Wednesday, April 10, 2013

U.S. VC Fundraising Up 22 Percent To $4.1B In Q1 2013, But Number Of Funds Raised Down

nvca.According to a NVCA and Thomson Reuters report issued this morning, U.S. venture capital firms raised $4.1 billion from 35 funds in the first quarter of 2013, an increase of 22 percent. But compared to Q4 2012, there is a 14 percent decrease by number of funds.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Vx9bGjb650Y/

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Don Keeps Falling

Don Draper (Jon Hamm).

Don Draper (Jon Hamm).

Photo by Michael Yarish/AMC

Slate?s Mad Men TV Club writers Hanna Rosin and Seth Stevenson were on Facebook on Monday to chat with readers about the season six premiere. The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Seth Stevenson: What did everyone think of the premiere last night?

Patrick McGough: I just found the whole thing underwhelming and hard to connect to. I liked Seth's take on it in his Slate review, but it all left me cold.

Donna Lyman Semar: Thought it was quite boring. Very disappointed.

Michael Leone: I thought it was strained. Don is becoming dull. Enough with his brooding! The Betty sequence I thought completely unbelievable, and moreover, I don't give a crap about her. Even the office scenes felt tired and played out. Roger's sequence was the most interesting and amusing. I was missing Joan.

Hanna Rosin: Wow, am surprised at the negativity. Was it Don's mute moping that turned everyone off? Roger on the couch?

Jill Elswick: Roger on the couch was the best part! That speech about doors. Death was at every turn in this episode, and the male leads seemed to have lost their way (Don wrote a dud ad that turned out to really be about death!). On the other hand, Peggy and Megan?and even Betty?seemed purposeful.?Roger's tears at being confronted with the death of the shoeshine man was a key development, and it contrasted well with his lack of feeling about his mother's passing.

Hanna Rosin: Jill?you just pre-empted my Slate entry. I totally agree, the women were doing something, while the men were spinning in circles. Roger can talk?I can luxuriate in Roger talk all day. Woe to the psychiatrist who falls asleep with Roger on the couch. But it's just talk. Whereas Betty at least ventures out, talks dirty, walks down the path with a modicum of curiosity.

John Swansburg: I gotta say, I found last night's episode pretty slack. I read that AMC pressured Weiner to open the season with a two-hour episode, and this felt padded out to me. I did love when Ken Cosgrove dressed down that sycophant, though it portended bad things to come for someone.

Seth Stevenson:?Ever-amiable Cosgrove took on a much harsher edge last night. Ken's always been a bit of a fringe character, if beloved by the literary-minded New Englanders among us. Maybe bigger things are in store for him this season?

Hanna Rosin: Yes, why were they all so harsh to that poor fan boy on the couch? And personally, I like having Ken's clueless amiability as a counterpoint to all the scheming.

Steve Robertson: Pete is a full partner. Ken is a senior accounts exec. There's a new generation of juniors coming in. Juniors with the same mix of ambition and incompetence that Pete once had. Only now they look at Pete with the same type of awe and jealousy that Pete held for Don.

Seth Stevenson: Perhaps Ken is attempting to nip Pete's burgeoning fan club in the bud.

Seth Stevenson: ?Maybe it's me but I found the premiere riveting. This isn't a show like Breaking Bad or the Sopranos, where it's a breeze to chuck in some violence to goose the action whenever things are flagging. I thought there was plenty of emotional drama. Roger dealt with his mother's death, we learn that Don is cheating on Megan, Peggy is becoming a creative rock star. ... Stuff happened!

Byron Boneparth: I think the parts you mention were riveting or at least very interesting. But the whole Betty/Sandy plotline was sort of dull and seemed a bit pointless, and that was a good chunk of the episode. I would have liked more Pete and/or Joan and less of the comparatively less compelling Francises.

Seth Stevenson: I am always in favor of more Joan. And yes, in general, my energy level seems to drop a bit whenever we cut to the Francis abode.

Daniel Noa: Mad Men is about a man falling. It's a continuous fall. Not two steps forward one step back. And Don's addiction (womanizing?seduction more than sex) is not Betty's fault or Megan's fault, which is the whole point. It's his fault and he cannot exorcise his demons without drastic action (we'll see if the show can even go there). More likely, he will be emblematic of a culture and generation that destroyed itself in pursuit of, as Don calls it, "the moment before you need more happiness."

Hanna Rosin: Matt Zoller Seitz?s recap in Vulture ends on a great question: Are these fundamental human flaws or flaws of the age. Is this something the late ?60s did to us, or is this the nature of humanity? That seems to be a question overhanging this season, because Don is unchanging and seems unaffected by the times. He would be cheating on his wife if it were 1932. And in some ways, the "age" is setting them up to be better men, to open up and understand themselves better, even if it will take a few decades to get there.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=f151a9f708cc538e5eb28be3ad1e4209

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Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Taping of farm cruelty is becoming the crime

On one covert video, farm workers illegally burn the ankles of Tennessee walking horses with chemicals. Another captures workers in Wyoming punching and kicking pigs and flinging piglets into the air. And at one of the country?s largest egg suppliers, a video shows hens caged alongside rotting bird corpses, while workers burn and snap off the beaks of young chicks.

Each video ? all shot in the last two years by undercover animal rights activists ? drew a swift response: Federal prosecutors in Tennessee charged the horse trainer and other workers, who have pleaded guilty, with violating the Horse Protection Act. Local authorities in Wyoming charged nine farm employees with cruelty to animals. And the egg supplier, which operates in Iowa and other states, lost one of its biggest customers, McDonald?s, which said the video played a part in its decision.

But a dozen or so state legislatures have had a different reaction: They proposed or enacted bills that would make it illegal to covertly videotape livestock farms, or apply for a job at one without disclosing ties to animal rights groups. They have also drafted measures to require such videos to be given to the authorities almost immediately, which activists say would thwart any meaningful undercover investigation of large factory farms.

Critics call them ?Ag-Gag? bills.

