Possible record-setting deadzone for Gulf of Mexico predicted

June 18, 2013 ? Scientists are expecting a very large "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico and a smaller than average hypoxic level in the Chesapeake Bay this year, based on several NOAA-supported forecast models.

NOAA-supported modelers at the University of Michigan, Louisiana State University, and the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium are forecasting that this year's Gulf of Mexico hypoxic "dead" zone will be between 7,286 and 8,561 square miles which could place it among the ten largest recorded. That would range from an area the size of Connecticut, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia combined on the low end to the New Jersey on the upper end. The high estimate would exceed the largest ever reported 8,481 square miles in 2002 .

Hypoxic (very low oxygen) and anoxic (no oxygen) zones are caused by excessive nutrient pollution, often from human activities such as agriculture, which results in insufficient oxygen to support most marine life in near-bottom waters. Aspects of weather, including wind speed, wind direction, precipitation and temperature, also impact the size of dead zones.

The Gulf estimate is based on the assumption of no significant tropical storms in the two weeks preceding or during the official measurement survey cruise scheduled from July 25-August 3 2013. If a storm does occur the size estimate could drop to a low of 5344 square miles, slightly smaller than the size of Connecticut.

This year's prediction for the Gulf reflect flood conditions in the Midwest that caused large amounts of nutrients to be transported from the Mississippi watershed to the Gulf. Last year's dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico was the fourth smallest on record due to drought conditions, covering an area of approximately 2,889 square miles, an area slightly larger than the state of Delaware. The overall average between 1995-2012 is 5,960 square miles, an area about the size of Connecticut.

A second NOAA-funded forecast, for the Chesapeake Bay, calls for a smaller than average dead zone in the nation's largest estuary. The forecasts from researchers at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and the University of Michigan has three parts: a prediction for the mid-summer volume of the low-oxygen hypoxic zone, one for the mid-summer oxygen-free anoxic zone, and a third that is an average value for the entire summer season.

The forecasts call for a mid-summer hypoxic zone of 1.46 cubic miles, a mid-summer anoxic zone of 0.26 to 0.38 cubic miles, and a summer average hypoxia of 1.108 cubic miles, all at the low end of previously recorded zones. Last year the final mid-summer hypoxic zone was 1.45 cubic miles.

This is the seventh year for the Bay outlook which, because of the shallow nature of large areas of the estuary, focuses on water volume or cubic miles, instead of square mileage as used in the Gulf. The history of hypoxia in the Chesapeake Bay since 1985 can be found at the EcoCheck website.

Both forecasts are based on nutrient run-off and river stream data from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), with the Chesapeake data funded with a cooperative agreement between USGS and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Those numbers are then inserted into models developed by funding from the National Ocean Service's National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS).

"Monitoring the health and vitality of our nation's oceans, waterways, and watersheds is critical as we work to preserve and protect coastal ecosystems," said Kathryn D. Sullivan, Ph.D., acting under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and acting NOAA administrator. "These ecological forecasts are good examples of the critical environmental intelligence products and tools that help shape a healthier coast, one that is so inextricably linked to the vitality of our communities and our livelihoods."

The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico affects nationally important commercial and recreational fisheries, and threatens the region's economy. The Chesapeake dead zones, which have been highly variable in recent years, threaten a multi-year effort to restore the Bay's water quality and enhance its production of crabs, oysters, and other important fisheries.

During May 2013, stream flows in the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers were above normal resulting in more nutrients flowing into the Gulf. According to USGS estimates, 153,000 metric tons of nutrients flowed down the rivers to the northern Gulf of Mexico in May, an increase of 94,900 metric tons over last year's 58,100 metric tons, when the region was suffering through drought. The 2013 input is an increase of 16 percent above the average nutrient load estimated over the past 34 years.

For the Chesapeake Bay, USGS estimates 36,600 metric tons of nutrients entered the estuary from the Susquehanna and Potomac rivers between January and May, which is 30 percent below the average loads estimated from1990 to 2013.

