Five hot iPod docking stations

The traditional home stereo is far from dead, but considering that many of us in our increasingly mobile culture are toting around an entire music collection in our pockets, shouldn’t we be able to play these tunes anywhere – without having to wear headphones?
When was the last time you saw a receiver, loudspeakers and 500 CDs in a bedroom? But if you add up how much time you spend here – relaxing before bed, getting ready for work, or with the case of university dorm rooms, living in this tight space – it makes sense to toss a compact speaker system designed for the almighty iPod or another MP3 player.
There’s no shortage of such devices these days, but the following are five of my favourites -- and a bonus item for those looking for a portable laser light show.
High-tech lullabies
Consider it a perfect bedside companion for iPod lovers. The TEAC SR-L200 Hi-Fi Table Radio ($129.99; http://www.teac.com/) lets you dock your player in a snug cradle on top of the unit that not only recharges your iPod’s battery but also lets you listen to music, podcasts and audio books through its crisp-sounding stereo speakers. Or you can set the alarm to play your favourite song. Available in white or black, this clock radio ships with connectors to fit all iPod models and also features an AM/FM tuner with station presets, snooze bar and backlit LCD screen. Also included is a small remote and optional auxiliary input (and cable) to connect a non-iPod based MP3 player.
Power to go
Whether it’s for your home, office, cottage or beach, the Logitech AudioStation Express ($99.99; http://www.logitech.com/) is a sleek and portable iPod speaker system. Plug it into an electrical socket or pop in six AA batteries for up to 10 hours of audio, and then use the wireless remote to crank it up to 80 watts of total power. Non-iPod MP3 players can also be used with the auxiliary input jack (though it won’t recharge the device). Have a TV nearby? Use the composite output option to watch your iPod’s video – be it camcorder footage, TV shows, movies, music videos or podcasts – on a big screen instead of the iPod’s 2.5-inch display.
Conversation piece
Perfect for kitchen countertops, family room tables or even bedroom dressers, the JBL Radial ($349.99; http://www.jbl.com/) is a unique-looking circular iPod docking station and 30-watt speaker system that sounds a good as it looks. Available in bone white or piano black, this stylish portable accessory fits all iPod types with swappable adaptors, supports other MP3 players and includes a video-out option to view photos or videos on a nearby television. The wireless remote uses RF (radio frequency) instead of IR (infrared), therefore you can control your tunes even from another room (up to 20 feet).
Bose SoundDock
This one’s my pick. They might not be new, but they’re still one of the best-sounding docking station speakers you could buy for your beloved iPod. Turn any room into a concert hall with Bose SoundDock Digital Music System ($399.99; http://www.bose.com/), which delivers powerful but clean, full-frequency performance out of its shielded speakers. As with other Bose products, it can be hard to pinpoint where the audio is actually coming from as it offers a spatial surround sound effect. Slip in any iPod with a dock connector on the bottom, press a button on the wireless remote and manage your music as you go about your business. Available in black or white.
Add some boom to your room
Music enthusiasts who spend time on the road may opt for this smart (and smart-looking) audio system from Altec Lansing. Similar to its stationary M602 product, the portable iM3 ($179.95; http://www.alteclansing.com/) looks like a teeny boom box and lets users insert their iPod, iPod nano or other MP3 player between two speakers (each housing 1-inch neodymium micro drivers) to fill the space with balanced sound. For iPod products, a wireless remote controls song navigation, power and volume, while the universal plug set offers adapters for various electrical outlets. No A/C plug in sight? No problem, the iM3 can run for roughly 24 hours on battery power.
Laserpod...and now for something completely different
The ‘60s gave us the lava lamp, but it’s all about laser light and LEDs in the ‘00s. Case in point – the Laserpod (US $89.95; http://www.firebox.com/) is a patented invention by UK light artist Chris Levine, whose work has lit up the band Massive Attack and high-profile fashion shows – though he might be best known for a celebrated hologram portrait of the Queen of England. The Laserpod uses three electronic lasers and three blue and purple LEDs (light emitting diodes), all projected through a crystal to create a dazzling light show throughout a room (best used in complete darkness). Turn on the Laserpod when you’ve got Pink Floyd cranked on a MP3 player docking station and you’ve got yourself one killer kaleidoscopic laser light show.