Some of the legislation appears inspired by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a business advocacy group with hundreds of state representatives from farm states as members. The group creates model bills, drafted by lobbyists and lawmakers, that in the past have included such things as ?stand your ground? gun laws and tighter voter identification rules.

One of the group?s model bills, ?The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act,? prohibits filming or taking pictures on livestock farms to ?defame the facility or its owner.? Violators would be placed on a ?terrorist registry.?

Officials from the group did not respond to a request for comment.

Animal rights activists say they have not seen legislation that would require them to register as terrorists, but they say other measures ? including laws passed last year in Iowa, Utah and Missouri ? make it nearly impossible to produce similar undercover expos?s. Some groups say that they have curtailed activism in those states.

?It definitely has had a chilling effect on our ability to conduct undercover investigations,? said Vandhana Bala, general counsel for Mercy for Animals, which has shot many videos, including the egg-farm investigation in 2011. (McDonald?s said that video showed ?disturbing and completely unacceptable? behavior, but that none of the online clips were from the Iowa farm that supplied its eggs. Ms. Bala, though, said that some video showing bird carcasses in cages did come from that facility.)

The American Farm Bureau Federation, which lobbies for the agricultural and meat industries, criticized the mistreatment seen on some videos. But the group cautions that some methods represent best practices endorsed by animal-care experts.

The videos may seem troubling to someone unfamiliar with farming, said Kelli Ludlum, the group?s director of Congressional relations, but they can be like seeing open-heart surgery for the first time.

?They could be performing a perfect procedure, but you would consider it abhorrent that they were cutting a person open,? she said.

In coming weeks, Indiana and Tennessee are expected to vote on similar measures, while states from California to Pennsylvania continue to debate them.

Opponents have scored some recent victories, as a handful of bills have died, including those in New Mexico and New Hampshire. In Wyoming, the legislation stalled after loud opposition from animal rights advocates, including Bob Barker, former host of ?The Price is Right.?

In Indiana, an expansive bill became one of the most controversial of the state legislative session, drawing heated opposition from labor groups and the state press association, which said the measure violated the First Amendment.

After numerous constitutional objections, the bill was redrafted and will be unveiled Monday, said Greg Steuerwald, a Republican state representative and chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

The new bill would require job applicants to disclose material information or face criminal penalties, a provision that opponents say would prevent undercover operatives from obtaining employment. And employees who do something beyond the scope of their jobs could be charged with criminal trespass.

An employee who took a video on a livestock farm with his phone and gave it to someone else would ?probably? run afoul of the proposed law, Mr. Steuerwald said. The bill will apply not just to farms, but to all employers, he added.

Nancy J. Guyott, the president of the Indiana chapter of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said she feared that the legislation would punish whistle-blowers.

Nationally, animal rights advocates fear that they will lose a valuable tool that fills the void of what they say is weak or nonexistent regulation.

Livestock companies say that their businesses have suffered financially from unfair videos that are less about protecting animals than persuading consumers to stop eating meat.

Don Lehe, a Republican state representative from a rural district in Indiana, said online videos can cast farmers in a false light and give them little opportunity to correct the record.

?That property owner is essentially guilty before they had the chance to address the issue,? Mr. Lehe said.

As for whistle-blowers, advocates for the meat industry say that they are protected from prosecution by provisions in some bills that give them 24 to 48 hours to turn over videos to legal authorities.

?If an abuse has occurred and they have evidence of it, why are they holding on to it?? said Dale Moore, executive director of public policy for the American Farm Bureau Federation.

But animal rights groups say investigations take months to complete.

Undercover workers cannot document a pattern of abuse, gather enough evidence to force a government investigation and determine whether managers condone the abuse within one to two days, said Matt Dominguez, who works on farm animal protection at the Humane Society of the United States.

?Instead of working to prevent future abuses, the factory farms want to silence them,? he said. ?What they really want is for the whistle to be blown on the whistle-blower.?

The Humane Society was responsible for a number of undercover investigations, including the videos of the Wyoming pig farm and the Tennessee walking horses.

Video shot in 2011 showed workers dripping caustic chemicals onto the horses? ankles and clasping metal chains onto the injured tissue. This illegal and excruciating technique, known as ?soring,? forces the horse to thrust its front legs forward after every painful step to exaggerate the distinctive high-stepping gait favored by breeders. The video also showed a worker hitting a horse in the head with a large piece of wood.

The Humane Society first voluntarily turned over the video to law enforcement. By the time the video was publicly disclosed, federal prosecutors had filed charges. A week later, they announced guilty pleas from the horse trainer and other workers.

Prosecutors later credited the Humane Society with prompting the federal investigation and establishing ?evidence instrumental to the case.?

That aid to prosecutors shows the importance of lengthy undercover investigations that would be prevented by laws requiring video to be turned over within one or two days, Mr. Dominguez said.

?At the first sign of animal cruelty, we?d have to pull our investigator out, and we wouldn?t be able to build a case that leads to charges.?

This article, "Taping of farm cruelty is becoming the crime," first appeared in The New York Times.

Copyright ? 2013 The New York Times

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653351/s/2a6ecfe4/l/0L0Snbcnews0N0Cbusiness0Ctaping0Efarm0Ecruelty0Ebecoming0Ecrime0E1B9251810A/story01.htm

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New Thunderbolt Port Could Enable Desktop Retina Display Monitors

Ever since it debuted the first iMac with USB instead of legacy ports -- at a time when not including a floppy drive was also considered daring -- Apple has been ahead of the curve when it comes to the ports and interfaces on its computers. In early 2011, it replaced its DisplayPort technology with the Thunderbolt port, developed by Intel, which let its laptops connect to a new Thunderbolt display along with high-speed external hard drives.

According to Engadget's Sarah Silbert, a new "Thunderbolt Technology Update" just demoed by Intel will allow "4K video file transfer and display simultaneously." Apple expert Marco Arment sums up the announcement by saying "This could enable the first generation of desktop Retina displays."

What is the Retina Display?

