquake, an earthquake’s location relative to population centers its depth under the earth are determining factors for the damage that may result, according to Michael Blanpied, associate coordinator of the Earthquake Hazards Program at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
In a recorded interview for USGS, Blanpied said the epicenter for the Haiti earthquake was just 10 miles (15 kilometers) from the capitol city of Port-au-Prince, where nearly 1 million people live. He also noted that Haiti, which suffers from widespread poverty, has not constructed many buildings resistant to earthquakes. Compounding the problem, he said, is that the earthquake has been followed by at least six aftershocks of moderate magnitude that have further damaged already weakened buildings and imperiled rescue efforts.
The initial earthquake is estimated to have occurred just 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) under the earth’s surface. Shaking from relatively shallow earthquakes is more severe, Blanpied said. In addition, soft ground amplifies the shaking, which increases the threat of destruction to the buildings above it.
Landslides, which could bury buildings and claim more victims, remain a possibility, Blanpied said. “The only positive thing about this earthquake is that, because it did occur on land, it did not generate a tsunami,” he said. Tsunamis are huge ocean waves capable of traveling miles inland on land masses. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, generated by an undersea earthquake, killed some 300,000 people.
Haiti is no stranger to earthquakes. The nation, which occupies the western part of the island of Hispaniola and is situated between Puerto Rico and Cuba, has experienced numerous slight to moderate earthquakes in the recent past.
“The island is caught between two tectonic plates,” Blanpied explained. “The North America and the Caribbean tectonic plates are sheering the island, crushing it, grinding it. And as that occurs, earthquakes pop off. … This is quite an earthquake-prone region.”
According to the USGS, at least 1,783 deaths worldwide resulted from earthquake activity in 2009. The deadliest earthquake of that year was a magnitude 7.5 event that killed approximately 1,117 people in southern Sumatra, Indonesia, on September 30. The most powerful earthquake for 2009 ― registering at magnitude 8.1 ― occurred September 29 in the Samoa Islands region. The tsunami it generated killed 192 people.
More information about earthquakes is available at the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program Web site.

Huge Mars Region Shaped by Water, Rover Mission Finds

Ker ThanNational Geographic News
May 21, 2009
Shifting sand dunes on ancient Mars once concealed a network of underground water spread across an area the size of Oklahoma, according to new findings from NASA's Mars rover Opportunity.
In 2004 Opportunity had spotted minerals and blueberry-shaped rocks indicative of ancient groundwater in the Martian crater Endurance.

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The robotic explorer has now found similar signs of past water in Victoria, a crater some 3.5 miles (6 kilometers) away.
Opportunity also spotted unique rock layers in the sides of Victoria Crater, which are likely the petrified remnants of ancient sand dunes.
The new findings confirm suspicions that water once shaped the Martian landscape on a regional scale instead of forming isolated oases, said rover project leader Steven Squyres of Cornell University in New York State.
"Given that we've seen the same stuff at places that are miles apart, it is a reasonable conjecture that those processes operated over most of this region," Squyres said.
Many scientists consider water to be a vital ingredient for life, Squyres noted.
Got the Job Done
The decision to send Opportunity down into Victoria Crater was one the rover team wrestled with for a long time in 2006.
Rough terrain leading into the crater could have damaged the aging probe's steering system or broken its wheels.
At the time, mission managers were worried that any damage would mean Opportunity would never make it back out of Victoria Crater.
But the risky maneuver has proved well worth it, Squyres said. Opportunity clambered safely out of the crater last August and is now trekking to Endeavor, an even larger crater some 8 miles (13.5 kilometers) away.
"There was no way we could've known [about the scale of the water network] without going to Victoria and taking a look," Squyres said.
"We got in, we got out, and we got the job done."

'Black box' could hold answer to plane crash mystery

(CNN) -- The "black box" is actually an orange cylinder -- about 13 pounds of metal wrapped around a stack of memory chips and designed to withstand the force of being slammed high-speed into a brick wall.

Recovery efforts have found several items confirmed to have come from Air France Flight 447.

