By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News

A space mission that will be critical to our understanding of climate change has launched from California.

The Jason-2 satellite will become the primary means of measuring the shape of the world’s oceans, taking readings with an accuracy of better than 4cm.

Its data will track not only sea level rise but reveal how the great mass of waters are moving around the globe.

This information will be fundamental in helping weather and climate agencies make better forecasts.

The satellite left Earth at 0746 GMT atop a Delta-2 rocket from the Vandenberg Air Force Base.

The spacecraft, built by Thales Alenia Space, represents the joint efforts of the US and French space agencies (Nasa and CNES), and the US and European organisations dedicated to studying weather and climate from orbit (Noaa and Eumetsat).

Down below

Jason-2 will provide a topographic map of 95% of the Earth’s ice-free oceans every 10 days.Although we think of our seas as being flat, they are actually marked by “hills” and “valleys”, where the highs and lows may be as much as two metres apart.

Elevation is a key parameter for oceanographers.Just as surface air pressure reveals what the atmosphere is doing above, so ocean height will betray details about the behaviour of water down below.

The data gives clues to temperature and salinity.When combined with gravity information, it will also indicate current direction and speed.

The oceans store vast amounts of heat from the Sun; and how they move that energy around the globe and interact with the atmosphere are what drive our climate system.

“The ocean constitutes the long-term memory of the climate system; the time-scales over which the ocean is changing are the climatic timescales,” explained Mikael Rattenborg, the director of operations at Eumetsat.

“In order to understand climate, in order to be able to predict the evolution of the atmosphere over months, years, and decades even, you need to understand the ocean.”

Number one

Jason-2 is a continuation of a programme that started in 1992 with the Topex/Poseidon mission and is currently maintained by the Jason-1 satellite launched in 2001.

JASON-2 SPACECRAFT

• 1. Advance Microwave Radiometer - measures signal delay caused by water vapour
• 2. GPS antennas - ensures knowledge of precise orbit path
• 3. Poseidon-3 altimeter- measures sea level
• 4. Doris antenna - tracking and positioning control
• 5. Laser Retroreflector Array (LRA) - tracks and calibrates measurements
• Satellite mass: 525kg (1,155lb) Power generation: 511 watts
• Satellite height: 3m (9ft 8in) Orbit: 1,338km (831 miles)

(Source: Eumetsat, Cnes, Nasa)

The project provides the global reference data for satellite-measured ocean height.

Although other spacecraft in service today can acquire similar data sets, none can match the precision achieved by Jason-1; and Jason-2, when in service, will be the benchmark against which all other spacecraft will be judged and calibrated.

At the heart of the latest mission is the Poseidon 3 solid-state altimeter.The instrument constantly bounces microwave pulses off the sea surface.By timing how long the signal takes to make the return trip, it can determine sea surface height.

Additionally, the signal can indicate the height of waves and wind speed.

“It is not a revolution between Jasion-1 and Jason-2; it is an evolution, because the main objective is to ensure continuity,” explains Francois Parisot, the Jason-2 project chief at Eumetsat.

“Nevertheless, there are some improvements in the instruments.We hope to make better measurements closer to the coast [and over inland waters and rivers]; and also, we will deliver near-realtime products - products that will be available within three hours of the measurements.”

Whale watching

The latter will be particularly useful in storm prediction.Jason will see the surface waters rise as warm eddies fuel hurricanes.The data will tell meteorologists how a storm is likely to intensify and allow them to issue better, more timely warnings.

Jason-2 data will have many other uses that may not be immediately obvious.Industry will take the information to make decisions about when conditions are most suitable for undersea drilling or cable laying.

Jason can help identify where wreckage or pollution will drift; and the satellite will assist marine biologists as they track whales by pinpointing waters with the potential to be prime feeding and breeding grounds.

One very important use will be in maritime navigation.

“Now that the fuel price is going up, saving fuel for the companies that run ships has become very sensitive; and knowing the currents, you can select your route so that you go faster and save fuel,” said Philippe Escudier, a space oceanography at CLS (Collecte Localisation Satellites), Toulouse, France.

“You can save up to 5% on fuel consumption by making best use of the currents.”

Formation flying

Jason-2 will spend its first few months flying a “tandem mission” with Jason-1.

The two spacecraft will be positioned so that they sweep around the Earth, one following the other, with a separation of just 60 seconds.

This will enable, essentially, the two satellites to measure the same patch of ocean surface at very nearly the same time.

