Features

WASHINGTON – The melting of ice in the Antarctic is considered a top threat to global sea level rise, and scientists said Thursday the trend could continue for decades or even centuries to come.

Researchers focused on the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica, which has been thinning at an increasingly rapid pace for about the past 20 years, as the waters beneath get warmer along with the rest of the ocean.

Based on new geological surveys and advanced dating techniques on rocks that have been exposed by the retreating ice, experts said in the journal Science that a similar phenomenon occurred thousands of years ago.

Some 8,000 years ago, the glacier thinned as fast as it has in recent decades, suggesting it may follow a similar pattern in the future, they reported.

“This thinning was sustained for decades to centuries at an average rate of more than 100 centimetres per year, comparable to contemporary thinning rates,” said the article in Science.

“Our findings reveal that Pine Island Glacier has experienced rapid thinning at least once in the past, and that, once set in motion, rapid ice sheet changes in this region can persist for centuries.”

The research team came from Britain, Germany and the United States.

Last month, scientists reported in the journal Nature Climate Change that the glacier was melting irreversibly and could add as much as a centimetre (0.4 inches) to ocean levels in 20 years.

A massive river of ice, the glacier by itself is responsible for 20 per cent of total ice loss from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet today.

On average, it shed 20 billion tonnes of ice annually from 1992-2011, a loss that is likely to increase up to and above 100 billion tonnes each year, said the Nature study.

NEW YORK — People take to Twitter to talk about everything from politics to breakfast to Justin Bieber in what feels like a chaotic stream of messages. So it may come as a surprise that the conversations on the short messaging service fit into just six distinct patterns.

The Pew Research Centre, working with the Social Media Research Foundation and using a special software tool, analysed and mapped millions of public tweets, retweets, hashtags and replies that form the backbone of Twitter chatter. The resulting diagrams show how people, brands, news outlets and celebrities interact on Twitter, depending on the topic of conversation.

When it comes to politics, for example, Twitter’s citizens tend to form two distinct groups that rarely interact with one another, divided along liberal and conservative lines, according to the report, which was published on Thursday. Liberals tend to post links to mainstream news sources, while conservatives link to sites with a conservative blend, according to the study, whose authors likened their methods to taking aerial photos of crowds gathered in public places.

The researchers are quick to note that not everyone uses Twitter — only 14 per cent of the US population — and not all who do use it to talk about politics, for example. Still, looking at how conversations flow on social media can provide new insights into how people communicate in a way that was not possible until very recently.

“You could never do that in the old days when you were running around with a pen and clipboard,” said Marc A. Smith, one of the study’s authors and director of the Social Media Research Foundation.

What emerged in maps of political conversations that the liberal and conservative groups are not even arguing with one another. Rather, they are “ignoring one another while pointing to different web resources and using different hashtags”, according to the study.

The telephone polls that take the pulse of the country about everything from politics to race, religion and technology will continue to form the research centre’s backbone. But Lee Rainie, one of the study’s authors and director of the Pew Research Internet Project said there are other kinds of data that deserve exploration. Looking at social media — something that large swaths of people participate in — can give insights to important information about people’s lives.

Here are the other five types of conversations:

— People who talk about well-known brands on Twitter tend to be disconnected from one another, focusing only on the topic at hand and not really interacting with each other. The study calls these “brand clusters.” One graph, that looked at mentions of Apple, found that users didn’t follow, reply to or mention any other person who also tweeted about the company.

— People who tweet from a social media conference, or about another highly specialised topic tend to form tight crowds of people who are connected to one another as followers. There are only a few users who are not connected to at least a few others in the group.

— “Community clusters” happen when several, evenly sized Twitter groups are connected to each other. In a sense, these can be compared “to people clustering in different stalls at a bazaar”. The conversations in this group share a common broader topic, whether that’s Michelle Obama or a tech conference, but each cluster takes a different focus.

— “Broadcast networks” are often media outlets or prominent social media figures with a lot of followers who repeat the messages such outlets send out.

— A Twitter “support network,” is the last major conversation type. These conversations usually involve a large company, such as a bank or airline, that listens and replies to consumer complaints. When mapped, the interactions in these groups tend to look like a bicycle wheel hub with many spokes.

SAN FRANCISCO — If Facebook hopes to remain the social networking leader, CEO Mark Zuckerberg knows the company must follow the people. That realisation compelled Zuckerberg to pay $19 billion for WhatsApp, a mobile messaging application that is redefining the concept of texting while its audience of 450 million users expands at an even faster clip than Facebook itself.

