For large companies that have a long list of suppliers that they work with, it’s not only difficult to manage communication with all of them, but understanding the environmental impact of each supplier is next to impossible. It’s not a sexy space to work in by any means but the addressable market is comprised of Fortune 500 companies and the government itself, which is bound to mandates involving environmental sustainability when working with suppliers. SupplyShift is a backend tool for those companies and organizations to track everything that’s going on with suppliers, which are usually scattered throughout the world. These buyers are collecting sustainability data but don’t currently have the tools to help them reduce risk exposure. What SupplyShift really is is a network which allows them to understand their “supply chain footprint” which will make suppliers actually care more about how they present themselves, heating up competing among them. The team, led by CEO and cofounder Alexander Gershenson, has been working on these problems as a consultant and it was time to build their work out as an actual product. Currently, Ecoshift, the consulting arm for the team, is already working with companies like Microsoft, Target and Sprint on supply chain management. The type of risk that companies experience with suppliers are the situation that Mattel went through with lead paint, where 1M toys had to be recalled. As far as how suppliers can affect how the public thinks about your company, look no further than Apple’s relationship with Foxconn, regarding their labor practices. You get the point. SupplyShift will track all of these potential risks, sharing them among the network of companies that use it. Why now? Gershenson told me: “The market situation changed radically in the last three years, and sustainability is becoming a key part of corporate strategy, but corporations and the government do not have the tools to address that need. SupplyShift takes care of that.” The main component that makes SupplyShift different from its competitors is that the companies who use the service are also paying to enroll their suppliers. This is key, because suppliers either won’t, or can’t afford to enroll themselves in similar services. By putting this in the hands of the companies who are selling goods, the database of suppliers will grow at a more rapid rate. This isn’t a social network for professionals, photo-sharing apps for tweens, but it’s a
NEW YORK (AP) ? Apple Inc. is selling $17 billion in bonds on Tuesday, according to a published report. That would make it the largest corporate bond issue ever.
Apple is selling the bonds in its first debt issue since the 1990s. The company is raising the money to give to shareholders through dividend payments and stock buybacks.
The company has $145 billion in cash, more than enough for the $100 billion cash return program it announced last week. However, most of its money sits in overseas accounts, and the company doesn't plan to bring it to the U.S. until the federal corporate tax rate is lowered.
The Wall Street Journal has reported the total value of the issue, citing unnamed bond-market participants. The paper said the yields were coming in lower than expected, and lower than Apple's credit rating would suggest. The bonds come in three- to thirty-year maturities, according to a preliminary prospectus filed by the company.
Ratings agencies Standard & Poor's and Moody's last week rated Apple at one rung below their highest rating for issuers. Moody's said only four non-financial companies have the highest rating, and Apple doesn't deserve it because it could adopt an even more shareholder-friendly policy, and its policy of not repatriating cash could force it to borrow more.
Research firm Dealogic said the largest previous corporate bond deal was a $16.5 billion issue by Swiss drug company Roche Holdings Inc. in 2009.
Happy Monday! Check out this amazing hotel in Gothenburg, Sweden. This intimate business hotel is designed to promote being social and to collaborate across borders. The design concept has an urban eclectic theme inspired by the heritage of the location in Lindholmen, once the centre for the shipbuilding industry, and the area of today as a centre for science and innovation. The result is a hotel with more individual expression than your general business hotel. The material palette is derived from the area and its heritage with honest materials such as wood, iron and copper. Contrasts and worked through details such as matt-glossy, dark-light and warm-cold colours enhance the sought after feeling of warmth and care.
It is Soap Dish time again and this week I am dishing all about how the hunky men of Days of Our Lives stripped this week. Oh yes it was a Magie Mike moment that was freaking HOT HOT HOT! If you missed the episode never fear you can check it out right here, woot woot! Last week some of DOOL’s hottest men took it all off, well most of it off I guess, heating up the hit NBC show. It was a total Mike Mike spook when Daniel, Brady and Rafe did their best strip tease, for charity of course. The guys strutted their stuff to benefit Salem University Hospital as well as to help our there pal Cameron, who had been moonlighting as a stripper. That of course is a big no no, so the guys decide to step up and take it off. I personally thought the show was awesome, especially since each of the guys dressed up similar to the men of Magic Mike. Plus lets be honest these men are fine, so watching them get down to their skivies was a very nice break in an otherwise long work day. It wasn’t just the guys [...]
Krishna Vedati doesn?t want your children to just watch Saturday morning cartoons. He wants them to make their own.
Vedati is the CEO of Tynker, a ?learn to code? platform for kids in third through eighth grade, one of many that have popped up in recent years aimed at parents who think computing skills are critical for their children.
But rather than focus on computer languages like HTML, the Mountain View-based startup teaches kids how to think like a programmer, he said.
?The way I think about programming is just like any other language the kids are learning today,? Vedati said. ?This is just like another language, just a different set of life skills than if you learned French or Spanish.?
Consumer might want what Vedati?s offering, after results from a pilot of Tynker in Bay Area schools over the past year. The startup, which has raised $3.5 million in angel funding, was inundated with 10,000 new requests after openin up to educators nationwide earlier this month, the majority from parents eager to get their hands on a home version of the coding platform.
Vedati estimates that a home-based edition should be ready in the next couple months. However, for now, Tynker is only available to schools. The platform is free for educators, with an option to pay and upgrade to premium.
Vedati?s own son went to a coding camp at Stanford University and, two weeks later, was able to build a Flash player game. Still, Vedati noticed that he had merely learned how to regurgitate the pre-scripted instructions for building the game, without any understanding of programming?s fundamentals.
It got Vedati thinking. How could he and the rest of the Tynker team design a platform that could convey the conceptual logic behind programming to kids in a structured and, more importantly, fun manner? It was the ideal project for Vedati, an engineer turned entrepreneur. He has been coding since his university years in India where his love of video games drew him to field.
?[Kids are] exposed to so much technology,? he said. ?But school hasn?t changed in 50 years, so we thought these kids need a different set of skills for their generation to use the technology to their advantage.?
With Tynker, kids are introduced to coding through a simple, visual platform that allows its young users to create games and basic animations with nary a line of code in sight. Its drag and drop design is similar to Scratch, another kid-friendly coding language conceived at MIT. One of Tynker?s simplest concepts is animating a character and teaching it how to walk and talk.
?By the time they?re done training the character, they?ve probably learned 20 primitives,? said Vedati. ?Once they get the knowledge of 20 primitives, then they?re asking what else can I do??
In general, Vedati says girls focus on storytelling and characters, while boys gravitate towards designing games. And, in general, the coding projects grow more complex as the children get older. Whereas third graders are happy to make anything they can show their parents, eighth graders want to build multi-level games.
Later down the line, Vedati said he aims to extend Tynker?s reach to high schoolers in a manner that would transition students to a regular programming language, such as JavaScript or Python and he hopes Tynker will help fix the lack of coding courses at schools nationwide.
?Programming is very near and dear to me,? Vedati said. ?I firmly believe that it?s a life skill that anyone can learn and they could put it to use no matter what their interests are whether their interests are history, art ? there?s computation going on in every field.?
