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Sunday, July 28, 2013
Beach Rentals Mexico for the Perfect Holiday
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India Readies Aircraft Carrier For Aug. 12 Launch
Indian government officials recently told journalists that the first vessel of the country?s Indigenous Aircraft Carrier (IAC) program would be launched Aug. 12. The 45,000-ton, 284-metre INS Vikrant, currently under construction at the Cochin shipyard, is expected to enter sea trials ten months after launch, and would be ready for operational service after another five years, according to a report in Aviation Week. The ship had originally been slated for full operations by 2014, though difficulties with steel supplies and the ship?s gearbox have delayed this until 2018. Aviation Week reports that India?s other aircraft carrier, the 45,000-ton, 262-meter-long INS Vikramaditya, formerly the Russian Kiev-class Admiral Gorshkov, is undergoing trials and will soon join the current sole carrier, the aging INS Viraat, which is approaching retirement. Vikrant is designed as a conventionally-powered short-takeoff but arrested recovery (STOBAR) carrier. Construction of the next ship in the IAC program, INS Vishal, has been delayed, but plans suggest it will weigh-in at 65,000-tons, with a catapult-assisted takeoff, barrier arrested recovery (CATOBAR) configuration.
Source: http://blogs.ottawacitizen.com/2013/07/27/india-readies-aircraft-carrier-for-aug-12-launch/
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Saturday, July 27, 2013
How Much Porn Does the U.K. Porn Ban Ban if Doesn't Just Ban Porn?
The U.K porn ban includes more than just porn, according to participating ISP providers that spoke with the Open Rights Group. In addition to the opt-in requirement for porn, ISPs will also automatically ban a slew of other content areas that have nothing to do with porn. TalkTalk, one of the ISPs praised by Prime Minister David Cameron for its "great leadership" in implementing the Homesafe program, has a screen like this, with all of those boxes checked. Note the inclusion of less porny site-types like social networking and dating.?
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Other services will have something similar, with "the precise pre-ticked options may vary from service to service," according to Open Rights Group. Since people generally stick with default options, the set-up encourages people to "sleepwalk into censorship," says the Open Rights Group.?
RELATED: Why Is Tumblr Censoring #Gay Searches?
To make matters worse TalkTalk's Homesafe?is run by Huawei,?the controversial Chinese tech company with significant ties to the Chinese government. The partnership has some free-speech groups worried that all of the censorship decisions are going through a foreign government that also happens to have a penchant for suppressing free speech. Both Huawai and TalkTalk employees can decide what websites end up on the blacklists, a cause for concern. "It needs to be run by an organization accountable to a minister so it can be challenged in Parliament,"?Dr Martyn Thomas, chair of the IT policy panel at the Institution of Engineering and Technology, told the BBC.?
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Prime Minister Cameron has given the ISPs the option to choose who runs the program, and has promised monitoring to ensure that the filtering is done right. But, really, how will anyone know? "There's certainly a concern about the process of how a web address gets added to a blacklist ? who knows about it, and who has an opportunity to appeal against it," added Thomas.?
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/much-porn-does-u-k-porn-ban-ban-155330234.html
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Utah football: Pac-12 commissioner Scott talks NCAA reform
Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott talks to the media during the NCAA college football Pac-12 Media Day on Friday, July 26, 2013, in Culver City, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
College football ? Scott believes $2,000 stipend should be part of upgraded scholarship rules.
Culver City, Calif. ? Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott sided with other major conference commissioners in acknowledging changes must be made in how business is conducted in college football, but he stopped short of saying the "Big Five" conferences should totally divorce themselves from the NCAA?s current system.
"At the end of the day, a lot of people thought realignment would be the end of the world and then the music stopped and it didn?t look that much different," he said. "I think this is going to be one of those deals."
Scott?s remarks came during the Pac-12 media day at the Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, Calif.
The scenario in which the Pac-12, SEC, ACC, Big 12 and Big Ten could break away and form their own super league outside of the governing hands of the NCAA sounds like a made-for-the-movies drama, but Scott believes a solution can be made without deconstructing the NCAA.
The sticking point for the big five leagues is a desire to give athletes a $2,000 stipend to help cover the cost of college attendance.
Schools in the smaller conferences have shot down the idea because they say they can?t afford it. However, Scott said he doesn?t like the idea of the smaller schools dictating what the bigger conferences do.
"Conferences like ours, with the amount of money we have coming in, we ought to update and revise how we do things," he said. "I don?t think student-athletes should be paid, but the scholarship rules haven?t changed since the 1970s and that is wrong. There has been a lot of change to college football since then and we have the means to take care of the student-athletes. It is the right thing to do."
Some fear the widening gap between the bigger conferences and the Mountain West, American Athletic Conference, Sun Belt, Mid-American and Conference USA could eventually lead to a time when the Big Five play each other exclusively.
