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Monday, November 28, 2011
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Sunday, November 27, 2011
Top Picks: Guitar lessons from James Taylor, Keira Knightley voices Tinkerbell, and more
James Taylor teaches guitar lessons on his website, Keira Knightley voices Tinkerbell in SyFy's two-part Peter Pan series, 'Journey of the Universe' space series on PBS takes viewers through the galaxy, and more top picks.
Taylor made
Skip to next paragraphEver wished you could have a guitar lesson with James Taylor? All it takes is a visit to jamestaylor.com and you can discover how he does that thing he does so well. The man himself breaks down his unique guitar technique in slow motion, and even if you aren't a player, it's just a real treat to spend some up close and personal time. Also on the site are vintage and modern videos of performances and rehearsals spanning Taylor's illustrious career.
Yo-Yo breaks out
Any album that includes Yo-Yo Ma, Chris Thile, Edgar Meyer, and Stuart Duncan is worth a listen. Combining bluegrass talents Thile and Duncan with classical musicians Ma and Meyer sounds strange, about as strange as the album's title, but The Goat Rodeo Sessions is about taking the virtuosos of two very different musical traditions and listening to the conversations they have with each other. Orchestral in places, folksy and bluesy elsewhere, "Goat Rodeo" is a fascinating experiment ? and addictive.
Before Peter met Wendy
Neverland is a SyFy Channel original miniseries taking viewers into the back story of the Peter Pan tale. A somber but stylish imagining, the two-part series airs Dec. 4 and 5 at 9 p.m. Stars include Keira Knightley as the voice of Tinkerbell, Charles Dance, Bob Hoskins, and Rhys Ifans.
Rare Simon songs
Paul Simon: Live at Webster Hall, New York will be on PBS beginning Dec. 3 ? check local listings. The set includes many old favorites rarely played live, including "Kodachrome," "Mother and Child Reunion," and "Gone at Last." The concert was recorded last June and includes tracks from his latest album, "So Beautiful or So What?"
Tenor in the park
Hosted by Paula Zahn, Andrea Bocelli Live in Central Park includes a roster of guests such as Celine Dion, Tony Bennett, and David Foster. Airing on PBS Dec. 2, the show's songs range from "The Prayer" to "Nessun Dorma," "Time to Say Goodbye," and "Volare."
Where it all began
Journey of the Universe: An Epic Story of Cosmic, Earth, and Human Transformation is a PBS series beginning Dec. 3 that invites us on a trip through time and scientific thought to review the latest theories on how galaxies, stars, planets, living organisms, human beings, and human consciousness came to be.
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Saturday, November 26, 2011
Original Googlephone HTC G1 Gets Ice Cream Sandwich Update [Video]
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Court date delayed for suspect in NYC bomb plot (AP)
NEW YORK ? A New York City man charged with making bombs and plotting to attack police stations and post offices won't be back in court until next month.
Jose Pimentel had been scheduled to learn Friday whether he'd been indicted, but the court date has been pushed back to Dec. 5. The postponement came as a new lawyer, Lori Cohen, was appointed for him.
Authorities say Pimentel was recorded building a pipe bomb and told a confidential informant his targets included government buildings.
He was represented initially by the Legal Aid Society. Then it emerged that Legal Aid had a conflict of interest because it represented the informant in an unrelated case.
A Legal Aid lawyer also had said Pimentel wanted another attorney. His previous lawyer has said Pimentel wasn't a true threat.
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Friday, November 25, 2011
2nd earthquake of day shakes northern Japan (AP)
TOKYO ? Two strong earthquakes rattled northern Japan on Thursday, but neither caused any apparent damage or a tsunami.
A magnitude-6.1 quake struck Thursday evening south of the northern island of Hokkaido, Japan's Meteorological Agency said.
It hit about 465 miles (750 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo and 19 miles (30 kilometers) below the sea surface. The agency did not issue a tsunami warning.
About 3,900 households in the towns of Erimo and Samani lost electricity shortly after the quake, but power was restored about an hour later, according to the Hokkaido Electric Power Co.
The shaking was not felt in Tokyo, though a morning quake was.
That magnitude-6.0 temblor struck just off the coast near the nuclear power plant damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
The two shakings are believed unrelated and did not affect the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi plant or other nuclear plants in the region.
