False memories prime immune system for future attacks

IN A police line-up, a falsely remembered face is a big problem. But for the body's police force – the immune system – false memories could be a crucial weapon.

When a new bacterium or virus invades the body, the immune system mounts an attack by sending in white blood cells called T-cells that are tailored to the molecular structure of that invader. Defeating the infection can take several weeks. However, once victorious, some T-cells stick around, turning into memory cells that remember the invader, reducing the time taken to kill it the next time it turns up.

Conventional thinking has it that memory cells for a particular microbe only form in response to an infection. "The dogma is that you need to be exposed," says Mark Davis of Stanford University in California, but now he and his colleagues have shown that this is not always the case.

The team took 26 samples from the Stanford Blood Center. All 26 people had been screened for diseases and had never been infected with HIV, herpes simplex virus or cytomegalovirus. Despite this, Davis's team found that all the samples contained T-cells tailored to these viruses, and an average of 50 per cent of these cells were memory cells.

The idea that T-cells don't need to be exposed to the pathogen "is paradigm shifting," says Philip Ashton-Rickardt of Imperial College London, who was not involved in the study. "Not only do they have capacity to remember, they seem to have seen a virus when they haven't."

So how are these false memories created? To a T-cell, each virus is "just a collection of peptides", says Davis. And so different microbes could have structures that are similar enough to confuse the T-cells.

To test this idea, the researchers vaccinated two people with an H1N1 strain of influenza and found that this also stimulated the T-cells to react to two bacteria with a similar peptide structure. Exposing the samples from the blood bank to peptide sequences from certain gut and soil bacteria and a species of ocean algae resulted in an immune response to HIV (Immunology, doi.org/kgg).

The finding could explain why vaccinating children against measles seems to improve mortality rates from other diseases. It also raises the possibility of creating a database of cross-reactive microbes to find new vaccination strategies. "We need to start exploring case by case," says Davis.

"You could find innocuous pathogens that are good at vaccinating against nasty ones," says Ashton-Rickardt. The idea of cross-reactivity is as old as immunology, he says. But he is excited about the potential for finding unexpected correlations. "Who could have predicted that HIV was related to an ocean algae?" he says. "No one's going to make that up!"

This article appeared in print under the headline "False memories prime our defences"

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.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

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Tennis: Nadal struggles into Brazil Open final

SAO PAULO: Rafael Nadal struggled into the Brazil Open final on Saturday by downing Argentine lucky loser Martin Alund in three sets.

The former world number one, who is recovering from a knee injury, battled hard to dismiss his 27-year-old opponent, who is ranked 111 in the world, winning 6-3, 6-7 (2/7), 6-1 in nearly two hours.

Sunday's final will pit the 26-year-old Spanish star against Argentine David Nalbandian, who whipped Italian Simone Bolelli 6-3, 7-5 in 85 minutes in the other semi-final.

Nadal is the top seed in this $455,775 tournament, his second comeback event after a seven-month absence due to his knee injury and then illness.

Last week, he competed in the Vina del Mar Open in Chile, losing the singles and doubles finals.

Alund more than held his own against the world number five, prevailing in the second set before Nadal stepped on the gas and sealed victory with a masterful performance in the decisive third set.

The Spaniard, who has 11 Grand Slam titles, won the Brazil Open in 2005, when it was held in Costa do Sauipe in eastern Bahia state.

Last year, the tournament was moved to Sao Paulo.

The Brazil Open is part of the Latin American clay court swing, along with the Vina del Mar event and the Mexico Open, in Acapulco, where Nadal plans to compete later this month.

The three low-profile Latin American events are routinely ignored by the world's top three players -- Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and Andy Murray.

- AFP/fa

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Russian meteorite: The conspiracy theories

A strange time for a military attack?

(Credit:
CNN; screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

A good hearty conspiracy theory can shine a sharp light on two of humanity's most enduring traits.

One, of course, is humanity's boundless imagination. The other is humanity's essential suspicion of humanity.

So while you might be deeply immersed in Bill Nye's explanation of the Russian meteorite, those with darker sensibilities have filled the Web with their fears and hauntings about the phenomenon.

There are few nations with greater awareness of dark sensibilities than Russia. The fact that there seems to be little evidence of meteorite fragments on the ground has encouraged some Russians to offer their own suspicions.

As the Toronto Globe and Mail reports, nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky hasn't been slow to offer something of a Hot War perspective.

"It's not meteors falling. It's a new weapon being tested by the Americans," he was quoted as saying.

We know from our recent experience of North Korea that weapons testing is an imprecise science.

But if you were an American in the mood to test a weapon, would Chelyabinsk, Russia, be your very first choice of place for the experiment?

Perhaps Tallahassee; Area 51; and Bialystok, Poland, were all unavailable due to prior commitments. Or perhaps it wasn't the Americans, but, say, the North Koreans, who mistook Chelyabinsk for, say, Chelsea.

Zhirinovsky's rather emotionally manipulative offering was countered by Russia's Emergency Ministry, which dedicated itself to an extensive rebuttal of his belief (and that of others) that this was some sort of military thing. The rebuttal? "Rubbish."

But that wasn't going to put off the local media, was it? Not only do they have papers to sell, they also have theories to expound to a troubled nation and world.

So, as The Atlantic reports, the local Znak newspaper accepted that this was a meteorite but insisted the explosion was caused by military defense blowing it up.

More Technically Incorrect

Yes, of course it has a source in the military. You thought it didn't?

Though I've watched a few movies in which exciting things happen, I don't find it easy to imagine that some sort of terrestrially created missile-laden aircraft could really explode a meteorite in such a manner.

It is easier to imagine, though, that politicians like Zhirinovsky might take the opportunity to foment a little rage.

Indeed, Alex Jones' infamously well-guarded Infowars site offered that Zhirinovsky insisted that America -- in the person of Secretary of State John Kerry -- had tried to give Russia advance notice of its "attack."

The Drudge Report led me to a piece at Foreign Policy that explained that Sergey Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, simply hadn't called Kerry back.

Which all suggests that Russia isn't, after all, living in fear of an attack from the U.S. Especially one over Chelyabinsk.

On balance, I prefer to currently believe Nye. He is the science guy, after all. And science guys know scientific events when they see them.

I hope.

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Picture Archive: Making Mount Rushmore, 1935-1941

Photograph from Rapid City Chamber of Commerce/National Geographic

There's no such thing as Presidents' Day.

According to United States federal government code, the holiday is named Washington's Birthday, and has been since it went nationwide in 1885.

But common practice is more inclusive. The holiday expanded to add in other U.S. presidents in the 1960s, and the moniker Presidents' Day became popular in the 1980s and stuck. It may be that George Washington (b. February 22, 1732) andAbraham Lincoln (b. February 12, 1809) still get the lion's share of attention—and appear in all the retail sale ads—on the third Monday in February, but the popular idea is that all 44 presidents get feted.

Mount Rushmore is a lot like that one day a year writ large—and in granite. It's carved 60 feet (18 meters) tall and 185 feet (56 meters) wide, from Washington's right ear to Lincoln's left.

