US drone attacks in Pakistan have killed at least 29 noncombatants since 2012 – deaths that could be categorized as war crimes, Amnesty International said today in a report released just a day before Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is set to meet with President Obama.
The report, “‘Will I be Next?’ US Drone Strikes in Pakistan” was released by Amnesty International in conjunction with a separate report by New York-based Human Rights Watch on US drone attacks in Yemen. The Amnesty report analyzed 45 publicly known drone attacks in the most commonly targeted region of Pakistan where the Taliban has been particularly active, North Waziristan, between January 2012 and August 2013.
The timing of the report's release puts perhaps the most sensitive issue in US-Pakistan relations in the spotlight as the two leaders meet.
President Obama publicly acknowledged a drone program in Pakistan in January 2012, and promised greater transparency in May 2013. “There must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured,” Obama said, noting that civilian deaths from drone strikes would haunt him and others involved in the administration’s hierarchy “as long as we live.”
Amnesty wrote in its report release that despite this, the US “still refuses to divulge even basic factual and legal information” on its drone program, which means little opportunity for victims’ families to press for compensation or take legal action.
“Secrecy surrounding the drones program gives the US administration a license to kill beyond the reach of the courts or basic standards of international law,” said Mustafa Qadri, author of the report.
“The tragedy is that drone aircraft deployed by the USA over Pakistan now instill the same kind of fear in the people of the tribal areas that was once associated only with Al Qaeda and the Taliban,” said Mr. Qadri.
According to Reuters, the Pakistani Taliban largely controls North Waziristan, in northwestern Pakistan, offering “safe havens to Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban who are fighting NATO troops across the border.”
The United States has carried out 376 drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004, the [London based] Bureau of Investigative Journalism says, with the death toll put at between 2,525 and 3,613. Local media reported that up to 926 of the dead were civilians.
Most of the time, the dead are militants although their rank is often unclear, residents, militants and Pakistani security sources have told Reuters. Government officials frequently say militant groups have killed 40,000 Pakistanis since 2001.
In the first publicized drone attack since Obama’s May speech, the Pakistani Taliban’s second in command, Wali-ur-Rehman, was killed in a strike along with at least five others.
"This is a huge blow to militants and a win in the fight against insurgents," one security official told Reuters at the time.
The Pakistani government has long condemned drone strikes, often citing civilian casualties, as well as territorial integrity and Pakistani sovereignty. Obama is set to meet Sharif at the White House tomorrow, and on Friday the United Nations is set to debate drones and transparency.
In its report, Amnesty found that US drones killed a grandmother, Mamana Bibi, in October 2012 while she was picking vegetables near her grandchildren. Another strike in July that same year killed 18 laborers near the Afghan border as they sat down to eat dinner. A subsequent missile strike killed many of those who came to the rescue of the first victims.
A big challenge in tallying civilian deaths is the difficulty of saying with certainty whether or not a military-aged victim of a strike is part of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, or another extremist group, the report authors acknowledge. However, family and friends often insist their loved ones “had no connection to extremists,” reports the Los Angeles Times.
“American intelligence officials and their congressional overseers argue that in almost all cases the strikes have hit legitimate targets. Sorting out the truth in individual cases is often impossible,” the LA Times reports.
According to The New York Times, in communities often targeted by drones – for example, the northwest Pakistani town of Miram Shah, which has been hit 13 times since 2008 – the psychological stress has been palpable.
While the strike rate has dropped drastically in recent months, the constant presence of circling drones — and accompanying tension over when, or whom, they will strike — is a crushing psychological burden for many residents [of Miram Shah].
Sales of sleeping tablets, antidepressants and medicine to treat anxiety have soared, said Hajji Gulab Jan Dawar, a pharmacist in the town bazaar. Women were particularly troubled, he said, but men also experienced problems…. ...
In the aftermath of drone strikes, things get worse. Many civilians hide at home, fearing masked vigilantes with the Ittehad-e-Mujahedeen Khorasan, a militant enforcement unit that hunts for American spies. The unit casts a wide net, and the suspects it hauls in are usually tortured and summarily executed.
Glacial buzz-saws, gold in fool's gold, fingerprints in sea water, and fluvial iron
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
18-Oct-2013
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Contact: Kea Giles kgiles@geosociety.org Geological Society of America
New Geology articles posted online ahead of print 16 October 2013
Boulder, Colo., USA New article postings for Geology cover glacial erosion and glacial slip; the work of marine organisms in changing the face of Earth; collisional shortening in the Central Alps; changes in sediment transport in Taiwan after typhoon Morakot in 2009; a new type of iron formation, dubbed "fluvial iron formation"; kimberlites in South Africa; using fossil marine plankton records in 70-million-year-old sediments as indicators of sea ice formation and retreat; and Greenland Ice Sheet behavior.
Highlights are provided below. GEOLOGY articles published ahead of print can be accessed online at http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/early/recent. All abstracts are open-access at http://geology.gsapubs.org/; representatives of the media may obtain complimentary GEOLOGY articles by contacting Kea Giles at the address above.
