Man Drowns Trying to Save Wife, Dog

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A California man who went into rough ocean waves to try and rescue his wife and dog drowned when he was pulled more than a half-mile off shore on New Year's day.

The man, who was identified by the Richmond Mercury News as 59-year-old Charles Quaid, went into the water at Point Reyes National Seashore to try and help his wife and dog, according to officials.
Quaid's wife was caught in the wake of 10 to 12 foot waves that were crashing on the beach, which is particularly exposed to swell, Capt. Chris Martinelli of the Marin County Fire Department said today.
Temperatures in the water are in the low 50s right now, he said.
Bystanders on the beach helped pull Quaid's wife to shore, while the dog made it back onto the beach as well, Martinelli said. They were not able to assist Quaid, and called for emergency help around 12:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Helicopters and boat rescue teams from the fire department, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the National Park Service scoured the water off the coast for Quaid.

Quaid's body was spotted around 4 p.m., and located by rescuers on jet skis who were part of the rescue operation. A paramedic on board the jet ski declared Quaid dead during the recovery, Martinelli said.

Quaid's wife and dog were not injured. The Coast Guard would not comment on the identity of those involved in the incident, and Martinelli referred the matter to the Fire Department spokesman, who did not return a call from ABC News.

"That beach is notorious," Martinelli said. "There are signs posted pretty well in that area warning of danger. This beach in particular is very exposed to the swell, and this time of year there are very large swells. If you aren't watching the water they can come up out of nowhere."

The rough surf off the northern California coast claimed three other lives in November 2012 when a family was swept out to sea after the family dog was caught in a wave near Big Lagoon.

A teenager and his mother and father all drowned in the Nov. 26 incident, in which a "sneaker wave," which was larger than previous sets of wave, came up onto shore forcefully. An older daughter and the family dog survived the incident.

Never-Before-Seen Stage of Planet Birth Revealed

Astronomers studying a newborn star have caught a detailed glimpse of planets forming around it, revealing a never-before seen stage of planetary evolution.

Large gas giant planets appear to be clearing a gap in the disk of material surrounding the star, and using gravity to channel material across the gap to the interior, helping the star to grow. Theoretical simulations have predicted such bridges between outer and inner portions of disks surrounding stars, but none have been directly observed until now.

An international team of astronomers have used the partially completed Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to study a young star about 450 light-years from Earth. They identified two thin filaments of gas streaming from the outer disk to the inner, across a broad gap cut by young planets.

"Currently, the only mechanism known to produce such gap-crossing dense molecular flows, with residual carbon monoxide gas more diffusely spread out inside the gap, is planetary formation," lead scientist Simon Casassus of the University of Chile told SPACE.com in an email. [Video: Baby Planets Form Bridge Around Star]

Bridging the gap

Far from Earth, the fledgling star HD 142527 is nearing the end of its formation process. Around 2 million years old, the young star is about twice as massive as the sun, though it is still slowly growing. A disk of spinning dust and gas left over from its formation surrounds the star, and from this material, planets are being created. 

As baby planets, or planetesimals, travel through the disk, they absorb the material around them, creating gaps. Such paths have been seen in a number of newborn systems. HD 142527 boasts a gap that starts at a point equivalent to Saturn's position in the solar system and extends outward 14 times as far. The gap, which scientists had previously measured, is so large that several planets would be required to clear it of debris.

Using ALMA to observe the system, Casassus and his team have found that the gap is not completely empty. Two filaments reach from the outer disk to the inner, indicating that at least two young planets exist within the space.

The gravity of the planets draws material from the outer ring inward. But while some of the gas and dust falls into orbit around the young gas giants, a fraction of it overshoots the planetesimals, traveling instead to the inner disk. Eventually, the star absorbs the material.

These bridges are important to the continued growth of the system's young sun. The inner disk around the star is too small to sustain its growth; Casassus and his team concluded that the disk around HD 142527 would be depleted within a year without a bridge. Planets funneling material from the outer disk to the inner would help nourish their star.

The process won't continue forever, however.
"Eventually, the proto-gaseous giants will exhaust the material within their radius of influence," Casassus said. "How much material will have infallen, in what timescales, and how this impacts the planet location and eventual migration are all open questions in the field of planet formation. Our observations are a step forward."
Mind the gap
In addition to revealing the bridges between the two disks, ALMA's detailed measurements showed that the gaps weren't completely empty. Instead, they contain traces of carbon monoxide gas.

"This residual gas was predicted by all dynamical calculations, but previous detections were not as clear-cut and direct as the ALMA result," Casassus said.

The data was taken by ALMA during its first year of observation. The array of 66 telescopes, set up in Chile, is still under construction but should be completed this year, at which point Casassus plans to observe the system in greater detail.

Although the dense gas of the filaments would obstruct a direct view of the young planets, studying the system at the higher resolution of the completed ALMA could reveal knots along the filaments that could signify their location.

At the same time, a more precise examination of the leftover gas in the gaps could help astronomers to narrow down the mass of the developing planets.

Buffett the $3 Billion Gorilla of 2012's Top Givers

Last year's 15 biggest gifts to charitable causes by American billionaires added up to more than last year's, but of that total more than half came from one man.

Warren BuffettWealthy Americans gave $5.1 billion dollars in the 15 biggest charitable donations of 2012, according to the "Chronicle of Philanthropy." But subtract the $3 billion pledged by Warren Buffett, and the total would be far less than last year's $2.6 billion.

