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Wright Brothers Anniversary A Flop; Great High Tech Gift Ideas; Genetically Engineered Glofish Banned In California

Aired December 20, 2003 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, everybody, I'm Daniel Sieberg. Today on NEXT@CNN, celebrating 100 years of human flight, how things didn't go quite as planned at the anniversary party in Kittyhawk, but modern glitches dramatize what it took for the Wright brother get airborne.

Also some help for procrastinators. If you're still looking for those cool techy holiday gifts, well, we have some suggestions.

And its opening weekend for the third and last "Lord of the Rings" movie. We'll get a behind the scenes look at just how they do some of those amazing special effects. All that and more on NEXT.

Astronauts, movie stars, and a president, as well as thousands of people who just love flying all gathered in Kittyhawk, North Carolina, this week, to honor the first powered human flight. Wednesday was the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers' achievement and the festivities brought reminders it's not that easy to get off the ground. Miles O'brien was there.

MILES O'BRIEN (on camera): Today, the goal is to recreate that flight with a nearly exact replica -- actually, exact replica, of the 1903 flyer. So far, the weather has not cooperated. 100 years ago at this time, the weather was just perfect. They had a nice headwind, which allowed the underpowered craft to take flight.

(voice-over): This was a very marginal aircraft. It had a 12 horsepower engine. You probably are have a lawn mower with more heft than that, and as a result it needed a fairly stiff headwind. In other words, an assist from mother nature creating some wind over the wings in order to get off the ground.

Right now the wind is doing better, but we need at least ten miles an hour, we're told, for it to get off the ground.

All right, here we go. It looks like -- there they start the engines. Let's listen to them start those the engines. It sounds a little bit like a leaf blower or a weed whacker.

Down the rails it goes. Oh!

That moment there was kind of exciting. And it also reminds us of how many times they failed which we don't know as much about. (on camera): Now Joining me who was watching this with as much interest as anybody here, Amanda Wright Lane, who is the great grandniece of Orville and Wilbur Wright and who has spent the last year representing the Wright family all over this country. Is it disappointing to see that? Or is that's what everybody expected in a sense.

AMANDA WRIGHT LANE, GRANDNIECE OF WRIGHT BROS.: Well, actually, if you know Wright history, they actually attempted this on December 14 and Uncle Will crashed. So, this is appropriate today. They took a day to repair the airplane on the 15th. The 16th, the weather was so bad they couldn't try again. So the 17th was it. And they pretty much told each other, that if they didn't fly on the 17th, they'd give it up and go home for Christmas.

O'BRIEN: And that would have been it for that year. That would have been the end of the season, if you will, and they would have come back, or maybe who knows what would have happened. History could have written another story entirely couldn't they?

LANE: Exactly.

O'BRIEN: All right. Amanda Wright Lane, thank you so much for being with us.

SIEBERG: In case you're wondering, you can find links for more information about the Wright brothers' anniversary and other stories in our show on our Web site, that's at CNN.com/next.

While history buffs celebrated the Wright brothers, some aviation pioneers on the other coast were making progress on their current project. A rocket plane called Spaceship I broke the sound barrier in its first powered flight on Wednesday. The plane is being developed by designer Burt Rutan.

The goal is to make sub orbital space flights 62 miles above Earth. Rutan's company says, this is the first manned supersonic flight by a small private company. Now Spaceship I had a problem on landing and did slide off the runway, but the company says the damage will be easy to fix.

Well, speaking of fixing, electronic voting was supposed to be the answer to those hanging chads and butterfly ballots that caused chaos in the 2000 presidential election. But is it working?

Just this week, election officials in the state of Washington proposed some new legislation that would require electronic voting machines have a paper audit trail. But experts all over the country are discovering e-votes are not a magic bullet.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The voter inserts the card here press to make selections, press the cast ballot button.

