Today In Science and Technology:
	Satellites Help 60 Rescues At Sea 'Clever' Car To Solve Congestion Jane Goodall Wins Science Prize Old Lab Samples May Save Endangered Snails Museum of Sci-Fi Set to Open Green Buildings Save Greenbacks
	Satellites Help 60 Rescues At Sea
	Source: United Press International SUITLAND, Md. (United Press International via COMTEX) -- Within the first three months of 2004, satellites helped to rescue 60 people from life-threatening situations, U.S. officials said Thursday. During the same time period last year, only 27 rescues were made, said officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They said the increase in rescues was due to the public's growing use of the high-tech emergency beacons used on airplanes and boats and carried around by outdoor enthusiasts. The beacon technology is part of the Satellite-Aided Tracking System known as SARSAT. "Usually, the winter months are quieter for rescues, and we have more saved lives during the spring and summer when more beacon users are flying, boating or outdoors in remote areas," said Gregory W. Withee, assistant administrator of NOAA's Satellites and Information Service, the lead U.S. agency for SARSAT. The SARSAT system uses NOAA's polar-orbiting and geostationary-orbiting satellites to detect and locate emergency beacons aboard ships, emergency locator transmitters aboard aircraft, and personal locator beacons carried by hikers and campers. Copyright 2004 by United Press International. Back to Top
	'Clever' Car To Solve Congestion
	Source: World Entertainment News Network A three-wheeled car that measures just one metre (3.2 feet) across and carries two people could be the answer to our growing traffic crisis, its developers say. The Clever (Compact Low Emission Vehicle for Urban Transport) car has been developed by nine European countries and is funded by the EU. The novel tilting vehicle aims to combine the safety of a traditional car with the flexibility of a motorbike. If produced, the 50mph car could sell for $11,700 (GBP6,500) after December 2005. It has a metal frame with a roof at about the same height as a normal car and seats one passenger behind the driver. A hydraulic tilting chassis is being developed by scientists at Bath University to make the car stable at high speeds. Smart answer Jos Darling, a senior lecturer in mechanical engineering at the university, said the car marked a "tremendous leap forward" in the development of vehicles. "The increase in traffic in our towns and cities means that we have to find a way to make our vehicles smaller," he says. "The advent of micro cars is a sign of this, but with its manoeuvrability and small width, the Clever vehicle is the ultimate in the search for a small vehicle to get around cities." (IG/WNWCCB/KTW) (c) 2004 World Entertainment News Network Back to Top
	Jane Goodall Wins Science Prize
	Source: United Press International SAN DIEGO (United Press International via COMTEX) -- Renowned British primate Jane Goodall has won the Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography announced. The award is the fourth to honor the memory of William A. Nierenberg, who was director of the Scripps Institution for more than two decades. Goodall's work in East Africa beginning in the 1960s redefined the relationship between humans and animals, and her revolutionary research lent great insight into the evolutionary past of humans, the institution said in a statement. Within her first year at the Gombe Stream Reserve in Tanzania, Goodall discovered that chimps, previously thought to be vegetarians, were meat eaters. She also witnessed their ability to make tools, which challenged the popular belief this behavior distinguished humans from animals. Goodall documented the social organization of chimps in the wild and defied scientific standards by giving the chimps names instead of numbers. She revealed chimpanzees' complex social behavior and hierarchy, and later discovered chimps engage in primitive and brutal warfare. Goodall will receive the Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest during a ceremony on Friday, April 30. Copyright 2004 by United Press International. Back to Top
	Old Lab Samples May Save Endangered Snails
	Source: United Press International ANN ARBOR, Mich. (United Press International via COMTEX) -- Some 600 freeze-dried snails held in a University of Michigan freezer for more than 30 years could help rescue a nearly extinct Tahitian land snail. The snails, famous since the late 1800s as examples of species that had rapidly diversified in an isolated environment, later became victims of a "spectacularly inept attempt at biological control," said U-M mollusk expert Diarmaid O Foighil. The trouble started in 1975 when the predatory rosy wolf snail was introduced to many South Pacific islands to control an agricultural pest. But the snail ate its sibling species more than the pests it was supposed to control. Eventually, it nearly wiped out the native snails and today only six of the original 61 snail species in the Society Island archipelago survive in the wild. In 1970, U-M professor emeritus John B. (Jack) Burch traveled to Tahiti to study the native snails that had not yet been decimated by the rosy wolf snail and collected several thousand specimens -- including 600 live snails that were freeze-dried. Now, by extracting, amplifying, and analyzing DNA from those samples, the researchers hope the data will help them reintroduce the endangered snail species to the wild, they said. Copyright 2004 by United Press International. Back to Top
