Costa CEO says captain misled company, crew (AP)

ROME ? The cruise captain who grounded the Costa Concordia off the Tuscan coast with 4,200 people on board did not relay correct information either to the company or crew after the ship hit rocks, the cruise ship owner's CEO said Friday as the search resumed for 21 missing passengers.

CEO Pierluigi Foschi told Italian state TV that the company spoke to the captain at 10:05 p.m. (2105 GMT; 4:05 p.m. EST), some 20 minutes after the ship ran aground on Jan. 13, but could not offer proper assistance because the captain's description "did not correspond to the truth."

Capt. Francesco Schettino said only that he had "problems" on board but did not mention hitting a reef.

Likewise, Foschi said crew members were not informed of the gravity of the situation.

Passenger video shown on Italian TV indicates crew members telling passengers to go to their cabins as late as 10:25 p.m. (2125 GMT; 4:25 p.m. EST). The abandon ship alarm sounded just before 11:00 p.m. (2200 GMT; 5:00 p.m. EST).

"That's because they also did not receive correct information on the gravity of the situation," Foschi said.

The $450 million Costa Concordia was carrying more than 4,200 passengers and crew when it slammed into well-charted rocks off the island of Giglio a week ago. Eleven people have been confirmed dead.

The Concordia shifted again on its rocky perch Friday, forcing the suspension of diving search operations for the 21 people still missing and raising concerns about the stability of the ship's resting place. But the search in areas above the waterline resumed in the evening after the ship was deemed stable.

The remarks by Costa CEO Foschi are the latest to indicate a lack of proper communication with authorities on land as the emergency unfolded.

An audiotape of the Concordia's first contact with maritime authorities has a Concordia office repeatedly replying that the ship had experienced a blackout, even though it had hit the reef more than half an hour earlier.

Italian media reported the officer on the call was Schettino, but that could not be independently confirmed.

Costa Crociere SpA, which offered support to the captain in the hours after the emergency, has now turned its back on the man who is under investigation for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning his ship. Schettino, who was jailed after he left the ship, is under house arrest near Naples.

Costa in recent days has suspended Schettino, announced it is no longer paying his legal fees and has signed on as a civil party in the prosecution, a move that positions it as an injured party and would allow it to seek damages in the case of a guilty verdict.

Coast Guard spokesman Cmdr. Cosimo Nicastro said crews will evaluate the ship's stability Saturday morning to see if the diving operation can resume, focusing on an area where passengers would have sought lifeboats, Nicastro said.

It was not clear if the slight movements registered by sensors placed on board the Costa Concordia were just vibrations as the ship settles on the rocks off the Tuscan island of Giglio or if the massive ocean liner is slowly slipping off the reef. Salvage experts suggest it could be because of pockets of air gradually escaping.

The sensors detected that the ship's bow was moving about 15 millimeters (half an inch) an hour and the stern about 7 millimeters (one-quarter inch) an hour, said Nicola Casagli of the University of Florence, who was called in by Italian authorities to monitor the ship's stability.

The Concordia's movements are being watched since any significant shift could be dangerous for divers trying to locate those missing since the Concordia ran aground Jan. 13. An additional fear is that movement could damage tanks holding a 500,000 gallons of fuel oil and lead to leaks.

The sea floor drops off sharply a few meters (yards) from where the ship is resting, and Italy's environment minister has warned it risks sinking.

On Friday, relatives of some of the 21 missing were at Giglio's port getting briefings from rescue teams.

Casagli told Sky TG24 that some movement in the Concordia was only natural given the immense weight of the steel-hulled ship, which is being held in place by two huge rocks at bow and stern.

But the latest movements indicate it isn't stable, he said. "These are small, regular movements that are being monitored because they're going in the same direction," he told Sky.

Late Thursday, Carnival Corp., the U.S.-based company that owns Costa, announced it was conducting a comprehensive audit of all 10 of its cruise lines to review safety and emergency response procedures in the wake of the Costa disaster. The evacuation was chaotic and the alarm to abandon the ship was sounded after the Concordia had capsized too much to get many life boats down.

___

Colleen Barry reported from Milan. Andrea Foa contributed from Giglio, Italy.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120121/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_italy_cruise_aground

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Town Turns Off the Lights To See the Stars

The main reasons for street lighting is to make obstacles and pedestrians more visible to motorists, to allow pedestrians to move around without carrying a torch, and to make them feel safer.

