Today on New Scientist: 28 November 2012

Out-of-proportion black hole is a rare cosmic fossil

A fairly small galaxy is host to a strangely enormous black hole, which could be a remnant of a quasar from the dawn of time

Flowing lithium atoms form accidental transistor

A transistor that controls the flow of atoms, rather than electrons, could be used as a model to probe the mysterious electrical property of superconductivity

Europe in 2050: a survivor's guide to climate change

A new report gives a clear picture of how global warming is affecting Europe - so how must countries adapt to survive?

Arctic permafrost is melting faster than predicted

A UN report and NASA research highlight greenhouse gases from melting permafrost, which they say could warm Earth's climate faster than we thought

Cassini spots superstorm at Saturn's north pole

The end of Saturn's 15-year winter reveals a huge hurricane-like vortex at the centre of the mysterious hexagon that tops the ringed planet

Infinity in the real world: Does space go on forever?

Watch an animation that tries to pin down the size of the universe, the largest thing that exists

Endangered primates caught in Congolese conflict

As the UN warns of a growing humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the advance of the M23 rebels also puts the region's gorillas and chimps at risk

Hive minds: Honeybee intelligence creates a buzz

Bees do remarkable things with a brain the size of a pinhead, raising some intriguing questions about the nature of intelligence for David Robson

Humans head for moon's orbit - and beyond

A NASA mission might focus on the dark side, while a private mission may attempt something even more novel

Europe has right stuff to take NASA back to moon

ESA's redesigned cargo drone will give NASA's Orion spacecraft air, power and manoeuvrability on two new trips to the moon

DNA imaged with electron microscope for the first time

The famous twists of DNA's double helix have been seen with the aid of an electron microscope and a silicon bed of nails

Holiday gifts: Books to give by

CultureLab picks the best books to delight the scientifically curious this holiday season

How do you solve a problem like North Korea?

Forging scientific links may be one of the best ways to help bring rogue states back into the international fold

What truly exists? Structure as a route to the real

Some say we should accept that entities such as atomic particles really do exist. Others bitterly disagree. There is a way out, says Eric Scerri

Gas explosion in Springfield points to ageing pipes

Gas company officials attributed natural gas explosion on 23 November to human error, but the pipeline's corrosion made it susceptible to puncture

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Manning's suicide watch at US brig "senseless": doctor

FORT MEADE, Maryland: A US military psychiatrist testified on Wednesday that the harsh detention of WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning was "senseless" and that commanders totally ignored his advice to lift tough suicide watch measures.

Captain William Hoctor, a Navy doctor who evaluated Manning about every week during his confinement at a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Virginia, told the court the army private showed no sign of being suicidal.

"It seemed really senseless," Hoctor said of a "prevention of injury" status imposed on Manning.

Manning, charged with passing a trove of secret government files to the WikiLeaks website, is asking a judge to dismiss his case because of alleged illegal punishment he suffered during his pre-trial detention at Quantico.

In a military career spanning more than two decades, Hoctor said he had never faced a situation in which his medical advice at a prison was totally ignored as it was at Quantico.

"I never really experienced anything like this," he said.

A second psychiatrist also advised the brig leadership to lift the "prevention of injury" status, he said.

After Manning was transferred to Quantico from a US military cell in Kuwait in July 2010, Hoctor soon advised military authorities to remove a "suicide risk" assessment and then to rescind a "prevention of injury" status, he said.

But the brig commanders chose not to follow his recommendation, isolating Manning in a solitary cell for more than 23 hours a day and forcing him to strip every night.

Hoctor said he had a heated meeting with one of the officers running the brig, Colonel Robert Oltman, who told him that Manning would be kept under "prevention of injury" status indefinitely.

Oltman also indicated he had instructions from senior officers to follow the tough approach to avoid any risk of Manning committing suicide.

But Oltman testified earlier that the doctor's view was "only one data point" and that there were other factors to take into account, including weekly reports from prison guards.

