The blobfish has been voted world’s ugliest animal, according to the Ugly Animal Preservation Society, which announced the results Thursday at the British Science Festival.

“We’ve needed an ugly face for endangered animals for a long time. and I’ve been amazed by the public’s reaction,” said Simon Watt, biologist and president of the Ugly Animal Preservation Society. For too long the cute and fluffy animals have taken the limelight, but now the blobfish will be a voice for the ugly creatures who always get forgotten, he said.

Thousands of people from around the world cast their votes online, said the society.

The blobfish live at depths of between 600 and 1,200 meters and can grow up to 12 inches in length. It suffers a significant threat from fishing trawlers – although it is inedible itself, it gets caught up in the nets. It feeds off crabs and lobsters living at the same depth.

Runners up in the contest include the Kakapo, an endangered parrot, the Axolotl, a type of salamander and the Titicaca water frog.

According to its Web site, the Ugly Animal Preservation Society is “dedicated to raising the profile of some of Mother Nature’s more aesthetically challenged children.”


Experimental vaccine eliminates
HIV from monkeys, study says


An experimental HIV/AIDS vaccine appears to have completely cleared a primate form of HIV from test monkeys. The primate version of HIV, called simian immunodeficiency virus, or SIV, causes AIDS in monkeys.

Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University hope an HIV-form of the vaccine can soon be tested in humans.

"To date, HIV infection has only been cured in a very small number of highly-publicized but unusual clinical cases in which HIV-infected individuals were treated with anti-viral medicines very early after the onset of infection or received a stem cell transplant to combat cancer,” said Louis Picker, associate director of the university's Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute. “This latest research suggests that certain immune responses elicited by a new vaccine may also have the ability to completely remove HIV from the body.”

To develop the vaccine, scientists used cytomegalovirus, or CMV, a common virus already carried by a large percentage of the population, and paired it with SIV. They found that a modified version of CMV engineered to express SIV proteins generates T-cells, a type of white blood cell, that are capable of searching out and destroying SIV-infected cells.

About 50 percent of monkeys given highly pathogenic SIV after being vaccinated with this vaccine became infected with SIV, but over time eliminated all traces of SIV from the body.

“Through this method we were able to teach the monkey's body to better prepare its defenses to combat the disease," said Picker. “Our vaccine mobilized a T-cell response that was able to overtake the SIV invaders in 50 percent of the cases treated. Moreover, in those cases with a positive response, our testing suggests SIV was banished from the host. We are hopeful that pairing our modified CMV vector with HIV will lead to a similar result in humans.”

The Picker lab is now investigating the possible reasons why only a subset of the animals treated had a positive response in hopes that the effectiveness of the proposed vaccine can be further increased.

These research results were published online by the journal Nature. The results will also appear in a future print version of the publication.


WikiLeaks server sold
on eBay as an historical artifact


The server used by pro-transparency organization WikiLeaks when it released secret documents in 2010 about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a massive trove of diplomatic cables was sold for $33,000 Thursday.
 
Swedish Internet firm Bahnhof, which hosted WikiLeaks at the time, sold the Dell server on the online marketplace eBay.
 
Bahnhof Chief Executive Jon Karlung called the server “a relic of our time” and said the buyer was a non-Swedish national. The data it contained had been erased, Karlung said.
 
“I believe this box has a very high symbolical value. In a way, it is a kind of artifact, an object that has made a mark on world history.”
 
Karlung said half of the proceeds from the sale would be donated to media freedom advocacy organization Reporters Without Borders and half to the 5th of July Foundation, an advocacy group for liberty and privacy on the Internet.
 
The U.S. soldier responsible for passing WikiLeaks the more than 700,000 classified military and diplomatic documents was last month sentenced to 35 years in a military prison for the biggest breach of secret data in the nation's history.


U.S. space agency confirms
Voyager I left Solar System


The U.S. space agency, NASA, has officially confirmed what others have suspected for some time: The Voyager 1 spacecraft is the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space.

NASA said the probe, which was launched 36 years ago, is 19 billion kilometers away from the sun.

"Now that we have new, key data, we believe this is mankind's historic leap into interstellar space," said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "The Voyager team needed time to analyze those observations and make sense of them. But we can now answer the question we've all been asking: 'Are we there yet?' Yes, we are."

NASA said it had new and unexpected data that indicate Voyager has been traveling for about one year through plasma, or ionized gas, which is present in the space between the stars.

In 2004, NASA detected the increased pressure of interstellar space on the heliosphere, the bubble of charged particles that surround the sun and extend to the edge of the Solar System. It was then they began to look for evidence that the probe had entered interstellar space.

Since the probe does not have working plasma sensor, NASA needed a different way to measure the plasma environment so as to better determine where the spacecraft was.

