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NEW YORK — One New York judge ruled the DNA evidence was scientifically sound. Another, just kilometres away, tossed it out as unreliable.

The same scenario is playing out in courthouses around the world amid a debate over whether a type of DNA analysis involving the amplification of tiny amounts of genetic material is reliable enough to convict someone for a crime.

The technique, known as low copy number or high-sensitivity analysis can be used when investigators use “touch DNA” and are only able to collect a few human cells left behind when someone touches an object such as a gun, the handle of a knife, or even clothing.

While many prosecutors and forensic experts hail it as powerful tool that can help close cases, critics — most notably the FBI — argue it is inconclusive and unreliable. But there is no clear case law on the merits of the science, leaving judges to evaluate it on a case-by-case basis.

“If the experts in the DNA field cannot agree on the weight to be given to evidence produced by high-sensitivity analysis, it would make no sense to throw such evidence before a lay jury,” Brooklyn State Supreme Court Justice Mark Dwyer said last year in throwing out a DNA sample swabbed from a bicycle in an attempted murder case.

With low-copy number DNA, the samples are so small — less than 100 picogrammes, or about 16 human cells — that scientists amplify them more than typical DNA samples and that’s one of the reasons critics say the technique is troubling.

“It’s more likely to pick up contamination, transference,” said Jessica Goldthwaite, a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society’s DNA unit, who worked on the Brooklyn case. “You can’t be assured of the reliability of the results.”

For example, she said, “you shake my hand and then I touch a gun, your DNA could end up on the gun”.

Such concerns prompted the FBI to forbid laboratories to run low copy number profiles through the national DNA database. The FBI has said it is studying the use of low copy DNA analysis but it hasn’t “demonstrated the necessary reliability for use in forensic casework”.

Perhaps the most high-profile example of the technique, and the controversy, came in the case of Amanda Knox, the American college student charged with killing her roommate in Italy. A low copy number DNA sample taken from the handle of a kitchen knife helped convict her but a forensic report in 2011 called the evidence unreliable and possibly contaminated, leading to the exoneration of both Knox and her co-defendant. The two were later retried, convicted and exonerated a second time.

The technique was also used in New York in a weapons possession case involving entertainer Lil Wayne. A judge ordered a hearing after prosecutors tried to use the technique to tie Lil Wayne to a gun found on his tour bus in 2007. The rapper eventually pleaded guilty in the case.

Notably, New York stands out for its aggressive use of the technique.

New York City’s medical examiner’s office says it uses the protocol in about 10 per cent of the DNA cases it analyses. Its forensic scientists have performed about 7,500 low copy number tests since 2005 and have testified in close to 250 cases in state and federal court.

“Removing it as a tool for police and prosecutors would lead to significant setbacks in 21st century evidence-gathering techniques,” said Emily Tuttle, a spokeswoman for Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr.

Just this past week, a former director of the city’s medical examiner’s office filed a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging that she was forced out of her job after questioning its use of low-copy DNA testing.

Dr Marina Stajic, who also served on a state commission tasked with developing standards for DNA labs, claimed she was ousted when she voted to require the medical examiner’s office to publicly release a study about the testing technique.

Julie Bolcer, a spokeswoman for New York City’s medical examiner’s office, declined to comment specifically on Stajic’s claim, citing ongoing litigation, but said the office is dedicated to using “the most accurate and advanced technology”.

“Low copy number DNA testing provides a tool for solving cases that is recognised as reliable and generally accepted by the scientific community,” she said.

SAN FRANCISCO  — Can the FBI force a company like Apple to extract data from a customer’s smartphone? In the fight over an iPhone used by an extremist killer in San Bernardino, some legal experts say Congress has never explicitly granted that power. And now a federal judge agrees in a similar case.

In a New York drug case that echoes the much higher-profile San Bernardino dispute, US Magistrate James Orenstein has ruled the government doesn’t have authority to make Apple pull information off a suspect’s iPhone. The judge said in his ruling that Congress has already considered, but rejected, extending the government’s authority in this fashion.

Orenstein cited the history of a 20-year-old federal law — one that requires phone companies to assist police in conducting court-authorised wiretaps. Congress has resisted attempts over the years to extend that authority to tech companies like Apple, according to experts who have studied the law, known as the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA.

