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Letter to the editor: It was your policies, stupid

Is there a poultice large enough to cover the thumped Democratic Party ("'$1 billion disaster': What went wrong for Harris campaign?" Web, Nov. 8)?




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Jets' Spencer Shrader expected to kick against Cardinals after another shakeup at the position

Spencer Shrader is next up in the New York Jets' kicking shuffle.




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Miami's Cam Ward sets school record with his 30th TD pass of the season

Miami quarterback and Heisman Trophy contender Cam Ward has another milestone on his resume.




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Roger Goodell says the NFL is working 'very hard' to hold a game in Berlin

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has an answer for German fans wondering about rumors the league could be heading to their capital city of Berlin: "Believe it."




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Utah AD Mark Harlan blasts the Big 12 officiating crew after BYU rallies to beat the Utes

Utah athletic director Mark Harlan blasted the Big 12 officiating crew following BYU's 22-21 win over the Utes on Saturday night for controversial calls on the Cougars' winning drive.




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Hall of Famer Michael Strahan grilled for failing to place hand over heart during national anthem

NFL Hall of Famer Michael Strahan grew up in a military family, but that didn't save him from an onslaught of criticism on Sunday when he failed to place his hand over his heart during the national anthem.




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Longtime Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw is on the mend after 2 surgeries

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




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Japan's SoftBank returns to profit after gains at Vision Fund and other investments

Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.




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Anthropic's Claude seeks work with the U.S. intelligence community

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




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Japan's nuclear watchdog disqualifies a reactor for the first time since Fukushima disaster

Japan's nuclear watchdog on Wednesday formally disqualified a reactor in the country's north-central region from restarting, the first rejection under safety standards that were reinforced after the 2011 Fukushima disaster. The decision is a setback for Japan as it seeks to accelerate reactor restarts to maximize nuclear power.




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2 Thessalonians, Chapter 1 Bible Study

Bible study topics in 2 Thessalonians, Chapter 1 cover Faith Vindicated. The questions are designed for personal or group inductive style Bible study and discussion.




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2 Thessalonians, Chapter 2 Bible Study

Bible study topics in 2 Thessalonians, Chapter 2 cover The Return Of Christ. The questions are designed for personal or group inductive style Bible study and discussion.




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2 Thessalonians, Chapter 3 Bible Study

Bible study topics in 2 Thessalonians, Chapter 3 cover Prayer And Productivity. The questions are designed for personal or group inductive style Bible study and discussion.




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Christian Divorce-What Is The Doctrine?

Help to understand when divorce is appropriate for Christians by applying the intent of the Biblical instructions to the circumstances of our modern culture.




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Indiana hires Stephanie White as coach to lead Caitlin Clark and the Fever

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.




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Bam Adebayo scores 32 points to help the Heat beat the Wizards 118-98 in Mexico City

Bam Adebayo scored 20 of his 32 points in the first half and the Miami Heat beat the Washington Wizards 118-98 on Saturday night in the 14th NBA regular-season game in Mexico.




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Joel Embiid is expected to make his season debut for the 76ers after injuries and suspension

Joel Embiid is expected to play this week for the Philadelphia 76ers - barring another setback, and there is always that chance with the 7-footer - after he won Olympic gold, signed a contract extension, slogged through a knee injury, was the root of two NBA investigations, scuffled with a columnist and was hit with a technical foul for waving a towel from the bench.




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Injuries are a common theme for NBA teams off to fast -- or slow -- starts

Cleveland has won its first 12 games and is off to the best start in the league. There are 10 teams in the Western Conference with winning records. And somehow, only two teams in the Eastern Conference have winning records.




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Prince William describes family's 'brutal' year as wife and father faced cancer treatment

Britain's Prince William has described the past year as "brutal" following cancer diagnoses for his wife and father. "Honestly, it's been dreadful," he said.




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NASA astronauts won't say which one of them got sick after almost eight months in space

Three NASA astronauts whose prolonged space station mission ended with a trip to the hospital last month declined to say Friday which one of them was sick.