Bangladeshi people gather as rescuers look for survivors and victims at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh,Thursday, April 25, 2013. By Thursday, the death toll reached at least 194 people as rescuers continued to search for injured and missing, after a huge section of an eight-story building that housed several garment factories splintered into a pile of concrete. (AP Photo/A.M.Ahad)
Bangladeshi people gather as rescuers look for survivors and victims at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh,Thursday, April 25, 2013. By Thursday, the death toll reached at least 194 people as rescuers continued to search for injured and missing, after a huge section of an eight-story building that housed several garment factories splintered into a pile of concrete. (AP Photo/A.M.Ahad)
A man who was trapped in an collapsed eight-story building housing several garment factories is reccued in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Wednesday, April 24, 2013. Dozens were killed and many more are feared trapped in the rubble. (AP Photo/ A.M. Ahad)
A Bangladeshi rescue worker searches alone in a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Saturday, April 27, 2013. Police in Bangladesh arrested two owners of a garment factory in a shoddily-constructed building that collapsed this week, killing at least 324 people, as protests spread to a second city Saturday with hundreds of people throwing stones and setting fire to vehicles. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)
Bangladeshi soldiers and rescue workers walk outside the building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Saturday, April 27, 2013. Police in Bangladesh took six people into custody in connection with the collapse of the shoddily-constructed building that killed at least 348 people, as rescue workers admitted Saturday that voices of survivors are getting weaker after four days of being pinned under the increasingly unstable rubble. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)
Bangladeshi relatives of garment worker Mohammed Abdullah cry as they pass others looking for missing relatives while to collecting his body at a makeshift morgue in a schoolyard near a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Saturday, April 27, 2013. Police in Bangladesh arrested two owners of a garment factory in a shoddily-constructed building that collapsed this week, killing hundreds of people, as protests spread to a second city Saturday with hundreds of people throwing stones and setting fire to vehicles. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)
SAVAR, Bangladesh (AP) ? When the cracks in the building appeared early Tuesday afternoon, a stocky man in his early 30s, a feared political operative who a neighbor says dropped out of school in seventh grade, quickly arrived at the scene in this crowded industrial suburb of the capital.
By then, fear had spread through the 3,200 people who worked in the five clothing factories that jammed the upper floors of Rana Plaza, and the handful of shops on the lower ones. Most of the workers had gathered in the street out front. Few wanted to go back in. Inspectors said the eight-story building should be closed until it could be inspected.
But Mohammed Sohel Rana scoffed.
"The building has minor damages," Rana, the building's owner, told gathering reporters. "There is nothing serious."
The next morning, many of the building's shops and a first-floor bank remained closed. But the factories' 8 a.m. shift began as usual. About 45 minutes into the shift, the building suddenly collapsed, killing at least 350 people in a fury of falling concrete. It was the worst industrial accident in the history of Bangladesh. More than three days later, rescuers are still crawling through the wreckage, hoping to find anyone who has managed to survive so long. By Saturday, nearly all the people being carried out were dead.
Rana, though, has disappeared. He hasn't been seen, according to local media reports, since he left his basement office in Rana Plaza and drove away, just before the collapse. Today, his political patron has abandoned him and authorities want to arrest him.
Rana sits at the nexus of party politics and the powerful $20 billion garment industry that drives the economy of this deeply impoverished nation. Experts say this intersection of politics and business, combined with a minimum wage of $9.50 a week that has made Bangladesh the go-to nation for many of the world's largest clothing brands, has created a predictable danger for factory workers.
Government officials, labor activists, manufacturers and retailers all called for improved safety standards after a November fire in the same suburb, when locked emergency exits trapped hundreds of garment workers inside amid spreading flames and 112 people died. But almost nothing has changed.
"Successive Bangladeshi governments have paid lip service to worker safety but in reality it is only the factory owners who have the ear of policymakers," Brad Adams, the Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. "How many factory tragedies will it take before the Bangladeshi government ends its cozy relationship with powerful company owners and prioritizes worker safety?"
Before the collapse, Rana was little known outside of the few blocks of his tiny empire, a grid of poorly paved streets in the crowded industrial suburb of Savar, built up over the past decade or so around hundreds of garment factories.
The son of a local businessman with political connections, Rana became a neighborhood force by working as an organizer for the two political parties that have competed for power for decades in Bangladesh, according to local politicians, as well as someone who grew up near Rana and still lives in the area.
While Rana is currently a leader of the youth group of the ruling Awami League, he has also worked for that party's archrival, the Bangladesh National Party.
"He doesn't belong to any particular political party," said Ashrafuddin Khan Imu, an Awami League leader and longtime Rana rival. "Whatever party is in power, he is there."
In essence, these people say, Rana is a neighborhood political enforcer, regularly ordering thousands of people into the streets for rallies. Most recently, Imu said, he has been working for Awami League lawmaker Talukder Touhid Jang Murad. When Murad was asked about Rana after the collapse, Murad denied any connections. The next day, Dhaka newspapers printed photographs of Murad kissing Rana on the forehead after a successful rally earlier this year.
"He used to intimidate people whenever he needed them, like bringing people out for street marches in support of the lawmaker," said the neighbor, who spoke on condition he not be named, fearing Rana would send his men to beat him up after having been threatened once before. "Neighbors would avoid him ... No one wanted to upset him."
Money came with his political connections, with wealth built upon a string of government-owned properties he acquired at reduced prices, according to local media reports. He built a small apartment building and a small commercial building, where a Bata shoe store is now on the ground floor. In 2010 he built Rana Plaza on land that had once been a swamp. He had a permit to erect a five-story building, but built three additional stories illegally.
Until Wednesday, he lived just a few blocks from Rana Plaza, in a five-story red-brick building he owns at the end of a narrow alley. The ground floor has a hand-painted medieval scene, with an aristocratic woman, or perhaps a bride, being carried by scowling bearers in a covered palanquin. The neighbor says he is married, and has two children. The buildings indicate he is a man of considerable stature locally, but is almost certainly not a member of the country's tiny elite.
After the cracks appeared in the building, witnesses say Rana quickly went to work. On Wednesday morning, he and a number of factory managers ordered nervous workers into the building shortly before the collapse, according to the neighbor, who was present at the scene, and local press reports.
"I was too afraid to go inside the building. But the factory officials assured us they would also be in the factory, so there should not be any problem," said Kohinoor Begum, a factory worker who survived but whose hands were injured.
By Saturday night, Rana was still nowhere to be found. Authorities say they detained his wife on Friday, apparently as a way to convince him to surrender.
What will happen to him? At first glance, the situation doesn't look good: He's on the run, his political allies have publicly abandoned him, Bangladesh's most powerful garment industry association says he ignored their warnings to shut the building, the prime minister has called for his arrest.
But in the streets of Savar, many people note that while three managers have been arrested in connection with the Tazreen fire, the factory owner remains free.
___
Sullivan reported from New Delhi, India. Julhas Alam in Dhaka contributed to the report.
Jim Miller is 5-foot-8, fights at 155 lbs., and has a bushy red beard. Pat Healy is 5-foot-9, fights at 155 lbs., and sported a trimmed red beard at UFC 159. Can you blame UFC announcer Bruce Buffer for mixing them up?
Healy, who returned to the UFC after spending much of his career in Strikeforce, put Miller to sleep with a rear naked choke in the third round of their thrilling bout. As the two stood on either side of referee Herb Dean to have the fight result announced, Buffer announced the winner by submission was Jim Mill-Pat Healy!
Healy smiled and corrected Buffer, who rarely makes such errors. It was a lighthearted moment that Healy laughed about after a thrilling bout.
Miller started out landing leg kicks and used ground and pound to beat up Healy in the first round. Near the end of the round, Healy was saved by the bell as Miller's ground and pound was close to ending the bout before the horn sounded.
It was in the third that Healy turned the bout around. Healy weakened Miller with striking, then took him down and took his back. He sunk in the rear naked choke, and Miller's arms went limp. The fight was stopped at 4:02 in the third because Miller was out.
