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Polar Bears Starve as Arctic Sea Shrinks; Device Turns Wall Outlets Into Network Connections; Ways to Deal With Password Overload

Aired May 18, 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: Today on NEXT@CNN, the Arctic Sea ice is shrinking and that means polar bears are starving. Will long-term climate change kill off the species?

Also, a device that turns your wall outlet into network connections.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's obviously connectivity throughout the house amongst all those outlets that is supporting electricity, and all we're doing is adding data to what's on that wire as well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: Find out how to plug in.

And password annex, new ways to log in even if you can't remember your secret code. All that and more on NEXT.

JAMES HATTORI, HOST: Hi, everybody, and welcome to NEXT@CNN. I'm James Hattori, this week from San Francisco's International Airport. Travelers across the U.S. are girding for a summer of aggravation, overcrowding, long lines, delays, connects before you even take off.

Up in the skies, one growing problem is too many planes crowding the traffic lanes. The FAA is looking for ways to share airspace more efficiently, without compromising safety. In fact this week, the agency announced a plan to reduce the vertical space required between planes in flight. And as Ann Kellan reports, that's just one of several plans to cut down delays.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANN KELLAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Has an airplane delay ever ruined your day?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I got stuck, missed all my connections back to Dayton, Ohio.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Basically, they board you and you sit on the plane. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Just sit there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The flight I was just going to get on is delayed.

KELLAN: Fear not, U.S. air traffic control is about to enter the 21st Century with new computer software aimed at helping controllers like Jim Ashe reduce air traffic delays.

JIM ASHE, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER: One minute, two minutes, I can see that in eight minutes, these two aircraft are going to be in conflict.

KELLAN: This program, nicknamed URET, User Request Evaluation Tool, lets Jim see 20 minutes ahead of time where planes in flight could get too close, so he can redirect them early to maintain an on time arrival. You would let's say warn this guy, hey you're getting a little too close, move out.

ASHE: We would issue them a clearance to get away from it and stay clear. This is what we used to keep a record of, every clearance we gave to every aircraft. These were printed off a printer. This machine allows us to do that more quickly and a lot easier than we used to do it in the past.

KELLAN: Are you thinking what I am? What took the FAA so long to incorporate this software? Well, consider air traffic control centers work 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

JOHN THORNTON, FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION: Modernizing the air traffic control system is like trying to change a tire on your car on the Beltway going 65 miles an hour. The system doesn't stop.

KELLAN: It's taken more than 30 years and billions of dollars to develop, test, and adopt technology that airlines, airports, and air traffic controllers would trust.

ASHE: There's a little angst and anxiety in the field over this right here, but once they get used to it, within six to eight months, they never want to go back. This is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

KELLAN: And just in time, as the industry rebounds from 9/11, the skies are expected to get more congested. What you're seeing is just one day of U.S. air traffic, roughly 40,000 commercial flights.

TOM EDWARDS, NASA: As the flight enters an air space sector, that sector turns red and each time this happens, the pilot is making voice contact with another air traffic controller and receiving instructions from him.

KELLAN: To cut some of the chatter, the FAA for the first time will install e-mail between controllers and pilots.

CHARLIE KEEGAN, FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION: That's going to start for the first time this summer in a trial at Miami, and it will really change the way that we do business in air traffic control, very much like e-mail has changed the way we do business in the corporate environment.

KELLAN: OK, but does that help get me there in time? Software developed by NASA called TMA, Traffic Management Adviser, helps controllers manage airport rush hour, when too many planes need to take off and land on too few runways.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right now that's all done manually.

KELLAN: The software helps pace a plane's arrival.

TOM EDWARDS, NASA: You're sitting back there reading your magazine and not knowing that the aircraft just got slowed down, 20, 30 miles an hour, so that it will arrive right on time, as opposed to proceeding at its cruise speed and then all of a sudden having to do a big circle and slow down that way.

KELLAN: Then there's the headache of weather delays.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All the flights got screwed up. We ended up in Chicago with no bags, flying out on another airline at another time to a different destination.