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NASA astronauts won't say which one of them got sick after almost 8 months in space

Three NASA astronauts whose prolonged space station mission ended with a trip to the hospital last month declined to say Friday which one of them was sick.




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Queen Camilla will miss the U.K.'s annual Remembrance Sunday events due to chest infection

Queen Camilla will miss Britain's annual remembrance weekend events to honor fallen service personnel while she recovers from a chest infection, Buckingham Palace said Saturday.




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1 monkey recovered, 42 others still remain on the run from South Carolina lab

One of 43 monkeys bred for medical research that escaped a compound in South Carolina has been recovered unharmed, officials said Saturday.




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Wisconsin's high court to hear oral arguments on whether an 1849 abortion ban remains valid

The Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Monday on whether a law that legislators adopted more than a decade before the Civil War bans abortion and can still be enforced.




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WHO says mpox cases in Congo's epicenter where the new variant was detected may be 'plateauing'

The World Health Organization said mpox cases in the region of Congo where a new and more infectious variant was first detected appear to be "plateauing," even as the virus continues to increase in other regions of the country, as well as in Burundi and Uganda.




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RFK Jr. cues up clash by calling for the removal of fluoride from drinking water

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.




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France throws one last party to celebrate the Paris Olympics

The curtain will come down on the Paris' feel-good summer with a grand parade of French athletes on the Champs Elysees on Saturday as the country throws one last party to celebrate the Olympic and Paralympic Games.




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New Edwin Moses doc '13 Steps' shows how clearing the hurdles was the easy part for a track icon

Not long after Edwin Moses figured out how to attack the solution to track's ultimate math problem, he transformed himself into the best hurdler in history.




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Could a doping probe strip Salt Lake City of the 2034 Olympics? The IOC president says it's unlikely

In his first visit back to Utah since awarding Salt Lake City the 2034 Winter Games, the International Olympic Committee president sought to ease worries that the city could lose its second Olympics if organizers don't fulfill an agreement to play peacemaker between anti-doping authorities.




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Biden: Olympians represented 'the very best of America'

Declaring the U.S. the "greatest sports nation in the history of the world," President Joe Biden welcomed U.S. Olympians and Paralympians at the White House on Monday to recognize their achievement in this summer's Games in Paris.




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Notre Dame marks arrival of Paris Olympics' iconic trackside bell as cathedral reopening nears

Paris's Notre Dame cathedral, whose historic bells were silenced following 2019's devastating fire, will soon echo again with fresh chimes.




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British writer Samantha Harvey's novel 'Orbital' wins the Booker Prize for fiction

British writer Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for fiction on Tuesday with "Orbital," a short, wonder-filled novel set aboard the International Space Station.










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Is The Lazarus Project Coming Back?

Season 2 of the sci-fi thriller premieres on TNT in the United States on Sunday, June 9. But there's a catch.

The post Is The Lazarus Project Coming Back? first appeared on SciFi Stream.



  • The Lazarus Project
  • TNT





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Symposium: Nature and Governance – Biodiversity Data, Science, and the Policy Interface

The EU BON project which is coordinated by the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin/Germany has started on 1 December and will continue for 4.5 years. The EU BON Kickoff Meeting will be held in Berlin from 13 to 15 February 2013.

With respect to EU BON’s objectives the International Symposium "Nature and Governance – Biodiversity Data, Science, and the Policy Interface" will be held prior to the EU BON Kickoff Meeting from 11 to 12 February in Berlin with high-ranking speakers. You are most welcome to attend the Symposium.

The Museum für Naturkunde Berlin is pleased to host this international symposium and will bring together high-ranking speakers and guests from worldwide to talk and discuss about these

Major Topics:

  • What (data) policy needs
  • The future of biodiversity information: new ways for generating, managing, and integrating biodiversity data
  • How new approaches / models can link scales and disciplines
  • Broadening the base and opening up: new ways to engage the public and stakeholders in biodiversity monitoring and assessments
  • Résumé / conclusions

For more details, please have a look at the programme page.

The 1st day of the Symposium and the reception will be held "under the dinosaurs" in the central exhibition hall of the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin.

