Fires account for a significant part of
the interannual variability of the atmospheric
concentrations of many
important trace gases like CO2 and
CH4, but the relative contribution of
emissions from different global regions
is very uncertain. In a study using
satellite and atmospheric data,
biogeochemical modeling, and an inverse
analysis of atmospheric CO
anomalies, van der Werf et al. (p.
73) analyzed how fires across different
regions contributed to global
trace gas variability between 1998
and 2001. Unusually high fire emissions
from Southeast Asia accounted for most of the global signals.
Contributions from Central America, northern boreal regions,
and South America that were underestimated previously
were also important sources.
Fire in the Whole World
Breaking Down the Stride
The energetic costs of running and the underlying physiological
mechanisms have been studied for decades. However, relating the
energetics to underlying mechanics has relied on “black-box” approaches.
In an experimental study of guinea fowl, Marsh et al. (p.
80; see the Perspective by Heglund) used blood flow to the muscles
as a measure of how the energy is distributed. Contrary to previous
predictions, the energy used by muscles that swing the upper limbs
was not negligible—it was about a third of the amount used by the
lower limbs that transmit force to the ground.
Mix and Fix Damaged DNA
Double-stand breaks (DSBs) in DNA can lead to tumorigenic
chromosomal translocations, but it is not clear how the broken
ends find each other. Are the different sites in the DNA in contact
before the breakage occurs (“contact-first” model) or are the
two different broken ends mobile in the nucleus (“breakage-first”
model)? By exposing cells to particles,
Aten et al. generated linear
tracks of DSBs through cell nuclei.
DSB-containing chromosomes were
mobile within the nucleus, as predicted
by the “breakage-first” model. In
some cells, the broken ends formed
large clusters, which brought many
DSBs in close proximity with one another
for potential repair.
A Home in the Milky Way
What fraction of
stars in our Galaxy
might play host
to planets that
can support multicellular
life?
Lineweaver et al.
calculate
the probable extent
of hospitable
space for complex life in the Galaxy, called the Galactic
habitable zone (GHZ). Their criteria include distance
from deadly supernovae, enough heavy elements to
form terrestrial planets, and enough time for life to
evolve. Based on these criteria, the GHZ is an annular
region between 7 to 9 kiloparsecs from the Galactic center
and contains about 10% of the Milky Way stars with
ages between 4 to 8 billion years old.
Now You See Them
Self-assembly of small molecules
can create objects with a wide variety
of morphologies on the
nanometer-to-micrometer scale.
Yan et al. (p. 65) have used hyperbranched
polymers that have both
hydrophilic and hydrophobic domains
to create hollow tubes that are millimeters in width and
centimeters long. The tubes form when the polymer is stirred into
acetone. Electron microscopy analysis of the tube walls indicates
that alternating lamellae form in which the hydrophobic domains
are amorphous and the hydrophilic ones are ordered. These tubes
are robust and can likely be tailored by derivatizing the side walls.
A Winter’s Trail
Before migrating into North America, early humans first moved into
Arctic Siberia and adapted to its harsh environment. The few oldest
sites have been dated to at most about 15,000 years ago or so,
which was after the major Northern Hemisphere ice sheets had begun
to recede. Pitulko et al. now report a series of
radiocarbon ages and artifacts
found in a terrace along the Yana
River (just south of its mouth into
the Arctic Ocean, in central Siberia)
that date to 27,000 radiocarbon
years ago (about 30,000 calendar
years). Artifacts include an ivory
foreshaft from the horn of a rhinoceros,
two others made from
mammoth tusk, and several hundred
stone points and flakes.
Dolphin gets help nursing her calf
BALTIMORE, Maryland (AP) -- A two-month old dolphin calf at the National Aquarium is being nursed by three females, the aquarium announced.
Jade is the calf's mother, but Chesapeake and Shiloh are helping Jade with her motherly duties.
While it is known that female bottlenose dolphins can spontaneously produce milk if a calf is present, the practice is not well documented and aquarium staff are carefully watching the process.
The unnamed male calf was born to a dolphin named Jade, who is being helped in her nursing duties by the mother-daughter team of Chesapeake and Shiloh, the aquarium said in a statement issued Tuesday to announce the birth.
Aquarium officials are compiling a list of possible names for the calf, which appears to be thriving.
The three-foot-long, 36-pound calf is nursing regularly, swimming more on its own and has begun to interact with the trainers and toys, the aquarium said.
Dolphin calves are fragile and not easily handled during their first two to three months of life, and trainers at the aquarium are leaving the nursing duties to its mother and her helpers.
Jade is the calf's mother, but Chesapeake and Shiloh are helping Jade with her motherly duties.
