Get cirrus in the fight against climate change

FEATHERY cirrus clouds are beautiful, but when it comes to climate change, they are the enemy. Found at high-altitude and made of small ice crystals, they trap heat - so more cirrus means a warmer world. Now it seems that, by destroying cirrus, we could reverse all the warming Earth has experienced so far. ...

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At least 55 dead in Venezuela prison riot: hospital

CARACAS: At least 55 people were killed and 90 others wounded in clashes between prison gangs and security guards at a facility in northwest Venezuela, a hospital director said Saturday.Television images had earlier shown National Guard troops surrounding the Uribana prison in Lara state as inmates in bloody clothes were taken out of the building.Behind the barriers, relatives of the prisoners...

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Oppo BDP-105: Not your average Blu-ray player

The Oppo BDP-105 Blu-ray, SACD, and DVD-Audio player(Credit:Oppo)Even by Oppo's high standards the BDP-105 is an extraordinary Blu-ray player. Sure, it's loaded with up-to-the-second features -- 4K upscaling, 2D-to-3D conversion, and a high-quality USB 2.0 digital-to-analog converter -- but what really makes the Oppo special is the sound. Pop the cover and look inside and you'll see why. Most of the...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Exterminator Charged in Pa. Doctor's Murder

An exterminator named Joseph Smith was arrested and charged today in the strangling and burning death of Philadelphia pediatrician Melissa Ketunuti.Smith, 36, had been sent to Ketunuti's home on a service call where the two got into "some kind of argument" in Ketunuti's basement on Monday, Capt. James Clark of the Philadelphia police department said this morning."At her home...

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Can we really 'cure' autism?

Some claim that new research shows people can grow out of autism, but it is more likely that they simply cope better with the condition over time The New York Times has pointed to an intriguing study ostensibly showing that some small percentage of people with autism can "outgrow" their symptoms. The story...

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Japan presses Algeria for answers as toll hits nine

ALGIERS: A senior Japanese official met Algeria's prime minister on Wednesday to press for an explanation of the gas plant siege, as Tokyo confirmed the deaths of two more nationals, taking its toll to nine.Senior Vice Foreign Minister Shunichi Suzuki arrived aboard a government jet that is to repatriate the bodies of those known to have been killed in the hostage crisis, along with the...

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Surface RT tablet to get update glitch fix -- in February

Hang in there, Surface RT users.(Credit:Josh Miller/CNET)Microsoft is working on a fix for Windows RT users hit by application-updating problems that seemingly were introduced by the latest set of updates Microsoft pushed out for the operating system earlier this month.As The Next Web noted late last week, some Surface RT users have not been able to access the Windows Store or Windows Update since...

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Pictures: Trout vs. Trout in Yellowstone Lake

Photograph by Jay FlemingWithout aggressive management, the population of Yellowstone cutthroats could be decimated. To suppress the population of lake trout, the National Park Service engaged a contract fishing company to net them. Cutthroats are removed carefully from the traps and thrown back. Lake trout are removed and killed. Last year about 300,000 of the non-native intruders were taken...

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Clinton Says Budget Cuts Undermine Security

Outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stood her ground today, telling the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that she has overseen plans to secure diplomatic outposts around the world while cuts in State Department funding undermine those efforts.Citing a report by the department's Accountability Review Board on the security failures that led to the deaths of four Americans...

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Barack Obama promises US action on climate

President Barack Obama yesterday vowed to put the fight against global warming at the heart of his next four-year term in office. Sweeping aside years of American prevarication on whether to act on emissions, Obama promised the US would lead...

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SGX's Q2 net profit rises 17% to S$76m

SINGAPORE : Rising interest in derivatives trading helped lift earnings for the Singapore Exchange (SGX) last quarter. Asia's second-largest bourse operator reported a 17 per cent on-year rise in second-quarter net profit to S$76 million.It also attracted a large number of new bond listings in the same quarter.Derivatives trading has been the star performer in SGX.Over the October to December...

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Video showdown set for March in Web-chat debate

After a fractious false start last year, Web standards makers will reconvene in Orlando, Florida, this March to try to settle a debate about the best video technology for browser-based chatting.The Web-based chat standard, which holds the potential to bring Skype-like audio and video communication services to the Web, is called WebRTC. The debate about it centers on how best to compress video: the...

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Newly Discovered Nebula Looks Like a Manatee

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's ... a manatee? The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) believes that a gas cloud in the constellation Aquila bears an uncanny resemblance to the endangered aquatic mammal.Heidi Winter, executive assistant to NRAO's director, first noticed the similarity. And Tania Burchell, an NRAO media producer who used to work in manatee conservation, quickly...

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Group Finds More Fake Ingredients in Popular Foods

It's what we expect as shoppers—what's in the food will be displayed on the label.But a new scientific examination by the non-profit food fraud detectives the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP), discovered rising numbers of fake ingredients in products from olive oil to spices to fruit juice."Food products are not always what they purport to be," Markus Lipp, senior director...

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Vibrating navigator shows cyclists the way

Paul Marks, chief technology correspondent(Image: B. S. P. I./Corbis)Think of it as satnav for your waist. The "vibrobelt", a vibrating belt to help guide cyclists, has proven successful in early tests. It uses vibrating actuators that indicate left, right, backward and forward turn directions, and even tickles the user with coded buzzes that tell them how far they have to go to their destination. Developed...

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