Fuerteventura, Maxorata, Canary Islands - Spain Travel Channel
Fuerteventura Maxorata http://www.myvideomdia.com English see below Fuerteventura ist die zweitgrte Insel der Kanaren und zugleich die lteste. Das Klima a...
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Fuerteventura, Jandia, Canary Islands - Spain Travel Channel
Fuerteventura Jandia http://www.myvideomedia.com English see below Puerto del Rosario ist die Hauptstadt der kanarischen Insel Fuerteventura. Wir besuchen da...
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Japan is seeking to nationalize 280 remote islands in a move aimed at strengthening the country's territorial boundaries.
Japanese government officials say nationalizing the islands is intended to clarify the governments protection of its territories and reinforce its management of marine resources and national security, The Japan News reported.
Registering [remote islands] as Japans national assets would send a message that we intend to strengthen management of them Ichita Yamamoto, Japans state minister for oceanic police and territorial issues, said.
The government must accurately grasp the state of these remote islands, Yamamoto said, according to the report.
The move may heighten already strained tensions between Tokyo, China and South Korea, who are currently engaged in territorial disputes over ownership of unclaimed islands in the East China Sea, Reuters reported.
We believe that Japans actions in marine areas should follow international law, and should not harm the interest of other countries or the international community, said Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman of Chinas foreign ministry, according to Reuters.
Earlier in the week, Japan's Cabinet adopted a national security strategy and revised defense plans that increased defense spending and calls for a larger role in maintaining international stability.
The program includes acquisition of surveillance drones, anti-missile destroyers and other equipment as the country's defense priorities shift to focus on its dispute with China over uninhabited islands.
The revised defense plans are based on the new national security strategy that reflects Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's drive to raise the profile of Japan's military and for the country to play a bigger international role.
Experts say the strategy and the defense plans are in line with power shift that has been continuing for several years. But Japan's neighbors and some Japanese citizens worry that the guidelines push the country away from its pacifist constitution.
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ABC Satellite image of Cyclone Ian as of 12:00pm Tongan local time, January 9.
Tonga's northern islands are bracing for the arrival of a powerful tropical cyclone which is forecast to bring hurricane force winds.
Tropical Cyclone Ian is currently packing average winds of 100 kilometres per hour with gusts of up to 140 kilometres per hour.
It's currently a Category Four system located about 300 kilometres north west of Vava'u and is moving south east at about five kilometres per hour.
Ian is expected to remain a Category Four storm for the next 24 hours and then weaken before leaving Tonga late Sunday.
Forecaster Shalwin Singh from the Fiji Meteorological Service says Tonga's northern islands will feel the brunt of Ian's fury.
"As the storm tracks south eastwards, we expect the Vava'u Group and the Ha'apai Group to be the worst affected, they will encounter the severe hurricane force winds," he said.
"It is a severe tropical cyclone now and close to its centre we expect the average winds to be up to 90 knots and that is quite significant.
"We expect hurricane force winds - that is above 65 knots - to be within 20 nautical miles of the centre.
Ian is expected to brush below Niuafo'ou, Tonga's most northerly island, in the Niua group.
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ABC Satellite view of Severe Tropical Cyclone Ian approaching Tonga
Tonga's northern islands are bracing for the arrival of a powerful tropical cyclone which is forecast to bring hurricane force winds.
Tropical Cyclone Ian is currently packing average winds of 100 kilometres per hour with gusts of up to 140 kilometres per hour.
It's currently a Category Four system located about 300 kilometres north west of Vava'u and is moving south east at about five kilometres per hour.
Ian is expected to remain a Category Four storm for the next 24 hours and then weaken before leaving Tonga late Sunday.
Forecaster Shalwin Singh from the Fiji Meteorological Service says Tonga's northern islands will feel the brunt of Ian's fury.
"As the storm tracks south eastwards, we expect the Vava'u Group and the Ha'apai Group to be the worst affected, they will encounter the severe hurricane force winds," he said.
"It is a severe tropical cyclone now and close to its centre we expect the average winds to be up to 90 knots and that is quite significant.
"We expect hurricane force winds - that is above 65 knots - to be within 20 nautical miles of the centre.
