NEWTOWN, Conn. Newtown observed Christmas amid snow-covered teddy bears, stockings, flowers and candles left in memory of the 20 children and six educators gunned down at an elementary school just 11 days before the holiday.
Volunteers were keeping watch over a candlelight vigil scheduled to last all Christmas day in the Connecticut town.
Twenty-six candles, one for each victim, were lit at midnight Monday near a huge sidewalk memorial filled with teddy bears, flowers, candles, posters and other tributes to the dead.
Volunteers were taking three-hour shifts Tuesday to ensure they remain burning.
Police officers from other communities were filling in for Newtown police so they could have the holiday off.
"It's a nice thing that they can use us this way," Ted Latiak, a police detective from Greenwich, Conn., said Christmas morning, as he and a fellow detective, each working a half-day shift, came out of a store with bagels and coffee for other officers.
And well-wishers from around the country continued visiting the town to pay their respects.
At Christmas morning services, congregants were told that good always overcomes evil.
The pastor of a church in Newtown, Conn., that was attended by eight of the child victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting told parishioners that this Christmas Day "is the day we begin everything all over again."
The Rev. Robert Weiss spoke at the second of four Masses at St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church.
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Newtown first responders: Don't call us heroes
Recalling the events of eleven days ago, Weiss said, "The moment the first responder broke through the doors, we knew good always overcomes evil."
Today, he says, "We know Christmas in a way we never ever thought we would know it."
The outpouring of support for this community was evident on Christmas Eve, with visitors arriving at town hall with offerings of cards, handmade snowflakes and sympathy.
"We know that they'll feel loved. They'll feel that somebody actually cares," said Treyvon Smalls, a 15-year-old from a few towns away who arrived bearing hundreds of cards and paper snowflakes collected from around the state.
An overflow crowd of several hundred people attended Christmas Eve services at Trinity Episcopal Church in Newtown. They were greeted by the sounds of a children's choir, in a sanctuary hall decorated with green wreaths and red bows.
The Trinity Church program said flowers were donated in honor of Sandy Hook shooting victims, identified by name or as the "school angels" and "Sandy Hook families."
36 Photos
Vigils for Conn. school shooting victims
The service, which generally took on a celebratory tone, made only a few vague references to the shooting. Pastor Kathie Adams-Shepherd led the congregation in praying "that the joy and consolation of the wonderful counselor might enliven all who are touched by illness, danger, or grief, especially all those families affected by the shootings in Sandy Hook."
Police say the gunman, Adam Lanza, killed his mother in her bed before his Dec. 14 rampage and committed suicide as he heard officers arriving. Authorities have yet to give a theory about his motive.
While the grief is still fresh, some residents are urging political activism. A group called Newtown United has been meeting at the library to talk about issues ranging from gun control, to increasing mental health services to the types of memorials that could be erected for the victims. Some clergy members have said they also intend to push for change.
15 Photos
U.S. gun shops report spike in sales
"We seek not to be the town of tragedy," said Rabbi Shaul Praver of Congregation Adath Israel. "But, we seek to be the town where all the great changes started."
Since the shooting, messages similar to the ones delivered Monday have arrived from around the world. People have donated toys, books, money and more. A United Way fund, one of many, has collected $3 million. People have given nearly $500,000 to a memorial scholarship fund at the University of Connecticut.
In the center of Newtown's Sandy Hook section Monday, a steady stream of residents and out-of-towners snapped pictures, lit candles and dropped off children's gifts at an expansive memorial filled with stuffed animals, poems, flowers, posters and cards.
"All the families who lost those little kids, Christmas will never be the same," said Philippe Poncet, a Newtown resident originally from France. "Everybody across the world is trying to share the tragedy with our community here."
Richard Scinto, a deacon at St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church, said the church's pastor, Rev. Robert Weiss, used several eulogies this week to tell his congregation to get angry and take action against what some consider is a culture of gun violence in the country.
Praver and Scinto said they are not opposed to hunting or to having police in schools, but both said something must be done to change what has become a culture of violence in the United States.
"These were his mother's guns," Scinto said. "Why would anyone want an assault rifle as part of a private citizen collection?"
