Whales Trapped Under Sea Ice Free Themselves

The killer whales trapped under ice in a remote Quebec village reached safety after the floes shifted on Hudson Bay, according to the mayor's office in Inukjuak.

Water opened up around the area where the orcas had been coming up for air and the winds seemed to have shifted overnight, creating a passageway to the open water six miles away.

"This is great news," Johnny Williams, a resident who works for the mayor's office, told ABC News.

Williams said he was unsure how far the whales have moved, but that they were definitely not under the ice hole.

Residents in the remote village of Inukjuak had been watching helplessly as at least 12 whales struggled to breathe out of a hole slightly bigger than a pickup truck in a desperate bid to survive.

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The community had asked the Canadian government for help in freeing the killer whales, believed to be an entire family. The government denied a request to bring icebreakers Wednesday, saying they were too far away to help. Inukjuak, about 900 miles north of Montreal, was ill-equipped to jump into action.

Joe Gaydos, director and chief scientist at the SeaDoc Society in Eastsound, Wash., said that although the whales can go a long time without food, the length of time they can hold their breath, which they must do underwater, was the question.

"The challenge [was] to figure out where the next hole is," he told ABCNews.com before the whales found freedom. "If that lake freezes over, it's an unfortunate situation. It's a very limited chance. It's a matter of luck."

Inukjuak residents posted a video online to show the whales' struggles. In the clip, the whales are seen taking turns breathing. They can't bend their necks so they do a "spy-hopping" maneuver, Gaydos said, in order to look for another hole in the ice.

A hunter first spotted the pod of trapped whales Tuesday. It is believed that the whales swam into the waters north of Quebec during recent warm weather.

ABC News' Bethany Owings contributed to this report

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Ghostly galaxies burned off mysterious cosmic fog

Ghostly galaxies in the distant universe are almost certainly the culprits behind a mysterious change in intergalactic gas that allows us to see across the cosmos. Although these galaxies are too faint to be spotted by current telescopes, future instruments could soon reveal their presence.

About 300,000 years after the big bang, the hydrogen that filled the universe cooled and became neutral and opaque, plunging everything into the so-called cosmic dark ages. Any visible wavelengths from early stars were quickly absorbed by the gas, which formed a cosmic fog that persisted for almost a billion years.

Some type of radiation must have broken up the neutral hydrogen atoms into electrons and protons in a process called reionisation, which ultimately made the universe transparent. But whether galaxies would have been numerous and bright enough back then to produce this radiation was uncertain.

Now the latest observations from the Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2012 survey (UDF12), presented this week at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, California, have suggested that galaxies could, indeed, have turned the universe clear.

"This is the last uncharted piece of cosmic history," said UDF12 team member Richard Ellis of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.

Staring intently

Ellis and colleagues used the Hubble Space Telescope to stare at one spot in the sky for 100 hours – twice as long as in previous surveys – and used a filter that made the telescope more sensitive to faint, distant objects. "For the first time with Hubble, we can do this in a systematic way," Ellis says.

In December the team reported that they had spotted seven new galaxies hailing from when the universe was between 380 million and 600 million years old, right in the middle of the period when reionisation was under way. Since then, the team has analysed the radiation from these galaxies.

Using spectral colour as a yardstick of stellar age, James Dunlop and Alexander Rogers of the Institute for Astronomy in Edinburgh, UK, found that the UDF12 galaxies contain surprisingly old stars. "What we're seeing are the second generation of stars," Rogers said at the meeting. "They're already mature – and must have been around for 100 million years."

Older stars do not pump out as much ionising radiation as young ones, so these galaxies, at the limit of Hubble's vision, could not have done the job by themselves.

The team then needed to figure out how many faint galaxies from this era may have gone undetected. Caltech's Matthew Schenker and colleagues used statistical modelling, based on known galactic populations, to show that there must be exponentially more faint galaxies in the early universe than bright ones – enough to supply the radiation needed.

