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Science and Technology Week

MIR Soon Will Plummet to Earth; Future Computers May be Wearable; Architecture Students Build Homes From Refuse

Aired February 24, 2001 - 1:30 p.m. ET

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

ANN KELLAN, HOST: Russia prepares for the MIR space station's finale. Computerized eyeglasses give a glimpse into the future. And revolutionary ideas in home building don't have to be high-tech. Those stories and more are just ahead on SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY WEEK.

Hello and welcome. I'm Ann Kellan. You may enjoy looking at a beautiful sunrise or sunset, but have you ever thought about listening to the sun? NASA scientists have, and now their experiments are yielding up some solar sounds. Now, you'll need to listen closely to hear them.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KELLAN: (voice-over): This is what scientists say the sun sounds like: the equivalent of a solar heartbeat. Solar scientists used listening devices to unravel some of the mysteries of earth's nearest star. It's not the actual sound -- sound can't travel through the vacuum of space -- but a re-creation based on the waves recorded by the devices.

Each pitch corresponds with the movement and vibrations of various hot gases as they flow like rivers beneath the sun's surface, similar to how trade winds blow on Earth. Scientists translate the sounds they make into images. This allows a unique glimpse inside the sun's complex architecture to answer questions about its temperature, chemical makeup and how gases inside ebb and flow.

CRAIG DEFOREST, NASA SOLAR PHYSICIST: What we're finding is that there are very interesting structures inside. There is an equatorial belt of faster-moving material. And then farther up near the poles, we believe that there's a jet stream of material moving about 60 miles an hour up at a very north latitude.

KELLAN: The Michelson Doppler Imager aboard a sun-orbiting satellite captures movements on the surface, seen here. Each of these granules, by the way, is the size of Texas. To hear the sounds, scientists had to speed up the vibrations 42,000 times and compress 40 days of solar activity into just a few seconds.

As for what we can do with this information, NASA scientists hope that listening to the sun will give us earlier warnings of dangerous solar activity, the kind that can disrupt power lines, satellites and navigational systems here on Earth. DEFOREST: Right now we can image when an eruption happens on the surface of the sun and determine when the disturbance is propagating across the solar system. But by imaging the far side of the sun with sound waves, we can determine what's over the horizon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KELLAN: The MIR space station will soon come down to earth. That's got several different groups of people upset for a lot of different reasons.

Steve Harrigan reports from Moscow.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STEVE HARRIGAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Russian space officials can't say yet exactly when the MIR is coming down -- mid-March, give or take a week -- or exactly where -- the Pacific Ocean between Australia and Chile, give or take 5,000 kilometers -- and they can't give a 100 percent guarantee that no one will get hurt.

YURI KOPTEV, RUSSIAN SPACE AGENCY DIRECTOR (through translator): There is only a .02 percent chance that the station will fall on a city.

HARRIGAN: The 136-ton station, which has been descending about one kilometer every day, will eventually be forced out of orbit, using the engines of a docked cargo ship. As many as 1,500 fragments, according to Russian scientists, some weighing up to a ton, will not burn up upon the MIR's reentry into the atmosphere.

Eighty nations have expressed their concern to the Russian government. They want to know where the gas tanks and the engines will land. Inside Russia, a different concern over the end of a symbol of Soviet achievement in space. These people don't want the MIR to come down.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): We used to have something to be proud of, when the whole country was striving for something. Now all we have is resentment.

HARRIGAN: That symbol has been tarnished by a fire onboard, a collision with a supply ship and numerous computer failures. After 15 years in orbit, the final act of MIR is just weeks away, the world waiting to see if it will go out with a splash or a bang.

For SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY WEEK, I'm Steve Harrigan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KELLAN: For a while last week, the astronauts on the space shuttle Atlantis must have been wondering if they would ever get back to earth. The shuttle finally landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California on Wednesday; landing was originally scheduled for Sunday at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, but gusty winds prevented it on Sunday and Monday and on Tuesday. The problem was thick, low clouds. During the 13-day mission, the Atlantis astronauts delivered and installed the laboratory module on the International Space Station Alpha.

