Tomorrow's News Online 11-07-2013 | ScienceT

The world's largest software maker also has at least three internal candidates on its shortlist, including former Skype CEO Tony Bates, who is now responsible for Microsoft's business development, and Satya Nadella, the company's cloud and enterprise chief, the sources said.

Despite the narrower list - the company started with about 40 names - the process could take a few more months, the sources said. In August, Ballmer said he would retire within 12 months.

The names of other candidates could not be learned, but the search committee is interviewing executives from a wide range of sectors, including life sciences and consumer, the sources said.

Microsoft declined to comment on the process and on behalf of the internal candidates. A Nokia representatives could not be reached immediately for comment late on Tuesday.

Ford spokesman Jay Cooney said: "There is no change from what we announced last November. Alan remains fully focused on continuing to make progress on our One Ford plan. We do not engage in speculation."

Investors have pushed Microsoft's board in recent months to look for a turnaround expert, such as Mulally or Computer Sciences Corp CEO Mike Lawrie, to succeed Ballmer. Some investors have also suggested to the board that co-founder Bill Gates should step down from his role as chairman, saying he stands in the way of radical reform at Microsoft.

Microsoft remains highly profitable and last month beat Wall Street's quarterly profit and revenue forecasts. But it has lost ground to Apple Inc and Google Inc in mobile computing.

Ballmer has focused on making devices, such as the Surface tablet and Xbox gaming console, and turning key software into services provided over the Internet.

Some investors say that a new chief should not be bound by that strategy. They are concerned that, with both Gates and Ballmer up for re-election to Microsoft's board, they will retain their influence over the company.

Gates has focused his day-to-day efforts on philanthropy since 2008 when he vacated his office on campus. People close to him say he is not considering a return to the CEO position.

Shares rose 2.7 percent to $70 in premarket trading.

Revenue at its cable unit, which includes Turner Broadcasting channels such as CNN as well as premium movie service HBO, increased 5 percent to $3.5 billion. Advertising was up 11 percent to $96 million.

Revenues fell 7 percent to $2.7 billion at its Film and TV Entertainment unit that includes Warner Brothers. It blamed the decline partly on a tough comparison to a year ago, when it benefited from the strong box office for the Batman movie "The Dark Knight Rises."

Its Time Inc publishing unit, which it plans to spin off next year, suffered a 2 percent fall in revenue.

Net income for Time Warner was $1.18 billion, or $1.26 cents per share, for the quarter ended September 30, up from $822 million, or 84 cents a share, a year ago.

Christie's broad, cross-party appeal sealed his status as a top contender if he decides to run for the White House in 2016, and the blunt governor addressed Americans' frustration with partisan stalemate in his victory speech.

"A dispirited America, angry with their dysfunctional government in Washington, looks to New Jersey to say, 'Is what I think is happening really happening? Are people really coming together?'" Christie told supporters. "Let me give the answer to everyone who is watching tonight. Under this government, our first job is to get the job done, and as long as I'm governor, that job will always, always be finished."

The results came less than three weeks after the 16-day partial government shutdown, a maneuver pushed by conservative Republicans seeking to delay or defund Democratic President Barack Obama's signature healthcare reform law, known as Obamacare.

Christie for Governor Chairman William Palatucci hinted at possible national aspirations for his candidate. "The Governor's convincing win also sounds a note for our entire country - who you elect and how they govern matters," he said.

In Virginian, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe was elected governor, largely with the support of the heavily populated Washington suburbs that were hard hit by the government shutdown.

McAuliffe's campaign had held up rival Ken Cuccinelli, the state's attorney general, as a symbol of the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, seen by many voters as responsible for the shutdown, which economists said took a $24 billion bite out of the U.S. economy.

Cuccinelli's loss could be seen as a setback for the Tea Party movement, which swept a wave of right-wing lawmakers into Congress in 2010 and has been seeking to extend its legislative influence in next year's congressional elections.

But Cuccinelli, a social conservative, carried the state's more rural southern and western districts, and his bid was undercut by a Libertarian candidate who won nearly 7 percent of the vote - much more than McAuliffe's margin of victory, according to results with most votes counted.

Cuccinelli surged late in the campaign, seeking to tie McAuliffe to Obamacare, which has been plagued with technical difficulties since its October 1 launch.

Using high-speed cameras, the team filmed jets of liquid striking toilet walls and studied the resulting spray.

Splashback was low when the jets were used close up with a narrow "angle of attack", said the Brigham Young University team.

They will present their research at an American Physical Society meeting.

"In response to harsh and repeated criticisms from our mothers and several failed relationships with women, we present the splash dynamics of a simulated human male urine stream," reads their conference abstract.

