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GE shares slide 7% on Dividend Cuts and Focus Realignment
Photo By: Momoneymoproblemz via Wikimedia Commons General Electric's (GE) announcement of its turnaround plans has led to a seven-percent slide in shares, its worst single-day decline in eight years.The turnaround involves the cutting of dividends in half and a reinvigorated focus on health care, aviation, and energy.GE CEO John Flannery apologized for GE's performance and assured investors that it will be more focused next year, which the company dubbed as the "reset year." The seven-percent decrease has been the company's worst since April 2009 after GE suffered setbacks from the housing recession's impact, and Flannery viewed the situation as a chance for GE to reinvent itself.The American multinational giant renewed its attention toward healthcare, aviation, and energy and views this as a complete departure from the usual interests involving media, railroads, chemicals, marine engines and banking.Flannery added that the said focus will allow the company to differentiate itself from Jeff Immelt and Jack Welch's aggressiveness. CNBC relayed GE's series of adjusted earnings for 2017 ahead of $1 to $1.07 a share and a free cash flow which is still at critically decreased levels of $6 billion to $7 billion, an area that GE guarantees to improve.The company looks forward to generating more than $20 billion of assets as it seeks to recalibrate its focus. GE is also set to deal with overcapacity issues, simplify its portfolio, and establish a $3 billion share buyback priority.In terms of dealing with overcapacity issues, the company is set to decrease the number of board of directors, who will have 15-year term limits, from 18 to 12 members.
China Outranks US on Supercomputer List
Photo By: O01326 via Wikimedia Commons China has reached another landmark in the world of supercomputing after having created faster supercomputers than those of the US in recent time.The final results in the Top500 rankings showed that China has 202 supercomputers while the US only has 143. The US has reached its lowest point in the Top500 rankings for the first time since it began 25 years ago.This is also the first time that China was able to produce a huge number of supercomputers which is attributed to the high economic performance of the Asian country. A decade ago, most of the world's fastest supercomputers can all be found in the US.By 2010, a Chinese supercomputer ended up in the No.1 spot.Since 2013, China has persistently held on to the number one title, thanks to the creation of the Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer that can be found in the city of Wuxi. Michael Kan from PCmag.com stated that the processing power of the Sunway TaihuLight can reach 93 petaflops, which is the equivalent of a quadrillion calculations per second.It's twice the power of the second fastest supercomputer called Tianhe-2, which was developed by a team of 1,300 computer engineers and scientists in China. Titan, the fastest supercomputer in the US, can be found at No. 5 on the list with a computing speed of 17.5 petaflops.The US had 231 supercomputers on the Top500 list three years ago.Tech analysts are worried that the country is lagging in its technological progress when rivals like China are making great strides in supercomputing technology.
Using Big Data to Protect Elephants, Count River Dolphins
Elephants roaming on a Kenyan wilderness. / Photo by: flightlog via Wikimedia Commons Wildlife conservation group Save the Elephants is harnessing the power of big data to protect elephants found in Kenya's Samburu National Reserve from poachers, according to Gavin Haines, writing for Positive News magazine. To carry out its work, STE relies on tracking software made possible by its partnership with Vulcan, a Seattle-based investment firm established by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The tracking software enables the real-time tracking of tagged elephants that can be displayed on a map in an app. The tracking data can be used in mapping elephant migration routes and if there are poachers in places where they will pass through, STE will send a ground unit to help the elephants make it through safely. Besides monitoring the elephants' movements, the tracking technology also observes their behavior through specialized algorithms. If an elephant is not behaving normally, an SMS alert can be sent to forest rangers who will act upon the matter. What technology is doing to the elephants, it is also doing to Amazon river dolphins which have been classified as data-deficient by the International Union for Conservation. To collect the necessary data on these animals, WWF Brazil is using drones that gather data more quickly than traditional field research work. Not all solutions need to be cutting-edge as STE is also initiating another conservation program -- installing beehives along farmland boundaries. Elephants are scared of bees and STE is using that knowledge in putting up bee barriers. The installation of bee barriers has reduced unpleasant confrontations between humans and elephants by almost 80 percent. Not only that, the bees also help pollinate farmers' crops. But technology has its limits and there is no app that can eradicate poverty, the main reason that drives poachers to kill elephants. Education and having a job are the best ways of addressing most wildlife crimes.
Bee antennae offer links between the evolution of social behavior and communication
Photo by: Skeeze/ Pixabay An international team of researchers, including those from Princeton University, reported that a certain species of bees, called halictid bees, have more sensorial machinery compared with related solitary species.The difference is measured by the density of tiny, hollow sensory hairs called sensilla on their antennae. Because social living requires the coordination of complex social behaviors, social insects invest more in these sensory systems — used to communicate information about resources, mates and sources of danger to their colonies and, therefore, are integral to survival — than their solitary counterparts, according to Sarah Kocher, an associate research scholar at the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics and the paper's corresponding author. Kocher and her colleagues imaged the antennae of adult females from 36 species that Kocher netted in the wild, mostly in France, or secured from specimens from the Museum of Comparative Zoology in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and the American Museum of Natural History in New York.Using a scanning electron microscope at Princeton, they obtained information about the antennae's surface topography and composition and observed convergent changes in both sensilla structures and the chemical signals of the groups as sociality was gained and lost. Kocher and her colleagues chose to examine halictid bees because they exhibit remarkable diversity in social behavior, from eusocial to solitary.Eusocial refers to an organizational structure in which individual insects in a colony forgo their reproductive capacity and perform a specific task, such as caring for young or gathering food, as seen in many ant, wasp and honeybee species.Also, within this family of insects, social behavior has evolved independently several times, and there are numerous examples of reversion, or a reappearance of an earlier physical characteristic, and replicated losses of sociality.These repeated gains and losses make the species one of the most behaviorally diverse social insects on the planet, and good candidates for studying sociality, according to Kocher. "What we have is a system with tremendous comparative power," she said. Relatively little is known about the evolutionary transition between solitary and social living, according to Kocher.But in this paper, "[The researchers] provide an elegant solution to this problem," said Tom Wenseleers, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Leuven in Belgium who is familiar with the research but had no role in it. "By studying a group of primitively eusocial insects that evolved sociality more recently and on several occasions reverted back to a solitary lifestyle, [they] succeed in making an accurate comparison of the investment in chemosensory systems made by social and derived, closely related, nonsocial species." In the paper, the researchers also noted that ancestrally solitary halictid bees — those bees that had never evolved social behaviors — had sensilla densities similar to eusocial species, while secondarily solitary halictid bees — those bees that evolved from social to solitary and back — exhibited decreases in sensilla density.Kocher was surprised by these patterns, but concluded that "sensilla density may be an important precursor to the evolution of social behavior." "This study demonstrates that changes in social structure are reflected in changes to the sensory systems of insects," she said. "[It] not only illustrates the evolutionary shift from reproducing as an individual to having to coordinate reproduction as a group, but also how this behavioral change can create an evolutionary feedback loop in which traits are selected in order to increase sociality in subsequent generations." Other authors on the paper, "Solitary bees reduce investment in communication compared with their social relatives" published June 20 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were Bernadette Wittwer and Mark Elgar of School of BioSciences, University of Melbourne; Abraham Hefetz and Tovit Simon of the Department of Zoology, George S.Wise Faculty of Life Sciences at Tel-Aviv University; and Li Murphy and Naomi Pierce of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University.
China Outranks US on Supercomputer List
The Top IT Security Measures for 2018
GE shares slide 7% on Dividend Cuts and Focus Realignment
Using Big Data to Protect Elephants, Count River Dolphins
Apple Gives More Focus on New Phone Models
Samsung's Artificial Intelligence Is the Winner in Two Machine Reading Comprehension Contests
Bee antennae offer links between the evolution of social behavior and communication
Give the incarcerated a chance at an education
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Beer, Golf, and Barbecue
Invasive Lionfish Feast on Unknown Fish Species
Photo Source: Sponchia / Pixabay Invasive lionfish in the Caribbean Sea are preying on fish species that scientists have not even described yet. Researchers from the University of Washington and Smithsonian Institution recorded video of a lionfish preying upon a new species of goby off the coast of Curaçao.Their findings, published in the journal PLOS ONE, represent the first observed case of lionfish eating a previously undiscovered fish species. Lionfish are native to the Middle East and Pacific Ocean, but arrived in the western Atlantic Ocean sometime in the 1980s or 1990s.Lionfish are strikingly beautiful, surrounded by a halo of long, venomous spines.But as an invasive species, they are wreaking havoc on coral reefs in the Atlantic.With few natural predators, they are devastating populations of native fishes. Lionfish often hunt in the "twilight zone," an area of ocean between 165 and 985 feet down, below traditional SCUBA diving depths.The zone is so named because only dim light can penetrate that far below the surface. In the new study, researchers used a submersible named Curasub to record video in the twilight zone off the coasts of Curaçao and Dominica.They captured footage of a school of about 50 orange-striped gobies near a rock wall 384 feet down.The researchers gave this new species the name Palatogobius indendius, or ember goby.They are less than an inch long and tend to hang out in sizable schools, hovering just above the seafloor in deep reef areas. In the video, a lionfish slowly cruises over the school of gobies, herding them against a rock wall and then suddenly striking at them. The good news is that the ember goby appears to be locally abundant; the researchers observed many of the fish on submarine trips around the region.However, it is concerning that lionfish are hunting small fish in deep reefs.Almost a third of the fish species along deep reefs have yet to be named, and they could be at risk if lionfish continue to eat their way through native fish populations. Ocean Invaders Lionfish are probably in the Caribbean for good, but efforts can be made to mitigate their detrimental effects on native species and ecosystems. Currently, the most reliable way to control lionfish is through divers with spears and nets.But people cannot safely dive down to the depths that lionfish often frequent.That's why Robots in Service of the Environment (RSE) designed an underwater robot to vacuum up lionfish.A team of engineers, marine biologists, web developers, and marketers worked together to create a prototype that was demonstrated this spring as part of a sustainability promotion event for the America's Cup. Piloted by a Playstation controller, the device runs off a 12-volt battery.A camera mounted on the robot allows the person controlling it to see what the robot sees via a laptop screen.The robot zaps the lionfish, stunning them, and then vacuums them up.It can collect up to ten lionfish before resurfacing. But what to do with those lionfish?The team hopes to market the robot to commercial fishermen to capture lionfish for people to eat.Although not yet a popular food fish, some conservationists support eating lionfish as a way to reduce their numbers. At the RSE demonstration, there was also an event where celebrity chefs from across the globe competed to make the best recipe using lionfish. There is even a cookbook for lionfish recipes.Apparently, they can be cooked in multiple ways, including fried, grilled, and sautéed. As coral reefs around the world decline due to factors like climate change, ocean acidification, pollution, disease, and overfishing, the deep water reefs could provide refuge for species that can survive in deeper water.But invasive predators such as lionfish threaten native fish and the balance of deep reef ecosystems.It is unclear if eating lionfish will be able to stem the tide of these ravenous invaders, but it's one strategy gaining the attention of foodies and conservationists alike.
