Nokia sees cellphone, gear market falling in 2009

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Top handset maker Nokia Oyj said on Friday the world's mobile phone market would fall in the fourth quarter and next year as an economic slowdown crimps consumer demand around the world.

It forecast 1.24 billion phones would be sold worldwide this year, down from a previous estimate of 1.26 billion, and said handset market volumes and the overall telecommunications equipment market was expected to fall next year.

"The warning dovetails well with Qualcomm and Intel -- rapid recent deterioration of consumer electronics demand," said analyst Tero Kuittinen at Global Crown Capital.

The worst financial crisis in 80 years has weakened economies around the world and official data on Friday showed the economy of the 15-nation euro zone shrank for the second quarter in a row.

"In the last few weeks, the global economic slowdown, combined with unprecedented currency volatility, has resulted in a sharp pull back in global consumer spending," Nokia said in a statement.

The strengthening U.S. dollar and yen are pushing up component prices for handset manufacturers, while weakening currencies in emerging markets are hurting the purchasing power of consumers in Nokia's key markets.

"Developed markets will fare worse and developing markets will fare better," Nokia Chief Financial Officer Rick Simonson told an investor call.

Nokia said the increasingly limited availability of credit was also hurting, something analysts agreed with.

"We have been hearing about operators and distributors reducing their handset stock to an absolute minimum due to a credit shortage for the past few weeks," said analyst Neil Mawston of Strategy Analytics.

Nokia shares fell more than 7 percent to 9.56 euros on Thursday, their lowest since August 2004, but later recovered and closed down 3.7 percent at 9.95 euros in Helsinki. In New York, Nokia's ADRs closed 11.02 percent lower at $12.59.

Kulbinder Garcha, an analyst with CSFB, said companies heavily exposed to the North American and Western European markets -- such as Motorola Inc and Sony Ericsson -- faced tough times.

"The one segment of the market that will grow in 2009 is smartphones, so in the industry, Apple, HTC and RIM will outpace the others," Garcha said.

BLACK CHRISTMAS

Nokia now expects fourth-quarter industry volumes to be around 330 million mobile devices, down from a year ago, and well below the 346 million average forecast in a Reuters poll earlier this month.

"As the dominant handset vendor, Nokia's warning bodes poorly for the entire handset industry and the supply chain as a whole," analyst Mark Sue from RBC Capital Markets, said in a research note.

Nokia's forecasts sent wireless stocks lower in Europe and North America, with Alcatel-LucentMotorola down 10.9 percent, RIM losing 8.5 percent and Apple off 6.4 percent. falling 3.4 percent,

Nokia expected its market share in the fourth quarter to be around 38 percent or slightly higher, but sales and profitability for key devices and services would be hurt. Reaching a 20 percent operating profit margin at the unit was not on the horizon and it would take decisive action to reduce its cost base significantly.

"You absolutely have to be brutal about prioritizing what you are going to continue to invest (at) the right pace and that means you have to cut some things off the bottom that would be nice to do, but they aren't necessary to do. We are absolutely going through that process," said Simonson.

Nokia's network gear making venture, Nokia Siemens Networks, said earlier this week it would cut 1,820 jobs, most in Finland and Germany. Nokia said earlier this month it would cut some 600 jobs in marketing and research.

Darwin's mockingbirds featured in London exhibit

LONDON – Two dead birds, one big idea.

Mockingbirds collected by Charles Darwin on the Galapagos Islands may not be the most visually exciting part of an exhibition that opened Friday at the Natural History Museum, but they stimulated the thinking that led to the theory of evolution.

The specimens have never before been on public display.

Darwin found that the mockingbirds he saw in the Galapagos Islands in September and October of 1835 were different from the ones he had seen all over South America.

"It struck him immediately that is was a very different bird: it's bigger, it has this dark chest, the bill is quite long," said Jo Cooper, the museum's curator of birds.

Darwin noted greater variations in the birds from different islands in the Galapagos than he had seen on the continent, "and that really made him start thinking," Cooper said.

