SciTimes Update: Recent Developments in Science and Health News

Michael Probst/Associated Press

Baby hedgehogs in Germany.

Friday in science, clues to owls’ backwardness, fresh dangers to the seas and the launch of a giant kite. Check out these and other headlines from around the Web.

Phil Marino for The New York Times

Physicists monitored data from heavy ion collisions in the control room at Brookhaven National Laboratory particle collider in 2007.

Felix Ordonez/Reuters

A snowy owl.

Hedgehog Bacteria: Sonic the Hedgehog may have a dark side. The Associated Press reports that in the last year, 20 people in the United States were infected, and 1 person died, from “a rare but dangerous” type of salmonella bacteria. All the cases, health officials said, were linked to hedgehogs that were kept as pets.

More Bad News for the Seas: National Geographic reports that buried beneath the waves are rich deposits of “gold, copper, zinc, and other valuable minerals,” and that is attracting the attention of the humans on the land above. Mining the minerals is not easy, but one company has already obtained an extraction contract for the waters off Papua, New Guinea, the magazine says.

Less Money for Science: Lean days are ahead for recipients of federal government contracts, and that knowledge is having an impact on physics research. Scientific American reports that a federal advisory panel has recommended closing a particle collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y.

Spinning Heads: Owls are able to do something that parents only dream about: swivel their heads completely around to see what is going on behind them. An illustrator and a physician at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine discovered that they can do so without severing their arteries or preventing blood from reaching their brains because of holes in their neck bones, which may hold air sacks that cushion the movement of the head, and because the vertebral artery is able to expand and hold reservoirs of blood for the brain, a LiveScience video explains.

Setting Sail in Space: A new solar sail, the largest yet, will be launched by NASA in 2014. Looking very much like a gigantic kite, it will eventually reach 2 million miles from Earth (that’s a lot of string!), Popular Science reports. And besides blazing the way for further research of this type, the mission has another purpose: “Sunjammer will be carrying the cremated remains of various individuals, including the creator of Star Trek,Gene Roddenberry, and his wife Majel Barrett Roddenberry. It is not exactly the Enterprise, but Sunjammer will be boldly going where no solar sailing spacecraft has gone before,” Popular Science says.

Video by NASAMarshallTV

Solar Sail Readies for Early Warning Mission

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DealBook: Capital One Hires Centerview Executive as Finance Chief

Capital One Financial said on Friday that it had hired Stephen S. Crawford, a top executive of the boutique investment bank Centerview Partners, as its chief financial officer.

He will join Capital One on Monday as chief financial officer designate, and on May 24 will formally replace Gary L. Perlin, who will retire. Upon joining the bank, Mr. Crawford will report to its chairman and chief executive, Richard D. Fairbank.

It is a return to the world of big banks for Mr. Crawford, a former chief financial officer and eventually co-president of Morgan Stanley. He made his mark as an adviser to financial institutions, helping orchestrate deals like Fleet Bank’s $49 billion sale to Bank of America.

At Centerview, he advised Capital One on its $9 billion purchase of the American online banking arm of ING.

“I have watched the transformation of Capital One over the last decade and have the greatest admiration for Rich and his strategic vision for the company,” Mr. Crawford said in a statement. “It is an honor to take on this important role and I look forward to continuing to help create a great company and bring value to our investors.”

Mr. Crawford isn’t the only deal-making investment banker to make the jump to the chief financial officer position of a client. In 2011, NBC Universal named Stuart J. Epstein, a top media banker at Morgan Stanley and a longtime adviser to corporate parent Comcast, as its chief financial officer.

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Alabama hostage standoff enters third day

A 5-year old boy is being held inside a bunker in Midland City, Ala.

By Michael Muskal

January 31, 2013, 9:45 a.m.

Praying and talking were the tactics and hope was the strategy as a standoff continued for a third day between a gunman who kidnapped a 5-year-old boy and walled them both off in an underground shelter in rural Alabama.

“They’re still talking,” Robin Litchfield, a spokeswoman for the Alabama Department of Public Safety, told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday. “Negotiators are negotiating and the boy is OK.”

