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PASADENA, Calif. - At least one of many large, lake-like features on Saturn's moon Titan studied by the international Cassini spacecraft contains liquid hydrocarbons, making it the only body in the solar system besides Earth known to have liquid on its surface, NASA said Wednesday.

Scientists positively identified the presence of ethane, according to a statement from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, which manages the Cassini mission exploring Saturn, its rings and moons.

Liquid ethane is a component of crude oil.

Cassini has made more than 40 close flybys of Titan, a giant planet-sized satellite of the ringed world.

Scientists had theorized that Titan might have oceans of methane, ethane and other hydrocarbons, but Cassini found hundreds of dark, lake-like features instead, and it wasn't known at first whether they were liquid or dark, solid material, JPL's statement said.

"This is the first observation that really pins down that Titan has a surface lake filled with liquid," Bob Brown, team leader of Cassini's visual and mapping instrument, said in the statement.

The instrument was used during a December flyby to observe a feature dubbed Ontario Lacus, in the south polar region, that is about 7,800 square miles, slightly larger than North America's Lake Ontario.

Cassini reached Saturn in mid-2004 and at the end of that year launched a probe named Huygens that parachuted to the surface of Titan the following January.

The mission is a project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.

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SETI Institute planetary astronomer Mark Showalter is rabid about rings.

Showalter directs the Planetary Rings Node of NASA's Planetary Data System. Anyone looking for information on planetary rings comes to Showalter's website here at the SETI Institute. Mark manages the rings node and continues to pursue his research interests from the ground and in space.

While everyone knows about Saturn's spectacular ring system, it's often forgotten that Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune are also encircled by fainter and narrower rings. Each of these systems interacts closely with a family of small, inner moons. Showalter works on some of NASA's highest-profile missions to the outer planets, including Cassini, now orbiting Saturn, and New Horizons, which recently flew past Jupiter en route to its 2015 encounter with Pluto. Known for his persistence in planetary image analysis, Mark's work on the earlier Voyager missions led to his discovery of Jupiter's faint, outer "gossamer" rings and Saturn's tiny ring-moon, Pan.

Mark splits his observing time between NASA space probes and Earth-based telescopes. He has been a frequent investigator with the Hubble Space Telescope. Since 2002, he has been leading a team of astronomers studying the planet Uranus. His discovery of two small moons — Cupid and Mab — and two additional faint rings orbiting that distant planet received national attention in 2006.

On the ground, Mark observes with the 10-meter Keck Telescope in Hawaii, where the new adaptive optics system has begun to rival and sometimes surpass Hubble in the clarity of its images. He will soon be turning his attention farther outward to Neptune, which is encircled by a peculiar family of rings, moons and incomplete arcs. These were studied by the Voyager spacecraft in 1989, but have been observed only a few times since then. Rings and the faint moons that interact with them are more than just local anomalies. They serve as dynamic laboratories where we can observe some of the same processes that operate, albeit on much larger scales, in galaxies and during the formation of planetary systems.

Adopt a Scientist: Mark Showalter

The best part of Mark's job is that he can come to work in the morning not knowing what new discovery might be awaiting him in the latest data.

He welcomes the opportunity to share this spirit of discovery with interested individuals or small groups. Watch over his shoulder as he processes the latest data and be among the first to see features that have never before been revealed to human eyes.

Mark isn't just rabid about rings. As an avid scuba diver, amateur naturalist and award-winning photographer, he spends his vacations exploring the diversity of life on Earth in its most distant and exotic and underwater environments. He has dived everywhere from Alaska to Australia, the Galapagos Islands, the Red Sea, and throughout the Caribbean and South Pacific.

As a different kind of journey of discovery, we invite experienced scuba divers on an expedition to a destination of their choice. Work with Mark to understand more about environments and life forms as we prepare for the trip, and then compare notes after each dive. Such a trip would also afford ample "down time" to explore Mark's other passion, photography, so we can examine the latest images from the heavens above when we're not focused on the oceans below.

The SETI Institute's Adopt a Scientist Program

Anyone can adopt a SETI Institute scientist and become part of the adventure!

Each of our scientists offers a compelling journey of discovery. When you adopt a scientist, you help lead the way towards answering profound questions regarding our place in the universe. You can form a one-on-one relationship and participate in the process of ground-breaking science with any number of our institute's scientists. In an effort to ensure that this vital research continues to prosper, our Adopt a Scientist Program invites you to make a direct contribution to the field.

There are many levels of commitment. For more information on the Adopt a Scientist program or to adopt a scientist, visit our website at http://www.seti.org/AdoptAScientist/ . Or email Karen Randall at krandall@seti.org or call 650-960-4537.

Source: YN

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MOSES LAKE, Wash. - Two NASA astronauts in spacesuits drove their lunar truck up a steep sand dune in a barren, wind-swept landscape so forbidding it was reminiscent of the surface of the moon.

Space agency officials certainly think so. NASA scientists and contractors recently spent two weeks here field-testing some of the vehicles and robots that will be used when humans return to the moon later this century.

"Believe it or not, this place has a lot in common with the moon," Robert Ambrose, deputy division chief for NASA, said of the unusual sand dunes in central Washington.

The key element is the soft, powdery soil that is mixed with volcanic ash and similar to lunar dust, he said. The soil forms high, slippery dunes similar to the lunar hills the vehicles will have to climb.

"Mainly we've got slopes, soft soils and wide open spaces," Ambrose said. "That's what we needed to test our machines."

The big drawback? Moses Lake has normal gravity, while the moon has about one-sixth of Earth's gravity, he said.

Moses Lake is a town of about 17,000 located 170 miles east of Seattle along Interstate 90 in the arid Columbia Basin. Many french fries served at restaurants nationwide are grown and processed here, but Moses Lake is otherwise a synonym in much of Washington for the middle of nowhere.

NASA is no stranger here, said Bill Bluethmann of the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The giant runways at a closed B-52 base serve as an emergency alternative landing site for the space shuttle. And Moses Lake was considered as a home for the planned X-33 spaceplane that was supposed to replace the space shuttle, but NASA canceled that program, he said.

The space agency has been tasked to return to the moon by 2020, and the tests in Moses Lake brought together numerous prototypes from laboratories nationwide to see how they worked in the field and how they worked together.

The tests started in late May in the Moses Lake Sand Dunes, a 3,000-acre off-road vehicle park.

NASA intends to collect buckets of the powdery soil, much of it blown here from volcanic eruptions in the nearby Cascade Range, so astronauts who have already walked on the moon can determine how closely the soil resembles lunar dust, said Lucien Junkin, director of the lunar truck project.

