Sunday, November 27, 2011

Australia plans Coral Sea reserve

The Australian government says it plans to establish the world's largest marine reserve in the Coral Sea.

Environment Minister Tony Burke said the protected zone would cover an area more than one-and-a-half times the size of France.

New fishing limits would be imposed and and exploration for oil and gas banned.

The proposal is subject to a 90-day consultation, but Mr Burke said the Coral Sea's biodiversity was at the heart of the plan.

"There is no other part of Australia's territory where so much comes together - pristine oceans, magnificent coral, a military history which has helped define us and now a clear proposal for permanent protection," he said.

The sea - off the Queensland coast in north-east Australia - is home to sharks and tuna, isolated tropical reefs and deep sea canyons. It is also the resting place of three US navy ships sunk in the Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942.

'World leader'

Under the plans, fishing - commercial and recreational - would be allowed in some areas of the reserve, which at its closest point would start 60km (37 miles) from the coast and it extends out to 1,100km.

President of the Queensland Seafood Industry Association Geoff Tilton said a larger area was needed for commercial fishing.

But Professor Terry Hughes, director of coral reef studies at James Cook University, called the proposal a "welcome step" that "cements Australia's reputation as a world leader in marine resource management".

"The proposed Coral Sea no-take area is hundreds of kilometres offshore, and will have no impact on recreational fishing. There is very, very little commercial fishing currently operating legally in the Coral Sea today," he said.

Activists called the plan a good start but said key reefs and spawning grounds lay outside the fully protected area.

Currently the world's largest marine reserve is a 545,000-sq-km area (210,425 sq miles) established by the UK around the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean.

The Coral Sea reserve, if approved, would be approximately 989,842 sq km.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/world-asia-15889194

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Saturday, November 26, 2011

Book Talk: Frazier returns to home state for third novel (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) ? Charles Frazier's novel "Cold Mountain" was a bestselling and critical phenomenon in 1996 and later became an Academy Award-winning movie, which is not bad considering it was the 46-year-old's debut.

Ten years later, the North Carolina native returned to his home state and the 19th century with "Thirteen Moons," another best-seller.

His latest novel, "Nightwoods," takes readers to early 1960s North Carolina, where Luce, a backwoods recluse, takes in her mute, pyromaniac twin niece and nephew after their stepdad murders their mother.

Frazier, who will be 61 on November 4, spoke to Reuters about the book and his career.

Q: How did the idea for this book develop?

A: "I had a different idea -- the place was going to be the same, and Luce would have been one of a group of secondary characters. I worked for maybe six months along those lines and then just got more interested in Luce. And then when the kids came into the book I kind of shifted gears and the book became more Luce's book. The old lodge, the lake, the setting was probably the first thing I had."

Q: You write extensively about nature in your books. How did you attain such knowledge of botany, animals and landforms?

A: "I've always been interested in the woods, even when I was just a little boy. Second or third grade after school on a fall day we would be wanting to get out into the woods, tromp around. So there's that level of observation and experience. Another part of it is sort of construction. I don't know nearly as many plant identification terms as I really should. I have to work that out when I need it. I learn it and then I forget it in a year. But I can re-learn it."

Q: How does Cherokee culture influence your writing and lifestyle?

A: "I grew up with Cherokee land not far away -- not far away as the crow flies; as the roads went, it took a while to get there. I've just always been interested in and aware of the culture. And just in the past five years or so I've been working on a couple little projects to try to help preserve the language."

Q: You were 46 when you published Cold Mountain. Were you ever frustrated that success didn't come sooner?

A: "I don't think I knew enough to write, certainly not to write Cold Mountain earlier. That was my first novel, so it wasn't like I had six sitting around in boxes that had been written and rejected. I just didn't get around to trying to write one till I was nearly 40."

Q: A common theme in your books is that modern entertainment robs us of the freedom nature offers.

A: "Certainly that, and also I think it robs people of idiosyncrasies and oddities. It smoothes out the edges and sort of regularizes. It has this effect of bringing the outliers in, I think."

Q: Are you conflicted, then, about your books being made into movies?

A: "I think if you can't let go of the story and the characters enough to take the attitude that the book is your expression of the material, the movie is somebody else's -- the director, the screenwriter, that whole group of people that have the creative input in a movie -- then you probably shouldn't sell it. Which doesn't mean I wouldn't always try to get a book into the hands of a director or screenwriter that I think sees the material a lot the way I do."

Q: Cold Mountain was critically acclaimed, Thirteen Moons less so. Do you feel any pressure to prove critics wrong with Nightwoods?

