Pictures: The Story Behind Sun Dogs, Penitent Ice, and More

Photograph by Art Wolfe, Getty Images

If you want the beauty of winter without having to brave the bone-chilling temperatures blasting much of the United States this week, snuggle into a soft blanket, grab a warm beverage, and curl up with some of these natural frozen wonders.

Nieve penitente, or penitent snow, are collections of spires that resemble robed monks—or penitents. They are flattened columns of snow wider at the base than at the tip and can range in height from 3 to 20 feet (1 to 6 meters). The picture above shows the phenomenon in central Chile. (See pictures of the patterns in snow and ice.)

Nieve penitente tend to form in shallow valleys where the snow is deep and the sun doesn't shine at too steep an angle, said Kenneth Libbrecht, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena who studies ice crystal formation.

As the snow melts, dirt gets mixed in with the runoff and collects in little pools here and there, he said. Since the dirt is darker in color than the surrounding snow, the dirty areas melt faster "and you end up digging these pits," explained Libbrecht.

"They tend to form at high altitude," he said. But other than that, no one really knows the exact conditions that are needed to form penitent snow.

"They're fairly strong," Libbrecht said. "People have found [the spires] difficult to hike through."

—Jane J. Lee

Published January 25, 2013

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Cops Using More Private Cameras to Nab Suspects

Philadelphia detectives were able to quickly make an arrest in the murder and burning of a female pediatrician by viewing surveillance video of nearby stores and a hospital that captured the suspect entering the doctor's home and later getting into his truck.

In the hours after Dr. Melissa Ketunuti's body was found strangled and burning in her basement, city's Homicide Task Force collected surveillance footage from a coffee shop, drug store and hospital overlooking Ketunuti's block. It was footage taken from Ori Feibush's coffee shop that allowed cops to identify Smith.

The suspect, an exterminator named Jason Smith, soon confessed to detectives, police said.

Lately a range of crimes have been solved by the seemingly ubiquitous security videos maintained by private companies or citizens, and investigators have been able to quickly apprehend suspects by obtaining the video, deftly turning private cameras into effective police resources.

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Private surveillance cameras have become so pervasive that the face of a suspect who allegedly shot a Bronx, N.Y., cab driver in a botched robbery on Jan. 14 was splashed throughout the media within days because the cabbie had rigged his vehicle with a camera.

The New York Police Department arrested Salvatore Perrone after he was caught on surveillance video recorded near two of three shopkeeper slayings in Brooklyn, N.Y., in November. He has since been charged with murder.

And in Mesa, Ariz., surveillance footage taken in November by resident Mitch Drum showed a man rolling on the ground trying to extinguish flames that had engulfed his shirt, which had caught fire while he was allegedly siphoning gas from a car by Drum's house. The man was arrested.

Though surveillance cameras have been a staple of security since a network of government operated cameras dubbed the "ring of steel" was introduced in London in the early 1990s, police have recently launched programs to partner with more businesses.

In Philadelphia, police have launched a program for businesses to register private cameras with the department. According to the SafeCam website, businesses will only be contacted when there is a criminal incident in the vicinity of the security camera. At that point, police will request a copy of the footage for their investigation.

"Businesses are saying, 'I have a camera at this location, and it may or may not be of use to you. It's a registration to say, 'feel free to call me,'" Sgt. Joseph Green told ABCNews.com

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Dung beetles navigate using the Milky Way

Ever look up at the stars and wonder if some bug-eyed creature is doing the same? It turns out at least one does: the dung beetle uses the glow of the Milky Way to navigate.

Once a beetle (Scarabaeus satyrus) has constructed its dung ball, it moves off in a straight line in order to escape from rival beetles as quickly as possible, lest they try and steal its carefully crafted ball. This behaviour doesn't sound complicated, but several years ago, Marie Dacke of Lund University in Sweden and colleagues showed that polarised light from the moon is important for dung beetles to keep to a straight line.

Then the researchers were surprised to find the insects were able to stay on course even on a moonless night. "We thought there was something wrong in our set-up," Dacke says.

The team allowed the beetles to crawl around the floor of a plain-walled cylindrical drum with an open top, meaning they could only use the night sky to orientate themselves. The researchers timed how long it took the beetles to reach the edge of the drum from the centre, and found that under a full moon, the insects took around 20 seconds on average; on a starry but moonless night, they took around 40 seconds.

But when beetles had a cardboard cap placed on them to prevent them from seeing the sky, they needed over two minutes, suggesting the stars were playing a role.

Planetarium clincher

To test this, the team moved the experiment to a planetarium. By switching stars on and off, Dacke discovered that the glowing strip of the whole Milky Way was what guided the beetles' movement. "Before it was assumed insects could not use the stars because their eyes don't have the resolution to see them," she says. Navigating using the whole of the Milky Way does away with the need to see individual stars.

