If fire, grazing and insect attack, the most likely causes of decline, remain unchecked, then?frankincense?production could be doomed altogether.
Trees that produce frankincense, a fragrant resin used in incense and perfumes and a central part of the Christmas story, are declining so fast that production could be halved over the next 15 years, scientists said on Wednesday.
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In a study published in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology, ecologists from the Netherlands and Ethiopia looked at large-scale field studies and predicted that tree numbers could decline by 90 percent in the next 50 years.
If fire, grazing and insect attack, the most likely causes of decline, remain unchecked, then frankincense production could be doomed altogether, they warned.
Frankincense, best known in religious teachings as one of the gifts laid before the newborn Messiah, is obtained by tapping various species of Boswellia, a small, deciduous tree that grows across Africa from northern Nigeria to the highlands of Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Cutting the Boswellia's bark produces the frankincense resin, a white substance with a strong, sweet smell. The resin is burnt in churches, mosques and at ceremonies, as well as being used by the perfume industry and in herbal medicines.
Despite its economic importance, incense has been traded internationally for thousands of years, little is known about how tapping affects Boswellia populations.
Working in an isolated part of northwest Ethiopia near the source of the Blue Nile, a research team led by Frans Bongers of Wageningen University in the Netherlands studied 13 two-hectare plots, some where trees were tapped for frankincense and some where they were untapped.
Over two years, they monitored survival, growth and seed production of more than 6,000 Boswellia trees and used the data to build mathematical models to predict the fate of Boswellia populations in coming years. The forecasts suggest Boswellia populations are declining so dramatically that frankincense production could be halved in the next 15 years.
"Current management of Boswellia populations is clearly unsustainable," Bongers said in a statement. "Our models show that within 50 years, populations of Boswellia will be decimated, and the declining populations mean frankincense production is doomed."
The researchers found that all the Boswellia populations they studied are declining, not only those from tapped trees, a finding that suggests factors other than tapping are at the root of the problem.
Bongers said the main causes of the trees' decline are likely to be burning, grazing and attack by the long-horn beetle, which lays its eggs under the Boswellia's bark.
The scientists urged local authorities to introduce better management incentives to ensure farmers work harder to protect Boswellia trees. In the short-term this meant preventing fires and beetle attack, Bongers said, but in the longer-term, large areas should be set aside and protected for five to 10 years to allow Boswellia saplings to become established.
Samsung makes some top-quality smartphones, but doesn't bestow them upon Verizon Wireless often. Sure, there's the new Galaxy Nexus?($299.99, 4 stars), but Android 4.0 aside, it lags behind Motorola's latest offering, the Droid RAZR ($299.99, 4.5 stars). The Samsung Illusion ($79.99 with a two-year contract) doesn't stand a chance against either of those two devices, but then again, it isn't trying to. Like many other Samsung phones for Verizon, the Illusion is a decent, midrange option, although it feels like it should be free with contract. It lacks 4G, and you don't have to look hard or spend more than $100 with contract to find something better.
Design and Call Quality The Samsung Illusion measures 4.5 by 2.4 by 0.5 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.2 ounces. It's made entirely of plastic, with a textured back panel. Unlike the gigantic Galaxy Nexus, the Illusion is a comfortable size to hold for any hand. The 3.5-inch, 320-by-480-pixel capacitive touch screen is bright and vibrant, though that resolution is disappointingly low. I would have much preferred to see the 800-by-480 screens that are now becoming standard. I had no problem typing on the onscreen QWERTY keyboard with accuracy. Four touch functions keys sit beneath the display, which are suitably responsive.
The Illusion is a dual-band EV-DO Rev A (800/1900MHz) with 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi. You can also use the phone as a mobile hotspot with the appropriate plan to provide a Wi-Fi connection for up to five devices. But while there are still plenty of 3G phones coming out for Verizon, the carrier's 4G network now covers 200 million Americans; a lack of 4G is a definite minus in my book.