Miller wanted to use the bout to convince UFC president Dana White that he was ready for a title shot. Instead, it was Healy who stood out. In his post-fight interview with UFC commentator, he warned other UFC lightweights to watch out because he was "putting them on blast."
Making new contacts, potential sales leads and generally marketing your brand and product to a wider audience, networking is vital in creating growth within your business.
As a medium through which you can establish yourself ahead of your competitors, networking will also add value to your business. Whether that be legal, financial or otherwise, being able to project your brand within your sector, helps you create a reputation. Based upon the reputation that precedes them, businesses can thrive or fail; to create a positive reputation of your company any yourself, business network allows you.
Support and Advice- To make people more aware of your company is not simply business networking; to gain support and advice from like-minded peers, it can also serve as a medium. Helping in answering any questions you may have regarding an aspect of the business, speaking to people in your own field can give you an insight into best practice. The way that they have supported you or this may make your company look inexperienced or unwilling to share information, do not be selfish however, ensure that you are able to help and support others in the network.
When networking, you do not need to be confined to your own business sector; in other fields also, it is good practice to cross. This means that you will have somebody to go to if you need a bit of outside advice on a matter which you have little experience. For example about intellectual property, if you work in the field of tax law but needed a bit of advice.
Brand Awareness- Besides a brand getting the name out in the open, speaking to people in your business sector about your company will also make a difference.
The first step in its growth and thus improved sales is making people aware of your brand. You are the face of the company, when you are networking, either face to face or via the Internet. As an ambassador, reflecting the professionalism of your company and promoting the brand effectively, it is important that you present yourself in a way.
Direct Sales- To make direct sales of your services, networking with business in your sector and others gives a chance. Creating a lasting relationship which is in the interest of your firm and theirs, it is a chance to approach potential buyers. For example, a financial accountant and vice versa could be helped by a legal firm.
To gain information on whom the decision makers are, building up relationships with companies also means that you will begin.
It's been four years since Michael Jackson died, but the legal wrangling following his death continues. A jury has now been empaneled in the lawsuit brought by Jackson's mother and children against AEG Live, the promoter of his final "This is It" tour, and one potential key figure at that trial will likely be Dr. Conrad Murray.
Murray, who served as Jackson's doctor, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the singer's death in 2011, and on Friday he phoned TODAY from his jail cell to talk with Savannah Guthrie, with his lawyer Valerie Wass in the studio.?
All along, Murray has denied being responsible for Jackson's death, and maintains that assertion today: "(I take) not any responsibility as it relates to his death," said Murray. "I am sorry that I lost Michael as a friend and as a patient. ... I have lost a very dear friend and a dear person to me, and it's going to remain with me for the rest of my life, but I'm not going to accept responsibility for anything I did not do."
At this new trial, lawyers for the Jackson family are likely to argue that AEG Live is liable because they hired Murray. In theory, the company would have had a financial interest in ensuring the singer was healthy and able to perform as contractually obligated, which may have created a conflict in their oversight of Dr. Murray.?
As Guthrie pointed out, there appeared to be clear negligence in that the drug that killed Jackson -- the singer died of acute propofol and benzodiazepine intoxication that brought on cardiac arrest -- was found in the room after Murray left Jackson unattended. "I met Michael Jackson with his own stash of medication," insisted Murray. "I tried to get rid of the propofol from Michael Jackson. He might not have liked the approach that I took, but nonetheless the circumstances were to actually get him away from that agent."
Wass spoke up to say that when Murray left Jackson alone in the room on the night he died, the singer was on a saline drip. "Jackson was not on a propofol drip," she said and added that however Jackson gained access to the propofol that killed him, it was never determined whether it came from "his own sources" or from Murray.
Murray says being in prison "has been one of my most horrendous experiences. ... I have only survived because of the loving hope and the support that I get from various individuals and I would especially like to say that my girlfriend Nicole Alvarez has been just tremendous."
Murray may be released in a few months due to prison overcrowding, and is appealing his conviction. Opening statements in the trial are set for Monday.
If you're a romantic-comedy lover with a soft spot for wedding movies, then trust me ? you've already seen The Big Wedding. The premise itself probably sounds familiar: when a family comes together for a wedding, hijinks ensue, people don't get along, and secrets are revealed. Even most of the cast members have played similar roles before. Diane Keaton and Robert De Niro play the groom's parents, Katherine Heigl is the bitter sister, and Amanda Seyfried plays the bride. And the unoriginality doesn't stop there! If you're tempted to watch The Big Wedding, then let me advise you that you can get the same fix by watching the movies below. Their accomplishment: they each tackled elements of The Big Wedding first ? but better.
It's Complicated: In Nancy Meyers's comedy It's Complicated, the romance between the divorced couple played by Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin feels organic and realistic. That's not the case for Keaton and De Niro's characters in Ellie and Don, the divorced parents of groom Alejandro (Ben Barnes) in The Big Wedding. Oh, it is complicated for them ? despite the fact that they haven't been married for over 10 years, sparks still fly between them during the wedding weekend ? even though he's already moved on with someone else. When Ellie and Don move closer to a reconnection, it's icky and doesn't make sense for their characters.
Wedding Crashers: The Big Wedding is rated R, so there's a healthy dose of raunchy humor, but there's nothing you haven't seen before, especially if you've seen Wedding Crashers. There is even one scene that is straight out of the Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn classic. For frisky family members and R-rated wedding jokes, just watch Wedding Crashers.
Get the rest of the list after the jump.
Meet the Parents: Ben Stiller already showed us how awkward it is to meet the family of your future spouse, especially when they're so disapproving. The twist of The Big Wedding is that the biological mother of the groom is a devoutly Catholic woman from Colombia who will freak out if she finds out her son's adoptive parents are divorced. Aside from being complicated, it's illogical and not really believable. Worse, the other disapproving in-laws are the WASP-y parents of the bride, who turn out to be a little racist and go to great lengths to not be seen with Alejandro. Yeah, it's uncomfortable for the audience, too, but not in that funny Meet the Parents way.
Mamma Mia: This one's not just because Seyfried is the blushing bride, though that element will probably give you d?j? vu too. Like in Mamma Mia, the parents' situation overshadows the nuptials of the young bride- and groom-to-be (and there is a lot of talk of the mother's sex life). Sadly, there are no sing-alongs to make it all OK.
Something's Gotta Give: Have you seen this cute movie starring Diane Keaton as a flustered, single older woman? Oh, good. Then you don't need to see The Big Wedding, because she's playing the exact same role.
This April 25, 2013, photo shows workers put the finishing touches on the Woody Guthrie Center, which features a mural of the Oklahoma-born folk singer/songwriter, in downtown Tulsa. The center is set to open to the public on Saturday, April 27. (AP Photo/Justin Juozapavicius)
This April 25, 2013, photo shows workers put the finishing touches on the Woody Guthrie Center, which features a mural of the Oklahoma-born folk singer/songwriter, in downtown Tulsa. The center is set to open to the public on Saturday, April 27. (AP Photo/Justin Juozapavicius)
This April 25, 2013, photo shows some of the more than 400 metal plates featuring copies of song lyrics and illustrations by Woody Guthrie at the Oklahoma-born folk singer?s center opening Saturday in Tulsa. The 12,000 square-foot Woody Guthrie Center features exhibits that chronicle Guthrie?s life and career. (AP Photo/Justin Juozapavicius)
In this April 25, 2013, photo Deana McCloud, of the Woody Guthrie Center, tries out the Woody?s America interactive map at the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa. The 12,000 square-foot center, which opens to the public on Saturday, features many interactive exhibits chronicling the life and work of Woody Guthrie and is home to the folk singer?s archives. (AP Photo/Justin Juozapavicius)
This April 25, 2013, photo shows the entrance to the Woody Guthrie Center, which opens to the public on Saturday in downtown Tulsa. The center features interactive exhibits chronicling the Oklahoma folk singer?s life and career, as well as an original, handwritten copy of ?This Land is Your Land.? (AP Photo/Justin Juozapavicius)
This circa 1943 photo courtesy of the Woody Guthrie Archives shows Oklahoma-born folk singer Woody Guthrie. The Woody Guthrie Center opens to the public on Saturday, April 27, 2013, with many interactive exhibits chronicling the life and work of Guthrie and is home to the folk singer?s archives. (AP Photo/Al Aumuller, Courtesy Woody Guthrie Archives)
TULSA, Okla. (AP) ? Supporters of folk singer Woody Guthrie say the opening of a center chronicling his storied life and career is long overdue in his native state of Oklahoma.