"I wasn't going to base a decision on his input alone," Oltman said under questioning by Manning's defence lawyer, David Coombs.

Oltman also said he had concerns about the doctor's credibility as Hoctor allegedly had concluded another detainee did not pose a suicide risk but the man ended up killing himself.

Manning is expected to take the stand for the first time this week during the latest round of pre-trial hearings that began Tuesday at Fort Meade, Maryland, north of the US capital.

Manning, 24, who sat in the courtroom taking copious notes during the proceedings, could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted of aiding the enemy with the massive leak, which embarrassed the US government and rankled Washington's allies.

In the worst security breach in US history, the leaks included hundreds of thousands of military intelligence logs from Iraq and Afghanistan and roughly 25,000 sensitive diplomatic cables.

Manning's lawyer appeared to be constructing an argument that officers imposed strict solitary confinement on the Army private under pressure from top brass at the Pentagon and against the advice of medical professionals and the military's own regulations.

On Tuesday, the former commander of the brig, retired Marine colonel Daniel Choike, said Manning was placed on suicide watch partly because he was engaged in "erratic dancing" and was licking the bars in his cell.

But Hoctor scoffed at the incidents. He said Manning was licking the cell bars when he was sleepwalking and as for dancing, he said: "I mean, so what?"

"It would be within the realm of normal behaviour," he added.

The defence also honed in on the role of a three-star Marine officer at the Pentagon, Lieutenant General George Flynn, who took a keen interest in the high-profile case, according to emails cited by the defense.

Flynn made clear in emails that he wanted to be kept informed and stressed that officers must ensure that Manning did not commit suicide while detained at the Marine Corps brig, Oltman said.

A UN rapporteur on torture concluded Manning was subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment at the Quantico brig.

After his detention from July 2010 to April 2011 at Quantico, Manning was later transferred to a prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, where he faces less strict conditions.

- AFP/xq

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Weatherman's fiancee stages naked coup of his Twitter feed

Storm clouds ahead?

(Credit:
Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

There are some people to whom things just happen.

It may well be that John Bolaris is one of those people.

Last year, he was suspended from his job at WTXF-TV in Philadelphia (he was subsequently fired) after Playboy wrote that he had been the alleged victim of "bottle girls" in a Miami club.

These women, it seems, had the bottle to wring $43,000 from his credit card.

Now, more woman trouble.

As the New York Daily News reports, Bolaris appears to have been asleep when his girlfriend wrestled her way onto his Twitter account and began to make promises of a carnal nature.

His fiancee happens to be Erica Smitheman, a former Playboy model.

On Sunday, she claimed Bolaris was asleep and began tweeting from his account -- and what tweeting.

She first introduced herself, told his fans (Bolaris now appears occasionally on the Howard Stern show) that he loved them, and then promised to upload some nude shots.

The only shot she did reveal was one of herself in her underwear.

However, the tease was clearly a little too much for some of Bolaris' followers, who couldn't help but become Oliver Twists of the twisted and begged for more.

Smitheman also happened to mention that sex with the weatherman was like a rising high pressure system. (I paraphrase marginally.)

When he woke from his slumber, Bolaris tweeted: "Obviously my fiance had a little party on Twitter last night, she has been by my side through everything, I love her,Hmm interesting tweets [sic]."

I am slightly skeptical that Bolaris knew nothing of this amusement as it was happening.

Yes, he tweeted to one follower that Smitheman is now "under house arrest," but I somehow suspect that a little publicity doesn't cause inclement conditions in his career.

More Technically Incorrect

It was only last week that Bolaris was in court, testifying against the Russian crime syndicate that was allegedly at the heart of his initial issues.

After that evidence, he had to defend himself against a charge that he had defecated himself during the ordeal.

So what better way to divert any further malodor by having his comely fiancee be the frontwoman for an evening?

