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Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Texas town relying on tanker trucks for water (AP)
SPICEWOOD, Texas ? Tanker trucks loaded with water have become the lifeline for a Texas lakefront village that came precariously close to becoming the state's first community to run out of drinking water during a historic drought.
Spicewood got its first delivery of water Monday under dark clouds and rain. The 8,000-gallon water delivery arrived after it became clear the village's wells could no longer produce enough water to meet the needs of the Lake Travis community's 1,100 residents and elementary school, said Clara Tuma, spokeswoman of the Lower Colorado River Authority.
The town uses wells, not the nearby lake, for its drinking water. Ryan Rowney, manager of water operations for the authority, said it plans to truck water into the Central Texas town for several more weeks while exploring alternatives, including drilling a new well or piping water from Lake Travis. But the agency doesn't want to rush into any project, and prefers for now to pay $200 per truckload of water while ensuring the tens of thousands of dollars it will cost to find a permanent solution are well-spent.
Several towns and villages in Texas have come close to running out of water during the driest year in Lone Star State history, but until now none has had to truck in water. Most found solutions to hold them over, often paying tens of thousands of dollars to avoid hauling water, a scenario that conjures up images from the early 1900s, when indoor plumbing was a novelty.
"The hauling of water is just a Band-Aid approach. It's just a short-term approach," said Joe Don Dockery, a Burnet County commissioner that oversees the Spicewood area.
The Lower Colorado River Authority realized last week how dire the situation was, and informed Dockery on Monday. By the next day, the situation was worse ? the well had dropped an additional 1.3 feet overnight. The severest forms of water restrictions were put in place, and the authority said there would be no new hookups to the town's water supply.
Water still ran Monday through pipes and faucets of Spicewood. But instead of being pumped from wells into the community's 129,000-gallon storage tank ? a two day's supply of water ? the already treated liquid will be hauled in from 17 miles away, treated a second time and put into the town's water system.
"If we need to haul every day, we will. This will probably go on for several more months," Rowney said.
Trucks, including at least one 6,000 gallon tanker, will make about four or five deliveries a day, Rowney said, but the town will still have to remain under the severest water restrictions.
"All you can do is take a bath, a shower, and that's really all you're allowed to do. You can flush the commode, but even that we're asking people to do judiciously," Rowney said.
Spicewood, about 35 miles from Austin, is home to many retirees who spend their weekdays in the city and drive to their lakeside homes on the weekends. Residents are now being careful, taking shorter showers, and some are even bringing their clothes to Laundromats.
Until last week, when it became clear they could run out water, the most exciting event in Spicewood was the upcoming wild game chili cook-off advertised on a roadside sign at the entrance to the small community.
"When we had water it was pretty nice here," deadpanned Riley Walker a 73-year-old state transportation employee.
Walker bought land in Spicewood in 1988 when only a handful of families lived here. He built a house and moved into town full time in 2002.
"I have faith they will haul water in. They don't really have a choice; there are a lot of people here," Walker said.
Joe Barbera, president of the local property owner's association, said residents have been "really worried about this for a long time now," but have always been conservation minded.
"You look around and you don't see any immaculate lawns," he added. "This is just normal use for a normal community."
For more than a year, nearly the entire state of Texas has been in some stage of severe or exceptional drought. Rain has been so scarce lakes across the state turned into pools of mud. One town near Waco, Groesbeck, bought water from a rock quarry and built a seven-mile pipeline through a state park to get water. Some communities on Lake Travis moved their intake pipes into deeper water. And Houston started getting water from an alternative, farther away reservoir when Lake Houston ran too low.
Although it has started to rain more this winter, it's not enough to fill the state's arid rivers and lakes.
A few inches of rain certainly won't be enough to fill Spicewood's wells.
"We're talking about rainfall events of 20 inches plus. Huge, huge flood events to bring the lake levels up," Rowney said. "The downside of that is that everyone's praying for a flood, well floods can be bad too."
___
Plushnick-Masti contributed to this report from Houston. You can follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com//RamitMastiAP
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Monday, January 30, 2012
Video: Syria crisis worsens
The crisis in Syria takes a dramatic turn for the worse as Arab League observers suspend their mission in the country after government forces killed 74 people, including women and children, in one day. NBC?s Ayman Mohyeldin reports.
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Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/46176809/
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Sunday, January 29, 2012
Chevron profit falls as refineries, output suffer (Reuters)
(Reuters) ? Chevron Corp reported lower quarterly earnings on Friday, missing Wall Street forecasts, as rising spending on oil and gas projects and losses at its U.S. refinery business offset gains from higher crude oil prices.
Its shares were down 2.2 percent at $104.21 by midday, nearly $7 short of the record high they hit early this month.
Oil and gas production at the No. 2 U.S. oil company declined to 2.64 million barrels per day (BPD) from 2.79 million BPD a year-before, while average benchmark oil prices rose about 25 percent over the same period.
The company said the major factors behind the 2011 output shortfall were the effect of higher prices on production sharing contracts, lower-than-expected performance at large new offshore projects in the Gulf of Mexico and Angola, and a third-party pipeline rupture and decreased demand in Thailand.
Chevron had said earlier this month its refinery business would about break even for the quarter, but U.S. losses pulled the entire segment into the red, and the company's profits from oil and gas sales also appeared weaker than expected.
"It was a miss on some non-controllable factors," said Pavel Molchanov, analyst with Raymond James in Houston, citing the timings of sales and global pricing differences as the likely reason oil and gas profits fell about $500 million below his forecast.
Still, Chevron added 1.67 billion barrels of oil equivalent to its reserves last year, 171 percent of its 2011 output, which was a very strong performance, Molchanov said.
The company is embroiled in some huge legal battles in South America, including one in Brazil where a prosecutor plans to file criminal charges against it and some of its local managers.
Chevron also faces an $11 billion lawsuit in Brazil related to an offshore spill in November. Chief Executive John Watson said the company's people in Brazil had responded in "textbook fashion" even if it did not put its "best foot forward" in its communications.
The San Ramon, California-based company also remains locked in a legal war against plaintiffs in Ecuador, who won an $18 billion judgment against it in a court there.
Watson cited the many defenses Chevron can still pursue, and said an arbitration tribunal on Wednesday strengthened its hand by converting previous interim measures to an "interim award" obligating Ecuador, under a treaty with the United States, to prevent enforcement worldwide pending a full review of the case.