The 12,000-square-foot Woody Guthrie Center opens Saturday afternoon in Tulsa.
It features Oklahoma's only permanent exhibit on the Dust Bowl and also includes Guthrie's original handwritten copy of "This Land Is Your Land," perhaps his best-known song.
Guthrie's daughter Nora says Oklahomans should take pride in knowing that the core of who her father was as a man and a musician was determined in Oklahoma.
The center is also home to the Woody Guthrie Archives, a collection featuring nearly 3,000 song lyrics, hundreds of pieces of artwork, journal entries, postcards, manuscripts and more than 500 photographs, among other rare items.
In another major setback for efforts to develop an HIV vaccine, federal researchers have shut down a key clinical trial after an independent panel of safety experts determined that volunteers who got an experimental vaccine appeared to be slightly more likely to contract the human immunodeficiency virus than those who got a placebo.
Investigators involved in recruiting volunteers and running the trial at 21 sites across the country were ordered Tuesday morning to stop immunizing volunteers with the genetically engineered HVTN 505 vaccine and to inform the nearly 2,500 people who participated in the study whether they got the vaccine or the placebo. All of the volunteers were men or transgender people who have sex with men.
The announcement came Thursday from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, known as NIAID, which developed the HVTN 505 vaccine and launched the advanced clinical trial in 2009. The vaccine was designed to prime the immune system to mount a robust defense against all three subtypes of the HIV virus.
Although earlier trials that tested the vaccine on fewer people suggested it was able to produce an immune response to HIV and had a good safety record, the larger trial revealed a "non-statistically significant increase in HIV acquisition among volunteers in the investigational vaccine group compared to those in the placebo group," NIAID said in a statement.
The difference in infection risk between the vaccine group and the placebo group could have been a matter of chance. Even so, the data failed to indicate that the vaccine was having ? or would ever achieve ? its intended effects of reducing one's risk of infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Also discouraging was the fact that the three-shot vaccine regimen did not help suppress the replication of HIV in people once they were infected, NIAID noted.
"This is quite a substantial disappointment," said Dr. Scott Hammer, a Columbia University virologist who is one of the trial's principal investigators. But, Hammer added, "we've learned from every clinical efficacy trial we've done. We've had good and bad news, but each one takes us a little closer in terms of what to pursue and not to pursue."
Altogether, there were 41 HIV infections among the 1,250 study volunteers who got the experimental vaccine and 30 infections among the 1,244 who received the placebo.
Of the 23 volunteers who became infected with HIV in the first 28 weeks of the study, 14 had received the vaccine and nine had received the placebo.
The experimental vaccine was also a disappointment for another reason: It failed to reduce the viral load of volunteers who became infected after they enrolled in the trial.
In its statement, NIAID said that it "remains committed to the pursuit of a highly effective, preventive HIV vaccine as part of a multifaceted HIV prevention research program." Meanwhile, it said that study volunteers who became infected during the trial would be referred to local services "for appropriate care and treatment." The study's investigators would continue to follow those volunteers for five years from the time they enrolled, NIAID said.
This is not the first large HIV vaccine trial to end abruptly after initial results proved disappointing. In 2003, early trials testing a Genentech Inc. vaccine known as Aidsvax found that some who got it developed HIV ? prompting government regulators to block further testing in the United States. In 2007, a trial in South Africa that tested a vaccine made by Merck & Co. was ended prematurely because participants who got the active vaccine were found to have higher rates of infection than those who did not.
The HVTN 505 vaccine regimen was an outgrowth of one of those disappointments. Researchers improved upon the Aidsvax vaccine and tested the new formulation, called RV-144, in heterosexuals in Thailand. In 2009, they found that it reduced infection rates by 30%.
The HVTN 505 vaccine incorporated many of the lessons learned from the RV-144 trial about constructing a vaccine that would train the immune system to recognize and fight the genetic guts of the virus as well as its "envelope," or outer cell wall.
That those lessons failed to yield a successful vaccine in the NIAID trial was a bitter disappointment to researchers. In the coming weeks and months, researchers will be poring over two years' worth of blood samples from volunteers, said Dr. Stephen J. Brown, medical director of the AIDS Research Alliance, the Los Angeles site participating in the HVTN 505 trial.
As they do so, Brown said, researchers are likely to glean new insights into which parts of the current vaccine might form the basis for new HIV-prevention regimens. The next HIV vaccine trials are to start next year in southern Africa.
The World Health Organization estimates that 34 million people worldwide are living with HIV, including 2.5 million who became infected in 2011 ? a statistic that underscores the need for a vaccine. More than 25 million people have died since the HIV/AIDS epidemic began, according to the WHO.
PresenceLearning, a startup that helps connect students with special needs with online speech and occupational therapy services has raised $8 million in funding led by New Markets Venture Partners with participation from Blue Heron Capital, Birchmere Ventures and returning investors, including Catamount Ventures, Calvert Funds, and Allen & Company.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's coalition has taken the lead in eight out of the 12 provinces that held provincial elections at the weekend, including the capital Baghdad, preliminary results showed on Thursday.
A Maliki ally also won in Najaf, effectively giving him a lead in a ninth province.
The strong showing by Shi'ite Maliki's State of Law alliance - based on 87 percent of the results - consolidates his position ahead of parliamentary elections due in 2014, when he has hinted it will be time to form a majority government.
Iraqi politics are deeply split along sectarian lines, with Maliki's government in a crisis over how to share power among Shi'ites, Sunni Muslims and ethnic Kurds who run their own autonomous region in the north.
Voting in two Sunni majority provinces was put off until July due to concerns about security, a delay criticized by the United States. The cabinet said the date could be postponed again unless the situation improved.
Violence and suicide bombings have surged since the start of the year with a local al Qaeda wing vowing a campaign to stoke widespread confrontation. More than 100 people have been killed since Tuesday in clashes between militants and security forces.
(Reporting by Raheem Salman; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
Apr. 24, 2013 ? A research team of biogeochemists at the University of California, Riverside has provided a new view on the relationship between the earliest accumulation of oxygen in the atmosphere, arguably the most important biological event in Earth history, and its relationship to the sulfur cycle.
A general consensus exists that appreciable oxygen first accumulated in Earth's atmosphere around 2.4 to 2.3 billion years ago. Though this paradigm is built upon a wide range of geological and geochemical observations, the famous "smoking gun" for what has come to be known as the "Great Oxidation Event" (GOE) comes from the disappearance of anomalous fractionations in rare sulfur isotopes.
