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ISO Finalizes C++ Update

s Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) . It will be known as C++ 2011.

"Perhaps the most heartening thing to me is that this standard is widely considered among committee old-timers as the highest-quality FDIS document we have shipped," wrote Herb Sutter, Microsoft architect and chair of the ISO C++ standards committee, in a blog post.

Computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup first created C++ in 1979 as an extension to the C programming language, one that supports classes, or blueprints, for creating run-time objects. Although sometimes , C++in use today, trailing only Java and C, according to the most recent Tiobe survey of programming languages.

"C++0x feels like a new language: The pieces just fit together better than they used to and I find a higher-level style of programming more natural than before and as efficient as ever,"Stroustrup in a FAQ describing the update.

Sutter noted that the features of the draft standard, code-named C++0x, have already been added into working compilers as library extensions. Microsoft'sand the Free Software Foundation's open source(GNU Compiler Collection) both support some features.

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at . Joab's e-mail address is

Are We All Really Martians? Q & A with Mars Life-Seeker Chris Carr

or ever was — life on Mars, it may be related to us. In fact, life on Earth may have been seeded by alien microbes that traveled here in chunks of rock blasted off Mars by asteroid impacts.

That's the idea motivating MIT's Chris Carr and his colleagues, who are developing an instrument that would detect Earth-like life on Mars. Called the , or SETG, the device would scan samples of Martian dirt, looking for the stuff of Earth life — the nucleic acids DNA and RNA.

A flight-ready version of the SETG might be ready to go by 2018. That could make the device a candidate instrument for the— a joint European-U.S. effort that would drop two rovers onto the Martian surface — which is scheduled to launch that same year.

SPACE.com caught up with Carr recently to talk about how to look for Earthlings' relatives on Mars, and why it's not so outlandish to think we may all be able to trace our lineage back to the Red Planet:

SPACE.com: What are you guys doing differently than other researchers who are thinking about looking for life on Mars?

Chris Carr: I think a lot of the astrobiology community has opted to try to develop strategies to look for life that are not Earth-centric. And our approach is to say, Well, if we think there's a chance that we could be related, we should at least be looking for life that's similar to us.

So in that sense, it's a more high-risk — but also high-payoff — strategy, because if we find something, it'll be really specific information. We can understand how life on Earth is related to life on Mars, if it exists. []

SPACE.com: How did you and your colleagues get interested in this idea?

Carr: The reason that we're doing this now — and people have not focused as much on this earlier — is that, in the late '90s, there were some studies looking at how much material might have gone between Earth and Mars due to big meteorite impacts. And the calculated number is about a billion tons of rock.

And it turns out that about 100 times as much rock has gone from Mars to Earth as from Earth to Mars. That's why you're seeing some of the comments — that we could be Martian — because a lot more rock went to Earth than went from Earth. []

If we find that there is life on Mars, and it's related to us, it still doesn't answer how that life started. But it certainly gives us some perspective on our own origins.

SPACE.com: If you do detect a lifeform on Mars, how would you know it's not just Earth contamination?

Carr: One of the ways to do that is, you look at the sequence data, and you look for gene regions that are similar to the gene regions we know about on Earth that are common to all known life. You can actually line up the sequences, essentially, and you can ask, Is it similar or different?

If we go to Mars and we get sequences, and they fit very deeply on the tree of life, that is much more compelling than if we go to Mars, we get sequences, and they look very close to, say, human. Or very close to B. subtilis, which is a bacterium that probably lives in spacecraft clean rooms, even though they're super-clean.

So, that's going to be a test. What do we find and how does it fit on the tree of life? By making those comparisons — in particular, having a lot of sequence data — that would allow us to gauge if something is contamination or whether it's actual .

SPACE.com: So how will this instrument work, when you've got a fully functional prototype?

Carr: What we need to do to detect life on Mars, if it's there — life related to us — is isolate any nucleic acids, so DNA or RNA. Then we need to amplify and detect it, and then we need to sequence it. So those three steps.

We've built a prototype instrument that will do the amplification and detection part, and what we're currently working on is building a miniature sequencer — the third part — and also the first part, the sample preparation. We're going to put it all together, with the goal being to have all of those pieces in place in the next couple of years.

SPACE.com: When will you likely have a flight-ready instrument?

Carr: Probably the earliest time that we would be ready to be on a mission would be on like a 2018 mission.

The goal is in the next couple of years to have an instrument where it's something that — it works on the bench, it's something we can take in the field and test in Antarctica, the Atacama Desert [in Chile] or some of the other sites that are typically used as terrestrial analogs of the Martian environment. We have to make a strong case that our instrument would survive the trip to Mars.

SPACE.com: How big will this thing be? What will it actually look like when it's all put together?

Carr: Right now our prototype of the middle part is about the size of a shoebox. And what we really need is for everything to be about the size of a shoebox. The smaller the better. Our target mass when this thing actually goes to Mars is a few kilograms.

