SpaceX Capsule Links Up With Space Station: NASA

Technicians attach the Dragon capsule to a Falcon 9 rocket on October 5

A capsule on a first privately-run resupply mission successfully linked up Wednesday with the International Space Station, the US space agency NASA said.

A robot arm operated by two of the six astronauts aboard the space station snatched the Dragon capsule at 1056 GMT, more than thirty minutes ahead of schedule, it said.

The docking will be completed after the ISS crew first inspects the capsule's condition with the help of cameras, a task that was expected to take another two hours, a NASA television announcer said.

SpaceX, the private company owned by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, launched the Dragon Sunday evening atop a Falcon 9 rocket from an air base in Cape Canaveral, Florida near the Kennedy Space Center.

The mission was the first of a dozen ISS supply runs that NASA has contracted out to SpaceX under a four-year, $1.6 billion contract, fulfilling a role once carried out by NASA's now retired shuttle fleet.

The capsule is loaded with 882 pounds (400 kilograms) of equipment and material for scientific experiments that will be conducted by an ISS crew commanded by American astronaut Sunit Williams.

The cargo also includes food, clothing and other necessities for the international crew, which besides Williams includes three Russians, a Japanese and another American astronaut.

Dragon is currently the only spacecraft capable of ferrying cargo from the space station back to Earth, and on its return voyage scheduled for October 28 will carry back 1,240 pounds (562 kilograms) of equipment and material.

It is supposed to land by parachute off the coast of southern California.

SpaceX Craft On Way To ISS In First Supply Run

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket attached to the cargo-only capsule called Dragon, lifts off from the launch pad, on October 7, in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The rocket is bringing cargo to the International Space Station that consists of clothing and equipment.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket blasted off, launching the cargo-laden Dragon capsule into Earth’s orbit on its way to the International Space Station for NASA’s first privately-run supply mission.

The engine fires traced a bright trail across the night sky over NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, the site of many launches into space after the on-time lift off at at 8:35 pm (0035 GMT) on Sunday.

Dragon, carrying around 1,000 pounds (455 kilograms) of supplies, is set to reach the ISS on Wednesday, where it will spend about two weeks. This is the first of 12 planned missions in the US firm’s $1.6 billion contract with NASA.

“Everything worked well, the weather stayed good — that was the one concern,” said aerospace consultant Jeff Foust, editor of The Space Review.

“I think this is the first time the Falcon 9 has launched on the very first attempt,” he added, recalling that one launch attempt for a previous mission in May had to abort just as it was meant to take off.

“Clearly they’re getting a more mature system there that is working very well,” Foust told AFP from Cape Canaveral, where he observed the launch.

SpaceX’s May mission, a nearly flawless test flight to the orbiting outpost, was a nine-day trip to deliver cargo to the $100 billion orbiting station — the first time a commercial outfit had sent its own capsule there and back.

Although the equipment and software are largely the same this time around, SpaceX said the launch is hardly routine.

“Every time we fly, we learn something,” SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said in a Saturday news conference.

SpaceX, owned by billionaire Paypal co-founder Elon Musk, is one of several private companies working with the US space agency to send flights to and from the ISS. NASA has been relying on Russian spacecraft for the last year, after retiring its fleet of shuttles.

The mission is the next step in American efforts to commercialize the space industry, in hopes of reducing costs and spreading them among a wider group than governments alone.

SpaceX says it has 50 launches planned — both NASA missions and commercial flights — representing about $4 billion in contracts.

Dragon is scheduled to return to Earth — splashing down off the coast of southern California — on October 28, carrying about 734 pounds of scientific tests and results.

So far, SpaceX has only sent unmanned flights into orbit, but the company aims to send a manned flight within the next three or four years. It is under a separate contract with NASA to refine the capsule so that it can carry a crew. AFP

Swimming The Hard Way In Japan: In Samurai Armour

Walking or running in a full suit of samurai armour is not the easiest thing in the world. Swimming in it is even harder, but that's exactly what some in Japan are doing. For fun. 