Birds of all feathers work together to hunt when army ants march
Photo by: Rihaij / Pixabay Army ants scare up a lot of food when they're on the move, which makes following them valuable for predator birds.But instead of competing and chasing each other off from the ant "raids," as scientists had thought, birds actually give each other a heads up when the ants are marching, according to a new Drexel University study. For more than a decade -- from 2005 until 2016 -- Sean O'Donnell, PhD, a professor in Drexel's College of Arts and Sciences, observed army ant "raids" and the birds that follow them.He hoped to find out whether birds really were aggressive toward each other during the ant marches or whether they actually cooperated to access the food (other insects and bugs) that ants rustle out of hiding. After observing 74 swarms in Costa Rica, it seems birds are much more likely to play nice with each other. "Overall, the results strongly supported facilitation -- species help each other to exploit shared resources," O'Donnell said of his study that was recently published in Biotropica. In watching for the raids and the flocks that "attend" them, a key to avian cooperation may be what are termed "bivouac-checking" birds.These are birds that perch near the sites where army ants make their nests (bivouacs) and watch to see where and when the ants move.Birds that fall into that category include the ocellated antbird and the blue-diademed motmot. The prevailing thought has been that these specialized birds liked to keep the ant colonies they watched to themselves, not allowing other species to horn in on their finds. But a frequent high diversity of species in flocks following the ant columns showed O'Donnell that birds that didn't specialize in tracking army ants (like the migrant species Kentucky Warbler) were allowed to join and hunt. So when bivouac-checking birds see the movement of the columns and take off, other birds take the cue.They either know birds like the ocellated antbird follow ant columns or recognize vocalizations the specialized birds make when chasing the colonies. "Birds may use each other as a way of finding army ant raids, which are very hard to locate in the forest because they are widely spaced and the ants are mobile," O'Donnell said. "Observations suggest some birds are attracted to other birds at raids, and birds may even follow each other when moving among raids of different ant colonies." However, there did seem to be some bullies. O'Donnell noticed some pairs of species were almost never found in flocks together despite, independently, being ant-chasers.That indicated that these bird species might chase each other off as competition, or just avoid each other entirely.Pairs that seemed to be unable to be around each other included the Blue-throated Toucanet and the brown jay, as well as the wood thrush and the white-eared ground sparrow. "These antagonistic pairs were often species of very similar body size or feeding behavior," O'Donnell explained. "Perhaps these species do compete very strongly at army ant raids." All in all, finding that birds largely work together to forage at army ant raids seems to demonstrate that cooperation is a better survival strategy than trying to keep food from the raids for their own species. "Having other birds around may be an advantage because there are more eyes and ears to detect predators," O'Donnell said. "If the raid is hard to monopolize, and food is very abundant there, then the costs of allowing other birds to attend may be low, further favoring positive species interactions."
From New Zealand to New York City: A mama's (not so) glamourous life
Photo Source: Steve Punter / Wikimedia Commons Jacqui Smith is a New Zealand mama making it in the Big Apple.Here she shares a day in the life of raising her child in New York City. Three lunches packed, four sips of coffee down, ten minutes till I hand over to the sitter, then shimmy into my work clothes, kiss everyone goodbye and start the 31 minute commute to the office. I slot the last soapy dish into the dish rack and turn around to spend a few more precious minutes with my cherub.For a brief moment, I think I'm killing it as a working mum. Poo.In his hair on the door handle, in the cracks of the floor tiles. "Poo," he confirms, then squeals and running off to create a wall pootrait before I can catch him. I'm an average kiwi mum living an average kiwi mum life.Only thing is I live up three flights of stairs in a one bedroom apartment and fall asleep to a melody of sirens and scent of the neighbour's weed.I jam into a subway and weave through the skyscrapers to find my way to my warren of an office block on Madison Avenue.My husband leaves the house with a bag of porridge-encrusted laundry slung over his shoulder to drop off on his way to the train, and then fights off the crowds in Times Square to get to his office.He gets free bagels. "How very glamorous," everyone in New Zealand says about us living in New York. They don't picture stuffing their life plus a kid into a space the size of their kitchen.Swapping their crossfit membership for doing subway stairs with a toddler strapped to their back and replacing their seven-seater car with a pushchair that's ready to take on snow, ice rain (nastier than hail), and hurricane winds.Add to this picture that they must then wrestle that pushchair, plus that toddler, plus any bags, up and down three flights of stairs rickety old stairs (just to get out the door), minimum twice a day. To be honest, when we moved across the world with eight suitcases and 4 month-old baby, we couldn't imagine what it would be like either.We wrote our apartment wish-list, but after a day of viewings, quickly screwed it up and just took what we saw.We didn't need a dishwasher or a washing machine or a bath!We didn't need a lift, or a deck, or a yard or hell, a wardrobe!We just needed a roof, some heating and a "safe", easy walk to the subway (I quickly learned not to browse the rental sites that offered you a crime report from the past seven days). What we did need, moving across the world with eight suitcases and a four month old baby, was friends.It turns out my son was quite the friend magnet (until he recently started hitting all the little girls).We made friends with people at our local playground, which doubles as a trading floor for drug deals, and where we need to be extra careful about what our kids are picking up off the ground (but that's okay – there was a shooting at one of the parks down the road last week, and some kids found a gun in a pile of leaves in the other one).We made friends at the singalongs that are held in the local bars during the day (and which, crucially to our friend-making plan, serve beer and wine to the parents at the afternoon sessions), and we make friends with the musicians, Wall St businessmen, homeless people, punks, goths and gangsters who my son waves and blows kisses to on the subway. We've made some amazing friends, but still there's nothing quite like family to fall back on when you want a night out, a weekend away, or just someone to come over to help with the dishes and not pass judgment on the fact that your house smells like actual poo because you haven't been to the laundromat for a few days.With the grandparents a grueling 22 hours flight away, and with babysitters coming in at US $20 an hour, we don't manage many nights out on Broadway (we're looking at US $400, not including a meal).But there's a concert on every second subway platform and the clubs come to us via the car stereos outside our bedroom window on Friday and Saturday nights. Even in more affordable daycare (which has a 12 month wait list in most cases), after the federal, state and special NY city tax, it's barely worth it for me to work, but I do, part-time.After a year of working from home, which pretty much meant spending the day scrubbing food and excrement off the floor then still working at night, I needed the change of scene.Even if that scene happens to be a subway passenger's armpit for an hour a day and a spreadsheet for the next eight.I'm working in Manhattan, right? The commute's volatile.Trains are always cancelled or delayed or there's no room.The other day I sprinted down the platform and threw myself into the sardined passengers, with a woman yelling obscenities at me as the doors closed between us.I tried to motion through the window that I was late to pick up my baby, but I should have made a bigger scene if I really wanted to blend in. They say that if you can make it in New York, you can "make it" anywhere, but I think what they are referring to is that you're better equipped to "make it" through the likes of an apocalypse, alien invasion or war.You build muscles you didn't know you had, a poker face you didn't know you had, a frenzied selfishness you wish you didn't have to have. As we relay all of this, people in New Zealand ask why on earth we would want to raise a child in New York when we could give him all the space in the world to be a free-range boy back home.And (apart from the prohibitively high property prices and desperate lack of jobs in our industry) it's very hard to answer. But our one-and-a-half year-old who loves surf beaches and lakes and running in long grass and cows and sheep and picking fruit straight off the tree also LOVES subways and cranes and planes (one flies over our place almost every minute) and dancing to saxophonists in Central Park.His friends are from all over the world, and their parents are everything from artists and humanitarians to small business owners to Wall Street bankers; from solo parents by choice, to two mum, two dad, and transgender parents.He watches people march for their rights to be who they are and he's picking up Spanish from his buddies. While we agree that New Zealand is still the literal land of (real cow's) milk and (reasonably-priced) honey, and an amazing place to raise a child, we have been sucked into the vortex of New York life that, right now, is going to be so hard to leave.
