Video games take off as a spectator sport

Editorial: "Give video games a sporting chance"

EVERY sport has its idols and superstars. Now video gaming is getting them too. Professional gaming, or e-sports, exploded in popularity in the US and Europe last year.

The scene has been big in Asia - particularly South Korea - for about a decade, with top players such as Lim Yo-Hwan earning six-figure salaries and competing for rock-star glory in Starcraft tournaments that attract audiences in the hundreds of thousands.

The phenomenon is taking off in the West partly because of improved video-streaming technology and large financial rewards. Video games are becoming a spectator sport, with certain players and commentators drawing massive online audiences.

And where people go, money follows. The second world championship of League of Legends - a team-based game in which players defend respective corners of a fantasy-themed battle arena - was held in Los Angeles in October. The tournament had a prize pool of $5 million for the season, with $1 million going to winning team Taipei Assassins, the largest cash prize in the history of e-sports.

League of Legends has also set records for spectator numbers. More than 8 million people watched the championship finals either online or on TV - a figure that dwarfs audience numbers for broadcasts of many traditional sports fixtures.

But gamers don't need to compete at the international level to earn money. Video-streaming software like Twitch makes it easy for players to send live footage to a website, where the more popular ones can attract upwards of 10,000 viewers - enough for some to make a living by having adverts in their video streams. Gamers can go pro without leaving their homes.

Currently, e-sports productions are handled by gaming leagues - but that could soon change. Last November saw two moves that will make it even easier to reach a global online audience. First, Twitch announced it would be integrating with Electronic Arts's Origin service, a widely used gaming platform. This would let gamers stream their play at the click of a button, making it easy for people around the world to watch.

Also in November came the latest release from one of gaming's biggest franchises, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, which has the ability to live-stream via YouTube built into the game itself. Another feature allows the broadcast of in-game commentary for multiplayer matches.

"I think we will reach a point, maybe within five years, where spectator features are a necessity for all big game releases," says Corin Cole of e-sports publishing company Heaven Media in Huntingdon, UK.

David Ting founded the California-based IGN Pro League (IPL), which hosts professional tournaments. He puts the popularity of e-sports down to the demand for new forms of online entertainment. "After 18 months, IPL's viewer numbers are already comparable to college sports in the US when there's a live event," he says. "The traffic is doubling every six months."

Ting sees motion detection, virtual reality and mobile gaming coming together to make physical exertion a more common aspect of video games, blurring the line between traditional sport and e-sports. "Angry Birds could be this century's bowling," says Ting.

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More seeking social assistance at CDCs

SINGAPORE: Singapore's five Community Development Councils (CDCs) have seen an increase in the number of social assistance cases coming to them for help in 2012.

SINGAPORE: A key reason for this uptrend is the revision in the criteria of people who can now qualify for such help under the ComCare scheme.

The scheme was revised last year.

Among the changes - the income criteria for short and medium term assistance schemes have been revised and there are more pre-school and student care subsidies.

There are four key challenges which will shape the work of the CDCs in 2013 - an expected slowdown in economic growth in Singapore coupled with economic restructuring, preserving social mobility, a rapidly ageing population and the continued costs of living pressures.

For cleaner Tay Kheng Leong, a sole breadwinner earning about S$700 a month, schemes from the North East CDC have come in very handy for him to meet his daily and medical expenses for his family members, who live in a two-room rental flat.

Mr Tay said CDC has been giving him S$300 every month for more than a year. His children get free textbooks and school uniforms. He provides for his children's pocket money.

Between January and September 2012, the CDCs received close to 44,900 applications for help, an increase of 8.2 per cent compared to 2011. In 2011, there were 41,500 applications for the period between January and September.

Teo Ser Luck, mayor of North East CDC said: "There is the lower middle income (group) that we have to help. Based on the rising costs of living, some of them may be struggling, some of them may have a one-time expenditure which they could not handle or afford. These are the ones we look out for.

"But we have to make our schemes more readily available on the ground and accessible. That is why more resources would be put into the community, engaging the residents and helping the residents this year."

Dr Teo Ho Pin, mayor of North West CDC added: "This year we have set aside a budget of about S$3.5 million in our CDC funding to support the needy. What we want to do is to provide a more holistic approach to help the needy families to achieve self reliance.

"In the areas of social assistance services, we will be decentralising some of our service points. Secondly we will be improving our processing time. Today we are processing 99 per cent of our cases within four weeks. We are going to do it within two weeks, so that we can respond faster."

Dr Amy Khor, coordinating chairman of the mayors' council, feels more can be done to improve the accessibility and delivery of social assistance.

"The CDCs are also actually working to further enhance and improve the efficiency and effectiveness as well as accessibility of social assistance and social assistance delivery," said Dr Khor, who is also the mayor of South West CDC.

"We are looking at a standard referral form and protocol, as well as working closely with our partner agencies to ensure that no one falls through the cracks and that they can get targeted assistance which is needed, relevant and useful to them."

Sam Tan, mayor of Central Singapore CDC said: "In the past, there were many who lived in the one and two-room rental flats, they may not be able to read the newsletter, internet and so on. We have done a lot of outreach activities like doing home visits, working closely with the VWOs (voluntary welfare organisations), the seniors activity centres, asking them to recommend the probable and suitable (potential beneficiaries) so that we can get in touch with them."

But there may still be some who do not qualify for the schemes and who need some interim help.

"In our case we always take a more generous approach in that we always exercise flexibility for people who may just marginally, or for some reasons may have exceeded the criteria a little bit more," said Mr Tan.

"We always look at their family background to find if there are other justifying factors or reasons so that we can have reasons to offer the assistance to them, even though they may have exceeded the criteria."

"Definitely there are applicants who may not qualify, but they come forward. Some of them may know that outright they do not qualify," said Dr Khor.

"They may suffer pay cuts but they expect to maintain their standard of living. That can be a problem and so we need to counsel and explain to them. In some cases when they really do not qualify because of their income criteria, we may still assist them through our own local schemes, in various ways, may not be in cash assistance but other ways, in terms of training where they can get other jobs. Or for instance in terms of looking at their needs of their children."

The next focus area for the CDCs is the elderly, and a pilot programme is underway in Marine Parade to assess their needs.

Dr Mohamad Maliki Osman, mayor of South East CDC explained: "Marine Parade is where we pilot the concept of a city of all ages where we want to help the seniors ensure that they are able to age successfully with the younger generation.

"So we assess all the abilities of the elderly, whether they are wheelchair bound, whether they have visual difficulties. The whole of Marine Parade is assessed physically and at the same time they also look at the social infrastructure of Marine Parade to respond to the varying needs of senior citizens there. Hopefully if Marine Parade succeeds we will try to expand it to other towns."

When it comes to employment assistance, the picture at the CDCs is slightly different. The CDCs say the number of people coming to them for job referrals and employment matters has dipped slightly in 2012 compared to 2011. And one key reason for this fall in numbers is the tight job market in Singapore last year.

Between January and November 2012, the number of people approaching the CDCs for training and employment assistance was 24,500, a 3 per cent drop compared to the same period in 2011.

The success rates of those being placed into employment has also been higher in 2012. 11,800 were placed into jobs between January and November 2012, compared to 10,100 for the same period in 2011.

But if Singapore faces a recession, the mayors say they are ready with their help schemes, having gained from the experiences in 2003 and 2008.