"Long-term nutrient monitoring and modeling is key to tracking how nutrient conditions are changing in response to floods and droughts and nutrient management actions," said Lori Caramanian, deputy assistant secretary of the interior for water and science. "Understanding the sources and transport of nutrients is key to developing effective nutrient management strategies needed to reduce the size of hypoxia zones in the Gulf, Bay and other U.S. waters where hypoxia is an on-going problem."

"Coastal hypoxia is proliferating around the world," said Donald Boesch, Ph.D., president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. "It is important that we have excellent abilities to predict and control the largest dead zones in the United States. The whole world is watching."

The confirmed size of the 2013 Gulf hypoxic zone will be released in August, following a monitoring survey led by the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium beginning in late July,and the result will be used to improve future forecasts. The final measurement in the Chesapeake will come in October following surveys by the Chesapeake Bay Program's partners from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.

Despite the Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico Nutrient Task Force's goal to reduce the dead zone to less than 2,000 square miles, it has averaged 5,600 square miles over the last five years. Demonstrating the link between the dead zone and nutrients from the Mississippi River, this annual forecast continues to provide guidance to federal and state agencies as they work on the 11 implementation actions outlined by the Task Force in 2008 for mitigating nutrient pollution.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/3UcVS13cqeA/130618161546.htm

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U.S. cites Russia, China among worst in human trafficking: report

By Susan Heavey

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An annual U.S. State Department report on Wednesday cited Russia and China among the world's worst offenders in fighting forced labor and sex trafficking, which could lead to U.S. sanctions.

The U.S. designation drops Russia and China, which already often are at odds with Washington, in the same category as North Korea and Iran.

The State Department ranks countries according to the efforts they make to fight human trafficking and Russia, China and Uzbekistan all fell to the lowest level, Tier 3, in the new report.

While the Chinese government has taken some steps to address the problem, such as vowing to work with international organizations and increasing public awareness, it also has continued to perpetuate the problem in hundreds of its own institutions, the State Department report said.

"Despite these modest signs of interest in anti-trafficking reforms, the Chinese government did not demonstrate significant efforts to comprehensively prohibit and punish all forms of trafficking and to prosecute traffickers," U.S. officials wrote.

The report said China's one-child policy and preference for sons has led to fewer women in the country, thus increasing demand for women as brides or prostitutes.

In Russia, the government "had not established any concrete system for the identification or care of trafficking victims, lacking any formal victim identification and referral mechanism," although there were some "ad hoc efforts," the report said.

The citation is likely to further strain the complicated relations between the United States and the two countries, which already have been strained by the handling of the civil war in Syria and cybersecurity, among other issues.

While it was not immediately clear what the Obama administration might do given the downgrade, human rights advocates and some U.S. lawmakers urged strong steps such as imposing sanctions or withholding foreign aid. They also called on the Russian and Chinese governments to take action.

"China has become the sex and labor trafficking capital of the world," said U.S. Representative Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican. "Without serious and sustained action by Beijing, it is only going to get worse."

Under U.S. law, Tier 3 countries may face sanctions that do not effect trade or humanitarian assistance, such as educational funding or culture programs.

John Sifton, Asia advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, said China and Russia have been given several chances to improve their effort to combat such trafficking and protect victims.

"The question for the White House is whether they're prepared to execute the sanctions," he said. "The question for China, Russia, and Uzbekistan is whether they're prepared to make commitments in the next 90 days to avoid those sanctions."

A GLOBAL PROBLEM

Despite pledges to combat such crimes, countries have failed to identify tens of millions of victims, according to the report, which ranked 188 countries and territories based on their efforts.

Just 40,000 victims of so-called modern slavery were identified last year among the estimated 27 million men, women and children who are held against their will globally, the report said.

"Despite a growing body of knowledge about victims and their needs, finding them remains a tremendous challenge," department officials wrote in their 2013 Trafficking in Persons report.

Among the millions of victims, most are women and girls, although many men and boys are also affected, the report said.

