Data waves keep your wearable tech in tune

IF LAST month's Consumer Electronics Show is anything to go by, we will soon be covered in wearable technology, from health monitors to smart watches. But there's a problem: how do we get them to communicate?

Traditionally, devices talk to one another either using wires, which are inconvenient, or Bluetooth, which is prone to interference. Now a new wireless technique that uses a phenomenon known as Zenneck surface waves could be the answer.

This type of electromagnetic wave stays at the interface between the surface of an object and the air, rather than travelling through open space. Radar systems have used them to see around the curvature of the Earth, but communicating in this way is a first.

Janice Turner and colleagues at Roke Manor Research in Romsey, UK, have created a demonstration system that uses the waves to send high-definition video over a short length of material. It has a bandwidth of up to 1.5 gigabits per second, making it almost three times faster than Wi-Fi. The signal does not travel through the material but rather over its surface for a few centimetres.

Turner's team has worked with a fabric made of a dielectric-coated conducting material. This could be tailored into a jacket to enable worn devices to communicate in a personal network. For example, a lapel camera, a wrist display and a pulse-monitor bracelet could all communicate through the jacket via surface waves. Other devices such as smartphones could attach automatically simply by being placed in a pocket. Zenneck wave-enabled devices could be on the market within two years, says Turner. Sandy Black, who studies how fashion design and technology merge at the London College of Fashion, says the idea sounds "interesting if it could be proved reliable and robust".

Such devices are also being explored for use on aircraft, where they could link up sensors embedded in the wings without wires, or form the backbone of a passenger entertainment system.

This article appeared in print under the headline "Jacket to connect wearable tech using data waves"

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The Shard is pinnacle of London's redevelopment

LONDON: The Shard, which opened its doors to the public on Friday, is western Europe's highest skyscraper but also the pinnacle of the transformation of London's long-neglected south bank of the River Thames.

The vertiginous public viewing platform, which is expected to attract one million visitors a year, offers unrivalled vistas of the British capital and is the perfect place to survey the huge changes in the neighbourhood.

Towering 310 metres (1,017 feet) above the skyline, the Shard is an arrow of glass piercing the clouds and a symbol of wealth in an area that for centuries has been overshadowed by its affluent rivals in the west, centre and north of London.

The platform is the first part of Italian architect Renzo Piano's building to open, and over the coming months its vast new office space, five-star hotel, restaurants and luxury apartments will slowly come to life.

While the design has been controversial, the tower -- 95 percent financed by Qatar -- has also attracted criticism because of the sense that its 8,000 future inhabitants are unaffected by the global economic crisis.

The 30 pounds (US$47, 35-euro) ticket price for the viewing platform does nothing to dispel this image, but the people behind the Shard are unapologetic.

"The wonderful thing about London is, in many ways, it never stops," William Matthews, a project architect in Piano's team, told AFP. "In some ways, British trade, the idea of commerce, and business, is really in our bones."

Peter John, leader of the local Southwark council, said: "It has really been a story of regeneration and renaissance."

The area on the south side of London Bridge was relatively prosperous in Roman times, but for centuries afterwards it was viewed as a seedy district beyond the city walls where the law held thin.

Travellers passed through brothels, inns and gambling dens, and residents festered among "every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage", as Charles Dickens put it in his 1838 novel "Oliver Twist".

The demise of London's shipping trade from the 1960s to the 1980s accentuated the area's poverty and the average household income among Southwark's 290,000 inhabitants today remains one of the lowest in Britain.

Nonetheless, in the last 25 to 30 years, the change in the area has been staggering, according to council leader Peter John.

Wharf-side warehouses with names evoking the British empire and the goods sailing into London from around the world, such as East India Wharf or Tea Trade Wharf, have been transformed into swanky New York-style loft flats.

Millions of square metres of office space have been constructed in cathedrals of glass across the river from the Tower of London, including Norman Foster's City Hall and Terence Conran's Design Museum.

The once unremarkable Borough Market has been transformed into a foodies' heaven, while the Tate Modern, constructed within a vast former power station on the river in 2000, is now the most popular contemporary art gallery in the world.

"But the Shard takes it to new levels," said John. "It really symbolises where the opportunities are for jobs, and leisure, and new housing."

He said the influx of a population with plenty of purchasing power will boost the whole area, saying: "I think the positives outweigh the negatives."

Many locals are not so enthusiastic.

Reverend Charlie Moore, rector of St Mary Magdalene Church in nearby Bermondsey, said "a lot of people have been forced to leave" as the redevelopment, including several gastropubs and posh shops, have sent rents sky-high.

And the further south you go, the louder the objections.

The Heygate Estate, comprising huge concrete blocks of social housing, once housed 3,000 people but now stands empty and awaiting demolition as part of a major regeneration programme in the Elephant and Castle area.

A campaigner for the Heygate residents, teacher Jerry Flynn, complains that the plans include far less social housing than before.

"It will mean the people who cannot afford to live here, working-class families and low income families, will no longer be able to live here. It was a traumatic process," he told AFP.

"We would like a regeneration that spread the benefits a little more widely."

- AFP/ir

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Building better Super Bowl ads by watching you watch them

A side-by-side test of Apple and Samsung ads.

(Credit:
Screenshot courtesy of Affectiva)

WALTHAM, Mass.--The makers of Wheat Thins cereal may have a hit Super Bowl commercial on their hands.

I believe this because I watched the ad on my computer while another computer watched me watching it over the Internet. The ad combined a box of Wheat Thins, night vision goggles, fear of Bigfoot when there should have been fear of the Yeti, and a thieving neighbor. It seems my "emotional valence" score -- which can be roughly translated to mean my overall emotional reaction -- while watching all this was unusually high, at least once the Yeti and the the thieving neighbor made their appearance.

I had no idea a Yeti and Wheat Thins were a powerful combination, but after running the ad through a Web demonstration by the 3-year-old company Affectiva, I'm forced to conclude that's the case.>

Welcome to the future of advertising, where the wisdom of spending a reported $4 million for a 30-second spot in the Super Bowl doesn't have to be left to the imagination of an ad agency's creative team and the honesty of focus groups.

When you turn on the the Super Bowl tomorrow and watch that game within the game -- no, not Beyonce's performance, I mean the ads -- there's a good chance that at least several of those pieces have been tested using Affectiva's tools, which are being used by both Coca-Cola and Unilever, which owns brands ranging from Dove soap to Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Using a Web camera and with a user's permission (usually commissioned by an ad agency or research firm), Affectiva monitors a person's expressions while watching an ad.

Affectiva provides a topline measurement on a scale from 1 to 10 on something the company calls an Affdex score. That's a combination of involvement, a "feel good" index, and a "minus metric." Behind that, reaction over the length of the ad is monitored and charted. When did someone smile during the ad? When did they frown? When did they drift? It's all tracked and produced on tables.

There's deep science behind that report. Affectiva was founded in 2009 and is based on technology created at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab. The technology was originally intended to work with people who have autism. Because people with autism may have difficulty displaying emotional reactions, co-founders Rana el Kaliouby and Rosalind Picard created a mathematical model for monitoring hard-to-perceive changes in their expressions.

"I personally think it could be a standard for advertising," said Stephanie Tilenius, an executive-in-residence at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. Kleiner was part of a $12 million Series C funding round announced in August. The company was also a big attention-grabber at last month's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

If you have a Webcam on your computer, you can run through the Affectiva demonstration yourself right here. You can also test a goat-related ad from Doritos (really, it kind of works), a Hyundai ad with a "don't tell mom" theme, and an already somewhat controversial ad from Volkswagen in which lots of people whom you wouldn't expect to have Jamaican accents sound a lot like Jimmy Cliff.