But there is a more serious side to the research.

The work is led by Prof Tadd Truscott and Randy Hurd of the "Splash Lab" at Brigham Young in Provo, Utah, who jokingly refer to themselves as "wizz kids".

"People ask me, are you serious? I tell them yes, this may involve 12-year-old humour, but it's also a real problem," Prof Truscott told BBC News.

"We've all been in disgusting toilets with puddles on the floor - these places are a breeding ground for bacteria."

For example, the detergents used to clean hospital toilets could actually increase the spray of disease-causing bacteria, by reducing the surface tension of water, according to a recent study. Chaotic spray

One might think the physics of aiming urination had already been summarised by the formula: "get it all in the bowl". But micturation is still a messier business than it needs to be, according to the research. Taking measurements live "in the field" did not appeal to the scientists, so the duo built a urination simulator. The "Water Angle Navigation Guide" is a five-gallon bucket with hoses connected to two types of synthetic urethra.

The team fired coloured water at various target "toilets" at the velocity and pressure of average human urination. Then, using a high-speed camera, they captured the moment of impact in remarkable visual detail.

Splashback was heightened by a phenomenon known as Plateau-Rayleigh instability, where a falling stream of liquid breaks up into droplets.

"The male urine stream breaks up about 6-7 inches outside the urethra exit," Mr Hurd explained.

"So by the time it hits the urinal, it's already in droplet form. And these droplets are the perpetrators of the splash formation on your khaki pants."

His advice? "The closer you are, the better. If you can get stream impact with the porcelain, it's a lot less chaotic."

The casting sessions for Star Wars: Episode VII will start later this week at locations around the UK and Ireland, including London, Dublin and Glasgow.

According to a casting notice the film-makers are looking to fill two roles.

They are a "street smart and strong" orphaned girl in her late teens and a "smart capable" man in his late teens or early 20s.

The open auditions for a "major Hollywood Movie" were first published on the twitter account @UKopencall, which announced a "nationwide search for lead roles for a Disney movie".

Disney bought Lucasfilm, the production company behind the Star Wars series, in October 2012. Leaked descriptions

Lucasfilm declined to comment to the BBC but it is likely the characters have been given non sci-fi names and descriptions in the announcement in an effort to disguise the auditions are for Star Wars: Episode VII. The broad nature of the characters is almost the same as in descriptions leaked online earlier in the year when the overall casting process began.

While it is unprecedented for lead parts in a franchise of this size to hold open auditions in this way, Star Wars has in the past given major roles to little known actors and actresses through the traditional casting process, dating back to the original trilogy when the then unknown Mark Hamill won the role of Luke Skywalker.

Other movies have successfully cast secondary actors and actresses through open auditions in the past most notably some of the later Harry Potter films.

And actress Dakota Blue Richards won the lead role of Lyra in The Golden Compass, the film adaptation of Philip Pullman's Northern Lights, through open casting.

Director JJ Abrams, who is also co-scripting the movie, will not be attending the open auditions which begin in Bristol on 9 November. Instead those at the auditions, who must be over the age of 16 for the female role, and over 18 for the male role, will briefly meet members of the casting team of the film.

Google Instant is an “autocomplete” service – which, as the name suggests, automatically suggests letters and words to complete a query, based on the company’s knowledge of the billions of searches performed across the world each day. If I enter the words “women should,” the number one suggestion on my own screen is “women shoulder bags,” followed by the more depressing “women should be seen and not heard.” If I type “men should”, the enigmatic suggestion “men should weep” pops up.

The argument behind the UN campaign is that this algorithm offers a glimpse into our collective psyche – and a disturbing one at that. Is this really true? Not in the sense that the campaign implies. Autocomplete is biased and deficient in many ways, and there are dangers ahead if we forget that. In fact, there is a good case that you should switch it off entirely.

Like many of the world’s most successful technologies, the mark of autocomplete’s success is how little we notice it. The better it’s working, the more seamlessly its anticipations fit in with our expectations – to the point where it’s most noticeable when something doesn’t have this feature, or Google suddenly stops anticipating our needs. The irony is that the more effort that’s expended making the results appear so seamless, the more unvarnished and truthful the results feel to users. Knowing what “everyone” thinks about any particular issue or question simply means starting to type, and watching the answer write itself ahead of our tapping fingers.

Yet, like any other search algorithm, autocomplete blends a secret sauce of data points beneath its effortless interface. Your language, location and timing are all major factors in results, as are measures of impact and engagement – not to mention your own browsing history and the “freshness” of any topic. In other words, what autocomplete feeds you is not the full picture, but what Google anticipates you want. It’s not about mere truth; it’s about “relevance”.

