Best Pictures: 2012 Nat Geo Photo Contest Winners









































































































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Quadruple Amputee Gets Two New Hands on Life













It's the simplest thing, the grasp of one hand in another. But Lindsay Ess will never see it that way, because her hands once belonged to someone else.


Growing up in Texas and Virginia, Lindsay, 29, was always one of the pretty girls. She went to college, did some modeling and started building a career in fashion, with an eye on producing fashion shows.


Then she lost her hands and feet.


Watch the full show in a special edition of "Nightline," "To Hold Again," TONIGHT at 11:35 p.m. ET on ABC


When she was 24 years old, Lindsay had just graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University's well-regarded fashion program when she developed a blockage in her small intestine from Crohn's Disease. After having surgery to correct the problem, an infection took over and shut down her entire body. To save her life, doctors put her in a medically-induced coma. When she came out of the coma a month later, still in a haze, Lindsay said she knew something was wrong with her hands and feet.


"I would look down and I would see black, almost like a body that had decomposed," she said.


The infection had turned her extremities into dead tissue. Still sedated, Lindsay said she didn't realize what that meant at first.








Quadruple Amputee Undergoes Hand Transplant Surgery Watch Video









After Hand Transplant, Relearning How to Hold Watch Video







"There was a period of time where they didn't tell me that they had to amputate, but somebody from the staff said, 'Oh honey, you know what they are going to do to your hands, right?' That's when I knew," she said.


After having her hands and feet amputated, Lindsay adapted. She learned how to drink from a cup, brush her teeth and even text on her cellphone with her arms, which were amputated just below the elbow.


"The most common questions I get are, 'How do you type,'" she said. "It's just like chicken-pecking."


PHOTOS: Lindsay Ess Gets New Hands


Despite her progress, Lindsay said she faced challenges being independent. Her mother, Judith Aronson, basically moved back into her daughter's life to provide basic care, including bathing, dressing and feeding. Having also lost her feet, Lindsay needed her mother to help put on her prosthetic legs.


"I've accepted the fact that my feet are gone, that's acceptable to me," Lindsay said. "My hands [are] not. It's still not. In my dreams I always have my hands."


Through her amputation recovery, Lindsay discovered a lot of things about herself, including that she felt better emotionally by not focusing on the life that was gone and how much she hated needing so much help but that she also truly depends on it.


"I'm such an independent person," she said. "But I'm also grateful that I have a mother like that, because what could I do?"


Lindsay said she found that her prosthetic arms were a struggle.


"These prosthetics are s---," she said. "I can't do anything with them. I can't do anything behind my head. They are heavy. They are made for men. They are claws, they are not feminine whatsoever."


For the next couple of years, Lindsay exercised diligently as part of the commitment she made to qualify for a hand transplant, which required her to be in shape. But the tough young woman now said she saw her body in a different way now.






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Rewinding reality: How you can change the past



MacGregor Campbell, consultant






Does objective reality exist? Is there an underlying truth that doesn't depend on the observer?



According to quantum physics, there may be no consistent reality. Not only do we change the outcome of experiments by what we choose to measure, but we can alter those results after they've already happened.



In this animation, find out how our choices of what to observe can change what actually happens, and what that means for our understanding of reality. A classic experiment illustrates the conundrum by attempting to measure whether a photon behaves as a particle or a wave. It turns out that it can be either, or a mixture of both, depending on how the experiment is set up.







You can find out more about this quantum weirdness in our full-length feature, "Quantum shadows: The mystery of matter deepens".

For more mind-bending animations, find out what lies at the heart of quantum physics or see what reality might actually be.




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Tennis: China's Li Na cruises to Shenzhen final






BEIJING: Chinese tennis star Li Na cruised into the final of the Shenzhen Open with a straight sets victory in her semi-final match on Friday, putting her in pole position to claim her seventh WTA singles title.

The world number seven is the firm favourite to take the trophy on home soil on Saturday when she faces off against Czech Klara Zakopalova, who is ranked 21 places below her.