"These isotope fractionations, often referred to as 'mass-independent fractionations,' or 'MIF' signals, require both the destruction of sulfur dioxide by ultraviolet energy from the sun in an atmosphere without ozone and very low atmospheric oxygen levels in order to be transported and deposited in marine sediments," said Christopher T. Reinhard, the lead author of the research paper and a former UC Riverside graduate student. "As a result, their presence in ancient rocks is interpreted to reflect vanishingly low atmospheric oxygen levels continuously for the first ~2 billion years of Earth's history."
However, diverse types of data are emerging that point to the presence of atmospheric oxygen, and, by inference, the early emergence of oxygenic photosynthesis hundreds of millions of years before these MIF signals disappear from the rock record. These observations motivated Reinhard and colleagues to explore the possible conditions under which inherited MIF signatures may have persisted in the rock record long after oxygen accumulated in the atmosphere.
Using a simple quantitative model describing how sulfur and its isotopes cycle through Earth's crust, the researchers discovered that under certain conditions these MIF signatures can persist within the ocean and marine sediments long after O2 increases in the atmosphere. Simply put, the weathering of rocks on the continents can transfer the MIF signal to the oceans and their sediments long after production of this fingerprint has ceased in an oxygenated atmosphere.
"This lag would blur our ability to date the timing of the GOE and would allow for dynamic rising and falling oxygen levels during a protracted transition from an atmosphere without oxygen to one rich in this life-giving gas," Reinhard said.
Study results appear in Nature's advanced online publication on April 24.
Reinhard explained that once MIF signals formed in an oxygen-poor atmosphere are captured in pyrite and other minerals in sedimentary rocks, they are recycled when those rocks are later uplifted as mountain ranges and the pyrite is oxidized.
"Under certain conditions, this will create a sort of 'memory effect' of these MIF signatures, providing a decoupling in time between the burial of MIF in sediments and oxygen accumulation at Earth's surface," he said.
According to the researchers, the key here is burying a distinct MIF signal in deep sea sediments, which are then subducted and removed from Earth's surface.
"This would create a complementary signal in minerals that are weathered and delivered to the oceans, something that we actually see evidence of in the rock record," said Noah Planavsky, the second author of the research paper and a former UC Riverside graduate student now at Caltech. "This signal can then be perpetuated through time without the need to generate it within the atmosphere contemporaneously."
Reinhard, now a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech and soon to be an assistant professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, explained that although the researchers' new model provides a plausible mechanism for reconciling recent conflicting data, this can only occur when certain key conditions are met -- and these conditions are likely to have changed through time during Earth's long early history.
"There is obviously much further work to do, but we hope that our model is one step toward a more integrated view of how Earth's crust, mantle and atmosphere interact in the global sulfur cycle," he said.
Timothy W. Lyons, a professor of biogeochemistry at UCR and the principal investigator of the research project noted that this is a fundamentally new and potentially very important way of looking at the sulfur isotope record and its relationship to biospheric oxygenation.
"The message is that sulfur isotope records, when viewed through the filter of sedimentary recycling, may challenge efforts to precisely date the GOE and its relationship to early life, while opening the door to the wonderful unknowns we should expect and embrace," he said.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of California - Riverside. The original article was written by Iqbal Pittalwala.
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Journal Reference:
Christopher T. Reinhard, Noah J. Planavsky, Timothy W. Lyons. Long-term sedimentary recycling of rare sulphur isotope anomalies. Nature, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/nature12021
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Apr. 24, 2013 ? Early, substantive dialogue between parents and their grade-school age children about the ills of tobacco and alcohol use can be more powerful in shaping teen behavior than advertising, marketing or peer pressure, a University of Texas at Arlington marketing researcher has shown.
The findings of Zhiyong Yang, an associate professor of marketing in the UT Arlington College of Business, are published in a recent edition of the Journal of Business Research. Similar findings were part of a 2010 study he published in the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing of the American Marketing Association.
Yang's current work, "Demarketing teen tobacco and alcohol use: Negative peer influence and longitudinal roles of parenting and self-esteem," argues that parental influence is a powerful tool in dissuading children from smoking and drinking in their later teen years.
His 2010 article, "The Impact of Parenting Strategies on Child Smoking Behavior: The Role of Child Self-Esteem Trajectory," shows that dialogue between parents and teens is effective in combating risky behavior, such as tobacco and alcohol use, and that parental influences buffer the impact of other external factors such as social media and peer pressure.
"First, our conclusion is that parenting styles can be changed, and that's good news for the parents and the teens," said Yang, who joined the UT Arlington in 2007 and specializes in "consumer misbehavior," a branch of marketing that attempts to change undesirable or risky behavior.
Yang further elaborated, "Second, our study shows that parental influence is not only profound in its magnitude, but also persistent and long-lasting over the course of a child's entire life. Effective parenting plays the critical role as a transition belt to pass normative values of society from one generation to another."
Rachel Croson, Dean of the UT Arlington College of Business, said Yang's research sheds important light on what drives behaviors and misbehaviors.
"Marketers often study how to sell more products," Croson said. "Dr. Yang's work answers some important and thorny questions about how to sell less, and what parents may be able to do to help improve their children's health and well-being."
Each day about 3,900 people under the age of 18 begin smoking in the United States, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control. An estimated 1,000 youth will become daily cigarette smokers. About 30 percent of youth smokers will continue to use tobacco and will die early from a smoking-related disease, the agency says.
Yang earned his doctorate from Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, and has based his research on national Canadian surveys of residents from childhood to 25 years old. Because the sampling was so large, comparable results would occur in the United States, Yang said. Canadian teen smoking statistics practically mirror those of the United States, he noted.
Yang said his findings are counter to common perceptions that parents have little influence on children's behavior after they enter adolescence. Conventional wisdom suggests that peer pressure and targeted marketing and advertising are of paramount influence on teen decisions to use tobacco and alcohol or engage in other risky behaviors.
"What our research determined is that parental influence is a far greater factor than those," Yang said. "Parenting starts from birth. What could have a greater impact than that?"
Less effective, Yang said, are parenting strategies that employ negative reinforcement, such as belittling a teenager, threats, physical discipline or using negative consequences if the teenager's behavior does not meet parental expectations.
"In fact, our research shows those negative strategies, like withholding affection, drive a teen toward smoking," Yang said.
The research also shows that parents could have a positive impact on discouraging their teen from using tobacco by sharing their own experiences.
"There's something to be said in telling a teen how you've suffered if you've smoked or engaged in a bad behavior when you were a teen," Yang said.
He said the ideal next step in the research would be to partner with local school districts to teach parents a battery of parenting strategies that can be used to curtail teen misbehaviors.
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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
DENVER ? The Golden State Warriors hardly missed much of anything Tuesday night.
Not their shots.
Not their injured All-Star.
Stephen Curry had 30 points and 13 assists and the scrappy Warriors handed the Denver Nuggets their first loss at home in more than three months, a 131-117 stunner that evened their playoff series at a game each.
Rallying around injured David Lee, who cheered on the bench in street clothes, the Warriors got 26 points from surprise starter Jarrett Jack, a career-high 24 from rookie Harrison Barnes in his debut at power forward and 21 from Klay Thompson.
The sixth-seeded Warriors, who became the second road team to win in the postseason following Chicago's victory at Brooklyn on Monday, wrested homecourt advantage from the NBA's best home team in the series that shifts to Oakland for Game 3 on Friday night.
"They were knocking down shots," Denver's Andre Iguodala said in an understatement
Better than they ever had before in a playoff game, a franchise playoff-record 64.6 percent from the field (51 of 79).
"We are a very good shooting basketball team," Warriors coach Mark Jackson said. "We've got guys that can knock down shots. You talk about Klay Thompson and Steph Curry, in my opinion, they're the greatest shooting backcourt in the history of the game."
