A Comeback for Lamarckian Evolution?

Silencing DNA: Adding methyl groups to specific spots in the genome can alter the expression of marked genes. The process, known as DNA methylation, is one mechanism of epigenetic change, heritable change that does not alter the sequence of DNA itself. In this image, colored bars represent the bases that make up a strand of DNA, while the green circles represent methylation. Credit: Technology Review

The effects of an animal's environment during adolescence can be passed down to future offspring, according to two new studies. If applicable to humans, the research, done on rodents, suggests that the impact of both childhood education and early abuse could span generations. The findings provide support for a 200-year-old theory of evolution that has been largely dismissed: Lamarckian evolution, which states that acquired characteristics can be passed on to offspring.

"The results are extremely surprising and unexpected," says Li-Huei Tsai, a neuroscientist at MIT who was not involved in the research. Indeed, one of the studies found that a boost in the brain's ability to rewire itself and a corresponding improvement in memory could be passed on. "This study is probably the first study to show there are transgenerational effects not only on behavior but on brain plasticity."

In recent years, scientists have discovered that epigenetic changes--heritable changes that do not alter the sequence of DNA itself--play a major role in development, allowing genetically identical cells to develop different characteristics; epigenetic changes also play a role in cancer and other diseases. (The definition of epigenetics is somewhat variable, with some scientists limiting the term to refer to specific molecular mechanisms that alter gene expression.) Most epigenetic studies have been limited to a cellular context or have looked at the epigenetic effects of drugs or diet in utero. These two new studies are unique in that the environmental change that triggers the effect--enrichment or early abuse--occurs before pregnancy. "Give mothers chemicals, and it can affect offspring and the next generation," says Larry Feig, a neuroscientist at Tufts University School of Medicine, in Boston, who oversaw part of the research. "In this case, [the environmental change] happened way before the mice were even fertile."

In Feig's study, mice genetically engineered to have memory problems were raised in an enriched environment--given toys, exercise, and social interaction--for two weeks during adolescence. The animals' memory improved--an unsurprising finding, given that enrichment has been previously shown to boost brain function. The mice were then returned to normal conditions, where they grew up and had offspring. This next generation of mice also had better memory, despite having the genetic defect and never having been exposed to the enriched environment.

The researchers also looked at a molecular correlate of memory called long-term potentiation, or LTP, a mechanism that strengthens connections between neurons. Environmental enrichment fixed faulty LTP in mice with the genetic defect; the fixed LTP was then passed on to their offspring. The findings held true even when pups were raised by memory-deficient mice that had never had the benefits of toys and social interaction. "When you look at offspring, they still have the defect in the protein, but they also have normal LTP," says Feig. The findings were published today in theJournal of Neuroscience.

"If the findings can be conveyed to human, it means that girls' education is important not just to their generation but to the next one," says Moshe Szyf of McGill University, in Montreal, who was not involved in the research.

In a second study, researchers found that rats raised by stressed mothers that neglected and physically abused their offspring showed specific epigenetic modifications to their DNA. The abused mice grew up to be poor mothers, and appeared to pass down these changes to their offspring.

Previous research has shown that bad rat mothering can be passed down through this kind of DNA modification--but those changes are thought to be triggered specifically by maternal behavior. In the new study, researchers also had healthy mothers raise the offspring of stressed mothers, and found that the problems were only partially fixed. That suggests that the changes "were not due to their neonatal experience," says says David Sweatt, a neuroscientist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who oversaw the study. "It was something that was already there when they were born." The research was published online last month in Biological Psychiatry.

The results of both studies are likely to be controversial, perhaps resurrecting a centuries-old debate. "It's very provocative," says Lisa Monteggia, a neuroscientist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, in Dallas. "It goes back to two schools of thought: Lamarck versus Darwin."

In contrast to natural selection, in which organisms that are born well adapted to their environment survive and reproduce, passing down those successful traits, Lamarckian evolution suggests that animals can develop adaptive traits, such as better memory, during their lifetimes, and pass on those traits to their offspring. The latter theory was largely abandoned as Darwin's, and later Mendel's, theories took hold. But the concept of Lamarckian inheritance has made a comeback in recent years, as scientists learn more about epigenetics.

"I didn't set out to come up with findings that support neo-Lamarckian inheritance," says Sweatt. "But the research now makes it more plausible that these things may be real and may be based in molecular mechanisms."

Feig, on the other hand, argues that while the findings are "a Lamarckian kind of phenomenon it's still Darwinian, because the changes don't last forever." In Feig's study, the offspring of enriched mice lost their memory benefits after a few months.

Sweatt and others say that this type of inheritance may in fact be much more common than expected. Improving technologies are now providing a broader look at the epigenetic changes linked to environment and behavior. Scientists are starting to use DNA microarrays, which over the past few years have become widely employed in genetic studies of disease, to look at one specific type of change, known as DNA methylation. "The changes we see are not limited to a small number of genes," says Szyf, who is using the technology to study epigenetics and cancer. "Whole circuitries are changed."

DNA sequencing, which is rapidly dropping in price, can also be used to study DNA methylation. But epigenetics studies require high-volume sequencing, which has been prohibitively expensive. "In contrast to the genome, every epigenome is different in different types of cells," says Sweatt. "A human epigenome project would be the equivalent of 250 human genomes, because there are at least 250 cell types in the body." Cheap sequencing may soon make that type of study possible, he says.

The actual mechanism underlying these patterns of inheritance is somewhat mystifying to scientists. Feig theorizes that environmental enrichment triggers a long-lasting hormonal change: when the animal becomes pregnant, the hormone would somehow modify the DNA of the fetus, ultimately causing it to have improved memory and LTP as an adolescent. However, he cautions, there is no direct evidence of this, and no specific evidence that the behaviors are transmitted through epigenetic mechanisms.

Next Generation iPhone May Have Videoconferencing, At Last

By Jesus Diaz

Given Apple's focus on videoconferencing with iChat AV, I always found strange that there wasn't a front camera in the iPhone. Looking at their gigantic iPhone patent, it may be coming in the next generation:

"In some embodiments, the functions may include telephoning, video conferencing, e-mailing, instant messaging, blogging, digital photographing, digital videoing, Web browsing, digital music playing, and/or digital video playing. Instructions for performing these functions may be included in a computer-readable storage medium or other computer program product configured for execution by one or more processors."

"In some embodiments, an optical sensor is located on the back of the device, opposite the touch screen display on the front of the device, so that the touch screen display may be used as a viewfinder for either still and/or video image acquisition. In some embodiments, an optical sensor is located on the front of the device so that the user's image may be obtained for videoconferencing while the user views the other video conference participants on the touch screen display. In some embodiments, the position of the optical sensor can be changed by the user (e.g., by rotating the lens and the sensor in the device housing) so that a single optical sensor may be used along with the touch screen display for both video conferencing and still and/or video image acquisition."

Most probably, it was shaved from the first version for the same reason 3G was avoided: Cost. My guess is that, as manufacturing prices went down, Apple added the GPS and 3G. And next in the Big Features list, is videoconferencing (late, as almost every other 3G phone in the market has this feature already). [PC World]

Doubts Over India's $20 Laptop

Credit: Technology Review

Yesterday, India unveiled a prototype laptop that will reportedly cost only $20. Dubbed Sakshat, the machine is meant to bridge the digital divide and provide a means for delivering online educational materials to students in more than 18,000 colleges across the country. But the prospect of producing any kind of laptop so cheaply has been met with widespread skepticism.