Pune's housing societies flout animal welfare guidelines
Photo Source: Louellakillingerdm7651 / Wikimedia Commons Despite guidelines issued by the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) in the matter, several housing societies in the city deny pet owners their basic rights.According to the AWBIguidelines, residential societies cannot deny residents from keeping pets, nor can they restrict the use of elevators for the pets.However, the case in some societies in Pune is different.Natasha Asnani, a resident of Forest County in Kharadi, wasn't allowed to use the lift with her pet.However, she fought back. "After months of discussions and arguments, we managed to convince the Residents Welfare Association (RWA) to allow us to use the elevators.All the pet owners from the society got together and fought with the members.Finally, they agreed," she says.But the problem didn't end there. "The society still doesn't allow us to walk the pets in the society premises.The road outside is bad and they get scared of the noises too.But nobody seems to care," she adds. Jigar Shah, Resident of Forest County, and member FC Adhoc Committee and Residents said, "The dog owners group had issues with some of the rules in the past and they misbehaved with lot of senior citizens a year back when the society had a temporary group of administrators.After that we had rules framed that clearly outlines what are do's and don'ts as far as walking of dogs is concerned in the society. The rules are 1.Owners of pets should ensure that their pets do not defecate within building/ society premises. 2.It is mandatory to carry poop scoop and a plastic bag every time pet is walked. 3.In case the pet does defecate within society premises, owners must clean up after them.Failure to do so will incur a penalty of ₹500 for each incident. 4.Pets must not cause nuisance to other residents by barking, destruction of common property, and the like 5.Owners must ensure that their pet, while outside their premises, is always on a leash and under control so as to avoid untoward incidents causing harm to others. 6.All pet owners are requested to inform at society office about details of the pet's. All residents are urged to report to the security guard or managers, any pet owners breaking the above rules.Photos, name and flat number of the violators would be most helpful." He further added, "We have had issues with stray dogs and even then we have not mistreated them.We in fact appealed to the municipality to help us with the stray dog issue as they are hurting our children and residents.They run after them and cause accidents, some that have led to serious injury for both children and senior citizens.Still we as a society have not taken any action as we are well aware of the guidelines of the animal welfare board." Disobliging neighbours is the last thing pet owners expect.Not only are there few places to take pets for a stroll, but constant judgment from people is another thing that pet owners have to deal with, all thanks to the insensitive policies adopted by most of the societies in the city. "Having people who don't like animals is one thing but nowhere have I seen such negativity towards pets.I am looked down upon every time I take my dog out for a walk.Many people act like they are doing me a favour by letting me have a pet in the first place.One of them even asked me to keep my dog in the house if I love him so much," informs Heena Grover, a resident of Bliss Apartments, Undri. Besides elevators, parks and gardens in society premises are also banned for pets.Even barking and dogs without leashes are said to be a nuisance by some societies. "Our society has three lawns but pets can't be taken for a stroll there.We are not allowed to walk them inside the premises, even on a leash.Whenever my kids take the dog for a walk, my neighbours pick on them," says Ritu Goyal, from Crosswings Society in Baner. While the law allows citizens to have pets at their homes, Sharmistha Yadav, a resident of Kubera Park, Kondhwa, has been facing a tough time after adopting cats.The neighbours accuse the cats of causing major inconvenience to them, but that's not the case.Sharmistha says, "They are not happy with me feeding the cats in the society premises.I hold a proper feeders' card and also make sure to clean up."
Growing a garden in the subarctic
Photo Source: Alexas_Fotos / Pixabay Since I was little, my grandma and grandpa had a garden in Thompson.Arriving in the '60s like most Thompson newcomers, they had a house on a mud pile.Fifty years of vegetable and flower planting and lawn turfing has my grandma's yard easily as my favourite in Thompson. Over the years, I've learned what grows here and what does not and still have a lot to learn!We have such a short growing season here that eager green thumbs usually start their gardens indoors in February and March to be planted after the first full moon in June.Waiting until then usually is the marker that we won't experience frost (but anyone that's lived in the north knows that's not always true). Soil grade and temperature ranges so much from Thompson and the Pas, or even Thompson and Setting Lake.Thompson is made of marsh and bedrock, whereas moving south towards The Pas you move more into lands that can be used for agriculture.Understanding your zone to see what grows in your location is a good starting point. This is also a great guide to use that is full of information on planting a garden in Northern Manitoba Over the years with your own experiments you will see what grows and what does not, or what doesn't survive long in these parts of the province! Companion planting is a great way to help control pests. • Basil planted with tomato improves production and flavour.Basil is also good for peppers and has been said to repel mosquitoes. • Chamomile is a great companion for cabbage, cucumbers, onions and all the brassicas.It improves flavour and is a great herb to have on hand.It attracts beneficial insects and has delicate and beautiful flowers. • Dill is also great planted with cabbages, cucumbers, lettuce and more.It improves flavour, helps repel pests, and is useful in making homemade pickles!Plant in the middle of cucumber beds.Don't plant with tomatoes! • Catnip is another great herb to grow and have on hand.Planted near squash and cucumbers it will repel squash bugs and aphids.The dried leaves can be steeped into a tea to help sooth the stomach, and can double as a pest control spray for many plants. • Radishes can be planted throughout the garden and under plants like cucumbers to deter cucumber beetles. • Marigolds planted throughout the garden help prevent nematodes and repel pests.They will flower all summer as long as you keep pulling the dead flowers off. • Onions can be planted freely throughout the garden but help keep pests away from cabbages, broccoli, tomatoes, strawberries, peppers, cucumbers and more.Intercropping a few with all of these plants can greatly reduce garden pests. • Sunflowers are great companions and beautiful throughout the garden.Plant with Cucumbers, beans, and vining plants to provide a trellis.They are hardy and a great trap crop for aphids and other pests.They typically produce plenty of their own seeds to use next year. Increasing the quality of your soil is key as well.You can do this naturally without harsh fertilizers and using some of the following ingredients: • Kelp tea is a great foliar spray that nourishes plants when sprayed on the leaves (just don't spray during the heat of the day).Sprinkling powdered kelp around plants can also have a nourishing effect. • Dried nettles can be added to supplement the soil and sleep composting if you compost kitchen scraps or leaves.Bonus: Dried nettles are also amazing for allergy relief when drunk in tea! • Add eggshells, ground coffee grinds, banana peels, dog and cat food, grass clippings and more to create a compost to till into your soil to make it strong and rich. Plant nutrition: what do plants need? • Nitrogen: Promotes leaf growth. • Phosphorous: Stimulates root growth. • Potassium: Aids flower and fruit development.Plants also need "micro-nutrients" in small amounts, including calcium, sulfur, magnesium, zinc, and iron. I made a little indoor greenhouse using a $30 wood shelf from Walmart and stapled poly wrap all over it.It worked perfect when placed in front of a sunny window. Experiment with your garden, start a compost and record your success and failures for next year! Happy gardening! As always, check with your doctor or health practitioner for any medical-related questions.This information is to be used as a guide and not to replace medical advice.
Forget Windows 10 - Microsoft releases major update that MILLIONS must download right now
If you haven't upgraded to Windows 10 there's some good news. Microsoft stopped supporting some of its ageing operating systems back in 2014 but it's just pushed out a major update which protects all users against attack from the latest WannaCry malware. The US tech firm announced last week that millions of users of its Windows XP operating system would be getting protection against this latest threat. Microsoft says it has pushed out updates for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and all of its most recent unsupported and supported versions of Windows because of an "elevated risk" of attacks similar to the WannaCry malware. The shocking WannaCry virus infected around 75,000 computers in 99 countries, including about 40 NHS organisations here in the UK. The ransomware was so dangerous as it locked away users' files and demanded a $300 (£235) ransom before granting computer owners access again. General Manager of crisis management at Microsoft, Adrienne Hall said: "In reviewing the updates for this month, some vulnerabilities were identified that pose elevated risk of cyberattacks by government organisations, sometimes referred to as nation-state actors, or other copycat organisations. "To address this risk, today we are providing additional security updates along with our regular Update Tuesday service. "These security updates are being made available to all customers, including those using older versions of Windows." These crucial security patches will be available to download from Microsoft's Download Centre or Windows Update. Microsoft says its decision to push-out to operating systems not currently in extended support "should not be viewed as a departure from our standard servicing policies". Instead, the updates to Windows XP and the like were an exception based on intelligence that led Microsoft to believe government organisations might use these latest vulnerabilities to attack these systems. General Manager of Microsoft Security Response Centre, Eric Doerr said: "Our decision today to release these security updates for platforms not in extended support should not be viewed as a departure from our standard servicing policies. "Based on an assessment of the current threat landscape by our security engineers, we made the decision to make updates available more broadly." If you're still running Windows XP on your main computer – you should install this latest update right now. The majority of those hit by the WannaCry malware were running Windows 7, without the latest security patches. However, it's not clear if this latest tip is any indication that new attacks would target Windows XP more aggressively. Microsoft suggests that all users should make sure their system is update to the latest version of the popular software. A statement from Microsoft president and chief legal officer Brad Smith said: "As cybercriminals become more sophisticated, there is simply no way for customers to protect themselves against threats unless they update their systems." Photo by: Microsoft / Wikimedia Commons
Wipro Flags Cybersecurity Breaches As Potential Risk To Business
Photo by: HypnoArt / Pixabay The development comes weeks after 'WannaCry' ransomware hit systems across sectors like telecommunications and healthcare in over 100 countries, including India, Russia and the UK. New Delhi: IT major Wipro has listed cybersecurity breaches as a potential risk to its business, stating that such attacks could lead to financial obligations to its customers. The development comes weeks after 'WannaCry' ransomware hit systems across sectors like telecommunications and healthcare in over 100 countries, including India, Russia and the UK. One of the most widespread cyber attacks in history, WannaCry infected computers running on older versions of Microsoft operating systems like XP, locking access to files on the computer. Wipro, in its filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, noted that while there is an increase in the number of connected devices and transition to cloud, the impact of threats is also on the rise. It added that attempts for unauthorised access, malwares, fraud, misuse/loss/tampering of personal and business data, deliberate or accidental act of its employees or other stakeholders are also on the rise. "While various security controls mechanisms are deployed at different technology layers and re-enforced periodically, it may be difficult always to be successful considering the complexity of the environments...," it said. In the past, the Bengaluru-based firm has acknowledged the growing cyber threat in its annual reports, but had not listed it as a risk factor. "...any potential cyber event impacting confidentiality, integrity ...could lead to financial, disclosure of data, privacy, security, reputational, customer loss, legal, regulatory and contractual obligations to Wipro and may have direct impact (on) our customers and partners," Wipro said in its filing. In a recent study, Wipro has said at least 1.38 billion records of data were reported stolen -- that is about 43 records every second -- during the year 2016 through data breaches at enterprises globally. Such breaches not only impact the business operations but also often result in customer faith being severely dented for enterprises in the aftermath of these attacks. This negative sentiment, after the breaches are notified, are often reflected in stock price dips and/or lower business online, ultimately hitting the company's bottom line. Wipro's larger rival Infosys also has a similar cautionary note in its annual filing. It says that while Infosys has put in place adequate infrastructure and business continuity plans against cyber security breaches, there could be an impact on active voice and data communications between its various development centres and clients' sites due to such disruptions. (This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Top tech stats: Biometric security, European FinTech funding and much more
