The end of the world is an opportunity, not a threat

Don't waste time bemoaning the demise of the old order; get on with building the new one

Read more: "2013 Smart Guide: 10 ideas that will shape the year"

A FEW days ago, a woman called New Scientist's subscription desk with an unusual question. Was it true that the world would end in a week's time? She was worried about her young relatives: "They don't deserve to die," she told our sympathetic, if nonplussed, representative.

Our usual response to such enquiries is to say there's about as much reason to expect the world to end this week as any other, which is to say: not much ("Countering the new horsemen of the apocalypse", New Scientist, 1 December, p 5). But surprising numbers of people think otherwise. In a recent poll by the US Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), about 2 per cent of people said they expected the world to end before 2012 does; 15 per cent - many of them evangelical Christians - said the end would come in their lifetimes.

Most of us are jokier about prophecies of doom, but still subject to deep-seated anxiety about what the future will bring. The order of things has crumbled in recent years. But we should relish, rather than fear, the challenge of rebuilding it. After all, apocalyptic thinking is also about renewal: those waiting for the world to end usually expect a better one to take its place ("The end is always nigh in the human mind", New Scientist, 4 June 2011, p 30).

There is certainly cause for concern. Struggling western economies eye the fate of Greece uneasily. Democracy's birthplace has plunged abruptly from apparent affluence to penury. Nor are its problems confined to its borders: its economic crisis is turning into a continent-wide public health problem, with long-vanquished "tropical" diseases staging a troubling comeback ("Greek crisis: How to prevent a humanitarian disaster", New Scientist, 26 May, p 6).

There's better news on the global scale - although it still has its befuddling features. The Global Burden of Disease report released last week shows life expectancies to have risen significantly around the world over the past 40 years - but we now die of different causes, from AIDS to traffic accidents. Strikingly, excess weight is now a bigger global health problem than undernutrition (see "Overeating now bigger global problem than lack of food").

And the general increase in living standards is being thrown into doubt by climate change, which is becoming more serious, more quickly, than most feared ("Climate change: It's even worse than we thought", New Scientist, 17 November, p 34). Thankfully, public acceptance of the problem seems also to be on the rise. Some 6 out of 10 people in the PRRI poll think the severity of recent natural disasters is evidence of global climate change. That's a bolder link than most scientists would make. But then again, more than a third of those polled took such disasters as evidence of the end of the world.

This is a deeply unhelpful reaction. Our species has certainly made a mess of the atmosphere, and it will take immense efforts to sort it out. But we are capable of them. It's our species that built a huge machine to test our theories of the universe's finest workings. It's also our species that this year winched a giant robot down to the surface of another planet to see what's there. And beyond sating our curiosity, it's our species that's cut the death rate in our under-5s by 60 per cent in 20 years.

So yes, the world is complicated, and the challenges we face are enormous. But we mustn't just throw up our hands in despair: all the ingenuity and determination we can muster will be needed. We have to believe that we can make the world a better place, and act to make it one. We shouldn't view the end of the old world as a threat - but as an opportunity.

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Kingfisher shares rise on new licence application

NEW DELHI: Shares in India's grounded Kingfisher Airlines climbed nearly three per cent on Friday on news that the stricken carrier has applied to renew its operating licence.

The move came days after Kingfisher, whose liquor baron owner Vijay Mallya has been desperately seeking investment from foreign carriers, said it aims to resume operations in a "phased manner".

Kingfisher's shares rose to 15.88 rupees in morning trade after regulatory authorities confirmed it had applied Thursday for the licence renewal.

An official said, however, that the application had not included the revival plan that has been demanded by regulators.

"This application needs to be made as their licence is expiring but there can be no (licence) renewal without a revival plan," the official at the Directorate General of Civil Aviation told AFP, asking not to be named.

Kingfisher, once India's second-largest airline by market share, could not be immediately reached for comment but it said on Monday it has come up with a full recapitalisation plan.

The firm has not flown since its planes were grounded in October by an employees' strike over unpaid wages, leading the regulator to suspend its operating licence until it comes up with a "viable" revival formula.

The airline, whose current licence expires on December 31, said last week it was in talks with investors including Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways.

But aviation analysts have expressed doubt whether Etihad would be interested in Bangalore-based Kingfisher given its debt load, which is estimated at $2.5 billion by the consultancy firm Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation.

Kingfisher's shares have climbed from an all-time low of 7.05 rupees in August on investor hopes a stake sale will avert a shutdown but they are still trading at a fraction of their record 2007 peak of 334 rupees.

