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Friday, October 25, 2013

Angel or demon: Can a potentially invasive plant bring a positive influence to a region?

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

25-Oct-2013

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Contact: Simon Hodge
simon.hodge@lincoln.ac.nz
Pensoft Publishers

Relationship between the bee Braunsapis puangensis and the invasive creeping daisy could be beneficial to crops and biodiversity in Fiji

Can invasive species be beneficial for the region? A recent study, published in the open access Journal of Hymenoptera Research, aimed to obtain empirical data on the activity and distribution of the bee species Braunsapis puangensis in the Suva area of Fiji and examine its association with the invasive creeping daisy Sphagneticola trilobata. The paper suggests that the invasive creeping daisy could in fact have a positive influence on a wild bee pollinator species, thus benefitting crops and biodiversity on the islands.

A recent survey by Mr Abhineshwar Prasad of The University of the South Pacific, reported over 100 species of arthropods associated with road side patches of S. trilobata, including Hymenoptera such as parasitoid wasps, honey bees and solitary bees. One species of solitary bee, Braunsapis puangensis was locally abundant on patches of S. trilobata in the Laucala Bay area of Suva. This bee species is probably of Indian origin and was most likely carried to Fiji by anthropogenic means.

"There is growing concern regarding the global decline of honey bee populations and the implications of this demise for the pollination of crops. In the future we may rely on other insect species to perform crop pollination services, including naturally-occurring native or introduced species of bees," comments one of the authors of the paper, Dr Simon Hodge from Lincoln University in New Zealand. "Pollination success of generalist plants tends to be positively related to pollinator diversity, so any habitat modifications that increase the number of pollinating species present at a site would tend to be of some inherent value."

The situations described above give the impression that the presence of some exotic flowering plants may be of benefit by encouraging higher numbers of pollinating species to occur at a site. Outside of agro-ecological systems, many studies have indicated that even flowering plants considered as invasive may have positive effects on insects, especially on nectar and pollen feeding species.

"Our study suggests it is important to realize that although S. trilobata is considered an invasive 'nuisance weed' in one context, it may be of value to crop growers, and commercial honey producers, by attracting and augmenting local populations of pollinating insects", explains Dr Hodge.

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Summary:

Prasad AV, Hodge S (2013) Factors influencing the foraging activity of the allodapine bee Braunsapis puangensis on creeping daisy (Sphagneticola trilobata) in Fiji. Journal of Hymenoptera Research 35: 56. doi: 10.3897/JHR.35.6006

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Angel or demon: Can a potentially invasive plant bring a positive influence to a region?

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

25-Oct-2013

[

| E-mail

]

Contact: Simon Hodge
simon.hodge@lincoln.ac.nz
Pensoft Publishers

Relationship between the bee Braunsapis puangensis and the invasive creeping daisy could be beneficial to crops and biodiversity in Fiji

###

Summary:

[

| 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.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-10/pp-aod102513.php
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Police seek car seen going on Philly museum steps

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Police on Friday were looking for the driver of a convertible seen driving down the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps made famous in the movie "Rocky."

Several people posted online videos showing the car slowly making its way down the long, wide outdoor staircase in fits and starts at about midnight Thursday. The car then speeds off.

A photographer who calls himself HughE Dillon and who runs the local entertainment website PhillyChitChat.com posted one of the videos. Dillon said he lives nearby and happened upon the stunt.

Officer Christine O'Brien, a police spokeswoman, said the case was "being investigated for damage to property ... and for all other aspects."

She said no officer witnessed the episode, but added that the recording appears to be legitimate and investigators were "watching the video on YouTube that everyone has seen."

Police earlier told reporters they also planned to review surveillance video to try to find the car and its driver, who could face citations for reckless driving and driving on the sidewalk, among others.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/police-seek-car-seen-going-philly-museum-steps-164401014.html
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Democrats want 'Obamacare' deadlines moved back

WASHINGTON (AP) — After uniting against Republican efforts earlier this month to delay President Barack Obama's health care law, a growing number Democrats in Congress now want to extend the enrollment deadline, and one senator wants to delay the penalty for not complying.

Six Senate Democrats up for re-election next year have proposed delaying the new March 31 deadline for applying for coverage while the program's problems are ironed out. A seventh, West Virginia's Joe Manchin, is co-authoring a bill to postpone the $95 penalty for people who fail to meet the deadline for acquiring insurance.

While their proposals are short on details, all argue that it's not fair to hold millions of Americans accountable for buying insurance when the primary instrument for enrollment — the HealthCare.gov website — has prevented many people from doing it.

Even the law's biggest boosters are aggravated that enrollment process for the national health care law they had hoped to tout on the 2014 campaign trail has gotten off to such a bad start.

"If we want this law to work, we've got to make it right, we've got to fix it," Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., one of the law's leading authors, said at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing Thursday on the sign-up problems.