The lunar truck is a 12-wheeled, gold-colored vehicle that weighs 4,500 pounds and can carry four astronauts in spacesuits. With a top speed of 10 mph and the ability to attach various implements, it is designed to perform civil engineering on the moon, Junkin said.

The battery-powered truck, which can move in all directions, can be controlled from Earth or by the passengers, he said. And unlike the lunar rover of the Apollo era, crew members will stand in the vehicle and be secured into the frame so a bump does not send them into flight.

One recent day, two men in 300-pound spacesuits drove across the dunes, practiced collecting sand in bags and deployed a small robot down the ramp of the truck.

Other NASA equipment included the crablike ATHLETE (All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra Terrestrial Explorer), which can roll or walk across the ground carrying a cylindrical living pod for astronauts, and the K10, a robot scout used to explore and map key places for astronauts to visit.

The Scarab, an unmanned vehicle that looks like a race car, is intended to operate in complete darkness at the bottom of craters to determine if they contain ice that can be converted into water for human use.

NASA considered dozens of sites for the testing before settling on Moses Lake. One reason was that temperatures were expected to be a manageable 80 degrees with no rain. Instead, the coldest, wettest spring in decades surprised the scientists.

Still, they were happy to avoid the triple-digit temperatures of the desert Southwest and enjoyed working close to a town, Bluethmann said.

Most of the year, vehicles are tested at various sites that cover a few hundred meters, he said.

"At some point you get tired of driving in the same circle over and over again," he said.

Ambrose said it is unclear if NASA will return to Moses Lake. Test sites are dictated by the specific needs of the scientists, and the space agency has many options.

"When we design a test, we figure out the right site for the test," he said.

Source: NASA

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TOKYO (AFP) - An environmental group in Japan said Wednesday it is planning to hold what it hopes will be the world's largest clean-up, bringing 180,000 volunteers together to pick up trash.

U-Project, a private group based in Chiba prefecture east of Tokyo, said they were calling on citizens to join in the clean-up around Tokyo Bay on November 24.

"We are expecting at least 10 percent of the population of nine cities and towns in the prefecture in which we are calling for cooperation, which is about 180,000 people," said Ai Ueda, a staff member of U-Project.

"Our group started picking up trash on Sundays with just about 20 people, but now there are about 400 people who join our regular clean-up rally on Sundays," she said.

"We want to expand our movement to the whole prefecture," she added.

Guinness World Records currently lists the largest clean-up as a gathering in August 2005 in which more than 140,000 people took part in the southern Japanese prefecture of Oita.

"It's not about competition. It's about sharing goodwill, and it's about enjoying a nice feeling coming not only from picking up trash but also from working together and saying hello to passers-by," she said.

Source: YN

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BANGALORE (Reuters) - In recent months, personal computer maker Dell Inc. (DELL.O), has been testing a digital music player that could go on sale as early as September, the Wall Street Journal newspaper said, citing several Dell officials.

Dell's new foray would put it into an Apple-led (AAPL.O) market that has defied assaults.

Companies like Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Sony Corp (6758.T) have tried -- and failed -- to make a dent in the market dominated by Apple's iPod players and iTunes store, the Journal said.

The music player which Dell has been testing features a small navigation screen and basic button controls to scroll through music play lists, the Jornal reported.

It would connect to online music services via a Wi-Fi Internet connection, and Dell would likely price the model at less than $100, the Journal said. Dell's first foray into the music market in 2003 was a huge disappointment. It withdrew from the music-player market after its DJ Ditty player failed to make major inroads.

This time, if the company goes ahead with the music player, the strategy is different, Michael Tatelman, Dell's vice president of consumer sales said, according to the paper.

Instead of simply selling a piece of hardware tied to someone else's music service, as it did in 2003, Dell is working on software for a range of portable PCs that will let users download and organize music and movies from various online sources, the paper added.

(Reporting by Purwa Naveen Raman in Bangalore)

Source: YN

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If you've every wanted to live forever, legendary game designer Richard Garriott--also known in the video game community as "Lord British"--may give you the chance.

That's because Garriott, who has paid well into eight figures for the chance to go to space, is planning to take the DNA of several of his games' players with him for eternal stellar posterity.

The mission, known as "Operation Immortality," will launch this October when Garriott will fly aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station, taking with him a time capsule that will include the DNA of players of his well-known game, Tabula Rasa.

The game's publisher, announced Wednesday that it will offer the opportunity to any Tabula Rasa player to have their DNA sequenced and digitized and added to the time capsule that Garriott will take with him into space.

Further, any player of the game with an active account as of September 2, will have their character uploaded digitally to the time capsule. Those who haven't bought the game will be able to use a free trial NCSoft is offering.

Source: YN

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LAKE BAIKAL, Russia (AFP) - A Russian mini-submarine reached the bottom of Lake Baikal at a depth of 1,680 metres (5,512 feet) on Tuesday, setting a record for the deepest dive in a lake, expedition organisers said.

The scientific expedition is being organised by Artur Chilingarov, a pro-Kremlin member of parliament and an Arctic explorer who led the team that planted a flag at the bottom of the North Pole in August last year.

Chilingarov, who boasts of enjoying the "full support" of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, spent Monday inspecting the mission's ship, anchored at Tourka and carrying the Mir-1 and Mir-2 submarine pods which, weather permitting, will head for the 1,637-metre (5,402 feet) bed of the lake, near Siberia's southern borders with Mongolia and China.

Source: YN

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TOKYO - Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. will begin test production of next-generation displays for TVs next year with plans for commercial output as early as 2011, Japan's top business newspaper reported Tuesday.

Competition is heating up among the world's electronics makers, including Japanese rival Sony Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea, in OLED, or organic light-emitting diode, displays.

Matsushita has already said OLED technology is in the works at its planned display plant in Japan — the company's second here — which will mainly make liquid crystal displays already common in flat-panel TVs.

The Osaka-based maker of Panasonic brand products has invested 300 billion yen ($2.8 billion) in the plant set to be running by 2010. The Nikkei daily reported test lines will begin early next year with mass production of 40-inch panels likely by 2011.

Matsushita spokesman Akira Kadota confirmed the company was working on OLED development at the plant, but said details weren't decided.

OLED technology uses materials that emit light on their own and don't require a back light. OLED displays are thinner, use less energy than current technology, and have high video display quality.

Sony has had an 11-inch OLED TV on sale since December 2007. Samsung showed a 31-inch OLED TV at a consumer electronics show earlier this year in Las Vegas.

Earlier this month, the Japanese government said it will support Sony, Sharp Corp., Matsushita and other domestic companies in joint development of OLED displays, with the plan to develop a 40-inch OLED display sometime after 2015.

OLED technology is currently more expensive than LCDs and plasma display panels. Smaller OLEDs are becoming gradually more widespread in cell phones and other mobile devices.

