may the force be with you

The software giant is mulling its own digital device that adds gaming to music and video, in an effort to compete with Apple's iPod empire

After getting trounced for four years in the digital music business by Apple Computer (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT) finally seems poised to do something about it. BusinessWeek has learned that the software giant is working on plans to develop its own portable digital media device to rival the iPod, rather than just providing technology to partners. Microsoft hasn't decided if it will go ahead. But sources inside the company and at its partners say Microsoft has put together a team that's considering the business end of such an initiative.

Going forward with it would be an acknowledgement that the current strategy isn't working. Chairman William H. Gates III has argued that consumers would prefer a vast choice of devices to the limited selection from Apple. That's why Microsoft has relied on dozens of partners to come up with sleek devices and clever online-music services that use its software.LIMITED APPEAL? But each year, Apple extends its lead in digital music. In 2005, Apple's share of portable media devices sold in the U.S. grew to 67% from 52% in 2004, according to NPD Group. Making its own device, despite an uneven track record in consumer electronics, may be Microsoft's only viable alternative.

What would it look like? Xbox boss Peter Moore says any Microsoft media device would have to leverage the company's most significant consumer strength, video gaming. "It can't just be our version of the iPod," says Moore, who nonetheless would not confirm that Microsoft is considering making such a device. So in addition to playing music and videos, a Microsoft device would include games. Microsoft would probably use the Xbox brand to market the gadget. "I think the brand is an opportunity," Moore says.

True, perhaps, but also risky. If the new device comes with the Xbox brand, most consumers will view it as a game player, like Sony's (SNE) PlayStation Portable. That might limit its appeal, since the portable gaming market is much smaller than the one for digital media.

TARGETING THE LIVING ROOM. There's also the risk of alienating partners. If Microsoft fashions its own gadget, those device makers could abandon Microsoft's digital media technology and devise their own software. "Everybody will try to do their own thing to differentiate," says Sim Wong Hoo, chief executive of Creative Technology (CREAF), the No.2 digital media device maker. "What Microsoft was trying to build will collapse."

With $39.8 billion in annual sales, Microsoft isn't particularly interested in increments from the digital media device business or online music. It's after a spot in consumers' living rooms. The more consumers purchase iPods, the more they'll buy songs and videos from iTunes, and the various iPod accessories to play music and video around their house. That in turn convinces more entertainment companies to partner with Apple. "The stakes are incredibly high," says Michael Gartenberg, vice-president and research director at JupiterResearch (JUPM).

The question still remains: Will Microsoft really do it? It has abandoned efforts over the years to make everything from computer speakers to PC-connected telephones. The company gave some clues in December, when it put its digital media software unit and its MSN Music service under Robert J. Bach, president of the Entertainment & Devices division. "It's a lot easier to talk about the end-to-end scenarios, because it's all under Robbie," says Microsoft's Moore. Indeed, the soup-to-nuts approach has been the key to Apple's success. For Microsoft, it may be worth the risk.

source:http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2006/tc20060126_148049.htm?campaign_id=rss_tech

Over 55s were less likely to opt for evolution than other groups

More than half the British population does not accept the theory of evolution, according to a survey.

Furthermore, more than 40% of those questioned believe that creationism or intelligent design should be taught in school science lessons.

The survey was conducted by Ipsos MORI for the BBC's Horizon series.

Its latest programme, A War on Science, looks into the attempt to introduce intelligent design into science classes in the US.

Over 2000 participants took part in the survey, and were asked what best described their view of the origin and development of life:

• 22% chose creationism
• 17% opted for intelligent design
• 48% selected evolution theory
• and the rest did not know.

Intelligent design is the concept that certain features of living things are so complex that their existence is better explained by an "intelligent process" than natural selection.

Education questioned

Andrew Cohen, editor of Horizon, commented: "I think that this poll represents our first introduction to the British public's views on this issue.

