CALABAR, Nigeria, March 23 (Reuters) - Nigeria, crowned African Nations Cup champions six weeks ago, needed a dramatic late equaliser to rescue a 1-1 home draw with bottom team Kenya in World Cup Group F qualifying on Saturday. Substitute Nnamdi Oduamadi, who plays for Italian second-tier club Varese, scored three minutes into stoppage time to save the Nigerians from an embarrassing defeat. It was the second draw in three games for Nigeria who have five points, level with Malawi at the top of the group. Namibia have three points from three matches and Kenya are bottom on two points. ...
The fine folks at Tinhte have gotten their mitts on a Motorola-made Android phone that hasn't made its official debut. Right out of the gate, the outlet notes that it's not the rumored "X phone" since it's missing a large, stunning screen that would rival other flagship gear, but the specs still give it a fair amount of horsepower. Behind the device's roughly 4-inch 720p screen hide a Snapdragon S4 Pro (or better), an Adreno 320 GPU, 2GB of RAM and a 2,000mAh battery. On the outside, the smartphone sports a curved back reminiscent of the HTC One, a black finish and a thin bezel framing its display. Tinhte reports that the handset carries a XT912A model number, so we reckon it could be a cousin of the Droid RAZR, which is labeled as the XT912. Hit the jump for a video tour of the device, or click the source link for a full photo gallery.
If you've been wondering why the We Are Hunted music discovery service has gone a little quiet of late, CNET thinks it has things figured out. According to typically-unnamed sources, Hunted has been gobbled up by Twitter and has been working on building an iOS app to launch before the end of the month. According to CNET's report, the app would make music suggestions based on what you're currently listening to and, yes, what music accounts you follow on Twitter. The app itself supposedly won't wade into the particularly murky waters of music streaming, but will instead piggy-back on SoundCloud for the heavy lifting. Current listens will be pushed out to Twitter and, if you were having doubts about this, many We Are Hunted employee Twitter accounts have been showing a conspicuous number of #NowPlaying-tagged tweets -- with links to SoundCloud tracks. We've reached out to Twitter for comment and will update here should we hear anything back.
The Edge is National Journal's daily look at today in Washington -- and what's coming next. The email features analysis from NJ's top correspondents, the biggest stories of the day -- and always a few surprises. To subscribe, click here.
Time for Another Fiscal Fight
The budget season is upon us. This week, Democrats and Republicans in Congress will offer their spending plans ahead of the president, who usually goes first (the White House says it was delayed by the fiscal-cliff mess.).
No doubt the two budgets will offer different worldviews when it comes to the Pentagon, domestic discretionary spending, and, of course, entitlements.
Democrats are already salivating; their Senate campaign committee held a conference call Monday to chirp that they were planning to lambaste any Republican who supported a Paul Ryan-type program for Medicare. That surely worked during the 2012 race but whether it?s a winner in 2014?the traditionally gloomy sixth year of a two term presidency?is less certain.
What is sure is that even as the sequester remains unresolved and agencies are publicizing their most painful cuts?Yellowstone hours trimmed! Carrier deployments delayed!?the next budget fight will be underway in hours.
In Washington, why finish one fight before you start the next?
Matthew Cooper mcooper@nationaljournal.com
TOP NEWS
SENATORS REACH OUTLINES OF IMMIGRATION DEAL. The bipartisan group of eight senators working to craft an immigration-reform package has reached an agreement on a chief sticking point, a pathway to citizenship, The Los Angeles Times reports. Illegal immigrants without criminal records would register with the Department of Homeland Security, pay a fine, and pay federal income tax, though they would not receive federal benefits. After a probationary period that could last more than a decade, they would then be able to apply for a green card. Read more
DUELING BUDGETS DEFINE BOTH PARTIES. By the middle of this week, Americans will once again be plunged into the wildly different worldviews of Republicans and Democrats as the two parties release competing budget proposals, National Journal's Nancy Cook reports, although this year will mark the first time in years that the Congress, and not the president, will kick off the budget process. Read more
National Journal?s Jill Lawrence wonders why Ryan's new plan to balance the federal budget in 10 years relies on repealing the Affordable Care Act. Read more?
DSCC NOT ALL-IN ON JUDD? The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is not yet committing itself to an Ashley Judd candidacy, Politico reports. Following a weekend story that suggested the actress was going to declare soon to challenge Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and another that suggested the DSCC was cool to a Judd candidacy based on recent polling, DSCC Executive Director Guy Cecil told a conference call Monday that Judd is just one of a ?handful of quality candidates in Kentucky,? while not directly denying that the DSCC was reevaluating her candidacy. Judd met with Cecil last month. Read more
PRESIDENT TO APPEAR AT $50K-A-HEAD OBAMA GROUP EVENT. President Obama will speak Wednesday at Organizing for America, the organization that was formed from the remnants of his campaign apparatus, The Hill reports. ?The president will address the advocacy group's ?founder's summit,? a two-day event for donors and supporters at a Washington-area hotel,? according to the paper. Donors will pay $50,000 to attend. The president and officials from the group are hoping to rally grassroots support for gun control, immigration reform, and the budget. The group has come under recent scrutiny for reportedly offering access to the president in exchange for large donations. Read more
NATO COMMANDER: CLAIM OF U.S.-TALIBAN COLLUSION FALSE. The commander of NATO-led forces in Afghanistan is denying as ?categorically false? an accusation by Afghan President Hamid Karzai that the U.S. is holding daily talks with the Taliban and that the militant group wants the U.S. to remain in the country. ?All I can do is speak for the coalition to tell you that it's categorically false, and that we have no reason to be colluding with the Taliban," Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford said. Karzai?s comments came Sunday, just hours ahead of a meeting with newly installed Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, who said he tried to offer assurances that no such back-channel talks were happening. At the same time, an insider attack in Afghanistan Monday has left two U.S. troops and two Afghan police officers dead. Read more
JUDGE BLOCKS NYC?s SUGARY DRINK BAN. Just a day before it was to go into effect, New York City?s ban on large sugary drinks was invalidated by a New York State Supreme Court judge, The New York Times reported. Judge Milton A. Tingling Jr. ruled that the ban on certain drinks ? like those with high milk content -- and not others, was ?arbitrary and capricious.? The ruling blocks the city from enforcing the ban. Read more
SENATE STAFFERS SQUABBLE OVER OFFICE SPACE. If Congress does not appear to care much for mitigating the effects of the sequester or addressing other national threats, it may be because they?re focused on office space. Roll Call reports that the offices of Sens. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., and Dean Heller, R-Nev., are feuding over allegations that Heller is blocking the more-senior Chambliss from examining his office suite. In the Senate, senior members have the option of booting junior members out of their offices and moving in. At least one other Senate office says Heller?s people have obstructed efforts to tour his office, though a spokesperson for Sen. Michael Bennett, D-Colo., has said Heller?s staff has been cooperative. Read more
@TheFix: Dean Heller, call your office. Literally.
