Today on New Scientist: 21 December 2012







Cadaver stem cells offer new hope of life after death

Stem cells can be extracted from bone marrow five days after death to be used in life-saving treatments



Apple's patents under fire at US patent office

The tech firm is skating on thin ice with some of the patents that won it a $1 billion settlement against Samsung



Himalayan dam-building threatens endemic species

The world's highest mountains look set to become home to a huge number of dams - good news for clean energy but bad news for biodiversity



Astrophile: Black hole exposed as a dwarf in disguise

A white dwarf star caught mimicking a black hole's X-ray flashes may be the first in a new class of binary star systems



Blind juggling robot keeps a ball in the air for hours

The robot, which has no visual sensors, can juggle a ball flawlessly by analysing its trajectory



Studio sessions show how Bengalese finch stays in tune

This songbird doesn't need technological aids to stay in tune - and it's smart enough to not worry when it hears notes that are too far off to be true



Giant tooth hints at truly monumental dinosaur

A lone tooth found in Argentina may have belonged to a dinosaur even larger than those we know of, but what to call it?



Avian flu virus learns to fly without wings

A strain of bird flu that hit the Netherlands in 2003 travelled by air, a hitherto suspected by unproven route of transmission



Feedback: Are wind turbines really fans?

A tale of "disease-spreading" wind farms, the trouble with quantifying "don't know", the death of parody in the UK, and more



The link between devaluing animals and discrimination

Our feelings about other animals have important consequences for how we treat humans, say prejudice researchers Gordon Hodson and Kimberly Costello



Best videos of 2012: First motion MRI of unborn twins

Watch twins fight for space in the womb, as we reach number 6 in our countdown of the top videos of the year



2012 Flash Fiction winner: Sleep by Richard Clarke

Congratulations to Richard Clarke, who won the 2012 New Scientist Flash Fiction competition with a clever work of satire



Urban Byzantine monks gave in to temptation

They were supposed to live on an ascetic diet of mainly bread and water, but the monks in 6th-century Jerusalem were tucking into animal products



The pregnant promise of fetal medicine

As prenatal diagnosis and treatment advance, we are entering difficult ethical territory



2013 Smart Guide: Searching for human origins in Asia

Africa is where humanity began, where we took our first steps, but those interested in the latest cool stuff on our origins should now look to Asia instead



The end of the world is an opportunity, not a threat

Don't waste time bemoaning the demise of the old order; get on with building the new one



Victorian counting device gets speedy quantum makeover

A photon-based version of a 19th-century mechanical device could bring quantum computers a step closer



Did learning to fly give bats super-immunity?

When bats first took to the air, something changed in their DNA which may have triggered their incredible immunity to viruses



Van-sized space rock is a cosmic oddball

Fragments from a meteor that exploded over California in April are unusually low in amino acids, putting a twist on one theory of how life on Earth began




Read More..

One dies in Canadian plane crash






MONTREAL: One person was killed Saturday after a plane en route from Winnipeg to Nunavut in northern Canada crashed, CBC News reported.

The Perimeter Aviation plane carrying seven passengers and two crew crashed less than a kilometer (0.6 miles) from the airport in town of Sanikiluaq, a Nunavut official told CBC News.

The eight other people on board have survived, the report said.

Sanikiluaq is an Inuit community of 850 residents situated on the Belcher Islands in southeastern Hudson Bay.

- AFP/ck



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First day tips and tweaks for new MacBook owners


As much as new MacBook owners love to rave about their systems, no laptop -- even one with an Apple logo -- comes right out of the box ready to perform optimally.


And while it's certainly exciting to unwrap a new holiday MacBook, there are a handful of tweaks, tips, and fixes you should check out on day one that will make your MacBook easier to use. I've put together some of my personal favorites here.

There are many more I could list, and I'm sure I've left out some of your favorites, so feel free to leave your own Day One tips for new MacBook owners in the comments section.


































Featured Posts


Most Popular


Holiday Gift Guide







The promo image for Stocking stuffers

Your mobile devices could use a little holiday cheer as well. Take a look at this gathering of affordable accessories.





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Pictures: Fungi Get Into the Holiday Spirit


Photograph courtesy Stephanie Mounaud, J. Craig Venter Institute

Mounaud combined different fungi to create a Santa hat and spell out a holiday message.

Different fungal grow at different rates, so Mounaud's artwork rarely lasts for long. There's only a short window of time when they actually look like what they're suppose to.

"You do have to keep that in perspective when you're making these creations," she said.

For example, the A. flavus fungi that she used to write this message from Santa grows very quickly. "The next day, after looking at this plate, it didn't say 'Ho Ho Ho.' It said 'blah blah blah,'" Mounaud said.

The message also eventually turned green, which was the color she was initially after. "It was a really nice green, which is what I was hoping for. But yellow will do," she said.

The hat was particularly challenging. The fungus used to create it "was troubling because at different temperatures it grows differently. The pigment in this one forms at room temperature but this type of growth needed higher temperatures," Mounaud said.

Not all fungus will grow nicely together. For example, in the hat, "N. fischeri [the brim and ball] did not want to play nice with the P. marneffei [red part of hat] ... so they remained slightly separated."

Published December 21, 2012

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Obama, Congress Waving Bye-Bye Lower Taxes?













The first family arrived in the president's idyllic home state of Hawaii early today to celebrate the holidays, but President Obama, who along with Michelle will pay tribute Sunday to the late Sen. Daniel Inouye at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, could be returning home to Washington sooner than he expected.


That's because the President didn't get his Christmas wish: a deal with Congress on the looming fiscal cliff.


Members of Congress streamed out of the Capitol Friday night with no agreement to avert the fiscal cliff -- a massive package of mandatory tax increases and federal spending cuts triggered if no deal is worked out to cut the deficit. Congress is expected to be back in session by Thursday.


It's unclear when President Obama may return from Hawaii. His limited vacation time will not be without updates on continuing talks. Staff members for both sides are expected to exchange emails and phone calls over the next couple of days.


Meanwhile, Speaker of the House John Boehner is home in Ohio. He recorded the weekly GOP address before leaving Washington, stressing the president's role in the failure to reach an agreement on the cliff.


"What the president has offered so far simply won't do anything to solve our spending problem and begin to address our nation's crippling debt," he said in the recorded address, "The House has done its part to avert this entire fiscal cliff. ... The events of the past week make it clearer than ever that these measures reflect the will of the House."








Fiscal Cliff Negotiations Halted for Christmas Watch Video









Cliffhanger: Congress Heads Home after 'Plan B' Vote Pulled from House Floor Watch Video









Fiscal Cliff: Boehner Doesn't Have Votes for Plan B Watch Video





Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell echoed the sentiment while lamenting the failure to reach a compromise.


"I'm stuck here in Washington trying to prevent my fellow Kentuckians having to shell out more money to Uncle Sam next year," he said.


McConnell is also traveling to Hawaii to attend the Inouye service Sunday.


If the White House and Congress cannot reach a deficit-cutting budget agreement by year's end, by law the across-the-board tax hikes and spending cuts -- the so called fiscal cliff -- will go into effect. Many economists say that will likely send the economy into a new recession.


Reports today shed light on how negotiations fell apart behind closed doors. The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, reported that when Boehner expressed his opposition to tax rate increases, the president allegedly responded, "You are asking me to accept Mitt Romney's tax plan. Why would I do that?"


The icy exchange continued when, in reference to Boehner's offer to secure $800 billion in revenue by limiting deductions, the speaker reportedly implored the president, "What do I get?"


The president's alleged response: "You get nothing. I get that for free."


The account is perhaps the most thorough and hostile released about the series of unsuccessful talks Obama and Boehner have had in an effort to reach an agreement about the cliff.