Human trafficking can take many forms - from prostitution to forced labor such as migrant work or domestic servitude - and children also can be victims. Perpetrators are difficult to track and largely circulate in the private economy, although cases can involve rebel groups or national authorities.

Among perpetrators, 7,705 were prosecuted in 2012, leading to 4,746 convictions, a slight increase from the prior year, U.S. officials said. In 2011, there were 7,206 prosecutions and 4,239 convictions.

Overall, there were far more countries downgraded than cited as improving, Sifton said.

"This is a much more negative report than years past," he said. "Russia and China rightly deserve attention but many other countries have very serious trafficking and forced labor problems."

Countries that did show improvement in fighting human trafficking include the Republic of Congo, Iraq and Azerbaijan, Sifton said.

President Barack Obama last year pledged to step up the U.S. effort to target trafficking.

Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday's report would guide U.S. action but did not offer details, citing continued "diplomacy and development efforts" as well as work with victim support groups, the private sector and others.

"Every government can do better," Kerry said in a letter accompanying the findings.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Bill Trott)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-cites-russia-china-among-worst-human-trafficking-211732411.html

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Shifting IRS polls contradict key deposition (CNN)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories Stories, RSS and RSS Feed via Feedzilla.

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Advanced Micro Devices may bounce back with new servers: Barron's

(Reuters) - Prospects are looking better for Advanced Micro Devices Inc, the No. 2 maker of microprocessors for personal computers whose revenue fell sharply last year, as computer servers acquired last year in its purchase of tiny startup company SeaMicro bolster results, Barron's said.

"SeaMicro offers AMD a chance to take share in the mainstream server-computer market, in which Intel sells about 96 percent of the chips," Barron's said, citing industry data. "SeaMicro's technology looks good; its management team, astute; and the market opportunity, promising."

Barron's said Dan Niles, an investor with AlphaOne Capital Partners, believes AMD shares could double to over $8 by 2015 if company revenue grows to $7 billion and other sales measurements improve.

Company revenue fell 17 percent last year to $5.4 billion, following gains in 2010 and 2011, Barron's said. Recent results were hurt by weakening sales of personal computers and strong demand for Intel's Xeon line of server chips, the newspaper said.

(Reporting by Ransdell Pierson; Editing by Theodore d'Afflisio)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/advanced-micro-devices-may-bounce-back-servers-barrons-234751303.html

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How to Move a Fifteen-Ton Electromagnet

How do massive electromagnets move? Incredibly slowly, if the $3 million plan to get one of them from New York to Chicago can tell us anything. The move, over land and sea, will take a total of five weeks.?

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Here's why: the 15-ton electromagnet can't just be disassembled and reassembled ? it has to move with minimal tweaks to maintain its functionality. The entire rig is about 50 feet wide, and if it twists more than an eight of an inch, it could break for good. Given that it's ten times cheaper to move the magnet than it is to build a new one, researchers will take their chances transporting it to Chicago's Fermi lab in an inert state, where it's needed for a new experiment. According to the Associated Press, the 3,200-mile trip will go something like this:?

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Day One: move the magnet from its place at the?Brookhaven National Lab to the lab's front gate, nearly 2 miles away.

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Day Two: Somehow transport it down the ?William Floyd Parkway to the ocean, 6 miles away. That's two days to move fewer than 10 miles.?

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Here's a model of the rig they'll use to transport it:?

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Source: Brookhaven National Laboratory

And a video!?

According to Brookhaven, they'll only drive the rig at night, at a top speed of 10 miles an hour.?

That will get them about this far (route is very, very approximate):?

Source: Google Maps

Day Three, etc.: get that thing on a boat. The bulk of the magnet's trip will be on water. It'll head south, go around Florida, and use the Mississippi river to get as close to the Fermi lab as possible.?

Then, it's a two-day journey over land for a few miles to the lab. Once it's in place, the massive magnet will help researchers learn more about subatomic particles called muons. They live for?2.2 millionths of a second, and there's a lot the field of particle physics has to learn about them. The magnet move begins next Saturday.?

