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Some Bald Eagles Still Suffer From DDT Poison; Interview With Dean Kamen

Aired April 17, 2004 - 15:30   ET

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

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


DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to NEXT@CNN. We're at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia and I'm joined right now by Dean Kamen, who founded the first robotics competition and Dean, what has changed in the, sort of, 12 or 13 years or so since the first FIRST Robotics Competition?
DEAN KAMEN, FOUNDER FIRST ROBOTICS COMPETITION: The good thing is nothing changed in terms of our purpose and our focus. Give kids an opportunity to see what's possible in a world of technology and science and creating and inventing. The great thing about what's changed is the first year we did this, I think I had 23 companies that adopted 23 schools from around the country, all descend on a little gym, a high school gymnasium in New Hampshire, and we had our event, the whole one event for the year.

SIEBERG: Now we're at the Georgia Dome.

KAMEN: Now this year, 2004, 26 cities have held regional events with the average event having 50 or more teams. We had a thousand teams compete this year, and here we are in the Georgia Dome in Atlanta for what's going to be a spectacular year.

SIEBERG: A lot of activity, a lot of enthusiasm with people here. What do you hope that these kids take away from this event?

KAMEN: I more than hope. I now know what they take away. You just walk through those pits and you talk to these kids, particularly find the rookies, and you'll see kids that eight or nine weeks ago thought engineering and science and inventing was a special thing only available for a few nerds, and these kids, now every single one of them, comes away from this competition knowing it's accessible, it's fun, it's rewarding, and it's an option for all kids to be part of these exciting career opportunities.

SIEBERG: Now, what are the projects that you're maybe most known for is the Segway, which you're on, we should point out. Do you think that these kids will have the ability to take what they learned from here to become an inventor or an engineer? I mean, obviously, they need to go to school perhaps after this, but are they getting some real world skills here?

KAMEN: This program is a microcosm of the real world of inventing, of engineering, and of business. Every product I've seen in the real business world, you never have enough time, you never have enough money, you never know what the competition's going to do, you have to get this thing, it's got to work, you got to ship it. They, in six or seven weeks, are doing the entire process of what product development and innovation is all about, and they all leave here, not only with an understanding of what it's about, but a lot of them with the idea they want to participate.

SIEBERG: All right, Dean Kamen, thank you so much for joining us and you're doing so well balancing on that Segway. You must have had a little practice.

KAMEN: I've had a little practice. Well, this thing has better balance than I do.

SIEBERG: All right, Dean, thanks so much for joining us.

KAMEN: Thank you.

SIEBERG: Now to a couple of robots out of this world. The twin rovers rambling around Mars should be in better shape this week thanks to new instructions from home. On Wednesday, NASA showed off the largest panorama taken so far. It was taken by Opportunity's panoramic camera and documents the rover's travel through the Eagle Crater. Another image shows the deepest hole dug by either rover. It's a trench Opportunity dug with its wheel so we could analyze the soil beneath the surface.

The two rovers have taken about 24,000 images, so far. That's quite a scrapbook.

Well, astronomers studying the most distant known object in our solar system say they're baffled. The planetoid called "Sedna" does not have a moon. Scientists expected to find one based on Sedna's very slow rate of rotation, which could be caused by the gravitational pull of a moon. But images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, last month, show no sign of one.

And then the most dragged out project in NASA history may finally get off the ground soon be off the ground. The Gravity Probe B Spacecraft has been in the works for 40 years, reportedly hitting technical snags. It was cancelled several times only to rise from the grave. The spacecraft's mission is to test whether massive objects, like earth, warp the fabric of space time as proposed by Einstein's theory of relativity. The probe is scheduled for launch on Monday.

Early next week, a new crew is scheduled to arrive at the International Space Station for a six-month stay. Is six months a right amount of time for a hitch onboard the orbiting laboratory? Well, officials are considering a Russian proposal to keep crews up there for a year.