A mediator who worked with Lanza's parents during their divorce has said Lanza, 20, was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, an autism-like disorder that is not associated with violence. It is not known whether he had other mental health issues. The guns used in the shooting had been purchased legally by his mother, Nancy Lanza, a gun enthusiast.
A convicted killer, who shot dead two firefighters with a Bushmaster assault rifle after leading them into an ambush when they responded to a house fire he set in Western New York, left behind a typewritten note saying he wanted to "do what I like doing best, killing people," police said.
William Spengler, 62, set his home and a car on fire early Monday morning with the intention of setting a trap to kill firefighters and to see "how much of the neighborhood I can burn down," according to the note he wrote and which police found at the scene. The note did not give a reason for his actions.
Spengler, who served 18 years in prison for beating his 92-year-old grandmother to death with a hammer in 1981, hid Monday morning in a small ditch beside a tree overlooking the sleepy lakeside street in Webster, N.Y., where he lived with his sister, police said today in a news conference.
Police said they found remains in the house, believed to be that of the sister, Cheryl Spengler, 67.
As firefighters arrived on the scene after a 5:30 a.m. 911 call on the morning of Christmas Eve, Spengler opened fire on them with the Bushmaster, the same semi-automatic, military-style weapon used in the Dec. 14 rampage killing of 20 children in Newtown, Conn.
"This was a clear ambush on first responders… Spengler had armed himself heavily and taken area of cover," said Gerald Pickering, the chief of the Webster Police Department.
Armed with a Smith & Wesson .38 caliber revolver, a Mossman 12-gauge shotgun, and the Bushmaster, Spengler killed two firefighters, and injured two more as well as an off-duty police officer at the scene.
As a convicted felon, Spengler could not legally own a firearm and police are investigating how he obtained the weapons.
One firefighter tried to take cover in his fire engine and was killed with a gunshot through the windshield, Pickering said.
Responding police engaged in a gunfight with Spengler, who ultimately died, likely by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
As police engaged the gunman, more houses along Lake Ontario were engulfed, ultimately razing seven of them. Some 33 people in adjoining homes were displaced by the fire.
SWAT teams were forced to evacuate residents using armored vehicles.
Police identified the two slain firefighter as Lt. Michael Chiapperini, a 20-year veteran of the Webster Police Department and "lifetime firefighter," according to Pickering, and Tomasz Kaczowka, who also worked as a 911 dispatcher.
Two other firefighters were wounded and remain the intensive care unit at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, N.Y.
Joseph Hofsetter was shot once. He sustained an injury to his pelvis and has "a long road to recovery," said Dr. Nicole A. Stassen, a trauma physician.
The second firefighter, Theodore Scardino, was shot twice and received injuries to his left shoulder and left lung, as well as a knee.
THIS was the year we held our breath in almost unbearable anticipation while we waited to see whether physicists at the Large Hadron Collider would finally get a clear view of the Higgs boson, so tantalisingly hinted at last December. Going a bit blue, we held on through March when one of the LHC's detectors seemed to lose sight of the thing, before exhaling in a puff of almost-resolution in July, when researchers announced that the data added up to a fairly confident pretty-much-actual-discovery of the particle.
Early indications were that it might be a weird and wonderful variety of the Higgs, prompting a collective gasp of excitement. That was followed by a synchronised sigh of mild disappointment when later data implied that it was probably the most boring possible version after all, and not a strange entity pointing the way to new dimensions and the true nature of dark matter. Prepare yourself for another puff or two as the big story moves on next year.
This respirational rollercoaster might be running a bit too slowly to supply enough oxygen to the brain of a New Scientist reader, so we have taken care to provide more frequent oohs and aahs using less momentous revelations. See how many of the following unfundamental discoveries you can distinguish from the truth-free mimics that crowd parasitically around them.
