Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle, Stranded in Holland, Released on Texas Coast

Image: National Park Service. 

They named her Flip — a Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle found last December, stranded on the coast of Holland.  She was injured and stunned by the cold.

But the scientists and animal lovers who rescued her took advantage of a key fact about Kemps’ Ridleys — that while they’re endangered, they are also among the world’s great long-distance travelers.  Specialists nursed her back to health, and released her into the water today — off the coast of south Texas.

“We couldn’t have asked for it to go any better,” said Iain Scouller, the general manager of Sea Life Aquarium Grapevine, based near Dallas-Fort Worth.  “We set her loose at high tide, and off she went.”

A lot of effort went into the rescue of a single four-year-old turtle, but Scouller said it matters for a species very much in danger of disappearing.

“It’s as much symbolic as anything,” he said.

His colleague, Karen Rifenbury, joined in. “One turtle makes a great difference because of the number of eggs she’ll lay in her lifetime.  We hope she will help revive the species.”

Flip was found on the rocky Dutch coast last December, about 5,000 miles from her likely birthplace in the Gulf of Mexico, and slowly nursed back to health by staff members at a Dutch aquarium.  She was then flown from Amsterdam to Houston — the aquarium staff is quick to thank KLM, the Dutch airline — in a special container that kept the water around her at 22 degrees Centigrade (about 75 degrees Fahrenheit).  She was driven to Port Aransas, Texas, for today’s release.

“It is likely that most individuals remain in the Gulf of Mexico for their entire lives,” wrote Donna Shaver of the National Park Service, in an email to ABC News. “However, some juveniles are shunted out of the Gulf of Mexico through the Gulf Stream and travel up the Atlantic coast of the U.S. to forage in nearshore waters and bays as far north as Massachusetts.”

Shaver has devoted much of her career to the preservation of sea turtles, and said it was rare, and risky, for a turtle like Flip to have gotten as far as northern Europe.  “There are only a few records of Kemp’s Ridleys being found stranded alive in this region. The waters there are too cold for their survival.”

Flip, at last report, is safely out in the warm waters of the Gulf, wearing an identification tag and a satellite transmitter glued to the back of her shell.  Turtles’ shells grow, and have a waxy protective layer over them, so the transmitter will probably come off at some point, but in the meantime it will provide useful data on Flip’s travels.  People will be able to track Flip at SeaTurtle.org.

“This is much bigger than a single turtle,” said Scouller.  “It shows that every one counts.”

Source : abcnews[dot]go[dot]com

NHTSA: Beware of counterfeit airbags

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is advising consumers whose vehicles have been in a crash in the past three years to have them inspected for fake parts.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has issued a consumer safety advisory regarding counterfeit airbags. These airbags, which the NHTSA says are installed at third party repair shops, can malfunction and jeopardize the lives of vehicle occupants in a crash.

According to the NHTSA, car owners who have been in a crash may have had their airbags replaced with counterfeits. The counterfeit parts look like original equipment, right down to fake manufacturer logos.

However, the counterfeit airbags are not made to the same standards as genuine parts, and have consistently malfunctioned in tests. In a crash, these fake airbags may not deploy, or they may expel metal shrapnel if they do. In one test, an airbag separated from its mounting point, showering the vehicle occupants with sparks from the bag’s pyrotechnics.

While it does not know the full scope of the problem, at the moment the NHTSA estimates that a very small number (0.1 percent) of American vehicles have counterfeit airbags. The NHTSA is not aware of any deaths or injuries due to counterfeit airbags.

The NHTSA is urging consumers whose vehicle has been in a crash within the last three years, and who have had the airbags replaced by a shop that is not part of a new car dealership, to call the manufacturer and have the replacement parts inspected. The safety advisory also applies to anyone who bought a replacement airbag online.

If the manufacturer finds a counterfeit airbag, vehicle owners will need to have it replaced at their own expense.

Consumers who purchased their cars new and have not been in a crash, and people who own a used car that has not had its airbags replaced in the last three years, shouldn’t have anything to worry about.

