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Sunday, March 3, 2013

Humans kill nearly 100 million sharks each year, say conservationists

Shark populations have declined rapidly, driven largely by demand for shark fins, a delicacy in many Asian countries.

By Alister Doyle,?Reuters Environment Correspondent / March 1, 2013

A great white shark in captivity swims Monterey Bay Aquarium's 'Outer Bay' exhibit in 2005. Great white sharks off the coast of California are set to enjoy greater protection, as state officials consider whether to add the predator to California's list of endangered species.

Vern Fisher/Monterey County Herald/AP/File

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Protection measures have failed to stop around 100 million sharks being fished every year and a third of all shark species are now threatened with extinction, conservationists say.

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Many are caught for their fins, a delicacy in Asian soup. The fins are sliced off and the animals are often dumped alive overboard to die of suffocation or eaten by other predators.

Protection for endangered sharks may have lagged because they are relatively unloved compared to animals such as pandas or lions, even though they usually kill fewer than 10 people a year worldwide.

An estimated 97 million sharks, or 1.41 million tonnes, were caught in 2010 compared to 100 million in 2000, according to a study in the journal Marine Policy, the first to estimate the number of sharks killed annually.

"We are now the predators. Humans have mounted an unrelenting assault on sharks and their numbers are crashing throughout the world's oceans," said Elizabeth Wilson, manager of global shark conservation at The Pew Charitable Trusts.

A meeting of 170 nations in Bangkok from March 3 to 14 will consider limits on trade in hammerhead sharks, oceanic whitetip sharks and porbeagle sharks to curb over-fishing. Great white sharks, whale sharks and basking sharks already have protection.

"More has to be done. Some species are really hanging on by a thread," said Boris Worm, a marine biologist at Dalhousie University in Canada, who was lead author of the study with other experts in Canada and the United States.

Demand in Asia for shark fins, a delicacy in soup, is a main driver of catches that also target meat, liver oil and cartilage.

The small fall in catches from 2000 to 2010 may be an encouraging sign of steps to outlaw finning by the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia in the past decade, Worm said. And China plans to phase out shark fin soup in official banquets.

But it may be a sign that sharks are getting harder to find because there are fewer in the oceans, he told Reuters.

Unloved fish

Sharks killed seven people worldwide in unprovoked attacks in 2012, down from 13 in 2011 but above the average for 2001 to 2010 of 4.4, according to the International Shark Attack File compiled by the University of Florida.

On Wednesday, a New Zealand man was attacked and killed by a great white shark.

Friday's study estimated that between 6.4 and 7.9 percent of the world's sharks are caught every year, depleting numbers since sharks grow slowly, have few offspring and numbers can only rebound at about 4.9 percent a year.

Pew urged delegates at the Bangkok meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species to agree more protection for sharks and rays.

Worldwide there are about 500 species of shark, ranging from the dwarf shark that can fit in the palm of a hand to the whale shark, the largest fish in the oceans that can grow up to 12 metres (40 feet), the length of a bus.

A third of those species risk being wiped out, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

(Reporting By Alister Doyle; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/zGLI4rlN6oo/Humans-kill-nearly-100-million-sharks-each-year-say-conservationists

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Scientists link rat brains via Internet

Electrical impulses generated in one rat's brain can be decoded by another, found researchers who used electrodes to connect the motor cortices of rodents thousands of miles apart.

By Megan Gannon,?LiveScience News Editor / February 28, 2013

In experiments, the rats' brains were linked via microelectrodes so that when one rat pressed a lever, the other knew to do the same. If the animals performed the cooperative task correctly, they got rewards.

Katie Zhuang, Laboratory of Dr. Miguel Nicolelis, Duke University

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Scientists have engineered something close to a mind meld in a pair of lab rats, linking the animals' brains electronically so that they could work together to solve a puzzle. And this brain-to-brain connection stayed strong even when the rats were 2,000 miles apart.

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The experiments were undertaken by Duke neurobiologist Miguel Nicolelis, who is best known for his work in making?mind-controlled prosthetics.

