Earth Observing-1: Ten Years of Innovation

Scheduled to fly for a year, designed to last a year and a half, EO-1 celebrated its tenth anniversary on November 21, 2010. During its decade in space, the satellite has accomplished far more than anyone dreamed.

"Earth-Observing-1 has had three missions," says mission manager Dan Mandl of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Its original mission was to test new technologies, a mission completed in the first year. Its second mission was to provide images and data. Its third mission was to test new cost-saving software that operates the satellite semi-autonomously and allows users to target the sensors.

All of the missions come down to one thing: "We're the satellite people can try things on." Mandl calls EO-1 NASA's on-orbit test bed, and the name rings true.

Testing New Technology: Faster, Better, Cheaper

EO-1 was commissioned as part of NASA's New Millennium Program, set up to develop and fly technology that would reduce the risk and cost of future science missions. In short, NASA told its engineers: find a way to fly faster, better, and cheaper.

"EO-1's primary purpose was to demonstrate that the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) was a suitable follow-on instrument for Landsat," says Bryant Cramer, the program manager at Goddard during EO-1's development and launch. Like Landsat-7, ALI records seven wavelengths of light reflected from Earth's surface. ALI also records an additional two wavelengths to improve measurements of forests and crops, coastal waters, and aerosols.

Later, an innovative new instrument, the Hyperion imaging spectrometer, was added to the mission. Hyperion records more than 200 adjacent wavelengths of light to even better understand the makeup of Earth's surface.

"EO-1 succeeded beyond anyone's expectations," says former project scientist Steve Ungar of NASA Goddard. He credits the mission's success to EO-1's "crackerjack team" of engineers and scientists, who were drawn to the mission because they recognized that they could have a stake in the future of satellite technology.

Hyperion

"Hyperion is probably the future of remote sensing," says Cramer. Hyperion is a hyperspectral instrument, a change in technology that is like going from black-and-white to color television, Mandl adds.

Other remote sensing instruments—multispectrometers—measure discreet wavelengths of light. It is as if your eyes could only see red and blue light; you could tell much about the world based on how much red and how much blue you saw, but your vision would have gaps in the green tones. A hyperspectral instrument corrects this color blindness by measuring many more wavelengths of light.

The science behind the hyperspectral instrument is spectroscopy, says current EO-1 project scientist, Elizabeth Middleton of NASA Goddard. "Spectroscopy is the study of constituents of materials using specific wavelengths," she notes. "Hyperion measures the chemical constituents of Earth's surface."

Space-based imaging spectroscopy enables a wide range of science, including tracking the amount of carbon plants take out of the atmosphere everywhere from the Amazon Rainforest to the Alaskan tundra. It also has been used to find evidence of microbial life in the Arctic and to monitor volcanic activity.

Perhaps the most important thing Hyperion has done, says Middleton, is teach the community how to work with complex hyperspectral data. Germany will soon launch the next hyperspectral instrument, EnMap, followed by NASA's HyspIRI satellite, which is still in the planning stage. Both missions build on lessons learned from Hyperion.

Advanced Land Imager

The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) was built, says Cramer, to test new technology and to provide a safe technology shift for future Landsat missions. The Landsat series of satellites has provided a continuous record of changes in Earth's landscape from 1972 to the present.

ALI differs from previous Landsat sensors because of how it takes images. Previous Landsat instruments scanned from side to side, like a whiskbroom. The image is built from horizontal strips of information. ALI, on the other hand, is more like a push broom. It has detectors arranged parallel to one another and facing forward, and they collect information in vertical strips. This arrangement eliminates the need for the sensor optics to move from side to side, and fewer moving parts means less chance of failure, says EO-1 engineer Stuart Frye of NASA Goddard.

After ten years of operation, ALI has proven that the push-broom technology is stable and reliable enough that the next Landsat satellite uses the same design. "The Landsat community is treating push-broom sensors like we've been building them for years," says Cramer. "That's a tribute to EO-1."