Coming up: will the computer of the future be something you wear, or even implant in your body? We'll be right back with that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KELLAN: If you could give yourself a photographic memory, a vast storehouse of knowledge and a big boost in brain power, would you do it? We may actually face that question in the future, according to a Toronto inventor.

Rick Lockridge has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RICK LOCKRIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The coolest shades on the University of Toronto campus belong to Professor Steve Mann and grad student Corey Manders (ph). They're wearing computerized cameras called eyetaps and seeing the world cyborg-style.

STEVE MANN, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PROFESSOR: The idea of the eyetap is to modify the visual perception of reality computationally.

LOCKRIDGE: Mann believes we will one day use wearable or even implantable computers to record everything we see, remember everything we'd otherwise forget, and do all our really hard thinking for us. And all the while, he predicts, we'll be connected to each other in ways we never imagined.

MANN: While I'm at the grocery store, my wife can remotely look through my eyes at whatever I'm looking at and remotely comment; or if I'm buying a used car, she can scribble a message on my retina that says, Steve, I think this person is lying.

LOCKRIDGE: Mann warns his knew students that it's not always easy being a cyborg pioneer. Some people will cross the street to avoid you, he tells them; but in the end, he says, the cyborgs will prevail. Resistance is futile.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I'm just trying to get these things prepped and ready for the students.

LOCKRIDGE: James Phung (ph), a Mann disciple, says computer- assisted reality means being able to filter out the visual spam in your life and replace it with things you want to see.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So rather than having to see the same advertising every day, you could see a picture of your dog or whatever.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's recording everything that I see. So you're recording me right now, but I'm also recording you.

LOCKRIDGE: Corey Manders knows he looks a little strange with his headgear. He admits his wife isn't crazy about the terminator look, especially when Corey insists on wearing this getup through airport security.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have about an hour-and-a-half of arguing with the guy trying to get onto the plane.

LOCKRIDGE: But when Manders wanders around the U of T campus, almost no one gives him a second glance. Toronto is getting comfortable with cyborgs, and Manders is getting comfortable being one.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You don't become totally dependent on it, but it certainly supplements your ability to do things.

LOCKRIDGE: What things? Mann says the visually impaired could benefit from computer-enhanced video. Alzheimer's patients, he says, could use computer memory to bolster their own. And activists could videotape civil rights abuses without being noticed.

MANN: When there's tyranny, the powers that be like to seize video and prevent people from taking pictures of it and documenting it.

LOCKRIDGE: But the flip side is, do we want to be under somebody's constant surveillance? And how much do we really want to tie ourselves to computers? Do you want your head running Microsoft Brain 2.0?

MANN: And I wonder if we'll see a future in which your thinking license will expire in 31 minutes -- you know, please provide payment to continue thinking.

LOCKRIDGE (on camera): If Mann's group is right, in the future a cameraman will simply look at his subject, the way Corey is looking at me right now. And the camera won't be worn, it'll be implanted. So when someone tells him he's got an eye for photography, they'll really mean it.

For SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY WEEK, I'm Rick Lockridge.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KELLAN: A major study on global warming looks at how it may change your future. That's coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KELLAN: You've probably heard about the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. But there was a much more devastating event millions of years before that that eliminated 90 percent of life on earth. Well, now scientists think they know how it happened.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KELLAN (voice-over): Scientists say 250 million years ago before even the dinosaurs existed, an asteroid, four to eight miles across, slammed into Earth with a force of a million or more earthquakes. That impact caused volcano eruptions that buried much of the Earth in lava, and kicked up so much dust and ash it blocked the sun's rays, making the Earth dark and cold, destroying most of its life.

RICHARD BAMBACH, VIRGINIA TECH: This is probably the most famous type of animal that existed in the Paleozoic. It's called the trilobite. And the trilobites went completely extinct.

KELLAN: As did most of the 15,000 species on Earth at the time, including shellfish and coral. Fish fared better than most.

BAMBACH: These very active animals actually made it through with only about 40 percent rather than 90 percent extinction.

