U.S. spacecraft finds Mars colder than expected

NASA announced on Thursday that new observations from its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter indicate that the crust and upper mantle of Mars are stiffer and colder than previously thought.

The findings suggest any liquid water that might exist below the planet's surface and any possible organisms living in that water would be located deeper than scientists had suspected.

"We found that the rocky surface of Mars is not bending under the load of the north polar ice cap," said Roger Phillips of the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, the lead author of a new report appearing in this week's online version of Science.

"This implies that the planet's interior is more rigid, and thus colder, than we thought before."

The discovery was made using the Shallow Radar (SHARAD) instrument on the Orbiter, which has provided the most detailed pictures to date of the interior layers of ice, sand and dust that make up the north polar cap on Mars.

The radar pictures show a smooth, flat border between the ice cap and the rocky Martian crust. On Earth, the weight of a similar stack of ice would cause the planet's surface to sag. The fact that the Martian surface is not bending means that its strong outer shell, or lithosphere, a combination of its crust and upper mantle, must be very thick and cold.

"The lithosphere of a planet is the rigid part. On Earth, the lithosphere is the part that breaks during an earthquake," said Suzanne Smrekar, deputy project scientist for Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter at NASA. "The ability of the radar to see through the ice cap and determine that there is no bending of the lithosphere gives us a good idea of present-day temperatures inside Mars for the first time."

Temperatures in the outer portion of a rocky planet like Mars increase with depth toward the interior. The thicker the lithosphere, the more gradually the temperatures increase. The discovery of a thicker Martian lithosphere therefore implies that any liquid water lurking in aquifers below the surface would have to be deeper than previously calculated, where temperatures are warmer. Scientists speculate that any life on Mars associated with deep aquifers also would have to be buried deeper in the interior.

On May 25, NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is scheduled to touch down not far from the north polar ice cap. It will further investigate the history of water on Mars, and is expected to get the first up-close look at ice on the Red Planet. >>Read more...

OLPC, Microsoft to make Windows, Linux available on XO

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Project and Microsoft plan to make both Windows and Linux available on a version of the project's XO laptop, the companies said Thursday.

The parties expect to deliver a dual-boot XO system in August or September that will have both the traditional Linux-based Sugar operating system of the XO and a low-cost student version of Windows XP, according to Kyle Austin, an OLPC representative.

OLPC Chairman Nicholas Negroponte has referred in the past to a dual-boot XO model, but this is the first official announcement of such a system. The XO was developed by OLPC for children in developing countries.

Microsoft said it plans to start trials of Windows on the low-cost laptop in key emerging markets as early as June. Customers will be able to choose to run the computer on either a Windows or a Linux operating system.


OLPC is working with third-party developers to have the XO's distinctive Sugar user interface placed on top of Windows, but the dual-boot systems coming later this year will use the Windows interface for Student Innovation Suite, Austin said.

Microsoft and OLPC did not specify the price of the dual-boot system on Thursday.

The availability of Windows on the system will give customers more choice in operating systems and let them use Windows-based educational software and tools, the parties said. Customers and partners worldwide have asked for Windows on the XO, they said.

Sugar was designed only to work with a free Linux operating system that engineers from Red Hat Inc. Eventually, the goal will be to develop versions of the laptop to run both Linux and Windows, leaving the user to decide which operating system to run when the machine boots up, Negroponte said. >>Read more...

U.S.: more new Internet subscribers chose cable

Cable companies in the United States reversed a 3 1/2-year trend in the first quarter by signing up more Internet subscribers than phone companies, according to a research report Thursday.

The 19 largest cable companies in America added 1.19 million broadband subscribers in the January-to-March period, according to a tally by Leichtman Research Group.

Phone companies added 1.01 million DSL customer in the same period, the report said.

Since the third quarter of 2004, phone companies had been adding subscribers faster than cable, closing in on cable's lead in total subscribers. But that lead is now widening, with cable companies having a total of 34.7 million subscribers compared with 29.5 million at the phone companies.

"With telephone companies generally curtailing prior aggressive price-based offers to woo subscribers, the telcos added about two-thirds as many broadband subscribers as a year ago," wrote Bruce Leichtman, president of the firm.

