World Newspapers Online 12-03-2013 | Science

The drones, called Octocopters, could deliver packages weighing up to 2.3kg to customers within 30 minutes of them placing the order, he said.

However, he added that it could take up to five years for the service to start.

The US Federal Aviation Administration is yet to approve the use of unmanned drones for civilian purposes.

"I know this looks like science fiction, but it's not," Mr Bezos told CBS television's 60 Minutes programme.

"We can do half-hour delivery... and we can carry objects, we think, up to five pounds (2.3kg), which covers 86% of the items that we deliver."

'Ready to enter' The service will be called Prime Air and comes as Amazon is looking to improve its efficiency to boost growth.

Amazon also posted a video on its website showing a drone picking up a package from one of its warehouses and delivering it to the doorstep of a customer's house.

However, it still has to wait for permission from US regulators.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has approved the use of drones for police and government agencies, issuing about 1,400 permits over the past several years.

Civilian air space is expected to be opened up to all kinds of drones in the US by 2015 and in Europe by 2016.

Existing regulations are in place to minimise the risk of injury to people on the ground, said Dr Darren Ansell, an expert on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) from the University of Central Lancashire.

"The UAVs do not currently have the awareness of their environment to be able to avoid flying into people. To deliver goods to people's homes for example in residential areas, the UAVs must overfly densely populated towns and cities, something that today's regulations prevent.

"Other things to consider are security of the goods during the transit. With no one to guard them the aircraft and package could be captured and stolen," he said.

Amazon said: "from a technology point of view, we'll be ready to enter commercial operations as soon as the necessary regulations are in place."

The FAA was "actively working on rules for unmanned aerial vehicles", the company said, adding that it hoped the green light would be given as early as 2015.

"One day, Prime Air vehicles will be as normal as seeing mail trucks on the road today."

The US company says the "limited edition" Toq is designed to showcase its new technologies rather than compete with its other products.

Qualcomm is best known for making processors that power smartphones.

However, one analyst suggested the device was too bulky to appeal beyond a niche enthusiast audience.

The $349 (£215) gadget is being made available via only Qualcomm's website to US customers, and the company said it was "unlikely" it would sell the watch elsewhere.

Wrist action

The Toq is designed to be paired with any smartphone running Android 4.0.3 or higher. It allows its owner to receive and send text messages, manage reminders and view other information - such as weather forecasts or stock prices - obtained via their handset.

There is no software store for the watch itself, but existing handset apps can be adapted to send details to its display and activate a vibrate function. In addition it can be used to accept or reject calls, and control what music is being played from the linked phone's library.

The company says that the watch's key innovation is its use of its proprietary Mirasol technology.

Rob Chandok, president of Qualcomm Interactive Platforms, described this as being similar to the e-ink displays commonly used by e-book readers and another smartwatch - the Pebble - but better.

Backlight

"In addition to the fact it offers colour, the refresh rate of Mirasol can be 30 frames a second, which allows you to build a touch interface," he told the BBC.

"That's tremendously important when you are trying to offer some of these experiences. "In an e-ink display you can't refresh the screen fast enough to follow the finger."

Mirasol is significantly less power-hungry than the OLED tech used by Samsung's Galaxy Gear watch, meaning that unlike its rival, its screen does not have to turn itself off when angled away from the user's face to extend battery life.

Sony's Smartwatch 2 does offer an always-on LCD display - however, it requires the user to switch on a backlight in dim conditions.

It sounds perfect, but something is not quite right. The scene is unnaturally idyllic, the sky slightly too blue and the horizon more curved than normal. That’s because this world is only 16 miles long, four miles wide and contained in a giant cylinder floating in space.

It’s a space colony concept, drawn up by the late Princeton physicist Gerard O’Neill in the mid-1970s, but his ambitious plan is now being revived by the space think tank British Interplanetary Society (Bis). The organisation has form in championing ideas that are not necessarily as wildly eccentric as they first appear. In the 1930s it came up with a detailed plan for a multi-stage rocket and a manned lunar lander, which looks remarkably like the mission that 30 years later successfully delivered Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the Moon.