The first, most viable application for the Affectiva technology was in advertising, of course. But it could one day find its way into everything from medical devices to smartphones. Imagine, for example, if your phone could sense by your expression, pulse, and tone of voice how urgently you need an app or to make a phone call?

Affectiva made a splash after last year's Super Bowl with a public analysis of many of the ads shown during the Giants-Patriots nail-biter. Perhaps their most interesting conclusion was that the follow-up ad to 2011's hit "Vader kid" ad from Volkswagen did not test well among 400 participants. The ad involved a dog trying to lose weight and finally chasing a new, red Volkswagen. But when the ad transitions to a scene from Star Wars' cantina scene (a nod to the Vader kid), interest fell off the map and didn't recover.

An explanation of Affectiva's score.

(Credit:
Affectiva)

Most likely, the ad testing technology will be used in addition to traditional ad testing, rather than replacing focus groups, said Graham Page, an executive at the market research firm Millward Brown. Last year, Millward Brown tested over 400 ads using the Affectiva technology and should use it for more than "several thousand" ads around the world this year.

A tour of Affectiva's technology is a bit of a tour of your own instincts. In seconds, you can see quantified what you already suspected about an ad. In a face-to-face test of Apple and Samsung pieces, for example, neither ad exactly floated my boat. (You can see my overly stern expression while watching them in the screenshot above this article.)

So what else did I learn about my advertising tastes? It appears I really hate commercials in which grown men act like children but I am a hopeless sucker for ads with real children. I've always sort of known this. But thanks to a demonstration of facial-tracking technology here at the offices of a young company called Affectiva I can say, with certainty, that, yes, Verizon, I was seriously annoyed by that dopey ad with the dopey guys playing basketball. But the kids in the AT&T ad? Adorable.

"Your negative reaction to that," said Avril England, vice president of product management and marketing at Affectiva, "was about as negative as it can get."

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Pictures We Love: Best of January

Photograph by Dieu Nalio Chery, AP

The magnitude 7 earthquake that struck near Port au Prince, Haiti, in January 2010 so devastated the country that recovery efforts are still ongoing.

Professional dancer Georges Exantus, one of the many casualties of that day, was trapped in his flattened apartment for three days, according to news reports. After friends dug him out, doctors amputated his right leg below the knee. With the help of a prosthetic leg, Exantus is able to dance again. (Read about his comeback.)

Why We Love It

"This is an intimate photo, taken in the subject's most personal space as he lies asleep and vulnerable, perhaps unaware of the photographer. The dancer's prosthetic leg lies in the foreground as an unavoidable reminder of the hardships he faced in the 2010 earthquake. This image makes me want to hear more of Georges' story."—Ben Fitch, associate photo editor

"This image uses aesthetics and the beauty of suggestion to tell a story. We are not given all the details in the image, but it is enough to make us question and wonder."—Janna Dotschkal, associate photo editor

Published February 1, 2013

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Ala. Standoff: Police Mum About Talks With Suspect

As a police standoff with an Alabama man accused of holding a 5-year-old boy hostage in an underground bunker entered its fifth day, authorities were saying little except that their talks with the 65-year-old loner were continuing through a ventilation pipe.

Negotiators were still trying late Friday to persuade Jimmy Lee Dykes to surrender. Police have said they believe the Vietnam-era veteran fatally shot a school bus driver on Tuesday, and then abducted the boy from the bus and disappeared into the home-made bunker.

While police were mostly staying mum about the delicate negotiations, it fell to neighbors to fill in the blanks about Dykes, described by some as a menacing figure who held anti-government views.

One of Dykes' next-door neighbors said the suspect spent two or three months constructing the bunker, digging several feet into the ground and then building a structure of lumber and plywood, which he covered with sand and dirt.

Neighbor Michael Creel said Dykes put the plastic pipe underground from the bunker to the end of his driveway so he could hear if anyone drove up to his gate. When Dykes finished the shelter a year or so ago, he invited Creel to see it — and he did.

"He was bragging about it. He said, 'Come check it out," Creel said.

He said he believes Dykes' goal with the standoff is to publicize his political beliefs.

Alabama Hostage Standoff: Who Is Jimmy Lee Dykes? Watch Video

Alabama Boy Held Hostage in Underground Bunker Watch Video

Alabama Hostage Standoff: Boy, 5, Held Captive in Bunker Watch Video

"I believe he wants to rant and rave about politics and government," Creel said. "He's very concerned about his property. He doesn't want his stuff messed with."

Police have used a ventilation pipe to the bunker to talk to the man and deliver the boy medication for his emotional disorders, but they have not revealed how often they are in touch or what the conversations have been about. Authorities waited until Friday to confirm the suspect's identity.

While much of what is going on inside the bunker remains a mystery, local officials who have spoken to police or the boy's family have described a small room with food, electricity and a TV. And while the boy has his medication, an official also said he has been crying for his parents.

Meanwhile, Midland City residents held out hope that the standoff would end safely and mourned for the slain bus driver and his family. Candlelight vigils have been held nightly at a gazebo in front of City Hall. Residents prayed, sang songs such as "Amazing Grace" and nailed homemade wooden crosses on the gazebo's railings alongside signs that read: "We are praying for you."

"We're doing any little thing that helps show support for him," said 15-year-old Taylor Edwards said.

Former hostage negotiators said authorities must be cautious and patient as long as they are confident that the boy is unharmed. Ex-FBI hostage negotiator Clint Van Zandt advised against any drastic measures such as cutting the electricity or putting sleeping gas inside the bunker because it could agitate Dykes.

The negotiator should try to ease Dykes' anxieties over what will happen when the standoff ends, and refer to both the boy and Dykes by their first names, he said.

"I want to give him a reason to come out," Van Zandt said,

Police seemed to be following that pattern. At a brief news conference to release a photo of Dykes, they brushed off any questions about possible charges.

"It's way too early for that," said Kevin Cook, a spokesman for the Alabama state troopers.

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US medical research chimps to retire to sanctuaries

IT IS good news for chimpanzees, but bad news for people with hepatitis C. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is likely to slash medical research on chimpanzees, and transfer most research chimps to sanctuaries. The plan is being hailed as a triumph for animal rights, but there is a snag: it could delay work on a hepatitis C vaccine.

Following a 2011 report concluding that most medical research on chimps was unnecessary, the NIH - which uses 360 of around 1000 research chimps in the US - set up an advisory committee. This body has now issued recommendations. Most of the NIH's chimps should retire to sanctuaries, but about 50 should be retained for future research, housed in environments that promote their natural behaviour: large groups, plenty of space and lots of activities.

"It's excellent news," says Barbara King of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. "These chimpanzees have served and suffered for us."

But some hepatitis C researchers are less happy. Chimps are the only non-human animal that the virus infects, so are used in the development of a vaccine.

"If there is no access to a chimpanzee model, it will likely slow vaccine development and put human lives at risk," says Stanley Lemon of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

This article appeared in print under the headline "US chimps retire"

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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Community leadership important for S'pore's development: Chan Chun Sing

SINGAPORE: Acting Minister for Social and Family Development, Chan Chun Sing, said Singapore will face more challenges as it moves towards its next stage of development.

While national leaders will look at issues from a broader perspective, Mr Chan said local community leadership is also needed.

He was speaking at the first Chua Thian Poh Community Leadership Symposium which was held at the National University of Singapore on Friday.

Some 80 students are currently enrolled in the Chua Thian Poh Community Leadership Programme.

Mr Chan said such platforms and the presence of community leaders are important as they have always been a part of Singapore's rich history.

Mr Chan said the role of community leaders was evident from British colonial rule.

He said, "They did not wait for the government to initiate things to do. They took it upon themselves to identify local needs, whereby they can play a useful role".

Going forward, Mr Chan said it will be about grooming a new generation of community leaders.