Photo by: CafeCredit / Flickr The majority of consumers (93%) prefer biometric payment authentication over passwords for unlocking payments or other financial services. Top tech stats: Developer salaries, Facebook news consumption and more Although 92% of banking professionals want to adopt biometric technology, execution of the technology has been inconsistent and only 36% of relevant executives feel they have adequate experience to deliver. Ajay Bhalla, president, global enterprise risk & security, Mastercard, commented on the research project in a blog: "Effective mobile biometrics melt into the broader experience of consumer-centric financial services, giving people the power to instantly access their financial information or make a payment.They're driving the trend toward a password-free future where digital identity is all about who we are, not what we remember. Cybersecurity skills gap According to data released by Indeed, the shortage of cybersecurity expertise means UK businesses will remain at risk of cyber attacks, despite the skill gap shrinking. Research unveiled by the same firm in January found that Britain's cybersecurity skills gap was the second worst in the world. However, the new data reveals that the shortage of people with the most in-demand skills has eased by more than 36% in the past two years. According to the data, between the first quarter of 2015 and the same period this year, the share of cybersecurity job postings rose by 2.8%, but the share of candidate clicks rocketed by 40.3%. European FinTech funding 70% of the total capital raised by privately owned FinTech companies in Europe during the Q1 2017 went to those based in London, Berlin, Stockholm, Paris, Barcelona and Amsterdam. That's according to FinTech Global, which also found that over a third of the aggregate amount ($1,164m) in FinTech investments was poured into London. Berlin, which came in second, attracted 12% of the total. Interestingly, the most significant change seen in the distribution of investments during the same time period, when compared to the data from the previous three years, was that Berlin doubled its share from 6% to 12%. The data, the report suggests, shows London has maintained its position despite the Brexit vote, but also that some of its European counterparts made huge strides in raising their levels of activity. Growth in UK VR The UK's virtual reality industry will grow at a faster rate than any other entertainment and media industry from 2016-2021, according to PwC's new Global Entertainment & Media (E&M) Outlook 2017-2021. Phil Stokes, entertainment and media leader at PwC UK, commented: "We forecast the number of virtual reality headsets in use in the UK will pass 16 million by 2021.Around 12 million of these headsets will be portable mobile VR devices that use a smartphone at their core as these are more affordable for consumers and benefit hugely from the fast evolution and replacement rate of smartphones. "Dedicated home VR headsets – the higher end devices used for gaming and video – will account for three million consumer headsets, with portable dedicated headsets – a new category of self-contained device that are easier to use and have superior capabilities to smartphone-based devices – forecast to account for one million." Rise in video Additionally, the same report found that the amount of data consumed annually in the UK is projected more than double from 17bn gigabytes in 2016 to 41bn by 2021. This, the report adds, will be largely driven by internet video consumption on streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. Revenue from internet video is forecast for overall growth of 9% (CAGR).By 2018, consumer spend on streaming services and on demand video will overtake physical home video, DVD and Blu-ray, which is in terminal decline shrinking at 15% year on year.By 2021, internet video revenue will also surpass box office revenues of £1.3bn by hitting £1.4bn. Phil Stokes added: "Demand for internet video shows no signs of slowing down.While the vast back catalogue of shows is often credited as the reason for subscribing to internet video services, companies have invested heavily in producing original content.Four of the top 10 programmes watched via subscription video on demand in 2015 were original productions showing that for consumers, fresh, high quality, content is king." UK gaming sector PwC's report also looked into the UK video gaming industry and highlights that it will continue to be Europe's largest market and the fifth largest, behind US, China, Japan and South Korea. Revenue is forecast for 6% CAGR over the five year period and by 2021 will be worth £5.2bn. Additionally, the report predicts that UK consumer spend on video games is set to overtake all spending on books, which will reach £5bn by 2021. Phil Stokes concluded: "With the creative industry being identified as a priority area in the government's industrial strategy, entertainment and media, particularly digital services, will continue to innovate further and drive prosperity and culture throughout the country."
Need to firewall systems to counter cyber risks around GST: Experts
Photo by: HypnoArt / Pixabay As the country is gearing up to usher in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) from next month, experts have cautioned that the government as well as firms should firewall their systems to deal with increasingly more complex cyber threats. Billed as the country's biggest taxation reform since independence, the Goods and Service Tax (GST) is expected to kick off from July 1. Experts opined there could be a rise in the number of security incidents, if the government and private players do not prepare themselves adequately to address the potential cyber risks around the GST. PwC India Partner and Leader (Cyber Security) Sivarama Krishnan said there are several threats that companies could get exposed to as a result of the new tax regime. Threats as a result of data leak, unauthorised changes to master data and involvement of third parties -- who will have access to a company's data -- are set to increase. "Companies need to modify their IT architecture with a focus on the GST.Hardening and security configurations of the systems that will be used in the end-to-end technology landscape will be required," he said. Ansh Bhargava, Senior Consultant, Taxmann.com, was of the view that since the GST Network (GSTN) will be recording the data of 8 million taxpayers each month, "it is imperative that this sensitive financial information be safeguarded against malicious attacks or security breaches in every possible way". "It is of utmost importance that the cyber security unit is not only capable of detecting security threats but also conducting fraud investigations and forensics whenever needed," he said. On cyber threats, Rohan Khara of mobile wallet company MobiKwik said even small glitches can mean major disruptions, which is why his company has set up a robust technology infrastructure to handle billions of transactions. "We even use predictive analytics that can forewarn of cyber issues," he said. The expert from PwC further said that in order to de- risk themselves, companies must adopt new approaches to cyber security, governance and monitoring processes. "The GST requires restructuring of the IT processes.If operationally security aligns with business objectives, it will enable a seamless GST process," Krishnan said. Rajeev Banduni, Co-founder and CEO GrowthEnabler advised that with the rushed timeline of implementation, suppliers and buyers should assess the information security practices of the Application Service Providers (ASP) and GST Suvidha Providers (GSP) while processing for GST implementation. "These end-devices of ASPs and GSPs could be the next target of cyber terrorists," he cautioned.
Snakes in the water: Locals encouraged to be aware of wildlife near creeks, lakes
Carrollton resident Bart Terrell was out walking along a spillway near Josey Lane and Peters Colony Road taking photographs when something shocking slithered into his viewfinder. "It was a big snake and surprised me," said the retired lawman. "I was … taking some pictures of the spillway there at the lake and that thing came out from some rocks by," he said. "By the time I could get my camera out it was already getting into the water.I decided to leave that area because there may have been other family members of that snake there." What Terrell spotted was a large northern water snake. "I was later told that it was not a venomous snake," he said. "However, it was a very aggressive snake that would bite you even though it wouldn't kill you." According to the National Wildlife Federation, northern water snakes are very common in the United States.The adults have dark bands, though their coloring can vary from gray, tan, buff or brown.They are often mistaken for copperheads or cottonmouths, but they are indeed not venomous. However, the NWF cautions that northern water snakes tend to flatten when they are agitated and will bite.It's best to stay out of their space, which is often basking on rocks in still or slow-moving water. Adults are between 2 and 4 ½ feet long.These snakes often look different in water than on land when their scales are dry. "I have seen small, tiny snakes but never one as big as that one," Terrell said. "If you have been to that spillway you would have seen the rocks that are covered with chicken wire.That's where that snake crawled out of." "Believe me, I retired after 32 years as a law enforcement officer but I got as far from that snake as I could.Scared me right back to the sidewalk!" Carrollton Animal Services Manager Carl Shooter recommends remaining calm and staying at a safe distance if you spot a snake, gator or other types of potentially dangerous wildlife. "I am not aware of any reported eels or alligators, but we do have cottonmouth and copperhead snakes, which are both venomous," he said. "We encourage folks to contact us with any questions related to venomous snakes.Although we always lean towards allowing wildlife remain in its natural habitat, we do want to know if there is an obvious threat to public safety that requires our attention." Clayton Church is a spokesman for the Arms Corps of Engineers for Texas.He said the Dallas-Fort Worth area, including around Lewisville Lake, sees alligators, feral hogs that can swim across the lake, bobcats and raccoons. "There are all kinds of wildlife in those large greenbelt areas … where nature is still nature," he said. "All those different native animals all the way from the insects to the mammals and the reptiles that are native to this part of Texas are native to those areas." Church echoes Shooter in his advice to steer clear. "In those areas … people should know that wildlife is there, give them a wide path and allow them to be on their way.Stay out of their way and most of them will stay out of your way." Last year the Corps had a safety concern when lake levels got really high.Church said rising water levels forces wildlife also to seek higher ground. Additionally, Church said that during a flood event, fire ants become a real concern in the lake areas. "When fire ants are flooded out many times they will form a 'ball of fire' and move through the water and crawl up on top of each other and keep doing that … move through the water from one location to another," he said. "If someone were to be out recreating on then and fall out into the water in one of those areas it would not be a pleasant experience." This year all the flood risk management reservoirs in the D/FW area are functioning as they are designed to," Church said.There aren't any high pool levels like there were in the last two years. "Creeks and tributaries will have wildlife in them – snakes, insects," Church said. "The smaller mammals and armadillos, raccoons, will eat the smaller animals." Along the residential areas near waterways, Church notes that bobcats are often spotted.He advises bringing pets inside at night and to try not to leave pet food and other types of food outside. Photo by CandyGuru (Pixabay)
Shy Wolf Sanctuary volunteers save two raccoon cubs
image by hansbenn / Pixabay Two tiny raccoons, only days old, sat alone near an apartment building.A worried tenant brought out a cardboard box for the cubs. "They waited 16 hours for a mother to come back," said Jeremy Albrecht. "They were still there wriggling around." So, the two little raccoons were brought to the Shy Wolf Sanctuary Albrecht and Lia Arnold, both long-time volunteers, decided to take the task of raising the two cubs until the critters could live at the sanctuary. The animals stayed at Albrecht's home night and day. "It was a ridiculous undertaking," he said. "They needed 24-7 care.We had to be up every hour-and-a-half to feed them.But our goal was not to raise them fully, but to socialize them." The two — named Andy and Mikey after characters in "The Goonies" movie — now reside at the sanctuary in Naples. Andy and Mikey are among the site's smaller residents. "We mostly work with wolves and wolf-dogs — they're very misunderstood," President Deanna Deppen said. "But we have coyotes, gophers, tortoises, prairie dogs, sugar gliders, chinchillas, raccoons and foxes." All animals at Shy Wolf Sanctuary are lifelong residents.Unless they are adopted or moved to another sanctuary, they stay at the Naples location. "(The animals) get used to people giving them food," Albrecht said. "If they go back in the wild, they continue looking for people for food.That's how people get bitten." While the Sanctuary has the means to care for raccoons, regulations make the task difficult. The government labels the critters as rabies carriers.This leaves euthanization as the only course of action for other animal groups. "We tested the little guys for rabies and vaccinated them," Albrecht said. "The Wildlife Commission doesn't recognize the vaccination because it's not officially proven to work.So, even though one is 'clean,' if it bites us, we have to go through the process as if we don't know." But thanks to Albrecht and Arnold, the little Andy and Mikey are easy to handle for the more than 40 Sanctuary volunteers. Their calm nature makes them ideal ambassadors, Albrecht said. "Most see raccoons as pests," he said. "These two will make good ambassadors.When people get up-close and personal, they will see raccoons have so many human qualities.They're a good example of a misunderstood animal." Ambassador animals, such as Albrecht's own adopted wolf-dog, are used to educate people about some misunderstood species kept at the Sanctuary. The case of the baby raccoons is an outlier, Deppen said. Many times, it is best for people to stay away from baby animals, she said. "Don't just go and pick up babies," she said. "Many times, they really aren't abandoned.Their mother will come back soon."
