Photograph by Jay Fleming
Without aggressive management, the population of Yellowstone cutthroats could be decimated. To suppress the population of lake trout, the National Park Service engaged a contract fishing company to net them. Cutthroats are removed carefully from the traps and thrown back. Lake trout are removed and killed. Last year about 300,000 of the non-native intruders were taken from the lake.
Published January 22, 2013
An energized Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stood her ground today, telling the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that she has overseen plans to secure diplomatic outposts around the world while cuts in State Department funding undermine those efforts.
Citing a report by the department's Accountability Review Board on the security failures that led to the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, during an attack last year, Clinton said the board is pushing for an increase in funding to facilities of more than $2 billion per year.
"Consistent shortfalls have required the department to prioritize available funding out of security accounts," Clinton told the Senate this morning, while again taking responsibility for the Benghazi attack. "And I will be the first to say that the prioritization process was at times imperfect, but as the ARB said, the funds provided were inadequate. So we need to work together to overcome that."
Clinton, showing little effect from her recent illnesses, choked up earlier in discussing the Benghazi attack.
"I stood next to President Obama as the Marines carried those flag-draped caskets off the plane at Andrews," Clinton said this morning, her voice growing hoarse with emotion. "I put my arms around the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters."
The outgoing secretary of state was the only witness to giving long-awaited testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee this morning, and will appear before the House Foreign Affairs Committee at 2 p.m.
Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo
The secretary, who postponed her testimony in December, started today by giving context to the terrorist attack.
"Any clear-eyed examination of this matter must begin with this sobering fact," Clinton began. "Since 1988, there have been 19 Accountability Review Boards investigating attacks on American diplomats and their facilities."
But the secretary did not deny her role in the failures, saying that as secretary of state, she has "no higher priority and no greater responsibility" than protecting American diplomats abroad like those killed in Benghazi.
"As I have said many times, I take responsibility, and nobody is more committed to getting this right," Clinton said. "I am determined to leave the State Department and our country safer, stronger and more secure."
Among the steps Clinton has taken, she said, is to "elevate the discussion and the decision-making to make sure there's not any" suggestions that get missed, as there were in this case.
Clinton testified that the United States needs to be able to "chew gum and walk at the same time," working to shore up its fiscal situation while also strengthening security, and she refuted the idea that across-the-board cuts slated to take place in March, commonly referred to as sequestration, were the way to do that.
"Now sequestration will be very damaging to the State Department and USAID if it does come to pass, because it throws the baby out with the bath," Clinton said, referring to the United States Agency for International Development, which administers civilian foreign aid.
While the State Department does need to make cuts in certain areas, "there are also a lot of very essential programs … that we can't afford to cut more of," she added.
More than four months have passed since the attack killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Libya. These meetings, during which Clinton discussed the report on State Department security failures by the Accountability Review Board, were postponed because of her recent illness.
Clinton told the Senate that the State Department is on track to have 85 percent of action items based on the recommendations in the Accountability Review Board report accomplished by March, with some already implemented.
Signs of the most recent life on Mars may have sprung up from underground. Because they would have been protected from harsh conditions on the surface, such as radiation, pockets of underground water may be where Martian life existed most recently.
Sulphates, made through interaction with briny water, lie all over Mars. As water underground is also briny, this suggested frequent upwellings.
But Joseph Michalski of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, and colleagues found that most basins, where groundwater would have pooled, are free of sulphates. The deep McLaughlin crater is instead rich in clays and carbonates which also formed through contact with water.
As water bearing these minerals would be more life-friendly than sulphate-rich water, which is more acidic, McLaughlin may be a good place to look for signs of life that pooled there from underground.
"The stuff we see in McLaughlin could have been very good at preserving life and could have been habitable," says Michalski.
He suggests that future Mars missions should search such basins for signs of habitability, such as the organic molecules that NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is currently seeking. "Perhaps we need to re-emphasise and redirect our attention to the subsurface environments," Michalski says.
Horton Newsom at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque, who was not involved in the new work and who works on Curiosity, thinks the idea sounds reasonable. "Given the low elevation location of McLaughlin crater… it is quite reasonable that it was flooded by deep groundwater."
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SINGAPORE : Rising interest in derivatives trading helped lift earnings for the Singapore Exchange (SGX) last quarter.
Asia's second-largest bourse operator reported a 17 per cent on-year rise in second-quarter net profit to S$76 million.
It also attracted a large number of new bond listings in the same quarter.