The deal sent shock waves through the technology industry because of the staggering price being paid for a four-year-old service that isn’t as well known in the US as it is overseas where WhatsApp has become a hip way to communicate instantaneously.

Although the amount of money involved is difficult to comprehend, the reason Facebook prizes WhatsApp is easier to grasp.

“This is a ‘go big or go home’ moment for Facebook,” said Benedict Evans, a former cellphone analyst who is now a partner with the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Just as he did nearly two years ago when Facebook bought photo-sharing service Instagram for $715 million, Zuckerberg is trying to ensure that his company doesn’t get left behind as people move to the next trend.

And WhatsApp is what’s hot now.  The Mountain View, California, start-up already has nearly twice as many users as the better known short messaging service, Twitter Inc. What’s more, WhatsApp is adding about 1 million users each day — more than even Facebook.

The rapid growth has convinced Zuckerberg that WhatsApp is bound to exceed 1 billion users within the next few years to give Facebook even more telling insights into what matters to people. Even at its current size, WhatsApp is already handling an average of 19 billion messages per day. Those daily messages include about 600 million photos. Facebook believes that WhatsApp’s messaging volume already exceeds all the traditional texts sent through the networks of cellphone carriers. Those short messaging services, or SMS, generate about $100 billion in annual revenue while WhatsApp charges just $1 annually after the first year of free usage.

By making a big bet on WhatsApp, Zuckerberg is trying to avoid the mistake that one of his heroes, Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates, made during the late 1990s when the Internet began to trigger an upheaval in business and culture. Gates recognised that Microsoft’s lucrative Windows software franchise could be undermined by a variety of new services made possible by the Internet, but didn’t act on some of his early instincts.

By the time that Steve Ballmer had succeeded Gates as Microsoft’s CEO in 2000, Google Inc. was already way ahead in the lucrative field of Internet search and Apple was gearing up to develop the iPod music player that paved the way for the iPhone.

Zuckerberg, 29, is showing his savvy and moxie by moving quickly to adapt to fickle tastes, said David Rogers, a professor at Columbia University’s business school and the author of the book, “The Network is Your Customer.”

“User behaviours in these digital experiences evolve so rapidly that you can’t afford to play the Windows game and say, ‘We are the dominant platform so we are just going to hold our position by making little tweaks,’” Rogers said.

Zuckerberg signalled his interest in mobile messaging apps late last year when he offered to buy Snapchat for $3 billion only to be rebuffed, according to several media outlets and technology blogs that quoted unnamed sources. It took less than two weeks to pull of the WhatsApp deal, according to Zuckerberg.

Being nimble has become even more important as smartphones supplant personal computers as the primary way people interact with digital services.

The advent of smartphones has been accompanied by a seemingly bottomless well of free smartphone applications that make it easy for people to hopscotch from one service to the next. The phenomenon has made it more difficult for a single application to become a one-stop shop that fulfills everyone’s digital desires.

“The smartphone is a social platform in ways that the desktop computer never really was,” Evans said. “A lot of the winner-take-all dynamics don’t apply on the smartphone.”

NEW YORK — Rumours have been swirling since news broke this week of a possible meeting between Apple’s top executive for acquisitions and the CEO of electric car maker Tesla.

Citing a person familiar with the matter, The San Francisco Chronicle reported Sunday that the meeting between Adrian Perica and Elon Musk took place last spring. The companies haven’t commented on the report.

With $158.8 billion in cash on its balance sheet, Apple certainly has the money to buy Tesla, which has a market cap of about $24 billion.

Although a pairing of the two companies is a likely long shot and far off at best, it’s kind of fun to think about a car made by the company that brought us the iPhone and iPad. Here are a few ideas:

NAME — There’s no question it would be called the iCar. With iPads, iPods and iPhones on the market, do they really have a choice? New models to follow could be called the iCar 2, iCar3, etc. Or the company could just make an iCarS if it didn’t feel like making any real changes to the product.

COLOUR — Two words: Space Grey. Of course, there also would be a hard-to-find gold-tone version and a slightly cheaper model featuring a shiny plastic exterior that could come in an array of eye-popping colours.

PLUG — Whatever it looks like, it’s sure to differ from the one Tesla currently uses. After all, Apple can’t have drivers re-using their current accessories.