SPACE.com: You think you might be ready around 2018. Have you talked to people with the ExoMars-MAX-C mission?

Carr: We haven't talked to ExoMars directly. I think it's just too early in the game for us to do that. As we've been talking, we're still putting the pieces together to make this possible. That would kind of be the earliest timing that we could do.

So the[rover mission] is going to launch this year, and all the instruments for that are obviously selected, and already built, and delivered to JPL [NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory]. That one's going to have a drill that will get a little bit into the surface, like on the order of centimeters.

But the 2018 mission is likely to have a drill that can get down deeper. Those are the kinds of samples that we're really interested in.

Space radiation can be pretty harmful, and below about a meter you get a lot shielding from that. We think it's much less likely that we would find something on the surface or in the top centimeters than if we went down a meter or more.

SPACE.com: This doesn't have to be a sample-return, right?

Carr: This would all be done on Mars. But I would argue that it would sure be interesting to return samples if we found something. And maybe that's a good argument for putting this instrument on a mission where you could return samples.

SPACE.com: If you do find Mars life that's related to Earth life, would you be able to get a good idea of when the split occurred — when Martian organisms colonized Earth, if that's what happened?

Carr: "Good" is a very relative term. I think we're going to think about a split time in very rough terms. It's going to be constrained by how different the sequences are, and what rocks the organisms might be found in. I think maybe "good" is overstating it. But we're going to get some information about how they're related, and that will certainly constrain our thinking about how such a transfer might have occurred.

But that’s putting the cart before the horse. First, we've got to get an instrument to Mars, and we've got to look for the stuff and see if it's there.

You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: . Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitterand on .

China leads challenge to "scientific superpowers"

China and other emerging nations such as Brazil and India are becoming leaders in science to rival traditional "scientific superpowers" like the United States, Europe and Japan, a top British academy said on Monday.

A report by the Royal Society science academy also found some rapidly emerging scientific nations not usually associated with a strong science base, including Iran, Tunisia and Turkey.

The report, entitled Knowledge, Networks and Nations: Global scientific collaboration in the 21st century, stressed the growing importance of international cooperation in the conduct and impact of science, and its ability to tackle global problems like energy security, climate change and loss of biodiversity.

"The landscape of science is changing. Science is increasing and new players are fast appearing," Chris Llewellyn Smith, chair of the advisory group for the study, told a briefing. "Beyond the emergence of China, we see the rise of Southeast Asian, Middle Eastern, North African and other nations."

Llewellyn Smith said in the five years from 2002 to 2007, global spending on research and development (R&D) had risen by almost 45 percent -- broadly in line with rising economic growth -- but in developing countries it had risen by 100 percent.

"The increase in the developing world is mainly driven by China," he said. "But there are also others there."

He said the growth in scientific research and collaboration should help the world find solutions to global challenges, and added: "No historically dominant nation can afford to rest on its laurels if it wants to retain the competitive economic advantage that being a scientific leader brings."

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The publication data analyzed by the report showed changes in the share of the world's authorship of scientific research papers between the periods 1993-2003 and 2004-2008.

Although the United States still leads the world, its share of global authorship has fallen to 21 percent from 26 percent and its closest rival is now China, which has risen from sixth to second place with a share of authorship rising to 10.2 percent from 4.4 percent.

Britain is stable in the rankings at third place, although its share is down slightly at 6.5 percent from 7.1 percent.

Among big surprises in the report's findings were a handful of countries whose scientific credentials have come almost from nowhere to feature far more prominently in world science.

Iran is the fastest growing country in terms of numbers of scientific publications in the world, growing from just 736 papers in 1996 to 13,238 in 2008.

The Iranian government has committed to a "comprehensive plan for science" including boosting R&D investment to 4 percent of GDP by 2030, compared with just 0.59 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2006.

Turkey has also dramatically improved its scientific performance, at a rate to almost rival China, with R&D spending increasing nearly sixfold between 1995 and 2007.

During that time the number of researchers increased by 43 percent, the report found, and four times as many papers with Turkish authors were published in 2008 as in 1996.

It also highlighted Tunisia, which has raised the percentage of its GDP spent on R&D to 1.25 percent in 2009 from 0.03 percent in 1996, at the same time as restructuring national R&D to create 624 research units and 139 research laboratories.

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Datsyuk scores 2, Red Wings beat Lightning 6-2

TAMPA, Fla. – Pavel Datsyuk scored twice, Danny Cleary had a goal and two assists and the Detroit Red Wings beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 6-2 on Thursday night.

Niklas Kronwall, Justin Abdelkader and Darren Helm also scored for the Red Wings, who have won three in a row and seven of 11.

Tampa Bay got goals from Victor Hedman and Steve Downie. The Lightning are 5-3-1 during a 12-game homestand.