Please discuss articles of interest with the authors before publishing stories on their work, and please make reference to GEOLOGY in articles published. Contact Kea Giles for additional information or assistance.
Non-media requests for articles may be directed to GSA Sales and Service, gsaservice@geosociety.org.
Selective glacial erosion on the Norwegian passive margin
Adrian M. Hall et al., School of Geography and GeoSciences, University of St Andrews, Irvine Building, North Street, St Andrews KY16 9AL, Fife, Scotland, UK; amh22@st-andrews.ac.uk. Co-authors: Karin Ebert, Johan Kleman, Atle Nesje, and Dag Ottesen. Posted online ahead of print on 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34806.1.
Glaciers cut down and cut deep, carving deep valleys in mountains. This efficient erosion -- the glacial buzz-saw -- operates best at the snowline where glaciers are thickest and fastest moving. But can glaciers also cut horizontally to create low angle surfaces or plateaus? That's what has been claimed recently to have happened during the Ice Age on the west coast of Norway. We provide evidence that the plateaus have been cut into by and so are older than cirques and valley glaciers. We also find no relationship to cirque distribution or to Pleistocene snowlines. The gentle, high elevation surfaces of this and other glaciated passive margins are largely inherited from Neogene non-glacial, fluvial environments. Yet Pleistocene glacial erosion has done far In Norway than to cut its magnificent fjords -- many hundreds of meters of soft rocks must have been removed from the coastal and inshore zone to account for the huge sediment volumes offshore.
Does gold in orogenic deposits come from pyrite in deeply buried carbon-rich sediments?: Insight from volatiles in fluid inclusions
Damien Gaboury, Laboratoire de Mtallognie Exprimentale et Quantitative (LAMEQ), Universit du Qubec Chicoutimi (UQAC), 555 Boulevard de l'Universit, Chicoutimi, Qubec G7H 2B1, Canada; dgaboury@uqac.ca. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34788.1
Orogenic gold deposits form an important class of hydrothermal deposits distributed in metamorphic volcano-sedimentary belts worldwide. It is accepted that gold-bearing fluids are generated by metamorphic dehydration reactions at depth (about 5 to 12 km) following mountain building during tectonic collisional events. However, the source of gold remains speculative and because of that, key criteria for selecting favorable areas for exploration is lacking. Recently, it was proposed that gold in primary nodular pyrite hosted in organic matter-rich shale was the source. Results presented here by Damien Gaboury provide an independent validation of this model. It was postulated that if gold-bearing fluids are derived from organic-rich material, fluids involved in the formation of gold deposits should contain some hydrocarbon species. Fluid inclusions are microscopic bubbles of trapped fluids in minerals. Fluid inclusions from selected deposits around the world were analyzed for volatile composition by solid-probe mass spectrometry following a unique technique developed by the author. It is demonstrated that ethane (C2H6) is sourced from thermally degraded organic matter, hence providing a reliable tracer. The C2H6 content is recorded in fluids from Meso-Archean to Cretaceous gold deposits, providing support for a general model where fluids and gold were sourced from deeply buried, carbon-rich, and pyrite-gold-bearing sedimentary rocks.
Tectonic forcing of Early to Middle Jurassic seawater Sr/Ca
Clemens V. Ullmann et al., University of Copenhagen, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, and Nordic Center for Earth Evolution (NordCEE), ster Voldgade 10, 1350 Copenhagen-K, Denmark; c.v.ullmann@gmx.net. Co-authors: Stephen P. Hesselbo, and Christoph Korte. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34817.1.
Earth's surface changes slowly, because of plate tectonic processes, long-term changes in climate, and even due to the activities of living organisms. On timescales of millions of years, these acting forces leave specific fingerprints in the chemical composition of seawater. Marine organisms record information about seawater composition in their shells. Fossil shell remains of such organisms can be used to estimate the variations of seawater composition through time and to evaluate the acting forces, leading to the observed variability. Around the Triassic-Jurassic transition (~201 million years ago), fundamental changes in the plate tectonic setting commenced and one of the most severe mass extinction events known from the geologic record occurred. The evolving seawater composition during ~37 million years after this important transition was tracked here by measuring the concentration and isotopic composition of strontium in the shells of oyster-like bivalves and belemnites -- extinct, marine predators. The observed patterns are attributed to an overall decreasing importance of strontium from weathering continental rocks with respect to strontium derived from Earth's mantle at the Mid Ocean Ridges. A major impact on seawater composition, related to the changing and recovering ecosystems, and the spreading of calcite producing nannoplankton, however, is not indicated.
Three-dimensional insight into Central-Alpine collision: Lower-plate or upper-plate indentation?
Claudio L. Rosenberg, UPMC University of Paris 6, ISTEP, F-75005, Paris, France; claudio.rosenberg@upmc.fr. Co-author: Eduard Kissling. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34584.1.
