More Evidence Links Genes to Parkinson's (HealthDay)

TUESDAY, Aug. 30 (HealthDay News) -- A genetic variation that reduces the risk of Parkinson's disease by nearly 20 percent in many populations has been found by an international team of scientists.

They also identified other variants of the same gene -- LRRK2 -- that double the risk of Parkinson's in whites and Asians.

The Genetic Epidemiology of Parkinson's Disease consortium's findings are from a genetic analysis of samples from more than 8,600 Parkinson's patients and almost 7,000 controls across 15 countries on five continents.

The investigation was led by neuroscientists at the Mayo Clinic in Florida, and the findings appear in the Aug. 31 online issue of The Lancet Neurology.

"The idea that Parkinson's disease occurs mostly in a random sporadic fashion is changing," lead investigator Owen Ross said in a Mayo news release. "Our study, one of the largest to date in the study of the genetics of Parkinson's disease, shows that a single gene, LRRK2, harbors both rare and common variants that in turn alter the susceptibility to Parkinson's disease in diverse populations."

These and future genetic findings could eventually help identify people at risk for Parkinson's and possibly lead to new treatments, Ross said.

One expert who was not involved in the study agreed that the findings hold promise.

"The finding that some variants in the LRRK2 gene can reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease is very interesting," said Dr. Andrew Feigin, associate professor of neurology and molecular medicine at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, N.Y. "[It] suggests that in addition to there likely being numerous genetic mutations that increase the risk of apparently sporadic disorders, there are also likely to be many genetic variations that reduce risk," he added.

"Though this observation may not lead directly to better treatments for Parkinson's disease, understanding how different genetic mutations in the same gene lead to increased or decreased risk for Parkinson's disease may provide clues to developing novel therapies," Feigin said.

Experts estimate that up to 2 percent of people over the age of 65 develop Parkinson's disease.

More information

We Move has more about Parkinson's disease.

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Hoax sign warns Arizona drivers of panda rampage (Reuters)

PHOENIX (Reuters) ? A wave of "panda-monium" has swept through a northern Arizona city thanks to a mischievous street sign hacker who warned motorists of a "ROGUE PANDA ON RAMPAGE."

State transportation officials said Tuesday that a person was able to post the hoax warning by hacking into an electronic message board in Flagstaff, Arizona, over the weekend.

Rest easy, though. Authorities said the city is safe from pandas, if not from jokesters.

Officials said the message board alerting drivers to street improvements near a busy city intersection was probably altered late on Sunday or early on Monday. It was fixed by 11 a.m. local time on Monday.

"Someone had to know what they were doing to go in and change the message," said Mackenzie Kirby, an Arizona Department of Transportation spokeswoman. "It's not easy."

Kirby joked that there had been no sightings of any rogue pandas in the community, but she has been sent several photoshopped images via email of the cuddly creatures tooled up for trouble.

In one picture, a panda is holding a machete. In another, it is toting a rifle.

"We're all getting a laugh out of this to be sure," she said.

(Reporting by David Schwartz; Editing by Tim Gaynor and Cynthia Johnston)

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Ancient humans used hand axes earlier than thought (AP)

LOS ANGELES ? Ancient humans fashioned hand axes, cleavers and picks much earlier than believed, but didn't take the stone tools along when they left Africa, new research suggests.

A team from the United States and France made the findings after traveling to an archaeological site along the northwest shoreline of Kenya's Lake Turkana. Two-faced blades and other large cutting tools had been previously excavated there along with primitive stone flakes.

Using a sophisticated technique to date the dirt, researchers calculated the age of the more advanced tools to be 1.76 million years old. That's older than similar stone-age artifacts in Ethiopia and Tanzania estimated to be between 1.4 and 1.6 million years old.

This suggests that prehistoric humans were involved in refined tool-making that required a higher level of thinking much earlier than thought. Unlike the simplest stone tools made from bashing rocks together, the early humans who shaped these more distinct objects planned the design and then created them.

This "required a good deal of forethought as well as dexterity to manufacture," said paleoanthropologist Eric Delson at Lehman College in New York, who was not involved in the research.

Results of the study, led by Christopher Lepre of Rutgers University and Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, appear in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

The stone tools, known collectively as Acheulian tools, are believed to be the handiwork of the human ancestor Homo erectus. The teardrop-shaped axes were "like a stone-age Leatherman or Swiss Army knife," said New York University anthropologist Christian Tryon.

The axes were suited for butchering animals or chopping wood while the thicker picks were used for digging holes.

Homo erectus walked upright like modern humans, but possessed a flat skull, sloping forehead and a smaller brain. It emerged about 2 million years ago in Africa. Most researchers think Homo erectus was the first to fan out widely from Africa.

There's archaeological evidence that the first to leave carried only a simple toolkit. The earliest sites recovered in Asia and Europe contain pebble tools and flakes, but no sign of Acheulian technology like hand axes.

Why that is "remains an open question," said anthropologist Sally McBrearty of the University of Connecticut, who had no role in the research.

Theories abound. Some surmise that the early humans could not find the raw materials in their new settlement and lost the technology along the way. Others suggest they later returned to Africa where they developed hand axes.

NYU's Tryon, who was not part of the study, has a different thought. Perhaps the early populations who expanded out of Africa didn't need advanced technology because there was less competition.

Early humans were "behaviorally flexible" and making hand axes "was something that they did as needed and abandoned when not needed," Tryon said.

The latest work does little to settle the issue, but scientists now have identified the earliest known site in the world containing Acheulian tools.

Geologists collected about 150 samples of sediment from the site in 2007. To come up with an age, they used a technique known as paleomagnetic dating, which takes advantage of the flip-flop of Earth's magnetic field every several hundred thousand years.

The tools were not too far from where the bones of Turkana Boy ? the most complete skeleton of a prehistoric human ? were unearthed in 1984.

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Online:

Nature journal: www.nature.com/nature

___

Follow Alicia Chang at: http://twitter.com/SciWriAlicia

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Will Hurricane Irene's Name Be Retired? (LiveScience.com)

Hurricane Irene caused billions of dollars in damage and forced millions of people to evacuate, which could force the name "Irene" into retirement even though the storm was only a Category 1 when it made landfall and was downgraded to a tropical storm as it ravaged the Northeast.

Hurricane name retirement decisions are made by high-level committees, which take months to decide, so it's still too early to know if the name "Irene" will be retired.

In the Atlantic basin, tropical cyclone names (which include�tropical storms and hurricanes)are retired, never to be used again, if the storm causes noteworthy destruction, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Retiring a storm name helps prevent confusion between a new storm with a historic, well-known one.

Irene's fierce winds and relentless rains are likely to make the storm the latest billion-dollar natural disaster of 2011.

"Although Irene never reached the highest category levels of intensity, it did cause enough havoc to at least merit consideration," said atmospheric scientist Eugene McCaul of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

Jeff Weber, an atmospheric scientist at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., agreed that retirement is a possibility.

"Usually it takes a 5 to retire, but societal and economic impacts are also factors, somaybe," Weber said, referring to Category 5 storms, the highest level of the Saffir-Simpson scale of Hurricane Strength

Recently retired hurricane names include Charley ��(2004), Dennis (2005), Dean (2007), Fabian (2003), Frances (2004), Felix (2007), Gustav (2008), Iris (2001), Isidore (2002), Isabel (2003), Ivan (2004), Ike (2008), Igor (2010), Juan (2003), Jeanne (2004), Katrina (2005), Lili (2002), Michelle (2001), Noel (2007), Paloma (2008), Rita (2005), Stan (2005), Tomas (2010) and Wilma (2005).

Email OurAmazingPlanet staff writer Brett Israel at @btisrael.