The third-seeded Nuggets were an NBA-best 38-3 at home during the regular season but needed Andre Miller's last-second shot to beat Golden State by a basket in the opener and extend their franchise-best winning streak to 24 games.
With Golden State losing Lee to a torn hip flexor and the Nuggets getting top rebounder and energizer Kenneth Faried back from a sprained ankle, this one looked like a mismatch, even Curry acknowledged.
And it was, only not the way the Pepsi Center crowd anticipated.
"We're a resilient team, said that all year. When guys go down, other guys step up," said Curry, who played through a tender left ankle after turning it late in the third quarter. "We showed that tonight. Big road win for us. We've got to go home and protect our homecourt."
Even without their All-Star, the Warriors outrebounded the Nuggets 36-26.
"We didn't do much of anything very well," Nuggets coach George Karl lamented. "I don't think I ever coached a game when a team got three 35-point quarters, maybe in my career. Ever."
The best anybody shot against Denver during the season was 54 percent, by the Los Angeles Lakers way back on Nov. 20, and the most points the Nuggets had allowed was 126 at San Antonio on Nov. 17.
Ty Lawson and Corey Brewer each scored 19 points for Denver and Iguodala and Miller both had 18, but the Nuggets were playing catch-up from the middle of the second quarter and couldn't keep up with so many of the Warriors' shots falling, negating Denver's league-best transition game.
Lee led the league in double-doubles with 56 and had another before getting hurt in the fourth quarter of the series opener on Saturday. The Warriors were 3-18 without him over the last three seasons, but Jackson mixed and matched his lineup to make up for his All-Star's absence on this night, when Lee gave advice to his teammates during timeouts.
The Nuggets were hoping the return of Faried would help them reverse their 10-point disadvantage on the boards in Game 1. But he was rusty and the same problems that plagued Denver in the opener ? missing too many open shots, getting outmuscled on the glass and giving up open 3s ? haunted them once again and even more so.
Curry scored 15 points in the second quarter and hit four jumpers during a 14-5 run the Warriors used to grab control and take the air out of the Pepsi Center as they cruised into halftime with a 61-53 lead that would never be threatened in the second half.
Curry swished another sweet jumper to start the third quarter and the Warriors opened up a 17-point lead they would stretch to 20 in the fourth quarter.
"The game plan tonight was to keep the ball out of Stephen Curry's hands, but he came off (the pick-and-rolls) and had open looks and then he started finding people," Lawson said. "After that, we started scrambling and we can't play like that."
The Nuggets pulled within 76-69, but Thompson hit a 3-pointer from the right corner and Curry a 3 from the left to make it 82-69. Both were wide open as Denver's mismatched defenders were again running ragged trying to keep up with the Warriors, who handled the altitude just fine.
Denver got its deficit down to 115-105 but this time it was Jack's turn to make a wide-open 3 with the Nuggets defenders scrambling around.
Faried finished with four points and two rebounds in 21 minutes.
The arena was half-empty by the time the horn sounded, a solitary fan yelling derisively, "Tacos!" when Evan Fournier's free throw fell through the hoop to give the Nuggets 110 points, the magic number for a promotion in which fans get discounted tacos.
Notes: The Warriors shot a sizzling 61 percent in the first half, when they outrebounded the Nuggets 21-14. ... The Nuggets' last loss at home was 112-108 to the Washington Wizards on Jan. 18. ... Denver had just eight fast-break points, compared to Golden State's 14. ... Curry's 30-10 playoff game was the first for the franchise since Sleepy Floyd on May 10, 1987.
___
Follow Arnie Melendrez Stapleton on Twitter: http://twitter.com/arniestapleton
Just last week Microsoft added Foxconn's parent company to its growing list of licensees for patents it asserts are key to Android, and now ZTE has inked a deal with Ballmer and Co. as well. Now that the pact is in place, Microsoft says it's struck patent accords with roughly 20 hardware makers, and that 60 percent of phones sold with Google's open source OS are covered by such licenses. With HTC and LG already paying Redmond royalties for devices using Android, that leaves the likes of Google, Motorola and Huawei as the odd manufacturers out. If Motorola has its way, however, that won't change.
ISLAMABAD (AP) ? Pakistani police say they have defused a car bomb near the house of former military ruler Pervez Musharraf.
Islamabad police chief Bani Amin says the explosive-laden vehicle was found parked about 150 meters (500 feet) from the main gate of Musharraf's house on the capital's outskirts Tuesday.
The former military strongman is being held under house arrest in connection with a case involving his decision to fire senior judges while in power.
Amin says police are investigating how the vehicle was able to approach Musharraf's house.
The Taliban have threatened to kill Musharraf, and suspected militants tried to assassinate him several times when he was in power from 1999-2008.
Musharraf returned last month after four years in self-imposed exile to make a political comeback but has suffered multiple setbacks.
We tend to think of an open source operating system as something that gives both smartphone vendors and end users more freedom to customize their experiences. But as Bronte Capital?s?John Hempton points out, open source software can have a dark side as well if it is changed by authoritarian governments to limit the information that end users can access. Hempton says he bought a Samsung Desire HD off of eBay from a Middle Eastern country a couple of years ago and found that ?it did not contain any access to the Google market place (Google?s equivalent of the App store),? that ?it had limited apps and no possibility of adding more? and ?it contained a non-standard web browser and a non-standard email client (leaving open the possibility of the State watching what I wrote and said).?
[More from BGR: iPhone sales projections are now so low it?s ridiculous]
All of this was possible, Hempton notes, because governments have access to Android?s source code and can thus ?demand and implement any changes? they want as a precondition of selling devices on national wireless carriers. Hempton says that it?s significantly more challenging for repressive regimes to drastically overhaul Apple?s iOS for their own purposes since Apple does not hand out its source code to anyone who asks for it. Instead, the regime must negotiate with Apple over potential country-specific modifications to iOS, which means that the government is unlikely to get everything it wants.
[More from BGR: Was Samsung caught fighting dirty in war against Apple?]
Of course, there is a solution to this for Android users living under more repressive governments: They can simply root their phones and install stock Android or remove their device?s more oppressive features. But Hempton worries that knowledge about rooting Android phones will be severely limited in many countries and that rooted Android phones will be used only by a tiny elite who have education?in coding.
All of this brings us to the looming battle between Android and Apple for consumers in China. Hempton speculates that Apple might have to make such severe changes to its operating system to gain broad access to the Chinese market that it could actually wind up degrading its devices? overall user experience. This will only stand to benefit Android vendors, especially among elites who will know how to root their devices to open up access to more apps and content.
?I am assuming that if Apple goes mass-market in China it will sell systems with enough ?apologies??to the cultural differences of China,? he writes. ?Those ?apologies? will make a rooted Android massively superior to a botched-up Apple. The elite will want their Samsungs??Some bulls?on Apple and China may be just flat wrong??
LONDON (Reuters) - Cosmetic treatment needs tougher regulation, particularly over the use of injectable anti-wrinkle fillers, which are a "crisis waiting to happen", according to a British review of the multibillion-dollar sector.
An independent panel, commissioned by the government in the wake of the PIP breast implant scandal last year, said on Wednesday that dermal fillers should always need a prescription and only qualified people be allowed to use them.
Bruce Keogh, the National Health Service medical director who led the review, said non-surgical interventions such as fillers, Botox and laser therapy accounted for nine out of 10 cosmetic procedures but were "almost entirely unregulated".
"In fact, a person having a non-surgical cosmetic intervention has no more protection and redress than someone buying a ballpoint pen or a toothbrush," his review said.
