Army major declines to talk
in penalty phase of his trial


In the punishment phase of the Fort Hood massacre trial at a military base in Texas Tuesday, Major Nidal Hasan rested without presenting witnesses or making a statement.  Last week, Hasan was convicted of murdering 13 people in a shooting rampage at Fort Hood on Nov, 5, 2009.  After summation statements Wednesday, the decision on whether to apply the death penalty will be in the hands of the 13-member jury. 

After prosecutors concluded their presentation of witnesses who had lost loved ones or been wounded by Nidal Hasan, they rested their case.  It was then Hasan's turn to either bring forth witnesses or make a statement.  As he has done in other stages of the trial, the defendant, who is serving as his own lawyer, rested his case immediately and said no more.

The presiding judge, Col. Tara Osborn, dismissed the jury and then questioned Hasan thoroughly to make sure he understood the implications of his decision. 

Geoffrey Corn, a former military prosecutor who now teaches at the South Texas College of Law in Houston, says the judge's effort will make a later appeal less likely and ensure that Hasan has voluntarily accepted the risks involved in his decisions.

"Judge Osborn does not have an interest in making sure that the case stands up on appeal. She has an interest in making sure that the defendant is fully appraised of his constitutional and statutory rights and is able to exercise them voluntarily," he said.

By refusing to speak, Hasan gave up his last opportunity to present evidence or any kind of argument to the jury.  Corn says Hasan, motivated by his belief in radical, jihadist Islam, believes murdering 13 people and wounding more than 30 others was justified.

"I think what he is doing is expressing passively his disdain for the army and his disdain for the military justice system, by doing nothing," he said.

Today the prosecution will give its closing summation of the evidence supporting the death penalty for Hasan, rather than life in prison.  At that point, Hasan will have an opportunity to present a closing summation, but since he has presented no evidence, Geoffrey Corn says Hasan most likely will say nothing.

The jury, or panel as it is known in military law, does not have a lot of evidence to go through, as it did in the first phase of the trial, but Corn says the 13 panel members will consider the question carefully.

"There isn't a whole lot of evidence to review, but they have to each, individually decide whether to put a human being to death and, I think, that is a big deal," he said. "I think, morally and legally, it should be hard.  These are people who understand life and death, perhaps better than most of us ever will, because of their profession, and I think they are going to take it very seriously."  

To impose the death penalty in a military capital murder case, the jurors must make a unanimous decision. Corn says he does not expect a very quick decision, but thinks a verdict is likely by late afternoon.


Hackers hit New York Times
Web site and claim Syrian ties


The New York Times Web site has been hacked for the second time this month, halting online news delivery for several hours Tuesday.

The Times chief information officer Marc Frons issued a statement saying the service disruption was due to "a malicious external attack by the Syrian Electronic Army" or someone trying to appear as that organization.

The Syrian Electronic Army is an online group that supports embattled Syrian President Bashir Al-Assad.

The Times says the hackers may have attacked the company's domain name registrar, Melbourne IT.

Earlier this month the Syrian Electronic Army took credit for cyber attacks attacks on the Times and the Washington Post through a third-party provider. It has also tried to attack CNN and The Financial Times.

Tuesday the Times published some stories via its Facebook site and kept readers apprised of the situation through the micro-blogging service.



Human thought transfered
to another mind via Internet


Scientists said Tuesday they have achieved the first human-to-human mind meld with one researcher sending a brain signal via the Internet to control the hand motion of a colleague sitting across the Seattle campus of the University of Washington.

The feat is less a conceptual advance than another step in the years-long progress that researchers have made toward brain-computer interfaces, in which electrical signals generated from one brain are translated by a computer into commands that can move a mechanical arm or a computer cursor or, in more and more studies, can affect another brain.

Much of the research has been aimed at helping paralyzed patients regain some power of movement, but bioethicists have raised concerns about more controversial uses.