Ryan Chilcote reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RYAN CHILCOTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): American "Mike" Fincke, Russian Gennady Padalka, and a Dutchman Andre Kuipers entering one of the world's most exclusive clubs. Replacing a two-man crew on the International Space Station since last fall, the American astronaut and Russian cosmonaut will spend the next six months in orbit. Kuipers is traveling on a seat Russia sold to the European Space Agency. He'll be spending just over a week at the station. Together they are set to blast off on a Russian Soyuz transport vehicle. The one and only space craft that has carried cosmonauts and astronauts to and from the station every six months since the shuttle's fleet was grounded last spring.

(on camera): The Kazakhstan Russian Space Agency wants to change that and NASA is now considering a Russian proposal to leave crews on the space station for a year at a time, freeing up seats on the Soyuz for paying customers.

(voice-over): Like American entrepreneur, Greg Olsen. Paying to go for only two space tourists have gone before him. Olsen is reportedly shelling out $20 million for his seat on a later flight. Without the shuttles operating, NASA can't ignore the Russian plan, and with proposed flights to the moon and Mars, NASA will need to train for extended missions. So far, the American record is just under seven months. The record holding Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov flew for over 14 months. Space veteran, Norm Thagard flew with Polyakov.

NORM THAGARD, ASTRONAUT: You have to be a person who can tolerate a fairly isolated environment in personal contact with only one or two other human beings.

CHILCOTE: Padalka and Fincke are expected to be in close personal contact for just a half year. Small comfort to Fincke's son.

"MIKE" FINCKE, ASTRONAUT: My son is two-and-a-half years old, he thinks he's coming with me and it's going to break my heart when he watches that rocket go up, and he's not on it.

CHILCOTE: The next crew could be together in space for more than a year.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Coming up, one airplane goes out by boat, and another comes in by land, at least parts of it. We'll explain.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Now, back to the FIRST Robotic Competition in Atlanta, Georgia.

Behind the scenes here, there is a practice area and I'm joined now by Keith Chester.

Keith, you guys are from New Jersey, right? KEITH CHESTER (PH), FIRST ROBOTIC COMPETITION, COMPETITOR: Yeah.

So, the Hawaiian shirts pushing for warmer weather sort of theme?

CHESTER: Yeah, it's been cold down there all season. We always try to do something wacky and so far, it's been a tradition to use Hawaiian shirts.

SIEBERG: This your eight year in this competition?

CHESTER: Personally, it's my third year, but it is the team's eighth year in the competition.

SIEBERG: OK, well we can see your robot, it's right here in the practice area, right now. It seems to be a little violent. Do you guys have a certain strategy here?

CHESTER: Well, we do have a very defensive strategy, and that basically keeps everyone away from the goals and the balls in order to score. But, the large arm that you also see on there is used to hook onto the bar and raise itself literally a few feet in the air and score 50 points at the end of the game.

SIEBERG: Right. We should tell people there are different points for different tasks that you have to do during the competition, right?

CHESTER: Yeah.

SIEBERG: Now, what got you interested in this robotics competition?

CHESTER: My family has a lot of engineers in it. My brother's an electrical engineer for Boeing. My father is a mechanical engineer for J&J. So, I've always had an interest in science or engineering, so when I heard that there was a robotics team in high school, I had to check it out and once I saw the machines, I was hooked.

SIEBERG: And you guys got to work together and have a little fun, too while you're out here, hence is the Hawaiian shirt theme.

CHESTER: What's the point of competing if you can't have fun?

SIEBERG: All right, Keith Chester, thanks so much for joining us and good luck out there.

CHESTER: Thank you.

SIEBERG: Well, it was a rather unglamorous finale for an airplane that once symbolized luxury and speed. A last, British Airways Concorde, this week, made its way slowly up the River Thames on a barge, stripped of its wings and tail. It's on its way to an aviation museum in Scotland. This plane is the last of British Airways' seven Concordes to find a home after commercial Concorde flights ended last year. It'll be taken up the east coast of England to Scotland then transported two miles cross country to the museum where it'll get its wings and tail back.

As Concorde fades into aviation history, another groundbreaking aircraft prepares to make its debut. The Airbus A380 may not match the Concorde's supersonic speeds, but it'll be the biggest airliner ever built. Jim Bitterman reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JIM BITTERMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Down a narrow country road on a dark night in what someone once called old Europe, the first sections of what will be the world's largest airliner were threading their way through the village of Levignac, France. Giants that towered over the heads of the locals, who stayed up late not to miss a convoy like this. But, it won't be their only chance. There will soon be huge Airbus 380 parts passing through here once a week as subassemblies, from all over Europe, are brought together at the Airbus final assembly plant in southwestern France, if the plane is as successful as its designers are betting.

