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WITH HIS DUSTY BOOTS planted firmly in pinkish rubble, David Wettergreen gazes out across the vast, brutal wasteland and tries to imagine that he is an astronaut landing on Mars.

It is not so far-fetched. This desiccated plateau stretching across 40,000 square miles in northern Chile is the closest thing on earth to the surface of the Red Planet. Reddish sand littered with volcanic rock stretches endlessly into the distance. Barren mountains shrouded in ice caps poke up against a frigid cobalt sky. The air is so dry it hurts to breathe.

Mr. Wettergreen’s partner doesn’t mind, though. Zo?« is short, wide, and a bit dirty, but can tackle conditions that cause even the most intrepid explorers to cower. That is, as long as Zo?«’s batteries don’t run too low.

Zo?« is a 400-pound robot with four wheels and a set of cameras that serve as eyes. Mr. Wettergreen, a robotics engineer at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, has carted the rover to this place to take advantage of the site’s otherworldly attributes.

Like Mars, the Atacama Desert has no visible surface water, with parts of the desert receiving no rainfall for decades. The Atacama’s dry atmosphere and its high altitude, ranging from 2,200 to 12,500 feet above sea level, leave it vulnerable to a barrage of ultraviolet rays. The desert soils are also particularly high in oxidants, which rapidly break down organic material.

Such a lethal combination has led some scientists to describe the Atacama as the most lifeless place on earth. (www.justyou.co.uk)

Mr. Wettergreen wants to test that claim. He is leading a three-year project that seeks to demonstrate that the desert is a patchwork of varied ecosystems, some more barren than others, which provide important clues about life’s capacity to adapt in the harshest of environments.

“We’re saying that the Atacama is not this lifeless place, but rather there are different areas where an organism can survive,” he says. He is surveying a satellite map of the current research area, a particularly arid patch of desert about 130 miles southeast of the coastal mining town of Antofagasta.

Zo?« is here to do the dirty work for him.

The project, which is backed by a $3.9-million grant from NASA, uses the autonomous rover, which is similar to those currently exploring Mars, to probe for microscopic organisms in vast stretches of desert. In the process, the researchers are developing technology that may be used to test for life on Mars.

“Given the amazing conditions at which things survive on earth ??” deep under ice, inside mines,” says Mr. Wettergreen, “who knows where things could hang on?”

MATCHING CONDITIONS

Mr. Wettergreen is a rugged 40-year-old veteran of expeditions to some of the world’s most remote places. As an associate research professor at the university’s Field Robotics Center, he has sent a rover to sample microorganisms living in the Antarctic ice sheet. His research has also taken him to Mount Spur, an active volcano in Alaska, and to the Arctic Circle in Canada.

While other scientists have looked for life in the Atacama, Mr. Wettergreen’s team is the first to do so using a rover ??” a method particularly relevant to future missions to other planets. The robot is designed to navigate rough terrain and to traverse long distances, while conducting complicated experiments.

“When you get into these environments where, like on Mars, you are searching for a needle in the haystack, you need to be able to go a long way to search for the needle,” says Kim Warren-Rhodes, a NASA scientist who is the lead ecologist on the project. She is a member of a science team, based in Pittsburgh, which directs the rover’s operations remotely. The group is headed by Nathalie A. Cabrol, an astrobiologist working at NASA’s Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute, a nonprofit research center searching for life in outer space.

Each morning the science team sends detailed instructions by satellite to the rover ??” named for the Greek word for “life” ??” after reviewing the data collected the previous day. The method is modeled on the system used to communicate with the pair of robots that have been rolling around on Mars since January 2004 as part of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission.

The Atacama team tries to Emit itself to the constraints of the Mars mission, in which scientists are currently communicating with the rovers across a distance of 43 million miles. “The focus on Mars is very heavy,” says Shmuel Weinstein, a research biologist at Carnegie Mellon who is also part of the team. For example, he says, Zo?« is programmed to send a maximum of 150 megabytes of data each day ??” roughly the amount transmitted by the Mars rovers ??” although it is capable of sending hundreds of times as much.

The university has a long track record of developing technology linked to planetary exploration. Part of the computer software that enables the current Mars rovers to navigate autonomously and to view the landscape using stereo vision was developed at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute. The university also serves as a training ground for future NASA engineers; many of the members of the current Mars mission are Carnegie Mellon graduates.

“The important thing in being exposed to robotics at CMU is that you get to work on real systems, not just toy things in a lab,” says Chris Leger, a rover driver on the current Mars mission who earned his Ph.D. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon in 1999. “That kind of practical exposure is good for developing robots for space.”

