Apple has posted iBooks Update 1.0.1 for Mac users who are using OS X 10.9 Mavericks. The update is available through Software Update.
The update sports typically terse Apple release notes:
This version of iBooks includes bug fixes and improvements to performance and stability.
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/aP7wdzrX-lo/story01.htmOne man's sewage is another man's drinking water. This pipe, filled with straw-like filters, gets rid of the contaminants in __.
One man's sewage is another man's drinking water. This pipe, filled with straw-like filters, gets rid of the contaminants in __.
In California's Silicon Valley, there will soon be a new source of water for residents. That may not sound like big news, but the source of this water – while certainly high-tech — is raising some eyebrows.
With freshwater becoming more scarce in many parts of the country, the public may have to overcome its aversion to water recycling.
Ah, The Stench Of Drinking Water
If text could transmit odor, you'd already know where this water is coming from.
"Well, we happen to be very close to a landfill," says Marty Grimes, a spokesman for the brand-new $68 million Silicon Valley Advanced Water Purification Center in San Jose.
There's also a wastewater treatment plant across the street. And that is where this water comes from: a place that smells a lot like a toilet.
This hydrant carries __ water to/from the treatment plant.
This hydrant carries __ water to/from the treatment plant.
"Wastewater is not necessarily a pretty business," says Grimes. "But let me tell you, the result of our plant is going to be pure, clean water."
It's a little unfair to linger on the unsavory sewage source. When this plant starts up later this year, it will be doing some of the most state-of-the-art water filtration in the country.
Naturally, that's what engineers here emphasize when they give tours.
"The water comes from the autostrainers, where it's strained down to 300 microns," says Crystal Yezman, who works at the facility. One micron is one thousandth of a millimeter, so 300 microns is about the size of a human hair.
That's step one — filtering out everything wider than a human hair.
Then, the water passes through filters that get rid of the tiniest of contaminants, like viruses or pharmaceuticals, by a process of reverse osmosis.
Finally, the water gets zapped by ultraviolet rays, which scramble the DNA of anything that might be living in it. This water is clean.
"The Department of Health has acknowledged that we are removing 99.99 percent of all pathogens," says Yezman.
If that's true, then the water is cleaner than snow melt, and certainly almost as good as what people get from their kitchen sinks now.
Or, says Grimes, "it could be even better."
Erasing A Dirty Past
Despite how clean this water is, no one's going to drink it. It's going into segregated pipes bound for landscaping instead.
But that may have to change one day because, like a lot of places in the West, water supplies here are drying up. Recycled water is the future — if enough people can be convinced that it's OK to drink.
"You have to break the memory, or the line of history, of the water," explains Brent Haddad of the University of California, Santa Cruz.
This is not an engineering challenge, he says. It's a psychological challenge. Water managers, he says, need to rewrite the history of the water to help people forget the part about sewage.
One way to do this is to take recycled water and put it back into a natural setting, like a river.
A "river is something that's comforting to people," says Haddad. "And we don't have to think anymore that it was passing through a city. We just begin the history of that water in the river itself."
Nine Years Of Convincing
This, of course, happens in nature every day. Just look at the Mississippi River — it's full of treated sewage water that people downstream clean and then drink.
And it's happening in Southern California, home to the largest potable water recycling facility in the world.
"We put it back into the ground, and then eventually it becomes part of the water supply," says Mike Markus, general manager of the facility.
Instead of putting their water into a river, his district cleans treated sewage and then pumps it underground, where it mixes with other water. Then, they pump it back up and treat it all over again, before piping it to peoples' houses.
Even with this crazy, Rube Goldbergian system, getting the public to accept recycled water took lots of meetings.
Markus says he and his colleagues talked to almost anyone who would listen — local elected officials, the health and medical community, the chamber of commerce, schools, environmentalists, rotary groups.
"We talked to the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution. And scouting troops," Markus adds. "Anyone who would want to hear or receive a presentation."
That whole process took nine years.
The irony, of course, is that when you put recycled water back into the ecosystem, it actually gets dirtier and has to be treated again. How does it feel to put that beautiful clean water into a hole in the ground? "Frustrated," Markus says.
So, he reminds himself that winning people over to recycled sewage water is a process — one that's just beginning here in Silicon Valley.
