Apple jumps into digital textbooks fray

Apple jumps into digital textbooks fray - Jan 19 - Apple Inc took a big jump into the digital textbooks market with the launch of its iBooks 2 software on Thursday, aiming to revitalize the U.S. education market and quicken the adoption of its market-leading iPad in that sector.

The giant consumer electronics company has been working on digital textbooks with publishers Pearson PLC, McGraw-Hill Cos Inc and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, a trio responsible for 90 percent of textbooks sold in the United States.

The move pits the maker of the iPod and iPhone against Amazon.com Inc and other content and device makers that have made inroads into the estimated $8 billion market with their electronic textbook offerings.

It could also see Apple shake up the traditional textbook market significantly, changing the emphasis from content to hardware; but publishers said working would be a great opportunity to revive and expand the market.

A promotional image for Apple's new digital textbook service called iBooks 2. REUTERS/Apple

"I give such incredible marks to Steve Jobs and Apple for having this vision and pushing it through the iPad," said Terry McGraw, chief executive of McGraw-Hill. He said he had been talking to Apple's founder Jobs and his team since last June about recreating textbooks as applications. Jobs died in October.

He said having textbooks on iPads will open up the market beyond high school and university students to everyday consumers. "I think without a doubt this will open up a learning agency for anybody and anywhere."

The early plan is to enable students to buy their books directly through Apple rather than through their school districts. The books in the pilot launch are priced at $14.99 each on the iPad, with a range of interactive features.

McGraw confirmed that Apple would take a cut of each sale, believed to be its standard amount of some 30 percent. He said he was "very relaxed" about having to share his profits with Apple, as printing and distributing textbooks accounts for about 25 percent of their cover prices.

Apple also unveiled iBooks Author, a new free application available on the Mac App Store which enables anyone to create a book. It also re-introduced its iTunes U service as a standalone app, with up to 100 complete university online courses from colleges including Yale and Duke.

At an event at New York's Guggenheim Museum, Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller and Apple Internet chief Eddy Cue introduced tools to craft digital textbooks and demonstrated how authors and even teachers can create books for students.

The "value of the app is directly proportional to students having iPads," said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with industry research firm Gartner.

REINVENTING THE TEXTBOOK

Apple's Schiller said it is time to reinvent the textbook, adding that 1.5 million iPads are in use now in education.

"It's hard not to see that the textbook is not always the ideal learning tool," he said. "It's a bit cumbersome."

IBooks 2 will be available as a free app on the iPad, starting Thursday. High school textbooks will be priced at $14.99 or less, Schiller said.

"You'll see textbooks for every subject for every level," he added.

At the event, the first since the passing of Jobs, Schiller said teachers need help and Apple is trying to figure out how it can do its part.

"In general, education is in the dark ages," he said, adding that education has challenges that are "pretty profound."

Cue told Reuters that young students would be quick to adopt the iBooks 2 technology, which is based on its iPad. But he declined to comment on whether Apple would introduce a cheaper iPads to make the iBooks software available to poorer students.

"Our iPads are very affordable; they start at $499. It's an amazing product with all the capabilities that it brings; that's what we've got and we feel very good about that," said Cue.

Other media and technology companies have eyed the U.S. education market as ripe for some sort of upheaval. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp launched an education business two years ago and hired former New York City Education Chancellor Joel Klein to lead it.

According to Jobs' biography by Walter Isaacson, Murdoch met with Jobs last year and discussed the possibility of Apple's entrance into a market Jobs estimated at $8 billion a year and believed was ripe for disruption.

Shares in Apple dipped 10 cents to $429.01 on the Nasdaq in afternoon trade. ( Reuters )

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Autistic boy,12, with higher IQ than Einstein develops his own theory of relativity

Autistic boy,12, with higher IQ than Einstein develops his own theory of relativity - A 12-year-old child prodigy has astounded university professors after grappling with some of the most advanced concepts in mathematics.

Jacob Barnett has an IQ of 170 - higher than Albert Einstein - and is now so far advanced in his Indiana university studies that professors are lining him up for a PHD research role.

The boy wonder, who taught himself calculus, algebra, geometry and trigonometry in a week, is now tutoring fellow college classmates after hours.

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Gifted: Jacob Barnett is so far ahead of his age group he is now leaving university he is developing his own theory on how the universe came into being

And now Jake has embarked on his most ambitious project yet - his own 'expanded version of Einstein's theory of relativity'.