Federal prosecutors have argued that a much older law known as the All Writs Act allows courts to compel private parties to assist law enforcement. But Orenstein said that shouldn’t apply when, in his words, “Congress has considered legislation that would achieve the same result but has not adopted it.”

The New York ruling isn’t binding on the magistrate in the San Bernardino case. And federal authorities said Monday they’ll appeal Orenstein’s decision. But a senior Apple executive, who spoke on condition that he wouldn’t be named, said Apple believes Orenstein’s ruling is both persuasive and relevant to the issues at stake in San Bernardino.

In that case, the FBI wants Apple to create software that would bypass some iPhone security features, making it easier to guess the passcode that would unlock it. Prosecutors say they’re only seeking what amounts to routine cooperation; Apple and its supporters say the request is unprecedented and would make other iPhones vulnerable to hacking by authorities and criminals alike.

By contrast, US phone carriers have long been required to design and build their networks in ways that allow federal wiretaps of digital phone calls. That government authority stems from CALEA, a 1994 law that drew heated debate before it passed, and even more controversy on occasions when federal officials sought to expand its scope. Tech industry and civil liberty groups have mostly succeeded in blocking those efforts.

Even before Orenstein’s ruling, some legal experts said in recent weeks that the history of CALEA suggests that authorities are overreaching in the San Bernardino case.

The law was narrowly focused and “the product of years of public debate, with many compromises on both sides of that debate,” said Ahmed Ghappour, a visiting professor who focuses on tech issues at the University of California, Hastings School of the Law. “That’s what Congress is for.”

As with the iPhone dispute today, the 1994 law was enacted at a time when the nation’s police agencies were struggling to keep up with new technology. Authorities feared that a switch from old-fashioned copper wire to digital phone networks would hinder their eavesdropping capabilities.

CALEA intentionally covers only telecommunication carriers and specifically excludes “information service providers” — including Internet companies such as Apple and Google. Extensive negotiation produced a law that preserved the wiretapping ability authorities already had without adding new types of surveillance capabilities, said Deirdre Mulligan, co-director of the Centre for Law & Technology at the University of California, Berkeley

The Federal Communications Commission updated CALEA-related regulations in 2005 to extend the government’s sway to voice-over-Internet phone services. Moves to expand it further, however, have fizzled, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service, which cited proposals for extending the law to “a wide range of technology services”, including instant messaging and video game chats.

“This is a power that Congress has had numerous opportunities to extend and has chosen not to,” said Mulligan.

Federal authorities argued that CALEA isn’t relevant to either iPhone case. But Apple and its supporters are likely to cite CALEA in the San Bernardino case, said Alex Abdo, an ACLU attorney who is helping draft a “friend-of-the-court” brief on Apple’s behalf. He said the All Writs Act can only be used to enforce authority the government already has, such as a legal search warrant.

The history of CALEA shows that if Congress wanted the government to have the authority it’s invoking against Apple, “it would have given it already,” said Abdo, echoing the New York magistrate’s ruling.

First launched globally in 2011, the Middle East and US Volkswagen Passat diverged from the long-standing European model as a larger, affordable parallel model better serving those markets’ preferences. Built in Volkswagen’s Tennessee plant, the more accommodating Passat is intended as a more elegant Germanic answer to high volume large saloons from General Motors, Toyota and others.

Updated for 2016 and launched regionally last month, the smooth, spacious and comfortable US-Middle East Passat receives a subtle but effective and honed aesthetic facelift inside and out. Revised to be more contemporary and competitive, it gets a raft of more advanced safety and infotainment systems, and new and more direct electrically assisted steering.

Classy and restrained

Discretely revised in design, the 2016 Passat has a classier more chiselled aesthetic, with revised grille featuring horizontal and vertical slats, sharper headlight elements including LED running lights on SEL specification models and higher. The new Passat also features a chrome strip across the top of the grille and headlights to create a moodier more browed face and reshaped foglights.

Snoutier and more jutting at the grille, the new Passat also features a more sculpted front bumper, bonnet and wings, in addition to new power-folding side mirrors and classy frameless interior rear-view mirror. From the rear and silhouette, the Passat is similarly sharper and better resolved, with new chrome window surrounds and restyled bootlid and light clusters with more complex LED elements. 

