Ramin Khadem

Odyssey Moon from the Isle of Man stepped forward as the first private team intent on exploring the moon and claiming Google’s 30-million-dollar Lunar X Prize.
Google announced the prize in September, challenging entrepreneurs to “re-conquer the moon“ and launch a “Moon 2.0“ era of private lunar visits and enterprises.
“People have not really thought through the potential the moon represents,“ Odyssey Moon chairman, Ramin Khadem, a founder of Inmarsat, told AFP after the team’s public debut at the Space Investment Summit in San Jose, California.
“The moon is the eighth continent and we need to exploit it in a responsible way. We want to win the Google prize and, if we do, that will be gravy. But either way we are going to the moon.“
Google partnered with the X Prize Foundation, which promotes private space exploration, to offer the prize.
The 30-million-dollar offer to the first private team to make it to the moon is good until 2012, when the amount of money drops to $25 million. All the prize money is taken from the table in 2014 if unclaimed.
“The Moon is a stepping stone to the rest of the solar system and a source of solutions to some of the most pressing environmental problems that we face on Earth--energy independence and climate change,“ Google says in a posting on its website.
The Google X Prize promises $20 million to the first team to land a privately-funded craft on the moon, move it at least 500 meters and send “Mooncast“ video back to Earth.
Millions more dollars in “bonus prizes“ can we won by completing additional tasks on the moon.
Odyssey Moon is the first team to pay the 10,000-dollar registration fee and qualify to compete.
“We hope the announcement will motivate and inspire even more teams to enter this race,“ said X Prize Foundation chairman Peter Diamandis.
The roster of technology entrepreneurs backing private space exploration includes Google founders Larry Page and Serge Brin; Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, Diamandis notes.
“Explorers of the 15th and 16th centuries who set out to find new worlds were probably asked why they were doing it,“ Khadem said. “Look at the riches and wonders they discovered.“
Odyssey Moon is an international partnership that began the project about three years ago.
“Ours will be a small robot,“ Khadem said, explaining his team’s mission is modest in comparison to manned space travel funded by national governments.
“We are out to complement, not compete with, China, Russia and the US.“
Khadem envisions solar power farms on the moon to help sate mankind’s hunger for affordable energy. He also sees the moon as a staging ground for deeper space missions.
“I think the returns can be enormous,“ said Khadem, who is also chairman of the International Space University.

Two Baylor College of Medicine researchers in Houston are working on a cocaine vaccine they hope will become the first-ever medication to treat people hooked on the drug.
“For people who have a desire to stop using, the vaccine should be very useful,“ said Dr. Tom Kosten, a psychiatry professor who is being assisted in the research by his wife, Therese, a psychologist and neuroscientist, AP wrote.
“At some point, most users will give in to temptation and relapse, but those for whom the vaccine is effective won’t get high and will lose interest.“
The vaccine, currently in clinical trials, stimulates the immune system to attack the real thing when it’s taken.
The immune system--unable to recognize cocaine and other drug molecules because they are so small--can’t make antibodies to attack them.
To help the immune system distinguish the drug, Kosten attached inactivated cocaine to the outside of inactivated cholera proteins.
In response, the immune system not only makes antibodies to the combination, which is harmless, but also recognizes the potent naked drug when it’s ingested.
The antibodies bind to the cocaine and prevent it from reaching the brain, where it normally would generate the highs that are so addictive.
“It’s a very clever idea,“ says David Eagleman, a Baylor neuroscientist. “Scientists have spent the last few decades figuring out reward pathways in the brain and how drugs like cocaine hijack the system.
It turns out those pathways are difficult to rewire once they’ve seen the drug. But the vaccine just circumvents all that.“
Kosten asked the Food and Drug Administration in December to green-light a multi-institutional trial to begin in the spring and is awaiting a response.
Approval would mark a breakthrough in the treatment of cocaine addiction, which now mostly involves psychiatric counseling and 12-step programs.
It presumably would be the final clinical hurdle before the vaccine--more than a decade in the making--might be approved for treatment. But one expert warns against expecting too much.
“Addiction vaccines are a promising advance, but it’s unlikely any treatment in this field will work for everyone,“ said Dr. David Gorelick, a senior investigator at the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
“Still, if they prove successful, they will give those working in drug addiction an important option.“

