The video from the first news read is finished. Our Chairman Thos (EI2JD) had the privilege of reading the news on the 4-01-2010, The first bulletin of the year.
Part one of the video is the news bulletin.
Part Two is the call-in’s from the listeners, Well worth a look. One of the highest number of call-in ever i think?
At 2153 UTC on Tuesday 12th January 2010, a magnitude 7.0Mw earthquake struck near Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti.
News reports soon revealed that this was a major disaster.
Shortly afterwards, IRESC received, miraculously via email just before connectivity failed, a message from David Farquharson HH2QCS, who had helped with communications during the series of hurricanes that devastated Haiti in 2008. He had survived the earthquake but his home, high in the mountains above Port-au-Prince, was badly damaged.
Nevertheless, he was heading into Port-au-Prince to see what he could do to help. He said he would try to set up his amateur radio station. He witnessed a two mile stretch of cliffs above nearby gravel pits collapsing and knew that many deaths were inevitable.
IRESC went to a high alert level and commenced operations on their Echolink Conference with a formal net, hoping that some communications could be established either directly using VoIP or via a radio gateway situated within reach of Haiti. Manny Arroyo, NP2KW, was particularly helpful in making his HF Gateway facility available to IRESC from his advantageous location on St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands.
The IRESC Incident Database, which can be accessed by emergency agencies and can receive submissions directly from the general public, was heavily used to manage health and welfare enquiries and eventually stored over 300 items of information relating to the disaster.
In the early phases of the activation, traffic was almost entirely inbound to Haiti. With no reliable amateur radio path, relatives’ enquiries were routed to the Red Cross and Salvation Army bureaux for processing.
In the next few days, IRESC received further messages from HH2QCS and also from Jean-Robert Gaillard HH2JR; they made grim reading. HH2JR had lost several close family members. He also lost his cousin, Micha Gaillard, the Opposition Leader in Haiti. Jean Robert himself had been attacked by mobs. The two hams had not been able to communicate with each other since the earthquake.
The desperate scenes described were shocking. HH2QCS was, by now, leading the communications team for one of the major medical centres in central Port-au-Prince and was struggling with limited equipment to re-establish internet communications, but he had been able to arrange solar power.
IRESC continued to deal with the large number of hams seeking information. At one point, the IRESC Echolink conference had nearly 200 individual stations, links and repeaters connected to it.
Because IRESC has members in over 50 countries, there was always a Net Control Station available who could operate during their local daylight hours, thus preventing exhaustion or overnight shifts. Members who spoke French were contacted in case this became the language necessary for traffic handling. Such members monitored the only radio station that managed to continue broadcasting on the Internet, Signal FM, and provided translations of the public message boards and news reports hosted on the station’s website.
IRESC Net Control Station (NCS) operators were joined by colleagues from the National Hurricane Net, NIAR, HAMNET, ARES, RAYNET and others, to whom grateful thanks are extended. The net was streamed to the web via several outlets. HF communications were monitored in a variety of ways. In the region of 900 radio amateurs registered to become members of IRESC in a 72 hour period. All in all, this represented a truly remarkable international alliance between radio amateurs.
As the relief effort developed, IRESC collaborated with the Maritime Mobile Service net. The MMS net operates on 14.300MHz, the internationally agreed ‘Centre of Activity’ frequency for emergency communications. The net was in regular communication with Father John Henault HH2JH, a missionary from the Ile-a-Vache off the SW coast of Haiti, who travelled to the mainland to provide assistance and to establish a ham radio station. Father John regularly provided essential information and requests for supplies, principally fuel for his generator. These messages were relayed to the IRESC Echolink net by Bernie Farthing NP2CB for onward transmission to a variety of support agencies. As well as more traditional routes, traffic was also being received via Blackberry and SMS text, with some Haitians even managing to report via Facebook. All of this data was collated on the IRESC Incident Database and forwarded as appropriate. The Database was made an open source for any agency that found it of use.
IRESC Liaison Officer for the Eastern Caribbean, Julien Dedier 9Z4FZ, set himself up as a point of contact for radio amateurs travelling with relief teams, offering advice and assistance to smooth their passage through Trinidad & Tobago en route to Haiti.
IRESC Liaison Officer for Israel, Pinchas Aviv 4Z5RU, set the Magen David Adom network of VHF repeaters to relay the IRESC traffic so that it was heard across the whole of the country.
