NASA, The Beatles To Beam Song "Across The Universe" Into Deep Space

For the first time ever, NASA will beam a song -- The Beatles' "Across the Universe" -- directly into deep space at 7 p.m. EST on Feb. 4.

The transmission over NASA's Deep Space Network will commemorate the 40th anniversary of the day The Beatles recorded the song, as well as the 50th anniversary of NASA's founding and the group's beginnings. Two other anniversaries also are being honored: The launch 50 years ago this week of Explorer 1, the first U.S. satellite, and the founding 45 years ago of the Deep Space Network, an international network of antennas that supports missions to explore the universe.

The transmission is being aimed at the North Star, Polaris, which is located 431 light years away from Earth. The song will travel across the universe at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. Former Beatle Paul McCartney expressed excitement that the tune, which was principally written by fellow Beatle John Lennon, was being beamed into the cosmos.

"Amazing! Well done, NASA!" McCartney says in a message to the space agency. "Send my love to the aliens. All the best, Paul."

Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, characterizes the song's transmission as a significant event.

"I see that this is the beginning of the new age in which we will communicate with billions of planets across the universe," she says.

It is not the first time Beatles music has been used by NASA; in November 2005, McCartney performed the song "Good Day Sunshine" during a concert that was transmitted to the International Space Station. "Here Comes the Sun," "Ticket to Ride" and "A Hard Day's Night" are among other Beatles' songs that have been played to wake astronaut crews in orbit.

Feb. 4 has been declared "Across The Universe Day" by Beatles fans to commemorate the anniversaries. As part of the celebration, the public around the world has been invited to participate in the event by simultaneously playing the song at the same time it is transmitted by NASA. Many of the senior NASA scientists and engineers involved in the effort are among the group's biggest fans.

"I've been a Beatles fan for 45 years -- as long as the Deep Space Network has been around," says Barry Geldzahler, the network's program executive at NASA headquarters in Washington. "What a joy, especially considering that 'Across the Universe' is my personal favorite Beatles song."

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Buy Ceiling Fans Online

As we've covered here recently on Life, The Universe..., the Internet community is increasingly buying products online.

Did you know you can buy home improvement products over the Web, too?

That includes products like ceiling fans. Farrey's.com is a website that sells a variety of fans, from such makers as casablanca ceiling fans, craftmade fans, hunter ceiling fans and others.

Farrey's Wholesale Hardware Co., Inc. was founded in 1924 and based in Miami. Today they sell ceiling fans and other products online. They offer a 30-day return policy.

Buying your ceiling fans or other home improvement items online may be more convenient than visiting one of those confusing big box stores. You can buy them from home, have them delivered and then have an installer you trust do the work. (Or do it yourself!)

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Number of Russian Women Smokers Has Doubled Since Soviet Collapse

The number of Russian women who smoke has more than doubled since the collapse of the Soviet Union, according to new research.

In 1992, seven per cent of women smoked, compared to almost 15 per cent by 2003. In the same period, the number of men who smoke has risen from 57 per cent to 63 per cent.

The researchers behind the study, published in the journal Tobacco Control, blame the privatisation of the previously state owned tobacco industry and the behaviour of the transnational tobacco companies (TTCs) for what they describe as a “very worrying increase.”

Between 1992 and 2000, TTCs such as Philip Morris, British American Tobacco and Japan Tobacco International invested approximately $1.7 billion to gain a 60 percent share of the privatized Russian tobacco market.

Tobacco advertising had simply not existed in the Soviet era. Yet as soon as the TTCs were there, it was rampant, say researchers. By the mid 1990s it was estimated that half of all billboards in Moscow and three quarters of plastic bags in Russia carried tobacco advertising.

“There can be no doubt that the marketing tactics of Philip Morris, British American Tobacco and the like directly underpin this massive increase in smoking that spells disaster for health in Russia,” says Dr Anna Gilmore from the School for Health at the University of Bath, who carried out the study with academics from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and University College London, and has been researching tobacco control in the region for over seven years.

“Following privatisation of the tobacco industry, TTCs invested heavily in developing the market, promoting smoking as part of the new ‘western lifestyle’,” Gilmore says.

“They aggressively targeted women, young people and those living in cities with their marketing and distribution strategies. This is now directly reflected in the smoking patterns we are seeing. Until this point women in Russia had simply not smoked,” she adds.

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More Than 875 Million Consumers Have Shopped Online

More than 85 percent of the world's online population has used the Internet to make a purchase -- increasing the market for online shopping by 40 percent in the past two years -- according to the latest Nielsen Global Online Survey on Internet shopping habits. Globally, more than half of Internet users have made at least one purchase online in the past month, according to Nielsen.

"The Internet is no longer a niche technology -- it is mass media and an utterly integral part of modern life. Almost no aspect of life remains untouched by online media. As our lives become more fractured and cluttered, it isn't surprising that consumers turn to the unrivaled convenience of the Internet when it comes to researching and buying products," says Jonathan Carson, president, international, Nielsen Online.

"When The Nielsen Company conducted its first global survey into Internet shopping trends two years ago, approximately 10 percent of the world's population (627 million) had shopped online," says Bruce Paul, vice president, customized research, Nielsen U.S. "Within two years, this number has increased by approximately 40 percent (to 875 million)."

Among Internet users, the highest percentage shopping online is found in South Korea, where 99 percent of those with Internet access have used it to shop, followed by the UK (97 percent), Germany (97 percent), Japan (97 percent) with the U.S. eighth, at 94 percent. Additionally, in South Korea, 79 percent of these Internet users have shopped in the past month, followed by the UK (76 percent) and Switzerland (67 percent) with the U.S. at 57 percent.

Globally, the most popular and purchased items over the Internet are books (41 percent purchased in the past three months), clothing/accessories/shoes (36 percent), videos / DVDs / games (24 percent), airline tickets (24 percent) and electronic equipment (23 percent).

Among Germany's Internet users, 55 percent say they bought books, 42 percent had bought Clothes/Accessories/Shoes and one in four had purchased Music/Videos/DVD's in the past three months.

During the same period, among Internet users in the UK, 45 percent bought books online, followed by Videos/DVDs/Games (44 percent), Clothing/Accessories/Shoes (38 percent), music (37 percent) and one in four Internet shoppers also purchased and airline tickets/reservations online.

Among U.S. Internet users in the past month, 41 percent bought Clothing/Shoes/Accessories, 38 percent bought books and one in three Internet shoppers bought Videos/DVDs/Games.

The number of Internet consumers buying books over the Internet has increased 7 percent in the past two years but the biggest increase has been in Clothing / Accessories / Shoes which increased from 20 percent to 36 percent. "Some of the biggest buyers of books on the Internet are from developing countries -- China, Brazil, Vietnam and Egypt -- indicating massive growth potential for online retailers that can specifically target these fast-growing markets," says Carson.

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An Italian Adventure For Any Budget

Italy, of course, is one of the world's great destinations. Did you know, however, that you can plan a trip to Rome, Milan, Venice or other Italian cities.

That's because you can find deals at Italy Hotels, and specifically at Rome Hotels, Milan Hotels and Venice Hotels to fit your needs -- whether you are looking for a trip on a budget or are able and want to experience true European luxury.

