Today on New Scientist: 25 January 2013

Hagfish gulped up in first video of deep-sea seal hunt

Watch the first sighting of a seal's underwater eating habits spotted by a teenager watching a live video feed

World's oldest portrait reveals the ice-age mind

A 26,000-year-old carved ivory head of a woman is not just an archaeological find - a new exhibition in London wants us to see works like this as art

Dung beetles navigate using the Milky Way

Forget the Pole Star: on moonless nights dung beetles use the Milky Way to follow a straight path with their dung ball

Stress's impact can affect future generations' genes

DNA analysis has yielded the first direct evidence that chemical marks which disable genes in response to stress can be passed on to offspring

Uncharted territory: Where digital maps are leading us

The way we use maps is evolving fast, says Kat Austen, and it will change a great deal more than how we navigate

Feedback: Tales of the stony turd industry

Fossilised faeces in Shitlington, confusing railway notices, organic water, and more

Duolingo gives language learning a jump start

First evidence that Duolingo, a new website that helps you learn a language while translating the web, actually works

Dolphins form life raft to help dying friend

A group of dolphins was caught on camera as they worked together to keep a struggling dolphin above water by forming an impromptu raft

Zoologger: Supercool squirrels go into the deep freeze

Hibernating Arctic ground squirrels drop their body temperatures to -4 °C, and shut their circadian clocks off for the winter

Greek economic crisis has cleared the air

The ongoing collapse of Greece's economy has caused a significant fall in air pollution, which can be detected by satellites

Body armour to scale up by mimicking flexible fish

Armour that is designed like the scales of the dragon fish could keep soldiers protected - while still letting them bend

Astrophile: Split personality tarnishes pulsars' rep

Pulsars were seen as cosmic timekeepers, but the quirky way in which one example shines suggests we can't take their behaviour for granted

Shrinking proton puzzle persists in new measurement

The most precise experiment yet to find the proton's radius confirms that it can appear smaller than our theories predict - is new physics needed?

Tight squeeze forces cells to take their medicine

A short sharp squash in these channels and a cell's membrane pops open - good news when you want to slip a molecule or nanoparticle in there

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Army kills six as Iraq demos call for PM to quit

FALLUJAH: Soldiers fired on an anti-government rally west of Baghdad on Friday, killing six demonstrators, the first deaths in weeks of increasingly angry protests calling for Iraq's premier to quit.

The shootings came as tens of thousands rallied in majority Sunni areas of the country, railing against alleged targeting of their minority community by the Shiite-led authorities, while in a cross-sectarian show of support, Shiite clerics called on the government to heed their demands.

Protesters had been moving to an area in east Fallujah, a predominantly Sunni town about 60 kilometres from Baghdad, but were blocked off by soldiers deployed from Baghdad, police Captain Nasser Awad told AFP. They began throwing bottles of water at the troops, who opened fire.

Six demonstrators were killed, all of them from gunshot wounds, said Khaled Khalaf al-Rawi, a doctor at Fallujah hospital. Rawi said 35 others were wounded, the majority of them as a result of gunfire.

Defence ministry spokesman Major General Mohammed al-Askari said an inquiry had been opened, and pledged that victims would be financially compensated.

Officials in Fallujah earlier said the army had vacated the town and had been ordered to transfer security responsibility to the police.

Mosques in Fallujah used loudspeakers to urge calm, and security forces imposed a curfew across the town.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called for restraint on the part of security forces in a statement issued by his office, but also blamed protesters for "raising tensions" and insisted the soldiers had been "attacked".

"This is what Al-Qaeda and terrorist groups are seeking to exploit," he said, referring to apparent sectarian tensions.

Similar demonstrations, meanwhile, took place in the nearby city of Ramadi, like Fallujah a mostly Sunni town in the western province of Anbar, as well as the cities of Samarra, Mosul and Baquba, all north of Baghdad.

Rallies also took place in Sunni neighbourhoods of the capital.

The longest-running of the protests, in Ramadi, has cut off a key trade route linking Baghdad to Jordan and Syria for a month.

"The government should respond immediately to the demands of protesters, before we start a revolution and put an end to it (the government)," said Hassan al-Zaidi, a tribal chief who was protesting in Baquba.

Demonstrators in Samarra held banners calling for Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to quit, while protesters in Baquba called for the "fall of the regime", and held banners that read, "Iran out, Baghdad always free", referring to Sunni claims that the government is controlled by Shiite neighbour Iran.

