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TECHNOLOGY
Robot vs. Robot

Can a computer forge a painting well enough that it fools the algorithms
designed to detect fakes?
(Charles16e/Flickr)
NICHOLAS ST. FLEUR

MAR 12, 2015
Beautiful mathematical patterns are hidden in the chaos of Jackson Pollocks

famous drip paintings. The repeating designsfractals of grey, black, and yellow
were first uncovered in 1999 by Richard Taylor, a physicist from the University
of Oregon. He proposed his findings in the journal Nature, and later suggested
that computers could analyze the geometric patterns within the brush strokes to
detect a Jackson Pollock fraud from an original.
To demonstrate his methods, Taylor and his colleagues planned to use the unique
signatures they found to make a Jackson Pollock fake good enough to dupe art
experts. However, we concluded that to generate this work would represent the
dawn of a new and unwanted era, Taylor told me in an email. So we shelved
the plan.
As robots increasingly work (and play) in ways that once seemed fundamentally
human, Taylor believes the art world is headed toward a turbulent time filled
with difficult questions: If a computer can fake a painting, can it also fool the
computers designed to detect the fakes? How can the programs designed to spot
fakes stay a step ahead of the programs designed to generate them? The idea, he
said, could trigger a particularly ominous cycle, considering the millions of
dollars that could be made from forgeries.
We concluded that to generate this work would

represent the dawn of a new and unwanted era.
The art world, Taylor said, has just passed through the first phase of answering
these questions. His team, and more recently a team led by the computer
scientist Lior Shamir from Lawrence Technological University in Michigan, has
found that computers can use fractal analysis to distinguish between real Pollocks
and imitations. Shamir and his colleagues analyzed more than 100 paintings,
including 26 original Jackson Pollocks, for traces of fractal patterns. To do so, the
paintings were digitized in 640,000 pixels then cut into 16 different segments.
Then, the computer would analyze the paintings segment by segment and
determine whether each portions fractal patterns matched the mathematical
features in Pollocks work. The computer, it turned out, was right about 93
percent of the time. Shamir and his team published their findings in the
International Journal of Art and Technology.
Shamir believes that computers will eventually be able to create artwork
indistinguishable from a person-made painting, an idea thats still controversial
in the art world. But robots are already dabbling in artistic pursuitseverything
from acting to dancing to painting.
e-David
Robot
Painting
from eDavid
03:25
If you remember during the 60s it was controversial whether a computer

program could play chess and beat a person. It was controversial 'til the 90s when
Deep Blue beat a chess master, Shamir said. It sounds like science fiction right
now, but a computer beating a person in chess was also science fiction for a long
time. Its going to stay controversial until the day it actually happens.
There are still plenty of limitations to what robots can discern about art
regardless of who or what made it. About 10 years ago, Taylors algorithm was called
into use by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation to verify the authenticity of 24 newly
discovered Jackson Pollock paintings. He found significant differences in a quarter of
them, which raised the possibility that they were fake. But researchers from Case Western
University challenged his methods in an article in Nature, showing that a set of simple stars
drawn by a child contained the same fractal statistics as a Pollock.
Daniel Rockmore, a mathematician from Dartmouth who applies mathematical

models to artwork, said computer programs like Taylors could not reverseengineer an entire Jackson Pollock masterpiecewhich means computers might
be adept at recognizing a Pollock, but they still havent figured out how to imitate
one. Instead, the programs would generate artworks based on a single signature
the fractal pattern identified as a defining characteristic of Pollock's workbut
might otherwise miss the overarching aesthetic of an authentic Pollock. In other
words, theres no guarantee that the final robot-made product would look
authentic to a human. Indeed, in one case, when researchers reverse-engineered
images of bikinis and golden retrievers from an algorithm designed to detect the
items, it spewed back an unrecognizable mess of static hues. Just because a
computer can recognize something doesn't mean it can reproduce that thing.
(Humans, for the record, have similar artistic limitations.)
RELATED STORY
Why So Many Art Forgers Want to Get

Caught
Its as if George Orwell used the word the 2 percent of the time in every book
that he wrote. Say I write a computer program in which two out of every 100
words is the, Rockmore said. By including the word the in 2 percent of its
text, that computer program could create a manuscript capable of convincing a
fraud-detecting algorithm that it is an authentic George Orwell essay. But a skim
of the entire text reveals the truth. Ive managed to match that one statistic, but
its not George Orwells writing and no one would ever confuse it as such.
Digitally, a computer program can create a piece of artwork that can pass for an
original. But, materially, things get more complicated. Going from pixels to the
actual painting strikes me as complicated, Rockmore said. But you wouldnt
want to say it could never be done.
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TECHNOLOGY
Mapping 61 Ancient Tattoos on a 5,300-Year-Old

Mummy
Scientists used a modified Nikon camera to reveal previously unseen markings
on tzi the Iceman's body.
One of Melis' colleagues hunts for the iceman's many tattoos. (South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology)
NICHOLAS ST. FLEUR

FEB 5, 2015
Wearing a surgical mask and gown over a thick winter jacket, Marcello Melis
stood at a glass operating table in a tiny ice chamber and examination room in
Italys South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology. His patient was a 5,300-year-old
mummy nicknamed tzi the Iceman. And though Melis wanted to look
beneath tzis caramel-colored skin, he held neither a scalpel nor forceps in his
gloved hands. Rather, the tool for this procedure was a modified Nikon camera.
tzi is legendary in science circles. Since finding the frozen mummy in the Italian
Alps in 1991, researchers have conducted numerous tests to piece together his
ancient tale. Genomic sequencing suggests that he had brown eyes, and came
from Central Europe, as well as was lactose intolerant and predisposed for
coronary heart disease. Analysis of a shoulder wound indicated he was fatally
shot with an arrow that pierced an artery. And a CT scan showed he also suffered
a hard blow to the head. Radiolab did a whole show about the murder mystery of
tzis demise. But what fascinated Melis and his colleagues most were the faded,
yet still visible black tattoos that covered the mummy's wrists, ankles, and lower
back.
The thing is: Researchers never knew how many tattoos tzi had, or why exactly
he was inked in the first place. Theyd previously counted somewhere between
47 and 55 black simple charcoal lines rubbed into the icemans skin, mostly
around his joints. Some scientists believe that the tattoos were made using a
sharp bone tool in an attempt to alleviate pain in these areas, perhaps an early
form of acupuncture.
But what if tzis tattoos were there for another reasonand what if there were
more of them? The dozens of tattoos scientists could see might, they thought, be
accompanied by more marksones obscured by dark patches from thousands of
years of mummification.
So Melis and his colleague Matteo Miccoli from Profilocolore, a spectral imaging
company in Rome, teamed up with the museums mummy experts and used a
camera technique called Hypercolorimetric Multispectral Imaging (HMI) to
investigate. The idea was to analyze tzi under infrared and ultraviolet light,
which might reveal details that couldn't otherwise be seen. Using specialized
lenses on an otherwise ordinary Nikon and imaging software, Melis and his
colleagues analyzed every pixel from the photos they took under seven different
wavelengths of light to map tzis tattoos.

And it worked. Not only did Melis and his team get a more complete view of
tattoos they already knew were therethey also uncovered new markings on
parts of tzis body they never knew were decorated.
Images of the iceman's tattoos as seen under different wavelengths (Marco Samadelli)
At first we didnt know if we could find something, Melis said. But after
spending a whole day in a below-freezing operating room taking pictures, the
team had a breakthrough. Then, very suddenly we saw that there was something
more, something never seen before when we looked through the infrared portion
of the pictures.
Before his work on tzi, Melis had used the HMI technique to collect clues for a
more traditional sort of cold case. After Italian police found the bones of a
missing man who had disappeared years earlier, Melis used the camera technique
at the crime scene to identify traces of blood splattered on what looked like clean
walls. The finding led a judge to reopen the case as a homicide. Melis also used
the technique to reveal a Leonardo da Vinci mural hidden beneath a thick layer of
soot in an Italian castle. Doctors use the technique to diagnose dermatological

diseases such as melanoma that can be present beneath the surface of the skin
an application not unlike the method researchers used to identify tzis tattoos.
We thought we could use the same kind of technique to discover the tattoos on
the mummy, because the tattoos go under the skin, Melis said.
Melis and his team found a total of 61 tattoos across the mummys body
including a never before seen set located on his ribcage. They reported their
findings last month in the Journal of Cultural Heritage. The tattoo on the chest
was really surprising, we did not expect to find a completely new tattoo, said the
anthropologist Albert Zink, head of the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman at
the European Research Academy in Italy, and an author on the paper.
The finding may challenge prevailing theories about the tattoos' therapeutic
properties. In the paper, Zink suggests that because of its location, the new chest
tattoo seems to contradict the idea that the markings only alleviated lower back
and joint pain. The question is now, Is this also a treatment? Or is this symbolic,
or even for a religious function?' Zink said.
Where the tattoo sets are located on tzi, with number 15 pointing to the new finding (Marco
Samadelli)
Researchers already know from previous scans that tzi had early signs of heart
diseaseatherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteriesso perhaps, some have
theorized, tzis chest tattoos were connected to management of chest pain.
Walter Kean, a rheumatologist from McMaster University in Canada who was not
involved with the study, previously published a paper suggesting tzis tattoos
are related to pain in the icemans back, transitional vertebra, and legs. If some
or all of the icemans tattoos were used as markers for therapeuticsthen the
chest tattoos could easily be a marker for some form of chest pain which troubled
the iceman, he said in an email.

