Science & Technology archives: January-February 2005

• 28 February 2005
  "The world is on the brink of a bird flu pandemic that could claim the lives of millions of people, scientists warned yesterday. The World Health Organisation (WHO) called an emergency conference of 20 nations to urge wealthy western countries to play a bigger role in halting the spread of avian flu. 'The world is now in the gravest possible danger of a pandemic,' Shigeru Omi, of the WHO, said at the conference in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where health authorities are meeting to consider emergency measures to control the virus. 'If the virus becomes highly contagious among humans, the health impact in terms of deaths and sickness will be enormous,' Dr Omi warned in the most strongly-worded statement issued so far by the WHO. The countries afflicted by the latest outbreak of bird flu, are Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. They are expected to outline their technical and financial needs at the conference." Learn more in the Scotsman.com.

• 25 February 2005
  "The 'digital divide' between rich and poor nations is narrowing fast, according to a World Bank report. The World Bank questioned a United Nation's campaign to increase usage and access to technology in poorer nations. 'People in the developing world are getting more access at an incredible rate - far faster than... in the past,' said the report. But a spokesman for the UN's World Summit on the Information Society said the digital divide remained very real. 'The digital divide is rapidly closing,' the World Bank report said. Half the world's population now has access to a fixed-line telephone, the report said, and 77% to a mobile network. The report's figures surpass a WSIS campaign goal that calls for 50% access to telephones by 2015. The UN hopes that widening access to technology such as mobile phones and the net will help eradicate poverty." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 24 February 2005
  "Timmy is no R2D2 or C-3P0 from Star Wars, what with his joystick handling and his lazy soccer-kicking abilities. But his creator believes Timmy may be one step closer to becoming the Rosie of the future, a Jetsons-like autonomous robot capable of interacting with humans...Rosie was the 1960s cartoon robot from the Jetsons TV series, while Bicentennial Man was the 1999 movie robot that wanted to become an ordinary man with emotions. Bowling is creating a 67.5-kilogram robot capable of speeds up to 20 kilometres an hour to play soccer with and against humans on Segway human transporters. The robot, worth at least $14,000 US, will adapt its kicking strategies and goal-scoring manoeuvres depending on how aggressive or defensive other players are or how muddy the turf is." Learn how a soccer playing robot might lead the way towards intelligent robotics in the Edmonton Journal.

• 23 February 2005
  "The laments have been heard for years. US research and development is falling off. Other countries are growing more competitive. American schools are turning out too few scientists and engineers. Now these clouds on the horizon may be converging into something like a perfect storm, according to a troubling report released last week by the American Electronics Association. The report argues that the US standing in technology is slipping, and that the nation is in danger of losing its advantage in fields it has long dominated. 'We are still in the lead, but it is a precarious one,' the association's researchers warn in the conclusion to their report. 'Already other countries are challenging us in key technology arenas. If we don't act now to maintain our competitive edge, we should not be surprised if the next wave of breakthrough technologies is created abroad.'" Learn more in the Boston Globe.

• 22 February 2005
  "Environmental changes wrought by population movement, destruction of habitats and other factors may be behind a resurgence of infectious diseases, a United Nations study says. A rise in cases of diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, and the recent crossover to humans of others such as the Nipah virus, are linked to a host of changes that create more favorable conditions for their spread, according to a report by the U.N. Environmental Programme (UNEP) issued on Monday. Deforestation, unplanned urban sprawl, poor waste management, pollution, building of roads and dams and rising temperatures are among the aggravating factors. Infectious diseases cause about 15 million deaths annually, or about a quarter of all fatalities, UNEP says." Learn more at ABC News.