Rallies also called for freeing prisoners who demonstrators allege are being wrongfully held, with one banner in Mosul reading, "Enough talk -- break the doors of the prisons".

Shiite clerics, meanwhile, called for the government to heed demonstrators' demands.

"There must be agreement with the demands," Sadr al-Din al-Qubanji, linked to the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council political bloc, said in his Friday sermon in the holy Shiite city of Najaf, south of Baghdad. "Nobody can say that the government is clean from errors."

If the authorities did not work to address protesters' demands, Qubanji warned, "There is another way, which can collapse the entire political process in Iraq."

The protests have hardened opposition against Maliki and come amid a political crisis less than three months ahead of key provincial elections.

Demonstrators began by criticising the alleged exploitation of anti-terror laws to detain Sunnis wrongfully, but have since moved on to calling for the premier to quit.

The government has sought to curb the rallies by claiming to have released nearly 900 prisoners in recent weeks, with a senior minister publicly apologising for holding detainees without charge.

- AFP/jc

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Public school system's e-mail sends parents to sex site

The botched link in the e-mail led to this page. Rather elegant.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

School officials don't always do their homework.

Errors creep in -- sometimes creepy ones.

Still, who cannot feel a pang of guffaw-suppressing empathy for whomever wrote an e-mail on behalf of the Chicago Public Schools system?

As CBS Chicago sniggers it, parents were being notified by the Schools system of adjustments to the Illinois Standards Achievement Test.

Helpfully, the e-mail notification included a link to the Illinois State Board of Education Web site.

More Technically Incorrect

Perhaps, though, there was a copy-paste failure. Or perhaps the author decided to type out the whole link. Or perhaps... well, anyway.

Somehow, an extra letter was added to the link, which led to something less than a happy ending.

For this link directed parents to a site -- Isbel.com -- where a group "works together to explore and enrich the modern woman's sex life and sensuality."

I am fairly sure that the Chicago Public Schools system wasn't suggesting that certain mothers of the kids needed to expand their sexual horizons.

I am also fairly sure that this site featured an image of the Kama Sutra -- which is not on the school syllabus.

The Schools system apologized and sent out an amended e-mail.

I wonder how many new enthusiasts Isbel.com secured before the amended e-mail went out.

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5 Amazing Animal Navigators

A house cat named Holly, which made news this week for trekking nearly 200 miles (320 kilometers) back to her hometown, isn't the only supernavigator in the animal kingdom.

"Any animal that comes back to the right place after a long travel, or comes back to the same place again and again following a major movement, is amazing," said Martin Wikelski, a migration expert at the Max Planck Institute. (Read about great animal migrations in National Geographic magazine.)

Many animals have a built-in magnetic system, "like a regular compass," said Wikelski, who is also a National Geographic emerging explorer. (National Geographic News is part of the National Geographic Society.)

However, much is still unknown about how animals navigate—for instance, no one can explain Holly's incredible journey, the New York Times reported.

But more and more research is pointing to the role of smell in navigation, Wikelski noted.

"It's one of the most important mechanisms to tell you where you are and lead you home."

Wikelski told us about five impressive navigators that he believes push the limits of what's possible.

1. Eels. These long, bony fish make epic, mysterious treks across entire oceans. The European eel, for example, is born in European rivers but travels all the way to the Sargasso Sea (map), a distance of thousands of miles, to spawn. The baby eels then return to European rivers and, once it's time for them to spawn, follow their parents' path to very same place in the Sargasso Sea. "Nobody really knows how they do it," Wikelski said.

2. Bar-Tailed Godwit. This shorebird can fly in one go from its Alaska breeding grounds across the entire globe to New Zealand. In 2007, a female bar-tailed godwit got a feather in its cap for the longest nonstop bird migration ever measured—7,145 miles (11,500 kilometers) from Alaska to New Zealand. The bird completed the journey in just nine days, according to biologists who tracked the flight using satellite tags.

3. Blackpoll Warbler. This North American forest dweller has figured out an express way of getting to its winter refuge in Venezuela, Wikelski said. The bird fattens itself up before snagging a ride on a trade wind, sailing from the northeastern U.S. to South America in a hundred hours—entirely over the open ocean. "That's completely crazy," he said. On the way back home, the bird takes the more scenic route, stopping on land to rest and refuel.

4. Mexican Free-Tailed Bat. These flying mammals are common in Texas, where they form colonies in the millions. Wikelski, who was involved in a tracking study of the bats, discovered that they can fly up to 40 miles (70 kilometers) from their home caves in search of moths or mosquitoes. "At some point they turn around and … basically know how to find [their way] back," Wikelski said. Evidence suggests the animals use both landmarks and the smell of their fellow cave bats to point them home. (See bat videos.)