The March 11 magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami wiped out large parts of Japan's northeastern coast and left nearly 20,000 people dead or missing. The twin disasters also triggered a nuclear crisis, forcing about 100,000 people to flee their homes due to leaking radiation.
Japan lies on the "Ring of Fire" ? an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones that stretches around the Pacific Rim. About 90 percent of the world's quakes occur in the area.
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Thursday, November 24, 2011
Thanksgiving a newcomer to fall festivals
Autumn festivals, including American Thanksgiving, East Asian Mid-Autumn Festival and Jewish Sukkot, celebrate family and the Earth's bounty in similar ways despite cultural differences.
Of those three, Thanksgiving is the newcomer.
The Pilgrims celebrated a harvest festival with the Native Americans in 1621. And their ancient Anglo-Saxon ancestors also celebrated autumn harvest festivals.
"Our word 'harvest' is a direct reflex of the Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, word 'h?rfest,' which ... only meant 'autumn.' By extension, the word came to refer to the fruits of the field, brought home for processing," John Niles, emeritus professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison told Discovery News.
But Thanksgiving wasn't an official annual event until 1863 when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed, "...set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens."
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Thanksgiving was new, but may have had an ancient inspiration in Leviticus, a holy book to both Jews and Christians. In Leviticus 23:39, God commanded the ancient Israelites to observe the Feast of Booths, Sukkot in Hebrew, "after you have gathered the crops of the land."
"The Pilgrims were avid Bible readers and Thanksgiving may have been inspired by Sukkot," Miriam Rinn, communications manager for the Jewish Community Center Association, told Discovery News.
"Sukkot is certainly a harvest festival, but also has greater religious significance," said Rinn.
"Thanking God for food (after eating) is a mitzvah, a religious obligation. Like all other Mitzvoth it connects man with God and enhance(s) the spiritual proximity between the two, a sense of mutual love," Rabbi Yossi Feintuch of Congregation Beth Shalom in Columbia, Missouri told Discovery News.
During Sukkot, celebrated this year from Oct. 12-19, observers worship, eat and even sleep in a sukkah, a flimsy booth representing the temporary structures the Israelites used after fleeing Egypt.
"You cannot appreciate ... protections availed by your home unless you experience being removed from these protections if only briefly and temporarily," said Feintuch.
"The sukkah also represents the transience and fragility of life," said Rinn.
The celebration of the Mid-Autumn, or Moon Festival, in China, Taiwan, Vietnam and other East Asian countries, also involves food and family and friends.
"During the Mid-Autumn Festival people come back home to be with their family. It's one of the biggest holidays," said Gene Cheung, multicultural coordinator of the Asian Affairs Center as the University of Missouri.
The tradition took on special significance for Cheung and his family in 1999, after an earthquake damaged their home in Nantou, Taiwan. They celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival that year visiting with his father's five brothers and six sisters. This year the festival fell on Sept. 12.
And like Thanksgiving's turkey and cranberries, Cheung and his family look forward every year to a special harvest meal that includes the Mid-Autumn Festival moon cake. Traditional moon cakes are soft, sweet pastry with an egg yolk and red bean paste inside, said Cheung.
"When you cut them open, it looks like a half-moon," said Cheung.
The shorter days and longer nights of the harvest season bring about more opportunities to star-gaze and watch the phases of the moon.
? 2011 Discovery Channel
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45393127/ns/technology_and_science-science/
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Growth Has an Expiration Date
Indefinite growth on a finite planet is impossible. Few would argue the truth of this statement in physical terms, but most believe that economic growth is immune to such a claim, because?the story goes?economics can be decoupled from physical throughput via efficiency improvements, transformative technology/innovation, and increased activity in low-resource-use ?service? industries. All of these things happen, and are real. But I argue in a series of blog posts on Do the Math that these notions, too, have limits. I also explore what this means for the concept of sustainability.
We begin with a startling illustration that continued energy growth at 2% per year has us consuming energy at a rate equivalent to the power output of all 100-billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy inside of 2500 years! Furthermore, no matter what the energy technology, the Earth?s surface would become so hot that water boils in a little over 400 years, and we reach the surface temperature of the sun in 1000 years. This is not global warming from CO2, but straightforward thermodynamics, and is an inescapable consequence of a continued growth trajectory on Earth. There are many reasons why this won?t happen?which is to say that we will end physical growth (in energy, for instance) within a century or two at the latest. Fusion (even the ?cold? variety) is not exempt.
