Detecting Rabid Bats Before They Bite

A picture is worth a thousand words—or in the case of bats, a rabies diagnosis. A new study reveals that rabid bats have cooler faces compared to uninfected colony-mates. And researchers are hopeful that thermal scans of bat faces could improve rabies surveillance in wild colonies, preventing outbreaks that introduce infections into other animals—including humans.

Bats are a major reservoir for the rabies virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. Previous research shows that bats can transmit their strains to other animals, potentially putting people at risk. (Popular Videos: Bats share the screen with creepy co-stars.)

Rabies, typically transmitted in saliva, targets the brain and is almost always fatal in animals and people if left untreated. No current tests detect rabies in live animals—only brain tissue analysis is accurate.

Searching for a way to detect the virus in bats before the animals died, rabies specialist James Ellison and his colleagues at the CDC turned to a captive colony of big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus). Previous studies had found temperature increases in the noses of rabid raccoons, so the team expected to see similar results with bats.

Researchers established normal temperature ranges for E. fuscus—the bat species most commonly sent for rabies testing—then injected 24 individuals with the virus. The 21-day study monitored facial temperatures with infrared cameras, and 13 of the 21 bats that developed rabies showed temperature drops of more than 4ºC.

"I was surprised to find the bats' faces were cooler because rabies causes inflammation—and that creates heat," said Ellison. "No one has done this before with bats," he added, and so researchers aren't sure what's causing the temperature changes they've discovered in the mammals. (Related: "Bats Have Superfast Muscles—A Mammal First.")

Although thermal scans didn't catch every instance of rabies in the colony, this method may be a way to detect the virus in bats before symptoms appear. The team plans to fine-tune their measurements of facial temperatures, and then Ellison hopes to try surveillance in the field.

This study was published online November 9 in Zoonoses and Public Health.

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Obama Invokes Newtown on 'Cliff' Deal

Invoking the somber aftermath of the school massacre in Newtown, Conn., President Obama today appealed to congressional Republicans to embrace a standing "fair deal" on taxes and spending that would avert the fiscal cliff in 13 days.

"If there's one thing we should have after this week, it should be a sense of perspective about what's important," Obama said at a midday news conference.

"I would like to think that members of that [Republican] caucus would say to themselves, 'You know what? We disagree with the president on a whole bunch of things,'" he said. "'But right now what the country needs is for us to compromise.'"

House Speaker John Boehner's response: "Get serious."

Boehner announced at a 52-second news conference that the House will vote Thursday to approve a "plan B" to a broad White House deal -- and authorize simply extending current tax rates for people earning less than $1 million a year and little more.

"Then, the president will have a decision to make," the Ohio Republican said. "He can call on Senate Democrats to pass that bill or he could be responsible for the largest tax increase in American history."

Fiscal Cliff Negotiations: Trying to Make a Deal Watch Video

House Speaker John Boehner Proposes 'Plan B' on Taxes Watch Video

'Fiscal Cliff' Negotiations: Deal Might Be Within Reach Watch Video

Unless Congress acts by Dec. 31, every American will face higher income tax rates and government programs will get hit with deep automatic cuts starting in 2013.

Obama and Boehner have been inching closer to a deal on tax hikes and spending cuts to help reduce the deficit. But they have not yet had a breakthrough on a deal.

Obama's latest plan would raise $1.2 trillion in new tax revenue over 10 years, largely through higher tax rates on incomes above $400,000. He also proposes roughly $930 billion in spending cuts, including new limits on entitlement spending, such as slower annual cost-of-living increases for Social Security beneficiaries.

Boehner has agreed to $1 trillion in new tax revenue, with a tax rate hike for households earning over $1 million. He is seeking more than $1 trillion in spending cuts, with significant changes to Medicare and Social Security.

The president said today that he remains "optimistic" about reaching a broad compromise by Christmas because both sides are "pretty close," a sentiment that has been publicly shared by Boehner.

But the speaker's backup plan has, at least temporarily, stymied talks, with no reported contact between the sides since Monday.

"The speaker should return to the negotiating table with the president because if he does I firmly believe we can have an agreement before Christmas," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a White House ally.

Schumer said Obama and Boehner are "not that far apart" in the negotiations.

"If they were to come to an agreement by Friday, they could write this stuff over the Christmas break and then we'd have to come back before the New Year and pass it," Schumer said.

Obama said he is "open to conversations" and planned to reach out to congressional leaders over the next few days to try to nudge Republicans to accept a "fair deal."

"At some point, there's got to be, I think, a recognition on the part of my Republican friends that -- you know, take the deal," he told reporters.

"They keep on finding ways to say no, as opposed to finding ways to say yes," Obama added. "At some point, you know, they've got take me out of it and think about their voters and think about what's best for the country."

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Say what: The top tech quotes of 2012

Felix Baumgartner, on surviving his supersonic free fall: "It was really a lot harder than I thought it was going to be." Mark Zuckerberg might have said the same thing about taking Facebook public, or Tim Cook about Apple releasing its own maps app in iOS 6.

(Credit:
Red Bull Stratos)

Sometimes it's what you say. Sometimes it's how you say it.