When audio worlds collide

Sometime—in the not so distant future, as you’ll see—we’ll all have some variation of a “smart” home. We’ll be able to detect noxious gases, keep track of food expiration dates, automate kitchen appliances and likely handle a bunch of stuff that hasn’t even been conceived yet. How we’ll operate a smart house is open to speculation. We may have touch/display screens or use voice commands or handheld controllers with high-resolution LCD screens. But one thing is clear: few of us will have enough spare change to purchase and install all the smart home ingredients for quite some time. That doesn’t mean we can’t get a taste of the technology today. If you’re nuts about your music, you’ve picked a hobby on the very forefront of the computer integration revolution. The goal? To move all that great digital music you’ve ripped from discs or downloaded from the Web out of your crummy computer audio setup and into your glorious living room entertainment system. If you want to keep it cheap, the most affordable idea is to simply burn a bunch of your tunes to a recordable CD and play them on an MP3-compatible disc player. But that’s so old school. A better idea might be a flash drive. An inexpensive 2GB flash drive can store hundreds of high bitrate MP3s. Copying files to and removing files from a flash drive is easy, and you can use the very same flash drive in a USB-equipped car deck. Of course, you’ll need something in your living room that’ll read the drive. Tight-budget options include the Philips DVP5960, an upconverting DVD player with a simple, built-in USB reader on its front panel. If online shopping is more your style, check out Oppo Digitals’ DV-970HD. But beware—not all drives are compatible with all devices. But what if you don’t need DVD capabilities or you want direct access to all the media files on your PC—not just the ones you can fit on a thumb drive? Now, that’s where things get interesting. Bridges and streams
Probably the least expensive way to “stream” media files direct from your PC is a product like the Sirocco Audio Bridge. Designed by BC’s own Sondigo, the Sirocco interfaces with the PC either wirelessly or via an Ethernet cable, and acts essentially like an external sound card. The primary advantage of this “sound card” system over its similarly-priced competition is that it more easily handles DRM-protected files. The bad news is that users can’t control their music remotely—they must return to the computer to make any adjustments to their playlist. Stepping up to the two hundred mark gets you into remote-controllable streaming. D-Link has been in the streaming game for some time now, with wireless devices such as the MediaLounge DSM-320 and DSM-520. But neither offer a built-in display (you need to switch on your TV for that), and there have been reports of uneven performance. A potentially better bet at the same price point is the near-ubiquitous Roku SoundBridge. The tube-shaped SoundBridge offers a built-in display, a simple setup, Internet Radio support and easy operation. But plunk down a few more bucks and you’re into Squeezebox territory. The third iteration of the original model, Slim Devices’ Squeezebox 3 is super stylish, Internet radio-capable and fitted with a big, legible display. It’s laden with features and lauded for its smooth streaming and open-source software that permits user customizations. Upping the digital media player ante is the soon-to-be-released Netgear EVA800. The unit supports a ton of codecs, streams some DRM content, handles high-definition playback of Windows Media Video 9 or MPEG-4 file formats up to today’s 1080p ceiling, and features two USB ports for portable storage devices and iPods. Expect to pay nearly $400 when it hits the market this spring. Big buck solutionsThose who require whole-house solutions may want to look at fully expandable systems such as the latest from Sonos. Getting rave user reviews, the Sonos ZonePlayer ZP80 handles most every type of file aside from certain DRM-encrypted content and does Internet radio too. It sets up its own proprietary network that avoids interference from external devices, thus allowing you to confidently plunk ZonePlayers all over the house. But the biggest lure may be its handheld remote, featuring a full colour, high-resolution, scrollable LCD screen that lets you see everything—including album art—up close and personal. A couple of ZonePlayers will set you back a cool grand. If you’re going to spend that kind of money, and in particular if you need to upgrade your ancient AV receiver too, you may want to investigate a shiny new streaming-capable receiver. Respected manufacturers such as Denon, Yamaha and Pioneer all offer receivers capable of