Chrome strips across the flanks and rear bumper are complemented by sportier exhaust tips and new alloy wheel designs. The next-to-top Sport spec model driven features standard 18-inch twin five-spoke alloy wheels with 235/45R18 tyres, providing strong later and grip, sure-footed highway composure and a smooth if slightly firm ride over hard lumps, bumps and cracks.

Smooth and progressive

Offered with a choice of either 1.8-litre turbocharged four-cylinder or 3.6-litre V6 in the US, Middle East specification Passat, however, comes with one 2.5-litre naturally aspirated five-cylinder engine for all trim levels. Well insulated for a refined driving experience, one can still pick up a faint hint of the Passat’s charismatic five-pot burble at heavy loads and high revs.

Progressive in character and delivery, the Passat’s rugged cast iron block and light aluminium head multi-point injection l2.5-litre engine develops 177lb/ft torque at 4250rpm and 168BHP by 5700rpm. Fitted with a standard six-speed automatic for the region, the Passat accelerates though 0-1000km/h in 9.2 seconds and onto an electronically governed 190km/h top speed.

Carried over from before its’ revision, the Passat’s 2.5-litre engine progressive and smooth with good response and mid-range, and returns good efficiency. If not outright fast or effortlessly muscular, the Passat’s five-pot power plant is effective, confident and is happy to be hustled along at a quicker pace, especially when using sequential tiprtonic shifts to hold gears longer at higher revs.

Settled and stable

In its element on the highway, the Passat is a smooth, comfortable and highly refined long-distance cruiser with terrific insulation from noise vibration and harshness. With committed stability at speed, the Passat remains settled and buttoned down on vertical rebound. Slightly firm on jagged low speed bumps with 18-inch alloys, 17- and 16-inch options provide more compliance for badly paved roads.

Long, stable, settled and with progressive delivery, the Passat well controls body lean for a large comfortable cruiser, but also provides excellent lateral grip, with rear wheels especially tenacious through hard cornering manoeuvres. More agile than its size suggests, the Passat’s new electric assisted steering is more efficient and sportier, and is quicker and more direct, responsive and precise.

Tucking tidily into corners the Passat feels manoeuvrable and sure-footed, but when pushed too fast and tight into corners, safe, progressive and instinctive understeer clearly notifies one of its grip limits. Underwritten by effective electronic safety systems, the new Passat also receives electrontic brakeforce distribution, adaptive airbags, tyre pressure monitoring system and other safety features.

Generous and spacious

Well equipped, the new Passat features revised standard safety systems including an Intelligent Crash Response system that cuts the fuel pump, unlocks doors and turns on hazard lights in the event of a crash severe enough to deploy the airbags. Additionally, the Passat features an Automatic Post-collision Braking System that brakes the car after a crash to prevent secondary collisions.

A revised technology and features suite includes an upgraded smartphone compatible infotainment system with Volkswagen App-Connect, large screen, voice command, Bluetooth streaming, and SD and USB connectivity. In addition to parking sensors, the Passat features a rear-view camera system, multi-function steering, eight-way adjustable driver’s seat, dual-zone climate control and automatic motion sensing boot release for added convenience when one’s hands are full.

Elegant, symmetric and logical, the Passat’s classy un-fussed cabin aesthetic and layouts feature revised colours and soft texture dashboard and seat designs. Supportive and comfortable seats and tilt/reach adjustable seats allow for a comfortable alert driving position, but more reach would be welcome. Airy, spacious and accessible in front and rear with leatherette upholstery, the Passat features good rear headroom, but is especially noteworthy for its extensively generous rear legroom and vast 578-litre boot.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 2.5-litre, cast iron block / aluminium head, transverse 5 cylinders

Bore x stroke: 82.55 x 92.71mm

Compression ratio: 9.5:1

Valve-train: 20-valve, DOHC

Gearbox: 6-speed automatic, front-wheel drive

0-100km/h: 9.2 seconds

Maximum speed: 190km/h

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 168 (170) [125] @5700rpm

Specific power: 67.7BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 116.7BHP/tonne (est.)

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 177 (240) @4250rpm

Specific torque: 97Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 167Nm/tonne (est.)