This image released by Nickelodeon shows, from left, Penny Marshall, Jennette McCurdy, Ariana Grande and Cindy Williams in a scene from the series "Sam & Cat." Marshall and Williams, best known from their comedy series "Laverne and Shirley," will guest star in the episode airing Saturday, Nov. 9, at 8 p.m. EST. (AP Photo/Nickelodeon, Lisa Rose)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams play feuding ex-TV partners on an episode of Nickelodeon's "Sam & Cat," but they brush aside any comparison to their past.
The former "Laverne & Shirley" stars, who back in the day of their 1976-83 sitcom were reported to have crossed swords, said they were never enemies and remain friends despite lingering suggestions to the contrary.
"That was rumors. Any show you work on for eight years, you're gonna argue at some point," said Marshall. "Way overblown."
Williams agreed, but added a bit of detail.
"Yes, it was a bit overblown," she said. The actress added that she and Marshall have "very different personalities" with contradictory styles of working, which sometimes led to on-set clashes.
That said, Williams regularly visits Marshall's house to watch and discuss TV. There's a chill in the air, Williams said, but only because Marshall keeps her thermostat turned down and, to compensate, provides down coats and blankets for guests.
Marshall, whose big-screen directing credits include "A League of Their Own" and "Big," is busy working on a documentary about provocative ex-NBA player Dennis Rodman. But she and Williams were enticed by "Sam & Cat" creator Dan Schneider to guest star on the comedy airing at 8 p.m. EST on Saturday.
"He loved our show," Williams said. "He wanted to do a little tribute."
In the episode, Sam (Jennette McCurdy) and Cat (Ariana Grande) face having to rename their baby-sitting business because it's similar to "Salmon Cat," a faux 1970s TV show. The young women track down the show's creators (Marshall and Williams) and try to dissolve their enmity.
In another Nickelodeon reunion, "Happy Days" creator Garry Marshall (brother of Penny Marshall), makes a guest appearance on "See Dad Run" starring Scott Baio, a cast member on the 1974-84 sitcom starring Henry Winkler and Ron Howard.
The "See Dad Run" episode airs 8 p.m. EST on Sunday.
___
Online:
http://www.nick.com
Apple on Thursday posted two firmware updates for the late 2013 MacBook Pro with Retina Display - MacBook Pro Retina EFI Update v1.2 and MacBook Pro Retina EFI Update v1.3.
The 1.2 update is specifically aimed at models equipped with Nvidia graphics, and updates a problem that, "in rare cases, may limit the performance of the discrete graphics processor after a system wake or boot."
The 1.3 update is recommended specifically for 13-inch models, and fixes an issue that cause the built-in keyboard and Multi-Touch trackpad to become unresponsive.
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/rCY9I4GiLO0/story01.htmNovember 07, 2013
Amid the clamor of "bring your own device" (BYOD), a question lurks in the background: "What happens to technical service and support?" Concerns for the tech support function encompass the extremes, from agents being overwhelmed with calls, to their becoming inhabitants of a help desk ghost town.
On the one hand, it’s easy to imagine a flood of calls as employees attempt to access wireless networks or synch their e-mail, especially in companies that permit the use of any device type. At the same time, as more people own smartphones, they are increasingly accustomed to resolving issues independently, through online forums, communities and other means of self-support.
By 2016, says Gartner analyst Jarod Greene, help desks will see a 25% to 30% drop in user-initiated call volume, as BYOD drives a companion trend of BYOS, or “bring your own support.”
By Olivia Oran and Gerry Shih
Nov 7 (Reuters) - Twitter Inc stock soared 92
percent in their first day of trading on Thursday on the New
York Stock Exchange as investors snapped up shares in the
microblogging site, pushing its market value to a heady $25
billion.
The shares opened at $45.10 a share, up from the initial
public offering price of $26 set on Wednesday, then added to
those gains, hitting a high of $50.
Sources said the flotation had drawn strong demand, with
investors asking for 30 times the number of shares on offer as
they bet on potential growth at the money-losing social media
company.
The opening price valued the shares at about 22 times
forecast 2014 sales, nearly double that multiple at social media
rivals Facebook Inc and LinkedIn Corp.
