Essential information about KGS, from our vision to our values.
We have a long history, but our aims are timeless: to prepare young people for the world around them, instilling aspiration, participation, partnership and regard along the way.
On 1st March 1561 Queen Elizabeth I put her seal to a Charter which established the "free grammar school of Queen Elizabeth, for the education, training and instruction of boys and youths in grammar." There is written evidence of a public school in Kingston at least 200 years earlier, and some historians suggest that the Charter was putting the royal stamp on a school that had been operating since the Middle Ages.
We are a strong and vibrant team made up of 100+ key teaching staff. We are always looking for the right people to join our outstanding team of teaching and support staff.
Pastoral care is central to all that we do. Our dedicated and highly trained staff provide the best all round care for pupils. Every pupil belongs to a form group with a dedicated tutor, head of year and housemaster.
Relevant school policies are available online to current and prospective parents.
Kingston Grammar School is located on London Road, just minutes from Kingston town centre and train station. Our 22 acre sports field and Boat House are situated three miles away at Ditton Field.
A number of our facilities are available to hire for weddings, parties, conferences, exhibitions performances and more. Our dedicated Events Coordinator will be happy to discuss all the options available to you.


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How many stonefishes at Sentosa?
Olive-backed Sunbird feeding chicks
Health Checks and Radio Collars: Pangolins Get Ready for Release
from EDGE Blog
PM Lee highlights wild boars, graffiti on need to be "messy selectively"
S. Ramesh Channel NewsAsia 13 Jul 12;
NEW DELHI: Would Singapore's leaders allow some "mess" in a creative society?
That was a question posed to Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the Singapore Symposium held in New Delhi, India, on Thursday.
The Singapore Symposium, organised by the Institute of South Asian Studies and the Asepan India Centre, attracted leading thinkers, politicians and analysts from Singapore and India.
They shared their views and perspectives on international and local issues.
Mr Lee used two recent issues - wild boars and graffiti - to highlight the way Singapore authorities are striking the balance.
Mr Lee said: "I would become messy selectively. There are some areas where you must accept that you cannot do things in a linear or hierarchical way. I decide, you refine, he implements. You have to have an interaction, discussion. There will be objections, you have views but something has to be done.
"We have a peculiar problem which you consider quaint. We have an abundance of wild boars in our nature reserves - about 100 of them - and they are causing a problem. In the old days, we would have just said solve the problem and tomorrow they would be literally gone. But now it has been discussed.
"There are animal lovers who feel you shouldn't cull them, sterilise them, maybe you should keep them in the zoo and have an exhibit of wild boars. Others would say they are part of the natural system and if they exist, it is good. But there are also families who say the wild boar killed my dog, another family says the wild boar knocked over my child, better do something about it. Finally, we have to do something about it.
"But we have to go through this discussion and engagement, and explanation and in the end, it takes longer but it will be done. I am not sure whether we will get the very last wild boar but we will solve this problem.
"As with wild boars, so with many other problems, where we have to do something and engage the people - the physical messiness along the streets - graffiti, I would strongly discourage. We invite graffiti artists, by invitation to perform on designated walls with permission but if you decide to freelance extra, I better do an investigation on how it came about. We want to do this in a controlled way. If the Pandora box is open, then we can't put the demons back."
- CNA/de
PM okay with politics getting messier selectively
NEW DELHI - Singapore is slowly letting its politics get a little messier, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in response to a question from a participant at a symposium organised by Singapore and Indian think tanks.
But he also made it clear that the Singapore Government meant to keep some measure of control over the process. He cited two examples: the culling of wild boar and street graffiti.
The question put to him was on whether Singapore would tolerate more mess so as to become vibrant and creative like India.
'I will become messy selectively,' he quipped, drawing laughter and applause.
In the case of wild boar, Mr Lee recalled that in the past, creatures that caused problems for people would be dealt with immediately. Now, the process takes longer because many people are given a chance to air their views, from animal lovers to families who fear for their children's safety.
The need to engage and explain to the people affected also extends to areas such as land acquisitions. While the authorities have legal powers to act, the affected parties have to understand the decision and that they are being fairly treated.
'There are some areas where you must accept that you cannot do things just in a linear or a hierarchical way - I decide, you refine, he implements. You have to have an interaction, a discussion, a flow of ideas, there will be objections and views and in the end something has to be done.'
He draws the line however at street graffiti, which he would strongly discourage. He did not mention any specific incident but much debate has been generated by the arrest of a woman who allegedly pasted stickers on traffic lights and stencil-painted roads with Singlish phrases.
Mr Lee said to laughter: 'I would invite graffiti artists to perform on designated walls, with permission, but if you decide to freelance extra, I better do an investigation and find out how it came about.
'We want to do this in a controlled way. Once you have let go, Pandora's box is opened, you cannot put all the demons back into place.'
GOH CHIN LIAN
labels singapore, singaporeans-and-nature, urban-development, wild-boar
Relatives claim 1,000 graves at Bukit Brown
It is about a quarter of the total number slated for exhumation
Tessa Wong Straits Times 13 Jul 12;
ABOUT a quarter of the Bukit Brown graves that must go to make way for an expressway have been claimed in the last four months by relatives.
This works out to 1,005 graves, of which most will be exhumed by a contractor hired by the Land Transport Authority (LTA), said its spokesman yesterday. The Government will pay for this public exhumation.
Only 178 of the applications sent to the LTA between March - when the Government said it would go ahead with the highway - and the start of this month wanted a private exhumation, which allows relatives to pick the date and time.
So far, 93 have been exhumed privately, while the public exhumation will start in January. An LTA spokesman said that as a tender has yet to be called, it cannot say how much this will cost.
A total of 3,746 graves will be exhumed and relatives have until Dec 31 to claim the graves.
Dr Hui Yew-Foong, an anthropologist at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, expects half of the graves to be claimed for a cemetery of Bukit Brown's age, which is about 90 years.
'The older the cemetery, the lower the claim rate, as ancestors are usually remembered for only two to three generations,' he said.
Unclaimed remains will be individually cremated, and the Government will keep them for three years. If still unclaimed, the ashes will be scattered at sea.
The decision to build a road through part of the historical burial ground to ease congestion on Lornie Road has sparked intense debate on preserving Singapore's heritage.
Though the exhumed graves form only a tiny proportion of the 100,000 graves at Bukit Brown, the entire 86 ha site is earmarked for a housing estate - a fact which, though not new, was raised again amid debate.
Various groups have swung into action to petition for preservation and to conduct tours of one of Singapore's last historical burial sites.
Dr Hui's team has documented about 90 per cent of the affected graves. They will also document the exhumations, he said.
Last month, his team documented the first private exhumation - that of Mr Ong Seah Say, who died in 1942.
Mr Ong was a member of the Singapore branch of Tongmenghui in the 1900s, the Chinese Revolutionary Alliance started by Dr Sun Yat Sen, who founded the Republic of China.
The Nature Society, with groups from the Singapore universities and the Government, is carrying out wildlife surveys. Society president Shawn Lum said he hopes the groups can eventually create a map with detailed information on, among other things, the wildlife clusters, and flora and fauna of the entire cemetery.
'As the Government intends to build a housing estate on the land eventually, this survey will help planners designate green spaces and decide which parts to preserve,' said Dr Lum.
Groups formed to preserve Bukit Brown's history say weekly public tours are packed.
And the number of private tours carried out for organisations has risen from an average of five a month before March to around eight a month now, said Ms Catherine Lim, co-founder of All Things Bukit Brown.
Students also ask the Singapore Heritage Society for help on Bukit Brown school projects.
Mr Woon Tien Wei of SOS Bukit Brown said his group is carrying out street surveys on people's sentiment about preserving the cemetery and collecting petition letters.
It plans to submit a report to the Government by year-end.
Academic Terence Chong, an executive committee member of the Heritage Society, is not surprised at the strong interest.
'There is an especially greater yearning among younger Singaporeans to get in touch with their roots because we became global and cosmopolitan so fast. So it is natural that there is a desire to look back into the past for authenticity and comfort,' he said.
labels singapore, singaporeans-and-nature, transport, urban-development
Coral Reefs in the Indo-Pacific Ocean Naturally Tougher Than Caribbean Reefs
ScienceDaily 12 Jul 12;
Coral reefs in the Indo-Pacific region, including the Great Barrier Reef, recover faster from major stresses than their Caribbean counterparts, leading marine scientists have said.
Dr George Roff and Professor Peter Mumby from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and The University of Queensland told the 12th International Coral Reef Symposium in Cairns on July 12 that coral reefs in the Indo-Pacific Ocean are naturally tougher than the Caribbean reefs.
"The main reason that Indo-Pacific reefs are more resilient is they have less seaweed than the Caribbean Sea," Dr Roff says. "Seaweed and corals are age-old competitors in the battle for space. When seaweed growth rates are lower, such as the Indo-Pacific region, the reefs recover faster from setbacks. This provides coral with a competitive advantage over seaweed, and our study suggests that these reefs would have to be heavily degraded for seaweeds to take over.
"This doesn't mean that we can be complacent -- reefs around the world are still heavily threatened by climate change and human activities," he says. "What it indicates is Indo-Pacific reefs will respond better to protection, and steps we take to keep them healthy have a better chance of succeeding."
"Many of the doom and gloom stories have emanated from the Caribbean, which has deteriorated rapidly in the last 30 years," says Professor Mumby. "We now appreciate that the Indo-Pacific and Caribbean are far more different than we thought."
The study, published in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution (TREE), includes survey data Indo-Pacific region and Caribbean reefs from 1965 to 2010.
The researchers also found that seaweeds in Indo-Pacific region bloom four times more slowly than those in the Caribbean.
"We're not sure why this happens, but a plausible theory is that Caribbean waters are highly enriched in iron," they say. "For thousands of years, the Caribbean Sea has received dusts that blow across the Atlantic from the Sahara, and the dust contains iron -- an essential element for algae to grow.
"This suggests that the difference between the Indo-Pacific and Caribbean oceans and their coral reefs is fundamental, and occurs at a very large scale.
"Another factor that protects these reefs is the abundance of herbivorous fish, such as surgeon and parrotfish that treat seaweed as a delicacy. The Indo-Pacific region has a lot of these fishes.
"For instance, the Indo-Pacific region has 70 species and six genera of parrotfish, while the Caribbean only has 13 species and two genera of the fish."
