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A Look at El Nino; Doom 3 Gets Rave Reviews; Politics on the Web

Aired August 15, 2004 - 17:00   ET

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

DANIEL SIEBERG, HOST: Hi there. I'm Daniel Sieberg. Today on NEXT@CNN, an infamous weather phenomenon that causes everything from droughts to floods could be poised for reappearance. El Nino is once again on forecasters' radar screens.
It was four years in the making. Now that it's here, Doom 3 is getting raves from reviewers while it scares the pants off them. But is this video game popular enough to revive the flagging PC game market?

And politics on the Internet is stranger than in the non-virtual world. We'll show you some whacky web ads. All that and more on NEXT.

A rather unwelcome visitor is on the horizon. Whether it's droughts, floods, hurricanes, you name it, el Nino can make a big splash and government weather forecasters are saying it could develop within the next three months. CNN meteorologist Rob Marciano has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROB MARCIANO, CNN METEOROLOGIST (voice-over): The name el Nino literally means little boy in Spanish, but some visits from this little terror translate to big problems around the globe. Mud slides in California, floods in south America, fires in Indonesia, drought in Australia. And scientists from the climate prediction center say another el Nino is closing in for a comeback but this time, not in a big way.

VERN KOUSKY, NOAA CLIMATE PREDICTION CENTER: Right now the current forecasts are for fairly moderate el Nino. And usually with those types of el Ninos, we don't experience any severe consequences.

MARCIANO: During an el Nino year, the waters in the Pacific Ocean will warm up and some of the warmest waters can be found off the coastline of South America, right now about two degrees Fahrenheit above normal, the Pacific Ocean waters, depending on how much warmer they get will determine how drastic the changes in the weather patterns will become.

Across North America, during an el Nino year, at least a typical one, you'll see cooler and wetter weather across the southeast and maybe in across the northeast and stormy weather across much of California, warmer and drier weather, maybe a little bit more quiet across the northwest and the northern tier.

But the last el Nino in 2002, 2003 was so mild that it had almost no effect on global weather patterns at all. So what does this el Nino have in store?

KOUSKY: It's a little early to say. We'll watch it very carefully in the next couple of months and update our forecasts as we progress through the fall season.

MARCIANO: El Ninos usually reduce the number of hurricanes and tropical storms. But this one may come too late to have any major effect on this year's storm season. One of the most intense el Ninos on record, 1997 and '98. It cost more than $1 billion in property damage in California alone. States like Florida and Texas suffered extreme flooding. Fish stocks plummeted and some wildlife starved.

But it helps other areas like the northeast, the Midwest. They enjoyed milder winters and lower heating bills. The rain-starved west welcomed a downpour of winter snow and heavier rainfall along the southeast was a boom for agriculture. So news of el Nino is not always bad.

But experts caution that weather prediction -- well, they are always kind of a gamble and since history proves that el Ninos can have such devastating effects on humans and the environment, they say this early data gives governments, businesses and the public time to plan for the unexpected.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Beyond this next el Nino researchers are predicting stronger, more frequent heat waves in the late 21st century. According to scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the largest increases in heat waves may happen in the western and southern United States and in the Mediterranean. The northwest U.S., along with France and Germany may also start feeling more heat. The researchers say the heat wave pattern will relate to climate change associated with greenhouse gas emissions. The study appears in this week's edition of the "Journal of Science."

Authorities in China were feeling the heat of environmentalists campaigning against the construction of new golf courses. More on that from Mike Chinoy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIKE CHINOY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For China's new rich it's the ultimate status symbol, membership in a golf course. Car dealer Joe Quo (ph) paid $58,000 U.S. dollars to join this club near Beijing. He plays every weekend.

Living standards are rising, he says. Golf is getting much more popular.

For many people here the profusion of golf courses is a source of pride that China has become a modern and prosperous nation. But the golf boom has now gotten so big, the sport has turned from a past time into a problem. The problem is that golf courses are consuming farmland and water resources the world's most populous nation desperately needs. With 1,000 new courses under construction, environmentalist Lee Hou (ph) has spearheaded a campaign against the game.