In conclusion, it is true to say that traffic out of Haiti was limited. The country’s infrastructure was so badly damaged that only the greatest of efforts lead to limited ham radio activity. The bulk of message flow handled by IRESC was of the Health & Welfare enquiry type. However, IRESC has benefitted from this significant mobilisation of its facilities; the learning curve has been steep and the debrief will be extensive. The IT systems, hosted on IRESC’s own servers, stood up well under the immense volume of activity.
NCS operators were well supported by always having several Assistant NCS members to work with them in the background, controlling the various online systems, managing the Incident Database, logging and dealing with off-net communications – not as glamorous as a net controller maybe, but the bedrock on which our organisation relies. When the next emergency comes, many more key agencies and contacts will be aware of what IRESC has to offer and will come to us earlier. Better working relationships have already been formed.
Correspondence was received from all over the world and diligently attended to. Radio amateurs worked with each other and found ways around the language and colloquial differences that will inevitably exist when the whole world meets in one place. But these radio amateurs had a shared goal – collaborating internationally is the very essence of IRESC - and the success of the operation demonstrates that it is possible to bring our diversity of cultures together in a single team.
IRESC has now dropped to a lower activation level but the net control structure has remained in place should any further help be requested. The fully activated net operated continuously around the clock for 384 hours. A slower but steady flow of requests for information on the whereabouts of individuals continues to arrive.
At 27th January 2010, the Haitian President Rene Preval said that 170,000 bodies had been counted. 245,000 commercial and residential buildings had either collapsed or were too badly damaged to repair. Father John HH2JH, Jean-Robert HH2JR and others have continued to report in to the Maritime Mobile Service and SATERN nets.
For further information, please contact Steve Richards g4hpe@iresc.org or visit our website at
Mc Donald Motors in connection with Mid-West Radio have placed a long wheel-based Transit on the car park of Tesco. The van will be in the car park for a number of days collecting anything that will be of use to the people of Haiti.
Already there has been a huge response to the appeal, and when this photo was taken earlier this morning (left), you could not see anything in the
rear of the van. When I checked back later there was folk putting items back into the van as they had fell out due to over flow.
Great job! Well done people.!
This Report is from Mid West Radio
The terrible news of Haiti's earthquake has definitely puts things in perspective. Whilst we've all suffered as a result of the terrible weather conditions over the past month it all pales into insignificance when one considers the plight of the hundreds of thousands that have died in Haiti. The focus now is on the living and relief workers are working tirelessly to assist the wounded and the displaced. Our listeners have the opportunity to help out by supporting our major fundraiser for the victims at a massive Indoor Car Boot Sale at St. John's Rest and Care Centre, Knock on Sunday January 31st, 2010.
Below we have a full list of people from the area who are going to supervise tables on the day and also a list of drop-off points in various towns. If you know any of the volunteers listed please support them in their collection efforts or alternatively gather up good items that will sell on the day and drop them to your nearest drop-off point. An example of items required include ornaments, glassware, books, small electrical items, bric-a-brac, crockery and all household items that would sell. Note that we are not in a position to take furniture or clothes.
Container located outside Broderick’s Electric, Lodge Road from 9am to 6pm
All funds raised from this Car Boot Sale will be given to the Gena Heraty Haiti Fund. Gena comes from Westport and has been working in an orphanage and hospital in Haiti that has been badly affected by the earthquake. Gena has been doing Trojan work in Haiti for many years and has told us that money will be urgently needed in the weeks and months ahead. She was the recipient of a Mayo People of the Year Award last month in recognition of her work with the poorest of the poor.
If you can help out in any way please call Midwest Radio on 0818 300055 or 094-9630169. Alternatively, if you wish to donate money to the fund please send what you can to Midwest Radio, Clare Street, Ballyhaunis, County Mayo. Please ensure that all postal orders/cheques are made payable to Midwest Radio Charity Account.
If you wish to lodge money to the fund the account details are
Bank of Ireland,
Ballyhaunis
(sort code 90-37-28)
56231799 account number
Account Name "Midwest Radio Charity Account"
An artist's impression of the black hole pulling gas off its companion
Astronomers have spied a star-sized black hole much further away than any such object previously known.
It has a mass 20 times that of our Sun and is sited six million light-years away in the galaxy NGC 300.
The discovery was made using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) facility on Mount Paranal in Chile.