NOEL FORGEARD, AIRBUS CEO: No, it's not a gamble. It's a very well thought economic decision based on market realities, on a product that the airline have requested.

BITTERMAN: Still, Airbus and its partners in the 380 project have put nearly $11 billion on the table, an investment that, for now, seems to be paying off, since customers have already signed orders for 129 aircraft at $275 million each. Lining up to buy a plane with 50 percent more room inside than a Boeing 747.

(on camera): Given all this flying space, 380 promoters giddily talked about on-board casinos and bistros and exercise rooms. Still there's nothing to stop a low cost airline from taking an airplane designed to handle 555 passengers and turning it into a flying sardine can seating nearly 800. But Airbus officials say the wider cabin means wider seats, even in economy. And since business and first class passengers pay the bulk of air transportation, airlines buying the 380's extra room might be induced to use some of it for luxurious extras.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here's a shower and bathrooms.

BITTERMAN (voice-over): Airbus hopes to fly the 380 for the first time next year and deliver the first aircraft to a customer in 2006. Already though, airports are making large new investments to cope with the colossus. Authorities in New York voted to spend nearly $180 million to widen runways, strengthen taxiway bridges, and increase passenger handling capacity at Kennedy Airport. But, Airbus insists, given the increases in passenger volume, it's either spend for bigger planes or spend for more and bigger airports. For now, though, about the only ground handling problem the Airbus 380 has created is ground control as gawkers airlines turn out along the airship's low flying path to the assembly line.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) ANNOUNCER: Just ahead, more from the floor of this year's FIRST Robotics Competition, and a whole lot more. Stay with us.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID KIRKPATRICK, "FORTUNE" SENIOR EDITOR: A number of countries have realized the way they can bring their people into more affluence is to improve their educational systems and India's doing that, china's doing that. And the problem is that the United States educational system, in general is not improving, in particularly in science, math, and engineering. The concern is that manufacturing and design of the most sophisticated products, the world depends on, could start gravitating out of the United States. Microsoft now has research labs in China that they are so excited about the quality of the employee that they are getting there, that some of the researchers are getting promoted into operational jobs. We also have an increasing unemployment rate among engineers in the United States. So, it's hard to motivate kids to go into those fields, here. But the reality is they're going into those fields all over the rest of the world because they see it as a ticket out of No. 2 status.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FEMI OKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's called termite fishing, and it's an important skill for young chimpanzees to learn. Since the insects are so tasty, they're known as chimp bon bons. But, the young primates have different ways of developing their fishing finesse, using flexible sticks as tools.

ELIZABETH V. LONSDORF, DEPT. OF ECOLOGY, EVOLUTION AND BEHAVIOR, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA: Well, little girl chimps, at the termite mound, even at very young ages, tended to watch their mothers more and pay close attention while little boy chimps were off kind of playing around in the trees and doing somersault.

OKE: Lonsdorf spent four years observing dozens of young chimps at the Gombe National Park in Tanzania. Teachers of young human children see some parallels.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Boys tend to be, at this age, a little bit more playful, and the girls tend to be a little bit more grown up acting, and more responsible.

OKE: Lonsdorf says there's no right or wrong way to fish.

LONSDORF: I don't think so. I don't think it's better or worse for girls and boys to be good at different things. It's quite possible that male chimpanzees are better hunters and learn hunting better because that's what they do in adulthood. OKE: The research in the journal "Nature" suggest these gender- based learning differences may go back to the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees.

I'm Femi Oke, and that's "Cool science."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Welcome back to NEXT@CNN. We're down here on the competition floor at the FIRST Robotics Competition. And joining me now, right now, is Greg Powers.

Greg, you guys are with New Technology High School in Napa, California and you're trying to stand out a little bit here, with these 7,000 high school students. Tell me about the outfit first.

GREG POWERS, NEW TECHNOLOGY HIGH SCHOOL: Well, you know, the sarongs really help us stand out. These were custom-made vests by one of our team members, the purple is a good touch, purple hair -- you do what you can.