Frank Rhli, director of the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine in Zurich,
Switzerland, who also was not involved with the most recent study, cautions
against interpreting the chest markings as pain management signs. It's
fascinating work, he said. But for me atherosclerosis is not a good enough
reasoning for the marks. I see it for the joints, but for the atherosclerosis Im not
very convinced.
As the debate on whether the tattoos served a therapeutic, religious, or symbolic
purpose continues, Melis notes that nobody knows the true meaning behind the
subdermal markings. Before we discovered the new ones they thought it was
acupuncture, said Melis. But then we discovered one on the ribcage and we
thought, This is something that has nothing to do with the joints. So now the
mystery is back.
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Lonesome George, the Last of His

Kind, Strikes His Final Pose
After the century-old giant tortoise died, Galpagos conservationists and a taxidermist had to
figure out how to continue his legacy
October 27, 2014 | By Nicholas St. Fleur
Tucked beside fossils of long-gone gigantic

sloths and knee-high horses stands a
newcomer to the American Museum of
Natural Historys extinction parade:
Lonesome George, the last known Pinta
Island giant tortoise.
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For four decades the 100-year-old reptile

served as a conservation icon on Ecuadors
Galpagos Archipelago. His subspecies,
hunted for meat and tortoise oil, all but
vanished in the 1900s. George was its only
survivor, and despite several attempts to get
him to reproduce with giant tortoises from
similar subspecies, he died without
descendants on June 24, 2012. Now, what
remains of Lonesome Georges legacy is a
lifelike mount at the American Museum of
Natural History (AMNH) in New York City.
Designed by an expert team of taxidermists,
the display depicts George at his most
majestic; with neck outstretched and shell
polished.
Away
Why Do People Believe in Conspiracy Theories?
Lonesome George is on view in the Museums 4th

floor Astor Turret through January 4, 2015.
Credit: AMNH/R. Mickens
More In This Article

Lonesome George, the
Last of His Kind, Strikes
His Final Pose
[Slideshow]
Serendipity brought him to the museum. On the same morning that Fausto Llerena,
Georges handler since 1983, found the tortoise sprawled out dead in his pen, a
congregation of conservationists had just arrived to Santa Cruz Island for a citizen
science workshop. Santa Cruz Island, where George drew millions of visitors over his
40-year tenure, is one of four inhabited islands in the Galpagos chain; the other more
than three-dozen islands and islets are untouched wilderness preserves. When Llerena
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lonesome-george-the-last-of-his-kind-strikes-his-final-pose/
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Page 1 of 5
informed the Galpagos National Park Service of Georges passing, they shared the
sad news with their guests, many of whom began to cry. For Eleanor Sterling, a chief
conservation scientist at the AMNH who arrived on the island that day, the next 24
11/21/14 4:25 AM
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hours were filled with disbelief. We just witnessed extinction, she says.
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects

Agency) seeks methods to accurately
forecast the spread of
Galpagos tortoises can live up to 150 years, so Georges death came unexpectedly.
The park had made no prior arrangements. Its always hypothetical until youre in the
NIH Single Cell Analysis Challenge: Follow That
middle of it, Sterling says. Then suddenly youve got this big weight on your
shoulders.
Sterling and the other conservationists, many of whom were members of the
Galpagos Conservancy, shifted gears from conducting citizen science to making
postmortem arrangements. A veterinarian was called to conduct the necropsy; after
splitting Georges shell in half with a chainsaw it was determined he had died of
natural causes. Next the group needed to stabilize Georges carcass before the 100degree Fahrenheit tropical heat could rot his remains. For that, they needed plastic
freezer wrap and a refrigerator. So the group made frantic calls to local village
hardware stores on Santa Cruz Island.
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Reward: $10 0 ,0 0 0 US D
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>> Click here to see a slideshow of Lonesome George's final adventure

The hardware stores were out of plastic freezer wrap, and it would take two weeks to
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get more. When the team explained that the supplies were for Lonesome George,
employees sniffed out some freezer plastic at a local pig farm. The group then wrapped
every centimeter of Georges 1.5-meter-long frame to keep him frozen and thwart
freezer burn; they had to protect each individual toe to prevent it from breaking off in
the refrigerator. For Sterling, the process was exciting and terrifying.
After 36 hours, the bulky, 75-kilogram tortoise was put in a large freezer, safely
wrapped and mummified. Meanwhile, word of his death went viral. The Galpagos
Conservancy was flooded with e-mails from impassioned fans suggesting next steps.
Some recommended burying Lonesome George on his home island. Others wanted to
parade him from country to country like a rock star on a world tour. One letter even
suggested barbecuing his remains for a celebratory ingesting George feast.
Members of both the conservancy and the Galpagos National Park System decided
the best option was to preserve George via taxidermy; that way, the thinking went,
George could continue to herald conservation efforts even in death. But the
restoration job would require a very special taxidermist.
George Dante was tinkering in his office at Wildlife Preservations, a taxidermy firm in
Woodland Park, N.J., when Steve Quinn, a senior diorama artist from the AMNH,
called. I could not believe what I was hearing, Dante says. Everything was moving
in slow-motion. I remember trying to process the fact that George had passed away
and this was the end of a species. And then this honor, that theyre asking me if Im
interested in doing this.
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Page 2 of 5
Sterling had recommended Dante for the job. After I had my 24 hours of sadness and
self-reflection, I realized the museum could and had the resources to make a
difference, she says. Dante had done the taxidermy restoration work on 2.5-metertall Alaskan brown bears and other creatures for the museums North American
Mammal Hall in 2012. Preserving George would be his biggest challenge since that
project.
Acting on Dantes instructions, the parks carpenters and mechanics built a custom
box made of hardwood tree bark to ship George from the Galpagos to Dantes New
Jersey office. Getting the tortoise there would require special permits from Ecuadors
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wildlife agencies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Ecuadors presidential office and
other authorities. It ended up taking nine months for George to be cleared for travel.
In the meantime all Dante could do was cross his fingers while the tortoise sat in a
freezer on an island with little infrastructure and frequent electrical blackouts.
On March 10, 2013, the morning of Lonesome Georges departure arrived. James
Gibbs, a conservationist from the State University of New York College of
Environmental Science and Forestry, had flown down to chaperone the corpse. Gibbs
had worked with George for a number of years but says that the tortoise had never
liked him. Gibbss job was to draw blood samples from George, so every time he would
approach the tortoise, George would recede into his shell.
Before dawn Gibbs helped load the frozen tortoise into his box and then onto a truck
that took them via ferry to the airport. Along the way, people asked what was in
Gibbss 225-kilogram box. When he told them it carried Lonesome George, they would
touch the box as if it were the casket of a loved one. Some people cried; many offered
to accompany George on his journey. I could actually see in the eyes of people that
they really believed in the importance of this, Gibbs says. It personalized the
meaning of extinction for me.
On March 11, after 28 hours of travel, Gibbs delivered George to Dante in New Jersey.
Opening the hardwood box was a nail-biter: What if the carcass had thawed en route?
But after Dante pried the box apart he found that Georges remains were still fully
frozen.
Dante defrosted the corpse. After Georges body thawed he measured every centimeter
of the tortoise before molding a replica of the body. He filled the mold with foam,
which would eventually become the base on which he would add a water-based clay to
create Georges features. On top of that clay he would stretch out Georges skinintact
in one whole piece. His biggest hurdle was working on a species that had never been
mounted before. Not surprisingly, taxidermy-supply companies do not make parts for
extinct giant tortoises. The beauty is that theres no handbook on how to do it, he
says.
Dante was well aware he was working on what he had dubbed the worlds pet. As
such, he knew there was no room for error. Every centimeter had to be scientifically
accurate, from his saddle-back shell to the missing toenail on his left front foot. We
Page 3 of 5
11/21/14 4:25 AM
couldnt just look at this as a project of mounting a Galpagos tortoise. Dante says.
We are re-creating this character.
He checked hundreds of pictures to fashion every wrinkle in Georges skin. He dashed
green stains around Georges mouth and neck to make it appear as if the tortoise had
just finished grazing. And he had a glass company create the worlds first pair of
custom-made glass tortoise eyeballs for George, which meant visiting a local zoo to
observe the intricate colors of a live tortoises eyes. When it came time for a pose,
Dante consulted Fausto Llerena, who was a part of the group that first found George
and the man who discovered he had died. Llerena advised Dante to portray George in
a familiar stance, with his neck outstretched in dominance and yet with his tail tucked
submissively. Llerena, who is also a well-known wood carver, sent Dante a handcarved wooden tortoise as a sign of gratitude for restoring his friend of 40 years. This
is my Oscar, Dante says of the softball-size carving.
On September 18, 2014, after 500 hours of labor conducted over more than a year,
Dante was finally ready to present George to the museum and the people who helped
bring him there. Among the congregation at Georges unveiling were several people
who were also present for his death, including Gibbs and Sterling. They were all
pleasantly surprised with Dantes work. You could see the look in his eye, and you
could see the pose, Sterling says. He brought Lonesome George back to life.
Surrounded by other species lost to time, George looked a little less lonesome. But the
difference between him and his neighboring specimens was not lost on anyone who
attended the unveiling. The other animals in the hall were driven to extinction by
changing climates. George and his kind disappeared because of man.
Editor's Note: Lonesome George is on temporary display at the museum until
January 4, 2015, after which he will be shipped and put on display in Quito,
Ecuador.
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EnvironmentalBiologist DashRiprock
October 27, 2014, 7:04 PM
That mentality is a big part of the problem with regards to extinction.

