Seabirds need effective marine conservation in wake of discard ban, warns study

Mar. 22, 2013 ? Conservationists have renewed urgent calls for effective marine protection in European waters, after a new study, published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, revealed that the recent EU ban on fish discards could have a significant short-term impact on some seabirds.

The research, led by scientists from Plymouth University in collaboration with RSPB and with funding from NERC, found the new EU policy, outlawing the dumping of fish at sea, is unlikely to pose a serious lasting threat to most seabirds, but recommends the need to build resilience into seabird populations by protecting habitats and ensuring a sufficient supply of food.

For several decades, a number of seabird species have grown accustomed to feeding on discards, the excess catch thrown back into the sea mostly because fishermen have exceeded their quotas. Buoyed by this bonanza, populations of several seabird species have boomed.

However, in the biggest change in European fisheries management for a generation, last month the European Parliament voted to scrap the controversial practice of discarding.

The Plymouth University review article revealed that scavenging species such as great skuas and large gulls, which have come to rely on discards, may be among the first to suffer due to an immediate shortage of food. However, by their very nature, these opportunistic feeders should be able to switch to alternative food sources -- provided they exist -- although scientists acknowledged there is a risk that some seabirds may switch to preying on other seabirds. Concern is also expressed for the 'critically endangered' Balearic shearwater which makes significant use of discards.

In a bid to mitigate this short term impact, the RSPB is renewing calls for Marine Protected Areas, to ensure that seabird foraging areas and prey populations are ready to cope with an increased demand for wild caught food.

Dr Euan Dunn, Head of Marine Policy at the RSPB said: "This long overdue ban helps to put our seas back on an even keel, and restore our seabirds to the balance they had with the marine environment before the advent of industrial-scale fisheries. Seabirds are a hardy bunch and we are heartened by the conclusion that most will weather the storm of a discard ban. Nevertheless the loss of discards could pile the pressure on the UK's seabirds already depleted by climate change-driven changes to their marine food chain. It underlines the need to build as much resilience as we can into their wider protection both on land and at sea. This research once again highlights the importance of marine protected areas, particularly in the short term as species adapt to necessary changes in fisheries management, and emphasises the vital role for government to play in the conservation of our internationally important seabird populations."

Dr Stephen Votier, Associate Professor in Marine Ecology at Plymouth University, said: "Reform of the Common Fisheries Policy is long overdue and hopefully the changes this brings will be beneficial for seabird populations throughout the EU. However marine ecosystems are inherently complex making it hard to predict precisely what will happen. For instance a discard ban may have negative impacts as some scavengers switch to feed on alternative prey, such as smaller seabirds, or by moving into novel habitats. Conversely there may be positive impacts associated with a reduction in accidental bycatch of seabirds attracted by discards to fishing gears and, in the long-term, a return to a more 'natural' seabird community. Our study also highlights that despite many years of research, we still have a great deal to learn about how seabirds will respond to changes in the marine environment -- we need a coordinated effort between conservation agencies and scientists to plug these important knowledge gaps."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by British Ecological Society (BES), via AlphaGalileo.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Anthony W. J. Bicknell, Daniel Oro, Kees Camphuysen, Stephen C. Votier. Potential consequences of discard reform for seabird communities. Journal of Applied Ecology, 2013

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/kGftT_E0lYw/130321205419.htm

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Apple ID accounts reportedly vulnerable to password reset hack, forgot password page taken offline for maintenance (update 2: back)

Gaping security holes are a pretty terrifying thing, especially when they involve something as sensitive as your Apple ID. Sadly it seems that immediately after making the paranoid happy by instituting two-step authentication a pretty massive flaw in Cupertino's system was discovered and first reported by The Verge. Turns out you can reset any Apple ID password with nothing more than a person's email address and date of birth -- two pieces of information that are pretty easy to come across.

There's a little more to the hack, but it's simple enough that even your non-tech savvy aunt or uncle could do it. After entering the target email address in the password reset form you can then select to answer security questions to validate your identity. The first task will be to enter a date of birth. If you enter that correctly then paste a particular URL into the address bar (which we will not be publishing for obvious reasons), press enter, then -- voilà -- instant password reset! Or, at least that's the story. While we were attempting to verify these claims Apple took down the password reset page for "maintenance." Though we've received no official confirmation from Apple, it seems the company is moving swiftly to shut down this particularly troublesome workaround before word of it spreads too far.