APPS — The dashboard of a Tesla already looks like a giant iPad. But in addition to the latest version of iOS and Retina display, an Apple version could include apps for podcasts, photos and of course iTunes and iTunes Radio. Want to let your passengers binge watch the second season of “House of Cards” as you blow down the freeway? Just fire up the Netflix app. And Candy Crush Saga would come preinstalled to give you something to do while waiting out traffic jams.

NAVIGATION — Google Maps? Forget about it. Apple Maps, all the way.

PRICE — Probably above what a Tesla currently sells for, but cheaper with a two-year agreement.

LONDON – University researchers are working on a system that could quash rumours spreading on social media by identifying whether information is accurate.

Five European universities, led by Sheffield in northern England, are cooperating on a system that could automatically identify whether a rumour originates from a reliable source and can be verified.

The researchers said Tuesday they hope the system will allow governments, emergency services, media and the private sector to respond more effectively to claims emerging and spreading on social media before they get out of hand.

The three-year, European Union-funded project, called PHEME, is an attempt to filter out the nuggets of factual information from the avalanche of ill-informed comment on Twitter and Facebook.

“Social networks are rife with lies and deception,” the project leaders said in a statement. Such messages can have far-reaching consequences, but there is so much of it that it is impossible to analyse it in real time.

Claims during the 2011 riots in London that the London Eye observation wheel was on fire or that all the animals were let out of London Zoo were given as examples of false rumours that spread rapidly via the Internet.

The research is being led by Dr Kalina Bontcheva of Sheffield University’s Faculty of Engineering.

“The problem is that it all happens so fast and we can’t quickly sort truth from lies,” she said.

“This makes it difficult to respond to rumours, for example, for the emergency services to quash a lie in order to keep a situation calm. Our system aims to help with that, by tracking and verifying information in real time.”

The project is trying to identify four types of information –– speculation, controversy, misinformation and disinformation –– and model their spread on social networks.

It will try to use three factors to establish veracity: the information itself (lexical, syntactic and semantic); cross-referencing with trustworthy data sources; and the information’s diffusion.

The results can be displayed to the user on screen.

“We can already handle many of the challenges involved, such as the sheer volume of information in social networks, the speed at which it appears and the variety of forms, from tweets, to videos, pictures and blog posts,” said Bontcheva.

“But it’s currently not possible to automatically analyse, in real time, whether a piece of information is true or false and this is what we’ve now set out to achieve.”

The Times newspaper said the EU would meet most of the predicted 4.3 million euros costs of the project and a final version is hoped for within 18 months.

The project is a collaboration between five universities –– Sheffield, King’s College London, Warwick in England, Saarland in Germany and MODUL University Vienna –– and four companies - ATOS in Spain, iHub in Kenya, Ontotext in Bulgaria and swissinfo.ch.

SEOUL, South Korea — Facebook’s announcement it is paying $19 billion in cash and stock to acquire WhatsApp is a milestone in the short history of mobile messaging apps. Hundreds of millions of people have downloaded such apps to their smartphones and tablets to chat and share photos and videos for free, making them potent rivals to Facebook. WhatsApp alone has 450 million active monthly users.

The stunning price tag for a company that employs just 55 people is likely to boost valuations of other messaging applications and also stoke worries about a new tech bubble. Many of the apps are still figuring out how to make money from big pools of users.

Their main features are free messaging and voice calls between two individuals or in groups. Some have been adding gift buying and mobile games. They are already undercutting the mainstay businesses of mobile phone network companies: text messages and voice calls.

Some of the most popular messaging apps were developed in Asia, where a slew of competitors are vying for dominance.

LINE

Developed by Naver Corp. in 2011, LINE is a free messaging app that has become hugely successful in Japan and Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand. It built its popularity around cute “stickers” of animal or comic characters that users can share in chat rooms. As of November, 300 million people were using LINE around the world. In less than three years, LINE has become a cash cow for Naver, which operates South Korea’s most visited web portal but is little known outside of East Asia. Its money making prowess makes it a rarity among messaging apps. Most of the app’s revenue comes from mobile games. Some also comes from sticker sales which cost about $1 for a dozen. LINE raked in revenue of 454.2 billion won ($423 million) in 2013.

Viber

Created by Cyprus-based Viber Media, Viber offers its core Internet phone call function for free to its 280 million global users. Japan’s top online retailer Rakuten Inc. said last week it will buy Viber for $900 million as the retail giant is eager to expand outside Japan. Rakuten founder Hiroshi Mikitani sees Viber as a potential platform for games and other content. Viber users can make video calls and exchange photos and messages between mobile devices and desktop computers. Access from a desktop computer is a feature that more mobile messenger apps are offering as they want users to stick with their service as they shift between devices.