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Study: Medieval plague may be extinct (AP)

WASHINGTON ? The version of plague that caused the Black Death in 14th century Europe may now be extinct, researchers report, but other deadly forms remain in circulation today.

The plague that ravaged Europe wiped out nearly a third to two-thirds of the population according to various estimates. Its cause was eventually identified as the bacteria Yersinia pestis.

A new study of DNA from people who died of the plague in London has now identified the form of the germ that caused their deaths, the researchers report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The remains of more than 100 plague victims buried between 1348 and 1350 in the East Smithfield burial site showed evidence of a strain of Y. pestis, according to the researchers led by Hendrik N. Poinar of McMaster University in Canada, and Johannes Krause of Tuebingen University in Germany.

"Our data reveal that the Black Death in medieval Europe was caused by a variant of Y. pestis that may no longer exist," the researchers wrote.

That doesn't mean it's safe to relax, noted Ole Georg Moseng of the Institute of Health and Society at the University of Oslo, Norway. Other forms are still dangerous, although it varies by strain, he said. The germ is carried by fleas.

The reasons plague no longer causes widespread deaths are that it is fairly easy to suppress, both by antibiotics and by means of isolation and pesticides, said Moseng, who was not part of the research team.

Since 1954, he noted, there have been yearly outbreaks in Brazil, Congo, Madagascar, Myanmar, Peru, the U.S. and Vietnam.

Virginia Miller, of the Center for Infectious Diseases at the University of North Carolina, said the findings reconfirm that the Black Death was indeed caused by Y. pestis, but she wasn't surprised the strain was a variant.

Whether Y. pestis was behind the Black Death had been questioned by other researchers in the 1970s and 1980s. This report joins other recent studies that reaffirmed Y. pestis as the cause, Moseng agreed.

While the study was not able to sequence the entire genome of the medieval plague, the amount they were able to study confirmed it is the same disease as the Y. pestis circulating today, Poinar said.

"With any ancient pathogen, understanding why it might have been so virulent in the past is important to be able to predict possible reemergence today," Poinar said. "If it did ... perhaps we might be prepared,"

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Online:

Journal: http://www.pnas.org

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Astronauts might have to abandon space station (AP)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. ? Astronauts may need to take the unprecedented step of temporarily abandoning the International Space Station if last week's Russian launch accident prevents new crews from flying there this fall.

Until officials figure out what went wrong with Russia's essential Soyuz rockets, there will be no way to launch any more astronauts before the current residents have to leave in mid-November.

The unsettling predicament comes just weeks after NASA's final space shuttle flight.

"We have plenty of options," NASA's space station program manager, Mike Suffredini, assured reporters Monday. "We'll focus on crew safety as we always do."

Abandoning the space station, even for a short period, would be an unpleasant last resort for the world's five space agencies that have spent decades working on the project. Astronauts have been living aboard the space station since 2000, and the goal is to keep it going until 2020.

Suffredini said flight controllers could keep a deserted space station operating indefinitely, as long as all major systems are working properly. The risk to the station goes up, however, if no one is on board to fix equipment breakdowns.

Six astronauts from three countries presently are living on the orbiting complex. Three are due to leave next month; the other three are supposed to check out in mid-November. They can't stay any longer because of spacecraft and landing restrictions.

The Sept. 22 launch of the very next crew ? the first to fly in this post-shuttle era ? already has been delayed indefinitely. Russia's Soyuz spacecraft have been the sole means of getting full-time station residents up and down for two years. The capsule is parked at the station until they ride it home.

To keep the orbiting outpost with a full staff of six for as long as possible, the one American and two Russians due to return to Earth on Sept. 8 will remain on board at least an extra week.

As for supplies, the space station is well stocked and could go until next summer, Suffredini said. Atlantis dropped off a year's supply of goods just last month on the final space shuttle voyage. The unmanned craft destroyed Wednesday was carrying 3 tons of supplies.

For now, operations are normal in orbit, Suffredini noted, and the additional week on board for half the crew will mean additional science research.

The Soyuz has been extremely reliable over the decades; this was the first failure in 44 Russian supply hauls for the space station. Even with such a good track record, many in and outside NASA were concerned about retiring the space shuttles before a replacement was ready to fly astronauts.

Russian space officials have set up an investigation team and until it comes up with a cause for the accident and a repair plan, the launch and landing schedules remain in question. None of the spacecraft debris has been recovered yet; the wreckage fell into a remote, wooded section of Siberia. The third stage malfunctioned; a sudden loss of pressure apparently was noted between the engine and turbopump.

While a crew may well have survived such an accident because of safety precautions built into the manned version of the rocket, no one wants to take any chances.

One or two unmanned Soyuz launches are on tap for October, one commercial and the other another space station supply run. Those would serve as important test flights before putting humans on board, Suffredini said.

NASA considered vacating the space station before, following the space shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003. Back then, shuttles were still being used to ferry some station residents back and forth. Instead, the station got by with two-man crews for three years because of the significant cutback in supplies.

The space station's population doubled in 2009, to six. It wasn't until the space station was completed this year that science research finally took priority.

Even if the space shuttles still were flying, space station crews still would need Soyuz-launched capsules to serve as lifeboats, Suffredini said. The capsules are certified for no more than 6 1/2 months in space, thus the need to regularly rotate crews. Complicating matters is the need to land the capsules during daylight hours in Kazakhstan, resulting in weeks of blackout periods.

NASA wants American private companies to take over crew hauls, but that's three to five years away at best. Until then, Soyuz capsules are the only means of transporting astronauts to the space station.

Japan and Europe have their own cargo ships and rockets, for unmanned use only. Commercial front-runner Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, plans to launch a space station supply ship from Cape Canaveral at the end of November. That would be put on hold if no one is on board to receive the vessel.

Suffredini said he hasn't had time to consider the PR impact of abandoning the space station, especially coming so soon after the end of the 30-year shuttle program.

"Flying safely is much, much more important than anything else I can think about right this instant," he said. "I'm sure we'll have an opportunity to discuss any political implications if we spend a lot of time on the ground. But you know, we'll just have to deal with them because we're going to do what's safest for the crew and for the space station."

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Online:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

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Archive Gallery: A Century of Ambitious Amphibious Vehicles

Would you take these seaplanes and other vehicles out for a ride? We'd take our chances on the marsh buggy, but would probably strap on a life vest (or two) while riding the amphibious bicycle

Marsh Buggy: March 1937

We've covered a fair number of amphibious craft over the years, most recently (and perhaps most memorably), a land-water ice cream truck that popped up on the Thames during Britain's National Ice Cream Week. And while you won't find any floating treatmobiles in our archives, the old-time amphibious vehicles we uncovered might prove just as charming.

Click to launch the photo gallery.

As a bonus, we threw in a couple of peculiar seaplanes from the 1930s, because who can resist an illustration titled "Air Conqueror of Tomorrow"? As goofy as some of these concepts look in retrospect (just wait until you see the amphibious bicycle), they're not far removed from the amphibians in operation today. For instance, one French inventor designed an underwater tour bus similar to the ones used in Duck Tours, except that his could actually dip underwater.

Meanwhile, Captain Frank T. Courtney suggested replacing a seaplane's wheels with endless treads in 1932, and prophetically enough, a good number of amphibious vehicles employed by the military draw inspiration from tanks instead of jeeps. Out of all the vehicles outlined in this gallery, the military amphibians are most reminiscent of their modern-day counterparts. Yet for every no-nonsense tank, there's an Arctic vessel equipped with a bladed hull and an airplane propeller, as well as a roly-poly combat vehicle outfitted with hemispherical wheels.

You might be asking whether these vehicles (excepting the military ones) are actually necessary. It's hard enough to maintain a car the runs on dry land, let alone one that can double as a motorboat, but practicality aside, we'd love to have taken one of these vehicles out for a spin. Correct us if we're wrong, but nothing says "August joyride" like a marsh buggy with jumbo-sized wheels.