"That makes it have more standing in the international community," Watson said. "This award is helpful to us in preventing enforcement outside of Ecuador."
In Nigeria, where a natural gas well just off the coast is burning after an accident this month, Watson said it expected to start a relief well within the next week or so.
PROFIT DIP
Fourth-quarter profit slipped to $5.1 billion, or $2.58 per share, from $5.3 billion, or $2.64 per share, a year earlier. That fell short of the $2.84 per share analysts had expected, according to the average on Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S, which was already 17 cents down in response to Chevron's warning.
Among other U.S. oil companies, the quarterly profits from ConocoPhillips and Occidental Petroleum Corp earlier this week topped Wall Street estimates, though Hess Corp fell short.
Chevron is spending piles of money on production growth that will not kick in until 2014. Its 2012 capital budget of $32.7 billion compares with $29.1 billion in 2011 - $3 billion above than previous 2011 guidance due to increased spending related to its Atlas shale gas acquisition and in response to higher oil prices.
In the fourth quarter, Chevron's spending on U.S. oil and gas projects nearly doubled from a year ago to $2 billion, while outside the U.S. it grew by more than a quarter to $5.1 billion.
Watson said 2013 and 2014 would also be high capital spending years as it completes work on Australian liquefied natural gas projects and new Gulf of Mexico developments.
Its $9 billion Angola LNG project is due to start up later this year, and Watson said the company was working to find new buyers for gas that had originally been intended for the now-glutted North American market.
Partly offsetting that new output would be the first major maintenance work at its plant in Tengiz in Kazakhstan since its startup in 2008, which would last around six weeks in the third quarter of this year.
(Reporting by Matt Daily in New York and Braden Reddall in San Francisco, editing by Dave Zimmerman)
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/energy/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120127/bs_nm/us_chevron
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Saturday, January 28, 2012
Jesse Jackson adds voice to Grammy protest (Reuters)
(Reuters) ? Civil rights activist the Rev. Jesse James on Friday urged Grammy organizers to reinstate 31 ethnic and minority musical categories that have been cut from the music industry's top awards.
In a letter to Recording Academy president Neil Portnow, sent three weeks before the February 12 Grammy Awards show, Jackson said the elimination of awards for Native American and Hawaiian musicians, and cuts in Latin Jazz, R&B and other categories were ill-considered and unfair.
Jackson said some of the categories dropped by the Recording Academy in a major overhaul last year "constitute the very heart of the music that nourishes and inspires minority communities."
Writing on behalf of the Rainbow Push Coalition of U.S. civil rights groups, Jackson called for an urgent meeting with Portnow to try and resolve the conflict that has spurred months of protests and a lawsuit by leading musicians.
Portnow said on Friday he was "receptive to meeting with the Rev. Jackson to explain how our nomination process works and to show the resulting diverse group of nominees it produced" for this year's Grammy Awards.
Paul Simon, Carlos Santana, Bonnie Raitt and Bobby Sanabria are among dozens of musicians who have protested the decision, announced last April, to slash the number of Grammy categories to 78 from 109 for the 2012 Grammy Awards.
Some categories, such as Hawaiian and Native American albums were dropped completely, while others including Latin music and R&B saw the number of award categories halved.
Portnow said at the time the changes were necessary to maintain "the prestige of the highest and only peer-recognized award in music."
Sanabria and three other Latin Jazz musicians filed a lawsuit in New York in August saying the cuts would harm their careers financially. They have also called for a boycott of the CBS network, which broadcasts the annual Grammy Awards show in Los Angeles.
The 2012 Grammy Awards take place on February12. Rapper Kanye West leads the field of contenders with seven nominations followed by British singer Adele, Bruno Mars and alternative rock band Foo Fighters.
(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)
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Friday, January 27, 2012
Hull House closes doors after more than 120 years (AP)
CHICAGO ? Hull House, the Chicago social services organization founded more than 120 years ago by Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams, closed Friday after running out of money.
The Jane Addams Hull House Association announced earlier this month plans to close in the spring, but the shutdown came unexpectedly. More than 300 people are losing their jobs. Many spent Friday packing belongings and saying goodbye.
Founded in 1889, Hull House was the best known of the 400 settlement houses in the United States in the early 1900s. The settlements were designed to provide services to immigrants and the poor while uplifting them through culture, education and recreation. At its peak, Hull House served more than 9,000 people a week, offering medical help, an art gallery, citizenship classes, a gardening club and a gym with sports programs.
In recent years, it has provided child care, domestic violence counseling, job training, housing assistance and other services for 60,000 people a year at nearly four dozen sites in the Chicago area.
The agency said the poor economy increased demand for services but made it difficult to raise enough money to cover the cost of providing them. Other service agencies are expected to step in to help provide services to Hull House clients.
Lizzie Harrington, 32, a project director for a Hull House program that helps low-income people find jobs said employees are emotional and angry about the closing. Harrington has a long history with the agency. She received help from Hull House when she was a teenager in foster care and wanted to live independently.
"It's unfortunate, and it's been emotional," Harrington said. "I have a special connection to this place. This was part of my childhood."
Agency officials have said the organization will file for bankruptcy protection in the first quarter of this year. The decision to close came after the agency's management and board of trustees worked for two years to reduce operating costs and improve services, officials said.
The Hull House agency isn't affiliated with the University of Illinois at Chicago's Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, which will remain open. The Hull House site on Chicago's West Side is a National Historic Landmark.
___
Online:
Jane Addams Hull House Association: http://www.hullhouse.org
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Scientists say Facebook's roots go way, way?back
Coren Apicella
A woman from Tanzania's Hadzabe tribe studies a social-networking chart.
By Alan Boyle
Hunter-gatherers exhibit many of the "friending" habits familiar to Facebook users, suggesting that the patterns for social networking were set early in the history of our species.
At least that's the conclusion from a group of researchers who mapped the connections among members of the Hadza ethnic group in Tanzania's Lake Eyasi region. The results were published in this week's issue of the journal Nature.
"The astonishing thing is that ancient human social networks so very much resemble what we see today," senior author Nicholas Christakis, a sociologist at Harvard Medical School, said in a university news release. Researchers from Harvard, the University of California at San Diego and Cambridge University worked together to document the Hadza's social networks.
"From the time we were around campfires and had words floating through the air, to today when we have digital packets floating through the ether, we've made networks of basically the same kind," Christakis said.