1. Which of these anatomical incongruities of the animal kingdom did we describe on 14 July?
a) A fish, found in a canal in Vietnam, that wears its genitals under its mouth
b) A frog, found in a puddle in Peru, that has no spleen
c) A lizard, found in a cave in Indonesia, that has four left feet
d) A cat, found in a tree in northern England, that has eight extra teeth
2. "A sprout by any other name would taste as foul." So wrote William Shakespeare in his diary on 25 December 1598, setting off the centuries of slightly unjust ridicule experienced by this routinely over-cooked vegetable. But which forbiddingly named veg did we report on 7 July as having more health-giving power than the sprout, its active ingredient being trialled as a treatment for prostate cancer?
a) Poison celery
b) Murder beans
c) Inconvenience potatoes
d) Death carrots
3. Scientists often like to say they are opening a new window on things. Usually that is a metaphor, but on 10 November we reported on a more literal innovation in the fenestral realm. It was:
a) A perspex peephole set in the nest of the fearsome Japanese giant hornet, to reveal its domestic habits
b) A glass porthole implanted in the abdomen of a mouse, to reveal the process of tumour metastasis
c) A crystal portal in the inner vessel of an experimental thorium reactor, to reveal its nuclear fires to the naked eye
d) A small window high on the wall of a basement office in the Princeton physics department, to reveal a small patch of sky to postgraduate students who have not been outside for seven years
4. On 10 March we described a new material for violin strings, said to produce a brilliant and complex sound richer than that of catgut. What makes up these super strings?
a) Mousegut
b) Spider silk
c) Braided carbon nanotubes
d) An alloy of yttrium and ytterbium
5. While the peril of climate change looms inexorably larger, in this festive-for-some season we might take a minute to look on the bright side. On 17 March we reported on one benefit of global warming, which might make life better for some people for a while. It was:
a) Receding Arctic sea ice will make it easier to lay undersea cables to boost internet speeds
b) Increasing temperatures mean that Greenlanders can soon start making their own wine
c) Rising sea levels could allow a string of new beach resorts to open in the impoverished country of Chad
d) More acidic seawater will add a pleasant tang to the salt water taffy sweets made in Atlantic City
6. In Alaska's Glacier Bay national park, the brown bear in the photo (above, right) is doing something never before witnessed among bearkind, as we revealed on 10 March. Is it:
a) Making a phonecall?
b) Gnawing at a piece of whalebone to dislodge a rotten tooth?
c) Scratching itself with a barnacle-covered stone tool?
d) Cracking oysters on its jaw?
7. Men have much in common with fruit flies, as we revealed on 24 March. When the sexual advances of a male fruit fly are rejected, he may respond by:
a) Whining
b) Hitting the booze
c) Jumping off a tall building
d) Hovering around the choosy female long after all hope is lost
8. While great Higgsian things were happening at the LHC, scientists puzzled over a newly urgent question: what should we call the boson? Peter Higgs wasn't the only physicist to predict its existence, and some have suggested that the particle's name should also include those other theorists or perhaps reflect some other aspect of the particle. Which of the following is a real suggestion that we reported on 24 March?
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SAN FRANCISCO: A lawsuit is seeking to stop Instagram from changing its terms of service, saying the Facebook-owned smartphone photo-sharing service is breaching its contract with users.
The class action lawsuit filed Friday by the Southern California-based Finkelstein and Krinsk law firm called on the federal court to bar Instagram from changing its rules.
"Instagram is taking its customers property rights while insulating itself from all liability," the law firm said in the filing, which also demanded that the service pay its legal fees.
"In short, Instagram declares that 'possession is nine tenths of the law and if you don't like it, you can't stop us.'"
Facebook said the complaint was "without merit." "We will fight it vigorously," the social network added.
Changes to the Instagram privacy policy and terms of service had included wording that allowed for people's pictures to be used by advertisers at Instagram or Facebook worldwide, royalty-free.
Last week, Instagram tried to calm a user rebellion by apparently backing off the changes, due to come into effect from January.
"I want to be really clear: Instagram has no intention of selling your photos, and we never did. We don't own your photos, you do," Instagram co-founder and chief Kevin Systrom said in a blog post.
But the lawsuit, filed in San Francisco, argues that Instagram didn't backpedal enough and that customers who leave the service still forfeit their rights to any photos that they had previously shared on the service.
"The purported concessions by Instagram in its press release and final version of the new terms were nothing more than a public relations campaign to address public discontent," the complaint said.
Tens of thousands of Instagram users in the state of California are eligible to join the class action lawsuit.