Regardless of what you can spend, getting the best deals possible on accommodations could enable you to take an even longer trip, and that means you could see more of Italy.

That's important because the country really is so different from region to region. Northern Italy bears little resemblance to the southern tip and the island of Sicily. The north has more in common with the Alps nations while the south is kissed by African breezes.

Of course the whole nation is steeped in history and culture, so you are almost certain to have a wonderful vacation wherever you visit in Italy.

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College Awarded Grant to Demonstrate Effective Blending of Classroom, Online Learning

Simmons College in Boston recently became the first private college in the United States to be awarded a grant from the prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to demonstrate that small colleges can offer high quality courses that combine classroom and online learning, while still maintaining close student/faculty relationships.

The Sloan Foundation awarded Simmons $225,000 to support two innovative "blended learning" initiatives that combine classroom and online student/teacher interactions in the Simmons School for Health Studies, and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science.

The goal of the Sloan program is to make high quality education available "anytime, anywhere, for those motivated to seek it." Course participants can access their courses at all times, from any location, through the Internet. The online and face-to-face course components are
designed as an integrated learning experience: each mode of learning is an extension of the other. The Sloan Foundation selected Simmons College for the award to demonstrate the viability of blended learning at small private institutions, to help dispel misconceptions about the level of faculty/student attentiveness the format can support.

"Private institutions have lagged behind public institutions in embracing blended and online learning," says Simmons College President Susan Scrimshaw. "Some fear that blended learning will compromise the 'high touch' faculty and student rapport for which our schools are known.

"Simmons is not dissuaded by this rationale. We intend to lead the way as a model for small private schools, to show the best of both worlds -- a college that can maintain a strong sense of community and also meet students where they are, in the workplace and homes distant from campus."

In one Simmons initiative, the grant will support blended learning in the Doctoral Program in Nursing Practice in the School of Health Studies. Academic administrators believe that blended
classroom and online courses will help decrease the shortage of nursing faculty, by making course offerings available to a wider geographic location, and with schedules that can better accommodate working professionals seeking a doctoral degree.

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Mayo Clinic, Microsoft Announce Agreement to Develop Consumer Health Tools

Mayo Clinic Health Solutions and Microsoft Corporation's Health Solutions Group announced today that they have entered into a strategic agreement to collaboratively develop tools that will empower people to manage their health and become engaged partners with their providers in a new model of health care.

As leaders in their respective industries, both organizations recognize the potential for technology solutions to help bridge the gaps in the health care system, to facilitate closer patient-to-physician connections, and to allow patients and consumers to better manage their health and wellness information. The collaboration will benefit from Microsoft's significant technology expertise and Mayo Clinic's experience in health care.

The organizations hope to announce further details of the project before the end of 2008.

"We are committed to finding new technology solutions that put the patient and consumer in control," says Brooks Edwards, M.D., chief medical officer, Mayo Clinic Health Solutions. "Our work with Microsoft is an exciting opportunity to create tools that empower patients to be in the very center of their own health care environment."

"Consumers demand and deserve tools that make their lives easier, facilitate communication, and help them take action to manage their health," says Peter Neupert, corporate vice president, Microsoft Health Solutions Group. "Building on the Microsoft HealthVault platform, our groups are committed to providing individuals with solutions that are dynamic, secure, and focused on the needs of the user, in order to effectively improve health and well-being."

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See What Plastic Surgery Has To Offer

Have you wondered about how plastic surgery would look?

Then take a look at the Photo Gallery at the website of this Los Angeles Plastic Surgeon.

This is actually a team of surgeons and other professionals who focus on breast augmentation, facial procedures and other common plastic surgery techniques.

Even if you are not in California, you can use this site to search for a plastic surgeon in your area and find out his or her qualifications and specialties.

You also find the latest news on the site related to plastic surgery, including information on INAMED Silicone-Filled Breast Implants becoming FDA approved.

When considering plastic surgery, you want all the background information you can find and this website could be a good resource for you.

This was a sponsored post.

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Infant Formula Manufacturers' 'Marketing Gimmick' Linked to Serious Illness

A report released today by The Cornucopia Institute presents research indicating that new additives placed in infant formula are seriously endangering the health of
some formula-fed newborns and toddlers.

The report, 'Replacing Mother--Imitating Human Breast Milk in the Laboratory,' details research questioning the alleged benefits of adding "novel" omega-3 fatty acids, produced in laboratories and extracted from algae and fungus, into infant formulas. The additives raised health and safety red flags during preapproval testing while aggressive marketing campaigns by some infant formula manufacturers appear to have encouraged new mothers to give up nursing for the questionable products, according to a statement by the institute.

"When I worked in the hospital's neonatal ward, the nurses all called it 'the diarrhea formula'," says Sam Heather Doak, LPN, IBCLC, from Marietta, Ohio. "We've seen infants, tiny little humans, with diarrhea that just wouldn't stop after being given this formula." For infants, virulent and long-term diarrhea is considered a serious and life-threatening event.

The infant formula referenced by Doak was supplemented with Martek Biosciences Corporation's laboratory-produced oils containing DHA and ARA. DHA, an omega-3 fatty acid, and ARA, an omega-6 fatty acid, are naturally found in human breast milk and are considered important nutrients for infants.

But laboratory-produced DHASCO and ARASCO (Martek's names for their proprietary oils) are materially different from the fats found in a mother's breast milk. Martek's products are extracted from fermented algae and fungus, with the use of the neurotoxic solvent hexane. They contain only 40 percent to 50 percent DHA and ARA, with the balance from sunflower oil and other components, including some not found in human breast milk and never before a part of the human infant diet, the statement says.

"It's true that DHA and ARA are important nutrients for developing infants--that's why they're found in human breast milk. But we have also seen that some infants are experiencing side effects like diarrhea from consuming the manufactured DHA and ARA oils in formula," says Jimi Francis, a biochemist specializing in DHA in infant nutrition at the Allie M. Lee Laboratory for Omega-3 Research at the University of Nevada at Reno.

Also, humans produce DHA and ARA on their own from other fats.

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Experience The Canary Islands

We've all heard of the Canary Islands, the Spanish islands off Africa. Just the name conjures thoughts of an exotic adventure.

Gran Canaria is the third-largest island in the chain and is home to 32 Natural Protected Spaces, such as the Rural Park of Nublo, Doramas's Jungle, the Ravine of Azuaje, Tamadaba, and Pino Santo. Gran Canaria is the island that bestowed the name on the entire chain of islands -- Island of the Dogs. More than 2 million tourists visit the island annually and many stay in the Gran Canaria Hotels.

Tenerife, meanwhile, is the largest of the Canaries, and if you want luxury, this is the place stay. That's because the Canarian Parliament decreed that no more Tenerife Hotels be built unless they were of 5-star quality and boast amenities such as golf courses.

You can also check out deals elsewhere in the Canaries, such as Playa Del Ingles Hotels and Playa de las Americas Hotels. Visit these links now to plan your Canary Islands adventure and experience all of the natural beauty, history and culture of these unique islands.

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Researchers Develop Darkest Manmade Material

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Rice University have created the darkest material ever made by man.