Think of it this way:
Panthera tigris is the species name for tigers.
Subspecies would be Bengal, Siberian, Caspian tigers, etc. They are NOT the same, and you cannot
just discount their importance and say they don't matter.
Page 4 of 5
11/21/2014
Science Notes 2014: Fireball Physics
Illustration: Mary Williams
The best-documented meteor was a blast for scientists to reconstruct. Nicholas St. Fleur retraces the
Russian shock waves. Illustrated by Mary Williams.
Peter Jenniskens paused as he reached for the front door to his hotel in Chelyabinsk,
Russia. Only a few jagged shards of thick glass stuck out from the wooden frame. He
collected the fragmentsthe first of many clues that the NASA scientist would gather
to understand the gigantic fireball that erupted over the city three weeks earlier.
I had in my hands pieces of glass that were destroyed by an asteroid impact. How unbelievable is that?
Jenniskens says.
The shards were tiny pieces of a puzzle assembled by Jenniskens and an international team about the most
startling cosmic encounter in decades. The Chelyabinsk meteor on February 15, 2013, came without warning.
It streaked across the dawn sky in a dazzling display of red and orange trailed by two columns of puffy
smoke. Then with a flash of light, it exploded mid-air. Moments later, a fierce shockwave rocked the one
million people below.
No one died, but the blast injured 1,600 peoplesome through flying glass like the shards Jenniskens
collected. Evidence about the intense physics of the blast came from patterns of damaged buildings, sound
recordings in the atmosphere, and pieces of the rock itselfincluding a 1,400-pound chunk fished from a
nearby lake. But the best clues came from security cameras and car-mounted dash cams that captured
footage of the meteor as it shot through the atmosphere and explodedmaking it, by far, the bestdocumented space impact in history.
We know that these events can be very violent, but to have this happen in our lifetime in this densely
populated of an area was incredible, Jenniskens says.
http://sciencenotes.ucsc.edu/2014/pages/meteor/meteor.html
1/8
11/21/2014
But to illuminate the extraordinary physics of a real fireball, the team had to spend weeks on the ground in
Siberia, tracing hints of the blasts imprints at every turn.
Examining the tapes

A tall, skinny man whose face brightens at the word meteorite, Jenniskens had led an expedition to recover
a space rock that crash-landed in Sudan in 2008. He also tracked down meteorites from the 2012 Sutters
Mill impact in the Sierra Nevada. Like nearly everyone else, he was alerted to the Chelyabinsk fireball
through headlines on the news and a flood of footage uploaded to YouTube. Thanks to social media, what
would have been an isolated explosion became the airblast heard, and seen, around the world.
Meteor expert Peter Jenniskens of NASA holds two keepsakes from the February 2013 fireball over Chelyabinsk,
Russia: a shard of blown-out glass and a fragment of the meteorite itself. (Photo: Nicholas St. Fleur)
By sheer coincidence, scientists were preparing for a much larger asteroid called 2012 DA14 to hurtle past
Earth that same day. But the Chelyabinsk fireball was a surprise. The asteroid was relatively small, and its
arrival was masked by the suns glare. It evaded detection of every satellite and radar when it pierced the
atmosphere.
Low frequency, long-distance vibrations called infrasound that emanated from the shockwave clued
scientists in to what had happened. Infrasound stations across the world detected the waves. The closest
detectors in Kazakhstan reported an explosion equivalent to the energy released by 500 kilotons of TNT,
bigger than most small nuclear blasts. In 1908 an impact perhaps 10 to 100 times more powerful had
flattened a huge tract of trees near Tunguska, Siberia. But that astral invasion was poorly documented.
Chelyabinsk was the first blast captured and shared in the social networking era. With a few clicks, footage
was seen by millions. It provided a wealth of evidence for remote scientists like Jenniskens to delve into
immediately.
2/8
11/21/2014
For the next few weeks, he pored over the films. Here's a perfect video, Jenniskens says, playing a clip from
the dash cam of a car stopped at a traffic sign. When the driver arrivesfor just a few framesyou see the
fireball appear. And from that moment on you get a beautiful record of the whole trajectory.
Jenniskens and his team combed through more than 400 such videos. Each one provided a different
perspective and viewing angle of the event. The videos created the foundation for his investigation. When
Jenniskens found one that met his criteriaa still, clear camera shot with points of reference, such as trees
or buildingshe downloaded it and extracted its individual frames. He narrowed his search to ten videos
that represented the locations he felt he needed to visit.
Chelyabinsk Infographic
Map data 2014 Google
Terms
3/8
11/21/2014
Click on this interactive graphic to see videos used by meteor hunter Peter Jenniskens and Nature authors J.
Borovika et al. to reconstruct the Chelyabinsk fireball. Yellow markers indicate where Jenniskens traveled to
map the night sky. Blue markers show the locations used by the Nature authors to calculate the trajectory. Blue
dots show places visited by both teams. The red line marks the fireball's trajectory, with dots marking key
moments. Data from Popova, O. P. et al. in Science 342, 10691073 (2013) and Borovika, J. et al. in Nature 503,
235237 (2013). (Infographic by Nicholas St. Fleur.)
The moment I saw the videos, my emotion was that I want to go there, Jenniskens says. Ideally I would
have liked to have been there when it happened. He found a host: meteor modeler Olga Popova of the
Russian Academy of Sciences Institute for Dynamics of Geospheres, who invited Jenniskens to join her team
in Chelyabinsk to reconstruct the meteorites trajectory.
Many videos caught the meteors entrance and exit, but missed its middle moments when the explosions
intense light blinded the cameras. To determine the rocks speed, Jenniskens analyzed traffic camera footage
that caught moving shadows from the backside of houses as the meteor blew up. This speed, and the
asteroids path as it punched through the atmosphere, let scientists trace the rock back to its origins in our
solar systems asteroid belt.
Jenniskens knew from his expedition in Sudan that sleuthing this meteor impact on the ground would be no
easy task. He needed to visit each site and take a photo of the scenery against the night sky, precisely
matching each reference point to triangulate the objects flight course. The stars, he says, act like a compass
for determining the direction of the fireball and deducing its orbit from space. Even small changes when
lining up his camera could have big consequences for accuracy.
But unlike his previous ventures, this one was a race against time. The data were rapidly disappearing: glass
was being repaired, chunks of meteorites were being recovered, and peoples memories were fading. Three
weeks after the fiery impact, Jenniskens embarked for Russia.
Cold case
After landing in bone-chilling Chelyabinsk, where the temperature dropped to 0F, Jenniskens and his team
first investigated a damaged zinc factory. The buildings walls had collapsed following the Chelyabinsk
explosion. It was one of more than 7,000 buildings to have its windows blown out by the shockwave.
The team marked the sites where they saw shattered glass to map the physical extent of the damage caused
by the shock. You see the pressure wave not just push against the glass, but also push the whole window
frame, Jenniskens says. You see people get blown off their feet from the shockwave. You wonder why more
people didnt get hurt. In a city of a million people, no one dieddespite the blasts intense power. But
many injuries did occur when people ran to their windows to see the bright flash of light, just before the blast
wave roared across the city.
The team traveled to more than 50 villages on the outskirts of the blast, some more than 50 miles away. They
visited local markets at each stop to speak with shop owners, who had spent three weeks discussing the
events with customers. The shopkeepers would summarize how the fireball impacted their town. When the
team heard other reports of damage, they traveled to those sites and assessed the impact.
Every person we spoke to had something to say
about it. Either they had seen the fireball or they
4/8
11/21/2014

felt the pressure wave coming towards them, says
Jenniskens. It was really an exceptional event.
The testimonies supplied information beyond what
the videos could capture, such as the smells,
sounds, and injuries in the blasts aftermath.
In some cases, Jenniskens met people who were
outside during the fireball. Many of them reported
smelling sulfur, like after a fireworks display. One
In this video produced by Nicholas St. Fleur, NASA

researcher Peter Jenniskens describes his trip to Russia
to document the dramatic Chelyabinsk fireball and
meteor explosion in February 2013.
coal miner was working in a snowfield right under

the blast; he suffered severe sunburns and peeling
skin. Jenniskens calls the airburst, which produced
brutally bright light, the most exceptional aspect of the entire event.
The team also collected fragments of the meteorites, which they sent back to labs around the world to
analyze. Geologist Qing Zhu Yin of UC Davis received a penny-sized fragment. He used intense X-rays to
examine the meteorites consistency. Its weakly bound layers of minerals and severe fragmenting revealed
why it exploded into thousands of pieces of debris. His team also looked at the rocks magnetic field and
determined that it was made of ordinary chondrite, a rocky asteroid containing little iron.
This is one of the bystander witnesses to the formation of the solar system four and a half billion years ago,
Yin says. Most asteroids that hit Earth will be like this one, he notes. Much more rare are solid iron bodies,
like the one that gouged Meteor Crater in Arizona 40,000 years ago.
Bursts and blasts

A week before Jenniskens left for Chelyabinsk, physicist Mark Boslough of Sandia National Laboratory in
Albuquerque, New Mexico, was already on his way. Boslough, a world authority on air blasts, uses computer
models to simulate how fireballs cascade toward the groundand their potential to kill people. Asteroids
that pierce the atmosphere release much of their kinetic energy as pressure, which creates the air blast. The
Chelyabinsk meteor provided a natural lab to test Boslough's ideas about how things blow up overhead.
Boslough was one of the first American scientists to find out about the meteor event. He too got the message
through social media. An hour after the fireball exploded, a Canadian friend who plays late-night chess
online with Russian players shared the news from a site documenting the explosion. Boslough immediately
identified it as an airburst.
It was an adrenaline rush from that moment I saw the first video, he says. The first thing I wanted to do
was set up a model and start simulating it.
A few days later, a team from the NOVA television program contacted Boslough to accompany them to
Chelyabinsk for three days as their meteorite expert. They wanted to detail the event in a short documentary
called Meteor Strike. But Boslough had more than just TV on his agenda. Equipped with a camera, tripod,
and warm winter clothes, he set out to track down data and learn more about the blast. During the day he
filmed with the NOVA crew, but at night Boslough sleuthed with a taxi driver across the countryside, looking
for clues.
I dont think of it so much as Sherlock Holmes, because he's all about solving mysteries with clues,
Boslough says. There was never a mystery about what this was. We just wanted to get the best possible data,
and we wanted to get it quickly so we could explain all the details surrounding the blast. In particular, the
airbursts path overheadcreated by the asteroids trajectorywould help test Bosloughs simulations of
explosions above the ground at different angles.
5/8
11/21/2014
astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California,

similar events may strike every 40 to 100 years, on average.
It makes you question at what size of an incoming object
would you want to evacuate or get out of the way and at what
size would you say Hey thats cool, lets go watch it. This was
right on the border between those two, he says.
The blast investigation, says Morrison, helps lay the
groundwork for preparing for the next event. Scientists now
can use models to run an ensemble of scenarios that vary in
meteorite size, impact angle, speed, and other variables, then
create risk assessments accordingly.
It's not that scientists didnt know this could happen,"
Morrison says. "Rather, now theres a broader community concerned about these impacts and saying Hey,
we need to understand this.
His colleague, Peter Jenniskens, holds two keepsakes from his time in Chelyabinsk: a small, smooth chunk of
the meteorite and a thick shard of glass shattered by the shockwave. The pocket-sized souvenirs are pieces to
a physics puzzle that he never thought he would be so fortunate to solve.
2014 Nicholas St. Fleur / UC Santa Cruz Science Communication Program