The pioneer laptop in this area is the XO machine created by the nonprofit One Laptop per Child (OLPC) foundation. This machine was originally meant to cost $100, but the price now stands at $188. While the foundation maintains that it can break the $100 barrier--and may even reach $75 in its next-generation version--creating a $20 machine is all but impossible, says Jim Gettys, OLPC's former vice president for software.

"I don't understand how anyone can build anything for real at that price," Gettys says. "There are too many components that cost $20 by themselves, never mind as a package." He mentions that even in volume, a low-cost screen runs to more than $20, while touch pads and keyboards cost $5 to $10 apiece, and memory and processors cost considerably more.

Sakshat was reportedly unveiled yesterday morning in Tirupati, India, by the Indian Education Ministry. According to these reports, Sakshat has two gigabytes of random-access memory and wireless and fixed Ethernet connections, consumes just two watts of power, and will be available in retail outlets in India in six months. Generally, though, the announcement raised more questions than it answered about what had actually been achieved.

R. P. Agrawal, India's secretary of secondary and higher education, who is leading the project, did not reply to messages, and there appeared to be no direct, official online announcement. But according to reports, the laptop was created over several months in a cooperative effort involving India's Vellore Institute of Technology; the Indian Institute of Science, in Bangalore; and the Indian Institute of Technology, in Madras.

Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of OLPC, also expressed skepticism over the price. "Wish the $20 laptop were true," he wrote in an e-mail, adding that if the laptop's claims were "close to true," it would be "a sign of great success" for OLPC in spurring development of low-cost machines for students around the world. "The technical data we have received to now suggests it is very inferior, but that does not matter at all," he added.

Vivek Pai, a computer scientist at Princeton University working on computing solutions for the developing world, says that, at a $20 price point, "it might be more plausible if we were talking about a 'fat keyboard' type of system that connects to a TV." After reading press coverage of the machine's specs, he adds that "it might be fine as an e-book reader, but I don't believe it will be a general-purpose machine."

Whatever the cost and capabilities of the machine, the effort may represent something of a turnaround for the Indian government. In 2006, Sudeep Banerjee, then the Indian minister of education, criticized the OLPC laptop and educational software as "pedagogically suspect" and added, "We need classrooms and teachers more urgently than fancy tools." But yesterday, the aims of the Sakshat project seemed remarkably similar to those of OLPC, right down to the development of online content and digital textbooks from major publishers.

Part of the reason that the laptop might be so cheap is because of government subsidies. A report in the Times of India said that government agencies would provide funding for related infrastructure.

Managing Energy with Swarm Logic

Smart switch: The controller shown here could improve the energy efficiency of building appliances. The devices communicate wirelessly and use swarming algorithms to collaboratively decide how to manage power usage. Credit: REGEN Energy

Air-conditioning units and heating systems are examples of power-hungry equipment that regularly switches on and off in commercial buildings. When these devices are all switched on at once, power consumption spikes, and a building's owners are left with hefty peak-demand charges on their electricity bills.

A startup based in Toronto says that it has come up with a way to reduce energy use by mimicking the self-organizing behavior of bees. REGEN Energy has developed a wireless controller that connects to the control box on a piece of building equipment and functions as a smart power switch. Once several controllers have been activated, they detect each other using a networking standard called ZigBee and begin negotiating the best times to turn equipment on and off. The devices learn the power cycles of each appliance and reconfigure them to maximize collective efficiency.

The goal is to avoid everything coming on at the same time without sacrificing individual performance. The devices work through this problem using a "swarm algorithm" that coordinates activity without any single device issuing orders.

"Every node thinks for itself," says Mark Kerbel, cofounder and chief executive officer of REGEN Energy, which invented the proprietary algorithm embedded in each device. Before making a decision, he explains, a node will consider the circumstances of other nodes in its network. For example, if a refrigerator needs to cycle on to maintain a minimum temperature, a node connected to a fan or pump will stay off for an extra 15 minutes to keep power use below a certain threshold. "The devices must satisfy the local restraint but simultaneously satisfy the system objective," says Kerbel, adding that a typical building might have between 10 and 40 controllers working together in a single "hive." The devices are simple and quick to install and, because there's no human intervention, require no special training to use.

It's a dramatic departure from the top-down command model associated with current building-automation systems. Some researchers say that the decentralized approach to energy management offers a cheaper, more effective way to manage supply and demand in a delicately balanced electricity system. Indeed, some believe that it could be an early prescription for an emerging smart grid.

"You're seeing a lot more interest in this on a modest scale," says David Chassin, a scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's energy-technology group, which is heading up the GridWise smart-grid initiative.

The benefits could extend beyond electricity savings for building owners. Today's electricity system is designed for peak consumption, which means that power plants are built to satisfy those few minutes of each day when power demand surges well above daily averages. By reducing peak demand on a large scale, utilities can maximize the operation of existing power plants while reducing the need to build new plants for occasional use. Another potential benefit is reduced carbon emissions, since power plants that supply peak electricity tend to be less efficient and fueled by coal and natural gas.

George Pappas, a professor of electrical and systems engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert in distributed control systems, says that swarm logic is a natural fit for energy applications. "REGEN is ahead of the curve on this," says Pappas.

Operation within a building is one thing, but less certain is whether swarm logic can be trusted to manage the grid itself. Chassin says that the engineering community is understandably wary of decentralized or "emergent" control systems for the grid because, while they work remarkably well in certain applications, the approach is not well tested.

Kerbel first came up with the idea of using a swarm algorithm to manage power consumption in 2005. "We were politely told that this style of control just isn't ready and requires far more academic research," he says. "It's difficult to think outside the command-and-control box and allow this leap of faith--that is, relinquishing decision-making capabilities to individual nodes of the collective."

It's a bias that Herb Sinnock, manager of the Centennial Energy Institute, in Toronto, admits to having. He says that engineers typically want constant feedback so that they can measure system operation and make refinements. REGEN's technology dispenses with all that, but he notes that its application will allow for some mistakes. "It's not like they're positioning control rods in a nuclear reactor core. We're talking about affecting the temperature in a room by half a degree, so there's room for error," says Sinnock.

Sinnock's institute has been working with REGEN to evaluate the performance of its devices in the field. Tests have so far demonstrated that building owners--of hospitals, hotels, shopping malls, factories, and other large facilities--could save as much as 30 percent on their peak-demand charges. Those savings, REGEN claims, more than cover the cost of renting the devices, which is an option for major electricity consumers reluctant to buy the technology up front. If the devices are purchased, the payback is less than three years, says Kerbel.

The simplicity of the installation is what impresses Sinnock most. "In a few hours, they can have the devices installed and figuring out their environment and surroundings," he says. Pappas, meanwhile, says that he expects there will be much more interest in this type of application over the coming years, pointing to a U.S. economic stimulus package that calls for more investment in energy efficiency and smart-grid technologies. "A lot of the big impact and low-hanging fruit is going to come from using this approach," he says.

A Robomedic for the Battlefield

Roboinspector: A snake robot inspects the head of a skeleton lying on a high-tech stretcher designed by the military, called the Life Support for Trauma and Transport system. Credit: Howie Choset/Carnegie Mellon University

Multimedia Watch a demo of the snakelike robotic arm.

