Giant truck set for sky-high task

A colossal 28-wheel truck that will help build a major telescope array in the Chilean Andes has successfully passed a series of tests.The giant vehicle will heave antennas - each weighing 115 tonnes - up a mountainside to the site of the array, a plateau 5,000m above sea level.The Alma telescope will study the night sky at sub-millimetre wavelengths.Astronomers say Alma will illuminate one half of the Universe that has hitherto been shrouded in darkness. Alma stands for the Atacama Large Millimeter Array.When it is completed in 2012, the £470m ($900m) array will be able to observe some of the first galaxies to form after the Big Bang, and catch planets in the act of forming around young stars.The telescope project will initially comprise 66 high-precision antennas, installed at the high-altitude Llano de Chajnantor site in Chile's Atacama desert.Each antenna has a dish measuring about 12m across and a surface engineered to be accurate to within 20 microns (millionths of a metre).
Power and precision The dishes will be electronically combined to provide astronomical observations which are equivalent to a single large telescope of tremendous size and resolution.Alma will be able to probe the Universe at millimetre and sub-millimetre wavelengths with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution, with an accuracy up to ten times better than the Hubble Space Telescope.The antenna transporter is 10m wide, 20m long and 6m high. It weighs 130 tonnes and has as much power as two Formula 1 engines.
The first of two vehicles has been put through its paces at the firm Scheuerle Fahrzeugfabrik near Nuremberg in Germany.The custom-built colossus will be able to transport a 115-tonne antenna and set it down on a concrete pad within millimetres of a prescribed position.Engineers have tested whether the transporter can safely pick up the 115-tonne antenna and very carefully settle it back down again."As it picks up the antenna, the transporter puts its arms under the armpits of the antenna, lifts it up and pulls it slowly up a ramp. It gradually lifts the antenna higher and higher and eventually pulls it right into the vehicle," said Adrian Russell, Alma project manager for North America."When it gets to where the antenna is being relocated, the antenna very slowly and carefully slides back dow. On top of the world He told the BBC News website: "It can then be manipulated left and right, and slowly lowered on to the antenna foundation. That entire mechanism has to be tested very carefully with dummy weights, as well as the independent steering of the wheels."The vehicles will have to haul their heavy cargo safely from the 2,900m-high Alma base camp, where the antennas are assembled, to the array site, which lies at 5,000m - about half the cruising altitude of a 747.The vehicles must therefore be extremely powerful, as the journey will make extraordinary demands on the two 500kW diesel engines.Because of the low oxygen content of the air at 5,000m, vehicle operators will need to wear portable oxygen canisters. The backrests of the driver seats are shaped to allow the driver to wear his oxygen tank while driving.Llano de Chajnantor was chosen as the site for Alma because it is so dry. Water vapour absorbs sub-millimetre waves, interfering with observations using the telescope.If all the water vapour above Chajnantor were collected, it would form a pool just 1mm deep.n the ramp so it is overhanging the edge of the vehicle.

The Astronaut’s Drinking Rules

After a NASA report suggested that some astronauts may have flown while intoxicated, a furor erupted, and NASA ’s alcohol rules — or lack of them — came to light.
The rules regarding alcohol and astronauts are somewhat vague, NASA officials said Friday at a news conference. Its alcohol rules for space flight have historically been the rules it applies to the use of its aircraft, informally carried over into the realm of space flight.
With the new report, NASA announced an interim alcohol policy based on rules for the T-38 training jets that astronauts enjoy the free use of. Those rules call for no alcohol consumption within 12 hours of a flight, and “astronauts will neither be under the influence nor the effects of alcohol at the time of launch.” NASA officials said at the news conference that during the quarantine period of about a week before a flight, alcoholic beverages were available at crew quarters.
They also said that the schedule the day before a launch was very busy, and that the astronauts were in close contact with medical personnel, so that it was hard to understand how such incidents could occur unnoticed. There’s no indication in the new report as to when the alleged incidents occurred: In the last couple of years, in the changed safety climate after the Columbia accident? Before Columbia? Before Challenger? So it’s impossible to know the severity of the problem.
There’s a long tradition of two-fisted hard living among military pilots. Tom Wolfe wrote in “The Right Stuff” about Chuck Yeager having a few drinks at the Muroc hangout, Pancho’s, two nights before breaking the sound barrier and going riding horses with his wife and having an accident that broke two ribs.

Home cells signal mobile change

Standing in the corner of the room; being exiled to the bottom of the garden; or teetering precariously on a chair.People will go to extraordinary lengths to find that elusive one bar of signal that will allow them to make a mobile phone call.But soon the days of despair that occur when you arrive home only to find your new handset does not get any coverage in your house may be over.There is a new home technology on the block, known as femtocells, and if the hype is to be believed, it will end signal problems forever."People I talk to say 'I want one now'," said Stephen Mallinson, CEO of UK femtocell producer ip.access.
Technology trial The paperback sized-boxes are essentially compact, personal, mobile phone base stations that plugs straight in to your internet connection.Make a phone call on your mobile and, instead of routing the call through the network of base stations and masts that cover most of the country, it sends the call over the internet using your broadband connection.Until now, they have been the preserve of big business, but sometime in the next two years they could come bundled with your mobile phone contract. "We always had the vision that the technology would be cheap enough to be in the home," said Mr Mallinson.The company has just launched a 3G femtocell, targeted directly at home users, which could also bring high-speed mobile broadband into the home.It is one of several offerings from companies such as Airwalk or Ubiquisys, which recently rose to prominence when search giant Google invested in the firm.At the same time, large networks operators such as Vodafone and Softel have announced they will trial the technology.And according to research firm ABI, by 2012 there could be 70 million femtocells installed in homes around the world serving more than 150 million users.But for the network operators at least, the technology goes beyond just mopping up those people who cannot make phone calls on their network."In a sense it's mobile taking on wi-fi," said Mike Roberts, principal analyst at research firm Informa Media and Telecoms.
Call hassle Femtocells pack high speed 3G technology or High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) inside, which can have download speeds of up to 7Mbps, similar to many home broadband offerings."In developed markets, their [the network operators] business has matured and they're looking for any growth opportunities they can. Taking on fixed broadband is one of those and femtocells are a great weapon to do that," said Mr Roberts.According to the Oxford Internet Survey, 67% of the UK's population are current internet users and 29% have wi-fi access.Grabbing an increasing share of this market is attractive to mobile operators, said Mr Roberts, and one way of doing that would be to build HSDPA straight into laptops"That way you can connect to your femtocell and you can use it everywhere else as well - that's compelling," he said.But the rise of the femtocell also has other advantages to the mobile networks.Over the last few years various technologies have converged that threaten to make a dent in mobile operator's profits.For example, wireless connectivity on handsets along with VoIP allows people to cut the cost of calls by bypassing the mobile phone network.Companies such as Skype, Jajah and Truphone have all got in on the action."VoiP over wi-fi is starting but it's still early days," said Mr Roberts. "It's a real hassle to use and it's nowhere near the quality, reliability or usability of cellular voice."If mobile operators can get femtocells into the home quickly, then they can prevent the rise of VoIP over home wi-fi."It's kind of like the mobile operator empire striking back," said Mr Roberts.