Experts say that every year, one golf course in Beijing uses water for 10,000 people she says, and uses land where hundreds could live. A country like China can't afford that.

Initially her campaign went nowhere. The government was hesitant she says because they're interested in economic development. They thought that because business people liked golf, they have to build golf courses to attract investment.

It's far from clear that ambitious property developers and greedy local officials will heed the ban, but on this environmental issue at least, the government has teed off in the right direction.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Britain has issued its first license for human cloning. Now it's not to create new human beings. The cloning technique will be used to produce stem cells, the so-called master cells of the human body. Stem cells are extracted when a human embryo is still microscopic. They can potentially develop into many types of human tissue and scientists want to instill these blank cells with specific traits, for instance making insulin producing cells that could be transplanted into diabetic patients. Many scientists believe that stem cells hold promise for treating other diseases from Parkinson's to Alzheimer's. But here in the United States, stem cell research is as much a political topic as it is a scientific one. Joe Johns reports on the controversy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Under election year pressure to defend the president's policy limiting embryonic stem cell research, the Bush campaign enlisted the first lady.

LAURA BUSH, FIRST LADY: But I know that embryonic stem cell research is very preliminary right now and the implication that cures for Alzheimer's are around the corner is just not right and it's really not fair to the people who are watching a loved one suffer with this disease.

JOHNS: It was a response of sorts to the appeals of another first lady, Nancy Reagan, who has made known her support for expanding stem cell research. Her husband, former President Ronald Reagan, suffered from Alzheimer's. Their son even spoke at the Democratic National Convention.

RON REAGAN, SON OF FORMER PRESIDENT REAGAN: Whatever else you do, come November 2nd, I urge you please, cast a vote for embryonic stem cell research. JOHNS: The greatest pressure is coming directly from the campaign trail. John Kerry and John Edwards have launched a whole series of events to highlight the issue, pointing to polls they claim show strong public support.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: What if, what if we could discover the cure to Alzheimer's and AIDS and spinal chord problems?

JOHNS: The administration argues the president's position tends to get misrepresented.

SCOTT McCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: This president was the first to open the doors for Federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

JOHNS: And while private companies were given freedom to do their own thing, government funding was strictly limited to a set number of existing embryonic stem cell lines. The administration argued that allowing unlimited research would lead to government funded creation and destruction of human embryos just to study them.

McCLELLAN: You go down a dangerous slippery slope when you try to divorce ethics from science.

JOHNS (on camera): There is substantial support in Congress for expanding embryonic stem cell research, but opponents say this year at least, it's much more likely to remain a presidential campaign issue.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Well, another campaign issue on our beat, the storage of spent nuclear reactor fuel and radioactive waste. Nevada's Yucca Mountain has been the bull's-eye of that debate for nearly two decades and this year is no different. Bruce Morton has the details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRUCE MORTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Not many mountains can deliver the electoral votes of an entire state, but this one probably can. It's Yucca Mountain, some 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas and it's where the Federal government wants to store 77,000 tons of spent reactor fuel and other nuclear waste. Nevada's tiny congressional delegation has fought it for decades.

1982, Congress orders development of a national nuclear disposal site. 1987 Congress settles on Yucca Mountain but resistance continues. In campaign 2,000, George W. Bush said he would oppose the site unless scientific studies showed it was environmentally safe and he won Nevada's 4 electoral votes. But in 2001 his Energy secretary recommended going ahead and in 2002, President Bush approved that recommendation.

Nevada went to court. In July 2004 the U.S. court of appeals ruled the government's proposed safety standards safe for 10,000 years was inadequate. Needs to be safe for more than 10 millennia? Is that a forward looking court or what? So the president can appeal or ask Congress to set a standard. And John Kerry, will Bill Clinton carried Nevada both times he ran as an opponent of the storage site. Guess what Kerry says.

