SNCF to launch grant framework for social entrepreneurs

SINGAPORE: To facilitate the growth of co-operatives, the Singapore National Co-operative Federation (SNCF) will launch a comprehensive grant framework that gives budding social entrepreneurs the support they need to set up new co-operatives to deal with social needs that have yet to be met.

Existing co-operatives will also be able to use the grant to improve productivity, expand their services, and for staff development.

This was announced by SNCF Chairman Chan Tee Seng at an awards ceremony on Saturday to recognise 22 co-operatives, co-operators and supporters for their contributions toward improving the welfare of Singaporeans.

The awards commend those who have helped grow the Singapore Co-operative Movement, which includes areas such as thrift and loan, aged care, childcare, employment, and insurance.

Minister in the Prime Minister's Office Lim Swee Say and former Singapore President SR Nathan were also among those recognised as co-op champions for the support they have rendered to the co-operative movement.

Mr Lim praised the role of co-operatives here, calling them both competent and competitive.

"Here at home, our co-operatives and social enterprises are doing your best as active citizens. It's in your DNA to do good -- passion to help others to live a better life. It's in your DNA to do well -- competent and competitive, to be financially viable. How can we help others, if we're not able to help ourselves? Most of all, it's in your DNA to do more, and to do more together," he said.

Mr Lim urged individual co-operatives here to work as a network, and in partnership with other like-minded enterprises so as to meet the ever-increasing needs of the community.

As a way to encourage co-operatives to come together, the SNCF also plans to facilitate and co-pay a shared services platform that will allow these co-operatives to collaborate and develop shared services in the areas of IT, marketing, book-keeping and accounting.

-CNA/ac

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Recalibrate your expectations of how good an in-ear headphone can sound

I've been listening to Jerry Harvey's custom-molded in-ear headphones for years. The very first one, the UE10, was a game changer; in 2006 it was the best sounding in-ear headphone I'd heard. Now with his new Freqphase JH13 and JH16 in-ears, Harvey's done it again. The performance gains in clarity, detail, resolution, and stereo imaging are huge -- the adrenaline-pumping sound of the music you love over a set of Harvey's headphones can't be matched by any other in-ear 'phones.

The Jerry Harvey JH13 Freqphase in-ear headphone.

(Credit:
Steve Guttenberg/CNET)

Years before he made headphones, Harvey mixed stage monitor sound for Kiss, Van Halen, David Lee Roth, The Cult, KD Lang, Linkin Park, and many others, and that background led to his inventing the in-ear stage monitor/headphone. He founded Ultimate Ears, but now runs Jerry Harvey Audio. The man's passion for great sound knows no bounds, and he still makes time to hit the road. Harvey was on the Van Halen tour from January through June of 2012. Perfecting in-ear headphone design balanced with working with live music keep Harvey in the game.

The new $1,099 "Freqphase" JH13 and $1,149 JH16 headphones use the same types of balanced armature drivers that were in the older JH Audio models, but everything else has been redesigned. There's a new crossover network for the separate bass, midrange, and treble drivers, and the silicone tubes that direct the sound out to your ears are tuned in a new way. My photo comparing the old and new JH13 shows how different the two headphones are.

The new JH13 nails the sound of drums' dynamic attack and punch like no other in-ear I've tested. I don't spend a lot of time listening to very loud music, but I will say the Freqphase headphones sound amazing when cranked way up. The sound never turns harsh or aggressive. Listening at saner levels, the resolution is still quite extraordinary. Classical music was well served by the new headphones' sound.

The new JH13 (left), compared with the original JH13 (right).

(Credit:
Steve Guttenberg/CNET)

I'm hearing finer details of the mixes of favorite old recordings that I've heard hundreds of times, which makes the recordings sound fresher and sometimes better than I thought they were. The Freqphase JH16's sound is similar, but it has more low bass punch and impact than the JH13. The original JH16's bass could sometimes be overwhelming and too thick for my taste, but the new '16's bass definition is excellent.