It set Darwin on a course that challenged the prevailing idea that each species was distinct and unchanged — or stable — since the moment it was created.

"When I see these Islands in sight of each other and possessed of but a scanty stock of animals, tenanted by these birds but slightly different in structure and filling the same place in Nature, I must suspect they are only varieties," he wrote, adding: "If there is the slightest foundation for these remarks, the zoology of archipelagoes will be well worth examining; for such facts would undermine the stability of species."

The museum's exhibition includes live specimens of the green iguana and a horned frog, animals Darwin saw; the first known sketch by Darwin of an evolutionary tree of life; and a recreation of Darwin's study at his home in Kent in southeastern England.

There are also some hairs, believed to be from Darwin's beard, which were kept by his daughter Etty.

While serving as a naturalist aboard the Beagle from 1831 to 1836, Darwin collected six mockingbirds in South America and four from the Galapagos, one from each of the largest islands.

The type he found on Floreana island became extinct there later in the 19th century, but a few more than a hundred Floreana mockingbirds now survive on two nearby small islands, Champion and Gardner.

In May, the Floreana mockingbird was listed as critically endangered, the highest threat category of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Mockingbirds on two other large islands of the Galapagos are listed as endangered.

The two birds on display, and two others in the museum collection, are doing their bit to save the Floreana mockingbird.

Bits of the footpads snipped from each bird are being analyzed to establish a DNA profile to assist in breeding and selecting birds to establish a new population on Floreana. Karen James, a molecular biologist at the museum, said results have been encouraging.

"It's really important when you're examining DNA from old specimens that you don't get contamination from other specimens in the same drawer or laboratory," James said.

"Preliminary results are looking promising. It looks like not only have we got usable DNA from the footpads, but they also share genetic markers with the surviving birds on the satellite islands."

The Charles Darwin Foundation, which maintains a research station in the Galapagos, is heading a 10-year project which includes eradicating nonnative species on Floreana, establishing a captive breeding program and finally reintroducing birds to the wild.

The Darwin exhibition leads into next year's celebrations of the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth on Feb. 12, and the 150th anniversary of "On the Origin of Species" on Nov. 24.

Which Came First? Eggs Before Chickens, Scientists Now Say

A rare fossilized dinosaur nest helps answer the conundrum of which came first, the chicken or the egg, two paleontologists say.

The small carnivorous dinosaur sat over her nest of eggs some 77 million years ago, along a sandy river beach. When water levels rose, Mom seems to have fled, leaving the unhatched offspring.

Researchers have now studied the fossil nest and at least five partial eggs. The nest is a mound of sand that extends about 1.6 feet (half a meter) across and weighs as much as a small person, or about 110 pounds (50 kg).

"Some characteristics of the nest are shared with birds, and our analysis can tell us how far back in time these features, such as brooding, nest building, and eggs with a pointed end, evolved - partial answers to the old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg," said researcher Francois Therrien, curator of dinosaur paleoecology at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta, Canada.

The answer?

Well, it's still unclear whether chicken eggs or chickens came first (the intended question in the original riddle), said Darla Zelenitsky, a paleontologist of the University of Calgary in Alberta who was the first scientist to closely analyze the dinosaur nest.

But interpreted literally, the answer to the riddle is clear. Dinosaurs were forming bird-like nests and laying bird-like eggs long before birds (including chickens) evolved from dinosaurs.

"The egg came before the chicken," Zelenitsky said. "Chickens evolved well after the meat-eating dinosaurs that laid these eggs."

So the original riddle might now be rephrased: Which came first, the dinosaur or the egg? Meanwhile, the new nest provides some of the strongest evidence in North America in favor of the bird-like egg over the chicken.

Rare dino nests

The fossil nest was collected in the 1990s and kept at Canada Fossils Limited in Calgary, Alberta. That's where Zelenitsky first spotted the remains, which were labeled at first as belonging to a duck-billed dinosaur, an herbivore. (In 2007, the fossil was acquired by the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Alberta.)

