Affan Salman holding up Pakistani flag while celebrating his victory in the World Youth Scrabble Championship 2024. — Geo Super/File

The Indian High Commission has refused to issue visas to most Pakistani players, preventing the defending champions from participating in the...

The International Cricket Council logo at the ICC headquarters in Dubai, October 31, 2010. — Reuters

Noman Ali celebrates after taking the wicket at the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium in Rawalpindi, on October 26, 2024. — AFP

KARACHI: Pakistan spinner Noman Ali has been named the ICC Men’s Player of the Month for October 2024, edging out South African pacer Kagiso...

Pakistan Cricket Board headquarters in Lahore. — PCB websitePCB ready to withdraw from playing in ICC events in India: sources.Board determined to reject "hybrid model" for Champions Trophy.Pakistan will host mega-tournament in February-March next year.

LAHORE: The...

This undated photo shows Pakistan blind cricket team. — Pakistan Blind Cricket Council

ISLAMABAD: A 16-member squad led by Nasir Ali has been announced by the Pakistan Blind Cricket Council for the upcoming Blind T20 World Cup 2024, slated to be held in Pakistan from...

Pakistani and Indian players shake hands after the ICC men's Twenty20 World Cup 2022 cricket match at Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne on October 23, 2022. — AFP"ICC in catch-22 situation" due to Pakistan-India tussle: source.Pakistan "expected to refuse playing against India" in...

A San Jose State University women's volleyball assistant coach has left the team after reportedly filing a Title IX complaint about the squad's male-to-female transgender player.

Alex Bono finished with seven saves for D.C. United, Roman Celentano stopped four shots for FC Cincinnati and the two clubs played to a scoreless draw on Sunday.

Advanced Academy 2024 Additional Titanium guest charge, 2 pmts of $499 USD per person, charged 30 days apart

Price: $499.00

Advanced Academy 2024 Additional Titanium Guest Wednesday night Only one payment of $299 USD

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MCE2025: Titanium Faculty Coach Alumni Special - 3 Payments of $232.50 USD billed 30 days apart

Price: $232.50

The Washington Capitals traded a 2027 third-round pick and a 2025 fifth-round pick to the rival Pittsburgh Penguins in exchange for forward Lars Eller, the team announced on Tuesday.

Daniil Medvedev was able to "block the noise" following a temper tantrum in his previous match and moved back into contention at the ATP Finals with a 6-2, 6-4 victory over Alex de Minaur on Tuesday.

Titanium Monthly Membershp

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Description: To receive Gold, Gold Plus, Diamond, or Titanium membership you must first apply and be accepted to the program and then purchase the 'Home Study System' for 3 payments of $499 USD (30 days apart). With your Home Study System you receive 3 free months of Gold Membership. *Do not purchase any MASS products without first applying to become a member at:?https://www.musicacademysuccess.com/apply/
If you purchase memberships without having your application approved, you will not be allowed to join the program.

Required For Titanium Membership: Must gross at least $25,000 USD per month to apply.

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• All the benefits of Gold AND Gold Plus AND Diamond membership (listed below) PLUS:
• Group Zoom video coaching with Marty Fort every?3 weeks discussing high level music academy?concepts and business ventures outside of the?music academy industry. Seven-figure sessions for seven-figure (& aspiring seven-figure) thinkers!
• Block out two ZIP CODES as long as you’re a Titanium member.?
• One free seat at the annual Advanced Academy (sometimes as presenter, sometimes as auditor). ?No need to participate in contests or pay full rate. Bring guest for discounted rate of 4 payments of $199, each 30 days apart.
• Elite Closed / Private Titanium Facebook Group with DIRECT answers to some questions from Marty (not his staff).
• Two 911 Fifteen minute calls with Marty every year.

U.S. forces launched strikes against nine Iran-linked targets in Syria, a response to several attacks on American troops in the region over the last 24 hours, U.S. Central Command officials said Monday.

The incoming Trump administration has a message for left-leaning Justice Department employees hoping to block or interfere with the new president's agenda: Get out.

The Los Angeles Dodgers, including Shohei Ohtani and his dog, celebrated their eighth World Series championship with a downtown parade on Friday.

With Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto making their first appearance, the World Series averaged 12.9 million viewers in Japan, making it the most-watched Fall Classic in the nation's history.

Shohei Ohtani had arthroscopic surgery on Tuesday to repair a labrum tear in his left shoulder, following an injury the Los Angeles Dodgers star suffered during Game 2 of the World Series on Oct. 26.

Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani is a finalist for his first National League MVP award after winning the AL honor twice, joined among the top three in NL voting by New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor and Arizona second baseman Ketel Marte.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved an audacious plan to employ booby-trapped pagers in September against members of the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon, his office said Monday.