While it is known that female bottlenose dolphins can spontaneously produce milk if a calf is present, the practice is not well documented and aquarium staff are carefully watching the process.
The unnamed male calf was born to a dolphin named Jade, who is being helped in her nursing duties by the mother-daughter team of Chesapeake and Shiloh, the aquarium said in a statement issued Tuesday to announce the birth.
Aquarium officials are compiling a list of possible names for the calf, which appears to be thriving.
The three-foot-long, 36-pound calf is nursing regularly, swimming more on its own and has begun to interact with the trainers and toys, the aquarium said.
Dolphin calves are fragile and not easily handled during their first two to three months of life, and trainers at the aquarium are leaving the nursing duties to its mother and her helpers.
CNN News
Asteroid could be NASA's new target
Here we are, nearly eight years into the 21st century, and the most spectacular manned mission NASA can pull off is a trip to the International Space Station, a mere 210 miles above the Earth.
Lack of gravity could make exploring an asteroid tricky.
Even the most ambitious part of NASA's current plans for human spaceflight involves visiting a celestial body we've already been to: the moon.
Astronauts, space buffs and an unimpressed public hunger for space exploration that's more dramatic, more heroic, more new. Something like, say, landing astronauts on a distant rock hurtling through space at 15 miles per second.
That's exactly the kind of trip NASA has been studying. In fact, scientists at the space agency recently determined that a manned mission to a near-Earth asteroid would be possible using technology being developed today.
The mission wouldn't be easy. A crew of two or three would spend months riding in a cramped spacecraft before reaching their barren, nearly gravity-free target.
That such a mission is even being considered, though, says a lot about the versatility of NASA's next fleet of spacecraft and the ambitions the agency has for them. If nothing else, it's a signal that space exploration could soon get much more exciting.
This wouldn't be our first trip to an asteroid. We've been visiting them by proxy for years now, using unmanned space probes.
In 2000 NASA's NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft arrived at 433 Eros, which a century earlier became the first near-Earth asteroid known to man; five years later, the Japanese Hayabusa probe touched down on asteroid 25143 Itokawa.
Yet unmanned probes have their limitations. NEAR Shoemaker and Hayabusa gathered a good deal of data, but we still don't know the exact composition and internal structure of the asteroids they visited. And although Hayabusa was designed to collect two small samples from Itokawa, it's doubtful the probe will actually have anything onboard when it returns in 2010.
Humans, however, could be much more effective. Unlike robots, we adapt to our environment in real time.
"We spend weeks at a rock with a Mars rover, trying to determine what it is," says Rob Landis, an engineer at NASA's Johnson Space Center and one of the co-leaders of the mission feasibility study. "An astronaut could make that determination in a matter of seconds."
A human crew could travel across an asteroid more intelligently than a robot, making it easier to deploy scientific instruments, collect samples, and zero in on the areas of greatest interest.
"No doubt, on a human mission we would characterize an asteroid better than we ever have," says Bruce Betts, director of projects for the Planetary Society.
Plenty of characterization needs to be done. While most asteroids are a safe distance from Earth (in an approximately 190-million-mile-wide expanse between Mars and Jupiter), Jupiter's gravitational tug and, less often, collisions between asteroids can kick these objects into orbits that pass uncomfortably close to Earth.
The 270-meter-wide asteroid 99942 Apophis, for example, will pass within roughly 24,000 miles of Earth in 2029, and could come back for a direct hit in 2036.
And if we're to have any hope of deflecting asteroids, we need to know a lot more about them than we do now. First off: What, exactly, are they made of? Measurements taken by Hayabusa indicate that 40 percent of Itokawa's volume is empty space. If some asteroids are truly this porous, that's helpful information for any plan to destroy or deflect an Earth-bound object.
Averting the apocalypse isn't the only reason to study near-Earth asteroids, though. They could be floating gold mines for future deep-space expeditions. Preliminary observations suggest that some asteroids are rich in useful minerals and, better yet, frozen water -- the most valuable resource a space traveler could hope to find.
If water could be extracted from asteroids, it could not only be used for drinking, but also broken down into oxygen for breathing and hydrogen for rocket fuel. "It might be an ultimate way to get to Mars," Landis says.
Forty-one years ago, a scientist at Northrop (now Northrop Grumman) proposed using moon rockets to go to an asteroid.
In some ways, NASA's latest plan is similar; it too relies on spacecraft designed for lunar travel -- the vehicles belonging to the Constellation program, which NASA is building to replace the shuttle and then go to the moon and beyond.
But although the hardware is similar, an asteroid mission couldn't be more different from a trip to the moon. Actually, an asteroid mission has one clear advantage: The virtually negligible gravity at the crew's destination means they need less fuel to get home.
