*At college or somewhere in life a man once told me, "Every time we kill off any living organism on this planet, we also kill a greater portion of ourselves". I believe this to be true.
Australia's Great Barrier Reef has lost more than half its coral cover in the past 27 years, a new study shows.
Researchers analysed data on the condition of 217 individual reefs that make up the World Heritage Site.
The results show that coral cover declined from 28.0% to 13.8% between 1985 and 2012.
They attribute the decline to storms, a coral-feeding starfish and bleaching linked to climate change.
The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.
Glen De'ath from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) and colleagues determined that tropical cyclones - 34 in total since 1985 - were responsible for 48% of the damage, while outbreaks of the coral-feeding crown-of-thorns starfish accounted for 42%.
Two severe coral bleaching events in 1998 and 2002 due to ocean warming also had "major detrimental impacts" on the central and northern parts of the reef, the study found, putting the impact at 10%.
"This loss of over half of initial cover is of great concern, signifying habitat loss for the tens of thousands of species associated with tropical coral reefs," the authors wrote in their study.
Co-author Hugh Sweatman said the findings, which were drawn from the world's largest ever reef monitoring project involving 2,258 separate surveys over 27 years, showed that coral could recover from such trauma.
"But recovery takes 10-20 years. At present, the intervals between the disturbances are generally too short for full recovery and that's causing the long-term losses," Sweatman said.
John Gunn, head of AIMS, said it was difficult to stop the storms and bleaching but researchers could focus their short-term efforts on the crown-of-thorns starfish, which feasts on coral polyps and can devastate reef cover.
The study said improving water quality was key to controlling starfish outbreaks, with increased agricultural run-off such as fertiliser along the reef coast causing algal blooms that starfish larvae feed on.
FPV racing drones. The top pilots in the world. Epic courses. Join us for the entire DRL 2016 Season where we’ll crown the world champion as the best FPV pilot on the planet.
2016 SEASON
Six races around the world for pilots to earn season points. The pilots with most points qualify for the World Championship race, where it’s winner-take-all. Check out the standings for all your favorite pilots.
Politicians have offered confusing and conflicting information on guns in the wake of the San Bernardino shootings and President Obama’s announced plans for tighter gun controls:
Jeb Bush said Obama’s plan would take away the rights of someone “selling a gun out of their collection, a one-off gun” by requiring that person to perform background checks. That’s not correct. Such “one-off” private gun sales would be unaffected by Obama’s proposals.
In an ad, Marco Rubio says Obama’s plan is to “take away our guns.” The president’s plan would do no such thing. No guns would be confiscated under Obama’s plan, and no law-abiding citizen would be denied the ability to purchase a gun.
In an interview, Donald Trump said Hillary Clinton’s gun plan is “worse than Obama[‘s]” and that “she wants to take everyone’s gun away.” That’s not what Clinton is proposing either.
Obama said that “historically, the NRA was in favor of background checks.” That’s misleading. The NRA opposed the Brady bill and offered an alternative background check provision that gun-control advocates saw as an attempt to kill the bill.
Obama’s Proposal
In an emotion-filled speech on Jan. 5, President Obama announced a series of executive actions aimed at reducing gun violence. The most controversial was Obama’s plan to crack down on some unregulated Internet gun sales.
The plan does not include any new regulations, or an executive order. Rather, Obama has directed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to “clarify” that anyone “engaged in the business” of selling firearms — even if the seller operates over the Internet or at gun shows — must get a license and conduct background checks.
In other words, Obama said, “It’s not where you do it, but what you do.”
And, Obama warned, those who “engage in the business” of selling firearms via the Internet or at gun shows but do not obtain a license and subject buyers to background checks will be federally prosecuted. A person who “willfully engages in the business of dealing in firearms without the required license is subject to criminal prosecution and can be sentenced up to five years in prison and fined up to $250,000,” the White House warned.
To back that up, Obama also announced that ATF has established an Internet Investigations Center that will track illegal online firearms trafficking, and Obama vowed that his 2017 budget proposal would include funding for an additional 200 ATF agents and investigators.
