The latest U.S. Missile Defense Test in Hawaii

The latest U.S. missile defense test, conducted Thursday evening in Hawaii waters, was deemed a success as tensions continue with North Korea over that country's missile program. A short-range ballistic missile was fired from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on the island of Kauai and then was shot down by a three-stage interceptor missile from a destroyer, the USS Hopper.

The test, The latest U.S. Missile Defense Test in Hawaii conducted by the Navy and the Department of Defense's Missile Defense Agency, marked the 23rd firing by ships equipped with the Aegis ballistic missile defense system. With the latest test, there have been 19 successes, including the shooting down of a dead U.S. spy satellite last year.

On July 4, North Korea violated U.N. Security Council resolutions by sending seven ballistic missiles into waters off its east coast. There had been speculation North Korea would launch a missile toward Hawaii — about 4,500 miles away — to coincide with the Independence Day holiday in the U.S. Two other Navy ships participated in Thursday's test, dubbed "Stellar Avenger."

According to a Missile Defense Agency statement, the Hopper fired and guided an SM-3 Block IA missile that intercepted the target missile about 100 miles above the Pacific Ocean. Meanwhile, the USS O'Kane simulated an engagement and the USS Lake Erie detected and tracked the target, the agency said.

Statement said the Hopper's weapons system guided its missile to a "direct body to body hit, approximately two minutes after leaving the ship."

Lake Erie used an advanced version of the Aegis system in a simulation to evaluate how it would function with a SM-3 Block IB missile. Next year, the ship is to use the system to fire a new SM-3 Block IB, which features an improved propulsion system, signal processor and warhead seeker.

The First Generation IPod

It was nearly eight years ago that I was among the very first people in New York City to carry around the first-generation iPod. About the size of a pack of cigarettes, it was advertised with the tagline "A thousand songs in your pocket." I can even remember the song used in the first TV spot: Take California by The Propellerheads.

Since then, I've upgraded to a 2007 model boasting a 160-gigabyte hard drive that makes holding a mere thousand songs seem quaint. Before long, I will no doubt be waxing nostalgic about this music player as well—one that, at not even half full, holds 5,231 songs, 141 videos, and 228 podcasts.

The iPod as many of us have known it is on the wane and giving way to a more feature-rich family of devices that in time will bear little resemblance to the trailblazing digital music players that helped Apple capture 70% of the North American market. Evidence of the iPod's decline came July 21, when Apple disclosed its first quarterly decline in iPods sold. In the three months ended in June, Apple (AAPL) sold 10.2 million iPods, versus 11 million a year earlier.

Anticipation of the drop-off is "one of the original reasons" Apple developed the iPhone and the WiFi-enabled iPod touch, Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said on a July 21 conference call with analysts. Apple is prepared for lower sales of what it calls "pocket products:" the iPod shuffle, nano, and classic.

At the same time, the iPod business "will last for many, many years," Apple believes. The company has good reason to want to extend the life of a product line that's generated $38 billion on sales of 218 million units, catapulting Apple ahead of SanDisk (SNDK), Microsoft (MSFT), Toshiba (6502.T), and others.

Flash Memory Is Cheaper

What will iPod's next generation look like? Most of Apple's energy is going to be devoted to the iPod touch, the most advanced and versatile version of the iPod.

My prediction is that one of the first casualties of Apple's emphasis will be the hard drive-based iPod classic. Flash memory is cheaper, consumes less power, and resists abuse better than hard drives, so future high-capacity iPods will most likely be based on flash.

I'm also betting those high-capacity models will look more like the iPod touch, and less like my iPod classic. If history is any judge, Apple will revise its iPod lineup in September, as it has every year since 2005.

A Mic Would Broaden Appeal

Besides a refresh of the iPod nano (it's been revised every fall since its introduction), you can also expect a more advanced version of the iPod touch. The next touch will come with 64GB of flash memory.

And since it runs virtually all of the same applications that the iPhone does, then it stands to reason that the touch will starting taking on more hardware features to accommodate applications. Aside from music and video, it's now already marketed as a handheld gaming machine, a communications device, and a handheld Web device. In a limited way it can even be used for navigation.

Over time, the touch will do even more. Consider its appeal if Apple were to add a microphone that lets you make calls on Skype (EBAY) or other Internet-calling services, without the need for the awkward headset that's required for such calls now.

You could talk on it as if it were an iPhone, and the mic would put in double duty for simple audio recordings like meetings, lectures, and voice memos.

How About a Camera?

The touch should really have a camera, too. And is there any reason why that camera can't be better than the one in the iPhone? The latest iPhone 3GS sports a 3-megapixel camera sensor, while the latest phones from Nokia (NOK) have an 8-megapixel sensor. Apple could split the difference and give the touch a 5- or 6-megapixel sensor, giving it the ability to take really gorgeous pictures.