Dermal fillers were a particular cause for concern as anyone could set up as a practitioner, with no training requirement, resulting in explosive market growth.
"It is our view that dermal fillers are a crisis waiting to happen," the review said.
In the United States, where dermal fillers are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, just 14 are available, including products from the likes of Botox-maker Allergan, Valeant and Merz.
Britain, by contrast, has anywhere between 140 and 190 dermal fillers on the market.
In future, fillers should be regulated as medical devices, like other implantable items, the review argued, and all those performing cosmetic interventions should be registered.
The review also proposed that a national breast implant registry be established within 12 months to provide better monitoring and ensure device safety, following shortcomings exposed by the PIP scandal.
More than 40,000 British women were given substandard silicone breast implants made by French firm Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), among hundreds of thousands worldwide.
Health minister Dan Poulter said he agreed with the principles of the review and the government would respond in detail in the summer.
Cosmetic treatments are a booming business in Britain, with sales totalling 2.3 billion pounds ($3.5 billion) in 2010 and forecast to rise to 3.6 billion by 2015, the review said.
($1 = 0.6560 British pounds)
(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Helen Massy-Beresford)
By Karolos Grohmann DORTMUND, Germany, April 23 (Reuters) - Manchester United's Premier League title win came as no surprise to Real Madrid coach Jose Mourinho, who praised coach Alex Ferguson on Tuesday and said winning was his life. Mourinho, who challenged United's domestic dominance while at Chelsea between 2004-2007, was speaking Real's their Champions League semi-final against Borussia Dortmund. Real eliminated United in the last 16. "What he did is what he has been doing all his life, winning," Mourinho told reporters. "Sometimes not consecutively because it is impossible to do it. ...
Atlantic cod in for even more stress?Public release date: 22-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sina Loeschke medien@awi.de 49-471-483-12008 Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres
Marine biologists launch a new research project on the impact of climate change on the popular commercial fish
Bremerhaven, 17 April 2013. Researchers have known for some years that the Atlantic cod beats the retreat in the direction of the Arctic when the waters in its traditional habitat become too warm. In summer, shoals from the Atlantic Ocean, for example, are now moving up as far as Spitsbergen into the waters the Arctic cod calls its own. In the next two and a half years, biologists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, together with scientists from Kiel, Bremen, Dsseldorf and Mnster, will be seeking to discover the consequences of this climate-related migration on the stocks of these two commercial fish species, how the fish are responding to the water becoming warmer and more acidic and at which stages of life the changes are most dangerous to them. The first investigations are already in progress as part of the joint project BIOACID with focus placed on the early life stages.
Until recently, Flemming Dahlke, fishery biologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), could not have imagined that he would one day have to resort to the fishing rod to pursue his doctorate. But after several fruitless attempts at getting hold of an Atlantic cod ready to spawn, a fishing trip proved to be the most profitable method. Flemming Dahlke stripped off the eggs from his catch, fertilised these with Atlantic cod sperm and was finally able to start on his actual research work.
At the Swedish research station of Kristineberg, the AWI fishery biologist observes, documents and measures how the cod eggs develop at different water temperatures. He would like to know whether as many larvae hatch from eggs which have matured in sea water at a temperature of 12 degrees as from eggs which have been kept in water at a temperature of six degrees, and how the quantity of dissolved carbon dioxide in water impairs the survival chance of the fish spawn.
These two questions are among the focal research topics of the BIOACID fish consortium headed by AWI biologist Dr. Felix Mark. In this research project marine biologists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, the GEOMAR, and the Universities of Bremen, Dsseldorf and Mnster together with partners from Norway and Sweden investigate how sensitive the two commercial fish species, Atlantic cod and Arctic cod, are to the increasing warming and acidification of the sea water. In nine closely linked sub-projects they study all life stages of the fish and their genetic patterns: from spawn and the development of the larvae, through the juvenile fish and their favourite food, the copepod, to the mature parent fish.
"As for all other organisms, the Atlantic cod and Arctic cod feel the most comfortable in a specific temperature range. During the spawning season, for example, the Atlantic cod prefers temperatures of between three and seven degrees Celsius. By contrast, the Arctic cod breeds at temperatures of between zero to four degrees Celsius. If the temperature of the sea now increases due to climate change, the animals become stressed, a condition which is greatly exacerbated by the increasing ocean acidification. We suspect that these new environmental conditions will lead to the comfort ranges of both species becoming smaller and that the habitat of the fish will increasingly overlap. This means that the Atlantic cod can be expected to seriously compete with the Arctic cod ", says Dr. Daniela Storch, biologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute.
Just which fish species has the best chances of survival will be investigated by the project members in complex behavioural experiments and during a four-week expedition. "From mid August to mid September this year we will be fishing the fjords of the north, west and south coasts of Spitsbergen on the research vessel Heincke. We firstly wish to document where we find which species at this time of year. Secondly, we are interested in catching a great deal of fish which we will bring back alive to Bremerhaven and can then study in the over 100 new basins of our aquarium facility", explains Felix Mark.
The planned experiments include performance analyses in the ultra-modern flow channel and the two MRI scanners of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven. "Using this apparatus we can not only look into the brain of the fish but even into its individual cells. We are able to recognise, for example, how its metabolism alters within the cells, how heart and blood circulation of the fish react to the rise in water temperature, at which pH value of the water the fish reaches its performance limits or in which way temperature and degree of acidification affect its senses", explains Felix Mark.
The researchers know from investigations of tropical fish, for example, that their offspring have a reduced sense of smell as ocean acidification rises. The consequence: the young fish find it more difficult to return home and are more likely to fall prey to others. So are heat-shy Atlantic cod and its Arctic cousin facing a similar fate in view of climate change? Flemming Dahlke's first results are at least interesting: "There are many signs that the water temperature plays an important role in the breeding of the cod. There was as virtually no life in those eggs fertilised in sea water at a temperature of twelve degrees", reports the phd student.
###
Glossary:
Atlantic cod:
Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) is one of the most important commercial fish species in the North Atlantic. Stocks of Atlantic cod are divided over both sides of the North Atlantic but the fish also live in the coastal waters off the southern tip of Greenland and around the island as well as in the North and Baltic Sea. Whilst the young fish prefer the shallow waters with sea grass beds or rock crannies, older fish tend to be found in shoals during the day at a depth of 150 to 200 metres. At night each animal searches for food alone, hunting for invertebrates, smaller fish and also juvenile fish of their own species under some circumstances. Adult fish reach a body length of around one metre. However, outstanding specimens two metres in length have also been caught. The Atlantic code tolerates water temperatures of up to 15 degrees Celsius and is brownish to greenish or grey dorsally and pale ventrally. The stocks of Atlantic cod along the American east coast and in European waters have dropped steeply due to intensive fishing in the eighties. Nowadays, primarily Norwegian, Icelandic and Russian fishermen find Atlantic cod in their nets.
Industrial production of Atlantic cod has been attempted primarily in the USA, Canada, Iceland, Norway and the United Kingdom. However, the financial market crisis in 2010 and the as yet unsolved problems in breeding itself have so far prevented any further growth in this economic sector.
More information on the Atlantic cod and its significance as a commercial fish may be found in the web portal of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: http://www.fao.org/fishery/culturedspecies/Gadus_morhua/en#tcNA003F
Arctic cod:
Arctic cod (Boreogadus saida) lives in the central Arctic Ocean and in the northern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The fish occur both beneath the sea ice and in the ice-free and also near-shore waters. Arctic cod are usually around 25 centimetres long and feed on copepods, amphipods and smaller fish. They are brownish along the back with many fine dark points. Sides and belly are silvery. The animals are currently caught primarily by Russian and Norwegian fishermen for the production of fish meal and oil.
