On Monday, Connecticut-based Foxwoods Resort Casino announced a partnership with GameAccount Network to deliver online gaming opportunities to the United States market.
The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation (MPTN), which owns and operates Foxwoods, said it would initially focus on play-money games until legislation allows real-money wagering in the U.S. The agreement is subject to regulatory approval, but MPTN said it would release a play-for-fun gaming site at some point this year.
The agreement includes business-to-business (B2B) operations and will provide turnkey online gaming solutions for other Indian casinos and gaming operators.
According to the tribe, Foxwoods.com attracts one million unique monthly visitors.
As of yet, Connecticut legislation has not discussed the allowance of real-money online gaming within the state, nor has the state indicated whether the issue would be brought into discussion within the future.
New Jersey, Delaware, and Nevada are the only states that regulate online wagering in the U.S. New Jersey and Delaware offer casino games; Nevada only allows online poker.
Rodney Butler, chairman of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation commented, ?The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation is thrilled to announce our proposed partnership with GameAccount. The Mashantucket Pequot Tribe has long been a leader in brick-and-mortar casino operations, and with the help of GameAccount, we aim to take the same leadership position in regulated online gaming in the US. Our shared vision unites GameAccount's technical capabilities with our Foxwoods brand and our leadership in casino management.?
GameAccount is an online gaming software supplier focusing its efforts on regulated markets. The company offers a fully-integrated online gaming platform of casino and mobile skill games, as well as the ability to convert land-based slots into online games.
?As one of the first European Internet gaming system suppliers that moved into the United States in advance of intra-State regulation in 2011, we have developed the specialist experience, expertise and technical functionality required to serve Foxwoods from a hardware platform located on-property in Connecticut," said Dermot Smurfit, GameAccount's CEO. "We're delighted that this experience and our unique capabilities will support our new strategic partner Foxwoods as they build a new Internet gaming business in one of the World's most exciting emerging regulated Internet gaming markets."
Monday's agreement comes just a few months after Foxwoods? southeastern Connecticut rival, Mohegan Sun, signed a deal with Amaya Gaming (now owned by Bally Technologies) to provide free-play online poker. That deal, made in November last year, was the first agreement of its kind made by an East Coast casino bringing online gaming and poker to the U.S.
For news, updates, and more follow PokerNews on Twitter and Facebook.
Contact: Jade Boyd jadeboyd@rice.edu 713-348-6778 Rice University
Researchers study code that allows bacteria to either bet on the present or travel in time
HOUSTON -- (April 22, 2013) -- Individual freedom and social responsibility may sound like humanistic concepts, but an investigation of the genetic circuitry of bacteria suggests that even the simplest creatures can make difficult choices that strike a balance between selflessness and selfishness.
In a new study the journal Scientific Reports, researchers from Rice University's Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP) and colleagues from Tel Aviv University and Harvard Medical School show how sophisticated genetic circuits allow an individual bacterium within a colony to act on its own while also ensuring that the colony pulls together in hard times.
"Our findings suggest new principles for collective decisions that allow both random behavior by individuals and nonrandom outcomes for the population as a whole," said study co-author Eshel Ben-Jacob, a senior investigator at CTBP and adjunct professor of biochemistry and cell biology at Rice. "These new principles could be broadly applicable, from the study of cancer metastasis to the study of collective decisions by humans during times of stress."
Some species of bacteria live in complex colonies that can contain millions of individual cells. An increasing body of research on bacterial colonies has found that members often cooperate -- even to the point of sacrificing their lives -- for the survival of their colony. For example, in response to extreme stress, such as starvation, most of the individual cells in a colony of the bacteria Bacillus subtilis will form spores. Spore formation is a drastic choice because it requires the cell to kill itself to encase a copy of its genetic code in a tough, impervious shell. Though the living cell dies, the spore acts as a kind of time capsule that allows the organism to re-emerge into the world of the living when conditions improve.
"This time-travel strategy of waiting and safeguarding a copy of the DNA in the spore ensures the survival of the colony," Ben-Jacob said. "But there are other, less desperate options that B. subtilis can take to respond to stress. Some of these cells turn into highly mobile food seekers. Others turn cannibalistic, and about 10 percent enter a state called 'competence' in which they bide their time and bet on present conditions to improve."
Scientists have long been curious about how bacteria decide which of these paths to pursue. Years of studies have determined that each individual constantly senses its environment and continuously sends out chemical signals to communicate with its neighbors about the choices it is making. Experimental studies have revealed dozens of regulatory genes, signaling proteins and other genetic tools that cells use to gather information and communicate with one another.
"Bacteria don't hide their intentions from their peers in the colony," said study co-author Jos Onuchic, co-director of CTBP, Rice's Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Physics and Astronomy and professor of chemistry and biochemistry and cell biology. "They don't evade or lie, but rather communicate their intentions by sending chemical messages among themselves."