KELLAN: No one knows where this asteroid hit. But others have left their mark, like this smaller one in Arizona. Does this mean it could happen again? If so, when?

You shouldn't worry, say scientists. They calculate an asteroid hits Earth once every million years. We know where the big ones are. And even if a smaller one was coming at us, we'd get plenty of notice.

CHRIS CHYBA, STANFORD UNIVERSITY: We would almost certainly have decades, if not centuries, to go before that impact would happen. So we'd have a long time to think about what to do about it.

KELLAN: Scientists made this discovery by digging deep into the Earth's core. They found gases only found in outer space, trapped in carbon molecules called buckminsterfullerenes, or buckyballs. Scientists now say those alien gases rode in on a speeding asteroid.

Even though the devastating impact destroyed life, it paved the way for the dinosaur era 25 million years later.

Ann Kellan, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KELLAN: A new United Nations report details what global warming may mean for people around the world. Hundreds of researchers worked for three years to put together the 1,000-page study.

Environment correspondent Natalie Pawelski boils it down for us.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NATALIE PAWELSKI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): From dangerous tropical weather to melting polar ice caps, a new United Nations report details how global warming is likely to change the world.

JAMES MCCARTHY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: There is not a lot of good news in climate change. There may be some local benefits, but on average most people will be affected negatively by the climate change that is now forecast. PAWELSKI: Those changes include more severe weather like hurricanes, floods and droughts. In some places, people might be forced to move out of harm's way, becoming environmental refugees. Another possibility: the wider spread of animal-borne diseases like malaria, which mosquitoes carry. Changes in climate could also drive some species extinct.

MCCARTHY: As we look to projections of future climate change, we see much more rapid changes in climate very likely, and the consequences of what we've experienced in the past will be even more extreme.

PAWELSKI: Among the consequences earth is already experiencing, the report counts shrinking glaciers, thawing permafrost and shifting ranges of habitat for plants and animals.

(on camera): The researchers say climate change will bring winners as well as losers. Some countries might find a warmer world actually helps grow crops better, for example. But in general, the U.N. report says poorer countries will suffer more than rich ones.

(voice-over): As one example, take sea-level rise. Any country with a coastline is going to feel the effects. But while the United States and other rich nations will probably be able to find ways to limit the damage and keep people safe, people in poorer countries, say, Bangladesh, probably won't have the money or the resources to deal with the coming floods.

For SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY WEEK, I'm Natalie Pawelski.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KELLAN: Two orphaned polar bear cubs are getting another chance at survival. The 2-month-old bears are now in a Toronto zoo after they were found wandering in the wild near Hudson Bay. Zoo officials say the cubs' mother is probably dead, and it's doubtful the little bears would have survived. They're still under quarantine, but seem to be healthy, and they could be on public view by the end of April.

OK, we'd like to hear what you think about our show. You can e- mail us at SciTechWeek@cnn.com. We may not be able to answer every e- mail, but we do promise to read all of them, and thanks for your comments so far.

When we come back: architecture students learn some secrets of home-building that can't be found in textbooks.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KELLAN: Architecture students study high-tech building materials and design sleek skyscrapers, but some of them learn more than that. A project at Alabama's Auburn University lets students see the beauty and the importance of simple materials.

Bruce Burkhardt reports. BRUCE BURKHARDT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Shepherd Bryant of Hale County, Alabama lives in one of the poorest regions in the country. Seems like it always has been. More than 60 years ago, the photographer Walker Evans and the writer James Agee came to Hale County to chronicle the depression in their book, "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men." Today the faces are more black than white, but still the face of poverty.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That was the house I built by myself

BURKHARDT (on camera): You built that yourself? You lived in that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, sir. All my children born in that over there.

BURKHARDT: All your children born right there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

BURKHARDT (voice-over): If ever a man and a woman needed a new house, it was Shepherd and Alberta Bryant (ph). But one made from hay?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, yes, sir.

BURKHARDT (on camera): You were worried about cows eating your house?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, I sure was.

