The charges stem from an incident earlier this year when a 63-year-old patient from Kaiser Permanente hospital in downtown Bellflower street was videotaped as she left a taxi in gown and socks, and then wandered skid row streets.

The suit seeks a judge's order to forbid all Kaiser medical facilities from dumping homeless patients on skid row or impose financial sanctions if it violates the order, according to the City News Service.

Besides Kaiser Permanente hospital, nine other hospitals are under investigation by city prosecutors for allegedly discharging patients to the 50-block area in downtown Los Angeles.

City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo said the Kaiser case was a first step in holding hospitals accountable for dumping.

"We seek to end the inhumane and illegal practice," Delgadillo said. "We believe this is the right action to take and it speaks to this region's values. We are in the right place at the right time to hold Kaiser accountable."

A Kaiser spokeswoman said she was "very surprised" by the charges.

"I can't understand how these charges would be levied based on what I know of the incident," said Diana Bonta, vice president of public affairs for Kaiser Southern California.

She said Kaiser had changed some of its practices since the March incident to better serve discharged homeless patients.

"As soon as we heard about it, we said this is not how we do business," she said. "And we apologized. Since then, we have been talking not only with the city attorney's office, but we've worked with the agencies that service the homeless."

Researchers Hod Lipson and Victor Zykov of Cornell University and Josh Bongard of the University of Vermont made a robot that observed its own motion using built-in sensors in its joints and then generated its own concept of itself, or at least its physical structure, in its internal computer.

It used this internal model of itself to figure out how to walk on its four legs and eight motorized joints.

"In the beginning, the robot starts off and does not know what it looks like. You look at it, and you see that it's a four-legged machine. But the robot itself doesn't know that. All it knows is that it could be a snake, it could be a tree, it could have six legs," Lipson said in an interview.

Lipson said the robot used various movements of its joints, first to generate hypotheses and then to formulate an accurate conception of itself.

The researchers then tested the robot's ability to adapt to new situations -- in this case injury -- by shortening one of its legs. "The robot knows something's wrong," Lipson said.

Animals can compensate for injury by changing movements, like limping to favor an injured leg. Machines can be programmed to react to a problem in a certain way. But when they are damaged in unexpected ways, they usually are doomed.

This plucky robot responded by generating on its own a new concept of its structure, accurately sensing it had been altered, and then devising a new way to walk using a different gait to compensate for the injury.

The robot's smarts, awareness of itself and ability to adapt on its own separates it from its mechanical brethren.

'THINKING ABOUT ITSELF'

"We don't really think this is self-consciousness, which is a robot thinking about itself thinking," Lipson said. "But I do think it is moving in the direction of consciousness, like a cat, that kind of level."

Aside from contributing to a philosophical debate, the research has practical implications -- giving hope to people who envision sending robots that can adapt to unforeseen circumstances to explore other worlds or the ocean floor.

"There is a need for planetary robotic rovers to be able to fix things on their own," Bongard said in a statement. "Robots on other planets must be able to continue their mission without human intervention in the event they are damaged and cannot communicate their problem back to Earth."

Christoph Adami of the Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences in Claremont, California, wrote a commentary accompanying the research entitled, "What Do Robots Dream Of?" -- an allusion to science fiction writer Philip Dick's 1968 novel, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"

Adami described how a robot like this one might perform in unknown territory, exploring the landscape and then "dreaming" of new methods to overcome obstacles it had encountered.

"And even though the robots ... seem to prefer to dream about themselves rather than electric sheep, they just may have unwittingly helped us understand what dreams are for," he said.

Reminded of malicious robots and computers turning on their human masters in movies like "The Terminator" and "2001: A Space Odyssey," Lipson was not worried.

"We just pull the plug out of the robot. That's all," Lipson said. "There are more immediate things to worry about than to worry about that."

The small group of fit athletes who took part in the study were asked to work out strenuously on a stationery bicycle, then drink low-fat chocolate milk, a fluid-replacement drink like Gatorade and a carbohydrate replacement drink like Endurox R4. A few hours later, they were asked to cycle again until they reached exhaustion.

