Hollies Get Prickly for a Reason



With shiny evergreen leaves and bright red berries, holly trees are a naturally festive decoration seen throughout the Christmas season.


They're famously sharp. But not all holly leaves are prickly, even on the same tree. And scientists now think they know how the plants are able to make sharper leaves, seemingly at will. (Watch a video about how Christmas trees are made.)


A new study published in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society suggests leaf variations on a single tree are the combined result of animals browsing on them and the trees' swift molecular response to that sort of environmental pressure.


Carlos Herrera of the National Research Council of Spain led the study in southeastern Spain. He and his team investigated the European holly tree, Ilex aquifolium. Hollies, like other plants, can make different types of leaves at the same time. This is called heterophylly. Out of the 40 holly trees they studied, 39 trees displayed different kinds of leaves, both prickly and smooth.



Five holly leaves from the same tree.

Five holly leaves from the same tree.


Photographs by Emmanuel Lattes, Alamy




Some trees looked like they had been browsed upon by wild goats and deer. On those trees, the lower 8 feet (2.5 meters) had more prickly leaves, while higher up the leaves tended to be smooth. Scientists wanted to figure out how the holly trees could make the change in leaf shape so quickly.


All of the leaves on a tree are genetic twins and share exactly the same DNA sequence. By looking in the DNA for traces of a chemical process called methylation, which modifies DNA but doesn't alter the organism's genetic sequence, the team could determine whether leaf variation was a response to environmental or genetic changes. They found a relationship between recent browsing by animals, the growth of prickly leaves, and methylation.


"In holly, what we found is that the DNA of prickly leaves was significantly less methylated than prickless leaves, and from this we inferred that methylation changes are ultimately responsible for leaf shape changes," Herrera said. "The novelty of our study is that we show that these well-known changes in leaf type are associated with differences in DNA methylation patterns, that is, epigenetic changes that do not depend on variation in the sequence of DNA."


"Heterophylly is an obvious feature of a well-known species, and this has been ascribed to browsing. However, until now, no one has been able to come up with a mechanism for how this occurs," said Mike Fay, chief editor of the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society and head of genetics at the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens. "With this new study, we are now one major step forward towards understanding how."


Epigenetic changes take place independently of variation in the genetic DNA sequence. (Read more about epigenetics in National Geographic magazine's "A Thing or Two About Twins.")


"This has clear and important implications for plant conservation," Herrera said. In natural populations that have their genetic variation depleted by habitat loss, the ability to respond quickly, without waiting for slower DNA changes, could help organisms survive accelerated environmental change. The plants' adaptability, he says, is an "optimistic note" amidst so many conservation concerns. (Related: "Wild Holly, Mistletoe, Spread With Warmer Winters.")


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Fiscal Cliff 'Plan B' Is Dead: Now What?


Dec 20, 2012 11:00pm







The defeat of his Plan B — Republicans pulled it when it became clear it would be voted down — is a big defeat for Speaker of the House John Boehner.  It demonstrates definitively that there is no fiscal cliff deal that can pass the House on Republican votes alone.


Boehner could not even muster the votes to pass something that would only allow tax rates on those making more than $1 million to go up.


Boehner’s Plan B ran into opposition from conservative and tea party groups -including Heritage Action, Freedom Works and the Club for Growth – but it became impossible to pass it after Senate Democrats vowed not to take up the bill and the president threatened to veto it.  Conservative Republicans saw no reason to vote for a bill conservative activists opposed – especially if it had no hopes of going anywhere anyway.


Plan B is dead.


Now what?


House Republicans say it is now up to the Senate to act.  Senate Democrats say it is now up to Boehner to reach an agreement with President Obama.


Each side is saying the other must move.


The bottom line:  The only plausible solution is for President Obama and Speaker Boehner to do what they have failed repeatedly to do:  come up with a truly bi-partisan deal.


The prospects look grimmer than ever. It will be interesting to see if the markets react.



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2013 Smart Guide: New maps to rein in cosmic inflation









































Read more: "2013 Smart Guide: 10 ideas that will shape the year"











We're about to get a better grasp of one of the biggest ideas in the universe: inflation. The first maps of the cosmos from the European Space Agency's Planck satellite are due out in early 2013. They should help us to hone descriptions of how, after the big bang, the universe grew from smaller than a proton into a vast expanse in less than a trillionth of a trillionth of a second.












