Bloody Cricket Bat Surfaces in Pistorius Case

Police in South Africa investigating the shooting death of model Reeva Steenkamp, allegedly by boyfriend and Paralympics champion Oscar Pistorius, consider a bloody cricket bat to be a central piece of evidence, according to South Africa's City Press newspaper.

Pistorius, 26, was arrested Thursday and charged with killing Steenkamp, 29, at his home in the South African capitol of Pretoria. His family says the shooting was an accident. He is in jail awaiting a bail hearing Tuesday.

PHOTOS: Paralympic Champion Charged in Killing

The City Press reported Sunday that police are investigating different scenarios involving the bat. Among them is the possibility that the flat-fronted bat was used in a violent argument before the shooting.

The paper also reported that Pistorius might have first shot Steenkamp in the bedroom, and that she possibly fled to the bathroom where she was shot three more times through the door.

When Pistorius' family arrived at the scene before paramedics, they saw him carrying Steenkamp down the stairs and performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on her, City Press reported.

Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images; Mike Holmes/The Herald/Gallo Images/Getty Images

Oscar Pistorius: Possibly Incriminating Information Leaked Watch Video

'Blade Runner' Murder Charges: Family Insist Accidental Shooting Watch Video

'Blade Runner' Murder Mystery: Family Speaks Out Watch Video

Pistorius, who is nicknamed the "blade runner" because of the carbon-fiber blades on which he runs, has canceled all his upcoming racing appearances, his agent said Sunday night.

The decision was made to "allow Oscar to concentrate on the upcoming legal proceedings and to help and support all those involved as they try to come to terms with this very difficult and distressing situation," Peet Van Zyl of In Site Athlete Management said in a statement.

Pistorius' father was quoted overnight in the South African paper The Sunday Times saying his countrymen are destroying a national icon.

"There is something fundamentally wrong with our society," Henke Pistorius said. "We build people up into heroes, who overcome immense challenges, only to take great glee in breaking them down."

Family and friends rallied to Pistorius' defense, saying they believe the Paralympic gold medalist shot the South African model by accident after he mistook her for an intruder.

"We have no doubt here that there's no substance for the allegations," uncle Arnold Pistorius said.

Pistorius' best friend, Justin Divaris, told reporters that he received a call from a distraught Pistorius just before 4 a.m. Feb. 14 in which he said there had been a terrible accident, and that he shot Steenkamp.

If convicted, Pistorius could face at least 25 years in jail.
A memorial service for Steenkamp will be held in Port Elizabeth Tuesday evening. Her body has been flown back for the service before being cremated, her family told local media.

Speaking with the media for the first time since her daughter's death in a phone interview with The Sunday Times from her home in Seaview, Port Elizabeth, June Steenkamp said,
"Why? Why my little girl? Why did this happen? Why did he do this? What for?"

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False memories prime immune system for future attacks

IN A police line-up, a falsely remembered face is a big problem. But for the body's police force – the immune system – false memories could be a crucial weapon.

When a new bacterium or virus invades the body, the immune system mounts an attack by sending in white blood cells called T-cells that are tailored to the molecular structure of that invader. Defeating the infection can take several weeks. However, once victorious, some T-cells stick around, turning into memory cells that remember the invader, reducing the time taken to kill it the next time it turns up.

Conventional thinking has it that memory cells for a particular microbe only form in response to an infection. "The dogma is that you need to be exposed," says Mark Davis of Stanford University in California, but now he and his colleagues have shown that this is not always the case.

The team took 26 samples from the Stanford Blood Center. All 26 people had been screened for diseases and had never been infected with HIV, herpes simplex virus or cytomegalovirus. Despite this, Davis's team found that all the samples contained T-cells tailored to these viruses, and an average of 50 per cent of these cells were memory cells.

The idea that T-cells don't need to be exposed to the pathogen "is paradigm shifting," says Philip Ashton-Rickardt of Imperial College London, who was not involved in the study. "Not only do they have capacity to remember, they seem to have seen a virus when they haven't."

So how are these false memories created? To a T-cell, each virus is "just a collection of peptides", says Davis. And so different microbes could have structures that are similar enough to confuse the T-cells.

To test this idea, the researchers vaccinated two people with an H1N1 strain of influenza and found that this also stimulated the T-cells to react to two bacteria with a similar peptide structure. Exposing the samples from the blood bank to peptide sequences from certain gut and soil bacteria and a species of ocean algae resulted in an immune response to HIV (Immunology, doi.org/kgg).

The finding could explain why vaccinating children against measles seems to improve mortality rates from other diseases. It also raises the possibility of creating a database of cross-reactive microbes to find new vaccination strategies. "We need to start exploring case by case," says Davis.

