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Thursday, February 28, 2013
ScienceDaily: Living Well News
Google Glass is an all-knowing virtual assistant ? is your head ready?
You may have recently spotted some goofy-looking headgear gracing the brows of the Google founders ? and a few supermodels, too. While it may seem like a cyberpunk fashion statement that just got too literal, Google's Project Glass, a wearable camera/display combo, may well be the future of human-machine interaction.
"One thing that we're really excited about and working hard on is transforming the way that people interact with Google," said Scott Huffman, Google's vice president of engineering for Search, showing off a video demonstrating the search engine giant's new sensation. "From the stilted one-keyword-at-a-time conversation, to more of a natural conversation ? like a human assistant."
Make no mistake, Huffman isn't talking about a virtual assistant along the lines of Apple's Siri, which responds to your questions. He's talking about a way to interact with a search engine ? and all its associated products ? that includes it gathering so much data about your life and habits, it will start anticipating your needs. Cool? Yes. Creepy? Maybe that, too.
"If you think about a good assistant," Huffman told me, pausing to correct himself, "a great assistant ? they don't interrupt you every few minutes." He described his own assistant, someone who doesn't interrupt him often, but certainly knows when she should give him a gentle reminder or a sharp kick.
"It's the opposite of the experience on your phone today," Huffman pointed out, referencing how disruptive our smartphones can be. Not only are they not capable of prioritizing our notifications, but they're mostly incapable of anticipating how the priorities themselves change depending on where we are ? or what time it is.
Though Google's improved experience will span all manner of devices ? "We're trying to think of it as ... your assistant is ubiquitously with you," said Huffman ? it's Google Glass that has everyone talking.
Under development in the Google X Lab ? that mysterious skunkworks where self-driving cars, neural networks, and other quirky yet ambitious projects are being dreamed up ? Glass is the most provocative way in which this assistant, your main touchpoint with Google, might interact with you.
A small display lives on a frame that resembles eyeglasses. It is connected to a camera, microphone, bone-conducting speaker, and more. Thanks to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support, the device communicates with other gadgets, such as your smartphone, as well as the good ol' Web.
"OK, Glass!" ? with a command like that, you can prompt the device to take pictures, record video, initiate video chats, provide directions, send messages, search, translate and more. Cards resembling those seen in Google Now ? Google's response to Apple's Siri ? may occasionally appear in the tiny display, meant to remind you of a dentist appointment, provide updates on an upcoming flight, and so on.
A concept video released by Google about a year ago left some people under the misconception that Glass provides an augmented reality experience, where information is overlaid across a field of vision. Instead, as a new demo video confirms, Glass is significantly less disruptive. You actually have to glance up at the display.
Google's intent with Glass is to provide you with all the information you need, before you even think of a question, but without being a nag. Sound too crazy? Not for Google, says ... Google.
What people want ... and what they don't know they want
"Our role is to understand user needs in terms of our search products and make sure that we're developing a search experience that meets and exceeds expectations," Jon Wiley, Google's lead user experience designer for Search, told me in mid-December. To get a sense of how that was going, Wiley said, the company conducted a little human-nature study.
Wiley's team gathered up a group of folks "from all walks of life" and installed specialized software on their mobile devices. Throughout the day, this software prompted the study participants with a very open-ended question: "What was the last bit of information you needed?" The point of the study wasn't to trace the flow of data through the participants' handsets. Wiley's team just wanted to know what sort of information ? simple or complicated, mundane or exciting ? people were hunting for at any given moment.
The study not only allowed Wiley's team to better capture the sorts of queries that people don't ask a search engine ? "Why is my daughter being mean to me?" ? but also the context in which all these questions arose. Where were people when they needed to know these things? What time was it? What were they doing? By gathering these details, the team could attempt to understand the contexts of searches (even the helpless ones) in our day-to-day, human trudge.
One day, Google could perhaps provide all that information without prompting. After all, a diligent user of Google Now already gets flight information, traffic alerts, and other details automatically ? just based on itineraries, daily travel patterns, etc. But with Glass that information could always be front-and-center at the very moment it's needed. What if you're late for a flight? Checking for its gate information by reaching for a boarding pass, pulling your phone out of your pocket, or finding an airport information board wastes precious seconds. Glass could put the information right in front of you without delay.
