Stellar performances finally gain the limelight

Michael Brooks, consultant

(Image: Five Finger Yamanaka/courtesy of Phil Ross)

In Heart of Darkness, Jeremiah P. Ostriker and Simon Mitton add new stars to the constellation of astronomy to tell the subject's full history

WE HAVE all heard of the Hubble Space Telescope, named after Edwin Hubble, but where is the Tinsley telescope?

Beatrice Tinsley was an excellent astronomer, but her career was stymied by an establishment set against giving a salary to the wife of an academic - even if she was also a gifted scientist. Tinsley made at least two vital contributions to our understanding of the universe's history, but she had to divorce her husband and grant him custody of the children to get any recognition of her talents.

In Heart of Darkness, Jeremiah Ostriker and Simon Mitton explore modern cosmology while recasting what they term the "simple linear parade of heroes" of standard accounts. Among the uncelebrated stars of cosmology they discuss, Tinsley shines brightest, but there are others: Milton Humason, a poorly educated mule-driver and janitor who assisted Hubble in his observations, and Vesto Slipher, who, despite working in the shadow of a boss obsessed with finding evidence for Martian civilisations, made the first observations that told us about the expansion of the universe.

Why do some names last and others fade? As well as being a great astronomer, Hubble was a "showman", and a "comfortable celebrity", say Ostriker and Mitton. Tinsley, meanwhile, was diagnosed with cancer the year she finally made full professor (at Yale). She died four years later, aged 40. Like a supernova, she burned brightly but briefly. Hopefully, this thorough and inspiring book will secure her a place in cosmological history.

Not that Ostriker and Mitton's book is focused solely on people - quite the opposite. Relatively few biographical details are given: it is their scientific contributions that are explored - and with aplomb.

This is a strong, confident book, easily one of the best guides to why cosmologists make the claims they do. Yet for all their redistribution of credit, the cosmology that the authors set out remains uncontroversial. It is the universe that began in a singularity, passed through a period of rapid inflation, and is now dominated by dark matter and dark energy. The state of our knowledge, they say, represents a "stunning" accomplishment.

This is the dilemma of modern cosmology: what counts as success? Summing up, Ostriker and Mitton simultaneously cite a "pretty impressive list of successes" while acknowledging that cosmology is "profoundly incomplete". We don't know what caused the inflation, what constitutes dark matter or what lies behind dark energy. In the end, the authors settle for a declaration that there's plenty for future cosmologists to do.

If there is one flaw in this crystal clear book, it's a lack of depth in the discussion of the dark side of the universe. It provides the book's title and is supposed to account for 96 per cent of the universe, but is confined to two chapters towards the end. Alternatives to dark matter are dismissed in little more than a paragraph and compared to pre-Copernican efforts to keep the Earth at the centre of the cosmos. When many respected scientists support the continued search for alternatives, that seems somewhat disingenuous.

Were she still with us, Tinsley would no doubt argue that there are compelling reasons to believe in the existence of dark matter, but that there are good reasons to consider alternatives, too. Her unique contribution to cosmology was to persuade a dismissive establishment that galaxies change their properties over time. In so doing, she exposed a gaping hole in the cosmology of the 1970s. It was a supreme achievement, if unwelcome.

Clearly, if you want your name to go down in history (or onto a telescope) it's better to be a showman than a troublemaker. But if the history of science teaches us anything, it's that the troublemakers should be celebrated too.

Book information:
Heart of Darkness: Unraveling the mysteries of the invisible universe by Jeremiah P. Ostriker and Simon Mitton
Princeton University Press
£19.95/$27.95

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Retail rents in S'pore up 2% in 2012

SINGAPORE: Prices of shop space rose 2.0 per cent in 2012, while rentals dropped marginally by 0.3 per cent according to the latest statistics from the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA).

Yields of retail units have dropped last year, but most market experts Channel NewsAsia spoke to are optimistic about the demand for retail space in Singapore from both investors and retailers.

After just one week, some retail units at the newly-launched mixed commercial development Alexandra Central are reportedly put on the market again.

Such speculation raises the possibility of cooling measures being extended to the commercial property sector where prices of strata-titled retail units have jumped by some 56 per cent over the last two years while median rentals have gone up by up to 35 per cent, according to Savills Singapore.

Alan Cheong, research head at Savills Singapore, said: "Rentals are not keeping up with price increases, meaning there will be yield compression. We also noticed that strata title units sold was about 1,274 square feet (in 2010). Last year, it was only 430 square feet. There is shrinkage in the average size of retail units."