His mother, not sure if her child was talking nonsense or genius, sent a video of his theory to the renowned Institute for Advanced Study near Princeton University.

According to the Indiana Star, Institute astrophysics professor Scott Tremaine -himself a world renowned expert - confirmed the authenticity of Jake's theory.

In an email to the family, Tremaine wrote: 'I'm impressed by his interest in physics and the amount that he has learned so far.

'The theory that he's working on involves several of the toughest problems in astrophysics and theoretical physics.

'Anyone who solves these will be in line for a Nobel Prize.'

But for his mother Kristine Barnett, 36, and the rest of the family, maths remains a tricky subject.

Speaking to the paper, Mrs Barnett said: 'I flunked math. I know this did not come from me.'

And it hasn't gone un-noticed by Jake, who added: 'Whenever I try talking about math with anyone in my family they just stare blankly.'

Jake was diagnosed with Aspergers syndrome, a mild form of autism, from an early age.

His parents were worried when he didn't talk until the age of two, suspecting he was educationally abnormal.

It was only as he began to grow up that they realised just how special his gift was.

He would fill up note pads of paper with drawings of complex geometrical shapes and calculations, before picking up felt tip pens and writing equations on windows.

By the age of three he was solving 5,000-piece puzzles and he even studied a state road map, reciting every highway and license plate prefix from memory.

By the age of eight he had left high school and was attending Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis advanced astrophysics classes.

Genius: Jake Barnett is now set to become a paid astrophysics researcher

His classroom presence is quite unnerving for many of the 18-plus year old students at his IPIU lectures.

Speaking to the Indy Star, Wanda Anderson, a biochemistry major said: 'When I first walked in and saw him, I thought, 'Oh my God, I'm going to school with Doogie Howser.'

She added: 'A lot of people come to him for help when they don't understand a physics problem.

'People come up to him all the time and say, 'Hey Jake, can you help me'.

'A lot of people think a genius is hard to talk to, but Jake explains things that would still be over their head.'

And his Professor John Ross said his performance in lectures had been 'outstanding'.

'When he asks a question, he is always two steps ahead of the lecture.

'Everyone in the class gets quiet. Poor kid. . . . He sits right in the front row, and they all just look at him.

'He will come to see me during office hours and ask even more detailed questions. And you can tell he's been thinking these things through.

'Kids his age would normally have problems adding fractions, and he is helping out some of his fellow students.'

According to his parents Jake has trouble sleeping at night as he constantly sees numbers in his head.

But far from complaining, Jake has turned the sleepless nights to his advantage - debunking the big bang theory.

The next step, according to professor Ross, is for Jake to leave class altogether and take up a paid research role. ( dailymail.co.uk )

READ MORE - Autistic boy,12, with higher IQ than Einstein develops his own theory of relativity

Warning systems often don't help tsunami victims

Warning systems often don't help tsunami victims – Costly warning systems installed across Asia since the deadly 2004 tsunami did nothing to save villagers on these remote Indonesian islands who saw homes and loved ones swept away by a giant wave this week.

Such systems can be effective for people living hours away from where a tsunami is forged but are often unable to help those most at risk. A 10-foot (3-meter) wave struck the Mentawai islands Monday just minutes after a massive earthquake offshore, killing more than 400 and destroying hundreds of homes in 20 villages.

There are questions about whether Indonesia's system was working properly, but even if it was, a tsunami generated by an earthquake so close to shore can reach land long before there's a chance to raise an effective warning, experts say.

Piatoro, a coconut farmer on the wave-battered island of Pagai Selatan, said he and his family ran toward higher ground when the water slammed into their home, but it was too late. The water snatched his feet from under him, and he was sucked under the waves, tumbling over and over. His wife was torn from him.

"I felt like I was boneless," Piatoro, 49, said Friday as he sat alone on a hospital mat, skin scraped from his calf and stitches on a foot wound. Like many Indonesians, he has only one name. It was not clear if his wife had survived.

Tsunami alerts were sounded by scientists within minutes of the earthquake, but some villages have no telephone lines, making it extremely difficult for a warning to get through in time.

Renato Solidum, the director of the state-run Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, said seaside communities needed to learn to read natural signs — such as earthquakes and unnaturally receding seas — and immediately move away from the coast even before alarms go off.

But reading those signs can be difficult.

