Pictures: Inside the World's Most Powerful Laser

Photograph courtesy Damien Jemison, LLNL

Looking like a portal to a science fiction movie, preamplifiers line a corridor at the U.S. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility (NIF).

Preamplifiers work by increasing the energy of laser beams—up to ten billion times—before these beams reach the facility's target chamber.

The project's lasers are tackling "one of physics' grand challenges"—igniting hydrogen fusion fuel in the laboratory, according to the NIF website. Nuclear fusion—the merging of the nuclei of two atoms of, say, hydrogen—can result in a tremendous amount of excess energy. Nuclear fission, by contrast, involves the splitting of atoms.

This July, California-based NIF made history by combining 192 laser beams into a record-breaking laser shot that packed over 500 trillion watts of peak power-a thousand times more power than the entire United States uses at any given instant.

"This was a quantum leap for laser technology around the world," NIF director Ed Moses said in September. But some critics of the $5 billion project wonder why the laser has yet to ignite a fusion chain reaction after three-and-a-half years in operation. Supporters counter that such groundbreaking science simply can't be rushed.

(Related: "Fusion Power a Step Closer After Giant Laser Blast.")

—Brian Handwerk

Published November 29, 2012

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Man Arrested in Fla. Girl's 1993 Disappearance

Police have arrested a 42-year-old man and charged him with murder in the case of a Florida girl who vanished almost 20 years ago.

Andrea Gail Parsons, 10, of Port Salerno, Fla., was last seen on July 11, 1993, shortly after 6 p.m. She had just purchased candy and soda at a grocery store when she waved to a local couple as they drove by on an area street and honked, police said.

Today, Martin County Sheriff's Department officials arrested Chester Duane Price, 42, who recently lived in Haleyville, Ala., and charged him with first-degree murder and kidnapping of a child under the age of 13, after he was indicted by a grand jury.

Price was acquainted with Andrea at the time of her disappearance, and also knew another man police once eyed as a potential suspect, officials told ABC News affiliate WPBF in West Palm Beach, Fla.

Handout/Martin County Sheriff's Office

"The investigation has concluded that Price abducted and killed Andrea Gail Parsons," read a sheriff's department news release. "Tragically, at this time, her body has not been recovered."

The sheriff's department declined to specify what evidence led to Price's arrest for the crime after 19 years or to provide details to ABCNews.com beyond the prepared news release.

Reached by phone, a sheriff's department spokeswoman said she did not know whether Price was yet represented by a lawyer.

Price was being held at the Martin County Jail without bond and was scheduled to make his first court appearance via video link at 10:30 a.m. Friday.

In its news release, the sheriff's department cited Price's "extensive criminal history with arrests dating back to 1991" that included arrests for cocaine possession, assault, sale of controlled substance, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and violation of domestic violence injunction.

"The resolve to find Andrea and get answers surrounding the circumstances of her disappearance has never wavered as detectives and others assigned have dedicated their careers to piecing this puzzle together," Martin County Sheriff Robert L. Crowder said in a prepared statement. "In 2011, I assigned a team of detectives, several 'fresh sets of eyes,' to begin another review of the high-volume of evidence that had been previously collected in this case."

A flyer dating from the time of Andrea's disappearance, and redistributed by the sheriff's office after the arrest, described her as 4-foot-11 with hazel eyes and brown hair. She was last seen wearing blue jean shorts, a dark shirt and clear plastic sandals, according to the flyer.

The sheriff's department became involved in the case after Andrea's mother, Linda Parsons, returned home from work around 10 p.m. on July 11, 1993, to find her daughter missing and called police, according to the initial sheriff's report.

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Today on New Scientist: 28 November 2012

Out-of-proportion black hole is a rare cosmic fossil

A fairly small galaxy is host to a strangely enormous black hole, which could be a remnant of a quasar from the dawn of time

Flowing lithium atoms form accidental transistor

A transistor that controls the flow of atoms, rather than electrons, could be used as a model to probe the mysterious electrical property of superconductivity

Europe in 2050: a survivor's guide to climate change

A new report gives a clear picture of how global warming is affecting Europe - so how must countries adapt to survive?

