2008 AutoTronics Taipei: Participants from IT industry to participate COMPUTEX uncertainly

Friday, April 11, 2008

Since the AutoTronics Taipei was held from 2006, companies from electronic and automobile-related industries steadily made their stages and a good complementary in this trade show.

Before the first holding in 2006, because of the establishment of Car Electronics Pavilion in 2005 TAITRONICS Autumn (Taipei International Electronic Autumn Show), it (the pavilion) ever became a hot topic in these 2 industries. And eventually, Yulon Group recruited their sub-companies grouping their own pavilion to showcase automobile parts, accessories, and applications.

Currently, automobile navigation, mobile entertainment, and road safety, were included in modern automotive devices. But in a keynote speech of TARC Pavilion, Jamie Hsu (Consultant of Ministry of Economic Affairs of the Republic of the China) pointed out several threats and opportunities on the automotive industry, his words also echoed a notable quote by Yi-cheng Liu (Chairman of Taiwan Transportation Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association): “The automobile industry shouldn’t be monopolized by a company or its own industry. If this industry want to be grown up, it [the industry] should do more optimizations and transformations with the other related industries like IT and electronic.”

Although some participants like Renesas, Fujitsu, MiTAC, TomTom NV, and Agilent ever participated in Taipei IT Month, CeBIT, or Computex Taipei, but there were varied comments for participation on Computex 2008.

Computex 2008 will do a significant growth, of course. But we [Aglient] still consider to cooperate with Intel in a forum rather than showcasing in Computex.
We [the MiTAC Group] will appoint different sub-companies to participate in different trade shows by different industries. That’s why we showcase the same products in different shows by different sub-companies.

Renesas Technology, a participant of Computex 2007, won’t showcase in Computex 2008, but Fujitsu and TomTom both declared to participate in the 2008 Taipei IT Month.

Generally in the automobile industry, progressively conformed by the other industries, its success should depend on collaborations between different and similar industries because “not any company can do any monopoly in any industry” even though the automobile industry will become a “trillion industry” not only in Taiwan.

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US Marine killed after vehicle capsizes, sinks in Oceanside Harbor, California

Saturday, January 15, 2011

An amphibious vehicle belonging to the United States Marines capsized and sank to the floor of the Del Mar boat basin, California at 1130 PST (1930 UTC) resulting in one death and three injures.

Three instructors and three students were conducting driver training when the vehicle capsized and sank, trapping them inside. Three injured individuals were transported to hospital and two were uninjured. The deceased Marine was rescued at around 1415 PST and was transported to hospital where he was pronounced dead at 1447 PST. Oxygen was being pumped into the vehicle for hours in an attempt to keep the Marine alive.

Captain Daniel J. Thomas revealed that “There will be a thorough investigation into this mishap that occurred.” He continued, “[there will be] reports that come, lessons learned in terms of preventing anything like this from happening.” Major Thomas said that training would not be stopped, but “We’re going to take a look at this and the commander will then make a decision before anything goes back into place to make sure any safety briefing that need to be given are conducted.”

The identity of the dead Marine has not yet been revealed; the family have yet to have been notified.

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Security tightened at Singapore courts after two attempts to escape

Friday, June 13, 2008

Following a failed escape attempt on Wednesday at the detention facilities of the Subordinate Courts of Singapore, security has been increased.

At 1:45 a.m., Jamaluddin Salam, 32, and Salman Abu Samah, 28, tried to escape from the basement lock-up by requesting water. An officer opened the cell gate to fulfill the request, which is a breach of procedure; he should have merely passed water through a hole in the cell door. The prisoners took advantage of the open gate and overpowered the officer, violently punching and kicking him to the ground before heading to the gates at the lock-up’s exit, pressing a buzzer to inform the officer at the control room to unlock the gates. The officer did not check the security camera monitor to see who was at the gates before unlocking it, constituting another breach of procedure.

Following their successful exit from the lock-up, the duo used the lift just past the exit gates to reach the fourth floor of the facility, forcing open a locked door and going down a stairwell to reach the ground floor.