SIEBERG (voice-over): If only it were that easy. Electronic voting has become a hotbed of debate. And hWith less than a year before the presidential election, many technical experts have deep- rooted concerns. In particular, security and the lack of a paper trail.

Players on many sides of the thorny issue gathered recently at the headquarters of the National Institute of Standards and Technology or Nist in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Under the Help America Vote Act of 2002, NIST plays a key role in improving voting systems by 2006. So, what about next year? Well, Harvard University's Rebecca Mercury says, it doesn't look good.

REBECCA MERCURI, HARVARD: Really, 2006, I think, before we're really going to start to see equipment that actually is more updated with updated standards.

SIEBERG: The main reason is because certifying and implementing electronic voting machines can best be described as Byzantine and Bureaucratic. Any changes to the federal standards could take months, if not years to put into place.

MERCURI: It is confusing. And the main concerns that I have is that many local election officials, all the way on up, are confused by this.

SIEBERG: NIST, along with other technical groups and advisers are now updating those high tech guidelines, hoping to give states and counties and voters more confidence.

Well, following the debacle in 2000 with the hanging chads in Florida, many counties across the country decided to purchase some new machines, some high tech machines like the ones on display behind me. Many political observers say they jumped the gun.

DONETTA DAVIDSON, COLORADO SECR. OF STATE: We are recommending to the counties that they do not buy equipment right now until we have standards that that have been sest by the NIST group.

SIEBERG: This agency has been looking at electronic voting for decades, which is partly why Congress turned to them for guidance. But NIST cannot enforce those recommendations.

ARDEN BEMENT, DIR. NIST: I want to stress that NIST is a nonregulatory agency and we recognize that our role is limited. It is essential that we be in close contact with a variety of interested parties.

SIEBERG: But with at least three reported flaws in electronic voting just this year, casting a shadow on the casting of votes...

MERCURI: No one appears to be held accountable. Officials are not removed from their post, fined or sent to trial. Vendors are not banned from participation, equipment is not recalled.

SIEBERG (on camera): Well, clearly some harsh criticisms being leveled against electronic voting and a bill now in Congress would require all machines to produce a voter verified paper trial. It's designed as a backup in case of any sort of malfunction or irregularity. But even if passed, it's not sure if the measure could prompt such changes in time for the 2004 election. Basically, don't hold your breath.

ANNOUNCER: Coming up, we'll tell you why the harmless looking fish are banned from some pet stores and one entire state. And why people still want them in their tanks.

And later in the show, Hubble's not the only space telescope out there. We'll see some new images from another one of what NASA calls its great observatory.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: If you have a reservation to ride your snow mobile through Yellowstone or Grand Teton National Park this winter, you might need to make new plans. Tuesday, a federal judge ruled the Bush administration could not kill a Clinton era plan phasing out snow mobiles in the parks. The plan is designed to reduce air pollution and it allows for fewer than 550 snow mobiles in the parks per day, all under guided tours. The Bush Administration would have allowed more than 1,100 and the riders could go in on their own. Next winter, no snow mobiles will be allowed in the parks at all under the new rules.

The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing new rules on mercury pollution from coal fired power plants. The plan would give some up to 15 years to install new technology to reduce mercury emissions and it would allow plants who meet targets to sell pollution credits to other plants that don't meet the targets. The EPA says the proposal would strengthen Clean Air Act regulations, but environmentalists say the proposal is too weak and would prompt industry to slow down research and development of new mercury reduction techniques.

Well, the first genetically engineered pet is set to hit the market nationwide next month. But even though this critter is glowing, not all the reviews are. Rusty Dornin explains.

RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Take your average aquarium zebra fish add a gene from a sea anenome and you get one fish two fish redfish new fish. And that new fish glows in the dark, at least under a black light.

glofish first developed by researchers in Asia to fluoresce in the presence of environmental toxins.

ALAN BLAKE, YORKTOWN TECHNOLOGIES: We became aware of the fish developed to fight pollution and decided to try to share our fish with the public.