I did the bulk of my listening for these tests with the headphones plugged into my
iPod Classic, listening to Apple Lossless files. I also tried the Freqphase headphones with my ALO Rx-Mk3B portable headphone amp and AlgoRhythm Solo digital-to-analog converter. The gains in see-through transparency and sheer believability of the sound were impressive, but I didn't want to get side-tracked by what the separate amp and DAC brought to the sound, so I continued with just the
iPod Classic.

Sure, the better universal-fit in-ear headphones, such as the $400 Ultimate Ears UE 900, which also use separate bass, midrange and treble balanced armature drivers can sound great. It's the best-sounding universal fit I've heard for the money, but it pales in comparison to the JH13. The UE 900 doesn't block external noise as effectively; it has limited dynamics and bass definition/power, and reduced high-frequency extension and "air" so the Black Keys' raunchy blues are scaled back. The JH13 lets the 'Keys rock out more; the difference is far from subtle. I still love the UE 900 and recommend it in its price point, but if you can afford a great custom like the JH13 or JH16 you won't be sorry.

JH Audio offers only headphones that are custom-molded to your ear canals -- they don't make universal-fit headphones. To have a set of customs made you need to first visit an audiologist to have "impressions" of your ear canals made and sent to JH Audio's factory in Apopka, Florida. Custom headphones block external noise better than universal-fit models, so you can turn down the volume when listening in noisy environments. Customs are as effective as battery-powered noise-canceling headphones, and sound better.

The JH13's sound is a revelation, but how does it compare with full-size audiophile headphones, like the $1,000 Sennheiser HD 700? The JH13 was really good, but the HD 700 was more relaxed, richer, fuller, and even more open sounding. Still, I'd never use the HD 700 in the subway, plugged into my iPod.

My $2,000 UE Personal Reference Monitors (PRM) were "designed" by me, and built with the equalization curves I selected. My PRMs sound absolutely amazing, but the JH13s' clarity and soundstage accuracy trumps those of the PRMs. Harvey knows a lot more about what it takes to make great sound than I do!

The JH13 and JH16 Freqphase in-ear headphones advance the state of the art. They're highly recommended.

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Attack at Algeria Gas Plant Heralds New Risks for Energy Development

The siege by Islamic militants at a remote Sahara desert natural gas plant in Algeria this week signaled heightened dangers in the region for international oil companies, at a time when they have been expanding operations in Africa as one of the world's last energy frontiers. (See related story: "Pictures: Four New Offshore Drilling Frontiers.")

As BP, Norway's Statoil, Italy's Eni, and other companies evacuated personnel from Algeria, it was not immediately clear how widely the peril would spread in the wake of the hostage-taking at the sprawling In Amenas gas complex near the Libyan border.

Map by National Geographic

Algeria, the fourth-largest crude oil producer on the continent and a major exporter of natural gas and refined fuels, may not have been viewed as the most hospitable climate for foreign energy companies, but that was due to unfavorable financial terms, bureaucracy, and corruption. The energy facilities themselves appeared to be safe, with multiple layers of security provided both by the companies and by government forces, several experts said. (See related photos: "Oil States: Are They Stable? Why It Matters.")

"It is particularly striking not only because it hasn't happened before, but because it happened in Algeria, one of the stronger states in the region," says Hanan Amin-Salem, a senior manager at the industry consulting firm PFC Energy, who specializes in country risk. She noted that in the long civil war that gripped the country throughout the 1990s, there had never been an attack on Algeria's energy complex. But now, hazard has spread from weak surrounding states, as the assault on In Amenas was carried out in an apparent retaliation for a move by French forces against the Islamists who had taken over Timbuktu and other towns in neighboring Mali. (See related story: "Timbuktu Falls.")

"What you're really seeing is an intensification of the fundamental problem of weak states, and empowerment of heavily armed groups that are really well motivated and want to pursue a set of aims," said Amin-Salem. In PFC Energy's view, she says, risk has increased in Mauritania, Chad, and Niger—indeed, throughout Sahel, the belt that bisects North Africa, separating the Sahara in the north from the tropical forests further south.