The scientists' data indicates the object has a huge companion star that will, most probably, end its days as a black hole, too.
"In the time it's taken for the light to reach us from this galaxy, the companion star will have blown up in a supernova to produce its own black hole," said Professor Paul Crowther, from Sheffield University, UK, and the lead author of the scientific paper reporting the discovery.
"If you could instantly teleport yourself to that system right now, you'd presumable find a pair of black holes spiralling around each other," he told BBC News.
The spiral galaxy NGC 300
You can see a video of what this system looks like by going to the website of the European Southern Observatory organisation.
Black holes tend to come in two sizes. The super-massive variety is colossal and weighs a million to a billion times the mass of our Sun.
There is also the stellar-sized type, which may be 10 or so times the mass of our Sun, and result when really big stars exhaust their nuclear fuel at the end of their lives and collapse.
The new target falls into the latter category. It has a mass of about 20 times that of the Sun.
Astronomers have now found three black holes with masses more than 15 times that of the Sun, all of which are in galaxies outside our own.
The existence of the new one was first suspected through X-ray observations with the US space agency's Swift telescope and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton observatory.
"We recorded periodic, extremely intense X-ray emission, a clue that a black hole might be lurking in the area," explains team member Stefania Carpano from Esa.
Black holes are expected to pulse X-rays as they pull gas into themselves and tear it apart.
The VLT facility and its four 8.2m telescope units
This was all confirmed when astronomers then followed up the Swift-XMM data with observations using the FORS2 instrument mounted on the 8.2m Antu unit of the VLT.
The instrument can pick apart fine details in light at visible and near-infrared wavelengths.
"We took spectra of the companion star regularly, every night over the course of a couple of weeks, and we saw a feature in the companion star that basically 'wobbles'," said Professor Crowther.
"We get a blue shift and a red shift in the light as the star goes around the black hole."
The pair sweep about each other with a period of just 32 hours. If sited in our Solar System, this action would take place inside what is the orbit of Mercury.
The companion is something astronomers call a Wolf-Rayet star - a giant, hot, highly-evolved star that is billowing gas into space.
SEEKING GRAVITATIONAL WAVES
Gravitational waves are an inevitable consequence of the theory of general relativity
They describe the gravity force as distortions made by matter in the fabric of space-time
An accelerating mass will produce waves; they are expected to propagate at the speed of light
Detectable sources should include exploding stars; merging black holes and neutron stars
Labs fire lasers into 2-4km-long, L-shaped tunnels; the weak waves should disturb the light
A lot of this material is presumably being pulled onto the black hole.
Only one other binary comprising a black hole and a Wolf-Rayet star has previously been seen.
Assuming the Wolf-Rayet arrives at the denouement expected for a star of its size, the system will then become a binary comprising two coalescing black holes.
In time, these holes would merge, emitting copious amounts of energy in the form of gravitational waves.
These ripples in the fabric of space-time are an inevitable consequence of the theory of general relativity, and their first detection is being sought by intricate laser experiments set up in science labs across the world.
Merging black holes are considered one of the most promising targets for these experiments.
"What's not really known is the statistics of binary black holes - we don't know how many there are. This gives us a hint there might be a certain number because this system is a progenitor to binary black holes."
Professor Crowther and colleagues will publish their findings in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Goojje launched on January 14 2010
A new search engine and social network provider called Goojje has appeared online in China.
The site contains very similar branding to Google, and the final syllable "jje" sounds similar to the Mandarin word for older sister (jiejie).
Goojie's search results appear to be filtered for sensitive content in accordance with Chinese regulations.
Google has recently objected to those restrictions, but the new site appears to be urging it to remain in China.
Google said on 12 January that hackers had tried to infiltrate its software coding and the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, in a "highly sophisticated" attack.
The California-based firm - which launched in China in 2006 - said it would remain in China only if the government relaxed censorship.
According to the Reuters news agency, Goojje has a message on its site which reads: "Sister was very happy when brother gave up the thought of leaving and stayed for sister".
While Goojje sounds like "sister", the word Google sounds similar to the Mandarin word gege, which means "big brother".
Google has declined to comment.
India's space programme is more than 45 years old
India's space agency has said it will launch its first manned mission to space in 2016.
A senior official of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) in Bangalore said that two astronauts would take part.
"We are preparing for the manned space flight," Isro Chairman K Radhakrishnan told reporters.