DORNIN: On sale now, says Yorktown Technologies, but the state of California says glofish no fish. While state biologists state the fish pose no environmental or health risks, the Fish and Game Commission didn't want to set a precedent. Commissioner Sam Shoechat says genetically altering animals for scientific research is fine, but he says what's next, pigs with wings?

SAM SCHUCHAT, CA. FISH AND GAME COMM.: We're not comfortable with the idea of moving genes from one species to another for no public benefit, simply to create a pet that people will want to buy.

DORNIN: But you can't buy them at two of the nation's largest pet stores, Petco and PetSmart. "Anything genetically engineered we don't want to be involved in," say Petco officials. But a smaller, like Tatao Lua says, he would have sold them.

Are you upset that they're banned in California?

TATAO LUA, ALL ABOUT FISH, ETC: Not really, because my view is it's more of a temporary thing, it's a fad. When people get used to it, it's just another fish.

DORNIN (on camera): Would you be interested in buying, if you ahead a fresh water tank, a fish that glowed in the dark?

VICTORIA RODMAN, CUSTOMER: Yes, definitely, but I would want to think a little more critically, about the repercussions of that.

DORNIN: While it may be forbidden fish in California, some aquarium lovers are already trying to figure out ways to get a glofish in their tank.

LUA: I have at least one customer who says, I'm going to search for that.

DORNIN (voice-over): Which might not be too hard, because 49 other states have not banned the glofish. Is it fated to sink and never swim in California? Company officials say they plan to float their fish before the state's Fish and Game Commission again in February.

SIEBERG (on camera): Well, keeping with sea creatures, Canada's Fisheries Department is trying to protect North Atlantic White Whales from being hit by ships. But it's turning out to be more difficult than expected. The plan was to put siren-like alarms on freighters to scare the wales into keeping a safe distance, but scientists found the alarm made the whales rush to the surface and then lurk just below the surface, where they're in much more danger of being hit. Officials say more research is need to do find a sound that will make the animals leave an area without disrupting their lives completely.

OK, Here's a wildlife story for you. This deer walks into a subway station. I know it sounds like a joke, but it's not. It happened in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., this month. And the security camera video was released this week.

The deer strolled down the escalator, loped along the platform, then jumped on the tracks, luckily avoiding the third rail. Hey, I didn't see him pay a fair right away. Then he headed off into the woods.

ANNOUNCER: Up next, we'll show you a few of the coolest high tech gifts on sale this season.

DAVID KIRKPATRICK, "FORTUNE": We've all come to rely on e-mail for more and more parts of our lives, personal and work related. However, even as our reliance has been growing, the percentage of messages coming to us that we don't want to see is also growing. It costs almost nothing to send spam. You can buy a mailing list for maybe 100 bucks and you can send out a million messages. And if you get 5,000 responses, you can make money.

I think the most important way to fight spam is with software. To, you know, let technology fight technology. And with education. To help people figure out how not to encourage more spam to come to them. But there's going to certainly be a role for law, whether we like it or not.

There will always be some degree of spam problem, I suspect, but wy I would strongly predict three to five years from now, this won't be anywhere near the kind of problem it is today.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: If you still have some holiday gifts to buy, you may be getting a little frantic at this point, counting down the days. We're here to help. Sean Callebs got some expert advice on good choices for the tech heads on your list.

SEAN CALLEBS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): It's holiday season. If you're looking for stocking stuffers and your pockets are stuffed full of cash, you've come to the right place. We have some of the hottest high tech items that are out there. They may not be the newest, but they are perhaps, the most cool.

Joining us now to talk more about it is Janice Chen. She is the editor of C-net.com reviews. Thanks for joining us here today. We have a good list.

Let's get through some of this. MP3 players, they have been out for some time, but these have become so light and they can do so much now.

JANICE CHEN, C-NET.COM: These two are from Rio and they're a great gift because everybody's been doing the MP3s and listening to music. These are new models from them.