Scientists will use this opportunity to cross-calibrate the instruments so that when Jason-1 is retired (or fails), the future data collected by its successor will be directly comparable with past records.

This continuity of information will be critical in recognising long-term trends in ocean behaviour.It is the data which underpins the observation that global sea level is rising by about three millimetres per year.

Once the tandem phase is completed, Jason-1 will be moved to the side, doubling the return of data.The importance of the Jason programme means both spacecraft will almost certainly be run for as long as they are serviceable.

Discussions are already in progress on a Jason-3 satellite.Given Europe’s role in the project, there is a compelling case for the next mission to be included in the GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) programme.This would attract significant EU money.

Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered the hallucinogenic drug LSD, has died of a heart attack at his home in Basel at the age of 102.

Mr Hofmann first produced LSD in 1938 while researching the medicinal uses of a crop fungus.

He accidentally ingested some of the drug and said later: “Everything I saw was distorted as in a warped mirror”.

He hoped LSD could be used to treat mental illness, but it became a popular street drug in the 1960s.

‘Turn on, tune in, drop out’

While working with the drug in the Sandoz pharmaceutical laboratory a few years after first producing it, Mr Hofmann ingested some of the drug through his fingertips.

He went home and experienced what he described as visions of “fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colours”.

The drug was popularised by Harvard professor Timothy Leary who suggested that people “turn on, tune in, drop out”.

Rock stars and the counter-culture of the 1960s picked up LSD as a wonder drug but horror stories began to emerge of users suffering permanent psychological damage.

LSD was made illegal in many countries beginning in the late 1960s

Sir Arthur Charles Clarke was born on the 16th of December 1917 in Minehead, England. Perhaps best known for his contributions to science fiction, and his inventions, his achievements will certainly not be forgotten anytime soon.

Clarke served in the Royal Air Force as a radar instructor from 1941-1946. It was there where he invented & proposed the idea of communications satellites in 1945 — an idea that materialized quickly and we now know, use and depend on to sustain our societies. His proposal won him the Franklin Institute Gold Medal and in 1994 he was nominated for a Nobel Prize. Consequently he became the chairman of the British Interplanetary Society.

He collaborated with Stanley Kubrick to create, in my and many others’ opinion, one of the greatest films of all time — and concurrently developed what later became a novel of the same name: 2001: A Space Odyssey shook the world and continues to inspire and provoke thought.

Moved to Sri Lanka in 1956. Knighted in 1998.

A Hero Passed Away on March 19th, 2008.
Arthur Charles Clarke will be missed.

I recently came across news of a device that geeked me out. Its a neckband that can detect and analyze neural firings when we think about saying something, and translate them into audible words via speech synthesizer. Beyond the obvious use of bettering the lives of people who’ve lost their ability to speak, it could enable us to make phonecalls without having to actually talk (as is demonstrated in a video in this article). The creators of the device mention that they’ll have a product by the end of the year for people with ALS (a.k.a. Lou Gehrig’s Disease).

In my aforementioned geek-out craze I told my girlfriend about the device, called the Audeo, who immediately identified the problem of the device saying a thought you don’t actually want the other person to hear. You’re on the phone with your boss when you suddenly hear the device blurt out “Are you never going to shut up about those damn TPS Reports!?“.

Good point. But the creators say the device can differentiate between things that you’re thinking, and things that you actually want to say. You have to think about using your voice for the device to pick up on it.

I’m sure that this ability is a beneficial byproduct of making the device a “collar” around your neck monitoring the nerves that control muscles of the larynx.

Our Head’s Too Messy, Go for the Neck

The device is not a brain interface worn on the head, so it stands to reason that (a) they are monitoring neural activity to the muscles that control speech (larynx/voicebox), and (b) by doing so it’s easier to detect things that you actually want to say, as opposed to what you’re casually thinking.

The larynx is innervated by branches of the vagus nerve on each side. Sensory innervation to the glottis and supraglottis is by the internal branch of the superior laryngeal nerve. The external branch of the superior laryngeal nerve innervates the cricothyroid muscle. Motor innervation to all other muscles of the larynx and sensory innervation to the subglottis is by the recurrent laryngeal nerve.

However, I’m sure we’ve all been in situations where we are on the verge of saying something, perhaps in an emotionally colored debate, but think twice and eventually say something less aggressive. In such a situation I’m sure the device could accidentally be triggered. So the user must make sure to be perfectly balanced, one with himself and the universe before using it for important conversations. At least for now.

