New PSP headlines Sony's Leipzig offerings

Facing an onslaught from the Xbox 360 and Wii, and stiff portable competition from the Nintendo DS and Iphone, Sony fired off a barrage of surprise announcements at this week's Leipzig Games Convention in Germany. Top of the list was a redesign of its PSP portable platform, but a new PlayStation 3 model and a keyboard controller are also in the works.

The PSP-3000, which is the second redesign since the PSP launched in 2005, sports a new integrated microphone, while a new PS button replaces the old Home key, matching the branding of its bigger brother the PlayStation 3. The microphone will be used for the machine's Skype voice-over-IP telephony application, and should allow for voice chat in online multiplayer games.

SONY HARDWARE GALLERY

Leipzig also brought news of yet another entry in Sony's long, long list of PlayStation 3 hardware configurations: it'll hit US stores in November, sporting with a gargantuan 160 GB hard drive, by far the largest in the range so far. It'll retail for $499.99, bundled with a copy of the excellent Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, a voucher to download PAIN from the PlayStation Network, and the ubiquitous DualShock 3 rumble-enabled controller. No official word yet on whether this new top-of-the-line configuration will be backwards-compatible with earlier PlayStation models, but if the scuttlebutt is to be believed, probably not.

Lastly, if you're fed up with struggling with the PlayStation 3's clumsy on-screen keyboard, there's light at the end of the tunnel. Sony also unveiled a keyboard attachment for the regular DualShock controller, which will give text-happy gamers a full QWERTY-style selection of keys with which to enter passwords, browse the web, and send rude messages to defeated opponents. It also supports a touchpad mode for mouse-like functionality.

Bees, Fish Analyzed to Understand Serial Killers

Not a Killer But...

Studying species in the animal world helps police catch human criminals -- and vice versa. Originally developed to catch serial killers, a method called geographic profiling is now being used to study great white sharks, bats and bees.

In turn, criminologists expect that these biological studies will help refine their criminal studies, making it easier for them to catch criminals more quickly. Eventually they want to apply it to other fields, such as epidemiology.

"The same general geographic framework that criminologists use to catch criminals can be used by zoologists as well," said Kim Rossmo, co-author of an article in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface and a professor at the Texas State University Center for Geospatial Intelligence and Investigation.

"This makes us think that it can be applied to other areas as well, like epidemiology."

Rossmo originally developed geographic profiling back in the 1980's. GP, as it's known, has since been adopted by police forces across the world and has been applied in such high profile cases as the BTK Killer and the D.C. Sniper.

GP works on the assumption that, like bats, bees and sharks, serial killers don't work right next to their homes and instead travel to a more distant locations to commit crimes, creating a buffer zone around their home or work.

"They want to operate in a comfort zone, close to an area they know but not where everyone knows them," said Rossmo.

By examining the geographic locations of crimes, scientists can determine a general vicinity for the home or work location of a criminal.

The idea to apply GP to animal studies came from watching stickleback fish, said Nigel Raine, a co-author on the JRSI paper and a professor from Queen Mary, University of London.

Sticklebacks create nests for their eggs in the midst of vegetation. They keep vegetation next to their nests intact, to help hide it from predators and parasites, and travel further away to forage.

The researchers tried GP first on bats, and then bees, the subject of the JRSI paper. Another study using GP in sharks is in press.

While the technique works better for some animals (bees) and less well for others (bats), the principle is still the same. By watching where animals feed, researchers can find their homes to study the animals more effectively or to help save endangered or threatened species by identifying what geographic areas need increased protection.

While the new information is certainly valuable to biologists, criminologists are looking at the new studies as a way to perform experiments that would be unethical or flat out impossible in the human world.

"You can control the settings in biology; where you put the flowers, what kind of flowers, et cetera," said Rossmo. "You can't do that with criminal offenders."

Lorie Velarde, a GIS analyst for the Irvine California Police Department, was recently recognized for using GP to catch a burglar who operated for about 20 years.

"[GP] works great," said Velarde. "The cases where it isn't as accurate is where we don't have enough crimes," said Velarde.

That's where the animal studies will have the biggest impact, says Velarde, by refining the models to make them more sensitive so detectives and analysts can find criminals sooner.

"If there is something happening in the animal world it certainly applies to the human world as well," she said.

The next step for GP, according to Rossmo and his colleagues, is to use it to find bigger killers, like disease-carrying mosquitoes and contaminated water.

"If we see a pattern of people being infected with malaria in an area, we can use that data to find a leaking pipe or empty tire and then spray it," said Rossmo.

That technique harkens back to the very beginnings of public health, said Rossmo, when scientists identified the source of a cholera epidemic as a water pump on a certain street using a technique very similar to modern day geographic profiling.