Unable to agree to a "big deal" on taxes and entitlements, the president is now reportedly hoping to reach a "small deal" with Republicans to avoid the fiscal cliff.


Such a deal would extend unemployment benefits and set the tone for a bigger deal with Republicans down the line.


In his own weekly address, Obama called this smaller deal "an achievable goal ... that can get done in 10 days."


But though there is no definitive way to say one way or the other whether it really is an achievable goal, one thing is for certain: Republican leadership does not agree with the president on this question.


Of reaching an agreement on the fiscal cliff by the deadline, Boehner said, "How we get there, God only knows."



Read More..

Today on New Scientist: 21 December 2012







Cadaver stem cells offer new hope of life after death

Stem cells can be extracted from bone marrow five days after death to be used in life-saving treatments



Apple's patents under fire at US patent office

The tech firm is skating on thin ice with some of the patents that won it a $1 billion settlement against Samsung



Himalayan dam-building threatens endemic species

The world's highest mountains look set to become home to a huge number of dams - good news for clean energy but bad news for biodiversity



Astrophile: Black hole exposed as a dwarf in disguise

A white dwarf star caught mimicking a black hole's X-ray flashes may be the first in a new class of binary star systems



Blind juggling robot keeps a ball in the air for hours

The robot, which has no visual sensors, can juggle a ball flawlessly by analysing its trajectory



Studio sessions show how Bengalese finch stays in tune

This songbird doesn't need technological aids to stay in tune - and it's smart enough to not worry when it hears notes that are too far off to be true



Giant tooth hints at truly monumental dinosaur

A lone tooth found in Argentina may have belonged to a dinosaur even larger than those we know of, but what to call it?



Avian flu virus learns to fly without wings

A strain of bird flu that hit the Netherlands in 2003 travelled by air, a hitherto suspected by unproven route of transmission



Feedback: Are wind turbines really fans?

A tale of "disease-spreading" wind farms, the trouble with quantifying "don't know", the death of parody in the UK, and more



The link between devaluing animals and discrimination

Our feelings about other animals have important consequences for how we treat humans, say prejudice researchers Gordon Hodson and Kimberly Costello



Best videos of 2012: First motion MRI of unborn twins

Watch twins fight for space in the womb, as we reach number 6 in our countdown of the top videos of the year



2012 Flash Fiction winner: Sleep by Richard Clarke

Congratulations to Richard Clarke, who won the 2012 New Scientist Flash Fiction competition with a clever work of satire



Urban Byzantine monks gave in to temptation

They were supposed to live on an ascetic diet of mainly bread and water, but the monks in 6th-century Jerusalem were tucking into animal products



The pregnant promise of fetal medicine

As prenatal diagnosis and treatment advance, we are entering difficult ethical territory



2013 Smart Guide: Searching for human origins in Asia

Africa is where humanity began, where we took our first steps, but those interested in the latest cool stuff on our origins should now look to Asia instead



The end of the world is an opportunity, not a threat

Don't waste time bemoaning the demise of the old order; get on with building the new one



Victorian counting device gets speedy quantum makeover

A photon-based version of a 19th-century mechanical device could bring quantum computers a step closer



Did learning to fly give bats super-immunity?

When bats first took to the air, something changed in their DNA which may have triggered their incredible immunity to viruses



Van-sized space rock is a cosmic oddball

Fragments from a meteor that exploded over California in April are unusually low in amino acids, putting a twist on one theory of how life on Earth began




Read More..

Banquets "off the menu" for China military






BEIJING: China's high-ranking military officers will no longer be treated to receptions featuring liquor and luxury banquets, state media reported on Saturday, as the country's new leaders stress austerity to fight corruption.

The state-run China Daily newspaper, quoting a dispatch from the official Xinhua news agency, said the Central Military Commission announced the new regulations on Friday.

Similar rules were passed down earlier this month aimed at Communist Party officials, as China's new leadership tries to send a clear signal that it is serious about reigning in corruption.

The report said that "receptions for high-ranking officers will no longer feature liquor or luxury banquets", with "welcome banners, red carpets, floral arrangements, formations of soldiers, performances and souvenirs" also to be abandoned.

The Central Military Commission is chaired by new Communist Party chief Xi Jinping, who took over the party and the commission at a key party meeting last month.

"Commission officials are also required to discipline their spouses, children and subordinates and make sure they do not take bribes," the report said, adding that commission officials were banned from staying in civilian or luxury military hotels while on inspection tours.

Xi, who is slated to become China's president in March, has repeatedly pledged to fight graft amid rising social discontent over government corruption and political scandals that have engulfed the Communist Party.

China's political transition this year was tarnished by the case of disgraced politician Bo Xilai, whose wife was convicted of murdering a British businessman.

Bo is awaiting trial for corruption and abuse of power after allegedly using police in Chongqing city where he ruled to remove political opponents and dissidents, practices that are routine in China.

The scandal unveiled rampant graft and lawlessness at the pinnacle of Chinese political power.

- AFP/al



Read More..

Why does my external hard drive only show 2.2TB?



External hard drives are exceptionally useful for expanding storage capabilities for both backups and data management. While external hard drives are often sold in preconfigured packages by manufacturers, another popular option is to purchase an external hard-drive enclosure and then use any drive of your choice in it. This is beneficial because as your demands for storage increase, you can replace the enclosure's drive with a larger one.


These days, the availability of hard drives with 4TB of storage are enticing for people to swap into their existing enclosures; however, when doing so they may find that the system will only recognize 2.2TB of the drive, regardless of how they partition or format the device.


While modern file-system formats such as HFS+, NTFS, and ExFAT ought to handle volume sizes of between hundreds of gigabytes to zettabytes, and though operating systems like OS X have increased the maximum volume size from 2TB to 8EB (exabytes) over the years, there are hardware limitations that may limit the size of the volume that can be used. If you are using an older drive enclosure for your large hard drive, then the controllers on it may not be capable of handling over 2.2TB, regardless of the software environment being used around it.


This problem happens because of the use of LBA (logical block addressing) in modern hard-drive controllers coupled with a hardware-based limit of how many blocks can be included in the LBA scheme. Early LBA controllers used 32-bit (or lower) addressing coupled with a maximum supported block size of 512 bytes. This means they support up to 2^32 or 4,294,967,296 blocks for a device, and with each block being 512 bytes, this translates to a maximum of 2,199,023,255,552 bytes, or 2.199TB.


Unfortunately in many cases these limits are hard-coded in enclosure's firmware, so even though modern drives use 4,096-byte sectors, the system will still only address these sectors as 512 bytes in size, resulting in both a waste of space and degraded performance.


The only way around this problem is to replace your drive enclosure with a new one that has proper support for both 48-bit (or greater) LBA and 4,096-byte sectors in hard drives. Luckily most enclosures on the market today do support this, so if you run into this problem, you should be up and running in no time.




Questions? Comments? Have a fix? Post them below or !
Be sure to check us out on Twitter and the CNET Mac forums.


Read More..

Pictures: Fungi Get Into the Holiday Spirit


Photograph courtesy Stephanie Mounaud, J. Craig Venter Institute

Mounaud combined different fungi to create a Santa hat and spell out a holiday message.

Different fungal grow at different rates, so Mounaud's artwork rarely lasts for long. There's only a short window of time when they actually look like what they're suppose to.

"You do have to keep that in perspective when you're making these creations," she said.

For example, the A. flavus fungi that she used to write this message from Santa grows very quickly. "The next day, after looking at this plate, it didn't say 'Ho Ho Ho.' It said 'blah blah blah,'" Mounaud said.

The message also eventually turned green, which was the color she was initially after. "It was a really nice green, which is what I was hoping for. But yellow will do," she said.

