Science & Technology News

By Bill Rigby SEATTLE (Reuters) – In the last week of August, Twitter entertained dozens of potential young recruits at a chic studio, while Facebook served drinks and snacks to job-seekers at its own office. More than 175 showed up to a similar event at Google in June. No, Seattle, home of Microsoft Corp and Amazon and fast becoming a second home for Silicon Valley companies looking to access the city’s plentiful pool of relatively cheap tech talent. Microsoft alumni are now running the Seattle offices of Facebook Inc , Twitter Inc and Google Inc , and they look to their former employer as a source for new talent.

By Fredrik Dahl VIENNA (Reuters) – The U.N. nuclear watchdog said it has seen releases of steam and water indicating that North Korea may be operating a reactor, in the latest update on a plant that experts say could make plutonium for atomic bombs. North Korea announced in April of last year that it would revive its aged five-megawatt research reactor at the Yongbyon nuclear complex, saying it was seeking a deterrent capacity. North Korea’s nuclear programme “remains a matter of serious concern”, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in an annual report posted on the U.N. agency’s website. The Vienna-based IAEA continued to monitor developments at Yongbyon through satellite imagery, it said.

By Marafaela Mohloboli and John Mkhize MASERU (Reuters) – Lesotho Prime Minister Thomas Thabane accused Deputy Prime Minister Mothetjoa Metsing of helping to plan a coup by the army that forced the prime minister to flee the country. Metsing took charge of the government once Thabane had fled the country for neighbouring South Africa. Thabane left on Saturday, after the army surrounded his residence and police stations in Lesotho’s capital, Maseru. Gunshots were heard in Maseru on Saturday, where one policeman was shot dead and four others wounded, said senior police superintendent Mofokeng Kolo.

By Marafaela Mohloboli and John Mkhize MASERU (Reuters) – Lesotho’s Deputy Prime Minister Mothetjoa Metsing has taken charge of the government after the Prime Minister Thomas Thabane fled the country accusing the army of staging a coup, a minister said on Sunday. Thabane, who has been in a fractious coalition government with his political rival Metsing, left for neighbouring South Africa on Saturday after the army surrounded his residence and police stations in Lesotho’s capital, Maseru. “For now there hasn’t been any arrangement, but it goes without saying the deputy prime minister will still oversee other issues that need to be taken care of until the prime minister returns.” Relations have been stormy between Thabane’s All Basotho Convention party and Metsing’s Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) group, which formed a coalition with another party after elections in 2012.

By Julie Ingwersen CHICAGO (Reuters) – Bovine avatars with funny hats in an app are being corralled into helping to teach young people in the United States about agricultural markets and risk. The CME Group futures exchange launched the app, called “Risk Ranch,” for tablets and smartphones as an electronic version of a board game called “Commodity Carnival” – first bought to state fairs in 2013 by CME and the 4-H youth organization. “We heard from educators who asked us, ‘How can I get this in my classroom?'” said Laurie Bischel, CME’s executive director of corporate marketing and communications.

By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) – Genetic studies of some of the earliest Ebola cases in Sierra Leone reveal more than 300 genetic changes in the virus as it leapt from person to person, changes that could blunt the effectiveness of diagnostic tests and experimental treatments now in development, researchers said on Thursday. It’s mutating,” said Pardis Sabeti of Harvard University and the Broad Institute, who led the massive study of samples from 78 people in Sierra Leone, all of whose infections could be traced to a faith healer whose claims of a cure attracted Ebola patients from Guinea, where the virus first took hold. The findings, published in Science, suggest the virus is mutating quickly and in ways that could affect current diagnostics and future vaccines and treatments, such as GlaxoSmithKline’s Ebola vaccine, which was just fast-tracked to begin clinical trials, or the antibody drug ZMapp, being developed by California biotech Mapp Biopharmaceutical. The findings come as the World Health Organization said that the epidemic could infect more than 20,000 people and spread to more countries.

By Linda Sieg TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is likely to boost the number of female ministers when he reshuffles his cabinet next week in a show of commitment to promoting women, but the appointees may struggle to convince sceptics they are more than tokens. Abe has made a push to get more women into the workforce to fill gaps due to an ageing, shrinking population a linchpin of his “Abenomics” growth plan. Wooing women voters could also help Abe’s overall ratings. The prime minister saw his popularity dented more among women than men after easing the limits of Japan’s pacifist constitution on the military in July, although his overall support rates have since rebounded to around 50 percent.

By Marina Lopes WASHINGTON (Reuters) – International Business Machines Corp on Wednesday launched a computer system that can quickly identify patterns in massive amounts of data, an ability that IBM said should hasten breakthroughs in science and medical research. The computer system, Watson Discovery Advisor, understands chemical compound interaction and human language and can visually map out connections in data, the company said in a statement. Some researchers and scientists have already been using Watson Discovery Advisor to sift through the sludge of scientific papers published daily. Sanofi, a French pharmaceutical company is working with Watson to identify alternate uses for existing drugs.

By Sharon Begley NEW YORK (Reuters) – A high-profile 2013 study that concluded that different kinds of happiness are associated with dramatically different patterns of gene activity is fatally flawed, according to an analysis published on Monday which tore into its target with language rarely seen in science journals. The new paper, published like the first in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, slams the research for “dubious analyses” and “erroneous methodology” and says it “conjured nonexistent effects out of thin air.” In the 2013 study, researchers had adults answer a 14-item questionnaire meant to sort them into two groups: interested in hedonic well-being (fun and selfish pleasure) or eudaimonic well-being (leading a meaningful life). The two groups, researchers led by psychologist Barbara Frederickson of the University of North Carolina reported, had different patterns of activity in 53 genes. Hedonists had DNA activity akin to people suffering from chronic, illness-inducing stress.

By Alister Doyle OSLO (Reuters) – The Atlantic Ocean has masked global warming this century by soaking up vast amounts of heat from the atmosphere in a shift likely to reverse from around 2030 and spur fast temperature rises, scientists said. The theory is the latest explanation for a slowdown in the pace of warming at the Earth’s surface since about 1998 that has puzzled experts because it conflicts with rising greenhouse gas emissions, especially from emerging economies led by China. “We’re pointing to the Atlantic as the driver of the hiatus,” Ka-Kit Tung, of the University of Washington in Seattle and a co-author of Thursday’s study in the journal Science, told Reuters. The study said an Atlantic current carrying water north from the tropics sped up this century and sucked more warm surface waters down to 1,500 metres (5,000 feet), part of a natural shift for the ocean that typically lasts about three decades.