Mac and iPhone sales boost Apple

Apple has made strong three-month profits, helped by Mac and iPhone sales, even though the phones were only available for two days of the quarter.Apple sold 270,000 iPhones on the first two days of their US launch.Net income was $818m (£398m) between April and June, up 73% from the same period of 2006.Apple shares have risen 62% since the start of the year when chief executive Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone and predicted 10 million sales in 2008. But the shares fell on Tuesday after AT&T, the exclusive US carrier, said it had activated 146,000 iPhones in the first two days after the 29 June launch.Analysts had been expecting the number sold in the first weekend would be closer to 500,000.
Direct sales Mr Jobs says he is confident of selling his millionth phone within the first three months.Apple said it shipped 1.76 million Macintosh computers in the quarter, a rise of 33% from a year earlier, while shipments of iPods were 9.82 million, up 21% from the same period of 2006.The results were also boosted by lower commodity prices and more sales being made in Apple stores, according to its chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer."We did benefit in the quarter from a favourable commodity environment and better mix of direct sales as well," he said.

Economy growing despite energy, housing

WASHINGTON - The economy registered modest growth in the early summer, considering how consumers and some businesses were buffeted by both high gasoline prices and the sour housing market.
That’s the gist of a Federal Reserve region-by-region survey, released Wednesday, which also showed the economy clearly has emerged from a rut at the beginning of the year and is now growing, albeit slowly.
On the inflation front, consumer prices continued to increase “at a moderate rate,” the Fed report said. “Almost every region said that oil and gasoline prices were either rising, high or an issue,” it noted. Gas prices have climbed past $3 a gallon nationwide.
The biggest threat to the economy is if inflation doesn’t recede as Fed policymakers anticipate, Bernanke explained, when he delivered the Fed’s midyear economic assessment to Capitol Hill.
Information from the Fed survey will figure into discussions at the central bank’s next meeting, Aug. 7. Economists predict that the Fed at that time will again vote to hold a key interest rate at 5.25 percent, where it has stood for more than a year.
Consumer spending — a major shaper of overall economic activity — continued to grow in the early summer. However, a number of Fed regions reported that high gas prices restrained purchases. And, five of the Fed’s 12 regions said that retail sales of housing-related items — such as furniture and home repair materials — were weak or declining. Tourism reports, meanwhile, were mostly positive.
The economy has rebounded and is expected to clock in at a pace of 3 percent or better for the April-to-June period. The government will release the second quarter’s results on Friday. Growth in the second quarter is expected to be powered by a revival in business investment, while consumer spending is expected to be somewhat subdued.
The housing slump, which started last year, continued to be felt in most areas.
Most regions said home building declined and residential real-estate activity was weak. New York, however said housing markets were “mixed but stable.” The Cleveland and Richmond regions said sales increased slightly. Reports on home prices around the country were mixed, the Fed said.

Toyota to Test Plug-In Hybrid, Rivaling G.M.

Toyota Motor Company said Tuesday that it was testing hybrid vehicles with rechargeable batteries in the United States and Japan, setting up a direct challenge with General Motors to develop the industry’s first plug-in hybrids.
Toyota’s announcement is its first formal confirmation that it is ready to test plug-in hybrid vehicles, which environmentalists say may prove to be cleaner and more fuel-efficient than current hybrids.
In recent months, Toyota executives have said the company had plug-in hybrids under development, but would not give more details.
Toyota already is the world’s biggest producer of conventional hybrid-electric vehicles, which run off a gasoline motor and a battery. Indeed, for years, executives had played down the prospects for plug-in hybrids, saying consumers preferred the convenience of vehicles that did not need to be recharged.
It has sold more than 1 million hybrid vehicles worldwide, including 750,000 Prius cars, since the Prius went on sale in Japan in 1998. Prius became available in the United States, its largest market, in the year 2000.
Industry experts say plug-in hybrid vehicles, known as PHEVs, may provide a longer battery life and prove more environmentally friendly than current hybrids.
Toyota said it would provide prototype versions of plug-in hybrid vehicles to researchers at the University of California, Irvine, and the University of California, Berkeley. It also said that the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport in Japan had approved the testing of plug-in hybrid vehicles on public roads in Japan.
Toyota is the only Japanese auto company thus far that has requested permission to test plug-in hybrids in Japan.
The prototype plug-in hybrids will be powered by two oversize packs of nickel-metal hydride batteries that are meant to simulate the kind of power Toyota expects future versions of the batteries to yield. The packs are capable of storing significantly more energy than the kind of battery found on the Prius, Toyota said.