Obama’s plan also includes the hiring of 230 additional FBI staff members to help to more efficiently and effectively perform background checks, and $500 million to improve mental health services.
There has been some confusion about his proposals. For example, a number of our readers asked us to fact-check Obama’s claim that “some gun sellers have been operating under a different set of rules. A violent felon can buy the exact same weapon over the Internet with no background check, no questions asked.”
Many of those readers correctly noted that federally licensed firearms dealers — no matter where they operate, including the Internet — are already required to perform background checks on the gun purchaser. And, besides, it’s illegal for a felon to purchase a gun, period.
But that doesn’t mean Obama’s statement is wrong. Obama did not say violent felons arepermitted to purchase guns over the Internet, only that some “can.” Obama was referring to those who buy guns from sellers who purport to be “private” sellers, not licensed dealers, and therefore are not required to perform background checks.
According to current law, those “engaged in the business” of firearms dealing are required to be federally licensed, and must then subject buyers to background checks. But the law exempts any person “who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms.”
In moving to crackdown on Internet sales, Obama is acting on the belief that too many sellers engaged in the business of selling firearms are purporting to be private sellers in order to avoid the need to be licensed (and in turn be required to obtain background checks).
That’s why, in an op-ed published by the New York Times on Jan. 8, Obama said the gun control steps he announced earlier in the week “include making sure that anybody engaged in the business of selling firearms conducts background checks.”
The key phrase in that statement is “making sure.”
Although Obama did not set a threshold number of sales to define who should be a licensed dealer, the White House noted that the “quantity and frequency of sales are relevant indicators.” The administration noted that “even a few transactions, when combined with other evidence, can be sufficient to establish that a person is ‘engaged in the business.’ For example, courts have upheld convictions for dealing without a license when as few as two firearms were sold or when only one or two transactions took place, when other factors also were present.” An Associated Press story said those other factors include business indicators such as “selling weapons in their original packaging and for a profit.”
Some have cautioned that Obama’s actions will have little real effect on gun violence. Carlisle Moody, an economics professor at William & Mary, told us Obama’s proposals “will almost certainly have no effect on violent crime” because licensed firearms dealers who do business over the Internet already do background checks. The guns are mailed to a local licensed dealer who performs the background check.
Existing law also requires that Internet sales between individuals in different states include background checks because guns cannot be legally mailed across state lines, per the Gun Control Act of 1968. In those cases, the gun is again mailed to a local licensed dealer.
The only possibility of avoiding background checks via the Internet is for the two individuals to meet in person, Moody said. “This is a tiny subset of all gun sales. The number of face-to-face gun sales between individuals in which the purchaser is a violent felon who then uses the firearm in the commission of a crime is even smaller.”
In addition, eight states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington state — and Washington, D.C. — require background checks for all gun sales, even face-to-face private sales. Two other states — Maryland and Pennsylvania — have similar requirements for the purchase of handguns only.
We should also note that it is illegal for a seller, private or licensed, to knowingly sell a firearm to someone who is prohibited from owning a gun, such as a convicted violent felon. But the seller would have to know. And as we said, in legitimate private sales, background checks are not required.
Bush: Obama’s Actions Would ‘Burden’ Private Sellers
Reacting to Obama’s announced gun actions, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush toldABC News that Obama’s plan would place an unnecessary burden on private sellers. But legitimate private sellers would not be required to do anything new.
“If someone is selling a gun out of their collection, a one-off gun, they’re not a dealer, which would require a license and already requires that, you’re taking that person’s right away,” Bush said. “It doesn’t make sense to add burdens on people where the problem isn’t — you’re not solving whatever problem he’s trying to solve.”
While Obama had the ATF clarify that a person engaged in the business of selling guns would need a license and to conduct background checks on buyers, regardless of where those sales take place, there is nothing in Obama’s actions that would affect the “one-off” gun seller that Bush describes.