Birds that make you go 'ohmygosh!' — these two authors understand
Photo by: Paul Hurtado / Wikimedia Commons President Theodore Roosevelt was conducting a meeting of the cabinet one fine Washington morning when he glanced out the window and spotted a Blackburnian warbler.Hastily excusing himself, he dashed outside for a closer look. Most of America's 50 million birders will understand.It's not often one encounters one of these pretty little black and orange birds twittering outside its native pine forests. Certainly the authors of these books, both out in time for summer birding and bird-reading, understand.Texas' own Victor Emanuel, a lifelong birder who has conducted commercial birding parties around the world, admits to dawdling along the road, late for an evening dinner party, in hopes of catching "just one more warbler." And Jim Robbins, the New York Times' appropriately named science freelancer, is as relentless in searching out the revealing oddities of bird lore, evolution, behavior and anatomy. The Wonder of Birds is one of those ohmygosh books that will have most readers calling out to whoever is handy, "ohmygosh, it says here that hummingbirds can hover, helicopterlike, for as long as an hour and a half!" They've had 125 million years to evolve this trick.Almost nobody questions now that birds started out as dinosaurs, though how they came to fly is still in dispute.Recent studies of baby chukkars, a kind of partridge, suggests that they ran first, flapping rudimentary wings for balance, but soon learned to climb trees, then flutter to the ground. Consulting bird experts around the world, Robbins parses the biophysics of the hummingbird, whose pea-sized heart may beat 1,250 times a minute.He reveals that the kingfisher taught a Japanese engineer how to hush the sonic boom that bullet trains make as they pop out of tunnels.Through his ornithological informants, Robbins anatomizes the structure of feathers, probes the keenness of the bird brain, the uses of birdsong, the complexities of bird social life and the phenomenon of murmurations, those vast formations of birds that wheel and pivot in the air seemingly without plan or signal, a mystery one expert deems "bigger than black holes." Computers come into it, of course, and information theory, and increasingly cellphones that allow birders to track bird movements with ever-greater accuracy.Here, the news is not always so good, as flocks dwindle ominously, some to follow the mournful trail of the passenger pigeon, the most dramatic extinction in modern times. Robbins' chapter on the factory-raised domestic chicken needs to be read by anyone who ever picked up a drumstick.Unlike the passenger pigeon, the future of what began as a red jungle fowl is assured, but excessively unpleasant. Still, "I'm in awe of birds," Robbins writes in something of an understatement.He makes some extravagant claims, including human-bird connections that seem eerily telepathic.Birds guide humans to safety or to treasure and perhaps to a new relationship with nature.A chapter examines the emerging field of ethno-ornithology, the study of the roles birds play in tribal religions, myths and practices.Birds figure in many creation stories, for example, and occupy a privileged place between heaven and earth.According to the Cheyenne, Magpie listens in on human conversations and reports them to a spirit called Sweet Prophet. Victor Emanuel's book, on the other hand, aims to get the reader out among the birds rather than stuffing bird lore into the reader's mind.The relaxed recollections of a life of birding, One More Warbler begins the spring morning the author, age 8, looked out the window of his Houston home, like Teddy, and saw a brilliant red cardinal.After a college try at scientific ornithology — boring — and a post-grad Harvard excursion into government, Emanuel settled into a life of organizing annual bird counts, presiding over the Texas Ornithological Society, and getting enthusiastic birders to follow (and pay) him to hot birding spots from the Arctic to tropical rain forests, and most of Texas.Customers have included President George W.and Laura Bush. Emanuel (with co-author S.Kirk Walsh) is very good at the kind of writing that makes you want to see for yourself a "fallout," when thousands of migrating birds suddenly descend on the Texas coast, or to dash across the subcontinent with writer Peter Matthiessen in an attempt to observe all the cranes of Asia in three weeks.During a lifetime of birding, Emanuel has seen it all, or most of it: Colonies of Emperor penguins, a rare Lake Baikal teal, an Eskimo curlew on West Galveston Island: "I doubt anyone will ever see this again." he writes, "the bird of my life." On a subject so lively and colorful, both books cry out for more illustrations.The warbler book has a few scattered photos, mostly black and white, and delicate pencil sketches grace each chapter in Wonder of Birds.I read both books with my MacBook at hand for easy Googling. (Oh, that's what the Blackburnian warbler looks like!) But then, if you really want to know what the actual birds look and sound like, you'll dash outside like Roosevelt or Emanuel, for a close-up look.
Digital organizations face a huge cybersecurity skills gap
Source: JanBaby / Pixabay Over the past five years, organizations have become more aware of cybersecurity, and yet DDoS, spear-phishing attacks, botnets, and other attack vectors have continued to get worse.Digital insecurity will continue for the foreseeable future, with the biggest reason being that we don't have enough well-trained, skilled cybersecurity professionals to go around. There are a few reasons for this gap. First, from a hiring perspective, the trickle of security students emerging from post-secondary schools may not be fully prepared to tackle complicated security issues — what we need are people who can protect businesses environments from everything from spam and BYOD vulnerabilities to complex threats like APTs and spear phishing. Second, certain companies may not know what to look for in a professional. Third, when skilled professionals are hired, they can often be overworked to the point where they don't have the time to keep up with the latest developments in the field — and even in their own security tools. The result is that most positions go unfilled.In fact, according to the Information Audit and Control Association (IACA), about a quarter of all cybersecurity positions are left unfilled for about six months.The IACA study isn't the only report with these dismal takeaways. Another study by the Information Systems Security Association and Enterprise Strategy Group, reports that about 70 percent of surveyed organizations say the cybersecurity skills gap has impacted their business, with 54 percent reporting they've suffered at least one security event in 2016.Fifty-five percent of respondents also said the lack of skilled workers added to their security team's workload so much that, in some cases (35 percent), their team couldn't familiarize themselves with the security tools they use. These are all systemic issues needing systemic answers that could take years to resolve.Still, these problems need to be addressed, and they won't be until we change how cybersecurity experts are hired, retained, and educated. Setting expectations is a good first step.Companies should have a clear understanding of what they need from a security professional and set their expectations accordingly.Typically, this will range from evaluating network and system ecosystems to routinely testing and prodding the companies' security to establishing protocols and analyzing network attacks.Here, professional experience and the ability to communicate effectively within the organization are very important. Companies should also have a robust mix of technical and theoretical problem solving questions for candidates.It should be long.It should be exhaustive.It should be tiring — but it's necessary.The reason is simple: Candidates should have the endurance, determination, and focus to lay out how they came to their conclusions and the ability to explain their reasoning — clearly — in order to do their job.Good hackers think creatively to overcome technical problems, and your security engineers need to do the same in order to defend the company properly.Sticking with a problem for awhile and not giving up is a key trait to look for.Just remember: "Thinking like a hacker" is a must in this industry. Another tactic is to give security teams the tools they need to succeed — and sometimes that just means giving them room to work.Giving employees the time to test new techniques, research new attacks, and analyze events is an important part of healthy security.Cybersecurity is a unique industry because it must identify and mitigate a variety of vulnerabilities in technologies that are constantly changing.Attack vectors come and go, but sometimes they resurface.Patches need issuing, and suspicious behavior needs analyzing — especially when executive-level endpoints are in play.Companies that don't provide the space and the time for their security staff to keep their skills sharp, are setting themselves up to fail.Companies with successful security teams give them the time to conduct internal evaluations and regularly send them to security conferences for fresh perspectives and hands-on training. The fundamental problem facing the skills gap, however, is that there aren't enough people coming into the field to begin with.Here, companies need to do two things: step-up their advocacy when it comes to promoting cybersecurity careers, and look internally for employees who have the skills and desire to take on a security position but need the training and support to succeed.The first half is a long-term solution requiring a good deal of cooperation with career counselors in both high schools and post-secondary schools.The second half, however, is more of a short- to mid-term solution, but it's just as viable — in some cases — as hiring dedicated security professionals.This is because cybersecurity shares many skills common to tech positions: creative thinking, technical know-how, and a dogged obsession with solving difficult problems. Finally, businesses need to recognize that security threats today go well beyond just one department.Every employee should be responsible for knowing what to look for in an attack, how to report a suspected threat, and how they can simply disengage from content and files they deem suspicious.Basic security training needs to become a part of the onboarding process for any employee — especially for those in the C-Suite, where a greater number of spear-phishing attacks occur. Closing the cybersecurity skills gap isn't going to happen overnight — or likely even over the next decade.It's going to be a long process because it's going to take a fundamental shift in how businesses recruit, hire, and keep security talent.But it's worth it in the long run for the company, its employees, and its customers.
