Some Michigan mammal species are rapidly expanding their ranges northward, apparently in response to climate change, a new study shows. In the process, these historically southern species are replacing their northern counterparts. The finding, by researchers at the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Ohio’s Miami University, appears in the June issue of the journal Global Change Biology. ‘When you read about changes in flora and fauna related to climatic warming, most of what you read is either predictive—they’re talking about things that are going to happen in the future—or it’s restricted to single species living in extreme or remote environments, like polar bears in the Arctic,’ said lead author Philip Myers, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at U-M. ‘But this study documents things that are happening right now, here at home.’ What will be the ultimate impact of Michigan’s changing mammal communities? ‘We’re talking about the commonest mammals there, mammals that have considerable ecological impact,’ Myers said. ‘They disperse seeds, they eat seeds, they eat the insects that kill trees, they disperse the fungus that grows in tree roots that is necessary for trees to grow, and they’re the prey base for a […]
The Global Positioning System faces the possibility of failures and blackouts, a federal watchdog agency has warned the U.S. Congress. Mismanagement by and underinvestment by the U.S. Air Force places the GPS at risk of failure in 2010 and beyond. The problem: Delays in launching replacement satellites, among other things. According to the Government Accountability Office report, ‘In recent years, the Air Force has struggled to successfully build GPS satellites within cost and schedule goals’ as part of a $2 billion modernization program. ‘If the Air Force does not meet its schedule goals for development of GPS IIIA satellites, there will be an increased likelihood that in 2010, as old satellites begin to fail, the overall GPS constellation will fall below the number of satellites required to provide the level of GPS service that the U.S. government commits to.’ Considered by the GAO to be ‘essential to national security’ the GPS is also widely used by business and consumers and is a driver for next-generation location-based mobile applications used with smartphones and other devices. ‘Such a gap in capability could have wide-ranging impacts on all GPS users,’ the GAO report states, ‘though there are measures the […]
The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth’s climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago – and could be even worse than that. The study uses the MIT Integrated Global Systems Model, a detailed computer simulation of global economic activity and climate processes that has been developed and refined by the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change since the early 1990s. The new research involved 400 runs of the model with each run using slight variations in input parameters, selected so that each run has about an equal probability of being correct based on present observations and knowledge. Other research groups have estimated the probabilities of various outcomes, based on variations in the physical response of the climate system itself. But the MIT model is the only one that interactively includes detailed treatment of possible changes in human activities as well – such as the degree of economic growth, with its associated energy use, in different countries. Study co-author Ronald Prinn, the co-director of the Joint […]
WASHINGTON — The Senate voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to rein in credit card rate increases and excessive fees, hoping to give voters some breathing room amid a recession that has left hundreds of thousands of Americans jobless or facing foreclosure. The House was on track to pass the measure as early as Wednesday, paving the way for President Barack Obama to see the bill on his desk by week’s end. ‘This is a victory for every American consumer who has ever suffered at the hands of a credit card company,’ said Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., chairman of the Banking Committee. The bill passed the Senate 90-5. If enacted into law as expected, the credit card industry would have nine months to change the way it does business: Lenders would have to post their credit card agreements on the Internet and let customers pay their bills online or by phone without an added fee. They’d also have to give consumers a chance to spare themselves from over-the-limit fees and provide 45 days notice and an explanation before interest rates are increased. Some of these changes are already on track to take effect in July 2010, under new rules […]
Scribd, the popular site for sharing documents, has launched a store that could eventually grow into a serious competitor to Amazon. There’s a bit of David-and-Goliath to the battle (not that Scribd has to kill Amazon to succeed), but there are reasons to think the smaller site might become a major player: Not only does it already attract 60 million readers a month for its free content, but its accessibility and flexibility could make it a good fit for authors who don’t want to go through a traditional publisher. The most prominent example in Scribd’s beta test is Tamim Ansary, author of West of Kabul, East of New York. Ansary is a New York Times-bestselling author, but Tammy Nam, Scribd’s vice president of content and marketing, says that since his success has been in nonfiction, Ansary’s publisher didn’t want to back his novel. (By the way, I find that anecdote incredibly depressing.) Instead, Ansary is putting the book up on Scribd. And since the company gives 80 percent of the revenue to the seller, he could make a lot more money this way, even if he sells fewer copies overall. Another big launch partner is O’Reilly Media, which is […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