Click through our gallery to read about the oil-hunting "tank," the Arctic amphibian, and more amphibious vehicles collected from our archives.

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Texas drought could threaten endangered species (AP)

LUBBOCK, Texas ? Federal officials are readying plans to evacuate a small number of endangered species in Texas as a severe drought lowers water levels and threatens the survival of rare wildlife in the state's huge ecosystem.

Months with almost no rain have caused water levels to drop by half or more in many rivers, lakes and other bodies of water, including springs in the central Texas Hill Country that are the only remaining habitat for populations of small fish, amphibians and other creatures. If the water continues to drop sharply, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials are preparing to net up large samples from the springs to take to a hatchery for preservation.

Such evacuations have been rare in the past, with one ordered in 2000 to rescue several species of mussels in Georgia. But such emergency measures could become more frequent if the drought here continues for months or years, as many forecasters predict. Texas is home to 86 endangered and threatened species.

"We're definitely concerned," Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Tom Brandt said. "I think we have moved to another step in making sure everything is ready. We're in a planning stage right now." The evacuations would begin if water levels in two declining springs drop by more than another 50 percent, after similar reductions in recent months.

Only 9.6 inches of rain has fallen on average across Texas this year, a little more than half the normal amount. Fish are dying in lakes and rivers from lack of water and low oxygen levels. Growth of vegetation for animal habitat is down dramatically.

"Texas flora and fauna are adapted to the harsh, extreme conditions. However, this particular drought is testing the limits of native populations," said Cindy Loeffler, a water resource expert with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

The lack of rainfall is intensifying competition for scarce water among wildlife, agriculture and local users. In this case, the Edwards Aquifer, which feeds the two springs that contain the vulnerable species, also provides water to almost two million people as well as for irrigation. The state has imposed new pumping restrictions on some water users and suspended the water rights of others. Federal law bars harming threatened species.

The Comal and San Marcos springs are the largest in Texas. The San Marcos Springs are on the bottom of a 16-acre lake, percolating water up through fissures in the limestone lake bottom. Comal Springs is in a secluded area of oak and cedar trees in a park in New Braunfels.

The springs contain the only remaining populations of two small fish, the fountain darter and the San Marcos gambusia; the Texas blind salamander; the San Marcos salamander; the Comal Springs Riffle beetle, the Comal Springs Dryopid beetle, the Peck's cave amphipod, an invertebrate; and Texas wild-rice. In fact, the San Marcos gambusia hasn't been seen since the early 1980s and could already be extinct.

This week (Aug. 22), the spring flow at Comal Springs was measured at 165 cubic feet per second, down from its average of 300. The flow at San Marcos Springs was 93, down from an average of 180. If the flows begin to approach 50 in Comal Springs and 75 in San Marcos Springs, wildlife agents and volunteers would collect large samples of the wildlife to add to small captive populations in tanks at the hatchery near San Marcos, which is about 30 miles from Austin.

Brandt said he couldn't project when the springs might approach the danger point, and hopes the water conservation efforts keep the springs viable until rains come. San Marcos Springs has never gone dry but Comal Springs went dry from June to November 1956, near the end of a seven-year drought that was the worst in Texas history. The current drought, which began last fall, is already the second worst.

Keeping the species alive is important, said Brandt. "They are a barometer," Brandt said. "We want to keep the habitat in as good a condition as we can and the endangered species, the health of those populations, tells us how well we're doing that."

If the drought continues unabated, "Then we're all in serious trouble and more severe steps will need to be taken," said Ken Kramer of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, which has gone to federal court in the past to protect wildlife in the state.

The Edwards Aquifer Authority, which manages pumpers of the water sourcey, has been directed by the Legislature to come up with conservation options for the future.

So far, lakes, streams and other waters in the north and western parts of Texas are drying up the fastest, and the plants and animals that rely on them are being watched the most closely. "We are internally at parks and wildlife having discussions, `what other species out there might need help?' " said Loeffler

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Irene forecasts on track; not up to speed on wind (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Hurricane Irene was no mystery to forecasters. They knew where it was going. But what it would do when it got there was another matter.

Predicting a storm's strength still baffles meteorologists. Every giant step in figuring out the path highlights how little progress they've made on another crucial question: How strong?

Irene made landfall Saturday morning at Cape Lookout, N.C. ? a bull's-eye in the field of weather forecasts. It hit where forecasters said it would and followed the track they had been warning about for days.

"People see that and assume we can predict everything," National Hurricane Center senior forecaster Richard Pasch said.

But when Irene struck, the storm did not stick with the forecast's predicted major hurricane strength winds.

"It's frustrating when people take our forecasts verbatim and say, `This is where it's going to be at this time and this is how strong it's going to be,'" Pasch said. "Because even though the track is good it's not certain."

But it's getting there.

By Monday night, five days before Irene first hit the East Coast, the hurricane center figured the storm would come ashore around the North Carolina-South Carolina border. By Tuesday night, they predicted it would rake the coast. And on Friday morning ? 24 hours before landfall ? they had the storm's next day location to within 10 miles or so.

Twenty years ago, 24-hour forecasts were lucky if they got it right within 100 miles and the average 36-hour forecast within 146 miles. With Irene, that was about the accuracy of the five-day forecast.

"This is a gold medal forecast," retired hurricane center director Max Mayfield said. "I don't think there's any doubt: I think they saved lives."

The current director, Bill Read, tried not to sound boastful: "In the big picture of things, it looks like it panned out very well."

There are two reasons for the steady improvement in forecasts: Better computer models and better data to go into those models. With Irene, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration spent extra money with jet flights and weather balloons across the country to get far more data than usual and it paid off in even better forecasts, Mayfield said.

Irene also was the type of storm that chugs off of Africa that is pretty simple to forecast accurately, said Georgia Tech meteorology professor Judith Curry, who makes private forecasts for energy interests with her firm Climate Forecast Applications Network.

Storms in the Gulf of Mexico are much more fickle, with weaker and less obvious steering currents. In 1985, Hurricane Elena caused evacuation chaos as it threatened to hit western Florida twice, but never did so.

On the negative side, the forecast after Irene hit the Bahamas had it staying as a Category 3 and possibly increasing to a Category 4. But it weakened and hit as a Category 1 storm and stayed that way up the coast until it faded into a tropical storm by the time it reached New York City. It lost strength as it moved north over land and cooler water.

Read said they will go back and figure out what happened, but noted they have made huge strides in projecting where a hurricane will hit. In past storms, they would have issued warnings for Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, but there were no evacuations there for Irene.

"We're not completely sure how the interplay of various features is causing the strength of a storm to change," Read said.

One theory is that a storm's strength is dependent on the storm's inner core. Irene never had a classic, fully formed eye wall ? even going through the Bahamas as a Category 3.

"Why it did that, we don't know," Read said. "That's a gap in the science."

Georgia Tech's Curry said one of the main problems is that the giant global computer models that do so well forecasting the track require large scale data. The keys to intensity changes are usually too small for big computer models, she said.

Mayfield says what's needed is better real-time, small-scale information, like Doppler radar. NOAA used old propeller planes to take Doppler radar data inside Irene, but the information will be used to design better intensity forecasts in the future, he said.

And when it comes to damage from Irene, the problem wasn't wind strength, but storm surge and flooding, which was the message from forecasters all week long.

Given that the accuracy of forecasting intensity has not changed much at all in 20 years, Keith Seitter, executive director of the American Meteorological Society, said he thought the strength forecast was pretty good.

___

Christine Armario reported from Miami.