In February, for instance, scientists led by Duke University Medical Center's Miguel Nicolelis used electronic sensors to capture the thoughts of a rat in a lab in Brazil and sent via Internet to the brain of a rat in the United States. The second rat received the thoughts of the first, mimicking its behavior. And electrical activity in the brain of a monkey at Duke, in North Carolina, recently was sent via the Internet, controlling a robot arm in Japan.

That raised visions of battalions of animal soldiers - or even human ones - whose brains are remotely controlled by others. Some of Duke's brain-computer research, though not this study, received funding from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

For the new study, funded by the U.S. Army Research Office and other non-military federal agencies, Rajesh Rao, who has studied brain-computer interfaces for more than a decade, sat in his lab on Aug. 12 wearing a cap with electrodes hooked up to an electroencephalography machine, which reads electrical activity in the brain. He is a computer science professor.

He looked at a computer screen and played a simple video game but only mentally. At one point, he imagined moving his right hand to fire a cannon, making sure not to actually move his hand.

The EEG electrodes picked up the brain signals of the "fire cannon!" thought and transmitted them to the other side of the campus.

There, Andrea Stocco of the university's Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences was wearing a purple swim cap with a device, called a transcranial magnetic stimulation coil, placed directly over his left motor cortex, which controls the right hand's movement.

When the move-right-hand signal arrived from Rao, Stocco involuntarily moved his right index finger to push the space bar on the keyboard in front of him, as if firing the cannon. He said the feeling of his hand moving involuntarily was like that of a nervous tic.

“It was both exciting and eerie to watch an imagined action from my brain get translated into actual action by another brain,” said Rao.

Other experts suggested the feat was not particularly impressive. It's possible to capture one of the few easy-to-recognize EEG signals and send “a simple shock ...  into the other investigator's head,” said Andrew Schwartz of the University of Pittsburgh, who was not part of the research.

Rao agreed that what his colleague jokingly called a Vulcan mind meld reads only simple brain signals, not thoughts, and cannot be used on anyone unknowingly. But it might one day be harnessed to allow an airline pilot on the ground help someone land a plane whose own pilot is incapacitated.

The research has not been published in a scientific journal, something university spokeswoman Doree Armstrong admits is “a bit unusual.” But she said the team knew other researchers are working on this same thing and they felt “time was of the essence.”

Besides, she said, they have a video of the experiment which they felt it could stand on its own.  T



Canadian geologist released
by Colombian rebel group


Colombia's Ejército de Liberación Nacional rebels freed a Canadian geologist they had held captive for seven months Tuesday, meeting one of the demands by President Juan Manuel Santos to enable the start of peace talks with the insurgent group.

Jernoc Wobert was seized Jan. 18 in northern Bolivar province along with two Peruvian and three Colombian miners contracted by the Toronto-based Braeval Mining gold mining company. His colleagues were later freed by the leftist, the smaller of two rebel groups fighting the government for almost five decades.

Wobert was released in a rural area to a mission of the International Committee of the Red Cross and has been examined by a doctor, said Red Cross spokesman Jordi Raich in a statement.

Santos has conditioned any peace talks with the Ejército de Liberación Nacional on freeing Wobert and all other captives it holds in the nation's jungles. Rebel leaders have expressed interest in starting peace negotiations similar to those currently under way with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia

It is not known how many hostages the group holds.

“We hope that this effort contributes to a healthy exchange and support for peace in Colombia,” Nicolas Rodriguez said in a video posted on the rebel web site. He said the release was a humanitarian gesture. He is the presumed leader.

The Ejército de Liberación Nacional, which is against mining by foreign companies in Colombia, pledged to free Wobert after Toronto-based Braeval said last month it would no longer mine in the area where he was kidnapped. The company did not link the decision to Wobert's capture.

Efforts to rid Colombia of its reputation as one of the most dangerous places to do business has led to a rush of investment into areas that were once off-limits.

Colombia, a nation of 47 million people, has attracted record foreign direct investment in recent years as troops push the guerrilla groups deeper into inhospitable jungles.

