Zebrafish made to grow pre-hands instead of fins

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PERHAPS the little fish embryo shown here is dancing a jig because it has just discovered that it has legs instead of fins. Fossils show that limbs evolved from fins, but a new study shows how it may have happened, live in the lab.













Fernando Casares of the Spanish National Research Council and his colleagues injected zebrafish with the hoxd13 gene from a mouse. The protein that the gene codes for controls the development of autopods, a precursor to hands, feet and paws.












Zebrafish naturally carry hoxd13 but produce less of the protein than tetrapods - all four-limbed vertebrates and birds - do. Casares and his colleagues hoped that by injecting extra copies of the gene into the zebrafish embryos, some of their cells would make more of the protein.












One full day later, all of those fish whose cells had taken up the gene began to develop autopods instead of fins. They carried on growing for four days but then died (Cell, DOI: 10.1016/j.devcel.2012.10.015).












"Of course, we haven't been able to grow hands," says Casares. He speculates that hundreds of millions of years ago, the ancestors of tetrapods began expressing more hoxd13 for some reason and that this could have allowed them to evolve autopods.


















































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China's longest high-speed railway to start on December 26

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BEIJING: The world's longest high-speed rail route, running from the Chinese capital Beijing to Guangzhou in the south, will open for business on December 26, state media said on Saturday.

Travelling at an average speed of 300 kilometres per hour, the line will slash journey times linking Beijing in the north with the country's southern economic hub from 22 hours to eight hours, the China Daily newspaper said.

The December opening means the 2,298-kilometre route, with 35 stops including major cities Zhengzhou, Wuhan and Changsha, will be operational for China's Lunar New Year holiday period, in which hundreds of millions of people travel across the country in the world's largest annual migration.

The specific date was chosen to commemorate the birth of Chinese leader Mao Zedong, state media said.

China's high-speed rail network is booming. Only established in 2007, it has quickly become the largest in the world, with 8,358 kilometres of track at the end of 2010 and expected to almost double to 16,000 kilometres by 2020.

The network, however, has been plagued by graft and safety scandals following its rapid expansion, with a deadly bullet train collision in July 2011 killing 40 people and sparking a public outcry.

The accident - China's worst rail disaster since 2008 - triggered a flood of criticism of the government and accusations that the authorities had compromised safety in its rush to expand.

- AFP/de



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Can a MP3 sound better than a high-resolution FLAC or Apple Lossless file?

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A great-sounding recording will sound its best only when it's properly mastered to LP, SACD, DVD-Audio, or a high-resolution file. Those formats will reveal the full glory of the music in ways that lower-resolution formats like MP3 or analog cassette always miss. But if you didn't have access to the high-resolution file to compare it with, a great recording will still sound pretty terrific as an AAC, M4A, or 320kbps MP3 file, because the recording's innate quality would shine through. On the other hand, a heavily compressed, processed and crude recording will always sound heavily compressed, processed and crude, regardless of whether it's an MP3, FLAC file, or LP.


Personal preferences are personal -- we like what we like; but there are objective standards for sound quality: low distortion, wide frequency response and stereo separation, and uninhibited dynamic range. If you applied those standards to most contemporary recordings, few would do well. Let's first look at dynamic range compression; once the mix or mastering engineer compresses a singer's whisper-to-a-scream vocal, the whisper will be just as loud as the scream. I love Arcade Fire's music, but their last record, "The Suburbs," sounds like crap. That's too bad; the music is strong, but the sound is not fun to listen to, and an LP or a FLAC can't fix the problems that were there to start with.


No one sets out to make bad-sounding recordings; they all make recordings they hope their intended audience will like. The bands and engineers know that most people will be listening on free earbuds,
car audio systems or Bluetooth speakers, so they make recordings that sound good over those things, but if that whisper to a scream vocal was left intact by the mix and mastering engineers you'd hear it in the MP3, FLAC file, or on the CD. Those formats are all capable of reproducing music's full dynamic range, but most of today's commercial music has it soft-to-loud dynamics squashed flat. Apparently, most people like it that way.