Hostility could increase people’s risk of heart disease by depleting their levels of certain heart-healthy antioxidants, new research suggests.
Oxidative stress occurs when production of free radicals, which are normal byproducts of metabolism, outpaces the body’s ability to neutralize them, resulting in tissue damage, Reuters reported.
It has been associated with heart disease, cancer and other illnesses. Antioxidant vitamins can help counteract oxidative stress, while cigarette smoking and pollution, among other factors, can increase it.
Hostility is associated with heart disease risk, Dr. Tetsuya Ohira of the University of Minneapolis and colleagues note.
Given that hostile individuals are more likely to smoke and drink, while poor diet and smoking can deplete antioxidants, antioxidants could help explain the relationship, they suggest.
To investigate, they looked at 3,579 men and women 18 to 30 years old who were participating in the so-called Cardiovascular Risk Development In Young Adults study. The researchers measured levels of several different carotenoids, which are pigments with powerful antioxidant properties, as well as tocopherols (vitamin E).
People who had high levels of hostility at the study’s outset were more likely to have lower levels of several types of carotenoids seven years later, the researchers found, but hostility didn’t predict levels of tocopherols or lycopene.
If hostility does reduce levels of antioxidants, Ohira and colleagues say, lifestyle factors such as diet, smoking and drinking probably play a key role.
The increased risk they observed was “small, but significant,“ they add, so “it is not clear whether or not the differences are importantly related to the risk of coronary heart disease.“ Further research is needed to answer this question, they conclude.

2007 was the year that hi-tech crime became firmly established and entrenched.

Starting a career as a cyber criminal got much easier in 2007. So say security experts looking back on 12 months in which hi-tech gangs took control of the net’s underground.
The economy supporting these groups has matured so much that now everything from virus-writing kits to spam-spewing zombies are available for rent or hire.
This has helped to fuel, say security professionals, rapid growth in the methods criminals use to catch out PC users and steal saleable data, according to BBC.
“2007 was a fairly interesting year,“ said Joe Telafici, vice president of operations for McAfee’s Avert Labs, “cyber crime continued to fuel most of the security attacks we saw.“
It was a year, he said, which saw the effective extinction of young hackers who wrote viruses and other malicious programs for fun.
Now, he said, Windows malware was all about money.
Some attacks, such as phishing runs, were clearly about stealing cash from victims either from a credit card or bank account.
But, he said, many others that looked more innocuous were done with money in mind. For instance, he said, trojans placed in banner ads that try to hijack a home PC were all about getting hold of resources that can be rented out for a fee to spammers or other net-based criminals.
“There’s a real eco-system built around this,“ he said.
Paul Henry, vice president of technology evangelism at Secure Computing said the tool of choice for many hi-tech criminals was the botnet--a collection of hijacked home PCs.
“Botnets are now a well-organized tool,“ he said. “They are at a point now where they are creating smaller botnets from larger ones.“
This was being done, he said, because like all businessmen criminals were keen to make the most of their assets.
2007 saw news break about one of the biggest botnets ever created. The network got its name from spam e-mails sent in January that capitalized on interest in a series of severe European storms to infect a large number of Windows PCs.
Successive spam campaigns added to the numbers of machines in the Storm botnet and, though estimates vary, many believe it was made up of more than one million machines.
A ready market for buying and selling of time on a botnet and the tools needed to put it to good use had sprung up, said Henry.
“Commercial exploitation has brought the real value of these tools to the vast majority,“ he said.
One of the most widely known tools was the MPack kit which was created by a Russian hacker gang. Anyone buying it got included in the price a year of technical support that updated them with the latest vulnerabilities so it could be used time and again for attacks.
But, said Telafici, this had created problems for some makers of malicious software.
“One kit developer recently threw in the towel because they could no longer get the margins they used to,“ he said.
“Instead they opened up the source and gave it away. There were just too many players in that space, it’s too crowded.“
This busy market was driving innovation, said Simon Heron, managing director of Network Box.
“We’ve seen attacks move away from sending e-mail with poisoned attachments to groups doing drive-by downloads,“ he said.
Some of those that used to send huge numbers of phishing e-mails were now indulging in “spear phishing“ which brought together lots of bits of data to make the messages they send look much more convincing.
Heron said he had seen campaigns targeted at a few hundred people such as the senior managers in a large firm.
“It’s just fascinating seeing that this is happening,“ he said.
The move away from the old attack vector of e-mail meant troubled times for users, he said.
“The bad guys are becoming more sophisticated and that means its becoming more difficult to stay safe,“ he said.
Summing up Paul Henry from Secure Computing said 2007 was the year that hi-tech crime became firmly established and entrenched.
“I see no end to this,“ he said, “until we effectively reduce the value of personal information to the point where for the hackers it is useless.“

Energy-saving light bulbs produce a flickering effect, which can trigger migraine attacks.

