This column will change your life: The calm before the storm

Looks like a barrel of laughs, doesn't it? Photograph: Corbis

The Australian meditation teacher Paul Wilson has been labelled "the guru of calm", which seems reasonable given that he's the author of The Calm Technique, Instant Calm, The Little Book Of Calm (famously featured on the sitcom Black Books), The Big Book Of Calm, Calm At Work, Calm Mother, Calm Baby, The Complete Book Of Calm and Calm For Life. Were I to meet him in person, I would be tempted to suggest that, in view of such a hectic publication schedule, it might be time to slow down and smell the roses. However, this would not irritate him. Because he is so calm.

Tranquillity is big business: Wilson – who describes himself as "the only meditation teacher listed in Who's Who" – sits at the pinnacle of an industry of writers, speakers and retreat centres promising (in the words of one such establishment, in California) "a sacred and peaceful environment for healing". So it was refreshing to hear the former Harvard economist and White House advisor Todd Buchholz outline his alternative theory: that calm is the enemy of happiness, and that it's busyness on which we thrive. Railing at the calm advocates he calls "Edenists", Buchholz proposes that striving keeps us neurologically fit: "The people who sit back and relax… those are the people who become truly miserable." Research, he notes, suggests that retirement prompts a reduction in cognitive abilities. "What you really want," he insists, "is to chase your tail, even if you never catch it." His forthcoming book is called Rush: Why You Need And Love The Rat Race.

There's plenty to disagree with here: Buchholz's thesis is a baby-and-bathwater affair, and his fixation on the joys of competition is a free-market fundamentalist's take on happiness. But his viewpoint highlights the fact that there's often something about the ideology of calm that's rather forced – strenuous, even – and therefore hardly calm at all. The most obvious manifestation of this is the effort to make your physical surroundings perfectly tranquil: either you'll fail and grow frustrated, or you'll succeed and find you're still not happy and productive. Arriving at Princeton, the physicist Richard Feynman found he didn't envy the über-geniuses at the university's Institute for Advanced Study, a leafy oasis where they had no obligation but to cogitate: "These poor bastards could now sit and think clearly all by themselves. So they don't get any ideas for a while… a kind of guilt or depression worms inside of you... and nothing happens." In the words of the computer scientist Richard Hamming, "Ideal working conditions are very strange. The ones you want aren't always the best ones for you."

Yet even the more realistic aspiration to remain "calm amid the chaos" of everyday life can turn into a struggle to feel only one category of emotions while suppressing others. We've all run into weirdly affectless people, usually identifying themselves as Buddhist, who seem to be using their commitment to serenity to avoid confronting other psychological issues. Buchholz may overstate how much we "need" frenzied activity. But it's a strange philosophy of wellbeing that would deny us the option of getting swept up in the excitement of it sometimes, and perhaps even knocked off our serene course by it. I always wonder about that stock photo-library image of a woman, cross-legged, meditating on a beach at sunset. She's clearly very calm. But does she ever have any fun?

The mean kitty song

Here's a great song that one man wrote about his kitty, named Sparta. How did this sweet little feline get that name? You'll know after watching this cute video:

Visit SMPFilms's YouTube channel.

As I've mentioned already, the seeming impossible is happening: I am running out of funny cat videos to show you on Caturday mornings. This means I have to either show you (1) funny parrot videos (2) fart videos or heaven forbid, (3) funny dog videos -- on Caturday morning!!

NASA spacecraft is first to orbit Mercury

WASHINGTON: A NASA spacecraft began orbiting Mercury Thursday, becoming the first to fly around the solar system’s innermost planet, the space agency said.

The craft, known as MESSENGER, began the orbit around 9:00 pm (0200 GMT) on a mission to circle the planet for one Earth year in an unprecedented study of the tiny, hot planet.

The spacecraft began its journey more than six years ago, traveling through the inner solar system and embarking on flybys of Earth, Venus and Mercury.

NASA said that by achieving orbit, “this marks the first time a spacecraft has accomplished this engineering and scientific milestone at our solar system’s innermost planet.”For the next several weeks, engineers will be focused on ensuring the spacecraft’s systems are all working well in Mercury’s harsh thermal environment.

Starting on March 23, the instruments will be turned on and checked out, and on April 4 the mission’s primary science phase will begin.

MESSENGER was 28 million miles (46 million kilometers) from the Sun and 96 million miles (155 million kilometers) from Earth when it headed into Mercury’s orbit, NASA said.