KELLAN: Controllers at the Air Traffic Command Center in Herndon, Virginia are using updated forecasting software to assess weather and advise regional centers of trouble spots and areas pilots should avoid.

(on camera): The FAA is also using a new radar system to better pinpoint local weather forecasts to reduce delays in metropolitan areas.

(voice-over): And certain planes are getting equipped with radar, providing weather and navigational information called Automatic Dependent Surveillance.

KEEGAN: In Bethel (ph), Alaska, there is no ground radar looking up and seeing where these planes are, so we've outfitted the aircraft that fly in that area with a technology that can send that information back.

KELLAN: If these upgrades are successful, the FAA hopes you won't notice, except that more often than not you'll get to your destination on time.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HATTORI: Also up in the air, an unusual export from Asia, dust clouds traveling across the Pacific to the United States. Scientists are now so concerned they're taking to the skies to try to sniff out the problem. We went along for a ride.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HATTORI (voice-over): A government plane that usually investigates hurricanes...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you can see the hurricane cities hunted.

HATTORI: ... is rigged to hunt pollution.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have three wing pods. If you look up inside, you'll see a pinhole that lets a small amount of air in. It samples continually from takeoff to landing.

HATTORI: It's a critical tool in the first comprehensive attempt to track and analyze wind-born pollutants blown halfway across the world.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's it guys, let's go.

HATTORI: Researchers are flying a dozen trips from Monterey, California out over the Pacific 6,000 miles from the pollution source. In China and Mongolia, dust storms are a common springtime phenomenon, but expanding erosion in the deserts and high winds are creating huge clouds that can move up to 1,500 miles per day. The winds also pick up industrial emissions in a region that burns a lot of coal and other fossil fuels.

Just 42 miles off the coast of Washington, NOAA researchers pick up the scent.

GERHARD HUBLER, NOAA RESEARCHER: We're getting now into air that seems to have Asian signature.

HATTORI: Air that will eventually drift over the western U.S. is analyzed for dozens of substances from dust particles, which could affect U.S. weather.

DOUG ORSINI, GEORGIA TECH RESEARCHER: We're seeing more clouds, thicker clouds, deeper clouds.

HATTORI: To trace amounts of toxic chemicals, like Mercury and gases like Ozone and Carbon Monoxide.

HUBLER: There is a lot of pollution. We hadn't seen and expected, I guess, this kind over here.

HATTORI: The pollution also measured on the ground and by sensors sent up in balloons doesn't pose a direct health risk. The dust and gases are similar to those found in North America. They can add to the challenge of meeting strict air quality standards.

ALLEN GOLDSTEIN, UC BERKELEY RESEARCHER: Any decreases in air pollution that we'll have here in California may actually be offset by rising emissions in Asia.

HATTORI: And only by probing the winds will scientists know just how much our activities degrade the environment from one continent to the next.

(END VIDEOTAPE) ANNOUNCER: Later in the show, we'll show you the best places to get a "Star Wars" fix on the Web, and when we come back, counting Canada's woodland caribou, the numbers add up to trouble.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HATTORI: Another week, another new iceberg in the Antarctic, a huge mass of ice, bigger than the State of Delaware has broken away from the frozen continent. Satellite images picked up the new berg, which is dubbed C-19. Last week, a smaller but still massive iceberg dubbed C-18 broke away. They're the latest in a series of ice breakups. Many scientists believe this is an early sign of global warming.

Scientists are also worried about global warming at the North Pole and how the Arctic's biggest carnivore is being affected. Gary Strieker has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY STRIEKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the Norwegian Arctic, researcher immobilize polar bears with drugs and then fit them with radio collars so they can be tracked by satellite, part of a new study sponsored by WWF, the conservation organization, to monitor how global warming is taking a serious toll on polar bears.

According to experts, arctic sea ice has been shrinking by three percent each decade since the 1970s, and that shortens the season when polar bears can hunt seals and walruses.