SIEBERG: There are unique looks here.

POWERS: Yeah.

SIEBERG: At the FIRST Robotic Competition. Now tell me, what is your strategy going into this?

POWERS: Right now we're trying to hang onto the bar every the match, you get 50 points. It's a pretty good clencher, it's hard to lose when you got that. As you can see, we're hanging on the bar right now, so that was good.

SIEBERG: All right, well have fun out there and maybe next year you can go with purple glasses and green hair.

POWERS: I don't know -- that's -- you know...

SIEBERG: You think about it.

POWERS: All right.

SIEBERG: Greg Powers, thanks so much for joining us.

POWERS: Thanks.

SIEBERG: It's not even out of the test phase yet, but Google's new e-mail service is already under fire from privacy advocates. Gmail will give users a gigabyte of storage space for free, but the catch is the service will scan user's e-mail messages for keywords and deliver specially targeted advertising. That prompted California State Senator Liz Figueroa to draft a bill that would block the service. Now Google has told reporters it's considering changes to Gmail based on feedback from testers, as well as privacy groups.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) ANNOUNCER: Still to come, these eagle chicks may not be old enough to fly, but they did anyway in a project designed to help their species survive. We'll explain.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: The pesticide DDT was banned in the United States more than 30 years ago, but some populations of bald eagles are still suffering from its effects. Rusty Dornin reports on a program that helps at-risk eggs hatch into healthy baby eaglets.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): These two bald eagle chicks were stolen from their nest on Catalina Island off the coast of southern California in February. Bald eagle eggs here are contaminated with the now banned pesticide DDT, so the eggs were snatched and brought to the San Francisco zoo in a program to help them survive.

KATHY HOBSON, SAN FRANCISCO ZOO: They have thinner areas of the shell, not the whole shell, but thinner areas, so that they dry out very quickly and the embryo dies, so we have to put them in very high humidity incubators.

DORNIN: Bird keeper, Kathy Hobson, has spent many a sleepless night tending the eggs until they hatched. Now, it's time to send the chicks home.

Wildlife biologist Peter Sharpe will put the chicks back in the nest, pick up the dummy eggs he put there in February, and hope the eagles will be none the wiser.

First he feeds the chicks.

PETER SHARPE, WILDLIFE BIOLOGIST: So, I really don't want to feed it too much.

DORNIN: Then it's a safety check with the helicopter crew and lift-off with Sharpe, birds in hand, dangling 100 feet below the helicopter.

In this bird's-eye view of the descent from the camera on Sharpe's helmet, you can see the nest perched high above the Pacific. After landing in the next while the exchange is being make, the female bird, angry at the intrusion, dive bombs within a few feet of Sharpe.

SHARPE: And, she was circling around pretty closely the whole time.

DORNIN: Even the airlift helicopter pilot, who donated the flight, was a little worried.

GLENN SMITH, AIRLIFT HELICOPTERS: The male was up about where we were in the helicopter, and he got awfully close.

DORNIN: Then the second chick is dropped at a nest on the other side of the island. All goes smoothly. They took ten fertile eggs from the nest this year, three hatched, two survived, and that's a good success rate.

(on camera): How long are you going to have to do this?

SHARPE: It's really unknown how long this project will have to go on. Right now, it could be another 50 to 100 years before the DDT contamination degrades naturally.

DORNIN (voice-over): Without the breeding program, there would be no bald eagles on Catalina Island. There were 15, now two more eaglets have landed.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Well, the researchers said the adult eagles accepted both chicks and are doing well. In case you're wondering, you can keep up with the project on the IWS website, including a web cam inside an eagle's nest. You can get there from our web website, that's at CNN.com/NEXT.

And that's all the time we have for now, but here's what's coming up next week:

Some very famous actors are lending their voices to an eye- popping animated film with a new twist. It's being put together thousands of miles from Hollywood. That's coming up on NEXT.