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One such device -- possibly sitting more than two miles below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean -- is the object of a massive international search and could hold the answer to why Air France Flight 447 mysteriously plunged into the sea off the coast of Brazil last week with 228 people on board.
"These record many, many parameters of the flight -- the aircraft, its altitude, even the amount of force that one of the pilots might put on a pedal," John Perry Fish, an underwater recovery expert, told CNN. "It's very important to find these in order to find out what happened to the flight."
In the wake of nearly every air disaster, search and rescue efforts immediately segue into quests for the boxes, which have been in wide use on commercial flights since shortly after World War II.
Actually a pair of devices -- the flight data recorder and a voice and audio recorder -- the equipment records virtually everything about how an airplane is working.
The time of day, air pressure, the plane's speed and altitude, how much fuel a plane has and whether that fuel is flowing properly -- all are recorded by sensors throughout the plane. Functions that can change quickly, such as the position of rudders and flight stabilizers, are checked as often as eight times per second, said Chris Benich, director of aerospace regulatory affairs with Honeywell, the company that made the recorders aboard the Air France flight. See a timeline of the Air France flight »
Microphones in the cockpit record not just conversations between the pilot and other crew members, but can pick up anything from a loud bang to the sound of a switch being flicked on or off.
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"When you put all that together, you can start to back it up to a point where you can see the triggering event, or events, that caused a chain of things to happen," Benich said.
Made of several layers of aluminum, insulation and stainless steel, the devices are designed to survive high temperatures, strong impact and tons of pressure -- like what would be experienced at the bottom of the ocean. There's nothing magical that keeps them together when an entire aircraft has been destroyed, according to Benich.
"It's not as much about the materials as it is about the design," he said.
The exact origin of the term "black box" is unclear -- with some sources citing descriptions of early flight-data recorders and others saying it stems from a generic reference to electronic equipment.
The French nuclear submarine and other vessels now searching for the recorders are focusing on its underwater locator beacon -- a device that sends acoustic pulses, or "pings," to searchers.
The U.S. Navy is contributing two high-tech acoustic devices -- known as "towed pinger locators" -- that will be attached to French tug boats and can search to a maximum depth of 20,000 feet.
The wreckage is believed to be about 15,000 feet deep, amid underwater mountains and mixed in with tons of sea trash. By comparison, the wreckage of the space shuttle Challenger was found in about 1,000 feet of water.
Still, experts like Fish say they're confident the box can be found.
"The pressure is high, but instruments are produced and designed and developed and we currently use them that work at those depths ... ," said Fish, vice-president of American Underwater Search and Survey in Cataument, Massachusetts. "I do think it's possible to find. It's just going to take a little longer and require a greater effort working in this deep water."
The batteries that power the locator beacon are designed to last for about 30 days. But the box is designed to keep its contents safe for much longer.

