Arias Challenged On Pedophilia Claim

Accused murderer Jodi Arias was challenged today by phone records, text message records, and her own diary entries that appeared to contradict her claim that she caught her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander, looking at pictures of naked boys.

Arias had said during her testimony that one afternoon in January 2008, she walked in on Alexander masturbating to pictures of naked boys. She said she fled from the home, threw up, drove around aimlessly, and ignored numerous phone calls from Alexander because she was so upset at what she had seen.

The claim was central to the defense's accusation that Alexander was a "sexual deviant" who grew angry and abusive toward Arias in the months after the incident, culminating in a violent confrontation in June that left Alexander dead.

Arias claimed she killed him in self-defense. She could face the death penalty if convicted of murder.

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

Today, prosecutor Juan Martinez, who has been aggressive in questioning witnesses throughout the trial, volleyed questions at her about the claim of pedophilia, asking her to explain why her and Alexander's cell phone records showed five calls back and forth between the pair throughout the day she allegedly fled in horror. Some of the calls were often initiated Arias, according to phone records.

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She and Alexander also exchanged text messages throughout the afternoon and evening at a time when Arias claims the pedophilia incident occurred. In those messages they discuss logistics of exchanging one another's cars that night. Alexander sends her text messages about the car from a church social event he attended that night that she never mentioned during her testimony.

Arias stuck by her claim that she saw Alexander masturbating to the pictures, and her voice remained steady under increasingly-loud questioning by Martinez.

But Martinez also sparred with Arias on the stand over minor issues, such as when he asked Arias detailed questions about the timing and order of events from that day and Arias said she could not remember them.

"It seems you have problems with your memory. Is this a longstanding thing? Since you started testifying?" Martinez asked.

"No it goes back farther than that. I don't know even know if I'd call it a problem," Arias said.

"How far back does it go? You don't want to call them problems, are they issues? Can we call them issues? When did you start having them?" he asked in rapid succession. "You say you have memory problems, that it depends on the circumstance. Give me the factors that influence that."

"Usually when men like you or Travis are screaming at me," Arias shot back from the stand. "It affects my brain, it makes my brain scramble."

"You're saying it's Mr. Martinez's fault?" Martinez asked, referring to himself in the third person.

"Objection your honor," Arias' attorney finally shouted. "This is a stunt!"

Timeline of the Jodi Arias Trial

Martinez dwelled at one point about a journal entry where Arias wrote that she missed the Mormon baptism of her friend Lonnie because she was having kinky sex with Alexander. He drew attention to prior testimony that she and Alexander used Tootsie Pops and Pop Rocks candy as sexual props.

"You're trying to get across (in the diary entry) that this involved a sexual liaison with Mr. Alexander right?" he asked. "And you're talking about Tootsie Pops and Pop Rocks?"

"That happened also that night," Arias said.

"You were there, enjoying it, the Tootsie Pops and Pop Rocks?" he asked again, prompting a smirk from Arias.

"I enjoyed his attention," Arias said.

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Higgs may spell doom, unless supersymmetry saves us

Lisa Grossman, physical sciences reporter

(Image: CERN)

Is the Higgs boson a herald of the apocalypse? That's the suggestion behind a theory, developed more than 30 years ago, that is back in the headlines this week. According to physicists, the mass of the Higgs-like particle announced last summer supports the notion that our universe is teetering on the edge of stability, like a pencil balanced on its point.

"It may be that the universe we live in is inherently unstable," Joseph Lykken, of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, said on Monday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "At some point, billions of years from now, it's all going to be wiped out."

Physicists have been wringing their hands about this scenario since 1982, when theorists Michael Turner and Frank Wilczek published a paper about it in Nature, NBC News points out. The pair showed that the vacuum of space can be in different energy states, and it will be most stable at its lowest energy. Trouble arises if we're not there yet, and we're inhabiting a temporarily stable state that should ultimately collapse.

"The universe wants to be in a different state, so eventually to realize that, a little bubble of what you might think of as an alternate universe will appear somewhere, and it will spread out and destroy us," Lykken said at AAAS.