"You could find innocuous pathogens that are good at vaccinating against nasty ones," says Ashton-Rickardt. The idea of cross-reactivity is as old as immunology, he says. But he is excited about the potential for finding unexpected correlations. "Who could have predicted that HIV was related to an ocean algae?" he says. "No one's going to make that up!"

This article appeared in print under the headline "False memories prime our defences"

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Hugh Grant uses Twitter to announce new baby

LONDON: Hugh Grant, the British actor and campaigner for tighter press regulation, has announced on Twitter that he has become a father for a second time after a newspaper obtained his new son's birth certificate.

Grant said he was "thrilled" to become a father again, reportedly with Chinese actress Tinglan Hong, but urged the press to leave his family in peace.

The 52-year-old star of "Notting Hill" was one of the most high-profile victims of phone-hacking by the former British tabloid the News of the World, and has since become a campaigner for a more responsible press.

"In answer to some journos. Am thrilled my daughter now has a brother. Adore them both to an uncool degree. They have a fab mum," Grant said in a Twitter message on Saturday evening.

He later added: "And to be crystal clear. I am the Daddy."

His announcement was in response to a story in Britain's Mail on Sunday reporting that the child, Felix Chang, was born in a west London hospital on December 29. The tabloid cited the birth certificate, issued on February 14.

Grant tweeted: "Thanks for v kind messages. Now I've confirmed (press somehow got birth certificate & were calling), hoping my family will be left in peace."

The couple's first daughter, Tabitha, was born in 2011. At the time, the actor's publicist said the couple had a "fleeting affair" and although the pregnancy was not planned, Grant "could not be happier or more supportive".

- AFP/xq

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Russian meteorite: The conspiracy theories

A strange time for a military attack?

(Credit:
CNN; screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

A good hearty conspiracy theory can shine a sharp light on two of humanity's most enduring traits.

One, of course, is humanity's boundless imagination. The other is humanity's essential suspicion of humanity.

So while you might be deeply immersed in Bill Nye's explanation of the Russian meteorite, those with darker sensibilities have filled the Web with their fears and hauntings about the phenomenon.

There are few nations with greater awareness of dark sensibilities than Russia. The fact that there seems to be little evidence of meteorite fragments on the ground has encouraged some Russians to offer their own suspicions.

As the Toronto Globe and Mail reports, nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky hasn't been slow to offer something of a Hot War perspective.

"It's not meteors falling. It's a new weapon being tested by the Americans," he was quoted as saying.

We know from our recent experience of North Korea that weapons testing is an imprecise science.

But if you were an American in the mood to test a weapon, would Chelyabinsk, Russia, be your very first choice of place for the experiment?

Perhaps Tallahassee; Area 51; and Bialystok, Poland, were all unavailable due to prior commitments. Or perhaps it wasn't the Americans, but, say, the North Koreans, who mistook Chelyabinsk for, say, Chelsea.

Zhirinovsky's rather emotionally manipulative offering was countered by Russia's Emergency Ministry, which dedicated itself to an extensive rebuttal of his belief (and that of others) that this was some sort of military thing. The rebuttal? "Rubbish."

But that wasn't going to put off the local media, was it? Not only do they have papers to sell, they also have theories to expound to a troubled nation and world.

So, as The Atlantic reports, the local Znak newspaper accepted that this was a meteorite but insisted the explosion was caused by military defense blowing it up.

More Technically Incorrect

Yes, of course it has a source in the military. You thought it didn't?

Though I've watched a few movies in which exciting things happen, I don't find it easy to imagine that some sort of terrestrially created missile-laden aircraft could really explode a meteorite in such a manner.

It is easier to imagine, though, that politicians like Zhirinovsky might take the opportunity to foment a little rage.

Indeed, Alex Jones' infamously well-guarded Infowars site offered that Zhirinovsky insisted that America -- in the person of Secretary of State John Kerry -- had tried to give Russia advance notice of its "attack."

The Drudge Report led me to a piece at Foreign Policy that explained that Sergey Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, simply hadn't called Kerry back.

Which all suggests that Russia isn't, after all, living in fear of an attack from the U.S. Especially one over Chelyabinsk.

On balance, I prefer to currently believe Nye. He is the science guy, after all. And science guys know scientific events when they see them.

I hope.

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Pictures: What the Presidents Brought Home

Photograph by Bill Ray, Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

When paleontologist Paul Olsen (pictured left, in 1970 at 17 years old) first started looking for dinosaurs in 1967, he never dreamed that he'd end up the subject of White House memos between President Richard Nixon and his senior advisers.

