Samudra Baru Tengah Membelah Afrika

Para geolog yang melakukan penelitian di wilayah Afar, Etiopia, mengatakan bahwa 10 juta tahun lagi samudra baru akan terbentuk. Samudra itu akan memecah Afrika menjadi dua bagian.

Proses terbentuknya samudra baru sebenarnya telah dimulai dari tahun 2005 lalu. Saat itu, retakan sepanjang 60 kilometer terbentuk di Etiopia. Dalam jangka waktu 10 hari saja retakan sudah melebar hingga 8 meter. Perkembangan retakan ini cukup mengejutkan karena secara teori, dalam kondisi normal, retakan selebar itu baru bisa tercapai dalam 230 tahun.

Retakan tersebut disebabkan oleh dorongan batuan lunak dan panas dari perut bumi. Menurut para ilmuwan, adanya dorongan dari dalam menyebabkan permukaan bumi retak. Dalam kurun waktu 5 tahun belakangan diketahui bahwa retakan terus melebar.

Sejauh ini, erupsi yang terjadi di bawah tanah masih terus berlangsung. Akibatnya, pada akhirnya wilayah Etiopia dan Somalia akan terpisah dari Benua Afrika. Ketika dua wilayah terpisah, akan terbentuk selat yang kemudian berkembang menjadi laut dan pada akhirnya samudra.

"Hasil retakan akan memisah semakin jauh. Bagian selatan Etiopia dan Somalia akan terpisah, menciptakan pulau baru. Dan, kita akan memiliki Afrika kecil dan pulau besar lainnya yang terapung di Samudra Hindia," kata James Hammond, seismolog Universitas Bristol yang meneliti Afar.

Dr Tim Wright dari Universitas Oxford di Inggris mengatakan, "Ini hal yang sangat luar biasa." Sebelumnya, ketika menemukannya pada tahun 2005, ia mengatakan, "Retakan ini akan terhubung dengan Laut Merah sehingga bisa terisi air dan membentuk samudra."

Bakal Kehidupan Ditemukan di Meteorit

Asam amino yang selama ini disebut sebagai senyawa bakal kehidupan ditemukan di batu meteor (meteorit) yang jatuh di Sudan. Padahal, saat menembus atmosfer Bumi, meteor sudah terpanaskan dalam suhu ribuan derajat celsius. Temuan ini penting karena menunjukkan daya tahan senyawa tersebut terkait dengan pembentukan kehidupan di muka Bumi.

Asam amino sebetulnya sudah sering ditemukan di meteor yang kaya akan karbon. Namun, biasanya asam amino terbentuk dalam kondisi sejuk. Untuk pertama kalinya, para astronom NASA menemukan asam amino pada meteor yang sudah terpanaskan pada suhu 1.100 derajat celsius. "Suhu setinggi itu harusnya membunuh semua organik yang ada," kata Daniel Glavin, ahli astrobiologi dari Gooddard Space Flight Center, NASA.

Selama ini pembentukan asam amino di asteroid terjadi pada saat temperatur yang lebih sejuk. "Meteor ini menunjukkan ada cara lain yang melibatkan reaksi gas ketika asteroid yang sangat panas mulai mendingin," ujar Glavin. Temuan ini juga memberikan informasi tambahan bagi teori bahwa awal mula kehidupan di Bumi berasal dari asteroid.

Penemuan ini, menurut Glavin, merupakan hal yang penting karena mereka bisa mengetahui bahan-bahan kimia di luar angkasa yang berhubungan dengan asal mula Bumi. "Meteor bisa menyediakan asam amino pada awal Bumi terbentuk, juga pada planet-planet lain di dalam tata surya, termasuk Mars," jelas Glavin.

Meteorit yang ditemukan di Sudan berasal dari asteroid sebesar 4 meter yang masuk ke orbit Bumi pada tahun 2008.