SAMUEL MOCKBEE, PROFESSOR, AUBURN UNIVERSITY: Hay bales. Those are hay bales behind that stucco wall right there.

BURKHARDT (voice-over): Professor Samuel Mockbee -- everybody around here calls him Sambo -- is Alberta and Shepherd's architect -- or rather, his students are. And part of their lesson is working with what's available, whether it's the rammed earth walls at this house or old road signs for a roof -- or better yet, how about these side windows from a bunch of junked '89 Chevy Caprices?

They form the roof of this community center -- and all of it designed and built by architecture students at Auburn University, putting in a semester out here in the country.

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: You have to know how materials work so you can be a really good architect.

It's called the Rural Studio, part of Auburn's architecture school and founded by Professor Mockbee about eight years ago. The students are the architects. And their clients live in places like this. Here you learn more than just how to draw up some blueprints.

MOCKBEE: In architecture, all art should be -- should have a social base to it. Architecture is a social art. And these students need to learn what those principles are. They need to address injustices -- not just social inequalities, but environmental inequalities.

BURKHARDT: An experiment in social activism, but also an experiment in design.

MOCKBEE: We call it the butterfly house because of the roof, the shape of the roof looks like its fixing to fly off.

Hey, Anderson (ph).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right, how you doing?

MOCKBEE: Doing fine.

The whole house is designed to be ventilated so the hot air can rise and get out, which is a principle that we always use down here in the South.

BURKHARDT: The houses, which the new owners get for free, cost, on average, $25,000 to $30,000 to build. That's materials. The labor comes courtesy of the students, who have also help out in fund- raising, mainly from grants and foundations.

(on camera): Who ever heard of college students building their own dormitories? Well, that's kind of what happened here. Each of these pods is home to a couple of students who've built them themselves.

But this is more than just housing. It's also an R&D center where students experiment with new ways of building and new building materials, like these cardboard bales, 1,000 pounds each. They're a post-industrial byproduct of making cardboard boxes, and otherwise would end up in a landfill.

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: Fifty of these bales at one factory in a day, which is 50,000 pounds of corrugated waste. You know, we're taking this garbage and we're making habitats out of it, you know; so it's not just trash going straight to a landfill.

BURKHARDT (voice-over): It's an education you couldn't get in a classroom: hands-on experience in the real world, building low-cost housing, often with recycled materials -- like this smokehouse built for Shepherd Bryant and his catfish.

MACKBEE: That's a big head; I'd like to have seen the fish that was behind that.

It's all busted up concrete and aluminum road signs; you know, Hale County Department of Transportation road signs.

BURKHARDT: Buildings that keep one warm and dry. For many of the rural studio's clients that, in itself, is a step up.

MOCKBEE: We also build a house that has a spirit to it, or a community building that speaks not only aesthetically, but is noble and has a moral sense to what it's about, and that is what elevates the work of the rural studio students. BURKHARDT: Warm and dry, and noble.

For SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY WEEK, I'm Bruce Burkhardt.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KELLAN: Learning by doing; a great idea.

Recently on this program, we aired a report about animal hoarding, which included Jennifer Schmid (ph), who founded a small humane society in 1996. The report stated that Ms. Schmid had in the past cared for more than 100 animals at her home, animals that were removed by the Georgia Department of Agriculture. We did not report that Ms. Schmid was, at the time, licensed by the state to run an animal shelter, or that she had found homes for more than 2,000 spayed and neutered dogs and cats. Her license to run the shelter was revoked because a state inspector found conditions at her home which did not meet regulations.

We did not intend to imply that Ms. Schmid was formerly an animal hoarder, or that any footage of inhumane conditions contained in the report depicted her home or her animals. We wanted to set the record straight on this matter, and wish Ms. Schmid the best in her continuing efforts to find homes for unwanted pets.

Thanks for joining us. I'm Ann Kellan.

Next week: teaching old wolves new tricks; a project underway in the Western U.S. is designed to train wolves to stay away from livestock. That's coming up on the next SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY WEEK. We'll see you then.

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