The hat was particularly challenging. The fungus used to create it "was troubling because at different temperatures it grows differently. The pigment in this one forms at room temperature but this type of growth needed higher temperatures," Mounaud said.

Not all fungus will grow nicely together. For example, in the hat, "N. fischeri [the brim and ball] did not want to play nice with the P. marneffei [red part of hat] ... so they remained slightly separated."

Published December 21, 2012

Read More..

Obama Still an 'Optimist' on Cliff Deal


gty barack obama ll 121221 wblog With Washington on Holiday, President Obama Still Optimist on Cliff Deal

Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images


WASHINGTON D.C. – Ten days remain before the mandatory spending cuts and tax increases known as the “fiscal cliff” take effect, but President Obama said he is still a “hopeless optimist” that a federal budget deal can be reached before the year-end deadline that economists agree might plunge the country back into recession.


“Even though Democrats and Republicans are arguing about whether those rates should go up for the wealthiest individuals, all of us – every single one of us -agrees that tax rates shouldn’t go up for the other 98 percent of Americans, which includes 97 percent of small businesses,” he said.


He added that there was “no reason” not to move forward on that aspect, and that it was “within our capacity” to resolve.


The question of whether to raise taxes on incomes over $250,000 remains at an impasse, but is only one element of nuanced legislative wrangling that has left the parties at odds.


For ABC News’ breakdown of the rhetoric versus the reality, click here.


At the White House news conference this evening, the president confirmed he had spoken today to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, although no details of the conversations were disclosed.


The talks came the same day Speaker Boehner admitted “God only knows” the solution to the gridlock, and a day after mounting pressure from within his own Republican Party forced him to pull his alternative proposal from a prospective House vote. That proposal, ”Plan B,” called for extending current tax rates for Americans making up to $1 million a year, a far wealthier threshold than Democrats have advocated.


Boehner acknowledged that even the conservative-leaning “Plan B” did not have the support necessary to pass in the Republican-dominated House, leaving a resolution to the fiscal cliff in doubt.


“In the next few days, I’ve asked leaders of Congress to work towards a package that prevents a tax hike on middle-class Americans, protects unemployment insurance for 2 million Americans, and lays the groundwork for further work on both growth and deficit reduction,” Obama said. ”That’s an achievable goal.  That can get done in 10 days.”


Complicating matters: The halls of Congress are silent tonight. The House of Representatives began its holiday recess Thursday and Senate followed this evening.


Meanwhile, the president has his own vacation to contend with. Tonight, he was embarking for Hawaii and what is typically several weeks of Christmas vacation.


However, during the press conference the president said he would see his congressional colleagues “next week” to continue negotiations, leaving uncertain how long Obama plans to remain in the Aloha State.


The president said he hoped the time off would give leaders “some perspective.”


“Everybody can cool off; everybody can drink some eggnog, have some Christmas cookies, sing some Christmas carols, enjoy the company of loved ones,” he said. “And then I’d ask every member of Congress, while they’re back home, to think about that.  Think about the obligations we have to the people who sent us here.


“This is not simply a contest between parties in terms of who looks good and who doesn’t,” he added later. “There are real-world consequences to what we do here.”


Obama concluded by reiterating that neither side could walk away with “100 percent” of its demands, and that it negotiations couldn’t remain “a contest between parties in terms of who looks good and who doesn’t.”


Boehner’s office reacted quickly to the remarks, continuing recent Republican statements that presidential leadership was at fault for the ongoing gridlock.


“Though the president has failed to offer any solution that passes the test of balance, we remain hopeful he is finally ready to get serious about averting the fiscal cliff,” Boehner said. “The House has already acted to stop all of the looming tax hikes and replace the automatic defense cuts. It is time for the Democratic-run Senate to act, and that is what the speaker told the president tonight.”


The speaker’s office said Boehner “will return to Washington following the holiday, ready to find a solution that can pass both houses of Congress.”


Read More..

Van-sized space rock is a cosmic oddball








































The shattered remains of a high-profile space rock are oddly low in organic materials, the raw ingredients for life. The discovery adds a slight wrinkle to the theory that early Earth was seeded with organics by meteorite impacts.












In April a van-sized meteor was seen streaking over northern California and Nevada in broad daylight. The fireball exploded with a sonic boom and sprayed the region with fragments. Videos, photographs and weather radar data allowed the meteor's trajectory to be reconstructed, and teams quickly mobilised to search for pieces in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in northern California.













Researchers readily identified the meteorites as rare CM chondrites, thought to be one of the oldest types of rock in the universe. "Because the meteorites were discovered so freshly, for the first time we had a chance to study this type of meteorite in a pristine form," says Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, who led the search effort and the subsequent study of the space rocks.












Jenniskens personally found a fragment in a parking lot, where it remained relatively free of soil contaminants. "That's the best you could hope for, other than landing in a freezer," says Daniel Glavin of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.











Battered past












CM chondrites make up only about 1 per cent of known meteorites. Most of them contain plenty of organic materials, including amino acids, the building blocks of life on Earth.













Jenniskens and colleagues found that the California fragments also have amino acids, including some not found naturally on Earth. But in three rocks collected before a heavy rainstorm, which bathed the other pieces in earthly contaminants, organics are less abundant by a factor of 1000 than in previously studied CM chondrites.












These three rocks could not have lost organics due to space "weathering": analysis of the meteorites' exposure to cosmic rays suggests the original meteor was flying through space for only about 50,000 years before hitting Earth.












Based on its trajectory and its relatively short flight time, Jenniskens thinks the meteor can be traced back to a family of asteroids dominated by 495 Eulalia, a group known as a possible source of CM chondrites. It is probably a piece that broke off during an impact, revealing the relatively pristine material inside.












So what happened to its organics? Jenniskens' team found that the meteorites are breccia – smaller rocks cemented together – which suggests that the asteroid from which they came took a series of beatings. Those impacts, or possibly other processes inside the asteroid, could have heated it enough to destroy most organic material.











Limited delivery













The result might have implications for the organics delivery theory, says Bill Bottke of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.












"It shows that not all asteroids can deliver sufficient quantities. One of the disappointments is that, from a prebiotic organic chemistry perspective, it was very limited," says Bottke. "But this is an unusual case. Most [CM chondrites] are loaded with organic compounds."











Still, studying the space rocks will help us prepare future missions to asteroids such as OSIRIS-Rex, scheduled to take off for asteroid 1999 RQ36 in 2016 and bring a sample back in 2023.













"In some ways, we've had a sample, a very fresh one, come to us," says Bottke. "This is a test bed for the techniques we'll use in that mission."












Journal reference: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1227163


















































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Read More..

Madoff's brother sentenced to 10 years for fraud






NEW YORK: Peter Madoff, brother of shamed US financier Bernard Madoff, was sentenced on Thursday to 10 years in prison for cooking the books at the family investment firm.

Peter Madoff, 67, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud during his role as book keeper for Bernard Madoff's once widely heralded but in fact fraudulent Wall Street firm.

The brother has also been slapped with stringent penalties that strip him of virtually everything he owns. Bernard Madoff is serving a 150-year sentence after pleading guilty to the multi-billion-dollar pyramid scheme.

"Peter Madoff was a gatekeeper, who was supposed to guard against fraud, but instead enabled it, facilitating his brother Bernie's breath-taking scheme by falsifying compliance records and lying to both regulators and clients," US Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement.

"The decade he will spend in prison and the disgorgement of his assets are a just result."

Prosecutors say Peter Madoff did incredibly well through his brother's scheme, in which investors' capital was robbed to pay fake dividends, giving the appearance of an unusually successful Wall Street investment advisory firm.

