The world wide web prospered and is what it is today because its inventor Tim Berners-Lee didn't give into temptation and greed and chose not to patent his invention. ?But 20 years later, it?s evident that the only thing that most online leaders lead in is plain bad behavior and greed. Business as Usual Right off the bat, I?ll admit that this means that the web is no different than business in general, where corporations aren?t exactly boy scouts.? But given the openness of the web, rise of social media, and the expectation of the democratization of society and economy through the web, it?s surprising that we find ourselves in the situation that we do.
ScienceDaily (Dec. 2, 2011) ? The end of the last ice age and the processes that led to the melting of the northern and southern ice sheets supply basic information on changes in our climate. Although the maximum size of the ice sheet in the northern hemisphere during the last ice age is relatively well known, there is little reliable data on the dimensions of the Antarctic ice sheet. A publication appearing in the journal Science on 1 December now furnishes indications that the two hemispheres attained their maximum ice sheet size at nearly the same time and started melting 19,000 years ago.
"The decline in the Antarctic ice sheets thus commenced almost 5,000 years earlier than assumed to date, though our investigations show great regional differences and demonstrate how important deepwater archives are," says the lead author of the study, Dr. Michael Weber from the Geological Institute of the University of Cologne.
"Our results suggest that Antarctica was not as climatically isolated as previously assumed," adds Dr. Gerhard Kuhn from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association. "Now we have to presume that the reaction of the large ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctic to climate change is more closely linked in time than thought. At least that's the way it was during the last ice age."
This simultaneous melting was presumably caused by changes in the global sea level and deepwater circulation in the Atlantic Ocean. As a result, warm water reached the Antarctic continental margin. This early ice retreat is evidence of an instability in the East Antarctic ice sheet unsuspected to date. "Forecasts of the future rise in the sea level caused by climate change will also have to be adjusted accordingly," explains Dr. Weber.
"However, our study also clearly points out how important access to long data series, good archives and high-quality scientific databases is," Gerhard Kuhn specifies key prerequisites for reconstruction of climate history. "It's only because we at the Alfred Wegener Institute can fall back on sediment cores archived on a long-term basis and a data archive that has been built up over decades that such comparative studies are possible at all. Some of the now investigated sediment cores, for instance, were taken back in the years 1987 and 1990."
Scientists from the Geological Institute of the University of Cologne (Dr. Michael Weber, lead author), the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association (Dr. Gerhard Kuhn, coordinator), Oregon State University and Harvard University were involved in the research work. The investigations were funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), among others.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres.
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Journal Reference:
M. E. Weber, P. U. Clark, W. Ricken, J. X. Mitrovica, S. W. Hostetler, G. Kuhn. Interhemispheric Ice-Sheet Synchronicity During the Last Glacial Maximum. Science, 2011; 334 (6060): 1265 DOI: 10.1126/science.1209299
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.
The Bay Bridge connecting San Francisco and Oakland my not be as iconic as the Golden Gate but it's a vital traffic artery nonetheless. So how do you reconstruct the span without delaying its 280,000 daily commuters? Very carefully. More »
LAGOS, Nigeria ? At least 5,000 people have fled villages in central Nigeria at the heart of clashes between nomadic cattle herders and farmers, officials said Thursday, as at least five people have died in the fighting.
Authorities acknowledged there could be many more deaths in the violence hitting rural Benue and Nasarawa states in Nigeria's fertile central belt, a dividing line in the country between religious and ethnic groups.
However, the remote villages remain difficult to reach and government officials appear hesitant to publicize details of the attacks at risk of inflaming a region where such clashes remain common.
The fighting began this week as Muslim Fulani cattle herders found some of their livestock dead, said Conrad Wergba, Benue state's information commissioner. The cattle herders retaliated by attacking villages of the Christian Tiv ethnic group in both Benue and Nasarawa states, he said.
"It is an occurring problem," Wergba said. "There is this conflict each time their cattle destroy the Tiv farmland during grazing."
A combined force of police and military moved into the areas to guard the area, he said.
Benue State police spokesman Ejike Alaribe said at least five people had died in the attacks, though he acknowledged that was all authorities could confirm on their own in the remote villages.
