The Spice Girls have confirmed they will reform for a world tour to take place in December and January.
The full line-up has not performed on stage since Ginger Spice Geri Halliwell quit in May 1998.
The 11 dates announced include a London show on 15 December, eight days after the tour begins in Los Angeles.
“I think for us it was about celebrating the past, enjoying each other and it’s about our fans. It was the right time,” said Halliwell.
The only British date is in London, with the venue not yet confirmed. The other European dates are in Cologne and Madrid.
Fears and doubts
Earlier this month Mel Chisholm, also known as Sporty Spice, told the BBC she had resisted reforming the group in the past because “it was amazing, it was magical. We could never recreate it”.
Asked why she had gone back on her word she said: “A girl is allowed to change her mind and also this is something that we have only seriously started this year really.
“I think really all of us have had our fears and doubts but we feel that the time is right.”
Good-natured
All five women laughed and joked constantly with photographers and reporters, even good-naturedly booing one journalist.
There had been rumours they would perform at the Concert for Diana memorial show in London on Sunday, but with Emma Bunton currently pregnant they decided not to appear.
“We would have loved to have been there this weekend but the timing has been impossible for us,” said Chisholm.
As the conference drew to a close, all five women left the stage holding hands as Brown shouted, “You have been spiced!”
Global success
The tour is being put together by Simon Fuller, whose 19 company masterminded the group’s global success more than a decade ago.
Under his guidance, the five-piece notched up a string of hits - including Wannabe and 2 Become 1 - while also capitalising on their fame with a stream of sponsorship deals.
Emma Bunton, Mel Brown, Mel Chisholm, Victoria Adams and Geri Halliwell quickly became household names - although they were better known as Baby, Scary, Sporty, Posh and Ginger.
They sold more than 55 million records around the world, and even starred in a film, Spice World.
Halliwell quit in 1998 citing “differences”, leaving them to complete a sold-out world tour as a foursome.
Since 2001 each member has since pursued solo careers with varying degrees of success, while Posh Spice has become better known as fashion icon Victoria Beckham.
The Spice Girls are a BRIT Award-winning English all-female pop group, which formed in London in 1994. The group signed to Virgin Records and released their debut single, “Wannabe”, in 1996. The song went to spend seven weeks at the top of the UK singles chart and helped establish the group as an “international phenomenon” who went on to release three studio albums and ten singles, selling in excess of 53 million records world wide.
The group embraced merchandise and became a regular feature of the British press. Each member of the group were given aliases by Top of the Pops Magazine in 1996 which were adopted by the group and media alike. According to biographer David Sinclair, “Scary, Baby, Ginger, Posh and Sporty were the most widely recognised group of individuals since John, Paul, George and Ringo”, stating that the group were “a social phenomenon that changed the course of popular music and popular culture”.
Career records and achievements
Total record sales in the region of 55 million. As of February 2000, the Spice
Girls had certified sales of 35.1 million albums and 18.2 million singles: Note however, this does not include sales for their third studio album.
Combined sales of the Spice Girls with their individual solo careers result in nearly 100 million records sold, a tally of 40 UK hit singles and 17 UK number ones.
Certified sales of 13 million albums in Europe, 11 million in the US, and 2.2 million in Canada.
Total of nine number one singles in the UK - tied with ABBA behind Take That (ten), The Shadows (twelve), Madonna (twelve), Westlife (fourteen), Cliff Richard (fourteen), The Beatles (seventeen) and Elvis Presley (twenty-one).
Three consecutive Christmas Number One singles in the UK for: (”2 Become 1,” 1996; “Too Much,” 1997; “Goodbye,” 1998)
“Wannabe” is the biggest selling single by an all female group.
First (and only) female act to have their first six singles (”Wannabe”, “Say You’ll Be There”, “2 Become 1″, “Who Do You Think You Are”, “Spice Up Your Life” and “Too Much”) make number one on the UK charts. (Their run was broken by “Stop”, which peaked at number two in March 1998.)
The Spice Girls achieved the highest ever annual earnings by an all female group in 1998 with an income of $49 million.
“Spice” is the 13th biggest-selling album of all time in the UK with over 3 million copies sold. It topped the charts for 15 weeks (non-consecutive), the most by a female group in the UK
Highest international debut on the Billboard Hot 100 at number five with “Say You’ll Be There”. (This record still holds to date.)
“Spiceworld” shipped 7 million copies in just two weeks, including 1.4million in Britain alone - the largest-ever shipment of an album over 14 days.
Spiceworld: The Movie broke the record for the highest-ever weekend debut for Super Bowl Weekend (January 25, 1998) in the US, with box office sales of $10,527,222. This record has since been beaten by The Butterfly Effect in 2004.
Spiceworld: The Movie topped the UK video charts on its first week of release, selling over 55,000 copies on its first day in the shops.
Received a plethora of awards including four BRIT Awards, three American Music Awards, three MTV Europe Music Awards, one MTV Video Music Award and three World Music Awards.
The FIA has confirmed that the WRC calendar will be shortened from 2009 and that WRC cars will be based on Group N and Super 2000 cars from 2012.
A statement from the FIA said that there will be 12 events in the World Rally Championship from 2009, and that more details regarding this decision will be examined by the FIA World Rally Championship Commission.
From 2012, WRC cars will be four-wheel drive and turbo-charged, based on mass-produced Group N and Super 2000 specification cars.
The statement also added that other cost-cutting measures will be introduced.
The World Rally Championship (WRC) - is a rallying series organised by the FIA, culminating with a champion driver and manufacturer. The driver’s championship and manufacturer’s championship are separate championships, but based on the same point system. This means, for example, that Petter Solberg driving for Subaru can win the driver’s championship but Citroen can win the manufacturer’s championship, which is what happened in 2003, and again in 2006 when Sebastien Loeb took his third consecutive WRC title but Ford won the manufacturer’s championship. The competition first received the designation of WRC in 1973. The sport’s commercial rights are administered by International Sportsworld Communicators.
Nissan’s 450-hp all-wheel-drive supercar is coming to America.
Will the fabulous Skyline GT-R come to the U.S.? The answer is yes. At the 2006 New York International Auto Show (NYIAS), Nissan president Carlos Ghosn announced that it indeed will come to America as a Nissan (not an Infiniti). The production car’s official debut will be at the 2007 Tokyo Motor Show.
The latest Skyline GT-R prototype, pictured above, differs from ones seen previously. This one has a pair of small air vents in the hood and four large exhaust outlets in the rear. Past prototypes had no vents and just two tailpipes. The car in the photo obviously uses Infiniti G35 coupe sheetmetal, substantially modified to fit huge tires and a large front air dam. The real GT-R will look a lot like the Nissan GT-R Proto concept that debuted at the 2005 Tokyo Motor Show.
Nissan considered a V-8 for the next GT-R but has opted instead for a specially developed twin-turbo V-6, due to its lower weight and explosive power potential. A limited-edition 2005-model GT-R Z-tune, fitted with the now superseded twin-turbo straight-six, generated over 500 horsepower, showing the potential of this car. Britain’s Cosworth is helping Nissan extract more than 450 horsepower from the upcoming 3.7- or 3.8-liter V-6 while still meeting emissions laws.
