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itwbennett writes “Starting this month, mobile carriers in China are requiring people who set up new mobile phone accounts to register with their real names as part of a new government measure to reduce anonymity among the country’s 800 million mobile users. And within 3 years, the carriers must also register the real identities of all existing users, said China Telecom spokesman Xu Fei. The new policy comes as China has been pushing users to register with their real names online. In August, online gamers had to begin real-name registration under regulations that are meant to protect minors from Internet addiction and ‘unhealthy’ content.”

Source: China Demands Real Names From Mobile Phone Users

For two years, the Chinese science satellite SJ-06F flew solo orbits around the Earth (or, as solo as a machine could be in the expanding haze of space junk in orbit). But now it has a partner: Last month China executed the delicate maneuver of aligning another satellite launched this year, SJ-12, with its older counterpart.

Only the United States had executed such a satellite rendezvous before this, and it shows off China’s advancement in satellite sophistication. Three years ago the country blew one of its satellites to smithereens in a practice test—a test that created thousands of additional chunks of debris in orbit. The satellite meet-up is a more elegant trick, and one whose implications could be sinister or benign. Let’s explore both possibilities.

Don’t Worry

China’s game of catch-up, which has its space program closing in on America’s abilities in orbit, strikes fear into the hearts of some politicos. But malfeasance need not be the aim of the satellite maneuver.

“This set of skills serves a whole lot of purposes,” says Dean Cheng, a Chinese policy expert with the Heritage Foundation, a think tank in Washington DC. The most immediate application, Cheng says, may be testing sensors and control systems to help pave the way for docking procedures to be used with China’s first space station module, Tiangong-1, which is set to launch in 2011. “This sort of thing may very well be consistent with wanting to test drive the hardware and software before you test it on your space laboratory,” Cheng says. [New Scientist]

And speaking of space junk (as we were earlier), this kind of procedure could be used in the future to clear out the defunct equipment and debris that clogs the space around our planet and threatens useful machinery in orbit.

What of the worry that China could dock with our satellites and interfere with them? Brian Weeden of the Secure World Foundation, who I talked to for a story in the September issue of DISCOVER, tracked the rendezvous and says that’s unlikely. Weeden, whose organization is devoted to the peaceful use of space, says that there are easier ways to mess with enemy satellites, like shooting them with lasers from the ground.

OK, Worry

Whether or not China is pursuing space warfare in this instance, the country is certainly trying to measure up to whatever the United States can do.

“The Chinese would be absolutely incompetent to not be trying to reduce U.S advantage in space,” James Oberg, a former NASA space engineer specializing in orbital rendezvous, tells Danger Room. “No potential adversary in their right mind would give us permanent advantage in space operations.” [Wired.com]

China might not need rendezvous capability to tinker with another country’s satellites, but it would need that capability to spy on them—taking an up-close look at the competitor’s product. There may be no way to gauge true intentions.

According to Oberg, the satellite meet-up occurred in an orbit almost exclusively devoted to earth observation — spy and weather satellites, for example — where “a potential adversary would be most interested in rendezvousing. On the other hand, it’s also where a satellite might need refueling,” he adds. “It’s like you could be changing a screwdriver for a hammer, or you could be turning a peaceful ‘bot into a killer one.” [Wired.com]

Image: ESA

Source: Close Encounters of the Worrisome Kind? Chinese Satellites Meet in Space

According to a recent report on M.I.C Gadget, China Unicom, the official carrier partner for the iPhone and iPad in China, could be offering official jailbreak service to their customers.

The website has published pictures of promotional posters on display at a China Unicom store in Dongguan that reads:

“Support Service: Free SIM-trimming, jailbreak, installation of more than 10 hot apps.”

Though some will argue that pictures don't lie, the offer looks unrealistic for more than one reason. 

Firstly, it seems unbelievable that an official iPhone carrier will offer a service like jailbreaking, which Apple has always maintained is an unauthorized modification and may void your iPhone's warranty.

Secondly, the latest version of iOS, iOS 4.0.2 has plugged the security hole that was exploited by Jailbreakme.com and hence cannot be jailbroken. In fact, the iPhone Dev team had recently announced that they shall not be releasing a jailbreak for iOS 4.0.2 and iOS 3.2.2.

Also, as an official carrier, China Unicom is likely to offer microSIM cards with the purchase of iPhone 4 and iPad and hence a SIM-trimming service appears doubtful at the moment. 

Interestingly, the promotional poster also talks about offering customers free cases along with the purchase of iPhones and iPads. This would make it unnecessary for these customers to sign up for Apple's free case program. The note however does not mention how these cases shall be different from those offered through Apple's program. 

What do you make of these reports? Do you think they are true? Tell us what you think in the comments below.