The monument's sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, grew up in Idaho, a first-generation American born to Danish parents. He studied art in France and became good friends with Auguste Rodin. Borglum mostly worked in bronze, but in the early 1910s he was hired to carve the likenesses of Confederate leaders into Stone Mountain in Georgia.

He was about to be fired from that job for creative differences about the same time that a South Dakota historian named Doane Robinson had an idea. Robinson wanted to have a monument carved into the Black Hills of South Dakota, maybe Western historical figures like Chief Red Cloud and Lewis and Clark, each on their own granite spire. (Plan a road trip in the Black Hills.)

Robinson hired Borglum and gave him carte blanche. Borglum was looking for something with national appeal, so he chose to depict four presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.

Borglum wanted to represent the first 150 years of the nation's history, choosing four presidents as symbols of their respective time periods. He took a tour of western South Dakota, searching for an ideal canvas.

The sculptor was looking for three things: a surface strong enough to sculpt, a mountain big enough to hold several figures, and a mountain face that received morning sunlight. Mount Rushmore fit the bill and was already part of a national forest, so it was easy to set aside as a national memorial.

Work started in 1927. Calvin Coolidge attended the dedication ceremony. It took 14 years to finish the carving, conducted mostly in summertime because of the area's harsh winters.

There were approximately 30 workers on the mountain at any give time. In total about 400 had worked on it by the time the monument was finished. Though the project involved thousands of pounds of dynamite and perilous climbs, not a single person died during the work.

Borglum himself died of natural causes in 1941, though, just six months before the project was declared "closed as is" by Congress that Halloween. His son Lincoln—named for his father's favorite president—took over.

In the photo above, a worker refines the details of Washington's left nostril.

About 90 percent of the mountain was carved using dynamite, which could get within 3 to 5 inches (8 to 13 centimeters) of the final facial features. For those last few inches, workers used what was known as the honeycomb method: Jackhammer workers pounded a series of three-inch-deep holes followed up by chiselers who knocked off the honeycomb pieces to get the final shape. Then carvers smoothed the "skin's" surface.

—Johnna Rizzo

February 16, 2013

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Meteor Blast 'Something We Only Saw in Movies'

A day after a massive meteor exploded over this city in central Russia, a monumental cleanup effort is under way.

Authorities have deployed around 24,000 troops and emergencies responders to help in the effort.

Officials say more than a million square feet of windows -- the size of about 20 football fields -- were shattered by the shockwave from the meteor's blast. Around 4,000 buildings in the area were damaged.

The injury toll climbed steadily on Friday. Authorities said today it now stands at more than 1,200. Most of those injuries were from broken glass, and only a few hundred required hospitalization.

According to NASA, this was the biggest meteor to hit Earth in more than a century. Preliminary figures suggest it was 50 feet wide and weighed more than the Eiffel Tower.

SEE PHOTOS: Meteorite Crashes in Russia

NASA scientists have also estimated the force of the blast that occurred when the meteor fractured upon entering Earth's atmosphere was approximately 470 kilotons -- the equivalent of about 30 Hiroshima bombs.

Residents said today they still can't believe it happened here.

"It was something we only saw in the movies," one university student said. "We never thought we would see it ourselves."

Throughout the city, the streets are littered with broken glass. Local officials have announced an ambitious pledge to replace all the broken windows within a week. In the early morning hours, however, workers could still be heard drilling new windows into place.

Authorities have sent divers into a frozen lake outside the city, where a large chunk of the meteor is believed to have landed, creating a large hole in the ice. By the end of the day they had not found anything.

They are not the only ones looking for it.

Meteor hunters from around the world are salivating at what some are calling the opportunity of a lifetime. A small piece of the meteor could fetch thousands of dollars and larger chunks could bring in even hundreds of thousands.

Read More..

False memories prime immune system for future attacks

IN A police line-up, a falsely remembered face is a big problem. But for the body's police force – the immune system – false memories could be a crucial weapon.

When a new bacterium or virus invades the body, the immune system mounts an attack by sending in white blood cells called T-cells that are tailored to the molecular structure of that invader. Defeating the infection can take several weeks. However, once victorious, some T-cells stick around, turning into memory cells that remember the invader, reducing the time taken to kill it the next time it turns up.

Conventional thinking has it that memory cells for a particular microbe only form in response to an infection. "The dogma is that you need to be exposed," says Mark Davis of Stanford University in California, but now he and his colleagues have shown that this is not always the case.

The team took 26 samples from the Stanford Blood Center. All 26 people had been screened for diseases and had never been infected with HIV, herpes simplex virus or cytomegalovirus. Despite this, Davis's team found that all the samples contained T-cells tailored to these viruses, and an average of 50 per cent of these cells were memory cells.

The idea that T-cells don't need to be exposed to the pathogen "is paradigm shifting," says Philip Ashton-Rickardt of Imperial College London, who was not involved in the study. "Not only do they have capacity to remember, they seem to have seen a virus when they haven't."

So how are these false memories created? To a T-cell, each virus is "just a collection of peptides", says Davis. And so different microbes could have structures that are similar enough to confuse the T-cells.

To test this idea, the researchers vaccinated two people with an H1N1 strain of influenza and found that this also stimulated the T-cells to react to two bacteria with a similar peptide structure. Exposing the samples from the blood bank to peptide sequences from certain gut and soil bacteria and a species of ocean algae resulted in an immune response to HIV (Immunology, doi.org/kgg).

The finding could explain why vaccinating children against measles seems to improve mortality rates from other diseases. It also raises the possibility of creating a database of cross-reactive microbes to find new vaccination strategies. "We need to start exploring case by case," says Davis.

"You could find innocuous pathogens that are good at vaccinating against nasty ones," says Ashton-Rickardt. The idea of cross-reactivity is as old as immunology, he says. But he is excited about the potential for finding unexpected correlations. "Who could have predicted that HIV was related to an ocean algae?" he says. "No one's going to make that up!"

This article appeared in print under the headline "False memories prime our defences"

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.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.

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Mexico to slaughter 486,000 chickens over bird flu

CELAYA, Mexico: Mexico will slaughter 486,000 chickens after an outbreak of bird flu was detected in the central state of Guanajuato, officials said Friday.

Poultry producer Bachoco reported a possible case of H7N3 influenza in five breeder farms late Wednesday, which agriculture ministry officials confirmed on Friday.

Authorities launched preventive measures, testing nearby farms to check if the outbreak had spread elsewhere.

Last year, a bird flu outbreak in the western state of Jalisco forced farmers to slaughter 22 million hens, sparking an egg crisis in Mexico, the world's top consumer of eggs per capita.

- AFP/fa

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Microsoft Surface Pro hoarders try to make a quick buck

Surface Pro at a Microsoft Specialty Store in Glendale, Calif. As of this afternoon, the 128GB model is still out of stock at Los Angeles Microsoft stores.

(Credit:
Brooke Crothers)

The 128GB Surface Pro is a rare commodity at the moment. And stiff eBay asking prices reflect this.

In fact, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that some eBay vendors are hoarding the device, trying to cash in on the scarcity.

Though pretty common with hard-to-get Apple products, it's unusual to see this with a Windows product -- and it's Microsoft's first PC, to boot.

