For the first time in a long time, some good news about how the world sees America:

“Views of the U.S. improved or stayed the same as last year in 18 nations, the first positive signs the poll has found for the U.S. image worldwide this decade,” according to folks at the Pew Research Center, who caution that “Five years after the start of the war in Iraq, the image of the United States abroad remains far less positive than it was before the war and at the beginning of the century.”

The center put together in interesting interactive global map to view this and other results, including the level of confidence in President Bush and candidates Obama and McCain.

Among the findings of the full survey, which included 24,000 people in 24 countries, is another shift in opinions that could factor into U.S. relations in the future:

“Around the world, people have a new concern: slumping economic conditions. And they have a familiar complaint — most think the U.S. is having a considerable influence on their economy, and it is largely seen as a negative one.”

Separately, a broader and years-long survey of 52 countries released this week found happiness is on the rise.

There’s been a (somewhat slowly) growing trend in recent years to revamp small things in our lives to make a little bit greener, for example, compact fluorescent bulbs are gradually replacing their more inefficient cousins, incandescent lights.

Companies are jumping on the band wagon as well. Poland Springs, for example, recently debuted their new “eco-shape” bottle that has 30 percent less plastic than the old bottle. Apparently, Sam’s Club is also getting in on the act with brand-new rectangular-shaped milk jugs, according to this article in today’s online version of The New York Times.

The jugs are easier to stack and therefore to ship, cheaper to make and ship (bringing down the cost of milk in the store) and more environmentally-friendly. But to change-resistant consumers, they’re also, well, different.

The new shape just isn’t want people are used to seeing in the diary section. And though the milk in these containers is fresher (because it ships out faster) and cheaper, it’s also apparently harder to pour. The tried-and-true “life, tip and pour” method doesn’t work these jugs, instead resulting in a lot of spilled milk. No need to cry though, because just resting the jug on a counter and tipping it will get all the milk into your glass, Sams Club employees say.

Such reinventions of basic parts of the American way of life are going to become more commonplace, according to experts quote in the article:

“This is a key strategy as a path forward,” said Anne Johnson, the director of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, a project of the nonprofit group GreenBlue. “Re-examining, ‘What are the materials we are using? How are we using them? And where to they go ultimately?”

Sam’s Club is already expanding the number of stores that feature the new milk jugs and Wal-Mart is considering following suit.

Who knows what product will eco-ified next…

If you think gas prices are high in the United States, you have not looked at the rest of the world.

Bill Marsh, a visual reporter at the NY Times who has a flair for putting data and words into meaningful presentations, compares the price per gallon for various countries and analyzes what fuels the vastly differing costs.

While a handful of countries have very cheap gas because it is heavily subsidized (such as in Venezuela, were it’s $0.25 per gallon), most European countries apply heavy taxes so consumers pay much more than U.S. residents. Prices range from $7.30 per gallon in space to $10.05 in The Netherlands.

“Take away the taxes, and the remaining gas price is similar from place to place,” Marsh writes.

• Why Oil Prices Skyrocketed

There’s a lot of funding fallout streaming out of discussions by space scientists at this week’s Planetary Science Subcommittee meeting held at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Tight budgets may well mean slipping an outer planet flagship mission to Jupiter or Saturn beyond 2016 to perhaps 2020. Some good news is that such a mission may get a financial boost from $2.1 billion to $3 billion.

Then there’s the ongoing saga of the budget-busting Mars Science Laboratory - powerpointed to be still on track for a September 2009 launch - but not out of the woods as yet.

There’s been roughly a $190 million cost overrun on Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) over two fiscal years. The current cost-to-complete estimate is now pegged at $1.9 billion in rounded-off dollars. Meanwhile, the folks at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are in hyper-drive piecing together the mega-rover. They are in double-shifts to achieve assemble, test and launch operations milestones - but also face supplier delivery delays.

One space scientist told me that the planetary science budget is “very uncertain” until (a) new administration, (b) MSL with lots of luck blasts off on time next September - and hopefully not needing any more money and (c) the Mars program gets its act together and comes up with a realistic plan - a plan that is now characterized by my contact as in “serious disarray”.

