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A Look At Hot New Innovations Of 2003; Prescription Medications Could Cause Enviornmental Problems Through Sewer System; Iraq May Be Proving Grounds For Al Qaeda Training With Surface-to-Air Missiles
Aired November 08, 2003 - 15:00 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.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DANIEL SEIBERG, CNN ANCHOR: I'm daniel sieberg. Today on NEXT@CNN, from a new kind of space craft to a DNA lab for your kids, we'll check out the hottest innovations of 2003.
Also, medicines from Prozac to Zantac pass through people into the sewer system. A new study says the drugs could be causing environmental problems downstream.
And the furthest man made object in space marks a milestone this week. All that and more on Next.
This week, we're at New York's Grand Central Station taking a look at what "Popular Science" magazine calls the best of what's new. By the way, "Popular Science" magazine is owned by CNN's parent company, Time Warner.
The editors there chose their top 100 innovations of the year. And throughout the show, we'll show you some of the more interesting ones. Let's take a look.
I'm joined by Suzanne Kantra, the technology editor at "Popular Science" magazine. Now, Suzanne, this is a real page turner, but it's not designed to help you read while you're in bed is it?
SUZANNE KANTRA, "POPULAR SCIENCE": It certainly isn't. The Curtis Book Scan (ph) is developed for putting more materials on the Web. It digitizes it automatically, unlike the other devices out there; 1200 pages per hour and it doesn't require an operator to be doing that manual page turning.
SIEBERG: All right, we're going to close the book on that one and move over here. People might be familiar with the chemistry sets when they were a kid, but this seems a little bit more high tech than that.
KANTRA: It's much more high tech. People are much more aware of DNA and what the implications of that are and now kids can get into the act. This has a centrifuge which spins out the sample. And then once you get that sample prepared it actually goes into this chamber here and pulls out the strand of DNA. It's called the DNA Explorer from Discovery Kids and it's under $100, so it's sort of a fun thing for your budding scientist. SIEBERG: All right, we're going move on from that discovery over to one that allows you to purify water. Now, why would somebody need to use this?
KANTRA: There are a couple of reasons why you would want to use the Myax (ph) Purifier. One is, sometimes you get a boil water order when there's been a power outage or something like that. We're also seeing the purifier being used over in Afghanistan and abroad. It can kill off things like cryptosporidium. It can neutralize anthrax, nerve gas. So this is a very powerful device. And it works with just an electric charge, salt and water. Couldn't be simpler.
SIEBERG: Wow. And very portable, obviously, as well. Well Suzanne Kantra, technology editor of "Popular Science" magazine, thanks so much for joining us.
KANTRA: Thank you.
SIEBERG: We'll show you more of the best of what's new throughout the prog.
First, though, some of the week's more serious news. U.S. military investigators still aren't sure who fired the surface-to-air missile that shot down a chinook helicopter last week end, killing 15. Now, certainly al Qaeda linked terrorists operating in Iraq are on the suspect list. Mike Boettcher examines al Qaeda's love affair with surface-to-air missiles and what it might mean for aircraft both inside and outside Iraq.
MIKE BOETTCHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): April 11, special forces hunt for and find stashes of surface-to-air missiles in southern Iraq. The missiles are stacked and explosive charges are set.
That cache of SAM 7 surface-to-air missiles is rendered useless. However, U.S. military sources say thousands of the lethal Iraqi weapons have never been found. U.S. forces in Iraq are concerned that they are in the hands of the Iraqi insurgery and al Qaeda backed jihadists who might use them outside of Iraq. The latter group concerns al Qaeda analysts like London based M.J. Gohel (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They have a great deal of experience in using this particular weapon and with lethal effect.
BOETTCHER: al Qaeda's experience with SAM's is extensive. Guerrilla warriors the Arab Mujahadeen, the eventual core of al Qaeda, used U.S. supplied stinger missiles to turn the tide of the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the late 1980s. Al Qaeda says it was between the 1993 shootdown of U.S. helicopters in Somalia, although that was with rocket propelled grenades.
The videotape archives of al Qaeda, recovered by CNN last year, included a comprehensive instruction video in the use of surface-to- air missiles. Al Qaeda tested SAM's in Afghanistan. And al Qaeda's supported Chechen insurgents who have been using SAM's to shoot down Russian helicopters, are trying to stockpile the weapons, according to Gojel (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They are trying to collect these weapons. And many are being used against the Russian forces in Chechnya and others are finding their way out into other countries.
BOETTCHER: One of the world's leading experts in improvised explosive devices who helped analyze CNN's al Qaeda tapes, fears that Iraq, like Chechnya, is becoming a weapons laboratory for al Qaeda.
TONY VILLA, EXPLOSIVES EXPERT: It's my feeling that they are using these areas as proving grounds to refine their tactics and bring that to the United States.
BOETTCHER: Although an immediate threat to U.S. forces in Iraq, surface-to-air missiles already have the attention of the world's airlines. Suspected al Qaeda terrorists narrowly missed shooting down an Israeli airliner a year ago in Kenya and tried to use another in Saudi Arabia. And al Qaeda adapts after failures.
VILLA: They have a propensity of going back to to the targets they failed to hit the first time or take out, and that those same targets are going to be revisited by al Qaeda.
BOETTCHER (on camera): The concern now among coalition counterterrorism officials is not just surface-to-air missiles in Iraq, but those in the hands of al Qaeda terrorists elsewhere in the world.
SIEBERG: Another concern for the U.S. military is the state of the country's spy satellites. Some experts question whether the next generation of satellites will be ready when they're needed. David Ensor has the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID ENSOR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As U.S. intelligence showed off at a recent trade fair, America's spy satellites were crucial in Iraq and Afghanistan. Keeping and improving the strategic advantage they provide could be critical. But critics, including the Pentagon's own Defense Science Board, warn that the program to field the next generation of satellites is behind schedule, over budget and as the board said bluntly, quote, "not executable."
STEVEN AFTERGOOD, FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS: Not executable is a fancy way of saying it won't work. And, of course, that's a serious problem.
LOREN THOMPSON, LEXINGTON INSTITUTE: We're facing the possibility of a spy satellite gap. If our existing satellites stop working before the new ones are in orbit, then, of course, we're going to have a problem collecting this type of intelligence.
ENSOR: Knowledgeable sources say the program has suffered satellite failures, drastic cost overruns, launch failures, all of which would have been front page news if they had been public, but the estimated $25 billion program is top secret, and intelligence chiefs have worked hard to keep many of the problems out of the public eye.
KEITH HALL, V.P., BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON: I don't think there's much of a risk of the nation going blind.
ENSOR: Former National Reconnaissance Office director Keith Hall says there may be a reduction in spy satellite capability for a while, but he says there will still be enough. Hall headed the NRO back in the '90s, when Boeing's bid on the massive contract to build the next generation of satellites was accepted. All the pressure then, he says, was to cut costs.
HALL: In order to free up the funds to do the development work, we had to stop buying the older satellites.
ENSOR: The current NRO director and undersecretary of the Air Force, Peter Teets, was unavailable for an interview. But after scaling down and adding $4 billion to the budget of what is the most expensive intelligence program in history, he recently said that, quote, "I have reasonable confidence we're going to have a successful program."
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SIEBERG: Microsoft and several law enforcement agencies are declaring war on cyber criminals. On Wednesday the company announced a $5 million program to help catch people to release viruses, worms and other malicious programs on the Internet. The first 2 awards are aimed at the creators of programs taht caused problems earlier this year.
BRAD SMITH, VP MICROSOFT: Microsoft is offering 1 reward of a quarter million dollars for information that results in the arrest and conviction of those responsible for launching the MS Blast-A worm.
