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শুক্রবার, ২৪ মে, ২০১৩

Abundance and distribution of Hawaiian coral species predicted by model

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Researchers from the University of Hawaii ? Manoa (UHM) School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) developed species distribution models of the six dominant Hawaiian coral species around the main Hawaiian Islands including two species currently under consideration as threatened or endangered. They found the order of coral abundance (from highest to lowest) around the main Hawaiian Islands to be Porites lobata, Montipora patula, Pocillopora meandrina, Montipora capitata, Porites compressa, and Montipora flabellata.

Environmental factors (wave energy, shape of the seafloor, water clarity, depth, rugosity (roughness of the seafloor), geological island age, and organic sediment content) are known to influence Hawaiian reefs. However, this is the first study to systematically examine the influence of these factors on the distribution and abundance of coral species across the entire seascape of shallow reefs in the main Hawaiian Islands (MHI).

"Average wave height and maximum wave height were the most influential variables explaining coral abundance in the Hawaiian Islands," reported Erik Franklin, lead author of the study and Assistant Research Professor at the UHM Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology. "Our models also identified relationships between coral cover and island age, depth, sunlight, rugosity, slope, and aspect (direction a slope faces)."

In general, coral cover was predicted to be highest in primarily wave-sheltered coastlines and embayments. Reefs with highest cover were concentrated in Kaneohe Bay on Oahu; the wave-sheltered reefs of Molokai, Lanai, Maui, and Kahoolawe; and the Kohala coast of Hawaii.

To construct the species distribution and abundance models, researchers integrated field surveys for corals (data provided by the US National Park Service and US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) with environmental data of wave exposure (data provided by UHM Department of Ocean and Resources Engineering), benthic geomorphology, and sunlight from 2000 to 2009.

Regional-scale mapping of coral species from these models provide a framework for population modeling and marine spatial planning of Hawaiian coral reefs. The geographic characterization of coral reefs would benefit greatly from the improved coral distribution and abundance information generated from coral distribution models. Data from these models can be incorporated into marine conservation plans or used for threat assessments to reefs.

"For example," Franklin says, "our results were recently used in the management plan review process of the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary as they considered the distribution and abundance of animals other than whales."

One advantage of this integrative, modeling approach is that researchers are able to consider a broader range of areas than field surveys alone and, therefore, can provide a truer picture of total abundance. "We were most surprised at the high relative abundance of Montipora patula which is currently under consideration for listing as a threatened or endangered species," reported Franklin. Montipora flabellata, the other coral species under consideration as a threatened or endangered species, was not as abundant as the other five species.

Franklin and colleagues are in the process of extending the modeling approach to include additional marine species in Hawaii such as reef fish and include additional environmental variables to try to improve the predictive capacity of the models. Ideally the results will continue to inform marine resource management in the Hawaiian Islands.

###

E C Franklin, P L Jokiel, M J Donahue (2013). Predictive modeling of coral distribution and abundance in the Hawaiian Islands. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 481:121-132; doi: 10.3354/meps10252.

University of Hawaii ? SOEST:

Thanks to University of Hawaii ? SOEST for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/128336/Abundance_and_distribution_of_Hawaiian_coral_species_predicted_by_model

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'Sons Of Anarchy' Casts Star Of 'The Shield'

EW.com:

Another butt-kicker from "The Shield" is coming to Charming.

EW has learned exclusively that the Emmy-nominated CCH Pounder will join FX?s "Sons of Anarchy" for a multi-episode arc. She will play Tyne Patterson, a San Joaquin County District Attorney who runs head first into the area?s violent biker ways.

Read the whole story at EW.com

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/23/sons-of-anarchy-casts-sta_n_3329487.html

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বৃহস্পতিবার, ২৩ মে, ২০১৩

Charles Simic to read from new book in Portsmouth - South Church, Portsmouth

RiverRun Bookstore welcomes Charles Simic to celebrate the recent recent release of his book, New and Selected Poems: 1962 - 2012. The event will be held at the South Church.

