Following Apple's removal of Bob Mansfield from their executive team, and clarification that he'd be staying to work on special projects, some more color and context has been reported on the situation. And it's low on drama, high on love. First, John Gruber of Daring Fireball:
There?s nothing punitive with Mansfield?s role change, nor health problems or anything like that. Just a more focused role on certain new products. His un-retirement as a senior vice president last year was always intended to be transitional, not permanent.
Gruber also says Mansfield is so successful and so popular he can "write his own ticket". Talking to Bloomberg, Om Malik had similar comments to make regarding the level of love for Mansfield.
So, thankfully, no medical concerns, and no politics, just an opportunity for Mansfield to shed his executive duties and go full speed ahead on those special projects. (Which, most recently, was rumored to include the iWatch...)
Of bears and berries: Return of wolves aids grizzly bears in YellowstonePublic release date: 29-Jul-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: William Ripple bill.ripple@oregonstate.edu 541-737-3056 Oregon State University
CORVALLIS, Ore. A new study suggests that the return of wolves to Yellowstone National Park is beginning to bring back a key part of the diet of grizzly bears that has been missing for much of the past century berries that help bears put on fat before going into hibernation.
It's one of the first reports to identify the interactions between these large, important predators, based on complex ecological processes. It was published today by scientists from Oregon State University and Washington State University in the Journal of Animal Ecology.
The researchers found that the level of berries consumed by Yellowstone grizzlies is significantly higher now that shrubs are starting to recover following the re-introduction of wolves, which have reduced over-browsing by elk herds. The berry bushes also produce flowers of value to pollinators like butterflies, insects and hummingbirds; food for other small and large mammals; and special benefits to birds.
The report said that berries may be sufficiently important to grizzly bear diet and health that they could be considered in legal disputes as is white pine nut availability now - about whether or not to change the "threatened" status of grizzly bears under the Endangered Species Act.
"Wild fruit is typically an important part of grizzly bear diet, especially in late summer when they are trying to gain weight as rapidly as possible before winter hibernation," said William Ripple, a professor in the OSU Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society, and lead author on the article. "Berries are one part of a diverse food source that aids bear survival and reproduction, and at certain times of the year can be more than half their diet in many places in North America."
When wolves were removed from Yellowstone early in the 1900s, increased browsing by elk herds caused the demise of young aspen and willow trees a favorite food along with many berry-producing shrubs and tall, herbaceous plants. The recovery of those trees and other food sources since the re-introduction of wolves in the 1990s has had a profound impact on the Yellowstone ecosystem, researchers say, even though it's still in the very early stages.
"Studies like this also point to the need for an ecologically effective number of wolves," said co-author Robert Beschta, an OSU professor emeritus. "As we learn more about the cascading effects they have on ecosystems, the issue may be more than having just enough individual wolves so they can survive as a species. In some situations, we may wish to consider the numbers necessary to help control overbrowsing, allow tree and shrub recovery, and restore ecosystem health."
As wolves help reduce elk numbers in Yellowstone and allow tree and shrub recovery, researchers said, this improves the diet and health of grizzly bears. In turn, a healthy grizzly bear population provides a second avenue of control on wild ungulates, especially on newborns in the spring time.
Yellowstone has a wide variety of nutritious berries serviceberry, chokecherry, buffaloberry, twinberry, huckleberry and others that are highly palatable to bears. These shrubs are also eaten by elk and thus likely declined as elk populations grew over time. With the return of wolves, the new study found the percentage of fruit in grizzly bear scat in recent years almost doubled during August.
Because the abundant elk have been an important food for Yellowstone grizzly bears for the past half-century, the increased supply of berries may help offset the reduced availability of elk in the bears' diet in recent years. More research is needed regarding the effects of wolves on plants and animals consumed by grizzly bears.
There is precedent for high levels of ungulate herbivory causing problems for grizzly bears, who are omnivores that eat both plants and animals. Before going extinct in the American Southwest by the early 1900s, grizzly bear diets shifted toward livestock depredation, the report noted, because of lack of plant-based food caused by livestock overgrazing. And, in the absence of wolves, black bears went extinct on Anticosti Island in Canada after over-browsing of berry shrubs by introduced while-tailed deer.