The blaster worm was designed to Attack microsoft's windows update dot com Web site, which provides fixes to protect computer users against attacks.
And Microsoft is offering a second reward of a quarter million dollars for information that results in the arrest and conviction of those responsible for launching the Sobig Virus. This virus attacked individual machines and e-mailed itself to each e-mail address in a computer's contact list.
SIEBERG: Microsoft is working with the FBI, Secret Service and Interpol in the effort to bring the writers of malicious code to justice.
ANNOUNCER: Coming up, fish on Paxil. The fish may be happy. Who knows? But in the long run, it could be bad news for the entire eco system.
And later in the show, cats have gone to the dogs. We'll introduce you to a new breed of kitty.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) SIEBERG: Alaska hunters will soon be able to shoot wolves from aircraft for the first time in more than 30 years. The state board of game approved the plan on Tuesday, saying the wolves are killing too many moose and caribou. Environmental groups, though, have campaigned against the change, saying the killing is inhuman and Alaskans have voted against it twice.
Officials say only 200 of Alaska's 15,000 wild wolves will be killed and that it's important to protect moose populations. Wolves are not classified as endangered or threatened in Alaska.
Prescription drugs that are good for people can be very bad for fish. Now, before your argue that nobody actually feeds drugs to the fish, take a look at our report from Bruce Burkhardt.
BRUCE BURKHARDT, CNN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): All those drugs we take, heart medications, birth control pills, antidepressants like Prozac, in one way or another, they end up going down here, which means eventually those pharmaceuticals wind up here. Bottom line, there might be a lot of fish out there on Prozac.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE, "FINDING NEMO": I'm feeling happy.
BURKHARDT: But happy fish, like this one portrayed in the movie "Finding Nemo," are not necessarily a good thing.
PROF. BRYAN BROOKS, BAYLOR UNIVERSITY TOXICOLOGIST: We need to ask the question, what does accumulation in fish issues, for example, actually mean to the organism's ability to live, grow or reproduce.
BURKHARDT: Bryan Brooks, a toxicologist at Baylor University, and a team of researchers, tested fish near a sewage treatment plant in Denton, Texas. The plant discharges its treated water into the nearby Pecan Creek (ph). In this and other studies, the fish, it turns out, were nearly as doped up as we were.
BROOKS: Heart medications and steroids, for example, active ingredients found in many birth control medications.
BURKHARDT: The concern, and where more studies are needed, is that these drugs might affect the fish's ability to reproduce or even avoid predators, thus upsetting the entire ecology of an aquatic system. It's too early to tell if humans may be affected.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have sewage entering from both sides of this stream.
BURKHARDT: Most sewage treatment plants, like this one in Atlanta, do an effective job at cleaning sewage before pumping it back into a river.
(on camera): But this sewage treatment plant, just like every other plant in the country, is not equipped to test for or remove pharmaceuticals. Until just recently, no one even knew that it might be a problem. (voice-over): But with the popularity of such prescriptions as Prozac and birth control pills, new treatments might be needed. Family planning might be OK for humans, but not fish.
ANNOUNCER: Coming up, more of the best of what's new. Including a car that parks itself.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ANN KELLAN, CNN ANCHOR: It's an adventure like no other, 12,000 feet below the surface of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. To mountain ranges, volcanoes and thermal vents that emit steaming hot minerals called black smokers and creatures, some never seen before all featured in a new iMax film called "Volcanoes of the Deep.
RICHARD LUTZ, SCIENCE ADVISOR, RUTGERS UNIVERSITY: Literally, every creature that you would see in the film was unknown to science a quarter century ago.
STEPHEN LOW, FILM DIRECTOR: It's extremely cold down there. It's very, very near freezing. With an occasional jet of incredibly hot water that could burn a hole in your sub.
KELLAN: At these depths, it's dark and dangerous. The film was shot through the window of a small submersible called ALVIN.
LOW: The volcanoes are scary, because if one blows you're toast, basically.
KELLAN: Ten years in the making. Director Stephen Low loaded ALVIN with a high res camera and 4,000 watts of lights.
LOW: We're lighting huge areas, the size of, you know, a football field. So people can see the spectacle down there for the first time.
KELLAN: The undersea creatures thrive in what we'd consider a toxic wasteland.
LOW: There are fish, there are mussels, there are clams and all of those organisms are living off bacteria that are ultimately getting their energy from chemicals, hydrogen sulfide on the bottom.
KELLAN: And thanks to the film we get the first glimpse of this octopus, appropriately nicknamed Dumbo. The fact creatures like this can thrive in these conditions makes you wonder whether life forms exist in outer space too. Ann Kellan, CNN.
SIEBERG: Lots of the nifty gadgets that "Popular Science" chose as the best of what's new are on display in the exhibit hall of Grand Central Station, including a battery charger that fully charges batteries in 15 minutes. So you don't have to live without your favorite gadget for very long. Obviously, batteries are fairly small, but some of the winners were simply too big to fit inside the building. (voice-over): One of "Pop Sci's: grand award winners was this radical design by Burt Rutan for sub-orbital spaceflight. At 50,000 feet, the egg-shaped spaceship one, detaches from the White Knight carrier airplane and launches to a height more than 60 miles above the Earth. While, that's not high enough for orbit it is far above the Earth's atmosphere in the realm of zero gravity. The craft then returns to land on a normal runway.
And Boeing has a new design as well, the 7He7 dream liner is the latest passenger jet on the company's drawing board. The jet lines would seat 200 to 250 people and employ high tech lightweight materials to make it more fuel efficient. With a 9,000 miles range, passengers could fly from Paris to Minneapolis nonstop.
And for those of you who failed parallel parking, another of "Pop Sci's" best of pick is the hybrid gas electric Toyota Prius. One new feature, available only in Japan, is that the car actually parks itself. Pull up to a spot of your choosing and the on board computer uses cameras and sensors to align the car. The vehicle then steers itself into the space.
And parking is no problem for this pick. With the Gibbs Aquatic car/boat, you just take your ride out to sea. Retractable wheels allow the vehicle to plane across the water, like a jet ski, at a top speed of 35 miles per hour. Back on land, the Aquatic can go up to 100 miles per hour.
(on camera): There's a lot more of best of what's new on "Popular Science" Web site. You can get there from our Web site at CNN.com/next.
ANNOUNCER: Coming up, making dollars off dolphins. We'll visit a country where dolphins are being promoted as a tourist attraction and another where they meet a very different fate.
And later in the show, NASA's Voyager One space probe heads into a region of space that's never been explored before.
Those stories and a lot more are coming up in the next half hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(NEWS BREAK)
DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN TECHNICAL CORRESPONDENT: Welcome back to NEXT@CNN we're at New York's Grand Central Station checking out some of the innovations and gizmos that "Popular Science" magazine has chosen as the best of what's new. For example, take a look at this dive mask, it's got an LCD inside the mask that tells you how deep you're diving, how much air you've got left, plus a lot of other useful information. It's certainly a good way to help divers avoid dangerous situations. But, for some dolphins in the waters off Japan, there's no way to avoid danger. Dolphin hunting is legal and the hunt was underway last month. We want to caution you though; some of the video in this next report is very graphic and may be distressing to some viewers. Gary Strieker has the story.
GARY STRIEKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Fishermen drive dolphins into a small cove, turned red with blood. In Japan, it's the season for dolphin drives. A century-old hunting tradition that does not draw protests from Japanese, but that many outside Japan now find shocking.
BROOKE MCDONALD, SEA SHEPHERD CONSERVATION SOCIETY: It's graphic. It's quite horrifying, and it elicits quite an emotional response and has resulted in international outcries in the past against the drive.