The first NASA craft to study Mercury since the Mariner mission more than three decades ago, MESSENGER has already been able to return a partial map of the planet’s crater-filled surface after a handful of flybys.

The craft is carrying seven science instruments, including a Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS), the Mercury Atmospheric and Surface Composition Spectrometer (MASCS), and the Energetic Particle and Plasma Spectrometer (EPPS).

It was first in August 2004 and has since traveled 4.9 billion miles (about 7.9 billion kilometers) through “a range of extreme conditions,” NASA said.

Google “20-per cent time” going to help Japan

“A lot of 20-per cent time is being spent on Japan,” Google spokesman Jamie Yood told AFP. – AP Photo

SAN FRANCISCO: Legions of Google workers are devoting a fifth of their work time or more to building technology to help to deal with the disaster in Japan.

Google has long allowed employees to spend 20 per cent of their time on engineering projects that interest them but which don’t fall into their usual area of focus.

The havoc and death wrought on Japan by a powerful earthquake and ensuing tsunami has prompted many “Googlers” to devote their “20-percent time” to crafting Digital Age tools for handling the crisis.

“A lot of 20-per cent time is being spent on Japan,” Google spokesman Jamie Yood told AFP on Thursday.

“There is definitely a group of people in our Tokyo office spending a lot more than 20 per cent of their time on this, and that is supported by Google,” he said.

Google has established a multi-lingual Crisis Response Page with links to resources such as emergency hotlines, relief organizations, maps, and a service for finding loved ones.

“Like the rest of the world, we’ve been transfixed by the images and news coming out of the northeastern part of Japan over the past six days,” Google product manager Nobu Makida said in a blog post on Thursday.

“Googlers in Japan and elsewhere around the world have been working around the clock to try and help improve the flow of information.” The Japanese military Thursday used trucks and helicopters to dump tons of water onto the quake-hit Fukushima nuclear plant in efforts to douse fuel rods and prevent a disastrous radiation release.

The operation aims to keep the fuel rods inside reactors and containment pools submerged under water, to stop them from degrading when they are exposed to air and emitting dangerous radioactive material.

Nvidia's comeback comes under scrutiny

SAN FRANCISCO: Nvidia has given Wall Street one of its best comeback stories in years and has been rewarded with a hefty share rally, but some investors now question how long its new lead in mobile chips will last.

Snubbed for years as a one-trick pony in video game graphics, Nvidia -- whose chief executive, Jen-Hsun Huang, has a penchant for fast cars -- now seems to be having the ride of its life.

The company is applying its technology to powering mobile devices, and the recent appearance of its chips in new smartphones and tablets made by Motorola, LG and Dell have won the company admirers on Wall Street.

Its Tegra 2 chips made a splash in January at the Consumer Electronics Show and ignited a share rally.

But a 47 percent surge since the start of 2011 has raised eyebrows as some investors ask whether the graphics specialist can defend its early advantage in new tablets from major rivals like Qualcomm and Texas Instruments.

"While they are riding the early stages of the wave and should be rewarded for having the foresight to help define that market, it's not going to be a long window because they have some very serious competition," said Cody Acree, an analyst at Williams Financial Group.

Nvidia's leap into the mobile market with its well-reviewed, cutting-edge Tegra 2 processors comes as Intel and Advanced Micro Devices squeeze its traditional business of designing graphics chips, or GPUs, for personal computers.

With Intel largely absent so far in mobile, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm and Nvidia are at the center of a battle to supply the brains behind the newest crop of devices. Marvell, Broadcom and Samsung are also competing.

With years more experience designing processors for mobile phones, Texas Instruments and Qualcomm may have advantages over Nvidia in areas like energy efficiency -- key for smartphones and tablets -- and are talking about cutting-edge tweaks to their chips like next-generation modems and gesture sensing.

Eager to maintain its edge, Nvidia on Tuesday showed reporters at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona a tablet using its yet-to-be-released quad-core processor. It said the chips, codenamed Kal-El and currently being sampled by customers, would have five times the processing power of Tegra 2 and appear in tablets around August and in smartphones by Christmas season.

For a table comparing Nvidia's key valuations with rivals, please click http://link.reuters.com/der97r

RALLYING

Last year, fears that Nvidia was trapped in a shrinking graphics market hammered its shares by 40 percent until the fourth quarter, when the company's upcoming mobile processors began to attract more attention and its stock began to recover.

Nvidia and most of its competitors design their chips for smartphones and tablets using architecture licensed from Britain's ARM Holdings, an energy-efficient technology that is shaping up to be the mobile industry's standard.