"Retina Display" is Apple's brand name for a screen so high-resolution that the unaided eye can't make out individual pixels at a typical viewing distance. The first Retina Display was on the iPhone 4 in 2010, and it has since come to Apple's full-sized iPad tablet and its 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pro laptops. (The displays on the MacBook Pro laptops aren't as sharp as the ones on Apple's mobile devices, because laptops are typically used from a greater distance.)

Does this mean that Apple's displays are the sharpest ones on the market?

Not quite. Not all of Apple's products use the Retina Display; the iPad Mini, for instance, despite costing more than the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD tablets, has a fuzzier screen than both. Many other mobile devices have screens with comparable sharpness to Apple's Retina gadgets. And Google's new Chromebook Pixel laptop has an even sharper display than the Retina MacBook Pros, although it's in the "old" 4:3 aspect ratio instead of today's standard 16:9.

What kind of displays should we expect to see?

Arment says that "it wouldn't surprise me" to see a 23-inch screen with 4K resolution, which means roughly 4,000 pixels horizontally. It would be four times as sharp as a 1080p HD display of the same size.

When would they be out and how much would they cost?

If Apple launched a desktop Retina Display using Intel's new technology, it would probably be sometime next year, as "production is set to ramp up in 2014."

Apple's current Thunderbolt displays cost $999 for a 27-inch screen. The Retina Display MacBook Pro laptops are available at a $200-$400 price premium over the non-Retina models, depending on what other improved specs and features they add.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/thunderbolt-port-could-enable-desktop-retina-display-monitors-220900140.html

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Monday, April 8, 2013

Conn. gov faults gun lobbyists over restrictions

In this April 4, 2013, photo, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, center, signs legislation at the Capitol in Hartford, Conn., that includes new restrictions on weapons and large capacity ammunition magazines, a response to last year's deadly school shooting in Newtown. Neil Heslin, behind left, father of Sandy Hook shooting victim Jesse Lewis, Nicole Hockley, right, mother of Sandy Hook School shooting victim Dylan, and Conn. Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman, left, watch. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

In this April 4, 2013, photo, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, center, signs legislation at the Capitol in Hartford, Conn., that includes new restrictions on weapons and large capacity ammunition magazines, a response to last year's deadly school shooting in Newtown. Neil Heslin, behind left, father of Sandy Hook shooting victim Jesse Lewis, Nicole Hockley, right, mother of Sandy Hook School shooting victim Dylan, and Conn. Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman, left, watch. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

(AP) ? Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy harshly criticized gun industry lobbyists on Sunday, saying they are doing too little to halt gun violence.

Just three days after he signed into law new restrictions on weapons and large-capacity magazines, the governor compared Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, to clowns and said lobbyists want to ensure that the industry can sell guns indiscriminately.

"Wayne reminds me of the clowns at the circus," Malloy said of LaPierre on CNN's "State of the Union." ''They get the most attention and that's what he's paid to do."

Representatives of the NRA did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

"What this is about is the ability of the gun industry to sell as many guns to as many people as possible even if they're deranged, even if they're mentally ill, even if they have a criminal background," Malloy said. "They don't care. They want to sell guns."

Robert Crook, executive director of the Connecticut Coalition of Sportsmen, a lobbying group, said Malloy's criticism was "absolutely false."

"It's another political statement from a governor with little knowledge," he said.

Connecticut's gun industry supports a gun trafficking task force and tighter background checks of buyers, Crook said.

Andrew Doba, a spokesman for Malloy, said the Democratic governor was criticizing lobbyists, not the gun industry. Malloy has said he wants Connecticut's large gun industry to remain in the state, though gun manufacturers say the new restrictions will hurt their business.

"People are welcome to stay in our state as long as they're producing a product that can be sold in the United States legally," Malloy said.

Nearly four months after a gunman killed 20 children and six educators at an elementary school in Newtown, lawmakers and Malloy enacted legislation that adds more than 100 firearms to the state's assault weapons ban. It also immediately bans the sale of magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition. People who purchased those guns and magazines before midnight Wednesday will be allowed to keep them if they're registered with the state police before Jan. 1.

Required background checks for private gun sales also take effect.

Other parts of the new law include a ban on armor-piercing bullets, establishment of a deadly weapon offender registry, expansion of circumstances when a person's mental health history disqualifies them from holding a gun permit, mandatory reporting of voluntary hospital commitments, doubled penalties for gun trafficking and other firearms violations, and $1 million to fund the statewide firearms trafficking task force.

Malloy said he preferred an "all-out ban" on magazines of more than 10 rounds of ammunition, but the legislature opposed him on the issue.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-04-07-Gun%20Control-Conn/id-77f0c259ff6e4bcb98c05219c97f495c

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Actor Jeremy Irons Clarifies His Gay Marriage Remarks | Mediaite

During a HuffPostLive interview this past Wednesday, Academy Award winner Jeremy Irons made some controversial remarks when asked about gay marriage, questioning whether it could ultimately lead to a father marrying his son in order to avoid estate taxes.

On his website on Friday, Irons posted a response to the controversy:

I am deeply concerned that from my on line discussion with the Huffington Post, it has been understood that I hold a position that is anti gay. This is as far from the truth of me as to say that I believe the earth is flat.

I was taking part in a short discussion around the practical meaning of Marriage, and how that institution might be altered by it becoming available to same-sex partners. Perhaps rather too flippantly I flew the kite of an example of the legal quagmire that might occur if same sex marriage entered the statute books, by raising the possibility of future marriage between same sex family members for tax reasons, (incest being illegal primarily in order to prevent inbreeding, and therefore an irrelevance in non reproductive relationships). Clearly this was a mischievous argument, but nonetheless valid.

I am clearly aware that many gay relationships are more long term, responsible and even healthier in their role of raising children, than their hetero equivalents, and that love often creates the desire to mark itself in a formal way, as Marriage would do. Clearly society should find a way of doing this.

I had hoped that even on such a subject as this, where passions run high, the internet was a forum where ideas could be freely discussed without descending into name-calling.

I believe that is what it could be, but it depends on all of us behaving, even behind our aliases, in a humane, intelligent and open way.

