Science and Technology Week

Research Could Lead to Birth Control Pill For Men; A Look at Housing Trends of Future; 'Biochips' Touted as Next Big Thing in Genetic Research

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ANN KELLAN, CNN ANCHOR: Oral contraceptives face a sex change, as new research shows promise of a birth control pill for men. A look at housing trends of the future, and how your appliances might someday be as connected as you are to the Internet. And watch as a robotic researcher combs the South Pole for clues to the cosmos. Those stories and more just ahead on SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY WEEK.

Hello, and welcome. I'm Ann Kellan. There is a new battle of the sexes on the horizon. Researchers at the Salk Institute have found a male fertility gene that when altered can make male mice infertile without other side effects. Though, this is years away, this research could lead to a birth control pill for men. In the meantime, the possibility of men popping that pill has people talking.

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KELLAN (voice-over): These male mice are as macho as their brothers, but they have been genetically altered to be sterile. They act like normal, virile male mice. They're active, curious, even have the urge and can and do mate.

Even though it's still years away, this genetic change could eventually lead to a male birth control pill without other side effects. Men we talked to liked the idea.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't think women should have all the burden.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just so long as when the time came, I wasn't shooting blanks.

KELLAN: In the midst of doing cancer research, these biologists at the Salk Institute accidentally stumbled on this discovery. They identified a tiny piece of genetic code that stops sperm from maturing, making the sperm incapable of fertilizing an egg.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That resulted in male mice that were completely sterile. So all the dots here are sperm cells at different stages of maturation.

KELLAN: The dark specks are immature sperm that in normal mice grow and elongate. The mutated mice have immature sperm, but the sperm eventually die, because a key chemical for sperm development is blocked to the sperm making part of the cell.

Scientists say they'll have to study generations of the genetically altered mice to make sure there are no other side effects, but so far have found none.

And though, the changes in these mice are permanent. For a male contraceptive, scientists have to make sure the change is reversible. Scientists don't know if that's possible yet.

TONY HUNTER, MOLECULAR BIOLOGIST, THE SALK INSTITUTE: Our next step will be to make what we call a regulated change in the mouse, so we can turn this change on and off at the gene level. It will be difficult, but it can be done.

KELLAN: And scientists will also have to make sure their findings can transfer from mice to men. If they're successful in developing a male contraceptive, and a man doesn't mind taking it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh sure, definitely.

KELLAN (on camera): Why?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Then I wouldn't have to use a condom. But you know, diseases and everything. But you get tested before and wouldn't have to use a condom? What could be better than that. Everybody hates the plastic pig. Nobody wants to visit jimmy thinking about fun in the sun, you know what I mean?

KELLAN: So the pill would be better.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm telling you, I'd love the pill as opposed to plastic. All the way, pill, no plastic. No plastic.

KELLAN (voice-over): Will women ever believe a guy who says he's taken the pill?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You're riding, right?

(LAUGHTER).

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I mean, it's a great concept, but unless it's proofed, you know, unless, you know, something in their body turns purple and you know for sure they've taken it, there's no way.

KELLAN (on camera): And you would be honest with a woman if you forgot to take the pill everyday.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I don't know. I mean, how honest are men with women at all?

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KELLAN: Coming up: new ways to wire your house for the 21st century.

We'll be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KELLAN: This past week, President Clinton announced a $2.4 billion proposal to help bridge the so-called digital divide, the gap between the haves and have nots of computer access and technology. Clinton is pushing for tax incentives that would encourage businesses to donate computers and sponsor technology training for workers. Additional incentives would benefit schools, as well as communities and families in low-income, urban and rural areas.

Now we move from the White House to your house. Home builders from around the world are doing what they can to conquer the digital divide, and that includes connecting computers to your castle.

Here is David George with some housing trends of the future.

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DAVID GEORGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The 40,000 square- foot house that Bill Gates built near Seattle was being hailed as the "house of the future" even before it was finished. A CD-ROM accompanying Gates' 1995 book about the future gave us a hint.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Once inside, you'll wear a special pin that uniquely identifies you and connects you to the home's electronic services.

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GEORGE: There would be technology at every turn, we were told: things like lights that automatically come on when you come home; speakers hidden beneath the wallpaper playing music that would follow you from room to room. There would be portable touch pads controlling everything from the TV sets to the temperature to the lights, which would brighten or dim to fit the occasion, or match the light outside -- technology galore, about what you'd expect in a $53 million house fit for a king of software.

(on camera): Those pictures, those images of wondrous technology, did not come from Bill Gates' house. Bill Gates doesn't allow cameras in his house. No, those pictures were taken in this house. It's a very nice house; it's loaded with technology, but it didn't cost anywhere near $53 million.

(voice-over): And the fact is, in the future, you won't have to live anywhere near Bill Gates' financial neighborhood to savor the latest in home technology. Even today, houses in this relatively modest subdivision in Georgia, where home prices start at about $150,000, come wired for the 21st century.

