Endeavour lifts off carrying Japanese lab to space station

CAPE CANAVERAL, US Mar 11: Space shuttle Endeavour soared into space today, carrying Japan's first space lab to the International Space Station to join US, Russian and European facilities there.

Endeavour lifted off at 1158 IST today, in a rare night launch from the Kennedy Space Center here, and two minutes after launch successfully jettisoned its twin solid rocket boosters.

Less than nine minutes after launch, Endeavour safely entered Earth's orbit and began its chase of the International Space Station, for a rendezvous expected tomorrow.

Just before reaching orbit, Endeavour separated from its massive external fuel tank, which fell into the atmosphere to disintegrate above the Pacific.

Endeavour's launch cast a brilliant burst of light over the Florida coast for about 30 seconds. In 53 seconds the shuttle had already attained a speed of about 2,425 kilometers (1507 miles) per hour -- about twice the speed of sound.

Endeavour's crew of seven is on a 16-day mission to install the first stage of the Japanese laboratory named Kibo, a micro-gravity research facility which aims to open a vital new stage in deeper space exploration.

When all three stages are installed, Kibo, which means "hope" in Japanese, will complete the research nucleus of the ISS along with the American, Russian and European laboratories.

This mission is the longest at the ISS and will see the Endeavour team, which includes Japanese astronaut Takao Doi, venture out on five space walks, totalling about 30 hours of work.

Kibo will be the largest by far of the four research modules on board the station and represents Japan's most important offering to the project, to which the island nation has contributed a total of USD 10 billion. (AGENCIES)

China "super-ministry" plan faces super challenges

BEIJING, Mar 11: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao today unveils a bureaucratic redesign that he hopes will foster greener, more efficient government by creating new ''super ministries''.

Yet with fierce rival interests at stake, experts said the plan was unlikely to end turf wars over energy policy, pollution and industry giants.

The reforms will herd together dozens of agencies, creating big departments for industry, transport and the environment, according to officials and local press reports that have dubbed them ''super ministries''.

The plan is a high point of this year's National People's Congress, the Communist Party-controlled parliament that meets in full once a year. National leaders have said it will make for better government, cutting red-tape and clarifying officials' responsibilities as they steer the increasingly complex economy.

A stronger environmental administration could cut pollution that has stoked rising public discontent and the revamp is also likely to include a new energy commission that could bolster Beijing's grip on the crucial, but fragmented, sector.

But this is far from China's first big bureaucratic revamp, and past results have been less than super.

One recent study counted eight overhauls since 1949, with the last under Wen's predecessor, Zhu Rongji, in 1998 and 2003, who also vowed to dramatically streamline government.

Wen's plan would cut some inefficiency and overlap but not dramatically transform the country's top-down, Party-dominated approach to governing, said Ding Xueliang, a Beijing-based scholar with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

''There were also huge hopes for the reforms under Zhu Rongji in his last year,'' said Ding. ''I said then that you can't expect too much. This time I retain my original view.''

The plan will remove one layer of officialdom between Premier Wen and key ministers dealing day-to-day with the country's biggest worries, job creation, price rises, pollution and energy, said Mao Shoulong of the People's University of China.

He likened the current system to a filter that stops crucial information reaching leaders fast enough. ''If even the best tea goes through six layers of filters, then in the end all you get is bottled water,'' Mao said.

But the real battle could come once the plan rolls out in coming months and central officials, local governments and state conglomerates contend for control of key levers of power -- price-setting, project approvals and personnel appointments, Mao added.

Even an expert who advised officials on the plan said real change to the way Chinese government operates would need deeper political reforms to expose officials to greater public accountability.

''Without progress in political system reform, it will be difficult to have a true super-ministry system,'' Wang Yukai of the National School of Administration, which trains officials, told the Web site of the People's Daily (www.People.Com.Cn). (AGENCIES)

computers taking toll on children's posture

SYDNEY, Mar 11: The increased use of computer as a learning material may boost children's knowledge, but it is affecting their posture.

Australian researchers said high computer screen display resulted in upward bending of the upper neck, but the mid-level display caused less musculoskeletal strain and promoted a more upright and symmetrical posture than either the high or the book-level position.