Accommodation of collisional shortening in the Central Alps varies dramatically along strike. In the western Central Alps, 90% of shortening is accommodated in the thickened lower plate. In the eastern Central Alps, 90% of shortening is accommodated in the upper plate. In the central part of the Central Alps shortening is almost equally partitioned between the two plates. Whereas the upper plate indents into the thickened accreted lower plate in the Simplon section, it is the lower plate that indents an intensely deforming upper plate in the Engadine section. In the west, the Ivrea mantle body increases the strength of the Adriatic upper plate and Barrovian metamorphism weakens the lower plate. Therefore, along-strike transfer of shortening from one plate to the other appears to be a manifestation of along-strike changes of rheology deep in the crust.
Altered regional sediment transport regime after a large typhoon, southern Taiwan
Michelle Y.-F. Huang, Research Center for Environmental Changes, Academia Sinica, Taipei 115, Taiwan; michelleyfhuang@gmail.com; ae2612@hotmail.com. Co-author: David R. Montgomery, Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195-1310, USA. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34826.1.
Analyses of river-suspended sediment response to record-breaking regional rainfall in southern Taiwan during typhoon Morakot, 7-9 August 2009, reveal systematic changes in the regional sediment transport regime as characterized by rating curve parameters. These changes result in much greater sediment concentration, and thus sediment transport, in subsequent low-flow events after the typhoon, an effect that amplifies and extends the influence of such extreme events through increased low-flow sediment transport. Findings by Michelle Huang and David Montgomery show that the rating curve exponent is not constant contrasts with the conventional assumption that large events influence sediment yields through increased intercept values, thereby supporting the interpretation that basin sediment delivery influences both rating parameters, and increases post-event low-flow sediment transport. Surveys of landslide density and riverbed grain sizes before and after typhoon Morakot support the interpretation that the observed changes reflect an altered sediment transport regime and a shift from channel migration and bank erosion to reworking of landslide debris and enhanced bed mobility as the dominant processes supplying fluvial sediment.
Late Cretaceous winter sea ice in Antarctica?
Vanessa C. Bowman et al., School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK; v.c.bowman@leeds.ac.uk or vcbowman@gmail.com. Co-authors: Jane E. Francis, and James B. Riding. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34891.1.
Scientists have found evidence of sea ice at a time in the geological past when forests covered Antarctica and the climate was thought to be very warm. Geologists from the University of Leeds, UK, and the British Geological Survey, supported by the British Antarctic Survey, undertook fieldwork and laboratory analysis over a period of four years. They interpreted the record of fossil marine plankton in Cretaceous sediments (70 million years ago) as indicators of sea ice formation and retreat. This implies that ice sheets may have existed on Antarctica under a high CO2 climate. These results help us reconstruct the history of the Antarctic ice sheet in order to understand how the ice sheet is responding to climate warming today and how it may behave in the future.
A re-evaluation of the Pleistocene behavior of the Scoresby Sund sector of the Greenland Ice Sheet
Jan Sverre Laberg et al., Department of Geology, University of Troms, N-9037 Troms, Norway; jan.laberg@uit.no. Co-authors: Matthias Forwick, Katrine Husum, and Tove Nielsen. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34784.1.
The Greenland Ice Sheet is the largest ice sheet outside of Antarctica. The amount of water stored equals seven meters of global sea-level rise so that the future behavior of the ice sheet is of global concern. However, limited data on the past dynamics of the Ice Sheet exceeding the ice-core records have led to partly contradictory reconstructions. Whereas the Scoresby Sund sector of the Greenland Ice Sheet has been suggested to be stable and not much larger than at present during the peak Pleistocene glaciations, the southeastern sector of the Ice Sheet has been inferred to be much more dynamic. Jan Sverre Laberg, Matthias Forwick, Katrine Husum, and Tove Nielsen present seismic data showing that glaciogenic debris-flow deposits dominate the earlier than ca. 2.58 Ma succession of the Scoresby Sund Trough Mouth Fan on the East Greenland continental margin, suggesting much more frequent expansions of the Greenland Ice Sheet to the shelf break than found previously. This rapid response of the glacier to climate forcing indicates how dynamic is the glacier ice front and what one might expect of the glacier as the influences of climate warming become more pronounced.
Riverine mixing and fluvial iron formation: A new type of Precambrian biochemical sediment
Peir K. Pufahl et al., Department of Earth and Environmental Science, Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia B4P 2R6, Canada; peir.pufahl@acadiau.ca. Co-authors: Franco Pirajno, and Eric E. Hiatt. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34812.1.
The deposition of Precambrian iron formation is perhaps one of the least understood phenomena in the Earth sciences. This iron-rich sedimentary rock precipitated in some way from seawater and therefore holds important clues about the composition of the early oceans and atmosphere as well as the evolution of life. For example, the appearance of large, economically important iron formations reflects photosynthetic oxygenation of the oceans and atmosphere approximately 2.5 billion-years-ago. In this paper, Peir Pufahl, with Franco Pirajno and Eric Hiatt, introduce a new type of iron formation, fluvial iron formation, which formed by mixing river discharge and seawater in coastal environments. Their results are significant because it shifts the locus of known iron formation precipitation processes into estuarine settings, providing a new window for understanding ocean-atmosphere development on the early Earth.