The 2nd day will be held in the Seminaris Conference Center in the quiet south-west of Berlin. The closing of the Symposium will be celebrated as "Come together & Ice-Breaker for EU BON Kickoff Meeting" in the nearby beautiful Large Green House of the Botanic Garden Berlin.

If you want to take part, please register at the registration page.





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The Norwegian Biodiversity Information Centre joins EU BON

The news about the new partnership has been officially disseminated through the website of the Norwegian Biodiversity Centre. The news piece discusses the importance of EU BON  in the classification of biodiversity data and the experience and technology that the new partnership brings to it.
The article quotes the EU BON project as "the only EU project of its kind with a main purpose is to build an infrastructure that improves the exchange and dataflow throughout Europe." More can be found at: http://www.biodiversity.no/ArticleList.aspx?m=34&amid=11718
The news about the partnership has been also picked up by the English language Norwegian Source for science news ScienceNordic.
Earlier on the visibility and the popularity of the EU BON project have been also enhanced by a publication of the first newsletter by the Estonian science news website eBiodiversity, with credit given to the ambitious project aiming to build an European gateway for integrated biodiversity information.




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International biodiversity data symposium to mark the kickoff of the EU BON project

The EU BON project is pleased to announce the International Symposium "Nature and Governance – Biodiversity Data, Science, and the Policy Interface", which was held in Berlin from 11 to 12 February. The symposium aimed at clarifying and popularizing EU BON's objectives prior to the official EU BON Kick-off Meeting held from 13 to 15 February 2013.

The symposium was hosted by the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and brought together high-ranking speakers and guests from across the world to talk and discuss the different aspects of the EU BON Project. Among the main issues covered was the future of biodiversity information, the challenges in front of new data policies, new approaches in collecting information, and ways to engage the public in biodiversity monitoring and assessments.

The EU BON project was started on 1 December, 2012, and will continue for 4.5 years. The aim of EU BON is to build a substantial part and contribute to the Group on Earth Observation's Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON), through an innovative approach of integration of biodiversity information systems. The project, built as an answer to the need of a new integrated biodiversity data, will facilitate access to this knowledge and will effectively improve the work in the field of biodiversity observation in general.

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For more information on the symposium and the events planned, please visit our programme page.

All interested parties are most welcome to attend the symposium or to follow it on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.

Additional information

EU BON (2012) stands for "Building the European Biodiversity Observation Network" and is a European research project, financed by the 7th EU framework programme for research and development (FP7). EU BON seeks ways to better integrate biodiversity information and implement into policy and decision-making of biodiversity monitoring and management in the EU.

GEO BON stands for "Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network". It coordinates activities relating to the Societal Benefit Area (SBA) on Biodiversity of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). Some 100 governmental, inter-governmental and non-governmental organisations are collaborating through GEO BON to organise and improve terrestrial, freshwater and marine biodiversity observations globally and make their biodiversity data, information and forecasts more readily accessible to policymakers, managers, experts and other users. Moreover, GEO BON has been recognized by the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. More information at: http://www.earthobservations.org/geobon.shtml.





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EU BON featured in the January newsletter of the The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)

The news about the International Symposium "Nature and Governance – Biodiversity Data, Science, and the Policy Interface" and the official EU BON Kickoff Meeting has been reflected in the January newsletter of the The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).

GBIF only features high end biodiversity news and major projects. EU BON project summary is placed in the collaborations section of the newsletter and the two events are included in the Upcoming Events, pointed out to the readers' attention.

To view the GBIF newsletter for January, please go to: http://www.gbif.org/communications/resources/newsletters/, or see the newsletter PDF attached below.