"Most people would have expected the public to go for evolution theory, but it seems there are lots of people who appear to believe in an alternative theory for life's origins."

When given a choice of three theories, people were asked which one or ones they would like to see taught in science lessons in British schools:

• 44% said creationism should be included
• 41% intelligent design
• 69% wanted evolution as part of the science curriculum.

Participants over 55 were less likely to choose evolution over other groups.

"This really says something about the role of science education in this country and begs us to question how we are teaching evolutionary theory," Andrew Cohen added.

The findings prompted surprise from the scientific community. Lord Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society, said: "It is surprising that many should still be sceptical of Darwinian evolution. Darwin proposed his theory nearly 150 years ago, and it is now supported by an immense weight of evidence.

"We are, however, fortunate compared to the US in that no major segment of UK religious or cultural life opposes the inclusion of evolution in the school science curriculum."

In the US, a recent high profile court case ruled that the intelligent design movement is motivated by a desire to introduce God into the classroom after parents in Pennsylvania took a school board to court over its demand that biology classes should not teach evolution as fact.

source:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4648598.stm

Figure 1: (Left) Global annual surface temperature relative to 1951-1980 mean based on surface air measurements at meteorological stations and ship and satellite measurements for sea surface temperature. Error bars are estimated 2σ (95% confidence) uncertainty. (Right) Temperature anomaly for 2005 calendar year. (Click for a large GIF or PDF of this figure.)

Figure 2. Temperature index change since 1950 at seasonal resolution, for the globe (above) and for low latitudes. This is an update of Figure 10 in reference 4. Blue semi-circles mark La Niñas, red rectangles mark El Niños, and green trianges mark large volcanos. (Click for a large GIF or PDF of this figure.)

Figure 3. Seasonal temperature change over the past 50 years based on local linear trends. (Click for a large GIF or PDF of this figure.)

The highest global surface temperature in more than a century of instrumental data was recorded in the 2005 calendar year in the GISS annual analysis. However, the error bar on the data implies that 2005 is practically in a dead heat with 1998, the warmest previous year.

Our analysis, summarized in Figure 1 above, uses documented procedures for data over land (1), satellite measurements of sea surface temperature since 1982 (2), and a ship-based analysis for earlier years (3). Our estimated error (2σ, 95% confidence) in comparing nearby years, such as 1998 and 2005, increases from 0.05°C in recent years to 0.1°C at the beginning of the 20th century. Error sources include incomplete station coverage, quantified by sampling a model-generated data set with realistic variability at actual station locations, and partly subjective estimates of data quality problems (4).

Record warmth in 2005 is notable, because global temperature has not received any boost from a tropical El Niño this year. The prior record year, 1998, on the contrary, was lifted 0.2°C above the trend line by the strongest El Niño of the past century.

Global warming is now 0.6°C in the past three decades and 0.8°C in the past century. It is no longer correct to say that "most global warming occurred before 1940". More specifically, there was slow global warming, with large fluctuations, over the century up to 1975 and subsequent rapid warming of almost 0.2°C per decade.

Recent warming coincides with rapid growth of human-made greenhouse gases. Climate models show that the rate of warming is consistent with expectations (5). The observed rapid warming thus gives urgency to discussions about how to slow greenhouse gas emissions (6).

The map shows that current warmth is nearly ubiquitous and largest at high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere. Our ranking of 2005 as warmer than 1998 is a result mainly of the large positive Arctic anomaly. Excluding the region north of 75N, 1998 is warmer than 2005. If the entire Arctic Ocean were excluded, the ranking of 2005 may be even lower.

Our analysis differs from others by including estimated temperatures up to 1200 km from the nearest measurement station (7). The resulting spatial extrapolations and interpolations are accurate for temperature anomalies at seasonal and longer time scales at middle and high latitudes, where the spatial scale of anomalies is set by Rossby waves (7). Thus we believe that the remarkable Arctic warmth of 2005 is real, and the inclusion of estimated arctic temperatures is the primary reason for our rank of 2005 as the warmest year. Other characteristics of our analysis method are summarized in footnote (8).

