SINGAPORE: Shoppers at Marina Bay Sands were in for a treat on Sunday as festivities to usher in the Lunar New Year of the Snake got into full swing.
Stilt-walkers dressed as the Gods of Prosperity, Wealth, and Longevity mingled with the crowds while mascots representing the 12 animals of the Zodiac paraded round the skating rink and posed for pictures with delighted shoppers.
A lion dance troop also traipsed from store to store, adding more cheer to the already festive atmosphere.
- CNA/ck
The Surface Pro
LOS ANGELES -- The launch of the Surface Pro at the Microsoft Store in LA's Century City was a relatively low-key affair compared with the debut of the Surface RT.
When I arrived just after 10 a.m. there was a small line (see photo). That said, both versions -- 64GB and 128GB -- of the
Surface Pro had sold out immediately.
Of course, no one would say how many units were set aside for first-day sales, and the lines didn't exactly snake around the Westfield Century City mall. So, it wasn't like a Depression-era run on a bank.
And back in October the lines were longer and the atmosphere a bit more frenzied when the Surface RT launched.
On Saturday, there was a small line outside the Century City Microsoft Store near Beverly Hills. The Surface Pro sold out immediately at the store.
But like the RT rollout, there was a fixation on and interest in the product not unlike what's found at an Apple event. I saw more than a few customers glued to the device for 30 minutes or even an hour.
In other words, Surface has a following. An analogy I would use is the Chevy Volt. Recently in LA, the Chevy Volt is gaining ground, driven by a small but growing (and fervent) customer base.
And Microsoft Store sales reps know what they're talking about. A patient, focused rep gave me a long, hands-on explanation of the
Windows 8 touch interface and demonstrated a new touch-enabled paint app, among other apps.
Finally, note that there are other enticing touch-screen Windows 8 devices at the store, including the 2.3-pound Acer Aspire S7 and the HP Spectre XT TouchSmart. And that's good for Windows 8 overall.
Looking at the line from inside the store.
The Surface Pro isn't the only cool Windows 8 device on sale at the Microsoft Store. The 11.6-inch Acer Aspire S7 touch-screen laptop is a tempting alternative to the Pro.
For the first time in history, humans have drilled a hole into rock on Mars and are collecting the powdered results for analysis, NASA announced Saturday.
After weeks of intensive planning, the Mars rover Curiosity undertook its first full drill on Friday, with NASA receiving images on Saturday showing that the procedure was a success.
Curiosity drilled a hole that is a modest 2.5 inches (6.35 centimeters) deep and .6 inches (1.52 centimeters) wide but that holds the promise of potentially great discoveries. (Watch video of the Mars rover Curiosity.)
"The most advanced planetary robot ever designed now is a fully operating analytical laboratory on Mars," John Grunsfeld, NASA associate administrator for the agency's Science Mission Directorate, said in a statement on Saturday.
"This is the biggest milestone accomplishment for the Curiosity team since the sky-crane landing last August."
Read: Asteroid to Make Closest Flyby in History
The site of the much-anticipated penetration is a flat section of Mars rock that shows signs of having been underwater in its past.
Called Yellowknife Bay, it's the kind of environment where organic materials—the building block of life—might have been deposited and preserved long ago, at a time when Mars was far wetter and warmer than it is today.
The contents of the drilling are now being transferred into the rover's internal collection system, where the samples will be sieved down to size and scoured to minimize the presence of contamination from Earth. (Watch video of Curiosity's "Seven Minutes of Terror.")
Then the sample will be distributed to the two instruments most capable of determining what the rocks contain.
The first is the Sample Analysis on Mars (SAM), which has two ovens that can heat the powdered rock to almost 2000°F (1093°C) and release the rock's elements and compounds in a gaseous form.
The gases will then be analyzed by instruments that can identify precisely what they are, and when they might have been deposited. Scientists are looking for carbon-based organics believed to be essential for any potentially past life on Mars.
Powder will also go to the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument for a related analysis that looks especially at the presence of minerals—especially those that can only be formed in the presence of water.
Louise Jandura, chief engineer for Curiosity's sample system at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said that designing and testing a drill that can grab hold of Martian rock and commence first a percussive shallow drilling and then dig a deeper hole was difficult.
The drill, which is at the end of a 7-foot arm, is capable of about 100 discrete maneuvers.