NASA's On-orbit test bed

As the EO-1 mission has aged, perhaps the most critical innovation has come from the onboard computer. "EO-1 has two separate computer processors with 256 megabytes of extra memory each," says Mandl. "It meant we had excess capacity to try new things."

The first new software loaded onto EO-1 was the Autonomous Science Experiment, an onboard intelligent scheduling tool that allows the satellite to decide for itself which images Hyperion and ALI should take. The on-board scheduler prioritizes requests based on what they are for (ranked by theme) and the weather.

"It's a customer-driven method of running a mission," says Mandl. Anyone from an archeologist to a disaster response agency can request images. "Flying a mission with a customizable user experience is one of EO-1's greatest achievement."

Sometimes the "customers" targeting EO-1 are other satellites. As part of SensorWeb, EO-1 automatically acquires images that are triggered by other satellites. For example, EO-1 monitors 100 volcanoes. When another satellite detects a hot spot at any of them, EO-1 automatically acquires an image on its next overpass. Hyperion records the temperature and position of lava flows, while ALI tracks ash plumes.

SensorWeb and the scheduling tool have saved money. "Initially, we were spending about $7,500 per image to acquire them. Now the cost is less than $600 a scene," says Cramer.

"EO-1 is one of the cheapest of NASA's Earth missions," confirms Middleton. These cost savings mean that anyone can now target EO-1 and access all data free of charge, making it useful to a growing range of people.

"EO-1 has done so many different things, NASA got three or four missions for the price of one," says Cramer. "We achieved all of the things that we hoped for and then some."

Online Atlas Shows Climate Change Impact on Forest Distribution Patterns in Iberian Peninsula

ScienceDaily — Researchers from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and CREAF have developed the Suitability Atlas of Woody Plants of the Iberian Peninsula, a series of digital maps available online which for the first time reveal the present and future degree of adaptation to climate conditions of the main plant species found in the forests throughout the Iberian Peninsula. Data shows the tendency of forests to move higher in altitude and migrate towards the north.
Today, territory and species conservation managers need to rely on data and empirical methods on which to base their protection policies. Within the context of Global Change, the maps offered can be useful to evaluate possible changes in the distribution of forests in the future, which could lead to an in depth study of mitigation and/or adaptation tools needed to face these changes.

Until now, a few maps had been drawn for specific woody plants or for partial areas of the peninsula. The Suitability Atlas of Woody Plants however offers a global view of the Iberian Peninsula. The series of maps were created to determine the degree of suitability to climate and/or topographic conditions of the forests' main woody plants. With the help of these maps one can verify, in an area of 200 metres, the topo-climatic suitability of the Iberian Peninsula. In addition, these values can be consulted for the current climatic scenario (1950-1998) and for future projections proposed by one of the foremost research centres dedicated to climate change, the Hadley Centre, located in Exeter, UK.

The Atlas combines advanced methodologies and technologies such as Geographic Information Systems, multivariate statistics and interoperable geoportals to offer both rigorous cartographic standards and information that can be consulted by the general public.

The Atlas was developed by a group of researchers from the UAB Department of Animal Biology, Plant Biology and Ecology, in collaboration with the Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF), under the framework of the R&D&I National Plan.

Main features of the Atlas

* Completeness: covering almost all woody species found in forests
* Quality initial data: both the Digital Climate Atlas of the Iberian Peninsula (ACDPI) and the third National Forest Inventory are cartography databases with high spatial resolution and with proven data quality.
* Detailed resolution: 200 m spatial resolution
* Objectivity: numerical quality (known level of error) calculated and documented for each map.
* Interoperability: format in which maps can be viewed allows users to contrast information with other map databases
* Accessibility: maps can be consulted online in GIS format without the need of additional installations.

First results

Researchers have already obtained the first scientific results with the help of Atlas data. They were able to verify that many species could be affected by the reduction in suitability in the regions they currently inhabit. They detected a tendency in forests to migrate towards higher altitudes and more northern latitudes. In this sense, mountain ranges such as the Pyrenees are seen as important protection areas of biodiversity within the context of Climate Change.