Source: YN

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MOJAVE, Calif. - The space tourism race marked a milestone Monday as British mogul Sir Richard Branson and American aerospace designer Burt Rutan waved to a crowd from inside the cabin of an exotic jet that will carry a passenger spaceship to launch altitude.

The photo-op was the public unveiling of the White Knight Two mothership before a crowd of engineers, dignitaries and space enthusiasts at the Mojave Air & Space Port in the high desert north of Los Angeles.

The four-engine jet, with its 140-foot single wing, is an engineering marvel. The space between its twin fuselages is where SpaceShipTwo, the passenger rocket being built for Branson's Virgin Galactic, will be mounted.

White Knight Two, billed as the world's largest all-carbon-composite airplane, is "one of the most beautiful and extraordinary aviation vehicles ever developed," Branson proclaimed.

White Knight Two is the brainchild of Rutan, who made history in 2004 when his SpaceShipOne became the first private, manned craft to reach space. SpaceShipOne accomplished it with help from White Knight Two's smaller predecessor, White Knight. After winning $10 million for the feat, Rutan partnered with Branson, chairman of Virgin Group, to commercialize the prototype.

White Knight Two's long-awaited rollout, a year after a deadly explosion rocked Rutan's test site, is the first tangible sign of progress toward making space tourism a reality. Despite the glitz surrounding the event, significant hurdles remain.

The aircraft must undergo at least a year of rigorous flight tests starting in the fall. In addition, workers have to finish building SpaceShipTwo, which will be flown by two pilots and carry six passengers.

Matthew Upchurch, 46, who reserved a future flight, said he felt goosebumps when he saw White Knight Two.

"It was very emotional for me," said Upchurch, who heads a luxury travel company that works with Virgin Galactic. "I thought, `Oh my God, we're getting closer.'"

The mothership rollout also moved Rutan, who has made a career of designing unconventional aircraft.

"Even though this is a pretty weird airplane, we all expect it fly very well," said Rutan, who traded his usual leather jacket for a white button-down shirt with a Virgin Galactic logo.

Meanwhile, SpaceShipTwo, which is 70 percent complete, remained under wraps. It sat in a hangar several hundred feet away from White Knight Two shrouded in a black tarp. A sticker on it read "Coming Soon ... To A Spaceport Near You."

In the history of spaceflight, most astronauts have been in government programs. In recent years, a handful of wealthy people have paid about $20 million each to ride Russian rockets to the international space station.

Virgin Galactic envisions a future where space voyages will become as common as airplane travel. It wants to fly 500 people into space in the first year for $200,000 a head. If it succeeds, that would be on par with the same number of people who have gone up in 45 years of space travel.

So far, more than 250 wannabe astronauts have paid the full amount or put down a deposit to fly with Virgin Galactic, but when they will float in zero gravity is unknown. Rutan has declined to release a schedule. Virgin Galactic stopped predicting after it said in a 2004 press release that flights could begin in 2007.

Virgin Galactic renamed White Knight Two after Branson's mother, Eve. After the rollout, Branson and his mother popped open a bottle of Champagne next to the craft, which sports a decorative motif of a blond woman flying a Virgin flag.

White Knight Two has a wingspan of 140 feet, about the same as a World War II B-29 Superfortress bomber.

The mothership is designed to tuck SpaceShipTwo under the center of its wing and release it at 50,000 feet. After separation, SpaceShipTwo will fire its hybrid rocket and climb some 62 miles above Earth, the internationally recognized boundary of space.

The spaceflight — up and back down without circling the Earth — will include about five minutes of weightlessness. The total trip, from White Knight Two's takeoff to SpaceShipTwo's unpowered landing, will last about 2 1/2 hours.

Monday's unveiling was bittersweet for Rutan's company, Scaled Composites LLC. A year ago, three technicians were killed in an explosion while testing SpaceShipTwo's propellant system. Scaled, which was since bought by Northrop Grumman Corp., held a ceremony last week in honor of the fallen workers.

Source: YN

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NEW YORK - AOL splashes images of Bollywood celebrities on its new home page for India. MySpace accepts sign-ups from mobile phones in Japan. Google departs from its customarily spartan home page and peppers its Korean site with colorful, animated icons.

As major U.S. Internet companies stake their ground abroad in anticipation of the next billion people coming online — and the advertising revenue they might generate — the flags they are planting aren't the Stars and Stripes.

Companies are trying to expand globally without seeming to, designing market-specific services with customized features that reflect differences in connection speeds, payment options and attitudes toward sex or violence.

The stakes are high as the United States faces a weakening economy and a slowing of online ad growth.

And the opportunities are large. People in two populous countries, India and China, are just getting online. The research firm IDC projects worldwide Internet ad spending at nearly $107 billion in 2011, compared with $65 billion this year.

But getting it right will be tough. American companies that merely translate their U.S.-focused sites into other languages risk losing to homegrown businesses that can better respond to cultural nuances.

Google Inc. discovered that in South Korea and China, where it initially held its minimalist approach, only to see local rivals thrive by acknowledging their users' preference for sites rich with entertainment and visual complexity.

"A lot of times, the U.S. companies, because they were successful in the U.S., they tend to repeat their current business models," said Tian X. Hou, a Pali Research analyst who follows China. "Most of the time, that doesn't work."

Cho Ko-un, 29, a graduate student sitting in a cybercafe in Seoul, South Korea, finds Google good for English and academic research, but local portals like Naver and Daum better for Korean-language information. Naver, for instance, has forums for users to answer one another's questions, which proved helpful when Koreans couldn't find a site in their native tongue.

"I feel amazed and surprised when the exact question I am trying to ask ... the proper answer on that is already uploaded," said Kim Seung-ho, a 32-year-old government employee.

Tom Anderson, co-founder of MySpace, said dominance in one market means nothing as the company expands to nearly 30 other countries and regions. He said local incumbents have a key advantage because "it's difficult to get people to change their behavior."

MySpace is nonetheless trying.

In South Korea, MySpace offers an exclusive "minilog" feature for youths to jot down everyday thoughts and feelings. In mobile-heavy Japan, people can sign up for an account directly from a phone; elsewhere, you need a desktop computer. MySpace tweaked its Chinese site to generate new windows with every click, in deference to local user preferences.

The News Corp.-owned company also is exploring low-bandwidth versions — perhaps with fewer graphics or less audio — for India and Latin America, where connection speeds tend to be slower.

AOL, meanwhile, has launched about two dozen international sites over the past 18 months. As the one-time Internet access powerhouse transforms itself into an advertising business, executives decided to push into several emerging markets that they knew wouldn't pay off for another few years.