The test was repeated three times - once with each kind of drink - and the data showed that the cyclists were able to go between 49 and 54 percent longer on the second stint after drinking chocolate milk than when they drank the carbohydrate drink. The difference between the milk and the fluid-replacement drink was not significant.

"My way of explaining it is, there's really nothing magic about the powder in a can that you mix with water," cycling coach Scott Saifer said of the carbohydrate drink. "It's water, carbs, proteins, maybe minerals and electrolytes. What's in chocolate milk? The same thing. There's no reason it shouldn't be as good for recovery as a carb drink."

The milk folks tout their product as a less-costly and healthier alternative to the more traditional energy drinks.

They have some data to back up the physiology of the issue. Among their points are that milk also provides much-needed calcium and might be more efficiently absorbed into the system than the other drinks.

The cost analysis also works in their favor.

To get 75 grams of carbohydrate, you'd need about 18 ounces of chocolate milk, three scoops of a carb drink or about 17 ounces of a fluid-replacement drink. The milk option would cost around 49 cents, which is about 95 cents less than the carb drink and about 9 cents less than a 17-ounce serving of Gatorade.

(Prices were calculated on the basis of a sale-priced $3.50 gallon of chocolate milk, an eight-pack of 20-ounce bottles of Gatorade on sale for $5.50 and a 56-scoop container of Endurox priced at $26.95.)

This latest study by the milk industry is an attempt to get people thinking about one of the world's most basic products in new ways. Of course, it could also be viewed as little more than a ploy to cut into the multibillion-dollar sports-drink market. (According to brandchannel.com, Gatorade topped $2 billion in sales in 2001.)

Dietician Mary Lee Chin, who does public-relations work for the Western Dairy Council, says that either way, there's nothing wrong with this sales pitch.

"It's not like you're talking about some beverage that's really outlandish and recommending that," she said. "Milk should be part of everyone's diet anyhow. It's the fact that you already have a nutritional benefit, and then there's this additional replenishment benefit as an added bonus."

The Indiana study netted different results than an earlier study that found participants exercised 55 percent longer after drinking Endurox than they did after drinking Gatorade. The Indiana study concluded the aberration may have been because of methodological differences in the experiments - most notably that subjects in the other study exercised at a more strenuous pace than in the Indiana study.

Chin acknowledged the Indiana study was not conclusive, but believes the findings merit a more expansive study.

As for the prospect of chugging down a glass of chocolate milk on a hot day after an extensive workout ... well, that's a matter of personal preference.

"If it tastes good enough that you want to reach for a bottle and drink it, it's a good exercise drink," said Saifer, who prefers a fruit and yogurt smoothie to quench his thirst. "If it tastes nasty and you don't want to drink it, there's no way it can help you."

The new studies confirm the Neanderthal's humanity, and show that their genomes and ours are more than 99.5 percent identical, differing by only about 3 million bases.

"This is a drop in the bucket if you consider that the human genome is 3 billion bases," said Edward Rubin of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who led one of the research teams.

The genomes of chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, differ from humans by about 30 million to 50 million base pairs.

The results tell more about the evolution of the human species, and pave the way for building a complete library of the Neanderthal genome within a few years, the scientists say.

The findings also appear to refute recent speculation that Neanderthals and humans interbred in more recent times.

"We see no evidence of mixing 30,000 to 40,000 years ago in Europe," Rubin said. "We don't exclude it, but from the data that we have, we have no evidence that pages were ripped from one genome and put in the other."

Excavations and anatomical studies have shown Neanderthals were not prehistoric brutes who lost out to modern humans who came from Africa. Neanderthals took of their sick, buried their dead, wore jewelry, used tools, and perhaps sang or spoke much as we do. And their brains were slightly larger than ours.