Voice quality is excellent. Reception is average, and incoming calls sound rich and clear, with volume that can go extremely loud. On the other end, calls made with the phone are equally clear and feature good background noise cancellation. The speakerphone sounds fine, though it's a little low for outdoor use. Calls sounded clear and natural through a?Jawbone Era?Bluetooth headset ($129, 4.5 stars) and voice dialing worked accurately. Battery life was excellent at 8 hours, 10 minutes of talk time.
Hardware, Android, and Apps Inside, the Illusion is powered by the same 1GHz Cortex A8-based Hummingbird CPU found in the?4G Samsung Droid Charge?($199.99, 4 stars) as well as last year's Samsung Galaxy S line. It's decently fast, though it lags far behind dual-core devices like the Motorola Droid Bionic?($199.99, 4.5 stars).
The Illusion runs Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread) with Samsung's TouchWiz UI layer. It isn't as all-encompassing as HTC's Sense UI, but it adds some nice color and graphic enhancements. There are five customizable home screens that come preloaded with some useful apps and widgets. Verizon has added some undeletable bloatware to the Illusion, but no more than you find in most Android phones nowadays. There are no plans so far for an upgrade to Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich."
You get Google Maps Navigation for voice-enabled, turn-by-turn GPS directions, along with some other useful, preinstalled apps. Of course, you also have your pick of more than 250,000+ apps from the Android Market, most of which should work well on the Illusion.
Multimedia and Conclusions There's a side-mounted microSD card slot on the left side of the Illusion, which is a big plus. Samsung includes a 2GB card, but our 32GB and 64GB SanDisk cards worked fine. You also get 990MB of free internal storage.
Music sounded good over both wired 3.5mm headphones as well as?Altec Lansing BackBeat?Bluetooth headphones ($99.99, 3.5 stars). The Illusion was able to play AAC, MP3, OGG, WAV, and WMA test files, but not FLAC. All of our video test files played back without a hitch, at resolutions up to 720p.
The 3.2-megapixel camera is disappointing. Though it snaps photos in a quick .3 second, it lacks auto-focus or an LED flash. Test photos look decent, with average color and detail, but they're no replacement for an average digital camera. The camera also captures 720-by-480 (DVD quality, not HD) video at a smooth 30 frames per second both indoors and out.
Throughout the course of my testing, I kept finding myself thinking, why isn't this phone free? The Illusion has the makings of an excellent entry-level smartphone, the kind you get for free with a two-year contract. While it's a solid starter device, there are too many other good options on Verizon in the same price range to recommend it highly.
The Samsung Stratosphere?($99.99, 3.5 stars) gets you access to Verizon's 4G LTE network along with a much nicer display and a physical QWERTY keyboard for just $20 more than the Illusion. The Pantech Breakout?($99.99, 3.5 stars) drops the keyboard, but also has 4G LTE and a better display. Then there's the iPhone 4?($99, 4 stars), which isn't 4G, but has a gorgeous display and the best app selection out there. All three beat the Illusion handily, showing that this might be the right budget Android phone, but it's being sold for the wrong price.
ScienceDaily (Dec. 20, 2011) ? Mockingbirds rarely remove the 'alien' eggs parasitic cowbirds lay in their nests because keeping them dilutes the risk of their own eggs being attacked.
The study, by Oxford University and Argentinean scientists, examined the behaviour of the chalk-browed mockingbird (Mimus saturninus) which is parasitized by the shiny cowbird (Molothrus bonariensis) in Argentina.
A report of the research is published in this week's Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Shiny cowbirds regularly visit mockingbird nests and attack and puncture any eggs they find there -- damaged eggs are later removed by the mockingbird host. During these visits cowbirds will often lay their own eggs in the nest for mockingbirds to hatch and bring up alongside their own chicks.
Whilst mockingbirds will mob an attacking cowbird, once an alien egg has been laid in their nest they will usually accept it -- even though it looks very different from their own eggs.
The researchers recorded video of 130 cowbird visits to see what happened to the eggs in mockingbird nests over three breeding seasons. They experimentally manipulated clutch compositions to compare host egg survival in clutches with different numbers of cowbird eggs. They found that mockingbird eggs were more likely to survive a puncture attack when more cowbird eggs were present in the nest.