- CNA/xq

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ZTE readies itself for U.S. expansion in 2013

Lixin Cheng, the CEO of ZTE USA, at CES 2013.

(Credit:
Lynn La/CNET)

LAS VEGAS--Lixin Cheng and the rest of his division are determined to make it in America.

Cheng is the CEO of ZTE's U.S. division, and in addition to strengthening the company's carrier relationships, Cheng also has big plans in the near future to increase ZTE's presence in the U.S.

"There are a lot of things already in the pipeline," he said, referring to the devices planned through U.S. carriers.

But other than just spending money on developing handsets (though Cheng does refer to it as ZTE's "bread and butter"), the company also plans on using the $30 million that it recently announced to expanding its U.S. infrastructure, warehousing, and local research and development.

Of course, there are serious obstacles to face. Last fall, the U.S. House Intelligence Committee held a hearing expressing security concerns over alleged ties Huawei and ZTE had with the Chinese government.

Though both companies tried to reassure the lawmakers and the American public that there was nothing to worry about, a veil of suspicion from U.S. consumers remains.

For Cheng, the entire issue was troubling, but there were a few silver linings. First, it helped ZTE increase its transparency with the FCC. Secondly, as the old saying goes - any press is good press.

"From a branding point of view, it increased out brand awareness and a lot of people know ZTE more," he said. "I can't believe there is a positive side, but that's one, I think."

And as for concerns about competing with the tech giants already dominating the U.S. market, Cheng said there isn't any really.

He continued, saying he has full respect for Samsung and Apple, but because ZTE provides such a wide range of inexpensive and prepaid handsets, the company fulfills a niche role in the market that the other two do not satisfy.

"Honestly, I'm not focused on competitors," he said. "That's just our strategy. We're focused on our customers."

For now, what's important are the things that have a more immediate impact, like bringing the ZTE Grand S, the company's new flagship handset, to the U.S. after its initial Chinese launch.

The ZTE Grand S.

(Credit:
Lynn La/CNET)

Cheng is determined to have it available on our shores because it would mark a notable departure from ZTE's usual line of mid-range handsets in the U.S. With this smartphone, along with carrier branding, the Grand S could the company be the boost it needs to make a more positive name for itself.

Especially when considering the money that's at stake. Even though ZTE increased its U.S. market share five to six percent in the last two years, the financial gains from last year weren't so high. Cheng, however, remains steadfast.

"Last year was a very challenging year for us," he said. "But despite that, ZTE is committed to the U.S. market."

For more of CNET's CES 2013 coverage, click here.

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Pictures: Civil War Shipwreck Revealed by Sonar

Photograph by Jesse Cancelmo

A fishing net, likely only decades old, drapes over machinery that once connected the Hatteras' pistons to its paddle wheels, said Delgado.

From archived documents, the NOAA archaeologist learned that Blake, the ship's commander, surrendered as his ship was sinking. "It was listing to port, [or the left]," Delgado said. The Alabama took the wounded and the rest of the crew and put them in irons.

The officers were allowed to keep their swords and wander the deck as long as they promised not to lead an uprising against the Alabama's crew, he added.

From there, the Alabama dropped off their captives in Jamaica, leaving them to make their own way back to the U.S.

Delgado wants to dig even further into the crew of the Hatteras. He'd like see if members of the public recognize any of the names on his list of crew members and can give him background on the men.

"That's why I do archaeology," he said.

(Read about other Civil War battlefields in National Geographic magazine.)

Published January 11, 2013

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CDC: Flu Outbreak Could Be Waning

The flu season appears to be waning in some parts of the country, but that doesn't mean it won't make a comeback in the next few weeks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Five fewer states reported high flu activity levels in the first week of January than the 29 that reported high activity levels in the last week of December, according to the CDC's weekly flu report. This week, 24 states reported high illness levels, 16 reported moderate levels, five reported low levels and one reported minimal levels, suggesting that the flu season peaked in the last week of December.

"It may be decreasing in some areas, but that's hard to predict," CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden said in a Friday morning teleconference. "Trends only in the next week or two will show whether we have in fact crossed the peak."

The flu season usually peaks in February or March, not December, said Dr. Jon Abramson, who specializes in pediatric infectious diseases at Wake Forest Baptist Health in North Carolina. He said the season started early with a dominant H3N2 strain, which was last seen a decade ago, in 2002-03. That year, the flu season also ended early.

Click here to see how this flu season stacks up against other years.

Cheryl Evans/The Arizona Republic/AP Photo

Increasing Flu Cases: Best Measures to Ensure Your Family's Health Watch Video

Because of the holiday season, Frieden said the data may have been skewed.

For instance, Connecticut appeared to be having a lighter flu season than other northeastern states at the end of December, but the state said it could have been a result of college winter break. College student health centers account for a large percentage of flu reports in Connecticut, but they've been closed since the fall semester ended, said William Gerrish, a spokesman for the state's department of public health.

The flu season arrived about a month early this year in parts of the South and the East, but it may only just be starting to take hold of states in the West, Frieden said. California is still showing "minimal" flu on the CDC's map, but that doesn't mean it will stay that way.

Click here to read about how flu has little to do with cold weather.

"It's not surprising. Influenza ebbs and flows during the flu season," Frieden said. "The only thing predictable about the flu is that it is unpredictable."

Dr. William Schaffner, chair of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., said he was expecting California's seeming good luck with the flu to be over this week.

"Flu is fickle, we say," Schaffner said. "Influenza can be spotty. It can be more severe in one community than another for reasons incompletely understood."

Early CDC estimates indicate that this year's flu vaccine is 62 percent effective, meaning people who have been vaccinated are 62 percent less likely to need to see a doctor for flu treatment, Frieden said.

Although the shot has been generally believed to be more effective for children than adults, there's not enough data this year to draw conclusions yet.

"The flu vaccine is far from perfect, but it's still by far the best tool we have to prevent flu," Frieden said, adding that most of the 130 million vaccine doses have already been administered. "We're hearing of shortages of the vaccine, so if you haven't been vaccinated and want to be, it's better late than never."

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Personal assistant for your emails streamlines your life

IT'S one of the luxuries of the corporate elite: a personal assistant who takes your overflowing inbox and turns it into a simple to-do list. Many people would love such help, if only they could afford it. But what if the cost was less than $2 a day? That's the idea behind software that uses crowdsourced workers to manage email overload.

GmailValet, developed by Nicolas Kokkalis and colleagues at Stanford University in California, works by connecting a Gmail account with oDesk, a crowd-labour web platform that draws upon a relatively skilled workforce. Users can deal with privacy fears by deploying filters that limit the access given to oDesk workers. All emails from family members can be excluded from the system, for example.

Once the workers are in, they examine new emails and, if appropriate, extract a task from the message, which appears in a to-do list that sits alongside the inbox on the GmailValet website, such as reminding the user to respond to a meeting request, for example. Users are encouraged to provide feedback on the tasks, so that the assistants can better understand their needs.

In initial tests, the assistants were paid the California minimum wage of $8 per hour. The researchers suggest that a single assistant could monitor dozens of inboxes simultaneously, though. If that proves to be the case, the service could end up costing each user as little as $1.80 per day.

The tests also revealed that users benefited from the to-do lists: the task-completion rate for those who worked with assistants was nearly 60 per cent, compared with less than 30 per cent for control participants, who had to create their own task lists. One user described the appearance of the tasks as "like magic".