Contractors for the health insurance website told the committee the government failed to thoroughly test the complex enrollment system before its Oct. 1 launch. The system crashed as soon as consumers tried to use it. A web of confusing deadlines and penalties for not obtaining health insurance persists.

As Democrats began to fret about the political consequences ahead of the 2014 midterm elections, the administration late Wednesday said it was granting what amounts to a six-week filing extension. The March 31 deadline for having insurance became the new deadline for applying for it.

But that's not enough for a growing number of Senate Democrats.

Manchin is teaming with Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., on a bill that would waive for one year the $95 penalty for not enrolling in the program.

"It should be a transition year. For one year, there should be no fines," Manchin said Wednesday on Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor."

The six Senate Democrats seeking re-election next year urged the Obama administration to postpone the March 31 deadline.

"As you continue to fix problems with the website and the enrollment process, it is critical that the administration be open to modifications that provide greater flexibility for the American people seeking to access health insurance," Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., wrote to Obama on Tuesday. Extending the open enrollment period and clarifying other parts of the law, she added, "would be a great start."

Also supporting Shaheen's effort are Democratic Sens. Tom Udall of New Mexico, Mark Begich of Alaska, Mark Udall of Colorado, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Kay Hagan of North Carolina, aides to the lawmakers said.

"I am asking the administration to extend the open enrollment period by two months, and waive the penalty for the individual mandate for the same period of time, to make up for time that is being lost while the website for the federal exchange is not functioning," Hagan said Thursday.

All of the Senate Democrats earlier this month joined in rejecting legislation passed by the House to delay for a year the law's requirement that people buy health insurance as well as the tax subsidies for helping them do it, as a condition for ending the partial government shutdown.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-10-24-US-Health-Overhaul-Democrats/id-8b3143cc38d24529badadd2c23c5ac0b
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AP sources: foreign help to US could be exposed

FILE - In this June 9, 2013, file photo provided by The Guardian Newspaper in London shows Edward Snowden, who worked as a contract employee at the National Security Agency, in Hong Kong. Two Western diplomats say U.S. officials have briefed them on documents obtained by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that might expose the intelligence operations of their respective countries. (AP Photo/The Guardian, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two Western diplomats say U.S. officials have briefed them on documents obtained by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that might expose the intelligence operations of their respective countries and their level of cooperation with the U.S.

Word of the briefings by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence comes amid questions swirling around overseas surveillance by the National Security Agency, which has angered allies on two continents and caused concern domestically over the scope of the intelligence-gathering.

The two Western diplomats said officials from ODNI have continued to brief them regularly on what documents the director of national intelligence believes Snowden obtained.

The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the intelligence briefings publicly.

The Washington Post, which first reported on the matter Thursday evening, said some of the documents Snowden took contain sensitive material about collection programs against adversaries such as Iran, Russia and China. Some refer to operations that in some cases involve countries not publicly allied with the United States.

The Post said the process of informing officials about the risk of disclosure is delicate because in some cases, one part of the cooperating government may know about the collaboration, but others may not.

National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said the U.S. takes the concerns of the international community seriously "and has been regularly consulting with affected partners." She declined to comment on diplomatic discussions.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-10-25-US-NSA-Foreign-Countries/id-4cea27c9d4264ce1aa8ce5520e2ef8c8
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Debugging the Healthcare.gov Hearings

a hearing on implementation of the Affordable Care Act before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. — From left to right, CGI Federal's Cheryl Campbell, Optum/QSSI's Andrew Slavitt, Equifax Workforce Solutions' Lynn Spellecy, and Serco's John Lau are sworn in during a hearing on implementation of the Affordable Care Act before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Oct. 24, 2013.

At Thursday’s House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on healthcare.gov, Cheryl Campbell of CGI Federal and Andrew Slavitt of Optum/QSSI provided few useful details about the site’s architecture or problems. Nor would they take much responsibility for the failure of the system. But there was one line of questioning they had no trouble answering. When Bill Cassidy, R-La., asked how much they’d been paid in their contracts, Campbell immediately gave a detailed rundown: CGI Federal, lead contractor on healthcare.gov, has received $112 million for this year, $196 million for this phase of the contract, and a Total Contract Value (TCV) of $293 million. Slavitt of QSSI, which built healthcare.gov’s data services hub, likewise gave his answer—$85 million—without hesitation.

Campbell and Slavitt, a senior vice president and an executive vice president, respectively, are not techies; they are not project managers. Their expertise is in extracting as much money as possible from the government in procurement contracts, and judging by the numbers, they are very good at it.

But if you place these kinds of managers on the critical communication chain of a software project, you immediately endanger its success. Project quality is sacrificed for the sake of appearances—meeting the letter of the contract with indifference toward the actual practical outcome. Even if you put “the best and the brightest” (to borrow the administration’s own phrase) on a project, the mere presence of such managers can make it impossible to do good work, because the lines of communication will be broken.

