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Montana State University researchers highlight bears' use of Banff highway crossings
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Public release date: 2-Aug-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Evelyn Boswell
evelynb@montana.edu
406-994-5135
Montana State University
BOZEMAN, Mont. Within sight of the Trans-Canada Highway, a team of ecologists with the Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University set out on foot for a nearby site where they'd strung wire snags to catch the fur of passing bears.
In the short distance they walked, with Canada's busiest transportation artery paralleling a prime patch of buffalo berries in the Bow River bottomland, the team spotted five grizzly bears, including a sow with two cubs.
Since counting and genetically identifying bears was critical for Mike Sawaya, Tony Clevenger and Steven Kalinowski's three-year field study on the effects of the highway's wildlife crossing structures on Banff National Park bear populations, it was all in a day's work, Sawaya said.
"We spent a ton of time in the backcountry and had a lot of really great days out there," said Sawaya, a 2012 graduate of MSU. "Fortunately we never had any really scary experiences. But seeing those particular bears, thankfully from a safe distance, did illustrate that the Trans-Canada Highway wildlife crossings allow safe access to that low-elevation Bow River habitat."
Sawaya said roads are the most common form of man-made disruption to wildlife habitat and, in the case of the Trans-Canada Highway, pose a direct threat to a threatened Alberta grizzly bear population. The study of how bears use wildlife crossings was part of Sawaya's doctoral work, for which he teamed up with Alberta-based wildlife biologist Clevenger, a senior research scientist at WTI, and Kalinowski, an associate professor of ecology at MSU who was Sawaya's adviser.
The 25 wildlife crossings in Banff were installed during the 1990s, to keep motorists and wildlife safe. Two of the crossings are overpasses built with enough width and vegetation to resemble the surrounding forest. The rest of the structures are culverts or bridges. The crossings work in conjunction with high fencing installed along the roadway to keep wildlife out of a stream of traffic that brings millions of vehicles to Banff and through the Canadian Rockies. In addition to bears, the crossings have seen documented use by deer, elk and moose, as well as wolves, wolverines, lynx, cougars and a host of other animals.
Last week, coinciding with the Society of Conservation Biology's biennial international conference, Sawaya, Clevenger and Kalinowski published a paper in the journal Conservation Biology detailing what genetic testing on 10,000 hair samples showed about the demographic effect the Banff crossings have on area bear populations.
Their results offered an encouraging assessment that a highway punctuated with 25 different crossings did not fragment the habitat in a way that prevented bears from seeking food, shelter and dispersal areas on either side of the Trans-Canada Highway.
"This is a landmark study because it's the first time anyone has done extensive genetic sampling to address unanswered questions about the use of highway crossings by bears," Clevenger said. "We knew that bears used the crossings, we just didn't know how many, what percentage of each species' population uses them, whether there is a preference by males or females to use crossings, and if there was a gender or species preference for overpasses or underpasses."
Another paper from the study due this fall will break down what ecologists call "gene flow" between bear populations in the Banff ecosystem. That data should help gauge how well the crossing structures perform in allowing different bears to find mates in an ecosystem bisected by a major highway.
"By collecting the genetic data on each bear using the crossings, we have a much more powerful tool for gauging the effectiveness of the crossing structures to provide connectivity within the ecosystem," Clevenger added.
In 2006, Sawaya, Clevenger and Kalinowski began setting out noninvasive hair snags strands of barbed wire strung across the wildlife crossings, hair traps with wire snags that collect samples from bears lured to a scent and rub trees with wire attached. Over the next three years, the MSU scientists and assistants collected hair samples from 20 crossings, 420 hair traps and 497 dispersed rub trees.
Once the genetic testing was finished, Sawaya said they could identify 15 individual grizzly bears and 17 individual black bears that used the highway crossings over the three years, which Sawaya said paints a good picture of the demographic connectivity provided by the crossing structures. During the study, close to 20 percent of the grizzly and black bears in Banff used the crossings. Grizzlies were more likely to use the overpasses, while black bears were more likely to use underpasses.
Sawaya said research shows that movement of more than 10 percent of a population through the highway barrier signals there is sufficient connectivity to maintain a healthy ecosystem for bears and other large mammals.
Clevenger, who has been tracking the numbers of bear crossings on the Trans-Canada Highway crossing structures for over a decade as part of the Banff Wildlife Crossings Project, said the study's findings are a breakthrough.