What really matters is that what you said captured a moment, crystallized a trend, got under the skin, or tickled a funny bone. For present purposes, it all adds up to the best quotes of the year, from across the tech sector.

The year 2012 brought us the futuristic Google Glass and an irate Ira Glass, messed-up maps and a picture-perfect Mars mission,
Windows 8 and Apple-Samsung hate. All that and more are captured below in a few well-chosen words. You'll be pleased to note, we hope, that not a single quote is burdened with cliched claptrap like "double down."

Without wasting any more words, let us begin:

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Smoking crack

You want me to do an order on 75 pages, [and] unless you're smoking crack, you know these witnesses aren't going to be called when you have less than four hours!"
--Judge Lucy Koh

Why save the very best for last? This gem came from an exasperated Judge Lucy Koh, presiding over the marquee legal battle of many, many legal battles going on between Apple and Samsung around the world. On August 16, she lost her temper (not for the first or last time, we might add) as Apple tried to book a few too many witnesses into precious little time. The outburst didn't seem to have hurt Apple's prospects, however; days later, the jury in the patent case found in favor of Apple, awarding the iPhone maker $1.05 billion in damages.

"We found for Apple because of the evidence they presented. It was clear there was infringement," Apple v. Samsung juror Manuel Ilagan told CNET.

I would highly prefer to settle than to battle. But it's important that Apple not become the developer for the world. We need people to invent their own stuff."
--Tim Cook, CEO, Apple

Really? Unless we're very much mistaken, Apple has had plenty of opportunities to settle in its various fights with Samsung and others. (OK, so Apple did reach a deal with HTC.) Apparently in some cases, bad blood just cannot be so easily quelled. And Cook's larger point is well taken; everybody wins when necessity mothers the next great innovation.

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On the outs

We have said think it over. Think twice.... It will create a huge negative impact for the ecosystem, and other brands may take a negative reaction. It is not something you are good at so please think twice."
--Acer CEO JT Wang

Microsoft's Surface tablet

(Credit:
Josh Miller/CNET)

While Samsung and Apple duked it out in courtrooms over
tablet and smartphone designs, as well as in the all-important court of consumer spending, Microsoft was taking a new crack at the tablet market with its Surface design and on the mobile phone front with Windows Phone 8. For its tablet efforts, software maker Microsoft earned a fair measure of grief from some of its hardware partners for treading on their turf, as conveyed above by Acer CEO JT Wang.

The pithier take on that came a few months later from Acer's manager of Greater China operations, who -- in a rough translation -- compared making hardware to a basic foodstuff, using the chewy analogy of "hard rice" that's "not so easy to eat."

We have a clear shot at being the No. 3 platform in the market. Carriers want other platforms. And we're not just another open platform running on another system. We're BlackBerry."
--Thorsten Heins, CEO, Research In Motion

It's still too early to know whether Windows Phone 8 will pull Microsoft out of the cellar of the mobile phone market, but if not, perhaps there's some consolation that Microsoft's mobile products never had much of a presence to start with. Not so with Research In Motion, maker of the now beleaguered BlackBerry. Once nearly synonymous with dominance in the mobile sector -- some years ago, what celeb didn't have a BlackBerry? -- RIM has been crowded out of the throne room by Apple and by
Android's acolytes, most notably Samsung (see above).

RIM spent 2012 notably not launching BlackBerry 10, its next-generation operating system and its hope for a return to something resembling its former glory. But it has shared some details about the software ahead of the formal January 2013 introduction, and perhaps even more so, maintained its bravado. It may not suit everybody to be a third wheel, but perhaps in some circumstances that's the best that can be achieved. Viel Glueck, Thorsten Heins.

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Bumps in the road

With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better."
--Apple's Tim Cook

We bring back Apple CEO Tim Cook for another quote, this time in apology mode. The second half of the year brought forth a bonanza of new and updated Apple products: the iPhone 5, the fourth-generation iPad and the new iPad Mini ("Every inch an iPad," to quote Apple's marketing tagline), a new pair of iMacs, iTunes 11, and iOS 6. Usually those are moments for Apple to revel in the adulation, but the company came in for some rough handling once people got a good look at the Maps app in iOS 6 -- cities went missing, roads took wrong turns, stable bridges and dams got all wobbly.

Cook even went so far as to -- gasp! -- recommend the competition: "While we're improving Maps, you can try alternatives by downloading map apps from the App Store like Bing, MapQuest, and Waze, or use Google or Nokia maps..."

Daisey lied to me and to 'This American Life' producer Brian Reed during the fact checking we did on the story, before it was broadcast."
--Ira Glass, host and executive producer, This American Life

Mike Daisey.

(Credit:
Greg Sandoval/CNET)

Apple took some heat in 2012 as well over the conditions for workers at the factories in China that crank out iPhones and other gear. (Other U.S.-based tech heavyweights also use these factories, we should point out.) Some of the most impassioned criticism came from Mike Daisey, the author and performer of the one-man play, "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs." There was just one problem: Daisey made up some of what he presented as fact. That revelation led to the public radio program "This American Life" retracting the January episode it ran featuring a Daisey monologue on those Chinese factories.