Computer simulations showed that this is likely to be a widespread phenomenon, and that, paradoxically, the greater the local density of parasites, the stronger the benefit hosts get from the presence of parasite eggs.
'It seems that the advantage mockingbirds gain from leaving these alien eggs in their nests is that they attract some of the destructive behaviour in later cowbird visits, and this benefit outweighs the cost of later having to rear the cowbird nestlings,' said Professor Alex Kacelnik from Oxford University's Department of Zoology, an author of the report. 'This is likely to be because, unlike other parasitic birds such as the cuckoo, mockingbird chicks do well in competition with their parasitic nest-mates -- fledging at rates similar to those of unparasitized broods.'
Of 347 mockingbird nests studied 89% were parasitized with one or more cowbird eggs, 35% receiving more than three, and 16% more than five (typically, they received around three).
'It might be expected that this high rate of parasitism would encourage a host to evolve more effective anti-parasite defences,' said Ros Gloag from Oxford University's Department of Zoology, an author of the report. 'In fact, the opposite is probably true: the higher the intensity of parasitism, the higher the frequency of puncturing attacks and the greater the importance of diluting this risk. Thus, hosts benefit more by not rejecting parasite eggs when there are more parasites around.'
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Journal Reference:
R. Gloag, V. D. Fiorini, J. C. Reboreda, A. Kacelnik. Brood parasite eggs enhance egg survivorship in a multiply parasitized host. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2011; DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2011.2047
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Wiley-VCH and ChemPubSoc Europe to launch multidisciplinary chemistry journalPublic release date: 15-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jennifer Beal jbeal@wiley.com Wiley-Blackwell
Weinheim, Germany -- Wiley-VCH, part of the scientific and technical publishing business of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and ChemPubSoc Europe, an association of 16 chemical societies, have announced the launch of ChemPlusChem, a multidisciplinary journal centering on chemistry (http://www.ChemPlusChem.org).
Original papers published will cover at least two different aspects (subfields) of chemistry or one of chemistry and one of another scientific discipline (one chemistry topic plus another one, hence the title ChemPlusChem). ChemPlusChem, in this new exciting form, will succeed the Collection of Czechoslovak Chemical Communications which will cease publication at the end of 2011.
ChemPlusChem will, as its predecessor did, feature strictly peer-reviewed full papers, communications, reviews, and mini-reviews from all subfields of chemistry. The journal will be published online only, ensuring rapid publication and colourful presentation of the results. The first articles will appear online shortly, with the first issue following in January 2012.
ChemPlusChem is tailored to multidisciplinary chemistry, biology, materials, and physics researchers from across the world. Collaboration is a prerequisite to multidisciplinary science, and the portion of papers with contributions from two or more research groups has more than doubled within the last ten years in Chemistry journals. ChemPlusChem is the first journal to specifically provide a high-quality forum for papers arising from these scientific partnerships.
According to Professor Wolfram Koch, Executive Director of the German Chemical Society and President of several of the journals published by ChemPubSoc Europe, "The ChemPubSoc Europe members are excited about this new project. Dedicated to truly interdisciplinary work and committed to the highest quality standards, ChemPlusChem complements the portfolio of ChemPubSoc Europe journals in an ideal way. As European chemical societies which serve the chemical community we are proud to launch this new journal together with our long-standing partner Wiley-VCH."
The Editor, Dr. Neville Compton from Wiley-VCH, and Professor Koch on behalf of ChemPubSoc Europe, are delighted to have secured the services of Professors Matthias Driess, Michal Hocek, and Nico Sommerdijk as co-chairmen of the Editorial Board of ChemPlusChem.
"To be an active part of crossdisciplinary research can be a tremendous 'catalyst' to boost creativity in chemistry and in turn to convince colleagues from other disciplines to interconnect with the beauty and power of chemistry," said Professor Matthias Driess from the Berlin Institute of Technology. "The launch of ChemPlusChem will be of benefit to all crossdisciplinary researchers and will ensure that fruitful scientific collaborations keep heading in the right direction."