Twitter executives including Chief Executive Dick Costolo
and founder Jack Dorsey thronged to the floor of the New York
Stock Exchange to witness the IPO. The Big Board snatched the
offering away from Nasdaq after the normally tech-focused Nasdaq
stumbled with the larger Facebook flotation last year.
"Facebook was so overhyped people felt like they couldn't
miss out," said Kenneth Polcari, a senior floor official at
O'Neil Securities Inc. "Twitter isn't like that, though you can
feel the excitement."
British actor Patrick Stewart rang the opening bell at the
exchange together with 9-year-old Vivienne Harr, who started a
charity to end childhood slavery using the microblogging site.
"I guess I represent the poster boy for Twitter," Stewart
said, adding that he had only been tweeting for about a year and
wasn't buying Twitter stock today.
Twitter's building staff opened its offices in San Francisco
extra early, at 5:30 a.m. on Thursday. By 7:30 a.m., hundreds of
employees had flocked to their 9th floor cafeteria to watch
Stewart ring the opening bell on TV.
The microblogging network priced its 70 million shares at
above the targeted range of $23 to $25, which had been raised
once before. The IPO values Twitter at $14.1 billion, with the
potential to reach $14.4 billion if underwriters exercise an
overallotment option.
If the full overallotment is exercised, as expected, Twitter
could raise $2.1 billion, making it the second largest Internet
offering in the United States behind Facebook Inc's $16
billion IPO last year and ahead of Google Inc's 2004
IPO, according to Thomson Reuters data.
Twitter boasts 230 million global users, including heads of
state and celebrities, but it lost $65 million in its most
recent quarter and questions remained about long-term prospects.
It also lacks the ubiquity of Facebook or the "stickiness"
factor that keeps people checking the No. 1 social network on a
daily basis.
A Reuters-Ipsos poll last month showed that 36 percent of
people who signed up for a Twitter account say they do not use
it.
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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 7-Nov-2013
ShareContact: Steven Powell
spowell2@mailbox.sc.edu
803-777-1923
University of South Carolina
Discovering a new species is, among biologists, akin to hitting a grand slam, and University of South Carolina ichthyologist Joe Quattro led a team that recently cleared the bases. In the journal Zootaxa, they describe a rare shark, the Carolina hammerhead, that had long eluded discovery because it is outwardly indistinguishable from the common scalloped hammerhead. Through its rarity, the new species, Sphyrna gilberti, underscores the fragility of shark diversity in the face of relentless human predation.
Quattro, a biology professor in USC's College of Arts and Sciences, didn't set out to discover a new cryptic species, let alone one found exclusively in saltwater. When he started as an assistant professor at USC in 1995, he was largely focused on fish in the freshwater rivers that flow through the state before emptying into the western Atlantic Ocean.
He has wide interests that include conservation, genetic diversity and taxonomy. A driving force in his scientific curiosity is a desire to better understand evolution. As it turns out, South Carolina's four major river basins the Pee Dee, the Santee, the Edisto and the Savannah are a source of particularly rich ore for mining insight into evolutionary history.
Glacial influence had limits
Quattro grew up in Maryland, earned a doctorate at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and completed a post-doc at Stanford University. "New Jersey and Maryland, in particular, had huge glacial influences," said Quattro. "The areas where rivers now flow were covered with glaciers until 10,000 to 15,000 years ago, and as the glaciers receded the taxa followed them upstream."
In contrast, rivers south of Virginia were not covered with glaciers. "In other words, these rivers have been around for quite some time," Quattro said. "The Pee Dee and the Santee are two of the largest river systems on the East coast. And we just got curious how distinct are these rivers from one another?"
Beginning with the pygmy sunfish, Quattro and colleagues examined the genetic makeup of fish species within the ancient freshwater drainage systems. They found the banded pygmy sunfish in all the South Carolina rivers in fact, this widespread species is found in nearly all the river systems of the U.S. southeastern and Gulf coasts, starting from the plains of North Carolina, around Florida, and all the way to and up the Mississippi River.
But two species are much rarer. The bluebarred pygmy sunfish is found only in the Savannah and Edisto systems. The Carolina pygmy sunfish is found only in the Santee and Pee Dee systems. Both species coexist with the common banded pygmy sunfish in these river systems, but are found nowhere else in the world.