WeChat

China’s dominant mobile messaging app is WeChat, launched in 2011 by Tencent Holdings Ltd., one of China’s leading Internet companies. Tencent, which makes most of its revenue from games, said WeChat had 272 million active users last year, with more than 100 million of them abroad. Other Chinese Internet companies including Alibaba and Baidu and phone carrier China Mobile Ltd. also offer instant messaging apps but have far fewer users. WeChat has added features including short voice messages and video calls over WiFi, which saves users money on phone calls. WeChat has added a payment feature for use in e-commerce. Alibaba, which dominates e-commerce in China, sees that as a threat to its own online payment service and is scrambling to shore up its dominance.

Kakao Talk

Created in 2010 by Kakao, a South Korea startup, Kakao Talk spread quickly in South Korea along with rapid adoption of smartphones. It has become the go-to free messaging service enjoyed by nearly all Korean smartphone users, giving birth to new idioms such as “Let’s do Ka Talk.” Some government officials and business people hold online meetings in Kakao Talk’s group chat rooms. Abroad, it has lagged behind LINE and others in popularity. As of last month, Kakao Talk had 130 million users exchanging 5.5 billion messages a day and spending 213 minutes on the app every week. Kakao Talk is looking for ways to extend beyond messaging and mobile games to become a portal for navigating the mobile Internet and an e-commerce platform. Mobile games helped the app become profitable in 2012 and Kakao plans an IPO for 2015. Tencent became Kakao’s second-biggest shareholder in 2012.

You browse the web several times a day, sometimes for hours, it’s all understood. But do you still buy and read hard copy printed books or do you go for e-books? Or perhaps you opted for a combination of both, for the time being at least? Of course the word book is understood as novels, thrillers, classics, history books, romance, poetry and the like. Online news, blogs, reviews and otherwise precious reading material on the web don’t count or qualify as books.

It is one of the most striking social transformations that the web has brought on us the last 10 years or so. It is taking place and evolving more quietly than social networking, in general, but it is definitely happening and the drive continues unabated.

Looking at statistics in the US for example gives us a foretaste of things to come in Jordan in a few years, since it is always the way it goes. According to Pew Research, market penetration of the product was 20 per cent in 2012 and it is estimated that it has practically doubled since. The success is not only due to the aggressive marketing of e-reading devices such as Amazon’s Kindle but also to the wide availability of libraries that have already implemented convenient lending of virtual books.

There are no statistics about e-book reading habits in Jordan. Based on hear-say only, one can only guess that in the capital city Amman less than 10 per cent of the population who has access to the Internet regularly reads e-books. As for the rest of the country, even a wild guess would not mean much. Perhaps the excellent, dynamic Department of Statistics in the country should tackle such issue.

The possibility to borrow e-books from libraries would constitute a huge boost to the phenomenon. For that libraries would have to be fully equipped with huge databases and complex systems, something more or less similar to e-banking, a system that is definitely working alright in Jordan and widely adopted by the population.

When you think that Amazon.com doesn’t even allow you to buy and download MP3 music tracks from its website because the service is restricted to the US, borrowing an e-book from there remains a remote possibility. Unless of course local libraries in Jordan start building their own virtual system and offer local lending. Given that the question of the protection of intellectual property is not yet completely solved in the country — this is an understatement — the implementation of legal e-book borrowing probably has to wait, the two notions being closely intertwined.

There is still reluctance from those who swear by nothing than a solid, hard copy book, printed on good old paper. These will argue that holding the paper in their hands makes them to better connect to the story they are reading. It’s all about “feeling” the book they will tell you. These are the same who thought that blackboard and chalk would still prevail at school in the twenty-first century.

Whereas it would be hard to foretell the actual impact of e-books in more than 15 or 20 years from now, it is safe to predict that the phenomenon will continue to grow significantly over the next few years and that it will cross the 50 per cent barrier soon, globally. 

The quality of the devices, the low cost, the convenience and the wide availability of reading contents, not to mention the positive impact on the environment, it  will all irremediably change the way we approach books and read them. Again, it’s about full books and stories, not about news, blogs or specifically web-formatted information. How quickly will Jordan catch up on North America or Western Europe remains to be seen.