Fiery Last-Lap Daytona Crash Injures 15 Fans

A fiery last-lap crash at the Daytona International Speedway injured a number of spectators today, who were seen being carried away from the stands on stretchers.

Fifteen spectators were taken to the hospital, according to ESPN, with one on the way to surgery with head trauma.

The 12-car crash happened moments before the end of the Nationwide race, and on the eve of the Daytona 500, one of NASCAR's biggest events.

The crash was apparently triggered when driver Regan Smith's car, which was being tailed by Brad Keselowski on his back bumper, spun to the right and shot up the track. Smith had been in the lead and said after the crash he had been trying to throw a "block."

Rookie Kyle Larson's car slammed into the wall that separates the track from the grandstands, causing his No. 32 car to go airborne and erupt in flames.

When a haze of smoke cleared and Larson's car came to a stop, he jumped out uninjured.

His engine and one of his wheels were sitting in a walkway of the grandstand.

"I was getting pushed from behind," Larson told ESPN. "Before I could react, it was too late."

Driver Michael Annett was taken to the hospital after he slammed head-on into a barrier during the chaos. NASCAR officials told ESPN the driver was awake and alert.

Tony Stewart pulled out the win, but in victory lane, what would have been a celebratory mood was tempered by concern for the injured fans.

"We've always known this is a dangerous sport," Stewart said. 'But it's hard when the fans get caught up in it."

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Rusty rocks reveal ancient origin of photosynthesis

SUN-WORSHIP began even earlier than we thought. The world's oldest sedimentary rocks suggest an early form of photosynthesis may have evolved almost 3.8 billion years ago, not long after life appeared on Earth.

A hallmark of photosynthesis in plants is that the process splits water and produces oxygen gas. But some groups of bacteria oxidise substances like iron instead – a form of photosynthesis that doesn't generate oxygen. Evolutionary biologists think these non-oxygen-generating forms of photosynthesis evolved first, giving rise to oxygen-generating photosynthesis sometime before the Earth's atmosphere gained oxygen 2.4 billion years ago (New Scientist, 8 December 2012, p 12).

But when did non-oxygen-generating photosynthesis evolve? Fossilised microbial mats that formed in shallow water 3.4 billion years ago in what is now South Africa show the chemical fingerprints of the process. However, geologists have long wondered whether even earlier evidence exists.

The world's oldest sedimentary rocks – a class of rock that can preserve evidence of life – are a logical place to look, says Andrew Czaja of the University of Cincinnati in Ohio. These rocks, which are found in Greenland and date back almost 3.8 billion years, contain vast deposits of iron oxide that are a puzzle. "What could have formed these giant masses of oxidised iron?" asks Czaja.

To investigate, he analysed the isotopic composition of samples taken from the oxidised iron. He found that some isotopes of iron were more common than they would be if oxygen gas was indiscriminately oxidising the metal. Moreover, the exact isotopic balance varied subtly from point to point in the rock.

Both findings make sense if photosynthetic bacteria were responsible for the iron oxide, says Czaja. That's because these microbes preferentially oxidise only a small fraction of the dissolved iron, and the iron isotopes they prefer vary slightly as environmental conditions change (Earth and Planetary Science Letters, doi.org/kh5). His findings suggest that this form of photosynthesis appeared about 370 million years earlier than we thought.

It is "the best current working hypothesis for the origin of these deposits", says Mike Tice of Texas A&M University in College Station – one of the team who analysed the 3.4-billion-year-old microbial mats from South Africa.

William Martin at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany, agrees. "Anoxygenic photosynthesis is a good candidate for the isotope evidence they see," he says. "Had these fascinating results been collected on Mars, the verdict of the jury would surely remain open," says Martin Brasier at the University of Oxford. "But [on Earth] opinion seems to be swinging in the direction of non-oxygen-generating photosynthesis during the interval from 3.8 to 2.9 billion years ago."

This article appeared in print under the headline "Photosynthesis has truly ancient origins"

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Catholic priests should be able to marry: British cardinal

LONDON: Roman Catholic priests should be able to marry and have children, Britain's most senior cardinal said on Friday.