Fuel consumption, city/highway: 11.2/7.3 l/100km (approximately)

Fuel capacity: 70 litres

Length: 4,868mm

Width: 1,835mm

Height: 1,472mm

Wheelbase: 2,803mm

Curb weight: 1,436kg (est.)

Headroom, F/R: 972 / 960mm

Legroom, F/R: 1,077 / 993mm

Shoulder room, F/R: 1,445/1,447mm

Luggage capacity: 568 litres

Steering: Electric-assisted rack and pinion

Turning circle: 11.1 metres

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated discs / discs

Suspension, front: MacPherson strut / four-link coil springs, stabiliser bar

Tyres: 235/4518

FRANKFURT, Germany — While waiting for the much-discussed future of driverless cars to arrive, European automakers are focusing on tried-and-tested sales winners at this year’s Geneva International Auto Show — rolling out the small SUVs that are increasingly replacing hatchbacks and sedans in people’s driveways.

Long after it has ceased to be an innovation, the small SUV category is drawing carmakers like catnip because it’s seen as the best chance to continue to increase sales and keep development costs down.

Europe’s car industry finally bounced back strongly in 2015 after the eurozone debt crisis that started in late 2009. Sales rose 9.3 per cent to 13.7 million vehicles in the European Union countries in 2015 and have risen now for 29 straight months.

Meanwhile, the shadow of Apple and Google hangs over the industry, as people wonder when, if and how non-industry players will compete with incumbents. There will be plenty of discussions about Internet-connected cars, car sharing apps such as GM’s Maven, and self-driving cars.

Until those driverless cars arrive, the metal on display in Geneva still represents the current model of people buying cars and driving them themselves.

Here are the most anticipated themes and vehicles at the Geneva Auto Show:

Smaller and smaller

Volkswagen AG’s luxury brand Audi offers a tiny SUV, the Q2, which is aimed at attracting younger buyers to the brand. Audi is the first of the three high-priced German carmakers — the others being Daimler and BMW — to have an SUV this small.

Analyst Tim Urquhart from IHS Automotive said the business rationale is compelling. He said Volkswagen, like other carmakers, can use engines and transmissions from other models, in this case the Audi A3 compact car, “and get two cars for the price of one”.

“The public sees a brand-new model — but the research and development costs are relatively little,” he said.

The Q2 will also likely share some components with a nearly production-ready Volkswagen-branded concept SUV that’s also on display. Concepts are cars meant to show possible new designs, with only some eventually being produced.

There’s more.

Volkswagen’s SEAT brand offers its mid-sized Atec on underpinnings shared with the Leon hatchback, giving the brand its first SUV offering; Skoda, another VW brand, has an SUV concept.

And Fiat Chrysler Automobile’s Maserati brand is coming with the Levante, an SUV crossover that offers powerful 350-horsepower and 430-horsepower engines and a silhouette that stands out due its sharply tapered back window. A crossover combines SUV features such as higher driver seating and lots of cargo room in back with a lower, sloping roofline more like a sedan.

Speed machines

It wouldn’t be an auto show without stunning vehicles like Bugatti’s Chiron, the successor to its 258-mph Veyron supercar. Photos show a low-slung sports car with a wrap-around windshield and the distinctive oval Bugatti front grille.

McLaren is offering the 570GT, a sleek two-seater that reaches 100kph in only 3.4 seconds. The company says it aimed to make a car that’s comfortable for weekend trips and long-distance drives, despite its racing-level performance. They gave it eight-way adjustable power seats, a touchscreen to control air conditioning and music, a large glass rear hatch to let in light and create a relaxed environment, and a lower door sill to make it easier to climb in and out.

Prices start at $199,950; the company is taking orders for delivery globally in late 2016.

The future

Auto executives say their industry is on the verge of wide-ranging transformation powered by the Internet, information technology and changing attitudes towards the automobile. There will be much talk of such themes in Geneva, but the actual vehicles, businesses and technologies may take years to appear.

US automaker General Motors is experimenting with a car-sharing programme called Maven, in which people reserve cars using an app and then use their phones to unlock and drive the vehicle.