The low (book-level) display caused the most strain on muscles and joints, the study published in Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society said.

Study leader Leon Straker of Curtin University of Technology in Perth and colleagues presented an interactive task to 24 children of normal height, aged 10 to 12.

The researchers recorded the children's movements and measured 3-D posture and muscle activity in the neck and upper limb for the high, mid, and book-level displays under conditions that are commonly observed in schools.

''The data collected in this study provide the first detailed description of 3-D head, neck and arm posture, and the associated muscle activity of children reading and entering data with computers and reading and writing with paper, the study authors noted.

The researchers believe that the study can prove helpful in developing guidelines for computer use bu children.

Studies conducted on adults are inadequate to address computer-related discomfort in children as they are physically and behaviourally different from adults, they said. (UNI)

Scientists create character with reasoning abilities of a kid

NEW YORK, Mar 11: Scientists have created a digital character which they claim has reasoning abilities of that of a child.

The character named 'Eddie' is a four-year-old child who can reason about his own beliefs to draw conclusions in a manner that matches human children his age, according to the researchers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

"Current avatars in massively multiplayer online worlds, such as Second Life, are directly tethered to a user's keystrokes and only give the illusion of mentality.

"Truly convincing autonomous synthetic characters must possess memories; believe things, want things, remember things," said lead researcher Selmer Bringsjord, the head of Rensselaer's Cognitive Science Department.

To test Eddie's reasoning powers, the researchers created a demo in Second Life that subjected their theory to a false-belief test.

In a typical real-life version of this test, a child witnesses a series of events in which Person A places an object (such as a teddy bear) in a certain location (such as a cabinet).

Person A then leaves the room, and during his absence Person B moves the object to a new location (such as the refrigerator). The child is then asked to predict where Person A will look for the object when he gets back.

The right answer, of course, is the cabinet, but kids aged four and under will generally say the refrigerator because they haven't yet formed a theory of the mind of others. (PTI)

Booker winner slams censorship before China trip

HONG KONG, Mar 11: Man Booker Prize winner Anne Enright says censorship never works, while voicing her conviction ahead of a first visit to China that words ultimately prevail over powers seeking to curb the freedom of expression.

Censorship in China has come under greater scrutiny ahead of the Beijing Olympics in August, and some global artists have clashed with the Chinese government over its bleak rights record.

"Words are liquid, they get everywhere. Emily Dickinson has a line that says you cannot fold a flood and put it in a drawer," Enright told Reuters in Hong Kong, referring to the reclusive 19^{th century American poet.}

^{Enright, a Dubliner known for her works exploring the darker elements of the human condition, won the prestigious 2007 Man Booker prize for her novel "The Gathering".}

^{She was in Hong Kong for the Man International Literary Festival and plans to fly to Shanghai afterwards.}

^{When asked to comment on China’s curbs on the freedom of expression, from banning books to jailing writers, Enright spoke broadly of the prevailing power of literature in overcoming the debilitating effects of censorship on society.}

^{"There was no way that when I was growing up that the tide of Irish writing was going to be stopped by something even as powerful as the Catholic Church," she told Reuters, citing the uncompromising writing of Edna O’Brien and John McGahern.}

^{"By conviction I’m against censorship in general and also in a pragmatic kind of way I think it doesn’t work," she added.}

^{Human rights groups have used the global spotlight on China ahead of the Games to highlight a range of issues from jailed dissidents, internet and media censorship and religious controls to Beijing’s policy on Tibet.}

^{China announced last week it would tighten controls over foreign singers and other performers after Icelandic singer Bjork shouted "Tibet! Tibet!" during a recent Shanghai concert. Director Steven Spielberg quit as an artistic adviser to the Olympics due to Beijing’s policy toward Sudan’s Darfur.}

^{PEN, the international writers’ association, urged Beijing to free nearly 40 jailed dissident writers before the Olympics, some of whom had been silenced without trial for alleged subversion.}

^{While China invariably bars the publication of politically sensitive books, Enright said she was pleased at the hunger of Chinese publishers to translate and publish difficult literary works such as her own.}