JINDAL FINDS REDEMPTION AT GRIDIRON DINNER. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, perhaps best known for his awkward State of the Union rebuttal in 2009, overflowed with charisma at the annual Gridiron dinner on Saturday, Bloomberg Businessweek reports. ?The truth is, I am too skinny to run. At least that?s what my friend, Chris Christie, keeps telling me,? Jindal said in his remarks, which were distinctly barbed and extremely well received, keeping the audience of journalists and politicos laughing. Obama and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., also spoke. Read more
?We noticed that some folks couldn?t make it this evening. ?It's been noted that Bob Woodward sends his regrets, which Gene Sperling predicted.? -Obama (Politico)
INTRADE IS DEAD. LONG LIVE INTRADE? Intrade, the Irish gambling site that allowed users to gamble on the outcomes of the presidential election and other world events, has shut down, possibly due to ?financial irregularities.? The site took a big hit in November when it had to close all U.S.-based accounts following a lawsuit from the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. But The Washington Post?s Neil Irwin would like to see a better, stronger gambling site arise from Intrade?s ashes: a CFTC-approved market in which political pundits publicly put their money where their pontificating mouths are. Read more
** A message from CIT: Growmerica? Growth opportunities created when CIT finances America?s small and middle-market businesses. CIT provides credit access to businesses in your communities, offering the lending, leasing and advisory services your constituents need to prosper. Visit cit.com
TOMORROW
HOUSE GOP BUDGET TO BE UNVEILED. The Republican budget, which defunds Obamacare, will be unveiled Tuesday morning. Democrats will release their budget on Wednesday.
SEC, CFPB NOMINEES GET CONFIRMATION HEARINGS. Mary Jo White?s confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking Committee gets underway Tuesday, and while the former U.S. attorney is widely expected to win confirmation, The New York Times editorial board has some questions it would like asked of her in order to ?allay justifiable concerns about her allegiances,? including, ?Does she believe deregulation was a major cause of the financial crisis; if so, what is still in need of fixing?? President Obama?s pick to head the controversial Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Richard Cordray, will also have his confirmation hearing Tuesday before the committee.Read more
BRENNAN BACK TO HILL FOR HEARING. Freshly confirmed CIA Director John Brennan heads back to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, as it holds its annual worldwide-threats hearing with several officials in the intelligence committee, including Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and FBI Director Robert Mueller.
AGENCIES TO TALK BUDGETS ON HILL. The Senate will move away from nominations and continue to hear from agencies about their future plans and budget needs. The Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday will hear from Gen. Robert Kehler, commander of Strategic Command, and Gen. Keith Alexander, who heads Cyber Command. And the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hear from Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman and National Counterterrorism Center Director Matthew Olsen on Wednesday about "strategic counterterrorism? and how to meet current and emerging challenges.
QUOTABLE
?I'm still far removed from the modern lexicon of people who are actually cool. So, I'm very careful not to try to use lingo that's above my coolness pay grade.??Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., on trying to be hip on Twitter as the Senate's youngest member.(BuzzFeed).
BEDTIME READING
THE PRINCE WHO HAS IT ALL, EXCEPT THE FORBES RANKING. Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal of Saudi Arabia?or ?the Arab world?s richest man,? as Kerry A. Dolan writes in this month?s Forbes?lives a life of unimaginable opulence. His private plane is the same model as Air Force One, except his has a throne. His 420-room palace is filled with marble and portraits of himself. His 120 acre ?farm and resort? has five artificial lakes, a small zoo, and a mini-Grand Canyon. But the one thing Alwaleed doesn?t have is a top-10 spot on Forbes? annual ranking of the world?s billionaires?and he really wants one. For years Alwaleed has been lobbying, but Forbes isn?t buying it. The last few years, his stock has suspiciously gone up?despite his major stock holdings going down?in the 10 weeks leading up to the Forbes rankings, which are out in this month?s issue. Read more
GET SMART
FIVE TO FOLLOW ON TWITTER ON THE BUDGET
@TonyFratto: Tony Fratto, a former U.S. Treasury and White House official in the George W. Bush administration, is a managing partner for Hamilton Place Strategies and a CNBC contributor.
@ezraklein: Ezra Klein is a progressive economics blogger for The Washington Post and editor of the paper's Wonkblog.
@nancook: Nancy Cook isNational Journal?s economic and fiscal-policy correspondent.
@JustinWolfers: Justin Wolfers is a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan.
@JimPethokoukis: James Pethokoukis is a right-leaning columnist/blogger at the American Enterprise Institute.
@altmandaniel: Daniel Altman is a columnist for Foreign Policy. He teaches at NYU and holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard.
PROFILE AT A GLANCE
Thomas Edward Perez
Why he is in the news: Expected to be nominated for secretary of Labor
Current Job: Assistant attorney general for the Justice Department?s Civil Rights Division
Born: 1961; Buffalo, N.Y.
Career Highlights
Special counsel to Sen. Ted Kennedy, 1995-98
Professor at University of Maryland School of Law, 2001-07
Maryland secretary of labor, 2007-09
Of Interest
Perez holds three Ivy League degrees: A B.A. from Brown and an M.P.P and J.D. from Harvard
First Latino ever elected to the Montgomery (Md.) County Council
In 2009, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., held up his nomination to the Justice Department for several months, but he was eventually confirmed, 77-22.
Mar. 9, 2013 ? The use of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), accompanied by mechanical CPR, in patients with massive myocardial infarctions can lead to unexpected survival. These study findings are being presented March 9 at the American College of Cardiology Scientific Sessions.
ECMO is an advanced technology that functions as a replacement for a critically ill patient's heart and lungs. This is the first report of combined ECMO, mechanical CPR and therapeutic hypothermia (TH) use within a STEMI Network.
"For many patients who present with a severe heart attack, or ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), complicated by cardiogenic shock that progresses to cardiac standstill, the result is almost uniformly fatal," says Michael R. Mooney, MD, a research cardiologist at the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation (MHIF) and a physician at the Minneapolis Heart Institute? at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis. "This aggressive approach despite its complexity extends our ability to salvage the most devastating complication of acute MI."
The patients in this study were a consecutive series with STEMI meeting criteria for ECMO from August 2011 to October 2012. The Shock Team composed of a perfusionist, an advanced heart failure cardiologist, an interventional cardiologist and a cardiac surgeon developed a protocol and a process for emergency ECMO (E-ECMO) in the CV lab. This same team was then used to implement E-ECMO.
