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Technology Assists Scientists With Tracking Wild Animals; Cell Phone Cameras Banned?; Email Helped Capture Saddam Hussein

Aired January 3, 2004 - 15:04   ET

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

DANIEL SIEBERG, ANCHOR, NEXT@CNN: Hi, everybody, I'm Daniel Sieberg. Today on NEXT@CNN, skill the trackers can find subtle clues to what wild animals are up to in the woods and now technology makes that information more useful to scientists.
Also, cell phones with cameras may be lots of fun, but they have a dark side, too. Do we need laws to protect us from candid cameras?

And can snowboarders and skiers really get a better workout on a carpeted treadmill than a snow-covered mountain? All that, and more on NEXT.

SIEBERG: We begin our first program of 2004 with a high-tech angle on a story bound to dominate headlines for months to come, the capture of Saddam Hussein. The U.S. forces that did it had help from a communications system that lets troops talk without making noise. Alphonso Van Marsh reports from Iraq.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALPHONSO VAN MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): U.S. Army Command Sergeant Major (LAUGHTER)wrence Wilson is e-mailing orders to troops as they travel in a convoy in central Iraq.

LAWRENCE WILSON, CMD. SERGEANT MAJOR, U.S. ARMY: Keep your eyes on the road. I'm typing something, OK?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right.

VAN MARSH: While Palm Pilots, wireless Internet service, text messaging are commonplace in many industrialized nations, Iraq is not one of them. So the 4th Infantry Division here considers having a secure, instantaneous digital network to track troop movements and e- mailing battle plans as a technological wonder.

WILSON: We can also send log reports for -- log status for like equipment you need or personnel if you're short.

VAN MARSH: The Army calls the 4th I.D., the Digital Division, because it was the first army unit to go high tech to silently communicate in combat.

MIKE IACOBACCI, FIELD SERVICE REP. FIRST BRIGADE: This is a normal computer that you'd find in your house. What they've done is made it ruggedized or made it so they can put it in a Humvee or a Bradly or tank. VAN MARSH (on camera): While the digital technology allows division troops in the Humvees to communicate with each other, it's also designed to link up with a mini war room of sorts, called the Tactical Operations Center. Digital Technician Steve Jones says the system displays troop vehicles as blue symbols on war room computer screens, like on the simulated map.

STEVE JONES, DIGITAL SUPPORT ENGINEER: Instead of having a map that has to be updated every few hours, it's a real-time map that is continuously updated as the vehicles move. You can -- that way, the commanders can adjust the way they're fighting their battle.

VAN MARSH: But the Army digital battlefield can't replace the human factor.

COL. JAMES HICKEY, U.S. ARMY: At the core of it is a soldier that imagines what must be done, thinks through how to get it done, and then gets it done. The technology is simply an enabler.

VAN MARSH: An enabler may help save soldiers' lives.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: From the war zone to the deep forests of Western Africa, tools like computers and GPS locaters are being used in new ways not just by soldiers, but by wildlife researchers. A system called Cybertracker helps scientists make better use of the information gathered by veteran animal trackers. Gary Strieker has that story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY STRIEKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Deep in this African forest, creatures can easily hide from noisy intruders like us. They can hide, but they leave signs behind them. For experienced eyes, unmistakable evidence that they're here, all around us. And with a new high-tech tool, it's information fed into a database.

LEWIS LIEBENBERG, EXPERT ANIMAL TRACKER: Good enough feeding signs. These branches have been broken and bent over like this. The gorilla feeding, they sort of pull the grass in. And you can also see the direction of movement, by the direction of the branches are lying.

STRIEKER: In a forest like this, where it's often impossible to catch anything more than a fleeting glimpse of an animal, tracking is the only way to collect information on wildlife.

(on camera): A large part of tracking is not just noticing what's on the ground, but interpreting what you see.

LIEBENBERG: Yes, it involves interpreting tracks. Like you would want to know what the animal was doing. So, you'd be looking at the relative position of the tracks, which tells you whether it was walking slowly, whether it was running, fleeing from something.

The elephant would have been here before the leopard. STRIEKER: South African Lewis Liebenberg is an expert animal tracker, but he realized some years ago for purposes of research or management, collecting reliable wildlife observations from trackers just wasn't practical.