Cardinal Keith O'Brien, who will be part of the conclave tasked with choosing a new pope to replace Benedict XVI, said the church's requirement for priests to be celibate was not of "divine origin" and should be reconsidered.

"Many priests have found it very difficult to cope with celibacy as they lived out their priesthood, and felt the need of a companion, of a woman, to whom they could get married and raise a family of their own," the 74-year-old told the BBC.

"The celibacy of the clergy, whether priests should marry -- Jesus didn't say that.

"There was a time when priests got married, and of course we know at the present time in some branches of the church -- in some branches of the Catholic church -- priests can get married," he added.

"So that is obviously not of divine origin and it could get discussed again."

O'Brien will have a say in who succeeds Benedict after he stands down on February 28.

He said he had not yet decided who should take over leadership of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, but suggested it could be time for a younger pontiff, possibly from the developing world.

"I would be open to a pope from anywhere if I thought it was the right man, whether it was Europe or Asia or Africa or wherever," he added.

Benedict stunned the world last week by becoming the first pope in more than 700 years to resign voluntarily.

No clear favourite has emerged, although the 85-year-old's announcement that he lacked the strength to lead the church indicates the need for a younger pope.

- AFP/jc

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Google to open registration for Google I/O March 13

Google co-founder showed off Google Glass at the 2012 Google I/O conference.

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

Google fans will be happy to know that registration for the 2013 Google I/O conference will open Wednesday, March 13, 2013 at 7:00 AM PDT (GMT-7).

In December, Google announced that it had moved up its annual developer conference a month. The confab that assemblies more than 5,000 developers will take place in San Francisco May 15-17, 2013. Previous Google I/O's had been held in June. The company has posted the registration date and details on its developer Website and on the Google+ page dedicated to developers.

Google said it will keep registration open until tickets are sold out. But based on demand from previous years, Google predicts that tickets will sell out quickly. The price of the ticket is $900 for general attendees and $300 for academic attendees. Those looking to register need to have a Google+ account and a Google Wallet buyer account.

Why is Google I/O such a hot ticket? Google uses the Google I/O conference as an opportunity to make big announcements. In 2012, it showed off the next version of
Android version 4.1 Jellybean. It also debuted Google Now, the
Nexus 7 tablet, and
Google Glass. But the new products and announcements are only part of the appeal of Google I/O.

Every year Google also gives away hundreds of dollars worth of free equipment to every attendee, making the $900 entrance fee a valuable investment for gadget lovers. Last year, Google gave away the Nexus 7 tablet running the new Jellybean software,the latest Samsung Chromebook hardware, and the ill-fated Nexus Q, home entertainment accessory.

Of course, attendees will be anxiously awaiting this year's announcements and giveaways, but many are also likely intrigued to see if Google can top the theatrics of last year's death-defying skydive stunt that offered a live demonstration of Google Glass. During one of the keynote events, Google co-founder Sergey Brin took the stage and showed a live video of a team of skydivers who were jumping out of a plane and landing on top of the Moscone Center. The whole experience was streamed live from the Google Glasses that the skydivers were wearing.

Google is keeping mum on this year's announcements and hasn't said yet if it's planning another surprise stunt. CNET hopes to get press passes again this year to cover all the news. So even if you aren't able to get a ticket to the show, you will find all the details about new products and other announcements and demonstrations right here.

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Businessman Dennis Tito Financing Manned Mission to Mars

Jane J. Lee

An announcement this week that a group led by the world's first space "tourist," Dennis Tito, plans to send a manned mission to flyby Mars in 2018 has lit up the Internet.

A press advisory from the new group, the Inspiration Mars Foundation, made no mention about whether there would be humans onboard.

But reports from NewSpace Journal say that there will be two crew members making the journey.

The Inspiration Mars Foundation, founded by Tito, plans to start its mission in January 2018, taking advantage of a rare launch window. Earth and Mars will be aligned in such a way that a trip that would normally take between two to three years would last about a year and a half, or 501 days.