While the findings indicate a brighter future for the Indo-Pacific reefs, nations such as Australia will need to maintain vigilant protection of the ocean, the researchers warn.
"All reefs face an uncertain future, particularly in places with lots of human activities," they say. "We still need to curb the overfishing of herbivorous fish, as they are very sought after in the Pacific. We also need to control the level of nutrients in the water and prevent runoff when necessary.
"The good news is that our Indo-Pacific reefs are tougher than we thought -- we just need to make sure that our actions won't destroy their natural resilience."
Reefs 'tougher than we thought'
ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
Science Alert 13 Jul 12;
Coral reefs in the Indo-Pacific region, including the Great Barrier Reef, recover faster from major stresses than their Caribbean counterparts, leading marine scientists said.
Dr George Roff and Professor Peter Mumby from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and The University of Queensland told the 12th International Coral Reef Symposium in Cairns that coral reefs in the Indo-Pacific region are naturally tougher than the Caribbean reefs.
"The main reason that Indo-Pacific reefs are more resilient is they have less seaweed than the Caribbean Sea," Dr Roff says.
"Seaweed and corals are age-old competitors in the battle for space. When seaweed growth rates are lower, such as the Indo-Pacific region, the reefs recover faster from setbacks. This provides coral with a competitive advantage over seaweed, and our study suggests that these reefs would have to be heavily degraded for seaweeds to take over.
"This doesn't mean that we can be complacent – reefs around the world are still heavily threatened by climate change and human activities," he says. "What it indicates is Indo-Pacific reefs will respond better to protection, and steps we take to keep them healthy have a better chance of succeeding."
"Many of the doom and gloom stories have emanated from the Caribbean, which has deteriorated rapidly in the last 30 years," says Professor Mumby. "We now appreciate that the Indo-Pacific and Caribbean are far more different than we thought."
"We're not sure why this happens, but a plausible theory is that Caribbean waters are highly enriched in iron," they say. "For thousands of years, the Caribbean Sea has received dusts that blow across the Atlantic from the Sahara, and the dust contains iron – an essential element for algae to grow.
"This suggests that the difference between the Indo-Pacific and Caribbean oceans and their coral reefs is fundamental, and occurs at a very large scale.
"Another factor that protects these reefs is the abundance of herbivorous fish, such as surgeon and parrotfish that treat seaweed as a delicacy. The Indo-Pacific region has a lot of these fishes.
"For instance, the Indo-Pacific region has 70 species and six genera of parrotfish, while the Caribbean only has 13 species and two genera of the fish."
"All reefs face an uncertain future, particularly in places with lots of human activities," they say. "We still need to curb the overfishing of herbivorous fish, as they are very sought after in the Pacific. We also need to control the level of nutrients in the water and prevent runoff when necessary.
"The good news is that our Indo-Pacific reefs are tougher than we thought – we just need to make sure that our actions won't destroy their natural resilience."
Free video clips to illustrate this article are available at Prof. Mumby's site http://www.reefvid.org. Images are available at http://bit.ly/MLBzCH
labels global, marine, reefs
Environment or profit - palm oil firm tests Indonesia
Olivia Rondonuwu and David Fogarty and Niluksi Koswanage
PlanetArk 13 Jul 12;
Insight: Environment or profit - palm oil firm tests Indonesia Photo: David Fogarty
A canal cuts through deep peat land at a palm oil plantation near Sebangau Kuala, Pulang Pisau Regency in Central Kalimantan June 19, 2012.
Photo: David Fogarty
An Indonesian palm oil firm received preliminary approval six years ago for a large plantation in a swampy, forested corner of Borneo island, bringing the promise of jobs and roads to impoverished villages.
By the book, that would have marked the start of a lengthy licensing and environmental approvals process before clearing and planting could start.
The firm, PT Suryamas Cipta Perkasa (SCP), didn't wait. It quickly cleared thousands of hectares of forest. That revelation recently set off alarm bells at major international palm oil trading firms Bunge and Cargill, which have made public pledges to source edible oil from plantations developed without cutting down forests illegally.
PT SCP is now under investigation from a presidential taskforce on forests and land reform as well as local police for clearing and developing the concession before getting mandatory environmental approvals. The investigation has become a test of Indonesia's pledge to clamp down on illegal forest clearing and pull plantation and mining firms into line.
Pressure is also building on PT SCP's parent PT Best Agro International Group, a large unlisted Indonesian palm oil plantation owner, processor and exporter.
"The allegation of illegal deforestation is deeply disturbing and should be addressed by PT Best quickly and transparently," major customer Bunge, a global agribusiness and food company, said in an email to Reuters. "If proven true, Bunge will take appropriate steps to ensure that our supply chain reflects our principles."
International conservation group Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) conducted a detailed probe into PT SCP and handed its findings to the Indonesian government. The British-based NGO also gave its findings to Reuters.
Further examination by Reuters of official documents, interviews and satellite images reveals how the 23,000-hectare (57,500 acre) concession in Central Kalimantan province was developed and cleared apparently in violation of multiple laws.
"PT SCP is suspected to have committed violations to the concession area since three years ago at the very least," said Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, one of Indonesia's most respected officials and head of the presidential taskforce on forests and land reform.
The allegations are being investigated by the taskforce and police in Central Kalimantan, a province in the Indonesian portion of Borneo, a vast island east of Singapore with an interior of dense tropical rainforest. If found guilty, PT SCP directors could be jailed and the concession's license revoked.
Villagers are also waging a campaign against PT SCP for compensation and loss of livelihoods, saying the firm never properly consulted them about the plantation plan.
Officials at PT SCP and PT Best deny wrongdoing and point to conflicting national and local laws in the area and say fair compensation was offered.
PT SCP official Wahyu Bima Dharta said the plantation had brought jobs and development. One local official also defended PT SCP, saying it had helped the economy.
"In the past, even the devil didn't want to enter this area," Dharta said, referring to the concession.
Illegal deforestation is widespread in Southeast Asia's biggest economy, especially in Central Kalimantan, where scores of palm oil and mining concessions overlap with protected forests.
British-based NGO Forest Peoples Programme and Sawit Watch of Indonesia say Indonesian laws offer weak protection for community land rights. They point to figures from Indonesia's National Land Bureau stating there are about 5,500 land conflicts, of which 3,500 relate to palm oil.
BILLION-DOLLAR PROMISE
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has set a goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by saving Indonesia's dwindling rainforests, a pledge that won the promise of $1 billion from Norway should he succeed. Indonesia has the world's third-largest area of tropical rainforest.
But Yudhoyono faces huge pressure because of soaring global demand for palm oil, used in everything from cookies to lipstick to biofuels, and the government plans to double current output to 40 million metric tons (44.1 million tons) a year. Indonesia is the world's top palm oil producer and earns $20 billion a year from exporting the edible oil.
A recent trip to PT SCP's concession in Pulang Pisau district in Central Kalimantan showed how advanced the plantation is.
Criss-crossing the plantation along roads laid out in a grid-pattern, deep canals drain tea-colored water from the black peat soil where forests stood a few years ago. The deep peat stores large amounts of carbon, which when drained or burned is released into the air, stoking climate change.
Plots marked with tags show some areas planted in March 2008 and already bearing palm fruits for harvest.
At the northwest edge of the plantation, a canal marks the boundary with thick forest on one side where several endangered orang-utans were gathered before fleeing at the sight of people. A GPS tracking device confirmed the area was part of PT SCP's concession area.
EIA's report details eight suspected violations against Indonesian law committed by PT SCP. The report cites the laws and includes copies of official documents supporting its findings. "This is a test case that will show us very clearly if the government is able or willing to enforce the law," said Tomasz Johnson, a forest campaigner for EIA who investigated the company.
Indonesia has abundant laws to protect its forests. But lax enforcement and corruption mean cases go unpunished, NGOs say.
ALL IN THE TIMING
At the heart of the issue is PT SCP's development of the plantation without getting approval for its environmental impact assessment report. The firm has also planted in deep peat, data used by the Ministry of Forestry shows. A presidential decree bans planting in peat more than 3 meters deep.
Indonesian law states that plantation and mining firms need an approved environmental impact assessment before carrying out any business or activities. Failure to comply can result in up to three years in jail and 3 billion rupiah ($318,000) in fines.
PT SCP official Dharta said an environmental impact assessment report had been done but not approved by provincial authorities. A senior company official from PT Best, who declined to be named, told Reuters the firm would try to get the environmental assessment approved in one or two months.
The key to the issue is the timing.
Indonesia's complex permitting process for a plantation can take up to three years, meaning the firm was obliged to wait until receiving its major environmental and business approvals.
Satellite imagery analysis by Thomson Reuters subsidiary Lanworth, which specializes in agriculture, forestry and renewable energy, shows the concession area being cleared from 2006, when the firm had only received a preliminary approval that did not give it the right to clear land.
It shows that before the clearing of PT SCP's concession, forest cover was 17,600 hectares in 2004-05, or 75 percent of the total. By late 2011, just over 2,100 ha of forest and other vegetation was left. Large areas of clearing started in September-November 2006 and continued into 2009, the analysis shows.
The firm also never received a forest clearance permit from the Ministry of Forestry. Dharta told Reuters this was because of confusion over the application of national and regional laws.
"We are actually the victim here. There is uncertainty in the law where this area should go to," he said.
A 2011 Ministry of Forestry decree shows the concession area as a combination of production, protection and conservation forest, meaning it has not been released for development.
Local officials and the company say a provincial bylaw removes the obligation for firms to get Ministry of Forestry approval to clear forest for a palm oil plantation, a view the ministry disputes.
Usis Sangkai, district head for economic administration and natural resources, said PT SCP had developed "abandoned land" and boosted the economy.
Presidential adviser Mangkusubroto told Reuters his team was investigating evidence PT SCP had also extended the plantation beyond its boundaries.
Local landowner Haji Asmadi, a thin, energetic man of 60, says villagers were never properly consulted on plans to develop the plantation, a view disputed by PT SCP and PT Best. He is leading a claim for compensation for about 5,600 hectares of land within the concession.
Indonesian shipping records obtained by Reuters show that PT Best has been expanding its reach slowly.
Last year, Bunge accounted for a third of the more than 50,000 tonnes of palm oil cargoes shipped from PT Best in Belawan port in Sumatra, the main export hub for the commodity.
Cargill confirmed a single purchase of palm oil products from PT Best in September 2011 and said it would halt purchases from the firm if any illegality was proven.
(Editing by Ed Davies)
Amazon Due for Numerous Species Extinctions