"Our goal is to plant the flag, to be present, said Maneesh Dhir, AOL's India-based international chief. "Then you work to grow that business."

In each market, AOL partners with local content providers.

The Indian portal, for instance, is heavy on Bollywood films, covering their stars as fiercely as American sites follow Lindsay Lohan. Instead of baseball, the Indian portal covers cricket, with schedules, team profiles and an online fantasy game.

AOL, a unit of Time Warner Inc., also customized its popular AIM instant-messaging service for India and other markets with heavy usage of text messaging on cell phones. Messages sent over AIM are automatically converted into phone texts, and vice versa.

And AOL's channel for men is far edgier in Australia than in Asia or the United States, at one point featuring a photo gallery of a New Zealand rugby game with full frontal nudity.

Microsoft Corp. has more than 80 people worldwide tasked with making sure its products and services do not stereotype, offend local sensibilities or prove irrelevant in a particular culture. Microsoft's instant-messaging product, for example, varies icons and emoticons to reflect flowers, animals and characters popular in each market.

Google has had a different challenge.

With a dearth of Arabic Web sites, Google had to find a way to persuade Arabic speakers that the Web is worth exploring. So it developed a system for automatically translating an Arabic user's search terms into English, checking its English index for matches and translating relevant Web sites back into Arabic for Mideast markets.

To take on China and Korea, where it trails rivals, the normally sparse Google site for those countries now displays icons that jump as users move the mouse. In China, Google also took the much-criticized step of filtering its results to avoid revealing search results blocked by the government.

But Baidu is still the Chinese search leader, thanks to its willingness to add music video and other entertainment features.

"I do think local companies have an edge over international companies because local companies start with Chinese services, whereas international companies have to follow their overarching goal and can't easily adapt to Chinese needs," said Zhu Shuang, 27, who works at a Shanghai wireless technology company, mInfo Ltd.

Like other U.S. companies, Google is finding it cannot afford to ignore emerging markets. This year, Google started getting more than half its revenue abroad.

Analyst Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence said many companies have stepped up international ambitions "to insulate themselves as much as possible" from the weakening U.S. economy.

E-retailer Amazon.com Inc. and auctioneer eBay Inc. were among the pioneers in expanding abroad, gaining dominance elsewhere over the past decade by buying local companies that knew the markets already, said Anette Schaefer, a Europe-based director at the Yankee Group.

Pali's Hou said Microsoft's MSN also has made inroads in China, thanks to its highly local staff in touch with Chinese affinity for entertainment news.

But expansion hasn't always been smooth. Though strong elsewhere, eBay failed to gain traction in Japan and pulled out in 2002. Among its missteps: It insisted on credit cards in a largely cash-based society. EBay is now re-entering Japan by teaming up with auction leader Yahoo Japan Corp., which itself is Yahoo Inc.'s joint venture with a leading Japanese company, Softbank Corp.

Other companies simply translated their sites, and one site that no longer exists displayed products available only in the United States, making the site feel foreign to locals, said Matthias Caesar, German-based board member for the Globalization and Localization Association, whose members provide language and other consulting services.

U.S. companies do have key advantages. They have technical know-how, financial muscle and global reach. MySpace and Facebook, for example, let friends communicate worldwide, even if each logs on from a locally customized home page.

And oddly, a few U.S. companies have found their social networks more popular abroad, including Google's Orkut in Brazil, AOL's Bebo in Britain and Friendster in the Philippines.

But U.S. companies are often hampered by global codes of conduct.

Take nudity. Many Mideast cultures are averse to displaying women's skin, while Europeans are far more tolerant of public nudity than Americans. A U.S. company trying to impose its standards for user-submitted content elsewhere risks complaints of banning too much or too little, yet it wants uniform policies because the Internet crosses borders.

"Creating a national company is like rocket science," said John Strand of Strand Consulting in Denmark. "But creating an international company is like proton physics."

___

Associated Press Writers Joe McDonald in Beijing and Jae-hyun Jeong in Seoul contributed to this report. Didi Tang in Beijing also contributed.

Cell phones have always been about helping you keep in touch. Now they're helping you stay healthy.

Eager to discover the next new trend in cell phone technology, Japanese mobile carriers are developing and rolling out services that tie a user's desire to keep fit with their cell phone and network-linked services.

First off the starting block has been KDDI's Au unit, which launched a service earlier this year called Smart Sports.

Most of its new handsets incorporate the service to some degree but three recently-launched models are fully equipped to take advantage of the technology. Inside the phones, a motion sensor and GPS (Global Positioning System) work together so that when you're running, the number of steps taken, distance, and calories burned are measured and recorded-- and the phone does this even if the phone's dedicated "Run&Walk" application isn't launched.

When you're done work-out information can be sent to a server and later your run can be mapped and analyzed through a PC.

And because the beat of music can help you during your daily exercise, the service links in with Au's "Lismo" music download service and can send selected tunes to a pair of wireless headphones. Using the "Beat Run" playback mode, it will also match musical tracks and the pace of the exercise.

The Smart Sports Web site indicates 7,200 users worked out with the service on Sunday and that in total this month 54,000 users have racked up more than 1 million [m] kilometers of running and walking between them and burned a collective 38 million [m] kilocalories.

Rival carrier NTT DoCoMo is also developing health-related applications.

Its system has weighing scales or blood-pressure monitors sending data to a user's cell phone via Bluetooth. DoCoMo is hoping to get organizations like health clubs and hospitals to participate so that automatic monitoring of basic wellness data can be easily done-- with the user's consent of course.

The system isn't commercialized yet but NTT DoCoMo hopes to have it available some time in the next year.

Source: PCWorld

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SAN FRANCISCO - Anna Patterson's last Internet search engine was so impressive that industry leader Google Inc. bought the technology in 2004 to upgrade its own system.

She believes her latest invention is even more valuable — only this time it's not for sale.

Patterson instead intends to upstage Google, which she quit in 2006 to develop a more comprehensive and efficient way to scour the Internet.

The end result is Cuil, pronounced "cool." Backed by $33 million in venture capital, the search engine plans to begin processing requests for the first time Monday.

Cuil had kept a low profile while Patterson, her husband, Tom Costello, and two other former Google engineers — Russell Power and Louis Monier — searched for better ways to search.

Now, it's boasting time.

For starters, Cuil's search index spans 120 billion Web pages.

Patterson believes that's at least three times the size of Google's index, although there is no way to know for certain. Google stopped publicly quantifying its index's breadth nearly three years ago when the catalog spanned 8.2 billion Web pages.

Cuil won't divulge the formula it has developed to cover a wider swath of the Web with far fewer computers than Google. And Google isn't ceding the point: Spokeswoman Katie Watson said her company still believes its index is the largest.