In order to affect the private seller, Congress would have to pass a universal background check law. A bipartisan 2013 amendment offered by Sens. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, and Pat Toomey, a Republican, would have gotten closer to universal checks, though it would have allowed sales to family, friends and neighbors without the need for background checks. Itfailed in a 54-46 vote.
In his speech on Jan. 5, Obama acknowledged that he could not institute universal background checks through executive order. “I want to be clear,” Obama said. “Congress still needs to act.”
Unless or until Congress passes a universal background check law, the “one-off” sales described by Bush will still be exempt from the need for background checks.
Taking Guns Away?
On the day that Obama made his speech, Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio released an ad in which he says, “His [Obama’s] plan after the attack in San Bernardino? Take away our guns.”
Just when the notion that western economies are settling into a “new normal” of low growth gained mainstream acceptance, doubts about its continued relevance have begun to emerge.
In the early days of 2009, the “new normal” was on virtually no one’s radar. Of course, the global financial crisis that had erupted a few months earlier threw the world economy into turmoil, causing output to contract, unemployment to surge, and trade to collapse. Dysfunction was evident in even the most stable and sophisticated segments of financial markets.
Yet most people’s instinct was to characterise the shock as temporary and reversible – a V-shape disruption, featuring a sharp downturn and a rapid recovery. After all, the crisis had originated in the advanced economies, which are accustomed to managing business cycles, rather than in the emerging-market countries, where structural and secular forces dominate.
But some observers already saw signs that this shock would prove more consequential, with the advanced economies finding themselves locked into a frustrating and unusual long-term low-growth trajectory. In May 2009, my Pimco colleagues and I went public with this hypothesis, calling it the “new normal.” The concept received a rather frosty reception in academic and policy circles – an understandable response, given strong conditioning to think and act cyclically.
Few were ready to admit that the advanced economies had bet the farm on the wrong growth model, much less that they should look to the emerging economies for insight into structural impediments to growth, including debt overhangs and excessive inequalities.
But the economy was not bouncing back. On the contrary, not only did slow growth and high unemployment persist for years, but the inequality trifecta (income, wealth, and opportunity) worsened as well. The consequences extended beyond economics and finance, straining regional political arrangements, amplifying national political dysfunction, and fueling the rise of anti-establishment parties and movements.
Echo Voyager, Boeing’s latest unmanned undersea vehicle (UUV), can operate autonomously for months at a time thanks to a hybrid rechargeable propulsion power system.
A new unmanned robotic submersible designed by aerospace giant Boeing can operate autonomously underwater for months at a time, according to company representatives.
The 51-foot-long (15.5 meters), bullet-shaped Echo Voyager was unveiled earlier this month, and is Boeing's latest unmanned undersea vehicle. The Echo Voyager is designed to explore the deep sea, and the vehicle's new hybrid rechargeable power system allows it to operate for months underwater without needing to stop for fuel.
The massive robotic sub can also be launched and recovered without help from support ships, according to Boeing. [In Photos: The Wonders of the Deep Sea]
Echo Voyager can collect data while at sea, rise to the surface and provide information back to users in a near-real-time environment," Lance Towers, director of Boeing Phantom Works' Sea & Land division, said in a statement. "Existing [unmanned undersea vehicles] require a surface ship and crew for day-to-day operations. Echo Voyager eliminates that need and associated costs."
Boeing has designed and operated both manned and unmanned submersibles since the 1960s. The company's existing fleet of unmanned undersea vehicles includes the 32-foot-long (9.7 m) Echo Seeker and the 18-foot-long (5.5 m) Echo Ranger, both of which can operate underwater for a few days at a time.
With the ability to carry out months-long missions, the Echo Voyager could be used for a range of deep-sea operations, according to Boeing.
"Echo Voyager is a new approach to how unmanned undersea vehicles will operate and be used in the future," Darryl Davis, president of Boeing Phantom Works, said in a statement.
The Echo Voyager will undergo sea trials this summer off the California coast, Boeing said.