If the guitarist was playing a Gretsch Synchromatic 400 Acoustic Archtop, I'd like to hear its unique sound. But if the producer and engineer record the Gretsch through a pickup instead of a microphone, equalized its sound, compressed dynamic range, added digital reverb, and process it to death -- there won't be much left of the Gretsch's sound. It would sound like a generic guitar, which is why I would describe the sound of the recording as "bad." If the engineer boosted the treble to make the sound "cut" better for listeners in noisy environments, it's likely to sound harsh at home in a quiet setting. It would sound "bad" to me. So why not make separate mixes for different formats? Load up the MP3 with compressed dynamics and brighter EQ, and put the uncompressed, less EQ-ed mix on the LP and FLAC releases. Then everybody would get the sound they want.


Most commercial recordings purposely distort and compress the sound of vocals and instruments. And sure, they might even do it in a way that sounds great. That's the idea, after all, but sometimes it's a treat to hear a recording that sounds like the band is in the room with you. Here's a list of some of my favorite recordings.


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

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Photograph by Mike Theiss, National Geographic

The 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 in Earth's atmosphere.

After one particularly amazing show, he wrote on YouTube, "The lights were dancing, rolling, and twisting, and at times looked like they were close enough to touch!" (Watch his time-lapse video of the northern lights.)

Published December 14, 2012

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Conn. Shooter Adam Lanza: Quiet, Bright, Troubled

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Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old who killed 20 kids and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school Friday, was very bright, say neighbors and former classmates, but he was also socially awkward and deeply troubled.


"[Adam] was not connected with the other kids," said family friend Barbara Frey. A relative told ABC News that Adam was "obviously not well."


READ full ABC News coverage of the Connecticut shootings.


On Friday morning, Lanza shot his mother Nancy in the face at the home they shared in Newtown, and then drove her car to Sandy Hook Elementary School. Dressed in black combat gear, he broke a window at the school, which had recently had a new security system installed, and within minutes had shot and killed six adults and 20 schoolchildren between the ages of five and 10.


The shooting stopped when Lanza put a bullet in his own head. Multiple weapons were found at the scene, including two semiautomatic handguns registered to his mother. A Bushmaster rifle registered to Nancy was discovered outside in the car.


Long before Lanza's spree, however, residents of Newtown had noticed that tall, pale boy was different, and believed he had some kind of unspecified personality disorder.


"Adam Lanza has been a weird kid since we were five years old," wrote aneighbor and former classmate Timothy Dalton on Twitter. "As horrible as this was, I can't say I am surprised."










Newtown School Massacre: 20 Children, 7 Adults Dead Watch Video









Newtown Teacher Kept 1st Graders Calm During Massacre Watch Video





In school, Lanza carried a black briefcase and spoke little. Every day, he wore a sort of uniform: khakis and a shirt buttoned up to the neck, with pens lined up in his shirt pocket.


He hated being called on by teachers, and it seemed to require a physical effort for him to respond. He avoided public attention and had few, if any, friends. He liked to sit near the door of the classroom to make a quick exit.


He even managed to avoid having his picture in his high school yearbook. Instead of his portrait, the space reserved for Adam Lanza says "Camera Shy." And unlike most in his age group, he seems to have left little imprint on the internet – no Facebook page, no Twitter account.


Lanza's parents Peter and Nancy Lanza married in New Hampshire in 1981, and had two sons, Adam and his older brother Ryan, who is now 24 and lives in New Jersey.


The Lanzas divorced in 2009 after 28 years of marriage due to "irreconcilable differences." When they first filed for divorce in 2008, a judge ordered that they participate in a "parenting education program."


Adam was 17 at the time of the divorce. He continued to live in Newtown with his mother. His father now lives in his Stamford, Connecticut with his second wife.


Peter Lanza, who drove to northern New Jersey to talk to police and the FBI, is a vice president at GE Capital and had been a partner at global accounting giant Ernst & Young.


Adam's older brother Ryan Lanza, 24, has worked at Ernst & Young for four years, apparently following in his father's footsteps and carving out a solid niche in the tax practice. He too was interviewed by the FBI. Neither he nor his father is under any suspicion.


"[Ryan] is a tax guy and he is clean as a whistle," a source familiar with his work said.


Police had initially identified Ryan as the killer. Ryan sent out a series of Facebook posts saying it wasn't him and that he was at work all day. Video records as well as card swipes at Ernst & Young verified his statement that he had been at the office.


Two federal sources told ABC News that identification belonging to Ryan Lanza was found at the scene of the mass shooting. They say that identification may have led to the confusion by authorities during the first hours after the shooting.


Click Here for the Blotter Homepage.



