By MAY WONG
Associated Press

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Adobe Systems Inc. plans to introduce a new format for digital photos on Monday in an attempt to create an industry public standard to make the archiving and editing process compatible across all types of cameras and photo software.

Most consumer digital cameras today capture images in the JPEG format, but a higher-quality raw photo format is gaining in popularity among higher-end and professional camera models.

A major frustration among photographers, however, has been how different digital camera makers use different, proprietary versions of the so-called raw format, industry analysts say.

That incompatibility has forced users, especially in media and other companies, to maintain multiple software programs to handle the raw photos taken by different cameras. It has also raised concerns that archived raw images could become inaccessible with future software.

Now, Adobe, which dominates the photo editing market with its Photoshop products, is proposing that its new Digital Negative Specification, or DNG, becomes a universal standard for the raw format. The San Jose-based company is also launching a free software tool that will allow users to convert the raw formats from more than 65 cameras into the DNG format.

Raw photo files contain all the original information captured by a digital camera sensor before any in-camera processing occurs and thus gives users truer images and more flexibility when editing. By comparison, JPEG photo files are compressed images that suffer some data loss.

Last year, Adobe began offering support for some of the raw formats from different cameras in its Photoshop program but decided that wasn't enough.

"Our customers have been struggling over the past few years. They see the flexibility of raw files but don't want the pain of having to deal with different formats," said Bryan Lamkin, an Adobe senior vice-president.

Yet it will be up to camera makers to support the specification, which Adobe is making available for free.

"It will be adopted by many, maybe not this year, but within five years because it's to everyone's advantage," predicted Paul Worthington, an analyst at the Future Image Inc. research firm.

Eventually, more consumer cameras may end up offering the higher-quality raw photo format as well, Mr. Worthington said.

Discovery of Molecule in Region of Extreme Cold Indicates Possibility the Beginning Came From 'Out There'

By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 27, 2004; Page A07

A cotton candy-like cloud of simple sugar drifts in the unspeakably cold center of the Milky Way about 26,000 light years away, offering a remote, yet tantalizing, hint of how the building blocks of life may have reached Earth billions of years ago.

This frigid cloud is composed of molecular glycolaldehyde, a sugar that, when it reacts with other sugars or carbon molecules, can form a more complex sugar called ribose, the starting point for DNA and RNA, which carry the genetic code for all living things.

The simple sugar molecule glycolaldehyde was found in this dust and gas cloud, Sagittarius B2. The colors indicate radio emissions of different strengths. (R. Gaume, M. Claussen, C. De Pre -- National Science Foundation)

Astronomers have known about sugar in space for some time, but new research reported last week in the Astrophysical Journal Letters showed that gaseous sugar could exist at extremely low temperatures, as are found in regions on the fringes of the solar system where comets are born.

Thus, while many scientists agree that life probably derived from a rich "primordial soup" concocted in the warm-water puddles of early Earth, the new research offers fresh evidence for another popular view -- that life, or at least some of its basic ingredients, may have flown in from interstellar space aboard a comet or asteroid.

"These are long-standing questions," said astronomer Philip R. Jewell, of the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. "You want to know what sort of molecules would form in the interstellar medium. This is a clue."

A four-member team led by Jan M. Hollis, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and Jewell, used Green Bank's 115-yard-diameter parabolic reflector to examine Sagittarius B2, a cloud of dust and gas several light-years wide at the heart of the Milky Way, in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius.

Green Bank is a radiotelescope that identifies specific molecules in the cosmos by analyzing their radio emissions as they rotate end over end in space. Each molecule has its own unique signature frequencies, derived and catalogued through testing on Earth.

Jewell said the team had found glycolaldehyde in a warmer part of the cloud in 2000, but this time detected it in an area where temperatures were only 8 degrees above absolute zero, that is, minus 445 degrees Fahrenheit. All molecular motion stops at absolute zero (minus 459 Fahrenheit).

"Being that cold is interesting," said research astrophysicist Scott A. Sandford, of NASA's Ames Research Center. "At 8 degrees kelvin, molecules aren't going to be hopping off into the gas phase."

Finding complex molecules floating free in cold space so that their radio signatures could be recognized was something of a surprise, Jewell said, because at such low temperatures, they are much more likely to be found frozen solid to dust particles in the cloud.