This one is the Rio Cali and it comes with 256 megabytes of memory so you can play four hours of music and it has a stop watch. As you can see, it's a sporty design and pretty rugged. So it's good for people who are into athletics and want to take their music with them. It only uses a single AAA battery and lasts for 16 to 18 hours.

CALLEBS: And it's reasonably priced too nowadays. This is about $200?

CHEN: Exactly, about $200 and really, really lightweight so it's a really great traveling option.

CALLEBS: And we have another one. It's a little bit less expensive. And tell me the differences, what makes this one perhaps more attractive to some people? CHEN: It would be definitely the price and alsoing that, you know because it's lower in price, though, it has less memory and you'd have a shorter amount of play time. But some people don't need four hours of music.

CALLEBS: Let's move on to the PDA. I like this, because I travel a decent amount. It has a lot of games as well. So, if you're looking to give somebody, perhaps, the present that he or she wouldn't sink $400 in, this seems like it could make a great gift.

CHEN: Right, this is the Tapwire Zodiac II and it's more than a PDA. It's a handheld gaming device. So it would compete with something like a Gameboy Advance. It actually has more advanced game play and a better screen and high resolution screen.

CALLEBS: Call up some of the games on these screens, just to show people what we're talking about. Here's a popular game, Bejeweled.

CHEN: This is one of the nicest screens, because it's high resolution and has a graphics accelerator in it, so you'd be able to play some of the really good games on it. But also, works really, really well as a PDA. So as a palm PDA. And we found the menus to be very intuitive and a nice design.

CALLEBS: Perhaps drawbacks, not that many games out now?

CHEN: Exactly. With any of these gaming devices the proof is in how many people develop games for it, because if you own a device, you want to have as many games as possible. This launched with a handful of games, but there will be more coming out. We'll see if the best ones come out and people get into it.

CALLEBS: OK, we have a digital camera here again Panasonic.

CHEN: That's right. It's a Panasonic SV-AS10. What's really great about this is that it's not just a digital camera, plays MP3s and you can record video. It's so thin and light. It's a 2 megapixel camera. So some people might not want it as their dedicated camera, because of what -- you're limited in how big you can blow up your photos. So you really only use it for a web-based photos, e-mails or if you're printing out snapshots at 4x6.

CALLEBS: And it has headphones for the MP3 player.

CHEN: That's right.

CALLEBS: We have to move on quickly to look at the video goggles. Now to me, these are fascinating and these are something that we may be on the cutting edge right now, perhaps if not this year, but next year. But this one this popular, but the video quality is not that great?

CHEN: These are definitely a new kind of -- a new trend. It's -- they're video glasses and you use them instead of a monitor. That means you wouldn't have to have your big home theater screen. You basically wear them and there's an LCD in them.

This one is a lower cost option. So they're more like $400 and they have only one -- they're monoculars so they only have one screen so you have to look at it with one eye or you'll get eye strain.

CALLEBS: Now this one, I understand it, has the equivalent of a 70-inch screen, but it's almost $1200.

CHEN: That's right, and because there are two LCD screens in there, you put them on, you have a very immersive environment and you also have headphones. You have you ooun own home theater you can walk around with.

CALLEBS: If you want to get more advice go to Cnet.com.

CHEN: That's right.

CALLEBS: OK. Janice Chen, thanks so much for joining us. And I hope this gives you some ideas for the holidays. I know, I have some new ideas

SIEBERG: While you're putting your wish list together, you can find links related to the products on our Web site at CNN.com/next.

Well, books are popular holiday gifts. But here's one that won't be stuffing any stockings. That's because it's 133 pounds. The "Guinness Book of Records" has declared it world's largest published book. It's the Ultimate Picture Book about the asian country about Bhutan. It contains a gallon of ink and enough paper to cover a football field.

