Football: Corinthians clinch Club World Cup title

YOKOHAMA, Japan: Brazilian giants Corinthians won the Club World Cup in Japan on Sunday, overcoming European champions Chelsea 1-0 in a closely-fought encounter.

Striker Paolo Guerrero got the goal as the Sao Paulo club secured their second intercontinental title -- they won the 2000 FIFA Club World Championship -- and became the first side from outside Europe to win the title since 2006.

"We played a high quality match," a delighted Corinthians coach Tite said afterwards.

"Everything went well. Each player performed their own role and were able to do well in their position. I'm very happy."

But interim Chelsea boss Rafael Benitez felt his team were unlucky to lose, ruing several missed chances.

"We knew it would be a tough game against a good team. I think they had one (clear cut) chance and they scored and we didn't take our chances. That was the difference."

Benitez made three changes to the team that thrashed Mexican side Monterrey 3-1 in the semi-final -- replacing Oscar, John Obi Mikel and Cesar Azpilicueta with Frank Lampard, Ramires and Victor Moses.

Tite changed just one player from the side that scraped to a 1-0 last-four win over Egypt's Al Ahly, bringing in Jorge Henrique for Douglas.

The match at the almost-full 68,000-capacity International Stadium in Yokohama was frenetic right from the first whistle as play swung from end to end.

Chelsea came closest to taking the lead after eight minutes when Corinthians goalkeeper Cassio fumbled a Gary Cahill effort from a corner, before gathering the ball just short of the goal-line as Victor Moses looked to pounce.

On 25 minutes, the referee waved away a penalty appeal by Corinthians when centre-forward Guerrero went down softly under a challenge by Cahill.

Emerson should have scored three minutes later after Cahill let the ball slip under his foot. But the Corinthians forward blazed his shot over the bar from the edge of the penalty box with just Petr Cech to beat.

Guerrero then had a shot blocked shortly afterwards before striker Fernando Torres was similarly denied at the other end.

The Spaniard should have done better on 37 minutes however, expertly controlling a long-range pass from Lampard that split the Corinthians' defence. But a weak shot at Cassio meant the Brazilians breathed a sigh of relief.

Moses did better two minutes later, cutting in from the left and curling a shot that Cassio did well to tip round his left-hand post.

The Corinthians goalkeeper -- later named player of the tournament -- was proving tough to beat, holding onto a long-range shot from Juan Mata shortly afterwards, and the teams entered the break goalless.

The second half started as quick as the first, with Eden Hazard causing problems for the Corinthians defence before midfielder Paulinho gave Cech a fright with a shot that narrowly went wide on 64 minutes.

There was finally a breakthrough five minutes later when Guerrero headed in from close range after Danilo's shot was blocked.

Benitez brought Oscar on for Moses almost straightaway. But it was Torres who missed the best chance to equalise when he shot straight at the goalkeeper from the edge of the six-yard box with only four minutes to go.

Cahill was sent off shortly afterwards, believed to be for lashing out at Emerson, but Chelsea managed one last chance in injury time.

Torres headed the ball in the net, however it was ruled offside and Corinthians held on.

CONCACAF champions Monterrey took third place earlier Sunday, defeating Al Ahly 2-0 through goals from Jesus Corona and Cesar Delgado.

- AFP/fa

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NASA takes on 'Gangnam Style' and wins

Psy's got nothing on this.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Christopher MacManus/CNET)

For those of you with a dirty wit, please lend me some patience before you fly off the rails when I say that a group of NASA interns made a "Gangnam Style" parody named "NASA Johnson Style."

Wondering what's with the song name? Well, NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center houses educational programs for interns and students aspiring to progress further into the field of space science. The eclectic group of youths created a parody video that plays off Psy's "Gangam Style" in a geeky way by amusingly attempting to "inform the public about the amazing work going on at NASA and the Johnson Space Center," says a related video description.

Several space visitors make appearances in the nearly four-minute long parody, including NASA astronauts Tracy Caldwell Dyson, Mike Massimino and Clay Anderson -- all three participated in space missions at least two times (or more).

What lyrics in the Gangnam parody made you chuckle? I couldn't help but snicker after hearing, "Orbiting earth, international space station, where we work and live in space with a crew from several nations -- Got Japanese, and Russians, that European charm, throw them up, like the Canada Arm."

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

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. Community Mourns Victims of Massacre

President Obama will visit Newtown, Conn. today to meet with the grieving families and thank the first responders from Friday's school shooting, as the community begins the long process of healing.

The pictures of the young victims killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School emerged Saturday, along with a remarkable story of survival.

Twenty children and six adults were killed at the school when shooter Adam Lanza went on a shooting rampage.

Later this evening, the community will gather for an interfaith vigil, where the president is scheduled to address mourners, some from out of state who came to offer help and others, who knew the young victims or their families.

Addressing the nation on Friday, Obama mourned the children who "had their entire lives ahead of them -- birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own."

Story of Survival

READ: Complete List of Sandy Hook Victims

The lone survivor of her class tricked the gunman by playing dead, the girl's pastor told ABC News, before running out of the school covered in the blood of her classmates.

"She ran out of the school building covered from head to toe with blood and the first thing she said to her mom was, 'Mommy, I'm OK but all my friends are dead,'" said Pastor Jim Solomon. "Somehow in that moment, by God's grace, [she] was able to act as she was already deceased."

Five first graders in another class were also killed, along with six staff members.

Connecticut Shooting: Churches Services Honor Victims Watch Video

Connecticut Shooting: Pastor Explains How Girl Played Dead to Survive Watch Video

"The mom told me, and I thought this was very insightful, that she was suffering from what she felt was survivor's guilt because so many of her friends no longer have their children but she has hers," the pastor said.

Click Here for full coverage of the tragedy at the elementary school.

Remembering the Victims of the Sandy Hook Shooting

There was Emilie Parker, the little girl with the blond hair and bright blue eyes, who would have been one of the first to comfort her classmates at Sandy Hook Elementary School, had a gunman's bullets not claimed her life, her father said.

Noah Pozner and his twin sister had just celebrated their sixth birthdays. His twin sister survived the shooting, but Noah did not.

Six-year-old Jesse Lewis went to school on Friday, excited to make gingerbread houses. He died, along with his teacher, Victoria Soto, 27, whose family said was shielding some of her first graders when she was hit by bullets.

As the community mourns and families bear the pain of planning 26 funerals before Christmas, school board members hope to get students back to a familiar routine.

"Well, all the mental health experts we've talked to...tell us that the best thing we can do is to get back to normal operations as soon as possible," said Bill Hart, a member of the Newtown Board of Education.

"We know some teachers won't be prepared to come back, he said. "We are going to be prepared with substitutes. We've got counseling for all. We're prepared to do whatever we have to do to help all of our community."

READ: Police Seek Motive in Shooting

Students who attend Sandy Hook Elementary School will be moved to another location that has yet to be announced, Hart said. He said officials did not yet know what would become of the building that was turned into a slaughterhouse on Friday.

"I think trying to understand what we are going to do with that is a long process and we're not in any way prepared to make those decisions now," he said.

ABC News' Lara Spencer and Dan Harris contributed reporting.

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Zebrafish made to grow pre-hands instead of fins

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

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?

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

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

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

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.

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.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

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