Rumors tip lighter, thinner Apple iPad
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 24 (UPI) -- Apple is developing a thinner, lighter fifth-generation iPad sharing some design points with the recently released iPad Mini, a Japanese tech blog is reporting.
The Macotakara site also said Apple's next iPad Mini would feature the high-resolution Retina display many had expected on the first version, CNET reported Monday.
The rumored next full-size iPad is another case of the accelerated product life cycle Apple seems to be favoring; the fourth-generation model was released last month, just eight months after the third-generation iPad.
If the company sticks to its usual March launch period, that would see the newest version land just five months after the release of its predecessor.
The current iPad is 241.2 mm in height, 185.7 mm in width, and 9.4 mm in depth.
The next iPad could mimic the white and silver and black and slate design elements from the iPad Mini, which itself was based on the iPhone 5, CNET said.
Oldest timber constructions unearthed
FREIBURG IM BREISGAU, Germany, Dec. 24 (UPI) -- Archaeologists in Germany say they've used tree-ring data to identify four ancient water wells as some of the world's oldest timber constructions.
A research team led by the University of Freiburg said the wells excavated at settlements of the first Central European agricultural civilization in the Greater Leipzig region are the oldest known timber constructions in the world, dating to between 5,600 and 4,900 B.C.
The four early Neolithic wells were constructed from oak wood and contained wooden artifacts, bark vessels, fiber cords and an array of richly decorated ceramic vessels, a Freiburg release reported.
Using dendrochronology -- a count of tree rings -- the scientists were able to determine the exact years the trees were felled and therefore the approximate date at which the wells were constructed.
The wood comes from massive old oak trees felled by early Neolithic farmers with stone adzes from 5,206 to 5,098 B.C., and the well-preserved tool marks and timber joints in the wells testify to unexpectedly sophisticated timber construction techniques, they said.
Cyclone risk in Indonesia said increasing
JAKARTA, Dec. 24 (UPI) -- Indonesia has seen more frequent cyclones with global warming in the past few years and the phenomenon is predicted to increase next year, experts say.
Data shows the frequency of cyclones this year was 28 times that for the year 2002, the country's disaster mitigation agency said.
"Global warming has resulted in the formation of more cumulonimbus clouds that could incite cyclones," Sutopo Purwo Yuwono, spokesperson with the Indonesian BNPB agency, said.
Sutopo predicted more cyclones would hit in Indonesia in March to April next year while floods and landslides would hit many parts of the country from January to March, China's Xinhua news agency reported Monday.
Cyclones accounted for 36 percent of the 1,200 disasters -- including floods, landslides, droughts and forest fires --experienced by Indonesia in 2012, Sutopo said.
A total of 60.9 million people living in 315 cities and provincial regencies could face risks from floods and 124 million people in 270 cities and regencies would be vulnerable to landslides, he said.
Secrets of stars' 'aging' revealed
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa., Dec. 24 (UPI) -- How star clusters age and how fast is linked more with their "lifestyle" than with how old they actually are, a U.S./European study found.
The findings come from a study of globular clusters by NASA and the European Space Agency using data from the Hubble Space Telescope and published in the journal Nature.
"Our observations of star clusters have shown us that, although they all formed over ten billion years ago, some of them are still young at heart," study co-author Steinn Sigurdsson at Penn State said. "We now can see how fast the clusters are racing toward their final collapse.
"It is as if each cluster has its own internal clock, some of which are ticking slower than others," he said in a Penn State release.
Globular clusters are spherical collections of stars, tightly bound to each other by gravity, and the approximately 150 globular clusters in the Milky Way contain many of our galaxy's oldest stars, scientists said.
"Although these clusters all formed billions of years ago, we wondered whether some clusters might be aging faster or slower than others," Francesco Ferraro of the University of Bologna in Italy, the leader of the study team, said.
"By studying the distribution of a type of blue star that exists in the clusters, we found that some clusters had indeed evolved much faster over their lifetimes, and we developed a way to measure the rate of aging."
In certain circumstances, stars within a cluster can be reinvigorated and given a new burst of life, creating the observed blue stars, the researchers said.
"Stars can receive extra fuel that bulks them up and substantially brightens them if one star pulls matter off a neighbor, if two neighboring stars merge together, or if two stars collide," Sigurdsson said.
"This study provides the first evidence, based totally on data from observations, of how quickly different globular clusters age."