A: "If you write books for other people's taste I'm not quite sure what you end up writing. Spending all your time looking backwards for me would be a guaranteed way to run into a writer's block. I don't give that an awful lot of thought. Looking backwards, that's really not going to get me anything I want."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/celebrity/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111124/en_nm/us_nov24_books_authors_frazier

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Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Taking bushmeat off the menu could increase child anemia, study finds

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

A new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, finds that consuming bushmeat had a positive effect on children's nutrition, raising complex questions about the trade-offs between human health and environmental conservation.

They further estimated that a loss of access to wildlife as a source of food ? either through stricter enforcement of conservation laws or depletion of resources ? would lead to a 29 percent jump in the number of children suffering from anemia. Among children in the poorest households, the researchers added, there would be a three-fold increase in the incidence of anemia. Left untreated, anemia in children can impair growth and cognitive development.

The findings are to be published the week of Nov. 21 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"When thinking of creating protected areas for diversity, policymakers need to take into consideration how that will impact local people, both in livelihoods and from a health perspective," said study lead author Christopher Golden, who did the research while a graduate student in UC Berkeley's Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management and at the School of Public Health. "We need to find ways to benefit the local population in our conservation policies, not hurt them."

Hundreds of millions of people worldwide consume bushmeat a key source of bio-available iron, particularly for those living in rural communities. But when the menu includes endangered species, the researchers said, human nutritional needs must contend with efforts to manage wildlife resources.

Because bio-available iron is primarily sourced from meat, the researchers hypothesized that increased consumption of wildlife would result in a reduced incidence of clinical anemia. They tested their theory by monitoring the diet and hemoglobin levels of 77 children every month for a year.

The children, all under 12 years old, lived in the Makira Protected Area of Madagascar, one of the most critical biodiversity hotspots in the world. The Makira region is located in a remote part of eastern Madagascar, and its inhabitants rely heavily upon local wildlife ? such as lemurs and bats ? for food.

Children there who ate more bushmeat had higher levels of hemoglobin, an iron-containing protein in red blood cells, even after factoring in such variables as consumption of domesticated meat, household income, sex, age and nutritional and disease status, the researchers found.

Eating domesticated meat is prohibitively expensive for many households, while wildlife is free, the authors noted. They found that, among impoverished people, bushmeat accounted for up to 20 percent of overall meat consumption. While many of the wildlife species are illegal to hunt, enforcement in the protected areas can often be lax.

"It is clearly not environmentally sustainable for children to eat endangered animals, but in the context of remote, rural Madagascar, households don't always have a choice," said Lia Fernald, UC Berkeley associate professor in the School of Public Health, who worked with Golden to design the study. "In places where a diverse range of nutritious food is unavailable, children rely upon animal-source foods ? milk, eggs and meat ? for critical nutrients like fats, protein, zinc and iron. What we need for these children are interventions that can provide high-quality food sources that are not endangered."

The authors of the study, which received its primary support from the National Geographic Society Conservation Trust and the National Science Foundation (NSF), emphasized the need for site-specific and culturally relevant solutions.

"In our study area, domesticated meat is actually desirable, but unaffordable, so one possible solution is to support programs that allow the people there to raise chickens or goats," said Golden, now a post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard Center for the environment and a visiting scientist at Harvard's School of Public Health. "But in places like Africa's Gabon or Equatorial Guinea, bushmeat is a desirable luxury item, so simply offering people there domesticated chicken meat as an alternative may not be successful. The sustainability of any type of conservation project relies upon local buy-in."

In addition to Fernald, Golden was advised at UC Berkeley by associate professors Claire Kremen, associate professor and Justin Brashares in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, all of whom are co-authors of the study.

The intersection of human health, household income and wildlife populations has become an increasingly important focus of research at UC Berkeley, they said. For instance, the NSF recently awarded a five-year grant for a project led by Brashares to understand the links between human health, household wealth and natural resource use. Kremen, Fernald, Golden and other colleagues are also part of this project, which will take place at nine rural sites in Ghana, Kenya and Madagascar.

###

University of California - Berkeley: http://www.berkeley.edu

Thanks to University of California - Berkeley for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/115378/Taking_bushmeat_off_the_menu_could_increase_child_anemia__study_finds

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Saturday, November 19, 2011

Ex-U.S. admiral raises cash for cyber security firm (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? Retired U.S. Admiral William Fallon has spent the past year working to turn around a high-tech start-up that sells software that helps government agencies and businesses fight sophisticated cyber attacks.

The 18-employee firm, CounterTack, underwent a restructuring during his tenure.

"My focus was trying to keep us alive," Fallon said in an interview.

But he said the pieces are now coming together.

