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Cutting Edge Innovations at Tech Conference in Phoenix; Millions of Monarch Butterflies Drop Dead in Mexico; New Yorkers Do Math on the Street
Aired February 23, 2002 - 13:00 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.
ANNOUNCER: NEXT@CNN, weather balloons that improve cell phone reception, a multi-dimensional monitor, and a whole lot more, cutting edge conference.
Also, millions of Monarch butterflies dropped dead in Central Mexico.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was dumbfounded. It really made us speechless to see that many down.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: Is the species in danger? Scientists assess the damage.
And cold calculating New Yorkers, would people interrupt their busy day to do math problems on the street? You bet they would. All that and more just ahead on NEXT.
JAMES HATTORI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi everybody, and welcome to NEXT@CNN. I'm James Hattori, this week from San Francisco's Exploratorium, a science and technology museum where kids and families get hands-on lessons in everything from aviation to zoology.
We'll look around a bit, but first we begin this week with a new crackdown on spam. Not the canned meat. We're, of course, talking about unsolicited commercial e-mail that clogs Internet mailboxes. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has settled a case against seven defendants accused of using e-mail in a pyramid scheme. Now the agency says it's on the lookout for fraudulent spammers.
But the feds are somewhat limited, because Congress has yet to pass a national statute regulating e-mail. So some states are coming up with strategies to put the squeeze on spam.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HATTORI (voice over): And often, you've got spam. How many spams a day do you figure you get?
BRUCE MILLER, SEATTLE WRITER: I get between 30 and 40 a day.
HATTORI: Seattle writer Bruce Miller is fed up with spam and he isn't taking it anymore.
MILLER: It's a big deal. It's a pain in the ass.
HATTORI: His website details how he's gotten cash settlements, totaling thousands of dollars, from companies which sent him unsolicited commercial e-mail. All he did was cite a three-year-old Washington State law.
MILLER: They recognized, after I presented my case on paper, that yes we probably violated the law and so, let's just settle it. We'll pay you some damages and then nobody has to go to court and it can be done and over with.
HATTORI (on camera): Washington is one of about 20 states with anti-spam statutes currently on the books. Many have been challenged in court, but Washington officials believe theirs will pass legal muster, because it focuses on two deceptive practices commonly used by spammers.
PAULA SELIS, WASHINGTON ATTORNEY GENERAL'S OFFICE: What it restricts people from doing is sending spam that has a misleading subject line, or a false transmission path.
HATTORI (voice over): Spammers often use multiple servers to hide the transmission path, identifying an e-mails origin, or else use a free e-mail account, then cancel or change it later.
Subject lines are supposed to tell you what the message is about, but spammers often use vague come-ons, like "Did you get your check?" or "Did I get the right e-mail address?" That one, prompted the first anti-spam lawsuit brought by Washington's Attorney General in 1998.
The target, a company called Natural Instincts in Salem, Oregon, allegedly owned by a then 24-year-old named Jason Heckel. The state claims Heckel sent up to one million unsolicited e-mails a week, including some to Washington State residents, pitching a book on how to make money on the Internet.
SELIS: The program that he sold was essentially a how-to book on how to send spam.
HATTORI: According to court records, this is the company's address, a rented mailbox in Salem. The state says Heckel asked customers to send him $40 for the book.
DALE CRANDALL, HECKEL'S ATTORNEY: There's no concurrence at all about what constitutes misleading identification on the Internet.
HATTORI: Heckel's attorney, Dale Crandall, says Washington has no jurisdiction over Oregon residents. Interstate commerce, he argues, is a federal matter under the Constitution.
CRANDALL: When there are commercial transactions taking place across state boundaries, the regulation of those transactions needs to be left with Congress.
HATTORI: Washington's case against Heckel will go to trial this fall.
SELIS: We're hoping that it has a deterrent effect, and we're hoping that over time, Congress will regulate this area so that there is a strong disincentive for people to send spam.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HATTORI: Jason Heckel declined an interview on the advice of his attorney, who says he doesn't want his client targeted with unsolicited e-mail from angry spam recipients.