Raymond E. Arvidson, a geologist who is deputy principal investigator on the Mars mission, agrees.

“These guys are the advance guard. They are carving the technology envelope for us,” says Mr. Arvidson, who directs the Earth and Planetary Remote Sensing Laboratory at Washington University in St. Louis. “Mars would be a much more difficult target to find and identify life than in the Atacama Desert,” he cautions, “but that’s OK because they’re prototyping the approaches.”

TESTING NEW GEAR

The Atacama project is also pioneering the use of an onboard fluorescence imager, an instrument that uses fluorescent light and special dyes to detect signs of life at the microscopic level. The instrument, which was developed at the university’s Molecular Biosensor and Imaging Center with a $900,000 grant from NASA, allows researchers to detect the likely presence of organisms. A ground team then collects samples and sends them back to a laboratory in Pittsburgh for confirmation.

During the project’s second field season in 2004, the rover’s fluorescence imager detected lichens and microscopic bacteria at two sites in the desert, according to team members. And testing at three separate sites this year has supported those findings, they say.

“The samples we saw light up ??” every one of those did show bacterial growth at some level,” says Mr. Weinstein, the research biologist, who was involved in developing the onboard fluorescence imager. “That says bacteria was there.”

The instrument, which is located on the underside of the rover, sprays the ground with special dyes that bind to nucleic acids, proteins, lipids, or carbohydrates ??” the building blocks of life. The instrument detects their presence by shining a florescent light on the ground, causing any of the biological molecules to glow in a distinctive color. The same instrument looks for chlorophyll, a key molecule in plants, lichens, and some bacteria.

The real test takes place back in the lab, however, where scientists view ground samples under a microscope and test them for DNA. Only then can they be sure that what they are seeing is actually evidence of life.

“In the Atacama, where it is very dry, or on Mars, you’re getting some weird soil chemistry that we’re not used to seeing,” says Ms. Warren-Rhodes, the project’s chief ecologist. She says the technology is still in the testing phase, but that its ability to detect life in the field is “a big improvement” over conventional methods, which involve collecting samples at random and then testing them in a lab.

Indeed, it was the failure of such conventional methods to detect life in the driest parts of the Atacama that led to current project. In the late 1990s, Chris McKay, a NASA astrobiologist, published reports suggesting that parts of the Atacama were utterly lifeless. Chilean researchers challenged those results, arguing that if you probed on a small-enough scale, you could find living organisms.

“That’s what got us excited about the desert,” says Mr. Wettergreen. He notes that the Viking landers performed some simple tests on Martian soil in 1976 and found no evidence of organic matter. But those results are no longer considered definitive.

“At first it seemed that there was no metabolic activity, but maybe it was just below the level of detection,” says Mr. Wettergreen as he drives his Toyota pickup at breakneck speed across the desert.

He is scouting for a site to launch the rover for its final round of field experiments in the three-year project, which was conducted in separate, several-month seasons. In all, the scientists tested six sites that ranged from foggy coastal areas and mud flats to the desert’s bone-dry interior. At each location, the researchers alternated mechanical tests of the rover’s navigational capacity with intensive scientific experiments probing for signs of life.

A FANCY RIDE

The six-and-a-half-foot-wide rover looks like a jacked-up go-cart, with mountain-bike tires and solar panels on its back. A set of high-resolution cameras is mounted on a five-foot pole in the front, resembling an insect’s antenna. Behind its removable fiberglass sides, the rover houses a dizzying array of circuitry, navigation equipment, and scientific instruments. The design is the result of 10 years of prototype testing at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute. (A less advanced rover, Hyperion, was used during the first year of the project in 2003 before being replaced by Zo?« in 2004.)

Zo?« operates almost entirely on sunlight collected by its six-foot-wide solar panels, but it reverts to rechargeable lithium-ion batteries early and late in the day. The rover can choose alternative paths to avoid obstacles and to plot a route beyond the horizon ??” technology that would be useful in exploring other planets.

The two rovers currently on Mars, Opportunity and Spirit, can only go as far as they can see in a straight line. They can cover a maximum distance of 300 yards in a day, while Zo?« frequently travels more than 10 miles at a stretch. And when confronted with a difficult obstacle, the Mars rovers are forced to stop and wait for new commands.

“It costs a lot to keep scientists and rover engineers running a mission. So you want robots to be more autonomous so you need less people,” Mr. Wettergreen explains, halting the truck at a bowl-shaped area of desert, rimmed by sand dunes.