Nevertheless, not all species react the same when suffering the consequences of climate change. Species such as aleppo pine, stone pine, or holm oak are more resistant and may even occupy larger areas in the future. In contrast, species such as scots pine or beech are more affected by rising temperatures and longer dry periods and therefore the space they occupy may begin to decrease.

At these moments researchers are studying the total forest surface which could be lost or substituted by scrubs, as well as interactions between forest species when their area of distribution is modified. The fact that forest surfaces are decreasing is of great relevance, since this represents a reduction in CO2 consumption, an increase in the risk of land erosion and modifications in water cycles.

Developing Countries Can Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Help the Poor

ScienceDaily — In the developing world, reducing greenhouse gas emissions is often seen as being in conflict with alleviating poverty, since improving the standard of living is usually associated with increased energy use.
A clean energy development initiative in rural Nicaragua, however, demonstrates that there are cost effective steps developing nations can take to reduce carbon emissions and at the same time help the rural poor reduce their energy expenses, according to researchers from the University of California, Berkeley.

In a report in this week's issue of the journal Science, UC Berkeley graduate student Christian E. Casillas and professor Daniel M. Kammen analyze simple steps taken by Nicaragua's Ministry of Energy & Mines and the nonprofit blueEnergy to reduce the cost of energy while reducing carbon emissions for a community of 172 households on the country's Mosquito Coast.

The villages of Orinoco and Marshall Point are off the nation's electric grid and obtain their power from diesel generators, according to Casillas. Until last year, however, the homes had no electricity meters; homeowners were billed according to the appliances they owned. This, Casillas said, encouraged indiscriminate energy use, with lights, televisions and radios remaining on, even when not being used.

After the government installed meters, however, energy use dropped by 28 percent, and many people's electric bills also dropped.

The non-governmental organization blueEnergy, whose administrative office is in San Francisco, subsequently worked with the government to institute in Orinoco and Marshall Point a simple energy conservation campaign: Villagers were offered two efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL) in exchange for two incandescent bulbs. This program reduced household energy use by an additional 17 percent, on average.

The net result was less diesel burned, even allowing for the fact that the community's reduced energy needs allowed the local energy supplier to run its generators two extra hours each day, providing longer service to customers. In the month after the conservation campaign, electricity bills dropped in 37 percent of the households in Orinoco.

"What we are saying is, if you're thinking about some of the lowest hanging fruit to lower greenhouse gas emissions, rural communities should be one of the first places you look for making small but very cheap carbon reductions," said Casillas, who is an advisor to blueEnergy.

Microgrids like the one in Nicaragua, often powered by diesel generators, are found by the thousands around the world, particularly in India and China, Casillas added.

"They're dirty, have high emissions, high energy costs and questionable reliability, so targeting these microgrids has the potential for improving access to energy services for those communities while at the same time, for the dollars invested, getting greater reductions in carbon emissions than you might get investing in similar measures where the cost of energy is cheaper, such as in the cities," he said.

"We hope that this paper will spur a wave of efforts to build similar community level carbon abatement and energy service tools, so that communities often ignored or lumped together as 'those billions without modern energy' can create their own locally appropriate development goals, and groups working with them can develop energy solutions, not just efforts to disperse hardware," said Kammen, a Distinguished Professor of Energy at UC Berkeley who is currently serving as the chief technical specialist for renewable energy and energy efficiency for the World Bank. Kammen also is director of UC Berkeley's Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory and a professor in both the Energy and Resources Group and the Goldman School of Public Policy.

The researchers used an economic tool called a marginal abatement cost (MAC) curve to analyze energy use in the community and to pinpoint the areas where investments would save the most energy and the most money. The tool, popularized by the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, has typically been used on a global or country-wide scale to target areas for carbon abatement, but not for assessing small communities, Casillas said.

The cheapest investments for the impact turned out to be the ones taken by the government and blueEnergy, though the model predicts further energy and carbon savings from other simple measures, such as more effective public lighting and use of biogas and wind turbines.