Update: We've heard back from Apple on the matter, which stated, "Apple takes customer privacy very seriously. We are aware of this issue, and working on a fix." No real surprises that a fix is in the works, but there you have it from the horse's mouth.

Update 2: The forgotten password page is back as of late Friday evening -- that was (relatively) quick. iMore reports (and we've verified ourselves) that the security hole is now closed.

Filed under: Internet, Apple

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Source: The Verge, iMore

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/22/apple-id-accounts-reportedly-vulnerable-to-password-reset-hack/

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Demand Media buys arts and crafts video provider

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) ? Demand Media is buying Creativebug, a provider of how-to crafty videos, as interest grows online in arts and crafts.

Financial terms were not disclosed Tuesday.

Demand Media assigns thousands of freelancers to produce stories about frequently searched topics and then sells ads alongside the content at its own websites, which include eHow and Livestrong. The Santa Monica, Calif., company said Creativebug's educational videos complement the crafts content on eHow.

San Francisco-based Creativebug allows users to pay per class or get a subscription for unlimited classes to learn skills such as sewing, knitting, jewelry-making and printmaking.

The purchase marks another effort by the company to boost the quality and variety of its offerings. Shortly after Demand Media went public in 2011, Google Inc. changed its influential search formula to weed out websites featuring content deemed to be shallow or deficient by its ranking system. The move relegated much of Demand Media's material to the back pages of the search results that provided much of its traffic.

Demand Media has been adapting to the changes by producing longer articles and setting up its how-to video channels on YouTube and other online outlets. Meanwhile, interest in online video continues to grow and people spend more time in front of their computers than their TVs.

In addition, interest in crafts content is growing, Demand Media said. Last year 50 million viewers looked at crafts-related pages on its eHow sites, the company said.

Shares of Demand Media Inc. added 3 cents to $8.74 in morning trading.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2013-03-19-US-Demand-Media-Creativebug-/id-4daf2081d4b84c52a1ab9a5afed98635

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Cell on a chip reveals protein behavior: In the future, artifical cells may produce complex protein structures on demand

Mar. 18, 2013 ? For years, scientists around the world have dreamed of building a complete, functional, artificial cell. Though this vision is still a distant blur on the horizon, many are making progress on various fronts. Prof. Roy Bar-Ziv and his research team in the Weizmann Institute's Materials and Interfaces Department recently took a significant step in this direction when they created a two-dimensional, cell-like system on a glass chip.

This system, composed of some of the basic biological molecules found in cells -- DNA, RNA, proteins -- carried out one of the central functions of a living cell: gene expression, the process by which the information stored in the genes is translated into proteins. More than that, it enabled the scientists, led by research student Yael Heprotein yman, to obtain "snapshots" of this process in nanoscale resolution.

The system, consisting of glass chips that are only 8 nanometers thick, is based on an earlier one designed in Bar-Ziv's lab by Dr. Shirley Daube and former student Dr. Amnon Buxboim. After being coated in a light-sensitive substance, the chips are irradiated with focused beams of ultraviolet light, which enables the biological molecules to bind to the substance in the irradiated areas. In this way, the scientists could precisely place DNA molecules encoding a protein marked with a green fluorescent marker in one area of the chip and antibodies that "trap" the colored proteins in an abutting area. When they observed the chips under a fluorescence microscope, the area in which they had placed the antibodies turned a glowing bright green. This meant that the DNA instructions had been copied into RNA molecules, which were in turn translated into fluorescent green proteins. The green proteins were then ensnared by the antibodies.

Next, the scientists asked whether their cell-like system could reproduce complex structural assemblies of naturally-occurring proteins. This time, they attached a viral gene to the chips' surface encoding a protein that can self-assemble into a nanotube. With the help of Dr. Sharon Wolf of the Electron Microscopy Unit, they observed a forest of minuscule tubes sprouting from the antibody area under an electron microscope.