“Back in the 1930s, the major work of the British Interplanetary Society was explaining to the public that exploring space was not a ridiculous idea,” says Jerry Stone, leader of the Study Project Advancing Colony Engineering (see what they did there?). “And what I’m trying to do with the space colonies project is something similar, to show that building a very large space colony is technically feasible.”

O’Neill’s original space colony proposal started out as an exercise for a group of students at Princeton. “Is a planetary surface the right place for an expanding technological civilisation?” he asked them. After a few months, and a great many calculations, the answer came back a resounding “No”. This got him interested in alternative human habitats beyond the Earth, and he conceived giant rotating spaceships containing landscaped biospheres housing up to 10 million people.

“There are two big advantages of constructing a colony in space rather than on a planet,” explains Stone. “You have the Sun’s energy 24 hours a day, so you can concentrate that energy to melt materials or use it to generate power, and you can rotate the habitat to create whatever gravity you want.”

Demonstrations on Saturday and Sunday, which saw violent clashes with the police, drew as many as 350,000 people, the biggest public rally in the ex-Soviet state since the "Orange revolution" against sleaze and electoral fraud nine years ago.

Prime Minister Mykola Azarov accused the opposition of planning to seize the parliament, while Yanukovich appealed for calm, saying protests should be peaceful and law-abiding.

"Any bad peace is better than a good war," Yanukovich said in his first comment on the mass unrest over the weekend. "Everyone must observe the laws of our state."

In a sign that he felt the security situation was under control, though, Yanukovich announced he would stick to a plan to travel on Tuesday to China, from which he is seeking loans and investment to avert a debt crisis.

His decision to abandon a trade pact with the European Union and instead seek closer economic ties with Russia has stirred deep passions in a country where many people yearn to join the European mainstream and escape Moscow's orbit.

The resulting unrest has hammered Ukraine's financial markets, underlining the fragile state of the economy.

The central bank was forced to intervene to prop up the hryvnia and threatened more action, underlining Kiev's vulnerability as it seeks more than $17 billion next year to meet gas bills and debt repayments.

Russian president Vladimir Putin blamed outside actors for the protests, which he said amounted to an attempt to unsettle Ukraine's legitimate rulers.

"This reminds me more of a pogrom than a revolution," Putin told reporters on a visit to Armenia.

Protesters in the capital remained defiant.

"We have no other choice but to defend ourselves and the gains we have made," said Taras Revunets, at Kiev's city hall, which hundreds of demonstrators occupied on Sunday.

With many worried that the unrest could endanger their savings, the central bank sought to head off panic withdrawals.

Michael Goodman said he stole Claude Soffel's bus pass from him outside the Museum of Natural History.

After reading a post about a bagel shop closing down Mr Goodman recognised the name of his victim and sent him a message to apologise.

Mr Soffel responded to the message and said he accepted the apology.

Writing on Facebook Mr Goodman said: "You may not remember this (about 1976 or '77) but a long long time ago... trying to look like a tough guy... I walked up to you and mugged you for your bus pass.

"I have never forgotten the incident or your name. Finally I can say I'm very sorry. So once again I'm truly sorry for taking your bus pass back then."

Arrested immediately Some time later the victim, Mr Soffel, replied.

"Clearly you're a bigger man today. I recognise your name now as well. So, apology accepted. So let us now, jointly put this in its proper place, behind us," he wrote.

Mr Goodman went on to explain that on the day of the mugging there had been undercover police nearby and he was arrested immediately.

"My father had to leave work and come and get me (I was a minor at the time) and [he] was not too happy with me to say the least," he wrote.

The violence is the latest twist in a conflict pitting Bangkok's middle class and royalist elite against the mostly poor, rural supporters of Yingluck and her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, a populist former prime minister who was ousted in a military coup in 2006 and lives in self-imposed exile.

