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Wednesday, September 28, 2005

French military commandos boarded a ferry boat on Wednesday morning that had been taken over by ferry company strikers from the Société nationale Corse-Méditerranée (SNCM). The strike erupted after the French government announced its intention to privatize the company, which had been losing money for decades. The strikers seem to belong to the Corsican workers’ union, a trade union close to Corsican nationalists.

The strikers captured the ship, called Pascal-Paoli, in Marseille. They sailed her to Bastia where she was intercepted by a ship of the Marine Nationale and boarded by special forces. The military team included members of the GIGN (the French Gendarmerie‘s rescue and anti-terror unit) and, according to some sources, naval special forces.

The prosecutor’s office at Marseille has opened a criminal enquiry for “evident crime”, with the charge of piracy — a crime which, according to article L224-6 of the French Penal Code, is punished by a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. If the charges are retained, the initiators of the event will face a jury trial before an assize court. There are, however, questions as to whether this criminal qualification applies in this case, since the strikers did not resort to violence in stealing the ship.

The strikers are in protest against the French government’s intention to sell SNCM to the investment fund Butler Capital Partners, led by businessman Walter Butler. Mr Butler claims that he can put SNCM back into financial shape within 4 years. Opponents of the privatization plan contend that the sale price is an amount greatly inferior to what it is worth, even if only for its assets.

The French government has had significant problems with money-losing state-owned companies in the past. SNCM is, however, a special case, due to the delicate political situation in Corsica. By comparison, the private company Corsica Ferries is in good financial shape. Some sympathetic protesters, however, caused damage to Corsica Ferries offices.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Viktor Schreckengost, the father of industrial design and creator of the Jazz Bowl, an iconic piece of Jazz Age art designed for Eleanor Roosevelt during his association with Cowan Pottery died yesterday. He was 101.

Schreckengost was born on June 26, 1906 in Sebring, Ohio, United States.

Schreckengost’s peers included the far more famous designers Raymond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes.

In 2000, the Cleveland Museum of Art curated the first ever retrospective of Schreckengost’s work. Stunning in scope, the exhibition included sculpture, pottery, dinnerware, drawings, and paintings.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

In May, periodical cicadas with 17 years life cycle emerged on the East Coast of the USA after underground development as juveniles since 1996. Researchers and scientists worked to map and study the rare wave, and the locals prepared for the noisy event. First recorded in 1666, the Magicicada septendecim species recently emerged in 1979, 1996, this year, with a next wave due in 2030.

This week, Wikinews interviewed Chris Simon, an ecology and evolutionary biologist at University of Connecticut, about the cicadas.

((Wikinews)) What caused your initial interest in periodical cicadas?

Chris Simon: As an undergraduate student, I was interested in the formation of species so when I went to graduate school I looked for a study organism that was likely to be in the process of forming new species. I chose periodical cicadas because they are broken up into reproductively isolated broods (or year classes). Reproductive isolation leads to speciation so I planned to study biochemical differences among the broods.

((WN)) You study the emergence of the periodical cicadas. What do you study? What observations are you making?

CS: We record exactly where each cicada population emerges (using GPS automated mapping and crowd sourcing). We record the presence or absence of each of the three morphologically distinct species groups of periodical cicadas (Decim group, Cassini group, and Decula group). We collect specimens for DNA analysis. We look for cicadas coming up one and four years early and late. We dig up cicada nymphs and monitor their growth rates.

((WN)) What equipment do you use?

CS: Nets, shovels, automated GPS recorders, cameras, laptop computers, automated DNA sequencers.

((WN)) Do you study the periodical cicadas with anyone else? What is their role?

