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It's been a long time since I've been here, at least a year or so. I don't think anyone would recognize me, but I'm excited to be part of rebuilding this community. It's great to be here!
Exo-Fat
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Yellow. I got suckered in the same way. Dammit!
Welcome back. Let's hope things change, huh?
ViceVersus
Member for 4 years
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Powerful mathematical model greatly improves predictions for species facing climate change Public release date: 2-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Stuart Wolpert swolpert@support.ucla.edu 310-206-0511 University of California - Los Angeles
UCLA life scientists and colleagues have produced the most comprehensive mathematical model ever devised to track the health of populations exposed to environmental change.
The research, federally funded by the National Science Foundation, is published Dec. 2 in the journal Science.
The team's groundbreaking integral projection model, or IPM, unites various sub-disciplines of population biology, including population ecology, quantitative genetics, population genetics, and life-span and offspring information, allowing researchers to link many different data sources simultaneously. Scientists can now change just a single variable, like temperature, and see how that affects many factors for a population.
"This is one of the most innovative and holistic models, because it unifies so many sub-fields of ecology and genetics into one predictive model," said study co-author Robert Wayne, a UCLA professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, who led the UCLA research team. "Traditionally, we have studied just a few ecological parameters at a time, like how much food there is or how the environment will change over time, and how that relates to population size. Here, we are analyzing everything at once."
Among the researchers' major findings with the IPM is that gradual, sustained change in an environment over time a gradual increase in temperature, for example has a greater impact on the species in an ecosystem than fluctuating changes.
"If we change the total environment, such as temperature, we change a whole suite of characteristics for a species, including viability, fertility, population size, body size and generation length," Wayne said.
The new model could therefore be of great use in predicting the complex ecological impacts that could result as Earth's temperature gradually rises as a result of high carbon dioxide emissions entering the atmosphere and oceans.
"Probably much of the tundra in the high Arctic will disappear with global warming," Wayne said. "Since this is a very general model, it can be applied to any population, from a polar bear to a wolf to a beetle, even plants. We want to use this model to make predictions about populations that are in dire situations, as their environments will be changing quickly."
Just as physicists are searching for a unified field theory to bring the physics of the very large in harmony with the physics of the very small, the IPM "is the version in ecology and population genetics of a similar unified theory," Wayne said.
The collaboration that led to the new model followed a fortuitous meeting between Wayne and collaborator Tim Coulson, a professor of population biology at Imperial College London. Following a talk by Coulson at UCLA , Wayne and his research team combined their decades of expertise on the wolf population in Yellowstone National Park with Coulson's expertise in applied mathematics and the most comprehensive ecological model was born.
Wolves were first introduced into Yellowstone in 1995 to control the overpopulation of elk and bison and to restore deteriorated forests. These wolves were closely monitored with radio collars in the years that followed, generating a vast array of detailed data. The effects they generated in the park known as a trophic cascade allowed many species, such as songbirds, beavers and grizzly bears, to thrive again as the elk and bison populations diminished.
"A critical issue for us is how these wolves will survive into the future," Wayne said. "This model addresses that issue in a comprehensive way by taking in so many components of population health."
The model also explains the persistence of the grey coat color in Yellowstone wolves, despite the fact that the gene for black coat color is dominant. Using genetic data collected in Wayne's laboratory, the IMP revealed that wolves who possessed two different versions of the coat-color gene, known as heterozygotes, lived longer and had more offspring than wolves who had two identical genes for coat color.
This example demonstrates the power of the new model, as it can make sense of seemingly unrelated information on population genetics and life history and generate a clearer understanding of an observed coat-color phenotype, and beyond that, the implications for survival of these animals in a complex ecosystem.
By using a model that could generate more accurate predictions, "We could potentially build scenarios predicting whether a species has no chance of recovery, and this could lead protection efforts," Wayne said.