"That's official figures, but some others died but not in this our state," Alaribe said. "It's a remote area. Most of the things that happen, they don't feel like going to report them to the appropriate authorities. ... It could be more."
Victoria Monde, the information commissioner of Nasarawa state, referred questions to an employee who refused to give his name, but said the government had given food to refugees in multiple camps. Both the employee and Monde declined to comment further.
The Tiv represent one the largest of the minority ethnic groups in Nigeria, a nation of more than 160 million people and more than 250 different ethnicities.
Benue state has seen previous clashes in the past between them and other groups over land issues. In 2001, during one of the worst spates of violence, Nigeria's federal government sent soldiers to the region that killed 200 villagers in a massacre after local militants killed military members.
___
Jon Gambrell can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.
Columbia River salmon are adapting to climate changePublic release date: 1-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Kevin Stacey kstacey@press.uchicago.edu 401-284-3878 University of Chicago Press Journals
News tips from the December issue of the American Naturalist
Article Highlights from the December issue of The American Naturalist:
Columbia River Salmon are Adapting to Climate Change
Predators Keep Local Frogs In Uniform
Can sexual selection's bizarre creations sometimes set evolution on a path to novel survival strategies?
For the complete table of contents for the December issue, go to www.journals.uchicago.edu/an.
Columbia River Salmon are Adapting to Climate Change
Sockeye salmon are evolving through natural selection to deal with a warming climate, according to a study by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In recent decades, scientists have observed that salmon in the Columbia River are starting their migration earlier in the year. The fish now migrate upstream an average of 10 days earlier than they did in the 1940s. Researchers knew that the change was associated with warming water temperatures, but an important question remained. Is this a behavioral response in reaction to warmer water, or are the fish evolving modified behavior through mortality and natural selection? Using 60 years of water temperature records and data on salmon mortality during migration, researchers led by Dr. Lisa Crozier have determined that the latter has played an important role. According to their model, up to two thirds of the 10-day advance in spawning is explained by natural selection, with a behavioral response to changes in river flow explaining the rest. "Evidence of an evolutionary response in Columbia River sockeye salmon is good news, because it appeared to reduce their exposure to potentially lethal river temperatures in recent years," said Dr. Crozier. "This study gives managers insight into the multiple processes that help salmon persist in the face of a changing environment, and augments our toolbox for predicting how other species might respond to similar changes."
Lisa G. Crozier, Mark D. Scheuerell, Richard W. Zabel, "Using Time Series Analysis to Characterize Evolutionary and Plastic Responses to Environmental Change: A Case Study of a Shift toward Earlier Migration Date in Sockeye Salmon." http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/662669
Predators Keep Local Frogs In Uniform
Peruvian poison dart frogs of the genus Ranitomeya are jewels of the rainforest, renowned for the diversity of vivid colors they display, which vary greatly from region to region. Obviously, these colors have not evolved for our amazement, but rather to warn predators that they will be greatly ill if they dare taste them. But how do predators keep track ofand learn to avoidso many color patterns. And why do poison-dart frogs maintain such a high diversity of color patterns? Researchers from the University of Montreal have recently showed that diversity in poison-dart frogs is maintained locally due to the predators avoiding only one color pattern and quickly eliminating all others. Using hundreds of life-sized clay models painted to resemble the distinct color patterns of poison dart frogs, the researchers found that avian predators avoided models with the local coloration, but attacked models with non-local colors. The results show that the local predators have come to recognize and avoid the local frogs. "Being exotic is, in this case, not advantageous at all, as the frogs' vivid coloration make them more easily detected by predators that have not learned to recognize them," said Dr. Chouteau. These results highlight the close relationship between the colorful amphibians and their predators, and demonstrate that the geographic diversity of color patterns is maintained by the learning experience of a distinct predator community.
Mathieu Chouteau, Bernard Angers, "The Role of Predators in Maintaining the Geographic Organization of Aposematic Signals." http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/662667
Can sexual selection's bizarre creations sometimes set evolution on a path to novel survival strategies?
