Tag Archives: report
Fossils Found Underneath Freeway!
The remains of an Ice Age bison have been found underneath a freeway in the northern stretches of San Diego.
A paleontologist from the San Diego Natural History Museum found the massive set of bones in early April at the junction of State Route 76 and Interstate 15 near the community of Pala Mesa, where work crews have been making freeway improvements, according to a report in U-T San Diego.
The bison bones are the latest in a series of fossil finds during freeway construction in the region.
During the recent widening of Interstate 15 in the nearby area of Rancho Bernardo, paleontologists found much older remains dating back 45 million years, including: remains of a brontothere, an extinct mammal nicknamed the “thunder beast” and related to today’s rhinoceros; a flesh-eating hooved-animal; and an early lemur-like primate.
Construction over the past two years along nearby State Route 905 in Otay Mesa uncovered whale, dolphin and walrus fossils from 3.5 million years ago.
Back in 1992, crews working on State Route 54 in the south Greater San Diego area found fossilized ground sloths, a mastodon, a Dire wolf and a camel from about 200,000 years ago.
Extinct for the past 20,000 years, the Bison latifrons — a solitary animal that lived in coastal woodlands across North America — was an evoluntionary relative of the Plains bison, Thomas Demere, curator for the history museum’s paleontology department, told U-T San Diego. .
Adults of the discovered bison species stood up to eight feet tall at the shoulders, measured about 15 feet from tail to nose and weighed up to two tons, according to the museum, which added the animal found in North County is believed to have been a female.
“This is a time capsule that was preserved for at least one hundred thousand years until just last month,” Demere said during a press conference Monday. “It’s just as exciting as Christmas morning to us to see what’s inside.”
The recent discovery represents the most complete set of bison fossils ever.
Smartphones Outsell dumb phones!
It’s official — smartphones are now the most popular type of phone worldwide. The first quarter of 2013 marks the first time smartphones out-shipped feature phones.
The latest International Data Corporation report shows out of the 418.6 million mobile devices shipped worldwide, smartphones claim 216.2 million, or 51.6 percent, of the total. (Via The New York Times)
The smartphone market has been on the rise in the past year with a 41.6 percent improvement since the first quarter of 2012.
With these stats, MediaPost numbers the days of the simplistic feature phones, even in emerging markets where standard devices are typically more popular.
“This tipping point in the phone market shifts the center of power to those vendors that are most reliant on their smartphone lines.”
Though this may not come as much of a surprise to some, IDC Senior Research Analyst Kevin Restivo told ABC it marks a big shift in how people view their phones.
“Phone users want computers in their pockets … The days where phones are used primarily to make phone calls and send text messages are quickly fading away.” (Via ABC)
CNET notes clear upticks in shipments for each Top 5 mobile company with LG seeing the biggest increase at 110 percent.
So, which company can call itself the smartphone king?
The Los Angeles Times reports Samsung took a strong lead in the first quarter with 70.7 million smartphone shipments — that’s 32.7 percent of the smartphone market share for the quarter, dominating the next top company, Apple, at 17.3 percent.
In addition, GigaOm says Samsung’s throne on the smartphone hierarchy will likely remain unchallenged.
“Unless Samsung stumbles in a big way, it’s not likely that another Android handset maker will outsell Apple’s iPhone any time soon. For all intents and purposes, Samsung is the de facto Android standard, having built a huge audience with its line of Galaxy smartphones.”
Samsung is so dominant in the smartphone market, it shipped more smartphones than its four closest competitors combined.
New Suicide Alert System on Facebook
Stopping suicide. Facebook is teaming up with UK organization Samaritans to reach out to users contemplating suicide. The BBC explains why.
“I think Facebook is under increasing pressure as other social networks to be a bit more responsible for what happens on their site.”
“They are under pressure from regulators around the world, in particularly the UK, to do more to look after users. Particularly young and vulnerable people.”
Concerned Facebook friends can fill out a form to report alarming posts and status updates. Site monitors will then contact police or Samaritans volunteers to get help for those struggling — and one writer for TIME Techland is all in on the idea.
“I think this is a good thing even though it does invade on some privacy issues … Sure, some of these calls will be false alarms … but if Facebook’s intervention with the help of Samaritans makes even one person think twice about killing themselves, I’d call it a success.”
A writer for The Atlantic Wire thinks it’s a great idea for those in need — and for Facebook. itself.