^{Her novel "The Gathering" probes sexual taboos and thwarted lust in a large Irish family.}

^{"I’m fascinated by the idea that the Chinese publishing houses bought all my backlist. I’m always interested in questions of cultural interpretation, and how somebody in a very different culture interprets my work is a really intriguing question."}

^{Enright, dressed in a black Jaeger dress with an Oriental design touch, said the world was now afraid and curious about China as its influence ripples across porous borders.}

^{"My children at the ages of five and seven know the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin. Ireland is not a monolithic, Catholic society anymore."}

^(AGENCIES)

Cheeky Danish royals picture wins Australian prize

CANBERRA, Mar 11: An irreverent portrait of Denmark's young royal family, with Australian-born Crown Princess Mary breast-feeding and Crown Prince Frederik drinking beer in his underpants, has won an Australian award for satirical paintings.

The painting, titled The Official Portrait of the Danish Royal Family, cashes in on Australia's obsession with Crown Princess Mary, who was a real estate agent from the southern island state of Tasmania before she married Frederik in 2004. Artist James Brennan said he was inspired to paint the royals as a suburban Australian family after seeing official portraits of Danish royals after the birth of their second child Isabella in 2007.

''They're probably just like everybody else, besides the wealth and the fame,'' Brennan told the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper. ''I just wanted to bring them down to our level.''

The painting shows Crown Princess May breast-feeding baby Isabella, while Crown Prince Frederik, wearing only white underpants, holds a Carlsberg beer in one hand, while his other hand hovers around his genitals.

The young Prince Christian sits on a pot, picking his nose, watched by a Tasmanian devil.

The portrait won the A$5,000 Australian dollar first prize in the Bald Archy awards, created 15 years ago to promote paintings of humour, dark satire, comedy or caricature.

The award comes amid a flurry of Australian prizes for portraiture.

Last Friday, Sydney artist Del Kathryn Barton won Australia's famous Archibald Prize, for a self portrait with her two children, edging out a portrait of late Australian actor Heath Ledger for the A$50,000 first prize.

Today, another Sydney artist, Fiona Lowry, won Australia's richest prize for portraiture, winning 100,000 Australian dollar for a nude self portrait set in the Belanglo state forest, the site of a series of notorious backpacker murders in the 1990s. (AGENCIES)

Minorities worst hit by climate change

LONDON, Mar 11: Minorities from Asia to Europe and Latin America were worst hit by dangerous climate change, a report by the international NGO Minority Rights Group said today.

The man-made environmental disasters were striking ethnic or religious minorities and indigenous peoples.

Greenhouse emissions from developed industrialised nations were changing global weather patterns with disastrous consequences for poorer countries. Even as the United Nations was calling richer polluting nations to pay for the ''climate-proofing'' of the developing world, concerns are mounting that groups living on the margins of these societies would not be protected.

''Climate change has made it to the top of the international agenda but at every level recognition of the acute difficulties that minorities face is often missing,'' Minority Rights Group's Ishbel Matheson said.

The European Union and the UN have recognised the security implications of climate-led disasters striking poorer countries, pointing to the increased likelihood of wars and mass migration.

At the UN climate talks in Bali in December, 190 nations signed up a roadmap aiming towards a binding global deal to stave off a climate disaster. That roadmap contains commitments to massive funding to help poor countries adapt to the changes on their way, but some of the attempts to scale back the carbon economy are creating as many problems as they are relieving. (UNI)

Australia cemetery to offer carbon-free funerals

CANBERRA, Mar 11: An Australian cemetery has unveiled plans to take the carbon out of cremations by offering new green funerals to help combat global warming.

On the day Australia's formal ratification of the Kyoto Protocol on Greenhouse emissions comes into force, the Centennial Park cemetery in the South Australian state capital of Adelaide said it had studied the carbon impact of burials and cremations.

While cremations initially produce more carbon emissions than a burial, cemetery chief executive Bryan Elliott said over time, burials ended up producing about 10 per cent more greenhouse gas.