Enter the Higgs boson, the particle form of the field that gives mass to several fundamental particles. The Higgs field permeates the vacuum of space, which means the mass of the boson and the stability of the vacuum are closely intertwined. Theory predicted that if the Higgs boson is heavier than about 129 gigaelectronvolts (GeV), the universe should be on safe footing.

But in July 2012 physicists at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland announced that a particle closely matching the Higgs had been found by experiments in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The much celebrated particle has a mass of about 126 GeV - light enough to raise fears of instability.

There is still hope for the universe as we know it. Some theorists pointed out that the relationship between the Higgs mass and the vacuum of space depends on the mass of a particle called the top quark. If the top quark's mass is different than we think it is, stability might reign.

There are also anomalies with the Higgs measurement, like the fact that it decays into photons more often than predicted. That hints we may yet find particles from the theory of supersymmetry, which says each ordinary particle has heavier "superpartners". If the Higgs has such a relative, it might save us from destruction. But some of these predicted particles, particularly the superpartners of the top quark, can push the universe back into instability.

The worries may remain unconfirmed for a while. The LHC is shutting down for a two-year break so engineers can prepare the machine to shoot higher-energy particle beams, which are needed to probe for superpartners.

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Oil down in Asian trade

SINGAPORE: Oil prices were down in Asia on Thursday as the dollar strengthened and amid market speculation that Saudi Arabian crude production could increase in the coming months, analysts said.

New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in April, shed 57 cents to $94.65 a barrel and Brent North Sea crude for delivery in April dropped 61 cents to $114.99.

The retreat in oil prices was driven by "prospects of increasing supply out of Saudi Arabia in the coming months," said Sanjeev Gupta, who heads the Asia-Pacific oil and gas practice at Ernst & Young.

Market chatter suggested that Saudi Arabia was planning to increase production to meet rising demand from countries such as China.

An increase in production usually puts a downward pressure on prices.

Another factor was the stronger US dollar, which rose Wednesday after minutes of the latest US Federal Reserve policy meeting were released.

Minutes of the January 29-30 meeting suggested the central bank could begin tightening its monetary policy even before the US labour market picks up.

"Such belief has caused the dollar to rally against the euro, making commodities less desirable," Phillip Futures said in a market commentary.

- AFP/ck

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Samsung TV Discovery service launches this quarter

Samsung America Senior Vice President Joe Stinziano describes new features for TVs, including a feature that allows users to search all video services and live TV in one screen.

(Credit:
James Martin/CNET)

Samsung today revealed more details about its TV discovery service -- except for the finalized name for the U.S. version -- as the Korean electronics giant gears up for the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona. Samsung first unveiled the service last month during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. At that time, it said users would be able to use one app to navigate all of their different video services on their smart TVs and
tablets, and use their mobile devices as remotes to control their TVs.

Today, it noted that the service will give consumers a way to find live TV and video content, as well as glean personalized recommendations based on viewing and preference history. In the U.S., the offering initially will aggregate content from Netflix and Blockbuster.

The offering will be called "TV Discovery" in most regions, though the U.S. branding has not yet been finalized.

It will launch on Samsung 2013 smart TVs this quarter in the U.S., Korea, and 14 European countries such as the U.K., France, Italy, and Germany. It will expand to mobile devices in the second quarter.

One of the biggest criticisms of smart TVs like those from Samsung is that they're too difficult to use. It can be frustrating and time consuming to navigate between all the different video streaming services on a device, as well as including live TV in the mix. Samsung has said it's making a big push this year to simplify its products, and TV Discovery is one product it hopes will appeal to customers.

"The more you engage with the service, the more relevant the returned recommendations for TV, movies, and other on-demand entertainment," Won-Pyo Hong, president and head of Samsung's Media Solution Center, said. "It could not be simpler."

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NASA's Mars Rover Makes Successful First Drill

For the first time ever, people have drilled into a rock on Mars, collecting the powdered remains from the hole for analysis.

Images sent back from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Wednesday confirmed that the precious sample is being held by the rover's scoop, and will soon be delivered to two miniature chemical labs to undergo an unprecedented analysis. (Related: "Mars Rover Curiosity Completes First Full Drill.")

To the delight of the scientists, the rock powder has come up gray and not the ubiquitous red of the dust that covers the planet. The gray rock, they believe, holds a lot of potential to glean information about conditions on an early Mars. (See more Mars pictures.)