"You need something non-thermal to get the sugar molecules off the dust grains," said Sandford, speaking from his Mountain View, Calif., office. "A shock wave could go through the cloud, cause grain collisions and blow the molecules into the gas phase." Heat will not work, he added, because it would break down the sugar molecules into simpler compounds.

Jewell said shock waves are quite likely what happened: "This is a star-forming region, and while star formation is a pretty hot process, the shock waves would pass through the center of the region and out into the colder outer areas," jarring the dust to release the sugar molecules.

It is unclear whether the glycolaldehyde, a simple "two-carbon" sugar containing two carbon atoms, two oxygen atoms and four hydrogen atoms, was frozen to the dust particles before the shock wave came by, or was formed by interstellar chemistry after the shock wave liberated simpler molecules.

In either case, however, "the conclusions are pretty exciting," said University of Arizona astrochemist Lucy M. Ziurys, director of the Arizona Radio Observatory. Ziurys, an expert in developing radio signatures for carbon molecules, has criticized the Green Bank team for not being thorough enough, but said her own students had replicated the Green Bank results.

"If sugar's in space, it's an important thing," Ziurys said in a telephone interview. "You add a few more carbons, and you end up with a sugar called ribose, and ribose is an essential component" of DNA and RNA.

What that means, however, is anybody's guess: "So suppose we have these interstellar clouds that are producing sugar molecules, and they're found throughout the galaxy," Ziurys said. "The big question is: Did the basic ingredients of life begin out in these clouds or on a planet?"

"We don't have a clue," Sandford said. "This seems to raise the odds that life could get started out there, but we don't know. That's why most of these arguments tend to be of a general nature."

In our solar system, and presumably elsewhere, the colder reaches of space are areas where particles of dust, ice and other debris bond in ever-larger clumps that eventually become comets.

Most comets in the solar system were formed about 4.5 billion years ago near the planets Uranus and Neptune and were subsequently cast into deep space well beyond Pluto. They reenter the solar system when nearby stars or large planets perturb their orbits.

Scientists long ago raised the possibility that early impacts from comets -- or asteroids from the belt between Mars and Jupiter -- may have brought Earth most of its water supply as well as the sugars and other compounds that served as the building blocks of life. The Green Bank research provides further evidence that this may have occurred.

Once liberated from their icy embrace and allowed to steep in warm water on the Earth's surface, the sugars could have combined with other carbon compounds to form ribose and, eventually, DNA and RNA.

But while this view appears to clash with more traditional thinking -- that the early Earth mixed its own soup without any help from space -- there is no reason why both phenomena could not have occurred.

"Current thinking is that sugars formed on the planet, but they could have been deposited on the planet by a comet or by interstellar dust," Ziurys said. "The important thing is that one method does not exclude the other."

And "nothing says that the stuff that fell out of the sky was the key thing, or the stuff that came from hydrothermal vents was the key thing, or the stuff that was struck by lightning was the key thing," Sandford said. "In the end, the chemical system that made life on Earth wasn't worried about 'Made in' labels. It just grabbed what it needed."

(click image to enlarge picture)

(click image to enlarge picture)

A NINE-YEAR OLD?!?

[referenced article]

Final Structure of Old Mustang Ranch Brothel Airlifted to New Location Near Reno

RENO, Nev. Sept. 12, 2004 ? The final section of the infamous Mustang Ranch brothel the parlor in which the working girls lined up for customers was airlifted four miles to the east on Sunday to the new location of the ranch at the Wild Horse Adult Resort & Spa.

The buildings that housed the girls' chambers, the kitchen and other rooms were moved to the new location by truck, but the 63-foot wide parlor was too big to travel by highway.

It almost was too big for the double-rotored helicopter brought in by Columbia Helicopters Inc., out of Aurora, Ore.

Its crew estimated that the chopper could lift 11 tons and Wild Horse owner Lance Gilman estimated the weight of the stripped parlor at 500 pounds less than that.

But when the pilot hooked up the wood and steel skeleton of the building, he estimated the weight at 12.5 tons and too heavy to safely fly from the Mustang Ranch location to the new brothel. Crews cut out about 3,000 pounds of 12-inch wooden braces to allow the move.

"They just felt they couldn't have controlled it," Gilman said.