Kimberlite (U-Th)/He dating links surface erosion with lithospheric heating, thinning, and metasomatism in the southern African Plateau
Jessica R. Stanley et al., Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA; jessica.stanley@colorado.edu. Co-authors: Rebecca M. Flowers, and David R. Bell. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34797.1.
Documenting the response at Earth's surface to processes at depth is a central challenge in continental tectonics. Kimberlites are ultramafic magmas derived from a depth greater than 150 km, famous for bringing diamonds to the surface, as well as other information about the state of the lithosphere in the form of mantle xenoliths. Though less well studied, kimberlites also contain xenoliths from sedimentary units present at the time of eruption, which may have since eroded away. In this study, Jessica Stanley, Rebecca Flowers, and David Bell combine constraints from sedimentary xenoliths with cooling histories derived from apatite (U-Th)/He dating of kimberlites to constrain 1-2 km of Mesozoic erosion across the interior of South Africa. This erosion pulse is contemporaneous with heating, thinning, and metasomatism of the lithosphere below documented in the mantle xenoliths from these same pipes. Thus, the data presented here appear to record the surface response to active processes in the mantle.
Glacier slip and seismicity induced by surface melt
Peter L. Moore et al., Department of Geological and Atmospheric Science, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA; pmoore@iastate.edu. Co-authors: J. Paul Winberry, Neal R. Iverson, Knut A. Christianson, Sridhar Anandakrishnan, Miriam Jackson, Mark E. Mathison, and Denis Cohen. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34760.1.
Peter Moore and colleagues installed instruments for measuring seismic activity, sliding, and stress at the bottom of Engabreen, a glacier in northern Norway where a hydro-power facility allows human access to the glacier bed. The instruments measured pronounced glacier response to meltwater input during the onset of summer melt in May 2010 and 2011. This paper documents three separate episodes in which surface melt or precipitation introduced a pulse of water to the glacier bed and our instruments measured the glacier's response. The added water briefly enhanced glacier sliding as it pressurized cavities between the ice and underlying bedrock, locally lifting the ice. Enhanced sliding ceased, however, when the increased cavity size and connectivity allowed the water to be evacuated from the cavities more efficiently -- a few hours in each case. During each of these events, broadband seismometers in the tunnels a few meters below the glacier bed detected tilt, interpreted as a slight deformation of the rock as water pressurized basal cavities. Though measurements also suggest that enhanced sliding at the bed exploited a frictional interface, no seismic activity directly associated with this slip could be resolved.
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Glacial buzz-saws, gold in fool's gold, fingerprints in sea water, and fluvial iron
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
18-Oct-2013
[
| E-mail
]
Share
Contact: Kea Giles kgiles@geosociety.org Geological Society of America
New Geology articles posted online ahead of print 16 October 2013
Boulder, Colo., USA New article postings for Geology cover glacial erosion and glacial slip; the work of marine organisms in changing the face of Earth; collisional shortening in the Central Alps; changes in sediment transport in Taiwan after typhoon Morakot in 2009; a new type of iron formation, dubbed "fluvial iron formation"; kimberlites in South Africa; using fossil marine plankton records in 70-million-year-old sediments as indicators of sea ice formation and retreat; and Greenland Ice Sheet behavior.
Highlights are provided below. GEOLOGY articles published ahead of print can be accessed online at http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/early/recent. All abstracts are open-access at http://geology.gsapubs.org/; representatives of the media may obtain complimentary GEOLOGY articles by contacting Kea Giles at the address above.
Please discuss articles of interest with the authors before publishing stories on their work, and please make reference to GEOLOGY in articles published. Contact Kea Giles for additional information or assistance.
Non-media requests for articles may be directed to GSA Sales and Service, gsaservice@geosociety.org.
Selective glacial erosion on the Norwegian passive margin
Adrian M. Hall et al., School of Geography and GeoSciences, University of St Andrews, Irvine Building, North Street, St Andrews KY16 9AL, Fife, Scotland, UK; amh22@st-andrews.ac.uk. Co-authors: Karin Ebert, Johan Kleman, Atle Nesje, and Dag Ottesen. Posted online ahead of print on 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34806.1.
Glaciers cut down and cut deep, carving deep valleys in mountains. This efficient erosion -- the glacial buzz-saw -- operates best at the snowline where glaciers are thickest and fastest moving. But can glaciers also cut horizontally to create low angle surfaces or plateaus? That's what has been claimed recently to have happened during the Ice Age on the west coast of Norway. We provide evidence that the plateaus have been cut into by and so are older than cirques and valley glaciers. We also find no relationship to cirque distribution or to Pleistocene snowlines. The gentle, high elevation surfaces of this and other glaciated passive margins are largely inherited from Neogene non-glacial, fluvial environments. Yet Pleistocene glacial erosion has done far In Norway than to cut its magnificent fjords -- many hundreds of meters of soft rocks must have been removed from the coastal and inshore zone to account for the huge sediment volumes offshore.