For over fifty years, Charles Simic has been widely celebrated for his brilliant and innovative poetic imagery, his sardonic wit, and a voice all his own. He has been awarded nearly every major literary prize for his poetry, including a Pulitzer and a MacArthur grant, in addition to serving as the poet laureate of the United States in 2007 and 2008.

In this new volume, he distills his life?s work, combining for the first time the best of his early poems with his later works?including nearly three dozen revisions?along with seventeen new, never-before-published poems. Simic?s body of work draws inspiration from a range of topics, from the inscrutability of ordinary life to American blues, from folktales to marriage and war.

Consistently exciting and unexpected, the nearly four hundred poems in this volume represent the best of one of America?s most distinguished and original poets.

After the event, Mr. Simic will sign books for the attendees.

Tickets are $5 and can be purchased?here. The $5 ticket can be redeemed for $5 in credit toward the purchase of one of Mr. Simic's books. (One ticket per book, please.) We hand out the tickets the night of the event, when you check in at the door.

If you would like to avoid the fees, you can also purchase tickets by calling RiverRun Bookstore at 603-431-2100 Call: 603-431-2100 .

Source: http://calendar.unh.edu//EventDetails.aspx?data=hHr80o3M7J4Ln3bNGffWvuuJQxdGnkAKzfUE1kNc/WBksdW4/wqaCfc1cekjbM6m

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Tornado survivors try to recover

A group of men pray with tornado survivor Tim Wardwell. (Jason Sickles/Yahoo News)

MOORE, Okla. ? Atop a pile of rubble that had been his home, Tim Wardwell choked back tears, grateful for the strangers who prayed with him to give thanks that he wasn?t among the 24 tornado fatalities.

?I don?t know how I?m here, dude,? Wardwell told Yahoo News.

Wardwell and his wife, Kelsey, had biked back to the house?which had collapsed on him and their two dachshunds?to survey the damage. They managed to recover their family birth certificates, a handful of photos and a few keepsakes for their children.

?The bear still squeaks,? said Kelsey, pointing to a tattered toy.

An upended car rests on what was once a house. (Jason Sickles/Yahoo News)

Reuters reports the Oklahoma Emergency Management office estimates 2,400 homes were damaged or destroyed and about 10,000 people affected. The 200 mph twister cut a path of destruction 17 miles long and 1.3 miles wide. On Wednesday, the Medical Examiner's office identified 16 of the 24 victims by name. Ten of them are children; two of those infants.

Economic experts fear the storm?s financial toll could top $3 billion. Donations have been coming in from kids with piggy banks to professional athletes. And charity groups said more cash will be needed for the months ahead.

"What this enables us to do is send those funds to the area where they're needed most immediately," Red Cross spokeswoman Anne Marie Borrego told Reuters.

The Moore Fire Department announced on Wednesday morning that its search for victims at the hard-hit Plaza Towers Elementary School, where seven children reportedly died, had ended with no new casualties discovered.

Wednesday will be a big day in the recovery effort. With rescue missions for trapped victims winding down, authorities are allowing more residents back into devastated neighborhoods. Government officials are setting up disaster centers to help thousands of people begin the process of applying for aid.

And Mother Nature is finally cooperating. Sunny skies are forecast for Wednesday before a 50 percent chance of thunderstorms through Saturday.

?Take advantage of today?s good weather,? KFOR-TV meteorologist Emily Sutton told listeners.

On Wednesday morning, displaced residents swapped advice and encouragement in the breakfast room at a Hampton Inn.

Allen Anderson and his wife, JoAnn, had made it back to their demolished home on Tuesday. He said the piles of muddy broken bricks and boards make it difficult to determine what?s what.

?You can?t go through the house like you normally would,? Allen, 63, told Yahoo News.