• 21 February 2005
  "A global network of computer users has clocked up more than 4,000 years' worth of computer calculations in under three months as part of a huge grid project. Since November, thousands have joined the World Community Grid (WCG) which uses idle computer time to help solve serious health and social problems. Over 4,000 "teams" have been running a simple program which processes proteins for the Institute of Systems Biology. The Seattle-based institute is working out the role of proteins in bodies. The calculations completed so far by the thousands of ordinary desktop computers mean that the WCG has done 22% of the total analysis needed for the institute's Human Proteome Folding Project." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 18 February 2005
  "The U.S. Senate on Thursday unanimously approved legislation to bar health insurers and employers from discriminating against people with a genetic predisposition to disease. Sponsors said a growing understanding of the human genetic code created a need for protections to make sure scientific breakthroughs were used to promote health, not discrimination. Scientists believe every human has some genetic flaws. The bill prevents health insurers from excluding people from coverage or charging them higher rates due to a genetic risk or predisposition to a disease. Insurers could not require customers to take genetic tests. Employers would be barred from making hiring or firing decisions based on genetic information." Learn more at ABC News.

• 17 February 2005
  "Since ancient times poets have revered the power of the seas. Now energy companies and coastal cities like New York and San Francisco are aiming to tap ocean waves and tidal currents as abundant sources of electricity. Whether captured by big buoys bobbing on sea swells or by submerged turbines spinning with the ebb and flow of the tides, the energy potential of moving water, or marine power, is beginning to turn heads in the energy world. 'I'm pretty bullish on the technology,' said Robert Thresher, a wind power researcher at the Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Marine power is in its infancy. But an experimental wave project run last summer by Ocean Power Delivery Ltd in the Scottish Orkneys successfully provided power to 500 homes through Scottish Power." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 16 February 2005
  "It is three years since Professor Rusi Taleyarkhan made the controversial claim that he had achieved one of the holy grails of science - nuclear fusion. Since then, he has grown tired of the scepticism of his fellow scientists...Nuclear fusion is nature's atomic power - it is what powers the sun and, if it can be made to happen here on earth on a large enough scale, it promises to solve all of mankind's energy problems in one go. It would be clean, last for ever and create no long term nuclear waste. And Rusi Taleyarkhan claims to have achieved it using simple sound waves. His breakthrough is based on something called sonoluminescence. It is a process that transforms sound waves into flashes of light, focusing the sound energy into a tiny flickering hot spot inside a bubble." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 15 February 2005
  "Though he foresaw many ways in which Big Brother might watch us, even George Orwell never imagined that the authorities would keep a keen eye on your bin. Residents of Croydon, south London, have been told that the microchips being inserted into their new wheely bins may well be adapted so that the council can judge whether they are producing too much rubbish. If the technology suggests that they are, errant residents may be visited by officials bearing advice on how they might 'manage their rubbish more effectively'. In the shorter term the microchips will be used to tell council officers how many of the borough's 100,000 bins the refuse collectors have emptied and how many have been missed." Learn more about this trash-gauging chip, in the Guardian.

• 14 February 2005
  "A harmless version of a major killer, the HIV virus, is being used to hunt down malignant melanoma cancer cells in mice, researchers say. Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles AIDS Institute used a version of HIV lacking key components that cause AIDS. This disabled form of the virus was able to spread through the body and infect cells, but without causing disease, they explained. Next, the researchers stripped off HIV's viral coat and reprogrammed the virus to recognize and attach to P-glycoproteins, molecules located on the surface of many cancer cells...The researchers also loaded the altered HIV with a fluorescent protein, the same protein that makes fireflies glow. Using a special optical camera, they used this fluorescence to track the virus' movements after injection into the mice." Learn more in Forbes.com.

• 11 February 2005
  "To Peter Hunter, the future of medicine looks like this: You visit your doctor after weeks of feeling fatigued and lethargic. She takes a blood sample, records your DNA profile, does a quick CT body scan, then uploads the raw data to a workstation. Within minutes, software stitches together a head-to-toe living, breathing digital reproduction of your innards, which the doc can poke and prod just like the real thing. Turns out you have lung cancer. Rather than focusing on one treatment, your physician can test various scenarios on your digital doppelgänger - surgery, radiation, chemotherapy - and watch how your system reacts. The cure is the simulation that doesn't kill the virtual you. Hunter, director of the Bioengineering Institute in Auckland, New Zealand, is an expert in biomechanics and in computational physiology, an emerging field. He admits that his vision for health care might be a decade or two away, but it's by no means science fiction." Learn more in Wired News.