"The advantage of this cost curve for local governments that may have as their mandate better energy services is that it can tell them what the cheapest investments are and how much emissions reductions they'll be able to get for their investments," Casillas said. "This allows them to see, with the limited funds available, how to get the most bang for the buck."

"This paper presents a theoretical and analytic framework that opens a vital new door to value the time, energy and opportunities for the rural poor and those on the outskirts of urban areas. It also recognizes the carbon and financial benefits of integrated strategies that combine energy efficiency with renewable energy to meet energy access, climate protection and economic development goals," Kammen said.

This work was supported by the Energy Foundation, the Karsten Family Foundation, and UC Berkeley's Class of 1935.

Nepali butler inherits New York fortune

By Salim Rizvi in New York

Until a few months ago, he was a butler in one of the more expensive residential buildings in Manhattan. But now, Nepal-born Indra Tamang is the owner of two multi-million dollar apartments in the same building.
The former owner - his former employer, Ruth Ford - died last year and left the apartments in the historic Dakota Building on the Upper West Side to Mr Tamang in her will, along with a valuable Russian surrealist art collection.

The estate is estimated to be worth nearly $10m (£6.8m).

Mr Tamang is happy but quickly points out that his good fortune did not come easily.

"I am happy and have been humbled by the generosity of the Ford family," he says. "I never expected that I will be given the ownership of these apartments.

"But I have been working for the family for the last 36 years, loyally, with honesty and dedication. So my hard work has been rewarded."

Relaxed masters

Mr Tamang was 21 when he was brought from Nepal as a domestic help by Charles Ford, a writer and a photographer.

Mr Ford died in 2002; his sister, actress Ruth Ford, then took charge and told Mr Tamang that he was like a brother to her after Charles's death.

"Charles was like my father," recalls Mr Tamang. "And Ruth has also been very kind to me and I took very good care of her. She used to lovingly call me 'Tamang darling'."

"They were very relaxed masters who treated me like a member of the family. I travelled with them all over the world."
Mrs Ford died aged 98. During the last five years of her life, she lost her eyesight and also developed speech problems. Mr Tamang looked after her most of the time and took care of her medicines and food.

He also worked with Charles Ford on various photography projects, which he now wants to keep as the photographer's legacy. He hopes to organise exhibitions of Mr Ford's photographs and compile a book of his works.

With the story of Mr Tamang's inheritance doing the rounds, the Dakota Building has seen an increase in visitor numbers. It also has links with the Beatles star John Lennon, who died there.

A doorman at the gate to the mansion block said he had been busy since morning, answering questions from visitors.

Mr Tamang plans to sell the bigger, three-bedroom apartment to pay the taxes he owes to the government on his inheritance.

He has not yet asked the co-operative board of the Dakota building for permission to live in his apartments.

But, he says: "The rules of the co-op might be a problem, as they require a minimum monthly income to qualify to live as owner of apartments."

For now, he plans to live in his modest home in Queens. "I have my small house here but I am happy with it," Mr Tamang says.

'Hard worker'

He first got news of the windfall last August, when the family's lawyers told him about the apartments left in his name.
However, the biological daughter of Ruth Ford challenged the will in court and the case was not settled until April this year.

The story made it into the press only this week. Since then, Mr Tamang has been interviewed by several TV channels from the US and abroad.

The former butler, now 57, insists that he has not changed at all following the unexpected turn in his life.

"I am the same Tamang as I have been before all this happened and I will remain like this in future too."

Friends have been coming from all over the city to congratulate him.

Friend and neighbour Narbada says: "Indra Tamang is a very honest and good person, always ready to help others. I am so happy for him, he deserves every bit of it. He worked very hard for many decades."

'Safety fears'

But one Nepali community activist, who did not want to give her name, said that many members of the community had not treated Mr Tamang well before the news of the multi-million dollar legacy started making the rounds.
Mr Tamang's wife, Radhika, is also not entirely happy with the turn of events.