"This is an important step forward in enabling the crowd to work on private and sensitive information," says Aniket Kittur, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. "It opens the door for the crowd helping us with our personal lives in ways we wouldn't have imagined even a few years ago."

The work will be presented next month at the Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing conference in San Antonio, Texas. The system is available to try out for free at gmailvalet.com.

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

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Afghan Taliban welcome US "zero option" on troops

KABUL: The Taliban have welcomed news from Washington that the US might withdraw all its troops from Afghanistan next year, saying the American public was pressing for an end to "this aimless war".

The comment came ahead of a crucial meeting between President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the White House on Friday that is expected to focus on how many American soldiers will remain in Afghanistan.

The US and its NATO allies have long planned to withdraw their combat troops by the end of 2014, although it has been widely expected that Washington will leave a force to train, advise and assist the Afghan army and police.

But Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, told reporters on Tuesday that Obama would not rule out any ideas, including the so-called zero option -- pulling out all the remaining 66,000 US troops.

US military officers privately said comments about a total withdrawal were primarily designed as a tactic in negotiations with Kabul over a security agreement, which includes immunity for American troops remaining behind.

Taliban insurgents, however, seized on Rhodes' comments as a sign that the administration was under pressure from the American people to pull out completely from the nation's longest war.

"We appreciate this step of the American public and all those societies who pressurise their government in the issue of Afghanistan as to bring this aimless war to an end and to evacuate all their troops," the Taliban said in a statement on their website.

Opinion polls for several years have shown that the US public is tired of the human and financial cost of the Afghanistan war, initially launched after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

- AFP/xq

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Google revs Chrome for Android faster with new beta release

Android users who want to live an edgier life now can try a beta version of Chrome.

Google yesterday released the Chrome 25 beta for Android 4.x smartphones and
tablets, a version number in sync with the release for personal computers. Previously, the only option was the stable version of Chrome for
Android, which is still way back at version 18.

The Chrome for Android beta is available on the Google Play app store, but only by following that link -- it's not visible in Google Play's search, Google said. The beta version can be installed and run side by side with the stable version.

Google has been working to put Chrome for Android on the same six-week update cycle as the personal computer version of the browser, and it looks like this release is part of that change. The Chrome 25 beta brings a number of new features, but Google warns of sluggish performance and some other problems.

Among the new features, according to Chrome developer Peter Beverloo:

• A new "text autosizing" technique for formatting text on mobile-device screens, drawing in part upon "font inflation" work by Mozilla. Sometimes it seems to cause Chrome to display different areas of text in mismatched font sizes, though.

• Faster JavaScript performance trough use of a newer version of Google's V8 software.

• A range of developer-oriented features such as CSS filters for visual effects, dynamic viewport units for better handling of screen-size and pixel-size variations, IndexedDB for offline data storage and other data-handling needs, and flexbox layout abilities for more adaptable formatting.

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Google and Twitter Help Track Influenza Outbreaks

This flu season could be the longest and worst in years. So far 18 children have died from flu-related symptoms, and 2,257 people have been hospitalized.

Yesterday Boston Mayor Thomas Menino declared a citywide public health emergency, with roughly 700 confirmed flu cases—ten times the number the city saw last year.

"It arrived five weeks early, and it's shaping up to be a pretty bad flu season," said Lyn Finelli, who heads the Influenza Outbreak Response Team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Boston isn't alone. According to the CDC, 41 states have reported widespread influenza activity, and in the last week of 2012, 5.6 percent of doctor's office visits across the country were for influenza-like illnesses. The severity likely stems from this year's predominant virus: H3N2, a strain known to severely affect children and the elderly. Finelli notes that the 2003-2004 flu season, also dominated by H3N2, produced similar numbers. (See "Are You Prepped? The Influenza Roundup.")

In tracking the flu, physicians and public health officials have a host of new surveillance tools at their disposal thanks to crowdsourcing and social media. Such tools let them get a sense of the flu's reach in real time rather than wait weeks for doctor's offices and state health departments to report in.

Pulling data from online sources "is no different than getting information on over-the-counter medication or thermometer purchases [to track against an outbreak]," said Philip Polgreen, an epidemiologist at the University of Iowa.

The most successful of these endeavors, Google Flu Trends, analyzes flu-related Internet search terms like "flu symptoms" or "flu medication" to estimate flu activity in different areas. It tracks flu outbreaks globally.

Another tool, HealthMap, which is sponsored by Boston Children's Hospital, mines online news reports to track outbreaks in real time. Sickweather draws from posts on Twitter and Facebook that mention the flu for its data.

People can be flu-hunters themselves with Flu Near You, a project that asks people to report their symptoms once a week. So far more than 38,000 people have signed up for this crowdsourced virus tracker. And of course, there's an app for that.

Both Finelli, a Flu Near You user, and Polgreen find the new tools exciting but agree that they have limits. "It's not as if we can replace traditional surveillance. It's really just a supplement, but it's timely," said Polgreen.

When people have timely warning that there's flu in the community, they can get vaccinated, and hospitals can plan ahead. According to a 2012 study in Clinical Infectious Diseases, Google Flu Trends has shown promise predicting emergency room flu traffic. Some researchers are even using a combination of the web database and weather data to predict when outbreaks will peak.

As for the current flu season, it's still impossible to predict week-to-week peaks and troughs. "We expect that it will last a few more weeks, but we can never tell how bad it's going to get," said Finelli.

Hospitals are already taking precautionary measures. One Pennsylvania hospital erected a separate emergency room tent for additional flu patients. This week, several Illinois hospitals went on "bypass," alerting local first responders that they're at capacity—due to an uptick in both flu and non-flu cases—so that patients will be taken to alternative facilities, if possible.

In the meantime, the CDC advises vaccination, first and foremost. On the bright side, the flu vaccine being used this year is a good match for the H3N2 strain. Though Finelli cautions, "Sometimes drifted strains pop up toward the end of the season."

It looks like there won't be shortages of seasonal flu vaccine like there have been in past years. HealthMap sports a Flu Vaccine Finder to make it a snap to find a dose nearby. And if the flu-shot line at the neighborhood pharmacy seems overwhelming, more health departments and clinics are offering drive-through options.

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Judge: Holmes Can Face Trial for Aurora Shooting

Jan 10, 2013 8:45pm

(Arapahoe County Sheriff/AP Photo)

In a ruling that comes as little surprise, the judge overseeing the Aurora, Colo., theater massacre has ordered that there is enough evidence against James Holmes to proceed to a trial.

In an order posted late Thursday, Judge William Sylvester wrote that “the People have carried their burden of proof and have established that there is probable cause to believe that Defendant committed the crimes charged.”

The ruling came after a three-day preliminary hearing this week that revealed new details about how Holmes allegedly planned for and carried out the movie theater shooting, including how investigators say he amassed an arsenal of guns and ammunition, how he booby-trapped his apartment to explode, and his bizarre behavior after his arrest.

PHOTOS: Colorado ‘Dark Knight Rises’ Theater Shooting

Holmes is charged with 166 counts, including murder, attempted murder and other charges related to the July 20 shooting that left 12 people dead and 58 wounded by gunfire. An additional 12 people suffered non-gunshot injuries.

One of the next legal steps is an arraignment, at which Holmes will enter a plea. The arraignment was originally expected to take place Friday morning.