• 10 February 2005
  "SUTTER, Calif. — The only grade school in this rural town is requiring students to wear radio frequency identification badges that can track their every move. Some parents are outraged, fearing it will take away their children's privacy. The badges introduced at Brittan Elementary School on Jan. 18 rely on the same radio frequency and scanner technology that companies use to track livestock and product inventory. Similar devices have recently been used to monitor youngsters in some parts of Japan. But few American school districts have embraced such a monitoring system, and civil libertarians hope to keep it that way.The system was imposed, without parental input, by the school as a way to simplify attendance-taking and potentially reduce vandalism and improve student safety. Principal Earnie Graham hopes to eventually add bar codes to the existing ID's so that students can use them to pay for cafeteria meals and check out library books." Learn more in USA Today.

• 9 February 2005
  "At the foot of the Jura Mountains, where Switzerland meets France, is a laboratory so vast it boggles the mind. But take a drive past the open fields, traditional chalets and petite new apartment blocks and you will look for it in vain. To find this enormous complex, you have to travel beneath the surface. One hundred metres below Geneva's western suburbs is a dimly lit tunnel that runs in a circle for 27km (17 miles). The tunnel belongs to Cern, the European Centre for Nuclear Research. Though currently empty, over the next two years an enormous experiment will be installed here. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a powerful and impossibly complicated machine that will smash particles together at super-fast speeds in a bid to unlock the secrets of the Universe." Learn how scientists are hoping to use this huge particle collider to create the "god particle" and perhaps even black holes, at the BBC.com.

• 8 February 2005
  "A pioneering new way of creating computer programs could be used in the future to design and build robots with minds that function like that of a human being, according to a leading researcher at The University of Reading. Dr James Anderson, of the University’s Department of Computer Science, has developed for the first time the ‘perspective simplex’, or Perspex, which is a way of writing a computer program as a geometrical structure, rather than as a series of instructions. Not only does the invention of the Perspex make it theoretically possible for us to develop robots with minds that learn and develop, it also provides us with clues to answer the philosophical conundrum of how minds relate to bodies in living beings." Learn more in the Innovations Report.

• 7 February 2005
  "Every day, some 10,350 plants around the world create more than 8.3 billion gallons of drinking water for a growing thirsty population. They do it by turning salt water into fresh, using steadily cheaper techniques. Now, two engineering professors at the University of Florida have taken that technology a step further with a novel idea. Since power plants need water for cooling purposes and desalination plants need heat, why not combine the needs of both? The professors - James Klausner and Renwei Mei - calculate that their process would shave a sixth of the cost from today's most efficient technology." Scientists are turning the waste water from power plants into drinking water, saving both energy and money. Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 4 February 2005
  "As dump-sites go, there's nothing quite like Earth orbit: Totally gone or near-dead spacecraft, spent motor casings and rocket stages, all the way down to pieces of solid propellant, insulation, and paint flakes. Toss in for good measure thousands of frozen bits of still-radioactive nuclear reactor coolant dribbling from a number of aged Russian radar satellites. Here's the heavenly clutter count as of December 29, 2004. There were 9,233 objects large enough to be tracked and catalogued by the USSTRATCOM Space Surveillance Network. Of this total there were 2,927 payloads, along with 6,306 object classed as rocket bodies and debris. That's the stats as listed in the January issue of The Orbital Debris Quarterly News, issued by the NASA Johnson Space Center Orbital Debris Program Office in Houston, Texas." Learn more at USA Today.