So far, the NHTSA is aware of counterfeit airbags being made for the following makes and models:

Acura: 2009-2011 TSX

Audi: 2006-2009 A3, A4, A6, A8, Q5, Q7

BMW: 2004-2011 5 Series; 2007-2011 3 Series, X5; 2011-2012 X3

Buick: 2010-2011 Lacrosse

Chevrolet: 2011-2012 Cruze, Volt; 2006-2010 Aveo; 2012 Camaro

Ford: 2012 Focus; 2005-2009 Mustang

Honda: 2003-2012 Accord; 2006-2011 Civic; 2002-2011 CRV; 2007-2011 Fit; 2009-2011 Pilot, Insight; 2010-2011 Crosstour; 2011 Odyssey

Hyundai: 2007-2011 Elantra; (not listed) Genesis, Sonata

Infiniti: 2007-2011 G35/37, EX35

Kia: 2010-2011 Soul, Forte; 2004-2009 Spectra

Land Rover: 2012 Range Rover Evoque

Lexus: 2006-2011 IS; 2003-2008 GX470; 2007-2009 RX350; (not listed) ES350

 Mazda: 2004, 2010-2012 Mazda3

Mercedes: 2009-2011 C-Class, GLK; 2010-2011 E-Class; 2007-2008 S550; 2006-2010 ML; 2009-2010 GL

Mitsubishi: (not listed) Outlander

Nissan: 1992-2002, Quest; 2010-2011 Quest; 2009-2011 Cube; 2007-2011 Versa; 2009-2010 Murano; (not listed) Altima

Subaru: 2008-2009 Forester, Impreza, Outback; 2010-2011 Legacy

Suzuki: 2007-2010 SX4

Toyota: 2002-2006, 2012 Camry; 2009-2011 Corolla, Matrix; 2007-2011 Yaris, Tundra; 2004-2011 Highlander, Sienna, Tacoma; 2010-2012 Prius; 2003-2006 Tundra, Sequoia; 2003-2010 Land Cruiser; 2004-2010 Highlander; 2004-2009 4Runner; 2007-2009 Solara; 2005-2011 RAV4

Volkswagen: 2006-2010 Jetta

Volvo: (not listed) XC60, XC70, V70, S60, S80

The NHTSA is advising all consumers, even ones whose cars do not appear on this list, to have their vehicles inspected if their airbags have been replaced in the last three years. In addition, a vehicle may not have counterfeit airbags just because it is on this list, it just means the NHTSA has found counterfeits made for that model. A full list of manufacturer call centers is available at the NHTSA’s website.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

National Zoo’s Giant Panda Was ‘Good Mom,’ Did Not Crush Cub

Image Credit: Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post via Getty Images

The National Zoo’s giant panda mother, Mei Xiang, spent the night cradling a cub-sized toy as panda lovers from D.C. to China mourned the death of her week-old cub.

Zookeepers at Washington’s Smithsonian National Zoo discovered Mei Xiang’s cub dead Sunday morning. In keeping with Chinese tradition, it had not yet been given a name.  Preliminary tests ruled out the possibility that the 4-ounce cub had been crushed by her 216-pound mother.

“Yes indeed, Mei Xiang was a good mom who protected her cub and did not crush her,” said Dr. Suzan Murray, the zoo’s chief veterinarian. “We all felt that Mei Xiang had been a very good mother and had been very gentle with the cub, and indeed we have found that to be so in the initial necropsy.”

While it could take up to two weeks to determine the cause of the cub’s death, Murray said the initial animal autopsy showed it may have been related to problems with her liver, which was barely the size of a lima bean.

Unlike other baby pandas’ livers, which are soft and the same color throughout, this cub’s liver had patches of hard tissue and had splotches of different coloring, Murray said.  Scientists also found excess fluid in the cub’s abdomen.

“There is great sadness amongst our staff and that’s to be expected,” National Zoo Director Dennis Kelly said. “Every loss is hard. This one is especially devastating.”

Before giving birth last Sunday, Mei Xiang had endured five pseudo-pregnancies. Each time, Murray said the giant panda held her pear-shaped toy day and night awaiting a cub.