While another annoyance of modern life, other people's endless cell phone conversations in places where you'd hope for peace and quiet. Kristie Lu Stout shows us a company in Hong Kong that's invented a device to shut down all that ringing and chattering.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KRISTIE LU STOUT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Want to start the conversation with a Hong Konger? Just ask him about his mobile phone.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't even know. I think it's (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
STOUT: With almost eight out of ten people owning a cell phone, Hong Kong has a bona fide case of mobile mania, so severe that social taboos about where and when to take a call have fallen by the wayside. Do you ever use a mobile phone in a restaurant or during a meeting?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Always.
STOUT: And is there a time when you think you have to turn off your mobile phone?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not any.
STOUT: Why?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why? I try to keep in touch.
STOUT: Keeping in touch, often at the expense of peace and quiet. But one company says it has the answer to those annoying cell phone rings, a mobile jammer called The Mute Tone.
PAUL KAN, CHAIRMAN, CHAMPION TECHNOLOGY: It can only stop mobile phones. It will not jam up other radio frequencies within a confined area. So you can define an area, say this room, we are going to have a conference. When we have a conference, we don't want people to talk on the mobile phones, so you can switch this device on so that people can not be using a mobile phone to talk. STOUT: The device sells for around $1,600, not a hefty price to pay for mobile free theaters, places of worship, and restaurants.
KAN: We receive hundreds of e-mail from different customers, a lot in America, saying, "how come it took you so long to come up with the device?" We never have a quiet dinner anymore with my wife in any restaurant since the introduction of the mobile phone."
STOUT: Demand is huge. The trouble is, mobile jammers are illegal in many parts of the world on fears that places outside the intended area would be affected. In Hong Kong, authorities are exploring whether the Mute Tone could be an accepted technology.
KAN: The plan now is to have a public consultation, and to see what is the response of the people, and if the public opinion is for the use of a device like this, to stop people talking on the mobile phone in places where they're not welcome, I think this will happen.
STOUT: But it may not be easy to take away someone's right to a dial tone. If I company said, "OK, we've installed a mobile jammer, so if anyone tries to make a phone call, you can't answer your phone call," how would you feel about that?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I wouldn't go to that kind of place.
STOUT: You would take your business elsewhere?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You've got your choice. You've got your freedom. Yes.
STOUT: It's an issue about freedom, personal freedom?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
STOUT (on camera): Champion Technology is confident that the Mute Tone will gain legal status in Hong Kong, good news for those of us who do miss the sweet sound of silence.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Coming up, the tourist battle between wild animals and suburbanites, and the search for humane solutions to a Bambi invasion.
And later in the show, a fighter jet without a pilot, expands the options for a military planner.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HATTORI: This week brought some good news about one of the world's most troubled zoos, the one in Kabul, Afghanistan. Decades of civil war and abuses under the Taliban regime, left the zoo damaged and bankrupt, struggling to feed the few animals that had survived. The elderly Lion, Marzian (ph), battered and blind, became the symbol of the zoo until his death last month.
The North Carolina Zoo had an international fundraising effort, hoping to raise enough money to buy food and pay zoo staff six months of back wages. Organizers said this week they have collected more than ten times their original goal, enough to rebuild the zoo and provide care for other domestic animals in Afghanistan. For more, you can check out our website, cnn.com/next.
Wild animals are invading suburbia, or more accurately, suburbia is invading the animal's turf. We have two stories focusing on the clash between wildlife and homeowners, including a possible high tech solution. But first, Maria Hinojosa, in Princeton, New Jersey.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MARIA HINOJOSA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's 11 o'clock in the morning and Tony Dinicola is getting ready for work. There are guns and bullets, detailed maps, and night vision tools. This is what you would normally use to see deer at what time?
Typically, once you get to be a half hour after sunset.