The first 30 minutes after a battlefield injury are dire: that's when nearly 86 percent of battlefield deaths occur. Before attending to the wounded, frontline physicians have to quickly locate the casualty and extract him from the battlefield, often under heavy fire. This can take up costly minutes, as well as expose medics themselves as possible targets.

Now researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) are developing technology to give battlefield medics a helping hand--literally. Howie Choset, an associate professor of robotics at CMU, has engineered a snakelike robotic arm equipped with various sensors that can monitor a soldier's condition. The robot can be wirelessly controlled via a joystick, so that a doctor at a remote clinic may move the robot to any point on a soldier's body to assess his injuries as he's being carried to a safe location. The robot's serpentine flexibility allows it to maneuver within tight confines, so that, in case a casualty can't be extracted from the battlefield immediately, the robot can perform an initial medical assessment in the field.

Choset and his colleagues have been building "snakebots" for over 10 years, improving range of motion and flexibility, as well as minimizing the overall size in multiple prototypes. In the past, the group has designed robots for urban search-and-rescue missions, and has worked with Ford Motor Company to build snake robots for precise auto-body painting. The team recently formed a startup company to commercialize one of its latest technologies, a robot that can potentially perform heart surgery.

Currently, the team is collaborating with the U.S. Army's Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) to integrate the robotic arm within the military's high-tech stretcher, called the Life Support for Trauma and Transport system (LSTAT). This stretcher is essentially a portable intensive-care unit, with a ventilator, defibrillator, and other physiological monitors, and it's currently being used in areas of Iraq and Afghanistan. Medics can quickly load a casualty onto the stretcher and attend to injuries with the equipment onboard.

"It has all these sensors onboard so we can perform preliminary diagnostics and maybe therapeutics to save the guy's life," says Choset. "The problem is, these sensors are attached to the LSTAT, and you would have to move them by hand, and if someone's shot and you go over and help them, you're an easy target. So we want to automate this whole system, and robotically move the sensors onto the patient while he's being dragged off the battlefield."

Choset and his students have engineered a highly articulated robotic arm that consists of multiple actuated joints, which give the robot a snakelike flexibility. Each joint has two degrees of freedom that, working together, allow the robot to flex, retract, and twist into different configurations, much like a live snake.

Because it's impossible for a person to simultaneously control all the joints on the snake, the team developed software to enable precise control of the robot's movements via a joystick. In lab tests, researchers could successfully guide the arm, mounted with a camera, up and down a skeleton's body using the joystick and watch the resulting pictures on a laptop.

Choset has affixed various physiological sensors to the robotic arm, including a detector for carbon dioxide and oxygen to test whether a person is breathing. He says that the robot can also sport an oxygen mask and, if connected to the stretcher's onboard ventilator, can potentially maneuver over a soldier's mouth and deliver oxygen, without the help of a medic.

In the future, Choset hopes to add an ultrasound component to the robot, so that it can quickly scan a soldier for signs of internal bleeding. His team is collaborating with researchers at Georgetown University to develop an ultrasound probe for the robotic arm. To perform ultrasound, Choset says that the robot would require a certain amount of strength and delicacy so that it can determine how much force to apply to gently press a probe against the skin. He and his students plan to explore this robotic challenge in the future, along with other applications for the snake robot.

Sylvain Cardin, a senior medical robotics scientist at TATRC, suggests that there may be other military applications for the robotic arm. "It could be on a small vehicle you could send into the field, and the medic could attend the patient in a remote location," says Cardin. "So you could be under fire, and could send this little vehicle out with the snake arm, and be able to attend the casualty without showing everyone we're attending the casualty."

Google Eearth Plumbs the Ocean's Depths

Deep-sea diving: This screenshot of Google Earth 5.0 shows a number of icons along the coast of northern California. Clicking on the shark icon out at sea brings up a video of a shark that has been tagged, as well as tracking data. Credit: Technology Review

Multimedia Watch a demo of the new version of Google Earth.

When Google Earth was introduced in 2005, it showed how fun digital mapping could be, allowing users to zoom over the planet's continents and explore their most spectacular features. However, 70 percent of the planet's surface--the proportion that is covered by ocean--has always remained off limits to Google Earth users.

In an announcement today at the California Academy of Sciences, in San Francisco, Google has rectified the situation. The latest version of the company's mapping software, Google Earth 5.0, lets users dive deep below the surface of the sea to view ocean-floor topography. Furthermore, they can click on icons that describe aquatic ecosystems and watch, for example, videos of killer whales eating seals. "We have extended the map of the world to include the ocean parts of the world, as well as the land parts," said John Henke, Google lead for the project, in today's announcement.

Sylvia Earle, a renowned oceanographer and former chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), played an integral role in adding ocean data to Google Earth. She and Henke met at an event in 2006 where she raved about Google Earth but noted that it should really be called "Google Dirt" because it ignored the part of the planet covered by water. Since then, the pair has worked to add ocean data to the platform.

At today's event, Earle demonstrated a number of new Google Earth features. A user can, for instance, view the migration patterns of the great white shark and see the sort of underwater terrain that the shark sees on its long journey. Earle also showed how the different ocean surface temperatures can be tracked. "You can track the importance of temperature in how El Niño and La Niña form," she said today.

The ocean data added to Google Earth includes more than 50,000 separate measurements, such as the elevation of underwater terrain and more than 20,000 extra pieces of information, including videos, pictures, and text excerpts, said Henke. This information can be added to the virtual map using a taskbar in the software.

Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, says that the software is more than just a fun visual demonstration. With all the information that it provides, "it's a platform for science and research," he says, "and literally understanding the future of the earth."

Then and now: This image compares two satellite shots of the same location in Thompsonville, MA. The low-resolution, black-and-white image was taken in 1995, before a housing development had been built on the central hill. The second picture, in color and with a higher resolution, was taken in 2008. Credit: Technology Review

Former U.S. vice president Al Gore spoke at Monday's press event about Google Earth's potential as a conservation tool. Gore demonstrated another feature in Google Earth 5.0 that lets people access historical satellite imagery of certain locations. He spotlighted the famously retreating Grinnell Glacier in Glacier National Park, in Montana. Gore also said that Google Earth is an "important shift" in the way that people view information, allowing the average person to see how geographic locations have been impacted by climate change.

Other new features include Google Mars, which lets users fly over Martian terrain and explore landmarks such as Olympus Mons, the solar system's largest known volcano. Additionally, Google Earth users can now create virtual tours, providing flyover views of locations with narration, videos, pictures, and text. And all Google Earth users can now upload coordinates from GPS devices to visualize a road trip or bicycle ride, for example. This feature was previously only available in the Plus and Pro versions of the software.

Since being released in June of 2005, Google Earth has been downloaded more than half a billion times. The software was originally called Earth Viewer and was created by Keyhole, a mapping company that Google acquired in 2004.

The engineers, scientists, and conservationists who worked on the latest version of the software hope that the new view of the ocean provided by Google Earth will educate people, inspire further research, and motivate conservation. So many natural resources have been lost already, says Terry Garcia, executive vice president for mission programs at National Geographic, which was involved in the Google Earth effort. "This new platform is going to allow us to show people exactly what is happening to the earth, and help us engage them, so we can start to recover some of our losses," he says.