After getting inquiries about Cuil, Google asserted on its blog Friday that it regularly scans through 1 trillion unique Web links. But Google said it doesn't index them all because they either point to similar content or would diminish the quality of its search results in some other way. The posting didn't quantify the size of Google's index.

A search index's scope is important because information, pictures and content can't be found unless they're stored in a database. But Cuil believes it will outshine Google in several other ways, including its method for identifying and displaying pertinent results.

Rather than trying to mimic Google's method of ranking the quantity and quality of links to Web sites, Patterson says Cuil's technology drills into the actual content of a page. And Cuil's results will be presented in a more magazine-like format instead of just a vertical stack of Web links. Cuil's results are displayed with more photos spread horizontally across the page and include sidebars that can be clicked on to learn more about topics related to the original search request.

Finally, Cuil is hoping to attract traffic by promising not to retain information about its users' search histories or surfing patterns — something that Google does, much to the consternation of privacy watchdogs.

Cuil is just the latest in a long line of Google challengers.

The list includes swaggering startups like Teoma (whose technology became the backbone of Ask.com), Vivisimo, Snap, Mahalo and, most recently, Powerset, which was acquired by Microsoft Corp. this month.

Even after investing hundreds of millions of dollars on search, both Microsoft and Yahoo Inc. have been losing ground to Google. Through May, Google held a 62 percent share of the U.S. search market followed by Yahoo at 21 percent and Microsoft at 8.5 percent, according to comScore Inc.

Google has become so synonymous with Internet search that it may no longer matter how good Cuil or any other challenger is, said Gartner Inc. analyst Allen Weiner.

"Search has become as much about branding as anything else," Weiner said. "I doubt (Cuil) will be keeping anyone at Google awake at night."

Google welcomed Cuil to the fray with its usual mantra about its rivals. "Having great competitors is a huge benefit to us and everyone in the search space," Watson said. "It makes us all work harder, and at the end of the day our users benefit from that."

But this will be the first time that Google has battled a general-purpose search engine created by its own alumni. It probably won't be the last time, given that Google now has nearly 20,000 employees.

Patterson joined Google in 2004 after she built and sold Recall, a search index that probed old Web sites for the Internet Archive. She and Power worked on the same team at Google.

Although he also worked for Google for a short time, Monier is best known as the former chief technology officer of AltaVista, which was considered the best search engine before Google came along in 1998. Monier also helped build the search engine on eBay's online auction site.

The trio of former Googlers are teaming up with Patterson's husband, Costello, who built a once-promising search engine called Xift in the late 1990s. He later joined IBM Corp., where he worked on an "analytic engine" called WebFountain.

Costello's Irish heritage inspired Cuil's odd name. It was derived from a character named Finn McCuill in Celtic folklore.

Patterson enjoyed her time at Google, but became disenchanted with the company's approach to search. "Google has looked pretty much the same for 10 years now," she said, "and I can guarantee it will look the same a year from now."

Source: YN

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NAIVASHA, Kenya (AFP) - Facing soaring electricity demands, Kenya is opting to go full steam ahead with geothermal energy to boost its production while preserving its rich environmental heritage.

The 37-million-strong nation's electricity supply capacity is dangerously close to its limit at 1,080 megawatts when peak hour demand almost reaches 1,000 megawatts.

With a fast-growing economy and demography, demand is climbing by eight percent each year and the country's hydro-electric capacity is peaking and being strained by chronic droughts and the impact of deforestation on rivers.

Aware of the urgent to find more power and the business community's concerns, President Mwai Kibaki announced in late June a new plan to produce an extra 2,000 megawatts within 10 years, with 85 percent of the surge coming from geothermal plants.

The announcement has set abuzz the country's main Olkaria plant, near the western town of Naivasha, where engineers and experts are actively discussing prospection and drilling plans.

Beneath the hooves of the giraffes and zebras populating the idyllic sceneries around Lake Naivasha lies the "white gold" that could solve Kenya's energy problem.

Geothermal technology has come a long way since the Romans used it for bathing and heating: the KenGen plants in the Naivasha area are among the jewels of Kenya's technical know-how.

The region's underground is a geothermal hotspot, harbouring hot water sources and steam at 300 degrees Celsius that is piped up the surface from up two kilometres (6,500 feet) below.

When the mix reaches the plant, the water is separated from the steam, which powers a generator turbine thanks to the pressure and heat.

"We have exploited our entire hydro-electric potential. Because of deforestation and the resulting erosion of the ground, the dams get clogged up with silt. It's a serious problem," says Silas Simiyu, one of the top experts in charge at Olkaria.

"Because geothermal energy is our only indigenous source of energy, we're going for it. We can supply Kenya's entire needs with geothermal alone," he says.

He estimates that the country has a geothermal potential of at least 3,000 megawatts due to its propicious geographical and geological parametres.

Since geothermal energy production began in Kenya in the 1980s, technology has evolved to help make it a cleaner process. The steam used to be lost and spewed by giant chimneys but the latest plants now function in closed circuit.

The water and condensation is collected and pumped back down two kilometres under the surface.

The major drawback of geothermal energy is the size of the initial investment, which has tended to scare away governments.

A megawatt of geothermal-produced electricity costs around three million dollars, 30 percent more than what coal-powered plants can offer.

"We're at a real turning point in Kenya," said Jean-Pierre Marcelli, who heads the East Africa section of the French Development Agency (AFP).

"It's a choice between a clean energy policy with low carbon emissions and the path of fossil energy, which may be more simple and require less investments but is infinitely more polluting," he explained.

The Kenyan authorities are fully aware that opting for geothermal projects at a time when greening the world's economies and industries is high on the global agenda will earn them foreign backing.

Kenya's geothermal energy plan is being supported with donations and preferential loans from the AFP, the World Bank and German cooperation.

Source: YN

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PARIS (AFP) - An extraordinary fish that inhabits muddy pools in West Africa and whose lineage can be traced back 96 million years could be the model for light, bomb-proof body armour for the soldiers of the future.

So say Pentagon-backed scientists who have pored over the scales of Polypterus senegalus, also called the Senegal bichir or the dinosaur eel.

Long and skinny and of ancient heritage, the 40-centimetre (16-inch) predator has multiple layers of scales that first dissipate the energy of a strike, then protect against any penetration to the soft tissues below and finally limit any damage to the shield to the immediate area surrounding the assault.

Experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) used nano-scale measurements to look at several scales that were harmlessly removed from a living fish.

They found the scales -- about 500 millionths of a metre thick -- have four layers. The tiny shield was then put to the test, in a simulation of a biting attack.

The team believe the scales' protection is remarkably effective because of the different composite materials, the geometry and thickness of each of these layers.