On Thursday, the London-based corporate consulting firm Exclusive Analysis, which was recently acquired by the global consultancy IHS, sent an alert to clients warning that oil and gas facilities near the Libyan and Mauritanian borders and in Mauritania's Hodh Ech Chargui province were at "high risk" of attack by jihadis.

"A Hot Place to Drill"

The attack at In Amenas comes at a time of unprecedented growth for the oil industry in Africa. (See related gallery: "Pictures: The Year's Most Overlooked Energy Stories.") Forecasters expect that oil output throughout Africa will double by 2025, says Amy Myers Jaffe, executive director of the energy and sustainability program at the University of California, Davis, who has counted 20 rounds of bidding for new exploration at sites in Africa's six largest oil-producing states.

Oil and natural gas are a large part of the Algerian economy, accounting for 60 percent of government budget revenues, more than a third of GDP and more than 97 percent of its export earnings. But the nation's resources are seen as largely undeveloped, and Algeria has tried to attract new investment. Over the past year, the government has sought to reform the law to boost foreign companies' interests in their investments, although those efforts have foundered.

Technology has been one of the factors driving the opening up of Africa to deeper energy exploration. Offshore and deepwater drilling success in the Gulf of Mexico and Brazil led to prospecting now under way offshore in Ghana, Mozambique, and elsewhere. (See related story: "New Oil—And a Huge Challenge—for Ghana.") Jaffe says the Houston-based company Anadarko Petroleum has sought to transfer its success in "subsalt seismic" exploration technology, surveying reserves hidden beneath the hard salt layer at the bottom of the sea, to the equally challenging seismic exploration beneath the sands of the Sahara in Algeria, where it now has three oil and gas operations.

Africa also is seen as one of the few remaining oil-rich regions of the world where foreign oil companies can obtain production-sharing agreements with governments, contracts that allow them a share of the revenue from the barrels they produce, instead of more limited service contracts for work performed.

"You now have the technology to tap the resources more effectively, and the fiscal terms are going to be more attractive than elsewhere—you put these things together and it's been a hot place to drill," says Jaffe, who doesn't see the energy industry's interest in Africa waning, despite the increased terrorism risk. "What I think will happen in some of these countries is that the companies are going to reveal new securities systems and procedures they have to keep workers safe," she says. "I don't think they will abandon these countries."

This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.

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Te'o Denies Involvement in Girlfriend Hoax

Notre Dame star linebacker Manti Te'o told ESPN that he "never, not ever" was involved in creating the hoax that had him touting what turned out to be a fictional girlfriend, "Lennay Kekua."

"When they hear the facts, they'll know," Te'o told ESPN's Jeremy Schaap in his first interview since the story broke. "They'll know that there is no way that I could be a part of this."

"I wasn't faking it," he said during a 2 1/2-hour interview, according to ESPN.com.

Te'o said he only learned for sure this week that he had been duped. On Wednesday, he received a Twitter message, allegedly from a man named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, apologizing for the hoax, Te'o told Schaap.

The sports website Deadspin, which first revealed the hoax this week, has reported that Tuiasosopo, a 22-year-old of Samoan descent who lives in Antelope Valley, Calif., asked a woman he knew for her photo and that photo became the face of Kekua's Twitter account.

Te'o told Schaap that Tuiasosopo was represented to him as Kekua's cousin.

"I hope he learns," Te'o said of Tuiasosopo, according to coverage of the interview on ESPN.com. "I hope he understands what he's done. I don't wish an ill thing to somebody. I just hope he learns. I think embarrassment is big enough."

Click Here for a Who's Who in the Manti Te'o Case

AP Photo/ESPN Images, Ryan Jones

Manti Te'o Hoax: Was He Duped or Did He Know? Watch Video

Manti Te'o Hoax: Notre Dame Star Allegedly Scammed Watch Video

Tale of Notre Dame Football Star's Girlfriend and Her Death an Alleged Hoax Watch Video

Te'o admitted to a few mistakes in his own conduct, including telling his father he met Kekua in Hawaii even though his attempt to meet her actually failed. Later retellings of that tale led to inconsistencies in media reports, Te'o said, adding that he never actually met Kekua in person.