Peter Madoff insists he had no idea that the whole firm was a fiction. However, he clearly did little to question where the money was coming from -- including his.

The judge ordered Madoff to pay back $143 billion, which represents everything he and his family own, and an enormous, symbolic additional amount.

This includes assets belonging to his wife Marion and daughter Shana. The surrendered items include several homes and a Ferrari sports car.

Bernard Madoff was the toast of Wall Street for years and remained advisor to a multitude of stars and well-connected members of the American-Jewish community, right up until his arrest in December 2008 and the collapse of his scheme.

Two years after that arrest, on December 11, 2010, Bernard Madoff's eldest son Mark was found hanged in his Manhattan apartment.

- AFP/al



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Senate approves Netflix-backed amendment to video privacy law



Ready to share your Netflix viewing on Facebook?



(Credit:
LG)



The U.S. Senate has approved legislation to amend a 1988 law that will make it easier for people to share their video-viewing habits online, sending the Netflix-backed bill to President Obama's signature.


The Senate approved revisions this evening to the Video Privacy Protection Act to allow video rental companies to obtain consent from customers in order to share information about their viewing preferences on social networks. The 24-year-old law was enacted after a newspaper printed the video rental history of Judge Robert H. Bork during his Supreme Court nomination hearings.




Bork died yesterday at age 85, a day after the U.S. House of Representatives approved the legislation.


A Netflix representative applauded the Senate's approval and promised to introduce new products should the president sign the bill.


"We are pleased the Senate has moved quickly to modernize the VPPA, giving consumers more freedom to share with friends when they want," Netflix spokesman Joris Evers said in a statement. "After the president signs the bill, we will introduce social features for our U.S. members in 2013."


Users outside of the United States have the option to link their Netflix accounts with Facebook, allowing them frictionless sharing of their video viewing preferences with other member of their online social network.

Read More..

Hollies Get Prickly for a Reason



With shiny evergreen leaves and bright red berries, holly trees are a naturally festive decoration seen throughout the Christmas season.


They're famously sharp. But not all holly leaves are prickly, even on the same tree. And scientists now think they know how the plants are able to make sharper leaves, seemingly at will. (Watch a video about how Christmas trees are made.)


A new study published in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society suggests leaf variations on a single tree are the combined result of animals browsing on them and the trees' swift molecular response to that sort of environmental pressure.


Carlos Herrera of the National Research Council of Spain led the study in southeastern Spain. He and his team investigated the European holly tree, Ilex aquifolium. Hollies, like other plants, can make different types of leaves at the same time. This is called heterophylly. Out of the 40 holly trees they studied, 39 trees displayed different kinds of leaves, both prickly and smooth.



Five holly leaves from the same tree.

Five holly leaves from the same tree.


Photographs by Emmanuel Lattes, Alamy




Some trees looked like they had been browsed upon by wild goats and deer. On those trees, the lower 8 feet (2.5 meters) had more prickly leaves, while higher up the leaves tended to be smooth. Scientists wanted to figure out how the holly trees could make the change in leaf shape so quickly.


All of the leaves on a tree are genetic twins and share exactly the same DNA sequence. By looking in the DNA for traces of a chemical process called methylation, which modifies DNA but doesn't alter the organism's genetic sequence, the team could determine whether leaf variation was a response to environmental or genetic changes. They found a relationship between recent browsing by animals, the growth of prickly leaves, and methylation.


"In holly, what we found is that the DNA of prickly leaves was significantly less methylated than prickless leaves, and from this we inferred that methylation changes are ultimately responsible for leaf shape changes," Herrera said. "The novelty of our study is that we show that these well-known changes in leaf type are associated with differences in DNA methylation patterns, that is, epigenetic changes that do not depend on variation in the sequence of DNA."


"Heterophylly is an obvious feature of a well-known species, and this has been ascribed to browsing. However, until now, no one has been able to come up with a mechanism for how this occurs," said Mike Fay, chief editor of the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society and head of genetics at the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens. "With this new study, we are now one major step forward towards understanding how."


Epigenetic changes take place independently of variation in the genetic DNA sequence. (Read more about epigenetics in National Geographic magazine's "A Thing or Two About Twins.")


"This has clear and important implications for plant conservation," Herrera said. In natural populations that have their genetic variation depleted by habitat loss, the ability to respond quickly, without waiting for slower DNA changes, could help organisms survive accelerated environmental change. The plants' adaptability, he says, is an "optimistic note" amidst so many conservation concerns. (Related: "Wild Holly, Mistletoe, Spread With Warmer Winters.")


Read More..

Fiscal Cliff 'Plan B' Is Dead: Now What?


Dec 20, 2012 11:00pm







The defeat of his Plan B — Republicans pulled it when it became clear it would be voted down — is a big defeat for Speaker of the House John Boehner.  It demonstrates definitively that there is no fiscal cliff deal that can pass the House on Republican votes alone.


Boehner could not even muster the votes to pass something that would only allow tax rates on those making more than $1 million to go up.


Boehner’s Plan B ran into opposition from conservative and tea party groups -including Heritage Action, Freedom Works and the Club for Growth – but it became impossible to pass it after Senate Democrats vowed not to take up the bill and the president threatened to veto it.  Conservative Republicans saw no reason to vote for a bill conservative activists opposed – especially if it had no hopes of going anywhere anyway.


Plan B is dead.


Now what?


House Republicans say it is now up to the Senate to act.  Senate Democrats say it is now up to Boehner to reach an agreement with President Obama.


Each side is saying the other must move.


The bottom line:  The only plausible solution is for President Obama and Speaker Boehner to do what they have failed repeatedly to do:  come up with a truly bi-partisan deal.


The prospects look grimmer than ever. It will be interesting to see if the markets react.



SHOWS: This Week







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Human hands evolved so we could punch each other









































Forget toolmaking, think fisticuffs. Did evolution shape our hands not for dexterity but to form fists so we could punch other people? That idea emerges from a new study, although it runs counter to conventional wisdom.











About the same time as we stopped hanging from trees and started walking upright, our hands become short and square, with opposable thumbs. These anatomical changes are thought to have evolved for tool manipulation, but David Carrier at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City has an alternative explanation.













He says there are several possible hand shapes that would have allowed greater dexterity, making it less clear why we ended up with the hands we have. But only one hand shape lets us make a fist with a thumb as buttress.












Among primates' hands, ours is unique for its ability to form a fist with the thumb outside the fingers. The fingers of other primates' hands are too long to curl into their palms, and their thumbs are too short to reach across the fingers. So when apes fight, they are far more likely to wrestle or hold their opponent down while others stomp on him, says Carrier.












To test the importance of fists, Carrier and his colleagues recruited 10 athletes and measured how hard they could hit a punching bag using a normal fist, a fist with the thumb stuck out, and with an open palm.












The athletes could generate more than twice the force with a normal fist as with the thumb-stuck-out fist, because of thumb's buttressing role. There was no difference in the force they could generate with a normal fist and with an open palm, but Carrier says it's possible that a fist concentrates the force into a smaller area and so does more damage.











Cause or effect?













Mary Marzke of Arizona State University in Tempe says the study is interesting, but it far from proves that the ability to make a strong fist was the main driver behind the evolution of our hands' shape. It is more likely that it was a useful side effect of a whole suite of modifications.












She points out that apes strike with the heel of their hand when knocking fruit out of trees. Carrier's study didn't assess the force that the heel of the hand generates, but if it turns out to be as good as a fist, it becomes less clear that our hands evolved so as to be perfect for fist-making, Marzke says.











But if the hypothesis is true, Carrier thinks it could explain another mystery. It has long been unclear why high levels of testosterone cause men's ring fingers to be longer than their index fingers. He says the finger-length ratio makes sense if it generates a better fist. This would make dominant males even better fighters.