"We will design and develop the space module for the manned mission in the next four years," he said.
Observers say India is emerging as a major player in the multi-billion dollar space market.
In September it launched seven satellites in a single mission, nearly a month after the country's inaugural Moon mission was aborted.
Key architect
Isro says that it will soon shortlist two astronauts to train for the space flight.
The manned mission will cost 124 billion rupees ($2,676,740,597).
Delhi has given its approval for the mission, space officials told the BBC.
India's space agency is also setting up a full-fledged training facility in Bangalore to train the astronauts.
The country's first unmanned Moon mission, Chandrayaan, was launched last year.
The second unmanned project, Chandrayaan-II, will be launched in the first quarter of 2013 - a prelude to the manned space mission.
India's first Moon mission had to be terminated because of a failure of critical communication components, but Isro officials termed the mission a success because 95% of the scientific objectives were completed.
India also plans a mission to Mars in 2030.
One of smallest satellites ever flown by the European Space Agency (Esa) has returned its first images of the Sun.
On Tuesday, mission managers hailed the excellent performance of the Proba-2 technology demonstration spacecraft.
The Project for On-Board Autonomy satellite is intended to test hardware and software that might be incorporated into future Esa missions.
The 0.6m by 0.6m by 0.8m box includes new computer, battery, thrusters, and solar panel systems.
It also carries some instruments to study the Sun and the space environment.
At a press conference at the Royal Observatory of Belgium in Brussels, the Proba team unveiled the spacecraft's first solar observations.
These included pictures of the annular solar eclipse on 15 January, which was seen from the Earth's surface across much of Africa and Asia.
Proba-2 was a secondary payload on the rocket which launched Esa's flagship "water mission" - the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (Smos) Earth Explorer.
Future Proba missions will be used by Esa to test new Earth observation techniques and the technology to fly spacecraft in formation.
Story from 
:
I had the wrong settings when she passed, i did not have the Auto Settings turned on!Will try again tomorrow at 10:41 UTC
ISS SSTV experiment
The Russian Federal Space website lists the International Space Station (ISS) MAI-75 experiment (Slow Scan TV on 145.800 MHz) taking place from Wednesday January 27 to Friday January 29.
This may mean Amateur Slow Scan TV (SSTV) may take place on one or more of these days. Previous activations of the SSTV system have produced some good images that can be seen on the ARISS SSTV picture gallery site.
The ISS puts out a strong signal on 145.800 MHz FM and a 2m handheld with a 1/4 wave ground-plane antenna will be enough to receive it. The FM transmission uses 5 kHz deviation which is standard in much of the world.
Many FM rigs in the UK can be switched between wide and narrow deviation FM filters so select the wider deviation. Handhelds all seem to have a single wide filter fitted as standard.
Free PC sound card Slow Scan TV software such as MMSSTV can be used to display the pictures and you can use software such as the IZ8BLY Vox Recoder to save the audio for later decoding if you are away at work.
Russian Federal Space - ISS Experiments January 25-31 (Google English)
http://tinyurl.com/yhy49t4
Information on the MAI-75 SSTV experiment
http://www.energia.ru/eng/iss/resear...cation-26.html
How to access the ISS Slow Scan TV
http://www.marexmg.org/fileshtml/howtoisssstv.html
Free Slow Scan TV Software MMSSTV uses your PCs Soundcard
http://mmhamsoft.amateur-radio.ca/
Again Many thanks to Skerries Radio Club for forwarding this information to me.
You can now follow the ISS (ZARYA) and its crew on Twitter.
and the rest of the crew are all Tweeting! on the Twitter network or you can just click on the NASA text below to bring you to the full list of followers in the sky's above.
The next pass of the ISS (ZARYA) is the 26 JAN 2010 17:55:40
Regards
EI1429 <--- "Don't forget to follow me too!"
Click here to go to the NASA Twitter Page
(CNN) -- In the brutal aftermath of Haiti's earthquake, Jean-Robert Gaillard turned to his low-tech radio for solace and for a lifeline.
When the earthquake hit, the 57-year-old from Petionville, Haiti, found most of his normal lines of communication -- his cell phone, the Internet, even his ability to walk down the street and talk to someone -- severed by the disaster.
But Gaillard used a neighbor's generator to power up his radio and connect to a handful of amateur radio enthusiasts in the United States -- many of whom were eagerly listening to radio static for calls like his.