Derivatives trading has been the star performer in SGX.
Over the October to December quarter, derivatives daily average volume on SGX hit a record of 358,532 contracts, up 30 per cent on-year.
This was supported by rising trading interests in China A50 futures and Japan Nikkei 225 options.
Not to be undone, the securities market performed well too.
Its daily average volume rose 8 per cent for the quarter to hit a trading value of S$1.2 billion.
This translates to a revenue of S$58 million for the securities business segment.
SGX said the better performance was due to improvements in investor sentiment following stability over the Europe debt situation and improved US economy.
Magnus Bocker, chief executive officer of Singapore Exchange, said: "We should remember the enormous amount of liquidity in the market. Not so much in the equity market, but actually more in the fixed income and currency markets, and with chasing yields and lot of very successful and growing companies, I think we can all expect this sentiment to continue. I think we can expect more flows into securities."
Some analysts are bullish on SGX's prospects going forward.
The said the improved investment climate globally may benefit the exchange operator.
Ken Ang, investment analyst at Phillip Securities Research, said: "SGX is very well placed to benefit from this increasing attractiveness of the equity market and therefore resulting in increase in trading value."
SGX attracted eight new listings in its second quarter - raising S$798.9 million.
While the number seems small, it came amid declines in the global initial public offering (IPO) market.
In 2012, global IPO volumes fell 27 per cent, with the lowest level of funds raised since 2009.
Kenneth Ng, head of Singapore research at CIMB Research, said: "I think while that (derivative) is great and that diversified the revenue of SGX, SGX still has a rather pertinent problem of trying to increase the security turnover velocity and value by retail initiatives, attracting listings and so forth."
Apart from seeking more IPOs, SGX also attracted some 90 new bond listings, raising S$39.7 billion for the quarter.
- CNA/ms
iPhone 5
In an about-face, Digitimes -- the purveyor of numerous Apple rumors, some of which have been true -- says not to get your hopes up for an even larger version of the iPhone. At least not this year.
The tech news site says Apple's still working on one, but that it won't come in the second half of this year, as it excitedly reported earlier this month. That report made waves after claiming Apple was working on a low-cost model with an even larger screen than the 4-inch display found on the
iPhone 5.
"Previously it was said that Apple would release a lower-cost version of its iPhone with a bigger screen in 2013," Digitimes said this morning. "But the sources claimed that Apple is indeed developing an iPhone with a bigger screen, but that will not be among the models to be lancuhed [sic] this year."
The reasoning behind the move, the updated report offers, is supply of the screens with larger displays creating possible production issues.
The report follows one from Chinese language Commercial Times yesterday, which said Apple has a low-cost, 4.8-inch iPhone model in the hopper dubbed the "iPhone Math." Jefferies analyst Peter Misek, who watches Apple's supply chain closely, put out a note to investors this morning agreeing with that possibility.
"Our checks agree three different models are scheduled for launch in 2013 but disagree on the details," Misek said. "We believe a lower-cost 4.3" iPhone and multi-color 4" iPhone 5S will launch in June/July. Additionally, we believe a 4.8" iPhone model is scheduled for the end of October. We do not know what this phone will be called and think 'Math' might be a mistranslation or a code name."
Apple currently sells three different models of the iPhone, but has only ever introduced one model at a time, choosing to sell the older model at a lower price. There were numerous rumors ahead of the
iPhone 4S in 2011 that Apple planned to change that with the simultaneous release of a 4S and the 5, something that proved to be wrong.
It's a bird, it's a plane, it's ... a manatee? The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) believes that a gas cloud in the constellation Aquila bears an uncanny resemblance to the endangered aquatic mammal.
Heidi Winter, executive assistant to NRAO's director, first noticed the similarity. And Tania Burchell, an NRAO media producer who used to work in manatee conservation, quickly saw it as "a wonderful opportunity to bridge two worlds—biology and astronomy."
The cloud, or nebula, which is named W50, has more in common with manatees than just its shape. It is the remnant of a star explosion from 20,000 years ago. Particle beams that shoot from the explosion's center, where a star and a black hole orbit each other, form a spiral pattern resembling scars.
Manatees also bear scars. "Around 80 percent of manatees in Florida have visible scarring," said Michael Lusk, manager of Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge. Because manatees prefer shallow water, collisions with boat propellers are frequent.