The Baltimore big man recorded a double-double -- in the first half alone -- en route to a stellar 22 point, 20 rebound debut as Maryland pulled away from Manhattan in the second half to win its season opener, 79-49

The Food and Drug Administration could put a stop to the use of phenylephrine, an ingredient in over-the-counter nasal decongestants, because its studies found it doesn't work.

Worsening air pollution sickened an estimated 1.8 million people in Pakistan's eastern Punjab province in the past month, health officials said Tuesday, as schools across the province were ordered to close for five days to protect children's health.

Democrats for Life of America said Tuesday that 97% of its endorsed candidates won their races in last week's election, which raises the question: Is there such a thing as a pro-life Democrat?

Monographs are fundamental for progress in systematic  botany. They are the vehicles for circumscribing and naming taxa, determining distributions and ecology,  assessing  relationships for formal classification, and interpreting long-term  and short-term  dimensions of the evolutionary process. Despite their importance, fewer monographs are now being prepared by the newer generation  of systematic  botanists, who are understandably involved principally with DNA data and analysis, especially for answering  phylogenetic, biogeographic, and population  genetic questions.  As monographs provide  hypotheses regarding species  boundaries and plant relationships, new insights  in many plant groups  are urgently  needed.  Increasing  pressures  on biodiversity, especially in tropical and developing regions of the world, emphasize this point. The results from a workshop (with 21 participants) reaffirm  the central role that monographs play in systematic  botany. But, rather than advocating abbreviated models  for monographic products,  we recommend a full presentation of relevant  information. Electronic  publication offers numerous  means of illustration of taxa, habitats, characters, and statistical and phylogenetic analyses, which previously  would have been prohibitively costly. Open Access and semantically enhanced  linked electronic  publications provide instant access to content from anywhere  in the world, and at the same time link this content to all underlying data and digital resources  used in the work.  Resources  in support  of monography, especially  databases  and widely  and easily  accessible  digital  literature and specimens, are now more powerful  than ever before, but interfacing and interoperability of databases  are much needed. Priorities  for new resources  to be developed  include an index of type collections and an online global chromosome database. Funding  for sabbaticals for monographers to work uninterrupted on major projects  is strongly  encouraged. We recommend that doctoral  students  be assigned  smaller  genera,  or natural  portions  of larger  ones (subgenera, sections,  etc.), to gain the necessary expertise for producing a monograph, including training in a broad array of data collection (e.g., morphology, anatomy, palynology, cytogenetics, DNA techniques, ecology, biogeography), data analysis (e.g., statistics,  phylogenetics, models), and nomenclature. Training programs, supported by institutes, associations, and agencies, provide means for passing on procedures and perspectives of challenging botanical  monography to the next generation  of young systematists.

A new article "A decadal view of biodiversity informatics: challenges and priorities"  published by BMC Ecology focuses on the challenges and perspectives for biodiversity informatics after a decade of development. The authors Alex Hardisty and Dave Roberts alongside 77 contributions from the biodiversity informatics community share experience and set future directions of biodiversity informatics as a tool for addressing conservation and ecological issues.

Biodiversity informatics plays a central enabling role in the research community's efforts to address scientific conservation and sustainability issues. This community consultation paper positions the role of biodiversity informatics, for the next decade, presenting the actions needed to link the various biodiversity infrastructures invisibly and to facilitate understanding that can support both business and policy-makers. The community considers the goal in biodiversity informatics to be full integration of the biodiversity research community, including citizens’ science, through a commonly-shared, sustainable e-infrastructure across all sub-disciplines that reliably serves science and society alike.

The full text of the article can be accessed here.

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/

At the Bioinformatics Horizon 2013 Conference (3 - 6 September 2013, Rome) a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between PESI and EU BON. Christoph Häuser, on behalf of EU BON and Yde de Jong on behalf of PESI (see picture below), signed the document to strengthen the cooperation and formalise the integrating efforts of the European species infrastructures.  

PESI is now a new associate partner of EU BON, a consortium with currently 30 partners from 18 countries. One of the common aims of EU BON and PESI will be to establish and sustain standard taxonomies for Europe.  EU BON will support the PESI backbone developments, including its components, with a focus on Fauna Europaea and Euro+Med. Besides analyzing current gaps, new ideas will be developed to trigger expert involvement and enhance the data management systems.

In a side-meeting at BIH 2013, some ideas were discussed with available EU BON and PESI partners. Important steps will be taken to secure the sustainability of databases and expertise networks combined with the development of technical innovations for users and stakeholders and to promote the implementation of PESI as a European (INSPIRE) standard. It will be also important to further integrate the huge expertise networks, outreach to PESI Focal Points and expand the geographical scope. Furthermore, it will be important to integrate additional data types and data-resources.

