Endeavour lifts off on two-week mission

The space shuttle Endeavour lifted off from Kennedy Space Center early Monday on a two-week mission to the International Space Station.

The shuttle quickly pierced light cloud cover along the Florida coast in a brilliant launch.

The six-member Endeavour crew is delivering a key module to the International Space Station.

Cmdr. George Zamka is leading the STS-130 mission. Joining him aboard are pilot Terry Virts, and mission specialists Nicholas Patrick, Robert Behnken, Stephen Robinson and Kathryn Hire, NASA said.

The crew is delivering a third connecting module, an Italian-built Tranquility node and a seven-windowed cupola to be used as a control room for robotics. The mission also will include three spacewalks.

It's a busy week for NASA, with the agency also preparing to launch a Solar Dynamics Observatory into orbit aboard an Atlas V rocket on Tuesday.

Only five more shuttle launches are scheduled before the program ends in 2011.

Endeavour was originally scheduled to lift off early Sunday, but low cloud ceilings forced a nearly 24-hour delay.

(cnn.com)

Obama calls for talks with GOP on health care, then vote by Congress

President Obama called Thursday for high-level talks with Republicans to work out a compromise on health care legislation, then putting the resulting bill to a vote in Congress.

"If Congress decides we're not going to do it, even after all the facts are laid out, after all the options are clear, then the American people can make a judgment as to whether this Congress has done the right thing for them or not," Obama said. "That's how democracy works."

Obama's comments were the first clear signal from the White House or Democrats in Congress on how they would proceed on a top legislative priority after losing their 60-seat super-majority in the Senate.

Republican Scott Brown was sworn in as the new U.S. senator from Massachusetts earlier Thursday, leaving the Democrats one vote shy of being able to overcome GOP filibusters of health care reform and other major initiatives.

Asked at a party fund-raising event about the Democratic strategy for health care reform going forward, Obama said Democratic leaders in the House and Senate were working out differences in the separate health care bills passed by each chamber last year.

Once that was finished, Obama said, the next step would be "to call on our Republican friends to present their ideas."

"What I'd like to do is to have a meeting whereby I'm sitting with the Republicans, sitting with the Democrats, sitting with health care experts, and let's just go through these bills -- their ideas, our ideas -- and walk through them and in a methodical way so that the American people can see and compare," Obama said.

(cnn.com)

Is the 'Avatar' concept really possible?

Now the highest-grossing film ever, "Avatar," has captivated millions of viewers with its picturesque scenery, extraterrestrial battles, and nature-loving, blue-skinned aliens.

The premise of the film is that humans can enter the world of these 10-foot aliens, called the Na'vi, by way of half-human, half-Na'vi hybrids. A high-tech interfacing mechanism allows a human to remain inert while controlling one of these avatar hybrids just by thinking.

Not only does the human manipulate the avatar's movements and speech, but he or she also experiences life -- every sensation, feeling and emotion -- through the eyes of the hybrid, as if consciousness were transferred.

Scientists say we are many decades, even centuries, away from making this kind of sophisticated interaction possible, if it can be done at all. But the fundamentals of components required to create this complicated system of mind-controlled avatars are already in the works, and have useful applications in medicine.

"We're starting to understand the basic building blocks, but the biggest challenges will be emotion and thought -- how to make another organism think what you think, to feel what you feel -- because those networks are much more difficult to sort out," said Dr. Brian Litt, associate professor of neurology and bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania.

See which films have been nominated for Academy Awards

Moving remote objects by thinking

Although nothing as complex as manipulating a creature through thought has been done, scientists working on allowing handicapped people to move prosthetic limbs with their minds are making headway. This idea actually played a role in the movie: Protagonist Jake Sully was in a wheelchair in his human body, but could walk, run and jump as his avatar.

One demonstration has been shown by Miguel Nicolelis, a neuroscientist at Duke University, who is working on robotic leg braces. In 2008, his group got a monkey in North Carolina to mentally control the walking patterns of a robot in Japan.

This was done by implanting electrodes in the brains of two rhesus monkeys. The electrodes recorded how cells in the brain's motor and sensory cortex responded to walking on the treadmill at various speeds. The monkeys' legs also had sensors to record walking patterns.

Researchers used all this information to predict the exact speed of movement and stride length of the legs, and uploaded that information to a robot in Japan, getting the robot to move in synch with a monkey thousands of miles away in real time. Even when the treadmill was turned off, a monkey continued making the robot walk just by thinking for a few minutes.

Another arena is one of virtual reality: controlling an avatar in a video game with your mind. Jaime Pineda, cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, is working with a brain-computer interface that allows participants to move a car around a racetrack, fly a plane and do other virtual tasks on a screen, simply by thinking. The mental training for this takes about four to six hours, he said.