It was the first time that new Lightning general manager Steve Yzerman faced his old team. He played 22 seasons before spending five more as a vice president with Detroit.

After wasting a two-goal lead, the Red Wings rebounded on second-period goals by Kronwall (16:34), on the power play, and Abdelkader (18:00) for 4-2 advantage.

Datsyuk extended the lead to 5-2 on his second goal of the game, at 11:49 of the third. An octopus — a tradition at Detroit's Joe Louis Arena — was thrown onto the ice after the goal.

Helm added a breakaway goal with 1:50 remaining.

Hedman got the Lightning within 2-1 on his first goal in 32 games at 11:51 of the second. Downie tied it with 5:22 to go in the period.

Cleary put the Red Wings up 1-0 on a deflection of Nicklas Lidstrom's shot during a power play 6:40 into the first. Detroit is 24-2-4 when scoring the game's first goal.

Lidstrom had two assists, giving him four in his last 12 games.

Datsyuk made it 2-0 with 5:03 left in the first. The center has eight goals and 16 points in his last 13 games.

Jimmy Howard stopped all six shots he faced, including an in-close backhander by Downie, during a 4-minute Tampa Bay power play midway through the first.

Tampa Bay right wing Martin St. Louis had an assist. He has no goals and three assists in 15 games against Detroit.

Notes: Red Wings senior vice president Jimmy Devellano, one of Yzerman's front-office mentors, and Chicago senior adviser Scotty Bowman, who was Yzerman's coach when Detroit won three Stanley Cups, were at the game. ... NHL commissioner Gary Bettman also was in attendance. ... Detroit D Brad Stuart returned after missing 15 games due to a broken jaw. ... Tampa Bay C Nate Thompson played after sitting out three games with concussion-like symptoms. ... It was just third time in the last eight years that Detroit played the Lightning in Tampa.

China January inflation stays high at 4.9%

BEIJING (AFP) – China said Tuesday its inflation rate stayed stubbornly high at 4.9 percent in January, prompting analysts to predict further steps by the government to cool prices.

The consumer price index, the key gauge of inflation in the world's second largest economy, was "lower than market expectations" according to the National Bureau of Statistics, but still above Beijing's four percent full-year target.

The figure, which follows a 4.6 percent increase in December and a more than two-year high of 5.1 percent in November, comes despite three interest rate hikes in four months and several increases in the amount of money banks must keep in reserve.

Brian Jackson, a Hong Kong-based senior strategist at Royal Bank of Canada, said pressure on prices would remain "uncomfortably strong" for the next few months.

"The policy focus will remain on curbing inflation, and we expect to see another 50 basis points of rate hikes and a faster pace of currency appreciation in coming months," he said.

New monthly lending data provided a ray of hope for policymakers however.

The value of new loans fell to 1.04 trillion yuan ($158 billion), down about 23 percent year on year.

A torrent of lending over the past two years -- officially encouraged at first as a shield against the global financial crisis -- has helped spur inflation, and the January data suggested government curbs were having some effect.

But analysts said the overall picture indicated Beijing would need to step up its inflation fight.

Li Huiyong, chief economist at Shenyin & Wanguo Securities Co, wrote in a research note that his firm expects two more rate hikes this year and further increases in the bank reserve ratio, designed to squeeze lending.

He said authorities were also likely to allow a five percent strengthening of the yuan this year, as a stronger yuan helps fend off price rises among imported commodities.

Inflation has become Beijing's top economic concern as it struggles to keep a lid on rising costs of food and other key items to head of public unrest.

The continued high prices came despite an adjustment in the index that lowered the weight of soaring food costs.

The statistics bureau downplayed the change, saying the index is tweaked annually, but the adjustment triggered speculation that Beijing was trying to paint a rosier picture than was warranted.

A Dow Jones Newswires poll of 15 economists had forecast inflation at 5.4 percent.

"The general feeling in the market is that without the change in weighting, the January CPI would definitely have been more than five percent," Alvin Cheng, associate director of Prudential Brokerage in Hong Kong, was quoted as saying by Dow Jones Newswires.

Yao Wei, a Hong Kong-based economist with Societe Generale, said that either way, the data "cannot change the fact that the general economy is overheating and inflationary pressure is high".

Despite the change, food costs continued to show strong growth in January, with grain prices up 15.1 percent, the bureau said.

The grain supply situation has become an increasing source of official anxiety as a drought across northern China over the past four months has raised fears that the important winter wheat crop could be severely affected.

At the same time, prices of fresh fruit grew 34.8 percent, the bureau said.

Inflation, particularly related to food, has a history of sparking unrest in China.

Tuesday's data did not include real estate prices, which also have climbed sharply over the past year.

Chinese shares ended flat on Tuesday, with traders saying investors were cautious out of fear the data could lead to further tightening measures.