"We're drilling into rock that's a time capsule, rocks that are potentially ancient," said sampling-system scientist Joel Hurowitz during a teleconference from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

A Place to Drill

The site features flat bedrock, often segmented into squares, with soil between the sections and many round gray nodules and white mineral veins.

Hurowitz said that the team did not attempt to drill into the minerals or the gray balls, but the nodules are so common that they likely hit some as they drilled down 2.5 inches (6.3 centimeters).

In keeping with the hypothesis that the area was once under water, Hurowitz said the sample "has the potential of telling us about multiple interactions of water and rock."

The drill, located at the end of a seven-foot (two-meter) arm, requires precision maneuvering in its placement and movement, and so its successful initial use was an exciting and welcome relief. The rover has been on Mars since August, and it took six months to find the right spot for that first drill. (Watch video of the Mars rover Curiosity.)

The flat drilling area is in the lower section of Yellowknife Bay, which Curiosity has been exploring for more than a month. What was previously identified by Curiosity scientists as the dry bed of a once-flowing river or stream appears to fan out into the Yellowknife area.

The bedrock of the site—named after deceased Curiosity deputy project manager John Klein—is believed to be siltstone or mudstone. Scientists said the veins of white minerals are probably calcium sulfate or gypsum, but the grey nodules remain something of a mystery.

Triumph

To the team that designed and operates the drill, the results were a triumph, as great as the much-heralded landing of Curiosity on the red planet. With more than a hundred maneuvers in its repertoire, the drill is unique in its capabilities and complexities. (Watch video of Curiosity's "Seven Minutes of Terror.")

Sample system chief engineer Louise Jandura, who has worked on the drill for eight years, said the Curosity team had made eight different drills before settling on the one now on the rover. The team tested each drill by boring 1,200 holes on 20 types of rock on Earth.

She called the successful drilling "historic" because it gives scientists unprecedented access to material that has not been exposed to the intense weathering and radiation processes that affect the Martian surface.

Mini-laboratories

The gray powder will be routed to the two most sophisticated instruments on Curiosity—the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) and Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin).

SAM, the largest and most complex instrument onboard, operates with two ovens that can heat the sample up to 1,800°F (982°C), turning the elements and compounds in the rock into gases that can then be identified. SAM can also determine whether any carbon-based organic material is present.

Organics are the chemical building blocks of life on Earth. They are known to regularly land on Mars via meteorites and finer material that rains down on all planets.

But researchers suspect the intense radiation on the Martian surface destroys any organics on the surface. Scientists hope that organics within Martian rocks are protected from that radiation.

CheMin shoots an X-ray beam at its sample and can analyze the mineral content of the rock. Minerals provide a durable record of environmental conditions over the eons, including information about possible ingredients and energy sources for life.

Both SAM and CheMin received samples of sandy soil scooped from the nearby Rocknest outcrop in October. SAM identified organic material, but scientists are still trying to determine whether any of it is Martian or the byproduct of organics inadvertently brought to Mars by the rover. (See "Mars Rover Detects Simple Organic Compounds.")

In the next few days, CheMin will be the first to receive samples of the powdered rock, and then SAM. Given the complexity of the analysis, and the track record seen with other samples, it will likely be weeks before results are announced.

The process of drilling and collecting the results was delayed by several glitches that required study and work-arounds. One involved drill software and the other involved a test-bed problem with a sieve that is part of the process of delivering samples to the instruments.

Lead systems engineer Daniel Limonadi said that while there was no indication the sieve on Mars was malfunctioning, they had become more conservative in its use because of the test bed results. (Related: "A 2020 Rover Return to Mars?")

Author of the National Geographic e-book Mars Landing 2012, Marc Kaufman has been a journalist for more than 35 years, including the past 12 as a science and space writer, foreign correspondent, and editor for the Washington Post. He is also author of First Contact: Scientific Breakthroughs in the Hunt for Life Beyond Earth, published in 2011, and has spoken extensively to crowds across the United States and abroad about astrobiology. He lives outside Washington, D.C., with his wife, Lynn Litterine.

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Newtown Shooter Had Sensory Processing Disorder

From the time he was little, Adam Lanza couldn't bear to be touched. By middle school, the chaos and noise of large, bustling classrooms began to upset him. At 20, just before the Newtown shootings, he was isolated and, the world would later learn, disturbed.