Robot to carry out heart surgery

A robotic arm able to carry out an intricate life-saving heart operation is being pioneered by UK surgeons.The robot is used to guide thin wires through blood vessels in the heart to treat a fast or irregular heartbeat.Doctors at St Mary's Hospital in London say it will reduce risk for patients and increase the number of procedures they can carry out.More than 20 patients have been operated on with the robot, which is only one of four in use in the world.During the procedure, known as catheter ablation, several thin wires and tubes are inserted through a vein in the groin and guided into the heart where they deliver an electric current to specific areas of heart muscle.The electric current destroys tiny portions of heart tissue which are causing the abnormal heartbeat.With the Sensei robot, surgeons use a joystick on a computer console to more accurately position and control the wires, which often need to be placed in locations that are difficult to reach.In the future the system could be automated so the robot guides the wires to a point in the heart selected by the doctor from images on a computer screen.
Poor access
When done by hand the operation is highly skilled and a shortage of clinicians able to carry out the surgery means only 10% of people with the condition, called atrial fibrillation, are treated this way.
Tony Blair underwent the operation by hand in 2004.
Around 50,000 people develop atrial fibrillation, which is a major cause of strokes and heart failure, every year and it has been calculated to cost the NHS almost 1% of its entire annual budget.
Numbers are expected to increase even more due to an ageing population, a rising number of people with chronic heart disease and better diagnosis.

Global Positioning by Cellphone

THE man in the Verizon Wireless commercials wearing thick-rimmed glasses may be constantly asking, “Can you hear me now?” But the most commonly asked question over mobile phones might actually be, “Where are you now?”.
The combination of global positioning systems and cellphones may make that question moot. Cellphone carriers are now mandated by the Federal Communications Commission to provide location information for 911 emergency use. Many now have G.P.S. chips that can pinpoint the phone’s location to within a few feet, though others rely on triangulation, a technology that approximates location based on proximity to cellphone towers.
Even some phones without G.P.S. can help you navigate. The iPhone from Apple, for example, cannot precisely locate you or track you as you drive. But its Google Maps feature can be used to plan a route by entering a start address and a destination. It displays directions or a map.
But as more phones come equipped with a small and relatively inexpensive G.P.S. microchip, the technology is being used for all sorts of location services that the carriers and other companies offer for additional fees. The Disney Family Locator service on a Disney-branded mobile phone uses G.P.S. to track a child’s whereabouts. Parents buy special child and parent phones. The child’s phone is programmed to beam locations to the parent’s phone, which has the ability to display and map the approximate street address where the child is at any given time.
Verizon’s child locater, called Chaperone, adds a “geofencing” service that allows a parents to define an area — such as a school or baby sitter’s house — where the child is permitted. The parents receive an alert on their handset when the child’s cellphone enters or leaves the zone.
The G.P.S. phones have adult applications, too. Wherify Wireless offers a line of G.P.S.-enabled phones to track elderly relatives or employees. People doing the tracking can locate the trackees through a Web or cellphone interface or by calling the company’s toll-free number and providing the operator with a password.
The drawback to turning a cellphone into a G.P.S. device is that cellphone screens are generally smaller than stand-alone G.P.S. units and a regular cellphone keypad is not ideal for typing in a destination address. On some phones, you can get knocked out of G.P.S. mode if a call comes in. That can be annoying, especially if you need to take the call to confirm where you’re going or when you’ll get there.
A G.P.S. phone enables many other services. Certain phones using the Sprint/Nextel and Verizon networks can use Bones in Motion’s BiM Active application to track your speed, location, elevation and calories burned while walking, running or cycling. You can view your statistics and a map of your route on the phone or a Web page.
Most G.P.S. navigation systems for cars only receive location information, but Dash Navigation, a Silicon Valley start-up, is now testing its Dash Express, which instead of adding G.P.S. to a cellphone adds a cellphone signal to a G.P.S. unit. The cellular radio transmits information both ways between the car and Dash’s servers. Every Dash unit continuously transmits its location and speed so, once there are a sufficient number of systems deployed to create a network effect, the company can determine the traffic flow on any road where Dash users are driving, including surface streets.
Navigation systems will not only route you around traffic, but take you to restaurants it thinks you will like. The technology for this already exists, but, says, Mr. Williams, “most people won’t use it until they’re confident that it will work properly almost all the time.”

Vibrating rings guide city tourists

Two vibrating rings which can guide the wearer around a city via global positioning satellite (GPS) have been unveiled by a British designer at the Royal College of Art.
The rings are the invention of Gail Knight, who developed them as a way of helping women feel safe in areas they are unfamiliar with.
"I admit that, as it is rings, they're obviously more attractive to women - and I'd been looking at women and their position in the public sphere, and how safe they feel in a public environment," she told BBC World Service's Culture Shock programme.
Buzz for direction
Not all of the necessary electronics could be put into the rings, so the device controller is worn either around the neck or clipped on to clothing. The controller has a display of eight digits, which allows for a postcode to be entered. It also houses an electronic compass and GPS system, which is what powers the device's navigation.
The signal is then transmitted to the two rings, inside of which are a small vibrating motor and antenna.
The rings buzz for left and right, and have different vibrations for forwards and backwards. Both buzz when going in the wrong direction.
Philip Dodd, chairman of Creative Cities Networks, said he thought the rings had a good chance of becoming widespread in the future.
"So the notion I could have a GPS that would direct me and make me a kind of 'literate tourist' in Tokyo would be a wonderful thing - so I think tourism, which is the world's biggest industry, is going to be one of the really important things for this new hand-held satellite device."
The controller has a display of eight digits, which allows for a postcode to be entered. It also houses an electronic compass and GPS system, which is what powers the device's navigation.
The signal is then transmitted to the two rings, inside of which are a small vibrating motor and antenna.
The rings buzz for left and right, and have different vibrations for forwards and backwards. Both buzz when going in the wrong direction.