About a dozen girls cheered and champagne flowed as the chopper gently lowered the skeleton of the parlor into place and workers secured it to a concrete pad.

Gilman, a Reno-based developer, opened the Wild Horse on a limited basis in 2002, then expanded it to its current 30,000 square foot size over the next year.

He immediately had his eye on the Mustang Ranch, which the government seized in 1999 after its owners were convicted of racketeering.

After prevailing in a series of court suits and environmental challenges, Gilman simply bought the property and its name on eBay from the U.S. Bureau and Land Management for $145,000. He estimates he has spent $1.5 million since then on site preparation and the move of the dozen sections of the pink stucco-clad buildings.

"This is a 4 1/2-year effort to achieve all this," he said.

The girls' cubicles and other rooms branch out like spokes from the hexagonally shaped parlor. Two of the spokes can't fit on the site in front of the Wild Horse and will become a museum filled with Mustang Ranch memorabilia.

They include the garish parlor where Mustang Ranch owner Joe Conforte lived before fleeing to Brazil to escape an income tax conviction.

Gilman said he had been contacted by scores of people who want to donate items to the museum, including Conforte.

Susan Austin, the Wild Horse madam, supervised everything from the African hunting trophies in the parlor to the paint schemes in the private suites in the new brothel. She said the renovated Mustang Ranch would not include the flocked red wallpaper and chintzy furnishings of the original.

"That just wouldn't be me," she said.

The 22-foot domed ceiling will have a skylike glow and the decor will be tasteful.

It will, however, again be a lineup brothel. At the Wild Horse, men enter a bar where they socialize with the women. A lineup is available if they request it.

The Wild Horse has about 35 women working 12-hour shifts. Austin said about 50 more would be working when refurbishing of the new buildings is finished in about 3 months.

"The Mustang girls are back," one worker said.

[referenced article]

EDMONTON - An extra 6,000 species of butterflies and other small creatures will be wiped out if their endangered plant and animal hosts go extinct, scientists say.

The addition of "affiliated species" means the biodiversity crisis is worse than thought, according to conservationists who added up the expected co-extinctions.

Researchers in Singapore, the United States and Canada used an international list of 12,200 plants and animals that are considered threatened or endangered as their starting point.

"What we wanted to learn was, if the host goes extinct, how many other species will go with it?" said biology Prof. Heather Proctor of the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

Using a mathematical model, the scientists added another estimated 6,300 dependent insects, mites, fungi and other species that rely on the hosts. These extra species weren't previously considered at risk.

The species aren't the cute and cuddly ones that tend to grab all the attention.

Many of the species facing co-extinction are mites, beetles and parasites, although Proctor noted 56 species of butterflies have already been lost because their host plants went extinct.

"It would be easy if there were always a one-to-one relationship with a host and its affiliate; however, not all parasites, for example, are restricted to a single host species," Proctor said in a statement.

"The trick was in trying to determine how many other species could act as hosts and factoring that degree of dependence into the study."

For Proctor, who said she "loves mites," the potential extinctions raise a moral reason to protect the original species.

The researchers noted species co-extinction reflects the interconnectedness of complex ecosystems.

"In view of the global extinction crisis, it is imperative that co-extinction be the focus of future research to understand the intricate processes of species extinctions," they wrote in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

"While co-extinction may not be the most important cause of species extinctions, it is certainly an insidious one."

Loss of habitat remains the main reason for extinctions, although the introduction of exotic pests and the international trade of wildlife like orchids also plays a role, Proctor told CBC Radio's As It Happens.

The study was funded in part by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Okay, that sounded flip. I really am bummed out. And this pic is just OUCH:

The prompting article is behind the link below, or you can read it in its original context at that great bastion of cutting edge science (NOT!), ABCNews.

By Paul Eng

Aug. 10, 2004 -- Last year, when a massive power outage plunged most of the East Coast of the United States into darkness, many scrambled to snap up that staple of modern life: batteries.

From flashlights to portable radios to cell phones, the common chemical-based battery provided some source of electricity while engineers struggled to get massive power plants back online.

While the battery has become the dominant form of portable power, some say its reign will soon be challenged by a "super" opponent: the capacitor.