Joseph Castro LiveScience.com Yahoo News 13 Jul 12;
When species lose their natural habitat to deforestation and other causes, they don't immediately disappear. Instead, they gradually die off over several generations, racking up an "extinction debt" that must eventually be paid in full. New research shows that the Brazilian Amazon has accrued a heavy vertebrate extinction debt, with more than 80 percent of extinctions expected from historical deforestation still impending.
While the results are alarming, this deathly time lag provides a conservation opportunity to save some of the disappearing species, scientists said, stressing that actions taken in the next few years are critical.
"Now that we know where the extinction debt is likely to be, we can go to the ground to restore habitat and take remedial actions to try to regenerate new habitats," said study lead author Robert Ewers, an ecologist at Imperial College London in the U.K. "We can try to put off ever having to pay that debt."
Extinction debt
The Brazilian Amazonis home to about 40 percent of the planet's tropical forests and a staggering amount of biodiversity. However, the Amazon's plant and animal species are under threat by deforestation, mostly due to agriculture and cattle ranging. [Stunning Photos of the Amazon]
Ewers and his colleagues set out to determine how many species would be lost from at least part of their historical habitats in the Amazon because of past and future deforestation. They began by looking at the "species-area relationship," a well-established ecological pattern describing how the number of species in a given habitat increases predictably as the habitat area increases. By turning this idea on its head, you can figure out how many species should go extinct as their habitat shrinks.
The researchers modeled the number of vertebrate species expected to go extinct within 31-mile by 31-mile blocks (50 by 50 kilometer blocks). They used a combination of deforestation data spanning back to 1970 and species-distribution maps of the Amazon. They compared their model's predictions with the actual number of extinctions seen thus far in the forest regions and found that 80 to 90 percent of the expected local extinctions have yet to happen, and many of them will occur in the southern and eastern regions of the Amazon.
Next, Ewers and his team used their model to estimate the magnitude of the local extinctions and extinction debts expected to occur in four scenarios, which mainly differ in their projections of future deforestation rates. Under the most likely scenario, every forest block will lose an average of about nine vertebrate speciesand be in debt for another 16 species by 2050.
And in all scenarios, species will continue to go extinct more than three decades after deforestation in the Amazon has stopped, if key forest areas are not restored, the researchers found.
"What we've seen in the last four decades is nothing like what we are going to see in the next four decades," Ewers told LiveScience.
Defaulting on the debt
Thiago Rangel, an ecologist at the Federal University of Goiás in Brazil who wasn't involved in the research, was surprised to see the Amazon's huge extinction debt. "Of course, that gives Brazil a very good opportunity for conservation measures," Rangel said. [10 Species You Can Kiss Goodbye]
Rangel, who wrote a perspective article accompanying the study published July 13 in the journal Science, pointed out that Brazil has made a lot of progress in reducing deforestation in the last decade. Moreover, the county has been expanding its network of protected areas — more than 50 percent of the Amazon is now under some form of environmental protection.
"But we are in the middle of a strong transition in Brazil from a very good and modern environmental legislation to something else," Rangel told LiveScience. Agricultural businesses, for example, have been lobbying for weaker forest protection codes — this past May, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff vetoed portions of such a bill, though this isn't likely the end of the debate, Rangel said.
Rangel stresses that Brazil must "default on its extinction debt," possibly by creating more conservation areas, particularly in places that have been abandoned by agriculturalists. Whatever the case, something needs to be done soon, he said.
Ewers agreed. "This problem has been building, and it will soon roll over and crash like a wave," he said.
Amazon's doomed species set to pay deforestation's 'extinction debt'
Ending forest clearance would not save some species from the effects of decades of destruction, scientists find
Ian Sample guardian.co.uk 12 Jul 12;
The destruction of great swaths of the Brazilian Amazon has turned scores of rare species into the walking dead, doomed to disappear even if deforestation were halted in the region overnight, according to a new study.
Forest clearing in Brazil has already claimed casualties, but the animals lost to date in the rainforest region are just one-fifth of those that will slowly die out as the full impact of the loss of habitat takes its toll. In parts of the eastern and southern Amazon, 30 years of concerted deforestation have shrunk viable living and breeding territories enough to condemn 38 species to regional extinction in coming years, including 10 mammal, 20 bird and eight amphibian species, scientists found.
The systematic clearance of trees from the Amazon forces wildlife into ever-smaller patches of ground.
Though few species are killed off directly in forest clearances, many face a slower death sentence as their breeding rates fall and competition for food becomes more intense.
Scientists at Imperial College, London, reached the bleak conclusion after creating a statistical model to calculate the Brazilian Amazon's "extinction debt", or the number of species headed for extinction as a result of past deforestation. The model draws on historical deforestation rates and animal populations in 50 by 50 kilometre squares of land.
It stops short of naming the species most at risk, but field workers in the region have drawn attention to scores of creatures struggling to cope with habitat destruction and other environmental threats.
White-cheeked spider monkeys, which feed on fruits high in the forest canopy, are endangered largely because of the expansion of farmland and road building. The population of Brazilian bare-faced tamarins has halved in 18 years, or three generations, as cities, agriculture and cattle ranching has pushed into the rainforest. The endangered giant otter, found in the slow-moving rivers and swamps of the Amazon, faces water pollution from agricultural runoff and mining operations in the area.
Writing in the journal Science, Robert Ewers and his co-authors reconstructed extinction rates from 1970 to 2008, and then forecast future extinction debts under four different scenarios, ranging from "business as usual" to a "strong reduction" in forest clearance, which required deforestation to slow down 80% by 2020.
"For now, the problem is along the arc of deforestation in the south and east where there is a long history of forest loss. But that is going to move in the future. We expect most of the species there to go extinct, and we'll pick up more extinction debt along the big, paved highways which are now cutting into the heart of the Amazon," Ewers told the Guardian from Belém, northern Brazil.
Under the "business as usual" scenario, where around 62 sq miles (160 sqkm) of forest are cleared each year, at least 15 mammal, 30 bird and 10 amphibian species were expected to die out locally by 2050, from around half of the Amazon. Under the most optimistic scenario, which requires cattle ranchers and soy farmers to comply with Brazilian environmental laws, the extinction debt could be held close to 38 species.
Ewers said the model reveals hotspots in the Brazilian Amazon where conservation efforts should be focused on the most vulnerable wildlife. "This shows us where we are likely to have high concentrations of species which are all in trouble, and that becomes a way for directing our conservation efforts. We are talking about an extinction debt. Those species are still alive, so we have an opportunity to get in there and restore the habitat to avoid paying that debt," Ewers said.
The Brazilian Amazon is home to 40% of the world's tropical forest and one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet. About 54% of the area is under environmental protection, and in the past five years, stricter controls and better compliance have driven deforestation rates down to a historical low.
The trend towards less deforestation might not last though. Under pressure from the financial crisis, the Brazilian government has proposed a rapid development programme in the Amazon to fuel the economy. The move foresees the construction of more than 20 hydroelectric power plants in the Amazon basin and an extensive push into the rainforest.
Environmentalists are further concerned about an overhaul to Brazil's Forest Code, which is widely expected to weaken the protection of the rainforest, and potentially speed up deforestation once more, according to an accompanying article in Science by Thiago Rangel, an ecologist at the Federal University of Goiás in Brazil. "Extinction debts in the Brazilian Amazon are one debt that should be defaulted on," he writes.
Reducing the rate that extinction debts build up is not enough to preserve the Amazon's biodiversity, Rangel argues. "The existing debt may eventually lead to the loss of species. To prevent species extinctions, it is necessary to take advantage of the window of opportunity for forest regeneration. Restored or regenerated forests initially show lower native species richness than the original forests they replaced, but they gradually recover species richness, composition and vital ecosystems functions, reducing extinction debt and mitigating local species loss," he writes.
labels forests, global, global-biodiversity
Drought leads to declaration of natural disaster in 26 US states
Decision means farmers who have lost crops in more than 1,000 counties are eligible for assistance from government
Suzanne Goldenberg guardian.co.uk 13 Jul 12;
America declared a natural disaster in more than 1,000 drought-stricken counties in 26 states on Thursday.
It was the largest declaration of a national disaster and was intended to speed relief to about a third of the country's farmers and ranchers who are suffering in drought conditions.
The declaration from the US department of agriculture includes most of the south-west, which has been scorched by wildfires, parts of the midwestern corn belt, and the south-east.
It was intended to free up funds for farmers whose crops have withered in extreme heatwave conditions linked by scientists to climate change.
According to the US drought monitor, 56% of the country is experiencing drought conditions – the most expansive drought in more than a decade.
The agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, said the funds were intended to help farmers and ranchers across the country who have lost crops to extreme heat or wildfires.
The declaration will make affected ranchers and farmers eligible for low-interest loans and speed processing of disaster claims.
"Agriculture remains a bright spot in our nation's economy," Vilsack said. "We need to be cognisant of the fact that drought and weather conditions have severely impacted on farmers around the country."
The declaration covers counties in California, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Illinois, Indiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, Delaware and Hawaii. It does not include Iowa, the country's biggest corn producer.
The first six months of this year were the warmest on record, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said. Twenty-eight states east of the Rockies set temperature records.
Those record-breaking temperatures deepened drought conditions across much of the American west, triggering an early and violent season of wildfires in Utah, Idaho, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico.
The heat also destroyed expectations of a bumper corn crop. American farmers planted more than 96m acres of corn this year, the most in 75 years.
The early spring got the crop off to a good start but , after June's extreme heat, only 40% of the crop was in good condition, according to USDA figures.
From the midwest to the mid-Atlantic, meanwhile, there were triple digit temperatures, breaking hundreds of heat records. On Thursday, St Louis confirmed 18 deaths due to extreme heat conditions.
"The recent heat and dryness is catching up with us on a national scale," Michael Hayes, director of the national drought mitigation centre said in a statement.
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text:
Mohammad Sarwar Yusufzai (dari محمد سرور یوسفزی) – afgański piłkarz, reprezentant Afganistanu na Letnich Igrzyskach Olimpijskich 1948.