Top
Biographies
Nicholas St. Fleur
B.S. (biological sciences; minor: communications) Cornell
University
Internships: National Public Radio, Scientific American
A magnitude-7.0 earthquake triggered my interest in science
writing. The sliding tectonic plates and severe aftershocks were
fascinating enough, but the human side of the seismological story
inspired me.
I was a first-year premed student when the quake devastated Portau-Prince, the capital of Haitiand the city where my parents were born. For the next week I was transfixed
as medical correspondents painted a morbid picture of the disease outbreaks and death following the
disaster. Though it was unsettling to watch, I found myself captivated by this juxtaposition of medicine and
media.
I soon enrolled in a science and health reporting course and developed a passion for storytelling. Only rare
science stories have tragedy at their epicenters, but they all have humanity beneath the surface, and I intend
to unearth it.
Nicholas St. Fleur's website
...................................................
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LIFE
Where Jazz Was Born, Musicians Say

Obamacare Is Out of Reach
By NICHOLAS ST. FLEUR, May 29, 2014 12:14 PM
When Raymond Weber, a New Orleans drummer, is on

stage, he cannot stop thinking about his music. When
he is off stage, he cannot stop thinking about his
growing pile of medical bills.
Mr. Weber, 47, has diabetes and high blood pressure,
and he is uninsured. His insulin pills can cost more
than $300 a month, and his three blood pressure
medications run $390 a month. The new health care
plan Mr. Weber qualifies for under the Affordable Care
Act would strangle his already tight budget, and he said
he could not afford another high monthly bill.
Its real
expensive,
he said. If it
was $200 a
month, I
could afford
that. Not
$400!
Mr. Webers 12-year-old son, Rodney, performed at a
Times were
RELATED
New Orleans Low-income Health

Program Could End in August
music workshop. Evan Ortiz | NYT Institute
not always so
tough for Mr.
Weber, who has played in New Orleans for over 40

years. He has toured with greats such as New Orleans
pianist and guitarist Malcolm John Rebennack Jr.,
more often called Dr. John. But now, the occasional
live show is harder to come across and often does not
pay enough to support his wife and three sons, who
also play instruments.
Im trying to work as hard as I can, Mr. Weber said.
Im taking every gig, even the kids parties.
Mr. Webers case is not unique. In 2012, musicians in
New Orleans made $17,800 on average, according to a
recent report from Sweet Home New Orleans, a
nonprofit organization that helps local musicians.
In the birthplace of jazz, life for musicians following
their passion pays very little and comes without health
benefits. And in many cases, national health care
initiatives have only aggravated their struggles.
The Affordable Care Act, which requires all Americans
to purchase health care, has pushed thousands of
musicians like Mr. Weber into the so-called sacrifice
zone. People inhabiting this area make too much
money to qualify for Medicaid in Louisiana but not
enough to afford a coverage plan under the new
national mandates.
But the coup de grace for these struggling artists came
when Gov. Bobby Jindal refused to accept legislation to
expand Medicaid coverage to low-income citizens. He
said that the cost of the expansion nearly $2 billion
over 10 years was too high.
Councilwoman LaToya Cantrell of New Orleans, who is
in favor of expanding Medicaid, has fought incessantly
against Governor Jindal, a Republican, to bring
Raymond Weber, 47, is an uninsured New Orleans drummer. He cannot

afford Obamacare, yet he makes too much to qualify for Medicaid. Evan Ortiz
| NYT Institute
medical coverage to more than 240,000 eligible

residents, including thousands of local entertainers.
Musicians are the heartbeat of this city, said Ms.
Cantrell, a Democrat. The rejection of the Medicaid
expansion feels like a rejection of the needs of those
human beings and the needs of their families.
The refusal, she said, could also stunt the citys
economy, which thrives largely in part because of its
music.
In 2012, entertainment in Louisiana generated more
than $395 million in gross sales, and it attracted nearly
four million people to festivals, according to the
Mayors Office of Cultural Economy.
Many of the medical facilities available to musicians
are struggling to sustain themselves under the states
new budgetary constraints.
The nonprofit New Orleans Musicians Clinic, which
provides musicians like Mr. Weber with free primary
care services, is no longer reimbursed for some of the
care it provides. And now, for the first time since it
opened 16 years ago, it is functioning at a $500,000
deficit.
The rejection affects the poorest of the poor, and
unfortunately, that sometimes includes musicians,
said Erica Dudas, managing director of the New
Orleans Musicians Assistance Foundation, which
provides aid to the Musicians Clinic. She estimates
that as many as 80 percent of the clinics patients fall
into the sacrifice zone.
Bethany Bultman, the founder and president of the
New Orleans Musicians Clinic, said that despite the
deficit, the clinic would continue to serve its patients.
Raymond Weber demonstrated drumming for a child at the jazz music

workshop. Evan Ortiz | NYT Institute
We are not going to say, Too bad, were not getting

reimbursed, so you cant come to our clinic, said Ms.
Bultman, who sees each of her patients as a cultural
icon. Every one of our 2,500 patients is as valuable as
Louis Armstrong, and each of them deserves medical
care if they need it, she said.
To that effect, the Musicians Clinic is helping some of
its clientele navigate, negotiate and become covered
under the Affordable Care Act, which Ms. Bultman calls
an honest-to-God life saver, for helping some of the
clinics sicker patients get health coverage despite their
pre-existent conditions.
During a recent visit at the Musicians Clinic, Mr.
Weber looked at the door as the nurse practitioner
opened it, her hands full of papers. She passed him a
sheet with the results of his most recent A1C test,
which showed how well he was managing his diabetes.
She smiled. This time his blood sugar, which normally
measures a dangerous 10 or 11 percent, came in at a
much safer level, 7.3 percent his best result in years.
Ive got to frame this, he said. If it wasnt for the
Musicians Clinic, Id be in shambles. Without this
place, a lot of us musicians would probably be dead.
As he left the clinicians office and walked past walls
lined with photographs of jazz legends who have been
treated there, Mr. Weber began to prepare for his next
gig, a workshop for children.
Mr. Weber took the stage under the white lights in
Tipitinas music club, where the pianist Professor
Longhair played out his final years. The venue was
filled with the smooth tunes of the saxophone and the
beats of his 12-year-old sons percussion. He looked
completely focused as he raised his microphone and
prepared for the conductors cue: Back to the music.
LATEST
NEWS
Mr. Weber performed with his band, the Raymond Weber Allstars, during
Louisiana Governor Blasts Obama Administration

on Education and Veterans Affairs
a Sunday jazz music workshop at Tipitinas. Evan Ortiz | NYT Institute
May 30, 2014 2:23 PM
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LIFE
On an Island in the Bayous, Tabasco Sauce Holds

Its Own
May 30, 2014 2:00 PM
your health
treatments & tests
health inc.
policy-ish
public health
policy-ish
Former Foster Care Youth Get Help Paying For

Health Care
JUNE 20, 2014 12:39 PM ET
NICHOLAS ST. FLEUR
iStockphoto
When Joseph Hill turned 21, he went from being homeless to being homeless and
uninsured.
Hill grew up in foster care. He entered the system when he was 3 months old, and
lived in 10 different foster homes in San Diego. At 19, he aged out of foster care and
faced an abrupt transition into adulthood.
At first he received health insurance under Medi-Cal, California's version of Medicaid.
But those benefits disappeared when he turned 21.

Back then, Hill needed new prescription glasses so he could drive to work and see the
board at school. Losing medical coverage meant spending money that he did not have.
"It felt like a low blow it cost like $400," Hill says of paying out of pocket for his
glasses. "If I had coverage, I could have put that $400 to groceries."
Joseph Hill now gets health care with Medi-Cal coverage.

Courtesy of Joseph Hill
But now, because of a little-known provision in the Affordable Care Act, Hill and other
former foster youth can get free health care under Medicaid until age 26, regardless of
their income. In some states, coverage includes free vision and dental care. The new
provision mirrors a similar Medicaid expansion granted to young adults on their
parents' insurance.
About 55,000 former foster youth are expected to take advantage of the Medicaid
expansion this year, and that number is predicted to increase by 2017 to as many as
74,000, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
This coverage can be lifesaving, because young adults who grew up in foster care are at
higher risk of mental health issues, post-traumatic stress and chronic medical
conditions than their peers. And before the change in the law, in many states, former
foster youth would lose access to Medicaid services as early as age 18.
"These are kids who have not had an easy life," Tricia Brooks, senior research fellow at
the Georgetown Center for Children and Families in Washington D.C., tells Shots.
"There's definitely a higher need for physical and mental health services among this
population."
Brooks is an advocate for the expanded coverage, but she says the change does not
come without hiccups.
Although state governments must cover youth who age out of the foster care system in
their own states, Brooks says state governments are not required to extend coverage to
former foster youth who aged out in a different state.
The change also comes with challenges. Finding and notifying eligible members of this
notoriously hard-to-reach demographic is the biggest, says Fatima Morales of Children
Now, a California-based children's health advocacy group. Her organization's new
campaign, Coveredtil26, aims to inform California's estimated 27,000 former foster
youth, like Hill, about their new health care eligibility and ease their transition into
adulthood.
Hill, who is now 23 and covered under Medi-Cal, felt the provision's effects firsthand
during a recent trip to the eyeglass store.
"I got a free pair and a backup in case they break," he says. "And I didn't have to pay a
cent."
foster care
affordable care act
medicaid
health insurance
your health
What's Going On In There? How Babies'