The early universe was a featureless soup of hot plasma that somehow grew into the dense galaxy clusters and cosmic voids we know today. On a large scale, regions far apart from each other should look very different, according to the laws of thermodynamics. But studies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) - the first light to be released, some 300,000 years after the big bang - show that the universe still looks virtually the same in all directions.












To explain this unlikely sameness, physicists invoked inflation: since all points in the universe were once next-door neighbours, the idea is that they blew apart so quickly that they couldn't forget about each other. Data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), launched in 2001, bolstered a key prediction of inflation, that the universe's structure was seeded by quantum fluctuations in space-time.












Stephen Hawking recently told New Scientist that WMAP's evidence for inflation was the most exciting development in physics during his career. But a best-fit model for what drove the exponential expansion, when it began and how long it lasted, hasn't been agreed. The WMAP data also revealed some surprises, such as inexplicable patterns in the CMB. So cosmologists have been anxiously awaiting Planck's higher-resolution maps to set the record straight. The Planck team will release its first cosmological results from 15 months' worth of data in March.


















In addition, the Planck results will help refine figures for how much dark energy, dark matter and normal matter make up the universe. Planck might also record the first direct signs of ripples in space-time called gravitational waves. Not bad for a probe that's already half dead - one of Planck's two detectors stopped working in January. The entire craft will be shuttered in August.





















































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Train service on NEL resumes after disruption






SINGAPORE: Services on the North East Line (NEL) have resumed after a disruption due to train fault.

SBS Transit said full operations resumed at 5.18pm on Thursday.

Earlier, a statement from SBS Transit said there was no service between Punggol and Little India.

Free bus rides were made available at designated bus stops near affected NEL stations.

SBS Transit has apologised for the inconvenience caused.

A caller to the MediaCorp hotline said a train had apparently broken down.

Another commuter said she had been stuck in the train for about 30 minutes.

- CNA/xq



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Facebook in 2012: 5 ways its IPO changed the social giant




Now that was a year Mark Zuckerberg will never forget -- even if he didn't celebrate each moment on Facebook, as he wants the rest of the world to do. Sure, he turned 28 and married longtime girlfriend, Priscilla Chan, in a backyard ceremony at the couple's home in Palo Alto, Calif. But that's the stuff of ordinary men. Make no mistake: 2012 will go down as the year in which Zuckerberg came out from under his hoodie and tried to prove himself as leader of one of the titans of consumer tech.


Is he succeeding? So far, sure, and more so as the year went on. While plenty of people like to complain about Facebook -- it's a time soak, a privacy nightmare -- plenty of others, as in hundreds of millions, clearly love it. Which is why Wall Street was in a tizzy when Facebook finally went public, an event that forever changed Facebook, making it far and away the most important development at Facebook this year.



1. Facebook's faceplant

Not since the Internet mania of the 1990s had we seen such hype and expectation over an IPO. And why not? This was Facebook, after all, a new kind of media company that had amassed hundreds of millions of passionate users and was already turning a profit on $4 billion in revenue by the time it filed to go public. This one was going to make armchair investors everywhere rich, and fast.


We all know what happened: The hype -- and the $100 billion-plus valuation Wall Street bankers awarded Facebook -- was all too much. Way too much. Sure, Facebook pulled off the biggest Internet IPO in history, which was great for Facebook, but then its shares began their speedy descent. Lawsuits were filed around the handling the IPO. Some even called for Zuckerberg's head, although Zuckerberg structured the company in way that makes firing him impossible. And the whole mess quashed hopes of a return to 1999-style Internet mania.



The upshot: Facebook's botched IPO sent fears across startup land and even now venture capitalists are cutting fewer checks to Zuckerberg wannabes since the possibility of a big IPO exit -- at least for consumer Internet companies -- is grim for now. (To be fair, IPO duds Groupon and Zynga also played a big role on this front). Despite all this, Facebook's stock, while still far from its IPO price of $38 a share, ended the year on a tear as Zuckerberg and team began to show they were serious about making money, especially from mobile.



2. Zuckerberg buys Instagram
Almost everything we hear about from Facebook these days has to do with mobile, and how the company has been restructured to emphasis "mobile first." And nothing shows just how concerned Zuckerberg was about the great mobile migration then when he singlehandedly struck a deal with Instagram cofounder Kevin Systrom to buy his two-year-old startup in a stock-and-cash deal worth $1 billion. Istagram had amassed 33 million users, and Zuckerberg knew that it was both a threat and the future. So he pounced -- just a month before Facebook's May IPO.