"We are not very effective at stopping global warming, but perhaps we could identify ways to alter or enrich habitats to mitigate environmental effects," he added.
###
Coulson, the study's lead author, and postdoctoral scholar Daniel MacNulty worked extensively on the modeling system using data on Yellowstone wolves organized by Wayne and co-authors Daniel Stahler, a UCLA graduate student, and Bridgett vonHoldt, a UC Irvine postdoctoral scholar who conducted her graduate research in Wayne's laboratory. Important contributions also came from the National Park Service's Douglas Smith, project leader for the Yellowstone National Park Gray Wolf Restoration Project, in conjunction with Stahler.
UCLA is California's largest university, with an enrollment of nearly 38,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The UCLA College of Letters and Science and the university's 11 professional schools feature renowned faculty and offer 337 degree programs and majors. UCLA is a national and international leader in the breadth and quality of its academic, research, health care, cultural, continuing education and athletic programs. Six alumni and five faculty have been awarded the Nobel Prize.
For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.
[ | 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.
Powerful mathematical model greatly improves predictions for species facing climate change Public release date: 2-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Stuart Wolpert swolpert@support.ucla.edu 310-206-0511 University of California - Los Angeles
UCLA life scientists and colleagues have produced the most comprehensive mathematical model ever devised to track the health of populations exposed to environmental change.
The research, federally funded by the National Science Foundation, is published Dec. 2 in the journal Science.
The team's groundbreaking integral projection model, or IPM, unites various sub-disciplines of population biology, including population ecology, quantitative genetics, population genetics, and life-span and offspring information, allowing researchers to link many different data sources simultaneously. Scientists can now change just a single variable, like temperature, and see how that affects many factors for a population.
"This is one of the most innovative and holistic models, because it unifies so many sub-fields of ecology and genetics into one predictive model," said study co-author Robert Wayne, a UCLA professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, who led the UCLA research team. "Traditionally, we have studied just a few ecological parameters at a time, like how much food there is or how the environment will change over time, and how that relates to population size. Here, we are analyzing everything at once."
Among the researchers' major findings with the IPM is that gradual, sustained change in an environment over time a gradual increase in temperature, for example has a greater impact on the species in an ecosystem than fluctuating changes.
"If we change the total environment, such as temperature, we change a whole suite of characteristics for a species, including viability, fertility, population size, body size and generation length," Wayne said.
The new model could therefore be of great use in predicting the complex ecological impacts that could result as Earth's temperature gradually rises as a result of high carbon dioxide emissions entering the atmosphere and oceans.
"Probably much of the tundra in the high Arctic will disappear with global warming," Wayne said. "Since this is a very general model, it can be applied to any population, from a polar bear to a wolf to a beetle, even plants. We want to use this model to make predictions about populations that are in dire situations, as their environments will be changing quickly."
Just as physicists are searching for a unified field theory to bring the physics of the very large in harmony with the physics of the very small, the IPM "is the version in ecology and population genetics of a similar unified theory," Wayne said.
The collaboration that led to the new model followed a fortuitous meeting between Wayne and collaborator Tim Coulson, a professor of population biology at Imperial College London. Following a talk by Coulson at UCLA , Wayne and his research team combined their decades of expertise on the wolf population in Yellowstone National Park with Coulson's expertise in applied mathematics and the most comprehensive ecological model was born.
Wolves were first introduced into Yellowstone in 1995 to control the overpopulation of elk and bison and to restore deteriorated forests. These wolves were closely monitored with radio collars in the years that followed, generating a vast array of detailed data. The effects they generated in the park known as a trophic cascade allowed many species, such as songbirds, beavers and grizzly bears, to thrive again as the elk and bison populations diminished.
"A critical issue for us is how these wolves will survive into the future," Wayne said. "This model addresses that issue in a comprehensive way by taking in so many components of population health."