Now someone just needs to create the world's largest book shelf. The big book goes for big bucks at $10,000. The author says he's received a couple of dozen orders. In case you're wondering, the money goes to charity.

ANNOUNCER: When we come back, creatures on the ocean floor may hold the key to curing some deadly diseases. We'll go underwater to see how scientists collect them.

And later in the program, it takes modern wizardry to make the new "Lord of the Rings" movie work. We'll show you how some of the magic is done.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(NEWS BREAK)

DANIEL SIEBERG, HOST: Well, the plants and animals that live on the ocean floor, they aren't just eye candy for scuba divers. They may one day provide a cure for some cancers. Femi Oke reports on a scientific voyage to capture some secrets of the deep.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FEMI OKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is a voyage of scientific discovery. It's a mission to explore strange new deep sea organisms to seek out new life in the ocean that can be used to save lives on land.

These pioneering scientists are from the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, a not-for-profit research group based in Florida. Most of their time is spent working in laboratories, searching for chemicals to cure human diseases. But, a few times a year, they take a very expensive cruise and go diving, and it's all part of the job.

(on camera): The "Stewart Johnson II" (PH) has been sailing off the coast of the Bahamas for the last two weeks. It is beautiful out here, but this isn't a pleasure cruise, this is strictly business. Scientific business, because somewhere in this ocean could be a cure for pancreatic cancer, perhaps a chemical that might shrink a tumor, or even kill cancer cells. And, this is what biomedical marine research is all about, looking for medicine under the sea.

(voice-over): First, let me show you discodermia, it's a deep water sponge that contains a compound that can kill cancer cells. It's already being used in human clinical trials and, if all goes well, it could be on the market in the next few years.

Onboard the ship, the communications desk keeps track of the sub, which appears on the computer screen as a small blue fish.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Temperatrue is 21.95 degrees, 21.95 degrees.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Visibility is about 70 feet, 7-0 feet.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And stand by for the current.

CAPTAIN GEORGE, "STEWART JOHNSON II": San Salvador...

OKE: Finding a cure for cancer is a group effort. Captain George plans the route, trying to keep the scientists on course for the dives they've planned.

(on camera): Do you pay any attention to what the scientists are doing?

None whatsoever. I'm always interested in looking at the video that they come up with, and, you know, it's a big ocean and anything's possible with what they recover.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 50 feet, surface in sight. Surface looks clear. There we go. OKE (voice-over): Every dive is greeted with enthusiasm. Normally, the scientists work with preserved samples, but for a few days they get to see the marine life they've been studying in its natural environmental. Up close and still in one piece, but not for long. The change in pressure and temperature means whatever has been collected has to be sorted immediately. This sponge is being studied to see if it can beat pancreatic cancer. With potential like this, no wonder chief scientist John Reed is so enthused. JOHN REED, CHIEF SCIENTIST: I'm like a kid in a candy shop. It's like exploration, I don't know what I'm going to see, each dive is new and different, whether it's scuba dive, or submersible dive. If I'm in the sub, I've got my face jammed against the class. We've collected about 220 organisms; different species from sponges to sea fans to algae, sea weeds.

OKE: And there's been a surprise find. A rare and elusive sponge found 19 years ago is rediscovered during the trip. It's already causing a stir because early tests indicate it has extremely potent anti-cancer properties.

Mission accomplished for stage one. Now it's back to Harbor Branch's high tech headquarters in Florida where the long, arduous tasks begin.

Jane Thompson is a molecular biologist; she's compiling a list of sponge DNA so it's easier to study. Like many of her colleges, her assignment is going to take years.

JANE THOMPSON, MOLECULAR BIOLOGIST: I want to get of my DNA within the size range 40 kb, so I will take it through a few steps to make sure...

OKE, (on camera): Do you like the way I nodded, as if I knew what 40 kb was.

THOMPSON: It's 40,000 (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

OKE: 40 kb, hmm, indeed.