The material, a thin coating comprised of low-density arrays of loosely vertically aligned carbon nanotubes, absorbs more than 99.9 percent of light and one day could be used to boost the effectiveness and efficiency of solar energy conversion, infrared sensors, and other devices. The researchers who developed the material have applied for a Guinness World Record for their efforts.

“It is a fascinating technology, and this discovery will allow us to increase the absorption efficiency of light as well as the overall radiation-to-electricity efficiency of solar energy conservation,” says Shawn-Yu Lin, professor of physics at Rensselaer and a member of the university’s Future Chips Constellation, who led the research project. “The key to this discovery was finding how to create a long, extremely porous vertically-aligned carbon nanotube array with certain surface randomness, therefore minimizing reflection and maximizing absorption simultaneously.”

The research results were published in the journal Nano Letters.

All materials, from paper to water, air, or plastic, reflect some amount of light. Scientists have long envisioned an ideal black material that absorbs all the colors of light while reflecting no light. So far they have been unsuccessful in engineering a material with a total reflectance of zero.

The total reflectance of conventional black paint, for example, is between 5 and 10 percent. The darkest manmade material, prior to the discovery by Lin’s group, boasted a total reflectance of 0.16 percent to 0.18 percent.

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Cell Phone Sensors Detect Radiation to Thwart Nuclear Terrorism

Researchers at Purdue University are working with the state of Indiana to develop a system that would use a network of cell phones to detect and track radiation to help prevent terrorist attacks with radiological "dirty bombs" and nuclear weapons.

Such a system could blanket the nation with millions of cell phones equipped with radiation sensors able to detect even light residues of radioactive material. Because cell phones already contain global positioning locators, the network of phones would serve as a tracking system, said physics professor Ephraim Fischbach. Fischbach is working with Jere Jenkins, director of Purdue's radiation laboratories within the School of Nuclear Engineering.

"It's the ubiquitous nature of cell phones and other portable electronic devices that give this system its power," Fischbach says. "It's meant to be small, cheap and eventually built into laptops, personal digital assistants and cell phones."

The system was developed by Andrew Longman, a consulting instrumentation scientist. Longman developed the software for the system and then worked with Purdue researchers to integrate the software with radiation detectors and cell phones. Cellular data air time was provided by AT&T.

The research has been funded by the Indiana Department of Transportation through the Joint Transportation Research Program and School of Civil Engineering at Purdue.

"The likely targets of a potential terrorist attack would be big cities with concentrated populations, and a system like this would make it very difficult for someone to go undetected with a radiological dirty bomb in such an area," says Longman, who also is Purdue alumnus. "The more people are walking around with cell phones and PDAs, the easier it would be to detect and catch the perpetrator. We are asking the public to push for this."

Tiny solid-state radiation sensors are commercially available. The detection system would require additional circuitry and would not add significant bulk to portable electronic products, Fischbach says.

The technology is unlike any other system, particularly because the software can work with a variety of sensor types, he says.

"Cell phones today also function as Internet computers that can report their locations and data to their towers in real time," Fischbach says. "So this system would use the same process to send an extra signal to a home station. The software can uncover information from this data and evaluate the levels of radiation."

The researchers tested the system in November, demonstrating that it is capable of detecting a weak radiation source 15 feet from the sensors.

"We set up a test source on campus, and people randomly walked around carrying these detectors," Jenkins says. "The test was extremely safe because we used a very weak, sealed radiation source, and we went through all of the necessary approval processes required for radiological safety. This was a source much weaker than you would see with a radiological dirty bomb."

Officials from the Indiana Department of Transportation participated in the test.

"The threat from a radiological dirty bomb is significant, especially in metropolitan areas that have dense populations," says Barry Partridge, director of INDOT's Division of Research and Development.

Long before the sensors would detect significant radiation, the system would send data to a receiving center.

"The sensors don't really perform the detection task individually," Fischbach says. "The collective action of the sensors, combined with the software analysis, detects the source. The system would transmit signals to a data center, and the data center would transmit information to authorities without alerting the person carrying the phone. Say a car is transporting radioactive material for a bomb, and that car is driving down Meridian Street in Indianapolis or Fifth Avenue in New York. As the car passes people, their cell phones individually would send signals to a command center, allowing authorities to track the source."

The signal grows weaker with increasing distance from the source, and the software is able to use the data from many cell phones to pinpoint the location of the radiation source.

"So the system would know that you were getting closer or farther from something hot," Jenkins said. "If I had handled radioactive material and you were sitting near me at a restaurant, this system would be sensitive enough to detect the residue. "

The Purdue Research Foundation owns patents associated with the technology licensed through the Office of Technology Commercialization.

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Insurance Quotes For People On The Move

Are you on the move? Does your job take you to new locations and new assignments?

Then perhaps you ought to take a look at the National Relocation website. Even if you don't need relocation services, per se, the site still has offerings for life insurance, car insurance and home insurance.

These are quick fill-in forms online that get you quotes fast. Just answer a few simple basic questions and you get the quote you need to make a decision.


In fact, even if you aren't on the go -- even if you plan to stay put for a while, these services might still be worth checking out to see if you can save some money with these coverages.

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Study Reveals Strongest Predictors for Oscar Nominations

If you're an actor angling for an Academy Award nomination on Tuesday, you better hope you didn't leave the audience rolling in the aisles, suggests a new study from UCLA's California Center for Population Research.

"The odds of being nominated for an Academy Award are so much greater for performers who appear in dramas that — at least this time of year — it really pays to be a drama queen," says Gabriel Rossman, one of the study's two authors and an assistant professor of sociology at UCLA.

Albeit to a lesser degree, it also helps to have a major film distributor, prior Oscar nominations, a high spot in the pecking order in past movie credits, fewer films competing for attention and good collaborators. And it doesn't hurt to be a woman.

"A performer's odds of being nominated are largely set before the cameras even start rolling, back when the script was bought, the director was signed and the film was cast," says Nicole Esparza, the study's lead author and a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at Harvard University. "It's surprising how many variables other than a performer's talent play a role in determining who gets nominated."

The 80th Academy Awards nominations are scheduled to be announced at 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday at the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.

Using Internet Movie Database (IMDb) records for every Oscar-eligible film made between the founding of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in 1927 and 2005, Esparza and Rossman looked for conditions that improved the odds of a performer getting the nod.

The researchers looked at number of Oscar-eligible films in any given year, the distributors and studios behind each performer's films, the film's tone or subject matter, the cast size, the sex of the performer, the performer's contacts within the industry, and past Oscar nominations among a film's cast, directors and writers.

The single greatest predictor of a nomination proved to be serious subject matter — or at least a film that was classified by IMDb as a drama, despite the possible presence of comedic elements. In examining IMDb records on 171,539 performances by 39,518 actors in 19,351 Oscar-eligible films, the researchers found that actors were nine times more likely to receive a nomination for their work in a drama than in a non-drama.

"In the entertainment industry, there's long been a sense that the nomination process prefers dramas, but I don't think anybody is aware of the magnitude of the effect," Rossman says.

