Remember Tracy Brabin, who played Coronation Street's Trish Armstrong - mother of Jamie?? Tracy's gone on from acting to writing for soaps and some excellent TV drama.? Check out her profile here.
Tracy will be one of the soaps writers speaking in the Writing for Soaps session at this year's London Screenwriters Festival.? The festival takes place in that London from October 26-28th October 2012 at the London School of Film, Media Performance, Regent's College.
The Writing for Soaps session is scheduled to take place on Sunday 28th October from 2pm to 3pm.? Also lined up to speak at the session is top script consultant and previous Corrie producer Yvonne Grace.? Yvonne and Tracy are joined by Mr Holby City Tony McHale.?
If anyone goes along to this and would like to write us a blog post after the event about the Writing for Soaps session, please do get in touch.
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ScienceDaily (Sep. 28, 2012) ? The sun erupted with a wide, Earth-directed coronal mass ejection (CME) on Sept. 27, 2012 at 10:25 p.m. EDT. CMEs are a phenomenon that can send billions of tons of solar particles into space that can reach Earth one to three days later, affecting electronic systems in satellites and on the ground. Experimental NASA research models estimate that the CME is traveling at around 700 miles per second and will reach Earth on Sept. 29.
CMEs of these speeds are usually benign. In the past, similar CMEs have caused auroras near the poles but have not caused disruption to electrical systems or significantly interfered with GPS or satellite-based communications systems.
The CME is associated with a fairly small solar flare that was measured as C-class, which is third in strength after X- and M-class flares. The flare peaked at 7 p.m. EDT and came from an active region on the sun labeled AR 1577.
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Jim Bell, an executive producer at?Today, wants you to know that "it was absolutely" his "call" to fire Ann Curry, throwing himself in front of the criticism Matt Lauer was getting from Curry fans.?Even though Today's ratings have been sagging? ?and the ,?nothing too terrible has happened?the show hasn't ended, the cheeriness is still there, Kathie Lee is still drinking before noon?and now Bell has come forward to claim responsibility for the call. "It was definitely not Matt?s call," . ...
The Obama administration has directed immigration officials to recognize same-sex partners as family members in deportation cases, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said on Friday.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told Pelosi in a letter that she had ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to notify its field offices "that the interpretation of the phrase ?family relationships' includes long-term, same-sex partners."
Pelosi welcomed the federal recognition of gay and lesbian couples. At the same time, she called for more to be done to protect undocumented immigrants in long-term relationships with American citizens.
Napolitano's directive "will provide a measure of clarity and confidence to families dealing with separation in immigration cases," Pelosi said in a written statement. "Our nation is served when loving families are kept together."
But she added: "We need to ... relegate DOMA to the dustbin of history." The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act bars the federal government from extending federal benefits, such as Social Security, to married gay and lesbian couples.
DOMA restricts the Obama administration from outright ordering that gay and lesbian couples be treated the same as heterosexual couples.
Last year, Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama called DOMA unconstitutional and said they would no longer defend the measure in court. In response, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives stepped in to fund an effort to try to uphold the law.
The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide next month whether it will review a number of cases questioning the constitutionality of DOMA.
Meanwhile, married couples like Brian Willingham, 38, and Alfonso Garcia, 35, of Orinda, California, have been fighting for the right to be considered related in the eyes of immigration authorities. After a traffic stop, officials began deportation proceedings against Garcia, who came to the United States from Mexico when he was 14.
"We're definitely happy that the Obama administration took this good first step," Willingham told Reuters Friday. "But it's just a Band-Aid. It helps us because we are faced with deportation. But it leaves thousands of couples in exile."
Immigration officials last year said they would consider same-sex partnerships as family relations in deciding whether to deport undocumented immigrants.
But 83 members of Congress led by Pelosi and Jerrold Nadler of New York criticized the government for unevenly applying the directive, and they pressed for written guidelines.
"This is a huge step forward," said Rachel B. Tiven, executive director of Immigration Equality, a national gay-rights group. "Until now, LGBT families and their lawyers had nothing to rely on but an oral promise. The administration's written guidance will help families facing separation and the field officers who are reviewing their cases." (reuters)
Website marketing may be quite difficult if your company is new and you are competing with other companies in the same line of business. A key concept in marketing on the Internet is to have multiple promotional and marking ideas working so you can choose which ones work best. Keep reading below to find out about a wide variety of tips and techniques you can implement. You won?t need to implement them all, but you will be able to select a few that may work well for you.
Allow your customers the ability to purchase items at wholesale prices if they buy in quantity. Even the wholesale prices will leave you with some profit, but you will be selling much larger quantities than before.