Individual bacteria weigh their decisions carefully, taking into account the stress they are facing, the situation of their peers, the statistics of how many cells are sporulating and how many are choosing competence, Onuchic said. Each bacterium in the colony communicates via chemical "tweets" and performs a sophisticated decision-making process using a specialized complex gene network comprised of many genes connected via complex circuitry. Taking a physics approach, Onuchic, Ben-Jacob and study co-authors Mingyang Lu, Daniel Schultz and Trevor Stavropoulos investigated the interplay between two components of the circuitry -- a timer that determines when sporulation occurs and a two-way switch that causes the cell to choose competence over sporulation.
"We found that the sporulation timer and the competence switch work in a coordinated fashion, but the interplay is complex because the two circuits are affected very differently by noise," said Schultz, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School and a former graduate student at CTBP.
Noise results from random fluctuations in a signal; every circuit -- whether genetic or electronic -- responds to noise in its own way. In the case of B. subtilis, noise is undesirable in the sporulation timer but is a necessity for the proper function of the competence switch, the researchers said.
"Our study explains how the two opposite noise requirements can be satisfied in the decision circuitry in B. subtilis," Onuchic said. "The circuits have a special capacity for noise management that allows each individual bacterium to determine its fate by 'playing dice with controlled odds.'"
Ben-Jacob said the timer has an internal clock that is controlled by cell stress. The noise-intolerant timer typically keeps the competence switch closed, but when the cell is exposed to stress over a long period of time, the timer activates a decision gate that opens brief "windows of opportunity" in which the competence switch can be flipped.
Thanks to its architecture, the gate oscillates during the window of opportunity, he said. At each oscillation, the switch opens for a short time and grants the cell a short window in which it can use noise as a "roll of the dice" to decide whether to escape into competence.
"The ingenuity is that at each oscillation the cell also sends 'chemical tweets' to inform the other cells about its stress and attempt to escape," said Ben-Jacob, the Maguy-Glass Professor in Physics of Complex Systems and professor of physics and astronomy at Tel Aviv University. "The tweets sent by others help regulate the circuits of their neighbors and guarantee that no more than a specific fraction of cells within the colony will enter into competence."
Onuchic said the decision-making principles revealed in the study could have implications for synthetic biologists who wish to incorporate sophisticated decision systems as well as for cancer researchers who are interested in exploring the decision-making processes that cancer cells use in choosing to become dormant or to metastasize.
"This represents a real fusion of ideas from statistical physics and biology," he said.
###
Lu is a postdoctoral research fellow at CTBP and Stavropoulos is a former graduate student and CTBP fellow at the University of California, San Diego. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas and the Tauber Family Foundation.
A copy of the Scientific Reports article is available at:
http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130417/srep01668/full/srep01668.html
[ | 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.
Contact: Jade Boyd jadeboyd@rice.edu 713-348-6778 Rice University
Researchers study code that allows bacteria to either bet on the present or travel in time
HOUSTON -- (April 22, 2013) -- Individual freedom and social responsibility may sound like humanistic concepts, but an investigation of the genetic circuitry of bacteria suggests that even the simplest creatures can make difficult choices that strike a balance between selflessness and selfishness.
In a new study the journal Scientific Reports, researchers from Rice University's Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP) and colleagues from Tel Aviv University and Harvard Medical School show how sophisticated genetic circuits allow an individual bacterium within a colony to act on its own while also ensuring that the colony pulls together in hard times.
"Our findings suggest new principles for collective decisions that allow both random behavior by individuals and nonrandom outcomes for the population as a whole," said study co-author Eshel Ben-Jacob, a senior investigator at CTBP and adjunct professor of biochemistry and cell biology at Rice. "These new principles could be broadly applicable, from the study of cancer metastasis to the study of collective decisions by humans during times of stress."
Some species of bacteria live in complex colonies that can contain millions of individual cells. An increasing body of research on bacterial colonies has found that members often cooperate -- even to the point of sacrificing their lives -- for the survival of their colony. For example, in response to extreme stress, such as starvation, most of the individual cells in a colony of the bacteria Bacillus subtilis will form spores. Spore formation is a drastic choice because it requires the cell to kill itself to encase a copy of its genetic code in a tough, impervious shell. Though the living cell dies, the spore acts as a kind of time capsule that allows the organism to re-emerge into the world of the living when conditions improve.
"This time-travel strategy of waiting and safeguarding a copy of the DNA in the spore ensures the survival of the colony," Ben-Jacob said. "But there are other, less desperate options that B. subtilis can take to respond to stress. Some of these cells turn into highly mobile food seekers. Others turn cannibalistic, and about 10 percent enter a state called 'competence' in which they bide their time and bet on present conditions to improve."
Scientists have long been curious about how bacteria decide which of these paths to pursue. Years of studies have determined that each individual constantly senses its environment and continuously sends out chemical signals to communicate with its neighbors about the choices it is making. Experimental studies have revealed dozens of regulatory genes, signaling proteins and other genetic tools that cells use to gather information and communicate with one another.
"Bacteria don't hide their intentions from their peers in the colony," said study co-author Jos Onuchic, co-director of CTBP, Rice's Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Physics and Astronomy and professor of chemistry and biochemistry and cell biology. "They don't evade or lie, but rather communicate their intentions by sending chemical messages among themselves."