“Mark Zuckerberg may be man of the year to some, but the company’s reputation has still taken a hit: aside from a negative film portrayal … Facebook’s once squeaky clean image has been blemished by its relation to a handful of suicides and bullying-related events.”
But ZDnet reports — in the company’s defense, its policy is to report imminent risk of bodily harm or death to authorities.
NDTV is raving about the new system — even if it’s in response to tragic events that have already occurred.
“The best part is that the report remains anonymous … Facebook is clearly trying to do its bit for the society even if it comes a little [too] late.”
Facebook ran a trial session for the new service and Samaritans said they received genuine reports and no hoaxes — but a writer for Yahoo! News has some concern over the program’s implementation.
“Unfortunately, the reporting form is difficult to find. Only after searching through the help center were we able to track it down.”
For now, Samaritans help is only available in the UK, but reports indicate Facebook is working to set up a similar program with organizations in the United States and encourages concerned users to call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
First Americans Return From Japan After Quake
Report by CNN
The powerful earthquake that unleashed a devastating tsunami Friday appears to have moved the main island of Japan by 8 feet (2.4 meters) and shifted the Earth on its axis.
“At this point, we know that one GPS station moved (8 feet), and we have seen a map from GSI (Geospatial Information Authority) in Japan showing the pattern of shift over a large area is consistent with about that much shift of the land mass,” said Kenneth Hudnut, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
Reports from the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Italy estimated the 8.9-magnitude quake shifted the planet on its axis by nearly 4 inches (10 centimeters).
The temblor, which struck Friday afternoon near the east coast of Japan, killed hundreds of people, caused the formation of 30-foot walls of water that swept across rice fields, engulfed entire towns, dragged houses onto highways, and tossed cars and boats like toys. Some waves reached six miles (10 kilometers) inland in Miyagi Prefecture on Japan’s east coast.
The quake was the most powerful to hit the island nation in recorded history and the tsunami it unleashed traveled across the Pacific Ocean, triggering tsunami warnings and alerts for 50 countries and territories as far away as the western coasts of Canada, the U.S. and Chile. The quake triggered more than 160 aftershocks in the first 24 hours — 141 measuring 5.0-magnitude or more.
The quake occurred as the Earth’s crust ruptured along an area about 250 miles (400 kilometers) long by 100 miles (160 kilometers) wide, as tectonic plates slipped more than 18 meters, said Shengzao Chen, a USGS geophysicist.
Japan is located along the Pacific “ring of fire,” an area of high seismic and volcanic activity stretching from New Zealand in the South Pacific up through Japan, across to Alaska and down the west coasts of North and South America. The quake was “hundreds of times larger” than the 2010 quake that ravaged Haiti, said Jim Gaherty of the LaMont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.
The Japanese quake was of similar strength to the 2004 earthquake in Indonesia that triggered a tsunami that killed over 200,000 people in more than a dozen countries around the Indian Ocean. “The tsunami that it sent out was roughly comparable in terms of size,” Gaherty said. “[The 2004 tsunami] happened to hit some regions that were not very prepared for tsunamis … we didn’t really have a very sophisticated tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean basin at the time so the damage was significantly worse.”
The Japanese quake comes just weeks after a 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck Christchurch on February 22, toppling historic buildings and killing more than 150 people. The timeframe of the two quakes have raised questions whether the two incidents are related, but experts say the distance between the two incidents makes that unlikely.
“I would think the connection is very slim,” said Prof. Stephan Grilli, ocean engineering professor at the University of Rhode Island.
Electrics Cars: Clean Energy?
BY MIRANDA WHEATLEY
When it comes to slowing down global warming and reducing our dependence on fossil fuels many believe electric cars could be a solution. However, a recent study released by Oxford University says that might not be the case.
Self-proclaimed ‘clean energy wonk’ William Pentland analyzed the study on his blog for Forbes.com, he wrote…
“Electric cars are not a silver bullet solution for global warming, but could they actually be part of the problem? In some developing countries, the answer is likely ‘yes’…”
Pentland’s post — and its dramatic headline — took off — reappearing on several sites including…
Red Dog Report, Australian Climate Madness, and Fox Nation.
But a contributing writer for National Geographic says the headline is misleading.
“Holy Turnaround, Batman. Does That Mean We Should Stick With Our Gasoline-Sucking Mobiles? No. First off, Pentland downplays the authors’ finding that despite the higher carbon intensity of China’s and India’s electricity, only in some scenarios do petroleum-powered vehicles emit less CO2 than their electric-powered equivalents.”
