Australian DJs Behind Prank Call Under Fire

An outpouring of anger is being directed today at the two Australian radio hosts after the death of a nurse who was caught in the DJs' prank call to hospital where Kate Middleton was treated earlier this week.

Lord Glenarthur, the chairman of King Edward VII's Hospital - the U.K. hospital where the Duchess of Cambridge was receiving treatment, condemned the prank in a letter to the Max Moore-Wilton, chairman of Southern Cross Austereo, the Australian radio station's parent company.

Glenarthur said the prank humiliated "two dedicated and caring nurses," and the consequences were "tragic beyond words," The Associated Press reported.

DJs Mel Greig and Michael Christian, radio shock jocks at Sydney's 2Day FM have been taken off the air, but the company they work for did not fire them or condemn them.

"I think that it's a bit early to be drawing conclusions from what is really a deeply tragic matter," Rhys Holleran, CEO of Southern Cross Austereo told a news conference in Sydney. "I mean, our main concern is for the family. I don't think anyone could have reasonably foreseen that this was going to be a result."

Nurse Jacintha Saldanha was found dead Friday morning after police were called to an address near the hospital to "reports of a woman found unconscious," according to a statement from Scotland Yard.

Circumstances of her death are still being investigated, but are not suspicious at this stage, authorities said Friday.

Following news of Saldanha's death, commentary on social media included posts expressing shock, sadness and anger.

Nurse Duped by 'Queen's' Prank Call Found Dead Watch Video

Jacintha Saldanha, Nurse at Kate Middleton's Hospital, Found Dead Watch Video

A sampling of some of the twitter posts directed at the DJs included: "you scumbag, hope you get what's coming to you" and "I hope you're happy now."

The hospital said that Saldanha worked at the hospital for more than four years. They called her a "first-class nurse" and "a well-respected and popular member of the staff."

The hospital extended their "deepest sympathies" to family and friends, saying that "everyone is shocked" at this "tragic event."

"I am devastated with the tragic loss of my beloved wife Jacintha in tragic circumstances, she will be laid to rest in Shirva, India," Saldanha's husband posted on Facebook.

The duchess spent three days at the hospital undergoing treatment for hyperemesis gravidarum, severe or debilitating nausea and vomiting. She was released from the hospital on Thursday morning.

"The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are deeply saddened to learn of the death of Jacintha Saldanha," a spokesman from St. James Palace said in a statement.

On Friday, Greig and Christian had been gloating about their successful call to the hospital, in which they pretended to be Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles and were able to obtain personal information about the Duchess's serious condition.

"You know what they were the worst accents ever and when we made that phone call we were sure a hundred people at least before us would have tried the same thing," said Grieg on air. She added with a laugh, "we were expecting to be hung up on we didn't even know what to say [when] we got through."

"We got through and now the entire world is talking, of course," said her co-host Christian.

When the royal impersonators called the hospital, Saldanha put through to a second nurse who told the royal impersonators that Kate was "quite stable" and hadn't "had any retching."

The hospital apologized for the mistake.

"The call was transferred through to a ward, and a short conversation was held with one of the nursing staff," the hospital said in a statement. "King Edward VII's Hospital deeply regrets this incident."

"This was a foolish prank call that we all deplore," John Lofthouse, the hospital's chief executive, said in the statement. "We take patient confidentiality extremely seriously, and we are now reviewing our telephone protocols."

The radio station also apologized for the prank call.

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Today on New Scientist: 9 December 2012

Climate talks stumbling towards a deal

As the Qatar climate summit looks set to run into the weekend, we look at some key issues, such as compensation for poor countries harmed by climate change

Twin spacecraft map the mass of the man in the moon

Two satellites called Ebb and Flow have revealed the fine variations in the moon's surface with the most detailed gravity map ever

Just cut down on fat to shed weight

A review of studies involving 75,000 people shows that simply eating less fat made them lighter

North-east Japan quake rattles same fault as last year

A new quake off Japan's Pacific coast revives memories of 2011 tsunami; Fukushima nuclear power station "undamaged"

YouTube reorganises video with automated channels

Software that automatically classifies video into channels catering to specific interests is YouTube's latest ploy to become the future of television

A mathematician's magnificent failure to explain life

An attempt to explain life was career suicide for mathematician Dorothy Wrinch, we learn from Marjorie Senechal's biography I Died for Beauty