Arctic permafrost is melting faster than predicted

A UN report and NASA research highlight greenhouse gases from melting permafrost, which they say could warm Earth's climate faster than we thought

Cassini spots superstorm at Saturn's north pole

The end of Saturn's 15-year winter reveals a huge hurricane-like vortex at the centre of the mysterious hexagon that tops the ringed planet

Infinity in the real world: Does space go on forever?

Watch an animation that tries to pin down the size of the universe, the largest thing that exists

Endangered primates caught in Congolese conflict

As the UN warns of a growing humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the advance of the M23 rebels also puts the region's gorillas and chimps at risk

Hive minds: Honeybee intelligence creates a buzz

Bees do remarkable things with a brain the size of a pinhead, raising some intriguing questions about the nature of intelligence for David Robson

Humans head for moon's orbit - and beyond

A NASA mission might focus on the dark side, while a private mission may attempt something even more novel

Europe has right stuff to take NASA back to moon

ESA's redesigned cargo drone will give NASA's Orion spacecraft air, power and manoeuvrability on two new trips to the moon

DNA imaged with electron microscope for the first time

The famous twists of DNA's double helix have been seen with the aid of an electron microscope and a silicon bed of nails

Holiday gifts: Books to give by

CultureLab picks the best books to delight the scientifically curious this holiday season

How do you solve a problem like North Korea?

Forging scientific links may be one of the best ways to help bring rogue states back into the international fold

What truly exists? Structure as a route to the real

Some say we should accept that entities such as atomic particles really do exist. Others bitterly disagree. There is a way out, says Eric Scerri

Gas explosion in Springfield points to ageing pipes

Gas company officials attributed natural gas explosion on 23 November to human error, but the pipeline's corrosion made it susceptible to puncture

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New Chinese passports "counterproductive": Indonesia

JAKARTA: Indonesia's foreign minister said in an interview published on Thursday that new Chinese passports featuring a map laying claim to disputed islands were "counterproductive".

Although it is not a claimant itself, Indonesia has mediated in the dispute between China and several members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

It is also a major supplier of commodities to China, which is increasingly exploring mines and constructing smelters in Indonesia to fuel its economy.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa, who has hopped between claimant nations this year over the issue, warned that the passports would worsen the already-tense dispute and said Jakarta would convey its position to Beijing.

"These actions are counterproductive and will not help settle the disputes," he said in an interview with the Jakarta Post daily.

"We perceive the Chinese move as disingenuous, like testing the water, to see its neighbours' reactions," he said.

He said ASEAN should concentrate on finalising a code of conduct as a first step to alleviate tensions over the issue.

"I hope that we, ASEAN and China can focus on dialogue," he said.

Beijing has infuriated its southern neighbours with its increasingly vocal claim to vast swathes of the South China Sea, with Chinese maps showing a dotted line that runs almost to the Philippine and Malaysian coasts.

The new passports have angered claimants Vietnam and the Philippines, which have refused to stamp the new passports.

India has started stamping its own map onto visas for Chinese visitors as the passports also show the disputed border areas of Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin as Chinese territory.

Beijing has attempted to downplay the diplomatic fallout from the recently introduced passports, with the foreign ministry arguing the maps were "not made to target any specific country".

- AFP/xq

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Apple branches out with new campus in Santa Clara

Apple's proposed new headquarters would be able to fit all of its employees but has yet to be built.

(Credit:
Apple)

As delays have hampered the construction of Apple's proposed upcoming spaceship-like headquarters, the tech giant has begun construction on a two-building campus in nearby Santa Clara, Calif., to house its overflow of employees, according to the Oakland Tribune.

Apple agreed to lease the Santa Clara site, which is close to its current Cupertino headquarters, and plans to move in by 2014. Now under construction, this office will be nearly 296,000 square feet, take up two six-story buildings, and accommodate at least 1,200 employees.