Yingluck told a news conference that police would not use force but the national security chief said rubber bullets were being used as protesters threatened to advance on Yingluck's office, the focal point of the demonstrations since the weekend.

A Ramathibodi Hospital official later said two protesters had been wounded by gunfire but it was not known who shot them.

The number of protesters was well down on the 30,000 dispersed around various sites on Sunday, but hard-core elements broke through concrete barriers set up around Government House, Yingluck's office in the heart of Bangkok.

After using canister upon canister of teargas to repel them on Sunday, police stepped up their response on Monday.

"We are alternating between the use of water cannons, teargas and rubber bullets," Paradorn Pattanathabutr, the head of the National Security Council, told Reuters.

"Rubber bullets are being used in one area only and that is the bridge near Government House."

A Reuters reporter saw a man in his early 20s fire three shots from a pistol in the direction of police protecting Government House. Protesters also threw dozens of petrol bombs.

Teargas was used against protesters trying to tear down barriers at the Bangkok metropolitan police headquarters.

They pulled back in late afternoon but protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban, who rejected Yingluck's call for talks, told supporters he was determined the assault would go on and they would seize the headquarters on Tuesday

Suthep, 64, who resigned as a Democrat lawmaker to lead the protests, wants a vaguely defined "people's council" to replace Yingluck's government and a parliament of nominated worthies.

"The protesters' demands are impossible to meet under the framework of the constitution," Yingluck said.

Suthep met Yingluck late on Sunday but insisted there had been no negotiations to end Thailand's worst political crisis since bloody unrest in 2010.

To compete with each other and powerhouse Amazon.com Inc, many U.S. retailers began offering some of the season's best online deals, which were traditionally reserved for the Monday after Thanksgiving, several days ago.

That helped overall online sales from Thanksgiving through Sunday rise 14.5 percent in 2013 over the same period last year, data from IBM showed. But since shoppers have a limited budget, that could mean Cyber Monday might lose some luster.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc, Target Corp, Toys R Us, Macy's Inc, J.C. Penney Co Inc and Best Buy Co Inc were among the brick-and-mortar chains that started their online deals early.

"The earlier offering of deals online may weigh on Cyber Monday and, interestingly, some retailers are offering a worse deal on Cyber Monday than they had over the earlier period," said Nomura analyst Simeon Siegel.

A survey by America's Research Group on Monday showed 23.5 percent of shoppers plan to shop on Cyber Monday, down from 29.2 percent, a year earlier.

U.S. shoppers spent almost 3 percent less than they did a year earlier during the Thanksgiving weekend, according to the National Retail Federation data. But online sales rose 17.3 percent on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, outpacing sales growth at brick-and-mortar stores, data from comScore Inc showed.

Shares of some brick-and-mortar chains including Wal-Mart, Target, Macy's and Penney were down on Monday. Shares of Best Buy and Gap Inc, two of the top performers of the weekend according to analysts, were up. Ebay shares also rose 3.3 percent on Monday morning.

Sales at many chains are coming at a steep cost to margins along with higher store costs as the sales spread out over a greater time, analysts said.

"Wal-Mart won the weekend with its aggressive campaign; however, even with this strength, we are not sure it will translate to much in the way of sales and earnings for the full quarter," Janney Capital Markets analyst David Strasser said.

Home applicance and electronics store h.h. gregg did well, but was hit hard in the TV and mobile categories, while Best Buy did really well with mobile phone sales, Strasser said.

"Sears continued its share losing ways," he added.

Wells Fargo's Paul Lejuez said American Eagle Outfitters, Bath and Body Works, Macy's and Urban Outfitters's chain Anthropologie were standouts, while Abercrombie did not do well over the big shopping weekend.

The court rejected a petition filed by Liberty University, a Christian college in Virginia, which had raised various objections to the law, including to the key provision that requires individuals to obtain health insurance.