LYNN ROSENTRATER, WWF: Its basis for survival is being threatened. The sea ice is melting earlier in the spring, which is sending the polar bears to land earlier without them having developed enough fat reserves to survive the ice free season. By the end of the summer, they're skinny bears and we've seen in places like Hudson Bay that their reproductive success if being jeopardized.

STRIEKER: This study will find out how the bears are adapting to climate change, where they go and what they do to survive and will monitor the health and condition of polar bears over time.

ANDY DEROCHER, NORWEGIAN POLAR INSTITUTE: Polar bears are, I think, an important indicator to get an understanding of what's happening in the Arctic. There's a lot of other species that will be affected by climate change and/or pollution, but when you look at it, polar bears are much easier to study in a lot of respects and that we can catch the same individuals over a long period of time. We can follow them for many years and get good insights into what's happening.

STRIEKER: WWF says the impact of climate change on polar bears underscores the critical need to reduce carbon pollution, which is widely blamed for global warming and for all nations to sign and ratify the Kyoto protocol on climate change.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Kyoto Climate Treaty requires all nations to reduce their carbon emissions so that the negative impacts of climate change can be halted. It's the only global effort to fight climate change, and it's a good step forward in the right direction.

STRIEKER: Experts now say if the trend continues, in 100 years by the end of each summer, there will be no ice at all in the Arctic Ocean.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HATTORI: Just a little south of polar bear country is where you can find the woodland caribou. Vast herds once roamed the mountains and forests of North America. Now they're down to just a few herds in Northern Canada and development is threatening those animals. Mark Stevenson from Canada's CTV Network reports on what it will take to save the species.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARK STEVENSON, CANADIAN CTV NETWORK (voice-over): Kirby Smith has tracked mountain caribou in Alberta for 20 years. He used to do it with his eyes, now by radio and satellite.

KIRBY SMITH, ALBERTA SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: You can home into the radio system and direct you right to where the animal is.

STEVENSON: The caribou live in the Borio (ph) Forest, running across northern Canada. In northwestern Alberta, it's marked by clear cuts in roads for oil and gas development, open areas that make it easier for wolves to hunt caribou, estimate at 3,000 to 6,000 in Alberta and falling.

(on camera): The caribou here are isolated and their numbers are low, this one herd here numbering about 80, a number that's declining.

SMITH: That shouldn't be too much further. It's coming in good.

STEVENSON (voice-over): Despite new technology, caribou are still hard to find. By tracking the animals, wildlife biologists like Smith monitor their range. In Alberta, the animals are listed as threatened and every caribou counts. Smith finally finds the animal he's looking for but it's dead.

SMITH: Unless things improve, we would expect the herd to you know disappear eventually.

STEVENSON: The data Smith collects is shared with industry, used to limit development near the caribou, but environmentalists say provincial and federal legislation doesn't protect the forest, and unless laws are expanded, caribou will die out.

STAN BOUTIN, UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA: We don't have to study it anymore. We have to have the political will to put aside land for these animals.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Whether they will go extinct or not is yet to be seen, but certainly herds will disappear is my feeling. STEVENSON: Mountain caribou need vast sections of untouched forest to survive, but development continues to eat away at their habitat. If the trend continues, scientists say, the caribou will eventually be eliminated.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HATTORI: A deadly form of plankton is killing sea lions and birds here in California and the toxin may be spreading. Health officials don't think it's a threat to humans. Still, they're warning people to stay away from sick wild sea lions. More on the story now from Tony Russomanno of our affiliate KPIX TV.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TONY RUSSOMANNO, KPIX-TV CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tens of thousands of California sea lions, dolphins and birds are sick or dying from one of the worst toxic algae poisonings in recorded state history.

DR. MARY SILVER, PROFESSOR, UC SANTA CRUZ: The levels are complete with the highest levels ever found in California.

RUSSOMANNO: The Marine Mammal Center at Sausalito is overwhelmed with the dozens of critically ill sea lions rescued from beaches in San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles counties.

KATHY ZAGZEBSKI, MARINE MAMMAL CENTER: We're seeing a lot of neurological symptoms including seizures on the beach, head waving, head bobbing, and just being oblivious to people and other entities around them.