''If we plant one tree for every service, either burial or cremation, we will more than offset the carbon emissions,'' Elliott told Reuters today.

The Centennial Park Cemetery carries out more than 900 burials and around 3,300 cremations a year. Elliott said every cremation created around 160 kg of carbon dioxide, compared to 39 kg of carbon dioxide for each burial.

But when the cost of maintaining grave sites, mostly covered by lawns at Centennial Park, is taken into account, cremations came out 10 per cent greener than burials.

''This is because we must look after the gravesite for a number of years by watering and mowing the surrounding lawn area and maintaining the concrete beam on which the headstone is placed,'' Elliott said.

''Burial is a more labour and resource intensive process, consumes more fuels and produces larger quantities of waste than cremation.''

The move was prompted by local calls for natural burials, where a tree is planted over a grave. But those proposals would not work in a major suburban cemetery, where space is limited and graves can be re-used, Elliott said.

In South Australia, graves are leased for only 50 years, and they can then be re-used if relatives do not the renew the lease.

Elliott said the cemetery planned to bear the cost of carbon offsets and would not charge more for funerals as it attempts to cut its greenhouse emissions, blamed for global warming. (AGENCIES)

Japan seeks new form of flu vaccine, investors jump

TOKYO, Mar 11: A group of Japanese researchers has developed a substance that could potentially help make flu vaccines effective for multiple strains of the disease, including strains of the bird flu virus, Japan's National Institute of Infectious Diseases said.

The substance faces a lot more testing but investors seized on media reports of it yesterday, pushing the shares of a chemical firm involved in the project, NOF Corp, up nearly 21 percent.

Traditional flu vaccines create antibodies which act against flu viruses, but since virus surfaces frequently mutate, different vaccines have to be made every year.

The group found that when a peptide derived from the influenza virus is induced into mice, it could act against cells infected by multiple strains of influenza, including bird flu.

Part of the research was reported in the Journal of Immunology in 2006, and the group presented its findings last month at Japan's National Cancer Center. The only tests so far have been on mice.

The next step is to develop a vaccine that works against multiple strains of flu and is proved safe for humans, said Tetsuya Uchida, a senior investigator at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases.

''It usually takes about five years to develop vaccines for clinical use. But bird flu is an emerging issue and we would like to develop this as soon as possible,'' Uchida said.

The findings could also potentially be applied to create drugs to treat AIDS, tumours and other diseases, he said. (AGENCIES)

Where ever you click... The network follows

SYDNEY, Mar 11: Internet has made world ''a global village'' and now every nook and corner of that village is being spied by large web companies to earn big bucks.

According to new statistics of online consumer data, web companies are learning more than ever about what users search on the internet, gathering clues about their tastes and preferences several hundred times a month.

The companies use the information to predict what content and advertisers people want to see. They can charge steep prices for carefully tailored ads because of their high response rates.

Earlier also, these practices of internet companies were highlighted but only vague statistics were available.

The new analysis indicates that web companies are take the trails people leave behind as they move around the internet, analysing them and anticipate their next steps. So anybody who searches for information on topics as iron supplements, airlines, hotels and soft drinks may see ads for those products and services later on.

''When you start to get into the details, it's scarier than you might suspect,'' Executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Centre, Mark Rotenberg, said, adding, ''We're recording preferences, hopes, worries and fears.''

Web companies, however, claim that have policies in place to protect consumers' names and other personal information from advertisers. Moreover, the data is a boon to consumers, as it makes the ads they see more relevant.

People who spend more time on the internet will have more information transmitted about them. The comScore per person figures are averages; occasional web users have far less transmitted about them.

(UNI)

Snakes win in creepy-crawly arms race: Study

WASHINGTON, Mar 11: Garter snakes have won out in a toxic arms race with their favored prey -- newts --researchers said in study that challenges conventional thinking on evolution.

They said their report helps demonstrate how evolution can move very quickly, and said it could also shed light on human disease, itself a kind of toxic arms race.

''These kinds of arms races are one of the models that we use for understanding host-parasite evolution and even viral disease evolution,'' Charles Hanifin of Utah State University, who led the study, said in a telephone interview yesterday.