Walking or running in a full suit of samurai armour is not the easiest thing in the world. Swimming in it is even harder, but that's exactly what some in Japan are doing. For fun.

"It's heavy, and it's hot in here... Fan me hard," Mutsuo Koga, a 27-year-old doctor, told fellow disciples of traditional Japanese swimming at a recent meet.

"I'm worried about whether I'll be able to get myself back out of the water. It's been three years since I last swam," said Koga as he readied to take the plunge in a public swimming pool.

Traditional swimming was developed during Japan's feudal 15th and 16th Centuries, when feared samurai swordsmen roamed the country enforcing their masters' will.

Part survival technique -- there were times when a warrior just had to swim for it, boots and all -- and part aesthetic performance, traditional swimming now has its place in the pantheon of Japanese martial arts.
photo1

And like all martial arts, its adherents say it has real-life applications.

"The primary purpose of this kind of swimming is to acquire practical skills for swimming in a real environment," said Tadao Koga, Mutsuo's father and the grand master of the Kobori school, one of twelve recognised by the Japan Swimming Federation.

"If you can swim fast using Western strokes, that doesn't mean you can survive in a natural environment," said Koga, 67.

Traditional swimmers have to master a kind of treading water, which will allow them to withstand powerful waves near a seashore.

They also have to learn the "hayanuki" stroke, vital for swimming against a current or up a river, thrusting your body high into the air as your arms crash into the foam.

Whatever happens, you have to keep your head above the water and your wits about you -- that obstacle looming in front of you could be a rock, or it could be an axe-wielding enemy.

Oh, and you have to do it while wearing 15 kilograms (33 pounds) of armour.

The appeal of the sport is that "swimmers compete on form and beauty, rather than the speed of swimming," said Yoko Suzuki, 25, a champion of women's traditional swimming.

Masahiko Yaginuma, chairman of the Japanese Traditional Swimming Committee of the JSF, said the form was widely taught in schools in the early 20th century but fell out of favour and is now only found in a few institutions.

"Nowadays women in their 60s or older are the main group of new learners," because they see traditional swimming as an extension of the other noble arts a cultured Japanese woman learns -- like flower arranging and tea ceremony, he said.

Briton Antony Cundy, a Tokyo-based advertising executive who has spent years being tutored in the Kobori school of swimming, said there were real benefits to taking up the sport.
photo3

"It's a fun way of getting fit and enjoying Japanese culture and history," said Cundy.

"It's astonishing you don't see many foreigners enjoying it."

Around a minute after he slid heavily into the water, Mutsuo Koga slowly and unsteadily hauled himself out to roaring applause from the assembled crowd.

He had managed about 20 metres (66 feet) using a stroke designed to make him glide across the surface of the water, his helmeted head making no abrupt moves.

"Your chest was supposed to be above the water," Tadao chastised, as his son stood panting on the poolside.

"I was not very good," gasped Mutsuo. "My body didn't float at all."

Japan team offers fertility hope with stem cell eggs

Handout. A team at Kyoto University harvested stem cells from mice and altered a number of genes to create cells very similar to the primordial germ cells that generate sperm in men and oocytes -- or eggs -- in women.

Hopes of a cure for infertility in humans were raised Friday after Japanese stem cell researchers announced they had created viable eggs using normal cells from adult mice.

The breakthrough raises the possibility that women who are unable to produce eggs naturally could have them created in a test tube from their own cells and then planted back into their body.

A team at Kyoto University harvested stem cells from mice and altered a number of genes to create cells very similar to the primordial germ cells that generate sperm in men and oocytes -- or eggs -- in women.

They then nurtured these with cells that would become ovaries and transplanted the mixture into living mice, where the cells matured into fully-grown oocytes.

They extracted the matured oocytes, fertilised them in vitro -- in a test tube -- and implanted them into surrogate mother mice.

The resulting mice pups were born healthy and were even able to reproduce once they matured.

Writing in the US journal Science, which published the findings, research leader professor Michinori Saito said the work provided a promising basis for hope in reproductive medicine.