STRIEKER: This drive took place last month in Taiji on Japan's western coast, a hunt that killed more than 60 striped dolphins. The video was taken with a hidden camera by activists with the U.S.-based anti-whaling group, Sea Shepherd, who also supplied statements by their representative, part of their campaign against the dolphin drive that has caused confrontations with local fishermen.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're here, we're cornered. They're about feet from us on either side.
MCDONALD: The pressure might be great enough to shut the drive down now and save 18,000 dolphin's lives this year.
STRIEKER: Dolphin meat is processed and sold in Japan's food markets. Hunting dolphins and smaller species of whales is legal in Japan's coastal waters, subject to quotas during limited seasons. Japanese authorities try to keep images like these from public view and Japan's official fishery agency has issued this statement:
"It is not acceptable to trample the dignity of fishermen engaging in traditional operations which are properly managed, based on scientific evidence, and internationally as well as domestically legal by distributing scenes of slaughtering to the public, since a scene of slaughtering any animal is cruel."
Official quotas for this year's hunting seasons in Japan authorize the killing of thousands of dolphins and small whales. Many of them in drives like this.
SEIBERG: The Middle Eastern nation of Oman has a very different plan for making money with its dolphin populations. There, dolphins aren't food, they're a tourist attraction.
Nic Robertson reports.
MOHAMED AL RIYAMI, ARABIAN SEA SAFARIS: There are quite a lot of dolphins, right no front here, coming this way.
NIC ROBERTSON, NBC CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hundreds, in fact, but in typical Omani style, dolphin guru, Mohamed Al Riyami, is understated. How many dolphins would you say we're looking at here?
AL RIYAMI: The rule of thumb says what you see at surface, multiply by four. So, I will say around 200, 300 dolphins.
ROBERTSON: Barely ten minutes out to sea from the capital, Muscat, and his boat literally surrounded by spinner dolphins.
AL RIYAMI: We will let them pass through and then we'll go behind them and follow them quite gently.
ROBERTSON, (on camera): They're here.
(voice-over): Once a government spokesman, Mohamed is now a driving force behind this Persian Gulf's alternate steady move to dolphin tourism.
AL RIYAMI: Oman, I will say, probably the best in the area, simply because you have to look at our coast line and look at the continental shelf. We do have numerous drop-offs very, very close to the shore.
ROBERTSON: That remarkable drop-off, where the sea floor falls to half the depth of the world's deepest ocean, draws cold water currents rich with plankton to the surface, creating near perfect conditions for the dolphins who gorge on the plentiful sardines attracted to the plankton. But, the near perfect conditions for the dolphins are also near perfect for the tuna. Perfect too for the local fishermen who, for centuries, have been using the dolphins to track their prey, the tuna.
AL RIYAMI: The Dolphins are mammals, so they come up to the surface to breathe. Under the dolphins are tuna with -- both tunas and dolphins are feeding on the same thing, sardines.
ROBERTSON: With recently imposed conservancy laws to protect dolphins by banning tuna nets, pressure is now on to the old industry of fishing to coexist with the new one, tourism. Despite the new law, nets can still be seen in some boats. And, near where tuna are unloaded young boys display a dead dolphin, discarded on a rubbish bin. With government approval a tiny handful of research scientists are helping expand Oman's knowledge of dolphins as a potentially lucrative tourist resource.
GIANNA MINTON, OMAN WHALE AND DOLPHIN RESEARCH GROUP: We're just scratching the surface in terms of learning about the different species. It's important to understand your market, how many tourists are interested in this sort of activity. And then to understand, sort of, what the capacity for a certain (INAUDIBLE) is.
ROBERTSON (on camera): It seems like near certainty if you head out to sea here, for a few hours, you'll see dolphins. What Omani hope through their conservancy, is that near certainty becomes a guarantee.
(voice-over): For now, at least, with Mohamed Al Riyami keeping a careful eye on the sea, chances look good.
AL RIYAMI: Look, beautiful. It will do it again. Beautiful. It will do it that time, a small one. Thank you. This is a special shore for CNN.
(LAUGHTER)
ROBERTSON: The fact is, this show is for anyone who comes.
ANNOUNCER: Coming up, new software to make your PDA respond when you talk to it.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SIEBERG: Microsoft, this week, unveiled new software that lets you operate our PDA with spoken commands. While it my not be a stylus killer on the end of the super tiny keyboard, it is a more hands-free hand-held. And before we left for New York, I talked to Lance Ulanoff with "PC" magazine.
LANCE ULANOFF, "PC" MAGAZINE: The great thing is that so many people have pocket PCs, hand-held devices and now they can do hands- free commands of these device, whether they're possibly walking down the street they can bring up messages, they can make phone calls, they could start playing music. At least this is the vision.
SIEBERG: Now, I've got a demonstration we could do here in the studio, this is the pocket PC phone that Microsoft sent us. The key to all of this is the button in the upper right corner, the calendar button, which you have to push in order to activate the micro phone. Once you do that the microphone icon will come up. I could say -- what's my next appointment?
VOICE: Tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. Ask boss for 20 percent raise.
SIEBERG: So, a note to myself to ask for that 20 percent raise, of course. Now, you also pointed out multimedia files, so I'm just going to do a quick demonstration of that, as well.
Play music.
VOICE: What do you want to play? (INAUDIBLE) or everything.
SIEBERG: Everything.
ULANOFF: That's pretty impressive. Did you do any training, Daniel?
SIEBERG: I didn't. Now, that's a good question, though. I mean, how intuitive is this? Are these commands fairly simple for you to understand?
ULANOFF: It is, yeah. I mean, that's -- here's the thing, that if you don't have to train, that's one of the things as selling points. If you don't have to train a speech recognition application, you just start using it from the get-go, that's very powerful. "PC" magazine is, of course, going to test it and tell you for certain if it's the real deal. But, from what I'm hearing there, it sound pretty darn impressive. SIEBERG: Yeah, it's about $40 to download it from the Handango website, and when you mention the driver aspect, the sort of reducing distractions, is that part of why Microsoft says they came up with this idea?
ULANOFF: Well, I mean, it's certainly a good selling point. It -- they did work with their automotive group to do this. So, I would assume that this is one of the reasons and -- you know, their press and materials talk about it, and it makes good sense because in addition to people using mobile phones, they are starting to use PDAs in their car. And, if you think a mobile phone is distracting in your car, imagine what a PDA is like where you've an interface to look at and you start to look away and hit at it. So, safety is one very good reason for them to develop it and possibly a good reason for people to plunk down the $40 and buy it.
SIEBERG: That was lance Ulnaoff from "PC" magazine.
ANNOUNCER: Coming up the Voyager One space probe crosses what NASA is calling the final frontier.
DAVID KIRKPATRICK, "FORTUNE" SENIOR EDITOR: The big change with China is that for years we've sort of thought of them as our competitor for manufacturing and -- you know, low cost labor. But, what's really changed now, is that china's market itself is becoming so big and important that the consumption of products, particularly technology products, in China, is beginning to have a huge impact on the entire global technology industry, and on other industries. For example, every year in China 60 million new cell phone users come on board. They have 80 million cable TV subscribers, a considerable percentage of them are digital and that number is growing all the time. And, this year, they become the world's second largest market for personal computers and it's thought by many that next year, they will be the world's largest market for personal computers, bigger than the number one today, the United States.
Most of the people that I talk to, the basic attitude when you ask them -- where's China going long-term, is we all better start learning Chinese.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SIEBERG: I'm joined, right now, by Scott Alexander; he is a senior editor of "Popular Science" magazine.
Scott, the magazine writes about these speakers as "speakers that can listen." That sounds almost philosophical. But, tell me how they work.