Phone companies have moved resources into upgrading their networks rather than marketing basic DSL service. Verizon Communications Inc. is replacing its copper network with fiber, and added a net of just 4,000 subscribers to its copper-based DSL service in the first quarter. It gained 262,000 customers for its fiber-based service.

AT&T, the country's largest Internet service provider, is focused on raising DSL speeds in some areas so it can provide TV service over phone lines.

Meanwhile, cable companies are poised to boost their maximum available Internet speeds this year with a relatively cheap upgrade using new cable modem technology. >>Read more...

CBS to buy CNET for bigger Internet presence

U.S. broadcaster CBS announced Thursday to buy online media company CNET for 1.8 billion dollars in a deal that would give the traditional television network a major presence in the rapidly growing Internet marketplace.

"There are very few opportunities to acquire a company like CNET Networks," said CBS CEO Leslie Moonves in a statement. "CNET will add a tremendous platform to extend our complementary entertainment, news, sports, music and information content to a whole new global audience."

The deal would instantly give CBS a top 10 presence on the Internet, and also help CNET appease its shareholders who have been frustrated about the company's stock performance and business execution.

"We're thrilled to join CBS and combine our interactive media experience with CBS's world-class content," CNET CEO Neil Ashe said in the statement.

The deal, which has been approved by CNET board of directors, is subject to regulatory scrutiny and shareholder approval. The two companies expect it to close in the third quarter.

The CBS move follows a string of similar acquisitions by traditional media companies of online ones, as these established media giants seek ways to tap into the lucrative Internet advertising business.

The San Francisco-base CNET was originally started in 1992 as a television company, but quickly moved on to the online world as the Internet began to take off in the mid-1990s. Since then the company has established itself as the premier site for technology news, reviews and information online. >>Read more...

Billionaire launches bid for control of Yahoo

Voicing disappointment over Yahoo. Inc.'s refusal of Microsoft takeover bid, billionaire investor Carl Icahn on Thursday launched a bid for control of the internet giant.

Icahn said he took the move because Yahoo's board "completely botched" takeover talks with Microsoft Corp.

In a letter to Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock, Icahn said he had snapped up 59 million Yahoo shares and was seeking permission from the Securities and Exchange Commission to amass up to 2.5 billion dollars in Yahoo's stock. Yahoo's market value was nearly 38 billion dollars this morning.

"It is unconscionable that you have not allowed your shareholders to choose to accept an offer that represented a 72-percent premium over Yahoo's closing price of 19.18 dollars on the day before the initial Microsoft offer," Icahn wrote.

"I and many of your shareholders strongly believe that a combination between Yahoo and Microsoft would form a dynamic company and more importantly would be a force strong enough to compete with Google on the Internet."

He added that he hoped Yahoo would listen to its shareholders and "move expeditiously" to close a deal with Microsoft, which earlier this month withdrew a 47.5-billion-dollar offer for Yahoo after they failed to agree on a price.

Sources close to Icahn said the billionaire had nominated a 12-people slate to unseat Yahoo's board of directors, a move that surprised some major shareholders, who had been told by Icahn's allies just a day before that he intended to put forward only a few names to serve as agitators.

The candidates include Icahn, former Viacom Inc. Chief Executive Frank Biondi Jr., Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and New Line Cinema co-chairman Robert Shaye. Yahoo didn't immediately comment. Its annual meeting is scheduled for July 3.

Yahoo shares gained 50 cents to 27.64 dollars in early trading on Thursday. They had tumbled to 24.37 dollars the first trading day after Microsoft walked away. >>Read more...

Today "Iron Man" suit fiction, tomorrow fact?

The process used to produce the armored suit worn by Robert Downey, Jr. in "Iron Man" -- biological circuit fabrication -- may soon be another case of science fiction becoming science fact.

As stated in the movie: "Micro-Scale suit tiles fabricated by genetically engineered metal affinity bacteria which assemble themselves in specific orderly arrays, then expire, leaving behind various metallic deposits which form all the metal shapes and microscopic circuits."

Now, a group of scientists led by Michael Sussman, director of University of Wisconsin, Madison's Biotechnology Center, and oceanography professor Virginia Armbrust of the University of Washington, are seeing if diatoms will help make even smaller integrated circuit chips by a similar process of biological fabrication.

Diatoms are unicellular algae; they form a unique shell, called a frustule. They work hard to make human life possible; they produce about a third of the world's oxygen.