"Our system serves as a robust foundation to investigate and further reconstitute female germline development in vitro, not only in mice, but also in other mammals, including humans," he said.

Saito cautioned that this was not a ready-made cure for people with fertility problems, adding that a lot of work remained.

"This achievement is expected to help us understand further the egg-producing mechanism and contribute to clarifying the causes of infertility," he told reporters.

"We intend to continue this research with monkeys and humans," he said.

Stem cells -- infant cells that develop into the specialised tissues of the body -- have sparked great excitement because they offer the chance of rebuilding organs damaged by disease or accident.

Until fairly recently, the only way to obtain stem cells was to harvest them from embryos, a process that is controversial because it necessitates the destruction of the embryo.

Religious conservatives, amongst others, have objected to research on human embryonic stem cells because they hold that the destruction of a foetus is wrong.

But pioneering work done in 2006 by Shinya Yamanaka, also at Kyoto University, succeeded in generating "induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells", from skin tissue.

Like embryonic stemcells, iPS cells are also capable of developing into any cell in the body, but crucially their base material is readily available.

The findings on egg development published this week come just a year after scientists in Kyoto successfully coaxed sperm cells from mouse stem cells.

In that work, researchers took mice that were unable to produce normal sperm and injected them with the stem cell-derived primordial germ cells, or PGCs.

These PGCs "produced normal-looking sperm, which were then used to successfully fertilize eggs", the study said last year. AFP

Turkey And Syria: Why Neither Side Wants War

Smoke rises from an explosion after Syrian shells hit the town of Akcakale in Turkey, killing at least five people.

Despite Turkey's shelling of Syria, Middle East expert Fawaz Gerges says neither side wants an escalation of a conflict that has the potential to spill over into a regional war that would be extremely difficult to end.

It is important to stress at the outset that we do not know if the shells that landed on Turkish border towns, killing at least five people, were ordered by Bashar al-Assad's government; all we know is the shelling came from the area where Syrian positions had been firing at rebels.

Syria has admitted its shelling killed Turkish civilians, has apologized, and has promised that the incident will not be repeated, Turkey's deputy prime minister says. Syria's information minister has pledged an investigation into how and why the shell came to be fired at Turkey.

The big point is that the Assad regime is desperately trying to prevent outside military intervention in its war-torn country, and does not want to provide a pretext for Turkey to do so, knowing that it would be disastrous.

News: Turkey strikes targets in retaliation for shelling deaths

Similarly, I believe the Turkish government has no interest in military escalation against its neighbor. 

According to surveys, public opinion in Turkey is strongly against all-out war with Syria.

Equally important is the fact that, although NATO and the United States have expressed solidarity with Turkey, a NATO member, they are urging restraint. Western powers, particularly the United States, do not have the desire or political will to intervene militarily in Syria. Without the full backing of NATO and the US, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan would be reluctant to embark on any large-scale military venture against Syria.

So while we have seen a lot of escalation in the last 48 hours we need to put it into context: Neither side has an interest in turning this low-intensity war into something more serious, a full-blown confrontation.

What the incident tells us is that Syria has now descended into all-out war. It tells us that Syria's neighbors are deeply embroiled in its internal armed struggle. It also tells us that the civil war has become a proxy war between other regional players such as Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Syrian conflict has also been internationalized along Cold War lines, with the US and Russia backing rival camps.

The spillover of the Syrian war has reached not just Turkey but also Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq, with frequent armed clashes and casualties. If these skirmishes intensify and escalate, the potential of a region-wide war cannot be overlooked.

World: Syrian refugees in Turkey -- police are forcing us from homes

This is why Western powers, particularly the United States, are reluctant to intervene militarily in the Syrian civil war, lest they exacerbate an already dangerous situation: They want the civil war to remain an internal conflict where it can be contained.

Al-Assad's strategy has succeeded: He has forced the opposition to militarize the political uprising. Syria is in the grip of a bloody and costly armed struggle, a struggle that does not show signs of an early resolution, but of turning into a long, drawn-out conflict. No one knows how that would end, but it would ensure he has local and regional support to survive for quite a long time.