A 500 error page that is user-friendly is an important tool to have. This occurs when the website?s code is malfunctioning and not working properly. A boring page that gives this message may annoy your potential customer. There are ways that are better to let the users know you are informed and attempting to repair the issue.
TIP! To make your internet business a success, take the time to evaluate the competition. Look at websites of other businesses in your chosen field, and see what can be improved.
Good content is the very source of a successful Affiliate marketing strategy. Constantly analyze your content to make sure it is of the highest quality and exactly what visitors are looking for. Make sure to have someone else critique your content. A fresh outlook can provide useful insight and catch errors that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. Lastly, run a program that checks your content for spelling and grammar errors, to make sure that it is absolutely perfect.
Affiliate marketing is not just exclusively on the internet. You can use the Internet to invite interested parties to conferences where you can meet them in person. This will have them become more familiar with your brand; this will make them more excited about writing about your products.
Offering a return policy is often very important when it comes to Web marketing. This will result in your customers feeling more secure and give you and your business credibility. By establishing that you will be fully responsible, customers are far more likely to put some trust in you and click that ?buy? button.
TIP! Submit your free materials and products to Internet directories that list such products for free. IF you are giving away an e-zine, give it to a lot of different directories.
To improve the level of satisfaction your customers feel with your site, add a section for frequently asked questions. This will help to answer your visitor?s questions immediately, which can solve their problem and improve satisfaction. When product benefits are spelled out in detail, it is more likely that people will buy.
Finding the right niche to market your Internet based business or website is key. You cannot sell a product or service if you have no heart in it. Niche marketing is one of the most important aspects of Internet market; it?s essentially the path that all other marketing techniques will travel down. Set your marketing with this in mind.
Think about just how good your product really is. You can have the best internet marketing around, though if what you are selling is below average, you will not see any changes to your bottom line. In order to see your sales grow, you should be sure that you are marketing a quality product, one that is superior to your competitors products.
TIP! Have special promotions to attract more visitors to your website. You can offer a dollar sale on one of your ebooks, for example.
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It is a good idea to cast yourself as an expert when it comes to the items you promote. This will help you establish credibility and loyalty if you can provide vital info and expert opinions and can meet special needs, so be sure to be able to back up your claims.
Use what you have learned to help you focus and devise an effective strategy. As said previously, spending time on setting everything up makes a huge difference. Make use of the advice you have read here to see an increase in traffic, and more importantly, in sales
TIP! Keep in mind that your website?s look and functionality are just as vital to your business as a more traditional in-store shopping experience. Regularly test your ads, links, graphics, and checkout system for problems that may inconvenience site visitors.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? A spate of data Thursday painted a mixed picture of the U.S. economy: Demand for long-lasting manufactured goods fell and slightly fewer people signed contracts to buy homes. At the same time, the job market looked a little better.
Taken together, the reports suggest the economy is growing only modestly and not quickly enough to spur much hiring.
"The economy overall has only weak forward momentum," Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight, said in a note to clients. "The news from housing may be improving, but manufacturing is struggling now."
Most of the data seemed discouraging on the surface. But a closer inspection of the details offered some promise.
? Companies cut orders for long-lasting goods by 13.2 percent in August, the Commerce Department said. That was the biggest drop in more than three years but it was largely influenced by a 102 percent decline in volatile aircraft orders. Excluding transportation equipment, orders fell only 1.6 percent. And in a positive sign, orders in a category that reflect business investment plans rose 1.1 percent, the first increase since May.
? The overall economy grew at a 1.3 percent annual rate in the April-June quarter, much lower than the 1.7 percent the government previously estimated. About half of the downward revision stemmed from the severe drought in the Midwest, which cut overall farm output. But growth also fell because exports and consumer spending expanded at a slower pace.
? The number of Americans who signed contracts to buy previously occupied homes fell in August from a two-year high in July. The National Association of Realtors said its index of sales agreements declined 2.6 percent to 99.2. That's just below the reading of 100 that is considered healthy. Still, the index is 10.7 percent higher than a year ago.
Economists expect growth to hover near or below 2 percent for the rest of the year. That's typically too weak to create enough jobs to lower the unemployment rate.
One report appeared to offer some hope that the job market will improve.
Weekly applications for unemployment benefits plunged 26,000 to a seasonally adjusted 359,000, the lowest level in two months, the Labor Department said. The four-week average, a less volatile measure, fell to 374,000.
Applications are a measure of the pace of layoffs. When they consistently fall below 375,000, it typically indicates that hiring is strong enough to lower the unemployment rate.
The weekly figures can be volatile, causing most economists to focus on the four-week average.
Economists were mildly encouraged by the unemployment applications. Still, many still expect the government's employment report for September to show only modest job gains, perhaps about 100,000. That's about the same as in August. The September jobs report will be released next week.