[via M.I.C Gadget]

Source: China Unicom To Offer Jailbreak Service & Free Cases To iPhone 4, iPad Customers?

eldavojohn writes “Details are limited but state media is reporting on $75 million being put into a new research facility
in Qingdao, Shandong Province that will conduct research into mining the sea floor. From the article: ‘Scientists believe sea beds at a depth of 4,000 to 6,000 meters hold abundant deposits of rare metals and methane hydrate, a solidified form of natural gas bound into ice that can serve as a new energy source.’ The research center’s first goal is to do surveying and exploration with a new submersible named ‘Jiaolong’ (a mythical aquatic Chinese dragon). Hopefully these quests yield energy resources to meet growing demand for resources like liquefied coal in China.”

Source: China Plans To Mine the Yellow Sea Floor

eldavojohn writes “The AFP brings a story of a growing concern that children in China and Japan suffer from ‘character amnesia‘ when asked to write the complex characters they are so used to inputting via alphabet-based systems. The article claims this is a growing problem. In China, they have a word for it: ‘tibiwangzi,’ which means ‘take pen, forget paper.’ China Youth Daily polled 2,072 people and found that 83% have problems writing characters (although there’s no indication if that was an online poll or not). A young woman who was interviewed explained her workaround: ‘When I can’t remember, I will take out my cellphone and find it (the character) and then copy it down.’”

Source: Wired Youths In China & Japan Forget Character Forms

The United States currently holds around half of the world’s helium supply and we’re selling it, for cheap.

We’ve known this for a while. We started stockpiling the stuff near Amarillo, Texas in 1925, in part for dirigible use, and stepped up reserves in the 1960s as a Cold War asset. In 1996, Congress passed the Helium Privatization Act mandating that the United States sell the gas at artificially low prices to get rid of the stockpile by 2015. This February, the National Research Council published a report estimating that, given increasing consumption, the world may run out of helium in 40 years. That’s bad news given helium’s current applications in science, technology, and party decorations–and possible future applications in fusion energy.

Now physicist Robert Richardson, who won a 1996 Nobel Prize for work using helium-3 to make superfluids, has come forward to stress the folly of underselling our supply of the natural resource. He suggested in several interviews that the gas’s price should mirror its actual demand and scarcity. He estimates that typical party balloons should cost $100 a pop.

“They couldn’t sell it fast enough and the world price for helium gas is ridiculously cheap,” Professor Richardson told a summer meeting of Nobel laureates…. “Once helium is released into the atmosphere in the form of party balloons or boiling helium it is lost to the Earth forever, lost to the Earth forever,” he emphasised. [The Independent]

If we don’t heed Richardson’s warning, here are some sources the United States might have to tap when we run out:

The Air

The current U.S. helium supply formed from billions of years worth of radioactive decay and accrued near uranium and thorium deposits. Though it’s possible to separate helium out of the air, Richardson warns that it will cost a lot more. He told New Scientist:

“There is no chemical means to make helium. The supplies we have on Earth come from radioactive alpha decay in rocks. Right now it’s not commercially viable to recover helium from the air, so we have to rely on extracting it from rocks. But if we do run out altogether, we will have to recover helium from the air and it will cost 10,000 times what it does today.” [New Scientist]

Other Countries

If we sell off all of our helium that means we’ll likely have to import it later–and c0mpetition could be fierce. China and India’s developing science and tech industries will also likely want a piece of the He pie.

Emerging powers such as China and India are ramping up helium-hungry activities like chipset fabrication, space programs, and cryogenic research…. Now, the NRC report warns, if the US does not soon cease selling off its reserves, within 10 to 15 years the country will be forced to import most of its helium from the only other near-term sources, gas fields in the Middle East and Russia. [Seed]

Other Planets

Another place where helium occurs naturally is, of course, in the gas balls we call stars. Researchers think that the solar wind from our sun may have deposited some helium-3 on the moon’s surface. If we use that up too, we could look a little further, say Uranus or Neptune, which have helium-rich atmospheres. We’re guessing that the party balloon prices will suffer accordingly.

“The moon is the El Dorado of helium-3,” says [futurist Marshall] Savage, and he’s right: Every star, including our sun, emits helium constantly. Implanted in the lunar soil by the solar wind, the all-important gas can be found on the moon by the bucketful. Associate professor Tim Swindle and his colleagues at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona have already begun prospecting. Swindle has mapped likely helium-3 deposits on the moon by charting the parts of the lunar landscape most exposed to solar wind against the locations of mineral deposits that best trap the element. [Wired]

Image: flickr / Shiny Things

Source: Nobel Prize Winner Warns World: We’re Running Out of Helium

The fourth nation to put a person in space, after Russia/USSR, the United States, and China, could be… Denmark?

Denmark indeed. Kristian von Bengtson and Peter Madsen, the leaders of Copenhagen Suborbitals, plan to fire a test flight of their HEAT-1X rocket from the European nation early next week.

This upcoming flight will be an unmanned test flight, but if all goes well, Madsen hopes to be inside the single-passenger capsule named Tycho Brahe for a manned flight in the near future [Universe Today].