LIEBENBERG: Trackers would go to the forest and they'd come back to the base camp and maybe report a few significant sightings, but no -- with a vague idea of where it might have been, which would have had very little usefulness.

STRIEKER: That's why Liebenberg developed the Cybertracker, a handheld personal organizer with special software enabling trackers to enter their observations in the field. And because it's connected by satellite to a global positioning system, Cybertracker records exactly where and when observations are made.

LIEBENBERG: Cybertracker runs on any PDA with a PALM operating system and connected to a GPS. It's just a standard personal organizer that you can buy in any shop.

STRIEKER: When the tracker returns to base camp, perhaps after weeks alone in the field, all data collected in his Cybertracker is downloaded into a central computer, which interprets and displays his observations.

Wildlife managers and researchers can see on maps where the tracker has been and what he's seen. And that's essential information for this conservation project in the Gambia protected areas in Gabon.

BAS HUIJBREGTS, WORLDWIDE FUND FOR NATURE: Basically, the challenge is to get the data, which is already in the heads of all of us, park managers, local guards and local communities, to get their data out of their heads into a database which is accessible to others.

STRIEKER: Demaste Ekondzo was one of the first to use the technology in Congo's national parks. Now, he's training others across Africa.

DEMAST EKONDZO, CYBERTRACKER: The most difficult thing to learn about it is how to make yourself data base, what you would like to record on the film.

STRIEKER: After the software is customized with a database, a tracker can record what he sees in the field by using simple picture icons. What kind of animal? How many? Male or female? Doing what?

LIEBENBERG: The idea is for each screen that you go through, the icons and the number of options should be so self-evident that anybody, just by looking at the screen, would know which selection to make. It's really simple and easy to use.

GUY-ROSTAN NTEMEMBA, FOREST AGENT TRAINEE (through translator): It is easy to operate, because even if you don't understand the scientific information, it shows you pictures that will help you understand it.

STRIEKER: Cybertracker is so simple, virtually anyone can use it to collect field data for research.

LIEBERNBER: It can be done, people can't read and write, it can be accessed by people who are not technicians. And you can show it, visually, the same day when they come out of the forest.

STRIEKER (on camera): You can actually think of animal tracking as having been the origin of science, dating back to the evolution of the first modern humans. Cybertracker is a new technology that makes tracking more efficient, more useful to science today. The software is available to anyone, free online at the Cybertracker website, www.cybertracker.org.

Liebenberg says is been downloaded in more than 30 countries for many different kinds of research projects. That's only scratching the surface of this technology's full potential. He foresees a time soon when powerful units like these will contain vast digital guidebooks, accessible through simple picture icons, enabling thousands of ordinary people, even school children, to gather critical observations on their environment. All their Cybertrackers connected to Internet sites, monitoring the health of the entire planet.

ANNOUNCER: Coming up, we'll take a walk inside a molecule. Check out a new way of looking at the world. >

And later in the show, a new plan to bring wild bison back to the Canadian prairies.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Which would you rather do, read a book about France or take a walk on the streets of Paris? Pretty easy answer. Most of us would opt for being there. Scientists in Maryland say a new 3-D visualization tool makes things just as real as strolling through a neighborhood of atoms and molecules and is helping them good get in new perspective on their research.

You can think of it as the movie "Minority Report" come to life. I recently got a chance to dive into this unusual world.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JUDITH DEVANEY, NATL. INST. OF STANDARDS & TECHNOLOGY: As you click the left mouse button, you go through different views that show the paths of different molecules. If you come out, you can get a global view of what's happening with the hydrogen atoms and the water molecules.

SIEBERG (on camera): I see.

SIEBERG (voice over): This 3-D technology at NIST, the National Institute of Standards of Technology, takes virtual reality to a new level, it lets a scientists see how a theory might work in a big way.

DEVANEY: He can look around things. He can look over things, under things, walk around them, because he's actually in the visualization. Visualization enables you to get a lot of information quickly into your brain. And that is really why it's useful. And immersive visualization gives you something additional that all the spatial relationships that you can use to also get information into your brain.

SIEBERG: For me, this is information overload. But I guess for scientists, this is what they want.