The company on Thursday announced $9.5 million in Series A financing in a round led by Fairhaven Capital.

It also hired a new executive team, naming Neal Creighton as CEO. Creighton was a co-founder and CEO of a digital security company known as GeoTrust.

Fallon - who resigned as commander of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008 after a magazine reported he was critical of President George W. Bush's policy toward Iran - will serve as chairman of the revamped company.

CounterTack sells products that monitor computer networks for malicious activity so that businesses and government agencies can identify malware that has made its way past firewalls and antivirus software.

"The ability to see in-progress attacks is what distinguishes our products," he said.

The technology helps investigators track the activities of malware, making it easier to identify perpetrators and their motives, he said.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle, editing by Matthew Lewis)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/software/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111117/wr_nm/us_cybersecurity_admiral

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Friday, November 18, 2011

Obama boosts U.S. military presence in Australia (Reuters)

CANBERRA (Reuters) ? President Barack Obama and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Wednesday unveiled plans for a deepening of the U.S. military presence in the Asia-Pacific, starting with thousands of U.S. Marines operating out of a defacto military base in the Australian port of Darwin.

U.S. troops in Darwin, only 820 kms (500 miles) from Indonesia, would be able to react quickly to any humanitarian and security issues in Southeast Asia, where disputes over sovereignty of the South China Sea are causing rising tensions.

"With my visit to the region I am making it clear that the United States is stepping up its commitment to the entire Asia-Pacific region," Obama told a joint news conference with Gillard in Canberra.

Deployment of an initial company of 200-250 Marines would begin in 2012 and expand to up to 2,500 eventually, Gillard said.

The move may be seen by Beijing as further evidence of Washington's attempt to encircle China, with U.S. bases in Japan and Korea and now troops in Australia.

"We hope that bilateral cooperation between the countries concerned will be of benefit to the peace, stability and development of the Asia-Pacific region," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei.

Some Asian nations are expected to welcome the U.S. move as a counterbalance to China's growing power, especially its expanding maritime operations, and a reassurance that Washington will not scale back its engagement in the region due to a stretched U.S. military budget.

"The United States hopes to militarily strengthen alliance relations with Japan in the north and with Australia in the south, with the clear intention of counter-balancing China," Su Hao, the director of the Asia-Pacific Researcher Center at the Foreign Affairs University in Beijing, told the Global Times, a popular Chinese newspaper.

OBAMA TO RAISE SOUTH CHINA SEA

Obama's visit to Australia, greeted with a 21 gun salute, marks 60 years of the U.S.-Australia alliance which has seen their troops fight in every major war.

"To the People of Australia, with whom we have stood together for a century of progress and sacrifice. On this 60th Anniversary of our Alliance, we resolve that our bonds will never be broken, and our friendship will last for all time," he wrote in Gillard's guest book.

The winding down of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has opened the door to greater U.S. attention to simmering tension over the South China Sea, a shipping lane for more than $5 trillion in annual trade that the United States wants to keep open.

Obama plans to raise maritime security in the South China Sea at a regional summit on Bali this week, defying China's desire to keep this sensitive topic off the agenda.

China claims the entire maritime region, a vital commercial shipping route rich in oil, minerals and fishery resources.

But Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei hold rivals claims to at least parts of the sea and tension occasionally flares up into maritime stand-offs.

China has generally sought to avoid flare-ups over tensions with the United States and its allies in 2011.

Obama will make an "anchor speech" outlining the U.S. vision for the Asia-Pacific to the Australian parliament on Thursday before a whistle stop in Darwin. He then flies to the Indonesian island of Bali for the East Asia summit.

DEFACTO BASE

Darwin, nicknamed the "Pearl Harbour of Australia" after a World War Two Japanese raid dropped more bombs on the city than those on Pearl Harbour, will give the U.S. military open access to East Asia sea lanes and the Indian Ocean.

Australia says hosting U.S. troops and the pre-positioning of U.S. supplies in Darwin is not the precursor to a U.S. base, but analysts say rotating more than 2,000 U.S. marines in and out of the northern port city, and more frequent U.S. naval visits, will give Washington a defacto base.

"The Chinese have gotten used to the fact that Australia and the United States have a very close military relationship. They expect nothing different," said Australian Defense Minister Kim Beazley.

Australia and the United States jointly operate an intelligence base at Pine Gap in the Australian outback and routinely take part in military exercises. But the Darwin deployment will be the largest in Australia since World War Two when General Douglas MacArthur moved his war headquarters there.

Analysts say Australia needs to balance its military relationship with the United States with its economic dependence on China, which is a voracious buyer or coal, iron ore and other resources.