The model also explains the persistence of the grey coat color in Yellowstone wolves, despite the fact that the gene for black coat color is dominant. Using genetic data collected in Wayne's laboratory, the IMP revealed that wolves who possessed two different versions of the coat-color gene, known as heterozygotes, lived longer and had more offspring than wolves who had two identical genes for coat color.
This example demonstrates the power of the new model, as it can make sense of seemingly unrelated information on population genetics and life history and generate a clearer understanding of an observed coat-color phenotype, and beyond that, the implications for survival of these animals in a complex ecosystem.
By using a model that could generate more accurate predictions, "We could potentially build scenarios predicting whether a species has no chance of recovery, and this could lead protection efforts," Wayne said.
"We are not very effective at stopping global warming, but perhaps we could identify ways to alter or enrich habitats to mitigate environmental effects," he added.
###
Coulson, the study's lead author, and postdoctoral scholar Daniel MacNulty worked extensively on the modeling system using data on Yellowstone wolves organized by Wayne and co-authors Daniel Stahler, a UCLA graduate student, and Bridgett vonHoldt, a UC Irvine postdoctoral scholar who conducted her graduate research in Wayne's laboratory. Important contributions also came from the National Park Service's Douglas Smith, project leader for the Yellowstone National Park Gray Wolf Restoration Project, in conjunction with Stahler.
UCLA is California's largest university, with an enrollment of nearly 38,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The UCLA College of Letters and Science and the university's 11 professional schools feature renowned faculty and offer 337 degree programs and majors. UCLA is a national and international leader in the breadth and quality of its academic, research, health care, cultural, continuing education and athletic programs. Six alumni and five faculty have been awarded the Nobel Prize.
For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.
[ | 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.
CAIRO (Reuters) ? Nearly 80 people were wounded on Tuesday when youths threw petrol bombs, fired guns and threw rocks in clashes near Cairo's Tahrir Square, where protesters have been demonstrating against military rule in Egypt.
Leading reformist politician Mohamed ElBaradei said "thugs" had attacked the protesters whose sit-in demonstration against the generals is now in its 11th day. Twenty seven of the wounded were taken to hospital, the official MENA news agency reported.
The violence disrupted what had been two largely peaceful days of voting in the first phase of a parliamentary election, the first since President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in February.
An organizer of the protest said the trouble started when an unidentified group had tried to enter the square. State media said the clashes had involved protesters and street vendors but this could not be independently verified.
In criticism of the military-run government, ElBaradei wrote on his twitter feed: "Thugs are now attacking the protesters in Tahrir. A regime that cannot protect its citizens is a regime that has failed in performing its basic function."
Thugs, has often been used to describe violent pro-Mubarak elements who disrupted elections in the rigged polls of the past, and who used camels in the final days of the Mubarak era to try and intimidate protesters in Tahrir Square.
Live television footage showed petrol bombs arching through the night sky in the direction of the square and exploding on the road by Cairo's landmark Egyptian Museum and not far from the protesters' encampment.
A witness heard at least 10 shots as the trouble flared at one end of the square, where protesters have been urging the immediate departure of the army generals who replaced Mubarak in February.
BLOODSHED IN THE SQUARE
The square had been calm for several days.
Last week, roads around Tahrir were the scene for some of the worst violence since Mubarak was toppled: 42 people killed in Cairo and elsewhere in violence triggered by protests against the generals.
The protesters say the generals are trying to manipulate their position to preserve power and privilege. The generals say they will hand power to an elected president by mid-2012.
Mohammed al-Saeed, an organizer of the protest, told Egyptian state television the protesters had organized volunteer security groups "to protect people and families in the square" from the youths.
People parked cars on one of the main bridges spanning the Nile to watch as armed youths chased others in violent scenes beneath them.
It was unclear who threw the petrol bombs and who fired the shots and what motivated them, but state television said the clashes had initially involved street vendors.
In an earlier sign of tensions in the square, scuffles had flared between dozens of street vendors who have been selling goods to the protesters camped there and stalls were damaged.