Another co-author of the study, UCSD's James Fowler, said the results suggest that the structure of today's social networks go back to a time before the invention of agriculture, tens of thousands of years ago.
For decades, social scientists have puzzled over the origins of cooperative and altruistic behavior that benefits the group at the expense of the individual. That seems to run counter to a basic "tooth and claw" view of evolution, in which each individual fights for survival, or at least the survival of its gene pool. One of the leading hypotheses is that a system to reward cooperation and punish non-cooperators ("free riders") grew out of a sense of genetic kinship between related individuals. But how far back did such a system arise?
Harvard Medical School researcher Coren Apicella discusses the Hadza social network.
To investigate that question, researchers spent two months interviewing more than 200 adult members of the Hadza group who still live in a traditional, nomadic, pre-agricultural setting. To chart the social connections, the researchers asked the adults to identify the individuals they'd like to live with in their next encampment. They also looked into gift-giving connections by giving their experimental subjects three straws of honey ? one of the Hadza's best-loved treats ? and asking them to assign them secretly to anyone else in the camp. That exercise produced a complex web of 1,263 "campmate ties" and 426 "gift ties."
Separately, the researchers gave the Hadza additional honey straws that they could either keep for themselves or donate for group distribution. That was used as a measure of cooperation vs. non-cooperation.
When the researchers analyzed all the linkages, they found that cooperators tended to group themselves together into one set of social clusters, while non-cooperators were in separate clusters. Even when other factors were taken into account, such as connections between kin and geographical proximity, the cooperation vs. non-cooperation distinction was significant. That finding suggested that even in pre-agricultural societies, social networking strengthened the connections between people inclined toward different kinds of behavior.
"If you can get cooperators to cluster together in social space, cooperation can evolve," said Coren Apicella, a postdoctoral researcher specializing in health-care policy at Harvard Medical School and the Nature paper's first author. "Social networks allow this to happen."
The researchers said the dynamics of the Hadza social networks ? including the kinds of ties that bind a group's most popular members and the reciprocal connections within the group?? were indistinguishable from previously gathered data about social networks in modern communities.
"We turned the data over lots of different ways," Fowler said in the news release. "We looked at over a dozen measures that social network analysts use to compare networks, and pretty much, the Hadza are like us."
Beyond the Facebook angle, the rise of relationships between cooperative individuals has larger implications for the study of human evolution. "This suggests that social networks may have co-evolved with the widespread cooperation in humans that we observe today," the researchers wrote.
Update for 2:15 p.m. ET: In a Nature commentary, University of British Columbia anthropologist Joseph Henrich said that the study provided a "glimpse into the social dynamics of one of the few remaining populations of nomadic hunter-gatherers" ? and pointed up the parallels between modern-day social networking and the kind of society in which our distant ancestors lived.
One of the more interesting findings was that non-cooperators preferred to associate with other non-cooperators, rather than with the givers in the Hadza group, Henrich told me. That could be because people tend to make those they associate with more similar to themselves ? sort of like a curmudgeonly married couple. Or it could be because non-cooperative types avoid the cooperators in the first place ? sort of like the high-school kids who shun the goody-goodies and form their own clique of bad boys and girls.
Henrich said the cooperation vs. non-cooperation distinction was surprisingly strong. "In fact, the gift-network results indicate that this extends to friends of friends: if your friend's friend is highly cooperative, you are likely to cooperate more, too."
He said the findings support the principle of homophily in social relations: "People tend to pick people like themselves." But does the cooperation connection apply to modern-day social networks as well? If you're a giving person, do you tend to friend other givers online? "We don't know," Henrich told me. That's a topic for further research.
Update for 10:35 p.m. ET: In a follow-up phone interview, Fowler told me the results that he and his colleagues are reporting add a new twist to the old nature vs. nurture debate. People aren't shaped merely by genetics and their physical environment, he said.
"Social networks were actually just as important as the other two," he said. There may even be a genetic component to the associations you make. Along with Christakis and UCSD's Christopher Dawes,?Fowler conducted research suggesting that genetic factors?affect social behaviors.?Previous studies have also shown that social networking among hunter-gatherer societies like the Hadza are not governed strictly by kin-based relationships.
"What's new here is that we've specifically tied this idea of cooperation to ties between non-kin," Fowler said.
Fowler acknowledged that studying hunter-gatherer societies are not a foolproof way to trace the evolutionary roots of the behaviors we see in modern-day society, including Facebook friending and Twitter tweeting. "This isn't necessarily the be-all and end-all of determining what we were like hundreds of thousands of years ago," he said. But considering that scientists can't interview?Stone Age social networkers, Fowler believes this is one of the best methods available to anthropologists.
More social-network science:
In addition to Apicella, Christakis and Fowler, authors of "Social Networks and Cooperation in Hunter-Gatherers" include Cambridge University's Frank Marlowe.
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
Source: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/25/10234789-facebooks-roots-go-way-way-back
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Thursday, January 26, 2012
Nokia loss tempered by Windows phone launch
HELSINKI (AP) ? Mobile phone maker Nokia Corp. on Thursday posted a fourth-quarter net loss of ?1.07 billion ($1.38 billion) as sales slumped 21 percent even as the company's first Windows smartphones hit markets in Europe and Asia.
The loss, widened by a ?1 billion loss booked on Nokia's navigation systems unit, compares with a profit of ?745 million in the same period a year earlier.
Nokia said net revenue ? including both its mobile phones and its network divisions ? fell from ?12.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010 to ?10 billion, with smartphone sales plunging 23 percent.
Nokia has lost its once-dominant position in the global cell phone market, with Android phones and iPhones overtaking it in the growing smartphone segment.
The Finnish company is attempting a comeback with smartphones using Microsoft's Windows software, a struggle that Nokia CEO Stephen Elop characterized as a "war of ecosystems."
He said Nokia has sold "well over" 1 million such devices since the launch of the Lumia line in the fourth quarter, in line with company expectations.
Including other models, Nokia sold 19.6 million smartphones in the quarter. By comparison, Apple sold 37 million iPhones in the same period.
The Lumia 710 and Lumia 800 hit stores in Europe and Asia in November while T-Mobile started offering the 710 in the U.S. in January. Nokia hopes to boost its poor presence in the U.S. with the higher-end Lumia 900, which AT&T will offer later this year.