One hopes that Smitheman's foray inspires other lovers to take over their more famous paramour's Twitter accounts and see what joy they might cause.

How touching it would be, for example, if Chris Brown took over Rihanna's Twitter account for an evening and offered even more of the measured, mellifluous musings that he directed toward writer Jenny Johnson only a few days ago.

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Caterpillar Fungus Has Anti-Inflammatory Properties

In the Tibetan mountains, a fungus attaches itself to a moth larva burrowed in the soil. It infects and slowly consumes its host from within, taking over its brain and making the young caterpillar move to a position from which the fungus can grow and spore again.

Sounds like something out of science fiction, right? But for ailing Chinese consumers and nomadic Tibetan harvesters, the parasite called cordyceps means hope—and big money. Chinese markets sell the "golden worm," or "Tibetan mushroom"—thought to cure ailments from cancer to asthma to erectile dysfunction—for up to $50,000 (U.S.) per pound. Patients, following traditional medicinal practices, brew the fungal-infected caterpillar in tea or chew it raw.

Now the folk medicine is getting scientific backing. A new study published in the journal RNA finds that cordycepin, a chemical derived from the caterpillar fungus, has anti-inflammatory properties.

"Inflammation is normally a beneficial response to a wound or infection, but in diseases like asthma it happens too fast and to too high of an extent," said study co-author Cornelia H. de Moor of the University of Nottingham. "When cordycepin is present, it inhibits that response strongly."

And it does so in a way not previously seen: at the mRNA stage, where it inhibits polyadenylation. That means it stops swelling at the genetic cellular level—a novel anti-inflammatory approach that could lead to new drugs for cancer, asthma, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and cardiovascular-disease patients who don't respond well to current medications.

From Worm to Pill

But such new drugs may be a long way off. The science of parasitic fungi is still in its early stages, and no medicine currently available utilizes cordycepin as an anti-inflammatory. The only way a patient could gain its benefits would by consuming wild-harvested mushrooms.

De Moor cautions against this practice. "I can't recommend taking wild-harvested medications," she says. "Each sample could have a completely different dose, and there are mushrooms where [taking] a single bite will kill you."

Today 96 percent of the world's caterpillar-fungus harvest comes from the high Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayan range. Fungi from this region are of the subspecies Ophiocordyceps sinensis, locally known as yartsa gunbu ("summer grass, winter worm"). While highly valued in Chinese traditional medicine, these fungi have relatively low levels of cordycepin. What's more, they grow only at elevations of 10,000 to 16,500 feet and cannot be farmed. All of which makes yartsa gunbu costly for Chinese consumers: A single fungal-infected caterpillar can fetch $30.

Brave New Worm

Luckily for researchers, and for potential consumers, another rare species of caterpillar fungus, Cordyceps militaris, is capable of being farmed—and even cultivated to yield much higher levels of cordycepin.

De Moor says that's not likely to discourage Tibetan harvesters, many of whom make a year's salary in just weeks by finding and selling yartsa gunbu. Scientific proof of cordycepin's efficacy will only increase demand for the fungus, which could prove dangerous. "With cultivation we have a level of quality control that's missing in the wild," says de Moor.

"There is definitely some truth somewhere in certain herbal medicinal traditions, if you look hard enough," says de Moor. "But ancient healers probably wouldn't notice a 10 percent mortality rate resulting from herbal remedies. In the scientific world, that's completely unacceptable." If you want to be safe, she adds, "wait for the medicine."

Ancient Chinese medical traditions—which also use ground tiger bones as a cure for insomnia, elephant ivory for religious icons, and rhinoceros horns to dispel fevers—are controversial but popular. Such remedies remain in demand regardless of scientific advancement—and endangered animals continue to be killed in order to meet that demand. While pills using cordycepin from farmed fungus might someday replace yartsa gunbu harvesting, tigers, elephants, and rhinos are disappearing much quicker than worms.

