Science & Technology

By SUE VORENBERG
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Finding a way to get rid of 34 tons of extra weapons-grade plutonium poses an interesting challenge.

The United States and Russia _ under an arms reduction treaty _ can't just drop it off at the dump or toss it in the garbage.

And the people who might want to take it off their hands _ say, North Korea and Iran _ probably wouldn't do anything nice with it.

One option in the United States is to carefully treat it, then store it at the nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, if it ever opens.

Or, if you're one of New Mexico's national laboratories, you can look at doing something even stranger with it _ recycling it into commercial power.

The United States and Russia cleared a major diplomatic hurdle in September that gets both closer to getting rid of the deadly material through recycling.

By MIKE BERMAN
Monday, November 20, 2006
I stream, you stream, we all stream for ....well, it isn't ice cream! For some reason the folks that are busily creating new toys for us to use with our PCs are convinced that everyone wants to stream music, videos and photos from their PCs to their TVs or surround sound music systems.

Because of this I looked at several products ranging from simple tools to the Cadillac of streaming music systems, all of which have the capabilities of delivering a cornucopia of multimedia delights.

Atop the list is the Sonos Digital Music System.

By ERIKA CHAVEZ
Sunday, November 19, 2006
It has been a grim, exhausting month for the 35 University of California Davis veterinarians and students who continue to care for hundreds of sheep injured in a fire that scorched 11,000 acres in rural Yolo County.

Amid the pain and death, however, the students have found tiny rays of hope: six baby lambs they have helped birth and nurse to health.

Most of the 1,200 sheep at Slaven Farms were pregnant and nearing full term when the fire struck on Sept.

By LEE BOWMAN
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Researchers have determined that elephants, along with people, great apes and dolphins, are part of an elite group of species that are able to recognize their own reflected image.

Biologists had expected that elephants, given their social complexity and behaviors, should be able to recognize themselves in a mirror but several previous tests using relatively small mirrors that the elephants couldn't reach had been unconvincing.

In a Bronx Zoo study, scientists used an 8-by 8-foot mirror that the pachyderms could "touch, rub against and try to look behind,'' said Joshua Plotnik, a researcher at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta, and lead author of a report on the tests published online Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

While the mirror was in the elephant yard, all three elephants tested the mirrored images by making repetitive body movements and using the mirror to inspect themselves, such as moving their trunks to look inside their mouths, a part of the body they usually can't see.

The elephants didn't react socially to their own image or mistake it for another elephant, as many animals do when they see their reflection.

"The social complexity of the elephant, its well-known altruistic behavior, and, of course, its huge brain, made the elephant a logical candidate species for testing in front of a mirror," said Plotnik, who worked on the study with Yerkes colleague Frans de Waal and Diana Reiss, a researcher at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York.

One of the elephants also passed a standard test known as the mark test.

By JEFF SMITH
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Wi-Fi "hot spots" continue to proliferate. Carriers such as Sprint and Verizon Wireless have launched Internet services on cell phones and laptops for people on the go.

But Internet speeds for the mobile user are still slow compared with what is available at home through a cable modem or DSL connection.

By DAVID PERLMAN
Friday, November 17, 2006
A giant underwater landslide that gouged the bottom of Lake Tahoe thousands of years ago sent a tsunami coursing across the lake and left huge ripples of rock that remain today, geologists have discovered.

By JAMES DERK
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Call it the week of the dueling browsers.

It was the week I got to download the finished versions of both Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2.

One was huge and one was small (you can guess which was which there.) One installed quickly and one took a while.

By STEVE ALEXANDER
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Once most consumers take a lot of digital photos and home movies, they don't know what to do with them.

So the U.S.division of Canadian software firm Corel Corp.

By BERNADETTE TANSEY
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
University of California-San Francisco post-doctoral student Dennis Eastburn scanned over images from a powerful microscope, searching for clues to the causes of cancer.

By GREG LAVINE
Monday, November 13, 2006
Its four prominent horns lend a new Utah dinosaur an intimidating air, but the rhinoceros-sized beast probably spent large parts of its day peacefully grazing.