Dugaan Ada Laut di Pluto Makin Kuat

Sebuah model di komputer memunculkan kemungkinan adanya kolam air di bawah lapisan es Pluto yang tebal. Para ilmuwan menduga Pluto punya inti berupa batu yang memiliki materi radioaktif. Secara perlahan, inti tersebut rusak, melepaskan panas yang bisa mencairkan es sekaligus mempertahankan bentuk cair itu.

"Mengingat ukuran dan komposisi Pluto, 100 bagian per 1 miliar potasium radioaktif bisa mempertahankan air 60-105 mil pada kedalaman 120 mil," kata Guillaume Robuchon, ilmuwan keplanetan dari University of California di Santa Cruz, Amerika Serikat.

Simulasi tersebut, seperti ditulis oleh Robuchon pada sinopses penelitian yang dipresentasikan minggu lalu di konferensi American Geophysical Union, memberikan petunjuk kalau Pluto saat ini memiliki laut.

Dugaan ini mungkin akan terbukti sekitar 5 tahun mendatang. Saat itu, wahana antariksa New Horizon milik NASA akan tiba di Pluto sebagai bagian dari perjalanan 10 tahun ke sana. New Horizon adalah pesawat antariksa tanpa awak yang dikirim ke Pluto. Saat ini, New Horizon sudah menempuh jarak 3 miliar mil.

Para ilmuwan juga akan melihat kutub di Pluto untuk mengetahui bentuk bagian dalam Pluto.

Ditemukan, Sungai Purba di Kalimantan!

Sebuah sungai purba ditemukan di perairan Matasiri, Kalimantan Selatan. Sungai tersebut ditemukan tim peneliti Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Ilndonesia (LIPI) dan Dirjen Pendidikan Tinggi Indonesia (Dikti) dalam ekspedisi di wilayah tersebut menggunakan Kapal Riset Baruna Jaya VIII, 4 November - 1 Desember 2010.

Sungai itu kemungkinan masih berhubungan dengan Sungai Barito.

-- M Hasanuddin

M. Hasanudin M.T., salah satu peneliti LIPI yang terlibat dalam ekspedisi ini mengatakan, keberadaan sungai purba itu bisa dilihat di dasar laut perairan Matasiri. Ada bentukan seperti parit menunjukkan daerah tersebut pernah menjadi bagian dari aliran sungai.

"Sungai itu kemungkinan masih berhubungan dengan Sungai Barito," Hasanuddin.

Hasanudin menambahkan, alur sungai purba tersebut masih bisa dijumpai dalam wilayah yang cukup jauh. "Selama kita menelusuri wilayah sejauh 30 mil dari pantai, alur sungai tersebut masih bisa dijumpai. Kami juga menemukan bahwa lebar sungai tersebut hampir sama dengan lebar Sungai Barito," papar Hasanudin.

Penemuan sungai purba ini bisa menguatkan pendapat, bahwa Laut Jawa dahulu pernah menjadi daratan. Menurut pendapat yang salah satunya didukung oleh Stephen Oppenheimer yang baru saja menerbitkan buku "Eden in the East", Laut Jawa bersama Laut Cina Selatan dan Asia Tenggara adalah bagian dari wilayah yang disebut Sundaland.

Namun demikian, Hasanudin mengatakan, hasil penelitian ini belum cukup dijadikan bukti untuk membenarkan temuan itu.

"Masih perlu penelitian lebih lanjut," ujarnya.

Hasanuddin hanya mengatakan, hasil penelitian ini akan terlebih dahulu memperkaya wawasan di bidang arkeologi dan geologi kelautan.

PT DI Sukses Merancang Pesawat Baru N219

Sejak tahun 2006, PT Dirgantara Indonesia (PT DI) telah berupaya mengembangkan pesawat model baru N219. Pesawat turboprop dengan 19 penumpang tersebut ditargetkan bisa melayani kebutuhan penerbangan perintis untuk menghubungkan wilayah-wilayah terpencil.

Untuk mengembangkannya, PT DI bekerja sama dengan Badan Pengkajian dan Penerapan Teknologi (BPPT) dalam mengembangkan model uji aerodinamika. Sementara itu, uji aerodinamikanya sendiri dilakukan pada tahun 2008.