One seller, with a stack of at least 10 Pros, is asking $1,300 for the 128GB model. Other sellers are asking $1,399 and even $1,499. The regular price is $999 for the 128GB model.

So, why is there a shortage to begin with? Though conspiracy theories abound about a staged shortage by Microsoft, others (mostly analysts) believe that suppliers simply weren't ready to deliver enough product to meet demand.

The 128GB model has been virtually unobtainable this week at the Microsoft Store, Best Buy, and Staples. And the status has not changed as of this afternoon based on checks at national retailers.

The Pro is one of the first
Windows 8 tablets to run legacy Windows software and sport a relatively powerful Intel Ivy Bridge processor.

Microsoft Specialty Store on Glendale, Calif.

(Credit:
Brooke Crothers)

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Meteorites: Best Places to See Them Up Close

The meteorite that touched down in central Russia on Friday sent many people running, hoping to avoid getting hurt. Now, plenty of others will be running in search of valuable meteorite pieces, which can be filled with precious metals.

Although it can be cost prohibitive to collect them, museums and other tourist sites offer an inexpensive way to admire space rocks. (Related: Asteroid Impacts: 10 Biggest Known Hits)

Here are five noteworthy meteorites from around the globe.

1. Hoba Meteorite

Where is it: Right where it landed, in Namibia, South Africa. It was declared a National Monument in 1955.

Specs: This is the largest single meteorite ever found and the largest slab of naturally-occurring iron ever discovered on Earth's surface. The Hoba Meteorite weighs 60 tons and measures roughly nine feet wide by nine feet long, with a depth of three feet.

Origin: The Hoba is thought to have fallen through Earth's atmosphere 80,000 years ago, but it wasn't discovered until a farmer came across it in 1920. Despite its size, the meteorite left no impact crater, which scientists are still trying to explain. Many believe that the combination of its shape and the Earth's atmosphere must have significantly decreased the speed at which it was traveling before it crash-landed.

2. El Chaco Meteorite

Where is it: After an attempt to move the rock to Germany was blocked in 2012 by Argentine citizens and scientists, El Chaco and the rest of the pieces sit comfortably in the El Chaco province in northeastern Argentina.

Specs: The El Chaco Meteorite is one of many fragments of a group of iron meteorites called Campo del Cielo. Weighing over 37 tons, it is not only the largest fragment of that group but also the second-largest single-piece meteorite. The combined weight of the fragments discovered far exceeds 60 tons, which would have allowed it to steal the Hoba's mantle of largest meteorite found on Earth.

Origin: The meteorite was believed to have landed in the northeastern part of Argentina as part of a meteor shower sometime between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago.

3. Willamette Meteorite

Where is it now: The American Natural History Museum in New York

Specs: Weighing 15.5 tons, the iron Willamette Meteorite is the largest ever found in the United States. It is also the sixth-largest in the world.

Origin: Although discovered in Oregon in 1902 by a miner named Ellis Hughes, the pitted meteorite is believed to have crashed into Earth at least a million years ago, the result of an iron-nickel core of a planet or moon shattering in a stellar collision. It is revered by an American Indian tribe known as the Clackamas Chinook, who lived in Willamette Valley prior to European settlement.

4. Ahnighito, also known as the Tent

Where is it: The American Natural History Museum in New York

Specs: Ahnighito weighs in at 31 tons and is the largest meteorite ever moved by man.

Origin: The meteorite is one fragment of the massive Cape York Meteorite that was thought to hit Earth over 10,000 years ago in an area that is now northwestern Greenland.  Once belonging to the native Inuit tribe, the chunk of iron was coveted by many different people. It wasn't until 1897 when explorer Sir John Ross risked everything to take the Tent to New York. He had to manually slide the rock onto his ship, making it the ultimate battle of man vs. nature—with man coming out on top.

5. Bacubirito Meteorite

Where is it: It is currently on display at the Centro de Ciencias building in Culiacan, a city in northwestern Mexico.

Specs: The Bacubirito Meteorite weighs 24 tons—much smaller than the ones described above—but measuring 14 feet across, it is one of the longest meteorites ever found.

Origin: The meteorite was discovered in 1863 by geologist Gilbert Ellis Bailey and is considered one of Mexico's most famous tourist attractions.

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Carnival Cruise Ship Hit With First Lawsuit

The first lawsuit against Carnival Cruise Lines has been filed and it is expected to be the beginning of a wave of lawsuits against the ship's owners.

Cassie Terry, 25, of Brazoria County, Texas, filed a lawsuit today in Miami federal court, calling the disabled Triumph cruise ship "a floating hell."

"Plaintiff was forced to endure unbearable and horrendous odors on the filthy and disabled vessel, and wade through human feces in order to reach food lines where the wait was counted in hours, only to receive rations of spoiled food," according to the lawsuit, obtained by ABCNews.com. "Plaintiff was forced to subsist for days in a floating toilet, a floating Petri dish, a floating hell."

Click Here for Photos of the Stranded Ship at Sea

The filing also said that during the "horrifying and excruciating tow back to the United States," the ship tilted several times "causing human waste to spill out of non-functioning toilets, flood across the vessel's floors and halls, and drip down the vessel's walls."

Terry's attorney Brent Allison told ABCNews.com that Terry knew she wanted to sue before she even got off the boat. When she was able to reach her husband, she told her husband and he contacted the attorneys.

Allison said Terry is thankful to be home with her husband, but is not feeling well and is going to a doctor.

Carnival's Triumph Passengers: 'We Were Homeless' Watch Video

Girl Disembarks Cruise Ship, Kisses the Ground Watch Video

Carnival Cruise Ship Passengers Line Up for Food Watch Video

"She's nauseated and actually has a fever," Allison said.

Terry is suing for breach of maritime contract, negligence, negligent misrepresentation and fraud as a result of the "unseaworthy, unsafe, unsanitary, and generally despicable conditions" on the crippled cruise ship.

"Plaintiff feared for her life and safety, under constant threat of contracting serious illness by the raw sewage filling the vessel, and suffering actual or some bodily injury," the lawsuit says.

Despite having their feet back on solid ground and making their way home, many passengers from the cruise ship are still fuming over their five days of squalor on the stricken ship and the cruise ship company is likely to be hit with a wave of lawsuits.

"I think people are going to file suits and rightly so," maritime trial attorney John Hickey told ABCNews.com. "I think, frankly, that the conduct of Carnival has been outrageous from the get-go."

Hickey, a Miami-based attorney, said his firm has already received "quite a few" inquiries from passengers who just got off the ship early this morning.

"What you have here is a) negligence on the part of Carnival and b) you have them, the passengers, being exposed to the risk of actual physical injury," Hickey said.

The attorney said that whether passengers can recover monetary compensation will depend on maritime law and the 15-pages of legal "gobbledygook," as Hickey described it, that passengers signed before boarding, but "nobody really agrees to."

One of the ticket conditions is that class action lawsuits are not allowed, but Hickey said there is a possibility that could be voided when all the conditions of the situation are taken into account.

One of the passengers already thinking about legal action is Tammy Hilley, a mother of two, who was on a girl's getaway with her two friends when a fire in the ship's engine room disabled the vessel's propulsion system and knocked out most of its power.