That lack of gravity, however, means that the first person to reach an asteroid will not take one giant leap for mankind, and he will not drive a dune buggy.
"You're going to be wearing a backpack and flying around," says Rusty Schweickart, an Apollo 9 astronaut who is now chairman of the B612 Foundation, whose goal is "to significantly alter the orbit of an asteroid, in a controlled manner, by 2015."
Astronauts might explore the asteroid from inside their spacecraft using remotely controlled instruments, or they might anchor their spacecraft to the surface of the asteroid by firing hooks into the object and reeling themselves in.
The biggest logistical hurdle is the sheer distance involved. It takes a few days to travel the 238,855 miles to the moon, but it will take more than a month to cover the distance of up to 4.5 million miles separating us from just about any asteroid of interest. The crew of two or three will live in their small quarters for several months.
Psychological experiments and historical precedent show that isolation and boredom can mentally break an otherwise sane person; NASA will have to find a way to keep an asteroid-bound crew from losing their minds. It will also have to engineer a means to shelter the astronauts from the intense cosmic radiation found outside the protection of Earth's magnetic field.
Most ominously, though, there's this little wrinkle: If anything goes wrong out there for an asteroid-bound space traveler, there's almost no chance of rescue.
Which asteroids would we visit?
"You need an asteroid that's in an orbit very similar to the orbit of the Earth," says David Morrison, a senior scientist at the NASA Astrobiology Institute. "There aren't many, so we would be quite dependent on carrying out a new survey."
The ideal target asteroid will also be at least a couple hundred meters in diameter, will have a very slow rotation of 10 hours or more, and will have the potential to come too close to Earth for comfort. Scientists suspect approximately 1,000 asteroids meet these criteria -- but we have yet to find them.
In 2005, Congress ordered NASA to develop a program to detect, track, catalog, and characterize, by the end of 2020, 90 percent of all near-Earth objects (an expanded category that includes comets as well as asteroids) 140 meters in diameter and larger.
The hitch: Right now, NASA doesn't have the budget to get it done by that deadline.
The interplay between Congress and NASA brings up the more terrestrial matter of politics. The stated goal of President George Bush's administration is to launch an "extended" moon mission by 2020 and, later, to build a permanent moon base that could function as a springboard for a manned mission to Mars.
That could all change after next year's election, however. A new administration could divert money from human space exploration to any number of other projects -- say, satellite-based climate science.
"I don't think that the Vision" --the Bush administration's plan for a new era of human space exploration --"as written today is likely to survive the election, even if a Republican is elected," says Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society.
Then again, some experts believe the Constellation program will move forward no matter who wins in '08; if it doesn't, NASA won't have any spacecraft after the shuttle retires. And although the feasibility study doesn't mean we're headed to an asteroid soon, it does tell us that if we decide to go, we can get there.
So if, say, we find one day that we need to visit 99942 Apophis to find the best way to knock it off a collision course with Earth, or if we need a refueling station for astronauts headed for Mars, we might be in luck.
Lack of gravity could make exploring an asteroid tricky.
Even the most ambitious part of NASA's current plans for human spaceflight involves visiting a celestial body we've already been to: the moon.
Astronauts, space buffs and an unimpressed public hunger for space exploration that's more dramatic, more heroic, more new. Something like, say, landing astronauts on a distant rock hurtling through space at 15 miles per second.
That's exactly the kind of trip NASA has been studying. In fact, scientists at the space agency recently determined that a manned mission to a near-Earth asteroid would be possible using technology being developed today.
The mission wouldn't be easy. A crew of two or three would spend months riding in a cramped spacecraft before reaching their barren, nearly gravity-free target.
That such a mission is even being considered, though, says a lot about the versatility of NASA's next fleet of spacecraft and the ambitions the agency has for them. If nothing else, it's a signal that space exploration could soon get much more exciting.
This wouldn't be our first trip to an asteroid. We've been visiting them by proxy for years now, using unmanned space probes.
In 2000 NASA's NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft arrived at 433 Eros, which a century earlier became the first near-Earth asteroid known to man; five years later, the Japanese Hayabusa probe touched down on asteroid 25143 Itokawa.
Yet unmanned probes have their limitations. NEAR Shoemaker and Hayabusa gathered a good deal of data, but we still don't know the exact composition and internal structure of the asteroids they visited. And although Hayabusa was designed to collect two small samples from Itokawa, it's doubtful the probe will actually have anything onboard when it returns in 2010.
Humans, however, could be much more effective. Unlike robots, we adapt to our environment in real time.