Figure 2 shows the temperature index at seasonal resolution for the globe and for low latitudes (23.6°N - 23.6°S). The low latitude temperature displays clearly the occurrence of substantial El Niños, especially the prominent 1969, 1972-3,1983 and 1998 El Niños. The quasi-regularity of recent El Niños at intervals of about 4 years (there was a weak El Niño in 2002) suggests the likelihood of an El Niño in 2006 or at latest 2007. In such a case the 2005 global temperature record will almost surely be broken.

Figure 3 shows the annual and seasonal temperature changes of the past 50 years. Largest warmings have occurred in Alaska, Siberia and the Antarctic Peninsula. Most ocean areas have warmed. The remote location of most warming makes it clear that the warming is not a product of local urban influence.

— J. Hansen, R. Ruedy, M. Sato, and K. Lo
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
and Columbia University Earth Institute
New York, NY 10025, USA

References and Notes

1. Hansen, J.E., R. Ruedy, Mki. Sato, M. Imhoff, W. Lawrence, D. Easterling, T. Peterson, and T. Karl 2001. A closer look at United States and global surface temperature change. J. Geophys. Res. 106, 23947-23963, doi:10.1029/2001JD000354.
2. Reynolds, R.W., and T.M. Smith 1994. Improved global sea surface temperature analyses using optimum interpolation. J. Climate 7, 929-948, doi:10.1175/1520-0442(1994)007<0929:igssta>2.0.CO;2.
3. Rayner, N.A., D.E. Parker, E.B. Horton, C.K. Folland, L.V. Alexander, D.P. Rowell, E.C. Kent, and A. Kaplan 2003. Global analyses of sea surface temperature, sea ice, and night marine air temperature since the late nineteenth century. J. Geophys. Res. 108, 4407, doi:10.1029/2002JD002670.
4. Hansen, J., R. Ruedy, J. Glascoe, and Mki. Sato 1999. GISS analysis of surface temperature change. J. Geophys. Res. 104, 30997-31022, doi:10.1029/1999JD900835.
5. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, J.T. Houghton et al., Eds. (Cambridge Univ. Press, New York, 2001).
6. Hansen, J. 2005. Is There Still Time to Avoid "Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference" with Global Climate? A Tribute to Charles David Keeling (5.5 MB PDF). Presentation given Dec. 6, 2005, at the American Geophysical Union, San Francisco.
7. Hansen, J.E., and S. Lebedeff 1987. Global trends of measured surface air temperature. J. Geophys. Res. 92, 13345-13372.
8. Analyses of global temperature change by different groups, particularly, ours (NASA GISS), the NOAA National Climate Data Center (NCDC), and the combination of the British Meteorological Office and the University of East Anglia (BMO/UEA), are generally in close agreement, as shown, e.g., in reference 5. The ranking of individual years, however, depends upon differences of only a few hundredths of a degree, which is finer than the accuracy that any method can achieve given observational limitations.
   One large source of differences is the attempt in the GISS method to estimate the temperature anomaly for all areas that have at least one station located within 1200 km, using weights for these stations that decrease linearly with distance from the station. At any given point the temperature anomaly estimated in this way can be substantially in error, but the increased coverage usually allows an improved estimate of the global temperature anomaly, as judged from tests made with spatially and temporally complete data sets generated by a general circulation model. However, in some cases this method can increase error by giving undue weight to one isolated station with anomalous temperature.
   Another source of difference is the method of averaging over the world, given the fact that data is not available everywhere. In the GISS method, we divide the Earth in four latitude belts. Within each belt the region with data is weighted by area. The anomaly for the entire belt is then taken as the anomaly for the portion of the belt that has data. The global anomaly is then the area-weighted mean of the four belts. This method gives equal weight to the hemispheres, but if one of the belts has little data that is not actually representative of the entire belt, substantial error can occur.
   The land (meteorological stations) data sets have substantial commonality, but they are not identical. Our approach, described in more detail in references 1, 4 and 7, uses GHCN (Global Historical Climatology Network) data, adjusting urban station data so that the long-term trend of the urban station matches that of neighboring rural stations, with the distinction between urban and rural based on either population or nightlights observed by satellite.
   Our ocean data is the "OI" analysis of Reynolds and Smith (2) for the period of satellite data, i.e., after 1982. Earlier ocean data is from Rayner et al. (3). These two ocean data sets are combined by working with anomalies for both data sets and defining anomalies relative to a common period, specifically 1982-1992.

