Study ties coral disease to warmer oceans

Warmer sea temperatures are linked to the severity of a coral disease, according to a study on Australia's Great Barrier Reef that offers a dire warning about global warming's potential impact on the world's troubled reefs.

The 6-year study released on Monday tracked the relationship between water temperature and the frequency of a coral disease called white syndrome across more than 900 miles of the world's largest coral reef.

"We've linked disease and warm water, which is one of the aspects of global warming," said John Bruno, the study's lead author. "Our study suggests as global warming warms the oceans more and more, we could see more disease outbreaks and more severe ones."

The results of the study, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, were to be published on Tuesday in the online journal PLoS Biology.

Researchers have suspected for years that warm sea temperatures were responsible for disease outbreaks on coral reefs. But Bruno said the study was the first to conclusively connect the two.

Reefs are undersea rock formations built by tiny animals called coral polyps. They are important habitats and nurseries for fish and other sea creatures.

Scientists estimate about a quarter of the world's coral has been permanently lost and another 30 percent could disappear over the next 30 years.

The study tracked the fate of 48 reefs across the Great Barrier Reef. They were resurveyed each year for six years and disease data were compared with data on ocean temperature taken from U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellites.

Hot water

Two years ago, unusually hot water across the Caribbean Sea was blamed for a massive surge of coral bleaching, an ailment that turns corals white, and a subsequent wave of deadly diseases that attacked reefs across the region.

In some locations, scientists found a 25 to 30 percent loss of coral and centuries-old corals were killed. Coral bleaching is a different phenomenon from white syndrome.

In the NSF study, scientists found white syndrome, an ailment that has appeared across the Pacific, flourished when the sea temperature rose. In 2002, for example, the frequency of the disease increased 20-fold after a year in which the region saw its second warmest summer.

The study found that the effect of temperature was "highly dependent" on the density of the coral cover. Outbreaks of white syndrome followed unusually warm temperature on reefs with greater than 50 percent coral cover.

The healthiest reefs suffered the most severe disease outbreaks, probably because they had the most dense concentrations of coral polyps.

"It's the same natural principle as what happens when humans are packed together in tight circumstances and they are more prone to disease," said Bruno, an assistant professor of marine ecology at the University of North Carolina.

A host of corals were affected, many of them the important "reef-building" corals that construct the limestone foundation on which coral polyps live.

Bruno said while the study focused on white syndrome, "there is no reason to suspect" that other coral diseases would not be similarly affected by warmer ocean temperatures.

"We are working on the same kind of experiments with yellow band disease," he said. "It's starting to look like there is a role of temperature in driving yellow band disease too."

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/05/08/global.warming.reefs.reut/index.html

NASA's probe shows Jupiter up close and personal

Small moons are acting as shepherds using their gravity to herd dust and boulders in Jupiter's faint rings, NASA scientists reported on Tuesday.

The finding is one of several discoveries made from images captured in late February by the New Horizons probe in what NASA scientists called "a real-world fly-by" of Jupiter, 16 months into its mission to Pluto.

They also got the closest look yet at the "Little Red Spot," an Earth-sized swirling storm that scientists described as a galactic rendition of Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night" painting, and dramatic views of volcanic eruptions on Jupiter's moon Io.

These postcards from Jupiter were taken by the piano-sized robotic probe's seven cameras as it came within 1.4 million miles of Jupiter on February 28. About 70 percent of the data has been relayed to Earth so far.

The close encounter allowed New Horizons to make use of Jupiter's gravity to shave three years from its travel time to Pluto. It is expected to arrive in 2015.

The encounter with Jupiter "was a chance to practice ... before the rubber hits the road" with Pluto, Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator, told a televised news briefing.

Pictures of Jupiter's faint rings revealed the moons Metis and Adrastea herding rocks with their gravitational pull.

"The boulder-sized particles are definitely being controlled by these shepherding satellites," Jeff Moore of the NASA Ames Research Center in California told the briefing.

Also spied was what appeared to be remnants of an object that had recently collided with the rings. "Individual clusters of particles in the rings is a really new discovery," Moore said.

MYSTERY VOLCANO

On Jupiter's volcanic moon Io, New Horizons revealed an umbrella-shaped plume rising 200 miles into space from the volcano Tvashtar.

"It's really exciting that it performed for us," said John Spencer of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

"Galileo was orbiting for six years and we never saw plumes like that," he said, referring to an earlier mission.

The probe also revealed a mystery volcano, so young its lava has just reached Io's surface, but has yet to emit enough gas to produce a plume.

"We're seeing the birth of a new volcano here," Spencer said.

In about eight years, the mission will produce the closest-ever views of Pluto and the hundreds of other icy objects in the distant Kuiper belt region.

But for now, the NASA scientists are happy with the test drive.