The researchers then sought a way to produce and trap multiple proteins simultaneously by confining each protein in the area of its gene on the chip. On top of the chip to which the DNA encoding green proteins was bound, the scientists added a solution with a second gene encoding a red protein. The resulting red and green proteins competed for binding on the antibody traps, yielding a graded spatial separation in which the antibodies closest to the green genes had the highest concentration of green protein, with red concentrations rising farther afield. The results of this research recently appeared in Nature Nanotechnology.

Bar-Ziv: "We have shown that it is possible to build a protein 'production line' outside of the cell and use it to observe a spectrum of protein activities." In the future, such a system may move from enabling the observation of proteins to providing the basis for techniques to create complex, active protein structures on demand.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Weizmann Institute of Science.

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Journal Reference:

1. Yael Heyman, Amnon Buxboim, Sharon G. Wolf, Shirley S. Daube, Roy H. Bar-Ziv. Cell-free protein synthesis and assembly on a biochip. Nature Nanotechnology, 2012; 7 (6): 374 DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2012.65

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/wUE79xwG08U/130318133024.htm

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Seven Under-the-Radar Financial Hacks Everyone Should Know About

Just before the Enron scandal broke, the company's CEO immediately put his money into annuities?in his wife's name. Why? Because those assets are creditor-protected, so they can't be seized (in this case, by the government). This is just one example of many illustrating how extremely wealthy people get the most from their money?and most of them do it legally. Much of their success comes from knowing where to find loopholes in the financial system. While we'd never recommend any illegal or dishonest money moves (seriously, don't break the law!), there are a handful of legal personal finance hacks that are available to all of us.

Borrow Against Your Home's Equity

This hack is for homeowners, but it's good for everyone to know about should you ever decide to buy a home.

How It Works: Instead of having the bank front you the money you need through a personal loan, you borrow against your home's equity. (As a reminder, equity is the difference between the total of your mortgage and the appraised value of your home.) The benefit here is two-fold: Since you've already been approved for a mortgage, the process will be less involved for this loan. You'll need to get your home appraised, but your lender should be able to walk you through the process. Second, interest payments on home equity loans are typically tax-deductible, unlike interest on personal loans.

Lenders probably won't give you an amount equivalent to the entire equity?you'll get more like 75%, at most. But if you have equity of $100,000, that's $75,000 you may be able to borrow. This is a great option if A. you're planning to stay in your home for a while and B. your home is worth more than what you paid for it. If your home is worth less than your mortgage, you have little equity or you'll be moving soon, this hack is not for you. And a word of caution: If you go this route, you must be vigilant about making timely payments on your loan?since you're borrowing against your home, you could lose it if you fall behind on those payments.

Pay Down Debt Using a Zero Interest Credit Card

For this hack, you need either a respectable credit score in order to apply for a new card or an existing credit card with zero interest.

How It Works: The most insidious part of carrying a large balance on your card is the interest that you're paying on that balance, which can be as much as 20%. With this hack, you're making a balance transfer to another card to avoid paying that interest. This maneuver only works with cards that don't charge interest. Luckily, many credit cards offer an initial promotion of 0% interest for up to 18 months when you open a new card. If you're carrying considerable debt that you intend to pay off within the 0% period, you can do a balance transfer (essentially, you're paying off the interest-bearing card using the new card, so your balance appears on a new bill) to pay down your debt without interest.

There is a charge for the balance transfer?usually around 3% of the amount that you're transferring?so if you have a very small balance on your card, this might not be the hack for you. The idea is that your would-have-been interest payments cost more than the balance transfer fees. You can figure out how much money you'll save with this maneuver by using a credit card balance calculator. Note that your credit score will get dinged when you open a new card because you're changing your utilization rate, but in the grand scheme of things, this ding doesn't compare to the full-on wreck that is major credit card debt.

Use a Roth IRA to Save For College

This hack is useful if you're saving for a child's college tuition because it gets around the limited use of 529 accounts. That said, Roth IRAs do come with income limitations: You can contribute to a Roth IRA to the limit if your adjusted gross income is less than $112,000 filing alone, and $178,000 if you're married, filing jointly, so consult your tax advisor before giving this idea a try.