Murray said the cub’s father is “blissfully unaware” that his daughter died. In the wild, pandas are solitary animals and the father is usually not involved in raising cubs.

Mei Xiang is slowly returning to her normal routine, Kelly said. After not eating for a week while nursing her newborn cub, the panda mother began drinking water and eating bamboo and biscuits Sunday afternoon.

Kelly said he is “cautiously optimistic” that Mei Xiang will return to normal.

“It’s a hard time for us but with your support we’ll get through it and we’ll learn more about how to protect the species,” he said.

The Zoo’s PandaCam, showing a live stream view of Mei Xiang’s den, is back up and running today.  It was turned off on Sunday following the cub’s death.

Source : abcnews[dot]go[dot]com

Touchdown for digital: Why the NFL’s online strategy makes for a winning game plan

While the NBA, NHL and MLB fumble with their online strategies, the NFL has mastered the with the help of former MySpace exec Jeff Berman.

The National Football League kicked off its 2012-2013 season last week. As the United States’ most popular sport, this signals the return of football’s “total domination” of both television and your company’s water cooler.

The NFL hopes to dominate online, as well. Two significant assets will help with this effort: a good streaming plan and a forward-thinking digital strategist.

Good (though not perfect) digital distribution

Though no sport’s online plan is perfect, the NFL has the best of America’s four major sports.

For $39.99, NFL Game Rewind provides full, high-definition replays of every 2012 Regular Season game. While Game Rewind is flawed for not airing live game action, it makes up for it in other ways. For instance, the NFL even provides replays of its entire schedule of games with no blackout restrictions, which is very progressive when viewed in context of plans for other sports. As I wrote in April:

• Though the NBA offers a for-pay online streaming plan in its League Pass service, blackout rules will prevent many viewers from watching games in which they will be most interested — those for their local teams and those nationally televised.
• Major League Baseball’s MLB.TV is more expensive than any other league’s streaming plan and has even more blackout problems than NBA League Pass.
• The NHL’s Gamecenter LIVE provides access to only out-of-market games and does not carry the Stanley Cup Playoffs. GameCenter Premium, the NHL’s playoff product, offers only radio broadcasts.
• Don’t worry though, hockey fans. There likely will not be a season this year anyway, so you won’t have an opportunity to complain about that ridiculous “premium” plan.

The NFL’s plan really shines when it comes to additional features. Game Rewind provides access to not just this season’s games, but also to those from the last three seasons, plus 20 of the best Super Bowls ever broadcast. Game Pass has great features to enhance the viewing experience, too. You can watch up to four games simultaneously with the player, and use their “Big Play Markers” to instantly jump to the most important events in each game. The player also has “Condensed” streams, which cover all of the game’s pertinent action in about a half hour. New to the player this year is a Coaches Film view, which provides additional All-22 and EndZone viewing angles previously unavailable to the public.

The NFL’s contracts with its television partners are also very digital-friendly. The League’s best products — its playoffs and NBC’s phenomenal Sunday Night Football telecast — are streamed online for free. Further, more games will become available online over the course of the 2014-2022 NFL television contracts, which extend streaming rights to all networks.

It may not be perfect, but, for today, the NFL has the best online streaming plan of US major sports.

A smart, seasoned digital boss

Jeff Berman, NFL General Manage of Digital Media, is in charge of making sure things stay that way. In August, Berman provided some insight into the NFL’s high-level digital strategy in an interview with Bloomberg.

What we focus on, and this is very much the mandate from the commissioner, is creating world-class, extraordinary fan experiences. Obviously, revenue follows from that, and we have a healthy model that mixes ad revenue and transactional revenue. But, by creating world-class experiences for our fans, we know that we’re just creating more value overall for the NFL, and that’s an unequivocally good thing.

Berman hasn’t limited the NFL’s search for “world-class experiences” to the usual suspects like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. For instance, Bloomberg interviewed him when the NFL had just partnered with Google to bring Google+ Hangout video conferences to NFL.com fantasy football.