The car of the future

This car can drive itself from A to B. It's taking part in the Darpa Grand Challenge, a Pentagon contest for inventors to come up with self-driving vehicles - and the ideas are already starting to be used in today's cars.
On a quiet university campus across the water from San Francisco, an enthusiastic bunch of young computer boffins are working on what could be the car of the future.
"Sometimes we talk to it as if it's an unruly child," says co-team leader Ben Upcroft.
Another member of the team jumps out of the front seat, crosses the road and presses a red button on a box in his hand. "The RAV4 is going autonomous," he says into a radio.
The car moves, slowly forward, like a learner terrified of touching the accelerator. The steering wheel is turning. It is driving itself. The speed is frustratingly slow, and from time to time the car veers towards the verge.
But what's impressive is that no-one is sitting inside.
The Sydney-Berkeley driving team are entrants in the 2007 Darpa Challenge, to be held in October. Sponsored by the United States Government, which wants to develop driverless military supply vehicles for war zones, the challenge will end with a 60-mile race through a mocked-up "urban area". The most important rule? No humans allowed.
The location of the challenge hasn't yet been announced. But it's likely to be a US military base, with roads and intersections. More than 50 teams are in the running, with 30 expected to start the race.
Cars will have to navigate by themselves, avoid other cars, circumvent traffic jams, stop at junctions, follow road markings and give way when they're supposed to. A serious test for artificial intelligence. A future where your car is an obedient pet sounds fantastic. Unless you're the law firm of a motor manufacturer. Imagine if the auto-driver fails, and there's injury or death. Instead of the driver getting sued, the car company is in the dock. So much of this technology will be introduced gradually.
But there are other less obvious benefits. Children could be driven to school. The elderly and visually impaired could gain new mobility.

Microsatellites 'pose global threat'

A satellite, no bigger that a domestic fridge, blasts into orbit from a secret military launch site.

Controlled from the ground, it stealthily moves towards the satellite of a rogue enemy country. Suddenly it explodes, destroying the second satellite and shutting down the communication capability of the country instantly.

It may sound like the beginning of a James Bond film, but scientists in the US have warned about the potential misuse of satellite technology.

Commercial companies, universities, space research institutions, such as NASA and ESA, are all in the development of this new spacecraft generation, called microsatellites.

Weighing less than 100kg, they provide GPS navigation, weather predictions, and Earth observation just like traditional satellites, but they are faster to build and much cheaper.

A typical microsatellite can cost as little as 10 million euros as opposed to hundreds of millions for traditional satellites.

About 400 microsatellites have been launched in orbit over the last 20 years for scientific, commercial and military purposes.

"Microsats save costs because the heavier a satellite is, the more it costs to send it into orbit," explains Dr Johan Köhler, a micro technology engineer at the European Space Agency.

"The launch is a major cost to any space mission."

'Indispensable part'

Satellite technology has become an indispensable part of modern society - being used for everything from mapping and weather forecasts to communications.

Physicist Laura Grego, from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), said: "It's amazing how much satellites are involved in the conduct of civil and economic life in a way that people don't appreciate, but they are also very important to the way... the US conducts military affairs."

Dr Köhler explains that miniaturisation of satellites has been possible thanks to the results reached by nanotechnology research, especially over the last two decades. 'Satellite attack'

"If someone interferes with another satellite, or even if the interference is caused accidentally by a piece of debris, this kind of event is likely to start a war, because this can be confused for a satellite attack."

There are about 800 satellites orbiting over our heads at the moment: 66% are for communications, while 6% are in use by the military. The US owns more than half of the total in our skies.

D. Craig Underwood, researcher at the Space Centre of University of Surrey, UK, says the warnings of danger may be overstates.

"The growth of space technology is not something that cannot hold back. It is part of the world we live in," he says.

Surrey Space Centre works in partnership with Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL), the first professional organisation to commercialise low-cost small satellites for telecommunication and monitoring of natural disasters.

'Jules Verne' set for sea voyage

The Jules Verne cargo ship has been packed up ready for despatch to the European spaceport in French Guiana.
The vehicle - the biggest, most complex spacecraft ever built in Europe - will launch in January with up to 7.5 tonnes of supplies for the space station.
Late on Friday it began the transfer by road and canal to Rotterdam, from where it will go by sea to South America.
The Jules Verne - or Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) to give it its generic name - has been split into three parts and put in containers for the journey. The craft heads to the Kourou spaceport as part of a 400-tonne, 50-case shipment that incorporates all the associated parts, apparatus and tools needed to reassemble it and check it prior to launch.
Test programme
The Jules Verne is the first of at least five ATVs that will fly to the International Space Station (ISS) over the coming years.
It will also reboost the station, which has a tendency to drift back to Earth over time. Esa's research and technology centre, Estec, in Noordwijk has put the space ship through an exhaustive series of tests.
The ATV was placed in an acoustic chamber and blasted with sound to ensure it could withstand the noise and vibration of launch; and in a giant vacuum chamber to see that components would function properly in the extreme conditions of the space environment.
"This is like if you had an old car with the radio on and then you switched the windscreen wipers on, you used to get noise on the radio," explained John Ellwood Esa's ATV Project Manager. "We cannot let that happen with the ATV."
The Jules Verne is scheduled to set sail from Rotterdam on Tuesday onboard the French cargo ship MN Toucan. It will take about 11 days to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
Once in Kourou, an 18-week launch preparation campaign will begin. The ATV will be put back together, fuelled and loaded with its dry and wet cargoes. Finally, it will be placed atop its Ariane 5-ES launcher.

Intel and $100 laptop join forces

Chip-maker Intel has joined forces with the makers of the $100 laptop.
The agreement marks a huge turnaround for both the not-for-profit One Laptop per Child (OLPC) foundation and Intel.
In May this year, Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of OLPC, said the silicon giant "should be ashamed of itself" for efforts to undermine his initiative.
He accused Intel of selling its own cut-price laptop - the Classmate PC - below cost to drive him out of markets in the developing world.
"What happened in the past has happened," Will Swope of Intel told the BBC News website. "But going forward, this allows the two organisations to go do a better job and have a better impact for what we are both very eager to do, which is help kids around the world."
Nicholas Negroponte, founder of One Laptop per Child, said: "Intel joins the OLPC board as a world leader in technology, helping reach the world's children. Collaboration with Intel means that the maximum number of laptops will reach children." Price test
In addition, the partnership will have a practical pay off for software developers.
"Any software you build is going to run at least on our two platforms,"said Mr Swope.
An application developed for the XO laptop should work on the Classmate and vice versa.
"That's the exciting thing for me," said Mr Bender.
Currently both laptops are being tested in schools around the world. In parallel, OLPC is finalising orders for the first batch of computers.
Participating countries are able to purchase the XO in lots of 250,000. They will initially cost $176 (£90) but the eventual aim is to sell the machine to governments of developing countries for $100 (£50).
Intel says it already has orders for "thousands" of Classmates, which currently cost over $200 (£100).