Does gold in orogenic deposits come from pyrite in deeply buried carbon-rich sediments?: Insight from volatiles in fluid inclusions
Damien Gaboury, Laboratoire de Mtallognie Exprimentale et Quantitative (LAMEQ), Universit du Qubec Chicoutimi (UQAC), 555 Boulevard de l'Universit, Chicoutimi, Qubec G7H 2B1, Canada; dgaboury@uqac.ca. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34788.1
Orogenic gold deposits form an important class of hydrothermal deposits distributed in metamorphic volcano-sedimentary belts worldwide. It is accepted that gold-bearing fluids are generated by metamorphic dehydration reactions at depth (about 5 to 12 km) following mountain building during tectonic collisional events. However, the source of gold remains speculative and because of that, key criteria for selecting favorable areas for exploration is lacking. Recently, it was proposed that gold in primary nodular pyrite hosted in organic matter-rich shale was the source. Results presented here by Damien Gaboury provide an independent validation of this model. It was postulated that if gold-bearing fluids are derived from organic-rich material, fluids involved in the formation of gold deposits should contain some hydrocarbon species. Fluid inclusions are microscopic bubbles of trapped fluids in minerals. Fluid inclusions from selected deposits around the world were analyzed for volatile composition by solid-probe mass spectrometry following a unique technique developed by the author. It is demonstrated that ethane (C2H6) is sourced from thermally degraded organic matter, hence providing a reliable tracer. The C2H6 content is recorded in fluids from Meso-Archean to Cretaceous gold deposits, providing support for a general model where fluids and gold were sourced from deeply buried, carbon-rich, and pyrite-gold-bearing sedimentary rocks.
Tectonic forcing of Early to Middle Jurassic seawater Sr/Ca
Clemens V. Ullmann et al., University of Copenhagen, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, and Nordic Center for Earth Evolution (NordCEE), ster Voldgade 10, 1350 Copenhagen-K, Denmark; c.v.ullmann@gmx.net. Co-authors: Stephen P. Hesselbo, and Christoph Korte. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34817.1.
Earth's surface changes slowly, because of plate tectonic processes, long-term changes in climate, and even due to the activities of living organisms. On timescales of millions of years, these acting forces leave specific fingerprints in the chemical composition of seawater. Marine organisms record information about seawater composition in their shells. Fossil shell remains of such organisms can be used to estimate the variations of seawater composition through time and to evaluate the acting forces, leading to the observed variability. Around the Triassic-Jurassic transition (~201 million years ago), fundamental changes in the plate tectonic setting commenced and one of the most severe mass extinction events known from the geologic record occurred. The evolving seawater composition during ~37 million years after this important transition was tracked here by measuring the concentration and isotopic composition of strontium in the shells of oyster-like bivalves and belemnites -- extinct, marine predators. The observed patterns are attributed to an overall decreasing importance of strontium from weathering continental rocks with respect to strontium derived from Earth's mantle at the Mid Ocean Ridges. A major impact on seawater composition, related to the changing and recovering ecosystems, and the spreading of calcite producing nannoplankton, however, is not indicated.
Three-dimensional insight into Central-Alpine collision: Lower-plate or upper-plate indentation?
Claudio L. Rosenberg, UPMC University of Paris 6, ISTEP, F-75005, Paris, France; claudio.rosenberg@upmc.fr. Co-author: Eduard Kissling. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34584.1.
Accommodation of collisional shortening in the Central Alps varies dramatically along strike. In the western Central Alps, 90% of shortening is accommodated in the thickened lower plate. In the eastern Central Alps, 90% of shortening is accommodated in the upper plate. In the central part of the Central Alps shortening is almost equally partitioned between the two plates. Whereas the upper plate indents into the thickened accreted lower plate in the Simplon section, it is the lower plate that indents an intensely deforming upper plate in the Engadine section. In the west, the Ivrea mantle body increases the strength of the Adriatic upper plate and Barrovian metamorphism weakens the lower plate. Therefore, along-strike transfer of shortening from one plate to the other appears to be a manifestation of along-strike changes of rheology deep in the crust.
Altered regional sediment transport regime after a large typhoon, southern Taiwan
Michelle Y.-F. Huang, Research Center for Environmental Changes, Academia Sinica, Taipei 115, Taiwan; michelleyfhuang@gmail.com; ae2612@hotmail.com. Co-author: David R. Montgomery, Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195-1310, USA. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34826.1.
Analyses of river-suspended sediment response to record-breaking regional rainfall in southern Taiwan during typhoon Morakot, 7-9 August 2009, reveal systematic changes in the regional sediment transport regime as characterized by rating curve parameters. These changes result in much greater sediment concentration, and thus sediment transport, in subsequent low-flow events after the typhoon, an effect that amplifies and extends the influence of such extreme events through increased low-flow sediment transport. Findings by Michelle Huang and David Montgomery show that the rating curve exponent is not constant contrasts with the conventional assumption that large events influence sediment yields through increased intercept values, thereby supporting the interpretation that basin sediment delivery influences both rating parameters, and increases post-event low-flow sediment transport. Surveys of landslide density and riverbed grain sizes before and after typhoon Morakot support the interpretation that the observed changes reflect an altered sediment transport regime and a shift from channel migration and bank erosion to reworking of landslide debris and enhanced bed mobility as the dominant processes supplying fluvial sediment.
Late Cretaceous winter sea ice in Antarctica?