In this case, they'd closed the roads around the town for this stunt, so no need for worrying about cars, and a good fraction of the population of the town was out on the street, so there were fewer empty dark back alleys down which to get stabbed (plus it's a small rural town; if it's anything like mine crime is generally livestock related...), and everyone there knew about it months in advance, so I'd expect they were stocked up on torches and batteries. It was just a shame it was so cloudy!

If you have never seen the stars without light pollution, go to somewhere in the middle of nowhere and have a look. It's quite hard to do in the UK, as our population density (and thus light pollution) is many times that of the US, so there aren't many really empty places left. It's a real tragedy that for a little convenience and marginal extra safety we've given up our window seat at the edge of the rest of the universe.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/GMbE0HW0Wsk/town-turns-off-the-lights-to-see-the-stars

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Birds flying faster than ever due to warming

Wind speeds over the Southern Ocean have been increasing over the past three decades and those stronger winds are boosting birds in the area to faster flying speeds, according to new research.

The wind speed shift is linked to climate change in the study, which was published in the latest issue of Science. The impact, at least for now, is a boon for certain birds. It shortens the length of their foraging trips, improves their breeding success and is even causing birds to gain more than two pounds in weight.

The scientists focused their study on the wandering albatross, a bird that spends most of its life in flight, touching down on land mostly just to find food or to breed. The windy Crozet islands in the Southern Ocean have been home to one population of such albatrosses for ages. The researchers believe that other birds, such as petrels, have been affected by the wind changes too.

PHOTOS: Albatrosses Find Fast Food at Sea

"Winds have increased overall at the world's oceans, with some areas being more affected than others, but still the increase is global," lead author Henri Weimerskirch told Discovery News. "The advantage we have with the Crozet is that we have a long term record of the population parameters, and also the movements of the birds, which is a unique situation."

Weimerskirch, a researcher at France's Centre d'Etudes Biologiques de Chize, and his team analyzed 40 years' worth of information on the Crozet albatross population. For decades, researchers have monitored the birds' feeding and breeding, and in 1989 they began outfitting the birds with satellite transmitters to track their travels.

The researchers found that westerly winds in the Southern Ocean have increased, on average, by 15 percent over the past few decades. Both female and male flight speeds got a boost as a result, with females alone traveling about 311 miles per day in 1990, but about 435 miles per day as of 2010.

Easier flights for the birds have improved their breeding success, allowing them to grow larger. As it is, this species has the largest wingspan of any living bird. It's possible that the weight gain is an adjustment to the speedier winds, allowing the birds to experience greater wing loading while in flight.

In addition to heightened wind speeds, the westerlies in the Southern Ocean are also now gradually moving poleward. All animals in the region, from birds to their prey, have likely been affected by the changes.

"Many albatrosses and petrels are using wind for their movements, either when they search for food during central place foraging movements, or for their migratory movements over the oceans, thus these changes should undoubtedly affect many other species," Weimerskirch said. "They should affect the food web, by increasing current strength, turbidity and therefore production, but this aspect is not well known so far."

BLOG: Climate Change Could Shrink Animals

At present, birds appear to be benefiting from the wind shifts, which the researchers attribute to climate change. But these positive consequences of global warming may be temporary if patterns of wind in the southern westerlies follow predicted climate change scenarios.

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Weimerskirch said models predict that wind strength will continue to increase, and that the poleward shift will continue. By 2080, the westerly flow now centered around Crozet will be further to the south, taking away the bird's easy ride. At present the birds are also under constant threat from longline tuna fisheries, which have indirectly killed many albatrosses and other animals.

Scott Shaffer, an assistant professor of biology at San Jose State University, studied wandering albatrosses back in the late 1990s, as part of his doctoral thesis.

Shaffer told Discovery News that he was struck by the changes documented to the birds' body weight.

"This is one of the most surprising aspects of the study and is consistent with the changes in wind patterns because wind is everything to these birds and body mass changes influence their flight performance," Shaffer said. "To see such changes over this time period is amazing."