"To get to the point of making this hole in a rock on Mars, we made eight drills and bored more than 1,200 holes in 20 types of rock on Earth," Jandura said in a statement.
Results from the SAM and CheMin analyses are not expected for several days to weeks.
The Los Angeles Police Department announced today it will reopen the case of the firing of Christopher Dorner, but said the decision was not made to "appease" the fugitive former cop suspected of killing three people.
Dorner, a fired and disgruntled former Los Angeles police officer, said in the so-called "manifesto" he released that he was targeting LAPD officials and their families and will keep killing until the truth is known about his case.
"I have no doubt that the law enforcement community will bring to an end the reign of terror perpetrated on our region by Christopher Jordan Dorner and he will be held accountable for his evil actions," LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said in a statement released tonight.
He spoke of the "tremendous strides" the LAPD has made in regaining public trust after numerous scandals, but added: "I am aware of the ghosts of the LAPD's past and one of my biggest concerns is that they will be resurrected by Dorner's allegations of racism within the Department."
To do that, he said, full re-investigation of the case that led to Dorner's firing is necessary.
"I feel we need to also publicly address Dorner's allegations regarding his termination of employment, and to do so I have directed our Professionals Standards Bureau and my Special Assistant for Constitutional Policing to completely review the Dorner complaint of 2007; To include a re-examination of all evidence and a re-interview of witnesses," he said. "We will also investigate any allegations made in his manifesto which were not included in his original complaint.
Irvine Police Department/AP Photo
"I do this not to appease a murderer. I do it to reassure the public that their police department is transparent and fair in all the things we do."
PHOTOS: Former LAPD Officer Suspected in Shootings
As police searched for Dorner today in the San Bernardino Mountains, sources told ABC News that investigators found two AR-15 assault rifles in the burned-out truck Dorner abandoned.
The truck had a broken axle, which may be the reason he decided to set fire to it, the police sources said.
A man identifying himself as Dorner taunted the father of Monica Quan four days after the former LAPD officer allegedly killed her and just 11 hours after he allegedly killed a police officer in Riverside, Calif., according to court documents obtained by ABC News
A man claiming to be Dorner called Randall Quan and told him that that he "should have done a better job of protecting his daughter," according to the documents.
In his 6,000-word "manifesto," Dorner named Randal Quan, a retired LAPD captain and attorney who represented him before a police review board that led to Dorner's dismissal from the force.
"I never had an opportunity to have a family of my own, I'm terminating yours," Dorner wrote, and directed Quan and other officials to "[l]ook your wives/husbands and surviving children directly in the face and tell them the truth as to why your children are dead."
Monica Quan and her fiancé Keith Lawrence were gunned down last Sunday in their car in the parking of their Irvine, Calif., condominium complex. Both were struck with multiple gunshot wounds.
The call, according to court records, was traced to Vancouver, Wash., but law enforcement officials do not believe Dorner was there at the time at the call.
Dorner is believed to have made the call early Thursday afternoon, less than half a day after he is suspected of killing a police officer and wounding two others early that morning, sparking an unprecedented man hunt involving more than a thousand police officers and federal agents spanning hundreds of miles.
FULL COVERAGE: Christopher Jordan Dorner
Lichens and algae could be the first life forms we find on Earth-like exoplanets, by looking for their light signatures in a planet's distinctive colouring.
Astronomers have found several rocky worlds in the habitable zone, the region around a star where liquid water can exist on a planet's surface, and many more are thought to exist. As telescopes get more sensitive, we should be able to collect light reflected off such planets and look for clues to their surface conditions.
Seen from space, Earth gives off a large amount of near-infrared light, which is reflecting off the chlorophyll in plants. We might see a similar "red edge" on distant exoplanets if they also host green vegetation.
But Siddharth Hegde and Lisa Kaltenegger of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, think it is possible that many rocky worlds will have extreme heat, dryness or acidity, and that hardier life forms will dominate their surfaces. So what would these organisms look like from a distance?
To find out the pair looked at the light reflected by some of Earth's more extreme life forms: lichens in arid regions, bacterial mats in very hot water and red algae in acid mine drainage. They calculated that seen from afar each type of organism would create a unique colour pattern. Lichens, for instance, appear more yellow than the algae or bacteria.
Finding these patterns wouldn't necessarily mean life is present, but it could be a step towards narrowing down exoplanets for more detailed searches, the authors say.