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/move-fifteen-ton-electromagnet-022929228.html

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MoveIT Cloud

Ipswitch offers businesses grappling with the thorny issue of how to securely transfer large files with an easy-to-use secure email platform, MOVEit Cloud. Employees can share files securely amongst themselves as well as with authorized individuals outside the organization.

Think about it: when your employees need to share files with colleagues, contractors, partners, and customers, what do they do? Odds are they are either just emailing the files to each other or using consumer-focused cloud services such as Dropbox and Box.net. This means that you, as IT, have a difficult time tracking who has access to which file, where these files are winding up, and whether sensitive information is protected. For companies in regulated industries, this becomes a bigger headache because IT has no control over how data is shared within and outside the organization, nor does it know if the information is encrypted before leaving the network.

MOVEit Cloud from Ipswitch is a secure, cloud-based file service that helps IT control how documents are passed around, without over-complicating the interface for the end-users. It is very similar to AppRiver's CipherPost Pro but has better folder management.

From the end-user perspective, MOVEit Cloud is intuitive to use because the Web interface is just like a Webmail client, and there is an Outlook plugin, which means they don't even have to leave the familiar interface. Users don't have to install complicated tools or jump through a series of steps to properly encrypt the file before sending it; MOVEit Cloud automatically takes care of that.

IT teams will like MOVEit Cloud because it provides a detailed view on who transferred what files when, as well as define certain rules on what can be done with the documents, such as restricting forwarding and automatically deleting the files after they are read.

MOVEit Portfolio
Ipwsitch offers two main modules in its MOVEit suite: Ad Hoc Transfer and File Transfer. File Transfer handles cases when files and data are shared between servers, systems, and applications, or when groups need to access a common shared folder. Ad Hoc Transfer, also available as a stand-alone module, refers to situations when an employee has to send files and messages to another individual or group.

These two modules are available in two deployment packages, MOVEit DMZ, which refers to the on-premise version, and MOVEit Cloud, the hosted version. This review focuses on MOVEit Cloud and the Ad Hoc Transfer module, in particular.

At a little over $23 a month, the platform is very affordable. However, MOVEit Cloud is not intended for the smallest business, as there is a minimum 25-user investment, which comes out to $3,600 a year, or just $12 per user per month. Final pricing depends on the actual number of users, and it can go as low as $5 per user per month, according to Ipswitch.

Getting Started
To begin, Ipswitch created a MOVEit Cloud account and the accompanying environment, branding it with the PCMag logo. The fact that it can be customized to look like the company's internal portal indicates this is the "official" platform, as opposed to a random service employees may be using.

I also received a username and password for accessing the support portal, which contains detailed manuals and reams of documentation. The password requirements for the support portal are pretty stringent as even a 12-character string with upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols, was not considered strong enough. I finally managed to change to a password that was 21-characters long with a mix of upper and lower case letters and numbers.

The administrator has full control over the system, managing users who have access to the system, storage and bandwidth limitations, and deciding whether messages could ever be saved locally. The administrator can see all the files that have been ever uploaded, by whom, and who has sent that file or viewed it. I could generate in-depth reports based on this information.

MOVEit Users
When I logged in for the first time, I was prompted to download the upload/download wizard, which requires Java to run. The tool speeds up getting the files up for transfer, handles multiple file transfers, performs automatic integrity checking, and handles files larger than 2GB in size?Next: MOVEit Cloud Administrator, User Interfaces

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/lsKFhuVMb-I/0,2817,2420442,00.asp

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A peek behind the curtain at the trailers gamers see at E3

E3 2013

Yannick LeJacq NBC News contributor

3 hours ago

Warner Bros.

Derron Ross of Blur Studio got to play as Batman and Deathstroke at different points during his company's latest trailer for "Batman: Arkham Origins."

If you've been watching the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) this week, you've probably seen a lot of sleek trailers for upcoming video games. Many game developers use E3 to tease gameplay footage in order to give gamers an early glimpse of what a highly anticipated game like "The Division" or "Titanfall" will actually look like in action.