Within 10 minutes of the escape, the duo was spotted at the ground floor. The alarm was raised and officers were deployed to seal off all exits. Near the facility’s main entrance, Salman tripped and was quickly subdued. Jamaluddin made his way to the back entrance, but found it locked. He then doubled back to the front and dashed out of the facility. An officer tripped him with his baton about 100m outside of the facility.

The attempted escape came barely four months after terrorist-fugitive Mas Selamat Kastari fled the Whitley Road Detention Centre. Failure to observe procedures on the part of his minders was also a reason for that escape.

The two men were brought from Queenstown Remand Prison to the Subordinate Courts for bail purposes. Jamaluddin was facing six counts of robbery with hurt and drug charges, while Salman had three charges of robbery with hurt. Both cases are unrelated. Bail was set at $30,000 for Jamaluddin and $20,000 for Salman.

Police revealed yesterday that Jamaluddin and Salman were not the only inmates in the cell. It has not been revealed how many inmates were in the cell but it is known that they stayed put during the escape attempt.

In a statement, police said they have been upgrading the lock-up area since 2003, adding extra security grilles and enhancing the CCTV system.

A security audit of all lock-ups was conducted in March. The following month, a working group was set-up to look specifically into the security of the Subordinate Courts lock-up facilities.

The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) is now investigating the circumstances of the attempted escape to see if any officers were negligent.

Due to the escape attempt, security at the facility has been tightened to prevent a similar incident from happening. New security measures include an extra lock fixed onto the lock-up exit gates so that another officer will need to check who is leaving the area when it is unlocked. The elevator has also been secured and can only be activated with a key.

Jamaluddian and Salman are now likely to face a barrage of charges including vandalism, police battery and escaping from legal custody.

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Two teenagers charged over shooting of student at C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute, Toronto

Monday, May 28, 2007

Two 17-year-old men have been arrested and charged with first degree murder over the shooting last week of Jordan Manners, a 15-year-old student at the C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute. He was killed by a single gunshot wound to the chest.

They cannot be named due to limitations in the Youth Criminal Justice Act. One was arrested in a raid early on Sunday morning, the other handed himself in later the same day. Three others, two men and a woman, were also arrested in raids but released without charge.

Toronto police Staff Insp. Brian Raybould stated at a press conference Monday that the two accused knew Manners and “probably were friends” with him. He also stated that a motive is yet to be established, but the attack was not gang-related. He also said that although there had clearly been only one shooter, both men had been charged with first degree murder. Crown prosecutors announced that they will seek full length sentences for the two, as opposed to restricted sentences reserved for minors.

Lawyers for the two accused have said that they have not been told exactly what the allegations against their clients are beyond the simple fact that they were involved in the shooting. The lawyers also said that the families were “shocked and upset” by the arrests.

Police have said that the two arrests came as a result of people within the school community coming forward with information regarding the shootings. They also urged more people to come forward to help clarify what they described as a “complex” case.

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News briefs:June 30, 2006

The time is 20:00 (UTC) on June 30th, 2006, and this is Audio Wikinews News Briefs.

Contents

  • 1 Headlines
    • 1.1 Interior Ministry, Fatah offices in Gaza hit by Israeli airstrikes
    • 1.2 Palestinian PM: Israel aims to topple gov’t
    • 1.3 Portuguese Minister of Foreign Affairs Freitas do Amaral resigns
    • 1.4 French Parliament adopts controversial copyright bill
    • 1.5 Police crackdown on illegal tow operations in Sydney
    • 1.6 Amsterdam to open a “Chocolate Factory”
    • 1.7 Australian shot in Thailand
    • 1.8 Germany master penalties to beat Argentina to semi-final spot
    • 1.9 Ullrich and Sevilla suspended from Tour de France
  • 2 Closing statements

[edit]

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As the Eurovision entrants return home, the home crowds weigh in

Monday, May 18, 2009

Most of the Eurovision entrants have returned home from their sojourn in Moscow, Russia, and the newspapers across Europe have varied opinions. Most national newspapers congratulated their entrants on a job well done, while others trash-talked other entrants, and still others called for their countries to pull out of the Contest.

Here are some interviews, articles and opinions that made it to the front pages of newspapers and to their sanctioned blogs.