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Multinational Firms Should Hold Own Management Styles In China

When it comes to breaking into the lucrative Chinese market, foreign multinational retailers should keep largely to their own, time-tested management techniques, according to new research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

Rather than struggle to adapt to the Chinese cultural environment, firms from the UK and elsewhere are better advised to hone and refine existing managerial and technical expertise, argues Jos Gamble, of Royal Holloway, University of London.

A fluent Chinese speaker, he interviewed management and staff in eight Chinese cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu, as well as key people in the UK and Japan. His findings also dispel claims that foreign retailers offer only ‘dead-end’ jobs in their Chinese subsidiaries. On the contrary, he says, such organisations can provide workers with significant opportunities to prosper and improve their skills. Rising prosperity and a rapidly commercialising economy have transformed China into the world’s most important emerging market. Multinational retailers have rapidly built up their presence since foreign participation was allowed in 1992.

By conducting case studies of UK and Japanese retailers and their off-shoots in China, Gamble set out to examine how these global organisations transfer management practices and retail concepts to their overseas subsidiaries. In China, the main approach of the Japanese and UK firms was to try to replicate the store procedures, employment relations and customer service standards of their parent company.

For both customer service and people management, this meant that companies often reflected their home country practices, so they were different from each other, as well as from local Chinese norms and practices.

However, the study found that, in some ways, retailers did diverge from practices back at home.

Japanese firms, for instance, took on far more women supervisors in China compared with their stores in Japan. And a UK multinational followed local practice with its use of large numbers of sales staff employed by product suppliers rather than directly by the stores.

Gamble says: “These findings indicate that while it is possible to transfer culturally innovative practices, those that run counter to institutional features - such as the nature of the local labour markets - are much harder to implement.” Japanese companies were more prescriptive and detailed in their way of dealing with customers than the UK-owned stores, which encouraged workers to adapt behaviour they used in everyday life.

Says Gamble: “The Japanese approach to customer service was particularly innovative in the Chinese context. Whilst, initially, local customer response was quite negative, it rapidly achieved acceptance as a form of ‘best practice’.” Most employees believed that their jobs would improve their skills level and employability, contradicting widely held concerns about ‘de-skilling’ of labour in the service sector.

Contrary to expectations, a UK firm examined for the study provided at least as much opportunity in this respect as Japanese companies.

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Compare UK Credit Card Offers Side By Side

The Motley Fool's U.K. website is offering consumers looking for U.K. credit cards a new tool to find the right credit card for them.

This web page lines up many offers from leading credit card issuers with terms and conditions lined up side-by-side so that consumers can compare the offers, find the appropriate one for them and then apply for a credit card right from the site if they desire.

You may also search on the site for interest free credit cards.

The website also offers links to good information online, particularly for those new to credit card use. This should answer many questions and hopefully keep consumers out of trouble and encourage responsible credit card use. In fact, there is a link to "Pitfalls of Credit Card use" that everyone should read.

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Report Calls for More Research on Health Effects of Wireless Technologies

A stronger research effort on the potential health effects of exposure to radio frequency energy tied to the global explosion in wireless technology like cell phones, laptops and hand-held Web-surfing gadgets.

That's according to a new National Research Council report chaired by University of Colorado at Boulder researcher Frank Barnes.

Requested by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration from the National Research Council last year, the report was released Jan 16. The authors did not evaluate potential human health effects of radio frequency, or RF, exposure from wireless devices, but rather made recommendations on how to meet research needs regarding the technology, says Barnes, a distinguished professor in the electrical and computer engineering department.

"This is a very, very complex issue," says Barnes. "Obviously we are not seeing immediate short-term effects of such exposure, like people dropping dead on their cell phones. But in the long term -- 10, 20 and 30 years out -- we have a lot less information about potential effects from these types of wireless devices."

The NRC committee chaired by Barnes hosted a three-day conference on the topic last August in Washington, D.C., reviewing scores of studies and hosting testimony by more than a dozen scientists from nine countries. Barnes briefed the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in Washington, D.C., on the 66-page report earlier this week. The NRC is the main operating agency of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.
Barnes says the committee recommended that future studies pay special attention to the effects of RF energy on children, adolescents, pregnant women and fetuses from exposure to hand-held devices as well as base-station antennas that transmit such signals. Although it is not known whether children are more susceptible, they could conceivably be at greater risk because of their developing tissue and organ systems, the report says.

Barnes says a large-scale epidemiological research effort involving 13 countries in Europe known as the Interphone Study is nearing completion and is providing researchers with a large amount of new data. "There clearly have been large changes in the use of personal wireless technology," says Barnes, who was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2004.

The report authors recommend new studies on the changing designs of antennas used for hand-held wireless communication devices. While studies targeting RF energy radiation on the human head from cell phone antennas held against the ear have been conducted, some newer cell phones and Web-surfing devices have antennas in proximity to other body regions like the waist, requiring more study, Barnes said.

A number of studies also have shown a steep increase in mobile phone use by children, ensuring that younger generations will experience much longer periods of RF exposure, Barnes said. "The fact that some cancers have a 10-to-20-year latency period make these broad, long-term studies potentially important," he said.

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NASA Selects Jaiwon Shin to Head Aeronautics Research

Jaiwon Shin has been named as NASA's associate administrator for the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate in Washington.

As the associate administrator, Shin will be responsible for managing the agency's aeronautics research portfolio and guiding its strategic direction. This portfolio includes research in the fundamental aeronautics of flight, aviation safety and the nation's airspace system. Prior to this appointment, Shin served as the deputy associate administrator for aeronautics.

"Jaiwon brings expert knowledge of aeronautics and technology to a critical position at NASA," NASA Administrator Michael Griffin says. "He's helped develop the aeronautics research roadmap for the 21st century. His leadership of the directorate will assure our continued recognition as the world's premiere aeronautics research organization."

Before coming to NASA headquarters in 2004, Shin served as chief of the aeronautics projects office at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. In this position, he had management responsibility for all aeronautics projects managed at the center. Prior to that, he was the deputy director of aeronautics at the center, providing executive leadership for the planning and implementation of the aeronautics program at Glenn.

"I am honored to have been chosen for this position and look forward to building on the strong foundation that my predecessor, Lisa Porter, established for NASA aeronautics," Shin says. "NASA's aeronautics programs develop the concepts, tools, methods and technologies that address many of the challenges faced by our nation in air traffic management, safety and the environment. We will continue our commitment to meet these challenges through technical excellence, integrity and strong partnerships with other government agencies, industry and academia."

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Buy And Sell Gold -- Online

The expected economic downtown in the United States is prompting some investors to look to buy gold as a diversification of their portfolios.

You can buy CDs, books online -- even cars. So why aren't people buying gold on the Web, too?


Actually, they are. BullionVault is an online gold trading system. It enables individuals to buy and sell gold to each other online -- there is nearly five tons of gold in its vaults.


BullionVault says it holds the gold in high-security vaults. That the gold doesn't move makes online trading safe, secure, cheap and easy. BullionVault says that all of its client holdings are reconciled daily and published online using anonymous aliases to prove the gold is owned by who it should be.


Gold bullion is an age-old traditional way to buy and sell gold. Now BullionVault brings bullion into the 21st Century.