Said Daisey in rebuttal: "I stand by my work. My show is a theatrical piece whose goal is to create a human connection between our gorgeous devices and the brutal circumstances from which they emerge." And that he was quoted "out of context."

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Red Planet rover, come on over

Touchdown confirmed. We're safe on Mars!... We are wheels down on Mars!"
--Allen Chen, mission control commentator

Some eight months and 350 million miles after departing Cape Canaveral, Fla., the one-ton Curiosity rover arrived on Mars in a high-stakes landing that made unprecedented use of a hovering sky crane. Many things could have gone very badly wrong with the $2.5 billion mission, especially in those final minutes. But in the end, it was a picture-perfect landing -- as images sent home from Curiosity quickly confirmed.

Or as Curiosity itself tweeted:

Over time, the rover has proved itself as adept at tweeting as it is laser-focused on its science-geeky mission. It even has a sense of humor. As speculation heated up during the fall about potentially momentous discoveries on the Red Planet, Curiosity sought to dispel them with a twinkle in its eye:

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Quite a spectacle

Google co-founder Sergey Brin touts the Project Glass computerized glasses at the Google I/O show.

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET)

This is not a consumer device. You have to want to be on the bleeding edge. That's what this is designed for."
--Google co-founder Sergey Brin

One of the most intriguing pieces of technology introduced during 2012 was the eye wear known as Google Glass. These aren't your ordinary spectacles. In this debut version, known as the Explorer Edition, the lightweight frames sport a camera, radios for data communication, speaker, microphone, and gyroscope, the better to reckon your position and orientation. The first recipients, other than a handful of Google employees, should be getting them early in 2013.

And what a spectacular entrance: the glasses leaped into the public consciousness on the faces of two skydivers who plummeted and then bicycled, safely and securely, onto the stage at the Google I/O conference last June. "You've seen demos that were slick and robust. This will be nothing like that," Brin said. "This could go wrong in about 500 different ways."

Not so spectacular for Google: its third-quarter results, dragged down by the Motorola Mobility acquisition that it's still digesting. Or from which it's suffering indigestion. Google posted earnings of $9.03 a share on revenue of $11.5 billion, way below expectations for $10.65 a share on $11.86 billion in revenue, and its shares plunged on the news. Adding an insult or two to the injuries, the draft press release on the earnings inadvertently slipped out ahead of schedule -- Google blamed its financial printer, R.R. Donnelly -- with an all-caps placeholder for a statement from CEO Larry Page: PENDING LARRY QUOTE. It didn't take long at all before the world welcomed the @PendingLarry parody account on Twitter.

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Windows, Windows, Windows

In 2012, what's next? Metro, Metro, Metro. And, of course, Windows, Windows, Windows."
--Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft

Steve Ballmer at CES 2012

(Credit:
James Martin/CNET)

It was a big year for Microsoft and its signature franchise, with the debuts of Windows 8, Windows RT, and Windows Phone 8. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer could help but chant "Windows, Windows, Windows" in his keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, looking out at the year ahead. And he gave a similar peroration for the new tiled look that would be shared across both the desktop and the mobile operating systems. "Metro will drive the new magic across all of our user experiences," he said at the time.

But times change, don't they? Seven months later, Microsoft ditched the name Metro, reportedly acquiescing to trademark concerns raised by the German retailer (and Microsoft partner) Metro. The message from Redmond in August: It was just a code name! Please use the software product name!

How was Ballmer feeling about things as the year wound down? Against a backdrop of gripes that the Metro -- er, Windows 8 -- interface had consumers dazed and confused, and questions about how quickly people were adopting the newly released OS, he had this to say at Microsoft's shareholder meeting in late November: "Based on customer feedback, we know for sure people get it and like it."

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Electoral politics

The argument we're making is exceedingly simple. Here it is: Obama's ahead in Ohio."
--Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight.com

You may have noticed that 2012 was an election year. Perhaps it seemed as if the election year would never, ever end. One constant through the whole long slog -- the Republican front-runners du jour; the conventions; the debates; the now you see them, now you don't memes and Tumblrs and hashtags -- was the primacy of poll numbers and of number crunchers. As much as the daily poll results now seem like so much ephemera, in the end Big Data showed some real heft and substance, especially in the hands of a fellow like FiveThirtyEight.com's Nate Silver. When Election Day rolled around, Silver, the statistician par excellence, had called the results of the presidential race, state by state, with remarkable accuracy.

Victory speech? Or victory tweet? There's still a lot to be said for good old-fashioned rhetoric declaimed from the podium, but there's no denying that the world today thrives on the brevity, immediacy, and sheer reach of Twitter. With just three short words (and one photo), President Obama put the digital icing on his re-election and almost as quickly became the retweet champion of all time, beating out youthful phenom Justin Bieber.

