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10th March 2017 - 10:30 by The Shephard News Team

Thales has launched a new UAS traffic management (UTM) system called ECOsystem UTM, the company announced on 7 March.

The platform incorporates UAS management technology from Unifly, including its validation engine software application that conducts real-time validation of UAS flight plans. Combined with Thales' ECOsystem decision support platform, the solution aims to support the aviation industry as it evolves to safely track and integrate UAS into the manned aviation domain.

ECOsystem uses a suite of tools and predictive analytics that allows stakeholders to optimise their operations, as well as contribute to global optimisation through data sharing and collaborative applications. The system is configurable to the customers' operational requirements, from a global cloud-hosted service, to a local single-facility deployment.

ECOsystem UTM adds drone registration, pilot registration, flight planning, and regulatory/business rules with geospatial and meteorological information to enable adaptable workflows for managing UAS operations as well as customisable situational awareness using tools such as map overlays, terrain views and 3D projections. The UTM application and data enable automated flight authorisations as well as real-time alerting and intervention in emergency situations.

The application aims to support the rapidly growing demand for UAS operations in both visual line of sight and beyond visual line of sight while ensuring the public's safety, security and privacy.

Read more:

Thales launches ECOsystem UTM - Shephard Media

ALL OF A sudden, some Government parliamentarians and officials have woken up to a perceived need to de-bush several privately-owned plots of land.

I wish to issue a word of caution where this newly fashionable idea is concerned.

The ecology of Barbados, taken as a whole, has become accustomed to a situation in which several different areas have become overgrown with weed, small trees and bushes.

There seems to be a sustained and complete sudden assault on the homes of birds, butterflies, moths, lizards, slugs, snails, frogs and toads, and so on. I strongly suspect that this will be highly deleterious to the lives and existence of these harmless and very helpful creatures.

Any food crop farmer in Barbados can at present afford to take pollination and cross-pollination of his plants for granted. But if the safe havens of the pollinating agents are destroyed or even largely destroyed, a new situation, a very harsh reality, will unfold.

Please do not think I am against any helpful beautification in Barbados countryside at all. All that I am asking is not to make it too much or too soon.

Also please remember that pasture land for cattle, sheep and goats is already being sharply reduced.

MICHAEL MOSELEY

Continued here:

While de-bushing spare a thought for the ecosystem - Nation News

An adult polar bear hunting for seals on the melting pack ice in the Arctic. Photograph: Alamy

In a few days the Arctics beleaguered sea ice cover is likely to set another grim record. Its coverage is on course to be the lowest winter maximum extent ever observed since satellite records began. These show that more than 2 million square kilometres of midwinter sea ice have disappeared from the Arctic in less than 40 years.

The ices disappearance triggered by global warming caused by rising carbon emissions from cars and factories is likely to have profound implications for the planet. A loss of sea ice means a loss of reflectivity of solar rays and further rises in global temperatures, warn researchers.

But there are other pressing concerns, they add. Sea ice loss is now posing serious threats to the Arctics indigenous species its seals, fish, wolves, foxes and polar bears. The Arctic food chain relies on a stable sea ice platform and that is now disappearing, putting the regions wildlife at risk, said marine ecologist Tom Brown, of the Scottish Association for Marine Science (Sams), in Oban.

Sea ice provides a platform from which polar bears can hunt, and it links communities of land animals such as foxes and wolves. The sea ice cap has been retreating for decades, and as it does the animals who live on its edge have had to move north, said Andrew Shepherd, professor of Earth observation at Leeds University.

But that process takes them further and further away from land and there is likely to be a limit about the distance they can tolerate.

In fact, the erosion of sea ice strikes at the very root of the Arctic ecosystem, for it provides a surface on which algae the basic material on which the entire food chain in the region depends can grow. Algae lingers on the underside of sea ice and as spring begins there is a major increase in its growth, said Brown. It is then eaten by tiny creatures called zooplankton, and they in turn are eaten by fish that are in turn eaten by seals, which are in turn consumed by polar bears. But if algae levels drop the whole food chain is disrupted.

This point was backed by Professor Geraint Tarling, of the British Antarctic Survey. The most important of the consumers of algae is a species of zooplankton called Calanus glacialis. It is rich in fats like omega-3 and is consumed by Arctic cod and baleen whales, he said. Crucially, in recent years levels of Calanus glacialis have been found to be declining and are retreating in their range. In its place a temperate species called Calanus finmarchicus has appeared, but it contains much less fat and that is of poorer quality. As a foodstuff it is simply inferior.

The base of the Arctic food chain is being depleted, in other words. However, it is not the only threat to wildlife in the region. In 2015 the journal Science published a paper by Professor Eric Post, of Penn State University and colleagues that shows that populations of wolves and foxes are currently isolated only in summer. For most of the year these groups are connected by sea ice.

But as its sea ice coverage declines over the years, this is extending the length of time that packs are kept away from each other, which threatens to lead to diminished cross-breeding and genetic wellbeing.

Then there are the narwhals. These tusked whales sometimes called the unicorns of the sea are prized by Inuits who use their blubber and skin to make a traditional, chewy meal called muktuk. Narwhals can hide safely in sea ice and so avoid their natural predator, the killer whale. Robbed of that protection, narwhal numbers could dwindle dangerously, marine biologists warn.

To uncover greater details of these issues, the UK Natural Environment Research Council (Nerc) has launched a programme called PRIZE, productivity in the seasonal ice zone, which will use underwater robot craft to study how nutrient flow and other factors are changing as the Arctic sea ice retreats. It will probe variations that are occurring in zooplankton behaviour, the composition of the seabed and other factors that could influence wildlife disruption.

Other dangers facing the Arctic were highlighted by Professor Julienne Stroeve, of University College London. Consider the example of harp seals, she said. They often give birth on snow mounds on sea ice. But if that sea ice is thin or formed late it breaks and the seal pups are dumped into the ocean and they drown. In addition, Stroeve pointed to the problem of increasing numbers of warm spells during which rain falls instead of snow. That rain then freezes on the ground and forms a hard coating that prevents reindeer and caribou from finding food under the snow, she added.

Caribou face another danger posed by climate change. Normally they try to take advantage of a range of nutritious plants that bloom in the Arctic spring in order to help them recover from the fierce Arctic winter and to strengthen females before giving birth. But the plant species on which they rely are now blooming earlier and earlier as spring in the far north arrives sooner each year while the caribous internal clock remains unchanged and locked into the wrong biological cycle. As a result, the plants on which they rely are past their best when caribou arrive and so there is less nutrition available when they give birth. As a result, fewer calves are born.

It is a problem of synchronicity. The alignment of different lifecycles is being disrupted by sea ice loss and it is affecting animals on both land and in the ocean. It is a bit like having your breakfast time changed, said Finlo Cottier, senior lecturer in polar oceanography , who is also based at Sams. You are used to sleeping in to 8am, but one day breakfast is served at 6am but no one tells you. The result: you go hungry. That is what is beginning to happen all over the Arctic.

As the Arctic warms, rain more frequently falls instead snow and then freezes over the ground preventing caribou and reindeer from finding food.

Harp seals give birth on mounds of snow on sea ice. If this is weakened or thinned because it has formed late in the year, it can break apart, causing pups to drown.

Zooplankton form a critical part of the food chain. They live off algae that form on the underside of sea ice and in turn they are eaten by fish such as Arctic cod and also be baleen whales.

Polar bears use sea ice as platforms from which to hunt seals and other creatures. Male and female bears also meet on ice sheets to mate.

Slow swimming whales like the narwhal use sea ice to hide from predators like killer whales and could also be affected as shipping in the region increases as ice retreats.

Read this article:

How disappearing sea ice has put Arctic ecosystem under threat - The Guardian

Its one of the worlds most incredible, yet unsung, ecosystems. It makes up as much as 15% of the worlds land area, and can be found across the world from Puerto Rico to Ohio, from Madagascar to Australia. Its karst, a limestone landscape formed long ago when marine organisms such as corals secreted calcium carbonate that formed into blocks of sedimentary rock. That rock was eventually raised above sea level due to uplift or other tectonic forces. The result is one of the most striking and diverse ecosystems on Earth.

Limestone is soft and porous, so over the millennia water and weathering have carved the karstlands into wild towers resembling tyrannosaurus teeth. Caves, sinkholes, steep cliffs, and other dramatic formations are common. In some cases, the karst forms uniform cones called cockpits. The worlds largest caves and underground rivers are located in karstlands. The porous rock holds a lot of groundwater, streams, and ponds, sometimes underground.

Karsts are home togigantic cave crickets, centipedes, crabs, and even the worlds smallest mammal, the bumblebee bat.

The variety of surfaces and other microhabitats within the karst supports huge numbers of plant and animal species. Local variations in temperature, elevation, and moisture lead to incredible plant diversity; gullies support full-sized forests, while mosses, ferns, orchids, and other smaller plants cling to cliffsides and towers. Cut off by the forbidding terrain from surrounding non-karst areas, many of the plants are found only in the karstlands. In a Malaysian survey, 60% of plant species were found exclusively in the karst.