The combination of ARM technology and its expertise in graphics has enabled Nvidia to get itself back on the scoreboard.

"ARM has democratized the CPU," Huang, once a competitive table-tennis player, told a CES audience in January.

Unlike central processors, or CPUs, which make huge calculations one after another, GPUs excel at carrying out several small calculations at once. That makes them ideal for processing the high-definition video and multimedia content consumers increasingly want.

But in a sign of the formidable competition that Nvidia faces, Hewlett-Packard chose Qualcomm's dual-core Snapdragon for its "TouchPad" tablet to compete against Apple's iPad.

Qualcomm on Monday outlined its plan for its own much faster quad-core processor for future mobile devices.

Texas Instruments last week announced its newest mobile processor, the OMAP 5, which promises a fivefold increase in graphics processing and will be available for tablet and phone makers to test in the second half of 2011.

Vicious competition, short product cycles and supply swings in Nvidia's core PC graphics business have made for erratic quarterly earnings over the years, making its stock a tough sell to conservative investors. Expansion into the mobile market may help Nvidia reduce its earnings volatility.

"We'd have to see a very strong case to be made for sustained profitability with the stock at this price," said Pat Becker Jr., a principal at Becker Capital Management who follows technology stock but does not own Nvidia shares.

The recent rally in Nvidia on the perception it is a strong mobile play has pushed its valuation far above those of its peers, raising concerns it may now be expensive given that most of its sales still come from PC graphics chips.

It trades at 23 times forward earnings, far surpassing TI's 13.5 or Marvell's 11.4, according to Thomson Reuters Starmine.

"The multiple on the stock right now is coming from a perception that they're sweeping smartphone and tablets, but the reality is this is still a PC-driven story," said JMP Securities analyst Alex Gauna.

Nvidia reports fourth-quarter results on Wednesday and is expected to show a healthy profit increase over the previous quarter with higher sales of PC graphics chips during the holiday season and only minor early sales of Tegra 2 chips.

In 2011, Tegra sales could amount to $460 million of Nvidia's estimated $3.6 billion in revenue, with the rest coming mostly from PC graphics chip sales, according to Gleacher & Company analyst Doug Freedman.

"The mobile space is growing like crazy," said Gamble Jones Investment Counsel portfolio manager Hampton Adams, who holds shares of Nvidia but says uncertain market estimates discourage buying more. "It's more art than science, but unless we can make a reasonable approximation of what it's worth, we don't want to take a stab at it." (Reuters)

Smartphone makers woo developers at trade show

BARCELONA: The shotgun marriage of Nokia and Microsoft's smartphone platforms puts software developers and companies at center stage at the annual Mobile World Congress starting on Monday in Barcelona.

Nokia and Microsoft, the global leaders in mobile phones and software, announced a wide-ranging alliance on Friday which they hope will give them a chance of building an iPhone killer -- but it is still regarded as only a slim chance.

Apple and Google's Android have already taken the high ground in the lucrative smartphone battle by attracting hordes of developers who make the small software applications, or apps, that make smartphones come alive.

Apple's iPhone was praised for its design when it launched in 2007, but it was its App Store that transformed the industry by allowing users to personalize their iPhones with easy-to-install games, shopping aids and business tools.

Total sales from all app stores are expected to triple this year to $15 billion, Gartner said last month.

"Most developers are doing Android and Apple; they don't want to do anything else, even if they are paid for it. It's going to be very, very difficult for the others," said Magnus Jern, chief executive of mobile software house Golden Gekko.

The open-source Android software platform, unleashed on the market just two years ago by Google, has already stormed to the top of the smartphone platform popularity charts, overtaking Nokia's Symbian at the end of last year.

Device makers such as Samsung, HTC and Sony Ericsson have embraced it as it offers features and functions they could never hope to develop on their own as quickly.

On Sunday Sony Ericsson and Samsung unveiled new models running on Android, with Sony Ericsson in a long-awaited move bringing Sony's PlayStation brand to the mobile market.

Many manufacturers will also be trying in their own right to attract software developers at the Mobile World Congress with special events laid on for them.

A consortium of telecom carriers, who have so far largely failed to profit from the apps boom, will also launch their own app platform, named WAC, on Monday.

Operators are hoping their wholesale store - from which operators' individual stores will take content - gives them a scale which is big enough to battle with Apple and Google. (Reuters)

Apple working on smaller, cheaper iPhone: report

SAN FRANCISCO: Apple Inc is working on a smaller and less expensive version of the iPhone, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing sources.

