Scientific Results From Challenger Deep

Jane J. Lee



The spotlight is shining once again on the deepest ecosystems in the ocean—Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench (map) and the New Britain Trench near Papua New Guinea. At a presentation today at the American Geophysical Union's conference in San Francisco, attendees got a glimpse into these mysterious ecosystems nearly 7 miles (11 kilometers) down, the former visited by filmmaker James Cameron during a historic dive earlier this year.


Watch a video interview with Cameron on exploring deep-sea trenches.



Microbiologist Douglas Bartlett with the University of California, San Diego described crustaceans called amphipods—oceanic cousins to pill bugs—that were collected from the New Britain Trench and grow to enormous sizes five miles (eight kilometers) down. Normally less than an inch (one to two centimeters) long in other deep-sea areas, the amphipods collected on the expedition measured 7 inches (17 centimeters). (Related: "Deep-Sea, Shrimp-like Creatures Survive by Eating Wood.")


Bartlett also noted that sea cucumbers, some of which may be new species, dominated many of the areas the team sampled in the New Britain Trench. The expedition visited this area before the dive to Challenger Deep.


Marine geologist Patricia Fryer with the University of Hawaii described some of the deepest seeps yet discovered. These seeps, where water heated by chemical reactions in the rocks percolates up through the seafloor and into the ocean, could offer hints of how life originated on Earth.


And astrobiologist Kevin Hand with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, spoke about how life in these stygian ecosystems, powered by chemical reactions, could parallel the evolution of life on other planets.


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John McAfee Seeks Asylum, Thanks God for 'Sanity'













Eccentric software tycoon John McAfee, wanted for questioning in the shooting death of his neighbor, has made his escape from Belize to Guatemala, where he told ABC News he will be seeking asylum.


"Thank God I am in a place where there is some sanity," McAfee said. "I chose Guatemala carefully."


McAfee, 67, has been on the run from police in the Central American country of Belize since the Nov. 10 murder of his neighbor, fellow American expatriate Greg Faull. Investigators said that McAfee was not a suspect in the death of the former developer, who was found shot in the head in his house on the resort island of San Pedro, but that they wanted to question him.


McAfee has been hiding from police ever since – a tactic his new lawyer, Telesforo Guerra, says was necessary.


"You don't have to believe what the police say," Guerra told ABC News. "Even though they say he is not a suspect they were trying to capture him." Guerra is Guatemala's former Attorney General, and, says McAfee, the uncle of McAfee's 20-year-old girlfriend, Samantha.


McAfee says the government raided his beachfront home and threatened Samantha's family.


"Fifteen armed soldiers come in and personally kidnap my housekeeper, threaten Sam's father with torture and haul away half a million dollars of my s___," claimed McAfee. "If they're not after me, then why all these raids? There've been eight raids!"






Johan Ordonez/AFP/Getty Images











John McAfee Interview: Software Millionaire on the Run Watch Video









John McAfee: Software Millionaire Not Officially a Suspect Watch Video









Anti-Virus Pioneer John McAfee Hiding in Belize: Police Watch Video





McAfee will hold a press conference at 3 p.m. Eastern Time in Guatemala City to announce his asylum bid. He has offered to answer questions from Belizean law enforcement over the phone, and denies any involvement in Faull's death.


For three weeks, McAfee has been on the run, blogging about his flight, flinging accusations at the Belize government and demanding the release of several friends who have been arrested. He zipped around in speedboats and vans, dyed his hair and beard black and said he'd been sleeping in a bug-infested bed.


Over the weekend, a post on his blog claimed that he had been detained on the Belizean/Mexico border.


On Monday, a follow-up post said that the "John McAfee" taken into custody was actually a "double" who was carrying a North Korean passport with McAfee's name.


That post claimed that McAfee had already escaped Belize and was on the run with Samantha and two reporters from Vice Magazine.


McAfee did not reveal his location in that post, and a spokesperson for Belize's National Security Ministry, Raphael Martinez, told ABC News on Monday that no one by McAfee's name was ever detained at the border and that Belizean security officials believed McAfee was still in their country.


However, a photo posted by Vice Magazine on Monday with their article, "We Are With John McAfee Right Now, Suckers," apparently had been taken on an iPhone 4S and had location information embedded in it which revealed the exact coordinates where the photo was taken - in the Rio Dulce National Park in Guatemala – as reported by Wired.com.