Next is a demonstration that economic growth cannot continue indefinitely against a constant energy supply. This starts with the observation that efficiency cannot be increased arbitrarily. We?ve got maybe a factor of two to gain, yet, at a typical rate of 1% per year. Nor can low-intensity activities continue to grow forever in a flat-energy world, because such things will saturate the economy?some fraction of which must still rely on a non-growing energy base. Some decoupling can extend economic growth for a time, but complete decoupling is not a real possibility.
This is such a key point, that it is worth elaborating here. To continue economic growth against flat energy would require the fractional cost of energy in the society to shrink toward zero, ultimately becoming essentially free. After non-energy economic growth leaves energy in the dust, one person could then buy all the energy (and food and manufacturing and other energy-intensive sectors) for a song. This will clearly not happen: energy is not just another commodity, but the resource that allows the rest of the economy to function and humans to eat. A limited resource as important as energy will saturate at some fraction of GDP (say 5% for argument?s sake). Since energy no longer grows in scale, neither can the remaining 95% of the economy. Change can still happen. Fads can come and go, but in something closer to a zero-sum game.
Taken together, the lesson is that we will ultimately be forced to abandon an economic system based on growth. Growth drives all our choices now, defines our economic structure and incentives, is the basis for interest, loans, finance, etc. Clinging to growth in a finite world sets us up on a collision course, and we will be losers if we don?t deliberately step off the train first, aiming for a steady-state existence. We might bundle this concept into the over-used term: ?sustainable.?
The problem with the word ?sustainable? is that we are unable to converge on what it really means: what practices are truly sustainable? And at what level might we expect to stabilize? For instance, the U.S. has approximately 5% of the world?s population, consuming roughly 25% of the world?s energy resources. In order realize the dream of many?to bring a growing world population up to a growing American standard of living?would take perhaps ten times the current throughput. Efficiency measures may knock this back to a factor of five. We are having great difficulty managing our current throughput in this world (fisheries, agriculture and livestock, deforestation, water depletion, climate change, pollution, etc.) so that it is very difficult to imagine ramping up by a factor of five.
A kid may really want a pony?more than anything in the world. A wise parent might suggest that the kid first try to take care of a gerbil, figuring this is five times easier than managing a pony. If the kid demonstrates that he or she can feed the gerbil, clean its cage, and keep it healthy, then the parent may graduate to a more demanding kitten. Next would be a puppy, requiring greater responsibility. If that?s successful, it may be time for a goat?now requiring the kid (not to be confused with the young goat) to manage a paddock. If this works out, it?s finally time for a pony.
In wanting the world to grow into an American standard of living, we effectively want a pony. The problem is, we have not demonstrated that we can take care of our gerbil! We have not deserved our pony, and I would say we don?t deserve to bandy the term ?sustainable? when we have no idea what we can actually manage, and have not talked seriously about a steady-state economic existence first.
This post follows a talk I gave at the Compass Summit in Palos Verdes, California on October 26, 2011. A video of the presentation can be seen here.
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=f4ea5cbe930879e88d1e6a221db24f71
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Wednesday, November 23, 2011
WFP says more than 1 million Zimbabweans need food aid (Reuters)
HARARE (Reuters) ? More than a million people in Zimbabwe will require food aid between now and March 2012, a United Nations agency said Monday, despite recent improvements in the country's grain production.
The southern African country has struggled to feed itself since 2000, when President Robert Mugabe began a drive to seize white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks, leading to a sharp fall in agricultural output.
Production of the staple maize started to recover after Mugabe formed a unity government with his rival, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, and rose from less than 500,000 tonnes in 2007-8 to 1.45 million tonnes in the 2010/11 season.
Production is still below the 2 million tonnes a year the country needs to be self-sufficient.
The UN World Food Program (WFP) said it was facing a $42 million funding shortfall for food aid it planned to provide to vulnerable households in Zimbabwe's hardest-hit areas until the start of the harvest season in March.
A recent study by the Zimbabwean government, UN agencies and other donor organizations had shown that 12 percent of the rural population would not be able to feed itself adequately through the lean season, the WFP said in a statement.
"Most at risk are low-income families hit by failed harvests, and households with orphans and vulnerable children," WFP said. "Although food is generally available in many rural areas, it is too expensive for those with limited resources."