Genes that Fend Off Cancer

Fighting cancer: Ken Offit, chief of the clinical genetics service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, in New York. Credit: Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Women who carry mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes have a dramatically increased risk of developing breast cancer: a 36 to 85 percent chance of developing the disease during their lifetime, which is three to five times greater than the average risk rate. Ken Offit, chief of the clinical genetics service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, in New York, wants to know how the other 15 to 64 percent escape unscathed.

Genetic microarrays that allow scientists to quickly screen the genomes of thousands of patients are finally bringing that question within reach. In a new study, scientists around the globe are collecting DNA samples from women with mutations in BRCA2. Researchers will scour their genomes for variations that are more common in carriers who have made it to old age cancer free. If they're successful, the study could point to genetic pathways that reveal new ways to treat cancer or prevent it before it even begins.

Because genetic variations that protect against cancer are expected to exert only a moderate effect on breast-cancer risk, scientists need to study thousands of women to find them. And because BRCA mutations are rare, occurring in about 1 in 400 women in the general population (and about 1 in 40 Ashkenazi Jewish women), cancer and genetics centers all over the world are collaborating on the study. Offit talks with Technology Review about the genetics of cancer protection.

Technology Review: Tell us about the new study.

Ken Offit: We're focusing on two extreme phenotypes in breast cancer. At one end of the spectrum are women who have inherited a predisposing mutation which vastly increases the risk of breast cancer and who develop it at early age. At the other extreme are older women who have not developed cancer, despite having that predisposing mutation. We will search for [genetic variations] that are protective against breast cancer.

It's a very simple study that we've been wanting to do for a long time.

TR: Why is the study only now being carried out?

KO: Two factors have finally come together to make it feasible. The technology is at hand: SNP arrays [microarrays that can quickly detect single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, across the entire genome]. And through international collaboration, we finally have enough women to do the study.

We already have in hand over 5,000 carriers of BRCA2 from around the world. That's an extraordinary number of individuals coming from virtually every major cancer and genetics center around the world.

TR: Have genetic factors that are protective against breast cancer been found before?

KO: Candidate gene studies have found some protective markers--for example, a SNP in a gene called rad51, which appears to confer some protection in BRCA2 carriers. It's a gene involved in the process of DNA damage response and repair.

TR: Are there drugs that can protect against cancer?

KO: Sometimes taking drugs like tamoxifen [a drug that interferes with the activity of estrogen and is used to treat breast cancer] can reduce risk in BRCA carriers. But it has risks.

TR: Could the same approach find protective factors for other types of cancer?

KO: In theory, the same approach could be applied to other hereditary cancer syndromes, such as colon cancer, thyroid cancer, or pediatric cancers. The question is whether the same factors that protect women from getting breast cancer or other cancers in the face of strong genetic predisposition will be generalizable to the population at large. We also hope to look at that.

TR: Will the results of the study be useful for genetic screening?

KO: The risk for breast cancer [in BRCA carriers] over the course of a lifetime can range from 30 to 40 percent up to 80 to 90 percent, based on different studies. The hope would be that by mapping modifiers [genetic variants that either increase or decrease risk], we would be able to tell women which end they are closer to.

Women who have mutations that modify risk may well be interested in tailoring their preventive medical management to an adjustment in risk. Someone carrying a series of modifiers that indicate they are at particular risk at early age might elect to have more frequent surveillance or surgical risk reduction.

TR: Will this study lead to new drugs that protect against the development of cancer?

KO: In any gene discovery experiment, the long-term goal is to better understand the biology of the process, which can then serve as the rationale for pharmacologic development. Certainly, the identification of genes that are protective against all the processes in aging, including the increasing cancer risk, would be interesting targets for drug development.

Ticketmaster and LiveNation Close to Merger

Live music behemoths Live Nation and Ticketmaster are apparently negotiating a proposed merger, according to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), after the ticketing contract between the two companies ended at the beginning of the year. Although neither board has approved the deal, the talks are said to be in a fairly late stage.

Late last fall, Live Nation representatives said they were excited about rolling out their own ticketing service to replace their contract with Ticketmaster. Instead, Live Nation, the biggest concert promoter in the world, and Ticketmaster, the biggest ticketing company in the world, want to merge their operations into a single company called Live Nation Ticketmaster through a deal in which no cash would change hands.

Some had hoped the expiration of Live Nation's contract with Ticketmaster would result in a reduction of the convenience fees that have made Ticketmaster one of the most reviled brands among music fans. With Live Nation and Ticketmaster competing, the door might open for smaller companies to join the ticketing fray, and for prices to drop as ticketers competed for audience.

The Journal says one potential sticking point is about who will lead the company, but that could be small potatoes compared to potential antitrust issues with the deal. Neither Ticketmaster nor Live Nation has returned our requests for comment so far, but sources we've canvassed raised the specter of the Federal Trade Commission blocking the deal on antitrust grounds.

Although the government has other concerns at the moment, a number of parties have significant incentive to try to get the FTC to pay close attention to the deal. According to a Reuters source, record labels and managers as well as smaller ticketing companies and concert promoters are likely to oppose it. The same record label source mentioned that President Barack Obama is likely to oppose the merger as well.

Hands on with Nikon's New Camera Range

Nikon today announced eight (count 'em) new Coolpix cameras, from a cheap-as-chips $110 (L19) up to the $400 Coolpix P90. The range is, of course, confusing. Nikon gave me a sneak peek of all the new models at CES this year and even my head is spinning sifting the press releases. We'll concentrate on a few key models, and point out the truly useful new features hidden amongst all the usual marketing bunk.

The first surprise is the price of each camera. They're cheap, but they certainly don't feel it. The biggest bargain of the range is the S220, above. It costs $150, but feels like it costs twice that thanks to the small size and sold metal shell.

The camera doesn't have all the fancy new gizmos found on its brethren, but you do get some truly useful features -- 10 megapixels, image stabilization, a decent 3x zoom (35-105 equivalent) and a big-for-the-price 2.5mm LCD screen. Not essential but nice to have features include a "blink-proof" mode. This would be great for me -- any shot I take of the Lady seems to catch her with her eyes firmly shut.

Next up is the $270 S630, notable for its 3" touch screen and lens that is 28mm at the wide end. The screen is used to control the usual functions but Nikon, in a fit of retro-fever, decided to include a stylus which "brings an element of personalization and expression". With it you can scrawl on your pictures. This is actually pretty neat, meaning you can annotate snaps and use your camera as a digital notebook. Combine with the online notebook Evernote and an Eye-Fi card and you're golden.

Further up the range is the top-end of Coolpix compacts, the S630. Despite being hobbled by too many pixels – 12 million of them – the camera has pretty much everything you need. In addition to the "four-way image stabilization" (which is just normal stabilization with some software tweaks to select higher shutter speeds, along with a burst mode that captures ten shots and picks the sharpest), you get a 2.7" display, a 7x optical zoom, all the auto electronic crap you'd expect (red-eye reduction, motion detection) and one truly amazing feature. The ISO goes up to 6400.

This last is proving to be a trend at Nikon. The D3 and D700 SLRs are famed for their low light capabilities and its now trickling down into the consumer range. I tried a few shots at ISO 6400 and while it isn't exactly clean and sparkling, its easily "good enough" -- way better than what I get at just ISO 1600 on my Canon G9 for example.

Finally, we'll visit the top end P90, at a reasonable $400. You get everything mentioned above (except the gimmicky touch screen) along with enough extras to keep you playing for weeks. First, the lens. This uses Nikon's ED (Extra-low Dispersion) glass, found in the company's pro-level SLR lenses and crams in a massive 24x zoom – an optical zoom – which starts at 26mm and ends up at a ridiculous 624mm at the far end. Make sure you have the image stabilization switched on.