The NFL’s partnership with Google is a brilliant idea. Video conferencing will return face-to-face interaction to fantasy football drafts that often occur between participants separated by hundreds of miles. Including this feature differentiates the NFL’s fantasy football platform against competition from Yahoo!, ESPN, and a host of other companies. That Berman is apparently on a first-name basis with “Mark and Cheryl” at Facebook makes him strike all the more convincing a figure — though I do disagree with his assertion that Fantasy Football is “in many respects … the first social network.” I was also disappointed when he deflected a question about the NFL’s proportion of viewership from tablet and mobile devices.

A 2011 Mashable interview with Berman, when he discussed experimentation with Google+, Tumblr, and Pinterest provides further evidence of the NFL Digital Chief’s savviness. However, the best support for Berman’s credibility may be his history with MySpace.

Though once a candidate to be MySpace’s CEO, Berman departed the company in August 2009. He could hardly have chosen a better time to leave. Berman was at MySpace for much of the social network’s rise to, by some estimates, 114 million global visitors, but hardly any of its precipitous decline. It may have simply been good luck, but I theorize that Berman saw the writing on the wall at MySpace and got out while the getting was good.

Conclusion

NFL Game Rewind and the League’s 2014 TV contracts will ensure that the core experience of watching football online will only increase in quality. Jeff Berman will work to keep football’s peripheral experiences — like fantasy leagues and social media interactions — at the cutting edge.

As a football fan, I look forward to what Berman and his team can offer in the future.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Michelle Obama’s Tuesday speech drives 28K tweets per minute

Michelle Obama's keynote speech at last night's Democratic National Convention provoked almost twice as much conversation on Twitter as Mitt Romney's address to the Republican Convention last week. Is there a message in there about who the Internet is more interested in?

The people have spoken – Well, Tweeted  – and it’s official: America prefers Obama to Romney. Michelle Obama, that is.

According to a post on Twitter’s official blog, last night’s Democratic National Convention keynote speech by the First Lady resulted in an impressive 28,003 Tweets Per Minute, almost double that of the Republican National Convention speech from Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney last week (He peaked at 14,289 Tweets Per Minute).

The most popular line from Obama’s speech was “We’ve got so much more to do,” which Twitter reported had 22,004 TPM – Something not entirely surprising, considering the bipartisan appeal of the line (“We’re not done yet!” for the Democrats in the crowd, while the Republicans could take it to mean “We haven’t managed to do what we promised in the last three years.” Would thatall speeches offered quite so much to everyone listening) – while the second most popular line was the equally-agreeable “Living the American Dream,” with 21,577 TPM. Third place went to “How hard you work matters,” which scored 18,669 TPM.

If Romney feels bad about being overshadowed by Mrs. Obama, perhaps he can take some solace in the fact that her 28K TPM last night also scored significantly higher than President Obama’s last State of The Union address, which only managed to reach 14,131 TPM as its peak – 156 TPM lower than Romney’s keynote from last week, should such things matter.

Overall, Twitter engagement with this week’s DNC seems up on last week’s RNC, Twitter’s Head of Government, News and Social Innovation Adam Sharp reported. “Although it’s just the first night at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte,” he wrote, “people have already posted more than 3 million Tweets, including #DNC2012 and related terms. In comparison, there were 4 million Tweets sent throughout the three days of last week’s Republican National Convention (#RNC2012).”

It wasn’t just Mrs. Obama raising the numbers, either; Mayor Julian Castro, considered by many pundits to be an up-and-comer akin to President Obama’s status back in 2004, reached the Tweets Per Minute total of 11,503 during his much-anticipated speech. That number puts him higher than any individual speaker at the RNC last week with the exception of Mitt Romney, surprisingly (Somewhere, Paul Ryan is very upset… or else, working out for his P90X for the day). Last night’s other speakers Massuchussets Governor Deval Patrick and Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley also hit worthy numbers, with 6.909 and 7,502 TPM respectively.

All of which raises the question: Why?

It’s not that the Republicans are necessarily any less of a force on Twitter; Romney’s numbers have been rising impressively over the last few months, and he’s expected to reach parity with the President before too long in terms of TPM about their respective campaigns, so… Are people just more engaged with the DNC as a topic this year? And if so, why? Expect experts from both sides of the political divide trying to work that one out over the next few days, if not weeks.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Internet freedom, cybersecurity land in 2012 Democratic National Platform

Democrats have included Internet freedom and cybersecurity as important issues in the 2012 Democratic National Platform.