"Our previous studies with?brain-machine interfaces?had convinced us that the brain was much more plastic than we had thought," Nicolelis explained. "In those experiments, the brain was able to adapt easily to accept input from devices outside the body and even learn how to process invisible infrared light generated by an artificial sensor. So, the question we asked was, if?the brain?could assimilate signals from artificial sensors, could it also assimilate information input from sensors from a different body?"

For the new experiments, Nicolelis and his colleagues trained pairs of rats to press a certain lever when a light went on in their cage. If they hit the right lever, they got a sip of water as a reward.

When one rat in the pair called the "encoder" performed this task, the pattern of its brain activity ? something like a snapshot of its thought process ? was translated into an electronic signal sent to the brain of its partner rat, the "decoder," in a separate enclosure. The light did not go off in the decoder's cage, so this animal had to crack the message from the encoder to know which lever to press to get the reward.

The decoder pressed the right lever 70 percent of the time, the researchers said.

The near mind merger was achieved with microelectrodes implanted in the part of the animals' cortex that processes motor information. And the brain-to-brain interface, which Nicolelis describes as an "organic computer," worked both ways: If the decoder chose the wrong lever, the encoder rat didn't get a full reward, which encouraged the two to work together. [Video - Watch the Brainy Rats Work Together]

"We saw that when the decoder rat committed an error, the encoder basically changed both its brain function and behavior to make it easier for its partner to get it right," Nicolelis explained in a statement. "The encoder improved the signal-to-noise ratio of its brain activity that represented the decision, so the signal became cleaner and easier to detect. And it made a quicker, cleaner decision to choose the correct lever to press. Invariably, when the encoder made those adaptations, the decoder got the right decision more often, so they both got a better reward."

The connection was not lost even when the signals were sent over the Internet and the rats placed on two different continents, 2,000 miles (3,219 kilometers) apart. The researchers say the results held true when the decoder rat was in a Duke lab in North Carolina and the encoder was with Nicolelis' colleagues at in Brazil, at the Edmond and Lily Safra International Institute of Neuroscience of Natal (ELS-IINN).

The researchers are working on experiments to link the minds of more than two animals (this is something Nicolelis calls a "brain-net") to see if they could solve more complex problems cooperatively.

"We cannot even predict what kinds of emergent properties would appear when animals begin interacting as part of a brain-net," Nicolelis said. "In theory, you could imagine that a combination of brains could provide solutions that individual brains cannot achieve by themselves."

The research was detailed today (Feb. 28) in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

Follow LiveScience on Twitter?@livescience. We're also on?Facebook?&?Google+.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/ED7OOLSqiJU/Scientists-link-rat-brains-via-Internet

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Saturday, March 2, 2013

'Switched at Birth' goes silent to make a point

This publicity image released by ABC Family shows Karla Gutierrez, left, and Ashley Shimizu in a scene from ABC Family's TV series, "Switched at Birth." When news of the school's closing spreads, the students of Carlton School for the Deaf stage a protest. (AP Photo/ABC Family/Eric McCandless)

This publicity image released by ABC Family shows Sean Berdy in a scene from ABC Family's TV series, "Switched at Birth." When news of the school's closing spreads, the students of Carlton School for the Deaf stage a protest. (AP Photo/ABC Family/Eric McCandless)

This publicity image released by ABC Family shows from left, Marlee Matlin, Katie Leclerc and Brian Gutierrez in a scene from ABC Family's TV series, "Switched at Birth." When news of the school's closing spreads, the students of Carlton School for the Deaf stage a protest. (AP Photo/ABC Family/Eric McCandless)

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? "Until hearing people walk a day in our shoes, they will never understand," says a guidance counselor at a high school for deaf students in "Switched at Birth."

Such insights are a staple of the ABC Family drama, a TV rarity that puts deaf characters, played by deaf or hard-of-hearing actors, at the center of the action.

But Monday's episode takes it a bold step further: Save for a few spoken words at the beginning and the end, it is silent. The actors' hands do the talking with American Sign Language, even rapping together in one gleeful sequence.

Subtitles, which are typically sprinkled throughout "Switched at Birth" episodes, keep the viewer clued in. But when a deaf character is confused because she can't hear something vital, the audience is too. It's powerfully disconcerting.