A smaller strata-titled unit could reduce the capital outlay for investors despite prices on a per square foot basis getting more expensive.

But market experts note that vacancy rates at 5.2 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2012 is at a 15-year low.

Unlike residential private property where an oversupply may be expected in the next few years, analysts believe demand for retail space is still strong.

Ku Swee Yong, CEO of International Property Advisor, said: "The future supply coming on stream will be spaced out for the next four to five years. And a large number of is concentrated in Jurong East where there will be creation of several thousand new jobs in two hospitals."

Prime rents like those on Orchard Road are expected to stay resilient. In the worst case scenario, analysts expect a mild correction of up to three per cent. This is because of the strengthening Sing dollar and a slower Singapore economy in 2013.

Analysts said URA data on shop space rentals are derived from a wide variety of commercial properties like strata-titled units, and those belonging to real estate investment trusts or REITS.

A decline in the rental index in shop space could be due to a higher number of leases from those in the heartlands, which are typically lower than those from the Orchard Road belt.

- CNA/fa

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Porn briefly makes 'Editor's Pick' on Twitter's Vine

The current top result for "Editor's Pick" on Vine.

(Credit:
Screenshot taken by Roger Cheng/CNET)

A pornographic video briefly made Vine's "Editor Pick" list, further raising the question of whether the video-clip-sharing app has a porn problem.

The clip showed up this morning, and was spotted by The Verge, before it was quickly taken down. A video featuring the "I love NY" logo is the current top editor's pick.

The Twitter app, which allows users to share six-second looping video clips, launched last week with a lot of buzz. But just a few days after its launch, videos not suitable for work began showing up on the app. Searches for #nsfw, #porn, and #sex brought up graphic results.

The pornographic clip was behind a NSFW filter, and users had to actively hit the screen to show the video.

Many wonder how long Vine will remain in Apple's store, given the company's strict policy over adult content and nudity. Apple reportedly removed app 500px because it allowed users to share nude photos with each other.

CNET contacted Twitter for additional details, and we'll update the story when the company responds.

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Doomed Dolphin Speaks to New York's Vibrant Wildlife

By the time New Yorkers spied a dolphin swimming through the superfund sludge of the Gowanus Canal last Friday, it was too late. The marine mammal didn't even survive long enough for a rescue plan to come together. First sighted on Friday afternoon, the dolphin perished at 6:00 p.m.

The reason the marine mammal died, and why the dolphin swam up the polluted waterway in the first place, is as yet unknown. But the sad story of the wayward creature highlights the strange nature of New York City, the global epitome of urbanity. Hidden within Gotham are native carnivores, marine mammals, and even species that have scarcely been seen before.

Marine mammals are arguably the most high-profile of New York City's wild residents and visitors. The Gowanus Canal dolphin was only the latest to venture within city limits. Just a month ago, a 60-foot-long finback whale (Balaenoptera physalus) became stranded in the Rockaway Inlet of Queens. The emaciated animal died the day after it was discovered.

There seems to be no singular reason explaining why marine mammals such as the Gowanus dolphin and Queens' finback whale wander up the city's rivers or strand on beaches. Each case is unique. But not all the city's marine mammal visitors suffer terrible fates.

In 2006, a hefty manatee (Trichechus spp.) took a long jaunt from its Florida home up the East Coast, including a detour down New York's Hudson River. The sirenian survived the trip, continuing on to Cape Cod before reportedly turning back south to a destination unknown. Hopefully the manatee didn't encounter any great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) on the return journey, a marine predator we know patrols the waters off New York.

Of course, New York City's whales, seals, and occasional manatee can only skirt the city along its shores and canals. You likely won't see a seal caterpillaring its way along Broadway.

Yet the city's interior also hosts a strange accumulation of wildlife, including native animals that are carving out spaces for themselves in the concrete corridors and exotic species that we have introduced to city life.

Coyotes (Canis latrans) may be the cleverest of New York City's hidden wildlife. Thanks to camera traps, and the occasional police chase through Lower Manhattan, researchers are keeping track of the wily canids and studying how they are so successfully taking up residence in many of the nation's cities. "Most small, urban parks will likely hold a pair and their offspring at most—coyotes are very territorial," said Cornell University ecologist Paul Curtis.

The secretive carnivorans bring a welcome element to urban neighborhoods—an appetite for rodents—and are experts at cracking open new niches alongside people.