? 2012 Discovery Channel

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45976436/ns/technology_and_science-science/

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JPMorgan profit falls, but sees hope in economy (Reuters)

(Reuters) ? The drag of the European debt crisis on investment banking weighed on JPMorgan Chase & Co's fourth-quarter profit, sending financial stocks tumbling even as the bank provided evidence that the domestic economy is strengthening.

Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said the New York-based bank was seeing signs of improvement in credit quality as well as loan demand from corporations and consumers in the United States.

"We see a mild recovery which actually might be strengthening, and it's broad," Dimon said in a conference call with reporters following the earnings report on Friday. "Hopefully, it will add to more jobs. We have seen jobs growing ... it's not enough but it could be self-sustaining."

Loan balances in JPMorgan's commercial division were up 13 percent at the end of December compared with a year earlier, the sixth consecutive quarterly rise in the measure of business borrowing.

But Dimon sounded renewed alarm on the European debt crisis. "I would put myself in the 'increasing worried' category," he said.

His comments came shortly before a senior euro zone government source said credit rating agency Standard & Poor's was set to downgrade several euro zone countries, not including Germany. The report sent the euro and U.S. markets lower.

JPMorgan shares fell 2.9 percent in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange, while the KBW banks index was down 0.7 percent.

JPMorgan is the first major U.S. bank to announce results for the fourth quarter. Its weak investment banking results suggest Wall Street firms Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Morgan Stanley will also report tough quarters when they issue results next week.

Others such as Bank of America Corp and Citigroup Inc, which also report results in the coming days, could benefit from the stronger business loan demand that JPMorgan experienced, but could also face problems in investment banking and housing loans.

Dimon, in a conference call with stock analysts, predicted that other banks will also report what he called "good loan growth in commercial banking." Shares of U.S. regional banks seemed to reflect Dimon's view as they traded better during the day, with PNC Financial Services sliding 0.8 percent and US Bancorp rising 0.8 percent.

But Dimon also conceded that at least some of JPMorgan's new loans came from taking business from competitors. European banks have been retreating from lending in the U.S. and JPMorgan has been deploying new loan marketers in California and Florida.

In a discouraging sign for upcoming results from private equity firms such as Blackstone Group LP, JPMorgan's competing unit showed an $89 million loss in the quarter because of a decline in investment values.

JPMorgan's results "show that there are major headwinds against the banking industry and it requires a strong management team to battle the headwinds," said Rick Meckler, president of investment firm Libertyview Capital Management in New York.

"The bigger negatives tend to be the housing and mortgage situation and investors questioning, 'Have we really hit bottom in this sector or is this just a black hole?'"

In afternoon dealings, Goldman Sachs shares were down 2.5 percent, Morgan Stanley was off 2.9 percent, Bank of America fell 2.8 percent, and Citigroup dropped 3.1 percent.

"We all knew the fourth quarter would be difficult," said Gary Townsend of Hill-Townsend Capital. "But the overall economic outlook has been improving from an economic standpoint starting in December."

ROUGH TIMES

JPMorgan said fourth-quarter net income was $3.72 billion, or 90 cents a share, down from $4.83 billion, or $1.12 a share, a year earlier.

Wall Street analysts, on average, had expected 90 cents a share, according to surveys by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

There had been some expectation the bank would do better, but that view faded after Dimon warned on December 7 that investment banking was not improving. "He did a great job guiding people down, but people thought he would beat" the estimate, said Paul Miller of FBR Capital Markets.

Revenue declined 17 percent to $22.2 billion on an adjusted basis, missing the average Wall Street estimate of about $23 billion.

Investment banking revenue fell 30 percent to $4.36 billion, hurt by a 39 percent drop in underwriting and advisory fees, a 13 percent decline in fixed income, and a 31 percent fall in equity markets.

The results were complicated by an accounting adjustment that reduced earnings by 9 cents per share to reflect a change in the market value of JPMorgan debt during the quarter. In the third quarter, the accounting adjustment added 29 cents per share to profits.

The bank also booked more than half a billion dollars in additional expenses for litigation, primarily for mortgage matters, an amount that totaled 8 cents a share. It said reducing its loan loss reserves added 11 cents per share to earnings.

"The earnings show how well JPMorgan can be managed in one of the roughest times," said money manager Michael Holland, founder of Holland & Co. "They were able to pull off a meet-or-beat quarter."

