Between 10 and 50% of marine species and ecosystems are recovering from population declines and degradation, according to recent research, which identified five strategies for successful recoveries. Recoveries are often driven by a combination of factors, which include restricting exploitation, better protection of vulnerable habitats and greater political support and local involvement with conservation.

Some Marine and Coastal have been altered over long periods of time, resulting in a loss of knowledge of their true healthy state, new research suggests. In this UK study, researchers used historical records, samples of sediment and present-day diving surveys to reconstruct the true history of shellfish beds on the east coast of Scotland.

Image modeling for biomedical organs

David Rolf, International Vice President of the Service Employees International Union, stands in his downtown Seattle office. Rolf led the campaign to bring a $15 minimum wage to Seatac, Washington in 2013.; Credit: Ben Bergman/KPCC

As Los Angeles mulls a law that would raise the minimum wage above the current California minimum of $9 an hour, it's the latest city to jump on a trend that started as the by-product of a failed labor negotiation in the state of Washington.

The first city to enact a $15-per-hour minimum wage was SeaTac, Wash., — a tiny airport town outside Seattle. "SeaTac will be viewed someday as the vanguard, as the place where the fight started," the lead organizer of SeaTac's $15 campaign, David Rolf, told supporters in November 2013 after a ballot measure there barely passed.

Rolf never set out to raise SeaTac’s minimum wage, much less start a national movement. Speaking from a sparse corner office in downtown Seattle at the Service Employees International Union 775, which he founded in 2002, Rolf told KPCC that his original goal in 2010 was to unionize workers at SeaTac airport.

When employers – led by Alaska Airlines — played hardball, Rolf put the $15 minimum wage on the ballot as leverage. “We had some polling in SeaTac that it could pass, but it was not at all definitive,” Rolf said.

That proved prescient: In a city of just 12,108 registered voters, Rolf's staff signed up around 1,000 new voters, many of them immigrants who had never cast a ballot. The measure won by just 77 votes.

It's an irony that the new law doesn't apply to workers at the center of the minimum wage campaign: The airport workers at SeaTac. That's because the Port of Seattle, which oversees the airport, challenged the initiative, arguing that the city's new minimum wage should not apply to the nearly 5,000 workers at the airport. A county judge agreed. Supporters of the $15 wage have appealed.

Still, Rolf said, "I think people are proud that that’s what happening. There are leaders of the movement in Seattle, including our mayor, that said shortly after the victory, 'Now we have to take it everywhere else.'"

The $15 minimum wage spread to Seattle last June and to San Francisco in November. 

Why $15 an hour?

The $15 figure first came to people’s attention in a series of strikes by fast food workers that started two years ago in New York. 

“I think it’s aspirational, and it provides a clean and easy-to-understand number," Rolf said. "You can debate whether it ought to really be $14.89 or $17.12, and based upon the cost of living in different cities, you could have a different answer. But in the late 19th and early 20th century, American workers didn’t rally for 7.9 or 8.1 hour working day. They rallied for an eight-hour day.”

“What’s really remarkable about social protest movements in American history is that the radical ideas of one group are often the common sense ideas of another group in a matter of a few years," said Peter Dreier, professor of politics at Occidental College.

Rolf is hopeful the $15 minimum wage can spread to every state. But Nelson Lichtenstein, Director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is skeptical.

“I don’t think having high wages in a few cities will mean it will spread to red state America,” he said. 

Lichtenstein said cities like L.A. have become more labor friendly, thanks largely to an influx of immigrants, but that’s not the case in the South. Oklahoma recently banned any city from setting its own minimum wage, joining at least 12 other states with similar laws, according to Paul Sonn, general counsel and program director at the National Employment Law Project.

In November, voters in four Republican-leaning states — Alaska, Arkansas, South Dakota, and Nebraska — approved higher minimum wages, but they weren’t close to $15.

A $15 dollar wage would have a much greater impact in Los Angeles than Seattle or San Francisco because the average income here is much lower than in those cities. Post-recession, income inequality has become much more of a concern for voters, which has made $15 more palatable, Sonn said.

This fall, the Los Angeles City Council enacted a $15.37 minimum wage for hotel workers that takes effect next year. A similar law has been in effect around LAX since 2007. 

But even though California cities have been allowed to set their own minimum wages for more than a decade, L.A. has never come close to doing so.