(Reporting by Nelson Banya; Editing by Tim Pearce)
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Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Nanowrinkles, nanofolds yield strange hidden channels
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 22-Nov-2011[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Richard Lewis
Richard_Lewis@brown.edu
401-863-3766
Brown University
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Wrinkles and folds are ubiquitous. They occur in furrowed brows, planetary topology, the surface of the human brain, even the bottom of a gecko's foot. In many cases, they are nature's ingenious way of packing more surface area into a limited space. Scientists, mimicking nature, have long sought to manipulate surfaces to create wrinkles and folds to make smaller, more flexible electronic devices, fluid-carrying nanochannels or even printable cell phones and computers.
But to attain those technology-bending feats, scientists must fully understand the profile and performance of wrinkles and folds at the nanoscale, dimensions 1/50,000th the thickness of a human hair. In a series of observations and experiments, engineers at Brown University and in Korea have discovered unusual properties in wrinkles and folds at the nanoscale. The researchers report that wrinkles created on super-thin films have hidden long waves that lengthen even when the film is compressed. The team also discovered that when folds are formed in such films, closed nanochannels appear below the surface, like thousands of super-tiny pipes.
"Wrinkles are everywhere in science," said Kyung-Suk Kim, professor of engineering at Brown and corresponding author of the paper published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A. "But they hold certain secrets. With this study, we have found mathematically how the wrinkle spacings of a thin sheet are determined on a largely deformed soft substrate and how the wrinkles evolve into regular folds."
Wrinkles are made when a thin stiff sheet is buckled on a soft foundation or in a soft surrounding. They are precursors of regular folds: When the sheet is compressed enough, the wrinkles are so closely spaced that they form folds. The folds are interesting to manufacturers, because they can fit a large surface area of a sheet in a finite space.
Kim and his team laid gold nanogranular film sheets ranging from 20 to 80 nanometers thick on a rubbery substrate commonly used in the microelectronics industry. The researchers compressed the film, creating wrinkles and examined their properties. As in previous studies, they saw primary wrinkles with short periodicities, the distance between individual wrinkles' peaks or valleys. But Kim and his colleagues discovered a second type of wrinkle, with a much longer periodicity than the primary wrinkles like a hidden long wave. As the researchers compressed the gold nanogranular film, the primary wrinkles' periodicity decreased, as expected. But the periodicity between the hidden long waves, which the group labeled secondary wrinkles, lengthened.
"We thought that was strange," Kim said.
It got even stranger when the group formed folds in the gold nanogranular sheets. On the surface, everything appeared normal. The folds were created as the peaks of neighboring wrinkles got so close that they touched. But the research team calculated that those folds, if elongated, did not match the length of the film before it had been compressed. A piece of the original film surface was not accounted for, "as if it had been buried," Kim said.
Indeed, it had been, as nano-size closed channels. Previous researchers, using atomic force microscopy that scans the film's surface, had been unable to see the buried channels. Kim's group turned to focused ion beams to extract a cross-section of the film. There, below the surface, were rows of closed channels, about 50 to a few 100 nanometers in diameter. "They were hidden," Kim said. "We were the first ones to cut (the film) and see that there are channels underneath."
The enclosed nano channels are important because they could be used to funnel liquids, from drugs on patches to treat diseases or infections, to clean water and energy harvesting, like a microscopic hydraulic pump.
###
Contributing authors include Jeong-Yun Sun and Kyu Hwan Oh from Seoul National University; Myoung-Woon Moon from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology; and Shuman Xia, a researcher at Brown and now at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The National Science Foundation, the Korea Institute of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Knowledge Economy of Korea, and the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology of Korea supported the research.
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 22-Nov-2011[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Richard Lewis
Richard_Lewis@brown.edu
401-863-3766
Brown University
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Wrinkles and folds are ubiquitous. They occur in furrowed brows, planetary topology, the surface of the human brain, even the bottom of a gecko's foot. In many cases, they are nature's ingenious way of packing more surface area into a limited space. Scientists, mimicking nature, have long sought to manipulate surfaces to create wrinkles and folds to make smaller, more flexible electronic devices, fluid-carrying nanochannels or even printable cell phones and computers.
But to attain those technology-bending feats, scientists must fully understand the profile and performance of wrinkles and folds at the nanoscale, dimensions 1/50,000th the thickness of a human hair. In a series of observations and experiments, engineers at Brown University and in Korea have discovered unusual properties in wrinkles and folds at the nanoscale. The researchers report that wrinkles created on super-thin films have hidden long waves that lengthen even when the film is compressed. The team also discovered that when folds are formed in such films, closed nanochannels appear below the surface, like thousands of super-tiny pipes.