HINOJOSA: He loads his .223 caliber rifle in his truck, but Tony is not a hunter. He runs White Buffalo, a non-profit organization, the city of Princeton has hired, to sharpshoot the deer.
TONY DINICOLA, OWNER, WHITE BUFFALO: In this particular area, we've already removed over 30 animals.
HINOJOSA: It's a national problem. As Americans expand suburbia into the reaches of the forest, animals aren't just going away. There are smart and diligent bears, and adaptable deer, who it turns out, like suburbia just fine.
DINICOLA: What we like as people in development of suburbia, is exactly what deer like. You've created food resource. Oftentimes, you eliminated hunting, and you've created an area that has, you know, safe haven from most natural predators, and so it's perfect for deer.
HINOJOSA: Not entirely. While Dinicola tries to catch them with nets to later be shot, the greatest number of deer deaths come from car accidents.
In Maryland, they set up special reflectors to deal with the problem. Installed on roadsides, they deter deer. Animal rights groups say it's more humane and more effective than gunshots.
MICHAEL MARKARIAN, THE FUND FOR ANIMALS: Hunting actually triggers reproductive growth in a population. It is a band-aid approach. It can reduce a population for a couple months, and then it bounces right back up to the same level, if not higher. Anyone who tells people otherwise, is trying to sell snake oil to a community that is frustrated with its problem.
HINOJOSA: Thomas Poole is frustrated, even though he's an animal lover. He put up a fence soon after his neighbor got Lyme Disease from a deer tick. Poole has supported every other possible solution, trapping and transfer, contraception, doing nothing.
THOMAS POOLE, PRINCETON RESIDENT: And we concluded that we would have to reduce the herd and that the only available way to do it at this point was to bring in sharpshooters and literally to reduce the herd that way.
(on camera): We were driving along when we saw this sign for the high accident area, and we got out. People around Princeton said that around dusk, you could see deer everywhere. We never imagined it would be this simple to find them. It looks like they really are just about everywhere.
(voice-over): On front lawns, the fawns play in streets close by, in wooded backyards. They eat in groups of five to ten. The deer that once feared humans just stare right back. So Tony gets on with his work.
DINICOLA: People themselves have to decide how many deer they're tolerant of, versus taking the life of an animal. How fast are you willing to drive? If you want to fence your entire property because you want to garden or landscape, that's your decision.
HINOJOSA: Climbing trees to wait for a shot at reducing Princeton's deer herd.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HATTORI: So how can wild animals and humans peacefully coexist? Well, one answer is to learn more about exactly where the animals call home. Mark Stevenson has that part of the story from Canada's Rocky Mountains.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MARK STEVENSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hounds like Joker and Pepper are hard wired to hunt large cats like cougars, but it isn't always easy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a squirrel up there. Yes, you spotted him. That's not what we're looking for though.
STEVENSON: Instead of hunting, the hounds are helping researchers track cougars to monitor their movement, to identify cougar corridors so they can be set aside.
Cougar numbers have rebounded in recent years. Now development along the eastern Rockies threatens to cut off and isolate the cats, leading to more close encounters with people.
CHERYL CHETKIEWICZ, WILDLIFE BIOLOGIST: Cougars can kill pets, and there have been cougars that kill people.
STEVENSON: Animal overpasses in (UNINTELLIGIBLE) try to preserve wildlife corridors, letting large mammals like cougars roam, without being blocked by a highway. But outside the parks, like here in Crows Nest Pass, animal overpasses don't exist. (on camera): Running right through prime cougar country is Highway 3, a single-lane highway the province plans to double, and a prime example of how animal corridors can be cut off at the center.
CARITA BERGMAN, ALBERTA FISH AND WILDLIFE: Our local residential and commercial developments are rapidly expanding, and threatening the connectiveness of habitat patches on either side, north and south of this highway.
STEVENSON (voice-over): The cougar research could determine where a future animal overpass might go, avoiding dead cougars like this one, likely killed by a collision.