"From this beachhead of more than 1 million Lumia devices, you will see us push forward with the sales, marketing and successive product introductions necessary to be successful," Elop said in a statement. "We also plan to bring the Lumia series to additional markets including China and Latin America in the first half of 2012."
In a conference call, he said Nokia would launch the Lumia 710 and 800 in Canada in February.
Nokia shares rose more than 2 percent to ?4.15 ($5.37) in afternoon trading in Helsinki.
Michael Schroeder, analyst at FIM bank in Helsinki, said markets had welcomed Elop's comments on sales of Lumia.
"It definitely alleviated concerns about a horror scenario, expected by some. Although a million is not a lot in the market, it was better than expected," Schroeder said.
The company said it would not provide annual targets for 2012 as it was in a "year of transition" but added that it expects operating margins in the first quarter of this year to be "about break-even, ranging either above or below by approximately 2 percentage points."
It repeated the target of cutting costs by more than ?1 billion by 2013.
Neil Mawston from Strategy Analytics in London said Nokia "was not out of the woods yet," but its quarterly result was in line with expectations.
"Nokia is not necessarily dead in the water. Profit margins were a bit higher than expected and Nokia has not lost its third position in smartphones although it is suffering in North America and western Europe," Mawston said.
Nokia proposed a dividend of ?0.20 per share for 2011 and said that chairman and former CEO Jorma Ollila will step down at the annual meeting in May. A nomination committee proposed board member Risto Siilasmaa as the new chairman.
The average selling price of a Nokia handset rose by ?2 from the previous quarter to ?53 but was down by ?16 from a year earlier, reflecting a higher proportion of cheaper mobile phones in Nokia's product mix.
The company also reported a 4 percent drop in sales for Nokia Siemens Networks, its joint network equipment unit with Siemens AG of Germany.
After selling four in 10 cell phones worldwide in 2010, Nokia has steadily lost market share to competitors including Apple and Samsung. It didn't give any market share estimates in the report Thursday, but said its net revenue fell 9 percent to ?38.6 billion in the full year 2011, with smartphone sales plunging 27 percent and sales of lower-end mobile phones down 18 percent.
___
Ritter reported from Stockholm.
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Breach of new EU online data rules to carry high fines (Reuters)
BRUSSELS (Reuters) ? The European Commission proposed new online data privacy rules on Wednesday, putting more responsibility on companies to protect users' information, and said those who breach the code could be fined up to two percent of annual turnover.
After two years of examining the shifts in Internet use and the behavior of consumers using websites such as Facebook, Google and Yahoo!, the European commissioner in charge of data privacy, Viviane Reding, said she was determined to give individuals more control over their personal information.
"The protection of personal data is a fundamental right for all Europeans, but citizens do not always feel in full control of their personal data," Reding said.
"A strong, clear and uniform legal framework at EU level will help to unleash the potential of the digital single market and foster economic growth, innovation and job creation."
The new rules, which have caused widespread concern among major technology and data companies, are expected to come into force at the end of 2013, once they have been approved by all EU member states and the European Parliament.
One of the more contested elements of the proposed legislation is what Reding has dubbed the "right to be forgotten" - effectively giving an individual the right to have all their data pulled from websites if they wish.
Access to a certain amount of personal data - and the digital trace that people leave after using the Internet for any length of time - is a critical element in the business model of companies such as Facebook and other social networking sites.
As well as causing consternation to those companies, arguments against the "right to be forgotten" have also come from historians and U.S. government authorities, who have argued that hugely valuable information that forms part of the historical record could be lost under the proposed laws.
After intense lobbying in recent months, Reding's department has watered down the proposal, removing a company's liability for not scrapping all of an applicant's data traces if it can be shown that a third party copied the data without knowledge.
And bloggers will not be subject to the new data rules if they are writing in a personal capacity - meaning they would not have the same obligation to remove all information if requested.
Some large online companies are more concerned about new guidelines on user consent - which would require companies to secure a user's formal approval to hold their data rather than assuming permission - rather than the prospect of fines.
Online publishers and other websites that closely track users' interests - such as Amazon - fear that such a rule will prevent them from providing customised content based on recurring themes - whether cooking or sports - in users' browsing sessions.
But the potential for fines is also causing consternation among major companies that use or depend upon data.
Originally Reding had wanted to fine companies a maximum of five percent of their annual global turnover for any breach of the rules. That has been scaled down to two percent, but is still a potentially vast figure.
For Google, for example, a breach of the rules could result in a fine of up to $800 million, based on expected full-year revenues in 2011.
(Reporting By Claire Davenport; editing by Luke Baker and Helen Massy-Beresford)
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Wednesday, January 25, 2012
[OOC] The thief and the royalty
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The Communications Network ? A Quick Word With?
A Quick Word With??is our ongoing series?in which?people from foundations of all sizes and types?tell us about themselves, their work and where they draw their inspiration. ?This installment features?Stefan Lanfer, Knowledge Officer, Barr Foundation
Last big improvement to your website?
We launched a new site in 2011, which took Barr to a new level of transparency and clarity about our work. It also gave us new ways to feature grantees.
An interesting communications project you?re working on?
One of Barr?s major focus areas is climate change. Even though this is a global challenge, Barr is focused on Boston and Massachusetts. We believe what happens locally can push the national conversation. So, we are starting conversations about what it would take to raise the national media profile of the local work.
Last nonfiction book you read?? The take-away?
Half the Sky. The takeaway? That the world is a brutal, exploitative, limiting place for far too many women. Investments in setting that right have about the highest ROI imaginable.
?Networks? is a word that comes up frequently on your site. What role do networks play in your communications?
Barr has been focused on networks for a long time and communications not long at all, so the question I am actually trying to answer is what role communications plays in our network efforts. We are increasingly looking at ways to embed communications from the beginning and throughout network efforts.
Are you engaging with social media?
Barr does not have any social media profiles ? though I have a few personally. I like Twitter best as a listening tool. I devote 5% of my time at most.
Favorite communications tool more foundation folks should take advantage of?
The telephone.
Do you evaluate communications?
Not yet, though we intend to begin in 2012. I?d love to hear from Communications Network members what methods they use.
When you were 13, what did you want to be when you grew up?
An English teacher.
What aspect of Barr?s work has received greater public attention than any other, and how did that happen?
The Barr Fellowship. It happened because these are amazing people with amazing stories.
Do you do an annual communications plan?