Until then, let us hear from you. You can e-mail us at NEXT@CNN.com. Thanks so much for joining us this week and thanks to all the folks here at the FIRST Robotics Competition. I'm Daniel Sieberg. We'll see you next time.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired April 17, 2004 - 15:30   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to NEXT@CNN. We're at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia and I'm joined right now by Dean Kamen, who founded the first robotics competition and Dean, what has changed in the, sort of, 12 or 13 years or so since the first FIRST Robotics Competition?
DEAN KAMEN, FOUNDER FIRST ROBOTICS COMPETITION: The good thing is nothing changed in terms of our purpose and our focus. Give kids an opportunity to see what's possible in a world of technology and science and creating and inventing. The great thing about what's changed is the first year we did this, I think I had 23 companies that adopted 23 schools from around the country, all descend on a little gym, a high school gymnasium in New Hampshire, and we had our event, the whole one event for the year.

SIEBERG: Now we're at the Georgia Dome.

KAMEN: Now this year, 2004, 26 cities have held regional events with the average event having 50 or more teams. We had a thousand teams compete this year, and here we are in the Georgia Dome in Atlanta for what's going to be a spectacular year.

SIEBERG: A lot of activity, a lot of enthusiasm with people here. What do you hope that these kids take away from this event?

KAMEN: I more than hope. I now know what they take away. You just walk through those pits and you talk to these kids, particularly find the rookies, and you'll see kids that eight or nine weeks ago thought engineering and science and inventing was a special thing only available for a few nerds, and these kids, now every single one of them, comes away from this competition knowing it's accessible, it's fun, it's rewarding, and it's an option for all kids to be part of these exciting career opportunities.

SIEBERG: Now, what are the projects that you're maybe most known for is the Segway, which you're on, we should point out. Do you think that these kids will have the ability to take what they learned from here to become an inventor or an engineer? I mean, obviously, they need to go to school perhaps after this, but are they getting some real world skills here?

KAMEN: This program is a microcosm of the real world of inventing, of engineering, and of business. Every product I've seen in the real business world, you never have enough time, you never have enough money, you never know what the competition's going to do, you have to get this thing, it's got to work, you got to ship it. They, in six or seven weeks, are doing the entire process of what product development and innovation is all about, and they all leave here, not only with an understanding of what it's about, but a lot of them with the idea they want to participate.

SIEBERG: All right, Dean Kamen, thank you so much for joining us and you're doing so well balancing on that Segway. You must have had a little practice.

KAMEN: I've had a little practice. Well, this thing has better balance than I do.

SIEBERG: All right, Dean, thanks so much for joining us.

KAMEN: Thank you.

SIEBERG: Now to a couple of robots out of this world. The twin rovers rambling around Mars should be in better shape this week thanks to new instructions from home. On Wednesday, NASA showed off the largest panorama taken so far. It was taken by Opportunity's panoramic camera and documents the rover's travel through the Eagle Crater. Another image shows the deepest hole dug by either rover. It's a trench Opportunity dug with its wheel so we could analyze the soil beneath the surface.

The two rovers have taken about 24,000 images, so far. That's quite a scrapbook.

Well, astronomers studying the most distant known object in our solar system say they're baffled. The planetoid called "Sedna" does not have a moon. Scientists expected to find one based on Sedna's very slow rate of rotation, which could be caused by the gravitational pull of a moon. But images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, last month, show no sign of one.

And then the most dragged out project in NASA history may finally get off the ground soon be off the ground. The Gravity Probe B Spacecraft has been in the works for 40 years, reportedly hitting technical snags. It was cancelled several times only to rise from the grave. The spacecraft's mission is to test whether massive objects, like earth, warp the fabric of space time as proposed by Einstein's theory of relativity. The probe is scheduled for launch on Monday.

Early next week, a new crew is scheduled to arrive at the International Space Station for a six-month stay. Is six months a right amount of time for a hitch onboard the orbiting laboratory? Well, officials are considering a Russian proposal to keep crews up there for a year.

Ryan Chilcote reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RYAN CHILCOTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): American "Mike" Fincke, Russian Gennady Padalka, and a Dutchman Andre Kuipers entering one of the world's most exclusive clubs. Replacing a two-man crew on the International Space Station since last fall, the American astronaut and Russian cosmonaut will spend the next six months in orbit. Kuipers is traveling on a seat Russia sold to the European Space Agency. He'll be spending just over a week at the station. Together they are set to blast off on a Russian Soyuz transport vehicle. The one and only space craft that has carried cosmonauts and astronauts to and from the station every six months since the shuttle's fleet was grounded last spring.

