Flaw in Web's Addressing System

Revamp for web navigation system urged
The system the internet relies on to direct web traffic needs to be revamped to thwart spammers and identity thieves, concludes a report released on Thursday.

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a distributed network of servers that contain records mapping each domain name – such as http://www.newscientist.com) to an internet protocol address – such as 194.203.155.123. When surfers request websites, their browsers refer first to those records.

But DNS records are currently susceptible to denial-of-service (DOS) and spoofing attacks, says the report, which was funded by the US National Academies, the Department of Commerce and National Science Foundation. “The continued successful operation of the DNS is not assured: many forces are challenging DNS’s future,” it says.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7218

Natural disaster hotspots: A global risk analysis

Columbia University and The World Bank produce new report
New York, March 29, 2005 — The World Bank has published a report entitled, “Natural Disaster Hotspots: A Global Risk Analysis,” that presents a global view of disaster risks associated with some major natural hazards — drought, floods, cyclones, earthquakes, volcanoes and landslides. The report identifies high-risk geographic regions so that development efforts can be better informed and designed to reduce disaster-related losses in the future.
The report was produced by researchers from Columbia University, the World Bank, the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute and other partners. It indicates that 3.4 billion people, more than half the world’s population, live in areas where at least one hazard could significantly impact them. Other key findings include:

Approximately 20 percent of the Earth’s land surface is exposed to at least one of the natural hazards evaluated;
160 countries have more than one quarter of their population in areas of high mortality risk from one or more hazards;
More than 90 countries have more than 10 percent of their population in areas of high mortality risk from two or more hazards;
In 35 countries, more than 1 in 20 residents lives at relatively high mortality risk from 3 or more hazards;
More than one-third of the United States’ population lives in hazard-prone areas, but only one percent of its land area ranks in the highest disaster-related mortality risk category;
Taiwan may be the place on Earth most vulnerable to natural hazards, with 73 percent of its land and population exposed to three or more hazards;
More than 90 percent of the populations of Bangladesh, Nepal, the Dominican Republic, Burundi, Haiti, Taiwan, Malawi, El Salvador, and Honduras live in areas at high relative risk of death from two or more hazards; and
Poorer countries in the developing world are more likely to have difficulty absorbing repeated disaster-related losses and costs associated with disaster relief, recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction.
On the topic of geographical distress and related impacts on poverty, Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University wrote in his newly published End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for our Time, “Adverse geography poses problems that can be solved, typically through physical investments and good conservation management. But adverse geography raises the costs of solving the problems of farming, transport, and health, and thereby makes it much more likely that a country will be caught in a poverty trap.” Today’s report, notes Professor Sachs, “offers precisely the scientific underpinnings necessary to manage natural hazards in ways that reduce poverty and vulnerability.”

Dr. Maxx Dilley, report co-author and research scientist in disaster and risk management at the International Research Institute for Climate Prediction (IRI) at the Earth Institute, suggests that disaster preparedness become a standard element in development strategies. “With natural hazard cycles repeating themselves every few years, developing countries find themselves in a vicious cycle of loss and recovery without the ability to move forward and achieve sustainable development. We recommend that the international community manage disaster risk as an integral part of development planning rather than only as a humanitarian issue.”

The authors categorized regions by their level of exposure, or vulnerability, to multiple hazards. Vulnerability was estimated from hazard-specific mortality and economic loss rates for World Bank regions and country wealth classes, calculated from 20 years of historical loss data from the Emergency Events Database (EMDAT), developed by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) in Brussels.

The information presented in the report aims to enhance disaster prevention and preparedness in high risk areas. The results are intended to inform measures that target more localized and detailed risk assessments, encourage implementation of risk-based disaster management and emergency response strategies, and promote development of long-term land use plans and multi-hazard risk management strategies. Additional recommendations from the report include prioritizing risk-reduction efforts in areas where risk management is most needed, and improving information exchanges among organizations and individuals working at local, national, regional and global levels.

Margaret Arnold, report co-author and program manager at the World Bank’s Hazard Management Unit (HMU), said, “Central America, East and South Asia, and large areas of the Mediterranean and the Middle East are at the greatest risk of loss from multiple hazards. Additionally, our analysis shows that in the last 20 years, developed countries have not faced relatively high mortality risk from hazards and related vulnerabilities, whereas industrial and lower-middle-income countries generally see larger economic losses.”