How It Works: A 529 plan is a state-run college savings account (you can look into the particulars of your state's program here). It's not federal income tax-deductible (although some states let you to deduct some of your contributions on your state income taxes), but it does allow you to pull out funds for college tax-free. The downside of a 529 plan is that if and when you apply for financial aid (by filling out the FAFSA form), the money in this account is considered part of the family's assets. For some families, having savings in a 529 counted as an asset lessens the chances of getting financial aid.

One of the things that we say again and again is that you shouldn't take money out of a retirement account. There are penalty fees, and it's basically self-sabotage...with one exception. That exception is withdrawing the principal?the money you contributed, and not the interest it has earned?from your Roth IRA.

We don't generally recommend this maneuver, but if you're in a tight spot, it might work for you. Money saved in retirement accounts doesn't count toward a family's assets, so you can save money for college in a Roth IRA, apply and possibly qualify for financial aid without declaring those assets, and then withdraw those savings when it's time to pay. For example, you and your spouse could each contribute $5,500 (the maximum contribution for 2013) for a total of $11,000 a year for the both of you. In 15 years, your principal will be $82,500, which you can withdraw to pay for college without penalty. Something else to know: Retirement accounts are generally creditor-protected, so they can't be seized by creditors?with 529 accounts, the rules vary by state.

Ask Grandparents to Open a 529

This hack is great if you're saving for college?particularly if it's for someone who isn't your child, such as a niece or nephew, grandchild or godchild.

How It Works: Nowhere on the FAFSA form (it's used to apply for financial aid for college) does it ask about assets that belong to people other than the student or student's parents. So to save money that isn't counted when colleges take stock of your assets, you can have a grandparent open a 529 plan, with your child as the beneficiary. Then parents and grandparents (or even just parents) can make contributions to the account. And it doesn't have to be grandparents who open this account?aunts, uncles, godparents or anyone else can contribute to your child's education. Just make sure the account holder is someone whom you trust, so they don't abscond with the money!

This also works in reverse: If you're a grandparent, aunt, uncle, godparent or vested bystander, you can open an account for the child or children you love. But be warned: This is a particularly complicated financial hack to execute. When the funds are taken from the 529 plan and given to your child, that money is counted as untaxed income for the year. It takes careful planning to figure out when it's best to withdraw the money?and forfeit your chances at further financial aid?so we recommend strategizing with a financial planner if you're going this route.

Pay Insurance Premiums Once a Year

If you have an insurance policy that you plan to keep for at least one year, then this hack could be a good idea for you.

How It Works: People typically make monthly payments for policies like life insurance and auto insurance, but you don't have to go this route. In fact, insurance companies prefer that you don't?if you pay in one lump sum, they know that the payment is fulfilled for the year. But companies allow monthly payments as a courtesy?and they charge you for the privilege by multiplying each month's payment by .08 to .09%.

So let's say that your life insurance premium is $400 a year. If you pay monthly, it will cost you $36 a month. Multiply $36 by 12 months, and you're paying $432 for the year. That's an extra $32, or 8%. There is a catch, however, with paying one lump sum: You need to have the money available to pay when the time comes. if you decide to hack your insurance payments in this way, we recommend setting up a separate savings account specifically for your yearly insurance payments, so you can auto-contribute a little each month.

Set Up Investment Auto-Drafts

This is another hack that could work for proactive people who can manage their own investment accounts.

How It Works: When you make a securities trade (like a mutual fund investment), you pay a fee, called a commission. But most companies will waive that fee if you set up an auto-draft?you sign on to contribute a certain amount automatically every month?because it guarantees that you'll continue paying, instead of just paying to make a trade every once in a while. You can ask your broker upfront if they'll waive the fee.

Of course, this only applies to people who have the money to contribute to their investments each month without coming up short when it comes to other financial obligations. One more important note: Before making any investment moves of your own, be sure to speak with an investment advisor or financial planner.

Get Rewards Cards

This hack is for you if you prefer to use a debit card for daily spending, but you aren't receiving the same rewards you could get using a credit card.

How It Works: Every card has two entities behind it: the credit card company (like MasterCard or Visa) and the bank. When you use a credit card, the merchant pays money to the credit card company, and the credit card company gives some of that money to the bank. But when you use a debit card, more of that money goes directly to the bank.