- AFP/il

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Senate approves Netflix-backed amendment to video privacy law

Ready to share your Netflix viewing on Facebook?

(Credit:
LG)

The U.S. Senate has approved legislation to amend a 1988 law that would make it easier for people to share their video-viewing habits online should the Netflix-backed bill win President Obama's signature.

The Senate approved revisions this evening to the Video Privacy Protection Act to allow video rental companies to obtain consent from customers in order to share information about their viewing preferences on social networks. The 24-year-old law was enacted after a newspaper printed the video rental history of Judge Robert H. Bork during his Supreme Court nomination hearings.

Bork died yesterday at age 85, a day after the U.S. House of Representatives approved the legislation.

A Netflix representative applauded the Senate's approval and promised to introduce new products should the president sign the bill.

"We are pleased the Senate has moved quickly to modernize the VPPA, giving consumers more freedom to share with friends when they want," Netflix spokesman Joris Evers said in a statement. "After the president signs the bill, we will introduce social features for our U.S. members in 2013."

Users outside of the United States have the option to link their Netflix accounts with Facebook, allowing them frictionless sharing of their video viewing preferences with other member of their online social network.

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Hollies Get Prickly for a Reason

With shiny evergreen leaves and bright red berries, holly trees are a naturally festive decoration seen throughout the Christmas season.

They're famously sharp. But not all holly leaves are prickly, even on the same tree. And scientists now think they know how the plants are able to make sharper leaves, seemingly at will. (Watch a video about how Christmas trees are made.)

A new study published in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society suggests leaf variations on a single tree are the combined result of animals browsing on them and the trees' swift molecular response to that sort of environmental pressure.

Carlos Herrera of the National Research Council of Spain led the study in southeastern Spain. He and his team investigated the European holly tree, Ilex aquifolium. Hollies, like other plants, can make different types of leaves at the same time. This is called heterophylly. Out of the 40 holly trees they studied, 39 trees displayed different kinds of leaves, both prickly and smooth.

Five holly leaves from the same tree.

Photographs by Emmanuel Lattes, Alamy

Some trees looked like they had been browsed upon by wild goats and deer. On those trees, the lower 8 feet (2.5 meters) had more prickly leaves, while higher up the leaves tended to be smooth. Scientists wanted to figure out how the holly trees could make the change in leaf shape so quickly.

All of the leaves on a tree are genetic twins and share exactly the same DNA sequence. By looking in the DNA for traces of a chemical process called methylation, which modifies DNA but doesn't alter the organism's genetic sequence, the team could determine whether leaf variation was a response to environmental or genetic changes. They found a relationship between recent browsing by animals, the growth of prickly leaves, and methylation.

"In holly, what we found is that the DNA of prickly leaves was significantly less methylated than prickless leaves, and from this we inferred that methylation changes are ultimately responsible for leaf shape changes," Herrera said. "The novelty of our study is that we show that these well-known changes in leaf type are associated with differences in DNA methylation patterns, that is, epigenetic changes that do not depend on variation in the sequence of DNA."

"Heterophylly is an obvious feature of a well-known species, and this has been ascribed to browsing. However, until now, no one has been able to come up with a mechanism for how this occurs," said Mike Fay, chief editor of the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society and head of genetics at the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens. "With this new study, we are now one major step forward towards understanding how."

Epigenetic changes take place independently of variation in the genetic DNA sequence. (Read more about epigenetics in National Geographic magazine's "A Thing or Two About Twins.")

"This has clear and important implications for plant conservation," Herrera said. In natural populations that have their genetic variation depleted by habitat loss, the ability to respond quickly, without waiting for slower DNA changes, could help organisms survive accelerated environmental change. The plants' adaptability, he says, is an "optimistic note" amidst so many conservation concerns. (Related: "Wild Holly, Mistletoe, Spread With Warmer Winters.")

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Fiscal Cliff 'Plan B' Is Dead: Now What?

Dec 20, 2012 11:00pm

The defeat of his Plan B — Republicans pulled it when it became clear it would be voted down — is a big defeat for Speaker of the House John Boehner.  It demonstrates definitively that there is no fiscal cliff deal that can pass the House on Republican votes alone.

Boehner could not even muster the votes to pass something that would only allow tax rates on those making more than $1 million to go up.

Boehner’s Plan B ran into opposition from conservative and tea party groups -including Heritage Action, Freedom Works and the Club for Growth – but it became impossible to pass it after Senate Democrats vowed not to take up the bill and the president threatened to veto it.  Conservative Republicans saw no reason to vote for a bill conservative activists opposed – especially if it had no hopes of going anywhere anyway.

