We first met Antonio McDuffy and Pat & Andrea Wills on the 400 block of E Patapsco Avenue back in 2015. This episode, we reunite with them, we listen back together to their original recordings, and we ask them, “How’s life changed in the past six years?”

Musician Art Garfunkel recently reunited with on-again/off-again musical partner Paul Simon, looking to reconcile their differences and make amends.

Penalties have been a reoccurring problem for Maryland during the Mike Locksley era, and though the Terrapins tamped them down last season, they are racking up quick again in 2024.

Maryland has been selected to finish in the middle of the new 18-team pack in this year's unofficial Big Ten men's basketball preseason poll.

The new Big Ten truly comes to full bore for Maryland this weekend with its first-ever West Coast conference trip to No. 1 Oregon, bringing with it a host of logistical tweaks and challenges.

Ryan Blaney celebrated his victory at Martinsville Speedway, a win that launched NASCAR's defending champion into the title-deciding season finale.

Roger Penske already won two sports car championships this season and heads to Phoenix Raceway with two chances to win a third consecutive NASCAR Cup Series title with both Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney in the winner-take-all season finale.

Drama continued to encompass NASCAR ahead of its championship-deciding season finale as the sanctioning body issued $600,000 in fines and suspended nine team members from three different teams on Tuesday for alleged race manipulation at Martinsville Speedway.

Sauber has signed 20-year-old Brazilian driver Gabriel Bortoleto to make his debut in Formula 1 next year as Nico Hulkenberg's teammate.

All four NASCAR Xfinity championship drivers said the right things heading into the season finale.

The struggling Alpine Formula 1 team will use engines and gearboxes from Mercedes starting in 2026 after parent company Renault cuts its in-house F1 engine program.

President-elect Donald Trump says that Tom Homan, his former acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement director, will serve as "border czar" in his incoming administration.

Donald Trump's victory may bring some relief for the leaders of three authoritarian Southeast Asian nations caught in the influence struggle between the U.S. and China -- Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia.

The numbers are trickling in, and between the presidential elections of 2020 and 2024, President-elect Donald Trump saw dramatic increases in support at the ballot boxes from Hispanics, youth and Black people -- traditionally all voters who stick with Democrats. This has the Democrat Party trembling in its big black boots.

Starting in the Obama administration and continuing through Vice President Kamala Harris' run for president, the Democrats have pledged to bring the American people back together.

The Washington Commanders woke up in second place in the NFC East on Monday morning. Sunday's loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Commanders' third of the season, allowed the rival Philadelphia Eagles to slip into the top spot in the division.

Now back at home for the first time in nearly a month and with three games remaining, the chance for Maryland to salvage a disappointing season with a potential bowl appearance begins with Rutgers.

The quarterback carousel isn't spinning. It should in some cases.

Washington Commanders rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels has repeatedly said he doesn't see himself as a superstar, but the latest data from the NFL Shop would disagree. The No. 2 pick in this year's draft ranked fifth in jersey sales from April 1 through Oct. 31.

The Los Angeles Dodgers, including Shohei Ohtani and his dog, celebrated their eighth World Series championship with a downtown parade on Friday.

With Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto making their first appearance, the World Series averaged 12.9 million viewers in Japan, making it the most-watched Fall Classic in the nation's history.

Shohei Ohtani had arthroscopic surgery on Tuesday to repair a labrum tear in his left shoulder, following an injury the Los Angeles Dodgers star suffered during Game 2 of the World Series on Oct. 26.

Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani is a finalist for his first National League MVP award after winning the AL honor twice, joined among the top three in NL voting by New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor and Arizona second baseman Ketel Marte.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced Thursday that his government would begin proceedings on a rule that would ban social media use for children under 16 years old.

California air regulators voted to approve changes to a key climate program aimed at reducing planet-warming emissions that has a wide swath of critics and could increase gas prices statewide.

Anthropic's large language model Claude is preparing for work in the U.S. intelligence community.

Bible study topics in 2 Thessalonians, Chapter 1 cover Faith Vindicated. The questions are designed for personal or group inductive style Bible study and discussion.

