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.