Full text of Obama's speech to Congress

Barack Obama acknowledges applause as he arrives to address Congress. Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Madame Speaker, Mr Vice-President, members of Congress and the first lady of the united states :
I've come here tonight not only to address the distinguished men and women in this great chamber, but to speak frankly and directly to the men and women who sent us here.
I know that for many Americans watching right now, the state of our economy is a concern that rises above all others. And rightly so. If you haven't been personally affected by this recession, you probably know someone who has - a friend; a neighbor; a member of your family. You don't need to hear another list of statistics to know that our economy is in crisis, because you live it every day. It's the worry you wake up with and the source of sleepless nights. It's the job you thought you'd retire from but now have lost; the business you built your dreams upon that's now hanging by a thread; the college acceptance letter your child had to put back in the envelope. The impact of this recession is real, and it is everywhere.
But while our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken; though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this:
We will rebuild, we will recover and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.
The weight of this crisis will not determine the destiny of this nation. The answers to our problems don't lie beyond our reach. They exist in our laboratories and universities; in our fields and our factories; in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest-working people on Earth. Those qualities that have made America the greatest force of progress and prosperity in human history we still possess in ample measure. What is required now is for this country to pull together, confront boldly the challenges we face and take responsibility for our future once more.
Now, if we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that for too long, we have not always met these responsibilities - as a government or as a people. I say this not to lay blame or look backwards, but because it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament.
The fact is, our economy did not fall into decline overnight. Nor did all of our problems begin when the housing market collapsed or the stock market sank. We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy. Yet we import more oil today than ever before. The cost of healthcare eats up more and more of our savings each year, yet we keep delaying reform. Our children will compete for jobs in a global economy that too many of our schools do not prepare them for. And though all these challenges went unsolved, we still managed to spend more money and pile up more debt, both as individuals and through our government, than ever before.
In other words, we have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter or the next election. A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn't afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day.
Well that day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here.
Now is the time to act boldly and wisely - to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity. Now is the time to jump-start job creation, re-start lending and invest in areas like energy, healthcare and education that will grow our economy, even as we make hard choices to bring our deficit down. That is what my economic agenda is designed to do, and that's what I'd like to talk to you about tonight.
It's an agenda that begins with jobs.
As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress to send me a recovery plan by President's Day that would put people back to work and put money in their pockets. Not because I believe in bigger government - I don't. Not because I'm not mindful of the massive debt we've inherited - I am. I called for action because the failure to do so would have cost more jobs and caused more hardships. In fact, a failure to act would have worsened our long-term deficit by assuring weak economic growth for years. That's why I pushed for quick action. And tonight, I am grateful that this Congress delivered, and pleased to say that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is now law.
Over the next two years, this plan will save or create 3.5m jobs. More than 90% of these jobs will be in the private sector - jobs rebuilding our roads and bridges; constructing wind turbines and solar panels; laying broadband and expanding mass transit.
Because of this plan, there are teachers who can now keep their jobs and educate our kids. Healthcare professionals can continue caring for our sick. There are 57 police officers who are still on the streets of Minneapolis tonight because this plan prevented the layoffs their department was about to make.
Because of this plan, 95% of the working households in America will receive a tax cut – a tax cut that you will see in your paychecks beginning on April 1st.
Because of this plan, families who are struggling to pay tuition costs will receive a $2,500 tax credit for all four years of college. And Americans who have lost their jobs in this recession will be able to receive extended unemployment benefits and continued healthcare coverage to help them weather this storm.
I know there are some in this chamber and watching at home who are sceptical of whether this plan will work. I understand that scepticism. Here in Washington, we've all seen how quickly good intentions can turn into broken promises and wasteful spending. And with a plan of this scale comes enormous responsibility to get it right.
That is why I have asked Vice-President Biden to lead a tough, unprecedented oversight effort - because nobody messes with Joe. I have told each member of my cabinet as well as mayors and governors across the country that they will be held accountable by me and the American people for every dollar they spend. I have appointed a proven and aggressive inspector-general to ferret out any and all cases of waste and fraud. And we have created a new website called recovery.gov so that every American can find out how and where their money is being spent.
So the recovery plan we passed is the first step in getting our economy back on track. But it is just the first step. Because even if we manage this plan flawlessly, there will be no real recovery unless we clean up the credit crisis that has severely weakened our financial system.
I want to speak plainly and candidly about this issue tonight, because every American should know that it directly affects you and your family's well-being. You should also know that the money you've deposited in banks across the country is safe; your insurance is secure; and you can rely on the continued operation of our financial system. That is not the source of concern.
The concern is that if we do not re-start lending in this country, our recovery will be choked off before it even begins.
You see, the flow of credit is the lifeblood of our economy. The ability to get a loan is how you finance the purchase of everything from a home to a car to a college education; how stores stock their shelves, farms buy equipment, and businesses make payroll.
But credit has stopped flowing the way it should. Too many bad loans from the housing crisis have made their way onto the books of too many banks. With so much debt and so little confidence, these banks are now fearful of lending out any more money to households, to businesses, or to each other. When there is no lending, families can't afford to buy homes or cars. So businesses are forced to make layoffs. Our economy suffers even more, and credit dries up even further.
That is why this administration is moving swiftly and aggressively to break this destructive cycle, restore confidence and re-start lending.
We will do so in several ways. First, we are creating a new lending fund that represents the largest effort ever to help provide auto loans, college loans and small business loans to the consumers and entrepreneurs who keep this economy running.
Second, we have launched a housing plan that will help responsible families facing the threat of foreclosure lower their monthly payments and re-finance their mortgages. It's a plan that won't help speculators or that neighbour down the street who bought a house he could never hope to afford, but it will help millions of Americans who are struggling with declining home values - Americans who will now be able to take advantage of the lower interest rates that this plan has already helped bring about. In fact, the average family who re-finances today can save nearly $2,000 per year on their mortgage

