Woman Gets Life for Lottery Winner's Murder

DeeDee Moore, the Tampa woman accused of swindling and then killing lottery winner Abraham Shakespeare, was found guilty today of first degree murder and other charges, after she declined to take the stand and the defense rested without calling a single witness.

In addition to the murder charge, Moore was also found guilty of possessing and discharging a firearm resulting in death. Prosecutors did not pursue the death penalty in the case, and Moore was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

"After trial and listening to all of this over two weeks, words that were said cool, calculated, manipulated. Abraham Shakespeare was your prey and victim. Money was the route of evil you brought to Abraham. You are sentenced to life in prison you shall not be elegible for parole," Judge Emmet Battles said.

Jurors deliberated for more than three hours Monday before delivering their verdict.

Prosecutors argued that Moore, 40, befriended Shakespeare before he vanished in April 2009 after he'd won $30 million in the Florida lottery. After Shakespeare had given away most of his money to people who simply asked for it, Moore agreed to manage the little he had left, but instead, prosecutors said, stole his winnings and killed him.

During a dramatic trial Moore has broken down in tears several times, and at one point said that she went into anaphylactic shock while in custody after taking the drug Bactrim when she was having problems with cuts on her ankles from being cuffed every day.

Early today the defense announced it would rest its case without calling any witnesses. Moore did not testify during her trial.

Jay Conner/The Tampa Tribune/AP Photo

Florida Lotto Murder Trial: Bizarre Moments Watch Video

Florida Lottery Murder Trial: Letters to Victim's Family Watch Video

Dee Dee Moore Trial: Woman Accused of Murdering Lottery Winner Watch Video

"There is no witness that can say she ever admitted to doing the killing or participating as a principle in helping anyone else do the killing," Moore's defense attorney Byron Hileman said today.

In the courtroom this morning, Moore's friend, former inmate Rose Condora was accused of threatening witnesses by Tampa Judge Emmett Battles, and was thrown out of the courtroom.

Authorities say Shakespeare, 47, was shot twice in the chest by a .38-caliber pistol sometime in April 2009. He wasn't reported missing until November 2009. His body was found under a slab of cement in a backyard in January 2010.

Polk County authorities claim Moore offered someone a $200,000 house in exchange for reporting a false sighting of Shakespeare. She also allegedly sent the victim's son $5,000 in cash for his birthday, and used the victim's cellphone to send text messages purportedly from him.

Shakespeare's mother, Elizabeth Walker, also testified that Moore tried to hide that her son was missing, and said that he had AIDS.

Sentorria Butler, Shakespeare's ex-girlfriend and the mother of his child, also testified. Butler told the court last week that Moore is a divisive and manipulative woman who told her Shakespeare "ran off with the lady from the bank."

During the trial, jurors also watched a Walmart surveillance video that the prosecution said links Moore to Shakespeare's killing. The footage shows Moore making a $104 cash purchase of gloves, duct tape, plastic sheeting and other items detectives later found close to where Shakespeare's body was buried.

Jurors hearing the case also heard a rambling two-page letter that witness Greg Smith, a police informant who was a former friend of Shakespeare and supposed friend of Moore, says Moore allegedly forged while at a Comfort Inn & Suites in Lakeland, Fla.

The letter was meant to appear to be from Shakespeare, prosecutors said. They say the letter was a ruse to convince Shakespeare's mother that he was still alive. Moore attempted to cover her tracks while it was written, according to prosecutors.

During the trial, jurors had to be accompanied by a security escort into the courtroom after they told the judge Smith and Shakespeare's family and friends were making them feel uncomfortable outside the courthouse. None of the jurors had to be excused by the judge.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Female lemurs avoid the wrong love in the dark

IT IS the ultimate voice-recognition system. Without ever meeting him, a female lemur still knows the call of her father.

The ability to identify family members is important to avoid inbreeding. For large-brained mammals like apes that engage in complex social interactions this is relatively straightforward. Now, a team has shown that nocturnal grey mouse lemurs appear to do the same, even though lemurs are reared exclusively by their mothers (BMC Ecology, doi.org/jvx).