	Museum of Sci-Fi Set to Open
	By TOM PAULSON P-I reporter Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer The nation's first museum honoring science fiction is still two months away from opening its doors in Seattle, but the former NASA scientist now managing it said everyone is in such a frenzy you'd think the countdown to launch was in only a matter of days. "Buzz Aldrin just called me (yesterday) morning to say how excited he was about this," said Donna Shirley, former manager of the Mars exploration program for NASA. Shirley is director of Paul Allen's new Science Fiction Museum located within the so-called "blue potato" portion of the Experience Music Project building at the Seattle Center. Museum officials, local sci-fi authors such as Greg Bear and others are expected to announce today the official opening day of the museum - sometime in mid-June, reportedly - after a media tour of the emerging facility. Aldrin, the astronaut who along with Neil Armstrong was first to set foot on the moon, is an enthusiastic proponent of space exploration. Like many in the space program, Shirley noted, he recognizes the role science fiction plays in encouraging people to think about where to boldly go next. "Science fiction is very important, very powerful," said Shirley, who recently returned to visit her former NASA colleagues at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., during the latest successful Mars rover landings of the robots Spirit and Opportunity. A half-scale model of an earlier rover, Sojourner, that she and her team landed on Mars in 1997 is just one of the artifacts and exhibits that will be featured at Allen's museum. Allen said last year that one of his primary goals in this project is to show how science fiction contributes to "real" science and technological progress. About 13,000 square feet of the Frank Gehry-designed EMP will be dedicated to the new Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame (which was initially dubbed SFX, for Science Fiction Experience). This new sci-fi wing will have three levels of exhibit space and add more than 1,000 square feet of performance space to EMP. Exhibits and artifacts celebrating such movies and television programs as "Star Trek," "Planet of the Apes" and "Dr. Strangelove" will be complemented by objects or exhibits aimed at demonstrating how the literary genre sometimes leads to real scientific developments or technological achievements. "Science fiction is about shining a light on what could be," Shirley said. She traces her own career in NASA back to the science fiction books she read as a young child in Oklahoma in the early 1950s. Shirley was the first woman to manage a major program at NASA. The billion-dollar Mars Exploration Program eventually succeeded in landing a rover on Mars in 1997. The facility, in its final phase of construction, is organized along four categories: Homeworld includes a Hall of Fame of sci-fi authors as well as a "Not So Weird Science" exhibit showing how sci-fi leads to new inventions and ideas. Fantastic Voyages celebrates other worlds and the means to get out there (like the spacecraft "Nostromo" from the movie "Alien"). Brave New Worlds uses sophisticated computer technology to look at some fantastic futuristic worlds featured in movies such as "The Matrix" or "Blade Runner" - as well as looking at what kind of choices we need to make now to avoid such places. Them! gets you up close and personal with creatures you might want to see only on a movie screen. The exhibit also includes a serious examination of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI. For more information, see www.sfhomeworld.org. P-I reporter Tom Paulson can be reached at 206-448-8318 or tompaulson@... (C) 2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer. via ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved Back to Top
	Green Buildings Save Greenbacks