From an evolutionary standpoint, it's a noteworthy finding. These rare species are related to the widespread species, yet the details of the inter-relationships such as which predates the others and is thus an ancestral species still defy ready description. The fact that a rare and a common species are located together in an ancient river system is important information in the ongoing struggle to clearly define evolutionary history. In the past, scientists drew taxonomic charts almost solely on the basis of physical structure (morphology) and available fossils. The genetic data revolution of recent decades is helping redefine biology in a much more precise manner, but the process is still in the early going.
From the river to the sea
Quattro has been doing his part by slowly moving down the river systems to the ocean, collecting genetic data the whole way down. In the freshwater rivers, he has examined pygmy sunfishes, other sunfishes and basses. Closer to the sea, he has looked at short-nosed sturgeon, which spend most of their time in the estuary (where the river meets the ocean), but do venture up the river to spawn. And further downriver still, he has looked at shark pups.
South Carolina is a well-known pupping ground for several species of sharks, including the hammerhead. The female hammerhead will birth her young at the ocean-side fringes of the estuary; the pups remain there for a year or so, growing, before moving out to the ocean to complete their life cycle.
In the process of looking at hammerheads, Quattro, his student William Driggers III and their colleagues quickly uncovered an anomaly. The scalloped hammerheads (Sphyrna lewini) that they were collecting had two different genetic signatures, in both the mitochondrial and nuclear genomes. Searching the literature, they found that Carter Gilbert, the renowned curator of the Florida Museum of Natural History from 1961 to 1998, had described an anomalous scalloped hammerhead in 1967 that had 10 fewer vertebrae than S. lewini. It had been caught near Charleston and, because the sample was in the National Museum of Natural History, the team was able to examine it morphologically and suggest that it constituted a cryptic species that is, one that is physically nearly indistinguishable from the more common species.
After publishing the preliminary genetic evidence for the new, cryptic species in the journal Marine Biology in 2006, Quattro and colleagues followed up by making thorough measurements (of 54 cryptic individuals and 24 S. lewini) to fully describe in Zootaxa the new species, S. gilberti, named in Gilbert's honor. The difference in vertebrae, 10 fewer in the cryptic species, is the defining morphological difference.
Apart from the satisfaction of discovery, Quattro has established locations and genetic signatures for a number of closely related, yet distinct, species in South Carolina's rivers, estuaries and coastal waters. The results will go a long way in furthering efforts to accurately define taxonomy and evolutionary history for aquatic life.
His team's work also demonstrates the rarity of the new species. "Outside of South Carolina, we've only seen five tissue samples of the cryptic species," Quattro said. "And that's out of three or four hundred specimens."
Shark populations have greatly diminished over the past few decades. "The biomass of scalloped hammerheads off the coast of the eastern U.S. is less than 10 percent of what it was historically," Quattro said. "Here, we're showing that the scalloped hammerheads are actually two things. Since the cryptic species is much rarer than the lewini, God only knows what its population levels have dropped to."
###
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 7-Nov-2013
ShareContact: Steven Powell
spowell2@mailbox.sc.edu
803-777-1923
University of South Carolina
Discovering a new species is, among biologists, akin to hitting a grand slam, and University of South Carolina ichthyologist Joe Quattro led a team that recently cleared the bases. In the journal Zootaxa, they describe a rare shark, the Carolina hammerhead, that had long eluded discovery because it is outwardly indistinguishable from the common scalloped hammerhead. Through its rarity, the new species, Sphyrna gilberti, underscores the fragility of shark diversity in the face of relentless human predation.
Quattro, a biology professor in USC's College of Arts and Sciences, didn't set out to discover a new cryptic species, let alone one found exclusively in saltwater. When he started as an assistant professor at USC in 1995, he was largely focused on fish in the freshwater rivers that flow through the state before emptying into the western Atlantic Ocean.
He has wide interests that include conservation, genetic diversity and taxonomy. A driving force in his scientific curiosity is a desire to better understand evolution. As it turns out, South Carolina's four major river basins the Pee Dee, the Santee, the Edisto and the Savannah are a source of particularly rich ore for mining insight into evolutionary history.