KERRY: When I'm president of the United States, I'll tell you about Yucca Mountain, not on my watch! No!

MORTON: Critics say Kerry voted for the 1987 act designating Yucca Mountain but he also voted for four unsuccessful amendments eliminating language targeting Yucca. His running mate, John Edwards favored the site as a senator but now of course backs Kerry's stand. Nevada is a battleground state again, five electoral votes now. They gained a congressional seat in the last census and Yucca Mountain in this land of desert and neon is an issue that could tilt the state toward Kerry.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: OK. There's more political news of a sort later on NEXT. You'll see how the gloves and other things come off in political ads on the Internet.

But first, a look how the canned spam act has been working. If you get e-mail, then you probably already know the answer.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Now you don't have to be a dead president or even a CNN reporter -- yikes, who is that guy -- to get your face on a postage stamp. The Web site photostamps.com will convert e-mail pictures into postage. Now you can submit any photo you like, short of porn or copyrighted material of course and photostamps will send you back stamps bearing your picture. You can use them just like regular stamps but they cost twice as much, 17 bucks for a sheet of 20 first- class stamps plus postage and handling of course.

All right. Let's move on. The government canned spam act has been in effect for more than seven months now. Has the amount of spam in your inbox decreased? Well a new report says the law just isn't working as Julie Vallese reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JULIE VALLESE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the online war against fraudulent activity, consumers are losing the battle to protect themselves. That from a new report by "Consumer Reports" which says the canned spam act isn't working.

JIM GUEST, PRESIDENT, CONSUMERS UNION: Sixty nine percent, seven out of 10 e-mail users say that more than half the e-mail they receive is spam.

VALLESE: When it came it unacceptable material, 55 percent said they've received pornographic or other objectionable spam. And about half said that despite the new law, they're getting more spam than ever before. MICHAEL GOODMAN, FTC BUREAU OF CONSUMER PROTECTION: Canned spam is not going to affect the amount of messages that consumers receive to any large degree. We've said all along that legislation, whether it be canned spam or something else is not going to be the silver bullet for the spam problem.

VALLESE: Canned spam gives law enforcement more ammunition to prosecute spammers if they can find them.

GUEST: We think the Federal law should be strengthened so that nobody can send you or me as a consumer spam, unsolicited e-mail unless we says we want to get it.

VALLESE: But sometimes consumers are tricked into getting spam by something called fishing. That too according to "Consumer Reports" is on the rise. It's where spammers pose as companies consumers trust.

GOODMAN: I don't think the problem is at that point that people would be better off unplugging their computer than continuing to use the Internet for what it's there for.

VALLESE (on-camera): But consumers can fight back. Don't buy anything spammers are selling; don't reply to spam and start using fire walls.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Speaking of selling, the latest remake of Doom, that mega popular horror game for the personal computer, is moving faster than an imp out of hell. JJ Ramburg reports on whether the sales will be enough to revive a flagging market for PC video games.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JJ RAMBURG, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was one of the most anticipated releases in video game history. When Doom 3 hit stores last week, it had the attention not only of fans, but also of video game analysts who were expecting a much needed boost to the PC game industry.

GREG VEDERMAN, PC GAMER: This is really the shot in the arm that we've all been waiting for. This game, along with a couple of others that will be coming out later this year, are expected to sort of swing the industry back towards the PC, once the PC is now the superior platform for graphics and sound.

RAMBURG: In the past four years, sales of video games for PCs have shrunk by 33 percent while games for consoles like Microsoft's Xbox and Nintendo's Game Cube have increased by 41 percent. But Doom is different. Sales of Doom 1 and 2 totaled $100 million and the industry buzz waiting for Doom 3 has executives from Id software, the creators of the game, confident that version 3 will also be a big moneymaker.