The next such opportunity will occur in 2031, according to a Scientific American blog post.

Tito's foundation will hold a press conference on February 27 in Washington, presumably to offer more details about the trip.

The National Geographic Society is in talks with Inspiration Mars Foundation about a potential partnership around the 2018 mission.

The man behind the private Mars push is no stranger to the red planet.

In 2001 Tito paid $20 million to become the first "tourist" to rocket into space. He spent six days on the International Space Station. (Related: "7 Ways You Could Blast Off by 2023.")

Though Tito made his fortune in finance, he has a master's degree in engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

While at JPL, Tito worked on Mariner 4 and 9, which flew to the red planet in the 60s and 70s respectively. Mariner 4 was the first successful flyby of Mars in 1965, beaming back the first pictures of another planet from deep space. (Watch a video about exploring Mars.)

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Jodi Arias' Friends Believe in Her Innocence

Accused murderer Jodi Arias believes she should be punished, but hopes she will not be sentenced to death, two of her closest friends told ABC News in an exclusive interview.

Ann Campbell and Donavan Bering have been a constant presence for Arias wth at least one of them sitting in the Phoenix, Ariz., courtroom along with Arias' family for almost every day of her murder trial. They befriended Arias after she first arrived in jail and believe in her innocence.

Arias admits killing her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander and lying for nearly two years about it, but insists she killed Alexander in self defense. She could face the death penalty if convicted of murder.

Jodi Arias Testimony: Prosecution's Cross-Examination Watch Video

Jodi Arias Remains Calm Under Cross-Examination Watch Video

Jodi Arias Doesn't Remember Stabbing Ex-Boyfriend Watch Video

Nevertheless, she is aware of the seriousness of her lies and deceitful behavior.

The women told ABC News that they understand that Arias needs to be punished and Arias understands that too.

"She does know that, you know, she does need to pay for the crime," Campbell said. "But I don't want her to die, and I know that she has so much to give back."

Catching Up on the Trial? Check Out ABC News' Jodi Arias Trial Coverage

The lies that Arias admits she told to police and her family have been devastating to her, Bering said.

""She said to me, 'I wish I didn't have to have lied. That destroyed me,'" Donovan said earlier this week. "Because now when it's so important for her to be believed, she has that doubt. But as she told me on the phone yesterday, she goes, 'I have nothing to lose.' So all she can do is go out there and tell the truth."

During Arias' nine days on the stand she has described in detail the oral, anal and phone sex that she and Alexander allegedly engaged in, despite being Mormons and trying to practice chastity. She also spelled out in excruciating detail what she claimed was Alexander's growing demands for sex, loyalty and subservience along with an increasingly violent temper.

Besides her two friends, Arias' mother and sometimes her father have been sitting in the front row of the courtroom during the testimony. It's been humiliating, Bering said.

"She's horrified. There's not one ounce of her life that's not out there, that's not open to the public. She's ashamed," she said.

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Mood-sensing smartphone tells your shrink how you feel

PEOPLE with anxiety, depression or stress are often asked to record their mood changes throughout the day, helping psychologists fine-tune their treatment. But they often forget, recording only sparse information at best. Now an emotion-sensing smartphone app that automatically generates someone's "mood diary" could give psychologists all the data they need.

It's the brainchild of Matt Dobson and Duncan Barclay, founders of speech recognition firm EI Technologies, based in Saffron Walden, UK. Instead of relying on people writing diaries, the app, called Xpression, listens for telltale changes in a person's voice that indicate whether they are in one of five emotional states: calm, happy, sad, angry or anxious/frightened. It then lists a person's moods against the times they change, and automatically emails the list to their psychologist at the end of the day.

To work, the app has to be always on, listening out for the user's voice once every second, whether they are talking to family, friends, colleagues or even pets. It also listens in on phone calls. If the user is silent, the app does nothing. Crucially for the users' privacy, it doesn't record their words, instead seeking out telltale acoustic features – like pitch – that are indicative of emotional state.