The Syrian authorities have little control over all military engagements. The fire has spread across the whole country: Assad's forces are over-extended and thinly spread. Despite assurances given by the Syrian government that the shelling that killed the Turkish civilians won't be repeated, it is doubtful whether that pledge can be honored as Syria descends into all-out war.

Turkey has been extremely angry in the last few weeks. For the first time Prime Minister Recep Tayip Reccip Erdogan has criticized the Western powers for paying lip service to the opposition cause, implying that his patience is running thin.

Regardless of how the Turkish leadership feels though, I don't think it will act independently without a security umbrella commitment by NATO and a green light from the Americans. They have made it very clear they will not act on their own against Syria. NATO has gone out of its way to impress gently on the Turkish leadership not to escalate the situation beyond what it has done so far. CNN

Improving The World, One Map At A Time

In Sao Paulo, Brazil, an app lets users find real estate using very specific parameters

After last year’s record floods ravaged Thailand, developer and entrepreneur Vachara Aemavat had an idea for helping people find higher ground. He built a tool, using Google Maps elevation data, that lets people in the Asian nation look up their homes’ locations and see how high above sea level they are. They can share the information on social media to ask for help or offer others a dry place to take shelter.

Aemavat’s story is one of six being featured as part of a new push by Google called More Than A Map. It promotes Google Maps Application Programming Interface products, which allow outside developers to tap into Google’s rich map data and tools for their own products and sites. It comes at a time when many are bemoaning the loss of Google Maps on Apple’s new mobile operating system.

Bangkok, where Aemavat is the co-founder of a company called Computerlogy, was the second stop on one industrious Google employee’s eight-day trip around the world. Carlos Cuesta, the Google Maps API product marketing manager, turned a round-trip business trip to Australia, where part of the Google Maps team is located, into a dash around the globe to visit international developers using the service.

Cuesta dropped in on each country for about a day and caught up on sleep on the planes. He visited

Bangkok, Thailand; Nairobi, Kenya; Hamburg, Germany; and Sao Paulo, Brazil with a backpack filled with recording equipment. He spent a day with each developer or company, checking out their diverse work spaces (living rooms, offices, on computers powered by generators) and gathering information on how they use the maps APIs.

“It’s important for us to see how what we’re creating affects the rest of the world,” said Cuesta. “Making sure we’re making products that are internationalized.”

What’s impressive about many of the developers Cuesta met with is how they’re using maps to solve local problems. Upande Limited uses maps and Google Earth to share a variety of important information about the country, including which local politicians have paid or not paid taxes, wildlife migration patterns, weather, and water quality. It sells those maps to governments, U.N. organizations and companies.

For the water quality project, developers are working with an Android app that counts the number of bacteria colonies based on a photograph of water. The results are uploaded to a database and cataloged, the results shared with the government so that it can take action.

In Sao Paulo, Brazil, Cuesta dropped in on a company called Epungo, which has a site that maps real estate in the sprawling and often chaotically laid-out city. Working out of one of their apartments, the co-founders created interactive maps that allow users to set very specific parameters for the type of real estate they’re looking for, and check out the neighborhood up close using Google’s Street View.

The More Than a Map project, while an interesting counterpoint to the recent Apple Maps app flap, was actually started back in July as a way to promote the Google Maps API. At that time, the service was working hard to keep developers from defecting to less-expensive alternatives.
 
There is a free version of the Google Maps API. But under certain circumstances, such as if a company plans to charge for its final product, it has to use Google Maps API for Business, which starts at $10,000. The final price tag can be steep for many start-ups, especially if they have a lot of traffic.

Back in March, a pair of well-known Google Maps clients left, following a price hike for the APIs. Location check-in service Foursquare switched to MapBox, which is powered by OpenStreetMaps. After realizing it would be out hundreds of thousands of dollars a year with the Google Maps API, StreetEasy also moved away from Google and built its own maps using a combination of other services and tools.