Ian is expected to brush below Niuafo'ou, Tonga's most northerly island, in the Niua group.
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Tonga's Vava'u and Ha'apai islands brace for hurricane force winds from Tropical Cyclone Ian
Bank of the Philippine Islands, the nations third-largest lender by assets, fell to a three-week low in Manila stock trading after pricing a 25 billion peso ($559 million) rights offer at a 22 percent discount.
BPI, as the lender is known, slumped 2.2 percent to 84.30 pesos at the close of trading, the lowest level since Dec. 20. The bank will sell up to 370.4 million new shares at 67.50 pesos a share, it said in an exchange filing today, compared with its closing price of 86.15 pesos yesterday.
Proceeds from the offering will help expand lending and operations, and strengthen capital under stricter Basel III requirements, BPI said in a Nov. 6 filing. Bigger rival BDO Unibank Inc. raised the equivalent of $1 billion from a rights offer in June 2012.
Philippine National Bank (PNB) shares sank 3.1 percent to 80.9 pesos, the biggest drop since Nov. 22. The bank priced its own rights offer at 71 pesos, it said in a separate disclosure, a 15 percent discount to its close yesterday.
Philippine National will offer 162.9 million new shares starting on Jan. 27, with stockholders entitled to 15 new shares for 100 shares held, according to the disclosure. BPI will sell its shares from Jan. 20 with an entitlement ratio of one share for every 9.6 held by stockholders, it said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Norman P. Aquino in Manila at naquino1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Clarissa Batino at cbatino@bloomberg.net
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Bank of Philippine Islands Slumps on Rights Offer: Manila Mover
BATAM (Riau Islands): Indonesian water patrol police have nabbed 61 Vietnamese crew for poaching using trawlers in Riau Islands waters, Indonesias news agency Antarareported.
Commander of Water Patrol Boat Bisma 8001 Adjunct Senior Commissioner Sigit N Hidayat said yesterday the crew members were detained on Jan 4 along with four boats and three tonnes of fish at two separate locations around 15 miles off Jemaja Isle, Anambas District.
The loss from fish that has been caught amounts to hundreds of millions, but the environmental damage caused by the trawlers is even worse, Sigit said.
The Vietnamese crew had earlier applied for permits to fish in the Riau Islands waters at the Batam maritime affairs and fisheries office but their request was turned down.
The group went ahead to poach fish in Riau Islands on their way back to Vietnam.
The Vietnamese boats were reportedly spotted poaching regularly in Indonesian waters since last September.
In July last year, four Thai fishing boats were caught fishing illegally in the seas off eastern Aceh by Indonesian maritime authorities.
A total of 36 crew including 8 Thai and 28 Myanmar nationals were detained. Bernama
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Weekly News Digest January 2, 2014 In addition to this week's NewsBreak(s), the editors have compiled the Weekly News Digest, featuring stories from the week just past that you should know about. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today.
CLICK HERE to view all of this week's Weekly News Digest items.
Nature Publishing Group Announces OA Journal
Human Genome Variation, the sixth journal collaboration between NPG and JSHG, is a sister title of JSHGs Journal of Human Genetics. Katsushi Tokunaga, a professor at the University of Tokyo, will serve as editor-in-chief. The journal will feature original research articles, summaries, reviews, and data reports. Its audience is human genetics researchers and clinical geneticists.
The journal will provide a forum for scientists working in human genetics, variation and mutation to publish their discoveries, results, analysis and insights, says Dugald McGlashan, publisher of NPGs Asia-Pacific academic journals.
Authors may choose which Creative Commons license to apply to their research articles, which will be OA on publication.
NPG and JSHG will also develop a searchable database sourced from the journals data reports that includes content on genomic variation and variability.
Source: Nature Publishing Group
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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
9-Jan-2014
Contact: Aileen Sheehy press.office@sanger.ac.uk 44-012-234-92368 Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
Contrary to a common belief, researchers have shown that genetic regions associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes were unlikely to have been beneficial to people at stages through human evolution.
Type 2 diabetes is responsible for more than three million deaths each year and this number is increasing steadily. The harmful genetic variants associated with this common disease have not yet been eliminated by natural selection.
