Critical food shortages and growing demand for bio-fuels and hydro-electricity due to high fossil fuel prices rank among the greatest threats today to the preservation of precious wetlands worldwide as farmers and developers look for new areas for agriculture, energy crop plantations and hydro dams. However, resisting pressures to convert wetlands is vital to avoid destroying ecosystems that provide a suite of services essential to humanity, including safe, steady local water supplies, preserving biodiversity and the large-scale capture and storage of climate warming greenhouse gases, according 700 leading world experts concluding a week-long meeting in Cuiaba, Brazil. The experts issued the Cuiaba Declaration (appended) July 25, the final day of the 8th INTECOL International Wetlands Conference, convened on the northern edge of the world's largest tropical wetland, the Pantanal. Wetlands include marshes, tidal marshes, peat bogs, swamps, river deltas, mangroves, tundra, lagoons and river floodplains. Among other services, they trap and store carbon in submerged organic matter, sustain biodiversity, and produce renewable natural resources, such as fish, natural pasture, timber, and wildlife.
However, resisting pressures to convert wetlands is vital to avoid destroying ecosystems that provide a suite of services essential to humanity, including safe, steady local water supplies, preserving biodiversity and the large-scale capture and storage of climate warming greenhouse gases, according 700 leading world experts concluding a week-long meeting in Cuiaba, Brazil.
The experts issued the Cuiaba Declaration (appended) July 25, the final day of the 8th INTECOL International Wetlands Conference, convened on the northern edge of the world's largest tropical wetland, the Pantanal.
Wetlands include marshes, tidal marshes, peat bogs, swamps, river deltas, mangroves, tundra, lagoons and river floodplains. Among other services, they trap and store carbon in submerged organic matter, sustain biodiversity, and produce renewable natural resources, such as fish, natural pasture, timber, and wildlife.
Slimy boss David Brent and his beleaguered staff are set to move to Russia after Channel One signed a deal with BBC Worldwide to make a local version of hit comedy-drama "The Office." BBC Worldwide announced Thursday that Channel One would produce 24 episodes of the show with its affiliated production company Krasny Kvadrat, or Red Square. The original show was only 12 episodes long, plus two Christmas specials, so Channel One has the right to develop new story lines. The statement did not say how much the deal was worth, and a Channel One spokeswoman said no one was available to comment Friday. The channel is currently airing the U.S. version of "The Office" in a late-night slot. (...) The Russian producers will have to adjust certain episodes. The famous scene where Gareth finds his stapler encased in Jell-O may have to be adjusted, since the gelatin treat is not a popular dessert in Russia. But office culture has already been the subject of popular sitcoms, including a Russian version of the U.S. show "Ugly Betty." The original series' co-writer and star, Ricky Gervais, called the Russian deal "very exciting and very flattering" in his blog. "With a 150 million population, I'm looking forward to some good ratings," Gervais wrote, adding that he may visit Russia in December for the premiere of his new film, "Ghost Town." Television critic Irina Petrovskaya said she had never watched "The Office," but she called the deal a sign that Channel One was looking "to attract a young audience."
BBC Worldwide announced Thursday that Channel One would produce 24 episodes of the show with its affiliated production company Krasny Kvadrat, or Red Square. The original show was only 12 episodes long, plus two Christmas specials, so Channel One has the right to develop new story lines.
The statement did not say how much the deal was worth, and a Channel One spokeswoman said no one was available to comment Friday. The channel is currently airing the U.S. version of "The Office" in a late-night slot.
(...)
The Russian producers will have to adjust certain episodes. The famous scene where Gareth finds his stapler encased in Jell-O may have to be adjusted, since the gelatin treat is not a popular dessert in Russia. But office culture has already been the subject of popular sitcoms, including a Russian version of the U.S. show "Ugly Betty."
The original series' co-writer and star, Ricky Gervais, called the Russian deal "very exciting and very flattering" in his blog. "With a 150 million population, I'm looking forward to some good ratings," Gervais wrote, adding that he may visit Russia in December for the premiere of his new film, "Ghost Town."
Television critic Irina Petrovskaya said she had never watched "The Office," but she called the deal a sign that Channel One was looking "to attract a young audience."
NEW YORK (AP) _ The creators of a Scrabble knockoff responsible for countless hours at the online hangout Facebook suspended their word game Tuesday after being hit with a lawsuit, disappointing fans who logged on expecting to make their next moves. (...) Facebook users who tried to access Scrabulous on Tuesday were simply told the game was disabled "until further notice," and many Facebook users updated their one-line status messages on the site to mourn the suspension. Laura Chefer, an Atlanta Facebook user who logs on about 20 times a day to check on Scrabulous, said she had no sympathy for Hasbro despite its rights to the game. "I was definitely shocked and annoyed," she said. "These two guys went to all the trouble to make this interface, and now the big company is suing them, and we're no longer able to play." The game continues to work at the developers' Web site, Scrabulous.com, but users must sign up and start games afresh.
Facebook users who tried to access Scrabulous on Tuesday were simply told the game was disabled "until further notice," and many Facebook users updated their one-line status messages on the site to mourn the suspension.
Laura Chefer, an Atlanta Facebook user who logs on about 20 times a day to check on Scrabulous, said she had no sympathy for Hasbro despite its rights to the game.
"I was definitely shocked and annoyed," she said. "These two guys went to all the trouble to make this interface, and now the big company is suing them, and we're no longer able to play."
The game continues to work at the developers' Web site, Scrabulous.com, but users must sign up and start games afresh.