With future Mars expeditions in mind, he forces himself to imagine where the pilot of a mission would deploy the rover. The terrain must be varied, but without insurmountable obstacles. He also has to consider the needs of the team back in Pittsburgh, which is interested in collecting a wide array of samples to compare different desert ecosystems.

“One of the main hypotheses that we’re testing is whether mobility is important, or whether it’s better to sit in one place and analyze things to the billionth,” he says. “Our hypothesis is that by testing many microhabitats, it bears more fruit.”

He stops the truck to examine another possible launch site further from the final base camp, at the Mina Guanaco, a semi-operational gold mine where the scientists are staying in relative luxury in prefabricated miners’ cabins. The other sites were so remote that the researchers were forced to camp in the desert, going without showers for weeks.

The Atacama’s harsh climate makes for hard living conditions, particularly since the team’s field seasons have coincided with the tail end of the Chilean winter. The temperature frequently dips well below freezing. Gusts of wind kick up swirling clouds of dust. And the ultraviolet rays are so intense that the scientists have to lather themselves in sunblock every few hours.

SECRET LOCATION

By the time they arrive at the final test location, however, the daytime temperature is a balmy 50 degrees. Mr. Wettergreen and four other robotics engineers are getting ready to transport Zo?« from its “garage” at the mine to Site F, a dramatic stretch of desert flanked by snowcapped mountains. The team checks dozens of components on the rover, removes the solar panels, and hoists the rover onto the roof of Mr. Wettergreen’s truck. By midafternoon, Zo?« is safely settled in the sand and ready to take a panoramic shot of the site, for use by the science team in Pittsburgh. (The rover’s exact location is kept secret from the remote science team, which is forced to analyze the data using small bits of information ??” again, in an attempt to re-create the challenges of a mission on another planet.)

It is a rare moment of quiet for Mr. Wettergreen’s base team. The engineers spend a few hours uploading data and filing reports by satellite.

Their work is being monitored round the clock by several researchers who are conducting parallel ethnographic studies of the project. “We’re trying to understand how the science team makes sense of the rover and the data, how they think about the rover, and how that affects how they command the rover,” says Pamela J. Hinds, an associate professor of management science and engineering from Stanford University. She is working in tandem with a Carnegie Mellon graduate student, Karen Stubbs, who is studying the remote science team back in Pittsburgh.

A third researcher, Roxana Wales, is conducting a separate analysis of the project that focuses on human-robot interaction. Working with a moving robot is “a totally new process” that takes scientists some time to master, says Ms. Wales, a NASA ethnographer. She recently worked with scientists on the Mars mission to help them develop a common language among themselves for dealing with the rovers.

“Sometimes, it’s just about helping them recognize big issues because they’re so involved in the trees, they don’t see the forest,” she says, over a breakfast of egg sandwiches in the rickety trailer that serves as the camp’s dining hall.

Minutes later, the researchers set out to find Zo?«, their trucks kicking up plumes of pinkish dust as they careen across the desert.

The haste turns out to be pointless, however. The wind is gusting up to 58 miles per hour, and the scientists are forced to spend a frustrating six hours in their vehicles waiting for conditions to improve. While the rover is designed to withstand high winds, the fluorescence imager needs to be relatively still to take photos and to spray its dye on the target.

Mr. Wettergreen waits until the wind has calmed to about 30 miles per hour, then gets out of his truck and flips the start-up switch under Zo?«. The rover responds by emitting a screeching sound like a chainsaw in need of oil. It takes Chris Williams, a mechanical engineer, another half-hour to figure out the problem. He discovers that the fluorescence imager got knocked out of position during the bumpy truck ride. Finally, around 3 p.m., Zo?« gets started on her task of the day: taking fluorescence tests at several nearby sites.

LIFE ON EARTH

So far, the results have exceeded the team’s expectations, turning up evidence of life in 5 percent to 10 percent of the test sites. Zo?« has also completed this year’s goal of traveling 120 miles autonomously.

Mr. Wettergreen now plans to apply for funds to extend the project for a fourth year, to experiment with a one-meter coring drill to probe for life beneath the desert surface. While it is unusual for NASA to support a project for more than three years, Mr. Wetter-green argues that the success of the research so far merits making an exception.

“I think we’re doing good work,” he says, as he struggles to fix another problem on the rover, which has inexplicably begun driving in circles.

It is the latest in a long list of mechanical mishaps. The most serious ??” which falls into the realm of what Mr. Williams jokingly calls “Mars irrelevant” ??” occurred while transporting Zo?« between Sites D and E, when the rover was jolted so badly that it broke an axle. The fluorescence imager was also damaged, and the ground team had to send back to the United States for replacement parts, delaying their research by several days.