___

National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/

Track forecasts for Irene: http://tinyurl.com/3goe2dr

Intensity forecasts for Irene: http://tinyurl.com/3vl9fvl

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Is It Worth It to Build a Home Theater PC These Days?

The Revival of the HTPC? Geoffrey Morrison

Home theater PCs (HTPCs) have kind of fallen out of favor as simpler, more efficient media gadgets have sprung up. But as we found with the Apple TV, sometimes simpler doesn't mean better. Our friends at Sound+Vision took a second look at the HTPC, and found some distinct benefits for the DIY-minded: a cheap price, endless possible upgrades, and lots of flexibility and power. Check it out here.

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Pa. robot institute attracts presidential visit (AP)

PITTSBURGH ? Need help defusing a bomb, mowing a lawn or scraping old paint?

President Barack Obama might see robots that can do those tasks on Friday when he visits the National Robotics Engineering Center at Carnegie Mellon University. It's one of eight research centers at the school's Robotics Institute.

The institute has been a global force in robotics development over the last 30 years. Its scientists have created robot vehicles to scout out war zones, medical robots, entertainment robots and even the SnackBot, which ferries snacks to people so scientists can study how humans respond to machines.

With growing interest from the military, businesses and consumers, the institute has more than 500 technical experts and a $65 million annual budget. And its scientists aren't just asking questions ? they're building robots that ask questions, too.

Institute director Matthew Mason told The Associated Press that in the early days of robotics research the vision was for machines to do the dull, dirty or dangerous jobs that humans shun.

"But now we think not so much of a robot instead of a person, but of robotic technology working with people," Mason said. That could mean helping the elderly or sick cope with basic household tasks, or helping a doctor perform surgery.

For Manuela Veloso, a scientist at the institute, a key step was building robots that are aware they don't have all the answers.

"They know the bounds of their ability. If they are not confident, they stop," and then ask a human a question, she said.

Her robots also learn that some people in the office don't have the time or inclination to answer questions from a machine.

"The robot plans not only with a model of the environment, but a plan of the people in the environment," she said.

Veloso now has two of the new designs ? called co-bots for collaboration ? and like humans who gossip about the best path to success at work, the co-bots compare notes.

"The two robots exchange information when they learn about the humans, and they negotiate who should go where among the two of them," said Veloso, who is also president-elect of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

She now sees robots ? and artificial intelligence ? in a completely new way.

"Forget about these robots knowing it all," she said. "I suddenly realized that intelligence was not about what you know. It was actually about knowing what you don't know."

Her next project is training the robots to go to the Internet for answers when humans can't provide them.

"I have a big vision of where we are going," Veloso said of her robots. "They know what they can do and what they cannot do. That's very beautiful."

Now the question may be how humans react to such new robots.

Mason, director of the institute, says that there's always been the issue of human trust in technology.

"For many years a lot of us were reluctant to get into medical robotics," he said, because of a fear that a robot mistake might cause harm to a patient, and thus tarnish the whole field.

But Mason thinks that the success of robots that identify and dispose of bombs in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has helped change views.

"You can't look at the wreckage without feeling grateful" that no human life was lost, he said.

Large agricultural companies also are considering robotic harvesting because of potential migrant labor shortages, he said.

Obama will stress the theme of growing American jobs through high-tech manufacturing with the visit to Carnegie Mellon.

Some companies already have such job openings, and they struggle to find enough people with the right skills.

Roderick Herrick is vice president and site manager for Bayer Corp.'s industrial park in Baytown, Texas. It's a manufacturing plant that uses advanced techniques. Jobs there can pay well ? around $60,000 a year ? and have the opportunity for advancement.

"The challenge is really whether we can find the talent," Herrick said. "Manufacturing has kind of gotten a black eye over the years."

___

Online:

http://www.ri.cmu.edu/

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Anti-Wave Tech Tricks Ocean Water Into Standing Still, Making Ships Efficient and Invisible

U.S. Navy Ships at Sea Wikimedia Commons

We?ve already seen how future ships can be cloaked against sonar, and maybe someday even space and time. Now researchers say they can cloak the ships? wakes, tricking water itself into acting as though nothing is there.

A new metamaterial cloaking system can trick water into standing still as an object moves through it, by eliminating the shear force and reducing water displacement, Duke University researchers say. This in turn reduces the amount of energy required to move an object ? say, a ship ? through the water, theoretically saving fuel.

Yaroslav Urzhumov, assistant research professor in electrical and computer engineering at Duke, envisions covering the hull of a ship with a three-dimensional lattice of porous metallic materials that would be embedded with tiny pumps. The pumps could force flowing water through at variable rates, Urzhumov says in a news release. ?The goal is make it so the water passing through the porous material leaves the cloak at the same speed as the water surrounding by the vessel,? he says.

The water surrounding the hull would appear to be still, relative to the movement of the vessel, which would reduce the amount of energy the vessel needs to get through it. When moving through a fluid, a solid object displaces a greater volume of fluid than its own total volume ? think of how much effort it requires to drag a thin fishing line through water. So if these shear forces could be eliminated or mitigated, a moving vessel would displace less fluid.

We?ve seen other examples of ship-efficiency water interference tech lately, including a proposal to harness the Leidenfrost effect, wherein a liquid produces an insulating vapor layer when it comes in contact with a solid object that is hotter than its boiling point. That vapor layer could reduce drag, researchers say. But superheating hulls would likely require lots of energy input, lessening any energy savings from the drag reduction.

A lattice-pump system would conceivably be better, because the micropumps wouldn?t need that much power, Urzhumov says ? certainly not as much energy as you would need to push an un-cloaked ship through the seas. The research is reported in the online version of Physical Review Letters.

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Driverless Car Drives 175 Miles on Busy Chinese Expressway, No GPS Necessary

Chinese Driverless Car National University of Defense Technology

According to China Daily, back in July, a Chinese driverless car traveled about 175 miles, at around 55 mph, on an expressway laden with other cars. Even more impressive, the car needed no GPS assistance, instead relying on only video cameras and radar sensors to see the road and the other drivers.

The car, a Hongqi HQ3 developed by the National University of Defense Technology, was controlled by a proprietary artificial intelligence system in the car's trunk. It seems like the demo went swimmingly: the car managed to travel the long distance between provincial capitals Changsha and Wuhan, passing cars and changing lanes, with hardly a hiccup.

Of course, as the car relies primarily on visual clues, the demo was conducted during daytime--a lack of light, as well as weather complications like fog, can throw the car's senses off. (Maybe it could use one of these optical sensors?)

China is a bit behind the U.S. when it comes to these driverless cars--some states are already on their way to passing driverless legislation, and Google's driverless cars have already driven a whopping 140,000 hours. On the other hand, only in the U.S. has a driverless car somehow crashed due to human error, so China's one up on us there.

The team behind the car plans to work with China's First Auto Works to produce a commercial version sometime in the future.

[via I Programmer]

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Pa. robot institute attracts presidential visit (AP)

PITTSBURGH ? Need help defusing a bomb, mowing a lawn or scraping old paint?

President Barack Obama might see robots that can do those tasks on Friday when he visits the National Robotics Engineering Center at Carnegie Mellon University. It's one of eight research centers at the school's Robotics Institute.

The institute has been a global force in robotics development over the last 30 years. Its scientists have created robot vehicles to scout out war zones, medical robots, entertainment robots and even the SnackBot, which ferries snacks to people so scientists can study how humans respond to machines.

With growing interest from the military, businesses and consumers, the institute has more than 500 technical experts and a $65 million annual budget. And its scientists aren't just asking questions ? they're building robots that ask questions, too.

Institute director Matthew Mason told The Associated Press that in the early days of robotics research the vision was for machines to do the dull, dirty or dangerous jobs that humans shun.