Black bears (Ursus americanus) may be next. The bears have proliferated in northern New Jersey in recent years, and in 2010, a black bear came within three miles of the George Washington Bridge, a major thoroughfare between New Jersey and Manhattan. The bear obviously would have eschewed rush hour traffic and the tolls, but the local population is so bountiful that it's not unreasonable to think some enterprising bear might eventually wander into the big city.

Strangely, you may actually be more likely to run into a crocodylian predator in New York City than a black bear. New Yorkers have a nagging habit of importing—and losing-alligator—like caimans and other reptiles within the city.

In 2010, an 18-inch long caiman took refuge under a parked Datsun in Astoria, Queens. No one knows how the reptile wound up on the street, but given the trend of owners buying cute crocodylians and later dumping them, someone may have abandoned the poor little caiman.

This would hardly be the first time. In 2006, another little caiman was found in the leaf litter behind Brooklyn's Spring Creek Towers, while "Damon the Caiman" swam around a Central Park lake in the summer of 2001. These caimans are only some of the most famous—according to a New York Times report, the Brooklyn-based Animal Care and Control deals with about ten caimans each year.

Many other unusual and exotic animals have romped through New York. Under some of their most notable animal celebrities, the city's Parks and Recreation department lists guinea pigs, boa snakes, and even a tiger that escaped from a circus in 2004 and ran down Jackie Robinson Parkway before his owners were able to get him back.

The Big Apple even contains species that have never been documented before. No, not the ballyhooed "Montauk Monster"—actually a rotted raccoon—but a distinct species of leopard frog. Described early this year, the cryptic amphibian was given away by its unique mating call.

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Gym Turned Into Morgue for Nightclub Fire Victims

Coffins lined a gymnasium in Santa Maria, Brazil, today as family members tried to identify their loved ones after a fast-moving fire tore through a crowded nightclub Sunday morning, killing more than 230 people and injuring hundreds more.

A community gym near the popular Kiss nightclub has been converted to a temporary morgue were family members were led in one by one Sunday night and early this morning to identify the dead. Outside the gym police held up personal objects, including a black purse and blue high-heeled shoe, as people seeking information on loved ones crowded around, hoping not to recognize anything they were being shown.

"Doctors from other parts of Brazil were flown in to assist the medical side of this," BBC reporter Julia Carneiro told ABC News this morning. "One hundred people are injured and in hospital. Some have been flown to other cities that have better hospital capacity."

PHOTOS: Santa Maria, Brazil Nightclub Fire

Flames and smoke outraced a terrified crowd at the Kiss nightclub, located in the southern city of Santa Maria, shortly after 2 a.m. Sunday morning. Panicked partygoers tried to outrun flames and black, thick smoke, but the club appeared to have only one open exit, police Maj. Cleberson Braida Bastianello told The Associated Press.

Police confirmed that the toll had risen to 231 with the death of a hospitalized victim.

Hours after the fire, cellphones on the victims were ringing inside the still-smoldering nightclub as family members tried to contact their loved ones, Brazilian radio reporter Sara Bodowsky told "World News" anchor David Muir.

JEFFERSON BERNARDES/AFP/Getty Images

Brazil Nightclub Fire: Nearly 200 People Killed Watch Video

"It's really like a war zone in here. We have [over 230] bodies laid down, side by side, so the families go inside one by one. They look at the bodies," Bodowsky said.

The first funerals for the victims were scheduled to begin later today for those families who have identified their loved ones.

"It was terrible inside. It was like one of those films of the Holocaust, bodies piled atop one another," police inspector Sandro Meinerz said Sunday. "We had to use trucks to remove them. It took about six hours to take the bodies away."

Investigators believe the blaze began when a band's small pyrotechnics show ignited foam sound insulating material on the ceiling, releasing a putrid haze that caused scores of people to choke to death.

Survivors and police inspector Marcelo Arigony said security guards briefly tried to block people from exiting the club in the mass confusion and chaos moments after the fire began.

But Arigony said the guards didn't appear to block fleeing patrons for long. "It was chaotic and it doesn't seem to have been done in bad faith because several security guards also died," he told the AP.

Police Maj. Bastianello told the AP by telephone the death toll was likely made worse because the nightclub appeared to have just one exit through which patrons could exit.

A security guard told the newspaper Diaro de Santa Maria that the club was filled to capacity, with 1,000 to 2,000 people inside.

Meanwhile, people outside tried to break through walls to get in to save those trapped inside.

Michele Pereira told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper that she was near the stage when members of the band lit some sort of flare.

"The band that was onstage began to use flares and, suddenly, they stopped the show and pointed them upward," she said. "At that point, the ceiling caught fire. It was really weak, but in a matter of seconds it spread."

