NewsScan Daily, 21 January 2005 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 21 January 2005 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        The Future of P2P
        Intel Speeds 'Vanderpool' to Market
        Smithsonian Song Catalog Online
        One-Charger-Fits-All
        E-Waste Is Piling Up

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Honorary Subscriber: Robert Wilhelm Bunsen

THE FUTURE OF P2P
      While Hollywood and the music industry has spent the last few years 
demonizing peer-to-peer networks, big business is eyeing the technology's 
potential for "commoditization" (translation: $$$). "Old media always tries 
to stop new media. When they can't stop it, they try to control it. Then 
they figure out how to make money and they always make a lot of money," 
says StreamCast Networks president Michael Weiss. P2P networks can be used 
to share any type of file -- photos, software, licensed music and other 
digital content. The BBC has already embraced the technology, and will be 
using P2P to offer most of its programs for download this year. Even some 
commercial entertainment companies are working on business models that 
would enable them to make money off of it, such as paid-for-pass-along, in 
which firms receive money each time a file is shared. (BBC News 21 Jan 2005)
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4191581.stm>

INTEL SPEEDS 'VANDERPOOL' TO MARKET
      Intel is touting the virtues of its Vanderpool technology, which 
enables a user to run two operating systems on the same PC by dividing the 
resources inside so that the machine functions like two or more independent 
computers. The chip giant had originally planned to roll out Vanderpool for 
desktops in 2006, but now says it will make it available in desktop 
chipsets and processors this year. Intel also plans to release dual-core 
processors this year, which are designed to perform two separate functions 
at once and dovetail nicely with the Vanderpool virtualization software. 
(CNet News.com 20 Jan 2005)
<http://news.com.com/Intel+accelerates+virtual-desktop+plans/2100-1006_3-5543754.html>

SMITHSONIAN SONG CATALOG ONLINE
      Some 30,000 songs from the Smithsonian Folkways catalog -- including 
such greats as Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger -- went on sale 
yesterday for 99 cents apiece at MSN's Music Store. About two-thirds of the 
proceeds will go to the Smithsonian. MSN Music has encoded the tracks in 
the Windows Media format, and will have exclusive rights to sell the 
Smithsonian collection through September. When that expires, the 
Smithsonian hopes to launch its own music download service, offering more 
extensive text and documentation features than are currently available. 
(New York Times 20 Jan 2005)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/20/arts/20folk.html>

ONE-CHARGER-FITS-ALL
      University of Cambridge spinoff Splashpower is moving closer to 
realizing its goal of launching the SplashPad charger -- a plastic pad the 
size of a mouse pad that can recharge phones, cameras and other digital 
gadgets just by placing them on it. Splashpower has filed a series of 
patents describing the underlying technology: Inside the pad, an array of 
coils spread a low-power magnetic field over the pad's flat surface so that 
devices placed anywhere on the pad intercept charging flux. 
Splashpower-compatible devices will feature a thin, flat sheet of metal 
alloy with a coil wound around it that acts as a receiver. Current induced 
in the coil when it is on the charging pad is then fed to the device's 
charging circuit. The company hopes to license the technology to portable 
gadget makers, and co-founder James Hay says he's confident "it will 
definitely happen. We could see the first drop-and-charge devices before 
the end of the year." (New Scientist 21 Jan 2005)
<http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6891>

E-WASTE IS PILING UP
      Consumers' penchant for constant upgrades -- new cell phones, a 
sleeker laptop -- is causing havoc in the environment, and with technology 
products now accounting for as much as 40% of the lead in U.S. landfills, 
e-waste has become one of the fastest-growing sectors of the U.S. solid 
waste stream. The International Association of Electronics Recyclers 
estimates that Americans dispose of 2 million tons of electronic products a 
year -- including 50 million computers and 130 million cell phones -- and 
China, which has served for years as the final resting place for Americans' 
unwanted TVs and computers, is becoming overwhelmed by the volume. Some 
high-tech companies are taking matters into their own hands -- Hewlett 
Packard and Dell job out their e-waste handling to environmentally 
sensitive recyclers such as RetroBox -- but such efforts are still quite 
limited and unable to cope with a problem that's reaching crisis 
proportions. Meanwhile, the U.S. is the only developed country not to have 
ratified the 1992 Basel Convention, the international treaty that controls 
the export of hazardous waste. "There's a real electronics-waste crisis," 
says Basel Action Network coordinator Jim Puckett. "The U.S. just looks the 
other way as we use these cheap and dirty dumping grounds." (Washington 
Post 21 Jan 2005)
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24672-2005Jan20.html>

*****

FLASH CARD
      "Chemistry stands at the pivot of science. On the one hand it deals 
with biology and provides explanations for the processes of life. On the 
other hand it mingles with physics and finds explanations for chemical 
phenomena in the fundamental processes and particles of the universe. 
Chemistry links the familiar with the fundamental." (P.W. Atkins)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: ROBERT WILHELM BUNSEN
      Today's honorary subscriber is the German chemist Robert Wilhelm 
Bunsen (1811-1899), whose name should be instantly recognizable by anyone 
who ever took a laboratory course in chemistry and heated a beaker of 
chemicals with the ubiquitous "Bunsen burner" -- a gas burner consisting of 
a vertical metal tube with holes near the bottom to admit air, a movable 
collar to regulate the air flow, a stopcock to control the gas, and a short 
pipe at the bottom, connected to a rubber hose, to carry the gas from its 
source to the burner.
      While Bunsen invented or improved numerous pieces of laboratory 
equipment, the Bunsen burner was not his invention, but rather a laboratory 
tool he popularized to such an extent that it became linked to his name. 
Two inventions that were properly his and rightly bear his name are the 
Bunsen cell that converts chemical energy into electrical energy and the 
Bunsen photometer that measures the intensity of a light source.
      After taking his doctorate in chemistry at the University of 
Göttingen, Bunsen taught at the universities of Marburg and Breslau and 
elsewhere. As a professor at Heidelberg (1852-99), he built up an excellent 
school of chemistry. Never married, he lived for his students, with whom he 
was very popular, and his laboratory. He chiefly concerned himself with 
experimental and analytical work.
      Early in Bunsen's career he found an antidote to arsenic poisoning, 
but at great personal cost --  losing the sight in one eye from an 
explosion and nearly killing himself from arsenic poisoning. His studies of 
the gaseous products of blast furnaces showed considerable waste of heat 
and led him to develop efficient methods of measuring volumes of gases and 
cutting down heat losses. In this connection he went to Iceland where he 
studied their geysers and explained their workings. He was the first to 
obtain magnesium in the metallic state and study its physical and chemical 
properties, demonstrating the brilliance of the flame when magnesium is 
burned in air, an effect of later importance in photography.
      Perhaps his highest achievement is one he shares with his younger 
associate, Gustav Robert Kirchhoff. Working together they invented the 
technique of spectrum analysis and almost immediately discovered two new 
elements, caesium and rubidium.

      [To find a library copy of Wilhelm Ostwalds' biography of Bunsen, 
visit RLG's RedLightGreen service at <http://tinyurl.com/6rsza> or if you 
want to brush up your chemistry with "The Idiot's Guide to Chemistry" go to 
<http://tinyurl.com/6c4gj>. Note: We donate all revenue from our book 
recommendations to adult literacy programs.]

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