"We can say confidently that galaxies can do the job, but the faintest galaxies that do most of the work are just below the limits of the UDF12 project," said team member Brant Robertson of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Happy ending

"We're pretty certain it's galaxies now," agrees Steven Finkelstein of the University of Texas at Austin, who was not involved in the new work. Other possible candidates for reionisation, such as colliding dark matter particles, had been all but ruled out by earlier observations.

"I think it's a happy ending," Ellis says. "Reionisation is a normal process produced by things we can see, and not yet another dark something that we don't understand."

The ghost galaxies will probably be detected by Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, which is expected to launch later this decade. If James Webb does not manage to see them, that would present a puzzle, says Ellis. "We'd need an additional source of radiation, whether annihilating particles or whatever else." But he said he would be very surprised if the faint galaxies did not turn up.

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Hong Kong leader survives impeachment bid

HONG KONG: Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmakers failed in an unprecedented bid on Wednesday to impeach the city's embattled Beijing-backed leader, after they accused him of breaking housing laws and urged him to quit.

The city's first impeachment motion, which accused Leung Chun-ying of lying, dereliction of duty and serious breaches of the law in a row stemming from illegal structures at his luxury home, was denied after eight hours of debate.

The 27 pro-democracy lawmakers who signed the joint motion -- which they said was a symbolic move -- voted in favour, while 37 voted against in the 70-seat legislature which is dominated by pro-Beijing members.

Wednesday's vote followed a protest on New Year's Day in which tens of thousands took to the streets to urge Leung to quit and to press for greater democracy, 15 years after the city returned to Chinese rule.

The former British colony maintains a semi-autonomous status, with its own legal and judicial system, but cannot choose its leader through the popular vote.

Leung took office in July after he was picked by a 1,200-strong election committee dominated by pro-Beijing elites, amid rising anger over what many perceive to be China's meddling in local affairs.

China has said the chief executive could be directly elected in 2017 at the earliest, with the legislature following by 2020.

Unauthorised structures are a politically sensitive issue in the space-starved city of seven million and demonstrators have used the scandal to press for universal suffrage in choosing Hong Kong's leader.

Leung secured the chief executive role after criticising his rival Henry Tang over illegal structures at Tang's home.

But he has since acknowledged and apologised for structures at his own home which were built without planning permission.

Maverick lawmaker "Long Hair" Leung Kwok-hung, wearing a T-shirt reading "We topple a tyrant", accused the new leader of lying about his own structures during campaigning when he presented the impeachment motion earlier on Wednesday.

"He has used dishonest ways to win the election," he said.

Chief Secretary Carrie Lam, second in command in Leung's administration, said the motion was unnecessary and urged lawmakers to work together on policy and livelihood issues.

But Democratic Party chairwoman Emily Lau said the motion was a symbolic gesture to show the deepening public mistrust toward Leung, claiming the leader had "cheated his way to power".

"This is the first time we have a motion in the legislature to impeach a cheating chief executive," she said.

If the motion had been passed, the city's highest court would have had to initiate an investigation. At least two-thirds of the legislature would need to endorse a guilty finding before Leung could be removed from office.

Earlier, rival protesters traded barbs outside the legislature and security personnel had to step in at one point when an angry pro-government supporter charged towards the rival group, TV footage showed.

Leung's popularity ratings have fallen since the controversy, with discontent over issues including sky-high property prices and anti-Beijing sentiment remaining high.

- AFP/xq

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Off-the-beaten-track at CES 2013

Samsung. Panasonic. Sony. Intel. Qualcomm. All have big booths pitching smartphones, smart TVs, smart
tablets, smart cameras -- you name it.

But my first day at CES 2013 was spent wandering around exploring things from companies you've likely never heard of. And there's some interesting stuff out there!

Most of my time on Tuesday at CES was spent wandering the South Hall. What I'll cover below are things that caught my eye. Not all of these are necessarily new products, and this will be far from a comprehensive round-up within product categories. But I hope you'll find it interesting.