Journal reference: Journal of Experimental Biology, doi:10.1242/jeb.075713


















































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Mexico empties prison of inmates after deadly riot






DURANGO, Mexico: Officials have removed all of the prisoners -- about 500 inmates -- from a prison in northern Mexico, one day after the facility erupted in violence, leaving 15 inmates and nine guards dead.

The prison "has been totally emptied as a preventive measure," Durango public safety spokesman Fernando Rios told AFP, who said the inmates had been distributed to penal facilities throughout the region.

Security forces said Tuesday's uprising, which occurred at the prison in the city of Gomez Palacio, erupted when prison guards foiled an attempted jailbreak by inmates.

Mass jailbreaks have become a recurring problem in Mexico. In September, 131 inmates escaped through the front door of a prison in Piedras Negras, a city on the US border.

A jailbreak at a prison in the northern state of Nuevo Leon in February saw 44 prisoners killed during fighting between two warring drug cartels.

In the last two years, 521 inmates have run free in 14 prison escapes while 352 homicides have been committed inside penitentiaries, according to the National Human Rights Commission.

- AFP



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Australian university to issue 11,000 iPads next year




Tablets have been eating away at the PC's position as the connected device of choice, and now slates are taking their place in the classrooms of an Australian university.


The University of Western Sydney said in a statement that it plans to distribute 11,000 iPads next year to every new student and member of the faculty "to support learning and teaching innovations across the curriculum and in informal learning environments."


"With digital technology revolutionizing how we connect and interact with the world, university study should be no different," professor Kerri-Lee Krause, the university's pro vice-chancellor, told The Australian.


Education was a key market for Apple more than two decades ago, and it returned to its roots earlier this year with the introduction of its iBooks Author software -- free software that lets authors design digital versions of textbooks and other interactive titles for the
iPad. It was launched in conjunction with the company's push to get textbook authors to create and distribute digital edition.




The iPad initiative is part of a curriculum overhaul at UWS that will stress "flexible study options" and "a blended learning model," The Australian reports. Traditional lectures will be augmented by a more interactive learning approach, Krause said.


"Mobile technologies will be a key part of this strategy," she said. "We want to support our academic staff to make the most of iPads and custom-designed apps in class so that, even in the largest lecture theater, students have access to just-for-me, just-in-time interactive learning experiences."


While not the first to give Apple's slates to students in an apparently revolutionary shift in lesson presentation, WSU might be the largest single institution to issue an iPad to each incoming student and faculty member. Earlier this year, the San Diego Unified School District announced it would purchase 26,000 iPads to be used by the district's more than 130,000 students.

Read More..

Detecting Rabid Bats Before They Bite


A picture is worth a thousand words—or in the case of bats, a rabies diagnosis. A new study reveals that rabid bats have cooler faces compared to uninfected colony-mates. And researchers are hopeful that thermal scans of bat faces could improve rabies surveillance in wild colonies, preventing outbreaks that introduce infections into other animals—including humans.

Bats are a major reservoir for the rabies virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. Previous research shows that bats can transmit their strains to other animals, potentially putting people at risk. (Popular Videos: Bats share the screen with creepy co-stars.)

Rabies, typically transmitted in saliva, targets the brain and is almost always fatal in animals and people if left untreated. No current tests detect rabies in live animals—only brain tissue analysis is accurate.

Searching for a way to detect the virus in bats before the animals died, rabies specialist James Ellison and his colleagues at the CDC turned to a captive colony of big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus). Previous studies had found temperature increases in the noses of rabid raccoons, so the team expected to see similar results with bats.

Researchers established normal temperature ranges for E. fuscus—the bat species most commonly sent for rabies testing—then injected 24 individuals with the virus. The 21-day study monitored facial temperatures with infrared cameras, and 13 of the 21 bats that developed rabies showed temperature drops of more than 4ºC.

"I was surprised to find the bats' faces were cooler because rabies causes inflammation—and that creates heat," said Ellison. "No one has done this before with bats," he added, and so researchers aren't sure what's causing the temperature changes they've discovered in the mammals. (Related: "Bats Have Superfast Muscles—A Mammal First.")

Although thermal scans didn't catch every instance of rabies in the colony, this method may be a way to detect the virus in bats before symptoms appear. The team plans to fine-tune their measurements of facial temperatures, and then Ellison hopes to try surveillance in the field.

This study was published online November 9 in Zoonoses and Public Health.


Read More..

Today on New Scientist: 18 December 2012








Violent polar storms help control the world's weather

Without the mini-hurricanes which form over the Arctic, the world could face massive weather disruption



Ancient city of Troy rebranded itself after war

Changing styles of pottery 3200 years ago show the Trojans were quick to align themselves with the region's new political power



Court ruling will clarify end-of-life decisions

Canada's supreme court will soon rule on whether doctors can stop treatment for "unconscious" patients, but determining awareness remains a thorny issue



Colourful claw of tiny ocean predator

See a prizewinning photo of the claw of a Phronima: a tiny marine predator whose size belies its ferocity



Gaming chair mimics a full-motion simulator

If you can't afford a full-motion flight or car simulator, here's a cheap way of creating some of the same effects



How an ancient Egyptian code unmasked a cannibal star

Has a papyrus from the time of the pharaohs exposed the ghoulish habits of the baleful Demon Star? Stephen Battersby investigates



Best videos of 2012: Bonobo genius makes stone tools

Watch a creative bonobo fashion tools to retrieve hidden food, at number 9 in our countdown of the year's best videos



Is the obesity epidemic caused by too much sugar?

In Fat Chance, endocrinologist Robert Lustig argues that insidious changes to our eating habits have caused disruptions to our endocrine systems



'The idea we live in a simulation isn't science fiction'

If the universe is just a Matrix-like simulation, how could we ever know? Physicist Silas Beane thinks he has the answer



Fungal frog killer hops into crayfish

Crayfish are vulnerable to the same chytrid fungus already killing frogs all over the world. The discovery provides a clue to how the disease spreads




Read More..

Migrant Workers' Centre reminds employers of their roles






SINGAPORE: The Migrant Workers' Centre has reminded employers of their responsibilities to foreign workers under Singapore's manpower regulations.

These include prompt payment of salaries, providing acceptable housing and adequate care during their stay here.

The reminder came after Tuesday' incident at a Yishun construction site where some workers stopped work as a result of unpaid salaries.

The centre's chairman, Yeo Guat Kwang, also urged the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) to respond swiftly to all foreign worker claims and complaints so that they do not take matters into their own hands out of desperation.

The centre said it has always advocated for stricter enforcement against errant employers, and is encouraged by the ministry's swift response to Tuesday's Yishun incident.

The centre said it received notice of the workers' salary dispute with Sime Chong Construction at 4pm on Tuesday, and quickly sent a team to the site.

The team worked with MOM officials, the employer and workers to reach a satisfactory resolution.

The centre also provided emergency housing for four workers who were not able to have their claims resolved on Tuesday. It will follow up with the ministry on Wednesday and is confident of a favourable resolution for them.

The centre added that it is ready to intervene and provide further assistance to the workers, should the need arise.

- CNA/al



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Analyst cryptically notes that iPad Mini gen-2 is 'pulled in'



iPad Mini. Chip companies are already gearing up for the next iPad Mini.

iPad Mini. Chip companies are already gearing up for the next iPad Mini.



(Credit:
Apple)


Chipmakers are preparing for the second-generation
iPad Mini and Samsung is on track for a phone with a bendable display and possibly an early intro of the Galaxy S4, according to a research note from RBC Capital Markets.