Follow AJ Delgado on Twitter >>> @missADelgado

Source: http://www.mediaite.com/online/actor-jeremy-irons-clarifies-his-gay-marriage-remarks/

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Thursday, April 4, 2013

Obama proposes $100M for brain mapping project

President Barack Obama speaks about the BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative, Tuesday, April 2, 2013, in the East Room at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

President Barack Obama speaks about the BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative, Tuesday, April 2, 2013, in the East Room at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

President Barack Obama listens as National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis S. Collins speaks about the BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative, Tuesday, April 2, 2013, in the East Room at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

President Barack Obama leaves the stage in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, April 2, 2013, after he spoke about the BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

President Barack Obama announces the BRIAN, Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies proposal, Tuesday, April 2, 2013, East Room of the White House in Washington. The president is asking Congress to spend $100 million next year to start a new project to map the human brain in hopes of eventually finding cures for diseases like Alzheimer's. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

(AP) ? President Barack Obama on Tuesday proposed an effort to map the brain's activity in unprecedented detail, as a step toward finding better ways to treat such conditions as Alzheimer's, autism, stroke and traumatic brain injuries.

He asked Congress to spend $100 million next year to start a project that will explore details of the brain, which contains 100 billion cells and trillions of connections.

That's a relatively small investment for the federal government ? less than a fifth of what NASA spends every year just to study the sun ? but it's too early to determine how Congress will react.

Obama said the so-called BRAIN Initiative could create jobs, and told scientists gathered in the White House's East Room that the research has the potential to improve the lives of billions of people worldwide.

"As humans we can identify galaxies light-years away," Obama said. "We can study particles smaller than an atom, but we still haven't unlocked the mystery of the three pounds of matter that sits between our ears."

Scientists unconnected to the project praised the idea.

BRAIN stands for Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies. The idea, which Obama first proposed in his State of the Union address, would require the development of new technology that can record the electrical activity of individual cells and complex neural circuits in the brain "at the speed of thought," the White House said.

Obama wants the initial $100 million investment to support research at the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Science Foundation. He also wants private companies, universities and philanthropists to partner with the federal agencies in support of the research. And he wants a study of the ethical, legal and societal implications of the research.

The goals of the work are unclear at this point. A working group at NIH, co-chaired by Cornelia "Cori" Bargmann of The Rockefeller University and William Newsome of Stanford University, would work on defining the goals and develop a multi-year plan to achieve them that included cost estimates.

The $100 million request is "a pretty good start for getting this project off the ground," Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health told reporters in a conference call. While the ultimate goal applies to the human brain, some work will be done in simpler systems of the brains of animals like worms, flies and mice, he said.

Collins said new understandings about how the brain works may also provide leads for developing better computers.

Brain scientists unconnected with the project were enthusiastic.

"This is spectacular," said David Fitzpatrick, scientific director and CEO of the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience in Jupiter, Fla., which focuses on studying neural circuits and structures.

While current brain-scanning technologies can reveal the average activity of large populations of brain cells, the new project is aimed at tracking activity down to the individual cell and the tiny details of cell connections, he said. It's "an entirely different scale," he said, and one that can pay off someday in treatments for a long list of neurological and psychiatric disorders including schizophrenia, Parkinson's, depression, epilepsy and autism.

"Ultimately, you can't fix it if you don't know how it works," he said. "We need this fundamental understanding of neuronal circuits, their structure, their function and their development in order to make progress on these disorders."

"This investment in fundamental brain science is going to pay off immensely in the future," Fitzpatrick said.

Richard Frackowiak, a co-director of Europe's Human Brain Project, which is funded by the European Commission, said he was delighted by the announcement.

"From our point of view as scientists we can only applaud and say we will collaborate as much as possible," he said. "The opportunities for a massive worldwide collaborative effort to solve the problem of neurodegeneration and psychiatric disease will ... really become absolutely feasible," he said. "We need that."

___

Ritter reported from New York.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-04-02-Obama-Human%20Brain/id-3860d8bc458141b8b94545337485107c

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Leno to leave NBC's 'Tonight Show' next spring

This undated promotional image released by NBC shows Jay Leno, host of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," left, and Jimmy Fallon, host of "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon," in Los Angeles. NBC on Wednesday, April 3, 2013 announced its long-rumored switch in late night, replacing incumbent Jay Leno at "The Tonight Show" with Jimmy Fallon and moving the iconic franchise back to New York. Leno will wrap up what will be 22 years of headlining the iconic late-night show in Spring 2014. "Saturday Night Live" producer Lorne Michaels will take over as producer of the new "Tonight Show." (AP Photo/NBC, Andrew Eccles)

This undated promotional image released by NBC shows Jay Leno, host of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," left, and Jimmy Fallon, host of "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon," in Los Angeles. NBC on Wednesday, April 3, 2013 announced its long-rumored switch in late night, replacing incumbent Jay Leno at "The Tonight Show" with Jimmy Fallon and moving the iconic franchise back to New York. Leno will wrap up what will be 22 years of headlining the iconic late-night show in Spring 2014. "Saturday Night Live" producer Lorne Michaels will take over as producer of the new "Tonight Show." (AP Photo/NBC, Andrew Eccles)

FILE - This Jan. 13, 2013 file photo shows Jay Leno, host of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," left, and Jimmy Fallon, host of "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" backstage at the 70th Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif. As Jay Leno lobs potshots at ratings-challenged NBC in his "Tonight Show" monologues, speculation is swirling the network is taking steps to replace the host with Jimmy Fallon next year and move the show from Burbank to New York. NBC confirmed Wednesday, March 20, it's creating a new studio for Fallon in New York, where he hosts "Late Night." But the network did not comment on a report that the digs at its Rockefeller Plaza headquarters may become home to a transplanted, Fallon-hosted "Tonight Show." (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, file)

This Nov. 5, 2012 photo released by NBC shows Jay Leno, host of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," on the set in Burbank, Calif. As Jay Leno lobs potshots at ratings-challenged NBC in his "Tonight Show" monologues, speculation is swirling the network is taking steps to replace the host with Jimmy Fallon next year and move the show from Burbank to New York. NBC confirmed Wednesday, March 20, it's creating a new studio for Fallon in New York, where he hosts "Late Night." But the network did not comment on a report that the digs at its Rockefeller Plaza headquarters may become home to a transplanted, Fallon-hosted "Tonight Show." (AP Photo/NBC, Paul Drinkwater)