The September jobs report will be released next Friday.
The past few reports on applications for unemployment benefits "suggest no significant acceleration or deceleration in employment growth," said Jim O'Sullivan, an economist at High Frequency Economics.
A survey of chief executives, released Wednesday, found a sharp drop in the number of large companies that plan to step up hiring or boost investment in the next six months. They cited worries over tax and budget policies in the United States and slower growth in Europe and China for the gloomier outlook.
Some recent indicators have been more optimistic. Consumer confidence jumped to a seven-month high in September, the Conference Board said Tuesday. Home prices are rising steadily nationwide. And sales of new homes remained near a two-year high in August, the Commerce Department said Wednesday.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? World powers decided Thursday to lay the groundwork for another round of negotiations with Iran over its disputed nuclear program, a senior U.S. official said, but they want a significantly improved offer from the Islamic republic.
Neither the U.S. nor any of its international partners was ready to abandon diplomacy in favor of military or other actions, as Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu has advocated.
The new hope for negotiated end to Iran's decade-long nuclear standoff came after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with the foreign ministers of Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia ? powers that have sought, over several rounds of talks, to persuade Iran to halt its production of material that could be used in nuclear weapons. All such efforts have failed so far.
The latest stab at a diplomatic compromise collapsed this summer after Iran proposed to stop producing higher-enriched uranium in exchange for a suspension in international sanctions, which Clinton has termed a "nonstarter." The U.S. official said Iran would have to bring a much better offer to the table this time, but stressed that nations were seeing some signs for optimism and that diplomacy remained "far and away the preferred way to deal with this issue."
Catherine Ashton, the European Union's top diplomat, who has been spearheading the international diplomacy with Iran, was instructed to reach out to Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili. Still, no date was set for the possible resumption of the so-called P5+1 talks with Iran, said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she wasn't authorized to comment publicly about the closed-doors meeting at the United Nations.
While Clinton looked for a diplomatic solution there, she was expected to hear the alternative argument for possible military action in a private meeting with Netanyahu. Their face-to-face was to take place Thursday evening at a New York hotel, just hours after the Israeli leader warned in an address to the U.N. General Assembly that Iran will have enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon by next summer.
Pulling out a red marker while holding a poster depicting a cartoon-like bomb that measured Iran's nuclear progress, Netanyahu drew a "red line" across the second-to-last stage of nuclear development, reminding everyone of his demand for President Barack Obama to declare when the U.S. might attack Iran. Obama has rejected the demand.
It is getting "late, very late" to stop the Iranian nuclear threat, Netanyahu said at the United Nations.
"Red lines don't lead to war; red lines prevent war," he said.
Iran insists its program is solely for peaceful energy and medical research purposes, while the U.S. and many Western and Sunni Arab states see that as a cover for developing nuclear arms. But there is disagreement on how to stop Iran, with Obama insisting there is more time for diplomacy and hard-hitting sanctions while Netanyahu presses for a military response.
That disagreement has spilled over into Obama's bid for re-election, with Republican challenger Mitt Romney accusing the president of being weak on Iran. Romney has promised a more credible threat of military action and closer alignment of U.S. policy with Netanyahu's positions ? an argument that resonates with some Jewish and pro-Israel evangelical Christian voters.
Neither presidential candidate, however, advocates clearly for military action.
An attack on Iran's nuclear facilities would surely prompt retaliation. Iran could seek to disrupt fuel supplies from the Persian Gulf, through which about one-fifth of the world's oil flows, or it could support proxies such as Hezbollah to attack Israel or U.S. allies in the Gulf. A worst-case scenario might see the U.S. dragged into another major war in the Muslim world at a time of staggering American debt and continued economic struggles.
Obama and Netanyahu probably will speak by telephone Friday, the White House said, after Clinton's meetings. She is doing the bulk of America's diplomatic work at this year's gathering of global leaders in New York, with Obama ruling out any bilateral meetings with presidents or prime ministers so he can spend more time campaigning for re-election.
America's partners also prefer diplomacy.
"We discussed at length the need for Iran to take action urgently," said Ashton, who briefed officials for more than an hour on her recent discussions with the Iranians.
"We were united," said French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, refusing to be moved by Netanyahu's call for red lines.