Increases in berry production in Yellowstone may also provide a buffer against other ecosystem shifts, the researchers noted whitebark pine nut production, a favored bear food, may be facing pressure from climate change. Grizzly bear survival declined during years of low nut production.
Livestock grazing in grizzly bear habitat adjacent to the national park, and bison herbivory in the park, likely also contribute to high foraging pressure on shrubs and forbs, the report said. In addition to eliminating wolf-livestock conflicts, retiring livestock allotments in the grizzly bear recovery zone adjacent to Yellowstone could benefit bears through increases in plant foods.
###
The research was supported by private, state and federal agencies, including the U.S. Geological Survey.
Editor's Note: Digital images are available to illustrate this story.
Grizzly bear in Yellowstone: http://bit.ly/16PnxnD
Serviceberries in Yellowstone: http://bit.ly/13HxNMB
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Of bears and berries: Return of wolves aids grizzly bears in YellowstonePublic release date: 29-Jul-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: William Ripple bill.ripple@oregonstate.edu 541-737-3056 Oregon State University
CORVALLIS, Ore. A new study suggests that the return of wolves to Yellowstone National Park is beginning to bring back a key part of the diet of grizzly bears that has been missing for much of the past century berries that help bears put on fat before going into hibernation.
It's one of the first reports to identify the interactions between these large, important predators, based on complex ecological processes. It was published today by scientists from Oregon State University and Washington State University in the Journal of Animal Ecology.
The researchers found that the level of berries consumed by Yellowstone grizzlies is significantly higher now that shrubs are starting to recover following the re-introduction of wolves, which have reduced over-browsing by elk herds. The berry bushes also produce flowers of value to pollinators like butterflies, insects and hummingbirds; food for other small and large mammals; and special benefits to birds.
The report said that berries may be sufficiently important to grizzly bear diet and health that they could be considered in legal disputes as is white pine nut availability now - about whether or not to change the "threatened" status of grizzly bears under the Endangered Species Act.
"Wild fruit is typically an important part of grizzly bear diet, especially in late summer when they are trying to gain weight as rapidly as possible before winter hibernation," said William Ripple, a professor in the OSU Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society, and lead author on the article. "Berries are one part of a diverse food source that aids bear survival and reproduction, and at certain times of the year can be more than half their diet in many places in North America."
When wolves were removed from Yellowstone early in the 1900s, increased browsing by elk herds caused the demise of young aspen and willow trees a favorite food along with many berry-producing shrubs and tall, herbaceous plants. The recovery of those trees and other food sources since the re-introduction of wolves in the 1990s has had a profound impact on the Yellowstone ecosystem, researchers say, even though it's still in the very early stages.
"Studies like this also point to the need for an ecologically effective number of wolves," said co-author Robert Beschta, an OSU professor emeritus. "As we learn more about the cascading effects they have on ecosystems, the issue may be more than having just enough individual wolves so they can survive as a species. In some situations, we may wish to consider the numbers necessary to help control overbrowsing, allow tree and shrub recovery, and restore ecosystem health."
As wolves help reduce elk numbers in Yellowstone and allow tree and shrub recovery, researchers said, this improves the diet and health of grizzly bears. In turn, a healthy grizzly bear population provides a second avenue of control on wild ungulates, especially on newborns in the spring time.
Yellowstone has a wide variety of nutritious berries serviceberry, chokecherry, buffaloberry, twinberry, huckleberry and others that are highly palatable to bears. These shrubs are also eaten by elk and thus likely declined as elk populations grew over time. With the return of wolves, the new study found the percentage of fruit in grizzly bear scat in recent years almost doubled during August.
Because the abundant elk have been an important food for Yellowstone grizzly bears for the past half-century, the increased supply of berries may help offset the reduced availability of elk in the bears' diet in recent years. More research is needed regarding the effects of wolves on plants and animals consumed by grizzly bears.