And if the touch has a camera, then it should support video. All that added memory leaves plenty of room for clips, and the Wi-Fi connection makes it easy to send them directly to YouTube (GOOG) and other video-sharing sites. And while Apple has resisted adding memory-card slots to its handhelds in the past, now that the Mac has a slot for SD memory cards, is there any reason the iPod touch (and for that matter a future model of the iPhone) can't have a slot for Mini-SD cards for added storage capacity?

While we're wish-listing, why should the iPhone be the only device in Apple's lineup that can help you get from one place to another? Why not add a GPS chipset, and let the iPod touch become a full-fledged personal navigation device? The touch's limited navigation features currently only work when Wi-Fi is present. This is fine when you're in a city, but no help when you're on the road. With excellent personal navigation devices from Garmin (GRMN) and TomTom (TOM2.AS) selling for as low as $120—more than $100 below the entry-level touch—why consider navigation a premium, iPhone-only feature?

Obesity's not just dangerous

Obesity's not just dangerous, Nearly 10 percent of health spending for obesity it's expensive. New research shows medical spending averages $1,400 more a year for an obese person than for someone who's normal weight. Overall obesity-related health spending reaches $147 billion, double what it was nearly a decade ago, says the study published Monday by the journal Health Affairs.

The higher expense reflects the costs of treating diabetes, heart disease and other ailments far more common for the overweight, concluded the study by government scientists and the nonprofit research group RTI International.

RTI health economist Eric Finkelstein offers a blunt message for lawmakers trying to revamp the health care system: "Unless you address obesity, you're never going to address rising health care costs."

Two-thirds of Americans are either overweight or obese, and the average American today is 23 pounds overweight, said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Obesity and with it diabetes are the only major health problems that are getting worse in this country, and they're getting worse rapidly," Frieden said Monday at the CDC's first major conference on the obesity crisis.

It's not an individual problem but a societal problem — as the nation's health bill illustrates — that will take society-wide efforts to reverse, Frieden stressed. His agency last week released a list of strategies it wants communities to try. They include: increasing healthy foods and drinks in schools and other public venues; building more supermarkets in poor neighborhoods; encouraging more mothers to breast-feed, which protects against childhood obesity; and discouraging consumption of sodas and other sweetened beverages.

The average American consumes 250 more daily calories today than two or three decades ago, 120 of them from those kinds of drinks, Frieden said. Science suggests that while eating a candy bar before dinner will spoil your appetite, liquid calories don't — you won't cut back on dinner if you have a sugary soda first.

Some evidence that adding a tax to those drinks might help curb consumption, although he stressed that wasn't a view of the Obama administration. The new Health Affairs study found obesity-related conditions now account for 9.1 percent of all medical spending, up from 6.5 percent in 1998. During that time, the obesity rate rose 37 percent.

Health bills for a normal-weight person are about $3,400 a year, but that rises to $4,870 for someone who's obese, Finkelstein said. Prescription drugs are the biggest driver of those costs: Medicare spends about $600 more per year on medications for an obese beneficiary than a normal-weight one.

Health economists have long warned that obesity is a driving force behind the rise in health spending. For example, diabetes costs the nation $190 billion a year to treat, and excess weight is the single biggest risk factor for developing diabetes. Moreover, obese diabetics are the hardest to treat, with higher rates of foot ulcers and amputations, among other things.

The new study's look at per-capita spending may offer a shock to the wallets of people who haven't yet heeded health warnings. "Health care costs are dramatically higher for people who are obese and it doesn't have to be that way," said Jeff Levi of the nonprofit Trust for America's Health, who wasn't involved in the new research.

The Harsh Glare Of a Flash Bulb " Invisible Flash "

Bright and sudden pop of a flash bulb means photos are being snapped, and while it's (arguably) fun to have your picture taken, the harsh glare of a flash bulb often leaves subjects squinting and annoyed.

But what else can you do if natural light isn't an option?

Enter the so-called "invisible flash" or "dark flash," which utilizes light waves outside the visible spectrum to illuminate your subject. Infrared and ultraviolet light is pulsed, with visible light frequencies filtered out, and a special camera sensor captures the invisible-to-the-naked-eye frequencies to create a finished image.

The resulting image isn't perfect -- the pictures are described as having the character of night-vision shots --so the new system, developed by two researchers at New York University, grabs color information from a flash-free picture which is snapped after the UV-illuminated shot is taken. Detail from the first shot and color data from the second are then combined in software, with what is called a "remarkably natural end result."

The system isn't perfect. Not all objects reflect UV or IR light, so the camera can't pick them up properly. The New Scientist story linked above notes that freckles present a particular challenge for the system. (I guess that's one way to clear up your skin in photographs, without resorting to Photoshop.)

Still, the prospect of taking shots in low light without the harsh glare and distraction of a flash bulb pop is a tantalizing one, even if the results are imperfect. The paparazzi, renowned for sneaky night-time shots, must be positively drooling over the possibility.