5. Sahara Desert Ant. These insects travel relatively long distances—up to 0.3 mile (0.5 kilometer)—from their central nest sites to search for food. Even though the ants run chaotically in many directions, they remember exactly how far they've gone by counting their steps, as well as navigating via polarized light patterns from the sun, Wikelski said. Finding their way back home is critical for these desert denizens—if they stay outside too long, they'll get fried in the sun.

These are just a sampling of incredible animals on the move. What other animal navigators have you observed? Tell us your stories in comments and we'll showcase the best ones.

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Mars Rover Celebrates Milestone on Red Planet

It was never supposed to last this long. When the Mars rover Opportunity settled on the Martian surface nine years ago today, mission managers at NASA said they would be pleased if it lasted for 90 days.

Instead, it's been 3,201 days, and still counting. The rover has driven 22.03 miles, mostly at a snail's pace, from one crater to another, stopping for months at a time in the frigid Martian winters. The six motorized wheels, rated to turn 2.5 million times, have lasted 70 million, and are all still working.

"Opportunity is still in very good health, especially considering what it's gone through," said John Callas, manager of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover project. The surface of Mars is a pretty tough place; there can be temperature fluctuations of a hundred degrees each day. That's pretty hard on the hardware."

Video: '7 Minutes of Terror: A Landing on Mars

When Opportunity and its twin rover, Spirit, reached Mars in January 2004, there was a fair bit of sniping that NASA, with all that 90-day talk, was playing down expectations. It escalated when Steve Squyres of Cornell University, the principal investigator for the missions, said things like, "We're on Sol 300 of a 90-Sol mission." (A Sol is a day on Mars, and lasts 24 hours, 39 minutes.) Callas and others have insisted that the prediction was based on engineering, not a nod to public relations.

"There was an expectation that airfall dust would accumulate on the rover, so that its solar panels would be able to gather less electricity," said Callas. "We saw that on Pathfinder," a small rover that landed on Mars in 1997." The cold climate was also expected to be hard on the rovers' batteries, and changes in temperature from night to day would probably pop a circuit or two.

Instead, the temperatures weren't quite as tough as engineers had expected, and the rovers proved tougher. They did become filthy as the red Martian dust settled on them, reducing the sunlight on the solar panels -- but every now and then a healthy gust came along, surprising everyone on Earth by cleaning the ships off.

Click Here for Pictures: Postcards From Mars

Spirit, in hilly territory on the other side of the planet, finally got stuck in crusty soil in 2009, and its radio went silent the next year. But Opportunity, though it's had some close calls, is -- well, you remember those commercials about the Energizer bunny.

So what do you do with an aging rover on a faraway planet? You keep using it. In its first weeks, NASA said Opportunity found chemical proof that there had once been standing water on the surface of Mars -- good news if you're looking for signs that the planet could once have been friendly to life. Since then, it's been sent to other places, with rocks and soil that are probably older, and with clay that may have been left by ancient rivers.

About 20 NASA staff members still work full-time on Opportunity at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Another 60 split their time between Opportunity and other projects, such as the Curiosity rover that landed last August. About 100 scientists, doing research on Mars, pop in and out.

In a few months, Callas said, Opportunity will head to an area nicknamed Cape Tribulation. The clay there could be rich in the minerals suggestive of past life.

They haven't done much to mark the ninth anniversary or the 3,200th Martian day, just a get-together earlier this week during a previously scheduled science conference. After that, Callas said, it was back to work.

"It's like keeping your car going," he said, "without ever having a chance to change the oil."

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Keppel Corp's net profit falls 22% on-year in Q4

SINGAPORE: Falling margins from building oil rigs has hit the bottomline of Keppel Corp.

Net profit for the world's leading rig builder fell 22 per cent on-year to S$305 million in the fourth quarter last year.

Still, full year profit for the conglomerate came in 15 per cent to S$2.24 billion.

Despite lower net profit in the three months ended Dec 31, Keppel Corp still declared a final dividend of 27 cents per share.

As part of its 45th anniversary, Keppel Corp is handing out more goodies to its shareholders.

The company has proposed to distribute one Keppel REIT unit for every five Keppel Corp shares.

That is about 27.4 cents per share based on Keppel REIT's closing price of S$1.37 on Thursday.