The study included five patients (three males) with a median age of 64 years. The median time of cardiac arrest from the initiation of ECMO was 52 minutes, and ECMO was required for a median time of 4 days in these patients. After ECMO was initiated, therapeutic hypothermia was used in 4 of the cases. Mechanical CPR devices were used in all cases.
Of the five patients, four survived to hospital discharge and all of the survivors had "good neurologic recovery at discharge," Mooney reports. Of the four survivors, discharge ejection fraction improved from 0-10% to a median of 45%. Blood transfusions were required in all cases.
This group of patients account for nearly half of all deaths within a STEMI network and no effective treatment was previously available. "ECMO, along with mechanical CPR, and TH can provide survival in situations previously regarded as uniformly fatal. Therefore, ECMO may have a role in selected PCI centers with advanced specialized teams with the appropriate experience," stated Mooney.
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Last week, a Russian news outlet reported the discovery of a new type of microbe discovered in Antarctica's Lake Vostok. But now scientists say that the bacteria is just contamination.
By Elizabeth Howell,?LiveScience / March 12, 2013
Russia's Vostok Station, in a photograph taken during the 2000 to 2001 field season.
Josh Landis/ National Science Foundation
Enlarge
Late last week, a Russian news outlet reported that scientists at Antarctica's Lake Vostok, buried under miles of ice, said they had found bacteria that appeared to be new to science. Now, the head of that lab has said the signature is actually just contamination, leading outside researchers to say that the Russian team rushed too quickly to announce the possibility of new bacterial life.
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Russian news media reported last week that the team had found DNA from a microbe that did not appear in databases and is only?86 percent similar to others on Earth?? considered a reliable threshold of new life.
On Monday (March 11), the lab analyzing the finding said it was not new bacteria that generated the signal, but contamination.
"We found certain specimens, although not many. All of them were contaminants," laboratory head Vladimir Korolyov said in a quote attributed in media reports to the Interfax news agency.
The quick backtrack illustrates the danger of bypassing peer review when announcing new results, Peter Doran, an Arctic and Antarctic researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told OurAmazingPlanet.
'You can say anything you want in a press release'
Peer review?is the scientific process that all findings must undergo before work is published, generally in the form of a paper in a scientific journal. The research comes under the scrutiny of other scientists in the field and is validated and questioned before anything goes to print. That's not the case in a news report.
For that reason, the scientists who OurAmazingPlanet spoke with said that it was hard for them to discuss why the Russians failed since they do not even know, for example, what contaminates were found in the lab. That information could take weeks or months to surface.
"You can say anything you want in a press release," Doran said. "The peer review literature [by contrast] is very controlled. It needs to be substantiated, and written in clear language."
"I tell my students," he continued, "don't trust anything you read in the popular press. Even if there is a paper, there's often a disconnect between what is in the paper and in the popular press."
Peer review, however, can take years, acknowledged David Pearce, a researcher with the British Antarctic Survey who worked on a similar British effort to drill into buried Lake Ellsworth. (That effort failed?and is being subject to a review board. The results should be published around May, at which point the British will decide whether to try again.) [Extreme Antarctica: Amazing Photos of Lake Ellsworth]
Taxpayers are often impatient to find out what is going on, Pearce said, and the press works to fill that need. A balance must be struck between these needs, he added.
"It's important [the public] is kept informed of what's going on, and the interesting things that are coming out," Pearce said. Science, by contrast, requires time and careful thought.
"You do want to find out what's happened to the research money," he added, "but you don't want to say too much too soon."
Sterilization part of best practice
The Russian researchers not only faced challenges concerning announcing their findings, but also scientific challenges in their quest to discover life.
It's still not known what kind of life, if any, lies below the 2 miles (3 kilometers) of ice that sits on top of Lake Vostok. As far as researchers know, the underground freshwater has been lying there untouched for more than a million years.
Confirming that any possible signature of life is not a contaminant is complicated, to say the least.
There's a strict protocol the Americans strive to follow in Antarctica, said Doran, who is familiar with the practices of the U.S. Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling project (WISSARD) team that worked this year at Antarctica's?Lake Whillans.
Doran could not speak specifically to the Russians, but said the American work demonstrates a good methodology.
In WISSARD's case, it involves sterilizing all the equipment with hydrogen peroxide gel or a similar product, then hermetically sealing them in bags for shipment. Scientists on-site sterilize the water in the drill system through several steps that include filters and life-killing ultraviolet radiation.
As the drill progresses through the ice, the scientists monitor cell counts to make sure there are no unexplained jumps.
WISSARD recently announced?life findings of its own, but Doran was equally skeptical of that until a paper comes out confirming the work. [Gallery: Finding Life in a Buried Antarctic Lake]
To the WISSARD announcement, Doran said, "I understand how it happened. There are embedded reporters in the field with them. They are sitting around the dinner table together, and drinking Scotch together, and the reporters are right there [when scientists say] 'Our cell counts are way up when we've gone into the lake water.'"
"Of course that gets reported, but without the peer review literature, it's still a violation of how the standard things are done," Doran said.
Follow Elizabeth Howell?@howellspace. Follow?OurAmazingPlanet?@OAPlanet,?Facebook?and?Google+.
Copyright 2013?LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Astronomers conduct first remote reconnaissance of another solar systemPublic release date: 11-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Kendra Snyder ksnyder@amnh.org 212-496-3419 American Museum of Natural History
Project 1640 reveals chemical composition of four red expplanets 128 light years away
Researchers have conducted a remote reconnaissance of a distant solar system with a new telescope imaging system that sifts through the blinding light of stars. Using a suite of high-tech instrumentation and software called Project 1640, the scientists collected the first chemical fingerprints, or spectra, of this system's four red exoplanets, which orbit a star 128 light years away from Earth. A detailed description of the planetsshowing how drastically different they are from the known worlds in the universewas accepted Friday for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.
"An image is worth a thousand words, but a spectrum is worth a million," said lead author Ben R. Oppenheimer, associate curator and chair of the Astrophysics Department at the American Museum of Natural History.
Oppenheimer is the principal investigator for Project 1640, which uses the Hale telescope at the Palomar Observatory in California. The project involves researchers from the California Institute of Technology, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Cambridge University, New York University, and the Space Telescope Science Institute, in addition to Oppenheimer's team at the Museum.
The planets surrounding the star of this study, HR 8799, have been imaged in the past. But except for a partial measurement of the outermost planet in the system, the star's bright light overwhelmed previous attempts to study the planets with spectroscopy, a technique that splits the light from an object into its component colorsas a prism spreads sunlight into a rainbow. Because every chemical, such as carbon dioxide, methane, or water, has a unique light signature in the spectrum, this technique is able to reveal the chemical composition of a planet's atmosphere.
