Researchers from the Trent & Peak Archaeology at The University of Nottingham use the technology to produce 3-dimensional tours that allow visitors to virtually explore the caves under the seventh-largest urban area in the United Kingdom. Some of the caves are known since medieval times. They have been used as dungeons, bunkers, and beer cellars for nearly 1,000 years.

To map the caves, laser scanners fire beams of light which reflect back from the cave walls to produce 500,000 survey points per second. Since the instrument measures the amount of time it takes for the light to return, it can calculate how far away an object or a wall is. The laser is so accurate that measurements only deviate plus or minus 0.08 inches (2 millimeters).

"This remarkable new technology will create a full measured record of the caves in three dimensions. This gives us two really important things - a highly detailed archaeological record of the historic caves, and a new way for people to view caves they may never have seen before," says David Walker, a scientist at The University of Nottingham. "For the first time visitors will be able to explore Nottingham's unique caves with a laptop or smartphone over the web. However, there have to be many more caves that we don't even know about and we want to hear from anyone who might have a sandstone tunnel at the back of their house, office or garden."

The majority of Nottingham’s caves is manmade and cut in the castle sandstone that formed in the Triassic period approximately 245 million years ago. During this period, the sea advanced and retreated many times across the area and left deposits of sand and pebble. The deposits were subsequently buried under a thick layer of mud and silt. The soft sandstone created did make it easy to excavate tunnels with hand tools. Early residents used the resulting structures hundreds of years ago as shelter.

The goal of the Nottingham Caves Survey, which is the first part of the Caves of Nottingham Regeneration Project, is to present the caves in a new and exciting way and to preserve Nottingham's unique and fragile resource for future generations.

A short video showing a sample of a 3-dimensional cave is available on YouTube here.

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ITA is a travel industry software company that offers an airfare search and pricing system called QPX. The software is used by several U.S. airlines and online travel agencies Orbitz, Cheap Tickets, and Bing Travel, among many others. The Cambridge based company also developed the Internet booking engine IBE and a passenger reservation management system, called RES.

While diversifying its business seems to be Google's main interest, keeping customers more engaged in its applications ranks certainly high on its to-do list. Customers can already use Google to plan travel, but they will eventually get links to other travel sites like Expedia, Hotwire, or Orbitz.

If the reports are true and Google follows through with the ITA Software acquisition, would this be a game changer? Most analysts speculate that Google will never sell tickets, only information. Due to Google’s usual scale of doing business, that could mean trouble for other sites based on the same model, some news outlets report. Google could use its mapping program to display rates and eventually integrate the service into its Android operating system to allow smartphone users to review hotel rates and airfares on the go.

However, Google could also be interested in Needle, a platform developed by ITA Software to acquire, integrate, clean, analyze and publish data on the web. Basically, the software can search websites, XML feeds, and spreadsheets for data and merge variant forms of the same record. Needle then allows users to extract and view the information in whatever way they want. This sounds almost like an advanced search algorithm that can be used to gather and analyze information for anything from hotel rates to airfares to migrating patterns of right whales – the sky seems to be the limit.

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"At the worst, the crisis impacted 29 percent of global aviation and affected 1.2 million passengers a day. The scale of the crisis eclipsed 9/11 when US airspace was closed for three days," said Giovanni Bisignani, IATA’s Director General and CEO.

Airlines are increasingly seeking emergency aid from their national governments and the European Union. There are fears that some carriers already weakened by the recession may struggle to survive the latest crisis. While airlines were able to save fuel while grounded, they faced added costs to repatriate and care for passengers.

"For an industry that lost $9.4 billion last year and was forecast to lose a further $2.8 billion in 2010, this crisis is devastating," said Bisignani. "It is hitting hardest where the carriers are in the most difficult financial situation. Europe’s carriers were already expected to lose $2.2 billion this year - the largest in the industry."

IATA, which represents some 230 airlines worldwide, called on governments to provide regulatory relief to move stranded passengers and deal with the backlog. Relaxing the restrictions on night flights would allow airlines to get stranded passengers back home as soon as possible. In addition, the IATA chief asked that governments relax airport slot rules and address unfair passenger care regulations.

"It is an extra-ordinary situation exaggerated with a poor decision-making process by national governments. The airlines could not do business normally. Governments should help carriers recover the cost of this disruption," said Bisignani. "It is an embarrassing situation for Europe, which after decades of discussion, still does not have an effective Single European Sky. The chaos and economic losses of the last week are a clarion call to Europe's political leaders that a Single European Sky is critical and urgent."

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"While Thailand has long been a British favorite, neighboring East Asian countries have experienced a dramatic rise in search recently and we are starting to see a popularity shift into places like Vietnam," says Nadine Hallak, Travel Expert for Cheapflights UK.

Price conscious travelers will find value in all three destinations. Vietnam is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula. Bordered by China, Laos and Cambodia, the country features two World Natural Heritage sites and six World biosphere reserves. Vietnam is ranked 16th in biological diversity, and 16 percent of the world’s species can be found here, including 794 aquatic invertebrates and 2,458 sea fish. While tourism has grown steadily to almost 4 million visitors over the years, prices remain relatively low.

Malaysia is made up of three main regions covering over a thousand individual islands. West and East Malaysia are separated by the South China Sea and share a largely similar landscape of coastal plains that rise to often densely forested hills and mountains. 38 designated marine parks are home to shipwrecks, coral gardens, black-tip reef sharks, barracuda, groupers, parrotfish, puffer and angelfish are common sights.

With a population of 230 million, Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous country. Only about 6,000 of its 17,508 islands that stretch along the equator are inhabited. After Brazil, Indonesia supports the world's second highest level of biodiversity. The Komodo National Park, the Banda Sea, Raja Ampat and the Bunaken National Marine Park feature some of the best scuba diving in the region.

"Travelers are more up to going the distance not only in flight time, but also in adventure. Whether it’s helping to feed an economy that’s fighting to grow or getting better acquainted with one that’s already booming," said Hallak. "Perhaps the two most interesting trends to come out of the recession are a heightened global conscience and a thirst for exploration."

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However, the worst could be behind the industry. While the passenger volume declined 9 percent in the first half of 2009, it did shrink only 1.4 percent during the last 6 months of the year. The statistics showed that 6.3 percent fewer international travelers used domestic airlines compared to 5.2 percent fewer domestic passengers. By comparison, passenger bookings on foreign airlines to and from the U.S. declined by 4.8 percent during 2009. The numbers are a far cry from 2007, which marked a record with 838.2 million air travelers.

Higher costs for checking luggage and other add-on fees travelers had to cope with partially offset declines in airline revenues.

With a volume of 42.1 million passengers, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson was the nation’s busiest airport, and American Airlines carried the most international travelers from and to the U.S.

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