Take your phone underwater
One of my favorite finds was an inexpensive pouch from DiCAPac that lets you use your smartphone even if you're in water.

Sure, you've got waterproof cases out there like the Armor series from OtterBox. But at around $100, it's overkill for what I need: something light to protect my phone when I go paddleboarding, on the off-chance I might fall off.

Similarly, the Griffin Survivor is expensive at $80. The LifeProof, now down to around $45, is less expensive. But at $20 to $25, the DiCAPac cases beat them all.

DiCAPac waterproof case

(Credit:
Danny Sullivan)

Do they really work? Well, my phone is working fine, after I dropped it into that fishtank above, while in one of the pouches. With luck, I'll never put it to a torture test, however. I'm not planning to use my phone in the water. I just want protection if I accidentally drop it. That's also another plus about the DiCAPac pouches. They float.

Hopefully I'll avoid dropping my phone at all, given that the pouches come with a long neck strap. As for why I'd even want a phone while paddleboarding, that's mainly for pictures. It's nice to get a shot of a great sunset or sea lions or other things I might spot. And again, this is where the pouch so far works well. You can tap the pouch down to your phone's touchscreen, and all the controls really work.

Will the pictures be blurry, shooting through the plastic? DiCAPac says it should be fine. We'll see.

There are similar products out there. A short walk away, the SEaLABox was being offered. And after returning from the show floor, some searching came up with AquaPac, which has similar looking pouches. A Wired review of waterproof case also led me to Ecases from Cascade Designs. I especially like the iSeries with a waterproof headphone jack. That might let me hook a cheap pair of headphones up to my iPhone or
iPod, so I can listen to tunes while paddling away.

Mind over matter
Of course, I might never drop my phone at all if I could develop telekinetic powers. That's not so science fiction, any longer. There are a number of devices out there where using your mind, you can move matter -- or at least transmit signals to electronics that will then move themselves.

NeuroSky, which provides EEG sensor technology to enable mind-over-matter devices, had a booth with products from a variety of partners, including The Force Trainer, to help young Jedis (and hopefully not young Siths) develop their powers.

But it was the Puzzlebox Brain Controlled Helicopter that was the star attraction. First there was a remote control helicopter craze. Then there was the Parrot smartphone controlled helicopter. This is 2013. If you're going to fly, you fly with your mind!

Steve Castellotti, flying the Puzzlebox helicopter with his mind

(Credit:
Danny Sullivan)

Steve Castellotti, CTO of Puzzlebox, let me have a go. You have to concentrate on something, anything, and the more you stay focused on that task, the more the helicopter will stay airborne. It automatically tries to hover in the same place, so you're not trying to fly it around the room. You're just trying to keep it aloft.

For the record, singing the lyrics to Katy Perry's California Gurls in my head worked pretty well, but repeating the spelling of antidisestablishmentarianism over and over worked the best. I'm glad memorizing the spelling of that word back in fifth grade finally paid off.

I've Fallen & I Can't Get Up 2.0
Many people have seen the classic "I've fallen and I can't get up" commercials, where an elderly woman summons help through a pendant that lets her call a monitoring and assistance service.

Well, the next generation of assistance services are here, where technology will know if you've fallen and get help without you even asking.

GoSafe by Philips Lifeline

(Credit:
Danny Sullivan)

That, at least, is what Philips Lifeline says it offers in its pendant. It can detect if you've fallen. It knows your location. And it'll make that call for you, when you can't, apparently.

Perhaps somewhat related, having trouble hearing on the phone as you're getting older? Hard to hit those little keys? Would pictures help you dial the right number? Well, just across from Philips, the Sonic Alert booth had those needs covered:

Sonic Alert phones

(Credit:
Danny Sullivan)

Everybody wants to track your fitness
Speaking of health, how about staying healthy by monitoring your activity. Yeah, yeah. Fitbit. I still don't have one. Since I inline skate for exercise rather than run, I've never felt it's going to track my activity well.