2008 Nissan GT-R
It’s the most exciting car Japan has ever produced. Sorry Supra, too bad NSX, but there’s nothing quite like the Skyline GT-R. A technological tour de force, the GT-R has always been the dream car of the PlayStation generation. Since 1989, modern GT-Rs have always featured a twin turbocharged engine and electronically controlled all-wheel drive and steering. The last generation Skyline GT-R, the R34, was the first production car ever to feature an onboard computer that gave real-time dynamic readouts on a full color screen. Not to mention that it was fast and nimble enough to run head-to-head with a Porsche 911 GT3.
But it also has more, much more, than just an enviable reputation — it has a cult following. Like all the best sports cars (think Porsche 911, Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, Ford GT40), the Skyline earned its accolades in motorsport, where budgets were blown and technology distilled to make this car a world-beater.
In one sense, it’s esoteric — its price and position atop the Japanese fast car food chain put it just beyond the reach, but not out of the dreams, of the average salaryman. What cemented the car’s standing was that it became fairly affordable as the years went by. After the hype died down, anyone willing to take the chance on a used Japanese import could have bagged an R33, or even an R34, for reasonable money. And the fact that the 2.6-liter straight-six engine is so damned unburstable — inspiring a few crazed owners to tweak its power output up to over 1,000 horsepower — hasn’t hurt, either. In fact, much of the Godzilla reputation has been built on the street, not the track. It seems the GT-R has always been built for tuning.
Sad, then, that few American drivers have had the pleasure of spinning its twin turbos, experiencing the all-wheel-drive traction, and dancing with its four-wheel steering system. Because the plumbing of the turbos made conversion to lefthand drive impractical, the Skyline was never available in the U.S. To own one in America has taken dedication, foolhardiness, and money, in correspondingly generous portions. Up until now. Well, 2008, more like. That’s when the new GT-R will be coming to a Nissan dealership near you.
As you read this, the next generation GT-R is already attacking the North Loop of Germany’s famed Nrburgring as part of its extensive testing regimen. We’ve shown the photos in past issues — tweaked Skyline/G35 coupes with weird vents and hood bulges. Why the Nordschleife? Well, partly for the PR buzz it generates, but more importantly because the R34 GT-R clocked a time of 7.52 seconds, for many years the unofficial record for a production car, and a time the new model must obliterate.
Just how it will do that is largely a mystery. There is an unprecendented level of secrecy surrounding this new model. And it’s not just to get us all excited. Nissan knows it must be right from the word go. At the peak of his cost reduction campaign in 2001, CEO Carlos Ghosn reinvigorated Nissan and the industry by announcing a new GT-R would be coming and that this time, it would be available to the world.
Since then, the company has released two GT-R concepts but has gone completely dark about the specifications of the production car. Security is so strict, sources indicate that only a handful of engineers have the secondary security pass that grants access to the special building at the technical center in Atsugi, Japan, in which the GT-R is being developed.
Here is what we know: Previous GT-Rs have been based on Skyline sedans, but for the first time ever the GT-R will be a standalone model sharing no sheetmetal or even visual cues with the sedan. The GT-R Proto you see on these pages was designed by Hiroshi Hasegawa (who penned the Infiniti G35 sedan and coupe) under the direction of Shiro Nakamura, Nissan’s head of design, and it cuts a bold silhouette. Although it shares cues from the first GT-R prototype, which debuted in Tokyo in 2001, that version was deemed too smooth and not aggressive enough. Those criticisms, however, cannot be leveled at the Proto. With 20-inch wheels confirmed for production, riding on 255/40 tires in the front and 285/35 at the rear, this monster leaves large footprints. Blacked out A-pillars give the windshield a wraparound, helmet visor look. And then there are the kinky C-pillars… definitely not smooth.
Although the body will be all new, the GT-R will be based on a variation of the Front Midship (FM) platform that underpins the next generation Infiniti G35 Coupe. The logic behind this choice is clear: variations of the FM platform underpin a host of other Nissan/Infiniti products (everything from the 350Z to the FX45), and refining and repurposing existing technology instead creating from scratch is how CEO Ghosn garnered his nickname, “Le Cost Killer.”
But this doesn’t mean the GT-R will be some warmed-over G35 or that Nissan is building its next supercar on the cheap. Quite the opposite in fact. Case in point, Lotus has been brought in to help fine-tune the suspension. What Lotus engineers don’t know about suspensions, you could write on a pinhead, and you’d better believe that kind of expertise doesn’t come cheap.
Like its predecessor, the GT-R will be all-wheel drive — most likely an updated version of Nissan’s Advanced Total Traction Engineering System for All - Electronic Torque Split (ATTESA-ETS) system. At its peak, the R34 Nur Spec GT-R’s ATTESA-ETS Pro system could send 100 percent of the torque to the rear wheels in mere milliseconds, allowing up to a 50:50 front/rear split when required. The rear axle even had an active limited-slip differential that allowed for a bit of tail-out action. But that was 2002, and since then, there have been great strides in all-wheel-drive technology, most notably Honda’s Super Handling-All-Wheel Drive (SH-AWD) and Mitsubishi’s Super All-Wheel Control (S-AWC) systems. Expect the next generation GT-R to feature an updated ATTESA system that pushes state-of-the-art even further; probably with upgraded torque split flexibility, including the ability to send torque side-to-side as well.
The R34 featured Super-High Capacity Actively Controlled Suspension (Super-HICAS), a four-wheel steering system that turned the front and rear wheels in the opposite direction at low speeds for added maneuverability. At high speeds, the rear wheels move in the same direction as the fronts, for instantaneous reaction and agility. No doubt the next gen GT-R will carry an upgraded version of Super-HICAS, but there’s no word on just how it will be improved.
The biggest question has been the engine. Many have wondered whether the GT-R will up the ante and move upmarket into V-8 territory. But our sources indicate the GT-R’s engine will be a reworked, twin-turbocharged version of the 3.5-liter VQ35 V-6, potentially destroked for higher piston speeds. In addition to turbo heritage, business concerns weigh significantly upon the minds of the higher-ups at Nissan, and the VQ35 is an engine Nissan uses in almost every model — from the Altima to the Quest minivan.
But lest you think your next favorite supercar will be powered by the same engine in Mom’s minivan, you should know that the GT-R’s VQ will be almost completely unrecognizable. How do we know? Because at the New York Auto Show, Nissan unveiled the next generation Infiniti G35 sedan. Although the makeover of their best selling luxury sedan was more evolutionary than revolutionary, the VQ35 engine was heavily revised, with 80-percent new content, a redline increased to 7500 rpm, and power boosted over the 300-bhp mark. Clearly, Nissan is investing heavily in the VQ35 development.
Credible sources also indicate that Cosworth, England’s legendary race engine specialist, has been working extensively on the VQ under Nissan’s direction. Whether it’s bored out to 3.8 liters as some suggest, or destroked to 3.2, once it’s paired with twin, ball-bearing turbos, we should see a power output somewhere between 450 and 500 hp and torque approaching 500 lb-ft. The large contact patch of the tires and stratospheric performance targets support these kinds of numbers.
Whereas the R34 was equipped with a Getrag six-speed manual transmission, we’re expecting something more cutting-edge this time around. The new G35 features a six-speed manual or a five-speed autobox with magnesium paddle shifters, but that probably won’t be high-tech enough for Nissan’s ne plus ultra. Could the next generation GT-R be an automatic? A semi-manual arrangement requiring just throttle and brake pedals with steering-wheel-mounted gearshift paddles flicking through seven or eight (like Toyota’s new Lexus gearbox) forward ratios could be in the cards. We know for sure there will be some form of launch control mode like that found in the Magneti Marelli transmission systems used by Ferrari and Aston Martin. While purists may howl, such a system would fit the GT crowd, if not the R lovers.