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Satellite upgrade should let planes slash emissions

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A CONSTELLATION of next-generation communications satellites has a surprise in store for the environment. When Iridium Communications begins launching replacement orbiters in 2015, it will do much more than upgrade its satphone services. Piggybacking on the satellites will be a set of transmitters that could revolutionise long-haul flight, save airlines billions of dollars worth of fuel and prevent millions of tonnes of carbon emissions.












For the first time, these devices, known as ADS-B transponders, will enable air traffic controllers to locate aircraft that are far out over oceans, remote deserts or the poles where there is no radar coverage. On top of the greater safety this offers airlines if a plane gets into trouble, say, it will also let controllers pack planes in closer together along optimal flight paths, which will cut carbon emissions.












The ADS-B radio transmitting system is designed to replace expensive, unreliable and low-range radar tracking. It bundles an aircraft's call sign, GPS position, speed and altitude into 112-bit digital packets, which are broadcast continually from the aircraft to the control stations.












But like today's radar, ADS-B radio packets have limited range. "If you're way out in the Pacific or over the North Pole no one's going to pick it up," says Dan Mercer of Iridium Communications. So the transponders piggybacking on the new satellites will pick up those signals and beam them back down to Earth. "For the first time, they'll have total vision of the aircraft at all times," Mercer says.












To avoid potential collisions, planes on long-haul routes out over the oceans currently have to fly quite a long way apart. And only some planes can fly in air lanes with kind tailwinds, while others have to push through less-favourable air currents. "If air traffic control can see where aircraft are precisely, they can fly them all closer together and on the most efficient routes. So they will save fuel and cut emissions," says Mercer.


















A study commissioned by Iridium found that between the service's proposed start in 2017 and 2030, the technology should save airlines about $7 billion on fuel and cut carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions by 35 million tonnes. Another projection that looked at just North Atlantic flights says orbital ADS-B will save airlines $110 million in fuel and 300,000 tonnes in emissions in 2018 alone.












The system can "improve the efficiency of oceanic air traffic management by reducing aircraft separation distances and allowing greater route optimisation", says Pauline Lamb, operations director of National Air Traffic Services in Prestwick, UK. She adds that her organisation is working to fully understand the benefits it will provide.












Meanwhile, one of the world's largest air traffic management firms, Nav Canada of Ottawa, Ontario, has formed Aireon, a joint venture with Iridium. Aireon will operate and sell the transponder service to airlines and air traffic control providers. In combination with other measures - such as use of lighter carbon fibre planes and more efficient engines - Iridium's move should help aviation fight its environmental corner.




















































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Football: Troubled Indonesia dodges FIFA sanctions

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JAKARTA: Indonesia evaded sanctions from world football regulator FIFA Friday, the nation's federation said, and was given an extension to resolve a row that has thrown Indonesian football into crisis.

FIFA had given the Indonesian Football Association (PSSI) a December 10 deadline to reconcile its differences with rival Indonesian Soccer Rescue Committee (KPSI) that runs a rebel league splitting the nation's top teams.

"FIFA did not sanction Indonesia and we were asked to solve our problem as soon as possible," PSSI head Djohar Arifin told AFP by telephone from Tokyo, after FIFA discussed the issue in a meeting.

The rival administrations failed to show unity despite signing a memorandum of understanding in June vowing to bring Indonesian football under one umbrella.

The nation's top sports authorities were forced to establish a taskforce after the deadline passed ahead of the Tokyo meeting to begin mediation in the long-standing feud.

In a statement emailed to media later, FIFA said: "The PSSI has submitted a three-month roadmap.

"Therefore, the situation of the PSSI will be examined again by the Associations Committee and the Executive Committee at their next meetings.

"This is the very final deadline that will be given to the PSSI to normalise its situation."

Arifin said he was informed of FIFA's decision via email and was told the task to oversee Indonesia's progress was handed to the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).

He said FIFA had not told him how long the extension would be, but that FIFA would evaluate Indonesia's progress in an association committee meeting on February 14, adding that he hoped to resolve the crisis by FIFA's executive committee meeting on March 20.

The decision has been met with mixed reactions in the 240-million-strong nation, where despite a poor performing national team, football attracts millions of fanatics.

"It's very kind of FIFA to not give sanctions. Now let's solve Indonesia's football problem," Ali Abu Negara tweeted in Indonesian.