• 3 February 2005
  "In Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, the eponymous subject keeps his youthful looks while the vagaries of age are visited upon his portrait in the attic. Now a digital version of Wilde's idea is being developed to show you what you will look like in five years' time if you take no exercise, eat too much junk food and drink too much alcohol. At Accenture Technology's lab in Sophia Antipolis, near Nice in France, a flat-screen LCD TV linked to a set of cameras and a powerful image-processing computer replaces the portrait described in Wilde's novel. Initially the system acts just like a sophisticated "mirror" in which an image captured by a wireless camera is displayed in front of you. But that is just the start. Its main purpose is to conjure up a computer-modified image of the effects of overindulgence at the press of a button." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 2 February 2005
  "Africa's poor millions risk bearing the brunt of the global warming crisis unless urgent action is taken now, a Nigerian scientist said on Wednesday. Anthony Nyong from Jos University said if current trends continued, temperatures in sub-Saharan Africa could rise by two degrees centigrade by 2050 and rainfall could drop 10 percent, leading to major water shortages. 'There must be substantial and genuine reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by the principal emitters,' he said in a paper to a climate change conference, noting that the G8 group of rich nations accounted for nearly half of world carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 1999." A new report warns that Africa's poor could be hit the hardest by the effects of global warming. Learn more in Yahoo News.

• 1 February 2005
  "Among the handiest villains in science fiction are Computers That Know Too Much. Think of the dream-weaving despots of The Matrix or murderous HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey. But in reality, even the most super supercomputer lacks the reasoning capacity of a child engrossed in a Dr. Seuss book. Computers can't read the way we do. They can't learn or reason like us. Narrowing that cognitive gap between humans and machines — creating a computer that can read and learn at a sophisticated level — is a big goal of artificial intelligence researchers. The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, or DARPA, granted a contract worth at least $400,000 last fall to two Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute professors who are trying to build a machine that can learn by reading." Learn more in USA Today.

• 31 January 2005
  "On a cool spring morning a quarter century ago, a place in Pennsylvania called Three Mile Island exploded into the headlines and stopped the US nuclear power industry in its tracks. What had been billed as the clean, cheap, limitless energy source for a shining future was suddenly too hot to handle. the years since, we've searched for alternatives, pouring billions of dollars into windmills, solar panels, and biofuels. We've designed fantastically efficient lightbulbs, air conditioners, and refrigerators. We've built enough gas-fired generators to bankrupt California. But mainly, each year we hack 400 million more tons of coal out of Earth's crust than we did a quarter century before, light it on fire, and shoot the proceeds into the atmosphere." Nuclear power is again being billed as an environmentally friendly energy source. Learn more in Wired.

• 28 January 2005
  "Slow adoption of IT, followed closely by rising medical costs and the cost of technology itself, are among the most serious threats to the health-care industry, according to a new survey of senior executives released Wednesday. The survey found that 38% think the slow adoption of IT--such as electronic health records--is among the most serious threats to the industry, followed by rising health costs, which was picked by 37% of the respondents. The increasing number of people without health insurance or with under-insurance was picked by 34% as among the biggest threats. Respondents were asked to pick the two most serious threats to their sector of the industry from a list of more than two-dozen possible threats." Learn more in Information Week.

• 27 January 2005
  "Future explorers on the Moon and Mars could be outfitted in lightweight, high-tech spacesuits that offer far more flexibility than the bulky suits that have been used for spacewalks in the 1960s.Research is under way at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on a Bio-Suit System that incorporates a suit designed to augment a person’s biological skin by providing mechanical counter-pressure. The 'epidermis' of such a second skin could be applied in spray-on fashion in the form of an organic, biodegradable layer. This coating would protect an astronaut conducting a spacewalk in extremely dusty planetary environments. Incorporated into that second skin would be electrically actuated artificial muscle fibers to enhance human strength and stamina." Learn more about these next generation spacesuits at Space.com.