(voice over): Researchers can wander through anything from groups of atoms, known as nano-structures, to the ingredients of concrete. They can also move the objects with a quick click on a remote to see how different materials interact.

Just how realistic is it? Well, Devaney says some people using this technology immersed near a cliff won't walk over the edge, even though they know they're standing on solid ground. Three tools give the brain this real feel, the big screens, the high-end 3-D glasses, and a head tracking device that puts the scientists inside the action.

STEVEN SATTERFIELD, NIST COMPUTER SCIENTIST: The scientists is so into their equations they have a gut feeling or intuitive feeling of what is in that research. It is like scientists will go, that's it. That's exactly what I was thinking. You ultimately produce better science because it's a collaboration.

SIEBERG: So, if you're the wizard, who is behind the screen?

SATTERFIELD: The behind the scenes of this immersive visualization system is a really just a rear-projection screen, and projected with a projector. It's a high-end projector that does stereo, that projects on to some mirrors. And to some extent it is the software that's the magic wizard that takes that projected image and translates it into the images that the scientists sees.

SIEBERG: NIST scientists are using the technology to studying materials called smart gels, these are liquids that can turn into gels when you shake them or change their temperature.

DEVANEY: Medically a tumor in your body is at a different temperature than your normal cells. If you put a material like that into the body and you can define the temperature at which it would gel, it would go there, gel, kill the tumor, and hopefully you'd be free of the tumor.

SIEBERG: These gels may also be used in shock absorbers, even exotic foods. Unfortunately, viewers at home cannot see all three dimensions, making my movements look, well, a little bit odd.

DEVANEY: It's like looking at a fishbowl. If you're in an immersive visualization, it's like being inside the fish bowl, with the fish at their scale.

SIEBERG: Except we don't have to swim.

DEVANEY: We don't have to swim. (END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: For more on this and other stories in our show, check out cnn.com/next.

ANNOUNCER: Did you make a New Year's resolution to get in better shape this year? When we come back, we'll show you some high-tech gadgets that might help.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Keeping up those new year's resolutions can be tough, even under the best of circumstances. But technology can make it a little more fun and a little easier to keep them up as you go along. Joining us now is consumer tech expert Marc Saltzman to help us out.

MARC SALTZMAN, CONSUMER TECH EXPERT: Hi, Daniel.

SIEBERG: Mark, we're obviously not wearing workout gear right now.

SALZTMAN: No, we're not going to break a sweat today. But you're right, though, it's hard to get the motivation sometimes, especially after the holiday season, after you've had lots of turkey and other good stuff.

We're going to look at some products that sort of marry the fitness products we're used to, but adding a little bit of a tech spin to it.

SIEBERG: We have Tom, here, our resident fitness expert.

Tom, thanks for helping us out.

SALTZMAN: Right.

SIEBERG: What does Tom, here -- it looks like a skipping rope, but it has a little more high-tech to it?

SALTZMAN: Right. It's actually the first skipping rope that's electric. Now, it's not going to do the skipping for you, but it will tell you either the number of rotations, and that's forward, backwards or cross -- Double-Dutch, I believe it's called -- or the number of calories burned if you're trying to keep track of that. That requires a little bit of information that you have to teach it first, such as your weight and whatnot.

SIEBERG: Well, Tom is obviously in better shape than either of us, so he'll demonstrate it here for us. It's portable too, obviously?

SALTZMAN: Absolutely.

SIEBERG: You can take it with you on a trip?

SALTZMAN: Wrap it up. There's no electrical wires inside the rope itself. It's in the handles so you can wrap it up nice and small. It's only 20 bucks, so it's good to keep with you in your bag. Shouldn't be too worried about losing it.

SIEBERG: Let's have a look at what Tom's readout is.

This is no workout for you at all, right?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not at all.

SALTZMAN: It's 48, pretty good. That way you can monitor what you're doing, refer back to it. For 20 bucks, it's a great product and very durable cord as well, even if you're doing it on cement. Good stuff. From a company called Tanita (ph), it is called the Healthy Jump.

SIEBERG: All right.

So, after you've been walking or skipping rope for 30 minutes or so you want to check your fitness progress. Marc, how does this fit in with all that?