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Executive search

The search committee and the entire Board concluded that he is the right leader to return the core business to a path of robust growth and industry-leading innovation."
--Roy Bostock, chairman, Yahoo, January 4

The Board of Directors unanimously agreed that Marissa's unparalleled track record in technology, design, and product execution makes her the right leader for Yahoo! at this time of enormous opportunity."
--Fred Amoroso, chairman, Yahoo, July 16

Not once, but twice this year, Yahoo proclaimed that it had found the "right leader" to take the helm as CEO and try to steer the ship back to its rightful place at the front of the Internet flotilla. First, in January, it was PayPal's Scott Thompson, a rather nondescript choice who rather quickly ran aground on the shoals of a doctored curriculum vitae that claimed a computer science degree where there really wasn't one.

Marissa Mayer

(Credit:
James Martin/CNET)

To wash away that unhappy episode, Yahoo in July brought in Google's Marissa Mayer, a more dazzling appointment with boatloads of tech cred (and an M.S. in computer science from Stanford, the press release made a point of saying). Five months later, Mayer's still going full steam ahead.

Oh, but did she make waves along the way. Not so much for her business decisions, at least not directly, but for her family status -- as in, being in the family way, a most uncommon condition in the corner office. Several hours after Yahoo announced her appointment as CEO, Mayer tweeted that she was pregnant: "Another piece of good news today - @zackbogue and I are expecting a new baby boy!" Equally startling for many was that she planned to take just a few weeks of maternity leave -- and would work throughout that short hiatus. The bundle of joy arrived as September turned into October.

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The fugitives

The United States must renounce its witch hunt against WikiLeaks.... The U.S. administration's war on whistle-blowers must end."
--Julian Assange, founder, WikiLeaks

We'll wind things down with tales of two men on the outs with authorities. The first is WikiLeaks founder and front man Julian Assange, who in mid-August took up residence in Ecuador's embassy in London after the Latin American country granted him asylum. Assange had faced possible extradition to Sweden for questioning over alleged sexual misconduct, though the underlying fear was that he would be transferred to the United States, where federal officials want to know more about WikiLeaks' publishing of thousands of sensitive military and diplomatic documents -- and where he could face prosecution under the Espionage Act, a statute that allows for a death penalty verdict.

From the safety of an embassy balcony, Assange cast himself as the hero of the tale, and urged the U.S. to "pledge before the world that it will not pursue journalists for shining a light on the secret crimes of the powerful."

Under no circumstances am I going to willingly talk to the police in this country. You can say I'm paranoid about it, but they will kill me, there is no question."
--John McAfee, fugitive

But as the year wound down, it was hard to top the bizarre saga of John McAfee, the computer-security pioneer who had taken up an offbeat residence in Belize and, of late, had become a person of interest in a murder case there. He wasn't so keen on talking to the police in that Central American country: "You can say I'm paranoid about it, but they will kill me," he told Wired.

It's a tangled tale that winds together the gunshot death of Gregory Faull, allegations of the unlicensed manufacture of antibiotics, May-December dalliances, detention by Guatemalan authorities, and faked heart attacks. Of the latter, said McAfee, newly arrived in Miami this month, "It was a deception, but who did it hurt? I look pretty healthy, don't I?"

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Race Is On to Find Life Under Antarctic Ice

A hundred years ago, two teams of explorers set out to be the first people ever to reach the South Pole. The race between Roald Amundsen of Norway and Robert Falcon Scott of Britain became the stuff of triumph, tragedy, and legend. (See rare pictures of Scott's expedition.)

Today, another Antarctic drama is underway that has a similar daring and intensity—but very different stakes.

Three unprecedented, major expeditions are underway to drill deep through the ice covering the continent and, researchers hope, penetrate three subglacial lakes not even known to exist until recently.

The three players—Russia, Britain, and the United States—are all on the ice now and are in varying stages of their preparations. The first drilling was attempted last week by the British team at Lake Ellsworth, but mechanical problems soon cropped up in the unforgiving Antarctic cold, putting a temporary hold on their work.

The key scientific goal of the missions: to discover and identify living organisms in Antarctica's dark, pristine, and hidden recesses. (See "Antarctica May Contain 'Oasis of Life.'")

Scientists believe the lakes may well be home to the kind of "extreme" life that could eke out an existence on other planets or moons of our solar system, so finding them on Earth could help significantly in the search for life elsewhere.

Lakes and rivers are buried beneath Antarctica's thick ice (enlarge).

Illustration courtesy Zina Deretsky, NSF

While astrobiology—the search for life beyond Earth—is a prime mover in the push into subglacial lakes, so too is the need to better understand the ice sheet that covers the vast continent and holds much of the world's water. If the ice sheet begins to melt due to global warming, the consequences—such as global sea level rise—could be catastrophic.

"We are the new wave of Antarctic explorers, pioneers if you will," said Montana State University's John Priscu, chief scientist of the U.S. drilling effort this season and a longtime Antarctic scientist.

"After years of planning, projects are coming together all at once," he said.

"What we find this year and next will set the stage for Antarctic science for the next generation and more—just like with the explorers a century ago."

All Eyes on the Brits

All three research teams are at work now, but the drama is currently focused on Lake Ellsworth, buried 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) below the West Antarctic ice sheet.

A 12-person British team is using a sophisticated technique that involves drilling down using water melted from the ice, which is then heated to 190 degrees Fahrenheit (88 degrees Celsius).

The first drilling attempt began on December 12, but was stopped at almost 200 feet (61 meters) because of technical problems with the sensors on the drill nozzle.