While Scott acknowledged there likely will be fewer games against teams from the Football Championship Subdivision as the strength of schedule becomes more important in the future, he doesn?t think there will be as much of an "us versus them" scenario as some imagine.
"I don?t see any scenario in the next few years where we are only playing amongst the five," he said. "I don?t think that would be healthy. I do think we need more autonomy and more control over the structure of how decisions are made."
story continues below
Copyright 2013 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Source: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/utes/56648866-89/scott-ncaa-pac-football.html.csp
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Friday, July 26, 2013
Endangered Plants for Sale Online: Are They Legal?
A young Pritchardia remota plant.
Did you know that it is often legal to buy and sell endangered species of plants through the mail? It?s true. Take, for example, the rare Hawaiian palm tree Pritchardia remota, one of several species collectively known as lou?lu. The tree, like many in its genus, is listed as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA), but right now there are several for sale on eBay. If those sellers have the right permit, then their sales are both legal and within the goals and scopes of the Endangered Species Act. Unfortunately, new research finds that the commercial trade of endangered plant species rarely lives up to law.
Plant sales and private cultivation are actually encouraged under the ESA, which recognizes that commercial propagation is often essential to the survival of listed species. Individuals can collect endangered plants from the wild (as long as they don?t do it from federal land), raise them and sell either whole plants or seeds. The ESA does have one requirement: sellers must apply for a $100 permit (pdf) from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) if plants are sold across state lines.
But the first in-depth study of online plant sales has found that many if not most sellers appear to lack this essential permit. The study?conducted by researchers at University of Notre Dame and published May 28 in Conservation Letters?found 49 federally listed plant species for sale on the Internet on eBay and other sites. The researchers, who conducted their searches between October 2009 and January 2011, then compared the listings with permit notices published in the Federal Register. They found that only four sellers, two of which were conservation organizations, had obtained the necessary interstate commerce permits. The remaining sellers all appeared to lack the permit.
Lead researcher Patrick Shirey, a Ph.D. candidate at Notre Dame?s Department of Biological Sciences, first observed this phenomenon while working on an earlier paper about human-assisted colonization of threatened plants under the ESA, which was published in Conservation Letters in December 2009. When researching that paper, he says, ?we noticed that the sellers of Tennessee coneflower and Virginia roundleaf birch didn?t advertise the required permit when offering plants for sale. We wanted to know if commercial trade was common for other listed plants.?
The researchers studied hundreds of plant species, including 753 on the ESA and dozens more that are protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). While many of the plants offered for sale were obviously from cultivated populations, they did observe many species that have been threatened by over-collecting from wild populations. They did not track actual completed financial transactions, only plants offered for sale, nor did they look at sales that did not cross state borders, which would not have required the ESA permit. (Each state has its own laws regarding what plants can and can?t be sold within its borders.)
Shirey and his researchers wrote that collaboration between federal agencies, nurseries and individual plant collectors could help to preserve rare species, but it may require more regulation than exists today. ?I would like to see more collaboration between public and private interests for the benefit of these endangered species,? Shirey says. He points to Australia?s critically endangered Wollemi pine (Wollemia nobilis) as a good example. The tree has fewer than 100 individuals left in the wild, but botanical gardens have propagated it worldwide, and some of the money raised from selling the plants goes into conserving the wild population. A similar program could work, he suggests, with the ESA-listed star cactus (Astrophytum asterias). ?Sales of cultivated star cactus are common? ? with and without FWS permits ? ?but profits do not support wild populations like the sales of Wollemi pine.? Meanwhile, the federal government spent more than $64,000 in fiscal year 2011 (pdf) to study and protect the star cactus in the wild.
Shirey and his fellow researchers indicate that private cultivation of endangered plants does more good than harm, and he points out that buyers who are aware of this issue should be able to tell if an online seller has the correct permit. ?The few sellers that have the permit advertise on their website or with the listing that they do so. For example, Sunlight Gardens sells the threatened Cumberland rosemary (Conradina verticillata), and they give their FWS permit number with the listing. They also send a photocopy of their FWS permit with their order.?
Gavin Shire, public affairs specialist with FWS, told me how important individuals are to plant conservation. ?Some 75 percent of endangered and threatened plant species occur to some extent on private lands, and so their conservation can be significantly affected by activities in those habitats. Private landowners and other citizens can have a positive impact on rare plant conservation, and we encourage them to contact their local Fish and Wildlife Service office, and their State Natural Heritage Program to learn more about what they can do to help.?
As for the sellers operating without permits, they might want to think about spending that $100 to get their affairs in order. Anyone convicted of selling endangered plants without the right permits could face a maximum of one year in prison and a $50,000 fine.
Oh, and by the way, I asked one of the eBay sellers currently selling Pritchardia remota plants if they had the FWS permit. I still await a reply.
Photo: A young Pritchardia remota plant photographed by Forest and Kim Starr, Starr Environmental, via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons license
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/~r/sciam/basic-science/~3/X2rM4Ygw0_8/post.cfm
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