Birds Migrate Earlier But Some May Be Left Behind As The Climate Warms Rapidly: related news

Birds Migrate Earlier, But Some May Be Left Behind As The Climate Warms Rapidly

Many birds are arriving earlier each spring as temperatures warm along the East Coast of the United States. However, the farther those birds journey, the less likely they are to keep pace with the rapidly changing climate.

As climate warms, birds are migrating earlier: study

Many birds are arriving earlier each spring as temperatures warm along the US East Coast, says a new study that looked at global warming and bird migration.

Win some, bowl some, eat some

One of the great things about playing cricket in the Midlands is the passionate support of the Warwickshire fans, who help make any game there so atmospheric. It was great to come back to a ground that I'm very fond of after spending time there during 2006 and 2007, and seeing some old friends. I really enjoyed my time at Warwickshire and would love to play some more cricket here in the future, and learn under the new coach Ashley Giles, who like me was a left-arm twirler.

Language May Have Evolved Earlier Than Supposed

Science News reports on research suggesting that humans' language ability may have developed earlier than we thought. Scientists used CT scanning of H. heidelbergensis skulls, more than 530,000 years old, to reconstruct the structure of the ear canal of this Neanderthal ancestor. They found evidence that the ears of these early hominids would have had a sensitivity peak in the same 2-4 KHz range that the ears of modern humans do — the range in which most information is carried in language. Sensory systems are neurologically expensive, and it's unlikely that the body would invest the resources in maintaining such a system if it didn't serve a purpose. Quoting: "It may be time to rethink the stereotype of grunting, wordless Neanderthals. The prehistoric humans may have been quite chatty — at least if the ear canals of their ancestors ar

Turns Out People Say They're Concerned About Privacy, But They're Not

Well, this shouldn't surprise very many people, but following on plenty of earlier studies that have made it clear that most people don't do much to protect their privacy, a new study out of the UK pretty much states the obvious: people say they're concerned about privacy, but they sure don't act that way. The study found 84% of users say they carefully guard their info online -- but when tested, 89% of people actually did give away info in the same exact survey. To be fair, the specific set of questions was first asking people if they carefully guard their income info, followed later by a question asking them what income bracket they fell into. It's reasonable to think that some folks believe that the bracket is not the same as giving away their actual income -- which is what the first question implied.

PC Video Games Thriving... But In Different Ways Than You Might Expect

Recently, we had a story about a lawyer who was suing a bunch of folks for uploading a pinball video game, with some questionable statements about how piracy was destroying the PC gaming industry. Of course, that's not actually true. An excellent post by Cord Blomquist explains how the PC gaming business is actually growing, but in different ways than most people expect. Sure, it may be harder to find certain types of video games that you see on consoles these days, but other games are thriving. But they're doing so by adopting different business models that aren't so impacted by unauthorized distribution. For example, they involve online services (ongoing MMO type games, where the payment is for service, rather than the software) or they focus on making money through other means, such as advertising or upselling premium editions.

As climate warms, birds are migrating earlier: study

Use of women for trafficking drugs via India on rise(June 26 is International Day Against Drug Abuse)

Insect Biodiversity in Amazon May Be Result of Ice Age Climate Change And Ancient Flooding, Not River Barriers

Ice age climate change and ancient flooding--but not barriers created by rivers--may have promoted the evolution of new insect species in the Amazon region of South America, a new study suggests.

Helping Some Students May Harm High Achievers

palegray.net writes "According to a new study performed by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Washington, increased emphasis on helping students with a history of lower academic achievement results in lower performance for high achievers. This trend appears to be related to the No Child Left Behind Act. Essentially, programs designed to devote a large number of resources to assisting students who are deemed to be 'significantly behind' leave little room for encouraging continued academic growth for higher-performing students."

Biologists say it may be necessary to move some species to save them from extinction

WASHINGTON (AP) _ With climate change increasingly threatening the survival of plants and animals, scientists say it may become necessary to move some species to save them. Dubbed assisted colonization or assisted migration, the idea is to decide how severe the threat is to various species, and if they need help to deal with it.

Biologists say it may be necessary to move some species to save them from extinction

WASHINGTON (AP) _ With climate change increasingly threatening the survival of plants and animals, scientists say it may become necessary to move some species to save them. Dubbed assisted colonization or assisted migration, the idea is to decide how severe the threat is to various species, and if they need help to deal with it.

European Politicians Discuss 'The Blogger Problem'

Apparently this got some discussion a few weeks back, but I was just alerted to the fact that some European politicians have been debating how to handle the new media landscape that makes some odd and totally contradictory suggestions which the possibilities of bloggers becoming a problem by "polluting cyberspace." While some of the argument has been blown way out of proportion, there are some things that are very problematic in the way the paper is written.

"We are keen to exploit some of the opportunities that open source brings - not just for the obvious cost advantage but also to benefit from some of the innovative thinking that we see in some of the current projects."

In the latest silicon.com CIO Jury poll, participants were asked whether they planned to increase the amount of open source software they use within the next 12 months.