Parasite makes mice fearless by hijacking immune cells

The Toxoplasma parasite does its dirty work by getting immune cells to make a chemical normally found in the brain

'Specialist knowledge is useless and unhelpful'

Kaggle.com has turned data prediction into sport. People competing to solve problems are outclassing the specialists, says its president Jeremy Howard

Feedback: Numerical value of 'don't know'

The value of indifference, carbon-free sugar, scientists massacred in the nude, and more

Friday Illusion: 100-year-old quilt reveals 3D vortex

See a mind-bending effect crafted into a recently discovered quilt that changes depending on its colours and dimensions

Space-time waves may be hiding in dead star pulses

The first direct detection of gravitational waves may happen in 2013, if new studies of pulsars affected by galaxy mergers are correct

2012 Flash Fiction shortlist: Go D

From nearly 130 science-inspired stories, our judge Alice LaPlante has narrowed down a fantastic shortlist. Story five of five: Go D by Michael Rolfe

Captured: the moment photosynthesis changed the world

For the first time, geologists have found evidence of how modern photosynthesis evolved 2.4 billion years ago

Commute to work on the roller coaster train

A Japanese train based on a theme park ride could make getting around cleaner - and more fun

BSE infected cattle have prions in saliva

The discovery of tiny levels of prions in cow saliva might pave way for a test for BSE before symptoms develop, and raises questions about transmission

Space bigwigs offer billion-dollar private moon trips

Robots aren't the only ones heading to the moon. The Golden Spike Company will sell you a ticket whether you want to explore, mine or just show off

Human eye proteins detect red beyond red

Tweaking the structure of a protein found in the eye has given it the ability to react to red light that is normally unperceivable

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Protesters break through barrier round Egypt palace

CAIRO: More than 10,000 protesters opposing Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi swarmed the square in front of his Cairo palace on Friday evening, breaking through barbed wire barriers protecting the compound.

A cordon of soldiers prevented the crowd from nearing the palace's main gate, but elsewhere protesters sprayed graffiti on the outside walls, telling Morsi to "Go" and leave power, AFP correspondents at the scene said.

There was no visible violence, but tensions were high after clashes at the same spot on Wednesday between pro- and anti-Morsi supporters left seven people dead and more than 600 injured.

Several army tanks were stationed in the square and nearby but made no movement against the protesters, some of whom clambered atop them to declare the army was "hand in hand" with them.

That was reminiscent of the popular uprising that ousted long-time president Hosni Mubarak early last year, when tanks stood idle amid massive protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square, as protesters mixed with soldiers.

The crowd also shouted "We want to see the fall of the regime" -- a slogan common during the anti-Mubarak revolt.

The increasingly strident calls for Morsi to step down followed an address on Thursday in which the president dismissed demands he give up sweeping new powers he decreed for himself two weeks ago and postpone a December 15 referendum on a constitution drafted by a panel of Islamist allies.

Leaders of the main opposition group, the National Salvation Front, rebuffed a grudging offer from Morsi to talk with them about the political crisis his decisions have triggered.

Both Morsi's Islamist backers and the largely secular opposition have dug in their heels in the confrontation, raising the prospect of further escalation.

In his speech, Morsi sought to portray elements of the opposition as "thugs" allied to remnants of Mubarak's regime.

The Front shot back, accusing the president of "dividing Egyptians between his 'supporters of legitimacy'... and his opponents."

The opposition sees the decree as a brazen power grab, and the draft constitution as an attempt to quash Egypt's secular underpinnings in favour of Islamic aspirations.

Demonstrators taking to Cairo's streets said they were determined to stop Morsi.

"We will use any means to bring down the regime," said a young man in his 20s, Ahmad Dewedar, camping out in Tahrir Square, one of the other focal points of protest.

"We won't be peaceful forever," warned a fellow activist Mahmud Ghazawi, 35.

But determination flashed just as brightly among those backing Morsi.

Late Friday, police fired tear gas at hundreds of Islamist protesters, mostly hardline Salafists, who tried to storming the Cairo studios of private Egyptian television channels critical of Morsi's supporters.

Prominent Salafist leader Hazim Abu Ismail had called for the demonstrations on his Twitter and Facebook accounts in order to "cleanse the media" of reporting they see as biased against the Islamists' cause.