Willem Schulte says we have enough oil, for now

Today, fossil fuels still supply most of the world’s energy needs. Energy demand by people around the world is growing as the global population increases. It’s logical to ask if the world is running out of oil.
Willem Schulte: The world is not running out of oil, not at the moment.
That is Dr. Willem Schulte, Chief Scientist for Reservoir Engineering for Shell. He says that while there is a lot of oil and natural gas remaining, its getting harder to recover.
Willem Schulte: For the medium term, we have enough hydrocarbons to supply to the world. In the past, we have produced one trillion barrels of liquid oil. There are still two trillion barrels, or twice as much, to be gained from those same reservoirs. We probably can add three to four trillion barrels of oil from unconventional, more complicated methodologies to recover oil, which we considered unrecoverable so far.
Getting to oil that once seemed unrecoverable is Schulte’s job.
Willem Schulte: If you look at the situation 30 years ago, oil recovery in an average oil field, we could get about 25 percent out of that oil field for various technical reasons. In the last 30 years, we’ve already moved on by better technology making that number rise to 35 percent.
He added that, in the end, oil is a finite resource.
Willem Schulte: People should also really focus their attention to sustainable energy and other energy resources.
According to a report presented by the World Energy Council, the world’s energy demand will double by 2050 and there are enough fossil fuel sources to satisfy energy needs up until the first half of this century, but not beyond, especially if demand doubles as experts have predicted.
One often hears the term ‘peak oil’ to describe the point in time when the maximum rate of global oil extraction is reached. Experts from around the world often place the time of peak oil extraction around the years 2040 to 2050, although some believe the oil industry could continue to produce at a peak rate for a decade or so after that.
Experts do not agree on when oil production will be in a phase of terminal decline, but it’s generally assumed that it may be around the years 2050 to 2070.
The projected times are uncertain because they depend on much energy the world will use over the coming decades – what other sources of energy might become available – and also the extent to which technological advances will enable the oil industry to recover hard-to-get oil.

Network creates virtual super-telescope

Vast quantities of data are transferred in real time from telescopes around the world to a supercomputer in the Netherlands, where European researchers combine the information to create high-resolution images of distant objects in space.


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By pointing up to 16 from six continents at one source in space and combining the observation signals from the telescopes via a high-speed network, European astronomers have created a ‘virtual telescope’ that delivers better resolution than any single telescope on earth.
The high-speed network also makes it easier for astronomers to react to so-called Targets of Opportunity - transient events such as supernova explosions and gamma-ray bursts in space.
“In November last year, astronomers noticed flaring activity from SS433 and alerted other observatories,” says Kristine Yun, public outreach officer for ExPReS (Express Production Real-time e-VLBI Service), the project behind this intercontinental astronomical instrument.
SS433 is one of the most spectacular and intensely studied locations in the Milky Way. It comprises two objects orbiting each other. Huge quantities of hydrogen are transferred from one star to its orbiting partner - a black hole or neutron star inside a dense, gas cloud. The flow of gas is so overwhelming that part of it is re-ejected by the neutron star in a pair of high-speed jets.
Within days, telescopes of the European VLBI Network (EVN) were turned towards SS433. Its activity was monitored in real time during three sessions and the data were made available within hours of the observations.

Mystery of "Dark" Star Explosions Solved?

Ker Than in Pasadena, Californiafor National Geographic News
June 8, 2009
Cosmic "dust bunnies" hiding in corners of distant galaxies are taking the dazzle out of some of the universe's brightest explosions, new research suggests.
Gamma ray bursts are brilliant flashes of light thought to happen when very massive stars explode. Each blast normally sends out beams of invisible gamma rays and x-rays followed by an hours-long afterglow of visible light.