MPAA Want to Bung-Up "Analog Hole," Disable Piracy-Enabling Cable Box Outputs

Movies movies movies... we all love a good show, but the lovely MPAA is up to some pretty strange shenanigans to ensure that you get to see some shows just once—until they're out on DVD at least. The fab guys at the Motion Picture Association of America are petitioning the FCC on behalf of some major movie studios to close the "analog hole" that may allow people to record movies broadcast on cable before they hit DVD. "The Petitioners' theatrical movies are too valuable in this early distribution window to risk their exposure to unauthorized copying" runs the argument, and is why the MPAA wants "selectable output control" (SOC) enabled on some cable box outputs.

Tech Companies Team Up To Buy Up Patents To Keep Them Away From Others

Google, Verizon, HP, Cisco and some others are apparently teaming up to put money towards buying patents to keep them out of the hands of patent hoarders who would turn around and sue them. This isn't a new concept, and has been tried before -- and it didn't help much. The problem is that many of the worst patent suits aren't from "known" patents, but someone claiming a patent on some minor feature that everyone thought was obvious. Also, this type of action only encourages more bad patent activities by adding another buyer to the market. Now, questionable patent holders will recognize that they can also just sell to this patent pool, rather than selling to some patent hoarding firm. This is one of those ideas that sounds good on paper, but will have little to no effect on slowing down or stopping bad patent lawsuits, and may actually enc

KDE 4.1 Beta 2 Ready For Testing

"Another milestone on the road towards KDE 4.1 has been packaged and put online for testing. The release notes highlight some features in Dolphin and Gwenview, as well as additional information on where to get the release, make sure you also check your distributor's websites as well. While there are some bugs left, the release already works quite solidly on most people's machines. Performance problems on NVidia chips remain, but we are confident that those will be solved by the teams over at NVidia in one of the next releases of their graphics driver. In KDE 4.1, there is also some preliminary Mac and Windows support coming up. Several apps can be tried by a wider audience on those proprietary platforms this summer already. On the side of Free operating systems, support for OpenSolaris is coming along nicely, but is not free of bugs yet.

Pricing projects is always hard

One of the most common questions I get from people wanting to become freelance Web designers is how do I set a price? It's a hard question to answer, but I found an interesting article from GoMediaZine written last fall that talks about some of the standard problems designers have when deciding how to charge. A designers guide to pricing has some things in it I don't agree with - such as only using contracts for "big" projects (if you agree with them, you should read some of the horror stories where people got stuck holding the bag when they didn't have a contract on a "little" project). But it does cover some essentials like how to pitch a project and invoicing and so on.

Nokia Urges Linux Developers To Be Cool With DRM

superglaze writes in to note that according to Nokia's software chief, its plans for open source include getting developers to accept things like DRM, commercial IP rights, and SIM locks. "Jaaksi admitted that concepts like these 'go against the open-source philosophy,' but said they were necessary components of the current mobile industry. 'Why do we need closed vehicles? We do,' he said. 'Some of these things harm the industry but they're here [as things stand]. These are touchy, emotional issues, but this dialogue is very much needed. As an industry, we plan to use open-source technologies, but we are not yet ready to play by the rules; but this needs to work the other way round too.'"

Some polling analysis and the environment

position on an emissions trading scheme, some recent analysis of election-time polling may give them pause. Unfortunately, the full paper is behind a pay wall, but the abstract is available here and it has been reported on by other media as well, so you can get the gist.

Climate change and species distributions

Scientists have long pointed to physical changes in the Earth and its atmosphere, such as melting polar ice caps, sea level rise and violent storms, as indicators of global climate change. But changes in climate can wreak havoc in more subtle ways, such as the loss of habitat for plant and animal species. In a series of talks at the Ecological Society of America (ESA) 93rd Annual Meeting, climate change scientists will discuss how temperature-induced habitat loss can spell disaster for many living things.

Science on climate change wrong: repor...

Politicians may have got the science on climate change wrong, a new report says.Politicians may have got the science on climate change wrong, a new report says.

Several Nintendo Controllers may be Banned

Nintendo may soon have to halt sales of its Wii Classic Controller, GameCube WaveBird, and the standard GameCube controller. A suit was brought against Nintendo by Anascape for violating its patent for a "six degrees of freedom interface device." Sony has been licensing the technology since 2004 and Microsoft settled out of court. Nintendo, however, decided to go to trial, and the judge ruled that Nintendo was indeed in violation of the patent and not only owes $21 million, but may also have to halt sales of the three aforementioned controllers. Nintendo has appealed the ruling, so for now, they can continue to sell the controllers. However, if you've been considering purchasing one, you may want to do so sooner rather than later.

Next legal battle for eBay may be over counterfeit software

Online auction house eBay may have won a major court victory when it prevailed over Tiffany, but its legal troubles are hardly behind it. In that case, a judge ruled that eBay was taking reasonable efforts to keep counterfeit items off its site and used Tiffany's trademarked name appropriately, but the auctioneer lost a similar battle against Louis Vuitton in French courts. Now, word comes that a software industry group is considering suing the auctioneer over counterfeit items, this time on copyright grounds.

Netflix Ships Some DVDs, Still Not Back To Normal

Netflix's bonered shipping system hasn't magically fixed itself yet, but Reuters reports that they're resuming shipments to the affected customers. The company, which shipped nothing early Thursday morning, wants to get back to normal sometime on Friday, which may or may not be the case. The good news is that they've fixed most of the problems (or so they claim), but if you really need something to watch, their Watch Now streaming is still up. [Reuters via CrunchGear - Image Credit]

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