But if you're like me and have avoided the Fitbit craze, look out. Booth after booth at CES seemed to be offering some type of activity tracker.

One that stood out was from Withings, the company that makes the wireless scale that I keep thinking is overkill. It will be releasing its Smart Activity Tracker. And you know that scale, sending data to my smartphone? Suddenly, that's looking pretty cool. Fitbit itself has a new band-based tracker called the Fitbit Flex that's coming.

What really caught my eye were the ibitz "family fitness keys" from GeoPalz. How could they not. Look at those colors!

ibitz family fitness keys

(Credit:
Danny Sullivan)

The versions for kids link to a game on their smartphone. They need to stay fit to keep their virtual characters fit. Kind of smart. For adults, there's more traditional tracking, plus options for monitoring your kids.

Ready to buy? Well, you can't. You can pre-order, and if enough people do, then the device will actually ship. So far, practically no one has ordered. Well, it was just announced. The product looks pretty cool; I hope it makes it.

Sports cameras everywhere!

Years ago, I got a Contour video camera that attached to my goggles, letting me film while I'm snowboarding. It drew looks, because there were so few people who had ruggedized cameras like that.

These days, we're well into the GoPro generation, it seems. With an array of devices to attach GoPro cameras to virtually any type of sporting equipment, GoPro seems to have become the standard in the space. Or at least my kids sure feel that way. For them and their friends, GoPro is cool. And I certainly do see GoPros far more than any other camera on the slopes.

If GoPro is king, perhaps this is the year where the rabble has turned out to try and unseat it. This year at CES, it seemed as if I was running into a GoPro competitor around every aisle.

And 170 degrees field of vision is so 2012. For 2013, it's all about the 360, or so the people at Geonaute would hope you believe. They've got a Geonaute 360 sports camera that shoots from all directions, so if you ever wanted to pretend you were a Google StreetView
car, check it out:

Geonaute 360

(Credit:
Danny Sullivan)

Price? Release date? Sadly, the Geonaute site is lacking this. But maybe after CES, they'll provide some updates.

But who wants yet another camera sticking up off their helmet? The folks at Liquid Image have cameras built right into goggles:

Liquid Image camera googles

(Credit:
Danny Sullivan)

Mmm. But then again, the folks at iON have a barrel-like format that reminds me of my old Contour, which I loved in how it could tuck it away against my googles, rather than stick off my helmet:

iON sports cameras

(Credit:
Danny Sullivan)

I actually didn't see these on the CES show floor but rather at the Pepcon Digital Experience event on Monday. Alas, there's no yet a way to attach them to your goggles, but I'm told that's coming.

Of course, maybe you'd prefer a Vivitar action camera:

Vivitar action camera

(Credit:
Danny Sullivan)

Or a Polaroid one:

Polaroid action camera

(Credit:
Danny Sullivan)

Or this GoPro clone:

Iron X Action Cam

(Credit:
Danny Sullivan)

Well, if you really want that one, sorry -- I didn't stop long enough to catch the maker's name, and I can't find anything about it on the web. I mainly took it as yet another example of how action cameras were everywhere. I half-expected to find a "My Little Pony" action cam. Actually, it's probably out there, if I look hard enough.

Seeing all of these, I kept wondering if they'd eventually go the way of the dodo, when someone comes up with a way to make our smartphones do the same job. Turns out, Hitcase has a product at CES aiming to do that. I didn't see it, but CNET writer Amanda Kooser did and has a review.

And yes, GoPro was at the show with a big booth and cameras looking as compelling as ever. It even survived the CNET torture test of dunking it in liquid nitrogen.