"This is confirmation of what our previous investigations have suggested but couldn't confirm," Clevenger said. "We were pretty certain that the numbers of bears using the crossings had steadily increased. Now we know."
The use of wildlife crossings to protect motorists and wildlife on the Trans-Canada Highway in Banff has been a model for similar projects elsewhere. WTI has been consulting on proposed projects with similar goals in countries around the world, from Mongolia, to China, to Brazil.
In Montana, where U.S. Highway 93 runs through the southern Flathead Valley, it runs near prime grizzly bear habitat in the Mission Mountains and the Bob Marshall Wilderness complex. At the request of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, the Montana Department of Transportation installed more than 40 wildlife crossings on the Flathead Reservation.
WTI is researching wildlife habits at those crossings also to assess their success in improving habitat. The multiyear study is set to run through 2015, according to Rob Ament, manager of WTI's Road Ecology Program.
Ament said the research WTI scientists are doing in Banff and on the Flathead Reservation is a fundamental part of its mission to provide solutions to transportation problems in the rural West, where wildlife and wildlife-vehicle collision are a common occurrence.
"Between Banff and the U.S. 93 project, we're talking about the two largest wildlife mitigation projects for highways in North America, if not the world," Ament said. "The lessons we learn will be shared with transportation practitioners not only here in the United States but also with those around the globe."
###
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 2-Aug-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Evelyn Boswell
evelynb@montana.edu
406-994-5135
Montana State University
BOZEMAN, Mont. Within sight of the Trans-Canada Highway, a team of ecologists with the Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University set out on foot for a nearby site where they'd strung wire snags to catch the fur of passing bears.
In the short distance they walked, with Canada's busiest transportation artery paralleling a prime patch of buffalo berries in the Bow River bottomland, the team spotted five grizzly bears, including a sow with two cubs.
Since counting and genetically identifying bears was critical for Mike Sawaya, Tony Clevenger and Steven Kalinowski's three-year field study on the effects of the highway's wildlife crossing structures on Banff National Park bear populations, it was all in a day's work, Sawaya said.
"We spent a ton of time in the backcountry and had a lot of really great days out there," said Sawaya, a 2012 graduate of MSU. "Fortunately we never had any really scary experiences. But seeing those particular bears, thankfully from a safe distance, did illustrate that the Trans-Canada Highway wildlife crossings allow safe access to that low-elevation Bow River habitat."
Sawaya said roads are the most common form of man-made disruption to wildlife habitat and, in the case of the Trans-Canada Highway, pose a direct threat to a threatened Alberta grizzly bear population. The study of how bears use wildlife crossings was part of Sawaya's doctoral work, for which he teamed up with Alberta-based wildlife biologist Clevenger, a senior research scientist at WTI, and Kalinowski, an associate professor of ecology at MSU who was Sawaya's adviser.
The 25 wildlife crossings in Banff were installed during the 1990s, to keep motorists and wildlife safe. Two of the crossings are overpasses built with enough width and vegetation to resemble the surrounding forest. The rest of the structures are culverts or bridges. The crossings work in conjunction with high fencing installed along the roadway to keep wildlife out of a stream of traffic that brings millions of vehicles to Banff and through the Canadian Rockies. In addition to bears, the crossings have seen documented use by deer, elk and moose, as well as wolves, wolverines, lynx, cougars and a host of other animals.
Last week, coinciding with the Society of Conservation Biology's biennial international conference, Sawaya, Clevenger and Kalinowski published a paper in the journal Conservation Biology detailing what genetic testing on 10,000 hair samples showed about the demographic effect the Banff crossings have on area bear populations.
Their results offered an encouraging assessment that a highway punctuated with 25 different crossings did not fragment the habitat in a way that prevented bears from seeking food, shelter and dispersal areas on either side of the Trans-Canada Highway.
"This is a landmark study because it's the first time anyone has done extensive genetic sampling to address unanswered questions about the use of highway crossings by bears," Clevenger said. "We knew that bears used the crossings, we just didn't know how many, what percentage of each species' population uses them, whether there is a preference by males or females to use crossings, and if there was a gender or species preference for overpasses or underpasses."
Another paper from the study due this fall will break down what ecologists call "gene flow" between bear populations in the Banff ecosystem. That data should help gauge how well the crossing structures perform in allowing different bears to find mates in an ecosystem bisected by a major highway.