SALTZMAN: This is a body fat monitoring scale, this is the glass model. It is also from Tanita, by the way. Not only will it measure your weight, but it will measure your body fat count.

What you need to do is you take off your socks and your shoes, stand on those two sensors there and it sends a safe electrical current throughout your body, based on the premise that current travels faster through lean muscle than body fat. And it comes up with a mathematical reading. It's a actually a patented technology. Tanita started developing body-fat monitors for the medical community back in '92.

SIEBERG: I won't stand on it, but we'll bring Tom in again.

SALTZMAN: Bring Tom in again.

SIEBERG: We promise it is safe.

SALTZMAN: Yes, you shouldn't feel anything at all.

SIEBERG: So, it's calculating it now as he stands on it.

SALTZMAN: Right, it takes about 10 seconds or so. Gives you a readout. Will count down when it's almost finished. There we go. He'll step off and it will give him a body fat count. Wow, less than 10 percent, 9.6.

So, good thing it wasn't me, that's all I can say.

SIEBERG: That's all I can say, as well.

SALTZMAN: Other neat things to keep in mind, is it will also tell you what amount of calories you can ingest, per day, to maintain your desired weight or body fat percentage. If there's more than one person in the household who wants to use it, it has a memory function. And you can also refer back to past readouts to see if you're gaining weight.

SIEBERG: All right.

Marc, it seems like everybody at the gym these days has something strapped to their arm or something clipped to their waist.

SALTZMAN: That's what I hear.

SIEBERG: And we are at a gym, we're joined now by Taylor, who is going to help us out. Now, Taylor has something on her arm that's rather unique, right?

SALTZMAN: Right, this is a pedometer, so much like other pedometers, it will tell you the distance you've traveled and the number of steps you've taken. This is a talking pedometer. It is from Sharper Image, our friends at Sharper Image. Not only will it tell you -- we'll hear it in a minute -- it will actually tell you how far you've traveled, but it actually plays seven little songs as well. This is optional.

But it will go to the beat of your step, if you wear it on your waist. Or in Taylor's case, it's on her arm so she has a too accentuate those movements. And it will change the tempo of the song accordingly.

SIEBERG: I'm assuming it won't tell you to speed up, but actually get you to stop Taylor, we're going to just see how you measured up here. I know it wasn't much of a workout.

SALTZMAN: Let's press the talk button.

ELECTRONIC DEVICE: You have walked 20 steps.

SALTZMAN: So, it's a little gadget, it weighs less than an ounce, and it's 20 bucks from Sharper Image. You can learn more about it at Sharperimage.com.

SIEBERG: All right, 20 steps. I guess you'll want to finish your workout somewhere else. Taylor, thanks for joining us.

I'm starting to feel kind of lazy with these active people around. So, we'd better get out of here. Mark Saltzman, consumer tech expert, thanks for joining us.

SALTZMAN: Thanks, Daniel.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Coming up could a chemical used on playground equipment and backyard decks be hazardous to your health?

And later, meet a 20-year-old inventor who has come up with a device that gives deaf people a new way to communicate.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) DANIEL SIEBERG, HOST: Welcome back to NEXT@CNN. Well, from decks and picnic tables to piers and docks. For over 70 years, many of those structures have been made from wood treated with a chemical containing arsenic. Well, this week marks the phase out of all residential uses of the chemical. Brian Cabell explains.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIAN CABELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For decades, playground equipment and decks have been built with a preservative known as Chromated Copper Arsenic, or CCA, it contains arsenic, a carcinogen. The Environmental Protection Agency, according to a spokesman, has not determined that CCA treated wood poses significant risks to people, but there is evidence that there may be some elevated risks to children from long-term use. The lumber industry has agreed to the ban, but downplays the danger. A spokesman says, enough studies have been by the EPA and others that have shown that the arsenic exposure from wood treated with CCA is very small.

David Seitz, vice president of Playnation, a playground equipment builder, says they stopped using CCA treated wood a couple years ago.

CABELL (on camera): Was your company concerned about the possible health threats?

DAVID SEITZ, VP PLAYNATION: We're a consumer products company. So, what we do is listen to our customers.