Competition is cropping up all over, and not just from Apple or open-source services. There are also maps APIs from Microsoft Bing, Nokia, Amazon and MapQuest.

Google’s slick new site is a sales pitch, showing off features like customized map styles, Street View, elevation information and data visualization. But the stories of developers creating important, problem-solving apps and websites are an even better pitch for the ability of smart programmers, entrepreneurs and maps to make a difference around the world. CNN

Schumacher To Retire At End Of F1 Season

Michael Schumacher

Seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher announced on Thursday that he will retire for the second time at the end of 2012.

"I have decided to retire at the end of the season," the German driver told a press conference in Suzuka.

"I still feel I am capable of competing against the best but the time sometimes comes to say goodbye and this time it might be forever."

He added: "During the past month I was not sure if I still had the motivation and energy which is necessary to go on. It is not my style to go on if I'm not 100 percent with it but with today's decision I feel relieved."

The 43-year-old's place at Mercedes will be taken by McLaren's Lewis Hamilton in 2013.

Schumacher won 91 races between 1991 and 2006 -- two world titles with Benetton in 1994 and 1995 and five with Ferrari who he joined in 1996 -- from 2000 to 2004.

The German retired for the first time in 2006 before returning to the sport in 2010 on a three-year contract with Mercedes. AFP

Global food prices jump 1.4% in September

Global food prices rose by 1.4 percent in September after holding steady for two months as cereals, meat and dairy prices climbed, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization said Thursday.

Global food prices rose by 1.4 percent in September after holding steady for two months as cereals, meat and dairy prices climbed, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization said Thursday.

The , a monthly measure of changes in a basket of food commodities, edged up three points to 216 points in September.

"Following two months of stability, the Index rose slightly, mostly on strengthening dairy and meat prices and more contained increases for cereals," a FAO statement said.

Prices of sugar and oils fell, it added.

The overall index remains far off the record 238 points reached in February 2011, and is 4 percent lower than in September 2011.

The cereals subindex also rose, by 1.0 percent or three points from August to 263 points in September, as gains in wheat and rice offset a decline in maize.

While gains in maize, or corn, prices had been behind most of the increases in recent months, the FAO said tightening wheat suppliers were also becoming a concern.

The FAO said the Cereal Price Index is 7 percent higher than in the corresponding period last year but still 4 percent below the peak of 274 points registered in April 2008.

The meat price index rose 2.1 percent, with pork and chicken prices seeing the biggest gains.

The dairy index jumped by 7 percent from August, registering its sharpest monthly gain since January 2011, said the FAO.AFP

Battling Hatred Begins at Home

Illustration

When President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono proposed his idea to establish an international protocol against religious denigration at the UN General Assembly, he was probably not aware of all the domestic and international ramifications.

As the leader of a country with the largest Muslim population in the world, and one that has tried hard to project itself as a moderate force in international politics, he may indeed be in the best position to propose such a plan. However, the failure of the Indonesian government to protect the basic rights of various religious minorities at home raises questions about the credibility of his proposal

A closer inspection of Yudhoyono’s proposal makes us doubt whether it is possible to reach any international agreement on such a delicate and sensitive issue like religious denigration. Although it is easy to agree with the president that there is a need to establish an international platform on the promotion of interreligious harmony and peace, a strong resistance may still come from Western democracies if such a noble goal should be achieved at the expense of freedom of expression. As a matter of fact, in addressing the UN General Assembly, US President Barack Obama convinced his audience that he would never discourage American citizens from expressing themselves freely in any form.

Obama’s insistence to uphold the principle of freedom of expression in his country should not surprise us. As a liberal president he speaks on behalf of a secular society that tends to look at any religious belief system as not more than a human-constructed set of ideas that will never be immune from criticism and even mockery.