He said: "Not only do we hope you will understand the challenges at the local level, we also hope that you will come up with innovative solutions. We also hope you will play a part to mobilise actions to solve or at least address some of these local issues.

"We need to look for innovative and new solutions. We cannot just adopt solutions that have been adopted by people from other countries wholesale. We should look at them closely, study them in context, and always apply them in context to our local situation down here."

At the symposium, six of the Programme's Fellows got to share the various projects they embarked on.

The projects ranged from looking at the community's role in preventing child abuse, to exploring interim home care at a community hospital.

The speakers are part of the first batch of students in the programme since it was launched in 2011.

For medical student Andrew Arjun Sayampanathan, who is currently on an internship at the Central Community Development Centre as part of the Chua Thian Poh Community Leadership Programme, it was the perfect opportunity to test a theory he had learned in university.

Applying it to Kampong Glam residents, the asset-based community development model was a means to empower needy or elderly residents to look at their proficiencies.

It was a different take on the needs-based community development model many social organisations adopt.

"The needs-based model looks at the deficiencies of individuals and what is the individual deficient in. When we look at the assets-based community development model, we see what the individual is proficient in so he or she does not need to be dependent on an external organisation," explained Andrew.

Andrew said the findings obtained from the asset-based community development models will allow them to create independent communities based on the proficiencies and assets of the individuals.

- CNA/fa

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Chrome, IE, Silk pry open mobile-browsing market

Chrome and Internet Explorer have carved their way into the top five mobile browsers, according to Net Applications' measurements of browser usage.

(Credit:
Net Applications)

New mobile browsers including Google's Chrome, Microsoft's IE, and Amazon's Silk are gaining
a foothold in a market that's growing faster than traditional browsing on personal computers.

The mobile browsing market has long been dominated by three products. Apple's
Safari has long
held the top spot in usage share measurements by Net Applications, with second place going to
Google's unbranded
Android browser after it surpassed Opera Mini last year.

Safari had 61.0 percent, the Android browser 21.5 percent, and Opera Mini 9.8 percent of usage
in January, measurements released today show.

But new contenders are starting to appear now.

The most assured of success is Chrome, which pushed aside BlackBerry OS's browser last November for fourth
place. Chrome works on Android 4.0, aka Ice Cream Sandwich, or 4.1 and 4.2, aka Jelly Bean,
and now ships with newer Android devices.

Chrome rose from 1.5 percent of use in December to 2.0 percent in January, Net Applications
said.

The next to bump BlackBerry down a peg is Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which rose from 1.2
percent to 1.3 percent to claim fifth place in January.

Tablets and smartphones account for a steadily increasing fraction of browser usage.

(Credit:
Net Applications)

The BlackBerry browser -- which could get a boost if the brand-new BlackBerry 10 OS and its first two
phones, the Q10 and Z10 catch on -- slipped down to 1.2 percent
of browser usage in January.

That's still ahead of Amazon's Silk, at 0.8 percent, or Opera Mobile, at 0.6 percent. And it's far
ahead of Mozilla's
Firefox version for Android, which didn't even cross the 0.05 percent
threshold.

Mobile browsing is on the increase, rising to an all-time high of 11.8 percent of total browsing in
January, according to Net Applications.

On the desktop, Internet Explorer's market share losses have stabilized, according to Net Applications' measurements.

(Credit:
Net Applications)

On PCs, the browser usage share remained relatively stable.

IE remained the leader with 55.1 percent of the market, and Firefox at 19.9 percent kept its edge
over Chrome at 17.5 percent. Safari and Opera stayed level at 5.2 percent and 1.8 percent,
respectively.

Net Applications bases its
usage data on activity logged on a collection of more than 40,000 Web sites with more than
160 million visits each month. It attempts to weight the data to account for differences in its
collection of sites and overall global Internet usage. It also logs only the first Web site visit by a
user on each day, in an attempt to measure what people are using rather than how much they
use it.

A rival measurement service, StatCounter, bases its
measurements on clicks only and doesn't attempt any geographic weighting. It shows different
winners and losers, with Chrome in the lead at 36.5 percent, IE next with 30.7 percent, and Firefox in third place with 21.4 percent.

StatCounter, which uses different methodology for tallying browser usage, shows Chrome as the top worldwide browser for January 2013.

(Credit:
StatCounter)

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Sinkhole Swallows Buildings in China

Photograph from AFP/Getty Images

The sinkhole that formed in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou (pictured) is, unfortunately, not a new occurrence for the country.

Many areas of the world are susceptible to these sudden formations, including the U.S. Florida is especially prone, but Guatemala, Mexico, and the area surrounding the Dead Sea in the Middle East are also known for their impressive sinkholes. (See pictures of a sinkhole in Beijing that swallowed a truck.)

Published January 31, 2013

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Columbia Shuttle Crew Remembered 10 Years Later

Iain Clark is a teenager now. He was eight years old when his mother, Dr Laurel Clark, and six other astronauts died when the space shuttle Columbia fell apart in the skies over Texas 10 years ago today.

Iain's father, Dr. Jonathon Clark, told ABC News recently that he and Iain will never really recover.

"There will always be a sense of loss and pain and hurt," said Clark. "I've lost a lot, but I've gained a lot, too. I have a perspective and reverence for life. I have my son, and seeing him through this has been very rewarding -- though it has been difficult, as well."

Feb. 1, the anniversary of the Columbia accident, is the day NASA chooses to remember all the astronauts who have died during missions.

Spaceflight is a risky business. Some of the accidents are well known. Others, not really. But they all illustrate just how dangerous it is to leave our planet and venture into orbit.

Three accidents, in particular, are seared in our memories because NASA's missions have been so dramatic, and so public.

First, there was the fire on Jan. 27, 1967, which killed Apollo 1's crew of Command Pilot "Gus" Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White and Pilot Roger Chaffee. At the time, NASA was racing to beat the Soviet Union to the moon.

Second was the space shuttle Challenger's accident on Jan. 28, 1986, which was seen live by children across the country because its crew included the first teacher in space, Christa McAuliffe.

Finally, Columbia's accident, on a clear, sunny Saturday, Feb. 1, 2003, as it re-entered from space after a seemingly routine science mission, stunned the country. It also meant the end of NASA's space shuttle program.

This morning at 9:16 a.m. ET, the time Columbia would have landed at the Kennedy Space Center in 2003, there will be a minute of silence. A bell will toll seven times at the Johnson Space Center for the seven astronauts who died on Columbia's final mission, STS 107: Commander Rick Husband, Pilot Willie McCool, Mission Specialists Michael Anderson, David Brown, Laurel Clark, Kalpana Chawla and Ilan Ramon.

It took months for the commission investigating the accident to determine the cause: foam. A piece the size of a briefcase broke off one of the shuttle's external fuel tanks, punching a hole in the orbiter's left wing.

The crew of seven knew something was wrong very late during re-entry, but there wasn't anything they or mission control could do to save them or Columbia. It took managers at the Johnson Space Center months to accept that something so simple as a piece of foam could do so much damage.

Wayne Hale, who guided NASA's space shuttle program back from the accident, was the only NASA employee who publicly accepted responsibility for Columbia's accident.

Hale now works in the private sector, but recently wrote in a blog about the internal discussion at mission control while engineers discussed what they thought might be a problem -- but weren't sure.

"After one of the MMTs [mission management teams] when possible damage to the orbiter was discussed," Hale wrote, "[Flight Director Jon Harpold] gave me his opinion: 'You know, there is nothing we can do about damage to the TPS [thermal protection system]. If it has been damaged it's probably better not to know. I think the crew would rather not know. Don't you think it would be better for them to have a happy successful flight and die unexpectedly during entry than to stay on orbit, knowing that there was nothing to be done, until the air ran out?'