Note: PDF documents require a special viewer such as the free Adobe Reader.

Further Information

Related webpages on the GISS website include:

• GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP)
• Global Temperature Annual Summations: 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000 (n/a), 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996

Contacts

Please address all inquiries regarding GISS surface temperature trends analysis to Dr. James E. Hansen.

source:http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2005/

Using a popular internet game that traces the travels of dollar bills, scientists have unveiled statistical laws of human travel in the United States, and developed a mathematical description that can be used to model the spread of infectious disease in this country. This model is considered a breakthrough in the field.

"We were confident that we could learn a lot from the data collected at the www.wheresgeorge.com bill-tracking website, but the results turned out far beyond our expectations," said Lars Hufnagel, a post-doctoral fellow at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara and co-author of an article describing the research in the January 26 issue of the journal Nature.

The worldwide spread of disease –– particularly pandemics with disastrous consequences for human health and economics –– has become a serious threat in the globalized world of intense international trade and travel. The threat of bird flu, the possible emergence of a new human "supervirus," and the potential of a worldwide flu pandemic, make predicting the spread of these diseases more urgent than ever.

Historical pandemics, like the 14th-century plague, moved slowly in waves across geographical areas, because in the Middle Ages people could typically only travel a few kilometers a day. The speed with which epidemics could spread was thus kept in check. It took the plague three years to move up the European continent, south to north, with an average rate of spread of about two kilometers a day.

"But today people move great distances in short time periods, as well as short distances, and they use variable means of transportation," said Hufnagel. "Thus we can expect that future pandemics will spread according to other rules, and more quickly. The rapid worldwide spread of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) has already demonstrated this."

Searching for a way to model the modern spread of disease became the focus of discussions among the co-authors: Theo Geisel, director of the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self Organization and professor at the University of Goettingen; Dirk Brockmann, a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Plank Institute for Dynamics and Self Organization; and Hufnagel. Following a conference in Montreal, Brockmann met with a friend in Vermont, a cabinetmaker, who showed him the internet game for tracking the movement of dollar bills, located at www.wheresgeorge.com. Participants can register a dollar bill, of any denomination, and monitor its geographic circulation.

The physicists were intrigued: Like viruses, money is transported by people from place to place. They found that the human movements follow what are known as universal scaling laws (from local to regional to long-distance scales). Using the game data, they developed a powerful mathematical theory that describes the observed movements of travelers amazingly well over distances from just a few kilometers to a few thousand. The study represents a major breakthrough for the mathematical modeling of the spread of epidemics.

"Since we can't track people with tracking devices, like we do animals, we needed to get data that provided us with millions of movements of individuals," explained Hufnagel. Scientists are already familiar with similar scaling laws from physical and biological systems. "What is amazing about these particular scaling laws is the fact that they are determined by two universal parameters only. This result surprised us all."

Added Brockmann: "We recognized that the enormous amount of data, as well as the geographical and temporal resolution of bill-tracking, allowed us to draw conclusions about the statistical characteristics of human travel, independent of which means of transportation people use."

Geisel said, "We are optimistic that this study will drastically improve predictions about the geographical spread of epidemics."

source:http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/web_game_provides_breakthrough_in_predicting_spread_of_epidemics_9874