Karst animal communities are also unique. Caves are cut off from the surrounding area, allowing evolution to occur in isolation. There is particularly impressive invertebrate diversity; gigantic cave crickets, centipedes, and even a pale, long-limbed, small-eyed crab can be found in these caves. The worlds smallest mammal, the bumblebee bat, lives exclusively in karst caves, as do several species of snakes and lizards. Fish include a pale loach which uses large pectoral fins to scale subterranean ledges Spiderman-style. On the surface, great species diversity of butterflies, fishes in isolated ponds, and land snails thrive in the calcium-rich soil. These examples are from Southeast Asia, but karstlands worldwide host unique species ensembles.

But while the rugged landscape makes development difficult, karst is threatened by limestone and cement quarrying. Fortunately, in many areas the tourism and biodiversity value of the karstlands have been recognized. Many nations have karst national parks and guides lead tourists into caves, boosting local economies. Populations of bird and reptile species from surrounding areas take refuge in the karsts, so if properly protected, karstlands may one day support repopulation of restored areas.

By: REUBEN CLEMENTS, NAVJOT S. SODHI, MENNO SCHILTHUIZEN and PETER K.L. NG

BioScience, Vol. 56, No. 9 (September 2006), pp. 733-742

Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Institute of Biological Sciences

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The Incredible Unsung Karst Ecosystem - JSTOR Daily

February 28, 2017

Researchers in the Singapore-ETH Centre's Future Cities Laboratory developed a method to quantify ecosystem services of street trees. Using nearly 100,000 images from Google Street View, the study helps further understanding on how green spaces contribute to urban sustainability.

Do you remember the last time you escaped the hot summer sun to enjoy a cool reprieve in the shade beneath a broad-leafed tree? While sizzling summer days may seem far away right now in the northern hemisphere, tropical cities like Singapore deal with solar radiation on a daily basis.

Street trees - keeping it cool

Trees and plants offer some relief, especially in urban areas with higher ambient temperatures, by providing shade and increasing evaporative cooling. Urban green spaces such as parks, gardens, and urban river networks deliver ecosystem services to cities reducing flood risk, cooling urban micro-climates, and creating recreational spaces. While it is generally accepted that trees and plants benefit urban environments, until now researchers have had very little data to work with in order to quantify the extent that street trees regulate urban ecosystems. Most of the research has been conducted in the temperate zones of Europe and North America, but little is known about how trees contribute to urban ecosystems in tropical regions. With urban populations exploding in megacities like Tokyo, Shanghai, and Delhi to well over 20 million people - it is important to understand how green spaces contribute to urban sustainability.

Google Street View as an environmental dataset

Researchers in the Future Cities Laboratory at the Singapore-ETH Centre, a research outpost of ETH Zurich, developed a method to map and quantify how street trees regulate ecosystem services. Using nearly 100,000 images extracted from Google Street View, they analysed hemispherical photographs using an algorithm to quantify the proportion of green canopy coverage at 50 metre intervals across more than 80% of Singapore's road network. Google Street View's technology allowed researchers to tap into a standard dataset of panoramic photographs and streetscapes that use a global positioning system (GPS) to map images to specific locations. The high spatial resolution of the images allowed researchers to estimate the amount of solar radiation that reaches the earth's surface. "In addition to cooling urban microclimates, these trees, which are integrated within dense urban street networks, also provide other benefits, such as reducing the risk of flash flooding and cleaning the air," says Peter Edwards, Principal Investigator at the Future Cities Laboratory and Director of the Singapore-ETH Centre. Researchers on the project concluded that increasing the cover of the street tree canopy could reduce ground surface and air temperatures on Singapore's streets. In addition, the relative quantity of the canopy may also serve as an indicator of evaporative cooling from leaves and rainfall interception.

Thermal comfort in green cities

"The study shows that trees are extremely important in providing shade in Singapore, and this shade could improve thermal comfort for people. Providing trees to help cool the environment is particularly important in tropical cities like Singapore, which suffers heavily from the urban heat island effect," says Dan Richards, a postdoctoral researcher at the Future Cities Laboratory and the project's coordinator. This new and relatively inexpensive method of rapidly estimating the amount of shade provided by street trees could help urban planners to identify areas of a city with low shade and prioritise the planting of new trees. Since Google Street View covers many of the world's cities, the method could be readily applied to quantify the proportion of canopy coverage and solar radiation in other tropical cities. If Google Street View images were collected during the growing season, the method may also be adapted to assess cities in temperate zones that experience a seasonal loss of tree leaves - enabling the possibility of creating strategically greener and more sustainable urban environments.

Explore further: Where are the trees? Not Paris, new 'Green View Index' finds

More information: Daniel R. Richards et al, Quantifying street tree regulating ecosystem services using Google Street View, Ecological Indicators (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolind.2017.01.028

Where are the trees? More important, where aren't the trees? A lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is helping some of the world's cities answer both questions in an attempt to make them more pleasant places to ...

The recent spate of heatwaves through eastern Australia has reminded us we're in an Australian summer. On top of another record hot year globally, and as heatwaves become more frequent and intense, our cities are making ...

Streets lined with gold? Not exactly, but a new report from the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station estimates trees lining Californian streets and boulevards provide benefits to municipalities and residents ...

Cities should feature compact development alongside large, contiguous green spaces to maximize benefits of urban ecosystems to humans, research led by the University of Exeter has concluded.

Arnhem has planted the world's first ever stadsklimaatboom ('urban climate tree') in the Sonsbeekkwartier. This district is experiencing serious heat problems, which are known as the 'urban heat island effect'. The tree will ...

Australian councils are being urged to take up new guidelines in green urban planning to create cooler cites with greener landscapes to reduce the risk of heat stress.

New research findings show that as the world warmed millions of years ago, conditions in the tropics may have made it so hot some organisms couldn't survive.

Though tailpipe emissions could fall in the years ahead as more zero-emission vehicles hit the streets, one major source of highway air pollution shows no signs of abating: brake and tire dust.

In September 2015, the German Volkswagen Group, the world's largest car producer, admitted to having installed "defeat devices" in 11 million diesel cars sold worldwide between 2008 and 2015. The devices were designed to ...

Scientists at EPFL and SLF describe with precision how snow and sand surfaces erode when exposed to wind. Their description can contribute to better predictions of dust emissions from deserts and snow transport in Antarctica, ...

What matters more for the evolution of plants and animals, precipitation or temperature? Scientists have found a surprising answer: rain and snow may play a more important role than how hot or cold it is.

Carbon emissions to the atmosphere from streams and rivers are expected to increase as warmer water temperatures stimulate faster rates of organic matter breakdown.

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Using Google to map our ecosystem - Phys.org - Phys.Org

The TeCake

Researchers use Google street view images for assessing ecosystem processes The TeCake With the technologies developed by Google gaining leverage with each passing day, the Google Street view is all set to make a mark on the environment sciences. A team of researchers from the Future Cities Laboratory, Singapore-ETH center have ... and more »

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Researchers use Google street view images for assessing ecosystem processes - The TeCake

President Juan Manuel Santos encouraged fellow Colombians to embrace nature as he introduced the Forest WardensHeart of the World programlast week in northern Colombia, reported El Heraldo.

The indigenousArhuaco people of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta were entitled with500 hectares of land, in an initiative thatseeks to preserve and recuperate the local ecosystem through actions that prevent human destruction of forests.

The initiative also aims to prevent the expansion of illicit cultivation and promote the Arhuaco territory as the first area of sustainable peace, whileeradicating malnutrition among Arhuaco children, according to Diaro del Sur.

The peace which we must now build is that of peacewith nature. We must embrace nature and reconcile with it, said Santos.

This was the first time thatPresident Santoshad metwith people from the Sierra Nevada region since signing the peace deal with the FARC.

Many areas of the region had been affected by the decades long internal conflict.

Santos acknowledgedthat the Sierra Nevada ecosystem is one of the most important in the world, while addingthat the program will have the entire support of the international community through its environmental contribution.

The implementation of the peace deal between Colombias government and the FARC rebels which includes the redistribution of land and the replacement of illicit crops will have a knock on effect on the countrys environment.

Rates of deforestation for example have surged since the peace deal was signed with the FARC in November, as loggers have rapily taken advantage of the FARCsabsence.

The leftist guerrillasprovided protection against deforestation and poaching through a quota system that ensured regular forest policing.

The government will have to respond accordingly to both the physical and political landscape as the agreement is implemented in the coming years.

Colombia is one of the most environmentally richcountries in the world, hosting close to 10% of the planets biodiversity, according to the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Santos introduces new ecosystem initiative, urges peace with nature was last modified: March 3rd, 2017 by Richard Kelleher

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Santos introduces new ecosystem initiative, urges 'peace with nature' - Colombia Reports

Credit: fotosipsak/iStock

The ad ecosystem has always been built on a sense of "cautious trust." This created a system where platforms largely operated in silos and the information shared with advertisers -- whether it be campaign, inventory or audience data -- was guarded. However, that system began to fall apart last year.