3D Printing, movie posters as the new QR codes and more
But wait, there's more! Like the MakerBot booth being overrun by those curious to see some of its 3D printing creations:

MakerBot creations

(Credit:
Danny Sullivan)

MakerBot makes the Las Vegas sign

(Credit:
Danny Sullivan)

Can't afford the MakerBot Replicator 2X that was unveiled at CES this week? Well, $2,800 is pretty pricey. How about effectively renting? The Sculpteo booth was touting how you can submit your own 3D models through the cloud for printing with its facilities. There's even a Made In 3D contest happening now to get you motivated.

Meanwhile, Paramount Pictures is super-excited about an app it has for the upcoming Star Trek Into Darkness movie. Developed by Qualcomm Labs and aided by buzzwords that range from "context awareness technologies" to "geo-location recognition" to, oh, just go read the press release.

Cynicism aside, the app was pretty amazing in that when you pointed the phone with the app open at the Star Trek movie poster, it registered the poster within seconds of pushing the scan button, adding points to your app. It was like scanning a QR code, only the entire poster was the QR code -- and a pretty one:

Star Trek Into Darkness app

(Credit:
Danny Sullivan)

Maybe this app will turn out to be fun. You can sign up here to be notified when it's available. Of course, app or not, I'm going to the next Star Trek movie. Who wouldn't?

Meanwhile, candy anyone?

Anything can be made to look like candy

(Credit:
Danny Sullivan)

Candy-themed headphones aren't new -- CNET had a review of them back in 2009. But still, candy! The display above is just one of the many examples of odd, strange or wondrous things you find off the beaten track at CES.

Blade Runnerize your home

One of my very favorite finds were the "LED balls" that Samsung LED Signs sells:

LED Balls

(Credit:
Danny Sullivan)

Logos spin around and around inside the balls. Presumably, you could have the LEDs make all types of pictures. For some reason, it reminded me of something out of the movie, Blade Runner.

For those with $1,000 to $1,600 to toss around, these might be the ideal conversation piece for the living room. But it's more likely that business trying to attract customers may want them. They sure pulled me in.

And no, despite the Samsung name, Samsung LED Signs apparently isn't connected with the big Samsung electronics group.

I'll leave off with this last bit of high tech from the wilds of CES that I guarantee won't make it into any other press write-up from the show:

Antennas

(Credit:
Danny Sullivan)

That's right. Antennas. They're making a comeback. You read it here first.

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2012: Hottest Year on Record for Continental U.S.

Temperatures across the continental United States soared in 2012 to an all-time high, making last year the warmest year on record for the country by a wide margin, scientists say. (Related: "July Hottest Month on Record in U.S.—Warming and Drought to Blame?")

"2012 marks the warmest year on record for the contiguous U.S., with the year consisting of a record warm spring, the second warmest summer, the fourth warmest winter, and a warmer than average autumn," Jake Crouch, a climate scientist at the National Climatic Data Center at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said in a press conference Tuesday.

According to a new NOAA report, the average temperature for the lower 48 states in 2012 was 55.3 degrees Fahrenheit (13 degrees Celsius), which is higher than the previous 1998 record by one degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degree Celsius).

A single degree difference might not seem like much, but it is an unusually large margin, scientists say. Annual temperature records typically differ by just tenths of a degree Fahrenheit.

"That is quite a bit for a whole year averaged over the whole country," said Anthony Barnston, chief forecaster at Columbia University's International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), who was not involved in the study.

2012: An Odd Year

To put that difference in perspective, said NOAA's Crouch, consider that the entire range of temperature increase between the coldest year on record, which occurred in 1917, and the previous hottest year in 1998 was just 4.2 degrees Fahrenheit (2.3 degrees Celsius).

"2012 is now more than one degree above the top of that. So we're talking about well above the pack in terms of all the years we have data for the U.S.," he added.

2012 was also the 15th driest year on record for the nation: The average precipitation total for the contiguous U.S. was 26.57 inches (67.5 centimeters), 2.57 inches (6.5 centimeters) below average.

Moreover, every single one of the lower 48 states had above average temperatures. Nineteen states had their warmest year on record and an additional 26 states experienced one of their top ten warmest years on record.