"I think that's a direction that our families will talk about, consider and see what's right for us," Hilley told "Good Morning America" when asked if she would be seeking legal action.

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Sand-grain-sized drum extends reach of quantum theory

The banging of a tiny drum heralds the intrusion of the weird world of quantum mechanics into our everyday experience. Though no bigger than a grain of sand, the drum is the largest object ever to have been caught obeying the uncertainty principle, a central idea in quantum theory.

As well as extending the observed reach of quantum theory, the finding could complicate the hunt for elusive gravitational waves : it suggests that the infinitesimal motion caused by these still-hypothetical ripples in spacetime could be overwhelmed by quantum effects.

The uncertainty principle says that you cannot simultaneously determine both a particle's exact position and momentum. For example, bouncing a photon off an electron will tell you where it is, but it will also change the electron's motion, creating fresh uncertainty in its speed.

This idea limits our ability to measure the properties of very small objects, such as electrons and atoms. The principle should also apply to everyday, macroscopic objects, but this has not been tested – for larger objects, the principle's effects tend to be swamped by other uncertainties in measurement, due to random noise, say.

Quantum drum

To extend the known reach of the uncertainty principle, Tom Purdy and colleagues of the University of Colorado, Boulder, created a drum by tightly stretching a 40-nanometre-thick sheet of silicon nitride over a square frame with sides of half a millimetre – about the width of a grain of sand. They placed the drum inside a vacuum chamber cooled to a few degrees above absolute zero, minimising any interference by random noise.

By continuously firing a stream of photons at the drum they were able to get increasingly precise measurements of the position of the skin at any moment. However, this also caused the skin to vibrate at an unknown speed. When they attempted to determine its momentum, the error in their measurement had increased – just as the uncertainty principle predicts.

"You don't usually have to think about quantum mechanics for objects you can hold in your hand," says Purdy.

That the uncertainty principle holds sway at such a large scale could affect the hunt for gravitational waves, which are predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity but have never been detected.

Mitigation strategy

Gravitational wave detectors look for very slight changes in the distance between two test masses caused by passing spacetime ripples. Purdy says his team's experiment confirms long-held suspicions that quantum uncertainty could overwhelm these very small changes.

Now he and others can use the drum to explore more advanced measurement techniques to mitigate the effects. For example, uncertainty in an object's momentum could lead to future uncertainty in its position and there should be ways to minimise such knock-on effects. "You can't avoid the uncertainty principle, but you can in some clever ways make it [such that] increasing the momentum doesn't add back to the uncertainty in position at a later time," says Purdy.

His experiment is a neat demonstration of the breakdown of the traditional notion that the atomic world is quantum while the macroscopic world is classic, says Gerard Milburn of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, who was not involved in the work. Previous, attempts to blur the quantum-classical divide have involved entangling diamonds and demonstrating quantum superposition in a strip of metal.

Despite these feats, Milburn doesn't rule out the prospect of a breakdown on really large scales. "Of course maybe one day we will see quantum mechanics fail at some scale. Testing it to destruction is a good motivation for going down this path," he says.

Journal reference: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1231282

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.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.

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Capriles says Venezuela lying about Chavez health

CARACAS: Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles on Thursday again accused the government of lying about the health of cancer-stricken President Hugo Chavez, who is convalescing in Cuba.

"Most probably, they have lied to us about the condition of the president of the republic during the past two months," Capriles told a press conference.

He said authorities in Caracas had already "lied" to the people by saying the national currency would not be devalued -- only to announce the devaluation of the bolivar by more than 30 per cent, which went into effect Wednesday.

"If a person can sign documents, then why can't that person speak to the nation? Therefore, they are lying -- the president is not really speaking or signing anything," Capriles said.

Chavez, 58, has not been seen or heard from since his last cancer operation on December 11 in Havana.

Vice President Nicolas Maduro said Wednesday that the firebrand leftist leader was undergoing "extremely tough and complex" treatment in the Cuban capital.

Declining to provide details about the course of treatment, Maduro insisted that Chavez was facing his medical travails with a "fighting spirit."

Capriles, who lost to Chavez in October's presidential election, however said the president could be in a condition that is "totally different" from what government ministers have described.

The governor of Miranda state refused to say whether he would again run for the presidency should a special election be called if Chavez -- who has been in power since 1999 -- is unable to carry on.

Chavez was too sick to attend his own inauguration on January 10, prompting the government to delay the swearing-in indefinitely under an interpretation of the constitution that was heavily criticized by the opposition.

Throughout his illness, first detected in June 2011, Chavez has refused to relinquish the powers of the presidency.

- AFP/jc

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PS4 prototype controller revealed?

Sony will reveal the future of the PlayStation brand at a New York City event next Wednesday, but one of the company's surprises may have just leaked. Destructoid has obtained an image of what is rumored to be the
PlayStation 4's new touch screen-equipped controller.

A "trusted source" has confirmed to IGN that the leaked PlayStation 4 controller image is indeed real, but is only a prototype. The final design could change. An industry source confirmed the same to gaming blog Kotaku.

The image matches up with previous reports, which suggested the PS4 controller would be similar in shape to the DualShock and include a front-facing touch screen. The rumored controller also does not have Start, Select, or Share buttons on its face, matching up with a past report that these buttons had been shifted or removed.

The controller in question also features some sort of illuminated light on its top as well as audio output functionality, similar to the
Wii. The pad is plugged into what looks like a development kit, though this is unclear.

Read more of "PS4 prototype controller revealed?" at GameSpot.

Read More..

Why We Walk … and Run … And Walk Again to Get Where We're Going

You have to get to a bus stop to catch the once-an-hour express ... or to a restaurant to meet a friend ... or to a doctor's office. You've got maybe a half a mile to cover and you're worried you'll be late. You run, then you stop and walk, then run some more.

But wait. Wouldn't it be better to run the whole way?

Not necessarily.

A new study by an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Ohio State University tests the theory that people subconsciously mix walking and running so they get where they need to. The idea is that "people move in a manner that minimizes energy consumption," said the professor, Manoj Srinivasan.

Srinivasan asked 36 subjects to cover 400 feet (122 meters), a bit more than the length of a football field. He gave them a time to arrive at the finish line and a stopwatch. If the deadline was supertight, they ran. If they had two minutes, they walked. And if the deadline was neither too short nor too far off, they toggled between walking and running.

The takeaway: Humans successfully make the walk-run adjustment as they go along, based on their sense of how far they have to go. "It's not like they decide beforehand," Srinivasan said. (Get tips, gear recommendations, and more in our Running Guide.)

The Best Technique for "the Twilight Zone"

"The mixture of walking and running is good when you have an intermediate amount of time," he explained. "I like to call it 'the Twilight Zone,' where you have neither infinite time nor do you have to be there now."

That ability to shift modes served ancient humans well. "It's basically an evolutionary argument," Srinivasan said. A prehistoric human seeking food would want to move in a way that conserves some energy so that if food is hard to find, the hunter won't run out of gas—and will still be able to rev it up to escape predators.

The study, published on January 30 in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, doesn't answer that question of how we make such adjustments.