Hari ini, Selasa (28/12/2010), hasil uji dinamika yang dilakukan BPPT di Laboratorium Aero Gasdinamika dan Getaran, Serpong, diserahkan kepada PTDI, menandai tuntasnya uji tersebut. Hasil uji menunjukkan kemampuan pesawat untuk lepas landas dan mendarat serta stabilitasnya.

Andi Alisjahbana, Direktur Aerostruktur PT DI mengatakan, "Sejauh ini kita telah melakukan uji aerodinamika yang meliputi 139 polar." Polar berkaitan dengan kestabilan posisi pesawat dalam kondisi tertentu sesuai dengan komando yang diberikan kepadanya.

Selain itu, berdasarkan uji aerodinamika, diperoleh kesimpulan bahwa pesawat bisa lepas landas dan mendarat (take off dan landing) pada landasan yang pendek. "Landasan yang dibutuhkan untuk take off dan landing hanya 600 meter," kata Andi.

Menurut Andi, kemampuan tersebut sangat dibutuhkan untuk pesawat perintis. "Banyak daerah terpencil di Indonesia yang tak memiliki lahan luas. Seperti pulau-pulau kecil, di sana tidak mungkin membangun bandara besar," lanjut Andi.

Model yang digunakan dalam uji aerodinamika memiliki perbandingan ukuran 1:6,3. Uji aerodinamika sendiri dilakukan dalam terowongan angin sirkuit tertutup. Hasil uji juga mengungkapkan stabilitas matra longitudinal dan lateral pesawat.

Rancangan pesawat masih harus menjalani uji lainnya. Beberapa di antaranya adalah ditching test, uji statik pesawat, uji mesin produksi, dan akhirnya uji coba terbang. Ditargetkan, pesawat sudah bisa diluncurkan dua tahun mendatang.

Earth project aims to 'simulate everything'

It could be one of the most ambitious computer projects ever conceived.

An international group of scientists are aiming to create a simulator that can replicate everything happening on Earth - from global weather patterns and the spread of diseases to international financial transactions or congestion on Milton Keynes' roads.

Nicknamed the Living Earth Simulator (LES), the project aims to advance the scientific understanding of what is taking place on the planet, encapsulating the human actions that shape societies and the environmental forces that define the physical world.

"Many problems we have today - including social and economic instabilities, wars, disease spreading - are related to human behaviour, but there is apparently a serious lack of understanding regarding how society and the economy work," says Dr Helbing, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, who chairs the FuturICT project which aims to create the simulator.

Knowledge collider

Thanks to projects such as the Large Hadron Collider, the particle accelerator built by Cern, scientists know more about the early universe than they do about our own planet, claims Dr Helbing.

What is needed is a knowledge accelerator, to collide different branches of knowledge, he says.

"Revealing the hidden laws and processes underlying societies constitutes the most pressing scientific grand challenge of our century."

The result would be the LES. It would be able to predict the spread of infectious diseases, such as Swine Flu, identify methods for tackling climate change or even spot the inklings of an impending financial crisis, he says.

Is it possible to build a social science equivalent to the Large Hadron Collider?

But how would such colossal system work?

For a start it would need to be populated by data - lots of it - covering the entire gamut of activity on the planet, says Dr Helbing.

It would also be powered by an assembly of yet-to-be-built supercomputers capable of carrying out number-crunching on a mammoth scale.

Although the hardware has not yet been built, much of the data is already being generated, he says.

For example, the Planetary Skin project, led by US space agency Nasa, will see the creation of a vast sensor network collecting climate data from air, land, sea and space.

In addition, Dr Helbing and his team have already identified more than 70 online data sources they believe can be used including Wikipedia, Google Maps and the UK government's data repository Data.gov.uk.

Drowning in data

Integrating such real-time data feeds with millions of other sources of data - from financial markets and medical records to social media - would ultimately power the simulator, says Dr Helbing.