Energy-saving light bulbs could trigger migraines, say campaigners.
The Migraine Action Association says members have told them how fluorescent bulbs have led to attacks, BBC wrote.
UK government is set to prevent the sale of conventional light bulbs within the next four years in a bid to cut carbon dioxide emissions.
Concerns have already been raised by epilepsy charities about an increased risk of seizures from energy-saving bulbs.
The bulbs use similar technology to fluorescent strip lights, and some users have complained that there can be a flickering effect.
They use approximately a quarter of the energy of conventional bulbs, and in September, Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said that a voluntary agreement with retailers would remove all conventional bulbs from the shops by December 2011.
However, Karen Manning, from the Migraine Action Association, said this could be damaging to some sufferers.
She said that up to six million people in the UK suffer from some sort of migraine attacks.
“These bulbs do trigger migraines for some of our members--it’s either the flickering, or the low intensity of the light, causing eye strain.
“We would ask the government to avoid banning them completely, and still leave some opportunity for conventional bulbs to be purchased.“
However, the Lighting Association, which represents bulb manufacturers, said that the latest energy-saving bulbs did not produce a flicker.
A spokesman said, “A small number of cases have been reported by people who suffer from reactions to certain types of linear fluorescent lamps.
“These were almost certainly triggered by old technology.“
Earlier this, year, the charity Epilepsy Action reported that a small number of people with the illness could have seizures triggered by low-energy bulbs.

Motorists using celphones are known to drive like drunks, but their overall effect on traffic flow was uncertain until now.
New computer simulations show that chatty drivers--using regular celphones or even hands-free devices--take longer to complete their trips because they drive more slowly on highways and pass sluggish drivers less frequently, LiveScience.com said.
“At the end of the day, the average person’s commute is longer because of that person who is on the cell phone right in front of them,“ said Dave Strayer, a University of Utah psychologist and leader of the research team. “That person on the cell phone is slowing you down and making you late.“
Strayer and his colleagues detail their findings in a study to be presented Jan. 16 at the Transportation Research Board’s annual meeting.
“If you talk on the phone while you’re driving, it’s going to take you longer to get from point A to point B, and it’s going to slow down everybody else on the road,“ said Joel Cooper, a University of Utah psychology doctoral student who assisted with the study.
Earlier studies showed that cell phone users follow at greater distances, are slower to hit the brakes and are slower to regain speed after braking.
The new study used a driving simulator with realistic traffic scenes projected onto screens around drivers.
Participants were told to obey a 65-mph speed limit and use turn signals, but were left to decide their own speeds, following distances and lane changes.
“We designed the study so that traffic would periodically slow in one lane and the other lane would periodically free up,“ Cooper said.
“It created a situation where progress down the road was clearly impeded by slower moving vehicles, and a driver would benefit by moving to the faster lane, whether it was right or left.“
In medium- and high-density traffic, drivers talking on celphones were about 20 percent less likely to change into the freed lane, drove an average of 2 mph slower and took 15 to 19 seconds longer to complete a 9.2-mile freeway course.
The numbers may seem easy to ignore, but the researchers said the effect cascades and gums up traffic.

Researchers in New Jersey report development of a new type of non-stick material whose ability to shed liquids like water from a duck’s back can be turned on or off simply by flipping an electrical switch.
According to Physorg.com, the material, called ’nanonails,’ offers a wide-range of potential applications including contamination-resistant and self-cleaning surfaces, reduced-drag ships, and advanced electrical batteries, they say.
Researchers have created non-stick surfaces that repel water and certain other liquids, but have had little success with repelling common organic liquids such as oils, solvents and detergents.
Tom N. Krupenkin and colleagues report that their ’nanonails’ have all-purpose repellency properties.
The nails actually are submicroscopic silicon structures shaped like carpenter’s nails that dramatically enhance a surface’s repellency. However, the surface becomes highly wettable when electricity is applied, allowing liquid to be sucked between the nails. In laboratory demonstrations, the researchers showed that their electronic non-stick surface works effectively using virtually any liquid.