State, local and federal officials have been very tight-lipped about the situation, which began on Tuesday when the gunman killed a school bus driver and snatched one of the children from the vehicle. There are heavily armed SWAT teams at the scene, but officials have made it clear they intend to wait out the man and to keep talking.

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Hostage drama in Alabama: Suspect was due in court, neighbors say

Man who shot bus driver holds boy, 6, hostage in Alabama bunker

School shooting victim expected to recover

There is no indication if the man has made any demands.

Asked at a Thursday morning news conference how long the standoff would last, Dale County Sheriff Wally Olson replied to reporters, “We have no way of knowing that right now.”

The boy, only known by his first name of Ethan, is believed to be coping with his imprisonment in a bunker some eight feet underground.

“We have no reason to believe that the child has been harmed,” Olson said at one of the infrequent briefings at the scene along a hard-scrabble dead-end road in Midland City, about 90 miles from Mobile.

The episode began on Tuesday afternoon when the gunman attacked a school bus and grabbed one of the 22 children coming home from classes. The bus driver, identified as Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, tried to stop the man and was killed. Witnesses have said Poland was shot perhaps as many as four times by the gunman, who then fled with the boy.

Officials have not formally named the gunman, but neighbors have identified the man as Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, a retired truck driver and veteran who has had frequent scrapes with neighbors and the law.

Dykes was free on a $500 bond in connection with a complaint last month that led to a menacing charge. Dykes had been scheduled to go to trial on Wednesday morning to deal with the complaint, which stems from a dispute with a neighbor that allegedly included Dykes firing several shots.

Midland City is a town of about 2,300 and Dykes had lived in his home for more than a year, neighbors told reporters. Described as a survivalist by officials, Dykes had dug out the underground bunker. It has electricity and a stash of food supplies, according to officials.

Neighbors said Dykes complained about the government’s intrusions and was standoffish to everyone else, except for the occasions when he threatened neighbors with violence if they or their animals trespassed. One neighbor, Ronda Wilbur, told reporters that Dykes had beat her 120-pound dog with a lead pipe because it had crossed the line. The dog died a week later.

“He said his only regret was he didn't beat him to death all the way,” Wilbur said. “If a man can kill a dog, and beat it with a lead pipe and brag about it, it's nothing until it's going to be people.”

Authorities have been communicating through a PVC pipe that's large enough for officials to pass medicine down for the boy, who requires medication daily, according to state Rep. Steve Clouse.

“We are all just hoping this can come to a safe end,” Clouse told NBC’s “Today” show. The boy’s family is “holding on by a thread,” he said.

When asked a news conference what the community could do to help the situation, Sheriff Olson replied, “Pray.”

The community has responded in kind through the night. Prayer vigils have been held in several areas and candles have been burned in the hope the child would be freed and in memory of the bus driver, who was hailed as a hero from preventing even more of his charges from ending up underground.

“Right now the whole town seems like they’re just in a mourning stage,” convenience store manager Carl McKenzie told WSFA-TV. “I would go take that child’s place if I could, just to get him out of danger.”

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White House, politicians react to Hadiya Pendleton shooting death

Jurors convict priest and teacher in Philadelphia sex-abuse scandal

Ohio judge rejects bid to close or move rape trial of two 16-year-olds

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<i>World of Warcraft</i> Movie Coming From <i>Source Code</i> Director Duncan Jones

With two critically acclaimed, small-to-medium budget sci-fi movies under his belt, Duncan Jones (Source Code, Moon) is seemingly headed to the big-time with the announcement that he will be directing Legendary Pictures’ big-budget live-action adaptation of the popular MMO game World of Warcraft.

Confirming a Hollywood Reporter story from earlier that day, Jones took to Twitter Wednesday evening to write “So the gauntlet was thrown down ages ago: Can you make a proper MOVIE of a video game. I’ve always said it’s possible. Got to DO it now! ;)” (Blizzard Entertainment also confirmed the news via its official World of Warcraft Twitter account.)

Jones’ tweet points to a hurdle that the WoW movie will have to overcome: The fact that movies based on videogames tend to be somewhat… well, lousy.