Te'o added that he feared people would think it was crazy for him to be involved with someone that he never met, so, "I kind of tailored my stories to have people think that, yeah, he met her before she passed away."

The relationship got started on Facebook during his freshman year, Te'o said.

"My relationship with Lennay wasn't a four-year relationship," Te'o said, according to ESPN.com. "There were blocks and times and periods in which we would talk and then it would end."

He showed Schaap Facebook correspondence indicating that other people knew of Kekua -- though Te'o now believes they, too, were tricked.

The relationship became more intense, Te'o said, after he received a call that Kekua was in a coma following a car accident involving a drunk driver on April 28.

Soon, Te'o and Kekua became inseparable over the phone, he said, continuing their phone conversations through her recovery from the accident, and then during her alleged battle against leukemia.

Even so, Te'o never tried to visit Kekua at her hospital in California.

"It never really crossed my mind," he said, according to ESPN.com. "I don't know. I was in school."

But the communication between the two was intense. They even had ritual where they discussed scripture every day, Te'o said. His parents also participated via text message, and Te'o showed Schaap some of the texts.

On Sept. 12, a phone caller claiming to be Kekua's relative told Te'o that Kekua had died of leukemia, Te'o said. However, on Dec. 6, Te'o said he got a call allegedly from Kekua saying she was alive. He said he was utterly confused and did not know what to believe.

ESPN's 2 1/2-hour interview was conducted in Bradenton, Fla., with Te'o's lawyer present but without video cameras. Schaap said Te'o was composed, comfortable and in command, and that he said he didn't want to go on camera to keep the setting intimate and avoid a big production.

According to ABC News interviews and published reports, Te'o received phone calls, text messages and letters before every football game from his "girlfriend." He was in contact with her family, including a twin brother, a second brother, sister and parents. He called often to check in with them, just as he did with his own family. And "Kekua" kept in contact with Te'o's friends and family, and teammates spoke to her on the phone.

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Moth navigation probed to improve micro-drone flight

It turns out moths are far better at video games than we might have thought. When navigating through a virtual forest, hawkmoths determine their route ahead of time depending on how much of the forest they can see. Mimicking their strategy might help us improve the flying ability of the micro-drones now being built.

Moths certainly see the world differently from humans as they zip along at 25 wingbeats per second. To figure out how they use landmarks to aid their navigation, Yonatan Munk of the University of Washington in Seattle created a virtual forest containing various amounts of "fog" that obscured the virtual trees. He then tied a hawkmoth (Manduca sexta) to an input device in front of the screen. This device detected when the moth was turning and caused the visualisation to respond accordingly.

"I'm essentially giving the moth a joystick," Munk said at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting in San Francisco, where he presented the research last week.

The simple animation (see video) tricked the moth into navigating through the trees it saw. Similar techniques have been used to fool fruit flies, mice and fish. When the insect thought it was about to crash into a tree, it would often flail its legs as though trying to land or slow down.

Munk and his colleagues set up three virtual environmental scenarios to see whether moths always navigate through trees in the same way. Surprisingly, they found that the moths changed their strategy depending on visibility conditions.

If virtual "fog" rendered visibility so poor that the moth had just quarter of a second to respond to approaching obstacles, it would fly in wide circles until it found a tree, which it then used as a reference point.

Next, the researchers lifted the virtual fog slightly, giving the moth about 2 seconds to respond to obstacles. Now, if trees loomed to the left or right, the moths veered sharply towards them.

Information filter

Finally, with no fog at all, the moth could see trees even a virtual kilometre away. Now there was no longer a correlation between the moth's left and right turns and the total number of trees visible to its left or right, says Munk. However, there was a correlation between its turns and the number and position of nearby trees – in other words, moths ignored visible distant trees when navigating in very clear conditions.

It's interesting that the moths appear to plan their strategy ahead of time depending on how much of their environment they can see, says Mark Willis of Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio. "We're used to thinking of insects as little stimulus-response machines."