Another Indonesian Twitter user Bheny Hermawan disagreed: "It's better for Indonesia to get sanctions so we can start from zero, for a better football in the future."

The PSSI has been in hot water with FIFA and the AFC in recent years over poor management, corruption allegations, leadership tussles and poor security at major matches.

The dual-league rivalry has also hit the national team after the KPSI told players from its unofficial top-tier Liga Super not to make themselves available.

At Southeast Asia's ongoing Suzuki Cup, four-time finalists Indonesia bowed out in the group stages.

-AFP/ac



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CES 2013 preview: The love and the hate of the greatest (tech) show on earth

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This will be my 13th
CES. Fewer than many, more than some. It's a grueling marathon of press conferences, swarming crowds, and endless lines.


When it comes to TV tech, David's take on what we'll see in Vegas is spot-on. I'm going to go one better, though. I'm going predict with stunning, remarkable, mind-blowing accuracy, exactly what we'll see at the show of shows.


1. 4K, 8K, 12K, ?K
I've gotten a lot of flak for my position on 4K, and 99 percent of it is from people not reading what I wrote, yet assuming they know what I said. Let me be very clear: 4K the resolution is awesome... for large screens. I have a 102-inch screen, and I'd love 4K and 4K content. But 4K TVs are stupid. And when I say "TV" I'm talking about the TVs most people buy, like 50 inches and smaller. At that size, 4K is pointless because your eye can't resolve it. Annnnnd I know what the first 20 comments to this post are going to be about.


But we're going to see more 4K Ultra HD. We're going to see 8K and probably more. If you read or hear from anyone that saw these ultra-ultra resolution displays, ask them how close they were standing.


2. OLED, FFS OLED
For frak's sake (yes, that's a PG-rated "FFS"), OLED was promised to us this year. I don't care what the problems are, I want my OLED and I want it now <stamps feet and pouts>. We better hear more about OLED, with pricing and a date. My guess? We'll be hearing from at least one new player -- perhaps the unholy alliance of Panasonic and Sony? OLED is way more interesting than 4K, as it represents better picture quality overall, not just higher resolution. Ultra HD is like putting better tires on a
car. Sure it's an improvement, but the rest of the car is the same. OLED is an entirely new and better car

Now before I continue, I feel I should explain something. When I and anyone else from CNET goes to CES, we're there to work. We're not "going to Vegas," we're going to CES, which just happens to be in Las Vegas. Our lives, for the most part, consist of hotel-transportation-convention center-transportation-hotel. I'm sure some gamble or see shows, but honestly, there's very little time. This isn't a vacation; we're there to work, we have to be there, and we have a lot to see. So, with that in mind...


3. Crappy press conferences
Press conferences are an awful, life-crushing experience. Imagine the most crowded room you've ever been in, crammed full of often smelly humanity of all shapes and sizes, filling every available space. Now, sit through a PowerPoint presentation detailing the sales figures of washers and dryers over the third quarter in Belize, Guatemala, and Qatar. Then, after your brain has seized up in some kind of Darwinian protection response, there's 32 seconds at the end covering all 1,700 new TV models. What? You feel asleep? You missed a model number? Too bad, because now you have to make a mad dash down the hall so you can squeeze into another hot and humid room with 3,000 of your closest frenemies and do it all over again.


The terribleness is not one person's fault. These are big companies, and I'm sure those tasked with creating these monstrosities work hard to make them as painless as possible. Then, after they've spent weeks crafting the perfect message and an entertaining experience, their boss informs them that her boss wants to speak at CES for 15 of the 45 allotted minutes on the company's "direction."


I can sit through about two press conferences per year; after that it devolves into an MST3K-style tweetfest mocking life, the universe, and everything. It's miraculous that I've never been fired (sort of).


4. No Wi-Fi
We landed a nuclear-powered SUV with frickin' laser beams on Mars, and we still can't get enough Wi-Fi bandwidth for the world's most obvious problem? After all the press conference nonsense, good luck trying to tell the world. Wi-Fi at 100 baud -- rockin'! I'm not asking to stream HD videos of kittens snoring, but being able to post text to a Web site would be nice. You know -- my job?


5. Lines
Lines for cabs. Lines for the monorail. Lines for food. Lines for elevators. Lines for cars (also called "traffic"). Lines for lines. You've walked 12 miles covering the show. All you want to do is go back to your overpriced, ugly hotel room and take your shoes off. It's two miles away. It takes you a hour to get there.