All this was revealed in "Raising Adam Lanza," an investigative report by the Hartford Courant in partnership with the PBS news program FRONTLINE, which aired Tuesday night.

Before the age of 6, Lanza had been diagnosed with a controversial condition, "sensory integration disorder" -- now known as sensory processing disorder, according to the report.

Those with sensory processing disorder or SPD may over-respond to stimuli and find clothing, physical contact, light, sound or food unbearable. They may also under-respond and feel little or no reaction to pain or extreme hot and cold. A third form involves sensory motor problems that can cause weakness and clumsiness or delay in developing motor skills.

In Photos: Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting, Mourning

Whether SPD is a distinct disorder or a collection of symptoms pointing to other neurological deficits, most often anxiety or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), has been debated by the medical community for more than two decades.

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No one will know why the withdrawn Lanza shot his mother four times in her own bed, then went to Sandy Hook Elementary School to slaughter six women and 20 first-graders before taking his own life on Dec. 14, 2012.

But this report, the most detailed account to date on his troubled life, paints a picture of a child coping with special needs and a mother, "devoted but perhaps misguided," struggling unsuccessfully to help.

"The most surprising thing for me was this sort of inwardness of Adam, a world view of someone that was afraid of the world," said show producer Frank Koughan. "He just reacted badly to the whole world and didn't want to be part of it. He was not some violent monster, except on one particular day, when he was exceedingly monstrous."

The investigative team interviewed family and friends of the shooter's parents, Nancy and Peter Lanza, and reviewed a decade's worth of messages and emails from his mother to close friends, describing her son's socially awkward behavior.

"Adam was a quiet kid. He never said a word," Marvin LaFontaine, a friend of Nancy Lanza, told them. "There was a weirdness about him and Nancy warned me once at one of the Scout meetings … 'Don't touch Adam.' She said he just can't stand that. He'd become teary-eyed and I think he would run to his mother."

In 1998, the Lanzas left their home in New Hampshire for Connecticut with Adam, who had already been diagnosed with the sensory disorder and was "coded" with an individual education plan, according to a family member who did not want to be identified by FRONTLINE.

"It was somebody well-placed who was completely in a position to know," said Koughan, 45, a veteran journalist who produced the film, "Drop-Out Nation."

Lanza didn't recognize pain, another feature of some types of SPD. He couldn't cope with loud noise, confusion or change, which would cause him to "shut down," according to the report.

"He'd almost go into a catatonic kind of state, which is another reason why in hindsight, he didn't seem like a threat to anybody," said Koughan. "He didn't lash out or beat up kids. He went within himself, until one day he didn't."

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Today on New Scientist: 19 February 2013

Doctors would tax sugary drinks to combat obesity

Hiking the price of fizzy drinks would cut consumption and so help fight obesity, urges the British Academy of Medical Royal Colleges

Space station's dark matter hunter coy about findings

Researchers on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which sits above the International Space Station, have collected their first results - but won't reveal them for two weeks

Huge telescopes could spy alien oxygen

Hunting for oxygen in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets is a tough job, but a new wave of giant telescopes should be up to the task

Evolution's detectives: Closing in on missing links

Technology is taking the guesswork out of finding evolution's turning points, from the first fish with legs to our own recent forebears, says Jeff Hecht

Moody Mercury shows its hidden colours

False-colour pictures let us see the chemical and physical landscape of the normally beige planet closest to the sun

LHC shuts down to prepare for peak energy in 2015

Over the next two years, engineers will be giving the Large Hadron Collider the makeover it needs to reach its maximum design energy

Insert real news events into your mobile game

From meteor airbursts to footballing fracas, mobile games could soon be brimming with news events that lend them more currency

3D-printing pen turns doodles into sculptures

The 3Doodle, which launched on Kickstarter today, lets users draw 3D structures in the air which solidify almost instantly

We need to rethink how we name exoplanets

Fed up with dull names for exoplanets, Alan Stern and his company Uwingu have asked the public for help. Will it be so long 2M 0746+20b, hello Obama?