By controlling what an insect encounters in a virtual reality world, researchers can tease apart how the creatures integrate different sensory inputs while navigating, says Willis. This information is important if we are to design effective flight navigation algorithms for micro-drones similar in size to the moths. "We're starting to understand what's going on in those beady little bug brains," Willis says.

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

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Football: 'Guardiola to City' talk did not faze Mancini

MANCHESTER, United Kingdom: Roberto Mancini on Friday said that he was never concerned about the prospect of Pep Guardiola taking his job at Manchester City, despite speculation before the Spaniard joined Bayern Munich.

Guardiola, the former Barcelona coach, was said to be lined up for a move to Eastlands should Mancini fail to deliver a trophy this year, despite leading the club to the English Premier League title last term.

The arrival at City of former Barca directors Ferran Soriano and Txiki Begiristain as chief executive and director of football only fuelled the rumours that the champions were building a backroom team for Guardiola.

But Guardiola is now set to take over at the German giants from next season, after signing a three-year contract earlier this week.

"I think that after one year out of work he decided to go to an important team," he told a news conference. "Bayern Munich is one of the world's top clubs because of its history. He decided this because it was the best solution for him.

"I did not have any problems about (the speculation of a move to City)," he added. "I understand the newspapers write that every day every manager wants to come here because it's a good place. But I think we work very well here.

"I have a five-year contract," he said, adding that he did not think it was likely that that he would be replaced in the meantime.

Mancini, whose side are currently seven points behind league leaders and local rivals Manchester United, said that although he wants to add to his squad, he may only be able to sign young players instead of big names in the transfer window.

"I think in January it is difficult to take good players because there is not one club who can sell good players," he explained.

"Maybe we can find some young players if we get a chance. In the last 12 days we probably can do something but I am not sure."

Mancini also welcomed a move to rescind a red card handed to City defender Vincent Kompany for a challenge on Jack Wilshere in last weekend's win over Arsenal, allowing him to escape a three-match ban.

"I am very pleased because I think it (the decision) is correct," said the manager. "I think the referee managed the game very well but in that situation he did not get to see well. After, I think he did very well.

"I don't think that tackle was a red card. Sometimes it's not."

Mancini meanwhile revealed that Sergio Aguero will return to action in City's home game against Fulham on Saturday, as the Argentina international has completed his recovery from a hamstring injury.

Aguero has not played since City beat Stoke on New Year's Day.

Mancini said he was relieved City appear to have overcome several recent injury problems, with the manager blaming the Premier League's hectic schedule for the club's fitness problems.

"We don't have time to recover, this is the reason," he added. "If every player play every two days for one year then they go and play international football there is no time to recover."

- AFP/de

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RIM launches final BlackBerry 10 'Portathon' event

BlackBerry App World.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Dara Kerr/CNET)

Research In Motion will hold its final BlackBerry 10 "Portathon" event this weekend.

Starting today at 9 a.m. PT, the company will allow developers to port their applications available on other mobile platforms to BlackBerry 10. Each approved app will net the developers $100, up to a maximum of 20 applications. To sweeten the pot a bit, RIM will enter all developers who submit five or more apps into a drawing that could see them win a free BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device.

RIM has been running Portathon events nearly every week for the last several weeks in an attempt to get as many mobile developers as possible to bring their products to the operating system. Last week, Alec Saunders, RIM vice president of developer relations, tweeted that the company netted 15,000 app submissions for BlackBerry 10 in a period of 37.5 hours. As with this weekend's event, that Portathon paid developers $100 per app.

RIM has made no secret of its belief that BlackBerry 10 is the future for the company, and if the operating system fails, so too could RIM. The company is expected to hold a major event on January 30 to unveil the long-awaited operating system. CNET will, of course, be there to cover every last detail.

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First Human Contact With Large Emperor Penguin Colony

One of the largest emperor penguin colonies in Antarctica was discovered last month by a team from the International Polar Foundation's Princess Elisabeth station.