	By HARVEY BLACK, United Press International Source: United Press International Making buildings greener, -- more energy and water efficient and less wasteful -- saves lots of money along with making them better places to work, experts told United Press International. A 2003 report to California's Sustainable Building Task Force concluded green design can mean savings of between $50 and $75 per square foot. That, the report goes on to note, is "over 10 times the average 2 percent cost premium" in making such designs. The report based its conclusion on an analysis of 33 green buildings in the state. In downtown Washington, D.C., the National Geographic Society's headquarters complex of three buildings, totaling 840,000 square feet, was retrofitted with more efficient heating and ventilation equipment. The resulting annual savings of between $150,000 and $200,000 according to Paul von Paumgartten, who is on the board of the U.S. Green Building Council in Washington, a 4,000-member association of builders, corporations and non-profit organizations working to promote buildings that are both profitable and environmentally responsible. The council certifies buildings as green under a three-tiered rating system known as the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, program. The tiers are silver, gold and platinum. Completed in 2000, the 950,000-square-foot building housing the California EPA headquarters in Sacramento is another example of a building which lessens its environmental impact, and saves money. "From downtown Sacramento averages, we're saving $1 per square foot on our operating expenses. That's a million dollars a year," Craig Sheehy of Thomas Properties Group, the building's manager, told UPI. In real estate terms, he said, such a savings adds $10 million to the building's value. Those savings come in both expected ways -- more efficient light, for example -- and innovative ones, such as having the janitorial staff clean during the day using silent vacuums. That change saves about $100,000 in electrical costs by reducing lighting requirements at night. Another cost-saving measure is the use of carpet squares with sticky backs instead of rolled carpets. If a square gets stained, it simply gets lifted out and possibly placed where it is not seen. The building, which has a LEED gold rating, also has an aggressive recycling program. It is so aggressive that trash pick-up is less than twice per month, instead of the three times per week Sheehy originally had budgeted. Most of the waste is paper, he explained, which gets recycled and constitutes one major reason for what appears to be a current boom in the production of green products. "The volume of green products available at no marginal cost increment has grown enormously since the industry size has grown," Gregory Kats, who chaired the report to California's Sustainable Building Task Force, told UPI. "Whether it's recycled content, ceiling tiles, carpeting, non-off-gassing adhesives, benign paints -- all these things (that) five years ago you would have struggled to find and paid a premium for are now available at no marginal cost. The market demand is there," said Kats, a principal in Capital E in Washington, a group of technology consultants who serve "clean energy firms." Even the relatively simple measure of using lighter colors on a roof can pay off. "Darker surfaces absorb more sunlight increasing temperatures in buildings ... and an associated need for air conditioning," the task force report noted. "More air conditioning requires greater consumption of energy." The average Los Angeles temperature, the report said, has increased 1 degree Celsius every year for the past 15 years, due at least in part to sunlight being absorbed by dark surfaces and roads and to the loss of trees. "Green buildings epitomize what we do," noted von Paumgartten, who also is director energy and environmental affairs at Johnson Controls, Inc. of Milwaukee, Wis., a maker of indoor atmosphere control equipment. Improving energy efficiency is embedded in what the company does, von Paumgartten said, adding it is therefore difficult to say how much this approach adds to the firm's profits. "If we were not approaching it this way (however) we would not be as nearly successful," he told UPI. Philips Lighting Company in Somerset, N.J., is another firm vigorously embracing the movement toward green buildings. Philips has been working on improved energy efficient fluorescent lighting since the mid-1990s, said Eric Marsh, the firm's strategic marketing manager. At the end of March, he said, it brought out its latest model fluorescent lamps. "These lamps are the most energy efficient lamps on the market," in terms of the amount of light per unit of energy produced, Marsh said. Greater energy efficiency means less demand on power plants, most of which are coal-fired. And that of course means less pollution and production of greenhouse gases. In spite of the growth in energy efficient building products and the effort to have green buildings, there remain hurdles to overcome. "The principle obstacle to people not building more green buildings is the perception is they are relatively expensive and that the financial benefits not clear," Kats said. -- Harvey Black covers technology for UPI Science News. E-mail sciencemail@... Copyright 2004 by United Press International. Back to Top

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