Apple has been making moves to find extra space to fit employees around Silicon Valley, leasing office space well outside of its Cupertino headquarters, which can hold about 2,800 employees. The company has some 12,000 employees in the area, which led the company to pitch plans to the city of Cupertino last year to build a new headquarters that can fit up to 14,200 people.

This new headquarters is designed to be a gigantic circular building, which somewhat resembles the Pentagon and is slated to be completed by mid-2016. Originally, Apple hoped to move into its new digs in 2015, but the city of Cupertino hasn't yet completed its environmental impact survey, so construction has been pushed back until next year.

CNET contacted Apple for comment. We'll update the story when we get more information.

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Caterpillar Fungus Has Anti-Inflammatory Properties

In the Tibetan mountains, a fungus attaches itself to a moth larva burrowed in the soil. It infects and slowly consumes its host from within, taking over its brain and making the young caterpillar move to a position from which the fungus can grow and spore again.

Sounds like something out of science fiction, right? But for ailing Chinese consumers and nomadic Tibetan harvesters, the parasite called cordyceps means hope—and big money. Chinese markets sell the "golden worm," or "Tibetan mushroom"—thought to cure ailments from cancer to asthma to erectile dysfunction—for up to $50,000 (U.S.) per pound. Patients, following traditional medicinal practices, brew the fungal-infected caterpillar in tea or chew it raw.

Now the folk medicine is getting scientific backing. A new study published in the journal RNA finds that cordycepin, a chemical derived from the caterpillar fungus, has anti-inflammatory properties.

"Inflammation is normally a beneficial response to a wound or infection, but in diseases like asthma it happens too fast and to too high of an extent," said study co-author Cornelia H. de Moor of the University of Nottingham. "When cordycepin is present, it inhibits that response strongly."

And it does so in a way not previously seen: at the mRNA stage, where it inhibits polyadenylation. That means it stops swelling at the genetic cellular level—a novel anti-inflammatory approach that could lead to new drugs for cancer, asthma, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and cardiovascular-disease patients who don't respond well to current medications.

From Worm to Pill

But such new drugs may be a long way off. The science of parasitic fungi is still in its early stages, and no medicine currently available utilizes cordycepin as an anti-inflammatory. The only way a patient could gain its benefits would by consuming wild-harvested mushrooms.

De Moor cautions against this practice. "I can't recommend taking wild-harvested medications," she says. "Each sample could have a completely different dose, and there are mushrooms where [taking] a single bite will kill you."

Today 96 percent of the world's caterpillar-fungus harvest comes from the high Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayan range. Fungi from this region are of the subspecies Ophiocordyceps sinensis, locally known as yartsa gunbu ("summer grass, winter worm"). While highly valued in Chinese traditional medicine, these fungi have relatively low levels of cordycepin. What's more, they grow only at elevations of 10,000 to 16,500 feet and cannot be farmed. All of which makes yartsa gunbu costly for Chinese consumers: A single fungal-infected caterpillar can fetch $30.

Brave New Worm

Luckily for researchers, and for potential consumers, another rare species of caterpillar fungus, Cordyceps militaris, is capable of being farmed—and even cultivated to yield much higher levels of cordycepin.

De Moor says that's not likely to discourage Tibetan harvesters, many of whom make a year's salary in just weeks by finding and selling yartsa gunbu. Scientific proof of cordycepin's efficacy will only increase demand for the fungus, which could prove dangerous. "With cultivation we have a level of quality control that's missing in the wild," says de Moor.

"There is definitely some truth somewhere in certain herbal medicinal traditions, if you look hard enough," says de Moor. "But ancient healers probably wouldn't notice a 10 percent mortality rate resulting from herbal remedies. In the scientific world, that's completely unacceptable." If you want to be safe, she adds, "wait for the medicine."

