Today on New Scientist: 19 February 2013







Doctors would tax sugary drinks to combat obesity

Hiking the price of fizzy drinks would cut consumption and so help fight obesity, urges the British Academy of Medical Royal Colleges



Space station's dark matter hunter coy about findings

Researchers on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which sits above the International Space Station, have collected their first results - but won't reveal them for two weeks



Huge telescopes could spy alien oxygen

Hunting for oxygen in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets is a tough job, but a new wave of giant telescopes should be up to the task



Evolution's detectives: Closing in on missing links

Technology is taking the guesswork out of finding evolution's turning points, from the first fish with legs to our own recent forebears, says Jeff Hecht



Moody Mercury shows its hidden colours

False-colour pictures let us see the chemical and physical landscape of the normally beige planet closest to the sun



LHC shuts down to prepare for peak energy in 2015

Over the next two years, engineers will be giving the Large Hadron Collider the makeover it needs to reach its maximum design energy



Insert real news events into your mobile game

From meteor airbursts to footballing fracas, mobile games could soon be brimming with news events that lend them more currency



3D-printing pen turns doodles into sculptures

The 3Doodle, which launched on Kickstarter today, lets users draw 3D structures in the air which solidify almost instantly



We need to rethink how we name exoplanets

Fed up with dull names for exoplanets, Alan Stern and his company Uwingu have asked the public for help. Will it be so long 2M 0746+20b, hello Obama?



A shocking cure: Plug in for the ultimate recharge

An electrical cure for ageing attracted the ire of the medical establishment. But could the jazz-age inventor have stumbled upon a genuine therapy?



Biofuel rush is wiping out unique American grasslands

Planting more crops to meet the biofuel demand is destroying grasslands and pastures in the central US, threatening wildlife




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Kerry to visit Europe, Mideast on first trip






WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State John Kerry will visit nine countries in Europe and the Middle East starting Sunday as he undertakes his first foreign trip as top diplomat, the State Department said Tuesday.

Kerry will visit Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar through March 6, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters.

Nuland said that the former senator's trip was partly a "listening tour," although in Rome he will take part in a meeting with the Syrian opposition and fellow countries that support the forces against President Bashar al-Assad.

"He'll look forward to hearing from the Syrian Opposition Coalition, what more they think we can do, and also to hear from counterparts who are deeply involved in supporting the opposition," Nuland said.

The newly installed US secretary of state will notably discuss Syria with regional players including Turkey, Egypt and Qatar, she said.

In Egypt, where tensions have been rising two years after the ouster of president Hosni Mubarak, Kerry will meet with political leaders as well as civil society "to encourage greater political consensus and moving forward on economic reforms," Nuland said.

Kerry will also meet in Cairo with Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi, while in Riyadh he will also meet foreign ministers from Gulf Arab kingdoms.

He is not visiting Israel or the Palestinian territories. Nuland noted that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was still forming a government and said Kerry would join President Barack Obama on an upcoming visit to the Jewish state.

Nuland said that Kerry would speak in Paris about Mali, where France's military recently intervened to force out Islamists who had seized vast swathes of the African nation.

Kerry, who spent part of his youth in Germany, will use his stop in Berlin as "an opportunity to reconnect with the city in which he lived as a child" and meet with young Germans, Nuland said.

Kerry's first trip as secretary of state marks a sharp change from that of his predecessor Hillary Clinton, who headed to Asia in a sign of the new Obama administration's focus on the fast-growing region.

Nuland said that Kerry will visit Asia "early in his tenure" but that with any additional stops on the upcoming trip, "an already long excursion would be even longer."

-AFP/ac



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Apple: Employee computers were hacked in targeted attack



Apple's Cupertino campus.



(Credit:
James Martin/CNET)


Apple today said it too was targeted as part of the string of hacking efforts on companies and news agencies.


The iPhone and
Mac maker today told Reuters that hackers targeted computers used by its employees, but that "there was no evidence that any data left Apple."


In a statement, Apple said it discovered malware that made use of a vulnerability in the Java plug-in, and that it was sourced from a site for software developers.


Reuters says Apple plans to release a security update later today to protect user computers. CNET has reached out to the company for additional information and will update this post when we know more.



Apple joins a list of companies including Facebook, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, as targets of a group of hackers believed to originate from China.


A report Monday by The New York Times claimed that an "overwhelming percentage" of the cyberattacks on U.S. corporations, government agencies, and organizations all came from an office building in Shanghai with ties to the People's Liberation Army, information that remains unconfirmed and flatly denied by Chinese authorities.