Glacial influence had limits
Quattro grew up in Maryland, earned a doctorate at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and completed a post-doc at Stanford University. "New Jersey and Maryland, in particular, had huge glacial influences," said Quattro. "The areas where rivers now flow were covered with glaciers until 10,000 to 15,000 years ago, and as the glaciers receded the taxa followed them upstream."
In contrast, rivers south of Virginia were not covered with glaciers. "In other words, these rivers have been around for quite some time," Quattro said. "The Pee Dee and the Santee are two of the largest river systems on the East coast. And we just got curious how distinct are these rivers from one another?"
Beginning with the pygmy sunfish, Quattro and colleagues examined the genetic makeup of fish species within the ancient freshwater drainage systems. They found the banded pygmy sunfish in all the South Carolina rivers in fact, this widespread species is found in nearly all the river systems of the U.S. southeastern and Gulf coasts, starting from the plains of North Carolina, around Florida, and all the way to and up the Mississippi River.
But two species are much rarer. The bluebarred pygmy sunfish is found only in the Savannah and Edisto systems. The Carolina pygmy sunfish is found only in the Santee and Pee Dee systems. Both species coexist with the common banded pygmy sunfish in these river systems, but are found nowhere else in the world.
From an evolutionary standpoint, it's a noteworthy finding. These rare species are related to the widespread species, yet the details of the inter-relationships such as which predates the others and is thus an ancestral species still defy ready description. The fact that a rare and a common species are located together in an ancient river system is important information in the ongoing struggle to clearly define evolutionary history. In the past, scientists drew taxonomic charts almost solely on the basis of physical structure (morphology) and available fossils. The genetic data revolution of recent decades is helping redefine biology in a much more precise manner, but the process is still in the early going.
From the river to the sea
Quattro has been doing his part by slowly moving down the river systems to the ocean, collecting genetic data the whole way down. In the freshwater rivers, he has examined pygmy sunfishes, other sunfishes and basses. Closer to the sea, he has looked at short-nosed sturgeon, which spend most of their time in the estuary (where the river meets the ocean), but do venture up the river to spawn. And further downriver still, he has looked at shark pups.
South Carolina is a well-known pupping ground for several species of sharks, including the hammerhead. The female hammerhead will birth her young at the ocean-side fringes of the estuary; the pups remain there for a year or so, growing, before moving out to the ocean to complete their life cycle.
In the process of looking at hammerheads, Quattro, his student William Driggers III and their colleagues quickly uncovered an anomaly. The scalloped hammerheads (Sphyrna lewini) that they were collecting had two different genetic signatures, in both the mitochondrial and nuclear genomes. Searching the literature, they found that Carter Gilbert, the renowned curator of the Florida Museum of Natural History from 1961 to 1998, had described an anomalous scalloped hammerhead in 1967 that had 10 fewer vertebrae than S. lewini. It had been caught near Charleston and, because the sample was in the National Museum of Natural History, the team was able to examine it morphologically and suggest that it constituted a cryptic species that is, one that is physically nearly indistinguishable from the more common species.
After publishing the preliminary genetic evidence for the new, cryptic species in the journal Marine Biology in 2006, Quattro and colleagues followed up by making thorough measurements (of 54 cryptic individuals and 24 S. lewini) to fully describe in Zootaxa the new species, S. gilberti, named in Gilbert's honor. The difference in vertebrae, 10 fewer in the cryptic species, is the defining morphological difference.
Apart from the satisfaction of discovery, Quattro has established locations and genetic signatures for a number of closely related, yet distinct, species in South Carolina's rivers, estuaries and coastal waters. The results will go a long way in furthering efforts to accurately define taxonomy and evolutionary history for aquatic life.
His team's work also demonstrates the rarity of the new species. "Outside of South Carolina, we've only seen five tissue samples of the cryptic species," Quattro said. "And that's out of three or four hundred specimens."
Shark populations have greatly diminished over the past few decades. "The biomass of scalloped hammerheads off the coast of the eastern U.S. is less than 10 percent of what it was historically," Quattro said. "Here, we're showing that the scalloped hammerheads are actually two things. Since the cryptic species is much rarer than the lewini, God only knows what its population levels have dropped to."
###
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