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Immigration reform – just part of America's new dream

Peter Aldhous, San Francisco bureau chief

After an election in which Hispanic voters arguably delivered a second term to President Barack Obama, it was clear that both leaders of both major political parties were going to start thinking about comprehensive immigration reform - long a priority for the nation's growing Latino population.

First out of the gate this week was a bipartisan group of senators dubbed the "gang of eight", with a plan that would give legal status to some 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the US, but also demand payment of back taxes. Obama weighed in the next day, suggesting he wanted legal status granted to existing immigrants "from the outset" - exposing a potential rift with the senators, who want to delay reform until stricter border controls are put in place

Whether any plan will pass the Republican-controlled House of Representatives remains unclear.

As New Scientist explained last September, though, achieving legal status is just one hurdle facing US Hispanics - huge disparities exist in income, family wealth and educational opportunities.

If those gaps aren't narrowed, warn leading demographers and social scientists, the nation as a whole will face some tough challenges retaining its economic and technological edge in the coming decades.

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HRW condemns Russia's "worst post-Soviet crackdown"

MOSCOW: Human Rights Watch on Thursday condemned the Russian authorities under President Vladimir Putin for unleashing the toughest crackdown against civil society since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

"The Kremlin in 2012 unleashed the worst political crackdown in Russia's post-Soviet history," the New-York based rights watchdog said in an English-language statement released in Moscow accompanying the release of its annual world report.

"This (2012) has been the worst year for human rights in Russia in recent memory," the rights group quoted Hugh Williamson, its Europe and Central Asia director as saying.

"Russia's civil society is standing strong but with the space around it shrinking rapidly, it needs support now more than ever."

After returning to the Kremlin for a third term despite unprecedented protests against his 13-year rule, Putin signed off on a raft of laws in what critics saw as a bid to quash dissent.

The new legislation re-criminalised slander, raised fines for misdemeanours at opposition protests and forced non-governmental organisations that receive foreign funding to carry a "foreign agent" tag in a move seen as a throwback to Soviet times.

- AFP/al

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Shutterstock's new tools revamp photo and video search

Shutterstock labs' Spectrum search results in the red range for images with the keyword "healthy."

(Credit:
screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

It's a challenge for anybody selling a wide range of anything online: how do you get the right products in front of the right customers?

Shutterstock, which sells stock-art photos and videos to customers such as ad agencies and PowerPoint presenters, has the matchmaking problem in spades. With 550,000 active customers and more than 23.7 million images, pairing the right buyer with the right photo isn't easy.

Which is why the New York-based company, which went public last October, is retooling how it presents its products to better compete with iStockphoto and other rivals.

Shutterstock has just launched a new stock image discovery tool called Spectrum on its labs site that lets people explore categories of photos based on their dominant color.

Shutterstock founder and CEO Jon Oringer

(Credit:
Shutterstock)

It's not the first such move. Last year, it launched an
iPad app whose "mosaic" interface presents wall-to-wall images that customers can browse rapidly by swipe gestures. A similar interface for the Web, Instant, was the first Shutterstock labs project.

And it's not the last, said Chief Executive and founder Jon Oringer: an overhaul for video is on the way so customers can evaluate footage with something approaching the ease and rapidity that they can check the results of searching for still images.

"With 50 thumbnail image results, it's very easy to scan. When it's 50 video clips, it's very hard to scan -- you don't know what's in each video," Oringer said. "We're working on ways to take that whole page of data and show it to you really quickly."

On top of that, the company takes a very Googley approach with its traditional photo-search techniques, in which customers type in search keywords and see an array of image thumbnails. "We're tracking hovers [where people direct their mouse pointers], clicks, and downloads," checking how customers refine searches and otherwise gathering data on what converts a search into a purchase, said Wyatt Jenkins, the company's vice president of product. "Our results are more relevant."

The formula is working, said Lee Torrens, who watches the industry closely at Microstock Diaries.

"They're innovating a lot on the buyer-side functionality, helping them catch up to iStock in terms of getting buyers to the image they're seeking as quickly as possible," Torrens said. "Overall, they're growing very quickly, remaining uniquely friendly to contributors, and pushing closer and closer towards iStock."

Shutterstock labs' Spectrum search results in the violet range for images with the keyword "healthy."

(Credit:
screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

The new search techniques can appeal to different designers or to the same designer in a different mood. With the new avenues for exploration, "We see people downloading different images. It gets their creativity moving in a different direction," Oringer said. And relative use of the iPad app increases on the weekends, he added.

So far, the company's held things together in its transition from private to public. Revenue for its most recently reported quarter, ended Sept. 30, increased to $42.3 million from $31.2 million the year earlier. Net income increased from $4.3 million to $6.6 million.

Shutterstock raised $82 million in its October IPO, when the shares went public at $17 piece. Its stock now trades above $24.

Oringer has a big stake in how things go at the 250-employee company -- indeed, by owning 55.2 percent of the company's stock, a controlling stake.

Shutterstock's share price has risen to the $24 range since its IPO at $17 in October.

(Credit:
Yahoo Finance)

Stock imagery in a nutshell
Stock photos are a staple in advertisers' imagery diet -- the senior couple strolling through the park, the fit-looking woman in a yoga pose, the businesspeople shaking hands. They're used in everything from annual reports to blog posts.

A decade ago, the stock-photo business moved from the hands of a relatively small number of professional photographers to a vastly larger pool of people as digital camera image quality improved and the Internet provided a global market. Making the commerce possible were microstock start-ups, led by iStockphoto, which old-school agency Getty Images acquired in 2006.

Microstock companies offered photos for relatively cheap on a "royalty-free" basis, meaning that customers could pay once to license a photo and then use it over and over in many ways. It's a much more liberal mechanism than the traditional rights-managed approach that came before, in which photo use is limited to particular geographic regions, times, and other constraints.

There are plenty of microstock companies out there -- well established Shutterstock competitors also include Dreamstime, Fotolia, and 123RF Images. With dozens of other out there, photographers can call on even more middlemen such as PicWorkFlow that'll retouch photos, add keywords, and upload to multiple microstock agencies.

Shutterstock tries to set itself apart. One way is that doesn't try to draw contributors into exclusive partnerships that increase royalty payments if photographers sell imagery only through a single microstock.

"The bottom line is that as a microstock photographer it just doesn't make sense to be exclusive to any one agency," Oringer said in a blog post. Among the company's reasons for not offering exclusivity: "Image marketplaces that offer exclusivity to contributors must favor certain images...While other agencies sort their search results based on maximizing revenue, we maximize on search success."

Sales by subscription
Another distinguishing feature is that Shutterstock offers a subscription model. Customers that spend $249 a month (or less, if they sign up for longer periods of time) may download up to 25 images each day. Most microstocks, in contrast, sell images one at a time, an option Shutterstock also offers.

About half the company's revenue comes from subscription plans, according to the company's regulatory filings. (Video footage, a fast-growing part of the company's business, is not available through subscriptions.)

And Wall Street likes subscription businesses, with their lower churn rates.

"What makes us a good candidate for going public is we are at the core a subscription product with predictable, repeat, recurring revenue helps smooth things out on a quarter-to-quarter basis," Oringer said. "In general, we have remarkable consistency in terms of acquiring subscribers and monitoring how much they download. That's been stable. If the stability was changing, we probably would taken a different route -- gone for a more private kind of equity raise."

Shutterstock labs' Spectrum search results in the blue range for images with the keyword "healthy."

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Subscriptions might seem like a bad idea for the contributing photographers who supply Shutterstock with images. The company only passes on 25 cents per photo to photographers for a shot sold via a subscription plan, according to Shutterstock's photographer payout formula, though that rate goes up to as much as 38 cents as the photographer's lifetime photo sales increase.

