CERN becomes first pure physics voice in UN chorus

Lisa Grossman, physical sciences reporter(Image: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras)If CERN observes the proceedings of the United Nations, will it change the outcome?The international particle physics laboratory, based near Geneva, Switzerland, has been granted observer status in the General Assembly of the United Nations, CERN officials announced today. The lab joins environmental groups and public...

Read More..

Philippine police shoot dead Malaysian carrying bomb

MANILA: A man with alleged ties to Islamic militants was shot dead in the Philippines after he threatened to set off a backpack bomb in a stand-off with local police, an official said Saturday.A suspect identified by police as Mohammad Noor Fikrie of Malaysia was killed in the southern city of Davao after he threatened to blow up an explosive device in a rucksack, city police chief Ronald...

Read More..

Put your phone into 'car mode' with these dashboard apps

Sadly, Android's original Car Home app is incompatible with most modern versions of the OS. (Credit:Google)My firstAndroid phone, the original Motorola Droid, was one of the first phones to debut Google Maps Navigation. Now, Google knew that this feature would get drivers interested in using their Android phones in the car and that the tiny virtual buttons and shortcuts that worked well when the device...

Read More..

Space Pictures This Week: Frosty Mars, Mini Nile, More

Photograph by Mike Theiss, National GeographicThe aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, illuminates the Arctic sky in a recent picture by National Geographic photographer Mike Theiss.A storm chaser by trade, Theiss is in the Arctic Circle on an expedition to photograph auroras, which result from collisions between charged particles released from the sun's atmosphere and gaseous particles...

Read More..

Conn. Shooter Adam Lanza: 'Obviously Not Well'

Adam Lanza of Newtown, Connecticut was a child of the suburbs and a child of divorce who at age 20 still lived with his mother.This morning he appears to have started his day by shooting his mother Nancy in the face, and then drove her car to nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School, armed with two handguns and a semi-automatic rifle.There, before turning his gun on himself, he shot...

Read More..

Today on New Scientist: 13 December 2012

Violent beauty at the end of an Alaskan glacier You can almost hear the crash of ice on water in this stunning image of an ice sheet calving off the Chenega glacier in AlaskaOvereating now bigger global problem than lack of food The most comprehensive disease report ever produced confirms that, for the first time, there is a larger health problem from people eating too much than too littleIn...

Read More..

Retail sales dip 1% on-year in Oct

SINGAPORE: Retail sales in Singapore dipped one per cent on-year in October as a result of lower sales of motor vehicles, according to the Department of Statistics (DOS).Excluding motor vehicles, DOS said retail sales rose 1.3 per cent on-year.Compared to the previous year, retail sales of motor vehicles decreased 8.5 per cent in October 2012. Sales of optical goods and books, watches...

Read More..

Apple pursues iPad Mini with better display, say 'sources'

Consumers expect Apple to upgrade the current iPad Mini to a Retina class display, according to recent comments from NPD DisplaySearch.(Credit:CNET)TheiPad Mini has been an exception to Apple's Retina obsession. But fresh gossip from Asia-based industry sources indicates Apple wants to rectify this. An upcoming version of the iPad Mini will "focus on enhancing the...display resolution," according...

Read More..

Global Checkup: Most People Living Longer, But Sicker

If the world's entire population went in for a collective checkup, would the doctor's prognosis be good or bad? Both, according to new studies published in The Lancet medical journal.The vast collaborative effort, called the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010, includes papers by nearly 500 authors in 50 countries. Spanning four decades of data, it represents...

Read More..

Health-Exchange Deadline Looms

All of the Affordable Care Act, also known as "Obamacare," doesn't go into effect until 2014, but states are required to set up their own health care exchanges or leave it to the federal government to step in by next year. The deadline for the governors' decisions is Friday.The health insurance exchanges are one of the key stipulations of the new health care law. They will offer...

Read More..

First results from James Cameron's trip to the abyss

IT'S not Pandora, but the Mariana trench holds life just as strange as that in James Cameron's film Avatar. And most is unknown to us, despite the film-maker's 11-kilometre descent into Earth's deepest point in a titanium sphere. Cameron and scientists on the team...

Read More..

S. Korea seeks to recover N. Korea rocket debris

SEOUL: South Korea's navy has launched a salvage operation in the Yellow Sea to retrieve debris from North Korea's long-range rocket launch, military officials said Thursday.The first stage of the North's Unha-3 rocket launched on Wednesday fell in the sea off the Korean peninsula, while the second splashed down east of the Philippines."Our navy discovered what appeared to be a part from...

Read More..

Google, Microsoft 'challenged' vs. Apple, says Goldman Sachs

The iPad 4, iPad Mini, and iPhone 5. Loyalty to Apple is increasing in the age of 'multiple device ownership' says Goldman Sachs.(Credit:CNET)Google and Microsoft will struggle to vend off Apple's smartphone-tablet juggernaut, according to a recent study by Goldman Sachs. Titled "Clash of the titans," the 75-page study depicts Google and Microsoft as "challenged" in their bids to compete with Apple....

Read More..

Hubble Discovers Oldest Known Galaxy

The Hubble space telescope has discovered seven primitive galaxies formed in the earliest days of the cosmos, including one believed to be the oldest ever detected.The discovery, announced Wednesday, is part of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field campaign to determine how and when galaxies first assembled following the Big Bang."This 'cosmic dawn' was not a single, dramatic event," said astrophysicist...