The report notes that from 1980 to 2003, the World Bank provided US$14.4 billion in emergency lending to 20 countries, including India, Bangladesh, Mexico, Brazil, Honduras and China. With the exception of one of all 20 countries, half of their populations live in areas at a relatively high mortality risk from one or more hazards, and all the countries have at least half of their gross domestic product (GDP) generated in areas of relatively high economic risk from one or more hazards.

“This has serious implications for how the World Bank works in these and other vulnerable countries. The analysis is part of our efforts to promote a more proactive, preventative approach to address disasters before they hit in order to enhance our mission of fighting poverty,” said Maryvonne Plessis-Fraissard, director of the World Bank’s Transportation and Urban Development Department.

Dr. Arthur Lerner-Lam, report co-author and director of the Center for Hazards and Risk Research (CHRR) at the Earth Institute agrees: “These statistics provide us with a strong warning that it is imperative to reduce the vulnerability of developing countries to natural hazards as part of any international poverty reduction strategy. This is one of our key recommendations to the international development community.”

In order to demonstrate how to reduce vulnerability and risk in areas that are prone to multiple hazards such as storm surges, landslides and drought, the project undertook case studies in Sri Lanka, Caracas, Venezuela and the Tana River basin in Kenya. The Caracas case study demonstrates how the vulnerability of urban areas can be reduced by incorporating locally appropriate risk-sensitive strategies into urban development planning.

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Information on ordering the “Hotspots” report and on accessing the core datasets developed by the project is provided at http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/chrr/research/hotspots/

New/ Improved Fuel Cell

New fuel cell drives around hydrogen economy roadblocks
EVANSTON, Ill. — As gasoline prices climb ever higher and the U.S. Senate backs oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the possibility of a hydrogen economy — where drivers tank up on clean-burning hydrogen fuel — gleams more brightly. But two Northwestern University engineers stress the need to get more out of the fuel we are already using.
“A hydrogen economy is not a perfectly clean system,” said Scott A. Barnett, professor of materials science and engineering. “You have to process fossil fuels at a plant to produce hydrogen fuel as well as develop an infrastructure to get that fuel into vehicles. We have bypassed these technological hurdles by basically bringing the hydrogen plant inside and pairing it with a high-temperature fuel cell in one compact unit that has a fuel efficiency of up to 50 percent.”

In a paper to be published online today (March 31) by the journal Science, Barnett and graduate student Zhongliang Zhan report the development of a new solid oxide fuel cell, or SOFC, that converts a liquid transportation fuel — iso-octane, a high-purity compound similar to gasoline — into hydrogen which is then used by the fuel cell to produce energy. The cells could lead to cost-effective, clean and efficient electrical-power sources for applications ranging from aircraft and homes to cars and trucks.

Although only demonstrated on a small scale, Barnett and Zhan’s fuel cells are projected to have a 50 percent fuel efficiency when used in a full-sized fuel cell generator, which would improve on other technologies. Higher fuel efficiencies mean less precious fuel is consumed and less carbon dioxide, a greenhouse-effect gas related to global warming, is produced. Internal combustion engines have a “well-to-wheels” efficiency of a mere 10 to 15 percent. Current hydrogen fuel cells that require hydrogen plants and new infrastructure have been calculated to have a 29 percent fuel efficiency while commercial gas/electric hybrid vehicles already have achieved 32 percent.

“The advent of hybrid vehicles has shaken up the fuel cell community and made researchers rethink hydrogen as a fuel,” said Barnett, who drives a Toyota Prius and foresees his new fuel cells being developed for use in battery/SOFC hybrid technology for vehicle propulsion or in auxiliary power units. “We need to look at the solid oxide fuel cell — the one kind of fuel cell that can work with other fuels beside hydrogen — as an option.”

A fuel cell is like a battery that can be replenished with fresh fuel. It consists of two electrodes sandwiched around an electrolyte material that conducts ions between them. Oxygen enters at the cathode, where it combines with electrons and is split into ions that travel through the electrolyte to react with fuel at the anode. Fuel cells are environmentally friendly: water and carbon dioxide are the only by-products. In the process, the oxygen ions traversing the electrolyte produce a useful current. Heat is also generated.