Norway’s mass media was filled with stories revolving around the winner, Alexander Rybak, but a secondary story that received press coverage was outcry against NRK‘s Eurovision commentator, Synnøve Svabø, who was criticized for talking incessantly during the event, making leering comments regarding the contents inside the male entrants’ tight pants, and making a joke about stuffing sweatsocks in her own bra. When asked for a statement by Aftenposten, Svabø said, “I guess people think I should have put the socks in my throat.” NRK did not comment on Svabø’s commentating or whether she will be returning next year.

Sweden’s newspaper Aftonbladet wrote that the “Swede of the evening” was not Sweden’s entrant Malena Ernman, but Malmö-raised Arash Labaf, one of the two singers placing third for Azerbaijan. Markus Larsson wrote, “21st place? Well, this is our second-worst result ever…Malena Ernman fell so far and deep that she almost ended up in Finland. That is to say, almost last.” When asked if she was disappointed, Ernman responded, “No, but I am sorry if the Swedes are disappointed.” She went on to quip, “Europe is simply not ready for my high notes.”

Finland, despite placing last, wrote upbeat stories; Helsingin Sanomat published an interview with Waldo and Karoliina from the Finnish act, Waldo’s People, who announced how happy they were to have participated and will be going right back to work with performances and recordings as soon as they return to Finland.

Most British newspapers in past years published lengthy screeds regarding their bad luck in the Contest and whether they should send an entrant at all. This year all that talk subsided, and newspapers published articles congratulating Jade Ewen on her fifth place ranking. Sir Terry Wogan, former Eurovision commentator for the BBC, said to the Daily Express about this year’s voting overhaul, “I think my protest about the voting was totally vindicated by the changes that were made to the scoring this year. It made a real difference. It was the change that Eurovision needed.” One of the headlines in Monday’s Daily Mail reads: “She did us proud.” Andrew Lloyd Webber, who worked with Ewen, said, “Jade performed brilliantly. After years of disappointing results, the UK can finally hold its head high.”

Spain’s newspaper El Mundo published an article entitled “Soraya’s fiasco,” outlining Soraya Arnelas‘s failure to receive points from 37 of the 41 other voting nations, with the writer remarking, “After a whole year trying to forget [Rodolfo Chikilicuatre, Spain’s “joke entrant” from 2008], Soraya jumped on-stage with strength…Spain’s experiment ended with longing [for] Rodolfo Chikilicuatre.” When asked about her performance and the result, Arnelas said, “I’ll hang on to the experiences I had, the great friends that I made and I’m happy because now I’m known in Europe.”

French newspapers and blogs were muted compared to other countries, but the overall feeling was still very supportive of Patricia Kaas, who placed eighth. In an interview with Le Figaro, Kaas said, “Eighth place, that’s not so bad. It was a great moment for France, we held our head high.” France Soir noted, “[Kaas’s] emotion does not seem to have found a place with competitors that have relied on heavy artillery choreography worthy of those like Shakira, and glamorous outfits, to ensure a place on the podium.”

German newspapers published lengthy stories analyzing why Germany was in the bottom quartile for the third straight year. Die Welt wrote, “The Germans have become accustomed to it: winning the Eurovision Song Contest just does not work [for us]. [Compared] to the total failure of last place with No Angels last year, [this] result is almost a sensational success.” Bild commented, “For years we have had little success. Germany’s placement, despite all efforts, will not be better. Why are we still participating in the Eurovision Song Contest?”

Ireland, who failed to make it to the final, led the cry to pull out of Eurovision. In the Irish Independent, Ian O’Doherty wrote, “Ireland managed something quite rare and rather gratifying last week — we actually managed to produce a Eurovision song that didn’t make you want to rip off your own eyelids so you could stuff them in your ears to stop the horrible sounds…[Sinéad] Mulvey’s elimination is proof of one thing: we need to pull out of this pile of rubbish as soon as possible.”

The Netherlands, another nation that did not make it past the semi-final round, has been very apathetic toward the Contest in recent years, and this year was no different. De Telegraaf conducted an opinion poll of Dutch television viewers, and 90% of them believed the Netherlands should not enter the Contest anymore. Despite the stated apathy, 2.5 million Dutch viewers watched De Toppers compete in the second semi-final, an improvement of 800,000 from last year’s semi-final, where Dutch entrant Hind also failed to advance. De Toppers singer Gordon, in an interview with De Telegraaf, said that the Netherlands should continue to compete: “One time, we will succeed.”