Unlike many other people in Haiti, Gaillard was able to contact family members in the United States soon after the January 12 earthquake hit to tell them he had survived.
In those first hellish moments, that connection seemed like a miracle.
"It relieved the tension of my family members," he said, speaking by Skype from Haiti on Tuesday, which he says wasn't possible until more recently. "They could hear my voice. They knew that I was OK."
Much has been made about the role flashier technologies like Twitter, Skype and text messaging have played in helping disaster victims find loved ones and communicate with international aid workers. But it is worth noting that, when all else fails, the low-tech hum of a radio frequency is sometimes the only line of communication that's open.
iReport: Search list of the missing and the found
Enthusiasts of amateur radio -- or ham radio -- are quick to use this as evidence that international aid groups and governments should rely more heavily on radio in disaster situations. Ham radio signals bounce off of a layer of charged particles in Earth's atmosphere, called the ionosphere, and, depending on the conditions, can work at times when other modes of communication fail.
But amateur radio is best viewed as one of many communications options in the wake of a disaster, said Keith Robertory, manager of disaster services technology at the American Red Cross, who has been helping in Haiti relief efforts from Washington.
The best communication technology in a disaster, he said, is whatever happens to work at the time.
"Amateur radio is a very powerful tool if the amateur radio operators are in the area where the disaster occurs," he said. "There's a window of opportunity for amateur radio operators right at the beginning [of a disaster]. ... That's where they are extremely valuable."
Because that window has now passed, cell phone connections, text messages, Twitter posts and Skype calls are becoming more significant, he said.
A 23-year-old woman, for example, was rescued in Haiti after text messages were sent from beneath the rubble of a school building.
Full coverage | Twitter updates
Radio stations in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, have been broadcasting almost since the earthquake, providing the only means of communication for some people, Agence France-Presse reports.
Some mobile phone towers in Haiti fell during the earthquake, and cell phone service was not returned to much of the country until at least two days after the tremors first shook the poor Caribbean nation, according to a mobile phone company operating in Haiti.
About a third of people in Haiti have access to mobile phones, compared to nearly 90 percent of people in the United States.
Reports suggest Internet connections also were spotty in the earthquake's aftermath; and only about 11 percent of Haitians have access to the Web in non-disaster situations, according to the CIA World Factbook.
Aid groups and journalists have relied on satellite phones, which work independently from local Internet and mobile phone infrastructure as long as the sky isn't too cloudy.
Such technology isn't commonly available for disaster victims, however.
Carol Wilson, compliance director for Trilogy International Partners, which provides mobile phone service to about 1 million people in Haiti, said 80 percent of the company's cell towers in Haiti were working as of Tuesday.
The company is donating out $5 worth of free phone calls to its customers and is giving people double the amount of minutes they would normally get so they can catch up with loved ones and communicate with aid groups, she said.
The main problem with mobile phone connections now, she said, may be fuel, since generators are used to power most cellular towers in Haiti.
In the immediate wake of the disaster, before cell phone coverage was restored, William F. Sturridge, a ham radio operator in Flagler Beach, Florida, said he was able to connect a priest living on the remote Haitian village of Ile-a-Vache with his family members in the United States.
On Wednesday morning, the day after the earthquake hit, he said he heard a faint call of "hotel, hotel," which signifies the "HH" letters at the beginning of radio call signs in Haiti. He responded immediately.
"When other systems don't work, [radio] always works," he said. "It doesn't matter -- no matter where you are in the world ... you can get a [high-frequency] signal out and somebody will hear."
After connecting with the priest in Haiti, Sturridge said he called the man's brother to tell him his sibling had survived the earthquake.
"He was super worried," he said. "They hadn't heard from him, and it was wonderful to be able to pass the information and hear the relief in the voice."
Sturridge said he's been listening for radio calls from Haiti almost non-stop, with no sleep, since the earthquake hit a week ago. The 51-year-old is disabled, and he said the radio gives him a lifeline to the outside world as well.
"It's very difficult for someone who is bed-bound to be able to work and be able to enjoy the benefits of helping other people, so this is one way I can do this very easily," he said.
"Certainly, I can't think of anything more rewarding than saving a life."
While the ability for even one person to communicate with the outside world immediately after a disaster has potentially huge impact, the number of people making calls from Haiti by amateur radio appears to be very small.