Because conventional solid oxide fuel cells operate at such high temperatures (between 600 and 800 degrees Centigrade) Barnett recognized that the heat could be used internally for the chemical process of reforming hydrogen, eliminating the need for hydrogen plants with their relatively low fuel efficiency. Barnett and Zhan found the optimal temperature for their system to be 600 to 800 degrees.

The real key to the new fuel cell is a special thin-film catalyst layer through which the hydrocarbon fuel flows toward the anode. That porous layer, which contains stabilized zirconia and small amounts of the metals ruthenium and cerium, chemically and cleanly converts the fuel to hydrogen.

“A major drawback of using solid oxide fuel cells is that carbon from the fuel is deposited all over the anode because of the high temperatures,” Barnett said. “But our thin film catalyst, plus the addition of a small amount of oxygen, eliminates those deposits, making it a viable technology to pursue with further research. We have shown that the fuel cell is much more stable with the catalyst and air than without.”

“The main drawback of fuel cells has been their complexity and high cost,” said Barnett. “The simple design of our system, which brings the hydrogen reformer in house, is a great advantage for a range of applications. For example, imagine a unit cheap enough to be used for auxiliary power in cars or diesel trucks. It would supply electricity continuously, cleanly, quietly and efficiently even when the engine is not running. This work has the potential to lead us in that direction.”

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The research was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Ice Ages Blamed on Tilted Earth

“In the past million years, the Earth experienced a major ice age about every 100,000 years. Scientists have several theories to explain this glacial cycle, but new research suggests the primary driving force is all in how the planet leans.

The Earth‚Äôs rotation axis is not perpendicular to the plane in which it orbits the Sun. It’s offset by 23.5 degrees. This tilt, or obliquity, explains why we have seasons and why places above the Arctic Circle have 24-hour darkness in winter and constant sunlight in the summer.

But the angle is not constant ‚Äì it is currently decreasing from a maximum of 24 degrees towards a minimum of 22.5 degrees. This variation goes in a 40,000-year cycle.”

http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/050330_earth_tilt.html

See yourself as outsiders do to measure progress toward goals, study says

COLUMBUS, Ohio ‚Äì When people feel they’ve hit a roadblock in reaching a personal goal, such as losing weight, a change in perspective may give them the help they need to move forward, a new study suggests.
The research found that picturing memories from a third-person perspective ‚Äì as if looking at one’s past self in a movie ‚Äì can lead people to perceive more personal change in their lives. Picturing the past in first-person, through their own eyes, doesn’t always allow people to see how they’ve changed.

Learning how to view past events with the right perspective could help anyone who is trying to make positive changes in their lives, said Lisa Libby, co-author of the study and assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State University.

“When you’re looking for change in yourself, picturing your past from a third-person perspective highlights the progress you’ve made, and that can give you the strength to keep working, even if you haven’t reached your goal yet,” Libby said.

“People who are looking for change in themselves don’t sense that they’ve made as much progress when they look back in first-person, and that could be discouraging.”

Libby conducted the study with Richard Eibach from Yale University and Thomas Gilovich of Cornell University. Their results were published in a recent issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

The researchers did a series of studies in which they asked people to picture a given event in their own lives from either a first-person or third-person perspective. The participants were then asked how much they had changed since the event had occurred.

In one study, they asked 38 college students who had been in psychotherapy to recall their very first treatment appointment. About half were told to visualize that appointment “looking out at your surroundings through your own eyes” (first-person). The other half were told to visualize that first treatment “from an observer’s visual perspective” (third-person).

All the participants rated how much they had changed since their first appointment on a scale of 0 (not at all) to 10 (completely). Results showed that people who were told to picture that initial treatment from a third-person perspective saw more change in themselves (average score of 7.18) than did those who were told to take the first-person viewpoint (average score of 5.64).

The reason is that viewing the past in the third-person emphasizes the meaning of an event in the person’s life, according to Libby.

“You’re reflecting on how the event is relevant to you, what it means in your life,” she said. “So if there have been any changes since then, the changes are accentuated in your mind.

“But other studies have shown that if you remember an incident in the first-person, you tend to re-experience the event, how everything unfolded. You’re wrapped up in the emotions, so you don’t reflect on the event and the overall meaning.”