Finally, the dogs find a cat. It's drugged, measured, and fitted with a radio collar. By tracking cougars, biologist Cheryl Chetkiewicz hopes to figure out where cougars roam.
CHETKIEWICZ: I don't like to envision a world without bears and cougars, but it's certainly a possibility.
STEVENSON: It's data towns can use to decide where and how to develop, so people and cougars can live with one another, but not together.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Coming up, math lessons on 42nd Street, go figure.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HATTORI: A NASA spacecraft this week started work on its mission to find water on Mars. The Mars Odyssey probe was launched last April, and arrived in orbit around the Red Planet in October. Now it's in a position about 250 miles above the Martian surface, and on Tuesday, it started gathering data about the top layer of soil.
If it spots hydrogen, there's a good chance that water is there, probably in the form of ice, mixed with the soil. Large amounts of water on Mars would suggest the planet could support life. Odyssey's finding will help NASA decide where to land rovers that will continue the search for water.
Two astronauts took a space walk this week from the International Space Station Alpha. The goal was to get the station's airlock ready for a busy period coming up in April, when there will be four space walks to do major construction work on the station.
The astronauts also wore devices that monitor radiation to help scientists understand how much exposure space walkers get. The space walk on Wednesday came on the 40th anniversary of the day that John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth.
The Winter Games winding up in Salt Lake City this weekend, brought some new sports to the Olympic area, and there were some innovations behind the scenes too. Sean Callebs reports on the technology of timing. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MARC WEISS, MATHMATICIAN: A thousandth of a second at human scale is very tiny.
SEAN CALLEBS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the luge, skeleton, and bobsled races, it's not just seconds that count it's milliseconds. Racers travel at speeds up to 90 miles an hour and finishes are decided in the blink of an eye.
WEISS: They're racing against the clock. Somebody else comes down and the clock says who won. The clock is jumping around, noisy at that one-thousandth of a second level, then the numbers don't mean anything.
CALLEBS: That's why this year, NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is independently calibrating the timing system. It's complicated, but by using infrared lights at the start and finish lines, as well as global positioning satellites, there should no longer be any question about race times.
WEISS: These athletes spend their lives trying to perfect themselves, trying to get down to thousands of seconds between them and the next one. We want to be sure for these people's sake that when they prove what they've done, it's a real measurement, that we know that this guy did better than this guy, and that it's a real thing.
CALLEBS: In these sports, timing is everything and this year, the timing is also very accurate.
(on camera): In fact, there have been no controversies in the timed events, is a good indication that so far everything is working error free.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HATTORI: When you think of street performers, you probably think of people playing music or even juggling plates, but solving math problems? Well, leave it to Jeanne Moos to find the sidewalk professor.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Put on your thinking cap. Solve the problem and win a Snickers. If you think the only math on 42nd Street involves sales signs, think again. Mary can paint a room in three hours. Fred can paint the same room in six hours. How long will it take them to paint the room together?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I can't say because Mary can still do it in three.
GEORGE NOBL, MATHEMATICS PROFESSOR: She can do it by herself in three. She's got this other guy to help her.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, Fred is going to hold her up.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Five hours.
NOBL: Ten hours? It takes longer than it would take her?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, less.
MOOS: Folks resort to using fingers, pads, even calculators. Two hours.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Two hours. I think that she's American.
MOOS: Oh, that's almost unfair.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, it's fair to me. Hey, I got a Snickers and I know it's two hours.
MOOS: Once a week, George Noble lugs his easel to 42nd Street.
NOBL: To divide two fractions, you have to get a common denominator, right? Am I speaking your language?
MOOS: He presents problems that some passersby just can't pass by. The population of Smithville increased by three percent since 1992, the population is 422,300. What was the population in 1992?
NOBL: That's an easy one.
MOOS: Easy for George.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 432,969.
NOBL: 409701?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.
NOBL: No?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 409,631.
MOOS: The correct answer is 410,000.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, well.