SCOTT ALEXANDER, "POPULAR SCIENCE": It's the world's first self- adjusting speaker. Bang & Olufsen made these so you can bring them into any room in your house. You touch the top here, a little microphone pops out from the side and it starts making some noises. The microphone records those noises and the reflections it makes off of your room and adjusts themselves so you get optimal sound in any room in your house. SIEBERG: Wow. And so, high end audio files though, because those go for about $16,000 a pair?
ALEXANDER: $16,000, yes. I would not...
SIEBERG: Now, DVD's, it seems like everybody has a DVD player in their home, these days. What does this one allow you to do?
ALEXANDER: This one allows you to access files from your PC. Eventually -- you know, more and more we have digital files. We have pictures, we have movies, we have music. This allows you to view the stuff through your home stereo and on your TV. So, you can listen to your music on your good speakers, you can watch your movies through your TV.
SIEBERG: All right, we're going from DVD to TV. Wireless seems to be the buzzword these days. Why is this one so different?
ALEXANDER: TV was one of the great early wireless technologies, then we hooked it up with a bunch of wires and stuff like that and essentially tied it down. This allows you to watch TV anywhere in your house. It's a WiFi connected television that allows you to go 100 feet from the base station and watch where ever you like -- the patio, to pool, however you want to do it.
SIEBERG: TV on the go.
ALEXANDER: Yep.
SIEBERG: Scott Alexander, senior editor of "Popular Science" magazine. Thank so much for joining us.
ALEXANDER: Thank you.
SIEBERG: The largest solar flare ever recorded erupted from the sun on Tuesday. Fortunately, the explosion wasn't pointed toward earth. Solar scientists though rated the flair an X-28, a measure of its x-ray brightness. The previous record holder was an X-20. All X- class flares are big and can interfere with radio communication and power grids on earth if the radiation comes in our direction.
China says it plans to send two more astronauts into orbit within the next two years. The announcement came as China's first space traveler, Yang Liwe wound up a week-long victory tour. Yang spent six days in Hong Kong where his visit was seen as an attempt to boost spirits in the former British colony. He wound up the week in Macaw, the former Portuguese colony turned gambling Mecca. Yang's 21-hour spaceflight last month, made China the world's third space fairng nation.
NANA's Voyager One spacecraft has been traveling through space for the 26 years and its gone where no other manmade object has ever been. Now, it's heading into even more mysterious territory. Miles O'Brien reports.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): What a long, strange trip it's been. They left earth when Carter was president, Elvis had just died, and we were first seeing "Saturday Night Fever" and "Star Wars." 26 years later, the force still with them, a pair of intrepid spacecraft, aptly named Voyager, are going where nothing made by earthlings have gone, ready to pierce yet another cloud of cosmic mystery.
ED STONE, VOYAGER PROJECT SCIENTIST: We are hoping, of course, to keep it going as long as possible, but none of us could have imagined in 1977 that it -- the space craft would last as long as it had.
O'BRIEN: NASA's Ed Stone saw his hairline recede along with the space craft he helped design launch and guide through a textbook trashing tour of our solar system. Voyagers One and Two spotted volcanoes on a Jovian moon, took a close look at Saturn's rings, and saw a tilt in Uranus, and found a dark spot on Neptune.
ERIC CHRISTIAN, VOYAGER PROJECT SCIENTIST: Voyager One and Voyager Two have completely rewritten our textbooks on the gas giants, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. But, this is the next step of exploration for mankind.
O'BRIEN: The next step is a doozie, and Voyager One may already be there, the final frontier of our solar system. A place where the supersonic gases spit out by our sun, crash into slower moving plasma, like waves hitting a sandy beach.
STONE: The sun creates a bubble around itself with a supersonic million-mile-per-hour wind creating this bubble. But, as the wind approaches inter-stellar space, it goes through a massive giant shockwave and we believe we're seeing particles coming from that shockwave.
O'BRIEN: Of course, it's hard to tell. The sensor on Voyager One, best able to detect those particles is no longer working and the craft is eight billion miles way, using a transmitter about as powerful as a 28 watt light bulb. But, the probe and its trailing twin, Voyager Two, are moving ten times faster than a speeding bullet, inexorably toward inter-stellar space, a place that gives new meaning to "no man's land."
STONE: The next star is indeed a great distance away, it'll be something like 40,000 years before Voyager is closer to another star than the sun. Just an indication of how immense the space is in our galaxy.
O'BRIEN: The Voyagers clearly won't last that long. In fact, their nuclear power plants could quit any day. So, for scientists, every ounce of data that makes it back to our pale blue dot is gravy. Once these diehards expire, they'll soldier on silently. And in case anyone is out there.
Kurt Waldheim, FMR. U.N. SECRETARY GENERAL: As the Secretary General of the United Nations...
O'BRIEN: They carry greetings from Earth, sent in the 70s and gold records with sounds from our planet. It's an eclectic mix, Beethoven, Louis Armstrong, and Chuck Berry. Go, Voyagers, go.
SIEBERG: There's a lot more about the Voyager mission on the CNN website and you can get there, plus find other stories in the show, through our website, that's at CNN.com/next.
ANNOUNCER: When we come back, meet a designer cat that breeders say will charm dog lovers.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SIEBERG: In a noticeable attempt to give deep pocketed customers what they want, breeders have come up with a new kind of cat. It looks an exotic wildcat and supposedly has a personality like a dog. Our Jeanne Moos visited a New York pet store to check out that kitty in the window.
JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Here, kitty, kitty. Here's what you get when you take this wildcat and breed it with your average feline.
MIKE BALL, LE PETIT PUPPY: Oh, this is going to be the next big pet.
MOOS: A cat, they say, even dog lovers will love, a big cat men might fall for just like these puppies have.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's not a regular cat, is it?
MOOS: Able to leap tall fences in a single bound, her name is Uma, as in Uma Thurman, and like her namesake, Uma has been turning heads.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, gosh!
MOOS: At Le Petit Puppy pet shop in Greenwich Village. Uma is a new breed known as the Savannah. Breeders use native African wildcats called Servals, like the one on the left to produce the housecat on your right.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's really cool looking.
MOOS: And then, there's the Savannah's personality, frisky but sweet, not savage.
(on camera): So, you're saying Uma kind of acts like a dog?
BALL: Exactly. Or the dogs think they're cats. I don't know. They're more dog-like and so intelligent.
MOOS: Savannahs are ranked by how close they are to the wildcat. An F-1 is half wild., Uma is an F-2.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I'll get the F-3 without all the options.
MOOS: An F-3 might cost you 2,000 bucks from breeders like exoticcats.com. Watch your spelling or you'll end up at a Web site for porn rather than pussycats.
Believe it or not, Uma is only three months old.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I would never have that cat like that in the house. It's like Ming, the tiger.
MOOS: Ming is that tiger recently removed from a Harlem apartment. But, Savannahs only grow to be two and a half times the size of a normal cat. Chew on that.
SIEBERG: And finally, we've got one more treat from the best of what's new list of winners. The top thrill dragster rollercoaster at Ohio's Cedar Point Amusement Park, it's the world's tallest and fastest. It gets riders up to 120 miles per hour in just four seconds. The ride has a special hydraulic acceleration system that makes the cars go as fast on the way up the 420-foot hill as on the way down. It only takes about 30 seconds to complete the 2,800 foot track, but you can bet it's a memorable 30 seconds.
We hope our program was memorable for you. We going to have to end our ride there because that's all the time we have for now. But, here's what's coming up next week.
The yearly leaded meteor shower will happen a week from Monday. And next weekend, we'll tell you how to get the best view of it.
That's coming up on NEXT. Until then, let us here from you. You can send us an e-mail at next@cnn.com.
Thanks so much for joining us for all of us on the SciTech beat. I'm Daniel Sieberg we'll see you next time.