Ancient Chinese medical traditions—which also use ground tiger bones as a cure for insomnia, elephant ivory for religious icons, and rhinoceros horns to dispel fevers—are controversial but popular. Such remedies remain in demand regardless of scientific advancement—and endangered animals continue to be killed in order to meet that demand. While pills using cordycepin from farmed fungus might someday replace yartsa gunbu harvesting, tigers, elephants, and rhinos are disappearing much quicker than worms.

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Powerball Numbers Drawn for Nearly $580M Jackpot

5-23-16-22-29-Powerball 6: Those are the winning numbers for an estimated $579 million Powerball jackpot -- the biggest in history.

After a feverish day that saw hopeful players buying tickets at the rate of 131,000 every minute, lottery officials in Orlando, Fla., drew the winning sequence shortly after 11 p.m.

The results likely will be announced sometime after 2 a.m. Thursday morning.

Identifying the winner, however, could take days -- if there is a winner.

A prior drawing last Saturday night produced no winner. That fact, plus the doubling in price of a Powerball ticket, accounted for the unprecedented richness of the pot.

"Back in January, we moved Powerball from being a $1 game to $2," said Mary Neubauer, a spokeswoman at the game's headquarters in Iowa. "We thought at the time that this would mean bigger and faster-growing jackpots."

That proved true. The total, she said, began taking "huge jumps -- another $100 million since Saturday." It then jumped another $50 million.

The biggest Powerball pot on record until now -- $365 million -- was won in 2006 by eight Lincoln, Neb., co-workers.

In Photos: Biggest Lotto Jackpot Winners

AP Photo/Patrick Semansky

As the latest pot swelled, lottery officials said they began getting phone calls from all around the world.

"When it gets this big," said Neubauer, "we get inquiries from Canada and Europe from people wanting to know if they can buy a ticket. They ask if they can FedEx us the money."

The answer she has to give them, she said, is: "Sorry, no. You have to buy a ticket in a member state from a licensed retail location."

About 80 percent of players don't choose their own Powerball number, opting instead for a computer-generated one.

Asked if there's anything a player can do to improve his or her odds of winning, Neubauer said there isn't -- apart from buying a ticket, of course.

Lottery officials put the odds of winning the $579 Powerball pot at one in 175 million, meaning you'd have been 25 times more likely to win an Academy Award.

Skip Garibaldi, a professor of mathematics at Emory University in Atlanta, provided additional perspective: You are three times more likely to die from a falling coconut, he said; seven times more likely to die from fireworks, "and way more likely to die from flesh-eating bacteria" (115 fatalities a year) than you are to win the Powerball lottery.

Segueing, then, from death to life, Garibaldi noted that even the best physicians, equipped with the most up-to-date equipment, can't predict the timing of a child's birth with much accuracy.

"But let's suppose," he said, "that your doctor managed to predict the day, the hour, the minute and the second your baby would be born."

The doctor's uncanny prediction would be "at least 100 times" more likely than your winning.

Even though he knows the odds all too well, Garibaldi said he usually plays the lottery.

When it gets this big, I'll buy a couple of tickets," he said. "It's kind of exciting. You get this feeling of anticipation. You get to think about the fantasy."

So, did he buy two tickets this time?

"I couldn't," he told ABC News. "I'm in California" -- one of eight states that doesn't offer Powerball.

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Gas explosion in Springfield points to ageing pipes

Human error and corroded pipes were a catastrophic combination on 23 November when a natural gas explosion in Springfield, Massachusetts, injured 21 people and damaged more than 40 buildings.

Gas company officials attributed the incident to an employee puncturing a high-pressure pipeline with a metal probe while looking for a leak. However, the steel pipeline was highly corroded, making it susceptible to damage, according to Mark McDonald, president of the New England Gas Workers Association. "You would have to be Superman to go through steel pipe in good condition," he says.

Ageing natural gas pipelines in the US are increasingly coming under scrutiny. A recent study found 3356 leaks from pipelines under Boston alone. Twenty-five thousand leaks have been reported throughout Massachusetts, some of which have been leaking continuously for more than 20 years, McDonald says. "Enough is enough," he says. "We have to fix the leaks and maintain the gas lines."