Mr. Wettergreen is not easily discouraged. He drops onto his back in the sand and starts dismantling the rover’s drive train. After another half-hour, he has discovered the source of the steering problem: a dead battery that controls the front wheels.

“Never a dull moment,” he says, laughing at the absurdity of so much going wrong in a single day. But he notes that one of the advantages of working on earth instead of Mars is that engineers can take apart the rover and fix it. “People ask when Zo?« is going to Mars and the answer is never,” he says, watching with relief as the rover finally speeds off straight into the desert.

Mr. Wettergreen and his team did not build the rover as a prototype, but rather as a way to explore techniques for detecting life. If all goes well, the technology they have developed may one day lift off on a trip bound for the Red Planet, where the howling winds and the desolate landscape won’t seem so foreign.

1969-2010: Raised in the Soviet Union, she came to Canada in 2002. She especially loved to walk her dog, Pont.

Ilona Koroleva was born on June 9, 1969, on a Soviet military base in Priozersk, Kazakhstan. With two big brothers (Giorgi and Constantine were five and 10 years older than her), she was the third child of Oleg, a military officer, and Inna, a hairdresser whose clientele included other women on the base. Life wasn’t easy for the young family, and became more difficult after Ilona’s parents divorced when she was still young. Oleg eventually moved away, losing touch with the family, and leaving Ilona to be raised by her mother and brothers, especially Constantine, who became a father figure to her. She was a playful and loving child with many friends, and found happiness wherever she could. One of her favourite places to visit was Lake Balkhash, just outside the city, where she’d go swimming.

When Ilona was a teenager, she moved with her mother and brothers to the Russian city of Kaluga, where she joined a local hiking club and a paratroopers’ club, completing so many jumps she eventually became an instructor. Always popular, she made many new friends. After finishing high school, she attended Moscow State Technical University, which had a campus in Kaluga, and studied electrical engineering. Ilona earned a degree in the subject, but it wasn’t her passion; she loved working with people, so after graduation, she went back to school and obtained a diploma in psychology.

While at university, Ilona met Andrey Korolev, who was also studying electrical engineering. Andrey was a practical, down-to-earth young man who was drawn to Ilona’s free spirit and her warm-hearted nature. “We were like the North and South Pole,” he says, but still, “we got along right away. I don’t know a person who didn’t get along with her.” They fell in love and had two children: Argur, in 1989, and Elena, born seven years later. On Feb. 16, 1996, they were married in a Russian Orthodox service in front of friends and family. “I was the happiest person in the world,” says Andrey.

As a young couple, Andrey and Ilona had worked various jobs, including, for a time, as electrical engineers. They even opened their own retail business. But life was hard in Kaluga, a “provincial town whose economy was dying,” says Andrey. The Soviet Union had collapsed in 1991, and “young capitalism has a very ugly face. Everybody needs money, and nobody knows where to go.” They thought about moving to Australia and Europe before deciding on Canada in 1996. Ilona thought it would be a good place to raise the children.

They weren’t accepted, however, until 2002. Though he was a bit nervous about having to adjust to a new country, Andrey recalls Ilona being excited about life in Canada. The family moved into an apartment in North York, in Toronto, where most of the neighbours were Russian expats. Andrey worked as a garbageman and did odd jobs in the building; Ilona worked at a deli. Their new life wasn’t always easy, says Andrey. They struggled to make ends meet at times, and worried about the kids; at first, “there was a language barrier for the older one,” he says. But Ilona settled in and got to know her new home, paying visits to Lake Ontario, which reminded her of days spent at Lake Balkhash.

Eventually, the couple pooled their savings and made a down payment on a condo in Etobicoke. They decided to get a family dog, and chose a German schnauzer named Pont, which Ilona loved to walk. “When we visited the breeder, the dog picked her,” Andrey recalls. “He sat in front of her, and put his head on her knees.”

In recent years, the family had adapted to their new life in Canada: Andrey worked as an electrician, and Ilona as a customer service representative for a transportation and logistics company, which made her happy, he says, since she got to interact with people every day. The children were thriving, too. Elena excelled at school, and last year, Argur, now 20, moved out on his own, with plans to attend university.

A few months ago, Ilona was laid off. She sent out resum?©s, and threw herself into different causes, volunteering at a Russian library and studying Reiki healing (a type of spiritual massage therapy). She also spent more time at the local Russian Orthodox church than ever. “She’s always been concerned about others, but lately, she seemed concerned about everybody on earth,” says Andrey. “She started going to church and praying every day.”