Bible study topics in 2 Thessalonians, Chapter 2 cover The Return Of Christ. The questions are designed for personal or group inductive style Bible study and discussion.

Bible study topics in 2 Thessalonians, Chapter 3 cover Prayer And Productivity. The questions are designed for personal or group inductive style Bible study and discussion.

The Indiana Fever hired Stephanie White as coach on Friday, putting her in charge of a team led by WNBA Rookie of the Year Caitlin Clark.

The Baltimore big man recorded a double-double -- in the first half alone -- en route to a stellar 22 point, 20 rebound debut as Maryland pulled away from Manhattan in the second half to win its season opener, 79-49

Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid was suspended by the NBA on Tuesday for three games without pay for shoving a member of the media.

Charlotte Hornets center Nick Richards is expected to miss at least two weeks after being diagnosed with a right first rib cartilage fracture underneath his clavicle.

The Justice Department is suing to block UnitedHealth Group's $3.3 billion purchase of Amedisys, citing concerns the combination would hinder access to home health and hospice services in the U.S.

Paris's Notre Dame cathedral, whose historic bells were silenced following 2019's devastating fire, will soon echo again with fresh chimes.

Varada Sethu is joining the TARDIS alongside Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson for the Fifteenth Doctor's second season of adventures.

The post Doctor Who Is Getting A New Companion For 2025 first appeared on SciFi Stream.

affaritaliani.it
 
 
08-11-2017.-
  
Alessandro Sahebi
 

Monographs are fundamental for progress in systematic  botany. They are the vehicles for circumscribing and naming taxa, determining distributions and ecology,  assessing  relationships for formal classification, and interpreting long-term  and short-term  dimensions of the evolutionary process. Despite their importance, fewer monographs are now being prepared by the newer generation  of systematic  botanists, who are understandably involved principally with DNA data and analysis, especially for answering  phylogenetic, biogeographic, and population  genetic questions.  As monographs provide  hypotheses regarding species  boundaries and plant relationships, new insights  in many plant groups  are urgently  needed.  Increasing  pressures  on biodiversity, especially in tropical and developing regions of the world, emphasize this point. The results from a workshop (with 21 participants) reaffirm  the central role that monographs play in systematic  botany. But, rather than advocating abbreviated models  for monographic products,  we recommend a full presentation of relevant  information. Electronic  publication offers numerous  means of illustration of taxa, habitats, characters, and statistical and phylogenetic analyses, which previously  would have been prohibitively costly. Open Access and semantically enhanced  linked electronic  publications provide instant access to content from anywhere  in the world, and at the same time link this content to all underlying data and digital resources  used in the work.  Resources  in support  of monography, especially  databases  and widely  and easily  accessible  digital  literature and specimens, are now more powerful  than ever before, but interfacing and interoperability of databases  are much needed. Priorities  for new resources  to be developed  include an index of type collections and an online global chromosome database. Funding  for sabbaticals for monographers to work uninterrupted on major projects  is strongly  encouraged. We recommend that doctoral  students  be assigned  smaller  genera,  or natural  portions  of larger  ones (subgenera, sections,  etc.), to gain the necessary expertise for producing a monograph, including training in a broad array of data collection (e.g., morphology, anatomy, palynology, cytogenetics, DNA techniques, ecology, biogeography), data analysis (e.g., statistics,  phylogenetics, models), and nomenclature. Training programs, supported by institutes, associations, and agencies, provide means for passing on procedures and perspectives of challenging botanical  monography to the next generation  of young systematists.

One year of experience and perspectives for the future from Pensoft Publishers and GBIF

In 2012 GBIF and Pensoft pioneered a workflow between the GBIF’s Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) and Pensoft’s journals ZooKeys, PhytoKeys, MycoKeys, Nature Conservation, etc. to automatically export metadata into the form of a data paper manuscript, based on the Ecological Metadata Language (EML). One year on they share their experience and perspectives for the future of data publishing.