The Chinese number one and top seed beat compatriot Peng Shuai 6-4, 6-0 in one hour 13 minutes to set up the final with fifth seed Zakapalova, who had earlier defeated Romanian Monica Niculescu.

Zakapalova took just one hour six minutes to claim a 6-1, 6-3 victory in her semi-final.

The Shenzhen Open - carrying total prize money of $500,000 - is being played for the first time as tennis expands in China on the back of Li's huge popularity.

Li's last singles title was at the 2012 Western and Southern Open in the United States in August - her first since she became a sporting icon in her own country by winning the 2011 French Open.

- AFP/de



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The 10 biggest tech innovations (that we personally use) of our lifetimes



Next-train arrival signs, like this one for NYC subway system have revolutionized commutes. Screen shot: Instragram photo by Sree Sreenivasan



As the father of 9-year-old twins, I often find myself telling them about tech products and innovations that I didn't have growing up. All parents do it: trying to get their kids to understand how much tougher life was in the old days.


In my case, the old days were in the 1980s - not that long ago. But the range of change in our lives continues to impress me and make my children roll their eyes.


Yesterday, I posted a photo on Instagram (see above and on my Sreenet account), saying the NYC subway's next-train arrival guides are among the top 20 technology innovations of my lifetime.


As you can tell, I had to post in a hurry as the next train arrived two minutes later. As I stood inside the subway, blissfully without cell service, I had a chance to think about that concept of top tech innovations and asked myself whether those guides were, indeed, worthy of a top 20 listing.



I've now taken a shot at that list. Before you read it, some ground rules I gave myself:


  • The technology had to be for personal use, something that affected me and that I use myself. So innovations in space travel, nuclear physics and enterprise computing don't count.

  • Innovations that have benefited millions of others, but I don't personally use don't count (sorry, electric
    car).

  • They had to be widely available only after my teen years - i.e, around 1988 - to be considered (eliminating the Walkman, the CD, the home video camera, the microwave oven).

  • Innovations so new or so rare or so expensive - or all three - that my family couldn't acquire them until many years later, do count (some of the items below might have been under your Christmas tree, but not mine).

  • Innovations that were widely adopted but then became irrelevant in their original form aren't here (example: America Online, Compuserve, etc).
  • Tech products that are mostly an evolution from something prior don't count (therefore, the DVD doesn't make the list; it's too similar to its predecessors, Betamax, VHS and laserdisc).
  • And if I saw my dad using it, it doesn't count, even if it's wonderful and I use it every day (sorry, electric razor).

Basically, it has to be stuff I didn't have when I was a kid.

What would be on your version of this list? Here's mine (the first six are in order of importance; the rest aren't):


  1. The Internet/Web/Search: No explanation needed.

  2. Email: Electronic messaging recently celebrated its 30th anniversary, but it wasn't a true mass product until the mid-1990s.

  3. Cellphones and smartphones: Cellphones have been around for decades, but the true revolution has only happened since the mid-1990s.

  4. Digital cameras: These cameras changed the way I capture and share memories and how I see the worlds of my friends, family and complete strangers. While more of my friends than ever before sling fancy digital SLRs, the only digital camera I've used in the last 15 months or so is the one in my iPhone. The other day, when someone took a group portrait with a point-n-shoot digital camera, several of us in the picture commented on how long it had been since we had used an "old-fashioned" camera.

  5. Laptops and wifi: Sure, there were ridiculously expensive laptops around in the 1980s, but none had the transformative effect on my life the way the ones in the 1990s did. And the arrival of wifi freed those laptops from the suffocating ethernet cord.

  6. GPS (with a nod to web-based Mapquest and Google Maps): I still remember our car vacations started with my dad would going down to the AAA (Wikipedia tells me it was "known formerly as the American Automobile Association" - sort of like IBM, I guess) and get maps with our route highlighted in yellow. When I first saw Mapquest I was blown away by the potential; the arrival of Web-based Google Maps just continued the innovation and set the stage for how we all use GPS today.