On March 29, Ilona took Pont out for an afternoon walk. She was standing on the walkway outside their home when a car veered out of control, hitting a tree and then crashing into her and the dog, killing them both. Ilona was 40 years old.

David Cameron’s wife brings style and mystery to the PM’s residence

Samantha Cameron might just be the perfect political wife. Serene, stylish, shrewd and hard-working, during the Conservative campaign last spring she was unveiled as “the Tories’ secret weapon,” and has been described by party insiders as “Dave’s best look.” The fact that she was luminously pregnant at the time with the couple’s fourth child (a girl, Florence, born three weeks premature a few months after her husband David’s Tories took power) only added to her photo-op appeal.

But Samantha’s easy smiles and effortless style conceal hidden depths of character. Those who know her say she is unflappable, impeccably mannered and also genuinely warm — a woman of “famously even temperament,” according to a recent profile in the Sunday Times. It’s a quality that has held her in good stead in the last year and half, an exceedingly turbulent period that’s included the death of her oldest child, the birth of another, the death of her father-in-law and the not insignificant matter of her husband becoming Prime Minister. Oh yeah, she works for a living, too.

Unlike her predecessors Cherie Blair and Sarah Brown, Samantha Cameron did not share a passion for party politics with her future husband. Instead, they met via a much more old-fashioned route: she was school chums with David’s sister Clare. They met not at a Tory event, but on a Cameron family holiday in Italy. When they began dating, David Cameron was already well ensconced in Westminster, living in London and working as an adviser to an MP. Samantha, by contrast, was enjoying a rather bohemian existence, studying fine art at Bristol Polytechnic (now the University of the West of England), and learning to play pool in seedy pubs with hip-hop star Tricky.

It was here that she traded in her cut glass accent for an estuary lilt — a reverse-snobbish affectation that would prompt some critics to describe her as a “trustafarian” (i.e. a rich kid who likes to slum it), but one that would go a long way with the British public. She also developed her personal style — a mix of ladylike classics and edgy trends that perfectly suited her tall, naturally willowy frame. “She wasn’t in the mould of his girlfriends at all,” family friend James Fergusson said in the recent book Cameron: The Rise of the New Conservative. “She was an art student, ‘hey man’ type, but he saw the toughness in her very quickly.”

While Samantha Cameron might be down to earth, her background is anything but. Presumably this was why she was not intimidated by Cameron and his Etonian pals, and also why she assumed the seat of power with natural grace, casually schlepping the family up to Chequers (the Prime Minister’s stately country residence) with as little pomp and circumstance as possible. In contrast to her recent predecessors, she is, quite literally, to the manor born.

Samantha Sheffield is the eldest daughter of Sir Reginald Sheffield, a baronet and a direct descendent of King Charles II. He can also trace his lineage back to the Crusades. Her mother, Annabel, divorced her father when Samantha was young and married William Astor, a viscount with a vast country estate and fortune of his own. Samantha’s childhood reads like something out of a Jane Austen novel. Educated at exclusive all-girls boarding schools, she spent most of her early years in her father’s Regency mansion, Normanby Hall in Lincolnshire. Or, as she preferred to tell acquaintances, “I grew up near Scunthorpe” (a nearby industrial town).

While her pedigree exceeds that of her husband (who is a descendent of a mistress of King William IV), Samantha is much more modern and socially elastic — a contemporary Jackie Kennedy to Cameron’s buttoned-down Tory boy image.

After university, she took at job at the historied stationer Smythson, where her mother (who is also co-founder of the successful furniture company Oka) was also employed. Samantha rose quickly through the ranks, eventually becoming Smythson’s creative director and rebranding the company in one of the most successful image makeovers in recent British fashion history. Her contemporary flair is credited with breathing new life into the stationer, which had been churning out leather diaries for dowager duchesses since 1887. Today it is cutting-edge chic — one of their bestselling $1,000 handbags is called the “Nancy” after the Camerons’ eldest daughter. For years, she was the major breadwinner in the household — pulling in the six-figure salary as David paid his dues in Parliament.

While privately she is said to have mixed feelings about public life, she is nonetheless credited with being the one who encouraged her husband to go after the Conservative leadership in 2005 — an audacious bid for the then 39-year-old MP. While not publicly political herself (she is rumoured to be more liberal than her husband, and even to have voted Labour in the past), she has also been instrumental in managing his public image. She edits many of his speeches and once gave him the wise advice to answer every question from a personal, local, regional and national perspective — in that order. According to party insiders, she also coined the now famous Cameronism: “There is a such thing as a society — it’s just not the same thing as a state” — a redress of Margaret Thatcher’s famous gaffe that “there is no such thing as society.”