Study leader Sharon Kessler of Arizona State University in Tempe, believes that the young lemurs may associate calls similar to their own, or to those of male siblings, with their fathers.

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Tortoiseshell craftsmen adapt to new century

PARIS: What did Yves Saint Laurent, Jackie Kennedy and the architect Le Corbusier have in common? Their eyewear, for one, as clients of the luxury French tortoiseshell artisan, Bonnet.

Four decades after the trade in tortoiseshell was banned under the 1973 CITES convention, the fourth-generation family firm sees itself as custodian of a rare craft, fashioning made-to-measure spectacles from stocks amassed before the ban.

Bonnet describes its customers -- among them Audrey Hepburn, Maria Callas or presidents Francois Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac -- as "aesthetes" more concerned about timeless style than fashion.

Christian Bonnet, who learned the trade from his father and grandfather, holds the rank of "maitre d'art", an honorific title granted by France's culture ministry and currently held by just over 100 craftsmen nationwide.

Today jointly headed by Christian and his sons Franck and Steven, Bonnet turns out around 100 pairs of handmade tortoiseshell glasses per year for prices ranging from 3,500 to 30,000 euros (approximately S$5,520 to S$47,310)

"My father didn't want me to go into the trade, because of the problem with tortoiseshell supply," produced mainly from the shell of the endangered hawksbill turtle, Franck Bonnet told AFP.

With 12 grammes of tortoiseshell needed for one pair of glasses, the firm says it uses around two to three kilos per year.

Declared part of French national heritage in 2007, Bonnet will not say how much stock it holds, but the supply is finite.

"It is inconceivable that we would ever fish another turtle out of the ocean," says the 41-year-old, himself a staunch environmentalist.

So he decided a few years ago it was time to look to the future -- and to a wider market.

"For my father, my grandfather and great-grandfather before them, it was tortoiseshell, tortoiseshell, tortoiseshell only.

"I said to my father, 'You are the last tortoiseshell craftsman, but you are also the last hand-made eyewear maker. If we could only use more readily available materials, maybe I can keep our craft alive?'"

That is how from 2008 onwards, he introduced buffalo horn -- lowering the average frame price to between 1,200 and 1,500 euros, and acetate, for budgets between 850 and 1,150 euros.

Tortoiseshell aside, the dozen workers at its Paris boutique and workshop in Sens, a few hours southeast of the capital, now produce some 700 pairs using new materials.

The next step towards broadening what they offer is to come from customisation -- allowing people to change the size and colour on standard models.

Franck Bonnet says he loves watching Japanese tourists inspect his wares, and is mulling opening a boutique in Tokyo.

"They go over every last detail. You know you haven't put the effort in for nothing!"

Bonnet was snared in controversy recently when a star journalist, Audrey Pulvar -- then in a relationship with a Socialist minister -- was outed for wearing a pair of their steeply-priced glasses.

"It wasn't 12,000 euros, it wasn't 15,000 euros or 18,000!", as reported in the media, Bonnet told AFP, "Five thousand is more like it."

In other words, almost an entry-level model.

"It's true it is costly," Bonnet said. "But we artisans are not millionaires; this kind of high craft is extremely time-consuming."

Making glasses to measure means studying the face in minute detail.

"How high your ears are, the shape of your nose -- all have an incidence on the tilt of the lenses, and therefore on how well you see," he explained. And that is before all the different steps of shaping and polishing the frame.

"You can spend a crazy length of time on a pair of spectacles, redoing them two, three, five times to get them exactly right. What costs money is not marketing, it's what goes on the client's nose!"

-AFP/fl

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IBM pushes silicon photonics with on-chip optics

This close-up photo shows an IBM chip wired up with both electrical links, shown in yellow, and optical waveguides, shown in blue. Conventional computers today transfer data with electrons traveling along electrical links, but researchers hope higher data-transfer speeds can be achieved by sending photons on optical links.

(Credit:
IBM Research)

IBM has advanced the technology of silicon photonics, fabricating a microchip that has built-in components to send and receive data over optical links.

Researchers have built optical data links into chips before, but IBM's move is notable because it uses conventional chipmaking equipment geared for chips with 90-nanometer features. Today's chips use metal wires to exchange data, but optical links offer the potential of higher transfer speeds over longer distances.