Or that one of the dinosaur footprints he discovered would find its way into a presidential collection.

But that's exactly what happened when Olsen and his friend Tony Lessa (right) successfully lobbied for the creation of a park in 1970 near Livingston, New Jersey (map).

The future park, located in a quarry owned by Walter Kidde Precision Instruments, was a budding paleontologist's dream.

The area was covered in dinosaur footprints, such as ones made by Eubrontes gigantis (pictured), and some of them were more than 200 million years old.

"The footprints are very well preserved in that particular spot," said Olsen, now at Columbia University in New York. And the arrangement of some of them—many small footprints associated with one larger set—indicated behaviors that included parental care, he said.

It took Olsen and Lessa two and a half years to get the area designated as a park, but once they did, an Olsen family friend started writing letters to the White House to see if the boys could meet the President.

"[Presidential speechwriter] William Safire said he didn't want President Nixon to be associated with the concept of a dinosaur," said Olsen. The White House staff discussed this while dealing with the Vietnam War, going so far as to write memos on the situation, he said.

Olsen and Lessa never got their meeting with the President. But Nixon ended up sending the teenagers presidential commendations.

Olsen sent the President a cast of the E. gigantis footprint as a thank you. The cast now resides at the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California.

The actual footprint fossils, stored in a shed at the park, have walked off. "No one knows what happened to them," Olsen said.

February 17, 2013

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WH Chief of Staff on Leaked Immigration Plan: Let's Make Sure It Doesn't Have to Be Proposed

Feb 17, 2013 9:06am

Responding to sharp criticism from Sen. Marco Rubio over the leaked White House immigration proposal, President Obama’s chief of staff Denis McDonough pushed back this morning on “This Week,” in an interview with ABC’s Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl, saying it was up to those in Congress to ensure the president’s proposal would not be sent to Congress.

“He [Marco Rubio] says its ‘dead on arrival’ if it’s proposed. Well let’s make sure that it doesn’t have to be proposed,” McDonough said. “Let’s make sure that that group up there, the gang of eight, makes the good progress on these efforts as much as they say they want to.”

After the White House proposal was leaked, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who is currently part of a bipartisan group at work on legislation to overhaul the immigration system of the United States, issued a statement saying “President Obama’s leaked immigration proposal is disappointing to those of us working on a serious solution. The President’s bill repeats the failures of past legislation.” He went on to say that if it was actually proposed, it would be “dead on arrival” in Congress.

Karl asked McDonough for a response, but said he was not interested in engaging in a political “scrum” with Rubio.

Like “This Week” on Facebook here. You can also follow the show on Twitter here.

SHOWS: This Week

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False memories prime immune system for future attacks

IN A police line-up, a falsely remembered face is a big problem. But for the body's police force – the immune system – false memories could be a crucial weapon.

When a new bacterium or virus invades the body, the immune system mounts an attack by sending in white blood cells called T-cells that are tailored to the molecular structure of that invader. Defeating the infection can take several weeks. However, once victorious, some T-cells stick around, turning into memory cells that remember the invader, reducing the time taken to kill it the next time it turns up.

Conventional thinking has it that memory cells for a particular microbe only form in response to an infection. "The dogma is that you need to be exposed," says Mark Davis of Stanford University in California, but now he and his colleagues have shown that this is not always the case.

The team took 26 samples from the Stanford Blood Center. All 26 people had been screened for diseases and had never been infected with HIV, herpes simplex virus or cytomegalovirus. Despite this, Davis's team found that all the samples contained T-cells tailored to these viruses, and an average of 50 per cent of these cells were memory cells.

The idea that T-cells don't need to be exposed to the pathogen "is paradigm shifting," says Philip Ashton-Rickardt of Imperial College London, who was not involved in the study. "Not only do they have capacity to remember, they seem to have seen a virus when they haven't."

So how are these false memories created? To a T-cell, each virus is "just a collection of peptides", says Davis. And so different microbes could have structures that are similar enough to confuse the T-cells.

To test this idea, the researchers vaccinated two people with an H1N1 strain of influenza and found that this also stimulated the T-cells to react to two bacteria with a similar peptide structure. Exposing the samples from the blood bank to peptide sequences from certain gut and soil bacteria and a species of ocean algae resulted in an immune response to HIV (Immunology, doi.org/kgg).

The finding could explain why vaccinating children against measles seems to improve mortality rates from other diseases. It also raises the possibility of creating a database of cross-reactive microbes to find new vaccination strategies. "We need to start exploring case by case," says Davis.