Hackers attacked 4 Florida school districts, allegedly hoped to hack voting systems
Source: hypnoart / Pixabay We've heard a lot about Russians attackers attempting to hack the US election, but another hacking group also allegedly wanted to interfere with the election; they attempted to pivot from compromised school districts to state voting systems. The Miami Herald reported that MoRo, a group of hackers based in Morocco, penetrated "at least four Florida school district networks" and purportedly searched for a way "to slip into other sensitive government systems, including state voting systems." According to United Data Technologies (UDT), the firm which investigated the breaches "incidents," the hackers successfully phished people working in the school districts, tricking them into clicking on an image in email which allowed malware into the system.The article does note that the hackers also targeted an unnamed Florida city network with a similar attack. After the school district systems were infected with malware, the hacking group "turned off the logs recording who accessed the systems." UDT analysts had a hard time figuring out for sure what all the hackers had done.Turning off the logs was called a "sophisticated maneuver" that UDT "had never seen before." (Silly me, I thought disabling logging was fairly common if a hacker doesn't wanted busted immediately.) Despite the lack of logs, UDT determined the hackers were in the system for three months, "mapping them out and testing their defenses.At one point, they even posted photos of someone dressed as an ISIS fighter on two school district websites." At first, the hackers had purportedly hoped to steal the personal information of "hundreds of thousands of students." Miami-Dade, which is the largest school district in Florida, was the only one of the four compromised school districts which was named. Yet it wasn't just sensitive student information the hackers could have accessed.The article points out that Miami-Dade, which is the fourth largest school district in the US, also "handles the personal information, including Social Security numbers, of hundreds of thousands of current and former students, along with data on thousands of employees and parents." Before you get worked up, the article claims the hacking group failed to steal student information or access voting systems.In fact, the hacking is referred to as "attempted" seven different times.Yet, if the hackers remained inside the systems for at least three months, that seems to be more than an "attempted" hack.Attempted, perhaps, pertains to stealing the personal information of hundreds of thousands of students and then selling the Social Security numbers on the dark web. Even though the hackers put "ISIS-inspired photos on a school district website," Miami-Dade "didn't find any evidence of malware or access to its computer systems." Paul Smith, Miami-Dade's school district director of data security, said, "I would say if anything it was an attempted hack.But it was raised up to law enforcement and we did go through all the systems." The article says the attack started in the fall.In November, "a photo of someone who appeared to be one of the hackers dressed as an ISIS fighter went up on a school district website.It stayed there for about 24 hours.The following month, the same photo flickered onto another school district's website." There are no details about the type of malware or even how it was ascertained that the photo might be of one of the hackers. UDT claimed that the hackers wanted more than kids' names and Social Security numbers; mapping the network revealed that the school district systems had some connections to "different county and city systems." The Moroccan hackers were allegedly searching for a backdoor to other government systems. Michael Kaiser, the executive director of the National Cyber Security Alliance, told the Miami Herald that is "very common" for a school district network to be "attached to other networks in the town or city or even the state, depending on how the network is set up." Attackers would love to steal the login for a system admin who has credentials to access other government networks, Kaiser explained, or to gain access to the admin's email account and use it to phish government employees. UDT claimed the hackers bragged about their exploits online, saying they were attempting "to get into voting systems hosted by Diebold voting platforms.They wanted to bring down what they thought were state voting systems." This, however, happened in December – which is about a month too late to hack the vote. Regarding the hack, or "attempted" hack as it is continually referred to by the Miami Herald, "UDT contacted the FBI and re-engineered the malware so it was no longer a threat.The analysts found no evidence that any data had been taken.The FBI declined to comment on the incidents or on cybercrimes in general." The point of the "hack attacks" article, it seems, was to raise awareness of how vulnerable Florida school districts are to cyber thugs.Raising overall security awareness for school districts seems like a wise thing, considering that another phishing scam in Florida resulted in compromising the financial information of more than 7,700 Manatee County School District employees.A school district employee received an email which appeared to be from the school superintendent and handed over the requested W2s of all the district's employees.
Bottom of the Tank: Driftwood Catfish
Image by: Mathias Appel / Flickr Driftwood catfish, also called wood cats, are a small group of fishes from the family Auchenipteridae found throughout the Amazon.Most of these are small species, making them excellent for aquariums.The family, which also contains a handful of larger fishes, has been divided into two subfamilies, Auchenipterinae and Centromochlinae; the former has been traditionally of much less interest to aquarists than the latter, though this is gradually changing. Livebearing Catfish Within Auchenipteridae there are about 125 fish spread across nearly two dozen genera.This is a truly diverse family, with incredible variability in appearance among its members.While not technically livebearers, wood cats are unique among catfishes in that they practice internal fertilization.The male's anal fin sports a modification that serves a similar role as the gonopodium in livebearers.Males will fertilize the female, who will lay eggs several days later.It is not uncommon for mature females to lay fertile eggs without a male present, even among species that have not been bred in the aquarium.These females are simply laying eggs that were fertilized previously, much like a single female guppy dropping fry a week after purchase. Honeycomb Catfish (Centromochlus perugiae) Perhaps the best known of the wood cats is the honeycomb catfish (Centromochlus perugiae).Until 1998, this fish was placed in the genus Tatia, and many resources still list it incorrectly as Tatia perugiae.A small fish, the honeycomb cat reaches a maximum size of only about 2 inches (5 cm).C.perugiae is covered in a pattern of large black spots separated by a white network, hence the name "honeycomb." They're a truly pretty fish, with a delicate pattern.Their native range runs throughout Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia.While the species name suggests that they were named for Peru, where they do occur, they were actually named for ichthyologist Albert Perugia. These are really great little fish that are unfortunately not seen in the hobby very often, and they have a rather unfortunate reputation for being both expensive and delicate.In my experience, these fish do much better in a small group.They truly need to be kept in tanks with a lot of hiding spots, such as driftwood and rockwork with many crevices.They're often kept in heavily planted tanks, which is fine, but the setup also needs to include some "hardscape" hiding spots.Honeycomb cats are generally adaptable to different water parameters, but they do much better at a slightly acidic pH and lower hardness.They do prefer a higher temperature, as they are susceptible to ich and other infections at lower temperatures; I usually keep these fish at about 78° to 80°F (25° to 27°C).C.perugiae is very sensitive to poor water conditions.Nitrate levels must be kept low, and they require higher than average oxygen levels, which can be aided by the addition of a powerhead or other device.They're more likely to thrive with some current in their tank. These little catfishes are peaceful and shy, generally only coming out when the tank lights are off.Because of this, many aquarists fail to understand how they feed.In the wild, they skim small insects from stream surfaces at night.They do not hunt along the bottom, and they do not eat well during the day.A high-quality floating food is a must, and it should be given to them when the lights are out or at least dimmed.While they'll often eat flakes, floating insect-based foods are great, frozen or not.They'll make short work of populations of mosquito larvae.Feeding them as you would a Corydoras, with a sinking pellet, will likely result in some very hungry cats, and eventually worse. The honeycomb catfish has been successfully bred in home aquaria, and its breeding method is somewhat unique.Among the driftwood cats we'll discuss, this is undoubtedly the easiest species to breed in the home aquarium.Several days after being fertilized, the females will enter a small cave or other crevice to deposit about a hundred eggs.These eggs are guarded by the female until they hatch, about four or five days later.The eggs may be preyed upon by other fish in the tank. When I've bred this fish, I've used small pieces of PVC pipe as caves.I put a finger over each end of the water-filled cave, lift it out with the female, and relocate it to a new tank; I don't think the female even notices sometimes.Once the eggs hatch, the female should be returned to the main aquarium or she may eat the fry. The fry develop quickly and are tiny eating machines.Surface foods, including powdered fry formula, brine shrimp nauplii, and ground flakes are all eaten with gusto—but again, only at night.Heavy feedings may lead to deteriorating water conditions, so large, frequent water changes are a must. Galaxy Wood Cat (Tatia galaxias) The genus Tatia, also in the subfamily Centromochlinae, contains a number of fishes that are of interest to aquarists.The most commonly encountered of these is supposedly T.galaxias, however, many of the T.galaxias imported are actually T.intermedia.Both species are superficially quite similar, especially when younger; however, T.intermedia will lose