Individual bacteria weigh their decisions carefully, taking into account the stress they are facing, the situation of their peers, the statistics of how many cells are sporulating and how many are choosing competence, Onuchic said. Each bacterium in the colony communicates via chemical "tweets" and performs a sophisticated decision-making process using a specialized complex gene network comprised of many genes connected via complex circuitry. Taking a physics approach, Onuchic, Ben-Jacob and study co-authors Mingyang Lu, Daniel Schultz and Trevor Stavropoulos investigated the interplay between two components of the circuitry -- a timer that determines when sporulation occurs and a two-way switch that causes the cell to choose competence over sporulation.
"We found that the sporulation timer and the competence switch work in a coordinated fashion, but the interplay is complex because the two circuits are affected very differently by noise," said Schultz, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School and a former graduate student at CTBP.
Noise results from random fluctuations in a signal; every circuit -- whether genetic or electronic -- responds to noise in its own way. In the case of B. subtilis, noise is undesirable in the sporulation timer but is a necessity for the proper function of the competence switch, the researchers said.
"Our study explains how the two opposite noise requirements can be satisfied in the decision circuitry in B. subtilis," Onuchic said. "The circuits have a special capacity for noise management that allows each individual bacterium to determine its fate by 'playing dice with controlled odds.'"
Ben-Jacob said the timer has an internal clock that is controlled by cell stress. The noise-intolerant timer typically keeps the competence switch closed, but when the cell is exposed to stress over a long period of time, the timer activates a decision gate that opens brief "windows of opportunity" in which the competence switch can be flipped.
Thanks to its architecture, the gate oscillates during the window of opportunity, he said. At each oscillation, the switch opens for a short time and grants the cell a short window in which it can use noise as a "roll of the dice" to decide whether to escape into competence.
"The ingenuity is that at each oscillation the cell also sends 'chemical tweets' to inform the other cells about its stress and attempt to escape," said Ben-Jacob, the Maguy-Glass Professor in Physics of Complex Systems and professor of physics and astronomy at Tel Aviv University. "The tweets sent by others help regulate the circuits of their neighbors and guarantee that no more than a specific fraction of cells within the colony will enter into competence."
Onuchic said the decision-making principles revealed in the study could have implications for synthetic biologists who wish to incorporate sophisticated decision systems as well as for cancer researchers who are interested in exploring the decision-making processes that cancer cells use in choosing to become dormant or to metastasize.
"This represents a real fusion of ideas from statistical physics and biology," he said.
###
Lu is a postdoctoral research fellow at CTBP and Stavropoulos is a former graduate student and CTBP fellow at the University of California, San Diego. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas and the Tauber Family Foundation.
A copy of the Scientific Reports article is available at:
http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130417/srep01668/full/srep01668.html
[ | 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.
Since 9/11, a debate has raged over whether the conflict with al Qaida and other jihadists should be treated more as a war or a crime. Now the same dispute is roiling over the fate of Dzhokar Tsarnaev, the 19-year-old ethnic Chechen and naturalized American who was captured by authorities in Boston Friday night after a dramatic day-long pursuit. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., in a series of tweets, argued that Tsarnaev, one of two suspects in the fatal Boston Marathon bombings, should be treated as an enemy combatant and tried in a military tribunal.
In fact, that?s very unlikely to happen, not least because in the nearly 12 years since 9/11, U.S. authorities have failed to figure out precisely how to reconcile the suspension of legal rights for ?enemy combatants? with the Constitution. ?The military commissions are in a state of near-total collapse right now. The idea that you would take this kid from Boston and send him down there is laughable,? says Scott Horton, a human-rights lawyer based in New York.
By suspending Tsarnaev?s Miranda rights under the so-called ?public safety? exemption for more than a day or so, U.S. and Boston authorities are also taking a slight risk of tainting his prosecution?one that should be fairly open and shut -- in the same way other prosecutions under military tribunals have been damaged. ?Everything is being tainted by the intelligence community,? which has sought to gain evidence through extra-constitutional means that have sometimes included harsh interrogation, says Horton. ?It?s been given a free hand to do things.?
U.S. officials say they are concerned with other threats, perhaps including plots involving other bombs, that Tsarnaev might know about, but that is difficult to square with the declaration Friday night that the public was out of danger.
It is also not known what might have motivated Tsarnaev and his older brother, 26-year-old Tamarlan, to allegedly commit these acts. A series of postings on social media sites indicate that Tamarlan might have become somewhat radicalized by Islamist teachings, perhaps during a visit to Russia when he might have seen his father living in Makhachkala,?Dagestan, a city infused both with jihadist groups and counterterrorism apparatus set up by Russia?s FSB, or intelligence service. But Tamarlan was killed in a shootout with police, and authorities may well find that his seriously wounded younger brother was mainly following the elder Tsarnaev?s lead.
Graham, a former Air Force lawyer, posted a statement on his his Facebook page saying "it is absolutely vital the suspect be questioned for intelligence gathering purposes. We need to know about any possible future attacks which could take additional American lives," ? "The least of our worries is a criminal trial which will likely be held years from now."