Brains Practice Speech
by NICHOLAS ST. FLEUR
July 15, 2014 5:08 PM ET
University of Washington
A baby's first words may seem spur of the moment, but really, the little
ones have practiced their "Mamas" and "Dadas" for months in their minds.
Using what looks like a hair dryer from Mars, researchers from the
University of Washington have taken the most precise peeks yet into the
fireworks display of neural activity that occurs when infants listen to people
speak.
They found that the motor area of the brain, which we use to produce
speech, is very active in babies 7 to 12 months old when they listen to
speech components.
"What we're seeing is that the babies are practicing because they want to
talk back," says Patricia Kuhl, a speech psychologist at the University of
Washington and the lead author on the paper, published Monday in the
Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences.
Kuhl used a machine called a magnetoencephalograph, or MEG, that
measures the brain's magnetic field from outside the head. Unlike MRIs or
CTs, which require that patients be completely still, the MEG can scan
images in moving patients, which works out perfectly for fidgety babies.
University of Washington/YouTube
The scanner lets scientists glimpse at what's going on in that little head.
Babies undergo a huge transition from 7 months to 12 months that is very

important for language acquisition, Kuhl says. At the age of 7 months, a
baby can distinguish sounds from different languages, such as English or
Spanish. But by 12 months the baby focuses in on her or his native
language and begins to tune out foreign speech.
Kuhl placed 57 babies aged either 7 months or 12 months under the
machine and played repeated human sounds for them. The speakers
played repeated "da" and "ta" syllables in English and then "da" in Spanish.
They found that the motor part of the brain lit up when the baby listened to
the sounds, indicating that they were trying to mimic or respond to the
speech. By 12 months, the babies, who had English-speaking parents, had
a harder time responding to the Spanish-language sounds.
Susan Goldin-Meadow, a developmental psychologist from the University of
Chicago who was not involved in the study, says it furthers understanding of
how babies process language. "We've had the behavioral data for a while,"
she says. "But this provides evidence on the neural level."
Kuhl says that her research supports parent's use of "parentese," or baby
speak, a form of talking to babies with a higher pitch, slower pace and
exaggerated facial expressions. "This is a good way to promote their itty-
bitty social skills to develop," she says.
Not everyone sees this as an endorsement of parentese, though. Barbara
Lust, a cognitive scientist from Cornell University who was not involved in
the study, says the results "show more generally how important surrounding
your child with language is, but it doesn't make a strong enough argument
for needing to talk to a baby in a motherese way."
Kuhl says her next steps are to have researchers speak to the baby using
parentese and analyze the baby's reactions, to see if the children respond
more strongly to it.
The take-home message for new moms and dads, she says: "Talk to your
baby; you're prompting it to act on the world."
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language
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March 31 deadline extended for sign-ups for new health care law A4
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Car Wash
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amid rumors of in-house discord SPORTS
BAY AREA NEWS GROUP

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Wednesday, March 26, 2014
$2 BILLION PURCHASE
ANSWER TO OVERHARVESTING
FARM REFINES
AQUACULTURE
Monterey outfit a model of sustainability in raising coveted abalone
A bold
leap to
virtual
reality
Facebook buys Irvine-based
startup Oculus with belief its
the next wave in computing
By Brandon Bailey
bbailey@mercurynews.com
VERN FISHER/MONTEREY COUNTY HERALD
Trevor Fay of Monterey Abalone Co. at work while tourists stroll the planks overhead on Wharf No. 2.
By Nicholas St. Fleur
nstfleur1@mercurynews.com
MONTEREY Trevor Fay grabs a

fistful of fresh, crisp kelp and crams it
into a large steel cage hidden within a
dim, wooden cavern beneath Municipal
Wharf No. 2, just a few hundred feet
from where tourists browse gift shops
and book whale-watching trips.
Its feeding time for more than a
thousand baby abalone that line the
cage in the nursery section of the
Monterey Abalone Co.
Since 1992, the iridescent-shelled

abalone have thrived in the companys
cages, which hang suspended in Monterey Bays waters from a barnaclecovered platform under the pier. A
trapdoor at the end of the commercial
dock serves as the entrance to an underworld that smells like brine and
rings with the sounds of sea lions roaring and metallic gears cranking up
cages.
See ABALONE, Page 14
From seed abalone to harvest

The Monterey Abalone Co. farms abalone under a municipal pier in Monterey.
The farming process starts with seed abalone purchased from
a land-based abalone farm. The seed abalone are about a year old
and about 30 millimeters in length.
ABALONE RULES
Abalone were once numerous
off the California coast, but
overharvesting has caused
their numbers to drop.
No commercial harvesting of
them in the wild is allowed.
Recreational harvesting is
legal north of the Golden Gate,
but sport fishers can take only
18 a year, only nine off the coast
of Marin and Sonoma counties.
Adult red abalone

at minimum market size
3.5 inches
See FACEBOOK, Page 14
PIPELINE SAFETY
Seed abalone
30 mm
0
1 year
2 years
3 years
It takes about three years to go from seed-size abalone to reach the minimum market-size length of 3.5 inches.
Source: Monterey Abalone Co.
CHUCK TODD / BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
THE PIES HAVE IT
A passion for pizza, perfection

Its my whole lifes work, says celebrity chef-restaurateur Tony Gemignani
INDEX
Business........B7
Classified C6, C7
Comics ........B10
Lottery...........A2
Movies ...........B6
Obituaries ... A16

Opinion ........ A18
People ...........A2
Puzzles ... B6, C8
Roadshow .....A2
Television ....B10
By Jessica Yadegaran
jyadegaran@bayareanewsgroup.com
In 2007, Tony Gemignani became the first

American to win the title of World Champion
Pizza Maker at the World Pizza Cup in Italy.
It was unprecedented for a non-Neapolitan to
take the title, let alone an American, and here
was this flour-coated victor from Castro Valley looking out into an angry mob of Italians.
While the rest of the American team celebrated in the safety of their hotel escorted
by polizia through the crowds and chaos
See PIZZA, Page 14
Announcing its second blockbuster deal in as

many months, Facebook said Tuesday it will pay
more than $2 billion in cash and stock for Oculus
VR, a small startup thats made a big splash with
its high-end prototypes of virtual reality systems for electronic games.
Skeptics immediately questioned the link between social networking and virtual-reality technology, which has been viewed as mostly suited
for immersive games, military training and the
like. But Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said
hes convinced the Southern California startup is
at the forefront of the next major wave in computing and communications.
Imagine sharing not just moments with your
friends online, but entire experiences. This can
change the way we communicate with our friends,
family and colleagues, Zuckerberg told analysts.
Drawing a parallel to the way mobile devices are
replacing desktop computers, he predicted that
virtual reality systems will emerge as a popular
medium for entertainment, education and other
uses even doctor visits.
Zuckerberg negotiated to buy the Irvine-based
company in just seven days, according to a source
familiar with the events, although he and other
Facebook executives first visited the company
and tried its technology a few months ago. Oculus
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ARIC CRABB/STAFF
Tony Gemignani at his restaurant Tonys

Pizza Napoletana in San Francisco.
PG&E plan to
cut down trees
draws outrage
City leaders object to utilitys claim that
safety trumps local and state laws
By Elisabeth Nardi and Lisa P. White
Staff writers
Pacific Gas & Electric is moving to cut down

thousands of oaks, redwoods and elms across the
Bay Area that block access to its natural gas pipelines, outraging city leaders who say the utility is
disregarding local laws
designed to protect trees. PIPELINES NEAR YOU?
The $500 million Pipe- To see where PG&Es
line Pathways project is pipelines run, go to
a statewide initiative to www.pge.com/safety/
clear obstructions from systemworks/gas/
the utility companys transmissionpipelines.
6,750 miles of gas lines
from Bakersfield to Eureka. PG&E says it needs
to remove the trees, shrubs and structures on private and public property to ensure pipeline safety
a top priority in the aftermath of the 2010 San
Bruno gas pipeline explosion that killed eight peo-
Copyright 2014 San Jose Mercury News
See PG&E, Page 5
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WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 2014
000
Abalone
Farming abalone in Monterey Bay
Facebook
Continued from Page 1
The Monterey Abalone Co. grows abalone in cages suspended in seawater
Hordes of abalone once

coated the rocks and sea
floor of Monterey Bay. But
because of overharvesting throughout most of the
20th century, wild abalone
now are scarce.
State regulations prohibit the commercial harvesting of abalone, but they
allow them to be farmed.
The Monterey Abalone Co.
is one of only two California
aquaculture operations that
use environmentally safe
methods to cultivate red
abalone in the same waters
the species has populated
for millennia.
Fay, the son of a marine biologist and a Salinas rancher, manages the
aquaculture operation with
his business partner, Arthur Seavey.
They are feeding the
abalone what they usually
eat where they usually eat
it, said Michael Graham,
a scientist at Moss Landing Marine Labs. Theyve
pretty much taken all of the
negatives out of aquaculture.
Most of the criticism
of aquaculture, commonly
called fish farming, stems
from the practices of the
giant salmon-farming industry. Environmentalists
fear that the practices pollute surrounding bodies
of water with excess feed,
potentially spreading diseases and threatening to
create genetically different
species when the farmed
fish escape into wild populations.
Most abalone farms are
land-based, such as the
one in Davenport, north
of Santa Cruz. The only
other underwater abalone
farm in California, Pacific
Abalone Farms, grows the
tasty mollusks in cages suspended off a raft in Monterey Harbor.
Seven species of wild
abalone inhabit California
waters, and each is fiercely
protected by state regulations. Only red abalone can
be farmed.
Feeding time
For the underwater

farmers, sustainability begins at feeding time with
hand-harvested kelp.
Every week a few of the
companys eight employees make four boat trips
to Montereys abundant
kelp patches, lean over
their 22-foot flat-bottom
aluminum skiff and wield
butcher knives to chop several tons of the plant from
its canopy.
Harvesting kelp, Fay
said, is a sustainable step
in the operation because
the sea grass grows 14 to
18 inches every day. Its
just like cutting the grass
in your frontyard, he said.
That top is going to come
right back.
Kelp, which is regulated
The red abalone

are corralled in
wire mesh cages
suspended in
the natural
seawater habitat
of Monterey Bay,
where they thrive.
A look inside the

abalone container
Once placed in the
container, the abalone
attach themselves to
panels inside the cage.
Abalone are densely
stocked in the
containers.
As the abalones increase
in size, they are given
more room to grow by
transfering them to a
bigger cage. The abalone
are harvested after three
to five years of growth.
Feeding hungry abalone