The cast, including Oscar-winner Marlee Matlin as the school counselor, are excited about what they see as a grand experiment and eager for viewer reaction.

"This is an opportunity for the hearing person to watch at home and try to experience it," said Katie Leclerc, who stars as deaf teenager Daphne Vasquez. "It's not exactly the same, but maybe you can try to imagine what your everyday life would be like."

"It's a risk," added Leclerc, who has an inner ear disorder, Meniere's disease, that can cause hearing loss and vertigo.

"A big risk," Matlin said through a sign language-interpreter. "But it's going to be an eye-opener. I'm very proud to be part of this risk-taking, history-making episode."

Matlin knows about making history. She was the first ? and remains the only ? deaf person to receive an Academy Award acting trophy, honored as best actress for 1986's "Children of a Lesser God."

The "Switched at Birth" episode pivots on another key moment for the deaf community: A 1988 student protest at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., that ended the unbroken succession of hearing presidents at the school for the deaf.

For fictional Carlton High School (inspired by real-life LA school, Marlton), more is at stake: The school faces closure because of funding cuts, which means its students will be "mainstreamed" with hearing teens.

(It mirrors a real-life trend caused by budget constraints, Leclerc said. There's also an increasing number of children being given cochlear implants to counter hearing loss, itself a controversial issue, according to series creator and executive producer Lizzy Weiss.)

The prospect is dreaded by the Carlton students, either because they've felt the sting of being an outsider or because they treasure being part of a deaf-oriented school.

"Deaf people feel that moving into the mainstream chips away at their community, which is about language and culture," said Jack Jason, Matlin's longtime interpreter and the series' on-set arbiter for correct sign-language use.

With Daphne as the driving force and invoking Gallaudet, students mobilize to take over the administration building and demand Carlton's survival. The conflict's ending will wait for the March 11 season finale.

The uprising panics parents and puts relationships at risk, including that of Daphne and Bay Kennish (Vanessa Marano), the switched-at-birth characters of the title who have come together as teenagers from two very different households.

"We started in the pilot with just one scene that was pure ASL," involving Daphne and Emmett (Sean Berdy), said Weiss. As the series developed, she and her writing team began pondering the "what-if" of an all-sign language episode for the second season.

Then ABC Family approached her with the same idea, and the challenge was on to find a logical and engaging way to realize the ASL-only goal and a big enough story to make the most of it.

Last year, a "CSI: NY" episode took a stab at a nearly silent episode, using music by Green Day for most of its storytelling before reverting to dialogue in the final act.

The solution for "Switched at Birth" was to make sure every scene included a deaf character: "The truth is, when you're around people who are deaf, it's considered rude not to sign if you know how," Weiss said.

To avoid overloading viewers with subtitles the story was designed to be highly visual, including scenes of the student protest complete with picket signs and a defiant "Take Back Carlton" banner unfurled from the occupied school building.

Although some moments depict the pitfalls of being a deaf person in a hearing world, Weiss said, that's balanced by positive aspects.

"If you have been anything that's in the minority ? gay, Jewish, a woman, anything ? you have some piece of your identity that brings with it a lot of baggage and hardship, but also a lot of pride," Weiss said. "That's what we're trying to connect with."

The episode also highlights the beauty of ASL and its "coolness," such as being able to sign across a crowded theater and have an essentially private conversation, she said.

As with a silent movie ? last year's Oscar-winning "The Artist" the latest case in point ? "Switched at Birth" includes music intended to reflect the characters' internal lives. A viewer could add to the silence by muting it, but Weiss said that misses the point.

The episode "is not about silence, or 'absence of' sound. It's about language and culture and seeing the world from the point of view of a deaf person, and our perspective is that deaf people's inner lives are not silent," she said.

Matlin, whose counselor is a recurring character on "Switched at Birth," said the episode is an emotional and professional high point for her, one she would like to see exceeded.

"I never thought in my life I would see this happen. But I want to go further in terms of using deaf actors. ... I want (Steven) Spielberg to say, 'Hey, we want to use deaf actors.' Why not? And, hey, let's have the same respect for actors who are deaf as for those who are hearing.