"But now we think not so much of a robot instead of a person, but of robotic technology working with people," Mason said. That could mean helping the elderly or sick cope with basic household tasks, or helping a doctor perform surgery.

For Manuela Veloso, a scientist at the institute, a key step was building robots that are aware they don't have all the answers.

"They know the bounds of their ability. If they are not confident, they stop," and then ask a human a question, she said.

Her robots also learn that some people in the office don't have the time or inclination to answer questions from a machine.

"The robot plans not only with a model of the environment, but a plan of the people in the environment," she said.

Veloso now has two of the new designs ? called co-bots for collaboration ? and like humans who gossip about the best path to success at work, the co-bots compare notes.

"The two robots exchange information when they learn about the humans, and they negotiate who should go where among the two of them," said Veloso, who is also president-elect of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

She now sees robots ? and artificial intelligence ? in a completely new way.

"Forget about these robots knowing it all," she said. "I suddenly realized that intelligence was not about what you know. It was actually about knowing what you don't know."

Her next project is training the robots to go to the Internet for answers when humans can't provide them.

"I have a big vision of where we are going," Veloso said of her robots. "They know what they can do and what they cannot do. That's very beautiful."

Now the question may be how humans react to such new robots.

Mason, director of the institute, says that there's always been the issue of human trust in technology.

"For many years a lot of us were reluctant to get into medical robotics," he said, because of a fear that a robot mistake might cause harm to a patient, and thus tarnish the whole field.

But Mason thinks that the success of robots that identify and dispose of bombs in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has helped change views.

"You can't look at the wreckage without feeling grateful" that no human life was lost, he said.

Large agricultural companies also are considering robotic harvesting because of potential migrant labor shortages, he said.

Obama will stress the theme of growing American jobs through high-tech manufacturing with the visit to Carnegie Mellon.

Some companies already have such job openings, and they struggle to find enough people with the right skills.

Roderick Herrick is vice president and site manager for Bayer Corp.'s industrial park in Baytown, Texas. It's a manufacturing plant that uses advanced techniques. Jobs there can pay well ? around $60,000 a year ? and have the opportunity for advancement.

"The challenge is really whether we can find the talent," Herrick said. "Manufacturing has kind of gotten a black eye over the years."

___

Online:

http://www.ri.cmu.edu/

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Scientists take temperature of long-gone dinosaurs (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Scientists have figured out a way to take the temperature of dinosaurs, and it turns out to be almost the same as ours.

Of course you can't just stick a thermometer under the tongue of a gigantic creature that's been extinct for millions of years.

So they did the next best thing. They studied dinosaur teeth, which can reflect body temperature.

They found the long-necked Brachiosaurus had a temperature of about 100.8 degrees F and the smaller Camarasaurus had a temperature of about 98.3 degrees. People average 98.6.

Their study, reported online Thursday in the journal Science, won't settle the long-running debate over whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded like modern mammals or cold-blooded, requiring outside sources of warmth to get them going like lizards.

When they were first discovered, the theory was that they were lumbering and cold-blooded, but in recent years the consensus has been moving more toward warm-blooded, which would allow them to be more active, like the velociraptors in the Jurassic Park movies.

"Our analysis really allows us rule out that they could have been cold, like crocodiles, for example," lead researcher Robert A. Eagle of the California Institute of Technology said in a briefing.

But, he added, "this doesn't necessarily mean these large dinosaurs had high metabolism like mammals and birds ... they could have been `gigantotherms' and stay warm because they were so large."

A giant body mass is very good at keeping the temperature constant, explained co-author Thomas Tuetken of the University of Bonn, Germany.

Their research was on sauropods, the largest of dinosaurs, and the researchers explained that animals that large can retain body heat even with a relatively low metabolism, simply because they are so big. Brachiosaurus weighed in at 40 tons and Camarasaurus was a 15-ton creature. Both lived about 150 million years ago.

The finding "confirms that dinosaurs were not sluggish, cold-blooded animals," commented Roger Seymour of the University of Adelaide, Australia, who was not part of the research team.

But, he added, "the debate about dinosaur metabolic rate will go on, no doubt, because it can never be measured directly and paleoscientists will often seek evidence to support a particular view and ignore contrary evidence."

Geoffrey F. Birchard of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., agreed that the debate is likely to continue.

The new paper helps confirm what the temperatures of these dinosaurs were, but knowing what the temperature was in something so big doesn't necessarily confirm that it was warm-blooded, said Birchard, who was not part of the research team.

The researchers were able to determine the creatures' temperatures because body temperature makes a difference in the amount of different types of carbon and oxygen that collect in the tooth enamel.

Now that they've looked at the biggest ones, they plan to turn their attention to smaller dinosaurs.

___

http://www.sciencemag.org

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'Missing' Moon Dust Turns Up at St. Louis Auction (SPACE.com)

NASA has recovered a few grains of moon dust after learning that the lunar material was set to be auctioned off in St. Louis this month, federal prosecutors announced Thursday (June 23).

There's not much of the stuff ? just some residue attached to a piece of transparent tape one-eighth of an inch (3 millimeters) wide. But its origin and history are what make the dust special: It came down to Earth in July 1969 with the Apollo 11 astronauts, who were the first humans to set foot on the lunar surface.

The United States Attorney's Office for Eastern Missouri learned in early June that the moon dust was going to be auctioned off in St. Louis. NASA investigators then contacted the auction house, Regency-Superior Auctions, which withdrew the material, prosecutors said.

Officials from the U.S. Attorney's Office took possession of the tape last Friday (June 17), then handed it over to NASA. The material was returned to the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston on Monday (June 20). [Photos: Our Changing Moon]

The federal government regards the Apollo lunar samples as national treasures. It has never knowingly given moon rocks or loose moon dust to private individuals. But no arrests have been made in this case.

The woman who consigned the tape to Regency-Superior inherited it from her late husband, who apparently acquired it in good faith, officials said. The woman's name has not been released.

"In this particular situation, there was no wrong done," said space history expert Robert Pearlman, editor of the website collectSPACE.com, which is a SPACE.com partner. "Everyone cooperated."

Selling is not a crime

It's not illegal per se to sell lunar materials, Pearlman said. It all depends on how the seller came into possession of the samples. And people have gotten a hold of moon dust legally.

For example, NASA gave Apollo astronauts the patches from the outsides of their spacesuits, which had become impregnated with lunar dust. And the agency once released from its inventory a so-called "temporary stowage bag" used on one of the Apollo flights to hold small items during the mission.

In the course of the flight, the items placed in the bag stained the interior with moon dust. When the bag was later sold during an Oct. 2000 auction, its new owner found some smatterings of the remaining moon dust inside when he opened it up, Pearlman said.

A dusty film cartridge

The moon dust to be auctioned in St. Louis this month was originally lodged in the film cartridge of a camera used by Apollo 11 astronauts, who apparently dropped it on the surface of the moon.

Back then, a NASA employee named Terry Slezak was in charge of processing the film brought back from the Apollo missions. When he opened this particular cartridge, dust poured out, getting all over his hands. Slezak thus became the non-astronaut ever to touch lunar material with his bare hands.

According to Slezak, he used a towel and some transparent tape to clear the dust off the film, the New York Times reported.

The Apollo 11 astronauts later presented Slezak with a signed commemorative poster board, complete with pictures showing a smiling Slezak holding his dusty hand up for the camera. Slezak affixed the dusty piece of tape to the poster.

"I thought that would be kind of neat," Slezak told the Times.

Slezak sold the poster at auction in 2001 for just over $25,000, Pearlman said. While Slezak was never authorized to take the dust-flecked tape, he maintains that NASA has never questioned him about the matter.