But as the kerfuffle over Sega and Gearbox's eagerly awaited-then-critically-lambasted "Aliens: Colonial Marines" showed, fans have become wary of any heavily produced videos that claim to depict actual gameplay. Cinematic trailers, on the other hand, can offer a sort of proof-of-concept for a new game without owing the same debt to realism (think "Dead Island" trailer).

That's where Blur Studio comes in. Founded in 1995, Blur has worked on such popular game franchises as "Dragon Age," "Bioshock" and a number of different "Star Wars" titles. In 2010, the video game site Kotaku dubbed Blur "the Pixar of video games."

Still a small company with a distinct start-up feel, Blur only brought one trailer to this year's E3 ? the new CGI trailer for "Batman: Arkham Origins." But that was more than enough to keep the studio busy since the beginning of 2013.

Derron Ross, an animation supervisor at Blur, told NBC News that a team that eventually grew to around 20 performers, animators and filmmakers started working on the new trailer in January after getting a few bare-bones directives and a sample of gameplay footage from "Arkham Origins" publisher Warner Bros.

"We get sent gameplay footage so we could assess the fight moves and see if we could mix it into our choreography to have something that's true to what the game is going to have in it," Ross said. "But Warner Bros. just told us they wanted to reveal Black Mask (the game's chief supervillain), they wanted to reveal Deathstroke (another slightly-less-super villain), and they wanted it to be Christmas time. The rest was pretty much up to us."

Since Ross was working with a relatively small team and has a background in both martial arts and acting, he ended up suiting up to play all three of the major villains in the trailer and even Batman himself in one shot.

BioWare / Electronic Arts

Blur's trailer for "Star Wars: The Old Republic" debuted at 2010's E3. Running to almost six minutes, the video was immediately celebrated as one of the best CGI "Star Wars" films ever created, let alone a thrilling trailer for a video game.

"I've gotten to fulfill a lot of dreams playing Jedi Knights and Sith Lords at the same time," Ross joked. "But I have to say, villains are fun to play. They're evil and twisted characters, so there's more to play on and think about."

The glamour of stepping into the shoes of superheroes and Jedi knights aside, Ross said that there can be some downright eerie moments given how much motion-capture and facial modeling technology has improved.

"The one that is still the creepiest role to play had to be playing myself as a Tyger guard," Ross said of his role as one of the unlucky henchmen who ends up falling prey to Batman in the trailer. "Being tortured and then seeing my face three-dimensionally represented was just like: 'Whoa, this is too spooky.'"

While Ross admitted that producing trailers is still a distinct field unto itself, separate from the game industry, the tech behind video game engines and cinematic CGI work are both improving so rapidly that he thinks they'll begin to merge in the next console generation. Visually stunning games like "The Last of Us" and "Beyond: Two Souls" have already begun to bridge the gap between film and interactive media already, after all ? something Microsoft promised to take a step further with its video game/television show hybrid "Quantum Break."

Does this mean that CGI producers like Ross will eventually become obsolete? Maybe someday, Ross said. But he's more excited about the possibility of game engines becoming powerful enough to allow filmmakers like him to work directly within a video game itself to produce their work ? either as an element of gameplay or a stand-alone film. Describing some of his work on the "Arkham Origins" trailer, Ross already sounds like he's stepped into this virtual movie set.

"Some of the cameras angles you see in 'Batman' have a handheld feel to them because I'm actually going back into the motion-capture space, " Ross said. "I have a shoulder rig with a screen so I can see the 3D world playing in the monitor. Then I can track the action, react and move to the fight!"

"That's almost like a game engine that we're piping through," he continued excitedly. "As I move through the space, it's almost like I'm in the game world."

Yannick LeJacq is a contributing writer for NBC News who has also covered technology and games for Kill Screen, The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic. You can follow him on Twitter at @YannickLeJacq and reach him by email at: ylejacq@gmail.com.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653377/s/2d42979c/l/0L0Snbcnews0N0Ctechnology0Cpeek0Ebehind0Ecurtain0Etrailers0Egamers0Esee0Ee30E6C10A312263/story01.htm

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