The overlapping junctions between the layers themselves also play an important role.

The design is "fascinating, complex and multiscale," say the scientists.

"Such fundamental knowledge holds great potential for the development of improved biologically-inspired structural materials," said Christine Ortiz, an MIT associate professor in materials science and engineering.

"Many of the design principles we describe -- durable interfaces and energy-dissipating mechanisms, for instance -- may be translatable to human armour systems."

The study appears on Sunday in a specialist journal, Nature Materials.

Source: YN

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HONG KONG (Reuters) - Scientists in Japan have gained a better understanding how influenza viruses replicate, possibly opening the way for the development of drugs to hamper their reproduction.

In the latest issue of Nature, the researchers described how they zeroed in on an enzyme that flu viruses need to replicate, and managed to capture a snapshot of the enzyme.

Enzymes in influenza viruses are made up of three proteins bound tightly together.

"Scientists have been trying to study its (enzyme's) structure and no one has yet got a detailed picture of the whole thing," said Yokohama City University's Jeremy Tame, a member of the research team.

But the team managed to crystallize the proteins and get a peek at part of the structure, which involves the tip of one of the proteins coming into contact with another protein.

"This gives us some hope that we can interrupt this interface (contact point)," Tame said.

Such an interruption would "kill the virus, or slow it down sufficiently," he added.

All influenza A viruses, including the H5N1 bird flu virus, are believed to have similar structures. Theoretically, one drug could fight all of them.

"We would like to start work. We're hopeful that will lead to efforts to work on completely novel drugs," Tame said.

(Reporting by Tan Ee Lyn; Editing by David Fogarty)

Source: YN

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scales that protect a quarrelsome fish from the bites of its own fellows as well as from predators may hold the key to the armor of the future, U.S. researchers reported on Sunday.

The light, multilayered design of its scales has helped Polypterus senegalus survive for 96 million years, the team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reports.

Writing in the journal Nature Materials, the MIT team said they had figured out how it works. Each scale is layered so it deflects the pressure of a crunching bite, they said.

Cracks do not travel far -- the design forces cracks to run in a circle around the penetration site, rather than spreading through the entire scale and leading to catastrophic failure, they said.

"Many of the design principles we describe -- durable interfaces and energy-dissipating mechanisms, for instance -- may be translatable to human armor systems," MIT's Christine Ortiz, who led the study, said in a statement.

With funding from the U.S. Army, Ortiz and colleagues carefully studied scales from P. senegalus, which lives at the bottom of freshwater, muddy shallows and estuaries in Africa.

It is noted for its heavy armor.

"The primary predators of P. senegalus are known to be its own species or its carnivorous vertebrate relatives, and biting takes place during territorial fighting and feeding," Ortiz and colleagues wrote in their report.

It evolved the armor millions of years ago, when fearsome predators lurked. "In ancient times, many large invertebrate predators existed. For example, the carnivorous eurypterid was a giant arthropod that possessed biting mouth parts, grasping jaws, claws, spines and a spiked tail," they wrote.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox; editing by Julie Steenhuysen and Todd Eastham)

Source: YN

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Shipments of Blu-ray Disc-based video recorders and players are increasing fast in Japan as the market rallies around the format after the end of its battle with the defeated HD DVD format.

Shipments of recorders and players based on Blu-ray Disc hit 122,000 in June marking the first time that monthly shipments have broken into six-figures, according to data published on Tuesday by the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA). The data is gathered from member companies, which include all the major consumer electronics manufacturers in Japan.

That figure is a healthy jump on the 82,000 units shipped in May and is likely due to anticipated demand for the devices going into July, when millions of Japanese workers receive a mid-year bonus, and August, when the Olympics are held in Beijing. Both events typically provide a boost to the consumer electronics sector.

The sector was also boosted by the July 4 launch of a new system called "Dubbing 10" that allows consumers to make copies of TV shows they have recorded. In the past consumers were able to make one digital recording of a TV show but not make subsequent copies of that recording. The new system, which required new firmware or updated machines, allows up to 9 additional copies to be made and its arrival had some consumers holding back on purchases.

Because of the widespread availability of high-definition digital TV Japanese electronics makers are pushing Blu-ray Disc recorders that, in many cases, are combined with hard-disk drive recording capability.

A quick check of comparison shopping Web site Kakaku.com shows the cheapest Blu-ray Disc machine, Sharp's BD-AV1, can be found for ¥44,800 (US$420). The machine, which doesn't include HDD recording, is typically priced at between ¥55,000 and ¥65,000 at many retailers.

The cheapest machine with HDD recording that is widely available is Sony's BDZ-T50, which packs a 250G-byte drive that can accommodate about 50 hours of HDTV. The recorder, which was first released in November 2007, costs as little as ¥71,180. That's about half the original list price of ¥140,000.

However, buyers need to be wary of purchasing older machines that, in some cases, don't support the latest version of the Blu-ray Disc format. The Sharp BD-AV1, for example, won't record to the newer 2-layer Blu-ray Disc media although it does offer playback. That means owners are limited to single-layer 25G-byte discs that hold about 3 hours worth of HDTV.

No major vendor has released a playback-only Blu-ray Disc machine in the Japanese market.

Japan domestic shipments of Next-generation optical disc recorders/players

Month Jan 2008 Feb 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008

Shipments 35,000 58,000 77,000 81,000 82,000 122,000

Source: Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association

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BERLIN (Reuters) - More than 1,600 years after it was written in Greek, one of the oldest copies of the Bible will become globally accessible online for the first time this week.

From Thursday, sections of the Codex Sinaiticus, which contains the oldest complete New Testament, will be available on the Internet, said the University of Leipzig, one of the four curators of the ancient text worldwide.

High resolution images of the Gospel of Mark, several Old Testament books, and notes on the work made over centuries will appear on www.codex-sinaiticus.net as a first step towards publishing the entire manuscript online by next July.

Ulrich Johannes Schneider, director of Leipzig University Library, which holds part of the manuscript, said the publication of the Codex online would allow anyone to study a work of "fundamental" importance to Christians.

"A manuscript is going onto the net which is like nothing else online to date," Schneider said. "It's also an enrichment of the virtual world -- and a bit of a change from YouTube."

Selected translations will be available in English and German for those not conversant in ancient Greek, he added.

Dating from around 350, the document is believed by experts to be the oldest known copy of the Bible, along with the Codex Vaticanus, another ancient version of the Bible, Schneider said.

The vellum manuscript came to Europe piece by piece from Saint Catherine's Monastery by Mount Sinai after German biblical scholar Konstantin von Tischendorf found a number of folios there in 1844. He was allowed to take some to Leipzig.