'Dancing Plague' and Other Odd Afflictions Explained

The Dancing Plague

In July of 1518, a woman referred to as Frau Troffea stepped into a narrow street in Strasbourg, France and began a fervent dancing vigil that lasted between four and six days. By the end of the week, 34 others had joined her and, within a month, the crowd of dancing, hopping and leaping individuals had swelled to 400.

Authorities prescribed "more dancing" to cure the tormented movers but, by summer's end, dozens in the Alsatian city had died of heart attacks, strokes and sheer exhaustion due to nonstop dancing.

For centuries this bizarre event, known variously as the dancing plague or epidemic of 1518, has stumped scientists attempting to find a cause for the mindless, intense and ultimately deadly dance. Historian John Waller, author of the forthcoming book, "A Time to Dance, A Time to Die: The Extraordinary Story of the Dancing Plague of 1518," studied the illness at length and has solved the mystery.

"That the event took place is undisputed," said Waller, a Michigan State University professor who has also authored a paper on the topic, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Endeavour.

Waller explained that historical records documenting the dancing deaths, such as physician notes, cathedral sermons, local and regional chronicles, and even notes issued by the Strasbourg city council during the height of the boogying rage, all "are unambiguous on the fact that (victims) danced."

"These people were not just trembling, shaking or convulsing; although they were entranced, their arms and legs were moving as if they were purposefully dancing," he said.

Possible Causes

Eugene Backman, author of the 1952 book "Religious Dances in the Christian Church and in Popular Medicine," sought a biological or chemical origin for the dancing mania. Backman and other experts at the time believed the most likely explanation was ergot, a mold that grows on the stalks of damp rye. When consumed unknowingly in bread, the mold can trigger violent convulsion and delusions but not, Waller says, "coordinated movements that last for days."

While at Australia's James Cook University, sociologist Robert Bartholomew proposed a theory that the dancers were performing an ecstatic ritual of a heretical sect, but Waller counters, "there is no evidence that the dancers wanted to dance."

"On the contrary," he added, "they expressed fear and desperation," according to the written accounts.

Unusual Events Preceded the Epidemic

A series of famines, resulting from bitter cold winters, scorching summers, sudden crop frosts and terrifying hailstorms, preceded the maniacal dancing, Waller said. Waves of deaths followed from malnutrition. People who survived were often forced to slaughter all of their farm animals, secure loans and finally, take to the streets begging.

Smallpox, syphilis, leprosy and even a new disease known as "the English sweat" swept through the area.

"Anxiety and false fears gripped the region," Waller said.

One of these fears, originating from a Christian church legend, was that if anyone provoked the wrath of Saint Vitus, a Sicilian martyred in 303 A.D., he would send down plagues of compulsive dancing.

Waller therefore believes a phenomenon known as "mass psychogenic illness," a form of mass hysteria usually preceded by intolerable levels of psychological distress, caused the dancing epidemic.

Praying to St. Vitus

Mass Hysteria

Ivan Crozier, a lecturer in the Science Studies Unit at the University of Edinburgh, told Discovery News that he "agrees completely" with Waller's conclusion.

"His cultural explanation, combined with a contextualized view of the conditions in which people lived at the time on the Rhine and Mosel, is very convincing and is superior to the arguments about ergot, which is a compound like LSD," Crozier said.

"Ergot gave people visions, not energy to dance," he added.

Crozier is a world authority on yet another mass hysteria epidemic: koro.

Since at least 300 B.C., plagues of koro -- an irrational male fear that one's genitals have been stolen or are fatally shrinking into the body -- have swept through various parts of the world, particularly throughout Africa and Asia. Most recently, a 1967 outbreak, documented in the Singapore Medical Journal, caused over 1,000 men to use pegs and clamps in hopes of protecting themselves from the gripping fear.

"In both cases we see cultural issues impacting on collective behavior," Crozier said, explaining that preexisting superstitions, fears and beliefs surrounding both koro and the dancing epidemic led to group beliefs turning into "collective action."

Waller explained that victims often go into an involuntary trance state, fueled by psychological stress and the expectation of succumbing to an altered state.

"Thus, in groups subject to severe social and economic hardship, trance can be highly contagious," he said.

More Deadly Dancing, And Laughing

At least seven other outbreaks of the dancing epidemic occurred in medieval Europe, mostly in the areas surrounding Strasbourg. In more recent history, a major outbreak occurred in Madagascar in the 1840's, according to medical reports that described "people dancing wildly, in a state of trance, convinced that they were possessed by spirits."

Perhaps the most unusual documented case of mass psychogenic illness was the Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic of 1962. A paper published the following year in the Central African Journal of Medicine described what happened.

Triggered by a joke among students at a Tanzania boarding school, young girls began to laugh uncontrollably. At first there were spurts of laughter, which extended to hours and then days.

The victims, virtually all female, suffered pain, fainting, respiratory problems, rashes and crying attacks, all related to the hysterical laughter. Proving the old adage that laughter can be contagious, the epidemic spread to the parents of the students as well as to other schools and surrounding villages.