MOOS: George is a math professor upset over the way math is taught in American schools.
NOBL: And if this keeps going, we're going to fall behind really bad.
MOOS: But what do you think you're going to accomplish like on 42nd Street, with your little easel and all that?
NOBL: We'll see. I don't know.
MOOS: So far, George has yet to discover anyone like the character in "Good Will Hunting" the young janitor who astounded professors by figuring out math problems.
Most of the folks on 42nd Street get the answers wrong. George even uses diagrams of aliens with tentacles to teach math.
It's such an odd thing though for you to be out here doing, you know, because you're not like a whacko. You, know no really. There's a lot of whackos in New York.
NOBL: Can I have that in writing, please. I'm not dangerous, no.
MOOS: What's dangerous is how easy the problems seem. Pete sells a six-inch pizza for $6. How much should he charge for a twelve-inch pizza? The answer is $24, not $12. Trying to figure that out -
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I-squared is going to be 3 squared. Square that, it's going to be 9. Nine times the diameter is...
MOOS: Is enough to make you lose your appetite.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Don't go away. Coming up on NEXT, a high-flying cell phone network could mean no more dropped calls. Also ahead, beyond this hole is a spectacular world of breathtaking scenes and unusual creatures. Is this anyplace for waste from a sewage treatment plant? All that and more, coming up after a break and the latest headlines from the CNN News Room. We'll be back in a few minutes.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HATTORI: Welcome back. You know, the exploratorium here in San Francisco gives kids and families up close lessons about how things work, like the simulated tornado vortex. Well some of the same scientific principles on display here are used by the best and brightest thinkers to come up with what they hope will be the next big things. Ann Kellan has some possible candidates from the recent Demo 2002 Conference in Phoenix, Arizona.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANN KELLAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): It's frustrating, even life threatening at times, when your cell phone service cuts out.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm a police officer down there. One of our lieutenants pulled over at a car accident, was trying to dial 9-1-1. The circuit was busy and couldn't get through.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A couple weeks ago when I was trying to reach home during an emergency situation, and had no service. So that was very agitating for me.
KELLAN: The company, Space Data, is using centuries old technology, weather balloons, to tackle the modern day nuisance of dropped calls and no service, caused by dead zones between transmission towers.
JERRY KNOBLACH, CEO, SPACE DATA CORP.: Only about 10 percent of land mass is actually covered by digital wireless service. By putting a wireless transceiver, like Space Data has done on weather balloons and float at 100,000 feet, we can provide coverage to a 360-mile diameter circle. Seventy of those could cover the entire landmass of the U.S., and we work with existing wireless devices, so no one has to change their cell phone or pager to work with us.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a GPS unit here that gives us position, so we know where the balloon craft is at all times.
KELLAN: The company hopes to have a network in the Southwest U.S. within a year. Space Data is the type of breakthrough technology the conference Demo 2002 seeks out. New software called Simphone (ph) turns a wireless personal digital assistant into a cell phone.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So what do you guys think? Is this cool or what?
CHRIS SHIPLEY, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, DEMO 2002: We're looking for a product that's coming into the market, they're new, and they are changing the landscape.
KELLAN (on camera): Demo 2002 features an elite group. There are only 65 products here and those products are guaranteed to get noticed.
KEITH PHILLIPS, CEO, DEEP VIDEO IMAGING: It's a show that's devoid of clutter, noise and garbage. You've got the experts who are here, the investors who really want to invest.
KELLAN: For example, Keith Phillips and his team came from New Zealand to show their multi-dimensional monitor, for navigational devices, and in-your-face video games.
KELLAN: It looks like two screens on top of each other.
R.J. SEIGEL, DEEP VIDEO IMAGING: Yes, we've been able to find a way to push light through multiple layers of LCDs, so that you can look through one screen, around those objects, to the next screen. So they are multi layers.
KELLAN: You can see seven and listen to as many as 250 at this video conference, bypass the phone company, pay $.40 a minute to a company called Reality Fusion, and you teleconference via the Internet.