END
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Medications Could Cause Enviornmental Problems Through Sewer System; Iraq May Be Proving Grounds For Al Qaeda Training With Surface-to-Air Missiles>
Aired November 8, 2003 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DANIEL SEIBERG, CNN ANCHOR: I'm daniel sieberg. Today on NEXT@CNN, from a new kind of space craft to a DNA lab for your kids, we'll check out the hottest innovations of 2003.
Also, medicines from Prozac to Zantac pass through people into the sewer system. A new study says the drugs could be causing environmental problems downstream.
And the furthest man made object in space marks a milestone this week. All that and more on Next.
This week, we're at New York's Grand Central Station taking a look at what "Popular Science" magazine calls the best of what's new. By the way, "Popular Science" magazine is owned by CNN's parent company, Time Warner.
The editors there chose their top 100 innovations of the year. And throughout the show, we'll show you some of the more interesting ones. Let's take a look.
I'm joined by Suzanne Kantra, the technology editor at "Popular Science" magazine. Now, Suzanne, this is a real page turner, but it's not designed to help you read while you're in bed is it?
SUZANNE KANTRA, "POPULAR SCIENCE": It certainly isn't. The Curtis Book Scan (ph) is developed for putting more materials on the Web. It digitizes it automatically, unlike the other devices out there; 1200 pages per hour and it doesn't require an operator to be doing that manual page turning.
SIEBERG: All right, we're going to close the book on that one and move over here. People might be familiar with the chemistry sets when they were a kid, but this seems a little bit more high tech than that.
KANTRA: It's much more high tech. People are much more aware of DNA and what the implications of that are and now kids can get into the act. This has a centrifuge which spins out the sample. And then once you get that sample prepared it actually goes into this chamber here and pulls out the strand of DNA. It's called the DNA Explorer from Discovery Kids and it's under $100, so it's sort of a fun thing for your budding scientist. SIEBERG: All right, we're going move on from that discovery over to one that allows you to purify water. Now, why would somebody need to use this?
KANTRA: There are a couple of reasons why you would want to use the Myax (ph) Purifier. One is, sometimes you get a boil water order when there's been a power outage or something like that. We're also seeing the purifier being used over in Afghanistan and abroad. It can kill off things like cryptosporidium. It can neutralize anthrax, nerve gas. So this is a very powerful device. And it works with just an electric charge, salt and water. Couldn't be simpler.
SIEBERG: Wow. And very portable, obviously, as well. Well Suzanne Kantra, technology editor of "Popular Science" magazine, thanks so much for joining us.
KANTRA: Thank you.
SIEBERG: We'll show you more of the best of what's new throughout the prog.
First, though, some of the week's more serious news. U.S. military investigators still aren't sure who fired the surface-to-air missile that shot down a chinook helicopter last week end, killing 15. Now, certainly al Qaeda linked terrorists operating in Iraq are on the suspect list. Mike Boettcher examines al Qaeda's love affair with surface-to-air missiles and what it might mean for aircraft both inside and outside Iraq.
MIKE BOETTCHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): April 11, special forces hunt for and find stashes of surface-to-air missiles in southern Iraq. The missiles are stacked and explosive charges are set.
That cache of SAM 7 surface-to-air missiles is rendered useless. However, U.S. military sources say thousands of the lethal Iraqi weapons have never been found. U.S. forces in Iraq are concerned that they are in the hands of the Iraqi insurgery and al Qaeda backed jihadists who might use them outside of Iraq. The latter group concerns al Qaeda analysts like London based M.J. Gohel (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They have a great deal of experience in using this particular weapon and with lethal effect.
BOETTCHER: al Qaeda's experience with SAM's is extensive. Guerrilla warriors the Arab Mujahadeen, the eventual core of al Qaeda, used U.S. supplied stinger missiles to turn the tide of the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the late 1980s. Al Qaeda says it was between the 1993 shootdown of U.S. helicopters in Somalia, although that was with rocket propelled grenades.
The videotape archives of al Qaeda, recovered by CNN last year, included a comprehensive instruction video in the use of surface-to- air missiles. Al Qaeda tested SAM's in Afghanistan. And al Qaeda's supported Chechen insurgents who have been using SAM's to shoot down Russian helicopters, are trying to stockpile the weapons, according to Gojel (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They are trying to collect these weapons. And many are being used against the Russian forces in Chechnya and others are finding their way out into other countries.
BOETTCHER: One of the world's leading experts in improvised explosive devices who helped analyze CNN's al Qaeda tapes, fears that Iraq, like Chechnya, is becoming a weapons laboratory for al Qaeda.
TONY VILLA, EXPLOSIVES EXPERT: It's my feeling that they are using these areas as proving grounds to refine their tactics and bring that to the United States.
BOETTCHER: Although an immediate threat to U.S. forces in Iraq, surface-to-air missiles already have the attention of the world's airlines. Suspected al Qaeda terrorists narrowly missed shooting down an Israeli airliner a year ago in Kenya and tried to use another in Saudi Arabia. And al Qaeda adapts after failures.
VILLA: They have a propensity of going back to to the targets they failed to hit the first time or take out, and that those same targets are going to be revisited by al Qaeda.
BOETTCHER (on camera): The concern now among coalition counterterrorism officials is not just surface-to-air missiles in Iraq, but those in the hands of al Qaeda terrorists elsewhere in the world.
SIEBERG: Another concern for the U.S. military is the state of the country's spy satellites. Some experts question whether the next generation of satellites will be ready when they're needed. David Ensor has the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID ENSOR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As U.S. intelligence showed off at a recent trade fair, America's spy satellites were crucial in Iraq and Afghanistan. Keeping and improving the strategic advantage they provide could be critical. But critics, including the Pentagon's own Defense Science Board, warn that the program to field the next generation of satellites is behind schedule, over budget and as the board said bluntly, quote, "not executable."
STEVEN AFTERGOOD, FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS: Not executable is a fancy way of saying it won't work. And, of course, that's a serious problem.
LOREN THOMPSON, LEXINGTON INSTITUTE: We're facing the possibility of a spy satellite gap. If our existing satellites stop working before the new ones are in orbit, then, of course, we're going to have a problem collecting this type of intelligence.
ENSOR: Knowledgeable sources say the program has suffered satellite failures, drastic cost overruns, launch failures, all of which would have been front page news if they had been public, but the estimated $25 billion program is top secret, and intelligence chiefs have worked hard to keep many of the problems out of the public eye.
KEITH HALL, V.P., BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON: I don't think there's much of a risk of the nation going blind.
ENSOR: Former National Reconnaissance Office director Keith Hall says there may be a reduction in spy satellite capability for a while, but he says there will still be enough. Hall headed the NRO back in the '90s, when Boeing's bid on the massive contract to build the next generation of satellites was accepted. All the pressure then, he says, was to cut costs.
HALL: In order to free up the funds to do the development work, we had to stop buying the older satellites.
ENSOR: The current NRO director and undersecretary of the Air Force, Peter Teets, was unavailable for an interview. But after scaling down and adding $4 billion to the budget of what is the most expensive intelligence program in history, he recently said that, quote, "I have reasonable confidence we're going to have a successful program."
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SIEBERG: Microsoft and several law enforcement agencies are declaring war on cyber criminals. On Wednesday the company announced a $5 million program to help catch people to release viruses, worms and other malicious programs on the Internet. The first 2 awards are aimed at the creators of programs taht caused problems earlier this year.
BRAD SMITH, VP MICROSOFT: Microsoft is offering 1 reward of a quarter million dollars for information that results in the arrest and conviction of those responsible for launching the MS Blast-A worm.