Here's why.

Ad fraud and viewability. Last year, a wave of endemic bot fraud cheated advertisers of more than $7 billion dollars. Similarly, viewability -- the degree in which an end-user actually sees an ad -- is a growing concern. Google has said that nearly 60% of its ads are not seen. And viewability can vary wildly among individual media sellers.

Measurement miscalculations. Facebook's recent struggles with measurement have only fueled longstanding concerns. It was, in the words of Unilever's chief marketing officer, as if Facebook was being left to "mark their own homework." As a major player in the media-buying supply chain, a miscalculation on Facebook's part has an industry-wide impact on advertiser perceptions, who risk losing faith in campaign value.

Desire for data. According to eMarketer, although data-driven marketing is "virtually universal," more advertisers are relying on third-party data, and they want greater insight into cross-channel/device measurement to understand campaign success. Data access and openness are fundamental in today's landscape. This is why brands are investing more in data collection and analytics. They are eager to have access to more pipes and sources. This desire for greater transparency is partly why Snapchat, which offers very limited data insight, gives some advertisers pause.

Advertisers want and deserve deeper insight into how agency and technology partners are acting on their behalf; they want to know how their money is being spent. Proctor & Gamble, the world's biggest advertiser, recently announced that it will review all media agency contracts this year. P&G's goal: to extract broader transparency and data from what the company has called "murky" agency and publisher relationships. And other advertisers are following P&G's lead.

So, what can the ecosystem do to course-correct? Technology platforms, given our position as both ad-buying and ad-selling facilitators, are particularly well positioned to deliver on increased calls for transparency and accountability. But that requires shifting away from the traditional "walled garden" model of digital advertising and embracing a more open and flexible approach. Here's how.

Build open technology. Open technology will unlock greater transparency in the advertising ecosystem. According to Gartner, there are more than 2,000 "significant" platforms in the ad tech landscape. Even with consolidation, successful technology services on both the buy and sell-side need to be vendor and media-agnostic. They must be designed to be open and flexible -- capable of integrating with hundreds of popular third-party services and sources that fit into the larger advertising supply chain. The desire to be a "walled garden" will, of course, continue to exist. But the problem for advertisers is that walled gardens allow their partners to "grade their own homework," often obfuscating ROI and data.

Embrace third-party verification. Third-party verification is quickly becoming standard protocol in digital advertising, and technology platforms need to proactively embrace this shift as the cost of doing business. A survey by the Association of Advertisers, for instance, revealed that 97% of advertisers want independent measurement of their media buys from third-party companies like Moat, DoubleVerify and ComScore. Advertisers are now choosing who they work with, based on whether or not they will allow independent verification. This matters not just for viewability and ad fraud, but also for general attribution and campaign success. For years, Facebook has slow-walked these demands. But that changed in 2016, with Facebook's well-publicized ad measurement woes and its recent announcement that it will be audited by the Media Rating Council to verify ad measurement accuracy.

Be transparent (Duh). Programmatic ad tech has quickly become the backbone of internet advertising. Per eMarketer, programmatic ad spend in the U.S. alone has grown more than 72% over the last three-year period. For advertisers, automated buys versus direct sales has allowed for smarter, more efficient data-driven transactions. However, even with its considerable benefits, many advertisers continue to cite transparency challenges across programmatic environments. With programmatic technology so deeply embedded in the ad supply chain, vendors offering solutions need to ensure "well-lit" auctions for their customers. This means delivering greater transparency across the programmatic lifecycle -- being upfront about demand sources, fees, CPMs, bids and attribution. As programmatic technology becomes table stakes, vendors can dramatically influence and raise the degree of transparency and accountability across the overall ecosystem.

The industry's cautious trust has always been fragile, but the crisis of confidence will only generate a new era of transparent and accountable digital advertising, with vendors leading the charge. While the "black box" era is dying, the future is bright.

Originally posted here:

Accountability and Trust in the Ad Ecosystem: How Platforms Can Help - AdAge.com

The 2016 Presidential election shook the foundations of American politics. Media reports immediately looked for external disruption to explain the unanticipated victorywith theories ranging from Russian hacking to fake news.

We have a less exotic, but perhaps more disconcerting explanation: Our own study of over 1.25 million stories published online between April 1, 2015 and Election Day shows that a right-wing media network anchored around Breitbart developed as a distinct and insulated media system, using social media as a backbone to transmit a hyper-partisan perspective to the world. This pro-Trump media sphere appears to have not only successfully set the agenda for the conservative media sphere, but also strongly influenced the broader media agenda, in particular coverage of Hillary Clinton.

While concerns about political and media polarization online are longstanding, our study suggests that polarization was asymmetric. Pro-Clinton audiences were highly attentive to traditional media outlets, which continued to be the most prominent outlets across the public sphere, alongside more left-oriented online sites. But pro-Trump audiences paid the majority of their attention to polarized outlets that have developed recently, many of them only since the 2008 election season.

Attacks on the integrity and professionalism of opposing media were also a central theme of right-wing media. Rather than fake news in the sense of wholly fabricated falsities, many of the most-shared stories can more accurately be understood as disinformation: the purposeful construction of true or partly true bits of information into a message that is, at its core, misleading. Over the course of the election, this turned the right-wing media system into an internally coherent, relatively insulated knowledge community, reinforcing the shared worldview of readers and shielding them from journalism that challenged it. The prevalence of such material has created an environment in which the President can tell supporters about events in Sweden that never happened, or a presidential advisor can reference a non-existent Bowling Green massacre.

RELATED:Breitbart editor slams mainstream media in Pulitzer Hall

We began to study this ecosystem by looking at the landscape of what sites people share. If a person shares a link from Breitbart, is he or she more likely also to share a link from Fox News or from The New York Times? We analyzed hyperlinking patterns, social media sharing patterns on Facebook and Twitter, and topic and language patterns in the content of the 1.25 million stories, published by 25,000 sources over the course of the election, using Media Cloud, an open-source platform for studying media ecosystems developed by Harvards Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society and MITs Center for Civic Media.

When we map media sources this way, we see that Breitbart became the center of a distinct right-wing media ecosystem, surrounded by Fox News, the Daily Caller, the Gateway Pundit, the Washington Examiner, Infowars, Conservative Treehouse, and Truthfeed.

Fig. 1: Media sources shared on Twitter during the election (nodes sized in proportion to Twitter shares).

Fig. 2: Media sources shared on Twitter during the election (nodes sized in proportion to Facebook shares).

The most frequently shared media sources for Twitter users that retweeted either Trump or Clinton.

Notes: In the above clouds, the nodes are sized according to how often they were shared on Twitter (Fig. 1) or Facebook (Fig. 2). The location of nodes is determined by whether two sites were shared by the same Twitter user on the same day, representing the extent to which two sites draw similar audiences. The colors assigned to a site in the map reflect the share of that sites stories tweeted by users who also retweeted either Clinton or Trump during the election. These colors therefore reflect the attention patterns of audiences, not analysis of content of the sites. Dark blue sites draw attention in ratios of at least 4:1 from Clinton followers; red sites 4:1 Trump followers. Green sites are retweeted more or less equally by followers of each candidate. Light-blue sites draw 3:2 Clinton followers, and pink draw 3:2 Trump followers.

Our analysis challenges a simple narrative that the internet as a technology is what fragments public discourse and polarizes opinions, by allowing us to inhabit filter bubbles or just read the daily me. If technology were the most important driver towards a post-truth world, we would expect to see symmetric patterns on the left and the right. Instead, different internal political dynamics in the right and the left led to different patterns in the reception and use of the technology by each wing. While Facebook and Twitter certainly enabled right-wing media to circumvent the gatekeeping power of traditional media, the pattern was not symmetric.

The size of the nodes marking traditional professional media like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN, surrounded by the Hill, ABC, and NBC, tell us that these media drew particularly large audiences. Their color tells us that Clinton followers attended to them more than Trump followers, and their proximity on the map to more quintessentially partisan siteslike Huffington Post, MSNBC, or the Daily Beastsuggests that attention to these more partisan outlets on the left was more tightly interwoven with attention to traditional media. The Breitbart-centered wing, by contrast, is farther from the mainstream set and lacks bridging nodes that draw attention and connect it to that mainstream.

RELATED:10 tools to tackle common problems journalists face

Moreover, the fact that these asymmetric patterns of attention were similar on both Twitter and Facebook suggests that human choices and political campaigning, not one companys algorithm, were responsible for the patterns we observe. These patterns might be the result of a coordinated campaign, but they could also be an emergent property of decentralized behavior, or some combination of both. Our data to this point cannot distinguish between these alternatives.