SEIGEL: Oh dear, this is a stick-out-your-tongue demo here. So you can actually see the people that you're working with. You can see their facial gestures. You can see if they're paying attention. You can see if they're confused or angry.
KELLAN: How's it going? Can I interrupt you. I mean if you (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Three mikes are live at any given time.
KELLAN: And if you're having a bad hair day, you can turn off your screen.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm super excited to show you today the next generation mobile PC.
KELLAN: Not everything is quite ready for market. Microsoft's new table PC is due to release this fall.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's super lightweight. It has six to eight hours of battery life, wireless connectivity.
KELLAN: Using a special pen and mouse, the tablet recognizes handwriting, but converting handwriting to typed text is still buggy. That's why it's not released until the fall, right?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's right. We're still working on these bugs.
KELLAN: And don't expect this $1,500 tablet to read messy handwriting.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If you can't read your own handwriting, it's not going to read it for you.
KELLAN: Palm's new I705 provides a wireless connection too, but the screen is black and white. Want to add a little color to your e- mail? For $25, you can download Anotice (ph) off the Internet and respond to e-mail with post-it notes.
ALAIN RENAUD, EMERIS TECHNOLOGIES: The comments and the answers are on the same document. It's not on the top of each other. So, questions and answers on the same document. The points are highlighted, right. And it's very fast.
KELLAN: And how do you print out the product?
RENAUD: Anotice.
KELLAN: Anotice. Is it Anotice or Anotice?
RENAUD: Well, you choose. It's an international product, so it doesn't matter. People will pronounce it the way they want.
KELLAN: If all product developers were so easy. Hey, if you're ever in Japan where cell phones and cameras are packaged as one, and if Mitigo (ph) makes its sale, you can aim your lens at a barcode on a billboard and buy a ticket to a U2 concert, or download a video game, even hail a taxi, the signs of things to come.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Coming up, disaster strikes the king of the butterfly, a massive die-off of Monarchs in Mexico, that and more still to come on NEXT AT CNN. Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HATTORI: A new environmental controversy is rumbling from beneath the ground in Central Tennessee. That's where an amazing complex of caves has been discovered. The problem is, it sits downstream from a desperately needed sewage treatment plant. As Natalie Pawelski reports, concerns are growing for the underground environment, and the river running through it.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NATALIE PAWELSKI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): A small hollow under a rock is the hidden gateway to Tennessee's Rumbling Falls Cave, home of one of the underground world's star attractions, the second biggest cave chamber ever discovered in the United States.
JUDY TAICAS, WORLD WILDLIFE FUND: I think that it compares to the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone Park, those kind of places that really have the wow factor. When you look at pictures of it, it is just incredible. It takes your breath away.
PAWELSKI: They call it the Rumble Room, five acres across and 250 feet high. Only expert cavers can manage the treacherous approach, navigating 200 foot drops and squeezing through passages that narrow to just one foot across. But the cave may also be vulnerable, because of a river running through it.
The topside town of Spencer plans to dump treated sewage into that river from a soon to be opened wastewater treatment plant, the Mayor says, is desperately needed.
MAYOR TERRY CRAIN, SPENCER, TENNESSEE: There was a septic tank survey done in our town by the State of Tennessee, and they found that 45 percent of the residents' septic systems were failing, and 75 percent of the businesses were failing.
PAWELSKI: The same geology that allows for spectacular caves, also means septic systems don't really work here. Backyards are dotted with puddles of raw sewage, leaking from septic tanks.
Spencer's a small relatively poor town, and it took years to come up with the money to build this new sewage treatment plant. In the middle of the process, news of the spectacular cave broke. The State of Tennessee said it made sure the plant is state of the art. It says the outflow will not hurt the cave.
SAYA QUALLS, TENNESSEE DIVISION OF WASTE POLLUTION CONTROL: What we're talking about is a wastewater that is just extremely clean and will not even come close to causing harm. We don't think that it will cause much of a change at all.