The blaster worm was designed to Attack microsoft's windows update dot com Web site, which provides fixes to protect computer users against attacks.
And Microsoft is offering a second reward of a quarter million dollars for information that results in the arrest and conviction of those responsible for launching the Sobig Virus. This virus attacked individual machines and e-mailed itself to each e-mail address in a computer's contact list.
SIEBERG: Microsoft is working with the FBI, Secret Service and Interpol in the effort to bring the writers of malicious code to justice.
ANNOUNCER: Coming up, fish on Paxil. The fish may be happy. Who knows? But in the long run, it could be bad news for the entire eco system.
And later in the show, cats have gone to the dogs. We'll introduce you to a new breed of kitty.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) SIEBERG: Alaska hunters will soon be able to shoot wolves from aircraft for the first time in more than 30 years. The state board of game approved the plan on Tuesday, saying the wolves are killing too many moose and caribou. Environmental groups, though, have campaigned against the change, saying the killing is inhuman and Alaskans have voted against it twice.
Officials say only 200 of Alaska's 15,000 wild wolves will be killed and that it's important to protect moose populations. Wolves are not classified as endangered or threatened in Alaska.
Prescription drugs that are good for people can be very bad for fish. Now, before your argue that nobody actually feeds drugs to the fish, take a look at our report from Bruce Burkhardt.
BRUCE BURKHARDT, CNN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): All those drugs we take, heart medications, birth control pills, antidepressants like Prozac, in one way or another, they end up going down here, which means eventually those pharmaceuticals wind up here. Bottom line, there might be a lot of fish out there on Prozac.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE, "FINDING NEMO": I'm feeling happy.
BURKHARDT: But happy fish, like this one portrayed in the movie "Finding Nemo," are not necessarily a good thing.
PROF. BRYAN BROOKS, BAYLOR UNIVERSITY TOXICOLOGIST: We need to ask the question, what does accumulation in fish issues, for example, actually mean to the organism's ability to live, grow or reproduce.
BURKHARDT: Bryan Brooks, a toxicologist at Baylor University, and a team of researchers, tested fish near a sewage treatment plant in Denton, Texas. The plant discharges its treated water into the nearby Pecan Creek (ph). In this and other studies, the fish, it turns out, were nearly as doped up as we were.
BROOKS: Heart medications and steroids, for example, active ingredients found in many birth control medications.
BURKHARDT: The concern, and where more studies are needed, is that these drugs might affect the fish's ability to reproduce or even avoid predators, thus upsetting the entire ecology of an aquatic system. It's too early to tell if humans may be affected.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have sewage entering from both sides of this stream.
BURKHARDT: Most sewage treatment plants, like this one in Atlanta, do an effective job at cleaning sewage before pumping it back into a river.
(on camera): But this sewage treatment plant, just like every other plant in the country, is not equipped to test for or remove pharmaceuticals. Until just recently, no one even knew that it might be a problem. (voice-over): But with the popularity of such prescriptions as Prozac and birth control pills, new treatments might be needed. Family planning might be OK for humans, but not fish.
ANNOUNCER: Coming up, more of the best of what's new. Including a car that parks itself.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ANN KELLAN, CNN ANCHOR: It's an adventure like no other, 12,000 feet below the surface of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. To mountain ranges, volcanoes and thermal vents that emit steaming hot minerals called black smokers and creatures, some never seen before all featured in a new iMax film called "Volcanoes of the Deep.
RICHARD LUTZ, SCIENCE ADVISOR, RUTGERS UNIVERSITY: Literally, every creature that you would see in the film was unknown to science a quarter century ago.
STEPHEN LOW, FILM DIRECTOR: It's extremely cold down there. It's very, very near freezing. With an occasional jet of incredibly hot water that could burn a hole in your sub.
KELLAN: At these depths, it's dark and dangerous. The film was shot through the window of a small submersible called ALVIN.
LOW: The volcanoes are scary, because if one blows you're toast, basically.
KELLAN: Ten years in the making. Director Stephen Low loaded ALVIN with a high res camera and 4,000 watts of lights.
LOW: We're lighting huge areas, the size of, you know, a football field. So people can see the spectacle down there for the first time.
KELLAN: The undersea creatures thrive in what we'd consider a toxic wasteland.
LOW: There are fish, there are mussels, there are clams and all of those organisms are living off bacteria that are ultimately getting their energy from chemicals, hydrogen sulfide on the bottom.
KELLAN: And thanks to the film we get the first glimpse of this octopus, appropriately nicknamed Dumbo. The fact creatures like this can thrive in these conditions makes you wonder whether life forms exist in outer space too. Ann Kellan, CNN.
SIEBERG: Lots of the nifty gadgets that "Popular Science" chose as the best of what's new are on display in the exhibit hall of Grand Central Station, including a battery charger that fully charges batteries in 15 minutes. So you don't have to live without your favorite gadget for very long. Obviously, batteries are fairly small, but some of the winners were simply too big to fit inside the building. (voice-over): One of "Pop Sci's: grand award winners was this radical design by Burt Rutan for sub-orbital spaceflight. At 50,000 feet, the egg-shaped spaceship one, detaches from the White Knight carrier airplane and launches to a height more than 60 miles above the Earth. While, that's not high enough for orbit it is far above the Earth's atmosphere in the realm of zero gravity. The craft then returns to land on a normal runway.
And Boeing has a new design as well, the 7He7 dream liner is the latest passenger jet on the company's drawing board. The jet lines would seat 200 to 250 people and employ high tech lightweight materials to make it more fuel efficient. With a 9,000 miles range, passengers could fly from Paris to Minneapolis nonstop.
And for those of you who failed parallel parking, another of "Pop Sci's" best of pick is the hybrid gas electric Toyota Prius. One new feature, available only in Japan, is that the car actually parks itself. Pull up to a spot of your choosing and the on board computer uses cameras and sensors to align the car. The vehicle then steers itself into the space.
And parking is no problem for this pick. With the Gibbs Aquatic car/boat, you just take your ride out to sea. Retractable wheels allow the vehicle to plane across the water, like a jet ski, at a top speed of 35 miles per hour. Back on land, the Aquatic can go up to 100 miles per hour.
(on camera): There's a lot more of best of what's new on "Popular Science" Web site. You can get there from our Web site at CNN.com/next.
ANNOUNCER: Coming up, making dollars off dolphins. We'll visit a country where dolphins are being promoted as a tourist attraction and another where they meet a very different fate.
And later in the show, NASA's Voyager One space probe heads into a region of space that's never been explored before.
Those stories and a lot more are coming up in the next half hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(NEWS BREAK)
DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN TECHNICAL CORRESPONDENT: Welcome back to NEXT@CNN we're at New York's Grand Central Station checking out some of the innovations and gizmos that "Popular Science" magazine has chosen as the best of what's new. For example, take a look at this dive mask, it's got an LCD inside the mask that tells you how deep you're diving, how much air you've got left, plus a lot of other useful information. It's certainly a good way to help divers avoid dangerous situations. But, for some dolphins in the waters off Japan, there's no way to avoid danger. Dolphin hunting is legal and the hunt was underway last month. We want to caution you though; some of the video in this next report is very graphic and may be distressing to some viewers. Gary Strieker has the story.
GARY STRIEKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Fishermen drive dolphins into a small cove, turned red with blood. In Japan, it's the season for dolphin drives. A century-old hunting tradition that does not draw protests from Japanese, but that many outside Japan now find shocking.
BROOKE MCDONALD, SEA SHEPHERD CONSERVATION SOCIETY: It's graphic. It's quite horrifying, and it elicits quite an emotional response and has resulted in international outcries in the past against the drive.