Until now.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Finding affordable apartments is especially tough in Los Angeles, where 52 percent of people are renters, according to a new study.; Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

You need to earn at least $33 an hour — $68,640 a year — to be able to afford the average apartment in Los Angeles County, according to Matt Schwartz, president and chief executive of the California Housing Partnership, which advocates for affordable housing. 

That's more than double the level of the highest minimum wage being proposed by Mayor Eric Garcetti, which he argued would make it easier for workers to afford to live here. “If we pass this, this will allow more people to live their American Dream here in L.A.," Garcetti proclaimed when he announced his plan to raise the minimum wage to $13.25 by 2017. 

The $33 an hour figure is based on the average L.A. County apartment rental price of $1,716 a month, from USC's 2014 Casden Multifamily Forecast. An apartment is considered affordable when you spend no more than 30 percent of your paycheck on rent.

To earn $33 an hour or more, you'd need to have a Los Angeles job like one of the following occupations: 

• Marketing manager: $66,538 (average in L.A., according to Payscale.com)
• LAUSD teacher: $70,000 (average salary, according to LAUSD)
• Software engineer: $82,669 (average according to Payscale.com)
• Lawyer: $104,249 (average according to Payscale.com)

But many occupations typically earn far below that $33 an hour threshold in L.A. County, according to the California Housing Partnership:

• Secretaries: $36,000 ($17 an hour)
• EMT Paramedics: $25,00 ($12 an hour)
• Preschool teachers: $29,000 ($14 an hour)

That's why L.A. residents wind up spending an average of 47 percent of their income on rent, which is the highest percentage in the nation, according to UCLA's Ziman Center for Real Estate.

Naturally, people who earn the current California minimum wage of $9 an hour ($18,720 a year) would fare even worse in trying to afford an average apartment.

Raising the minimum wage to $13.25 would equal a $27,560 salary; raising it to $15.25 an hour totals $31,720 a year.

What about buying a home?

In order to afford to purchase the median-priced home in Los Angeles, you'd need to earn $96,513 a year, according to HSH.com, a mortgage information website. 

The median home price in Los Angeles is $570,500, according to the real estate website, Trulia.com.

But consider that the median income in Los Angeles is about half that: $49,497, according to census numbers from 2009-2013.

So it's no surprise that Los Angeles has been rated as the most unaffordable city to rent in America by Harvard and UCLA. 

The cost of housing has gone up so much that even raising the minimum wage to $15.25 an hour – as some on the city council have proposed doing by 2019– would not go very far in solving the problem.

“Every little bit helps, but even if you doubled the minimum wage, it wouldn’t help most low-income families find affordable rental housing in Los Angeles,” said Schwartz.

What percentage of your income to you spend on housing in Los Angeles? Let us know in the comments, on our Facebook page or on Twitter (@KPCC). You can see how affordable your neighborhood is with our interactive map.

An earlier version of this story incorrectly calculated the hourly pay rate, based on the estimated $68,640 annual pay needed to afford the average rent in L.A. County. KPCC regrets the error.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

“Union members and non-union members have a strong interest in seeing our economy grow," said Rusty Hicks, the new head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, which represents over 300 unions.; Credit: Ben Bergman/KPCC

Labor unions have led the fight to raise the minimum wage in several American cities, including Los Angeles, where the City Council is considering two proposals right now that would give raises to hundreds of thousands of workers (to $13.25 an hour by 2017 and $15.25 an hour by 2019).

But few of the unions' members have benefited directly from the initiatives. So why do unions care about a $15 wage for non-union workers? 

It’s part of a long-term strategy to protect the interests of their members, labor leaders say. They also see an opportunity to raise the profile of unions after years of falling membership.

"We can’t be the movement that’s just about us," said David Rolf, an international vice-president of SEIU, who led the first successful $15 minimum wage campaign in SeaTac, the town in Washington that is home to the region's similarly named airport. 

“We have to be the movement that’s about justice for all," Rolf added. "The labor movement that people flocked to by the tens of millions in the 1930s wasn’t known for fighting for 500-page contracts. They were known for fighting for the eight-hour day, fighting to end child labor.”

The idea that workers should earn $15 dollars an hour first came to the public’s attention during a series of fast food strikes that started in New York City in late 2012. Those workers didn’t just walk off the job by themselves. They were part of a campaign organized by unions, led by SEIU, which is made up mostly of public sector and health care workers.