This kind of emotion recognition via voice pattern already works well and is a "hot area" of research, says Stephen Cox, head of the speech processing lab at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, who is scientific adviser for the firm.

Initially, Xpression will send 200-millisecond-long acoustic snapshots to a remote server where a machine-learning system will work out a person's emotional state before sending it back to the app for storage. Factors like voice loudness, intensity, changes in pitch and speaking pace allow the system to accurately estimate somebody's emotional state. "We extract acoustic features and let the machine-learning system work it out," says Cox. This ability will be built into the app itself eventually, says Dobson.

There's a strong need for this kind of technology, says Adrian Skinner, a clinical psychologist with the UK's National Health Service in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. "With conditions like depression, people tend to stop doing things like filling in mood diaries. If this app gives us more complete diaries it could help us better find the day-to-day triggers that raise or lower a patient's mood," he says.

The firm is a finalist in a UK government competition to identify the nation's top mobile tech company, to be judged on 26 February. An insurance company has already expressed an interest in using the app to ensure the workplace stress therapy it pays for is effective. Clinical trials are due to take place later this year.

This article appeared in print under the headline "We know how you really feel"

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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New death from SARS-like virus in Saudi Arabia

GENEVA: Another person suffering from a SARS-like virus has died in Saudi Arabia, the World Health Organization said on Thursday, bringing the worldwide number of fatalities from the mystery illness to seven.

The Saudi health ministry informed the UN's health body that the patient had been hospitalised on January 29 and died on February 10, WHO said in a statement.

A laboratory had confirmed on February 18 that the person had died from the so-called novel coronavirus (NCoV), it added.

This brings the number of cases of the virus that have so far been reported to the WHO to 13. The virus was first detected in the middle of last year, with six previous fatalities -- three in Saudi Arabia, two in Jordan and one in Britain.

The news comes just days after a person suffering from the virus died in hospital in central England on Sunday.

That patient, who had a pre-existing health condition, was one of three people in the same family with the virus, which appeared to have been caught by one of the family members during a recent visit to the Middle East and Pakistan.

Even before the death in Britain, the WHO had on Saturday urged its member states to keep a close eye on any cases of severe acute respiratory infections, like pneumonia, and to "carefully review any unusual patterns."

Health authorities should test for NCoV in cases of unexplained pneumonia or other severe, "progressive or complicated respiratory illnesses not responding to treatment, particularly in persons travelling from or resident in areas of the world known to be affected," it said.

It also urged testing of any health workers showing such symptoms, and thorough investigations of clusters of cases, regardless of where they occur in the world.

WHO meanwhile did not recommend any travel or trade restriction in connection with the virus.

Coronaviruses cause most common colds but can also cause SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome).

The new virus however is different from SARS, especially in that it causes rapid kidney failure.

A SARS epidemic killed more than 800 people when it swept out of China in 2003, sparking a major international health scare.

- AFP/fa

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How to manage OS X boot options with wireless keyboards

Apple offers several alternative boot environments for OS X that can help you troubleshoot problems you might be experiencing, which can be invoked by holding various key combinations at startup. Of these, Safe Mode is perhaps the most common; it offers a limited boot environment and can be started by holding the Shift key. In addition there is Single User mode (Command-S) for a command-line interface, Apple's hardware diagnostics tests (the "D" key), Target Disk mode (the "T" key), and holding the Option key will bring up the boot loader for choosing a startup disk.

These options can be invoked by holding their respective key combinations immediately when powering on the system; however, if you use Apple's Bluetooth keyboard, you could find that the system may ignore these inputs and boot normally. While you might assume that these options require a USB keyboard or other physical connection, this is not always the case. There are a couple of workarounds if you find yourself in this situation.

Apple's Bluetooth hardware controllers activate after all of the system's self-tests at boot complete and the EFI firmware loads successfully, which is indicated by the system playing the standard
Mac startup sound. It is at this point that the system will accept boot variables, either stored in the PRAM or those being sent via keyboard inputs. These are then passed to the OS X kernel to invoke the desired startup sequence.

