Three gods: The hardest logic puzzle ever

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Nicaraguan farmers stay put despite volcano warning

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CHINANDEGA, Nicaragua: Some 1,500 farmers living on the slopes of the San Cristobal volcano refused to leave, despite being ordered to evacuate as the volcano spewed gas, sand and ash.

"People have not evacuated because we do not want to go and leave the area abandoned," Maria Pereira told AFP.

Pereira lives in "Grecia 4", a community of about 600 people at the base of the volcano, in the Chinandega department.

She said columns of ash "bathed the trees, houses, and roads in white" and "pretty sand fell" in the morning. She said by early afternoon volcanic activity had decreased, though in the evening new columns of ash shot up.

In another community near the volcano, Bethlehem, some farmers resisted efforts of Civil Defence officials to convince them to obey the evacuation order.

Around 140 Civil Defence troops have been deployed to "persuade" farmers to move away from the danger zone, state deputy Colonel Nestor Solis told reporters.

The government issued a yellow alert on Wednesday, ordering the evacuation of 300 families living near the volcano.

Reiterating the evacuation order on Wednesday, first lady Rosario Murillo, a government spokeswoman, said "the situation of the volcano is unstable".

But she did not specify how many had obeyed the evacuation order or where they are being housed.

San Cristobal, the tallest of Nicaragua's seven active volcanoes, is believed to have erupted for the first time in 1685.

- AFP/al



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Tap Twitter, control a cockroach

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Too bad we can't control all cockroaches through Twitter. Yuck.



(Credit:
Brittany Ransom)


Next time you see a cockroach, don't scurry away faster than it can flee. In fact, if you're a lover of the weirder side of life, the intrusive insect could represent one heck of a science project.


For example, artist Brittany Ransom created Twitter Roach -- a discoid cockroach that can be controlled through tweets that it receives on the popular microblogging service.




As it turns out, humans can actually control cockroaches with a device called RoboRoach -- a tiny electronic backpack that attaches to a cockroach and stimulates the bug's antenna nerves, enabling the controller to turn the insect left or right with the press of a button.


Ransom built upon the Roboroach concept and added some Arduino hardware and custom-programmed software to link the bug to Twitter. While on display at the "Life, in some form" art exhibition by the Chicago Artists Coalition, visitors could send the @TweetRoach account commands such as "#TweetRoachLeft" and #TweetRoachRight."





The Tweet Roach sits while awaiting its next command.



(Credit:
Brittany Ransom)



Those of you concerned about insect welfare can rest easy; the roach didn't stay enslaved all day long. Ransom told Crave via e-mail that the bug "wears the backpack for short intervals" and "is only accessible to the Twitter community during designated times." To avoid a flood of commands, Ransom set the cockroach to receive no more than one tweet every 30 seconds.


Why would someone take on such a strange project? Ransom says she's exploring a kind of insectoid parallel to the digital overstimulation many of us experience today. She aims to see if the cockroach can learn to eventually learn to adapt and ignore the stimulating effects of her setup.


"At what point does its intelligence and ability take over? How much does it take before we are all desensitized to overstimulation? As we, as human beings, grow more cyborgian and interconnected through social media, this project helps us participate in discovering the answer," Ransom said in an e-mail about the project.



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Space Pictures This Week: Green Lantern, Supersonic Star

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Toyota Agrees to $1B Settlement in Acceleration Case

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Toyota has agreed to pay more than $1 billion to customers to settle a class action lawsuit that alleged its vehicles accelerated dangerously and without warning, according to statements by the carmaker and the plaintiffs' attorney.


The deal, which still needs approval by a federal judge in California, includes a $250 million fund to be paid to Toyota owners who sold their cars at a loss following reports of vehicle malfunctions, as well as the installation of a brake override system in about 3.25 million vehicles


An additional $250 million fund will be created to pay those owners whose vehicles are not eligible for the retrofitted brakes.






David Zalubowski/AP PHoto







Toyota recalled more than 14 million vehicles after reports of sudden, unexplained acceleration in several models began to surface between 2009 and 2010. There were also reports of brake problems with the Prius hybrid.


Toyota insists that it was not an electrical flaw that caused the acceleration problems, but driver error, floor mats and sticky gas pedals.


Both the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and NASA have said there is nothing in wrong with programs that run the vehicles' onboard computers


"From the very start, this was a challenging case," said Steve Berman, the plaintiffs' lawyer. "We brought in automotive experts, physicists and some of the world's leading theoreticians in electrical engineering to help us understand what happened to drivers experiencing sudden acceleration."


The settlement also includes $30 million to be given to outside groups to study automotive safety.


In a statement, Toyota agreed to the deal.


"In keeping with our core principles, we have structured this agreement in ways that work to put our customers first and demonstrate that they can count on Toyota to stand behind our vehicles." said Toyota spokesman Christopher P. Reynolds.