The Nissan Skyline GT-R is an iconic Japanese sports coupe in the Nissan Skyline range. Dubbed “Godzilla” by Wheels magazine in Australia when released there in 1989, it was rated by many motoring magazines, including the well-respected Wheels, as providing performance and handling equal or superior to that of European icons like the Porsche 911 and the Ferrari Testarossa, at a considerably lower price. The Skyline’s home-market competitors have included the Honda NSX, Toyota Supra, Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, Subaru Impreza WRX STi and Mazda RX-7. Since the Skyline GT-R became a popular car for street racing in Japan, that has led to countless appearance in video games, beginning with its debut in 1994 for the SNES game Zero 4 Champ R and most notably the Gran Turismo series, as well as the occasional appearances in feature films, animes and mangas.
2009 Nissan Skyline GT-R conquers the Corkscrew at Laguna Seca
After weeks of chasing the 2009 Nissan Skyline GT-R, from the streets of Los Angeles to one test facility and another, it looks like we’ve hit the end of the road for this GT-R’s stint in America.
Following a day of hot-lapping at Sears Point, the Nissan engineering team headed south to Laguna Seca raceway to see how the Skyline GT-R would handle the 2.2-mile road course and its world-famous Corkscrew. The day wrapped up with the Nissan engineers mugging for an official Nissan camera crew, while our unofficial shooters snagged plenty of new spy photos and video.
Although the prototype never shed its front and rear camouflage, we caught the Nissan Skyline with its hood open, giving us the first-ever look at the GT-R’s power plant. Close inspection reveals a few notable details about the engine that’s expected to generate roughly 450 horsepower. Two short intake plenums with three barely visible runners on each side suggest a V6, as we expected. There’s no conclusive evidence that it’s Nissan’s recently redesigned VQ35HR V6, but the front cover just behind the oil dipstick is consistent with current VQ design.
The placement of the dipstick itself is another tip to this GT-R’s configuration. Previous Skylines have integrated the front differential of the all-wheel-drive system into the engine’s oil sump. With the dipstick so far forward in the engine compartment, we expect this GT-R will continue to use this configuration.
Any doubts about a twin-turbo setup can be laid to rest as there’s plenty of visible plumbing. And those vents in the hood are clearly not there for show. The gold-colored caps of the twin compressor bypass valves are visible on the cast-aluminum intake plumbing. With plumbing running toward the front of the car, it’s a safe bet that there’s a monster air-to-air intercooler buried in the nose, or maybe even two smaller ones.
We’re not sure how it all works, but it does work, as the GT-R consistently lapped quicker around Laguna Seca than its Porsche 911 Turbo companion. According to our hand-timed data, the GT-R’s fastest lap proved to be a 1:39.62, while the 911 recorded a 1:39.89. Put Walter Rohl behind the wheel of the 911 and it might be a different story, but the GT-R clearly has the kind of power and grip to match up against the best sports cars in the world.
As the day wrapped up, it was clear that Nissan’s team was headed home for good. The engineers (including Chief Engineer Kazutoshi Muzuno in the snappy salmon-colored shirt) were posing for team pictures and having fun, so the serious work was clearly over. Of course, back in Japan there’s still plenty of development work left as the official introduction is slated for the 2007 Tokyo Auto Show, with U.S. sales expected early next year.
Northern lights is the name of a light phenomenon often seen in the northern regions. The lights have been around since Earth formed an atmosphere -the dinosaurs saw it, early humans saw it and our descendants will se it. The scientific name for the phenomenon is “Aurora Borealis”, aurora for short.
An aurora (plural aurorae/auroras) is an electro-static phenomenon, characterised by a bright glow and caused by the collision of charged particles in the magnetosphere with atoms in the Earth’s upper atmosphere. An aurora is usually observed in the night sky, particularly in the polar zone. For this latter reason, some scientists call it a “polar aurora” (or “aurora polaris”). In northern latitudes, it is known as the aurora borealis, which is named after the Roman goddess of the dawn, Aurora, and the Greek name for north wind, Boreas. Especially in Europe, it often appears as a reddish glow on the northern horizon, as if the sun were rising from an unusual direction. The aurora borealis is also called the northern lights since it is only visible in the North sky from the Northern Hemisphere. The aurora borealis most often occurs from September to October and from March to April. Its southern counterpart, aurora australis, has similar properties. Australis is the Latin word for “of the South”.
Aurora (astronomy) - Coloured light in the night sky near the Earth’s magnetic poles, called aurora borealis (‘northern lights’) in the northern hemisphere and aurora australis (‘southern lights’) in the southern hemisphere. Although auroras are usually restricted to the polar skies, fluctuations in the solar wind occasionally cause them to be visible at lower latitudes. An aurora is usually in the form of a luminous arch with its apex towards the magnetic pole, followed by arcs, bands, rays, curtains, and coronae, usually green but often showing shades of blue and red, and sometimes yellow or white. Auroras are caused at heights of over 100 km/60 mi by a fast stream of charged particles from solar flares and low-density ‘holes’ in the Sun’s corona. These are guided by the Earth’s magnetic field towards the north and south magnetic poles, where they enter the upper atmosphere and bombard the gases in the atmosphere, causing them to emit visible light.
An aurora is a sporadic, generally faint, atmospheric phenomenon usually seen in the night sky from locations at high latitudes. More commonly known as the “northern lights,” it may first appear as a faint, milky glow low in the north, too dim for the human eye to detect any color but bright enough to silhouette clouds near the horizon. It may develop into steady greenish arcs or form scintillating, swirling curtains of yellow-green light. During the most dramatic displays visible from regions at middle latitudes, such as central Europe and the United States, a crimson glow fills much of the sky. It was this form that inspired European scientists of the 1600s to call the phenomenon aurora borealis, literally “northern dawn,” but it also occurs at high southern latitudes, where it is formally called aurora australis, “southern dawn.” The same processes are at work in both hemispheres — not just on Earth, but on other planets as well — and today, scientists simply refer to this phenomenon as an aurora. The ghostly forms of an aurora include quiescent patches, veils, and arcs, and rapidly moving rays and curtains.
Many historical accounts of the northern lights from areas far south of its usual location exist. An early Chinese record describes it as a “red cloud spreading all over the sky.” The Roman philosopher Seneca wrote that an aurora in a.d. 37 tricked the emperor into sending troops to aid what he thought was the burning seaport of Ostia, “when the glowing of the sky lasted through a great part of the night, shining dimly like a vast and smoking fire.” In 1583, similar “fires in the air” mobilized thousands of French pilgrims, who prayed to avert the wrath of God. On September 15, 1839, an intense aurora dispatched firefighters throughout London.
Aurorae occur in two great luminous ovals centered on Earth’s north and south magnetic poles. Collisions between atmospheric gases and showers of electrons and protons guided by Earth’s magnetic field set the ovals aglow, typically between heights of 62 and 155 miles (100 to 250 kilometers). Each gas gives out a characteristic color when bombarded. Excited oxygen atoms give off yellow-green light, the color most commonly observed. Ionized molecular nitrogen emits blue and violet light, colors to which the human eye is less sensitive. At lower altitudes, excited molecules of nitrogen and oxygen glow with a vivid red. These three primary colors together produce the myriad hues of a typical aurora.