(LAUGHTER)

OKE: I was faking it, Jane, I'm sorry.

THOMPSON: Well, you're good at that.

OKE (voice-over): Also faking it, rather more convincingly, is Dr. Allan Duckworth. He's trying to grow sponges in the lab, using some of the discodermia brought back from the Bahamas. The aim is to artificially produce the drug commercially without stripping the sponge from its natural environment. But, this experimental kind of drug research is not cheap. Ten days at sea costs about a quarter of a million dollars. The feeling here, though, is that it's money well spent.

DR. AMY WRIGHT, MARINE BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH DIRECTOR: If I could spend a couple thousand dollars for a drug that dept my father alive for a few more years, I would certainly have paid that money.

(AUDIO MISSING)

OKE: if one brief trip to the Bahamas is any indication the potential for developing major drugs and cures in the future is truly exciting, as is any new voyage of discovery.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Well, another kind of underwater research is going on in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Divers there are studying the wreck of the "USS Arizona," looking for ways to preserve what remains of ship where more than 1,000 crewmen died in the Japanese attack in 1941. Frank Buckley reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's been 62 years since the sinking of the "USS Arizona," and it is still there, in just a few feet of water, just through this porthole to the past.

Here the signs of everyday life -- a phone, a uniform still hanging where a sailor placed it just so -- still speak to the loss of so many lives.

DAVE CONLIN, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE UNDERWATER ARCHAEOLOGIST: Each of the things that we see on the wreck reminds us that there was 1,177 individuals that died.

BUCKLEY: But, it is the effort to keep the story of the "USS Arizona" alive that brings these divers.

CONLIN: This is our robot submarine.

BUCKLEY: From the Underwater Resources Center of the National Park Service in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to the waters of Pearl Harbor.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Men were standing on these tile floors, this is an area that they would have been eating, cooking, December 7.

BUCKLEY: The park service is documenting how well the ship is holding up after six decades under water. These images, deep within the ship, providing clues about corrosion within the Arizona.

(on camera) Those interior views of Arizona are made possible by this remotely operated vehicle, but this ROV is more than a camera carrier, it also delivers this probe, designed to take scientific measurements inside the ship that are as important as the images.

(voice-over) The findings will help the park service to predict how long Arizona will remain intact.

MATT RUSSELL, USS ARIZONA PRESERVATION PROJECT: Sending the ROV inside of the ship is not just to take compelling pictures, but is to gather important scientific data so that we can help preserve the ship.

BUCKLEY: So that the "USS Arizona" can continue to speak to generations to come.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Coming up, meet a man who has made it his life's work to stamp out spam. And still ahead, there's a new telescope on the block and it looks at celestial sights in a different way.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: While Santa is checking his list for naughty boys and girls, a man on a houseboat in England is checking his for spammers. Robyn Curnow, has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBYN CURNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This Christmas, you're likely to get more spam than presents under the tree. Unsolicited e-mails clogging your inbox, hawking Viagra, cheap credit, or porn. Hackers and spammers rubbing their hands in glee as they stuff our e-mail with junk. But, here on the wintry banks of London's River Thames, this man, Steve Linford, is leading a global battle against spam and the people who send it.

The top floor of his house boat, his war room. For spammers, Steve Linford is the Christmas Grinch.

STEVE LINFORD, SPAMHAUS.ORG: Span is a total heft of your time, of your resources, of your computers, disks, of everything, and you should not have to deal with anything that you did not ask for.

CURNOW: E-mail users are dealing with tidal waves of spam. Linford saying 70 percent of e-mails are junk. But, he knows where and from whom most of it comes.

LINFORD: They're from his house in Detroit, Michigan, he has a net -- a connection directly through to Beijing, and all of his spam goes out from Beijing through proxy machines all over the world.

CURNOW: Linford has spam detectives positioned around the world, a team on the front line of the spam wars.