The more information we share with Google, even just so that Google can better understand our data needs, the more privacy concerns will be raised. Google is already no stranger to privacy lawsuits and legislation, so how much more heated will things get when the company introduces eyeglasses that know as much ? or more ? about you than you know yourself?
Perhaps even more importantly, Google Glass is one of the first digital technologies capable of recording the world around you constantly: Will that cause discomfort for others? Will they start to avoid you once you're wearing a device that allows you to take photos or record video without even the slightest warning? And when will Google Glass data be brought into the courtroom for a divorce case, a robbery, or worse?
Despite its magical promises (and ominous portents), Google's creation may remain out of reach for a while ? until late 2013, at the very earliest. Google's currently only allowing select individuals to participate in the Google Glass Explorer program. This first publicly available Glass edition costs $1,500, and comes with an invite to a special pick-up event and more. In order to be part of the Glass Explorer program, you had to pre-order during Google I/O 2012 conference last June or make it through the recently announced #IfIHadGlass application process.
Nerd alert!
While the general public waits for the latest Google gadget to become available though, there's been plenty of criticism of Glass' appearance ? "these specs look like the freaky science fiction concept they are," Gizmodo's Mario Aguilar declared.
And the behoodied Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, not exactly a fashion icon himself, is among those concerned about how he'll look wearing Glass on his face, reports Ryan Mac. The Forbes' writer witnessed an exchange between Zuckerberg and Google co-founder Sergey Brin after an event at the University of California on Wednesday.
"How do you look out from this without looking awkward?" Zuckerberg reportedly asked. "You know, how are you supposed to use these this without breaking eye contact?" (Neither Facebook nor Google chose to confirm that this conversation occurred.)
Still, Google seems to be working hard to ditch the belief that only the nerdiest of nerds will don Glass. The New York Times' Claire Cain Miller reports that Google may be in negotiations with eyewear seller Warby Parker "to help it design more fashionable frames" for Glass.
The company also collaborated with designer Diane von Furstenberg during last year's New York Fashion Week and brought Glass onto the runway.
?I am so excited to introduce Glass to the fashion world and use this revolutionary technology to give everyone a unique perspective into fashion," von Furstenberg was quoted as remarking, while Google co-founder Sergey Brin added that "beauty, style and comfort are as important to Glass as the latest technology."
Until Glass is publicly available ? and until we discover whether this groundbreaking virtual personal assistant is worth bending a fashion rule or two ? the last words on the subject go to actor LeVar Burton. Speaking for Geordi La Forge, a character he played in "Star Trek: The Next Generation," Burton tweets: "#ifihadglass It would be a downgrade."
Want more tech news or interesting links? You'll get plenty of both if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.
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Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Looks like Pluto will have a moon named 'Vulcan'
The votes are in for the SETI Institute's Pluto Rocks Poll, and, thanks in part to William Shatner, Mr. Spock's home planet is a clear winner.?
This photo provided and annotated by NASA/Hubble Space Telescope shows the five moons in their orbits around Pluto. The smallest moons ? no more than 20 miles (32 kilometers) across ? were discovered in that past two years and are currently referred to as P4 and P5.
NASA/Hubble Space Telescope/AP
EnlargeThe votes have been tallied and the results are in from the SETI Institute?s?Pluto Rocks Poll: ?Vulcan? and ?Cerberus? have come out on top for names for Pluto?s most recently-discovered moons, P4 and P5.
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After 450,324 votes cast over the past two weeks, Vulcan is the clear winner with a landslide 174,062 votes? due in no small part to a little?Twitter intervention by Mr. William Shatner,?I?m sure.
In other words??yes,?the Trekkies have won.
During a Google+ Hangout today,?SETI Institute?senior scientist Mark Showalter ? who discovered the moons and opened up the poll ? talked with SETI astronomer Franck Marchis and MSNBC?s Alan Boyle about the voting results. Showalter admitted that he wasn?t quite sure how well the whole internet poll thing would work out, but he?s pleased with the results.