"Wrinkles are everywhere in science," said Kyung-Suk Kim, professor of engineering at Brown and corresponding author of the paper published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A. "But they hold certain secrets. With this study, we have found mathematically how the wrinkle spacings of a thin sheet are determined on a largely deformed soft substrate and how the wrinkles evolve into regular folds."
Wrinkles are made when a thin stiff sheet is buckled on a soft foundation or in a soft surrounding. They are precursors of regular folds: When the sheet is compressed enough, the wrinkles are so closely spaced that they form folds. The folds are interesting to manufacturers, because they can fit a large surface area of a sheet in a finite space.
Kim and his team laid gold nanogranular film sheets ranging from 20 to 80 nanometers thick on a rubbery substrate commonly used in the microelectronics industry. The researchers compressed the film, creating wrinkles and examined their properties. As in previous studies, they saw primary wrinkles with short periodicities, the distance between individual wrinkles' peaks or valleys. But Kim and his colleagues discovered a second type of wrinkle, with a much longer periodicity than the primary wrinkles like a hidden long wave. As the researchers compressed the gold nanogranular film, the primary wrinkles' periodicity decreased, as expected. But the periodicity between the hidden long waves, which the group labeled secondary wrinkles, lengthened.
"We thought that was strange," Kim said.
It got even stranger when the group formed folds in the gold nanogranular sheets. On the surface, everything appeared normal. The folds were created as the peaks of neighboring wrinkles got so close that they touched. But the research team calculated that those folds, if elongated, did not match the length of the film before it had been compressed. A piece of the original film surface was not accounted for, "as if it had been buried," Kim said.
Indeed, it had been, as nano-size closed channels. Previous researchers, using atomic force microscopy that scans the film's surface, had been unable to see the buried channels. Kim's group turned to focused ion beams to extract a cross-section of the film. There, below the surface, were rows of closed channels, about 50 to a few 100 nanometers in diameter. "They were hidden," Kim said. "We were the first ones to cut (the film) and see that there are channels underneath."
The enclosed nano channels are important because they could be used to funnel liquids, from drugs on patches to treat diseases or infections, to clean water and energy harvesting, like a microscopic hydraulic pump.
###
Contributing authors include Jeong-Yun Sun and Kyu Hwan Oh from Seoul National University; Myoung-Woon Moon from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology; and Shuman Xia, a researcher at Brown and now at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The National Science Foundation, the Korea Institute of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Knowledge Economy of Korea, and the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology of Korea supported the research.
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-11/bu-nny112211.php
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?Bachelorette? Stars Ali Fedotowsky & Roberto Martinez Split!
“Bachelorette” Stars Ali Fedotowsky & Roberto Martinez Split!
Ali Fedotowsky and Roberto Martinez have ended their relationship! Fedotowsky and Martinez met on the reality show “The Bachelorette” but have called time on their [...]
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Monday, November 21, 2011
Mutants with heterozygote disadvantage can prevent spread of transgenic animals
ScienceDaily (Nov. 21, 2011) ? Genetically modified animals are designed to contain the spread of pathogens. One prerequisite for the release of such organisms into the environment is that the new gene variant does not spread uncontrollably, suppressing natural populations. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Pl?n, Germany, have now established that certain mutations are maintained over an extended period if two separate populations exchange individuals with one another on a small scale. The new gene variant may remain confined to one of the two populations. The migration rate between the populations determines how long the new gene variant is expected to survive in the environment.
These new findings may help to achieve greater safety when conducting release experiments involving genetically modified animals.
Genetically modified organisms must not be allowed to spread uncontrollably. Scientists are therefore keen to take advantage of a mechanism that will localise the spread of mutants. Mutants with a heterozygote disadvantage, as it is known, reduce the evolutionary fitness of their carriers to varying degrees if they are only available to one gene copy (heterozygote) or exist in both gene copies (homozygote). In their study, the Max Planck scientists assumed a fitness loss of 50 percent (compared to wildtypes) for mutant heterozygotes and a 10 percent fitness loss for mutant homozygotes.