To try to explain why this is, geneticists have previously hypothesised that during times of 'feast or famine' throughout human evolution, people who had advantageous or 'thrifty' genes processed food more efficiently. But in the modern developed world with too much food, these same people would be more susceptible to type 2 diabetes.
"This thrifty gene theory is an attractive hypothesis to explain why natural selection hasn't protected us against these harmful variants," says Dr. Yali Xue, lead author of the study from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. "But we find little or no evidence to corroborate this theory."
The team tested this theory by examining 65 genetic regions that were known to increase type 2 diabetes risk, the most detailed study of its kind.
If these harmful variants were beneficial in the past, the team would expect to see a genetic imprint of this in the DNA around the affected regions. Despite major developments in tests for positive selection and a four-fold increase in the number of genetic variants associated with diabetes to work with, they found no such imprint.
"We found evidence for positive selection in only few of the 65 variants and selection favoured the protective and risk alleles for type 2 diabetes in similar proportions," notes Dr. Qasim Ayub, first author from The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, "This is no more than what we would expect to find for a random set of genomic variants."
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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
9-Jan-2014
Contact: Melissa A. Wilson Sayres mwilsonsayres@berkeley.edu Public Library of Science
Is the male Y chromosome at risk of being lost? Recent work by Dr Wilson Sayres and colleagues at UC Berkeley, published in PLOS Genetics, demonstrates that the genes on the Y chromosome are important: they have probably been maintained by selection. This implies that despite its dwindling size, the Y chromosome will be sticking around.
The human Y chromosome contains 27 unique genes, compared to thousands on other chromosomes. Some mammals have already lost their Y chromosome (despite still having males, females and normal reproduction); this has led some researchers to speculate that the Y chromosome is superfluous.
As the X and Y chromosomes evolved, male-specific genes became fixed on the Y chromosome. Some of these genes were detrimental to females, so the X and Y chromosomes stopped swapping genes. This meant the Y chromosome was no longer able to correct mistakes efficiently and has thus degraded over time.
There is low genetic diversity in the human Y chromosome, and Dr Wilson Sayres and colleagues were able to precisely measure this by comparing variation on a person's Y chromosome with variation on that person's other 22 chromosomes, the X chromosome and the mitochondrial DNA. The researchers then showed that this low genetic diversity cannot be explained solely by a reduction in the number of males passing on their Y chromosome (successfully fathering male offspring). Instead, the low diversity must also result from natural selection, in this case purifying selection (the selective removal of deleterious alleles).
The movements of human populations around the world are tracked by variations in the Y chromosome. The increased understanding provided by this research will improve estimates of humans' evolutionary history.
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Achieving STEEEP Health Care, Marisa Valdes (CRC Press)
Marisa Valdes discusses the STEEEP model used at Baylor Health Care System Provides the perspectives of senior leaders in the areas of corporate governance...
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Achieving STEEEP Health Care, Dr. David Ballard (CRC Press) Part 1
Dr. David Ballard discusses the STEEEP model used at Baylor Health Care System Features: Provides the perspectives of senior leaders in the areas of corpor...
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The Health Care Decision (full session)
A panel that discusses the Supreme Court #39;s ruling to uphold the Affordable Care Act. The emphasis is on where do things go from here? The ACA can be broken d...
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How to See the Reality of the Health Care System
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JUDY WOODRUFF: It's been just over a week since some Americans first started getting health insurance coverage through the new marketplaces.
The federal website and the government's enrollment efforts seem to be working substantially better, but there are still a fair share of questions and complications, including for some people eligible for Medicaid going online at HealthCare.gov. And there have been troubles for some of the state-created exchanges.
Sarah Kliff is following all this for The Washington Post.
And it's good to you have back with us.
SARAH KLIFF, The Washington Post: Thank you.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Sarah, let's stipulate that things, as we said, do seem to be generally going better for the sign-up process. That's your understanding?
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SARAH KLIFF: Yes.
JUDY WOODRUFF: But let's talk about, for example, people who are eligible for Medicaid, going on the federal Web site and some of them are having problems. Tell us about that.