Another way of seeing this asymmetry is to graph how much attention is given to sites that draw attention mostly from one side of the partisan divide. There are very few center-right sites: sites that draw many Trump followers, but also a substantial number of Clinton followers. Between the moderately conservative Wall Street Journal, which draws Clinton and Trump supporters in equal shares, and the starkly partisan sites that draw Trump supporters by ratios of 4:1 or more, there are only a handful of sites. Once a threshold of partisan-only attention is reached, the number of sites in the clearly partisan right increases, and indeed exceeds the number of sites in the clearly partisan left. By contrast, starting at The Wall Street Journal and moving left, attention is spread more evenly across a range of sites whose audience reflects a gradually increasing proportion of Clinton followers as opposed to Trump followers. Unlike on the right, on the left there is no dramatic increase in either the number of sites or levels of attention they receive as we move to more clearly partisan sites.

Sites by partisan attention and Twitter shares.

Sites by partisan attention and Facebook shares.

The primary explanation of such asymmetric polarization is more likely politics and culture than technology.

A remarkable feature of the right-wing media ecosystem is how new it is. Out of all the outlets favored by Trump followers, only the New York Post existed when Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980. By the election of Bill Clinton in 1992, only the Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh, and arguably Sean Hannity had joined the fray. Alex Jones of Infowars started his first outlet on the radio in 1996. Fox News was not founded until 1996. Breitbart was founded in 2007, and most of the other major nodes in the right-wing media system were created even later. Outside the right-wing, the map reflects a mixture of high attention to traditional journalistic outlets and dispersed attention to new, online-only, and partisan media.

The pattern of hyper-partisan attack was set during the primary campaign, targeting not only opposing candidates but also media that did not support Trumps candidacy. In our data, looking at the most widely-shared stories during the primary season and at the monthly maps of media during those months, we see that Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Fox News were the targets of attack.

The first and seventh most highly-tweeted stories from Infowars.com, one of the 10 most influential sites in the right-wing media system.

The February map, for example, shows Fox News as a smaller node quite distant from the Breitbart-centered right. It reflects the fact that Fox News received less attention than it did earlier or later in the campaign, and less attention, in particular, from users who also paid attention to the core Breitbart-centered sites and whose attention would have drawn Fox closer to Breitbart. The March map is similar, and only over April and May will Foxs overall attention and attention from Breitbart followers revive.

This sidelining of Fox News in early 2016 coincided with sustained attacks against it by Breitbart. The top-20 stories in the right-wing media ecology during January included, for example, Trump Campaign Manager Reveals Fox News Debate Chief Has Daughter Working for Rubio. More generally, the five most-widely shared stories in which Breitbart refers to Fox are stories aimed to delegitimize Fox as the central arbiter of conservative news, tying it to immigration, terrorism and Muslims, and corruption:

The repeated theme of conspiracy, corruption, and media betrayal is palpable in these highly shared Breitbart headlines linking Fox News, Rubio, and illegal immigration.

As the primaries ended, our maps show that attention to Fox revived and was more closely integrated with Breitbart and the remainder of the right-wing media sphere. The primary target of the right-wing media then became all other traditional media. While the prominence of different media sources in the right-wing sphere vary when viewed by shares on Facebook and Twitter, the content and core structure, with Breitbart at the center, is stable across platforms. Infowars, and similarly radical sites Truthfeed and Ending the Fed, gain in prominence in the Facebook map.

October 2016 by Twitter shares

October 2016 by Facebook shares

These two maps reveal the same pattern. Even in the highly-charged pre-election month, everyone outside the Breitbart-centered universe forms a tightly interconnected attention network, with major traditional mass media and professional sources at the core. The right, by contrast, forms its own insular sphere.

The right-wing media was also able to bring the focus on immigration, Clinton emails, and scandals more generally to the broader media environment. A sentence-level analysis of stories throughout the media environment suggests that Donald Trumps substantive agendaheavily focused on immigration and direct attacks on Hillary Clintoncame to dominate public discussions.

Number of sentences in mainstream media that address Trump and Clinton issues and scandals.

Coverage of Clinton overwhelmingly focused on emails, followed by the Clinton Foundation and Benghazi. Coverage of Trump included some scandal, but the most prevalent topic of Trump-focused stories was his main substantive agenda itemimmigrationand his arguments about jobs and trade also received more attention than his scandals.

Proportion of election coverage that discusses immigration for selected media sources.

While mainstream media coverage was often critical, it nonetheless revolved around the agenda that the right-wing media sphere set: immigration. Right-wing media, in turn, framed immigration in terms of terror, crime, and Islam, as a review of Breitbart and other right-wing media stories about immigration most widely shared on social media exhibits. Immigration is the key topic around which Trump and Breitbart found common cause; just as Trump made this a focal point for his campaign, Breitbart devoted disproportionate attention to the topic.

Top immigration related stories from right wing media shared on Twitter or Facebook.

What we find in our data is a network of mutually-reinforcing hyper-partisan sites that revive what Richard Hofstadter called the paranoid style in American politics, combining decontextualized truths, repeated falsehoods, and leaps of logic to create a fundamentally misleading view of the world. Fake news, which implies made of whole cloth by politically disinterested parties out to make a buck of Facebook advertising dollars, rather than propaganda and disinformation, is not an adequate term. By repetition, variation, and circulation through many associated sites, the network of sites make their claims familiar to readers, and this fluency with the core narrative gives credence to the incredible.

Take a look at Ending the Fed, which, according to Buzzfeeds examination of fake news in November 2016, accounted for five of the top 10 of the top fake stories in the election. In our data, Ending the Fed is indeed prominent by Facebook measures, but not by Twitter shares. In the month before the election, for example, it was one of the three most-shared right-wing sites on Facebook, alongside Breitbart and Truthfeed. While Ending the Fed clearly had great success marketing stories on Facebook, our analysis shows nothing distinctive about the siteit is simply part-and-parcel of the Breitbart-centered sphere.

And the false claims perpetuated in Ending the Feds most-shared posts are well established tropes in right wing media: the leaked Podesta emails, alleged Saudi funding of Clintons campaign, and a lack of credibility in media. The most Facebook-shared story by Ending the Fed in October was ITS OVER: Hillarys ISIS Email Just Leaked & Its Worse Than Anyone Could Have Imagined. See also, Infowars Saudi Arabia has funded 20% of Hillarys Presidential Campaign, Saudi Crown Prince Claims, and Breitbarts Clinton Cash: Khizr Khans Deep Legal, Financial Connections to Saudi Arabia, Hillarys Clinton Foundation Tie Terror, Immigration, Email Scandals Together. This mix of claims and facts, linked through paranoid logic characterizes much of the most shared content linked to Breitbart. It is a mistake to dismiss these stories as fake news; their power stems from a potent mix of verifiable facts (the leaked Podesta emails), familiar repeated falsehoods, paranoid logic, and consistent political orientation within a mutually-reinforcing network of like-minded sites.

Use of disinformation by partisan media sources is neither new nor limited to the right wing, but the insulation of the partisan right-wing media from traditional journalistic media sources, and the vehemence of its attacks on journalism in common cause with a similarly outspoken president, is new and distinctive.

Rebuilding a basis on which Americans can form a shared belief about what is going on is a precondition of democracy, and the most important task confronting the press going forward. Our data strongly suggest that most Americans, including those who access news through social networks, continue to pay attention to traditional media, following professional journalistic practices, and cross-reference what they read on partisan sites with what they read on mass media sites.

To accomplish this, traditional media needs to reorient, not by developing better viral content and clickbait to compete in the social media environment, but by recognizing that it is operating in a propaganda and disinformation-rich environment. This, not Macedonian teenagers or Facebook, is the real challenge of the coming years. Rising to this challenge could usher in a new golden age for the Fourth Estate.

The election study was funded by the Open Society Foundations U.S. Program. Media Cloud has received funding from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Open Societies Foundations.

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Study: Breitbart-led right-wing media ecosystem altered broader media agenda - Columbia Journalism Review

Germany's Daimler AG has become the lead investor in American charging solutions provider ChargePoint as part of a plan to expand its development of electric vehicles.

With the investment, Daimler AG receive a seat on the companys board of directors. Daimler is investing in electric mobility as part of its corporate strategy known as CASE, which stands for Connected, Autonomous, Shared and Service, and Electric Drive.

Daimler says this "ecosystem expansion" will serve as a platform for further electric mobility products and services for commercial vehicles as well as private customers and passenger cars.

While pursuing the systematic expansion of our CASE ecosystem based on our new product brand EQ, we also remain open and ready for partnerships and cooperation at the highest level, said Axel Harries, head of CASE at Daimler AG. Together we will be able to significantly expand the product portfolio in the area of intelligent charging solutions and provide the customer with an all-embracing premium offer for electric mobility.

With the investment, ChargePoint plans to expand business into the European Market. The company currently offers 33,000 charging spots at more than 7,000 sites inNorth America.

The significant investment by our lead investor Daimler and others not only underscores a collective commitment to e-mobility around the world, but will lay the groundwork for Europe's most comprehensive charging network ever, said Pasquale Romano, CEO of ChargePoint.

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Daimler Preps for Electric Ecosystem with ChargePoint Investment - Heavy Duty Trucking

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Docker rolled out a batch of container services this week aimed squarely at enterprise developers and IT operators looking to leverage containers to push applications into production and scale them across hybrid cloud infrastructure.