    My friend Arik Hesseldahl (@AHess247) of AllThingsD once explained to me, for another story, how cool technology by itself isn't likely to change the landscape. Luck and government decisions play a role, too:

    GPS existed [prior to 1997], but was deliberately made inaccurate for non-military users under a federal directive known as "selective availability" that was eliminated in 2000 by order of President Clinton; prior to this, consumer GPS was good enough for hiking, but nowhere near good enough for in-car navigation, let alone geocaching.

  7. MetroCard: Prior to the arrival of these yellow electronic payment cards for the subway, New Yorkers had to be obsessed with having enough tokens on hand to enter the system. The MetroCard literally changed my life.

  8. Next-train arrival signs: Londoners and Londonphiles love to tell me how they've had these forever in the Underground, but these arrived in NYC only three years ago. Until these real-time signs showed up, you had no idea if your train was coming in two minutes or 20. Just last week, a handy next step: MTA Subway Time, an iPhone app that gives you the same real-time arrival data. It was officially released only for iOS, but, in a sign of the times, someone made an Android version within 24 hours, thanks to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's API offerings (more on APIs below). Yes, it's only for a few subway lines, but 90 percent of my trains are covered and this is my list, after all.

  9. Wii and Kinect: When I was growing up, Atari, Intellivision and Commodore were major players in the home console market. The systems that came after that were much more powerful and more popular, but were basically improvements on what came before (sorry, Sega, Nintendo 64,
    PlayStation, Xbox). But the
    Wii, which I first tested at a family gathering on Thanksgiving 2006, was a breakthrough worthy of this list. I saw something I'd never seen before: Grandparents, parents and kids all gathered around the big-screen TV, playing digital bowling, golf and tennis.

    Some of that may have happened on occasion in the Atari days, but now, the players were all standing, not sitting on a couch, thanks to the wireless remotes. I predicted on my local TV segment the following week that the Wii would be unlike any other video game product and outsell the competition. At the time and in the years to follow, gamer-snobs felt the Wii wasn't any good in comparison to consoles with fancier graphics, better sound and more complex - and more gruesome - titles. The Wii went onto to outsell the other so-called "seventh generation" consoles, including PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

    A logical next step in gaming has to be on my list. The Microsoft Kinect sensor, which works on Xbox, does away with the wireless remote and uses a player's arms and entire body to control the games - everything from sports to dance-offs. As I wrote in January 2011 about Five Things I Learned from Two Weeks With Kinect, this is only the beginning. "The Kinect shows that there's still lots of room for innovation in a field that seemed pretty saturated. I expect to see more developments in this area as the sensors gets smarter, the cameras gets sharper and the game play gets more sophisticated.


  10. Social media, including blogging: Here I'm including various platforms - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogging - that have changed the way a billion-plus people spend their time, express themselves and engage with each other. For better and worse.

  11. Wikipedia: While it's easy to complain about some of the problems of Wikipedia, the fact is that it has completely changed the way I do everyday research. It's my first stop, not my last - and I sometimes spend as much time on the footnotes and where they lead as I do on the main text. Even hoaxes like the one uncovered last week don't deter me (see Bicholim Conflict on this list of the biggest hoaxes in Wikipedia history). If you want to truly understand Wikipedia's impact, potential and pitfalls, you have to read the definitive book about it, "The Wikipedia Revolution: How A Bunch of Nobodies Created The World's Greatest Encyclopedia" by my friend Andrew Lih (@fuzheado).

  12. YouTube: I had considered not including YouTube because it is, in many ways, just an evolution in online video. But in recent years, YouTube has become its own community with four billion hours of video watched every month; an important tool for all kinds of marketing, promotion and propaganda; and a source of entertainment and information for 800 million people every month (a stat I found in this compelling Peter Kafka (@pkafka) post that makes that case that Al Jazeera English should have gone with a web-only platform, rather than buying Current TV as announced this week).