So what makes this battery different? Because it uses readily available saltwater, the material is abundant and easily sourced. It is cheap, and clean, and lasts longer than current batteries.
State-of-the-art batteries that are being designed today for energy storage, or for the grid, are lithium-ion batteries, but according to Whitacre, if lithium-ion batteries had to increase their cycle lifetime long enough to compete with his saltwater battery, they would cost significantly more.
Saltwater batteries also cannot explode or catch fire. “They are full of water,” he said. “And when they dry out, they are fire-retardant.”
What drove Whitacre to investigate saltwater to build a battery was his concerns about current battery tech. Lithium-ion batteries can be flammable, and many other batteries are unsafe, are more expensive or are environmentally dangerous, containing heavy metals or toxic chemicals, he said.
The saltwater battery beats lithium ion batteries in cycle life, a key limitation that has long made batteries more expensive than pumped hydro.
Pumped hydro is the cheapest storage to date – which, like solar and wind, essentially is permanent. There is no limit to the number of times you can pump water up a hill to a reservoir so it can be released to generate electricity when needed by turning a turbine on the downhill run. But unfortunately not every place has enough hills and water.
There have long been concerns raised in the renewable industry about the availability of some of the materials needed to build batteries – at the scale the world is going to need to support a wind and solar-powered energy future, where renewables power 100% of our energy needs.
Just as we needed to build the railroad to move coal from mountains to cities to burn it, and we needed to add pipelines to make use of oil and gas, in order to make the fullest use possible of solar and wind we are going to need energy storage .
Already recognized inventor
The inventor’s company, Aquion Energy has received more than $145 million in funding in equity, debt and grants – so the prize is not about the money.
Visionary VC funders Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers provided the earliest financing for the saltwater battery. The company’s other investors include Bill Gates, Nick and Joby Pritzker, Bright Capital, Gentry Venture Partners, Foundation Capital, and Advanced Technology Ventures,Trinity Capital Investment and CapX Partners.
So the $500,000 prize is more cachet than needed cash to build the battery. Past winners have been inventors who have had a major impact on the world. They include Dean Kamen who has invented hundreds of lifesaving medical technologies that are now part of modern day lives of diabetics and other patients – and Leroy Hood, who invented the DNA sequencer – and Ray Kurzweil who conceived of The Singularity.
The prize is a tribute to the need for clean energy storage technology as the world adds more solar and wind.
As more and more people go solar, we’ll eventually have too much on sunny afternoons, so we need to put aside some sunshine for a rainy day. We need to store spilled wind power as well – because wind gets wasted when it blows in the wee hours and nobody’s awake to use it up.
While a saltwater battery does not have the same energy density as a lithium-ion battery, it would not take up too much space relative to need. For example, you could easily store a typical home’s daytime solar to power night time use from a saltwater battery about the size of a dishwasher. So it would take up more space than a Tesla Powerwall, but not be impractical.
There are other technologies that could mop up all this spilled solar and wind, and be clean and simple like saltwater.
This study is originally published by The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. The study is an overall analysis of ISIS, also known as ISIL, Islamic State (or IS). The study is structured in nine sections,[1] which if read in conjunction with each other, draws a complete picture of ISIS. You can also download the study in PDF format here.
Historical background
ISIS took root in the new era created in Iraq after the Americans took control of the country in 2003. The Second Gulf War led to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime, the dismantling of the Iraqi army and the destruction of the existing governmental structure. As a result, a security and governmental vacuum was created and the country’s fragile social fabric (in the middle of which was the volatile Sunni-Shi’ite schism) was severely damaged.
During the almost nine years (2003 — 2011) the United States army was stationed in Iraq the Americans failed to establish effective Iraqi army and security forces to fill the newly-created security vacuum. While in Iraq, the Americans encouraged the establishment of what was supposed to be a democratic national Shi’ite regime headed by Nouri al-Maliki. However, the regime alienated the Sunni population, which had traditionally controlled the country, even though they were a minority (about 22% of the Iraqi population is Sunni Arabs — alongside the Kurds, who are also Sunnis — while about 60% of Iraqis are Shi’ites).