Writing this I get the idea that this problem could be overcome with AI; natural language processing could detect potentially insulting sentences or harsh language. The user could then be prompted to verify whether he meant to say a particular sentence (whether this would introduce too much lag is another question).

Voiceless Phonecalls

The device, currently able to recognize 150 words, is under development by Ambient Corporation, co-founded by Micahel Callahan who demonstrates the device in the following video at the TI Developer Conference’08 by placing a “voiceless phonecall”.

For the past few decades, humans have increasingly been extending their intellectual capacity with the use of machines. An example is using mobile devices to retrieve knowledge on the fly —

making each device-wielding human more intellectually capable than one 20 years ago. But this a matter of perspective, and many only see future invasive devices as “extensions of intelligence” (e.g. neural-interfaced memory storage device) and everything else as tools.

Modern technology is starting to blur this line between intellectual extensions and tools. The “Smartest Person in the Room” project is one of these: Using the Audeo, a person thinks of a question —

the question is consequently sent to a web knowledge-application, the answer found and tunneled back out through the speakers. Question never audibly asked, yet answered. Quite brilliant.

Looking forward to monitoring the developments of this project, feeding my interest in machine interfaces right along Emotiv’s Epoc and Neurosky’s non-invasive neural interfaces.

Links & References

• New Scientist on the Audeo

By Michael Voss
BBC News, Havana

The first legalised home computers have gone on sale in Cuba, but the ban on home internet access remains.

This is the latest in a series of restrictions on daily life which President Raul Castro has lifted in recent weeks.

Crowds formed at the Carlos III shopping centre in Havana, though most had come just to look.

The desktop computers cost almost $800 ($400), in a country where the average wage is under $20 a month.

But some Cubans do have access to extra income, much of it from money sent by relatives living abroad.

Since taking over the presidency in February, Raul Castro has ended a range of restrictions and allowed Cubans access to previously banned consumer goods.

In recent weeks,thousands of Cubans have snapped up mobile phones andDVD players.

But only now have the first computer stocks arrived.

Internet access remains restricted to certain workplaces, schools and universities on this communist island.

The government says it is unable to connect to the giant undersea fibre-optic cables because of the US trade embargo.All online connections today are via satellite which has limited bandwidth and is expensive to use.

Cuba’s anti-American ally, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, is laying a new cable under the Caribbean.

It remains unclear whether, once the connectionis completed, the authorities will then allow unrestricted access to the world wide web

Two projects in Wales which aim to support people at risk of suicide and prevent it have each been given lottery grants of almost £1m.

They are among 19 projects across Wales to receive funding worth £14m from the lottery’s Mental Health Matters scheme.

Also benefiting are people affected by bipolar disorder and those with drug and alcohol problems.

Seventeen young people from the Bridgend area are believed to have killed themselves in just over a year.

The Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University NHS Trust will be using its £999,000 award from the Big Lottery Fund to run its Let’s Talk project, which aims to reduce stigma and improve public awareness of mental health issues across the Bridgend and Neath Port Talbot borough areas.

Two co-ordinators will be employed to run the project and develop a broader base of people who can identify mental health issues in their communities.

The cash injection will also enable support groups to be set up and improve co-ordination at accident and emergency departments so that those patients who survive a suicide attempt are signposted into appropriate services.

“One in four of us is likely to experience mental health problems at some point during our lives so it is important to recognise the issue”
Barbara Wilding, Big Lottery Fund

Dr Tegwyn Williams, director of mental health service within the trust, said he hoped the funding would help “reduce the number of tragic self-inflicted deaths” in the community.

Mind Cymru’s suicide intervention programme Positive Choices -will benefit from almost £1m funding over the next five years.

The charity hopes to use the money to train more than 13,000 people in suicide intervention skills and develop a website for anyone concerned about suicide.

A two-day course will help frontline workers and community members recognise someone who is feeling suicidal and give them the skills and confidence to intervene.

Lindsay Fosyter, director of Mind Cymru, said the success of the Positive Choices project would depend on working in partnership with other key agencies.

Barbara Wilding from the Big Lottery Fund said the projects would have a “significant impact” on the lives of people who suffer from mental health problems in Wales.

Homeless people

“Our funding will make an important strategic contribution to developing mental health services across the country, by helping people with mental health problems and supporting projects that try to overcome the barriers that they face,” she said.

“One in four of us is likely to experience mental health problems at some point during our lives so it is important to recognise the issue.”