?I had no idea what to expect,? said Showalter. ?As we all know the internet can be an unruly place? but by and large this process has gone very smoothly. I feel the results are fair.?
As far as having a name from the Star Trek universe be used for an actual astronomical object?
?Vulcan works,? Showalter said. ?He?s got a family tie to the whole story. Pluto and Zeus were brothers, and Vulcan is a son of Pluto.?
And what can you say when even?Mr. Spock agrees?
The other winning name, Cerberus, is currently used for an asteroid. So because the IAU typically tries to avoid confusion with two objects sharing the same exact name, Showalter said he will use the Greek version of the spelling: Kerberos.
The next step will be to submit these names to the International Astronomical Union for official approval, a process that could take 1?2 months.
(Although who knows? maybe Bill can help move that process along as well?)
Read more about the names on the Pluto Rocks ballot?here.
Jason Major is a graphic artist from?Rhode Island?now living and working in?Dallas, Texas. He writes about astronomy and space exploration on his blog?Lights In The Dark, on Universe Today and also on?Discovery?News.
This story originally appeared in?Universe Today.
Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow?@universetoday?on?Twitter
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Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Landmark civil rights law faces critical Supreme Court test
Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images, file
U.S. Supreme Court members (first row L-R) Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, Chief Justice John Roberts, Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, (back row L-R) Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, Associate Justice Samuel Alito and Associate Justice Elena Kagan.
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By Pete Williams, NBC News Justice Correspondent
The U.S. Supreme Court this week will consider whether a landmark civil rights law, the Voting Rights Act, remains constitutionally valid, given the growth in the political power of minority voters and candidates.
Civil rights groups fear the court's conservatives are prepared to gut what the ACLU calls "the most important piece of civil rights legislation Congress has ever enacted."
The justices will hear oral arguments in the case Wednesday and rule sometime before the current court term ends in late June.
Passed by Congress in 1965 and renewed four times since then, most recently in 2006, a key provision of the law requires states with a history of discrimination at the polls to get federal permission before making any changes to their election procedures ? from congressional redistricting to changing the locations of polling places.
The law was at the core of last year's successful efforts to block strict voter photo ID laws in Texas and South Carolina and to prevent Texas from redrawing its legislative and congressional boundaries in a manner that challengers claimed would have discriminated against minority voters.
"The last election vividly showed that voter suppression and voting discrimination are not just problems of the past. They continue to undermine our democratic process," says the ACLU's Steve Shapiro.
The challenge to the law comes from Shelby County, Alabama, a mostly white suburb south of Birmingham.? It argues that the pre-clearance requirement ? which covers nine entire states and 66 counties or townships in seven others ? is unconstitutional.
The areas covered by the law, it says, include some localities that have made substantial reforms but leave out other parts of the country that have failed to root out discrimination at the polls.
"Florida has been forced into pre-clearance litigation to prove that reducing early voting from 14 days to 8 is not discriminatory, when states such as Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania have no early voting at all," says Bert Rein of Washington, DC, the lawyer for the county.
While the history of blatant discrimination at the polls justified renewing the law in the past, Shelby County says, Congress failed to marshal enough evidence in 2006 to justify extending it for another 25 years.? "At most, the 2006 legislative record shows scattered and limited interference with voting rights, a level plainly insufficient" to sustain the pre-clearance requirement, Rein says.
Since 1990, adds Alabama?s Attorney General, Luther Strange, African Americans in the state have registered and voted in larger percentages than in states outside the South.
?African Americans hold seats in the legislature at percentages that are roughly commensurate with Alabama?s 26 percent African-American population,? Strange says.
But the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund says the current map is a close enough fit to cover the areas of greatest concern.? "Congress is not a surgeon with a scalpel when it acts to legislate across the fivty states, but it can reasonably attack discrimination where it finds it," the group says.
If the law were struck down, civil rights groups fear the areas covered by the law would revert to their old habits.
Warns the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human rights, ?There is a significant risk of backsliding and a likelihood that millions of minority voters will face new barriers to the exercise of their most fundamental human right.?