Julian Zelizer: 2012 was a year of bitter domestic battles, turbulence overseas
He says the weakness of GOP, renewed strength of liberalism were apparent
Zelizer says the year also highlighted the influence of new immigrants in America
Zelizer: Year ended with a tragic reminder about need to act on gun control
Editor's note: Julian Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Jimmy Carter" and of the new book "Governing America."
(CNN) -- 2012 has been a tumultuous year in American politics. With the presidential election capping off the year, Americans have witnessed a series of bitter domestic battles and turbulent events overseas. As the year closes out, it is worth thinking about some of the most important lessons that politicians and voters can learn from this year as they prepare for 2013.
Here are six:
The Republican brand name is in trouble: The GOP took a drubbing in 2012. To be sure, Mitt Romney ran a problematic campaign. His inability to connect with voters and a number of embarrassing gaffes hurt the chances for Republicans to succeed.
Julian Zelizer
Just as important to the outcome was the party that Romney represented. Voters are not happy with the GOP. Public approval for the party has been extremely low. Congressional Republicans have helped to bring down the party name with their inability to compromise.
Recent polls show that if the nation goes off the fiscal cliff, the Republicans would be blamed. According to a survey by NBC and the Wall Street Journal, 65 percent of people asked for a short word or phrase to describe the GOP came up with something negative. The Republican Party was also the lowest-rated political institution.
The exit polls in November showed that the GOP is out of step with the electorate on a number of big issues, including immigration and gay marriage. If Republicans don't undertake some serious reforms and offer fresh voices, all the new messaging in the world won't help them as the competition starts for 2016.
Opinion: Madness in the air in Washington
America has grown more liberal on cultural and social issues: The election results confirmed what polls have been showing for some time. If the 1960s was a battle over conservative "traditional family values" and liberal ideals of social relations, liberals eventually won. Throughout the year, polls showed, for example, that the public was becoming more tolerant of gay marriage and civil unions. Americans support the view that gay sex should be legal by a margin of 2-1, compared to 1977 when the public was split.
In the election, same-sex marriage was approved in three states, voters in Wisconsin sent to office the first openly gay senator, and two states approved of referendums to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. Americans are accepting of social diversity, and expect that the pluralism of the electorate will be reflected by the composition of elected officials in Washington.
While there are some conservative voices who lament these changes and warn of a nation that is veering toward Sodom, a majority are more than comfortable that some of the taboos and social restrictions of earlier eras are fading and that we live in a nation which is more tolerant than ever before. These social and cultural changes will certainly raise more questions about restrictive practices and policies that remain in place while creating pressure for new kinds of leaders who are responsive to these changes.
The Middle East remains a tinderbox: In the years that followed Barack Obama's election, there was some hope that the Middle East could become a calmer region. When revolutions brought down some of the most notorious dictators in the region, many Americans cheered as the fervor for democracy seemed to be riding high.
But events in 2012 threw some cold water on those hopes. The Muslim Brotherhood won control of the Egyptian government. In Syria, the government brutally cracked down on opponents, reaching the point in December where Obama's administration has started to talk about the possibility of the al-Assad regime using chemical weapons, though the severity of the threat is unclear. The battles between Palestinians and Israel raged with rockets being fired into Tel Aviv and Israelis bombing targets in Gaza.
Although national attention is focused on domestic policy, it is clear that the Middle East has the capacity to command national attention at any moment and remains as explosive as ever.
Our infrastructure needs repair: Hurricane Sandy devastated the Northeast in November, leaving millions of Americans on the East Coast without power and with damaged property. Soon after the hurricane hit, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo made an important point. The infrastructure of our cities is outdated and needs to be revamped so that it can withstand current weather patterns. Speaking of the need for levees in New York, Cuomo said: "It is something we're going to have to start thinking about ... The construction of this city did not anticipate these kinds of situations."
Regardless of whether Congress takes action on the issue of climate change, in the short term cities and suburbs must do more work to curtail the kind of damage wreaked by these storms and to mitigate the costs of recovery -- building underground power lines, increasing resources for emergency responders, building state-of-the-art water systems, and constructing effective barriers to block water from flooding.