The bank's return on equity, a key measure of shareholder profits, fell to 8 percent from 11 percent a year earlier and 9 percent in the 2011 third quarter.

The company's quarter-end share count declined 4 percent from a year earlier as it bought back stock.

For the first time in three quarters, JPMorgan booked more income and revenue from its credit card and card loan businesses than from any other area.

Net income from the consumer credit areas was $1.1 billion, or 28.2 percent of total profit. Investment banking profit, by far the largest generator of profits in the first three quarters of 2011, fell 52 percent to $726 million, or 19.5 percent of total quarterly profit.

(Additional reporting by Jed Horowitz and Angela Moon in New York, Rick Rothacker in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Ben Berkowitz in Boston; editing by Alwyn Scott, John Wallace and Gerald E. McCormick)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120113/bs_nm/us_jpmorgan

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Mercedes-Benz intros mbrace2 at CES, brings apps to the car

Here at Mercedes-Benz's CES keynote (it's first), the creator of the automobile just unveiled the successor to its telematics system: mbrace2. This second generation builds upon last year's release, focusing heavily on adding social media into the mix with app support like Twitter, Facebook and Yelp via a smartphone -- much in the vein of BMW Apps and Ford SYNC AppLink. Rolling out first in the 2013 SL and later eventually to all US models, CEO Dieter Zetsche also mentioned it'll update itself, as lets face it, visits just to the dealer just for new features isn't pleasant nor speedy. Stay tuned for a hands-on from the show floor in a few.

Gallery: Mercedes Benz CES keynote

Joe Pollicino contributed to this report.

Mercedes-Benz intros mbrace2 at CES, brings apps to the car originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Jan 2012 14:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/10/mercedes-benz-intros-mbrace2-at-ces-brings-apps-to-the-car/

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Video: Dogs help the healing process??

David Frei, founder of ?Angel on a leash? ?and host of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show on how dogs improve the lives they touch.? ?

Related Links:

http://twitter.com/nbcnightlynews

Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/45787279/

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Discovery of the smallest exoplanets: The Barnard's star connection

Thursday, January 12, 2012
This artist's concept depicts an itsy bitsy planetary system -- so compact, in fact, that it's more like Jupiter and its moons than a star and its planets. Astronomers using data from NASA's Kepler mission and ground-based telescopes recently confirmed that the system, called KOI-961, hosts the three smallest exoplanets known so far to orbit a star other than our sun. An exoplanet is a planet that resides outside of our solar system. The star, which is located about 130 light-years away in the Cygnus constellation, is what's called a red dwarf. It's one-sixth the size of the sun, or just 70 percent bigger than Jupiter. The star is also cooler than our sun, and gives off more red light than yellow. The smallest of the three planets, called KOI-961.03, is actually located the farthest from the star, and is pictured in the foreground. This planet is about the same size as Mars, with a radius only 0.57 times that of Earth. The next planet to the upper right is KOI-961.01, which is 0.78 times the radius of Earth. The planet closest to the star is KOI-961.02, with a radius 0.73 times the Earth's. All three planets whip around the star in less than two days, with the closest planet taking less than half a day. Their close proximity to the star also means they are scorching hot, with temperatures ranging from 350 to 836 degrees Fahrenheit (176 to 447 degrees Celsius). The star's habitable zone, or the region where liquid water could exist, is located far beyond the planets. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The discovery of the three smallest planets yet orbiting a distant star, which was announced today at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society, has an unusual connection to Barnard's star, one of the Sun's nearest neighbors.

The discovery was made by a scientific team led by astronomers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) that included three members from Vanderbilt. The team used data from NASA's Kepler mission combined with additional observations of a single star, called KOI-961, to determine that it possesses three planets that range in size from 0.57 to 0.78 times the radius of Earth. This makes them the smallest of the more than 700 exoplanets confirmed to orbit other stars.

In their investigation of KOI-961, which is about 130 light years away in the Cygnus constellation, the astronomers found that it is nearly identical to Barnard's star, which is only six light years away in the constellation Ophiuchus. This similarity allowed them to use information about Barnard's star, which was discovered in 1916 by Vanderbilt astronomer E.E. Barnard, to determine the mass, size and luminosity of the distant star. These values, in turn, were used to determine the size of the three new exoplanets.