It's an attractive idea, says Nicolas Cowan of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and it is far more likely that a given planet would contain microbial life than trees. But the work has its limits, he cautions. For instance, atmospheres on other planets may be very different from our own and could scatter light in ways we wouldn't expect.
"Nature may be more creative than our little corner of the cosmos would have us believe," Cowan says.
Journal reference: Astrobiology, doi.org/kch
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SINGAPORE: For the first time, a guided tour will be held at the Istana to promote a deeper understanding of the national monument - a collaboration between the Preservation of Monuments Board and the Istana of Singapore.
The first tour will be offered on Monday at the Istana's Lunar New Year Open House.
Whether it's a painting inspired by a tropical plantation or a decorated ceiling, there's a human interest story behind each art piece.
President Tony Tan Keng Yam said: "People come here but they don't really understand the significance of the building and some of the artefacts and paintings until somebody explains it to you. Just like myself, I come here everyday and I pass all these things and it doesn't register until you know what are the details."
But now you can get the chance to hear the stories behind the 144-year-old national monument through a guided tour.
The 45-minute tour, led by a team of volunteers, will take visitors through Singapore during the colonial days to the tumultuous years towards independence.
One of the art pieces that stood out for President Tony Tan was a Balinese painting which has multiple stories playing out simultaneously within the picture.
So one can expect to see iconic structures and buildings of Singapore's landscape which include the Merlion, Changi Airport and the Singapore River.
Visitors can also expect to hear stories of individuals involved in the daily management in each of the three stately rooms.
A banquet hall that used to be the kitchen underwent renovation to now host State banquets held in honour of visiting heads of states and governments. The centrepiece of the room is a chandelier weighing 220 kilogrammes.
The tour will be offered on all Istana Open House days from 9:30am to 4:30pm.
Ticket fees for the guided tour are at S$2 for children between the ages of 4 and 12, S$4 for Singapore citizens and Permanent Residents, and S$10 for foreigners.
All proceeds collected from the tours will be donated to the Community Chest.
Tickets can be bought at the site itself.
- CNA/ck
Will Apple ever make an iWatch?
Ever since the sixth-generation iPod Nano, lots of people have thought that Apple making its own branded watch is not merely a smart potential move but simply a matter of time. No matter what some have recently argued, I doubt, however, that today's Apple is hungry enough to create the fabled iWatch device.
I've been covering the technology beat long enough to feel, no, smell certain shifts in the gadget market. I'm talking about those cycles when a new product category springs up from nowhere and first seems like a completely goofy notion. Soon after, the segment really heats up with scores of companies jumping into the fray to make a quick buck.
Traditionally, if Apple senses a legitimate opportunity it steps in at the right moment after figuring out the secret to success and sucks the air right out of the market.
Tablets and MP3 players existed well before Apple launched the
iPod and iPad, but their arrival completely transformed the playing field. Remember music players from Creative Labs, Rio, or even Microsoft's clunky Windows Tablet PCs?
I'm getting the same tingling sensation right now from smartwatches. At
CES in January the sleeper hit of the show was wearable tech, essentially devices you could strap or clip to yourself as you would an accessory or article of clothing. A lot of smartwatches, fitness bands, or some hybrid of the two, were talked up at the conference.
These included everything from the long-awaited and crowd-funded Pebble and the Dick Tracy/007-inspired Martian Passport Watch to the Fitbit Flex fitness tracker and the Basis Band. When you factor in the success of the Nike FuelBand, Nike being a company Apple has partnered with in the past to create fitness products, I'd say the time is ripe for Apple to swoop in for the kill.
Chat through the Martian Passport like a speakerphone.
This is a move the Cupertino company used to accomplish without breaking a sweat. Apple has the knack of catching the competition completely flat-footed, surprising since many already had a big head start. The iPhone is a perfect example. Smartphones had existed for years but the iPhone sounded the death knell for Microsoft's struggling Windows Mobile products -- trust me, I was saddled with a T-Mobile Wing at the time. The Sidekick and a legion of keyboarded feature phones suffered the same fate.
I'm afraid Apple hasn't demonstrated its signature ferocity in recent years. We haven't seen a truly disruptive product from the company since the first iPad. Every noteworthy hardware release since then has been evolutionary and incremental, not transformative. The iPad Mini is simply a smaller iPad, while the iPhone 5 essentially increased the screen from 3.7 to 4 inches. Its A6 processor is also dual-core where many Android CPUs have gone to full quad-core and it received 4G LTE well after its rivals.