Judge Sylvester indicated through a court spokesman that he would allow television and still cameras into the courtroom, providing the outside world the first images of Holmes since a July 23 hearing. Plans for cameras in court, however, were put on hold Thursday afternoon.

“The defense has notified the district attorney that it is not prepared to proceed to arraignment in this case by Friday,” wrote public defenders Daniel King, Tamara Brady and Kristen Nelson Thursday afternoon in a document objecting to cameras in court.

A hearing in the case will still take place Friday morning. In his order, Judge Sylvester said it should technically be considered an arraignment, but noted the defense has requested a continuance.  Legal experts expect the judge will grant the continuance, delaying the arraignment and keeping cameras out of court for now.

Sylvester also ordered that Holmes be held without bail.

Holmes’ attorneys have said in court that the former University of Colorado neuroscience student is mentally ill. The district attorney overseeing the case has not yet announced whether Holmes, now 25, can face the death penalty.

SHOWS: World News

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Smartphones make identifying endangered animals easy

Everyday mobile tech takes the legwork out of tracking hard-to-find animals, and makes life easier for field biologists

FIELD biology is notoriously laborious. In one famous 1982 study, Smithsonian entomologist Terry Erwin counted by hand the number of insect species in one hectare of forest canopy in Panama. By extrapolation Erwin estimated the total biodiversity of Earth's insects. What if your smartphone could take some of the strain?

Harvard biologist and computer scientist Walter Scheirer has devised a machine vision system that automatically recognises and counts specific animals and runs on a Motorola Droid X2 smartphone. This will help biologists make quicker, more accurate judgements about the health of delicate ecosystems.

Two years ago, Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave desert, California, put out a call for a cheap way to monitor the animals that live there. The area is one of the last refuges for the endangered desert tortoises as well as the threatened Mojave ground squirrels (see map). Keeping an eye on the health of the animal population in such a remote location is time-consuming and expensive. So Scheirer developed detection and classification algorithms capable of identifying tortoises and squirrels with nothing more than a standard smartphone.

Automated camera traps already exist, but they are not selective enough. "Right now, we have to manually go through every photo to identify species and separate photos of interest from false photos. It's a very laborious task," says Princeton conservation biologist Siva Sundaresan, who works with Grévy's zebras in Kenya. He says Scheirer's method is potentially very useful to biologists.

But how does a phone tell the difference between a squirrel and a rock or a tumbleweed? Scheirer's system starts off by scanning its environment for objects that could be the animals it wants. It looks for clumps of pixels that are new to the scene, then examines them to decide whether they represent any of the animals it has been trained to recognise. Rather than checking each individual pixel, Scheirer's algorithms analyse the content of a frame of video and look for patterns of pixels that identify the animal. The algorithms don't need intensive processing and so run well on smartphones.

A paper due to be presented at the Workshop on the Applications of Computer Vision in Clearwater, Florida, later this month shows how well the algorithms work, with the system able to distinguish between three different species of ground squirrel 78 per cent of the time, even though they are almost identical. Scheirer says that the algorithms have been tweaked and that the recognition rate is now around 85 per cent.

Scheirer says his goal is to build a cheap, easy-to-use system that can automatically detect animals in any environment. More field trials are scheduled for next month, and the team aims to deliver a finished system to the US Air Force by 2014.

Princeton population biologist Dan Rubenstein says machine vision systems will also help us understand delicate ecosystems in finer detail. "You won't be generalising from such small scale to such a massive scale," he says. "We're going to be able to save ecosystems."

Another system presented at the conference, called Hotspotter, recognises individual animals like zebras and giraffes by their stripes and spots, although it still needs some human guidance, unlike the Mojave desert system. Rubenstein, who works on Hotspotter, says that systems like this will allow biologists to look at animals and their actions on an individual basis. "We could start to build massive databases of who's who, and how they move in time. We can use social networks to figure out how they relate to each other."

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

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Australia firefighters race to beat rising heat

YASS: Australian firefighters raced to control a series of blazes on Thursday before a forecast rise in temperatures brings the risk of more infernos, as dramatic accounts of survival emerged.

Fires have been raging across southeast Australia for nearly a week. While many have been contained, 120 are still burning and at least 17 remain out of control in the country's most populous state, New South Wales.

Cooler weather that brought some relief on Wednesday continued in many parts Thursday. But temperatures are set to soar again to well over 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) on Friday, piling pressure on firefighters.

In Tasmania, residents of the fishing village of Dunalley, where 90 homes and businesses were destroyed, could be allowed to go home on Friday, police said, as gripping stories of survival emerged.

"We saw tornadoes of fire just coming across towards us and the next thing we knew everything was on fire, everywhere all around us," Tim Holmes, who took refuge in the sea under a jetty with his five young grandchildren, told the ABC.

"We were all just heads, water up to our chins just trying to breathe because... the atmosphere was so incredibly toxic." The family survived but are now homeless.

NSW Rural Fire Service commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said crews were working flat-out containing blazes before the heat returned.

"It's about focusing on getting as much contained and consolidated as we can ahead of a return to hotter and dryer conditions dominating much of NSW over the coming days," Fitzsimmons told ABC television.

"We're looking at temperatures across much of NSW into low-to-mid 40s and extending into the high 40s on Saturday.

"The only reprieve, if you can call it that, is that we are not expecting significant wind strengths to build."

The blazes have scorched more than 350,000 hectares (865,000 acres) of land in New South Wales alone, with one fire burning just two kilometres (1.2 miles) from a former weapons range littered with unexploded bombs.

The 5,840-hectare Deans Gap fire is near the Tianjara plateau which, until the mid-1970s, was used by the army as a practice bombing range.

"If it was required, they'd be looking to put in a firebreak in that area," a New South Wales Rural Fire Service spokeswoman told AFP.

Were the flames to reach the plateau south of Sydney, it could complicate firefighting efforts, with the unexploded bombs making water-drops impossible.

The fires are so large they can be seen from space, with astronaut Chris Hadfield uploading images of "streamers of smoke visible all across the country" to Twitter from the International Space Station.

While more than 100 homes were razed by fires in Tasmania state last weekend, only a handful have since been destroyed nationwide and no deaths have been reported.

The biggest impact has been on farmers, with vast amounts of pasture, crops and animal feed lost, as well as thousands of head of stock and sheds and outbuildings.

One of the worst-hit areas is Yass Shire west of Canberra where a fire has so far burnt out 16,000 hectares and killed 10,000 sheep.

As well as New South Wales, fires continue to burn in the states of Victoria, Tasmania and Queensland.

Wildfires are a fact of life in arid Australia, where 173 people died in the 2009 Black Saturday firestorm, the nation's worst natural disaster of modern times.

Most are ignited naturally, but in Sydney's west three teenage boys were charged with deliberately lighting a fire on Tuesday, and on Wednesday a man was charged after sparks from his angle grinder caused a blaze.

- AFP/al

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Google's Schmidt presses North Korean officials for open Web

Google's Eric Schmidt (right) upon his arrival in North Korea earlier this week with former N.M. Gov. Bill Richardson.

(Credit:
CBS News/Screenshot by CNET)

Eric Schmidt wrapped up a controversial visit to North Korea on Thursday, saying that his private delegation warned officials that global Internet access was key to developing its economy.