Together with the interim dividend of 18 cents, total distribution for 2012 will be 72.4 cents per share.

Keppel Corp said the lower net profit was partly due to lower contributions from its offshore and marine unit.

Offshore and Marine's contribution was 12 per cent lower from a higher base in 2011 when margins were at record highs. It contributes to half of Keppel Corp's net profits.

"Keen rivalry from Chinese and Korean yards have suppressed prices and squeezed margins on newbuilds," said Choo Chiau Beng, chief executive officer at Keppel Corp. "In 2013, we will be completing a record of 22 newbuild units."

Analysts remained upbeat of Keppel's prospects going forward.

They say their financial results still outperformed market expectations.

Keppel Corp expects crude oil prices to stay above US$100 per barrel, supporting the need for more global exploration and production.

But global challenges like the slower US economy and the eurozone crisis from last year will continue to pose uncertainties for Keppel Corp's business.

Keppel Corp's property arm, led by the listed Keppel Land, boosted the group's earnings.

Net profit for the property division was 2.5 times higher than in 2011, offsetting the lower earnings from business in the offshore and marine, and infrastructure.

But Keppel Corp does not expect its property arm to perform better this year.

This is because recognition from sales of completed units at its development Reflections at Keppel Bay is expected to be lower this financial year.

- CNA/xq

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French court tells Twitter it must hand over names of racist tweeters

A French court ruled today that Twitter must turn over the identities users who post racist tweets.

(Credit:
Illustration by James Martin/CNET)

Twitter must hand over the identities of users in France who post racist tweets, a French court ruled today.

According to AFP, the court's ruling stemmed from a test case "that pitted the right to free speech against laws banning hate speech," and answered a petition made in October by the French Union of Jewish Students (UEJF), which had claimed that many anti-Semitic tweets had violated the law in the European country.

The UEJF had demanded that Twitter do a better job of policing obviously anti-Semitic tweets.

Twitter said today in a statement that "we are currently reviewing the court's decision."

In October, Twitter was awash in anti-Semitic French-language tweets tied to the hashtag "#unbonjuif" ("a good Jew"), prompting many to argue that social media in general, and Twitter in particular, are cesspools of objectionable content (article in French). A big element of the complaints aimed at Twitter was that it was too hard for users to report objectionable tweets.

At the time, Twitter rebutted that contention, pointing out that a simple Google search for, say, "Report Twitter behavior" returns a number of different methods for reporting, or flagging, abusive posts or users.

Twitter also said in October that it is concerned about egregious user behavior and can, and sometimes does, take action against perpetrators of such activity. The company said, for example, that it can police trending topics, proactively removing any such terms that are considered offensive from its highly influential real-time list of popular subjects, such as "swastika." Today, AFP reported that Twitter had deleted some of the anti-Semitic tweets in October.

But Twitter has also long emphasized freedom of user expression, and the company said in October that on its own, there's nothing about a term like "good Jew" that's inherently anti-semitic. In a case like the one in France, it's up to users to report abusive tweets, the company has contended, and it reserves the right not to take action unless such posts are clearly illegal in the country where the tweet was reported.

It is almost certainly that position that led the UEJF to take its case to the French courts.

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Deformed Dolphin Accepted Into New Family

In 2011, behavioral ecologists Alexander Wilson and Jens Krause of the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Germany were surprised to discover that a group of sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus)—animals not usually known for forging bonds with other species—had taken in an adult bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus).

The researchers observed the group in the ocean surrounding the Azores (map)—about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) off the coast of Lisbon, Portugal—for eight days as the dolphin traveled, foraged, and played with both the adult whales and their calves. When the dolphin rubbed its body against the whales, they would sometimes return the gesture.

Among terrestrial animals, cross-species interactions are not uncommon. These mostly temporary alliances are forged for foraging benefits and protection against predators, said Wilson.

They could also be satisfying a desire for the company of other animals, added marine biologist John Francis, vice president for research, conservation, and exploration at the National Geographic Society (the Society owns National Geographic news).

Photographs of dogs nursing tiger cubs, stories of a signing gorilla adopting a pet cat, and videos of a leopard caring for a baby baboon have long circulated the web and caught national attention.

A Rare Alliance

And although dolphins are known for being sociable animals, Wilson called the alliance between sperm whale and bottlenose dolphin rare, as it has never, to his knowledge, been witnessed before.

This association may have started with something called bow riding, a common behavior among dolphins during which they ride the pressure waves generated by the bow of a ship or, in this case, whales, suggested Francis.