The prototype device is about one-third smaller than the iPhone 4, the report said, citing a person who had seen it.

Apple has considered selling the new iPhone for $200 without a two-year wireless contract, Bloomberg reported.

Apple is aiming to unveil the device around the middle of this year, but the launch may be delayed or canceled altogether, the report said.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

The company often develops products it never brings to market.

According to the report, Apple is also working on a dual-mode phone that would be able to work with the world's two main wireless standards.

AT&T, which carries the iPhone on its wireless network in the United States, declined to comment. Verizon Wireless, which also carries the device, could not be reached for comment.

Shares of Cupertino, California-based Apple closed down 1 percent at $354.54 on the Nasdaq on Thursday. (Reuters)

LG to unveil first full 3D smartphone

MADRID: The world's very first 3D smartphone will be unveiled by LG at Mobile World Congress (MWC) to be held on February 14 in Barcelona.

There will a live demo of LG’s 3D smartphone.

The LG Optimus 3D is aimed at addressing the lack of such a smartphone and the lack of 3D content issue.

Users will experience a full 3D experience right in the palm of their hands.

Concentrating on the 3D elements only the smartphone comes with a dual-lens camera offering 3D recording, the screen is a glasses-free LCD offering 3D viewing, HDMI and DNLA for 3D content sharing.

LG will provide the full details for the LG Optimus 3D at MWC, meanwhile you can look at whats known to-date here.

Computer crushes human Jeopardy

CHICAGO: An IBM computer crushed two human champions Tuesday in the second round of a man vs. machine showdown on the popular US television game show "Jeopardy!"

Most of the banter and gentle humor that usually pepper the popular quiz show was gone as the supercomputer dominated the game by beating his human opponents to the buzzer again and again.

Ken Jennings -- who holds the "Jeopardy!" record of 74 straight wins -- shook his buzzer in silent frustration as the computer's artificial voice answered the first dozen challenges without pause, getting all but one right.

"Watson" - named after Thomas Watson, the founder of the US technology giant -- receives the clues electronically by text message at the same time as they are revealed to the human contestants.

The first player to hit the buzzer gets to answer the question. The others only get a chance if the first player gets the answer wrong.

Watson, which is not connected to the Internet, plays the game by crunching through multiple algorithms at dizzying speed and attaching a percentage score to what it believes is the correct response.

It beat Jennings and Brad Rutter -- who won a record $3.25 million on the show -- to the buzzer on 24 of 30 questions.

Five-time "Jeopardy!" champion Jeffrey Spoeri sympathized with Jennings and Rutter, and said the computer's speed to the buzzer seemed like an unfair advantage.

"I gotta root for the humans," said Spoeri, who won 105,000 dollars on the show in November 2006.

But he was deeply impressed with the computer's skills.

"The actual game play was just amazing, that it would know the answers and discern which one is the correct one," Spoeri said after viewing the first show.

"It's a terrific experiment."

Watson, which has been under development at IBM Research labs in New York since 2006, is the latest machine developed by IBM to challenge mankind.

In 1997, an IBM computer named "Deep Blue" defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match.

"Jeopardy!", which first aired on US television in 1964, tests a player's knowledge in a range of categories, from geography to politics to history to sports and entertainment.

A dollar amount is attached to each question and the player with the most money at the end of the game is the winner. Players have money deducted for wrong answers.

In a twist on traditional game play, contestants are provided with clues and need to supply the questions.

Watson showed an impressive knowledge of pop culture, answering "Who is the Church Lady" to the challenge "A Dana Carvey character on 'Saturday Night Live.'"

Watson was quick to the punch on history, geography, medicine and art -- jumping in with the second largest city in New Zealand, the founder of Cambridge's Trinity College, the names of stolen artwork, and types of diseases.

Most impressive was his ability to interpret the challenges, answering "What is narcolepsy?" to the question "You just need a nap. You don't have this sleep disorder that can make sufferers nod off while standing up."

Jennings managed to get three correct answers in while Rutter won two.

None were able to identify a portrait of Spanish King Phillip II as that which was stolen at gunpoint from an Argentina gallery in 1987.

The computer stumbled badly in the usually critical final "Jeopardy!" round.

The audience groaned when Watson answered "What is Toronto????" to the question: "Its largest airport is named for a WWII hero. Its second largest, for a WWII battle" under the category "US Cities."

Jennings and Rutter both gave Chicago as the correct answer.