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(See a picture of a gamma ray burst that was visible to the naked eye.)
But for years astronomers have puzzled over so-called dark gamma ray bursts—those that send out plenty of gamma rays and x-rays but have little to no afterglow.
One popular theory has been that dark gamma ray bursts happen so far away that the expansion of the universe has stretched the wavelengths of visible light into the invisible infrared part of the spectrum.
Another idea is that dust around the explosion is absorbing visible light but letting other kinds of radiation through.
"Whatever the cause, it was like hearing the foghorn without seeing the lighthouse," study co-author Joshua Bloom, of the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement.
Dark, Dusty Corners
To test the two theories, Bloom and colleagues used NASA's Swift satellite and telescopes at California's Palomar Observatory to seek out galaxies where dark gamma ray bursts occur.
The team reasoned that if dark gamma ray bursts happen very far away, visible light from their host galaxies should also be redshifted and therefore invisible to optical sensors.
But after examining 14 dark gamma ray bursts, the researchers noted that they could see visible light from stars in 11 of the host galaxies.
"We think we've solved most of the mystery of what makes [dark gamma ray bursts] dark," study co-author Daniel Perley, also of UC Berkeley, said today at a press conference.
"We conclude that a large majority of dark bursts are the result of dust obscuring the optical light."
Closer looks at the hosts themselves, though, revealed that the galaxies do not appear to be unusually dusty. This means that the dark bursts must be hidden within otherwise undetectable dust clouds.
The finding supports theories that very massive stars form in dusty places, and it suggests that dark, dusty corners of the universe have been concealing previously unknown numbers of star births and deaths.
Findings presented today at the 214th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Pasadena, California.

New services promise online life after death

CNN) -- Your husband, an avid gamer and techie, dies of a heart attack, leaving his vast online life ­-- one you don't know much about ­-- in limbo.

Eternal Space lets loved ones create customized online gravesites and memorial pages.

His accounts, to which you don't know the passwords, go idle. His e-mails go unanswered, his online multiplayer games go on without him and bidders on his eBay items don't know why they can't get an answer from the seller.
Web site domains that he has purchased, some of which are now worth hundreds of thousands of dollars,­ will expire, and you may never know.
It's a scenario that's becoming more likely as we spend more of our lives online. And it's raising more questions about what happens to our online lives after we log off for the final time.
The answer, until recently, was nothing.
But now, as online usage increases and social-media sites soar in popularity, more companies are popping up to try and fill that void created in your digital life after death.
Jeremy Toeman, founder of the site Legacy Locker, recognized that when he was on a plane and wondered what would happen to his online life if it crashed. While his will leaves everything to his wife, including all of his digital assets, Toeman realized how difficult it would be for her to access his accounts.
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"My GoDaddy account would belong to her, but it doesn't solve the practical reality of how she would get access to it," he said. He experienced a similar scenario after his grandmother died, and he tried to get the password for her e-mail account -- only to give up because of the hassle.
So Toeman built his company to change all that. Legacy Locker allows users to set up a kind of online will, with beneficiaries that would receive the customer's account information and passwords after they die.
"We know it's a hard thing to think about -- to get people to face mortality. We know it's kind of morbid, but for those who live their entire lives online, it's also very real."
A Legacy Locker account costs $29.99 a year. Users can set up their accounts at http://www.legacylocker.com/ to specify who gets access to their posthumous online information, along with "legacy letters," or messages, that can be sent to loved ones.
If someone contacts Legacy Locker to report a client's death, the service will send the customer four e-mails in 48 hours. If there's no response, Legacy Locker will then contact the people the client listed as verifiers in the event of his or her death. Even then, the service would not release digital assets without examining a copy of the customer's death certificate, Toeman said.
Eddie Lopez is the kind of tech-savvy guy for which a service such as Legacy Locker was made. The St. Paul, Minnesota, man has three online banking accounts, a PayPal account, domain names, Web-hosting accounts, multiple e-mail addresses and many social-networking accounts.
"I do think this is something people should be really considering these days," Lopez told CNN when asked about services such as Legacy Locker. He wants to hire a service to handle his digital assets but is concerned about privacy.
"Although I'm glad there's people breaking ground in this area, I don't think I would jump at the first opportunity to sign up," Lopez said. "My concerns are turning over such an exhaustive list of user names and passwords to a single business. That's one-stop shopping for any hacker to get access to just about every detail of my life."

Why our 'amazing' science fiction future fizzled

(CNN) -- At the 1964 New York World's Fair, people stood in line for hours to look at a strange sight.