$10 million fast-food strikes

The Service Employees International Union spent $10 million dollars on the fast food strikes, according to The New York Times. But none of those restaurants have unionized, and because it’s been so hard to form private sector union these days, they probably never will, said labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein.

“In effect what you have now is the SEIU – its hospital membership or its members working at the Department of Motor Vehicles – helping to raise the wages of fast food workers, but not their own wages,” Lichtenstein said.

That's because unionized workers earn far more than the current or proposed new minimum wages, in L.A. an average of more than $27 an hour, according to UCLA's Center for Research on Employment and Labor. 

The spread of the $15 minimum wage from SeaTac to Seattle to San Francisco — and now possibly Los Angeles — is a huge victory for labor unions, but it’s unlikely most of the people getting raises will ever be part of organized labor.

Still, the rank and file seem to support their unions' efforts.

“I personally support using our organization as a way to advocate for those who don’t have a voice," said Rafael Sanchez III, a teacher's assistant at Bell High School who's a member of SEIU Local 99. 

A challenging time for the labor movement

In the 1950’s, about one in three American workers belonged to a union. Last year, just 11 percent did – or 6 percent of private sector workers – the lowest numbers in nearly a century.

Rolf says the minimum wage campaigns mark a change in tactics for organized labor; Rather than the shop floor, the focus is on the ballot box and city hall.

“Since at least the 1980s, winning unions in the private sector has been a Herculean task," Rolf said. "The political process provides an alternative vehicle.”

And an increasingly successful one. It was voters who approved the first $15 wage, in Washington state in 2013, and another one in San Francisco last year.  

In Los Angeles, the issue is before the city council. Mayor Eric Garcetti opened the bidding, proposing a raise of $13.25 on Labor Day before six council members countered with $15.25.

The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor – lead by Rusty Hicks — is pushing for the higher option.

“Union members and non-union members have an interest in seeing our economy grow," said Hicks. "You can’t continue to have a strong, vibrant economy if in fact folks don’t have money in their pockets.”

Other benefits for unions: A safety net and a higher floor

Some union members see a higher minimum wage as a safety net.

Robert Matsuda is a studio violinist represented by the American Federation of Musicians, part of the AFL-CIO. Even though he’s not working for the minimum wage now, he worries that may not last: He’s getting fewer and fewer gigs as more film and TV scoring is outsourced overseas.

“I might have to take a minimum wage job in the near future, so it might directly affect me,” said Matsuda.

There’s also a more tangible benefit for unions, says Nelson Lichtenstein, the labor historian: A higher minimum wage means a higher wage floor to negotiate with in future contracts.

“It’s one labor market, and if you can raise the wages in those sectors that have been pulling down the general wage level – i.e: fast food and retail – then it makes it easier for unions to create a higher standard and go on and get more stuff,” said Lichtenstein.

On Friday morning, union members will rally in front of Los Angeles City Hall, calling on the council to enact a $15.25 an hour minimum wage as soon as possible.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

In this Jan. 14, 2015, photo, shipping containers are stacked up waiting for truck transport at the Port of Los Angeles.; Credit: Damian Dovarganes/AP

The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach reopened Monday after ship loading and unloading was suspended this weekend because of a long-running labor dispute, which caused the worst delays the ports have seen in more than a decade.

The stoppage led to a queue of 31 ships, according to Kip Louttit, Executive Director of the Marine Exchange of Southern California, the agency that manages ship traffic.

“It’s quite unusual,” said Louttit.

There was a 10-day lockout at the ports in 2002, and an eight-day strike by port clerks in 2012, but even during those standoffs, the queue never exceeded 30 vessels.

The last time that happened was in 2004, because of staffing shortages at the Union Pacific Railroad. Some 65 ships were anchored, "backed up halfway down to San Diego, like 50 miles down the coast," Art Wong, spokesperson for the Port of Long Beach, told JOC.com, a container shipping and international supply chain industry website.

By Monday afternoon, the situation had improved some: 24 vessels were waiting to dock.

Louttit says all those ships waiting at sea means cargo is not getting where it needs to be.

“We had an automaker from the Midwest stop by, trying to get an idea of what the flow would be, because their plants are running out of parts to make cars,” he said.