But even though they wagered nearly all their winnings on the challenge, they couldn't catch up to Watson's lead.

Watson ended the second day of the three day challenge with $35,734 while Rutter had $10,400 and Jennings had $4,800. (AFP)

HTC unveils 5 smartphone models

BARCELONA: Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC unveiled on Tuesday two social networking phone models, with a focus on Facebook access, and introduced its first tablet computer to a crowded marketplace.

The world's fifth-largest smartphone maker also introduced new versions of its hit models Desire, Wildfire and Incredible.

All six new devices will run Google's Android software, which ended the 10-year reign of Nokia's Symbian as the pre-eminent smartphone platform last quarter.

"We believe customers want choice; one size does not fit all," said Philip Blair, product director at HTC Europe.

HTC's strong push into smartphones using Google's Android operating system has helped the company to grow market share against bigger rivals like Nokia and Samsung Electronics.

It held 9 percent of the global smartphone market in the December quarter, according to research firm IDC.

HTC joined the throng of tablet makers with its Flyer model, which comes with a 7-inch screen and a separate stylus.

According to PRTM Management Consultants before the show there were 102 tablets either for sale or in development by 64 manufacturers.

HTC positioned the tablet in the premium price category, but said its was ready to sell new social networking phones at keenly competitive price levels.

"We are really trying to for the young and mass market. We will try to be as aggressive as we can," Blair said.

HTC is hoping to replicate the success of smaller vendor INQ Mobile, which has built a business by focusing solely on social networking models.

HTC's new social networking models come with a dedicated hard-key for Facebook, enabling users to post information to their Facebook account with just one keystroke.

Mobile is an increasingly important driver of traffic to Facebook, which says 250 million users per month access the social network on mobile devices.

All six devices use Qualcomm's chipsets. (Reuters)

New mobile can check pulse, send ambulance

BARCELONA: You probably have good reason to worry if you get a call on your mobile phone with the following message: "Sir, an ambulance is on the way."

That's the worst call you can receive if you buy a new EPI Life mobile phone, which comes complete with mini electrocardiogram.

It's a new phone developed in Singapore that takes your pulse when you press your fingers on a receptor, and sends the results to a 24-hour medical call centre.

"We think it's a revolution. It has clinical significance," EPI medical chief Dr. Chow U-Jin said at the mobile industry's annual conference in Barcelona.

"Anywhere in the world you can use it as a phone but you are also able to transfer an ECG and get a reply," Chow said.

"If you get a normal reply it will just be an SMS," he added.

"If it's severe, you get a call: 'Sir, an ambulance is on the way'."

EPI Life has three hospitals in Singapore, all of which carry the phone users' history.

EPI Life costs $700 (516 euros), the price of a top range smartphone, and 2,000 of them have been on the market since 2010.

"The most obvious targets are people with heart disease," Chow said.

Depending on your health or nervous disposition you can choose from three packages offering 10, 30 or 100 tests a month.

There is now a mini $99 version with a smaller receptor that links via Bluetooth connection to your smartphone, which is due for launch soon in Spain and France.

The EPI Life is one of a series of mobile health initiatives unveiled in Barcelona.

Many of the services rely on SMS or MMS messages that even older mobiles can receive.

Health Company, which covers Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, sends medical information about sexuality, obesity, children's health etc. to about 430,000 customers in Arab and English.

"You could also send a consultation through SMS," said company vice president Fahad S. Al-Orifi.

"This SMS will go to our website where our doctor answers you to your mobile."

Mobile health is developing in poorer countries where it can play a crucial

role, said Kazi Islam, chief executive of Grameenphone in Bangladesh.

In his country there are 156 million people and fewer than 3,000 hospitals but 66 million people have access to a mobile phone.

"Most women don't have access to information of health. Seventy-five percent of women from 15 to 24 have never heard of STIs (sexually transmitted infections)," he said.

"With a simple SMS we are sending information to expectant mothers. This is a necessary help". (AFP)

Scientists build first ‘antilaser’

CHICAGO: The laser -- a 50-year-old invention now used in everything from CDs to laser pointers -- has met its match in the "antilaser," the first device capable of trapping and canceling out laser beams.

While such a device would seem most fitting in a science fiction movie, its real-world application will likely be in next-generation, optical computers, which will be powered by light in addition to electrons, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

"It's a device which basically works like running a laser backwards," A. Douglas Stone of Yale University, who published his findings in the journal Science, said in a telephone interview.

While a laser takes in electrical energy and emits light in a very narrow frequency range, Stone said, his antilaser takes in laser light and transforms it into heat energy.