President Obama expressed a similar sentiment in a radio interview last week. If covered jurisdictions no longer had to defend their electoral changes in advance, Obama said, civil rights groups would be forced to file lawsuits after voting changes were already in place.
?There are some parts of the country where obviously folks have been trying to make it harder for people to vote. So generally speaking, you?d see less protection before an election with respect to voting rights,? Mr. Obama said.
The Justice Department, which is defending the law before the Supreme Court, argues that the coverage formula is flexible, allowing local governments to bail out of the pre-clearance requirement if they can demonstrate they have not discriminated against minority voters for at least ten years.
During the past three decades, 38 bailouts have been granted, freeing 196 local jurisdictions of the preclearance requirement, the Justice Department says.? They include the first ever granted from parts of Alabama, Georgia, Texas, and Virginia, four of the states that are otherwise covered by the law.
Four years ago, the Supreme Court strongly suggested that several justices had doubts about its constitutionality, given recent electoral reforms. "Things have changed in the South," the court said in 2009.? "Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare."
The court then went on to reject a constitutional challenge to the pre-clearance requirement, but it strongly suggested Congress should update the coverage formula.? Because, however, no changes have since made, the court may prepared to go the rest of the way this time.
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In shift, Syrian regime says it's ready to talk to rebels
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said in Moscow that the Assad government wanted to engage in 'dialogue with anyone?who's willing for it, even those who carry arms.'
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem attends a meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, unseen, in Moscow on Monday, Feb. 25, 2013.
Ivan Sekretarev/AP
EnlargeFor the first time since the Syrian civil war began almost two years ago, a top member of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government today offered to engage in talks with rebel leaders to find a diplomatic resolution to the fighting. But the opposition leadership has reportedly dismissed the offer, insisting that the president must first step down.
Skip to next paragraph Arthur BrightEurope Editor
Arthur Bright is the Europe Editor at The Christian Science Monitor.? He has worked for the Monitor in various capacities since 2004, including as the Online News Editor and a regular contributor to the Monitor's Terrorism & Security blog.? He is also a licensed Massachusetts attorney.
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Speaking at a press conference in Moscow before talks with his Russian counterpart, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said that "We're ready for a dialogue with anyone who's willing for it, even those who carry arms," reports the Associated Press.
"We are confident that reforms will come about not with the help of bloodshed but through dialogue," he added. The AP notes that it is unclear whether he meant that the government would be willing to negotiate with rebels before they laid down their arms.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also called upon Syria to open negotiations with the rebels, saying that "the situation in Syria is at a crossroads now."
But in an email to the Guardian, Khalid Saleh, a spokesman of the Western-backed Syrian opposition umbrella group known as the Syrian National Coalition, called Mr. Moallem's offer "empty" and "deceitful." Mr. Saleh insisted that talks could not involve Mr. Assad or his allies, and that Assad must resign.
There is nothing new in what Moualem said. It is more of the same empty offers the regime has been putting out for the last few months.
We are not looking for a dialogue. We are offering negotiations with those who have not committed crimes against Syrians to transfer powers from the Assad regime to the Syrian people.?Moualem's offer is deceitful, and it seems that he wants to divide up those who are fighting against Assad. It will be more appropriate for?Moualem ? who is offering dialogue with those carrying weapons ? to ask his regime to stop using scud missiles against those who are not armed.
We need serious movement from Assad regime not repeated empty offers.
Still, Moallem's comments come amid signs from both sides of the conflict ? and from the US and Russia ? in favor of a diplomatic solution. Despite Saleh's rejection of Moallem's proposal, it was only a few weeks ago that Mouaz al-Khatib, the SNC's leader, called for Assad to open negotiations with his organization. BBC News reported that Mr. Khatib's offer displeased many in the SNC, which has long insisted that Assad's resignation was a precondition for any talks.
And Mr. Lavrov is scheduled to meet with newly appointed US Secretary of State John Kerry in Berlin on Wednesday. The New York Times notes that even before the meeting was planned, Mr. Kerry had indicated that he had new ideas toward resolving the Syrian conflict, and that working with Russia, a staunch ally of Mr. Assad, appears to be part of those ideas.