A subsequent blog post on McAfee's site confirmed that the photo had mistakenly revealed his location, and said that Monday was "chaotic due to the accidental release of my exact co-ordinates by an unseasoned technician at Vice headquarters."


"We made it to safety in spite of this handicap," the post reads. "I had to cancel numerous interviews with the press yesterday because of this and I apologize to all of those affected."





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Today on New Scientist: 4 December 2012







'Magnetic highway' found at solar system's edge

NASA's Voyager 1 has detected a zone where charged particles can race along magnetic field lines linking the solar system with interstellar space



Back-to-basics money shot shows a cent's battle scars

The euro has taken a bit of a battering of late - and not just in the financial markets. See how a 1-cent coin looks through a powerful microscope



Battling nature in your backyard

Your yard is the new frontier as wildlife returns to the suburbs. In Nature Wars, Jim Sterba calls for a shift from conservation to culling to win back territory



Why words are as painful as sticks and stones

Rejection and heartbreak can have effects every bit as physical as cuts and bruises, and understanding why could change your life



How to create stunning paintings using physics alone

Attention, Pollock wannabes - watch different colours of paint interact to produce abstract images thanks to fluid dynamics



2012 Flash Fiction shortlist: S3xD0ll

From scores of science-inspired stories, our judge has narrowed down a fantastic shortlist. Story two of five: S3xD0ll by Kevlin Henney



Green shoots are growing in oil-rich Texas

Texas has a reputation as the fossil fuel and climate change denial capital of the US, but George Marshall found that things are quietly changing



Heavy hydrogen excess hints at Martian vapour loss

NASA's Curiosity rover has found an unusually high proportion of heavy hydrogen in the Martian soil that may help pin down how Mars lost its atmosphere



Curiosity finds carbon - but is it from Mars?

The NASA rover's first chemical analysis of Martian soil has revealed a carbon compound of uncertain origins



Leech cocoon preserves 200-million-year-old fossil

Move over amber. When it comes to preserving soft-bodied animals through the ages, there's a newcomer in town: fossilised leech "cocoons"




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Android extends global smartphone lead: survey






WASHINGTON: Google's Android operating system will power more than two-thirds of smartphones sold worldwide in 2012, and will remain the dominant platform for at least the next four years, a survey showed Tuesday.

The survey by the research firm IDC showed Android will be the platform for 68.3 per cent of smartphones shipped in 2012, far ahead of 18.8 per cent for the iOS platform used on Apple's iPhone.

"IDC forecasts Android to be the clear leader in the smartphone mobile operating system race, thanks in large part to a broad selection of devices from a wide range of partners," the market tracker said.

"Samsung is the leading Android smartphone seller though resurgent smartphone vendors LG Electronics and Sony, both of which cracked the top five smartphone vendors during the third quarter, are not to be overlooked. IDC believes the net result of this will be continued double-digit growth throughout the forecast period."

The report said Android will retain the top position through 2016, when it will have 63.8 per cent of the market in the face of increased competition from Apple, Microsoft's Windows Phone and others.

"Android is expected to stay in front, but we also expect it to be the biggest target for competing operating systems to grab market share," said Ramon Llamas, research manager with IDC.

"At the same time, Windows Phone stands to gain the most market share as its smartphone and carrier partners have gained valuable experience in selling the differentiated experience Windows Phone has to offer."

Llamas said other players jockeying for market share will include Research in Motion's BlackBerry, which releases a new operating system next year, and the open-source Linux system.

BlackBerry, which until a few years ago was the dominant smartphone, will see its market share slide to 4.7 per cent in 2012, according to IDC, and to 4.1 per cent by 2016.

Linux will be used on two per cent of smartphones this year and 1.5 per cent in 2016, it said. Windows will grow from 2.6 per cent this year to 11.4 per cent in 2016, IDC said.

Apple's iOS will remain the clear number two platform but will be "cost prohibitive for some users within many emerging markets," IDC said.

"In order to maintain current growth rates, Apple will need to examine the possibility of offering less expensive models," it said.

The report said the overall worldwide mobile phone market will grow just 1.4 per cent in 2012, the lowest annual growth rate in three years. The total number of devices sold is expected to be around 1.7 billion.