Not a communications plan, per se, but detailed work plans for every program staff. As we pull these together, we flesh out where communications opportunities are in their portfolios, and I make sure I understand any major initiatives where they?ll be depending on me.
Has the foundation ever talked publicly about a failure?
Yes. Our Executive Director recently spoke to a group of Massachusetts education leaders. She started the talk with reflections on a failed strategy. It is on our site here.
Does your foundation blog?
We don?t have a blog, though the ?News and Knowledge? area of our site is blog-like in look and feel ? short posts, regular updates, organized by topics, etc., all shareable on social media.
Another foundation whose communications work you admire?
The Boston Foundation. They are as aggressive and out front communicating on issues as Barr is not. Even if we don?t always agree with the positions they take, I appreciate the role they play in fueling a robust public discourse.
Most memorable take-away from the Communications Network?s Fall conference in Boston last September?
Swanee Hunt?s challenge to ?fall in love with your audience.?
Biggest complaint about how the media covers your issues?
In general, the media hasn?t helped get us past confusion and policy gridlock?on climate.
Got a novel deep down inside you?
No, but I have a play.
A Quick Word With? is edited by Michael Hamill Remaley, Vice President of Communications & Public Policy,?Philanthropy New York, and a frequent Communications Network contributor.
If you?d like to suggest someone for a future profile, please use?this form.
?
Source: http://www.comnetwork.org/stefanlanfer/
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Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Women Feel Pain More Intensely Than Men Do
News |
Health
Future research is needed to find out the exact causes of pain perception differences, and which ones would be best to target for more effective pain control
?| January 23, 2012?|
When a woman falls ill, her pain may be more intense than a man's, a new study suggests.
Across a number of different diseases, including diabetes, arthritis and certain respiratory infections, women in the study reported feeling more pain than men, the researchers said.
The study is one of the largest to examine sex differences in human pain perception. The results are in line with earlier findings, and reveal that sex differences in pain sensitivity may be present in many more diseases than previously thought.
Because pain is subjective, the researchers can't know for sure whether women, in fact, experience more pain than men. A number of factors, including a person's mood and whether they take pain medication, likely influence how much pain they say they're in.
"Whatever the reason, I think it's important to be aware of this pain discrepancy between men and women and look into it further," said study researcher Linda Liu, a doctoral student in Stanford University Biomedical Informatics program.
Future studies, in both people and animals, should analyze their results to see whether sex differences in pain may be present, Liu said. Many studies in animals do not include females, or fail to report the sex of animals used, Liu said.
The study was published online Jan. 12 in the Journal of Pain.
Sex differences
Most human studies examining gender differences in reported pain have compared the number of women with the number of men with a given condition who say they are in pain. But most haven't looked at how intense the pain is, and many have not included enough people to be able to detect differences between the sexes in pain perception, the researchers said.
The new study included information from more than 11,000 patients whose pain scores were recorded in electronic medical records at Stanford Hospital and Clinics between 2007 and 2010. Patients were asked to rate their pain on a scale of zero (no pain) to 10 (worst pain imaginable).
In all, the researchers assessed sex differences in reported pain for more than 250 diseases and conditions.
For almost every diagnosis, women reported higher average pain scores than men. Women's scores were, on average, 20 percent higher than men's scores, according to the study.
Women with lower back pain, and knee and leg strain consistently reported higher scores than men. Women also reported feeling more pain in the neck (for conditions such as torticollis, in which the neck muscles twist or spasm) and sinuses (during sinus infections) than did men, a result not found by previous research.
Pain perception
It could be that women assign different numbers to the level of pain they perceive compared with men, said Roger B. Fillingim, a pain researcher at the University of Florida College of Dentistry, who was not involved with the new study.
But the study was large, and the findings are backed up by previous work, Fillingim said.
"I think the most [simple] explanation is that women are indeed experiencing higher levels of pain than men," Fillingim said.
The reason for this is not known, Fillingim said. Past research suggests a number of factors contribute to perceptions of pain level, including hormones, genetics and psychological factors, which may vary between men and women, Fillingim said. It's also possible the pain systems work differently in men and women, or women experience more severe forms of disease than men, he said.
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=375eefafa006b0fe61ece860fbd287d6
New Fed voters likelier to back help for economy
NEW YORK (AP) ? If Chairman Ben Bernanke decides the economy needs more help from the Federal Reserve this year, he probably won't face as much resistance as he did last year.
Call it the changing of the guard.
As the Fed's policy committee meets for the first time this year, its roster of voting members is rotating slightly, as it does each year. And its new makeup suggests fewer members would oppose further steps to boost the economy.
Twice last year, Fed action to try to further lower long-term interest rates drew three dissenting votes out of 10. It was the most dissents in nearly 20 years. The "no" votes came from three regional Fed bank presidents who worried that additional moves to try to reduce long-term rates could fan inflation.
A fourth regional bank president twice dissented last year for the opposite reason: He wanted to go further to help the economy.
All four dissenters have lost their votes on the Fed's policymaking committee.
Replacing them are: Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Richmond regional Fed bank; John Williams of the San Francisco Fed; Sandra Pianalto of the Cleveland Fed; and Dennis Lockhart of the Atlanta Fed.
Should Bernanke push a new bond-buying program, only Lacker is seen as a probable dissent.
Lacker is viewed as the most "hawkish" of the new voting members, Williams the most "dovish." Hawks tend to be most concerned that super-low interest rates could ignite inflation. Doves put a higher priority on boosting the economy and reducing unemployment.
Pianalto and Lockhart are seen as centrists unlikely to break from the majority view.
In the past, the Fed has bought bonds to try to drive down long-term interest rates, encourage borrowing and spending and lift stock prices. The goal is to increase economic growth and hiring.
In December, Lacker told reporters he was "hard-pressed to see the rationale" for any further Fed efforts to increase growth.
Yet overall within the Fed this year, "I think there will be a little less militancy and a little more willingness to move forward with the chairman," predicts Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial.
That said, few economists expect the Fed to pursue more bond purchases soon, unless a European recession were to shrink U.S. economic growth and threaten the gains the economy has made in recent months.
"Bernanke will have the votes to pursue an easier credit policy if he needs to do so, but I just don't think the Fed will go further unless Europe goes bad," said David Wyss, former chief economist at Standard & Poor's. "Things in the U.S. economy are beginning to look better ? not great, but better."