(Additional reporting by Reuters Television, Dina Zayed, Ali Abdelatti, Dina Zayed and Peter Millership; Writing by Tom Perry, editing by Peter Millership)
Penn State President Rodney Erickson, left, responds to a question as Acting Executive Vice President and Provost Rob Pangborn, center, and Vice President for Student Affairs Damon Simons look on during a town hall forum organized by students at the university's main campus, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2011, in State College, Pa. The event served as an open discussion between students and the administration about the school's recent sexual abuse scandal, which has resulted in the departures of school President Graham Spanier and longtime football coach Joe Paterno. (AP Photo/John Beale)
Penn State President Rodney Erickson, left, responds to a question as Acting Executive Vice President and Provost Rob Pangborn, center, and Vice President for Student Affairs Damon Simons look on during a town hall forum organized by students at the university's main campus, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2011, in State College, Pa. The event served as an open discussion between students and the administration about the school's recent sexual abuse scandal, which has resulted in the departures of school President Graham Spanier and longtime football coach Joe Paterno. (AP Photo/John Beale)
Penn State President Rodney Erickson speaks at a town hall forum organized by students at the university's main campus, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2011, in State College, Pa. The event served as an open discussion between students and the administration about the school's recent sexual abuse scandal, which has resulted in the departures of school President Graham Spanier and longtime football coach Joe Paterno. (AP Photo/John Beale)
Penn State President Rodney Erickson, left, responds to a question as Acting Executive Vice President and Provost Rob Pangborn, center, and Vice President for Student Affairs Damon Simons look on during a town hall forum organized by students at the university's main campus, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2011, in State College, Pa. The event served as an open discussion between students and the administration about the school's recent sexual abuse scandal, which has resulted in the departures of school President Graham Spanier and longtime football coach Joe Paterno. (AP Photo/John Beale)
Penn State President Rodney Erickson, right, gives his opening remarks as T.J. Bard, president of the University Park Undergraduate Association, and Peter Khoury, president of The Council of Commonwealth Student Governments, look on during a town hall forum organized by students at the university's main campus, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2011, in State College, Pa. The event served as an open discussion between students and the administration about the school's recent sexual abuse scandal, which has resulted in the departures of school President Graham Spanier and longtime football coach Joe Paterno. (AP Photo/John Beale)
Penn State administrators including President Rodney Erickson, far left, participate during a town hall forum organized by students at the university's main campus, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2011, in State College, Pa. The event served as an open discussion between students and the administration about the school's recent sexual abuse scandal, which has resulted in the departures of school President Graham Spanier and longtime football coach Joe Paterno. (AP Photo/John Beale)
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) ? Penn State University officials on Thursday said they will donate $1.5 million in bowl proceeds to a pair of sex-crime advocacy organizations in the wake of shocking sex-abuse allegations levied against a once-revered assistant football coach.
University President Rod Erickson promised the donation the morning after he and other administrators faced pointed questions at a student-organized town hall forum.
Erickson told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday that the Big Ten bowl revenue, which usually goes back to the athletic department, will go instead to the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape and the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.
"This presents an excellent opportunity for Penn State to raise the national visibility of this issue," Erickson said. "Our students and fans are focused on a cause to play for, to cheer for."
Also Thursday, Jerry Sandusky's lawyer said he has not discussed pleading guilty with his client and that the former coach continues to maintain he is innocent of the charges against him.
Joe Amendola said he would consider "possible alternatives" with Sandusky if new charges are filed that involve more victims than the eight boys covered by the 40 pending criminal counts, but that Sandusky has never considered a plea in his case. Sandusky, 67, is awaiting a preliminary hearing.
Amendola said the topic of a guilty plea came up as a "what-if" question from a reporter about potential additional charges.