The chip can include several optical components including wavelength division multiplexers that let the chip send and receive signals with multiple frequencies of light, an approach that lets more data be sent over the same channel in a given amount of time.

The IBM chip can handle data rates of 25 gigabits per second, and the researchers expect to increase that through technology improvements and by building multiple communication channels that work in parallel.

The research is part of IBM's continuing effort to improve computing performance despite Moore's Law challenges.

IBM expects the technology to benefit large-scale systems -- supercomputers, multiple servers linked together, or the data-pathway "backplanes" within servers. It's not unusual for higher-end server technology to trickle down to consumer products, though.

The 90nm process IBM used isn't as advanced as the 22nm one that Intel uses for its latest "Ivy Bridge" generation of processors found in higher-end PCs today. But IBM's approach is the first time silicon photonics has been built into chips with a process size less than 100nm, the paper said. (A nanometer is a billionth of a meter; about 1,100 elements of 90nm chip circuitry could fit side by side across the diameter of a human hair.)

IBM's approach also makes efficient use of electrical power, an important consideration given the power limits processor and computer designers face today.

Big Blue reported the results in a 24-author paper for the IEEE's International Electron Devices Meeting.

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Plants Grow Fine Without Gravity

When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.

Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't need it to flourish. The research team from the University of Florida in Gainesville thinks this ability is related to a plant's inherent ability to orient itself as it grows. Seeds germinated on the International Space Station sprouted roots that behaved like they would on Earth—growing away from the seed to seek nutrients and water in exactly the same pattern observed with gravity. (Related: "Beyond Gravity.")

Since the flowers were orbiting some 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the Earth at the time, the NASA-funded experiment suggests that plants still retain an earthy instinct when they don't have gravity as a guide.

"The role of gravity in plant growth and development in terrestrial environments is well understood," said plant geneticist and study co-author Anna-Lisa Paul, with the University of Florida in Gainesville. "What is less well understood is how plants respond when you remove gravity." (See a video about plant growth.)

The new study revealed that "features of plant growth we thought were a result of gravity acting on plant cells and organs do not actually require gravity," she added.

Paul and her collaborator Robert Ferl, a plant biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, monitored their plants from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using images sent from the space station every six hours.

Root Growth

Grown on a nutrient-rich gel in clear petri plates, the space flowers showed familiar root growth patterns such as "skewing," where roots slant progressively as they branch out.

"When we saw the first pictures come back from orbit and saw that we had most of the skewing phenomenon we were quite surprised," Paul said.

Researchers have always thought that skewing was the result of gravity's effects on how the root tip interacts with the surfaces it encounters as it grows, she added. But Paul and Ferl suspect that in the absence of gravity, other cues take over that enable the plant to direct its roots away from the seed and light-seeking shoot. Those cues could include moisture, nutrients, and light avoidance.

"Bottom line is that although plants 'know' that they are in a novel environment, they ultimately do just fine," Paul said.

The finding further boosts the prospect of cultivating food plants in space and, eventually, on other planets.

"There's really no impediment to growing plants in microgravity, such as on a long-term mission to Mars, or in reduced-gravity environments such as in specialized greenhouses on Mars or the moon," Paul said. (Related: "Alien Trees Would Bloom Black on Worlds With Double Stars.")

The study findings appear in the latest issue of the journal BMC Plant Biology.

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Fiscal Cliff Talks: Boehner, Obama Meet Face-to-Face

For the first time in more than three weeks, President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner met face-to-face today at the White House to talk about avoiding the fiscal cliff.

White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest would offer no details saying only, "The lines of communication remain open."

Erskine Bowles, the co-creator of a debt reducing plan, who was pessimistic a couple weeks ago, said he likes what he's hearing.

"Any time you have two guys in there tangoing, you have a chance to get it done," Bowles said on CBS's "Face the Nation."

The White House afternoon talks, conducted without cameras or any announcement until they were over, came as some Republicans were showing more flexibility about approving higher tax rates for the wealthy, one of the president's demands to keep the country from the so-called fiscal cliff -- a mixture of across-the-board tax increases and spending cuts that many economists say would send the country back into recession.

Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo; Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo

Fiscal Cliff Battle: President Obama vs. Speaker John Boehner Watch Video

"Let's face it. He does have the upper hand on taxes. You have to pass something to keep it from happening," Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee said on "FOX News Sunday."

This comes after the White House moderated one of its demands about tax rate increases for the wealthy.

The administration was demanding the rate return to its former level of 39.6 percent on income above $250,000. The so-called Bush tax cut set that rate at 35 percent. But Friday, Vice President Joe Biden signaled that rate could be negotiable, somewhere between the two.

"So will I accept a tax increase as a part of a deal to actually solve our problems? Yes," said Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn on ABC's "This Week."

The problems the senator was referring to are the country's entitlement programs. And there was some progress on that front, too.

A leading Democrat said means testing for Medicare recipients could be a way to cut costs to the government health insurance program. Those who make more money would be required to pay more for Medicare.

"I do believe there should be means testing, and those of us with higher income and retirement should pay more. That could be part of the solution," Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

But Durbin said he would not favor raising the eligibility age from 65 years old to 67 years old, as many Republicans have suggested.

The White House and the speaker's office released the exact same statement about the negotiating session. Some will see that as a sign of progress, that neither side is talking about what was said behind closed doors.

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Kenyan elephant numbers plummet by 1000 in four years

IT'S a case of up then down for Kenya's second largest population of elephants. After a promising growth spurt, the elephants are now dying faster than they are being born. The decline is being blamed on illegal poaching, driven by Asia's demand for ivory.

The Kenya Wildlife Service recently conducted a census of the Samburu/Laikipia population, the country's second largest. It found that the population lost over 1000 elephants in just four years, and now stands at 6361. Previous censuses in 1992, 1998, 2002 and 2008 had revealed a growing population, which appears to have peaked at 7415 in 2008.

Poaching is suspected. A July report by three conservation groups found that it has been on the rise across Africa since 2006. Poaching is also spreading eastwards from central Africa into countries like Kenya, says Richard Thomas of TRAFFIC in Cambridge, UK, one of the three groups that drafted the report. The July report found that more than half of all elephants found dead in Africa in 2011 had been illegally killed.

The rise in poaching appears to be driven by increasing affluence in China and Thailand, where ivory is often used to make religious sculptures and other decorations.

Organised criminal gangs have capitalised on this increased demand. "If it's worth someone's while to smuggle the ivory, they'll take the risk," Thomas says. There is evidence that gangs are moving into Kenya to hunt elephants.

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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Storm Bopha returns to Philippines

MANILA: Heavy rain brought flooding fears in the north of the storm-battered Philippines as Typhoon Bopha returned Sunday, days after slamming into the south of the country and leaving almost 1,400 dead or missing.

While the powerful typhoon had weakened to a tropical storm, it was still causing downpours in the north even as hundreds in the south struggled to recover from its fury, said civil defence chief Benito Ramos.

"It will bring rain, not so much wind. We anticipate flash floods and landslides. We expect low-lying areas to be flooded again," Ramos told AFP.

Local relief and rescue teams along with the military were already in position while residents were on alert for rising waters.

Officials said 548 people are confirmed dead after Botha struck last week. The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said 827 are missing, a sharp rise on earlier estimates of about 500 unaccounted for.

Most of the deaths were in the southern island of Mindanao where mountainous gold-rush sites were hit hard. Almost 178,000 people were still huddled in crowded government evacuation centres after their homes were destroyed.

Ramos said the massive death toll in Mindanao had made residents in the north more cautious.

"They are more alert now. They were watching developments in the south where we incurred a substantial number of casualties and they were alarmed," he said.

Despite Bopha's weakening, the second-level of a three-step storm alert was raised over three northern provinces. Lower alerts were hoisted over surrounding areas, the government weather station said.

Bopha struck the southern Philippines last week, wiping whole towns off the map with its 210-kilometre (130-mile) per hour winds and heavy rains.

The strongest typhoon to hit the country this year cut through the central islands and was heading out to the South China Sea when it made a U-turn towards the north this weekend.