No wonder sharp and sometimes unjustified criticism of religions — especially Christianity — in Western, secular democracies is regarded as a normal contestation of ideas. If Yudhoyono’s proposal of an international protocol is meant to control or stop public discourses like this, it is doubtful that his plan will have any chance of success. We may expect that there will always be some irresponsible individuals out there who will be tempted to come up with a crazy idea — like the one that has led to the making of an anti-Islamic film “Innocence of Muslims.”

Therefore, before the government goes ahead with its plan to formulate a roadmap for an international protocol against religious denigration, let us re-think its plausibility and then come up with a more sensible idea.

Also, let’s not forget that no matter how compelling our moral exhortation in the international arena, at the end of the day effective promotion of interreligious harmony and peace is very much determined at the national level.

We live an era of globalization and liberalization of ideas. With Indonesia’s limited political and economic leverage, there is no way we can stop or control this trend. On top of that, all religious institutions now are under pressure to develop their apologetic system in order to argue against those trying to delegitimize their beliefs. Violent reactions will never solve this problem and sometimes make it even worse.

If the Indonesian government intends to substantiate its claim as a moderate force in international politics, it has to start with its own society. The more we can uphold interreligious tolerance in Indonesia, the more the international community will look at us as an example worthy of emulation. Promoting interreligious harmony after all is more about real-world action than about sophisticated diplomacy that is yet without substance.

Aleksius Jemadu is dean of the School of Social and Political Sciences at Universitas Pelita Harapan in Karawaci. JG

Little Public Participation on Batik Day in Jakarta

Two children play near batik-style murals as they wear batik clothing in Batik Village in South Jakarta on Tuesday. Tuesday was National Batik Day, with workshops on offer in the village and many Indonesians wearing the fabric to mark the occasion. (SP Photo/Joanito De Saojoao)

Three years after UNESCO designated batik as a cultural masterpiece, Jakartans seem to have forgotten the struggle by the government, with support from the country’s batik artists, to receive acknowledgement.

Some blamed the government for the lack of awareness that Oct. 2 has been declared Batik Day, the day that the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization designated batik as a “masterpiece of oral and intangible heritage of humanity” in 2009. It was also insisted that Indonesians preserve their heritage.

“I didn’t know that Oct. 2 was Batik Day. All I know is that my office requires me to wear batik on Fridays,” said Agus Riadi, 26, an employee of a private bank in Central Jakarta. “I would have worn batik had I known today was Batik Day.”

Agus thinks that the government might have not been active enough in promoting Batik Day.

Although batik designs can be found in other countries like China, Africa and Egypt, UNESCO had acknowledged that the dyeing technique was uniquely Indonesian. Neni, 27, an employee of another private company in Central Jakarta, said she remembered the day on Tuesday, but added that most of her colleagues were unaware or did not care about the day.

“I don’t see many people wearing batik today,” said Neni who wore a blue-colored batik shirt.

“Interestingly, or sadly, it’s foreign institutions like embassies that have actually made their employees wear batik today,” she added.

However, all of the House of Representatives lawmakers that attended the plenary session on Tuesday wore batik because “they were aware of the day”.

“Even my housemaid knows that today is Batik Day. She wore batik today, so why shouldn’t I?” said legislator Tubagus Hasanudin of the House Commission I overseeing defense.

In the past three years, the government has taken some measures to promote batik as a world-class product, including by drafting a blueprint on batik preservation and development to set quality standards for batik production.

Businesses consider labeling to be important in order to protect locally made batik products from imported products, especially from China, which have increasingly flooded the domestic market, and to raise awareness among local customers about homemade batik products.

With the blueprint, the government expects the batik industry to become a driver of the micro economy by 2025, as 99.39 percent of all 55,912 batik producers according to 2010 data comprised micro- and small-sized enterprises.

Exports, according to the blueprint, are expected to grow on average by 10 percent from 2012 to 2015 along with government efforts to diversify its markets.

Exports increased by 55.94 percent to US$22.3 million in 2010 from $14.3 million in 2006.

Indonesia’s main export destinations for batik products are currently the United States, Japan and European countries, such as Belgium, Germany and Sweden, with growing demand from neighboring countries, such as Thailand and Malaysia. JP