"We spend weeks at a rock with a Mars rover, trying to determine what it is," says Rob Landis, an engineer at NASA's Johnson Space Center and one of the co-leaders of the mission feasibility study. "An astronaut could make that determination in a matter of seconds."
A human crew could travel across an asteroid more intelligently than a robot, making it easier to deploy scientific instruments, collect samples, and zero in on the areas of greatest interest.
"No doubt, on a human mission we would characterize an asteroid better than we ever have," says Bruce Betts, director of projects for the Planetary Society.
Plenty of characterization needs to be done. While most asteroids are a safe distance from Earth (in an approximately 190-million-mile-wide expanse between Mars and Jupiter), Jupiter's gravitational tug and, less often, collisions between asteroids can kick these objects into orbits that pass uncomfortably close to Earth.
The 270-meter-wide asteroid 99942 Apophis, for example, will pass within roughly 24,000 miles of Earth in 2029, and could come back for a direct hit in 2036.
And if we're to have any hope of deflecting asteroids, we need to know a lot more about them than we do now. First off: What, exactly, are they made of? Measurements taken by Hayabusa indicate that 40 percent of Itokawa's volume is empty space. If some asteroids are truly this porous, that's helpful information for any plan to destroy or deflect an Earth-bound object.
Averting the apocalypse isn't the only reason to study near-Earth asteroids, though. They could be floating gold mines for future deep-space expeditions. Preliminary observations suggest that some asteroids are rich in useful minerals and, better yet, frozen water -- the most valuable resource a space traveler could hope to find.
If water could be extracted from asteroids, it could not only be used for drinking, but also broken down into oxygen for breathing and hydrogen for rocket fuel. "It might be an ultimate way to get to Mars," Landis says.
Forty-one years ago, a scientist at Northrop (now Northrop Grumman) proposed using moon rockets to go to an asteroid.
In some ways, NASA's latest plan is similar; it too relies on spacecraft designed for lunar travel -- the vehicles belonging to the Constellation program, which NASA is building to replace the shuttle and then go to the moon and beyond.
But although the hardware is similar, an asteroid mission couldn't be more different from a trip to the moon. Actually, an asteroid mission has one clear advantage: The virtually negligible gravity at the crew's destination means they need less fuel to get home.
That lack of gravity, however, means that the first person to reach an asteroid will not take one giant leap for mankind, and he will not drive a dune buggy.
"You're going to be wearing a backpack and flying around," says Rusty Schweickart, an Apollo 9 astronaut who is now chairman of the B612 Foundation, whose goal is "to significantly alter the orbit of an asteroid, in a controlled manner, by 2015."
Astronauts might explore the asteroid from inside their spacecraft using remotely controlled instruments, or they might anchor their spacecraft to the surface of the asteroid by firing hooks into the object and reeling themselves in.
The biggest logistical hurdle is the sheer distance involved. It takes a few days to travel the 238,855 miles to the moon, but it will take more than a month to cover the distance of up to 4.5 million miles separating us from just about any asteroid of interest. The crew of two or three will live in their small quarters for several months.
Psychological experiments and historical precedent show that isolation and boredom can mentally break an otherwise sane person; NASA will have to find a way to keep an asteroid-bound crew from losing their minds. It will also have to engineer a means to shelter the astronauts from the intense cosmic radiation found outside the protection of Earth's magnetic field.
Most ominously, though, there's this little wrinkle: If anything goes wrong out there for an asteroid-bound space traveler, there's almost no chance of rescue.
Which asteroids would we visit?
"You need an asteroid that's in an orbit very similar to the orbit of the Earth," says David Morrison, a senior scientist at the NASA Astrobiology Institute. "There aren't many, so we would be quite dependent on carrying out a new survey."
The ideal target asteroid will also be at least a couple hundred meters in diameter, will have a very slow rotation of 10 hours or more, and will have the potential to come too close to Earth for comfort. Scientists suspect approximately 1,000 asteroids meet these criteria -- but we have yet to find them.
In 2005, Congress ordered NASA to develop a program to detect, track, catalog, and characterize, by the end of 2020, 90 percent of all near-Earth objects (an expanded category that includes comets as well as asteroids) 140 meters in diameter and larger.
The hitch: Right now, NASA doesn't have the budget to get it done by that deadline.
The interplay between Congress and NASA brings up the more terrestrial matter of politics. The stated goal of President George Bush's administration is to launch an "extended" moon mission by 2020 and, later, to build a permanent moon base that could function as a springboard for a manned mission to Mars.
That could all change after next year's election, however. A new administration could divert money from human space exploration to any number of other projects -- say, satellite-based climate science.
"I don't think that the Vision" --the Bush administration's plan for a new era of human space exploration --"as written today is likely to survive the election, even if a Republican is elected," says Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society.
