Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese helped bring women's basketball to new heights over the past two years. While there may be a ratings dip from last season's record high, there are plenty of talented players like Paige Bueckers, JuJu Watkins, Deja Kelly and Hannah Hidalgo ready to continue the rise.

Jack Douglas Teixeira, 23, pleaded guilty in March 2024 to six counts of "willful retention and transmission of national defense information." His defense team asked for an 11-year prison sentence while federal prosecutors in Boston pushed for him to spend 16 years behind bars.

April McClain-Delaney, a Democrat, was announced the winner of the open seat in Maryland's 6th Congressional District late Saturday, four days after Election Day.

Taiwan's top diplomat in the United States tells The Washington Times in an exclusive interview that China's communist government is intensifying its campaign to pressure countries not to recognize the legitimacy of the island democracy and to block it from participating in the United Nations and other key international organizations.

UCLA will play Baylor and Texas will face Maryland in a women's basketball doubleheader in the inaugural Coretta Scott King Classic in January.

The Washington metro area is a hotbed for basketball talent. You can find all the proof you need of the area's hoops legacy at the Washington D.C. Basketball Hall of Fame.

Buoyed by a season-shifting comeback win over Southern California, Maryland now has a pep in its step as it hits the road again in the Big Ten this week.

McLaren driver Lando Norris won Saturday's Formula 1 sprint race at the Brazilian Grand Prix to cut his deficit to championship leader Max Verstappen.

President-elect Donald Trump is looking to fill hundreds of top positions in his incoming administration during the next two months -- but one of the most coveted, flash point slots is that of attorney general.

Three-time Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw is "planning to crush some rehab" in his recovery from two surgeries.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy rejected claims made by some staff and analysts that the company's recently announced return-to-office strategy is a backdoor firing strategy.

TikTok has been forced to close its offices in Vancouver and Toronto because Canadian security and intelligence officials said activity at the offices threatened the national security of Canada, a charge that TikTok plans to fight in court.

Anthropic's large language model Claude is preparing for work in the U.S. intelligence community.

The Indiana Fever hired Stephanie White as coach on Friday, putting her in charge of a team led by WNBA Rookie of the Year Caitlin Clark.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is pushing President-elect Donald Trump to crack down on fluoride levels in drinking water, saying the mineral can lead to unintended medical problems -- and setting up a clash with medical experts who defend it as a proven way to fighting cavities.

When opponents of Idaho's strict abortion law said it was forcing women to be emergency-airlifted out of state to have their pregnancies terminated, it shocked the Supreme Court. Now Idaho says the claim is not true.

A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked a state law that would require classrooms in Louisiana to post the Ten Commandments starting in January.

The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) was initiated by the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) together with a group of editors and publishers of scholarly journals after a meeting in  December 2012 during the ASCB Annual Meeting in San Francisco. The document recognizes the need to improve the ways in which the outputs of scientific research are evaluated.

DORA puts into question the use of Journal Impact Factor as a main tool for assessment, and proposes the consideration of various other factors towards more sophisticated and meaningful approaches. DORA is a worldwide initiative covering all scholarly disciplines.

To read the whole declaration, please follow the link: http://am.ascb.org/dora/

A recent paper by Duccio Rocchini et al. (2015) has been classified as the fourth hottest article in Ecological Informatics. The paper is part of the EU BON project, and discusses from a conceptual point of view, the potential of remote sensing in estimating biodiversity using various diversity indices, including alpha- and beta-diversity measurements. 

Abstract:

Many geospatial tools have been advocated in spatial ecology to estimate biodiversity and its changes over space and time. Such information is essential in designing effective strategies for biodiversity conservation and management. Remote sensing is one of the most powerful approaches to identify biodiversity hotspots and predict changes in species composition in reduced time and costs. This is because, with respect to field-based methods, it allows to derive complete spatial coverages of the Earth surface under study in a short period of time. Furthermore, remote sensing provides repeated coverages of field sites, thus making studies of temporal changes in biodiversity possible. In this paper we discuss, from a conceptual point of view, the potential of remote sensing in estimating biodiversity using various diversity indices, including alpha- and beta-diversity measurements.

Original source:

Rocchini D, Hernández Stefanoni JL, He, KS (2015) Advancing species diversity estimate by remotely sensed proxies: a conceptual review. Ecological Informatics, 25: 22-28. doi:10.1016/j.ecoinf.2014.10.006

A new EU BON derived paper, publsihed recently in the journal Remote Sensing, introduces eHabitat+, a habitat modelling service supporting the European Commission’s Digital Observatory for Protected Areas.

Abstract:

Protected areas (PAs) need to be assessed systematically according to biodiversity values and threats in order to support decision-making processes. For this, PAs can be characterized according to their species, ecosystems and threats, but such information is often difficult to access and usually not comparable across regions. There are currently over 200,000 PAs in the world, and assessing these systematically according to their ecological values remains a huge challenge. However, linking remote sensing with ecological modelling can help to overcome some limitations of conservation studies, such as the sampling bias of biodiversity inventories. The aim of this paper is to introduce eHabitat+, a habitat modelling service supporting the European Commission’s Digital Observatory for Protected Areas, and specifically to discuss a component that systematically stratifies PAs into different habitat functional types based on remote sensing data. eHabitat+ uses an optimized procedure of automatic image segmentation based on several environmental variables to identify the main biophysical gradients in each PA. This allows a systematic production of key indicators on PAs that can be compared globally. Results from a few case studies are illustrated to show the benefits and limitations of this open-source tool.