In contrast, an on-demand purchase of a single image generates 81 cents to $1.24 for lower-resolution images and $1.88 to $2.85 for high resolution.

Low cost, high volume
But subscriptions can also encourage customers to loosen up, downloading images more often and not losing a lot of sleep over which one is best or over which resolution to buy, Oringer said.

"Shutterstock is selling more images than anybody else in the world," with two images downloaded each second on average, Jenkins said. "In sheer volume, we're the clear leader...The subscription is a motivator."

And of course customers who like it will continue with their subscriptions, which ultimately is good for Shutterstock contributors. Shutterstock customers who spent money in 2010 spent more than double as much in 2011, accordinging to a company regulatory filing. And from 2010 to 2011, customer growth was 71 percent. (The company hasn't yet released 2012 statistics.)

The approach is the opposite of iStockphoto's strategy, which emphasizes upselling customers to expensive images, but Torrens said it works.

"Their business model still makes them the cheapest of the cheap," Torrens said. But photographers forget about that fact, "especially when Shutterstock sends them more money at the end of the month than any other agency."

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New Theory on How Homing Pigeons Find Home

Jane J. Lee

Homing pigeons (Columba livia) have been prized for their navigational abilities for thousands of years. They've served as messengers during war, as a means of long-distance communication, and as prized athletes in international races.

But there are places around the world that seem to confuse these birds—areas where they repeatedly vanish in the wrong direction or scatter on random headings rather than fly straight home, said Jon Hagstrum, a geophysicist who authored a study that may help researchers understand how homing pigeons navigate.

Hagstrum's paper, published online Wednesday in the Journal of Experimental Biology, proposes an intriguing theory for homing pigeon disorientation—that the birds are following ultralow frequency sounds back towards their lofts and that disruptions in their ability to "hear" home is what screws them up.

Called infrasound, these sound waves propagate at frequencies well below the range audible to people, but pigeons can pick them up, said Hagstrum, who works at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California.

"They're using sound to image the terrain [surrounding] their loft," he said. "It's like us visually recognizing our house using our eyes."

Homeward Bound?

For years, scientists have struggled to explain carrier pigeons' directional challenges in certain areas, known as release-site biases.

This "map" issue, or a pigeon's ability to tell where it is in relation to where it wants to go, is different from the bird's compass system, which tells it which direction it's headed in. (Learn about how other animals navigate.)

"We know a lot about pigeon compass systems, but what has been controversial, even to this day, has been their map [system]," said Cordula Mora, an animal behavior researcher at Bowling Green State University in Ohio who was not involved in the study.

Until now, the two main theories say that pigeons rely either on their sense of smell to find their way home or that they follow the Earth's magnetic field lines, she said.

If something screwed up their sense of smell or their ability to follow those fields, the thinking has been, that could explain why pigeons got lost in certain areas.

But neither explanation made sense to Hagstrum, a geologist who grew interested in pigeons after attending an undergraduate lecture by Cornell biologist William Keeton. Keeton, who studied homing pigeons' navigation abilities, described some release-site biases in his pigeons and Hagstrum was hooked.

"I was just stunned and amazed and fascinated," said Hagstrum. "I understand we don't get dark matter or quantum mechanics, but bird [navigation]?"

So Hagstrum decided to look at Keeton's pigeon release data from three sites in upstate New York. At Castor Hill and Jersey Hill, the birds would repeatedly fly in the wrong direction or head off randomly when trying to return to their loft at Cornell University, even though they had no problems at other locations. At a third site near the town of Weedsport, young pigeons would head off in a different direction from older birds.

There were also certain days when the Cornell pigeons could find their way back home from these areas without any problems.

At the same time, homing pigeons from other lofts released at Castor Hill, Jersey Hill, and near Weedsport, would fly home just fine.

Sound Shadows

Hagstrum knew that homing pigeons could hear sounds as low as 0.05 hertz, low enough to pick up infrasounds that were down around 0.1 or 0.2 hertz. So he decided to map out what these low-frequency sound waves would have looked like on an average day, and on the days when the pigeons could home correctly from Jersey Hill.

He found that due to atmospheric conditions and local terrain, Jersey Hill normally sits in a sound shadow in relation to the Cornell loft. Little to none of the infrasounds from the area around the loft reached Jersey Hill except on one day when changing wind patterns and temperature inversions permitted.

That happened to match a day when the Cornell pigeons had no problem returning home.

"I could see how the topography was affecting the sound and how the weather was affecting the sound [transmission]," Hagstrum said. "It started to explain all these mysteries."

The terrain between the loft and Jersey Hill, combined with normal atmospheric conditions, bounced infrasounds up and over these areas.

Some infrasound would still reach Castor Hill, but due to nearby hills and valleys, the sound waves approached from the west and southwest, even though the Cornell loft is situated south-southwest of Castor Hill.

Records show that younger, inexperienced pigeons released at Castor Hill would sometimes fly west while older birds headed southwest, presumably following infrasounds from their loft.

Hagstrum's model found that infrasound normally arrived at the Weedsport site from the south. But one day of abnormal weather conditions, combined with a local river valley, resulted in infrasound that arrived at Weedsport from the Cornell loft from the southeast.

Multiple Maps

"What [Hagstrum] has found for those areas are a possible explanation for the [pigeon] behavior at these sites," said Bowling Green State's Mora. But she cautions against extrapolating these results to all homing pigeons.

Some of Mora's work supports the theory that homing pigeons use magnetic field lines to find their way home.

What homing pigeons are using as their map probably depends on where they're raised, she said. "In some places it may be infrasound, and in other places [a sense of smell] may be the way to go."

Hagstrum's next steps are to figure out how large an area the pigeons are listening to. He's also talking to the Navy and Air Force, who are interested in his work. "Right now we use GPS to navigate," he said. But if those satellites were compromised, "we'd be out of luck." Pigeons navigate from point to point without any problems, he said.

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Obama Prods GOP on Immigration Negotiations

Jan 31, 2013 6:00am

                                                                        (Image Credit: John Gurzinski/Getty Images)

President Obama has apparently had enough of leading from behind.

During the health-care push, Obama left Congress to its own devices. On immigration, he’s doing just the opposite, attempting to prod Republican legislators to the middle by demanding a vote on his own plan.

The president insisted Tuesday that Congress vote on his plan as soon as possible, barring agreement on something else.

“It’s important for us to recognize that the foundation for bipartisan action is already in place,” Obama said, referring to a bipartisan Senate bill offered up by the so-called Gang of Eight senators, which looks much more palatable to Republicans than Obama’s own plan. “And if Congress is unable to move forward in a timely fashion, I will send up a bill based on my proposal and insist that they vote on it right away.”

In doing so, Obama dared Congress to say “no” to something specific.

It’s the same strategy Obama used in the “fiscal-cliff” talks. With a year-end deadline approaching, he pushed Congress to vote on his own plan: to let higher income tax hikes go into effect if lawmakers couldn’t cut a deal themselves. Obama asked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada to call “an up-or-down vote” on that plan, the president announced in a Dec. 28 appearance before cameras at the White House.

“If members of the House or the Senate want to vote ‘no,’ they can, but we should let everybody vote,” Obama said then.

Republicans hate such a negotiation tactic. Throughout Obama’s White House tenure, GOP aides have griped that the president and congressional Democrats have sought political gain while refusing to negotiate in good faith. On immigration, it’s the same.

The Obama plan includes a faster path to citizenship and nothing to trigger border-security enforcement. It would also clear an easier path for same-sex couples.

Before Obama rolled out his immigration plan in Nevada Tuesday, Sen. Marco Rubio of  Florida raised concerns that the president would launch a “bidding war.”

In a radio interview with Rush Limbaugh, Rubio dismissed the notion of an up-or-down vote: “It’s going to have to go through committees and people are going to have their input. There’s going to be public hearings.  I don’t want to be part of a process that comes up with some bill in secret and brings it to the floor and gives people a take it or leave it.