Bernanke already starts the year with a base of support within the Fed. The policy committee normally comprises 12 voting members:
? Seven Fed governors in Washington.
? The president of the New York Fed.
? Four of the 11 other regional bank presidents, who serve one-year rotating terms. This group is where dissents typically come from.
The seven governors, including the chairman, always have a vote. So does the New York Fed's president. All these members traditionally back the chairman.
On the Fed's board, two of the seven seats are vacant, even though President Barack Obama has nominated replacements for them: Jeremy Stein, a Harvard economics professor who is a Democrat, and Jerome Powell, a Treasury official in the George H.W. Bush administration who is a Republican.
Twinning a Democrat and a Republican was an Obama effort to win Senate confirmation for both. But Senate Republicans have threatened to hold up those nominations because of Obama's use of a recess appointment to install Richard Cordray as the first head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Even if the board seats remain vacant, Bernanke will continue to command unanimous support on the board.
No announcements of further action to try to lift the economy through bond purchases are expected when the Fed's meeting ends Wednesday. Most analysts think Fed members want to put off such a step to see if the economy can extend the gains it's made in recent months.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, said he thinks further bond buying is likely this year only if Europe's financial crisis destabilized U.S. financial markets and threatened the U.S. economy.
"Further bond buying will depend on two things: that the economy continues to struggle and that concerns about deflation rise," Zandi said.
Deflation is a prolonged drop in wages, prices and the value of assets like stocks and houses. The country last suffered serious deflation during the 1930s.
Zandi said he felt more bond buying isn't probable this year because he is forecasting the economy will perform better.
"My outlook is for an economy that is still soft but not struggling," Zandi said.
Hiring has picked up. Factories are busier. Gasoline prices are well off their highs. The depressed housing industry appears a little healthier. And stocks have reached their highest point since summer.
The stronger job growth has raised hopes more jobs will soon accelerate income and spending. The result could be what economists call a "virtuous cycle," in which businesses respond to growing demand by hiring even more.
Should that happen, the Fed might decide that further steps to energize the economy aren't necessary.
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Monday, January 23, 2012
Ratings: The Big Bang Theory Dominates Over American Idol (omg!)
The nerds have slain the singers!
American Idol's second Season 11 outing drew 18 million viewers, down from the 21.6 million who tuned in for the season premiere on Wednesday. Fox's reality series bested The Big Bang Theory in total viewers (15.8 million), but the 100th episode of the CBS comedy scored a 5.3 in the coveted 18-49 demo, with Idol trailing at 5.2 during its first half-hour.
Overall, Idol was down 20 percent from the Wednesday telecast, and down 28 percent from last season's first Thursday airing.
8 p.m.
CBS: The Big Bang Theory 15.82 million viewers (5.3 demo rating); Rob 11.41 million viewers (3.5)
ABC: Wipeout 5.85 million (1.8)
Fox: American Idol 18.02 million (5.7)
NBC: 30 Rock 4.05 million (1.6); Parks & Recreation 4.25 million (1.9)
CW: The Vampire Diaries 2.71 million (1.1)
9 p.m.
CBS: Person of Interest?14.4 million viewers (3.2 demo rating)
ABC: Grey's Anatomy 9.42 million (3.5)
FOX: The Finder 6.58 million (2.2)
NBC: The Office 6.02 million (3.0); Up All Night 3.98 million (1.9)
CW: The Secret Circle 1.63 million (0.7)
10 p.m.
CBS: The Mentalist 14.22 million viewers (3.0 demo rating)
ABC: Private Practice 6 million (2.1)
NBC: The Firm?3.42 million (0.9)
Pro-euro candidate wins first round of Finnish vote (Reuters)
HELSINKI (Reuters) ? Pro-euro candidate Sauli Niinisto won the first round of Finland's presidential election on Sunday, signaling voters want to keep cooperating with the European Union despite their frustration over bailouts for debt-ridden member states.
The former finance minister got 37 percent of the vote. He faces a February 5 run-off with another pro-euro candidate, Pekka Haavisto of the Greens Party, who got about 19 percent.
Anti-euro candidates Paavo Vayrynen and Timo Soini dropped out of the race after the final tally.
While the president has little executive power beyond military and diplomatic affairs, it is a high-profile post and the strength of the pro-euro vote will ease pressure on the government to take a hard line against Brussels.
A euro skeptic leader may have forced Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen to demand stricter conditions on European bailout plans in the months ahead.
"This has significance. This has an impact on political discussions, as Europe is going through difficult talks on crisis management," said University of Helsinki professor Tuomo Martikainen. He and other analysts said Niinisto will likely win the second-round.
EUROSCEPTICISM RETREATS
The presidential election comes 9 months after Soini's Finns Party made strong gains in a parliamentary election after a campaign that focused on criticizing European bailout plans.
High taxes, combined with a lackluster economic growth outlook, fuelled criticism that Finland was helping some countries get an easy ride out of debt, while voters faced austerity at home.
Yet Sunday's result showed most voters would rather be represented by a more internationalist leader.
Soini came in fourth place with 9 percent support. Analysts said his popularity may have been hit by racist comments by some party members as well as his own provocative style. Prospects of a Europe-wide recession are also making voters wary of choosing a president who does not support the government, they said.
Finland's government and the euro zone are expected to agree on Monday to new rules for a 500-billion-euro ($646-billion) bailout fund. Finland had been the sole objector to a proposed new majority voting system and a deal would remove an obstacle to the scheme's launch in July.
Niinisto, who has also worked for the European Investment Bank, reaffirmed his support for Finland's pro-Europe stance, saying: "The EU is an essential direction for us. We are European."
Both he and Katainen are members of the National Coalition party which represents conservative economic policy and liberal social values, although as president he is expected to renounce party affiliation.
Eija Saario, a voter in Helsinki, said she voted for Niinisto as: "I think he would best represent me out in the world."
Some voters said they were concerned last year's rise of the Finns Party, previously called the True Finns, had stirred feelings of xenophobia in a country where less than 5 percent of the population are immigrants.
"The political discussion has grown more conservative and xenophobic after the True Finns victory last year," said 29-year-old advertising manager Erik. He voted for Haavisto, the first openly gay presidential candidate.
Haavisto, voting with his partner in central Helsinki, said: "In one way I am a pioneer, but I think the Finns are very tolerant people and they accept people for who they are."