This Oct. 24, 2012 photo released by NBC shows Jay Leno, host of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," on the set in Burbank, Calif. NBC announced Wednesday, April 3, 2013 that Jimmy Fallon is replacing Jay Leno as the host of "The Tonight Show" in spring 2014. (AP Photo/NBC, Paul Drinkwater)

This Feb. 18, 2013 photo released by NBC shows Jimmy Fallon, host of "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon," on the set in New York. As Jay Leno lobs potshots at ratings-challenged NBC in his "Tonight Show" monologues, speculation is swirling the network is taking steps to replace the host with Jimmy Fallon next year and move the show from Burbank to New York. NBC confirmed Wednesday, March 20, it's creating a new studio for Fallon in New York, where he hosts "Late Night." But the network did not comment on a report that the digs at its Rockefeller Plaza headquarters may become home to a transplanted, Fallon-hosted "Tonight Show." (AP Photo/NBC, Lloyd Bishop)

(AP) ? NBC on Wednesday announced its long-rumored switch in late night, replacing Jay Leno at the "Tonight" show with Jimmy Fallon and moving the iconic franchise back to New York.

Fallon will take over in about a year, the switch coinciding with NBC's Winter Olympics coverage next year. Veteran "Saturday Night Live" producer Lorne Michaels also will take over as executive producer of "Tonight."

NBC made no announcement on who would replace Fallon at the 12:35 a.m. "Late Night" slot, although Seth Meyers of "Saturday Night Live" is considered a strong candidate.

The change at "Tonight," the longest-running and most popular late-night talk show, had been widely reported but not confirmed by the network until Wednesday. NBC reportedly just wrapped up negotiations with Fallon on a contract extension.

Steve Burke, chief executive officer of NBC Universal, said the network is purposefully making the move when Leno is still at the top of the ratings, just as when Leno replaced Johnny Carson at "Tonight" in 1992.

"Jimmy Fallon is a unique talent and this is his time," Burke said.

Leno, in a statement, offered his congratulations to Fallon.

"I hope you're as lucky as me and hold on to the job until you're the old guy," he said. "If you need me, I'll be at the garage."

Fallon said: "I'm really excited to host a show that starts today instead of tomorrow."

NBC has been quietly building a new studio for Fallon at its Rockefeller Center headquarters. "Tonight" began in New York in the 1950s, but Carson moved it to California in 1972. Starting next year, Fallon, Letterman, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will tape late-night shows in New York. ABC's Jimmy Kimmel and TNT's Conan O'Brien will be the top California-based shows.

"The 'Tonight' show will bring even more jobs and economic activity to our city, and we couldn't be happier that one of New York's own is bringing the show back to where it started, and where it belongs," said New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

New York state recently added a tax credit in its budget that seemed designed specifically to benefit NBC's move East with "Tonight."

While a storied part of television tradition, the network late-night shows find themselves with much more competition now with cable programs like "Adult Swim," smaller talk shows hosted by the Comedy Central duo of Stewart and Colbert, Chelsea Handler and a device ? a large number of people take that time to watch programs they had taped earlier on their DVRs.

NBC is worried that ABC's Kimmel will establish himself as a go-to late night performer for a younger generation if the network doesn't move swiftly to install Fallon. ABC moved Kimmel's time slot to directly compete with Leno earlier this year.

But the move also has the potential to backfire with Leno's fans, who did not embrace O'Brien when Leno was temporarily moved to prime time a few years ago.

"The guys at NBC are not totally stupid and are not going to shoot themselves in the foot," said Gary Carr, senior vice president and executive director of national broadcast for the ad buying firm TargetCast. "I think it's a good move for them long-term. But it may have short-term ramifications."

NBC has long prided itself on smooth transitions but that reputation took a hit with the short-lived and ill-fated move of O'Brien to "Tonight" and Leno to prime-time a few years ago. In morning television, the "Today" show has taken a ratings nose dive in large measure because of anger at how Ann Curry was treated when she was ousted last year as Matt Lauer's co-host.

The Leno-Fallon changeover didn't begin smoothly. Leno had been cracking jokes about NBC's prime-time futility, angering NBC entertainment chief Robert Greenblatt, who sent a note to Leno telling him to cool it. That only made Leno go after NBC management much harder.

The first public effort toward making the transition smooth came Monday night, when Leno and Fallon appeared in a comic video making fun of the late-night rumors. It aired in between each man's show.

John Dawson, general manager for five NBC affiliates that have extensive reach throughout Kansas, said it will be difficult to give up a program that wins its time period by 33 percent.

"Jay has always been a great friend to the affiliates," he said. "For that alone it will be hard to give up."

But he said he believes in Fallon and in NBC's corporate owners Comcast, the nation's largest cable company.

"Comcast certainly knows how to launch entertainment programming," Dawson said.

___

Associated Press television writers Lynn Elber in Los Angeles and Frazier Moore in New York contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-04-03-NBC-Leno/id-03dd7973e60a4f91a3c692f6e1c48d74

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Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Porsha Williams Divorce Filing: Pay Me!

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/03/porsha-williams-divorce-filing-pay-me/

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Andmade Share: For a more robust sharing menu

Andmade Share

The native Android sharing intents are extremely powerful, but that doesn't mean you can't shoehorn more functionality in there

Andmade Share takes the already functional sharing intents found on every Android phone, and makes them even more capable with a new set of features. Instead of choosing to share to a single app or service, with Andmade Share you can select multiple services together. We wish the apps could just talk together and make this easy on users, but since that's unlikely to happen tools like this will save the day.

