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The US House of Representatives has passed a climate change bill aimed at reducing the country's emissions.

The legislation will put curbs on pollution and apply market principles to attempts to tackle global warming.

It was passed by a narrow margin of 219 votes to 212. President Barack Obama said the vote represented "enormous progress".

But the bill still has to be passed by the US Senate before it can become law, and it faces another tough fight.

"Today the House of Representatives took historic action with the passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act," Mr Obama said after the vote.

"It's a bold and necessary step that holds the promise of creating new industries and millions of new jobs, decreasing our dangerous dependence on foreign oil."

'Job-killing bill'

Correspondents say the bill was passed after a long and heated session.

It seeks to cut emissions from 2005 levels by 17% by 2020, introduce a carbon trading system and and force a shift from fossil fuels to renewable sources.

Supporters say it will create a new "green" industry, boosting jobs and innovation, and reduce US dependence on foreign oil.

But opponents of the bill, both Republicans and Democrats, say it will lead to massive job losses in the US and impose greater taxes on every American.

Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner said energy costs would soar, and called the legislation "the biggest job-killing bill that has ever been on the floor of the House".

The battle now moves to the Senate, where correspondents say it will face a rough ride. It is not yet clear when the Senate might debate the bill.

The legislation has been widely supported by environmentalists but there are concerns that it will not go far enough towards addressing climate change.

GREENBELT , Md. -- After a four and a half day journey from the Earth, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, has successfully entered orbit around the moon. Engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt , Md. , confirmed the spacecraft's lunar orbit insertion at 6:27 a.m. EDT Tuesday.

During transit to the moon, engineers performed a mid-course correction to get the spacecraft in the proper position to reach its lunar destination. Since the moon is always moving, the spacecraft shot for a target point ahead of the moon. When close to the moon, LRO used its rocket motor to slow down until the gravity of the moon caught the spacecraft in lunar orbit.

"Lunar orbit insertion is a crucial milestone for the mission," said Cathy Peddie, LRO deputy project manager at Goddard. "The LRO mission cannot begin until the moon captures us. Once we enter the moon's orbit, we can begin to buildup the dataset needed to understand in greater detail the lunar topography, features and resources. We are so proud to be a part of this exciting mission and NASA's planned return to the moon."

A series of four engine burns over the next four days will put the satellite into its commissioning phase orbit. During the commissioning phase each of its seven instruments is checked out and brought online. The commissioning phase will end approximately 60 days after launch, when LRO will use its engines to transition to its primary mission orbit.

For its primary mission, LRO will orbit above the moon at about 31 miles, or 50 kilometers, for one year. The spacecraft's instruments will help scientists compile high resolution, three-dimensional maps of the lunar surface and also survey it at many spectral wavelengths.

The satellite will explore the moon's deepest craters, examining permanently sunlit and shadowed regions, and provide understanding of the effects of lunar radiation on humans. LRO will return more data about the moon than any previous mission.

have collect you some Technological information “The world's largest chip maker has teamed up with the world's largest mobile phone maker to create what they say will be a "new exciting industry".” From the source bbc.news.com

Intel and Nokia said their "technology collaboration" would deliver new mobile computing products - beyond existing smart phones, netbooks and notebooks. But both companies added it was still too early to talk about product plans. The deal gives Intel its first real breakthrough in the multi-billion dollar mobile-phone market. "This collaboration will drive exciting new revenue opportunities for both companies and shape the next era of mobile computing," said Anand Chandrasekher, Intel's senior vice president of its ultra-mobility group. Nokia's executive vice president for devices, Kai Oistamo said: "It will be compelling not only for our companies, but also for our industries, our partners and, of course, for customers."

"Brave new world"

Both companies said the partnership would centre on several open-source mobile Linux software projects, including the Moblin platform for Atom-based processors and the Maemo operating system developed by Nokia. Intel will also acquire a licence from Nokia that is used in modem chips to connect to third generation cellular networks.

"Wave of the future"

Intel's microprocessors are found in eight out of 10 personal computers, while Nokia boasts around a billion customers but is not as big a player in the US as it is in Europe . The alliance could spell stiffer competition for ARM Holdings, which is one of the biggest suppliers of chips in the cell phone marketplace. Analysts welcomed the collaboration, which they described as significant for both companies.

"Intel has really been trying to get a foothold in the wireless world in the worst way," Will Strauss, principal analyst with Forward Concepts told the BBC. "They know portability; mobility is the wave of the future. Nokia is the world's biggest cell-phone maker in the world so getting a piece of Nokia's business is a big deal.