Piatoro and his wife ran from their house twice on Monday, after the initial quake and the first aftershock. But the shaking did not seem bad enough to set off a tsunami and they went back inside.

Indonesia sits amid the Pacific "Ring of Fire," a cluster of fault lines prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity, putting many of its people simply too close to get much of a warning.

As a result, Indonesian authorities have created a system designed to sound an alarm within five minutes of an earthquake, and have tried to teach people to move quickly uphill.

"But obviously that's a tall order — that's not much time to react and it's not much time for the system to work out what's happened," said Chris Ryan, co-director of the Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Center.

Scientists still insist the warning systems are necessary. The 2004 tsunami, which also was triggered by an earthquake off Indonesia, proved all too well that distance from a quake's epicenter offers little protection.

Half of the nearly 230,000 dead were on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, but powerful waves also moved at jetliner speeds across the Indian Ocean, slamming into coastal communities in countries thousands of miles away.

Beach resorts were destroyed in Thailand. A train was thrown from its rails in Sri Lanka. Entire villages were wiped out in India. Dozens of people were killed as far away as Tanzania.

The disaster pushed many countries to order advanced alert systems, most of which rely on electronic buoys to detect sudden changes in water levels. The network of systems has cost many millions of dollars — with the most complex buoys sold for $1 million each.

Further from Indonesia, other countries said the new warning systems worked well, and that their response to the Monday quake proved that.

"The system that is now in place for the whole Indian Ocean did work, and would have prevented widespread areas being surprised if it had been a more widespread tsunami," said Ryan, from the Australian warning center.

"Within 10 minutes of the earthquake, we had issued a bulletin ... warning that there was potential for a local tsunami," said Satheesh C. Shenoi, director of the Indian National Center for Ocean Information Services.

The system, though, is based on an often-inexact science.

Earlier this year, a magnitude 8.8-earthquake struck Chile, spawning warnings of a deadly wave heading across the Pacific. Scientists, working from reams of data and complex computer models, warned that "urgent action should be taken to protect lives and property," sending hundreds of thousands of people fleeing for high ground in Hawaii, Japan and elsewhere.

Instead, most waves were just a few feet high and — except off the Chilean coast — there was little reported damage. ( Associated Press )

READ MORE - Warning systems often don't help tsunami victims

Tips for Reducing Stress

You can't always avoid stress, but it is possible to avoid a complete meltdown when stressful situations arise. We asked women on the iVillage message boards their best strategies for defusing difficult situations and staying calm. Some of our favorite responses:

Tips for Reducing Stress.

• 1. Breathe deep. Just sit still for a few moments, be present and breathe.

• 2. Laugh! Rent a funny movie or call up that hilarious friend.

• 3. Do gentle yoga while watching the sunrise.

• 4. Get some exercise and work up a sweat. I spent a whole weekend cutting up a tree in my backyard to blow off steam!

• 5. Clean up your act. Go on a stress-busting cleaning rampage.

• 6. Meditate. Breathe, clear your mind, focus on an image or a chant.

• 7. Hug someone. Recruit the boyfriend, the husband, or the kids.

• 8. Try scrapbooking or another soothing hobby -- many women swear by the calming, repetitive motions of knitting.

• 9. Talk it out. Seek out the support of people who will listen.

• 10. Visit the sauna. There are no distractions, which makes the sauna a great place to meditate. Ahhh.

( weather.com )

READ MORE - Tips for Reducing Stress

Are mobile phones safe?

Are mobile phones safe?. More than 27 million people in Britain and more than 300 million worldwide own one. The total number of users in the world is expected to reach one billion by 2005.

But are mobile phones really safe? The Government has announced a multi million pound research programme looking into the possible health hazards of mobile phones. Here we look at the risks.

Fact File

History The first mobile phones cost around £2,700, but prices plummeted as technology advanced and many companies now offer handsets for free in special deals to attract new customers.

The risks Mobile phones emit microwaves similar to those used in microwave ovens, but at a much lower power level. They have generated a multitude of scare stories, including suggestions that they cause cancer and memory loss, but the industry insists there is no evidence they have any harmful effects. The main health effect noticed by researchers is the fact that drivers are at more risk of crashes while talking into the handsets.

Research Research into mobiles includes a study at the University Neurology Clinic in Freiburg, Germany, which claimed they can increase blood pressure - the rise was small, but could be harmful to people with high blood pressure, said researchers.