She says that they have not received any money as yet - but they are still being projected as millionaires. She fears for the safety of the family. The couple have a 10-year-old daughter, Zina, who is also trying to figure out what has suddenly changed in their lives.

Mr Tamang says that he will get much less than the estimated $10m value of the legacy after taxes and fees.

But looking forward to receiving a sizeable sum, he says: "When I get some money from the sale of the apartment, I will try and pay the mortgage of my home in Queens. But I will keep my other apartment and use it for exhibitions etc."

Memoir plans

Mr Tamang was born in a small village called Fahil, in the Makanpur district of Nepal.
He says that his mother, two children from his first marriage and his brothers and sisters who still live in his village have no idea about his multi-million dollar inheritance thousands of miles away in New York.

He now plans to visit his family, whom he has not seen for many years.

He also encourages other Nepalis living in America to work hard and be honest in their work.

One day, he plans to write an autobiography, with some help from others. But for now, Mr Tamang plans to take it easy and relax for a while.

He has learnt his lesson from the life of his employers and plans to use his money with great caution.

"I think one should save money for old age. That's when you need it the most to get care," he says.

Wikileaks release of embassy cables reveals US concerns

Whistle-blowing website Wikileaks has released 250,000 secret messages sent by US embassies which give an insight into current American global concerns.

They include reports of some Arab leaders - including the Saudi king - urging the US to attack Iran and end its nuclear weapons programme.

Other concerns include the security of Pakistani nuclear material that could be used to make an atomic weapon.

The widespread use of hacking by the Chinese government is also reported.

The leaked US embassy cables also reportedly include accounts of:

* Corruption within the Afghan government, with concerns heightened when a senior official was found to be carrying more than $50m in cash on a foreign trip
* Bargaining to empty the Guantanamo Bay prison camp - including Slovenian diplomats being told to take in a freed prisoner if they wanted to secure a meeting with President Barack Obama
* The extraordinarily close relationship between Russian PM Vladimir Putin and his Italian counterpart Silvio Berlusconi
* Alleged links between the Russian government and organised crime
* American and South Korean officials' discussions about the prospects for a unified Korea should North Korea collapse as a viable state
* Sharply critical accounts of UK military operations in Afghanistan
The US government has condemned the release of state department documents.

"President Obama supports responsible, accountable, and open government at home and around the world, but this reckless and dangerous action runs counter to that goal," a White House statement said.

"We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorised disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information."

The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, says the US authorities are afraid of being held to account.

Earlier, Wikileaks said it had come under attack from a computer-hacking operation.

"We are currently under a mass distributed denial of service attack," it reported on its Twitter feed.

No-one has been charged with passing the diplomatic files to the website but suspicion has fallen on US Army private Bradley Manning, an intelligence analyst arrested in Iraq in June and charged over an earlier leak of classified US documents to Mr Assange's organisation.

Wikileaks argues that the site's previous releases shed light on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Engineers Assessing Cassini Spacecraft

Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., are working to understand what caused NASA's Cassini spacecraft to put itself into "safe mode," a precautionary standby mode. Cassini entered safe mode around 4 p.m. PDT (7 p.m. EDT) on Tuesday, Nov. 2.

Since going into safe mode, the spacecraft has performed as expected, suspending the flow of science data and sending back only data about engineering and spacecraft health. Cassini is programmed to put itself into safe mode automatically any time it detects a condition on the spacecraft that requires action from mission controllers on the ground.

Engineers say it is not likely that Cassini will be able to resume full operations before a planned Nov. 11 flyby of Saturn's moon Titan. But Cassini has 53 more Titan flybys planned in its extended mission, which lasts until 2017.

"The spacecraft responded exactly as it should have, and I fully expect that we will get Cassini back up and running with no problems," said Bob Mitchell, Cassini program manager based at JPL. "Over the more than six years we have been at Saturn, this is only the second safing event. So considering the complexity of demands we have made on Cassini, the spacecraft has performed exceptionally well for us."