Luckily, in March 2012, there was a coronal mass ejection, or a massive burst of solar wind and magnetism from the sun. The ejection took 13 months to get to Voyager 1, but when it did “the plasma around the spacecraft began to vibrate like a violin string,” NASA said.

The pitch of the oscillations helped scientists determine the plasma’s density. The measured oscillations showed the plasma was 40 times denser than what they had measured in the outer layer of the sun’s heliosphere. This density, NASA said, would be expected in interstellar space.

"We literally jumped out of our seats when we saw these oscillations in our data. They showed us the spacecraft was in an entirely new region, comparable to what was expected in interstellar space, and totally different than in the solar bubble," said Don Gurnett of the plasma wave science team at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, who published a paper in Thursday’s edition of the journal Science. "Clearly we had passed through the heliopause, which is the long-hypothesized boundary between the solar plasma and the interstellar plasma."

NASA said the data revealed that Voyager 1 left the Solar System on Aug. 25, 2012.

Last month, researchers at the University of Maryland claimed the probe had left the Solar System July 27, 2012 in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.


Colorado Front Range ravaged
by days of heavy downpours


Flash flooding unleashed by torrential downpours in Colorado has killed at least three people and forced hundreds to flee to higher ground as rising water toppled buildings and stranded motorists in their cars, officials said Thursday.
 
Heavy rains drenched Colorado's biggest urban areas, stretching 130 miles (210 km) along the eastern slopes of the Rockies from Fort Collins near the Wyoming border south through Boulder, Denver and Colorado Springs.
 
Among the hardest-hit areas was Boulder County where the National Weather Service issued a flash-flood warning. Flood watches were also posted for several counties in central and north-central parts of Colorado.
 
"There is water everywhere," said Andrew Barth, the emergency management spokesman in Boulder County. "We've had several structural collapses. There's mud and muck and debris everywhere. Cars are stranded all over the place."

At least six inches (15 cm) of rain has fallen on the city of Boulder and up to eight inches (20 cm) were measured in the foothills west of town, said Kari Bowen, a Weather Service meteorologist in Boulder, northwest of Denver.
 
The rains transformed Boulder Creek, which runs through the heart of the city and the University of Colorado's Boulder campus, into a raging torrent that overran its banks and flooded adjacent parking lots and streets.
 
Water gushed over sidewalks, roads and bike paths throughout the downtown area as sirens wailed and public-address loudspeakers urged residents to stay clear of high water: "Warning: Flash flood. Please proceed to higher ground. Do not cross standing or running water. Do not cross Boulder Creek."
 
The university campus was closed for the day, as were Boulder-area public schools and all municipal office buildings.
 
More than 400 students were evacuated from ground-floor campus housing overnight, campus police spokesman Ryan Huff said. Roughly 40 buildings on campus were believed to have sustained some flood-related damage, Huff said.
 
Steady rain which began on Monday grew more intense late Tuesday and into Wednesday. Roads across the region were flooded out and standing water throughout Denver snarled morning rush-hour in the state capital.
 
Barth, the Boulder County emergency management spokesman, said conditions were extremely dangerous.
 
All 200 residents of Jamestown, just north of Boulder, were forced to flee overnight, while the town of Lyons, further to the north, was cut off as floodwaters washed out U.S. Route 36 linking Lyons to Boulder, county Sheriff Joe Pelle said.
 
At least two people died in flooding in Boulder County, one whose body was found in a collapsed building by emergency crews searching door to door for victims in and around Jamestown and another who drowned elsewhere in the county, Commander Heidi Prentup of the Boulder County Sheriff's Office said.
 
The body of a third victim, a man, was found by police on flood-watch patrols in Colorado Springs, about 100 miles (160 km) to the south, officials said.
 

Reported death of Alabama man
believed work of ex-associates


News that U.S.-born terrorist Omar Hammami died in Somalia was met with sadness and relief by people who knew him in the Mobile, Alabama, suburb of Daphne.  Many people there were shocked that a local boy had taken up with an al-Qaida-linked terrorist group, and Hammami's activity with al-Shabab created some friction with Muslims in his hometown.  But, some remember him as a good guy.

People in southern Alabama received the reports that al-Shabab gunmen killed Omar Hammami in Somalia with some caution, because there had been previous false reports. But most people following the news from far-away East Africa knew he was in great danger after breaking away from the Somali militant group and criticizing its leader.

His father, Shafik Hammami, spoke shortly after learning his son was dead.

"I was shocked and of course did not believe it, because we’ve been through this before many times.  And I was hoping and praying this would be like the news in the past and would not be true," he said.

The elder Hammami immigrated to the United States from Syria in 1972. His son, Omar, was born in Alabama in 1984. Shafik Hammami says his son became a devout Muslim, but he does not know how he became a radical.