RUSSOMANNO: The culprit is psuedonicia (ph), a single cell plant about the width of a human hair. Marine researchers at US Santa Cruz are tracking the plant. Under certain conditions it produces a deadly nerve toxin, but it doesn't cause a problem until it moves up the food chain.

SILVER: So when the schools of anchovies and sardines, the bay fish come in, that's when times get really dangerous.

RUSSOMANNO: The toxin can be deadly to people if infected fish or shellfish are eaten in large quantities. UC Santa Cruz Professor of Ocean Science, Dr. Mary Silver, identified the poison from water samples in Santa Barbara.

SILVER: As I was collecting my samples, a sea lion was (UNINTELLIGIBLE) on the beach, and as I walked off the pier, the Marine Mammal Center people came to rescue it.

RUSSOMANNO: The plankton is the same one that killed more than 400 sea lions in Monterey Bay in 1998. It also caused hundreds of sea birds and crazed (UNINTELLIGIBLE) to attack people in Santa Cruz in 1961 and became the inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock's movie "The Birds." Hitchcock was living near Santa Cruz at the time. There's some evidence that the current Southern California outbreak is spreading into Monterey Bay.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HATTORI: Veterinarians treat the sea lions with fluids to flush the toxin from their systems. They've nursed dozens of them back to health but just as many have died from the plankton.

ANNOUNCER: Coming up, a traffic jam in the U.S. electrical system and an experiment designed to wipe out blackouts, that and much more when NEXT@CNN returns.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HATTORI: Wouldn't it be great to have computers interconnected all over your house, but wait, you'd have to run cables between them or have expensive construction work done to run the connection. Well, not really. A new device takes advantage of the wiring that's already there. Colin Trethewey from our affiliate CJOH has that story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COLIN TRETHEWEY, CJOH CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This little blue box brings a new type of power to an electrical outlet, computing power. Thanks to chips designed by Cogency, existing electrical wiring can be used to share computer data. That means every room can be connected to the Internet.

PETER WILSON, COGENCY SEMICONDUCTOR: The video trailer that we're playing on the laptop is actually coming from the hard drive on the desktop, and vice versa, so we've got video going both ways in this particular setup and we're connecting it over the power lines in the office to install special network cable in your home. In order to begin to connect say two PCs, it's a very painful and expensive proposition to do.

TRETHEWEY (on camera): The Cogency labs look more like the basement of your house than a high-tech lab. They've got actual fuse boxes and electrical wiring that you'd find in your regular house. They use this to simulate how data flows on power lines. They plug the unit in here and then connect the computer cable to see exactly how it operates in a real life environment.

WILSON: There's obviously connectivity throughout the house amongst all those outlets that is supporting electricity, and all we're doing is adding data to what's on that wire as well.

TRETHEWEY (voice-over): Mark Quigley at the Yankee Group analyzes technology trends. He sees the home network becoming a reality in the longer term with some applications coming online right away.

MARK QUIGLEY, YANKEE GROUP RESEARCH DIRECTOR: Once you have that smart device that gives you the ability to have a network virtually anywhere in your home and to listen to MP3s or the next stuff, I guess perhaps watching TV feeds or watching video on demand kind of thing over the Internet. TRETHEWEY: The Cogency product is on display at a trade show in Dallas this week, where they hope manufacturers will consider mass producing it. The goal is to bring it to stores this fall, retailing for less than $100 a unit.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HATTORI: For a link to Cogency's Web site and other sites relating to our program, go to our Web site, cnn.com/next. If you're busy working on your computer in a brownout or blackout wipes out all your hard work, you might blame a traffic jam. Steve Young explains why the electricity grid can have a lot in common with rush hour traffic.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STEVE YOUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): America is linked by a complex power distribution system, three million miles of overhead electric cable, another 100,000 miles of cable buried in the earth. It's all tied into a grid, not working as well as it used to.

KURT YEAGER, ELECTRIC POWER RESEARCH INSTITUTE: If you think of the gridlock in the same way you do a highway, think of the wires as a highway system in which there are not enough on ramps, there are not enough off ramps and there are not enough lanes to be able to carry the traffic.