Dacke says the results suggest moths, locusts and other insects might navigate by the Milky Way, too. Her team is now looking at whether the beetles prefer to navigate by the moon or the Milky Way when both are on view.

Journal reference: Current Biology, doi.org/kbm

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US scholar urges dramatic rethink on Taiwan

WASHINGTON: With Beijing growing in strength, a US scholar is calling for a major rethink on Taiwan in which the island would cut its troop numbers in half and rebrand its army as a self-defence force.

The proposal marks a rare break from the conventional view of American and Taiwanese policymakers that the island needs to close the military gap with Beijing, but its author said an opposite course could strengthen Taipei.

Scott Bates, president of the Washington-based Center for National Policy, said the balance was "irretrievably shifting" in China's favor and it was politically and economically unrealistic that Taiwan would commit enough to close the gap.

Instead, Taipei can take the lead by halving the size of its army, rebranding it as a Self-Defence Force in the style of Japan and renouncing any military action on mainland China's soil, he argued.

"If Taiwan were to take a bold step like this, that would change perceptions on the mainland and perhaps win some popular support for the Taiwanese position," said Bates, a former congressional aide.

"If there were a showdown, it might make (Beijing) think twice."

Taiwan should turn the new force into a disaster response team ready to deploy throughout Asia and also highlight the island's democracy through a major initiative that supports civil society across the continent, Bates said.

And instead of waging a battle to preserve a dwindling number of nations' recognition of Taipei instead of Beijing, Taiwan can use its diplomatic resources to seek solutions on Asia's bitter territorial disputes, he said.

The new Taiwanese approach would give the island the moral high ground, winning over global opinion and ensuring that China would appear to be the aggressor if it attacked, he argued.

"Mainland Chinese public opinion is beginning to matter more. The Chinese Communist Party cannot ignore its own people without repercussions," Bates said.

China considers Taiwan to be a territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary. China's defeated nationalists fled to Taiwan after defeat by the communists in 1949, with the island developing into a self-ruling democracy.

The United States switched recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979 but at the same time Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which requires Washington to provide the island with means to defend itself.

Bates said that his proposal would complement efforts by Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, who has sought to ease tensions with China by expanding economic ties, though domestic critics accuse Ma of jeopardising the island's de facto independence.

Bates supported the continuation of the Taiwan Relations Act, saying the island needed a credible deterrent. While cutting its army, Bates called for Taiwan to launch a major upgrade of its air defences and navy to show that any effort to gain supremacy over the island would be costly.

The Taiwan Relations Act enjoys virtually unanimous support in the US Congress, where lawmakers have pressed President Barack Obama to sell to the island new F-16 jets - a step that China strongly opposes.

Bates' ideas, however, are unlikely to win quick support.

Joseph Bosco, a former Pentagon official, sharply criticised the proposal, saying it went against accepted concepts of deterrence and that Taiwan already had the moral high ground.

"Taiwan does not need to disarm unilaterally in order to prove its moral or political legitimacy," Bosco said on Wednesday at an event where Bates presented his proposal.

Bates, who spoke last year at Taiwan's National Defence University and wrote an opinion piece in the Taipei Times, said he wanted to start a debate.

"It doesn't have to be my plan, but there does have to be a strategic rethink," he said.

- AFP

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Ito: Think twice about immortality and the singularity

MIT Media Lab director Joichi Ito speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland

(Credit:
screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Ray Kurzweil's vision of the "singularity" -- when nanobots make humans immortal and computer progress is so fast that the future becomes profoundly unknowable -- is a bad idea.

That's the perhaps surprisingly contrary opinion of Joichi Ito, who as a high-tech investor and director of the MIT Media Lab might be expected to be a natural ally. The lab, after all, aims to be at the center of today's technology revolution.

Ito, speaking today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said he believes the singularity vision puts the wrong priorities first.

"I'm on the other side of the singularity guys. I don't think immortality is a good thing," Ito said. People who think about maximizing efficiency "don't think about the ecological, social-network effects. In the future, every science invention we do should be at least neutral," and preferably positive.

"When you introduce immortality, you have to think about what does it do to the system. At the Media Lab, our design principle is not to make the world more efficient, but making the system more resilient, more robust."

Ito called for a radically restructured educational system, too.

"You're training kids to become obedient members of a mass-production society," he said. "But as there's more and more automation, you want people to be more and more creative," like kindergarten when children spend more time playing around, exploring, and teaching each other.

Tests today judge kids in a computer-free testing environment completely unrelated to what's in the real world.

Today, "you can look on the Internet, you can ask your friends," Ito said. "Cheating is actually a feature. Success as an adult is how resourceful you are at getting people to help you do things. Those are all unassessed things" in today's schools and tests.

The MIT Media Lab favors a more unstructured approach. "Our students and faculty can explore whatever they want. We just let them go," he said. "If you're not asking permission and writing proposals, the cost of innovation is very low."