(Read more: Majority of Wealthy Support Taxing Themselves More, Poll Says)

The top givers were:

1. Warren Buffett: $3.09 billion in stock to be divided equally among three foundations run by his children
   
2. Mark Zuckerberg: $498.8 million to Silicon Valley Community Foundation to support education and health
   
3. Paul Allen: $300 million pledge to the Allen Institute for Brain Science
   
4. Mortimer Zuckerman: $200 million pledge to the Columbia University's Mind Brain Behavior Initiative
   
5. Fred Fields: $150 million bequest to Oregon Community Foundation to support art and education
   
6. Carl Icahn: $150 million pledge to Mount Sinai School of Medicine for medical research
   

Three of those top gifts were announced in December - either a good sign for 2013, or an effort to avoid the effects of the fiscal cliff.

Photographer captures eerie 'pyramids' in New York City

These sand dunes are the result of the cleanup from Hurricane Sandy, the deadly superstorm that swept through the New York area in October. While the storm has long since passed, many signs of its devastation remain. Photographer Stephane Missier, aka Charles le Brigand, captured these images of the otherworldly mounds on the Rockaways in Queens. By Claudine Zap

 

Believe it or not, this image, captured by photographer Stephane Missier, aka Charles le Brigand, was taken in New York City. The Brooklyn-based photographer, who keeps his camera on him at all times, came across the eerie landscape while biking to the Rockaways in Queens on Dec. 30, 2012.

 

When crossing the Marine Parkway Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge by bike, the photographer, who had been documenting the area devastated by Hurricane Sandy, spotted the sand pyramids in the parking lot at Jacob Riis Park in Queens. He told Yahoo News in an email, "I knew the city was using the parking lot as a debris transfer site, but I wasn't expecting such an eerie landscape."

 

The photographer noted the odd shape of the sand dunes that reminded him of the "dark side of the moon," the Sahara and pre-Columbian pyramids. All of this, in New York City."

 

The 18 dunes, measuring about 30 feet tall, were made from sand from the surrounding streets that were devastated by Hurricane Sandy. After taking shots of the striking sight, he was spotted by a sanitation officer who "asked me politely to leave."

 

The dunes are just one more sign of the magnitude of the cleanup involved in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

 

The storm ravaged the Rockaways, a peninsula that sits between the Atlantic Ocean and Jamaica Bay.

 

Wind created wavy lines in the 30-foot sand dunes in the parking lot of Jacob Riis Park in Queens. 

 

The city is using the parking lot as a debris transfer site. Le Brigand noted, "There were all kinds of construction and hauling trucks on the site as well as generators, watch towers, and pole lights, so I really had the impression of being on another planet."

Squash Holds Decapitated King Louis XVI's Blood

More than 200 years ago, France's King Louis XVI was killed (along with his wife, Marie Antoinette) via guillotine, and legend has it someone used a handkerchief to soak up the king's blood, then stored the handkerchief in a gourd.

Now scientists have confirmed that a squash emblazoned with figures from the French Revolution indeed contains the dried blood of the executed king.

Scientists matched DNA from the blood with DNA from a detached and mummified head believed to be from a direct ancestor of King Louis XVI, the 16th-century French king Henry IV. The new analysis, which was published Dec. 30 in the journal Forensic Science International, confirmed the identity of both French royals.

"We have these two kings scattered in pieces in different places in Europe," said study co-author Carles Lalueza-Fox, a paleogenomics researcher at Pompeu Fabra University in Spain. The new analysis confirms that the two men "are separated by seven generations and they are paternally related." [See Photos of the Embalmed Head & Gourd]

Two French kings

King Henry IV was born in 1553 and became king in 1589 after a crazed monk killed his predecessor, Henry III. To ascend to the throne, Henry, a Protestant, converted to Catholicism and laid siege to Paris. Through his fair and peaceful reign, he earned a reputation as "Good King Henry."

But in 1610, a fanatical Catholic assassinated him, and his body was embalmed and laid to rest in northern Paris. There it stayed until the French Revolution, when looters desecrated the graves of bygone monarchs. At this point, someone must have cut off King Henry's head.

The head was held privately until 2010, when researchers used a facial reconstruction to argue that it once belonged to Good King Henry. But DNA taken from tissues in the head was too contaminated to analyze for any definitive conclusion.

Meanwhile, a wealthy Italian family possessed the gourd that allegedly contained the blood of the unpopular King Louis XVI. (The handkerchief presumably had disintegrated.)

Louis XVI was born in 1754 and died in 1793, when the rising tide of revolution swept him and Marie Antoinette from power and eventually to the guillotine. At his execution, legend had it that witnesses dipped their handkerchiefs in the monarch's blood, Lalueza-Fox told LiveScience. Text on the gourd recounts the gruesome story: "On January 21, Maximilien Bourdaloue dipped his handkerchief in the blood of Louis XVI after his decapitation." [10 Historically Significant Political Protests]

Blood relatives

Last year Lalueza-Fox analyzed the genetic material in the blood and found it came from a blue-eyed European male. But without any comparison DNA, he couldn't definitively say it was the blood of the last French king.

This year, however, the forensic scientist who originally studied the embalmed head sent DNA from inside it to the research team. The new DNA was not as badly damaged, and Lalueza-Fox and his colleagues were able to get parts of the Y, or male sex, chromosome, which is often used to identify male lineages.

By comparing the Y chromosome in both samples, the team concluded that the two men were 250 times more likely to be genetically related than unrelated. Both samples had genetic variants characteristic of the Bourbon region of France, and those variants are very rare in Europe today.

Given the history behind the samples, the new findings confirm that both the dried blood belongs to King Louis XVI. It also verifies that the embalmed head once belonged to King Henry IV.

Now that it has confirmed the blood came from Louis XVI, the team is planning to reconstruct the entire genome of the deposed French monarch.

"This could be the first historical genome ever to be retrieved," Lalueza-Fox said.