Once a week the cage is lifted out of the water and the hungry abalone are fed giant kelp harvested from Monterey Bay.
The cage is opened and the
abalone are given a seawater
rinse to remove waste material.
Unwelcome guests,
such as crabs and
starfish, are removed.
Kelp is gently placed between

the abalone panels. As much
kelp as possible determined
by the number of abalone
is placed in
the cage.
All of the kelp

will be eaten
in a week.
The process is
then repeated.
Source: Monterey Abalone Co.
CHUCK TODD / BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
fried or sauteed and served

in a garlic, butter or lemon
sauce.
The end result of all
our work is an abalone that
looks and tastes like a real
wild abalone, Fay said.
The farm raises abalone
from broodstock it receives
from a hatchery that holds
more than 9 million larvae.
But the survival rate for
the larvae is extremely low.
Little more than 1 percent,
or about 100,000, get to the
farm.
Life cycle
VERN FISHER/MONTEREY COUNTY HERALD
Trevor Fay holds three farm-raised abalone at the

Monterey Abalone Co., underneath Wharf No. 2.
by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife,
can only be legally harvested with a permit.
The practice of feeding
abalone is no more complicated than cutting hay and
feeding it to a cow, said
Randy Lovell, the departments aquaculture coordinator.
It takes the abalone
nearly a week to devour
the 10 to 40 pounds of kelp
packed in their cages. But
because there are hundreds of cages, feeding the
farms abalone army seems
like a never-ending task for
workers.
By the time they finish, its time to start at the
other end, Fay said. Its
like painting the Golden

Gate Bridge.
Workers also feed the
abalone red algae, which
give the mollusks their red
appearance. Red algae are
abundant where wild abalone grow, but not every
farm incorporates it into
the sea snails diet. Thats a
mistake, Fay said, because
omitting the algae leaves
the abalone with pale shells
and a bland taste. The algae
also increase the abalones
growth rate by 25 percent,
he said.
Monterey Bay Abalone
sells abalone directly to
local restaurants and consumers as an expensive
entree more than $60
that is often grilled, pan-
Pizza
MIKE LUCIA/STAFF ARCHIVES
Tony Gemignani tosses pizza for kids at Pyzanos

Pizza in Castro Valley in 2008.
scrawled across his chest.
No one loves pizza more
than me.
Friend and fellow pizza
celebrity chef Joe Carlucci
of Famous Joes Pizzeria
says that just might be true.
I thought I was the
most passionate person
about pizza until I met him
(Gemignani), says Carlucci, a New York native
who has been a teammate
and competitor of Gemignanis on the Food Network
and the World Pizza Cup
circuit. Carlucci is also the
Guinness World Record
holder of the highest pizza
toss. He takes it to another
level. Pizza is Tonys child
until he has one.
That passion is reflected
in his pizzeria, the only
one in the country with
seven types of ovens and
three different dough mixers. Gemignani uses seven
kinds of flour to achieve
various crusts and more
than a dozen cheeses. He

pulls his own mozzarella
and extracts his own honey
from two beehives on his
rooftop garden. It goes on
his Honey Pie, a wood-fired
California-style pizza with
calabrese peppers and fried
caramelized onions.
In his kitchen, pillows of
pizza proof in old-fashioned
Neapolitan wood boxes.
The menu is organized by
region and oven type. For
instance, Italy is broken up
into Roman, Sicilian, Neapolitan and Classic. American pizza includes Chicago, New York and some
lesser known styles, such
as Detroits Red Top, a
thick square cooked in blue
steel pans from Detroit to
achieve crunchy, toasted
corners reminiscent of
macaroni and cheese topping. St. Louis-style is
cracker-thin, with extra
sweet tomato sauce and
provel, a processed cheese
3 and 6 inches. Regulations

aimed at protecting the
species and the bay dictate
what size of abalone the
company can sell, as well as
the conditions in which the
farm is operated.
Because of its feeding
methods, the companys
abalone gets a green
light from the Monterey
Bay Seafood Watch Program, said Peter Bridson,
the programs aquaculture
research manager. The
program uses a traffic-light
rating system to denote sustainable seafood options.
He said the Monterey
Bay Abalone Co. runs a
particularly
sustainable
operation because there
are no significant concerns
about chemical waste or
feed waste or fear of the
abalone escaping.
Seavey acknowledges
that his operations image
is sometimes tainted by the
widely criticized practices
of salmon farming. However, he thinks the comparison is unfair.
Its like saying all of
agriculture is bad because
people dont like industrial
farming, Seavey said. We
hope that we can be an example of sustainable aquaculture not just environmentally, but economically,
too.
A week after birth, the

abalone develop their shells.
At about nine months, they
can start eating kelp. The
abalone munch on the sea
grass using two teeth-like
mouthpieces called radula,
which interlock to rasp
away kelp.
Its like having a zipper to rub against kelp and
grind off pieces into their
stomach, said Jim Covel,
director of interpretation at the Monterey Bay
Aquarium.
The company partitions
its farm into three sections
that grow abalone of different shell sizes and ages.
Every section holds about
60 cages that can each support hundreds of older abalone with 6-inch shells to
thousands of juvenile abaContact Nicholas St. Fleur
lone with 2-inch shells.
The company sells aba- at 408-920-5064. Follow him
lone when they are between at Twitter.com/SciFleur.
PIZZAS RENAISSANCE MAN

Gemignani sat quietly pondering his winning pizza.
Then he looked at a teammate and said: I think
I know how to make the
dough better next time.
Those who know him say
it is that drive for perfection
that has led to his success.
In only five years, Gemignani has revitalized his
corner of San Franciscos
North Beach with Tonys
Pizza Napoletana and
its adjoining slice house,
which turns out more than
1,000 pizzas a day. Its also
home to The International
School of Pizza, where he
trains chefs from all over
the world. He also owns
Capos, a Chicago-style restaurant and whiskey bar a
few blocks over.
To date, Gemignani, 40,
has won three world titles
in pizza cooking and eight in
pizza acrobatics tossing
dough at uncanny heights
and speeds. He holds two
pizza-related
Guinness
World Record titles, and
his third book, The Pizza
Bible, is due out in October on Ten Speed Press
after the summer release
of his artisan pizza flour for
home chefs.
Its my whole lifes
work, says the spikyhaired brunette, sitting at
a table inside Tonys on a
bustling Thursday afternoon. The words Respect
the Craft are tattooed on
his hands. Pizza for Life is
Once filled with kelp,

the cage is closed and
returned to the seawater.
Who: Tony Gemignani;

www.tonygemignani.com
Occupation: Chef, restaurateur, author, master
instructor and 11-time World
Pizza Cup champion.
Residence: San Francisco
(and currently building a
home in San Ramon)
Current projects: Slice
House and Pizza Rock
expanding into AT&T Park,
the East Bay and Las Vegas.
His book, The Pizza Bible,
will be out in October on Ten
Speed Press.
ONLINE EXTRA
Scan this code
to view a photo
gallery or see it
and a video of
Gemignani tossing pizza
dough at www.mercury
news.com/food.
made with cheddar, Swiss

and provolone.
A decorated California chef using processed
cheese?
Yeah, he admits. If
someone from St. Louis
comes in here, I couldnt
use mozzarella. Theyd
know. People come looking for their favorites from
back home. People from
Detroit know and expect
those crunchy corners.
Gemignani uncovered
these regional specialties
while traveling the world
with his pizza acrobatics
team. He fell into acrobatics after high school when
he started working for his
brother, Frank, at Pyzanos,
in Castro Valley.
To entertain the crowds

awaiting their pies, Gemignani experimented with
tossing tricks, like rolling
the dough along the backs
of his shoulders. After a
few years, he entered his
first pizza-throwing competition in Las Vegas and
quickly became the top
pizza thrower in the world.
The title took him on
the road. When he wasnt
doing television appearances or exclusive gigs, like
the time he made pizza for
Francis Ford Coppola at
the directors Napa estate,
he would steal away into local kitchens, working with
chefs and gathering knowledge about regional flavors
and Old World pizza-making styles.
And he brought it all
back to that Castro Valley
kitchen, crafting American pies for customers, but
working as a mad pizza scientist before the pizzeria
opened.
Id be in kitchen at 5
a.m. experimenting with
different flours from around
the world, he recalls.
Ironically, the first time
he tasted Neapolitan pizza
was on a trip to Italy that
had nothing to do with
cooking competitions. It
was 14 years ago on his honeymoon. He had just started
working at Pyzanos, and,
as he sunk his teeth into the
blistered, perfectly charred
crust and tasted that marriage of sweet tomatoes and
sea salt, he closed his eyes
and said, I know nothing.
Now he just might know
it all.
Drawing a parallel to the

way mobile devices are replacing desktop computers,
he predicted that virtual
reality systems will emerge
as a popular medium for entertainment, education and
other uses even doctor
visits.
Zuckerberg negotiated
to buy the Irvine-based
company in just seven days,
according to a source familiar with the events, although
he and other Facebook executives first visited the
company and tried its technology a few months ago.
Oculus VR was founded by
Palmer Luckey, a 21-yearold software developer and
self-described science fiction enthusiast, less than
two years ago; CEO Brendan Iribe is a veteran of previous startups.
Coming just a month after Facebook agreed to pay
an eye-popping $19 billion
for online messaging service
WhatsApp, analysts said the
Oculus deal demonstrates
Zuckerbergs determination
to push the worlds largest
social networking company
into new business sectors
and technologies.
It also shows the tremendous pressure on major Internet companies like Facebook and Google to acquire
promising new technology
ahead of their rivals. The two
Internet giants reportedly
made competing offers in
several recent deals, including the WhatsApp acquisition, and have been racing
to hire talented scientists in
such cutting-edge fields as
artificial intelligence.
Google has dabbled in
augmented reality, as well,
by developing products
like the wearable computer
known as Glass, which can
project information on a
headset screen while its
wearer is walking or moving
through the real world.
Oculus impressed audiences at recent technology
conferences by showing
off a prototype headset,
called Oculus Rift, which
surrounds the wearer with
sights and sounds that simulate stepping into a different
landscape or imaginary setting something akin to the
immersive holodeck experience in science fictions
Star Trek. Reviewers have
called the effect strikingly
realistic.
Virtual worlds are a
new medium, just like DOS
was a medium and the Web
browser and Android and
iPhone smartphones, said
Antonio Rodriguez, an Oculus board member and general partner at venture firm
Matrix Partners, which took
part in two funding rounds
for the startup.
Noting that Facebook
was criticized for being slow
to shift from desktop PCs
to the mobile computing
model, Rodriguez added:
If youre Mark Zuckerberg
and want to be sure you are
early to the next medium,
whats better than to go
with the dominant company
in this area?
But one expert said hes
skeptical that Facebook can
deliver on Zuckerbergs vision for virtual reality.
Virtual reality inherently has been a singular
experience. It hasnt been
social, said Brian Blau, a
Gartner technology analyst
and computer scientist who
has worked at virtual reality
companies.
While virtual reality
could be an appealing feature in multiplayer electronic games, Blau added,
there are vast technological
challenges in designing a
system that works for one
person, let alone for multiple people.
Zuckerberg,
however,
told analysts on a conference
call that recent advances in
computer hardware have
substantially lowered the
cost of powerful processors and other components
needed to create realistic,
immersive experiences. He
also boasted that Oculus VR
has already hired many of the
best engineers in the field.
Facebooks first priority will be helping its new
subsidiary finish building a
working product and bring
it to market, according to
Zuckerberg, who said other
applications will come over
time. He said Facebook
will develop software and
services around the Oculus technology and perhaps
seek to profit by selling virtual goods or advertising
down the line.
LOCAL
Study: Bay Area more likely to see cluster of mid-sized quakes than another Big One
BAY AREA NEWS GROUP