W Londynie, grano od razu w systemie pucharowym. Jego reprezentacja rozegrała jeden mecz w rundzie eliminacyjnej. Na Goldstone Ground w Brighton, Afgańczycy podejmowali reprezentację Luksemburga. Yusufzai wystąpił w tym meczu na pozycji napastnika. Jego reprezentacja przegrała jednak aż 0-6, tym samym odpadła ona z rywalizacji.

Przypisy

Bibliografia

Reprezentanci Afganistanu w piłce nożnej
Afgańscy olimpijczycy
Nieznana data urodzenia

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Description: Beautiful home with a backyard you'll love! Open floor plan with a cathedral ceiling in the living room and tall windows with remote control blinds facing the Ozone pool. The exposed brick wall on the opposite wall from the windows completes the modern elegance of the space. The kitchen features Australian sea pearl quartzite counter tops, a wine fridge, gas range with a built in griddle and grill, and stainless steel farm house sink. The split plan includes two bedrooms that share a Jack and Jill bathroom and a third guest bedroom with an en suite bathroom which could be used as a second master! The bonus room on the second floor is spacious and includes a half bath. The second floor also boasts a media room that feels just like you're at the theatre! The safe room is large and includes a built in bench seat. This home has everything and is ready for you!


text:
AKG C214 review
A mid-priced condenser mic that'll serve as a good studio all-rounder
By Mike Collins published 12 September 08
The C214 is a solid performer for anyone who wants to record a variety of instruments in the studio.
Easy to use. Maximum SPL capability with minimum noise. Matte greyish blue finish.
Not so great for electric bass.
MusicRadar Verdict
at Thomann
at Gear 4 Music
Designed, engineered and built in Vienna, Austria, AKG microphones have had an enviable reputation for technical excellence ever since the company was established more than 60 years ago.
These days, AKG is starting to pay more attention to what its customers want in other areas - so the designs are looking sexier, lots of accessories are supplied with the microphones, and the technical features are continually being improved.
The new C214 large diaphragm, side-fire condenser microphone is very reasonably priced when compared to its competitors. It has just one pickup pattern - cardioid - but it comes complete with a spider suspension mount and a foam windscreen all neatly packaged in a metal carrying case - ideal for taking out on the road. And you don't have to pay out extra for these items, most of which you are going to want.
Technically, the C214 uses a 1-inch edge-terminated large diaphragm capsule that delivers a highly detailed, up-front sound - and it can handle an incredible 143dB dynamic range - accurately capturing transient details. It also features an integrated capsule suspension that reduces mechanical noise and resonance, further improving sonic accuracy.
The all-metal die-cast body provides a high degree of RF-immunity and has a shock- and scratch-resistant matte greyish-blue finish with a rugged double mesh grille to protect the capsule. The C214 has incredibly low self-noise, at just 13dB(A), along with very high headroom, and will work with phantom power sources ranging from 12 to 52V.
Switching in the microphone's 160Hz bass roll-off filter helps to remove unwanted low-frequency rumble (due to floor vibrations, handling noise or whatever) without unduly affecting the sound of most recorded voices or instruments. Using this filter also minimises the proximity effect that you get when close-miking sources from less than six inches.
Also, by switching in the pre-attenuation pad, you can increase the microphone's headroom by 20dB when you are recording very loud sound sources such as drum kits, guitar amps or trumpets, thus preventing the microphone's output from overloading the input of the mic preamplifier.
The C214 works well with vocals and speech, piano and organ and acoustic/electric guitars, but not quite as well with electric bass. It's recommended for recording strings, such as double bass, violin or cello, and it also performs well on drums - particularly for overheads.
The frequency response curve is flat from 60Hz up to 1kHz, giving it a very accurate and solid bottom end. It dips between 1kHz and 2.5kHz, down by a couple of dB at 2kHz, helping to prevent electric guitars from sounding too shrill, for instance, before rising again.
This 'wiggle' in the response is mirrored by a lift between 2.5 to 5kHz, up by a couple of dB at about 3.5kHz before falling back, which helps to make sure that instruments don't sound too 'dull'. Then, there is a steady rise in the response between 5.5kHz and 13kHz, giving a strong 'presence' lift to vocal and instrumental recordings.
In action, the C214 sounds extremely similar to the C414, but we prefer the C214 for electric guitar - it has a slightly 'punchier' sound. So, if you're on a budget, but prepared to spend a reasonable amount on a general-purpose studio microphone, the C214 is an excellent choice.
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text:
Culicidae Community Composition and Temporal Dynamics in Guapiaçu Ecological Reserve, Cachoeiras de Macacu, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Jeronimo Alencar ,
* E-mail: jalencar@ioc.fiocruz.br (JA); raquelgleiser@hotmail.com (RMG)
Affiliation Instituto Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz), Laboratório de Diptera, Manguinhos, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Cecilia Ferreira de Mello,
Anthony Érico Guimarães,
Hélcio R. Gil-Santana,
Júlia dos Santos Silva,
Affiliation Instituto Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz), Laboratório de Transmissores de Leishmanioses, Manguinhos, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Jacenir R. Santos- Mallet,
Raquel M. Gleiser
Affiliation Centro de Relevamiento y Evaluación de Recursos Agrícolas y Naturales-Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas—Universidad Nacinal de Córdoba, CONICET-UNC), Facultad de Ciencias Agropecuarias, and Cátedra de Ecología, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Córdoba, Argentina
Jeronimo Alencar,
Jeronimo Alencar Cecilia Ferreira de Mello ... Raquel M. Gleiser
A temporal observational study was conducted of the Culicidae fauna in a remnant area of Atlantic Forest within a private reserve (Guapiaçu Ecological Reserve-REGUA) presenting typical vegetation cover of dense rain forest, with some patches recovering a floristic composition similar to that of the original community. Research was carried out to analyze the influence of climatic factors (mean monthly temperature, rainfall, and air relative humidity) on the temporal dynamics of the mosquito communities that occur in the reserve. The completeness of the mosquito inventory was assessed with individual-based rarefaction-extrapolation curves. Differences in species composition between sites and months were tested with PERMANOVA. True diversities of orders 0, 1, and 2 (effective numbers) were estimated and compared between sites, months, and years. Multiple stepwise regressions were used to assess relationships between climatic variables, measures of diversity, and abundances of the most common species. There were significant interactive effects between year and site on measures of diversity. However, diversity estimates showed little variation among months, and these were weakly correlated with climatic variables. Abundances of the most common species were significantly related to temperature or relative humidity, but not rainfall. The presence of mosquito species known to be vectors of human diseases combined with an intermittent flow of visitors to the study area suggests there is a risk of disease transmission that warrants further monitoring.
Citation: Alencar J, de Mello CF, Guimarães AÉ, Gil-Santana HR, Silva JdS, Santos- Mallet JR, et al. (2015) Culicidae Community Composition and Temporal Dynamics in Guapiaçu Ecological Reserve, Cachoeiras de Macacu, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. PLoS ONE 10(3): e0122268. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0122268
Academic Editor: Alex Córdoba-Aguilar, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, MEXICO
Received: July 12, 2014; Accepted: February 16, 2015; Published: March 27, 2015
Copyright: © 2015 Alencar et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
Funding: Support was provided by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro-FAPERJ (contract 112.076/2012) [http://www.faperj.br/] to JA; and by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico-CNPq (301345/2013-9) [www.cnpq.br] to JA. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
The Atlantic Forest of South America is ranked among the world's top biodiversity hotspots. Stretching along the Atlantic coastline from northeast Brazil to Uruguay, only 7% of the original forest area still remains. It has been extensively modified, and within Brazil, reduced to 7.8% of its original cover. This ecosystem is one of the most endangered in the world, second only to the severely threatened forests of Madagascar, off the east coast of the African continent [1]. About 5–12% of the remaining area of the Atlantic Forest, including legally protected areas, is composed of relatively small forest fragments [2].
A rich diversity of species from the Culicidae family (Order: Diptera) with considerable spatial variability in composition has been recorded in the Atlantic Forest. For example, 22 species were collected from bromeliads belonging to the genera Nidularium and Vrisea in Serra do Mar [3]; 91 taxa were recorded in degraded and remnant forests in the Municipality of São Paulo, Brazil [4], and 31 mosquito species belonging to 12 genera were collected in Nova Iguaçu Natural Park, Rio de Janeiro [5]. The Atlantic forest is topographically complex, which creates a diverse array of microclimates and environmental conditions that may affect the availability and suitability of mosquito habitats, resulting in substantial spatial variation in Culicidae assemblages within this ecoregion [6], [3], [5].
The study of mosquitoes in natural areas is of considerable importance due to their role in pathogen transmission to humans and other vertebrates [7] and the potential to identify as yet unknown habitats of these disease vectors [8]. Knowledge of mosquito community composition is of fundamental importance in areas where the environment has suffered or is suffering anthropic disturbances. The composition and diversity of mosquito communities may influence disease transmission, either decreasing disease risk through mechanisms such as competition for hosts among vector and non-vector species [9], or facilitating the spread of disease due to factors such as nested ectoparasite-vector host networks [10]. Improved knowledge of culicid populations can only be achieved if the systematics and ecology of the group are both studied. The aim of this study was to document temporal changes in the distribution of mosquito species from the Guapiaçu Ecological Reserve, Cachoeiras de Macacu, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and investigate the influence of seasonally variable climatic factors (temperature, relative humidity and rainfall) on species abundances and diversity.