Dr Kjell-Hansson Mild, at the National Institute of Working Life in Umea, Sweden, conducted tests on 11,000 mobile users which suggested regular use could lead to fatigue, headaches, and skin irritation.

A University of Bristol team, led by Dr Alan Preece, found no evidence of mobile phone users suffering impairment of memory, spatial awareness or attention span.

Stress and cancer Research at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA, suggested that microwaves can induce stress. Swedish cancer specialist Dr Lennart Hardell has claimed to have found a correlation between which side of the head mobile users hold their handset and the location of tumours. ( dailymail.co.uk )

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Evolution's place in a created universe

The Structure of Scientific Evolutions. Evolution's place in a created universe. The quarrel between religion and evolution has taken an interesting turn. Instead of attacking religion, some Darwinists have embraced it as a product of human evolution. Now they're debating to what extent this evolution was biological. Evolution and biology are coming apart.

This is a tricky concept to grapple with in today's biologically dominated era of science. Let me try to explain where we are. Three years ago, while on a Templeton fellowship at the University of Cambridge, I heard one of those ideas that not only sticks in your head but starts to reorganize your thinking. The idea was convergence. The speaker was Simon Conway Morris, the Cambridge paleontologist and author of Life's Solution. Conway Morris affirmed evolution as a mechanical explanation of animal and human development. But he also argued that evolution takes place in an ordered world. Because similar features evolve repeatedly in different contexts, there must be something about the world that favors such features.

There's nothing inherently spooky or religious about this idea. We have a straightforward model of it in the well-known pattern of phase changes. At certain temperatures and pressures, this or that element will naturally change from solid to liquid to gas. The fact that such transitions can be explained mechanically doesn't erase the fact that the points at which they'll happen can be predicted independently. In that sense, they're caused not just by heating or cooling but by the pre-existing structure of the universe.

Conway Morris takes this idea a step further. He suggests that such structural causation might occur not just in physics but in biology. This is a gamble, since biology is more complex than physics or chemistry. In physics or chemistry, you can make solid predictions from a limited set of data and laws. Biology is a lot messier. With the emergence of life, organisms that arose from physics and chemistry begin to operate according to new patterns. Functional explanations replace chemical ones. You can't assume that an underlying order constrains biological evolution in the same way that the underlying order of chemistry constrains phase changes. But Conway Morris suggests, based on evolutionary convergence, that to some extent it does.

If he's right, two much bigger questions start to become serious. One is how far this architecture of the universe extends. If it influences developments at the chemical and biological levels, does it extend to the next level of complexity, the mind? How about the level beyond that, society? Are there mental and cultural laws? Does some pre-existing order favor, and thereby produce by adaptation or selection, certain kinds of cultural development?

The other question is what to think of this architecture. Is it just the way things are? Is it creation? Is it God?

If you're interested in either of these questions—and as the cutting edge of biological and cultural development, you should be—the guy whose work you ought to read is Robert Wright. Two confessions up front: One, I consider Bob a friend. Two, for several years (well, it seemed like years—maybe it was months), he routinely kicked my ass at squash. So I gave up squash and took up science writing. And guess what? Now he kicks my ass at science writing. (Check out his latest Slate piece on shamans and their sex, money, and protection rackets.)

In a series of books—Three Scientists and Their Gods, The Moral Animal, and Nonzero—Wright has pushed the idea of pre-existing architecture from the chemical to the biological to the cultural level. He believes that the structure of our world has favored the evolution of societies based on peace, commerce, reciprocal altruism, and mutual benefit. His latest book, The Evolution of God, takes this argument further: God may or may not have shaped biological and cultural evolution (just by establishing an initial algorithm), but these processes have definitely shaped Him. The evolution of the human brain led to religion, and our ideas about God have subsequently changed in concert with cultural progress. On the whole, despite history's ups and downs, God has become more peaceful, more beneficent, and more compatible with a scientific understanding of the world.

Not everyone is thrilled with Wright's version of God. To many religious people, a nonpersonal deity that never intervenes in the ordered world is no deity at all. But the more interesting critique has come from scientists. Many of them don't like theism, even in Wright's deistic form. They prefer simple explanations. They think that biological evolution can account for religion's emergence and that this form of explanation is uniquely God-free.