"You could find innocuous pathogens that are good at vaccinating against nasty ones," says Ashton-Rickardt. The idea of cross-reactivity is as old as immunology, he says. But he is excited about the potential for finding unexpected correlations. "Who could have predicted that HIV was related to an ocean algae?" he says. "No one's going to make that up!"

This article appeared in print under the headline "False memories prime our defences"

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.

If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.

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Experts urge community to help boost mental resilience in youths

SINGAPORE: Every month, about 20 youths are identified as having early signs of psychosis -- a serious mental illness that causes hallucinations and delusions.

This is according to the Community Health Assessment Team (CHAT), that conducts free mental health assessment at a youth centre.

The youths are then referred for treatment.

In conjunction with Total Defence Day commemorated this week, the centre is urging the community to help beef up the country's psychological defence by strengthening the mental resilience among youths.

Some common concerns which youths shared with counsellors at the centre are anxiety and conflict with family members and peers.

On average, the centre at SCAPE sees about 60 youths a month. About 30 per cent of them show signs of psychosis.

Around one in 50 people will experience a psychotic episode in his or her lifetime.

Dr Swapna Verma, chief of Early Psychosis Intervention Programme at Institute of Mental Health, said: "Psychosis is not that uncommon. About two or three out of every hundred young people will have a psychotic breakdown between the late teens and early twenties and because of the stigma, they don't seek help readily so having services like this would encourage them to seek help."

CHAT was set up in 2009 to address mental health issues among those aged between 16 and 30.

The Singapore Mental Health Study conducted in 2010 showed 90 per cent of mental health issues emerged before the age of 29.

Chan Lishan, 30, said: "I went through a period of sensory deprivation. I took an enormous blanket and covered the window with it, to make it really dark. And then I took ear plugs and I wore it, and refused to hear anything. I was really paranoid and afraid of people and I just hid in my room all day. I got really compulsive in a way. Obsessive over things. I would continuously write statements - the same statements over and over again."

She has written a book about schizophrenia.

In 2007, Ms Chan was about to start her research scholarship.

She had rented a room from a family, as her parents were based overseas. But when her symptoms worsened, her landlord kicked her out.

She recounted: "I got lost, and I wandered into an old folks' home and they called the police because I was trespassing. Then when they spoke to me they realised that something was strange and they decided to put me in the lockup for the night and send me to hospital for the next day.

"I lost a lot. I lost a scholarship, I was homeless. I lost a lot of friends because I quarrelled with them for no good reason. I lost my mind because I couldn't focus very well."

Ms Chan has fully recovered and now spends her time writing and giving talks on her experience.

Experts say a multi-pronged approach is needed to help solve mental health issues among youths. This includes positive support from peers, families and the community.

- CNA/xq

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Do separate components sound better than AV receivers?

The Outlaw Audio Model 975 (top) and Model 7125 (bottom)

(Credit:
Outlaw Audio)

There's no doubt that the best of today's receivers sound great and come jam-packed with a vast range of features. Even entry-level models paired with a decent 5.1 speaker/subwoofer system can do a fine job, but some buyers aim higher. They may have invested in a 65-inch or larger display, or maybe a video projector and a 120-inch screen. They crave a sound that matches the grandeur of the picture, and they can get that only with separate components like the Outlaw Audio Model 975 Surround Processor and Model 7125 Power Amp.

The Model 975 Surround Processor's feature set is fairly minimalist, which makes it a nice alternative to today's increasingly hard-to-use receivers. The Model 975 was designed to sound good, but if you need USB inputs, 4K upscaling, Audyssey Auto Calibration, Wi-Fi, Air Play, HD Radio, Internet radio, Ethernet, or Bluetooth, the Model 975 won't cut it. True, there are just four HDMI inputs and that might be a deal-breaker for some potential customers, but I love everything else about the surround processor, including its uncluttered front panel. It's a joy to use.

I listened to the 975 with Outlaw's Model 7125 amp, and if you look under the top cover you'll see why no receiver, including lots of $2,000 or $3,000 ones, can match the sound of a well designed dedicated amp. The receivers don't have enough space to house the massive power transformers, power supply capacitors, and heat sinks for the output transistors you see in power amps like the Model 7125.

