Nikon D60 hitting in February for US$800?

We had all the vitals last night except for the price. Lucky for us, the D60 showed up today over at Henry's with a pricetag of $800 (HK$6,240), not bad at all for this low-end DSLR. Nikon still hasn't said anything officially beyond "pricing information will be available approximately 30 days prior to sales availability," and we haven't seen the camera, which arrives in February, available for pre-order elsewhere, but $800 seems like as good a guess as any.

Engadget.

Asteroid to make close approach

An asteroid some 250m (600ft) across is about to sweep past the Earth.

There is no chance of it hitting the planet, but astronomers will train telescopes and radar on the object to learn as much about it as they can.

The asteroid - which carries the rather dull designation 2007 TU24 - will pass by at a distance of 538,000km (334,000 miles), just outside Moon's orbit.

Scientists who study so called near-Earth objects say similar-sized rocks come by every few years.

The moment of closest approach for 2007 TU24 is 0833 GMT. The asteroid is only expected to be visible through amateur telescopes that are three inches (7.6cm) or larger.

Detailed observations of 2007 TU24 could reveal whether the asteroid is a solid object or simply a loose pile of space rubble.

Knowledge of how asteroids are put together will be key to working out how we might defend ourselves against future, more threatening rocks.

An explosive attack - so popular with Hollywood scriptwriters - may not be the most effective approach. Many scientists believe that giving a hostile object a gentle nudge over a long period of time may in fact be our best strategy.

Given the estimated number of near-Earth asteroids of this size (about 7,000 discovered and undiscovered objects, says the US space agency), an object similar to 2007 TU24 would be expected to pass this close to Earth, on average, about every five years or so.

The average interval between actual Earth impacts for an object of this size would be about 37,000 years, Nasa adds.

A little over a year-and-a-half ago, a 600m-wide (2,000ft) asteroid known as 2004 XP14 flew past the Earth at just about the Earth-Moon distance.

The asteroids' names include the year in which they were first identified.

BBC News

Weekend snow storms wreak havoc across the mainland

The worst snows to hit parts of the mainland for 50 years killed at least a dozen people at the weekend, state media said, with thousands more injured as they headed home for the Lunar New Year holiday.

The conditions brought traffic to a standstill in eight provinces, cut off a key rail link and left thousands of vehicles marooned on icy highways, reports said, with the cold snap causing power cuts across more than half the country.

A bus that overturned on an icy freeway in eastern Jiangxi Province left five dead early on Sunday, including at least two children, Xinhua news agency said, with sub-zero temperatures forecast for the next three days.

Heavy snow in south central China, meanwhile, snarled roads, railways and airports with the bad weather expected to worsen as millions of travellers head home for the Lunar New Year holiday, known elsewhere as Chinese New Year.

In the mountainous Guizhou Province in the southwest, a hospital in the capital city of Guiyang has received at least 1,500 patients in the last five days, most suffering fractures after falling on slippery roads.

The local government said bad weather had also stranded more than 40,000 passengers in at least 5,000 broken-down vehicles on highways between Guizhou and the neighbouring Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

'We're trying to provide them with food and water, but several have passed out in the cold, including a new mother and her one-month-old baby,'€ said Huang Zhengfu, secretary-general with the prefectural government.

Elsewhere, up to 150,000 passengers were stuck at the Guangzhou railway station, the southern end of the key rail link to the capital Beijing, with numbers expected to grow to up to 600,000 by Monday, the Southern Metropolitan Daily reported.

The city has issued emergency orders to help cope with the swelling crowds and called on local universities and other public facilities to provide shelter for stranded passengers, it said.

Lunar New Year, which falls on February 7, is China's most important holiday, when millions of people travel for annual family reunions.

Authorities expects more than 2.2 billion trips will be made by either rail, air or bus during the Lunar New Year travel period that runs from January 19 to March 2.

According to Xinhua, up to 60,000 people in 20,000 vehicles were stranded on a stretch of highway in the central Hunan province, one of the worst hit areas where seven people have died.

Senior government officials held an emergency teleconference late Sunday to discuss the power disruptions, Xinhua said.