Along with a new services platform that includes a container runtime and multi-tenant orchestration along with security and management tools, Docker also announced a certification program described as a framework for its growing list of software partners to integrate their tools with existing enterprise infrastructure.

Addressing many of the early teething problems associated with deploying containers in production, Docker stressed that its "enterprise edition" provides a modular platform for installing, configuring and upgrading Docker on certified infrastructure, including operating systems and cloud services.

The platform seeks to remove "the layers of complexity [while] giving users a more native and tightly integrated experience," Solomon Hykes, Docker's co-founder and CTO noted in a statement. The container leader also is targeting the growing number of hybrid cloud deployments by emphasizing the entire software supply chain and the "seamless workflow" between application developers and IT operators.

The certification program for validating technologies running on the Docker platform also includes a Docker store that provides access to certified infrastructure along with trusted containers, network and storage plugins and other tools.

Docker announced Thursday (March 2) that its enterprise edition comes in basic, standard and advanced subscription tiers. The high-end version includes features such as image security scanning and continuous container vulnerability monitoring. Subscription pricing ranges from $750 for "business day support" to $3,500 for "business critical support."

The company also announced support for the new container service from a growing partner network that includes Alibaba Cloud, Canonical, Cloudera, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE), IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). The platform also is available on the Amazon Web Services (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Microsoft Azure cloud marketplaces.

The enterprise edition supports infrastructure ranging from Windows Server 2016 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The certified container component allows partner vendors to distribute their software in Docker containers that have been scanned for vulnerabilities before being posted to the Docker store.

The goal of the latest Docker initiative is an attempt at forging a single platform aimed at enterprise developers and IT managers working with either Linux or Windows. Further, the hybrid cloud initiative looks to address "homegrown" as well as commercial software along with emerging micro-services used to deliver distributed applications.

Hence, Docker is positioning the new container service as a "modern software supply chain framework" billed as making life easier for embattled developers and infrastructure managers. The company also is betting that the availability of a range of available operating systems and cloud infrastructure will appeal to developers.

"This gives developers, DevOps teams and enterprises the freedom to run Docker and Docker apps on their favorite infrastructure without risk of lock-in," Docker product manager Michael Friis noted in a blog post.

About the author: George Leopold

George Leopold has written about science and technology for more than 25 years, focusing on electronics and aerospace technology. He previously served as Executive Editor for Electronic Engineering Times.

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Docker Platform Fills Gaps in Container Ecosystem - EnterpriseTech

NORTH CAROLINA, USA (CMC) Researchers at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill have called for the protection of Caribbean coral reefs , known as supersites, in order to restore the environmental and economic setback that has been inflicted by overfishing.

The report, published in the March 1 issue of the journal Science Advances, noted that up to 90 per cent of predatory fish are gone from Caribbean coral reefs, straining the ocean ecosystem and coastal economy.

The research, led by former UNC-Chapel Hill graduate student Abel Valdivia, working with John Bruno, a marine biologist at UNC College of Arts & Sciences, suggests that these supersites reefs with many nooks and crannies on its surface that act as hiding places for prey (and attract predators) should be prioritised for protection and could serve as regional models showcasing the value of biodiversity for tourism and other uses.

Other features that make a supersite are amount of available food, size of reef and proximity to mangroves.

On land, a supersite would be a national park like Yellowstone, which naturally supports an abundance of varied wildlife and has been protected by the federal government, said Bruno.

The team surveyed 39 reefs across The Bahamas, Cuba, Florida, Mexico and Belize, both inside and outside marine reserves, to determine how much fish had been lost by comparing fish biomass on pristine sites to fish biomass on a typical reef. They estimated the biomass in each location and found that 90 per cent of predatory fish were gone due to overfishing.

But the scientists found a ray of hope in that a small number of reef location, if protected, could substantially contribute to the recovery of predatory fish populations and help restore depleted species.

Some features have a surprisingly large effect on how many predators a reef can support, said Courtney Ellen Cox, a co-author and former UNC-Chapel Hill doctoral student now at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC.

The report states that not long ago, large fishes were plentiful on coral reefs but are now largely absent due to targeted fishing.

Today predators are larger and more abundant within the marine reserves than on unprotected, overfished reefs. But even some of the marine reserves have seen striking declines, largely due to lack of enforcement of fishing regulations.

The bottom line is protection of predatory fish is a win-win from both an environmental and an economical perspective, said Bruno.

A live shark is worth over a million dollars in tourism revenue over its lifespan because sharks live for decades and thousands of people will travel and dive just to see them up close, said Valdivia, now at the Center for Biological Diversity in Oakland, California. There is a massive economic incentive to restore and protect sharks and other top predators on coral reefs.

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Researchers call for protection of Caribbean 'supersites' to restore ocean ecosystem - Jamaica Observer

Last month, a group of prominent Republicans called for a nationwide price on carbon to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and slow climate change. This week, two key subcommittees of the US House of Representatives namely, Environment and Oversight held a hearing to address the issue.

Members of Congress met to discuss the costs of climate change, read the Washington Posts headline of their coverage. They ended up debating its existence.

Story Continues Below

As the hearing was getting underway, Rachel Cleetus of the Union of Concerned Scientistsposted this backgrounderon the social cost of carbon:

The social cost of carbon is metric that helps quantify the costs of climate change related to our carbon emissions, in terms of dollars per ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted. It can also be used to quantify the benefits of reducing carbon emissions. The current value of the social cost of carbon is roughly $36/ton of CO2.

Our global warming emissions are already contributing to climate impacts such as flooding from sea level rise and increased heavy precipitation; longer, more intense wildfire seasons; heat waves; and droughts. The risks of these types of impacts will grow as emissions rise.

In 2016 alone there were 15 extreme weather and climate-related disasters that cost more than a billion dollars apiece (see map). Climate change is contributing to worsening risks of many of these types of events. If you go to this EPA site, you can click on the map to see the impacts of climate change where you live in the nation. (Assuming that webpage is allowed to stay on line of course)

In previous blogposts Ive explained why the social cost of carbon is so important and how we have arrived at the current US government value for the social cost of carbon through an extensive and ongoing interagency process including a public comment period. (Note that the SCC information also used to be available on the Obama administration Office of Management and Budget website).

The social cost of carbon is used in cost-benefit analyses that agencies routinely undertake as part of the regulation-setting process. Cost-benefit analyses, which have been a feature of rulemakings since the Reagan era, are meant to quantify the impacts of a regulation. For regulations that help cut carbon emissions, the benefits of carbon reductions are quantified by applying the dollar per ton estimate of climate damages avoided based on the SCC.

Michael Greenstone, formerly at the Council of Economic Advisors and one of the witnesses at todays hearing, co-authored a recent op-ed in the New York Times together with Cass Sunstein (former Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Administrator at OMB), explaining why the SCC is a necessary and legal component of federal cost-benefit analyses.

As they point out, attempts to do away with the SCC would defy law, science and economics.

One red herring that may come up in todays hearing is the claim that the SCC should not include global damages from our carbon emissions. This type of reasoning fundamentally misstates the challenge of climate change, which is a result of global carbon emissions. No single nation can solve this problem alone. And no nation is immune to the effects of our collective emissions.

Just one manifestation of this is the growing challenge of climate refugees, people around the world displaced by climate factors such as drought and sea level rise.

Solving climate change will require us working together in cooperation with all the nations of the world. Each nation must recognize that their emissions have impacts on everyone and make choices that further our collective good. If, instead, we all retreat to our own corners and act solely out of narrow self-interest, we will fail together to constrain emissions to the levels necessary to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. (This type of problem has been called The Tragedy of the Commons.)

The US also benefits from global reductions in carbon emissions. News that Chinas emissions may have stabilized or fallen for the fourth year in a row is good news for us all. (Even as we know that more action to cut emissions is required by all major emitters). In other words, solving climate change is like the ultimate team sport. With very high stakes if we fail to win.

Theres no doubt that the social cost of carbon must be updated on a regular basis to take account of the latest science and economics. Just as an example, we are seeing unprecedented changes in the Arctic and the Antarctic that could portend significant impacts on weather patterns and sea level rise. A recent article also pointed out the need for better climate and economic modeling to include a wider range of social and economic impacts.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine recently undertook a project to assess approaches to update the social cost of carbon and released two reports with recommendations. Some of these recommendations were already being implemented by the Obama administration, although more work remains. The methodology has also been extended to methane and nitrous oxide emissions, two other potent global warming gases.

What we should not and cannot afford to do is refuse to accept the facts: climate change is real and it is already having serious and costly effects on people. Therefore our policy choices must appropriately reflect the benefits of cutting global warming emissions.