Like batteries, capacitors provide electrical energy using chemicals stored within a container. But one of the traditional drawbacks of capacitors is that they don't provide nearly enough juice as a common battery of a similar size.

Alfred Siggel, global technical manager at Honeywell Specialty Materials in Seelze, Germany, says the company has developed a chemical solution that will help make so-called supercapacitors.

Like batteries, these devices could hold enough energy to power portable devices, computers, or even cars. And they could be recharged within seconds, not hours like traditional rechargeable batteries.

The heart of Honeywell's solution is a fluorborate salt, a chemical whose physical structure allows it to store a tremendous number of electrons. The chemical is dissolved in a special solution at high concentrations -- about 300 grams of salt per liter of solvent -- and then embedded onto carbon plates.

Siggel says that this chemical process is important because it improves how capacitors store and deliver energy.

"The main difference, compared to batteries, is that the battery uses a chemical reaction to generate electricity," he said. "[In a capacitor], it's a pure physical process. The [chemicals in the] plates are where you are storing the electrons."

But by using special chemical concoctions such as Honeywell's salt, Siggel says supercapacitors can now hold about a million times more energy than of capacitors of similar size ? and without losing the important advantages of ordinary capacitors.

For example, storing electrons in a capacitor doesn't require any chemical reaction. That's why capacitors can be charged in seconds and release huge amounts of power quickly, too. (A typical use of capacitors is in electronics such as camera flashbulbs.)

Another advantage of supercapacitors: their extremely long life cycle. Batteries can produce electricity only as long as their chemicals hold out. Even rechargeable batteries have a limited life since their chemicals wear out from repeated charging and discharging.

"For a capacitor, this [charge-discharge cycle] is typical," said Siggel. "There is no overcharging, no effect on the lifetime of the chemicals, and 100 percent capacity all the time."

Such characteristics, says Siggel, now make supercapacitors an ideal candidate for uses traditionally filled by conventional rechargeable batteries. One such new use, for example, would be in new hybrid electric cars.

Currently, hybrid cars such as Toyota's Prius use heavy, rechargeable nickel-metal hydride batteries to store energy recaptured when drivers step on the car's brakes. That energy can then power a small electric motor to move the car at slow speeds, saving the car's engine -- and gasoline -- for higher speeds.

Siggel says a supercapacitor could easily do the job of the hybrid's battery without the weight or cost.

"Panasonic charges $4,000 or $5,000 for a Prius battery," he said. "If you have to replace it because the chemicals have worn out, that can be quite unreasonable for the car's owner."

Automobile makers have reportedly been working on supercapacitor-equipped cars. A Toyota spokeswoman says the Japanese company had a few years ago shown a Prius concept car using what it called an ultracapacitor. But the company says it's unlikely such a car will make it to showroom floors anytime soon.

Many say that even with chemicals such as Honeywell's fluroborate salt, supercapacitors won't catch up with the capabilities of traditional batteries. And there are several disadvantages that still need to be worked out.

For one, while a capacitor may hold energy comparable to a battery's, it typically releases it quickly, in large bursts. In other words, it would be hard to make a capacitor that can deliver a steady stream of electricity for days or even hours at a time.

Although a backup power system made up of just supercapacitors would be impossible, Siggle says the devices could have a role in protecting a regional power grid and perhaps prevent wide-scale blackouts such as the one that struck last year.

"In the power blackouts of last year, you had one system that crashed and the others tried to make up for the sudden loss of power," he said. "When they couldn't make up the demand, they began to fail as well."

Siggel theorizes that large banks of supercapacitors might have been able to take up the slack momentarily, providing just enough power and time for system engineers to react properly.

"If there was a buffer in between [the failure of one system], maybe the next system [down the line] wouldn't have crashed," he suggested.

But until more supercapacitors are developed, tested, and put to practical use, Siggel's idea might be just another spark in the dark.

Changes in latitude, changes in attitude ... it's not just a song.

I've watched the light change as the year progresses, which I never really noticed before. I've driven through vast empty fields where nothing blocks the wind, and the wind makes it's presence felt. I've trod carefully over ice-covered streets and sidewalks, never quite slipping but coming close enough to taste real fear of a broken bone.

I've had some of the worst nights of my life, but they weren't associated with this place necessarily and they are in the past.