As expected, the Democrats have included “Internet freedom” as one of the party’s many primary provisions in the 2012 Democratic National Platform. “Cybersecurity” is also included in the platform, released late Monday ahead of the 2012 Democratic National Convention, which kicks off in Charlotte, North Carolina, today.

Inclusion of Internet freedom in the Democrats’ platform was first revealed by President Barack Obama during his “Ask Me Anything” public interview on Reddit last week. Obama’s revelation came soon after the GOP released its own stance on Internet freedom in the 2012 Republican Party Platform.

While the Republicans focused on how they plan to address open Internet issues in the future — through opposition to the Federal Communications Commission’s Net neutrality rules, opposition to changes in the Internet governance model through the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), and support for civil liberties and personal privacy on the Web — the Democrats instead vaguely outline what the Obama administration has already done to preserve the open Internet, along with further promises to oppose “the extension of intergovernmental controls” of the Internet through the ITU.

Here is the Democrats’ Internet freedom position, in full:

The Obama administration has led the world to recognize and defend Internet freedom — the freedom of expression, assembly, and association online for people everywhere — through coalitions of countries and by empowering individuals with innovative technologies. The administration has built partnerships to support an Internet that is secure and reliable and that is respectful of U.S. intellectual property, free flow of information, and privacy. To preserve the Internet as a platform for commerce, debate, learning, and innovation in the 21st century, we successfully negotiated international Internet policymaking principles, support the current multi-stakeholder approach to Internet governance, and oppose the extension of intergovernmental controls over the Internet.

For comparison, here is the GOP’s Internet freedom stance:

The Internet has unleashed innovation, enabled growth, and inspired freedom more rapidly and extensively than any other technological advance in human history. Its independence is its power. The Internet offers a communications system uniquely free from government intervention. We will remove regulatory barriers that protect outdated technologies and business plans from innovation and competition, while preventing legacy regulation from interfering with new and disruptive technologies such as mobile delivery of voice video data as they become crucial components of the Internet ecosystem. We will resist any effort to shift control away from the successful multi-stakeholder approach of Internet governance and toward governance by international or other intergovernmental organizations. We will ensure that personal data receives full constitutional protection from government overreach and that individuals retain the right to control the use of their data by third parties; the only way to safeguard or improve these systems is through the private sector.

In addition to the issue of Internet freedom, the Democrats also outlined its efforts to establish robust cybersecurity measures, and reiterated it support for cybersecurity legislation put forth by Congress this year, but which has so far failed to pass through the full lawmaking process.

The Democrats’ plank on cybersecrity reads:

Cybersecurity threats represent one of the most serious potential national security, public safety, and economic challenges we face. The very technologies that empower use to lead and create also empower individual criminal hackers, organized criminal groups, terrorist networks, and other advanced nations to disrupt the critical infrastructure that is vital to our economy, commerce, public safety, and military. Defending against cyber threats requires networks that are secure, trustworthy, and resilient. The President and the administration have taken unprecedented steps to defend America from cyber attacks, including creating the first military command dedicated to cybersecurity and conducting a full review of the federal government’s efforts to protect our information and our infrastructure. We will continue to take steps to deter, prevent, detect, and defend against cyber intrusions, by investing in cutting-edge research and development, promoting cybersecurity awareness and digital literacy, and strengthening private sector and international partnerships. President Obama has supported comprehensive cybersecurity legislation that would help business and government protect against risks of cyber attacks while also safeguarding the privacy rights of our citizens. And, going forward, the President will continue to take executive action to strengthen and update our cyber defenses.

All in all, the Democrats’ positions on these pertinent topics is neither surprising nor particularly impressive, from a Web user’s point of view. In fact, my personal opinion is that the Democrats should have said far more about Internet freedom, and taken a much more pointed stance on protecting Web users privacy and personal liberty on the Internet. They hint at it, but we need more than just hints.

Image via Action Sports Photography/Shutterstock

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com