Scarred for life? The biology of childhood hardship

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Starbucks opens first store in Vietnam

HO CHI MINH CITY: Starbucks opened its first store in coffee-loving Vietnam on Friday, seeking to compete with local rivals in a country known for its strong cafe culture.

Vietnam - the world's second-largest coffee producer - has dozens of local chains as well as small coffee shops on nearly every street corner, presenting a major challenge for Starbucks to break into the crowded market.

Around 100 people queued up in southern Ho Chi Minh City for the opening, but the US giant's coffee was not to everybody's taste.

"I prefer Vietnamese coffee, which is stronger than Starbucks. As a Vietnamese, I love local coffee," said Nguyen Tien Tam, 35.

Vietnamese coffee is traditionally prepared in individual metal drip filters, producing a very strong, thick liquid that can be mixed with condensed milk or served black over ice.

Starbucks said in a statement that its store would "embrace distinctive Vietnam traditions and strong heritage of coffee passion".

"We have deep respect for Vietnam's long coffee traditions," it added.

Vietnamese farmers mostly produce the low-grade robusta variety used for instant coffee or other blends.

An increasing number, however, are switching to arabica beans, which command higher prices, and Starbucks has said it aims to buy more of this type from local suppliers.

Starbucks has been targeting growth outside of the stagnant US market, opening thousands of stores in China and across the Asia-Pacific region over the past few years.

It plans to have almost 4,000 stores in the Asia-Pacific by the end of 2013.

- AFP/de

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Windows 8 ekes out 2.2 percent market share

Windows 8 may not be setting the PC landscape on fire, but at least it's heating up some gains in market share.

The latest flavor of Windows scored a market share of 2.26 percent in January, as recorded by Web tracker Net Applications. That showed a slow but steady rise from 1.72 percent in December and 1.09 percent in November.

Windows 8 has been floating around for a while as beta and preview editions became available, but the official release debuted at the end of October.

January's numbers showed
Windows 8 in fifth place among the various operating system versions, just behind
Mac OS X 10.8 with a 2.44 percent share.

Windows 7 remained in first place with a 44.4 percent share, down slightly from the previous month. No. 2 Windows XP grabbed 39.5 percent of the market, up slightly from December. Though still in third place, Vista continued to shed users with a 5.24 percent share.

How has Windows 8 fared in comparison with
Windows 7 during its initial launch months? Not too well.

Windows 7 officially debuted in October 2009. By January 2010, Windows 7 had already won a market share of 7.71 percent, according to Net Applications' stats.

And how Windows 8 will fare moving forward remains a question mark.

The new OS has so far failed to ignite PC sales, which continue to slump as tablets surge. And even people who want to upgrade to Windows 8 now may be discouraged by the higher price tag.

Microsoft had been dangling the Windows 8 Pro upgrade for just $39.99. Even better, anyone who bought Windows 7 after June of last year was able to snag Windows 8 Pro for just $14.99.

But that promotion is no more. As of today, upgrading to Windows 8 will run you $119.99 for the standard version and $199.99 for the Pro version.

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Sinkhole Swallows Buildings in China

Photograph from AFP/Getty Images

The sinkhole that formed in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou (pictured) is, unfortunately, not a new occurrence for the country.

Many areas of the world are susceptible to these sudden formations, including the U.S. Florida is especially prone, but Guatemala, Mexico, and the area surrounding the Dead Sea in the Middle East are also known for their impressive sinkholes. (See pictures of a sinkhole in Beijing that swallowed a truck.)

Published January 31, 2013

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Police: Suicide Bombing Strikes US Embassy

A suspected suicide bomber detonated an explosive Friday in front of the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, killing himself and a guard at the entrance gate, officials said.

U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardione told reporters that a Turkish citizen was also wounded in the 1:15 p.m. blast in the Turkish capital.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but both Kurdish rebels and Islamic militants are active in Turkey.

The bomb appeared to have exploded inside the security checkpoint at the side entrance to the embassy, but did not damage the inside of the embassy itself.