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Panama-flagged ship hijacked off Somali coast by pirates

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Suspected Somali pirates have hijacked the MV Al Khaliq, a Panama-flagged ship, off the eastern coast of Africa on Thursday. International maritime officials said the ship was seized about 330 kilometers west of the Seychelles islands.

Officials reported that the ship is carrying 26 crew members — 24 Indians and two Burmese. The Al Khaliq is the fourth ship Somali pirates have hijacked this month, and the third in the past week.

“The MV Al Khaliq, a Panamanian-flagged bulk carrier, has been hijacked early this morning off Somalia,” said a spokeswoman for the NATO’s antipiracy mission in the UK. “There were 26 crew on board, 24 of whom are Indian and two Burmese.”

The mission confirmed that the ship had been hijacked. “Within the last hour, an EU NAVFOR maritime patrol aircraft has confirmed the hijack of MV Al Khaliq, [with] six pirates on board and two attack skiffs in tow,” it said. “The mother skiff [of the pirates] has already been taken on board with a crane.”

The European Union’s anti-piracy mission reported that crew members radioed for help before losing contact. An EU aircraft that flew over the scene reported seeing six pirates on board and the Al Khaliq towing two pirate skiffs. NATO’s nearest defence ship was located about eight hours away from the Al Khaliq when it was overtaken by the pirates.

The EU and NATO also said that pirates released open fire on another ship, the Italian-flagged MV Jolly Rosso, off the coast of Kenya on the same day. That ship, however, managed to escape by increasing its throttles to eighteen knots, a spokeswoman for the antipiracy mission said.

“The ship took appropriate evasive action, managed to evade the attack and is proceeding on her voyage. There were no casualties,” read a statement by the mission.

Somali pirates have hijacked dozens of ships over the last two years, taking in tens of millions of dollars in ransom money. The pirates are believed to be holding seven ships in all. A new report on the pirates suggests that current international strategies to stop the hijackings are not effective.

The report, put out by the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research, said the international naval patrols off Somalia’s coast are expensive, and that the pirates can evade the patrols or escape to shore. It also noted that efforts to combat piracy by strengthening Somalia’s Western-backed government are limited, because the pirates come from specific regions and clans, far away from the capital.

The researchers, however, said that there are centers of power close to the pirate bases, and that these can be allies in fighting piracy. The researchers say that to effectively combat piracy, the international community needs to support these local structures.

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As the Eurovision entrants return home, the home crowds weigh in

Monday, May 18, 2009

Most of the Eurovision entrants have returned home from their sojourn in Moscow, Russia, and the newspapers across Europe have varied opinions. Most national newspapers congratulated their entrants on a job well done, while others trash-talked other entrants, and still others called for their countries to pull out of the Contest.

Here are some interviews, articles and opinions that made it to the front pages of newspapers and to their sanctioned blogs.

Norway’s mass media was filled with stories revolving around the winner, Alexander Rybak, but a secondary story that received press coverage was outcry against NRK‘s Eurovision commentator, Synnøve Svabø, who was criticized for talking incessantly during the event, making leering comments regarding the contents inside the male entrants’ tight pants, and making a joke about stuffing sweatsocks in her own bra. When asked for a statement by Aftenposten, Svabø said, “I guess people think I should have put the socks in my throat.” NRK did not comment on Svabø’s commentating or whether she will be returning next year.

Sweden’s newspaper Aftonbladet wrote that the “Swede of the evening” was not Sweden’s entrant Malena Ernman, but Malmö-raised Arash Labaf, one of the two singers placing third for Azerbaijan. Markus Larsson wrote, “21st place? Well, this is our second-worst result ever…Malena Ernman fell so far and deep that she almost ended up in Finland. That is to say, almost last.” When asked if she was disappointed, Ernman responded, “No, but I am sorry if the Swedes are disappointed.” She went on to quip, “Europe is simply not ready for my high notes.”

Finland, despite placing last, wrote upbeat stories; Helsingin Sanomat published an interview with Waldo and Karoliina from the Finnish act, Waldo’s People, who announced how happy they were to have participated and will be going right back to work with performances and recordings as soon as they return to Finland.