“I want this place to work the way it’s supposed to work, with every senator having input and the public having input,” Rubio said.

A Senate Republican aide jabbed, “The president’s been gone from the Senate a long time and perhaps he has forgotten that it’s a lot easier to pass legislation if he works with Congress.”

Obama has presented Republicans with a plan they will like much less than what’s been crafted by the bipartisan Senate group. The group plan includes triggers to enforce border-security measures, more unmanned drones and no provisions making it easier for same-sex couples seeking to immigrate or naturalize.

Unless other Republicans come up with a plan of their own, the president has given Republicans a choice between the left and the middle. It’s not hard to tell which they’d prefer.

SHOWS: Good Morning America World News

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The right to fight: women at war

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US man kills bus driver, kidnaps child

WASHINGTON: A gunman boarded a school bus in the US state of Alabama, shot dead the driver and kidnapped a six-year-old, whom he is now holding in an underground bunker, local media reported Wednesday.

WSFA television said the man boarded the bus at around 3:40 pm Tuesday, shot the bus driver and took one of the children to an underground shelter, where police are currently communicating with him through a PVC pipe.

Police could not immediately be reached for comment, but Sergeant Rachel David of the Dothan Police Department confirmed to WSFA that an adult male had been shot during the incident and that the suspect was "not in custody".

"We are at the very beginning of this investigation," she said.

WSFA, a CNN affiliate, said area roads had been closed and three local school systems had cancelled classes on Wednesday over the hostage situation.

- AFP/al

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LG logs a loss on EU fine, but sees smartphone strength

The LG Motion 4G.

(Credit:
Sarah Tew/CNET)

LG Electronics has posted losses within its fourth-quarter 2012 results due to a heavy fine imposed by the European Union over price-fixing allegations.

The world's second-largest television set maker by revenue posted its Q4 2012 financial report today, detailing its first loss-making quarter in a year. Net losses accounted for 468 billion won ($429 million) in the fourth quarter of 2012, in comparison to a loss of 112 billion won in 2011.

Consolidated revenues currently stand at 13.50 trillion won ($12.4 billion).

LG also posted an operating profit of 107 billion won ($98.84 million) in the quarter, which is up 25 percent year over year, based on record smartphone sales of 8.6 million in comparison to third-quarter sales of 7 million. Overall handset sales -- including both feature phones and smartphones -- rose 7 percent to 15.4 million units.

Credit: LG

The electronics firm's mobile business achieved overall revenue of 2.81 trillion won ($2.58 billion), up 15 percent quarter over quarter. LG also says that its customer base for "premium 4G devices" -- such as the Optimus G -- grew in the fourth quarter, and the company intends to capitalize on the expanding 4G market in Europe and in emerging markets this year.

However, profit margins in the television industry continue to slide. LG reported another quarter of losses within its television sector; 5.7 percent in the second quarter, 0.8 percent in the third quarter, and 0.3 percent in the fourth quarter. The firm says that it is not only strong competition from local rivals that has almost flatlined the television sector, but a weak yen has also contributed, despite "aggressive marketing efforts." LG plans to try and reinvigorate its decaying business by tapping into the premium television market and offer OLED and Ultra HD television sets in 2013, along with the sales of 3D and Smart TVs.

In December, LG was fined 492 million euros ($664 million) by the European Commission as part of one of the largest antitrust fines in history. Philips, LG Electronics, Panasonic, Toshiba, Samsung SDI and Technicolor were all fined individually for an overall penalty of over 1 billion euros, after the EU decided that the companies had all been involved in a scheme to rig the prices of cathode ray tubes, used in both computer monitors and television screens. Panasonic plans to appeal the ruling.

This story originally appeared at ZDNet's Between the Lines under the headline "LG Electronics posts loss through EU price fixing fine."

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Timbuktu’s vulnerable manuscripts are city’s "gold"

French and Malian troops surrounded Timbuktu on Monday and began combing the labyrinthine city for Islamist fighters. Witnesses, however, said the Islamists, who claim an affiliation to al Qaeda and had imposed a Taliban-style rule in the northern Malian city over the last ten months, slipped into the desert a few days earlier.

But before fleeing, the militants reportedly set fire to several buildings and many rare manuscripts. There are conflicting reports as to how many manuscripts were actually destroyed. (Video: Roots of the Mali Crisis.)

On Monday, Sky News posted an interview with a man identifying himself as an employee of the Ahmed Baba Institute, a government-run repository for rare books and manuscripts, the oldest of which date back to the city's founding in the 12th century. The man said some 3,000 of the institute's 20,000 manuscripts had been destroyed or looted by the Islamists.

Video showed what appeared to be a large pile of charred manuscripts and the special boxes made to preserve them in front of one of the institute's buildings.

However, a member of the University of Cape Town Timbuktu Manuscript Project told eNews Channel Africa on Tuesday that he had spoken with the director of the Ahmed Baba Institute, Mahmoud Zouber, who said that nearly all of its manuscripts had been removed from the buildings and taken to secure locations months earlier. (Read "The Telltale Scribes of Timbuktu" in National Geographic magazine.)

A Written Legacy

The written word is deeply rooted in Timbuktu's rich history. The city emerged as a wealthy center of trade, Islam, and learning during the 13th century, attracting a number of Sufi religious scholars. They in turn took on students, forming schools affiliated with's Timbuktu's three main mosques.

The scholars imported parchment and vellum manuscripts via the caravan system that connected northern Africa with the Mediterranean and Arabia. Wealthy families had the documents copied and illuminated by local scribes, building extensive libraries containing works of religion, art, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, history, geography, and culture.

"The manuscripts are the city's real gold," said Mohammed Aghali, a tour guide from Timbuktu. "The manuscripts, our mosques, and our history—these are our treasures. Without them, what is Timbuktu?"

This isn't the first time that an occupying army has threatened Timbuktu's cultural heritage. The Moroccan army invaded the city in 1591 to take control of the gold trade. In the process of securing the city, they killed or deported most of Timbuktu's scholars, including the city's most famous teacher, Ahmed Baba al Massufi, who was held in exile in Marrakesh for many years and forced to teach in a pasha's court. He finally returned to Timbuktu in 1611, and it is for him that the Ahmed Baba Institute was named.

Hiding the Texts

In addition to the Ahmed Baba Institute, Timbuktu is home to more than 60 private libraries, some with collections containing several thousand manuscripts and others with only a precious handful. (Read about the fall of Timbuktu.)

Sidi Ahmed, a reporter based in Timbuktu who recently fled to the Malian capital Bamako, said Monday that nearly all the libraries, including the world-renowned Mamma Haidara and the Fondo Kati libraries, had secreted their collections before the Islamist forces had taken the city.

"The people here have long memories," he said. "They are used to hiding their manuscripts. They go into the desert and bury them until it is safe."

Though it appears most of the manuscripts are safe, the Islamists' occupation took a heavy toll on Timbuktu.

Women were flogged for not covering their hair or wearing bright colors. Girls were forbidden from attending school, and boys were recruited into the fighters' ranks.

Music was banned. Local imams who dared speak out against the occupiers were barred from speaking in their mosques. In a move reminiscent of the Taliban's destruction of Afghanistan's famous Bamiyan Buddha sculptures, Islamist fighters bulldozed 14 ancient mud-brick mausoleums and cemeteries that held the remains of revered Sufi saints.

A spokesman for the Islamists said it was "un-Islamic" for locals to "worship idols."

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Gunman Kills Bus Driver, Takes Child as Hostage

A gunman shot and killed a school bus driver in Midland City, Ala., Tuesday afternoon and escaped the scene with a 6-year-old passenger, which has prompted a hostage situation that is still going on this morning.

