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From Science Daily: Carnegie Mellon University researchers have developed a new type of mobile robot that balances on a ball instead of legs or wheels. “Ballbot” is a self-contained, battery-operated, omnidirectional robot that balances dynamically on a single urethane-coated metal sphere. It weighs 95 pounds and is the approximate height and width of a person. Because of its long, thin shape and ability to maneuver in tight spaces, it has the potential to function better than current robots can in environments with people.

LOS ANGELES — A hotel tycoon’s dream of building an inflatable commercial space station is taking a step toward reality _ or a reality check _ with the launch of a satellite that will test the technology behind the orbital outpost.

The fact-finding mission scheduled for this week will explore the feasibility of Robert Bigelow’s planned commercial space complex. When finished by 2015, he said, it will consist of balloon-like modules strung together like sausage links and serve as a hotel, laboratory, college or entertainment venue.

The planned liftoff from Russia of Bigelow Aerospace’s privately funded Genesis I spacecraft will mark the beginning of the startup’s attempt to break into the fledging manned commercial spaceflight business.

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The seven crew members of the space shuttle Discovery arrived at Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday to begin training for a spaceflight next month in which each will have a 1-in-100 chance of dying.

Those are the official odds that NASA has long given.

Exactly what the real odds are is a question that looms larger than normal this time.

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WASHINGTON – Everyone has known New Orleans is a sinking city. Now new research suggests parts of the city are sinking even faster than many scientists imagined — more than an inch a year.

That may explain some of the levee failures during Hurricane Katrina and it raises more worries about the future.

The research, reported in the journal Nature, is based on new satellite radar data for the three years before Katrina struck in 2005. The data show that some areas are sinking four or five times faster than the rest of the city. And that, experts say, can be deadly.

“My concern is the very low-lying areas,” said lead author Tim Dixon, a University of Miami geophysicist. “I think those areas are death traps. I don’t think those areas should be rebuilt.”

The blame for this phenomenon, called subsidence, includes overdevelopment, drainage and natural seismic shifts.

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Two prescriptions for an invisibility cloak have been unveiled by physicists in the United Kingdom and the United States. The researchers say that in principle the technologies needed for building these devices already exist. “Invisibility is visibly close,” says Ulf Leonhardt of the University of St Andrews in Scotland, one of the researchers behind the proposals.

He and John Pendry of Imperial College London, UK, and their co-workers have independently described similar ways to create an invisible ‘hole’ in space, inside which objects can be hidden. They say it is possible to guide light around the hole, rather like water flowing around a rock in a river, so that the object inside it cannot be seen.

Light rays are bent when they pass between materials with different refractive indices, such as air and water. But bending light so that it passes round a region of space and emerges travelling along the same line as it was initially is a difficult trick, requiring an invisibility cloak made from materials with a ‘tunable’ refractive index.

Such substances have been made, in the form of so-called metamaterials. These are built from rings or coils of metal wire, etched into printed circuit boards and glued together, which act as antennae that interact with the electromagnetic field of incoming light and modify the paths the light takes. Such metamaterials can have bizarre optical properties: for example, having negative refractive index, so that they bend light the ‘wrong’ way.

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A NEW species of dinosaur has been named in honour of J. K. Rowling and her Harry Potter books.

The 66 million-year-old dragon-like monster has been given the title Dracorex hogwartsia because it resembles the kind of fantastical creature encountered by the teenage wizard.

The nearly complete skull of the previously unknown dinosaur was found by three friends during a fossil-collecting trip in South Dakota in the United States.

The dinosaur’s name comes from the Latin words Draco, meaning dragon, Rex, meaning king, and hogwartsia for the fictional Hogwarts School created by Rowling.

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Ron Patrick is approaching the age of 50, a time when many men begin thinking about minutiae like pensions and second homes and third cars. But Patrick is far more interested in telling you why it is that he has stuck a big jet engine in the back of a prosaic silver Volkswagen.

He’s standing out in a parking lot, waving his arms with wild enthusiasm, pointing at the car as if he were a 15-year-old who’s just had his first ride in a Corvette, his eyes spinning in delight. This car consumes him, he loves the completely outrageous idea behind it, and for a moment, his infectious mood makes you think, gee, anybody could do this and it sounds like a great way to spend a few years, not to mention $250,000.

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WADSWORTH, Ohio – Firefighters dousing a fire in a new home were confused when the man they thought was the owner suddenly left – until they found $700,000 worth of marijuana plants in the basement, officials said.

“It seemed so strange to me” that the man left, said Wadsworth Fire Chief Ralph Copley. “If it were my home burning, I’d want to be there.”

After firefighters extinguished the fire, which started in the attic early Friday morning, they found 239 marijuana plants filling one-fourth of the basement, which was wired throughout for indoor plant growing, authorities said.

“It was unreal,” Copley said. “In 24 years, I’ve never seen a fire quite like that.”

The Medina County Drug Task Force and firefighters on Friday confiscated items from the home, including peat moss, 1,000-watt bulbs and large reflecting discs. The basement had no fire damage.

The marijuana-cultivating system was wired to the home’s electrical system in a way that bypassed the meter, said Michael Barnhardt, acting director of the task force. Such wiring would help a grower avoid the large electric bills that clue in investigators, he said.

Copley said the cause of the fire was unknown, but it did not appear to be related to the marijuana operation or electrical wiring. It caused about $150,000 in damage.

The home, bought for $229,000 less than one month ago, is owned by a Lan Le. There is no telephone listing under that name in the northeast Ohio city 30 miles south of Cleveland.

HOUSTON – For the first time since 1972, the United States is planning to fly to the moon, but instead of a quick, Apollo-like visit, astronauts intend to build a permanent base and live there while they prepare what may be the most ambitious undertaking in history — putting human beings on Mars.

President Bush in 2004 announced to great fanfare plans to build a new spaceship, get back to the moon by 2020 and travel on to Mars after that. But with NASA focused on designing a new spaceship and spending about 40 percent of its budget on the troubled space shuttle and international space station programs, that timetable may suffer.

Still, NASA’s moon planners are closely following the spaceship initiative and, within six months, will outline what they need from the new vehicle to enable astronauts to explore the lunar surface.

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Veteran soul singer Isaac Hayes, voice of the libidinous character “Chef” on the satiric cable TV cartoon “South Park,” said on Monday he was quitting the show, citing its “inappropriate ridicule” of religion.

“There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry toward religious beliefs … begins,” Hayes said in a statement.

Hayes, 63, a devoted follower of the Church of Scientology, did not mention a “South Park” episode that aired last fall poking fun at Scientology and some of its celebrity adherents, including actor Tom Cruise.

Rather, Hayes said the show’s parody of religion is part of what he saw as a “growing insensitivity toward personal spiritual beliefs” in the media generally, including the recent controversy over cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad.

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