While oil and mining companies have been able to work in more remote and dangerous areas in recent years, the risk to employees continues. Both the Ejército de Liberación Nacional and the Fuerzas ARmadas Revolucionarias  have stepped up attacks on the infrastructure this year, hitting oil pipelines and power lines repeatedly.

The Ejército de Liberación Nacional has battled a dozen governments since it was founded in 1964 and is considered a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union.

Inspired by the Cuban revolution and established by radical Catholic priests, the Ejército de Liberación Nacional was close to disappearing in the 1970s but gradually regained strength. By 2002 it had as many as 5,000 fighters, financed by war taxes levied on landowners and oil companies.

The Ejército de Liberación Nacional is now believed to have about 3,000 fighters. It has sought peace before, holding talks with the Colombian government in Cuba and Venezuela between 2002 and 2007. Experts say there was a lack of will on both sides to agree a final peace plan.

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Jelle Van Loon breaks tools for a living.

At the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center outside Mexico City, the shaggy-sideburned engineer strikes the ground with a V-shaped, waist-high planting tool.

Its metal tip pierces the soil. He closes the sides of the V and the planter deposits a seed and a small dose of fertilizer into the earth.

Lift. Strike. Repeat. Van Loon says for a typical developing-world farmer who plants and fertilizes a couple hectares of land by hand, this tool could save days of work.

And by delivering just the right amount of seed and fertilizer, it can save money, too.

There’s one problem. It broke.

“We put our strongest guy on it and we let him work it.” He was “over-enthusiastic,” Van Loon said, and broke the chain connecting the two sides of the V.

What’s more, the wood swelled in Mexico’s tropical downpours, and some of the parts rusted.

“Which is a good thing,” Van Loon said, because by seeing tools break in real-world conditions, his team knows what it needs to improve before this planter will work for farmers here.

Researchers around the world are working to build simple machines that will save small-scale farmers time, money and effort.

The challenge is to make those tools both affordable and durable for farmers who don’t have much money to invest.

Van Loon is well suited for the job. His background is in rural development, but in his spare time he tinkers with cars and motorcycles.

His latest project has been fixing up his Kawasaki 650 motorcycle.

“It’s making a lot of noise, waking people up in the morning here,” he said with a laugh. “It’s great for the potholes on Mexican roads.”

Applying his gearhead instincts to farm tools, he put a stronger chain on the hand planter and found wood that didn’t swell so much in the rain. He’s testing a new model.

The prototype cost about $200 to make, though the mass-produced product will cost significantly less.

But Van Loon said it would be a worthwhile investment.

“The acquiring cost is a little bit higher, maybe, at first, but the return on investment is higher because inputs are lower,” he said. Seed and fertilizer are expensive, Van Loon noted, and “if you can lower the amount of seed you use, this is what you’re going to feel in your pocket.”

Under a corrugated metal roof at the center's headquarters, Van Loon showed off a row of prototype hand tools, animal-drawn planters, and equipment pulled behind small engines.

They’re all being tested and tweaked to adapt them to different environments and types of farming, while keeping them affordable.

For example, an off-the-shelf toothbrush installed in one of the larger machines sweeps out the planting mechanism to ensure only one expensive seed is planted at a time.

Agronomist Bill Raun is also wrestling with a prototype hand planter at Oklahoma State University. He and his colleagues are trying to design a $50 tool that will reliably plant exactly one seed per strike, over and over, for a decade.

“We want a unit that will plant 100,000 seeds per hectare for 10 years. So, that’s a million seeds. So, we want 1 million cycles with no failure,” he explained.

They have not reached that level of reliability yet. “We’re getting there,” he said. “But it has been a challenge.”

When it’s ready, he’s working with a major farm machinery company to make the tool available to farmers around the developing world for about $10, with the rest of the cost subsidized by grants or other funding.

It’s being tested out in El Salvador, Guatemala, Zambia and Kenya.

Raun hopes another six months or so of testing will produce the reliable product he is looking for.