All research was performed in accordance with scientific license number 34911 provided by SISBIO/IBAMA for the capture of culicids throughout the Brazilian national territory.
Mosquito collections were made in the Guapiaçu Ecological Reserve (REGUA), a Private Natural Heritage Reserve that was created in 1996 and contains about 7,385 ha of dense rain forest. The reserve has a great wealth of pioneer species in its lower and peripheral areas, culminating in climax communities in its highest parts. Altitude ranges from 30 to 2000 m above sea level, and part of the reserve area, particularly that above 700 m, is covered by largely unmodified forests hosting a large diversity of plants and animals. Over 80% of the reserve is above 400 m and is part of the Three Peaks State Park, located in the central corridor of the Serra do Mar, Atlantic Forest biome.
Vegetation in REGUA is characterized as dense rain forest, consisting of three vegetation types: the lower part consists of dense alluvial rain forest and pasture that has been reverting to forest for the past seven years; coastal plains, lowlands, and lower mountain slopes with dense rain forest and areas that have been reforested for 3–5 years; and dense submontane and montane rain forest covering the rugged mountainous areas [11]. The latter holds mature forest that was used as a reference in reforestation programs. The soils of the study area are classified as Fluvisol, Oxisol, and Cambisol on the plains, gently undulating slopes, and hills, respectively. In the large Guapi-Macacu watershed (Guapiaçu and Macacu rivers), Pinheiro [12] suggested the occurrence of other soil classes. In hilly areas there is a predominance of red-Oxisols; areas with rugged, rocky outcrops have Haplic Cambisols and Entisols; yellow and red-yellow Argisols and Haplic Planosols can be found in alkaline massifs; and Fluvic Neossolos and Gleysols predominate in hydromorphic areas.
Two sampling sites were established: Site A was located in the lower parts of the study area in flat terrain presently covered by pasture and 7-year-old regenerated forest. It is adjacent to the reserve administration, in an area featuring wetlands that were revegetated in 2005. The seedlings used for revegetation were mostly produced with genetic material sourced from forest remnants within the reserve itself, supplemented with seedlings from nurseries in the area. Native species were planted with random distributions. Random mixtures of pioneer, early, and late secondary, and climax species were used, with pioneers making up the largest proportion. This was done to avoid spatial homogeneity in community composition. Exotic fruiting species were also planted in order to attract frugivorous birds. Site B was located in the submontane zone, in the highest part of the study area, overlooking hilly and rugged terrain. The forest is dense and highly diverse submontane and montane rain forest, comprising three strata: emergent trees (reaching to about 45 m high), the main canopy (5–10 m in height), and understory vegetation [13]. Geographical coordinates of the sampling sites were obtained using a Garmin GPSmap 60CS GPS. Maps were prepared in Arcview10 and edited in Adobe Photoshop CS5 and CorelDraw X5. The sampling locations are shown in Fig. 1.
a: Location in Brazil; b: State of Rio de Janeiro; c: Guapiaçu Ecological Reserve (REGUA), with sampling sites A and B marked.
Culicid sampling took place once every two months (at approximately the same day of the month) for two years, from February 2012 to January 2014, for three consecutive nights, with each sampling running from 6:00pm to 10:00am. Mosquitoes were collected using two types of light trap: automatic CDC (Center for Disease Control) and Shannon [14], with the aid of an oral suction tube. Light traps are a standard method for sampling mostly crepuscular and nocturnal mosquitoes. Although there is variation in the degree to which different mosquito species (or populations of a species from different geographic regions) are attracted to light traps, this method is considered to provide the least biased samples of aerial mosquito populations [15]. For data analysis, captures from both trap types were pooled.
Species determinations were performed by direct observation of morphological characters using a stereomicroscope (ZEISS Stemi SV6) and, when necessary, optic microscope examination of key morphological characteristics of individuals mounted on microscope slides (e.g., male genitalia). Species identifications were based on dichotomous keys by Lane [16], Faran and Linthicum [17], Consoli and Lourenço-de-Oliveira [18], and Forattini [19]. For species of the Aedini tribe, we followed the policy of the Journal of Medical Entomology and considered Ochlerotatus to be a subgenus of Aedes [20], as opposed to the taxonomy proposed by Reinert [21], which endows Ochlerotatus with genus status. All mosquito samples were then deposited in the Entomological Collection of the Oswaldo Cruz Institute, under the title "Atlantic Forest Collection".
Monthly mean measurements of air relative humidity, temperature (maximum, minimum, and average offset) and monthly rainfall were obtained from the National Meteorology Institute of Brazil (INMET). For each site and sampling date, variations in temperature and relative humidity were measured every hour using a thermo-hygrometer (Oregon Scientific, RMR132HG), fixed 1 m above ground level. Comparisons between field collected data and data provided by INMET did not show significant differences, and thus INMET data were used in the analysis.
Data analyses
To verify the completeness of the mosquito inventory, a species accumulation curve was generated for each site, using individual-based interpolation (rarefaction) and extrapolation (up to double the lowest number of individuals recorded at either site) from reference samples (total number of individuals collected at each site) using the multinomial model (S(est)) [22] in EstimateS software [23] (i.e., the expected number of species represented among m individuals, given the reference sample). Richness estimates, standard errors, and 95% confidence intervals were calculated. Further, considering that the performance of richness estimators varies among data and cases [24], [25], the following well-known species richness estimators (diversity of order 0) were assessed using SPADE software [26]: Chao1-bc (a bias-corrected form of Chao1, [27]) and ACE-1 (a modified non-parametric abundance-based coverage estimator for highly heterogeneous communities [28]). Rare species were defined as those for which fewer than 10 individuals were collected. The number of species common to both sites and the number of species expected if sample size was increased were estimated using the concept of sample coverage [29] and SPADE software (200 bootstrap replications used to obtain the standard error estimate). The squared coefficient of variation of species abundance (CV) was estimated to characterize the degree of heterogeneity among species abundances; when all species have equal abundances, CV is zero, and is positively correlated with the degree of heterogeneity [30].
To test for differences in species composition between sampling sites and among months, a non-parametric multivariate analysis of variance (PERMANOVA) with 10,000 permutations based on Bray-Curtis distances was used. To visualize differences in multivariate patterns among observations, non-metric multidimensional scaling (nMDS) was performed on the Bray-Curtis distances (Past software, [31]).
In addition to species richness (diversity of order 0), other measures of species diversity were estimated: Shannon's index and associated effective number of species (diversity of order 1, or Shannon diversity, based on the Chao & Shen estimator [30]), and Simpson's index and associated effective number of species (diversity of order 2, or Simpson diversity, based on a minimum variance unbiased estimator—MVUE). Differences between sites were assessed with t-tests.
Generalized linear models (GLMs) were used to assess differences in abundance and diversity (for each order of diversity: 0, 1, or 2) between sites and years (2012 and 2013), and among months (February, April, June, August, October, and December) (Infostat software [32]). Mosquito abundance, Shannon Diversity (diversity of order 1), and Simpson Diversity (diversity of order 2) were assumed to be Poisson log distributed, while species richness (diversity of order 0) was assumed to be Gaussian distributed. The threshold for assessing significant differences was set at p < 0.05.
Relationships between average monthly climatic variables from the same or previous month as mosquito collection (rainfall, maximum, and minimum temperature, and relative humidity) and abundances and measures of diversity of the eight most abundant species (Aedes (Ochlerotatus) scapularis (Rondani, 1948), Anopheles (Nyssorhynchus) albitarsis Lynch Arribálzaga, 1878, Culex (Melanoconion) bastagarius Dyar and Knab, 1906, Cx. (Culex) declarator Dyar and Knab, 1906, Cx. (Cux.) usquatus Dyar, 1918, Coquillettidia venezuelensis (Theobald, 1912), Mansonia (Mansonia) titillans (Walker, 1848), and Ma. (Man.) wilsoni (Barreto and Coutinho, 1944)) were assessed with multiple stepwise regression (Stepwise in InfoStat software), with p ≤ 0.15 as the criterion for retaining variables.
A total of 3,289 individual mosquitoes were collected during the two year sampling period, of which 3,170 (96.4%) were identified to the species level (Table 1). The identities of the remaining 3.6% could only be determined to the genus level because of damage to the relevant morphological characteristics. Most specimens were collected using CDC light traps (3,092); only 197 individuals were collected with Shannon traps, and none of these at site B. Table 2 summarizes the species collected by site and trap type. The mosquitoes captured belonged to 48 species from 14 genera: Aedeomyia (0.4%), Aedes (5.22%), Anopheles (5.7%), Coquillettidia (10.9%), Culex (58.9%), Haemagogus (0.1%), Limatus (1%), Mansonia (11.3%), Psorophora (0.3%), Rhunchomyia (1%), Sabethes (0.2%), Trichoprosopon (0.2%), Uranotaenia (3.4%), and Wyeomyia (0.8%). The most frequently captured species was Cx. bastagarius (21.7%), followed by Cx. usquatus (17.4%), Cx. declarator (15.6%), and Ma. titillans (5.9%).