Also, NASA remains keen on looking at a Mars Sample Return mission. However, the cost for that effort is deemed ultra-high, even with international cooperation. To make that project happen, say in a 2018-2020 time frame, it will require skipping opportunities at Mars, even with significant international partnership.

It’s all money, money, money.

Good luck to Ed Weiler, NASA’s top space science guru, in locating that printing press to create fresh money - it must be behind some door at space agency headquarters, no?

Inflation (there, I said it) and the mortgage meltdown, worry about global warming and the overall glum economy (we’re not supposed to call it a recession until it’s over or a new person is in the White House or until inflation is clearly the greater worry, whichever comes first) are having profound effects on how Americans live.

You know best. You are driving less, driving slower, and being more careful at the grocery store. In the East where public transportation is not a dirty word, buses and subways are stuffed and Amtrak ridership is at an all-time high.

And no surprise, you are tightening your belts. A Bloomberg/L.A. Times survey this week finds seven in 10 “say higher gas prices have caused them ‘financial hardship.’ More than 1 in 3 respondents say they have cut back on their spending over the last six months as oil and food prices surged and unemployment rose.”

If you are a Baby Boomer, you’re whining like crazy. But you always have been.

Meanwhile, as your stocks plunged today and oil surged above $140 a barrel, here are a dozen less obvious signs of the times:

1. Government officials in a Minnesota county worrying how they’ll plow the snow next winter. They are struggling with budgets that were planned before fuel prices skyrocketed. “We’re looking at fuel efficiency, but it can only go so far,” said Don Theisen, who runs Washington County’s public works department. “The big equipment, like snowplows, have improved over time, but nothing that will make up for the rise in fuel costs.”

2. With diesel prices even higher than gas, thieves are siphoning big-rig fuel. “There’s quite a bit of theft going on,” said Dave Williams, vice president of equipment and maintenance for Phoenix-based Knight Transportation. “We’ve had to figure out how to track it and keep it from happening.”

3. The Caribbean tourism industry is sinking, and on many islands it’s pretty much all they have. That means, of course, that you and many others are planning staycations this summer.

4. An official in Madison, Wisconsin is advocating a ban on fast-food drive-thrus. “Given the concern about all the carbon going into the atmosphere, I’m not sure we should be building more places for people to sit idling in their cars,” says Eric Sundquist, appointed to a citizen panel by the mayor.

5. Suburban commuters, especially out West where the public transport options are as rare as hybrid cars on a showroom floor, know too well the disproportionate hit to the pocketbook they’re suffering now. And so, of course, there’s talk about the death of the suburbs and the exurbs.

6. Carpooling is nothing new, but now rodeo cowboys are saddling up together. They have to drive to the many stops on the rodeo circuit, often in diesel pickup trucks towing trailers weighted down by the animals. “It’s ridiculous, I mean it’s doubled my cost to go places,” said Monty Lewis, the 2004 world champion tie-down roper.

7. Cocoa Beach Florida is scrubbing its fireworks simply because the city can’t afford it this year.

8. Job productivity is declining as workers stress about pump prices, claims Wayne Hochwarter of Florida State University’s College of Business. There’s no firm data on this (in fact, I suspect a lot of people are working harder for fear they’ll be laid off). But Hochwarter did a survey earlier this year to see what’s on workers’ minds. “People concerned with the effects of gas prices were significantly less attentive on the job, less excited about going to work, less passionate and conscientious and more tense,” he concludes. “These people also reported more ‘blues’ on the job.” Sad.

9. Now we turn positive, Vint Cerf (the real Al Gore of the Internet) and now a Google mucky-muck, said “Although I’m not happy with increased oil prices, the Internet (industry) may actually benefit from that as people turn to it as an aid to improve their efficiency.” Indeed: Lisa Honan of U.K.-based Eyenetwork, which brokers videoconference facilities in 3,500 locations, says studio bookings have more than doubled in the past year. The No. 1 use: interviewing job candidates. Take note, ye who are blue an slacking (No. 6).

And, to reprise, there are these offbeat upsides:

10. Deaths are likely down. Fewer miles driven means safer roads. One study predicts nearly 2,000 fewer people will die because of the recent price hikes.