Actually, with a huge array of detainees seemingly permanently under detention at Guantanamo, their fates undecided, and the rules for trying them still undetermined, the nature of Tsarnaev?s trial is a fairly significant issue.
Microsoft has finally responded to a study claiming that Bing?s search results delivered five times as much malware than Google?s, and its answer is simple: the study is flawed.
Last week, AV-TEST conducted a malware study that analyzed millions of websites and found that Bing was showing much more malware to users than its more popular rival (see graph below).
But David Felstead, Senior Development Lead at Bing, responded in a blog post Friday, writing that the study made a mistake by using a Bing API instead of examining the searches directly from Bing.com. This method, Bing says, resulted in misleading results because the API results bypassed its warning system and does not show warning labels.
?Bing actually does prevent customers from clicking on malware infected sites by disabling the link on the results page and showing the below message to stop people from going to the site,? he wrote.
But why does Bing even show them at all if they could be infected?
?We don?t explicitly remove malicious sites from the index because most are legitimate sites that normally don?t host malware but have been hacked,? Felstead writes. ?Our research shows that if sites like this remain infected for a long period of time, their ranking will naturally fall because customers won?t click on them.?
While he did say that ?this is a highly complex problem that all engines are constantly working to solve,? Felstead pointed out how a Google search of ?vacation hotline,? doesn?t give a malware warning, but Bing does.
He added that users will see the warning only once per 10,000 searches on Bing.
?In any case, the overall scale of the problem is very small,? Felstead wrote.
Russian search engine company Yanax also questioned the validity of AV-TEST?s study.
The monthly U.S. search stats from comScore came out for March last week and it showed Google with 67.1 percent of the search market share. Microsoft only has 16.9 percent, a number that?s been growing, albeit slowly.
Microsoft, meanwhile, continues to bash Google with its ?Scroogled? campaign, with the latest bombardment focusing on privacy issues with the Google Play Store.
Reach GeekWire staff reporter Taylor Soper at taylor@geekwire.com or on Twitter at @Taylor_Soper.
After a lifetime immersed in American politics, perhaps it was inevitable that my reaction to the early days of the new papacy has been to conjure up memories?.of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.
I mean no disrespect. But in watching Pope Francis? powerful first gestures?shunning the elaborate vestments for a simple garment, choosing a modest apartment over the lavish Papal accommodations, and heading back to his hotel in Rome to pay his bill!?I was reminded of two presidents who embraced simplicity but were ultimately rejected by voters. And thereby hangs a tale about the power, and the limits, of symbolism.
President Gerald Ford, right, and Jimmy Carter at a debate on Oct. 6, 1976 in San Francisco, Calif. (AP Photo)When Gerald Ford suddenly stepped into the presidency in August 1974 after Richard Nixon?s resignation, he was a relatively unknown figure despite his years as House Republican leader and his 10-month stint as vice president. After Nixon?s polarizing presidency?capped by nearly a year and a half of Watergate frenzy?Ford was at pains to establish him as a healing, unthreatening, modest leader. As he described himself even before taking the presidential oath, ?I?m a Ford, not a Lincoln.?
When Ford disclosed he had toasted his own English muffins and poured his own orange juice before heading to the Oval Office, pictures of the new president in the White House kitchen hit front pages across America. It was the perfect contrast with Nixon, who had ordered up uniforms for the White House Guard worthy of a European principality.
Now fast forward a few months to the impossibly long-shot presidential campaign of ex-Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter, a self described peanut farmer whose quest seemed so improbable that a home state paper headlined: ?Jimmy WHO? Is Running for WHAT??
Making a virtue out of necessity, Carter?s financially challenged campaign drew attention to the candidate?s humility. He stayed at the homes of supporters, where he made his own bed; shared rooms with aides at low-cost motels; and carried his own garment bag.
In the post-Watergate atmosphere of 1975 and 1976, the just-plain-folks personalities of both Ford and Carter seemed the perfect antidote to Nixon?s arrogant, isolated presidency.
But as alert history-minded readers know, Ford and Carter were both rebuffed by voters in their efforts to hold on to the presidency.
Ford?s decision to pardon Nixon for crimes associated with Watergate cost him dearly, even though it now looks like a prudent choice to avoid years of contentious litigation. Ford?s occasional slips?of tongue and body?turned him, unfairly, into a comic figure that elevated Chevy Chase of ?Saturday Night Live? to national fame. And an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress all but assured Ford?s legislative goals would be dead on delivery.
Carter narrowly defeated Ford in 1976. But the charm of the peanut farmer faded under withering blows of double-digit inflation, recession, the Iranian hostage crisis and a deeply divided Democratic Party. Carter lost in a landslide to Ronald Reagan in 1980.
So does this history tell us that Pope Francis? early steps are doomed to irrelevance? No. Unlike presidents, a pope?s personal decisions can have a swift, decisive impact on the actions of others. Offhand, I can?t think of any congressional committee chairs or Fortune 500 CEOs who felt it necessary to abandon the perks of their offices because Ford and Carter did so.