The resemblance continues. Like the "sea cow," which can blend into murky water, the nebula is hard to spot. It's approximately 18,000 light-years away, so only one bright arc can be seen by the human eye. Astronomers first saw the ghostly nebula with a telescope that collects a kind of light that radiates at longer wavelengths called radio waves.
W50's new nickname, the Manatee Nebula, and its first photos were unveiled January 19 at the Florida Manatee Festival. "People have an underlying love for the natural world—sky or sea," said Burchell. "We're human beings on this planet, looking up or looking down."
The event marks the 40th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act, which aims to protect critical habitats. Florida's manatee population has risen from around 700 in the 1970s to 5,000 today, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering reclassifying the species from endangered to threatened.
It's what we expect as shoppers—what's in the food will be displayed on the label.
But a new scientific examination by the non-profit food fraud detectives the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP), discovered rising numbers of fake ingredients in products from olive oil to spices to fruit juice.
"Food products are not always what they purport to be," Markus Lipp, senior director for Food Standards for the independent lab in Maryland, told ABC News.
In a new database to be released Wednesday, and obtained exclusively by ABC News today, USP warns consumers, the FDA and manufacturers that the amount of food fraud they found is up by 60 percent this year.
USP, a scientific nonprofit that according to their website "sets standards for the identity, strength, quality, and purity of medicines, food ingredients, and dietary supplements manufactured, distributed and consumed worldwide" first released the Food Fraud Database in April 2012.
The organization examined more than 1,300 published studies and media reports from 1980-2010. The update to the database includes nearly 800 new records, nearly all published in 2011 and 2012.
Among the most popular targets for unscrupulous food suppliers? Pomegranate juice, which is often diluted with grape or pear juice.
"Pomegranate juice is a high-value ingredient and a high-priced ingredient, and adulteration appears to be widespread," Lipp said. "It can be adulterated with other food juices…additional sugar, or just water and sugar."
Lipp added that there have also been reports of completely "synthetic pomegranate juice" that didn't contain any traces of the real juice.
USP tells ABC News that liquids and ground foods in general are the easiest to tamper with:
Milk, honey, coffee and syrup are also listed by the USP as being highly adulterated products.
Also high on the list: seafood. The number one fake being escolar, an oily fish that can cause stomach problems, being mislabeled as white tuna or albacore, frequently found on sushi menus.
National Consumers League did its own testing on lemon juice just this past year and found four different products labeled 100 percent lemon juice were far from pure.
"One had 10 percent lemon juice, it said it had 100 percent, another had 15 percent lemon juice, another...had 25 percent, and the last one had 35 percent lemon juice," Sally Greenberg, Executive Director for the National Consumers League said. "And they were all labeled 100 percent lemon juice."
Greenberg explains there are indications to help consumers pick the faux from the food.
"In a bottle of olive oil if there's a dark bottle, does it have the date that it was harvested?" she said. While other products, such as honey or lemon juice, are more difficult to discern, if the price is "too good to be true" it probably is.
"$5.50, that's pretty cheap for extra virgin olive oil," Greenberg said. "And something that should raise some eyebrows for consumers."
Many of the products USP found to be adulterated are those that would be more expensive or research intensive in its production.
"Pomegranate juice is expensive because there is little juice in a pomegranate," Lipp said.
Jacob Aron, reporter
Anyone who fondly remembers the heady days in early July 2012 when the discovery of the Higgs boson was hotly anticipated, and eventually announced, can now relive the thrilling experience thanks to an analysis of Higgs-related traffic on Twitter.
The traffic - amounting to more than 1 million tweets - provides a neat reflection of real-world excitement, starting with rumours of the elusive particle, and eventually erupting into a buzz of Higgsteria with global reach. The data might even help marketers predict how news about their products will spread on Twitter.
This video shows how the rate of tweets changed per hour over the key period, in various locations around the world.
The discovery in July of the long-sought Higgs boson, or at least something very much like it, was easily the biggest science story of 2012. Manlio De Domenico of the University of Birmingham, UK, and colleagues, who study the relationships between social and geographic networks, saw it as a unique opportunity to gather data.
Normally such Twitter data sets are gathered retrospectively, but as a former physicist, De Domenico had an advantage. "I was aware something big about the Higgs was being presented, so I proposed to monitor the progress of the rumours."
Using software to monitor for the words "lhc", "cern", "boson" and "higgs", the group began collecting tweets on 1 July, when rumours of a particle discovery were already beginning and anticipation was mounting. The researchers continued their monitoring beyond the particle announcement at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland, on 4 July, right up until the 7th.