Later, the dusty tape from the poster board was cut up into tiny pieces, some of which were also put up for sale. A piece three-eighths of an inch (9 mm) wide has sold for about $6,000, and slivers the size of the one Regency-Superior was going to auction off have been offered at nearly $1,000, Pearlman said.

Moon rocks for sale?

NASA astronauts brought 842 pounds (382 kilograms) of lunar material home to Earth between 1969 and 1972, souvenirs from their Apollo moonwalking jaunts. A court has valued this stuff at $1.44 million per ounce ($50,800 per gram), based on how much those NASA missions cost.

The space agency has given small amounts of moon material to national and state governments over the years. But NASA hangs on tightly to the rest of it.

"They track it very well," Pearlman said, adding that less than 1 ounce (28 g) of the lunar samples is thought to be unaccounted for.

But moon rocks, real or fake, are circulating on the market.

Just last month, NASA officials busted a woman who was trying to sell a purported moon rock for $1.7 million. The moon rock sting went down in a Denny's restaurant in Lake Elsinore, Calif.

While the auction of this tiny tape sliver seems to be small potatoes by comparison, Pearlman said he understands why NASA works so hard to recover lunar materials.

"You can't undo precedent," Pearlman said. "They want to be able to defend when there are large missing moon rocks, if that ever comes up. So they have to respond to every report that they receive."

Preliminary analysis of the dust on the tape indicates that it likely is of lunar origin, though it will take two to three weeks to confirm this definitively, prosecutors said.

You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Stress May Worsen Lung Function in Kids Breathing Dirty Air (HealthDay)

FRIDAY, June 24 (HealthDay News) -- Children who live in stress-filled homes experience more air pollution-related lung damage than kids in less stressful environments, a new study finds.

Researchers looked at the effects of traffic-related pollution and parental stress on 1,400 children, aged 10 to 12, in California. There were no significant associations noted between parental stress alone and lung function levels in the children.

But as exposure to traffic pollution increased, lung function decreased among children in high-stress homes. This did not occur among children in low-stress homes, said the researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

Certain factors associated with low socioeconomic levels were also linked with high stress, such as an annual income below $30,000, low education levels among parents, no air conditioning in the home and a lack of health insurance.

The study appears online ahead of print in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

"One possible explanation for the stress-related pattern of [traffic-related pollution] respiratory effects is the biological pathways common to effects of traffic-related pollution and stress," lead researcher Talat Islam, an assistant professor in the environmental health division at Keck, said in a news release from the American Thoracic Society.

"Like air pollution, stress has been linked to both inflammation and oxidative damage at the cellular level, so this may explain the association," he added.

The public health implications of this finding are clear, he noted.

"The magnitude of the traffic-related pollution-associated deficits in [lung function] levels in children growing up in high-stress households was larger than deficits reported for children exposed to maternal smoking during pregnancy and secondhand tobacco smoke," Islam said.

"Our findings suggest that by regulating traffic-related pollution levels around residential areas and schools, we could reduce the adverse effect of traffic-related pollution on lung function among vulnerable children," he concluded.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about respiratory health and air pollution.

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NASA prepping next Mars spacecraft for fall launch (AP)

PASADENA, Calif. ? NASA's next roving spacecraft to the surface of Mars has arrived in Florida after a cross-country flight to undergo final testing.

A C-17 cargo jet carrying the rover nicknamed Curiosity took off from March Air Force Base in California and arrived Wednesday night in Florida.

Engineers will spend the next several months prepping the rover for its November launch.

The $2.5 billion mission was supposed to fly in 2009, but problems during development pushed costs up and delayed launch.

Curiosity is scheduled to land in August 2012 and will study whether the Martian environment was ever favorable for microbial life.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the program, formally known as the Mars Science Laboratory.

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Testing the Goods: The Midnight/Shot, a Pocket-Sized Infrared Camera

The Midnight/Shot offers one key feature--infrared photos and videos--that you won't find on your average point-and-shoot, or even your average DSLR

By Dan Bracaglia and Dan Nosowitz Posted 08.12.2011 at 12:28 pm

Tree Shot at Night Foliage quickly became our favorite subject to shoot with the Midnight/Shot Dan Bracaglia

This may sound like a high-school science lesson, but to understand how the Midnight/Shot IR camera takes its eerie and beautiful shots, you must first understand what exactly infrared light is. Stay with us. (Please.) Because that understanding is key to appreciating that this little $150 camera can take photos most $3,000 DSLRs can't.

What's New

So, the lesson: The longest wavelength of light that is visible to the naked human eye is red. Infrared light is essentially electromagnetic radiation that is at a wavelength slightly longer than that of visible light. That slightly longer wavelength makes infrared light invisible to the naked eye.

All digital cameras, including the Midnight/Shot, contain a filter, generally located in front of the sensor, that blocks out all infrared light?without this filter, digital images would have a pink fuzz around the edges, since digital sensors are very sensitive to IR and the different wavelength would cause the lens to focus at a different point. However, in its "IR mode," the Midnight/Shot removes that infrared filter from the light path. It avoids the pink fuzz problem by using exclusively black and white for IR photos, and by being a relatively low-resolution camera to begin with. (This version of IR is different than the "heat map" photos, like this cup of coffee, that we sometimes associate with IR photography. Those are actually taken with thermographic cameras--heat emits IR, yes, but in a longer wavelength than the one the Midnight/Shot sees.)

Science lesson over (and it wasn?t so bad, right?).

So why is infrared photography so cool? It allows us to see a world that is ordinarily completely invisible to us. Plus, it makes photos look really unusual and cool--contrast is dialed way up, with trees often seeming snow-white and the sky looking pitch-black, for example. IR photography isn?t new--in the old days of infrared photography, special IR-sensitive films were used. Unfortunately, the handling and processing of those films, in addition to the physical price of them, made IR photography out of reach for most photographers. But within recent years, many photographers have begun experimenting with the removal of that IR filter located in their digital cameras. In fact, there are quite a few services out there that will convert your camera for you (LifePixel being one of the largest). But as this conversion can cost nearly $500, it?s nowhere near worth it for someone who just wants to experiment with this very unusual branch of photography.

Enter the $150 Midnight/Shot, a tiny, solid-feeling (if plasticky) compact camera, boasting a roomy 3-inch LCD, a 5MP CMOS sensor and the ability to shoot authentic infrared images--you can even shoot infrared video at 640x480p--all for $150. To trigger the IR mode, you actually twist a little grooved ring around the lens to physically move the IR filter away from the lens.

The main difference between the Midnight/Shot IR camera and an expensive DSLR converted for IR photography is that the DSLR captures only infrared light, thanks to the filter placed in front of the sensor that blocks nearly all wavelengths except for the infrared ones. The Midnight/Shot, on the other hand, allows for all spectrums of light to flood the sensor--not just infrared, but also all visible light. Without the insertion of an additional filter to block out the other wavelengths, the Midnight/Shot is no different than a point and shoot with a busted IR-blocking filter?essentially a full-spectrum camera.

Check out some sample shots from the Midnight/Shot camera.

What's Good

We brought the Midnight/Shot along with us to a nighttime concert in Central Park to see how it'd fare. The results were, to our surprise, pretty impressive. The instructions do state that at night, the subject must be within nine feet of the camera. That's because at night, with the absence of light (including infrared light), you'll need to use the camera's little IR flashlight, located just above the lens, to provide your own (invisible to the naked eye) IR light. Without the flashlight, taking photos in a dark room would result in a black picture. In the daytime, you don't have to worry about that, but we did end up with several completely dark images, due to our negligence in reading the instructions. The flashlight generally does a better, or at least more dramatic, job of exploiting the "IR look" of photos than just using regular sunlight.