If only the future looked like "Star Trek," with its nifty gadgets that seem to solve every problem.

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They wanted to see the "Futurama," a miniaturized replica of a typical 21st century American city that featured moving sidewalks, computer-guided cars zipping along congestion-free highways and resort hotels beneath the sea.
Forty years later, we're still waiting for those congestion-free highways -- along with the jet pack, the paperless office and all those "Star Trek"-like gadgets that were supposed to make 21st-century life so easy.
Daniel Wilson has been waiting as well. He's looked at the future we imagined for ourselves in pulp comic books, old science magazines and cheesy sci-fi movies from the 1950s, and came up with one question.
Why isn't the future what it used to be?
"I feel entitled to have all this technology that's been promised at a certain time," says Wilson, author of "Where's My Jetpack?" "I look up and say, 'Where's all this stuff?' ''
Some of that futuristic stuff, it turns out, is already here.
Visionaries actually invented objects like flying cars, but they could never work out the real world applications, Wilson says. Other inventions had the same problem. Ordinary people didn't want to have anything to do with them.
These futuristic follies include everything from "Smell-O-Vision," an invention that helped moviegoers smell as well as see movies; Sanyo's "ultrasonic ultra-squeaky clean human washing machine" (it was dubbed the "human washing machine," but wouldn't fit in an ordinary bathroom) and, of course, the jet pack.
"Scientists are OK at predicting what technology is going to happen in the future," Wilson says. "They're really bad at predicting how it's going to affect us."
What happened to my jet pack?
The jet pack is a perfect example of predicting the future, Wilson says. He says the jet pack first appeared in 1928 in an Amazing Stories comic book, which featured the hero Buck Rogers zooming though the sky in a jet pack.
The jet pack was actually developed by 1961, Wilson says. An inventor mounted a rocket onto a backpack and called it a rocket belt. A variation of the rocket belt even appeared in the 1965 James Bond movie, "Thunderball."
Today, the jet pack continues to grab inventors' imaginations.
A daredevil wearing a jet pack flew across a 1,500-foot-wide canyon in Colorado in November. A Swiss pilot, dubbed "Fusion Man," flew across the English Channel last year using a single jet-propelled wing. And a New Zealand inventor recently invented a jet pack, which weighs about 250 pounds, that reportedly can run for 30 minutes.
The jet pack, though, has never really taken off, Wilson says. The problem is its practical application. While a rocket belt could propel a screaming human to 60 mph in seconds, its fuel lasted for only about half a minute, "which led to more screaming," Wilson says.

Why our 'amazing' science fiction future fizzled

CNN) -- At the 1964 New York World's Fair, people stood in line for hours to look at a strange sight.

If only the future looked like "Star Trek," with its nifty gadgets that seem to solve every problem.