Students can talk about ideas in the morning. "By the afternoon they've built a prototype," he said, especially with the increasing utility of 3D printers.

Ito had grand visions for how those printers will change manufacturing. "We're going to be manufacturing things everywhere instead of centrally. Every single person is going to become a designer," he predicted.

Technology should help people rethink what's possible with cities, he also said. With people able to page buses on demand, bus stops should be created on demand, not fixed in advance. Rentable commuter bicycles should be cheaper to use if people drop them off in high-demand areas.

"We're trying to look at the city from a software perspective and build the hardware around it," Ito said.

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Deformed Dolphin Accepted Into New Family

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

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

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

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

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

A Rare Alliance

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

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

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

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

Default

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

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

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

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

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

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Unplanned Pregnancies Hurt Military Women

Women in the military have access to some of the nation's best health care, which includes free birth control. But a new study shows that many women are not using it and the rate of unintended pregnancy is double that of the general population.

And today, with the Department of Defense having just ended its longtime ban on women serving in combat roles, an unplanned pregnancy could have wider ramifications not only for a woman's health, but for her opportunities for advancement.

An estimated 10.5 percent of active duty women, ages 18 to 44, reported an unplanned pregnancy in the prior 12 months in 2008, the last year for which there are statistics, according to researchers at Ibis Reproductive Health, a nonprofit organization that supports women's sexual and reproductive rights.

That number was higher than in 2005, when the rate was 9.7 percent.

In the non-military population, about 5.2 percent of women of reproductive age report an unintended pregnancy each year, according to the study, published this week in the February issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

The Ibis study was based on surveys of more than 7,000 active-duty women; the statistics were obtained from the Department of Defense under the Freedom of Information Act. Rates were equal among those women who were deployed and those serving stateside.

Women make up 202,400 of the U.S. military's 1.4 million active duty personnel; more than 280,000 women have deployed over the last decade to Iraq and Afghanistan.

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"It's terrific that women are getting recognition for their role in combat missions and are being considered for all types of promotions in the armed services," said lead author Kate Grindlay, senior project manager at Ibis. "But for women to reach their potential, they must be able to access birth control for their personal health and well-being."

Military warned to maintain readiness as women move toward combat.

About 900 women had been unable to deploy in the past year due to a pregnancy, either planned or unplanned, according to the study. The highest rates were among younger women with less education who were either married or cohabitating, researchers said.

The authors of the study say that an unwanted pregnancy not only disrupts a woman's military career, but takes a toll on military readiness because pregnant women cannot be deployed or must be evacuated from war zones. They say the military needs to take a more "comprehensive approach" to address the problem.

A July 2012 Ibis study, based on women deployed over the last decade, revealed they face a variety of barriers to accessing contraception.
Women said they did not speak with a military medical provider about birth control before they deployed overseas -- either it was never offered or the woman never asked.

Military policies that forbid sexual activity between fellow service members "led some women to think contraception was not available or not needed," said the report.

Others said they had trouble getting preferred types of birth control -- the IUD, for example -- or adequate supplies before deployment.

"In addition to these access barriers, the high rate of sexual assault in the military also puts women at risk of unintended pregnancy," said the July study.

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Abortions are only provided at military hospitals in cases of rape, incest or life endangerment. A woman must either risk an abortion at a local hospital during deployment or be sent home. Tricare, the military insurance plan, does not cover an abortion.

"Women who are deployed in Iraq wouldn't have any abortion options and must be evacuated and it could compromise confidentiality and access to care," said Grindlay.

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The real lesson from the bird flu storm

The controversy over whether work on airborne H5N1 bird flu can be published shows that transparency is vital to upholding public trust

So the research moratorium on H5N1 bird flu is over. In 2011 I was one of the first journalists to report the discovery that H5N1 bird flu, which is highly lethal in humans, can mutate to become readily transmissible not just in birds but also in mammals like us – while, apparently, remaining lethal.

What happened next shocked the researchers. Publication of the work was blocked, as US biosecurity experts insisted it would be crazy to tell would-be bioterrorists about this. The 39 labs around the world that do this research responded by declaring a moratorium on further work: there's little point doing research you can't publish.

A year later, the US will shortly launch a new review process to address this. This week, the labs said they would soon resume work on whether, and how, a virus now evolving across Eurasia might become an apocalyptic threat to humanity.

This resumption is good news – but there's a proviso. Hypothetical bioterrorists aside, the real worry for many critics is the danger posed by research itself. We don't want labs to inadvertently release the virus we fear.

That doesn't just require stringent containment and more bureaucracy – it means doing experiments only when benefits really outweigh risks. If, as seems likely, all parties involved cannot agree on that, then the whole process should at least be as transparent as possible. Top research officials in the US have been saying this, and that too is good.