STRIEKER: This drive took place last month in Taiji on Japan's western coast, a hunt that killed more than 60 striped dolphins. The video was taken with a hidden camera by activists with the U.S.-based anti-whaling group, Sea Shepherd, who also supplied statements by their representative, part of their campaign against the dolphin drive that has caused confrontations with local fishermen.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're here, we're cornered. They're about feet from us on either side.
MCDONALD: The pressure might be great enough to shut the drive down now and save 18,000 dolphin's lives this year.
STRIEKER: Dolphin meat is processed and sold in Japan's food markets. Hunting dolphins and smaller species of whales is legal in Japan's coastal waters, subject to quotas during limited seasons. Japanese authorities try to keep images like these from public view and Japan's official fishery agency has issued this statement:
"It is not acceptable to trample the dignity of fishermen engaging in traditional operations which are properly managed, based on scientific evidence, and internationally as well as domestically legal by distributing scenes of slaughtering to the public, since a scene of slaughtering any animal is cruel."
Official quotas for this year's hunting seasons in Japan authorize the killing of thousands of dolphins and small whales. Many of them in drives like this.
SEIBERG: The Middle Eastern nation of Oman has a very different plan for making money with its dolphin populations. There, dolphins aren't food, they're a tourist attraction.
Nic Robertson reports.
MOHAMED AL RIYAMI, ARABIAN SEA SAFARIS: There are quite a lot of dolphins, right no front here, coming this way.
NIC ROBERTSON, NBC CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hundreds, in fact, but in typical Omani style, dolphin guru, Mohamed Al Riyami, is understated. How many dolphins would you say we're looking at here?
AL RIYAMI: The rule of thumb says what you see at surface, multiply by four. So, I will say around 200, 300 dolphins.
ROBERTSON: Barely ten minutes out to sea from the capital, Muscat, and his boat literally surrounded by spinner dolphins.
AL RIYAMI: We will let them pass through and then we'll go behind them and follow them quite gently.
ROBERTSON, (on camera): They're here.
(voice-over): Once a government spokesman, Mohamed is now a driving force behind this Persian Gulf's alternate steady move to dolphin tourism.
AL RIYAMI: Oman, I will say, probably the best in the area, simply because you have to look at our coast line and look at the continental shelf. We do have numerous drop-offs very, very close to the shore.
ROBERTSON: That remarkable drop-off, where the sea floor falls to half the depth of the world's deepest ocean, draws cold water currents rich with plankton to the surface, creating near perfect conditions for the dolphins who gorge on the plentiful sardines attracted to the plankton. But, the near perfect conditions for the dolphins are also near perfect for the tuna. Perfect too for the local fishermen who, for centuries, have been using the dolphins to track their prey, the tuna.
AL RIYAMI: The Dolphins are mammals, so they come up to the surface to breathe. Under the dolphins are tuna with -- both tunas and dolphins are feeding on the same thing, sardines.
ROBERTSON: With recently imposed conservancy laws to protect dolphins by banning tuna nets, pressure is now on to the old industry of fishing to coexist with the new one, tourism. Despite the new law, nets can still be seen in some boats. And, near where tuna are unloaded young boys display a dead dolphin, discarded on a rubbish bin. With government approval a tiny handful of research scientists are helping expand Oman's knowledge of dolphins as a potentially lucrative tourist resource.
GIANNA MINTON, OMAN WHALE AND DOLPHIN RESEARCH GROUP: We're just scratching the surface in terms of learning about the different species. It's important to understand your market, how many tourists are interested in this sort of activity. And then to understand, sort of, what the capacity for a certain (INAUDIBLE) is.
ROBERTSON (on camera): It seems like near certainty if you head out to sea here, for a few hours, you'll see dolphins. What Omani hope through their conservancy, is that near certainty becomes a guarantee.
(voice-over): For now, at least, with Mohamed Al Riyami keeping a careful eye on the sea, chances look good.
AL RIYAMI: Look, beautiful. It will do it again. Beautiful. It will do it that time, a small one. Thank you. This is a special shore for CNN.
(LAUGHTER)
ROBERTSON: The fact is, this show is for anyone who comes.
ANNOUNCER: Coming up, new software to make your PDA respond when you talk to it.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SIEBERG: Microsoft, this week, unveiled new software that lets you operate our PDA with spoken commands. While it my not be a stylus killer on the end of the super tiny keyboard, it is a more hands-free hand-held. And before we left for New York, I talked to Lance Ulanoff with "PC" magazine.
LANCE ULANOFF, "PC" MAGAZINE: The great thing is that so many people have pocket PCs, hand-held devices and now they can do hands- free commands of these device, whether they're possibly walking down the street they can bring up messages, they can make phone calls, they could start playing music. At least this is the vision.
SIEBERG: Now, I've got a demonstration we could do here in the studio, this is the pocket PC phone that Microsoft sent us. The key to all of this is the button in the upper right corner, the calendar button, which you have to push in order to activate the micro phone. Once you do that the microphone icon will come up. I could say -- what's my next appointment?
VOICE: Tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. Ask boss for 20 percent raise.
SIEBERG: So, a note to myself to ask for that 20 percent raise, of course. Now, you also pointed out multimedia files, so I'm just going to do a quick demonstration of that, as well.
Play music.
VOICE: What do you want to play? (INAUDIBLE) or everything.
SIEBERG: Everything.
ULANOFF: That's pretty impressive. Did you do any training, Daniel?
SIEBERG: I didn't. Now, that's a good question, though. I mean, how intuitive is this? Are these commands fairly simple for you to understand?
ULANOFF: It is, yeah. I mean, that's -- here's the thing, that if you don't have to train, that's one of the things as selling points. If you don't have to train a speech recognition application, you just start using it from the get-go, that's very powerful. "PC" magazine is, of course, going to test it and tell you for certain if it's the real deal. But, from what I'm hearing there, it sound pretty darn impressive. SIEBERG: Yeah, it's about $40 to download it from the Handango website, and when you mention the driver aspect, the sort of reducing distractions, is that part of why Microsoft says they came up with this idea?
ULANOFF: Well, I mean, it's certainly a good selling point. It -- they did work with their automotive group to do this. So, I would assume that this is one of the reasons and -- you know, their press and materials talk about it, and it makes good sense because in addition to people using mobile phones, they are starting to use PDAs in their car. And, if you think a mobile phone is distracting in your car, imagine what a PDA is like where you've an interface to look at and you start to look away and hit at it. So, safety is one very good reason for them to develop it and possibly a good reason for people to plunk down the $40 and buy it.
SIEBERG: That was lance Ulnaoff from "PC" magazine.
ANNOUNCER: Coming up the Voyager One space probe crosses what NASA is calling the final frontier.
DAVID KIRKPATRICK, "FORTUNE" SENIOR EDITOR: The big change with China is that for years we've sort of thought of them as our competitor for manufacturing and -- you know, low cost labor. But, what's really changed now, is that china's market itself is becoming so big and important that the consumption of products, particularly technology products, in China, is beginning to have a huge impact on the entire global technology industry, and on other industries. For example, every year in China 60 million new cell phone users come on board. They have 80 million cable TV subscribers, a considerable percentage of them are digital and that number is growing all the time. And, this year, they become the world's second largest market for personal computers and it's thought by many that next year, they will be the world's largest market for personal computers, bigger than the number one today, the United States.
Most of the people that I talk to, the basic attitude when you ask them -- where's China going long-term, is we all better start learning Chinese.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SIEBERG: I'm joined, right now, by Scott Alexander; he is a senior editor of "Popular Science" magazine.
Scott, the magazine writes about these speakers as "speakers that can listen." That sounds almost philosophical. But, tell me how they work.