The suspected gunman is identified as Jimmy Lee Dykes, a 60-something military veteran, a police source told ABC News. Dykes and the child are in an underground bunker behind his home.

Dale County Sheriff Wally Olson said Tuesday night that the police had information that the little boy "is OK right now." The boy was delivered some needed medication, police told ABC News.

The police have not identified the child or the dead bus driver.

"Extremely sensitive situation. ... Our agents are working very hard with the locals for the best possible outcome to this situation," a federal law enforcement source told ABC News this morning.

Danny Tindell/Dothan Eagle

Some people in the area were evacuated Tuesday evening, and everyone in the immediate area was notified of the situation, according to Olson.

"Stay at home and pray," Olson told homeowners living in the area.

Olson said multiple agencies have responded to the hostage situation. The FBI has assumed the lead in the investigation, and SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) teams were surrounding the bunker as of Tuesday night.

The incident began a little after 3:30 p.m. local time Tuesday. An unidentified girl, who was on the bus, told ABC News Radio the bus driver had stopped to drop off some children. The alleged gunman boarded the bus and handed the driver a note, she said.

"And then I don't know what happened after that but he started telling them he needed a kid because of the law coming after him," she said.

Dykes got on the bus and originally demanded that he get two children as hostages. All the children on the bus managed to escape except the 6-year-old boy, a police source told ABC News affiliate WDNH.

"He shot the bus driver, and the driver's foot was on the gas and we went backwards. And everybody started screaming. And then the bus driver was still there and we all got off the bus and went to a neighbor's house," the girl said.

Dykes was scheduled to be in court today for a trial related to charges of menacing, according to court records obtained by WDNH.

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Midnight sun: How to get 24-hour solar power

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Football: Beckham is training at Arsenal, Wenger reveals

LONDON: Former England midfielder David Beckham has been training with Arsenal, the club's manager Arsene Wenger has confirmed, but rejected reports that he could sign.

"He called me. He has asked to come here and to work on his fitness. He has not done anything for a long, long time," Wenger said of Beckham, who is without a club after leaving Los Angeles Galaxy at the end of last Major League Soccer season.

"It's purely for fitness. There's no speculation about signing or anything."

Where Beckham, who made his name with Manchester United and has also played for Real Madrid and AC Milan, continues his career has still to be decided.

The 37-year-old, who won 115 England caps, was a key figure in the successful bid to bring the Olympics and Paralympics to London last year.

And if his football career is now over, he could yet find himself with plenty of offers of promotional work.

Beckham also played a prominent role in the delegation sent to Singapore which helped to secure the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games for London and if he does not continue his football career, there are many avenues for the future.

With Wenger playing down the possibility of Beckham signing on a permanent basis he was asked what benefit there is for Arsenal.

He said: "Nothing. To help somebody.

"We are open for people who behave well when they come here."

Despite his United connection, this is not the first time Beckham has trained with Arsenal, having spent some time training with the London club in January 2008 during a break from the MLS season.

He also trained with Arsenal in late 2010, before he trained with Tottenham in January 2011, while this year his sons have been training with Chelsea.

Former Gunners Thierry Henry and Sol Campbell have also returned to Arsenal for training stints.

- AFP/al

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BlackBerry 10 launch: What we know, what we expect

RIM CEO Thorsten Heins at a BlackBerry event last year.

(Credit:
Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

Yes, it's true. After several frustrating delays, Research In Motion is ready to formally pull back the curtain on its next-generation BlackBerry 10 operating system and its first wholly new BlackBerry in a year and a half.

Whether RIM has enough up its sleeves to really wow the public remains to be seen. But there's no question that the company has everything riding on the success of BlackBerry 10. A hit would inject life into RIM and offer proof that it has a place in an industry that it once dominated -- while failure could accelerate a breakup or sale of the business.

There's no doubt that the interest level surrounding RIM has picked up considerably, with industry watchers drawn in by either the potential comeback story or the prospect of a train wreck. Investors seem willing to bet on the company -- its shares have more than doubled in the past six months (although they fell 7.8 percent to $16.24 yesterday). Juxtapose that with Apple, whose stock has lost a quarter of its value in the same time period.

The optimism is a stark contrast from the long stretch RIM endured over the past few years as its market share eroded and executives had more excuses than results. After acquiring QNX in April 2010, then co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie bungled and delayed the transition to the next-generation platform. Even current CEO Thorsten Heins had to push back the debut from the end of last year to early this year because of the complexities of the move.

Despite the swing in sentiment, there remains skeptics. Ovum analyst Jan Dawson doesn't believe BlackBerry 10 will save RIM.

"RIM continues to face the twin demons of consumer-driven buying power and a chronic inability to appeal to mature market consumers," Dawson said. "There is nothing in what we've seen so far of BB10 that suggests it will conquer the second of these demons, and the first is utterly out of RIM's control."

Shares were down yesterday on fears RIM may not actually be able to pull a comeback off.

Even so, the launch date is finally here. CNET breaks down what we know, what we expect, and what we hope for.

What we know:

Thanks to an early look at the BlackBerry 10 operating system at prior conferences and through pre-release trial devices, there's already a good picture of what it will look like.

A demo unit using BlackBerry 10.

(Credit:
Lynn La/CNET)

There are a few key features RIM executives will likely focus on. One is BlackBerry Hub, or a central location for e-mail, messages, and social and status updates. Another is "Flow," which enables easier navigation and multi-tasking between apps. Another is BlackBerry Balance, which RIM hopes will win over corporate IT managers. Balance allows the device to carry two personalities, a secure one for work, and a personal one for family and friends.

Another focal point will be its improved virtual keyboard. Gone are the days of the click-screen debacle of the BlackBerry Storm. The virtual keyboard promises to be smarter than rival versions, and includes a second heat-map layer that remembers how you press the individual keys, and whether you tend to be right or left of the actual key itself. The phone is also supposed to remember and suggest commonly used words and words already used in the document.

The keyboard was a highlight at a past conference, but RIM will have to show off more than that.

"RIM really needs to wow the audience," said RBC Capital analyst Mark Sue.

RIM will unveil two BlackBerry devices at the event, a full touchscreen device and a second full-keyboard version. The phones, which CNET spent limited time with a few months ago, will stack up nicely with the specifications of rival smartphones, including display resolution, pixel density, memory, and a 4G LTE connection.

On the app front, BlackBerry 10 will launch with 70,000 apps, the most applications available during launch, the company boasts. Still, that library pales in comparison to the available iOS and
Android apps in the market.

What we expect (and hope for):

With all the buzz about carrier excitement and support, we expect some details on launch partners, availability, and perhaps even pricing.

The two BlackBerrys are rumored to carry the names Z10 (for the touchscreen version) and X10 (for the keyboard version). The Z10 is expected to launch first, with the X10 following shortly. The first phone is reportedly going to hit the market in February.

Nokia's launch of the
Lumia 920 and 820 was mired a bit by the lack of details over availability, and we expect (and hope) that RIM will do better. But, given the carrier's preference to be involved with product announcements, the availability info may be limited.

The wireless carriers aren't expected to play a big role in the event -- it'll be all RIM's show. As a result, perhaps the announcement of carrier partners might be a little wishful thinking.

RIM will likely show off a taste of its marketing campaign, which will play a crucial role in convincing smartphone owners that BlackBerrys are worth buying again. The company said it can sell into its current base of just under 80 million users, but the truth is it will need to attract new consumers to thrive. RIM will need to be able to quickly communicate any benefits or advantages it has over the competition, and it needs its carrier partners to be on the same page.

The company is already poised to air a commercial during the Super Bowl, so it appears ready to go big with its campaign. The burning question: Will it be able to get that cool factor again?