The new immigrants are a powerful political and social force: As was the case in the turn of the twentieth century when Eastern and Southern Europeans came into this county, massive waves of immigration are remaking the social fabric of the nation. Latino-Americans, Asian-Americans and other new portions of the electorate who have been coming into the country since the reform of immigration laws in 1965 are coming to represent a bigger and bigger portion of the electorate.
Not only are their numbers growing as a voting bloc, but they are more organized and active than ever before, both on election day as well as in policy making.
Soon after the election, The New York Times reported that 600 members of United We Dream, a network of younger immigrants who don't have their papers, met for three days to plan how to lobby for a bill that would enable 11 million illegal immigrants to become legal. One of the leaders, Christina Jimenez, explained: "We have an unprecedented opportunity to engage our parents, our cousins, our abuelitos in this fight." They have both parties scrambling as Democrats are working to fulfill the promises that brought these voters to their side in November, while some Republicans are desperate to dampen the influence of hardline anti-immigration activists in their party.
We need to do something about guns. The year ended with a horrific shooting at an elementary school in Connecticut. When a 20-year-old went on a rampage apparently using guns that had been legally purchased by his mother, the world watched with horror. Several prominent conservative advocates of gun rights, including former congressman and television host Joseph Scarborough as well as Sen. Joe Manchin, made statements indicating that the time has come to impose stricter controls and regulations on the purchase of weapons. "I don't know anybody in the sporting or hunting arena that goes out with an assault file," Manchin said.
Over the next few weeks, there will certainly be a big debate about what caused this shooting. People from different perspectives will highlight different issues but making it more difficult for people to get their hands on certain kinds of weapons, while not a cure-all, can only diminish the chances of this happening again.
There are many more lessons but these six stand out. After the trauma of the past week, let's hope the new year starts off with better days.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Julian Zelizer.
PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. Volunteers at a U.S. Air Force base monitoring Santa Claus' progress around the world were on track to answer a record number of calls Monday from children wanting to know everything from Saint Nick's age to how reindeer fly.
Oh, and when are the presents coming?
Phones were ringing nonstop at Peterson Air Force Base, headquarters of the North American Aerospace Command's annual Santa-tracking operation.
First Lady Michelle Obama joined in from Hawaii, where she answered phone calls for about 30 minutes.
First Lady Michelle Obama reacts while talking on the phone to children across the country as part of the annual NORAD Tracks Santa program. Mrs. Obama answered the phone calls from Kailua, Hawaii, Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, 2012.
/ The White House/Pete Souza
NORAD Tracks Santa was on pace to exceed last year's record of 107,000 calls, program spokeswoman Marisa Novobilski said.
But NORAD has some fresh competition: Google has unveiled a new Santa tracker this year. As CNET reports, Google Maps engineers developed a new route algorithm that will let users track Saint Nick's journey on a special Santa Tracker page.
"Google has been tracking Santa via Google Earth since 2004," CNET's Don Reisinger notes. "This is the first time the company has launched a broader Santa Tracker tool that competes with NORAD's perennial favorite."
Volunteers started taking calls at 4 a.m. Mountain time on Monday and will keep updating until 3 a.m. on Christmas morning.
NORAD Tracks Santa began in 1955 when a newspaper ad listed the wrong phone number for kids to call Santa. Callers ended up getting the Continental Air Defense Command, NORAD's predecessor, and a tradition was born.
Officers played along. Since then, NORAD Tracks Santa has gone global, posting updates for nearly 1.2 million Facebook fans and 104,000 Twitter followers.
Volunteer Sara Berghoff was caught off-guard when a child called to see if Santa could be especially kind this year to the families affected by the recent Connecticut school shooting.
"I'm from Newtown, Connecticut, where the shooting was," she remembered the child asking. "Is it possible that Santa can bring extra presents so I can deliver them to the families that lost kids?"
Sara, just 13 herself, gathered her thoughts quickly. "If I can get ahold of him, I'll try to get the message to him," she told the child.
Following is a sampling of calls received at the base:
---
GIFTS IN HEAVEN: One little boy from Missouri phoned in to ask what time Santa delivered toys to heaven, said volunteer Jennifer Eckels, who took the call. The boy's mother got on the line to explain that his sister had died this year.