Los Angeles Councilman Joe Buscaino, who supports the dockworkers union, called on both sides to reach an agreement quickly. To underscore the delays the dispute is having, he travelled a mile and a half out to sea Monday morning to count the number of anchored ships for himself. He posted a video of his trip on Youtube:

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Tradeshift, a supply...

…and why are they selling it to other security vendors and product testers?

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My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Content: The coronavirus pandemic viewed through a Dilbert filter Victor David Hanson: “credentialed class” keeps getting it wrong My Twitter debate with a doctor, on testing feasibility Models function is to manipulate perception Paying to have airline middle seats empty If you would like my channel […]

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My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Content: Adam Schiff lied for years…but broke no laws We do NOT know if Russia hacked DNC? Law enforcement targeted/framed President Trump to take him out “Cheryl The Server” theory applied to the lockdown If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content […]

The post Episode 964 Scott Adams: Grab Your Beverage Because it’s Time For… appeared first on Scott Adams' Blog.

This project, along with two other new projects, increases the company's order backlog by 65%.

Bycatch (species caught unintentionally in fisheries) in some commercial marine fisheries is the main cause of death in some populations of seabirds, sea turtles, marine mammals, sharks and fish. New research has revealed that bycatch from tuna fishing can be reduced by using better equipment, without compromising industry profits. However, significant policy efforts are needed to monitor bycatch and enforce more sustainable fishing practices.

A new study indicates that water management in the Netherlands uses a reliable warning system for extreme weather, which can incorporate wind and coastal surge level forecasts, as well as precipitation forecasts.

For the first time, researchers have applied a carbon footprint analysis to calculate carbon sequestration by an urban green space. Their results indicate that urban green space can act as a carbon sink, but its design and maintenance influence the amount stored.

Stricter management of fisheries is needed to prevent overexploitation and decline of tuna and their mackerel relatives, according to an international study. The researchers say fisheries managers have wrongly treated upper limits for catches as target levels for fishing, contributing to global declines and the threatened status of some species.

A new tool has been developed, with input from the public, to measure and compare the quality of green spaces in urban areas. A UK case study suggests that litter and vandalism are among the factors most likely to prevent local residents from using and benefiting from green spaces.

The last two decades have seen a series of new construction waste policies management in Hong Kong. One of the most significant is an offsite construction waste sorting (CWS) programme which, since its implementation in 2006, has separated 5.11 million tonnes of construction waste into different materials. The researchers suggest that the study provides an important reference for other countries working to minimise construction waste.

The impact of polluted urban soil on trees is highlighted in a recent study from Latvia. The researchers found that high salt levels from de-icing chemicals and nutrient imbalance in soil damaged lime trees growing in the city of Riga.

A new tool to improve the measurement of waste management performance has been presented by a recent study. The researchers applied it to three high consuming cities aspiring to ???zero waste???, finding San Francisco to be closer to achieving zero waste than Stockholm and Adelaide, due to its emphasis on reusing solid waste.

Neither the public nor conservation managers are fully aware of the different risks posed by invasive alien species (IAS), new research suggests. A study examining perceptions of five invasive species in the UK shows that both conservation managers and the public regard some highly damaging species as ???low risk???, and that their awareness does not increase with the amount of scientific research on the topic.

Damage caused by boats anchoring in seagrass meadows off the coast of Sardinia continues despite restrictions, new research shows. The study's authors provide a number of recommendations to help protect seagrass. These include creating special anchoring areas in seagrass-free locations, and limiting the number of boats that enter a marine protected area.

Improved public communications and standardised collection systems can greatly increase uptake of safe and sustainable waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) disposal and recycling. This is according to new insights from Italy and Romania, where WEEE collection rates have risen in response to these measures.

A new tool to improve the measurement of waste management performance has been presented by a recent study. The researchers applied it to three high consuming cities aspiring to ‘zero waste’, finding San Francisco to be closer to achieving zero waste than Stockholm and Adelaide, due to its emphasis on reusing solid waste.

New research has compared the environmental impact of four alternative methods of water supply in Copenhagen. Results indicated that rain and stormwater harvesting is the most environmentally sound approach, whilst desalination currently has a large environmental impact, mainly due to electricity use. However, if freshwater extraction is included as an impact, the environmental credibility of desalination is improved.