The Andersons said their longtime insurance company dropped them last year when it decided to quit covering houses in Oklahoma. JoAnn said she breathed a sigh of relief when their new carrier immediately gave them emergency cash and approved the hotel for 31 days.

?We?re going to have to find a house to rent, and we?re going to have to find a car,? she said.

Danielle Stephan holds boyfriend Thomas Layton as they pause between salvaging through the remains of a family member's home one day after a tornado devastated the town Moore, Oklahoma, in the ... more? Danielle Stephan holds boyfriend Thomas Layton as they pause between salvaging through the remains of a family member's home one day after a tornado devastated the town Moore, Oklahoma, in the outskirts of Oklahoma City May 21, 2013. Rescuers went building to building in search of victims and thousands of survivors were homeless on Tuesday after a massive tornado tore through the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore, wiping out whole blocks of homes and killing at least 24 people. REUTERS/Adrees Latif (UNITED STATES - Tags: DISASTER ENVIRONMENT TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY) - RTXZVON less?

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/financial-toll-mounts-oklahoma-tornado-recovery-effort-begins-133103551.html

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3 Mindbending Ways Apple Dodged $13.8B In Taxes

Kudos to Apple's finance lawyers, who are the Cirque Du Soleil of legal contortionism. On the eve of live testimony from CEO Tim Cook, CFO Peter Oppenheimer and Phillip Bullock, head of Apple's tax operations, a scathing congressional investigation of Apple's tax dodging strategy reveals how the computer giant avoided $13.8 billion in taxes through a clever labyrinth of offshore tax havens, shell corporations, and paper shuffling.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/6vgeTuQa_mE/

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বুধবার, ২২ মে, ২০১৩

Should we let wunderkinds drop out of high school?

FILE - In this Oct. 1, 2012 file photo, Tumblr founder David Karp participates in the "Bloomberg Leadership Summit" seminar in New York. In a deal announced Monday, May 20, 2013, Yahoo is buying New York-based Tumblr, the online blogging forum, for $1.1 billion. About $275 million will go to Karp, 26, who dropped out of high school to concentrate on computer programming and started Tumblr six years ago. (AP Photo/Charles Sykes/Invision for Advertising Week)

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, and Tumblr Chief Executive David Karp speak during a news conference Monday, May 20, 2013, in New York. Yahoo edged up 31 cents, or 1.2 percent, to $26.83 after the Internet company said it was buying online blogging forum Tumblr for $1.1 billion. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

NEW YORK (AP) ? It's one thing to say tech geniuses don't need degrees. After all, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg all dropped out of college.

But now we've got David Karp, who doesn't even have a high school diploma. Karp, 26, founded Tumblr, the online blogging forum, and sold it to Yahoo for $1.1 billion.

Which raises the question: When is it OK for a wunderkind to drop out of school?

Some folks in Silicon Valley and elsewhere say a conventional education can't possibly give kids with outsize talents what they need. Others, like Vivek Wadhwa, a fellow at Stanford Law School who teaches and advises startup companies, say dropping out to pursue a dream is like "buying a lottery ticket ? that's how good your odds are here. More likely than not, you will become unemployed. For every success, there are 100,000 failures."

But what about kids who are so good at computer programming that schools can't teach them what they need to know? "That's what internships are for; that's what extracurricular activities are for," says Wadhwa, who has founded two companies.

Karp, in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday, said he hopes teenagers don't look at his success as an excuse for leaving school. "That is not a path that I would haphazardly recommend to kids out there," he said. "I was in a very unique position of knowing exactly what I wanted to do at a time when computer science education certainly wasn't that good in high school in New York City."

Karp's mother gave him the option of home-schooling when he was 14, after he completed his freshman year at the Bronx High School of Science, an elite New York City public school that only admits students who score well on a difficult entrance exam. Karp took Japanese classes and had a math tutor while continuing with an internship at an animation production company, but by age 16, he was working for a website and was on his way to become a tech entrepreneur. He never did get his diploma. Karp's mother told the AP that she let him leave school because she realized "he needed the time in the day in order to create."

