Amazing Video: First Camera Trap Footage of Critically Endangered Cross River Gorillas

Very few people have ever seen a Cross River gorilla (Gorilla gorilla diehli), the rarest and most endangered of the world?s four gorilla subspecies. Only about 250 to 300 of these animals exist in the world, and they have almost never been photographed in the wild.

Well, you?re in for a treat. The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) this week released the first camera trap video footage of Cross River gorillas. The footage, shot in Cameroon?s Kagwene Gorilla Sanctuary, shows eight different gorillas?representing about 3 percent of the entire species?casually walking through the forest. About halfway through the two-minute video, a male silverback charges toward the camera, beating his massive chest:

?Spectacular footage such as this, which we?ve never had before for Cross River gorillas, is absolutely vital to inspire local people, the governments of Nigeria and Cameroon, and the global community to care about and to save this unique subspecies,? James Deutsch, executive director for WCS?s Africa Program, said in a prepared release. ?Continued research of this kind will help fine-tune management plans to protect this rarest of apes.?

The video does contain a disturbing element if you look closely enough: one of the gorillas is missing a hand. The WCS theorizes that this could be an injury, now healed, caused by a snare left by hunters. Wildlife poaching used to be more prevalent in the region, but the sanctuary has been protected by antipoaching patrols since it was established in 2008. It is less than 20 square kilometers in size and is estimated to hold approximately 20 to 30 gorillas.

?Cross River gorillas occur in very low densities across their entire range, so the appearance of a possible snare injury is a reminder that continued law enforcement efforts are needed to prevent further injuries to gorillas in the sanctuary,? said Liz Macfie, gorilla coordinator for WCS?s Species Program.

Cross River gorillas only live in remote, mountainous regions along the Nigeria?Cameroon border, where they exist in extremely fragmented subpopulations spread out over 12,000 kilometers. The major threats to their survival are habitat loss and poaching. Most of the gorillas live outside of protected sites.

Previously in Extinction Countdown: Critically Endangered Cross River Gorillas May Have More Room to Grow

Video and still courtesy of the Wildlife Conservation Society

los angeles desserts Discount Motorcycle Luggage Planters for Sale upholstery and furniture cleaning Colorado Springs

Looking for Earths by looking for Jupiters

ScienceDaily (May 7, 2012) ? In the search for Earth-like planets, it is helpful to look for clues and patterns that can help scientist narrow down the types of systems where potentially habitable planets are likely to be discovered. New research from a team including Carnegie's Alan Boss narrows down the search for Earth-like planets near Jupiter-like planets. Their work indicates that the early post-formation movements of hot-Jupiter planets probably disrupt the formation of Earth-like planets.

Their work is published the week of May 7 by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The team, led by Jason Steffen of the Fermilab Center for particle Astrophysics, used data from NASA's Kepler mission to look at so-called "hot Jupiter" planets -- those roughly Jupiter-sized planets with orbital periods of about three days. If a Jupiter-like planet has been discovered by a slight dimming of brightness in the star it orbits as it passes between the star and Earth, it is then possible -- within certain parameters -- to determine whether the hot-Jupiter has any companion planets.

Of the 63 candidate hot Jupiter systems identified by Kepler, the research team did not find any evidence for nearby companion planets. There are several possible explanations. One is that there are no companion planets for any of these hot Jupiters. Another is that the companions are too small in either size or mass to be detected using these methods. Lastly it is possible that there are companion planets, but that the configuration of their orbits makes them undetectable using these methods.

However, when expanding the search to include systems with either Neptune-like planets (known as "hot Neptunes"), or "warm Jupiters" (Jupiter-sized planets with slightly larger orbits than hot Jupiters), the team found some potential companions. Of the 222 hot Neptunes, there were two with possible companions, and of the 31 warm Jupiters, there were three with possible companions.