Vanessa C. Bowman et al., School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK; v.c.bowman@leeds.ac.uk or vcbowman@gmail.com. Co-authors: Jane E. Francis, and James B. Riding. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34891.1.
Scientists have found evidence of sea ice at a time in the geological past when forests covered Antarctica and the climate was thought to be very warm. Geologists from the University of Leeds, UK, and the British Geological Survey, supported by the British Antarctic Survey, undertook fieldwork and laboratory analysis over a period of four years. They interpreted the record of fossil marine plankton in Cretaceous sediments (70 million years ago) as indicators of sea ice formation and retreat. This implies that ice sheets may have existed on Antarctica under a high CO2 climate. These results help us reconstruct the history of the Antarctic ice sheet in order to understand how the ice sheet is responding to climate warming today and how it may behave in the future.
A re-evaluation of the Pleistocene behavior of the Scoresby Sund sector of the Greenland Ice Sheet
Jan Sverre Laberg et al., Department of Geology, University of Troms, N-9037 Troms, Norway; jan.laberg@uit.no. Co-authors: Matthias Forwick, Katrine Husum, and Tove Nielsen. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34784.1.
The Greenland Ice Sheet is the largest ice sheet outside of Antarctica. The amount of water stored equals seven meters of global sea-level rise so that the future behavior of the ice sheet is of global concern. However, limited data on the past dynamics of the Ice Sheet exceeding the ice-core records have led to partly contradictory reconstructions. Whereas the Scoresby Sund sector of the Greenland Ice Sheet has been suggested to be stable and not much larger than at present during the peak Pleistocene glaciations, the southeastern sector of the Ice Sheet has been inferred to be much more dynamic. Jan Sverre Laberg, Matthias Forwick, Katrine Husum, and Tove Nielsen present seismic data showing that glaciogenic debris-flow deposits dominate the earlier than ca. 2.58 Ma succession of the Scoresby Sund Trough Mouth Fan on the East Greenland continental margin, suggesting much more frequent expansions of the Greenland Ice Sheet to the shelf break than found previously. This rapid response of the glacier to climate forcing indicates how dynamic is the glacier ice front and what one might expect of the glacier as the influences of climate warming become more pronounced.
Riverine mixing and fluvial iron formation: A new type of Precambrian biochemical sediment
Peir K. Pufahl et al., Department of Earth and Environmental Science, Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia B4P 2R6, Canada; peir.pufahl@acadiau.ca. Co-authors: Franco Pirajno, and Eric E. Hiatt. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34812.1.
The deposition of Precambrian iron formation is perhaps one of the least understood phenomena in the Earth sciences. This iron-rich sedimentary rock precipitated in some way from seawater and therefore holds important clues about the composition of the early oceans and atmosphere as well as the evolution of life. For example, the appearance of large, economically important iron formations reflects photosynthetic oxygenation of the oceans and atmosphere approximately 2.5 billion-years-ago. In this paper, Peir Pufahl, with Franco Pirajno and Eric Hiatt, introduce a new type of iron formation, fluvial iron formation, which formed by mixing river discharge and seawater in coastal environments. Their results are significant because it shifts the locus of known iron formation precipitation processes into estuarine settings, providing a new window for understanding ocean-atmosphere development on the early Earth.
Kimberlite (U-Th)/He dating links surface erosion with lithospheric heating, thinning, and metasomatism in the southern African Plateau
Jessica R. Stanley et al., Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA; jessica.stanley@colorado.edu. Co-authors: Rebecca M. Flowers, and David R. Bell. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34797.1.
Documenting the response at Earth's surface to processes at depth is a central challenge in continental tectonics. Kimberlites are ultramafic magmas derived from a depth greater than 150 km, famous for bringing diamonds to the surface, as well as other information about the state of the lithosphere in the form of mantle xenoliths. Though less well studied, kimberlites also contain xenoliths from sedimentary units present at the time of eruption, which may have since eroded away. In this study, Jessica Stanley, Rebecca Flowers, and David Bell combine constraints from sedimentary xenoliths with cooling histories derived from apatite (U-Th)/He dating of kimberlites to constrain 1-2 km of Mesozoic erosion across the interior of South Africa. This erosion pulse is contemporaneous with heating, thinning, and metasomatism of the lithosphere below documented in the mantle xenoliths from these same pipes. Thus, the data presented here appear to record the surface response to active processes in the mantle.
Glacier slip and seismicity induced by surface melt
Peter L. Moore et al., Department of Geological and Atmospheric Science, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA; pmoore@iastate.edu. Co-authors: J. Paul Winberry, Neal R. Iverson, Knut A. Christianson, Sridhar Anandakrishnan, Miriam Jackson, Mark E. Mathison, and Denis Cohen. Posted online ahead of print 16 Oct. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G34760.1.