"By collecting the genetic data on each bear using the crossings, we have a much more powerful tool for gauging the effectiveness of the crossing structures to provide connectivity within the ecosystem," Clevenger added.
In 2006, Sawaya, Clevenger and Kalinowski began setting out noninvasive hair snags strands of barbed wire strung across the wildlife crossings, hair traps with wire snags that collect samples from bears lured to a scent and rub trees with wire attached. Over the next three years, the MSU scientists and assistants collected hair samples from 20 crossings, 420 hair traps and 497 dispersed rub trees.
Once the genetic testing was finished, Sawaya said they could identify 15 individual grizzly bears and 17 individual black bears that used the highway crossings over the three years, which Sawaya said paints a good picture of the demographic connectivity provided by the crossing structures. During the study, close to 20 percent of the grizzly and black bears in Banff used the crossings. Grizzlies were more likely to use the overpasses, while black bears were more likely to use underpasses.
Sawaya said research shows that movement of more than 10 percent of a population through the highway barrier signals there is sufficient connectivity to maintain a healthy ecosystem for bears and other large mammals.
Clevenger, who has been tracking the numbers of bear crossings on the Trans-Canada Highway crossing structures for over a decade as part of the Banff Wildlife Crossings Project, said the study's findings are a breakthrough.
"This is confirmation of what our previous investigations have suggested but couldn't confirm," Clevenger said. "We were pretty certain that the numbers of bears using the crossings had steadily increased. Now we know."
The use of wildlife crossings to protect motorists and wildlife on the Trans-Canada Highway in Banff has been a model for similar projects elsewhere. WTI has been consulting on proposed projects with similar goals in countries around the world, from Mongolia, to China, to Brazil.
In Montana, where U.S. Highway 93 runs through the southern Flathead Valley, it runs near prime grizzly bear habitat in the Mission Mountains and the Bob Marshall Wilderness complex. At the request of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, the Montana Department of Transportation installed more than 40 wildlife crossings on the Flathead Reservation.
WTI is researching wildlife habits at those crossings also to assess their success in improving habitat. The multiyear study is set to run through 2015, according to Rob Ament, manager of WTI's Road Ecology Program.
Ament said the research WTI scientists are doing in Banff and on the Flathead Reservation is a fundamental part of its mission to provide solutions to transportation problems in the rural West, where wildlife and wildlife-vehicle collision are a common occurrence.
"Between Banff and the U.S. 93 project, we're talking about the two largest wildlife mitigation projects for highways in North America, if not the world," Ament said. "The lessons we learn will be shared with transportation practitioners not only here in the United States but also with those around the globe."
###
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-08/msu-msu080213.php
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Russia opposition leader freed on bail, protests rattle Kremlin
By Gabriela Baczynska
KIROV, Russia (Reuters) - Russia unexpectedly freed opposition leader Alexei Navalny on bail on Friday, bending to the will of thousands of protesters who denounced his five-year jail sentence as a crude attempt by President Vladimir Putin to silence him.
Putin's spokesman called the protesters "mobs" and warned that the rallies were illegal.
In a highly unusual ruling that points to Kremlin uncertainty over how to handle Navalny's case, a judge approved the prosecution request to free him pending his appeal so that he can run in a Moscow mayor election on September 8.
The anti-corruption blogger will be unable to leave Moscow but hailed the decision, a day after he was convicted of theft, as a victory for people power.
Experts said it was unprecedented for the prosecution to seek bail on such terms after sentencing.
"I am very grateful to all the people who supported us, all the people who went to (protest in Moscow's) Manezh Square and other squares," the 37-year-old said, rushing across the court to hug his wife after he was let out of a glass courtroom cage.
The judge's decision was greeted by applause in the court in Kirov, 900 km (550 miles) northeast of Moscow. Under Russian law, he has 10 days to file an appeal and then the court has to decide whether to hear that appeal in 30 days.
"We understand perfectly well what has happened now. It's an absolutely unique phenomenon in Russian justice," Navalny said.
People poured onto the streets of Russian cities to protest on Thursday evening after Navalny was convicted of stealing at least 16 million roubles ($494,000) from a timber firm when he was advising the Kirov regional governor in 2009.