A tiny tree-shrew that lives on alcoholic nectar could - pound for pound - drink the average human under the table, scientists have discovered. (...) Chemicals in the hair samples showed that on any given night, a tree-shrew had a 36% chance of being drunk by human standards. The shrew's resistance to intoxication suggests its body must have an effective mechanism for breaking down alcohol. This should not come as too much of a surprise: scientists believe the animals - which are distant relatives of humans - have had 55 million years of evolution to adapt to their boozy lifestyle. The researchers used radio tags to track the creatures on their crawls and recorded video of their feeding sessions. Humans may even preserve a relic of the shrews' love of alcohol that has lasted through millions of years of evolution. In their PNAS paper, the scientists wrote that the pen-tailed tree-shrew is "a living model for extinct mammals, representing the stock from all extinct and living tree-shrews and primates radiated". They added: "Therefore, we hypothesise that moderate to high alcohol intake was present early on in the evolution of these closely related lineages."
Chemicals in the hair samples showed that on any given night, a tree-shrew had a 36% chance of being drunk by human standards. The shrew's resistance to intoxication suggests its body must have an effective mechanism for breaking down alcohol.
This should not come as too much of a surprise: scientists believe the animals - which are distant relatives of humans - have had 55 million years of evolution to adapt to their boozy lifestyle.
The researchers used radio tags to track the creatures on their crawls and recorded video of their feeding sessions.
Humans may even preserve a relic of the shrews' love of alcohol that has lasted through millions of years of evolution.
In their PNAS paper, the scientists wrote that the pen-tailed tree-shrew is "a living model for extinct mammals, representing the stock from all extinct and living tree-shrews and primates radiated".
They added: "Therefore, we hypothesise that moderate to high alcohol intake was present early on in the evolution of these closely related lineages."
Or run for president.
A mayor's hopes of ending her town's ban on the 1979 Monty Python film Life of Brian are being opposed by the local vicar, who says it pokes fun at Jesus. Sue Jones-Davies, who played Brian's girlfriend in the movie, was amazed when she became mayor of Aberystwyth that it was still barred from cinemas. But Reverend Canon Stuart Bell said Christians he spoke to in Ceredigion were still against it being shown. The mayor declined to respond, but will still press for the ban to be lifted.
A mayor's hopes of ending her town's ban on the 1979 Monty Python film Life of Brian are being opposed by the local vicar, who says it pokes fun at Jesus.
Sue Jones-Davies, who played Brian's girlfriend in the movie, was amazed when she became mayor of Aberystwyth that it was still barred from cinemas.
But Reverend Canon Stuart Bell said Christians he spoke to in Ceredigion were still against it being shown.
The mayor declined to respond, but will still press for the ban to be lifted.
Rising fuel prices are to cost Wales Air Ambulance an extra £75,000 a year, it has emerged. The charity said the cost of fuelling its fleet of three helicopters was increasing by 30% to £325,000 per year. But officials said emergency flights would not be restricted as a result of the hike in fuel prices. Meanwhile, the charity is to upgrade its helicopters next year, which are based in Caernarfon, Swansea and Welshpool, Powys. The air ambulances have to be replaced under Civil Aviation Authority regulations.
Rising fuel prices are to cost Wales Air Ambulance an extra £75,000 a year, it has emerged.
The charity said the cost of fuelling its fleet of three helicopters was increasing by 30% to £325,000 per year.
But officials said emergency flights would not be restricted as a result of the hike in fuel prices.
Meanwhile, the charity is to upgrade its helicopters next year, which are based in Caernarfon, Swansea and Welshpool, Powys.
The air ambulances have to be replaced under Civil Aviation Authority regulations.
On the credibility of climate predictions / De la credibilite des previsions climatiques
Geographically distributed predictions of future climate, obtained through climate models, are widely used in hydrology and many other disciplines, typically without assessing their reliability. Here we compare the output of various models to temperature and precipitation observations from eight stations with long (over 100 years) records from around the globe. The results show that models perform poorly, even at a climatic (30-year) scale. Thus local model projections cannot be credible, whereas a common argument that models can perform better at larger spatial scales is unsupported.
Bold mine. Hattip: Climate Audit
News Analysis - Climate Experts Tussle Over Details. Public Gets Whiplash. - News Analysis - NYTimes.com By ANDREW C. REVKIN
When science is testing new ideas, the result is often a two-papers-forward-one-paper-back intellectual tussle among competing research teams. When the work touches on issues that worry the public, affect the economy or polarize politics, the news media and advocates of all stripes dive in. Under nonstop scrutiny, conflicting findings can make news coverage veer from one extreme to another, resulting in a kind of journalistic whiplash for the public. This has been true for decades in health coverage. But lately the phenomenon has been glaringly apparent on the global warming beat. Discordant findings have come in quick succession. How fast is Greenland shedding ice? Did human-caused warming wipe out frogs in the American tropics? Has warming strengthened hurricanes? Have the oceans stopped warming? These questions endure even as the basic theory of a rising human influence on climate has steadily solidified: accumulating greenhouse gases will warm the world, erode ice sheets, raise seas and have big impacts on biology and human affairs.
When science is testing new ideas, the result is often a two-papers-forward-one-paper-back intellectual tussle among competing research teams.
When the work touches on issues that worry the public, affect the economy or polarize politics, the news media and advocates of all stripes dive in. Under nonstop scrutiny, conflicting findings can make news coverage veer from one extreme to another, resulting in a kind of journalistic whiplash for the public.
This has been true for decades in health coverage. But lately the phenomenon has been glaringly apparent on the global warming beat.
Discordant findings have come in quick succession. How fast is Greenland shedding ice? Did human-caused warming wipe out frogs in the American tropics? Has warming strengthened hurricanes? Have the oceans stopped warming? These questions endure even as the basic theory of a rising human influence on climate has steadily solidified: accumulating greenhouse gases will warm the world, erode ice sheets, raise seas and have big impacts on biology and human affairs.