Peter Moore and colleagues installed instruments for measuring seismic activity, sliding, and stress at the bottom of Engabreen, a glacier in northern Norway where a hydro-power facility allows human access to the glacier bed. The instruments measured pronounced glacier response to meltwater input during the onset of summer melt in May 2010 and 2011. This paper documents three separate episodes in which surface melt or precipitation introduced a pulse of water to the glacier bed and our instruments measured the glacier's response. The added water briefly enhanced glacier sliding as it pressurized cavities between the ice and underlying bedrock, locally lifting the ice. Enhanced sliding ceased, however, when the increased cavity size and connectivity allowed the water to be evacuated from the cavities more efficiently -- a few hours in each case. During each of these events, broadband seismometers in the tunnels a few meters below the glacier bed detected tilt, interpreted as a slight deformation of the rock as water pressurized basal cavities. Though measurements also suggest that enhanced sliding at the bed exploited a frictional interface, no seismic activity directly associated with this slip could be resolved.
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FILE - In this Sept. 1, 2013 file photo, Lady Gaga performs on stage at the Roundhouse in Camden, north London, as part of the iTunes Festival, the first of 30 nights of live free music in the capital. Lady Gaga and a former personal assistant who sued her won’t face off in a trial next month after settling their differences out of court. The settlement in a lawsuit brought by Jennifer O’Neill was revealed Monday, Oct. 21, 2013, in a court order dismissing the case. (Photo by Joel Ryan/Invision,file)
NEW YORK (AP) — Lady Gaga and a former personal assistant who sued her won't face off in a trial next month after settling their differences out of court.
The settlement in a lawsuit brought by Jennifer O'Neill was revealed Monday in a court order dismissing the case. O'Neill had claimed the singer cheated her out of overtime wages when she worked for her for a few weeks in early 2009 and for 13 months beginning in February 2010.
A trial was scheduled to start Nov. 4. O'Neill had testified she was responsible for sometimes monitoring the singer's communications and for handling about 20 bags of luggage.
Court papers revealed that Lady Gaga and O'Neill were roommates and friends on the Lower East Side of Manhattan before 2008. Lawyers did not immediately comment.
Lawyers had notified U.S. District Judge Paul G. Gardephe on Friday that they were close to a settlement.
O'Neill had said that she was paid at a flat rate of about $50,000 annually when she was first hired and $75,000 annually the second time by the pop singer, who is estimated in a list published by Forbes magazine to have earned $80 million in the first six months of this year.
Gardephe had ordered the case to proceed to trial, saying O'Neill's "on-call" time potentially qualifies for overtime compensation. O'Neill's lawsuit said she was on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
According to court papers, Lady Gaga, listed in the litigation under her birth name — Stefani Germanotta — and O'Neill frequently slept in the same bed because O'Neill never had her own hotel room while on tour and was required to address Lady Gaga's needs throughout the night.
In her deposition testimony, Lady Gaga had testified: "You don't get a schedule. You don't get a schedule that is like you punch in and you can play ... at your desk for four hours and then you punch out at the end of the day. This is when I need you, you're available."
Eighteen months ago I reviewed the Dropcam HD, which is now renamed simply as the Dropcam. Now the eponymous company has a new camera, the Dropcam Pro ($199 direct), that outshines not only its predecessor, but its top competitors as well. Dropcam Pro has twice the digital zoom power (8x) of the original (4x)—normally nothing to brag about, but newly enhanced visual quality makes it better than the pan/tilt/zoom on mechanized cameras of the same price (like the Compro Cloud Network Camera TN600W). Couple that with easy PC-free setup and the industry's best cloud-based recording, and it's a no brainer: The Dropcam Pro is our new Editors' Choice in consumer home surveillance.
Design and Setup One look at the packaging for the new Dropcam Pro and it's obvious the company is channeling Apple's product presentation. Even the box is a beaut, containing the absolute minimal paperwork to get up and running: a postcard sized quick start guide.
The appearance of the Dropcam Pro is identical to the Dropcam (still available at $149.99). The camera itself is a small puck that clips into a metal stand on a hinge. The stand rotates as needed in the base you attach to wall or ceiling, so you can view any area of a room. In the stand, Dropcam Pro measures 4.5 by 3.15 by 3.15 inches (HWD). Without the stand, the puck-shaped camera itself is hard to position, but not impossible, if you want to add some stealth to your deployment. It's nice that the Pro's stand is now black to match the camera, but it's a shame the 10-foot long USB-power cord and wall adapter are still white, so they don't exactly match.
Dropcam Pro is one of the few cameras that lack an Ethernet port. It's all about the wireless: Inside the camera is not just Wi-Fi, but dual-band 802.11n, so you can connect via 2.4GHz (the typical setup) or 5GHz. Dropcam Pro is the only surveillance camera on the market with dual-band. The camera actually picks the band for you, generally going 5GHz if available.
Your installation options include plugging the camera directly into a PC to access the setup files for Mac or Windows and going from there, but that's old-school. Much easier: Plug the Dropcam Pro into power, open up the free Dropcam app on an iOS device (or eventually Android 4.3 device), create or log in to a Dropcam account, and let it find the camera. Give the camera your Wi-Fi network login credentials, give it a unique name, and you're done.