A project helping people with mental health problems receive tailored educational courses in north Wales and Powys has also received just under £1m from the Big Lottery Fund.

Homeless people in Newport are also set to benefit from a grant of over £300,000 to a charity which aims to provide them with therapeutic help.

And a grant of almost £800,000 will enable the Eating Disorders Association to better support people in Wales affected by eating disorders

By Innes Bowen
BBC Radio 4, More or Less

It’s widely thought that employees on lower grades suffer if they have little control over their jobs. Is this true

A group of middle managers gathers in central London for a half-day workshop on stress. Merren Barber, an occupational health physiotherapist, delivers a stark warning: managers who put too much pressure on their workers can cause serious health problems.

“Stress isn’t an illness but there’s quite a bit of evidence that it increases the risk of high blood pressure, heart disease and mental health problems. So people potentially can become ill because of chronic stress,” Barber tells the group.

Is this really true

Stress management courses are now a staple of corporate life and the claim often made that there is a link between stress and ill health has become the received wisdom.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the government body in charge of protecting people’s health at work, has even made giving workers more control over their workload a legal obligation.

FIND OUT MORE…

• More or Less is on Radio 4 on Mondays, 1630 BST
• Or catch up at Radio 4’s Listen Again site

According to employment lawyer Gordon Turner, the HSE standards on stress are so rigorous that many employers fear details of their working practices becoming public. “It’s so easy to slip up. If an employee takes a grievance as far as an employment tribunal, companies often settle rather than risk a public hearing that might attract the attention of the HSE.”

Both the HSE and stress management trainers are influenced by a famous survey of the health of British civil servants known as the Whitehall II study. Led by Prof Sir Michael Marmot, an epidemiologist at University College London, Whitehall II has tracked the lives of thousands of civil servants for more than 20 years in an attempt to assess the effect of job status on health.

According to Professor Marmot, it is not stress per se that has an adverse effect on health and life expectancy. Rather it is working in a job where there are high demands accompanied by a lack of control. “People of high status tend to have high demand and that doesn’t seem to cause any illness problems at all.”

Some academics in this field have their doubts. Dr John MacLeod is one of a team of researchers at Bristol University who are sceptical about Professor Marmot’s findings.

“We looked at these issues in a study of 6,000 working men in South West Scotland. Unusually, when these men were recruited in the early 1970s, it was the middle classes and the more advantaged who were experiencing high levels of stress. In those circumstances stress was not associated with poorer health.”

Professor Marmot’s response is that the Scottish study does not use good measures of stress.

Sick of work

As far as heart disease is concerned, it is not only Dr MacLeod and colleagues at Bristol University who are unconvinced there is a proven link with stress. The American Heart Association website states that “current data don’t yet support specific recommendations about stress reduction as a proven therapy for cardiovascular disease”.

Dr MacLeod believes that so-called psychosocial explanations of ill health are a distraction from what he believes are more likely causes of a growing health divide between richer and poorer people.

“We don’t really know the causes but material disadvantage in childhood is one of the strongest predictors of health in adulthood. So the best bet would be to target and reduce childhood deprivation if we want to see reductions in health inequalities.”

So are companies wasting money by sending managers on courses that might make them feel guilty about placing high demands on their workers

Dr MacLeod doesn’t go that far. “It may not reduce the risk of heart disease but creating fairer workplaces is a humane and just thing to do.”

A teenager is recovering in hospital after a 200,000-volt electric shock which threw him 25ft (7.6m) onto a live railway line in Wigan.

Sam Cunningham, 16, was wearing steel toecaps when he tried to retrieve a rugby ball from a bridge and a charge leapt from overhead power lines.

He fell onto the track below and was knocked unconscious but did not get electrocuted.

He suffered severe burns and is expected to make a full recovery.

His friends called emergency services, who alerted the rail networks to stop trains on the main line between Manchester and Wigan.

When Sam, who suffered burns to his legs, arm, back and face, came round, he managed to call his mother Ann.

The mother-of-four immediately went to the track, at Platt Bridge.

“He said he just remembers seeing a flash and then feeling himself spinning around”
Ann, Sam’s mother

Ms Cunningham, 40, a health care assistant, said: “I got there within a couple of minutes and all his clothes had been burned off, he was shaking from head to toe and the line was still live.

“All his hair had been singed and smoke was coming from the bandages paramedics had put on his legs.

“My head was just in bits and I can’t believe that he is still alive - I don’t think anybody can.

