Firefly – Trabol Sum + Taz feat. Prote-J – (US, PNG + Solomon Islands collab) – Video

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Firefly - Trabol Sum + Taz feat. Prote-J - (US, PNG + Solomon Islands collab)
Music Video for Trabol Sum + Taz performing Firefly feat. Prote-J A CHM Music and Shefram Studios collaboration Filmed in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea and Orlando, Florida CHM Music.

By: CHM Music Entertainment

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Firefly - Trabol Sum + Taz feat. Prote-J - (US, PNG + Solomon Islands collab) - Video

Russian-held islands shrink by 33 sq. km

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The total area of the Russian-held islands off Hokkaido claimed by Japan has shrunk by about 33 sq. km thanks to more accurate mapping techniques by the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI).

The annual survey by the GSI, released Friday, found that the area of the islands called the Northern Territories in Japan and Southern Kurils in Russia was 5,003.05 sq. km as of Oct. 1, compared with 5,036.14 sq. km a year ago.

The islands comprise Etorofu, Kunashiri and Shikotan and the Habomai group of islets.

The decrease can be attributed to the introduction of a new topographic map based on satellite images, which enabled the GSI to measure the area more accurately, according to an official of the institution attached to the Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry.

Until the 2013 survey, the GSI had measured the islands using a 1:50,000 scale map created in 1922, Nobuyuki Watanabe, a section chief in the National Mapping Department, told The Japan Times on Tuesday.

Using images from the Japanese satellite Daichi, we completed creating a topographic map of the northern areas with a scale of 1:25,000 in February 2014, Watanabe said.

The GSI has utilized a topographic map with a scale of 1:25,000 for surveying areas in other parts of Japan.

The islands were seized by the former Soviet Union at the end of World War II. The institute has been unable to conduct an aerial survey.

The area of Etorofu, the largest of the disputed islands, is now registered as 3,166.64 sq. km, down from 3,182.65 sq. km, while that of Kunashiri was recalculated at 1,489.27 sq. km, down from 1,498.56 sq. km.

Shikotans area is calculated at 247.65 sq. km, reduced from 250.16 sq. km. The Habomai islets now total 94.84 sq. km, down from 99.94 sq. km.

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Russian-held islands shrink by 33 sq. km

Private islands up for auction

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News Desk

China Daily

Publication Date : 10-03-2015

Recently, islands in Fiji, Greece, the UK and Canada were auctioned off on China's largest online shopping platform, Taobao. However, if you were looking for a private island closer to home, this may be your chance.

More than 500 islands in East China's Shangdong province will be put up for auction from mid March, with leases of up to 50 years, Shangdong TV reported.

The report said that theoretically anyone can apply for the usage rights of the 577 uninhabited islands to develop them into tourist attractions or fish farms, for example.

But they don't come cheap. It may cost more than 100 million yuan (US$16 million), including construction fees to supply the island with water and electricity, a pier and boats in order to make them habitable.

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Private islands up for auction

Sewage testing can predict obesity rates

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Escherichia coli at 10,000x magnification Roger Pickup, Professor of Environment and Human Health at Lancaster University for The Conversation 2015-03-10 20:45:46 UTC

We are all populated by microbes helpful or otherwise which form a community known as a microbiome. Recent research by Ryan Newton and co-workers has shown that sewage-based analysis of the human microbiome can be used to diagnose health issues at a population level.

Large-scale monitoring of human populations and their activities takes many forms, from satellite imagery to censuses, providing data that can inform future policies. At this scale, we can collect and store data to assess the health of a nation. Projects such as BiobankUK and the 100,000 genomes project aim to fully describe human genetics and health at the cellular and molecular level, whilst revealing information at an individual and population level. This will result in the creation of a UK disease map, possibly linked to genetic information and factors that significantly affect health.

These projects focus on the human genome yet we are not just human. Each of us is populated by microbes: bacteria, viruses, fungi and protozoa. Bacterial cells alone outnumber our own by a factor of 20. No one has estimated the number of viruses, but we expect between ten and a hundred times more than the bacteria. In the body, microbial genes outnumber human genes by a factor of 200.

We are now able to look not only at the numbers of microbes in the body, but can also find out what they are and determine their functions. DNA sequencing on very large scales indicates which bacteria dominate different environments and different processes. This sequencing defines the identity of the microbes. When targeted correctly, it can also define function at a molecular level. This is particularly useful in describing the human microbiome and its value to human health.

The microbes that form our microbiome provide protection against disease, top up our immune system, help metabolise our food into simpler more useful compounds and provide some essential nutrients such as vitamin K. The genetic profile of bacteria in faeces provides individual microbial fingerprints. This shows that the microbiome in all humans has a shared essential microbial function whilst having some variability in its microbial composition.

Gut microbes also vary with progressing age, dietary changes, disease states and across differing human populations. Changes in the diversity of the microbiome are associated with certain chronic illnesses such as inflammatory bowel disease. By looking at the microbial profiles of bacteria in the colon we can even show a difference between people with Crohn's disease and irritable bowel syndrome compared to people with ulcerative colitis.

This type of diagonistic analysis has now been taken a step further. Whilst recognising that faeces are a proxy for the gut microbiome within and among human population, Ryan Newton and co-workers examined sewage samples and compared them to human faecal samples. They showed that sewage effluent accurately reflects a composite faecal microbiome from human populations not only at an individual level but over different demographic scales city, country, or continent using 71 cities in the USA as a sampling ground.

Among the core set of organisms detected, significant variation was seen at a population level rather than at an individual level. This variation clustered into three primary community structures distinguished from different groups of microbes: Bacteroidaceae, Prevotellaceae, or Lachnospiraceae/Ruminococcaceae. These distribution patterns reflected human population variation and even predicted whether samples represented lean or obese populations with 81 to 89% accuracy.

So why not just observe the "fat and lean" by sitting at a busy railway station in disguise rather than extract the bacteria from sewage? Well, not everyone in the population will pass the detective's observation point but almost all will submit their sample to the sewer, to be subjected to sewage molecular "satellite" imagery. And sewage can be used to analyse many more health issues than simply the weight of the population.

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Sewage testing can predict obesity rates