Local funding leads to big things in parrot genomicsPublic release date: 28-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Scott Edmunds scott@gigasciencejournal.com 852-361-03531 GigaScience
A grassroots funding effort in Puerto Rico enables genome sequencing of the critically endangered Puerto Rican parrot
September 28, 2012, Hong Kong, China The international open-access journal GigaScience (a BGI and BioMed Central journal) announces the publication of a unique study providing the genome sequence of the critically endangered Puerto Rican Parrot (Amazona vittata) by Taras Oleksyk and colleagues at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez. The sequencing and analysis of the genome of the only surviving native parrot in US territory provides numerous benefits for avian genetics, conservation studies, and evolutionary analyses. What is remarkable here, and highlighted in an accompanying commentary by Steven J. O'Brien of St Petersburg State University, is that it shows how accessible genomic technology has become. With the human genome project taking a consortium of the leading international genome centers a decade and $3 Billion USD to carry out, just over a decade later the genome of the Puerto Rico parrot was assembled at a small institution in Puerto Rico, and completely funded by the community. Money was raised in a variety of creative ways, including student organized art and fashion shows (see: http://youtu.be/tXW-pNoM9uU), social-networking sites, and private donations from Puerto Rican citizens wanting to promote research on their local wildlife. This project serves as a signal that work on large-scale whole-genome projects is becoming more democratized, and opens the door for more creative input from outside the large genome centers.
Dr. Oleksyk, the primary organizer of this project, said, "We are very proud of our project and even more proud to be part of a local community dedicated to raising awareness and furthering scientific knowledge of this endangered bird." He further added, "Community involvement may be the key for the future of conservation genetics, and many projects like this are needed reverse the current rate of extinction of birds across the globe."
The Puerto Rican Parrot once flourished throughout Puerto Rico, but its population rapidly declined during the 20th century due to extensive habitat destruction. By 1975, only 16 birds remained. Since then, through extensive conservation efforts including captive breeding programs in Rio Abajo and El Yunque and bird release into the wild, the number of these parrots has grown. The population, however, still remains exceedingly low and on the critically endangered list. Recent conservation efforts for other endangered species are now working to incorporate genome information to better assess the genetic health of endangered species and provide tools for targeted breeding, and the long-term prospects of this enigmatic bird will be given a boost given the new genomic resources provided by Oleksyk and colleagues. The authors estimated the parrot's genome size as ~1.58 Gbp, about half that of the human, and, at this stage of the project, provide 29x sequencing coverage of 76% of the genome. Assembly and annotation of the genome were carried out as part of the undergraduate education program at the university, which is not only a boon for developing technically savvy young scientists in Puerto Rico, but also serves as an example of how students can take part in community curation projects to aid in processing the increasingly unmanageable amounts of data now being generated throughout the world.
In keeping with the scientific community's goals of making all data fully and freely available, all data from this project are available in the GigaScience database, GigaDB, in a citable format, and are available as raw reads in the ENA (Accession # PRJEB225) and as scaffolds with assembly parameters in GenBank (Accession # PRJNA171587).
###
References:
Steven J. O'Brien. (2012): Genome empowerment for the Puerto Rican parrot Amazona vittata GigaScience 2012, 1:13
Taras K Oleksyk, Jean-Francois Pombert, Wilfried Guiblet, Brian Ramos, Anyimilehidi Mazo, Christina T Ruiz-Rodriguez, Michael L Nickerson, Yashira Afanador, Daniel Siu, Ricardo Valentin, Luis Figueroa, Michael Dean, David M Logue and Juan-Carlos Martinez-Cruzado (2012) A Locally Funded Puerto Rican Parrot (Amazona vittata) Genome Sequencing Project Increases Avian Data and Advances Young Researcher Education GigaScience 2012, 1:14
Oleksyk, TK; Guiblet, W; Pombert, JF; Valentin, R; Martinez-Cruzado, JC (2012): Genomic data of the Puerto Rican Parrot (Amazona vittata) from a locally funded project. GigaScience. http://dx.doi.org/10.5524/100039
Media Contacts
Scott Edmunds
Editor, GigaScience, BGI Hong Kong
Tel: +852 3610 3531
Mob: +852 92490853
Email: scott@gigasciencejournal.com
Rebecca Fairbairn
Public Relations Manager, BioMed Central
Tel: +44 (0) 20 3192 2433
Mob: +44 (0) 7825 257423
Email: rebecca.fairbairn@biomedcentral.com
To directly receive future press releases from GigaScience send your name and media outlet to editorial@gigasciencejournal.com under the subject header: Request To Receive Press Releases.
Organization Information:
1. GigaScience (http://www.gigasciencejournal.com) is co-published by BGI, the world's largest genomics institute, and BioMed Central, the world's largest open-access publisher. The journal covers research that uses or produces 'big data' from the full spectrum of the life sciences. It also serves as a forum for discussing the difficulties of and unique needs for handling large-scale data from all areas of the life sciences. The journal has a completely novel publication format one that integrates manuscript publication with complete data hosting, and analyses tool incorporation. To encourage transparent reporting of scientific research as well as enable future access and analyses, it is a requirement of manuscript submission to GigaScience that all supporting data and source code be made available in the GigaScience database, GigaDB (http://gigadb.org), as well as in their publicly available repositories. GigaScience will provide users access to associated online tools and workflows, and will be integrating a data analysis platform and cloud resources into the database later this year, maximizing the potential utility and re-use of data.