The next step is create a framework to turn that morass of data in to models that accurately replicate what is taken place on Earth today.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

We don't take any action on the information we have”

End Quote Pete Warden OpenHeatMaps

That will only be possible by bringing together social scientists and computer scientists and engineers to establish the rules that will define how the LES operates.

Such work cannot be left to traditional social science researchers, where typically years of work produces limited volumes of data, argues Dr Helbing.

Nor is it something that could have been achieved before - the technology needed to run the LES will only become available in the coming decade, he adds.

Human behaviour

For example, while the LES will need to be able to assimilate vast oceans of data it will simultaneously have to understand what that data means.

That becomes possible as so-called semantic web technologies mature, says Dr Helbing.

Today, a database chock-full of air pollution data would look much the same to a computer as a database of global banking transactions - essentially just a lot of numbers.

But semantic web technology will encode a description of data alongside the data itself, enabling computers to understand the data in context.

What's more, our approach to aggregating data stresses the need to strip out any of that information that relates directly to an individual, says Dr Helbing.

The Living Earth Simulator aims to predict how diseases spread

That will enable the LES to incorporate vast amounts of data relating to human activity, without compromising people's privacy, he argues.

Once an approach to carrying out large-scale social and economic data is agreed upon, it will be necessary to build supercomputer centres needed to crunch that data and produce the simulation of the Earth, says Dr Helbing.

Generating the computational power to deal with the amount of data needed to populate the LES represents a significant challenge, but it's far from being a showstopper.

If you look at the data-processing capacity of Google, it's clear that the LES won't be held back by processing capacity, says Pete Warden, founder of the OpenHeatMap project and a specialist on data analysis.

While Google is somewhat secretive about the amount of data it can process, in May 2010 it was believed to use in the region of 39,000 servers to process an exabyte of data per month - that's enough data to fill 2 billion CDs every month.

Reality mining

If you accept that only a fraction of the "several hundred exabytes of data being produced worldwide every year… would be useful for a world simulation, the bottleneck won't be the processing capacity," says Mr Warden.

"Getting access to the data will be much more of a challenge, as will figuring out something useful to do with it," he adds.

Simply having lots of data isn't enough to build a credible simulation of the planet, argues Warden. "Economics and sociology have consistently failed to produce theories with strong predictive powers over the last century, despite lots of data gathering. I'm sceptical that larger data sets will mark a big change," he says.

"It's not that we don't know enough about a lot of the problems the world faces, from climate change to extreme poverty, it's that we don't take any action on the information we do have," he argues.

Regardless of the challenges the project faces, the greater danger is not attempting to use the computer tools we have now - and will have in future - to improve our understanding of global socio-economic trends, says Dr Helbing.

"Over the past years, it has for example become obvious that we need better indicators than the gross national product to judge societal development and well-being," he argues.

At it's heart, the LES is about working towards better methods to measure the state of society, he says, which would account for health, education and environmental issues. "And last but not least, happiness."

Microsoft warns on IE browser bug

Microsoft has issued a warning about a serious vulnerability in all versions of its Internet Explorer (IE) browser.

If exploited by a booby-trapped webpage the bug would allow attackers to take control of an unprotected computer.

Code to exploit the bug has already been published though Microsoft said it had no evidence it was currently being used by hi-tech criminals.

A workaround for the bug has been produced while Microsoft works on a permanent fix.

Code injection

The bug revolves around the way that IE manages a computer's memory when processing Cascading Style Sheets - a widely used technology that defines the look and feel of pages on a website.

Hi-tech criminals have long known that they can exploit IE's memory management to inject their own malicious code into the stream of instructions a computer processes as a browser is being used. In this way the criminals can get their own code running and hijack a PC.

Microsoft has produced updates that improves memory management but security researchers discovered that these protection systems are not used when some older parts of Windows are called upon.

In a statement Microsoft said it was "investigating" the bug and working on a permanent fix. In the meantime it recommended those concerned use a protection system known as the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit.

Installing and applying the toolkit may require Windows XP users to update the version of the operating system they are using. But even if they do that some of the protection it bestows on Windows 7 and Vista users will not be available.