GEORGE IDE, HOME TECH CONSULTANT: This includes wires for video, which is the coax wire, and that runs the cable television on it; a data line which runs data to the upstairs, as well as telephone. The red is for fire. GEORGE: How much technology is up to the homeowner? A basic house might have a simple intercom at the front door, for instance. A more expensive house might have a front-door camera with the intercom linked to the telephone.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hello.

GEORGE (on camera): Hi, it's David George from CNN.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, David, how are you? Come on in.

Well, the way it works, if you ring the doorbell, I just grab the phone and dial "star-star" and I'm talking to you at the front door, so I can be anywhere in the house.

GEORGE (voice-over): Step into the house of the future in Watford, a suburb of London. That's where a British home builder, Laing Homes, has joined with the giant technology company Cisco to construct a showcase residence they're calling the Internet home. It's chock full of every sort of technology: video conferencing, TV sets that double as Internet data ports, a kitchen computer that keeps track of what's in the refrigerator. There are multiple security cameras, even a system for starting the coffeepot from any room in the house.

But what makes the Internet home unique is, well, the Internet. The house has its own Web site. According to the builders, the homeowner could access the house from anywhere in the world: control the lights, adjust the temperature, check the security cameras, even turn on the sprinkler in the garden. All the technology and the systems to run it are available today off the shelf.

SARAH BAILEY, MARKETING DIRECTOR: It's basically a very comfortable house that you can operate both from the Internet and by hand, as normal.

GEORGE: But with the Internet becoming more and more a part of our lives, what will normal mean in the future?

PROF. JEFFREY HUANG, HARVARD SCHOOL OF DESIGN: The emergence of the Internet and the Worldwide Web and this networking infrastructure will have a very profound effect on how we live.

GEORGE: Harvard's Jeffrey Huang and his students envision such things as virtual walls doing the job now done by computer screens; virtual closets where you can see how you'd look in clothes without trying them on; virtual tables at which any number of people in any number of locations can work together or socialize. Huang even talks of a virtual shower in which the walls, even the shower curtain, become a digital interface.

HUANG: The house is an interface to a virtual community, and the interface is integrated into the architecture.

GEORGE: Ah, architecture: How it's changed since the 1950s when television's "March of Time" documented Levittown, the planned communities that made the American dream accessible to a generation of young Americans coming home from World War II. The Levitt brothers built tens of thousands of homes in three states and Puerto Rico: two bedrooms, one bath, 850 square feet for about $10,000.

Today, the average new home is more than 2,000 square feet, the average price, $175,000. Families have gotten smaller since the '50s, but houses have gotten bigger. With land prices up, typical lot size is down.

PROF. ROSEMARY GOSS, VIRGINIA TECH: And lots of people say, well, I can't have both so I will choose to have the large house on the small lot.

GEORGE: Virginia Tech's Rosemary Goss studies housing and property management. She says the cost of energy in the 21st century will make us rethink the way we build our houses.

GOSS: We're going to continue to see our homes become more and more energy-efficient.

GEORGE: That'll mean more universal acceptance of such things as solar electric shingles that generate power from the sun, energy-savvy design on the outside of our homes, more efficient lighting inside.

Builders may make wider use of things like cellulose insulation, which is sprayed into the walls, making them airtight. Made mostly of recycled newspapers, cellulose insulation is treated with borox to be fire-proof and resistant to termites.

Houses in this subdivision south of Atlanta sell in the $100,000 to $200,000 range. They are heated and cooled by water circulating through geo-thermal pipes sunk 200 feet into the ground. The system costs nearly three times as much to install as conventional heating and air conditioning.

JULIUS POSTON, HOME BUILDER: This is the whole system.

GEORGE: But it pays for itself through reduced utility bills.

POSTON: And a 2,000 square-foot home in Atlanta averages about $172 a month. Our utility bills average about $75 to $80 -- about half.

GEORGE: Back in 1957, Monsanto Corporation offered its version of the "house of the future" at California's Disneyland. In Monsanto's view, the future was all about easy living.

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ANNOUNCER: Convenience is right at your fingertips here.

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GEORGE: Some of Monsanto's vision came true, but the house of the future's floating diner design never caught on. Four decades later, the "house of the future" looks a lot like the house next door. It's the technology inside that makes it different. The prediction is that, in the future, technology currently found mostly at the upper end of the housing market will work its way down the line, and one day here in the 21st century, our children will look around at all the technology in their homes and wonder how we ever got along without it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was wondering how I was going to get along with it until I figured out how to work it.

GEORGE: For SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY WEEK, I'm David George.

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KELLAN: Coming up: advances in biotechnology that can fit a body of information on a pocket-sized chip.

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KELLAN: The dramatic strides scientists are making in genetic research are sparking an explosion in the field of biotechnology. Tiny devices called "biochips" are being touted as the next big thing in genetic research.

Rusty Dornin has more.

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RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Looks like a computer chip, acts like a computer chip, but forget integrated circuits: This chip contains thousands of actual DNA fragments. It's called a biochip.