"In the 19th century it was thought impossible to know the composition of stars, but the invention of astronomical spectroscopy has revealed detailed information about nearby stars and distant galaxies," said Charles Beichman, executive director of the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at the California Institute of Technology. "Now, with Project 1640, we are beginning to turn this tool to the investigation of neighboring exoplanets to learn about the composition, temperature, and other characteristics of their atmospheres."
With this system, the researchers are the first to determine the spectra of all four planets surrounding HR 8799. "It's fantastic to nab the spectra of four planets in a single observation," said co-author Gautam Vasisht, an astronomer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The results are "quite strange," Oppenheimer said. "These warm, red planets are unlike any other known object in our universe. All four planets have different spectra, and all four are peculiar. The theorists have a lot of work to do now."
One of the most striking abnormalities is an apparent chemical imbalance. Basic chemistry predicts that ammonia and methane should naturally coexist in varying quantities unless they are in extremely cold or hot environments. Yet the spectra of the HR 8799 planets, all of which have "lukewarm" temperatures of about 1000 Kelvin (1340 degrees Fahrenheit), either have methane or ammonia, with little or no signs of their chemical partners. Other chemicals such as acetylene, previously undiscovered on any exoplanet, and carbon dioxide may be present as well.
The planets also are "redder," meaning that they emit longer wavelengths of light, than celestial objects with similar temperatures. This could be explained by significant but patchy cloud cover on the planets, the authors say.
With 1.6 times the mass and five times the brightness, HR 8799 itself is very different from our Sun. The brightness of the star can vary by as much as 8 percent over a period of two days and produces about 1,000 times more ultraviolet light than the Sun. All of these factors could impact the spectral fingerprints of the planets, possibly inducing complex weather and sooty hazes that could be revealed by periodic changes in the spectra. More data is needed to further explore this solar system's unusual characteristics.
"The spectra of these four worlds clearly show that they are far too toxic and hot to sustain life as we know it," said co-author Ian Parry, a senior lecturer at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge University. "But the really exciting thing is that one day, the techniques we've developed will give us our first secure evidence of the existence of life on a planet outside our solar system."
In addition to revealing unique planets, the research debuts a new capability to observe and rapidly characterize exoplanetary systems in a routine manner, something that has eluded astronomers until now because the light that stars emit is tens of millions to billions of times brighter than the light given off by planets. This makes directly imaging and analyzing exoplanets extremely difficult: as Oppenheimer says, "It's like taking a single picture of the Empire State Building from an airplane that reveals the height of the building as well as taking a picture of a bump on the sidewalk next to it that is as high as a couple of bacteria."
Project 1640 helps scientists clear this hurdle by sharpening and darkening a star's light. This technical advance involves the coordinated operation of four major instruments: the world's most advanced adaptive optics system, which can make millions of tiny adjustments to the device's two 6-inch mirrors every second; a coronagraph that optically dims the star but not other celestial objects in the field of view; an imaging spectrograph that records 30 images in a rainbow of colors simultaneously; and a specialized wave front sensor that distinguishes between residual starlight that sneaks through the coronagraph and the light from planets, allowing scientists to filter out background starlight more effectively.
Altogether, the project has produced images of celestial objects 1 million to 10 million times fainter than the star at the center of the image, with only an hour of observations. It is also capable of measuring orbital motion of objects.
"Astronomers are now able to monitor cloudy skies on extrasolar planets, and for the first time, they have made such observations for four planets at once," said Maria Womack, program director for the Division of Astronomical Sciences at the National Science Foundation. "This new ability enables astronomers to now make comparisons as they track the atmospheres, and maybe even weather patterns, on the planets."
Researchers are already collecting more data on this system to look for changes in the planets over time, as well as surveying other young stars. During its three-year survey at Palomar, which started in June 2012, Project 1640 aims to survey 200 stars within about 150 light years of our solar system.
"The variation in the spectra of the four planets is really intriguing," said Didier Saumon, an astronomer at Los Alamos National Laboratory who was not involved in this study. "Perhaps this shouldn't be too surprising, given that the four gaseous planets of the solar system are all different. The hundreds of known exoplanets have forced us to broaden our thinking, and this new data keeps pushing that envelope."
###
This work is supported by the National Science Foundation (grant numbers AST-0215793, 0334916, 0520822, 0619922, 0804417, 1039790, and 1245018), NASA Origins of the Solar System Grant (number NMO7100830/102190), and the Plymouth Hill foundation. Additional funding sources for Project 1640 are listed here.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Astronomers conduct first remote reconnaissance of another solar systemPublic release date: 11-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Kendra Snyder ksnyder@amnh.org 212-496-3419 American Museum of Natural History
Project 1640 reveals chemical composition of four red expplanets 128 light years away
Researchers have conducted a remote reconnaissance of a distant solar system with a new telescope imaging system that sifts through the blinding light of stars. Using a suite of high-tech instrumentation and software called Project 1640, the scientists collected the first chemical fingerprints, or spectra, of this system's four red exoplanets, which orbit a star 128 light years away from Earth. A detailed description of the planetsshowing how drastically different they are from the known worlds in the universewas accepted Friday for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.
"An image is worth a thousand words, but a spectrum is worth a million," said lead author Ben R. Oppenheimer, associate curator and chair of the Astrophysics Department at the American Museum of Natural History.
Oppenheimer is the principal investigator for Project 1640, which uses the Hale telescope at the Palomar Observatory in California. The project involves researchers from the California Institute of Technology, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Cambridge University, New York University, and the Space Telescope Science Institute, in addition to Oppenheimer's team at the Museum.
The planets surrounding the star of this study, HR 8799, have been imaged in the past. But except for a partial measurement of the outermost planet in the system, the star's bright light overwhelmed previous attempts to study the planets with spectroscopy, a technique that splits the light from an object into its component colorsas a prism spreads sunlight into a rainbow. Because every chemical, such as carbon dioxide, methane, or water, has a unique light signature in the spectrum, this technique is able to reveal the chemical composition of a planet's atmosphere.
"In the 19th century it was thought impossible to know the composition of stars, but the invention of astronomical spectroscopy has revealed detailed information about nearby stars and distant galaxies," said Charles Beichman, executive director of the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at the California Institute of Technology. "Now, with Project 1640, we are beginning to turn this tool to the investigation of neighboring exoplanets to learn about the composition, temperature, and other characteristics of their atmospheres."
With this system, the researchers are the first to determine the spectra of all four planets surrounding HR 8799. "It's fantastic to nab the spectra of four planets in a single observation," said co-author Gautam Vasisht, an astronomer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The results are "quite strange," Oppenheimer said. "These warm, red planets are unlike any other known object in our universe. All four planets have different spectra, and all four are peculiar. The theorists have a lot of work to do now."