TV footage showed the embassy door blown off its hinges. The windows of nearby businesses were also shattered by the power of the blast, and debris littered the ground and across the road.

Police swarmed the area and immediately cordoned it off and several ambulances were dispatched.

An AP journalist saw one woman who appeared to be seriously injured being carried into an ambulance but a hospital official said she was "not in critical condition." On its website, the Hurriyet newspaper identified the woman as Didem Tuncay, a television journalist who it said was at the embassy to get a U.S. visa.

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The embassy building is heavily protected and located near several other embassies, including that of Germany and France. Hurriyet newspaper said staff at the embassy took shelter in "safe room" inside the compound soon after the explosion.

Phones were not being answered at the embassy later Friday.

Police examined security cameras around the embassy and identified two people who could have been the suicide bomber, a police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with government rules.

In a statement, the U.S. Embassy thanked Turkey for "its solidarity and outrage over the incident."

Kurdish rebels who are fighting for autonomy in the Kurdish-dominated southeast have dramatically stepped up attacks in Turkey over the last year. The United States considers the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, a terrorist organization and has helped Turkey in its battle against the group. But the group has not attacked U.S. targets in its nearly 30-year insurgency.

Homegrown Islamic militants tied to al-Qaida have carried out suicide bombings in Istanbul, Turkey's bustling commercial center. In a 2003 attack on the British consulate, a suspected Islamic militant rammed an explosive-laden pickup truck into the main gate, killing 58 people, including the British consul-general.

In 2008, an attack blamed on al-Qaida-affiliated militants outside the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul left three assailants and three policemen dead.

Turkey is also being deeply affected by the brutal civil war in neighboring Syria, and has become a harsh critic of President Bashar Assad's regime there. The war has left at least 60,000 people dead so far, according to the U.N., and Turkey is sheltering tens of thousands of Syrian refugees.

The first of six Patriot missile batteries being deployed to Turkey to protect the country against attack from Syria was just declared operational and placed under NATO command. Others are expected to become operational in the coming days.

——

Associated Press writer Ezgi Akin contributed to the report.

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Drone school: Not a cushy number

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Malaysia Airlines joins oneworld global airline alliance

KUALA LUMPUR: The oneworld global airline alliance on Thursday welcomed Malaysia flag carrier Malaysia Airlines (MAS) as its newest member.

Oneworld's CEO Bruce Ashby said MAS will enhance the alliance's presence in Southeast Asia and turn Kuala Lumpur into its gateway to the region.

Mr Ashby said: "We didn't have a member in Southeast Asia. We had Hong Kong, we had Sydney, but we were lacking a presence in this area. We now have Malaysia, and Sri Lanka will be coming in probably later this year."

Malaysia Airlines is oneworld's 12th member.

The alliance operates over 9,000 daily flights, carrying nearly a million passengers a day.

It currently flies to more than 850 destinations in almost 160 countries.

MAS said joining the alliance is part of its key strategy in its turnaround plan.

- CNA/fa

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Facebook shares down as investors, analysts question future

Facebook shares are down in pre-market trading today, spelling some possible erosion in the stock price heading into full Thursday trading.

Facebook shares are down 5 percent today to $29.68 in pre-market trading. The company's stock ended the day yesterday at $31.24, up significantly from the company's 52-week low of $17.55. That rally has been due to Facebook's ability to gain traction in mobile and reassure investors that it could continue to grow.

The company went a long way in making its case yesterday, reporting better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings. During the period, the company's revenue grew 40 percent year-over-year to $1.59 billion. Facebook was also able to post an adjusted earnings per share of 17 cents, beating Wall Street's estimates.

So, why are Facebook shares down? It might have more to do with the ability for Facebook shares to actually grow and less to do with its performance.

Here's what Citi analyst Neil Doshi had to say:

We view FB as a core long-term 'Net stock. But with plans to invest heavily in the biz in 2013, and little expected contribution from new initiatives like Gifts or Graph Search, we don't see any near-term catalysts for the stock. And Mobile Ads appear to be cannibalizing Desktop, which further concerns us.