Runners: Take a Break if You Need It

The mix of walking and running is also something that nonelite marathoners are familiar with. Covering 26.2 miles might take less of a toll if the runner stops running from time to time, walks a bit, then resumes a jogging pace. "You use less energy overall and also give yourself a bit of a break," Srinivasan noted. (Watch: An elite marathoner on her passion for running.)

One take-home lesson is: Runners, don't push it all the time. A walk-run mix will minimize the energy you expend.

Lesson two: If you're a parent walking with your kid, and the kid lags behind, then runs to catch up, then lags again, the child isn't necessarily trying to annoy you. Rather, the child is perhaps exhibiting an innate ability to do the walk-run transition.

Potential lesson three: The knowledge that humans naturally move in a manner that minimizes energy consumption might be helpful in designing artificial limbs that feel more natural and will help the user reduce energy consumption.

The big question for Manoj Srinivasan: Now that he has his walk-run theory, does he consciously switch between running and walking when he's trying to get somewhere? "I must admit, no," he said. "When I want to get somewhere, I just let the body do its thing." But if he's in a rush, he'll make a mad dash.

"Talk to you tomorrow," he signed off in an email to National Geographic News. "Running to get to teaching now!"

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Ship Overcomes Towing Issues, Inches Closer to Port

The agonizingly slow progress of the stricken Carnival Triumph cruise ship carrying 4,000 passengers and crew was further delayed today by problems with the tug boats towing it in, meaning exhausted passengers may not get off the ship until nearly dawn.

The ship is now expected in port between 9:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. CT, according to Carnival. It could take up to five more hours to get everybody off the huge ship.

"There are some limitations. We know that up front," Carnival Cruise Senior Vice President of Marketing Terry Thornton said at a news conference this afternoon. "The ship still does not have power. We only have one functioning elevator aboard."

Thornton said that anyone with special needs and children will be the first to get off the boat. He said the company's number one priority is to make the process as "quick, efficient and comfortable" for guests as possible.

"We're not anticipating any additional difficulties," he said.

Click here for photos of the stranded ship at sea.

The passengers were achingly close to port about noon today as the ship began to enter the channel and proceed to the cruise terminal. At 1 p.m., the lead tow boat had a tow gear break, so a spare tug boat that was on standby had to be sent in to replace it.

But once the second tug was in position and the lines were re-set, the towing resumed only briefly before the tow line snapped.

"We had to replace that tow line so the ship did not begin progressing back into the cruise terminal until 2 p.m.," Thornton said

Stranded Carnival Cruise Ship On Its Way to Port Watch Video

Carnival Cancels All Scheduled Voyages Aboard the Triumph Watch Video

Carnival Cruise Ship Making Its Way to Port Watch Video

Passengers desperate to get off the vessel waved at media helicopters that flew out to film the ship and passenger Rob Mowlam told ABCNews.com by phone today that most of the passengers on board were "really upbeat and positive."

Nevertheless, when he gets off Mowlam said, "I will probably flush the toilet 10 times just because I can."

Mowlam, 37, got married on board the Triumph Friday and said he and his wife, Stephanie Stevenson, 27, haven't yet thought of redoing the honeymoon other than to say, "It won't be a cruise."

Alabama State Port Authority Director Jimmy Lyons said that with powerless "dead ships" like the Triumph, it is usually safer to bring them in during daylight hours, but, "Once they make the initial effort to come into the channel, there's no turning back."

"There are issues regarding coming into the ship channel and docking at night because the ship has no power and there's safety issues there," Richard Tillman of the Mobile Bay Convention and Visitors Bureau told ABCNews.com.

When asked if the ship could be disembarked in the dark of night, Tillman said, "It is not advised. It would be very unusual."

Thornton denied the rumors that there was a fatality on the ship. He said that there was one illness early on, a dialysis patient, but that passenger was removed from the vessel and transferred to a medical facility.

The U.S. Coast Guard is assisting now and there are multiple generators on board. And customs officials will board the ship while it is being piloted to port to accelerate the embarkation, officials said.

After eight miserable days at sea, the ship's owners have increased the compensation for what some on board are calling the vacation from hell.

All 3,143 passengers aboard the 900 foot colossus, which stalled in the Gulf of Mexico after an engine room fire early Sunday, were already being given a full refund for the cruise, transportation expenses and vouchers for a another cruise. Carnival Cruise Lines is now boosting that offer to include another $500 per person. Gerry Cahill, president and CEO of Carnival Cruise Lines, announced the additional compensation Wednesday.

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Water wars loom as the US runs dry

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Tennis: Nadal out of Brazil Open doubles over knee fear

SAO PAULO: Rafael Nadal will not play his scheduled doubles match at the Brazil Open Wednesday because of "knee overuse", organisers said.

But they added that the Spanish star intends to play his opening singles match Thursday against Brazilian Joao Souza.

World number five Nadal had been scheduled to team up with Argentina's David Nalbandian in a second-round encounter against Argentine Horacio Zeballos and Austrian Oliver Marach on Wednesday.

Former world number one Nadal only returned to the tour in Chile last week, where he lost in the final, after a seven-month injury absence.

"The conditions are very difficult. The court is not in the best condition and the ball is very difficult to control," Nalbandian told a press conference.

Nalbandian and Nadal won a hard-fought match 6-3, 3-6, 11-9 against Spaniards Pablo Andujar and Guillermo Garcia-Lopez on the court late Tuesday.

"It's too bad I cannot play the doubles after the match Rafa and I had (yesterday)," the Argentine said. "But he (Nadal) has to take care of himself and prepare for a long and hard year".

At a press conference Tuesday, Nadal complained about having to play so many hardcourt events

"That is a theme among the players and doctors," he said.

While conceding that reducing the number of events on hard surface was not possible at this time, he added: "I think that the ATP has to work to think of how to lengthen tennis players' careers."

"Can you imagine football players playing on cement?" he added.

"I am a bit tired after a hard week in Chile. But it was positive. The process of recovery follows its course," Nadal also said. "As always I come here to do the best possible and hope that things turn out all right."

Asked when he expected to be 100 per cent fit, he responded: "I cannot know the future. If my knee allows, I will do everything possible to be at my best."

"I am a player who plays with a lot passion, a lot of energy. I suppose that does not help the knee."

"My long-term objective is to be in Brazil in 2016 (for the Rio Summer Olympics). I am going to work to arrive in good condition at what are likely to be my last Olympics," he said.

Considered by many to be the best ever claycourt player, seven-time French Open champion Nadal was back in Chile last week for the first time since a surprise second-round exit at Wimbledon in June.

The world number five lost the singles and doubles finals in the Vina del Mar Open on Sunday.

- AFP/jc

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Commodore 65 prototype sells for $7,625

Did you adore your 64? Well, wanna buy a 65? That'll cost you.

Earlier this month we saw how fans of vintage home computers can get a little crazy on eBay, bidding up the price of a 1983 10MHz Texas Instruments TI-99/8 to $3,240.

Well that's nothing compared with the enthusiasm that Commodore commands. A prototype Commodore 65 more than doubled the winning TI bid when it sold on eBay recently for a whopping $7,625.