One of the most striking abnormalities is an apparent chemical imbalance. Basic chemistry predicts that ammonia and methane should naturally coexist in varying quantities unless they are in extremely cold or hot environments. Yet the spectra of the HR 8799 planets, all of which have "lukewarm" temperatures of about 1000 Kelvin (1340 degrees Fahrenheit), either have methane or ammonia, with little or no signs of their chemical partners. Other chemicals such as acetylene, previously undiscovered on any exoplanet, and carbon dioxide may be present as well.
The planets also are "redder," meaning that they emit longer wavelengths of light, than celestial objects with similar temperatures. This could be explained by significant but patchy cloud cover on the planets, the authors say.
With 1.6 times the mass and five times the brightness, HR 8799 itself is very different from our Sun. The brightness of the star can vary by as much as 8 percent over a period of two days and produces about 1,000 times more ultraviolet light than the Sun. All of these factors could impact the spectral fingerprints of the planets, possibly inducing complex weather and sooty hazes that could be revealed by periodic changes in the spectra. More data is needed to further explore this solar system's unusual characteristics.
"The spectra of these four worlds clearly show that they are far too toxic and hot to sustain life as we know it," said co-author Ian Parry, a senior lecturer at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge University. "But the really exciting thing is that one day, the techniques we've developed will give us our first secure evidence of the existence of life on a planet outside our solar system."
In addition to revealing unique planets, the research debuts a new capability to observe and rapidly characterize exoplanetary systems in a routine manner, something that has eluded astronomers until now because the light that stars emit is tens of millions to billions of times brighter than the light given off by planets. This makes directly imaging and analyzing exoplanets extremely difficult: as Oppenheimer says, "It's like taking a single picture of the Empire State Building from an airplane that reveals the height of the building as well as taking a picture of a bump on the sidewalk next to it that is as high as a couple of bacteria."
Project 1640 helps scientists clear this hurdle by sharpening and darkening a star's light. This technical advance involves the coordinated operation of four major instruments: the world's most advanced adaptive optics system, which can make millions of tiny adjustments to the device's two 6-inch mirrors every second; a coronagraph that optically dims the star but not other celestial objects in the field of view; an imaging spectrograph that records 30 images in a rainbow of colors simultaneously; and a specialized wave front sensor that distinguishes between residual starlight that sneaks through the coronagraph and the light from planets, allowing scientists to filter out background starlight more effectively.
Altogether, the project has produced images of celestial objects 1 million to 10 million times fainter than the star at the center of the image, with only an hour of observations. It is also capable of measuring orbital motion of objects.
"Astronomers are now able to monitor cloudy skies on extrasolar planets, and for the first time, they have made such observations for four planets at once," said Maria Womack, program director for the Division of Astronomical Sciences at the National Science Foundation. "This new ability enables astronomers to now make comparisons as they track the atmospheres, and maybe even weather patterns, on the planets."
Researchers are already collecting more data on this system to look for changes in the planets over time, as well as surveying other young stars. During its three-year survey at Palomar, which started in June 2012, Project 1640 aims to survey 200 stars within about 150 light years of our solar system.
"The variation in the spectra of the four planets is really intriguing," said Didier Saumon, an astronomer at Los Alamos National Laboratory who was not involved in this study. "Perhaps this shouldn't be too surprising, given that the four gaseous planets of the solar system are all different. The hundreds of known exoplanets have forced us to broaden our thinking, and this new data keeps pushing that envelope."
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This work is supported by the National Science Foundation (grant numbers AST-0215793, 0334916, 0520822, 0619922, 0804417, 1039790, and 1245018), NASA Origins of the Solar System Grant (number NMO7100830/102190), and the Plymouth Hill foundation. Additional funding sources for Project 1640 are listed here.
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The closest star system found in a centuryPublic release date: 11-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Barbara K.Kennedy science@psu.edu 814-863-4682 Penn State
A pair of newly discovered stars is the third-closest star system to the Sun, according to a paper that will be published in Astrophysical Journal Letters. The duo is the closest star system discovered since 1916. The discovery was made by Kevin Luhman, an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University and a researcher in Penn State's Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds.
Both stars in the new binary system are "brown dwarfs," which are stars that are too small in mass to ever become hot enough to ignite hydrogen fusion. As a result, they are very cool and dim, resembling a giant planet like Jupiter more than a bright star like the Sun.
"The distance to this brown dwarf pair is 6.5 light years -- so close that Earth's television transmissions from 2006 are now arriving there," Luhman said. "It will be an excellent hunting ground for planets because it is very close to Earth, which makes it a lot easier to see any planets orbiting either of the brown dwarfs." Since it is the third-closest star system, in the distant future it might be one of the first destinations for manned expeditions outside our solar system, Luhman said.
The star system is named "WISE J104915.57-531906" because it was discovered in a map of the entire sky obtained by the NASA-funded Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite. It is only slightly farther away than the second-closest star, Barnard's star, which was discovered 6.0 light years from the Sun in 1916. The closest star system consists of Alpha Centauri, found to be a neighbor of the Sun in 1839 at 4.4 light years, and the fainter Proxima Centauri, discovered in 1917 at 4.2 light years.
Edward (Ned) Wright, the principal investigator for the WISE satellite, said "One major goal when proposing WISE was to find the closest stars to the Sun. WISE 1049-5319 is by far the closest star found to date using the WISE data, and the close-up views of this binary system we can get with big telescopes like Gemini and the future James Webb Space Telescope will tell us a lot about the low mass stars known as brown dwarfs." Wright is the David Saxon Presidential Chair in Physics and a professor of physics and astronomy at UCLA.
Astronomers have long speculated about the possible presence of a distant, dim object orbiting the Sun, which is sometimes called Nemesis. However, Luhman has concluded, "we can rule out that the new brown dwarf system is such an object because it is moving across the sky much too fast to be in orbit around the Sun."
To discover the new star system, Luhman studied the images of the sky that the WISE satellite had obtained during a 13-month period ending in 2011. During its mission, WISE observed each point in the sky 2 to 3 times. "In these time-lapse images, I was able to tell that this system was moving very quickly across the sky -- which was a big clue that it was probably very close to our solar system," Luhman said.
After noticing its rapid motion in the WISE images, Luhman went hunting for detections of the suspected nearby star in older sky surveys. He found that it indeed was detected in images spanning from 1978 to 1999 from the Digitized Sky Survey, the Two Micron All-Sky Survey, and the Deep Near Infrared Survey of the Southern Sky. "Based on how this star system was moving in the images from the WISE survey, I was able to extrapolate back in time to predict where it should have been located in the older surveys and, sure enough, it was there," Luhman said.