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Factory Workers: We Were Locked in, Flames Spread

More survivors of the factory fire in Bangladesh that killed more than 100 garment workers this weekend have told human rights and international labor groups they were actually locked in by security gates as the flames spread.

"The police and the fire department are confirming that the collapsible gates were locked on each floor," said Charles Kernighan, executive director of the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights. "The fire department said they had to come in with bolt cutters to cut the locks."

The toll of the garment factory blaze now stands at 112, but Kernighan and others interviewed by ABC News said they believe the number may actually be much higher. The destruction inside made it difficult to identify bodies, and Kernighan said factory officials have yet to make public a list of the 1,500 workers believed to be working in the nine-story building at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, when the fire broke out in a first floor warehouse.

Kalpona Akter, a labor activist based in the Bangladesh capital of Dhaka, spoke with a number of survivors, who described a scene of horror as workers started to smell smoke, and then the power went out and they were thrown into darkness.

"Then they ran to the stairs and found it was already fire caught in the stairs," she said. "They broke one window in the east side of the factory and … they started to jump."

Akter said many groups of relatives worked together in the factory, and when the lights went out, many began to scream in search of their mothers and sisters and daughters. She said she also heard accounts of managers shutting the gates as alarms sounded to prevent workers from walking off the job, apparently thinking it was a false alarm.

Fire Kills Over 100 Factory Workers in Bangladesh Watch Video

Bangladesh Garment Factory Fire Leaves 112 Dead Watch Video

More Than 100 Dead in Bangladesh Garment Factory Fire Watch Video

Authorities in Bangladesh announced three arrests, all supervisors from the factory, whom the police accused of negligence in their handling of the incident.

A journalist who attended the police press conference told ABC News the three men were arrested "because they did not perform their duty" and prevented workers from escaping from the factory, instead of helping them get out.

Also Wednesday, there were new reports that clothing found in the burned-out remains included large quantities of sweat shirts with labels for Disney, the parent company of ABC News. Like Wal-Mart and Sears, Disney said today it had no idea the Tazreen Fashions Limited factory was not supposed to be making its clothes.

"None of our licensees have been permitted to manufacture Disney-branded products in this facility for at least the last 12 months," a Disney statement read.

As with Disney, other retailers continue to question how their products could be found in a factory they did not know they had hired. Li & Fung, a Hong Kong supplier that works with several large brands, confirmed it was producing clothes in the factory for a Sean Combs label, ENYCE. But in a statement to ABC News Wednesday, Li & Fung said it had not brought clothes to the factory for any other client, including Sears, Disney and Wal-Mart.

Asked why it hired a factory that had been cited by at least one auditor for having safety problems, Li & Fung said it was investigating that question.

"As this tragic event is still under official investigation by the authorities, and since Li & Fung will conduct our own investigation, it would be premature to comment on our prior assessment of the factory's compliance," the statement said.

Labor rights groups said the American clothing companies have an obligation to know where their clothing is being manufactured.

"They have the power to make demands on the factory owners, they don't do it though," Kernighan said. "Because they want to keep cutting the prices, and cutting the prices, and cutting the prices."

Click Here for the Blotter Homepage.

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Gas explosion in Springfield points to ageing pipes

Human error and corroded pipes were a catastrophic combination on 23 November when a natural gas explosion in Springfield, Massachusetts, injured 21 people and damaged more than 40 buildings.

Gas company officials attributed the incident to an employee puncturing a high-pressure pipeline with a metal probe while looking for a leak. However, the steel pipeline was highly corroded, making it susceptible to damage, according to Mark McDonald, president of the New England Gas Workers Association. "You would have to be Superman to go through steel pipe in good condition," he says.

Ageing natural gas pipelines in the US are increasingly coming under scrutiny. A recent study found 3356 leaks from pipelines under Boston alone. Twenty-five thousand leaks have been reported throughout Massachusetts, some of which have been leaking continuously for more than 20 years, McDonald says. "Enough is enough," he says. "We have to fix the leaks and maintain the gas lines."