By contrast, Francis? rejection of the lavish pomp that surrounded his predecessor, Benedict, is offering a model that others in the Catholic hierarchy may well want to follow?if for no other reason than to avoid the embarrassment of the contrast.
The thick cloud that has surrounded the church in the wake of the pedophile priest scandals may strengthen the impulse toward humility. When it comes to the priestly vows of ?poverty, chastity and obedience,? the church has demonstrated some pretty serious problems with the second but can demonstrate its fealty to the third by more vigorously embracing the first.
There are, however, ways in which Francis will face challenges similar to those that tripped up Ford and Carter.
If the church does not clearly and unflinchingly demand and receive full accountability for the evasions and cover-ups that marred its response to the child abuse scandals, none of the pope?s humble gestures will count for much. If Francis? symbolic embrace of the poor does not govern the church?s behavior in the cities and towns of Latin America?where church and state have in the past been linked by privilege and indifference?then the words of the new pope will remain hollow. Ultimately, deeds trump symbols.
Of course, in one key way, the new pope has a powerful, perhaps decisive advantage over the 38th and 39th presidents: Having received the keys to the kingdom, his electoral lock is permanent.
Ocean nutrients a key component of future change say scientistsPublic release date: 10-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Catherine Beswick catherine.beswick@noc.ac.uk 0238-059-8490 National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (UK)
Variations in nutrient availability in the world's oceans could be a vital component of future environmental change, according to a multi-author review paper involving the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS).
The paper, published this month in Nature Geoscience, reviews what we know about ocean nutrient patterns and interactions, and how they might be influenced by future climate change and other man-made factors. The authors also highlight how nutrient cycles influence climate by fuelling biological production, hence keeping carbon dioxide (CO2) locked down in the ocean away from the atmosphere.
Dr Mark Moore from University of Southampton Ocean and Earth Science, which is based at NOCS, led the review. He said: "We aimed to get a group of international experts together in an attempt to define the current state of knowledge in this rapidly developing field."
Marine algae, which support most marine ecosystems, need certain resources to grow and reproduce including nutrients. If there are not enough nutrients available, the growth or abundance of these microscopic plants can become restricted. This is known as 'nutrient limitation'.
"All organisms, from the smallest microbes, up to complex multi-cellular animals like us, require a variety of chemical elements to survive," explained Dr Moore. "Somehow we all have to get these elements from our external environment."
Nutrients are therefore a key driver of microbial activity in the oceans. But at the same time, microorganisms play a major role in cycling nutrients and carbon throughout the vast ocean system including drawing down CO2 from the atmosphere. Therefore understanding ocean nutrient cycling is important for predicting future environmental change.
Dr Moore said: "Despite many decades of research, we still don't understand some of the complex interactions between marine microorganisms and nutrient cycles.
"Human activity has the potential to profoundly impact oceanic nutrient cycles. A solid understanding of complex feedbacks in the system will be required if we are going to be able to predict the consequences of these changes."
The authors from 22 different institutes call for an interdisciplinary approach merging new analytical techniques, observations and models going forward to address current gaps in our understanding.
###
The review resulted from a workshop, hosted at NOCS, as part of the International GeosphereBiosphere Programme/Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (IGBP-SCOR) funded Fast Track Initiative on Upper Ocean Nutrient Limitation.
Notes for editors
1. Reference: C. M. Moore, M. M. Mills, K. R. Arrigo, I. Berman-Frank, L. Bopp, P. W. Boyd, E. D. Galbraith, R. J. Geider, C. Guieu, S. L. Jaccard, T. D. Jickells, J. La Roche, T. M. Lenton, N. M. Mahowald, E. Maran, I. Marinov, J. K. Moore, T. Nakatsuka, A. Oschlies, M. A. Saito, T. F. Thingstad, A. Tsuda and O. Ulloa (2013) Processes and patterns of oceanic nutrient limitation. Nature Geoscience, published online 31 March 2013. DOI: 10.1038/NGEO1765
2. The image shows oceanographic sampling equipment being lowered into clear blue open ocean water. The clarity of the water is a consequence of low nutrient availability restricting the amount of planktonic microbes. Credit: Elizabeth Sargent, NOCS
3. University of Southampton Ocean and Earth Science is based at the National oceanography Centre, Southampton.
4. The National Oceanography Centre (NOC) is the UK's leading institution for integrated coastal and deep ocean research. NOC operates the Royal Research Ships James Cook and Discovery and develops technology for coastal and deep ocean research. Working with its partners NOC provides long-term marine science capability including: sustained ocean observing, mapping and surveying, data management and scientific advice.
5. NOC operates at two sites, Southampton and Liverpool, with the headquarters based in Southampton.
6. Among the resources that NOC provides on behalf of the UK are the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC), the Marine Autonomous and Robotic Systems (MARS) facility, the National Tide and Sea Level Facility (NTSLF), the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) and British Ocean Sediment Core Research Facility (BOSCORF).