CABELL (voice-over): The EPA has advice for home owners with CCA treated wood, keep food out of the contact with the wood, such as picnic tables. Children playing on the wood should wash hands before eating. Don't burn the wood and wear a dust mask, goggles, and gloves when working with it.

The ban on CCA treated wood applies only to homes and will still be allowed for commercial use. And while production of CCA wood for residential use stops at year's end, it will still be sold in stores until supplies run out. It'll be replaced by arsenic-free alternatives.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: The wood treatment industry says newer, safer chemicals will let them limit the use of CCA so commercial projects. They also say, however, that the new processes are almost 20 percent more expensive and that higher wood prices could follow.

A python captured in Indonesia is apparently the biggest snake ever kept in captivity. It's almost 49 feet long and weighs close to 1,000 pounds. The snake was caught last year, but just recently put on display. Previous record for the longest snake, in case you're wondering, is a mere 32 feet.

An orphaned baby elephant was airlifted to new home last week. Olly was found as a known lonely newborn three months ago and I can hear what you're saying, "Ah!" No one knows whether his mother abandoned him or was killed. He's been at a wildlife center in South Africa where he got food, medical care and the companionship of a baby rhinoceros. Now he's ready to hang out with other elephants and start learning the skills he'll need to return to the wild. There's an elephant rehabilitation center in Kenya that can offer all that, so Olly was packed into a shipping crate and flown to Kenya along with his care-giver. The center is a national park where Olly will be able to roam free, protected from poachers looking for ivory.

Well, more than 100 years ago wild Bison were wiped out by hunters and disease on the vast plains of the Northern U.S. and Southern Canada. Just a few by son herds remain farther north in Canada, but the Canadian prairies are about to hear the thunder of Bison herds again.

Mark Stevenson from the "CTV Network" reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARK STEVENSON, CTV NEWTWORK CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They once roamed North America by the millions. Herds so large, they shook the ground with Bison as far as the eye could see.

JOHN RILEY, NATURE CONSERVANCY OF CANADA: These were tens of miles long and tens of miles wide. These were huge herds.

STEVENSON: These days, the only wild Bison left are a few isolated herds like this one in Northern Alberta. But still, no wild prairie Bison anywhere on the Canadian prairie.

(on camera): Now, 150 years after wild Bison last roamed the prairie, the Bison are about to return.

(voice-over): They'll return to this, the 5,300 acre "Old Man on His Back Ranch" in Southern Saskatchewan where the native grass has never been turned under. And it's all because of Peter and Sharon Butala. They donated part of their land to the Nature Conservancy and dreamed that one day, the Bison would come home.

PETER BUTALA, RANCHER: I'd like to recreate a little bit of it, ey? That seems like it's going to happen.

STEVENSON: It happened in the early hours of the morning. 50 pure-bred baby bison, raised from a limited stock at Elk Island National Park near Edmonton, loaded and shipped 700 kilometers to Southern Saskatchewan. It all came down to this. A homecoming 150 years later in the dark. The next morning, everyone praising the return of the wild Bison, pure-bred and disease-free.

RILEY: And the special thing about this is we're bringing them back to the Canadian prairie. The treeless prairie.

STEVENSON: The Bison will not spend the next few months getting used to their new surroundings, set free in the spring. Conservationists hope the herd will remember how to survive on the prairie and hope, over time, it will grow to a few hundred animals. And though the Bison will never return to their former glory, Peter Butala hopes people will experience the Bison and the prairie the way they used to be.

BUTALA: It'll be just fun to see how they react to their freedom and stuff, I guess.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: When we come back, would you let your cell phone provider choose the person you marry? We'll meet some people who did.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: This week, China launched a research satellite in a joint project with the European Space Agency. The satellite was launched on a Long March rocket from a base in Southwestern China on Tuesday. It's one of a pair of satellites that will study the earth's magnetic fields. This is China's first collaboration with the ESA, but has been launching satellites on its own for more than 30 years. Thursday's launch was the 33rd success in a row for Long March rocket since one blew up shortly after liftoff in 1996.

Mobile phones keep offering more and more features from games to digital cameras to instant messaging. But finding you somebody to marry? Well, that may not be what you want your phone to do. But, for some couples in India, it's working out just fine. Suhasini Haidar has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUHASINI HAIDAR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ish Bajaj prepares for his wedding with an ancient Hindu prayer ceremony. Ish's marriage was arranged by his parents, as is the custom here, and he's met the woman he intends to spend his life with only four times, always surrounded by relatives.