Since Cassini launched in 1997, Cassini has put itself into safe mode a total of six times.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington

Nepal police disrupt Tibetan elections in Kathmandu

By Phurbu Thinley

Dharamsala, October 3: Nepal police in Kathmandu on Sunday disrupted Tibetan preliminary polls by confiscating ballot boxes already filled with thousands of ballots just an hour before the polls were due to be closed.
Several armed police arrived at different polling booths located in different parts of Kathmandu valley and confiscated ballot boxes filled with thousands of votes, a Tibetan voter from Boudha, a landmark Tibetan area in Kathmandu, told Phayul.

Hundreds and thousands of Tibetan exiles across the world on Sunday went to polls to cast their ballots to nominate candidates for the post of Prime Minister of the Tibet’s government in exile and members of the Tibetan Parliament-in-exile for the next year’s general elections.

The voting is to take place simultaneously from 9.am to 5.pm local time around the world.

Around 50 or 60 armed policemen arrived around 4.pm and confiscated all the ballot boxes and put them into police van, the Tibetan voter who identified himself as Wangdu, said.

According to Mr Tsering Dhondup, a local election officer in charge of Boudha-Jorpati area, police took away ballot boxes from at least three polling booths located in areas of Swayambu, Boudha and the main Kathmandu city circle.

“We have been told that the last-minute order was issued directly from the Home Ministry. Otherwise we have duly informed the concerned Nepali authorities well in advance about our poll schedules and at that time we have only been told to restrict our polls within the limit of the approved venues. Other than that there were no other objections from their side initially,” Dhondup added.

According to Dhondup, although no arrests were made, in some cases police even resorted to mild lathi-charge before forcefully taking away the ballot boxes.

He said efforts are underway to talk to concerned higher authorities about the matter.

“We don’t know yet where they took away the ballot boxes and everyone here is looking confused and helpless. Some of the Tibetans at the election scene even decided to stage protests, but the Tibetan elections officials stopped them from doing so,” Wangdu said.

Nepal government has lately vowed to check "anti-China activities" to strengthen friendly ties with China, a major donor for the impoverished country.

The forced disruption of Tibetan polls on Sunday follows a visit by 21-member high-level Chinese delegation led by He Yong, Secretary of the 17th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, to Nepal last month.

During the visit, the Chinese delegation reportedly expressed satisfaction over “Nepal’s ‘one China’ policy and the alertness adopted by the country over the Tibet issue”.

Prior to the Chinese delegation’s visit, the governments of the two countries had even agreed to set up a joint mechanism to help share intelligence on "anti-China activities" in Nepal.

Nepal, which is home to some 20,000 Tibetans, has accommodated Tibetan exiles for decades, but has come under increasing pressure from China to crack down on the political protests.

Under Beijing's influence and lack of stable government in the impoverished nation, rights groups say Tibetans refugees in Nepal are increasingly vulnerable and at risk of arrest and repatriation.

Strange Facebook Love Story Is Big Screen Hit

While the upcoming movie The Social Network is offering one view of Facebook, another big-screen release is taking a personal look at the power of internet site on a shoestring.
Low-budget documentary film Catfish has grossed £1m so far after being played at Sundance earlier this year and is predicted to take a whole lot more when it reaches cinemas.

Catfish tells the tale of Nev Schulman, a New York City photographer who develops a close online relationship with three members of a rural Michigan family.

It begins when the young daughter of the family, Abby, starts painting adaptations of some of the photographer's work.

Nev also starts an intense Facebook relationship with Abby's older sister, while conversing with the sisters' mother as well.
Schulman's filmmaker brother, Ari, and his business partner Henry Joost, frequently shot the dull day-to-day doings in the office shared by the three of them.

But when Nev started internet correspondence with an eight-year-old girl, an art prodigy, the filmmakers were intrigued, and began to fix their lenses on Nev's life.

Things soon got more intriguing when they begin to suspect not all was what this "Facebook family" was claiming.