A mutant with a heterozygote disadvantage can be maintained in a population if it occurs frequently enough for sufficient homozygote offspring to be produced. Above this value, it can suppress the non-mutated gene variant completely and the mutated form becomes extinct. Populations containing mutants with heterozygote disadvantage develop into one of two stable states. These mutant types therefore seem to be well-suited for the safe release of genetically modified organisms. After all, as soon as sufficient numbers of mutants exist in the environment, these replace the natural variant in a local population. If such genes are joined to resistance genes to combat pathogens, mosquito populations could be rendered resistant to Malaria, for example. By releasing the wildtype at a later stage, the transgenic animals can therefore also be removed again more easily from the environment. In population genetics this is known as underdominance.
The researchers then analyzed computer-based simulations showing the effect of mutants with heterozygote disadvantage on two populations of equal size, which, as in nature, are subject to statistical fluctuations. In doing so, they paid particular attention to the gene flow arising from the mobility of the individuals. At times, such a mutation can survive in a stable state in a population. However, this only happens if the migration rate is less than 5 percent. "Our calculations have also shown that mutants are best released into both populations even if the goal is to establish the new genetic variant in only one of them in the long term. If, for example, 75 percent of transgenic animals are distributed to the target population and the remaining 25 percent to a neighbouring population, the transgenic individuals may find it easier to gain traction on a long-term basis in the target population," explains Philipp Altrock from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology.
Scientists in the USA, Brazil, Malaysia and the Cayman Islands have been conducting field experiments on the use of genetically modified animals for several years. These include, for example, experiments involving genetically modified mosquitoes, to protect against infectious diseases such as malaria or dengue fever, and transgenic plant pests. Similar experiments are planned in another nine countries. To date, the males from various insect species, which are generally infertile, are released. In this way, the effective size of the wild population is limited. "One of the disadvantages of this method is that it needs to be repeated very frequently as the transgenic animals cannot reproduce," says Arne Traulsen from the Max Planck Institute in Pl?n. In addition, in the case of mosquitoes, a few parent individuals can already have a large share of the next generation.
In contrast, mutants with heterozygote disadvantage can survive for many generations. Resistance genes linked to such mutants would therefore be more efficient. The safety aspect also increases, as proliferation across a target population is very unlikely. "Nevertheless, the fitness of the transgenic animals, the population sizes, and the migration rates must be known. These factors can most likely be determined for release experiments on maritime islands," says Arne Traulsen.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Max-Planck-Gesellschaft.
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Journal Reference:
- Philipp M. Altrock, Arne Traulsen, Floyd A. Reed. Stability Properties of Underdominance in Finite Subdivided Populations. PLoS Computational Biology, 2011; 7 (11): e1002260 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002260
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111121114757.htm
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Sunday, November 20, 2011
Gaddafi son Saif seized in Libya: officials (Reuters)
TRIPOLI (Reuters) ? Muammar Gaddafi's son and heir apparent Saif al-Islam has been detained in the southern desert, Libya's interim justice minister and other officials said on Saturday.
They said Saif al-Islam and several bodyguards, but no other senior figures from the ousted administration, had been taken near the town of Obari by fighters based in the western mountain town of Zintan
"We have arrested Saif al-Islam Gaddafi in the Obari area," Justice Minister Mohammed al-Alagy told Reuters, adding that the 39-year-old who is wanted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court at The Hague was not injured.
Another senior official in the executive of the National Transitional Council (NTC) told Reuters that the interim government was still checking the details of what had happened.
There was no word of the other official wanted by the ICC, former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi.
The news broke as fighters from Zintan, a powerful faction among the many armed groups currently dominating Libya while the NTC tries to form a new government, started celebrating in Tripoli.
Bashir Thaelba, a Zintan field commander who had called a news conference on another issue, told reporters in the capital that Gaddafi would be held in Zintan until there was a government to hand him over to. The government is due to be formed within days.
"The rebels of Zintan announce that Saif al-Islam Gaddafi has been arrested along with three of his aides today," Thaelba said in remarks carried on Libyan television. "We hope at this historical moment that the future of Libya will be bright."
Gaddafi's father was killed a month ago on Sunday after being captured in his hometown of Sirte on the coast.
(Reporting by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Jon Boyle)
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111119/wl_nm/us_libya
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Brazilian police investigate offshore oil spill (AP)
SAO PAULO ? The Brazilian Federal Police has begun investigating an oil spill in an offshore field operated by oil giant Chevron Corp., which an environmental group alleges is far bigger than the company has stated.