The most notable of these scientific critics is Nicholas Wade, a reporter for the New York Times. Wade is the author of Before the Dawn, an ingenious reconstruction of human prehistory from genetic and linguistic evidence. This fall, he has another book coming out: The Faith Instinct. In a preview on the Times Web site, he agrees with Wright that "morality has a genetic basis and may well have evolved over the millennia into forms that are objectively higher." But Wade thinks religion's original function was clear:

to instill, through group cohesion, morality within a group and hostility toward those outside it. So in very early human societies, groups with strong religious behavior would have prevailed over less cohesive adversaries. We are descended from the religious groups, the argument goes, and that is why everyone harbors a religious instinct. …

Wade concludes: "Natural selection also explains rather well how religious behavior would have conferred such advantages on early human societies that it became a part of human nature."

Wright disagrees. He calls religion "an incidental by-product" of biological evolution. "Religion arose out of a hodgepodge of genetically based mental mechanisms designed by natural selection for thoroughly mundane purposes," he writes. Those mechanisms include conformist bias (believing what your peers believe, in order to get along), a tendency to explain events in terms of personal agency (since our mental machinery for thinking about causality evolved in the context of social interaction), and interest in remote control (a bias toward beliefs that promise influence over predators, diseases, and bad weather). Given these biases, we're prone to believe in powerful, jealous, tempestuous personal deities.

But Wright doesn't think our consequent religious belief systems evolved in the same way that these underlying mechanisms did. He argues that

biological evolution isn't the only great "designer" at work on this planet. There is also cultural evolution: the selective transmission of "memes"—beliefs, habits, rituals, songs, technologies, theories, and so forth—from person to person. And one criterion that shapes cultural evolution is social utility; memes that are conductive to smooth functioning at the group level often have an advantage over memes that aren't. Cultural evolution is what gave us modern corporations, modern government, and modern religion.

Wade calls this theory "a disappointment from the Darwinian perspective." It isn't "real evolution," he concludes; it's "just the development of ideas about God." Therefore, "the God of [Wright's] title owes nothing to Darwin."

So who's right in this debate? Is religion a product of natural selection, cultural evolution, or God's truth?

Here's one possibility: all of the above.

I agree with Wade that cultural evolution is an exaggerated metaphor. Wright asserts that "just as genes are transmitted from body to body, down the generations, memes are transmitted from mind to mind." But that's a stretch. Memes don't pass from generation to generation the way genes do. One requires only procreation; the other requires parenting and education. For this reason, our cultural inheritance is vulnerable in a way that our biological inheritance isn't.

On the other hand, I agree with Wright that biological evolution isn't the only ordered process that shaped us. Life originally emerged from an architecture of physical and chemical laws. So natural selection isn't the first level of the cosmic order; it's at least the second or third. Why should we assume the architecture stops there? Shouldn't we look for directional patterns in cultural history? If such patterns exist, they'll be far more complicated than the patterns of biology, just as the patterns of biology are more complicated than the patterns of physics or chemistry. But science doesn't promise that everything can be explained with the same ease, or even in the same terms. You have to face the world as it is and develop new tools when the old ones fail.

Natural selection has become a tremendous tool for understanding biology. But it wasn't the first kind of science we invented, and it won't be the last. The notion that major components of our society or its development, such as religion, must be explained entirely through natural selection is no more scientific than the notion that they must be explained through physics or chemistry. All of these sciences, these levels of order, work together. We are physical, chemical, biologically designed, culturally guided organisms.

If this complex, multitiered, gradually emerging architecture is the concept of God we're heading toward, then yes, God owes plenty to Darwin. And Darwin owes plenty to God. ( slate.com )

READ MORE - Evolution's place in a created universe

How destructive is snorkeling or diving at a coral reef?

Reefer Sadness. How destructive is snorkeling or diving at a coral reef?. I'm about to leave for my long-awaited tropical vacation, and now I've gotten myself in a tizzy over whether my swimming and snorkeling might contribute to the destruction of coral reefs. How can I be a more responsible ocean visitor? And what about these reports I've heard about sunscreen killing corals—is that true? Should I let myself burn to save the reefs?

You're right to worry. The world's coral reefs are not in such great shape: According to a comprehensive 2008 report from the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, approximately 19 percent of the world's coral reefs are "effectively lost"—meaning that they're so degraded or polluted they can no longer support healthy ecosystems or provide other benefits—and another 15 percent are in serious danger of joining that category within the next 10 to 20 years. Reefs are more than just awe-inspiring and gorgeous; they're also brimming with wildlife. They provide local communities with food and money—both from fishing and from tourism—and help protect coastlines from storms and rough waves.