Living organisms pursue a dazzling diversity of ecological strategies for surviving in and extracting resources from their environments, but how does such diversity come about? Because natural selection is shortsighted, unable to see potentially advantageous strategies for which no variation is immediately available, it will tend to keep populations doing what they do, ecologically speaking. So how do novel ecological strategies evolve? Most attempts to resolve this long-standing evolutionary puzzle have invoked a stochastic evolutionary process, genetic drift, which can sometimes pull very small populations away from their local phenotypic optimum. But an article by (University of New South Wales) Russell Bonduriansky explains an alternative process capable of displacing populations from their ecological comfort-zone: sexual selection. Darwin famously proposed sexual selection as an explanation for the evolution of bizarre traits that often seem to hinder prospects for survival and foraging. Perhaps the perverse tendency for sexual selectionand its more recently identified corollary, sexual conflictto act at cross purposes to survival and foraging needs might also, in the evolutionary long run, facilitate ecological diversification. The author brings together theory and evidence to make the case that sexual selection and conflict could act as engines of ecological diversification. Bizarre traits that evolve under sexual selection can, on occasion, furnish preadaptations for novel ecological functionsand can evolve to be expressed in both sexes, a process termed ecological co-optation. A variety of examples that implicate this process are discussed, along with suggestions for future research.
Russell Bonduriansky, "Sexual Selection and Conflict as Engines of Ecological Diversification." http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/662665
###
Since its inception in 1867, The American Naturalist has maintained its position as one of the world's most renowned, peer-reviewed publications in ecology, evolution, and population and integrative biology research. While addressing topics in community and ecosystem dynamics, evolution of sex and mating systems, organismal adaptation, and genetic aspects of evolution, AmNat emphasizes sophisticated methodologies and innovative theoretical syntheses--all in an effort to advance the knowledge of organic evolution and other broad biological principles.
[ | 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.
Columbia River salmon are adapting to climate changePublic release date: 1-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Kevin Stacey kstacey@press.uchicago.edu 401-284-3878 University of Chicago Press Journals
News tips from the December issue of the American Naturalist
Article Highlights from the December issue of The American Naturalist:
Columbia River Salmon are Adapting to Climate Change
Predators Keep Local Frogs In Uniform
Can sexual selection's bizarre creations sometimes set evolution on a path to novel survival strategies?
For the complete table of contents for the December issue, go to www.journals.uchicago.edu/an.
Columbia River Salmon are Adapting to Climate Change
Sockeye salmon are evolving through natural selection to deal with a warming climate, according to a study by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In recent decades, scientists have observed that salmon in the Columbia River are starting their migration earlier in the year. The fish now migrate upstream an average of 10 days earlier than they did in the 1940s. Researchers knew that the change was associated with warming water temperatures, but an important question remained. Is this a behavioral response in reaction to warmer water, or are the fish evolving modified behavior through mortality and natural selection? Using 60 years of water temperature records and data on salmon mortality during migration, researchers led by Dr. Lisa Crozier have determined that the latter has played an important role. According to their model, up to two thirds of the 10-day advance in spawning is explained by natural selection, with a behavioral response to changes in river flow explaining the rest. "Evidence of an evolutionary response in Columbia River sockeye salmon is good news, because it appeared to reduce their exposure to potentially lethal river temperatures in recent years," said Dr. Crozier. "This study gives managers insight into the multiple processes that help salmon persist in the face of a changing environment, and augments our toolbox for predicting how other species might respond to similar changes."
Lisa G. Crozier, Mark D. Scheuerell, Richard W. Zabel, "Using Time Series Analysis to Characterize Evolutionary and Plastic Responses to Environmental Change: A Case Study of a Shift toward Earlier Migration Date in Sockeye Salmon." http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/662669
Predators Keep Local Frogs In Uniform
Peruvian poison dart frogs of the genus Ranitomeya are jewels of the rainforest, renowned for the diversity of vivid colors they display, which vary greatly from region to region. Obviously, these colors have not evolved for our amazement, but rather to warn predators that they will be greatly ill if they dare taste them. But how do predators keep track ofand learn to avoidso many color patterns. And why do poison-dart frogs maintain such a high diversity of color patterns? Researchers from the University of Montreal have recently showed that diversity in poison-dart frogs is maintained locally due to the predators avoiding only one color pattern and quickly eliminating all others. Using hundreds of life-sized clay models painted to resemble the distinct color patterns of poison dart frogs, the researchers found that avian predators avoided models with the local coloration, but attacked models with non-local colors. The results show that the local predators have come to recognize and avoid the local frogs. "Being exotic is, in this case, not advantageous at all, as the frogs' vivid coloration make them more easily detected by predators that have not learned to recognize them," said Dr. Chouteau. These results highlight the close relationship between the colorful amphibians and their predators, and demonstrate that the geographic diversity of color patterns is maintained by the learning experience of a distinct predator community.