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Science Shows Soyfoods May Help Win 'Battle of the Belt'

Scientists have found soyfoods may be a valuable weapon in the weight loss battle. Protein-rich soyfoods, when replacing other sources of protein, may help individuals lose weight and fat -- while lowering LDL (bad) cholesterol. An evidence-based review by David Allison and Mark Cope at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and John Erdman at the University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana, finds soyfoods are equal to other protein sources, such as dairy or meat, in helping to battle weight by promoting fat loss.

This comprehensive review, published in the November issue of Obesity Reviews, examines current research on animals, human populations, and clinical trials related to soy protein and weight control. Researchers sought to determine the strength of the evidence on four proposed mechanisms by which soy may aid weight control: 1) soy increases weight loss when consumed at an equal calorie level as other foods, 2) soy aids weight and fat loss by decreasing caloric intake, 3) certain soyfoods benefit glucose control and heart health during weight loss, and 4) certain soyfoods will minimize the loss of bone mass during weight loss.

The review, including results from eight human studies, finds that individuals lost equivalent amounts of weight and, in some cases, equal inches of fat around the waist, using soy protein, dairy milk meal replacements, beef or pork at equal calorie levels. This illustrates the value of soy protein in a varied diet for weight control. Findings also support the possibility that soy protein decreases short-term appetite and calorie intake. Extensive follow-up trials are needed to prove the satiety, or feeling of fullness, factor of soy protein.

Researchers also examined whether soy isoflavones reduce diabetes by stopping fat tissue build up and enhancing fat breakdown. Limited animal trials and human studies suggest soy-based diets and isoflavones may lower blood glucose and insulin levels. If proven effective, a soy-based meal replacement could provide additional benefits to diabetics during weight reduction. Researchers confirmed soy-based diets, compared to other low calorie diets, reduce LDL (bad) cholesterol and triglycerides and raise HDL (good) cholesterol. Findings indicate soy may reduce bone loss in women, but additional clinical trials on soy and bone loss are needed.

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NASA's Quest to Find Water on the Moon Moves Closer to Launch

Cameras and sensors that will look for the presence of water on the moon have completed validation tests and been shipped to the manufacturer of NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite.

The science instruments for the satellite, which is known as LCROSS, departed NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field Calif., for the Northrop Grumman Corporation's facility in Redondo Beach, Calif. to be integrated with the spacecraft. LCROSS is scheduled to launch with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., by the end of 2008.

"The goal of the mission is to confirm the presence or absence of water ice in a permanently shadowed crater at the moon's south pole," says Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS principal investigator at Ames. "The dentification of water is very important to the future of human activities on the moon."

In 2009, LCROSS will separate into two parts and create a pair of impacts on the permanently dark floor of one of the moon's polar craters. The spent Centaur upper stage of the Atlas V rocket will hit the moon, causing an explosion of material from the crater's surface. The instruments aboard the satellite will analyze the plume for the presence of water ice or water vapor, hydrocarbons and hydrated materials. The satellite then will fly through the plume on a collision course with the lunar surface. Both impacts will be visible to Earth and lunar-orbiting instruments.

Northrop Grumman is designing and building the spacecraft. After installing the instruments on the satellite, Northrop Grumman will test the entire spacecraft system to ensure it is flight worthy.

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Complexity of Financial Services Industry Makes It Difficult for Individual Investors to Distinguish Broker-Dealers and Investment Advisers

The financial services industry is complex and financial service professionals are becoming less distinguishable and more inter-related, according to a new RAND Corporation report.

The study found that while individual investors typically fail to distinguish the different duties and services provided by broker-dealers and investment advisers, investors are generally highly satisfied with their own financial service providers.

“Partly because of the diversity of business models and services, individual investors are not aware of the differences between broker-dealers and investment advisors,” says Angela Hung, the study's lead author and an economist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “Nonetheless, investors are generally satisfied with their own financial service provider. This is primarily attributable to the personal attention they receive rather than from the financial returns they experience.”

Research shows that trends in the financial services industry over the past 15 years have blurred the boundaries between broker-dealers, which are regulated by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and investment advisers, which are subject to the Investment Adviser Act of 1940.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission attempted in recent years to clarify the boundaries between broker-dealers and investment advisers, but the regulation it developed was challenged and eventually overturned (Financial Planning Association v. Securities and Exchange Commission).

The SEC selected RAND to examine the current business practices of broker-dealers and investment advisers and explore individual investors' perceptions as to the differences between, and relationships among, the two.

“Broker-dealers and investment advisers have been subject to separate regulatory structures since the 1930s,” Hung says. “But in the past few decades the lines between the two have become increasingly blurred. The SEC can use the findings of this study to better evaluate the current legal and regulatory structure.”

The study includes an analysis of the business practices of thousands of investment advisers and broker-dealers based on information they report in regulatory filings. It also includes analysis of companies that offer both brokerage and advisory services or that are affiliated with companies that offer the complementary service.

To assess investor understanding, the study includes results from an extensive household survey of 654 experienced and inexperienced investors. RAND researchers also conducted six focus groups of experienced and inexperienced investors.

Researchers found that most companies serve as an investment adviser or as a broker-dealer without any affiliations with those that provide the complementary service. A number of other companies, however, were directly engaged in only one type of activity, but were affiliated with a company engaged in the other type. A minority were involved in both brokerage and advisory activities.

Smaller companies, which are much more numerous, tend to provide a more limited and focused range of either investment advisory or brokerage services, although they frequently report some sort of affiliation with companies providing the complementary service.

Hung says these affiliations further blur the boundaries among types of financial services.

“In many cases, we found it difficult to disentangle the services and business relationships of firms that were dually registered or affiliated with other firms,” she says. “So it isn't surprising that the typical investor finds it hard to understand the nature of the investment advisory or brokerage businesses.”

The study found that, in general, the roles of broker-dealers and investment advisers were confusing to most of the household survey respondents and focus-group participants. The survey respondents and focus-group participants indicated they have a general sense of the difference in services offered by brokers and by investment advisers, but that they are not clear about the differences in their specific legal obligations.

Moreover, the study found that survey respondents and focus group participants were unclear about the role of financial professionals who use generic titles, such as “financial advisor” and “financial consultant.”

Hung said that after receiving information detailing some key differences between investment advisers and broker-dealers, focus-group participants reported that the compensation structures, disclosure requirements and legal duties make investment advisers appealing. However, participants reported that the account minimums, industry certification and costs make broker-dealers appealing.

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Video: Interview With In-Vitro Fertilization Experts

Fertility and IVF Center at the George Washington University Medical Faculty Associates. Watch this fascinating interview and learn about the in-vitro fertilization process and how the fertility science has evolved over the last 25 years.

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Ice Cream, Frozen Desserts Market Expected to Fatten to $27.6 Billion by 2012

Despite unchanging consumer demand and fickle consumer tastes, the market for frozen desserts is expected to grow by more than $4 billion by 2012, according to The U.S. Market for Ice Cream and Related Frozen Desserts, a new report from market research publisher Packaged Facts.