   

• 26 January 2005
  

  "To many software makers and security consultants, flaw finder David Aitel is irresponsible. The 20-something founder of vulnerability assessment company Immunity hunts down security problems in widely used software products. But unlike an increasing number of researchers, he does not share his findings with the makers of the programs he examines. Last week, Immunity published an advisory highlighting four security holes in Apple Computer's Mac OS X--vulnerabilities that the security firm had known about for seven months but had kept to itself and its customers instead of disclosing the problem to Apple." A debate is raging between large software companies and independent security firms over how quickly security flaws in operating systems should be reported. Learn more at News.com.

• 25 January 2005
  

  "Global warming is approaching the critical point of no return, after which widespread drought, crop failure and rising sea-levels would be irreversible, an international climate change task force warned Monday. The report, 'Meeting the Climate Challenge,' called on the G-8 leading industrial nations to cut carbon emissions, double their research spending on green technology and work with India and China to build on the Kyoto Protocol. 'An ecological time-bomb is ticking away,' said Stephen Byers, who co-chaired the task force with U.S. Republican Senator Olympia Snowe, and is a close confidant of British Prime Minister Tony Blair." Learn more about this report that warns that we are reaching the point-of-no-return in regards to the damage caused by global warming, at CNN.com.

• 24 January 2005
  

  "When Lawrence H. Summers, the president of Harvard, suggested this month that one factor in women's lagging progress in science and mathematics might be innate differences between the sexes, he slapped a bit of brimstone into a debate that has simmered for decades. And though his comments elicited so many fierce reactions that he quickly apologized, many were left to wonder: Did he have a point? Has science found compelling evidence of inherent sex disparities in the relevant skills, or perhaps in the drive to succeed at all costs, that could help account for the persistent paucity of women in science generally, and at the upper tiers of the profession in particular?" The New York Times examines the scientific debate over whether gender has any effect on certain cognitive abilities.

• 21 January 2005
  

  "Global warming caused by widespread volcanic eruptions was most likely the cause of the largest extinction event in history, an epic disaster 250 million years ago in which 90% of marine life and 70% of species living on land died off, two teams of researchers reported Thursday. Sulfur spewed out by volcanoes in the so-called Siberian Traps depleted oxygen in the air while creating powerful greenhouse gases that trapped sunlight and raised the Earth's temperature sharply, producing the event known as the 'Great Dying.' 'It got hotter and hotter until it reached a critical point and everything died,' said paleontologist Peter D. Ward of the University of Washington, lead author of one of the two papers published online by the journal Science. Global temperatures probably rose about 18 degrees Fahrenheit, Ward said, killing off many of the relatively primitive plants that served as a food base for land animals." Read more in the LA Times.

• 20 January 2005
  

  "The Chinese net-using population looks set to exceed that of the US in less than three years, says a report. China's net users number 100m but this represents less than 8% of the country's 1.3 billion people. Market analysts Panlogic predicts that net users in China will exceed the 137 million US users of the net by 2008. The report says that the country's culture will mean that Chinese people will use the net for very different ends than in many other nations. Already net use in China has a very different character than in many Western nations, said William Makower, chief executive of Panlogic. In many Western nations desktop computers that can access the net are hard to escape at work. By contrast in China workplace machines are relatively rare." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 19 January 2005
  

  "Scientists are developing an inkjet printer that can create 'made to measure' skin and bones to treat people with severe burns or disfigurements. The University of Manchester team say the inkjets will be able to 'print out' tailor-made human cells to fit a patient's exact dimensions. Human cells are suspended in a nutrient-rich liquid before being printed out in several thin layers. Project leaders say the method could be used to build an organ in a day. Prof Brian Derby, head of the Ink-jet Printing of Human Cells Project research team, said the technology has tremendous potential." Scientists are working on a printer that may soon be able to tailor bone, skin, and eventually organs for specific individuals. Learn more about this fascinating project at the BBC.com.

• 18 January 2005
  

  "Scientists hope to soon be able to spin spider silk without the aid of spiders—achieving an age-old human quest to harness one of nature's most remarkable materials. Randy Lewis is a professor of molecular biology at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. His team of researchers has successfully sequenced genes related to spider-silk production—uncovering the formula that spiders use to make silk from proteins. In the process the team acquired a better understanding of how the silk's structure is related to its amazing strength and elastic properties. Their next task will be using what they've learned to spin spider silk themselves." Scientists are hoping to spin their own artificial spider silk, which could be used in products like plastics or super-strong armor. Learn more in the National Geographic.