You know when the cashier asks, "debit or credit?" When you make a debit payment, you're pulling money straight from your checking account?and your bank makes money in fees. But when you swipe your debit card as credit, some banks make extra money?and many of them will share some of that money with you in the form of rewards, like cash back. So if your bank isn't giving you rewards?or it's charging you to be part of the rewards program?it might be time to shop around.

7 Financial Hacks Everyone Should Know About | LearnVest

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Libby Kane is the associate editor at LearnVest. After graduating from Wellesley College, where she was an editor at the Wellesley News, she joined the LearnVest team. Her work has appeared on the Huffington Post, Forbes, the Fiscal Times and more. Libby spends her time visiting the best museums she can find-the mustier, the better. Follow Libby Kane on Twitter @LibbyKane.

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Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/hBFxs0lTt1c/seven-under+the+radar-financial-hacks-everyone-should-know-about

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From the Editor's Desk: Timing is everything

The recurring theme running through my head the past few days is, obviously, the headline for this column. Timing is everything. OK, maybe not everything in the mobile business -- hardware and software still count for something -- but timing is still damned important.

That's particularly true when launching a new smartphone.  Last week's Samsung Galaxy S4 event in New York City offered any number of ways to consider how timing affects a launch, and affects a product as a whole. And not just for Samsung. HTC and LG did their best to nip at Samsung's heels Hell, so did Apple.

Make no mistake -- every other mobile company sees Samsung as the one to stop. There's some serious realpolitik going on these days.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/X3dSxctDaNE/story01.htm

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Soyuz space capsule lands safely in Kazakhstan

A Soyuz spacecraft has safely landed on the frigid steppes of Kazakhstan, returning an American astronaut and two Russian cosmonaut to Earth after a nearly five-month mission to the International Space Station.

The Soyuz space capsule touched down at about 11:11 p.m. EDT (0311 March 16 GMT) on Friday (March 15), though it was early Saturday local time at the landing site. The spacecraft returned NASA astronaut Kevin Ford and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin home after 142 days in space. The trio was greeted by freezing temperatures after exiting the spacecraft.

"They've landed. Expedition 34 is back on Earth," NASA spokesperson Rob Navias said during live commentary.

Originally, the international crew was set to depart from the laboratory on Thursday (March 14), but freezing rain and foggy weather on the ground prevented them from returning home. Weather conditions improved today, leading to a?smooth undocking, however a bank of clouds greatly hampered visibility in the landing zone. The foggy conditions caused some last-minute alterations to the original search plan after landing, however, the Soyuz crew was still recovered successfully.

During their almost five month stay on board the station, the two cosmonauts and the astronaut orbited the Earth 2,304 times, travelling nearly 61 million miles (98,169,984 kilometers). This was Novitskiy and Tarelkin's first trip to space, the second for Ford. [See photos from Expedition 34 space mission]

The three crewmembers were on board to see the docking of the unmanned Dragon capsule ? owned and operated by private spaceflight firm SpaceX ? at the beginning of March. A month before, the crew participated in the docking and undocking of another supply capsule, the Progress 50.

Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin leave three other international crewmembers on board the space station. Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko and NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn remained on board the station after saying goodbye to the three spaceflyers that boarded the space capsule earlier today.

Hadfield, Romanenko and Marshburn will not be the sole residents of the station for long. Cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov, Alexander Misurkin and NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy are expected to arrive at the station on the same day of their launch from Earth on March 28.

If all goes as planned, it will mark the first time a Soyuz capsule has delivered a station crew to the International Space Station in one day. Russia's Federal Space Agency has proven the one-day flight profile during unmanned Progress cargo ship deliveries to the space station.

NASA has relied on Russia's Soyuz crafts to transport astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit since the retirement of the agency's shuttle program in 2011. NASA officials hope to eventually depend on privately built, unmanned and crewed spacecraft to bring people and cargo to and from the space station.

The $100 billion laboratory was built by space agencies representing Japan, Canada, the United States and Russia. International crews of astronauts have continually occupied the station since 2000.

This story was updated to reflect a successful landing at 11:42 EDT.

Follow Miriam Kramer @mirikramer and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook?and Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.

Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/soyuz-space-capsule-makes-foggy-landing-us-russian-034345572.html

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