'So far, 17 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions have suffered blackouts, and power grids in central China's Hubei, Hunan provinces and south China's Guizhou and Guangdong provinces have been seriously damaged,'€ Xinhua quoted Vice-Premier Zeng Peiyan saying.

According to China Central Television, seven airports in the hardest hit regions, including those in the major cities of Changsha, Nanjing and Hefei were closed on Saturday due to icy conditions.

Some airports were expected to reopen soon, but the one in Changsha would remain shut throughout Sunday, reports said.

Major highways in Guizhou, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Fujian and Anhui provinces reopened by around noon Sunday, but were expected to be closed in the evening, with more heavy snow and freezing rain forecast throughout the region, the China News Service said.

Due to icy roads, long-distance bus travel was largely curtailed for much of the last week in the areas hardest hit by the snowfall.

State television showed footage of thousands of motorists and long-distance truck drivers stranded on stretches of road as heavy snow brought traffic to a standstill.

SCMP Jan 28, 2008

Australian girl changes blood group, immune system

CANBERRA (Reuters) - An Australian teenage girl has become the world's first known transplant patient to change blood groups and take on the immune system of her organ donor, doctors said on Friday, calling her a "one-in-six-billion miracle."

Demi-Lee Brennan, now 15, received a donor liver when she was 9 years old and her own liver failed.

"It's like my second chance at life," Brennan told local media, recounting how her body achieved what doctors said was the holy grail of transplant surgery. "It's kind of hard to believe."

Brennan's body changed blood group from O negative to O positive when she became ill while on drugs to avoid rejection of the organ by her body's immune system.

Her new liver's blood stem cells then invaded her body's bone marrow to take over her entire immune system, meaning the teen no longer needs anti-rejection drugs.

Doctors from Sydney's Westmead Childrens' Hospital said they had no explanation for Brennan's recovery, detailed in the latest edition of The New England Journal of Medicine.

"There was no precedent for this having happened at any other time, so we were sort of flying by the seat of our pants," Michael Stormon, a pediatric hepatologist, told local radio.

Stuart Dorney, the hospital's former transplant unit head, said Brennan's treatment could lead to breakthroughs in organ transplant treatment, because normally the immune system of recipients attacked the transplanted tissue.

"We now need to go back over everything that happened to Demi-Lee and see why, and if it can be replicated," said Dorney.

"We think because we used a young person's liver and Demi-Lee had low white blood cells, that could have been a reason," he told the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

Rejection is normally treated with a combination of drugs, although chronic rejection is irreversible.

Only seven-in-10 transplant operations in Australia are successful after a five-year period due to rejection complications.

Reuters

Hong Kong's natural "resources" - Biogas

Landfills eyed after success of biogas plan

Methane from the Tseung Kwan O landfill could in future be converted for household and commercial use, environment officials said yesterday.

They said the Environmental Protection Department, Towngas and the landfill operator were studying the feasibility of such a project, but no timetable had been set.

The proposed project for Tseung Kwan O was revealed after success in transferring methane, also known as biogas, through a 19km pipeline from the Ta Kwu Ling landfill near the border to a Towngas plant in Tai Po. The conversion of biogas from Ta Kwu Ling into town gas began in the middle of last year. Town gas is a general term referring to manufactured gas fuels produced for sale to consumers.

The supply of the biogas, now at 6,000 cubic metres per hour, has helped Towngas replace 43,000 tonnes of imported naphtha for town-gas manufacturing, lower costs and tariffs, and cut greenhouse gases by 135,000 tonnes a year, it says.

The transfer was made possible under a tripartite agreement in which Towngas invested HK$150 million for the pipeline and landfill operator Far East Landfill Technologies paid HK$80 million for a gas-processing plant, while the government provided the landfill.

At present, Towngas pays nothing for the biogas, but when usage reaches a certain level it will pay the government and Far East for the methane.

Speaking after the official opening ceremony for the gas plant at the Ta Kwu Ling landfill, Secretary for the Environment Edward Yau Tang-wah said he hoped the project could be extended.