LINFORD: We have a team of 16 investigators who spend their time chasing around after spammers, finding out where the spammers have moved to, where they're moving to next and so forth.

CURNOW: Their data base is available for free on Linford's website, spamhaus.org which also distributes a spam blocking system.

LINFORD: The 160 million users around the world have their e- mail protected by us, and these users include a lot of government facilities, a lot of U.S. governments, things like NASA, the U.S. Navy. There's a lot of military stuff, as well. Most of the major universities around the world.

CURNOW: A mission, that Linford says, is being hindered mistakenly by new U.S. anti-spam legislation due in early 2004, that gives consumers a right to opt out of unsolicited e-mail.

LINFORD: What this act says is that 23 million U.S. business can all start spamming you straight away and you, by law, have to respond to every single spammer and ask to be taken off his list. By using whatever mechanism the spammer instructs you to.

CURNOW: Prepared for fresh battles in the new year in a conflict that gets more and more dangerous. Spam is barraging spasmhaus.org with internet viruses and worse.

LINFORD: Some of threats have been very, very serious. Many of them say things like, "the next package you open will blow you out of the country." We get phone calls from spammers saying, "get out of your house now we're coming to shoot you, we've coming to cut your throats."

CURNOW: But, Linford says the threats don't shatter the piece of his London base or his commitment.

(on camera): Floating back there, the unlikely command center on the frontline of the cyber war. A fight for the future of e-mail Steve Linford says, and the way we communicate over the internet.

(voice-over): Defending the flow of information in cyberspace from London's idyllic waterways.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Coming up, we'll tell you about a new way to study asteroids, and the high school stood the who invented it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: One of NASA's orbiting telescopes has a new name and a new claim to fame. The telescope launched in August was previously known as the "Space Infrared Telescope Facility" or SIRTF. From now on, you call it the Spitzer Telescope named after astrophysicist, Lyman Spitzer, who proposed a large-faced telescope almost 60 years ago. It's the fourth and last of NASA's great observatories joining the Hubble Space Telescope, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Each one uses different wave lengths and instruments to study the universe. New images released this week, from the orbiting Spitzer, give an infrared picture without the distortion in the atmosphere.

Well, the Lyman Spitzer's and Edwin Hubble's for the 21st century may already be gazing at the stars and making discoveries. One candidate, a high school senior in Connecticut.

Peter Viles has her story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PETER VILES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): One of the great mysteries of space, asteroids, millions of mini planets. But, how many are close to the earth and just how close are they? Meet the high school senior who's finding out. Lisa Glukovsky of New Milford, Connecticut, daughter of Russian immigrants, is lucky. There's an observatory just a few steps from her public high school.

LISA GLUKHOVSKY, HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT: I find astronomy incredibly exciting especially because there's so much left to discover. VILES: But, she is also brilliant and she does not give up. For a science project, she set out to measure the distance to near-Earth asteroids. Her theory, if she could view the same asteroid at the same instance from two observatories, she could create a giant triangle, and then using geometry, could calculate the distance to the asteroid. She spent months working out the math, then used the Internet to link observatories in Denmark, the Netherlands, and California, but then it took even more time, eight months in all, to see if her system really worked. GLUKHOVSKY: There was an earthquake in California in the fall of -- in the fall of the year that I started my project. There were also forest fires in California, and I think the worst problem was the bad weather that occurred. VILES: But then, finally the weather cleared, the images came by e-mail, and lo and behold, the system did work. GLUKHOVSKY: I wasn't going to give up. But it just -- it takes a lot of patience and perseverance. VILES: Lisa's measurements of asteroids that are 11 million kilometers from Earth proved to be remarkably accurate. MONTY ROBSON, SOCIETY FOR AMATEUR SCIENTISTS: Right now, it's an amazing feat that as a high school student, she was able to do this. So, I think it's just amazing that she had the fortitude to carry it through and to make such an important and winning project. VILES: The scientists at Intel agreed. They gave Lisa their highest award for young scientists, and a $50,000 scholarship. She won another scholarship from the United States Navy and Marine Corps, and hopes to attend college in New England. (END VIDEOTAPE) ANNOUNCER: Coming up, how do you make a battle scene look realistic when it includes 50-foot elephants? We'll show you some of the technology behind the new "Lord of the Rings" movie.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: A big film phenom this weekend, which you've probably heard by now, is the third installment of the "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King." Now, we're not saying that just because the movie was produced by one of our sister Time-Warner companies, New Line Cinema. Theater goers and critics alike are heaping praise on the movie, like a Hobbit heaps food on his plate as a second breakfast. As Renay San Miguel reports, technology deserves a lot of credit for the acclaim.