Nikon sensibly decided to keep the pixel count at "just" 12MP, allowing the above mentioned 6400 ISO mode. The LCD screen is a 3" monster and can be flipped out and twisted, and when you hit the shutter release you can let the camera scream away at 15 frames per second for up to 45 frames.

Playing with it, I remember that the screen is tough feeling and also very very sharp, similar to the high-res LCD found on the D700 and D3. This is a good thing, because Nikon left out a proper viewfinder and instead put in an electronic one. I hate these, but honestly, with an LCD like this you won't ever need to use the viewfinder anyway.

The Nikon folks told me that they're sick of chasing megapixels, and have started to do something about it. Sure, the public still swoons with ever higher dot-densities, but enthusiasts are starting to appreciate other things like low light sensitivity (not to mention the hard drive space saved by not shooting at 24MP).

This, along with Casio's excellent 1000fps Exilim FC100 and Canon's high-def video shooting 5D MKII, is marking a real change in the digicam market. We've caught up with film already. Now it's time to start doing things that film cameras never could.

Product range [Nikon]

Taking Traffic Control Lessons from Ants

If humans took their cues from ants, they might spend less time in traffic.

When opposing streams of leafcutter ants share a narrow path, they instinctively alternate flows in the most efficient way possible. Studying how ants manage this could provide the basis for a system of driverless cars running on ant traffic algorithms.

"They never get stuck in traffic," said Audrey Dussutour, a University of Sydney entomologist. "We should use their rules. I've been working with ants for eight years, and have never seen a traffic jam — and I've tried."

People have long been fascinated with the ability of ants to organize colonial activities in patterns as sophisticated as any urban engineer's megalopolis blueprint. In recent years, scientists have turned ant traffic flows into algorithms applicable to data transmission and vehicular traffic.

Dussutour, whose earlier work showed that leafcutter ants organize themselves into separate and tightly-regulated streams of load-carrying and unburdened individuals when traveling in opposite directions on wide paths, was curious about their dynamics on narrow paths such as the tip of a treebranch — the ant equivalent of a one-lane road.

In the latest findings, published in the February issue of the Journal of Experimental Biology, Dussutour's team found that ants leaving the colony automatically gave right-of-way to those returning with food. Of the returning ants, some were empty-mandibled — but rather than passing their leaf-carrying, slow-moving brethren, they gathered in clusters and moved behind them.

This seemingly counterintuitive strategy — when stuck behind a slow-moving truck, are you content to slow down? — actually saved them time.

"Leafcutters paths in particular look very much like car traffic," said Dussutour. "There's a lot of times on the highway when you're stuck behind a truck, and sometimes overtaking it is not optimal."

The results are an example of how individual behaviors optimized to serve a collective good can ultimately benefit the individual as well. If humans would let a network take the wheel, these principles might manage our own congested thoroughfares.

"We essentially would have to hand over control of the vehicle to a collectively intelligent
system that would move all vehicles from their source to destination," said Marcus Randall, a Bond University software mathematician. People would be reluctant, he said, but "accidents would be virtually non-existent and travel would become much more efficient.

If ants in the experiment behaved like the average human driver, they'd routinely run head-first into each other, causing insect versions of pile-ups and gridlock. Dussutour's team calculated that patience reduced the average delay experienced by an individual ant crossing a crowded three-meter bridge from 64 to 32 seconds.

"One dominating factor in human traffic is egoism," said University of Zoln traffic flow theorist Andreas Schadschneider. "Drivers optimize their own travel time, without taking much care about others. This leads to phantom traffic jams which occur without any obvious reason. Ants, on the other hand, are not egoistic."

Another way of understanding the difference between human and ant navigation decisions, he said, comes from optimization theory. In human traffic, "the user optimum is relevant, whereas in ant traffic it is the system optimum, which can be quite different," and produces a different set of behaviors.

Guiding the individual ants' decisions is their inherited, colony-serving programming and on-the-ground traffic updates, acquired from an immersive cloud of information that takes the form of pheromone trails and physical contact. Though scientists have studied and pheromones for decades, the latter exchange is less understood.

"We have good evidence that encounters between inbound and outbound workers are important," said study co-author Sam Besher, an entomologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "It's not just that they're managing the traffic flow. They're managing the information flow, too. That's about all we know, but it's potentially very important."

An experimental navigational system called Inter-Vehicle Communication tries to emulate this, with on-board navigation computers exchanging data as they pass each other and roadside base stations. It's yet to be deployed in real-world conditions, though, reflecting the difficulty in replacing a culture and infrastructure of solitary driving.

A compromise, said Schadschneider, may be systems that improve communication between drivers and cars. "This has already been achieved by new devices which transmit information about abrupt velocity decreases to the following cars, which then start to brake automatically, before the driver even realizes the need to brake," he said.

Beshers is optimistic about the potential of driverless cars running on ant traffic algorithms, but cautious about the timeline of their acceptance. Embracing such a system, he said, "assumes that humans could agree on an upper speed limit, which has never yet happened."

Citation: "Priority rules govern the organization of traffic on foraging trails under crowding conditions in the leaf-cutting ant Atta colombica." By Dussutour, A., Beshers, S., Deneubourg, J. L. and Fourcassié, V.. Journal of Experimental Biology, Vol. 212 Issue 4, Feb. 15, 2009.

Image: Clinton and Charles Robertson

ATM Megaheists Reach Epidemic Levels

A carefully coordinated global ATM heist last November resulted in a one-day haul of $9 million in cash, after a hacker penetrated a server at payment processor RBS WorldPay, New York's Fox 5 reports.

RBS WorldPay announced on December 23 that they'd been hacked, and personal information on approximately 1.5 million payroll-card and gift-card customers had been stolen. (Payroll cards are debit cards issued and recharged by employers as an alternative to paychecks and direct-deposit.) Now we know that account numbers and other mag-stripe data needed to clone the debit cards were also compromised in the breach.

At the time, the company said it identified fraudulent activity on only 100 cards, making it sound like small beans. But it turns out the hacker managed to lift the withdrawal limits on those 100 cards, before dispatching an global army of cashers to drain them with repeated rapid-fire withdrawals. More than 130 ATMs in 49 cities from Moscow to Atlanta were hit simultaneously just after midnight Eastern Time on November 8.

A class action lawsuit has been filed against RBS WorldPay on behalf of consumers.

A nearly identical cybercrime feeding frenzy targeted payment card company iWire in late 2007. From September 30 to October 1 of that year -- just two days -- four iWire payroll cards were hit with more than 9,000 actual and attempted withdrawals from ATM machines around the world, resulting in losses of $5 million.

A similar MO was employed against Citibank account holders last year, after a processing server that handles withdrawals from Citibank-branded ATMs at 7-Eleven convenience stores was breached. In that case, cashers converged on New York and withdrew at least $2 million from Citibank accounts, sending 70 percent of the take back to a mysterious hacker kingpin in Russia.

Could all three breaches be the work of a single wealthy cybercrook sitting on piles of cash somewhere in Moscow? Some of the cashers in the iWire and Citibank caper are cooperating with the FBI, so we may eventually find out.