"We're currently unaware of any attacks trying to use the claimed vulnerability or of customer impact," said Dave Forstrom, the director of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing group, in a statement.

"As vulnerabilities go, this kind is the most serious as it allows remote execution of code," said Rik Ferguson, senior security analyst at Trend Micro, "This means the attacker can run programs, such as malware, directly on the victim's computer."

He added: "It is highly reminiscent of a vulnerability at the same time two years ago which prompted several national governments to warn against using IE and to switch to an alternative browser."

New solar fuel machine 'mimics plant life'

A prototype solar device has been unveiled which mimics plant life, turning the Sun's energy into fuel.

The machine uses the Sun's rays and a metal oxide called ceria to break down carbon dioxide or water into fuels which can be stored and transported.

Conventional photovoltaic panels must use the electricity they generate in situ, and cannot deliver power at night.

Details are published in the journal Science.

The prototype, which was devised by researchers in the US and Switzerland, uses a quartz window and cavity to concentrate sunlight into a cylinder lined with cerium oxide, also known as ceria.

Ceria has a natural propensity to exhale oxygen as it heats up and inhale it as it cools down.

If as in the prototype, carbon dioxide and/or water are pumped into the vessel, the ceria will rapidly strip the oxygen from them as it cools, creating hydrogen and/or carbon monoxide.

Hydrogen produced could be used to fuel hydrogen fuel cells in cars, for example, while a combination of hydrogen and carbon monoxide can be used to create "syngas" for fuel.

It is this harnessing of ceria's properties in the solar reactor which represents the major breakthrough, say the inventors of the device. They also say the metal is readily available, being the most abundant of the "rare-earth" metals.

Methane can be produced using the same machine, they say.

Refinements needed

The prototype is grossly inefficient, the fuel created harnessing only between 0.7% and 0.8% of the solar energy taken into the vessel.

Most of the energy is lost through heat loss through the reactor's wall or through the re-radiation of sunlight back through the device's aperture.

But the researchers are confident that efficiency rates of up to 19% can be achieved through better insulation and smaller apertures. Such efficiency rates, they say, could make for a viable commercial device.

"The chemistry of the material is really well suited to this process," says Professor Sossina Haile of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). "This is the first demonstration of doing the full shebang, running it under (light) photons in a reactor."

She says the reactor could be used to create transportation fuels or be adopted in large-scale energy plants, where solar-sourced power could be available throughout the day and night.

However, she admits the fate of this and other devices in development is tied to whether states adopt a low-carbon policy.

"It's very much tied to policy. If we had a carbon policy, something like this would move forward a lot more quickly," she told the BBC.

It has been suggested that the device mimics plants, which also use carbon dioxide, water and sunlight to create energy as part of the process of photosynthesis. But Professor Haile thinks the analogy is over-simplistic.

"Yes, the reactor takes in sunlight, we take in carbon dioxide and water and we produce a chemical compound, so in the most generic sense there are these similarities, but I think that's pretty much where the analogy ends."

The PS10 solar tower plant near Seville, Spain. Mirrors concentrate the sun's power on to a central tower, driving a steam turbine

Daniel Davies, chief technology officer at the British photovoltaic company Solar Century, said the research was "very exciting".

"I guess the question is where you locate it - would you put your solar collector on a roof or would it be better off as a big industrial concern in the Sahara and then shipping the liquid fuel?" he said.

Solar technology is moving forward apace but the overriding challenges remain ones of efficiency, economy and storage.

New-generation "solar tower" plants have been built in Spain and the United States which use an array of mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto tower-mounted receivers which drive steam turbines.

A new Spanish project will use molten salts to store heat from the Sun for up to 15 hours, so that the plant could potentially operate through the night.

Ka-Sat net-dedicated spacecraft lifts off

The second European satellite dedicated to delivering broadband internet connections has launched successfully.

The six-tonne Ka-Sat lifted off atop a Proton rocket from Baikonur in Kazakhstan at 0351 local time on Monday (2151 GMT on Sunday).