Then again, some experts believe the Constellation program will move forward no matter who wins in '08; if it doesn't, NASA won't have any spacecraft after the shuttle retires. And although the feasibility study doesn't mean we're headed to an asteroid soon, it does tell us that if we decide to go, we can get there.
So if, say, we find one day that we need to visit 99942 Apophis to find the best way to knock it off a collision course with Earth, or if we need a refueling station for astronauts headed for Mars, we might be in luck.
CNN News
Scientist finds fossilized claw of man-sized sea scorpion
LONDON, England (AP) -- This was a bug you couldn't swat and definitely couldn't step on.
The ancient sea scorpion, at 2.5 meters (8 feet) in length, was bigger than the average man is tall.
British scientists have stumbled across a fossilized claw, part of an ancient sea scorpion, that is of such large proportion it would make the entire creature the biggest bug ever.
How big? Bigger than you, and at 8 feet long as big as some Smart cars.
The discovery in 390-million-year-old rocks suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were far larger in the past than previously thought, said Simon Braddy, a University of Bristol paleontologist and one of the study's three authors.
"This is an amazing discovery," he said Tuesday.
"We have known for some time that the fossil record yields monster millipedes, super-sized scorpions, colossal cockroaches, and jumbo dragonflies. But we never realized until now just how big some of these ancient creepy-crawlies were," he said.
The research found a type of sea scorpion that was almost half a yard longer than previous estimates and the largest one ever to have evolved.
The study, published online Tuesday in the Royal Society's journal Biology Letters, means that before this sea scorpion became extinct it was much longer than today's average man is tall.
Prof. Jeorg W. Schneider, a paleontologist at Freiberg Mining Academy in southeastern Germany, said the study provides valuable new information about "the last of the giant scorpions."
Schneider, who was not involved in the study, said these scorpions "were dominant for millions of years because they didn't have natural enemies. Eventually they were wiped out by large fish with jaws and teeth."
Braddy's partner paleontologist Markus Poschmann found the claw fossil several years ago in a quarry near Prum, Germany, that probably had once been an ancient estuary or swamp.
"I was loosening pieces of rock with a hammer and chisel when I suddenly realized there was a dark patch of organic matter on a freshly removed slab. After some cleaning I could identify this as a small part of a large claw," said Poschmann, another author of the study.
"Although I did not know if it was more complete or not, I decided to try and get it out. The pieces had to be cleaned separately, dried, and then glued back together. It was then put into a white plaster jacket to stabilize it," he said.
Eurypterids, or ancient sea scorpions, are believed to be the extinct aquatic ancestors of today's scorpions and possibly all arachnids, a class of joint-legged, invertebrate animals, including spiders, scorpions, mites and ticks.
Braddy said the fossil was from a Jaekelopterus Rhenaniae, a kind of scorpion that lived only in Germany for about 10 million years, about 400 million years ago.
He said some geologists believe that gigantic sea scorpions evolved due to higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere in the past. Others suspect they evolved in an "arms race" alongside their likely prey, fish that had armor on their outer bodies.
Braddy said the sea scorpions also were cannibals that fought and ate one other, so it helped to be as big as they could be.
"The competition between this scorpion and its prey was probably like a nuclear standoff, an effort to have the biggest weapon," he said. "Hundreds of millions of years ago, these sea scorpions had the upper hand over vertebrates -- backboned animals like ourselves."
That competition ended long ago.
But the next time you swat a fly, or squish a spider at home, Braddy said, try to "think about the insects that lived long ago. You wouldn't want to swat one of those."
CNN News
The ancient sea scorpion, at 2.5 meters (8 feet) in length, was bigger than the average man is tall.
British scientists have stumbled across a fossilized claw, part of an ancient sea scorpion, that is of such large proportion it would make the entire creature the biggest bug ever.
How big? Bigger than you, and at 8 feet long as big as some Smart cars.
The discovery in 390-million-year-old rocks suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were far larger in the past than previously thought, said Simon Braddy, a University of Bristol paleontologist and one of the study's three authors.
"This is an amazing discovery," he said Tuesday.
"We have known for some time that the fossil record yields monster millipedes, super-sized scorpions, colossal cockroaches, and jumbo dragonflies. But we never realized until now just how big some of these ancient creepy-crawlies were," he said.
The research found a type of sea scorpion that was almost half a yard longer than previous estimates and the largest one ever to have evolved.
The study, published online Tuesday in the Royal Society's journal Biology Letters, means that before this sea scorpion became extinct it was much longer than today's average man is tall.
Prof. Jeorg W. Schneider, a paleontologist at Freiberg Mining Academy in southeastern Germany, said the study provides valuable new information about "the last of the giant scorpions."