From 1993′s Super Mario Bros through last year’s Resident Evil: Retribution, the genre consistently struggles with poor reviews and a box office appeal that seems cult at best, perhaps because it’s difficult to convince fans of the games that the passive experience of watching the stories unfold is more fun than actively participating in them.

Because of the sprawling, massively de-centralized nature of MMOs as a genre, any World of Warcraft movie faces an additional problem: There’s no central narrative for the movie to adapt. A script for the movie already exists, written by Charles Leavitt, best-known for his 2006 Blood Diamond script and 2001 adaptation of Gene Brewer’s novel K-Pax, but Legendary has so far kept plot details under wraps.

Jones’s involvement kickstarts the project, which has been in various stages of development since 2006. (At one point, Sam Raimi was heading up the adaptation, although he left to direct the soon-to-be-released Oz: The Great and Powerful.) Now that Jones is onboard, Legendary reportedly wants production on the movie to begin in the fall of this year for a 2015 release, which would put it right at the center of an already-crowded year for genre movies; in addition to J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars debut, 2015 is also the scheduled year of release for Avengers 2 and Warner Bros’ mooted Justice League movie, based upon the DC Comics heroes.

The WoW movie is expected to have a budget upwards of $100 million — for some context, the budget for the first Lord of the Rings movie, The Fellowship of the Ring, was $93 million – by far the biggest project that Jones has tackled to date. His last movie, 2011′s Source Code, had a budget of $32 million according to Box Office Mojo, while his debut, Moon, cost just around $1 million. Given what he has been able to do with less money before — and his apparent awareness of the problems inherent with the videogame movie genre — the prospect of Jones having over $100 million to play with and spend wisely is an exciting one indeed, even for those who have never been tempted to play the online fantasy game.

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ABC orders drama pilots from Martin Campbell, Maria Maggenti

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “Casino Royale” director Martin Campbell is taking on another intrigue-filled project, this time with ABC.

The network has ordered a pilot for the drama “Reckless,” which Campbell, left, will executive produce.

The pilot involves David, a resourceful problem-solver whose wife is unjustly imprisoned during a political uprising overseas. Desperately to rescue her, he tries every legal option, but after being stymied by the U.S. government in the name of diplomacy, David moves outside of the law — and enters “a world of political intrigue, dangerous alliances and high emotional stakes.”

Chris Black (“Star Trek: Enterprise”) is writing the ABC Studios project.

ABC has also ordered a pilot for the dramedy “Murder in Manhattan.” Written by Maria Maggenti (“Monte Carlo”), the hour-long project follows a mother and daughter who team up as amateur sleuths in New York City.

ABC Studios and DarkFire TV are producing.

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SciTimes Update: Recent Developments in Science and Health News

NASA

Researchers tracked the movement of carbon monoxide molecules orbiting a black hole within the galaxy NGC 4526 to determine its mass.

Thursday in science, possible advances in cancer diagnosis, weighing black holes, shocking photos from space and good news for a breed of penguins. Check out these and other headlines from around the Web.

How Heavy Is That Black Hole?: Concerned about the weight of black holes? ScienceNews.org reports that astrophysicists associated with the European Southern Observatory have developed a new technique to more accurately measure the masses of supermassive black holes.

A New Cancer Test?: Invasive tests to diagnose cancer could soon be a thing of the past, Scientific American reports. Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital have been looking at whether RNA fragments, called exosomes, which are shed from cancer tumor cells and can be detected in cerebral spinal fluid, blood and urine, can be analyzed to diagnose cancer types and evaluate the disease’s progression.

False Claims About Flu Relief: Flu sufferers are often desperate for relief, but the Food and Drug Administration is warning that scams abound. USA Today reports that the F.D.A. issued a warning letter about one flu-relief product, GermBullet, accusing its manufacturers of making a “false and misleading promotional statement” by claiming the substance reduces bacteria and viruses.

Tainted Steriods Law Suits: The first lawsuit has been filed in Nashville against a clinic where hundreds of people received spinal injections of a tainted steroid that caused meningitis and other side effects in 693 people nationwide and 45 deaths as of Monday. The Tennessean said that Wayne Reed, who suffers from Lou Gehrig’s disease and was being cared for by his wife, Diana Reed, is suing the Saint Thomas Outpatient Neurosurgery Center and its owners, seeking $12.5 million in damages for Diana’s death from fungal meningitis. Denise Grady wrote about the family in October.