Many Egyptian media say the Muslim Brotherhood was seeking to suppress freedom of expression through the new draft constitution.

At a Cairo funeral on Friday for several of the seven killed this week and said to be Muslim Brotherhood members, pro-Morsi supporters dismissed the public protests against the president.

"All the people are with us, with the (draft) constitution," said one Brotherhood supporter attending the service in the Al-Azhar mosque.

That unquestioning backing was not shared by Egypt's top Islamic body, which on Thursday called on Morsi to suspend the decree.

The demonstrations seen this week were the biggest since Morsi took office in June with a slim election victory.

The United States and European Union have called for dialogue to resolve the crisis.

US President Barack Obama expressed "deep concern" in a call to Morsi on Thursday, the White House said.

And on Friday, UN human rights chief Navi Pillay criticised the draft constitution and "the way the process has been short-circuited," saying "people are right to be very concerned."

She highlighted the proposed charter's perceived weaknesses in upholding human rights and gender equality, the primacy of Islamic sharia law in the text and its potential to give the president "excessive power" over the judiciary.

- AFP/fa

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Want to see what the first GamePad looked like?

A look at the first GamePad.

(Credit:
Nintendo)

Nintendo today released an image of what was its first GamePad prototype.

In the latest Iwata Asks feature, in which Nintendo President Satoru Iwata holds discussions with employees on a host of topics, the company shared what was the first prototype for the
Wii U's GamePad.

The first "GamePad" was made up of two
Wii Remotes that were connected to an LCD display with double-sided tape. Two control knobs on the sides of the display connected to the Wii Remote.

According to Iwata, the GamePad prototype was used to develop "a lot of prototype software." He went on to say that the prototype helped lead the company to develop Nintendo Land, the title bundled with the Wii U Deluxe Set.

Nintendo launched its Wii U last month. The device is designed to work with the GamePad, which offers a 6.2-inch LCD and full motion control. The GamePad is designed to allow users to play games on dual displays, as well as continuing playing a title when they're away from their televisions.

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Natural Gas Nation: EIA Sees U.S. Future Shaped by Fracking

Truck stops will need restyled fuel pumps. New factories, and some old ones, will whir to life. Ports will send new tankers onto the open seas, heralding the return of the United States to the top of the global energy scene.

All these changes already are in motion, according to the new U.S. government annual energy outlook, a document that paints the clearest picture yet of the transformation being wrought by the natural gas boom.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Wednesday released projections that affirmed the trend already tracked by numerous private forecasters and the International Energy Agency: The growth of U.S. energy production, particularly oil and natural gas, will far outstrip the rise in demand, slashing imports and moderating prices for consumers. But in table after table of numbers, the government's energy analysts detail for the first time the widespread impact of the new abundance—especially the changes due to natural gas from hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

EIA anticipates the production boom from Texas to Pennsylvania will ripple through every segment of the economy. But the projections, based entirely on U.S. government policy now in place and assuming no technological breakthroughs, see more evolution than revolution in the nation's energy future-an outlook still deeply dependent upon fossil energy. (See related story: "U.S. to Overtake Saudi Arabia, Russia as World's Top Energy Producer")

Trucking Inroads

EIA projects that the use of natural gas as a fuel for vehicles will rise nearly 12 percent per year through 2040, more than double the agency's outlook last year. That increase will be almost entirely due to some segments of the trucking industry changing their fueling habits, and buying new rigs equipped to run on liquefied natural gas (LNG). (See related story: "Trading Oil for Natural Gas in the Truck Lane")

Big freight haulers will be willing to fork out extra cash for this capital investment, EIA's analysts reckon, for one reason: They'll make the money back and save in the long run, as the price of LNG will remain 40 percent below the price of petroleum diesel fuel for the next three decades. That price spread, perhaps more than any other numbers in the outlook, conveys just how durable the fracking boom appears to be in the eyes of the analysts. By 2040, EIA projects that the use of natural gas in heavy-duty vehicles will be displacing 700,000 million barrels of petroleum diesel fuel a day.

But the picture painted by the government analysts is far from the vision of a natural gas superhighway touted by tycoon T. Boone Pickens and other advocates. From providing less than 1 percent of the energy used in U.S. transportation today, the EIA projects the share fueled by LNG and compressed natural gas (used in many city buses today) will reach only about 4 percent by 2040, based on current policy and technology. Some trucking companies may be able to work out the logistics of having adequate LNG fueling stations for their fleets. But average drivers will not.