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New Scientist 2012 holiday quiz

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THIS was the year we held our breath in almost unbearable anticipation while we waited to see whether physicists at the Large Hadron Collider would finally get a clear view of the Higgs boson, so tantalisingly hinted at last December. Going a bit blue, we held on through March when one of the LHC's detectors seemed to lose sight of the thing, before exhaling in a puff of almost-resolution in July, when researchers announced that the data added up to a fairly confident pretty-much-actual-discovery of the particle.












Early indications were that it might be a weird and wonderful variety of the Higgs, prompting a collective gasp of excitement. That was followed by a synchronised sigh of mild disappointment when later data implied that it was probably the most boring possible version after all, and not a strange entity pointing the way to new dimensions and the true nature of dark matter. Prepare yourself for another puff or two as the big story moves on next year.













This respirational rollercoaster might be running a bit too slowly to supply enough oxygen to the brain of a New Scientist reader, so we have taken care to provide more frequent oohs and aahs using less momentous revelations. See how many of the following unfundamental discoveries you can distinguish from the truth-free mimics that crowd parasitically around them.












1. Which of these anatomical incongruities of the animal kingdom did we describe on 14 July?












  • a) A fish, found in a canal in Vietnam, that wears its genitals under its mouth
  • b) A frog, found in a puddle in Peru, that has no spleen
  • c) A lizard, found in a cave in Indonesia, that has four left feet
  • d) A cat, found in a tree in northern England, that has eight extra teeth

2. "A sprout by any other name would taste as foul." So wrote William Shakespeare in his diary on 25 December 1598, setting off the centuries of slightly unjust ridicule experienced by this routinely over-cooked vegetable. But which forbiddingly named veg did we report on 7 July as having more health-giving power than the sprout, its active ingredient being trialled as a treatment for prostate cancer?












  • a) Poison celery
  • b) Murder beans
  • c) Inconvenience potatoes
  • d) Death carrots

3. Scientists often like to say they are opening a new window on things. Usually that is a metaphor, but on 10 November we reported on a more literal innovation in the fenestral realm. It was:












  • a) A perspex peephole set in the nest of the fearsome Japanese giant hornet, to reveal its domestic habits
  • b) A glass porthole implanted in the abdomen of a mouse, to reveal the process of tumour metastasis
  • c) A crystal portal in the inner vessel of an experimental thorium reactor, to reveal its nuclear fires to the naked eye
  • d) A small window high on the wall of a basement office in the Princeton physics department, to reveal a small patch of sky to postgraduate students who have not been outside for seven years

4. On 10 March we described a new material for violin strings, said to produce a brilliant and complex sound richer than that of catgut. What makes up these super strings?












  • a) Mousegut
  • b) Spider silk
  • c) Braided carbon nanotubes
  • d) An alloy of yttrium and ytterbium

5. While the peril of climate change looms inexorably larger, in this festive-for-some season we might take a minute to look on the bright side. On 17 March we reported on one benefit of global warming, which might make life better for some people for a while. It was:












  • a) Receding Arctic sea ice will make it easier to lay undersea cables to boost internet speeds
  • b) Increasing temperatures mean that Greenlanders can soon start making their own wine
  • c) Rising sea levels could allow a string of new beach resorts to open in the impoverished country of Chad
  • d) More acidic seawater will add a pleasant tang to the salt water taffy sweets made in Atlantic City

6. In Alaska's Glacier Bay national park, the brown bear in the photo (above, right) is doing something never before witnessed among bearkind, as we revealed on 10 March. Is it:












  • a) Making a phonecall?
  • b) Gnawing at a piece of whalebone to dislodge a rotten tooth?
  • c) Scratching itself with a barnacle-covered stone tool?
  • d) Cracking oysters on its jaw?

7. Men have much in common with fruit flies, as we revealed on 24 March. When the sexual advances of a male fruit fly are rejected, he may respond by:












  • a) Whining
  • b) Hitting the booze
  • c) Jumping off a tall building
  • d) Hovering around the choosy female long after all hope is lost

8. While great Higgsian things were happening at the LHC, scientists puzzled over a newly urgent question: what should we call the boson? Peter Higgs wasn't the only physicist to predict its existence, and some have suggested that the particle's name should also include those other theorists or perhaps reflect some other aspect of the particle. Which of the following is a real suggestion that we reported on 24 March?

























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Stevie Wonder, Gilberto Gil give Rio Christmas cheer

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RIO DE JANEIRO: US singer Stevie Wonder joined Brazil's Gilberto Gil late Tuesday for a massive free Christmas concert on Rio's Copacabana beach attended by half a million people.

"Tudo bem? (Everything all right?)" Wonder shouted out to the crowd in Portuguese after being led on stage by his sons.

Dressed in a golden suit, the blind singer began his set with "What a Wonderful World", then performed hits like "I Just Called to Say I Love You", "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" and, to sing a cover of the late Michael Jackson's "The Way You Make Me Feel."

Earlier, Gil opened the show with "Realce" and "A Novidade" on a stage set with the exclusive Copacabana Palace Hotel as a backdrop.

"Good night Rio, Merry Christmas. Thank you for the gift of your presence," he said.