Consulting firm EY and Swiss think tank Rinspeed are showcasing their Etos concept of a self-driving sports car that has a retractable steering wheel that clears more space for the driver, an entertainment system that anticipates user preferences and an on-board drone with its own landing platform. In one sign of the increasing convergence of tech and autos, the car has already been seen by the public — at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Efficent luxury

BMW is offering its large 7-Series sedan as a plug-in hybrid, for which it will even come install a charging station at your house. The vehicle uses technology from the Munich-based company’s all-electric i-series models such as the i3 and the i8, including light-weight materials and battery and charging technology.

Analyst Urquhart says higher-price brands are combining efficient technology with high power as a selling point, “so it’s smart performance, and not just out-and-out performance”. The robust acceleration of electric motors is an added advantage.

For those who just want the power, BMW offers a 7-Series M version — the company’s performance designation — with a 12-cylinder, 600-horsepower gasoline engine that will accelerate to 100kph in a brisk 3.9 seconds.

Hollywood - Hollywood A-lister Leonardo DiCaprio finally bagged Oscars gold on Sunday for his grueling star turn in "The Revenant," 22 years after his first Academy Award nomination. 

DiCaprio edged out Bryan Cranston ("Trumbo"), Matt Damon ("The Martian"), Michael Fassbender ("Steve Jobs") and Eddie Redmayne ("The Danish Girl") to take the best actor statuette.

DiCaprio won a standing ovation as he accepted the award -- one of the most highly anticipated moments of the night. He had been nominated six times in total, five of them for acting roles.

The 41-year-old film veteran thanked a long list of figures who have helped him in his career, including Martin Scorsese, before speaking on his passion -- climate change.

"Climate change is real. It is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species and we need to work together and stop procrastinating," he said to applause.

"We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters, the big corporations, but who speak for all of humanity, for the indigenous people of the world," he said.

A couple years ago, astronomers made a surprising discovery: A significant number of asteroids were missing from the central region of the solar system.

The space rocks were plentiful in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and they appeared in their expected numbers around the neighbourhood of Earth, Venus and Mercury. But in the zone closest to the sun, there were lots of no-shows.

For every 10 asteroids they expected to find within 10 solar diameters of the sun, they could only spot one.

So, where had they all gone?

In a paper published in Nature, the scientists say that the asteroids appear to be disintegrating when they get too close to the sun, leaving a trail of space rubble in their orbital wake.

The researchers didn’t set out to go on an asteroid hunt. Their initial goal was to create a new and improved model of all the near-Earth objects (NEO) in the solar system.

A NEO is exactly what it sounds like — a comet or asteroid with an orbit that takes it into the vicinity of our planet.

Most of the asteroids that wander into our part of the solar system come from the doughnut-shaped space between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter known as the main asteroid belt. This region of the solar system is home to about 1 million asteroids more than 800 metres in diameter, and many more even smaller than that.

The majority of these space rocks stick to their normal orbits for billions of years, but every once in a while the gentle force of solar radiation pushes one of them into a place where they begin to interact with the gravity of Jupiter or Saturn. When that happens, the asteroid’s orbit grows more elliptical, sending it into the Earth’s neighbourhood.

To create a more accurate map of the NEO circling around the solar system, the researchers used observations of 9,000 NEOs detected in about 100,000 images taken over eight years from the Catalina Sky Survey.

The new model did a great job of matching the data in almost all areas of the solar system except for in the part closest to the sun, said Robert Jedicke of the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy and an author on the paper.

“If we weren’t scientists, we might have said it’s close enough, but something didn’t feel right,” he said.

So the team went back to work. For another year, they checked and double checked their calculations, until they had convinced themselves that the discrepancy they saw between their model and the data was real.

Next they had to figure out where all the asteroids they expected to see had gone.

Study leader Mikael Granvik, a research scientist at the University of Helsinki, proposed that the asteroids must be disappearing once they got close to the sun, but long before they would have plunged into it.

Further research supported this hunch. Going back to the CSS data, the astronomers found that smaller asteroids seem to disappear farther from the sun than larger asteroids. They also discovered that brighter asteroids, which reflect more light, seemed to stay intact closer to the sun than dark asteroids that absorb light.

If thermal forces are responsible for the break-up of the asteroid, “that’s exactly what you would expect to see”, said Jedicke.