Mathieu Chouteau, Bernard Angers, "The Role of Predators in Maintaining the Geographic Organization of Aposematic Signals." http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/662667
Can sexual selection's bizarre creations sometimes set evolution on a path to novel survival strategies?
Living organisms pursue a dazzling diversity of ecological strategies for surviving in and extracting resources from their environments, but how does such diversity come about? Because natural selection is shortsighted, unable to see potentially advantageous strategies for which no variation is immediately available, it will tend to keep populations doing what they do, ecologically speaking. So how do novel ecological strategies evolve? Most attempts to resolve this long-standing evolutionary puzzle have invoked a stochastic evolutionary process, genetic drift, which can sometimes pull very small populations away from their local phenotypic optimum. But an article by (University of New South Wales) Russell Bonduriansky explains an alternative process capable of displacing populations from their ecological comfort-zone: sexual selection. Darwin famously proposed sexual selection as an explanation for the evolution of bizarre traits that often seem to hinder prospects for survival and foraging. Perhaps the perverse tendency for sexual selectionand its more recently identified corollary, sexual conflictto act at cross purposes to survival and foraging needs might also, in the evolutionary long run, facilitate ecological diversification. The author brings together theory and evidence to make the case that sexual selection and conflict could act as engines of ecological diversification. Bizarre traits that evolve under sexual selection can, on occasion, furnish preadaptations for novel ecological functionsand can evolve to be expressed in both sexes, a process termed ecological co-optation. A variety of examples that implicate this process are discussed, along with suggestions for future research.
Russell Bonduriansky, "Sexual Selection and Conflict as Engines of Ecological Diversification." http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/662665
###
Since its inception in 1867, The American Naturalist has maintained its position as one of the world's most renowned, peer-reviewed publications in ecology, evolution, and population and integrative biology research. While addressing topics in community and ecosystem dynamics, evolution of sex and mating systems, organismal adaptation, and genetic aspects of evolution, AmNat emphasizes sophisticated methodologies and innovative theoretical syntheses--all in an effort to advance the knowledge of organic evolution and other broad biological principles.
[ | 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.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nev., center, accompanied by, from left, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin of Ill., and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks to reporters about extending the payroll tax cut, Thursday, Dec. 1, 2011, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nev., center, accompanied by, from left, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin of Ill., and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks to reporters about extending the payroll tax cut, Thursday, Dec. 1, 2011, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Ignoring a presidential veto threat, the Democratic-controlled Senate moved methodically Thursday to complete a massive defense bill that would deny suspected terrorists, even U.S. citizens seized within the nation's borders, the right to trial and subject them to indefinite detention.
The Senate rejected an effort by Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein to limit a military custody requirement for suspects to those captured outside the United States. The vote was 55-45. Feinstein, D-Calif., said her goal was to ensure "the military won't be roaming our streets looking for suspected terrorists."
The issue divided Democrats with nine senators, many facing re-election next year, breaking with the leadership and administration to vote against the amendment. Republicans held firm, with only Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Mark Kirk of Illinois and Mike Lee of Utah backing Feinstein's effort.
Overall, the deficit-driven bill would authorize $662 billion for military personnel, weapons systems, national security programs in the Energy Department and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Reflecting a period of austerity and a winding down of decade-old conflicts, the bill is $27 billion less than what President Barack Obama requested and $43 billion less than what Congress gave the Pentagon this year.
The Senate pushed to finish the bill by day's end. Its version must be reconciled with a House-passed measure in the final weeks of the congressional session.