Zelenitsky realized that the nest and eggs actually belonged to a small theropod, a meat-eating dinosaur. In particular, the egg-layer was likely a maniraptoran, the group of theropods that paleontologists think birds derived from some 150 million years ago during the Jurassic Period.

"Nests of small theropods are rare in North America and only those of the dinosaur Troodon have been identified previously," said Zelenitsky. "Based on characteristics of the eggs and nest, we know that the nest belonged to either a caenagnathid [a family of maniraptorans] or a small raptor, both small meat-eating dinosaurs closely related to birds."

She added, "Either way, it is the first nest known for these small dinosaurs."

The only other egg clutch identified to date from a maniraptoran in North America belonged to Troodon formosus.

Egg-laying behaviors

The analysis of the nest, detailed in the latest issue of the journal Palaeontology, provides paleontologists with information about egg-laying in this particular dinosaur and others, along with the evolution of various egg-laying behaviors, Therrien said.

"Our research tells us a lot about the dinosaur that laid the eggs and how it built its nest," he said.

For instance, the position and spacing of the eggs suggest the original clutch contained at least 12 eggs arranged in a ring around the mound's flat top, where the theropod would have sat and brooded its clutch. The eggs were about 5 inches (12 cm) long and, like bird eggs, they were pointed at one end.

The analysis also suggests the dinosaur laid its eggs two at a time on the sloping sides of the mound. That's unlike, say, crocodiles, which lay all their eggs at once, and more like birds, which lay one egg at a time. (The ancestors of crocodiles gave rise to dinosaurs and later on, birds.)

As if figuring out the chicken-egg puzzle weren't enough, the researchers also have another objective: "To find the same kind of nest with babies inside," Zelenitsky told LiveScience. "There are dinosaur eggs from North America with baby bones preserved inside of them. It's entirely possible, but again these types of nests (from small meat-eating dinosaurs) are fairly rare."

The research was funded by Richard and Donna Strong, the Alberta Ingenuity Fellowship Fund and the Killam Fellowship Fund.

• Avian Ancestors: Dinosaurs That Learned to Fly
• Birds of Prey: Spot Today's Dinosaurs
• Dino Quiz: Test Your Smarts

• Original Story: Which Came First? Eggs Before Chickens, Scientists Now Say

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Endeavour astronauts board ISS

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Astronauts aboard space shuttle Endeavour and the International Space Station have opened a hatch between their two vessels and met amid handshakes and hugs 223 miles (360 kilometers) above the South Pacific Ocean.

The hatch sprung open at 7:16 pm (0016 pm Monday), two hours after Endeavour docked at the ISS and almost 48 hours into its 15-day mission to expand the living quarters of the orbiting space station.

"Welcome Endeavour ... we understand that this house is in need of an extreme makeover and that you are the crew to do it. We're really glad to see you ... Welcome to space," ISS commander Mike Fincke told the seven arriving Endeavour astronauts in a welcoming ceremony.

Before the two crafts linked up, the Endeavour, piloted by commander Chris Ferguson, performed a backflip so astronauts aboard the station could photograph its heat shield for closer analysis.

On Saturday, crew members used the shuttle's robotic arm and an attached boom extension to check the spacecraft's underside, nose cap and leading edges of the wings as well as hard to reach surfaces.

The five-hour examination revealed that a 30 by 45 centimeter (12 by 18 inch) piece of thermal blanket on the rear top of the orbiter apparently ripped off during launch, according to NASA engineers back on Earth who viewed the images sent by the shuttle.

The gap in the heat shield, however, was considered "of no great concern since it is not an area that experiences high heat during reentry," NASA said in a statement.

The task of the Endeavour will be to repair the station's power-generating solar arrays and expand its living quarters to accommodate bigger crews.

"This mission is all about home improvement," Ferguson said this week during launch preparations. "Home improvement inside and outside the station."

It will be the most extreme home makeover ever attempted by NASA astronauts. The additions will include two new sleeping quarters, exercise equipment, a second toilet, two new ovens to heat food, a refrigerator for food and drinks, a freezer and an oven for scientific experiments.