Table 1. Absolute values (N) of mosquito species collected in the Guapiaçu Ecological Reserve, Cachoeiras de Macacu, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in the period from February 2012 to January 2014.
Table 2. Total numbers of adult mosquito specimens collected from February 2012 to January 2014, in two sites in Guapiaçu Ecological Reserve (REGUA), Rio de Janeiro using CDC and Shannon traps.
Species richness at each site was estimated using the total number of mosquitoes collected from each site as samples (Fig. 2 and Table 3). At site A, 35 species were observed, closely matching expected species richness based on Chao1-bc (37 species) and ACE-1 (40 species) estimates; 11.4% of the sample consisted of species for which only a single specimen was collected. At Site B, 37 species were observed, 27.0% of which were collected only once; the Chao 1-bc estimate was 43 species and that of ACE-1 51 species (Table 3). Thus, following Colwell [23] it was considered that the samples obtained provided adequate representations of species diversity at both sites. Furthermore, sampling efficiency was estimated to be 0.999 for site A and 0.989 for site B, meaning that the probability of finding additional species with further sampling was less than 1%. Colwell et al. [22] suggested that extrapolation is conservatively reliable only up to double the reference sample size. Consequently, results of rarefaction-extrapolations were compared between sites A and B at 1800 individuals, which is the double the lowest number of individuals captured at either site (site B). There was a 6.8% overlap in the 95% confidence intervals around the species accumulation curves between sites (Fig. 2). Following the conservative overlap criterion proposed by Colwell et al. [22] it was inferred that species richness did not differ significantly between sites.
Fig 2. Individual-based interpolation (rarefaction; solid lines) and extrapolation (dashed lines) from reference samples from the two sampling sites (filled black circle = site A; filled gray triangle = site B) in Guapiaçu Ecological Reserve (REGUA) from a multinomial model, with 95% unconditional confidence intervals (dotted lines) (based on Colwell et al. 2012).
Table 3. Mosquito diversity estimates for two sites in Guapiaçu Ecological Reserve, Cachoeiras de Macacu, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in the period from February 2012 to January 2014 (bootstrap mean ± s.e.; 95% confidence intervals are in parentheses).
In total, 24 species were common to both sites, 6 of which were rare (each totaling 10 or fewer individuals). CV values for each site were relatively high (Table 2), reflecting high heterogeneity in species abundances in the communities of both sites. Based on the ACE-shared model, which allows for heterogeneous discovery probabilities of species occurring at multiple sites [29–33], there are likely to be at least 4 such shared species not discovered in the survey (shared species = 27.52±11.2; 95% CI: 24.0–62.7). PERMANOVA analysis detected significant differences in species composition between sites (F = 1.91; p<0.05) but not months (F = 0.94; p = 0.57). Sites A and B were clustered separately in two dimensional ordination space when species abundances from different months and sites were analyzed using NMDS; Site A mostly grouped to the left side of the graph (Fig. 3).
Fig 3. Non-parametric multidimensional scaling plot of 48 mosquito species collected bimonthly at two sites (site A represented with crosses, site B with filled circles) during 2012 and 2013.
Stress is 0.22, indicating a moderately good representation of the data in the two-dimensional ordination plot. Labels indicate sample month and year.
GLMs assessing differences in abundance and diversity between sites showed significant interactive effects between year and site on mosquito abundance (p<0.001), species richness (as estimated with ACE-1) (p<0.004), and diversity of order 1 (p<0.001), but no significant effects of site (p = 0.37) or year (p = 0.16) on diversity of order 2. Mosquitoes were more abundant at site A than site B, and in 2013 compared to 2012 (Table 4). More species were collected at site A in 2013 and at site B in 2012. The lowest richness recorded was at site B in 2013. The effective numbers of species detected both at site B in 2012 and at site A in 2013 were approximately twice that at site B in 2013.
Table 4. Mosquito abundance and diversity estimates (effective number of species) for two sites in Guapiaçu Ecological Reserve, Cachoeiras de Macacu, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2012 and 2013 (adjusted ± s.e.).
Diversity of Order 0 is ACE-1; Diversity of order 1 is Shannon diversity; diversity order 2 is Simpson diversity.
There was also a significant interactive effect between month and site on mosquito abundance (p<0.001). The highest mosquito numbers were recorded in April and December, in which there were significantly more mosquitoes at site A than B. The lowest mosquito numbers were in October (site B) and June (site A). No significant effects of month or site were detected on measures of diversity (Fig. 4). Correlations between measures of diversity and climatic variables were mostly weak and non-significant: both Shannon and Simpson indices of diversity were significantly related to monthly rainfall (p<0.01 each), which was the only variable retained in these models; the models explained only 23% and 25% of the variation in the data, respectively. Mosquito abundance, on the other hand, was significantly related to monthly maximum temperature in the month prior to sampling, explaining 22% of the variation in the data (Table 5).
Fig 4. Monthly estimates of: A. species abundance and measures of diversity B. order 0 (ACE-1), C. order 1 (Shannon) and D. order 2 (MVUE) in Guapiaçu Ecological Reserve (REGUA) (adjusted means + s.e.).
Different small letters indicate significant differences (p<0.01) between sites and months in mosquito abundance. No significant differences were found in measures of diversity.
Table 5. Results of stepwise multiple linear regression analyses of mosquito abundance and measures of diversity as functions of temperature (monthly maximum and minimum), rainfall and relative humidity in the same or previous month.
Stepwise linear regression analysis of variables influencing abundances of the eight most frequent species resulted in bivariate models in which minimum temperature and maximum temperature in the previous month explained 44% of the variation in An. albitarsis abundance, and minimum temperature in the same and previous month explained 53% of the variation in Ma. Titillans abundance. Forty-seven percent of the variation in Ae. scapularis abundance was explained by minimum temperature in the previous month, and 33% of that of Cx. usquatus by maximum temperature. Cx. bastagarius and Ma. wilsoni abundances were related to relative humidity in the previous month, resulting in univariate models that explained 29% and 31% of the variation, respectively. The abundances of Cx. declarator and Cq. venezuelensis were not significantly associated with any of the climatic variables measured (Table 6).
Table 6. Results of stepwise multiple linear regression analyses of abundances of the eight most frequent mosquito species as functions of temperature (monthly maximum and minimum), rainfall and relative humidity in the same or previous month.
The sampling procedure used provided an adequate representation of the composition of mosquito communities in REGUA, since 35 of 40 (87%) and 37 of 51 (73%) species estimated to occur at sites A and B, respectively, were detected. Overall, the number of species detected in REGUA (48 species from 14 genera) was comparable to numbers reported for other patches of Atlantic Forest, although species composition seems to vary somewhat among sites. For example, Guimarães et al. [34] collected 45 mosquito species from 13 genera in forest environments in Itaguaí, Rio de Janeiro, although only 50% of the species were the same as those collected in REGUA. In Nova Iguaçu Municipal Park, within the Gericinó-Mendanha natural protection area, also in Rio de Janeiro State, 31 species from 12 genera were reported [5], 45% of which were the same as those found in REGUA. This is consistent with the highly heterogeneous environment of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest and the associated high occurrence of endemism [35].
Even though the sampling sites were located within the same fragment of Atlantic Forest, differences in the available oviposition sites may explain differences in the mosquito fauna. Although species richness was similar, total diversity was higher at site A than site B. Species composition and abundance differed, with approximately 25% of species common to both. Ground water mosquito species (such as Cx. bastagarius) and species of the Mansoninii tribe were found almost exclusively at sampling site A. Site A was near a lake with calm, clear, cold water, a low light environment, and plenty floating and emergent vegetation, such as Eichhornia spp. It thus offered ample larval habitat for these species throughout the study period. On the other hand, species of the Sabethini tribe, mosquitoes that are typically sylvatic, were more frequently found at site B, characterized by more extensive plant cover and mature forest.
Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain differences in species richness and diversity. One such is the niche diversification hypothesis, in which diversity is a function of the range of habitats and of the degree of specialization of resident species; in this hypothesis more stable ecosystems such as forests are predicted to have higher species diversities. The intermediate disturbance hypothesis (IDH) states that local species diversity is maximized when ecological disturbance is neither too rare nor too frequent, allowing both competitive and opportunistic species to coexist [36]. This study did not find significant differences in species richness between the two Atlantic Forest sites analyzed. However, Site B, the more intact environment, had lower diversity (relating richness with relative abundance) and greater dominance of Culicidae, which could be explained in part by the IDH. Differences in larval habitat availability and/or preference may also explain the patterns observed. Those species of Culicidae that develop in water-filled tree holes and other phytothelmata such as the Sabethini tribe (with the exception of Limatus durhamii, which has been collected from habitats such as artificial containers [37] and percolation tanks [38]) were more frequently collected in Site B (43% compared with 8% in site A). Such species are considered to indicate environments that have not been subjected to pronounced anthropic disturbance [39]. In contrast, 91% of mosquitoes collected at Site A develop in larval habitats such as ground pools, ponds, and artificial containers; the presence of specimens of the Mansoniini tribe (Mansonia spp., Coquillettidia spp.) and the Aedini tribe (e.g., Ae. scapularis) tends to be linked to environments with higher degrees of anthropic disturbance [39], [19].