According to Associate Professor Michal Hocek from the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry, Czech Republic, "The chemical community urgently needs a general multidisciplinary journal with a broadly defined scope to accommodate high quality, complex papers covering several subject categories in parallel."
Associate Professor Nico Sommerdijk from the Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands said of the new journal, "Great inventions almost always are the product of multidisciplinary research! There is a great need for a chemistry journal that is able to review and publish creative studies that bring together contributions from many areas of research. I think ChemPlusChem will be that journal."
###
About ChemPubSoc Europe:
ChemPubSoc Europe (http://www.chempubsoc.eu) is an organisation of 16 European chemical societies, founded in the late 1990s as a consequence of the amalgamation of more than a dozen chemical journals owned by national chemical societies into a number of high quality European journals. ChemPubSoc Europe's journals, which are all published with Wiley-VCH, are: ChemistryA European Journal, European Journal of Organic Chemistry, European Journal of Inorganic Chemistry, ChemBioChem, ChemPhysChem, ChemMedChem, ChemSusChem, ChemCatChem, ChemistryOpen, and ChemViews The ChemPubSoc Europe Magazine. All participating societies share a commitment to scientific excellence, to publishing ethics, and to the highest standards in publication, which are the basis for the success of the ChemPubSoc Europe journals. ChemPubSoc Europe has approximately 72,000 members.
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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.
Wiley-VCH and ChemPubSoc Europe to launch multidisciplinary chemistry journalPublic release date: 15-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jennifer Beal jbeal@wiley.com Wiley-Blackwell
Weinheim, Germany -- Wiley-VCH, part of the scientific and technical publishing business of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and ChemPubSoc Europe, an association of 16 chemical societies, have announced the launch of ChemPlusChem, a multidisciplinary journal centering on chemistry (http://www.ChemPlusChem.org).
Original papers published will cover at least two different aspects (subfields) of chemistry or one of chemistry and one of another scientific discipline (one chemistry topic plus another one, hence the title ChemPlusChem). ChemPlusChem, in this new exciting form, will succeed the Collection of Czechoslovak Chemical Communications which will cease publication at the end of 2011.
ChemPlusChem will, as its predecessor did, feature strictly peer-reviewed full papers, communications, reviews, and mini-reviews from all subfields of chemistry. The journal will be published online only, ensuring rapid publication and colourful presentation of the results. The first articles will appear online shortly, with the first issue following in January 2012.
ChemPlusChem is tailored to multidisciplinary chemistry, biology, materials, and physics researchers from across the world. Collaboration is a prerequisite to multidisciplinary science, and the portion of papers with contributions from two or more research groups has more than doubled within the last ten years in Chemistry journals. ChemPlusChem is the first journal to specifically provide a high-quality forum for papers arising from these scientific partnerships.
According to Professor Wolfram Koch, Executive Director of the German Chemical Society and President of several of the journals published by ChemPubSoc Europe, "The ChemPubSoc Europe members are excited about this new project. Dedicated to truly interdisciplinary work and committed to the highest quality standards, ChemPlusChem complements the portfolio of ChemPubSoc Europe journals in an ideal way. As European chemical societies which serve the chemical community we are proud to launch this new journal together with our long-standing partner Wiley-VCH."
The Editor, Dr. Neville Compton from Wiley-VCH, and Professor Koch on behalf of ChemPubSoc Europe, are delighted to have secured the services of Professors Matthias Driess, Michal Hocek, and Nico Sommerdijk as co-chairmen of the Editorial Board of ChemPlusChem.
"To be an active part of crossdisciplinary research can be a tremendous 'catalyst' to boost creativity in chemistry and in turn to convince colleagues from other disciplines to interconnect with the beauty and power of chemistry," said Professor Matthias Driess from the Berlin Institute of Technology. "The launch of ChemPlusChem will be of benefit to all crossdisciplinary researchers and will ensure that fruitful scientific collaborations keep heading in the right direction."
According to Associate Professor Michal Hocek from the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry, Czech Republic, "The chemical community urgently needs a general multidisciplinary journal with a broadly defined scope to accommodate high quality, complex papers covering several subject categories in parallel."