Eighteen months passed before the laughter epidemic ended.

Curing the Mind

According to medical epidemiologist Timothy Jones, an assistant clinical professor of preventative medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, who also reported an incident of hysteria in Belgium following soft-drink consumption, "Outbreaks of psychogenic illness are likely to be more common than is currently appreciated, and many go unrecognized."

Jones recommends that physicians treating such problems "attempt to separate persons with illness associated with the outbreak," conduct tests to rule out other causes, monitor and provide oxygen for hyperventilation, attempt to minimize the individual's anxiety, notify public health authorities and seek to assure patients that, while their symptoms "are real…rumors and reports of suspected causes are not equivalent to confirmed results."

Aside from their medical interest, Waller believes such epidemics, particularly those from past centuries, are "of immense historical value."

He said the dancing plague "tells us much about the extraordinary supernaturalism of late medieval people, but it also reveals the extremes to which fear and irrationality can lead us."

He added, "Few events in my view so clearly show the extraordinary potentials of the human mind."

Harsh Climate Change Once Fell Swiftly

It's one of the most dramatic examples of climate change in Earth's history, and scientists now say it happened almost entirely in one year's time.

Thirteen thousands years ago, Europe was much like it is today -- cool but temperate, with great forests carpeting the land. Ice sheets still nibbled at Finland and Sweden, but for much of the continent the last Ice Age was a distant memory.

Suddenly, the climate went haywire. Warm Gulf Stream currents that brought heat from the equator up toward the pole began to fail. Temperatures plummeted 3 to 4 degrees Celsius, and stayed that way for a millennium.

Now scientists believe they've pinpointed the exact time the northern hemisphere was plunged back into a deep freeze. Examining sediments preserved at the bottom of a remote lake in western Germany, they found that what's known as the Younger Dryas cold period took just a year to sweep across the continent, starting in the autumn, 12,679 years ago.

Led by Achim Brauer of the German Research Center for Geosciences in Potsdam, Germany, the team believes such a quick, profound change in climate could only have been brought about by a shift in winds across the northern hemisphere.

Today prevailing winds in the northern hemisphere above the tropics tend to blow from the southwest to the northeast. Air that flows over Texas soon crosses the Atlantic and winds up over Norway.

As it travels the air passes over the Gulf Stream, a warm ribbon of water pouring northward from the tropics. The balmy air brings heat to Europe, which otherwise would be chilly.

The same was probably true just before the Yonger Dryas set in. But as the vast Ice Age glaciers retreated, their melt water flowed into the northern reaches of the Atlantic Ocean. The injection of fresh water made the sea easier to freeze, and a new skin of ice began advancing south.

The warm conveyor belt of Gulf Stream waters soon ebbed to a trickle. And as the sea ice advanced, the winds shifted into a west-east pattern. Within a year the breezes that warmed Europe had vanished.

"The Younger Dryas continues to surprise us in providing a message as to how quickly climate change can occur," said Daniel Sigman of Princeton University in N.J. Sigman is a co-author on the study, which appears today in the journal Nature Geoscience.

"The hypothesis on this paper is I think a very nice one," Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University said. Winds tend to blow parallel to temperature gradients, and the gradient between sea ice and open water can be very sharp, up to 40 degrees C.

The sea ice border probably extended in a rough west to east direction, and the winds would've followed it, bringing cold air to much of Europe.

"You can think of it as a front pushing down across Germany," Alley said. "Winds go where something's pushing them hard. A steep temperature gradient along the edge of sea ice would push hard in an east-west direction."

Universe's Spiral Galaxy Population Evolving

New generations of small spiral galaxies are three times as likely to sport a central bar of stars as their counterparts seven billion years ago, a census of more than 2,000 galaxies shows.

The finding indicates that the galaxies, which are believed to build up over time by merging with other galaxies, are still evolving in form as the universe ages, said Kartik Sheth at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Spiral galaxies were around in the universe's early days, but only about 20 percent of them had the bar-shaped cores so prevalent in newer galaxies. Sheth's team found that spiral galaxies younger than about seven billion years -- roughly half the age of the universe -- were three times as likely as older generations to have bars.

The structures, which are found in two-thirds of all spiral galaxies including our own Milky Way, form when the orbits of stars in the disk become unstable and drift from circular paths.

"It turns out that stars prefer to be in these bar orbits," Sheth told Discovery News. "It's a lower-energy state."

Over time, more and more stars are locked into elongated orbits, making the bar more stable, added Bruce Elmegreen, an IBM Research Division astrophysicist.

The small, low-mass spiral galaxies are the most dynamic now. Larger-mass spirals with bar structures developed them, on average, much earlier in their history.

"When the universe was forming, the biggest things formed first. Then the action moved down to the wimpier guys that are still becoming mature," Sheth said.