"The implications of these findings are that systems with Earth-like planets formed differently than systems with hot Jupiters," Boss said. "Since we believe that hot Jupiters formed farther out, and then migrated inward toward their stars, the inward migration disrupted the formation of Earth-like planets. If our sun had a hot Jupiter, we would not be here."

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

---

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Carnegie Institution.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

---

Journal Reference:

1. Jason H. Steffen, Darin Ragozzine, Daniel C. Fabrycky, Joshua A. Carter, Eric B. Ford, Matthew J. Holman, Jason F. Rowe, William F. Welsh, William J. Borucki, Alan P. Boss, David R. Ciardi, Samuel N. Quinn. Kepler constraints on planets near hot Jupiters. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1120970109

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

car locksmith matt leinart how to network market online laundromat for sale

The First Aid Methods of Eye Injury

When there is the occurrence of ocular trauma, the injured person himself must first identify the site, nature and extent of injury, and then given the appropriate treatment depending on the situation.

?

Face by blunt hit, only cause of orbital soft tissue swelling without break orbit, around the eye has rich vascular distribution, bleeding under the skin is often swollen, so after the injury must not be rubbing or hot compress, avoid not increasing subcutaneous hematoma. Ice pack or cold towel should immediately local cooling, in order to relieve swelling and pain. After 24 hours, we can change heat or to promote the absorption of local bleeding.

?

Those who only eye external skin rupture and eye lossless injured, you must keep the wound clean, non-rub cover the wound with dirty hands or dirty cloth, so as not to cause an infection involving the eye and affect vision.

You should be taken to hospital as soon as possible with a clean dressing ophthalmology debridement, reducing the opportunity to shed large scar in the future.

?

If the eyeball gets by blunt impact or abrasion, there may be intraocular foreign body sensation, photophobia, tearing for the wounded, if damages the cornea, and it will appear pain. At this point, if there is chloramphenicol eye drops, it can be used to wash the eye to prevent infection. Then cover the eye with clean gauze or a handkerchief to the hospital for treatment.

?

If the eye injuries, and there are foreign body piercing or across the eye, resulting in eyeball rupture, the wounded themselves feel having an ?tears? pouring, then blurred vision associated with pain.

This time, rescuers should let the wounded immediately lie down, and never use water to flush the injured eye, or apply any medication, just stamp on the injured eye with a clean dressing, and the wound can be gently with a bandage, but it is strictly prohibited pressure. The purpose of dressing only is to limit the damage aggravated by eye movements and friction, and reduce the light stimulation of the injured eye. All ocular trauma need to be bandaged, in order to avoid eye activities led to injury to the eye rotation caused by friction, so that the injury aggravated. And then quickly send the wounded to hospital, and may not delay a moment, though sometimes only one, if not get the timely treatment, the other eye will be affected and blindness.

?

fence contractor Los Angeles steel band Hoa Management Houston luton car rental

Facebook expands its second foray into local deals

By Martha C. White

Facebook is expanding Offers, a free, DIY-coupon generator for local businesses that bears more than a passing resemblance to Deals, which was widely touted as a potential "Groupon-killer" when it launched last year. Offering local deals isn't easy: Facebook scrapped Deals after four months.?

"Local and daily deals in general are very labor intensive, and contrast sharply with Facebook's business model of being engineering-heavy," Sam Hamadeh, CEO of PrivCo LLC, said via email.?Making Offers free and self-serve isn't the solution, though, according to experts in the business of monetizing data.

Facebook needs to stop emulating daily deal strategies and instead take a page from the playbook of credit card companies, which are slicing and dicing the reams of customer information at their disposal to connect businesses only with the people who are likely to become customers ? or who already shop at their competitors.

Offers was announced back in February along with other changes to Facebook's advertising platform. It's still in beta, but was made available to?most local businesses in the United States last week.?"Offers are a free new way for businesses to share discounts and promotions directly from a Facebook Page," the company said in a statement when it launched.?