pulling radio from the Internet and music from your hard drive. The Pioneer VSX-84TXSi has a USB port that allows you to connect your PC directly to the receiver and bypass the sound card entirely. Do your research beforehand though, because some models won’t work well into the future. One streaming-capable receiver that seems to have all the bases covered is the Onkyo TX-NR1000—though crazily pricey, it handles everything but the proverbial kitchen sink and features upgradeable (and sometimes replaceable) modules. But if you’re going to go that extent, why not simply put a PC in your living room? You’ll likely want to skip older “media center” PCs because they look like PCs (i.e. clunky), they’re controlled like PCs (i.e. clumsily), and they feature middle-of-the-road sound cards and electronics that just won’t do justice to your audio. Sony’s just-released VAIO XL3 Digital Living System is one of the better options. The XL3 looks like a traditional high-end A/V component, but with all the futuristic capabilities of a PC. It features a built-in Blu-ray player, memory card slot, dual USB ports, and, of course, integrated audio-video streaming. If Sony’s managed to eliminate the vibrations and other electronic interference that typically hamper PC audio, and if the internal sound card is up to snuff (those are big ifs), the XL3 could be a winner. Sound purists might do better with the new Onkyo HDC 1.0. Onkyo has refrained from juicing the HDC 1.0 with an internal power supply—thusly exorcising one of the main reasons behind inferior PC audio—but that means you’ll need to power the unit with external power such as Onkyo’s matching digital amp. The SE-90PCI sound card residing inside is a good one, but the non-Windows proprietary software may cause headaches. You’ll need to dump in the neighbourhood of $2500 for both the PC and its amp. Regardless of price, neither of these home entertainment PCs deals with the inherent problems of internally mounted sound converters. Audio engineers have long believed, and rightly so, that internal cards and their analog-to-digital converters are subject to the interference and noise put forth by other PC components such as hard drives, fans and network cards. Engineers deal with it by using sound cards with “breakout boxes,” such as M-Audio’s Delta series and Echo Audio’s Layla and Gina models. Consumers who are sticklers about their sound or regularly record/capture audio to add to their music or videos would be wise to explore this option. I’ll be your server todayMeanwhile, software giant Microsoft is finalizing work on a “whole home” project that’s sure to impact fans of sound and video. With its just-announced Windows Home Server, Microsoft wants you to buy into the idea that networking is essential and easier than ever. Rather than the typical peer-to-peer network that’s found in most multiple-PC households today, Windows Home Server works with hardware such as HP’s just announced MediaSmart Server (essentially a sophisticated, central data storage bin with expandable hard drive space) to deliver a true server-client network. Benefits include automated, touchless backups of all the data in all the connected devices and worldwide access to the Windows Home Server via a personalized Windows Live Internet account. Windows Home Server is not due until fall this year, but it may eventually alter the way we all do our computing and become a real boon to those who want to access their media from anywhere within their home. Of course, Windows Home Server will need some way to communicate with all those devices. Though a wireless network involves the least amount of invasiveness, it certainly isn’t the fastest way to move data, and it’s subject to external interference. But do you really want to go to all the trouble of running a web of Ethernet cable throughout every nook and cranny? Networking veterans Linksys and Netgear say you don’t necessarily have to.
Both the Linksys PLK200 PowerLine AV Ethernet Adapter Kit and the Netgear Powerline HD Ethernet Adapter operate on the principle that Ethernet is passé. Instead, they use your existing electrical system as a network, plugging into your AC outlets and piggybacking along with the current, so to speak. The downside is that you’ll still need to run a cable from each networked device to each powerline adaptor. The upside is that that’s the only wiring you’ll need to do.
Though powerline networking is nothing new, this new batch of powerline gear is faster and more reliable than previous iterations and thus a good alternative for those who need better throughput than a wireless network can provide. It's costly though, at $200-plus for a set of two adapters, and it's not as fast as good old Ethernet.