  13. Zipcar: This car-sharing service changed my family's life, allowing us to access a car in more convenient ways than traditional rental cars (we don't own a car, in part, because parking in our Manhattan building is $500 a month). This week's purchase of Zipcar by Avis for $500 million is causing consternation. Here's an article saying this is good for consumers; here's one that argues the opposite.

  14. Credit cards in NYC taxis: Until they came along, I had to always check my wallet for cash before grabbing a taxi. Since they became widely available in 2007, I've not had to hesitate before hailing a cab and, unlike some folks who complain about drivers unhappy to take cards, I've never faced an issue with that.

    There's another reason to use credit cards in cabs, as I wrote in 5 Lessons From a Lost iPhone: "3. I'll always pay for my NYC cabs with credit cards. Turns out the taxi medallion number (the unique number displayed on top of all yellow cabs in Manhattan) is recorded with every credit card purchase, meaning you have way of tracking down cabs you've taken." The taxi industry in the city is the process of a much bigger disruption: figuring out new apps that are changing the decades-old system of hailing cabs.


  15. DVR: The arrival of TiVo, and, later, the generic digital video recorder provided by the cable company, introduced us all to timeshifting TV in ways the complicated VHS system and its blink "12:00" clock never could.

  16. Netflix: I'm including Netflix here as a representative of a whole new class of video watching, a big leap from the DVR. Whether Netflix will be the eventual winner in this space or not (Amazon, Hulu and others are attacking it), the concept of getting movies anytime from anywhere has changed how our family accesses entertainment.

    But I don't understand how anyone uses Netflix without also accessing Instawatcher.com, which provides a much better, searchable listing of the on-demand movies on Netflix, including my favorite feature, "Expiring soon."

    If you don't want to spring for Netflix, but are an HBO subscriber, you have to check out the free HBO Go app or website, which provides access to dozens of movies and entire seasons of HBO shows that are no longer available on the HBO On Demand service on your cable box. For instance, I saw and enjoyed "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency," a quirky, charming show I never saw when it first ran on the network.


  17. iPod and iTunes: These changed the music world forever, let us carry thousands of songs at a time and got millions of us to pay for digital music for the first time.

    My friend Hari Sreenivasan (@Hari; no relation), now an anchor on PBS Newshour, was the first to outline to me the power of iPod beyond music. One day in late 2001 (soon after iPod was launched), he predicted that the iPod would be a great way to introduce the Apple brand to PC users skeptical of the Mac. He saw it as a way to get people comfortable using an Apple product and getting them hooked and ready to try others. Even though he didn't call it that, iPod became a gateway drug that changed the company's fortunes and set it on the path to iPhone, iPad and beyond. If you are curious, the price of Apple stock on Oct. 1, 2001 was $15.49. On Oct. 1, 2012, it was $671.16 (it's down since then).


  18. Tablets and apps: In some ways, tablets feel like cousins of laptops and not worthy of this list. But in many other ways, they are, indeed, new. The key here are the apps we use in smartphones, too. As millions of users have discovered, tablets can be used in ways that are different from laptops and we see them being used as cash registers, restaurant menus, medical devices and much more. And all this is just getting started.

    I didn't include e-readers such as the Kindle on this list because while they were innovative, they are not going to stick around much longer. Thanks to tablets that let you read Kindle content without a Kindle, e-readers are dying much faster than anyone could have predicted. See this chart to understand the whole picture.


  19. APIs: I am not an engineer, but I play one on TV, thanks to my CNET tech segments on WCBS-TV. Since I don't program, it's not obvious why I'd include APIs - or application programming interfaces - on this list.

    But these web APIs, which allow live data and content from one web service to be posted and used on another have changed how we access information. Everything from mashups of real-estate listings and Google maps, to embedding videos, to the subway-arrival app I mentioned in #7 above, APIs are now a critical part of our digital lives. Here's a list of the most popular APIs.


  20. Cordless irons: I know some of you will claim to have had cordless electric irons for decades now, but the day I saw one of these, I had to have one when the prices became reasonable. They aren't as good as corded ones (the heat dissipates too quickly), but they changed my ironing life.


