Communications

A stream of highly charged particles from the sun is headed straight toward Earth, threatening to plunge cities around the world into darkness and bring the global economy screeching to a halt. This isn't the premise of the latest doomsday thriller. Massive solar storms have happened before - and another one is likely to occur soon, according to Mike Hapgood, a space weather scientist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, England. Much of the planet's electronic equipment, as well as orbiting satellites, have been built to withstand these periodic geomagnetic storms.

A company headed by cellphone pioneer Craig O. McCaw asked the California Supreme Court to reinstate a $603-million fraud and breach-of-contract verdict against Boeing Co., alleging that two appellate justices had conflicts of interest. ICO Global Communications, a subsidiary of Pendrell Corp., said in its appeal filed Wednesday that two state 2nd District Court of Appeal judges considered Boeing's petition to toss out the trial court verdict even though they owned stock in Boeing.

Vertigo. For most people, the word summons images of Jimmy Stewart dangling from high places in Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller by the same name. It means something else, however, to hundreds of thousands of people who experience the strange, dizzying affliction. The most common cause of vertigo, known as benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, usually can be treated with one visit to the doctor.

That stereotypical image of the American teenager glued to the phone needs an update. A new study from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project found that 37% of Internet users ages 12 to 17 participate in video chats using such applications as Skype, Google Talk and iChat - and girls are more likely to engage in them than boys. "As more and more devices in our lives have video capabilities - as laptops and computers come with built-in video cameras, and many smartphones have cameras that allow for video chatting, for taking videos - teens are taking advantage of that," said Amanda Lenhart, senior research specialist with Pew Research Center.

Consider the older man who slips into the bathroom before bedtime and surreptitiously swallows a Viagra pill. He decides against telling his wife, afraid she might think he's having a problem because he's no longer attracted to her. Now consider the older woman who admits to her girlfriend that sex with her husband isn't what it used to be. She'd like to suggest he try Viagra but hasn't, afraid that he'll feel more inadequate than she suspects he already does.

To understand how the wizards of Twitter settled on 140 as the magic number of characters in a single tweet, you have to go back two decades to Bonn, Germany. One day in 1985, Friedhelm Hillebrand sat at the typewriter in his home there, tapping out random sentences and questions on a sheet of paper. As he went along, the communications researcher counted the number of letters, numbers, punctuation marks and spaces on the page. The blurbs nearly always clocked in under 160 characters.

Many of the technology sponsors for the Atlanta Games provided equipment and manpower in addition to sponsorship fees. Here's how one of the trickiest technology demonstrations ever was pieced together by the various sponsors: The technology backbone for the games was constructed by . . . IBM, which has been working since 1992 to provide hardware, software and Internet access systems for the Games.

Five high school students from Capistrano Unified School District were recently awarded $1,000 scholarships from Cox Communication at its seventh annual Cable in the Classroom Awards. Cox officials present the awards to graduating high school seniors in their service area who plan to pursue careers in communications. This year's winners are Sarah Byers, Gavin Harvey and Salina Vavia of Aliso Niguel High School and Shayna Rimel and Denise Smaldino of Dana Hills High School.

Translating even the clearest of long-term visions into practical strategy can be a nightmare. Just ask American Telephone & Telegraph Co., whose recent acquisition of NCR Corp. is the latest episode in a decades-long quest to capitalize on the long-predicted collision of the computing and communications industries. Just under a decade ago, on Jan. 8, 1982, U.S.

In an increasingly high-tech world, a country's communications network is a key measure of the quality of life it offers. Telephones, radios and televisions are the tools for keeping information and ideas flowing. According to the most recent figures available, the United States leads the world in the number of radios and televisions per 1,000 population.

Laurie Tragen-Boykoff rocks on her feet, holding on to a large sign, her hands trembling. The international arrivals ramp at LAX is empty, but that only fuels her anticipation. She's waited 25 years for this. On the sign is a blown-up black-and-white photograph of a somber-faced boy. His name is Nicky Mutoka. Below, in large black letters, the Agoura Hills social worker has written: "NICKY!!! I'M LAURIE. " She lifts the sign, her face disappearing behind it. But she is smiling. In 1987, she began what she saw as a most unlikely pen pal correspondence.