There is precedent for high levels of ungulate herbivory causing problems for grizzly bears, who are omnivores that eat both plants and animals. Before going extinct in the American Southwest by the early 1900s, grizzly bear diets shifted toward livestock depredation, the report noted, because of lack of plant-based food caused by livestock overgrazing. And, in the absence of wolves, black bears went extinct on Anticosti Island in Canada after over-browsing of berry shrubs by introduced while-tailed deer.
Increases in berry production in Yellowstone may also provide a buffer against other ecosystem shifts, the researchers noted whitebark pine nut production, a favored bear food, may be facing pressure from climate change. Grizzly bear survival declined during years of low nut production.
Livestock grazing in grizzly bear habitat adjacent to the national park, and bison herbivory in the park, likely also contribute to high foraging pressure on shrubs and forbs, the report said. In addition to eliminating wolf-livestock conflicts, retiring livestock allotments in the grizzly bear recovery zone adjacent to Yellowstone could benefit bears through increases in plant foods.
###
The research was supported by private, state and federal agencies, including the U.S. Geological Survey.
Editor's Note: Digital images are available to illustrate this story.
Grizzly bear in Yellowstone: http://bit.ly/16PnxnD
Serviceberries in Yellowstone: http://bit.ly/13HxNMB
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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By Nick Tavares
July 28, 2013 12:00 AM
Last week, Ryan Braun was put away for the rest of 2013 thanks to his ties to a clinic that passed out drugs of all kinds to athletes.
At the same time, Alex Rodriguez has played Richard Nixon to Braun's Spiro Agnew, ducking and weaving as baseball chases the crown jewel of the steroid-fueled justice brigade.
It's dominated sports talk on radio and cable, I imagine. It's hard to say for sure, as I've tuned out as much of it as possible.
I can't begin to express how bored and exhausted I am with the drug scandals that continue to plague baseball coverage. For as much gravity as they're given in the media, I can't make myself care about the fates of Rodriguez or Braun or whether they've burned their tickets to the Hall of Fame. I don't see how or why it matters.
What matters, plainly, are the players that are left playing and what level of commitment and entertainment they bring to the game. When they're put away for breaking the rules, it's hard to see the point in paying them any further mind.
To dwell on scandal is to ignore the work that baseball has done to clean up the game. It ignores the tornado that Yasiel Puig has created in pushing the Dodgers back up the standings in the National League West. It ignores how the Oakland A's have played all season in proving that last year's division title wasn't a fluke. It ignores the jobs Joe Maddon and David Price have done in keeping Tampa Bay relevant.
And, back here, it ignores the story of how the Red Sox continue to steward their ship in the right direction, locking up second baseman Dustin Pedroia with a contract extension that will keep him in Fenway Park until 2021.
The mechanics of the deal are pretty plain. The Red Sox get a team leader who is arguably the best in baseball at his position, offensively and defensively, for the rest of his career. Pedroia gets stability, both financially (he'll have some payments deferred until 2028) and in knowing that Boston will be home until he's in his late 30s.
So here's a good story to come out of baseball this week, but it's not the only one. To say that Pedroia is a breath of fresh air carries the weight that baseball is stuck in the fog of scandals and selfish parties, and that's not necessarily true.
Rodriguez, Braun and the rest are, finally, a very small portion of the baseball bunch. Where they were likely the majority even just 10 years ago, they're now on the fringes and footnotes to the real stories.
So when a player like Pedroia signs a contract extension like the one he has, it's recognition of finding the sweet spot, where the team and the player have trust and actually feel they need each other. They each see the benefit of staying in the same arrangement. And there's trust there.
Not all players stay with one team their entire careers, or even most of their careers. So many things have to go right for it to happen. Sometimes it looks like a good fit, as with Felix Hernandez and the Mariners or Joe Mauer and the Twins. Sometimes, the Yankees sign Rodriguez for 10 years and the Brewers extend Braun through 2020.
But Pedroia's taking his shot at it. And if he's right, and the team's right, and it keeps working, it's going to be a fun decade in Boston baseball.
With so many great stars and stories, it'll likely be a great era for the game, anyway. It'll be nice to keep some of that here on the local dial.