A court in September had outlawed the Brotherhood after the army overthrew President Mohamed Mursi in July following mass protests against his rule.

The case against his Brotherhood was brought by a lawyer from the leftist Tagammu party, which cited the need to protect Egyptians from violence.

It accompanied a campaign by security forces to crush the movement in which hundreds of its members have been killed, thousands arrested, and its leaders, including Mursi, put on trial.

Wednesday's decision was another political blow to the group as it would compromise its participation in any new elections.

"In its scheduled session today, the Cairo Urgent Cases court dismissed an appeal raised by the Muslim Brotherhood to stop the execution of the previous order banning the activities of the group," state news agency MENA reported.

Defense lawyer Faisal el-Sayyed, a Brotherhood member, said he would appeal the ruling.

"We will appeal again and again until we banish this law," he told Reuters.

"Unfortunately we are working in a time when there is little respect for the law. But we still have a hint of hope in the law and that we can overcome this legally."

Since Mursi's overthrow, state media has lionized the military and police for the crackdown and his supporters frequently protest in the streets.

The military-installed government has promised new elections next year which foreign governments say must include all political factions to mark a credible return to democracy.

The court ruling indicated the Brotherhood was likely to be excluded.

The Brotherhood has also refused to take part in the transition, saying it would legitimize what they consider a coup. The army says it was responding to the will of the people.

Mursi, Egypt's first freely elected president, faces charges of inciting violence. His trial began on Monday and was adjourned by a judge to early January.

Political analyst Omar Ashour said the ban was an "eradication policy".

"This is just about making sure that the (Muslim) Brothers don't get a significant percentage in any institutions like the parliament," he told Reuters.

"But it's a return to the days of (deposed president) Hosni Mubarak where the Brothers would run as independents and probably face reprisals against them, but continue to challenge them."

Ashour said a legal ban on the organization would make it easier for the government to target members who may plan to run as independents in the upcoming elections.

The glitches have crippled HealthCare.gov, the new online insurance marketplace meant to serve people in 36 states, frustrating millions of would-be applicants since it opened for enrollment on October 1.

The poll's findings are good news for Obamacare supporters who worry the problems and bad press could dissuade people from signing up, particularly the young and healthy who are crucial to diversifying the pool of insured and keeping premiums down.

The uninsured view the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, more favorably since online marketplaces opened - 44 percent compared with 37 percent in September, according to the Reuters/Ipsos poll. It found that 56 percent oppose the program compared with 63 percent in September.

A higher proportion of the uninsured also said they are interested in buying insurance on the exchanges, with 42 percent in October, saying they were likely to enroll compared with 37 percent in September. The results have a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.

For a graphic, see: link.reuters.com/myw44v

"The launch of the exchanges, that's the first real world event for a lot of people," said Chris Jackson, an Ipsos pollster. "There's been this sense that once people got familiar with it, public opinion would start to move in its direction."

The online poll of nearly 12,000 people was conducted in October. Some 1,100 of the respondents identified themselves as uninsured.

Among the general public, support for the law rose from nearly 44 percent to 47 percent, with a credibility interval of 1 percentage point, according to the poll.

The Mars Orbiter Mission took off at 09:08 GMT from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on the country's east coast.

The head of India's space agency told the BBC the mission would demonstrate the technological capability to reach Mars orbit and carry out experiments.

The spacecraft is set to travel for 300 days, reaching Mars orbit in 2014.

If the satellite orbits the Red Planet, India's space agency will become the fourth in the world after those of the US, Russia and Europe to undertake a successful Mars mission.

In order for the MOM to embark on the right trajectory for its 300-day, 780-million km journey, it must carry out its final orbital burn by 30 November. Some observers are viewing the launch of the MOM, also known by the informal name of Mangalyaan (Mars-craft), as the latest salvo in a burgeoning space race between the Asian powers of India, China, Japan, South Korea and others.

Prof Andrew Coates, from University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory, told BBC News: "I think this mission really brings India to the table of international space exploration. Interplanetary exploration is certainly not trivial to do, and [India] has found some interesting scientific niches to make some measurements in."

Those niche areas include searching for the signature of methane (CH4) in the Martian atmosphere, which has previously been detected from Martian orbit and telescopes on Earth. However, Nasa's Curiosity rover recently failed to find the gas in its measurements of atmospheric gases.

CH4 has a short lifetime in the Martian atmosphere, meaning that some source on the Red Planet must replenish it. Intriguingly, some 95% of atmospheric methane on Earth is produced by microbes, which has led some to propose the possibility of a biosphere deep beneath the Martian surface. But the gas can be produced by geological processes too, most notably by volcanism.