A shocking cure: Plug in for the ultimate recharge

An electrical cure for ageing attracted the ire of the medical establishment. But could the jazz-age inventor have stumbled upon a genuine therapy?

Biofuel rush is wiping out unique American grasslands

Planting more crops to meet the biofuel demand is destroying grasslands and pastures in the central US, threatening wildlife

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Ubisoft sells rivals' games in online shop

SAN FRANCISCO: French videogame maker Ubisoft began selling computer games made by Electronic Arts, Warner Brothers and other rivals at its online Uplay shop.

California-based Electronic Arts, in turn, added Ubisoft hits including "Assassin's Creed III" and "Far Cry 3" to its Origin network for play as the companies ramped up their challenge to Valve Corporation's Steam service.

Third-party computer games available for download from the Uplay shop include a game-of-the-year edition of "Batman: Arkham City" and "Crysis 3," according to Ubisoft.

"We're thrilled to be bringing EA titles to Uplay and Ubisoft titles to Origin -- the more choice for consumers, the better in today's gaming world," said Origin vice president of production Michael Blank.

"Offering games like Dead Space 3, Need for Speed Most Wanted and more on Uplay is a great opportunity to reach even more PC gamers worldwide."

Uplay is an online gaming community boasting 50 million members who access the service from videogame consoles, mobile gadgets, or personal computers.

"Adding excellent titles from EA, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and many other top developers to Uplay shop means that players now have more choice in where and how they purchase games online," said Ubisoft vice president of digital publishing Chris Early.

Origin reports having nearly 40 million users who sign on to play or buy games using computers powered by Windows or Macintosh software, or iPhones, iPads or iPod touch devices.

At the start of this year, Steam network for game software and online play was reported to have more than 54 million active users and laid claim to the lion's share of the videogame digital distribution market.

- AFP/sf

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Apple, Facebook, Twitter hacks said to hail from Eastern Europe

While many security experts have been pointing the blame at China for the recent wave of cyberattacks on U.S. companies and newspapers, Bloomberg reports that some of the malware attacks actually may be coming from Eastern Europe.

Investigators familiar with the matter told Bloomberg they believe a cybercriminal group based in either Russia or Eastern Europe is carrying out the high-level attacks to steal company secrets, research, and intellectual property, which could then be sold on the black market.

Evidence that the attacks may be coming from Eastern Europe is the type of malware being used by the hackers, which is more commonly used by cybercriminals than by government spying. Also, investigators have tracked at least one server being used by the hackers to a Ukrainian hosting company.

Roughly 40 companies have been victims of cyberattacks over the past several months. These companies included tech businesses, such as Apple, Facebook, and Twitter, and newspapers, such as The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press.

Apple announced today that hackers targeted computers used by its employees, but that "there was no evidence that any data left Apple." In a statement, the company said it discovered malware that made use of a vulnerability in the Java plug-in, and that it was sourced from a site for software developers. Apple blocked Java from some of its Macs late last month using its XProtect antimalware tool and citing security vulnerabilities.

A report by The New York Times yesterday claimed that an "overwhelming percentage" of the cyberattacks on U.S. corporations, government agencies, and organizations came from an office building in Shanghai with ties to the People's Liberation Army. These allegations remain unconfirmed and flatly denied by Chinese authorities.

The hack on The New York Times itself was months long and included the theft of corporate passwords of Times employees, as well as spying on personal computers. The attacks on Facebook, Twitter, and Apple were a bit different in that reportedly only a small number of systems were infected and the hackers got in via the Java vulnerability.

This isn't the first allegation of cybercriminals operating out of Eastern Europe. Security firm McAfee Labs published a report in December that warned of increasing attacks on U.S. financial institutions from Eastern European hackers. Dubbed Project Blitzkrieg, McAfee said the possible attacks would be done with a highly developed Trojan that could infect victims' computers, plant software, and allow cybercriminals to steal information and money.

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Florida Python Hunt Captures 68 Invasive Snakes

It's a wrap—the 2013 Python Challenge has nabbed 68 invasive Burmese pythons in Florida, organizers say. And experts are surprised so many of the elusive giants were caught.

Nearly 1,600 people from 38 states—most of them inexperienced hunters—registered for the chance to track down one of the animals, many of which descend from snakes that either escaped or were dumped into the wild.