its spots as it ages, and it reaches a size of nearly twice that of T.galaxias. The true galaxy wood cat, T.galaxias, is a striking black fish covered with small white dots.It will reach a maximum size of just about 3 inches (7.5 cm).T.intermedia, however, will reach about 5 inches (12.5 cm).These fish usually have many more spots than T.galaxias, and the spots tend to be more gray than white in color.Regardless of species, their care is quite similar.Like the honeycomb catfish, they require clean, well-oxygenated water, with plenty of hiding places.Feeding should be done only at night, though both of these fish seem to be a little more forgiving about daylight than the honeycomb. Both T.galaxias and T.intermedia have been bred in captivity, and they are easily sexed, as with Centromochlus.However, unlike Centromochlus, eggs are typically laid in a mass in the water column and sink to the bottom.Females may guard the eggs for a brief period. Ninja Wood Cat (Tatia musaica) A true beauty of the genus, the ninja wood cat (Tatia musaica) is only rarely seen, and often at a very high price.I don't know where the common name comes from, but I assume some marketing-minded importer just really liked the word "ninja." The pattern of these fish reminds me of an orca—dark black on top, with a white underbelly, and patches of the two mixed in between.A very small fish, it won't reach more than about 2 inches (5 cm). A bit more delicate than the other Tatia species above, T.musaica is completely intolerant of poor water conditions.I can find no reliable sources indicating that this species has been spawned in the aquarium, though reproduction is presumably similar to other members of the genus. Happy Driftwood Catfish (Trachelyichthys exilis) The subfamily Auchenipterinae contains the bulk of the driftwood catfishes, although these fish are seldom seen in the hobby.Slowly, this is beginning to change, with many new imports from this group appearing.The best known of these is Trachelyichthys exilis, the happy driftwood catfish.T.exilis reaches a size of about 3 to 4 inches (7.5 to 10 cm).Its body form is pretty typical of the Auchenipterinae: a streamlined, midwater catfish shape with an elongated anal fin.Similar to the other driftwood cats, the first rays of this fin are modified in males.These fish are generally a gold color, with dark spots covering the body. Happy driftwood cats are schooling fish, with small groups taking shelter in caves or other structures during the day.They're far less shy than other driftwood catfishes, with food quickly luring them out of hiding.It's really fun to drop food into a seemingly empty tank and watch an explosion of these catfish emerge from every hiding spot imaginable (and sometimes even some spots that aren't). Breeding T.exilis isn't particularly troublesome and is quite similar to the previously mentioned species.However, the females will drop a handful of eggs at a time, usually scattering them throughout the tank.Fisher's Wood Cat (Trachelyopterus fisheri) One of the more interesting catfish I recently worked with was Fisher's Wood Cat (Trachelyopterus fisheri) This is one of the larger wood cats, reaching a maximum size of nearly a foot (30 cm).Despite their relatively large size, they are quite shy, but I found they could be coaxed out by keeping them in larger numbers.Two or three simply vanished into the tank, but a dozen were quite active and schooled constantly, regardless of the time of day. They're a dark, golden brown, with a maze of black lines across the body.Their body shape is very stereotypically catfish, but unlike most cats, they're constantly on the move in the midwater.Like the other driftwood cats, expect them to ignore food on the bottom and instead opt for surface foods (and woe to any insect on the surface with a dozen of these below). Care should be taken with the maximum size of this fish.While they were quite peaceful for me, I sold them all before they reached more than about 4 to 5 inches (10 to 12.5 cm), and I imagine that a fully grown specimen would not turn down the chance to make a convenient meal out of a small tankmate. Wallace's Shoehorn Catfish (Tetranematichthys wallacei) Wallace's shoehorn cat (Tetranematichthys wallacei) is an interesting member of the group.These fish rely strongly on camouflage, and they look quite a bit like large, dead leaves.This fish is sometimes imported under the name T.quadrifilis, but almost all of the shoehorns exported are likely T.wallacei.These fish reach a maximum size of about 7 to 8 inches (18 to 20.5 cm). Aquariums for shoehorns should have a softer substrate rather than gravel, as they spend a lot of their time lying on it, mimicking a dead leaf.Driftwood and other hiding places are a must, and oak, beech, or other hardwood tree leaves are a good choice for providing shelter at the bottom.These leaves will also release tannins, which will lower the pH and stain the water brown, something shoehorns love.These fish differ from other members of the group in that small fishes make up most of their natural diet.They'll quickly adapt to any good pellet food, but they should absolutely not be kept with anything mouth-sized.Though peaceful, they should not be housed with smaller fish at all.Males can be sexed by an extended dorsal fin.There are no confirmed reports of successful breeding of this fish in the aquarium. Ogre Driftwood Catfish (Trachycorystes trachycorystes) Rounding out this look at the driftwood catfishes is Trachycorystes trachycorystes, the ogre driftwood catfish (not to be confused with the ogre catfish, Asterophysus batrachus).These are unique wood cats, with bodies reminiscent of Raphael catfish.However, they're jet black.The mouth is front-facing, and big.This fish reaches a maximum size of about 14 inches (36 cm), and it is apparently a food fish in Brazil and Venezuela. While they can be quite shy in the aquarium, they are definitely predators and not to be trusted with anything smaller than they are.About a year ago, I received a half-dozen of these fish.They were definitely ugly, but I was soon to see where they really got the name "ogres." They wedged themselves into any cave available in the tank and were seldom seen thereafter.So I forgot they were in there and put a batch of about a hundred 3- to 4-inch (7.5- to 10-cm) pearl gouramis into the tank (when you're unpacking dozens of boxes of fish, these things sometimes happen).The next morning I could see every single one of the ogres, as they were now too fat to fit into any of the caves.Of the pearl gouramis, however, there were only two or three left. A Diverse Family The driftwood catfishes represent a huge spectrum of body types and behaviors, from tiny, peaceful fishes like the honeycomb driftwood catfish to monstrous eating machines like the ogre driftwood cat.While their shy natures can make them less appealing to casual aquarists, most species quickly adapt to aquaria, as well as to their keepers' feeding schedules.With a little work, keeping these catfish can be a truly rewarding experience.
Native Roots: American agave in Denton produces spectacular flower stalk
Photo by: KENPEI / Wikimedia Commons One attraction for the Hancock family when they were house hunting in Denton was the large American agave plants at the front entrance to what eventually became their home.These plants are taller than the tallest of the Hancock family members — Seth, who stands 6-foot, 3 inches.And that's before one of the plants started to send up a very large flower stalk this spring. The Hancock family first noticed the stalk on April 7.The flower stalk has been growing daily — think Jack and the Beanstalk here, so that it is now 25 to 30 feet tall.It is full of buds that will begin to open soon.The Hancocks expect the agave to be in flower most of the summer and possibly into the early fall. American agave (Agave Americana) adds a dramatic touch to North Texas landscapes.It is a regal Texas native, found in the southwestern parts of Texas.Although it is also called century plant, American agave usually does not live to be 100 years old; typically, it will live for 15 to 45 years. When it is fully mature, it sends up tall stalks that bud out, flower and then die.The flower buds are creamy white to pale yellow, and the flowers are usually yellow or yellow-green.When the flower stalk dies, so does the rest of the plant.However, all is not lost.Around the base of the agave, offset plants appear over time that will start the life cycle of the agave anew.These pups can be transplanted to other sites. The name "agave" comes from the Greek word agauos, which means noble or admirable.The name could refer to the large flower stalk or perhaps the large, thick evergreen leaves that are lance-shaped and succulent. In American agave plants, the leaves are typically gray-green, somewhat waxy, with a sharp tip and spiny margins.American agave has few pests.It is susceptible to the agave weevil, and snails and slugs may damage its leaves.Its nectar serves as a food source for pollinators. American agave is winter-hardy in USDA Zones 8-10.As a result, it is more common to see this plant used for landscaping in warmer cities in Texas like Austin or San Marcos than in Denton, which is borderline Zone 8. American agave can be grown in pots, but usually does better when it is in the ground.It grows well in full to part sun in well-drained soil.Well drained is key — overly moist, poorly drained soil can lead to root rot.American agave can be damaged by winter temperatures in the teens and should be protected. The Hancocks' agave plants are in part sun and are planted near the top of a slope, aiding proper drainage.They are also close to the house on the south side, protecting them from damaging low winter temperatures.In the right conditions, American agave plants will grow to be over 6 feet tall and 8 to 10 feet wide. The Hancock's house did not come with a record of when the agaves were planted, but they know the house dates to 1953.Although it is possible that these plants are as old as the house, it is more likely that a previous owner planted the agaves in the 1980s or '90s.The entire Hancock family, Seth, Collier and Ruby, are grateful, delighted, amazed and humbled by the size of these large agave specimens and the gigantic flower stalk in their yard, where they watch its progress every day. The Hancocks have been sharing their amazing agave plants with friends and family on social media and have agreed to allow the public to view them, too.They are located at 3400 Santa Monica Drive in the Forrestridge section of Denton.If you visit the plant, please be respectful that this is a private residence.