Drilling resumed on Saturday but then was delayed when both boilers malfunctioned, requiring the team to wait for spare parts. The situation is frustrating but normal due to the harsh climate, British Antarctic team leader Martin Siegert, who helped discover Lake Ellsworth in 2004, said in an email from the site.

After completing their drilling, the team will have about 24 hours to collect their samples before the hole freezes back up in the often below-zero cold. If all goes well, they could have lake water and mud samples as early as this week.

"Our expectation is that microbes will be found in the lake water and upper sediment," Siegert said. "We would be highly surprised if this were not the case."

The British team lives in tents and makeshift shelters, and endures constant wind as well as frigid temperatures. (Take an Antarctic quiz.)

"Right now we are working round the clock in a cold, demanding and extreme location-it's testing our own personal endurance, but it's worth it," Siegert said.

U.S. First to Find Life?

The U.S. team is drilling into Lake Whillans, a much shallower body about 700 miles inland (1,120 kilometers) in the region that drains into the Ross Sea.

The lake, which is part of a broader water system under the ice, may well have the greatest chances of supporting microbial life, experts say. Hot-water drilling begins there in January.

Among the challenges: Lake Whillans lies under an ice stream, which is similar to a glacier but is underground and surrounded by ice on all sides. It moves slowly but constantly, and that complicates efforts to drill into the deepest—and most scientifically interesting—part of the lake.

Montana State's Priscu—currently back in the U.S. for medical reasons—said his team will bring a full lab to the Lake Whillans drilling site to study samples as they come up: something the Russians don't have the interest or capacity in doing and that the British will be trying in a more limited way. (Also see "Pictures: 'Extreme' Antarctic Science Revealed.")

So while the U.S. team may be the last of the three to penetrate their lake, they could be the first to announce the discovery of life in deep subglacial lakes.

"We should have a good idea of the abundance and type of life in the lake and sediments before we leave the site," said Priscu, who plans to return to Antarctica in early January if doctors allow.

"And we want to know as much as possible about how they make a living down there without energy from the sun and without nutrients most life-forms need."

All subglacial lakes are kept liquid by heat generated from the pressure of the heavy load of ice above them, and also from heat emanating from deeper in the Earth's crust.

In addition, the movement of glaciers and "ice streams" produces heat from friction, which at least temporarily results in a wet layer at the very bottom of the ice.

The Lake Whillans drilling is part of the larger Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling (WISSARD) project, first funded in 2009 by the U.S. National Science Foundation with funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

That much larger effort will also study the ice streams that feed and leave the lake to learn more about another aspect of Antarctic dynamism: The recently discovered web of more than 360 lakes and untold streams and rivers—some nearing the size of the Amazon Basin—below the ice. (See "Chain of Cascading Lakes Discovered Under Antarctica.")

Helen Fricker, a member of the WISSARD team and a glaciologist at University of California, San Diego, said that scientists didn't begin to understand the vastness of Antarctica's subglacial water world until after the turn of the century.

That hidden, subterranean realm has "incredibly interesting and probably never classified biology," Fricker said.

"But it can also give us important answers about the climate history of the Earth, and clues about the future, too, as the climate changes."

Russia Returning to Successful Site

While both the U.S. and British teams have websites to keep people up to date on their work, the Russians do not, and have been generally quiet about their plans for this year.

The Russians have a team at Lake Vostok, the largest and deepest subglacial lake in Antarctica at more than 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) below the icy surface of the East Antarctic plateau.

The Vostok drilling began in the 1950s, well before anyone knew there was an enormous lake beneath the ice. The Russians finally and briefly pierced the lake early this year, before having to leave because of the cold. That breakthrough was portrayed at the time as a major national accomplishment.

According to Irina Alexhina, a Russian scientist with the Vostok team who was visiting the U.S. McMurdo Station last week, the Russian plan for this season focuses on extracting the ice core that rose in February when Vostok was breached. She said the team arrived this month and can stay through early February.

Preliminary results from the February breach report no signs of life on the drill bit that entered the water, but some evidence of life in small samples of the "accretion ice," which is frozen to the bottom of the lake, said Lake Vostok expert Sergey Bulat, of the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, in May.

Both results are considered tentative because of the size of the sample and how they were retrieved. In addition, sampling water from the very top of Lake Vostok is far less likely to find organisms than farther down or in the bottom sediment, scientists say.

"It's like taking a scoop of water from the top of Lake Ontario and making conclusions about the lake based on that," said Priscu, who has worked with the Russians at Vostok.

He said he hopes to one day be part of a fully international team that will bring the most advanced drilling and sample collecting technology to Vostok.

Extreme Antarctic Microbes Found

Some results have already revealed life under the ice. A November study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported that subglacial Lake Vida—which is smaller and closer to the surface than other subglacial lakes—does indeed support a menagerie of strange and often unknown bacteria.

The microbes survive in water six times saltier than the oceans, with no oxygen, and with the highest level of nitrous oxide ever found in water on Earth, said study co-author Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at NASA's Ames Research Center.