President Tarja Halonen was elected as the country's first woman president in 2000 and re-elected in 2006. She steps down having served 12 years, the maximum term in office.
(Additional reporting by Terhi Kinnunen and Jussi Rosendahl; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120122/wl_nm/us_finland
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Sunday, January 22, 2012
Jorge Rivera goes out a winner in retirement fight at UFC on FX 1
He doesn't rank up there with the likes of Matt Hughes, Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture, but Jorge Rivera certainly did his part as one of the building blocks for the UFC.
A long-time card filler since 2003, Rivera announced earlier in the day that he was retiring following his fight tonight. He seized the opportunity to shine in his final trip to the Octagon by wearing down and eventually punching out Eric Schafer at the 1:31 mark of the second round of the final fight on the FUEL TV portion of the UFC on FX 1 card.
"I want to thank Zuffa. I want to thank Dana White, the Fertitta brothers, Burt Watson, whose voice I'm going to miss dearly in the back," Rivera told UFC play-by-play announcer Jon Anik.
Rivera then turned his attention to thanking his family and training partners. That's when he got a bit emotional.
It was nice to see the near 40-year-old make it to the cage tonight for his 15th career fight with the promotion. He nearly retired back in 2009 after the tragic passing of his daughter Jessica.
Rivera (19-9) turned pro back in 2001. He finishes with an 8-7 record in the UFC. He rose near the top of the division facing former UFC middleweight champ Rich Franklin at UFC 50. He also lost to current contender Michael Bisping. He had to overcome some rough times in his personal life when Jessica, 17, passed away after a fatal reaction to birth control medication.
"I'm grateful I fought here in front of a lot of people. It's been a real nice trip. It's been real good to me," said Rivera.
Rivera's seen the sport come a long way. In 2003, UFC pay-per-views had trouble eclipsing 50,000 buys. Tonight, between FUEL TV and FX, all 11 fights are being televised to a nationwide audience.
The victory was typical Rivera. He never panics in the cage, so even when he was getting dominated in the grappling game, Rivera stayed composed in the first round. Schafer, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, had top control for much of the opening round, but never threatened with a submission.
Schafer (12-7-2, 3-6 UFC) is a new entry to the middleweight division. His stamina was an issue in his UFC debut fight at 185 pounds against Aaron Simpson and it happened again tonight.
"He's a strong guy. I was watching him in the back. He had a real tough [weight] cut, so I knew the longer the fight would go, he would have a harder time. And I could feel him breathing harder and harder," said Rivera.
Rivera escaped one final takedown attempt with 4:10 left in the second. With Schafer on his hands and knees, Rivera stunned him with a right uppercut. He eventually faded to the cage where he ate 23 unanswered shots. After several requests from referee Herb Dean to defend himself, Schafer didn't respond and the fight was stopped.
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Colo. girl escapes apparent kidnapper, calls 911
DENVER (AP) ? A missing 9-year-old girl escaped from an apparent kidnapper and called 911 herself from a convenience store in Colorado Springs on Friday.
The Pueblo girl was reported missing Thursday night after she didn't return home from school.
The suspect, Jose Garcia, 29, is also a suspect in an alleged molestation involving a different girl, Pueblo police Capt. Eric Bravo said.
The car of the man accused of kidnapping the girl broke down Friday morning in Colorado Springs, and a passerby gave them a ride to a Circle K, police said.
The girl ran into the convenience store and asked to use the phone to call her uncle but instead called 911, which prompted the man to take off, authorities said.
"Once she realized she had that window of opportunity, she became a hero and rescued herself by calling 911," Colorado Springs police spokeswoman Barbara Miller said in a statement.
Efren Vialpando told The Gazette he saw the girl come in the Circle K with two black eyes and a bruise on her lip and face. She had refused to leave the store with the man, saying, "I ain't going nowhere. I'm waiting for my momma." He said the suspect fled after that.
A Circle K employee declined to comment, citing store policy.
Police immediately began a search for Garcia when they arrived at the store and notified transportation hubs. An employee at a bus terminal recognized Garcia and notified police, who quickly arrested the man without incident.
The girl was taken to a hospital Friday morning. Miller said details of the girl's condition won't be released because of her age.
Garcia was in custody Friday. Pueblo police haven't said how they connected him to the kidnapping and where Garcia was with the girl for more than 15 hours overnight. Pueblo police Sgt. Darren Velarde said Garcia is being held on suspicion of kidnapping and could face a charge of sexual assault on a child.
The FBI helped with the investigation.
Pueblo County court records said Garcia was wanted for suspicion of kidnapping and sex assault on a child, and Bravo said allegations in that case involved Garcia's 9-year-old former stepdaughter. Both the former stepdaughter and the girl who escaped Friday attended Columbian Elementary School in Pueblo.
In the case involving the ex-stepdaughter, Bravo said Garcia was listed as an emergency contact at the school and told officials there he was picking the girl up for a dentist's appointment. Bravo said Garcia is suspected of kidnapping and sexually assaulting the girl in about a half hour before he took the girl back to school.
"We don't know if there's a connection to that girl and (the girl who escaped Friday)," Bravo said.
A family member told The Associated Press by phone that Garcia worked construction in Colorado Springs and he had known his ex-stepdaughter since she was about 3 years old.
___
Follow P. Solomon Banda at http://twitter.com/psbanda .
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Saturday, January 21, 2012
Ice storm blankets Washington day after snowstorm (AP)
SEATTLE ? A monster Pacific Northwest storm coated Washington with freezing rain on Thursday and brought much of the state to a standstill as the Seattle airport shut down and hundreds of cars slid off roads a day after the region was hit with a major snowfall.
The storm claimed at least one life ? a child whose body was pulled from an Oregon creek where a car was swept away from a grocery store parking lot. Rescuers also searched Thursday for an adult missing in the creek in the Willamette Valley community of Albany, about 70 miles south of Portland, said fire department spokeswoman Wanda Omdahl.
The National Weather Service used the Emergency Alert System to break into Thursday morning broadcasts with an ice storm warning until noon for the Seattle area and southwest Washington. Among the concerns were widespread power outages and the threat that structures could collapse under the weight of ice.
Authorities are also worried about flooding in the coming days as temperatures warm up.
"It's a very dangerous situation," with a major impact on roads, said Brad Colman, the meteorologist in charge of the Weather Service office in Seattle. "We're expecting a significant impact on power."