The authors can’t say for certain what causes the asteroids to break up when they get close to the sun, but they lay out a few possibilities in the paper.

For instance, the intense radiation from the sun could be causing the asteroids to spin up their rotation rate to the point where gravity and cohesive forces can no longer keep them together.

It is also possible that as the asteroid flies close to the sun its surface becomes hot enough to cause thermal cracking, similar to what you might see in mud that has been baked by the sun.

Finally, the scientists wonder if all asteroids might contain volatile elements that can sublimate (go directly from solid to gas) in moderate temperatures and exert enough pressure to cause the body to explode.

But all these are just lines of future inquiry, Jedicke said.

“We really steer away from speculating too much about the mechanisms by which they are disappearing,” he said.

“What our data shows is there is a deficit of objects close to the sun, and the fact that we can see that deficit means they have to disappear quite rapidly.”

The researchers add that the discovery could explain the origin of meteor showers that have no known parent object.

If the Earth passed through the stream of debris left in the wake of an exploded asteroid, bits of this busted up space rock would burn up in our asteroid and cause shooting stars in the night sky.

WASHINGTON — Here’s another use for the smartphone as it invades daily life: in place of your debit card at your bank cash machine.

The “cardless” automatic teller machine (ATM) is gaining ground in the US and around the world, with smartphone technology allowing for speedier and more secure transactions.

Dozens of US banks are installing new ATMs or updating existing ones to allow customers to order cash on a mobile application and then scan a code to get their money without having to insert a bank card.

US banking giants Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Chase are in the process of deploying the new ATMs, as are a number of regional banks and financial groups around the world. Makers of ATMs and financial software groups are ramping up to meet this demand. 

“We think our model [using smartphones] reduces a lot of vulnerabilities,” said Doug Brown, who leads mobile technology for FIS Global, a major provider of software and technology for ATMs.

Brown said the FIS cardless system is being used at some 2,000 ATMs operated by at least 28 banks in the United States “and we’re looking to rapidly expand that”.

He said the system should be operational at some 80,000 machines in North America over the coming 18 months. And similar changes are coming in other countries, according to Brown.

Reducing ‘skimming,’ fraud

In addition to speeding the transaction time, the smartphone-based system aims to curb the growing problem of “skimming” in which criminals steal the data on a card, often by inserting devices into the ATM card slot.

By some estimates, skimming cost the global banking industry some $2 billion in 2015 and can lead to other kinds of fraud when card data is stolen.

“Consumers are aware of this, they really understand and welcome this,” Brown said.

Another security benefit, Brown said, is that authenticating on the handset reduces the time spent at the ATM to around 10 seconds instead of the typical 30 to 40 seconds

“The performance is kind shocking to some people, they almost jump back at the instantaneous response,” Brown said. “But it provides more physical security because they can make the transaction faster.”

Bank of America spokeswoman, Betty Riess, said the group is “currently developing a new cardless ATM solution” based on NFC or near field communication technology to allow customers to authenticate without the use of a card.

“We’ll roll out this capability in late February to associates in select ATMs in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Charlotte, New York and Boston.” Riess said. “It will be followed by a broader customer launch mid-year.”

Chase said it is planning a similar rollout sometime this year.

“When we first roll this out, customers will be able to request an access code through the Chase mobile app and enter it at the ATM to do their transactions,” said Chase spokesman Michael Fusco.

“Later on, they will be able to use their digital mobile wallet to complete the transaction at the ATM.”

Wells Fargo is also on board, developing ATMs that will allow customers to use their smartphones to obtain and eight-digit token to authorise a cash withdrawal.

The Wells Fargo system will support Android Pay, “and we’ll continue to evaluate additional wallets”, said spokesman Kristopher Dahl.

Chicago-based BMO Harris, an affiliate of Bank of Montreal, began using smartphone technology at its 750 ATMs last March.

‘Headless’ ATMs

Some of the new technologies will require only a software update to the ATM, while others will need new hardware.

ATM manufacturer Diebold is testing a “headless” teller machine, without a screen or keypad, which dispenses cash from interaction on the smartphone.

“What we are saying with this is forget the card reader, forget the PIN pad, we all have these devices in our pockets,” said Dave Kuchenski, Diebold’s senior business development manager for new technology.