Reuters notes that there are multiple sticking points before even an initial meeting could take place. One is the venue: the rebels insist that any negotiations would have to take place abroad or in rebel-held territory, while the Syrian government insists that it should host someplace within state control.
Further, the rebels demand that any peace talks must ultimately lead to Assad's departure from the government. Assad told UN envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi that he intends to complete his term and run for reelection in 2014.
And even if talks were held, Reuters adds, the Syrian opposition's political leaders, who would be conducting the talks, are in large part disconnected from the rebels on the ground, who appear to be willing to fight until Assad is toppled.
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APNewsBreak: Taliban attacks not down after all
FILE - In this Jan. 26, 2012 file photo, an Afghan solider, left, stands guard at the scene of a suicide attack in Lashkar Gah, Helmand province south of Kabul, Afghanistan. The U.S.-led military coalition in Afghanistan incorrectly reported a decline in Taliban attacks last year, and officials said Tuesday that there was actually no change in the number of attacks on international troops from 2011 to 2012. (AP Photo/Abdul Khaleq, File)
FILE - In this Jan. 26, 2012 file photo, an Afghan solider, left, stands guard at the scene of a suicide attack in Lashkar Gah, Helmand province south of Kabul, Afghanistan. The U.S.-led military coalition in Afghanistan incorrectly reported a decline in Taliban attacks last year, and officials said Tuesday that there was actually no change in the number of attacks on international troops from 2011 to 2012. (AP Photo/Abdul Khaleq, File)
FILE - In this Feb. 13, 2013 file photo, outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta speaks during his last news conference as defense secretary. at the Pentagon. The U.S.-led military coalition in Afghanistan incorrectly reported a decline in Taliban attacks last year, and officials said Tuesday that there was actually no change in the number of attacks on international troops from 2011 to 2012. In mid-December, Panetta said "violence is down," in 2012, and that Afghan forces "have gotten much better at providing security" in areas where they have taken the lead role. He said the Taliban can be expected to continue to attack, "but overall they are losing." (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The American-led military coalition in Afghanistan backed off Tuesday from its claim that Taliban attacks dropped off in 2012, tacitly acknowledging a hole in its widely repeated argument that violence is easing and that the insurgency is in steep decline.
In response to Associated Press inquiries about its latest series of statistics on security in Afghanistan, the coalition command in Kabul said it had erred in reporting a 7 percent decline in attacks. In fact there was no decline at all, officials said.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who is among the senior officials who had publicly repeated the assertion of an encouraging drop-off in Taliban attacks last year, was disturbed to learn of the error, said his spokesman, George Little.
"This particular set of metrics doesn't tell the full story of progress against the Taliban, of course, but it's unhelpful to have inaccurate information in our systems," Little said.
A coalition spokesman, Jamie Graybeal, attributed the miscounting to clerical errors and said the problem does not change officials' basic assessment of the war, which they say is on a positive track as American and allied forces withdraw.
The 7 percent figure had been included in a report posted on the website of the coalition, the International Security Assistance Force, on Jan. 22 as part of its monthly update on trends in security and violence. It was removed from the website recently without explanation. After the AP asked last week about the missing report, coalition officials said they were correcting the data and would re-publish the report. As of Tuesday afternoon it had not reappeared.
U.S. and allied officials have often cited declining violence as a sign that the Taliban have been degraded and that Afghan forces are in position to take the lead security role when the last U.S. combat troops leave Dec. 31, 2014.
In mid-December, Panetta said "violence is down" for 2012 and Afghan forces "have gotten much better at providing security" in areas where they have taken the lead. He said the Taliban could be expected to continue to attack, "but overall they are losing."
Little said Panetta was briefed only "very recently" on the erroneous data.
U.S. and alliance officials try to measure progress against the Taliban from a variety of angles. Those include, for example, indications that the Taliban have lost much of their influence in population centers.
"The fact that 80 percent of the violence has been taking place in areas where less than 20 percent of the Afghan population lives remains unchanged," Little said.
The Taliban have lost a good deal of territory since a 2010 surge of U.S. forces in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, and they failed to recover it during the past two fighting seasons. Even so, they are resilient, and they are expected to severely test Afghan forces as the U.S. and its coalition partners step further into the background this year and complete their combat mission next year.