More than 200 people were detained although the rallies were peaceful, with demonstrators chanting "Shame!", "Freedom!" and "Putin is a thief!"
In Moscow, drivers honked their horns in support as they drove past at least 3,000 demonstrators a few hundred meters from the Kremlin's red brick walls.
Navalny says his trial was politically motivated and intended to sideline him as a threat to Putin, even though his support is limited outside the cities and opinion polls show the president is still Russia's most popular politician.
Putin has not commented on the verdict against Navalny or his release from custody. Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the rallies were illegal because they were held without approval from the authorities.
"There is no doubt that it is impossible to condone such mobs, and one can only hope that in the future everything will be done within the framework of the law," Peskov told reporters.
The trial was a matter for the courts "and has nothing to do with the president," he said.
KREMLIN CONCERN
Navalny led anti-Putin protests in Moscow which attracted tens of thousands of people at their peak last year. But they did not take off in the provinces, Putin's traditional power base, and faded after the former KGB spy was elected to a six-year third term as president in March 2012.
The sight of protesters so close to the heart of power on Thursday may have unsettled the Kremlin, and Friday's bail decision could be a political maneuver to head off new protests that would worry investors.
The judge ruled that keeping him in detention put "him on an unequal footing against other candidates (in the mayoral election) and restricts his right to be elected".
The current mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, a close Putin ally, said he would prefer to be challenged by Navalny, who opinion polls show is trailing him by a long way.
A source close to the mayor said Sobyanin, who is tipped as a potential prime minister, was worried the removal of Navalny as a candidate would tarnish his expected victory.
Some analysts said the Kremlin, and the business and security community around it, looked divided over Navalny.
"There really is a split in the elite and it seems there will be no peaceful outcome," said political scientist Ella Paneyakh, who described the bail request by the state prosecution as unprecedented.
SPLITS IN THE KREMLIN?
Putin is under no immediate political threat from Navalny, or any other opposition figure, but his grip on power has long depended on maintaining calm and a balance of forces between the conservatives and more liberal forces around him.
Cracks in the facade of unity have appeared, particularly over the removal from government of Vladislav Surkov, Putin's former political strategist, in May. Surkov had fallen foul of more hawkish Kremlin allies who are in the ascendancy as Putin takes a tough line against opponents after last year's protests.
"I think the split at the top of the Kremlin pyramid has now become absolutely obvious," said Alexei Roshchin, a veteran campaign adviser and sociologist.
"Before our very eyes the Navalny case is acting as a catalyst for the split in the elites."
Members of the Kremlin human rights council on Friday supported calls for an independent review of the case against Navalny, the Interfax news agency cited the advisory body's head, Mikhail Fedotov, as saying.
The United States and European Union voiced concern over Navalny's conviction, saying it raised questions about the rule of law and Russia's treatment of Putin's opponents.
"The fact that they were released under specific conditions is something that we can welcome, but how the whole case has been handled simply underlines our concerns," a spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said.
While it makes it easier for him to stay in the mayoral race, there is no indication Navalny's release from custody will affect the court's ruling on his planned appeal.
The acquittal rate in Russia is about half a percent, or one in 200, and has declined in recent years, said Pavel Chikov, a human rights lawyer and head of legal rights group Agora.
(Additional reporting by Alexei Anishchuk, Denis Dyomkin, Maria Tsvetkova and Steve Gutterman, Writing by Timothy Heritage, Editing by Elizabeth Piper and Angus MacSwan)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/russian-opposition-leader-freed-temporarily-await-appeal-071359018.html
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What to Expect from the President's Big Climate Change Speech
On Tuesday, President Obama will use a speech at the University of Georgetown to announce new, sweeping executive orders addressing climate change that will be designed to appease critics who have attacked the President for talking the green talk and not walking the green walk. Obviously, the White House is also hoping tackling climate change will get them some decent press in the wake of that pesky surveillance scandal.?
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After signalling he was ready to act during a speech in Berlin last week, the White House released a video of the President teasing his plan to lay out new climate initiatives late Saturday. "This Tuesday, I'll lay out my vision for where I believe we need to go - a national plan to reduce carbon pollution, prepare our country for the impacts of climate change and lead global efforts to fight it," he says. "There's no single step that can reverse the effects of climate change. But when it comes to the world we leave our children, we owe it to them to do what we can."