Increasing resource efficiency is a central aim of European environmental policy, and effective waste management must play a key role in this. A new report assesses waste management in 32 European countries, and identifies key lessons. Landfill taxes and mandatory separate collections of different waste types are highlighted as particularly successful policy instruments.

A new study indicates that ‘commitment’ interventions are effective in encouraging environmentally-friendly behaviour, both in the short- and long-term. However, to increase the effectiveness of such interventions, whereby people promise or pledge to perform certain behaviours, more research is needed on the psychological processes behind their effects.

The public can help assess the human impact on wild birds through amateur ‘citizen science’ networks, according to new research. Scientists evaluated the suitability of data collected by amateur bird-watchers for long-term monitoring of European bird populations. Their findings suggest that citizen data may significantly improve the accuracy of existing official survey methods, as well as help increase public awareness of wild bird conservation.

According to new research, improved communications and financial assistance could encourage private forest owners to engage more willingly in forest management. Personal economics, moral obligations, traditional ideas of how a forest should look and fear of forest fires were found to influence whether forest owners participate in management activities.

A review of the community-led research programme Open Air Laboratories (OPAL) – a UK national programme that brings scientists and communities together to investigate environmental issues – concludes that it benefits both science and the public. The public’s involvement not only raises their awareness of their relationship with the environment, but also contributes to securing a sustainable future.

A new study indicates that ‘commitment’ interventions are effective in encouraging environmentally-friendly behaviour, both in the short- and long-term. However, to increase the effectiveness of such interventions, whereby people promise or pledge to perform certain behaviours, more research is needed on the psychological processes behind their effects.

Campaigns which remind individuals of the environmentally-friendly actions they already perform may motivate them to even more pro-environmental behaviours, new research suggests. If people identify themselves as environmentally-friendly, they are more likely to carry out green actions, even in the absence of any incentive.

A new method of assessing human impacts on seafloor habitats suggests that over a third of habitats in the Baltic Sea have an ‘unfavourable’ status. The method is presented in a recent study which concludes that the tool can be effective in helping implement the EU’s Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD).

Effective ‘knowledge exchange’ - the process of producing, sharing, understanding and using knowledge - is vital to good environmental management. New research has uncovered five principles for this process which could help researchers, decision makers and other parties work together to better manage environmental change.

Public participation in developing coastal management plans can have numerous benefits, such as augmenting expert information with local knowledge and building trust, a new study has confirmed; however, challenges remain, say the researchers. They use the experiences of 10 case studies to make a series of recommendations regarding how to improve the efficiency of the process.

The phrase ‘emerging risk’ has been widely used in scientific and business communities, but without consensus on how to define and govern such a risk. A new study proposes that risk emergence goes through four states, from ‘unknown unknowns’ to risks that are fully in the public domain. Understanding emergence as a process can help decision makers detect and manage risks on the basis of scientific evidence.

Hispanic Mexican city of Teotihuacan may have bred rabbits and hares for food, fur and bone tools, according to a study published August 17, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Andrew Somerville from the University of California San Diego, US, and colleagues.

read more

A rare small-bodied pterosaur, a flying reptile from the Late Cretaceous period approximately 77 million years ago, is the first of its kind to have been discovered on the west coast of North America.

read more

New research has investigated the combined impact of climate change and land cover change on external household water consumption and local night-time temperatures. It estimates that a 3ºC rise in temperature combined with a high degree of urban sprawl would increase water consumption by 4,061 litres per household for the month of August due to increases in evaporation from ground surface. The study recommends full integration of land use planning and water management.

An analysis of flash flood forecasting in Europe has produced recommendations for emergency planners and others to improve flood risk management in vulnerable regions. In particular, the researchers recommend improved data collection and sharing, a common European policy for flash flood forecasting, and that local risk management recognises the specific challenges presented by flash floods.

The importance of comprehensive flood emergency plans is becoming increasingly recognised. A new study has evaluated plans in England and Wales, France and the Netherlands. It was found that, although plans perform well in terms of organisation and communication, they are lacking in more technical aspects, such as the provision of flood hazard maps and evacuation plans.

The use of herbicides on crops causes environmental concerns. A new French study assesses the performance of cropping systems to manage weeds and finds that these techniques could control arable weeds in the long-term and reduce reliance on herbicides.