Plan B is dead.

Now what?

House Republicans say it is now up to the Senate to act.  Senate Democrats say it is now up to Boehner to reach an agreement with President Obama.

Each side is saying the other must move.

The bottom line:  The only plausible solution is for President Obama and Speaker Boehner to do what they have failed repeatedly to do:  come up with a truly bi-partisan deal.

The prospects look grimmer than ever. It will be interesting to see if the markets react.

SHOWS: This Week

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Fail-safe software could stop flash crashes

HIGH-FREQUENCY trading algorithms are seriously profitable. But they are also a serious problem, leading to mysterious "flash crashes" on the world's financial markets. So would emergency fail-safes of the kind used to prevent medical robots and nuclear reactors going haywire be any help?

Philip Bond, a computer scientist at the University of Bristol, UK, thinks so. At present, suspicious trading at an exchange can be stopped by a catch-all "market halt", but that's often too late: what is needed is a reliable way of sensing when wild stock-price variations suggest a build-up to a crash. At that point a smart circuit breaker could step in, Bond told a London meeting of the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation on 11 December.

The idea is to avoid another debacle like the flash crash of 6 May 2010, when $10 trillion was briefly knocked off the Dow Jones Industrial Average after a trading firm's high-frequency algorithm went awry. Prices mostly recovered in a matter of minutes, but the turbulence caused slumps in stock prices around the globe.

High-speed traders have a distinct advantage over traditional investors, according to research by Andrei Kirilenko, chief economist at the US Commodity Trading Futures Commission, and his colleagues. Kirilenko presented the findings on 30 November at the National Bureau of Economic Research's Market Microstructure Meeting. This skewed playing field might increase market instability even more.

Because high-frequency trading algorithms (HFTs) can work at blistering speeds - a trade every 60 microseconds is common - a lot can happen before humans have a chance to intervene. This has left governments scrambling to come up with ways to regulate the practice. The European Parliament is considering legislation that could force traders to increase trading intervals to a "safer" half a second.

But Bond and his colleagues, who examined the risks of high-speed trading for the UK government, say that enforcing a delay is wrong-headed. Making algorithms wait half a second would stop them from reacting to breaking financial news and render them useless.

Instead, they propose using circuit-breaker algorithms that will trip when trading becomes erratic. Such software monitors systems like medical robots and nuclear reactors for potentially dangerous behaviour. "HFT circuit breakers need to be considered as very high reliability software engineered to work under stressed conditions and with multiple backups," he says.

A decision is needed fast. The proportion of high frequency trades has declined in the US in recent years as they have lost some of their initial edge, but they still account for a majority of trades. And the hardware needed to get in the game is becoming more accessible - a server running a high-speed system costs only $270,000, and prices will keep falling.

Any technical backstops will have to distinguish between algorithms gone haywire and simple bad decision-making, warns Fod Barnes, an economist with UK consultants Oxera. "The HFT system is a bit more complex than just engineering," he says. "Why should those who manage to write an algorithm that makes a series of very bad trades be protected from their own folly?"

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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Park Geun-Hye: South Korea's president-elect with history

SEOUL: Park Geun-Hye's historic election victory that will see her installed as South Korea's first woman president of a still male-dominated nation caps a political career founded in privilege and personal tragedy.

One might assume Park's upbringing to be one of privilege, having lived in the presidential Blue House as a child and served there after her mother's murder as first lady to her later-assassinated father.

The Daegu native was just nine years old when her father, Park Chung-Hee, came to power in 1961 in a military coup that set the stage for 18 years of authoritarian rule.

Wednesday's presidential result was, in some ways, a referendum on the legacy of her father whose name still triggers polarised emotions in many South Koreans.

Admired for dragging the war-torn nation out of poverty, but reviled in some quarters for his repression of dissent, his shadow loomed large over Park's election campaign.

Thus, in an effort at reconciliation, Park publicly acknowledged the excesses of her father's regime and apologised to the families of its victims, a move aimed to shed the historic baggage that has plagued her campaign.

"In the shadows of South Korea's rapid growth, there was pain," she said at a news conference held at the Grand National Party's (GNP's) headquarters in Seoul, September 24 earlier this year.

"I deeply apologise to all those who were personally hurt and family members of victims of government abuse."

And like Korea itself, Park was as much the victim of her father's legacy as the beneficiary.

Park was attending graduate school in France in 1974 when she was called back to Seoul after the First Lady Yook Young-soo was killed by a pro-North Korean gunman aiming for her father.