Dollar sales continue to grow annually, but not because Americans are eating more frozen desserts: instead, the population is paying more for what it eats. Prices of all dairy products are at an all-time high, and frozen desserts are no exception. Although these higher prices make shoppers hesitant about purchasing frozen desserts at the retail level, they sure don't hesitate at the foodservice level. This phenomenon is driving foodservice sales while retail sales are slowing.

Although ice cream accounted for 59.2 percent (or $13.8 billion) of all U.S. frozen dessert sales in 2007, ice cream's place at the dessert table dropped 0.3 percentage points from 2006. Sales likely went to frozen yogurt. Frozen yogurt's 4.1 percent CAGR from 2003 to 2007 is the highest of all frozen desserts categories. In 2007 alone, frozen yogurt sales grew 12 percent from the 2006 level. With consumers seeking better-for-you indulgence in a frozen form, frozen yogurt manufacturers have engaged in more innovation and new flavors, helping to revive the packaged frozen yogurt business.

"Because this is a mature market, growth for one marketer often comes at the expense of another. And within a company, growth of an individual product line or flavor often cannibalizes sales of another item. This is particularly true with frozen novelties, where product life cycles are extremely short," says Cathy Minkler, editor of Packaged Facts. "Shoppers tend to browse shelves, actively on the lookout for new tastes, informative and exciting packaging, interesting product innovations, or products offering a 'surprise' factor."

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Order Your Flowers For Your 2008 Wedding

If you are planning a wedding this year, you will face seemingly countless details to arrange.

One of those undoubtedly will be your wedding flowers. No matter when you're planning your wedding to take place, it's not too early to start trying to nail down the details.

That includes the flower arrangements. FiftyFlowers may make it easier for you. They offer what they call a "Wedding in a Box," in which the wedding party gets 23 pieces, including bridal bouquet, bridesmaid bouquet, corsages, boutonnieres, and table arrangements. The focal flower, accent flowers and greens are choosen by the bride.

You can't make it much simpler than that. And FiftyFlowers promises quality flowers because they don't store their flowers in coolers. They ship via FedEx from growers in Ecuador, Colombia and other exotic locations.

In addition to weddings, FiftyFlowers supplies flowers for a variety of needs, such as events, hotels, and the personal flower arrangements you want to send for any occasion.

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NASA Scientists Predict Black Hole Light Echo Show

It's well known that black holes can slow time to a crawl and tidally stretch large objects into spaghetti-like strands. But according to new theoretical research from two NASA astrophysicists, the wrenching gravity just outside the outer boundary of a black hole can produce yet another bizarre effect: light echoes.

"The light echoes come about because of the severe warping of spacetime predicted by Einstein," says Keigo Fukumura of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "If the black hole is spinning fast, it can literally drag the surrounding space, and this can produce some wild special effects."

Fukumura and his NASA Goddard colleague Demosthenes Kazanas are presenting their research this Wednesday in a poster session at the American Astronomical Society's 2008 winter meeting in Austin, Texas.

Many black holes are surrounded by disks of searing hot gas that whirl around at nearly the speed of light. Hot spots within these disks sometimes emit random bursts of X-rays, which have been detected by orbiting X-ray observatories. But according to Fukumura and Kazanas, things get more interesting when they take into account Einstein's general theory of relativity, which describes how extremely massive objects like black holes can actually warp and drag the surrounding space-time.

Many of these X-ray photons travel to Earth by taking different paths around the black hole. Because the black hole's extreme gravity warps the surrounding spacetime, it bends the trajectories of the photons so they arrive here with a delay that depends on the relative positions of the X-ray flare, the black hole, and Earth.

But if the black hole rotates very fast, then, according to Fukumura and Kazanas' calculations, the delay between the photons is constant, independent of the source's position. They discovered that for rapidly spinning black holes, about 75 percent of the X-ray photons arrive at the observer after completing a fraction of one orbit around the black hole, while the remaining photons travel the exact same fraction plus one or more full orbits.

"For each X-ray burst from a hot spot, the observer will receive two or more flashes separated by a constant interval, so even a signal made up from a totally random collection of bursts from hot spots at different positions will contain an echo of itself," says Kazanas.

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Aeronautics Associate Administrator Departs NASA for Intelligence R&D Post

Lisa Porter, NASA's associate administrator of the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, announced Wednesday her decision to leave the agency, effective Feb. 1.
Porter is leaving NASA to become the first director of the Intelligence
Advanced Research Projects Activity.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin expressed his appreciation for
Porter's service since she was selected to head the aeronautics directorate
in October 2005.

"While I am very excited about this new opportunity, I am of course saddened by the thought of having to say goodbye to each of you," Porter said. "I am confident that you will all continue to excel and make the nation and the world stand up and take notice of the first 'A' in 'NASA.'"

As the associate administrator for the Aeronautics Mission Directorate, Porter managed the agency's aeronautics research portfolio and guided its strategic direction, which includes research in the fundamental aeronautics of flight, aviation safety and the nation's airspace system.

Porter co-chairs the White House National Science & Technology Council's Aeronautics, Science and Technology Subcommittee. Comprised of federal departments and agencies that fund aeronautics-related research, the subcommittee wrote the nation's first presidential policy for aeronautics research and development.

Porter came to NASA following her service as a senior scientist in the Advanced Technology Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. While there, she created and managed programs in diverse technical areas ranging from fundamental scientific research to multi-disciplinary systems-level development and integration efforts.

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Video: How STAR WARS Almost Never Was

In THE MAKING OF STAR WARS, J.W. Rinzler goes into the Lucasfilm vaults for the complete story behind the original pop culture phenomenon, and tells how it almost never came to be.

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Consumer Reports' Survey: Verizon FiOS a Leading Choice for Internet, Television, Telephone Service

Consumers looking for Internet, television, and telephone service should consider Verizon FiOS. In Consumer Reports' latest survey of several major telecom providers, featured in the February issue, Verizon FiOS, whose network is fiber-optic based, received superior scores for reliability and performance for its Internet, television, and telephone services.

Because the availability of Verizon FiOS is as yet limited, many consumers should also consider other options for these services. The article also includes Ratings of services typically bundled from various providers based on reader scores.

Consumers interested in services provided by a cable company may not have an option when choosing a provider because a majority of homes only have one cable company available in their area. According to CR's survey, better cable companies include Cox, Bright House and Wow, which are fine alternatives to Verizon FiOS in areas that they are available and also offer Internet and telephone services.

If television service is a priority, satellite service may be a fine option. DirecTV scored significantly higher than all the major cable companies and Dish Network, the other major provider of satellite service. It also offers hybrid bundles of its TV offerings and DSL and phone service from telephone providers Qwest and Verizon. DirecTV's television service stacks up well against services offered from the best cable companies and requires getting a satellite dish and other equipment, typically free or at discount in exchange for a contract agreement.

For Internet service offered through a cable company, Wow and Bright House did well in CR's Ratings. Cincinnati Bell, which offers a DSL Internet connection, was one of the higher scoring providers due to its high marks for value and reliability. Verizon's DSL Internet service was average for value, reliability and support, but scores for performance were lagging.

Although landline phone service offers a more reliable connection, especially in cases of an emergency, VoIP phone service scored higher in overall satisfaction in CR's Ratings. Cox was among the leaders especially because of its reliability and performance. Skype was noted for its superior value, but its scores were worse than average when it came to reliability and performance.