(on camera): The Kazakhstan Russian Space Agency wants to change that and NASA is now considering a Russian proposal to leave crews on the space station for a year at a time, freeing up seats on the Soyuz for paying customers.

(voice-over): Like American entrepreneur, Greg Olsen. Paying to go for only two space tourists have gone before him. Olsen is reportedly shelling out $20 million for his seat on a later flight. Without the shuttles operating, NASA can't ignore the Russian plan, and with proposed flights to the moon and Mars, NASA will need to train for extended missions. So far, the American record is just under seven months. The record holding Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov flew for over 14 months. Space veteran, Norm Thagard flew with Polyakov.

NORM THAGARD, ASTRONAUT: You have to be a person who can tolerate a fairly isolated environment in personal contact with only one or two other human beings.

CHILCOTE: Padalka and Fincke are expected to be in close personal contact for just a half year. Small comfort to Fincke's son.

"MIKE" FINCKE, ASTRONAUT: My son is two-and-a-half years old, he thinks he's coming with me and it's going to break my heart when he watches that rocket go up, and he's not on it.

CHILCOTE: The next crew could be together in space for more than a year.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Coming up, one airplane goes out by boat, and another comes in by land, at least parts of it. We'll explain.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Now, back to the FIRST Robotic Competition in Atlanta, Georgia.

Behind the scenes here, there is a practice area and I'm joined now by Keith Chester.

Keith, you guys are from New Jersey, right? KEITH CHESTER (PH), FIRST ROBOTIC COMPETITION, COMPETITOR: Yeah.

So, the Hawaiian shirts pushing for warmer weather sort of theme?

CHESTER: Yeah, it's been cold down there all season. We always try to do something wacky and so far, it's been a tradition to use Hawaiian shirts.

SIEBERG: This your eight year in this competition?

CHESTER: Personally, it's my third year, but it is the team's eighth year in the competition.

SIEBERG: OK, well we can see your robot, it's right here in the practice area, right now. It seems to be a little violent. Do you guys have a certain strategy here?

CHESTER: Well, we do have a very defensive strategy, and that basically keeps everyone away from the goals and the balls in order to score. But, the large arm that you also see on there is used to hook onto the bar and raise itself literally a few feet in the air and score 50 points at the end of the game.

SIEBERG: Right. We should tell people there are different points for different tasks that you have to do during the competition, right?

CHESTER: Yeah.

SIEBERG: Now, what got you interested in this robotics competition?

CHESTER: My family has a lot of engineers in it. My brother's an electrical engineer for Boeing. My father is a mechanical engineer for J&J. So, I've always had an interest in science or engineering, so when I heard that there was a robotics team in high school, I had to check it out and once I saw the machines, I was hooked.

SIEBERG: And you guys got to work together and have a little fun, too while you're out here, hence is the Hawaiian shirt theme.

CHESTER: What's the point of competing if you can't have fun?

SIEBERG: All right, Keith Chester, thanks so much for joining us and good luck out there.

CHESTER: Thank you.

SIEBERG: Well, it was a rather unglamorous finale for an airplane that once symbolized luxury and speed. A last, British Airways Concorde, this week, made its way slowly up the River Thames on a barge, stripped of its wings and tail. It's on its way to an aviation museum in Scotland. This plane is the last of British Airways' seven Concordes to find a home after commercial Concorde flights ended last year. It'll be taken up the east coast of England to Scotland then transported two miles cross country to the museum where it'll get its wings and tail back.

As Concorde fades into aviation history, another groundbreaking aircraft prepares to make its debut. The Airbus A380 may not match the Concorde's supersonic speeds, but it'll be the biggest airliner ever built. Jim Bitterman reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JIM BITTERMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Down a narrow country road on a dark night in what someone once called old Europe, the first sections of what will be the world's largest airliner were threading their way through the village of Levignac, France. Giants that towered over the heads of the locals, who stayed up late not to miss a convoy like this. But, it won't be their only chance. There will soon be huge Airbus 380 parts passing through here once a week as subassemblies, from all over Europe, are brought together at the Airbus final assembly plant in southwestern France, if the plane is as successful as its designers are betting.