The flight to orbit lasted nine hours and 12 minutes.

The Eutelsat-operated spacecraft will concentrate its services on the estimated tens of millions of European homes in so-called "not-spots".

These are places where consumers cannot get a decent terrestrial connection.

The spacecraft follows the Hylas-1 platform into orbit. This satellite, operated by Avanti Communications of London, was launched just last month.

Ka-Sat, however, is considerably bigger, and has a notional capacity to serve up to two million households compared with Hylas's 300,000.

Nevertheless, such is the scale of the under-served market in Europe that both platforms should be very profitable ventures, the two companies believe.

"As many as 30 million households in Europe are not served at all or get high mediocrity of service," said Eutelsat CEO Michel de Rosen.

"These could be people in the countryside or in the mountains, sometimes not very far from large cities. Ka-Sat is an answer to that problem," he told BBC News.

Paris-based Eutelsat is one of the world's big three Fixed Satellite Services (FSS) companies, and transmits thousands of TV channels across its fleet of spacecraft.

It already provides some internet capability on its existing platforms, but Ka-Sat is its first broadband-dedicated endeavour.

High throughput

Ka-Sat will sit about 36,000km above the equator at nine degrees East.

Ka-Sat was prepared in the UK

Its communications payload, structure and propulsion system were prepared by EADS Astrium at its UK facilities in Stevenage and Portsmouth.

Final testing of the spacecraft took place at Astrium's factory in Toulouse, France, before shipment to Baikonur.

Ka-Sat has a total throughput of some 70Gbps.

This will be channelled via 82 spot beams on to different market areas stretching from North Africa to southern Scandinavia. A very small segment of the Middle East will also be reached.

Eutelsat has signed about 70 deals with distributors across the satellite's "footprint", and more would be signed over the next year, said Mr de Rosen.

"It takes normally a few weeks for a satellite to become operational after launch," he explained.

"In this case, it is more likely to be a few months. Expect Ka-Sat to be operational in the second half of the second quarter of 2011."

The satellite will need to undertake some firings of its own propulsion system to circularise its final orbit. Ground controllers will also need a period of time to check out and commission all onboard systems.

Previous failure

Ka-Sat's Proton rocket was under the spotlight for this flight.

The Russian vehicle had failed on its previous outing, dumping three Glonass satellite-navigation spacecraft in the Pacific Ocean.

An inquiry found the Proton's new Block DM-03 upper-stage had been over-fuelled, making it too heavy to achieve its required performance.

International Launch Services (ILS), which runs the commercial operations of the Proton vehicle, used a different upper-stage for the Ka-Sat mission.

This Breeze M stage has a good recent record.

It was the eighth and last ILS-organised Proton mission of 2010.

No police in Mexico town after last officer kidnapped

The Mexican border town of Guadalupe has been left with no police force after the last officer was kidnapped.

Erika Gandara's house was set on fire by unidentified gunmen before she was abducted last week, according to the state prosecutor's office.

All her colleagues had resigned or were killed in the region's drug war.

More than 30,000 people have died in drug-related violence since 2006 when the President announced a crackdown on the cartels.

Ms Gandara, 28, had patrolled the town of 9,000 inhabitants on her own since June.

"Nobody wants to go into policing here, and the budget just isn't there anyway," she told AFP news agency earlier this year.

Guadalupe is about 5km (3 miles) away from the US border and 60km (40 miles) from Ciudad Juarez, the centre of drug smuggling operations into the United States.

It is also close to the hamlet of Praxedis Guadalupe Guerreror, where a 20-year-old college student got the job of police chief in October because no one else applied.

The Mexican government has sent soldiers to patrol Guadalupe and to investigate the kidnapping of Ms Gandara.

Ivory Coast: Africa trio give Laurent Gbagbo ultimatum

West African heads of state have ended their Ivory Coast mission to persuade Laurent Gbagbo to cede power after the disputed presidential election.