Ice closed Sea-Tac Airport and officials said airlines would likely cancel flights because taxiways remain a problem even as runways are deiced. Forecasters expect up to 0.4 inch of ice before temperatures rise above freezing by afternoon.
The state Transportation Department closed one highway because of falling trees that also took out power lines. Puget Sound Energy reported 70,000 outages at 7 a.m. Thursday, after crews had already brought 46,000 customers back on line since Wednesday.
"It's like a storm in slow motion that keeps happening again and again," said PSE spokesman Roger Thompson.
The ice follows a huge snowfall on Wednesday. Nearly a foot of new snow fell in Olympia, Wash., where 11 inches was measured at the airport. The record is 14.2 inches on Jan. 24, 1972.
Oregon didn't receive the snowfall that Washington did ? but got plenty of rain.
Rising water from heavy rains swept a car carrying at least three people into an overflowing creek in Albany. Two people escaped but at least one child was missing and feared drowned Wednesday night.
"The water just got high so fast," Omdahl said. "It's a big tragedy."
Washington State University in Pullman was closed. The University of Washington also cancelled Thursday classes at three campuses, including Seattle. Seattle schools were also closed again Thursday, as were schools in Bellingham in northwest Washington, and in southeast Washington's Pasco, Kennewick and Richland.
Lewis County, south of Olympia, had the highest snowfall amounts, ranging from 12 to 17 inches.
"It's unusual to get this much snow for western Washington," said Dennis D'Amico, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Seattle.
Forecasters warned that heavy rain combined with snowmelt could lead to some Washington river flooding, especially in the Chehalis River Basin, an area that has been hit by significant floods in recent years.
The storm caused hundreds of accidents but no fatalities.
"I saw a guy in my rear mirror," said Washington State Patrol trooper Guy Gill. "I saw headlights and taillights and headlights and taillights again as he spun around off the road."
In Oregon, high winds hammered parts of the coast and caused power outages that initially affected tens of thousands of customers, with reports of gusts as high as 113 mph. There were no immediate reports of serious damage.
___
Associated Press writers Doug Esser and Gene Johnson in Seattle, Ted Warren in Tacoma, Wash., and Jonathan J. Cooper in Portland, Ore., contributed to this report.
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Birds' bachelor-pad illusions snag mates
Everyone likes a good optical illusion, and that includes at least one animal. Male bowerbirds woo females by constructing a bachelor pad that creates an illusion of uniform decor (and the illusion that their owners are much more robust lads than they really are).
And a new study suggests the females tend to choose mates from those who produce the best illusion.
Male great bowerbirds ?pigeon-size birds native to Australia ? spend the majority of their time building and maintaining their courtship sites, called bowers. A bower consists of a tunnel-like avenue made of densely woven sticks that leads to a court of gray stones, shells and bones. Previous research suggested the birds arrange items in such a way that the court appears uniform and small to a female viewing it from within the avenue, which makes the male appear much larger and more impressive than he really is.
Bowerbirds are the only animals so far that have been shown to use illusions for mating.
By analyzing the geometry of various bowers and studying the mating success of the bowers' creators, researchers have now determined that the male bowerbirds creating the best bower illusion get all the females.
The purpose of the illusion may be to make displayed objects more attention-grabbing to a female, giving her more time to decide if she wants to mate, the researchers said.
The idea that illusion strength can predict mating success is "absolutely brilliant and novel," said Fabrizio Sergio, a conservation biologist at the Spanish National Research Council (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cient?ficas) in Madrid, who was not involved in the current study. "It opens a new perspective on (mating) signal design and makes more complete our view of the fascinating subject of animal communication."
The power of a bower
Male bowerbirds, which live about 30 years, begin collecting objects at around age 5 for their bower courts. After building his avenue and court, which can have several thousand objects, the bird will vocally advertise his bower from the top of a nearby tree.
If a female is interested, she will inspect the bower from both outside and inside of the avenue. While the female is inside, the male will stand in the court just outside her view and display brightly colored objects, such as plastic clothespins or pieces or fruit, or the crest on the back of his neck. Then he will enter the avenue, come up to the gal from behind and try to mate.
John Endler, an evolutionary ecologist at Deakin University in Australia, and his colleagues first observed a peculiar aspect of the bower in 2010. Rather than randomly placing items while constructing a court, the birds were putting smaller objects closer to the avenue and larger objects farther away. This size gradient, when viewed from within the avenue, created an optical illusion called forced perspective: All the court items appeared roughly the same size, and the court itself looked smaller than it was.
The researchers experimentally rearranged the court items and found that the original design was no accident. "They fix it within three days," Endler told LiveScience. "The objects' placements were really important to them."
While court design was critical to the males, it was unclear whether it really mattered to the females. To find out, Endler and study co-author Laura Kelly, an ecologist at Deakin University, first monitored 20 male bowerbirds to see which bowers successfully attracted females, and then placed motion-sensing cameras around the eight bowers that drew female visitors.
Males that created the best illusions were more likely to mate with interested females, the results showed. Some males crafted perfectly reasonable size gradients of the objects, but those gradients, when viewed from within the avenue, didn't produce a suitable illusion of uniformity ? the only birds that successfully mated were those that got the illusion just right.
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The researchers also found that females chose to mate only if they had spent at least 55 percent of their visit checking out the court from within the avenue. The researchers suspect the bright objects, when waved by the male over the court illusion, stand out more, helping to hold the female's attention. "This might give her more time to decide if she wants to mate with him," Endler said.
Trial and error?
Sergio found the new study "catchy and interesting," though he said that the conclusions would have been stronger if the team had studied more than eight bowers. "But the authors did start with 20 bowers (an adequate sample) and had it reduced by absence of visitation by females, something out of their control," he wrote in an email to LiveScience.
Given that some birds, such as pigeons and gray parrots, are sensitive to visual tricks, the study proposed that other animals also might use illusions during courtship. Sergio agreed: "If the study is successful in stimulating further research, many examples of similar dynamics from other species will soon accompany it."
At this point, the researchers aren't sure whether the bowerbirds' ability to use illusions says anything about their cognitive abilities. Endler said the birds simply could be good at recognizing patterns and create the forced perspective by trial and error.
"But it's amusing to think that forced perspective was invented by bowerbirds millions of years before humans," Endler said. "Bird art has a bigger history than human art."
? 2012 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46064195/ns/technology_and_science-science/
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