In its essence, a Data Paper is a scholarly journal publication whose primary purpose is to describe a dataset or a group of datasets, rather than to report a research investigation. As such, it contains facts about data, not hypotheses and arguments in support of the data, as found in a conventional research article. The future of data publishing according to Pensoft Publishers and GBIF, lies in the elaborating of formats for descriptions of various kinds of data (ecological, morphological, genomic, environmental, etc.), as well as in linking to various platforms (GBIF, Scratchpads, Dryad, EDIT, CBOL, etc.).

More about the collaboration and experience of Pensoft Publishers and GBIF learn from their joint poster available here.

The first Informatics Workshop of the EU-FP7 funded project EU BON was held on 29-31 May 2013 in Trondheim, Norway. The meeting was hosted by the EU BON partner Norwegian Biodiversity Information Centre (NBIC). The aims were to highlight the link to infrastructures and processes like GEOSS or DataONE and to discuss the data standards and informatics architecture that will be followed by the EU BON project.

During the three-days of the workshop, the participants of the meeting discussed the important aspects regarding the informatics architecture and decided on the next steps to develop a new open-access platform for sharing biodiversity data and tools in order to advance the European biodiversity knowledge.  On the first day, the aim was to highlight the link of EU BON with GEOSS, GEO BON and other processes like DataONE to find synergies and to build on work that was conducted in these processes. On the second day, detailed discussion on the specific tasks of the workgroup took place. The afternoon session was split into 3 different tracks where issues like architectural design, review and guidelines for using data standards, the design of monitoring sites and the gap analysis of existing biodiversity data were analyzed and discussed.

It was agreed that a new platform is needed which should be built on existing solutions. Thus, the platform will use the technical solutions of the DataONE network that will be adjusted to the specific needs of the EU BON project. EU BON Partners will implement DataONE Member Nodes to start the process and a DataOne coordinating node may be established towards 2015. Furthermore, it was also decided to join and support the GEO BON Working Group pilot project on automating the data flows for the Essential Biodiversity Variables.

The EUBrazilOpenBio project  announces two new training tools as a part of its e-training Programme aiming at educating and enabling current and potential users of EUBrazilOpenBio to unlock new knowledge and shape effective policy on biodiversity challenges. The new tools cover the following use cases: Ecological Niche Modeling and Cross-mapping.

The EUBrazilOpenBio anytime, anywhere eTraining tools are designed for researchers in the spheres of Biodiversity, Life science, Climate Change, application Developers as well as regulatory authorities and policy decision-makers.

EUBrazilOpenBio is focused on tackling the complexity of biodiversity science such as the diversity of multidisciplinary datasets spanning from climatology to earth sciences by integrating advanced computing resources with data sources across Europe and Brazil.

For more informationand to try out the new tools click here.

The Brazilian initiative PPBio (The Program for Research on Biodiversity) launches a new book based on over a decade of experience in implementing the biodiversity monitoring system RAPELD in the Brazilian Amazon. Richly illustrated and written in simple language, the book "Biodiversity and Integrated Environmental Monitoring" addresses the issues that led to the system development, covering topics such as the spatial organization and representation of biological diversity, environmental monitoring, and data management.

Monitoring of biodiversity is not merely an academic endeavor. Although scientific aspects such as representation of biodiversity and biodiversity data integration, management and preservation are of a great importance, it is also essential to think about the political context in which decisions will be made and how to incorporate political stakeholders and decision makers.

"As this important book makes clear questions about biodiversity are far from purely scientific. Biodiversity matters. Our needs to assess it embed in a complex of questions posed by managers, policy makers and those who live in or otherwise benefit from biodiversity.",  explains Dr Stuart L. Pimm in the preface of the book. "So how do we ensure that data collected now will be useful for purposes we cannot yet imagine at some unexpected time in the future? Or provide comparison to some other place that we might survey some day?"

Those and many more questions regarding biodiversity data management and policy involvement are discussed in the new book "Biodiversity and Integrated Environmental Monitoring".

The University of Cambridge invites for applications for a Research Associate to work on EU-BON, a major EU-funded research project seeking to improve the use of biodiversity data in public policy.