Fast forward for computer memory

The memory in our computers is getting faster - it has to, as our processors get more powerful and software more complicated, so memory has to speed up to feed our data-hungry computers.
RAM (Random Access Memory) is the place where your computer stores all the data it needs right now to help you do what you want - be it play a game or write a letter.
It is different to data stored on your hard disk because it goes away when you switch the power off, disks are called storage because the data stays on them when you power them down.
Now, to make your computer to run faster, a new system called dual channel memory has been developed that, as its name implies, splits the RAM memory into two channels.
With single channel memory the data in RAM only has one route to take to the chip. With dual channels it has two.
"Two memory [modules] work in tandem and they both send information to the processor at the same time," said Marc Bernier of memory manufacturer Kingston Technology. "This means that the overall bandwidth is increased."
Faster memory
One obvious way to get more data throughput is just to speed up the memory modules.
Many of the RAM modules these days are Double Data Rate modules which, again as the name implies, makes data zip through twice as fast. As ever in the hi-tech world the hardware changes and now DDR2 is in wide use.
"If someone bought a PC 12 months ago it probably came with DDR, so if you're looking to upgrade your PC you want to be looking at DDR memory," said Chris Gibson of Corsair Memory."Anything less than 12 months ago will have DDR2 in the system, which is effectively a faster module. In the future - probably six to 12 months away - there'll be DDR3," he said.

Digital Planet

The Digital Planet team investigates the technology behind home automation, talks to Czech researchers developing software that might allow people with hearing impairments to hear classic books and takes a 3D-trip through ancient wonders.
MAPPING ANCIENT BUILDINGS
What was it like to enter the Coliseum when the Roman Empire was at its height, or to take a peak into the great palaces of Babylon?
We have long been fascinated with the past and antiquity. But how true is our picture of that past, how accurate are the reconstructions and sketches of buildings and ruins?
For decades scientists have sought to use computing to bring some ancient buildings to life.
The refinement of their technique continues unabated. Recently, software and computer engineers have worked with archaeologists and historians to develop a system for creating faithful 3D models based on archaeological ruins and artefacts.
Ideally, the specialists would be able to go beyond mere surfaces of exteriors and interiors, and create an atmosphere of shade and lighting that would have existed at the time, with oil lamps or candles.
A team of scientists in the English Midlands have devoted several years' worth of programming and analysis to gain a more accurate picture of the past.
Gareth Mitchell talks to Alan Chalmers, Professor of Visualisation at the new Warwick Digital Laboratory.
HOME AUTOMATION
Researchers and developers have been showing off their latest gadgets, at Cedia, the Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association.
The huge gathering in London's docklands reveals the latest, state-of-the-art designs in home automation.
Historically, Cedia has specialised in installing electronic systems for the home that perhaps only the super wealthy could afford.
This year, one of the award categories was for the best Cinema Home Installation costing less than £20,000.
Such luxuries, on show at Cedia, have always been beyond the pocket of the average consumer.
Now, using internet protocols, researchers have been exploring more affordable means of home automation, in which hand held devices such as PDAs or mobile phones might activate everything from your house lights to your security cameras. Gareth Mitchell visits Cedia.

Robot unravels mystery of walking

Roboticists are using the lessons of a 1930s human physiologist to build the world's fastest walking robot.
Runbot is a self-learning, dynamic robot, which has been built around the theories of Nikolai Bernstein.
"Getting a robot to walk like a human requires a dynamic machine," said Professor Florentin Woergoetter.
Runbot is a small, biped robot which can move at speeds of more than three leg lengths per second, slightly slower than the fastest walking human.
Bernstein said that animal movement was not under the total control of the brain but rather, "local circuits" did most of the command and control work.
The brain was involved in the process of walking, he said, only when the understood parameters were altered, such as moving from one type of terrain to another, or dealing with uneven surfaces.
The basic walking steps of Runbot, which has been built by scientists co-operating across Europe, are controlled by reflex information received by peripheral sensors on the joints and feet of the robot, as well as an accelerometer which monitors the pitch of the machine.
These sensors pass data on to local neural loops - the equivalent of local circuits - which analyse the information and make adjustments to the gait of the robot in real time.
How does Runbot walk?
Information from sensors is constantly created by the interaction of the robot with the terrain so that Runbot can adjust its step if there is a change in the environment.
As the robot takes each step, control circuits ensure that the joints are not overstretched and that the next step begins.
But if the robot encounters an obstacle, or a dramatic change in the terrain, such as a slope, then the higher level functions of the robot - the learning circuitries - are used. He said Runbot learned from its mistakes, much in the same way as a human baby.
"Babies use a lot of their brains to train local circuits but once they are trained they are fairly autonomous.
The challenge was now to make Runbot bigger, more adaptive and to better anticipate situations like change of terrain.

The perpetual myth of free energy

Irish company Steorn made headlines around the world when it took out a full page advert in The Economist claiming to have developed a device that produced "free energy".
Throughout early July, the company planned to display the device to the public for the first time.
Professor Sir Eric Ash, electrical engineer and former rector of Imperial College London, visited the demonstration for the BBC News website.
Marvellous things can happen in this world.
As an engineer, whenever I look at a new baby I say categorically that there can be no such thing - it's far too complicated to work.
Yet we know this lack of faith in the marvellous is misplaced.
So, the fact that a device or an invention looks too marvellous to be true is not conclusive evidence that it isn't.
I believe that it is thinking on such lines that encourages inventors - and there have been many since the 12th Century - to pursue what would be a true marvel: a perpetual motion machine.
The most recent attempt is from Mr Sean McCarthy, the Chief Executive Officer of an Irish company called Steorn.
His invention, known as the "Orbo", is a mechanical device which uses powerful magnets on the rim of a rotor and further magnets on an outer shell.
Mr McCarthy is convinced that it is working. He took a full page advertisement in the Economist last year to say so, and to attract volunteer scientists to check the authenticity of his claims.
They are still in the process of doing so.