The rate of tweets per hour on 1 July was just 36. This grew in the following days and spiked on 4 July when it reached a peak of about 36,000 an hour (see below).
To help make sense of their data, the researchers split the tweets into four time periods. The first covered the initial Higgs rumours, the second included the final release of Higgs data from the already-defunct Tevatron collider in Batavia, Illinois, which once hoped to beat the LHC to the Higgs discovery, the third covered further rumours and the fourth spanned the actual announcement of the Higgs and the aftermath.
The number of users joining the Higgs conversation changed dramatically over these four periods. In the graph below, you can see that although it looks as if there is just a small jump following CERN's announcement, the graph uses a logarithmic scale, which means that only 10 per cent of users who tweeted about the Higgs were doing so before the announcement.
Analysing Twitter users' locations revealed how the Higgs conversation changed over the seven monitored days. Initially, the conversation seemed localised, with consecutive Higgs tweets most likely to be sent by users living 20 kilometres apart. However, by the time of the announcement, consecutive tweets were equally likely to come from anywhere in the world.
Unsurprisingly, the official CERN Twitter account got the most retweets during the monitored period. Second place was less predictable, however, going to Colin Eberhardt, a software consultant who still has relatively few followers.
Eberhardt managed to strike a nerve with one of his tweets - winning the prize for the single most-shared tweet. It read: "Possibly the biggest scientific discovery of our time, the #Higgs Boson, announced in glorious MS Comic Sans Font", making reference to the odd choice of font used in the presentation from ATLAS, one of the two LHC experiments that discovered the Higgs.
The New Scientist account @newscientist was beaten to third place by just one retweet by University of Manchester physicist and TV presenter Brian Cox.
As well as providing a neat anatomy of a historical event, the work helps us understand how other topics spread on Twitter, say De Domenico and his team. They used the data to create a mathematical model that uses the number of newly active Higgs tweeters at any given moment to predict the number that will emerge at future points in time.
Such information could be useful for people who want to keep a message spreading, such as marketers. "If you want to keep interest for a certain product going, you might want to estimate where and when to tweet," he says.
In some ways, it seems the announcement of a new particle isn't very different from the launch of a new product.
LONDON: Championship leaders Cardiff have signed striker Fraizer Campbell on a three-and-a-half-year deal from Premier League club Sunderland, the Welsh club announced Monday.
The 25-year-old England international scored just 10 goals in 72 appearances for Sunderland after joining the north-east side from Manchester United.
Campbell came through the Old Trafford youth system before signing professional forms with English giants United in 2006.
He had loan spells with Antwerp and Tottenham Hotspur but made his mark at Hull, scoring 15 goals in 32 starts and helping them reach English football's top flight.
After recovering from injury, he made his full England debut against the Netherlands 11 months ago but has scored just once in 15 appearances this season for the Black Cats.
Despite Cardiff sitting 10 points clear at the top of the Championship and leading the charge for promotion to the lucrative Premier League, none of their strikers have been in the goals this term.
Heidar Helgusson is Cardiff's top scorer with just seven goals in 24 starts.
-AFP/ac
RIM CEO Thorsten Heins.
Research In Motion will launch devices running BlackBerry 10 at the end of the month, but the handset maker is still playing with the idea of licensing its new operating system to other manufacturers.
When asked whether RIM might license the new platform as Microsoft did with Windows Phone, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins told German newspaper Die Welt that it's not out of the realm of possibility.
"Before you licensed the software, you must show that the platform has a large potential," he said, "First we have to fulfill our promises. If such proof, a licensing is conceivable."
Licensing would allow third-party hardware makers to put the new OS on non-RIM devices. RIM has a lot riding on BlackBerry 10, which the company hopes will reinvigorate the brand. After some delay, RIM is expected to unveil handsets fort the new platform next week in a multiple-city debut.
When asked about the delay, Heins said the company's goal was to create a solid platform that would last a decade.
"We have taken the time to build a platform that is future-proof for the next ten years," he said. "Our aim is not only to smartphones, but also to the use, for example, in
cars that will be in the future increasingly networked. We see with BlackBerry 10 completely new areas of growth."
The company has been struggling to bring back lost market share and sales for its once popular BlackBerry devices, but it's not having much luck in an industry ruled by Apple and
Android, which Google has had great success licensing to third-party hardware makers. The company announced a broad restructuring last year and is rumored to be considering a plan to split in two, separating its handset division from its messaging network and selling off the struggling BlackBerry hardware business
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