• 17 January 2005
  

  "Creative destruction is central to economic growth. It is also believed by many researchers to be central to the growth of solar systems. Planets, the theory goes, evolve by colliding with each other. Sometimes such collisions result in the protagonists sticking together and making a bigger planet. Sometimes, by contrast, they knock lumps off one another, as is thought to have happened when the Earth's moon formed...Looking back across the 4.5 billion years since that occurred is obviously an exercise fraught with guesswork. But telescopes have now reached the point where they should be able to see evidence of similar collisions in other, younger solar systems. And two of those telescopes, the Gemini Observatory telescope in Chile, and the Spitzer Space Telescope, in orbit around Earth, have recently come up with the goods. " An article in the Economist makes sense of some of the most recent discoveries in the field of Astronomy.

• 14 January 2005
  

  "They approach the topic gingerly, wary of sounding callous, aware that the geology they admire has just caused a staggering loss of life. Even so, scientists argue that in the very long view, the global process behind great earthquakes is quite advantageous for life on earth - especially human life. Powerful jolts like the one that sent killer waves racing across the Indian Ocean on Dec. 26 are inevitable side effects of the constant recycling of planetary crust, which produces a lush, habitable planet. Some experts refer to the regular blows - hundreds a day - as the planet's heartbeat." Although it is difficult to fathom any positive aspect to the recent Asian earthquake and tsunami, geologists view these massive earthquakes as a necessary part of the Earth's process of renewal. Learn more in the New York Times.

• 13 January 2005
  

  "We are all seeing rather less of the Sun, according to scientists who have been looking at five decades of sunlight measurements. They have reached the disturbing conclusion that the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth's surface has been gradually falling. Paradoxically, the decline in sunlight may mean that global warming is a far greater threat to society than previously thought...Perhaps the most alarming aspect of global dimming is that it may have led scientists to underestimate the true power of the greenhouse effect." This disturbing finding that indicates that cuts in fuel emissions could actually magnify the effects of global warming. Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 12 January 2005
  

  "Not many years ago, it seemed like a constant stream of new technology made even hard-boiled techno-weenies go, 'Wow!' We're talking epiphanies — thunderbolts that get industry types thinking of products and applications they never considered before. But, at least for the moment, that's missing. The wow is gone. This was made clear last week in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show, the biggest tech trade show of the year...Don't get me wrong: CES featured plenty of stuff that was cool. But there's a difference between cool and wow." Kevin Maney of USA Today argues that the recent Consumer Electronics Show underscored the fact that there are very few life-altering technologies being developed right now.

• 11 January 2005
  

  "After a recent three-day binge of playing the Japanese cult hit video game Katamari Damacy, Los Angeles artist Kozy Kitchens discovered that walking away from the game was not as easy as putting down her joystick. In the game, players push around what amounts to a giant tape ball, attempting to make the ball bigger by picking up any and all objects in its path. Kitchens found that her urge to keep picking things up was not so easy to shake. 'I was driving down Venice Boulevard,' recalled her husband, Dan Kitchens, 'and Kozy reached over and grabbed the steering wheel and for a moment was trying to yank it to the right... (Then) she let go, but kept staring out her window, and then looked back at me kind of stunned and said, "Sorry. I thought we could pick up that mailbox we just passed."' As video games become increasingly immersing some people are having trouble separating gaming from reality. Learn more in Wired News.