What causes the showers of charged particles that create the northern lights? Ultimately, the source lies in the solar wind, a fast-moving stream of particles constantly flowing from the Sun that carries the Sun’s magnetic field out into space. The solar wind, typically moving at 250 miles (400 kilometers) per second, flows past Earth’s magnetic field and molds it into an elongated bubble or cavity, compressing its sunward side and stretching its night side far beyond the Moon’s orbit. Under certain conditions, the solar wind’s magnetic field can merge with Earth’s, creating electrical currents that drive protons and electrons into the polar atmosphere. Powerful events occurring on the Sun can drive enormous changes in the solar wind, increasing both its speed and density and enhancing its effect on Earth.
Understanding just how Earth’s magnetic field responds to such events is now a focus of much solar and space research. We are increasingly dependent on technologies that are extremely sensitive to changes in the space environment, changes often collectively referred to as “space weather.” The story of Galaxy 4, a heavily used communications satellite, serves as a good example. At 22h UT on May 19, 1998, while in geostationary orbit above the central United States, Galaxy 4 lost its primary and backup attitude control systems. At the time, Galaxy 4 handled about 80 percent of all U.S. pager traffic. Controllers could no longer maintain a stable link between the satellite and Earth, resulting in a loss of pager service to an estimated 45 million customers. Researchers believe the incident occurred because a sequence of solar events about two weeks prior to the failure created an extremely energetic cloud of electrons that wreaked havoc with the satellite.
Transient events on the Sun can generate fast-moving clouds of particles that greatly intensify the solar wind’s impact on Earth. Solar flares may blast material from the Sun’s surface for hours. Areas called coronal holes generate broad torrents of solar wind and may last for many months. But the most dramatic space-weather effects arise when enormous clouds of material erupt from the solar atmosphere and race to Earth. Scientists call these eruptions coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. Somehow, a portion of the Sun’s magnetic field undergoes a sudden disruption, stretching and twisting like a rubber band until it snaps. When it does, as much as one billion tons of matter blast away from the Sun at speeds up to 1,250 miles (2,000 km) a second. When a CME slams into Earth’s magnetic bubble, it pushes the sunward side closer to Earth and triggers other sudden changes. The result is a surge of particles into Earth’s atmosphere — a geomagnetic storm. Sometimes a fast CME will overtake and merge with one or more CMEs already on their way, resulting in a “cannibal” CME that can have an especially dramatic effect. Particularly powerful storms cause the auroral ovals to expand and move southward from their normal locations, bringing the northern lights to skywatchers at far lower latitudes than normal.
One of the most important spacecraft in the fleet now dedicated to monitoring the Sun is the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a joint mission between NASA and ESA. Launched in December 1995, it was placed in an orbit around a dynamically stable point 932,000 miles (1.5 million km) sunward of Earth. From here, it has an uninterrupted view of the Sun.
“Two instruments on SOHO have proved to be especially valuable for continuous real-time monitoring of solar storms that affect space weather,” says Paal Brekke, a SOHO project scientist. These are the Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) — which provides images of the solar surface at far ultraviolet wavelengths that are blocked by Earth’s atmosphere — and the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) — which looks for the enormous bubbles of charged particles and entrained magnetic field that represent a CME. Before SOHO was operational, only 27 percent of major magnetic storms were forecast correctly, and most forecasts were false alarms. Between 1996 and 1997, SOHO detected more than two dozen CMEs. “Over 85 percent [of these CMEs] caused major magnetic storms,” Brekke says, “and only 15 percent of such storms were not predicted.” Because geomagnetic storms can affect radio communications and navigation signals — and even introduce errors in positions determined by the Global Positioning Satellite network — advance notice is increasingly important as our reliance on such technology grows.
Coronal mass ejections, solar flares, and coronal holes tend to be more frequent on the active side of the Sun’s 11-year sunspot cycle. This cycle peaked in 2000, with a secondary maximum in 2002, which means solar activity is now on the downswing and will continue to decline until sometime between 2005 and 2006, when the next solar cycle begins. Activity will then slowly rise as the Sun powers up for its next maximum early in or after 2010.
Overall, the chances of seeing an aurora are not all that bad — especially in Canada and the United States. Because the north magnetic pole lies in North America, the auroral oval generally reaches farther south there. This means observers at a given latitude in North America have a better chance of seeing an aurora than those at the same latitude in Europe or Asia. Both Rome and Chicago lie at a latitude of 42°, for example, but Rome averages one aurora per decade while Chicago could see about ten each year.
The atmospheric activity responsible for the northern lights occasionally has a profound effect on everyday life. “During the aurora of September 2, 1859,” wrote American researcher Elias Loomis (1811-1889), “the currents of electricity on the telegraph wires were so steady and powerful that, on several lines, the operators succeeded in using them for telegraphic purposes as a substitute for the battery.” For a time, messages were transmitted solely on auroral currents.
A rapidly shifting and expanding auroral oval can induce electrical currents in other long conductors as well. An example that has become legend in the space-weather community occurred in March 1989, when an extremely active solar region broke records held for more than 30 years: Auroral activity was seen as far south as Jamaica. In Quebec, Canada, aurora-induced currents flowed through seven 100-ton capacitors operated by the Hydro-Quebec Power Authority, causing their protective relays to detect an overload condition. When the relays kicked in and took the devices off-line, about half of Quebec’s available electrical power went with them. Less than one minute later, the entire power-distribution system collapsed, leaving some 6 million people without electricity for more than 9 hours.
And the blackout could have expanded farther. “The power pools that served the entire northeastern United States were uncomfortably close to a cascading system collapse,” says Paal Brekke. Beyond power problems, induced currents also can weaken welds in oil pipelines and create damaging electrical surges in telecommunications cables.
A bright aurora is a feast for the eyes, but it is also a reminder of the powerful forces and tremendous energies routinely at work just a few miles above our heads.
Looking for the most expensive chocolate in the world? Knipschildt’s “La Madeline au Truffe” is exactly what are you looking for. Its’ price is $250 for a dark chocolate - about $2600 for a pound. This chocolate with a French black truffle inside is made of 70% Valrhona cacao, which is blended into a creamy ganache with truffle oil. The truffle is then hand-rolled with a dark truffle on the inside and dusted with cocoa powder. Finally it is packed in a silver box.
Chocolatier was founded in 1999 by Fritz Knipschildt, who got his culinary education as a chef in Denmark. He is also selected as a part of “40 under 40? in Fairfield Country. Fritz climes that all of his chocolate is artisan and made by hand, also he says, that his chocolate is a memorable one of a kind taste. Is it true? You can order and judge yourself.
Chocolate it originates from a Nahuatl word meaning “bitter water”, comprises a number of raw and processed foods that originate from the seed of the tropical cacao tree. It is a common ingredient in many kinds of confections such as chocolate bars, candy, ice cream, cookies, cakes, pies, chocolate mousse, and other desserts. It is one of the most popular (or at least recognizable) flavours in the world.