YOUNG: According to one estimate, the cost of increasing brownouts, blackouts and interference with sensitive high tech manufacturing is $120 billion every year. The gridlock stems from federal activism a decade ago. The idea was to breakup utility monopolies and spur pro-consumer competition.

DAVID OWENS, EDISON ELECTRIC INSTITUTE: The Energy Policy Act of 1992 stimulated the development of all types of suppliers to participate in the marketplace and because there are so many of them, there's a lot of congestion on the system, and the way to relieve congestion is to build more highways.

YOUNG: A federal study says it would cost about $16 billion to fix the bottlenecks. The industry hopes the use of small, onsite generators can help delay a major grid build out. Detroit Edison is a partner in a pioneering experiment that uses super conducting ceramic cables.

(on camera): This equipment will keep the cables super cool. Engineers expect three of the new cables will be able to carry as much juice as nine of the old kind.

ANTHONY EARLY, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, DTE ENERGY: You'll be able to significantly increase the capability to supply electricity, without ripping up streets and adding new infrastructure. Long-term, you could use this technology to increase the capacity on long range transmission.

YOUNG (voice-over): Electrical gridlock isn't obvious like potholes in the road. You don't see this infrastructure problem until the lights go out. Then it's a little late.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Still ahead, some hopeful news for people who just can't remember all those computer passwords, and a baby bunny with an important mission. Those stories and much more are coming up in our next half hour. First, we'll take a break and get the headlines from the CNN newsroom. Don't go away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HATTORI: People here in the San Francisco Bay area will soon be getting a giant telescope that might be described as viewer friendly. This week, the Shibo Bay (ph) Center installed the roof on a new observatory that will house the 36-inch telescope scheduled for completion later this year. It will be one of the largest telescopes available to the public in the United States. The roof will roll on and off the building, making it easy to point the telescope anywhere in the sky.

The viewing eyepiece will be about five feet off the floor, more accessible than on most telescopes this size. Shibo's telescopes are available for free public viewing on Friday and Saturday nights.

If you didn't get enough of spiders in the new "Spider-Man" movie, don't go away. Beth Nissen visits the place that's home to a million of the eight-legged creatures and a man who feels right at home with them, Arachnophobes beware.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Norm Platnik (ph) is a spider man.

NORM PLATNIK: Now this is a nice spider.

NISSEN: He's the spider curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

PLATNIK: We have the world's largest collection of spiders, well over a million specimens here.

NISSEN: Fifty thousand of them are in his office preserved in little vials and Mason jars. Most of these spiders are tiny. He has some bigger ones in the hall.

PLATNIK: Spiders can be as small as the period at the end of a sentence or as large as a dinner plate leg span.

NISSEN: Most people think spiders are insects.

PLATNIK: Not at all. Insects have six legs, totally different group of arthopods (ph).

NISSEN: All spiders have eight legs and all spiders spin silk, wondrous stuff. PLATNIK: A strand of spider silk has a tinsel strength that's greater than steel of the same diameter.

NISSEN: Yet highly elastic.

PLATNIK: Spider silk can easily stretch to three or four times its original dimensions and then snap back.

NISSEN: Only about half of all spiders weave webs and those aren't always the Halloween style orbed webs. There are also sheet webs and funnel webs. Spiders use webs to catch food. They set up sticky mid air traps, drop webs like a net, lasso and tie up prey like a cowboy with a rodeo calf. Spiders that don't weave webs, hunt.

PLATNIK: Some are sit and wait hunters. They wait for the prey to come to them. Some are more active and go out and chase the prey down.

NISSEN: And then start digesting.

PLATNIK: It's rather gory actually. They'll first inject venom to paralyze it and then they will secrete digestive enzymes, which liquefy the prey and then they suck up the liquid.

NISSEN: Oh.

PLATNIK: Well, you have to make a living somehow.

NISSEN: They'll eat almost anything they can catch, butterflies, other spiders, even small snakes and fish, but not humans, although if threatened spiders, such as this tarantula, will bite.