(Follow us on twitter @GigaScience; sina-weibo http://weibo.com/gigasciencejournal, and keep up-to-date on our blogs http://blogs.openaccesscentral.com/blogs/gigablog/feed/entries/rss).
2. BGI (http://www.genomics.cn/en), a China-based scientific institution, was founded in 1999 and has since become the largest genomic organization in the world. With a focus on research and applications in the healthcare, agriculture, conservation, and bio-energy fields, BGI has a proven track record of innovative, high profile research, which has generated over 178 publications in top-tier journals such as Nature and Science. It also contributes to scientific communication by publishing the international research journal GigaScience and hosting its associated database GigaDB. BGI's distinguished achievements have made a great contribution to the development of genomics in both China and the world. Their goal is to make leading-edge genomics highly accessible to the global research community by integrating industry's best technology, economies of scale, and expert bioinformatics resources. BGI and its affiliates, BGI-Americas and BGI-Europe, have established partnerships and collaborations with leading academic and government research institutions, as well as global biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. (Follow BGI on twitter @BGI_events.)
3. BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com/) is an STM (Science, Technology and Medicine) publisher, which pioneered the open-access publishing model. All peer-reviewed research articles published by BioMed Central are made immediately and freely accessible online, and are licensed to allow redistribution and reuse. BioMed Central is part of Springer Science+Business Media, a leading global publisher in the STM sector.
4. For more on the Puerto Rican Parrot Genome project at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, please see their website (http://genomes.uprm.edu/drupal/?q=parrot), and to keep up with the latest news on the project follow them on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/amazona.vittata
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Local funding leads to big things in parrot genomicsPublic release date: 28-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Scott Edmunds scott@gigasciencejournal.com 852-361-03531 GigaScience
A grassroots funding effort in Puerto Rico enables genome sequencing of the critically endangered Puerto Rican parrot
September 28, 2012, Hong Kong, China The international open-access journal GigaScience (a BGI and BioMed Central journal) announces the publication of a unique study providing the genome sequence of the critically endangered Puerto Rican Parrot (Amazona vittata) by Taras Oleksyk and colleagues at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez. The sequencing and analysis of the genome of the only surviving native parrot in US territory provides numerous benefits for avian genetics, conservation studies, and evolutionary analyses. What is remarkable here, and highlighted in an accompanying commentary by Steven J. O'Brien of St Petersburg State University, is that it shows how accessible genomic technology has become. With the human genome project taking a consortium of the leading international genome centers a decade and $3 Billion USD to carry out, just over a decade later the genome of the Puerto Rico parrot was assembled at a small institution in Puerto Rico, and completely funded by the community. Money was raised in a variety of creative ways, including student organized art and fashion shows (see: http://youtu.be/tXW-pNoM9uU), social-networking sites, and private donations from Puerto Rican citizens wanting to promote research on their local wildlife. This project serves as a signal that work on large-scale whole-genome projects is becoming more democratized, and opens the door for more creative input from outside the large genome centers.
Dr. Oleksyk, the primary organizer of this project, said, "We are very proud of our project and even more proud to be part of a local community dedicated to raising awareness and furthering scientific knowledge of this endangered bird." He further added, "Community involvement may be the key for the future of conservation genetics, and many projects like this are needed reverse the current rate of extinction of birds across the globe."
The Puerto Rican Parrot once flourished throughout Puerto Rico, but its population rapidly declined during the 20th century due to extensive habitat destruction. By 1975, only 16 birds remained. Since then, through extensive conservation efforts including captive breeding programs in Rio Abajo and El Yunque and bird release into the wild, the number of these parrots has grown. The population, however, still remains exceedingly low and on the critically endangered list. Recent conservation efforts for other endangered species are now working to incorporate genome information to better assess the genetic health of endangered species and provide tools for targeted breeding, and the long-term prospects of this enigmatic bird will be given a boost given the new genomic resources provided by Oleksyk and colleagues. The authors estimated the parrot's genome size as ~1.58 Gbp, about half that of the human, and, at this stage of the project, provide 29x sequencing coverage of 76% of the genome. Assembly and annotation of the genome were carried out as part of the undergraduate education program at the university, which is not only a boon for developing technically savvy young scientists in Puerto Rico, but also serves as an example of how students can take part in community curation projects to aid in processing the increasingly unmanageable amounts of data now being generated throughout the world.