"If you took 20 top scientists and put them in a room and said, 'Design the ideal fuel for light-duty vehicles, those men and women would invent gasoline, and maybe diesel fuel, because the energy density you can get in a tank for a relatively small car is tremendous," said Adam Sieminski, who took over this summer as EIA administrator after a career in energy forecasting, most recently as chief energy economist for Deutsche Bank. "What really holds natural gas back is the infrastructure to refuel, and how much energy you can put into a vehicle is limited."

Industrial Renewal

U.S. manufacturing output will increase by an average 2 percent per year over three decades, according to the EIA outlook. That's 20 percent more rapidly than the analysts projected a year ago, and it's due to the extended outlook for low-priced natural gas due to the shale-drilling boom.

Numerous petrochemical companies—Dow, Formosa Plastics, Shell, Chevron Phillips, Westlake Chemicals, and Nova Chemicals, to name a few—have announced plans to build, reopen, or expand North American production. That's because they now anticipate long-term access to low-priced natural gas, which they use as a feedstock to make thousands of plastic, adhesive, and polyester products. It's an astounding turnaround for the industry, which as recently as 2004 closed down 70 U.S. facilities as uneconomic due to high-priced natural gas.

Now, between the ramp-up in petrochemical plants and an anticipated increase in production by the energy-hungry metals, the EIA's outlook for the U.S. economy is "fairly positive in the industrial sector of the economy," Siemenski said.

But this gravy train will have its limits. After 2025, the EIA sees other nations developing and installing newer and more energy-efficient facilities that compete effectively with U.S. chemical plants and limit their output.

Export Battle

It already is clear that the chemical industry understands well the risks of this global competition for resources. That's why it is expected to be a major player in an upcoming battle in Washington over another one of EIA's projections: The rapid U.S. move into exports of natural gas. EIA projects exports of natural gas will rise to 1.6 trillion cubic feet by 2027, almost double the agency's projection of a year ago. (See related story: "With U.S. Natural Gas Booming, a Move to Send It Overseas")

Exporting natural gas by ship is no easy matter. It must be super-chilled to (-260°F/ -162.2°C) at "liquefaction" plants, shrinking it to 1/600th of its original size to be shipped in specialized insulated tankers with bubble-like domes. The facilities cost billions of dollars to build and require government approval.

So far, U.S. regulators have proposed nine LNG export projects, with at least seven other sites being surveyed as possible liquefaction sites. EIA's projection counts only the one project that has received approval, Sabine Pass in Louisiana, which is expected to begin operations in 2015.

But the chemical industry has raised concerns about sending its natural gas fuel and plastics feedstock overseas. "We're all for exporting natural gas," said Dow Chemical Chief Executive Andrew Liveris at the energy industry's big annual IHS Ceraweek conference in Houston earlier this year. "We just want to see it exported in solid form instead of liquid form."  Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden, incoming chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, is expected to take up the issue of limiting LNG exports, having expressed concern that exports of natural gas could raise the price of the fuel for U.S. consumers.

Charles Ebinger, director of the foreign policy and energy security initiative at the Brookings Institution, spearheaded a study earlier this year that concluded that LNG exports would be a net benefit to the U.S. economy, findings he said were echoed in an economic analysis released this week by the U.S. Department of Energy. But he anticipated a political battle: "There are people on the Hill who will fight this fight, saying we shouldn't be exporting our national patrimony."

No Revolution

But just as natural gas is not expected to unseat oil in fueling vehicles, neither is it projected to displace coal in firing U.S. electricity—at least with current policy in place. The share of electricity produced by natural gas is expected to be 30 percent by 2040, with coal at 37 percent, and nuclear at 18 percent—not too different from their shares today. Non-hydroelectric renewable energy such as solar and wind is on track to grow from just 5 percent to 11 percent of all U.S. electricity by 2040. (See related interactive: The Global Electricity Mix)

EIA's outlook contains some good news for the climate: Over the next three decades, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions are on track to remain 5 percent below their 2005 level. Even though the number of miles traveled on U.S. highways is projected to climb—40 percent for cars and 90 percent for trucks by 2040—the amount of energy used for transportation will stay flat, due to a massive shift to more far more fuel-efficient vehicles.