Customers need only verify their identity, which can be done with the device’s fingerprint reader, or possibly with an iris scanner on the ATM.

While some existing Diebold ATMs can work with mobile applications, Kuchenski said the new concept, in testing with Citibank and others, could provide “a better user experience”.

“We don’t have to walk through the same process which we have had since the ATM has existed,” he said.

“If we’re using a mobile phone, we no longer have the need for a card, we no longer have a need for a receipt printer, we’ve dematerialised a lot of the devices. Banks like this, because it has fewer moving parts, so it reduces the total cost of ownership.”

WASHINGTON — The dodo is an extinct flightless bird whose name has become synonymous with stupidity. But it turns out that the dodo was no bird brain, but instead a reasonably brainy bird.

Scientists recently said they figured out the dodo’s brain size and structure based on an analysis of a well-preserved skull from a museum collection. They determined its brain was not unusually small but rather completely in proportion to its body size.

They also found the dodo may have had a better sense of smell than most birds, with an enlarged olfactory region of the brain. This trait, unusual for birds, probably let it sniff out ripe fruit to eat.

The research suggests the dodo, rather than being stupid, boasted at least the same intelligence as its fellow members of the pigeon and dove family.

“If we take brain size — or rather, volume, as we measured here — as a proxy for intelligence, then the dodo was as smart as a common pigeon,” palaeontologist Eugenia Gold of Stony Brook University in New York state said. “Common pigeons are actually smarter than they get credit for, as they were trained as message carriers during the world wars.”

The dodo lived on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. The weird-looking, ground-nesting bird had a pointed beak and rounded head, stood about one-metre tall and weighed up to about 23kg.

Driven into extinction largely by human hunting, the last dodo was seen in 1662.

Gold said dodos exhibited no fear of humans when people reached Mauritius in the 1500s.

“Why would they fear something they’ve never seen? They had no natural predators on the islands before humans arrived. Because of this, sailors herded the birds onto their boats for fresh meat later in their voyages. Their willingness to be driven onto the boats is, I think, what led to people thinking they were dumb. It is rather unfair,” Gold said.

Paleontologist Mark Norell of the American Museum of Natural History in New York explained how the dodo got its reputation: “It had a catchy name, had a ridiculous appearance, was flightless, and because of its lack of fear towards humans, probably due to its isolated habitat, made easy prey: traits which easily could have been attributed to stupidity.”

But Norell added, “Intelligence is a very hard quantity to measure.”

The research was published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

If you’re torn between buying a laptop computer or a tablet, perhaps one of these new beauties that work as both/either can make you happy and help solve the dilemma. That is if you have cash to spare.

Laptops that convert into tablets are the trend. Some refer to them as hybrids, others more sportily as convertibles, conjuring up the image of a fancy car. Others like to call them 2-in-1. Sometime hybrid would refer to units where the screen can be detached from the main unit, to be then handled as a tablet, whereas convertible would imply that the screen cannot be physically detached but folds back 360 per cent behind the keyboard to make the whole set look and behave like a tablet. There’s no definite terminology yet, but it does not really matter, we all know what these portable computers do.

Lenovo (ex-IBM) for one, make an attractive model they wittily call Yoga. Indeed, the machine can take various positions when in use, and folds — or unfolds for that matter — to make a V stand for the tablet in it.

Because hybrid and convertible laptops are meant to function as tablets as well, the screen usually has its limits when it comes to size. Whereas dedicated laptops often sport screens that are 16” or even 17”, hybrids keep it down to a small but reasonable 13” or so. Lenovo’s Yoga 900 has a 13.3” monitor. Weighing a mere 1.3kg and featuring a battery that keeps it working for up to 10 hours, the machine is a real winner.

At around JD950 it is on the expensive side, but it is still cheaper that to buy a laptop and a tablet separately. Besides, high-end smartphones are almost as expensive today. Toshiba’s Portege Z20 is in the same league and cost about the same. In comparison, dedicated top-notch tablets such as Microsoft’s Surface or Samsung Tab 3 Pro 12” cost as much but provide superior tablet performance.

Some manufacturers, like Dell for instance, also propose budget units alongside their high-performance models, and that remain in the affordable JD400-500 price range. However, most reviews seems to indicate that the actual performance is not what one would expect, overall, or at least is not on a par with the upper end units, those close to JD1,000.