RBC Capital Markets analyst Doug Freedman -- who is in China visiting chip companies this week -- offered this ambiguous Apple note: "iPad Mini Gen-2: Apple's gen-2 iPad mini is getting pulled-in, and is likely to have several new suppliers, with TXN gaining content."


"Pulled in" would seem to imply that Apple is moving up introduction of the next iPad Mini. That would be helpful if we knew when the gen 2 Mini was actually slated to ship in the first place. As the current iPad Mini is still in short supply, we may be getting a little ahead of ourselves.


TXN refers to Texas Instruments, which has supplied components to iPads in the past, including relatively obscure silicon like touchscreen line drivers.



What may be more interesting is his comment about Samsung's future displays and future phones.


"Samsung handset road-map: Samsung display will be ready to ship unbreakable plastic substrate screen by 2q end, with bendable in 2h13," he wrote, referring to the second quarter and second half of 2013, respectively.


Samsung talked about phone with bendable screens as recently as last month.


And what about that the Galaxy 4? "Galaxy 4 likely ships a month early if carriers want it at end of March, [semiconductor companies]...support will start mid-Feb," he wrote.


Read More..

Race Is On to Find Life Under Antarctic Ice



A hundred years ago, two teams of explorers set out to be the first people ever to reach the South Pole. The race between Roald Amundsen of Norway and Robert Falcon Scott of Britain became the stuff of triumph, tragedy, and legend. (See rare pictures of Scott's expedition.)


Today, another Antarctic drama is underway that has a similar daring and intensity—but very different stakes.


Three unprecedented, major expeditions are underway to drill deep through the ice covering the continent and, researchers hope, penetrate three subglacial lakes not even known to exist until recently.


The three players—Russia, Britain, and the United States—are all on the ice now and are in varying stages of their preparations. The first drilling was attempted last week by the British team at Lake Ellsworth, but mechanical problems soon cropped up in the unforgiving Antarctic cold, putting a temporary hold on their work.


The key scientific goal of the missions: to discover and identify living organisms in Antarctica's dark, pristine, and hidden recesses. (See "Antarctica May Contain 'Oasis of Life.'")


Scientists believe the lakes may well be home to the kind of "extreme" life that could eke out an existence on other planets or moons of our solar system, so finding them on Earth could help significantly in the search for life elsewhere.



An illustration shows lakes and rivers under Antarctica's ice.
Lakes and rivers are buried beneath Antarctica's thick ice (enlarge).

Illustration courtesy Zina Deretsky, NSF




While astrobiology—the search for life beyond Earth—is a prime mover in the push into subglacial lakes, so too is the need to better understand the ice sheet that covers the vast continent and holds much of the world's water. If the ice sheet begins to melt due to global warming, the consequences—such as global sea level rise—could be catastrophic.


"We are the new wave of Antarctic explorers, pioneers if you will," said Montana State University's John Priscu, chief scientist of the U.S. drilling effort this season and a longtime Antarctic scientist.


"After years of planning, projects are coming together all at once," he said.


"What we find this year and next will set the stage for Antarctic science for the next generation and more—just like with the explorers a century ago."


All Eyes on the Brits


All three research teams are at work now, but the drama is currently focused on Lake Ellsworth, buried 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) below the West Antarctic ice sheet.


A 12-person British team is using a sophisticated technique that involves drilling down using water melted from the ice, which is then heated to 190 degrees Fahrenheit (88 degrees Celsius).


The first drilling attempt began on December 12, but was stopped at almost 200 feet (61 meters) because of technical problems with the sensors on the drill nozzle.


Drilling resumed on Saturday but then was delayed when both boilers malfunctioned, requiring the team to wait for spare parts. The situation is frustrating but normal due to the harsh climate, British Antarctic team leader Martin Siegert, who helped discover Lake Ellsworth in 2004, said in an email from the site.


After completing their drilling, the team will have about 24 hours to collect their samples before the hole freezes back up in the often below-zero cold. If all goes well, they could have lake water and mud samples as early as this week.


"Our expectation is that microbes will be found in the lake water and upper sediment," Siegert said. "We would be highly surprised if this were not the case."


The British team lives in tents and makeshift shelters, and endures constant wind as well as frigid temperatures. (Take an Antarctic quiz.)


"Right now we are working round the clock in a cold, demanding and extreme location-it's testing our own personal endurance, but it's worth it," Siegert said.


U.S. First to Find Life?


The U.S. team is drilling into Lake Whillans, a much shallower body about 700 miles inland (1,120 kilometers) in the region that drains into the Ross Sea.


The lake, which is part of a broader water system under the ice, may well have the greatest chances of supporting microbial life, experts say. Hot-water drilling begins there in January.


Among the challenges: Lake Whillans lies under an ice stream, which is similar to a glacier but is underground and surrounded by ice on all sides. It moves slowly but constantly, and that complicates efforts to drill into the deepest—and most scientifically interesting—part of the lake.


Montana State's Priscu—currently back in the U.S. for medical reasons—said his team will bring a full lab to the Lake Whillans drilling site to study samples as they come up: something the Russians don't have the interest or capacity in doing and that the British will be trying in a more limited way. (Also see "Pictures: 'Extreme' Antarctic Science Revealed.")


So while the U.S. team may be the last of the three to penetrate their lake, they could be the first to announce the discovery of life in deep subglacial lakes.


"We should have a good idea of the abundance and type of life in the lake and sediments before we leave the site," said Priscu, who plans to return to Antarctica in early January if doctors allow.


"And we want to know as much as possible about how they make a living down there without energy from the sun and without nutrients most life-forms need."


All subglacial lakes are kept liquid by heat generated from the pressure of the heavy load of ice above them, and also from heat emanating from deeper in the Earth's crust.


In addition, the movement of glaciers and "ice streams" produces heat from friction, which at least temporarily results in a wet layer at the very bottom of the ice.


The Lake Whillans drilling is part of the larger Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling (WISSARD) project, first funded in 2009 by the U.S. National Science Foundation with funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.


That much larger effort will also study the ice streams that feed and leave the lake to learn more about another aspect of Antarctic dynamism: The recently discovered web of more than 360 lakes and untold streams and rivers—some nearing the size of the Amazon Basin—below the ice. (See "Chain of Cascading Lakes Discovered Under Antarctica.")


Helen Fricker, a member of the WISSARD team and a glaciologist at University of California, San Diego, said that scientists didn't begin to understand the vastness of Antarctica's subglacial water world until after the turn of the century.


That hidden, subterranean realm has "incredibly interesting and probably never classified biology," Fricker said.


"But it can also give us important answers about the climate history of the Earth, and clues about the future, too, as the climate changes."


Russia Returning to Successful Site


While both the U.S. and British teams have websites to keep people up to date on their work, the Russians do not, and have been generally quiet about their plans for this year.


The Russians have a team at Lake Vostok, the largest and deepest subglacial lake in Antarctica at more than 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) below the icy surface of the East Antarctic plateau.


The Vostok drilling began in the 1950s, well before anyone knew there was an enormous lake beneath the ice. The Russians finally and briefly pierced the lake early this year, before having to leave because of the cold. That breakthrough was portrayed at the time as a major national accomplishment.


According to Irina Alexhina, a Russian scientist with the Vostok team who was visiting the U.S. McMurdo Station last week, the Russian plan for this season focuses on extracting the ice core that rose in February when Vostok was breached. She said the team arrived this month and can stay through early February.


Preliminary results from the February breach report no signs of life on the drill bit that entered the water, but some evidence of life in small samples of the "accretion ice," which is frozen to the bottom of the lake, said Lake Vostok expert Sergey Bulat, of the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, in May.


Both results are considered tentative because of the size of the sample and how they were retrieved. In addition, sampling water from the very top of Lake Vostok is far less likely to find organisms than farther down or in the bottom sediment, scientists say.