Many people, including coalition officials, have cautioned against the heavy reliance on statistics in assessing war progress. Yet the figures often are highlighted when they fit the narrative being promoted by leaders in Washington and other allied capitals.
"It is disturbing that, after 10 years of war, no reliable count of trends in violence exist even in terms of deaths, the most visible form of violence and one that is only a small portion of the actual causes and patterns of violence in the war," Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote in February 2012.
Graybeal did not fully explain erroneous reporting of 2012 Taliban attacks by the International Security Assistance Force. It was not clear, for example, at what point the data errors began or who discovered them.
"During a quality control check, ISAF recently became aware that some data was incorrectly entered into the database that is used for tracking security-related incidents across Afghanistan," Graybeal said earlier.
He said an audit determined that portions of the data from unilateral Afghan military operations were "not properly reflected" in the trends ISAF had reported in its monthly updates.
"After including this unilateral ANSF (Afghan National Security Force) data into our database, we have determined that there was no change in the total number of EIAs (enemy initiated attacks) from 2011 to 2012," Graybeal said.
"This was a record-keeping error that we recognized and have now corrected," he added.
While ISAF routinely reports trends in Taliban attacks, it does not reveal exact numbers of attacks. Judging from its illustrative charts, however, it appears that there were more than 28,000 Taliban "enemy initiated" attacks in 2011.
The coalition defines enemy initiated attacks as those by small arms, mortars, rockets and improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. But it does not include IEDs that are found and cleared before they explode.
Trends in Taliban attacks are one yardstick used by ISAF to measure war progress. Others include the state of security in populated areas, the number of coalition and Afghan casualties, the level of economic activity, the degree to which civilians can move about freely and the performance of Afghan security forces.
Graybeal said that even though the number of 2012 Taliban attacks was unchanged from 2011, "our assessment of the fundamentals of campaign progress has not changed. The enemy is increasingly separated from the population, and the ANSF are currently in the lead for the vast majority of partnered operations."
___
Follow Robert Burns on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/robertburnsAP
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Greece helicopter prison escape attempt foiled
ATHENS, Greece (AP) ? A helicopter swooped down on a prison courtyard Sunday as armed men on board fired on guards and lowered a rope to help a convicted killer make his fourth attempt to escape from a Greek prison.
But the plot was foiled after the prisoner was shot and the chopper forced to land in the prison's parking lot.
The dramatic escape attempt was one of a handful involving helicopters in Greece, and the first time such plans have failed.
Authorities said the chartered helicopter ? carrying two armed passengers, a pilot and a technician ? first tried to rip off the chicken-wire fence surrounding Trikala prison with a hook dangling from a rope. But that didn't work, so a rope was lowered down to whisk away Panagiotis Vlastos. Another prisoner, an unnamed Albanian national also in the courtyard at the time, may also have been part of the escape plan.
At the same time, the armed passengers used AK-47 assault rifles to fire on the prison guards. One guard, who was inside a post, was slightly injured by shards of flying glass. He and others returned fire, injuring Vlastos, who had managed to climb into the helicopter, as well as the helicopter's technician. Vlastos fell from a height of about 3 meters (10 feet) into the courtyard, and the helicopter was eventually grounded in the parking lot.
Vlastos, 43, is a convicted murderer and racketeer serving a life term who had tried and failed three times before to escape from prison.
Prison officials told TV stations Mega and NET that they recovered well over 500 bullets fired from the helicopter. The Ministry of Justice, in statements describing the escape attempt, added that the helicopter passengers also carried, but did not use, "improvised explosive devices."
Authorities said Vlastos was wounded in the legs but is being treated in the prison hospital because his injuries were not deemed serious enough for a transfer elsewhere. The technician's hand was slightly wounded.
It was not immediately clear if the pilot and flight technician had willingly participated in the escape attempt or had been forced to fly to the prison, which is located 328 km (205 miles) northwest of Athens. Also unclear was whether the second would-be escapee was in on the scheme or just happened to be in the courtyard and tried to take advantage of the situation.