Not only can taking a third-person perspective affect how people think about changes in their lives – it can also affect their behavior.

In another study, the researchers recruited 27 college students who on a questionnaire rated themselves as socially awkward in high school. They were then asked to recall a socially awkward event from their high school years, either from a first-person or third-person perspective.

Again, students who were told to take the third-person perspective were more likely than those who were told to take a first-person viewpoint to say they had changed, and were no longer so socially awkward.

But there was another twist to this study.

Immediately after filling out the ratings, students were individually put in a room with a person whom they thought was another student participating in the experiment. But in fact, the other person was an assistant of the researchers (who did not know whether the participant had been told to use the first- or third-person in the study). The assistant turned on a concealed tape recorder to see how many times the participant attempted to start a conversation. The assistant also rated the participant on a variety of measures of sociability.

The results showed that participants who had viewed their past socially awkward moment from a third-person perspective were more likely to initiate conversation, and were rated as more sociable by the research assistant.

“When participants recalled past awkwardness from a third-person perspective, they felt they had changed and were now more socially skilled,” Libby said. “That led them to behave more sociably and appear more socially skilled to the research assistant.”

The third-person perspective doesn’t always lead to perceptions of change, she said. Another study showed that if people focused on a positive event from their past, the third-person perspective helped them see more similarities between their past and present selves than did the first-person perspective.

So the effects of the third-person perspective depend on whether people are inclined to see changes or similarities between past and present selves.

“We think these results could be useful to people who are trying to make changes in their lives,” Libby said. “Using the third-person is a good technique to see the positive changes you’ve made in your life, and that is likely to lead to greater satisfaction with your efforts. That, in turn, should make it easier to continue with your efforts to reach your goals.”

Who You Know…

We all know who you know is more important than what you know when it comes to work and business. Politics is what it is all about whether we like it or not, business is not a true meritocracy…Now, social networking combines with social/ career networking to create career networks of the future.

From Business 2.0
LinkedIn is a job board that uses social networking to its advantage. It was a godsend for Stephen Harris, an underutilized marketing manager. After being laid off from a director-level job by Automatic Data Processing when the bubble burst in 2000, the online marketing specialist spent the down economy at a New Jersey startup that does search engine optimization. Harris launched a job search last fall by contacting a handful of recruiters and posting his resume on Monster.com and Yahoo’s (YHOO) HotJobs. He landed 30 job interviews between November and January, including one in Redmond at the invitation of Microsoft (MSFT).

But his big break came when a buddy told him about LinkedIn. There he saw a posting for a senior project manager at Audible.com, the booming distributor of digital audio books. Here’s where the key advantage of the fusion of social networking and an online job board becomes clear: Rather than posting his resume cold-call fashion and waiting passively for a response, Harris used LinkedIn’s search engine to network into the job. He matched his list of 127 contacts against the personal profiles posted on the site, using the keyword “Audible.” To his surprise he discovered that a business friend, David Simpson, had worked at Audible.com as an executive.

http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,1043054,00.html?promoid=rss

Satellite Radio Everywhere

Satellite Radio will find many additional uses and places for its service….
They to to find a way to have successfull upstream data transmission and their possibilities will be endless.

XM Sees Satellite Radio Built Into Myriad Gadgets
NEW YORK (Reuters) – XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. is investing in ways of building its pay radio service into gadgets ranging from MP3 players to video game consoles in an effort to boost its reach and subscribers, chairman Gary Parsons said on Wednesday.

“We would see the ability for consumer electronics manufacturers to perpetuate the availability of XM’s service down to clock radios and DVD players,” XM chairman Gary Parsons said at a Banc of America Securities investors’ conference on Wednesday.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=581&e=3&u=/nm/20050330/tc_nm/tech_xmsatellite_dc

PillCam enables study of esophagus by swallowing a pill

DALLAS – March 17, 2005 – Diagnosing inflammation, pre-cancerous changes or dilated veins in the esophagus is now as easy as taking a pill – a pill housing miniature video cameras.

UT Southwestern Medical Center is the first in Dallas to acquire the PillCam ESO technology. It allows doctors to quickly and easily assess the presence of esophageal diseases such erosive esophagitis, Barrett’s esophagus and esophageal varices.