"What Antarctica is telling us is that organisms can eke out a living in the most extreme of environments," said McKay, an expert in the search for life beyond Earth.

McKay called Lake Vida the closest analog found so far to the two ice and water moons in the solar system deemed most likely to support extraterrestrial life—Jupiter's Europa and Saturn's Enceladus.

But that "closest analog" designation may soon change. Life-forms found in Vostok, Ellsworth, or Whillans would all be living at a much greater depth than at Lake Vida—meaning that they'd have to contend with more pressure, more limited nutrients, and a source of energy entirely unrelated to the sun.

"Unique Moment in Antarctica"

The prospect of finding microscopic life in these extreme conditions may not seem to be such a big deal for understanding our planet—or the possibility of life on others. (See Antarctic pictures by National Geographic readers.)

But scientists point out that only bacteria and other microbes were present on Earth for 3 billion of the roughly 3.8 billion years that life has existed here. Our planet, however, had conditions that allowed those microbes to eventually evolve into more complex life and eventually into everything biological around us.

While other moons and planets in our solar system do not appear capable of supporting evolution, scientists say they may support—or have once supported—primitive microbial life.

And drilling into Antarctica's deep lakes could provide clues about where extraterrestrial microbes might live, and how they might be identified.

In addition, Priscu said there are scores of additional Antarctic targets to study to learn about extreme life, climate change, how glaciers move, and the dynamics of subterranean rivers and lakes.

"We actually know more about the surface of Mars than about these subglacial systems of Antarctica," he said. "That's why this work involves such important and most likely transformative science."

Mahlon "Chuck" Kennicutt, the just-retired president of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, an international coordinating group, called this year "a unique moment in Antarctica."

"There's a growing understanding of the continent as a living, dynamic place—not a locked-in ice desert—and that has created real scientific excitement."

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Newtown Settles In for Prayerful, Somber Christmas

Residents of Sandy Hook, Conn., gather every year under an enormous tree in the middle of town to sing carols and light the tree. The tree is lit this year, too, but the scene beneath it is starkly different.

The tree looms over hundreds of teddy bears and toys, but they are for children who will never receive them. The ornaments are adorned with names and jarringly recent birth dates.

Wreaths with pine cones and white ribbons hang near the tree, one each for a life lost. A small statue of an angel child sleeps among a sea of candles.

A steady flow of well-wishers, young and old, tearfully comes to cry, pray, light candles, leave gifts and share hugs and stories.

CLICK HERE for complete coverage of the massacre at Sandy Hook.

The Christmas season is a normally joyful time for this tight-knit village, but in the wake of a shooting rampage, holiday decorations have given way this year to memorial signs. And instead of cars with Christmas trees on top, there are media vans with satellites.

Connie Koch has lived in Newtown for nine years. She lives directly behind Sandy Hook Elementary School, where Adam Lanza, 20, killed 20 children and six adults before turning the gun on himself. Earlier that Friday morning, he had also killed his mother at home.

President Obama on Newtown Shooting: 'We Must Change' Watch Video

Koch said the shocked town, which includes the Village of Sandy Hook, is experiencing a notably different Christmas this year.

"It's more somber, much more time spent in prayer for our victims' families and our friends that have lost loved ones," she said as she stood near the base of the tree.

CLICK HERE for a tribute to the shooting victims.

Her family has been touched by the tragedy is multiple ways.

"My daughter, she lost her child that she babysat for for six years," she said, holding back tears. "And for her friend who lost her mother. And for my dear friend who lost one of her friends in the school, one of the aides.

"It's hard. And there will be much prayer on Christmas morning for these people, for our community."

Koch said her community always rallies in the face of tragedy, but the term "hits close to home" resonates this time more than ever before. She says the only way to make it through is one day at a time.

"It's all you can do, one hour at a time," Koch said. "For me, I don't even want to wake up in the morning because I don't want to have to face it again. You feel like it's still just a dream and with the funerals starting, it's becoming more real. It's becoming more final."

Another Newtown parent, Adam Zuckerman, stood by the makeshift memorial with a roll of red heart stickers with the words, "In Our" above a drawing of the Sandy Hook Elementary School welcome sign. He was selling the stickers to collect money for a Sandy Hook victims' fund.

"It's a lot," he said of the events of the past few days. "We don't know how it's going to affect our community, but I feel very strongly that I needed to do something to keep it positive, to keep this community positive."

Zuckerman's 20-year-old stepdaughter came home from college for winter break the night before the shooting. As a high school student, she worked in one of the town's popular toy stores.

"She knew a lot of the kids," he said of his daughter. "Their parents brought them in over the years. We have other friends who have lost family here and good friends who are dear friends with the principal of the school. … It's pretty rough."

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'The idea we live in a simulation isn't science fiction'

If the universe is just a Matrix-like simulation, how could we ever know? Physicist Silas Beane thinks he has the answer

The idea that we live in a simulation is just science fiction, isn't it?
There is a famous argument that we probably do live in a simulation. The idea is that in future, humans will be able to simulate entire universes quite easily. And given the vastness of time ahead, the number of these simulations is likely to be huge. So if you ask the question: 'do we live in the one true reality or in one of the many simulations?', the answer, statistically speaking, is that we're more likely to be living in a simulation.