7. The National Oceanography Centre is wholly owned by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
Contact details:
Catherine Beswick
Media and Communications Officer
National Oceanography Centre
http://www.noc.ac.uk
[ | 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.
Ocean nutrients a key component of future change say scientistsPublic release date: 10-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Catherine Beswick catherine.beswick@noc.ac.uk 0238-059-8490 National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (UK)
Variations in nutrient availability in the world's oceans could be a vital component of future environmental change, according to a multi-author review paper involving the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS).
The paper, published this month in Nature Geoscience, reviews what we know about ocean nutrient patterns and interactions, and how they might be influenced by future climate change and other man-made factors. The authors also highlight how nutrient cycles influence climate by fuelling biological production, hence keeping carbon dioxide (CO2) locked down in the ocean away from the atmosphere.
Dr Mark Moore from University of Southampton Ocean and Earth Science, which is based at NOCS, led the review. He said: "We aimed to get a group of international experts together in an attempt to define the current state of knowledge in this rapidly developing field."
Marine algae, which support most marine ecosystems, need certain resources to grow and reproduce including nutrients. If there are not enough nutrients available, the growth or abundance of these microscopic plants can become restricted. This is known as 'nutrient limitation'.
"All organisms, from the smallest microbes, up to complex multi-cellular animals like us, require a variety of chemical elements to survive," explained Dr Moore. "Somehow we all have to get these elements from our external environment."
Nutrients are therefore a key driver of microbial activity in the oceans. But at the same time, microorganisms play a major role in cycling nutrients and carbon throughout the vast ocean system including drawing down CO2 from the atmosphere. Therefore understanding ocean nutrient cycling is important for predicting future environmental change.
Dr Moore said: "Despite many decades of research, we still don't understand some of the complex interactions between marine microorganisms and nutrient cycles.
"Human activity has the potential to profoundly impact oceanic nutrient cycles. A solid understanding of complex feedbacks in the system will be required if we are going to be able to predict the consequences of these changes."
The authors from 22 different institutes call for an interdisciplinary approach merging new analytical techniques, observations and models going forward to address current gaps in our understanding.
###
The review resulted from a workshop, hosted at NOCS, as part of the International GeosphereBiosphere Programme/Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (IGBP-SCOR) funded Fast Track Initiative on Upper Ocean Nutrient Limitation.
Notes for editors
1. Reference: C. M. Moore, M. M. Mills, K. R. Arrigo, I. Berman-Frank, L. Bopp, P. W. Boyd, E. D. Galbraith, R. J. Geider, C. Guieu, S. L. Jaccard, T. D. Jickells, J. La Roche, T. M. Lenton, N. M. Mahowald, E. Maran, I. Marinov, J. K. Moore, T. Nakatsuka, A. Oschlies, M. A. Saito, T. F. Thingstad, A. Tsuda and O. Ulloa (2013) Processes and patterns of oceanic nutrient limitation. Nature Geoscience, published online 31 March 2013. DOI: 10.1038/NGEO1765
2. The image shows oceanographic sampling equipment being lowered into clear blue open ocean water. The clarity of the water is a consequence of low nutrient availability restricting the amount of planktonic microbes. Credit: Elizabeth Sargent, NOCS
3. University of Southampton Ocean and Earth Science is based at the National oceanography Centre, Southampton.
4. The National Oceanography Centre (NOC) is the UK's leading institution for integrated coastal and deep ocean research. NOC operates the Royal Research Ships James Cook and Discovery and develops technology for coastal and deep ocean research. Working with its partners NOC provides long-term marine science capability including: sustained ocean observing, mapping and surveying, data management and scientific advice.
5. NOC operates at two sites, Southampton and Liverpool, with the headquarters based in Southampton.
6. Among the resources that NOC provides on behalf of the UK are the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC), the Marine Autonomous and Robotic Systems (MARS) facility, the National Tide and Sea Level Facility (NTSLF), the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) and British Ocean Sediment Core Research Facility (BOSCORF).
7. The National Oceanography Centre is wholly owned by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
Contact details:
Catherine Beswick
Media and Communications Officer
National Oceanography Centre
http://www.noc.ac.uk
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
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With all this talk about the cord-cutting masses no longer wanting to subsidize TV channels they don't watch, it's a little surprising that one of the oldest, most widely available forms of TV is waning: over-the-air broadcast TV. Despite its attractive price of $0 per month and billions of advertising revenue, nobody ? including the broadcast networks, the tech companies that are out to disrupt them, and the cord-cutters and cord-nevers who hate cable ? is very enthusiastic about antennas. ...
Are you ready to take on your friends in Angry Birds... Friends? The Facebook app is on its way to an iOS and Android release, allowing players to invite Facebook friends to play, take part in weekly tournaments, give and receive gifts, gather daily rewards, and more. Rovio did not say when exactly it will be released, but they said it will be "soon." For more updates, remember to like Angry Birds on Facebook... they?ll give you all the goods.
UFC on Fuel 9's main card kicks off at 2 p.m. ET on Saturday. What questions will be answered by these fights in Sweden?