The capsule stands about 10 yards tall, and its top is a clear glass dome through which the standing passenger can enjoy the trip to space. (Or at least, try to enjoy it: The cramped passenger will have only minimal arm movement, just enough to operate necessities like a camera, escape hatch, and vomit bag.) The rocket would carry the capsule to the edge of space, where the passenger will be temporarily weightless, and then it will fall in a parachute-slowed descent.

Madsen and von Bengtson are both engineers, and the latter used to work for NASA. But their rocket project didn’t receive government funding; instead they built on a budget of about $63,000 brought in by donation. Says von Bengtson:

“I think our entire budget would barely cover the cost of the key hole on the shuttle. We want to show people that space doesn’t need to be the exclusive domain of big money investments where everything is made out of titanium in clean rooms by people wearing white slippers. We want to give space another face” [The Independent].

OK, but what about safety when you’re building on a non-profit’s budget?

The creators are members of the SomethingAwful web community, and have been posting pictures and answering questions there. In response to one question asking what the chances of the person inside dying are, they replied: “Unlike Columbia we’re not moving at orbital speeds so ‘dying a gruesome death burning up on re-entry’ with our kit has a very low outcome probability” [Wired.com].

(If you’re wondering about the capsule’s namesake, Tycho Brahe, he was a 16th century aristocrat who famously identified a supernova. Some Tycho trivia: He also reportedly lost part of his nose in a duel and lived the rest of his life with a metal replacement. We wish his namesake capsule and its builders a better fate.)

Image: Copenhagen Suborbitals

Source: Amateur Danish Rocket Builders Plan to Send a Human to Space

A traffic jam on the Beijing-Tibet expressway has now entered its ninth day and has grown to over 62 miles in length. This mother-of-all delays has even spawned its own micro-economy of local merchants selling water and food at inflated prices to stranded drivers. Can you imagine how infuriating it must be to see someone leave their blinker on for 9 days?

Source: China’s Nine-Day Traffic Jam Tops 62 Miles

Hugh Pickens writes “The NY Times reports that China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has published a list of 2,087 steel mills, cement works and other energy-intensive factories required to close by September 30 after discussions with provincial and municipal officials to identify industrial operations with outdated, inefficient technology. The goal of the factory closings is ‘to enhance the structure of production, heighten the standard of technical capability and international competitiveness and realize a transformation of industry from being big to being strong,’ the ministry says. The current Chinese five-year plan calls for using 20 percent less energy this year for each unit of economic output than in 2005 but surging production by heavy industry since last winter has put in question China’s ability to meet this target. In addition to the energy-efficiency objective in the current five-year plan, a plan announced by President Hu Jintao late last year called for China to reduce its carbon emissions per unit of economic output by 40 to 45 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels.”

Source: China To Close 2,000 Factories In Energy Crackdown

Girls around the country are starting puberty ever younger, says a new study out in Pediatrics.

Researchers led by Frank Biro studied more than a thousand girls between six and eight years old from New York, Cincinnati, and San Francisco. Their findings: By the age of 7, about 23 percent of black girls, 15 percent of Hispanic girls, and 11 percent of white girls showed enough breast development to be considered pubescent. Those numbers are even more extreme than the findings of a similar 1997 study that seemed to show the age entering puberty was dropping fast.

Says Biro:

“In 1997, people said, ‘That can’t be right; there must be something wrong with the study’. But the average age is going down even further” [Los Angeles Times].

The starkness of Biro’s statistics has drawn plenty of attention. But just what it means is a difficult question, because there’s no “ideal” age for entering puberty.

A girl needs a certain amount of body fat to start menstruating, and girls who are malnourished or ill may have delayed puberty. In developed countries, the age of puberty dropped from the 19th to 20th centuries, as nutrition improved and infectious diseases were brought under better control, and it was seen as a sign of progress [The New York Times].

However, seven and eight years old might be “too young,” given the possible psychological and medical effects. Going through puberty early might affect cancer risk by increasing one’s lifetime exposure to hormones like estrogen and progesterone, which can speed tumor growth in some cases. There are probably other consequences yet unknown.

And then, Biro says, there’s the concern of one’s physical and emotional maturity moving at different rates:

“For the 11-year-old that looks like she’s 15 or 16, adults are going to interact with her like she’s 15 or 16, but so are her peers.”… Girls who develop young “look physically older,” he said, adding, “It doesn’t mean that they’re psychologically or socially more mature” [New York Daily News].

The big question is why this is happening—studies in China and Denmark recently have picked up the same phenomenon. Biro’s study can’t address that part, but he has some ideas.

He speculates that its primary driver may be overweight and obesity, because estrogen is sequestered in fat tissue. But environmental exposures to chemicals — including pesticides and endocrine-disrupting chemicals like bisphenol A, commonly found in plastics, and phthalates, which are contained in many personal-care products — could also play a role [TIME].

Image: iStockphoto

Source: Across America, Girls Are Beginning Puberty Younger