More Baby Penguins: There’s been a baby boom among white-flippered penguins ever since a farming couple in New Zealand turned much of their land into a safe haven for the birds, Scientific American reports. The birds, also known as korora, have nearly doubled their population in the last decade, and credit is being given to the farmers Francis and Shireen Helps.

The Storm From Above: And while strong winds and heavy rains were jolting many people across the eastern United States out of their sleep Wednesday night, a satellite was snapping images of the lightning flashes from the storm. The cool photos were published on LiveScience.

Science With a Side of Fries: Finally, science is alive and well, perhaps at your local bar or restaurant, where Americans are more frequently gathering to hear or join in scientific talks. As Reuters reported on Wednesday: “Want a beer with that biology? Or perhaps a burger with the works to complement the theory of everything?”

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DealBook: Deutsche Bank Posts Surprise $3 Billion Loss

FRANKFURT – Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest lender, reported a surprise net loss of 2.2 billion euros ($3 billion) for the fourth quarter of 2012 on Thursday, hurt by the diminished value of some assets as well as costs related to numerous legal proceedings.

The results underline the task ahead for Jürgen Fitschen and Anshu Jain, the co- chief executives who took over the bank less than seven months ago and have declared their intention to deal more severely with the legacy of the financial crisis.

“This is the most comprehensive reconfiguration of Deutsche Bank in recent times,” Mr. Fitschen and Mr. Jain said in a statement. They warned that “deliberate but sometimes uncomfortable change” lay ahead, adding that “this journey will take years not months.”

Deutsche Bank avoided a government bailout during the financial crisis, but has faced numerous lawsuits and official investigations, including a tax-evasion inquiry that led to a raid on company headquarters last month by German police.

“Significant” charges related to legal proceedings contributed to the loss, Deutsche Bank said, without providing specifics.

Analysts consider the bank to be among the most highly leveraged in Europe, and bank management has promised to reduce the number of risky activities, a process that sometimes requires it to recognize the reduced value of assets and book losses.

Despite the loss, Deutsche Bank said fourth-quarter revenue rose 14 percent, to 7.9 billion euros, from the period a year earlier. The bank also said it had increased the amount of capital held as insurance against risk, and reduced the amount of money it needed to set aside to cover possible bad loans. The bank said it had reduced total employee pay to the lowest level in years.

The bank had warned in December that it would incur major charges in the quarter, without saying how much.

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Toyota recalls 1 million of its Corollas and Lexus IS sport sedans

Toyota Motor Corp. announced recalls of 1 million vehicles, including some models of its popular Toyota Corolla and its Lexus IS sports sedan.

About 752,000 Corolla and Corolla Matrix vehicles are being recalled to fix an air-bag control module that is susceptible to short circuiting that could eventually cause the front air bags and seat belt pretensioners to deploy when they shouldn't.

The recall affects Corollas from the 2003 and 2004 model years. There have been two reported accidents and 18 injuries linked to the problem, said Brian Lyons, a Toyota spokesman.

For years, the Corolla has played a key role in Toyota's sales success in the U.S.  It was the second-best-selling compact car nationally last year with sales of 291,000 vehicles, second only to the Honda Civic, which sold about 318,000.

The Corolla was last redesigned in 2009. Toyota introduced a concept version of what is expected to become the new Corolla at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit this month.

Toyota also said it will recall 270,000 IS sport sedans sold by its luxury Lexus division because a nut on the front windshield wiper arms could be insufficiently tight. If movement of the wipers is restricted by an external load, such as a buildup of heavy snow on the windshield, one or both of the wipers could stop working.

The recall includes vehicles from the 2006 model year through the beginning of the 2013 model year. There have been 25 reports of wipers not functioning correctly, but no reports of accidents as a result.

Toyota plans to roll out a new generation of the IS line this year.
 
Owners of vehicles covered by these safety recalls will be notified by mail. Dealers will fix the problems at no cost to the vehicle owner.