CS: Yes, there are a large number of people studying periodical cicadas in my lab and in other labs. My lab is made up of Research Scientists, Postdoctoral Researchers, a technician, graduate students, and undergraduates. Research Scientist John Cooley is the leader of the GPS mapping project; he invented the automated GPS recorder; he built our crowd-sourcing website, and he is instrumental in public outreach. Postdoctoral research David Marshall also participates in the mapping project and leads the part of the research related to the mapping of stragglers. John and Dave and Technician Kathy Hill all study periodical cicada mating behavior and conduct mating and hybridization experiments. One of my graduate students Beth Wade has participated in the nymph collections and will soon start genetic work involving genome wide association mapping designed to locate genes related to life cycle. My graduate student Russ Meister is studying the genes of the bacterial endosymbionts of cicadas. My current undergraduate honors student Erin Dwyer is also studying the development of Magicicada nymphs and is helping to design a lab exercise for college students around the eastern US to do the same. Many of my past undergraduate students have studied the biochemical genetics and development of periodical cicadas. See the Simon Lab website.

CS: We are collaborating with Teiji Sota at the University Kyoto and Jin Yoshimura at Shizuoka University in Japan. They are studying the phylogeography of Magicicada. We are collaborating with John McCutcheon of the University of Montana who is studying the endosymbiont genomes.

CS: We are also collaborating with ecologists Rick Karban and Louie Yang, both professors at UC Davis who have an interest in cicada population dynamics and nutrient cycling in the ecosystem.

((WN)) You studied the periodical cicadas in 1979 and 1996 too. What changes with time?

CS: I have studied periodical cicadas since I was a student back in 1974. What changes with time is increased human development constantly shrinking the patch size of cicada populations.

((WN)) What are your thoughts on the long life span of the periodical cicadas? Why could it be so? What advantages and what disadvantages does it have?

CS: Most or all cicadas have long life cycles compared to your typical annual insect. Examples have been found of two-year to 9-year cycles in different species. Periodical cicadas evolved an even-longer life cycle and I think that part of this relates to the evolution of their synchronized life cycles and peculiar safety-in-numbers strategy for survival. To become synchronized, periodical cicadas had to evolve an exact length life cycle and all adults would have to appear in the same year. Because the nymphs grow at different rates underground, a longer life cycle and a way of counting years must have evolved so that the individuals that get to the last nymphal (underground juvenile) stage first would wait long enough for all other individuals in the population to become ready to emerge.

((WN)) News reports mention this is ‘Brood II’ of the periodical cicadas. What are the distinctive features of this specific species and what is its full scientific name?

CS: The same species exist in multiple broods. No species is restricted to Brood II. The three species present in Brood II are: Magicicada septendecim, M. cassini, and M. septendecula. These same three species are found in every 17-year brood (except the farthest north which only has M. septendecim).

((WN)) At what depth do the cicadas juveniles live underground?

CS: Most live within the top foot of soil but some have been found deeper. We do not know if they go deeper in winter. We need to do much more digging to understand the nymphs.

((WN)) How do people prepare for the cicada emergence?

CS: Of course various people prepare in different ways. Ideally, everyone prepares by studying information available on the web (especially on our websites Magicicada Central and Magicicada.org).

((WN)) Do cicadas affect transport in the local area?

CS: No, not really. Occasionally individuals can be seeing flying across highways and sometimes they smash into cars.

((WN)) Do cicadas usually stay outside or do they also invade houses too?

CS: They stay outside. One might accidentally fly in through an open window but that would be rare.

((WN)) What do the cicadas eat?

CS: Cicadas suck xylem fluid (the watery fluid coming up from the roots of plants) in deciduous forest trees and herbs. Essential amino acids in the cicada diet are supplied by their bacterial endosymbionts. There are two species of endosymbionts. One makes 8 essential amino acids and one makes two essential amino acids.

((WN)) Do cicadas damage crops or city vegetation? What damage?

CS: Cicadas do not chew leave so they do not damage crops like other insects. They can inflict some damage by their egg laying. Cicadas lay eggs in pencil-sized tree branches. If there are not enough branches available, too many female cicadas may lay eggs in a single branch weakening it and making it susceptible to breakage by wind. This can sometimes cause damage in fruit orchards. If the branches break, the eggs die so this behavior is selected against by natural selection.