"Economic cooperation with China is increasingly important for Australia's future development," said Su from the Foreign Affairs University in Beijing.

"On the other hand, Australia is committed to maintaining its traditional alliance with the United States...That's a security challenge for Australia. I'm sure that Australia won't take this too far."

(Additional reporting by Michael Perry and Jim Regan in Sydney; Editing by Lincoln Feast)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111116/ts_nm/us_usa_australia

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Monday, November 14, 2011

Patriots lead Jets 6-0 after 1st quarter

(AP) ? Stephen Gostkowski kicked a pair of field goals and New England's maligned defense came up with two sacks by Andre Carter to lead the New York Jets 6-0 through one quarter of their AFC East showdown Sunday night.

Jets coach Rex Ryan called the prime-time meeting "a great opportunity." His team did not seize it in the opening 15 minutes.

With Buffalo losing earlier in the day, the winner will have sole possession of the top spot in the AFC East. All three teams entered Sunday at 5-3, with the Jets having won three in a row and the Patriots dropping their past two.

New York also is undefeated at home in four games.

Ignoring their ground-and-pound philosophy, the Jets went to the air on the first series, and completions of 16 and 27 yards to Santonio Holmes helped them get deep in New England territory. But they couldn't score from the 9 and Nick Folk missed a chip-shot 24-yard field goal to the left.

An ominous sign against the Patriots, and Tom Brady went right to work. Completions of 12 yards to Aaron Hernandez, 21 to Rob Gronkowski ? Brady loves those tight ends ? and 12 to Chad Ochocinco got them in field goal range. Gostkowski did what Folk couldn't, squeezing his 50-yarder just through the uprights for a 3-0 lead.

Ochocinco's catch was his first in a month; his last was against the Jets on Oct. 9 in a Patriots victory.

Sanchez overthrew a wide-open Dustin Keller on the next Jets possession, then was sacked by Carter, forcing a punt and quieting the crowd. The fans were nearly silent when Ochocinco broke free behind star cornerback Darrelle Revis ? the Jets appeared confused in their alignment ? and gained 53 yards on a throw from Brady.

Again, the Patriots stalled and Gostkowski made it 6-0 with a 36-yarder.

Carter got his second sack on the final play of the first period.

For star power, the Patriots went with Jon Bon Jovi as the team's guest, while the Jets welcomed Donald Trump.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2011-11-13-FBN-Patriots-Jets/id-07bac542afde43ef985a23b55d421634

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Australia seizes huge haul of cocaine, arrests 4 (AP)

CANBERRA, Australia ? Police arrested four Spaniards in one of Australia's largest cocaine seizures, authorites said Monday.

About 660 pounds (300 kilograms) of the illegal drug were seized from a yacht on Friday at the northeastern coastal town of Bundaberg, Australian Federal Police said in a statement. The yacht was crewed by a 35-year-old man and 37-year-old woman, and both were arrested.

Another two Spanish nationals ? a 38-year-old man who lives in Sydney and 39-year-old man living in Gold Coast city ? were also arrested in Bundaberg, where they were alleged to be collecting the cocaine.

Police have also seized more than 3 million Australian dollars ($3.1 million) in cash using search warrants in Bundaberg, Gold Coast and Sydney.

The four Spanish nationals cannot be named for legal reasons. They will appear in a Bundaberg court Monday charged with importing cocaine and they each face a potential life prison sentence if convicted.

Police said the haul was the fifth-largest cocaine seizure in Australian history. The drug was valued at up to $80 million.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111114/ap_on_re_as/as_australia_cocaine

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Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Smaller corn harvest could keep food prices high

(AP) ? The government slightly reduced its estimate for next year's corn supply, a move that could keep food prices high for most consumers.

The Department of Agriculture estimates that a smaller harvest will leave farmers with 843 million bushels of corn at the end of next summer. That's lower than last month's forecast of 866 million bushels. Wednesday's crop forecast is the first since farmers harvested most of their corn crop last month.

Tight supplies next year will likely increase corn prices, which hit record levels in June on fears of a shortage.

Corn prices affect broader food inflation because it is used in everything from animal feed to cereal to soft drinks. It takes about six months for corn prices to trickle down to products at the grocery store.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2011-11-09-US-Crop-Size/id-e4339d46637e40bc879ce0f1471d669f

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British Singer Adele Recuperating After Throat Surgery

British Singer Adele Recuperating After Throat Surgery

Adele Adkins has undergone laser throat surgery in Boston, Massachusetts today. Dr. Steven M. Zeitels, the director of Massachusetts General Hospital’s Voice Center, said in [...]

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