Time out of mind

BBC NEWS : "We can't touch time, or smell it. Yet it is utterly inescapable. But, research shows, time is - at least partly - something we control in our heads. It's four in the morning, and schoolgirl Bethany McQuerry is starting her homework. Her dad, Clay, does the family's washing before going to the 24-hour supermarket. Meanwhile, Bethany's mum and brother, Janelle and Casey, sleep on. But Bethany is no swot and Clay is no housework obsessive. They just wake up early every single day, whether they like it or not - it's as if they have permanent jet lag. Bethany and Clay have to get things done early in the morning, because they also fall asleep in the early evening. The difference in timekeeping has divided the family, from North Carolina, US. 'There have been times when I wished we would function the same as other families,' says Janelle. 'It does make it hard when you're wanting to be together.' Only recently did Clay discover there was a biological explanation for his and Bethany's unusual behaviour, known as ASPS, or Advanced Sleep Phase Syndrome - a disorder of the body clock that shifts their day forward."

Wi-Fi to Go: The Hot Spot in a Box

New York Times: "YOU know what would be so cool? A portable Wi-Fi hot spot. Whenever you wanted Internet access, you wouldn't have to hunt for a wireless coffee shop or pay $24 a night to your hotel. Instead, you'd travel with a little box. Plug it into a power outlet %u2014 or even your car's cigarette lighter %u2014 and boom, you and everyone within 200 feet could get onto the Internet at high speed, without wires. Actually, such boxes exist. They come from companies like Kyocera, Junxion and Top Global, and they're every bit as awesome as they sound. (Unfortunately, the category is so new that it has no agreed-upon name. 'Portable hot spot' is descriptive but unwieldy. 'Cellular gateway' is a bit cryptic. Kyocera's term, 'mobile router,' may be as good as any.)Before you start thinking that you've died and gone to Internet heaven, however, you should know that these boxes don't work alone. Each requires the insertion of a PC laptop card provided by a cellular carrier like Verizon, Sprint or Cingular. The card provides the Internet connection, courtesy of those companies' 3G ('third generation') high-speed cellular data networks. The box just rebroadcasts that connection as a Wi-Fi signal so that all nearby computers %u2014 not just one privileged laptop %u2014 can go online."

Summers Resigns as Harvard President

WaPo: "Lawrence Summers, the embattled president of Harvard University, resigned today after a tumultuous year during which he repeatedly clashed with the faculty at one of the nation's oldest and more prestigious schools.His resignation takes effect at the end of the academic year. Former president Derek Bok will serve as interim president of the university from July 1 until a new president is appointed, according to Harvard's Web site. Harvard University President Lawrence Summers faces reporters as he departs a faculty meeting at Harvard, in Cambridge, Mass., in this March 15, 2005, file photo, taken after the school's Faculty of Arts and Sciences passed a no-confidence vote against him. Harvard University announced Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2006, on its website that Summers will resign as president at the end of the current academic year. Summers's announcement comes after several weeks of inflamed rhetoric by his opponents on the faculty, incensed by the way he handled the dismissal of Arts and Sciences Dean William Kirby, and one week before a scheduled full faculty meeting on a vote of no confidence in his leadership."

CNN.com - UAE to get $265 million spaceport - Feb 20, 2006

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- A day after Space Adventures announced it was in a venture to develop rocket ships for suborbital flights, the company said Friday it plans to build a $265 million spaceport in the United Arab Emirates.The commercial spaceport would be based in Ras Al-Khaimah near the southern end of the Persian Gulf, and the UAE government has made an initial investment of $30 million, the Arlington, Virginia-based company said in a statement.The spaceport announcement comes on the heels of Space Adventures' new partnership with an investment firm founded by major sponsors of the Ansari X Prize to develop rocket ships for suborbital flights.The agreement between Space Adventures and the Texas-based venture capital firm Prodea would help finance suborbital vehicles being designed and built by the Russian aerospace firm Myasishchev Design Bureau.Space Adventures is best known for sending the first three space tourists to the orbiting international space station for a reported $20 million a person.Space Adventures' jump into the infant suborbital flight industry comes at a time when several companies already are designing spaceships to take paying passengers on short trips up into space and then back to Earth without circling the globe.Last December, British tycoon Richard Branson announced development of a $225 million spaceport in southern New Mexico, which will be the headquarters of Branson's Virgin Galactic space tourism company.Virgin Galactic is contracting with Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites to develop a suborbital spaceship based on SpaceShipOne technology.Flying out of Mojave, California, SpaceShipOne made history on June 21, 2004, as the first privately financed manned rocket to reach space, then made two more flights later that year to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize."

California woman, 62, gives birth to 12th child - Women's Health - MSNBC.com

REDDING, Calif. - A 62-year-old great-grandmother has become one of the oldest women in the world to successfully give birth.The healthy six-pound, nine-ounce baby boy is the 12th child born to Janise Wulf, who also has 20 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Her oldest child is 40.Family members said Friday%u2019s delivery went smoothly, despite health concerns involving Wulf, who has diabetes and has been blind since birth.Baby Adam is the second child born to Wulf and third husband, Scott. Their other son is 3-1/2. Scott Wulf, who is 48 years old, said he%u2019d always wanted children. He said their two sons, born through in-vitro fertilization, are beyond what he%u2019d hoped was possible.Wulf isn%u2019t the oldest woman to give birth. That record went to a Romanian woman who gave birth last year at the age of 66."

Shortlist drawn up of stars likely to have habitable planets

Astronomers have drawn up a shortlist of the stars most likely to have habitable planets. They are the prime candidates for detecting signals with the first radio telescope designed specially to find extraterrestrial intelligence elsewhere in the universe."

ScienceDaily: NASA's Spitzer Uncovers Hints Of Mega Solar Systems

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has identified two huge "hypergiant" stars circled by monstrous disks of what might be planet-forming dust. The findings surprised astronomers because stars as big as these were thought to be inhospitable to planets. This illustration compares the size of a gargantuan star and its surrounding dusty disk (top) to that of our solar system. (Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) "These extremely massive stars are tremendously hot and bright and have very strong winds, making the job of building planets difficult," said Joel Kastner of the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. "Our data suggest that the planet-forming process may be hardier than previously believed, occurring around even the most massive stars that nature produces."

NASA Telescope Spots Mega Solar Systems - Yahoo! News

PASADENA, Calif. - Astronomers said Wednesday they have spotted evidence of two mega solar systems giant stars enveloped by what appear to be huge disks of planet-forming dust. Cloudy disks around stars are believed to represent current or future planetary systems. Our sun is surrounded by the Kuiper Belt, a disk containing dust, comets and other bodies. Astronomers said the latest findings were surprising because such massive stars are thought to be inhospitable to the formation of planets. 'Our data suggest that the planet-forming process may be hardier than previously believed, occurring around even the most massive stars,' Joel Kastner, of the Rochester Institute of Technology, said in a statement. Results appear in the Feb. 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters. The new stars were measured to be 30 to 70 times more massive than the sun. Because of the stars' size, scientists said the surrounding debris disks are larger versions of the Kuiper Belt and probably contain about 10 times more mass. The new stars were found using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope during a survey of 60 bright stars. Kastner said the new discoveries stuck out from the rest because an analysis indicated the presence of flat disks. Last year, another team of scientists discovered what they believe was a mini solar system. The team found a dust cloud around a brown dwarf, or failed star."