Most British newspapers in past years published lengthy screeds regarding their bad luck in the Contest and whether they should send an entrant at all. This year all that talk subsided, and newspapers published articles congratulating Jade Ewen on her fifth place ranking. Sir Terry Wogan, former Eurovision commentator for the BBC, said to the Daily Express about this year’s voting overhaul, “I think my protest about the voting was totally vindicated by the changes that were made to the scoring this year. It made a real difference. It was the change that Eurovision needed.” One of the headlines in Monday’s Daily Mail reads: “She did us proud.” Andrew Lloyd Webber, who worked with Ewen, said, “Jade performed brilliantly. After years of disappointing results, the UK can finally hold its head high.”

Spain’s newspaper El Mundo published an article entitled “Soraya’s fiasco,” outlining Soraya Arnelas‘s failure to receive points from 37 of the 41 other voting nations, with the writer remarking, “After a whole year trying to forget [Rodolfo Chikilicuatre, Spain’s “joke entrant” from 2008], Soraya jumped on-stage with strength…Spain’s experiment ended with longing [for] Rodolfo Chikilicuatre.” When asked about her performance and the result, Arnelas said, “I’ll hang on to the experiences I had, the great friends that I made and I’m happy because now I’m known in Europe.”

French newspapers and blogs were muted compared to other countries, but the overall feeling was still very supportive of Patricia Kaas, who placed eighth. In an interview with Le Figaro, Kaas said, “Eighth place, that’s not so bad. It was a great moment for France, we held our head high.” France Soir noted, “[Kaas’s] emotion does not seem to have found a place with competitors that have relied on heavy artillery choreography worthy of those like Shakira, and glamorous outfits, to ensure a place on the podium.”

German newspapers published lengthy stories analyzing why Germany was in the bottom quartile for the third straight year. Die Welt wrote, “The Germans have become accustomed to it: winning the Eurovision Song Contest just does not work [for us]. [Compared] to the total failure of last place with No Angels last year, [this] result is almost a sensational success.” Bild commented, “For years we have had little success. Germany’s placement, despite all efforts, will not be better. Why are we still participating in the Eurovision Song Contest?”

Ireland, who failed to make it to the final, led the cry to pull out of Eurovision. In the Irish Independent, Ian O’Doherty wrote, “Ireland managed something quite rare and rather gratifying last week — we actually managed to produce a Eurovision song that didn’t make you want to rip off your own eyelids so you could stuff them in your ears to stop the horrible sounds…[Sinéad] Mulvey’s elimination is proof of one thing: we need to pull out of this pile of rubbish as soon as possible.”

The Netherlands, another nation that did not make it past the semi-final round, has been very apathetic toward the Contest in recent years, and this year was no different. De Telegraaf conducted an opinion poll of Dutch television viewers, and 90% of them believed the Netherlands should not enter the Contest anymore. Despite the stated apathy, 2.5 million Dutch viewers watched De Toppers compete in the second semi-final, an improvement of 800,000 from last year’s semi-final, where Dutch entrant Hind also failed to advance. De Toppers singer Gordon, in an interview with De Telegraaf, said that the Netherlands should continue to compete: “One time, we will succeed.”

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Retired Indian police official shot in train

Sunday, June 4, 2006

An armed gang killed a retired IPS officer and looted cash and valuables from passengers in an air-conditioned compartment of the Rajendra Nagar – Lokmanya Tilak Superfast Express near the Patna junction, an official said. The six robbers, who were armed with five guns were arrested by the Government Railway Police Karbigahiya and Mithapur localities. Superintendent of Railway Police G.P Sinha said that Anil Kumar Singh was shot when he resisted the gang’s attempts to steal his belongings.

As the news spread, railway personnel rushed Singh to a Patna Medical College hospital where he was declared dead. The GRP acted on a tip provided by one Rinku, who was among those arrested in the train itself, and took his fellow thieves into custody. Some articles, including wallets and suitcases, looted from the passengers during raids were recovered by the GRP.

Anil Kumar Singh had retired from the police force at the rank of DIG. He was also a practicing lawyer at the Patna High Court. Mintu, the attacker who had fired at Singh was also arrested. The train was allowed to resume its journey after being stopped for a few hours at the Patna Junction.