Measures of diversity showed little variation between years and no significant variation among months, and were weakly correlated with climatic variables. Although relationships with rainfall were significant, these explained less than 30% of the variability of the data. However, it is interesting that the relationship was negative, which could indicate that a few species peak in numbers as rainfall increases (however, no correlation was found between rainfall and the abundances of the most common species, see below). Alternatively high rainfall may be "flushing" larvae from their habitats. Dorvillé [39] pointed out that in some regions of Brazil there are alternations between tropical and temperate climatic states [40]. In our study sites average temperatures during the sampling period fluctuated between 20 and 26°C and mode monthly rainfall was 50 mm, indicative of a tropical climate suitable for mosquitoes year round, rather than a temperate one. Thus factors other than climate may have more influence on temporal variations in the mosquito community.
Aedes scapularis is a flood water mosquito; its eggs hatch in installment in response to floods. Rainfall regime directly influences the development of immature Ae. scapularis [41], [19], which has been suggested as an explanation for higher occurrences in warm, humid periods with heavy rainfall [42] for this species and Ae. albifasciatus [43], [44]. In this study no significant relationships were found between Ae. scapularis abundance and rainfall, but there was a positive relationship with average minimum temperature in the previous month. This species was collected in similar numbers at both sites, reflecting the generalist nature of Ae. scapularis reported by Forattini et al. [45] in São Paulo State, as well as Lourenço-de-Oliveira and Silva [46] and Guimarães et al. [34] in Itaguaí-Rio de Janeiro. Aedes scapularis is a vector of Dirofilaria immitis Leidy in Rio de Janeiro State [47], and there is field and laboratory evidence indicating it may be a vector of several arboviruses [19].
Overall, Culex bastagarius was the most abundant species collected, although it was comparatively rare in 2012. The species is a suspected vector of Hepatozoon caimani (Apicomplexa: Hepatozoidae) in some regions of South America [48]. Luz & Lourenço-de-Oliveira [49] reported that Culex bastagarius abundances are lower during the rainy season. However, in this study no significant relationship was found between C. bastagarius abundance and rainfall; however a positive (but weak) relationship was detected with relative humidity in the previous month, and the species was very abundant during the wetter months. Regression models seeking to explain abundances of six of the eight most frequent species in terms of climatic variables explained from 29 to 53% of the variation in the data, suggesting that local conditions other than climate, such as interspecific interactions, may have a substantial influence on seasonal fluctuations in abundance.
Culicid species composition differed between the environments studied, probably influenced by the intactness of the forest and other local characteristics such as larval habitat availability. Among the species considered of epidemiological importance, Mansonia and Coquillettidia species, prevalent at Site A, are known vectors of equine encephalitis [19]. Hg. leucocelaenus, collected only at Site B (though in small numbers), is involved in the transmission of yellow fever [50], and potentially of Ilhéus, Maguari, Tucunduba, and Una viruses [51]. Other species of medical interest such as Ae. scapularis and Cx. declarator (a vector of Saint Louis Encephalitis in the Amazonian region), [52] were detected in similar numbers at both sites.
Due to the diversity of mosquito species detected, their potential roles in pathogen transmission, and the intermittent flow of national and international visitors to REGUA, it is recommended that a program of Culicidae surveillance be maintained.
RMG is a Career Member of Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Argentina. A. Mangeaud of Universidad Nacional de Córdoba is acknowledged for advice about PERMANOVA. The authors thank Nicholas and Rachel Locke as president and vice president, and Jorge Bizarro as research coordinator of REGUA, respectively, for the facilities granted while carrying out this study. We are thankful for comments and suggestions from anonymous reviewers that helped improve an earlier version of this article.
Conceived and designed the experiments: JA CFM AEG HRGS JSS JRSM RMG. Performed the experiments: JA CFM AEG HRGS JSS JRSM RMG. Analyzed the data: JA HRGS JSS JRSM RMG. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: JA CFM AEG HRGS JSS JRSM RMG. Wrote the paper: JA CFM HRGS JSS RMG.
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text:
The UK choice to postpone the second Covid vaccine shot has been accepted by advisors
By UMass Mag On Jan 5, 2021
A pharmacist dilutes the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine as he prepares it for administration to staff and residents at Goodwin House Bailey's Crossroads, a senior community in Falls Church, Virginia, on December 30, 2020.
Brendan Smialowski | AFP | Getty Images
LONDON – Health experts have condemned the UK's decision to delay the administration of a second dose of the coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, warning that the need to suppress the new strain of coronavirus "cannot be overstated ".
Shortly after the UK announced that the second dose of the Pfizer BioNTech jab, in addition to the newly approved Covid-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, will now be given up to 12 weeks after the first dose.
The National Health Service had previously planned to give a second dose of the Covid-19 vaccine three weeks after the first to ensure a high level of protection against the virus.
The UK's Independent Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE) said in a statement released on Sunday that it was "a very difficult and balanced decision" but was in favor of the UK government's move to cover as high a proportion of the population as possible.
However, the change in policy would have to go hand in hand with several other measures. These included: publishing a detailed and compelling strategy to scale up vaccination, developing a rigorous assessment process, real-time assessment of ongoing virus variation, and the need to restrict movement to and from the UK to the rest of the world.
SAGE is made up of health professionals and scientists and is jointly managed by the UK Government's Chief Scientific Advisor and Chief Medical Officer.
Meghana Pandit, Chief Medical Officer of the NHS Trust, Oxford University, right, speaks to Trevor Cowlett, 88, before receiving the Oxford University AstraZeneca Plc and Covid-19 vaccine at Churchill Hospital in Oxford, UK on Monday. January 4, 2021. UK regulators approved the shot last week, giving it its first approval anywhere in the world.
Steve Parsons | PA wire | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The comments come despite the British Medical Association criticizing the UK's decision to postpone the second dose of Pfizer BioNTech vaccine. It described the move as "grossly unfair" to thousands of high-risk patients in England.
"The BMA is of the opinion that the existing commitment of the NHS and local doctors to these patients should be respected. If the GPs decide to keep these booked appointments in January, the BMA will support them," said Dr. Richard Vautre, Chairman of the BMA GP Committee. said in a statement on December 31.
In response to these concerns, the SAGE Committee said, "Under normal circumstances, we would advocate continuing our previous plans of administering two doses of Pfizer BioNTech vaccine 21 days apart. However, these are not normal circumstances and it is are other important public health considerations. "
The German Ministry of Health asked an independent vaccination commission for advice on Monday whether it should follow in the UK's footsteps.
A ministry spokesman confirmed to CNBC that the federal government had asked the Robert Koch Institute's Standing Committee on Vaccination if the country should delay a second vaccination with the Pfizer vaccine. "Such a decision requires scientific consideration," they added.
"Hard" measures required
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Monday the government could soon announce stricter public health measures to prevent the coronavirus from spreading.
Johnson said "tough" measures could come for weeks. Currently, more than three quarters of the UK population is in Tier 4 – the highest level of restrictions.
The opposition Labor Party said the government must impose a national lockdown within 24 hours and warned the virus was "clearly out of control".
The UK recorded more than 50,000 new confirmed Covid-19 infections for the sixth consecutive year on Sunday. The country continues to fight a new strain of the virus that is spreading faster.
To date, the UK has reported more than 2.6 million coronavirus cases with 75,137 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
"It is now clear that the new variant of the virus that appears to have surfaced in south-east England is 40-80% significantly more transmissible than previous variants," SAGE said in a Jan. 3 statement.
"It is also clear that the current Tier 4 restrictions cannot contain their spread even if schools and universities are closed."
"The pandemic is now out of control and the NHS is struggling with some hospitals being forced to cease non-COVID activity. The NHS is no longer protected. For these reasons, there is a strong case for maximizing population coverage with at least one dose of vaccine although this requires a change in the dosage regimen, "added the group.
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text:
Q: Maximum length series of shifts in Google OR-tools employee scheduling I'm developing a nurse scheduling program for one of the departments of the hospital I work with in Python. Various examples of such programs already exist and are shared online. One of these is the following: https://github.com/google/or-tools/blob/master/examples/python/shift_scheduling_sat.py
So far I have managed to adapt the code in the link above to include various types of labour regulations as well as individual nurse preferences. However I keep struggling to implement the following rule:

*

*Employees cannot work more than 5 consecutive days.

The code natively supports bounds on the length of series of the same shift type (e.g. forbid n consecutive morning shifts or night shifts). However, there is no way to limit the length of series of back-to-back shifts if they are not of the same type (e.g. night/night/morning/night/morning).
I managed to implement this rule by adding the following piece of code:
    for e in range(num_employees):
            for d in range(num_days):
                   model.Add(work[e, 0, d] == 1).OnlyEnforceIf( (work[e, 1, d-5] or work[e, 2, d-5] or work[e, 3, d-5] or work[e, 4, d-5] )
                                                                and (work[e, 1, d-4] or work[e, 2, d-4] or work[e, 3, d-4] or work[e, 4, d-4] )
                                                                and (work[e, 1, d-3] or work[e, 2, d-3] or work[e, 3, d-3] or work[e, 4, d-3] )
                                                                and (work[e, 1, d-2] or work[e, 2, d-2] or work[e, 3, d-2] or work[e, 4, d-2] )
                                                                and (work[e, 1, d-1] or work[e, 2, d-1] or work[e, 3, d-1] or work[e, 4, d-1] ))

However, this implementation increases the run-time of the program drastically (from 30 seconds without the constraints, to about 15 minutes including it). Therefore I'm looking for a way to prohibit employees from being scheduled 5 or more consecutive days that doesn't increase run-time as much.

A: ANSWER
I implemented the changes @LaurentPerron suggested below using the following lines of code:
max_seq_length = 5
for e in range(num_employees):
    works = [work[e, 0, d].Not() for d in range(num_days)]
    variables, coeffs = add_soft_sequence_constraint(
           model, works, 0, 0, 0, max_seq_length, max_seq_length, 0,
           'shift_constraint(employee %i, shift %i)' % (e, 0))
    obj_bool_vars.extend(variables)
    obj_bool_coeffs.extend(coeffs)

A: You can adapt the code by limiting the length of off_shift.not() literals.

A: couldn't we just add an AddBoolOr constraint on the consecutive off shifts instead of the 'add_soft_sequence_constraint' function and the .Not() literals? i.e., we enforce that there is no sequence of length hard_max that does not have an off-shift in it. sample code, modified from the example file:
max_seq_length = 5
for e in range(num_employees):
    works = [work[e, 0, d] for d in range(num_days)]
    for start in range(len(works) - hard_max):
        model.AddBoolOr([works[i] for i in range(start, start + hard_max + 1)])

I wonder if this would help speed up the solver.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Food - Drink - Music Great Foodie Day out for the whole family at a lovely venue.
More than 'just another food festival', The Great British Food Festival combines the nation's love of great food and drink with some of the country's most treasured locations, providing a unique opportunity to explore new flavours and beautiful venues, all at the same time!
Taking some of the finest local and regional artisan producers, hot food, real ale and wine bars, craft and gift stalls, children's entertainment, foraging walks and amazing scenery, top chef demos, cake competitions and the popular Men vs Food, all accompanied by excellent live music - it's a fabulous, foodie day out for the whole family!