Meet the man who would make BlackBerry apps cool

RIM has been talking up the ease with which developers can write or port over apps to the BlackBerry 10 platform, so the company will need to prove that it has the top-tier apps people want in a mobile operating system.

Will heavy-hitters such as Rovio and Electronic Arts show up? Hopefully, we'll get quick answers in the presentation.

Heins could pull a rabbit out of his hat and tease a
tablet successor to the PlayBook. The statement touting the upcoming Super Bowl ad did state smartphones and tablets, so you never know.

Lastly, we are also hoping for BlackBerrys to take home. Nothing convinces a skeptical horde of tech journalists that a company is ready for prime time like having demo units ready to take home.

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Space Pictures This Week: Martian Gas, Cloud Trails

Image courtesy SDO/NASA

The sun is more than meets the eye, and researchers should know. They've equipped telescopes on Earth and in space with instruments that view the sun in at least ten different wavelengths of light, some of which are represented in this collage compiled by NASA and released January 22. (See more pictures of the sun.)

By viewing the different wavelengths of light given off by the sun, researchers can monitor its surface and atmosphere, picking up on activity that can create space weather.

If directed towards Earth, that weather can disrupt satellite communications and electronics—and result in spectacular auroras. (Read an article on solar storms in National Geographic magazine.)

The surface of the sun contains material at about 10,000°F (5,700°C), which gives off yellow-green light. Atoms at 11 million°F (6.3 million°C) gives off ultraviolet light, which scientists use to observe solar flares in the sun's corona. There are even instruments that image wavelengths of light highlighting the sun's magnetic field lines.

—Jane J. Lee

Published January 28, 2013

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5 Years Later, What's New on Immigration Reform?

The announcement of a proposal for immigration reform inspired renewed excitement for some involved in the fight Monday, but other players in the debate felt a sense of déjà vu.

Monday afternoon, senators introduced a framework of changes previewed over the weekend, with President Obama and a secret group from the House of Representatives expected soon to follow suit.

The press conference was held by Senators Chuck Schumer, John McCain, Dick Durbin, Lindsey Graham, Bob Menendez, Marco Rubio, Michael Bennet and Jeff Flake. Menendez called it "meaningful and comprehensive" immigration reform.

But former Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., who worked on this same issue under President George W. Bush in 2007, said this proposal "is a lot like what we did five years ago -- remarkably so."

Martinez said it puts "a little more emphasis" on dealing with legal immigrants who overstay their visas, shifts from framing the policies as reuniting families to rewarding skilled laborers, and the phrase "guest worker" -- which was a point of contention then -- is now absent.

But in terms of things like creating a path to citizenship and requiring an electronic verification system for employers to determine an applicant's legal status, "All of these things are exactly what we did before," Martinez said.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo| Susan Walsh/AP Photo

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To Martinez, this replay is a good thing. He said a "political evolution" and a new appreciation for Hispanic voters created a positive climate for reforms this time around.

But Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform said he is not impressed.

"It's essentially the same legislation that was offered and rejected in 2007," Mehlman told ABC News."It includes nothing for the primary constituency -- namely the American public. It's all based on what the immigrants and particularly the illegal immigrants want and what employers want."

The two plans focused on achieving bipartisan support, molding immigration law to meet the needs of the economy, and the condition that reform would only happen simultaneously with the strengthening of border security.

The difference, according to immigration lawyer Cori Alonso-Yoder of immigrant-focused non-profit Ayuda, is the messaging in this proposal.

"The message is very helpful to people who are used to hearing a not-welcoming tone towards immigrants," Alonso-Yoder said Monday. "I think that's sort of what distinguishes this from efforts that we saw in 2006, 2007 things that I think were more harsh on immigrants."

This time around the plan alludes to racial profiling and human trafficking, two issues Alonso-Yoder said her clients "confront on a daily basis and are dealing with on a daily basis."

Related: 'Dreamers' React to the New Immigration Reform Framework

She said she believes the intent in this legislation is good and that it will have some success -- at least outside of the House of Representatives.

"My concern is just seeing how this will all sort of play out in a system that is already filled with patchwork fixes, and how deep this reform will go, how broad it will sweep," Alonso-Yoder said.

The collapse of President George W. Bush's 2007 immigration bill may be a bad sign for Obama -- who is expected to announce his own plan today -- and others hoping to change the immigration system.

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Stellar performances finally gain the limelight

Michael Brooks, consultant

(Image: Five Finger Yamanaka/courtesy of Phil Ross)

In Heart of Darkness, Jeremiah P. Ostriker and Simon Mitton add new stars to the constellation of astronomy to tell the subject's full history

WE HAVE all heard of the Hubble Space Telescope, named after Edwin Hubble, but where is the Tinsley telescope?

Beatrice Tinsley was an excellent astronomer, but her career was stymied by an establishment set against giving a salary to the wife of an academic - even if she was also a gifted scientist. Tinsley made at least two vital contributions to our understanding of the universe's history, but she had to divorce her husband and grant him custody of the children to get any recognition of her talents.

In Heart of Darkness, Jeremiah Ostriker and Simon Mitton explore modern cosmology while recasting what they term the "simple linear parade of heroes" of standard accounts. Among the uncelebrated stars of cosmology they discuss, Tinsley shines brightest, but there are others: Milton Humason, a poorly educated mule-driver and janitor who assisted Hubble in his observations, and Vesto Slipher, who, despite working in the shadow of a boss obsessed with finding evidence for Martian civilisations, made the first observations that told us about the expansion of the universe.

Why do some names last and others fade? As well as being a great astronomer, Hubble was a "showman", and a "comfortable celebrity", say Ostriker and Mitton. Tinsley, meanwhile, was diagnosed with cancer the year she finally made full professor (at Yale). She died four years later, aged 40. Like a supernova, she burned brightly but briefly. Hopefully, this thorough and inspiring book will secure her a place in cosmological history.

Not that Ostriker and Mitton's book is focused solely on people - quite the opposite. Relatively few biographical details are given: it is their scientific contributions that are explored - and with aplomb.

This is a strong, confident book, easily one of the best guides to why cosmologists make the claims they do. Yet for all their redistribution of credit, the cosmology that the authors set out remains uncontroversial. It is the universe that began in a singularity, passed through a period of rapid inflation, and is now dominated by dark matter and dark energy. The state of our knowledge, they say, represents a "stunning" accomplishment.

This is the dilemma of modern cosmology: what counts as success? Summing up, Ostriker and Mitton simultaneously cite a "pretty impressive list of successes" while acknowledging that cosmology is "profoundly incomplete". We don't know what caused the inflation, what constitutes dark matter or what lies behind dark energy. In the end, the authors settle for a declaration that there's plenty for future cosmologists to do.

If there is one flaw in this crystal clear book, it's a lack of depth in the discussion of the dark side of the universe. It provides the book's title and is supposed to account for 96 per cent of the universe, but is confined to two chapters towards the end. Alternatives to dark matter are dismissed in little more than a paragraph and compared to pre-Copernican efforts to keep the Earth at the centre of the cosmos. When many respected scientists support the continued search for alternatives, that seems somewhat disingenuous.

Were she still with us, Tinsley would no doubt argue that there are compelling reasons to believe in the existence of dark matter, but that there are good reasons to consider alternatives, too. Her unique contribution to cosmology was to persuade a dismissive establishment that galaxies change their properties over time. In so doing, she exposed a gaping hole in the cosmology of the 1970s. It was a supreme achievement, if unwelcome.

Clearly, if you want your name to go down in history (or onto a telescope) it's better to be a showman than a troublemaker. But if the history of science teaches us anything, it's that the troublemakers should be celebrated too.

Book information:
Heart of Darkness: Unraveling the mysteries of the invisible universe by Jeremiah P. Ostriker and Simon Mitton
Princeton University Press
£19.95/$27.95

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