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Cold as ice: Wikinews interviews Marymegan Daly on unusual new sea anemone

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

In late 2010 a geological expedition to Antarctica drilled through the Ross Ice Shelf so they could send an ROV under it. What they found was unexpected: Sea anemones. In their thousands they were doing what no other species of sea anemone is known to do — they were living in the ice itself.

Discovered by the ANDRILL [Antarctic Drilling] project, the team was so unprepared for biological discoveries they did not have suitable preservatives and the only chemicals available obliterated the creature’s DNA. Nonetheless Marymegan Daly of Ohio State University confirmed the animals were a new species. Named Edwardsiella andrillae after the drilling project that found it, the anemone was finally described in a PLOS ONE paper last month.

ANDRILL lowered their cylindrical camera ROV down a freshly-bored 270m (890ft) hole, enabling it to reach seawater below the ice. The device was merely being tested ahead of its planned mission retrieving data on ocean currents and the sub-ice environment. Instead it found what ANDRILL director Frank Rack of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, a co-author of the paper describing the find, called the “total serendipity” of “a whole new ecosystem that no one had ever seen before”.

The discovery raises many questions. Burrowing sea anemones worm their way into substrates or use their tentacles to dig, but it’s unclear how E. andrillae enters the hard ice. With only their tentacles protruding into the water from the underneath of the ice shelf questions also revolve around how the animals avoid freezing, how they reproduce, and how they cope with the continuously melting nature of their home. Their diet is also a mystery.

What fascinates me about sea anemones is that they’re able to do things that seem impossible

E. andrillae is an opaque white, with an inner ring of eight tentacles and twelve-to-sixteen tentacles in an outer ring. The ROV’s lights produced an orange glow from the creatures, although this may be produced by their food. It measures 16–20mm (0.6–0.8in) but when fully relaxed can extend to triple that.

Genetic analysis being impossible, Daly turned to dissection of the specimens but could find nothing out of the ordinary. Scientists hope to send a biological mission to explore the area under the massive ice sheet, which is in excess of 600 miles (970km) wide. The cameras also observed worms, fish that swim inverted as if the icy roof was the sea floor, crustaceans and a cylindrical creature that used appendages on its ends to move and to grab hold of the anemones.

NASA is providing funding to aid further research, owing to possible similarities between this icy realm and Europa, a moon of Jupiter. Biological research is planned for 2015. An application for funding to the U.S. National Science Foundation, which funds ANDRILL, is also pending.

The ANDRILL team almost failed to get any samples at all. Designed to examine the seafloor, the ROV had to be inverted to examine the roof of ice. Weather conditions prevented biological sampling equipment being delivered from McMurdo Station, but the scientists retrieved 20–30 anemones by using hot water to stun them before sucking them from their burrows with an improvised device fashioned from a coffee filter and a spare ROV thruster. Preserved on-site in ethanol, they were taken to McMurdo station where some were further preserved with formaldehyde.

((Wikinews)) How did you come to be involved with this discovery?

Marymegan Daly: Frank Rack got in touch after they returned from Antarctica in hopes that I could help with an identification on the anemone.

((Wikinews)) What was your first reaction upon learning there was an undiscovered ecosystem under the ice in the Ross Sea?

MD I was amazed and really excited. I think to say it was unexpected is inaccurate, because it implies that there was a well-founded expectation of something. The technology that Frank and his colleagues are using to explore the ice is so important because, given our lack of data, we have no reasonable expectation of what it should be like, or what it shouldn’t be like.

((Wikinews)) There’s a return trip planned hopefully for 2015, with both biologists and ANDRILL geologists. Are you intending to go there yourself?

MD I would love to. But I am also happy to not go, as long as someone collects more animals on my behalf! What I want to do with the animals requires new material preserved in diverse ways, but it doesn’t require me to be there. Although I am sure that being there would enhance my understanding of the animals and the system in which they live, and would help me formulate more and better questions about the anemones, ship time is expensive, especially in Antarctica, and if there are biologists whose contribution is predicated on being there, they should have priority to be there.

