Movie of the day: Becoming Jane

Movies that bring us back into the world of English countrysides and gentry with their intrigues and superficial splendor are hard to follow for more than an hour when no major action like murder, war etc are happening. 'Becoming Jane' accomplishes fascination of the audience (Gabriele, the cat 'Sparkle' and myself) by an excellent cast and a story that not only was typical and important for its time but also challenges peoples integrity and emotions. The story is simple and circles around the problem of finding partners for marriage that combine affection and economical reason. Anne Hathaway plays the role of Jane Austin in a fully believable and entertaining way. Her outstanding beauty that apparently goes beyond the historical Jane, helps through the stages of love, betrayal and resolve with the family of the poor daughter of a clergyman keeping its world together. It is a movie to enjoy the beauty of the pictures but also the intelligence of the dialogs and the significance of the problem and its resolution. It does not need many shots fired (only one in this movie as an accident without consequences) or racing vehicles to make a good and entertaining movie.

Lithopanspermia theory on test

It started with the image of the brown bolder (see left insert) in the Popular Science magazine at the health club and it keeps me going already for a few days: How can the surrogate meteorite Foton-M3 help to test the lithopanspermia theory that is around for several hundred years and still has not changed our understanding of the origin of life on earth? This theory assumes that life was "inoculated" on earth by means of meteorites carrying life forms from outer space to earth from which point it started to evolve to the myriads of forms we know about today. So the theory does not - as often misstated - question the evolution theory, but it defines a different, more advanced starting point for evolution on our planet. The transport of life forms through space and to the surface of Earth through surrounding atmosphere pose difficult questions for the lithopanspermia believers. The radiation in outer space and the immense heat when travelling through the atmosphere are not particularly life-supporting conditions. So has the collaborative space mission between NASA, ES and Russia in 2007 dubbed 'Foton-M3' provided for experimental test opportunities to expose cyanobacteria and lichens to those fierce conditions. The unmanned spacecraft orbited the Earth 12 times last September before it dove into its fall back to a field in Kazakhstan. The hitchhiking life forms were recovered and are under investigation. Different to reports you may have seen in other blogs, the results are still confidential since they have not yet been published in a scientific journal. ESA's coordinator Rene Demets told me in an email yesterday "that the lichens fully survived just as they did in 2005". By this he refers to a 2005 experiment published in a 2007 paper (Sancho et al., Astrobiology 7(3)) where lichens proved to recover their full metabolic activity within 24 hours after return to Earth from a 16-day space mission. As soo as I learn mora about the results of the FOTON-M3 mission, I will share them with you so we can speculate some more about the merits of the lithopanspermia theory. Image credits: ESA, BBC, and Rene Demets.

Pen computer - Concept or reality?

Recently I had received from a friend a set of photos that shows a device that is described as a pen-size computer with keyboard and monitor projected on flat surfaces. I found this concept intriguing and shared it with many of my friends by email. Many recipients have responded and expressed from awe to caution and doubt. So I inquired about the origin of this technology information and whether it is more than a concept. Here is what I found:

The particular set of photos is around only in a number of blogs since approx. 2005. It is available as a video slideshow on YouTube since April 27, 2007, and has since then 54,000 views. You can see it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ptixSbHzJ4 The video/images are discussed daily in a stream of comments attached to the YouTube viewing site and range from informative to obnoxious. Some posts claim the PC is already available in Japan,others characterize this as a hoax. I could not find any proof for reality or commercial availability.

However, at the 2003 ITU Telecom World exhibition held in Geneva, the Tokyo-based NEC corporation displayed a conceptual prototype of what they dubbed a "Pen-style Personal Networking Gadget Package," or P-ISM. As NEC described the P-ISM:

P-ISM is a gadget package including five functions: a pen-style cellular phone with a handwriting data input function, virtual keyboard, a very small projector, camera scanner, and personal ID key with cashless pass function. P-ISMs are connected with one another through short-range wireless technology. The whole set is also connected to the Internet through the cellular phone function. This personal gadget in a minimalistic pen style enables the ultimate ubiquitous computing.

The P-ISM system was based on "low-cost electronic perception technology" produced by the San Jose, California, firm of Canesta, Inc., developers of technologies such as the "virtual keyboard" (although the last two pictures shown above appear to be virtual keyboard products sold by other companies such as VKB rather than components of the P-ISM prototype).

The information from the exhibition was posted in December 2005 by B. and D. Mikkelson at http://www.snopes.com/photos/advertisements/pcpen.asp I cannot verify that the P-ISM is the device shown in the pictures of the "pen PC" in the video. I did not find websites or information about such technology on websites of the quoted companies. So for the time being it looks this is a just a concept and not a product that we can buy in the near future. If somebody sees/hears otherwise, you input (e.g., as a comment here) would be highly appreciated.

Birdfeeder still popular

Although spring has arrived the feeder is still visited by many birds throughout the day. Some bird couples are very 'regular' and come to feed together (e.g., House Finch [see photo], Starlings, Junkos), some others visit separately (e.g., Cowbird, American Goldfinch [see photo], Mockingbird). Additional species arriving back from their winter quarters in the South have not shown up yet.

Welcome home, Katze Walk II.

After more than seven years we have taken another cat into our home. Gabriele and I were always thinking about it but could not decide to take on another responsibility. Now Alexander asked us whether we could have a pet companion in our family and that tipped us over the edge. And here she is, "Katze Walk the second". About one year old, a grey tiger that is healthy and happy with people inside a home. From the first moment she 'owned' the place and felt at home. Alexander will give her a new name but in the the interim she bears the same name as our former cat in Germany which looked very similar and kept us company for more than ten years before she died of old age.

Blueray - Second thoughts

After comparing the quality/impression of the picture of the Blueray player (Sony BDP-S300) with Blueray DVDs and standard DVDs upsampled to 720p resolution with the images presented by the 460p Lexicon RT-10 DVD player (no upsampling), we decided to return the Blueray player and continue to use the standard player instead. Either the technical quality and sophistication of the first and second generation of Blueray players is still far from that of higher-end standard DVD players or the component cable connection that I have to use with my Meridian G68 processor is so much worse than the HDMI connection used by the most recent versions of processors that they should not be used (I actually saw a Denon Blueray player that had only HDMI output). So if you consider Blueray at this time, make sure you can use HDMI connectors and have a TV or projector that can handle full 1080p resolution. Then Blueray may make sense even at this time. But also check and compare carefully before you commit to replace your current DVD player with a new Blueray.

Discovery of organic molecules on extrasolar planet.

Methane molecules in the atmosphere of the Jupiter-sized extrasolar planet HD 189733b has been found with the Hubble Space Telescope. Under the right circumstances methane can play a key role in prebiotic chemistry -- the chemical reactions considered necessary to form life as we know it. Although methane has been detected on most of the planets in our Solar System, this is the first time any organic molecule has been detected on a world orbiting another star.