But the EIA projection should give pause to anyone seeking a wholesale U.S. energy transformation. The analysis sees little uptick in all-electric vehicles; even by 2040, EVs will account for less than one percent of cars sold, assuming today's policies. Advanced biofuels languish.

Wind and solar energy grow strongly, but never enough to take more than a bite out of fossil-fuel energy, which EIA projects will continue to feed 78 percent of all U.S. energy demand 28 years from now, barely down from 82 percent today.

Without new climate policy or a leap in technology, the EIA sees an energy future being shaped by the rush of new oil and natural gas.

This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.

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'Fiscal Cliff' Talks: Tax Increases Seem Inevitable

Dec 7, 2012 11:51am

Another week comes to a close with seemingly little progress in the on-going “fiscal cliff” negotiations. With only 24 days left to negotiate and the House of Representatives heading out of town for a long weekend, the outlook for a deal before December 31 is looking increasingly slim, and Republicans and Democrats don’t appear to be moving away from the right and the left and toward some middle ground.

But this week, several Republicans seemed to voice a sense of inevitability on a key issue in cliff negotiations–an increase in tax rates. While Republicans continue to be staunchly opposed to raising tax rates–one of the major sticking points in the discussions–GOP House and Senate members this week shared their belief that a hike in rates is going to happen.

Get more pure politics at ABCNews.com/Politics and a lighter take on the news at OTUSNews.com

“We have no leverage on that, so whether we want taxes to go up or not they’re going to,” Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn told ABC’s Jonathan Karl on Thursday. “We can’t stop that from happening. But the real elephant in the room is entitlements.”

“The sense was that there’s a growing number of folks in our party that are saying, you know what, the president has won this round relative to the rates, but we need to you to sit down and get the second half of the deal and that’s the spending,” Ohio Republican Congressman Steve LaTourette said on CNN’s “Starting Point with Soledad O’Brien.

LaTourette’s office did not immediately respond to ABC’s inquiry for a follow-up statement.

The reason for this sense of inevitability, which both LaTourette and Coburn made clear were not to be confused with a desire to raise taxes, is in large part simply a factor of time. On January 1, if a deal has not been reached, the combination of expiring Bush-era tax cuts and Obama era-tax cuts will yield an increase in tax rates. Taxes are expected to rise by more than $500 billion if this occurs–an average of about $3,500 per household, according to calculations by the Tax Policy Center. And this week the Obama administration expressed a willingness to pass that deadline and go over the cliff if Republicans don’t agree to raising tax rates on top earners.

“Oh, absolutely,” Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said in an interview on CNBC when asked if the administration was willing to accept the impending tax increases and spending cuts. “There’s no prospect for an agreement that doesn’t involve those rates going up on the top 2 percent of the wealthiest.”

It’s unclear how this reality will figure into the negotiations. Republicans and Democrats are both walking a tight rope in the negotiations, but polling indicates that Republicans are likely to bear the brunt of the blame if the country goes over the cliff.  A newly released Washington Post/Pew Poll found that 53 percent of those surveyed said that they would point the finger at Republicans if Congress and the administration fail to reach a deal, while just 27 percent would blame President Obama.

“A slew of polls have made it abundantly obvious that Republicans will take a big political hit if the country goes off the political cliff,” says Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “Yes, that won’t affect loads of GOP incumbents, but it WILL affect some, a couple dozen in more moderate states and swing districts. Plus, it influences Republican chances to make progress in the Senate in 2014.”

Despite the seemingly bleak outlook right now though, Sabato notes that the timing is actually favorable right now for both party’s to strike an agreement.

“The underlying conditions are not bad for a deal. The next election is two years away, and the president’s preferences on tax rates received something of a mandate in November,” Sabato said. ”Everyone can see the outlines of a reasonable compromise. The rates for wealthier Americans go up but not by as much as Obama wants. The Republicans acquiesce–though they let their base see that they are being dragged kicking and screaming to the rate increase. In exchange, they get some entitlement reform and spending reductions.”

SHOWS: World News

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Human eye proteins detect red beyond red

We all see red every now and again, but imagine seeing red beyond red. Researchers have altered the structure of a protein normally found in the human eye so that it can absorb a type of red light that we cannot normally see. The new protein could, in theory, give us the ability to see reds that are currently beyond our visible spectrum.