Fabio Scliar, head of the Federal Police department's environmental affairs division, told government news service Agencia Brasil that his division began to look into the causes and extent of the spill Thursday.
A request emailed by The Associated Press emailed to the Federal Police asking for an interview with Scliar went unanswered.
Chevron has said that the volume of the oil spill was between 400 and 650 barrels of oil.
SkyTruth, a nonprofit group that uses satellite imagery to detect environmental problems, said on its website that satellite images show the oil spill extended 918 square miles (2,379 square kilometers) and that the spill rate as of Tuesday was up to at least 3,738 barrels per day.
In an emailed statement, Chevron spokesman Scott Walker said only that the company "continues to fully inform and cooperate with Brazilian government agencies as part of the company's response efforts."
Brazil's oil regulator, the National Petroleum Agency, said in a statement that Chevron plugged the well with a cement cover.
"If Chevron is not doing what it should (to contain the spill) it will be severely punished," Mines and Energy Minister Edison Lobao said Thursday.
Brazil's environmental protection agency, Ibama, said in a statement that Chevron has not omitted any information and has implemented all the emergency procedures required.
The well is part of the Chevron-operated Frade project, located 3,800 feet (1,200 meters) underwater, 230 miles (370 kilometers) off the northeastern coast of Rio de Janeiro state.
The agency said that ships in the area were working to disperse the oil and move it away from the Brazilian shore and that their efforts were being aided by prevailing weather conditions.
On Tuesday, Chevron said its efforts to contain the spill had been successful and that there had been a "significant decrease" in the amount of oil coming from seep lines near the Frade well.
In the past few years, Brazil's state-run oil company Petrobras and others have made massive offshore oil discoveries thought to hold at least 50 billion barrels of oil, making them the biggest finds in the Western hemisphere in 30 years.
There has been virtually no debate in Brazil about the dangers drilling offshore poses, unlike in the U.S., where debate about the dangers of drilling were pitched even before last year's massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Politicians are in a fierce battle trying to decide how to divide up the future oil royalties among states, with essentially no talk about the potentially damaging effects the drilling may spark.
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Saturday, November 19, 2011
iLuv iSP210 MusicPac Portable Stereo Speaker Case for iPad
I love my iPad 2, but I have to admit that its speaker is lacking. ?I find myself cupping my hand around the back of the iPad 2 to try to redirect the sound to the front – where my ears are. ?The iSP210 MusicPac Portable Stereo Speaker Case for iPad from iLuv is a [...]
Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2011/11/18/iluv-isp210-musicpac-portable-stereo-speaker-case-for-ipad/
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Friday, November 18, 2011
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Editor's Note: Product not yet tested.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/lRI2eBSoMsA/0,2817,2396412,00.asp
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Mass Appeal: To Study Backward-Finned Dolphin, Researcher Sources Crowds for Cash
Features |
Evolution
One scientist's quest to understand some funky fins taps a new crowdsourcing model to funding his project
?| November 17, 2011
Backward-finned dolphin: This dolphin's fin seems to be on backward. Matt Leslie is trying to figure out why.
Image: Robert L. Pitman NOAA-NMFS-PRD
No, it's not photoshopped?that dolphin's fin really is on backward. It is a type of spinner dolphin that lives in the eastern tropical Pacific. The really peculiar thing about these cetaceans is that only the adult males have backward fins. The juveniles and females of the species look completely normal.
"We've known about these dolphins for 50 years," says Matt Leslie, a graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, "but not a lot has been done to actually study why it's on backwards."
To figure out what's going on, Leslie wants to build models of these dolphins and put them into a flow tank. By looking at how the water moves over the models, researchers can study how the fin might affect the dolphins' swimming capabilities. Because the funky fin only occurs in adult males, the hunch is that it has to do with appealing to female preferences, rather than making the dolphin a more efficient swimmer.
But this research is only tangentially related to Leslie's PhD work, and it is not a question that big funding agencies are terribly interested in. So to get money for the CT scans he needs to build the models, Leslie has turned to a new funding source: crowds. His research project is one of 49 projects in the SciFund Challenge, an experiment in crowdsourcing for research funding.
SciFund is the brainchild of two researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who thought that crowdsourcing for science projects could help bridge the gap between scientists and the rest of the world. "My vision for the future is that every scientist has a public face, where they're updating people about their science and people can directly connect to it," co-founder Jai Ranganathan says. He hopes that if people can see and fund projects, they'll be more connected to the science.