The penguin colony had previously been identified through satellite imagery by researchers from the British Antarctic Survey. The penguins themselves didn't show up very clearly, but their excrement stains on the ice did.

Expedition leader Alain Hubert, who has spent seven seasons in Antarctica, long suspected a colony existed somewhere along the vast coast near Princess Elisabeth station. "When you go on the coast," explained the Belgian explorer, "after ten minutes, penguins come out of the water to look at who you are and what you are doing."

The satellite images gave Hubert and his team a rough idea of where to start looking. When ice research brought them within 37 miles (60 kilometers) of the probable location, they hopped on their snowmobiles for a side trip. The team traversed steep crevasses from the continent's cliffs down to the ice shelf, which has been shifting 650 feet (200 meters) toward the sea each year. "We were lucky to find it," said Hubert.

They finally came upon the colony at midnight in early December, when the sun was still shining during the Antarctic summer. Spread out on the ice were 9,000 emperor penguins, about three-quarters of them chicks. Despite his polar experience, Hubert had never seen a full colony before. "You can approach them," he said. "When you talk to them, it's like they are listening to you."

Researchers hope penguins will tell them—through population numbers and colony locations—how they are faring with climate change. Emperor penguins breed on the sea ice. If the ice breaks up early, before the chicks can fend for themselves, the chicks die and the future of the colony is imperiled.

Hubert has high hopes for his newly met neighbors because they located their nursery on top of an underwater rift, where the sea ice is less likely to melt. "They are quite clever, these animals."

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Manti Te'o's Fake Girlfriend May Have Duped Others

Notre Dame star linebacker Manti Te'o's fake girlfriend "Lennay Kekua" may have hoaxed other unsuspecting suitors.

"Catfish" movie director and actor Ariel Schulman told "Good Morning America" today that he believes there may have been "a few other people duped by the fake Lennay character."

Schulman and his brother Nev Schulman have been looking into the elaborate scam and claim to be corresponding with various players involved. They have come to believe that there were "a lot of other people that she was corresponding with before and maybe even during her relationship [with Te'o]."

Nev Schulman was the subject of the 2010 movie "Catfish," which spawned the TV series, because he himself was sucked in by an Internet pretender -- or a "catfish" -- who built an elaborate fake life.

As questions mount about Te'o's possible role in the complex scam, the number one question is whether Te'o was unknowingly ensnared, as he says, or whether he was complicit in the scam.

"I stand by the guy. My heart goes out to him," Ariel Schulman said. His brother has reached out to Te'o, but has not heard back.

"He had his heart broken," Schulman said. "He was grieving for someone, whether she existed or not. Those were real feelings."

Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

Manti Te'o Hoax: Was He Duped or Did He Know? Watch Video

Manti Te'o Hoax: Notre Dame Star Allegedly Scammed Watch Video

Tale of Notre Dame Football Star's Girlfriend and Her Death an Alleged Hoax Watch Video

Click here for a who's who in the Manti Te'o case

Te'o has kept a low-profile since the news of the scandal broke. He released a statement calling the situation "incredibly embarrassing" and maintaining that he was a victim of the hoax.

He was captured briefly by news cameras on Thursday at a Florida training facility, but has not spoken publicly.

As for the woman whose photo was used as the face of Lennay Kekua, "Inside Edition" has identified her as Diane O'Meara who is very much alive. The show caught up with her on Thursday, but she declined to comment.

ABC News' legal analyst Dan Abrams said that O'Meara may be the one person in the scandal with the power to sue since her likeness was taken and used without her permission.

As for Te'o, even if he knew about the deception, it appears that he did not do anything illegal.

"He's allowed to lie to the public. He's allowed to lie to the media. He's not allowed to lie to the authorities," Abrams said on "Good Morning America."

Questions also remain about the timeline of events and when Te'o discovered that the "love of his life," as he called her, was nothing more than a fake Internet persona.

According to Notre Dame's timeline of events, Te'o learned his girlfriend didn't exist on Dec. 6.

But in a Dec. 8 interview with South Bend, Ind., TV station WSBT, Te'o said, "I really got hit with cancer. I lost both my grandparents an my girlfriend to cancer." And on Dec. 11, he talked about his girlfriend in a newspaper interview.