“Sam can’t remember much about what happened.

“He said he just remembers seeing a flash and then feeling himself spinning around.”

She added: “He is still very sore but he has not lost his sense of humour. He’s a typical Wigan lad and is missing his pies.”

Sam, a labourer, is being treated in the specialist burns unit at Whiston Hospital, Merseyside.

He will require skin grafts but is expected to make a full recovery and be back home next week.

A British Transport Police spokesman said: “That (railway) line is 750,000 volts and he is very lucky to be alive. A shock such as that can be fatal.

“We would like to reinforce that the railway environment is a highly dangerous place and advise that no person should go on or near the railway lines in any circumstances.”<P

By Rob Liddle
BBC News

Family skeletons have been toppling out of closets since the searchable details of more than 200 years of Old Bailey trails went online last month. So how does it feel to idly type a name into a search box and be presented with more than you bargained for

Tracy Lowe knew the Mendays were a clan to be reckoned with in the mean streets of Victorian south London.

Family lore hinted at violent arguments, brushes with the law and men who had to make themselves scarce for a while.

A keen family historian, Tracy had already established from online census records that her great-grandfather Alexander Menday was attending a reform school in 1891, at the age of 17.

Petty crimes

She was also familiar with the tale of how her grandmother had come home one day to find her kitchen decked out with improvised washing lines from which were hanging numerous soggy banknotes.

“ I read the next word - ‘killing’. I was so shocked I nearly fell off my stool.”
Tracy Lowe

When hanging was too good

Menday, a Thames waterman at the time, had the job of recovering bodies from the river, and he and his son had relieved an unfortunate of the contents of his pockets before the authorities arrived - on the basis he didn’t have any more use for them.

“We knew they were rogues, the sort of people you would cross the street to avoid,” says Tracy.

“When I told my mother about his being in the reform school, she wasn’t surprised.”

So when the details of about 100,000 Old Bailey trials were published on the internet recently, Tracy was half-expecting to find her Southwark ancestors named among the records.

“When I typed the surname in, I thought I might find offences like petty theft, breach of the peace, being drunk and disorderly, that sort of thing.”

“First I saw the name ‘Alexander’, and I thought ‘fantastic’. But then I read the next word, ‘killing’. I was so shocked I nearly fell off my stool.”

‘Terrific blow’

There on the screen she saw the story unfold of how Alexander Menday had been drinking with friends in a pub near London’s Moorgate in February 1902 when an argument got out of hand.

A man called Dugald McCall came in and accused Menday of using bad language towards the barmaid the night before. Menday followed him outside into the street where they began to tussle. Witnesses described how the pair fought three rounds before the victim said that he had had enough.

George Sneezman, a clerk whose office overlooked the scene, told the court: “The prisoner went after him, and from behind dealt him a terrific blow behind the right ear - the blow was quite audible in our office - he fell directly, and his head struck the kerb.”

McCall could not be revived and Menday was arrested. He claimed that the victim had forced him to fight and denied hitting him from behind. Found guilty of manslaughter, the jury “recommended him to mercy” and the 27-year-old was sentenced to six months’ hard labour.

For Tracy, there were the mixed emotions. She knew her mother’s grandfather had committed a terrible deed in taking a life, but she also recognised that she had been presented with genealogical gold - the sort of detail about our ancestors’ lives that most family historians crave.

“It was amazing to see it all there in front of me, and there’s such a level of detail,” says Tracy, an interior design artist and mother-of-three from Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire.

“I suppose the initial shock gave way to a partial acceptance that I knew they were south London rogues and something like this might have happened.”

‘Mickey-taking’

Others who have made their own surprising discoveries in recent weeks have discussed the dilemmas they are wrestling with - will telling other members of the family cause more harm than good

One person contributing to an online forum has discovered the reason why a friend’s forebears emigrated to Australia was a murder within the family. Would the friend, also an avid genealogist, want to know

But for 49-year-old Tracy, enough time has passed and that part of her family has fragmented to such an extent that she feels she is able to talk about it.

As for her three daughters, one 18 and 14-year-old twins, the revelations have given them some “ammunition for mickey-taking”, but their interest has been short-lived.

“They certainly weren’t shocked as they don’t see this as ‘real’ people,” she says, “and it is certainly not anything to do with them or their lives.”

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The hanging of Saddam Hussein - directors cut



This should be the infamous cameraphone video showing all the action of Saddam’s hanging… actually I think they could spare showing this but…

As seen on the CNN