"For Nokia it's a way to get into notebooks and netbooks. They are not big there and partnering with Intel as the largest manufacturer of chips will lend them credibility in that market," said Mr Strauss.

Source : bbc.news.com

Authorities say seven people have been killed and 70 injured in a subway train collision in Washington DC .

The city's mayor Adrian Fenty held a press conference where he revised an earlier reported death toll of nine. Carriages of one of the trains came to rest on top of the other after the collision near a station during a rush hour, officials said. The female driver of the moving train - which crashed into the back of a stationary train - was among the dead. The crash - the worst in the 33 years of the Metro system - happened above ground between Fort Totten and Takoma at 1700 local time (2200 BST). Passenger Jodie Wickett told CNN she had been sitting on one of the six-car trains, sending text messages on her phone, when she felt the impact.

She said: "From that point on, it happened so fast, I flew out of the seat and hit my head." Ms Wickett said she stayed at the scene and tried to help. She added: "People are just in very bad shape. The people that were hurt, the ones that could speak, were calling back as we called out to them. "Lots of people were upset and crying, but there were no screams." President Barack Obama said in a statement: "Michelle and I were saddened by the terrible accident in north-east Washington DC . Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families and friends affected by this tragedy.

An Italian Mafia fugitive, listed as one of the country's 30 most dangerous men, has been arrested in Venezuela, Italian police say.

Salvatore Miceli, on the run since 2001, had been under surveillance for three days before he was seized by officers in the capital, Caracas. He is suspected of being a link between Sicily's Cosa Nostra, the 'Ndrangheta network and Colombian drug cartels. Italy's interior minister said his arrest was an "important operation".

A police statement said: "The investigation has essentially confirmed Miceli's primary role in the drug trafficking sector and his ability to build a close network of relations with various trans-national organized crime groups."

Italian police have inflicted a number of major blows on the Sicilian Mafia in recent years. Arrests have included the man known as the "boss of bosses" Bernardo Provenzano in 2006, followed by the arrest of his heir apparent Salvatore Lo Piccolo in 2007. Pasquale Condello, the boss of the 'Ndrangheta - which operates from Calabria in southern Italy and is considered even more powerful than the Sicilian Mafia - was arrested in February 2008. In more recent months a number of operations in Sicily and the mainland have led to the detention of dozens more members of the Mafia, and arrests of members of the Camorra - a separate group operating around Naples.

When Silvio Berlusconi was elected prime minister last year he promised to be more aggressive towards organized crime. A few hundred troops were sent to the Naples area to help police. It is hard to conclude that all this current activity against the various mafia amounts to a concerted attempt to break them, says the BBC's Duncan Kennedy in Rome. But it does seem like an extremely productive period for the authorities, even if the mob in all its guises continues to evolve and survive, he adds.

Friday is the switch to digital television. The Federal Communications Commission wants to make sure you are DTV ready.

The U.S. military in Afghanistan is launching a Facebook page, a YouTube site and feeds on Twitter as part of a new communications effort to reach readers who get their information on the Internet rather than in newspapers, officials said Monday.

The effort, which officials described as a way to counter Taliban propaganda, represents a sea change in how the military can communicate its message to foreign and American audiences.

"There's an entire audience segment that seeks its news from alternative means outside traditional news sources, and we want to make sure we're engaging them as well," said Col. Greg Julian, the top U.S. spokesman in Afghanistan.

U.S. officials here have long said that the military is losing the information war to the Taliban, which routinely publicizes false claims about how many U.S. soldiers its forces have killed or how many civilians might have died in an airstrike. Spokesmen send text messages to reporters and Taliban militants post claims on Web sites, many of which have chat groups dedicated to sympathizers and the merely curious.

The military on Monday announced the death of U.S. service member the previous day from non-combat-related injuries in southern Afghanistan by posting the news on Twitter hours before announcing it in a more formal press statement.

The military is also encouraging troops to post stories and photos on Web sites in an effort to portray daily life in Afghanistan, including stories about development projects that may not make the news.

Many military commands and individual troops have long used social networking sites. The Air Force and Army have Facebook pages, as does Gen. Ray Odierno, the top commander in Iraq. But the new effort in Afghanistan is the first in an active war zone to attempt to harness the power of social networking sites as a primary tool to release information.