Constant universe
In the meantime Mr McCarthy was hoping to demonstrate the machine to the public at the London Kinetica Museum, which is devoted to displaying dynamic art, particularly of artefacts at the interface of science and art.
The demonstration was to run over 10 days starting on 6 July. Unfortunately, there was a technical defect, attributed by Mr McCarthy to the excessive heat produced by lights used to illuminate the device so that cameras could stream pictures of it in action across the web.
He hopes to be able to demonstrate the machine at a later date.
Mr McCarthy appreciates that if the device really works it is in contradiction of the law of conservation of energy, which he sees as a dogma of science.
There is an implied reference to religious dogmas, and it is just here that one can see the source of the misunderstanding.
Most religions feature a multiplicity of dogmas.
A person who is an adherent of that religion may not necessarily believe each and every one of the dogmas. Beliefs cannot of course be chosen a la carte - but there is a degree of flexibility which can accommodate quite significant differences.
The law of conservation of energy is not like this.
It states that the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant, although it may change forms, into heat or kinetic energy for example.
In short, law states that energy cannot be created or destroyed.
Denying its validity would undermine not just little bits of science - the whole edifice would be no more. All of the technology on which we built the modern world would lie in ruins.
There is no flexibility in the acceptance of the law as true - at all times, and in all circumstances.
It is the failure to appreciate the difference between this scientific law and a law of religion or of society which is why we know - without having to examine details of a particular device - that Orbo cannot work.

Memory recorded on a grane of sand

UK science fiction writer Charles Stross, author of novels Accelerando and Singularity Sky, posits a future in which all human experience is record on devices the size of a grain of sand.
We've had agriculture for about 12,000 years, towns for eight to 10,000 years, and writing for about 5,000 years. But we're still living in the dark ages leading up to the dawn of history.
Don't we have history already, you ask? Well actually, we don't. We know much less about our ancestors than our descendants will know about us.
Indeed, we've acquired bad behvioural habits - because we're used to forgetting things over time. In fact, collectively we're on the edge of losing the ability to forget.
For the past 50 years we've become used to computers getting cheaper and more powerful exponentially - doubling in performance (or halving in price) roughly every 18 months.
The core trend, described by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, describes the transistor count in microchips.
But a parallel trend in data storage means that storage space is becoming twice as plentiful on a similar time scale - and our ability to generate data to store is also increasing, as witness the 4m CCTV cameras around the UK, and about 70m cellphone accounts, of which maybe half are associated with camera phones able to record video.
Sooner or later they're all going to be switched on, all the time and our data storage capacity is growing so fast that we need not delete anything ever again.
There are huge legal, ethical, and privacy issues connected with recording this much information, never mind sharing it; as security expert Bruce Schneier has said: "... managing data privacy is going to be the big legal problem of the 21st century".
But I'm assuming, for the sake of argument, that we will find answers or compromise solutions to these questions. We'd better, because those cameras aren't going to stop recording and go away.
How far can it go?
Moore's law has an end in sight, dictated by physics. We can't build circuits out of components smaller than atoms.
But we can envisage building data storage devices that use individual atoms to represent one bit of information.
Consider a carbon crystal, created (and edited) one atom at a time by nanomachinery; there are two stable isotopes of carbon, and we can use a Carbon-12 atom to represent a binary 0 and a Carbon-13 atom to represent a binary 1.
One gram of this substance could store 10 to the power 21 bytes (887,808 petabytes) - the equivalent storage of more than 11 billion typical PCs.
By way of comparison, in 2003 we as a species recorded 2,200 petabytes (2.5 x 10 to the power 18 bytes) of data - enough to fill the hard drives of more than 28m typical PCs.
If we can figure out how to read and write data on the atomic scale, you could store the sum total of all the data we recorded in 2003 on a grain of sand.
We're only a few years away from the cost of data storage dropping so far that we can record "everything" that happens to us: our location at any given time, what we are hearing, what we are seeing, and what we are saying or doing.
The storage requirement for a video stream and two audio streams, plus GPS location, is only about 10,000 Gb per year - which will cost about £10 by 2017.
With your phone converting all the speech it hears to text (and storing that, too, and indexing it by time and location it becomes possible to search it all - like having Google for your memory.
You don't ever need to forget a conversation again, even if all you can recall about it is that it was with a stranger you met in a given pub about two months ago and someone mentioned the word "fishhooks".
If you're a police officer, it means never forgetting a face and always logging all your interactions with the public.
If you're suffering from the early stages of dementia, or if you're simply over-worked and expected to keep track of too many tasks at the office, it means you've got a memory prosthesis to help you keep track of things.
And if you're a student, it means you can concentrate on understanding your lecturer, and worry about making notes later.
This technology is available now -- some researchers are using it - in a few years' time, it's going to be as cheap as owning a mobile phone, and a few years later it'll be just an extra feature of your mobile phone.
It sounds strange right now, but there are too many uses for it to remain an eccentric niche. In the long term, almost all human experiences will be recorded. And in the very long term, they'll be a gold mine for historians.
Using nanoscale diamond as data storage, six hundred grams (about one and a quarter pounds, if you're my generation) can store a lifelog, a video and audio channel, with running transcript and search index, for six billion human beings for one year.
Sixty to a hundred kilograms is all it takes to store an entire 21st Century of human experience.
And some time after our demise, this information will be available to historians.
And what a mass of information it will be. For the first time ever, they'll be able to know who was where, when, and what they said; just what words were exchanged in smoky beer halls 30 years before the revolutions that haven't happened yet: who it was who claimed to be there when they founded the Party (but didn't join until years later): and where the bodies are buried.
They'll be able to see the ephemera of public life and understand the minutiae of domestic life; information that is usually omitted from the historical record because the recorders at the time deemed it insignificant, but which may be of vital interest in centuries to come.For the first time ever, the human species will have an accurate and unblinking, unvarnished view of its own past as far back as the dark ages of the first decade of the 21st Century, when recorded history "really" began

Good vibes power tiny generator

A tiny generator powered by natural vibrations could soon be helping keep heart pacemakers working.

Created by scientists at the University of Southampton, UK, the generator has been developed to power devices where replacing batteries is very difficult.

The device is expected initially to be used to power wireless sensors on equipment in manufacturing plants.

The generator's creators say their technology is up to 10 times more efficient than similar devices.

Power packed

The tiny device, which is less than one cubic centimetre in size, uses vibrations in the world around it to make magnets on a cantilever at the heart of the device wobble to generate power.