Samantha Cameron has rarely given an interview — a silence that only adds to her mystique. Perhaps it is a reflection of her ambivalence toward her new public role. When the Camerons were moving into their last house in North Kensington, a friendly neighbour looked at the moving van and remarked that the next time they moved, it would be to Downing Street. Samantha’s now legendary response: “I f–king hope not!” But she appears to be rising admirably to the occasion — juggling new motherhood, part-time work (after the election she scaled back at Smythson to two days a week), and the strange reality of life in the spotlight.

Despite the Tories’ recent and controversial spending review, Samantha (or SamCam, as she is affectionately called in the tabloids) is enjoying a honeymoon period with Britain’s cantankerous media. In that recent Sunday Times piece, the writer Eleanor Mills did not uncover a single criticism of her subject, despite relying heavily on anonymous sources. Unnamed friends did, however, share details of Samantha’s pregnancy complications (you’d never have known it from the campaign photos) and her recent revamp of the Downing Street flat, complete with family-style eating-living-play area in a clean contemporary palette (she favours the colour grey, and collects mid-century modern furniture).

The cranky, contrarian journalist Toby Young has described her as “obviously a grown-up, a serious person, someone who’s managed to combine being a good wife and mother with a successful career. And the fact that Dave managed to persuade her to marry him — and had the good judgment to choose her — is a reason to vote for him.”

But Samantha Cameron’s polished glow also conceals a quiet depth of sorrow. Last year, the couple’s first child, Ivan, born severely disabled with cerebral palsy and epilepsy, died suddenly in hospital at age six. Samantha, in particular, was said to be devastated, having made Ivan the centre of the family’s life for so long. Every visitor to the Cameron’s house met Ivan, and he was taken out on all family outings. David Cameron spent many nights sleeping on hospital room floors with his wife, at Ivan’s bedside. While Samantha returned to work not long after Ivan died, she is said to be grieving still.

As her former assistant at Smythson put it recently, “Sam is very strong without being devoid of emotion. She has been through an unimaginably traumatic experience recently, but has carried on with enormous guts and courage. Sam makes you want to look out for her, because she doesn’t ask you to.”

According to reports, Samantha is now winding down her career, focusing more on her family and her chosen children’s charities. But unlike Michelle Obama, you aren’t likely to hear her haranguing the nation to eat its veggies or staging photo ops in the garden any time soon. She is a private person thrust into a public role. As such, she has opted, in traditional English fashion, to keep calm and carry on. Frankly, it looks good on her.

BRUCE McLachlan has some top chances at Doomben tomorrow but his focus will be split watching rival runners at Rosehill.

McLachlan is desperate for his Magic Millions Classic winner Phelan Ready to scrape into the field for the $3.5 million Golden Slipper next week.

Many two-year-olds have a chance to grab a last-gasp automatic entry into the Slipper by winning either the Darley Stakes (colts and gelding) or Magic Night (fillies).

“It’s getting very tight for Phelan Ready. He needs some above him to drop out, not a couple more to leapfrog him in the order of entry,” McLachlan said.

“He has thrived in Sydney since his run last weekend. He has a mighty chance if we can get him into the race.”

At Doomben, McLachlan is upbeat about his three runners — bella sirena resort rocky point, Sleepy Jackson (Vincent Good Guys) and Silvern (Akers Good Guys). “Bella Sirena isn’t right at peak fitness but the inside barrier from this start will help offset the lack of a recent run,” McLachlan said.

“I think she is a good filly with a bright future. I’m not going to run Facile Tigre from a wide barrier in the same race.

“Sleep Jackson won well up here at the Sunshine Coast last run.

“That was at 1000 metres but I think he is looking for the 1200 metres now.

“He’ll run well for sure if he can run a strong 1200 metres.

“And I really believe Silvern will run a big race fresh.

“He has a bit of class and I rated him unlucky not to win last start on the big Magic Millions day at the Gold Coast.”

Silvern will be suited in a race where there are a lot of fast horses and many of them are drawn poorly and likely to push hard early to try to position near the rails.

Favourite Chakvetadze has a handy draw at five and should get a nice trail just behind the speed.

M&M’s is playing up its colorful past to ensure a successful future. The iconic Masterfoods U.S.A. brand this week introduces bolder colors for its candies, packaging with new graphics and an artist-inspired ad effort introducing the tagline, “Chocolate is better in color.”

The M&M’s update, the culmination of the “Great Color Quest” promotion that has turned much of the country’s colorful candies black and white since January, is the biggest in a series of color-inspired integrated marketing efforts to fend off competition and maintain relevance among loyalists.