Tischendorf returned to the monastery in 1859 with Russian backing and acquired the biggest section of the Bible for his imperial sponsors. It remained in St. Petersburg until the Soviet Union sold it to the British Museum in 1933.

"The first section was clearly a gift to Tischendorf, but that's not so clear in the case of the second portion. The monks all signed a contract at the time, but the rumor persists that they were given a raw deal," said Schneider.

"And there is probably some truth to this."

Subsequent discoveries meant that the original Codex, missing roughly half the Old Testament, is now housed at four locations in Europe and the Middle East.

The project, launched in cooperation with the Russian National Library, the British Library and Saint Catherine's Monastery, also details the condition of the Bible, believed to have been written by early Christians in Egypt.

"I think it's just fantastic that thanks to technology we can now make the oldest cultural artifacts -- ones that were once so precious you couldn't show them to anyone -- accessible to everyone, in really high quality," said Schneider.

(editing by Ron Popeski)

Source: YN

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By most estimates, Linux and other open-source operating systems represent about 1 percent of the PC market. But on mobile devices, Linux is growing fast. As of 2007, more than 18 percent of all embedded devices--from cell phones to PDAs to e-book readers--ran a Linux-based OS, while less than 17 percent ran embedded Windows. So it's no great surprise that this year's OSCON open-source conference is leading off with a new program focused specifically on mobile gadgets.

Open-source and Linux developers are gathering in Portland, Oregon, this week to show off their work, compare notes, and hone their skills. Google, Intel, Sun, Yahoo, and even Microsoft have come to influence the future of Linux and other open-source initiatives. And if one thing is clear, it's that the future is mobile.

This year, OSCON is kicking off with a new day-long program called Open Mobile Exchange. The program started this morning with a look at the state of open source in general--and Linux in particular--on mobile devices, presented by Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin.

While server and desktop systems remain a key focus for open source developers, many at the conference see mobile devices as a major opportunity for growth of the Linux platform. In his opening talk, Zemlin attributed much of this enthusiasm to a the convergence of important technical and business considerations.

On the technical side, said Zemlin, Linux presents developers with a flexible platform that makes it easy to launch new software products quickly. It also now enjoys a wealth of new development platforms, including the much-touted (but somewhat delayed) Google Android and Trolltech's Qtopia. Additionally, Linux runs readily on a wide variety of CPUs and devices.

From a business perspective, Zemlin attributes the interest in mobile Linux, in large measure, to the lower development costs of royalty-free code. However, Linux also offers developers a chance to brand, skin, and customize their products in ways that major platform vendors Microsoft and Apple would never allow.

Of course, there's more to mobile open source than just Linux this year. The Symbian operating system, which represents roughly 22 percent of the smart-phone market, has gone open-source as well, in the wake of its acquisition by handset-maker Nokia. The combined Linux-Symbian OS juggernaut means that your next mobile phone has a good chance of running an open-source OS, even as Linux market share continues to flounder on desktop PCs.

Mobile software and devices will play a major role on the show floor at OSCON this year with Google, Intel, Trolltech, Ubuntu, and a host of other major developers planning to showcase their efforts on cell phones and Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs).

Via YN

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - For years, visitors wanting to see Denali National Park's grizzly bears, moose, sheep and caribou have had to ride school buses that polluted the air and spoiled the tranquility with their noisy, carbon dioxide-spewing diesel engines.

Now park officials are testing a new hybrid bus that promises to run cleaner, cheaper, and quieter.

The 230-horse power hybrid bus — white and sporting scenic views of Denali on its sides — went on an actual drive in the park Thursday. The plan is to test the hybrid this summer to determine its potential for replacing the park's 110 diesel buses.

Park managers do not allow visitors to drive their personal cars the length of the park road. Visitors board the buses near the park entrance. The 92-mile road, much of it unpaved, is the only way in and out of the nearly 6-million-acre park, home to Mount McKinley, at 20,320 feet the tallest mountain in North America.

The hybrid — looking a lot like a spiffy school bus — comes with a diesel engine but also has a hybrid system, said Keith Kladder, marketing manager for IC Bus of Warrenville, Ill., the manufacturer of the bus.

Production on the hybrid buses began about a year ago, Kladder said.

"The technology is just coming to market," he said.

The diesel buses emit carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide and particulate matter into the air. The hybrids are cleaner, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by up to 40 percent, nitrogen oxide by up to 20 percent and particulate matter by up to 30 percent, according to IC Bus.

Diesel buses also are expensive to operate — not a small issue considering that diesel fuel in the Denali area costs more than $5 a gallon.

When Doyon/ARAMARK, the concessioner responsible for transportation inside the park, got the park contract in 2003, it was challenged to look at new technology, including hybrids.

The hybrid system used on the bus was developed by Enova Systems, based in Torrance, Calif. It couples a diesel engine with an 80-kilowatt powertrain that incorporates a transmission, batteries and an electric motor.

The system gathers energy when the brakes are used. The batteries are charged while the bus is slowing down. That, in turn, provides additional power for acceleration, allowing the diesel engine to mostly idle while the bus increases speed.

The hybrid bus needs up to 70 percent less fuel.

"The beauty is when you use less fuel you emit fewer pollutants," Kladder said.

Kladder said the hybrid application is perfect for park buses because just like school buses they make a lot of stops and starts.

If the hybrid test is a success, the park will look at replacing its diesel buses with hybrids as needed. From two to 12 buses are replaced each year. Buses in service can't be more than 10 years old.

A typical hybrid bus costs about $200,000 or twice that of the average bus, Kladder said. In time, he said the company hopes to bring the cost down with increased production.

For park managers, it's not all about money. The quieter hybrid motors will enhance the visitor experience.

One big problem with the diesel-engine buses — which drive an average of 1.2 million miles per year — is that they are noisy. They can be heard from a long ways off in the park.

The hybrids are quiet.

"Can you imagine the thrill of moving slowly and silently past a bear nursing its cub or wolf hunting along the road?" said Elwood Lynn, assistant superintendent of operations for Denali.

Source: YN

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PARIS (AFP) - French nuclear safety authorities said Friday that a broken pipe at a nuclear fuel plant in southeast France had caused a radioactive leak but no damage to the environment.

The latest uranium spill at the plant run by nuclear giant Areva in Romans-sur-Isere came amid much public concern over a leak at another facility last week that polluted the local water supply.

Residents in the Vaucluse region of southern France have been told not to drink water or eat fish from nearby rivers after the liquid uranium spill on July 7 at the Tricastin nuclear plant.

According to the ASN nuclear safety authority, the pipe defect at the FBFC plant at Romans-sur-Isere in the Drome region may date back several years.