Alarming spin

But are researchers as committed to transparency? The H5N1 kerfuffle has been notable for an alarming amount of spin. Details of the findings have been reinterpreted as pressures have mounted. The experience may have left some researchers even less likely to tell us what they're doing.

The story emerged at a flu meeting in Malta in September 2011. Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam reported that he had made H5N1 able to spread between ferrets via airborne droplets, by simply passing it repeatedly between the animals.

This was the $64,000 question in flu research. At present, H5N1 cannot become a human pandemic as it does not spread this way in mammals. But can it evolve this ability? Some virologists said no. Others said it might, but the mutant would not be as lethal.

No such luck. "All the ferrets died," Fouchier told me. "We have to do more to control H5N1." He was clearly upset at the prospect of such a virus evolving naturally; so were other flu researchers at the meeting. I reported it

Fouchier had left out a lot of detail as the research had been submitted to the journal Science, which doesn't allow authors to say much before publication. When he said the ferrets all died, I thought he was referring to the ones that inhaled the virus. In fact those ferrets lived; the ones that died had had that same virus put into their windpipe.

We would have corrected the article had the researchers complained. Maybe it seemed a minor point: the team had also reported that putting a flu virus in a ferret's windpipe was the best test of its danger to humans. The transmissible virus killed in a way that might be relevant to people – that's what mattered. The detail wouldn't have changed our conclusion.

Dangerous or not?

But then the dispute over whether the work could be published blew up, and The New York Times charged that this research was just too dangerous.

In February last year, the researchers' story had changed dramatically. The press had blown things out of proportion. The mutant virus wasn't dangerous. None of the ferrets that inhaled it died, you had to practically shove it into their lungs to kill them. Anyway, animal work doesn't show what will happen in people.

Efforts to portray the transmissible virus as harmless were almost comical. One researcher told me the mutant H5N1 was no biggie – even the 2009 pandemic flu kills in ferrets' tracheas. Ah, but only one in three – the H5N1 killed them all, so not quite the same.

When the research was finally published, none of the spin seemed very relevant. The message of Malta remained: H5N1 became airborne in mammals, and could still kill. That's enough. Yes, this is animal work: if a virus that kills in a ferret's throat, but not in its nose, emerges in nature, we may get lucky. Or maybe we'd best not inhale.

Full transparency

Some defensiveness is understandable if scientists fear work they rightly consider vitally important may be banned. Yet full transparency is the answer. I fear that lesson has not sunk in. After the papers were published, one of the researchers insisted to me that there was no reason why he should ever talk to a journalist; this week that person begged journalists to tell the public the researchers' side of the story, so they wouldn't get this kind of opposition.

That's not how it's done. Transparency is an important safeguard against some who may take excessive risks (it happens) as well as showing the good that scientists do. It must serve both these functions, or no one will believe the good news.

I gave a talk in Malta too, about public communication. I told a roomful of flu researchers the old risk-management saying: strive to be, not trusted, but accountable. I got a lot of blank, angry stares.

This problem won't go away until that gets rueful, knowing nods. It isn't happening yet.

Debora MacKenzie is a consultant for New Scientist based in Brussels

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Analysts remained upbeat of Keppel's prospects going forward.

They say their financial results still outperformed market expectations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

- CNA/xq

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Twitter unveils Vine, its six-second Instagram for video

Twitter today unveiled Vine, an app for iOS that lets anyone create and share short looping videos.

Twitter acquired Vine last fall, but anyone can use Vine regardless of whether they use Twitter. However, the service is clearly meant to be embedded anywhere, and there are plenty of examples of the videos being embedded in tweets. The service (see an example below) is being referred to by many as Twitter's "Instagram for video."

Vine videos are limited to a maximum of six seconds, and play in a continuous loop. They are shot using the Vine app. In a blog post, Vine co-founder and general manager Dom Hofmann wrote that, "Posts on Vine are about abbreviation -- the shortened form of something larger. They're little windows into the people, settings, ideas and objects that make up your life. They're quirky, and we think that's part of what makes them so special."

It's not clear, however, if Vine posts have a technical limitation that keeps that six seconds or shorter. Neither Twitter nor Vine immediately responded to a request for comment.

Although Twitter officially unveiled the service today, CEO Dick Costolo teased it yesterday when he posted a tweet with an embedded video. What was not clear yesterday, however, was whether Vine was going to become Twitter's own hosted video service, or if, as turned out to be the case, it would be a stand-alone service that works in conjunction with Twitter, but doesn't depend on it.

There are of course other embeddable short video services. One is Tout, a service that lets people shoot videos of up to 15 seconds, and then either embed them in tweets, Facebook posts, blogs, or elsewhere, or view them directly on the Web. But Twitter seems to have decided that Vine was a service worth buying, despite the fact that it will allow it to exist independently.

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