In keeping with the scientific community's goals of making all data fully and freely available, all data from this project are available in the GigaScience database, GigaDB, in a citable format, and are available as raw reads in the ENA (Accession # PRJEB225) and as scaffolds with assembly parameters in GenBank (Accession # PRJNA171587).
###
References:
Steven J. O'Brien. (2012): Genome empowerment for the Puerto Rican parrot Amazona vittata GigaScience 2012, 1:13
Taras K Oleksyk, Jean-Francois Pombert, Wilfried Guiblet, Brian Ramos, Anyimilehidi Mazo, Christina T Ruiz-Rodriguez, Michael L Nickerson, Yashira Afanador, Daniel Siu, Ricardo Valentin, Luis Figueroa, Michael Dean, David M Logue and Juan-Carlos Martinez-Cruzado (2012) A Locally Funded Puerto Rican Parrot (Amazona vittata) Genome Sequencing Project Increases Avian Data and Advances Young Researcher Education GigaScience 2012, 1:14
Oleksyk, TK; Guiblet, W; Pombert, JF; Valentin, R; Martinez-Cruzado, JC (2012): Genomic data of the Puerto Rican Parrot (Amazona vittata) from a locally funded project. GigaScience. http://dx.doi.org/10.5524/100039
Media Contacts
Scott Edmunds
Editor, GigaScience, BGI Hong Kong
Tel: +852 3610 3531
Mob: +852 92490853
Email: scott@gigasciencejournal.com
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This sixth-annual conference begins in the morning on Friday November 16 and continues through Sunday afternoon on November 18. The venue is the Prince Conference Center at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The theme of the conference is Vision, Action, Leadership. The purpose of the conference is to provide the audience with in-depth ideas about concrete actions that can be taken now, in our own communities, to help achieve stronger economies, cleaner environments, and greater energy security.
Headliners at the conference include Daniel Quinn, Steve Keen, Richard Heinberg, Nicole Foss, Albert Bates, and Stephanie Mills.
In addition to the featured speakers, the conference invites proposals to speak. Especially sought are proposals on culture change, sustainability, transition towns, peak oil, climate change, and protecting biodiversity. All proposals are due by October 7, 2012.
Conference details and registration information are available now at the conference web site: SustainabilityConference.org.
Attendees are invited to attend all or any part of the conference. Early-bird registration fees in September are $199 plus meals. Low-income participants can get a discount for volunteering at the conference.
Sponsors include: Local Future, The Post Carbon Institute, The Prince Conference Center, and the Great Lakes Renewable Energy Association.
MORE DETAILS:
Experts in energy, economics, and environment will combine forces in November at the 2012 International Conference on Sustainability, Transition and Culture Change: Vision ? Action ? Leadership.
Headliners for the 6th annual conference include: Daniel Quinn, Steve Keen, Richard Heinberg, Nicole Foss, Albert Bates, and Stephanie Mills.
Daniel Quinn is a best-selling author of books including Ishmael, Providence, The Story of B, and Beyond Civilization. In 1990, Ted Turner offered a $500,000 prize for the best unpublished novel offering positive solutions to global problems. Quinn submitted Ishmael, which was selected as the grand prize winner, by a panel of distinguished authors, out of 2500 entries.
Quinn is retired from public speaking, but agreed to appear via pre-recorded video. Local Future founder Aaron Wissner directed three days of filming in Houston in August, recording seven hours of high-definition video footage with Quinn.
?The shoot exceeded our best expectations, with Daniel delving into topics including: the origins and structure of our culture, the challenges of population growth and overshoot, perspectives on mass extinction and climate change, and his motivations for writing environmentalist fiction,? said Wissner.
?This was the most extensive interview ever conducted with Daniel, and includes unique and exclusive moments, many of them too personal to describe in print,? continued Wissner.
Quinn is joined by Steve Keen, Richard Heinberg, Nicole Foss, Albert Bates and Stephanie Mills who will provide insight and inspiration into current topics in energy, economics and environment.
Steve Keen is the Australian economist and professor who most cogently warned of the 2008 economic crisis, for which he was awarded the Revere Award from the Real World Economics Review. He is the author of the Debunking Economics, which takes aim at conventional economists for using a flawed model of the economy which inevitably leads to economic recessions, depressions, job losses, and market crashes. An international speaker, Keen travels to the conference as part of a trip that includes stops in Bangkok, New York City, Grand Rapids, London, and Berlin.
Richard Heinberg is senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, and is author of ten books including The Party?s Over, Peak Everything, and The End of Growth. He is regarded as one of the world?s most effective communicators of the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels. Heinberg appear via exclusive live video conference after an exhaustive fall speaking schedule.