It's so much more fun when the whole family's involved, he says.

In another part of town, his wife to be, Poonam, is being beatified, a typical Indian bride to the tips of her hennaed hands.

But, there's a technological twist to all the old fashion the festivities that's fast becoming a trend.

(on camera): Instead of going to the family priest to search for a soul mate, thousands are now going online, marching horoscopes and family backgrounds. Some others, simply message their mobile service provider.

(voice-over): Cellular companies are now the matchmakers with the most, as they jostle for a jab at India's 26 million cell phone users.

MANDEEP BHATIA, AIRTEL INDIA CELLULAR SERVICES: We want to make it a part of life. We want to make it that anything and everything is possible through phone.

HAIDAR: So, when Indian cell company, Airtel, announced a service where they matched bride and groom hopefuls, both Ish and Poonam signed up right away.

POONAM BAJAJ NEE THAPA, BRIDE (through translator): It was something new. I was really keen to try it. Now, it's like a dream come true.

HAIDAR: No shortcuts on conservative Indian courtship customs, though. Airtel messaged Ish and Poonam back a list of people who matched the personalities, but it was their parents who narrowed the list down. Once they approved, Ish and Poonam spoke and decided to marry. And as they tie the knot in Hindu tradition, the best part, say Ish and Poonam, is they no longer need the telephone to talk to each other. A match made in heaven, they say, arranged over cellular airwaves.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEGERG: Back in the U.S., some people aren't quite so starry- eyed about new cell phone technology, although others are rather enamored with it. The issue is phones that take pictures and how some people misuse them. Michael Okwu has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MICHAEL OKWU, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It looks so harmless, you've probably laughed at this.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Check this out, I'm sitting next to your new boyfriend.

OKWU: That Spring PCS commercial extolling the value of the latest "it" item, the camera phone.

KATHLEEN DUNLEAVY, SPOKESWOMAN SPRINT PCS: That is phenomenon that has taken off like nobody's business.

OKWU: Problems is, the popularity of the phones, six million in circulation and counting, now has some private institutions and legislators worrying about their misuse.

In Washington State, a man was charged with voyeurism after he allegedly slid a cell phone camera under a woman's skirt and took pictures while she shopped, pictures that can be downloaded on the internet. Web watchdogs say the phones have helped to refuel so- called "upskirt" and "downblouse" photography.

MICHAEL YEATER, REEBOK SPORTS CLUB, NEW YORK: When we realized that this technology was first coming out, it's something you have to take a strong stance on.

OKWU: At this sports club in Manhattan, and others like it, zero tolerance now, for cell phones of any kind in exercise and locker rooms. Camera phone manufacturers say:

DUNLEAVY: It's not the technology, it's how people are using it.

OKWU: But, in towns and villages across the country, lawmakers concerned about the public's privacy, are taking preemptive action. Des Peres, Missouri, an ordinance past in September bans taking photos of a partially unclothed person without consent.

Chicago, city council there considering a ban on camera-phones in public places where one would expect privacy, such as bathrooms, locker rooms, hospital changing rooms.

In the Elk Grove Park District outside Chicago, you can't use any kind of cell phone in park-owned restrooms, locker rooms and showers.

But, privacy lawyers say safeguarding the rights of unwitting subjects might tread on the rights of cell phone users, especially those who need cell phones in emergencies.

RICK FISCHER, PRIVACY ATTORNEY: You have to look at all of these rights and responsibilities and find the right balance.

OKWU: The dilemma of protecting the rights of the majority from the conduct of a few.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEGERG: Another privacy debate in Phoenix, where a middle school is testing a computer face recognition system that supporters say will help protect kids from sex offenders. But, critics are worried about whether it will really work.

Scott McGee from our affiliate KTVK has the story.

SCOTT MCGEE, KTVK CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): There are websites full of the faces of missing children and there are websites full of the faces of people convicted of abusing children. The question is, would you recognize any of those faces if you saw them at your child's school? Well, now you don't have to.