The hack itself stemmed from a months-long attack on The New York Times, with attackers stealing corporate passwords of its employees as well as spying on personal computers owned by employees. Apple says only "a small number of systems" were infected before being isolated.


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New Ancient Members of Whale Family Found

Jane J. Lee in Boston


The ancestors of modern baleen whales—including the ancient forbears of blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) and humpbacks (Megaptera novaeangliae)—just got four new relatives.

Scientists announced Sunday that they have discovered the new species thanks in large part to a construction crew in southern California.

The researchers discovered 11 whale species at the site, said Meredith Rivin, a paleontologist at California State University in Fullerton, including the four new species.

The newly identified ancient animals belong to the group including baleen whales, named for the frayed blades of fingernail-like material hanging down from the roof of their mouths, which they use to strain seawater for food.

The four new species of ancient baleen whales had teeth—unlike their current relatives—and are not direct ancestors to modern baleen whales, said Rivin. They represent a transitional step and are related to the animals that would eventually give rise to the whales we know today.

During work on a new road through Laguna Canyon (map) near Los Angeles in 2000, construction crews uncovered an outcrop littered with whale fossils around 17 to 19 million years old.

By that time, Rivin said, toothed baleen whales "were supposed to have been extinct for about 5 million years or so, and we got a huge diversity of them."

Not only were they not extinct, she said, but it appears that the lineage was doing well at the time.

Before these finds, there weren't any examples of toothed baleen whales from around the world during this time period, called the early Miocene, said Rivin.

Paleontologists accompanying the Southern California crew eventually uncovered hundreds of whale bones and over 30 whale skulls over a five-year period.

Three of the new species are relatively small, about the size of modern-day dolphins, said Rivin.

One of the larger species, a 30-foot (nine-meter) whale in the genus Morawanocetus, is similar to another ancient whale species, Llanocetus denticrenatus, which was thought to have gone extinct 35 million years ago. (Read about a mud-grubbing toothed baleen whale.)

Rivin discussed the newly discovered species of ancient toothed baleen whales at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Boston.

She plans to publish papers on three of the four toothed baleen whale species later this year.

The fourth one she's still trying to extract fully from the rock, although she's been able to uncover enough to know that this whale is unlike anything she's ever seen before. Its teeth have very long roots that bulge up from the bone. Rivin plans to keep chipping away at the rock surrounding the fossil until she can study the entire specimen.


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Oscar Pistorius Describes 'Sense of Terror'












Olympian Oscar Pistorius today denied that he willfully killed his girlfriend, telling a South African court that he shot the woman through his bathroom door because he believed she was an intruder.


Pistorius, 26 and a double-amputee Olympian, was charged today with premeditated murder, or a Schedule 6 offense, which under South African law limits his chances for parole if convicted.


"I fail to understand how I could be charged with murder, let alone premeditated murder because I had no intention to kill my girlfriend," Pistorius said in a statement, read by his lawyer.


"I deny the accusation," he said. "Nothing can be further from the truth that I planned the murder of my girlfriend."


The court adjourned today with no decision on his bail and the hearing is scheduled to resume Wednesday.


PHOTOS: Paralympic Champion Charged in Killing


Pistorius, who gained worldwide fame for running on carbon-fiber blades and competing against able-bodied runners at the Olympics, is accused of shooting his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, at his gated home in Pretoria, South Africa, Feb. 14.


In a statement read by his lawyer today, the runner said he and Steenkamp went to bed together before he was awoken by a noise he thought was an intruder coming from the bathroom.


Filled with a "sense of terror," he removed the 9-mm pistol he kept hidden under his bed and, without putting on his prosthetic legs, began shooting through the bathroom door, according to his statement.


"I was scared and didn't switch on the light," he said. "I got my gun and moved towards the bathroom. I screamed at the intruder because I did not have my legs on. I felt vulnerable. I fired shots through the bathroom door and told Reeva to call police.








Oscar Pistorius: Was Shooting Premeditated? Watch Video









Conflicting Theories Muddle Oscar Pistorius Murder Case Watch Video









Oscar Pistorius Allegedly Fought the Night of Shooting Watch Video





"I walked back to the bed and realized Reeva was not in bed. It's then it dawned on me it could be her in there," he said.


That's when he realized Steenkamp was not in bed, he said in the statement. Fearing she was inside the bathroom, he says, he broke down the door using a cricket bat and carried the woman outside, where he called for help, and she soon died.


Excerpts of Prosecutor's Case Against Pistorius


Pistorius appeared in court today for the first time since his Valentine's Day arrest, as prosecutors laid out their case, insisting that the runner could not have mistaken his girlfriend for an intruder.