Read along past the break to see a bit more of what Andmade Share adds in terms of sharing functionality on your device.

read more



Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/NMr--qkZEtc/story01.htm

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Video: Closing Bell Exchange

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/video/cnbc/51395975/

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Monday, April 1, 2013

Video: The state of religion in America (cbsnews)

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Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/295790697?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Kelly: Gun checks need mental health component

FILE - In a Jan. 30, 2013 file photo Mark Kelly testifies at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, D.C. The daughter of former astronaut Mark Kelly was walking her dog Shiner on Goff Island Beach when the dog bolted, ripping the leash from her hand and fatally attacking a beached baby sea lion Saturday March 23, 2013. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, file)

FILE - In a Jan. 30, 2013 file photo Mark Kelly testifies at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, D.C. The daughter of former astronaut Mark Kelly was walking her dog Shiner on Goff Island Beach when the dog bolted, ripping the leash from her hand and fatally attacking a beached baby sea lion Saturday March 23, 2013. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, file)

(AP) ? Gun control activist Mark Kelly says a proposed national gun background bill under discussion in the Senate should include better access to mental health records that could prevent psychologically disturbed people from obtaining guns.

Kelly, a former astronaut and husband of former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, said Sunday that the suspect accused of severely wounding his wife could not have bought the guns he wielded if a background check had exposed his mental problems.

Jared Loughner pleaded guilty to shooting Giffords and killing six people in Tucson in January 2011. Case records released last week showed Loughner passed a background check despite evidence of his agitated mental state.

Kelly pressed for the proposed background check law in an interview on Fox News Sunday.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-03-31-Gun%20Control-Mark%20Kelly/id-e33a7fdbd9cf45e0b37bee5e52b7da24

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Deadly NYC meningitis warning now expanded beyond city, vaccine recommendation grows (Americablog)

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Friday, March 29, 2013

Scientists propose revolutionary laser system to produce the next LHC

Mar. 28, 2013 ? An international team of physicists has proposed a revolutionary laser system, inspired by the telecommunications technology, to produce the next generation of particle accelerators, such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The International Coherent Amplification Network (ICAN) sets out a new laser system composed of massive arrays of thousands of fibre lasers, for both fundamental research at laboratories such as CERN and more applied tasks such as proton therapy and nuclear transmutation.

The results of this study are published today in Nature Photonics.

Lasers can provide, in a very short time measured in femtoseconds, bursts of energy of great power counted in petawatts or a thousand times the power of all the power plants in the world.

Compact accelerators are also of great societal importance for applied tasks in medicine, such as a unique way to democratise proton therapy for cancer treatment, or the environment where it offers the prospect to reduce the lifetime of dangerous nuclear waste by, in some cases, from 100 thousand years to tens of years or even less.

However, there are two major hurdles that prevent the high-intensity laser from becoming a viable and widely used technology in the future. First, a high-intensity laser often only operates at a rate of one laser pulse per second, when for practical applications it would need to operate tens of thousands of times per second. The second is ultra-intense lasers are notorious for being very inefficient, producing output powers that are a fraction of a percent of the input power. As practical applications would require output powers in the range of tens of kilowatts to megawatts, it is economically not feasible to produce this power with such a poor efficiency.

To bridge this technology divide, the ICAN consortium, an EU-funded project initiated and coordinated by the ?cole polytechnique and composed of the University of Southampton's Optoelectronics Research Centre, Jena and CERN, as well as 12 other prestigious laboratories around the world, aims to harness the efficiency, controllability, and high average power capability of fibre lasers to produce high energy, high repetition rate pulse sources.

The aim is to replace the conventional single monolithic rod amplifier that typically equips lasers with a network of fibre amplifiers and telecommunication components.

G?rard Mourou of ?cole polytechnique who leads the consortium says: "One important application demonstrated today has been the possibility to accelerate particles to high energy over very short distances measured in centimetres rather than kilometres as it is the case today with conventional technology. This feature is of paramount importance when we know that today high energy physics is limited by the prohibitive size of accelerators, of the size of tens of kilometres, and cost billions of euros. Reducing the size and cost by a large amount is of critical importance for the future of high energy physics."

Dr Bill Brocklesby from the ORC adds: "A typical CAN laser for high-energy physics may use thousands of fibres, each carrying a small amount of laser energy. It offers the advantage of relying on well tested telecommunication elements, such as fibre lasers and other components. The fibre laser offers an excellent efficiency due to laser diode pumping. It also provides a much larger surface cooling area and therefore makes possible high repetition rate operation.

"The most stringent difficulty is to phase the lasers within a fraction of a wavelength. This difficulty seemed insurmountable but a major roadblock has in fact been solved: preliminary proof of concept suggests that thousands of fibres can be controlled to provide a laser output powerful enough to accelerate electrons to energies of several GeV at 10 kHz repetition rate -- an improvement of at least ten thousand times over today's state of the art lasers."

Such a combined fibre-laser system should provide the necessary power and efficiency that could make economical the production of a large flux of relativistic protons over millimetre lengths as opposed to a few hundred metres..

One important societal application of such a source is to transmute the waste products of nuclear reactors, which at present have half-lives of hundreds of thousands of years, into materials with much shorter lives, on the scale of tens of years, thus transforming dramatically the problem of nuclear waste management. CAN technology could also find important applications in areas of medicine, such as proton therapy, where reliability and robustness of fibre technology could be decisive features.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Southampton.

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


Journal Reference:

  1. Gerard Mourou, Bill Brocklesby, Toshiki Tajima, Jens Limpert. The future is fibre accelerators. Nature Photonics, 2013; 7 (4): 258 DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2013.75

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/matter_energy/physics/~3/yBttQ2lfkwo/130328075706.htm

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Thursday, March 28, 2013

UK scientists develop safer foot-and-mouth vaccine

By Ben Hirschler

LONDON (Reuters) - British scientists have developed a new vaccine against foot-and-mouth disease that is safer and easier to manufacture, an advance they believe should greatly increase production capacity and reduce costs.

The technology behind the livestock product might also be applied to make improved human vaccines to protect against similar viruses, including polio.

The new vaccine does not require live virus in its production - an important consideration as foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is extremely infectious and vaccine facilities handling virus samples are difficult to secure.

"It spreads like wild fire," said David Stuart, a professor of biology at the University of Oxford, who led the research.