Mr Gbagbo is refusing to make way for Alassane Ouattara, internationally recognised as the president-elect.

The delegation has said that if he does not relinquish power, he could be forced out by military intervention.

An Ivorian TV station loyal to Mr Gbagbo has attacked anyone criticising his decision to stay in office.

It indicated that African nationals from neighbouring countries working in Ivory Coast might be at risk if the threats of military action continued.

Earlier, a United Nations peacekeeper was wounded in the arm with a machete when his convoy was attacked by a crowd in a Gbagbo stronghold.

A UN statement said that one of three vehicles in the convoy was set alight in the incident in a western area of Abidjan.

The UN, which has a force of more than 9,500 in Ivory Coast, has been accused by Mr Gbagbo of interfering in Ivorian affairs - and asked to leave the country.

The UN has refused his call and called for power to be handed to Mr Ouattara.

'All went well'

A statement by one of the three West African leaders, Cape Verde President Pedro Pires, said their visit had ended and they would travel to Nigeria to report to Ecowas Chairman Goodluck Jonathan.

The three West African presidents - Mr Pires, Boni Yayi of Benin and Sierra Leone's Ernest Bai Koroma - had arrived in Abidjan during the morning in what was seen as a final chance to urge Mr Gbagbo to step down peacefully.

After the meeting, Benin's President, Boni Yayi, said "all went well".

Continue reading the main story

Analysis

Kwasi Anning Analyst, Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre

---

Ivory Coast is different from Liberia and Sierra Leone. It is a functioning wealthy country with a strong army, so a force will meet some credible resistance.

Furthermore, it doesn't look as if Ecowas is capable of putting a credible force on the ground: Nigeria is heading towards elections and may not want to put in troops for that long a time; Ghana has elections in 2012 and Senegal has its own problems with dynastic succession. So the key countries that would have to contribute may not have the political stomach and the temerity.

I would have thought an emphasis on sanctions, bank accounts, no-fly zones, seizure of properties - total isolation on the continent - would have been a first step.

But it looks as if there has been a hastiness to demonstrate that "we can deal with Gbagbo" - and in doing so Ecowas, the African Union and the United Nations have actually closed too many doors that limit their options for engagement and manoeuvre.

But a Laurent Gbagbo adviser, Abdon Bayeto, later told the BBC that "the message he [Mr Gbagbo] had for them was to tell them that he was democratically elected, recognised by our constitution".

The three presidents then went to see Mr Ouattara who is in a hotel with his shadow government protected by around 800 UN peacekeepers.

"Outtara won and we insist that Outtara becomes the president of this country and that is the position taken by the West African leaders," Sierra Leone's Information Minister Ibrahim Ben Kargbo told the BBC.

The hotel is also surrounded by troops loyal to Laurent Gbagbo who says he is not worried by threats to remove him by force and claims he is the victim of a plot involving France and the US.

Refugees escape

Mr Ouattara's victory in the 28 November election was overturned by the Constitutional Council, a body headed by an ally of Mr Gbagbo, citing claims that results were rigged in the north.

Since the election, the UN has said at least 173 people have died in violence, and scores of others have been tortured.

The threat of escalating violence has prompted almost 20,000 people to flee Ivory Coast for neighbouring Liberia.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) says 15,120 people from villages in western Ivory Coast are known to have crossed the border and another 4,000 arrivals have been reported.

Most of the refugees are said to be women and children and almost two thirds under the age of 18.

The atmosphere in Abidjan is tense, says the BBC's John James, with everyone fearing a military intervention in the coming weeks.

Ivorians had hoped these elections would close the chapter on the country's most difficult 10 years, but instead they have opened up a new period of instability, he adds.

Jos bombing: Politicians 'fuel Nigeria unrest'

Nigerian faith leaders have accused politicians of fuelling a recent upsurge in sectarian violence in which 80 people have died.

In a joint news conference, Muslim and Christian leaders said politicians were using religion to whip up trouble around the city of Jos.

Bombs exploded in several areas of Jos on Christmas Eve, and Christian and Muslim youths clashed two days later.