"My answer to the 'what if' question was analogous to saying, if weather forecasters were predicting a blizzard next week, which they are not, I would have to at least consider the possibility of postponing my scheduled trip to Philadelphia," Amendola said in an email.
The Wednesday night forum on Penn State's main campus came on the heels of fresh sex abuse allegations against Sandusky, who was accused in a lawsuit of sexually abusing a young boy more than 100 times after meeting him through the charity the coach founded in the 1970s.
The state police commissioner has criticized school leaders for failing to do more to alert authorities to the allegations, and Erickson told about 450 attendees at a crowded auditorium at the student union building that ethics would be raised "to a new level so that everyone at the university understands not just the legal thing to do, but the moral thing to do, so that we learn to do the right thing the first time, every time."
Students appeared grateful to get answers more than three weeks after Sandusky was charged Nov. 5, hopeful it would aid in the arduous healing process.
"I think this is a good start for a lot of good things that can happen at the university," said student Andrew Comes, 21, following the two-hour forum. "It's a singularly bad event, but there can still be positive repercussions and good things happening from it."
Administrators sought to reassure students worried about the unintended ramifications of the scandal, such as the reputation of a Penn State degree.
After several questioners mentioned they felt shamed by the scandal, vice president Henry Foley, as part of an answer about the school's top three priorities, told students to focus on academics and to "recognize that none of you are guilty. ... You may feel shame, but none of you are guilty. Just keep doing what you came here to do."
The scandal has resulted in the departures of head coach Joe Paterno and university President Graham Spanier. Athletic Director Tim Curley has been placed on administrative leave, and Vice President Gary Schultz, who was in charge of the university's police department, has stepped down.
Schultz and Curley are charged with lying to the grand jury and failure to report to police. They also maintain their innocence and have a preliminary hearing later this month.
Erickson told reporters after the forum that Spanier was currently on sabbatical, and that as a tenured faculty member would have the right to teach if he so desired.
Several students also asked about the treatment of Paterno, who was the only school leader fired in the scandal's aftermath. Erickson said afterward he could not offer a detailed answer because it was the trustees' decision.
He reiterated there was no truth to Internet-fueled rumors that Paterno's statue outside Beaver Stadium would be removed, or that the Paterno name would be removed from the campus library for which the Paterno family has donated millions.
"At some appropriate time down the road, I'm sure there will be an opportunity to also reflect on the many years of service Joe and (wife Sue Paterno) provided the university and the many good things that they've done for Penn State," Erickson said, eliciting brief applause.
It seems Simon Cowell is at it again. According to some media rumors, he's thinking of making some changes on his judging panel forTheX Factor (Wednesdays and Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET, on Fox) once again. Back in May, when the show was only weeks into filming, Cowell swapped out British singer Cheryl Cole, 28, for Nicole Scherzinger, 33. This week, according to the U.K. tabloid, Now, he's considering trading Scherzinger for one of the British X Factor judges, R&B singer Kelly Rowland, 30. The two would simply switch places, with Scherzinger going to the British version, and Rowland joining the stateside one.
The latest update to iOS 5 is drawing near, folks, as the beta of version 5.1 was just released on Apple's developer site. You can grab the build if you're in possession of an iPhone 3GS or later, either iPad or the third and fourth generations of the iPod Touch. We're hoping to see some fixes to the battery life issues on the iPhone 4S, as the company has acknowledged the concern and promised a fix in the near future. Stay tuned as we learn more about the new refresh.
Update: A little digging has already revealed a new product ID contained in the update, referencing an "iPad 2,4". There's some speculation that this could be a reference to a tablet with a modem from Sprint built in, but even if that's the case, who knows if it would actually be released prior to the next generation iPad.
Update 2: More leaks! Now 9to5Mac is reporting on a new device, codenamed "J33", which it believes refers to a new model of the Apple TV box. Hit up the link for a few more well-reasoned rumors, we'll let you know if any more details surface.
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Public release date: 2-Dec-2011
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