2012 was unusual in another way for the nation, according to the NOAA report. Last year was the second most extreme year on record for the U.S., with 11 natural disasters such as Hurricane Sandy and a widespread drought that each cost at least a billion dollars in losses. (See pictures of the U.S. drought.)

Global Warming at Play?

The country's record year can't be explained by natural climate variability alone, noted Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the Boulder, Colorado-based National Center for Atmospheric Research.

"It is abundantly clear that we are seeing [human-caused] climate change in action," Trenberth, who also did not participate in the NOAA report, said in an email. "These records do not occur like this in an unchanging climate." (Test your global warming knowledge.)

(Also see "Climate Predictions: Worst-Case May Be Most Accurate, Study Finds.")

Just how much of a role climate change played is still unclear, however. "That's kind of hard to state at this point," NOAA's Crouch said.

"Climate change has had a role in this ... but it's hard for us to say at this time what amount of the 2012 temperature was dependent on climate change and what part was dependent on local variability."

For example, Columbia University's Barnston pointed out, an atmospheric weather pattern known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) was in the positive phase for much of the winter of 2012, which lead to warmer winters in the eastern U.S.

Warming Trend May Continue

There's no guarantee that the weather pattern will continue in 2013. "It could be in the negative phase, which would make it more like it was a few years ago when we had very snowy winters in the eastern part of the country," Barnston said.

The NAO is an example of "a factor that makes the U.S. annual mean temperature kind of jog up and down from year to year. It won't just gradually go straight up with global warming. It can take big dips and have big jumps."

But if climate change continues unchecked, heat records will become more common, NOAA's Crouch said.

"If the warming trend continues, we will expect to see more warmer than average years."

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Hospitals Flooded With Flu Patients

U.S. emergency rooms have been overwhelmed with flu patients, turning away some of them and others with non-life-threatening conditions for lack of space.

Forty-one states are battling widespread influenza outbreaks, including Illinois, where six people -- all older than 50 -- have died, according to the state's Department of Public Health.

At least 18 children in the country have died during this flu season, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The proportion of people seeing their doctor for flu-like symptoms jumped to 5.6 percent from 2.8 percent in the past month, according to the CDC.

Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago reported a 20 percent increase in flu patients every day. Northwestern Memorial was one of eight hospitals on bypass Monday and Tuesday, meaning it asked ambulances to take patients elsewhere if they could do so safely.

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Most of the hospitals have resumed normal operations, but could return to the bypass status if the influx of patients becomes too great.

"Northwestern Memorial Hospital is an extraordinarily busy hospital, and oftentimes during our busier months, in the summer, we will sometimes have to go on bypass," Northwestern Memorial's Dr. David Zich said. "We don't like it, the community doesn't like it, but sometimes it is necessary."

A tent outside Lehigh Valley Hospital in Salisbury Township, Pa., was set up to tend to the overflowing number of flu cases.

A hospital in Ohio is requiring patients with the flu to wear masks to protect those who are not infected.

State health officials in Indiana have reported seven deaths. Five of the deaths occurred in people older than 65 and two younger than 18. The state will release another report later today.

Doctors are especially concerned about the elderly and children, where the flu can be deadly.

"Our office in the last two weeks has exploded with children," Dr. Gayle Smith, a pediatrician in Richmond, Va., said

It is the earliest flu season in a decade and, ABC News Chief Medical Editor Dr. Besser says, it's not too late to protect yourself from the outbreak.

"You have to think about an anti-viral, especially if you're elderly, a young child, a pregnant woman," Besser said.

"They're the people that are going to die from this. Tens of thousands of people die in a bad flu season. We're not taking it serious enough."

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Mock Mars mission reveals salty surprise

They survived a "mission to Mars" that helped us understand the challenges of long-term isolation. Now the crew who participated in a mock trip to the Red Planet may have helped overturn a long-standing assumption of how our body deals with dietary salt.