Nicole Foss is senior editor for The Automatic Earth and former editor of The Oil Drum ? Canada. Foss is a professional speaker on peak oil, economic instability and personal preparation. Foss has delivered her Century of Challenges presentation hundreds of time to conferences including peak oil, biodiversity, and economics. During 2012, Foss embarked on a world-wide speaking tour including stops throughout North America, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and the United Kingdom.
Albert Bates is author of The Biochar Solution: Carbon Farming and Climate Change and many other books. A former environmental rights lawyer, Bates lives at The Farm, an intentional community in Tennessee; co-founder of the Global Ecovillage Network and delegate to the UN climate talks; and teaches permaculture, ecovillage design and natural building. Bates traveled extensively in 2012 including teaching permaculture design in Belize, participating in the Rio+20 climate summit, and speaking at the Mother Earth News Fair.
Stephanie Mills is an author, lecturer and bio-regionalist. Her books include: On Ghandi's Path, Tough Little Beauties, Epicurean Simplicity, Turning Away from Technology, In Service of the Wild, In Praise of Nature, and Whatever Happened to Ecology? Mills is president of the Bay Bucks local currency board, fellow of the Post Carbon Institute, board member of Local Future, and holds an honorary doctorate from Mills College, California.
Mr. Aaron Wissner is a teacher, writer and speaker specializing peak oil, climate change, money and debt, and cultural transition. Wissner has organized six major conferences bringing in hundreds of speakers and thousands of participants. A featured article on Wissner was published on the front page of the Wall Street Journal in 2007.
For more information, visit: SustainabilityConference.org
Edward Norton, Jonah Hill, Snoop Dogg and several other stars are slated to play in a celebrity tournament of the popular online game "Words With Friends" for charity. The celebs will begin facing off against each other in matches of Zynga's Scrabble-like word-building game on Thursday.
Norton, who is playing for the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Fund, is confident that he will dominate the tournament, which also includes such celebrity players as Eva Longoria, Kristen Bell and John Legend ? but not Baldwin ? vying for $500,000 in prize money for their charities from American Express.
"I have to give myself time-outs on 'Words With Friends,'" said Norton in a telephone interview Monday. "I've gone through phases where I'm like, 'What am I doing? This is much too much of my day.'"
"Words With Friends" players will be able to join their favorite stars' teams during the "Words With Friends Celebrity Challenge," as well as watch the celebrity matchups online and donate to their charities through Norton's fundraising site, CrowdRise.com.
"We had the idea to do a celebrity tournament some time ago when it became apparent that the game was a hit among celebrities," said Travis Boatman, senior vice president of mobile at Zynga Inc. "It seems like everyone from Katie Couric to Snoop Lion is into the game. It's really inspirational for the team to see how 'Words With Friends has become part of the cultural mainstream, and I think it has struck a chord because it's not just a game, it's a way for people to connect and keep in touch with each other."
In the first round, Norton said he'll face Boston Celtics captain Paul "The Truth" Pierce, who is playing for his foundation, The Truth Fund.
"I think it's going to be a tough first round for him," teased Norton. "I think it's great that he has a cause he supports, and I hope the amount he gets from just the first round is going to make him happy because I don't think it's going to go past there."
The brainy "Moonrise Kingdom" and "The Bourne Legacy" actor, who graduated from Yale University with a history degree, said his stiffest competition might come from Snoop Dogg, who has recently been going by the name Snoop Lion, because of the rapper's experience with wordplay.
And what about Baldwin? Why isn't the "30 Rock" actor, who was infamously booted from a flight last year for refusing to stop playing "Words With Friends" on his phone, among the contenders?
"Next year, for sure, if I have any say in it," said Norton. "I'm going to win this year, so adding him to the mix next year will make it interesting for me."
___
Online:
http://www.wordscelebritychallenge.com
http://www.crowdrise.com/wordswithfriends
___
Follow AP entertainment writer Derrik J. Lang on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/derrikjlang
PARIS (AP) -The historic head-butt that marked the end of France great Zinedine Zidane's international football career is now more than just a memory.
A 5-meter-high bronze statue portraying Zidane aiming his shaven head at Italian opponent Marco Materazzi's torso has been erected in front of Paris' Centre Pompidou modern art museum.
Zidane lit up the field playing for Real Madrid and other professional teams and helped France to victory at the 1998 World Cup. But in the 110th minute of a riveting World Cup final in 2006 against Italy, Zidane lowered his head and rammed Materazzi's chest, knocking him to the ground.
Zidane, who had been planning to retire after the World Cup, later apologized to viewers and said he was responding to repeated insults.
? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Zidane head-butt now a statue
??The historic head-butt that marked the end of France great Zinedine Zidane's international football career is now more than just a memory.