TODD HOLLENSHEAD, ID SOFTWARE: Initial game sales for the first are going to be well north of 200,000 units. We don't have the totals in yet but that's going to be the fastest selling game that Id has ever made and the fastest selling PC game that Activision has ever distributed.

RAMBURG: Four years, 21 developers and more than $10 million in the making, Doom 3 incorporates technological breakthroughs that have awed even the most experienced game players.

ANTHONY BORQUEZ, USC SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING: The lighting is unbelievable, the lighting in the game. It casts shadows. It sets a mood that really can startle the player. There's also the use of sound. I think the sound is quite amazing in the game. You hear voices from all around at different times in the game also which adds to the immersiveness of Doom 3.

RAMBURG: Gamers characterize the 20 hours or so it takes to play the game as a true thrill ride and while so decry the violence in the game and others say the story line is weak, there is no question that Id Software's technology creates a new standard to live up to in the video gaming industry.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Well, the movie industry is looking for a new standard. Theaters are debating what kind of system they should use in the future when movies evolve from film to digital. Paul Clinton has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAUL CLINTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When the Warner Theater opened in Hollywood in 1928, it was state of art, one of the world's first movie venues to feature sound. The theater was the brainchild of Sam, one of the four Warner Brothers who died the day before the movie palace opened.

PAUL MILLER, DIRECTOR, DIGITAL CINEMA LAB: Sam's ghost is purported to be here and there's enough strange stuff going on that I wouldn't say it's absolutely no.

CHARLES SWARTZ, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR/CEO, ENTERTAINMENT TECH CENTER: Sam was the Warner brother who pushed technology more than any other. We feel like we're working in his heritage you might say. We're furthering the kind of goals that he had even at that time.

CLINTON: One of those goals is choosing a worldwide standard for a digital system to be used in the future, when movies will be displayed in theaters using computer chips instead of film. Paul Miller and Charles Swartz of the University of Southern California are trying to set that standard. The advantages for filmgoers of having movies displayed on digital cinema are numerous.

SWARTZ: It might be possible in the future to have multiple ratings versions playing in different screens of the multiplex. It also would be possible where there are cases that certain scenes may not be appropriate in other countries, those could also be contained within the digital cinema file.

CLINTON: Also different language versions could play simultaneously at the same theater and in addition to far greater clarity, digital, unlike film, never gets scratched or faded no matter how many times it's played. So how far off is this new technology?

SWARTZ: I think there's a lot of hope that in 2005, we will see a lot of digital cinema deployment. We won't see all theaters converted for many years to come.

CLINTON: That's because it will cost theater owners billions to convert from film to digital, but the technology is on the way and once again, the grand old theater that was Sam Warner's dream, despite years of neglect, is at cutting edge of movie technology.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: More of NEXT@CNN in a moment, but first a look at what's happening right now in the news. President Bush visited southwest Florida today, surveying damage left by hurricane Charley. Still no official estimate of the destruction, but the confirmed death toll now stands at 16. The president vowed that the government will do what it can to help the victims.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The lesson is respond quickly and we are responding quickly and we're surging equipment and the coordination between the Federal government and state government is excellent and the Homeland Security Department is doing its job.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: The president left Florida and arrived back at Andrews Air Force base about three hours ago.

For an update on Charley's strength and whereabouts and other possible weather trouble out there, here is meteorologist Orelon Sydney.

ORELON SYDNEY, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Thanks a lot. Charley is no more and that's certainly some good news. Right now it's just a couple of squalls across New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, so not a problem for the U.S. any longer. We look out into the Atlantic, we have a couple of other storms, hurricane Danielle now a category two. But this storm is expected to take a turn to the north and then northeast, way out in the Atlantic. It's not going to be a threat to any land mass that I can see at this point.