I auditioned the Model 975/7125 combo with the Pioneer SP-PK52 speaker system, along with a Hsu Research VTF-1 Mk2 subwoofer. I started with a few multichannel DVD-Audio discs, and the sound was far and away the best I've heard in the CNET listening room. The first thing I noticed was the newfound clarity, so my already positive feelings about the Pioneer speakers shot up a few notches! They sounded bigger and more powerful than before, and the better multichannel recordings generated a remarkably seamless, room-filling soundstage. That is, the gap between the front and rear speakers disappeared; the entire room was energized with sound. I could play the system louder, without strain, than I could with the 90-watt-per-channel
Denon AVR-1912 receiver. The Model 7125 is rated at 125 watts per channel, but it sounded considerably more powerful than the wattage numbers would indicate. The 51-pound Model 7125 has power reserves that receivers like the 22.4 pound Denon can never hope to muster. For example, the Model 7125 can deliver 190 watts into all seven channels with 4-ohm-rated speakers! Denon's higher-end $1,200 AVR-3313Ci receiver can deliver 165 watts per channel into easier-to-drive 6 ohm speakers, but it weighs just 26.45 pounds. There's no way the Denon could deliver close to the same power.

Under the covers: the Outlaw Model 7125 (left) and Denon AVR-1912 (right)

(Credit:
Steve Guttenberg/CNET)

If you have a receiver with 5.1 or 7.1 channel outputs on its rear panel, you may not have to buy Outlaw's Model 975 Surround Processor. You can run your receiver (bypassing its internal amps) with the 7125 and radically upgrade your sound. Outlaw also offers a range of more powerful amps, topping out with the 7x300 watt $3,499 Model 7900.

Comparing the Outlaw 975/7125 combo with a Denon AVR-1912 receiver I was surprised by the magnitude of the difference in sound quality. The Denon was fine, but the Outlaws were a lot more transparent, vivid, clear, and powerful.

Outlaw sells direct with a 30-day return policy. If you order the Model 975 ($575) and Model 7125 ($999) together, the discounted price is $1,398.

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Picture Archive: Making Mount Rushmore, 1935-1941

Photograph from Rapid City Chamber of Commerce/National Geographic

There's no such thing as Presidents' Day.

According to United States federal government code, the holiday is named Washington's Birthday, and has been since it went nationwide in 1885.

But common practice is more inclusive. The holiday expanded to add in other U.S. presidents in the 1960s, and the moniker Presidents' Day became popular in the 1980s and stuck. It may be that George Washington (b. February 22, 1732) andAbraham Lincoln (b. February 12, 1809) still get the lion's share of attention—and appear in all the retail sale ads—on the third Monday in February, but the popular idea is that all 44 presidents get feted.

Mount Rushmore is a lot like that one day a year writ large—and in granite. It's carved 60 feet (18 meters) tall and 185 feet (56 meters) wide, from Washington's right ear to Lincoln's left.

The monument's sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, grew up in Idaho, a first-generation American born to Danish parents. He studied art in France and became good friends with Auguste Rodin. Borglum mostly worked in bronze, but in the early 1910s he was hired to carve the likenesses of Confederate leaders into Stone Mountain in Georgia.

He was about to be fired from that job for creative differences about the same time that a South Dakota historian named Doane Robinson had an idea. Robinson wanted to have a monument carved into the Black Hills of South Dakota, maybe Western historical figures like Chief Red Cloud and Lewis and Clark, each on their own granite spire. (Plan a road trip in the Black Hills.)

Robinson hired Borglum and gave him carte blanche. Borglum was looking for something with national appeal, so he chose to depict four presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.

Borglum wanted to represent the first 150 years of the nation's history, choosing four presidents as symbols of their respective time periods. He took a tour of western South Dakota, searching for an ideal canvas.

The sculptor was looking for three things: a surface strong enough to sculpt, a mountain big enough to hold several figures, and a mountain face that received morning sunlight. Mount Rushmore fit the bill and was already part of a national forest, so it was easy to set aside as a national memorial.

Work started in 1927. Calvin Coolidge attended the dedication ceremony. It took 14 years to finish the carving, conducted mostly in summertime because of the area's harsh winters.

There were approximately 30 workers on the mountain at any give time. In total about 400 had worked on it by the time the monument was finished. Though the project involved thousands of pounds of dynamite and perilous climbs, not a single person died during the work.

Borglum himself died of natural causes in 1941, though, just six months before the project was declared "closed as is" by Congress that Halloween. His son Lincoln—named for his father's favorite president—took over.

In the photo above, a worker refines the details of Washington's left nostril.

About 90 percent of the mountain was carved using dynamite, which could get within 3 to 5 inches (8 to 13 centimeters) of the final facial features. For those last few inches, workers used what was known as the honeycomb method: Jackhammer workers pounded a series of three-inch-deep holes followed up by chiselers who knocked off the honeycomb pieces to get the final shape. Then carvers smoothed the "skin's" surface.

—Johnna Rizzo

February 16, 2013

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