Who the heck is Ilir Latifi, anyway? When the Swedish MMA Federation stopped Alexander Gustafsson from fighting because of a cut, the UFC needed a quick replacement for the main event. Latifi, Gustafsson's training partner, stepped up, but we don't know much about him except that he's on a three-fight win streak. Will he take advantage of the opportunity?
Where does Gegard Mousasi rank in the UFC's stocked light heavyweight division? Mousasi has made a name for himself fighting in Strikeforce, Dream and Pride, but this is the first time UFC fans will get a look at him. Fighting against Latifi, a late replacement, Mousasi could show he is the dominant fighter he once was.
Will Matt Mitrione end his losing streak? It's been a rough go for the football-player-turned-fighter. After starting his career with five straight wins, Mitrione lost his last two. Can a bout with Philip de Fries, who is 1-2 in his last three fights, give Mitrione a chance to right the ship?
Can Ryan Couture step out from the shadow of his famous father? After spending all of his pro career in Strikeforce, Couture will finally fight in the UFC, where his father became a legend. He will also have to ignore the ongoing dispute between UFC president Dana White and his father. Will he be able to win over Ross Pearson and start his own legend?
Will UFC fans still tune in after the main event was changed so close to the fights? This is a tough one. Gustafsson was fighting for a possible title shot. Now, he's off the card, and the rest of it is filled with Strikeforce fighters making their UFC debut and "The Ultimate Fighter" castmembers. Will it be enough for fans to spend their Saturday afternoon watching the fights?
Is Papy Abedi the best name in the UFC? Yes. Yes, it is.
A new national poll reveals that Americans differ along political party lines even in their endorsement of conspiracy theories, including the belief that President Obama is the Anti-Christ to the idea that global warming is a hoax.
The poll found, for instance, just 15 percent of Democrats believe a secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian world government, or New World Order; compare that with 34 percent of Republicans and 35 percent of Independents who believe the same.
As one might expect, the more far-out the conspiracy theory, the fewer people endorse it. Dean Debnam, president of Public Policy Polling, which conducted the research, noted, "Most Americans reject the wackier ideas out there about fake moon landings and shape-shifting lizards."
Even so, 20 percent of Republicans believe that President Obama is the Anti-Christ, compared with 13 percent of Independents and 6 percent of Democrats who agree.
Some other highlights include:
? 58 percent of Republicans think global warming is a hoax, whereas just 24 percent of Democrats said the same. [The Reality of Global Warming: 10 Myths Busted]
? 15 percent of the respondents believe the pharmaceutical industry conspires with the medical industry to fabricate new diseases for profit, and the same number believe that secret mind-controlling technology is added to TV broadcast signals.
Democrats, Republicans and conspiracy theorists
The difference in endorsement between self-identified Democrats and Republicans is less surprising than it may seem at first glance; many events producing conspiracy theories have important political implications that make them more or less likely to be believed depending on your worldview.
For example, the recent Sandy Hook conspiracy theories were framed by believers not as merely a tragic school shooting but instead as a hoax perpetrated or coordinated by the Obama administration (or gun control groups or other powerful, unknown organizations) to scare the public into supporting gun control legislation. Similarly, conspiracies involving the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the killing of Osama bin Laden, and whether or not President Obama is a legal U.S. citizen clearly have political implications.
Other common conspiracies ? such as whether a UFO crashed in Roswell, New Mexico (21 percent said yes), or the moon landings were faked (7 percent said yes), or that Paul McCartney died in a car crash in 1966 (5 percent said yes) ? have little implications for people's everyday lives. [The 10 Craziest Conspiracy Theories Explained]
The Conspiracy Mentality
The image of the bug-eyed, tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy believer is largely a stereotype. There is no single profile fitting all conspiracy theorists, but generally what the conspiratorial mind sees as misinformation and lies, others see as merely perfectly ordinary incomplete and inaccurate information or misunderstandings. Conspiracy believers tend to be skeptical of coincidences, instead seeing a reason or hidden purpose behind seemingly random events.
Sometimes evidence showing that a conspiracy theory is false has a measurable effect on public belief; for example, soon after Obama released his long-form birth certificate proving that he'd been born in Hawai'i, the number of people believing he'd been born outside the United States dropped by half, according to a 2011 Washington Post poll.
Often, however, no amount of evidence can deter true believers from conspiracy thinking. There is no shortage of documentation about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, for example, and questions from so-called "9/11 Truthers" have been repeatedly answered but to little effect.
In many cases, in fact, conspiracy believers endorse contradictory theories. Recent studies by researcher Karen Douglas at the University of Kent suggest a reason why. She and colleagues asked 137 students to rate how much they agreed with five conspiracy theories about the 1997 death of Princess Diana. The results were surprising ? and contradictory. As Douglas explained to LiveScience, "The more people were likely to endorse the idea Princess Diana was murdered, the more they were likely to believe that Princess Diana is alive." To many conspiracy theorists settling on one definitive theory (for example whether bin Laden or Princess Diana is alive or not ? and if they aren't, how or when they died) is far less important than knowing that something has been covered up and is being kept secret.