Described as by the seller as "the proposed successor to the most popular computer of all time," the C65 is a prototype engineering unit that's missing some chips. It doesn't even work, but it came with a prototype Mitsumi keyboard.

Regardless, bidders sure wanted to get their hands on it.

Developed around 1991, the 3.54MHz Commodore 65 was designed to build on the C64's success and, like the Commodore 128, be generally compatible with its software.

The 8-bit C65 had improved graphics, a built-in 3.5-inch floppy drive, up to 8MB of RAM, and 128K ROM. It ran Commodore BASIC 10.0.

Unfortunately the C65 project was cancelled before it got to market, and Commodore declared bankruptcy in 1994.

However, some C65s were made as engineering prototypes and survived the company's liquidation. The number of extant units is unknown; estimates range from dozens to hundreds.

The machine's MRSP was only $300-$350, according to this C65 page.

"A working 65 is the Holy Grail of the Commodore 8-bit world these days," the site says.

Until the Grail turns up, I'll just keep watching C64 ads.

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Are Honeybees Losing Their Way?

A single honeybee visits hundreds, sometimes thousands, of flowers a day in search of nectar and pollen. Then it must find its way back to the hive, navigating distances up to five miles (eight kilometers), and perform a "waggle dance" to tell the other bees where the flowers are.

A new study shows that long-term exposure to a combination of certain pesticides might impair the bee's ability to carry out its pollen mission.

"Any impairment in their ability to do this could have a strong effect on their survival," said Geraldine Wright, a neuroscientist at Newcastle University in England and co-author of a new study posted online February 7, 2013, in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

Wright's study adds to the growing body of research that shows that the honeybee's ability to thrive is being threatened. Scientists are still researching how pesticides may be contributing to colony collapse disorder (CCD), a rapid die-off seen in millions of honeybees throughout the world since 2006.

"Pesticides are very likely to be involved in CCD and also in the loss of other types of pollinators," Wright said. (See the diversity of pollinating creatures in a photo gallery from National Geographic magazine.)

Bees depend on what's called "scent memory" to find flowers teeming with nectar and pollen. Their ability to rapidly learn, remember, and communicate with each other has made them highly efficient foragers, using the waggle dance to educate others about the site of the food source.

Watch as National Geographic explains the waggle dance.

Their pollination of plants is responsible for the existence of nearly a third of the food we eat and has a similar impact on wildlife food supplies.

Previous studies have shown certain types of pesticides affect a bee's learning and memory. Wright's team wanted to investigate if the combination of different pesticides had an even greater effect on the learning and memory of honeybees.

"Honeybees learn to associate floral colors and scents with the quality of food rewards," Wright explained. "The pesticides affect the neurons involved in these behaviors. These [affected] bees are likely to have difficulty communicating with other members of the colony."

The experiment used a classic procedure with a daunting name: olfactory conditioning of the proboscis extension reflex. In layman's terms, the bee sticks out its tongue in response to odor and food rewards.

For the experiment, bees were collected from the colony entrance, placed in glass vials, and then transferred into plastic sandwich boxes. For three days the bees were fed a sucrose solution laced with sublethal doses of pesticides. The team measured short-term and long-term memory at 10-minute and 24-hour intervals respectively. (Watch of a video of a similar type of bee experiment.)

This study is the first to show that when pesticides are combined, the impact on bees is far worse than exposure to just one pesticide. "This is particularly important because one of the pesticides we used, coumaphos, is a 'medicine' used to treat Varroa mites [pests that have been implicated in CCD] in honeybee colonies throughout the world," Wright said.

The pesticide, in addition to killing the mites, might also be making honeybees more vulnerable to poisoning and effects from other pesticides.

Stephen Buchmann of the Pollinator Partnership, who was not part of Wright's study, underscored how critical pollinators are for the world. "The main threat to pollinators is habitat destruction and alteration. We're rapidly losing pollinator habitats, natural areas, and food—producing agricultural lands that are essential for our survival and well being. Along with habitat destruction, insecticides weaken pollinators and other beneficial insects."

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Ship Stranded: Love Boat to Horror Honeymoon

A Texas couple's fantasy wedding quickly turned into a nightmare honeymoon when the fire-damaged Carnival Cruise ship carrying them became stranded in the Gulf of Mexico.

Rob Mowlam, 37, and Stephanie Stevenson, 27, of Nederland, Texas, got married on the Carnival Triumph on Saturday. The four-day cruise was meant to be back to shore on Monday, but was left disabled by an engine fire on Sunday.

The ship is being slowly towed to shore and is expected to dock in Mobile, Ala., on Thursday if weather permits. The vessel is without air conditioning, many working toilets and some restaurant service. Passengers, many who are sleeping in tents on deck, have told ABC News the smell on the ship is foul.

That is the honeymoon setting for Mowlam and Stevenson.

"[Rob Mowlam] had been with his girlfriend, or fiance, for a long period of time and they just took the next step," Mowlam's brother James Mowlam III told ABCNews.com. "The captain is the king of the world when they're on the boat and he hitched them up."

James Mowlam said he was shocked when he heard about the stranded boat and the increasingly dire conditions on the ship.

"It is an atrocious scene to be subjected to," he said.

Mowlam said he has not been able to communicate with his brother, but that his father has had sporadic communication with him.

"It would be my guess that this would probably not be on anyone's great list of memorable wedding experiences," Mowlam said with a laugh. "Although, my mom told him that she was hoping they had a memorable wedding and I think this would classify as a memorable wedding experience."

Lt. Cmdr. Paul McConnell/U.S. Coast Guard/AP Photo

Carnival Cruise Ship Stranded for Third Day Watch Video

Carnival Cruise Ship Stranded off Yucatan Peninsula Watch Video

Cruise Ship Stranded Without Power in Gulf of Mexico Watch Video

The bride's brother, Justin Davis, told ABCNews.com that his sister works for a doctor's office and the cruise was a gift from the doctor to the staff.

Davis has not been able to speak to Stevenson but said that her two young sons are being cared for by her mother. He said his sister is tough and he guesses she's probably not scared.

"She might be a little aggravated at the situation, but I'd say she's [probably] handling it really well," he said.

Others on the ship do not seem to be handling the situation so well.

Elderly and disabled passengers aboard the ship are struggling to cope with the worsening conditions, according to at least one passenger.

"Elderly and handicap are struggling, the smell is gross," passenger Ann Barlow text-messaged ABC News overnight. "Our room is leaking sewage."

The head of Carnival Cruise Lines said the British-U.S.-owned company was working hard to ensure the thousands of passengers stranded on the disabled ship were as comfortable as possible while the vessel was being towed to a port in Alabama.

"I need to apologize to our guests and to our families that have been affected by a very difficult situation," Carnival Cruise Lines president and CEO Gerry Cahill said at a news conference Tuesday evening.

It was the first time since a fire erupted in Triumph's engine room Sunday, knocking out its four engines, that a company representative had spoken publicly. The Triumph, with roughly 4,200 people on board, was left bobbing like a 100,000-ton cork for more than 24 hours. Giant sea-faring tugboats then hooked up to the ship and began towing the nearly 900-foot-long ship to land.