"It's like taking a scoop of water from the top of Lake Ontario and making conclusions about the lake based on that," said Priscu, who has worked with the Russians at Vostok.


He said he hopes to one day be part of a fully international team that will bring the most advanced drilling and sample collecting technology to Vostok.


Extreme Antarctic Microbes Found


Some results have already revealed life under the ice. A November study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported that subglacial Lake Vida—which is smaller and closer to the surface than other subglacial lakes—does indeed support a menagerie of strange and often unknown bacteria.


The microbes survive in water six times saltier than the oceans, with no oxygen, and with the highest level of nitrous oxide ever found in water on Earth, said study co-author Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at NASA's Ames Research Center.


"What Antarctica is telling us is that organisms can eke out a living in the most extreme of environments," said McKay, an expert in the search for life beyond Earth.


McKay called Lake Vida the closest analog found so far to the two ice and water moons in the solar system deemed most likely to support extraterrestrial life—Jupiter's Europa and Saturn's Enceladus.


But that "closest analog" designation may soon change. Life-forms found in Vostok, Ellsworth, or Whillans would all be living at a much greater depth than at Lake Vida—meaning that they'd have to contend with more pressure, more limited nutrients, and a source of energy entirely unrelated to the sun.


"Unique Moment in Antarctica"


The prospect of finding microscopic life in these extreme conditions may not seem to be such a big deal for understanding our planet—or the possibility of life on others. (See Antarctic pictures by National Geographic readers.)


But scientists point out that only bacteria and other microbes were present on Earth for 3 billion of the roughly 3.8 billion years that life has existed here. Our planet, however, had conditions that allowed those microbes to eventually evolve into more complex life and eventually into everything biological around us.


While other moons and planets in our solar system do not appear capable of supporting evolution, scientists say they may support—or have once supported—primitive microbial life.


And drilling into Antarctica's deep lakes could provide clues about where extraterrestrial microbes might live, and how they might be identified.


In addition, Priscu said there are scores of additional Antarctic targets to study to learn about extreme life, climate change, how glaciers move, and the dynamics of subterranean rivers and lakes.


"We actually know more about the surface of Mars than about these subglacial systems of Antarctica," he said. "That's why this work involves such important and most likely transformative science."


Mahlon "Chuck" Kennicutt, the just-retired president of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, an international coordinating group, called this year "a unique moment in Antarctica."


"There's a growing understanding of the continent as a living, dynamic place—not a locked-in ice desert—and that has created real scientific excitement."


Read More..

Newtown Settles In for Prayerful, Somber Christmas













Residents of Sandy Hook, Conn., gather every year under an enormous tree in the middle of town to sing carols and light the tree. The tree is lit this year, too, but the scene beneath it is starkly different.


The tree looms over hundreds of teddy bears and toys, but they are for children who will never receive them. The ornaments are adorned with names and jarringly recent birth dates.


Wreaths with pine cones and white ribbons hang near the tree, one each for a life lost. A small statue of an angel child sleeps among a sea of candles.


A steady flow of well-wishers, young and old, tearfully comes to cry, pray, light candles, leave gifts and share hugs and stories.


CLICK HERE for complete coverage of the massacre at Sandy Hook.


The Christmas season is a normally joyful time for this tight-knit village, but in the wake of a shooting rampage, holiday decorations have given way this year to memorial signs. And instead of cars with Christmas trees on top, there are media vans with satellites.


Connie Koch has lived in Newtown for nine years. She lives directly behind Sandy Hook Elementary School, where Adam Lanza, 20, killed 20 children and six adults before turning the gun on himself. Earlier that Friday morning, he had also killed his mother at home.










President Obama on Newtown Shooting: 'We Must Change' Watch Video







Koch said the shocked town, which includes the Village of Sandy Hook, is experiencing a notably different Christmas this year.


"It's more somber, much more time spent in prayer for our victims' families and our friends that have lost loved ones," she said as she stood near the base of the tree.


CLICK HERE for a tribute to the shooting victims.


Her family has been touched by the tragedy is multiple ways.


"My daughter, she lost her child that she babysat for for six years," she said, holding back tears. "And for her friend who lost her mother. And for my dear friend who lost one of her friends in the school, one of the aides.


"It's hard. And there will be much prayer on Christmas morning for these people, for our community."


Koch said her community always rallies in the face of tragedy, but the term "hits close to home" resonates this time more than ever before. She says the only way to make it through is one day at a time.


"It's all you can do, one hour at a time," Koch said. "For me, I don't even want to wake up in the morning because I don't want to have to face it again. You feel like it's still just a dream and with the funerals starting, it's becoming more real. It's becoming more final."


Another Newtown parent, Adam Zuckerman, stood by the makeshift memorial with a roll of red heart stickers with the words, "In Our" above a drawing of the Sandy Hook Elementary School welcome sign. He was selling the stickers to collect money for a Sandy Hook victims' fund.


"It's a lot," he said of the events of the past few days. "We don't know how it's going to affect our community, but I feel very strongly that I needed to do something to keep it positive, to keep this community positive."


Zuckerman's 20-year-old stepdaughter came home from college for winter break the night before the shooting. As a high school student, she worked in one of the town's popular toy stores.


"She knew a lot of the kids," he said of his daughter. "Their parents brought them in over the years. We have other friends who have lost family here and good friends who are dear friends with the principal of the school. … It's pretty rough."






Read More..

Fungal frog killer hops into crayfish








































Crayfish are vulnerable to the same fungus that is killing frogs all over the world. The discovery helps explain how the disease spreads even after all the amphibians in an area have been wiped out. Worryingly, chemicals released by the fungus may alone be enough to kill.












Taegan McMahon of the University of South Florida, Tampa, and colleagues discovered infected crayfish in field surveys in Louisiana and Colorado. They found that up to 29 per cent of the animals carried the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. Lab studies proved that crayfish can become infected and die, the first time this has been shown in non-amphibians.













Infected crayfish can pass the disease to tadpoles, and crayfish exposed to water from which the fungus had been filtered still died. McMahon says the distribution of crayfish around the world may explain why the fungus is so widespread.












She adds that it is "is certainly possible" that other invertebrates might carry the fungus. Her team are currently investigating this and are working on possible ways to stop the spread of the toxin.












"It's very compelling, their evidence for crayfish as a disease vector and for a toxic effect secreted in the water," says Trenton Garner at London's Institute of Zoology.












PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1200592110


















































If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.




































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Indonesia blames pilot error for plane crash that killed 45






JAKARTA: Indonesian investigators blamed pilot error on Tuesday for a Sukhoi Superjet crash that killed all 45 onboard an exhibition flight that slammed into a Javanese volcano in May.

The National Transport Safety Committee (KNKT) found that the terrain awareness and warning system (TAWS) was functioning and that the pilot had switched it off before the crash.

"The TAWS had sent a 'terrain ahead' warning before the crash, followed by six 'avoid terrain' warnings. The pilot in command switched the TAWS off as he assumed there was a database problem," KNKT chief Tatang Kurniadi said.

He said there was a "diversion of attention" in the cockpit before the Sukhoi Superjet 100 crashed into the 7,200-foot (2,200-metre) dormant Mount Salak volcano.

"The crash could have been avoided if a recovery action was carried out within 24 seconds from the first warning," he told reporters.

The flight was scheduled to be a 40-minute hop to showcase the new Russian plane to prospective buyers in Indonesia, where the aviation industry is booming.

The Superjet accident was taken as a blow to the Russian aviation industry, which was hoping the twin-engine plane, the first new civilian aircraft built in post-Soviet Russia, would improve its image.