The branch of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, established in 2004, entered the security vacuum and took advantage of the increasing political-societal Sunni alienation: It became an important actor in the insurgent organizations fighting the American army, became stronger after the withdrawal of the American troops at the end of 2001, and spread to Syria after the civil war began in March 2011. The establishment of Al-Qaeda and ISIS in Iraq and Syria occurred in four stages:
Stage One (2004-2006) — The establishment of the branch of Al-Qaeda in Iraq led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and called “Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia:” It waged a terrorist-guerilla war against the American and coalition forces and against the Shi’ite population. The first stage ended when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in an American targeted attack in June 2006.
Stage Two (2006-2011) — Establishment of the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI): ISI served as an umbrella network for several jihadi organizations that continued waging a terrorist-guerilla campaign against the United States, its coalition allies and the Shi’ite population. ISI was weakened towards the end of the American presence in Iraq following successful American military moves and a wise foreign policy that supported the Sunni population and knew how to win their hearts and minds.
Stage Three (2012-June 2014) — The strengthening of ISI and the founding of ISIS: After the American army withdrew from Iraq ISI became stronger. Following the outbreak of the Syrian civil war ISI established a branch in Syria called the Al-Nusra Front (“support front”). Dissension broke out between ISI and its Syrian branch, leading to a rift between ISI and Al-Qaeda and the establishment of the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS).
Stage Four (as of June 2014) — Dramatic ISIS military achievements: The most prominent was the takeover of Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq. At the same time ISIS established its control in eastern Syria where it set up a governmental center (its “capital city”) in Al-Raqqah. In the wake of its success, ISIS declared the establishment of an “Islamic State” (IS) (or “Islamic Caliphate”) headed by an ISIS leader named Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. In September 2014 the United States declared a comprehensive campaign against ISIS, which is currently waging a fierce struggle against its many enemies both at home and abroad.
In ITIC assessment, historically speaking there are similarities between the results of the American invasion of Iraq, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. In all three instances the invading country failed to establish a new political order or to stabilize an effective, supportive regime. In effect all three invasions had a deleterious effect on the existing delicate politicalsocial fabric: in Afghanistan and Iraq they caused changes that contributed to the establishment of radical Sunni jihadi terrorist organizations and in Lebanon to a radical Shi’ite terrorist organization following Iranian ideology and receiving Iranian support. The terrorist organizations established in Iraq (the branch of Al-Qaeda), Afghanistan (Al-Qaeda) and Lebanon (Hezbollah) exist to this day. ISIS, which developed from a branch of Al-Qaeda, has become strong in Iraq and Syria and today threatens the order and stability of the Middle East and the entire world.
Establishment of Al-Qaeda’s branch in Iraq led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the beginning of the campaign against the United States and its allies
The establishment of Al-Qaeda and the global jihad in Iraq began when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian global jihad operative, went to Iraq in 2002 (before the entrance of the Americans). Al-Zarqawi (a nickname for Ahmad Fadil al-Nazal al-Khalayleh) was influenced by the Jordanian Salafist-jihadi movement headed by Abdullah Azzam, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and Abu Qatada (all three of whom are of Palestinian origin). While in Afghanistan in 1989 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi underwent ideological indoctrination and operational training conducted by Abdullah Azzam (Osama bin Laden’s ideological mentor). Al-Zarqawi returned to Jordan in 1993 where he was detained and imprisoned in 1994 and released in 1999, at which point he went back to Afghanistan.
After September 11, 2001, al-Zarqawi fled from Afghanistan and sought refuge in Iran. In 2002, before the American entrance into Iraq, he went to the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. While there he collaborated with a Kurdish jihadi Islamist organization called Ansar al-Islam, established in September 2001 (which is still operative and belongs to the coalition in Iraq collaborating with ISIS). Al-Zarqawi later established his own Islamic jihadi organization, Al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (“the oneness [of Allah] and jihad”). After the Americans invaded Iraq in March 2003 he joined the insurgents fighting the United States and became a prominent figure until he was killed in a targeted American attack.