RENAY SAN MIGUEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): That (UNINTELLIGIBLE) may not have passed, but legions of "Lord of the Rings" fans are passing through theaters this week to see the return of the king. The final installment of the trilogy.

The first two films have grossed close to $2 billion at box offices worldwide.

PETER JACKSON, DIRECTOR: Several years ago we thought about making "Lord of the Rings" here we are three years later, we've done it. SAN MIGUEL: All three films were shot at the same time and Peter Jackson, even with cast and crew of thousands, would not have been able to do it without the help of some serious movie making magic.

JIM RYGIEL, SPECIAL EFFECTS: With our digital technology, you can create creatures and -- for instance Gollum, and -- you know, start to make the digital creature act almost like an actor.

SAN MIGUEL: Gollum came to life, in large part, thanks to the voice and talent of actor Andy Serkis, whose performance created Oscar buzz last year.

ANDY SERKIS, "GOLLUM": I mean it is a hybrid between acting and animation. It's just that -- what's difficult about any kind of categorization about awards or anything like that is really where the actor's performance begins and ends.

SAN MIGUEL: The performance, along with the films award winning use of computer animation allowed Serkis to blur the lines between virtual and real-life characters.

So, what does Gollum have in store for "Return of the King?"

SERKIS: Gollum has of skin takes too (PH), and he has more -- he has more muscles, actually, we developed more nuance and expressiveness in his face, and so he actually delivers a bit of a performance in "Return of the King."

SAN MIGUEL: The film's creators say in the third film, advances in technology changed more than just Andy Serkis' face. Motion caption, a process that allows animators to input real life movements into their computers through a digital suit lined with sensors, helped to make the scenes more powerful than ever.

JACKSON: We've used, for some of the big horse charges, we've used 250 real horses. And back in -- four years ago when we were shooting it and we thought that, you know, 250 horses ought to be impressive on a screen, and when we came to work on the film this year, we thought, "Oh, you know what? Let's use all out of computer technology and let's just put a few more horses on." So, we added a few more thousand horses to shots we never thought were going be effect shots four years ago.

SAN MIGUEL: With the help of technology something happened that the film makers did not intend. They speak about Middle Earth as though it was a real place. A place they have been to.

RYGIEL: 2000,000 Orcs 6,000 horses colliding with the Orcs. Mamakils (PH), which are the big 50-foot elephants, sort of charging in and mingling with the horses and taking horses out and -- you know, the combination of live action horses and digital horses and...

SAN MIGUEL: So, with the lines between fantasy and reality now clearly blurred, "Return of the King" means to take you on an approximately three-and-a-half hour adventure through Middle Earth. Will you be able to resist the temptation of the one ring? (END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: We're about out of time, but before we go, here's a peek at what's coming up next week.

As 2004 approaches, we'll look back at the year gone by. We'll update some stories we told you about and tell you about some things you may have missed on the SciTech beat in the crush of other news. And, we'll replay some of our favorite pieces.

That's coming up on NEXT. Of course, we'd love to hear from you. You can send us an e-mail, that's at NEXT@CNN.com. Thanks so much for joining us. For all of us, I'm Daniel Sieberg. We'll see you next time.

END

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