• 10 January 2005
  

  "The colossal tidal wave which devastated south east Asia and parts of east Africa could stir up new strains of cholera and unearth rare diseases, experts are warning. Health agencies are already rallying to avert what they call an impending 'health disaster'. At least 150,000 people have already perished and 150,000 more are at "extreme risk" of dying if a major disease outbreak occurs in the region, the World Health Organization warned on Wednesday. It says access to clean water and sanitation must be urgently restored to the millions currently without it to avoid outbreaks of infectious diseases such as diarrhoea and typhoid. The tsunami has already dredged up some deadly pathogens. At least five people are reported to have contracted tetanus in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. The disease is caused when spores from Clostridium tetani enter a wound or scratch. Tetanus spores can lie dormant in the soil for more than 40 years." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 7 January 2005
  

  "Toyota Motor will introduce robots which can work as well or better than humans at all 12 of its factories in Japan to cut costs and deal with a looming labour shortage as the country ages, a report said on Thursday. The robots would be able to carry out multiple tasks simultaneously with their two arms, achieving efficiency unseen in human workers and matching the cheap wages of Chinese labourers, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said. Japan's top automaker currently uses 3 000 to 4 000 less advanced robots at its domestic factories but their use has been confined mostly to welding, painting and other potentially hazardous tasks, the economic daily said. The new robots would also be used in finishing work, such as installation of seats and car interior fixtures, that have been too complex for conventional robots up to now, the daily said." Learn more at News24.com.

• 6 January 2005
  

  "Stone-age tribes living on India's remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands not only survived the devastating December 26 tsunami - triggered by an undersea quake whose epicenter was close to their homelands - but may actually have a few lessons in reading natural early-warning systems for their less perceptive Asian neighbors, say scientists. While close to 150,000 people have been confirmed dead on the coasts of a dozen countries around the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea after being caught unaware by giant killer waves, the Onges, Jarawas, Sentinalese and Great Andamanese who live in the archipelago escaped unscathed because they took to the forests and higher ground well in time." Early reports indicate that primitive tribes weathered the Asian tsunami much better than their more "advanced" neighbors. Learn more in the Asia Times.

• 5 January 2005
  

  "Think of steam engines and hazy, romantic images of chugging great beasts of old fill the mind. Steam-powered vehicles are not usually deemed as being parked at the cutting edge of transport technology. Nor do they seem to be the type to race across desert landscapes in a bid to smash land speed records in the 21st Century. But British design engineer Glynne Bowsher and his team have almost finished building a super-fast vehicle reminiscent of the Batmobile. And this car puts a new technological breath of life into what is regarded as a traditional means of power." A British engineer believes that steam might be the key to finding an environmentally friendly energy source. Learn more in the BBC.com.

• 4 January 2005
  

  "Many animals seem to have avoided the December 26 tsunami that swept the coastline of the Indian Ocean, thanks to acoustic senses that are far more advanced than humans', say French zoologists. Aerial pictures of Sri Lanka's Yala National Park, broadcast on international TV news channels, show it was penetrated by surging floodwater. But there were no signs of any dead elephants, leopards, deer, jackals and crocodiles, the species that have given the conservation reserve worldwide fame. The footage adds to historic anecdotes about seismic waves, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, in which birds take flight, dogs howl and herd animals stampede to safety before catastrophe strikes. If that is the case, the animals' survival is unlikely to owe itself to some so-called sixth sense but to acuter hearing or some already known sense, experts say." Learn more in The Australian.

• 3 January 2005
  

  "In seven hours last week, great ocean waves scoured shores from Thailand to Somalia, exacting a terrible price in wealth and human lives. But unimaginable as it may seem, future catastrophes may be far grimmer. Many more such disasters - from earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, to floods, mudslides and droughts - are likely to devastate countries already hard hit by poverty and political turmoil. The world has already seen a sharp increase in such 'natural' disasters - from about 100 per year in the early 1960's to as many as 500 per year by the early 2000's...As new technology allows, or as poverty demands, rich and poor alike have pushed into soggy floodplains or drought-ridden deserts, built on impossibly steep slopes, and created vast, fragile cities along fault lines that tremble with alarming frequency. In that sense, catastrophes are as much the result of human choices as they are of geology or hydrology." Learn more in the New York Times.

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