NOEL FORGEARD, AIRBUS CEO: No, it's not a gamble. It's a very well thought economic decision based on market realities, on a product that the airline have requested.

BITTERMAN: Still, Airbus and its partners in the 380 project have put nearly $11 billion on the table, an investment that, for now, seems to be paying off, since customers have already signed orders for 129 aircraft at $275 million each. Lining up to buy a plane with 50 percent more room inside than a Boeing 747.

(on camera): Given all this flying space, 380 promoters giddily talked about on-board casinos and bistros and exercise rooms. Still there's nothing to stop a low cost airline from taking an airplane designed to handle 555 passengers and turning it into a flying sardine can seating nearly 800. But Airbus officials say the wider cabin means wider seats, even in economy. And since business and first class passengers pay the bulk of air transportation, airlines buying the 380's extra room might be induced to use some of it for luxurious extras.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here's a shower and bathrooms.

BITTERMAN (voice-over): Airbus hopes to fly the 380 for the first time next year and deliver the first aircraft to a customer in 2006. Already though, airports are making large new investments to cope with the colossus. Authorities in New York voted to spend nearly $180 million to widen runways, strengthen taxiway bridges, and increase passenger handling capacity at Kennedy Airport. But, Airbus insists, given the increases in passenger volume, it's either spend for bigger planes or spend for more and bigger airports. For now, though, about the only ground handling problem the Airbus 380 has created is ground control as gawkers airlines turn out along the airship's low flying path to the assembly line.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) ANNOUNCER: Just ahead, more from the floor of this year's FIRST Robotics Competition, and a whole lot more. Stay with us.

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DAVID KIRKPATRICK, "FORTUNE" SENIOR EDITOR: A number of countries have realized the way they can bring their people into more affluence is to improve their educational systems and India's doing that, china's doing that. And the problem is that the United States educational system, in general is not improving, in particularly in science, math, and engineering. The concern is that manufacturing and design of the most sophisticated products, the world depends on, could start gravitating out of the United States. Microsoft now has research labs in China that they are so excited about the quality of the employee that they are getting there, that some of the researchers are getting promoted into operational jobs. We also have an increasing unemployment rate among engineers in the United States. So, it's hard to motivate kids to go into those fields, here. But the reality is they're going into those fields all over the rest of the world because they see it as a ticket out of No. 2 status.

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FEMI OKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's called termite fishing, and it's an important skill for young chimpanzees to learn. Since the insects are so tasty, they're known as chimp bon bons. But, the young primates have different ways of developing their fishing finesse, using flexible sticks as tools.

ELIZABETH V. LONSDORF, DEPT. OF ECOLOGY, EVOLUTION AND BEHAVIOR, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA: Well, little girl chimps, at the termite mound, even at very young ages, tended to watch their mothers more and pay close attention while little boy chimps were off kind of playing around in the trees and doing somersault.

OKE: Lonsdorf spent four years observing dozens of young chimps at the Gombe National Park in Tanzania. Teachers of young human children see some parallels.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Boys tend to be, at this age, a little bit more playful, and the girls tend to be a little bit more grown up acting, and more responsible.

OKE: Lonsdorf says there's no right or wrong way to fish.

LONSDORF: I don't think so. I don't think it's better or worse for girls and boys to be good at different things. It's quite possible that male chimpanzees are better hunters and learn hunting better because that's what they do in adulthood. OKE: The research in the journal "Nature" suggest these gender- based learning differences may go back to the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees.

I'm Femi Oke, and that's "Cool science."

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SIEBERG: Welcome back to NEXT@CNN. We're down here on the competition floor at the FIRST Robotics Competition. And joining me now, right now, is Greg Powers.

Greg, you guys are with New Technology High School in Napa, California and you're trying to stand out a little bit here, with these 7,000 high school students. Tell me about the outfit first.

GREG POWERS, NEW TECHNOLOGY HIGH SCHOOL: Well, you know, the sarongs really help us stand out. These were custom-made vests by one of our team members, the purple is a good touch, purple hair -- you do what you can.