But it could be easily converted into electrical energy, he said.

Conventional lasers, which were invented in 1960, use a so-called "gain medium," such as a semiconductor material, to produce a focused beam of light waves.

Stone's device uses silicon as an absorbent "loss-medium" that traps light waves, which bounce around until they are converted into heat.

And while the technology seems cool, his antilaser would never be used as a potential laser shield.

"This is something that absorbs lasers. If a ray gun was intended to kill you, it's going to kill you," Stone said.

He said the most obvious use of his device is in computing. "The next generation of high performance computers are going to have hybrid chips," Stone said.

Instead of having chips with transistors and silicon, these new computers will use both light and electrical energy.

Stone said the device could be used as a sort of optical switch that can be turned on and off at will.

Ultimately, he said, the technology could find its way in radiology.

Hummingbird drone has successful flight

SEATTLE: Tech company AeroVironment, Inc has announced successful flight trials of the tiny robot spy "Hummingbird" prototype, which the company has been working on since 2006, a uk based website reported.

The hand-made prototype aircraft has a wingspan of 16 centimeters (6.5 inches) tip-to-tip and has a total flying weight of 19 grams (2/3 ounce), which is less than the weight of a common AA battery. This includes all the systems required for flight; batteries, motors, communications systems and video camera. The aircraft can be fitted with a removable body fairing, which is shaped to have the appearance of a real hummingbird, the statement said.

The mini spy plane can fly up to 11 miles an hour and took five years to develop at a cost of $4million.

The Nano humming bird is part of the Phase II contract awarded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) program and has both whimsy and espionage potential.

Japan launches 'Hayabusa' bullet train

TOKYO: Japan's latest bullet train, the thin-nosed "Hayabusa" or Falcon, made its 300 kilometre per hour (186 mph) debut Saturday, boasting a luxury carriage modelled on airline business class.

Japan has built up a network of cutting-edge Shinkansen train lines since the 1960s that criss-cross the island nation and now hopes to sell the infrastructure technology abroad, including to the United States.

The latest ultra-fast tech-marvel will make two trips a day from Tokyo to Aomori, a scenic rural backwater on the northern tip of the main Honshu island that has until now been off Japan's bullet train map. It will also make one more trip a day to Sendai, located between Tokyo and Aomori.

Mutsutake Otsuka, chairman of East Japan Railway Co. (JR East), stressed the engineering sophistication of the new ride. "To the best of our ability, we will strive to improve Hayabusa's passenger comfort, safety and environmental friendliness, not just its speed," he told hundreds of people who came to Tokyo station to see the futuristic train.

The mood at the launch was dampened slightly by a seven minute delay to the first service after a passenger fell from the platform at Tokyo station, where more than 1,000 train hobbyists rushed to take pictures. The train was not moving at the time, and the man climbed back up to the platform unaided.

The green-and-silver E5 series Hayabusa travels at up to 300 kilometres per hour to make the 675 kilometre trip to Aomori in three hours and 10 minutes. From next year, it will push its top speed to 320 kilometres per hour to become Japan's fastest train.

Passengers will glide quietly along the straight stretches and tunnels that cut through Japan's mountainous countryside, said JR East, which has heavily promoted the launch of the new service.

Those willing to pay 26,360 yen ($320) for a one-way trip can enjoy the comfort of a 'GranClass' car, where a cabin attendant will serve them drinks and food in their deeply reclining leather seats on thick woollen carpets.

To promote the service, the train company has also heavily advertised Aomori as a tourist destination, praising its landscape, seafood and winter snow.

Japan's ultra-fast, frequent and punctual bullet trains have made them the preferred choice for many travellers, rather than flying or road travel, ever since the first Shinkansen was launched in time for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. But as Japan, and its railway companies, struggle with a fast-greying and shrinking population and falling domestic demand, the government and industry are aggressively seeking to promote the bullet trains abroad.

Japan has in the past sold Shinkansen technology to Taiwan and hopes to capture other overseas markets, such as Brazil and Vietnam, but faces stiff competition from train manufacturers in China, France and Germany.

The biggest prize is a future high-speed US rail network that President Barack Obama has promoted, to be backed by 13 billion dollars in public funding. California's then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was treated to an early test ride on the Hayabusa when he visited Japan in September.