"I think Santa headed there first," Eckels told him.
---
IS HE THERE YET?: James Solano took a call from a young girl and her father in Bangkok, asking when Santa would arrive. Solano checked the map and said it wouldn't be long.
"The dad was saying, `We've got to get to bed soon,"' said Solano, an Army colonel.
"It was kind of neat," he said. "They were very thrilled."
---
SANTA KNOWS: Glenn Barr took a call from a 10-year-old who wasn't sure if he would be sleeping at his mom's house or his dad's and was worried about whether Santa would find him.
"I told him Santa would know where he was and not to worry," Barr said.
Another child asked if he was on the nice list or the naughty list.
"That's a closely guarded secret, and only Santa knows," Barr replied.
---
THE REAL DEAL: A young boy called to ask if Santa was real.
Air Force Maj. Jamie Humphries, who took the call, said, "I'm 37 years old, and I believe in Santa, and if you believe in him as well, then he must be real."
The boy turned from the phone and yelled to others in the room, "I told you guys he was real!"
People drawn to Newtown to share in its mourning brought cards and handmade snowflakes to town Monday while residents prepared to observe Christmas less than two weeks after a gunman killed 20 children and six educators at an elementary school.
On Christmas Eve, residents said they would light luminaries outside their homes in memory of the victims. Tiny empty Christmas stockings with the victims' names on them hung from trees in the neighborhood where the children were shot.
"We know that they'll feel loved. They'll feel that somebody actually cares," said Treyvon Smalls, a 15-year-old from a few towns away who arrived at town hall with hundreds of cards and paper snowflakes collected from around the state.
Organizers said they wanted to let the families of victims know they are not alone while also giving Connecticut children a chance to express their feelings about the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
At the Trinity Episcopal Church, less than 2 miles from the school, an overflow crowd of several hundred people attended Christmas Eve services. They were greeted by the sounds of a children's choir echoing throughout a sanctuary hall that had its walls decorated with green wreaths adorned with red bows.
The church program said flowers were donated in honor of Sandy Hook shooting victims, identified by name or as the "school angels" and "Sandy Hook families."
Julio Cortez, File/AP Photo
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The service, which generally took on a celebratory tone, made only a few vague references to the shooting. Pastor Kathie Adams-Shepherd led the congregation in praying "that the joy and consolation of the wonderful counselor might enliven all who are touched by illness, danger, or grief, especially all those families affected by the shootings in Sandy Hook."
Police say the gunman killed his mother in her bed before his Dec. 14 rampage and committed suicide as he heard officers arriving. Authorities have yet to give a theory about his motive.
While the grief is still fresh, some residents are urging political activism in the wake of the tragedy. A grassroots group called Newtown United has been meeting at the library to talk about issues ranging from gun control, to increasing mental health services to the types of memorials that could be erected for the victims. Some clergy members have said they also intend to push for change.
"We seek not to be the town of tragedy," said Rabbi Shaul Praver of Congregation Adath Israel. "But, we seek to be the town where all the great changes started."
Since the shooting, messages similar to the ones delivered Monday have arrived from around the world. People have donated toys, books, money and more. A United Way fund, one of many, has collected $3 million. People have given nearly $500,000 to a memorial scholarship fund at the University of Connecticut. On Christmas Day, police from other towns have agreed to work so Newtown officers can have the time off.
In the center of Newtown's Sandy Hook section Monday, a steady stream of residents and out-of-towners snapped pictures, lit candles and dropped off children's gifts at an expansive memorial filled with stuffed animals, poems, flowers, posters and cards.
"All the families who lost those little kids, Christmas will never be the same," said Philippe Poncet, a Newtown resident originally from France. "Everybody across the world is trying to share the tragedy with our community here."