"Barnard's star and KOI-961 are both M dwarfs, which are also known as red dwarfs. This is the smallest category of stars. They are popular targets for exoplanet hunters because their small size makes it easier to detect Earth-sized planets," said Keivan Stassun, the professor of astronomy who headed the Vanderbilt contingent. The other Vanderbilt scientists involved were Research Assistant Professors Joshua Pepper and Leslie Hebb.

From the 1960's through the 1980's, astronomers thought that Barnard's star also had a planetary system ? specifically one or two planets larger than Jupiter. If their existence had been verified, it would have been a scientific first, but the evidence was ultimately discredited. Today, advances in telescope technology and image processing allow astronomers to identify stars with exoplanets with considerable confidence.

Barnard's star favorite of science fiction destination

Although Barnard's star is too dim to be seen by the naked eye, its proximity to the Sun and the possibility that it possessed a planetary system made it a favorite destination for science fiction writers. It appears in dozens of science fiction novels, including Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, movies like the 1979 film The Alien Encounters, television series including Galactica Discovers Earth and a number of computer and video games.

By contrast, KOI-961 is one of thousands of nameless stars that NASA's Kepler mission has identified as candidates that may possess planetary systems. The Kepler spacecraft contains a specially designed telescope that continuously monitors the brightness of 150,000 stars at a time. It flags stars whose brightness dips periodically because the dimming could be caused by a planet that passes in the front of the star as viewed from Earth. Astronomers call this the transit method of planet detection.

The Caltech team used the Kepler data on KOI-961 along with follow-up observations from the Palomar Observatory near San Diego and the W.W. Keck Observatory in Hawaii to confirm the existence of its planetary system and to determine the size of its planets.

Vanderbilt astronomers helped determine star's size

The transit method provides astronomers with the ratio of the size of the planet to that of the star. As a result, they needed to determine the star's size to calculate the size of the planets. The Kepler telescope gives some crude information about a star's diameter, but the researchers knew that this data is particularly unreliable for M dwarfs, Stassun said. So the Vanderbilt contingent performed the additional telescope observations and analysis that were required to get an accurate estimate of the star's size.

To get better estimates of the star's properties, the astronomers obtained an accurate measure of the star's color from Vanderbilt's telescope in southern Arizona and a detailed spectrum of the star from Palomar and Keck. This provided a fingerprint of KOI-961. "When we compared its fingerprint with those of the best known M dwarfs we found that Barnard's star was the best match," said Stassun.

That was fortunate because Barnard's star is the one of the most studied and best characterized M dwarfs. Specifically, there is an accurate estimate of its size, which is one-fifth that of the Sun. This allowed the researchers to start with a mathematical model of Barnard's star and alter it to account for the subtle differences between the two stars. When they did, the model produced an even smaller estimate of KOI-961's size: about one-sixth that of the Sun.

Once the size of the star was established, the team used the Kepler data to calculate that the three exoplanets range from the size of Mars to slightly more than three-quarters the size of Earth. They also determined that these planets orbit the star with periods ranging from a half day to two days. Such short periods mean that all three orbit so close to their star that they must be too hot for liquid water to exist and life to evolve, the astronomers calculate.

New system comparable in size to Jupiter and its moons

The diminutive dimensions of this planetary system prompted John Johnson, the principal investigator of the research from NASA's Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech, to comment, "The really amazing thing about this system is that the closest size comparison is to Jupiter and its moons." (KOI-961 is just 70 percent bigger than Jupiter and its exoplanets are comparable in size and have similar orbital periods to the Galilean moons that circle the Jovian planet.)

The fact that Barnard's star doesn't have a giant planet doesn't preclude the possibility that it has smaller planets. The discovery of another M dwarf that has small exoplanets increases the likelihood that Barnard's star may have some as well. If it does, however, the planets must orbit at a much greater distance than those at KOI-961. The Kepler mission requires that the image of a star must dip three times before it is tagged as a planet-bearing candidate. As a result, the longer a planet's orbital period, the more difficult it is to discover. For example, if a planet orbits a star once a year, it would take three years of continuous observations to detect in this fashion.

###

Vanderbilt University: http://www.exploration.vanderbilt.edu

Thanks to Vanderbilt University for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/116665/Discovery_of_the_smallest_exoplanets__The_Barnard_s_star_connection

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