Colour vision in nearly all animals depends on specialised chemicals called chromophores, which sit inside proteins and absorb different wavelengths of light. Specific protein structures are thought to determine the absorption spectrum of the chromophores within.

To better understand the chemistry behind colour vision, Babak Borhan at Michigan State University in East Lansing and his colleagues engineered a series of mutations which altered the structure of human chromophore-containing proteins. These structural changes altered the electrostatic properties within the protein, which in turn changed the absorption spectrum of the chromophores.

The team created 11 different artificial protein structures and used spectrophotometry – a technology that compares the intensity of light going in and out of a sample – to identify which wavelengths they could absorb. Chromophores within one particular protein were able to absorb red light with a wavelength of around 644 nanometres – tantalisingly close to the wavelength of infrared light, which starts at around 750 nanometres. This was unexpected since natural chromophores have a maximum absorption of around 560 nanometres.

"We were surprised," says Borhan. "But I still don't know if we're at the upper limit of absorption yet. I've speculated about 10 times and been proved wrong."

Green tinge

If these proteins were present in the eye you would be able to see red light that is invisible to you now, says co-author James Geiger, also at Michigan State University. But since objects reflect a mixture of light, the world would not necessarily always appear more red. "Something that looked white before would now look green with your new super red vision," he says.

Marco Garavelli at the University of Bologna in Italy says that in the far future, "one could dare to foresee mutations in visual receptors that extend our ability to see colours beyond the natural spectrum". However, he points out that it is not clear how these engineered proteins would affect neural signalling in the brain.

For now, Borhan is hoping that the modified proteins might prove useful in imaging technology. To track specific cells of interest in a body, researchers can currently attach green fluorescent proteins to them that fluoresce under ultraviolet light. Replacing these proteins with those in Borhan's experiment would allow absorption of longer wavelengths of light. Since longer wavelengths can penetrate further into the body, they may give a clearer view of deeper tissues.

Journal reference: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1226135

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Football: Mikel handed three-match ban after United race row

LONDON: Chelsea midfielder John Obi Mikel was on Thursday suspended for three matches and fined £60,000 (74,320 euros) for clashing with match officials following the controversial 3-2 defeat to Manchester United.

Mikel was reported to have stormed into the officials' dressing room at Stamford Bridge after the Premier League match in October following accusations that referee Mark Clattenburg had racially abused the Chelsea midfielder.

But the FA decided there was "no case to answer" over the allegation Clattenburg said "shut up you monkey" to Mikel and the official was clear of all charges.

Mikel had admitted using threatening and/or abusive and/or insulting words and/or behaviour in the official's changing room at the end of the game at Stamford Bridge on October 28, said the Football Association.

"Chelsea's John Obi Mikel has been given a three-match suspension to begin with immediate effect and fined £60,000 following an Independent Regulatory Commission hearing today," said an FA statement.

"The Regulatory Commission's independent chairman Christopher Quinlan QC emphasised that the Independent Regulatory Commission accepted, as did The FA, that at the time he threatened the referee the player genuinely believed that the referee had racially abused him.

"But for that factor the suspension would have been significantly longer. Subsequently The FA investigated the allegation that the referee racially abused the player and found that there was not a case for him to answer."

Mikel's suspension will take effect immediately, ruling the Nigeria international out of domestic duty until December 26.

The 25-year-old, who signed a new five-year contract with Chelsea on Wednesday, will miss Saturday's trip to Sunderland, but will be available when his club compete in the Club World Cup in Japan next week.

With Mikel also likely to be absent on African Cup of Nations duty in January, Chelsea interim manager Rafael Benitez has started looking for cover for the Nigerian from within his squad.

Benitez employed David Luiz in midfield during parts of the 6-1 Champions League win over Nordsjaelland on Wednesday and admitted he was prepared to use the Brazil defender further up the pitch to provide an alternative to Ramires and Oriol Romeu in the holding role.

-AFP/ac

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Sean Parker of Spotify joins Metallic's Lars Ulrich on stage

Daniel Ek, the CEO of Spotify, now can boast that he helped make peace between Sean Parker, the Napster co-founder, and Metallica's Lars Ulrich. The three told the audience at Spotify's press event today that the fight between them was just a misunderstanding.