With its story of the possibilities and pitfalls of personal connection through the internet, Catfish is said to play like a scrappy sequel to The Social Network.

"The Social Network is obviously an explanation as to the construction of that world, and into the mind of the man who invented it," Schulman said.

"But Catfish is really a story about where it has taken us, and the real-life implications of what that website has created.

"So, I think they are a terrific double feature. I recommend seeing The Social Network and then going to see Catfish. It is wonderful because it is more than anything the start of a conversation."

Strange Facebook Love Story Is Big Screen Hit

While the upcoming movie The Social Network is offering one view of Facebook, another big-screen release is taking a personal look at the power of internet site on a shoestring.
Low-budget documentary film Catfish has grossed £1m so far after being played at Sundance earlier this year and is predicted to take a whole lot more when it reaches cinemas.

Catfish tells the tale of Nev Schulman, a New York City photographer who develops a close online relationship with three members of a rural Michigan family.

It begins when the young daughter of the family, Abby, starts painting adaptations of some of the photographer's work.

Nev also starts an intense Facebook relationship with Abby's older sister, while conversing with the sisters' mother as well.
Schulman's filmmaker brother, Ari, and his business partner Henry Joost, frequently shot the dull day-to-day doings in the office shared by the three of them.

But when Nev started internet correspondence with an eight-year-old girl, an art prodigy, the filmmakers were intrigued, and began to fix their lenses on Nev's life.

Things soon got more intriguing when they begin to suspect not all was what this "Facebook family" was claiming.

With its story of the possibilities and pitfalls of personal connection through the internet, Catfish is said to play like a scrappy sequel to The Social Network.

"The Social Network is obviously an explanation as to the construction of that world, and into the mind of the man who invented it," Schulman said.

"But Catfish is really a story about where it has taken us, and the real-life implications of what that website has created.

"So, I think they are a terrific double feature. I recommend seeing The Social Network and then going to see Catfish. It is wonderful because it is more than anything the start of a conversation."

Nepal media aggressively targets Indian Embassy, Kantipur takes the lead

Including several professional media organizations, Nepal’s main opposition Unified Maoists’ Party and the leaders of various political parties have heavily come down against the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu, under the dynamic leadership of Ambassador Rakesh Sood, for violating diplomatic norms and also blamed for blatant interference in Nepal’s media.
The media organizations, the main-opposition and leaders have been criticizing a press-release issued by the Indian mission which claimed referring to Indian Joint-Ventures in Nepal that certain print and television media houses (in Nepal) had approached them for release of advertisements.
The Indian embassy press release also claimed that the Indian JVs were threatened with negative publicity if requests for release of advertisements were not met with.
Money matters!
The Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ), Revolutionary Journalists’ Association and the Press Council-a statutory body constituted and controlled by Nepal government have collectively deplored the press-statement of the Indian Embassy.
Jolt in series. Bad days for India in Nepal. Poor India.
“The Indian Embassy in the past had threatened the media here in Nepal for publishing the news of blocking consignment of newsprints at the Kolkata port by India”, the joint statement made by FNJ-Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Bhaktapur district chapters read.
Friendship shattered! So sad.
“Such events have exposed Indian Interference in series”, the statement also adds insult to injury.
Narayan Sharma of Press-Council states that India has been ignoring diplomatic norms and that it has begun interfering in affairs exclusive to Nepali media.
Mr. Sharma was handpicked by the Maoist led government and made the Press Council Chairman.
Similarly, Nepal’s main opposition Unified Maoists’ Party has also deplored the act of the Indian Embassy in making a statement against the Nepali media. The party has also demanded apology from Indian Embassy to the free media here.
Asking the absurd. Good joke indeed.
“Our central committee meeting has deplored the act of Interference of the Indian Embassy”, said vice chairman Narayan Kaji Shrestha.
The so-called democratic parties, the Nepali Congress and the UML are yet to criticize the event.
This has some meaning underneath.
Similarly, making exclusive comments to the Kantipur National Daily August 30, 2010, Chakra Prasad Bastola of the Nepali Congress, Pradip Nepal of UML, Devendra Poudel of Unified Maoists’ Party, Jay Prakash Gupta of Madhesi Janaadhikar Forum-Nepal and Sarita Giri of Sadvawana Party too have criticized the Indian Embassy for targeting the Nepali media.
Those who have made scathing comments against the Indian Embassy, mentioned above, were at one time in the not so distant past very very friendly to India.
But why they are distancing themselves? Naughty Nepali political animals.
Some may have, it could be presumed, talked against the Embassy with “heavy hearts”.
The Kantipur, Nepal’s largest circulating daily has penned an editorial in the issue.