Associate Professor Nico Sommerdijk from the Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands said of the new journal, "Great inventions almost always are the product of multidisciplinary research! There is a great need for a chemistry journal that is able to review and publish creative studies that bring together contributions from many areas of research. I think ChemPlusChem will be that journal."
###
About ChemPubSoc Europe:
ChemPubSoc Europe (http://www.chempubsoc.eu) is an organisation of 16 European chemical societies, founded in the late 1990s as a consequence of the amalgamation of more than a dozen chemical journals owned by national chemical societies into a number of high quality European journals. ChemPubSoc Europe's journals, which are all published with Wiley-VCH, are: ChemistryA European Journal, European Journal of Organic Chemistry, European Journal of Inorganic Chemistry, ChemBioChem, ChemPhysChem, ChemMedChem, ChemSusChem, ChemCatChem, ChemistryOpen, and ChemViews The ChemPubSoc Europe Magazine. All participating societies share a commitment to scientific excellence, to publishing ethics, and to the highest standards in publication, which are the basis for the success of the ChemPubSoc Europe journals. ChemPubSoc Europe has approximately 72,000 members.
[ | E-mail | 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.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? An explicit ban on insider trading by federal lawmakers could narrow existing law covering the conduct, a top Securities and Exchange Commission official warned on Tuesday.
Any changes need to be "carefully calibrated" so that they do not hurt insider trading prosecutions outside of Congress, enforcement director Robert Khuzami told a House panel.
The House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday considered legislation that would prohibit members of Congress and their staff from trading in securities or commodities based on non-public information gleaned through their jobs.
The bill has languished in Congress for the past five years, but saw renewed interest after a recent television report on "60 Minutes" that found some lawmakers profited from inside information.
The chairman of the House committee, Spencer Bachus, was one of the lawmakers singled out by the report for trading stock options after a Treasury briefing about the economic collapse in 2008. At Tuesday's hearing, he said he would schedule a markup of the legislation.
"In practice, we have never seen these rules applied to Congress," said Representative Louise Slaughter, a Democrat from New York who introduced the bill. "We want to remove any current ambiguity."
"We are trying to set the bar higher for members of Congress," said Representative Timothy Walz, a Democrat from Minnesota who co-sponsored the bill.
While the SEC prosecutes insider trading under general anti-fraud provisions, the agency has never used the laws to go after members of Congress.
The bill could narrow some existing laws, Khuzami said.
The proposed legislation targets information related to pending legislation, for example, and might exempt information obtained through a regulatory briefing, he said.
Khuzami suggested lawmakers instead create an explicit fiduciary duty between members of Congress to keep information gained on the job confidential and not use it for private gain. The agency would be able to use that general duty to go after insider trading in Congress, he said.
"Highlighting a duty by members of Congress ... is the simplest way to go," he said.
The existing proposal had support in the single digits before the 60 Minutes report, but won 171 co-sponsors in recent weeks, Slaughter said.
A Senate panel considered similar legislation last week.
(Reporting by Aruna Viswanatha; editing by Matthew Lewis)
The most recent American Idol winner was named Best New Artist at last night's American Country Awards, accepting the trophy via a live performance, as seen here:
The young crooner also watched his debut album, "Clear as Day," surpass 500,000 sold copies, a feat that took only two months to accomplish. It currently sits atop the Billboard Country Albums chart.
“It’s huge," Scotty said in a statement. "Every artist dreams of a gold album and works hard for it, so it’s a major accomplishment to have your debut album go gold. This is just incredible."
U.S. regional carrier C Spire (former Cellular South) announced today that it's carrying the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play for $49.99 on contract (and after $50 rebate). The so-called Playstation phone -- nicknamed for its Playstation-like slide-out controls -- is the same as we've crawled all over for the past year or so, with a 4-inch display, 1GHz Snapdragon II processor, 5MP rear camera and a slew of available games.
We're not yet seeing the Xperia Play on C Spire's website, but you can call telesales (855-277-4734) or get it in a C Spire store.
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Public release date: 15-Dec-2011
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