In an escalating fight with the White House, the bill would ramp up the role of the military in handling terror suspects. The bill's language challenges citizens' rights under the Constitution, tests the boundaries of executive and legislative branch authority and sets up a showdown with the Democratic commander in chief.
It reflects the politically charged dispute over whether to treat suspected terrorists as prisoners of war or criminals. The administration insists that the military, law enforcement and intelligence agents need flexibility in prosecuting the war on terror after they've succeeded in killing al-Qaida's Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki.
In its veto threat, the White House said it cannot accept any legislation that "challenges or constrains the president's authorities to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists and protect the nation." Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and FBI Director Robert Mueller have opposed the provisions.
Republicans counter that their efforts are necessary to respond to an evolving, post-Sept. 11 threat, and that Obama has failed to produce a consistent policy on handling terror suspects.
The bill would require military custody of a suspect deemed to be a member of al-Qaida or its affiliates and involved in plotting or committing attacks on the United States. American citizens would be exempt. The bill does allow the executive branch to waive the authority based on national security and hold a suspect in civilian custody.
The legislation also would give the government the authority to have the military hold an individual suspected of terrorism indefinitely, without a trial. That provision had no exception for a U.S. citizen.
Feinstein offered another amendment, one that would prohibit the indefinite detention of a U.S. citizen without charges or trial. She has said the last time the government held U.S. citizens indefinitely was when Japanese-Americans were interned in camps during World War II.
Kirk has called the provision unconstitutional, violating the Fourth Amendment and the right of individuals to be secure in their homes from unreasonable searches and seizures.
Countered Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H.: "We need the authority to hold those individuals in military custody so we aren't reading them Miranda rights."
Earlier this week, the Senate resoundingly rejected an effort to strip the detainee provisions from the defense bill and instead hold hearings on the issue.
The Senate was expected to overwhelmingly approve crippling sanctions on Iran as fears about Tehran developing a nuclear weapon outweighed concerns about driving up oil prices that would hit economically strapped Americans at the gas pump.
Last week, the administration announced a new set of penalties against Iran, including identifying for the first time Iran's entire banking sector as a "primary money laundering concern." This requires increased monitoring by U.S. banks to ensure that they and their foreign affiliates avoid dealing with Iranian financial institutions.
But lawmakers pressed ahead with even tougher penalties despite reservations by the administration.
Sens. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and Kirk offered an amendment that would target foreign financial institutions that do business with the Central Bank of Iran, barring them from opening or maintaining correspondent operations in the United States. It would apply to foreign central banks only for transactions that involve the sale or purchase of petroleum or petroleum products.
The sanctions on petroleum would only apply if the president determines there is a sufficient alternative supply and if the country with jurisdiction over the financial institution has not significantly reduced its purchases of Iranian oil.
Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, David Cohen, a senior Treasury Department official, and Wendy Sherman, an undersecretary of state, warned that the amendment could force up oil prices ? a financial boon for Iran.
"There is absolutely a risk that in fact the price of oil would go up, which would mean that Iran would in fact have more money to fuel its nuclear ambitions, not less," Sherman said. "And our real objective here is to cut off the economic means that Iran has for its nuclear program."
Cohen said the amendment would tell foreign banks and companies "that if they continue to process oil transactions with the Central Bank of Iran their access to the United States can be terminated."
"It is a very, very powerful threat," Cohen warned. "It is a threat for the commercial banks to end their ability to transact in the dollar and their ability really to function as major international financial institutions," and one that could push allies away from contributing to a coordinated effort against Iran.
___
Associated Press writer Bradley Klapper contributed to this report.
The world wide web prospered and is what it is today because its inventor Tim Berners-Lee didn't give into temptation and greed and chose not to patent his invention. ?But 20 years later, it?s evident that the only thing that most online leaders lead in is plain bad behavior and greed. Business as Usual Right off the bat, I?ll admit that this means that the web is no different than business in general, where corporations aren?t exactly boy scouts.? But given the openness of the web, rise of social media, and the expectation of the democratization of society and economy through the web, it?s surprising that we find ourselves in the situation that we do.
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Public release date: 1-Dec-2011
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