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Data paper describes Antarctic biodiversity data gathered by 90 expeditions since 1956

Huge data encompassed into a unique georeferenced macrobenthic assemblages database

A new peer-reviewed data paper offers a comprehensive, open-access collection of georeferenced biological information about the Antarctic macrobenthic communities. The term macrobenthic refers to the visible-for-the-eye organisms that live near or on the sea bottom such as echinoderms, sponges, ascidians, crustaceans. The paper will help in coordinating biodiversity research and conservation activities on species living near the ocean bottom of the Antarctic.
The data paper "Antarctic macrobenthic communities: A compilation of circumpolar information", published in the open access journal Nature Conservation, describes data from approximately 90 different expeditions in the region since 1956 that have now been made openly available under a CC-By license. The paper provides unique georeferenced biological basic information for the planning of future coordinated research activities, for example those under the umbrella of the biology program Antarctic Thresholds – Ecosystem Resilience and Adaptation (AnT-ERA) of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR). The information collected could be also beneficial for current conservation priorities such as the planning of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).
The expeditions were organised by several famous explorers of the Antarctic. The area covered by the paper consists of almost the entire Southern Ocean, including sites covered by a single ice-shelf. The vast majority of information is from shelf areas around the continent at water depth shallower than 800m. The information from the different sources is then attributed to the classified macrobenthic assemblages. The results are made publicly available via the "Antarctic Biodiversity Facility" (data.biodiversity.aq).
A specific feature of this paper is that the manuscript was automatically generated from the Integrated Publishing Toolkit of the Antarctic Node of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (AntaBIF IPT) and then submitted to the journal Nature Conservation through a novel workflow developed by GBIF and Pensoft Publishers. (see previous press release). Data are made freely available through the AntaBIF IPT, and sea-bed images of 214 localities through the data repository for geoscience and environmental data, PANGAEA- Data Publisher for Earth and Environmental Science (sample: http://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.198682).

Speaking from on board the research vessel 'Polarstern', the paper's lead author Prof. Julian Gutt of the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Germany commented:
"The most important achievement of this paper is that data collected over many years and by various institutions are now not only freely available for anyone to download and use, but also properly described to facilitate future work in re-using the data. The Data Paper concept is certainly a great approach that multiplies the effect of funds and efforts spent by generations of scientists."
The data will also be used for a comprehensive Biogeography Atlas of the Southern Ocean project to be released during the XI SCAR Biology Symposium in Barcelona July 2013.
SOURCE: EurekAlert!




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The Future of Botanical Monography: Report from an international workshop, 12–16 March 2012, Smolenice, Slovak Republic

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.

Source: Crespo, A., Crisci, J.V., Dorr, L.J., Ferencová, Z., Frodin, D., Geltman, D.V., Kilian, N., Linder, H.P., Lohmann, L.G., Oberprieler, C., Penev, L., Smith, G.F., Thomas, W., Tulig, M., Turland, N. & Zhang, X.-C. 2013. The Future of Botanical Monography: Report from an international workshop, 12–16 March 2012, Smolenice, Slovak Republic. Taxon 62: 4–20.




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The European Biodiversity Observation Network

The European Biodiversity Observation Network (EU BON), a European project on biodiversity data, was launched in December 2012. The Belgian Biodiversity Platform attended the symposium connected to the EU BON kick-off meeting in Berlin, Germany, on 11-12th February 2013.
The symposium entitled ‘Nature and Governance: Biodiversity Data, Science, and the Policy Interface’ highlighted the importance of biodiversity data for policy-making and research.  The complexity of producing and collating data on an international scale involving different methods and disciplines was well illustrated. The importance of the accessibility of biodiversity data within an integrated system was well demonstrated - the sum of all contributions will in the end enable monitoring, forecasting and policy-making.
EU BON will create a substantial part of the Group on Earth’s Observation’s Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) and will operate in support of biodiversity sciences and policy initiatives, such as the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
EU BON will build on existing components, such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), LifeWatch infrastructures and national biodiversity data centers. As Belgian GBIF node, the Belgian Biodiversity Platform can provide an important support to the development of EU BON. The Belgian partners in the EU BON project are the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA), the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS), and the National Botanic Garden of Belgium (Botanic Garden).
We will follow with interest the development in the EU BON project and will continue publishing data through GBIF. If you would like to support this initiative by having your data published on GBIF, please contact André Heughebaert (GBIF node manager), Dimitri Brosens or Kristina Articus (Biodiversity Experts).