Tropical storm Earl however, is working its way on into the Caribbean Sea and it's moving very rapidly forward. That's managed I think to help keep it from developing much more than 45 miles an hour, moving to the west at 23, 140 miles now west of Grenada, 12.3 north, 63.8 west, still very far out to sea, still several days away from the Gulf of Mexico and the way it looks now, it's probably going to head more westward than northwestward. By Wednesday, we expect it to be somewhere to the east of the Yucatan Peninsula. It doesn't look like it's going to really curve off to the north but more westward at least at the latest track. So that's certainly some good news from the -- at least in the short term.

This is how it shapes up for the rest of the nation over the next few hours. We'll continue to watch an area of thunderstorms across Florida. That's daytime heating generated. Things get better as the sun goes down. Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: All right. Thanks a lot Orelon.

Overseas in Najaf, an Iraqi official says 25 heavily armed foreign fighters are holed up inside the sacred Imam Ali mosque. He says they rigged the mosque with explosives and are threatening to blow up the building if attacked.

And prices at the pump are down again according to the Lundberg survey. Gas prices dropped nearly a nickel per gallon during the past few weeks, despite a recent surge in the price of crude oil. Unfortunately, analysts say they expect prices to rise again.

More headlines in half an hour. I'm Fredricka Whitfield. Now back to more of NEXT@CNN. Keeping you informed, CNN, the most trusted name in news.

SIEBERG: Welcome back. It may be difficult to track down al Qaeda operatives or other militant groups. But the explosion of thousands of Web sites is proof that they're abundant as they use the Internet to spread their message. Brian Todd has more on the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the streets and safe houses of Kabul, two months after the September 11th attacks, a journalist stumbles onto a real find, a window inside Osama bin Laden's terror network.

ALAN CULLISON, "WALL STREET JOURNAL": Yeah. It was an exciting moment and we of course didn't know the details but we know that there was a lot ahead of us.

TODD: Alan Cullison had lost his own computer in a roadway accident in Afghanistan. In looking for a replacement he came across two computers that experts say had been used by al Qaeda's top leadership including bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri. Cullison found disk transmissions and letters where al-Zawahiri discusses a chemical and biological weapons program that never fully developed, where members complain about bin Laden's publicity stunts and a note from bin laden to Taliban leader Mullah Omar after September 11th, exhorting Omar to keep up the fight and utilize publicity himself.

Although have you already made strong declarations, we ask to you increase them to equal the opponent's media campaign in quantity and force. Cullison's reporting, first in the "Wall Street Journal" in December 2001 and in detail in next month's edition of the "Atlantic Monthly," takes us into the world of virtual terror, the recent explosion of videos, disks and Web sites produced by al Qaeda and many other militant groups. Israeli Professor Gabriel Weimann has monitored terrorism through his own Internet project for years.

PROF. GABRIEL WEIMANN, UNIVERSITY OF HAIFA: When we started this project seven years ago, there were 12 organizations and only 12 Web sites and we are monitoring now, not 12 Web sites but over 4,000 Web sites.

TODD: The phenomenon dates back to Afghanistan in the 1980s, Chechnya in the mid-'90s, militant groups getting their message out sometimes by simply recording an attack. These days expert say, tapes, Web sites and disks are more important than ever for terrorist groups.

PETER BERGEN, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: If you can't go a training camp anymore in Afghanistan, but can you watch these things on the Internet and sort of get training tips from these tapes that way.

TODD (on camera): Videos are also valuable to terrorists for propaganda and fund-raising, according to experts but they have their own vulnerability. A Web site posting training videos can quickly be shut down by a government and its producers tracked down.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: With security threats on the rise, explosive and chemical agent detection is an everyday reality and risk of soldiers and police officers. But a new technology is finding safe methods of identifying weapons and other explosives without risking human life. Veronica De La Cruz has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

VERONICA DE LA CRUZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): October 2000, a small boat carries a lethal bomb to the USS Cole in Yemen. Could this attack have been thwarted? Researchers at Lockheed Martin and the University of Florida think so. They developed a device which they believe can detect explosives and can prevent such attacks.