What Apple needs here is true out-of-the-box action to quell the doubters at large and on Wall Street. A serious example of nonlinear thinking that matches the creation of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Something that would merge multiple gadgets and applications into something entirely new or perhaps clean up the confused mess other manufacturers tout as useful gadgets. Something like a fabulous, shiny Apple iWatch.
Image courtesy SDO/NASA
Resembling a dragon's tail, remnants of a solar filament strain to escape the sun's gravity in an image released this week by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.
Most of the electrically charged gas, imaged in extreme ultraviolet light, was unsuccessful in its escape attempt and fell back into the sun.
Filaments form when magnetic field lines push out of the sun in loops, holding dense gas above the surface of the sun. (Read about a huge solar filament that erupted in August 2012.)
—Jane J. Lee and Christine Dell'Amore
Published February 8, 2013
Photograph by Marcel Mivelaz, My Shot
Northern lights writhe behind a thin cloud layer above a road on Ringvassoya Island, Norway, in this picture submitted to National Geographic's My Shot photography community on January 31.
Born of violent eruptions of plasma from the sun's surface, auroras occur when the ejected gas slams into the protective bubble of Earth's magnetic field. (Watch a video about the birth of auroras.)
Published February 8, 2013
Image courtesy ESO
Like a parrot perched on a pirate's arm, the Seagull Nebula resides in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way.
This new image, released by the European Southern Observatory on February 6, shows a closeup of one of the "wings" of the Seagull Nebula. Red clouds of hydrogen gas glow from the intense ultraviolet radiation given off with the birth of stars.
The entire nebula is actually comprised of three large gas clouds arranged in the shape of a bird. (See pictures of other nebulae.)
Published February 8, 2013
Image courtesy Caltech/SSI/NASA
Saturn's hexagon-shaped north pole is lit by the sun now that spring has come to the planet's northern hemisphere, as seen in a NASA picture released this week.
The 15,000-mile-wide (25,000-kilometer-wide) cloud formation, captured by the Cassini spacecraft's wide-angle camera in November, was initially spied during the Voyager missions in the 1980s. (See another Cassini picture of the hexagon.)
Published February 8, 2013
Image courtesy U. Arizona/NASA
A 2011 frost avalanche kicks up dust on Mars in a picture released this week by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera team.
Frost avalanches usually occur at the onset of the Martian spring, when layers of carbon dioxide frost warm, causing ice and dust to cascade off of cliffs.
"While HiRISE has captured other frost avalanches before, they never cease to amaze, since it demonstrates that there are indeed active processes on the red planet," according to the HiRISE website. (Related: "First Mars Avalanches Seen In Action.")
Published February 8, 2013
Photograph courtesy NASA
London gleams in a nighttime picture taken from the International Space Station on February 2.
Expedition 34 Flight Engineer Chris Hadfield captured the English city while flying about 240 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth.
Published February 8, 2013
Illustration courtesy Foster and Partners/ESA
Published February 8, 2013
A behemoth storm packing hurricane-force wind gusts and blizzard conditions swept through the Northeast on Saturday, dumping more than 2 feet of snow on New England and knocking out power to 650,000 homes and businesses.
More than 28 inches of snow had fallen on central Connecticut by early Saturday, and areas of southeastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire notched 2 feet or more of snow — with more falling. Airlines scratched more than 5,300 flights through Saturday, and New York City's three major airports and Boston's Logan Airport closed.
The wind-whipped snowstorm mercifully arrived at the start of a weekend, which meant fewer cars on the road and extra time for sanitation crews to clear the mess before commuters in the New York-to-Boston region of roughly 25 million people have to go back to work. But it also could mean a weekend cooped up indoors.
For a group of stranded European business travelers, it meant making the best of downtime in a hotel restaurant Friday night in downtown Boston, where snow blew outside and drifted several inches deep on the sidewalks.
The six Santander bank employees found their flights back to Spain canceled, and they gave up on seeing the city or having dinner out.
AP Photo/Standard Times, Peter Pereira
"We are not believing it," said Tommaso Memeghini, 29, an Italian who lives in Barcelona. "We were told it may be the biggest snowstorm in the last 20 years."
The National Weather Service says up to 3 feet of snow is expected in Boston, threatening the city's 2003 record of 27.6 inches. A wind gust of 76 mph was recorded at Logan Airport.