This is a tool intended for the mom-and-pop small business with tiny marketing budgets.?While deals can either be posted on a business's news feed or made into a "sponsored story" ? Facebook-speak for ad ? the video tutorial on Facebook's site focuses on the free aspect and includes a short Marketing 101 lesson on structuring a coupon.?

Once it's created, the offer goes onto the business's timeline, which means people who have liked the business page will see it on their news feeds, and anyone who views the business's timeline will be able to see the offer. This is likely to be too scattershot an approach to deliver much businesses to the local restaurants, retailers and service providers Facebook is targeting.

"You can't drop this stuff like they're leaflets from airplanes," said Brian Riley, senior research director at CEB TowerGroup.

Sites like Groupon and its rivals probably don't have to start worrying just yet, since Offers has to develop a traction it never managed to achieve with Deals. "Groupon has a huge presence in local,"?Ken Sena, an analyst at Evercore Partners, said via email. "Therefore, it could be disruptive longer term but I think initially they will be somewhat separated."

But if Facebook takes a more data-driven, targeted approach to offers, daily deal sites might have to contend with much stiffer competition.?"A lot of the information on Facebook is so general, you've got to be able to drive that down... and really turn it from data into information," Riley said.?

Banks that issue credit and debit cards are doing this using a model the industry calls "merchant funded rewards." The issuer or a third-party middleman slices and dices anonymized spending and demographic data and uses that to present offers to customers.?Merchants pay the cost of the discount plus a cut to the bank or third-party firm only for offers actually redeemed.?

For instance, imagine a chain coffee shop wants to reach females under the age of 35 who earn more than $50,000 a year and who make purchases at a competing coffee chain. They create an offer ? say, for a half-price blended coffee drink ? that goes out only to consumers who match those specs. This way, the coffee chain avoids giving offers to customers who would have made a purchase there anyway, or to deal-hunters who will take the discount and never return.

"What I'm noticing what's happening with those types of programs is they're generally incorporating a variety of anonymized data," said?Beth Robertson, director of payments research at Javelin Strategy & Research, and that data is what makes users more likely to only receive offers to which they'll respond.

PrivCo's Hamadeh said it's promising that Facebook is letting businesses combine an offer with a targeted ad, but Robertson said Facebook needs to exploit the information it has at its disposal more aggressively.

"Facebook?could do those things but theres no indication it's offering that right now," she said. Although Facebook doesn't have information about users' spending patterns ? with the exception of the brisk sale of game-related virtual goods ? it has plenty of demographic information along with information about what businesses users like, and this is what could eventually give it an edge over deal sites.

"Making it more sophisticated draws it out of the daily deal sort of generic offering and would add value to the merchant," Robertson said.?

CNBC's Becky Quick discusses her conversation with Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett regarding his perspective on Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. It's too difficult to value, he says.

depression cures jailbreak iphone 4g Real Time Graphics lawn care lawrencville

A Weekly Roundup of Small-Business News - NYTimes.com

Dashboard

A weekly roundup of small-business developments.

What?s affecting me, my clients and other small-business owners this week.

The Big Story: Optimism Up, Hiring Down

Gallup reports that the optimism of small-business owners has risen to its highest since 2008. Optimism is also up among chief financial officers. Small-business revenues are recovering from their recessionary depths. The latest jobs report is a disappointment, and ADP says there?s a slowdown in hiring. Weekly unemployment claims fall slightly. Meanwhile, small-business net employment growth is outpacing the national average. But small-business hiring took a step back in April, and Joyce M. Rosenberg explains why. The number of new companies continues to slide.

The Economy: Heading to the Cliff

Federal Reserve policy makers are sounding the alarm over a ?fiscal cliff? at the end of this year, when ?scheduled U.S. tax hikes and spending cuts could pose a big threat to the fragile economic recovery.? Two Pauls debate whose economic policies are more outdated. Lawmakers,?according to the Treasury Department, will not have to refight their epic battle over the debt ceiling until after the November elections. Alan Greenspan says stocks are ?very cheap,? while Martin Feldstein says we have a Fed-fueled stock bubble. Lance Roberts says monetary and fiscal policies have little effect on when recessions occur.