Doshi downgraded Facebook's shares to neutral and put its price target at $30.

But not every analyst agrees with Citi. Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter said in a research note today that there's good reason to be bullish on the company's shares and he has placed Facebook's price target over the next 12 months at $35:

Our price target reflects Facebook's strong monetization potential from increased mobile penetration and a series of initiatives as well as future success from new products like Graph Search and targeted ads.

We will continue to update this story as Facebook shares start trading.

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New Theory on How Homing Pigeons Find Home

Jane J. Lee

Homing pigeons (Columba livia) have been prized for their navigational abilities for thousands of years. They've served as messengers during war, as a means of long-distance communication, and as prized athletes in international races.

But there are places around the world that seem to confuse these birds—areas where they repeatedly vanish in the wrong direction or scatter on random headings rather than fly straight home, said Jon Hagstrum, a geophysicist who authored a study that may help researchers understand how homing pigeons navigate.

Hagstrum's paper, published online Wednesday in the Journal of Experimental Biology, proposes an intriguing theory for homing pigeon disorientation—that the birds are following ultralow frequency sounds back towards their lofts and that disruptions in their ability to "hear" home is what screws them up.

Called infrasound, these sound waves propagate at frequencies well below the range audible to people, but pigeons can pick them up, said Hagstrum, who works at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California.

"They're using sound to image the terrain [surrounding] their loft," he said. "It's like us visually recognizing our house using our eyes."

Homeward Bound?

For years, scientists have struggled to explain carrier pigeons' directional challenges in certain areas, known as release-site biases.

This "map" issue, or a pigeon's ability to tell where it is in relation to where it wants to go, is different from the bird's compass system, which tells it which direction it's headed in. (Learn about how other animals navigate.)

"We know a lot about pigeon compass systems, but what has been controversial, even to this day, has been their map [system]," said Cordula Mora, an animal behavior researcher at Bowling Green State University in Ohio who was not involved in the study.

Until now, the two main theories say that pigeons rely either on their sense of smell to find their way home or that they follow the Earth's magnetic field lines, she said.

If something screwed up their sense of smell or their ability to follow those fields, the thinking has been, that could explain why pigeons got lost in certain areas.

But neither explanation made sense to Hagstrum, a geologist who grew interested in pigeons after attending an undergraduate lecture by Cornell biologist William Keeton. Keeton, who studied homing pigeons' navigation abilities, described some release-site biases in his pigeons and Hagstrum was hooked.

"I was just stunned and amazed and fascinated," said Hagstrum. "I understand we don't get dark matter or quantum mechanics, but bird [navigation]?"

So Hagstrum decided to look at Keeton's pigeon release data from three sites in upstate New York. At Castor Hill and Jersey Hill, the birds would repeatedly fly in the wrong direction or head off randomly when trying to return to their loft at Cornell University, even though they had no problems at other locations. At a third site near the town of Weedsport, young pigeons would head off in a different direction from older birds.

There were also certain days when the Cornell pigeons could find their way back home from these areas without any problems.

At the same time, homing pigeons from other lofts released at Castor Hill, Jersey Hill, and near Weedsport, would fly home just fine.

Sound Shadows

Hagstrum knew that homing pigeons could hear sounds as low as 0.05 hertz, low enough to pick up infrasounds that were down around 0.1 or 0.2 hertz. So he decided to map out what these low-frequency sound waves would have looked like on an average day, and on the days when the pigeons could home correctly from Jersey Hill.

He found that due to atmospheric conditions and local terrain, Jersey Hill normally sits in a sound shadow in relation to the Cornell loft. Little to none of the infrasounds from the area around the loft reached Jersey Hill except on one day when changing wind patterns and temperature inversions permitted.

That happened to match a day when the Cornell pigeons had no problem returning home.

"I could see how the topography was affecting the sound and how the weather was affecting the sound [transmission]," Hagstrum said. "It started to explain all these mysteries."

The terrain between the loft and Jersey Hill, combined with normal atmospheric conditions, bounced infrasounds up and over these areas.