(Credit:
Greg Sandoval/CNET)

NEW YORK--Lars Ulrich of Metallica and Sean Parker, one of the founders of file-sharing service Napster, made peace today.

The two men joined Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, on stage during the company's press event here. Turns out that Ulrich and Parker share a love of Spotify. Ulrich announced that Metallica is now on Spotify.

Besides offering testimonials about how much they enjoy using Spotify's service, the two shared their experiences of their now famous confrontation when Ulrich declared war on Napster, the pioneering peer-to-peer service more than a decade ago.

"Our manager told us that our [unreleased] song was playing on the radio," Ulrich recalled. "I told him 'Maybe we should go over there and...'." He pounded his hand with his fist.

By adding Metallica's catalog to its music library, Spotify gains a big boost in credibility with artists. Ulrich and the band have had the reputation since filing suit against Napster in 2000 as being against digital services.

The big criticism from the music industry is that Spotify pays very little money to artists. Ek said the company is trying to build its audience and as the audience gets bigger, the more money will come in for Spotify and for music acts. He said the company has paid over $500 million to artists so far.

Spotify announced an important benchmark, hitting 1 million paid U.S. subscribers in one year. Rhapsody, by contrast, was in business more than a decade before reaching that many subscribers.

Worldwide, Spotify now has 5 million paying customers and 20 million users overall, Ek told the audience. In addition to Spotify's paid service, the company offers a free listening experience.

More to come

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High-Voltage DC Breakthrough Could Boost Renewable Energy

Patrick J. Kiger

Thomas Edison championed direct current, or DC, as a better mode for delivering electricity than alternating current, or AC. But the inventor of the light bulb lost the War of the Currents. Despite Edison's sometimes flamboyant efforts—at one point he electrocuted a Coney Island zoo elephant in an attempt to show the technology's hazards—AC is the primary way that electricity flows from power plants to homes and businesses everywhere. (Related Quiz: "What You Don't Know About Electricity")

But now, more than a century after Edison's misguided stunt, DC may be getting a measure of vindication.

An updated, high-voltage version of DC, called HVDC, is being touted as the transmission method of the future because of its ability to transmit current over very long distances with fewer losses than AC. And that trend may be accelerated by a new device called a hybrid HVDC breaker, which may make it possible to use DC on large power grids without the fear of catastrophic breakdown that stymied the technology in the past.  (See related photos: "World's Worst Power Outages.")

Swiss-based power technology and automation giant ABB, which developed the breaker, says it may also prove critical to the 21st century's transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, by tapping the full potential of massive wind farms and solar generating stations to provide electricity to distant cities.

So far, the device has been tested only in laboratories, but ABB's chief executive, Joe Hogan, touts the hybrid HVDC breaker as "a new chapter in the history of electrical engineering," and predicts that it will make possible the development of "the grid of the future"—that is, a massive, super-efficient network for distributing electricity that would interconnect not just nations but multiple continents. Outside experts aren't quite as grandiose, but they still see the breaker as an important breakthrough.

"I'm quite struck by the potential of this invention," says John Kassakian, an electrical engineering and computer science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "If it works on a large scale and is economical to use, it could be a substantial asset."

Going the Distance

The hybrid HVDC breaker may herald a new day for Edison's favored mode of electricity, in which current is transmitted in a constant flow in one direction, rather than in the back-and-forth bursts of AC. In the early 1890s, DC lost the so-called War of the Currents mostly because of the issue of long-distance transmission.

In Edison's time, because of losses due to electrical resistance, there wasn't an economical technology that would enable DC systems to transmit power over long distances. Edison did not see this as a drawback because he envisioned electric power plants in every neighborhood.

But his rivals in the pioneering era of electricity, Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse, instead touted AC, which could be sent long distances with fewer losses. AC's voltage, the amount of potential energy in the current (think of it as analogous to the pressure in a water line), could be stepped up and down easily through the use of transformers. That meant high-voltage AC could be transmitted long distances until it entered neighborhoods, where it would be transformed to safer low-voltage electricity.

Thanks to AC, smoke-belching, coal-burning generating plants could be built miles away from the homes and office buildings they powered. It was the idea that won the day, and became the basis for the proliferation of electric power systems across the United States and around the world.