Land of the Giants

ALONG California’s mystical redwood coast, 1,000-year-old trees as much as four times the height of the Rockefeller Center Christmas spruce command rocky bluffs that overlook golden, frothy beaches. Many travelers in search of the California redwoods never venture beyond one of the southernmost groves, the gorgeous but often crowded Muir Woods, just outside of San Francisco. But a journey 300 miles farther north, through Redwood National Park and its surrounding state parks, plus outpost-like towns and the mountainous corner of southwestern Oregon, is one packed with rich rewards. California Travel GuideGo to the California Travel Guide »MultimediaInteractive FeatureMileposts: A Journey Through the Land of the Giants
Begin in Arcata, the Humboldt State University town that was founded by loggers. Today, it’s populated with dreadlocked hippies and is known, in these parts at least, for the high number of houses where marijuana is covertly grown. It’s also home to a minuscule airport and is a no-fuss place to rent a car, grab a fortifying granola breakfast and start your drive. You’ll be going mostly north, but first dip briefly south on Highway 101. You’ll pass through Arcata’s sister city of Eureka, whose historic district is a colorful jumble of refurbished Victorians, tiny boutiques and stunning inns, and then be on your way toward Humboldt Redwoods State Park.
MILE 35
AVENUE OF THE GIANTS
A 32-mile spur leads you off the highway and along a two-lane road (Route 254) originally built for stagecoaches in the 1880s. You’ll drive beneath a canopy of massive branches belonging to the giants themselves, averaging 200 feet tall and 500 years old here. Eight Auto Tour signs offer facts on some of the history of logging (which wiped out an estimated 96 percent of the original redwoods in California) and on local wildlife including the elusive, nocturnal flying squirrel.
MILE 85
TRINIDAD
Backtrack on Highway 101 to Arcata and then continue north to this tiny town of 400, where the bluffs will present you with your first elevated view of the Pacific coastline, slate gray and misty, its shore strewn with tangles of beach grass and smooth driftwood logs. Immerse yourself in the landscape by descending into the pocket of fog along the steep, scrub-oak shaded staircase near the white and cherry-red Trinidad Memorial Lighthouse (a replica of an 1871 structure), which leads you to a rocky, sheltered pocket of Trinidad Bay.
Heading back out of Trinidad, turn left off Main Street onto Patrick’s Point Drive and follow it north until, east of Patrick’s Point State Park, it ends at 101 North. You’ll wind past several sandy beaches and above ocean coves where sea lions gather to bark and howl, sending eerily mournful echoes up into the trees.
MILE 100
REDWOOD NATIONAL PARK
The approach on Highway 101 to the southern edge of the park whisks you through a dewy, lagoon-laced landscape made magical by fog-filtered light and the Sweet Tart-like scent of bursting wildflowers. You’ll quickly come through the fog (created almost daily in summer, when inland warmth clashes with the cool ocean’s morning air) to the Kuchel Visitor Center just outside of the tiny town of Orick.
Redwood National Park was created by Congress in 1968, and together with abutting state parks, makes up nearly 40,000 acres of ancient forest. “The draw among visitors is to see the tallest living things on the planet,” noted Jeff Denny, a National Park ranger stationed there, adding that the tallest known redwood is in this forest and stands 379 feet high (to protect the tree, rangers don’t divulge its location).
Before leaving the visitor center, pick up a free permit to hike into the awe-inspiring Tall Trees Grove, and a map to guide you there.
MILE 110
TALL TREES GROVE
A slow-going, 40-minute drive along a narrow gravel road takes you to the head of a mellow trail snaking down into a mossy, shady bowl that holds Douglas firs, rhododendrons and some of the tallest redwoods in the park. Small signs note redwoods with the black, burnt bark of century-old fire scars; “spiketops,” or treetops that died after too much exposure when their neighbors were logged; and an ancient streambed, a shallow ribbon of clear water and fist-size polished stones. The trees are so towering that it strains your neck to peer up at their tops, and only if you sit among them for a while, listening to the high-up branches blow and squeak in the breeze, can you truly begin to take in their immensity.
“Time, time as we dissect it in days and hours and minutes loses all meaning in a setting such as this,” wrote Philip Hyde and François Leydet in the Sierra Club’s “Last Redwoods,” excerpted in the Tall Trees Trail Guide available at the start of the hike. “... Here are trees that have already stood for a millennium or two — and still their lives will outlast yours a thousand years.” Return to 101 and drive a couple of miles north to Davison Road; turn left and continue to the parking lot at its terminus.
MILE 120
GOLD BLUFFS BEACH
This gem of a beachfront is a gorgeous spot to visit at the end of the day, when sunsets bathe the sand, surf and fields of beach grass in a gilded, otherworldly glow. You can pitch a tent and camp right on the beach or simply take the short and simple hike into deep Fern Canyon, where a 60-foot sheer ravine stands smothered in gigantic, bushy ferns. Near the beach, keep your eyes peeled for Roosevelt elk, which graze in the purple lupines.