Schneider, who was not involved in the study, said these scorpions "were dominant for millions of years because they didn't have natural enemies. Eventually they were wiped out by large fish with jaws and teeth."
Braddy's partner paleontologist Markus Poschmann found the claw fossil several years ago in a quarry near Prum, Germany, that probably had once been an ancient estuary or swamp.
"I was loosening pieces of rock with a hammer and chisel when I suddenly realized there was a dark patch of organic matter on a freshly removed slab. After some cleaning I could identify this as a small part of a large claw," said Poschmann, another author of the study.
"Although I did not know if it was more complete or not, I decided to try and get it out. The pieces had to be cleaned separately, dried, and then glued back together. It was then put into a white plaster jacket to stabilize it," he said.
Eurypterids, or ancient sea scorpions, are believed to be the extinct aquatic ancestors of today's scorpions and possibly all arachnids, a class of joint-legged, invertebrate animals, including spiders, scorpions, mites and ticks.
Braddy said the fossil was from a Jaekelopterus Rhenaniae, a kind of scorpion that lived only in Germany for about 10 million years, about 400 million years ago.
He said some geologists believe that gigantic sea scorpions evolved due to higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere in the past. Others suspect they evolved in an "arms race" alongside their likely prey, fish that had armor on their outer bodies.
Braddy said the sea scorpions also were cannibals that fought and ate one other, so it helped to be as big as they could be.
"The competition between this scorpion and its prey was probably like a nuclear standoff, an effort to have the biggest weapon," he said. "Hundreds of millions of years ago, these sea scorpions had the upper hand over vertebrates -- backboned animals like ourselves."
That competition ended long ago.
But the next time you swat a fly, or squish a spider at home, Braddy said, try to "think about the insects that lived long ago. You wouldn't want to swat one of those."
CNN News
Zune players to get laser-engraved designs
SEATTLE, Washington (AP) -- In a bid to one-up Apple, Microsoft said it will engrave designs by contemporary artists on the back of its Zune media players free of charge starting Tuesday, when the new line goes on sale.
Zune media players have 4 gigabytes or 8 gigabytes of storage, and a larger model has an 80 GB hard drive.
Microsoft Corp.'s Zune Originals include work from 18 artists, including illustrators Catalina Estrada of Spain, Skwak of France and Nobumasa Takahashi of Japan. The intricate designs take up most of the metallic back surface of the players.
Apple Inc., the overwhelming market leader in portable music players, will engrave a line or two of small text on the back of its iPods and iPhones.
"We looked at how homogenized the category looked, everybody has the same sort of player, the same white earphones," said Chris Stephenson, general manager of global marketing for the Microsoft division responsible for the Zune. "We knew there was something interesting here that would allow us to have a slightly different position in the marketplace."
Microsoft's newest Zunes, first unveiled in October, hit store shelves Tuesday. Two smaller models have 4 gigabytes or 8 gigabytes of storage, and a larger model has an 80 GB hard drive. Prices range from $150 (euro103) to $250 (euro171).
Many of the artists have collaborated with sneaker companies or snowboard manufacturers on limited-edition products. Stephenson said Microsoft also took a cue from the customization craze on social networking sites like News Corp.-owned MySpace, and from limited-edition cell phones.
The company will also offer 20 smaller graphic designs inspired by classic tattoo art, leaving room for three lines of text chosen by the customer. Those who choose no design can have up to five lines of text engraved.
Stephenson would not say whether Microsoft has any specific goals for the Zune's second year on the market, other than to be "a solid No. 2" to the iPod.
Microsoft said the engraving service is free for a limited time, and is only available through its Zune site.
CNN News
Zune media players have 4 gigabytes or 8 gigabytes of storage, and a larger model has an 80 GB hard drive.
Microsoft Corp.'s Zune Originals include work from 18 artists, including illustrators Catalina Estrada of Spain, Skwak of France and Nobumasa Takahashi of Japan. The intricate designs take up most of the metallic back surface of the players.
Apple Inc., the overwhelming market leader in portable music players, will engrave a line or two of small text on the back of its iPods and iPhones.
"We looked at how homogenized the category looked, everybody has the same sort of player, the same white earphones," said Chris Stephenson, general manager of global marketing for the Microsoft division responsible for the Zune. "We knew there was something interesting here that would allow us to have a slightly different position in the marketplace."
Microsoft's newest Zunes, first unveiled in October, hit store shelves Tuesday. Two smaller models have 4 gigabytes or 8 gigabytes of storage, and a larger model has an 80 GB hard drive. Prices range from $150 (euro103) to $250 (euro171).
