2006-12-27

Disappearing world: Global warming claims tropical island

Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time
washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration
of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges
and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the
moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of
environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true.







As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations,
from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of
countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of
coastal cities.


Eight years ago, as exclusively reported in The Independent on
Sunday, the first uninhabited islands - in the Pacific atoll nation of
Kiribati - vanished beneath the waves. The people of low-lying islands
in Vanuatu, also in the Pacific, have been evacuated as a precaution,
but the land still juts above the sea. The disappearance of Lohachara,
once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented.

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2099971.ece





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2006-12-20

Epson cranks out "world's smallest" GPS module

Apparently Epson is hoping that small is in, as the firm is pumping out yet another "world's smallest" object, and this time it's a wee-sized GPS
module. Crafted specifically for tiny applications like mobile
handsets, the S4E19863 measures just 7- x 6- x 1.28-millimeters and
purportedly holds the title for "world's smallest GPS chip." Already
available in NTT DoCoMo's FOMA 903i
series, Epson has begun shipping these things in bulk, hoping to add
GPS functionality to other miniscule handsets as well. Built to receive
even the faintest signals indoors and out, the chip also boasts
"3GPP-compliant positioning modes (MS-Based, MS-Assisted and
Autonomous)" to offer greater compatibility across the board. Plus, we
bet it's just a matter of time before these tiny positioning modules
are up and running in some streamlined dog collar for the "anxious pet owner" crowd.



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