Common methods of bomb detection can place humans, even bomb- sniffing dogs in harm's way. But this new device prompts disposal units to stand back. It's called splat for Sticky Polymer Lethal Agent Tracer. Fired from a low velocity gun, in this case, a paint ball gun, the projectile attaches to its target using a gummy polymer. Presently the device can hit its objective from 65 feet without damaging it.

Lockheed Martin says that with fine-tuning, SPLAT will be able to access target from 300 yards. The casing contains a circuit board, transmitter and antenna. Data collected from on board sensors is sent to a laptop. The technology provides remote sensing that may save lives and give intelligence officials the upper hand in surveillance. Bomb-sniffing dogs get tired or just may not want to go to work. SPLAT also offers a much more discreet method of monitoring than other methods of detection. The prototype measures the acceleration of the projectile. Researchers say the possibilities to add other sensors are limitless.

TARA PLEW, RESEARCH ENGINEER, LOCKHEED MARTIN: We could see acoustical sensors, even small cameras, explosive sensors, chemical sensors, biological warfare sensor, you name it. It could potentially have an application.

DE LA CRUZ: The smart bullet isn't in use just yet and researchers don't have a schedule for it to be put into action. However Lockheed Martin hopes to offer SPLAT to military and police agencies soon. They believe the device will allow such agencies to pull their forces out of the danger zone.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: The 2004 Olympics are officially under way in Athens, Greece. And some track and field athletes hope to be on their way to Olympic gold and record-breaking sprints with the help of a pair of high-heeled sneakers. Larry Smith has more.

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LARRY SMITH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Sometimes finding a way to go faster first requires slowing down. Traditional track theory says sprinters run only on their toes, so their shoes have always been flat. But using extreme slow motion recording, researchers at Nike have found that sprinters' heels often do touch the ground and eventually slow them down.

TODD LEWIS, NIKE RUNNING FOOTWEAR: Everybody reaches top speed at 60 meters, 65 meters. The guy that slows down the least over the last 30 meters is usually the guy that wins the race and we sort of developed this concept of elevating the foot when it's fatigued, the last 30 meters to give our athletes that extra performance.

SMITH: What Nike's designers came up with is more likely to be spotted on a runway in Milan than a straight away in Athens. Meet the monster fly (ph), the stiletto heel of track and field. The shoe's adjustable polyurethane columns are quite a leap, even for a company that began making shoes with a waffle iron.

LEWIS: Some athletes like to be up a little higher. Some athletes like to be down a little lower. The design is such that we're able to adjust the height for specific athletes.

SMITH: The runner who is supposed to make his Olympic splash in the new swish is 100 meter sprinter Shawn Crawford, who is following in the foot steps, if not the gold shoes, of previous Nike clad gold medalist Michael Johnson.

SHAWN CRAWFORD, U.S. OLYMPIC SPRINTER: They always ask me -- they ask me, how do I feel about the shoe? And I give them the feedback, tell them where to make some minor adjustments and then we come out with a fine product. It's a little edge, but in a sprint like the 100-meter dash, every second, every 100th of a second counts. SMITH: Nike's high hopes for the high heels have Crawford shaving that 1/100 of a second off his 100 meter time. That's often the difference between first and fourth place at the finish line.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: While Nike is designing a better sneaker, my studying the anatomy of a runner's foot, an audacious art exhibit is displaying the anatomy of real human bodies and as you'll see, it's more than skin and bones.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF RUDOLPH, CEO & PRES, CALIFORNIA SCIENCE CENTER: Body world is an exhibit of 25 whole human bodies and a number of different organs and parts that show an incredible look at human physiology and anatomy help us understand our own bodies, how they function and what can go wrong.

These are all real human bodies and specimens from people who during their lifetime gave their bodies for public and medical education. It gives us a chance to look at ourselves in a way that maybe medical professionals have an opportunity to see but the lay public never gets a chance to see.

DR. GUNTHER VON HAGANS, CREATOR OF BODY WORKS: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) They believe it is something they saw in films, blending anatomy with crime, with horror but Body World is something different. It is the beauty beneath our skin, frozen in time; it is a natural art. God has given me the power to preserve what he has done in such beauty.