Early Sunday Bopha was just off the northern city of Laoag, packing gusts of 120 kilometres per hour as it moved east at 15 kilometres per hour, the weather station said.

- AFP/ir

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Handcuffs that give you an electric shock?

Progress?

(Credit:
Patent Bolt)

Sometimes an invention comes along that makes you excited about the future.

For a long time, it seems that handcuffs have been stuck in the movies of old. They restrain you, but, odd for our interactive world, that's all they seem to do.

Might I tempt you toward futuristic handcuffs that will offer you a small involuntary judder?

I am grateful to Gizmodo for discovering that Patent Bolt has lucked upon a patent that offers bound(less) excitement.

For these are handcuffs that offer surprises. Indeed, they might make the idea of being tased, bro, not quite so bad.

The patent is called "Apparatus and System For Augmented Detainee Restraint."

The augmentations it offers are truly quite something. You see, these handcuffs are "configured to administer electrical shocks when certain predetermined conditions occur."

These shocks might be "activated by internal control systems or by external controllers that transmit activation signals to the restraining device."

This progressive tool is the brainchild of Scottsdale Inventions.

More Technically Incorrect

And while you might be shocked or even excited by the idea of handcuffs with electric shock capabilities, might I move you further?

For Patent Bolt points out that this patent also allows for the idea of a substance delivery system. Yes, these handcuffs might also be used to, well, inject the detained with who knows what -- to achieve "any desired result."

Clearly, the desires of the detained and the detainer might differ. Yet, this patent allows for the possibility of the substance being in the form of "a liquid, a gas, a dye, an irritant, a medication, a sedative, a transdermal medication or transdermal enhancers such as dimethyl sulfoxide, a chemical restraint, a paralytic, a medication prescribed to the detainee, and combinations thereof."

Yes, you really did read the word "paralytic."

Naturally, some will be wondering whether, as in fine restaurants, the arresting officer will ask whether the detained has any allergies.

Some might be concerned, though that -- at least theoretically -- this creation might put quite some power into the hands of those who might not always be lucid or learned enough to use that power wisely.

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Plants Grow Fine Without Gravity

When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.

Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't need it to flourish. The research team from the University of Florida in Gainesville thinks this ability is related to a plant's inherent ability to orient itself as it grows. Seeds germinated on the International Space Station sprouted roots that behaved like they would on Earth—growing away from the seed to seek nutrients and water in exactly the same pattern observed with gravity. (Related: "Beyond Gravity.")

Since the flowers were orbiting some 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the Earth at the time, the NASA-funded experiment suggests that plants still retain an earthy instinct when they don't have gravity as a guide.

"The role of gravity in plant growth and development in terrestrial environments is well understood," said plant geneticist and study co-author Anna-Lisa Paul, with the University of Florida in Gainesville. "What is less well understood is how plants respond when you remove gravity." (See a video about plant growth.)

The new study revealed that "features of plant growth we thought were a result of gravity acting on plant cells and organs do not actually require gravity," she added.

Paul and her collaborator Robert Ferl, a plant biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, monitored their plants from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using images sent from the space station every six hours.

Root Growth

Grown on a nutrient-rich gel in clear petri plates, the space flowers showed familiar root growth patterns such as "skewing," where roots slant progressively as they branch out.

"When we saw the first pictures come back from orbit and saw that we had most of the skewing phenomenon we were quite surprised," Paul said.

Researchers have always thought that skewing was the result of gravity's effects on how the root tip interacts with the surfaces it encounters as it grows, she added. But Paul and Ferl suspect that in the absence of gravity, other cues take over that enable the plant to direct its roots away from the seed and light-seeking shoot. Those cues could include moisture, nutrients, and light avoidance.

"Bottom line is that although plants 'know' that they are in a novel environment, they ultimately do just fine," Paul said.

The finding further boosts the prospect of cultivating food plants in space and, eventually, on other planets.

"There's really no impediment to growing plants in microgravity, such as on a long-term mission to Mars, or in reduced-gravity environments such as in specialized greenhouses on Mars or the moon," Paul said. (Related: "Alien Trees Would Bloom Black on Worlds With Double Stars.")

The study findings appear in the latest issue of the journal BMC Plant Biology.

Read More..