Perhaps what one should really look for in this trendy category is more the operating system than the actual hardware technical specifications. Indeed, if you are shopping in the Windows area (i.e. outside the Mac area…), a wise choice would be to go for a hybrid or a convertible that runs Windows 10 and not Windows 8.

Less than a year after it has been made available Win10 has managed to convince the most sceptical, despite some minor details here and there, and that are quickly ironed out by the company. When it comes to touch screens, an essential attribute in tablets, the system works like a charm. Moreover, with each week that passes, users discover more advantages and benefits to Win10. Recently they have “unearthed” a precious tool, deeply buried in the menus and functions, and that lets you know how much Internet-ADSL bandwidth you have used up, in total, and how much each application or programme exactly did use, this over the past 30 days. For hybrids and convertibles such functionality can be a precious one.

Windows 10 on a powerful hybrid or convertible laptop, it’s a definitely winning formula for practical, efficient mobile computing.

AUSTIN, Texas — Autism researchers at Texas A&M University say they have discovered that a common food supplement could help offset a genetic mutation linked to the complex disorder.

Carnitine, which is available as an over-the-counter nutritional supplement and is found in red meats and whole milk, could play a key role in preventing some forms of autism from developing during the early days of pregnancy. There’s not a consensus on whether pregnant women should supplement their carnitine intake, but the A&M researchers see it as a step with virtually no downside if done under medical supervision, comparing it to the widely accepted recommendation that pregnant women consume folic acid, which is added to many foods because it helps prevent defects in a baby’s brain and spinal cord.

“It might help effectively address what seems to be a common factor in autism risk,” said Vytas Bankaitis, one of the authors of the study, which was published in the journal Cell Reports.

Paul Wang, the senior vice president for medical research at AutismSpeaks, said he could not endorse adding significant amounts of carnitine to people’s diets without clinical trials, but nonetheless said the science behind the idea is sound.

“I think this is an important step behind what’s happening with certain types of autism,” said Wang, who reviewed the A&M findings. “It’s solid early research.”

Previous studies found that a particular gene, TMLHE, is linked to autism. Lead researcher Zhigang Xie and Bankaitis appear to have determined how that connection works by tracking and analysing certain kinds of stem cells in developing brains. The lab work was done on mice, which are genetically similar to people.

In some mice, the TMLHE gene is mutated. Because of this, the body produces insufficient amounts of carnitine. Carnitine is important because it helps transport fatty acids into the correct compartment in a cell so they can be broken down. Lack of carnitine appears to result in a foetus’ neural stem cells not getting fatty acid to the correct places, increasing autism risk.

For a male foetus, the mutation erases the ability to make carnitine entirely — a finding consistent with the far higher prevalence of autism among boys, Bankaitis said.

Autism might ultimately be linked to as many as 1,000 genes, and this research addresses only one of those genes, Bankaitis said. But mutations in this particular gene are surprisingly common, he said, and “if you can reduce incidence by even 1 per cent by just a nutritional method, that’s a lot of money and effort society has saved”.

Autism is a general term for “a group of complex disorders of brain development… characterised, in varying degrees, by difficulties in social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication and repetitive behaviours”, according to AutismSpeaks, a national advocacy group that sponsors research and conducts awareness campaigns. One in 68 American children are on the autism spectrum, a tenfold increase in prevalence in 40 years, according to the organisation, which estimates the social cost in the United States is $236 billion a year.

The National Institutes of Health and the Welch Foundation, a private funder of chemical research, paid for the work of Xie and Bankaitis.

The upshot, to them: The body does not necessarily have to produce its own carnitine. It’s found in many normal diets. The ideal amounts for someone to ingest will have to be worked out in separate clinical trials, Bankaitis said, but he added that there is little reason for someone working with a doctor to wait. He sees carnitine supplements in the same light as folic acid, which poses so little risk and carries such an upside that the Food and Drug Administration allowed it to be added to many foods without extensive clinical trials.

For people considering starting a family who are on, say, a vegan diet that has little carnitine, “I would ask my doctor if I could take a corrective supplement,” Bankaitis said. “It’s just such a small, non-invasive, inexpensive step.”