Chocolate was used by the Mesoamerican civilizations, using seeds of the Theobroma cacao tree, which was cultivated by many pre-Columbian civilizations such as the Maya and Aztec. The seeds were ground and mixed with water for use as a basic component in a variety of beverages, both sweet and bitter, which were reserved for only the highest noblemen and clerics. Chocolate is made from the fermented, roasted, and ground beans taken from the pod of the tropical cacao tree, Theobroma cacao, which was native to lowland tropical South America, Central America and Mexico, but is now cultivated throughout the tropics. The beans have an intensely flavoured bitter taste. The resulting products are known as “chocolate” or, in some parts of the world, cocoa.
Today, chocolate commonly refers to bars made from the combination of cocoa solids, fat, sugar and other ingredients, which has a melting point just below body temperature. It contains alkaloids such as theobromine and phenethylamine, and has numerous physiological effects on the body: it has been linked with seratonin levels in the brain, and in some animals it is even toxic.
Chocolate is often produced as small molded forms in the shape of squares, animals, people, or inanimate objects to celebrate festivals worldwide. For example, there are moulds of rabbits or eggs for Easter, coins for Hanukkah, Saint Nicholas (Santa Claus) for Christmas, and hearts for Valentine’s Day. Chocolate can also be made into drinks (called cocoa and hot chocolate), as originated by the Aztecs and the Mayas. In England, Samuel Pepys records in his diaries at least two entries relating to “jocolatte” as early as the 1660s. Later, in 1689 Hans Sloane developed a milk chocolate drink in Jamaica initially used by apothecaries, but later sold by the Cadbury brothers.
A subliminal message is a signal or message embedded in another object, designed to pass below the normal limits of perception. These messages are indiscernible to the conscious mind, but are alleged to be perceptible to the subconscious or deeper mind: for example, an image transmitted so briefly that it is only perceived subconsciously, but not otherwise noticed. Subliminal techniques have occasionally been used in advertising and propaganda; the purpose, effectiveness and frequency of such techniques is debated.
Friday June 15th 2007, 01:24
Filed under: Technology
40% of All Electricity is consumed by devices which are not in use…
But I am also a prodigious computer user, and it looks as if that makes me an energy hog. I started checking how much electricity my electronics were consuming when I wasn’t using them. I used a Kill A Watt EZ energy meter (available online for about $25) and began measuring. My PC was continuously drawing 134 watts all night.
The more devices I checked, the worse it got. My TiVo digital video recorder was sucking down about 30 watts when it was not playing or recording a show. A Comcast digital cable set-top box made by Motorola that I tested was drawing about 40 watts. My DVD player was drawing 26 watts while idle, and my audio system — which I rarely turned off — was using 47 watts. This was in addition to the numerous power adapters and chargers, each drawing 1 or 2 watts, not to mention several other devices sipping energy to keep clocks running or to be ready to turn on at the push of a button.
I’m partly to blame for the audio system and DVD player. They do have on/off switches that I was failing to use. I had falsely assumed they were using relatively little power. But I tested DVR’s from Comcast, Dish Network and TiVo, and none went into a low-power mode. All of this wasted power was costing me money and pumping unnecessary CO2 into the atmosphere. My PC alone was contributing 2,000 pounds of CO2 annually. The DVR. was adding another 543 pounds.
Indeed, the Department of Energy estimates that in the average home, 40 percent of all electricity used to power home electronics is consumed while the products are turned off. Add that all up, and it equals the annual output of 17 power plants, the government says. In an effort to address that, a consortium of Intel, Google, PC makers and other technology companies this week announced their intent to increase the PC’s overall energy efficiency to 90 percent.
Products that idle in what the industry calls low-power mode, or lopomo, consumed about 10 percent of total electricity in California homes, according to a 2002 study prepared for the California Energy Commission by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. A few of those devices, even those with Energy Star ratings that signal that they are less wasteful, still use a lot of power. “Some of the larger big-screen TVs consume as much energy each year as a new refrigerator,” according to Noah Horowitz, a scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
You do not have to use an energy meter to reduce your consumption. If you don’t turn off your PC when it is not in use, make sure it goes into a low-power sleep, suspend or hibernate mode. That doesn’t always happen automatically. Windows XP has both a suspend and hibernate option, but it isn’t always turned on by default. Computers running the Windows XP operating system can be configured by clicking on Power Options in the Control Panel to set the number of minutes before Windows will turn off the monitor and hard disks or put the system into standby or hibernate mode. (Hibernation uses the least amount of energy). If it is a notebook PC, there are separate settings for when it runs on the battery and when it is plugged in.
Microsoft says that it has overhauled energy management in its Vista operating system so that machines, by default, should go into a low-power state after 60 minutes of inactivity. The PC sips only a few watts until the user touches the mouse or keyboard. To configure a machine with Vista, type “Power Options” in the search box at the bottom of the Start menu and click on “Change when the computer sleeps.”
All of this, of course, assumes that the systems are working correctly. When I first installed Vista on my PC, I configured it to go to sleep after 30 minutes, but it has been unreliable. Sometimes it fails to go to sleep, and at other times it fails to wake up. Sometimes I experience the worst of both worlds: the drives and fan are spinning, but the monitor is blank, and I cannot get the machine to come back to life without powering it down and turning it back on.
I spent numerous hours trying to fix the problem, including updating the BIOS, installing up-to-date versions of all my device drivers, checking to make sure there were no unnecessary applications running in the background and, of course, scanning for spyware and viruses. The results were encouraging. After all that fiddling, the machine went to sleep most nights and woke up most — but not all —mornings.
I then installed Co2 Saver (co2saver.snap.com), a free program for Windows XP and Vista that seems to have solved the problem. It gives you a simple control panel to specify when to turn off monitors and disk drives and put the machine to sleep. It also adjusts some hard-to-configure settings. One option forces the machine to “Initiate sleep mode if system doesn’t sleep automatically.” This feature, according to its developer, Lee Hasiuk, defeats Windows attempts to keep a machine awake if it thinks (correctly or otherwise) that it is detecting a background task other than mouse or keyboard activity. Now my machine sleeps and wakes properly almost all the time.
Whatever machine you’re using, consider having it go into sleep, standby or hibernate after about a half-hour of inactivity. The shorter the period, the more energy you save. Graphic-intense screen savers can actually waste power.
Unplug unused external power supplies because they can draw energy even when they’re not connected to a device.
If you’re shopping for a new PC, be sure that it meets Energy Star requirements, ideally the ones that go into effect July 20. The new standards require that 80 percent of the power consumed is actually used by the PC.
Use an L.C.D. screen instead of an old-fashioned cathode ray tube monitor. L.C.D.’s are as much as 66 percent more efficient than C.R.T.’s, according to the Energy Department.
Consider buying a notebook PC, rather than a less-efficient desktop. Because notebooks are designed to run on batteries, they’re equipped with chips and drives that draw less power. Seagate’s 160GB 2.5-inch drive uses one-fourth the energy of the equivalent 3.5-inch drive, according to a Seagate product manager, Joni Clark.
And because the screen is integrated on notebooks, there is only one power supply. I tested several notebooks, and all consumed under 30 watts except when charging the battery.
Consider a machine with a low-voltage processor like the Intel Core 2 Duo or one with A.M.D.’s “Cool and Quiet” technology. Trim desktop models also tend to use less energy. The new Hewlett-Packard Slimline models use about 45 watts, which is considerably lower than many larger PCs.