Brian Crow, who has been communicating with people in Haiti by radio from outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, said only three people in Haiti have made contact with the United States by ham radio since the earthquake.
Crow said his primary role has been taking calls, finding out what aid is needed, and relaying the information to Web sites collecting news about missing people.
A number of sites -- including CNN's iReport and Google -- are creating databases with information about missing people in Haiti.
Other groups have put together population estimates based on satellite maps as a way for aid groups to target their relief efforts. And a site called Ushahidi is mapping text messages and calls for help in Haiti to give aid groups a better picture of dire needs for food, water and medical help.
Gaillard, the Haitian man who used ham radio to contact loved ones, said the week following Haiti's earthquake has been absolute hell.
But the fact that he could get on the radio and talk to people outside the situation made him feel connected to the world and has given him the strength to keep going.
"We are in God's hands now," he said.
I have just been playing with my new toy i got last week for my camera. I bought myself two lense filters from the recession busting Argos. The Ultraviolet and the Cir-Polarizing Filters.
The Cir-Polarizing Filter is a must buy if you are serious about the photos, For me photography was just “a-bit-of-a-laugh” Then someone handed me cash for some crappy little picture a had on the wall of a bird? What? Forty Quid!? Hear take it"! Will i carry it to the car for ya!?
Filters allow the photographer to have more control of the images being produced. Sometimes they are used to make only subtle changes to images; other times the image would simply not be possible without them.
So for some time now i have been taking this photography thing a little more seriously. Anyways i fitted this CPL filter to the camera and started rotating it to see for myself the effects,
These two photos show the difference in the photo when the lens is at one position and then the other.
Yes the phone is on at all times!
Here i took a photo of my garden. you can see the reflection of the kitchen curtains in the glass. Not good if you were trying to photograph the garden wildlife like i would be doing!
The photo on the right was taken seconds later when the filter was rotated clockwise about 90-110 degrees. You can still see the curtains in the lower right side of the shot but there is perfect line of sight to the top of the waste bins where the birds are normally fed.
Well worth the buy!
Approximately 7 km outside the town of Claremorris there is a killer waiting on the road for you in the form of a tarmacadam pot-hole. Not only is there one, but a hole family of them just waiting to take your car and rip it to pieces.
The image on the left is taken approximately a half of a mile from the area where the killer pot-holes are lying in wait. I would be understanding that when the countries infrastructure is damaged the county council of that area would be making sure something is done, and if there is nothing being done at the time they would warn people of the danger. “Not So”
What your looking at here is first killer hole to meat you when you come around the bend on the N60. This stretch of road is 100km/ph and is the main link between Castlerea and Castlebar.
“Oh yea” says the man, I could avoid that no problem, Well what about this one. The image on the right is next pot-hole you meet, Oh look there is a full size bottle of Lucozade in it. That bottle measures Just under 10inches, now to me that hole looks about 5-7 times bigger than that bottle of Lucozade. So tell me again, could you avoid it now when you have no warning? Ohh hang on. . . . What i meant to say was could you avoid it now when you have no warning in the dark at 100km/ph?. .
Well?…..
I doubt it!. Look out people, seriously. I measured the depth of this pot-hole, and it clocks in at 4 inches, one further up the road not as wide but measures in at 6inches. 
This might not mean anything to the normal Joe-Soap but if you were to be driving a Ford Fiesta or a Renault Clio, 6inches is just under half the height of your wheels, At 100km/ph it is going to do MAJOR Damage, Fuel Lines Ripped out, Break Lines ripped off or even a good chance of just Killing you pure and simple.
Please. . . Stay safe.
Location On Map
Scientists have produced a very unusual light show, engineering bacterial cells to fluoresce in synchrony.
The researchers turned the cells into synchronised "genetic clocks" - programming them to switch a fluorescent protein on and off.
These waves of activity could eventually be used to make biological sensors, or to programme cells to release timed doses of medicine.
The researchers report the advance in the journal Nature.
This is well worth a look!
Information by
President Obama wants answers on alleged cyber-attacks originating in China on the search giant Google, officials say.
A White House spokesman said Mr Obama wanted "some answers" and agreed those responsible should "face consequences". The comments came after China denounced US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's criticism of its internet restrictions, saying it was harming relations. Google has said it will decide shortly whether to end its China operations.