PAWELSKI: But the new plant is expected to boost the levels of nitrogen, phosphorus in the river by about 10 percent.
QUALLS: Our biologists generally don't think that a 10 percent difference is going to cause a significant change in the cave system or in any system for that matter.
PAWELSKI: Cavers and environmentalists are not so confident.
TAICAS: The cave creatures will likely die, because they will not be able to adapt to the treatment plant.
PAWELSKI (on camera): A few months back, a biologist took a quick survey of life inside Rumbling Falls Cave. He found a couple dozen species of cave-dwelling animals. Now that may not sound like a lot but the biologist called it globally significant.
(voice-over): The species are small and strange, like this blind crayfish that can live to be 120 years old. It can't even begin to reproduce until age 30. There are also endangered animals, creatures found in only one or two caves in the world.
TAICAS: All these things that the creatures kind of are very adapted to living in this very unique niche that they have, is going to change, which means that they will not be able to survive. They will not be able to adapt for the new environment.
PAWELSKI: Tennessee's governor is trying to help find a way to reroute the treated sewage somewhere else, but with the wastewater treatment plant scheduled to go online in a matter of weeks, time for finding a solution that works perfectly for the world above and the world below is running out.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HATTORI: Time has run out for millions of Monarch butterflies, found dead at their winter nesting grounds in Mexico. Cold weather and shrinking forests apparently are to blame. Denelle Balfour (ph) has that story.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
DENELLE BALFOUR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): High up in Mexico's diminishing Oyamel Forest, the sound of millions of butterfly wings. It is the winter site of the Monarch, a spectacle treasured by nature lovers.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's like sort of walking through fairyland in a sense.
BALFOUR: But this year, much of the site is like a morgue, after an unusual and severe cold front. You don't have to be an expert to know this is bad.
Guide Jose Garcia says the butterflies fell from the sky like rain and covered the forest floor like a carpet. They survived an epic migration from Canada, but were no match for the bad weather.
It's impossible to know how many of these fragile creatures died. Estimates range from 50 million to 250 million.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was eerie and it was just almost, I was dumbfounded. It really made you speechless to see that many down.
BALFOUR: It's possible deforestation in the area made the die- off worse, the butterfly's protective canopy thinned by illegal logging. It is agreed that up to 80 percent of the Monarchs at Mexico's two major reserves perished in the January freeze. Not known is what impact this massive die-off will have on the future of the population.
KURST: It will be a waiting game to really see if they can recover after a storm of this nature.
BALFOUR: Minnesota scientist, Dave Kurst (ph) along with others in Mexico, the United States, and Canada, will monitor the Monarch as it makes its amazing migratory journey north.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The spring will be a very critical time.
BALFOUR: Scientists say it is unlikely a single event could bring the death now for the Monarch, but the radically reduced numbers have left the butterflies vulnerable to future whims of weather, disease, and deforestation.
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ANNOUNCER: Up next, a fighter plane can do some things better without a pilot. We'll look at a prototype that's coming over the horizon.
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HATTORI: If you're ever tried to squeeze your car into a parking space that's just a little too short, like everybody here in San Francisco, take a look at this invention. When you're ready to park, the car collapses from a four-seater to a two-seater, which makes it two feet shorter. Now there's a safety latch so the chassis can't fold up accidentally.
The prototype was designed by a small Swiss company. Now Renault floated a similar idea 10 years ago, and Volkswagen once tried a van that parked itself without human help, but neither made it into production. The new shrinking car will go on display at the Geneva Auto Show starting March 7th.
Military pilots can make their planes do some amazing things, but from an aircraft designers point of view, pilots could one day be an option instead of standard equipment. Steve Young reports on one aircraft company's plans for a jet that will fly into combat without a pilot.
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STEVE YOUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The wingspan of Boeing's unmanned combat aerial vehicle is about the same as the $25 million manned jet fighter, but it has no cockpit, so it's a lot shorter.