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Tuesday, May 20, 2014
ALL YOU NEED

is Kevin Love, the star the Warriors need to pursue
gotdailydeals.com/sb
Travelzoo: Venture Quest Kayaking
45% off
SPORTS
$32 for guided wildlife

kayak tour in Santa Cruz
KIDNAPPING AND KILLING
Sierra
NEW GREEN suspect
facing
death
DROUGHT LANDS GOLF COURSES IN WATER TRAP
BROWN IS THE
Fewer drinks for the links
Because of Californias severe drought, golf courses across the state are being forced to cut water use by as much as 50 percent.
So golf course operators are now performing triage saving the greens but letting the roughs, tee boxes and even some
fairways go brown. Here is the amount of water used per year on an average 18-hole golf course.
Tee boxes
Fairways
Roughs
Greens
2.1 million
gallons
19 million
gallons
20.9 million
gallons
2.3 million
gallons
DA to seek ultimate penalty

against 22-year-old man
despite absence of teens body
By Robert Salonga, Julia Prodis Sulek
and Mark Emmons
Staff writers
How much water is 1 million gallons?
How are courses

watered during
a drought?
Priority
A standard Olympic swimming pool

contains about 660,000 gallons.
Figures do not include practice areas and
clubhouse grounds, which on average are irrigated
with 3.5 million gallons and 2.2 million gallons, respectively.
All figures are for the Northern California coastal region.
Olympic
pool
One million gallons
fills approximately
1 1/3 pools.
Source: Golf Course Superintendents Association of America
1. Greens
2. Fairways
3. Tee boxes
4. Roughs
BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
Handicap: As water districts order course

operators to cut water use up to 50 percent,
many find themselves sacrificing fairways
PATRICK TEHAN/STAFF
Steve Naas hand waters a green at DeLaveaga Golf Course in Santa

Cruz, a practice many courses are implementing to save water.
By Nicholas St. Fleur
nstfleur1@mercurynews.com
Gripping a hose, Robert Hirsch, a

maintenance worker at DeLaveaga
Golf Course in Santa Cruz, sprays a
dry patch of grass, several feet away
from a lush green where a group of
golfers practice chipping with their
9-irons.
In another month, all of this
will be brown, Hirsch says as he
splashes another withered spot.
Were going to sacrifice some fairways.
DeLaveaga is just one of hundreds of golf courses across the
state girding for an especially long,
dry summer in the third year of Californias historic drought. In an effort to save water, Hirsch and other
workers are watering more by hand
and cutting back on indiscriminate
sprinkling. For many courses, conserving means using more recycled
water and modernizing irrigation
systems and all the while trying to convince golfers that when
See WATER, Page 8
WASHINGTON Accusing China of

vast business spying, the United States
charged five military officials on Monday with hacking into U.S. companies to
steal vital trade secrets in a case intensifying already-rising tensions between
the international economic giants.
The Chinese targeted big-name
American makers of nuclear and solar
technology, stealing confidential business information, sensitive trade secrets
See CHINA, Page 7
!"#$"%&
'"( )*'+
,*(,*%&
%+&$**& ,-.#
/+%0+1+#
MEGAMERGERS UNDER FIRE
FCC spells out

relentless rise
in pay-TV fees
By Troy Wolverton
U.S. charges Chinese officials

with stealing vital trade secrets
By Eric Tucker
See SIERRA, Page 8
Cost of service has outpaced inflation

for nearly 20 years, regulator reports
CYBERSPYING CASE
Associated Press
SAN JOSE Two years after 15-year-old Sierra LaMar disappeared on her way to her school
bus stop, District Attorney Jeff Rosen announced
Monday he is seeking the death
penalty against the man charged
with kidnapping and killing her.
Despite ongoing volunteer
searches through the creeks and
fields of Morgan Hill, her body has
never been found a fact that
experts say could make a death
penalty verdict difficult to obtain. Sierra
At the same time, some are hoping that the specter of execution
could persuade the 22-year-old
suspect handyman and onetime grocery store clerk Antolin
Garcia-Torres to finally lead
investigators to her body.
This will be the first death penGarciaalty case since Rosen took office Torres
in 2011.
Given the facts of this case and after a comprehensive review by a committee of senior prosecutors, I have concluded that this defendant
(A companys
success should
not be based)
on a sponsor
governments
ability to spy
and steal
business
secrets.
Attorney General
Eric Holder, left
INDEX
Business....... B5
Classified B7, C2
Comics ......... B8
Lottery.......... A2
Movies .......... B4
Obituaries .... A9
Opinion ........ A11
People .......... A2
Puzzles ...B4, C6
Roadshow .... A2
Television ..... B8
WEATHER PAGE B10

Partly cloudy
H: 67-72 L: 50-54
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NEWSPAPER
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS DAILY
Copyright 2014 San Jose Mercury News
twolverton@mercurynews.com
With two planned megamergers threatening

to further reduce competition in the pay-TV industry, consumer advocates have been looking
for a way to shoot down the deals. A new report
on industry pricing may have
given them some needed am- IN BUSINESS
munition.
Congressional
The Federal Communica- committee sets
tions Commission late last hearings to examweek quietly released a re- ine AT&T-DirecTV
port documenting that yet merger. PAGE B5
again the average pay-TV
bill grew faster than inflation in 2012. In addition,
the FCC report noted that cable-related equipment prices, such as monthly fees for DVRs, also
outpaced inflation.
Consumers continue to see price hikes and
lousy service, said Delara Derakhshani, policy
counsel at Consumers Union, the public advocacy
group that publishes Consumer Reports.
See CABLE, Page 8
!"#$
!" !## $ #%&!"'%()
A8
BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
TUESDAY, MAY 20, 2014
111
Water
Mother Nature turns off the
water spigot, brown is the
new green.
Northern California golf
courses like DeLaveaga use
about 140,000 gallons of
water per day, according to
the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America. Thats roughly the same
amount of water a family of
four uses in a year.
But now golf courses
across the state are being
forced by water districts to
cut water use by as much as
50 percent. So golf course
operators are performing triage and setting
strict priorities saving
the greens and letting the
roughs and even some fairways go dry.
Thats only right, said
Jennifer Clary, a policy analyst in the Oakland office of
Clean Water Action, a national water conservation
group.
You walk past a green
lawn during a drought and
you wonder, Why is that
person wasting water? A
golf course is just one big
green lawn, she said. We
live in a desert and golf
courses that look like they
belong in Scotland are not
what you should have in a
dry climate like this.
Golf course officials are
the first to acknowledge the
image problem.
A lot of people see us
as a big water user, said
Jeff Jensen, the Southwest
regional field representative with the superintendents association. But
while were in the business
of growing grass for recreational purposes, we want
to be a leader in water conservation efforts.
Golf courses account for
less than 1 percent of the
freshwater use in California,
while homes, businesses and
industry use roughly 20 percent, according to the U.S.
Geological Survey. Farmers
use almost 80 percent.
PATRICK TEHAN/STAFF
Terry Crabtree, left, and David Salac play at DeLaveaga in Santa Cruz. Salac worries water conservation will change the feel of the game.
Part of golf is the beauty of the scenery. If you got dead grass, its just not pretty.
ONLINE EXTRA
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Like the overwhelming

majority of Californias
1,100 courses, DeLaveaga
does not use recycled water. As of 2009, only 14
percent of the total water
used on golf courses had
been reclaimed, according
to the California Alliance
for Golf.
But Jensen said his organization is hoping that
number will soon blossom.
The group now has several
task forces aimed at identifying which golf courses
could switch to recycled

water. Water providers in
Coachella Valley in Southern California, for instance,
recently gave a $5.2 million
grant to six golf courses to
get them hooked up to reclaimed water by the end of
summer.
Recycled water is wastewater that is not treated to
meet drinking standards
but is suitable for landscaping and agricultural irrigation.
Jensen said golf course
officials are also looking
at creating more efficient
sprinkler systems and turf
reduction programs taking out the nonessential irrigated acres.
Poppy Hills in Pebble
Beach, which uses only recycled water for irrigation,
also just spent $3 million to
improve its sprinklers.
I think all golf course
Sierra
should face the ultimate
penalty, Rosen said in a
brief statement Monday.
Garcia-Torres alleged
history of attacking other
women contributed to
Rosens decision, he said.
After Garcia-Torres was
charged in Sierras disappearance, he was charged
with attempting to kidnap
and carjack three other
women in separate instances four years earlier,
when he worked at the
Morgan Hill Safeway and
allegedly preyed on the
women in the parking lot.
After being indicted by
a grand jury in February,
Garcia-Torres pleaded not
guilty to all the charges,
including kidnapping and
murdering Sierra. The Alternate Defenders Office,
which is representing him,
expressed disappointment
in Rosens decision, saying
it is a missing person case,
not a homicide. The case
does not appear to meet
any objective criteria for
seeking death nor do they
appear to match in any
manner the facts and circumstances of other cases
in this county where the
district attorney has sought
death, the office said in a
statement.
The LaMar family, however, supports Rosens
decision, Sierras father,
Steve LaMar, and cousin,
Keith LaMar, said Monday.
Were glad the DA
has chosen to do the right
thing, Keith LaMar said.
I dont personally feel society would be safe with
someone like that back in
it.
Several members of the
LaMar family either met
with one of Rosens deputies or joined a conference
GARY REYES/STAFF ARCHIVES
Antolin Garcia-Torres, 22, during his arraignment on

charges in the death of Sierra LaMar at Santa Clara
County Superior Court in San Jose on Feb. 13.
call about two or three
weeks ago to discuss the
death penalty possibility.
All but one cousin, who was
torn, supported the decision, Rosen said.
Keith LaMar also said
Rosen made it clear that
pursuing the death penalty
is not intended to be a bargaining chip to persuade
Garcia-Torres to lead authorities to her body.
Someone in the family asked, would the DA
use that is that one of
the factors? Keith LaMar
said. Rosen responded,
Absolutely not.
But Marc Klaas, founder
of the KlaasKids Foundation and who has helped
extensively with the ongoing search effort for Sierra,
said Rosens decision could
put needed pressure on