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The President is expected to use his executive powers to adopt a wide array of climate change measures, but no one is 100% sure what those measures are just yet. Reuters reports the President will?detail?"a strategy to limit greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants" to cap U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. (Power plants account for more than 40 percent of domestic CO2 emissions.) The Washington Post reports the President will also announce new short-term goals:?
In the speech at Georgetown University, according to individuals briefed on the matter who asked not to be identified because the plan was not yet public, Obama will detail a government-wide plan to not only reduce the nation?s carbon output but also prepare the United States for the?near-term impacts of global warming.
They said those measures would include programs to enhance the resilience of coastal communities as well as Agriculture Department ?climate adaptation hubs? that could help farmers cope with changes in temperature and precipitation.
The President promised big climate change initiatives during his second Inaugural address but has come under fire in some corners for not acting on those promises until now. Still, his combination of short- and long-term goals seem to fulfill his promise of responding to climate change, "knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations." The President also said the road towards climate change would be "long and sometimes difficult," maybe signalling a fight to pass bills through congress, but in reality his climate plan should be relatively easy to enact. Because Obama is using his executive powers, he avoids having to pass anything through the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. But The New York Times cautions the path towards climate change isn't exactly sunny and paved in green:
Mr. Obama?s decision to use his executive authority to regulate utilities reflects a determination that he has no prospect of passing such sweeping policies through Congress. But while the Supreme Court validated the power of the executive to regulate carbon emissions without further legislation, the president?s move may draw lawsuits and other challenges from industry and Republicans citing the economic costs.
Nothing is going to come easy for Obama when it comes to the environment, or any other issue for that matter. There's no indication as to whether or not Obama will approve the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. That move would certainly appease Republicans and make the entire climate change slate go down easier, but it would also infuriate climate change activists and potentially steal the headlines away from other initiatives.?
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/expect-presidents-big-climate-change-speech-154430321.html
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Giving children non-verbal clues boosts vocabularies
June 24, 2013 ? The clues that parents give toddlers about words can make a big difference in how deep their vocabularies are when they enter school, new research at the University of Chicago shows.
By using words to reference objects in the visual environment, parents can help young children learn new words, according to the research. It also explores the difficult-to-measure quality of non-verbal clues to word meaning during interactions between parents and children learning to speak. For example, saying, "There goes the zebra" while visiting the zoo helps a child learn the word "zebra" faster than saying, "Let's go to see the zebra."
Differences in the quality of parents' non-verbal clues to toddlers (what children can see when their parents are talking) explain about a quarter (22 percent) of the differences in those same children's vocabularies when they enter kindergarten, researchers found. The results are reported in the paper, "Quality of early parent input predicts child vocabulary three years later," published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Children's vocabularies vary greatly in size by the time they enter school," said lead author Erica Cartmill, a postdoctoral scholar at UChicago. "Because preschool vocabulary is a major predictor of subsequent school success, this variability must be taken seriously and its sources understood."
Scholars have found that the number of words youngsters hear greatly influences their vocabularies. Parents with higher socioeconomic status -- those with higher income and more education -- typically talk more to their children and accordingly boost their vocabularies, research has shown.
That advantage for higher-income families doesn't show up in the quality research, however.
"What was surprising in this study was that social economic status did not have an impact on quality. Parents of lower social economic status were just as likely to provide high-quality experiences for their children as were parents of higher status," said co-author Susan Goldin-Meadow, the Beardsley Ruml Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology at UChicago.
Although scholars have amassed impressive evidence that the number of words children hear -- the quantity of their linguistic input -- has an impact on vocabulary development, measuring the quality of the verbal environment -- including non-verbal clues to word meaning -- has proved much more difficult.
To measure quality, the research team reviewed videotapes of everyday interactions between 50 primary caregivers, almost all mothers, and their children (14 to 18 months old). The mothers and children, from a range of social and economic backgrounds, were taped for 90-minute periods as they went about their days, playing and engaging in other activities.
The team then showed 40-second vignettes from these videotapes to 218 adults with the sound track muted. Based on the interaction between the child and parent, the adults were asked to guess what word the parent in each vignette used when a beep was sounded on the tape.