Nick Tavares' column appears Sundays in the Standard-Times and at SouthCoastToday.com. He can be reached at nick@nicktavares.com
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HOUSTON ? George P. Mitchell, the Texas billionaire who pioneered shale-drilling techniques that triggered a renaissance in North American oil and natural gas production, has died. He was 94.
He died Friday at his residence in the Tremont Hotel in Galveston, according to Franklin ?Rusty? Carnes, at the Carnes Brothers Funeral Home in Galveston. He died of natural causes, his family said in a statement.
Mitchell?s innovative use of horizontal wells and hydraulic fracturing in the 1990s to release gas from a previously impermeable rock formation near Fort Worth, Texas, earned him the nickname the ?father of the Barnett Shale.? Those drilling breakthroughs revolutionized oil and gas exploration from Pennsylvania to Poland and the Yukon Territory to Argentina.
?My engineers kept telling me, ?You are wasting your money, Mitchell,?? he told Forbes in 2009. ?And I said, ?Well damn it, let?s figure this thing out, because there is no question there is a tremendous source bed that?s about 250 feet thick.??
As other companies adopted Mitchell?s techniques, U.S. gas production rose 25 percent in the past decade, pushing prices to a 10-year low in April 2012. The nation now has an estimated 890 trillion cubic feet equivalent of recoverable natural gas, according to ITG Investment Research. That?s enough fuel for almost 40 years at current consumption rates.
As the same methods were applied to oil fields, crude production has more than quadrupled in places such as the Bakken formation in North Dakota and Montana in the past three years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Industries.
Mitchell sold his company, Mitchell Energy & Development Corp., to Devon Energy Corp. in 2002 for about $3 billion, becoming one of the largest shareholders of the Oklahoma City- based gas and oil producer. Forbes magazine ranked him the 239th-richest American in 2012.
The oilman focused on real estate earlier in his career, developing a suburb north of Houston out of 25,000 acres of pine forest. The Woodlands, which opened in 1974, now has a population of 100,000 and includes a mall, a 1.4-mile winding waterway and the 30-story headquarters of Anadarko Petroleum Corp. Exxon Mobil Corp., based in Irving, Texas, is building a 3 million-square-foot campus there.
Mitchell sold the development in 1997 to a partnership of Crescent Real Estate Equities Co. and Morgan Stanley Real Estate Fund II.
Mitchell had the ?guts? to do certain things that other people would be too scared to do, said Michael Richmond, who worked for Mitchell for 25 years, eventually retiring as chief executive officer of the real-estate company that developed The Woodlands.
?George didn?t like to hear the answer no,? Richmond said. ?He always wanted to hear the answer, how. You had to figure out solutions to any issue that was on the table.?
?The Woodlands is a beautiful project,? Mitchell said in a March 2009 interview in his downtown Houston office. ?But energy has been my background.?
George Phydias Mitchell was born in Galveston on May 21, 1919. His parents, Mike and Katina Mitchell, who had come to the U.S. from Greece separately around 1900, ran a shoeshine parlor in Galveston. His father, soon after arriving in the U.S., took the name Mike Mitchell from an employer handing out paychecks who couldn?t say his real name, Savvas Paraskevopoulos, according to an article in the Houston Chronicle.
Mitchell developed a passion for oil and gas while working in the oil fields for his older brother, Johnny, around age 17. He graduated in 1940 with a degree in petroleum engineering and an emphasis in geology from the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, now known as Texas A&M University, in College Station.
After serving as a captain in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during World War II, Mitchell in 1946 joined a newly formed oil exploration company, Oil Drilling. That eventually became Mitchell Energy & Development Corp., which went public in 1972. Mitchell and his brother were early partners in the company.
Mitchell participated in about 10,000 wells over his career. His company drilled its first well in the Barnett Shale in 1981 and developed fracturing and horizontal-drilling techniques to unlock gas trapped beneath hundreds of feet of rock, according to Mitchell?s company.