((WN)) Thank you.

CS: You’re welcome. I am happy to have this opportunity to communicate with your readers!

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Yahoo!, the world’s favorite Internet destination, reported $373 million in net income for the three month period ended December 31. Revenues were $1,078 million for the fourth quarter of 2004, a 62 percent increase compared to $664 million for the same period of 2003. “We are attracting more and more users to Yahoo!’s network of services and driving their usage deeper with more relevant products and services. This deeper usage is the real magic behind the surpassing of our financial objectives,” explained Susan Decker, the company’s chief financial officer.

• Revenues excluding traffic acquisition costs (“TAC”) were $785 million for the fourth quarter of 2004, a 54 percent increase compared to $511 million for the same period of 2003
• Gross profit for the fourth quarter of 2004 was $691 million, a 56 percent increase compared to $443 million for the same period of 2003
• Operating income for the fourth quarter of 2004 was $235 million, a 149 percent increase compared to $94 million for the same period of 2003
• Operating income before depreciation and amortization for the fourth quarter of 2004 was $327 million, an 84 percent increase compared to $178 million for the same period of]] 2003

Monday, April 17, 2006

Kevin Ray Underwood, the suspect in the murder of 10-year-old Jamie Rose Bolin of Purcell, Oklahoma, reportedly kept a weblog in which he joked about cannibalism, discussed the effects of not taking his prescribed medicine, and talked about “dangerously weird” fantasies.

Underwood was arrested Friday after investigators searched his apartment and found Jamie’s body in a plastic bin in his bedroom closet. Also reportedly found in his apartment were barbecue skewers and meat tenderizer, which law enforcement officials believe he intended to use to eat the girl’s flesh.

People who knew Underwood reported that he was a relatively unassuming man, seemingly trustworthy. His mother described him as “a wonderful boy” and said of Jamie, “I would like to be able to tell her family how sorry we are. I just feel so terrible.”

In the profile of his blog, entitled “Strange Things are Afoot at the Circle K” ([1]), Underwood described himself as “Single, bored, and lonely, but other than that, pretty happy.” Also on his profile page, he poses the question, “If you were a cannibal, what would you wear to dinner?” and answers, “The skin of last night’s main course.”

In an entry dated September 8, 2005, Underwood reportedly described 1998 as “the year that a large part of me died” and “the longest year of my life.” He reported losing contact with most of his friends, making an online acquaintance only to lose her again, and suffering panic attacks from being around people at college. Two of his friends also were involved in a car accident, one fatally injured.

He reported in that entry that in the last year he found himself becoming more and more detached from the world, never leaving his apartment except to go to work or his parents’ apartment. In an entry dated September 24, 2004, he reported that his fantasies were “just getting weirder and weirder. Dangerously weird. If people knew the kinds of things I think about anymore, I’d probably be locked away. No probably about it, I know I would be.”

In an entry dated February 4, 2006, he said that he had hardly left the apartment in almost two months, and that “a week or so ago, I spent my day off sitting here at the computer, barely moving from the chair, for 14 hours.”

His last blog entry was dated Thursday, April 13, 2006, one day after authorities believe Underwood killed Jamie Bolin.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Journalist, counselor, painter, and US 2012 Presidential candidate Joe Schriner of Cleveland, Ohio took some time to discuss his campaign with Wikinews in an interview.

Schriner previously ran for president in 2000, 2004, and 2008, but failed to gain much traction in the races. He announced his candidacy for the 2012 race immediately following the 2008 election. Schriner refers to himself as the “Average Joe” candidate, and advocates a pro-life and pro-environmentalist platform. He has been the subject of numerous newspaper articles, and has published public policy papers exploring solutions to American issues.

Wikinews reporter William Saturn? talks with Schriner and discusses his campaign.