The successes of the two teams' sequencing projects were made possible by recent advances in DNA sequencing technology, which now allow scientists to sequence DNA more than 100 times faster than in the past.

The researchers say their achievements mark the "dawn of Neanderthal genomics," and they estimate that further advances in DNA sequencing technology could allow the completion of a very rough draft of the entire Neanderthal genome within two years.

"Humans went through several stages of evolution in the last 400,000 years," said study co-author Jonathan Pritchard of the University of Chicago. "If we can compare humans' and Neanderthals' genomes, then we can possibly identify what the key genetic changes were during that final stage of human evolution."

A completed genome will also reveal new insights about Neanderthals, who disappeared mysteriously about 30,000 years ago.

"In having the Neanderthal genome sequence ...we're going to learn about the biology, learn about things that we could never learn from the bones and the artifacts that we have," Rubin said.

The results of Rubin's team are detailed in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature; Paabo's team's results are detailed in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

Alexander Schoppmann, the 55-year-old founder of Smoker's International Airways -- Smintair -- said he got the idea for a smokers' haven in the heavens after he'd had enough of expensive non-smoking long-haul flights with poor service.

"I got so annoyed that ticket prices were rising while service was getting worse," said Schoppmann, who is a 20-a-day cigarette smoker.

Once Smintair flights begin in October 2007, smoking will be allowed in all 138 seats aboard a spacious Smintair Boeing 747. Normal airlines fit up to 559 passengers in a 747.

"The crew can smoke as well," the former stockbroker said.

Schoppmann came up with the idea as Germany considers toughening its smoking regulations, among the most lenient in Europe. Germans have been loath to ban smoking because of memories of Adolf Hitler, who forbade it in public places.

The center-left Social Democrats, who are part of the grand coalition, have drafted a proposal to ban smoking in many public places.

Berlin, the city-state that is Germany's capital, may go even further. It is considering a ban in all public places.

Large ashtrays

Nicotine-friendly Smintair is already popular, even though tickets are not on sale yet.

"Demand is strong," Schoppmann said. "We get people who say they want to fly with us, even though they have no business in Tokyo or Shanghai," he said.

On daily flights from Duesseldorf to Tokyo and Shanghai, Smintair will offer Cuban cigars, caviar served by flight attendants in designer uniforms, a deluxe on-board entertainment system and large ashtrays at every seat.

There will be a lounge with a duty-free shop.

The extravagance will not cost any more than a flight to Japan with any other airline, Schoppmann said.

A first-class return ticket -- Smintair offers only business and first-class tickets -- from Duesseldorf to Tokyo will cost 10,000 euros ($12,680), while a business-class seat will go for 6,500 euros on the same route, he says.

Schoppmann expects to make profit within the first 12 months. He forecasts a rise in annual sales to 500 million euros and a pre-tax profit of 120 million euros by October 2008.

Airline industry experts are skeptical.

"I don't think an all-business class smoking flight can be run economically from Duesseldorf," said Andreas Kretzschmar, chairman of the Board of Airline Representatives in Germany.

Ernst-Guenther Krause, vice-president of the Non-Smoker Initiative Germany, said Schoppmann's idea would never fly because people were increasingly aware of the risks of smoking.

"Most people have realized by now that tobacco is not good for them," he said.

Nearly one in three German adults smokes regularly and about 140,000 Germans die every year from tobacco-related illnesses.

Schoppmann, who dismisses the effects of second-hand smoking as "nonsense", is not worried about a future smoking ban.

"Quite the opposite. We'll benefit from it," he said.

Smintair does not have an airline licence yet, since it still lacks one crucial piece of equipment -- planes.

Schoppmann said he was taking over three used Boeing 747s from airlines that hoped to replace them with the new Airbus A380 super jumbo, whose delivery is delayed.

Once his airline takes off, the chain-smoking Smintair founder hopes to open a chain of hotels, restaurants, pubs and holiday resorts.

He may also expand the airline's route to the southern hemisphere. Johannesburg and Sao Paulo are on his radar.