"[Pistorius] shot and killed an innocent woman," Gerrie Nel, the senior state prosecutor, said in court, adding that there is "no possible explanation to support" the notion that Pistorius thought Steenkamp was an intruder.


Prosecutors said, "There is no possible explanation to support his report that he thought that it was a burglar. Even [in] his own version, he readied himself, walked to the bathroom with the clear intention and plan to kill the 'burglar' and did so whilst the burglar was harmless and contained in a toilet. This in itself also constitutes premeditated murder of a 'defenseless burglar.''


Pistorius said he and Steenkamp were in his bedroom the night before Valentine's Day, when she
was doing yoga exercises and he was in bed watching television. "My prosthetic legs were off," according to his statement. "We were deeply in love and I could not be happier. I
know she felt the same way. She had given me a present for Valentine's Day
but asked me only to open it the next day.


"After Reeva finished her yoga exercises she got into bed and we both fell
asleep."


Later, police responding to neighbors' calls about shouting and gunshots at Pistorius' home in the guarded and gated complex in the South African capital discovered Steenkamp's body. A 9-mm pistol was recovered at the home.


Prosecutors said Steenkamp had arrived at the house with the expectation of spending the night with Pistorius. They said that Steenkamp was shot while in the bathroom, which is about 21 feet from the main bedroom, and that the two rooms are linked by a passage. The door to the toilet was broken down from the outside, prosecutors said, implying that the bathroom door had been locked.


Prosecutors believe it's a case of premeditated murder because, they say, Pistorius had to stop, put on his prosthetic legs, grab a gun and then walk 21 feet to a bathroom.


The premeditated murder charge means that he would likely be sentenced to life in prison if convicted, and that he is likely to be denied bail.






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Today on New Scientist: 18 February 2013








One-Minute Physics: Are unknowns part of the universe?

Watch an animation that examines the contents of the universe as described by physics - does it contain everything that is, including the unknown?



Traces of life on Mars may have been bleached away

Bleach-related compounds in a Mars meteorite from Antarctica suggest that chemical reactions may have destroyed organics - at least on Mars's surface



Predict an Oscar winner by crunching the numbers

Predictive techniques got a boost after Nate Silver's tremendous success with the US elections. Can others do likewise with the Oscars?



Oil spill firm to pay $400 million to fix Gulf coast

Offshore drilling firm Transocean is to pay a huge fine for its role in the Deepwater Horizon spill, helping fund restoration work in the affected states



The fish with a rainbow eye

See the spectral eyes of the Caribbean trumpetfish glowing in many different colours in an award-winning photograph



Nuclear waste: too hot to handle?

Cumbria's decision to veto an underground repository for the UK shows how hard it is to find a long-term solution, say William M. Alley and Rosemarie Alley



Wiping out top predators messes up the climate

It isn't just the food chain that is disrupted when creatures at the top die out - so are mechanisms that keep carbon dioxide emissions down



False memories prime immune system for future attacks

Exposing our bodies to vaccines based on benign microbes could promote immunity to much nastier but totally different diseases



Taxpayers' money keeps Japan's whaling fleet afloat

Public funds subsidise Japan's whaling industry to the tune of $8.9 million, even though only 11 per cent of citizens support it



Did police use Twitter effectively during the riots?

An analysis of tweets from the UK riots of 2011 compares how police in different cities varied in their approaches to communicating with the public



Tongue-tingling interface lets you taste data

Tongueduino's electrodes send signals from sensors to the tongue, allowing taste buds to "read" information such as the orientation of Earth's magnetic field



Meteor guide: science and safety of Earth-bound rocks

As the meteorite landing in Russia today showed, space rocks can be destructive - but they also tell us about a lot about our solar system



Quake could rock asteroid as it skims Earth

The near-Earth fly-by of the huge space rock 2012 DA14 could reveal an asteroid quake in action





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French horsemeat scandal firm resumes work as ban eased






PARIS: The French firm that sparked a Europe-wide food scandal by allegedly passing off 750 tonnes of horsemeat as beef was allowed Monday to resume production of minced meat, sausages and ready-to-eat meals.

But Spanghero, whose horsemeat found its way into 4.5 million "beef" products sold across Europe, will no longer be allowed to stock frozen meat, Agriculture Minister Stephane Le Foll told AFP.

Upholding that ban means it cannot act as middleman between abattoirs and food-processing companies, the situation which allegedly allowed it to change labels on horsemeat and sell it on as beef.

The firm's sanitary licence was suspended last Thursday after it was accused of passing off huge quantities of mislabeled meat over a period of six months.