The then 22-year-old took on the duties of her mother and played a sizeable role as the First Lady of Korea, one of which included persuading the 39th US President Jimmy Carter of the importance of the ongoing presence of US troops in Korea when he visited in 1979.

She left the presidential palace after her father was shot dead by his spy chief in 1979 and after a nine-year hiatus finally began her political career in 1998 as an assemblywoman in her home town for the conservative GNP.

The unmarried 60-year-old with no children -- a fact Park used to gain traction with voters tired of corruption scandals surrounding their first families.

"I have no family to take care of and no children to pass wealth to," she said in a televised address on the last day of campaigning, "You, the people, are my family and your happiness is the reason that I stay in politics."

Park's image of a female politician who promised a strong, maternal style of leadership that would steer the country through the challenges of global economic troubles is at odds with that pushed by her critics, an aloof aristocrat they call the "Ice Queen".

But even dissenters acknowledge her strengths as a campaigner that helped her party secure strong results in local and national polls between 2004 and 2006, emerging victorious in all 40 re-elections and by-elections, earning her another royal moniker as the "Queen of Elections".

And despite her privileged upbringing, Park has demonstrated a tough streak.

In 2006, an attacker at an election event where she was speaking slashed her face with a utility knife, leaving an 11-centimetre wound that needed 60 stitches.

Park had previously ran in 2008 to become the presidential nominee for GNP but eventually lost to the now outgoing president Lee Myung-bak by a narrow margin. Park had won the "party member's bid", but she lost the "national bid" which is a larger percentage of the total presidential bid.

Now Park will face numerous challenges when she begins her five-year term in February, not least dealing with a North Korea.

Even before Park won her party's presidential nomination in August, the state-run Korean Central News Agency hat attacked her candidacy, warning that "a dictator's bloodline cannot change away from its viciousness".

Park has signalled a break from outgoing President Lee Myung-Bak's hard line on Pyongyang, and even held out the possibility of an eventual summit with North Korea leader Kim Jong-Un.

But she will be restricted by conservative forces in her party as well as an international community intent on punishing North Korea for its long-range rocket launch last week.

While Park's election as South Korea's first woman president marks a major breakthrough in a male-dominated country, which ranked 108th out of 135 countries in terms of gender equality by the World Economic Forum -- one place below the United Arab Emirates and just above Kuwait.

However, not everyone sees her victory as paving the way for greater women's rights.

Kim Eun-Ju, executive director of the Centre for Korean Women and Politics, believes Park is a female political leader "only in biological terms".

"For the past 15 years, Park has shown little visible effort to help women in politics or anywhere else as a policymaker," Kim told AFP.

-AFP/CNA/fl

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Google planning cheaper Nexus 7, report claims

Google may be aiming for a Nexus 7 that is priced below $149 and eventually as low as $99.

(Credit:
Google)

Google is planning low-ball itself with an even cheaper
Nexus 7, according to an Asia-based report.

Google and Asus wowed consumers with the $199 Nexus 7 and now they're aiming at price points below $150, ultimately going as low as $99, according to Taipei-based Digitimes, citing sources at display component maker O-Film Tech.

The lower-priced Nexus 7 should be released by the second quarter of next year, said the technology site, which covers device manufacturers and component suppliers in Asia.

O-Film started shipping components for the lower-priced Nexus 7 in December 2012, the report said. The company's touch-screen glass-glass film technology will contribute to lower production costs and make it thinner, Digitimes said.

The cost-reduction measures could eventually lead to a $99 Nexus 7 but this may not happen initially. The cheaper Nexus 7 may first be priced in the $129 to $149 range, according to the report.

Shipment estimates of the new Nexus 7 are in the range of 500,000 to 600,000 in the first quarter of shipments.

Needless to say, a Nexus 7 priced below $150 and eventually going to $99 would make Google's
tablet even more competitively priced against the $329
iPad Mini -- even allowing for the high-quality build that Apple typically achieves with its tablets.

And, as always, this Digitimes report is coming from the supply chain, which can be very unpredictable. Orders for an unconfirmed new component or new product can be canceled at any time.

Google and Asus are currently shipping about one million Nexus 7 devices per month, according to recent statements from Asus executives.

A cheaper Nexus 7 might give consumers pause when considering the iPad Mini.

(Credit:
Apple)

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Detecting Rabid Bats Before They Bite

A picture is worth a thousand words—or in the case of bats, a rabies diagnosis. A new study reveals that rabid bats have cooler faces compared to uninfected colony-mates. And researchers are hopeful that thermal scans of bat faces could improve rabies surveillance in wild colonies, preventing outbreaks that introduce infections into other animals—including humans.