Nigerians are due to hold national and local elections in April.

Local politicians are frequently accused of trying to exploit communal tensions for their gain.

At Tuesday's news conference, Christian Association of Nigeria head Ayo Oritsejafor, and Nigerian Muslims' spiritual leader Sultan Mohammadu Sa'ad Abubakar made a joint statement criticising politicians.

Mr Oritsejafor said some politicians "know the weaknesses of the people".

"They know how to manipulate their beliefs and they know the... parts of the country where people react very easily," he said.

"Some of them are creating these kind of problems to make Nigeria ungovernable."

Islamist claims

The sultan accused politicians of a "failure of leadership".

"If the government in that area is... purposeful enough... they will find answers to these problems," he said.

Officials from Nigeria's emergency management agency (Nema) said at least 80 people had died and more than 190 had been injured in the recent outbreak of violence around Jos.

A radical Islamist sect reportedly said they carried out the Christmas Eve bombings.

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Jos Violence

• Deadly riots in 2001, 2008 and 2010
• City divided into Christian and Muslim areas
• Hausa-speaking Muslims living in Jos for decades still classified as settlers
• Settlers find it difficult to stand for election
• Communities divided along political party lines

• Jos violence: Q&A

A website apparently belonging to the Boko Haram group, which staged an uprising in the city of north-eastern city of Maiduguri in 2008, said it launched the attacks to "start avenging the atrocities committed against Muslims".

But police chief Abdulrahman Akano cast doubt on the claims, saying it was not Boko Haram's usual method.

"Anybody can post anything on the internet," he told the AFP news agency.

Boko Haram members who took part in the 2008 uprising were armed mostly with sticks and home-made rifles.

Security forces put down the uprising and killed about 800 people, including the group's leader.

Sultan Mohammadu also played down the Boko Haram link and called on all Nigerians "not to succumb to the moves and practices of the few destructive elements that really don't want peace in this country".

The city of Jos lies in Nigeria's volatile Middle Belt - between the mainly Muslim north and largely Christian south.

Jos has been blighted by sectarian violence over the past decade, with deadly riots in 2001, 2008 and this year.

The clashes usually pit Muslims against Christians, but analysts say the underlying issues are political and economic.

Neanderthals cooked and ate vegetables

Neanderthals cooked and ate plants and vegetables, a new study of Neanderthal remains reveals.

Researchers in the US have found grains of cooked plant material in their teeth.

The study is the first to confirm that the Neanderthal diet was not confined to meat and was more sophisticated than previously thought.

The research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The popular image of Neanderthals as great meat eaters is one that has up until now been backed by some circumstantial evidence. Chemical analysis of their bones suggested they ate little or no vegetables.

This perceived reliance on meat had been put forward by some as one of the reasons these humans become extinct as large animals such as mammoths declined due to an Ice Age.

But a new analysis of Neanderthal remains from across the world has found direct evidence that contradicts the chemical studies. Researchers found fossilised grains of vegetable material in their teeth and some of it was cooked.

Although pollen grains have been found before on Neanderthal sites and some in hearths, it is only now there is clear evidence that plant food was actually eaten by these people.

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“Start Quote

We have found pollen grains in Neanderthal sites before but you never know whether they were eating the plant or sleeping on them or what”

End Quote Professor Alison Brooks George Washington University

Professor Alison Brooks, from George Washington University, told BBC News: "We have found pollen grains in Neanderthal sites before but you never know whether they were eating the plant or sleeping on them or what.

"But here we have a case where a little bit of the plant is in the mouth so we know that the Neanderthals were consuming the food."

More like us

One question raised by the study is why the chemical studies on Neanderthal bones have been wide of the mark. According to Professor Brooks, the tests were measuring proteins levels, which the researchers assumed came from meat.

"We've tended to assume that if you have a very high value for protein in the diet that must come from meat. But... it's possible that some of the protein in their diet was coming from plants," she said.

This study is the latest to suggest that, far from being brutish savages, Neanderthals were more like us than we previously thought.