“We’ve always had color as a unique point of difference, but we wanted to reinforce that message in a fresh, contemporary way,” said Janis Smith-Gomez, VP-marketing for Masterfoods’ Chocolate division.

According to Steven Addis, president of Berkeley, Calif.-based brand strategy and design firm Addis Group, “Any mature brand has a lot to compete with since all the excitement gets taken by the new brands on the block.” More than ever, he said, consumers actually expect change so as not to view a brand as stodgy. M&M’s, he said, “is really smart” to combine the best of the tried-and-true with innovation and reinforce their association with color, which is what sets them apart.

The new M&M’s feature a brighter mix of colors, including a brightened yellow and blue, as well as a larger M, and an updated package features a new trademark logo and a color illustration that highlights the brighter product mix inside, Ms. Smith-Gomez said.

An ad campaign from Omnicom Group’s BBDO Worldwide, New York breaks March 11 featuring a series of spots that show interpretations of the brand by different artists. Although the spots veer from M&M’s longtime focus on its M&M’s spokescharacters, the conversant candies will introduce the spots and the new colors during interstitials on NBC’s Thursday-night lineup (and will reappear in future spots, Ms. Smith-Gomez promises). Masterfoods similarly partnered with ABC when the M&M spokescharacters went on-air with Dick Clark during his “Rockin’ Eve” program to launch the Color Quest promotion.

The first ad, “River of Chocolate,” features a cascading chocolate river into which the new brighter-colored signature M&M’s fall like water droplets. Other executions will play off that ad and focus on specific colors. Masterfoods spent $66 million on its M&M’s brand for January through November, according to TNS Media Intelligence/CMR.

As with previous promotional announcements, Masterfoods will showcase its newly refreshed look with a celebrity-studded PR event, this time building a 6-domed building in downtown L.A. that will feature a celebrity spokesperson and a color in each dome. According to a company spokesman, the New Year’s Eve event, featuring Megan Mullally of NBC’s “Will & Grace” sparked some 500 broadcast placements including mentions on CNN and MSNBC within 48 hours. Ms. Mullaly will also host the L.A. event.

The new packages hit early in some retail channels, including vending machines and airports, even while the black-and-white packages were still slated to be the focus.

FOR the first time, Adelaide and Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) will be linked with direct flights. Two special flights will depart Adelaide, providing 544 return seats.

These flights have been confirmed after months of negotiations between Bunnik Tours, Vietnam Airlines, Adelaide Airport and aviation company Aspirion. The flights will be operated by Vietnam Airlines using its new Airbus A330-200 aircraft with in-seat entertainment in every seat.

Adelaide-based travel company Bunnik Tours has secured exclusive access to the entire aircraft for both return services.
“By committing to the entire aircraft, Bunnik Tours has been able to secure great prices and introduce some wonderful touring packages to Vietnam,'’ managing director Dennis Bunnik says.

“We’ve passed these savings on and can now offer Adelaide travellers a range of two-week Vietnam holidays during a peak travel period at prices hundreds of dollars below normal rates,'’ Bunnik says.

“Adelaide travellers usually need to change planes interstate, in Singapore or Kuala Lumpur to get to Vietnam. With these direct services, travellers will be able to leave Adelaide at 10am and arrive in Saigon at 2pm the same afternoon. Less time at airports means more time on holiday.”

Bunnik Tours has five packages, catering for group and independent travellers, with a two-week tour of Vietnam featuring Ho Chi Minh City, Mekong Delta, Hoi An, Hue, Hanoi and Halong Bay starting from $2599 a person. This includes all flights, air taxes and fuel surcharges, accommodation, sightseeing, guides and many meals. Accommodation is 3 or 4-star, with the option to upgrade to 5-star on independent packages.

Packages are being released this weekend and will be sold on a first-come first-served basis.

“Vietnam is an up-and-coming destination with more Australians seeking authentic experiences, rest and relaxation in nearby countries,'’ Bunnik says.

“November and December are peak travel times to Vietnam as Aussies head overseas to do their Christmas shopping. We expect that these flights will sell very quickly.'’

A well-designed user-friendly Web site has become an expected standard for today’s benefit funds. The essential building blocks are (1) Web site ergonomics, (2) basic content selection and (3) hosting (What is Web Hosting?). Having a state-of-the-art site will allow funds to keep pace with the evolving technology and self-service expectations of their participants as well as to reap financial, administrative and legal benefits. In addition, such a site can increase the level of administrative services and attention that members receive and improve their awareness and the value of the various benefits the fund provides.