I will end up back in a sun-drenched valley where so many things started and nothing seemed like home. I have a bit of a drive to get there, but drives aren't the problem for me that once they were. I'll have another den to slip into, though for the first time the new den will have a washer and dryer. I'll even have easy access to a racquetball court, which hasn't been true since college.

Some good things happened there. I have to remember that.

Pretty soon I'll be past the cusp, following the sun's daily path and winter-to-summer path. The moment will have passed, and a new moment will be waiting somewhere. Nothing like life, hmm?

The about-turn might cost Hawking, a physicist at the University of Cambridge, an encyclopaedia because of a bet he made in 1997. More importantly, it might solve one of the long-standing puzzles in modern physics, known as the black hole information paradox.

It was Hawking's own work that created the paradox. In 1976, he calculated that once a black hole forms, it starts losing mass by radiating energy. This "Hawking radiation" contains no information about the matter inside the black hole and once the black hole evaporates, all information is lost.

But this conflicts with the laws of quantum physics, which say that such information can never be completely wiped out. Hawking's argument was that the intense gravitational fields of black holes somehow unravel the laws of quantum physics.

Other physicists have tried to chip away at this paradox. Earlier in 2004, Samir Mathur of Ohio State University in Columbus and his colleagues showed that if a black hole is modelled according to string theory - in which the universe is made of tiny, vibrating strings rather than point-like particles - then the black hole becomes a giant tangle of strings. And the Hawking radiation emitted by this "fuzzball" does contain information about the insides of a black hole (New Scientist print edition, 13 March).

Now, it seems that Hawking too has an answer to the conundrum and the physics community is abuzz with the news. Hawking requested at the last minute that he be allowed to present his findings at the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation in Dublin, Ireland.

"He sent a note saying 'I have solved the black hole information paradox and I want to talk about it'," says Curt Cutler, a physicist at the Albert Einstein Institute in Golm, Germany, who is chairing the conference's scientific committee. "I haven't seen a preprint [of the paper]. To be quite honest, I went on Hawking's reputation."

Though Hawking has not yet revealed the detailed maths behind his finding, sketchy details have emerged from a seminar Hawking gave at Cambridge. According to Cambridge colleague Gary Gibbons, an expert on the physics of black holes who was at the seminar, Hawking's black holes, unlike classic black holes, do not have a well-defined event horizon that hides everything within them from the outside world.

In essence, his new black holes now never quite become the kind that gobble up everything. Instead, they keep emitting radiation for a long time, and eventually open up to reveal the information within. "It's possible that what he presented in the seminar is a solution," says Gibbons. "But I think you have to say the jury is still out."

At the conference, Hawking will have an hour on 21 July to make his case. If he succeeds, then, ironically, he will lose a bet that he and theoretical physicist Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena made with John Preskill, also of Caltech.

They argued that "information swallowed by a black hole is forever hidden, and can never be revealed".

"Since Stephen has changed his view and now believes that black holes do not destroy information, I expect him [and Kip] to concede the bet," Preskill told New Scientist. The duo are expected to present Preskill with an encyclopaedia of his choice "from which information can be recovered at will".

[original article]

How fast must a train be travelling for the Doppler effect to put all the mobile phones being used on it out of action?

- Philip Woodward , Malvern, Worcestershire, UK

Answer

The Doppler effect says that if an object emitting a wave is approaching the receiver of the wave, it is heard at a higher frequency by the following factor:

frequency heard = frequency sent x (1/(1-speed/c))

where c is the speed of your wave (practically the speed of light in this case).

If the emitter is moving away from your receiver, its frequency is lowered by the following factor:

frequency heard = frequency sent x (1/(1+speed/c))

In the UK, mobile phones use either the GSM900 protocol, broadcasting in the 890-915 megahertz range for uplinks and 935-960 MHz for downlinks, or the GSM1800 protocol, with equivalent ranges of 1710-1785 MHz and 1805-1880 MHz.

To ensure that one end of each of these ranges is Dopplered out the other end, one would need to travel at a speed of roughly 3 per cent of the speed of light for GSM900 signals, or 4 per cent for GSM1800. This amounts to a train speed of between 32 million and 43 million kilometres per hour.

Somehow I don't think that's likely on UK trains. Or indeed any others, if I'm being reasonable.

- Simon Scarle , University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, UK

[original article]