So far the military's Facebook and Twitter sites in Afghanistan have been in a testing phase only. Officials hope to attract thousands more users after a formal launch this week.

source: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/AheadoftheCurve/wireStory?id=7726502

Surface also features the capability to recognize physical objects that have identification tags similar to bar codes, i.e. imagine a customer simply sets a wine glass on the surface of a table, a restaurant could provide them with information about the wine they’re ordering, pictures of the vineyard it came from and suggested food pairings modified to that evening’s menu. The experience could become completely immersive, allowing the users to access information on the wine-growing region and even look at suggested hotels and plan a trip without leaving the table.

Surface computing at Microsoft is a result of a shared effort between the Microsoft Hardware and Microsoft Research teams, which were struck by the opportunity to create technology that would bridge the physical and virtual worlds.

Four features key attributes are listed below:

•Direct interaction: Users can actually “capture” digital information directly with hands, interacting with content by touch and sign, without the use of a mouse or keyboard.

•Multi-touch: Surface computing recognizes many points of contact all together, not just from one finger like a usual touch-screen, but dozens of items at once.

•Multi-user: The horizontal form factor makes it simple for several people to gather around surface computers together, providing a collaborative, face-to-face computing experience.

•Object recognition: Users can place physical objects on the surface to activate different types of digital responses, including the move of digital content.

The $278-million Orbiting Carbon Observatory was designed to measure greenhouse gas emissions. It plunges into the ocean near Antarctica after a mechanical problem.

A NASA satellite designed to measure greenhouse gas emissions and pinpoint global warming dangers crashed Tuesday after a protective covering failed to separate from the craft shortly after launch at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The loss of the $278-million satellite came as a severe blow to NASA's climate monitoring efforts, as well as the builder of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va.

"Our whole team, at a very personal level, is disappointed," Orbital Science's John Brunschwyler said at an early-morning briefing just hours after the satellite plunged into the ocean near Antarctica.

Launch director Chuck Dovale said the failure was a reminder that "even when you do your best, you can still fail."

NASA and Orbital Sciences began an immediate investigation. Early indications pointed to a problem with the faring, the clamshell device that shields the satellite during liftoff from the high heat caused by air friction.

The faring is designed to fall away about three minutes into the flight, when the rocket reaches an altitude where the air is too thin to harm the satellite.

Evidence from telemetry received by ground operators suggests the faring never separated. With the extra weight, the satellite could not reach orbit, the science team said.

The first sign that something was wrong came shortly after the 1:55 a.m. launch, when ground controllers noticed there was no jump in acceleration in the two-stage Taurus XL rocket that would have been expected when the heavy faring was shed.

The 966-pound satellite was to be placed in an orbit 400 miles above Earth to spend two years measuring carbon dioxide emissions, the principal gas blamed in global warming.

Using a set of spectrometers, the satellite was also to identify the places where carbon is neutralized, or removed from the atmosphere by natural processes. These places, mainly forests and the seas, are known as carbon sinks.

Despite convincing evidence global warming is occurring, scientists are not certain how these carbon sinks work, and whether it might be possible to use them more efficiently to combat global warming.

Climate scientists were hoping the Orbiting Carbon Observatory could tell them whether current voluntary worldwide efforts to control carbon dioxide emissions were beginning to work.

Brunschwyler said that before Tuesday's failure, Orbital Sciences had 56 successful launches in 57 attempts.

Never before had they had a problem with a faring, he said.

The lone previous failure occurred in 2001, when an ozone-monitoring satellite and a cargo of human ashes plunged into the Indian Ocean after launch.

In January, Japan launched a satellite called GOSAT that will make many of the same measurements that the NASA satellite was designed to perform.

With Tuesday's failure, NASA managers said they would study the situation before deciding whether to build another carbon observatory.

"We are going to look at how best to advance" global warming research, said Michael Freilich, director of the Earth sciences division at NASA headquarters in Washington. Whether that would be a duplicate of the lost craft or something different, he did not say.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory was managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge. The Taurus XL rocket carried hydrazine fuel, a hazardous material. But launch officials said they believed the fuel was burned away during the launch.

source:http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-na-satellite-lost25-2009feb25,0,4639339.story

Yahoo's BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service) will have a variety of commercial models including revenue sharing on advertising and co-branding of sites, apart from a fee-based model that the company announced last week.

"We will look at a variety of options," said David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo in an interview on Sunday. Filo was in Bangalore for Yahoo's Open Hack Day, a developer event with about 360 participants.

For example, advertisers on Yahoo Search will be given the option to also advertise on Web sites of Yahoo's BOSS partners, Filo said. If developers are not interested in revenue-sharing on advertising, then they can opt for a traffic fee to use the Yahoo platform, he added.