Original Source: 

Martínez-López, J.; Bertzky, B.; Bonet-García, F.J.; Bastin, L.; Dubois, G. Biophysical Characterization of Protected Areas Globally through Optimized Image Segmentation and Classification. Remote Sens. 2016, 8, 780. DOI: 0.3390/rs8090780

Distributed European School of Taxonomy (DEST) is organizing a Zoological Nomenclature training course targeted at MSc students, PhD students, early career researchers,  professional systematists/taxonomists and anyone who is interested in the philosophy of Biological Systematics. The course has a duration of one 5 days and will take place between 22-26 September 2014 at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris, France.

Deadline for registration: 16 June 2014, extended until Friday 20 June 2014. To register and to learn more about the course visit the official webpage: http://www.taxonomytraining.eu/content/zoological-nomenclature-3

Course description:
Taxonomists need a common language worldwide. This is provided by the international codes of nomenclature. Although several codes exist, according to the organisms at stake, they all follow a similar mode of allocation of names to taxa (through "types") and of establishment of the valid name for a taxon (priority, first-reviser, usage). As biological nomenclature is rarely taught in academic formations, many taxonomists have difficulties mastering it. This training will provide an overview of the history and epistemology of biological nomenclature, and a discussion of the relationships between phylogeny, taxonomy and nomenclature. The zoological code will be presented in detail, the other codes (including the botanical one) more briefly. The recent problems and projects of nomenclature, including alternative systems, will be discussed.

Lecture topics:

• What is taxonomy? What is nomenclature? Name, taxon, nomenclatural rank, taxonomic category. Species and supraspecific taxa. The relationships between phylogeny, taxonomy and nomenclature
• History and epistemology of the international codes of nomenclature
• The international code of zoological nomenclature
• The other international codes (plants and fungi, bacteria, viruses, cultivated plants)
• The alternative nomenclatural systems

Seminar topics:

• Nomenclature of higher taxa in zoology
• The Phylocode and other phylogenetic nomenclatural systems
• Zoobank and electronic publications

Practical experiences will include: exercises in zoological nomenclature and transforming phylogenetic data into a taxonomy and a nomenclature.

Distributed European School of Taxonomy (DEST) is organizing a Botanical Nomenclature training course targeted at MSc students, PhD students, early career researchers,  professional systematists/taxonomists and anyone who is interested in the philosophy of Biological Systematics. The course has a duration of one week and will take place between 26-30 January 2015 at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK.

Deadline for registrationis 10 October 2014. Participants will receive notification by 24 October 2014 whether accepted to the course. To register and to learn more about the course visit the official webpage: http://www.taxonomytraining.eu/content/botanical-nomenclature-3

Course description
This in-depth course will teach the principles of plant nomenclature according to the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi and plants (ICN) so that participants can apply good nomenclatural practice when undertaking taxonomic revisions, compiling checklists etc. This will be achieved by lectures illustrated with examples from the ICN, workshop sessions applying what has been learned to "real life" cases, and by encouraging participants to discuss nomenclatural problems they have encountered.

Participants will have time to pursue their own research interests using the collections at Kew, with the emphasis on identifying and solving nomenclatural problems.
Short seminars will give participants the opportunity to present nomenclatural problems relevant to their own research.

"They’re definitely planning on being very active in the free agent market."

The post MLB agent Scott Boras claims Red Sox are ‘wanting to secure high-level players’ this offseason appeared first on Boston.com.

The post Which Classical Instrument Are You? Take the Quiz! appeared first on CMUSE.

Classic FM has posted what it believes to be the hardest classical music quiz online, allowing you to test out your knowledge and brag about ... Read more

The post Feel like testing your classical music knowledge? Take this quiz appeared first on CMUSE.

The post Can You Name These Classical Composers? Take the Quiz! appeared first on CMUSE.

The post Love Letters Classics: A proposal gets weird appeared first on Boston.com.

Researchers at University of Washington released a dataset of classical music pieces called MusicNote Wednesday that facilitates machine learning of note patterns and automated note ... Read more

The post Will the next great classical music composer be a computer? appeared first on CMUSE.

Anipo, a French-based network of musicians, has launched an initiative aimed at cracking down on stolen instruments. Anipo encourages musicians to install a chip on ... Read more

The post Musicians’ network aims to clamp down on instrument thefts appeared first on CMUSE.

Violinist Joshua Bell teamed up with Sony as they unveiled a new virtual reality concert experience for classical music fans. Using a Playstation VR headset, ... Read more

The post Can virtual reality give classical music a boost? appeared first on CMUSE.

The contemporary dating scene might, at times, resemble TS Eliot’s wasteland or, worse, a post-apocalyptic landscape punctuated by primeval beings who shy away from light. Apps like ... Read more

The post Seven Reasons Why You Should Date a Classical Musician appeared first on CMUSE.

The Internet 2.0 gave us a great opportunity: user-generated content can allow anyone’s voice to be heard (a blessing or a curse?) and, as a ... Read more

The post Five Types of Classical music lovers you find online appeared first on CMUSE.

Post-pandemic, the opportunity to enjoy live music and music festivals at home, abroad or further afield is again possible. The plethora of options is almost ... Read more

The post Classical Music Festivals Around The World appeared first on CMUSE.