Still, we came home with a few winners--all in black-and-white, since the camera only shoots infrared in monochrome (it shoots in color when not in IR mode). You will notice that the IR-effect tends to give foliage and anything with chlorophyll an eerie white glow. This is because chlorophyll is known to reflect IR light back more than just about any other surface, which means any kind of greenery is going to give a particularly strong image. The IR effect is very particular--it looks almost like some sort of digital aftereffect, except even more unearthly. It's not going to be ideal in every situation, but we did find it to be a very fun toy to play around with--"how's that going to look in IR? How about that?"

However, the true genius of this inexpensive camera is revealed when the lights are turned off. Thanks to the IR flashlight located above the lens, the Midnight/Shot is able to see in complete darkness?something an expensive IR-converted DSLR can?t do. While the manufacturer claims that the beam is capable of illuminating objects shrouded in blackness up to eight feet away, our tests showed the beam's limit is more like six feet. For the best results, we recommend being no more than 3 feet away from your subject. Here's what we mean:

Night Vision With the Midnight/Shot: �Dan Bracaglia

The camera itself feels sort of like a cheap-ish knockoff of the Canon S95?pretty much the top compact camera in the game right now?which means it?s a thin, minimalistic black design, very businesslike, with no more buttons than necessary. It?s very easy to use, once you figure out how to activate IR mode, which is of course what you?ll mostly be doing with it.

What's Bad

It is still a basically no-name-brand $150 point-and-shoot, and one with middling specs at that, so in terms of performance, it's not exactly the most impressive camera you can buy. It does feel pretty cheap, though not necessarily fragile--it's very plasticky, but it doesn't feel as if it's liable to fall apart. We could probably pick apart its specs and shooting options, but that's really missing the point of the camera.

The Midnight/Shot IR Camera: Slim and inoffensively designed. �Midnight/Shot

The Price

$150 at ThinkGeek, which we think is a totally fair price. Cheap, even.

The Verdict

If you're looking for a new all-purpose point-and-shoot, forget about the Midnight/Shot. It's not for you. But for photography geeks and the generally curious, this is a really fun toy. You can replicate the effect in Photoshop, mostly--though not without some very significant time figuring out all the particular light and contrast settings--but we really liked playing with real IR photography, seeing how different objects and scenes would react with the filterless camera. The night vision mode, as expected from the camera's marketing, was one of the most fun features--it really does see in the dark, to a limited extent, and in our time with the camera, the feature didn't even start to get old. It's inessential, but definitely fun.

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Endangered species hit hard by historic Ariz. fire (AP)

PHOENIX ? The largest wildfire in Arizona history left a charred landscape of blackened forest, burned-out vehicle hulks and charred fireplaces as it destroyed more than 30 homes. It also inflicted a serious toll on an ecosystem that's home to numerous endangered species.

The flames spared three packs of endangered Mexican gray wolves but likely killed at least some threatened Mexican spotted owls as it roared through more than a half-million acres of a pristine forest on the New Mexico border.

Though some spots were untouched or had only undergrowth burn, the effect of the human-caused Wallow fire will last for decades because it burned so hot in many areas that it completely denuded the landscape, forest specialists said.

"The natural fires are good for a healthy forest, but these fires ? where the debris has been allowed to build up and it just hasn't been addressed ? they come out very hot and just scorch everything. As soon as the monsoon shows up, there's a potential for a lot of soil to move," said Tom Buckley, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokesman.

Forest managers are warning homeowners in the White Mountains to get flood insurance immediately because summer storms will likely create severe runoff.

It's part of the steep human cost from the 832-square-mile blaze that continues to churn through thousands of new acres per day in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest.

The fire destroyed 32 homes and four rental cabins. The charred skeletons of vacation homes are physical reminders of disrupted lives and bygone memories. For many Arizona desert dwellers, the mountains provided an escape from the heat for generations.

The Wallow fire was 67 percent contained by Thursday night but still slowly growing on the south and southeast flanks.

Two other major fires are burning in the state. The 44-square-mile Monument fire near Sierra Vista, Ariz., has destroyed 57 homes. Authorities lifted an evacuation order for an estimated 200 to 300 homes Thursday, but about 300 remain evacuated. The 348-square-mile Horseshoe Two fire atop southeastern the Chiricahua mountains has destroyed nine homes in the world-renowned bird watching area.

The three wolf packs in the Apache-Sitgreaves all had pups and were in or near their dens when the fire that broke out on May 29 roared through, said Jim Paxon, a spokesman for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. Firefighters on the ground have seen two of the packs moving around with their pups. Radio collars on the three adults in the third pack show they are alive, but the status of their pups remains unknown because they are in an area still too hot for ground crews to enter.

"They're there, and functioning, and able to persist and take care of their pups," Paxon said. "We feel very confident that our wolves are out there and they've all got pups, and that's a good thing."

The Fish and Wildlife Service said Thursday it had not confirmed the pups survived.

The wolves were reintroduced into Arizona and New Mexico beginning in 1998. Managers had hoped to have more than 100 in the wild by 2006, but the count stood at 42 at the beginning of 2010.

The spotted owls are another matter.

Crown fires in overgrown forests have become the greatest cause of unusual losses for the birds, and 73 protected nesting areas were burned in the fire, said Beth Humphrey, Apache-Sitgreaves biologist. There are 145 protested nest sites in the entire 2.1 million acres forest.

Any nestlings or eggs caught in the fire were surely lost, although mortality among adults was likely limited, Humphrey said.

"We don't know the severity of the impacts of those owl sites," Buckley said. "Fires don't burn evenly, so we have a lot of hope that some survived."

Fish and Wildlife is looking to see if prey for the wolves and owls will return quickly enough to let the animals stay in their regular areas.

The burned forest supports more than a dozen other endangered or threatened species, including snails, frogs and fish. Dozens of other species live in the forest that aren't rare, including bear, deer, antelope and a herd of elk that, at about 6,000, is among the state's biggest.

Only two dead elk have been found, Paxon said. A yearling calf had to be euthanized because its hooves were badly burned.

"These ungulates, the elk and the deer and the antelope, they're a whole lot smarter than people are when it comes to evacuations," Paxon said.

"When they feel heat, they will move away from heat toward a cooler area, and generally that's perpendicular to the way the fire's going. If it's not a huge fire, they often circle around and come back in. If it is a pretty widespread fire front, they simply get out in front of that and go over the hill into the next drainage."

The next round of damage will come once summer rains hit. The National Weather Service is warning of major flash floods and debris flows even with a 15-minute-long moderate downpour.

A 23-square-mile fire outside Flagstaff, Ariz., last June led to severe flooding from summer rains that inundated more than 80 homes and led to the drowning death of a 12-year-old girl.

The flooding from the Wallow will kill fish, since it will carry major flows of ash and sediment and clog streams. Decades-long efforts to restore endangered Apache and Gila trout to the streams that flow from the mountain will be hurt.

Already, plans are being made to pull pure Apache trout from streams where it is expected they will die, to preserve the lineage, said Julie Meka Carter, native trout conservation coordinator for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. They could be put in other streams or placed in hatcheries for as long as three years, until the ash and sediment flows subside.

"The forest will be very changed, very, very different," said Apache-Sitgreaves forest supervisor Chris Knopp.

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Pollution found in Pa. wells near site of blowout (AP)

ALLENTOWN, Pa. ? Federal environmental officials say that testing has revealed contamination in three private water wells following an April blowout at a Pennsylvania natural gas drilling site.

Environmental Protection Agency spokesman Roy Seneca said Friday that EPA took water samples from seven private water wells near the Chesapeake Energy Corp. drilling site near Canton in in northeastern Pennsylvania's Bradford County.

EPA briefed residents on the sampling results Thursday. Seneca declined to reveal the nature of the contamination. He says EPA will sample the wells again in July.

The Chesapeake well spilled thousands of gallons of salty, chemical-laced water into fields and a stream.