The leaks raise safety concerns, and have implications for global warming. Methane is thought to be more than 20 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over a 100 year period.

Incidents involving natural gas pipelines in the US cause an average of $133 million in property damage each year according to data collected by the US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. Even accounting for inflation, annual damages are several times higher today than they were 20 years ago.

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US again says China not currency manipulator

WASHINGTON: The US Treasury on Tuesday again stopped short of labeling China a currency manipulator, noting gains in the value of the yuan, but said the currency remains "significantly undervalued."

In a twice-yearly finding to answer congressional critics of China's overwhelming bilateral trade advantage, the Treasury declined to slap Beijing with the currency manipulator tag, a move that could spark US trade sanctions.

The US Treasury argued that Beijing knows that an appreciating currency is in its own interest, and said the yuan, or renminbi (RMB), had gained 9.3 percent against the dollar between June 2010 and November 2012.

It said that when inflation was taken into account, the value of the Chinese currency had increased 12.6 percent since June 2010, when Beijing pledged to allow the yuan to trade more freely.

Nevertheless, it said, based on Beijing's huge stock of foreign reserves and its strong trade surplus, the yuan's appreciation has been "insufficient."

Those and other factors "suggest that the real exchange rate of the RMB remains significantly undervalued and further appreciation of the RMB against the dollar and other major currencies is warranted."

After hitting a year low in July of around RMB 6.39 per dollar, the currency has steadily climbed in recent weeks to hit a fresh record high of RMB 6.22 per dollar on Monday. It was trading around 6.227 per dollar in late trade Tuesday.

The US Treasury regularly reviews the exchange rate policies of nine economies that account for 70 percent of US foreign trade, with most of the focus on China, the world's second largest economy.

Critics in Congress accuse Beijing of keeping the yuan artificially low to make Chinese exports unfairly cheap. They want the Asian nation officially labelled a manipulator in order to apply sanctions against the country.

The administration of President Barack Obama has raised trade pressure on China but has refrained from any formal action on the currency front.

In its last report in May, the Treasury also said the yuan was "significantly undervalued."

Republicans used the issue of China's currency to batter Obama ahead of the November 6 elections, but the Democratic incumbent handily defeated his Republican rival Mitt Romney.

Romney had accused Obama of going easy on Beijing and promised, if elected, to label China a manipulator on the first day of his presidency.

The US-China Business Council, which has regularly opposed the push to brand China a manipulator, praised the Treasury report.

"The Treasury Department once again made the right call on China's currency policy in its report to Congress.

"Labeling China a currency 'manipulator' would do little to help us reach the goal of a fully convertible currency and market-driven exchange rate for China," the group said in a statement.

"We need to move on to more important issues with China, such as removing market access barriers and improving intellectual property protection."

-AFP/ac

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Quick workaround for MacBook black screen

A while ago a number of MacBook users noticed a pretty annoying black-screen bug on their systems, in which the computer would appear to be running but would not show any output on the display. To get around this issue, people were forced to restart their systems, losing any unsaved data.

Investigations of this bug showed the problem appeared to be rooted in the handling of the dual graphics cards in MacBook Pro models from 2010, and while Apple issued a software update to address the problem, this update did not help all who were experiencing it.

The primary workaround for this problem was to use the third-party GPU manager utility gfxCardStatus to force the system to use only one of its available GPUs, to avoid the automatic switching between the graphics cards that was leading to the problem. While the increased use of the more powerful dedicated GPU drained the battery a little more, it did avoid the problem for many.

Unfortunately, while Apple claimed this problem was software-based, many users reported that replacing the motherboard with a new one of the same model fixed the problem, which suggests it was rooted in hardware. Installing Apple's software fix for the problem also produced mixed results.