KEN KAPLAN, HUMMINGBIRD DEFENSE CONTRACTORS: From what I've seen, it's terrific

MCGEE: Ken Kaplan is with Hummingbird Defense Contractors, he's talking about the company's new face recognition system.

KAPLAN: First it captures -- identifies a face in the field on a computer frame, finds the borderline or perimeter of the face and then learns the nature of all of the things about that face that make it unique.

MCGEE: In this case, the databank will be filled with pictures of the state's registered sex offenders, plus all of the missing children and suspected kidnappers in the country.

SHERIFF JOE ARPAIO, MARICOPA COUNTY, ARIZONA: Every kid has to go to school. If we find one kid, one, it's worth it.

MCGEE: And here's the system in action. First, they input pictures, either mug shots, or in my case, video, at literally hundreds of different angles. (on camera): So, from now on, anytime I walk in front of this camera, the system will recognize my face in just a few seconds.

TOM HORNE, ARIZONA SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION: There my be predators that come into schools, and I think parents are very anxious that they not come into schools, or if they do that we catch them.

MCGEE: When that happens, an alert is sent to 9-1-1 operators who notify law enforcement to investigate. Faces not on those lists are not recognized and they're ignored by the system, but the idea is to get the system at all the county's 1,800 schools so school officials know everyone on school grounds belongs there.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Privacy advocates say they're worried because the system is unproven. You might remember a few years back, when police in Tampa, Florida, tried a facial recognition system then quietly gave up the experiment. Now, critics of the new effort in Arizona worry that innocent people could be incorrectly identified as sex offenders.

ANNOUNCER: Up next, we'll take you to a ski slope that never gets cold.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: If you want to practice skiing or snowboarding so you can look good on the mountain, but you don't enjoy getting cold and wet when you fall down, have we got a spot for you. Kristie Lu Stout takes us to the world's largest indoor ski slope in Hong Kong.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KRISTIE LU STOUT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Time to suit up, slip on the skis, and slide up the hill. It's a date with Infinity Slope, the world's largest indoor training deck. Think of it as a giant treadmill for snowboarders. The 30 foot long ramp revolves uphill to simulate a downhill run. Allowing ski junkies of any age to learn or refine their skills.

KIERAN O'HALLORAN, SKI AND SNOWBOARD PRO: OK. Ready, Leon? Just show them your best stuff, bud.

STOUT: Switched on, the deck moves at around five miles an hour. Ski pros say one hour on the machine is on par with several hours on the mountain.

O'HALLORAN: The funny thing is, it's actually more difficult to ski here because of our carpet, it adds a little more pressure when you turn. Skiing's a little more forgiving so you have to be always on your game here, otherwise you catch your edges a little more often. So, it's a great place to train.

STOUT (on camera): And for the never, ever skier, is this an effective thing to do? O'HALLORAN: I believe so. As you can see, we have blue bars around the slope, which allows people to have a little added comfort that they can reach out and stop themselves or they can, if they're going a little bit faster, there's a little bit of padding. And once again, it's something to hold on to.

STOUT: I like the padding.

O'HALLORAN: It allows them to hold on to it to get the feeling they can move their feet around and stay in one spot and give them an added comfort so they can, you know, use this as a safety measure.

STOUT (voice-over): I buy the pitch and sign up for my very first snowboarding lesson.

(on camera): Why are they slipping?

O'HALLORAN: That's ok, slipping is the idea. Normally, we like to call it sliding, instead of slipping.

STOUT: OK sliding.

STOUT (voice-over): The pros use the deck to reinforce muscle memory and introduce some new moves.

O'HALLORAN: So, ready? On the count of three: one, two and three.

STOUT (on camera): Whoa, hello! OK.

O'HALLORAN: Set. Cool. Good. So, you can feel that you're kind of swinging around. So, just try to relax and hold your step.

STOUT: All right. I'm relaxing.

STOUT (voice-over): I slide, I stop. But, most of the time, I teeter, a feeble attempt to master the most basic moves on the magic carpet.

O'HALLORAN: And, that's the key to snowboarding, is the control. It's to make sure that when you lift the edge up, you hold it up until you come to a stop, then you can release and keep going.

STOUT (on camera): Yeah. Well, thank you very much.