- AFP/al



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Celebrity hacker gets 10 years prison for e-mail hack



The man targeted in "Operation Hackerazzi" is now behind bars.

Hacker Christopher Chaney was sentenced to 10 years in prison today by U.S. District Judge James Otero, according to the Associated Press. Chaney pled guilty to hacking into dozens of celebrities' e-mail accounts and posting their private information on the Internet. Among his victims were Mila Kunis, Scarlett Johansson, Christina Aguilera, Simone Harouche, and Renee Olstead.

"It's hard to fathom the mindset of a person who would accomplish all of this," Otero said, according to the Associated Press. "These types of crimes are as pernicious and serious as physical stalking."

Chaney, 35 of Jacksonville, Fla., was nabbed last year following an 11-month investigation that federal officials named "Operation Hackerazzi." After the bust, Chaney initially pled not guilty, but he later struck a plea deal and ended up agreeing to nine counts, including identity theft, wiretapping, and unauthorized access of protected computers. He also agreed to surrender his computers, external drives, and cell phone.

More than 50 victims from the entertainment industry were connected with the case, but only a handful agreed to be identified by name with the hope of garnering awareness about online information theft. Chaney admitted to hacking into their accounts, obtaining private e-mails and confidential documents, publicizing their personal information, and sending photos to two celebrity Web sites. Some of the photos of Johansson were nude photos she took privately to send to her then-husband Ryan Reynolds.

Chaney gained access to the accounts by using the "Forgot your password?" feature in their e-mail accounts. He then would reset the passwords by answering security questions from public information he found by searching the Web. According to his plea agreement, Chaney received thousands of e-mails from the victims' accounts.

According to the Associated Press, Otero heard a videotaped statement from Johansson, in which she said, "I have been truly humiliated and embarrassed. I find Christopher Chaney's actions to be perverted and reprehensible."

Chaney faced up to 60 years in prison and prosecutors fought to get him at least six. Otero ruled to give him ten years because he believed Chaney would not control his behavior and showed a "callous disregard" for his actions, according to the Associated Press. The judge also ruled that Chaney will get three years of supervised probation after he serves his time.

Read More..

GRAIL Mission Goes Out With a Bang

Jane J. Lee


On Friday, December 14, NASA sent their latest moon mission into a death spiral. Rocket burns nudged GRAIL probes Ebb and Flow into a new orbit designed to crash them into the side of a mountain near the moon's north pole today at around 2:28 p.m. Pacific standard time. NASA named the crash site after late astronaut Sally Ride, America's first woman in space.

Although the mountain is located on the nearside of the moon, there won't be any pictures because the area will be shadowed, according to a statement from NASA' Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

Originally sent to map the moon's gravity field, Ebb and Flow join a long list of man-made objects that have succumbed to a deadly lunar attraction. Decades of exploration have left a trail of debris intentionally crashed, accidentally hurtled, or deliberately left on the moon's surface. Some notable examples include:

Ranger 4 - Part of NASA's first attempt to snap close-up pictures of the moon, the Ranger program did not start off well. Rangers 1 through 6 all failed, although Ranger 4, launched April 23, 1962, did make it as far as the moon. Sadly, onboard computer failures kept number 4 from sending back any pictures before it crashed. (See a map of all artifacts on the moon.)

Fallen astronaut statue - This 3.5-inch-tall aluminum figure commemorates the 14 astronauts and cosmonauts who had died prior to the Apollo 15 mission. That crew left it behind in 1971, and NASA wasn't aware of what the astronauts had done until a post-flight press conference.

Lunar yard sale - Objects jettisoned by Apollo crews over the years include a television camera, earplugs, two "urine collection assemblies," and tools that include tongs and a hammer. Astronauts left them because they needed to shed weight in order to make it back to Earth on their remaining fuel supply, said archivist Colin Fries of the NASA History Program Office.

Luna 10 - A Soviet satellite that crashed after successfully orbiting the moon, Luna 10 was the first man-made object to orbit a celestial body other than Earth. Its Russian controllers had programmed it to broadcast the Communist anthem "Internationale" live to the Communist Party Congress on April 4, 1966. Worried that the live broadcast could fail, they decided to broadcast a recording of the satellite's test run the night before—a fact they revealed 30 years later.

Radio Astronomy Explorer B - The U.S. launched this enormous instrument, also known as Explorer 49, into a lunar orbit in 1973. At 600 feet (183 meters) across, it's the largest man-made object to enter orbit around the moon. Researchers sent it into its lunar orbit so it could take measurements of the planets, the sun, and the galaxy free from terrestrial radio interference. NASA lost contact with the satellite in 1977, and it's presumed to have crashed into the moon.

(Learn about lunar exploration.)


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Conn. Kids Laid to Rest: 'Our Hearts Are With You'













Visibly shaken attendees exiting the funeral today for 6-year-old Noah Pozner, one of 20 children killed in the Connecticut school massacre last week, said they were touched by a story that summed up the first-grader best.


His mother, Veronique, would often tell him how much she loved him and he'd respond: "Not as much as I [love] you," said a New York man who attended the funeral but was not a member of the family.


Noah's family had been scheduled to greet the public before the funeral service began at 1 p.m. at the Abraham L. Green & Son Funeral Home in Fairfield, Conn. The burial was to follow at the B'nai Israel Cemetery in Monroe, Conn. Those present said they were in awe at the composure of Noah's mother.


Rabbi Edgar Gluck, who attended the service, said the first person to speak was Noah's mother, who told mourners that her son's ambition when he grew up was to be either a director of a plant that makes tacos -- because that was his favorite food -- or to be a doctor.


Outside the funeral home, a small memorial lay with a sign reading: "Our hearts are with you, Noah." A red rose was also left behind along with two teddy bears with white flowers and a blue toy car with a note saying "Noah, rest in peace."


CLICK HERE for complete coverage of the tragedy at Sandy Hook.






Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images











Sandy Hook Victims: Jack Pinto's Funeral Held Watch Video









First Sandy Hook Shooting Victims to Be Buried Watch Video







The funeral home was adorned with white balloons as members of the surrounding communities came also to pay their respects, which included a rabbi from Bridgeport. More than a dozen police officers were at the front of the funeral home, and an ambulance was on standby at a gas station at the corner.


U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, U.S. Rep. and Sen.-Elect Chris Murphy and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, all of Connecticut, were in attendance, the Connecticut Post reported.


Noah was an inquisitive boy who liked to figure out how things worked mechanically, The Associated Press reported. His twin sister, Arielle, was one of the students who survived when her teacher hid her class in the bathroom during the attack.


CLICK HERE for a tribute to the shooting victims.


The twins celebrated their sixth birthday last month. Noah's uncle Alexis Haller told the AP that he was "smart as a whip," gentle but with a rambunctious streak. He called his twin sister his best friend.


"They were always playing together, they loved to do things together," Haller said.


The funeral for Jack Pinto, 6, was also held today, at the Honan Funeral Home in Newtown. He was to be buried at Newtown Village Cemetery.


Jack's family said he loved football, skiing, wrestling and reading, and he also loved his school. Friends from his wrestling team attended his funeral today in their uniforms. One mourner said the message during the service was: "You're secure now. The worst is over."


Family members say they are not dwelling on his death, but instead on the gift of his life that they will cherish.


The family released a statement, saying, Jack was an "inspiration to all those who knew him."


"He had a wide smile that would simply light up the room and while we are all uncertain as to how we will ever cope without him, we choose to remember and celebrate his life," the statement said. "Not dwelling on the loss but instead on the gift that we were given and will forever cherish in our hearts forever."


Jack and Noah were two of 20 children killed Friday morning at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., when 20-year-old Adam Lanza sprayed two first-grade classrooms with bullets that also killed six adults.






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