PLATNIK: You have to watch out. You're getting a little too close to the jaw.

NISSEN: Jaw, all right. There are only two poisonous spiders in North America, the Black Widow and the Brown Recluse. Still, many people react to spiders the way a CNN sound man did when this Brazilian tarantula momentarily got away from its handler. Those with Arachnophobia, fear of spiders, can't avoid them. They're almost everywhere.

PLATNIK: You're probably within seven or eight feet of a spider no matter where you are. The only place on earth that has no spiders at all, as far as we know, is Antarctica.

NISSEN: He says as far as we know because so little is known about spiders. Scientists have identified 36,000 species of spider but they estimate that's only half the actual number.

PLATNIK: And we're destroying their habitats so that we're losing them before we even know what we're losing.

NISSEN: While many people might say good riddance to spiders, Platnik says humans should say thank you. PLATNIK: The fact is, if there were no spiders, we probably wouldn't be here. The spiders eat an enormous number of insects, and without that, the insects would have devoured all our crops long ago. We would have no food.

NISSEN: Something to keep in mind the next time you see a spider in the bathtub or a cobweb in the corner.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Next on NEXT, places to find real "Star Wars" mania and you don't need to go to a movie theater, that and more still ahead. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HATTORI: "Star Wars, Episode II" has been out for a few days now, so fess up, how many times have you seen it? Well, if you haven't gotten your fill of the force, you can find a lot more on the Web. In this week's "Nothin' but Net," Natalie Pawelski takes a virtual tour of a galaxy far, far away -- I can't believe I said that -- with consumer tech expert Marc Saltzman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NATALIE PAWELSKI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So the whole nation is in the grip of "Star Wars" mania, but let's say you can't get enough. You've seen the movie but you want more. Mark, what do you do?

MARC SALTZMAN, CONSUMER TECH GURU: Well, you go online is what you do. The force is alive and well in cyberspace. First and foremost, we've got starwars.com, obviously the official Lucas film Web site, but it's a lot more than just, you know, a central hub for people to gather online. It's got 5,000 pages of text and media.

PAWELSKI: Five thousand pages?

SALTZMAN: Five thousand pages.

PAWELSKI: Who needs 5,000 pages, Mark?

SALTZMAN: It's not just for this film obviously. It's for all six, which one of them will be debuting in two years from now. And one new thing that I like about starwars.com, is that every time you visit the Web site, it's got a different picture on it. You've got a search engine, so just like your favorite, you know, search engine like google.com or Yahoo, you type in what you're looking for.

Then, of course, there's the shop where you can buy official "Star Wars" merchandise.

PAWELSKI: Imagine that.

SALTZMAN: If you can believe that, yes. "Star Wars" merchandise, come on. So you can do that, of course. As well, there's a collecting link as well, so if you're a serious collector, you can read up all about all the official "Star Wars" stuff, not from this film, but even past ones. You know the original "Star Wars"...

PAWELSKI: Princess Leia wig.

SALTZMAN: Yes, exactly, light sabers. You want to buy a light saber, circa 1977? This might be the place to do it. Now Databank, that is a really popular area starwars.com, because that's where you can view all the trailers to the film. You know movie trailers are so popular online. It helps you get excited about the film.

PAWELSKI: Well, Mark, what if you want some of the unofficial dirt?

SALTZMAN: The most popular unofficial Web site for "Star Wars" fans is theforce.net. They've got over 25 new stories posted every day. It could be rumor, gossip, an official news item and there's always a reason to come back once again.

PAWELSKI: Who does this?

SALTZMAN: Well, 50 people actually work on this site and all for free, so they are fans. They are hardcore fans. They've got commercials if you want to watch it. There's tons of media as well. It's not just text. There's video clips, audio clips, and it's kind of fun because you can customize your desktop as well. If you're a hardcore "Star Wars" fan, you want your Windows desktop to look like you know something out of the movie, you can download wallpaper and icons and sound clips.

PAWELSKI: Well, what about for the fan who has everything and you maybe want to get them a special souvenir in honor of this latest "Star Wars" movie?