Up to a million spectators had been initially expected, but police estimates cited in local media put the number at 450,000 to half a million people who braved sweltering temperatures around 40 degrees Celsius on one of the hottest evenings of the year.

During a benefit concert a week ago, Wonder and Gil performed for thousands of people who paid a $400 entry fee each.

Rio is expecting to host 752,000 tourists for its lavish New Year's Eve celebrations.

Throughout the Southern hemisphere's summer season, which began on December 21 and ends in March, about 3.2 billion tourists are expected to flock to the city and spend $2.6 billion, according to Tourism Ministry figures.

For February's Carnival, the state government hopes 900,000 tourists will visit the city and spend about $665 million.

-AFP/fl



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Stuxnet attacks Iran again, reports say

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An Iranian news agency says the country successfully fended off yet another attack by the Stuxnet worm, according to reports.


The cyberattack targeted a power plant and other sites in southern Iran over the fall, the BBC and the Associated Press reported today.


Discovered in June 2010, Stuxnet is believed to be the first malware targeted specifically at critical infrastructure systems. It's thought to have been designed to shut down centrifuges at Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment plant, where stoppages and other problems reportedly occurred around that time. The sophisticated worm spreads via USB drives and through four previously unknown holes, known as zero-day vulnerabilities, in Windows.


Stuxnet is just one of several versions of malware aimed at Middle Eastern countries in the past two and a half years. Along Stuxnet, there have arisen Duqu, Gauss, Mahdi, Flame, Wiper, and Shamoon.


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Photos: Humboldt Squid Have a Bad Day at the Beach

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Photograph by Chris Elmenhurst, Surf the Spot Photography

“Strandings have been taking place with increased frequency along the west coast over the past ten years,” noted NOAA’s Field, “as this population of squid seems to be expanding its range—likely a consequence of climate change—and can be very abundant at times.” (Learn about other jumbo squid strandings.)

Humboldt squid are typically found in warmer waters farther south in theGulf of California (map) and off the coast ofPeru. “[But] we find them up north here during warmer water time periods,” said ocean sciences researcherKenneth Bruland with the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC).

Coastal upwelling—when winds blowing south drive ocean circulation to bring cold, nutrient-rich waters up from the deep—ceases during the fall and winter and warmer water is found closer to shore. Bruland noted that climate change, and the resulting areas of low oxygen, “could be a major factor” in drawing jumbo squid north.

Published December 24, 2012

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Gunman Killed Firemen With Bushmaster, Left Note

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A convicted killer, who shot dead two firefighters with a Bushmaster assault rifle after leading them into an ambush when they responded to a house fire he set in Western New York, left behind a typewritten note saying he wanted to "do what I like doing best, killing people," police said.


William Spengler, 62, set his home and a car on fire early Monday morning with the intention of setting a trap to kill firefighters and to see "how much of the neighborhood I can burn down," according to the note he wrote and which police found at the scene. The note did not give a reason for his actions.


Spengler, who served 18 years in prison for beating his 92-year-old grandmother to death with a hammer in 1981, hid Monday morning in a small ditch beside a tree overlooking the sleepy lakeside street in Webster, N.Y., where he lived with his sister, police said today in a news conference.


Police said they found remains in the house, believed to be that of the sister, Cheryl Spengler, 67.


As firefighters arrived on the scene after a 5:30 a.m. 911 call on the morning of Christmas Eve, Spengler opened fire on them with the Bushmaster, the same semi-automatic, military-style weapon used in the Dec. 14 rampage killing of 20 children in Newtown, Conn.




"This was a clear ambush on first responders… Spengler had armed himself heavily and taken area of cover," said Gerald Pickering, the chief of the Webster Police Department.


Armed with a Smith & Wesson .38 caliber revolver, a Mossman 12-gauge shotgun, and the Bushmaster, Spengler killed two firefighters, and injured two more as well as an off-duty police officer at the scene.


As a convicted felon, Spengler could not legally own a firearm and police are investigating how he obtained the weapons.


One firefighter tried to take cover in his fire engine and was killed with a gunshot through the windshield, Pickering said.


Responding police engaged in a gunfight with Spengler, who ultimately died, likely by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.


As police engaged the gunman, more houses along Lake Ontario were engulfed, ultimately razing seven of them. Some 33 people in adjoining homes were displaced by the fire.


SWAT teams were forced to evacuate residents using armored vehicles.


Police identified the two slain firefighter as Lt. Michael Chiapperini, a 20-year veteran of the Webster Police Department and "lifetime firefighter," according to Pickering, and Tomasz Kaczowka, who also worked as a 911 dispatcher.


Two other firefighters were wounded and remain the intensive care unit at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, N.Y.


Joseph Hofsetter was shot once. He sustained an injury to his pelvis and has "a long road to recovery," said Dr. Nicole A. Stassen, a trauma physician.


The second firefighter, Theodore Scardino, was shot twice and received injuries to his left shoulder and left lung, as well as a knee.



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