Applicants should have a PhD in a relevant social science or conservation science. Experience in both qualitative and quantitative analysis is desirable. Applicants should ideally have some first-hand experience of public policy processes and a willingness to travel within the European Union for research. Excellent organisational and communication skills will be essential in working as a successful part of this large, multi-partner and multinational team.

The researcher will carry out research on how biodiversity data is currently used in European policy making and will contribute to analysis of the opportunities to increase its effective provision and use. Research methods are likely to combine qualitative and quantitate analysis and to focus on the use of biodiversity data in public policy contexts. It is expected that some of the research will take place in Brussels. The researcher will have considerable freedom in defining the research project in discussion with Dr Doubleday and Prof Sutherland. In addition to carrying out research on the use of biodiversity data in European policy making, the researcher will support Cambridge's contribution to EU BON as a whole. This will involve contributing to other workpackages as and when required. More information about EU BON can be found here: http://www.eubon.eu

Fixed-term: The funds for this post are available for 36 months in the first instance.

Completed applications consisting of a CHRIS/6 (Parts I & III) (downloadable from http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/hr/forms/chris6/) a covering letter, and CV, should be sent to Danielle Feger, via email: geogrec@hermes.cam.ac.uk or sent to Research Administrator, Department of Geography, Downing Site, Cambridge, CB2 3EN

Please quote reference LC01355 on your application and in any correspondence about this vacancy.

Any enquiries concerning the position can be made to Dr Robert Doubleday, rob.doubleday@csap.cam.ac.uk

For more information about the position, please visit: http://www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/1611/

The Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) in Tervuren (Belgium) is part of the FishBase Consortium and responsible for the information on the fresh- and brackish water fishes of Africa. Through an agreement with the Belgian Development Cooperation and as part of the FishBase programme, the RMCA has five grants available for a 3-month training programme in the use of FishBase and the taxonomy of African fishes.

The training includes three subsets:

1. A detailed explanation of FishBase in all its aspects;
2. A training in the taxonomy of African fishes; and
3. A case study based on data from FishBase or on taxa for which taxonomic problems have been encountered.

The main focus of the training is on fish biodiversity data and their integration into FishBase, and on how to use and contribute data to FishBase. The context of these contributions may vary and can also include the knowledge on common names, fish ecology, fisheries statistics, aquaculture and many other areas of fish biology.

After the training, the participants should be able to make their own contribution to fish biology and continue to work on FishBase. They are encouraged to teach their newly apprehended skills to new/local users, to help in completing the database and keeping it up to date, and to spread the use of FishBase as a source of information and a fisheries tool.

This course has been offered annually since 2005 and is held at the Royal Museum for Central Africa (Leuvensesteenweg 13, B-3080 Tervuren, Belgium).

To apply for traineeship and for more information, go to:
http://www.africamuseum.be/research/collaborations/training/group?set_language=en&cl=en

Please note that for 2014, this course will be given in French only.

Contact: Dimitri Geelhand de Merxem (dimitri.geelhand@africamuseum.be)

The Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg offers in cooperation with GEO BON and iDiv the position of Executive Director for the duration of 30 months (initially limited till September 30th, 2016 with possibility of extension). The Executive Director will work in close collaboration with the incoming Chair of the GEO BON Steering Committee, Prof. Henrique M. Pereira (iDiv) and the incoming vice-chair, Dr. Mike Gill (Environment Canada), thematic workgroup coordinators, regional BON coordinators, the GEO BON Steering Committee and the GEO secretariat.