11. Less gas is being consumed (fewer SUVs, less driving, etc.). One economist estimates that each $1 rise in gas leads to 14 percent less fuel consumption over the long haul. Of course, as consumption falls, some analysts say prices at the pump could dip, stimulating demand.

12. Pollution is reduced. If we use less gas, logic dictates that smog will decrease (you’ll breath cleaner air) and we’ll pump lower amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Little if any research has quantified this potential outcome, but the traffic-death study also predicts 600 fewer pollution-related deaths. So maybe, just maybe, we’re on the, ahem, road to recovery.

It’s an inevitable development, but one that has safety advocates concerned.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back on the road, with states enacting laws against talking on cell phones and texting while driving, Chrysler is expected to announce wireless Internet for 2009 models, according to the L.A. Times.

“Surfing the Web is something people really don’t have any business doing while they drive,” said Jonathan Adkins, spokesman for the Governors Highway Safety Association. “It’s definitely a distraction.”

Perhaps Wi-Fi will come in cars also packing advanced no-crash technology.

The country that brings you bullfighting is expected to pass a law that will guarantee Apes Rights.

In Spain, if the resolution passes, it’ll be illegal to experiment on apes or use them in circuses, commercials or movies.

“This is a historic day in the struggle for animal rights and in defense of our evolutionary comrades, which will doubtless go down in the history of humanity,” said Pedro Pozas, Spanish director of the Great Apes Project.

I have no idea exactly what the above quote means.

Separately, our Jeanna Bryner reported last month, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France has been asked to grant human rights to Matthew, a 26-year-old chimp. Not just any ol’ rights, but human rights. Hmm. Matthew does look like he’s pondering all this..

It’s a banner day today for NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander, which hit the 30-day mark of its initial three-month mission to study the bleak Martian arctic for buried water ice.

Not only is today Sol 30 (a sol is a Martian day) for Phoenix, but it’s also the summer solstice on Mars, where the sun hits the northernmost point of its path across the sky. Earth’s own summer solstice was last Saturday, June 21.

Phoenix is poised to “taste” Martian soil in this image taken on June 24, 2008. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A & M.

So what do we know about the Martian arctic at the one-third mark of Phoenix’s initial mission?

Well, there’s apparently ice in them thar trenches for sure. In a coup for Phoenix, images of the probe’s robotic arm-dug trenches caught ice evaporation in action over the course of a few days last week. Scientists hailed it as a major milestone showing that Phoenix’s can in fact reach local ice stores buried beneath the dirt covered surface.

It’s also cold, like super-frigid cold. Even in the eternally day arctic summer, where the sun strays close but never below the Martian horizon, the temperatures tend to range between minus 20 and minus 120 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 30 to minus 85 degrees Celsius).

Scientists now know that the Martian arctic soil tends to be a bit clumpy, with the first sample clogging one of Phoenix’s eight small ovens before the probe managed to shake some dirt inside.

The focus of today’s work on Mars for Phoenix was aimed at delivering a sample of Martian dirt into the probe’s wet chemistry laboratory, suite of teacup-sized beakers designed to serve as “electronic tongues” to taste the stuff and determine its composition, NASA officials.

Mission managers even hope to run Phoenix at least one extra month beyond its initial three-month mission, so long as the $420 million probe is still healthy and able to do science. Phoenix landed on Mars on May 25, 2008 and is designed to hunt for buried water ice to learn if the Martian arctic could have once been habitable for primitive life.

Editor’s note: If you want to be nitpicky, today is actually Phoenix’s 31st day on Mars. On landing day, mission scientists opted to start at Sol 0, not Sol 1.

Editor’s note 2: And if you REALLY want to get technical, you’d have to factor in the fact that days on Mars are longer than they are on Earth, with on Martian day running about 40 minutes or so longer that their Earthly counterparts. This space reporter is not getting that technical.

There’s been lots of powerpoint talk and back of the envelop calculation regarding use of a “gravity tractor” to deflect an asteroid that might endanger Earth.

The physics behind the idea is that a spacecraft would position itself near a menacing asteroid and ever-so-slightly pull it off course thanks to the gravitational attraction between the two bodies.