What's clear is that this is a great time to be a hacker. In just over one year we've seen these kinds of breaches go from virtually unheard of into a multimillion dollar industry.

In September, Canadian police announced the arrest of Israeli hacker Ehud Tenenbaum for allegedly penetrating the Calgary-based financial services company Direct Cash Management and increasing the cash limits on prepaid debit cards he and his co-conspirators legitimately purchased. The caper allegedly netted the crooks the equivalent of $1.7 million U.S.

Despite much-ballyhooed payment card security standards, the industry responsible for protecting our money appears to be as leaky as a sieve. But, as always, consumers aren't responsible for fraudulent withdrawals that they find and promptly report to their card issuer.

DIY RFID

Get It: TikiTag Starter Package, $50; tikitag.com Satoshi

Create a business card that automatically places a Skype call when waved near a computer, or a photo that opens an online video of your vacation. A new kit makes it easy to devise your own uses for radio-frequency ID tags, something that previously only programmers could do.

TikiTag’s kit comes with an RFID reader, plus 10 stick-on chips that transmit data over short-distance radio waves, just like the chips in electronic security badges and PayPass credit cards. When scanned by the reader or a reader-equipped cellphone (such as the Nokia 6212 Classic), each chip emits a unique signal. Software on a computer or phone looks up this ID in TikiTag’s online database, which stores your instructions for what program to trigger next.

TikiTag can pass commands to several programs, including Skype, iTunes and Web browsers, and others are in the works. Soon a tag could connect to home-automation applications to open the door when you swipe, or act as a store’s frequent-user card, updating the online database every time it’s used.

Wireless Chargers Puff Up Their Green Credentials

By Priya Ganapati

Saving energy usually involves a lengthy checklist: turning off the lights, turning down the heater, changing the light bulbs. But what if you could increase efficiency and convenience at the same time?

This eco–couch potato's dream is about to come true, say the supporters of new wireless power technologies, which they say can eliminate inconvenient power cables and ugly "wall warts," while sipping electricity efficiently and sparingly.

"Everybody's mouth drops when we show our products," says Ron Ferber, CEO of Powermat. "You could have wireless chargers anywhere in your kitchen, hidden in your walls, and can charge multiple devices at high power."

There's just one problem: Until now, wireless chargers (like those used in many electric toothbrushes) have been less efficient than plugged-in power sources, not more. And the companies working on next-gen wireless power have done nothing to substantiate their claims of greater efficiency.

One thing is clear: Charging gadgets wirelessly is a growing trend. Startups such as Powermat, WiTriCity and WildCharge are trying to free users from being tied to their chargers. Palm showed off a wireless charger for its new Pre phone at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year. And even Intel has been working on a wireless-charger research project for the past two years.

Unlike the monolithic, plugged-in wall charger, wireless chargers for electronic devices promise to make it easy to separate the gadgets from their power sources. The chargers come in two parts: a charging surface that can be plugged discreetly into a power outlet, and a receiver that goes on the back of the device you want to charge. The charging surface conducts the power through those receivers to the electronic devices that are dropped onto it. This combination allows for the charging surface to be hidden — sometimes as far away as another room — creating the illusion of gadgets that recharge themselves.

"It is the wave of the future," says Sara Bradford, principal analyst at research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan.

Wireless chargers broadly use two principles familiar to those who took high-school physics: electromagnetic induction and magnetic resonance.

Electromagnetic induction is one of the fundamental principles of physics. It describes how an electric current passing through a coil of wire creates a magnetic field. Place a second coil of wire in that magnetic field, and either move that coil or change the electric current in the first. This induces a current in the second wire. Electricity has been effectively transfered from one wire to the other, paving the way for wireless transmission.

In the case of magnetic resonance, two coils tuned to the same frequency exchange energy strongly and can do so over longer distances than with simple magnetic induction.

These ideas aren't new. Physicist Nikola Tesla offered theories on wireless power transmission in the late 1800s. But concerns about power efficiency and loss have kept the products from going mainstream.

"The power and efficiency of these devices has been quite low," says Bradford. "They capture only about 60 percent of the power to begin with and then convert it to DC, so there's a significant loss to deal with."

Compare that to cellphone-battery chargers today, which boast an average efficiency of at least 80 percent, says Chris Calwell, director of policy and research at Ecos Consulting, a firm that helps companies reduce their energy use.

To better understand how that's possible, consider how efficiency is measured in a traditional, plugged-in battery-charging system. Each system consists of three parts. The first is a power conversion unit that takes the high-voltage AC current from the wall and converts it to low-voltage DC for the gadget — where efficiencies can be as high as 80 percent.

The second step is the battery-charging circuitry, where losses are very little, says Calwell. Finally, the battery's own efficiency is a measure of how much output it delivers relative to the amount of power put into it. Overall efficiency is measured by taking the efficiency of each part of the system into account: Multiply the three percentages, and you might come up with a lower number than you'd expect.

In case of wireless chargers, proponents claim they are no less inefficient than their plugged-in peers.

"People's intuition is that wireless powers must lose a lot of energy," says Josh Smith, an Intel researcher. "But the discrepancy is not as big as your intuition may suggest."

Take those claims with a grain of salt, says Calwell. There are no standard energy ratings for wireless chargers yet, and no independent tests have been run on the chargers.

The startups behind the wireless chargers are keeping their cards close to their chest. Instead of offering details on how efficiency is being measured, the companies would rather use platitudes on having the right technology to extract greater efficiency despite cutting the cord.

Powermat's Ferber, whose wireless-charging products made their debut at CES starts answering questions about the energy efficiency of his products by saying, "I could tell you, but I would have to kill you."

Press for details, and he says, "We are using multiple technologies today to eliminate the biggest issues with wireless charges related to slow charging and low efficiency."

If that strikes you as banal or secretive, it is clearly the idea. All Ferber will say is his products offer "more than 90 percent efficiency".

Ecos' Calwell is skeptical about that statement. "I am dubious of that kind of efficiency claims," he says. Without any details of how the efficiency is being calculated, the 90 percent figure doesn't mean much, agrees Frost & Sullivan's Bradford.

Eric Giler, CEO of WiTriCity, a startup spun out of MIT's engineering school, is more circumspect in his claims. Giler says his company's wireless chargers can rival their plugged-in counterparts, though so far his wireless chargers have shown power of efficiency just about 50 percent. (In contrast to Calwell, Giler says plugged-in chargers he's tested are less than 50 percent efficient.)

WiTriCity's selling point, though, is the convenience. The company uses highly coupled magnetic resonance to create wireless chargers that can power cellphones and notebooks over a distance of up to 7 feet. "You will never have to reach into your pocket or purse to find the charger or even a charging mat again," says Giler.

Researchers at Intel have also been working to create a viable wireless charger. At the company's Seattle Lab, researchers have been working on a project called Wireless Resonant Energy Link or WREL (pronounced whirl).

"We have been focusing it on the products that are most important to Intel, basically laptop computers," says Smith.

At its conference for developers last year, Intel demonstrated wireless transfer of 60 watts of power at 75 percent efficiency over a distance of less than 5 feet.

These wireless efficiency claims may seem all right, except they are probably just one part of the overall system. What companies may be touting is just the transmitter-to-receiver efficiency, says Calwell.

"If you add up all the other parts," he says, such as the AC-to-DC converter and the battery itself, "then there is very likely to be significant degradation." That's a more serious problem for a wireless system whose transmission efficiency is only 60 or 75 percent than it is for a wired system where transmission can be as efficient as 80 or 90 percent.