"As the world becomes increasingly connected, their decision to be virtually isolated is very much going to affect their view of the world," he told reporters upon his return to Beijing, according to a Wall Street Journal account. Lack of such access would "make it harder for them to catch up economically. We made that alternative very, very clear," he added.

Despite official U.S. opposition to the visit, Google's executive chairman flew to the reclusive nation on Monday as part of a delegation led by former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who described the trip as a "private humanitarian mission."

"We had a good opportunity to talk about expanding the Internet and cell phones in the DPRK," Richardson told the Associated Press before departing for Beijing.

The U.S. State Department had discouraged the visit, saying that the timing was not right for the delegation to visit the country, which is subject to U.S. economic sanctions. A department spokesperson cited recent missile launches by North Korea as a reason for opposing the visit

During the visit, the delegation, which also included Jared Cohen, head of Google Ideas, got a tour of a computer lab at Kim Il Sung University Pyongyang, where a student showed how he goes online to look at reading material from Cornell University.

It's unclear whether the delegation had the opportunity to inquire about Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American whose arrest on unspecified charges was announced by the North Koreans last month.

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Embryonic Sharks Freeze to Avoid Detection

Jane J. Lee

Although shark pups are born with all the equipment they'll ever need to defend themselves and hunt down food, developing embryos still stuck in their egg cases are vulnerable to predators. But a new study finds that even these baby sharks can detect a potential predator, and play possum to avoid being eaten.

Every living thing gives off a weak electrical field. Sharks can sense this with a series of pores—called the ampullae of Lorenzini—on their heads and around their eyes, and some species rely on this electrosensory ability to find food buried in the seafloor. (See pictures of electroreceptive fish.)

Two previous studies on the spotted catshark (Scyliorhinus canicula) and the clearnose skate (Raja eglanteria)—a relative of sharks—found similar freezing behavior in their young. But new research by shark biologist and doctoral student Ryan Kempster at the University of Western Australia has given scientists a more thorough understanding of this behavior.

It all started because Kempster wanted to build a better shark repellent. Since he needed to know how sharks respond to electrical fields, Kempster decided to use embryos. "It's very hard to test this in the field because you need to get repeated responses," he said. And you can't always get the same shark to cooperate multiple times. "But we could use embryos because they're contained within an egg case."

Cloaking Themselves

So Kempster got his hands on 11 brownbanded bamboo shark (Chiloscyllium punctatum) embryos and tested their reactions to the simulated weak electrical field of a predator. (Popular pictures: Bamboo shark swallowed whole—by another shark.)

In a study published today in the journal PLoS One, Kempster and his colleagues report that all of the embryonic bamboo sharks, once they reached later stages of development, reacted to the electrical field by ceasing gill movements (essentially, holding their breath), curling their tails around their bodies, and freezing.

A bamboo shark embryo normally beats its tail to move fresh seawater in and out of its egg case. But that generates odor cues and small water currents that can give away its position. The beating of its gills as it breathes also generates an electrical field that predators can use to find it.

"So it cloaks itself," said neuroecologist Joseph Sisneros, at the University of Washington in Seattle, who was not involved in the study. "[The embryo] shuts down any odor cues, water movement, and its own electrical signal."

Sisneros, who conducted the previous clearnose skate work, is delighted to see that this shark species also reacts to external electrical fields and said it would be great to see whether this is something all shark, skate, and ray embryos do.

Marine biologist Stephen Kajiura, at Florida Atlantic University, is curious to know how well the simulated electrical fields compare to the bamboo shark's natural predators—the experimental field was on the higher end of the range normally given off.

"[But] they did a good job with [the study]," Kajiura said. "They certainly did a more thorough study than anyone else has done."

Electrifying Protection?

In addition to the freezing behavior he recorded in the bamboo shark embryos, Kempster found that the shark pups remembered the electrical field signal when it was presented again within 40 minutes and that they wouldn't respond as strongly to subsequent exposures as they did initially.

This is important for developing shark repellents, he said, since some of them use electrical fields to ward off the animals. "So if you were using a shark repellent, you would need to change the current over a 20- to 30-minute period so the shark doesn't get used to that field."

Kempster envisions using electrical fields to not only keep humans safe but to protect sharks as well. Shark populations have been on the decline for decades, due partly to ending up as bycatch, or accidental catches, in the nets and on the longlines of fishers targeting other animals.

A 2006 study estimated that as much as 70 percent of landings, by weight, in the Spanish surface longline fleet were sharks, while a 2007 report found that eight million sharks are hooked each year off the coast of southern Africa. (Read about the global fisheries crisis in National Geographic magazine.)

"If we can produce something effective, it could be used in the fishing industry to reduce shark bycatch," Kempster said. "In [America] at the moment, they're doing quite a lot of work trying to produce electromagnetic fish hooks." The eventual hope is that if these hooks repel the sharks, they won't accidentally end up on longlines.

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Holmes 'Delighted' by Creepy Self-Portraits: Victims

After two days of apparent indifference, accused Aurora shooter James Holmessmiled and smirked at disturbing self-portraits and images of weapons shown in court today, according to the families of victims who watched him.

"When he sees himself, he gets very excited and his eyes crinkle," Caren Teves said outside of the courthouse, after the hearing. "Your eyes are the window to the soul and you could see that he was very delighted in seeing himself in that manner."

Teves' son Alex Teves, 24, died in the shooting.

Prosecutors showed photos that Holmes took of himself hours before he allegedly carried out a massacre at a Colorado movie theater. He took a series of menacing self-portraits with his dyed orange hair curling out of from under a black skull cap and his eyes covered with black contacts. In some of the photos, guns were visible.

Those haunting photographs, found on his iPhone, were shown in court today on the last day of a preliminary testimony that will lead to a decision on whether the case will go to trial. The hearing concluded without Holmes' defense calling any witnesses.

The judge's decision on whether the case will proceed to trial is expected on Friday.

James Holmes: Suspect in Aurora Movie Theatre Shootings Back in Court Watch Video

Police Testify at Hearing for Accused Colorado Gunman Watch Video

Couple Surprised by Rebuilt Home After Sandy Watch Video

Holmes, 25, is accused of opening fire on a crowded movie theater in Aurora, Colo., on July 20, 2012, killing 12 people and wounding dozens others during a showing of "Dark Knight Rises."

The court room's set-up kept members of the media from being able to see Holmes' face as the photos were displayed, but victims and their families could watch him.

Teves said that Holmes was "absolutely smirking" when images of his weapons and the iPhone photos he took of himself were shown in court.

"I watched him intently," Caren Teves' husband Tom Teves said. "I watched him smile every time a weapon was discussed, every time they talked about his apartment and how he had it set up (with booby traps), and he could have gave a darn about the people, to be quite frank. But he's not crazy one bit. He's very, very cold. He's very, very calculated."

Holmes' has exhibited bizarre behavior after the shooting and while in custody. His defense team has said that he is mentally ill, but have not said if he will plead insanity.

"He has a brain set that no one here can understand and we want to call him crazy because we want to make that feel better in our society, but we have to accept the fact that there are evil people in our society that enjoy killing any type of living thing," a frustrated Tom Teves said. "That doesn't make them crazy. And don't pretend he's crazy. He's not crazy."

The photos presented in court showed Holmes mugging for his iPhone camera just hours before the shooting.

Click here for full coverage of the Aurora movie theater shooting.

Half-a-dozen photos showed Holmes with his clownish red-orange hair and black contact lenses giving the photos a particularly disturbing edge.