How did you end up working on this issue?
My day job is to do high performance computing simulations of the forces of nature, particularly the strong nuclear force. My colleagues and I use a grid-like lattice to represent a small chunk of space and time. We put all the forces into that little cube and calculate what happens. In effect, we're simulating a very tiny corner of the universe.

How accurate are your simulations?
We're able to calculate some of the properties of real things like the simplest nuclei. But the process also generates artefacts that don't appear in the real world and that we have to remove. So we started to think about what sort of artefacts might appear if we lived in a simulation.

What did you discover?
In our universe the laws of physics are the same in every direction. But in a grid, this changes since you no longer have a spacetime continuum, and the laws of physics would depend on direction. Simulators would be able to hide this effect but they wouldn't be able to get rid of it completely.

How might we gather evidence that we're in a simulation?
Using very high energy particles. The highest energy particles that we know of are cosmic rays and there is a well-known natural cut off in their energy at about 10²⁰ electron volts. We calculated that if the simulators used a grid size of about 10^-27 metres, then the cut off energy would vary in different directions.

Do cosmic rays vary in this way?
We don't know. The highest energy cosmic rays are very rare. A square kilometre on Earth is hit by one only about once per century so we're not going to be able map out their distribution any time soon. And even if we do, it'll be hard to show that this is conclusive proof that we're in a simulation.

But can we improve our own simulations?
The size of the universe we simulate is a just fermi, that's a box with sides 10^-15 metres long. But we can use Moore's Law to imagine what we might be able to simulate in future. If the current trends in computing continue, we should be simulating a universe the size of a human within a century and within five centuries, we could manage a box 10²⁶ metres big. That's the size of the observable universe.

How have people reacted to your work?
I gave a lecture on this topic the other week and the turnout was amazing. Half of the people looked at me as if I was disturbed and the other half were very enthusiastic.

Profile

Silas Beane is a physicist at the University of Bonn, Germany. His paper "Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation" has been submitted to the journal Physical Review D

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Changi Airport's aircraft handling capacity to be increased 40%

SINGAPORE - The authorities are gearing up to increase Changi Airport's aircraft handling capacity as there is scope for Changi Airport to handle about 40 per cent more aircraft movements than the 302,000 aircraft movements handled last year.

The airport's air traffic potential of about 430,000 annual aircraft movements is based on findings from a terminal airspace consultancy study commissioned by the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) and completed by UK NATS, the air navigation service provider of the UK.

In order to grow Changi Airport's capacity, the CAAS will be looking at increasing air traffic management and runway availability, alongside improving collaboration with the airport's stakeholders.

Among other things, the CAAS is considering reducing the duration of scheduled runway closures through leveraging on IT systems to optimise runway inspection processes.

The CAAS will also attempt to reduce separation between aircraft, in order to free up the airport's runways for the next aircraft as soon as possible.

- TODAY

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Samsung announces Galaxy Grand; 5-inch Jelly Bean-powered smartphone

Samsung's Galaxy Grand: an Android 'Jelly Bean'-powered 5-inch smartphone with a dual-core processor.

(Credit:

Samsung)

Samsung today unveiled the Galaxy Grand smartphone, which runs the latest
Android 4.1.2 'Jelly Bean' mobile operating system, and sports a 5-inch WVGA display.

The smartphone also features a powerful dual-core 1.2 Ghz Dual Core powered smartphone with 1GB RAM, an 8-megapixel rear camera offering 1080p video recording and a 2-megapixel front camera.

The Galaxy Grand runs includes 8GB internal memory with a microSD memory expansion slot, Wi-Fi b/g/n, GPS functionality, and the usual perks, such as an accelerometer, compass and gyroscopic sensor.

The Galaxy Grand also connects to high-speed on HSPA+ networks, but falls short of offering 4G LTE connectivity.

The Korean smartphone giant said the smartphone will be sold in two variants: the I9080 which offers single SIM service, while the I9082 will offer dual-SIM functionality, allowing users to use two separate cell numbers from the same device, such as work and personal numbers.

Samsung's Galaxy Grand comes with a range of features, including the latest Android 'Jelly Bean' operating system.

(Credit:

Samsung)

The smartphone also includes built-in features, such as Direct Call, Popup Video, Smart Alert, and S-Voice, the Samsung's rival to Apple's Siri voice-activated assistant.

Announced in the midst of December holiday season, only days before many businesses finish for the year and consumer holiday spending reaches its peak, the Galaxy Grand was announced with no pricing or availability information.

We've put in questions to Samsung, but did not hear back at the time of writing. It is expected that the smartphone will be showed off to the crows at the consumer showcase
CES 2013 in January.

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GRAIL Mission Goes Out With a Bang

Jane J. Lee

On Friday, December 14, NASA sent their latest moon mission into a death spiral. Rocket burns nudged GRAIL probes Ebb and Flow into a new orbit designed to crash them into the side of a mountain near the moon's north pole today at around 2:28 p.m. Pacific standard time. NASA named the crash site after late astronaut Sally Ride, America's first woman in space.