Japan says its trains boast a strong safety record: despite running in an earthquake-prone country, no passenger has ever died due to a Shinkansen derailment or collision -- although people have committed suicide by jumping in front of the trains. Japan has also been developing a magnetic levitation or maglev train that, its operator says, reached a world record speed of 581 kilometres per hour in 2003 on a test track near Mount Fuji in Tsuru, west of Tokyo.

The plan is to launch maglev services between Tokyo and the central city of Nagoya by 2027. By 2045 they are expected to link Tokyo with the main western city of Osaka in just one hour and seven minutes, compared with the current two hours 25.(AFP)

UK solar panel subsidies slashed

Less cash for large scale solar energy producers 'could deter investment in renewable energy'

Continue reading the main story

The UK government has proposed cuts of up to 70% to the feed in tariff for large scale solar energy production.

The proposal would be implemented on the 1 August, reducing payments to farmers or owners of large commercial buildings.

The industry has reacted with anger to the proposal.

And investors have warned that cutting the scheme just a year after it was created will deter further investment in renewable energy.

"The whole investor market was totally disengaged as a result of the feed in tariff being ripped up," said Ben Warren, partner with Ernst and Young, a consultancy.

'Absolute disaster'

According to the government's proposal, , which is subject to consultation, payments for any solar installation over about 50kW would be reduced.

The full reduction would apply to installations from 250kw to 5MW - the standard size for a farm based scheme.

"It's an absolute disaster," said Ray Noble, solar specialist at the Renewable Energy Association.

Continue reading the main story

“tart Quote

"No new projects will start after this comes into effect."

The tariff had not been due to be reviewed until 2013.

'Fast-falling costs'

The new scheme is designed to preserve funds, which come from consumer bills, for schemes on domestic roofs.

These tend to be more expensive and generally need greater subsidies.

Climate change minister Greg Baker said the new tariff will be on a par with subsidies paid for large scale offshore wind.

"I want to make sure that we capture the benefits of fast-falling costs in solar technology to allow even more homes to benefit, rather than see that money go in bumper profits to a small number of big investors," he said.

The emphasis on small scale installations is likely to reduce the total amount of energy generated from the scheme whilst encouraging public engagement in renewable energy.

Ship container 'stepping stone' risk for alien invaders

A shipping container lost off the coast of California in 2004 is now teeming with underwater life, say scientists who returned to it with a robotic sub.

However, it is unclear whether the "artificial reef" that the container provides is a beneficial one.

Containers could provide a "stepping stone" route for invasive species to colonise new areas, the team says.

The unique study sheds light on the problem of the estimated 10,000 such containers that are lost each year.

It is estimated that some 200 million shipping containers are used globally each year, and that at any one time, between five and six million containers are in transit.

Tyre tracks

In February 2004, the container ship Med Taipei set off from San Francisco.

Continue reading the main story

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What concerns me is that we might be changing this ecology before we even understand it”

Andrew DeVogelaereMonterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary

Caught in a storm on its coastal journey to Los Angeles, 15 containers broke free and were lost near Monterey Bay.

Four months later, on a routine remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) dive by scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (Mbari), one of the containers was spotted at a depth of 1,300m.

The container - listed as housing more than 1,000 tyres - appeared to be in pristine condition, but the Mbari team resolved to return and assess the container's effects on life on the seafloor.

Last week, Andrew DeVogelaere of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary and colleagues from Mbari took the Doc Ricketts ROV back to the site.

"What's normally down there is gently rolling, soft seabed covered with an amazing amount of life - there are these clear sea cucumbers every few feet, beautiful pink crabs, tubeworms," Dr DeVogelaere told BBC News.

"Now into that you've dropped this hard substratum, this container, and on that you'll see other species like Neptunia, a large whelk that lays its eggs on the container, and it also seems some large crabs and octopus then move in and are feeding on the whelk."

The submersible Doc Ricketts returned to the site seven years on

While some efforts at "artificial reefs" elsewhere in the world's oceans change the biodiversity in a particular ecological niche, Dr DeVogelaere explained that it is unclear whether the container's presence presented a benefit.

"When you have large expanses of one kind of habitat, it can create a 'biogeographic break point' - you have species distributions that are abundant in one area of the coastline and then they disappear.

"What could be creating breaks - (preventing) invasive species moving from one area to another - is an expansive habitat, and in this case we may be creating stepping stones across that for the ecology to change. What concerns me is that we might be changing this ecology before we even understand it."

Given the growing preponderance of containers on the seafloor - some 10% of which may house materials toxic to marine life - the find has spurred the researchers to examine the shipping industry itself.