RUDOLPH: The process of plastination is one which essentially replaces the water, the fluids in our body with plastics and since most of our body is made up of fluid, that results in a specimen that's largely plastic and is preserved forever essentially.

VON HAGANS: There are people they -- actually they recognize themselves in the specimen, and this actually brings life into this exhibition.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All those faces that you make, will you go like this?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So you're moving your muscles.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Those are all your muscles and you got tons of muscles around your face.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Basically each one is presented to show something different. They range from a basketball player that looks at the musculature and how the body's muscles and skeletal system work when we're in action to the chess player who's bending over a chess board and you see the brain and the spinal chord and the nervous system emanating from the spinal cord to the family, where there's a father, mother and child.

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: Looks like an infant.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It looks like he's younger than you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you're looking at the arterial system, the circulatory system of all of them. Through a series of showcases that show the individual organs, you can see all the different parts of our body and how they function on a healthy body and how things can go wrong.

VON HAGANS: For me as a physician it is especially important to avoid disease to make people know if you smoke, your lung will look like that. If you drink too much, your liver will show those signs, to change the lifestyle and learn from the corpse.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That will get you healthy real quick.

VON HAGANS: The main message of this Body World exhibition is to create the power to live a better and longer life.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: In case you're wondering, you can find a link to the body art Web site on our Web site. That's at cnn.com/next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Talk about being in the right place at the right time with the right equipment, workers from the Japanese ministry of land were inspecting a region of the Nara (ph) prefecture after some heavy rains and they captured these amazing pictures. The landslide blocked a major mountain roadway, but in spite of the power you see here nobody got hurt. The Japanese people are accustomed to events like these. About 70 percent of the country's landscape is hilly or mountainous.

If you want to know how healthy a forest is, well, you might want to ask a bat. Yes, biologists say bats can be a good indicator of what's going on throughout an ecosystem. Dozens of scientists just wrapped up an intense bat blitz in North Carolina's Pee Dee National Wildlife Refuge to study these often misunderstood mammals.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATINA KALCOUNIS-RUEPPELL, UNIV. OF NORTH CAROLINA, GREENSBORO: Fully a quarter of the mammals on this earth are bats and we still know relatively little about them just because as a group, so over 1,000 species are nocturnal and they're just doing things that we can't see and what we can't see or what we can't hear, we don't understand.

J.D. BRICKEN, PEE DEE NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE: We've got a lot of bats and a good diversity of bats and that means that we have good habitat for a lot of other species. So the more information we find out each species, the more we can look at the total ecosystem.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can you come five feet closer? OK. We're good.

KALCOUNIS-RUEPPELL: We're setting up a really big net tonight that is 100 feet long and the bats will hopefully be coming down to the pond for either feeding or drinking.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We hope that if the bats aren't pay attention, they'll fly into it.

TIM CARTER, SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY: This is going to be a mess. I always joke with my students and tell that that the best way to describe a misnet (ph) is that it's the world's largest hair net.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So we're collecting hair. We're collecting some tissue. We're collecting some fecal matter. We're taking the standard measurements. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) obviously and then we let it go.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK, he's coming at you. Going that way.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is a bat detector. That's the high frequency sound of the bats. And now what we can do in the field in a relatively easy and portable way is download this sound to the computer and save as a wave file to in some cases identify the bats that we're observing.

This is a red bat, and it's one of the prettier bats that we have. Their tail membrane back here is completely furred and they use this as basically like a furry blanket they can wrap around themselves when it's kind of cold out. And the bones in a bat are exactly the same as the bones in our arm. So I'm going to measure his forearm. It's one of the measurements we take on bats. 30, 39 millimeters.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And the next thing we want to do is a wing punch, little bit of tissue and this will be high quality DNA that will be used for evolutionary studies. It's just a couple of cells thick. It's not that much tissue and they heal up really quickly and you can actually hear her.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It you could translate it, it probably would be bat profanity. He's pretty tired, or she, excuse me, is tired and have had a rough half hour, 45 minutes but hopefully she'll take off. Ready?