Guitarist Rodrigo Martins told Radio Gaucha that the band, Gurizada Fandangueira, started playing at 2:15 a.m. "and we had played around five songs when I looked up and noticed the roof was burning."

"It might have happened because of the Sputnik, the machine we use to create a luminous effect with sparks. It's harmless, we never had any trouble with it," he said. "When the fire started, a guard passed us a fire extinguisher, the singer tried to use it but it wasn't working."

He confirmed that accordion player Danilo Jacques, 28, died, while the five other members made it out safely.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who was attending a summit with European Union leaders and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States in Chile, cut her trip short and returned home to Brazil Sunday.

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DNA privacy: don't flatter yourself

The secrets contained in our individual genomes are less valuable than we like to believe

IMAGINE donating your DNA to a project aimed at discovering links between genes and diseases. You consent to your genome sequence being released anonymously into the public domain, though you are warned there is a remote possibility that it might one day be possible to link it back to you.

A few years later, that remote possibility comes to pass. How should you feel? This is no longer a hypothetical scenario. About 50 people who participated in a project called 1000 Genomes have been traced (see "Matching names to genes: the end of genetic privacy?").

The researchers' intentions were honourable. They have not revealed these identities, and the original data has been adjusted to make a repeat using the same technique impossible. All they wanted to do was expose privacy issues.

Consider them exposed. It is clear that genomics has entered a new phase, similar to that which social media went through a few years ago, when concerns were raised about people giving away too much personal information.

What happens when the same applies to our DNA? Having your genome open to public scrutiny obviously raises privacy issues. Employers and insurers may be interested. Embarrassing family secrets may be exposed.

But overall, personal genetic information is probably no more revealing than other sorts. In fact there are reasons to believe that it is less so: would an insurance company really go to the trouble of decoding a genome to discover a slightly elevated risk of cancer or Alzheimer's disease?

The available evidence suggests not. In 2006, Harvard University set out to sequence the genomes of 100,000 volunteers and make them publicly available, along with personal information such as names and medical records. One of the goals was to see what happens when such data is open to all. The answer seems to be "not a lot". So far this Personal Genome Project has published 148 people's full genomes. Not one volunteer has reported a privacy issue.

This is not a reason for complacency, but it suggests that our genomic secrets are less interesting to other people than we might like to believe.

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Syria pledges to end opposition prosecutions

DAMASCUS: Syria's high judicial council has announced a suspension of prosecutions of opposition members so they can join a national dialogue, state media reported on Sunday, without detailing the nature of crimes affected by the ruling.

The report comes after Interior Minister Mohammed al-Shaar had earlier vowed to ease the return of Syrian opposition members living in exile so that they too can take part in the dialogue proposed by President Bashar al-Assad on January 6.

"The high judicial council has decided to discontinue all prosecutions against opposition forces and individuals so they may participate in the national dialogue" the official news agency SANA said, without elaborating.

The council stressed that those "opposition forces will be designated by the government or first ministerial action group charged with implementing the preparatory phase of the programme to resolve the Syrian crisis."

In his January 6 speech, Assad proposed a dialogue with opposition figures who were not "slaves of the West" and on condition that "terrorist attacks" came to a halt before any political transition.

The regime has branded activists and armed insurgents alike as terrorists.

Shaar, in comments reported by state media on Saturday, said the directive allowing Syrians living abroad to return was not a blanket amnesty.

"Executive orders will be issued to border crossings to facilitate and guarantee that all political opposition forces may enter the country, maintain residency and leave at will," Shaar was quoted as saying.

"There is a big difference between those who safeguard their nation and those who are complicit in foreign agendas."

The United Nations says that more than 60,000 people have been killed in Syria's uprising, which broke out in March 2011 with peaceful protests and morphed into an armed insurgency after a harsh regime crackdown.

- AFP/xq

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The ultimate gall of a heartless iPhone thief

An object of desire?

(Credit:
CNET)

One should never expect justice in life.

The best one can hope for is poetry.

And yet, just once or twice, both manage to collide with a deliciousness that moves the soul.

Here is the tale of a teenage girl who had her iPhone stolen.

As The New York Times composes it, the girl had her
iPhone 4S ripped from her by a teenage boy in Brooklyn's notoriously difficult Prospect Park.

iPhone theft is rather popular in New York. Indeed, Mayor Bloomberg recently suggested that it's responsible for an increase in crime in the city.

Anyway, the iPhone-less girl collared a couple of policemen, but the miscreant was not to be found.

However, the thief then decided that he'd try to get some money for the phone. So he met a man on a Flatbush street -- as you do.