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Friendly Humanoid Robot Asimo (May Be) Tapped for Japanese Nuclear Cleanup Work [Updated]

I'm Going Where? Wikimedia Commons

[Updated 2:25 p.m.] Honda sent us an e-mail saying the Asahi Shimbun report is "speculative." "Although Honda hopes that ASIMO will someday be a helper to people, at this point the robot is solely a research and design project," a Honda spokeswoman said.

A couple camera-toting robots have been tooling around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, where radiation levels are still making it unsafe for human workers. Now Japanese media are reporting the crews are getting their first humanoid counterpart.

Honda is aiming to redesign Asimo, its 4-foot-tall humanoid robot, so it can join workers at Fukushima Daiichi, according to Japanese media. Asimo would need tires or caterpillar tracks instead of its delicate legs, and the robot would also need updates to its arms so they can move as smoothly as a human?s, according to the newspaper Asahi Shimbun (reported by AFP).

Since it was introduced a little more than 10 years ago, Asimo has been a robot ambassador of sorts, used mostly to spur robotics research and development. The robot greets children at science museums and has even met heads of state. But it has not been tapped for such difficult labor before.

Asimo can easily shake hands, carry a tray and push small objects, but it would need motorized shoulders, elbows and wrists to get more human-like moves, the paper says. It?s not clear what Asimo would be doing inside the Fukushima plant, but it would likely go into radiation hotspots where it remains dangerous for humans to enter.

Fukushima Daiichi?s reactors have been leaking radiation since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out its cooling systems. Workers are being exposed to high levels of radiation while trying to make repairs. Japanese elderly have even offered to do the job, to spare the younger workers from harmful radiation. But a human-like robot would clearly be a better alternative.

[AFP ]

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Friendly Humanoid Robot Asimo (May Be) Tapped for Japanese Nuclear Cleanup Work [Updated]

I'm Going Where? Wikimedia Commons

[Updated 2:25 p.m.] Honda sent us an e-mail saying the Asahi Shimbun report is "speculative." "Although Honda hopes that ASIMO will someday be a helper to people, at this point the robot is solely a research and design project," a Honda spokeswoman said.

A couple camera-toting robots have been tooling around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, where radiation levels are still making it unsafe for human workers. Now Japanese media are reporting the crews are getting their first humanoid counterpart.

Honda is aiming to redesign Asimo, its 4-foot-tall humanoid robot, so it can join workers at Fukushima Daiichi, according to Japanese media. Asimo would need tires or caterpillar tracks instead of its delicate legs, and the robot would also need updates to its arms so they can move as smoothly as a human?s, according to the newspaper Asahi Shimbun (reported by AFP).

Since it was introduced a little more than 10 years ago, Asimo has been a robot ambassador of sorts, used mostly to spur robotics research and development. The robot greets children at science museums and has even met heads of state. But it has not been tapped for such difficult labor before.

Asimo can easily shake hands, carry a tray and push small objects, but it would need motorized shoulders, elbows and wrists to get more human-like moves, the paper says. It?s not clear what Asimo would be doing inside the Fukushima plant, but it would likely go into radiation hotspots where it remains dangerous for humans to enter.

Fukushima Daiichi?s reactors have been leaking radiation since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out its cooling systems. Workers are being exposed to high levels of radiation while trying to make repairs. Japanese elderly have even offered to do the job, to spare the younger workers from harmful radiation. But a human-like robot would clearly be a better alternative.

[AFP ]

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Willow Garage Introduces Discount PR2 SE, a One-Armed Personal Robot for the Rest of Us

PR2 SE Half the arms, nearly half the price. Willow Garage

Willow Garage?s PR2 has provided a unique, open source robotics platform to all kinds of labs and institutions that otherwise wouldn?t have access to a complex robotics system--but not to that many. For all the absolutely cool things you can do with PR2, the $400,000 price tag is prohibitive--only about two dozen commercial and academic labs have their own PR2s. So, in an attempt to make their robot more accessible, Willow Garage is introducing the PR2 SE this week, a pared-down version of the same robot costing a mere $285,000.

So how do you cut more than a hundred grand off a $400,000 robot? You start by removing one of its arms. Robot arms are complicated and expensive, and a lot of roboticists have told Willow Garage their research really doesn?t require two arms (unless you?re researching how to bake chocolate chip cookies). Cut off one arm and the price drops dramatically.

Figure in the 30 percent savings Willow Garage offers to those who show a proven track record of open source development practices, and pretty soon you?re talking about a personal robot at a price that many more universities and other institutions can justify. That?s good for robotics, good for the open source community, and good for Willow Garage. PR2 doesn?t seem to mind either.

Plus, the PR2 SE comes with an updated sensor suite (which as yet has not been fully defined) to offset the loss of that arm, an added value that PR2 SE would likely applaud--if it could.

[Willow Garage via SmartPlanet]

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Stress May Worsen Lung Function in Kids Breathing Dirty Air (HealthDay)

FRIDAY, June 24 (HealthDay News) -- Children who live in stress-filled homes experience more air pollution-related lung damage than kids in less stressful environments, a new study finds.

Researchers looked at the effects of traffic-related pollution and parental stress on 1,400 children, aged 10 to 12, in California. There were no significant associations noted between parental stress alone and lung function levels in the children.

But as exposure to traffic pollution increased, lung function decreased among children in high-stress homes. This did not occur among children in low-stress homes, said the researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

Certain factors associated with low socioeconomic levels were also linked with high stress, such as an annual income below $30,000, low education levels among parents, no air conditioning in the home and a lack of health insurance.

The study appears online ahead of print in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

"One possible explanation for the stress-related pattern of [traffic-related pollution] respiratory effects is the biological pathways common to effects of traffic-related pollution and stress," lead researcher Talat Islam, an assistant professor in the environmental health division at Keck, said in a news release from the American Thoracic Society.

"Like air pollution, stress has been linked to both inflammation and oxidative damage at the cellular level, so this may explain the association," he added.

The public health implications of this finding are clear, he noted.

"The magnitude of the traffic-related pollution-associated deficits in [lung function] levels in children growing up in high-stress households was larger than deficits reported for children exposed to maternal smoking during pregnancy and secondhand tobacco smoke," Islam said.

"Our findings suggest that by regulating traffic-related pollution levels around residential areas and schools, we could reduce the adverse effect of traffic-related pollution on lung function among vulnerable children," he concluded.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about respiratory health and air pollution.

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NASA prepping next Mars spacecraft for fall launch (AP)

PASADENA, Calif. ? NASA's next roving spacecraft to the surface of Mars has arrived in Florida after a cross-country flight to undergo final testing.

A C-17 cargo jet carrying the rover nicknamed Curiosity took off from March Air Force Base in California and arrived Wednesday night in Florida.

Engineers will spend the next several months prepping the rover for its November launch.

The $2.5 billion mission was supposed to fly in 2009, but problems during development pushed costs up and delayed launch.

Curiosity is scheduled to land in August 2012 and will study whether the Martian environment was ever favorable for microbial life.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the program, formally known as the Mars Science Laboratory.

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Pollution found in Pa. wells near site of blowout (AP)

ALLENTOWN, Pa. ? Federal environmental officials say that testing has revealed contamination in three private water wells following an April blowout at a Pennsylvania natural gas drilling site.

Environmental Protection Agency spokesman Roy Seneca said Friday that EPA took water samples from seven private water wells near the Chesapeake Energy Corp. drilling site near Canton in in northeastern Pennsylvania's Bradford County.

EPA briefed residents on the sampling results Thursday. Seneca declined to reveal the nature of the contamination. He says EPA will sample the wells again in July.

The Chesapeake well spilled thousands of gallons of salty, chemical-laced water into fields and a stream.

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