The forecast reflects an estimated 39.5 per cent growth in smartphones, but declines in sales of other kinds of mobile phones.

"Sluggish economic conditions worldwide have cast a pall over the mobile phone market this year," said IDC's Kevin Restivo.

"However, the fourth quarter will be relatively bright due in part to sales of high-profile smartphones, such as the iPhone 5 and Samsung's Galaxy S3, in addition to lower-cost Android-powered smartphones shipped to China and other high-growth emerging markets."

- AFP/fa



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360-degree camera captures head-spinning videos



Making View race car still

This may be the closest you'll get to driving an F1 car.



(Credit:
Video screenshot by Amanda Kooser/CNET)


The phrase "immersive experience" gets bandied about quite a bit when talking about technology. I wouldn't use those words to describe the online video experience... until now. The Making View 360-degree ViewCam video system brings you into the action much more than a regular clip.


Remember those panoramic house tours that were popular for a while on real estate sites? The ViewCam videos created with Red Bull are like that on steroids -- with a shot of adrenaline on the side.


Demonstration videos let you ride along with a race car or a downhill mountain biker. You hover with the driver or rider and control the viewpoint with the arrow keys on your keyboard. Jump out of the launch chute, and glance behind to see the next bike rider coming down, or look ahead as the
car angles into a corner.



The camera system weighs a little over a pound. It's surprisingly compact, but still much bigger than a regular GoPro you'd mount on your helmet. It captures 4K by 2K equirectangular video at 25-50fps. It uses 160GB to 224GB of internal memory to hold all that video data. The MakingViewer video viewer lets you share the experience online.


The video looks a little distorted sometimes, but it doesn't distract from the sense of excitement at being able to control the viewpoint, pan around, glance up at the sky, and then back behind. The novelty may wear off at some point, but the videos are a lot of fun for now.



(Via Outside Online)


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Pictures We Love: Best of November

Photograph by Qais Usyan, AFP/Getty Images

The family of a five-year-old Afghan girl, victim of an alleged rape by a 22-year-old man, sits at her hospital bedside in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, on November 12. News agencies reported that the assailant, a neighbor, was later detained by police.

(Read about the continued struggle of women in Afghanistan in National Geographic magazine.)

Why We Love It

"The perspective and stark lighting reinforce how small and defenseless this little girl is—her body engulfed by the bed and blankets, with only her feet showing. The bedframe appears to trap her and her family, just as they are trapped in this cycle of violence."—Monica Corcoran, senior photo editor

"This image has a symbolic quality. The light draws our attention immediately to the girl. We see, however, nothing to identify her. It could be any girl who is lying there. Her family at her bedside and their facial expressions indicate that rape affects not only the victim. Overall, this image shows the universality of human suffering."—Amina El Banayosy, photo intern

Published December 4, 2012

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Alaska Serial Killer Buried Murder Kits Across US













Israel Keyes, the Alaskan man whoconfessed to seven murders before killing himself in a jail cell, told police that he traveled the country to find victims and buried caches of weapons, money and tools for disposing of bodies to use in future crimes.


The FBI also released an ominous list of 35 trips Keyes made around the U.S., Mexico and Canada over the last eight years.


Keyes, 34, the owner of an Anchorage construction company, was in jail charged with the February murder of Samantha Koenig, 18. While in jail he had been confessing to at least seven other killings in Washington, New York and Vermont. He was found dead in his Alaska jail cell on Sunday in an apparent suicide.


Investigators are now piecing together a deadly puzzle that is uncovering a macabre lifestyle of Keyes traveling to kill simply because he "liked to do it," prosecutors said.


"In a series of interviews with law enforcement, Keyes described significant planning and preparation for his murders, reflecting a meticulous and organized approach to the crimes," the Anchorage FBI office said in a statement.


The FBI has released a timeline of Keyes' travels that showed nearly three dozen trips between 2004 and 2012. The destinations of the trips are vague, described only by U.S. region in most cases, but span the entire country, including Hawaii. There are also trips to Canada and Mexico listed.


"Keyes also admitted traveling to various locations to leave supplies he planned to use in a future crime. Keyes buried caches throughout the United States," the FBI said.