A 2007 outbreak of FMD in southeast England, for example, was traced to a nearby vaccine site. The same facility, ironically, is home to some of the researchers behind the new vaccine.

In contrast to standard FMD livestock vaccines, the new product is made from synthetic empty protein shells containing no infectious viral genome, scientists reported in the journal PLOS Pathogens on Wednesday.

This means the vaccine can be produced without expensive biosecurity and does not need to be kept refrigerated.

"One of the big advantages is that since it is not derived from live virus, the production facility requires no special containment," Stuart said.

"One could imagine local plants being set up in large parts of the world where foot and mouth is endemic and where it still remains a huge problem."

Worldwide, between 3 billion and 4 billion doses of FMD vaccine are administered every year but there are shortages in many parts of Asia and Africa were the disease is a serious problem.

Current standard vaccines are based on 50-year-old technology, although U.S. biotech company GenVec last year won U.S. approval for a new one.

The purely synthetic British vaccine has so far been tested in small-scale cattle trials and found to be effective.

Stuart said the research team from the universities of Oxford and Reading and two state-funded bodies - Diamond Light Source and the Pirbright Institute - would now conduct larger tests while discussing the vaccine's commercial development.

"We are talking to a potential commercial partner," Stuart told Reuters, adding that it would probably take around six years to bring the new vaccine to market. He said it was too early to give an indication of how much the vaccine would cost.

He declined to name the company involved but said it was not Merial, the animal health division of Sanofi that shares Pirbright's site in southeast England.

Stuart and his colleagues were able to produce empty protein shells to imitate the protein coat that surrounds the FMD virus using Diamond's X-ray system to visualize images a billion times smaller than a pinhead.

The same approach could in future be used to make empty shell vaccines against related viruses such as polio and hand-foot-and-mouth, a human disease that mainly affects infants and children, the researchers said.

(Editing by Keiron Henderson)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/uk-scientists-develop-safer-foot-mouth-vaccine-220336601--finance.html

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Friday, March 22, 2013

I stuck around the Middle East, till I saw it was a time for a change, I killed Saddam and his ministers? (Unqualified Offerings)

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Convict convinces judge to ban Lifetime movie

By Eriq Gardner, The Hollywood Reporter

Ed Araquel / Lifetime

Eric McCormack in "Romeo Killer: The Christopher Porco Story."

In a development that could reverberate throughout the entertainment industry, a New York Supreme Court judge has taken the bold step of enjoining the broadcast of Lifetime Television's telefilm "Romeo Killer: The Christopher Porco Story," which was scheduled to air Saturday.

The film is based on the true story of the murder of Peter Porco and the attempted murder of his wife, Joan Porco; the resulting criminal investigation; and the prosecution and conviction of their son, Christopher Porco, for those crimes. The case drew national news attention, and Lifetime's planned film drew a lawsuit from the convicted killer, who alleges that "Romeo Killer" violates his rights.

PHOTOS: 10 TV Trials that shook the world

On Tuesday, Judge Robert Muller issued an injunction that not only prevents the airing but also prohibits Lifetime from promoting the film, which stars Matt Barr as Chris Porco, Lolita Davidovich as his mother and Eric McCormack as the case's lead detective. In reaction, Lifetime is filing an emergency application to vacate or stay the injunction on appeal. According to court documents, the cable network says it stands to lose more than $1 million if it is not given immediate appellate relief.

As of Wednesday morning, there was no mention of "Romeo Killer" on Lifetime's homepage, and its promotional links to the telefilm had been disabled.

Read the appeal here

Throughout the years, publicity rights has become a bigger and bigger issue in entertainment. The laws vary by state but generally protect an individual's likeness from being exploited. Increasingly, the boundaries between an individual's right to protect an image and First Amendment allowances on free expression aren't particularly clear, and some lawyers wonder if the confusion might chill speech.

This has the potential of being one of those cases.

Porco sued Lifetime, claiming that the film violated New York Civil Rights Section 51, the state's version of publicity rights, which allows a person to seek redress if his or her "name, portrait, picture or voice is used ? for advertising purposes or for the purposes of trade without the written consent first obtained."

The jailed killer, who hasn't seen "Romeo Killer," ?alleged that the movie was a ?substantially fictionalized account ... about plaintiff and the events that led to his incarceration."

Lifetime counters that "the essential elements of the movie are true and accurate and based on court and police records, interviews with persons involved, and historical and other documents."

STORY: Lifetime prepping Jodi Arias TV movie

The cable network also points out that Porco's story has been told on CBS' "48 Hours Mystery" and the TruTV series "Forensic Files."

Without even getting a summons, Lifetime now has been ordered to not air its telefilm. Muller has issued an injunction, finding that "Defendant appears to concede that the movie is fictionalized." The judge has said that he is "not persuaded" that monetary damages would be sufficient redress and also has waved away Lifetime's concern that the injunction represents a "prior restraint" on its free speech rights.

According to an appeal that Lifetime is filing -- obtained by The Hollywood Reporter -- "The Supreme Court?s order is unprecedented and would cause grave and irreparable damage not just to Lifetime but to the constitutional protections for speech."

Lifetime cites many landmark rulings that are supposed to restrain judges from making prior restraints on free expression and says: "This is not a case where national security concerns are in jeopardy. It is not even a case involving potential irreparable injury from the disclosure of trade secrets or other confidential information; it involves a movie based on the public facts of a murder prosecution. While plaintiff may not want the story of his crime repeated in a television movie, the constitutional protection of speech and press on matters of public concern flatly prevent the issuance of an order enjoining the broadcast of the movie."

The defendant also makes the case that its film fits the "newsworthy" exceptions to New York's publicity rights law and that claims of a story being "fictionalized" don't overcome that.

Lifetime also says that Porco hasn't made a sufficient case about the irreparable harm he'll face if the film is aired and says that the balance of hardships tips entirely in its favor.