SIEBERG: There are unique looks here.

POWERS: Yeah.

SIEBERG: At the FIRST Robotic Competition. Now tell me, what is your strategy going into this?

POWERS: Right now we're trying to hang onto the bar every the match, you get 50 points. It's a pretty good clencher, it's hard to lose when you got that. As you can see, we're hanging on the bar right now, so that was good.

SIEBERG: All right, well have fun out there and maybe next year you can go with purple glasses and green hair.

POWERS: I don't know -- that's -- you know...

SIEBERG: You think about it.

POWERS: All right.

SIEBERG: Greg Powers, thanks so much for joining us.

POWERS: Thanks.

SIEBERG: It's not even out of the test phase yet, but Google's new e-mail service is already under fire from privacy advocates. Gmail will give users a gigabyte of storage space for free, but the catch is the service will scan user's e-mail messages for keywords and deliver specially targeted advertising. That prompted California State Senator Liz Figueroa to draft a bill that would block the service. Now Google has told reporters it's considering changes to Gmail based on feedback from testers, as well as privacy groups.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) ANNOUNCER: Still to come, these eagle chicks may not be old enough to fly, but they did anyway in a project designed to help their species survive. We'll explain.

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SIEBERG: The pesticide DDT was banned in the United States more than 30 years ago, but some populations of bald eagles are still suffering from its effects. Rusty Dornin reports on a program that helps at-risk eggs hatch into healthy baby eaglets.

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RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): These two bald eagle chicks were stolen from their nest on Catalina Island off the coast of southern California in February. Bald eagle eggs here are contaminated with the now banned pesticide DDT, so the eggs were snatched and brought to the San Francisco zoo in a program to help them survive.

KATHY HOBSON, SAN FRANCISCO ZOO: They have thinner areas of the shell, not the whole shell, but thinner areas, so that they dry out very quickly and the embryo dies, so we have to put them in very high humidity incubators.

DORNIN: Bird keeper, Kathy Hobson, has spent many a sleepless night tending the eggs until they hatched. Now, it's time to send the chicks home.

Wildlife biologist Peter Sharpe will put the chicks back in the nest, pick up the dummy eggs he put there in February, and hope the eagles will be none the wiser.

First he feeds the chicks.

PETER SHARPE, WILDLIFE BIOLOGIST: So, I really don't want to feed it too much.

DORNIN: Then it's a safety check with the helicopter crew and lift-off with Sharpe, birds in hand, dangling 100 feet below the helicopter.

In this bird's-eye view of the descent from the camera on Sharpe's helmet, you can see the nest perched high above the Pacific. After landing in the next while the exchange is being make, the female bird, angry at the intrusion, dive bombs within a few feet of Sharpe.

SHARPE: And, she was circling around pretty closely the whole time.

DORNIN: Even the airlift helicopter pilot, who donated the flight, was a little worried.

GLENN SMITH, AIRLIFT HELICOPTERS: The male was up about where we were in the helicopter, and he got awfully close.

DORNIN: Then the second chick is dropped at a nest on the other side of the island. All goes smoothly. They took ten fertile eggs from the nest this year, three hatched, two survived, and that's a good success rate.

(on camera): How long are you going to have to do this?

SHARPE: It's really unknown how long this project will have to go on. Right now, it could be another 50 to 100 years before the DDT contamination degrades naturally.

DORNIN (voice-over): Without the breeding program, there would be no bald eagles on Catalina Island. There were 15, now two more eaglets have landed.

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SIEBERG: Well, the researchers said the adult eagles accepted both chicks and are doing well. In case you're wondering, you can keep up with the project on the IWS website, including a web cam inside an eagle's nest. You can get there from our web website, that's at CNN.com/NEXT.

And that's all the time we have for now, but here's what's coming up next week:

Some very famous actors are lending their voices to an eye- popping animated film with a new twist. It's being put together thousands of miles from Hollywood. That's coming up on NEXT.

Until then, let us hear from you. You can e-mail us at NEXT@CNN.com. Thanks so much for joining us this week and thanks to all the folks here at the FIRST Robotics Competition. I'm Daniel Sieberg. We'll see you next time.

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