"I think we're ready to rock and roll." Stern said.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN0126144720070502?src=050207_0838_ARTICLE_PROMO_also_on_reuters&pageNumber=2

Next target of cell phone industry: navigation

After hitting alarm clock makers and camera manufacturers, the cell phone industry has a new target -- personal navigation device makers.

Handset makers see navigation as one of the next major value-adding offerings and even at this very early stage, analysts say the annual market for phone navigation is worth hundreds of millions of euros.

While a few years ago personal navigation device makers like Dutch TomTom shrugged off possible rivalry from the handset industry, they have now acknowledged the potential risk to their business.

The world's top handset maker Nokia started to sell its first navigation phone N95 a month ago, and other top vendors are expected to follow shortly, hoping to make 2007 the breakthrough year for cell phone navigation.

The N95, with a 700-euro price tag, is not in reach of the masses despite first reports showing strong sales, but the Finnish firm aims to bring GPS positioning chips to a wide array of its products.

"I believe it will quickly go through almost the whole of our portfolio," Kai Oistamo, head of Nokia's Mobile Phones unit, told a recent news conference.

The GPS technology enables handset makers to bypass mobile phone network operators and at least some of the navigation phones can be used for routing when not connected to operators' networks.

Operators would get a share of the business when real-time data traffic starts to grow. So far it is the handset makers' dream that people will use phones to find restaurants nearby, but car navigation firms have already started to offer road data.

According to researchers Canalys, the navigation products market is set to grow in 2007 by about two thirds from last year, with traditional personal navigation devices (PND) taking 85 percent of the market.

Analysis firm Berg Insight has forecast annual shipments of handset-based personal navigation products in Europe and the U.S. to reach 12 million units by 2009, compared with 1 million in 2005.

"As the pie grows, more powerful players want to have a piece of it. Nokia was the first to acknowledge it," said Oren Nissim, Chief Executive of Telmap, an Israeli navigation software firm.

Nokia, which bought into the navigation industry last year with the acquisition of German firm Gate5, rolled out a free Nokia Maps service in February, giving away maps and routing data while charging consumers for a turn-by-turn navigation service.

"Nokia's entrance has livened up this market. Interest towards the sector from outside has grown a lot," said Juha Murtopuro, chief executive of Finnish navigation software startup Navicore.

Google and Yahoo are seen as keen to add mobile navigation services to their mapping offerings, while car navigation firms are adding mobile services to their products.

"In the short term I am more worried about the personal navigation device makers, in the long term about the Internet companies," said Ralph Kunz, head of mapping and navigation operations at Nokia, who expects the Internet's advertisement-funded business model to spread to mobiles.

"In the mid term there is no reason to believe why the funding mechanism would not be the same as in the Internet," he said.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSL0233196120070502?src=050207_0838_ARTICLE_PROMO_also_on_reuters&pageNumber=2

Pieces of Titanic transformed into luxury watches

Steel and coal from the Titanic have been transformed into a new line of luxury wristwatches that claim to capture the essence of the legendary oceanliner which sank in 1912.

Geneva watchmaker Romain Jerome SA billed its "Titanic-DNA" collection as among the most exclusive pieces showcased this week at Baselworld, the watch and jewellery industry's largest annual trade fair.

"It is very luxurious and very inaccessible," said Yvan Arpa, chief executive of the three-year-old company that hopes the limited edition watches will attract both collectors and garrulous luxury goods buyers.

"So many rich people buy incredibly complicated watches without understanding how they work, because they want a story to tell," he said. "To them we offer a story."

The North Atlantic wrecksite of the Titanic, which hit an iceberg and sank on its first voyage from the English port of Southampton to New York, have been protected for more than a decade but many relics were taken in early diving expeditions.

Romain Jerome said it purchased a piece of the hull weighing about 1.5 kg (3 pounds) that was retrieved in 1991, but declined to identify the seller. The metal has been certified as authentic by the Titanic's builders Harland and Wolff.

To make the watches, which were offered for sale for the first time in Basel for between $7,800 and $173,100, the Swiss company created an alloy using the slab from the Titanic with steel being used in a Harland and Wolff replica of the vessel.

The gold, platinum and steel time pieces have black dial faces made of lacquer paint that includes coal recovered from the debris field of the Titanic wrecksite, offered for sale by the U.S. company RMS Titanic Inc.

Arpa said the combination of new and old materials infused the watches with a sense of renewal, instead of representing a reminder of the 1,500 passengers who drowned when the oceanliner met her tragic end off the coast of Newfoundland.

"It is a message of hope, of life stronger than death, of rebirth," he said in an interview in Romain Jerome's exposition booth in Basel, where more than 2,100 exhibitors are flaunting their latest wares amid a boom for the luxury goods sector.

The company will make 2,012 watches to coincide with the centenary anniversary of the Titanic's sinking in 2012.