Requirements:
• Ph.D. in ecology or related field
• excellent diploma or master degree in a relevant field
• demonstrable experience in project management with executive leadership in organizations a plus
• excellent communication skills, fluency in English, knowledge of other languages being a plus
• willingness to travel abroad frequently, outgoing and at ease in multicultural backgrounds

Topic/job description:
• Providing visible leadership for GEO BON and representing GEO BON at scientific and policy meetings
• Creating funding opportunities through engagement with potential donors
• Coordinating activities of GEO BON Working Groups and Regional Observation Networks
• Liaising with national and regional organizations involved in biodiversity monitoring and reporting
• Organize the Steering Committee, All-hands and other meetings of GEO BON and manage the communication activities of GEO BON, including a regular newsletter and a website
• Manage, as and when required, activities and inputs requested by the GEO secretariat

Applications should be directed to emily.keller@idiv.de and addressed to Henrique M. Pereira, Professor of Biodiversity Conservation, iDiv. Applications should be in a single PDF file with reference file number (D 189/2013). Applications are accepted until January 6th, 2014.

For more information see attached the full text of the job offer.

Ecosystem functioning, or the role which organisms play in an ecosystem, is becoming increasingly important in marine ecological and conservation. To facilitate such studies an international team of scientists lead by S. Faulwetter from the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HMRC) present the Polytraitsdatabase that aims to provide re-usable, and accessible data on marine bristle worms. The paper describing the new database was published in the innovative Biodiversity Data Journal, a pioneer in the publication of integrated biological data.

Benthic organisms participate in a number of biological processes in world water basins. Their functional diversity is an important community property demonstrating the role organisms have in the ecosystem and helping to understand how the community reacts to environmental changes. Polychaetes, or bristle worms, are marine worms famous for their peculiar shapes and often vivid coloration. More than 10,000 species are described in the class worldwide, most of which living in the shelf zone of the seas and oceans, burrowing in the sediment or swimming among the plankton.

At present, the Polytraits database contains almost 20,000 records on morphological, behavioural and reproductive characteristics of more than 1,000 species, all referenced by literature sources. All data on these engaging organisms can be freely accessed through the project website in different ways and formats, both human-readable and machine-readable. The new database presents a rich and easy to use collection, which cover morphological, reproductive and behavioural characteristics of polychaetes, as well as information on environmental preferences in an attempt to facilitate ecological research and conservation studies.

The researchers also provide a leading-edge approach to accessing, integrating and re-using the data. Through programming interfaces, the life-cycle information is automatically integrated into the Polychaetes Scratchpads, together with other data on polychaetes. Scratchpads are easy to use, adaptable, and provide powerful tools for managing biodiversity data. This taxon-centric virtual research environment allows browsing the taxonomic classification and retrieving various kinds of relevant information for each taxon, among which are also the collected biological traits.

Furthermore, the data are also accessible through Encyclopedia of Life's TraitBank which currently features over 3 million records related to more than 250 attributes for 272,720 taxa, including the Polytraits data. TraitBank serves as a provider for aggregated species trait data. All data uploaded there are archived and integrated with trait information from other sources to address issues of standardization of scientific data. This is the first complex database for marine organisms to be published in such an innovative way and demonstrates yet another example of collaboration between the data publisher Pensoft and Encyclopedia of Life.

Issue 72 of the CBD Technical Series is now out focusing on "EARTH OBSERVATION FOR BIODIVERSITY MONITORING : A review of current approaches and future opportunities for tracking progress towards the Aichi Biodiversity Targets". The issue shows how earth observation technologies can and should fit into systems for biodiversity monitoring, as well as demonstrates how these approaches could further improve relevant indicators for the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. It illustrates a clear track from observations done by remote sensing platforms through Essential Biodiversity Variables to biodiversity indicators and ultimately to the assessment of progress towards the Aichi Biodiversity Targets and ultimately in support of evidence-based decision making. EU BON is also featured in this report.

The goal of the CBD Technical Series is to contribute to the dissemination of up-to-date and accurate information on selected topics that are important for the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of its components and the equitable sharing of its benefits. A large and growing body of evidence has clearly established the need to disseminate synthesis publications relevant to CBD objectives and selected reports presented at CBD meetings.

The CBD Technical Series is intended to:

• Foster scientific and technical cooperation;
• Improve communication between the Convention and the scientific community;
• Increase awareness of current biodiversity-related problems and concerns; and
• Facilitate widespread and effective use of the growing body of scientific and technical information on conserving and using biological diversity.

The full report is available here.