In one particularly odd image, he was making a scowling face with his tongue out. He was whistling in another photo. Holmes is smiling in his black contacts and flaming hair in yet another with the muzzle of one of his Glock pistols in the forefront.

Yet another photo showed him dressed in black tactical gear, posing with an AR-15 rifle.

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Carcinogen levels soar in Canada's tar sand lakes

Canada's push to exploit oil-rich sandy rock formations is certainly controversial, but does it pose a health threat? A first analysis has found an increase in carcinogens in sediment from lakes near to the Athabasca oil sands in Alberta but it is not yet clear if the pollution could make people ill.

John Smol of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and colleagues analysed sediment cores from six lakes up to 90 kilometres north-west of Athabasca. They found that concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), well-known carcinogens, are between 2.5 and 23 times higher in the top layers of sediment than in layers laid down in 1960, at least 20 years before tar sand extraction began.

The type of PAHs has changed over that period too, from those typically generated by wood-burning to those originating from unburnt petroleum, suggesting tar sand excavation was the culprit. "We show clearly the timing of the change and the type of contamination, and the ones increasing are ones closely related to the tar sands industry," says Smol.

He says that this contradicts claims by the tar sands industry that the source of PAHs in lakes is natural. He suggests that the PAHs might get into lakes via vapour and smoke produced while extracting oil from the tar sands.

Smol acknowledges that levels in the lakes they tested have yet to reach concentrations found in urban lakes. Nor did his team find any evidence of a substantial impact on fish or other aquatic life, such as plankton. But his analysis is the first to look at potential health threats from tar sand extraction. Previous studies found that tar sands increase the production of greenhouse gases and deplete ancient forests.

Journal reference: PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1217675110

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Bangkok governor charged over city Skytrain contract

BANGKOK: Thai authorities charged outgoing Bangkok governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra Wednesday with extending the multi-billion-dollar contract to run the city's elevated train network without government permission.

Sukhumbhand, who has stood down from his post to campaign for re-election in March, failed to consult the Interior Ministry before renewing the contract of Skytrain operator BTSC last year, the Department of Special Investigation said.

"The DSI informed Sukhumbhand of the charge today," the DSI's Thawal Mangkang told reporters at its Bangkok headquarters.

He added that the contract extension to 2042 -- which was made 17 years before the deal was up for renewal -- was worth $6.6 billion.

Investigators have around a month to complete their work before deciding whether to forward a case to prosecutors.

If found guilty, Sukhumbhand could face a year in jail or a hefty fine while BTSC's contract extension would be rescinded, the DSI said.

Sukhumbhand, the candidate of the opposition Democrat party, denied the allegations, telling reporters that he "did not violate any laws" and was consulting lawyers over bringing a counter legal claim against the DSI.

Eight other Bangkok Metropolitan Administration officers -- including Sukhumbhand's deputy -- were also charged over the contract renewal, which boosted BTSC's existing deal from 2029 to 2042.

Established in 1999 the Skytrain system is a key commuter alternative to Bangkok's notoriously congested roads and runs on elevated tracks through the business heart of the city.

Sukhumbhand stepped down on Wednesday to concentrate on his re-election campaign.

-AFP/fl

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Kensington widget warns when iPhone goes walkabout

The Kensington Proximo system tells you if your keys and your iPhone get too far apart.

(Credit:
Kensington)

Kensington has launched a system called Proximo that it promises will alert people when items like keys and iPhones are lost or stolen.

The Proximo kit consists of an iPhone app, a key fob for a keychain, and a third device to track something else like a backpack or
car, the company announced at
CES. If the items get too far apart -- people can specify the exact distances, which are measured wirelessly using BlueTooth -- they sound an alarm.

The fobs and app each come with buttons that triggers an audible alarm from a paired device to help locate it. And the app offers a map for GPS-based tracking for devices that are out of range.

The kit costs $60, and additional $25 tags can be purchased to track up to five devices with the app.

Also at CES, Kensington announced a few other accessories:

• The $50 TriFold Folio
iPad case for fourth-generation iPads, with a protective shell back and a three-fold front cover that can serve as a stand.

• The $35 PowerBolt 4.2 Dual Fast Charge car charger with dual 2.1-watt USB charging ports and two detachable older-style iPhone charging cables. Those with iOS devices using the newer Lightning port will have to use their own cables.

• The $30 PowerBolt 2.1 Fast Charge car charger with a single attached Lightning cable.

• The $90 Contour Overnight backpack that features a laptop compartment that can be unzipped and laid flat for easier trips through airport security. It's got a larger capacity than earlier models of the company's Contour packpack models.

Kensington's TriFold Folio iPad cover for fourth-generation iPads

(Credit:
Kensington)

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Pictures: Wildfires Scorch Australia Amid Record Heat

Photograph by Jo Giuliani, European Pressphoto Agency

Smoke from a wildfire mushrooms over a beach in Forcett, Tasmania, on January 4. (See more wildfire pictures.)

Wildfires have engulfed southeastern Australia, including the island state of Tasmania, in recent days, fueled by dry conditions and temperatures as high as 113ºF (45ºC), the Associated Press reported. (Read "Australia's Dry Run" inNational Geographic magazine.)

No deaths have been reported, though a hundred people are unaccounted for in the town of Dunalley, where the blazes destroyed 90 homes.

"You don't get conditions worse than this," New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons told the AP.

"We are at the catastrophic level, and clearly in those areas leaving early is your safest option."

Published January 8, 2013

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Dead Lotto Winner's Wife Seeks 'Truth'

The wife of a $1 million Chicago lottery winner who died of cyanide poisoning told ABC News that she was shocked to learn the true cause of his death and is cooperating with an ongoing homicide investigation.

"I want the truth to come out in the investigation, the sooner the better," said Shabana Ansari, 32, the wife of Urooj Khan, 46. "Who could be that person who hurt him?

"It has been incredibly hard time," she added. "We went from being the happiest the day we got the check. It was the best sleep I've had. And then the next day, everything was gone."

Ansari, Khan's second wife, told the Chicago Sun-Times that she prepared what would be her husband's last meal the night before Khan died unexpectedly on July 20. It was a traditional beef-curry dinner attended by the married couple and their family, including Khan's 17-year-old daughter from a prior marriage, Jasmeen, and Ansari's father. Not feeling well, Khan retired early, Ansari told the paper, falling asleep in a chair, waking up in agony, then collapsing in the middle of the night. She called 911.

Khan, an immigrant from India who owned three dry-cleaning businesses in Chicago, won $1 million in a scratch-off Illinois Lottery game in June and said he planned to use the money to pay off his bills and mortgage, and make a contribution to St. Jude Children's Research Center.

"Him winning the lottery was just his luck," Ansari told ABC News. "He had already worked hard to be a millionaire before it."

Illinois Lottery/AP Photo

Chicago Lottery Winner Died From Cyanide Poisoning Watch Video

Lottery Murder Suspect Dee Dee Moore Found Guilty Watch Video

Lottery Winner Murder Trial: Opening Statements Begin Watch Video

Jimmy Goreel, who worked at the 7-Eleven store where Khan bought the winning ticket, described him to The Associated Press as a "regular customer ... very friendly, good sense of humor, working type of guy."