1 of 2


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They wanted to see the "Futurama," a miniaturized replica of a typical 21st century American city that featured moving sidewalks, computer-guided cars zipping along congestion-free highways and resort hotels beneath the sea.
Forty years later, we're still waiting for those congestion-free highways -- along with the jet pack, the paperless office and all those "Star Trek"-like gadgets that were supposed to make 21st-century life so easy.
Daniel Wilson has been waiting as well. He's looked at the future we imagined for ourselves in pulp comic books, old science magazines and cheesy sci-fi movies from the 1950s, and came up with one question.
Why isn't the future what it used to be?
"I feel entitled to have all this technology that's been promised at a certain time," says Wilson, author of "Where's My Jetpack?" "I look up and say, 'Where's all this stuff?' ''
Some of that futuristic stuff, it turns out, is already here.
Visionaries actually invented objects like flying cars, but they could never work out the real world applications, Wilson says. Other inventions had the same problem. Ordinary people didn't want to have anything to do with them.
These futuristic follies include everything from "Smell-O-Vision," an invention that helped moviegoers smell as well as see movies; Sanyo's "ultrasonic ultra-squeaky clean human washing machine" (it was dubbed the "human washing machine," but wouldn't fit in an ordinary bathroom) and, of course, the jet pack.
"Scientists are OK at predicting what technology is going to happen in the future," Wilson says. "They're really bad at predicting how it's going to affect us."
What happened to my jet pack?
The jet pack is a perfect example of predicting the future, Wilson says. He says the jet pack first appeared in 1928 in an Amazing Stories comic book, which featured the hero Buck Rogers zooming though the sky in a jet pack.
The jet pack was actually developed by 1961, Wilson says. An inventor mounted a rocket onto a backpack and called it a rocket belt. A variation of the rocket belt even appeared in the 1965 James Bond movie, "Thunderball."
Today, the jet pack continues to grab inventors' imaginations.
A daredevil wearing a jet pack flew across a 1,500-foot-wide canyon in Colorado in November. A Swiss pilot, dubbed "Fusion Man," flew across the English Channel last year using a single jet-propelled wing. And a New Zealand inventor recently invented a jet pack, which weighs about 250 pounds, that reportedly can run for 30 minutes.
The jet pack, though, has never really taken off, Wilson says. The problem is its practical application. While a rocket belt could propel a screaming human to 60 mph in seconds, its fuel lasted for only about half a minute, "which led to more screaming," Wilson says.
The military couldn't find a useful application for it either. A soldier with a jet pack might look cool, but he's an easy target. Nor could a jet pack be of use to ordinary people who wanted to avoid rush-hour traffic, Wilson says. Jet-packing hordes could transform the skies into an aerial demolition derby, with air rage and drunk drivers turned into wobbly human torpedoes.
Yet other bold visions of the future have come true. Remember Rosey the Robot? That was the name of the robotic maid that waited on the Jetsons, the popular cartoon family from the future.

Exploring Antarctica's Lake Bonney - ENDURANCE robot dives into ice-covered lake

The robot that scientists deployed last year into ice-covered Lake Bonney in Antarctica's McMurdo Dry Valleys isn't small.
The autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), named ENDURANCE (Environmentally Non-Disturbing Under-ice Robotic ANtartic Explorer) , requires its own "garage" and a hoist to maneuver in and out of the water. It's slightly smaller than a Volkswagen Beetle without wheels.
It came as something of a surprise, then, that microbubbles of gas were able to push ENDURANCE around a bit while it explored the cold depths of the briny lake.
"We knew these lakes were supersaturated with gases, and yet a bunch of very smart people did not predict that these gases meant microbubbles would form on every surface of the vehicle and cause buoyancy problems," mused Peter Doran , principal investigator of the ENDURANCE project. "They also formed on the surface of [the sonar] and caused interference there, too."
ENDURANCE made its first underwater foray into Lake Bonney last field season. Its job is to create three-dimensional maps of the underwater environment, which includes the face of Taylor Glacier. It also carries a suite of instruments that allow it to measure water characteristics like salinity and acidity, and probe for evidence of microbial life.
Doran and his collaborators on the NASA-funded project, which involves logistical assistance from the National Science Foundation (NSF) , also view the ENDURANCE prototype as a possible tool for future exploration of Saturn's moon Europa, which scientists believe has reservoirs of liquid water -- and possibly life.
Doran said the team was able to overcome the buoyancy problems, but the experience proved the utility of such field tests in the challenging Antarctic environment, which researchers often use as an analogue for outer space scenarios.
"To me this was a real lesson for doing autonomous science on say Europa," explained Doran, a professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago . "It was only because we had human ingenuity in the field that we could overcome this. Had the robot been on a mission to ... Europa, and we had not prepared it for this problem, it would not have been able to overcome it.
"And that's in an environment [Lake Bonney] we already know a lot about," he added. "Imagine now going into a completely unknown environment on another planetary body. You really need precursor preliminary data, and even without that, there are risks to going there for sure."
Lake Bonney, a saline lake about 3 kilometers long and 1 kilometers wide, is one of a series of lakes in the relatively ice-free McMurdo Dry Valleys. The area is part of the McMurdo Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program, one of 26 sites in the LTER Network. Most long-term monitoring sites are in or around the United States except for McMurdo and the Palmer LTER along the Antarctic Peninsula.
Scientists believe that Bonney and the other lakes in the valleys are the remnants of much largerbodies of water that once dominated the area. A thick, salty, nutrient-rich layer of water in Bonney, where most of the lake's photosynthetic microorganisms live, is leftover carbon material from the retreat of those great lakes many millennia ago that the little critters subsist on.
Recent research published in the journal Science suggests that some microbial communities have evolved even more unique survival capabilities. Another group of scientists collected samples of water, originating from the base of the Taylor Glacier, that contained microorganisms but no oxygen. They believe that, lacking enough light to make food through photosynthesis, the microbes have adapted over the past 1.5 million years to manipulate sulfur and iron compounds to survive. [See related story: Ancient microbes.]
ENDURANCE promises to expand further what the researchers are learning about life on the extreme.
"ENDURANCE blew us away. In the end, it did everything we asked of it," said Doran, whose particular interest is in the Dry Valleys lakes and their history.
Though engineers designed ENDURANCE to work without input from them, swimming on its own based on a set of pre-programmed instructions and autonomous functions, the scientists employed a fiber optic leash, or tether, for this experimental phase of the project.
"Without the fiber [leash] we would have no way of knowing whether it is making the right decisions until - and if - it came back," Doran noted. "With the fiber we can watch over its shoulder and step in if we need to override or something.
"It's complete peace of mind -- and keeps us from getting bored," he added. "Also, we have found that it increases our productivity since we have often changed the mission in the middle to acquire more data based on some discovery."
However, in the case of an emergency, such as if the cable snapped or the team at the surface had to cut it because of a snag, ENDURANCE is programmed to return to base camp -- a hole cut into the lake surface sheltered by a specially built boat house.
"The vehicle's coming-home ability is amazing to me," Doran said. "No matter how far out it is, or how long it has been out there, it finds its way back to the hole just by knowing where it's been," he explained. "It has an incredibly accurate bottom tracker and laser-ring gyro for orientation. At the end of the mission, it just unravels its path out, calculates a trip home, and does it to sub-meter accuracy. When [it] gets under the hole, it tracks a light beam to the surface without touching the hole walls."
Doran and his team will return this coming field season to complete three-dimensional mapping of the lake and to create a photo mosaic of the glacier face. Various delays last year caused a late field deployment, and then warm weather caused the streams to flow, mucking up visibility in Bonney for the photo imaging.
"But we did accomplish much of the 3-D mapping, and will complete this in the coming field season," he said. "We also did do mapping of the glacier face and will finish the underwater imaging this season as well.
"We are hoping for some really good data this year."
NSF-funded research in this story: NSF-funded research in this story: Peter Doran, University of Illinois at Chicago, Award No. 0096250 .