Temples Where Gods Come to Life

THE god was ready for his night of conjugal bliss. The priests of the temple, muscular, shirtless men with white sarongs wrapped around their thighs, bore the god’s palanquin on their shoulders. They marched him slowly along a stone corridor shrouded in shadows to his consort’s shrine. Drumbeats echoed along the walls. Candles flickered outside the doorway to the shrine’s inner sanctum. There, Meenakshi, the fish-eyed goddess, awaited the embrace of her husband, Sundareshwarar, an incarnation of that most priapic of Indian gods, Shiva.India Travel GuideGo to the India Travel Guide »MultimediaSlide ShowIn Tamil Nadu, Gods Live in Stone Temples MapTamil Nadu
Along with hundreds of Indians clustered around the shrine entrance, I strained to get a glimpse of the statue of Sundareshwarar, but green cloths draped over the palanquin kept it hidden. Worshipers surged forward in mass delirium, snapping photos with their cellphones, bowing to the palanquin and chanting hymns. They stretched out their hands to touch the carriage. Priests ordered them back.
Then the priests veered into the inner sanctum, carrying the unseen god toward the eager arms of his wife. They too had a night of divine pleasure ahead of them, so we were all ushered out as the guards began locking up.
This union of Meenakshi and Sundareshwarar is a nightly ritual in Madurai, the largest temple city in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, drawing feverish crowds of Hindu devotees. In much of India, the gods are not creatures of distant myth to be worshiped as abstractions. They exist in our world, in our time, and are fully integrated into the daily lives of Hindu believers. They move simultaneously through the world of the divine and the world that we inhabit, and are subject to all the emotions and experiences that we humans are all too familiar with — including carnal desire.
Few things in India express the continuous presence of the gods better than the ancient, massive temple complexes of Tamil Nadu. Walk through any city there and what catches your eye first are the soaring temple entrances known as gopuras, sacred skyscrapers decorated with a phantasmagoria of Hindu statues of multi-armed, bug-eyed gods, mythical beasts and chiseled warriors. Thousands of such statues adorn the largest gopuras, like the ones rising from the Meenakshi-Sundareshwarar temple in Madurai, one of the holiest pilgrimage sites in India.
“Here, we have a proverb: ‘Where there is a temple, people can live,’ ” said Ram Kumar, a guide I had hired in Madurai. “The temple is the center of a person’s living space.”
Though Kerala, the state just to the west, draws larger tourist crowds, Tamil Nadu is an increasingly popular destination. One of India’s most developed states, it also has beaches and lush farmland, and its cuisine is among the most flavorful — and hottest — in India.
But it is the temple circuit that is the main draw, as it has been for centuries. Indeed, many of Tamil Nadu’s residents see the state as a repository of “pure” Hindu culture. In many ways, it is a country within a country, proudly preserving its ancient Dravidian culture, most noticeably in the widespread use of the Tamil language.
I had been to India four times, but never to the south, so I had little idea of what to expect in December, when I flew with my friend Tini into Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu. We were met by a driver from a hotel in Mahabalipuram, a beach town 36 miles south. He whisked us into an Ambassador, those grand 1950s-style sedans ubiquitous throughout India, and off we went, veering past cows, motor rickshaws and overcrowded buses.
The chaos of India — sometimes the very quality that draws me there — wasn’t quite what I needed on this vacation. For a moment, as we were flying through the insane traffic, I had second thoughts about the whole trip.
Then we pulled into Mahabalipuram; I could see the ocean as we cruised into town. There was the smell of salt in the air, and we drove through quiet lanes to the seaside hotel. The beach there is not of the golden-sand-and-swaying-palms kind you find in Goa or Kerala, but it is a pretty stretch to walk along and unwind from sightseeing (think fishing skiffs and seafood restaurants).
It is the town’s stone architecture, some of the oldest in India, that makes Mahabalipuram a good first stop on the temple crawl. Biking between temples seemed the most relaxed way of taking in the sights, so off we went to a set of mini-temples on the southern edge of town. The place was already crowded with Indian tourists and juice vendors standing next to carts piled high with green coconuts.
The ancient site was designed to be a big outdoor showroom that exhibited the skills of the town’s architects. Incredibly, the set of temples, the Five Rathas, was carved from a single large slab of granite: models in the Dravida style.
As I pedaled north, I heard the chiseling of stone coming from roadside workshops — a sound I would hear throughout the day — reminding me that Mahabalipuram is still the stone-sculpturing capital of India, just as it was in ancient times. Likenesses of major Hindu gods like Shiva, Vishnu and Ganesh roll out of these workshops and into homes and offices around the country.