In Photos: Biggest Lotto Jackpot Winners

Khan's unexpected death the month after his lottery win raised the suspicions of the Cook County medical examiner. There were no signs of foul play or trauma so the death initially was attributed to arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease, which covers heart attacks, stroke or ruptured aneurysms. The medical examiner based the conclusion on an external exam -- not an autopsy -- and toxicology reports that indicated no presence of drugs or carbon monoxide.

Khan was buried at Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago.

However, several days after a death certificate was issued, a family member requested that the medical examiner's office look further into Khan's death, Cook County Medical Examiner Stephen Cina said. The office did so by retesting fluid samples that had been taken from Khan's body, including tests for cyanide and strychnine.

When the final toxicology results came back in late November, they showed a lethal level of cyanide, which led to the homicide investigation, Cina said. His office planned to exhume Khan's body within the next two weeks as part of the investigation.

Melissa Stratton, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Police Department, confirmed it has been working closely with the medical examiner's office. The police have not said whether or not they believe Khan's lottery winnings played a part in the homicide.

Khan had elected to receive the lump sum payout of $425,000, but had not yet received it when he died, Ansari told the AP, adding that the winnings now are tied up as a probate matter.

"I am cooperating with the investigation," Ansari told ABC News. "I want the truth to come out."

Authorities also have not revealed the identity of the relative who suggested the deeper look into Khan's death. Ansari said it was not her, though she told the AP she has subsequently spoken with investigators.

"This is been a shock for me," she told ABC News. "This has been an utter shock for me, and my husband was such a goodhearted person who would do anything for anyone. Who would do something like this to him?

"We were married 12 years [and] he treated me like a princess," she said. "He showered his love on me and now it's gone."

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Tony Fadell: From iPhones to sexing up thermostats

After quitting Apple, the tech guru behind the iPod wanted to revolutionise our homes – starting with the humble thermostat

After you left Apple, you developed a "smart" thermostat. Was that always your plan?
Not at all! The plan was to retire with my wife, who also worked for Steve [Jobs], and spend time with our children. We didn't see them because we were working so madly at Apple. We wanted to build a house in Lake Tahoe. I wanted to design the greenest, most connected house that I could. That's when I found out about the thermostat problem. These devices had not seen innovation in 30 years. They were the same as the ones our parents had. I wanted something that was very different.

Your solution was the NEST. Tell me about it
It uses algorithms and sensors to remember the temperatures you like, create a custom schedule for your home and turn itself down when you are away. And you can use your smartphone, tablet or computer to control it remotely. We call it the thermostat for the iPhone generation. It has a big dial, not fiddly buttons.

Did Steve Jobs have any input?
I was going to talk to Steve about it. He knew we were working on something, but he didn't know what. When it was time to show him, he said he couldn't do it. Unfortunately, he died just a few weeks later, before he could see it.

Is the NEST just the start of a range of smart-home devices?
Absolutely. But if you look at what we did at Apple after the iPod came out, it took us five years to start thinking about the iPhone and two more years to finally ship it. I would love to make more devices, but our goal is to make the NEST successful first.

Who would have believed the iPod could turn into the iPhone, then the iPad?
Even I wondered how many people would buy an iPad. But you have to be at the right place in the cultural time. We plan a similar trajectory with the NEST, with the ways that emerging behaviours can happen in the home through interconnected devices. You can't start with all of these things at once because people's minds get blown. You start with very simple things, simple concepts, and then you can build on them.

Will people have to continually upgrade their thermostats, as they do with cellphones?
Unlike a cellphone, you're not going to change the NEST every 18 months! They are supposed to hang on your wall for 10 to 15 years. Our goal is to continue to improve it via software, and we have built tonnes of extra capability into this device to allow that to happen. For example, we have a new update that gives an energy report - it shows how you're doing compared with last month, and even compares you to your neighbours.

Was it your aim to raise awareness of the energy we waste heating our homes?
The NEST starts people thinking about how they're using energy in the home. But it's also a great party trick. You get people whipping out their phones and saying "Check out my NEST at home! Watch, I'm going to freeze my wife!"

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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China press freedom campaign swells with new rally

GUANGZHOU, China: Protesters mounted a second day of rallies calling for press freedom in China Tuesday, as social media users and celebrities backed a campaign which poses a test for the nation's new leaders.

Scores of people, some carrying mourning flowers, gathered outside the Guangzhou offices of the Southern Weekly, a popular liberal paper which had an article urging greater protection of rights censored.

One man in a wheelchair held a banner reading: "Support the Southern Weekly, resist censorship, give back my freedom of speech."

Some demonstrators wore masks depicting the British revolutionary figure Guy Fawkes, adopted as an anarchist symbol internationally after being popularised in the film "V for Vendetta" which was recently broadcast on state television.

Police stood by allowing the rally to proceed, but as it dispersed for the day, a lone woman demonstrator stood outside the building, holding a white rose and raising one hand, making a victory sign with her fingers.

The second day of rare public protests pushing for greater rights in China came after bloggers and celebrities -- some with millions of followers -- voiced support online for freedom of the press.

Yao Chen, an actress who has 32 million followers, posted the paper's logo on China's Twitter-like Weibo service and quoted Russian dissident Alexandr Solzhenitsyn: "One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world".

Southern Weekly used the same quote in its 2006 New Year message.

Fellow actor Chen Kun, who has 27 million followers, replied: "I am not that deep, and don't play with words, I support the friends at Southern Weekly".

The popular blogger Han Han, named by Time magazine as one of the world's 100 most influential people in 2010, lamented the pressure that journalists faced.

"I hope we can give it some small strength and accompany it to keep it going," he wrote, referring to the Southern Weekly.

The row erupted after censors Thursday blocked the paper's 2013 New Year message calling for the realisation of a "dream of constitutionalism in China" and replaced it with an article in praise of the Communist Party, according to journalists.

Chinese media outlets are subject to directives from official propaganda departments, which often suppress news seen as negative by the ruling Communist party, but some publications take a more critical stance.

The dispute comes after the party's new leadership, headed by president-in-waiting Xi Jinping, took over at a congress in November, raising expectations of a more open style of governance.

The authorities seemed to be approaching the row cautiously to avoid a backlash that might trigger more protests, said Doug Young, a journalism professor at Fudan University in Shanghai.

"The government is treading really, really carefully in this incident because they have to make sure that it doesn't get out of control, say if they come across as acting too heavy-handed and start arresting people or trying to fire people," he said.

In a commentary the People's Daily, the Party's official mouthpiece, said propaganda chiefs needed to adapt to the "rhythm of the era" to ensure their effectiveness, and abandon "stiff preaching that is unchanging and patronising".

Analysts said the dispute was the latest instance of years of mounting tension between a heavily controlling government and a public increasingly assertive of its rights.

"It's part of the intensifying battle in the last decade," said Kerry Brown, director of the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. "You cannot just shut them up. This is not going to go away."

The US-based website China Digital Times posted what it called a message from propaganda authorities telling media outlets not to refer to the issue.

"Party control of the media is an unwavering basic principle" and "external hostile forces are involved in the development of the situation", it quoted the message as saying.

The international media freedom group Reporters Without Borders praised the protestors' "show of courage" and called for the original article to be published.

But a commentary in the English-language Global Times, which is close to the ruling party, on Tuesday said authorities would not allow radical changes in media policy.

"The country is unlikely to have the 'absolutely free media' that is dreamed of by those activists," it said, "The Southern Weekly issue will not be concluded with a surprise ending."