If the concept of a carbon price is new to you, be sure to check our the very first edition of Bionic Planet oniTunes,TuneIn, Stitcher, or wherever you access podcasts. You can also stream it here:

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Note To Congress: Climate Change Is Real, And It's Expensive - Ecosystem Marketplace

The ecosystem of a river is the river viewed as a system operating in its natural environment, and includes biotic (living) interactions amongst plants, animals and micro-organisms, as well as abiotic (nonliving) physical and chemical interactions.[1][2]

River ecosystems are prime examples of lotic ecosystems. Lotic refers to flowing water, from the Latin lotus, washed. Lotic waters range from springs only a few centimeters wide to major rivers kilometers in width.[3] Much of this article applies to lotic ecosystems in general, including related lotic systems such as streams and springs. Lotic ecosystems can be contrasted with lentic ecosystems, which involve relatively still terrestrial waters such as lakes and ponds. Together, these two fields form the more general study area of freshwater or aquatic ecology.

The following unifying characteristics make the ecology of running waters unique from that of other aquatic habitats.[4]

The non living components of an ecosystem are called abiotic components

Water flow is the key factor in lotic systems influencing their ecology. The strength of water flow can vary between systems, ranging from torrential rapids to slow backwaters that almost seem like lentic systems. The speed of the water flow can also vary within a system and is subject to chaotic turbulence. This turbulence results in divergences of flow from the mean downslope flow vector as typified by eddy currents. The mean flow rate vector is based on variability of friction with the bottom or sides of the channel, sinuosity, obstructions, and the incline gradient.[3] In addition, the amount of water input into the system from direct precipitation, snowmelt, and/or groundwater can affect flow rate. Flowing waters can alter the shape of the streambed through erosion and deposition, creating a variety of habitats, including riffles, glides, and pools.[5]

Light is important to lotic systems, because it provides the energy necessary to drive primary production via photosynthesis, and can also provide refuge for prey species in shadows it casts. The amount of light that a system receives can be related to a combination of internal and external stream variables. The area surrounding a small stream, for example, might be shaded by surrounding forests or by valley walls. Larger river systems tend to be wide so the influence of external variables is minimized, and the sun reaches the surface. These rivers also tend to be more turbulent, however, and particles in the water increasingly attenuate light as depth increases.[5] Seasonal and diurnal factors might also play a role in light availability because the angle of incidence, the angle at which light strikes water can lead to light lost from reflection. Known as Beer's Law, the shallower the angle, the more light is reflected and the amount of solar radiation received declines logarithmically with depth.[4] Additional influences on light availability include cloud cover, altitude, and geographic position (Brown 1987).

Most lotic species are poikilotherms whose internal temperature varies with their environment, thus temperature is a key abiotic factor for them. Water can be heated or cooled through radiation at the surface and conduction to or from the air and surrounding substrate. Shallow streams are typically well mixed and maintain a relatively uniform temperature within an area. In deeper, slower moving water systems, however, a strong difference between the bottom and surface temperatures may develop. Spring fed systems have little variation as springs are typically from groundwater sources, which are often very close to ambient temperature.[4] Many systems show strong diurnal fluctuations and seasonal variations are most extreme in arctic, desert and temperate systems.[4] The amount of shading, climate and elevation can also influence the temperature of lotic systems.[3]

Water chemistry between systems varies tremendously. The chemistry is foremost determined by inputs from the geology of its watershed, or catchment area, but can also be influenced by precipitation and the addition of pollutants from human sources.[3][5] Large differences in chemistry do not usually exist within small lotic systems due to a high rate of mixing. In larger river systems, however, the concentrations of most nutrients, dissolved salts, and pH decrease as distance increases from the rivers source.[4]

Oxygen is likely the most important chemical constituent of lotic systems, as all aerobic organisms require it for survival. It enters the water mostly via diffusion at the water-air interface. Oxygens solubility in water decreases as water pH and temperature increases. Fast, turbulent streams expose more of the waters surface area to the air and tend to have low temperatures and thus more oxygen than slow, backwaters.[4] Oxygen is a byproduct of photosynthesis, so systems with a high abundance of aquatic algae and plants may also have high concentrations of oxygen during the day. These levels can decrease significantly during the night when primary producers switch to respiration. Oxygen can be limiting if circulation between the surface and deeper layers is poor, if the activity of lotic animals is very high, or if there is a large amount of organic decay occurring.[5]

The inorganic substrate of lotic systems is composed of the geologic material present in the catchment that is eroded, transported, sorted, and deposited by the current. Inorganic substrates are classified by size on the Wentworth scale, which ranges from boulders, to pebbles, to gravel, to sand, and to silt.[4] Typically, particle size decreases downstream with larger boulders and stones in more mountainous areas and sandy bottoms in lowland rivers. This is because the higher gradients of mountain streams facilitate a faster flow, moving smaller substrate materials further downstream for deposition.[5] Substrate can also be organic and may include fine particles, autumn shed leaves, submerged wood, moss, and more evolved plants.[3] Substrate deposition is not necessarily a permanent event, as it can be subject to large modifications during flooding events.[5]

The living components of an ecosystem are called the biotic components.

Bacteria are present in large numbers in lotic waters. Free-living forms are associated with decomposing organic material, biofilm on the surfaces of rocks and vegetation, in between particles that compose the substrate, and suspended in the water column. Other forms are also associated with the guts of lotic organisms as parasites or in commensal relationships.[4] Bacteria play a large role in energy recycling,[3] which will be discussed in the Trophic Relationships section.

Algae, consisting of phytoplankton and periphyton, are the most significant sources of primary production in most streams and rivers.[4] Phytoplankton float freely in the water column and thus are unable to maintain populations in fast flowing streams. They can, however, develop sizable populations in slow moving rivers and backwaters.[3] Periphyton are typically filamentous and tufted algae that can attach themselves to objects to avoid being washed away by fast currents. In places where flow rates are negligible or absent, periphyton may form a gelatinous, unanchored floating mat.[5]

Plants exhibit limited adaptations to fast flow and are most successful in reduced currents. More primitive plants, such as mosses and liverworts attach themselves to solid objects. This typically occurs in colder headwaters where the mostly rocky substrate offers attachment sites. Some plants are free floating at the waters surface in dense mats like duckweed or water hyacinth. Others are rooted and may be classified as submerged or emergent. Rooted plants usually occur in areas of slackened current where fine-grained soils are found (Brown 1987).[5] These rooted plants are flexible, with elongated leaves that offer minimal resistance to current.[1]

Living in flowing water can be beneficial to plants and algae because the current is usually well aerated and it provides a continuous supply of nutrients.[5] These organisms are limited by flow, light, water chemistry, substrate, and grazing pressure.[4] Algae and plants are important to lotic systems as sources of energy, for forming microhabitats that shelter other fauna from predators and the current, and as a food resource (Brown 1987).

Up to 90% of invertebrates in some lotic systems are insects. These species exhibit tremendous diversity and can be found occupying almost every available habitat, including the surfaces of stones, deep below the substratum, adrift in the current, and in the surface film. Insects have developed several strategies for living in the diverse flows of lotic systems. Some avoid high current areas, inhabiting the substratum or the sheltered side of rocks. Additional invertebrate taxa common to flowing waters include mollusks such as snails, limpets, clams, mussels, as well as crustaceans like crayfish and crabs.[5] Like most of the primary consumers, lotic invertebrates often rely heavily on the current to bring them food and oxygen (Brown 1987). Invertebrates, especially insects, are important as both consumers and prey items in lotic systems.

Fish are probably the best-known inhabitants of lotic systems. The ability of a fish species to live in flowing waters depends upon the speed at which it can swim and the duration that its speed can be maintained. This ability can vary greatly between species and is tied to the habitat in which it can survive. Continuous swimming expends a tremendous amount of energy and, therefore, fishes spend only short periods in full current. Instead, individuals remain close to the bottom or the banks, behind obstacles, and sheltered from the current, swimming in the current only to feed or change locations.[1] Some species have adapted to living only on the system bottom, never venturing into the open water flow. These fishes are dorso-ventrally flattened to reduce flow resistance and often have eyes on top of their heads to observe what is happening above them. Some also have sensory barrels positioned under the head to assist in the testing of substratum (Brown 1987).

Lotic systems typically connect to each other, forming a path to the ocean (spring stream river ocean), and many fishes have life cycles that require stages in both fresh and salt water. Salmon, for example, are anadromous species that are born in freshwater but spend most of their adult life in the ocean, returning to fresh water only to spawn. Eels are catadromous species that do the opposite, living in freshwater as adults but migrating to the ocean to spawn.[4]

Other vertebrate taxa that inhabit lotic systems include amphibians, such as salamanders, reptiles (e.g. snakes, turtles, crocodiles and alligators) various bird species, and mammals (e.g., otters, beavers, hippos, and river dolphins). With the exception of a few species, these vertebrates are not tied to water as fishes are, and spend part of their time in terrestrial habitats.[4] Many fish species are important as consumers and as prey species to the larger vertebrates mentioned above.

Energy sources can be autochthonous or allochthonous.