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Your Guide To Online Casinos

By now you've probably heard a lot about online casinos and Internet gambling. Maybe you are curious. Where do you start? The online casino bluebook offers such a place. It provides a free online guide to online casinos -- including their Top 10 casinos updated for January!

Find out what payout percentages, read reviews -- and see which casinos accept USA players. Still confused? You can email for assistance to help you find the right casino. You'll also find odds, casino news and other gambling information.

Whatever your game is, you can find an online casino that'll challenge you and perhaps make you the next winner.

Regulations and laws on Internet gambling vary. Please check to see what your laws and legal status are before beginning.

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Survey Shows Overall Employee Confidence Drops to Year Low

The confidence level of U.S. workers slightly decreased in December, according to a recent survey of 2,827 working adults. The Spherion Employee Confidence Index, a monthly gauge of overall worker confidence, decreased by 0.9 point to 52 in December, the lowest level recorded this year.

The survey, conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of Spherion Corporation (NYSE: SFN), revealed that while slightly fewer workers were optimistic about job availability, more were confident in the future of their current employer.

According to the Index, the percentage of workers who believed the economy was getting stronger was unchanged at 12 percent, while slightly fewer workers believed that are more jobs available. Despite this, the percentage of workers who are confident in the future of their current employer increased three percentage points from November to 64 percent. In addition, the number of workers likely to look for a new job in the next year remains stable at 32 percent and nearly eight-in-ten (78 percent) workers feel that they are unlikely to lose their job in the next 12 months.

"With the continuing turmoil in the housing and credit markets and concerns of an overall slowing in the economy, it's not surprising that the Employee Confidence Index has continued its decline," says Roy Krause, president and chief executive officer of Spherion. "This month's Index reached its lowest level in the past year, but not all of the data is negative. In fact, the majority of workers remain confident about their own job security and the future of their current employer. The data also shows that nearly a third of workers plan on finding a new job in the next year, indicating that this certainly isn't the time for employers to ease up on their retention and recruiting efforts. It's those employers who make the extra effort now to be recognized as an employer of choice who will reap the benefits from having top talent in the years to come."

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Fun With RC Cars

We've probably all played with a remote control car in our youth, and it can develop into a fun, serious hobby.

There's a website for enthusiasts of Remote Control Cars, and seeks to explain RC cars and the hobby in straightforward, non-technical language. They even have video of RC cars that is really fun and cool. The site and its navigation setup work to make it easy to find what you are looking for.

This site works for comprehensive coverage, including RC Trucks as well as other vehicles. The site also contains comparisons of different types of RC vehicles, such as Nitro RC Cars.

RC vehicles can be a great family entertainment, bringing together young and old. So whether you are already an RC hobbyist or looking to know more about this fun passtime, visit Everything RC Cars -- and have fun!

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Scientific Balloons Achieve Antarctic Flight Record

NASA and the National Science Foundation say they have achieved a new milestone in conducting scientific observations from balloons, by launching and operating three
long-duration flights within a single Antarctic summer.

"Having three long-duration balloon science missions flying simultaneously is a record-setting event. But of greater significance is the increase in science that can be accomplished with only a modest increase in cost to the program," says David Gregory, assistant chief of NASA's Balloon Program at Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

Unique atmospheric circulation over Antarctica during its summer months allows scientists to launch balloons from a site near McMurdo Station, NSF's logistics hub in Antarctica, and recover them from nearly the same spot weeks later. During that time, each balloon circles the continent one to three times. Scientists from the United States, Japan, South Korea, France and other countries are using the balloons to investigate the nature of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays and to search for antimatter.

The three payloads will ride the stratospheric winds in the polar vortex, a persistent low-pressure system above the Antarctic continent that will help keep balloons aloft for up to six weeks. This orbital pattern allows for long and continuous observations of a variety of phenomena from a single instrument at a fraction of the cost of launching a satellite into space.

The payloads launched Dec. 19 - 26 from McMurdo are the University of Maryland's Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass (CREAM) experiment, the Balloon borne Experiment with a Superconducting Spectrometer (BESS) developed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. and Japan's High Energy Accelerator Center, Tsukuba, Japan, and Louisiana State University's Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter (ATIC).

The CREAM investigation will search for characteristic changes in elemental composition and energy spectra of very high-energy cosmic rays that might be associated with a particle acceleration limit in supernovae. ATIC is focusing on cosmic rays electrons, which are of particular interest because they are subject to synchrotron energy loses, so structure in their spectrum may be linked to individual, nearby sources. BESS will provide definitive measurements of low-energy antiprotons in solar minimum conditions, with precise data that will constrain models for dark matter, in addition to placing limits on decay of primordial black holes and cosmological antimatter.

Once the balloon flights are completed, the payloads will be retrieved, brought back to McMurdo, and then returned to the U.S., where they can be refurbished and launched again.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA conduct an annual scientific-balloon campaign during the Antarctic summer.

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Web Hosting Made Simple

Web hosting seems like it should be a straightforward affair, but often it is not. You can become lost in minutae of storage and bandwidth and more.

That's why Burton Hosting's promise of "Web Hosting Made Simple" seems so refreshing. Burton offers plans for both Business Website Hosting and Personal Website Hosting.

No matter which package you select, Burton promises "No fuss. No hassle." Burton Hosting not only wants to be simple but also low-cost. Burton offers personal Web hosting at $6.95 and business-level hosting at $21.95.

Part of their no-hassle commitment, Burton Hosting offers a variety of templates and other tools to get your Web presence up fast and easy.

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Purdue Wind Tunnel Key For 'Hypersonic Vehicles,' Future Space Planes

By using the only wind tunnel capable of running quietly at "hypersonic" speeds, Purdue University engineers have conducted experiments to yield critical data for designing an advanced aircraft called the X-51A, powered by engines called scramjets.

The X-51A test vehicle is expected to evolve into missiles capable of flying at Mach 6 -- or six times the speed of sound -- enabling them to hit mobile "time-critical" targets.

Scramjets also may propel future military and civilian space planes.

The quiet wind tunnel operation is critical for collecting data to show precisely how air flows over a vehicle's surface in flight. No other wind tunnel runs quietly while conducting experiments in airstreams traveling at Mach 6, says Steven Schneider, an aerospace engineer and professor in Purdue's School of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

"A quiet wind tunnel yields more accurate data because it more closely simulates flight," he says.

Specifically, engineers need detailed information about how airflow changes from "laminar," or smooth, to turbulent as it speeds over an aircraft's surfaces. The information is essential to properly design vehicles that fly at hypersonic speeds, or faster than Mach 5, nearly 4,000 mph, Schneider says.

The X-51 project is led by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the vehicle is being built by Pratt & Whitney and the Boeing Co. Purdue engineers are part of a national team of researchers from government, academia and industry handling different aspects of the vehicle.

The Purdue research focuses on the forebody, or front portion of the craft, using a foot-long model for wind-tunnel testing. Research findings are providing information in two vital areas: maintaining the turbulent flow of air into the engine's combustor to keep the scramjet running properly, and increasing the amount of smooth airflow over the vehicle's upper surface to reduce friction and heat that could damage or destroy the vehicle. The higher the Mach number, the greater the friction and heat generated in flight.