Technology Smooths the Way for Home Wind-Power Turbines

Wind turbines, once used primarily for farms and rural houses far from electrical service, are becoming more common in heavily populated residential areas as homeowners are attracted to ease of use, financial incentives and low environmental effects. Enlarge This Image Skystream
A residential wind generator that has built-in controls and an inverter. Some “plug and play” systems plug directly into the home panel. RelatedNew Ways to Store Solar Energy for Nighttime and Cloudy Days (April 15, 2008)
No one tracks the number of small-scale residential wind turbines — windmills that run turbines to produce electricity — in the United States. Experts on renewable energy say a convergence of factors, political, technical and ecological, has caused a surge in the use of residential wind turbines, especially in the Northeast and California.
“Back in the early days, off-grid electrical generation was pursued mostly by hippies and rednecks, usually in isolated, rural areas,” said Joe Schwartz, editor of Home Power magazine. “Now, it’s a lot more mainstream.”
“The big shift happened in the last three years,” Mr. Schwartz said, because of technology that makes it possible to feed electricity back to the grid, the commercial power system fed by large utilities. “These new systems use the utility for back up power, removing the need for big, expensive battery backup systems.”
Some of the “plug and play” systems can be plugged directly into a circuit in the home electrical panel. Homeowners can use energy from the wind turbine or the power company without taking action.
Federal wind energy incentives introduced after the oil crisis of the late 1970s helped drive large-scale turbine use. But the federal government does not currently provide a tax credit for residential-scale wind energy, as it does for residential solar applications, according to the American Wind Energy Association, a trade group for wind-power developers and equipment manufacturers.
A number of states, however, have incentive programs. In New York, “we have incentive levels for different installations, but a homeowner could expect to get approximately $4,000 per electric meter for a wind turbine,” said Paul Tonko, president of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, which administers the state’s renewable energy incentives. “That would cover about 30 to 40 percent of the project cost.”
“Certainly, the technology has improved, and the cost per project is coming down,” Mr. Tonko said. “Turbines for farms and residential applications are seeing much more activity.”
States have also enacted so-called net metering laws that require utilities to buy excess power made by a residential turbine at retail rather than wholesale prices. “Many of the barriers to residential turbines have been lowered, but net-metering removes what may be the biggest barrier,” said Jim Green, a senior project leader at the Wind Technology Center, part of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo.
“Along with state incentives, net metering entirely changes the economics of residential wind generation,” Mr. Green said.
Ecological concerns, more than cost savings may drive many new residential turbine installations. “People want to reduce their carbon footprints,” Mr. Tonko said. “They’re concerned about climate change and they want to reduce our reliance of foreign sources of fuels.”
Mr. Schwartz, the editor, said that even with the economic benefits, it can take 20 years to pay back the installation cost.
“This isn’t about people putting turbines in to lower their electric bills as much as it is about people voting with their dollars to help the environment in some small way,” he said.
Despite growing interest, some hurdles will not change. Whether a residential turbine saves a money or just eases ecological guilt depends largely on the wind . The wind energy available in any given location is called the “wind resource.”
Even if the wind is strong, zoning and aesthetics can pose problems. “Turbines work in rural areas with strong wind,” Mr. Schwartz said. “But in urban and suburban areas, neighbors are never happy to see a 60- to 120-foot tower going up across the street.”

Q. Could a plan being explored to use wind to produce a third of the power for New York City affect weather systems?

A. The usual objections raised to wind farming involve aesthetic issues, expense, noise and fears of danger to wildlife, and the issue of weather impact from wind farming has not been conclusively studied.
There has been at least one preliminary study of wind farming that suggested the possibility of an adverse effect on local weather systems from a large wind farm with many rotors in one area. But the researchers also suggested that potential problems could be ameliorated by redesigning the rotors to produce less turbulence.
The study, published in October 2004 in The Journal of Geophysical Research, used a hypothetical model of a wind farm much larger than any that had been built: 10,000 turbines, with rotor blades 165 feet long, in a 60-by-60-mile grid in north-central Oklahoma.
Dr. Somnath Baidya Roy, the lead author, then at Princeton, said the impact would come not so much from the rotor blades’ slowing down the air but from atmospheric mixing in the wake of the blades. The mixing of layers of air would create warmer, drier conditions at the surface, the study suggested.
A nighttime stream of fast-moving air in the Great Plains separates cool, moist air near the ground from drier, warmer air above. The simulation found that the turbines would catch this nocturnal jet, with ensuing turbulence and vertical mixing. When the upper air mass reached the surface, the warming and drying effect would be significant, the model suggested.