"They're going to be sitting in the bottom of the ocean for hundreds if not thousands of years, and building up through time," Dr DeVogelaere said.

"In one journal they describe containerisation like racecar driving: if everything's under control, you're not going fast enough.

"We'd like to understand the business, overlaying that with the biology and ecology. We want start to meld the thinking of the two so we're not doing science without understanding containers and so the container business is thinking about ecological impact."

Messenger probe enters Mercury orbit

Nasa's Messenger spacecraft has successfully entered into orbit around the planet Mercury - the first probe to do so.

The robotic explorer initiated a 14-minute burn on its main thruster at 0045 GMT on Friday.

This slowed the spacecraft sufficiently to be captured by the innermost planet's gravity.

Being so close to the Sun, Mercury is a hostile place to do science. Surface temperatures would melt lead.

In this blistering environment, the probe has to carry a shield to protect it from the full glare of our star.

And even its instruments looking down at the planet have to be guarded against the intense heat coming back up off the surface.

"It was right on the money," Messenger's chief engineer, Eric Finnegan, said. "This is as close as you can possibly get to being perfect.

"Everybody was whooping and hollering; we are elated. There's a lot of work left to be done, but we are there."

The spacecraft is now some 46 million km (29 million miles) from the Sun, and about 155 million km (96 million miles) from Earth.

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Sean Solomon: "Mercury tests all of our ideas for how Earth-like planets form and evolve"

The orbit insertion burn by the probe's 600-newton engine will have parked it into a 12-hour, highly elliptical orbit about the planet.

Principal investigator Sean Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, is hoping for some remarkable discoveries in coming months.

"We started the Messenger mission as a proposal to Nasa 15 years ago," he told BBC News.

"We have been building for the orbit insertion and the observations that will follow for a decade and a half.

"To say that the science team is excited about what is to come is a huge understatement. We're really pumped."

Just getting to Mercury has proved a challenge.

Messenger has had to use six planetary flybys - one of Earth, two of Venus and three of Mercury itself - to manage its speed as it ran in closer to the Sun and its deep gravity well.

The strategy devised by scientists and engineers is to have Messenger gather data with its seven instruments during the close approaches (some 200km from the surface) and then return that information to Earth when the probe is cooling off at maximum separation from the planet (up to 15,000km from the surface).

Images captured by Messenger have already revealed surprising details about the planet

Mercury is often dismissed as a boring, featureless world that offers little to excite those who observe it, but planetary scientists who know it well beg to differ. It is a place of extraordinary extremes.

Mercury's proximity to the Sun means exposed equator surfaces can reach more than 600C; and yet there may be water-ice at the poles in craters that are in permanent shadow.

It is so dense for its size that more than two-thirds of the body has to be made of an iron-metal composition.

Mercury also retains a magnetic field, something which is absent on Venus and Mars.

In addition, the planet is deeply scarred, not just by impact craters and volcanic activity but through shrinkage; the whole body has reduced in size through Solar System history.

And Mercury fascinates because it may be our best guide to what some of the new planets might be like that are now being discovered around distant suns.

Many of these worlds also orbit very close in to their host stars.

"We'll be looking at the composition of the planet and how it ended up so dense, and what planetary formation processes gave rise to the high fraction of core," said Dr Solomon

"The answer to that question lies in the composition of the surface that we can sense remotely from orbit, but we need time in orbit to do that.

"We'll also be taking more images, but images at higher resolution and in optimum lighting compared with the conditions we had during the flybys."

Others to follow

Key to the success of the whole endeavour will be maintaining the health of Messenger in the harsh conditions it will experience.

"The sunshade is made of a ceramic material that keeps the heat on the outside of the spacecraft from getting on the inside," explained Eric Finnegan, who is affiliated to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).

"We also had to develop thermal protection for the solar arrays. We still need to generate power but we had to make sure the solar arrays themselves wouldn't melt. So, we built a solar panel that's only populated with one-third solar cells. The other two-thirds of the panel are basically mirrors to reflect the sunlight off of the panels."

The spacecraft is scheduled to remain in orbit for a year, allowing the probe to fly around Mercury 730 times.

If Messenger stays in good health and the funding allows, a one-year mission extension is likely to be granted.

The European and Japanese space agencies (Esa and Jaxa) are also sending a mission to Mercury this decade.

BepiColombo consists of two spacecraft - an orbiter for planetary investigation, led by Esa, and one for magnetospheric studies, led by Jaxa.

Dr Solomon says there will be plenty left for the duo to do and discover when they get to the innermost planet.