Although the mountain is located on the nearside of the moon, there won't be any pictures because the area will be shadowed, according to a statement from NASA' Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

Originally sent to map the moon's gravity field, Ebb and Flow join a long list of man-made objects that have succumbed to a deadly lunar attraction. Decades of exploration have left a trail of debris intentionally crashed, accidentally hurtled, or deliberately left on the moon's surface. Some notable examples include:

Ranger 4 - Part of NASA's first attempt to snap close-up pictures of the moon, the Ranger program did not start off well. Rangers 1 through 6 all failed, although Ranger 4, launched April 23, 1962, did make it as far as the moon. Sadly, onboard computer failures kept number 4 from sending back any pictures before it crashed. (See a map of all artifacts on the moon.)

Fallen astronaut statue - This 3.5-inch-tall aluminum figure commemorates the 14 astronauts and cosmonauts who had died prior to the Apollo 15 mission. That crew left it behind in 1971, and NASA wasn't aware of what the astronauts had done until a post-flight press conference.

Lunar yard sale - Objects jettisoned by Apollo crews over the years include a television camera, earplugs, two "urine collection assemblies," and tools that include tongs and a hammer. Astronauts left them because they needed to shed weight in order to make it back to Earth on their remaining fuel supply, said archivist Colin Fries of the NASA History Program Office.

Luna 10 - A Soviet satellite that crashed after successfully orbiting the moon, Luna 10 was the first man-made object to orbit a celestial body other than Earth. Its Russian controllers had programmed it to broadcast the Communist anthem "Internationale" live to the Communist Party Congress on April 4, 1966. Worried that the live broadcast could fail, they decided to broadcast a recording of the satellite's test run the night before—a fact they revealed 30 years later.

Radio Astronomy Explorer B - The U.S. launched this enormous instrument, also known as Explorer 49, into a lunar orbit in 1973. At 600 feet (183 meters) across, it's the largest man-made object to enter orbit around the moon. Researchers sent it into its lunar orbit so it could take measurements of the planets, the sun, and the galaxy free from terrestrial radio interference. NASA lost contact with the satellite in 1977, and it's presumed to have crashed into the moon.

(Learn about lunar exploration.)

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Conn. Kids Laid to Rest: 'Our Hearts Are With You'

Visibly shaken attendees exiting the funeral today for 6-year-old Noah Pozner, one of 20 children killed in the Connecticut school massacre last week, said they were touched by a story that summed up the first-grader best.

His mother, Veronique, would often tell him how much she loved him and he'd respond: "Not as much as I [love] you," said a New York man who attended the funeral but was not a member of the family.

Noah's family had been scheduled to greet the public before the funeral service began at 1 p.m. at the Abraham L. Green & Son Funeral Home in Fairfield, Conn. The burial was to follow at the B'nai Israel Cemetery in Monroe, Conn. Those present said they were in awe at the composure of Noah's mother.

Rabbi Edgar Gluck, who attended the service, said the first person to speak was Noah's mother, who told mourners that her son's ambition when he grew up was to be either a director of a plant that makes tacos -- because that was his favorite food -- or to be a doctor.

Outside the funeral home, a small memorial lay with a sign reading: "Our hearts are with you, Noah." A red rose was also left behind along with two teddy bears with white flowers and a blue toy car with a note saying "Noah, rest in peace."

CLICK HERE for complete coverage of the tragedy at Sandy Hook.

Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images

President Obama on Newtown Shooting: 'We Must Change' Watch Video

The funeral home was adorned with white balloons as members of the surrounding communities came also to pay their respects, which included a rabbi from Bridgeport. More than a dozen police officers were at the front of the funeral home, and an ambulance was on standby at a gas station at the corner.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, U.S. Rep. and Sen.-Elect Chris Murphy and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, all of Connecticut, were in attendance, the Connecticut Post reported.

Noah was an inquisitive boy who liked to figure out how things worked mechanically, The Associated Press reported. His twin sister, Arielle, was one of the students who survived when her teacher hid her class in the bathroom during the attack.

CLICK HERE for a tribute to the shooting victims.

The twins celebrated their sixth birthday last month. Noah's uncle Alexis Haller told the AP that he was "smart as a whip," gentle but with a rambunctious streak. He called his twin sister his best friend.

"They were always playing together, they loved to do things together," Haller said.

The funeral for Jack Pinto, 6, was also held today, at the Honan Funeral Home in Newtown. He was to be buried at Newtown Village Cemetery.

Jack's family said he loved football, skiing, wrestling and reading, and he also loved his school. Friends from his wrestling team attended his funeral today in their uniforms. One mourner said the message during the service was: "You're secure now. The worst is over."

Family members say they are not dwelling on his death, but instead on the gift of his life that they will cherish.

The family released a statement, saying, Jack was an "inspiration to all those who knew him."

"He had a wide smile that would simply light up the room and while we are all uncertain as to how we will ever cope without him, we choose to remember and celebrate his life," the statement said. "Not dwelling on the loss but instead on the gift that we were given and will forever cherish in our hearts forever."

Jack and Noah were two of 20 children killed Friday morning at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., when 20-year-old Adam Lanza sprayed two first-grade classrooms with bullets that also killed six adults.

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