By combining the detections of the star system from the various surveys, Luhman was able to measure its distance via parallax, which is the apparent shift of a star in the sky due to the Earth's orbit around the Sun. He then used the Gemini South telescope on Cerro Pachn in Chile to obtain a spectrum of it, which demonstrated that it had a very cool temperature, and hence was a brown dwarf. "As an unexpected bonus, the sharp images from Gemini also revealed that the object actually was not just one but a pair of brown dwarfs orbiting each other," Luhman said.
"It was a lot of detective work," Luhman said. "There are billions of infrared points of light across the sky, and the mystery is which one -- if any of them -- could be a star that is very close to our solar system."
###
[ Barbara K. Kennedy ]
CONTACTS
Kevin Luhman at Penn State: (+1) 814-863-4957 (primary) or (+1) 814-865-0418 (secondary), kluhman@astro.psu.edu
Barbara Kennedy at Penn State (PIO): (+1) 814-863-4682, science@psu.edu
Peter Michaud at Gemini (PIO): 808-974-2510, pmichaud@gemini.edu
Edward (Ned) Wright at WISE and UCLA: 310-825-5755, wright@astro.ucla.edu
IMAGES and ANIMATION
High-resolution images and an animation are online at http://science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2013-news/Luhman3-2013.
FUNDING
This research received financial support with a grant from the NASA Astrophysics Data Analysis Program (#NNX12AI47G).
MORE INFORMATION
The Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds is supported by Penn State University, the Penn State Eberly College of Science, and the Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium.
Gemini Observatory is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under a cooperative agreement with the NSF on behalf of the Gemini partnership: the National Science Foundation (United States), the National Research Council (Canada), CONICYT (Chile), the Australian Research Council (Australia), Ministerio da Ciencia, Tecnologia e Inovacao (Brazil) and Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnologia e Innovacion Productiva (Argentina).
JPL manages, and operated, WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The spacecraft was put into hibernation mode after it scanned the entire sky twice, completing its main objectives. Edward Wright is the principal investigator and is at UCLA. The mission was selected competitively under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah. The spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
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The closest star system found in a centuryPublic release date: 11-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Barbara K.Kennedy science@psu.edu 814-863-4682 Penn State
A pair of newly discovered stars is the third-closest star system to the Sun, according to a paper that will be published in Astrophysical Journal Letters. The duo is the closest star system discovered since 1916. The discovery was made by Kevin Luhman, an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University and a researcher in Penn State's Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds.
Both stars in the new binary system are "brown dwarfs," which are stars that are too small in mass to ever become hot enough to ignite hydrogen fusion. As a result, they are very cool and dim, resembling a giant planet like Jupiter more than a bright star like the Sun.
"The distance to this brown dwarf pair is 6.5 light years -- so close that Earth's television transmissions from 2006 are now arriving there," Luhman said. "It will be an excellent hunting ground for planets because it is very close to Earth, which makes it a lot easier to see any planets orbiting either of the brown dwarfs." Since it is the third-closest star system, in the distant future it might be one of the first destinations for manned expeditions outside our solar system, Luhman said.
The star system is named "WISE J104915.57-531906" because it was discovered in a map of the entire sky obtained by the NASA-funded Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite. It is only slightly farther away than the second-closest star, Barnard's star, which was discovered 6.0 light years from the Sun in 1916. The closest star system consists of Alpha Centauri, found to be a neighbor of the Sun in 1839 at 4.4 light years, and the fainter Proxima Centauri, discovered in 1917 at 4.2 light years.
Edward (Ned) Wright, the principal investigator for the WISE satellite, said "One major goal when proposing WISE was to find the closest stars to the Sun. WISE 1049-5319 is by far the closest star found to date using the WISE data, and the close-up views of this binary system we can get with big telescopes like Gemini and the future James Webb Space Telescope will tell us a lot about the low mass stars known as brown dwarfs." Wright is the David Saxon Presidential Chair in Physics and a professor of physics and astronomy at UCLA.
Astronomers have long speculated about the possible presence of a distant, dim object orbiting the Sun, which is sometimes called Nemesis. However, Luhman has concluded, "we can rule out that the new brown dwarf system is such an object because it is moving across the sky much too fast to be in orbit around the Sun."
To discover the new star system, Luhman studied the images of the sky that the WISE satellite had obtained during a 13-month period ending in 2011. During its mission, WISE observed each point in the sky 2 to 3 times. "In these time-lapse images, I was able to tell that this system was moving very quickly across the sky -- which was a big clue that it was probably very close to our solar system," Luhman said.
After noticing its rapid motion in the WISE images, Luhman went hunting for detections of the suspected nearby star in older sky surveys. He found that it indeed was detected in images spanning from 1978 to 1999 from the Digitized Sky Survey, the Two Micron All-Sky Survey, and the Deep Near Infrared Survey of the Southern Sky. "Based on how this star system was moving in the images from the WISE survey, I was able to extrapolate back in time to predict where it should have been located in the older surveys and, sure enough, it was there," Luhman said.
By combining the detections of the star system from the various surveys, Luhman was able to measure its distance via parallax, which is the apparent shift of a star in the sky due to the Earth's orbit around the Sun. He then used the Gemini South telescope on Cerro Pachn in Chile to obtain a spectrum of it, which demonstrated that it had a very cool temperature, and hence was a brown dwarf. "As an unexpected bonus, the sharp images from Gemini also revealed that the object actually was not just one but a pair of brown dwarfs orbiting each other," Luhman said.
"It was a lot of detective work," Luhman said. "There are billions of infrared points of light across the sky, and the mystery is which one -- if any of them -- could be a star that is very close to our solar system."
###
[ Barbara K. Kennedy ]
CONTACTS
Kevin Luhman at Penn State: (+1) 814-863-4957 (primary) or (+1) 814-865-0418 (secondary), kluhman@astro.psu.edu
Barbara Kennedy at Penn State (PIO): (+1) 814-863-4682, science@psu.edu
Peter Michaud at Gemini (PIO): 808-974-2510, pmichaud@gemini.edu
Edward (Ned) Wright at WISE and UCLA: 310-825-5755, wright@astro.ucla.edu
IMAGES and ANIMATION
High-resolution images and an animation are online at http://science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2013-news/Luhman3-2013.
FUNDING
This research received financial support with a grant from the NASA Astrophysics Data Analysis Program (#NNX12AI47G).
MORE INFORMATION
The Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds is supported by Penn State University, the Penn State Eberly College of Science, and the Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium.
Gemini Observatory is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under a cooperative agreement with the NSF on behalf of the Gemini partnership: the National Science Foundation (United States), the National Research Council (Canada), CONICYT (Chile), the Australian Research Council (Australia), Ministerio da Ciencia, Tecnologia e Inovacao (Brazil) and Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnologia e Innovacion Productiva (Argentina).
