(03-04) 18:39 PST Redmond, Wash. (AP) —

Microsoft researchers from around the world gathered at the software maker’s headquarters Tuesday to show off projects dealing with subjects as tiny as individual cells and as large as the universe.

The WorldWide Telescope, an application that lets computer users zoom from one galaxy to the next, was an atypically tangible demonstration at the annual science-fair-like gathering that usually shows off early-stage prototypes.

Researcher Curtis Wong, who had walked journalists through a bare-bones version of the program a year ago, showed how users can explore on their own or take a guided tour designed by an astronomer. The program, which knits together images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, among others, will be freely available sometime in the spring.

Other groups demonstrated projects that use data collected from sensors for more terrestrial purposes. U.K.-based researchers showed how a system of sensors, radio frequency identification tags and GPS data were combined to track the feeding habits of a local bird population, as a way to understand how changes in climate and other variables affected the species.

Another team displayed lightweight sensors that can fit in the palm of the hand and can last four years on two AA batteries. They pass along information “like a bucket brigade,” Redmond-based researcher Feng Zhao said, using protocols developed for the Internet that his group modified to use less energy and memory. Zhao said one practical application would be more efficient heating and cooling of warehouse-size data centers, depending on which small areas the sensors reported were too hot or too cold.

There were also tools designed especially for scientists, from an application that helps them “program” without having to write code to an entirely new programming language to model cellular processes.

A handful of rough prototypes were built to ease common frustrations of today’s Web-savvy PC user. Researchers devised an Internet Explorer plug-in for people in different locations to save search results and share notes; they also came up with a plug-in that makes the pages visited during a Web search session more accessible.

Other researchers built on existing social networking services. One project gave people reading e-mail in Microsoft Outlook more information about the senders and other recipients, including photos and past e-mails. Another helped people consolidate their friends’ social network profiles from different sites in one place.

Microsoft has 800 researchers in six labs around the world.

___

On the Net:

Microsoft research: «research.microsoft.com»

WorldWide Telescope: «worldwidetelescope.org»

(03-04) 18:39 PST Redmond, Wash. (AP) —

Microsoft researchers from around the world gathered at the software maker’s headquarters Tuesday to show off projects dealing with subjects as tiny as individual cells and as large as the universe.

The WorldWide Telescope, an application that lets computer users zoom from one galaxy to the next, was an atypically tangible demonstration at the annual science-fair-like gathering that usually shows off early-stage prototypes.

Researcher Curtis Wong, who had walked journalists through a bare-bones version of the program a year ago, showed how users can explore on their own or take a guided tour designed by an astronomer. The program, which knits together images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, among others, will be freely available sometime in the spring.

Other groups demonstrated projects that use data collected from sensors for more terrestrial purposes. U.K.-based researchers showed how a system of sensors, radio frequency identification tags and GPS data were combined to track the feeding habits of a local bird population, as a way to understand how changes in climate and other variables affected the species.

Another team displayed lightweight sensors that can fit in the palm of the hand and can last four years on two AA batteries. They pass along information “like a bucket brigade,” Redmond-based researcher Feng Zhao said, using protocols developed for the Internet that his group modified to use less energy and memory. Zhao said one practical application would be more efficient heating and cooling of warehouse-size data centers, depending on which small areas the sensors reported were too hot or too cold.

There were also tools designed especially for scientists, from an application that helps them “program” without having to write code to an entirely new programming language to model cellular processes.

A handful of rough prototypes were built to ease common frustrations of today’s Web-savvy PC user. Researchers devised an Internet Explorer plug-in for people in different locations to save search results and share notes; they also came up with a plug-in that makes the pages visited during a Web search session more accessible.

Other researchers built on existing social networking services. One project gave people reading e-mail in Microsoft Outlook more information about the senders and other recipients, including photos and past e-mails. Another helped people consolidate their friends’ social network profiles from different sites in one place.

Microsoft has 800 researchers in six labs around the world.

___

On the Net:

Microsoft research: «research.microsoft.com»

WorldWide Telescope: «worldwidetelescope.org»

ROMANCE has always been one of the expected casualties of war. So in Baghdad - with no end to the violence in sight - the rules of attraction have been adapting.

Endearments are whispered into mobile phones. Inboxes are full of flirtations. Even old-style matchmaking is getting back in vogue. The high risks of going out far outweigh the pleasures of courtship.