Some may still encounter this problem periodically on these older MacBook Pros, and it's possible configuration issues could lead to something similar on other systems. If this happens to you, try the following as a way to save your work before restarting.

MacFixIt reader Joe recently wrote in regarding his experiences with this problem, and found that while the display remained black, the system did appear to be running just fine in the background. Not wanting to interrupt his work flow, Joe attached an external monitor to the system, and despite the black video output on the main display, normal video output appeared on the external monitor. Thus he was able to restart the system properly.

Hence, if you have a MacBook (or any
Mac for that matter) that is showing no video output on one display source, especially a built-in display as on a laptop or the
iMac, then try using a secondary video output, if possible, before resorting to rebooting the system. With DisplayPort adapters you should be able to use most video devices to do this, including any external monitors, TVs, and even an iMac that supports target display mode.

---

Questions? Comments? Have a fix? Post them below or !
Be sure to check us out on Twitter and the CNET Mac forums.

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Pictures: Falcon Massacre Uncovered in India

Photograph courtesy Conservation India

A young boy can sell bundles of fresh Amur falcons (pictured) for less than five dollars. Still, when multiplied by the thousands of falcons hunters can catch in a day, the practice can be a considerable financial boon to these groups.

Since discovering the extent of Amur hunting in Nagaland this fall, Conservation India has taken the issue to the local Indian authorities.

"They have taken it very well. They've not been defensive," Sreenivasan said.

"You're not dealing with national property, you're dealing with international property, which helped us put pressure on [them]." (Related: "Asia's Wildlife Trade.")

According to Conservation India, the same day the group filed their report with the government, a fresh order banning Amur hunting was issued. Local officials also began meeting with village leaders, seizing traps and confiscating birds. The national government has also requested an end to the hunting.

Much remains to be done, but because the hunt is so regional, Sreenivasan hopes it can eventually be contained and stamped out. Authorities there, he said, are planning a more thorough investigation next year, with officials observing, patrolling, and enforcing the law.

"This is part of India where there is some amount of acceptance on traditional bush hunting," he added. "But at some point, you draw the line."

(Related: "Bush-Meat Ban Would Devastate Africa's Animals, Poor?")

Published November 27, 2012

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Justice, House Try to Resolve Fast and Furious Suit

Nov 27, 2012 3:25pm

The Justice Department said Tuesday that they will try to settle a lawsuit seeking to enforce a subpoena sought by the House Oversight and Government Reform committee to obtain documents related to the ATF’s botched gun trafficking case Operation Fast and Furious.

Ian Gershengorn, the Justice Department deputy assistant attorney general,  and House General Counsel Kerry Kircher said the two sides would be meeting shortly to discuss a possible settlement.

The ATF’s flawed “Fast and Furious” operation allowed firearms to “walk” across the U.S. border into Mexico in hopes of tracing the guns and locating major weapons traffickers.  The operation took a tragic turn when two weapons found in December 2010 at the scene of murdered U.S. Border Patrol Brian Terry were linked to Fast and Furious. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee spearheaded the congressional investigation into the ATF operation.

The House voted this summer to hold Attorney General Holder in contempt for not releasing the materials.  The House then sued Attorney General Eric Holder earlier this year after President Obama invoked executive privilege shielding Holder from turning over the documents. The Committee’s subpoena was seeking internal DOJ documents following the drafting of a February 4, 2011 letter sent to Congress that  contained inaccurate information about ATF’s operations. The letter was withdrawn by the Justice Department in December 2011.

A DOJ Inspector General report earlier this year cleared Holder of knowing about the ATF’s reckless tactics. The Inspector General’s review recommended 14 Justice Department and ATF officials for disciplinary and administrative review.

Tuesday during a news conference in Connecticut, Holder said, “I think there is a deal that can be struck.”

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson has set a status hearing for January 10, 2013 to review the issue further.

SHOWS: World News

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