The leaks raise safety concerns, and have implications for global warming. Methane is thought to be more than 20 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over a 100 year period.

Incidents involving natural gas pipelines in the US cause an average of $133 million in property damage each year according to data collected by the US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. Even accounting for inflation, annual damages are several times higher today than they were 20 years ago.

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US actor sorry for calling hit TV show 'filth'

LOS ANGELES: The US actor on "Two and a Half Men" who called the hit TV series "filth" apologised Tuesday, as he scrambled to keep his job on what its former star Charlie Sheen said was a "cursed" show.

Angus T. Jones voiced remorse a day after a video surfaced on a Christian church's website, in which he urged viewers not to watch the top-rated comedy show.

"I apologize if my remarks reflect me showing indifference to and disrespect of my colleagues and a lack of appreciation of the extraordinary opportunity of which I have been blessed. I never intended that," he said in a statement.

He added, "I have been the subject of much discussion ... over the past 24 hours. While I cannot address everything that has been said or right every misstatement or misunderstanding, there is one thing I want to make clear.

"Without qualification, I am grateful to and have the highest regard and respect for all of the wonderful people on Two and a Half Men with whom I have worked and over the past ten years who have become an extension of my family."

19-year-old Jones, who reportedly earns US$350,000 an episode playing the character Jake in the show now starring Ashton Kutcher, attacked the program after apparently undergoing a religious revelation.

"If you watch 'Two and a Half Men', please stop watching 'Two and a Half Men'. I'm on 'Two and a Half Men', and I don't want to be on it," he said in a video posted by the Forerunner Christian Church on YouTube.

"Please stop watching it; stop filling your head with filth. Please," he said in the video.

Jones signed up for a new one-year contract in May for the show - from which Sheen was sacked last year after he gave a series of increasingly erratic and explosive interviews about the show's producer, Chuck Lorre.

Sheen said shortly before Jones' apology that he thought the series was plagued.

"With Angus's Hale-Bopp-like meltdown, it is radically clear to me that the show is cursed," Sheen told celebrity bible People magazine, referring to the fiery comet.

Sheen - who portrayed hedonistic jingle writer Charlie Harper - was replaced by Kutcher on the top-rated comedy series, which has been a hit since it was launched in 2003.

In his apology Tuesday, Jones added fulsome praise for its producers.

"Chuck Lorre, (executive producer) Peter Roth and many others at Warner Bros. and CBS are responsible for what has been one of the most significant experiences in my life to date.

"I thank them for the opportunity they have given and continue to give me and the help and guidance I have and expect to continue to receive from them," he said.

Warner Bros, which makes the show along with CBS, has remained tight-lipped about Jones' outburst. A Warner Bros spokesman, Paul McGuire, declined to comment when asked by AFP for a reaction to Jones' apology.

-AFP/fl

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Half of mobile phone users get online with their device

People are now using their cell phones for much more than talking. According to a new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 85 percent of U.S. adults own a mobile phone and 56 percent of them use it to get online.

"Fully 85 percent of American adults own a cell phone and now use the devices to do much more than make phone calls," Pew's Maeve Duggan and Lee Rainie wrote in the recently released study. "Cell phones have become a portal for an ever-growing list of activities."

The data is based on surveys conducted in March and August, which polled more than 4,500 cell phone owners about their habits. The survey didn't clarify what percentage of those polled owned a smartphone, but a Pew poll that came out in April showed that roughly 46 percent of American adults own a smartphone.

Interestingly, this number isn't much higher than a year ago. In July 2011, Pew data showed that 83 percent of U.S. adults have a cell phone and 35 percent own a smartphone.

Despite the small amount of growth, Pew's new survey does suggest that mobile devices are spurring more people to get online and spend more time online. For example, those people using the Internet has gone from 25 percent in 2008 to 56 percent today. And, only 22 percent of people downloaded apps in 2009, while 43 percent do so now. Whether people are taking photos, e-mailing, texting, or getting online, they are now doing more with their cell phones.

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