Although the generator produces only microwatts this was more than enough to power sensors attached to machines in manufacturing plants, said Dr Steve Beeby, the Southampton researcher who led the development of the device.

"The big advantage of wireless sensor systems is that by removing wires and batteries, there is the potential for embedding sensors in previously inaccessible locations," he said.

Using the tiny generator also made it possible to use larger numbers of sensors because there was no longer the need to visit them to replace or recharge batteries, Dr Beeby added.

The generator was developed to sit inside air compressors but, said Dr Beeby, it could find a future role in self-powered medical implants such as pacemakers.

In a pacemaker, the beating of the human heart would be strong enough to keep the magnets inside the device wobbling.

It could also be used to power sensors attached to road and rail bridges to monitor the health of such structures.

Work on the project was funded by the EU as part of the 14.3m euros Vibration Energy Scavenging (Vibes) project that is looking at how to use environmental vibrations to generate power.

THE NEW 7 WONDERS OF THE WORLD

The Pyramid at Chichén Itzá (before 800 A.D.) Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico

Chichén Itzá, the most famous Mayan temple city, served as the political and economic center of the Mayan civilization. Its various structures - the pyramid of Kukulkan, the Temple of Chac Mool, the Hall of the Thousand Pillars, and the Playing Field of the Prisoners – can still be seen today and are demonstrative of an extraordinary commitment to architectural space and composition. The pyramid itself was the last, and arguably the greatest, of all Mayan temples.

Christ Redeemer (1931) Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

This statue of Jesus stands some 38 meters tall, atop the Corcovado mountain overlooking Rio de Janeiro. Designed by Brazilian Heitor da Silva Costa and created by French sculptor Paul Landowski, it is one of the world’s best-known monuments. The statue took five years to construct and was inaugurated on October 12, 1931. It has become a symbol of the city and of the warmth of the Brazilian people, who receive visitors with open arms.

The Great Wall of China (220 B.C and 1369-1644 A.D.) China

The Great Wall of China was built to link existing fortifications into a united defense system and better keep invading Mongol tribes out of China. It is the largest man-made monument ever to have been built and it is disputed that it is the only one visible from space. Many thousands of people must have given their lives to build this colossal construction.

Machu Picchu (1460-1470), Peru

In the 15th century, the Incan Emperor Pachacútec built a city in the clouds on the mountain known as Machu Picchu ("old mountain"). This extraordinary settlement lies halfway up the Andes Plateau, deep in the Amazon jungle and above the Urubamba River. It was probably abandoned by the Incas because of a smallpox outbreak and, after the Spanish defeated the Incan Empire, the city remained 'lost' for over three centuries. It was rediscovered by Hiram Bingham in 1911.

Petra (9 B.C.- 40 A.D.), Jordan

On the edge of the Arabian Desert, Petra was the glittering capital of the Nabataean empire of King Aretas IV (9 B.C. to 40 A.D.). Masters of water technology, the Nabataeans provided their city with great tunnel constructions and water chambers. A theater, modelled on Greek-Roman prototypes, had space for an audience of 4,000. Today, the Palace Tombs of Petra, with the 42-meter-high Hellenistic temple facade on the El-Deir Monastery, are impressive examples of Middle Eastern culture.

The Roman Colosseum (70-82 A.D.) Rome, Italy

This great amphitheater in the centre of Rome was built to give favors to successful legionnaires and to celebrate the glory of the Roman Empire. Its design concept still stands to this very day, and virtually every modern sports stadium some 2,000 years later still bears the irresistible imprint of the Colosseum's original design. Today, through films and history books, we are even more aware of the cruel fights and games that took place in this arena, all for the joy of the spectators.

The Taj Mahal (1630 A.D.) Agra, India

This immense mausoleum was built on the orders of Shah Jahan, the fifth Muslim Mogul emperor, to honor the memory of his beloved late wife. Built out of white marble and standing in formally laid-out walled gardens, the Taj Mahal is regarded as the most perfect jewel of Muslim art in India. The emperor was consequently jailed and, it is said, could then only see the Taj Mahal out of his small cell window.

Will big U.S. job gains raise inflation risks?

The latest data showing strong job growth are good news for anyone looking for a job or angling for a raise. But with the Federal Reserve still keeping an eagle eye on inflation, the news makes it unlikely the rate-setters will lower their guard — or interest rates — anytime soon.
The latest official jobs data from the government confirmed that, after barely breaking even in the first quarter, the U.S. economy is rebounding convincingly; some 132,000 new jobs were added in June, according to the Labor Department. That kept the unemployment rate at a historically low 4.5 percent. Workers also posted gains in their paychecks last month.
Friday’s report also showed that that the economy added more jobs in April and May than the government previously thought. Revised figures Friday showed that payrolls grew by a strong 190,000 in May, up from the 157,000 reported last month. And in April the total job pool expanded by 122,000, better than the 80,000 previously reported.

9 steps to lose weight safely

1) Ask Your Doctor About Sensible Goals

Your doctor or other health workers can help you set sensible goals based on a proper weight for your height, build, and age. Men and very active women may need up to 2,500 calories daily. Other women and inactive men need only about 2,000 calories daily. A safe plan is to eat 300 to 500 fewer calories a day to lose 1 to 2 pounds a week.

2) Exercise 30 Minutes

Do at least 30 minutes of exercise, such as brisk walking, most days of the week. The idea is to use up more calories than you eat. You need to use up the day's calories and some of the calories stored in your body fat.

3) Eat in Moderation and Use Portion Control

Many Americans eat too much of even low-fat foods. Most restaurant portions are large enough for two or even three people. Check portion sizes on food labels and refer to the recommended portions on the Food Guide Pyramid. Some people find that measuring food for a week or two helps them learn healthy portion sizes.

4) Eat Less Fat and Sugar

This will help you cut calories. Fried foods and fatty desserts can quickly use up a day's calories. And these foods may not provide the other nutrients you need.