SALTZMAN: Rebelscum.com is really the place to go if you're a serious collector. Most hardcore collectors go there so they can seek out other merchandise because, as you know, there are literally thousands of products and toys and games on the market that are "Star Wars" related over the last 20 years.

PAWELSKI: Sort of like Ebay for "Star Wars" fans?

SALTZMAN: Right. That's right.

PAWELSKI: OK, let's say you really want to get into your favorite character. Where do you go?

SALTZMAN: Well, if you don't want to just watch two heroes on the screen and you want to play as one of these protagonists, you can always go to lucasarts.com, which is a great place to go to check out all the videogames, the computer games that are available in the "Star Wars" universe. In fact, you can download a lot of demos for free, to try before you buy.

Starwarskids.com is a popular site and it is an official Lucas film site. As you can see, there's lots to do. There's games and activities, a very popular section. They're all related to the "Star Wars" universe. There's some fun facts and other neat things you can learn about "Attack of the Clones" and this is a family friendly safe destination for young "Star Wars" fans.

PAWELSKI: Well, thank you, Marc, for being our guide to the intergalactic world on the Internet. I'm Natalie Pawelski and that's "Nothin' but Net."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HATTORI: You can find links to those Web sites and a lot of other interesting stuff relating to our program on our Web site, cnn.com/next.

ANNOUNCER: Coming up, some burned up koalas get better with the kindness of strangers. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HATTORI: OK, time for one of our animal video extravaganzas, purely in the name of science. This week brought a deluge of cute baby animal pictures, maybe because it's spring.

Let's start with a baby bunny, but not just any bunny. This is a pygmy rabbit, born in captivity. Pygmy rabbits are rare everywhere, but the Washington State subspecies is almost extinct. This baby is actually an Idaho pygmy rabbit.

Scientists are perfecting their captive breeding program on the Idaho bunnies before trying it on their Washington cousins. There are a few Washington pygmy rabbits in the captive breeding program, but so far they have not bred like rabbits.

A captive breeding success at Denver's Ocean Journey, a southern Sea Otter gave birth to a pup last weekend. Look closely and you can see the mother otter pulling the baby from the birth canal and cleaning it up, all the while floating on her back. Officials at Ocean Journey say this is only the second time a southern sea otter has been born at a zoo or aquarium.

And two red wolf pups born in captivity are growing up as part of a wild wolf family. Earlier this month, scientists slipped the two- week old babies into the den of a mother wolf who had two pups the same age. The mother made herself scarce when humans were around taking pictures, but researchers think the arrangement is working.

The pups are implanted with microchips and the mother has a radio collar so researchers can keep tabs on where they are. Red wolves are the most endangered canines in North America and if this experiment works, it will give scientists an important tool for increasing the gene pool for wild red wolves.

The pandas at a research center in China are on a diet. Zoo keepers were worried that plump pandas were at risk of health problems. Nutrition experts mixed up a panda health food of eggs, milk and bamboo and changed the texture of their food from liquid to solid, adding fiber to the pandas' diet. One two-year-old panda quickly lost 20 kilograms, about 44 pounds on the diet. Earlier this year, wildfires roared across southeast Australia, burning more than one million acres and destroying scores of homes. No human lives were lost but officials estimate thousands of wild animals were killed including many koalas. Some of the koalas that survived are getting a second chance thanks to their human neighbors. Jonathan Gravner from the CTV network has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JONATHAN GRAVNER, CTV NETWORK (voice-over): It's tea time at the Cowanberg home in Port McQuarry (ph) Australia. That means tea for John and Glennis and blended eucalyptus and yogurt for Ocean 7.

Ocean 7 is an injured koala, hurt in the bush fires four months ago. She shares this house with the Cowanbergs and several other koalas who are lovingly being nursed back to health. They are among the lucky ones who were rescued. This burnt out forest from a deliberately set fire is what koala rescuers called death row.

JASON MCMANNUS: I would hear koalas screaming out in pain. They really needed help. The poor little blokes were dehydrated, burned. They had smoke inhalation. They were in a very bad way. Then they'd help.

