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In a small step for commercial space exploration, San Diego's TransOrbital Inc. said it has become the first private company to win approvals from the U.S. government for a mission to the moon. "Right now, realistically, we're the only ones going to the moon," Dennis Laurie, TransOrbital's chief executive, said yesterday. TransOrbital said it has received approvals and licensing from the State Department and from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, required for its unmanned "Trailblazer" lunar mission. Its plans call for launching a memorabilia-laden satellite into lunar orbit. The spacecraft would transmit high-resolution images of the Earth and moon...

Microsoft prices itself out of legitimacy Third world won't pay for Windows By Paul Hales: Monday 29 July 2002, 09:18 IN SOME DEVELOPING COUNTRIES the price of software can be prohibitive. But rather than lower its prices locally to promote legal use, Microsoft, for example, prefers to send in snatch squads to catch and prosecute users of pirate software. The squads have been out in force in Peru, we hear, particularly since the government there said it was considering going the open source route. Microsoft pressure on Peru has been considerable and Wired has a story here that the company...

One good way to gauge a new technology's degree of acceptance is to observe whether it has moved out of the laboratory and onto store shelves -- from science to commerce. According to that measure, grid computing is just coming of age.     • What Supercomputers Can and Cannot Do - Yet • Universities Connect on 'Tera-Scale' Supercomputer Grid • Sun Says Business 'Gets' Grid Computing Often called the next big thing in global Internet technology, grid computing employs clusters of locally or remotely networked machines to work on specific computational projects. One well-known example of grid computing --...

Nanoscale Sensor Could Increase Data Storage CapacityBy Michael Pastore Researchers at the State University of New York at Buffalo have developed an extremely sensitive nanoscale device that could shrink ultra-high-density storage devices to incredibly small sizes. The magnetic sensor, made of nickel and only a few atoms in diameter, could increase data storage capacity by a factor of a thousand or more and could ultimately lead to supercomputing devices as small as a wristwatch. The effect created with the new nickel device is called ballistic magneto-resistance (BMR). It addresses a major hurdle facing advances in magnetic storage — that as...

June 20, 2002 -- Researchers at the University of Toronto have discovered a new technique to form tiny perfect crystals that have high optical quality, a finding that could usher in a new era of ultra-fast computing and communication using photons instead of electrons. These crystals, called photonic crystals, could greatly improve both speed and bandwidth in communications systems, says University Professor Geoffrey Ozin of the Department of Chemistry. "All of the promises of what photonic crystals can do, in terms of guiding light and bending light in incredibly small spaces, may be achieved by the assembly of patterns of...

Soon you could be swapping your mobile phone for a molar phone. Royal College of Art students in London have developed a phone that fits inside a tooth. The concept device picks up signals with a radio receiver and uses a tiny vibrating plate to convey them as sound along the jawbone to a person's ear. The designers said the mini-molar phone could be implanted in a tooth during routine dental surgery. The prototype phone is the work of graduates James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau and forms part of the Royal College of Art's annual summer exhibition. Known as The...

Researchers at the UCLA School of Engineering have created an organic, nonvolatile memory device that is cheaper and faster than those currently in use. Associate Professor Yang Yang from the Materials Science and Engineering Department, who leads the research at the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, will present his findings to the International Conference on Science and Technology of Synthetic Metals in Shanghai on June 29. According to Yang, such devices "have tremendous potential" for use in personal computers, personal digital assistants and digital cameras because of their lighter weight and faster response times. They are up...

The five major record companies have been hit with a class-action lawsuit charging that new CDs designed to thwart Napster-style piracy are defective and should either be barred from sale or carry warning labels. The suit was brought this week in Los Angeles Superior Court by class-action specialists at the law firm Milberg, Weiss, Bershad, Hynes & Lerach on behalf of two Southern California consumers. It marks the first legal challenge of CD copy-prevention technology to "tackle the issue on an industry-wide basis," Alan Mansfield, an attorney representing the two named plaintiffs in the complaint, said Friday. It also follows...

ZURICH, Switzerland — IBM Corp. has developed a prototype terabit memory that stores a trillion bits of data, or twenty times more than a current disk drive, in a square inch. Created with micromachining techniques, IBM said the Millipede non-volatile memory is only the beginning of even denser memories.The Millipede chip uses silicon micromachining techniques to precisely move a silicon substrate coated with a thin-film polymer beneath an array of 1,024 parallel activated 20-nanometer read/write heads, which were also etched from silicon. While other memory technologies are reaching the end of their usefulness, IBM Nobel laureate Gerd Beinnig of...