JPL manages, and operated, WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The spacecraft was put into hibernation mode after it scanned the entire sky twice, completing its main objectives. Edward Wright is the principal investigator and is at UCLA. The mission was selected competitively under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah. The spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
AKRON, Ohio (AP) ? The prosecution in the murder case against a man charged with killing three men by luring them with Craigslist job offers urged jurors on Monday to use their common sense and return guilty verdicts.
Prosecutor Jonathan Baumoel repeatedly mentioned the three victims and a fourth jobseeker who survived an attack and told jurors there was no reasonable doubt that Richard Beasley, 53, plotted the killings.
"They were desperate for a better life," Baumoel said in a hushed courtroom, with Beasley sitting in a wheelchair due to back problems. "They wanted a second chance."
Baumoel said jurors should use their common sense in weighing evidence against Beasley. The standard for a guilty verdict is evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, "It is not beyond all doubt," the prosecutor said.
The case was headed to the jury for deliberations after closing arguments by both sides.
Baumoel presented three possible theories for aggravated murder ? planning the crimes, done with a kidnapping or done with a robbery.
"This was clearly with prior calculation and design," a component of the death penalty aggravated murder charge, Baumoel said. "He was the mastermind behind this plot."
Beasley, an ex-convict and one-time street preacher, could face the death penalty if convicted.
His 18-year-old co-defendant, Brogan Rafferty, was convicted and sentenced last year to life in prison without chance of parole. Brogan was under 18 at the time of the crimes and was ineligible for the death penalty.
Beasley said he knew nothing about the killings.
"I had no idea that somebody, anybody, had been killed down on that farm. I had no way to know," Beasley testified in his defense.
Beasley denied involvement in the 2011 attacks and said that the lone survivor was sent to kill him in retaliation for being a police snitch in a motorcycle gang investigation in Akron.
Prosecutors said Beasley and Brogan used the job postings as bait in a robbery plot aimed at down-on-their-luck victims with few family ties that might highlight their disappearance. The slain men were Ralph Geiger, 56, of Akron; David Pauley, 51, of Norfolk, Va.; and Timothy Kern, 47, of Massillon.
Rafferty has said the crimes were horrible but he didn't see any chance to stop the killings. Rafferty said he feared Beasley would kill him and his relatives if he tipped off police.
Beasley testified that he met with the surviving victim, Scott Davis, but said Davis was the one who pulled a gun in retaliation for Beasley's role as a police informant in a motorcycle gang investigation.
Davis, who was the star witness at Rafferty's trial, also testified against Beasley. Davis testified that he fled into the woods in Noble County, about 60 miles east of Columbus, after hearing the click of a handgun, getting shot in the arm, and pushing the weapon aside.
"Only by the grace of God did he escape with his life," Baumoel told the jury.
Scientists have developed a new method of replacing missing teeth with a bioengineered material generated from a person's own gum cells. Current implant-based methods of whole tooth replacement fail to reproduce a natural root structure and as a consequence of the friction from eating and other jaw movement, loss of jaw bone can occur around the implant. The research is led by Professor Paul Sharpe, an expert in craniofacial development and stem cell biology at King's College London and published in the Journal of Dental Research.
Research towards achieving the aim of producing bioengineered teeth ? bioteeth ? has largely focussed on the generation of immature teeth (teeth primordia) that mimic those in the embryo that can be transplanted as small cell 'pellets' into the adult jaw to develop into functional teeth.
Remarkably, despite the very different environments, embryonic teeth primordia can develop normally in the adult mouth and thus if suitable cells can be identified that can be combined in such a way to produce an immature tooth, there is a realistic prospect bioteeth can become a clinical reality. Subsequent studies have largely focussed on the use of embryonic cells and although it is clear that embryonic tooth primordia cells can readily form immature teeth following dissociation into single cell populations and subsequent recombination, such cell sources are impractical to use in a general therapy.
Professor Sharpe says: 'What is required is the identification of adult sources of human epithelial and mesenchymal cells that can be obtained in sufficient numbers to make biotooth formation a viable alternative to dental implants.'
In this new work, the researchers isolated adult human gum tissue from patients at the Dental Institute at King's College London, grew more of it in the lab, and then combined it with the cells of mice that form teeth. By transplanting this combination of cells into mice the researchers were able to grow hybrid human/mouse teeth containing dentine and enamel, as well as viable roots.
Professor Sharpe concludes: 'Epithelial cells derived from adult human gum tissue are capable of responding to tooth inducing signals from embryonic tooth mesenchyme in an appropriate way to contribute to tooth crown and root formation and give rise to relevant differentiated cell types, following in vitro culture.
'These easily accessible epithelial cells are thus a realistic source for consideration in human biotooth formation. The next major challenge is to identify a way to culture adult human mesenchymal cells to be tooth-inducing, as at the moment we can only make embryonic mesenchymal cells do this.'
###
King's College London: http://www.kcl.ac.uk
Thanks to King's College London for this article.
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FILE - In this Sunday, Nov. 4, 2012 file photo, Russian dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko, as Ivan the Terrible, right, and ballerina Anna Nikulina as Anastasia, wife of Ivan the Terrible perform at a dress rehearsal of Ivan the Terrible (Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible) in the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, Russia. The Russian Interior Ministry says police are searching the home of a star of the Bolshoi Ballet, Pavel Dmitrichenko, known for his role as tsar Ivan the Terrible, the Interior Ministry said Tuesday March 5, 2013, in connection with the acid attack on the company's artistic director, and have detained another man on suspicion of carrying out the attack. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
FILE - In this Sunday, Nov. 4, 2012 file photo, Russian dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko, as Ivan the Terrible, right, and ballerina Anna Nikulina as Anastasia, wife of Ivan the Terrible perform at a dress rehearsal of Ivan the Terrible (Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible) in the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, Russia. The Russian Interior Ministry says police are searching the home of a star of the Bolshoi Ballet, Pavel Dmitrichenko, known for his role as tsar Ivan the Terrible, the Interior Ministry said Tuesday March 5, 2013, in connection with the acid attack on the company's artistic director, and have detained another man on suspicion of carrying out the attack. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
FILE - In this Sunday, Nov. 4, 2012 file photo, Russian dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko, as Ivan the Terrible, is pictured after a dress rehearsal of Ivan the Terrible (Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible) in the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, Russia. The Russian Interior Ministry says police are searching the home of a star of the Bolshoi Ballet, Pavel Dmitrichenko, known for his role as tsar Ivan the Terrible, the Interior Ministry said Tuesday March 5, 2013, in connection with the acid attack on the company's artistic director, and have detained another man on suspicion of carrying out the attack. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, file)
In this combo frame grab taken from video supplied by the Moscow Interior MInistry branch website on Wednesday, March 6, 2013, 29-year-old Pavel Dmitrichenko, the star Russian ballet dancer is seen in Moscow. Dmitrichenko, who most recently played the title role in "Ivan the Terrible" at the famed Bolshoi Theater has confessed to the acid attack on the theater's ballet chief, Moscow police said on Wednesday. (AP Photo/ Moscow Interior MInistry branch website)
FILE - In this Monday, Feb. 4, 2013 file photo artistic director of the Bolshoi ballet Sergei Filin, speaks with the media as he leaves a hospital in Moscow, Russia. A spokeswoman for the Bolshoi Theater says Tuesday, March 5, 2013, police has detained a suspect in the January acid attack on its artistic director. (AP Photo/Misha Japaridze, File)
FILE - In this file photo taken on Sunday, Nov. 4, 2012, Russian dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko as Ivan the Terrible, top, performs at a dress rehearsal of Ivan the Terrible (Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible) in the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, Russia. Three men are detained for an acid attack that severely burned the face and eyes of Bolshoi ballet director Sergei Filin. Russian police say one of them is star dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko. The two others are the suspected attacker and a man who allegedly transported him to and from the scene.(AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
MOSCOW (AP) ? A Russian ballet star who most recently played the title role in "Ivan the Terrible" at the famed Bolshoi Theater has confessed that he organized the acid attack on the theater's ballet chief, Moscow police said Wednesday.