Many of the artists have collaborated with sneaker companies or snowboard manufacturers on limited-edition products. Stephenson said Microsoft also took a cue from the customization craze on social networking sites like News Corp.-owned MySpace, and from limited-edition cell phones.
The company will also offer 20 smaller graphic designs inspired by classic tattoo art, leaving room for three lines of text chosen by the customer. Those who choose no design can have up to five lines of text engraved.
Stephenson would not say whether Microsoft has any specific goals for the Zune's second year on the market, other than to be "a solid No. 2" to the iPod.
Microsoft said the engraving service is free for a limited time, and is only available through its Zune site.
CNN News
PlayStation 3 sales more than double after price cut
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- U.S. sales of the PlayStation 3 more than doubled in the weeks after the company slashed the video game console's price $100 and launched a low-end model, Sony Corp. CEO Howard Stringer told The Associated Press Wednesday.
U.S. sales of the PlayStation 3 more doubled after a $100 price cut.
Sony said it sold more than 100,000 consoles of all types in the week ending November 11.
The price cut and new model make the PS3 more competitive against Nintendo Co.'s Wii and Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 as the holiday season opens, Stringer said.
"It's the breakthrough we've been anticipating," Stringer said. "We've been holding our breath."
Sony said it had been selling between 30,000 and 40,000 consoles per week before the October 18 price cut from $599 to $499 of the 80 GB model.
Sales rose to 75,000 in the week of October 29, reflecting both the lower price of the high-end model and the introduction of a 40-gigabyte model for $399 on November 2, the company said. And it was the following week that sales hit 100,000, according to Sony.
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New, cheaper PlayStation 3 coming soon
Lagging sales of the PlayStation 3, compared to sales of the Wii and XBox 360, prompted Sony to cut the price in the U.S. as it had in Japan and Europe.
"Obviously, we've taken so much heat over the year on PS3," Stringer said from his office in Tokyo. "Finally, the turning point has been passed."
Stringer said Sony is poised to benefit from the difficulty Nintendo has had producing Wii consoles fast enough to keep up with demand.
"It's a little fortuitous that the Wii is running out of hardware," Stringer said.
By October, Nintendo had shipped 9.3 million units worldwide of the Wii, which went on sale late last year. By the end of this fiscal year in March 2008, total global Wii shipments are expected to reach 22.3 million.
Sony had sold 5 million PS3s worldwide by October. The game console went on sale late last year in Japan and the U.S. and in March in Europe.
Microsoft had sold 11.6 million Xbox 360 machines in two years.
Sony executives said the rising sales also will boost the Blu-ray high definition DVD format. A Blu-ray drive comes with the PS3.
"It puts us vastly ahead of where the other format is going to be in terms of an installed base in people's homes by the end of this holiday season," Andrew House, Sony's chief marketing officer, said.
Toshiba Corp. has been selling players for its rival DVD format for high-definition as low as $200 and prices are expected to drop further.
CNN News
China's big plans for space
(CNN) -- When China's lunar orbiter blasted off last month, there was not a cheer or smile or a "whoo-haaa" to be had in mission control.
Taikonaut Fei Junlong exits the re-entry capsule of China's second manned spacecraft on October 17, 2005.
Perhaps because for the government scientists, it was just another small step in an ambitious space program which could ultimately see a Chinese space station orbiting the Earth, a Chinese moon colony and a joint China-Russia explorer on Mars.
If all goes well, and so far it has, the Chang'e 1 will spend the next year orbiting the moon, mapping the surface and looking for resources. Next, the Chinese hope to send an unmanned rover to the moon by 2012, with a robotic mission to bring back samples by 2017. Officials have recently backpedaled from goals of putting a taikonaut (the Chinese version of an astronaut or cosmonaut) on the moon by 2020, but analysts believe that is still a pressing ambition.
"If China can go to the moon, eventually with a manned program, it will represent the ultimate achievement for China in making itself essentially the second most important space power, accomplishing what even the Soviets had not," says Dean Cheng, a China military analyst for CNA, a private research corporation.
According to Cheng, the Chinese are now embarking on a systematic space program the world has not seen since the 1960's and for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States is facing real competition. That may explain why the head of NASA, Michael Griffin, recently warned that "China will be back on the moon before we are . . . I think when that happens Americans will not like it."
But there could be a lot more at stake than just lunar boasting rights. It's unlikely the Chinese will land at Tranquility Base and pull down the Stars and Stripes. But the goal could be mining resources. One powerful, potential fuel source is helium-3. Helium-3 originated from the sun and was deposited in the moon's soil by the solar wind. It is estimated there are up to two million tons on the moon, and virtually none on Earth.