To reach a bigger audience, SciFund has teamed up with RocketHub, a more general-topic crowdsourcing site that connects projects with people. RocketHub co-founder Brian Meece was initially skeptical of how well crowdsourcing would work for science, but since teaming up with SciFund he's seen several projects go well beyond their expected fundraising goals. "We're seeing this model that's been so successful in the world of arts hold up exceptionally well in the world of science," he says.
And for Leslie, the benefit is twofold: His project could get funded, and he can connect more easily with the public about his work. "I see this initiative as an excellent way to do both funding for a nontraditional science project, but also for outreach and getting people excited," he says.
The projects on the SciFund site are generally small, compared with those typically funded by agencies such as the National Science Foundation or the American Association for the Advancement of Science. But Ranganathan and Meece think researchers could start to fund more ambitious projects using crowds. "It's really a brand new model," Meece says, "so I think the future is very bright."
Ranganathan says that for him, it's less about the cash and more about the outreach. People who donate to a project feel a sense of ownership and excitement about that research, he says. And anyone who donates money to a project on RocketHub, gets something from that project in return, whether it's photographs from the field, a mention in a paper published in a journal or, in the case of Leslie's project, a clay model of a backward dolphin fin. "Obviously I'd have to draw or carve an arrow for the right direction," he says, laughing.
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=3ce288c4d36fbf89cd05110119a9fc1f
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Thursday, November 17, 2011
Report: Justin Bieber paternity lawsuit dropped
Nacho Doce / REUTERS
Justin Bieber will no longer have to prove whether or not he fathered a child.
By Randee Dawn
Justin Bieber is off the hook! At least, in terms of having to take a paternity test. According to TMZ, Mariah Yeater has dismissed a lawsuit claiming the 17-year-old is the father of her child.
Two weeks ago, the California-based Yeater stepped forward with her lawyers Lance Rogers and Matt Pare to claim that she and Bieber had shared a backstage encounter after one of his Los Angeles Staples Center concerts, and that her four-month-old baby was his. Bieber and his representatives denied any such tryst ever took place, and prepared to take a paternity test to refute her claims.
"To set the record straight, none of it is true," Bieber declared during a visit to TODAY earlier in November. "I know I'm going to be a target, but I'm never going to be a victim. It's crazy, because every night after the show I've gone right from the stage right to my car. So it's crazy that some people want to make up such false allegations."
"I can confirm that the team has proactively made arrangements for Justin to be tested upon his return and we're going to hold everyone who is involved responsible," Bieber spokesperson Matthew Hiltzik said in a statement, as reported on MTV.com. "It's sad that someone would fabricate malicious, defamatory, and demonstrably false claims. We'll vigorously pursue all available legal remedies to protect Justin and to hold those involved with bringing this suit accountable for their actions."
According to TMZ, the paternity case is now dead in the water, and Yeater's lawyers have quit representing her.
MTV.com says there's no word yet on whether Bieber's reps will follow through with their legal case now that the original suit has been dropped.
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Scott Disick: Banned From Dancing With the Stars Set Over Kristin Cavallari Fling?
Rob Kardashian has had one heck of a run, tangoing his way to the Dancing With the Stars finals on ABC this fall. Along for the ride in the audience? His entire family.
Almost.
Absent until October 31 was Scott Disick, Kourtney Kardashian's baby father. That's 'cause Kristin Cavallari was still on the show until then, Life & Style says.
Say what?
The celebrity gossip magazine alleges that just before Kourtney became pregnant with her and Scott's child, he was putting it to Kristin, a DWTS hopeful this fall.
"While Kourtney and Scott were on a break, Scott hooked up with Kristin," a friend reveals. "Kourtney can't stand her now and didn't want Scott at show tapings."
A Kardashian pal confirms that "Scott and Kristin definitely hooked up in Las Vegas during a time [February 2009] that he was on a break from Kourtney."
The Kardashian insider adds that both Kourt and Scott were BFFs with Kristin Cavallari, who used to date Kourtney's stepbrother Brody Jenner, at one point.
That was then, though, and this is now.
She and Kristin have been enemies ever since. "Kourtney was furious," the friend says. "She and her sisters have called Kristin 'the whore bag' ever since."
The most surprising part of this report? That Scott Disick actually scored with both of these girls. Look at him, wearing sunglasses at night! What a douche.
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