The justices upheld the constitutionality of a the individual mandate in a 5-4 ruling in June 2012.

Last week, the court agreed to hear two new cases in which employers have made religious objections to regulations implemented under Obamacare that require employers to provide health insurance that includes contraception for women. The case will be heard this term and decided by the end of June.

By rejecting the Liberty University case, the justices left intact a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals of a May 2013 decision that dismissed the claims made by the college and two individuals, Michele Waddell and Joanne Merrill.

Early on Sunday the spacecraft fired its main engine for more than 20 minutes, giving it the correct velocity to leave Earth's orbit.

It will now cruise for 680m km (422m miles), setting up an encounter with its target on 24 September 2014.

The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also known as Mangalyaan, is designed to demonstrate the technological capability to reach Mars orbit.

But the $72m (£45m) probe will also carry out experiments, including a search for methane gas in the planet's atmosphere.

MOM tweeted: "Earth orbiting phase of the #Mangalyaan ended and now is on a course to encounter Mars after a journey of about 10 months around the Sun."

The head of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) K Radhakrishnan said the operation to leave orbit had passed off well.

Since launch on 5 November, the craft has progressively raised its orbit around Earth with a series of engine burns.

The manoeuvres were all successful apart from the fourth, carried out on 11 November, during which a problem with the liquid fuel thruster caused the MOM to fall short of the mark.

But Isro has made plans for the eventuality that changes need to be made to the 1,350kg spacecraft's course. "We have planned right now four mid-course corrections; first one will be around December 11 - plus or minus a couple of days depending on the deviation," the NDTV news channel reported V Koteswara Rao, Isro's scientific secretary, as saying.

On Earth, the majority of atmospheric methane (CH4) is produced by living organisms. The gas has previously been detected in Mars's atmosphere by orbiting spacecraft and by telescopes on Earth.

But Nasa's rover Curiosity recently failed to find the gas in its atmospheric measurements.

If the MOM can detect methane, one possible source could be Martian microbes, perhaps living deep beneath the surface. But CH4 can also be produced by geological processes, including volcanism.

India's PSLV rocket - the second choice for the mission after a beefier launcher failed - was not powerful enough to send the MOM on a direct flight to Mars.

The Chang'e-3 mission is set to blast off from Xichang in the south at 01:30 local time (17:30 GMT).

The Long March rocket's payload includes a landing module and a six-wheeled robotic rover called Yutu (or Jade Rabbit).

The mission should land in the Moon's northern hemisphere in mid-December.

"The news channel will begin live coverage tonight at midnight... Spread the word!" state broadcaster CCTV said on its official account on Sina Weibo, China's version of Twitter.

This will be the third rover mission to land on the lunar surface, but the Chinese vehicle carries a more sophisticated payload, including ground-penetrating radar which will gather measurements of the lunar soil and crust.

The 120kg (260lb) Jade Rabbit rover can climb slopes of up to 30 degrees and travel at 200m (660ft) per hour, according to its designer the Shanghai Aerospace Systems Engineering Research Institute. Its name - chosen in an online poll of 3.4 million voters - derives from an ancient Chinese myth about a rabbit living on the moon as the pet of the lunar goddess Chang'e.

Last week, Prof Ouyang Ziyuan told the BBC's science editor David Shukman that the mission would test key technology and carry out science, adding: "In terms of the talents, China needs its own intellectual team who can explore the whole lunar and solar system - that is also our main purpose."

The lander's target is Sinus Iridum (Latin for Bay of Rainbows) a flat volcanic plain thought to be relatively clear of large rocks. It is part of a larger feature known as Mare Imbrium that forms the right eye of the "Man in the Moon".

Other details of the mission are sketchy; the rover and lander are powered by solar panels but other sources suggest they also carry radioisotope heating units (RHUs) containing plutonium-238 to keep them warm during the cold lunar night. The US Apollo astronauts Eugene Cernan and "Buzz" Aldrin have also remarked in a recent article that the landing module is substantially bigger than it needs to be to carry the rover, suggesting that it could be precursor technology to a human landing.