Soaring In Circles: Two Road Trips To See California Condors, Thirty Years Apart
Image by: Scott Frier / Wikimedia Commons In late July of 1981, my father came home and asked me and my younger brother, Giles, if we wanted to go to California to look for condors.Be warned, he said: "It will be a knock-down, drag-out, no-holds-barred birding adventure with no concessions for kiddies." We said yes. New self-paced course: Learn How to Identify Bird Songs, Click to Learn More That Saturday morning, we got in our Chevy Suburban and my father drove 925 miles in one day to Mt.Pinos, California, one of the most reliable condor lookout points remaining, from our home at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. At the time, as a 12-year-old kid, I thought we were just going on another of my dad's adventures.I didn't appreciate that he was seizing a moment, or that later in that same decade, these great vultures were going to vanish from the skies.Now I'm middle-aged, and condors are flying free once again, in 10 times their 1981 numbers.If not for the foresight of the Endangered Species Act, we would have lost this largest North American bird entirely. After our trip, my father wrote in his bird journal, "I believe that by my death, the only remaining condors will be in zoos." He's going to be wrong about that. But while California Condors are a spectacular success story, much like Bald Eagles and Peregrine Falcons, there's one glaring difference—we haven't really gained the bird back.Their number-one problem—poisoning from lead ammunition—has yet to be solved. Even with the Endangered Species Act, the bird is still doomed, not to extinction but to constant maintenance, and always vulnerable to political vicissitudes that might end the recovery program. "If you had asked me, 'Is it worth spending however many millions of dollars on this species?' I don't know," says Noel Snyder, who led the condor recovery program for the U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service during a crucial period in the early 1980s. "I'm very fond of condors and in some sense I'm very glad.But if it doesn't go any farther than right now, basically you haven't saved the bird." We had only been in California for about 18 hours when we saw ours.We had spent the night in the back of the Suburban and by 9 a.m.we were on the 8,800-foot summit of Mt.Pinos.Below us, canyon slopes stood like great chevrons with gray-green chaparral spreading over them. My father was an Air Force fighter pilot and had eyes like a bird of prey.He picked up a dot over the sides of Mount Able. "Maybe 4, 5 miles," he wrote later, in his daily bird journal.The two main confusion species were Turkey Vultures and Cessna twin-engine aircraft. This dot was large, flat-winged, and so steady in the air it seemed not to be moving. "We watched it and said, 'Well, could it be, might it be?It's not flapping,'" my father recalls. "And all of a sudden it took a big double dip"—wings bending up and back down again, wingtips almost touching—"which is kind of a distinctive flight mode for the condor, and it kept coming slowly but surely." That was the only wingbeat we ever saw it take. After about 20 minutes the condor came right over the top of us.A little bird was harassing it the way a Red-winged Blackbird harries a crow, except this little bird was a Red-tailed Hawk. I remember the condor's massive wings filling the view of my 7×35 binoculars.The fingered primaries curved upward as clear California air rushed past the wingtips, holding the bird aloft.The white triangles in the underwing gleamed in the light, with just a few black feathers mixed among them.The bird wore no wing tags, because no condors at that time had ever been tagged.Today, they all are. Very few people in 1981 recognized lead poisoning as a problem for California Condors, and nobody had any evidence.Conventional wisdom still held that condors were too big, too slow to reproduce, too dependent on large game.They were a "senile species," according to one account, and the writing had been on the wall ever since the mammoths had disappeared.Condor recovery consisted of watching them from a distance and trying to preserve large tracts of wilderness so they could be left alone. Things started to change in 1980, when Snyder took the helm of the recovery program.He wanted to use new technology to track where condors went and to breed them in captivity.But the team had yet to gain permission for the work, and there was a tooth-and-nail battle going on over whether captive breeding was a viable tactic or a last insult to a doomed species. Nobody even knew how many condors were left until 1982, when a California Polytechnic professor named Eric Johnson started paying attention to molt patterns.The slow-growing primary feathers created distinctive wing outlines that could be used to identify individuals, much the way humpback whales are catalogued by patterns in their tail flukes.By arming students and volunteers with telephoto lenses and then carefully matching up hundreds of black-and-white prints, the team determined that just 21 condors remained in the wild. "All of a sudden we knew how many condors there were and it was less than everyone had thought," Snyder says.The low number helped gain approval for radio-tracking.Though the goal was to learn about condor movements, Snyder says the most important thing radio tags did was lead the team to dead ones. In 1984, a radio tag led researchers to the body of IC1, the first California Condor known to die of lead poisoning.The next year, two more birds died from lead.There was little else to be done but start building up a captive population. At the time, no one knew whether it would even be possible to breed California Condors in captivity, so Snyder had begun working with Andean Condors, for practice.By the early 1980s, "we knew that Andean Condors breed like chickens," he says, and it turned out that California Condors did too, often doubling the yearly output that a wild pair could produce on its own.The team caught the last wild bird on Easter Sunday, 1987.My father's prediction had come true: for the first time in at least 10,000 years, no condors flew over California. By 1993 captive breeding had grown the population past 50 individuals, and by 1998 it passed 150.The recovery program still had lots of work to do, such as getting condors properly socialized to each other and unattached to humans, but the imminent prospect of extinction had passed. What remained was lead. "If they're in the wild long enough, they're going to get lead exposure." That's how Myra Finkelstein sums up the problem condors face.Finkelstein runs a lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz, that tests blood samples from wild condors.In the first 14 years after the recovery team began releasing captive-bred birds in 1997, biologists tested 150 different condors for lead a total of 1,154 times.What they found led Finkelstein to publish a paper titled "Lead poisoning and the deceptive recovery of the critically endangered California Condor." Almost half of all free-flying condors had at some point developed lead levels so high that they needed to be brought to a zoo for emergency treatment.In some years, nearly 9 out of every 10 wild condors showed elevated lead levels. Lead doesn't build up in the food chain, or bioaccumulate, the way pollutants like DDT do.That means a condor can't get lead poisoning just from eating a lead-poisoned animal—it has to consume the lead fragment itself.Unfortunately, it doesn't take much: lead toxicity is measured in billionths of a gram.The snowstorm of flakes that a bullet sheds as it enters a deer, wild boar, or other animal's body provides more than enough. Bullets are almost pure lead, Finkelstein says, "so even a tiny fragment, if it gets in their digestive system and leaches out, can be enough to poison a condor." It's tragic that condors don't get better with age at avoiding lead.They're very good at finding carcasses, visiting an estimated 150 per year, but they have no way of learning which ones have been shot.Old veteran condors are just as vulnerable to lead poisoning as a fresh fledgling is. Because lead poisoning is so direct, tracing it back to its source is fairly easy.By measuring two isotopes of lead, Finkelstein can create something akin to a fingerprint that matches condor blood samples to environmental sources—it's the same process used to trace lead contamination in homes.With condors, years of research have shown that the animals almost always get their lead exposure from ammunition.Finkelstein's instruments can unequivocally distinguish between different sources of lead, such as bullets versus old lead paint. Her evidence led to a 2008 ban on lead ammunition for big-game hunters in California's condor country.But it's been hard to enforce, and there are loopholes: lead bullets are allowed when euthanizing livestock and for controlling "nuisance" animals like coyotes and ground squirrels—all of which are on the condor's menu. As a result, condors showed no drop in lead poisoning after the 2008 ban—a result that pro-lead factions have used to argue for lifting the ban, perceived by some as unfairly scapegoating hunters.In 2013 the lead ammunition ban was expanded to cover all types of hunting and will include the entire state by 2019. For Finkelstein, lead is a much larger public health issue. "As a society we have recognized that lead is toxic for a very long time, and gotten lead out of paint, and gotten lead out of gas," she says.Alternatives to lead ammunition are no more anti-hunter than unleaded gas is anti-car, she says: "Changing from lead in gasoline didn't mean you couldn't drive your car.It just meant you had to use something else in your tank." "It really seemed to me that this was a very solvable problem," Snyder recalls thinking after the three lead poisonings of the 1980s. "But nobody anticipated how hard the politics would be." Meanwhile, the recovery program goes on.Condors continue to breed in captivity, and increasingly in the wild.The recovery team toils to follow radio- tagged birds, set out lead-free carcasses, sweep nests for trash, check eggs for fertility, and capture each of the more than 250 free-flying birds to test for lead twice a year.According to exposure rates in Finkelstein's 2012 paper, a typical year would see at least 175 of those birds developing elevated lead levels. "Even though I had been working with the data for years, it was still shocking," Finkelstein says. "These birds are acutely poisoned all the time." What if the lead problem could be solved?Finkelstein has run the numbers: "Even if you just got rid of 80 percent of lead poisoning, the population would start increasing, and you would have a positive population growth rate, even without releasing birds." My dad had budgeted three days to wait for condors on Mt.Pinos.After one buzzed us before lunchtime on the first day, he deployed his contingency plan: head to Yosemite for his lifer Black Swift and Hermit Warbler.These landscapes—Mojave, Ventura, Sequoia, Yosemite—these were what crystallized in my mind as a boy going on adventures.On our way home, my father took a detour in Arizona for Violet-crowned Hummingbird, and then drove us home all night, through pelting thunderstorms, so we wouldn't have to stay in a motel. I remember watching his face in the rearview mirror.He was staring out into the raindrops and leaning over the steering wheel to keep himself awake.He was 40 years old—younger than I am today.I had total confidence in this man, who spent his workdays flying faster than the speed of sound.We had seen condors together—a bird that in the adult world was in crisis, but in my world had been almost a sure thing ever since my father had decreed we would go find it. I didn't know it then, but the whole reason we had taken this abrupt vacation was a shakeup in his squadron, a kink in his career trajectory he was dismayed to find he could not change.Until then, my father had been an Eagle Scout; a math whiz; a state-champion football player; a rock climber; a war veteran; a knockdown, drag-out birder. He kept leading us on adventures, switching to small-boat sailing when the Air Force moved us to Florida a couple of years later.But somewhere in this period was a high-water mark, after which I realized birding might not, after all, be the second-coolest activity in the world after flying jets.And that vulnerability is not reserved only for the weak or the small, but can settle its heavy weight anywhere, even onto the largest wings on the continent. Thirty-two years later, I returned to California to accompany four condor biologists on a nest check at the Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge, just 20 miles from Mt.Pinos.We hiked through thick chaparral as a hot wind barreled up the slopes and flung fine dust in our eyes. We stopped at a sheer fin of sandstone with an almond-shaped cave perhaps 50 feet below the ridge.In that alcove, tucked deep in the cool shadows, lay a single egg.Biologists Joseph Brandt of the U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service, and Jenny Schmidt of the L.A.Zoo, put on climbing gear and rappelled down to check the egg. As we approached, a condor sailed up the canyon toward us, its big body impervious to the buffeting winds.Just before he came overhead he stalled and turned on the air, his great finger-primaries spread against the blue, his legs dangling roughly below him.Rotating slowly in spite of gravity and wind, he completed the circle and began an arc back toward the valley, then abruptly dropped below the ridge and onto the nest entrance.His wing tag was yellow, meaning "200," and bore the number 37. This was male #237, at 23 pounds a big bird even for a condor, and "always really standoffish," according to Brandt, who notes every condor has its own personality.This male and his mate, female #255, had both hatched in captivity in 2001 and were released the following year.This was their fourth nesting attempt each. Brandt is 6'2", thick-trunked as a sequoia, with blond dreadlocks.When he arrived at the cave entrance and unclipped from the rope, he didn't have to bend down to walk in.Schmidt came after, carefully placed the egg in a black bag to block the light and checked it with a flashlight: it was fertile. Later that month, the pale blue-white egg cracked from within and a chick pushed its way into the world.The little gray nestling became condor #717, a female who is still flying free today.