A beep might occur, for instance, in a parent's silenced speech for the word "book" as a child approaches a bookshelf or brings a book to the mother to start storytime. In this scenario, the word was easy to guess because the mother labeled objects as the child saw and experienced them. In other tapes, viewers were unable to guess the word that was beeped during the conversation, as there were few immediate clues to the meaning of the parent's words. Vignettes containing words that were easy to guess provided high-quality clues to word meaning.
Although there were no differences in the quality of the interactions based on parents' backgrounds, the team did find significant individual differences among the parents studied. Some parents provided non-verbal clues about words only 5 percent of the time, while others provided clues 38 percent of the time, the study found.
The study also found that the number of words parents used was not related to the quality of the verbal exchanges. "Early quantity and quality accounted for different aspects of the variance found in the later vocabulary outcome measure," the authors wrote. In other words, how much parents talk to their children (quantity), and how parents use words in relation to the non-verbal environment (quality) provided different kinds of input into early language development.
"However, parents who talk more are, by definition, offering their children more words, and the more words a child hears, the more likely it will be for that child to hear a particular word in a high-quality learning situation," they added. This suggests that higher-income families' vocabulary advantage comes from a greater quantity of input, which leads to a greater number of high-quality word-learning opportunities. DMaking effective use of non-verbal cues may be a good way for parents to get their children started on the road to language.
Joining Cartmill and Goldin-Meadow as authors were University of Pennsylvania scholars Lila Gleitman, professor emerita of psychology; John Trueswell, professor of psychology; Benjamin Armstrong, a research assistant; and Tamara Medina, assistant professor of psychology at Drexel University.
The work was supported by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/U2KmlDslfMQ/130624152529.htm
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The Restaurant of the Future Was Going to Revolve You
Today's restaurants love automation. Whether it's conveyor belt sushi, iPad ordering or drones
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Erdogan defends riot police tactics in Turkey protests
By Daren Butler
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan piled ridicule on activists behind weeks of protests against his government during a rally on Sunday and defended riot police who fired water cannon at crowds in Istanbul a day earlier.
Looking out of over a sea of Turkish flags waved by his AK Party faithful in the eastern city of Erzurum, Erdogan praised his supporters and the general public for opposing what he called a plot against his country.
"The people saw this game from the start and frustrated it. They (the protesters) thought the people would say nothing. They said we will burn and destroy and do what we want but the people will do nothing," he said.
Sunday's mass rally was the fifth which Erdogan has called since protests began in Istanbul in an unprecedented challenge to his 10-year rule.
The unrest was triggered when police used force against campaigners opposed to plans to develop Istanbul's Gezi Park, but they quickly turned into a broader show of anger at what critics call Erdogan's growing authoritarianism.
The protests have underlined divisions in Turkish society between religious conservatives who form the bedrock of Erdogan's support and more liberal Turks who have swelled the ranks of demonstrators.
He ending his speech by throwing red carnations to the roughly 15,000-strong crowd in the AK Party stronghold.
MARCH ELECTIONS
The AK Party rallies are focused on boosting party support ahead of municipal elections scheduled for next March and Erdogan said voters would then give their verdict on the weeks of unrest.
"Those who came out using the excuse of Gezi at Taksim Square will get their answer at the ballot box," he said.
Erdogan, who won a third consecutive election in 2011 with 50 percent support, sees himself as a champion of democratic reform, and has been riled by the protests and by international condemnation coming mainly from key trade partner Germany.
Saturday's clashes occurred after thousands of protesters gathered in Istanbul's Taksim Square, which adjoins Gezi Park, to remember the three demonstrators and one police officer who died in earlier protests. Many refused to leave after calls from the police for them to disperse.
Erdogan defended the tactics of the police, who also used fired teargas canisters to scatter protesters in nearby streets in cat-and-mouse clashes.
"Yesterday they wanted to occupy the square again. The police were patient up to a certain point," he said. "When they didn't leave the police was forced to get them out."
There were also clashes on Saturday night in the capital Ankara, where riot police fired water cannon and teargas to break up hundreds of protesters.
The interior ministry estimates about 2.5 million people have taken part in demonstrations across Turkey since the unrest began on May 31, Milliyet newspaper reported on Sunday.
Around 4,900 protesters have been detained and 4,000 protesters and 600 police injured, the report added.
The interior ministry also said the protests had caused 140 million lira ($72 million) worth of damage to public buildings and vehicles.