In heavily Catholic Boston, the archdiocese urged parishioners to be prudent about attending Sunday Mass and reminded them that, under church law, the obligation "does not apply when there is grave difficulty in fulfilling this obligation."
Halfway through what had been a mild winter across the Northeast, blizzard warnings were posted from parts of New Jersey to Maine. The National Weather Service said Boston could get close to 3 feet of snow by Saturday evening, while most of Rhode Island could receive more than 2 feet, most of it falling overnight Friday into Saturday. Connecticut was bracing for 2 feet, and New York City was expecting as much as 14 inches.
Early snowfall was blamed for a 19-car pileup in Cumberland, Maine, that caused minor injuries. In New York, hundreds of cars began getting stuck on the Long Island Expressway on Friday afternoon at the beginning of the snowstorm and dozens of motorists remained disabled early Saturday as police worked to free them.
About 650,000 customers in the Northeast lost power during the height of the snowstorm, most of them in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth, Mass., lost electricity and shut down Friday night during the storm. Authorities say there's no threat to public safety.
At least four deaths were being blamed on the storm, three in Canada and one in New York. In southern Ontario, an 80-year-old woman collapsed while shoveling her driveway and two men were killed in car crashes. In New York, a 74-year-old man died after being struck by a car in Poughkeepsie; the driver said she lost control in the snowy conditions, police said.
Zoologger is our weekly column highlighting extraordinary animals – and occasionally other organisms – from around the world
Species: Rhinopithecus bieti
Habitat: Evergreen forests in an isolated mountainous area of south-west China
Humans aren't built for giving birth. Babies' heads are big to accommodate their big brains, but the mother's hips are small because they walk upright. As a result,
Other animals may find birth difficult, particularly if the babies have been gestating for a long time and have grown large. Nevertheless, most mammals have it easier than humans. Monkeys give birth in less than ten minutes.
So it is a surprise that female black snub-nosed monkeys may be assisted by "midwives" when they give birth. This behaviour has only been seen once in this species, but it suggests that it's not just human mothers that need help giving birth.
Black snub-nosed monkeys live in societies called bands, which can be over 400 strong. Each is divided into smaller groups of around 10 monkeys. Most groups contain one male and several females plus offspring, but there are also all-male groups.
Wen Xiao of Dali University in Yunnan, China, and colleagues have been observing black snub-nosed monkeys in the province for years, but had never seen one give birth: the monkeys normally deliver at night. Then on 18 March last year, they got lucky.
A female monkey gave birth to her first infant within fifteen minutes late one morning. While sitting in a rhododendron tree, she began twisting her body and calling faintly. After 10 minutes she started screaming, and then another female climbed up the tree. She was an experienced mother, and sat beside the labouring female while the crown of the infant's head appeared. Once the head was fully exposed, the "midwife" pulled the baby out with both hands and ripped open the birth membranes.
Within a minute, the mother had reclaimed the infant from the midwife, severed the umbilical cord, and begun eating the placenta. A few minutes later, the midwife went back down to the forest floor to forage.
"This is a fairly rare observation," says Sarah Turner of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, who was not involved in the Yunnan study. She says female monkeys often pull their babies out themselves, and the midwife may have adapted this behaviour. "It's hard to know what's going on in her head," says Turner, but it seems she was genuinely helping.
That could be because female black snub-nosed monkeys tend to stay in the group they were born in. As a result, the females in a group are likely to be closely related and to have strong social bonds. Animals often help their relatives because doing so preserves their own genes, a phenomenon called kin selection.
The juvenile females in the group watched the birth closely, and may have picked up a few tips. Turner says many primates remain with their groups while giving birth, giving juveniles a chance to learn.
In a human childbirth, having help on hand can be vitally important should things go wrong, Wen notes. "The assistance means the infant has a better chance of surviving," he says. There could be a similar benefit for monkeys aided by a midwife.
But primates, with the exception of humans, rarely help each other give birth. In one case, a male cottontop tamarin was seen pulling at his infant's shoulders until they emerged. Another report claims that a female capped langur was groomed by other females during birth, perhaps in an attempt to ease her distress.
While primates generally give birth unassisted, other creatures get more help. In possibly the cutest observation in all of natural history, male Djungarian hamsters regularly assist with deliveries, pulling infants out with their front paws and incisors.
Journal reference: Behavioural Processes, doi.org/kd9
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