Carnival spokeswoman Joyce Oliva told The Associated Press Tuesday that a passenger with a pre-existing medical condition was taken off the ship as a precaution. Everyone else will likely have to weather conditions such as scarce running water, no air conditioning and long lines for food.

Back on land, passenger Barlow's 11-year-old twins told ABC News Tuesday they are worried as more passengers continue to talk about living with limited power and sanitation.

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Plants listen more closely to kin than strangers

It is not just humans that like a natter with their nearest and dearest – plants pay most attention to their closest relatives.

When an insect bites a leaf, many plants release volatile chemicals to prime their neighbours for attack. The defences this triggers vary – some plants respond by attracting predatory insects that eat the herbivores, others make themselves less tasty.

Now Richard Karban of the University of California, Davis, has shown that for the sagebrush, responses to these warning signals can vary with relatedness.

At the start of three growing seasons, Karban's team exposed different branches of the same plants to volatile chemicals. The substances came from relatives of the same species whose leaves had been clipped to trigger chemical release.

By the end of the seasons, herbivores had done less damage to the branches exposed to chemicals from close relatives than to those receiving signals from more distant relatives – the warning probably prompting the plants to release herbivore-deterring chemicals, says Karban.

He has previously shown that the blend of volatiles varies enormously between individuals – "so much so that big peaks in some individuals are undetectable in others", he says.

However, there is some similarity between family members. Karban thinks this variability is being exploited by the plants as a kind of family-specific signature, to prevent eavesdroppers from listening in and to give those that share the same genes a greater chance of survival.

Some plants are genetically more resistant to being eaten than others, so it makes sense that plants should care more about their kin's fate than that of the general population.

"It is very elegant work," says Susan Dudley from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, who has shown that plants competing for space in a small pot are less aggressive if they are related to their neighbours.

She thinks this kind of kin-recognition is probably common among many plants.

Journal Reference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B, doi: 10.1098/rspb.2012.3062

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Pre-pregnancy folic acid linked to lower autism risk

WASHINGTON: Children born to women who started taking folic acid supplements four to eight weeks before pregnancy appear to be at a lower risk of autism, a study showed on Tuesday.

Pal Suren of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and colleagues looked into the use of folic acid supplements before and during early pregnancy, and any impact on the later risk of various disorders on the autism spectrum.

"Our main finding was that maternal use of folic acid supplements around the time of conception was associated with a lower risk of autistic disorder," the authors wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The journal recalled that many countries recommend flour be enriched with folic acid to lower the risk of birth defects, and that women are often advised to take folic acid supplements before and during pregnancy.

Despite the practice, European and North American studies have found that many pregnant women take less folate in their diet than is necessary to prevent neural tube defects.

Suren's research appears to confirm that the advice to take folic acid supplements is well-founded.

The 85,176 Norwegian children who took part in the study were born between 2002 and 2008.

Among the sample, 270 children, or 0.32 percent, were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders, and researchers found that there was an inverse association between folic acid use and subsequent autism risks.

About 1 in 88 children, or 1.14 percent, in the United States have been identified with an autism spectrum disorder, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mothers who took folic acid supplements in early pregnancy had a 40 percent lower risk of having children with autistic disorder compared with mothers who did not take folic acid, the researchers found.

Folic acid is found in naturally high levels in foods such as dark leafy greens, asparagus and broccoli, as well as citrus fruits.

- AFP/de

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BlueStacks brings a boat-load of Android apps to the Surface Pro

Thanks to BlueStacks, Angry Birds can officially be found on almost every Surface.

(Credit:
BlueStacks)

Hunting around the Windows store for your favorite apps can sometimes be a sad and demoralizing experience, particularly if you just dropped about a grand for that slick new Surface Pro from Microsoft.

Enter the startup BlueStacks on its multicolored digital steed prepared to liberate the Surface with its
Android app player, shouting "Freedom!" at the top of its lungs a la Mel Gibson in "Braveheart."

Actually, you can just download a version of the BlueStacks App Player optimized for the
Surface Pro that was just released today, but I do recommend at least donning a bit of blue war paint before clicking to make for a more memorable experience.

BlueStacks' app player is a sort of emulator that allows the whole universe of more than 750,000 Android apps (malware and all) to run on a PC. The Windows and Mac versions were first released last year, and the new
Windows 8/Surface Pro download greatly expands the options for users who previously might have shed a tear when perusing the less than 40,000 apps currently offered on Microsoft's official Windows app market.

According to a release from the company, BlueStacks is officially supported Windows 8 software, which is perhaps the most interesting part of the tale, especially given jabs at Redmond like this one from BlueStacks CEO Rosen Sharma in the statement:

The number of mobile apps being written overall is expanding exponentially and Microsoft has not added apps to the handful it has. Our goal is to get people more value out of their Surface Pro and Win8 devices.

BlueStacks has struck a handful of deals with PC and component makers like AMD, Asus and Lenovo and says that BlueStacks will come pre-loaded on millions of PCs in the future.

Forget about zombies, folks, from here on out, it looks like we'll have to look for Angry Birds around every corner and on every, uh...Surface.

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Where Will Pope Benedict XVI Retire?

Someone with a suspicious mind and deep knowledge of Vatican trivia might have guessed that something was going on months ago. Last November, a community of cloistered nuns vacated the  Mater Ecclesiae monastery, located inside Vatican Gardens, two years before they were expected to do so.

The monastery has since been closed for renovation.

On Monday, in the press conference that followed Pope Benedict XVI's announcement that he will resign at the end of the month, Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See Press Office,  revealed that the monastery will be the retired pontiff's new home. (Photo Gallery: Inside the Vatican.)

"When renovation work on the monastery of cloistered nuns inside the Vatican is complete, the Holy Father will move there for a period of prayer and reflection," Lombardi said.

Until then, the pope will stay at the Apostolical Palace and the Pontifical Villas in Castel Gandolfo, a small lake town about 15 miles (24 kilometers) southeast of Rome, which serves as the traditional summer residence for popes.

The Mater Ecclesiae monastery was founded in 1992 by Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, "to create a place to house an international convent for contemplative life within the walls of Vatican City," according to the Vatican City State website.

It has housed small communities of cloistered nuns whose main task has been to provide spiritual assistance to the pope and to the Roman Catholic Church as a whole by praying in Latin and singing Gregorian chants.

The nuns would also embroider papal garments and cultivate a small organic orchard and a rose garden next to their residence. In a 2009 interview with the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, the monastery's then abbess said that Benedict particularly appreciated the special-recipe marmalade that the nuns would prepare out of the oranges and lemons they picked in the Vatican orchard.

It is not yet clear for how long the soon-to-be-former pope will stay at the monastery. Lombardi has said that Benedict will not participate in the March conclave that will elect his successor, stressing that there will be "no confusion or division arising from his resignation."

Lombardi also said that he wasn't sure of Benedict's future title-there are no canon law provisions or historical precedents regarding the statute, prerogatives, or titles for a retired pope.

Resignations of Popes Past

Only a handful of popes have willfully or forcefully resigned in the church's history, the last case going back to 1415, almost 600 years ago.