The Data: Restaurants Perform

Personal income and expenditures increased. The Restaurant Performance Index (pdf) matches its post-recession high. Construction spending (pdf) rises slightly. The I.S.M. manufacturing index indicates faster expansion but the nonmanufacturing index shows slower growth. General Motors lifts its outlook. Steel consumption is expected to be strong. Factory orders fell in March by the most in three years.

Management: Ridiculously Simple

David Butcher shares six tips to motivate employees, including: ?Be specific in praise.? Uzi Shmilovici says the earlier you start collecting and analyzing data, the better your decisions. Terrence Russell explains how to be in the office without being in the office. An entrepreneur who started 11 companies over a 20-year period documents his stumbles in a book. Joe Brancatelli explains why United Airlines is the worst ever (again). The Jetman demonstrates a better way to travel. Here is a ridiculously simple way to get more revenue and build your audience. Tara Hornor explains what every female business owner needs to know. Mike Michalowicz says this management method is a better way to handle stressful situations. Lynn Greiner says that business-process management will help clear the bottlenecks that can hinder a business. There were 13 occupational fatalities a day in 2010.

Marketing: A Two-Second Pitch

Virgin Airlines lets you use Richard Branson?s head to cool your drinks. Yahoo introduces an online marketing dashboard for small businesses. Jeff Bullas offers five ways to turn Twitter into your most powerful social media tool. Diana Maria says there are three things you need to know about keywords. Tuesday is the best day for auto brands to publish Facebook content (but Sunday is the most engaging day for telecom and consumer goods). Kevin Casey gives five tips for handling complaints on social media, including: ?Don?t forget you?re still dealing with people.? Here?s a surprise: social-media-savvy consumers will spend more when they get good service and drop companies when they don?t. Tracey Lawton says there is a five-step checklist for sending out e-mail broadcasts. Social media marketing is nice, but TV ads still rule. Here?s a two-second business pitch that worked. Can you guess which age group sends the most text messages? Franny Oxford gives advice for speaking to strangers at professional events. Ashton Kutcher looks for a date (and gets in trouble). Anna Farmery says that this new cultural business model will emerge over the next few years.

Start-Up: Go to Delaware, Young Man

Some say start-up chief executives crave venture capital, not crowdsourcing. A tech start-up raises the profile of small businesses ? and $4 million. Peter Thiel has three rules for starting a business, including, ?Be a Delaware C-corp.?: ?This separates your business and personal affairs, offers flexibility when it comes to issuing stock, and makes it possible to exit the business by going public.? A ?Pinterest for commerce? start-up is growing 20 to 30 percent month-over-month. Here are six ways to lure talented engineers to your start-up.

Around the Country: Philadelphia?

Philadelphia sets its sights on becoming America?s next big tech town. A new TV show features a skilled pair of entrepreneurs who trade up from low-value items to get what they want. Street Fight plans a ?Summit West? on local marketing strategies. A new report explains why companies relocate. These are the 10 most expensive ballparks. Chief Executive magazine lists its best and worst states to do business. A student has 13 years of perfect attendance.

Around the World: Luxembourg?

Michael T. Snyder offers 22 signs that the Spanish economy is heading into a great depression. Unemployment reaches a record high in the Euro zone. Darcie Connell suggests five reasons entrepreneurs flee America, including a desire to escape from suburbia: many expats ?grew tired of suburban sprawl.? America presses China over its currency. Here are 42 things you will see only in China. TripAdvisor users say London is the best place to visit, and this flyover shows why. Canadians dominate the world?s 10 strongest banks. And in case you didn?t know, Luxembourg is the fifth-largest holder of American securities, debt and equity.