Invertebrates can be organized into many feeding guilds in lotic systems. Some species are shredders, which use large and powerful mouth parts to feed on non-woody CPOM and their associated microorganisms. Others are suspension feeders, which use their setae, filtering aparati, nets, or even secretions to collect FPOM and microbes from the water. These species may be passive collectors, utilizing the natural flow of the system, or they may generate their own current to draw water, and also, FPOM in Allan.[3] Members of the gatherer-collector guild actively search for FPOM under rocks and in other places where the stream flow has slackened enough to allow deposition.[5] Grazing invertebrates utilize scraping, rasping, and browsing adaptations to feed on periphyton and detritus. Finally, several families are predatory, capturing and consuming animal prey. Both the number of species and the abundance of individuals within each guild is largely dependent upon food availability. Thus, these values may vary across both seasons and systems.[3]

Fish can also be placed into feeding guilds. Planktivores pick plankton out of the water column. Herbivore-detritivores are bottom-feeding species that ingest both periphyton and detritus indiscriminately. Surface and water column feeders capture surface prey (mainly terrestrial and emerging insects) and drift (benthic invertebrates floating downstream). Benthic invertebrate feeders prey primarily on immature insects, but will also consume other benthic invertebrates. Top predators consume fishes and/or large invertebrates. Omnivores ingest a wide range of prey. These can be floral, faunal, and/or detrital in nature. Finally, parasites live off of host species, typically other fishes.[3] Fish are flexible in their feeding roles, capturing different prey with regard to seasonal availability and their own developmental stage. Thus, they may occupy multiple feeding guilds in their lifetime. The number of species in each guild can vary greatly between systems, with temperate warm water streams having the most benthic invertebrate feeders, and tropical systems having large numbers of detritus feeders due to high rates of allochthonous input.[5]

Large rivers have comparatively more species than small streams. Many relate this pattern to the greater area and volume of larger systems, as well as an increase in habitat diversity. Some systems, however, show a poor fit between system size and species richness. In these cases, a combination of factors such as historical rates of speciation and extinction, type of substrate, microhabitat availability, water chemistry, temperature, and disturbance such as flooding seem to be important.[4]

Although many alternate theories have been postulated for the ability of guild-mates to coexist (see Morin 1999), resource partitioning has been well documented in lotic systems as a means of reducing competition. The three main types of resource partitioning include habitat, dietary, and temporal segregation.[4]

Habitat segregation was found to be the most common type of resource partitioning in natural systems (Schoener, 1974). In lotic systems, microhabitats provide a level of physical complexity that can support a diverse array of organisms (Vincin and Hawknis, 1998). The separation of species by substrate preferences has been well documented for invertebrates. Ward (1992) was able to divide substrate dwellers into six broad assemblages, including those that live in: coarse substrate, gravel, sand, mud, woody debris, and those associated with plants, showing one layer of segregation. On a smaller scale, further habitat partitioning can occur on or around a single substrate, such as a piece of gravel. Some invertebrates prefer the high flow areas on the exposed top of the gravel, while others reside in the crevices between one piece of gravel and the next, while still others live on the bottom of this gravel piece.[4]

Dietary segregation is the second-most common type of resource partitioning.[4] High degrees of morphological specializations or behavioral differences allow organisms to use specific resources. The size of nets built by some species of invertebrate suspension feeders, for example, can filter varying particle size of FPOM from the water (Edington et al. 1984). Similarly, members in the grazing guild can specialize in the harvesting of algae or detritus depending upon the morphology of their scraping apparatus. In addition, certain species seem to show a preference for specific algal species.[4]

Temporal segregation is a less common form of resource partitioning, but it is nonetheless an observed phenomenon.[4] Typically, it accounts for coexistence by relating it to differences in life history patterns and the timing of maximum growth among guild mates. Tropical fishes in Borneo, for example, have shifted to shorter life spans in response to the ecological niche reduction felt with increasing levels of species richness in their ecosystem (Watson and Balon 1984).

Over long time scales, there is a tendency for species composition in pristine systems to remain in a stable state.[7] This has been found for both invertebrate and fish species.[4] On shorter time scales, however, flow variability and unusual precipitation patterns decrease habitat stability and can all lead to declines in persistence levels. The ability to maintain this persistence over long time scales is related to the ability of lotic systems to return to the original community configuration relatively quickly after a disturbance (Townsend et al. 1987). This is one example of temporal succession, a site-specific change in a community involving changes in species composition over time. Another form of temporal succession might occur when a new habitat is opened up for colonization. In these cases, an entirely new community that is well adapted to the conditions found in this new area can establish itself.[4]

The River continuum concept (RCC) was an attempt to construct a single framework to describe the function of temperate lotic ecosystems from the source to the end and relate it to changes in the biotic community (Vannote et al. 1980).[3] The physical basis for RCC is size and location along the gradient from a small stream eventually linked to a large river. Stream order (see characteristics of streams) is used as the physical measure of the position along the RCC.

According to the RCC, low ordered sites are small shaded streams where allochthonous inputs of CPOM are a necessary resource for consumers. As the river widens at mid-ordered sites, energy inputs should change. Ample sunlight should reach the bottom in these systems to support significant periphyton production. Additionally, the biological processing of CPOM (Coarse Particulate Organic Matter - larger than 1mm) inputs at upstream sites is expected to result in the transport of large amounts of FPOM (Fine Particulate Organic Matter - smaller than 1mm) to these downstream ecosystems. Plants should become more abundant at edges of the river with increasing river size, especially in lowland rivers where finer sediments have been deposited and facilitate rooting. The main channels likely have too much current and turbidity and a lack of substrate to support plants or periphyton. Phytoplankton should produce the only autochthonous inputs here, but photosynthetic rates will be limited due to turbidity and mixing. Thus, allochthonous inputs are expected to be the primary energy source for large rivers. This FPOM will come from both upstream sites via the decomposition process and through lateral inputs from floodplains.

Biota should change with this change in energy from the headwaters to the mouth of these systems. Namely, shredders should prosper in low-ordered systems and grazers in mid-ordered sites. Microbial decomposition should play the largest role in energy production for low-ordered sites and large rivers, while photosynthesis, in addition to degraded allochthonous inputs from upstream will be essential in mid-ordered systems. As mid-ordered sites will theoretically receive the largest variety of energy inputs, they might be expected to host the most biological diversity (Vannote et al. 1980).[3][4]

Just how well the RCC actually reflects patterns in natural systems is uncertain and its generality can be a handicap when applied to diverse and specific situations.[3] The most noted criticisms of the RCC are: 1. It focuses mostly on macroinvertebrates, disregarding that plankton and fish diversity is highest in high orders; 2. It relies heavily on the fact that low ordered sites have high CPOM inputs, even though many streams lack riparian habitats; 3. It is based on pristine systems, which rarely exist today; and 4. It is centered around the functioning of temperate streams. Despite its shortcomings, the RCC remains a useful idea for describing how the patterns of ecological functions in a lotic system can vary from the source to the mouth.[3]

Disturbances such as congestion by dams or natural events such as shore flooding are not included in the RCC model.[8] Various researchers have since expanded the model to account for such irregularities. For example, J.V. Ward and J.A. Stanford came up with the Serial Discontinuity Concept in 1983, which addresses the impact of geomorphologic disorders such as congestion and integrated inflows. The same authors presented the Hyporheic Corridor concept in 1993, in which the vertical (in depth) and lateral (from shore to shore) structural complexity of the river were connected.[9] The flood pulse concept, developed by W.J. Junk in 1989, further modified by P.B. Bayley in 1990 and K. Tockner in 2000, takes into account the large amount of nutrients and organic material that makes its way into a river from the sediment of surrounding flooded land.[8]

Pollutant sources of lotic systems are hard to control because they derive, often in small amounts, over a very wide area and enter the system at many locations along its length. Agricultural fields often deliver large quantities of sediments, nutrients, and chemicals to nearby streams and rivers. Urban and residential areas can also add to this pollution when contaminants are accumulated on impervious surfaces such as roads and parking lots that then drain into the system. Elevated nutrient concentrations, especially nitrogen and phosphorus which are key components of fertilizers, can increase periphyton growth, which can be particularly dangerous in slow-moving streams.[5] Another pollutant, acid rain, forms from sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide emitted from factories and power stations. These substances readily dissolve in atmospheric moisture and enter lotic systems through precipitation. This can lower the pH of these sites, affecting all trophic levels from algae to vertebrates (Brown 1987). Mean species richness and total species numbers within a system decrease with decreasing pH.[4]

While direct pollution of lotic systems has been greatly reduced in the United States under the governments Clean Water Act, contaminants from diffuse non-point sources remain a large problem.[5]

Dams alter the flow, temperature, and sediment regime of lotic systems.[4] Additionally, many rivers are dammed at multiple locations, amplifying the impact. Dams can cause enhanced clarity and reduced variability in stream flow, which in turn cause an increase in periphyton abundance. Invertebrates immediately below a dam can show reductions in species richness due to an overall reduction in habitat heterogeneity.[5] Also, thermal changes can affect insect development, with abnormally warm winter temperatures obscuring cues to break egg diapause and overly cool summer temperatures leaving too few acceptable days to complete growth.[3] Finally, dams fragment river systems, isolating previously continuous populations, and preventing the migrations of anadromous and catadromous species.[5]

Invasive species have been introduced to lotic systems through both purposeful events (e.g. stocking game and food species) as well as unintentional events (e.g. hitchhikers on boats or fishing waders). These organisms can affect natives via competition for prey or habitat, predation, habitat alteration, hybridization, or the introduction of harmful diseases and parasites.[4] Once established, these species can be difficult to control or eradicate, particularly because of the connectivity of lotic systems. Invasive species can be especially harmful in areas that have endangered biota, such as mussels in the Southeast United States, or those that have localized endemic species, like lotic systems west of the Rocky Mountains, where many species evolved in isolation.