Bats are a major reservoir for the rabies virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. Previous research shows that bats can transmit their strains to other animals, potentially putting people at risk. (Popular Videos: Bats share the screen with creepy co-stars.)

Rabies, typically transmitted in saliva, targets the brain and is almost always fatal in animals and people if left untreated. No current tests detect rabies in live animals—only brain tissue analysis is accurate.

Searching for a way to detect the virus in bats before the animals died, rabies specialist James Ellison and his colleagues at the CDC turned to a captive colony of big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus). Previous studies had found temperature increases in the noses of rabid raccoons, so the team expected to see similar results with bats.

Researchers established normal temperature ranges for E. fuscus—the bat species most commonly sent for rabies testing—then injected 24 individuals with the virus. The 21-day study monitored facial temperatures with infrared cameras, and 13 of the 21 bats that developed rabies showed temperature drops of more than 4ºC.

"I was surprised to find the bats' faces were cooler because rabies causes inflammation—and that creates heat," said Ellison. "No one has done this before with bats," he added, and so researchers aren't sure what's causing the temperature changes they've discovered in the mammals. (Related: "Bats Have Superfast Muscles—A Mammal First.")

Although thermal scans didn't catch every instance of rabies in the colony, this method may be a way to detect the virus in bats before symptoms appear. The team plans to fine-tune their measurements of facial temperatures, and then Ellison hopes to try surveillance in the field.

This study was published online November 9 in Zoonoses and Public Health.

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Obama Invokes Newtown on 'Cliff' Deal

Invoking the somber aftermath of the school massacre in Newtown, Conn., President Obama today appealed to congressional Republicans to embrace a standing "fair deal" on taxes and spending that would avert the fiscal cliff in 13 days.

"If there's one thing we should have after this week, it should be a sense of perspective about what's important," Obama said at a midday news conference.

"I would like to think that members of that [Republican] caucus would say to themselves, 'You know what? We disagree with the president on a whole bunch of things,'" he said. "'But right now what the country needs is for us to compromise.'"

House Speaker John Boehner's response: "Get serious."

Boehner announced at a 52-second news conference that the House will vote Thursday to approve a "plan B" to a broad White House deal -- and authorize simply extending current tax rates for people earning less than $1 million a year and little more.

"Then, the president will have a decision to make," the Ohio Republican said. "He can call on Senate Democrats to pass that bill or he could be responsible for the largest tax increase in American history."

Fiscal Cliff Negotiations: Trying to Make a Deal Watch Video

House Speaker John Boehner Proposes 'Plan B' on Taxes Watch Video

'Fiscal Cliff' Negotiations: Deal Might Be Within Reach Watch Video

Unless Congress acts by Dec. 31, every American will face higher income tax rates and government programs will get hit with deep automatic cuts starting in 2013.

Obama and Boehner have been inching closer to a deal on tax hikes and spending cuts to help reduce the deficit. But they have not yet had a breakthrough on a deal.

Obama's latest plan would raise $1.2 trillion in new tax revenue over 10 years, largely through higher tax rates on incomes above $400,000. He also proposes roughly $930 billion in spending cuts, including new limits on entitlement spending, such as slower annual cost-of-living increases for Social Security beneficiaries.

Boehner has agreed to $1 trillion in new tax revenue, with a tax rate hike for households earning over $1 million. He is seeking more than $1 trillion in spending cuts, with significant changes to Medicare and Social Security.

The president said today that he remains "optimistic" about reaching a broad compromise by Christmas because both sides are "pretty close," a sentiment that has been publicly shared by Boehner.

But the speaker's backup plan has, at least temporarily, stymied talks, with no reported contact between the sides since Monday.

"The speaker should return to the negotiating table with the president because if he does I firmly believe we can have an agreement before Christmas," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a White House ally.

Schumer said Obama and Boehner are "not that far apart" in the negotiations.

"If they were to come to an agreement by Friday, they could write this stuff over the Christmas break and then we'd have to come back before the New Year and pass it," Schumer said.

Obama said he is "open to conversations" and planned to reach out to congressional leaders over the next few days to try to nudge Republicans to accept a "fair deal."

"At some point, there's got to be, I think, a recognition on the part of my Republican friends that -- you know, take the deal," he told reporters.

"They keep on finding ways to say no, as opposed to finding ways to say yes," Obama added. "At some point, you know, they've got take me out of it and think about their voters and think about what's best for the country."

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