It Takes Just One Village to Save a Species

Peking University Chongzuo Biodiversity Research Institute

CHONGZUO, China — Long ago, in the poverty-stricken hills of southern China, a village banished its children to the forest to feed on wild fruits and leaves. Years later, when food stores improved, the children’s parents returned to the woods to reclaim their young. MultimediaSlide ShowOnce Endangered, Now Recovering RSS FeedGet Science News From The New York Times »Enlarge This Image Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Lopen Sonam Wangchuk observing the set-up of the shrine he will pray at during the "Dragon's Gift" exhibition at the Rubin Museum of Art. More Photos »
To their surprise, their offspring had adapted to forest life remarkably well; the children’s white headdresses had dissolved into fur, tails grew from their spines and they refused to come home.
At the Nongguan Nature Reserve in Chongzuo, Guangxi province, the real-life descendants of these mythical children — monkeys known as white-headed langurs — still swing through the forest canopy.
As the langurs traverse a towering karst peak in a setting out of a Chinese landscape painting, they appear untouched by time and change, but it is remarkable that they and their tropical forest home have survived. In 1996, when the langurs were highly endangered, Pan Wenshi, China’s premier panda biologist, came to study them in Chongzuo at what was then an abandoned military base. This was at a time when hunters were taking the canary-yellow young langurs from their cliff-face strongholds, and villagers were leveling the forest for firewood.
Dr. Pan quickly hired wardens to protect the remaining animals but then went a step further, taking on the larger social and economic factors jeopardizing the species. Dr. Pan recognized the animal’s origin myth as legend, but he also believed that alleviating the region’s continuing poverty was essential for their long-term survival.
In the 24-square-kilometer nature reserve where he has focused his studies, the langur population increased to more than 500 today from 96 in 1996.
“It’s a model of what can be done in hot-spot areas that have been devastated by development,” said Russell A. Mittermeier, the president of Conservation International. “Pan has combined all the elements — protection, research, ecotourism, good relations with the local community; he’s really turned the langur into a flagship for the region.”
Part of what makes Dr. Pan’s achievements so remarkable is the success he is having compared with the fate of primates elsewhere. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s most recent Red List, nearly half of the world’s 634 primate species and subspecies are in danger of extinction. “If you look at the Red List, Asia has by far the highest percentage in the threatened categories,” Dr. Mittermeier said.
When Dr. Pan arrived in Guangxi, the challenges of studying langurs, much less protecting them, seemed insurmountable. He and a student spent their first two years living in collapsing cinder block barracks with no electricity or running water.
At that time, the langur’s population was in freefall, dropping from an estimated 2,000 individuals in the late 1980s to fewer than 500 a decade later. Historically, local farmers had occasionally killed langurs for food, but then teams of outside hunters began taking a serious toll on the population.
“In the 1990s, the Chinese economy started booming, and those with money — governors, factory owners, businessmen — all wanted to eat the wildlife to show how powerful they were,” said Dr. Pan, 71.
A breakthrough in protecting the species came in 1997 when he helped local villagers build a pipeline to secure clean drinking water. Shortly thereafter, a farmer from the village freed a trapped langur and brought it to Dr. Pan.
“When you help the villagers, they would like to help you back,” he said.
As self-appointed local advocate, Dr. Pan raised money for a new school in another village, oversaw the construction of health clinics in two neighboring towns and organized physicals for women throughout the area.
“Now, when outsiders try to trap langurs,” Dr. Pan said, “the locals stop them from coming in.”
But the villagers were still dependent on the reserve’s trees for fuel.
“If I told them they can’t cut down the trees, that wouldn’t be right,” Dr. Pan said. “They have to feed their families.”