The New Orleans Saints, already reeling from the bounty scandal, were confronted Monday with a different type of explosive allegation. According to ESPN, Saints General Manager Mickey Loomis had a device in his Superdome suite that allowed him to listen in on the game-day communications of opposing coaching staffs and did so in his first three seasons in New Orleans, from 2002 through 2004, before the device was dismantled in 2005. Loomis is suspended through the first eight games of next season for his role in another debacle, the club's improper pay-for-performance program and cover-up, in which players were offered cash bonuses for injuring opponents.

OAKLAND - Aaron Negherbon remembers the plaintive email he received from a Marine sergeant in Afghanistan. "Aaron, I don't know if you can do this," it read. "Our supply truck was blown up and all the gear from my nine medics was destroyed. " The sergeant was requesting surgical kits, gauze, equipment for cutting into tracheas and "all the etc. " Negherbon, 38, founder and president of TroopsDirect, a nonprofit organization, had the supplies gathered, shipped and in the hands of front-line troops within 10 days.

SACRAMENTO - A coalition led by AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. is backing legislation that critics contend would strip the state Public Utilities Commission of its last vestige of regulatory power over basic land-line telephone service. The bill, authored by the powerful chairmen of the Senate and Assembly committees overseeing utilities, would ensure that state agencies have "no regulatory jurisdiction or control" over telephone calls that involve sending voice signals over the Internet.

The new Greek film "Attenberg" follows a young woman as she cares for her father while he struggles through the final stages of a terminal illness. A 23-year-old virgin, she finds herself coming to terms with impending grief just as she is also feeling an emergent lust for a stranger she has just met. Sex and death, old mysteries dealt with in new ways. While those themes have long fascinated independent filmmakers, Athina Rachel Tsangari, writer and director of "Attenberg," which opened in Los Angeles Friday, puts a unique and rather odd twist on her coming-of-age story: The film features a number of sequences in which the lead character, Marina (Ariane Labed)

Nokia Corp. is taking steps to make sure that you never miss another phone call, text or email alert again: The company has filed a patent for a tattoo that would send "a perceivable impulse" to your skin whenever someone tries to contact you on the phone. According to the patent filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the phone would communicate with the tattoo through magnetic waves. The phone would emit magnetic waves and the tattoo would act as a receiver. When the waves hit the tattoo, it would set off a tactile response in the user's skin.

Several Southern California companies are developing satellite systems for tracking and sending messages to interstate trucks, public safety vehicles, buses and trains in remote and rural areas. The nationwide networks would be able to send and receive messages from these vehicles as they traverse the United States, including the estimated 85% of the country that lies outside the range of existing two-way radio towers.

Four South Bay police departments have received a $150,000 federal grant intended to help improve communication between the station dispatch and officers in the field. Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach, El Segundo and Torrance police departments will each outfit four cars with the Automatic Vehicle Location System. The satellite-based system will enable dispatchers to locate the car in the field that is closest to a crime scene or emergency, including cruisers from other departments.

A 20-story Atlas V rocket built by United Launch Alliance lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., and carried a 15,000-pound communications satellite into orbit for the Navy. The satellite was initially slated to blast off last week but was pushed back because of bad weather. The spacecraft, part of the Mobile User Objective System, was launched at 2:15 p.m. Pacific time Friday from Space Launch Complex 41 at the Cape.  Watch the launch here. The new system, dubbed MUOS, will provide more than 10 times the capacity of the Navy's current UHF Follow-On constellation, which provides communications for aircraft, ship, submarine and ground forces.

Now it's Facebook's turn to share. The social networking giant that coaxes 845 million people to divulge the most intimate details about their lives is one step closer to cashing in on its meteoric rise in what could be the largest initial public offering to come out of Silicon Valley. Facebook Inc. filed papers Wednesday with the goal of raising $5 billion in a public stock sale that could come in May. The offering would be the largest among Internet companies, eclipsing Google Inc. in 2004 and Netscape Communications in 1995.