The critics pounced. Why spend $1 billion for a money losing startup without a business model? But Zuckerberg didn't care. And when Facebook amended its IPO filing with the SEC -- just over a week before the IPO -- to emphasize how the shift of its users to mobile devices was threatening its long-term ad revenue, it all all started to make sense. Zuckerberg needed more mobile juice, at any cost. By the time the Instagram deal finally closed in October, the price came in at $715 million due to Facebook's sagging stock. Instagram is still on fire. It reached 100 million users in September, and, by one account, people are spending more time on it than on Twitter.


Then -- and this arguably deserves its own entry among top stories for 2012 -- management blundered badly in mid-December when it unveiled Instagram's new terms of service, which said that the company could sell your photos or use them in advertisements. You have to wonder who signed off on this one. Unsurprisingly, the backlash was swift. Instagram co-founder and chief executive Kevin Systrom apologized, backpedaled and said the company is "working on updated language."



3. Speaking of a billion...
This was the year when, with great fanfare, Facebook crossed the billion member mark. No consumer Internet company -- heck, no company, period -- has ever done that. Not bad for what began as a side project in Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm room eight years earlier. It's worth pointing out that these are "monthly active users," measured as people who log on to Facebook at least once a month. Still, that's one seventh of the entire world population. And Facebook's daily active user number is hardly shabby. That metric averaged 584 million in September, a 28 percent jump from the period year. As for mobile? Monthly active mobile users soared 61 percent to 604 million.


Zuckerberg and his team aren't satisfied with one billion, of course. Around five billion people are expected to be online by the end of the decade -- largely via phones -- and Facebook wants all of them conducting their Internet lives through Facebook. Growth has slowed in the U.S, but the company has its sights on all pockets of the globe, as evidenced by its reworked instant messenger app released in early December.

4. I'm talking to you, Wall Street
The rap against Zuckerberg, at least from Wall Street, had been that he didn't care about the money side of the business. In September, he sat for his first live interview (at the TechCrunch Distrupt conference) since the IPO and worked hard to disabuse the world that notion, arguing that Facebook can be a great place for users and can make a ton of money. This will go down as the day Zuckberg took control of the narrative and his messaging to Wall Street. This was also when he began preaching that mobile wasn't a problem for Facebook, but an opportunity -- a talking point that clearly went out to all Facebook execs, who now love talking about mobile, mobile and more mobile.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at yesterday's TechCrunch Disrupt event.

In September, Zuckerberg started talking about the huge mobile opportunity



(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET)


Soon after that, Zuckerberg showed it was more than talk. Facebook started inserting ads -- called "Sponsored Stories" -- on its mobile apps in March, its first effort to make money from mobile. And the results started to show up this fall. When Facebook reported its third-quarter earnings, it said that mobile ads made up 14 percent of its total ad revenue -- largely putting to an end to the biggest worry among Wall Street since Facebook went public.



5. Buy your friend a drink
It's hard to pinpoint one money-making tactic that Facebook launched in 2012 as most important. The company did go all out in this regard. A few examples: It launched Facebook Exchange, an ad-bidding system that lets advertisers better target users on Facebook by tracking what else they do across the Web; it started letting users pay $7 to promote a post to ensure it'll land in a lot of News Feeds; it began charging business for Facebook Offers, a way for merchants to send Groupon-like deals to your News Feed.


But here's one that's unlike the others: The launch of Facebook Gifts, which lets you easily buy a Facebook friend a gift -- from an
iTunes gift card, to an item from Baby Gap or even a bottle of wine that gets shipped to your home. This is a huge move. It helps Facebook get credit card numbers on files -- important for future products -- and marks Facebook's march into commerce. Arguably, Facebook Gifts isn't yet about the money -- it's more about keeping people using Facebook -- but that'll change quickly.


And when that happens, that will certainly give Zuckerberg and his team something they can all drink to.


Read More..

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 4ÂșC.

"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 jumps

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:



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.



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 Surface

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.


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

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."


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:



Quite a spectacle

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

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.


Windows, Windows, Windows


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



Steve Ballmer

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."


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.



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

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.


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.



An illustration shows lakes and rivers under Antarctica's ice.
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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