"Hanging around slower creatures to catch a ride might have been the first advantage [of such behavior]," he said, adding that this may have also started out as simply a playful encounter.

Wilson suggested that the dolphin's peculiar spinal shape made it more likely to initiate an interaction with the large and slow-moving whales. "Perhaps it could not keep up with or was picked on by other members of its dolphin group," he said in an email.

Default

But the "million-dollar question," as Wilson puts it, is why the whales accepted the lone dolphin. Among several theories presented in an upcoming paper in Aquatic Mammals describing the scientists' observations, they propose that the dolphin may have been regarded as nonthreatening and that it was accepted by default because of the way adult sperm whales "babysit" their calves.

Sperm whales alternate their dives between group members, always leaving one adult near the surface to watch the juveniles. "What is likely is that the presence of the calves—which cannot dive very deep or for very long—allowed the dolphin to maintain contact with the group," Wilson said.

Wilson doesn't believe the dolphin approached the sperm whales for help in protecting itself from predators, since there aren't many dolphin predators in the waters surrounding the Azores.

But Francis was not so quick to discount the idea. "I don't buy that there is no predator in the lifelong experience of the whales and dolphins frequenting the Azores," he said.

He suggested that it could be just as possible that the sperm whales accepted the dolphin for added protection against their own predators, like the killer whale (Orcinus orca), while traveling. "They see killer whales off the Azores, and while they may not be around regularly, it does not take a lot of encounters to make [other] whales defensive," he said.

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Exterminator Charged in Pa. Doctor's Murder

An exterminator named Joseph Smith was arrested and charged today in the strangling and burning death of Philadelphia pediatrician Melissa Ketunuti.

Smith, 36, had been sent to Ketunuti's home on a service call where the two got into "some kind of argument" in Ketunuti's basement on Monday, Capt. James Clark of the Philadelphia police department said this morning.

"At her home they got into an argument. It went terribly wrong. He struck her, and knocked her to the ground," Clark said. "Immediately he jumped on top of her, started strangling her. She passed out, and then he set her body on fire."

Clark said Smith burned the woman's body "to hide evidence like DNA." He said "at some point, he bound her up." The doctor was found with her hands and feet tied behind her back.

The captain said that before today's arrest Smith's record consisted of only "minor traffic offenses."

Philadelphia Police Department/AP Photo

Pa. Doctor Killing: Person of Interest in Custody Watch Video

Philadelphia Doctor's Murder Leaves Police Baffled Watch Video

Police received a call from Ketunuti's dog-walker about the house fire around 12:30 p.m. Monday, and once inside found Ketunuti with her hands and feet bound. They believe Smith hit her and strangled her with a rope, causing her to pass out, and then bound her body and set fire to it in order to destroy evidence, including DNA evidence.

Ketunuti, 35, was fully clothed and police do not believe she was sexually assaulted.

She was a doctor at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and had lived alone in the Graduate Hospital neighborhood of the city for about three years.

Clark said that homicide detectives scoured the neighborhood for surveillance videos from nearby stores and businesses, and through the video identified the suspect.

Smith was spotted on video getting out of the vehicle and following Ketunuti to her home. The man left her home after an hour and was seen on video circling her home.

Detectives drove to Clark's home in Levittown, Pa., outside of Philadelphia where he lives with a girlfriend and her child, on Wednesday night and brought him back to the Philadelphia police station.

A silver Ford truck was towed from Smith's home, which was the same truck spotted on surveillance video Monday in Ketunuti's neighborhood, sources told ABC News affiliate WPVI.

There, he gave statements that led police to charge him with the murders, Clark said.

Smith will face charges of murder, arson, and abuse of a corpse.

Ketunuti's hospital issued a statement Tuesday that she was "a warm, caring, earnest, bright young woman with her whole future ahead of her," adding that she will be deeply missed.

"[She was] super pleasant, really nice," one neighbor said. "Just super friendly."

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Snaps from space: Bleak landscapes become abstract art

18:27 23 January 2013

Yesterday, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield dropped a puck from space for his favourite hockey team's opening game. In the meantime, he's been busy tweeting his latest photos of astounding landscapes from the International Space Station. Here are a few of our favourites. Sandrine Ceurstemont

Image 1 of 6

The Australian outback looks like an abstract painting in this view, its iron-rich soil appearing even more vivid from far above. Ridges in its flat topography resemble brushstrokes.

(Image: Chris Hadfield/Canadian Space Agency/ISS)

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