“The worst was when we were talking in a caf one time and we heard a nearby explosion and gunfire,” recalled Kareem Abdul-Aziz about one outing with 24-year-old Dalia. “We weren’t sure if the streets would be safe enough for us to go home.”

That ended one of their few real dates since their first encounter about six months ago when Abdul-Aziz, who sells children’s clothes in a central Baghdad market, slipped a piece of paper with his name and number into Dalia’s shopping bag.

Abdul-Aziz, 25, now speaks with her for an average of two hours every day - usually late at night. The local mobile phone company offers huge discounts on calls made between midnight and noon the next day.

“We have only met a handful of times,” said Abdul-Aziz, despair in his voice.

Baghdad has changed almost beyond recognition over the past four years since the US invasion, and little or nothing remains that would inspire romance or help it flourish.

Instead, the streets are lined with concrete blast barriers topped with barbed wire and plastered with black banners announcing yet another death. Stinking, uncollected garbage and men with guns fill out the picture.

Young women fear being out alone even in daylight. Female school and university students travel in groups, delivered to and collected from classes by trusted taxi drivers or parents.

The city’s streets empty well before dark. Parties are unheard of. Cinemas are shut, some turned to warehouses. The National Theatre, the only one still functioning in the city, offers performances only in the morning. To foil bombers or kidnappers, they are not publicised in advance.

Other places associated with romancing couples - cafs, fast-food outlets, ice cream shops and riverside cafs - have mostly closed.

Long stretches of Abu Nawass, a former promenade beside the Tigris named after a medieval poet from Baghdad who wrote about women and wine, have been closed since 2003. There are plans to reopen it to traffic this summer, but it is unlikely to return to its role as a haven for young lovers.

Only two couples could be seen on a recent mid-morning tour of a central Baghdad area where cafs were once filled with young couples. In Zawraa, the city’s largest park, there were but a handful of couples, some holding hands.

But any public display of affection, no matter how innocent, can attract unwanted attention. In some neighbourhoods, religious fanatics, Shiite and Sunni Muslims alike, admonish couples for being in a “prohibited”, or haram, relationship.

Then there is the fear of kidnapping for ransom or being seized by sectarian death squads. This makes mobile telephones, introduced in most of Iraq after the 2003 fall of Saddam, the absolute must-have on the city’s dating scene. Many Baghdad couples use text messages on mobile phones to stay in touch or grow fonder.

With the internet now widely available in Baghdad, young Iraqis look to chat rooms and dating sites hoping to find a partner. Prepaid cards for some of the dating websites are sold in stores across the city, but users in Baghdad say the sites are mostly helping Iraqis abroad, where couples can freely meet.

The difficulties associated with dating, according to Iraqis, have led to a marked rise in arranged marriages and are pushing many young and educated women to settle for much older men who have either money, a residence permit abroad, or both.

“I’ve seen with my own eyes girls as young as 16 or 17 getting married to much older men for the sake of coming over here [Britain], pushed and encouraged by their families,” the UK-based Iraqi author of the popular blog ‘Madly in Love with Iraq’ wrote in an e-mail. “Highly educated women get married to illiterates for the same reason,” wrote the blogger, who only gave her name as Hala.

Ali Mohsen, a 24-year-old driver, says he has not been out a single time with Samar, whom he has been “dating” on the telephone since 2004. Samar’s parents refuse to let her go out without a family escort.

“I used to see her a lot from a distance when she came with her family to visit her uncle, who was our neighbour,” he explained. “The uncle has moved and for me to see her now we agree on a time when I can walk past her house and look at her in the window.” DOZENS DIE IN ANOTHER DAY OF SLAUGHTER

A CAR bomb killed 25 people yesterday at a busy intersection in Baghdad where minibuses pick up and drop off passengers, while 20 beheaded bodies were found on a riverbank south of the capital, Iraqi police said.

Another car bomb in Baghdad targeting motorists queuing for petrol killed five people, police said. Mortar bombs killed four people in two separate neighbourhoods in the city.

US and Iraqi officials blame most major car bombings on Sunni Islamist al-Qaeda.

While the group has a strong foothold in Iraq, the prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, warned that the interrogation of captured al- Qaeda operatives showed the network was also planning attacks in a number of other unnamed countries.