($1 = 1.9388 Turkish liras)
(Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/turkish-police-break-protest-pm-lambasts-opponents-153851912.html
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Feds: Nuclear waste may be leaking into soil from Hanford site
Mark Ralston / AFP - Getty Images file
Government officials said radioactive waste might be leaking into the soil from a nuclear site in Hanford, Washington state. Governor Jay Inslee said the situation should be treated with the "utmost seriousness."
By Shannon Dininny, The Associated Press
An underground tank holding some of the worst radioactive waste at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site might be leaking into the soil.
The U.S. Energy Department said workers at Washington state's Hanford Nuclear Reservation detected higher radioactivity levels under tank AY-102 during a routine inspection Thursday.
Spokeswoman Lori Gamache said the department has notified Washington officials and is investigating the leak further. An engineering analysis team will conduct additional sampling and video inspection to determine the source of the contamination, she said.
State and federal officials have long said leaking tanks at Hanford do not pose an immediate threat to the environment or public health.
The largest waterway in the Pacific Northwest ? the Columbia River ? is still at least 5 miles away and the closest communities are several miles downstream.
However, if this dangerous waste escapes the tank into the soil, it raises concerns about it traveling to the groundwater and someday potentially reaching the river.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said in a statement that the situation "must be treated with the utmost seriousness."
Inslee said additional testing is expected to take several days.
"Our state experts confirm that there is no immediate public health threat. Given the relatively early detection of this potential leak, the river is not at immediate risk of contamination should it be determined that a leak has occurred outside the tank," he said.
Tom Carpenter, executive director of the Seattle-based advocacy group Hanford Challenge, said, "this is really, really bad. They are going to pollute the ground and the groundwater with some of the nastiest stuff, and they don't have a solution for it."
AY-102 is one of Hanford's 28 tanks with two walls, which were installed years ago when single-shell tanks began leaking. Some of the worst liquid in those tanks was pumped into the sturdier double-shell tanks.
The tanks are now beyond their intended life span. The Energy Department announced last year that AY-102 was leaking between its two walls, but it said then that no waste had escaped.
Two radionuclides comprise much of the radioactivity in Hanford's tanks: cesium-137 and strontium-90. Both take hundreds of years to decay, and exposure to either would increase a person's risk of developing cancer.
At the height of World War II, the federal government created Hanford in the remote sagebrush of eastern Washington as part of a hush-hush project to build the atomic bomb. The site ultimately produced plutonium for the world's first atomic blast and for one of two atomic bombs dropped on Japan, and it continued production through the Cold War.
Today, it is the nation's most contaminated nuclear site, with cleanup expected to last decades. The effort ? with a price tag of about $2 billion annually ? has cost taxpayers $40 billion to date and is estimated will cost $115 billion more.
The most challenging task so far has been the removal of highly radioactive waste from the 177 aging, underground tanks and construction of a plant to treat that waste.
The Energy Department recently notified Washington and Oregon that it may miss two upcoming deadlines to empty some tanks and to complete a key part of the plant to handle some of the worst waste.
Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz visited the site Wednesday for the first time since being confirmed by the Senate in May. He said he intends to have a new plan by the end of the summer for resolving the technical problems with the waste treatment plant.
Related:
Head of company overseeing leaking nuclear tanks at Hanford to step down
Six tanks now said to be leaking at contaminated Hanford nuclear site
Tank at Hanford nuclear site leaking radioactive liquids, Washington governor says
? 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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FAA moving toward easing electronic device use
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Relief may be on the way for airline passengers who can't bear to be separated even briefly from their personal electronic devices. The government is moving toward allowing gate-to-gate use of music players, tablets, laptops, smartphones and other gadgets, although it may take a few months.
Restrictions on cellphone calls and Internet use and transmission are not expected to be changed.
An industry-labor advisory committee was supposed to make recommendations next month to the Federal Aviation Administration on easing restrictions on using electronic devices during takeoffs and landings. But the agency said in a statement Friday the deadline has been extended to September because committee members asked for extra time to finish assessing whether it's safe to lift restrictions.
"The FAA recognizes consumers are intensely interested in the use of personal electronics aboard aircraft; that is why we tasked a government-industry group to examine the safety issues and the feasibility of changing the current restrictions," the statement said.
The agency is under public and political pressure to ease the restrictions as more people bring their devices with them when they fly in order to read e-books, listen to music, watch videos, and get work done.