France's DGCCRF anti-fraud office concluded after an initial inquiry that 500 tonnes of that horsemeat were sent to French firm Comigel, whose frozen meals were sold to 28 different companies in 13 European states.

Le Foll said the results of a full inquiry into the activities of Spanghero -- where experts have been carrying out inspections at its plant in the southwestern town of Castelnaudary -- would be ready by Friday.

"At this point, 80 percent of the total meat stock has been verified, the work continues for the remaining 20 percent," he said.

His ministry said its inspectors confirmed the DGCCRF's findings that labels on horsemeat had been changed by Spanghero to pass it off as beef. The DGCCRF's criminal investigation into the wider horsemeat scandal is continuing.

Spanghero on Friday again insisted it was not responsible for the mislabelling that has seen supermarket chains across the continent pull millions of suspect food products from their shelves.

"I don't know who is behind this, but it is not us," said Spanghero boss Barthelemy Aguerre, adding that the accusations were putting his 300 workers' jobs on the line. "I will prove our innocence."

Union leaders at Spanghero had warned that revoking its licence would put the company out of business.

Concerns about horsemeat first emerged in mid-January when Irish authorities found traces of horse in beef burgers made by firms in Ireland and Britain and sold in supermarket chains including Tesco and Aldi.

The scandal then intensified when Comigel alerted Findus this month to the presence of horsemeat in the meals it had made for the food giant and which were on sale in Britain.

Since then, supermarket chains have removed millions of "beef" products as tests are carried out to detect horsemeat, which is eaten in many European countries but is considered taboo in Britain.

Horsemeat in "beef" ready-to-eat meals has so far been confirmed in products found in Britain, Ireland, France, Austria, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden. Most of the mislabeled products were made by Comigel.

The scandal spread on Monday to Finland, where two ready-made meals sold at German discount chain Lidl -- canned beef goulash and tortellini bolognese -- were found to contain horsemeat.

Lidl said it was also pulling the products from its shops in Sweden.

The European Union, seeking to reassure nervous consumers that their food is safe and to end the horsemeat scandal, on Friday agreed the immediate launch of tests for horse DNA in meat products.

Germany said Monday it planned to tighten checks and sanctions on food production under an action plan to counter the scandal.

-AFP/ac



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Burger King Twitter account hacked, defaced





Burger King's hacked Twitter account (click to enlarge).



(Credit:
Screenshot by Steven Musil/CNET)



The Twitter account associated with the fast-food chain Burger King was suspended after an apparent hacking that defaced the page with messages that the account had been sold to rival McDonald's.


The @BurgerKing account name was changed today to "McDonalds" and the Golden Arches' familiar logo was added to the page, as was a message that the account had been sold to McDonald's "because the whopper flopped."

The page has since been taken down, but images of the defacement are still visible on Web cache.


Before the feed's suspension, hackers posted messages to Burger King's some 83,000 followers that included racial epithets.


The online hacktivist collective Anonymous appeared to take responsibility for the hack in a tweet that mentioned a new operation dubbed #OpMadCow, although it was not immediately clear what the aim of that campaign was.




CNET has contacted Burger King and will update this report when we learn more.

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Confirmed: Dogs Sneak Food When People Aren't Looking


Many dog owners will swear their pups are up to something when out of view of watchful eyes. Shoes go missing, couches have mysterious teeth marks, and food disappears. They seem to disregard the word "no."

Now, a new study suggests dogs might understand people even better than we thought. (Related: "Animal Minds.")

The research shows that domestic dogs, when told not to snatch a piece of food, are more likely to disobey the command in a dark room than in a lit room.

This suggests that man's best friend is capable of understanding a human's point of view, said study leader Juliane Kaminski, a psychologist at the U.K.'s University of Portmouth.

"The one thing we can say is that dogs really have specialized skills in reading human communication," she said. "This is special in dogs." (Read "How to Build a Dog.")

Sneaky Canines

Kaminski and colleagues recruited 84 dogs, all of which were more than a year old, motivated by food, and comfortable with both strangers and dark rooms.

The team then set up experiments in which a person commanded a dog not to take a piece of food on the floor and repeated the commands in a room with different lighting scenarios ranging from fully lit to fully dark.

They found that the dogs were four times as likely to steal the food—and steal it more quickly—when the room was dark. (Take our dog quiz.)

"We were thinking what affected the dog was whether they saw the human, but seeing the human or not didn't affect the behavior," said Kaminski, whose study was published recently in the journal Animal Cognition.

Instead, she said, the dog's behavior depended on whether the food was in the light or not, suggesting that the dog made its decision based on whether the human could see them approaching the food.