Since being introduced, these Asian behemoths have flourished in Florida's swamps while also squeezing out local populations of the state's native mammals, especially in the Everglades. (See Everglades pictures.)

To highlight the python problem, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and its partners launched the 2013 Python Challenge, which encouraged registered participants to catch as many pythons as they could between January 12 and February 10 in state wildlife-management areas within the Everglades.

The commission gave cash prizes to those who harvested the most and longest pythons.

Frank Mazzotti, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Florida and scientific leader for the challenge, said before the hunt that he would consider a harvest of 70 animals a success—and 68 is close enough to say the event met its goals.

It's unknown just how many Burmese pythons live in Florida, but catching 68 snakes is an "exceptional" number, added Kenneth Krysko, senior herpetologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville.

Snakes in the Grass

Finding 68 snakes is impressive, experts say, since it's so hard to find pythons. For one, it's been unusually warm lately in Florida, which means the reptiles—which normally sun themselves to regulate their body temperature—are staying in the brush, making them harder to detect, Krysko said.

On top of that, Burmese pythons are notoriously hard to locate, experts say.

The animals are so well camouflaged that people can stand right next to one and not notice it. "It's rare that you get to see them stretched out—most of the time they're blending in," said Cheryl Millett, a biologist at the Nature Conservancy, a Python Challenge partner.

What's more, the reptiles are ambush hunters, which means they spend much of their time lying in wait in dense vegetation, not moving, she said.

That's why Millett gave the hunters some tips, such as looking along the water's edge, where the snakes like to hang out, and also simply listening for "something big moving through the vegetation."

Even so, catching 68 snakes is "actually is a little more than I expected," said Millett.

No Walk in the Park

Ruben Ramirez, founder of the company Florida Python Hunters, won two prizes in the competition: First place for the most snakes captured—18—and second place for the largest python, which he said was close to 11 feet (3.4 meters) long. The biggest Burmese python caught in Florida, nabbed in 2012, measured 17.7 feet (5.4 meters).

"They're there, but they're not as easy to find as people think," said Ramirez. "You're not going to be stumbling over pythons in Miami." (Related blog post: "What It's Like to Be a Florida Python Hunter.")

All participants, some of whom had never hunted a python before, were trained to identify the difference between a Burmese python and Florida's native snakes, said Millett. No native snakes were accidentally killed, she said.

Hunters were also told to kill the snakes by either putting a bolt or a bullet through their heads, or decapitating them-all humane methods that result "in immediate loss of consciousness and destruction of the brain," according to the Python Challenge website.

Ramirez added that some of the first-time or amateur hunters had different expectations. "I think they were expecting to walk down a canal and see a 10-foot [3-meter], 15-foot [4.5-meter] Burmese python. They thought it'd be a walk in the park."

Stopping the Spread

Completely removing these snakes from the wild isn't easy, and some scientists see the Python Challenge as helping to achieve part of that goal. (Read an opposing view on the Python Challenge: "Opinion: Florida's Great Snake Hunt Is a Cheap Stunt.")

"You're talking about 68 more animals removed from the population that shouldn't be there—that's 68 more mouths that aren't being fed," said the Florida museum's Krysko. (Read about giant Burmese python meals that went bust.)

"I support any kind of event or program that not only informs the general public about introduced species, but also gets the public involved in removing these nonnative animals that don't belong there."

The Nature Conservancy's Millett said the challenge had two positive outcomes: boosting knowledge for both science and the public.

People who didn't want to hunt or touch the snakes could still help, she said, by reporting sightings of exotic species to 888-IVE-GOT-1, through free IveGot1 apps, or www.ivegot1.org.

Millett runs a public-private Nature Conservancy partnership called Python Patrol that the Florida wildlife commission will take on in the fall. The program focuses not only on eradicating invasive pythons but on preventing the snake from moving to ecologically sensitive areas, such as Key West.

Necropsies on the captured snakes will reveal what pythons are eating, and location data from the hunters will help scientists figure out where the snakes are living—valuable data for researchers working to stop their spread.

"This is the most [number of] pythons that have been caught in this short of a period of time in such an extensive area," said the University of Florida's Mazzotti.

"It's an unprecedented sample, and we're going to get a lot of information out of that."

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