"Results from initial tests show there has been no impact at all on the environment, because the quantity of uranium was very small, in the order of a few hundred grammes," said ASN spokeswoman Evangelia Petit.

The FBFC plant produces nuclear fuel for some of France's 58 reactors, the world's largest network after the United States and which produces 80 percent of the nation's electricity.

Areva late Thursday notified the nuclear authority of the leak and three inspectors were dispatched to the site in the early hours on Friday to assess the damage.

Petit said the spill did not reach the ground water and that there was no sign of contamination.

Areva president Anne Lauvergeon was later Friday due to inspect the Tricastin plant, which is run by its subsidiary Socatri.

After admitting to a safety lapse at Tricastin, Areva on Thursday replaced Socatri's director and announced an internal audit to determine what went wrong.

French Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo has announced that tests of the ground water near all nuclear reactors will be carried out to reassure residents following the Tricastin leak.

Swimming and water sports have also been forbidden as is irrigation of crops with the contaminated water.

The leak ranked as a level-one incident on the seven-point scale to rank nuclear accidents.

Via Yahoo News

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A new kind of malicious software could pose a danger to Windows users who download music files on peer-to-peer networks.

The new malware inserts links to dangerous Web pages within ASF (Advanced Systems Format) media files.

"The possibility of this has been known for a little while but this is the first time we've seen it done," said David Emm, senior technology consultant for security vendor Kaspersky Lab.

Advanced Systems Format is a Microsoft-defined container format for audio and video streams that can also hold arbitrary content such as images or links to Web resources.

If a user plays an infected music file, it will launch Internet Explorer and load a malicious Web page which asks the user to download a codec, a well-known trick to get someone to download malware.

The actual download is not a codec but a Trojan horse, which installs a proxy program on the PC, Emm said. The proxy program allows hackers to route other traffic through the compromised PC, helping the hacker essentially cover their tracks for other malicious activity, Emm said.

The malware has worm-like qualities. Once on a PC, it looks for MP3 or MP2 audio files, transcodes them to Microsoft's Windows Media Audio format, wraps them in an ASF container and adds links to further copies of the malware, in the guise of a codec, according to another security analyst, Secure Computing.

The ".mp3" extension of the files is not modified, however, so victims may not immediately notice the change, according to Kaspersky Lab.

Most savvy PC users are aware of the codec ruse, but the style of attack is still effective since many media players do need to receive updated codecs occasionally in order to play files.

"Users downloading from P2P networks need to exercise caution anyway, but should also be sensitive to pop-ups appearing upon playing a downloaded video or audio stream," Secure Computing said.

Users on a digital audio enthusiast site differed over the danger level of the malware.

"I never allow programs to choose which codecs I use to play back media," wrote JXL on the Hydrogen Audio forum "I research it and get the codec bundles off of sites I know to be trustworthy and even then I still scan them and check to make sure they are what they are. I honestly don't feel that this malware has a very good chance of spreading fast."

But most users will probably think the prompt to download a codec is just routine business, wrote a user by the nickname of Citay on the same forum.

"I think that outside a minority of users who really know about all the dangers implied with Internet use, the vast majority of people have no idea that such a codec download could lead to a Trojan infection," Citay wrote.

Trend Micro calls the malware "Troj_Medpinch.a," Secure Computing named it " "Trojan.ASF.Hijacker.gen" and Kaspersky calls it "Worm.Win32.GetCodec.a."

Via Yahoo News

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SEOUL (Reuters) - Two South Korean labs are offering pet owners the chance to clone dogs, but for those looking to bring back a beloved beagle, be ready to wait in line and have plenty of cash on hand.

The Seoul-based labs -- one affiliated to RNL Bio Co and the other to Sooam Biotech Research Foundation -- are separated by about 30 km (20 miles) and bill themselves as the only places in the world where you can clone a cocker spaniel or retrieve a retriever, with costs running at about $50,000 to $100,000.

But the labs are turning out far more copies of working dogs and endangered breeds than pets.

Customers such as South Korea's customs service have cloned a champion sniffer dog, seeing the option as a cost-effective way to produce candidates for expensive training programs.

The customs service estimates the cost at 60 million won ($60,260) per clone. It costs about twice that to breed and train a normal sniffer dog, but only about 30 percent are good enough to make the grade, it said.

"This all came about from the question of how we could secure dogs with superior qualities at a low price," commissioner of the Korea Customs Service Hur Yong-suk said.

Near South Korea's main international airport, trainers have been putting seven Labrador retrievers cloned from a top drug sniffing dog named Chase through their paces.

The seven clones, all named Toppy for "tomorrow's puppy," were produced in October and November last year by RNL Bio and seem to have the right stuff for the job, their trainer said.

TOP DOG IN CLONING BATTLE

Both labs are staffed with researchers who worked with Hwang Woo-suk, once hailed as a national hero in South Korea for his work in human embryonic stem cells but who later fell from his perch when his research results were found to be fraudulent.

Hwang, who left Seoul National University in disgrace, went on to form Sooam in 2006, while the RNL Bio lab is largely staffed by researchers who stayed behind after Hwang left the prestigious university.

RNL says Hwang's team members, and not Hwang himself, developed the technology that resulted in the world's first cloned dog, an Afghan hound named Snuppy born in 2005 while Sooam says the technology belongs to Hwang.

"They can be our competitor or we can cooperate because our capacity is very small now. If we can make a partnership, we can make more dog clones for worldwide needs," said Ra Jeongchan, president and CEO of RNL Bio.

RNL, a biotech firm using dog cloning as a way to grow its international business, will soon produce its first cloned pet, copying a pit bull named Booger for a California grandmother who lost a few of her fingers and relied on the dog for help.

Ra said it costs as much to produce a single copy of a dog as it does to produce many clones.

Dogs are cloned using so-called somatic cell nuclear transfer, a technique for hollowing out the nucleus of a donor egg and injecting it with the donor's genetic material, which is typically skin tissue taken from the ear.

The canines are considered one of the more difficult mammals to clone because of their reproductive cycle that includes difficult-to-predict ovulations.

Sooam, which has brought Hwang back into the spotlight, made a splash when it said it produced the first clones of a pet dog, a mixed-breed called "Missy" that was the pet of the CEO of U.S. biotech firm BioArts International. Three clones were born in late 2007 and early 2008, it said.

U.S. biotech firm BioArts, which works with Sooam, is auctioning off five slots to people who want to clone their pets, with bids starting at $100,000.

RNL chief Ra said he expects to be able to clone about 100 dogs next year and for the price to drop as technology improves.

But Ra, the owner of a Maltese, has no plans to clone his own family pet. "It's too expensive," he said.

(Additional reporting by Kim Junghyun)

(Editing by Miral Fahmy)

Source: Yahoo News

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