That's my 20. Am sure I am missing some others and that you will disagree with many of my choices (especially if you are in a different age bracket). That's what makes this list so much fun to put together. It has no right or wrong answers and it's all about you.

Hope you'll take a stab at creating a similar list of 5-20 tech innovations. You can post it in the comments below and/or tweet it with #mytoptech.





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Pictures We Love: Best of 2012

Photograph by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/AP

Powder-splattered, and powder-splattering, runners cross the finish line of The Color Run 5K in Irvine, California, on April 22. Each kilometer (0.6 mile) of the event features a color-pelting station dedicated to a single hue, culminating in the Pollock-esque riot at kilometer 5.

The "magical color dust" is completely safe, organizers say, though they admit it's "surprisingly high in calories and leaves a chalky aftertaste."

See more from April 2012 >>

Why We Love It

"Vibrant color floating through the air automatically brings to mind festive Holi celebrations in India. We expect to see revelers in Mumbai but instead find a surprise in the lower third of the frame—runners in California!"—Sarah Polger, senior photo editor

"There are a lot of eye-catching photographs of the festival of Holi in India that show colored powder in midair, but this particular situation has the people all lined up in a row—making it easy to see each of their very cinematic facial expressions."—Chris Combs, news photo editor

Published January 3, 2013

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Chelsea Clinton Raises Profile During Mom's Illness













While Hillary Clinton was in the hospital it was daughter Chelsea -- not the secretary of state or the former president Bill Clinton -- who spoke for the family.


She, along with the State Department, doled out what little information the family wanted to share in a series of tweets and when her mother was released from the hospital, it was Chelsea who delivered the thanks on behalf of her parents, tweeting her gratitude to the doctors as well as those who kept her mother in their thoughts while she recovered from a blood clot.


When Hillary Clinton leaves office, possibly at the end of this month, it will be the first time since 1982 that a Clinton will not be holding a public office.


The watch will be on whether Hillary Clinton makes another run for the White House in 2016, but almost inevitably people will also be watching to see if Chelsea Clinton decides to run for office, too.


"Americans always look for dynasties: Bush, Kennedy, Cuomo, Clinton … it's some kind of continuity. There will always be pressure on her to run for public office," said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic political strategist in New York.


"She's learning from the two best politicians in recent American history and she understands when to hold them and when to fold them," Sheinkopf said.


That sense of dynasty could also present a significant hurdle.






James Devaney/Getty Images











Secretary of State Clinton: Mystery Health Issues Watch Video









Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Undergoing Blood-Thinning Therapy Watch Video





"She's got to A, demonstrate that she has the charisma of her father, or B, demonstrate that she has the policy chops of her mother. And I think like most people she is somewhere in between," a former Hillary Clinton aide from her 2008 campaign said. "People are judging her through each of her parents and it's an impossible standard."


Chelsea Clinton, 32, has inched towards a possible political career in recent statements and has become more politically active.


In an interview with Vogue published in August she was more open to it than she has been in the past, telling the magazine, "Before my mom's (presidential) campaign I would have said no," but "now I don't know."


"I believe that engaging in the political process is part of being a good person. And I certainly believe that part of helping to build a better world is ensuring that we have political leaders who are committed to that premise. So if there were to be a point where it was something I felt called to do and I didn't think there was someone who was sufficiently committed to building a healthier, more just, more equitable, more productive world? Then that would be a question I'd have to ask and answer."


Clinton also spoke of a change in her private to public life:


"Historically I deliberately tried to lead a private life in the public eye," she told the magazine. "And now I am trying to lead a purposefully public life."


Besides her work as a special correspondent with NBC, Chelsea Clinton has taken on high profile roles with her father's Clinton Global Initiative. She sits on several corporate boards and has both moderated and sat on panels discussing both women in politics and childhood obesity, among other issues.