6. Questionable hygiene
Look, I know we Americans are typically "overshowered" compared to inhabitants of most countries, but dammit, put on some deodorant. You're getting shoved in beside other people for hours on end; have some human decency.


7. No one washes their hands!!!
More than half the men leaving the bathroom don't wash their hands. Not an exaggeration. Not a joke. I've seen it with my own eyes at every CES I've been to so far.


8. OMG #7
Seriously. Gross.


9. Rollybags
Look, I understand some people, for myriad reasons, don't have the ability to carry a heavy backpack or satchel around all day. But if you're toting around a rollybag, I hate you. So does everyone else. The normal human takes up about four square feet of floor space. Carting around a rollybag, that area triples. Not only are you wasting precious space on an already crowded floor, you're doing it down out of normal sightlines. At every show, I trip over someone's rollybag and nearly take a header. I've seen countless people fall over them and land hard. These abominations should be banned completely.


And wait a second: what are you toting around that's so heavy and important anyway? Iron Man's suit? Thor's hammer? What? I have a $275 laptop that weighs less than three pounds, plus I carry a real camera and two big lenses, and all of that fits in a bag a kid could carry. (Hmmm, now there's an idea....) This rolling episode of "Hoarders" has to stop. It's dangerous.


10. Meanderers
As I said earlier, most of us at the show are here to work. Some of us cover so many different product categories, that we're literally running from place to place to place to attempt to see everything we need to -- and we won't, it's futile. There's a percentage of people who, apparently, have absolutely nothing to do while they're there. They meander, shuffling slowly around the show with no direction, no straight line. They're speedbumps for those of us who move with a purpose. Hey, whatever you want to do at CES is none of my business, but at least don't walk four abreast with your buddies, blocking aisles. And please, please, please -- move to the side.


Which brings me to my last point. If this is your first CES, I wrote Ten Tips for the CES Noob for S+V last year, and it's still current (not to mention one of my more favorite articles).


Bottom Line
OK, now that all of that is out of my system, I have to say this: The drive to Vegas for CES is one of my favorite days of year. Just a flat-out high-speed burn through Berdoo, Barstow, and Baker. Up the hill, cresting to reveal that unmistakable, incongruous valley, ever growing, ever changing.


The truth is, despite the toll on mind and body, I love CES. It's exciting. We see cool stuff. I get to spend time with friends and co-workers I only see a few times a year. The food is excellent -- seriously.


It occurs to me that every annoyance I've complained about stems from the fact that I have to actually work at the show. A Catch-22 if I've ever seen one. I'd love to go to CES if I didn't have to work, but if I wasn't working, I couldn't go to CES.


Maybe I'll figure it out next year.



Got a question for Geoff? Send him an e-mail! If it's witty, amusing, and/or a good question, you may just see it in a post just like this one. No, he won't tell you which TV to buy. Yes, he'll probably truncate and/or clean up your e-mail. You can also send him a message on Twitter: @TechWriterGeoff.


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Pictures: Surveying Rain Forest Arthropods

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State Police: Two Gunmen at Conn. Grade School

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A shooting involving two gunmen erupted at a Connecticut elementary school this morning, prompting the town of Newtown to lock down all of its schools and draw SWAT teams to the school, authorities said today.


State Police confirm that one shooter is dead. A second gunman is apparently at large, sources told ABC News.


The shooting occurred at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, about 12 miles east of Danbury.


State Police received the first 911 call at 9:41a.m. and immediately began sending emergency units from the western part of the state. Initial 911 calls stated that multiple students were trapped in a classroom, possibly with a gunman, according to a Connecticut State Police source.






Shannon Hicks/The Newtown Bee







A photo from the scene shows a line of distressed children being led out of the school.


CLICK HERE for more photos from the scene.


While some students have been reunited with their parents on the school's perimeter, one group of students remains unaccounted for, according to a source with a child in the school.


Newton Public School District secretary of superintendent Kathy June said in a statement that the district's school were locked down because of the report of a shooting. "The district is taking preventive measures by putting all schools in lockdown until we ensure the safety of all students and staff."


State police sent SWAT team units to Newtown.


All public and private schools in the town are on lockdown.


State emergency management officials said ambulances and other units were also en route and staging near the school.


A message on the school district website says that all afternoon kindergarten is cancelled today and there will be no mid-day bus runs.



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