ALISON SHERMAN, MISS. MUSEUM OF NATURAL SCIENCE: So far tonight we've caught seven bats.

We have some evening bats that tend to be a little bit more feisty and then pipistrelles (ph) is another bat species that tends to be a little bit more docile.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So forearms. 33. Yeah, she's a juvenile. So she's -- this year's -- female -- would have been born early in spring. We just couldn't do anything like this without the help from the volunteers, and yes, they're coming on their own money. They're bringing their own resources. When you get to see a bat up close, they're cuddly animals. They're really beautiful. They're as beautiful as any other mammal that we think of as being really attractive or cuddly. Every time you see a bat in the nets, it's really exciting and you just want to be surprised by what you find.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: By the way, over the three nights of the bat blitz, scientists cut 77 bats from five different species, a busy night. For the study only two species have been officially identified from the Piedmont region of North Carolina.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: This could easily qualify as the most bizarre fund- raiser ever. Illinois Senate candidate Alan Keyes was sweating profusely when he entered the first all-African-American race for a Senate seat last weekend. So supporter Jerry McLaughlin used a napkin to dab sweat from Keyes' brow and then put it up for auction on eBay. EBay pulled the auction, citing rules against auctioning bodily fluids but McLaughlin put the napkin back on eBay, this time with no mention of sweat for a buy it now price of just a penny under $1,000. That's the federal contribution limit. EBay, don't sweat the small stuff.

OK, believe it or not a sweaty napkin may not be the weirdest campaign-related item on the Internet. Well, maybe it is. But Jeanne Moos found some wacky political ads that could come in a close second.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is the story of how a subservient chicken begat the subservient president. But there is nothing subservient about the candidate bashing that goes on on the web. John Kerry is portrayed as Frankenstein, his face morphs out of a cicada, while President Bush is portrayed as a bumpkin. Will Ferrell donated his time to an anti-Bush group.

WILL FERRELL, ACTOR: Ever since I took office, well, things have been really, really bad.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Cut!

FERRELL: That seemed like a good one. I'm getting my groove on.

MOOS: If you think the president looks bad...

JOEL STEIN, STAFF WRITER, "TIME": How are people still doing dancing baby jokes? It's 2004. That should be illegal.

MOOS: Maybe it should be illegal to use John Kerry's head to shoot down incoming flip-flops. The one thing that's interesting about it is that they can be so much meaner on the web.

STEIN: That is true. MOOS: You couldn't get away with this in a TV spot, two Johns getting it on. Many of these are just an individual's attempt at humor and persuasion. Take the subservient president. It's a parody of Burger King's subservient chicken. But instead of typing in orders like touch your toes, you tell the subservient president to say invade North Korea and a guy in a Bush mask presses the nuclear button. Write foreign policy, he plays the cowboy, ask for a magic trick and he turns Osama into Saddam.

If you type club the director you'll glimpse Steve Anderson, the interactive media professor who dreamed up the Web site. Though some web campaign videos may be lowbrow, they make TV ads seem subservient, this president's no chicken. Mention Michael Moore and he flips the bird. This is take no prisoners politicking.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: And no sorry to disappoint you, there are no plans in the works for a subservient sci-tech reporter unless you consider that you do have the remote control.

All right. That's all the time we have for now, but here's a peek at what's coming up next week. It's inevitable. Relics decay over time, right? Well we'll show you a way that some ancient documents are being preserved possibly for thousands of years to come. That's coming up on NEXT.

Until then, let's hear from you. You can send us an e-mail at next@cnn.com, and don't forget to check out our Web site. That's cnn.com/next.

Thanks so much for joining us. For all of us, I'm Daniel Sieberg. We'll see you NEXT time.

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