More information of the Arctic cod and its significance as a commercial fish may be found in the web portal of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: http://www.fao.org/fishery/species/2233/en
BIOACID:
BIOACID is an acronym for the major research project "Biological Impacts of Ocean Acidification", within which 14 institutes explore how marine organisms react to ocean acidification and the impact on the food web, the ecosystems in the sea and ultimately also on the economy and society. The project moved into its second phase in September 2012. The Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) supports the work of this three-year second phase with EUR 8.77 million. More information on the entire project is available at http://www.bioacid.de.
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Atlantic cod in for even more stress?Public release date: 22-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sina Loeschke medien@awi.de 49-471-483-12008 Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres
Marine biologists launch a new research project on the impact of climate change on the popular commercial fish
Bremerhaven, 17 April 2013. Researchers have known for some years that the Atlantic cod beats the retreat in the direction of the Arctic when the waters in its traditional habitat become too warm. In summer, shoals from the Atlantic Ocean, for example, are now moving up as far as Spitsbergen into the waters the Arctic cod calls its own. In the next two and a half years, biologists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, together with scientists from Kiel, Bremen, Dsseldorf and Mnster, will be seeking to discover the consequences of this climate-related migration on the stocks of these two commercial fish species, how the fish are responding to the water becoming warmer and more acidic and at which stages of life the changes are most dangerous to them. The first investigations are already in progress as part of the joint project BIOACID with focus placed on the early life stages.
Until recently, Flemming Dahlke, fishery biologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), could not have imagined that he would one day have to resort to the fishing rod to pursue his doctorate. But after several fruitless attempts at getting hold of an Atlantic cod ready to spawn, a fishing trip proved to be the most profitable method. Flemming Dahlke stripped off the eggs from his catch, fertilised these with Atlantic cod sperm and was finally able to start on his actual research work.
At the Swedish research station of Kristineberg, the AWI fishery biologist observes, documents and measures how the cod eggs develop at different water temperatures. He would like to know whether as many larvae hatch from eggs which have matured in sea water at a temperature of 12 degrees as from eggs which have been kept in water at a temperature of six degrees, and how the quantity of dissolved carbon dioxide in water impairs the survival chance of the fish spawn.
These two questions are among the focal research topics of the BIOACID fish consortium headed by AWI biologist Dr. Felix Mark. In this research project marine biologists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, the GEOMAR, and the Universities of Bremen, Dsseldorf and Mnster together with partners from Norway and Sweden investigate how sensitive the two commercial fish species, Atlantic cod and Arctic cod, are to the increasing warming and acidification of the sea water. In nine closely linked sub-projects they study all life stages of the fish and their genetic patterns: from spawn and the development of the larvae, through the juvenile fish and their favourite food, the copepod, to the mature parent fish.
"As for all other organisms, the Atlantic cod and Arctic cod feel the most comfortable in a specific temperature range. During the spawning season, for example, the Atlantic cod prefers temperatures of between three and seven degrees Celsius. By contrast, the Arctic cod breeds at temperatures of between zero to four degrees Celsius. If the temperature of the sea now increases due to climate change, the animals become stressed, a condition which is greatly exacerbated by the increasing ocean acidification. We suspect that these new environmental conditions will lead to the comfort ranges of both species becoming smaller and that the habitat of the fish will increasingly overlap. This means that the Atlantic cod can be expected to seriously compete with the Arctic cod ", says Dr. Daniela Storch, biologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute.
Just which fish species has the best chances of survival will be investigated by the project members in complex behavioural experiments and during a four-week expedition. "From mid August to mid September this year we will be fishing the fjords of the north, west and south coasts of Spitsbergen on the research vessel Heincke. We firstly wish to document where we find which species at this time of year. Secondly, we are interested in catching a great deal of fish which we will bring back alive to Bremerhaven and can then study in the over 100 new basins of our aquarium facility", explains Felix Mark.
The planned experiments include performance analyses in the ultra-modern flow channel and the two MRI scanners of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven. "Using this apparatus we can not only look into the brain of the fish but even into its individual cells. We are able to recognise, for example, how its metabolism alters within the cells, how heart and blood circulation of the fish react to the rise in water temperature, at which pH value of the water the fish reaches its performance limits or in which way temperature and degree of acidification affect its senses", explains Felix Mark.
The researchers know from investigations of tropical fish, for example, that their offspring have a reduced sense of smell as ocean acidification rises. The consequence: the young fish find it more difficult to return home and are more likely to fall prey to others. So are heat-shy Atlantic cod and its Arctic cousin facing a similar fate in view of climate change? Flemming Dahlke's first results are at least interesting: "There are many signs that the water temperature plays an important role in the breeding of the cod. There was as virtually no life in those eggs fertilised in sea water at a temperature of twelve degrees", reports the phd student.
###
Glossary:
Atlantic cod:
Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) is one of the most important commercial fish species in the North Atlantic. Stocks of Atlantic cod are divided over both sides of the North Atlantic but the fish also live in the coastal waters off the southern tip of Greenland and around the island as well as in the North and Baltic Sea. Whilst the young fish prefer the shallow waters with sea grass beds or rock crannies, older fish tend to be found in shoals during the day at a depth of 150 to 200 metres. At night each animal searches for food alone, hunting for invertebrates, smaller fish and also juvenile fish of their own species under some circumstances. Adult fish reach a body length of around one metre. However, outstanding specimens two metres in length have also been caught. The Atlantic code tolerates water temperatures of up to 15 degrees Celsius and is brownish to greenish or grey dorsally and pale ventrally. The stocks of Atlantic cod along the American east coast and in European waters have dropped steeply due to intensive fishing in the eighties. Nowadays, primarily Norwegian, Icelandic and Russian fishermen find Atlantic cod in their nets.
Industrial production of Atlantic cod has been attempted primarily in the USA, Canada, Iceland, Norway and the United Kingdom. However, the financial market crisis in 2010 and the as yet unsolved problems in breeding itself have so far prevented any further growth in this economic sector.
More information on the Atlantic cod and its significance as a commercial fish may be found in the web portal of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: http://www.fao.org/fishery/culturedspecies/Gadus_morhua/en#tcNA003F
Arctic cod:
Arctic cod (Boreogadus saida) lives in the central Arctic Ocean and in the northern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The fish occur both beneath the sea ice and in the ice-free and also near-shore waters. Arctic cod are usually around 25 centimetres long and feed on copepods, amphipods and smaller fish. They are brownish along the back with many fine dark points. Sides and belly are silvery. The animals are currently caught primarily by Russian and Norwegian fishermen for the production of fish meal and oil.
More information of the Arctic cod and its significance as a commercial fish may be found in the web portal of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: http://www.fao.org/fishery/species/2233/en
BIOACID:
BIOACID is an acronym for the major research project "Biological Impacts of Ocean Acidification", within which 14 institutes explore how marine organisms react to ocean acidification and the impact on the food web, the ecosystems in the sea and ultimately also on the economy and society. The project moved into its second phase in September 2012. The Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) supports the work of this three-year second phase with EUR 8.77 million. More information on the entire project is available at http://www.bioacid.de.
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Jim Miller is 5-foot-8, fights at 155 lbs., and has a bushy red beard. Pat Healy is 5-foot-9, fights at 155 lbs., and sported a trimmed red beard at UFC 159. Can you blame UFC announcer Bruce Buffer for mixing them up?
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Public release date: 22-Apr-2013
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