"My own judgment is that he had good intentions to fulfill his Islamic principles, but he was deceived by the al-Shabab and their murderous ways.  He rebelled against them because he did not approve of their ways, that is, not in the Islamic tradition and Islamic teachings," he said.

Mike Faulk went to high school with Omar Hammami and was in an international studies class that often produced heated debates. In one incident, Hammami attacked him and tried to choke him. The honor student was suspended for a few days, but Faulk says when Hammami returned, all was well.

"He came back to class and apologized. We got along. We had very big disagreements, but he was intelligent and he could have done good things with his life," said Faulk.

Faulk now works as a reporter for the Yakima Herald newspaper in Washington state. He says the Alabama community on the east side of Mobile Bay where he and Omar grew up was typically American, steeped in the music and movies that were popular in the rest of the country. From time to time, this influence would show in cultural references that Hammami made in his promotional messages on behalf of al-Shabab.

Faulk says it is sad that his classmate turned his back on the good life he could have had.

Because of his activities with al-Shabab, the U.S. government had charged Omar Hammami with providing material support to a terrorist organization and offered up to $5 million for information leading to his capture.


Cilantro may be a cheap way
to filter heavy metals in water


Hints that cilantro, a favorite ingredient in Mexican, Southeast Asian and other spicy cuisine, may be an inexpensive new way of purifying drinking water, chemists said Thursday.

The report came at the 246th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.

Reporting on research done by undergraduate students at a community college, Douglas Schauer  said that cilantro — also known as coriander and Thai parsley — shows promise as a much-needed new biosorbent for removing lead and other potentially toxic heavy metals from contaminated water.

“Cilantro may seem too pricey for use in decontaminating large amounts of water for drinking and cooking,” Schauer said. “However, cilantro grows wild in vast amounts in countries that have problems with heavy-metal water pollution. It is readily available, inexpensive and shows promise in removing certain metals, such as lead, copper and mercury, that can be harmful to human health.”

Conventional methods for removing heavy metals from water such as treatment with activated carbon (used in the filters in home water purification pitchers) or more advanced technology like ion-exchange resins are very effective. However, they can be too expensive for use in developing countries, especially in rural areas. The need for lower-cost, sustainable alternatives has fostered research on biosorbents. These natural materials, which range from microbes to plants, latch on to heavy metals in ways that include both absorption and adsorption.

“Our goal is to find biosorbents that people in developing countries could obtain for nothing,” Schauer explained. “When the filter in a water purification pitcher needs to be changed, they could go outside, gather a handful of cilantro or some other plant, and presto, there’s a new filter ready to purify the water.”

Schauer, who is with Ivy Tech Community College, enlisted his students in that quest, and they worked with scientists at the Universidad Politécnica de Francisco I. Madero in Hidalgo. Mexico does not have a system to filter out heavy metals, said Schauer, noting that cilantro grows wild there. Their small-scale experiments suggested that cilantro may be more effective than activated carbon in removing heavy metals such as lead.

Cilantro’s secret may lie in the structure of the outer walls of the microscopic cells that make up the plant. They have an architecture ideal for absorption of heavy metals. Other plants, including cilantro’s cousins, parsley and culantro, have similar features and could potentially work as biosorbents, he added. Schauer thinks that biosorbents like cilantro could be packed into tea-bag-like packets, reusable water filter cartridges or even tea infuser balls and used to remove heavy metals.



Shirley MacLaine, music stars
win Kennedy Center honors


Pop singer Billy Joel, Oscar-winning actress Shirley MacLaine and jazz composer Herbie Hancock on Thursday were among the annual recipients of this year's Kennedy Center Honors, one of the United States' top cultural awards.
 
Rock guitarist Carlos Santana and opera soprano Martina Arroyo also will be honored at the ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts on Dec. 8 in Washington, D.C.
 
The Kennedy Center Honors, which were created in 1978, recognize the lifetime contributions of performing artists to American culture.
 
Joel, 64, a Grammy-winning singer-songwriter who broke out with 1973's  “Piano Man,” is one of the best-selling pop musicians in the United States. Hancock, 73, is considered an innovative jazz composer and pianist who was an early adopter of synthesizers and made waves with solo works “Cantaloupe Island” and “Watermelon Man.”
 
Santana, 66, is best known as a guitar virtuoso who fused rock and Latin music, while Arroyo, 76, became a mainstay at the world's top opera houses from the 1960s to 1980s.
 
MacLaine, 79, won an Academy Award for her lead role in the 1983 comedy-drama “Terms of Endearment” and was nominated for four other acting Oscars. She also helped break the Hollywood studio's system of contracted movie stars.
 
Kennedy Center Honors recipients are selected by a Kennedy Center committee and come from the fields of music, dance, theater, opera, film and television.
 
The honors have been bestowed on more than 180 performers, including Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Meryl Streep, Luciano Pavarotti, Paul McCartney and Willie Nelson.