The Environmental Change Institute (ECI) in the University of Oxford is seeking to appoint a Research Assistant to join the existing research team on two EU funded research projects.

The role will require the development and application of methodologies for undertaking systematic literature reviews, quantitative analysis of model outputs, contribution to the writing of research papers, organisation of workshops and large meetings, and the performance of other duties necessary for the successful completion of both the IMPRESSIONS and OPENNESS projects

You will have a Masters or equivalent in an environmental discipline and strong quantitative skills. You must have the ability to undertake systematic literature reviews and synthesise findings and assist in the management of large research projects. Excellent organisational and writing skills are essential.

This is a part-time (50% FTE) post and is available for 24 months.

The closing date for applications is 12.00 noon on Wednesday 18 December 2013.

You can find more information and apply here.

The Environmental Change Institute (ECI) in the University of Oxford is seeking to appoint a Postdoctoral Research Assistant to join the existing research team on two EU funded research projects: IMPRESSIONS and OPENNESS.

The role will require the development of a range of methodological and modelling approaches, including quantitative, qualitative and mixed techniques, to address a number of environmental science challenges in the contexts of operationalising ecosystem services and investigating cross-sectoral climate change impacts and vulnerabilities. The post provides the opportunity for a researcher with skills in programming, GIS and statistics to develop innovative solutions in research areas critical to ensuring the resilience of our future environment and to expand the modelling capability of the ECI team.

You will have a PhD in a discipline relevant to modelling or environmental sciences and a background in programming and modelling. You will have experience of using Geographical Information Systems and a strong grounding in statistics and/or operational research. Excellent communication skills both written and oral are essential. You will be self-motivated, with the ability to work independently.

This post is available for 24 months in the first instance.

The closing date for applications is 12.00 noon on Wednesday 18 December 2013. It is intended that interviews will be held during the week beginning 13 January 2014.

For more information and to apply for this position, click here.

A memorandum of understanding has been signed between EU BON and Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA). The hand over took place at the 21st GBIF Governing Board (GB21) in New Delhi (India) on 16-18 September 2014 between EU BON project co-ordinator Christoph Häuser and Roald Vang (Head of Department on Information technology) and Frank Hanssen from NINA.

IMAGE: At the handover: EU BON co-ordinator Christoph Häuser and Roald Vang (Head of Department on Information technology) and Frank Hanssen from NINA.

The Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA) is Norway’s leading institution for applied ecological research, with broad-based expertise on the genetic, population, species, ecosystem and landscape level, in terrestrial, freshwater and coastal marine environments. The core activities encompass strategic ecological research integrated with long-term monitoring, as well as a variety of environmental assessments and development of methodologies. Most work is aimed at improving the understanding of biodiversity, ecosystem services, ecological processes and their main drivers to facilitate better management of ecosystem services and resources. NINA addresses a wide variety of interdisciplinary issues involving both ecologists and social scientists, and plays an important role in European and other international research cooperation.

The consultation will run from the 7th of October to the 30th of November 2014. Comments received before the 31st of October 2014 will be, as much as possible, presented with the first results of this project during the IUCN World Parks Congress taking place in Sydney, Australia, 12-19 November 2014.

Contributors are not required to comment on the entire Consultation Document – any input will welcomed. 

More information available here.

A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed at the second EU BON Stakeholder Roundtable on Citizen Science between Christoph Häuser, on behalf of EU BON, and Fermin Serrano Sanz, on behalf of the Citizen Science Project Socientize at the 27^th of November 2014. The Roundtable on Citizen Science took place at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, Germany and followed the General Assembly Meeting of the European Citizen Science Association. 

Signing the MoU: (left) Christoph Häuser, EU BON and (right) Fermin Serrano Sanz, Socientize

Socientize (Society as e-Infrastructure through technology, innovation and creativity) is a Citizen Science Project that was funded by the European Union. The project aims to coordinate agents involved in the citizen science process and to foster and promote the usage of citizen science infrastructures.  There are several linkages between the citizen science related work of EU BON and Socientize (e.g. policy recommendations for citizen science) and by signing the MoU, a further exchange and follow-ups were agreed.

EU BON and CETAF informatics groups had an astronomically successful meeting at Digitarium in Joensuu, Finland, 17-20 March 2015. The event coincided with solar eclipse and show of the decade for northern lights.

Major progress in data standards for information exchange took place during the week when the Biodiversity Information Standards TDWG organisation announced ratification of five new terms for quantitative biodiversity data, which had been proposed by the EU BON project one year earlier. The new terms include, in particular, organismQuantity and sampleSizeValue. This allows for exchange of ecological data in much wider scale than what has been possible until now. The participants of the meeting applauded for this occasion.