Vacationing snorkelers and scuba divers aren't the biggest threat facing coral reefs—that dubious honor belongs to the trifecta of global warming, the fishing industry, and land-based pollution. But tourism is still a major area of concern: In 2002, the United States Coral Reef Task Force identified "recreational overuse" as one of six priority threats facing our country's coral reefs (PDF). The deleterious effects may be even more pronounced in developing countries, where rapid expansion of the tourism industry isn't always coupled with well-managed conservation efforts.

Ocean frolickers can damage corals intentionally—by touching them or breaking off branches as souvenirs—and unintentionally, by standing, walking, or dragging their gear over them. Snorkelers and divers can also kick up clouds of sediment with their fins. When that grit lands on a reef, it blocks the sunlight that zooxanthellae—the algae that live in and nourish the corals—need for photosynthesis.

When wading in shallow waters, make sure you're walking over sand or gravel, particularly if you're dragging a surfboard. Another way to protect the reefs is to practice swimming before you go—so you're nimble enough in the water to avoid touching the corals. (Klutzy landlubbers like the Lantern should wear a snorkel vest and make sure to get some training before heading in.) Photographers need to be extra cautious: Your extra gear and desire to get sweet close-up shots make you a special hazard.

Boats that drop their anchors into reefs can also cause a lot of damage, so if you're planning on taking any kind of boat tour, look for a responsible company that uses mooring buoys instead of anchors. For a list of tour operators around the world that have pledged to follow ocean-friendly practices, check out the Project AWARE Foundation's ECO Operators program.

Regarding the sunscreen issue: Chances are, you read one of the many alarming news stories on an Italian study published last year that found that common chemical sunscreen ingredients can trigger viral infections in zooxanthellae, causing the corals to "bleach" and weaken. There's still considerable debate over the extent to which the study's findings can be applied in the wild, but in the meantime, it seems prudent to avoid sunscreens that contain the problematic ingredients—namely, oxybenzone, octinoxate, 4-MBC, and the common preservative butylparaben.

Some news reports have recommended zinc oxide or titanium oxide-based sunblocks as "coral-friendly" alternatives.* But the Lantern is a bit wary of that claim: So far, she hasn't seen any data that prove these sunblocks are coral-safe, just a lack of data showing that they're dangerous. As she noted in her previous column about sunscreens, there's still a lot we don't know about the fate of these products in the environment. Luckily, there's an easy, lotion-free way to stay protected while snorkeling: a long-sleeved T-shirt and leggings.

All of this said, the tourism industry has the potential to be a net positive for our oceans. Swimmers and divers who've experienced the spiny majesty of a coral reef firsthand are more likely to press hotels and tour operators to adopt more sustainable practices. Meanwhile, vendors who want to keep tourists happy have a strong economic incentive to maintain beautiful, healthy reefs.

So before you get in the water—and before you even leave home—do your part by supporting businesses with established conservation policies. Choose hotels that properly treat their wastewater and sewage: If these polluting effluents wind up in the ocean, they encourage algae blooms that can overwhelm coral reefs. When planning your beach excursions, try to patronize marine protected areas, which are managed in ways that promote long-term ecosystem health.

Finally, to really green up your vacation, consider donating some of that leisure time to conservation-oriented activities, like the Reef Environmental Education Foundation's Volunteer Survey Project. If your trip is taking you anywhere within REEF's monitoring areas, you can sign up to collect data on the fish you see on your dives. Your data will get fed into much larger data sets that scientists can use to study population trends. Sun, sand, and citizen science—what could be better? ( slate.com )

READ MORE - How destructive is snorkeling or diving at a coral reef?

Controversy flares over space-based power plan

Controversy flares over space-based power plan. Some hope to harness solar power in orbit; others worry about hype. Space solar power advocates may soon get their day in the sun, as different projects aimed at beaming energy to Earth from orbit begin to take shape. But at least one space power scientist worries that a U.S.-based project may be promising too much, too soon.

Last week, California regulators proposed a plan to approve a 15-year contract with the American company Solaren Corp. to supply space-based solar power to utility giant Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) by 2016. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has also teamed up with a private Japanese coalition to design a solar space station for launch by the 2030s.