5) Eat More Fiber-Rich Foods

Fiber-rich foods are more filling than other foods--so people tend to eat less. Insoluble fiber also may hamper the absorption of calorie-dense dietary fat. In addition, studies have found that diets low in saturated fat and cholesterol and high in fiber are associated with a reduced risk of certain cancers, diabetes, digestive disorders, and heart disease. So, reaching for an apple instead of a bag of chips is a smart choice for someone trying to lose weight and stay healthy.

6) Tips for Cutting Calories and Fat

• Eat plenty of vegetables, fruits, and grain products such as bread and rice.
• Eat only small, single servings of foods high in fat or calories.
• Eat less sugar and fewer sweets.
• Drink less alcohol or no alcohol.
• Choose foods whose labels say low, light or reduced to describe calories or fat.
• Choose 1 percent or skim milk products and reduced fat cheeses.
• Replace ice cream with fat-free frozen yogurt.
• Replace sour cream with fat-free or low-fat plain yogurt.
• Make sure fish, poultry, and meat are lean. Trim skin and fat.
• Broil, roast, or steam foods.

7) Eat a Favorite Rich Food--Sometimes

That may keep you from craving it. But eat only a small amount. Make sure your other foods that day are low in fat and calories.

8) Eat a Wide Variety of Foods

Variety in the diet helps you get all the vitamins and other nutrients you need.

9) Watch Out for Promises of Quick and Easy Weight Loss

Fad diets aren't good because they often call for too much or too little of one type of food. As a result, you may not get important nutrients you need daily. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't true.

If housing's down, why are interest rates up?

The latest interest rate move by the Federal Reserve — a whole lot of nothing — has some readers, including Alvin in North Carolina, wondering why central bankers aren't doing more to help the ailing housing market by cutting rates. Hint: They're still worried about inflation. OK, asks Jeff in Sacramento, what exactly is inflation and what causes it?
If the housing market is in a slump, and it surely is, why is the Fed increasing the interest rates, which would make it even harder to qualify or get a loan mortgage?
In fact, the Federal Reserve’s latest move was to leave short-term interest rates just where they’ve been for the past 12 months. The Fed-controlled rate for banks borrowing money from each other remains at 5.25 percent. But that won’t help you if you’re trying to get a mortgage to buy a house. Over the past two months long-term mortgage rates — which are set by investors bidding on the price of money in the credit markets — have shot up half a percentage point.
For all the hoopla about the Fed’s interest rate deliberations, the central bank has only limited control over day-to-day changes in rates that home buyers pay. The official “federal funds” rate applies to very short-term loans — typically money that banks move around overnight to make sure they have enough reserves on hand.
The federal funds rate effectively becomes the wholesale price for money. When banks lend that money to you through your credit card or some other lending vehicle, they charge much more than they paid for it. That’s where bank profits come from.

Ceres, Now a Dwarf Planet, Is Scheduled for Exploration

Part of the fallout from the “Is-Pluto-a-planet?” debate is that the asteroid Ceres is no longer just a rock among hundreds of thousands of rocks in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Ceres is now also a dwarf planet. At almost 590 miles wide, it is big enough that its gravity has made it round, but not big enough to be considered a planet. Like Pluto, it fails part of the planet definition passed by the International Astronomical Union: it has not “cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.”
Ceres’s new celebrity on the solar system B-list will perhaps bring more prominence to NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, scheduled to be launched on Saturday atop a Delta II rocket. The spacecraft is to visit Vesta, the third largest asteroid, in October 2011, and depart in April 2012 to Ceres It would arrive at Ceres in February 2015.
Asteroids turn out to be a fairly diverse bunch.
By contrast, under Ceres’ outer coating of dust the asteroid appears to have a thick layer of ice, perhaps 60 miles deep, wrapped around a ball of rock. But there is no iron core. It is still by far the largest asteroid, with about a third of all of the mass in the asteroid belt.
But first, the spacecraft needs to get off the launching pad. Some last-minute glitches delayed the take-off date from June 20 to July 7. But if there are any more delays, NASA might have to pull the Dawn off the launching pad to make room for the Mars Phoenix probe, which must launch by Aug. 25 or Mars and Earth will be out of alignment for two years.
The NASA team meets today to decide whether to continue preparations for a Saturday launching of Dawn.
Dawn has its own time and cost constraints. Taking it off the launching pad could cost NASA up to $25 million. And after November, Ceres and Vesta move too far apart so that Dawn would never be able to get from Vesta to Ceres, Dr. Russell said.

Rival Manufacturers Chasing the iPhone

While Americans have been blitzed with news about the iPhone’s debut, many in South Korea’s and Japan’s technology industries initially greeted Apple’s flashy new handset with yawns.

Cellphones in these technology-saturated countries can already play digital songs and video games and receive satellite television. But now that analysts and industry executives are getting their first good look at the iPhone, many here are concerned that Asian manufacturers may have underestimated the Apple threat.

In South Korea, manufacturers are taking the threat seriously, and are rushing out their own iPhone-like handsets. By the end of the year, Samsung, South Korea’s biggest cellphone maker, will unveil its Ultra Smart F700, with a large touch-controlled screen displaying rows of icons, much as the iPhone does.

But even if iPhone’s success is limited to America, it could be a setback for South Korean electronics companies, which export heavily to the United States. In particular, say analysts, Apple could end up seizing much of the top end of the American cellphone market, where a handset that cost $100 or more offers the highest profit margins.

That segment of the American market represents about a quarter of America’s 250 million cellphone subscribers, according to Strategy Analytics, a market research firm based in Newton, Mass. In contrast with cellphone users in Asia, more than half of American subscribers paid $50 or less for their cellphones.

Apple, whose biggest challenge may be persuading Americans to spend $500 or $600 for an iPhone, has said it wants to have the devices in the hands of 1 percent of the world’s cellphone users, or about 10 million people, by the end of next year.

For its part, Samsung says it is ready for Apple’s challenge, offering a far broader range of high-end products. Some of Samsung’s recent products in this segment in the United States include the BlackJack, a $200 smartphone that uses Windows Mobile, and the UpStage, a phone on one side and an MP3 player on the other.

Samsung employees insist, and analysts agree, that Samsung handsets offer better durability and higher performance than the iPhone. But if the iPhone succeeds, the lesson will be that engineering alone is not enough to win consumers, say analysts and others in the industry.