Definitive conclusions are likely to be elusive, but the spacecraft's Methane Sensor for Mars (MSM) instrument will aim to make measurements and map any potential sources of methane "plumes".

The barges have a four-storey structure on deck and rumours are circulating about what the company plans to use them for.

One suggestion is that they could be turned in to floating data centres powered by wave action.

Others believe they could be fitted out with new showrooms for Google Glass with a "party deck" on top.

So far Google has declined to comment on what the vessels are being used for. But the company does have a patent from 2009 for a "water-based" data centre.

"It's an interesting concept," said Nick Layzell, of Telehouse, a data centre provider.

"Cooling is the big cost for any data centre, so perhaps they're trying to take advantage of having some water on tap."

But he added that water was the biggest threat to data centres because of the damage it could cause to equipment. One of the barges is anchored at Pier 1, Treasure Island Marina in San Francisco.

The authority in charge of projects within San Francisco Bay confirmed that it had met with Google officials several times in recent months. Its chief executive Larry Goldzband said that Google had been "less than specific" about its plans.

"When they decide to let us know what they plan to do with it, or hope to do with it, then we can decide if it's allowable," he told AP.

Documents revealed following a freedom of information request by the The Day newspaper in Connecticut show Google is also linked to a barge near Maine on the eastern coast of the United States.

As slides of the paintings were shown at a news conference, an expert said the works had been seized from private individuals or institutions.

Previously unregistered works by Marc Chagall, Otto Dix, Max Liebermann and Henri Matisse were found.

Prosecutors said the issue of ownership was still being clarified. The total value has been estimated at about 1bn euros (£846m; $1.35bn).

Reinhard Nemetz, head of the prosecutors' office in Augsburg, said that 121 framed and 1,285 unframed works had been seized in the flat of Cornelius Gurlitt in Munich in March of last year. It was not yet clear if any offence had been committed, he added, stressing that the legal position was extremely complex. Investigators, he said, had turned up "concrete evidence" that at least some of the works had been seized by the Nazis from their owners or had been deemed "degenerate". Art expert Meike Hoffmann said some of the works were dirty but they had not been damaged.

'Extraordinarily good'

"When you stand before the works and see again these long-lost, missing works, that were believed destroyed, seeing them in quite good condition, it's an extraordinarily good feeling," Ms Hoffmann said.

Art expert Meike Hoffmann: "An emotional discovery" "The pictures are of exceptional quality, and have very special value for art experts. Many works were unknown until now."

Other artists whose works were found include Pablo Picasso and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, as well as Canaletto and Gustave Courbet.

The paintings were found in March of last year after Mr Gurlitt was investigated for tax evasion.

The framed pictures were stacked on a shelf, like in a museum storeroom while the unframed works were piled up in drawers, said customs official Siegfried Kloeble.

According to a report by Germany's Focus magazine, Mr Gurlitt, the reclusive son of an art dealer in Munich, would occasionally sell a picture when he needed money.

"We don't have any strong suspicion of a crime that would justify an arrest," said Mr Nemetz, adding that the current whereabouts of Mr Gurlitt were unknown. Asked at the news conference why the German authorities had taken so long to reveal the paintings, the prosecutor said it would have been "counter-productive to go public" with the case earlier.

Mr Kloeble refused to say where the artworks were being stored.

Mr Gurlitt's father Hildebrand collected early 20th Century art regarded by the Nazis as un-German or "degenerate", and removed from show in state museums.

Given that there just more than 7 billion of us on this planet, that means a planet for each of us with some spares for your picky neighbors. Or a vacation planet or two for you, maybe. And the closest may be circling a star you can see if you look up into the heavens tonight.

"When you look up at the thousands of stars in the night sky, the nearest sun-like star with an Earth-size planet in its habitable zone is probably only 12 light years away and can be seen with the naked eye. That is amazing," UC Berkeley graduate student Erik Petigura, the leader of the team that analyzed data from the Kepler, said in a press release.

To be sure, the astronomers haven't seen any of the planets themselves. They came to their conclusions like this: The Kepler telescope photographed 150,000 of the 300 billion stars in the Milky Way every 30 minutes for four years. It looked for when orbiting planets passed between the camera and the star, causing a slight change in brightness of that star. Analyzing the data, the astronomers say, they found 3,000 planet candidates.

The astronomers narrowed that number by focusing on just 42,000 stars like our sun or a bit cooler. That brought the number of planets down to 603. But only 10 of those were about the size of Earth in the so-called "Goldilocks zone," just the right distance from the star where temperatures are suitable for life as we know it.