If any inputs are being sent via the Bluetooth keyboard before the controllers are active, then they will not be recognized by the system. However, if these inputs are performed after the controllers are activated, then they will be properly read. Therefore, for Bluetooth keyboards, be sure to press the desired key sequences after you hear the boot chimes and not before.

While this approach for wireless keyboards should work, it may not in all situations. Should that happen, you can try various alternative approaches, such as using a spare USB keyboard to connect and send the desired boot argument to your system. Alternately, you can manually adjust the system's PRAM variables to invoke these boot arguments the next time the system starts up.

Setting the boot arguments PRAM variable requires administrative access, and is done from the Terminal using the following command:

sudo nvram boot-args="VALUE"

In this command, the VALUE component is one or more of the following flags separated by spaces, that will tell the kernel to load in the corresponding way:

-s -- Single User Mode
-v -- Verbose Mode
-x -- Safe Mode
rd=DISKID -- force booting to a specific partition.

In the "rd=DISKID" option, DISKID is a BSD device ID such as "disk0s1" for the first partition or "slice" of the disk0 device. The DISKID value can also be "*hd:NUMBER" where NUMBER is the partition of the drive to use as the boot volume. For example, if you would like to load the system in Single User mode and boot from the first partition on the second hard drive in the system, then you would issue the following version of the command:

sudo nvram boot-args="-s rd=disk1s2"

The Target Disk mode and startup disk can be set in the system preferences, which may be preferable to using Terminal commands.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Topher Kessler/CNET)

The "boot-args" variable can be used for setting the above modes. but in addition if you need to load the system into Target Disk mode, you can do so by setting the "target-mode" PRAM variable in the following way (this will be enabled only once for the next time the system is started):

sudo nvram target-mode=1

The option for rebooting the system into Target Disk mode or choosing an alternative boot partition can be done in the Startup Disk system preferences pane, so using the Terminal for these options is not a requirement for those with wireless keyboards. If you want to boot to Safe, Verbose, or Single User modes and cannot do so at startup with a key command, you will need to use one of these Terminal command options.

A final word of note when adjusting PRAM values is how to revert any changes you make. By default the PRAM variables mentioned here are empty, so you can delete them by running the following commands:

sudo nvram -d boot-args

sudo nvram -d target-mode

A final approach to clearing these is to simply reset the system's PRAM by rebooting and holding down the Option-Command-P-R keys at startup. Again for a Bluetooth keyboard, this needs to be done after you hear the boot chimes, or using an alternative keyboard.

---

Questions? Comments? Have a fix? Post them below or !
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Pictures: Artifacts Provide Clues to Life in Early Christchurch

Photograph courtesy Jaden Harris, Underground Overground Archaeology
 
 
 

A tiny container for Holloway's ointment, less than two inches (five centimeters) wide, came from what was probably a brick-lined basement on Madras Street under a multistory modern commercial building.

British patent medicine entrepreneur Thomas Holloway began to advertise his ointment in 1837, claiming it would cure an impressive list of ailments—"Bad Legs, Bad Breasts, Burns, Bunions, Bite of Mosquitoes and Sandflies, Coco-bay, Chiego-foot, Chilblains, Chapped Hands, Corns (Soft), Cancers, Contracted and Stiff Joints, Elephantiasis, Fistulas, Gout, Glandular Swellings, Lumbago, Piles, Rheumatism, Scalds, Sore Nipples, Sore Throats, Skin Diseases, Scurvy, Sore Heads, Tumours, Ulcers, Wound(s), Yaws."

("Coco-bay" is a Jamaican word for a form of leprosy. "Chiego-foot" is a Trinidadian term that describes a foot covered in chigger bites.)

Holloway moved his company several times in London. "The changing address and the subtle differences in the wording and images that appear on these pots are what enable them to be dated," said Watson. The address on this particular pot—533 Oxford Street, London—indicates that it was made between 1867 and 1881.

Published February 21, 2013

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