Approved by the Food and Drug Administration late last year, the PillCam ESO is a smooth plastic capsule about the size of a large vitamin pill with video cameras on each end, equipped with a battery and internal light source.

After the patient lies down, the PillCam ESO is swallowed and glides through the esophagus, taking about 2,600 color pictures (14 per second). The patient gradually sits up to aid its progression down the esophagus, while the photographs are transmitted to a recording device and then viewed on a computer screen. The single-use capsule is passed naturally in less than 24 hours.

“The main use of the PillCam ESO right now is to find pre-cancerous changes in the esophaguses of patients who had had acid reflux for more than five years,” said Dr. Charles Ulrich, associate professor of internal medicine. “It also can be used to find varices or dilated veins, and there are a number of other applications under investigation.”

Anthony Frisbie (left), a Dallas art teacher, views the results of his PillCam ESO procedure with Dr. Charles Ulrich, associate professor of internal medicine. The PillCam ESO (above) is equipped with cameras, a battery and internal light source.

Consumers Respond to Preceived Extra Marketing Effort

Does wooing work?
New research into how consumers respond to extra effort

“‘It’s the thought that counts.’ ‘Most improved swimmer.’ ‘An ‘E’ for effort.’ The implication in all of these examples is clear–people like to reward effort,” opines Andrea Morales (University of Southern California) in the March 2005 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research.
Morales explains that when companies or firms go the extra mile in marketing their products, consumers respond favorably–even if the products themselves are not improved whatsoever. This research builds on previous studies that have shown that extra effort in the form of personal attention while shopping is related to consumers feeling obliged to buy.

“The focus of the current paper is whether consumers demonstrate ‘general reciprocity’ by rewarding firms for actions from which they receive no personal benefit, in contrast to ‘personal reciprocity’ for effort directed at them individually,” notes Morales. “For instance, if a store spends a lot of time creating product displays, the store’s effort is not directed at an individual consumer. The store increases its costs as a result of the displays, but most consumers do not feel their personal benefits increase, as the effort was only generally directed. For cases like these, will reciprocation still be invoked?”

The findings of the experiments summarized in the article indicate that consumers do in fact demonstrate general reciprocity. Regardless of why a business is putting in the extra effort–whether it be an altruistic reason or not–consumers seem to respond more so based on what they believe to be the cause for the effort.

“An important point here is that the true motives of firms do not matter, but what influences consumer responses to effort are the perceived motives,” Morales determines.

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Giving Firms an “E” for Effort: Consumer Responses to High Effort Firms. By ANDREA C. MORALES ¬© 2005 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc. – Vol. 31 – March 2005

Catch a Wave: Oceans Supply Energy

Ocean power could be a great energy source. The oceans, propelled by currents and the lunar cycle create our own “propetual motion machine” that can be harvested for a clean, unending source of energy.

Other futuristic energy sources like hydrogen, requre processing and extraction methods that require use of fossil fuels. Also, solar and wind engergy, while promising, I don’t think can deliver the potential power that the ocean can. This is a trend worth watching…

Ocean Power Fights Current Thinking
By John Gartner March 28, 2005
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Ocean waves provide a predictable source of energy that is easily tapped, and will likely have minimal impact on the environment, but the U.S. government is not pursuing this renewable resource.

Recent advancements in the technology indicate that with a relatively small investment from the government, wave energy could soon compete with other renewable sources.

Wave energy systems place objects on the water’s surface that generate energy by rising and falling with the waves. The wave energy in turn moves a buoy or cylinder up and down, which turns a generator that sends the electricity through an undersea cable to a power station on the shore.

Several companies — Ocean Power Delivery, AquaEnergy Group and Ocean Power Technology — have developed prototype wave energy conversion systems that the companies say are ready to be deployed along United States coastlines.

The potential energy to be captured from ocean waves could surpass the other forms of renewable energy such as solar, wind, or hydropower, according to a recent study by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), a research group funded by hundreds of utilities.

According to a report released in January, 2005, the total wave power along the coastlines of the U.S. is approximately 2,100 terrawatt hours per year, nearly as much as all of the electricity produced by coal and roughly 10 times the total energy produced by all of the country’s hydroelectric plants.

http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/03/wo/wo_gartner032805.asp