In terms of tech jobs I’d never want to have, I’d estimate that programming for a CGI-like contractor would be better than being a World of Warcraft gold farmer in China, but worse than working for Pax Dickinson. Campbell and Slavitt made many gaffes that would ensure that any programmer with common sense would never work under them. Let me debug their testimony a bit.

When asked about QSSI’s testimony at a Sept. 10 hearing that everything was fine and dandy, Slavitt replied, “We mentioned the data services hub would be ready. It indeed was ready.” Alas, minutes earlier, Slavitt had said, “We absolutely take accountability for those first days when our tool was part of the issue in terms of the volume. Today the data services hub and the EIDM tool”—the registration and access management tool—“are performing well.” In other words, it was “ready,” but it wasn’t ready—because Slavitt is defining “readiness” not in terms of the product actually working, but in terms of meeting contract demands. They handed something off and ticked all the boxes, so what’s the problem? This attitude goes some ways toward explaining the last few weeks.

There was a lot of talk Thursday about end-to-end testing. Slavitt and Campbell both claimed they weren’t responsible for it. As Bill Johnson, R-Ohio, pointed out, the Pre-Operational Readiness Review in their contracts “required end-to-end testing results.” Campbell declared, “We have not been the systems integrator and we have never been the systems integrator.” Campbell saying it doesn’t make it so—CGI clearly was in charge of integration.

Campbell’s stonewalling on this point became embarrassing. When CGI Federal said it owned the front-end, Campbell explained, it meant that the company owned the front of a building but not the front door—which, by the way, was broken, which was all QSSI’s fault. Slavitt unhelpfully added, “I think the front door is a bit of a term of art. We supply a tool.”

Let me explain how end-to-end testing works in integrating large systems owned by multiple vendors. Each vendor works out detailed specifications for how the systems should interact. These are made as clear as possible so that when something goes wrong—and it always does—you can point to the spec and say, “You weren’t supposed to do that and that’s why our component appeared to misbehave.” In order to meet the specs, each vendor simulates end-to-end testing by building a prototype of the larger system.

In the case of healthcare.gov, QSSI should have had test scaffolding that could simulate the functionality of what CGI Federal was building, and vice versa. Each vendor needed to know the broad definition of what the other was building, and it was their responsibility to make sure they knew it. Campbell and Slavitt’s refusal to acknowledge this basic fact is both frightening and mortifying, and accounts for their inability to give any clear answers as to exactly which portions of the system are failing. They don’t seem to understand the difference between acceptable and unacceptable bugs, and worse, they don’t seem to know that there is a difference.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2013/10/healthcare_gov_problems_house_committee_hearing_is_a_spectacle_of_tech_illiteracy.html
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Town mourns after teen charged in teacher's death

Candles and teddy bears are placed at Danvers High School prior to a candlelight vigil to mourn the death of Colleen Ritzer, a 24-year-old math teacher at Danvers High School on Wednesday, Oct 23, 2013, in Danvers, Mass. Ritzer was found slain in woods behind the high school, and Danvers High School student Philip Chism, 14, who was found walking along a state highway overnight was charged with killing her. (AP Photo/ Bizuayehu Tesfaye)

DANVERS, Mass. (AP) — Grief counselors are meeting with students at the Massachusetts high school where authorities say a popular teacher was killed by a 14-year-old student in one of her math classes.

Classes won't resume until Friday at Danvers High School, where 24-year-old Colleen Ritzer was described as a caring teacher who would stand outside her classroom and say hello to even students she didn't teach.

Grief counselors will be available for several hours Thursday. Authorities have charged student Philip Chism with the crime that has shaken this middle-class community 20 miles north of Boston. Ritzer's body was found behind the school Wednesday.

Officials haven't released a cause of death or discussed a motive in the killing.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/town-mourns-teen-charged-teachers-death-114910061.html
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Amazon Q3 2013 earnings are out - $17.09 billion in sales, operating loss of $25 million

Jeff Bezos

Still seeing net losses despite huge sales numbers; no Kindle Fire sales figures given

Amazon has just posted its Q3 2013 earnings report, and the line seems to follow much the same trend as previous quarters. While the retail and online service giant posted a massive $17.09 billion in sales, up 24 percent year-over-year, it still posted an operating loss of $25 million (net loss of $41 million) for the quarter. That loss is improved from an operating loss of $28 million in the same quarter last year, and Amazon claims $7 million of that loss was due to negative foreign exchange impact, but losses are still never good to see.

As is the case every quarter, Amazon chose not to break out any sales figures of its Kindle Fire tablets, although it did take a moment to remind everyone that it has launched three new models and is offering a great experience with the Mayday button: "average Mayday response times are just 11 seconds!” said CEO Jeff Bezos.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/DHN4wpDF6SE/story01.htm
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