Rooney returns from injury as United wins in cup
LONDON (AP) - Wayne Rooney returned from a monthlong injury absence, helping Manchester United to a 2-1 victory Wednesday that eliminated Newcastle from the League Cup. Arsenal and Tottenham advanced with ease on Wednesday.
by John Biondolillo and?David Jamieson of BCK Real Estate
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ScienceDaily (Sep. 23, 2012) ? What if you woke up every day to find that the closest grocery store had moved several miles farther away from your home? Over time, you would have to travel hundreds of extra miles to find essential food for yourself and your family. This is potentially a scenario faced by thousands of marine animals affected by climate change.
A new study published in Nature Climate Change examines the distribution of various open ocean animals in the North Pacific and explores how that could change over the next century as global ocean temperatures increase and productivity levels shift. The researchers conclude that some critical ocean habitats could undergo significant changes in location, moving more than 600 miles from where they are now, while other habitats could remain relatively unchanged.
Among large animals, loggerhead turtles, some sharks and blue whales may face the harshest impacts of climate change while some seabirds may actually benefit. Not only are species at risk, but also coastal communities and industries could feel the impact since top predator habitat shifts can result in the displacement of fisheries and ecotourism, such as whale watching.
"For species already stressed by overfishing or other human impacts, increased migration time and loss of habitat could be a heavy blow," said Elliott Hazen, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researcher on the project who is affiliated with the Center for Ocean Solutions at Stanford. "But if we can build some plausible scenarios of how marine ecosystems may change, this may help efforts to prioritize and proactively manage them."
In order to carry out their study, the authors employed complex mathematical models with data from the decade-long "Tagging of Pacific Predators" (TOPP) project, in which 4,300 electronic tags placed on 23 species from 2000 to 2009 created unprecedented insight into migration patterns and hotspots of predator species in the northern Pacific.
Satellite measurements of sea surface temperature and chlorophyll-a (used to estimate surface productivity) were combined with the tracking data to identify "key habitat areas" for a variety of different ocean predators. The researchers then used climate models of ocean temperature and productivity to ascertain how those key habitat areas might change in the face of ocean warming.
One of these key habitat areas, known as the North Pacific Transition Zone, marks the interface between cold, nutrient-rich polar water to the north and warmer, nutrient-poor water to the south. This region is used by a variety of ocean predators, including marine mammals, tunas and seabirds, as a corridor across the Pacific Ocean basin. The study suggests that this critical region could shift by as much as 600 miles, resulting in a 20 percent loss of species diversity in the region.
Other critical habitat areas, however, may experience little or no impact. The California Current, which runs along the west coast of North America, supports a variety of open ocean predators each year, when cold, nutrient-rich water creates regions of high productivity. This so-called upwelling cycle would likely continue despite ocean warming. "The fact that tagging indicates this is the number one lunch stop in town along the most populous coast in the nation -- and stabilizes in a warming world -- increases our opportunity to consider how to protect these hot spots," said Barbara Block, the Charles and Elizabeth Prothro Professor in Marine Sciences at Stanford, who is heavily involved in TOPP.
Among the Pacific's top predators, turtles, sharks and marine mammals such as whales appear to be most at risk from habitat shifts associated with Pacific warming. In some cases, predicted losses in essential habitat ranged as high as 35 percent.
But animals such as seabirds and tunas may benefit from climate-change-related shifts that could actually increase their potential habitat for foraging due to their broader tolerances to temperature.
"The differences from one species to another is their ability to adapt to temperatures and to use multiple ocean areas," said Hazen. "Having multiple sources of food, migration corridors and areas to call home provides a buffer against climate variability and change."
"Modeling of future scenarios is used in national security, financial investing and other critical areas," said Larry Crowder, the science director of the Center for Ocean Solutions, who was involved in the study.
"Here we use it to envision climate change impacts on large predators in the Pacific so that steps can be taken to better manage species that are important both commercially and for conservation goals," he said.
Based on these predictions, marine and coastal managers may alter fishing catches or revamp marine protected areas.
The research was a collaboration including Salvador Jorgensen of Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station, Ryan Rykaczewski of the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and Steven Bograd of NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center.
The Center for Ocean Solutions is a collaboration among Stanford University's Woods Institute for the Environment and Hopkins Marine Station, the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Stanford University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
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Journal Reference:
Elliott L. Hazen, Salvador Jorgensen, Ryan R. Rykaczewski, Steven J. Bograd, David G. Foley, Ian D. Jonsen, Scott A. Shaffer, John P. Dunne, Daniel P. Costa, Larry B. Crowder, Barbara A. Block. Predicted habitat shifts of Pacific top predators in a changing climate. Nature Climate Change, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/nclimate1686
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Public release date: 28-Sep-2012
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