Sergei Filin, the artistic director of the Bolshoi ballet, suffered severe burns to his eyes and face on Jan. 17 when a masked attacker threw a jar of sulfuric acid in his face as he returned home late at night. The 42-year-old former dancer is undergoing treatment in Germany.
Star dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko, 29, confessed to masterminding the attack, and two other men confessed to being accomplices, police said in a statement.
"I organized that attack but not to the extent that it occurred," a bleary-eyed Dmitrichenko said in footage released by Russian police.
Moscow police said in a statement that investigators believe that Dmitrichenko harbored "personal enmity" against Filin.
Investigators got suspicious of Dmitrichenko when they found out that he had recently been in a close contact with an unemployed convict. The suspects were making inquiries about Filin's schedule and whereabouts and bought SIM cards for mobile phones registered under fake names, police said.
Police found out that the acid that the alleged attacker, 35-year-old Yuri Zarutsky, splashed on Filin's face was bought at an auto shop. Police said Zarutsky is believed to have heated it to make the water evaporate to make the acid stronger. On the night of the attack Dmitrichenko tipped off Zarutsky when Filin left the theater, police said.
Bolshoi spokeswoman Katerina Novikova told the AP that Filin had been informed about Dmitrichenko's detention, but said the theater would not comment until after the trial.
Dmitrichenko, who comes from a family of dancers and joined the Bolshoi in 2002, has danced several major parts in recent years, including the villain in "Swan Lake." Novikova said on Tuesday that management was unaware of any conflict between him and Filin. However, Channel One state television reported that Dmitrichenko's girlfriend, Anzhelina Vorontsova, also a Bolshoi soloist, was known to have been at odds with Filin.
Dmitrichenko remained in police custody pending a court hearing on Thursday in which prosecutors will move for formal charges against the three men, and it was unclear whether they had lawyers.
The Bolshoi Theater is one of Russia's premier cultural institutions, best known for "Swan Lake" and the other grand classical ballets that grace its stage. Backstage, the ballet company has been troubled by deep intrigue and infighting that have led to the departure of several artistic directors over recent years.
Filin's colleagues have said the attack could be in retaliation for his selection of certain dancers over others for prized roles. Filin told state television before he checked out of a Moscow hospital in January that he knew who ordered the attack but would not name the person.
Zarutsky was detained on Tuesday in the Tver region north of Moscow, police said. Police had also detained and questioned another suspected accomplice, identified as Andrei Lipatov, who is believed to have driven Zarutsky to the scene of the crime.
Russian news agencies reported that Lipatov had been detained in Stupino, a sprawling Moscow suburb where the Bolshoi owns summer houses used by its dancers and management. Dmitrichenko said in a recent interview that he was managing the Bolshoi dachas in his spare time.
The Bolshoi's general director, Anatoly Iksanov, accused longtime principal dancer Nikolai Tsiskaridze of inspiring the attack. Tsiskaridze, a long-time critic of the theater's management, has denied the allegation and accused Iksanov and his allies of fueling the dispute.
Dmitrichenko's girlfriend was coached by Tsiskaridze.
When contacted by The Associated Press Tsiskaridze texted back: "I have nothing to say..."
Filin is the sixth artistic director at the Bolshoi since the legendary Yuri Grigorovich, who led the dance company for three decades, resigned in 1995 after losing a protracted dispute with theater management. Successive artistic directors have been unable to overcome the resistance from dancers and teachers still loyal to Grigorovich, but Filin was seen as capable of bridging that gap.
The Izvestia daily on Wednesday quoted ballet teacher Marina Kondratyeva as saying that Dmitrichenko had a brilliant career and would not have needed to seek revenge on Filin.
Kondratyeva admitted that his girlfriend Vorontsova had not been given leading parts lately but for a good reason: "How could Filin 'elbow her out'? Tsiskaridze is mentoring and coaching her ? but she was just plain fat."
Vorontsova danced for Filin when he worked at the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theater, Moscow's second ballet company. Russian newspapers said that Filin expected Vorontsova to stay at the theater when she finished doing her apprenticeship but she went to Bolshoi instead ? before Filin was hired to work there.
Filin's lawyer, however, told the Rossiya television channel that Vorontsova is unlikely to be the only cause of the conflict.
"We cannot say that Ms. Vorontsova was the only reason why it happened," Tatyana Stukalova said. "We believe that investigators will still have to do a lot of work to establish all the facts."
Russian newspapers quoted unidentified ballet dancers saying that Dmitrichenko had a fiery temper.
In a rare public outburst, Dmitrichenko posted an angry comment in November responding to a newspaper review which said his "artistic scope is limited not to mention his physical potential."
Dmitrichenko on the website of the Kommersant daily accused the journalist of bias, calling the writer "a failed performer." Kommersant later took down his comment. One of the screenshots of the detailed remarks read:
"I'm happy, I'm accomplished, I work with the genius of a teacher, I work with Genius, Grigorovich himself!!! What about you??"
Dmitrichenko was due to appear at the Bolshoi in "Sleeping Beauty" on March 16 where he played Bluebird.
____
Sasha Merkushev and Yelena Yegorova contributed to this report.
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Public release date: 11-Mar-2013
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