JAXA

In this artist's impression from Japan's space agency, a solar power satellite transmits energy down to Earth via lasers.

Such projects encourage scientists who dream of harnessing the sun's power directly, without the interruption of cloudy skies and Earth's day-night cycle. Marty Hoffert, a physicist at New York University and one of the staunchest supporters of space solar power, suggests that today's technologies allow space solar power to provide energy as cheaply as the usual solar panel arrays on Earth.

"The problem is that we're treating space solar power as something that has to compete with coal right now," said Hoffert, who gave a recent talk on beamed power at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. "Nothing can compete with coal."

Despite his enthusiasm, Hoffert remains skeptical of Solaren's plan. And he warns that failure to deliver could deal a life-threatening blow to the dream of space solar power.

A decision by the California Power Utility Commission on Solaren's plan for PG&E could come as early as Thursday, according to a Dow Jones wire report.

Harnessing the sun

Solar panels in space can receive seven times more solar energy per unit than ones on Earth and don't have to deal with weather or darkness. The challenge in harnessing that energy comes from the expensive costs of launching material into space, as well as figuring out how to beam energy back down to Earth.

Microwave beaming has long been the favored delivery option for space solar power advocates. Space power stations using this method would convert the electricity generated by solar panels into radio frequency (RF) waves for beaming down to an Earth receiver several kilometers wide.

A former NASA scientist demonstrated the RF concept last year by beaming 20 watts between two Hawaiian islands — barely enough energy to power a dim light bulb. That experiment cost just $1 million. A full-scale space solar power setup would require much bigger and more costly receivers.

Another more recent choice has arisen in the form of solid-state lasers. Such lasers now have enough power to deliver energy as a tightly focused optical beam that requires much less costly equipment in space and on the ground. But unlike RF, lasers can run into bigger problems with atmospheric interference and weather.

"Microwaves can beam through clouds, which lasers can't," Hoffert explained. "With lasers you're going to have to have receivers in desert sites that are cloud free, and maybe backup receivers in several sites."

Hoffert still favors lasers because of the lower costs required up front for a tech demonstration. By contrast, Solaren weighed its choices and decided to go with RF technology.

"Basically we chose RF because it is more efficient and has all-weather capability for the reliable delivery of electricity to our customers," said Cal Boerman, Solaren's director of energy services.

The cost of space power

Hoffert is wary of Solaren's latest step forward and the company's promise of delivering 200 megawatts to PG&E utility customers in California by 2016.

Hoffert estimates that Solaren could manage to get about 50 percent transmission efficiency in a best-case scenario, meaning that half of the energy collected by space solar panels would be lost in the transfer down to Earth.

Solaren would then need to launch a solar panel array capable of generating 400 megawatts. The total launch weight of all the equipment would be the equivalent of about 400 metric tons, or 20 shuttle-sized launches, according to Hoffert.

But Solaren says that it would just require four or five heavy-lift rocket launches capable of carrying 25 metric tons, or about one fourth of Hoffert's weight estimate. The company is relying on developing more efficient photovoltaic technology for the solar panels, as well as mirrors that help focus sunlight.

"Solaren's patented SSP [space solar power] system dramatically reduces the SSP space segment mass compared to previous concepts," Boerman told SPACE.com.

Solaren has not provided details on just how its technology works, citing intellectual property concerns. But it expects that its space solar power can convert to RF energy with greater than 80 percent efficiency, and expects similar conversion efficiency for converting the RF energy back to DC electricity on the ground in California. The company also anticipates minimal transmission losses from the space to the ground.

Hoffert remains unconvinced without knowing the details of Solaren's technology. He frets that "premature optimism" over unproven and perhaps scientifically implausible concepts could end up ruining the reputation of space solar power, even as advocates desperately want to see their vision come true.

"Too many space power guys have been silent, perhaps to not give comfort to opponents," Hoffert noted in a recent e-mail to colleagues. "But scientists should not do this."

Beaming into the future

Hoffert still believes strongly in the promise of space solar power, and has calculated that it can even prove as cost-effective as ground-based solar panels. That's because solar farms on Earth must build expensive storage systems to hold energy reserves during cloudy days or nighttime — although Hoffert still sees solar farms as an ideal complement to space solar power.