His team studied rough-skinned newts, a type of salamander, found on the west coast of the United States and Canada. They are among the most poisonous known animals, carrying a lethal load of paralyzing tetrodotoxin, known as TTX for short.

''Because they have this toxin, nothing else eats them,'' Hanifin said.

Just a little bit of TTX can kill thousands of mice, but certain garter snakes are immune and gobble the newts with no apparent ill consequences. But not all of them.

''Both toxicity of newts and resistance of snakes vary geographically. Where newts are absent or nontoxic, T. Sirtalis (garter snakes) are not resistant to TTX,'' Hanifin's team wrote in their report, published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Biology.

YOUR DINNER OR YOUR LIFE

The usual thinking in evolution is driven by the so-called ''Life-Dinner'' principle. The idea is that prey animals get a little faster, or in this case a little more poisonous, to stay one step ahead of their predators.

''In these kinds of situations you would expect the prey to evolve more quickly and strongly than the predator,'' Hanifin said. This is because the prey stands to lose more.

''If the prey loses that interaction, the prey is dead. But if the lion doesn't catch the antelope, then the lion is not dead but has suffered the loss of a dinner,'' Hanifin said.

''That obviously is the complete opposite of what we see here.''

Hanifin's team found in 10 different places that garter snakes had evolved immunity to TTX, but the newts never got poisonous enough to escape the snakes.

This immunity to TTX boiled down to a small change in a single gene in the snakes, Hanifin said.

In places where the newts were not poisonous, the snakes did not have the genetic change -- showing that it did evolve in response to the poisonous varieties of newt. There were no places where the newts were toxic enough to escape the snakes.

The discovery shows evolution can make sudden leaps. ''Boom -- all of a sudden there is no arms race any more,'' Hanifin said.

It could explain other cases of extreme evolution -- such as hummingbirds that have grown long beaks to reach deep into flowers for nectar, Hanifin said.

And it would explain quick cases of evolution -- such as the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria among people. (AGENCIES)

If both parents have Alzheimer's, your risk soars

WASHINGTON, Mar 11: If both your parents have Alzheimer's disease, you probably are more much likely than other people to get it, researchers said yesterday.

Their study focused on 111 families in which both parents were diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia among the elderly, and assessed the risk for developing it among the offspring.

The parents had 297 children who lived into adulthood. Of the 98 men and women who were at least 70 years old, 41 of them -- about 42 percent -- developed Alzheimer's disease, researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle found.

''That's greater than you would expect in the general population in that age group,'' Dr Thomas Bird, one of the researchers, said in a telephone interview yesterday.

In the general population, risk for the disease begins to rise at about age 65, with the number of people developing the disease doubling every five years beyond that, experts say.

But about two-thirds of the adult offspring in the study still had not reached age 70. Counting all 297 of these adult offspring regardless of age, 23 per cent already had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, with the disease diagnosed on average at age 66, the researchers found.

Bird said that compares to the roughly one in 10 chance that the average person will develop the disease.

''I think it confirms that there's a strong genetic component in the disease and that's not a surprise,'' said Bird, whose study was published in the Archives of Neurology.

Scientists do not yet fully understand the causes of Alzheimer's disease, although genetics plays an important role. There is no cure.

Bird said there is only one gene, known as ApoE, that is generally agreed among researchers as a risk factor for the disease but there likely are many more.

The ApoE gene is involved in making a substance in the body that helps carry cholesterol in the bloodstream and the gene seems to influence the age of onset of Alzheimer's.

The researchers have been doing the study for about two decades and intend to continue for at least another decade.

''The numbers will be interesting to follow as they get older and older,'' Bird said.

Bird said the study is not examining the Alzheimer's risk for people who have one but not two parents who develop the disease.

In order to confirm that both parents actually had Alzheimer's, the researchers reviewed the medical records and in many cases the brain autopsies of those who had died, and tried to meet in person to assess those who still living.

In people with Alzheimer's disease, healthy brain tissue degenerates, causing an inexorable decline in memory and mental abilities. The average length of time from diagnosis to death is about eight years.

(AGENCIES)