Comparing Apples to Apples, the $1,199 2-gigahertz iMac with a 17-inch monitor uses only 45 watts, and the 20-inch model uses 80 watts. (Apple’s high-end Mac Pro desktop workstation consumed a whopping 220 watts, without a monitor.) The iMac, according to Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, is optimized for energy savings because all the computer components are housed in the same chassis as the monitor, allowing for more efficient power distribution and cooling.
Tweaking can pay off. Annually, my desktop PC is now using 73 percent less energy — saving me $119 a year and depriving the earth of 1,405 more pounds of CO2.
Electricity is a general term for the variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge. Together with magnetism, it constitutes the fundamental interaction known as electromagnetism. It includes many well-known physical phenomena such as lightning, electromagnetic fields and electric currents, and is put to use in industrial applications such as electronics and electric power.
In casual usage, the term electricity is applied to several related concepts that are better identified by more precise terms: Electric potential - the capacity of an electric field to do work, typically measured in volts (V). Electric current - a movement or flow of electrically charged particles, typically measured in amperes (A). Electric field - an effect produced by an electric charge that exerts a force on charged objects in its vicinity. Electrical energy - the energy made available by the flow of electric charge through an electrical conductor. Electric power - the rate at which electric energy is converted to or from another energy form, such as light, heat, or mechanical energy. Electric charge - a connection conserved property of some subatomic particles, which determines their electromagnetic interactions. Electrically charged matter is influenced by, and produces, electromagnetic fields.
History of electricity
Static electricity produced by rubbing objects against fur was known to the ancient Greeks, Phoenicians, Parthians and Mesopotamians. The Parthians and Mesopotamians may have had some knowledge of electroplating, based on the discovery of the Baghdad Battery, which resembles a Galvanic cell.
Benjamin Franklin conducted extensive research in electricity. He had theories on the relationship between lightning and static electricity, including his famous kite-flying experiment,which was a key attached to a wet string and kite. During a lightning storm a small spark struck his finger showing that lightning is electricity. It sparked the interest of later scientists whose work provided the basis for modern electrical technology. Most notably these include Luigi Galvani (1737–1798), Alessandro Volta (1745-1827), Michael Faraday (1791–1867), Andre-Marie Ampere (1775–1836), and Georg Simon Ohm (1789-1854). The late 19th and early 20th century produced such giants of electrical engineering as Nikola Tesla, Antonio Meucci, Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, Werner von Siemens, Charles Steinmetz, Alexander Graham Bell and William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin.
Thursday June 14th 2007, 01:08
Filed under: Food, Science
Scientists Demonstrate Best Way To Use Caffeine
Here is some useful news you can use. Morning “big gulp” coffee drinkers are misusing the power of caffeine. Researchers at the Sleep Disorders Center at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago along with colleagues at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School have shown that caffeine is best admnistered in a larger number of smaller doses with the doses coming later in the day.
Chicago - People who take small amounts of caffeine regularly during the day may be able to avoid falling asleep and perform well on cognitive tests without affecting their nighttime sleep habits.
Researchers from Rush University Medical Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School have discovered that caffeine works by thwarting one of two interacting physiological systems that govern the human sleep-wake cycle. The researchers, who report their findings in the May issue of the journal SLEEP, propose a novel regimen, consisting of frequent low doses of caffeine, to help shift workers, medical residents, truck drivers, and others who need to stay awake get a bigger boost from their tea or coffee.
“I hate to say it, but most of the population is using caffeine the wrong way by drinking a few mugs of coffee or tea in the morning, or three cups from their Starbuck’s grande on the way to work. This means that caffeine levels in the brain will be falling as the day goes on. Unfortunately, the physiological process they need to counteract is not a major player until the latter half of the day,” said James Wyatt, PhD, sleep researcher at Rush University Medical Center and lead author on the study.
Though many studies have measured caffeine’s sleep-averting effects, most do not take into account that sleep is governed by two opposing but interacting processes. The circadian system promotes sleep rhythmically—an internal clock releases melatonin and other hormones in a cyclical fashion. In contrast, the homeostatic system drives sleep appetitively—it builds the longer one is awake. If the two drives worked together, the drive for sleep would be overwhelming. As it turns out, they oppose one another.
Caffeine is thought to block the receptor for adenosine, a critical chemical messenger involved in the homeostatic drive for sleep. If that were true, then caffeine would be most effective if it were administered in parallel with growing pressure from the sleep homeostatic system, and also with accumulating adenosine.
To test their hypothesis, the scientists studied 16 male subjects in private suites, free of time cues, for 29 days. Instead of keeping to a 24-hour day, researchers scheduled the subjects to live on a 42.85–hour day (28.57-hour wake episodes), simulating the duration of extended wakefulness commonly encountered by doctors, and military and emergency services personnel. The extended day was also designed to disrupt the subjects’ circadian system while maximizing the effects of the homeostatic push for sleep.
Following a randomized, double-blind protocol, subjects received either one caffeine pill, containing 0.3 mg per kilogram of body weight, roughly the equivalent of two ounces of coffee, or an identical-looking placebo. They took the pills upon waking and then once every hour. The goal of the steady dosing was to progressively build up caffeine levels in a way that would coincide with—and ultimately, counteract—the progressive push of the homeostatic system, which grows stronger the longer a subject stays awake.
The strategy worked. Subjects who took the low-dose caffeine performed better on cognitive tests. They also exhibited fewer accidental sleep onsets, or microsleeps. EEG tests showed that placebo subjects were unintentionally asleep 1.57 percent of the time during the scheduled wake episodes, compared with 0.32 percent for those receiving caffeine. Despite their enhanced wakefulness, the caffeine-taking subjects reported feeling sleepier than their placebo counterparts, suggesting that the wake-promoting effects of caffeine do not replace the restorative effects gained through sleep.
Coffee, tea, and other caffeine-containing beverages are tools. Don’t drink more than you need to and slow the rate of your drinking to spread it out. Keep in mind that once you reach the point where you don’t need to maintain a high feeling of wakefulness that you should immediately stop drinking it. If you need something more powerful then consider Provigil (modafinil). My strongly felt advice is to stay away from methamphetamine or other amphetamines because they cause brain damage. I don’t have any specific knowledge about toxic effects of caffeine or modafinil on neurons. But sleep deprivation is definitely harmful. A life lived with a constant need for anti-sleep stmulants is a life that is in need of some serious restructuring to allow for more sleep time.
Caffeine is a xanthine alkaloid compound that acts as a stimulant in humans. The word comes from the Italian term for coffee, caff?. Caffeine is also called guaranine when found in guarana, mateine when found in mate, and theine when found in tea. It is found in the leaves and beans of the coffee plant, in tea, yerba mate, and guarana berries, the kola nut, the Yaupon Holly, and in small quantities in cocoa. Overall, caffeine is found in the beans, leaves, and fruit of over 60 plants, where it acts as a natural pesticide that paralyzes and kills certain insects feeding on the plants.
Caffeine is a central nervous system (CNS) stimulant, having the effect of temporarily warding off drowsiness and restoring alertness. Beverages containing caffeine, such as coffee, tea, soft drinks and energy drinks enjoy great popularity; caffeine is the world’s most widely consumed psychoactive substance, but unlike most other psychoactive substances, it is legal and unregulated in nearly all jurisdictions. In North America, 90% of adults consume caffeine daily. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration lists caffeine as a “Multiple Purpose GRAS Food Substance”.