Some infrasound would still reach Castor Hill, but due to nearby hills and valleys, the sound waves approached from the west and southwest, even though the Cornell loft is situated south-southwest of Castor Hill.

Records show that younger, inexperienced pigeons released at Castor Hill would sometimes fly west while older birds headed southwest, presumably following infrasounds from their loft.

Hagstrum's model found that infrasound normally arrived at the Weedsport site from the south. But one day of abnormal weather conditions, combined with a local river valley, resulted in infrasound that arrived at Weedsport from the Cornell loft from the southeast.

Multiple Maps

"What [Hagstrum] has found for those areas are a possible explanation for the [pigeon] behavior at these sites," said Bowling Green State's Mora. But she cautions against extrapolating these results to all homing pigeons.

Some of Mora's work supports the theory that homing pigeons use magnetic field lines to find their way home.

What homing pigeons are using as their map probably depends on where they're raised, she said. "In some places it may be infrasound, and in other places [a sense of smell] may be the way to go."

Hagstrum's next steps are to figure out how large an area the pigeons are listening to. He's also talking to the Navy and Air Force, who are interested in his work. "Right now we use GPS to navigate," he said. But if those satellites were compromised, "we'd be out of luck." Pigeons navigate from point to point without any problems, he said.

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Obama Prods GOP on Immigration Negotiations

Jan 31, 2013 6:00am

                                                                        (Image Credit: John Gurzinski/Getty Images)

President Obama has apparently had enough of leading from behind.

During the health-care push, Obama left Congress to its own devices. On immigration, he’s doing just the opposite, attempting to prod Republican legislators to the middle by demanding a vote on his own plan.

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The president insisted Tuesday that Congress vote on his plan as soon as possible, barring agreement on something else.

“It’s important for us to recognize that the foundation for bipartisan action is already in place,” Obama said, referring to a bipartisan Senate bill offered up by the so-called Gang of Eight senators, which looks much more palatable to Republicans than Obama’s own plan. “And if Congress is unable to move forward in a timely fashion, I will send up a bill based on my proposal and insist that they vote on it right away.”

In doing so, Obama dared Congress to say “no” to something specific.

A Glossary for Immigration Overhaul

It’s the same strategy Obama used in the “fiscal-cliff” talks. With a year-end deadline approaching, he pushed Congress to vote on his own plan: to let higher income tax hikes go into effect if lawmakers couldn’t cut a deal themselves. Obama asked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada to call “an up-or-down vote” on that plan, the president announced in a Dec. 28 appearance before cameras at the White House.

“If members of the House or the Senate want to vote ‘no,’ they can, but we should let everybody vote,” Obama said then.

Republicans hate such a negotiation tactic. Throughout Obama’s White House tenure, GOP aides have griped that the president and congressional Democrats have sought political gain while refusing to negotiate in good faith. On immigration, it’s the same.

The Obama plan includes a faster path to citizenship and nothing to trigger border-security enforcement. It would also clear an easier path for same-sex couples.

Before Obama rolled out his immigration plan in Nevada Tuesday, Sen. Marco Rubio of  Florida raised concerns that the president would launch a “bidding war.”

In a radio interview with Rush Limbaugh, Rubio dismissed the notion of an up-or-down vote: “It’s going to have to go through committees and people are going to have their input. There’s going to be public hearings.  I don’t want to be part of a process that comes up with some bill in secret and brings it to the floor and gives people a take it or leave it.

“I want this place to work the way it’s supposed to work, with every senator having input and the public having input,” Rubio said.

A Senate Republican aide jabbed, “The president’s been gone from the Senate a long time and perhaps he has forgotten that it’s a lot easier to pass legislation if he works with Congress.”

Obama has presented Republicans with a plan they will like much less than what’s been crafted by the bipartisan Senate group. The group plan includes triggers to enforce border-security measures, more unmanned drones and no provisions making it easier for same-sex couples seeking to immigrate or naturalize.

Unless other Republicans come up with a plan of their own, the president has given Republicans a choice between the left and the middle. It’s not hard to tell which they’d prefer.

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