JOHN NGAI, UNIV. OF CALIF. BERKELEY: It's allowing us to do experiments that we, in the past, couldn't even dream of doing.

DORNIN: Out with the mammogram and in with the genetic test of the future. DNA from a swab taken from the inside of a patients cheek is then tested against 100,000 variants of the gene that causes breast cancer stored on the chip.

TITO SERAFINI, UNIV. OF CALIF. BERKELEY: And depending upon which variant a woman has, this increases or decreases her likelihood of getting breast cancer.

DORNIN: Biochips are sparking a revolution in drug testing. This one contains proteins made by genes, proteins that might be involved in causing diseases. Biochips allow hundreds of thousands of chemicals to be rapidly tested against them.

DANIEL KISNER, CALIPER TECHNOLOGIES: The pharmaceutical industry is attempting to find chemicals, potential drugs, if you will, that interact with these proteins in some way, either modify their effect or slow them down or destroy them. DORNIN (on camera): Ten years ago, researchers could only do hundreds of experiments per day, testing chemicals against proteins produced by genes. In this laboratory, that number is now 40,000, and by the end of the year it could shoot up to 100,000.

(voice-over): Today, decisions about what drugs are used to treat a patient are often based on educated guesses. In the future, researchers say the biochips will help produce safer and more accurate therapies.

NGAI: Because we are genetically different, in some cases this means that one person may respond better to a drug than another, one person may have a bad reaction to a drug, and another -- whereas another wouldn't.

DORNIN: Customized biochip testing for a customized biotech cure.

For SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY WEEK, I'm Rusty Dornin.

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KELLAN: Coming up: a robot searching for meteorites in Antarctica. We'll tell you the details when we come back.

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KELLAN: Some of America Online's 20 million customers say they got more than they bargained for after installing a new version of the company's Internet software. In the midst of AOL's announcement to merge with Time Warner, the parent company of CNN, a lawsuit has been filed against AOL on behalf of what could be millions of users who say its new software is damaging other computer programs.

Marsha Walton explains.

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MARSHA WALTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: America Online says its latest Internet software, version 5.0, makes it easier for customers to get online, but computer technicians in chat rooms report it can also wreak havoc on unrelated computer functions.

DANNY BROWN, OWNER, THE COMPUTER HANDYMAN: As soon as I installed that, it started crashing, started locking up. It started just having a realm of unknown problems.

GREG JONES, FORMER AOL USER: Well, it wouldn't exactly crash. It would just kick you off line. Many people now have more than one Internet service provider, or ISP. Fore example, one for a home account, one for work.

WALTON: AOL competitors, like Prodigy, say 5.0 just takes over the computer.

"They really haven't told the user, I'm going to disable your other ISPs, I'm going to delete information from your machine, and I'm going to make it impossible for you to get back on without uninstalling software and reinstalling software."

Now lawyers have filed a class-action suit because of these problems on behalf of what the plaintiffs say are up to 8 million AOL customers with the same problem. AOL says not nearly that many customers have been affected and told CNN, "The complaint that has been filed on this issue has no basis, in fact, or law." And AOL says customers must agree to choose AOL as their default, or primary connection, a choice other ISPs demand as well.

DAVID GANG, AMERICA ONLINE: So AOL asks you if you want us to be your default connection to the Internet, and when you select "yes," we set up in conjunction with what Windows software allows you do, you're default online experience.

WALTON: Many expert agree that for customers who use nothing but AOL, 5.0 can provide a more stable Internet ride. But installing it, even if you don't have another ISP can frustrate users by changing existing files and settings. This can affect programs ranging from e- mail to financial software.

Analysts Doug Barney sees similarities to Microsoft.

DOUG BARNEY, COLUMNIST, NETWORKWORLD: Microsoft software oftentimes will take over your computer and will interfere with some other vendors products, and Microsoft has had its reputation tarnished by these types of reports. AOL is in danger of doing the exact same thing.

WALTON: AOL says it has no plans, to change its current 5.0 version.

For SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY WEEK, I'm Marsha Walton.

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KELLAN: Well, we end this week's show with a look at a roving robot. Researchers with Carnegie-Mellon University and the National Science Foundation are breaking new ground while examining what's on the ground in Antarctica. On January 30, the Nomad robot wrapped up a successful 10-day search for meteorites in Antarctica. The mission marks the first time a robot in the natural world has been able to distinguish meteorites from ordinary rocks, using sensors and artificial intelligence. After examining more than 100 rocks, the robot identified seven as meteorites. Nomad's accuracy wasn't bad -- five of the seven specimens were later confirmed as meteorites.

The discovery occurred at Elephant Moraine in eastern Antarctica, a hotspot for meteorite activity. Scientists say further study of the robot's abilities can help set expectations for future generations of planetary rovers.

Thanks for joining us. I'm Ann Kellan.

Next week, it has been the launch site for products like the Palm Pilot and the free PC. Find out what will be the next big thing to debut at the tech industry's most elite trade show. That's coming up on the next SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY WEEK. We'll see you then.

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