"If we can ever get helium-3 and helium-3 to fuse together it is what we call nuclear power without nuclear waste -- there is no radioactivity associated with that reactor," says Professor Gerald Kulcinski, an expert in helium from the University of Wisconsin.
The key though, says Kulcinski, will be developing a fusion reactor, which he says could be done within 15 to 20 years, in tandem with a program to establish a permanent human presence on the moon. Just four tons of helium-3 would be enough to supply all the power needs for the United States for a year, two shuttle payloads according to Kulcinski.
Analysts believe the lure of such potent resources is one of the reasons behind China's exploration of space. State media reported last month details of a new rocket with enough thrust to put a space station into orbit. When it's developed, the Long March 5 will have almost three times the power of existing rockets.
China has long wanted to be part of the international space station, but has always been denied, partly it's believed because of U.S. concerns. But that may not be a problem for the Chinese if they can send their own space station into orbit, reportedly by 2020. But again the Chinese are sending mixed messages, saying no firm date has been decided. More immediately, there are plans a for televised space walk by three taikonauts next year, according to the Shanghai Daily.
At a recent news conference Pei Zhaoyu from China's space administration repeated at least three times that "China has always adhered to the principle of peaceful use of outer space." But he made no mention of China's satellite killer missile which was tested earlier this year, destroying an aging Chinese weather satellite in low Earth orbit.
That and the fact that China's space administration is controlled by the military has many in Washington worried about where the Chinese are heading. Technologically, the Chinese are still behind the United States, but analysts warn that might not be the case for much longer.
CNN News
Taikonaut Fei Junlong exits the re-entry capsule of China's second manned spacecraft on October 17, 2005.
Perhaps because for the government scientists, it was just another small step in an ambitious space program which could ultimately see a Chinese space station orbiting the Earth, a Chinese moon colony and a joint China-Russia explorer on Mars.
If all goes well, and so far it has, the Chang'e 1 will spend the next year orbiting the moon, mapping the surface and looking for resources. Next, the Chinese hope to send an unmanned rover to the moon by 2012, with a robotic mission to bring back samples by 2017. Officials have recently backpedaled from goals of putting a taikonaut (the Chinese version of an astronaut or cosmonaut) on the moon by 2020, but analysts believe that is still a pressing ambition.
"If China can go to the moon, eventually with a manned program, it will represent the ultimate achievement for China in making itself essentially the second most important space power, accomplishing what even the Soviets had not," says Dean Cheng, a China military analyst for CNA, a private research corporation.
According to Cheng, the Chinese are now embarking on a systematic space program the world has not seen since the 1960's and for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States is facing real competition. That may explain why the head of NASA, Michael Griffin, recently warned that "China will be back on the moon before we are . . . I think when that happens Americans will not like it."
But there could be a lot more at stake than just lunar boasting rights. It's unlikely the Chinese will land at Tranquility Base and pull down the Stars and Stripes. But the goal could be mining resources. One powerful, potential fuel source is helium-3. Helium-3 originated from the sun and was deposited in the moon's soil by the solar wind. It is estimated there are up to two million tons on the moon, and virtually none on Earth.
"If we can ever get helium-3 and helium-3 to fuse together it is what we call nuclear power without nuclear waste -- there is no radioactivity associated with that reactor," says Professor Gerald Kulcinski, an expert in helium from the University of Wisconsin.
The key though, says Kulcinski, will be developing a fusion reactor, which he says could be done within 15 to 20 years, in tandem with a program to establish a permanent human presence on the moon. Just four tons of helium-3 would be enough to supply all the power needs for the United States for a year, two shuttle payloads according to Kulcinski.
Analysts believe the lure of such potent resources is one of the reasons behind China's exploration of space. State media reported last month details of a new rocket with enough thrust to put a space station into orbit. When it's developed, the Long March 5 will have almost three times the power of existing rockets.
China has long wanted to be part of the international space station, but has always been denied, partly it's believed because of U.S. concerns. But that may not be a problem for the Chinese if they can send their own space station into orbit, reportedly by 2020. But again the Chinese are sending mixed messages, saying no firm date has been decided. More immediately, there are plans a for televised space walk by three taikonauts next year, according to the Shanghai Daily.
At a recent news conference Pei Zhaoyu from China's space administration repeated at least three times that "China has always adhered to the principle of peaceful use of outer space." But he made no mention of China's satellite killer missile which was tested earlier this year, destroying an aging Chinese weather satellite in low Earth orbit.
That and the fact that China's space administration is controlled by the military has many in Washington worried about where the Chinese are heading. Technologically, the Chinese are still behind the United States, but analysts warn that might not be the case for much longer.
CNN News
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