O'HALLORAN: You are very welcome.

STOUT: And, then I will sit down.

O'HALLORAN: Yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Still ahead, new technology that turns sign language into written text. And it was invented by a high school student.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

O'HALLORAN: Set. Cool. Good.

STOUG: (SCREAMING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIEBERG: Sign language is a great communication tool for people who can't hear or speak, but it only works if both parties to a conversation know the signs. Now, there's a way to convert sign language to text, and it's the brainchild of an inventor barely out of his teens. Kitty Pilgrim has his story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KITTY PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Ryan Patterson is so good, the University of Colorado has given him his own lab.

RYAN PATTERSON, INVENTOR, AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE TRANSLATOR: Q, R, S, F, G, H, I...

PILGRIM: One of his brilliant inventions, a glove that turns sign language into written text.

PATTERSON: IT just signed out letter by letter: Hello, how are you?

PILGRIM: He invented it during his junior year of high school, and is refining it. After observing how deaf people had to communicate, he knew that he could come up with something to help.

PATTERSON: I had been sitting in a fast food restaurant and saw a group of people who couldn't speak and they were using sign language; and they had a human interpreter with them who was ordering their food and just basic interpreting with them.

PILGRIM: Ryan's device is also portable.

PATTERSON: I designed two portable translators, which is basically a small device about the size of a candy bar that has a circuit board with a number of microcontrollers and processing components, and then a large liquid crystal display.

PILGRIM: Ryan's clip file shows he is already a celebrated scientist by the age of 20. He has won, what is considered by many, to be the equivalent of a junior Nobel Prize in science. In his second year at the university of Colorado, he is part of a team developing a device to help brain damaged people function in daily life.

PROF. JIM SULLIVAN, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO: Ryan loves technological challenge, but I think he loves the kind of challenge that really makes a difference in people's lives.

PILGRIM: Although a patent is pending on his glove, he says he is not looking to commercialize his success.

PATTERSON: A lot of people tell me, you know, you should start a business, manufacture that glove, you'd become a millionaire -- that type of thing, but to me there's not a great interest in that.

PILGRIM: For some the thrill of invention is the highest calling.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: With all the attention being paid to Mars this weekend, a lot of people might be imagining a trip to the red planet. Futuristic stuff sure, but a new touring science exhibit builds on those dreams of space travel to inspire kids and adults alike. Kimberly Osias takes a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KIMBERLY OSIAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Even before man figured out how to put words to the silver screen, there was the desire to explore above.

BRYCE SEIDEL CEO, PACIFIC SCIENCE CENTER: The goal of this exhibit is not to necessarily load people up with facts, but it's to really ignite a sense of curiosity.

OSIAS: Interactive exhibits drive home scientific concepts. Here, the idea is to create artificial gravity and retain bone mass, something that's difficult to do in space.

APRIL WILLIAMS, STUDENT: You learn about it in the books, but now it's just totally different, because you actually get to try stuff.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're looking at Jupiter and four of its moons.

OSIAS: Exhibit organizers say interest in science is waning, especially from young women, so the overall objective is to demystify. Almost everything is hands-on.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Where in the universe do you want to go?

OSIAS: You can design your own mission, anywhere in the solar system. Fill up your rocket with gear and then you're ready to test it out in base camp.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You've loaded all the essentials.

SEIDEL: This is what we expect the surface of Mars to be like.

OSIAS: And, the 10,000 square foot exhibit isn't just for kids.

LISA WEIRAUCH, HOME SCHOOL TEACHER: It's really a great tool.

DAVID WEISS, CREATIVE DIRECTOR: I think we've kind of forgotten that we have the ability to dream and to make our future a reality.

OSIAS: A reality this exhibit hopes to encourage in the next generation of explorers.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: The space exhibit will be in Seattle through May and then it will hit the road, traveling all over the country for the next five years.

Well, it's time for us to hit the road, but here's what's coming up next week:

We'll be on the road at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, that's right, back to Vegas for the world's largest showcase for tech toys. And we'll give you a glimpse for the gadgets you'll want on your holiday wish list 11 months from now.

Another digital extravaganza from the desert, that's coming up on NEXT. Until then, we'd love to hear from. 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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