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SETI@home Ramps Up to Analyze More Data in Search of Extraterrestrial Intelligence

The longest-running search for radio signals from alien civilizations is getting a burst of new data from an upgraded Arecibo telescope, which means the SETI@home project needs more desktop computers to help crunch the data.

Since SETI@home launched eight years ago, the project based at the University of California, Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory has signed up more than 5 million interested volunteers and boasts the largest community of dedicated users of any Internet computing project: 170,000 devotees on 320,000 computers.

Yet, new and more sensitive receivers on the world's largest radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, and better frequency coverage are generating 500 times more data for the project than before. The SETI@home software has been upgraded to deal with this new data as the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) enters a new era and offers a new opportunity for those who want to help find other civilizations in the universe.

"The next generation SETI@home is 500 times more powerful then anything anyone has done before," says project chief scientist Dan Werthimer. "That means we are 500 times more likely to find ET than with the original SETI@home."

According to project scientist Eric Korpela, the new data amounts to 300 gigabytes per day, or 100 terabytes (100,000 gigabytes) per year, about the amount of data stored in the U.S. Library of Congress. "That's why we need all the volunteers," he says. "Everyone has a chance to be part of the largest public participation science project in history."

The 1,000-foot diameter Arecibo dish, which fills a valley in Puerto Rico, is part of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center operated by Cornell University with funds from the National Science Foundation. Since 1992, Werthimer and his team have piggybacked on radio astronomy observations at Arecibo to record signals from space and analyze them for patterns that could indicate they were transmitted by an intelligent civilization.

When the team's incoming data overwhelmed its ability to analyze it, the scientists conceived a distributed computing project to harness many computers into one big supercomputer to do the analysis. Since SETI@home was launched, other distributed computing projects have arisen, from folding@home to predict the three-dimensional tangle of a protein to the newly-launched cosmology@home to model possible universes. Most are now on a platform called BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing), which was developed by SETI@home's director David Anderson so that the various projects could share resources.

"There are now 42 projects on BOINC, and, until now, there has been enough computing power to go around," Werthimer says.

What triggered the new flow of data was the addition of seven new receivers at Arecibo, which now allow the telescope to record radio signals from seven regions of the sky simultaneously instead of just one. With greater sensitivity and the ability to detect the polarization of the radio signals, plus 40 times more frequency coverage, Arecibo is set to survey the sky for new radio sources.

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Make Your Finances A New Year's Resolution

New Year's is a good time to consider the state of your finances and how to make them stronger. Some experts are saying a recession is coming which means you want to put your financial situation in the best circumstances possible.

For example, look for the Best Credit Cards you qualify for.

Look for an interest rate more advantageous than you currently enjoy -- that could really save you money each month.

If you find yourself with a lot of credit card debt already, look for a credit card with a low balance transfer rate. Balance your balances and then pay more of it off each month with zero or low interest. That may save you even more and get you off the revolving monthly credit payment merry-go-round sooner.

Please remember to always use credit responsibly.

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Religion Might Keep Anxiety at Bay

For many, religious activity changes between childhood and adulthood, and a new study finds this could affect one’s mental health.

According to Temple University’s Joanna Maselko, women who had stopped being religiously active were more than three times more likely to have suffered generalized anxiety and alcohol abuse/dependence than women who reported always having been active.

“One’s lifetime pattern of religious service attendance can be related to psychiatric illness,” says Maselko, an assistant professor of public health and co-author of the study, which appears in the January issue of Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology.

Conversely, men who stopped being religiously active were less likely to suffer major depression when compared to men who had always been religiously active.

Maselko offers one possible explanation for the gender differences in the relationship between religious activity and mental health.

“Women are simply more integrated into the social networks of their religious communities. When they stop attending religious services, they lose access to that network and all its potential benefits. Men may not be as integrated into the religious community in the first place and so may not suffer the negative consequences of leaving,” Maselko says.

The study expands on previous research in the field by analyzing the relationship between mental health — anxiety, depression and alcohol dependence or abuse — and spirituality using current and past levels, said Maselko, who conducted the research when she was at Harvard University.

In the study sample, comprising 718 adults, a majority of men and women changed their level of religious activity between childhood and adulthood, which was critical information for the researchers.

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Study Provides Framework for Passenger-Rail Systems to Cost-Effectively Protect Riders from Terrorist Attacks

A RAND Corp. study gives rail security planners and policymakers a framework to develop cost-effective plans to secure their rail systems from terrorist attacks.

More than 12 million Americans travel on passenger-rail lines each weekday, and because of its open nature, rail transit is considered an attractive terrorist target. While there have been no successful attacks on U.S. rail systems recently, attacks on passenger-rail systems around the world — such as the London Underground in 2005 — highlight the vulnerability of rail travel and the importance of rail security for passengers.

The study by RAND, a nonprofit research organization, uses a generic intracity rail system with characteristics similar to existing American systems. An interdisciplinary team of RAND researchers identified 17 security improvement options — such as canine teams, vehicle surveillance systems, and blast resistant containers — and assessed their relative effectiveness when deployed in different parts of the rail system.

“Millions ride the nation's railways every day, and it is critical to protect them from terrorist attacks. But we need ways to do so while getting the most for the money we invest,” says Jeremy Wilson, the study's lead author. “By design, rail systems are open and accessible by large numbers of people, and for this reason are difficult to secure.”

The framework RAND researchers developed gives transit officials a guide to help them evaluate their systems and determine the best, and most efficient, ways to improve safety. The study is based on a composite system in order to avoid disclosing confidential details about any specific rail system in the United States.

Brian Jackson, co-author of the report, says terrorists have demonstrated the ability to change strategies and tactics in response to security measures. As a result, passenger-rail officials and policy makers need to adapt in order to protect their riders.

“Rather than providing a static defense, security planners should review their plans regularly to ensure that they remain relevant to any changes in the terrorists' targeting methods,” Jackson says.

The study focuses on addressing vulnerabilities and limiting consequences, the two components of risk rail security measures can most influence. Additionally, researchers focused on intracity heavy rail systems—characterized by high speed and rapid acceleration cars, such as the Metro in Washington, D.C., MARTA in Atlanta and the Red Line in Los Angeles—and did not include light rail or commuter rail, such as Amtrak.

The study finds that 80 percent of the worldwide attacks on rail systems were bombings, followed by sabotage (6 percent) and armed attack (6 percent). Explosives accounted for 77 percent of the weapons used in rail system terrorist incidents, with 8 percent of the incidents involving hoaxes or threats.

Using the generic rail system as the intended target, researchers took data on past terrorist attacks on rail systems from the RAND-Oklahoma City National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT) Terrorist Incident Database to develop a risk assessment.

Researchers examined 11 potential attack locations in a rail system, such as underground infrastructure, ground-level stations, and elevated rail lines, and subjected them to eight different forms of attack, including bombings, incendiaries, and unconventional weapons.

The research was sponsored by an award from the National Institute of Justice, the research, development and evaluation arm of the U.S. Department of Justice.

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