Forest custodians

Under Redd, oil palm companies could be called on to protect the forested areas they own, and sell "carbon credits" for the amount of carbon contained in that forest.
"Despite their rich biodiversity, we haven't been able to protect these forests with conservation funds," said Dr Venter. "So we looked at what Redd would be able to do and what that would mean for biodiversity."
He and his team looked at the financial reports of palm oil companies to see how much money they earned from oil production, and from selling timber.

This could create the financial incentive needed to ensure that the world's tropical forests last into the next century
Oscar VenterUniversity of Queensland
They compared these earnings to the predicted carbon emissions from planned palm oil projects, and calculated that if carbon credits could be sold for $10 (£6) per tonne, conserving the forest could be more profitable than clearing land for oil palm.
"This is the break-even price if oil palm can only be grown in areas that are at least moderately suitable, or if some oil palm can be relocated to already [deforested] areas. Any price over [that] means Redd becomes more profitable than oil palm," explained Dr Venter.
"Carbon markets, while they fluctuate, are where the price of carbon is currently established. So we compared our prices to prices on major global markets, which at the time were selling carbon for around $30 per tonne of CO2."
Redd is a UN-led programme, introduced in 2005, to create a practical financial system to protect the rainforests.
Dr Venter hopes this research will strengthen the case to include it in the of the climate agreement that replaces the Kyoto accord, which is set to be decided upon at a meeting in Copenhagen later this year.
"If Redd does become part of the next international climate agreement, it will have the potential to fund forest protection in areas slated for oil palm conversion," said Dr Venter.
He said the findings showed that it was possible to create "financial incentives to ensure that the world's tropical forests last into the next century, instead of becoming a memory of the past".