The actual study compared the emissions of traditional internal combustion engines to battery electric vehicles of similar models in several different countries.
The researchers found that in countries with high carbon dioxide emissions such as China and India — it all comes down to the source of the electricity. If it’s not a clean source charging the vehicle — like coal-powered electricity — emissions will be higher. The United States came in slightly better — and France — who gets nearly 80% of its power from nuclear energy — came in on top. (Science Direct)
The study completed by Oxford University only looked at electric vehicles, not hybrids and compared vehicles of roughly the same size and power. A different study recently released by MIT suggests hybrid vehicles have slightly lower emissions than electric. To see more of that study, visit the link in our transcript section.
Oxford study
MIT study
Get more multisource science video news analysis from Newsy.
Transcript by Newsy.
What If Google Presses The “Off” Button?
The above video is an example I was made aware of, where an apparent censoring of specific keywords were disabled.
Google, they hold so much power its beyond most of our understanding, although I and most of us use it everyday, in all honesty it is as critical to me as my central heating.
Not only is it on par with living utilities, it is more important that I can access Google than it is for me to have my coffee in the morning.
The biggest disaster that could happen for me is not as simple as the internet going down, or Google’s servers, it is far worse if I search Google for something that I know exists and it does not show up in the results.
A couple of years back I was fascinated and drawn to studying UFOs and general off-planet activities, to cut a long story short, I eventually got some interesting connections and YouTube subscriptions. At a certain string of mornings I would wake up and watch a video posted a few minutes ago, it would typically be a foreign news report on a UFO sighting, caught by camera.
Now, you had to be extremely quick back then to actually view the best videos because after about 10 minutes, it would not be available. Utterly unobtainable.
I tried everything. I searched YouTube for exact information, I contacted the accounts involved in posting, only to get a very simple and concise note, for example “it happens a lot, we get our videos censored constantly”.
At first my reaction was of shock! “WHAT!??” If the world knew about this, there would be an ocean of raised fists, demanding our free, uncensored internet.
After that whole time, deep in a world of private research, I put it all to rest with one thought, “censoring videos of UFO sightings is one thing, but when critical news becomes unobtainable and I can’t back up my information with a reliable source, it’s time to start speaking about it”.
I would simply ask you all to keep your senses sober and alert, when Google begins to block search results for you, that would be a good time to remember this article you are reading.
My guidelines for this eventuality is as follows.
Tell anyone who will believe you!
Replace Google with your mind, it’s all we ever needed!
Facebook Down???
Reports are coming in from all over the world that facebook is down, a report to CNN states:
– Facebook was down for many users for the second day in a row on Thursday.
A Facebook spokeswoman says Thursday’s issue is not related to the issue on Wednesday that shut or slowed down the site.
“We’re currently experiencing some site issues causing Facebook to be slow or unavailable for some users,” a spokeswoman said in an e-mail. “We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.”
She said the issue was not related to the one from Wednesday, when problems with a third-party network provider shut the site down, or slowed it badly, for several hours.
With more than 500 million users, Facebook is the world’s largest social-networking site.
On Facebook’s blog for developers, a post said the site was “experiencing latency issues,” or a time delay, with its platform. But some tech observers speculated that the delay on the developers’ platform was unlikely to be the entire cause of the problem.
As usual, Facebook’s outage led thousands of social networkers to Twitter to, well … talk about Facebook.
“Somebody needs to fix Facebook ASAP,” wrote Gizmodo blogger Rosa Golijan on her Twitter feed. “I don’t like having to tweet to show that I ‘like’ all the stories about it being down.”
Several sarcastic Twitter users bemoaned the fate of the undernourished virtual plants and animals of FarmVille, while others (presumably with a degree of self-awareness) remarked on the ramifications of the outage.
“OPB BREAKING NEWS: Facebook is down,” read a message on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s feed. “Worker productivity rises. U.S. climbs out of recession.”
- Facebook was down for users Thursday, the second day in a row
- Spokeswoman says the problem isn’t related to a similar outage on Wednesday
- Users flock to Twitter … to talk about Facebook
News source Doug Gross, CNN
Just today in the UK, Facebook seemed to be working just fine as many users communicated and played their social network games, but at about 21:45 GMT, reports started to come in that people were unable to log in and in fact the site was down altogether. I myself tried logging into my account just to see if the reports were true.
Update: it is now 23:10 and it seems facebook is up and running just fine, so hopefully all the issues are now sorted.