"I don't know if we'll ever get there, but never say never," Matlin said.

___

Online:

http://www.abcfamily.go.com

___

Lynn Elber is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. She can be reached at lelber(at)ap.org and on Twitter (at)lynnelber.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-03-01-TV-Silent%20Drama/id-3ef317f2d8cb4376aceadc8602c94ca0

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Friday, March 1, 2013

Fossil shows origin of stuffing your face

Flora Graham, editor, newscientist.com

(Image: Yie Jang, Yunnan University)

This multi-limbed creature is a Fuxianhuiid arthropod, and it's not waving, but eating. Some of those arms are actually mouthparts, the earliest ever seen.

Fuxianhuiids lived from 520 million years ago, roughly 50 million years before primordial land animals crawled from the sea. They had soft bodies, but their heads were covered in a hard shell, which has hidden the structures underneath in all fossils previously found. But now, thanks to an astonishingly rich new site in southern China, we have several specimens like the one pictured that were fossilised after losing their shells.

This has given researchers the first opportunity to examine the appendages on the creature's head, which turn out to be the earliest and simplest example of manipulative limbs used for feeding purposes.

The researchers reckon that fuxianhuiids adapted the limbs to push sediment into their mouths while grazing along the sea floor. They would then filter out the tasty morsels, such as traces of decomposed seaweed.

The revelation sheds light on the earliest moments of limb development in arthropods, which evolved into the insects, spiders and crustaceans we know today.

"Since biologists rely heavily on organisation of head appendages to classify arthropod groups, such as insects and spiders, our study provides a crucial reference point for reconstructing the evolutionary history and relationships of the most diverse and abundant animals on Earth," says Javier Ortega-Hern?ndez from the University of Cambridge, who was on the research team.

The fossils also revealed the oldest nervous system on record that extends beyond the head - a single nerve string.

"These fossils are our best window to see the most primitive state of animals as we know them - including us," says Ortega-Hern?ndez. "Before that there is no clear indication in the fossil record of whether something was an animal or a plant."

The fossils were found at a new site called the Xiaoshiba biota. It has proven stunningly rich in arthropod remains and even surpasses the bounty of the Chengjiang biota, says Ortega-Hern?ndez.

"More than 50 specimens of fuxianhuiids have been found in just over a year, whereas in previous areas considered fossil-rich, such as Chengjiang, it took years - even decades - to build up such a collection."

Journal reference: Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature11874

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/2910d0e9/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cshortsharpscience0C20A130C0A20Cfossil0Efuxianhuiid0Bhtml0Dcmpid0FRSS0QNSNS0Q20A120EGLOBAL0Qonline0Enews/story01.htm

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The Arctic in a Pool: Simulator Grows Sea Ice

This winter, flowers bloomed in the northern Canadian city of Winnipeg. But not the verdant blooms that might come to mind; these were frost flowers.

The University of Manitoba opened a sea ice simulator last year to see how ice forms on the open water of the frigid poles, and how it affects the local climate and plant life.

The $1.5 million Canadian ($1.46 million USD) Sea-ice Environmental Research Facility's 30-foot-long (9 meters) pool ? the centerpiece of the project ? is where the researchers sprinkle salt, water and environmental contaminants, then watch how the sea ice grows.

The facility runs during the winter, when the outdoor temperature is below 28.9 Fahrenheit (minus 1.7 degrees Celsius), the temperature at which ice forms.

"The real beauty is we can add [chemical or biological] tracers to it and use the sensors to monitor it in real time," said Feiyue Wang, an environmental chemist who leads the facility.

"As an experimental scientist, I always like to do control experiments. What if we hold some variables constant? What if we change them? You can't do that in the Arctic," Wang told OurAmazingPlanet.

Ice experiments

Frost flowers are one of the types of ice they can grow at the facility. These structures form around salt on the surface of the ice, and host a wealth of microbes that can survive in harsh Arctic environments. Previous research found that they contain far more salt than the surrounding waters.

"If they can concentrate salt, they can concentrate other chemicals in seawater," Wang said, adding that pollutants would be among the chemicals.