The helicopter was hired from a western Athens suburb and was supposed to fly to Thessaloniki, in northern Greece. But it deviated from is flight path to head to the prison.
This is the third time a helicopter has been used in an attempted prison escape in Greece. Convicted criminals Vassilis Paleokostas and Alket Rizaj were whisked by helicopter from the high-security Korydallos prison in Athens in June 2006. They were caught, but escaped for a second time ? again using a helicopter ? in February 2009. Paleokostas is still at large.
Vlastos was first arrested in 1994 in the murder of two members of a rival criminal gang. He was convicted last year as the behind-the-bars mastermind of the kidnapping of shipping tycoon Pericles Panagopoulos. Panagopoulos was kidnapped in January 2009 and released after eight days, when a ransom of ?30 million was paid.
While awaiting trial for the kidnapping, Vlastos tried to escape in December 2011 from Korydallos prison along with three members of armed anarchist group Conspiracy Nuclei of Fire. The four used a pistol and knives to take hostage three prison guards and 25 visiting relatives of other prisoners. The four surrendered to authorities after a five-hour standoff.
Vlastos had also tried to escape, unsuccessfully, in 1994 and 1998.
___
Demetris Nellas contributed to this report from Athens.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/greece-helicopter-prison-escape-attempt-foiled-220755584.html
Fragments of continents hidden under lava in the Indian Ocean
Monday, February 25, 2013
The islands Reunion and Mauritius, both well-known tourist destinations, are hiding a micro-continent, which has now been discovered. The continent fragment known as Mauritia detached about 60 million years ago while Madagascar and India drifted apart, and had been hidden under huge masses of lava. Such micro-continents in the oceans seem to occur more frequently than previously thought, says a study in the latest issue of Nature Geoscience ("A Precambrian microcontinent in the Indian Ocean," Nature Geoscience, Vol 6, doi: 10.1038/NGEO1736).
The break-up of continents is often associated with mantle plumes: These giant bubbles of hot rock rise from the deep mantle and soften the tectonic plates from below, until the plates break apart at the hotspots. This is how Eastern Gondwana broke apart about 170 million years ago. At first, one part was separated, which in turn fragmented into Madagascar, India, Australia and Antarctica, which then migrated to their present position.
Plumes currently situated underneath the islands Marion and Reunion appear to have played a role in the emergence of the Indian Ocean. If the zone of the rupture lies at the edge of a land mass (in this case Madagascar / India), fragments of this land mass may be separated off. The Seychelles are a well-known example of such a continental fragment.
A group of geoscientists from Norway, South Africa, Britain and Germany have now published a study that suggests, based on the study of lava sand grains from the beach of Mauritius, the existence of further fragments. The sand grains contain semi-precious zircons aged between 660 and 1970 million years, which is explained by the fact that the zircons were carried by the lava as it pushed through subjacent continental crust of this age.
This dating method was supplemented by a recalculation of plate tectonics, which explains exactly how and where the fragments ended up in the Indian Ocean. Dr. Bernhard Steinberger of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences and Dr. Pavel Doubrovine of Oslo University calculated the hotspot trail: "On the one hand, it shows the position of the plates relative to the two hotspots at the time of the rupture, which points towards a causal relation," says
Steinberger. "On the other hand, we were able to show that the continent fragments continued to wander almost exactly over the Reunion plume, which explains how they were covered by volcanic rock." So what was previously interpreted only as the trail of the Reunion hotspot, are continental fragments which were previously not recognized as such because they were covered by the volcanic rocks of the Reunion plume. It therefore appears that such micro-continents in the ocean occur more frequently than previously thought.
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Torsvik, T.H., Amundsen, H., Hartz, E.H., Corfu, F., Kusznir, N., Gaina, C., Doubrovine, P.V., Steinberger B., Ashwal, L.D. & Jamtveit, B., ?A Precambrian microcontinent in the Indian Ocean", Nature Geoscience, Vol. 6, doi:10.1038/NGEO1736.
Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres: http://www.helmholtz.de/en/index.html
Thanks to Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres for this article.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/126998/Fragments_of_continents_hidden_under_lava_in_the_Indian_Ocean_
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