"It is based on the motor parts of your brain. That's what we're recording from, and so if you think about moving, it's actually as if you are actually moving," he said.

Apart from the entertainment value, Pineda sees this as a future therapy for autistic children. The theory is that because people with autism have less conductivity between various parts of the brain, participating in mind-controlled video games may normalize those circuits. Results from his lab show improvement in social interaction and other behaviors after 10 or 20 weeks of playing the game in the lab.

(cnn.com)

Washington Struggles to Recover from Massive Snowstorm

Washington and surrounding areas are digging out after a paralyzing blizzard that dumped more than half a meter of snow, triggering emergency declarations by state officials throughout the mid-Atlantic region.

For nearly two days, the snow fell, and fell, and fell some more. The U.S. capital and surrounding areas received more snow in 36 hours than it usually sees in an entire winter. Local governments fought losing battles to keep roads clear, while residents struggled to free their cars from massive snowdrifts. Most public transportation ground to a halt, and flights to and from Washington were canceled.

WASHINGTON AREA RESIDENT: "I have been in Washington for maybe 30 years, and I think this is probably one of the biggest storms, maybe the biggest we have ever had."

Hundreds of thousands of people lost power to their homes. The weight of the snow caused tree limbs to snap and roofs to collapse. Emergency responders have been hard-pressed to reach those in need.

But what caused grief for many gave others a chance to engage in activities not usually seen in the nation's capital. A Washington landmark, Dupont Circle, became ground zero for a massive, friendly snowball fight that was organized on Twitter and other social networking sites.

Even President Barack Obama took note of the extreme conditions, coining a new phrase.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: "Snow, 'snowmageddon' ] here in [Washington] D.C."

And winter's grip on Washington is far from over. More snow is forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday.

(from voanews.com)

Some US Students Learn Mandarin With China's Help

The Confucius Classroom program is offered in more than 50 American schools and universities, and almost 40 countries worldwide. Transcript of radio broadcast: 04 February 2010

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

Some schools in the United States and other countries offer Chinese language classes with government support from China.

(CLASSROOM SOUND)

Saint Mary's School is a private college preparatory school in Medford, Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest.

CARLY IRVINE: "Wo jiao Carly."

Carly Irvine is in her fourth year of learning Mandarin.

CARLY IRVINE: "Since China and America are working so closely and our relationship is growing more and more, I think it will be very important in the future to know Chinese."

Saint Mary's also teaches Spanish, German and Latin. It added Mandarin in two thousand five. Two years ago, it became the first school in the country to join the Confucius Classroom program.

The program pays about half the costs of a teacher sent to a school in the United States. China's Education Ministry also provides books and other materials.

Saint Mary's principal, Frank Phillips, says knowing Chinese will help students in a world where China is quickly gaining economic power. But he admits to concerns in his local community.

FRANK PHILLIPS: "The question I always get is, 'Is this a gigantic propaganda move, is this an evil Communist plot on the part of China?' That's the number one kind of lingering Cold War suspicion about this program. From what I can detect, having been involved in it for two years, I see none of that."

In fact, the program has won the support of his local representative in the state legislature. Dennis Richardson says he has concerns about human rights in China. But he is among several lawmakers who have been pushing for more Chinese language education in public schools in Oregon.

DENNIS RICHARDSON: "We can do more good setting an example and being friends and business associates than we can by ostracizing them."

Zheng Ling, a teacher at Saint Mary's, came from China in two thousand eight.

ZHENG LING: "People do not know much about China, especially the latest development. So I think this is a chance for them to know more about China, what China is really like. It's quite different from what it was twenty years ago."

The Confucius Classroom program is in about forty countries, including more than fifty American schools and universities.

A recent report said more schools in the United States are teaching Chinese and Arabic, although the numbers are still low. But it said foreign language teaching in public elementary and middle schools dropped sharply in recent years. Fewer schools teach French, German, Russian or Japanese.

There are language teacher shortages. But some schools say a federal law that only measures progress in math and reading has hurt language teaching.

The federal government paid for the survey by the Center for Applied Linguistics.

Explosion at US Power Plant Kills 5; 12 Injured

The mayor of the northeastern U.S. city of Middletown, Connecticut, says at least five people have been killed and 12 others injured by an explosion at a newly constructed electrical power plant.

Mayor Sebastian Giuliano said the Sunday morning blast damaged the main generating building of the Keene Energy facility, and resulted in a large fire.

After the fire was extinguished, search teams began looking for victims amid the wreckage of the plant. Officials say casualty figures may rise as the searchers work through the night.

Fire officials say they have not yet determined how many people were inside the building when it exploded. The power plant was in the final stages of construction, and there were a number of different contracting companies working at the site.

Authorities say natural gas, which powers the plant, was the source of the blast.

(taken from http://www1.voanews.com/)