Wireless-charger makers, meanwhile, are pressing their green credentials. Their chargers, they say, cuts standby power losses — the power drawn by the charger even when there is no battery attached. Also, the ability to charge multiple devices through one charging station means the technology potentially eliminates losses from having many different chargers plugged in.

"That's ultimately what we see as our No. 1 benefit," says Powermat's Ferber. "If you are into energy conservation and the green movement, there are obviously significant efficiencies you have here."

Calwell is more skeptical of these claims. "There are laws of physics that can't be changed," he says.

There's only one way to settle the debate. It is time for wireless charger makers to come clean with their efficiency metrics. Only then will we be able to tell whether this technology truly lets gadget lovers have convenience and eco-friendliness at the same time.

Photo: Intel Wireless Power Demo/Intel

Japan sewage yields more gold than top mines

TOKYO, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Resource-poor Japan just discovered a new source of mineral wealth -- sewage.

A sewage treatment facility in central Japan has recorded a higher gold yield from sludge than can be found at some of the world's best mines. An official in Nagano prefecture, northwest of Tokyo, said the high percentage of gold found at the Suwa facility was probably due to the large number of precision equipment manufacturers in the vicinity that use the yellow metal. The facility recently recorded finding 1,890 grammes of gold per tonne of ash from incinerated sludge.

That is a far higher gold content than Japan's Hishikari Mine, one of the world's top gold mines, owned by Sumitomo Metal Mining Co Ltd (5713.T), which contains 20-40 grammes of the precious metal per tonne of ore.

The prefecture is so far due to receive 5 million yen ($55,810) for the gold, minus expenses.

It expects to earn about 15 million yen for the fiscal year to the end of March from the gold it has retrieved from the ashes of incinerated sludge.

"How much we actually receive will depend on gold prices at the time," the official said.

Some gold industry officials expect prices this year to top the all-time high above $1,030 per ounce set in 2008, on buying by investors worried about the deepening economic downturn. (Reporting by Miho Yoshikawa; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Michael Phelps Has No Business Apologizing for Taking Bong Hits

By Tony Newman, AlterNet

http://www.alternet.org/story/124793/

Plastered all over the Internet right now is a photo of Michael Phelps smoking marijuana out of a bong. Phelps put out a statement saying that he acted in a youthful and inappropriate way and promises it won't happen again. Different people are weighing in on the possible impact of this photo on the gold medalist's $100 million endorsement deals.

Here are a few of my observations on Phelps' bong hits:

Phelps Is in Good Company

Phelps struck another blow to the myth that marijuana smokers are lazy couch potatoes. Here is the guy who has won more gold medals than anyone in history, and obviously his health and accomplishments are not hindered by smoking some pot. In addition to his swimming skills, he is a successful businessman who has turned his swimming skills into an enormous public relations platform and money generator. Successful and honorable people who have smoked some pot are all around us, from President Barack Obama to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Phelps Apology Was Unnecessary

While Phelps' statement said he acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, he did not pretend to have a drug problem and promise to go to rehab. So many times when celebrities are caught with drugs, they give tearful statements and promise to get help. Phelps doesn't appear to have a drug problem, and there is no reason for him to take up valuable treatment slots if he doesn't have a drug problem.

Does it Hurt or Help His Image?

While some "experts" are predicting that Phelps bong hits could cost him millions, I could also see it humanizing him and making him even more popular with a large section of the public. Phelps' swimming accomplishments have always been awe-inspiring, but who could relate to the guy who swam eight hours a day and had to eat 23 hamburgers every day to compensate for the calories he burns off in training? Seeing him with his hat on backwards taking a hit made me feel like I could relate to the guy more. With half of high school seniors having tried marijuana before they graduate, it is not clear that this photo is going to disillusion his fan base.

Pot Use Doesn't Discriminate, but Our Pot Laws Do

While society has made some progress on tolerating pot consumption, there are still many laws on the books that cause more harm than the smoking of marijuana. Close to 800,000 people were arrested for marijuana last year, and the vast majority for only possessing small amounts. Harry Levine and Deborah Small put out a report last year that found that between 1998 and 2007, New York City police arrested 374,900 people for low-level, misdemeanor marijuana offenses. That is more than eight times the number of arrests on the same charges for the previous 10-year period (between 1988 and 1997), when 45,300 people were picked up for having small amounts of marijuana.

Researchers also found stark racial disparities in who NYPD officers chose to arrest for marijuana offenses. The report found that 83 percent of those charged in these cases were black or Latino, despite equal marijuana use between whites and nonwhites. The discrepancy, the researchers asserted, is because NYPD officers stopped and frisked blacks and Latinos at a dramatically higher rate.

Once someone is convicted of a drug offense, they can lose college financial aid, food stamps, public housing and, in some cases, even voting rights. Money wasted and lives ruined … and for what?

Phelps Can Continue to be a Role Model

I like Phelps and don't think his bong hit should hurt him. If he truly wants to be a role model, he can take his comments and platform to the next level. He can say simply, "Yes, that was me smoking marijuana, and the laws that ruin peoples' lives for using marijuana should be debated and changed."

Tony Newman is communications director for the Drug Policy Alliance.

© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/124793/

Russian cosmonauts armed with 3-barreled gun to fight aliens

Launch, Dock and Three Smoking Barrels

Among the training regimes that Russian cosmonauts pass before being admitted into orbit is the shooting range. The reason is that they must learn how to use a special three-barreled gun found on every Soyuz spacecraft.

“Hokey religions and ancient weapons
are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid,”
Han Solo.

Unlike the Star Wars universe, however, real-life spacemen don’t fire sparkling blasts of energy at charging stormtroopers. The TP-82 gun is part of the survival kit and is meant to be used on terra firma if cosmonauts land in the wilderness.

Vladimir Kremlev for RT. Click to enlarge.

A gun in orbit is a controversial issue. NASA traditionally keeps a ‘no firearms on board’ policy, and their astronauts’ survival kit has had a machete-like knife as its only weapon for decades. When the International Space Station project was launched, the status of a pistol on Russian ships became one of the tricky legal questions.

Some people like astronaut James Oberg called for discarding the gun, saying the country calling for a ban of weapons in space should show a good example and citing concerns over the enlargement of the ISS crews and the likely rise of tension between members. The Russian Space Agency held its ground and the TP-82 kept its place.

NASA Astronaut Knife M-1 has been used by Gemini and Apollo crews

The third space-faring nation China apparently sided with Russia in its attitude towards firearms in space. The Chinese media reported that the Shenzhou-6 expedition in 2005 was armed with pistols for self-defence, but no detail on the model or the number of the weapons was disclosed. Russian space experts believe that China may have borrowed the concept of the TP-82 and developed their own version.

The blaster

The TP-82 – an abbreviation is of the Russian name ‘three-barreled pistol’ – is more a hunting shotgun than a handgun. As its name suggests, it has two larger 32 gauge (12.5 mm) smoothbore barrels located side by side and a smaller 5.45 mm calibre rifled barrel under them. The combination gives the weapon a futuristic look, and Russian survival trainers recall some people asking them to show ‘the blaster’ when speaking about the TP-82.

The three barrels are used to shoot rifle bullets, shotgun shells and flares. The standard Soyuz survival kit includes 20 rifle rounds, 20 flares and 10 shotgun shells. The cartridges are reloaded manually from the breach side, which can be done with one hand.