Read More..

N. Korean Missile Hits Target of Alarming the World

North Korea's successful launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile hit its target: it bolstered the standing of its young tyrant Kim Jong Un and raised the specter of being able to eventually strike the U.S. with a nuclear weapon.The pride in the success of the launch -- after several failures -- is a huge boost for Kim Jong Un, 29, who took power one year ago. He has...

Read More..

Today on New Scientist: 11 December 2012

Out-of-season's greetings from the Arctic frost flowers Season's regards from an icy meadow in the Arctic, but it's no winter wonderland and please don't dash out into itHow hacking a mosquito's heart could eradicate malaria Watch how a double-pronged trick helps mosquitoes remain healthy while carrying disease, a process that could be exploited to eliminate malariaNew drug lifts hard-to-treat...

Read More..

New Yorkers live longer than other Americans: mayor

NEW YORK: New Yorkers are living longer than Americans overall, and the margin is increasing, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Tuesday as he praised his administration's health policies.A New Yorker born in 2010 has a life expectancy of 80.9 years, 2.2 years longer than the national life expectancy of 78.7 years at the time.Since 2001, New Yorkers' life expectancy has increased by three years,...

Read More..

MediaTek joins Samsung, Nvidia quad-core club

MediaTek will take on Samsung and Nvidia in the emerging market for quad-core chips for high-end smartphones. The Hsinchu, Taiwan-based company announced today the MT6589, a quad-core system-on-a-chip (SoC) that integrates a modem that supports HSPA+ and other international standards. The integration of a modem into a quad-core chip is a first, the company says. The processor is based on ARM's Cortex-A7...

Read More..

Best Space Pictures of 2012: Editor's Picks

Photograph courtesy Tunç Tezel, APOY/Royal ObservatoryThis image of the Milky Way's vast star fields hanging over a valley of human-made light was recognized in the 2012 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition run by the U.K.’s Royal Observatory Greenwich.To get the shot, photographer Tunç Tezel trekked to Uludag National Park near his hometown of Bursa, Turkey. He intended to watch the moon...

Read More..

Gunman 'Tentatively' Identified in Oregon Shooting

A masked gunman who opened fire in the crowded Clackamas Town Center mall in suburban Portland, Ore., killing two individuals before killing himself, has been "tentatively" identified by police, though they have not yet released his name.The shooter, wearing a white hockey mask, black clothing, and a bullet proof vest, tore through the mall around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, entering...

Read More..

'Biology is a manufacturing capability'

Soon we'll be able to engineer living things with mechanical precision, says Tom Knight, father of synthetic biology How is synthetic biology different from biotechnology?The main difference is the degree of control. Engineers want...

Read More..

Number of fallen casement windows hits new high

SINGAPORE: The number of fallen windows has risen since 2010, with an average increase of eight to nine cases per year. There were 50 cases in 2010, 58 cases in 2011 and 67 cases up till November this year.A joint statement by the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) and Housing and Development Board (HDB) said the increase is largely due to the number of fallen casement windows.Thirty-seven...

Read More..

New Twitter (with filters) not available yet for iPhone

Twitter on Monday released a new version of its mobile app that allows users to filter their photos, a step that directly challenges Instagram. However, while Twitter said the version would be available for both Android and iPhone, the iPhone version has yet to appear in the App Store.(Credit:Twitter)Twitter said today that it was releasing a new version of its iPhone andAndroid apps that would allow...

Read More..

U.K. Dash for Shale Gas a Test for Global Fracking

Thomas K. Grose in London The starting gun has sounded for the United Kingdom's "dash for gas," as the media here have dubbed it.As early as this week, a moratorium on shale gas production is expected to be lifted. And plans to streamline and speed the regulatory process through a new Office for Unconventional Gas and Oil were unveiled last week in the annual autumn budget statement by...

Read More..

Woman Gets Life for Lottery Winner's Murder

DeeDee Moore, the Tampa woman accused of swindling and then killing lottery winner Abraham Shakespeare, was found guilty today of first degree murder and other charges, after she declined to take the stand and the defense rested without calling a single witness.In addition to the murder charge, Moore was also found guilty of possessing and discharging a firearm resulting in...

Read More..

Female lemurs avoid the wrong love in the dark

IT IS the ultimate voice-recognition system. Without ever meeting him, a female lemur still knows the call of her father. The ability to identify family members is important to avoid inbreeding. For large-brained mammals like apes that engage in complex...

Read More..

N. Korea extends rocket launch window

SEOUL: North Korea on Monday extended the window for its planned rocket launch by one week, in order to deal with a "technical deficiency" with the first stage of the carrier.The original December 10-22 window was extended to December 29, the Korean Committee of Space Technology said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.The statement stressed that scientists...

Read More..

Five lies your TV salesperson will tell you

Using the time-honored tactics of obfuscation, misdirection, and a little bit of fear, the people who try to sell you TVs can hit you with some heavy-duty lies. Now this isn't to say that all TV sales people are bad, nor that any necessarily do this out of malice (there's plenty of misinformation out there confused as truth). But when it's your dollar on the line, being prepared with some facts can...

Read More..

Plants Grow Fine Without Gravity

When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't...

Read More..