Many natural sources of caffeine also contain widely varying mixtures of other xanthine alkaloids, including the cardiac stimulants theophylline and theobromine and other substances such as polyphenols which can form insoluble complexes with caffeine.
Caffeine is a plant alkaloid, found in numerous plant species, where it acts as a natural pesticide that paralyzes and kills certain insects feeding upon them. The most commonly used caffeine-containing plants are coffee, tea, and to a small extent cocoa. Other, less commonly used, sources of caffeine include the yerba mate and guaran? plants, which are sometimes used in the preparation of teas and energy drinks. Two of caffeine’s alternative names, mateine and guaranine, are derived from the names of these plants.
The world’s primary source of caffeine is the coffee bean (the seed of the coffee plant), from which coffee is brewed. Caffeine content in coffee varies widely depending on the type of coffee bean and the method of preparation used; even beans within a given bush can show variations in concentration. In general, one serving of coffee ranges from 40 milligrams, for a single shot (30 milliliters) of arabica-variety espresso, to about 100 milligrams for a cup (120 milliliters) of drip coffee. Generally, dark-roast coffee has less caffeine than lighter roasts because the roasting process reduces the bean’s caffeine content. Arabica coffee normally contains less caffeine than the robusta variety. Coffee also contains trace amounts of theophylline, but no theobromine.
Tea is another common source of caffeine. Tea usually contains about half as much caffeine per serving as coffee, depending on the strength of the brew. Certain types of tea, such as black and oolong, contain somewhat more caffeine than most other teas. Tea contains small amounts of theobromine and slightly higher levels of theophylline than coffee. Preparation has a significant impact on tea, and color is a very poor indicator of caffeine content. Teas like the green Japanese gyokuro, for example, contain far more caffeine than much darker teas like lapsang souchong, which has very little.
Caffeine is also a common ingredient of soft drinks such as cola, originally prepared from kola nuts. Soft drinks typically contain about 10 to 50 milligrams of caffeine per serving. By contrast, energy drinks such as Red Bull contain as much as 80 milligrams of caffeine per serving. The caffeine in these drinks either originates from the ingredients used or is an additive derived from the product of decaffeination or from chemical synthesis. Guarana, a prime ingredient of energy drinks, contains large amounts of caffeine with small amounts of theobromine and theophylline in a naturally occurring slow-release excipient.
Chocolate derived from cocoa contains a small amount of caffeine. The weak stimulant effect of chocolate may be due to a combination of theobromine and theophylline as well as caffeine. Chocolate contains too little of these compounds for a reasonable serving to create effects in humans that are on par with coffee. A typical 28-gram serving of a milk chocolate bar has about as much caffeine as a cup of decaffeinated coffee.
Google launches antitrust complaint against Vista’s desktop search.
Who’s the monopolist, Google or Microsoft? The two companies have been trading antitrust criticisms over the last few months, with Microsoft most recently asking the federal government to scrutinize Google’s proposed merger with DoubleClick. Google has been playing the same game, but it has conducted its campaign in secret and directly with the federal government. The New York Times has just revealed that Google months ago filed a confidential complaint with the Justice Department, asking that Microsoft be forced to alter Vista’s desktop search behavior on antitrust grounds.
The complaint says that Vista’s indexing service cannot easily be turned off and creates a drag on system resources when operating at the same time as rival indexers, like the one in Google Desktop Search. Google argues that this behavior is anticompetitive, and several state Attorneys General seem willing to pursue the issue. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer managed to wring a response from a Google spokesman that sheds more light on the claims. “The search boxes built throughout Vista are hard-wired to Microsoft’s own desktop search product,” said Google’s Ricardo Reyes, “with no way for users to choose an alternate provider from these visible search access points. Likewise, Vista makes it impractical to turn off Microsoft’s search index.”
Microsoft’s Bradford Smith, the company’s general counsel, sounded a conciliatory tone. “We’ve made a decision to go the extra mile to be reasonable,” Smith told the Times. “The discussions between the company and the various government agencies have been quite fruitful.”
This might be nothing more than a business dispute between rivals, but the Times also reveals that the man in charge of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, Thomas Barnett, circulated an unusual memo to state Attorneys General in recent days that asks them to reject Google’s complaint (many states were party to the main US antitrust case against Microsoft). While such a request is rare enough, it invites additional scrutiny because Barnett also served previously as the vice chair of the antitrust and consumer protection practice group at DC law firm Covington & Burling—a firm that represented Microsoft throughout its antitrust battles with the government.
Barnett, who has a degree from Yale and Harvard Law, had no direct involvement with the Microsoft case while at Covington & Burling and recused himself at Justice from handling any issues related to the company out of an abundance of caution. The Times reports that an internal ethics panel has now cleared him to work on Microsoft issues. There’s no evidence of any pro-Microsoft pandering here; rather, the paper points out that this is only the latest in a long line of actions that the Bush administration has taken to defend Microsoft (and other large US companies like Apple).
As part of its consent decree, Microsoft also worked with the US government before Vista was released to ensure that no problems would result, and the government signed off on the operating system. The company also made changes to placate the EU before Vista was released, so it’s not as though Microsoft hasn’t made a good-faith effort in this area. According to Google, though, Microsoft still needs to go one step further: provide a way to swap out the back-end desktop search engine.
Windows Vista is a line of graphical operating systems used on personal computers, including home and business desktops, notebook computers, Tablet PCs, and media centers. Prior to its announcement on July 22, 2005, Windows Vista was known by its codename “Longhorn”. Development was completed on November 8, 2006; over the following three months it was released in stages to computer hardware and software manufacturers, business customers, and retail channels. On January 30, 2007, it was released worldwide to the general public, and was made available for purchase and downloading from Microsoft’s web site. The release of Windows Vista comes more than five years after the introduction of its predecessor, Windows XP, making it the longest time span between two releases of Microsoft Windows.
Windows Vista contains hundreds of new features; some of the most significant include an updated graphical user interface and visual style dubbed Windows Aero, improved searching features, new multimedia creation tools such as Windows DVD Maker, and completely redesigned networking, audio, print, and display sub-systems. Vista also aims to increase the level of communication between machines on a home network using peer-to-peer technology, making it easier to share files and digital media between computers and devices. For developers, Vista includes version 3.0 of the .NET Framework, which aims to make it significantly easier for developers to write high-quality applications than with the traditional Windows API.
Microsoft’s primary stated objective with Windows Vista, however, has been to improve the state of security in the Windows operating system. One common criticism of Windows XP and its predecessors has been their commonly exploited security vulnerabilities and overall susceptibility to malware, viruses and buffer overflows. In light of this, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates announced in early 2002 a company-wide ‘Trustworthy Computing initiative’ which aims to incorporate security work into every aspect of software development at the company. Microsoft stated that it prioritized improving the security of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 above finishing Windows Vista, thus delaying its completion.
Windows Vista has been the target of a number of negative assessments by various groups. Criticism of Windows Vista has included protracted development time, more restrictive licensing terms, the inclusion of a number of new Digital Rights Management technologies aimed at restricting the copying of protected digital media, and the usability of other new features such as User Account Control.
Google Via John Battelle, Rick Skrenta’s remarkable piece on what Google have actually built. They don’t just have the world’s best search engine, they have the world’s largest and most scalable platform for developing huge web-based applications.