((Wikinews)) These animals are shrouded in mystery. Some of the most intriguing questions are chemical; do they produce some kind of antifreeze, and is that orange glow in the ROV lights their own? Talk us through the difficulties encountered when trying to find answers with the specimens on hand.

MD The samples we have are small in terms of numbers and they are all preserved in formalin (a kind of formaldehyde solution). The formalin is great for preserving structures, but for anemones, it prevents study of DNA or of the chemistry of the body. This means we can’t look at the issue you raise with these animals. What we could do, however, was to study anatomy and figure out what it is, so that when we have samples preserved for studying e.g., the genome, transcriptome, or metabolome, or conduct tests of the fluid in the burrows or in the animals themselves, we can make precise comparisons, and figure out what these animals have or do (metabolically or chemically) that lets them live where they live.
Just knowing a whole lot about a single species isn’t very useful, even if that animal is as special as these clearly are — we need to know what about them is different and thus related to living in this strange way. The only way to get at what’s different is to make comparisons with close relatives. We can start that side of the work now, anticipating having more beasts in the future.
In terms of their glow, I suspect that it’s not theirs — although luminescence is common in anemone relatives, they don’t usually make light themselves. They do make a host of florescent proteins, and these may interact with the light of the ROV to give that gorgeous glow.

((Wikinews)) What analysis did you perform on the specimens and what equipment was used?

MD I used a dissecting scope to look at the animal’s external anatomy and overall body organization (magnification of 60X). I embedded a few of the animals in wax and then cut them into very thin slices using a microtome, mounted the slices on microscope slides, stained the slices to enhance contrast, and then looked at those slides under a compound microscope (that’s how I got the pictures of the muscles etc in the paper). I used that same compound scope to look at squashed bits of tissue to see the stinging capsules (=nematocysts).
I compared the things I saw under the ‘scopes to what had been published on other species in this group. This step seems trivial, but it is really the most important part! By comparing my observations to what my colleagues and predecessors had found, I figured out what group it belongs to, and was able to determine that within that group, it was a new species.

((Wikinews)) It was three years between recovery of specimens and final publication, why did it take so long?

MD You mean, how did we manage to make it all happen so quickly, right? 🙂 It was about two years from when Frank sent me specimens to when we got the paper out. Some of that time was just lost time — I had other projects in the queue that I needed to finish. Once we figured out what it was, we played a lot of manuscript email tag, which can be challenging and time consuming given the differing schedules that folks keep in terms of travel, field work, etc. Manuscript review and processing took about four months.

((Wikinews)) What sort of difficulties were posed by the unorthodox preservatives used, and what additional work might be possible on a specimen with intact DNA?

MD The preservation was not unorthodox — they followed best practices for anatomical preservation. Having DNA-suitable material will let us see whether there are new genes, or genes turned on in different ways and at different times that help explain how these animals burrow into hard ice and then survive in the cold. I am curious about the population structure of the “fields” of anemones — the group to which Edwardsiella andrillae belongs includes many species that reproduce asexually, and it’s possible that the fields are “clones” produced asexually rather than the result of sexual reproduction. DNA is the only way to test this.

((Wikinews)) Do you have any theories about the strategies employed to cope with the harsh environment of burrowing inside an ice shelf?

MD I think there must be some kind of antifreeze produced — the cells in contact with ice would otherwise freeze.

((Wikinews)) How has such an apparently large population of clearly unusual sea anemones, not to mention the other creatures caught on camera, gone undetected for so long?

MD I think this reflects how difficult it is to get under the ice and to collect specimens. That being said, since the paper came out, I have been pointed towards two other reports that are probably records of these species: one from Japanese scientists who looked at footage from cameras attached to seals and one from Americans who dove under ice. In both of these cases, the anemone (if that’s what they saw) was seen at a distance, and no specimens were collected. Without the animals in hand, or the capability of a ROV to get close up for pictures, it is hard to know what has been seen, and lacking a definitive ID, hard to have the finding appropriately indexed or contextualized.

((Wikinews)) Would it be fair to say this suggests there may be other undiscovered species of sea anemone that burrow into hard substrates such as ice?

MD I hope so! What fascinates me about sea anemones is that they’re able to do things that seem impossible given their seemingly limited toolkit. This finding certainly expands the realm of possible.

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