-AFP/fl

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Primitive and Peculiar Mammal May Be Hiding Out in Australia

It’d be hard to think of a mammal that’s weirder than the long-beaked, egg-laying echidna. Or harder to find.

Scientists long thought the animal, which has a spine-covered body, a four-headed penis, and a single hole for reproducing, laying eggs, and excreting waste, lived only in New Guinea. The population of about 10,000 is critically endangered. Now there is tantalizing evidence that the echidna, thought to have gone extinct in Australia some 10,000 years ago, lived and reproduced there as recently as the early 1900s and may still be alive on Aussie soil.

The new echidna information comes from zoologist Kristofer Helgen, a National Geographic emerging explorer and curator of mammals at the Smithsonian Institution. Helgen has published a key finding in ZooKeys confirming that a skin and skull collected in 1901 by naturalist John T. Tunney in Australia is in fact the western long-beaked echidna, Zaglossus bruijnii. The specimen, found in the West Kimberley region of Western Australia, was misidentified for many years.

(More about echidnas: Get to know this living link between mammals and reptiles.)

Helgen has long been fascinated by echidnas. He has seen only three in the wild. “Long-beaked echidnas are hard to get your hands on, period,” he said. “They are shy and secretive by nature. You’re lucky if you can find one. And if you do, it will be by chance.” Indeed, chance played a role in his identification of the Australian specimen. In 2009, he visited the Natural History Museum of London, where he wanted to see all of the echidnas he could. He took a good look in the bottom drawer of the echidna cabinet, where the specimens with less identifying information are often stored. From among about a dozen specimens squeezed into the drawer, he grabbed the one at the very bottom.

(Related from National Geographic magazine: “Discovery in the Foja Mountains.”)

“As I pulled it out, I saw a tag that I had seen before,” Helgen said. “I was immediately excited about this label. As a zoologist working in museums you get used to certain tags: It’s a collector’s calling card. I instantly recognized John Tunney’s tag and his handwriting.”

John Tunney was a well-known naturalist in the early 20th century who went on collecting expeditions for museums. During an Australian expedition in 1901 for Lord L. Walter Rothschild’s private museum collection, he found the long-beaked echidna specimen. Though he reported the locality on his tag as “Mt Anderson (W Kimberley)” and marked it as “Rare,” Tunney left the species identification field blank. When he returned home, the specimen was sent to the museum in Perth for identification. It came back to Rothschild’s museum identified as a short-beaked echidna.

With the specimen’s long snout, large size, and three-clawed feet, Helgen knew that it must be a long-beaked echidna. The short-beaked echidna, still alive and thriving in Australia today, has five claws, a smaller beak, and is half the size of the long-beaked echidna, which can weigh up to 36 pounds (16 kilograms).

As Helgen began tracing the history and journey of the specimen over the last century, he crossed the path of another fascinating mind who had also encountered the specimen. Oldfield Thomas was arguably the most brilliant mammalogical taxonomist ever. He named approximately one out of every six mammals known today.

Thomas was working at the Natural History Museum in London when the Tunney echidna specimen arrived, still misidentified as a short-beaked echidna. Thomas realized the specimen was actually a long-beaked echidna and removed the skull and some of the leg bones from the skin to prove that it was an Australian record of a long-beaked echidna, something just as unexpected then as it is now.

No one knows why Thomas did not publish that information. And the echidna went back into the drawer until Helgen came along 80 years later.

As Helgen became convinced that Tunney’s long-beaked echidna specimen indeed came from Australia, he confided in fellow scientist Mark Eldridge of the Australian Museum about the possibility. Eldridge replied, “You’re not the first person who’s told me that there might be long-beaked echidnas in the Kimberley.” (That’s the Kimberley region of northern Australia.) Scientist James Kohen, a co-author on Helgen’s ZooKeys paper, had been conducting fieldwork in the area in 2001 and spoke to an Aboriginal woman who told him how “her grandmothers used to hunt” large echidnas.

This is “the first evidence of the survival into modern times of any long-beaked echidna in Australia,” said Tim Flannery, professor at Macquarie University in Sydney. “This is a truly significant finding that should spark a re-evaluation of echidna identifications from across northern Australia.”

Helgen has “a small optimism” about finding a long-beaked echidna in the wild in Australia and hopes to undertake an expedition and to interview Aboriginal communities, with their intimate knowledge of the Australian bush.

Though the chances may be small, Helgen says, finding one in the wild “would be the beautiful end to the story.”

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Meet Obama's Defense Secretary Nominee

President Obama nominated former Senator Chuck Hagel as the next U.S. secretary of defense. To those who haven't followed the Senate closely in the past decade, he's probably not a household name.

Hagel is a former GOP senator from Nebraska and Purple-Heart-decorated Vietnam veteran, but he wouldn't necessarily be a popular pick with Republicans in Congress.

At age 21, Hagel and his brother Tom became the next in the family to serve in the United States Army. They joined the masses of Americans fighting an unfamiliar enemy in Vietnam.

In his book, he describes finding himself "pinned down by Viet Cong rifle fire, badly burned, with my wounded brother in my arms."

"Mr. President, I'm grateful for this opportunity to serve our country again," Hagel said after Obama announced his nomination Monday.

In 1971, Hagel took his first job in politics as chief of staff to Congressman John Y. McCollister, a position he held for six years. After that, he moved to Washington for the first time, where he went on to work for a tire company's government affairs office, the 1982 World's Fair and in 1981, as Ronald Reagan's Deputy Administrator of the Veterans Administration.

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He worked in the private sector for most of the 80s and 90s before his first election to the Senate in 1997.
Since the turn of the century, Hagel has followed a curvy path of political alliances that puts his endorsements all over the map. Hagel's record of picking politically unpopular positions could be a large part of why Obama is naming him for the job, as Slate's Fred Kaplan surmises the next Defense secretary will be faced with tough choices.

In 2000, he was one of few Republican senators to back Sen. John McCain over then-presidential-candidate George W. Bush.

After that election, Hagel fiercely criticized Bush for adding 30,000 surge troops to Iraq, in place of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group's proposal of a draw-down and regional diplomacy, which Hagel preferred. When Bush instead announced that more troops would go to Iraq, Hagel co-sponsored a nonbinding resolution to oppose it, along with then-Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del.

"The president says, 'I don't care.' He's not accountable anymore," Hagel told Esquire in June 2007. "He's not accountable anymore, which isn't totally true. You can impeach him, and before this is over, you might see calls for his impeachment. I don't know. It depends how this goes."

Hagel's fierce opposition to America's involvement in Iraq – he called it one of the five monumental blunders of history, on par with the Trojan War – will be of substantial importance as the Obama administration charts our course out of Afghanistan, deciding how to withdraw the last of the troops in 2014 and how much of a presence to leave behind.

Hagel's support for McCain, which was substantial in his competition against Bush, disappeared in the 2008 election. Hagel toured Iraq and Afghanistan with Obama during his first campaign for the presidency.

In October 2008, Hagel's wife, Lillibet, announced her support for the Obama team, after the Washington Post reported on her donations to his campaign. She donated again in 2012.

Before the 2008 election, Hagel wrote: "The next president of the United States will face one of the most difficult national security decisions of modern times: what to do about an Iran that may be at the threshold of acquiring nuclear weapons."

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