Google has taken the last 10 years of systems software research out of university labs, and built their own proprietary, production quality system. What is this platform that Google is building? It’s a distributed computing platform that can manage web-scale datasets on 100,000 node server clusters. It includes a petabyte, distributed, fault tolerant filesystem, distributed RPC code, probably network shared memory and process migration. And a datacenter management system which lets a handful of ops engineers effectively run 100,000 servers. Any of these projects could be the sole focus of a startup.
While competitors are targeting the individual applications Google has deployed, Google is building a massive, general purpose computing platform for web-scale programming.
Sunday June 10th 2007, 22:33
Filed under: Science, Space
A new analysis of pictures taken by the exploration rover Opportunity reveals what appear to be small ponds of liquid water on the surface of Mars.
The report identifies specific spots that appear to have contained liquid water two years ago, when Opportunity was exploring a crater called Endurance. It is a highly controversial claim, as many scientists believe that liquid water cannot exist on the surface of Mars today because of the planet’s thin atmosphere.
If confirmed, the existence of such ponds would significantly boost the odds that living organisms could survive on or near the surface of Mars, says physicist Ron Levin, the report’s lead author, who works in advanced image processing at the aerospace company Lockheed Martin in Arizona.
Along with fellow Lockheed engineer Daniel Lyddy, Levin used images from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s website. The resulting stereoscopic reconstructions, made from paired images from the Opportunity rover’s twin cameras, show bluish features that look perfectly flat. The surfaces are so smooth that the computer could not find any surface details within those areas to match up between the two images.
The imaging shows that the areas occupy the lowest parts of the terrain. They also appear transparent: some features, which Levin says may be submerged rocks or pebbles, can be seen below the plane of the smooth surface.
Smooth surface
The smoothness and transparency of the features could suggest either water or very clear ice, Levin says.
“The surface is incredibly smooth, and the edges are in a plane and all at the same altitude,” he says. “If they were ice or some other material, they’d show wear and tear over the surface, there would be rubble or sand or something.”
His report was presented at a conference of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and will be published later this year in the institute’s proceedings.
No signs of liquid water have been observed directly from cameras on the surface before. Reports last year pointed to the existence of gullies on crater walls where water appears to have flowed in the last few years, as shown in images taken from orbit, but those are short-lived flows, which are thought to have frozen over almost immediately.
Speedy evaporation?
Levin and other reasearchers, including JPL’s Michael Hecht, have published calculations showing the possibility of “micro-environments” where water could linger, but the idea remains controversial.
“The temperatures get plenty warm enough, but the Mars atmosphere is essentially a vacuum,” says Phil Christensen of Arizona State University, developer of the Mars rovers’ mini-Thermal Emission Spectrometers. That means any water or ice exposed on the surface evaporates or sublimes away almost instantly, he says.
But, he adds, “it is theoretically possible to get liquid water within soil, or under other very special conditions”. The question is just how special those conditions need to be, and whether they ever really are found on Mars today.
If there were absolutely no wind, says Christensen, you might build up a stagnant layer of vapour above a liquid surface, preventing it from evaporating too fast. “The problem is, there are winds on Mars… In the real world, I think it’s virtually impossible,” he told New Scientist.
Simple test
Levin disagrees. He says his analysis shows that there can be wind-free environments at certain times of day in certain protected locations. He thinks that could apply to these small depressions inside the sheltered bowl of Endurance crater, at midday in the Martian summer.
He adds that highly briny water, as is probably found on Mars, could be stable even at much lower temperatures.
Although the rover is now miles away from this site, Levin proposes a simple test that would prove the presence of liquid if similar features are found: use the rover’s drill on the surface of the flat area. If it is ice, or any solid material, the drill will leave unmistakable markings, but if it is liquid there should be no trace of the drill’s activity.
Levin’s father Gilbert was principal investigator of an experiment on the Viking Mars lander, which found evidence for life on the planet, although negative results from a separate test for organic materials led most scientists to doubt the evidence for biology.
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after Mars, the Roman god of war. It is also referred to as the “Red Planet” because of its reddish appearance as seen from Earth.
A terrestrial planet, Mars has a thin atmosphere and surface features reminiscent both of the impact craters of the Moon and the volcanoes, valleys, deserts and polar ice caps of Earth. It is the site of Olympus Mons, the highest known mountain in the solar system, and of Valles Marineris, the largest canyon. In addition to its geographical features, Mars’ rotational period and seasonal cycles are likewise similar to those of the Earth.
Until the first flyby of Mars by Mariner 4 in 1965, it was speculated that there might be liquid water on the planet. This was based on observations of periodic variations in light and dark patches, particularly in the polar latitudes, which looked like seas and continents, while long, dark striations were interpreted by some observers as irrigation channels for liquid water. These straight line features were later proven not to exist and were instead explained as optical illusions. Still, of all the planets in our solar system, Mars is the most likely, other than Earth, to harbor liquid water, and perhaps life.
Mars is currently host to three functional orbiting spacecraft: Mars Odyssey, Mars Express, and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This is more than any planet except Earth. The surface is also home to the two Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity). Geological evidence gathered by these and preceding missions suggests that Mars previously had large-scale water coverage, while observations also indicate that small geyser-like water flows have occurred in recent years. Observations by NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor show evidence that parts of the southern polar ice cap have been receding.
Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are small and irregularly shaped. These may be captured asteroids, similar to 5261 Eureka, a Martian Trojan asteroid. Mars can be seen from Earth with the naked eye. Its apparent magnitude reaches ?2.9, a brightness surpassed only by Venus, the Moon, and the Sun, though for much of the year Jupiter may appear brighter to the naked eye than Mars.
Water is a common chemical substance that is essential to all known forms of life. In typical usage water refers only to its liquid form or state, but the substance also has the solid state, ice, and gaseous state, water vapor. About 1,460 teratonnes (Tt) of water cover 71% of Earth’s surface, with 1.6% of water below ground in aquifers and 0.001% in the air as vapor, clouds, and precipitation. Saltwater oceans hold 97% of surface water, glaciers and polar ice caps 2.4%; and other land surface water such as rivers and lakes 0.025%. Water in these forms moves perpetually through the water cycle of evaporation and transpiration, precipitation, and runoff usually reaching the sea. Winds carry water vapor over land at the same rate as runoff into the sea, about 36 Tt per year. Over land, evaporation and transpiration contribute another 71 Tt per year to the precipitation of 107 Tt per year over land. Some water is trapped for periods in ice caps, glaciers, aquifers, or lakes for varying periods, sometimes providing fresh water for life on land. Clean, fresh water is essential to human and other land-based life. In many parts of the world, it is in short supply. Many very important chemical substances, such as salts, sugars, acids, alkalis, some gases (especially oxygen) and many organic molecules dissolve in water. Outside of our planet, a significant quantity is thought to exist underground on the planet Mars, on the moons Europa and Enceladus, and on the exoplanet known as HD 209458 b.
The World Rally Championship (WRC) - is a rallying series organised by the FIA, culminating with a champion driver and manufacturer. The driver’s championship and manufacturer’s championship are separate championships, but based on the same point system. This means, for example, that Petter Solberg driving for Subaru can win the driver’s championship but Citroen can win the manufacturer’s championship, which is what happened in 2003, and again in 2006 when Sebastien Loeb took his third consecutive WRC title but Ford won the manufacturer’s championship. The competition first received the designation of WRC in 1973. The sport’s commercial rights are administered by International Sportsworld Communicators.