Research suggests that in some cases belief in conspiracy theories can actually be psychologically adaptive and beneficial, as the very premise of conspiracies implies a powerful, hidden force at work with some overarching grand design. Conspiracy theorists see a hidden hand behind the world's major events, including social and political changes. Even though conspiracy theorists claim to want to expose the conspiracy and thwart its goals (such as establishing a New World Order), some take comfort that the world is not merely random ? that things happen for a reason. Though conspiracy believers don't feel in control of the events, they feel that at least someone is (or a small cabal of powerful "someones" are).
The survey, conducted by the Public Policy Polling group, sampled 1,247 registered American voters by telephone from March 27?30 and was not paid for by any political organization.
Benjamin Radford is deputy editor of "Skeptical Inquirer" science magazine and author of six books including "Media Mythmakers: How Journalists, Activists, and Advertisers Mislead Us." His website is www.BenjaminRadford.com.
Follow?LiveScience @livescience, Facebook?& Google+. Original article on?LiveScience.com.
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis has indicated that he will act against sex abuse cases in the Roman Catholic Church.
The Vatican said in a statement Friday that the pope has urged the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith to "act with determination with regard to cases of sexual abuse." The statement cited measures promoted by Benedict XVI to protect minors, helping victims of sexual violence and taking necessary action against perpetrators.
U.S. victims of clergy abuse have demanded swift and bold actions from the new Jesuit pontiff.
Apr. 2, 2013 ? When we imagine drama playing out between predators and prey, most of us picture stealthy lions and restless gazelle, or a sharp-taloned hawk latched on to an unlucky squirrel. But Ben Baiser, a post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard Forest and lead author of a new study in Oikos, thinks on a more local scale. His inter-species drama plays out in the humble bogs and fens of eastern North America, home to the carnivorous pitcher plant, Sarracenia purpurea. "It's shocking, the complex world you can find inside one little pitcher plant," says Baiser.
A pitcher plant's work seems simple: their tube-shaped leaves catch and hold rainwater, which drowns the ants, beetles, and flies that stumble in.
But the rainwater inside a pitcher plant is not just a malevolent dunking pool. It also hosts a complex system of aquatic life, including wriggling mosquito, flesh fly, and midge larvae; mites; rotifers; copepods; nematodes; and multicellular algae. These tiny organisms are crucial to the pitcher plant's ability to process food. They create what scientists call a 'processing chain': when a bug drowns in the pitcher's rainwater, midge larvae swim up and shred it to smaller pieces, bacteria eat the shredded pieces, rotifers eat the bacteria, and the pitcher plant absorbs the rotifers' waste.
But that's not the whole story. Fly larvae are also eating the rotifers, midge larvae, and each other, and everybody eats bacteria. It's a complex food web that shifts on the order of seconds.
Aaron Ellison, a co-author on the new study and senior ecologist at the Harvard Forest, says the pitcher plant food web is an ideal model for understanding larger food webs -- with top predators like wolves -- that change over a longer period of time. He points out, "With pitcher plants, you can hold the whole food web in your hand. The vast number of pitcher plants in one bog provide endless opportunities for detailed experiments on how food webs work, not only in pitcher plants, but also in bigger ecosystems that are harder to manipulate, like ponds, lakes, or oceans."
With funding from the National Science Foundation, the research team traveled to bogs in British Columbia, Quebec City, and Georgia -- the full extent of the plant's range -- to analyze the aquatic food webs from 60 pitcher plants. They found 35 different types of organisms inside, with a large contingent of bacteria counting as just one type. Then, says Baiser, "We wanted to know: how did we get different food webs in individual pitchers from the same species pool? What caused these food webs to form the way they did?"
A few well-established scientific models predict how food webs form based on a ranked system of ecosystem factors. For the Oikos study, Baiser and his team checked their real-world observations against those models. He explains: "Say you've got a bunch of lakes. And you've got a big bucket holding all the species that can live in those lakes. When you dump out the bucket, which creatures end up in which lake? What matters more: the size of the lake, or the fact that predator species X is there, too? Or is it random? Those models help us tease those factors apart."
According to the Oikos study, the way pitcher plant food webs assemble is not random. In fact, it seems the predator-prey interactions are of key importance. "You take out one species, and that affects everything else," says Baiser.
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Journal Reference:
Benjamin Baiser, Hannah L. Buckley, Nicholas J. Gotelli, Aaron M. Ellison. Predicting food-web structure with metacommunity models. Oikos, 2013; 122 (4): 492 DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-0706.2012.00005.x
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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon said on Tuesday that a second U.S. guided-missile destroyer had taken position in the western Pacific on a missile defense mission, as tensions rise over North Korea's threats of war against the United States and its ally, South Korea. The announcement is the latest confirmation of minor adjustments to the posture of the U.S. military, which is seeking to reassure allies in Seoul and Tokyo of American military capabilities to respond to any moves by Pyongyang. U.S. ...
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UFC on Fuel 9's main card kicks off at 2 p.m. ET on Saturday. What questions will be answered by these fights in Sweden?