Space solar power has to deal mainly with expensive launch costs of about $15,000 per kilogram, as well as the huge capital costs of building ground arrays if RF technology is involved. Hoffert has pushed for the laser beaming approach as newly effective cost-cutting measure, and even submitted a proposal with his son to ARPA-E, the U.S. Department of Energy's new agency.

"The cost to first power doesn't have to be in the hundreds of billions," Hoffert said. His proposal includes laser transmission tests on the ground in an NYU lab, and then a space experiment launched to the International Space Station.

Such beaming tests could even provide temporary power to isolated places on Earth along the space station's ground track, although a true solar space power station would sit in geostationary orbit.

Hoffert approved of Japan's own space solar power effort, led by JAXA, which would test both RF technology and lasers as means of energy transmission. He envisions the possibility of space solar power becoming commercially viable within a decade — but only if all the science bears out the technology behind private efforts.

"Some of it is physics and engineering, and some of it is business and promotion," Hoffert said. "But in the long run, you can't fool Mother Nature." ( space.com )

READ MORE - Controversy flares over space-based power plan

Cyber warfare 'now a reality' with United States and Russia armed

Cyber warfare 'now a reality' with United States and Russia armed. Cyber warfare is now a reality with at least five nations including the United States and Russia already armed with virtual weapons, according to a report.

A wave of politically-motivated cyber offensives this year – such as attacks on the White House and the US Department of Homeland Security – show that the international arms race is now moving online, a study claims.

A new study reports that the international arms race is now moving online

The report warns that cyber strikes could have a "devastating" impact on national infrastructure with power grids, water supplies and financial markets all at risk.

While the potential of online warfare has long been talked up, the Virtual Criminology Report released by the web security firm McAfee claims that it is now moving from science fiction to fact.

France, Israel and China are among the countries known to have cyber weapon programmes, according to Paul Kurtz, the former White House adviser who complied the study based on interviews with more than 20 experts.

“McAfee began to warn of the global cyber arms race more than two years ago, but now we’re seeing increasing evidence that it’s become real,” said Dave Dealt, president of McAfee.

“Now several nations around the world are actively engaged in cyber warlike preparations and attacks. Today, the weapons are not nuclear, but virtual, and everyone must adapt to these threats.”

The infrastructure of most developed nations is connected to the internet and vulnerable to hackers because of insufficient security controls, the report warns.

Companies will also be caught in the crossfire of future cyber wars between governments because so many essential services are privately run, it advises.

Last month a congressional advisory panel in the US warned that China appears to be using the growing technical abilities to collect US intelligence through a sophisticated and long-term computer attack campaign.

Georgia also accused Russian hackers linked to the government of forcing Georgian websites offline during the real-world conflict between the two nations in 2008. ( telegraph.co.uk )

READ MORE - Cyber warfare 'now a reality' with United States and Russia armed

Society must decide if it 'will accept relationships between humans and robots'

Society must decide if it 'will accept relationships between humans and robots'. Society must decide if it is willing to accept relationships between humans and robots before the machines become so sophisticated they start demanding rights, a legal expert has warned.

Rapid advances in technology mean cyborgs, or human-like robots, are no longer a vision of a distant future.

Arnold Schwarzenegger in the fim Terminator Photo: COLUMBIA FILMS

The machines have been made famous by films like Terminator and Blade Runner but real life is increasingly catching up with fiction.

Earlier this year researchers announced they had created robot ‘scientists’ – complete with the ability to think for themselves.

As the machines become more sophisticated, they will increasingly seem more like humans and could demand ‘human rights’, Anna Russel, from the University of San Diego warns.

One of the flashpoints could be over relationships, including sexual relationships, with humans, she claims.

In an article titled “Blurring the love lines” she warns: “While this humanoid is a giant leap forward technologically, if a self-aware, super-intelligent, thinking, feeling humanoid is developed, the legal system will be hard-pressed to distinguish this creature legally from human actors on grounds not stemming from a religious or moral prejudice.”

Lawyers have to start thinking now about what rights should be accorded to cyborgs, she argues.

Most societies will want to regulate such relationships but Russel claims they have to prepare themselves for how they would respond if the cyborgs clamoured for sexual freedoms.

As the technology improves “it will be inevitable that legal issues would be raised and the love lines blurred,” she warns.

“In what way would such sexual activities be regulated, however, and how regulation would work is not clear.” ( telegraph.co.uk )

READ MORE - Society must decide if it 'will accept relationships between humans and robots'