The company currently holds about one-third of the Chinese search market, far behind Chinese rival Baidu, which has more than 60%.
'Consequences'
Earlier on Friday, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said the US should "respect the facts" and stop making "groundless accusations". "The US has criticised China's policies to administer the internet, and insinuated that China restricts internet freedom," Ma Zhaoxu said. "This runs contrary to the facts and is harmful to China-US relations." The warning from Beijing came after Mrs Clinton said in a speech that the internet had been a "source of tremendous progress" in China, but that any country which restricted free access to information risked "walling themselves off from the progress of the next century". The private sector had a shared responsibility to safeguard freedom of expression and should take a "principled stand" against censorship, she said. Mrs Clinton also called on the Chinese authorities to investigate Google's complaint that hackers in China had tried to infiltrate its software coding and the e-mail accounts of human rights activists, in a "highly sophisticated" attack. "Countries or individuals that engage in cyber-attacks should face consequences and international condemnation," she added.
Speaking to reporters on board Air Force One on Friday, White House spokesman Bill Burton made it clear that President Obama agreed with her. "As the president has said, he continues to be troubled by the cyber-security breach that Google attributes to China," he said. "All we are looking for from China are some answers," he added. Chinese officials have repeatedly said that Google and other foreign internet companies are welcome to operate within China as long as they obeyed the country's laws and traditions. When the California-based company launched google.cn in 2006, it agreed to censor some search results - such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, Tibetan independence or Falun Gong - as required by the Chinese government.
Google now says it is looking at operating an unfiltered search engine within the law in the country, though no changes to filtering have yet been made.
China has more internet users - about 350 million - than any other country and provides a lucrative search engine market worth an estimated $1bn (£614m) last year.
An Irish internet forum which had to shut down after an attack on its user database has been restored.
Boards.ie, which had to shut down on Thursday afternoon, was restored on Friday evening. Part of the database which included members' usernames, email addresses and obfuscated passwords was accessed. The site had to send nearly 300,000 emails to users warning them of the breach and advising them to change their passwords. The site started life as a forum for the computer game Quake in 1998 and has more than 500 forums on a range of topics. According to the most recent ABC internet traffic statistics in November, Boards.ie had more than 20m page views, averaging more than 1.1m page views a day. Boards.ie said that an administrative account had been compromised and used to insert malicious software, which dumped the user table to a public directory from which it was downloaded. Irish police, the Data Protection Commissioner Billy Hawkes and an independent security consultant have been investigating the attack. The site said users who used their Boards.ie password on other sites with the same username/email should change it there as well. During the time the site was down users were kept updated on the social networking site Twitter about developments. Site users have welcomed the return of Boards.ie with one poster noting: "Thank God - my caffeine-free solidarity is over. I had already fallen off my chair in work."
A 22-day-old baby buried in rubble has been found alive more than a week after an earthquake turned Haiti into a disaster zone.
Oh look at this!, Someone is in trouble!
Former US senator John Edwards has admitted he is the father of a baby girl born to a woman with whom he was having an extra-marital affair.
Following progress online.
Shutter speed too slow.
Shaky Hand and slow shutter speed!
SATELLITE DATE TIME S-AZ MAX EL DURATION VISIBLE
ISS (ZARYA)
ISS (ZARYA)
ISS (ZARYA)
ISS (ZARYA)
ISS (ZARYA)
ISS (ZARYA)
ISS (ZARYA)
ISS (ZARYA)
ISS (ZARYA)
ISS (ZARYA)
ISS (ZARYA)
ISS (ZARYA)
ISS (ZARYA)
ISS (ZARYA)
ISS (ZARYA)
ISS (ZARYA)
ISS (ZARYA)
ISS (ZARYA)
ISS (ZARYA)
ISS (ZARYA)
ISS (ZARYA)
This is one of Aer Arann's (ATR 72-212A) in its new Celtic Colours. The new paint job was let loose on the public back in mid 2007 in the same location as today (EICM) Galway Airport. This baby has a range of 1,500km 
This light aircraft is one of the Galway Flying Clubs aircraft. This Cessna 172R is an all-metal, high-wing, tricycle undercarriage, four seat aircraft. This plane is equipped with the Garmin 1000 Electronic Flight Instrumentation display System (EFIS). 
A pilot on his lesson.
The same pilot aproching R26.
I do not have much information on this aircraft only that it belongs to Irish Helicopters Ltd