She has also worked toward making same-sex marriage legal in New York last year, as well as gay marriage referendums in Maine, Maryland, Wisconsin and Washington state, all of which were successful in November. She has also been active in superstorm Sandy recovery, most notably delivering aid to the devastated Rockaways with her father.






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Cannibal grig sex caught on video



Joanna Carver, reporter






It may be considered poor form in the human dating game, but cannibalistic sex is common practice among hump-winged grigs. This video shows a female insect feasting on her partner's hind wings then drinking the blood from his wound, apparently with little interest in procreation. The male isn't completely passive though: he uses a hook on his abdomen to catch the female, linking their genitals together.






The wing material doesn't grow back, so each time a male mates, his hind wings get shorter. Females prefer males with undamaged wings, which makes wingless male grigs less desirable. But according to Kevin Judge, an insect expert from George MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, females will sometimes move onto other body parts when there isn't much wing to tuck into. "I've seen males with missing hind legs that have apparently been chewed off by females," says Judge.


When hungry, however, female grigs are less picky about their choice of mate. In a recent study, Judge and his colleagues found that when starved, they would breed with males of other grig species. This behaviour is more likely to occur at the end of the breeding season. "All their own males are tapped out and they just go with what's available," says Judge.


Interspecies romance isn't unique to grigs: many animals also branch out from their own type. To find out more about these risky sexual practices, check out our feature, "Dangerous liaisons: Fatal animal attractions".


If you enjoyed this post, watch a video reveal details of nematode mating or see how water striders pin down females for sex.




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Wilkie Terrace land parcel sold for S$24.5m






SINGAPORE: A land parcel at 13/15 Wilkie Terrace has been sold to Roxy-Pacific Holdings for S$24.5 million.

Its marketing agent, Jones Lang LaSalle, said the plot located off Dhoby Ghaut/ Selegie Road has been sold to a subsidiary of Roxy-Pacific Holdings in a private treaty deal.

Jones Lang LaSalle added that the sale price of S$24.5 million reflects a land rate of S$1,259 per square foot per plot ratio based on the gross plot ratio of 2.1, after factoring in a marginal development charge.

Spanning 9,324 square feet, the freehold site currently houses a bungalow owned by a family and it is zoned for residential development.

Including this latest acquisition, Roxy-Pacific has bought three sites in the vicinity in the last six months.

Jones Lang LaSalle said the other two sites are Sophia Mansions at Adis Road and 7/9/11 Wilkie Terrace which adjoins the land parcel that it has just purchased.

The two earlier transactions were handled by property consultant Credo Real Estate before its merger with Jones Lang LaSalle.

Mr Karamjit Singh, Head of Investments and Residential at Jones Lang LaSalle said: "The narrowing gap in land prices between the upper and lower ends of the residential market is causing some developers to shift their attention to freehold land in more central locations. Some may be building up their land banks in anticipation of an upswing in the higher end of the market."

Jones Lang LaSalle added that the site at 13/15 Wilkie Terrace is located near to the upcoming Rochor MRT station, part of the Downtown Line, which is expected to commence operations in two years.

- CNA/xq



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WhatsApp processes record 18B messages on New Year's Eve



WhatsApp Messenger running on iOS.



(Credit:
Screenshot by Steven Musil/CNET)



WhatsApp has a message for its users -- a lot of them.


The mobile messaging service announced today that it set a WhatsApp record on New Year's Eve, processing 18 billion messages on the last day of the year. The company said it delivered 7 billion inbound messages and 11 billion outbound messages, surpassing its previous record of 10 billion messages processed in August.





In comparison, Apple revealed in October that its iMessage text service had delivered about 300 billion texts sent by iOS users during the previous 12 months -- an average of less than a billion a day.


That kind of growth reportedly attracted acquisition interest from Facebook -- a TechCrunch report that the company called "a rumor and not factually accurate."


Founded in 2009, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company provides a smartphone app for
Android, BlackBerry, iOS, Symbian, and Windows Phone that delivers text messages, as well as images and audio and video messages.


Read More..