The X-45 can carry the same weapons as a jet fighter for as little as one-third the cost, and it can make human pilots seem puny.
PIERRE CHAO, AEROSPACE ANALYST CENTER: Having a human being inside the aircraft means you have to make a lot of compromises. There's only so fast you can go. There's only turns that you can make so fast because otherwise your pilot would end up getting squashed like a bug on the inside.
YOUNG: The potential of the X-45 means a lot to Boeing, which won the Air Force developmental contract, after losing the huge joint strike force contract to Lockheed Martin.
While an unmanned cruise missile also destroys enemy targets, it's on a one-way trip. The unmanned combat vehicle returns to base for repeated assignments. Its first test flight is scheduled for the spring. It's supposed to spare combat pilots from trying to lure a ground launched missile so they can duck and knock out the installation.
MICHAEL HEINZ, VICE PRESIDENT, BOEING UNMANNED SYSTEMS: We don't want to put men in extremely dangerous situations. We do that as necessary today, of course, and such missions as what we call suppression of enemy air defenses only the pilot has to fly right into the heart of the air defense in order to take it down.
YOUNG: The company believes by the end of the decade, its pilotless fighter jets, along with surveillance drones, could be a billion dollar a year business for Boeing with sustainable double- digit revenue growth.
YOUNG (on camera): And analysts say, planes like the X-45 someday could boost homeland defense starting with surveillance runs. Eventually, lethal capability could be added, so the plane not only could detect a domestic threat, but also react to it.
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ANNOUNCER: Still ahead on NEXT, a map of life to help conservationists better understand the circle of life.
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HATTORI: Finally this week, a NEXT@CNN pop quiz. There are nearly 200 countries in the world, but how many eco regions are there? If you guessed more than 850, you'd be right, and I'd be amazed.
Even more amazing is that scientists now have them all mapped in hopes of protecting the world's diversity of life. Here's Gary Strieker.
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GARY STRIEKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Scientists now have a new conservation tool, what they describe as a new map of life on earth. The diversity of life on the planet is like a complicated jigsaw puzzle, natural communities of plants and animals assembled together in a network of ecological regions, some of them very large, others so small they're seldom noticed. For conservation scientists, detailed maps of these ecological regions are essential for research and planning.
(on camera): Until now, biogeographic maps have divided the earth into very large ecological regions without much detail, not very useful for serious conservation work.
(voice over): But now, a team of scientists at the World Wildlife Fund have produced a new high resolution map of the world's terrestrial life.
DAVID OLSON, WORLD WILDLIFE FUND: This eco region map provides much greater detail of how plants and animals are distributed around the world, roughly a four-fold increase over previous maps of life on this planet.
STRIEKER: The map is the product of eight years of research using data collected by hundreds of international experts. It identifies 867 eco regions, ranging from the Cammarunean (ph) Highlands Forests in Central Africa, to the Arctic Coastal Tundra in North America, a way of looking at the world as nature made it without political boundaries.
DAVID DINERSTEIN, WORLD WILDLIFE FUND: We have to have some sort of common foundation upon which to make decisions, and with this map, we think that the World Wildlife Fund has been able to put together something that will be of great use to conservationists around the world.
STRIEKER: A valuable resource on the diversity of life.
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HATTORI: You can take a look at the eco regions map and find out where you fit in on the World Wide Web. For a link, go to our website, cnn.com/next. Well, that does it for us this week. Here's a peak at some of the stories we've got in the pipeline.
If you thought free music downloading died after the Napster controversy, think again. Net-heads are still swapping songs, along with TV shows and movies. Will there be a replay in court?
And we'll take you to a game reserve in Kenya for the biggest elephant relocation project in history.
Those stories plus a look at the latest in pocket computers coming up on NEXT. Until then, let us know what you think. Drop us an e-mail. Our address is next@cnn.com. Thanks so much for joining us this week. For all of us on the sci-tech beat, I'm James Hattori. See you next time.
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