Only a few "narrow windows" of time are available for the launch over the coming days, some lasting only a few minutes, mission spokesman Pei Zhaoyu told the state-run Xinhua news agency.

The flat display shows your caller's upper body, talking away. But below this their hands and arms reach up out of the tabletop into the physical world, gently lifting a small red ball off the table and passing it from one digitally-recreated hand to the other. It can already happen.

It's the work of the inFORM Dynamic Shape Display: a tabletop covered in miniature white squares that rise up like towers, to turn digital content into physical objects. Used in conjunction with a 3D sensor, like Microsoft's Kinect, it can capture a person's physical appearance and reproduce it in tiny skyscraper-like "pixel" blocks -- on-the-fly, anywhere in the world.

Essentially it's very similar to those kind of pin toys that you might know from museum novelty stores," explains MIT's Daniel Leithinger, part of the Tangible Media Group behind the inFORM.

Similar -- yes -- just a lot more impressive. To add color to the block shapes, a projector on the ceiling beams down light, turning the towers psychedelic hues as Leithinger demonstrates the table's capabilities.

It also has a deeper purpose -- communicating an extra layer of information from the sender to the receiver on the other end: "When you move your hands, not only do you have the shape of the hands, but you also see the color, the texture of the hands," says Leithinger.

Leithinger shows off a couple of the table's party tricks: sculpting a model car from the blocks, coloring it in, and video-chatting about it with a colleague -- allowing them both to get hands-on with the model, regardless of physical distance.

The display doubles as an active controller, allowing a user to interact with 3D menus constructed by the table by moving the little red ball. "It's not real 3D because we can only push up and down each one of these pins," says Leithinger. "We can't push them sideways or have any other control over them at the moment -- we usually call this affect '2.5D'"

Even so, the inFORM's remarkable capabilities seem to given some users big ideas. "A lot of comments we get are like -- 'Oh, it's like a super power'," he laughs. They say it feels like being X-Men nemesis Magneto, he explains -- suddenly having the power to manipulate the world at a distance, just with a wave of your hand. For Leithinger, his ambitions are a little more down to earth.

Firefighters and emergency rescuers swarmed the scene near Spuyten Duyvil station in the Bronx, where at least two train cars had flipped on their sides. One car was just feet away from the Harlem River.

Three of the dead were thrown "as the train came off the track and was twisting and turning," New York Fire Department Chief Edward Kilduff told reporters. Police divers were in the water hours after the crash searching for survivors, and cadaver dogs combed the wreckage. Authorities believe all the passengers have been accounted for, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told reporters.

It was unclear how fast the train was traveling and how many passengers were on board.

At least 67 people were injured, New York Police Chief Ray Kelly told reporters. "In terms of causes, we don't know exactly what happened," Cuomo said.

Federal investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board were headed to the scene, he said. Cuomo said 11 people were critically injured.

The train had been traveling from the Hudson Valley town of Poughkeepsie, 100 miles north of New York, to New York's Grand Central Station.

It came off the tracks just as it was coming around a sharp curve shortly after 7 a.m., fire officials told CNN affiliate WCBS. Of eight train cars, seven were off the tracks.

The train operator -- who is among the injured -- told investigators he applied brakes to the train, but it didn't slow down, a law enforcement official on the scene and familiar with the investigation said.

Passenger Frank Tatulli told WABC he thought the train was traveling "a lot faster" than usual. He escaped a derailed car on his own and suffered head and neck injuries, he said. Other passengers were still on the train, he told WABC.

The derailment occurred near where a freight train derailed in July, WCBS reported. No one was injured in that accident.

Federal authorities are still investigating a collision that occurred on the same line in May, when two passenger trains crashed during rush hour in Connecticut. Service was suspended Sunday on part of the Hudson Line, Metro-North said on Twitter.