Finance: Selling Out

One study finds small-business owners are finding it less difficult to obtain credit; another shows there was less lending to small businesses in March as companies lost confidence in the economy. TD Bank kicks off a campaign to discuss the borrowing needs of 30,000 small businesses. John Adams reports that banks are finally putting together the right mix of payments and banking technology to satisfy small-business clients. Sales of small businesses rise as prices decline. The Small Business Administration needs investors for its new early stage capital program. Citibank rolls out a rewards program for small businesses.

Red Tape: Imports Week

Contractors are preparing for new rules. John Arensmeyer says small businesses want the government to invest in clean energy. Apple avoids paying a lot of taxes. Sandra Block reports that most student loans would be unaffected by the coming interest rate increase. Scott Lincicome reports on a new Web site and an ?imports week? sponsored by several trade associations that rely on imports to remain competitive. Joe Smith explains how to use a paper towel. The Small Business Administration adds a business matchmaking event to its National Small Business Week schedule. A lion tries to consume a baby.

Technology: Blackberry 10

The geek world likes the new Blackberry 10 and a college geek automates his dorm room. The Android phone is failing to get into businesses. Greenpeace is after some companies for their ?dirty cloud? computing. Barnes & Noble has a partnership with Microsoft. Intuit grabs for a bigger chunk of the small-business, software-as-a-service market. New wearable devices can track people through a wireless network. Marc Andreessen says there is no tech bubble (and the smartphone is still underhyped). Google introduces automatic translation in Gmail. Dave Mosher explains a future of automatic pilots and robotic farmers. A study says the cloud saves the government more than $5 billion a year. Facebook is now helping organ donors. Evernote is worth $1 billion. Symantec reports that small-company security problems can threaten large corporate nets. M.I.T.?s Technology Review identifies 10 technologies set to transform the world. A computer glitch summons 1,200 residents to jury duty and causes a huge traffic jam.

The Week?s Bests

Prerna Gupta explains why entrepreneurs become disillusioned: ?There is no such thing as success. It is a moving target. A mirage. By the time you attain what you thought was your wildest dream, reality has moved on and left your dreams in the dust. And the desire for success grows stronger still.?

David Lavenda says that great ideas often come in pairs: ?Ideas do have their unique time in history. When there is a profound interest in solving a problem, more than one person will work on it, and each will have access to the same assortment of knowledge and underlying technology. What develops is a race to make the discovery or create the invention. And in some cases, a race?s ?photo finish? produces a duplicate invention.?

Gabriel Aidra thinks team building is a waste of time: ?I?m not saying that relationships and communication and cooperation aren?t important, they most certainly are, but going to a team-building workshop ? that?s like explaining the concept of friendship to two strangers and then expecting them to be friends. ? It just makes no sense.?

This Week?s Question: Are you disillusioned?

Gene Marks owns the Marks Group, a Bala Cynwyd, Pa., consulting firm that helps clients with customer relationship management. You can follow him on Twitter.

Oklahoma Lake Property toric lenses Generic Levitra Mattress reviews

Anthropologist finds explanation for hominin brain evolution in famous fossils

ScienceDaily (May 7, 2012) ? One of the world's most important fossils has a story to tell about the brain evolution of modern humans and their ancestors, according to Florida State University evolutionary anthropologist Dean Falk.

The Taung fossil -- the first australopithecine ever discovered -- has two significant features that were analyzed by Falk and a group of anthropological researchers. Their findings, which suggest brain evolution was a result of a complex set of interrelated dynamics in childbirth among new bipeds, were published May 7 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"These findings are significant because they provide a highly plausible explanation as to why the hominin brain might grow larger and more complex," Falk said.

The first feature is a "persistent metopic suture," or unfused seam, in the frontal bone, which allows a baby's skull to be pliable during childbirth as it squeezes through the birth canal. In great apes -- gorillas, orangutans and chimpanzees -- the metopic suture closes shortly after birth. In humans, it does not fuse until around 2 years of age to accommodate rapid brain growth.