The challenge is trying to track down these structures. In the isolated north, scientists rely on remote sensing from satellites to take their research vessel to the correct location. However, it's difficult to pick out the frost flowers from the surrounding ice. [10 Things You Need to Know About Arctic Sea Ice]

At the facility last year, the researchers watched frost flowers over three days using one particular band of radiation. Their goal was to figure out how to position the sensor to best see the flowers. A paper on the research, led by the University of Manitoba's Dustin Isleifson will be published in a future issue of the journal Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.

Future plans

More research papers are forthcoming on acidity in the sea ice environment, as well as how carbon is exchanged with the ice, which would help tease out the effects of climate change from carbon dioxide on the Arctic ocean environment.

Within the next few years, the researchers aim to enhance their "simulation" by taking a sheet of ice from the Arctic and laying it inside the pool to do controlled bacteria studies.

The researchers are also laying the groundwork for a facility expansion that would allow them to study oil spills in the sea ice environment. The first concrete step will be to obtain funding, which the researchers are working on now.

Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace, or LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/arctic-pool-simulator-grows-sea-ice-151034430.html

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Video: 4 ways to save on organic groceries

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West wary, Iran upbeat after nuclear talks

Stanislav Filippov / AFP - Getty Images

Iran's top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili speaks at a press conference after the talks on Iran's nuclear program in the Kazakh city of Almaty on Wednesday.

By Ali Arouzi, Correspondent, NBC News

ALMATY, Kazakhstan ? Another round of talks between six world powers and Iran over Tehran?s nuclear program ended Wednesday. And like the air in fog-engulfed Almaty, the Kazakh city where the meetings were held, nothing was very clear at the conclusion of the latest negotiations.

The only thing both sides seemed able to agree on was that they would meet again: The next high-level talks will be held on April 5 and 6, again in Almaty.

It is hard to know what exactly has been offered and rejected by Iran and the six powers ? France, Germany, the United States, China Russia and Britain ? because the negotiations are opaque by nature.

While Tehran maintains it is not seeking nuclear weapons, both sides seemed just as far away from an agreement to resolve the dispute that could lead to military conflict in the Middle East.

Israel has hinted that it could strike Iran's nuclear sites if current diplomatic efforts failed to stop its enrichment of uranium to near weapons-grade. Israel is thought to be the only country in the region with a nuclear arsenal.

An American diplomat speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity said that Iran was offered minor sanctions relief if Tehran was willing to scale back certain elements of its nuclear program. It is generally accepted that neither side wants a complete breakdown in talks.

Iran?s chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili was upbeat and smiling after the talks concluded, and said that the offers made by the world powers was more realist than previous ones.

"In this round of talks we have witnessed that despite all the attitudes during the last eight months, they tried to get closer to our viewpoints," he told journalists.

He also said Western powers had made no demands that Iran shut down a uranium enrichment facility in Fordow, which is hidden deep inside a mountain.

Jalili concluded by saying that Iran had made massive achievements since the last round of talks and that it would not give up its rights.

One Western diplomat who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that that halting enriching uranium to 20 percent fissile purity ? a short technical step from weapons grade ??shipping out current stockpiles and shutting Fordow was still a prerequisite for world powers.

Speaking to journalists for the six powers, European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said that she was glad that the Iranians saw this as a positive meeting.

"I hope the Iranian side is looking positively on the proposal we put forward," she said.

"We have to see what happens next,? she added, striking a cautious tone.

She only took three questions from journalists, replying with very short answers.

Whatever the outcome of the negotiations, one thing that the Iranian team has to look forward to is the approaching Persian New Year.? This, the most important holiday on the calendar, is a time for shopping, buying presents for family and friends and decorations for the festive season.

The sense that a deal is on the horizon could strengthen the Iranian currency, which has been in free-fall under pressure from Western sanctions.? A strengthened rial would give ordinary Iranians more purchasing power, and the government more breathing space.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Related:

'Why Almaty?' Journalists at Iran nuclear talks wonder

Iran widens use of clandestine tanker fleet to bust oil sanctions, international officials say

Iran conducts tests to bring down 'hypothetical' drones

Source: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/27/17118643-west-wary-iran-upbeat-after-nuclear-talks?lite

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