"Landfill gases account for over 10 per cent of total greenhouse gases emitted in Hong Kong. The project can reduce these emissions, as landfill gases are expected to increase over [their] remaining life," he said.

Most of the landfill gases are now turned into electricity for on-site use or as heating sources for waste treatment.

Using methane from the Tseung Kwan O landfill could be more costly than from Ta Kwu Ling because the former is farther from the Tai Po gas plant, increasing transport costs.

A solution could be to build a Towngas production facility on-site that could convert the methane and pump the town gas directly into existing pipelines, said Ellen Chen Ying-lung, assistant director of the environment department.

Alfred Chan Wing-kin, managing director of Towngas, yesterday said the feasibility of using gases in other landfills was being studied.

James Tam Ping-cheong, director of Swire SITA Waste Services, which owns Far East, said the Tuen Mun landfill also had plenty of potential because the volume of biogas available was double that of Ta Kwu Ling.

SCMP. Jan 26, 2008

Life on Mars? Amazing photos from Nasa probe reveal mystery figure on Red Planet

Perched on a rock, she could be waiting for a bus.

But if so, she could be in for an awfully long wait.

This photo of what looks remarkably like a female figure with her arm outstretched, was taken on Mars.

Link to the story.

Mobiles linked to disturbed sleep

Using a mobile phone before going to bed could stop you getting a decent night's sleep, research suggests.

The study, funded by mobile phone companies, suggests radiation from the handset can cause insomnia, headaches and confusion.

It may also cut our amount of deep sleep - interfering with the body's ability to refresh itself.

The study was carried out by Sweden's Karolinska Institute and Wayne State University in the US.

BBC News

Link to the story.

Common English Errors in HK (2)

Many of friends came to see her off at the airport. (Wrong)

Many friends came to see her off at the airport.
Many of her friends came to see her off at the airport.

'Many of' is only used when followed by a definite group, some of whom are not included in the 'many'. When simply followed by a noun, 'many' does not take 'of'.

Common English Errors in HK (1)

Barry spoke foul languages. (Wrong)

Barry used bad language.

'Language' is only plural when it refers to different languages. 'Foul' is a strong word and can be used for really obscene language, but 'bad language' is more common expression for swearing. And the verb is generally 'use'.

Action urged on bus seat belts

Passengers should not be allowed to sit in the front seats on the top deck of double-decker buses that are too old to be fitted with seat belts, a political party said yesterday.

It made the suggestion in response to a survey that found eight out of 10 bus passengers would be happy to buckle up if seat belts were provided on public buses.

Chan Hok-fung, transport affairs spokesman for the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, which carried out the survey, said it was surprising so many respondents said they would definitely or occasionally wear seat belts. He said the government should speed up the installing of seat belts in double-deckers.

Last week, the government said seat belts could not be fitted on buses built before 1997. It expected that between 2012 and 2015, operators would replace these older vehicles with new models equipped with seat belts.

But Mr Chan said: "Traffic accidents will keep happening. The government should not put forward this excuse." He said it should consider temporary measures, such as installing railings or preventing the use of "high-risk" seats, such as those at the front of upper decks.

Other parties and pressure groups have urged similar action following a crash between double-decker buses in Tseung Kwan O last month in which two women were thrown to their deaths from front-row seats on the upper deck of a bus.

Of 1,532 bus passengers the DAB polled, 39.6 per cent said they would definitely wear seat belts on buses, and 40.8 per cent said they would do so occasionally. Only 14.2 per cent said they would not wear them.

The DAB also polled 213 bus drivers, of whom 56.8 per cent said they got insufficient rest time. Thirty per cent admitted they were sometimes guilty of speeding and missing stops to keep to timetables, with 3.8 per cent saying they often did so.

"They are facing huge stresses from tight schedules, complicated road conditions, and a lack of rest time," Mr Chan said.

The law requires bus drivers to have at least nine hours off between shifts. Mr Chan said that may not be enough.

The party will urge bus companies to recruit more drivers and give staff more time off between shifts.

SCMP Jan 20, 2008