But advances in transformer technology ultimately made it possible to transmit DC at higher voltages. The advantages of HVDC then became readily apparent. Compared to AC, HVDC is more efficient—a thousand-mile HVDC line carrying thousands of megawatts might lose 6 to 8 percent of its power, compared to 12 to 25 percent for a similar AC line. And HVDC would require fewer lines along a route. That made it better suited to places where electricity must be transmitted extraordinarily long distances from power plants to urban areas. It also is more efficient for underwater electricity transmission.

In recent years, companies such as ABB and Germany's Siemens have built a number of big HVDC transmission projects, like ABB's 940-kilometer (584-mile) line that went into service in 2004 to deliver power from China's massive Three Gorges hydroelectric plant to Guangdong province in the South. In the United States, Siemens for the first time ever installed a 500-kilovolt submarine cable, a 65-mile HVDC line, to take additional power from the Pennsylvania/New Jersey grid to power-hungry Long Island. (Related: "Can Hurricane Sandy Shed Light on Curbing Power Outages?") And the longest electric transmission line in the world, some 2,500 kilometers (1,553 miles), is under construction by ABB now in Brazil: The Rio-Madeira HVDC project will link two new hydropower plants in the Amazon with São Paulo, the nation's main economic hub. (Related Pictures: "A River People Await an Amazon Dam")

But these projects all involved point-to-point electricity delivery. Some engineers began to envision the potential of branching out HVDC into "supergrids." Far-flung arrays of wind farms and solar installations could be tied together in giant networks. Because of its stability and low losses, HVDC could balance out the natural fluctuations in renewable energy in a way that AC never could. That could dramatically reduce the need for the constant base-load power of large coal or nuclear power plants.

The Need for a Breaker

Until now, however, such renewable energy solutions have faced at least one daunting obstacle. It's much trickier to regulate a DC grid, where current flows continuously, than it is with AC. "When you have a large grid and you have a lightning strike at one location, you need to be able to disconnect that section quickly and isolate the problem, or else bad things can happen to the rest of the grid," such as a catastrophic blackout, explains ABB chief technology officer Prith Banerjee. "But if you can disconnect quickly, the rest of the grid can go on working while you fix the problem." That's where HVDC hybrid breakers—basically, nondescript racks of circuitry inside a power station—could come in. The breaker combines a series of mechanical and electronic circuit-breaking devices, which redirect a surge in current and then shut it off.  ABB says the unit is capable of stopping a surge equivalent to the output of a one-gigawatt power plant, the sort that might provide power to 1 million U.S. homes or 2 million European homes, in significantly less time than the blink of an eye.

While ABB's new breaker still must be tested in actual power plants before it is deemed dependable enough for wide use, independent experts say it seems to represent an advance over previous efforts. (Siemens, an ABB competitor, reportedly also has been working to develop an advanced HVDC breaker.)

"I think this hybrid approach is a very good approach," says Narain Hingorani, a power-transmission researcher and consultant who is a fellow with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. "There are other ways of doing the same thing, but they don't exist right now, and they may be more expensive."

Hingorani thinks the hybrid HVDC breakers could play an important role in building sprawling HVDC grids that could realize the potential of renewable energy sources. HVDC cables could be laid along the ocean floor to transmit electricity from floating wind farms that are dozens of mile offshore, far out of sight of coastal residents. HVDC lines equipped with hybrid breakers also would be much cheaper to bury than AC, because they require less insulation, Hingorani says.

For wind farms and solar installations in the Midwest and Rocky Mountain regions, HVDC cables could be run underground in environmentally sensitive areas, to avoid cluttering the landscape with transmission towers and overhead lines. "So far, we've been going after the low-hanging fruit, building them in places where it's easy to connect to the grid," he explains. "There are other places where you can get a lot of wind, but where it's going to take years to get permits for overhead lines—if you can get them at all—because the public is against it."

In other words, whether due to public preference to keep coal plants out of sight, or a desire to harness the force of remote offshore or mountain wind power, society is still seeking the least obtrusive way to deliver electricity long distances. That means that for the same reason Edison lost the War of the Currents at the end of the 19th century, his DC current may gain its opportunity (thanks to technological advances) to serve as the backbone of a cleaner 21st-century grid. (See related story: "The 21st Century Grid: Can we fix the infrastructure that powers our lives?")

This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.

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