A Ring Tone Meant to Fall on Deaf Ears

In that old battle of the wills between young people and their keepers, the young have found a new weapon that could change the balance of power on the cellphone front: a ring tone that many adults cannot hear.

In settings where cellphone use is forbidden — in class, for example — it is perfect for signaling the arrival of a text message without being detected by an elder of the species.

"When I heard about it I didn't believe it at first," said Donna Lewis, a technology teacher at the Trinity School in Manhattan. "But one of the kids gave me a copy, and I sent it to a colleague. She played it for her first graders. All of them could hear it, and neither she nor I could."

The technology, which relies on the fact that most adults gradually lose the ability to hear high-pitched sounds, was developed in Britain but has only recently spread to America — by Internet, of course.

Recently, in classes at Trinity and elsewhere, some students have begun testing the boundaries of their new technology. One place was Michelle Musorofiti's freshman honors math class at Roslyn High School on Long Island.

At Roslyn, as at most schools, cellphones must be turned off during class. But one morning last week, a high-pitched ring tone went off that set teeth on edge for anyone who could hear it. To the students' surprise, that group included their teacher.

"Whose cellphone is that?" Miss Musorofiti demanded, demonstrating that at 28, her ears had not lost their sensitivity to strangely annoying, high-pitched, though virtually inaudible tones.

"You can hear that?" one of them asked.

"Adults are not supposed to be able to hear that," said another, according to the teacher's account.

She had indeed heard that, Miss Musorofiti said, adding, "Now turn it off."

The cellphone ring tone that she heard was the offshoot of an invention called the Mosquito, developed last year by a Welsh security company to annoy teenagers and gratify adults, not the other way around.

A Ring Tone Meant to Fall on Deaf Ears

Reef at forefront of CO2 battle

UK scientists say it's now so badly damaged that another hurricane would simply sweep it away.

But they don't primarily blame hurricanes for the damage to the coral here on the Belize Barrier Reef; they blame climate change.

And they are backing a petition pressing the United Nations World Heritage Sites Committee to acknowledge that climate change is already damaging world heritage sites.

The five sites are the Belize Barrier reef, at 321km (200 miles) long, the biggest in the western hemisphere; the Australian barrier reef; and glacier parks in Nepal, Peru and the Rockies where glaciers are disappearing as the climate warms.

The World Heritage Sites Treaty stipulates that listed sites should not be damaged by signatories to the treaty, but it was mainly designed to protect the world's treasures in the event of wars.

The stakes are high because if the UN accepts the case, it might lead to poor countries attempting to sue rich countries for damages for the greenhouse gases they've emitted.

Scientists in Belize believe their case is strong. They say the 297km (185 mile) reef here has suffered more than 40% damage since 1998.

They particularly implicate three events of coral bleaching when water temperatures were high.

Corals get their colour from tiny single-cell plants - zooxanthellae - which provide for the reef-building creatures, the polyps.

When temperatures are very high for a protracted period, the zooxanthellae are driven away, the coral loses its colour, the polyps lose their food and so the reef is weakened.

The reefs then easily fall victim to the many forces that assail them - over-fishing, pollution, creatures that eat them, tourist snorkellers who inadvertently smother them with sand, and particularly the storm waves of hurricanes.

Local fishermen say there is no record of bleaching before 1998.

Reef at forefront of CO2 battle

The ultimate pain killer

Birth, fractures, abscesses ... when we feel the pangs, we suffer alone. Gene therapy may ease the effects.

"The greatest mistake in the treatment of diseases is that there are physicians for the body and physicians for the soul, although the two cannot be separated." - Plato

The experience and treatment of pain is one area of human health to which Plato's body and mind philosophy can be applied.

When a person experiences pain, whether the sharp and sudden pangs of acute pain or the exhaustion and depression of persistent pain, it can be extremely difficult for them to accept that only they can understand their pain.

"Pain is an entirely subjective human experience," says Professor Michael Cousins, director of the Pain Management Research Institute in Sydney. "The only person who knows what the experience of pain is, is that individual.

"You can't second-guess your neighbour's pain. There are a lot of misconceived ideas about it. People might say, 'She doesn't look as though she is in pain.' But what does a person in pain look like? It is very different for different people."

Cousins's pain institute was established in 1990. Two years ago, it identified pain as a disease in its own right, with its own set of symptoms and side-effects.

The ultimate pain killer

New Hammerhead Shark Species Found in U.S.

A new species of hammerhead shark has been discovered off the coast of South Carolina, but summer swimmers don't have to worry—it's the sharks that are in trouble, experts say.

The newfound shark species, which has not yet been named, is nearly identical to the scalloped hammerhead, a common Atlantic shark that can grow up to 10 feet (3 meters) long.

But the new species appears to be extremely rare—so much so that it may only breed in certain South Carolina bays.

Biologists at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, discovered the new species while studying the DNA of scalloped hammerheads. The researchers found that some hammerheads they examined had a significantly different genetic signature from the rest, despite their similar appearance.

A separate team led by Joe Quattro at the University of South Carolina in Columbia came to the same conclusion while studying the state's coastal shark stocks.

Discovery of the new hammerhead raises the need for better shark protection in the U.S., Quattro says.

"If South Carolina's waters are the primary nursery grounds for [this] species, and females gather here to reproduce, these areas should be conservation priorities," he said in a statement issued last week.

"Protecting this prime nursery habitat is vital to the survival of the species."

—Blake de Pastino

New Hammerhead Shark Species Found in U.S.

In the sights of a joystick killing machine

About 8,000 miles away, someone at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada could look at me through the Predator's zoom lens and determine whether I should live or die. I could not see the Predator or hear it, but I could imagine how it must feel in the control box at Nellis when a high-value target is in their sights.

"The heart beats faster and the concentration levels really kick in," said Capt. Jon Songer, the squadron leader of the 62nd Expeditionary Reconnaissance Flight.

The unsuspecting target has no clue that once the Predator locks on, the final moments of life are upon you. Nothing is seen, nothing is usually heard. It's a clinical, surreal form of destroying a target.

The Predator is the U.S. military's most sophisticated killing machine in the war on terror -- a flying assassin constantly searching for Osama bin Laden and other top al Qaeda members. In one successful strike in Yemen in late 2002, a CIA Predator killed six suspected al Qaeda members, including a former bin Laden security guard who was suspected of playing a key role in the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors.

"This is the way of the future," Songer said. "Just the ability from the other side of the world to locate and destroy enemy targets is incredible, unbelievable -- to be able to do this from Vegas and destroy high value targets, perhaps bin Laden himself one day."

In the sights of a joystick killing machine