In his late 80s, Mitchell turned his attention back to another shale play, this time bankrolling rigs in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania for a company headed by his son, Todd, and Joe Greenberg, a geologist. The Marcellus Shale has since emerged as the largest U.S. gas resource, holding the equivalent of 330 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas, according to ITG.
The new abundance of cheap gas transformed the U.S. industrial landscape, prompting new investment in power plants that use gas to generate electricity and accelerating the demise of older coal and nuclear plants that were more expensive to repair and operate.
Chemical manufacturers including Exxon Mobil that use gas as the raw material for their products planned to build new plants in the U.S. to take advantage of the new resources. Pipeline networks to carry the newfound gas to market multiplied across the country. And gas drillers promoted natural gas powered trucks and cars for the nation?s highways and roads.
Import facilities built earlier in the 2000?s, when concerns in the U.S. focused on dwindling oil and gas supplies, are now seeking to add export terminals to send U.S. gas overseas in the form of liquefied natural gas.
?He was a visionary,? said James Rebello, who worked at Prudential Securities when it financed a small part of the exploration and production side of Mitchell?s group. Rebello and his colleagues told Mitchell they could lend him more if he combined the oil & gas business with the real estate unit.
?But he was adamant that he wanted to keep those separate,? Rebello said. ?He was right, and it worked out in the long run.?
Mitchell donated more than $175 million, with the largest gifts going to Texas A&M, the University of Houston and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. A tennis center at Texas A&M bears his name. His wife, Cynthia, who died in 2009, helped develop the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, an outdoor concert venue, in The Woodlands.
In addition to his ?great love? for The Woodlands, Richmond said, Mitchell had ?an enormous passion? for his home town of Galveston, where he bought and renovated older downtown buildings.
Mitchell met his wife while in the Army and married her in 1943. They had 10 children: Pamela Maguire, Meredith Dreiss, Scott Mitchell, Sheridan Lorenz, Mark Mitchell, Kent Mitchell, Greg Mitchell, Kirk Mitchell, Todd Mitchell and Grant Mitchell.
Syrian government forces have fully captured a district that was a key rebel stronghold in the central city of Homs, state media report.
The Sana news agency said the military had "restored security and stability to the neighbourhood of Khalidiya".
Activists reported clashes in Khalidiya on Monday morning, but said that most of the area was under army control.
The announcement comes a month after troops launched an offensive to oust rebels from Syria's third largest city.
Homs has been one of the focuses of a two-year nationwide uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, in which the UN says more than 100,000 people have died.
Correspondents say the capture of Khalidiya would add further impetus to the counter-offensive by government troops and their allies, which saw the nearby town of Qusair fall in June.
'Almost over'
On Monday, an unnamed army officer told Syrian state television: "Today, we can report having complete control of the area of Khalidiya."
"That was a victory of all our fighters and the whole Syrian Army and especially our dear leader, Bashar al-Assad. And God willing, we will get rid of the terrorists in the entire country and the future will be free of killings and under the control of the army."
However, UK-based activist group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights cast doubt on the claim.
While the group acknowledged that government forces were in control of most of Khalidiya, it said fighting was continuing on Monday.
"Clashes took place between rebels and regime forces, supported by Hezbollah and National Defence Forces, in the southern parts of the Khalidiya neighbourhood," it said.
"Regime forces are bombarding parts, and military reinforcements are arriving as advancing regime forces try to establish full control."
Opposition activists told the AFP news agency that about 90% of Khalidiya was now controlled by the army. One told the Associated Press that the battle for the district was "almost over".
On Sunday, the Arabic TV station al-Mayadeen, which is seen as close to the Syrian government, broadcast what it said was footage of Khalidiya, showing heavily damaged buildings and piles of rubble.
It also showed pictures of the interior of the historic Khaled bin Walid mosque, a focal point for anti-government protesters. Troops reportedly seized it on Saturday, days after activists accused them of firing shells at the tomb of Khaled bin Walid, a revered figure in Islam.
Only the Old City of Homs and a few other districts are still held by the opposition. On Monday, government jets bombed the Bab Hud district of the Old City, just south of Khalidiya, according to the Syrian Observatory.
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Public release date: 29-Jul-2013
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