NEW YORK (CP) - A Canadian man who lost his sight in an accident nearly 20 years ago is one of a select group of people to have some vision restored by having electronic artificial eyes implanted in their brains. "You actually have a fifth sense restored. And that is what I absolutely adore about this device," the man, who wished only to be identified by his first name, Jens, said at a conference where early results from the work were revealed. "You are no longer blind. You might be blind to some objects, some situations, but you are not...

IN a world first, Melbourne scientists have successfully grown an organ from stem cells. A team from Monash Medical School grew a functioning thymus, a small organ that is critical to the immune system. Human trials could begin within two years. Stem cells are the body's building blocks and have unlimited capacity to grow and replace all the cells within a particular tissue or organ. "When I realised what we had finally done after 15 years of research, I went weak at the knees," Professor Richard Boyd said. He said understanding the thymus, located near the heart, was the...

Science fiction closer to factBy John Kerin June 17, 2002 IN a dramatic technological breakthrough, an Australian-based research team has teleported a message-encoded laser beam – bringing the science fiction fantasy of "beaming" humans from one place to another a step closer. Although Star Trek-style planet hopping is way into the future, teleporting – disassembling objects in one place while a perfect replica is created elsewhere – promises to revolutionise computing and communications over the next decade. The Australian National University team, partly funded by the Australian Research Council, has been involved in a global race with teams from the...

Thousands Of Teacher Candidates Mistakenly Flunked WASHINGTON -- About 4,100 people who passed teacher licensing tests were incorrectly told they failed, delaying or preventing some from getting jobs, the testing company says. The Educational Testing Service, a private company that administers more than 12 million tests worldwide, is tracking down each person who received a faulty score to apologize and refund the $115 test fee and other expenses. The company is also notifying the 19 states that use the Praxis exam in question, one that tests teaching and content knowledge for prospective educators of grades seven to 12. As part...

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SAN JOSE, Calif. — The United States may have come a long way in the fight against institutionalized racism but in California, black children are still being denied access to an important educational tool. Excerpt

Education: President Bush has given schools their biggest boost in aid in decades. But he insists on standards and results. For that, teacher unions want him out.If you're in a battleground state, you may have seen the ads. If you're within earshot of a public school, you've probably heard the griping. The president's education reforms are under fire. But what, exactly, has Bush done wrong? Has he given the schools too little money?That charge is laughable, though some pretend to take it seriously. Under Bush, federal school aid has had its biggest rise in any single presidential term since the...

North Korea has tested an intercontinental ballistic missile engine capable of hitting the United States, according to a South Korean report. The potential range of the missile was established by American intelligence from scorch marks and other traces of the engine test, the newspaper Joongang Ilbo said, citing diplomatic sources. It could reach up to 3,700 miles, enough to hit Alaska. North Korea is developing a family of long-range missiles called the Taepodong. Taepodong 1 was test-fired over Japan in 1998. It caused consternation, not least because of the determination of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, to pursue a...

North succeeds in missile tests, diplomats say According to diplomatic sources, North Korea has recently succeeded in testing the main engine of a long-range ballistic missile. Tests of what the North calls its Taepodong-2 rocket occurred at a launching pad in Musudanri, North Hamgyeong province. They were the first engine firings since December 2002. Such tests are often the last step before an actual flight test of a missile. A foreign diplomatic source said that the experiments were successful, in contrast to an accident during the last round of tests when an explosion destroyed facilities at the launching pad. Intelligence...

New Kerry ad put to 10TV Truth Test Printer Friendly Version   Democrat John Kerry launches a new television ad campaign Tuesday to counter President Bush's re-election message.  The Senator's two new advertisements will cost the Kerry camp $25 million to run.The spots focus on Senator Kerry's achievements and national service.  10TV Eyewitness News reporter Eve Mueller puts one of the commercials to the 10TV Truth Test. You'll start seeing the 60 second ads here in Ohio May 4th.  People in 18 other states will see them, too.  The Kerry campaign calls the three-week ad buy is the biggest...

A 68-year-old man is preparing to take his secondary school exam in India - for the 35th time. Shyoram Yadav, from the village of Tasing in Rajasthan, has been trying to pass the exam since 1969. Mr Yadav's efforts are supported by all in his village He has vowed to remain unmarried until he does. "Education is everything in life," Mr Yadav told BBC World Service's Outlook programme. "Education rules the world: education is supreme even among your own brothers, your own society, your government, and abroad." Tripped up So far, Mr Yadav has failed a different subject each year....