The pistol has a detachable plastic stock that doubles as a machete sheath. The loaded gun weighs about 1.8 kg on its own or 2.6 kg with the butt stock attached. It has a range of 40 metres for shells and 200 metres for rifle rounds. Overall it’s a small and light weapon as befits something to be taken into orbit, which in itself implies strict weight and size allowances.

Not meant for space

Cosmonaut lore suggests that space legend Aleksey Leonov, who experienced an off-course landing, and together with his fellow spaceman Pavel

Aleksey Leonov, the living legend of space exploration, is rumoured to be behind the ‘space pistol’ project

Belyaev spent more then a day in the wild Taiga fending off hungry wolves before rescuers could pick them up. The dramatic episode happened in 1965. The TP-82 was given the green light in 1982, which casts some doubt on the direct connection between the two events, but Leonov did visit the gun workshop in Tula which produced the firearm and he may have given some ideas to the developers.

The gun made the headlines in 2007, when the Russian Space Agency announced that ISS Expedition 16 will not take the TP-82 with them. The media reported that all the remaining ammunition for the weapon was outdated and unsafe, and a replacement is not expected to be produced. The story received international attention, with several major newspapers, including the British newspaper Daily Telegraph, vividly describing the “fearsome triple-barreled space pistol”. Almost two years later the firearm is still part of the Soyuz survival kit, stowed away in a metal case in between two of the capsule’s three seats.

TP-82 detachable stock doubles as machete sheath (photo from http://diversant.h1.ru/)

As a weapon for space combat the TP-82 is hardly worth criticism. Its recoil is strong, so a possible attacker would be sent banging around the walls of the space station or the space ship after firing off a shot. In addition, the rifle rounds are extremely dangerous, since they can pierce the spaceship’s hull, leading to a rapid loss of pressure and the subsequent death of everyone onboard.

The Soviet space programme has tested one space weapon. The Almaz station, launched in 1974, was fitted with an aviation cannon. There are no reports on whether the station was manned or not during the trial.

Alexandre Antonov, RT

BMW Teases Future Progressive Activity Sedan

MUNICH, Germany — A video of the BMW Progressive Activity Sedan offers a peek at some of the features on the upcoming segment smasher.

The video, which flashes a series of sketches, leaves more questions than answers. What is known is that the PAS is a crossover slotted in between the 5 Series and the X6. The video reveals a few unique features of the PAS, including a panoramic roof, an adjustable rear seat and flexible trunk space.

BMW says the vehicle is not quite a sedan, SUV or station wagon, but a blending of utility, sport and luxury. The PAS rides on a long-wheelbase 5 Series chassis and has a sloping hatch similar to the X6.

Inside Line says: Is there really a void between the 5 Series and the X6? — Eric Tingwall, Correspondent

The Commercial

Obama to Detail Compensation Limits on Bank Executives

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Call it the maximum wage. President Barack Obama wants to impose a $500,000 pay cap on executives whose firms receive government financial rescue funds, a dramatic intervention into corporate governance in the midst of financial crisis.

The new restrictions, described by an administration official familiar with the new rules, are to be announced Wednesday morning at the White House. The steps set the stage for the administration's unveiling next week of a new framework for spending the money that remains in the $700 billion financial rescue fund.

"If the taxpayers are helping you, then you've got certain responsibilities to not be living high on the hog," President Barack Obama said Tuesday.

The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the plan had not yet been made public, said the most restrictive limits would apply only to struggling large firms that receive "exceptional assistance" in the future. Healthy banks that receive government infusions of capital would have more leeway.

Firms that want to pay executives above the $500,000 threshold would have to compensate them with stock that could not be sold or liquidated until they pay back the government funds, the official said.

The president and members of Congress have been weighing various proposals to restrict chief executives' compensation as one of the conditions of receiving help under the $700 billion financial bailout fund. The desire for limits was reinforced by revelations that Wall Street firms paid more than $18 billion in bonuses in 2008 even while struggling with the economic downturn.

Banks and other financial institutions that receive capital infusions, but are considered healthy, could waive the $500,000 salary cap and the stock restrictions under the new Obama rules. But the companies would have to disclose the compensation and submit the pay plan to shareholders for a nonbinding vote.

The administration will also propose long-term compensation restrictions even for companies that don't receive government assistance.

According to the official, the proposals include:

-- Requiring top executives at financial institutions to hold stock for several years before they can cash out.

-- Requiring nonbinding "say on pay" resolutions -- that is, giving shareholders more say on executive compensation.

-- A Treasury-sponsored conference on a long-term overhaul of executive compensation.

Top officials at companies that have received money from the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program already face some compensation limits. But elected officials want to place more caps.

"I do know this: We can't just say, 'Please, please,'" said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who has proposed that no employee of an institution that receives money under the $700 billion federal bailout can receive more than $400,000 in total compensation until it pays the money back.

The figure is equivalent to the salary of the president of the United States.

Compensation experts in the private sector have warned that such an intrusion into the internal decisions of financial institutions could discourage participation in the rescue program and slow down the financial sector's recovery. They also argue that it could set a precedent for government regulation that undermines performance-based pay.

"It's not a government takeover," Obama stressed in an interview Tuesday with CNN. "Private enterprise will still be taking place. But people will be accountable and responsible."

Even some Republicans, angered by company decisions to pay bonuses and buy airplanes while receiving government help, have few qualms about restrictions.

"In ordinary situations where the taxpayers' money is not involved, we shouldn't set executive pay," said Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee.

"But where you've got federal money involved, taxpayers' money involved, TARP money involved, and the way they have spent it, with no accountability, is getting close to being criminal."

Economy Takes a Toll on Jobs

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- For American workers buffeted by layoffs and cutbacks, January was as bad as it felt, as indicated by two key employment reports released Wednesday.

The number of planned cuts announced in the month rose to the highest level in seven years, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. And ADP's National Employment Report found that private-sector employers cut 522,000 positions.

Job cut announcements by U.S. employers soared to 241,749 in January, up 45% from December's 166,348 cuts, according to Challenger. That was the highest number of job cuts since January 2002.

Layoffs rose 222% - more than triple - from January 2008, when 74,986 job cuts were announced.

On the heels of the worst holiday season in decades, the retail sector was hit the hardest. Boosted in a large part by Circuit City, 53,968 job cuts were announced.

Following retail, the industrial goods industry cut 32,083 jobs last month, while the computer, pharmaceutical and aerospace industries also notched large losses.

"The variety of industries represented among the top five job-cutting sectors in January is further evidence of how far the impact of this recession has spread. Industries that at first appeared to be immune to downturns, such as computer and pharmaceutical, are now rapidly shedding workers," John Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in a statement.

"If there is any bright spot in the latest job-cut data, it is the fact that financial firms announced only 1,458 job cuts in January. That is the lowest one-month total for that industry since 2005," said Challenger.

Of the 23 industry categories that the Challenger report tracks, 16 reported higher job cuts in January compared to the previous month. Eleven industries announced hiring plans, led by government, computer and entertainment.

Challenger's report sets the stage for the government's monthly jobs report due Friday.

The Labor Department report is expected to show a loss of 500,000 jobs in January, down from the 524,000 reported for December, according to a consensus estimate of economists complied by Briefing.com. The unemployment rate is forecasted to rise to 7.5% from 7.2%