Once a mark of distinction for benefit administrators and other service organizations, a well-designed, feature-rich, dynamic, transactional Web site has become an expected standard. Offering anything less indicates that a plan is behind the times and unresponsive to the needs of its participants. While some older retirees may still prefer–or even insist on–interacting with benefit administrators via more traditional means, they are a shrinking minority. Most of today’s benefit plan participants want interactive electronic communications.

While satisfying participant expectations may be reason enough for administrators to develop a first-class, multifunctional, self-service Web site, other benefits include:

- High-quality and rapid-response customer service, thanks to enhanced tools for customer service representatives

- Streamlined administrative processes that leverage technology to reduce administrative costs

- Increased operational capabilities, such as the ability to generate statements, manage records and respond to participant, employer and trustee issues and needs

- Improved accuracy and consistency in participant communications

- Better accuracy for reporting (via electronic data exchange), processing and maintaining employer contributions.
Web Usage Today

Before taking a closer look at how fund administrators can harness the World WideWeb (WWW) to achieve these benefits, here’s a little perspective on who uses the Internet and how.

More than 75% of adult Americans (aged 18 and over) now access the Internet. The top ten things they do are: Send or read e-mail; use a search engine to find information; search for a map or driving directions; look for information on a hobby or interest; look for health/medical information; look for information about a service or product they are thinking of buying; check the weather; get travel information; and get news.(n1) During the month of March 2008, the average Web user who accessed the Internet from home had 36 separate sessions during which he or she visited 66 different domains.(n2) Gobbler Hosting

Usage, however, drops significantly with age. While the Internet is used by 92% of those aged 18 to 29, 85% of those aged 30 to 49 and 72% of those aged 50 to 64, only 37% of those aged 65 and older go online.(n3)

On the other hand, usage rises sharply with household income. While only 61% of those with annual household incomes less than $30,000 use the Internet, that rises to 78% for those with household incomes between $30,000 and $49,999, 90% for those with household incomes between $50,000 and $74,999 and 90% for those with household incomes of $75,000 and more.(n4)

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For Los Angeles artist Gayle Garner Roski, painting is a way of enhancing her travel experiences–a process that allows her to better see and appreciate the exciting locales she visits while traveling three months out of the year with her husband. “I paint anywhere,” Roski proclaims. “In the beginning, I would look for the perfect subject. Now I realize that wherever I am–whether it’s on top of a mountain or sitting in an airport waiting for a flight–there is always something interesting to paint.”

During her travels, Roski creates mainly sketches that she describes as noncommercial, something just for herself. “They’re not polished, not thought out,” she admits, “but they’re authentic. They express what I did, where I was. Travel has a lot of downtime, and I can fit in artwork while waiting. If I have one hour before the plane arrives I figure out what I can accomplish. Sometimes it’s just 10 minutes for a gesture drawing in ink, but one that may be the beginning of a future finished work.”

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In an interview, Alex Kummant says now is the time for a national dialogue on passenger rail

Don’t look for Amtrak’s eighth president and chief executive officer to apologize for the carrier’s federal capital and operating grants of the past. No, he wants more!

“We should ask for big things — we shouldn’t haltingly ask for small things,” Alex Kummant told Sen. Dick Durbin and more than 25 Illinois mayors that the Illinois Democrat and Rep. Tim Johnson (R., Ill) convened at the multi-modal transportation center in Champaign, Ill., on Oct. 17.

“One of the reasons I took this job is that if you look at gas prices, highway congestion, and the challenges in air travel, the time really is now to have a national dialogue on passenger rail. What’s going on here today is the face of [Amtrak’s] future: sitting down with groups of state departments of transportation and freight railroads to look for public monies perhaps totaling in the billions in certain demonstration lanes of 300 to 600 miles in length.”

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Eccentric travel writers, tourism experts, and dedicated politicians across Africa gathered at the Cross River State which boasts to visitors that it is the “cleanest state in Nigeria,” for a five-day Ecotourism symposium. The conference was organized by the African Travel Association ??” a tourism group created to promote travel and investment in Africa.

With the onslaught of global warming fundamentally changing the cultural environments of emerging nations, eco-tourism is vastly seen as a medium to preserve these countries’ natural elements. The eco-tourism movement seeks to create sustainable economic development through the tourist industry, and conserve the biological and cultural elements of rising nations.

Mention the word “Nigeria” to anyone and all political correctness is unfairly abandoned because of the nagging stereotype adopted by the unenlightened that some Nigerians are scammers who are constantly conducting “backdoor deals.” In developing a steady tourism market, Nigerian politicians and tourism agencies are faced with the task of successfully trying to shed the negative images some hold of Nigeria and its people.

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