But now a detailed study of the gravity tractor is underway, making use of an expert team at Jet Propulsion Laboratory and CalTech. That’s the word from former Apollo astronaut, Rusty Schweickart - now Chairman of the Board and Founder of the B612 Foundation which is dedicated to detecting, tracking and deflecting near Earth objects (NEOs).

Schweickart spotlighted that fact in a June 15 briefing to the Secure World Foundation (SWF) in Boulder, Colorado. Full-disclosure here from this writer as I’m a research associate with SWF, but also afraid of getting knocked in the planetary noggin by a falling space rock.

The B612 Foundation has inked a $50,000 contract for the work to be done - a detailed performance analysis on the gravity tractor idea. Details of this work-in-progress will be given during the upcoming 10th Asteroids, Comets, Meteors meeting to be held mid-July in Baltimore, Maryland, Schweickart told me.

The assessment is looking into numerous aspects of the gravity tractor, in terms of stability required, maneuvering capability needed and how much fuel is necessary….and just how close can you saunter up to a rotating, odd-shaped body and still maintain spacecraft control.

Man and Nature have always been at odds. Long ago, we sought caves to get out of the rain. It was human nature to do so. Now, stupidly, we build houses in locations we know will flood. We know they will. We’re essentially giving the game away, allowing Nature an advantage that assures it will win.

And the worst is yet to come.

In New Orleans, the levees failed years after engineers and hurricane experts told us they would. The disaster was, one could argue, extremely well planned. Officials said, “Nature, our levees are too short and we dare you to send a strong hurricane our way.” And then Nature just did what it naturally does.

This month’s Midwest floods remind us again how precarious it is to live where a river wants to flow. The Christian Science Monitor today explains that unlike the well-studied New Orleans levee system, the patchwork setup in the Midwest was an unwritten recipe for disaster.

“Little information is known about where levees exist, who maintains them, and what their condition is,” the article points out.

But we do know that the Midwest undergoes extensive flooding every few years [just look at the Great Flood of 1993]. This is not news. But it does get easily forgotten. As Gerald Galloway, a professor of engineering at the University of Maryland, put it a few months after Katrina: “The half-life of the memory of a flood is very short.”

To those who live in the flood plain and the lawmakers and planning officials and insurance companies that allow more homes to be built and rebuilt there, none of this week’s events should come as much of a surprise.

“To qualify for the National Flood Insurance Program [in the United States], structures simply need to be behind a levee built to a so-called 100-year standard, meaning there is a 1 percent chance in any given year that a flood will rise above the levee,” the Monitor article explains. This year, for many people, the odds are now at about 100 percent.

Seeing this week’s devastation, would you go for those odds? Would you build a home in the flood plain, with or without insurance? Apparently for many, the answer is yes.

Figuring out why people live in places they know could prove destructive is tricky. “We can’t underestimate the importance of place, weather and beauty to people,” says Paul Slovic, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon who studies risk behavior.

We need to think more like the Dutch, a good chunk of whom live below sea level:

“In the Netherlands, on the other hand, levees for ocean flooding are built to a 10,000-year standard, and inland levees are designed at least to a 250-year standard and usually in excess of 1,250 years,” according to the Monitor.

Not coincidentally, the Dutch are the least concerned of any nation about the rising seas expected from global warming. They’re planning for it.

What’s next? Oh, you don’t want to know.

More than 40 percent of the U.S. population lives in areas protected by levees, according to the Association of State Flood Plain Managers.

New Orleans will get slammed again, eventually. The whole city is sinking, which we’ve known for years, but now scientists say it’s sinking faster than expected. And in California, engineers have long warned of a disaster waiting for aging levees to give way in the vast Sacramento River delta.

“There are more people in the state of California in danger of catastrophic levee failure than in the states of Texas, Louisiana and Florida combined,” said Sandy Rosenthal, Founder of Levees.Org, a group that lobbies for the obvious: Build them taller and better.

If history is any guide, California is poised for an avoidable catastrophe you’ll be reading about one day. Bank on it.

• Natural Disasters: Top 10 U.S. Threats