That resonates with Penny Mills of Hudson, Mass., who let her son Thomas Sohmers, 17, drop out of 11th grade this year. "I could see how much of the work he was doing at school wasn't relevant to what he wanted to learn," she said. "He always wanted to learn more than what the schools wanted to teach him. At times it was very frustrating. I was fortunate to find people that were able to teach him more, but he has gone beyond what high school could ever give him."

Thomas has been working at a research lab at the esteemed Massachusetts Institute of Technology since he was 13, developing projects ranging from augmented reality eyewear to laser communications systems. He just won a Thiel Fellowship, which gives $100,000 to 20 people under the age of 20 each year so they can skip college to focus on research or a dream, whether it's a high-tech project, a business or a nonprofit. But his mom says she would have let him drop out even if he hadn't won the award.

"The part that really bothers me is that there are a lot of Thomases out there and their needs are not being met," said Mills.

Thomas says he's sad to be leaving his teenage friends behind, but he's excited about the future. And he has mixed feelings about his years in school. "I've had some amazing, great teachers that really have the passion to teach, but most of what is in school now is teaching to a test," he said. "It's really sad. You're not learning the skills for how to solve the problem ? you are just learning the answer to this question that is going to be on the test."

Susan Bartell, a psychologist based in Port Washington, New York who works with adolescents and their families, says she frequently encounters parents who are convinced that their kids are extraordinarily gifted. But she cautions that it's "the very rare exception when this decision (to drop out) makes sense." In the case of Karp, she said, "it worked out, but almost always it doesn't ? even if a kid is extremely gifted. School is about much more than just academics and in most cases, even the most gifted kids need the socializing."

And not all young moguls take Karp's route. Earlier this year, a 17-year-old from London, Nick D'Aloisio, sold an app he created to Yahoo for $30 million ? but he decided to stay in school.

On the other hand, there are examples of successful individuals in many fields who lack a high school diploma, from top performers such as Jay-Z to billionaire businessmen such as Richard Branson.

The tech community may be different from other industries. Degrees are not necessarily seen as a hallmark of achievement and programmers are judged on their ability to type lines of code. You are what you create.

What also sets the field apart is that computer programming is not taught at every high school, and even when it is, the most talented students often either "surpass the curriculum or feel it's not relevant to them," said Danielle Strachman, program director for the Thiel Fellowship. "They want to move at their own pace."

Strachman also emphasized that just because someone has left school, doesn't mean they've stopped learning. The Thiel program provides not just funding, but a community of peers and mentors to help recipients reach their goals. And they can always go back to pursue a degree when the fellowship is over.

It's a goal that even Karp has his eye on? despite his newfound wealth. "I hope I have an opportunity to go to school at some point," he said, "and study something completely different."

___

Associated Press writers Meghan Barr in New York and Michael Liedtke in San Francisco contributed to this story.

___

Online:

Thiel Fellowship: http://www.thielfellowship.org/

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-05-20-Wunderkind%20Dropouts/id-55bf6948713040c2b1a38f523c8caa87

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Could UK claim title of Europe's biggest economy?

Speculation that the UK could become Europe's biggest economy is wishful thinking, Karlsson writes.?Germany is far more competitive than both Britain and France and will outperform both, as it has done in recent years.

By Stefan Karlsson,?Guest blogger / May 20, 2013

A view shows Big Ben from Westminster Bridge in London. Net immigration to Britain is declining, Karlsson writes.

Kieran Doherty/Reuters/File

Enlarge

Matthew Lynn at Marketwatch claims?that his country, Britain, will become Europe's biggest economy. But that is just nationalist wishful thinking from his part. First, let's review the current situation, here was the 2012 GDP in local currency for the three biggest:

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