Yahoo announced the BOSS program last year, which lets developers use Yahoo's search infrastructure and algorithms and create their own customized search services.

Yahoo plans to charge a fee late in the second half of this year for use of the service above a set daily limit of search queries. Filo said the infrastructure and engineering costs for search are expensive. The search market is dominated by Google and Yahoo, and as a result of that dominance, fewer new ideas are introduced, he added.

BOSS is intended to throw open Yahoo's infrastructure and engineering and encourage new ideas from students, developers and start-ups, Filo said.

Yahoo has hundreds of engineers working on search, but the company wants thousands of other developers outside the company to start innovating on top of Yahoo Search.

It will take between six months to a year for new services on the BOSS platform to gain traction. When that happens, Yahoo will be open to new business relationships with BOSS partners, Filo said.

Building a relationship with developers through advertising, or licensing of their technology, or co-branding will be easier if they are using Yahoo's platform, Filo said.

Earlier this month, Yahoo began to test Search Pad, an online notepad for users of its search engine, that allows them to save links, type notes, and copy and paste content from Web sites. Users of Search Pad can now share information from the notepad through e-mail or print it out.

Yahoo will work on a number of other options for users to share information from Search Pad, including posting information from the notepad on social networking sites like Facebook, Filo said. The kind of information typically stored on Search Pad may not be the kind that would be shared on instant messaging programs or Twitter, but Yahoo will consider adding these options if users want it, he added.

Yahoo is also focusing its resources and will drop some products and projects this year, according to Filo.

The company said in January that it is closing down its Briefcase online storage service by March 30 because users are increasingly using e-mail for storage. Briefcase is an example of a product that wasn't critical to users, Filo said.

source:http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/159590/yahoo_search_service_will_have_variety_of_commercial_models.html

Pacific Grove: A consortium of researchers led by Stanford University Professor Barbara Block collaborated with Google for more than a year, providing animal tracking data for the new Google Earth release, which features a three-dimensional, interactive ocean.

In the animal tracking layer, called GTOPP (Global Tagging of Pelagic Predators), users can explore the large-scale migrations of tunas, sharks, whales, seals, sea turtles and seabirds – seeing where they go through time, and even swimming along with them in special "fly-through" animations, which provide an "animal's eye view" of the open ocean seascape, says a press release by EurekAlert.

The collaboration between GTOPP and Google has been a long-term goal for Block and her colleagues.

"Google Earth provides a powerful, intuitive interface for exploring the kinds of data these animals produce from electronic tags "says Block. "This allows users – from scientists to school kids – to quickly view and interact with animal tracks. And ultimately, they'll be able to use this interface to access related data such as oceanographic data or diving data from that same location at the same time. Its an important evolution in being able to "see" the largest portion of our planet."

The ability to simultaneously tag and track large numbers of open ocean animals, representing a variety of different species, has been pioneered over more than a decade by Block and her colleagues Drs. Daniel Costa from UC Santa Cruz, Stephen Bograd from NOAA and Randy Kochevar, also of Stanford University. In a program called, "Tagging of Pacific Predators" (TOPP), which is one of the field programs of the global Census of Marine Life, these four principal investigators led a team of over 100 scientists from seven different countries. In the first eight years of the program they tagged over 4,000 individual animals, representing 23 different species, and collected over 1,000,000 days of data. Block also leads a program in the Atlantic Ocean called TAG-A-Giant that has placed over 1000 electronic tags in Atlantic bluefin tuna.

In October, 2008 Block with the support of the Sloan Foundation brought together a broad consortium of researchers for the "Biologging III" conference to explore how the researchers could combine forces to put animal tracking data into one portal. This has given rise the Global Tagging of Pelagic Predators. The data to be featured upon release of the new Google software in the GTOPP layer is a small sample of data from a variety of projects, all of which utilize electronic tags to follow animals over months and years, and across vast distances.

Block explains, "The idea of GTOPP is to create a Web-based portal where researchers around the globe can submit tracking data, that represents live uplinks or positions from a wide variety of animals. The goal is to combine the data with other oceanographic datasets. By viewing tracking data from multiple species simultaneously, in the context of ocean conditions, it is possible to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of how the open ocean ecosystems work. We can begin to see ocean hotspots – those critical habitat regions where animals spend a great deal of time – as well as the ocean highways that link them together."

The open ocean is experiencing significant impacts of human overexploitation. Large marine fish such as Giant bluefin in the Atlantic ocean, leatherback sea turtles, albatross and sharks are all experiencing steep declines in their populations.