Stand aside, the behe-moths of the insect world have arrived

With their stunning colours and 12in wingspan they're not the sort of insect you could ignore.

And now not just one but nine of the world's largest moths have hatched at a butterfly sanctuary in Gloucestershire.
The giant Atlas moths emerged from their chrysalises at Berkeley Castle Butterfly House
Atlas moths are named after the intricate, colourful map-like patterns on their wings It is the first time the moths have successfully bred and hatched offspring in two years.
The moths, which do not have fully-formed mouths and survive off fat they built up as caterpillars, only live for a maximum of two weeks.
They are unsteady fliers and they do not stray far. Their sole purpose of life as a moth is to breed. Atlas moths are found in the tropical and subtropical forests of South-East Asia and are common across the Malay archipelago.

Millions of rural poor in Nepal could face more hunger as a result of climate change; situation “deeply worrying”

Poor crop yields, water shortages and more extreme temperatures are pushing rural villagers closer to the brink as climate change grips Nepal, according to a new report launched by the international aid agency Oxfam.

In the report, “Even the Himalayas Have Stopped Smiling: Climate Change, Poverty and Adaptation in Nepal”, farmers told Oxfam that changing weather patterns had dramatically affected crop production, leaving them unable to properly feed themselves and getting into debt. Oxfam called the situation “deeply worrying.”

“Communities told us crop production is roughly half that of previous years. Some said that while they used to grow enough food for three to six months of the year, last year many could only grow enough for one month’s consumption,” said Oxfam’s Nepal country director, Wayne Gum. ”Poor farmers rely on rainfall. They farm small areas of land which, at the best of times, can barely produce enough food for the family.”

Currently, more than 3.4 million people in Nepal are estimated to require food assistance, due to a combination of natural disasters, including last year’s winter drought - one of the worst in the country’s history. Higher food prices have also reduced people’s ability to purchase food. Although single drought events cannot be attributed to climate change, climate models predict less winter rain, indicating how the current situation could get worse.

Among recent changes in weather patterns in Nepal are an increase in temperature extremes, more intense rainfall and increased unpredictability in weather patterns, including drier winters and delays in the summer monsoons. The melting of the Himalayan glaciers will also be felt well beyond Nepal’s borders. Scientists warn that if the Himalayan glaciers disappear – with some predicting this could happen within 30 years – the impact would be felt by more than one billion people across Asia.

Some of the heaviest burdens have fallen on women who are on the frontline of climate change. They have to travel further distances to fetch water and take on the responsibility for feeding the family as men in many poor households migrate seasonally to seek work.

“The predicted impacts of climate change will heighten existing vulnerabilities, inequalities and exposure to hazards”, said the report.

“Poor and marginalized communities tend to be those most vulnerable to climate change and least able to cope with weather-related disasters because of lack of access to information and resources to reduce their risk.”

Nepal is one of the world’s poorest nations, with 31% of its 28 million population living below the poverty line. Most of Nepal’s poor live in rural areas that are most at risk to disasters such as floods and landslides.

Oxfam says more work needs to be done in Nepal by the government and international organisations to create greater awareness about climate change and its likely impacts, to prioritize and institutionalize actions at national level; and help communities to play a greater role themselves in initiatives to reduce their vulnerability.

Nepal is extremely vulnerable to climate change; yet has one of the lowest emissions in the world – just 0.025% of total global greenhouse gas emissions