The Mars 500 mission, which ended in November 2011, was a dry run for a real Mars mission. It saw six volunteers confined for 520 days in a mocked-up spacecraft at the State Research Centre Institute for Biomedical Problems in Moscow, Russia. It also provided a chance to perform otherwise difficult experiments on diet.

It is known that dietary salt is rapidly excreted in urine. As it passes through the kidneys it helps them to eliminate unwanted fluids. But too much salt in the bloodstream can hamper the ability of kidneys to remove water, increasing blood pressure and adversely affecting health.

Salt cycle

It is a challenge to measure the long-term effects of salt because of difficulties in regulating dietary intake. However, Mars 500 "mission controllers" were able to dictate the amount of salt that the crew received each day.

During this mission, and a preliminary mission with a different crew that lasted 105 days, 12 crew members consumed either 6, 9 or 12 grams of salt per day for 29 to 60 days. Previous research suggests that there should be roughly the same amount of salt in urine as has been eaten that day.

Instead, the crew excreted different amounts each day, revealing a six to seven-day cycle of salt retention and excretion. The patterns varied between crew members, but were consistent within individuals. For example, on a 12-gram daily salt diet a crew member might excrete as little as 6 grams on day three of the cycle, and peak at 18 grams on day five.

Sleepy time

The fluctuations tallied with levels of the hormones aldosterone and cortisol. It is not yet known why the cycles lasted six to seven days. Jens Titze of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee, who headed the study, suspects it could be influenced by sleep.

In the 105-day mission, crew members performed a night shift every six days. Blood pressure on the morning after a night shift was higher compared with day shifts. No night shifts were performed during the experiment on the longer mission, however.

Graham MacGregor of the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine in London says the results are fascinating, but adds that they don't compromise previous studies. "It doesn't matter if there are [cyclic] fluctuations, because if you average single results across a large number of people, you'll still get a close correlation between the salt going in and out," he says.

Salt stores

Together with previous animal studies, the fluctuations indicate that salt might be stored away from the kidneys, which might otherwise sustain damage through salt overload. Subsequent MRI scans performed by Titze suggest that muscle and skin may also store salt. These results will be published in March, but more work will be needed to identify how such storage might affect health.

In another study published this week from the Mars 500 experiment, researchers report that the "cosmonauts" slept for longer periods, and became less physically active, the longer the mission went on. In the first quarter of the 520-day mission, the six crew members averaged 7.12 hours of sleep a day, which increased to 7.7 hours during the final quarter (PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1212646110).

More sophisticated lighting could improve acclimatisation to the required daily sleep cycle in future experiments or indeed aboard long-haul space modules. Blue light intensity is particularly important, says Mathias Basner of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, for setting day-night cycles, so lighting could be more carefully attuned to this intensity in future.

Journal reference: Cell Metabolism, DOI: 10.1016/j.cemet.2012.11.013

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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India says two soldiers killed in clash with Pakistan troops

SRINAGAR, India: Pakistani troops killed two Indian soldiers on Tuesday near the tense disputed border between the nuclear-armed neighbours in Kashmir and one of the bodies was badly mutilated, the Indian army said.

The firefight broke out at about noon on Tuesday (0630 GMT) after an Indian patrol discovered Pakistani troops about half a kilometre (1,600 feet) inside Indian territory, an army spokesman told AFP.

A ceasefire has been in place along the Line of Control that divides the countries since 2003, but it is periodically violated by both sides and Pakistan said Indian troops killed a Pakistani soldier on Sunday.

Relations had been slowly improving over the last few years following a rupture in their slow-moving peace process after the 2008 attacks on Mumbai, which were blamed by India on Pakistan-based militants.

"There was a firefight with Pakistani troops," army spokesman Rajesh Kalia told AFP from the mountainous Himalayan region.

"We lost two soldiers and one of them has been badly mutilated," he added, declining to give more details on the injuries.