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River ecosystem - Wikipedia

Singaporean telecommunications provider Singtel in partnership with Ericsson has unveiled its Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem for operators, networks, and devices at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2017.

The IoT ecosystem, dubbed the Assured+ Consumer Connected Device Solution, was developed jointly by Ericsson and Singtel, and integrates stand-alone IoT applications into a single solution. Designed to solve the fragmentation of the IoT market and make it more open, the solution will provide consumers with an overview and control over all of their connected devices, including personal, automotive, and smart home.

"In order to realise the full potential of IoT and offer our customers the best user experience, we need to ensure collaboration between people, devices, and networks," said Yuen Kuan Moon, CEO of Singtel's Consumer Singapore business arm.

"Singtel believes an open ecosystem and the Assured+ solution will enable us to achieve these aims."

Singtel will begin trialling the system across its mobile customers later this year.

According to Ericsson, the solution will also accelerate IoT adoption across networks and enable a faster time to market for app developers.

Ericsson and Singtel in January launched 450Mbps speeds across the latter's entire 4G network in Singapore for customers with compatible Samsung smartphones, with the companies also announcing attaining speeds of up to 1Gbps in a trial of its 4G network.

The network upgrade was achieved by making use of 256 Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) technology, which increases efficient use of spectrum by increasing the number of unique radio waveform shapes to transport a third more data.

Singtel and Ericsson also announced that a live trial, conducted to the east of Singapore in Pasir Ris, saw them attain speeds of 1Gbps across 4G using 256 QAM downlink combined with 4x4 Multiple Input Multiple Output (4x4 MIMO) and triple carrier aggregation.

Singtel said it plans to roll out 4x4 MIMO technology -- which doubles the data paths between mobile phones and cellular base stations to double download speeds -- to high-traffic locations on its network next year.

Ericsson and Singtel have been working on a "blueprint" for 5G deployment across Singapore since January 2015, signing a memorandum of understanding to "study the future of 5G networks and its applications" for consumers and enterprises.

In July last year, the two companies also completed a live trial of License Assisted Access (LAA) 4G, saying the mobile technology would boost network capacity and speeds indoors and would be rolled out over the next two years, beginning in the first half of 2017.

The trial involved two weeks of testing across several RBS 6402 indoor small cells, Wi-Fi access points, prototype LAA devices, and Wi-Fi devices, using 20MHz of the 1800MHz licensed spectrum band aggregated with 20MHz of the 5GHz unlicensed spectrum band over a live network inside an office premises in Serangoon North.

LAA is a kind of LTE-U -- a mobile technology using unlicensed LTE spectrum to boost data speeds -- which comes with "listen-before-talk" functionality that ensures LAA coexists with other Wi-Fi devices across the same unlicensed spectrum, improving network capacity for multiple devices.

LAA-capable smartphones and devices should be available for consumers in early 2017, Singtel added, allowing for 450Mbps throughput speeds.

In February last year, Singtel and Ericsson also announced their collaboration on enabling Singtel's 4G network for the IoT, including a trial of narrowband IoT technology during the latter half of 2016.

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Ericsson and Singtel unveil IoT ecosystem for app integration | ZDNet - ZDNet

The TeCake

Using Google to map our ecosystem -- ScienceDaily Science Daily Researchers have developed a method to quantify ecosystem services of street trees. Using nearly 100000 images from Google Street View, the study helps ... Researchers use Google street view images for assessing ecosystem processesThe TeCake all 4 news articles »

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Using Google to map our ecosystem -- ScienceDaily - Science Daily

Forbes

Fitness Vet Randy Dobson Is Selling A Healthy-Lifestyle 'Ecosystem' In Vietnam Forbes By Lan Anh Nguyen. Randy Dobson looks younger than his 41 years and is in the kind of shape you'd associate with his livelihood. The American arrived in Vietnam less than ten years ago to launch a modern gym in the heart of Ho Chi Minh City. Now he ...

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Fitness Vet Randy Dobson Is Selling A Healthy-Lifestyle 'Ecosystem' In Vietnam - Forbes

Francis Skalicky, For the News-Leader 6:05 a.m. CT March 1, 2017

Sometimes, introducing invasive plants and animals into a habitat is the equivalent of throwing a wrench into the cogs of a machine:In some cases, the machine continues to operate, but at a much-reduced efficiency. In other cases, the machine shuts down completely.

This week, Feb. 27-March 3 is National Invasive Species Awareness Week. The purpose of this week is to bring attention to all non-native species that pose threats to our outdoor habitats. Unfortunately for our habitats and native species that reside in them, there are a large number of non-native invaders and many of them can be harmful to our ecosystems.

Invasive species whichin most casesare non-native exotic species are nothing new. A variety of animals and plants have been introduced to North America in the 500-plus years that the continent has been explored, settled and developed. Some were introduced on purpose, others by accident. These introduced species are collectively known as exotic species because theyre not indigenous to North America. The opposite of exotic is native. Native species are the plants and animals that were the original inhabitants of our landscape.

Some exotic plants such as kudzu and fescue are well-known to people, but there are many others. Some have become so common that we dont realize theyre not from around here. Take, for instance, the two most common types of crabgrass found in residential yards hairy crabgrass (Digitaria sanguinalis) and smooth crabgrass (Digitaria ischaemum). Neither is native to North America; they were introduced here, probably in the 19th century.

And those dandelions that pop up each spring to the annoyance of many lawn-lovers? Theyre also from Europe and Asia and were established here through intentional plantings by early European settlers.

On the animal side, zebra mussels and Asian carp are highly publicized exotics that have made the news as threats to aquatic habitats in parts of the U.S. Gypsy moths and emerald ash borers are well-known non-native tree pests that pose both habitat and financial threats to forests in the eastern and central parts of the country.

One of our less-publicized exotic animals is the house mouse (Mus musculus). This common pest, which is the mouse species we commonly encounter in homes and other domestic dwellings, wasnt here when Europeans first arrived. It had numerous introductions to North America via the ships of explorers and colonists.

There are several species of native mice, butdue to the house mouses reproductive capabilities and the availability of habitat (houses, garages, storage sheds, etc.), this exotic rodent probably far outnumbers its native cousins in the U.S. Another pest the Norway rat (Rattus norvegicus) is an exotic species that came to North America on the ships of early European visitors.

Though the exotic species that have come here are varied, the reasons theyve become abundant are similar: Exotic species were introduced into areas that had few of the natural controls (browsing animals, predators, harsher weather, etc.) that kept them in line in their native lands and, as a result, these newcomers flourished. This abundance has often come at the expense of native plants that formed the foundation of our habitats.

When exotic species invade an area and crowd out the plants and animals that occurred naturally in that location, habitats often change for the worse: The insects that were attracted to native flowers go elsewhere, the native birds cant find nesting areas because theyre occupied by exotic birds and other animals that needed these species for some part of their life cycles are also negatively impacted.

Wise conservation practices utilizing native species pay by enriching our economy and quality of life. Conversely, exotic invasions can have negative financial repercussions. Gypsy moths and emerald ash borers are already having an effect on the timber industry. In addition to negatively impacting aquatic life, fishing and recreational boating; thick mats of the aquatic invasive plant hydrilla can clog intake structures at power generation and water supply facilities. When exotic plants such as musk thistle, spotted knapweed or Johnson grass take over pastures and fields, they can turn what had been money-making acres into financially unproductive tracts of land.

Information about invasive species can also be found at http://www.missouriconservation.org

Francis Skalicky is the media specialist for the Missouri Department of Conservations Southwest Region. For more information about conservation issues, call 417-895-6880.

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Invasive exotic species damage ecosystem and economy - Springfield News-Leader

Data engineering needs DevOps to navigate big data ecosystem TechTarget Spark and Hadoop will lag if teams don't embrace data engineering styles focused on hardening big data ecosystem components for production. Looking Down The Long Enterprise Road With HadoopThe Next Platform all 2 news articles »

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Data engineering needs DevOps to navigate big data ecosystem - TechTarget

The Hindu

Google Street View helps manage urban ecosystem The Hindu Scientists have used over 100,000 images extracted from Google Street View to map and quantify how street trees regulate urban ecosystems in megacities like Delhi and Shanghai. While it was generally accepted that trees and plants helped in regulating ...

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Google Street View helps manage urban ecosystem - The Hindu