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Health care sign up improves, but some states seek workarounds for tech issues
USC TREET Seminar Series: Eric Hoffman - Molecular and Clinical Outcome Measures in Rehab Medicine
Eric Hoffman, PhD presents "Molecular and Clinical Outcome Measures in Rehabilitation Medicine: The National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research in Wa...
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Discussion Podcast
Discussion of the paper #39;Development of a Performance of Upper Limb module for Duchenne muscular dystrophy #39;. The contributors in the podcast are as follows: ...
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Jan. 9, 2014 The Fleckvieh is a breed of cattle that originated in the Alpine region. A robust animal, it is now found on every continent, with an estimated worldwide population of around 40 million.
In Germany, there are approximately 1 million Fleckvieh dairy cows: "Their genomes can be traced back to a small number of key ancestors," explains Prof. Ruedi Fries, Chair of Animal Breeding at TUM. "With artificial insemination, male breeding animals can produce more than one hundred thousand offspring."
Infertility caused by a single gene
This practice is fraught with risk, however: If the genetic make-up of any animal contains an unidentified defect, this characteristic will be passed on to future generations. TUM researchers have now discovered that a mutation in the TMEM95 gene on cattle chromosome 19 makes bulls effectively infertile, with a success rate for insemination of less than 2 percent.
"Otherwise, the animals are perfectly healthy and normal," points out Dr. Hubert Pausch, lead author of the study. "The characteristic only manifests itself if bulls inherit the mutation from both the male and female side, i.e. they are homozygous for the defective gene. It is only in this case that the animals should be excluded from breeding." Routine genetic testing for all breeding bulls has been underway since August 2012.
Findings of interest for human medicine
As part of their study, the researchers compared the genome of 40 subfertile animals with 8,000 breeding bulls with normal fertility levels. They discovered that the genetic defect can be traced back to one Fleckvieh animal born in 1966.
The TMEM95 gene encodes a protein on the surface of the sperm heads. The protein probably mediates the binding process between the sperm and egg cells. If it is missing, fertilization will not occur.
"Our findings indicate that genetic defects in TMEM95 could also cause infertility in men," elaborates Pausch. During their investigation of the sperm of infertile breeding bulls, the TUM scientists collaborated with Prof. Sabine Klle and Dr. Matthias Trottmann from Munich's Ludwig Maximilian University. Trottmann helps couples with infertility problems.
Genetic analysis for healthier animals
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2014 1 3 ZOC Eating Genetic Engineering
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Fewer than 250 adults may be left in West Africa, and those big cats are confined to less than 1 percent of their historic range.
The new study, detailed in the journal PLOS ONE, suggests that without dramatic conservation efforts, three of the four West African lion populations could become extinct in the next five years, with further declines in the one remaining population, study co-author Philipp Henschel, the lion program survey coordinator for Panthera, a global wildcat conservation organization, wrote in an email. [In Photos: The Biggest Lions on Earth]
The majestic lion once roamed throughout West Africa, from Nigeria to Senegal.
But as people have converted wild lands to pastureland, hunted the lion's traditional prey antelopes, gazelles, wildebeest, buffalos and zebras and gotten into conflicts with the animals, the big cat population has plummeted in West Africa.
Cash-strapped West African governments have put little money into lion conservation, in part because "wildlife tourism is quasi-absent in West Africa," Henschel said.
And research institutions have similarly neglected the region.
"Like wildlife tourists, most international research institutions and conservation organizations active in Africa also flock to the iconic game parks in East and southern Africa, meaning that lions faced a silent demise in West Africa over the past decades," Henschel told LiveScience.
Massive Survey
To remedy that, Henschel and his colleagues recently completed a massive, six-year survey of West Africa's lions, using remote cameras, interviews with people and counts of lion tracks. The survey, carried out between October 2006 and May 2012, builds on a smaller study done last year, which found shrinking savannas for lions in the region.
About 400 adult and juvenile lions existed in the region. And the wild cats, which were originally thought to have inhabited 21 separate regions, actually exist in just four. Their range is now confined to pockets in Senegal, Nigeria and the borderlands between Benin, Niger and Burkina Faso.
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