SCOTT ALEXANDER, "POPULAR SCIENCE": It's the world's first self- adjusting speaker. Bang & Olufsen made these so you can bring them into any room in your house. You touch the top here, a little microphone pops out from the side and it starts making some noises. The microphone records those noises and the reflections it makes off of your room and adjusts themselves so you get optimal sound in any room in your house. SIEBERG: Wow. And so, high end audio files though, because those go for about $16,000 a pair?
ALEXANDER: $16,000, yes. I would not...
SIEBERG: Now, DVD's, it seems like everybody has a DVD player in their home, these days. What does this one allow you to do?
ALEXANDER: This one allows you to access files from your PC. Eventually -- you know, more and more we have digital files. We have pictures, we have movies, we have music. This allows you to view the stuff through your home stereo and on your TV. So, you can listen to your music on your good speakers, you can watch your movies through your TV.
SIEBERG: All right, we're going from DVD to TV. Wireless seems to be the buzzword these days. Why is this one so different?
ALEXANDER: TV was one of the great early wireless technologies, then we hooked it up with a bunch of wires and stuff like that and essentially tied it down. This allows you to watch TV anywhere in your house. It's a WiFi connected television that allows you to go 100 feet from the base station and watch where ever you like -- the patio, to pool, however you want to do it.
SIEBERG: TV on the go.
ALEXANDER: Yep.
SIEBERG: Scott Alexander, senior editor of "Popular Science" magazine. Thank so much for joining us.
ALEXANDER: Thank you.
SIEBERG: The largest solar flare ever recorded erupted from the sun on Tuesday. Fortunately, the explosion wasn't pointed toward earth. Solar scientists though rated the flair an X-28, a measure of its x-ray brightness. The previous record holder was an X-20. All X- class flares are big and can interfere with radio communication and power grids on earth if the radiation comes in our direction.
China says it plans to send two more astronauts into orbit within the next two years. The announcement came as China's first space traveler, Yang Liwe wound up a week-long victory tour. Yang spent six days in Hong Kong where his visit was seen as an attempt to boost spirits in the former British colony. He wound up the week in Macaw, the former Portuguese colony turned gambling Mecca. Yang's 21-hour spaceflight last month, made China the world's third space fairng nation.
NANA's Voyager One spacecraft has been traveling through space for the 26 years and its gone where no other manmade object has ever been. Now, it's heading into even more mysterious territory. Miles O'Brien reports.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): What a long, strange trip it's been. They left earth when Carter was president, Elvis had just died, and we were first seeing "Saturday Night Fever" and "Star Wars." 26 years later, the force still with them, a pair of intrepid spacecraft, aptly named Voyager, are going where nothing made by earthlings have gone, ready to pierce yet another cloud of cosmic mystery.
ED STONE, VOYAGER PROJECT SCIENTIST: We are hoping, of course, to keep it going as long as possible, but none of us could have imagined in 1977 that it -- the space craft would last as long as it had.
O'BRIEN: NASA's Ed Stone saw his hairline recede along with the space craft he helped design launch and guide through a textbook trashing tour of our solar system. Voyagers One and Two spotted volcanoes on a Jovian moon, took a close look at Saturn's rings, and saw a tilt in Uranus, and found a dark spot on Neptune.
ERIC CHRISTIAN, VOYAGER PROJECT SCIENTIST: Voyager One and Voyager Two have completely rewritten our textbooks on the gas giants, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. But, this is the next step of exploration for mankind.
O'BRIEN: The next step is a doozie, and Voyager One may already be there, the final frontier of our solar system. A place where the supersonic gases spit out by our sun, crash into slower moving plasma, like waves hitting a sandy beach.
STONE: The sun creates a bubble around itself with a supersonic million-mile-per-hour wind creating this bubble. But, as the wind approaches inter-stellar space, it goes through a massive giant shockwave and we believe we're seeing particles coming from that shockwave.
O'BRIEN: Of course, it's hard to tell. The sensor on Voyager One, best able to detect those particles is no longer working and the craft is eight billion miles way, using a transmitter about as powerful as a 28 watt light bulb. But, the probe and its trailing twin, Voyager Two, are moving ten times faster than a speeding bullet, inexorably toward inter-stellar space, a place that gives new meaning to "no man's land."
STONE: The next star is indeed a great distance away, it'll be something like 40,000 years before Voyager is closer to another star than the sun. Just an indication of how immense the space is in our galaxy.
O'BRIEN: The Voyagers clearly won't last that long. In fact, their nuclear power plants could quit any day. So, for scientists, every ounce of data that makes it back to our pale blue dot is gravy. Once these diehards expire, they'll soldier on silently. And in case anyone is out there.
Kurt Waldheim, FMR. U.N. SECRETARY GENERAL: As the Secretary General of the United Nations...
O'BRIEN: They carry greetings from Earth, sent in the 70s and gold records with sounds from our planet. It's an eclectic mix, Beethoven, Louis Armstrong, and Chuck Berry. Go, Voyagers, go.
SIEBERG: There's a lot more about the Voyager mission on the CNN website and you can get there, plus find other stories in the show, through our website, that's at CNN.com/next.
ANNOUNCER: When we come back, meet a designer cat that breeders say will charm dog lovers.
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SIEBERG: In a noticeable attempt to give deep pocketed customers what they want, breeders have come up with a new kind of cat. It looks an exotic wildcat and supposedly has a personality like a dog. Our Jeanne Moos visited a New York pet store to check out that kitty in the window.
JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Here, kitty, kitty. Here's what you get when you take this wildcat and breed it with your average feline.
MIKE BALL, LE PETIT PUPPY: Oh, this is going to be the next big pet.
MOOS: A cat, they say, even dog lovers will love, a big cat men might fall for just like these puppies have.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's not a regular cat, is it?
MOOS: Able to leap tall fences in a single bound, her name is Uma, as in Uma Thurman, and like her namesake, Uma has been turning heads.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, gosh!
MOOS: At Le Petit Puppy pet shop in Greenwich Village. Uma is a new breed known as the Savannah. Breeders use native African wildcats called Servals, like the one on the left to produce the housecat on your right.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's really cool looking.
MOOS: And then, there's the Savannah's personality, frisky but sweet, not savage.
(on camera): So, you're saying Uma kind of acts like a dog?
BALL: Exactly. Or the dogs think they're cats. I don't know. They're more dog-like and so intelligent.
MOOS: Savannahs are ranked by how close they are to the wildcat. An F-1 is half wild., Uma is an F-2.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I'll get the F-3 without all the options.
MOOS: An F-3 might cost you 2,000 bucks from breeders like exoticcats.com. Watch your spelling or you'll end up at a Web site for porn rather than pussycats.
Believe it or not, Uma is only three months old.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I would never have that cat like that in the house. It's like Ming, the tiger.
MOOS: Ming is that tiger recently removed from a Harlem apartment. But, Savannahs only grow to be two and a half times the size of a normal cat. Chew on that.
SIEBERG: And finally, we've got one more treat from the best of what's new list of winners. The top thrill dragster rollercoaster at Ohio's Cedar Point Amusement Park, it's the world's tallest and fastest. It gets riders up to 120 miles per hour in just four seconds. The ride has a special hydraulic acceleration system that makes the cars go as fast on the way up the 420-foot hill as on the way down. It only takes about 30 seconds to complete the 2,800 foot track, but you can bet it's a memorable 30 seconds.
We hope our program was memorable for you. We going to have to end our ride there because that's all the time we have for now. But, here's what's coming up next week.
The yearly leaded meteor shower will happen a week from Monday. And next weekend, we'll tell you how to get the best view of it.
That's coming up on NEXT. Until then, let us here from you. You can send us an e-mail at next@cnn.com.
Thanks so much for joining us for all of us on the SciTech beat. I'm Daniel Sieberg we'll see you next time.
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