Te'o alerted Notre Dame on Dec. 26 about the scam, the university said.

Click here for more scandalous public confessions.

Skeptics have also cited comments by Te'o's father Brian Te'o who told a newspaper how Kekua used to visit his son in Hawaii.

Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said the university launched their own investigation.

"Our investigators, through their work, were able to discover online chatter between the perpetrators," Swarbrick said at a Wednesday news conference. "That was sort of the ultimate proof."

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Obama to scientists: tell us how to curb gun violence

With a stroke of his pen, President Barack Obama yesterday ended a de facto freeze on US government research into gun violence as a public health problem – in place since the mid-1990s.

"We don't benefit from ignorance," Obama said, directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, to assess existing strategies to reduce gun violence and identify pressing questions that should be answered.

The executive order is one of 23 Obama signed as part of measures drawn up in response to the horrific killing last month of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

Obama also wants the US Congress to release $10 million for new research, including investigating whether playing violent video games and being exposed to other violent media makes people more likely to commit gun crimes.

With gun violence claiming some 11,000 lives in the US each year, you might imagine that reducing this toll would be near the top of the public health agenda.

For a while, in the early 1990s, it was – with CDC-backed research finding, for instance, that people with guns in the home were more likely to become victims of homicide.

Budget cut

But in 1996, after lobbying by the National Rifle Association, Congress passed language preventing the CDC from using its funds to "advocate or promote gun control". Simultaneously, it slashed $2.6 million from the agency's budget – precisely the CDC's annual funding for gun violence research.

Fearing further cuts, CDC officials have since steered away from investigating the consequences of gun ownership. "It's incredible that the CDC has been so hampered in doing research on this terrible public health issue," says David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center.

Noting that "research on gun violence is not advocacy", Obama's order stresses that the CDC is not prohibited from following his directions. It also specifies one initial priority: getting Congress to provide $20 million to expand coverage of the CDC's National Violent Death Reporting System from 18 states to the entire nation.

The NVDRS collects data on the circumstances of homicides from police, coroners' reports and other sources. It could be used to help investigate whether gun control laws are having the desired effect, but its patchy coverage means that many actions taken at the state level cannot easily be studied.

No lack of questions

Gun violence researchers have no shortage of questions that the CDC could now investigate. Garen Wintemute, who heads the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis, wants to examine the value of California's efforts to recover firearms from people who bought them legally, but subsequently became ineligible to own a gun because they were convicted of a serious crime.

"We need to know whether that intervention – which is expensive and potentially risky – actually works," Wintemute says.

Another important question is over the degree of risk posed by people with a history of alcohol abuse owning guns. That could be studied if the CDC restored questions about gun ownership to its Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, the main survey used by the agency to investigate how risky behaviours may lead to disease, injury and death. These were removed after Congress pressured the CDC to abandon gun research.

While the CDC should now be able to study gun violence once again, its budget must be approved by Congress, which is why Obama is also requesting $10 million in new funding, in addition to the $20 million for the NVDRS. The new research, the White House plan says, should include "investigating the relationship between video games, media images, and violence".

It is well established that playing violent video games causes a short-term rise in aggression – measured, for example, by testing volunteers' willingness to subject others to unpleasant blasts of sound.

Definitive answer

What is unclear is whether prolonged exposure to violent games translates into an increased risk of real-world violence. Getting a definitive answer would mean following the behaviour of thousands of children into adulthood so that any link between gaming and violent crime can be identified, says Craig Anderson, who heads the Center for the Study of Violence at Iowa State University in Ames.

Given the gun lobby's powerful influence in Congress, it is unclear whether gun studies will earn the CDC additional funds, or whether they will have to compete with existing priorities.

Obama's main proposals on gun control similarly hang in the balance, requiring congressional approval. The president wants Congress to impose bans on assault weapons and large-capacity ammunition magazines, and to close a loophole that allows individuals to sell guns privately without background checks on the buyer.

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

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