Toyota has had a series a large recalls in recent years and has paid record federal fines for not recalling its vehicles fast enough.  But that doesn’t seem to bother buyers.

Toyota’s share of U.S. auto sales rose to 14.4% last year from 12.9% the year before. Globally, it recaptured the position as the world’s biggest auto seller last year, knocking General Motors from the No. 1 spot.

“Despite the flood of recalls, buyers continue to be extremely loyal to Toyota,” said George Cook, professor at the Simon School of Business at the University of Rochester. “Toyota is keenly aware of post-recall challenges and continues to be extremely proactive about announcing even the smallest of problems to ensure a positive consumer response.”

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Love Blooms on the Battlefield in <cite>Fire Emblem</cite>

Fire Emblem: Awakening might be a tactical role-playing game, but the most compelling part for me wasn’t plotting out intricate strategies or watching a risky plan came together. What kept me going was watching my army fall in love with each other.

To be released on February 4 for Nintendo 3DS, Awakening keeps the series’ trademark strategic design: Players deploy the units they’ve recruited and trained and then position them around a grid-based map, taking turns with the opponent for moving and performing actions. This basic formula has been tweaked a little in each of the 13 Fire Emblem games released so far, and Awakening’s twist is that it makes you more conscious of your army’s composition than any series entry before it.

If you place “compatible” soldiers next to each other, they’ll fight together and grow closer emotionally, as shown in dialogue sequences that take place after the battles. If the two units are of opposite genders, they will eventually get married. To be fair, this was always possible to a certain extent in past Fire Emblem games, but it had minimal impact on the story, and required you to sacrifice smart tactics for the tedious process of forcing units to stand next to each other. Here, as long as any two compatible units take part in a fight, their relationship will develop.

The marriage system is inextricably linked to the storyline as well. Awakening‘s story revolves around the use of time travel and will eventually have you meeting the future children of any units you’ve paired together. Depending on how they’ve been trained, the parents can pass on unique skills to their offspring, who can then be used in combat.

I never thought myself to be the romantic type but I was enthralled with this. I loved playing matchmaker with my favorite characters and watching their interactions. I purposely sent them into battle together whenever I possibly could and I meticulously manipulated the parents’ stats so their children could be as powerful as possible.

As a result, I found myself more attached to my army in Awakening than any previous Fire Emblem. One of Fire Emblem‘s defining features is that any characters lost in battle are permanently dead. But for me in this case, the stakes were higher than ever because your characters have real emotional weight. They have families, lives. So any time one of my units died, I immediately reset the game to try from my last save point.

Sure it meant resetting in the middle of an otherwise excellent run, but there was no way I was going to let anyone in my army die. They had come too far for that.

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Barbra Streisand to sing at Oscars for first time in decades

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Actress, singer and director Barbra Streisand may be a familiar figure at Hollywood‘s Oscars, but she has only sung on the annual awards show once.

Streisand will perform again at the Academy Awards on February 24, producers said on Wednesday, without providing details about how her appearance would fit into the show or what she might sing.

Streisand, 70, has won two Oscars, one for best actress in “Funny Girl” and another for best original song, “Evergreen” from her 1976 vehicle “A Star Is Born.” Her performance of the song at the 1977 Oscars show was her only previous onstage stint at Hollywood’s biggest night.

“In an evening that celebrates the artistry of movies and music, how could the telecast be complete without Barbra Streisand?” producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron said in a statement. “We are honored that she has agreed to do a very special performance on this year’s Oscars.”

Streisand has also been nominated for several Oscars, including for best actress in “The Way We Were” and as producer for best picture nominee “The Prince of Tides.”

Most recently she co-starred with Seth Rogen in “The Guilt Trip,” a Christmas 2012 release.

Earlier this month, the Film Society of Lincoln Center announced that Streisand would be this year’s recipient of its annual Chaplin Award, a prestigious honor recognizing achievement in film.

The Oscars will be presented at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre, hosted by Seth MacFarlane and broadcast live on ABC as well as in more than 225 countries worldwide.

(Editing by Chris Michaud and Lisa Von Ahn)

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