Their cell walls -- the shell -- is created from silicon dioxide, or silica. Sussman's interest in diatoms is based on the fact that diatoms are capable of creating lines of silica much smaller than present chip manufacturing processes can make out of silicon.

Sussman and Armbrust's group have been working with the diatom Thalassiosira pseudonana. Armbrust previously led the effort to sequence T. pseudonana's genome in 2004. The group has identified 75 genes that are used in the diatom's silica bioprocessing, and they hope to use genetic manipulation to use diatoms to draw lines on computer chips.

"If we can genetically control that process, we would have a whole new way of performing the nanofabrication used to make computer chips," says Sussman.

Biological circuit fabrication is not the only "comic book" technology that real-life scientists are trying to bring to life. Researchers in Germany are working on spinning webs like Spider-Man and an American firm is working on blast-resistant fabrics like a superhero suit. >>Read more...

U.S. lists polar bear as threatened species

The U.S. goverment declared the polar bear a threatened species because of the loss of Arctic sea ice but cautioned the decision should not be viewed as a path to address global warming.

"This listing will not stop global climate change or prevent any sea ice from melting," Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said while announcing the decision Wednesday.

The Endangered Species Act should not be "abused to make global warming policies," he said.

Kassie Siegel, a lawyer with the Center for Biological Diversity, said the group does not accept Kempthorne's view.

The act requires federal agencies to take steps to reduce or eliminate those impacts on threatened species, she said. "There is no exemption for greenhouse gas emissions."


If the government fails to address global warming, "we can and will go to court to enforce the law," she said.

The decision comes three years after environmental groups petitioned to have the polar bear listed under the Endangered Species Act.

The listing of "threatened" means a species is at risk of becoming endangered within the foreseeable future. A species is listed as "endangered" when it is at risk of becoming extinct, according to the act.

"Although the population of polar bears has grown from 10,000 in the 1960s to 25,000 today, our scientists tell me that polar bears could become an endangered species in the next 30 years," Kempthorne said.

In an interview, Kempthorne said the next step is for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which administers the act, to designate "critical habitat" for the polar bear, which will likely happen under the next administration. After that, a recovery plan will be developed, he said, adding that he could not provide specifics.

He said the decision to list the animals as threatened was "forced" by science and the Endangered Species Act, which he called "inflexible."

The Department of Interior will issue a rule stating that anything allowed under the Marine Mammals Protection Act, including arctic oil and gas production and exploration, will be allowed under the new listing. The only exception: polar bear hides collected in sport hunts in Canada can no longer be imported into the United States.

Reed Hopper, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, which defends property rights, said the decision "is exactly what the environmentalists have been looking for."

"It opened the door to them to create a hook to bring legal challenges to virtually any carbon-emitting activities," including livestock and energy production, and manufacturing, he said.

Kempthorne said the decision precludes such an argument. "It's not going to be up to the agency," Hopper said. "It's going to be up to the courts." >>Read more...

Missing biodiversity target puts people at risk, warns WWF

Future generations face hunger, thirst, disease and disaster if people carry on trashing the environment, the conservation organization World Wildlife Fund WWF) cautioned on Thursday.

The stark warning came as WWF launched its 2010 and Beyond: Rising to the Biodiversity Challenge report which contained the latest Living Planet index - the internationally agreed way to measure progress toward the global target of reducing biodiversity loss by 2010 - and which revealed a continuing decline in biodiversity.

Food, clean water, medicines and protection from natural hazards are important ingredients in maintaining our security and quality of life, the Swiss-based organization said in a statement.

If they are to be maintained, the species, natural habitats and ecosystems that support them need to be protected, it said.

In 2002 the world's governments set themselves a target to achieve a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at global, regional and national levels by 2010.

However, the 2010 and Beyond: Rising to the Biodiversity Challenge report showed governments were not on track to meet the 2010 target and that environment ministries cannot reverse this trend without integrated support at the highest level.

According to the WWF, the reason governments are failing to meet their biodiversity targets is because they haven't provided adequate financial and technical resources and have failed to develop economic incentives and other measures to preserve biodiversity.

The organization called on all the governments that signed the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2002 to do what as they promised: implement the Strategic Plan by establishing national targets and allocating sufficient financial, human and technical resources. >>Read more...