Technically, the FAA doesn't bar use of electronic devices when aircraft are below 10,000 feet. But under FAA rules, airlines that want to let passengers use the devices are faced with a practical impossibility ? they would have to show that they've tested every type and make of device passengers would use to ensure there is no electromagnetic interference with aircraft radios and electrical and electronic systems.
As a result, U.S. airlines simply bar all electric device use below 10,000 feet. Airline accidents are most likely to occur during takeoffs, landings and taxiing.
Using cellphones to make calls on planes is regulated by the Federal Communications Commission. There is concern that making calls from fast-flying planes might strain cellular systems, interfering with service on the ground. There is also the potential annoyance factor ? whether passengers will be unhappy if they have to listen to other passengers yakking on the phone.
The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that a draft report by the advisory committee indicates its 28 members have reached a consensus that at least some of the current restrictions should be eased.
A member of the committee told The Associated Press that while the draft report is an attempt to reach consensus, no formal agreement has yet been reached. The member was not authorized to discuss the committee's private deliberations and requested anonymity.
There are also still safety concerns, the member said. The electrical interference generated by today's devices is much lower than those of a decade ago, but many more passengers today are carrying electronics.
Any plan to allow gate-to-gate electronic use would also come with certification processes for new and existing aircraft to ensure that they are built or modified to mitigate those risks. Steps to be taken could include ensuring that all navigational antennas are angled away from the plane's doors and windows. Planes that are already certified for Wi-Fi would probably be more easily certified.
Although the restrictions have been broadly criticized as unnecessary, committee members saw value in them.
One of the considerations being weighed is whether some heavier devices like laptops should continue to be restricted because they might become dangerous projectiles, hurting other passengers during a crash, the committee member said. There is less concern about tablets and other lighter devices.
FAA officials would still have the final say. An official familiar with FAA's efforts on the issue said agency officials would like to find a way to allow passengers to use electronic devices during takeoffs and landings the same way they're already allowed to use them when planes are cruising above 10,000 feet. The official requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak by name.
FAA Administrator Michael Huerta told a Senate panel in April that he convened the advisory committee in the hope of working out changes to the restrictions.
"It's good to see the FAA may be on the verge of acknowledging what the traveling public has suspected for years ? that current rules are arbitrary and lack real justification," Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., one of Congress' more outspoken critics of the restrictions, said in a statement. She contends that unless scientific evidence can be presented to justify the restrictions, they should be lifted.
Edward Pizzarello, the co-founder of frequent flier discussion site MilePoint, says lifting the restriction is "long overdue."
"I actually feel like this regulation has been toughest on flight attendants. Nobody wants to shut off their phone, and the flight attendants are always left to be the bad guys and gals," said Pizzarello, 38, of Leesburg, Va.
Actor Alec Baldwin became the face of passenger frustration with the restrictions in 2011 when he was kicked off a New York-bound flight in Los Angeles for refusing to turn off his cellphone. Baldwin later issued an apology to fellow American Airlines passengers who were delayed, but mocked the flight attendant on Twitter.
"I just hope they do the sensible thing and don't allow people to talk on their cellphones during flight," said Pizzarello, who flies 150,000 to 200,000 miles a year. "There are plenty of people that don't have the social skills necessary to make a phone call on a plane without annoying the people around them. Some things are better left alone."
___
Mayerowitz reported from New York.
___
Follow Joan Lowy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AP_Joan_Lowy
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/faa-moving-toward-easing-electronic-device-183139775.html
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RadioShack bundling $100 Google Play store credit with HTC One purchases
Loyal Engadget readers know that we don't normally trouble ourselves with promotions, but this one is too wild to ignore. Until June 30th, RadioShack is offering the HTC One to AT&T and Sprint customers with an added bonus -- a $100 credit for the Google Play store. Should you elect to sign up with Sprint, you'll basically get away like a bandit since RadioShack has slashed the price of the handset to $79.99 for new activations -- on two-year contracts, of course. After all is said and done, you would basically leave $20 richer than when you started (sort of). So, if you've been lusting after the HTC One but have held off on buying it, the universe might be trying to tell you something.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, HTC, Sprint, AT&T
Via: Phone Arena
Source: Radio Shack
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/t1PU03rRnYs/
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Republicans Have Already Lost the Hispanic Vote (Taegan Goddard's Political Wire)
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