"The intruders were regular (Pakistani) soldiers and they were 400-500 metres (1,300-1,600 feet) inside our territory," he said of the clash in Mendhar sector, 173 kilometres (107 miles) west by road from the city of Jammu.

In Islamabad, a Pakistan military spokesman denied what he called an "Indian allegation of unprovoked firing". He declined to elaborate.

On Sunday, Pakistan said Indian troops had crossed the Line of Control and stormed a military post. It said one Pakistani soldier was killed and another injured.

It lodged a formal protest with India on Monday over what it called an unprovoked attack.

India denied crossing the line, saying it had retaliated with small arms fire after Pakistani mortars hit a village home.

A foreign ministry spokesman said Indian troops had undertaken "controlled retaliation" on Sunday after "unprovoked firing" which damaged a civilian home.

The deaths are set to undermine recent efforts to improve relations, such as opening up trade and offering more lenient visa regimes which have been a feature of talks between senior political leaders from both sides.

Muslim-majority Kashmir is a Himalayan region which India and Pakistan both claim in full but rule in part. It was the cause of two of three wars between the neighbours since independence from Britain in 1947.

- AFP/fa

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Amazon Prime lands in Canada

Amazon Prime has expanded its coverage to Canada, but not all benefits will be part of the package.

Starting today, Prime will be offered to Canadian consumers for the usual yearly fee of $79.

The service's unlimited two-day shipping will be available in most of the country, according to Canada's Times Colonist. People in rural areas can grab the unlimited shipping but with no two-day guarantee. Those in certain locations will be able to upgrade to one-day shipping starting at $3.99 per item.

Steve Oliver, the country manager for Amazon.ca, told the Times Colonist that the shipping guarantee is good for millions of products sold by the store.

Amazon Prime also provides free Kindle e-book lending and the Instant Video streaming service to its U.S. members. But Canadian subscribers are out of luck here. Oliver told the Times Colonist that at this point the company has no plans to offer those options in Canada.

Amazon Prime is also available in the U.K, Japan, France, and Germany.

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Jodi Arias: Who Is the Admitted Killer?

Jodi Arias is a woman that many can't keep their eyes off of--a soft-spoken, small-framed 32-year-old who last year won a jailhouse Christmas caroling contest. But she is also an admitted killer who is now on trial in Arizona for the 2008 murder of her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander.

Sitting in a Maricopa County court, Arias, whose trial resumes today, cries every time prosecutors describe what she admits she did -- stab her one-time boyfriend Travis Alexander 27 times, slit his throat and shoot him in the head.

Arias grew up in the small city of Yreka, Calif. She dropped out of high school, but received her GED while in jail a few years ago. She was an aspiring photographer; her MySpace page includes several albums of pictures, one of which was called "In loving memory of Travis Alexander."

FULL COVERAGE: Jodi Arias Murder Trial

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"Jodi wanted nothing but to please Travis," defense attorney Jennifer Wilmot said in her opening statements, but added that there was another reality – that Arias was Alexander's "dirty little secret."

Arias' attorneys want the jury to believe she killed Alexander in June of 2008 in self defense, that he abused her, and she feared for her life when she attacked him in the shower of his Mesa, Ariz., home.

Alexander's family and friends say Arias was a stalker who killed him in cold blood. They say the 30-year-old was a successful businessman who overcame all the odds. His parents were drug addicts, and he grew up occasionally homeless until he converted to Mormonism and turned his life around.

Jodi Arias Trial: A Timeline of Events in the Arizona Murder Case

"He actually had everything going for him," said Dave Hall, one of Alexander's friends. "A beautiful home, a beautiful car, a great income."

Alexander kept a blog, and in a haunting last entry, just two weeks before his murder, he wrote about trying to find a wife.

"This type of dating to me is like a very long job interview," he wrote. "Desperately trying to find out if my date has an axe murderer penned up inside of her."

Alexander did date a killer. It's now up to the jury to decide if she killed in self defense.

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