GRAVNER: The rescuers found 23 dead koalas here, 20 injured. Countless others of the cherished animals perished in the flames. Habitats were wiped out.

GLYNNIS COWANBERG: She's doing wonderfully.

GRAVNER: This is Miracle. When she was found, her claws were melted, her skin falling away.

JOHN COWANBERG: In some cases you wonder whether you're doing the right thing by even treating them because they're in such pain, but we're going to have a win here.

GRAVNER: At the Port McQuarry Koala Hospital, volunteers work seven days a week, ten hours a day. The hospital itself gets no government funding. Everything is paid for by donations.

G. COWANBERG: This is my holiday.

GRAVNER: Just like the Cowanbergs, everybody gives up something here to help, all in the effort to save such beautiful little animals.

G. COWANBERG: But when they're babies and they come to you or they're near death's door and you get them well, yes it's hard but you do it. That's what it's all about, putting them back. It's lovely.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Still ahead on NEXT@CNN, a plague of passwords.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One to the ATM, one to get in the garage door, one to get on AOL.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: And what you can do to protect yours.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HATTORI: Quick, what's your password? Well, if your answer to that question was, which one, you may be among the countless people suffering from password overload. It seems everything in the digital age requires a personal identification number. Jeannie Moos pins down the problem.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNIE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Back in the years B.C., before computers, password was just a nice little game show. These days, you want to hide under a blanket. Old password, new password, changed password, forgot your password.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One to get into the ATM, one to get in the garage door, one to get on AOL.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Personal, I probably have six and then at work I have seven or eight.

MOOS: And the more we have, the more we resort to ones we can remember, sort of like the ruler forced to divulge his secret combination in "Spaceballs." Why stop at luggage?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well honestly, I use one password for everything.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I got to write everything down.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A little cheat sheet you know, I use that in college.

MOOS (on camera): By the computer?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: By the computer, underneath your keyboard or behind your monitor.

MOOS: You are like a walking list of things you're not supposed to do.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know.

MOOS (voice-over): Not supposed to do if you're into ...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good password hygiene.

MOOS (voice-over): Which means maintaining security, not easy in a world where a study a few years back showed the three most popular passwords were ...

MARC BORODITSKY, CEO, PASSLOGIX: Sex, God and password.

MOOS: Marc Boroditsky's firm, Passlogix, makes software that lets you have one password linked to technology that automatically signs you on everywhere with different complex passwords. But who needs to remember a password?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You just need to remember your finger.

MOOS: With fingerprint authentication.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Grabs it, authenticates me.

MOOS: Or maybe you'd prefer picture passwords. Imagine logging in by mixing your very own drink.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Throw some vodka in there, a little orange juice.

MOOS: Or making your own meal, fish, carrots. Change the ingredients or the order and you can't log on. That's not the vodka.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, I put gin in.

MOOS: It sort of makes regular passwords seem quaint.

(on camera): Have you ever had any favorite ones, you know, that you're not using anymore so we can reveal it?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, trust is my favorite one.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The password is courage.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Loveboat.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ice cream because it's my favorite food.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Spun jelly (ph).

MOOS: Pardon me?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Spun jelly.

MOOS: Hey, a made up word is better. It can save you from programs that figure out passwords, known as dictionary attacks.

BORODITSKY: In other words they can actually just load all 30,000 words in the dictionary and get to your password eventually.

MOOS: It's enough to drive you to drink, all those forgotten pins, all those invalid passwords. No wonder we all feel like fish out of water.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HATTORI: Well, I'd tell you all my passwords, but darn we're out of time. Here's a quick look at what's coming up next week. You will never see so much fun or so many games at any other trade show. It's E3, the annual videogame industry get together and we've got your ticket for this exclusive event. See the next big thing that your kids or you will be playing. That and a lot more coming up on NEXT.

Until then, let us know how we're doing. You can e-mail us. Our address is next@cnn.com. Thanks so much for joining us this week. Thanks to our friends here at SFO. For all of us on the sci-tech beat, I'm James Hattori. See you next time.

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