Endeavour is carrying 14.5 tonnes of material and equipment to the Italian module Leonardo, allowing for the ISS crew to expand from three to six in 2009.

As one NASA expert described earlier this week, the upgrades will effectively turn the ISS into "a five-bedroom two-bath house with a kitchen, and support six residents on a continuing basis."

The astronauts also will be installing a system that can turn urine back into drinking water. The 250-million-dollar upgrade will allow enough recycling for a six-person ISS crew to sharply reduce the amount of water that has to be flown up from Earth.

Four planned spacewalks during the mission will focus on servicing the station's solar wings, mainly the large joints that allow the apparatus to rotate to track the sun.

The first spacewalk begins on the fifth day of the mission.

The 27th shuttle flight to the orbiting space station and the fourth and final shuttle mission for 2008 consists of a crew of five men and two women, all Americans.

While docked to the ISS, the Endeavour astronauts and the three-man ISS crew will mark the 10th anniversary of the ISS, a multi-billion-dollar collaborative effort between the space agencies of Canada, Europe, Japan, Russia and the United States.

Endeavour's crew includes commander Ferguson, 47, co-pilot Eric Boe, 44, and five other mission specialists including Sandra Magnus, 44.

She will replace compatriot Greg Chamitoff as ISS Expedition 18 flight engineer. Chamitoff is scheduled to return to Earth on Endeavour in late November while Magnus is to stay on through February 2009.

Endeavour's mission is scheduled to end November 29, though NASA has said the flight could well be extended a day.

Indonesia quake kills 2, buildings collapse

JAKARTA, Indonesia – A powerful earthquake jolted eastern Indonesia on Monday, killing at least two people, crumpling homes and briefly triggering a region-wide tsunami warning, officials said as they surveyed the damage.

The 7.5-magnitude quake struck off the coast of Sulawesi island in the middle of the night, sending thousands fleeing homes, hotels and even hospitals.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake struck 85 miles from the nearest city, Gorantalo, on Sulawesi island. It was centered 16 miles beneath the sea and was followed by two strong aftershocks.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center initially warned the temblor had the potential to generate a destructive tsunami along coasts within 600 miles. But even after local officials lifted the tsunami alert, frightened Sulawesi residents refused to go back indoors.

In December 2004, a massive earthquake off Indonesia's Sumatra island triggered a tsunami that battered much of the Indian Ocean coastline and killed more than 230,000 people — 131,000 of them in Indonesia's Aceh province alone. A tsunami off Java island last year killed nearly 5,000.

By morning, officials were starting to get a better sense of the damage.

Rustam Pakaya, the head of the Health Ministry's Crisis Center, said at least two people died, 37 were injured and more than 200 homes were damaged, some of them completely crumpled.

Robert Bano, a resident in the provincial capital, said the massive quake shook his house for more than two minutes, knocking paintings from the wall. He grabbed his crying children and, along with many others, ran outside

Some fled to high ground, others gathered in the streets.

A few guests streaming from Paradiso Hotel were so afraid they fainted, the official news agency Antara reported.

A witness in the city of Poso said patients from at least one hospital were evacuated.

Indonesia is prone to seismic upheaval due to its location on the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire," an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.

NASA turns to open-source problem-tracking databases (CNET)

When the Space Shuttle Endeavour launches Friday afternoon, assuming it is not delayed, the astronauts onboard and the technicians on the ground at mission control will have at their disposal new software that could streamline the process of problem reporting and analysis.

The software, called the Problem Reporting Analysis and Corrective Action (PRACA) system, was created by the Human-Computer Interaction Group at NASA's Ames Research Center, and is designed to give a wide cross-section of people in the Space Shuttle ecosystem access to a single database package for tracking problems with the Shuttle and its associated infrastructure.

According to Alonso Vera, the lead of the Ames Human-Computer Interaction Group, the single, universally accessible PRACA package is replacing a set of more than 40 different database systems that had been used over the past 30 years by the many different parts of that Shuttle ecosystem.