Arpa said the young watchmaker would unveil a new series next year commemorating another famous legend, but declined to offer clues of what is to come.

"For a new brand, you have to find something different to be interesting," he said. Asked if the next collection would be based on Scotland's legendary Loch Ness monster, he smiled and said: "Ooh. Have you found it?"

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/wtMostRead/idUSL1310422320070415?pageNumber=2

Two British helicopters crash north of Baghdad

Two British personnel died and another was seriously injured when two helicopters crashed north of Baghdad on Sunday, Britain's ministry of defence said.

"Now that next of kin have been informed, I can confirm that the two helicopters reported this morning as having crashed north of Baghdad earlier today were, in fact, both UK helicopters," Defence Secretary Des Browne said in a statement.

"Sadly, two personnel have died and one is very seriously injured. All of these were UK personnel," he said.

The statement said initial reports indicated the crash was an accident and not the result of an attack by insurgents.

It was earlier reported that the two helicopters were U.S. military helicopters.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSPAR34073020070415

Space storm disrupted GPS, experts say

A solar eruption in December disrupted the Global Positioning System, a satellite-based navigational system used widely by the military, scientists and civilians, researchers reported on Wednesday.

The solar flare created radio bursts that traveled to the Earth, covering a broad frequency range, the researchers said, affecting GPS and other navigational systems.

Solar flares have been known to knock out satellites and even electricity grids, but the researchers told the Space Weather Enterprise Forum this was an unexpectedly serious new effect.

"In December, we found the effect on GPS receivers were more profound and widespread than we expected," said Paul Kintner, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Cornell University in New York.

"Now we are concerned more severe consequences will occur during the next solar maximum," Kintner said in a statement.

Dale Gary of the New Jersey Institute of Technology said the burst created 10 times more radio noise than the previous record.

"Measurements with NJIT's solar radiotelescope confirmed, at its peak, the burst produced 20,000 times more radio emission than the entire rest of the Sun. This was enough to swamp GPS receivers over the entire sunlit side of Earth," Gary said in a statement.

Forecasters from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration observed two powerful solar flares on December 5 and 6, 2006, emanating from a large cluster of sunspots.

A giant radio burst followed, causing large numbers of receivers to stop tracking the GPS signal.

"NASA wants to better understand this solar phenomenon so we can limit the adverse impacts on real-time systems," said Tony Mannucci of the U.S. space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Anthea Coster of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said the findings showed solar radio bursts can have global and instantaneous effects. "The size and timing of this burst were completely unexpected and the largest ever detected. We do not know how often we can expect solar radio bursts of this size or even larger," she said.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN0438594720070404?pageNumber=2

Google lets users create own maps

Google Inc. is out to make map-making simpler, giving away tools for ordinary users to pinpoint locations, draw routes and attach photos or video to existing online maps, the company said on Wednesday.

The Web search leader, which set off an explosion of creative map-making among professional programmers after introducing Google Maps two years ago, is now offering MyMaps, tools for everyday users to create maps in a few mouse clicks.

Let your imagination run wild, spatially speaking: Pinpoint your favorite restaurant locations. Return from a world tour and plot out landmarks along the way. Take photos from a recent hike and use MyMaps to illustrate locations along the trail.

"Who better to create maps than local experts?" Jessica Lee, product manager for Google Maps, said in an interview. "MyMaps makes map-making universally accessible to anyone."

Creators of custom maps can publish them so other users can find them when searching Google Maps. Users of Google Local search will now see relevant user-generated MyMaps show up in a special section along with traditional commercial results.

Or they can choose to leave their MyMaps unlisted for personal use or to share with a select group of friends.

See the new features by clicking on the MyMaps tab now available at Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/).

MyMaps can also feature YouTube videos or other snippets of Web content in small windows that appear when a user clicks on pinpointed location. Anyone comfortable with the trick of adding small bits of hypertext code to a Web site or blog or MySpace profile can add video to MyMaps in just a few clicks.

Feeling uninspired? Just search out an address on Google Maps and add MyMaps locations automatically to anyone of your existing maps by clicking the button that appears saying "Save to MyMaps."

Instead of telling stories in chronological fashion using text or pictures, map-making this easy allows people to narrate their lives location-by-location.

Lee describes how one Google employee recreated their resume on MyMaps, where each job or educa

Leave it to a Google engineer to create a map featuring the locations where great computer languages were invented in recent decades: http://tinyurl.com/2n5or3/. Another employee created a map of life around Google's Silicon Valley headquarters at http://tinyurl.com/ytwvnw/.

Another more fanciful example charts monster sightings worldwide, from Godzilla to Dracula, Mummy, the Blob, King Kong and Bigfoot, Lee said. (http://tinyurl.com/2lkqhu)

MyMaps is initially available in the United States and the national versions of Google in nine other countries including Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands and Spain.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN0436837620070405?pageNumber=2

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