Northern lights over Joensuu Science Park 2015-03-18. Photo: Riitta Tegelberg

The meeting included a training workshop on new data sharing tools, and working sessions for designing the EU BON portal, which will allow using biodiversity observation data in research.

The 40 attendees came from 18 different countries.

Participants at the meeting.

During the meeting the attendees also were given presentations and demonstrations of Digitarium's equipment and methods for high-performance digitisation.

Butterfly monitoring at local, national, regional, and global levels is the topic of the first of the GEO BON Technical Series reports produced to provide stakeholders with practical guidance for biodiversity conservation.

The report is jointly produced by GEO BON, EU BON, UNEP-WCMC, the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) and Dutch Butterfly Conservation, as a follow up of a joint workshop, which took place in December 2014, to catalyse the process for the development of global butterfly monitoring guidelines and the creation of a new specialist butterfly monitoring group.

The report titled "Guidelines for Standardised Global Butterfly Monitoring" provides a suite of standard field protocols that can measure butterfly population change over various spatial and temporal scales, and that can be applied in any part of the world.

The importance of butterfly monitoring programmes lies in the fact that they provide information about population trends and changes that can be then used as indicators of biodiversity and environmental change outside of the butterfly context.

The guidelines are intended for scheme coordinators, i.e. people wishing to establish butterfly monitoring in any part of the world. The guidelines explain how to set up butterfly monitoring that can provide consistent and comparable results between sites and between years, consistent with international standards.

The ambition behind this new publication is that butterfly populations around the world are well monitored, thereby providing vital information on how these insect populations and other parts of biodiversity are changing. This information is important for feeding into local, national, regional, and global decision-making to help reduce biodiversity loss as well as raising awareness of butterflies and biodiversity in general.

Original Source:

Van Swaay, C., Regan, E., Ling, M., Bozhinovska, E., Fernandez, M., Marini-Filho, O.J., Huertas, B., Phon, C.-K., Kőrösi, A., Meerman, J., Pe’er, G., Uehara-Prado, M., Sáfián, S., Sam, L., Shuey, J., Taron, D., Terblanche, R., and Underhill, L. (2015). Guidelines for Standardised Global Butterfly Monitoring. Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network, Leipzig, Germany. GEO BON Technical Series 1, 32pp.

The Museum für Naturkunde and the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum are honored to be hosting the 31st Annual Meeting of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) as well as the 2nd International Conference on Biodiversity Biobanking of the Global Genome Biodiversity Network (GGBN) in Berlin from June, 20 to June, 25, 2016. The conferences will be held in parallel at the andel’s Hotel Berlin, Landsberger Allee.

• SPNHC conference web site: http://www.spnhc2016.berlin/, conference theme: "Green Museum – How to practice what we preach?"
• GGBN conference web site: https://meetings.ggbn.org/conference/ggbn/2016/index, conference theme: "Meeting the Challenge: How to Preserve a Cross-Section of the Tree of Life"

The registration for both conferences is now open. Please check the conference web sites for information on the conference program, field trips, social events, accommodation, registration and abstract submission. All social events and field trips as well as the opening session on Tuesday are joint events for attendees of both conferences. During lunch and coffee breaks one will have the chance to visit the vendor booths and chat with attendees of both conferences. The sessions of both conferences cover complementary topics to avoid duplications.

The Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring (TEAM) network has the aim to measure and compare plants, terrestrial mammals, ground-dwelling birds and climate using a standard methodology in a range of tropical forests, from relatively pristine places to those most affected by people. TEAM currently operates in sixteen tropical forest sites across Africa, Asia and Latin America supporting a network of scientists committed to standardized methods of data collection to quantify how plants and animals respond to pressures such as climate change and human encroachment.

A recent TEAM network paper published in PLOS Biology deals with the standartization of methods in assessing biodiversity trends in tropical forest protected areas.

Abstract: 

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.

With about 87 percent of precincts reporting, 57 percent of residents voted against the measure, according to the Associated Press.

The post Question 4: Voters reject legalization of some psychedelic substances appeared first on Boston.com.

At her first Met Gala, Ayo Edebiri showed out in a youthful white look fading into a garden full of colorful flowers at the bottom by Loewe.

The post The Met Gala was in full bloom with Zendaya, Jennifer Lopez, Mindy Kaling among the standout stars appeared first on Boston.com.

Wegen fragwürdiger Anklagen, Urteile und Ernennungen gerät die spanische Justiz zunehmend ins Zwielicht. Die politischen Parteien haben zu grossen Einfluss auf die Ernennung der Richter.


«Gerechtigkeit!» Spaniens Justiz gerät ins Zwielicht, etwa durch die Kehrtwende des obersten Gerichts im Fall der Grundbuchgebühren. (Bild: Susana Vera / Reuters)