The second feature is the fossil's endocast, or imprint of the outside surface of the brain transferred to the inside of the skull. The endocast allows researchers to examine the brain's form and structure.

After examining the Taung fossil, as well as huge numbers of skulls belonging to apes and humans, as well as corresponding 3-D CT (three-dimensional computed tomographic) scans, and taking into account the fossil record for the past 3 million years, Falk and her colleagues noted three important findings: The persistent metopic suture is an adaptation for giving birth to babies with larger brains; is related to the shift to a rapidly growing brain after birth; and may be related to expansion in the frontal lobes.

"The persistent metopic suture, an advanced trait, probably occurred in conjunction with refining the ability to walk on two legs," Falk said. "The ability to walk upright caused an obstretric dilemma. Childbirth became more difficult because the shape of the birth canal became constricted while the size of the brain increased. The persistent metopic suture contributes to an evolutionary solution to this dilemma."

The later fusion of the metopic suture is most likely an adaptation of hominins who walked upright to be able to more easily give birth to babies with relatively large brains. The unfused seam is also related to the shift to rapidly growing brains after birth, an advanced human-like feature as compared to apes.

"The later fusion was also associated with evolutionary expansion of the frontal lobes, which is evident from the endocasts of australopithecines such as Taung," Falk said.

The Taung fossil, which is estimated to be around 2? million years old, was discovered in 1924 in Taung, South Africa. It became the "type specimen," or main model, of the genus Australopithecus africanus when it was announced in 1925.

An australopithecine is any species of the extinct genera Australopithecus or Paranthropus that lived in Africa, walked on two legs and had relatively small brains.

Falk conducted the research with Marcia S. Ponce de Leon, Christoph P.E. Zollikofer and Naoki Morimoto of the Anthropological Institute and Museum at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

---

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Florida State University, via Newswise. The original article was written by Jeffery Seay.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

---

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

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.

make money online how to Life Insurance Custom Banners and Signs burton feelgood 2012

#Campaign: How Twitter is playing politics

Political Punch

Twitter -- the next (digital) battleground state. The social media wars are already underway, just check out Twitter foes David Axelrod, of the Obama campaign, and Eric Fehrnstrom, with the Romney campaign. Axelrod tweeted this photo, saying "How loving owners transport their dogs" -- a shot at Mitt Romney, who in the 1980s transported his dog Seamus in a carrier strapped to the roof. Fehrnstrom shot back after someone realized that in his memoir Obama wrote about eating dog as a boy. Fehrnstrom re-tweeted Axelrod's photo with the message: "In hindsight, a chilling photo." It was a debate hashed out -- or hashtagged out -- entirely on Twitter.

Campaigns can use Twitter to get a message out quickly, bypassing television ads or media interviews. And the social media tool is becoming a good predictor of which way the wind is blowing in the election.

"The momentum that shows up in polls two or three days [later] is showing up in a matter of hours on Twitter," said Adam Sharp, Twitter's senior manager for government, news, and social innovation. "In the run up to the Arizona and Michigan primaries, where the polls were neck in neck, the day before you saw a little bit of a flattening in Rick Santorum's follower growth, and a surge in Mitt Romney's follower growth -- and he went on to win both primaries."

Twitter has exploded on Capitol Hill and state legislatures; more than 90 percent of senators, representatives, and governors are on Twitter.? Internationally, one in five world leaders has an account.

"You could today send a tweet to President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and get an answer," said Sharp.

On election day 2008, about 1.8 million tweets were sent -- on all topics not just politics. That is just eight minutes' worth of tweets at today's rate of 340 million per day.

Check out this week's Political Punch to see how Twitter is affecting the 2012 election, working its way onto Capitol Hill, and at times, tripping up on its own algorithms.

burn victims support groups divers watches alcohol yeast Discount Pet Doors