Cadaver stem cells offer new hope of life after death
Stem cells can be extracted from bone marrow five days after death to be used in life-saving treatments
Apple's patents under fire at US patent office
The tech firm is skating on thin ice with some of the patents that won it a $1 billion settlement against Samsung
Himalayan dam-building threatens endemic species
The world's highest mountains look set to become home to a huge number of dams - good news for clean energy but bad news for biodiversity
Astrophile: Black hole exposed as a dwarf in disguise
A white dwarf star caught mimicking a black hole's X-ray flashes may be the first in a new class of binary star systems
Blind juggling robot keeps a ball in the air for hours
The robot, which has no visual sensors, can juggle a ball flawlessly by analysing its trajectory
Studio sessions show how Bengalese finch stays in tune
This songbird doesn't need technological aids to stay in tune - and it's smart enough to not worry when it hears notes that are too far off to be true
Giant tooth hints at truly monumental dinosaur
A lone tooth found in Argentina may have belonged to a dinosaur even larger than those we know of, but what to call it?
Avian flu virus learns to fly without wings
A strain of bird flu that hit the Netherlands in 2003 travelled by air, a hitherto suspected by unproven route of transmission
Feedback: Are wind turbines really fans?
A tale of "disease-spreading" wind farms, the trouble with quantifying "don't know", the death of parody in the UK, and more
The link between devaluing animals and discrimination
Our feelings about other animals have important consequences for how we treat humans, say prejudice researchers Gordon Hodson and Kimberly Costello
Best videos of 2012: First motion MRI of unborn twins
Watch twins fight for space in the womb, as we reach number 6 in our countdown of the top videos of the year
2012 Flash Fiction winner: Sleep by Richard Clarke
Congratulations to Richard Clarke, who won the 2012 New Scientist Flash Fiction competition with a clever work of satire
Urban Byzantine monks gave in to temptation
They were supposed to live on an ascetic diet of mainly bread and water, but the monks in 6th-century Jerusalem were tucking into animal products
The pregnant promise of fetal medicine
As prenatal diagnosis and treatment advance, we are entering difficult ethical territory
2013 Smart Guide: Searching for human origins in Asia
Africa is where humanity began, where we took our first steps, but those interested in the latest cool stuff on our origins should now look to Asia instead
The end of the world is an opportunity, not a threat
Don't waste time bemoaning the demise of the old order; get on with building the new one
A photon-based version of a 19th-century mechanical device could bring quantum computers a step closer
Did learning to fly give bats super-immunity?
When bats first took to the air, something changed in their DNA which may have triggered their incredible immunity to viruses
Van-sized space rock is a cosmic oddball
Fragments from a meteor that exploded over California in April are unusually low in amino acids, putting a twist on one theory of how life on Earth began
PARIS: The West Antarctic Ice Sheet, whose melt may be responsible for 10 percent of the sea-level rise caused by climate change, is warming twice as quickly as previously thought, a study said Sunday.
A re-analysis of temperature records from 1958 to 2010 revealed an increase of 2.4 degrees Celsius (36.3 degrees Fahrenheit) over the period -- three times the average global rise.
The increase was nearly double what previous research had suggested, and meant this was one of the fastest-warming regions on Earth, according to paper co-author David Bromwich of the Byrd Polar Research Center.
"Our record suggests that continued summer warming in West Antarctica could upset the surface balance of the ice sheet, so that the region could make an even bigger contribution to sea-level rise than it already does," he said.
Scientists believe the shrinking of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is responsible for about 10 percent of global warming-related sea-level rise, which if unchecked threatens to flood many coastal cities within a few generations.
The sheet, a huge mass of ice up to four kilometres (2.5 miles) thick that covers the land surface and stretches into the sea, is melting faster than any other part of Antarctica.
Data records kept at Byrd Station in the central West Antarctic had been incomplete.
Since being established in 1957, the research station has not been consistently occupied and has seen frequent power outages, especially during the long polar night, when its solar panels cannot recharge.
Bromwich and a team from several US-based research institutions used weather data from different sources to plug holes in the Byrd data and corrected calibration errors.
The updated log was published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
"Aside from offering a more complete picture of warming in West Antarctica, the study suggests that if this warming trend continues, melting will become more extensive in the region in the future," said Bromwich.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 had projected sea level rise of 18 to 59 centimetres (seven to 23 inches) worldwide by the year 2100.
But a study by the US National Research Council said in June the actual rise could be two to three times higher, with polar ice-cap melt speeding up the process.