In October 2004 al-Zarqawi’s organization joined Al-Qaeda. He swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden and was declared the leader (emir) of Al-Qaeda in Iraq). (In Arabic al-qaeda fi bilad al-rafidayn, Al-Qaeda in the country of the two rivers, i.e., Mesopotamia). It was the first branch Al-Qaeda established beyond the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan. With its founding, al-Zarqawi was no longer the leader of a local Islamic jihadi organization but rather had become the official representative of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and later one of the prominent terrorists among the global jihad networks. The jihad network al-Zarqawi established in Iraq, initially composed of operatives who had been affiliated with it in Pakistan and Afghanistan, later enlisted operatives from Iraq, Syria and other Arab countries.
As the emir of Al-Qaeda in Iraq al-Zarqawi formulated a strategy for the campaign against the United States. He had the following objectives: harm U.S. forces and its allies; discourage Iraqi collaboration by targeting government infrastructure and personnel; target reconstruction efforts in Iraq with attacks on Iraqi civilian contractors and aid workers; and draw the U.S. military into a sectarian Sunni-Shiite war by targeting Shiites.[6] The wave of terrorism he initiated against the Shi’ite population, the result of his strong anti-Shi’ite doctrine, was carried out by suicide bombers and the use of car bombs which caused many civilian casualties, sowed chaos throughout Iraq, made it difficult to stabilize the internal situation and added a murderous gene to the ISIS DNA.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s strategy, which stressed broad attacks on the Shi’ite population (and sometimes on Sunni civilians as well), was criticized by both Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri. They were concerned that the indiscriminate killing of innocent Muslim civilians would erode public support for Al-Qaeda throughout the entire region. In July 2005 they criticized his strategy and instructed him to stop attacking Shi’ite religious and cultural sites. He refused, and his relations with the Al-Qaeda leadership deteriorated.[7] The dispute held the seeds of the tensions and rivalry between the branch of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and the central Al-Qaeda leadership, as it was manifested through ISIS’s independent actions and policy, and ISIS and the Al-Qaeda leadership headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri.
The terrorist-guerilla campaign of the branch of Al-Qaeda in Iraq was mainly carried out in and around Baghdad and in western Iraq. The local Sunni population in those regions became hostile to the central Iraqi government and to the United States, and today forms ISIS’s societal and political power base. The most important city in the Sunni region was Fallujah. Fallujah is located in Al-Anbar, the largest province in the country, which became al-Zarqawi’s power base and symbolized the jihadi campaign against the American army. Al-Zarqawi’s main campaign was concentrated in Iraq, but he had made attempts to export jihadi terrorism to other Arab states, including Jordan, his country of origin (See below).
Ideologically, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi handed down to his heirs a radical Islamic, uncompromising legacy whose traces are evident in ISIS’s actions to this day. Noteworthy is its hostility toward Shi’ites in general and Iraqi Shi’ites in particular, whom he referred to in strong terms (“human scum,” “poisonous snakes,” “deadly poison”). He regarded the Shi’ites as a fifth column who, along with pro-American Sunnis, were trying to institute a new Shi’ite regime in Iraq, anti-Sunni and pro-American. That anti-Shi’ite legacy, based on Arabic Islamic sources from the Middle Ages, gave al-Zarqawi what he considered “Islamic legitimacy” to carry out mass-killing attacks on Shi’ites and the Shi’ite-affiliated central government. His objective was to instigate a Shi’ite-Sunni civil war that would destabilize public order, prevent the establishment of a Shi’ite regime and support Al-Qaeda’s takeover of Iraq. ISIS has continued its brutality towards the Shi’ite population in Iraq and Syria, implementing the legacy of al-Zarqawi who, after his death, became a revered figure and role model.[8]