The man asked to take a look at the phone. Perhaps he wanted to see whether Siri was still inside.

Then, he ran off with it.

Yes, this is slightly poetic. But we've only just begun.

You see, the boy thief was not very happy. After all, he'd had his recently acquired property stolen. So he went off in search of a policeman to report the crime.

I pause for your sound effects.

Thank you.

More Technically Incorrect

The police reacted with unusual efficiency. They corralled both the boy and the man who had taken Siri from him. But they still assumed the boy was the victim.

Are you ready for verse three?

The phone rang. It was the girl trying to do a deal to get her phone back. The police realized something might be amiss here. This seemed to be a miss who actually owned the phone.

So they waited for her to arrive in Flatbush. She recognized the boy's sneakers. They were pink.

I pause for your further sound effects.

The police decided it was time to play Solomon. They would slice the phone in two if one party didn't renounce their claim to the phone.

No, wait. They asked both the girl and the pink-sneakered boy to unlock the phone with the PIN code.

You're already there, aren't you? Both the actual thieves were brought to justice -- the actual kind. And the girl got her phone back.

There are several morals to this story.

One, don't steal iPhones if you're wearing pink sneakers.

Two, if someone does unto you as you have done unto someone else, take it onto the chin. It will help you understand the feelings of others.

Three, if you're the kind of New Yorker who thinks they can always get away with it, well, you can't. Not always.

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Pictures: The Story Behind Sun Dogs, Penitent Ice, and More

Photograph by Art Wolfe, Getty Images

If you want the beauty of winter without having to brave the bone-chilling temperatures blasting much of the United States this week, snuggle into a soft blanket, grab a warm beverage, and curl up with some of these natural frozen wonders.

Nieve penitente, or penitent snow, are collections of spires that resemble robed monks—or penitents. They are flattened columns of snow wider at the base than at the tip and can range in height from 3 to 20 feet (1 to 6 meters). The picture above shows the phenomenon in central Chile. (See pictures of the patterns in snow and ice.)

Nieve penitente tend to form in shallow valleys where the snow is deep and the sun doesn't shine at too steep an angle, said Kenneth Libbrecht, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena who studies ice crystal formation.

As the snow melts, dirt gets mixed in with the runoff and collects in little pools here and there, he said. Since the dirt is darker in color than the surrounding snow, the dirty areas melt faster "and you end up digging these pits," explained Libbrecht.

"They tend to form at high altitude," he said. But other than that, no one really knows the exact conditions that are needed to form penitent snow.

"They're fairly strong," Libbrecht said. "People have found [the spires] difficult to hike through."

—Jane J. Lee

Published January 25, 2013

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Authorities: 245 Dead in Brazil Nightclub Fire

A fire swept through a crowded nightclub in southern Brazil early Sunday, killing at least 245 people and leaving at least 200 injured, police and firefighters said.

Police Maj. Cleberson Braida told local news media that the 245 bodies were brought for identification to a gymnasium in the city of Santa Maria.

That toll would make it one of the deadliest nightclub fires more than a decade.

The cause of the fire is not yet known, officials said. Officials earlier put the death toll at 180.

Civil Police and regional government spokesman Marcelo Arigoni told Radio Gaucha earlier that the total number of victims is still unclear and there may be hundreds injured,

The newspaper Diario de Santa Maria reported that the fire started at around 2 a.m. at the Kiss club in the city at the southern tip of Brazil, near the borders with Argentina and Uruguay.

Rodrigo Moura, whom the paper identified as a security guard at the club, said it was at its maximum capacity of between 1,000 and 2,000, and partygoers were pushing and shoving to escape.

Ezekiel Corte Real, 23, was quoted by the paper as saying that he helped people to escape. "I just got out because I'm very strong," he said.

"Sad Sunday", tweeted Tarso Genro, the governor of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. He said all possible action was being taken and that he would be in the city later in the day.

Santa Maria is a major university city with a population of around a quarter of a million.

A welding accident reportedly set off a Dec. 25, 2000, fire at a club in Luoyang, China, killing 309.

At least 194 people died at an overcrowded working-class nightclub in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2004.

A blaze at the Lame Horse nightclub in Perm, Russia, broke out on Dec. 5, 2009, when an indoor fireworks display ignited a plastic ceiling decorated with branches, killing 152

A nightclub fire in the U.S. state of Rhode Island in 2003 killed 100 people after pyrotechnics used as a stage prop by the 1980s rock band Great White set ablaze cheap soundproofing foam on the walls and ceiling.

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