"In a general sense, [Kaminski] and other researchers are interested in whether the dog has a theory of mind," said Alexandra Horowitz, head of the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard University, who was not involved in the new study.

Something that all normal adult humans have, theory of mind is "an understanding that others have different perspective, knowledge, feelings than we do," said Horowitz, also the author of Inside of a Dog.

Smarter Than We Think

While research has previously been focused on our closer relatives—chimpanzees and bonobos—interest in dog cognition is increasing, thanks in part to owners wanting to know what their dogs are thinking. (Pictures: How smart are these animals?)

"The study of dog cognition suddenly began about 15 years ago," Horowitz said.

Part of the reason for that, said Brian Hare, director of the Duke Canine Cognition Lab and author of The Genius of Dogs, is that "science thought dogs were unremarkable."

But "dogs have a genius—years ago we didn't know what that was," said Hare, who was not involved in the new research. (See pictures of the the evolution of dogs, from wolf to woof.)

Many of the new dog studies are variations on research done with chimpanzees, bonobos, and even young children. Animal-cognition researchers are looking into dogs' ability to imitate, solve problems, or navigate social environments.

So just how much does your dog understand? It's much more than you—and science—probably thought.

Selectively bred as companions for thousands of years, dogs are especially attuned to human emotions—and, study leader Kaminski said, are better at reading human cues than even our closest mammalian relatives.

"There has been a physiological change in dogs because of domestication," Duke's Hare added. "Dogs want to bond with us in ways other species don't." (Related: "Dogs' Brains Reorganized by Breeding.")

While research reveals more and more insight into the minds of our furry best friends, Kaminski said, "We still don't know just how smart they are."


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Dr. Drew: McCready Was 'Fearful of Stigma'












Troubled country singer Mindy McCready was "devastated" after the January death of her boyfriend and "fearful of stigma and ridicule," according to Dr. Drew Pinsky, who treated her in 2009 on "Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew."


McCready died Sunday of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound at her Arkansas home, police said. She was 37.


The country singer who soared to the top of the charts with her debut album, "Ten Thousand Angels," struggled with substance abuse, served time in jail and fought a lengthy battle with her mother over custody of her son.


The singer appeared on the third season of Dr. Drew's VH1 show. She is the fifth person who has appeared on the show to die.


"I am deeply saddened by this awful news," Dr. Drew said in a statement posted in a VH1 blog. "My heart goes out to Mindy's family and children. She is a lovely woman who will be missed by many."


Dr. Drew said that he had not treated McCready for a few years, but "reached out to her recently" after her boyfriend and father of one of her two children David Wilson, died in January of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.


"She was devastated. Although she was fearful of stigma and ridicule she agreed with me that she needed to make her health and safety a priority," Dr. Drew said. "Unfortunately it seems that Mindy did not sustain her treatment."


SEE PHOTOS: Notable Deaths in 2013






Ron Galella/WireImage/Getty Images











Country Singer Mindy McCready Dead at Age 37 Watch Video









Mindy McCready Details Moment Cops Found Her, Son Watch Video







"Mental health issues can be life threatening and need to be treated with the same intensity and resources as any other dangerous potentially life threatening medical condition," the doctor's statement said. "Treatment is effective. If someone you know is suffering please be sure he or she gets help and maintains treatment."


Deputies from the Cleburne County Sheriff's Office were dispatched to a report of gun shots fired at McCready's Heber Springs, Ark., home at around 3:30 p.m. on Sunday.


There they found McCready on the front porch. She was pronounced dead at the scene from what appeared to be a single self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to a statement from the sheriff's office.


When reached by phone today, the Cleburne County Sheriff's Office said the sheriff would be responding to questions later in the day.


RELATED: Mindy McCready: Police Take Son


McCready was ordered to enter rehab shortly after Wilson's death, and her two children, Zander, 6, and 9-month-old Zayne were taken from her. She was released after one day to undergo outpatient care.


McCready scored a number-one Billboard country hit in 1996 with "Guys Do It All the Time," but in recent years, the country crooner has received more media attention for her troubled personal life than her music.


McCready reportedly had a decade-long affair with baseball star Roger Clemens that began when she was a teen, the New York Daily News reported in 2008. Clemens' attorney at the time denied any improper relationship, but McCready discussed details of the relationship on television.


"This is sad news," Clemens said in a statement today, posted on the Houston Astros website. "I had heard over time that she was trying to get peace and direction in her life. The few times that I had met her and her manager/agent they were extremely nice."


She has been arrested multiple times on drug charges and probation violations and has been hospitalized for overdoses several times, including in 2010, when she was found unconscious at her mother's home after taking a painkiller and muscle relaxant.






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