And, like a related database system known as Items for Investigation (IFI) that is used for tracking International Space Station issues, the new PRACA was written using open-source Bugzilla tools that will save NASA considerable amounts of time and money.

Vera wouldn't say exactly how much the new systems cost to build, but he said they were an order of magnitude cheaper than what was being used before, closer to $100,000 than the $1 million it would have cost in the past.

More to the point, Vera explained, by using open-source Bugzilla tools, technicians will be able to make changes to either PRACA or IFI more or less on the fly, rather than having to submit any proposed changes to the publishers of proprietary software, steps that often took weeks to achieve.

The PRACA system is used, Vera said, to help anyone trying to diagnose problems with the Shuttle find reports of similar issues from the past to see how they were resolved. The IFI system, by contrast, is used by those involved with the Space Station to report new problems for later analysis.

Already, the new PRACA systems are being used in NASA's Constellation program, which will replace the Space Shuttle after 2010. But Friday's launch will be the first live test of the system, given that Constellation has yet to go into space. However, since it's only a test, the existing PRACA system will also be used.

Similarly, the Space Station program has now phased out its older IFI system and turned on the new version.

Vera said that the Space Shuttle program has yet to commit fully to the new PRACA system, though the Space Station program will do a full switchover in March 2009.

Gadget survey finds many bugs can't be fixed (AP)

NEW YORK - Gadget makers love to sell us on all the things their devices can do, whether it's letting us chat with distant friends at any time or watch movies on our commute. But can anyone fix this stuff when it breaks?

That's a question raised by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which discovered in a survey released Sunday that 15 percent of people who had some piece of technology break down in the previous year were never able to get it repaired.

The figure was even higher for certain products. Almost a quarter of cell phone users said they never managed to get their device fixed. And among those who did resolve an issue, a higher percentage either corrected the problem themselves or sought help from friends or relatives rather than call customer service.

"That 15 percent of technology users are sort of throwing up their hands was surprising for us," said John Horrigan, the author of the study. "You're talking about close to one in four cell phone users and one in five computer users saying, `Hey I can't cope with this any longer, I'm done.'"

The survey covered computers, Internet service, music players, cell phones and their higher-end siblings known as "smart" phones. And while the results are no conclusive verdict on the state of customer care in the digital age, analysts say the figures indicate the growing complexity of technology.

Zachary McGeary, an analyst with Jupiter Research, noted that gadgetry now involves an "increasingly integrated ecosystem of devices." In other words, it isn't enough anymore for cell phones and computers to simply work on their own. They also have to get along with each other, and swap video and pictures.

As providing technical support becomes more complicated, some companies have started tapping online communities to offer help, taking advantage of tech-savvy customers who enjoy trading tips online. This method can be best for solving problems that involve multiple devices made by different companies, said Lyle Fong, chief executive of Lithium Technologies Inc., which sets up such customer forums for businesses.

For example, imagine you're trying to get one manufacturer's laptop to work with another company's printer. "Which company do you call for issues like this?" Fong said.

However, for all the talk about online communities, the Pew survey showed only about 2 percent of people solved their technology problem online.

About 38 percent of respondents called customer service, 28 percent fixed the problem themselves and 15 percent got help from friends or relatives.

The rest — about 15 percent — gave up.

Horrigan said that reflected a common thread in the survey: that most people still don't understand the technology they use in their daily lives. For instance, about half of adults who use cell phones or the Internet usually needed someone to show them how to use it or set it up.

Once they were up and running, not all was fine: Nearly 40 percent of computer users said their machine stopped working properly at some point in the past year. Almost 30 percent of cell phone users said the same.

Horrigan argues these statistics should sway technology providers to focus harder on making their products more user-friendly.

Ask Avery Griffin, who switched to an Apple Inc. computer a few years ago for its audio recording software. The 24-year-old musician said his new machine wouldn't stop freezing up and crashing. But he said all he heard from Apple was, "At least it's not a PC."

The PC he uses now works just fine, he said.