After spending $2 million to acquire the rights to the film and nearly $1 million to promote the movie as "appointment viewing," Lifetime says an injunction would have a "devastating financial and reputational impact" on the network, that it "will lead to a reluctance among cable affiliates and advertisers to spend money on Lifetime," that TV viewers "will come to see Lifetime as unreliable and not trustworthy" when they find that the program doesn't air as scheduled, that advertisers will have to be made whole, that local cable operators will be out from their own investments in advertising and more.

Says the network, "Even now, Lifetime employees are scrambling to comply with the Supreme Court?s order at great cost in human and financial resources."

More in NBC News Entertainment:

?

Source: http://entertainment.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/21/17399713-judge-bans-airing-of-lifetime-movie-romeo-killer?lite

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Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Hunting for meat impacts on rainforest

Hunting for meat impacts on rainforest [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 20-Mar-2013
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Ola Olsson
Ola.Olsson@biol.lu.se
46-733-448-390
Lund University

Hunting for meat in the African rainforests has halved the number of primates. However, the hunting also has other negative consequences. The decline in the number of primates causes a reduction in the dispersal of seed by the primates, and this leads to a reduction in the numbers of important fruit trees and changes to the rainforest. This has been shown in new research from Lund University in Sweden.

The destruction of the world's rainforests is generally recognised as a major problem. However, it is not only felling and clear-cutting that change the rainforest. A research project at Lund University has looked at the effects of hunting on the forest. The researchers studied rainforests in Nigeria, where the local population hunts for food. The animals that are hunted include almost all mammals, including gorillas and chimpanzees and some small species of monkey.

"Hunting has a dramatic effect on the composition and structure of the forest, just as logging does, but without felling any trees", said Ola Olsson, a researcher at the Department of Biology, Lund University.

Both apes and small monkeys play an important role in seed dispersal in the rainforest, as they feed on a variety of different fruits. As the number of primates declines as a result of hunting, their seed spreading role also declines. If fewer fruit seeds are spread, fewer fruit trees will grow in the forests. Instead, species with wind-dispersed seeds will most likely take over.

Ola Olsson stressed that the present study does not give any definite answers to how the composition of the forests could change, but in his view, there could well be an increase in bushes and lianas. This would also have negative consequences for the local population.

"Many of the trees which have seeds that are dispersed by primates are also important to people, because those who live in the vicinity of the forests gather a lot of fruit and nuts", he said.

Moreover, a vicious circle arises, because primates cannot live in a forest without fruit trees. Ola Olsson would like to see better protection for nature reserves and national parks, and better information and education of local people in the villages. He remarked that the reasons for the hunting are somewhat complex. The meat forms a cheap and accessible source of protein for poor people, as well as a source of income if the carcasses can be sold in the towns, where people are prepared to pay high prices for ape meat.

"All our study sites are in protected areas, but the protection is insufficient", said Ola Olsson.

The trees also have other ecosystem functions, in the form of carbon sequestration and effects on nutrient cycling and retention. The researchers fear that when the composition of the tree species changes, there will be a knock-on effect on these processes. The study, which Ola Olsson has carried out together with Nigerian researcher Edu Effiom, has been published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1759/20130246.abstract?sid=90e0d3d8-8566-49b8-a129-2cc00fc2a2d3

###

For more information, please contact:

Ola Olsson, Department of Biology, Lund University
Tel. +46 46 222 37 74, +46 733 448390
Ola.Olsson@biol.lu.se

Image: A male drill (Mandrillus leucophaeus). Photographer: Ola Olsson.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Hunting for meat impacts on rainforest [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 20-Mar-2013
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Ola Olsson
Ola.Olsson@biol.lu.se
46-733-448-390
Lund University

Hunting for meat in the African rainforests has halved the number of primates. However, the hunting also has other negative consequences. The decline in the number of primates causes a reduction in the dispersal of seed by the primates, and this leads to a reduction in the numbers of important fruit trees and changes to the rainforest. This has been shown in new research from Lund University in Sweden.

The destruction of the world's rainforests is generally recognised as a major problem. However, it is not only felling and clear-cutting that change the rainforest. A research project at Lund University has looked at the effects of hunting on the forest. The researchers studied rainforests in Nigeria, where the local population hunts for food. The animals that are hunted include almost all mammals, including gorillas and chimpanzees and some small species of monkey.

"Hunting has a dramatic effect on the composition and structure of the forest, just as logging does, but without felling any trees", said Ola Olsson, a researcher at the Department of Biology, Lund University.

Both apes and small monkeys play an important role in seed dispersal in the rainforest, as they feed on a variety of different fruits. As the number of primates declines as a result of hunting, their seed spreading role also declines. If fewer fruit seeds are spread, fewer fruit trees will grow in the forests. Instead, species with wind-dispersed seeds will most likely take over.

Ola Olsson stressed that the present study does not give any definite answers to how the composition of the forests could change, but in his view, there could well be an increase in bushes and lianas. This would also have negative consequences for the local population.

"Many of the trees which have seeds that are dispersed by primates are also important to people, because those who live in the vicinity of the forests gather a lot of fruit and nuts", he said.

Moreover, a vicious circle arises, because primates cannot live in a forest without fruit trees. Ola Olsson would like to see better protection for nature reserves and national parks, and better information and education of local people in the villages. He remarked that the reasons for the hunting are somewhat complex. The meat forms a cheap and accessible source of protein for poor people, as well as a source of income if the carcasses can be sold in the towns, where people are prepared to pay high prices for ape meat.

"All our study sites are in protected areas, but the protection is insufficient", said Ola Olsson.

The trees also have other ecosystem functions, in the form of carbon sequestration and effects on nutrient cycling and retention. The researchers fear that when the composition of the tree species changes, there will be a knock-on effect on these processes. The study, which Ola Olsson has carried out together with Nigerian researcher Edu Effiom, has been published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1759/20130246.abstract?sid=90e0d3d8-8566-49b8-a129-2cc00fc2a2d3

###

For more information, please contact:

Ola Olsson, Department of Biology, Lund University
Tel. +46 46 222 37 74, +46 733 448390
Ola.Olsson@biol.lu.se

Image: A male drill (Mandrillus leucophaeus). Photographer: Ola Olsson.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/lu-hfm032013.php

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