Garcia-Torres.
Its obviously going to
be a long, hard slog trying
to get a jury to recommend
execution when you dont
have a body, said Klaas,
whose daughter, Polly,
was kidnapped and killed
in Petaluma in 1993. But
perhaps this individual understands now how serious
the DA is and would be willing to make a deal to bring
Sierra home.
Obtaining the death
penalty without a victims
body is rare but not without precedent in Santa
Clara County: Mark Christopher Crew is on death
row for killing wife Nancy
Jo Crew in 1982, where
Crew and an accomplice
chopped off his wifes head
owners are committed to simply is no reclaimed wausing recycled water, said ter available.
The less potable water
Brad Shupe, Poppy Hills
general manager. But its we use, the better. Thats
While were in the business of growing

grass for recreational purposes,
we want to be a leader in water
conservation efforts.
Jeff Jensen,
Golf Course Superintendents Association of America
not as simple as Yes, well

irrigate with reclaimed water.
Converting from using
potable water to treated
wastewater is a slow, expensive process. The piping
alone can cost as much as $1
million per mile and often also involves hundreds
of millions of dollars of new
infrastructure, Shupe said.
He said in many areas there
and stuffed her body into a

55-gallon drum filled with
cement, but the remains
were never found.
Sierra vanished March
16, 2012, as she was walking to the bus stop near
her home in an unincorporated, rural area just north
of Morgan Hill. Garcia-Torres DNA was found on articles of Sierras clothing
found two days after she
disappeared, folded in her
Juicy-brand bag and tossed
into a field near her home.
Sierras DNA was also
found in the suspects red
Volkswagen Jetta.
Rosens decision to
pursue the death penalty
against
Garcia-Torres
comes after declining to do
so in six previous eligible
cases.
But the lack of a body
will present significant
challenges, said Steven
Clark, a criminal-defense
attorney and former Santa
Clara County prosecutor.
Theres a certain level
of depravity that goes with
a successful death penalty
case, where you can detail what the victim went
through, Clark said. The
jurors are appalled by and
decide that person should
no longer be in society.
Even now, between 20
and 30 volunteer searchers
continue to scour creeks,
woods and fields throughout the South County every Saturday, looking for
Sierra.
As a family member
whos lost someone, its
hard to describe, Steve
LaMar said. Holding out
that hope is just something
that you do.
Staff writer Mark Gomez
contributed to this report.
Contact Robert Salonga at
rsalonga@mercurynews.
com. Contact Julia
Prodis Sulek at jsulek@
mercurynews.com.
Man gets 25 years for mailing ricin to Obama

By Jeff Amy
Associated Press
JACKSON,
Miss.
A Mississippi man who
pleaded guilty to sending
letters dusted with the
poison ricin to President
Barack Obama and other
officials was sentenced
Monday to 25 years in
prison.
JamesEverettDutschke
was sentenced by U.S.
District Judge Sharion

Aycock in Aberdeen after
telling the judge May 13
that he had changed his
mind about wanting to
withdraw his guilty plea in
the case.
He also was sentenced
to five years of supervised
release and remains in federal custody.
Dutschke, who waived
his right to appeal, wasnt
fined or ordered to pay restitution because he doesnt

have enough money, federal prosecutor Chad Lamar said.
Unlike
last
week,
Dutschke said little and allowed his lawyer to do the
talking, Lamar said.
The 42-year-old Tupelo
resident sent the letters to
Obama, Republican U.S.
Sen. Roger Wicker and
Mississippi Judge Sadie

Holland in what prosecutors have said was an elaborate plot to frame a rival,
Paul Kevin Curtis. Poisoned letters addressed to
Obama and Wicker were
intercepted before delivery, but one letter reached
Holland. She was not
harmed.
The sentencing remains
set for May 27.
San Jose, said he would

prefer not seeing too much
brown which he fears will
change the feel of the game.
Part of golf is the beauty
of the scenery, he said. If
you got dead grass, its just
not pretty.
But Salac may be in the
minority of golfers. In one
survey by Golf Digest, 74
percent of golfers said they
should be willing to play on
brown grass during times of
low rainfall.
A bit of brown doesnt
bother Jack Sanchez, 64,
of Santa Cruz, who has
been golfing with his workmates at DeLaveaga every
Wednesday afternoon for
the last 20 years.
As long as youve got
18 holes, he said, thats all
that matters to me.
a no-brainer, said Gary

Ingram, superintendent at
Metropolitan Golf Links
in Oakland. But theres
just not enough piping out
there.
So if the new normal
means browner golf courses,
golfers have varying views
on the future of the game in
California.
At DeLaveaga, David Sa- Contact Nicholas St. Fleur
lac, a golfer of 30 years from at 408-920-5064.
Cable
But pay-TV operators
have argued that rising content costs the amounts
they pay companies such
as Disney to carry channels largely explain the
rate hikes. And as noted in
the FCC report, the pay-TV
operators have consistently
added channels to their offerings at a faster pace than
their prices have risen. For
example, expanded basic
customers had access to
about 160 channels last
year, up from about 150 the
year before, according to
the report.
The FCC report on payTV bills, which the agency
is required to issue annually
under the 1992 Cable Act,
comes as federal regulators are about to weigh the
merits of two mergers that
would reshape the pay-TV
industry. Over the weekend, AT&T announced
plans to buy DirecTV, the
largest satellite television
company, in a $67 billion
deal that would make the
combined entity the nations
largest pay-TV company.
Earlier this year, Comcast,
the largest cable company,
announced plans to acquire
Time Warner Cable, the No.
2 player, for $45 billion.
Both deals would require
FCC approval. In reviewing
such mergers, the commission is charged with determining whether they would
serve the public interest.
That makes the latest fee
report important, because
it gives consumer advocates
evidence to bolster their argument that the last thing
the industry needs is less
competition.
The report comes from
a survey of pay-TV operators, including traditional
cable companies, satellite
TV operators, telephone
companies such as AT&T
that offer pay-TV services
and companies such as RCN
that offer competing cable
services in some markets.
According to the survey,
the average monthly cost of
basic cable, the most popular service level, jumped 6.5
percent in 2012 to $22.63.
The cost of expanded basic service, which typically
includes many of the most
popular cable networks,
rose 5.1 percent to $64.41 a
month.
Meanwhile, basic cable
consumers paid an average

of $7.55 a month for equipment such as set-top boxes
and DVRs in 2012, up 4.4 percent from the previous year.
Expanded basic customers
saw their equipment charge
rise 4.2 percent to $7.70.
By contrast, inflation in
2012, which is the most recent for which the FCC has
compiled data, was just 1.6
percent.
On its face, competition
didnt appear to help keep
prices in check. In 2012, customers of cable companies
in markets the FCC dubbed
competitive paid $65.64 a
month for expanded basic
cable service, up 6 percent
from 2011. Expanded basic
subscribers whose only real
choice was the local cable
company paid $63.03 a
month, up 4.6 percent from
the year before.
Consumer
advocates
say thats an argument for
greater competition or
more regulatory scrutiny.
Part of the reason cable
rates rose faster in competitive markets is that cable
companies in those markets
arent subject to price caps
and can charge what they
think the market will bear.
Pay-TV service prices
have consistently grown
faster than inflation since
the FCC began issuing these
reports nearly 20 years ago.
Costs of basic, expanded basic and the next-most-popular tier of service have risen
at average annual clips of
4.3 percent, 6.1 percent and
5.1 percent, respectively. Inflation has grown at an average annual pace of just 2.4
percent over that period.
Representatives
for
Comcast were not available for comment. Representatives of AT&T, Dish
Network and DirecTV did
not respond to requests for
comment.
However, their previous
explanations for the price
hikes and moves havent
mollified many customers. Pay-TV operators as
a whole lost about 105,000
subscribers last year.
Robin Wolaner, a 60year-old San Francisco resident, hasnt cut the cord, but
said she feels foolish paying
around $200 each month to
Comcast.
I feel bad about it every
time I write a check, said
Wolaner, CEO of Vittana, a
nonprofit that provides student loans in the developing
world. I never have time to
watch half of what I record.

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Robot vs. Robot

NICHOLAS ST. FLEUR

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We concluded that to generate this work would

If you remember during the 60s it was controversial whether a computer

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mapping 61 Ancient Tattoos on a 5,300-Year-Old

NICHOLAS ST. FLEUR

wavelengths of light to map tzis tattoos.

soot in an Italian castle. Doctors use the technique to diagnose dermatological

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October 27, 2014, 7:04 PM

That mentality is a big part of the problem with regards to extinction.

Science Notes 2014: Fireball Physics

Illustration: Mary Williams

Science Notes 2014: Fireball Physics

Examining the tapes

Science Notes 2014: Fireball Physics

Map data 2014 Google

Science Notes 2014: Fireball Physics

Science Notes 2014: Fireball Physics

In this video produced by Nicholas St. Fleur, NASA