"It was Pope Gregory XII, who, in a very sacrificial gesture, offered to resign so that the Council of Constance could assume his power and appoint a new pope, and in so doing bring an end [to the] Great Western Schism," Donald Prudlo, associate professor of history at Jacksonville State University in Alabama, told Vatican Radio.

Italian and foreign commentators have been likening Benedict's choice to a famous case of papal abdication-that of Celestine V, who was elected in 1294 and left the Roman throne only five months later.

"At the end of the 13th century, a very holy hermit named Peter was elected as Pope Celestine V in order to break a deadlock in the conclave that had lasted nearly three years," Prudlo explained. "He was elected because of his personal holiness, sort of a unity candidate. And once he got there, being a hermit, not used to the ways of the Roman Curia, he found himself somewhat unsuited to the task."

So he resigned and lived as a hermit—or, some historians say, as a prisoner—in a castle belonging to his successor, Boniface VIII, before dying in 1296.

Celestine is widely recognized as the object of Dante Alighieri's scolding verses in his Divine Comedy. The former pope was proclaimed saint in 1313.

In 2009, Benedict XVI visited Celestine's tomb in L'Aquila (map) and left the pallium—a vestment that is the symbol of papal authority—on the grave. Now that gesture is being interpreted as a premonition of the choice he would eventually make.

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Wanted Ex-Cop Possibly in Shootout, Chase

Fugitive former cop Christopher Dorner has barricaded himself inside a mountain cabin near Big Bear, Calif., and exchanged gunfire with police who had pursued him after he broke into a home in the area, authorities said.

Two San Bernadino County Sheriff's deputies injured in the firefight and subsequently airlifted to a nearby hospital. The extent of their injuries is unknown.

Dozens of local, state and federal authorities are at the scene in the San Bernadino Mountains, surrounding the cabin and engaged in an intense standoff with Dorner, a former Navy marksman who swore to kill police and their family members in a manifesto discovered online last week.

Dorner is believed to have broken into another home nearby and taken two women hostage before stealing a car, police said. Officials say Dorner crashed the vehicle and fled on foot, where sheriff's deputies and state Fish and Game officers exchanged fire with him, before he barricaded himself in the cabin.

The two hostages, who were tied up by Dorner but later escaped, were evaluated by paramedics and were determined to be uninjured.

Police have sealed all roads going into the area and imposed a no-fly zone above the cabin, which is in a wooded area that has received several inches of snow in recent days.

Four Big Bear area schools were briefly placed on lockdown.

The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department stopped all traffic leaving the area and thoroughly searched vehicles, as SWAT team and tactical units could be seen driving toward the cabin, their sirens blaring.

Los Angeles Police Department/AP Photo

Christopher Dorner Manhunt: An International Search? Watch Video

Christopher Dorner Manhunt: Police Offer Million-Dollar Reward Watch Video

Christopher Dorner Search: LA Police Chief Reopens Former Officer's Case Watch Video

FULL COVERAGE: Christopher Dorner Manhunt

Authorities believer Dorner may be watching reports of the standoff and have asked media not to broadcast images of police surrounding the cabin.

"If he's watching this, the message... is: Enough is enough. It's time to turn yourself in. It's time to stop the bloodshed. It's time to let this event and let this incident be over," said Los Angeles Police spokesman Andy Smith, told reporters at a press conference.

Dorner faces capital murder charges that involve the killing of Riverside police officer Michael Crain, who was gunned down in an ambush last Thursday.

Since then a massive manhunt has been underway, focused primarily in the San Bernardino Mountains, but extending to neighboring states and as far away as Mexico.

A capital murder charge could result in the death penalty if Dorner is captured alive and convicted. Crain was married with two children, aged 10 and 4.

The charges do not involve the slayings of Monica Quan and her fiance, who were found shot to death Feb. 3. Quan was the daughter of former LAPD Capt. Randal Quan, who was mentioned as a target of Dorner's fury in his so-called "manifesto," which he posted on his Facebook page.

PHOTOS: Former LAPD Officer Suspected in Shootings

In the 6,000 word "manifesto," Dorner outlined his anger at the Los Angeles Police Department for firing him, and made threats against individuals he believed were responsible for ending his career with the police force five years ago.

Dorner's grievance with police goes back five years when he was fired after filing a false report accusing other cops of brutality.

The LAPD has assigned 50 protection details to guard officers and their families who were deemed possible targets.

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Arctic sunshine cranks up threat from greenhouse gases

IT'S a solar double whammy. Not only does sunlight melt Arctic ice, but it also speeds up the conversion of frozen organic matter into carbon dioxide.

The amount of carbon in dead vegetation preserved in the far northern permafrost is estimated to be twice what the atmosphere holds as CO₂. Global warming could allow this plant matter to decompose, releasing either CO₂ or methane – both greenhouse gases. The extent of the risk remains uncertain because the release mechanisms are not clear.

Rose Cory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her colleagues analysed water from ponds forming on melting permafrost at 27 sites across the Arctic. They found that the amount of CO₂ released was 40 per cent higher when the water was exposed to ultraviolet light than when kept dark. This is because UV light, a component of sunlight, raises the respiration rate of soil bacteria and fungi, amplifying the amount of organic matter they break down and the amount of CO₂ released.

The thawing Arctic is emerging as a potentially major source of positive feedback that could accelerate global warming beyond existing projections. "Our task now is to quantify how fast this previously frozen carbon may be converted to CO₂, so that models can include the process," Cory says.

Journal reference: PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1214104110.

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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IBM puts supercomputer to work on cancer

WASHINGTON: IBM is putting its Watson supercomputer to work fighting cancer, in what is described as the first commercial program of its kind to use "big data" to help patients with the disease.

The US computing giant last week unveiled its initiative with health insurer WellPoint and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

The supercomputer, which gained fame by defeating two human champions in the "Jeopardy!" quiz show, has been sifting through some 600,000 pieces of medical evidence, two million pages of text from 42 medical journals and clinical trials in oncology research.

This can speed up the way data is analysed to make the best diagnosis and find the optimal treatment, says Craig Thompson, Sloan-Kettering's president.

"It can take years for the latest developments in oncology to reach all practice settings," Thompson said.

"The combination of transformational technologies found in Watson with our cancer analytics and decision-making process has the potential to revolutionise the accessibility of information for the treatment of cancer in communities across the country and around the world."

IBM first announced plans to work with WellPoint in 2011, and last year began receiving data from the New York research hospital which specialises in cancer.

The first application will work with 1,500 lung cancer cases, where clinicians and analysts are training Watson to extract and interpret physician notes, lab results and clinical research.

The Maine Center for Cancer Medicine and Westmed Medical Group will be two centres testing the service and providing feedback to WellPoint, IBM and Memorial Sloan-Kettering.

"IBM's work with WellPoint and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center represents a landmark collaboration in how technology and evidence based medicine can transform the way in which health care is practiced," said Manoj Saxena at IBM.

"These breakthrough capabilities bring forward the first in a series of Watson-based technologies, which exemplifies the value of applying big data and analytics and cognitive computing to tackle the industry's most pressing challenges."

The program is being commercialised under the name Interactive Care Insights for Oncology, powered by Watson.

Watson, named after IBM founder Thomas Watson, can ingest tens of million pages of data in just seconds.

- AFP/jc

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