Missing Alaska Barista Had Past Restraining Order Watch Video







Authorities have already recovered two caches, one in Alaska and one in New York, that contained money, weapons and items for disposing of bodies. Keyes indicated that there were other supply boxes buried across the country.


He funded his travel with the proceeds from bank robberies, authorities said.


"Investigators believe that Keyes did not know any of his victims prior to their abductions," the FBI said. "He described several remote locations that he frequented to look for victims--parks, campgrounds, trailheads, cemeteries, boating areas, etc."


Keyes told authorities that his victims received little if any media attention when they disappeared. Authorities said that "based on his own research," Keyes said that one of his victims had been recovered, but the death was ruled accidental. Investigators said they have not identified the victim or location of that alleged crime.


Before his death, Keyes indicated that, in addition to Koenig and a Vermont couple, he killed four people in Washington State and one person in New York, but did not give the victims' names, authorities said.


"It was not unusual for Keyes to fly into an airport, rent a car, and drive hundreds of miles to his final destination," the FBI said.


That is precisely what Keyes did in the murder of Bill and Lorraine Currier in Essex, Vt., last year. He flew from Alaska to Chicago in June 2011. He rented a car in Chicago and drove to Vermont where he spent three days looking for his next victims and planning the slaying.


"When [Keyes] left Alaska, he left with the specific purpose of kidnapping and murdering someone," Chittenden County State Attorney T. J. Donovan said at the press conference. "He was specifically looking for a house that had an attached garage, no car in the driveway, no children, no dog."


The Curriers, unfortunately, fit all of Keyes' criteria. He spent three days in Vermont before striking. He even took out a three-day fishing license and fished before the slayings.


Keyes abducted the couple from their home and murdered them in an abandoned barn he had located before breaking into the Curriers' home. After binding the couple with plastic cuffs, the beat the husband with a shovel and then shot him. The wife was raped and strangled.


"By all accounts, [the Curriers] were friendly, peaceful, good people who encountered a force of pure evil acting at random," an investigator said at today's news conference. Authorities called the ongoing investigation a "huge case, national in scope."






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Top accounting firms face charges over China data






WASHINGTON: US market regulators charged the China affiliates of five top accounting firms Monday with violation of securities laws for refusing to provide audit data related to China-based companies.

"The audit materials are being sought as part of SEC investigations into potential wrongdoing by nine China-based companies whose securities are publicly traded in the US," the Securities and Exchange Commission said.

The five firms charged were BDO China Dahua, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Certified Public Accountants, Ernst & Young Hua Ming, KPMG Huazhen, and PricewaterhouseCoopers Zhong Tian.

The SEC said they violated the Securities Exchange Act and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which requires foreign public accounting firms to provide the SEC upon request with audit work papers involving any company trading on US markets.

SEC investigators have been trying to obtain the data for months from the audit firms but they have refused to cooperate, it said in a statement.

"Only with access to work papers of foreign public accounting firms can the SEC test the quality of the underlying audits and protect investors from the dangers of accounting fraud," said Robert Khuzami, director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement.

"Firms that conduct audits knowing they cannot comply with laws requiring access to these work papers face serious sanctions."

- AFP/fa



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AT&T adds 6 LTE markets, now reaches 150 million people



AT&T has expanded its LTE network to six more markets.


The company announced today that three U.S. markets -- Albuquerque, NM, Reading, Penn., and Salt Lake City, UT -- are now able to access its LTE network. Three markets in Puerto Rico -- Guayama, San German-Cabo Rojo, and Yauco -- also now have AT&T's LTE network.


With the new addition, AT&T's network now spans 109 markets and reaches over 150 million people, the company told CNET in an e-mailed statement.



AT&T has been rapidly rolling out its LTE network across the U.S., adding new markets each month. However, the company is still far behind Verizon. That company announced last month that it had reached its goal of hitting 400 LTE markets by year's end two months ahead of schedule. By October 18, Verizon had 417 LTE markets in the U.S., covering 250 million people.


As of this writing, Verizon claims to have 441 markets in the U.S.


Last week, AT&T's LTE network received high praise from Consumer Reports, which said that the carrier's network was better than those from competitors. But that was about the only good news AT&T received from Consumer Reports: the carrier was ranked dead last in a ranking of top carriers by value, voice, data, and other factors.


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Photos: Kilauea Lava Reaches the Sea









































































































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