How does the smartphone even see your Dropcam Pro if it's not yet on the Wi-Fi? Dropcam Pro also integrates Bluetooth LE, the low energy tech part of Bluetooth Smart (4.0)—the same Bluetooth available on the latest iPhones and Android devices. Not only is Bluetooth LE an integral part of the setup via mobile, it's a future-proof scheme. The company claims Dropcam Pro will use Bluetooth LE to instantly talk to other peripherals in the future, and Dropcam may open its API for programmers that want to make devices that talk to the Dropcam Pro.
Features and Performance What exactly does the Pro have over the old Dropcam that warrants paying the extra 50 bucks? It's all about the optics. The wide field of view on the Dropcam Pro is 130 degrees, up from the original's 107 degrees. The sensor size is double—Dropcam says it is even bigger than the camera sensor in the iPhone 5s. It delivers an excellent video stream at 1,920-by-1,080 full motion—without a doubt, the best video I've seen on a home surveillance camera.
On the mobile apps you can use a two finger pinch/spread to digitally zoom in and out on the video. The same effect can be duplicated with the mouse scroll wheel in the browser interface at Dropcam.com. Digital zoom isn't usually a big deal and sometimes looks awful, but the sensor size, video quality, and well-designed apps make it easy to pan or tilt around the high-def image. An enhanced view oversamples a zoomed-in area of the stream—click the magic wand icon to get a sharper zoom than you'd imagine possible. This works best in very bright light conditions.
Let's also note that on the browser, the Dropcam interface is Flash-based, so it works with every major desktop Web browser in existence. Unlike the interfaces for cameras like the D-Link Cloud Camera 1150 or Compro TN600W, which limit you typically to Internet Explorer.
The audio capabilities on the Pro are enhanced. You'll hear more because of the mic sensitivity, and I found the two-way audio (where you talk through the software interface so your voice comes out the camera) was better than most cameras, both louder and clearer.
The hallmark of Dropcam is its encrypted, cloud-based, digital video recording service, now officially dubbed Cloud Video Recording, or CVR. Dropcam can be used to watch live video feeds at no extra cost, but the power is in being able to go back in time to watch previous footage. If there's any area where Dropcam falls short, though, it's the pricing. Look at it as the cost of three cups of coffee a month ($9.95/month or $99/year) and it doesn't hurt as much, and having that seven-day buffer of recorded video can make all the difference when you have a break-in or other problem. You can also go back a full month if you pay $29.95/month or $299/year; how much its worth to you depends on your security needs. But it wouldn't hurt if Dropcam offered a 24-hour recording buffer for, say, $10/year (or gratis).
You can also use the buffered online video to create video clips of just about any duration: Download it as an MP4 file, or easily share the clip via email, Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. You can also make your stream public if you want; Dropcam features many public streams in its Featured Cameras section.
Dropcam Pro marks video as it's recorded, so you know when motion or audio events take place. Those same events can be used to trigger notifications to your phone or via email. Be careful with this in high traffic areas, though. While you can't set the level of motion detection, Dropcam's web interface is testing an activity-recognition feature where the software learns motion patterns of your stream—you label them to help recognize pets vs. burglars. And while it's not much to praise now, since it's a Web interface, CVR subscribers will automatically get updates.
You can schedule times for when alerts can are sent. iPhone users get a nice little extra—Location Scheduling. Tell the Dropcam service to turn on notifications when you leave a location, based entirely on where you phone is. That way, you don't get inundated with alerts when you're home in front of the camera.
The night vision on the Dropcam Pro is phenomenal, especially considering it only uses eight infrared LEDs. That's fewer than most—even the previous Dropcam had 12. The large sensor size makes up for it; it takes in so much light, it requires a cavern-dark room for the night vision to even kick on.
I've dinged Dropcam in the past for not offering a battery but, realistically, it can't without making the camera unwieldy, the size of a phone at least. Luckily, being powered by USB, there are third-party options for hooking it to battery packs a-plenty.
Conclusions Dropcam Pro shows just how great a camera like this can get with quality optics. That Dropcam sees itself more as a software-and-services company, and thus works hard on the back-end and apps also makes a huge difference. The CVR service is costly, but worth it when you capture something important with your baby, your dogs, your family—or something a lot less savory, like burglars. The lack of on-board storage may seem like a burden, but Dropcam would argue the set-it-and-forget cloud storage saves you even more hassle, and I'd agree.
Other options: The Logitech Alert 750n Indoor Master System offers HomePlug connections (a convenience for some with tricky wireless setups at home) and a good cloud service for video, but its price and video quality no longer can compare. Likewise, the Wi-Fi-based Y-Cam HomeMonitor Indoor has some great features, like long-distance night vision and seven days of free online video storage. But with only VGA video, its simply not as good a camera or service combo by any stretch. All told, with this Pro release, Dropcam pulls ahead of the pack in the home surveillance camera market.
RolePlayGateway is proudly powered by obscene amounts of caffeine, duct tape, and support from people like you. It operates under a "don't like it, suggest an improvement" platform, and we gladly take suggestions for improvements or changes.
The custom-built "roleplay" system was designed and implemented by Eric Martindale as of July 2009. All attempts to replicate or otherwise emulate this system and its method of organizing roleplay are strictly prohibited without his express written and contractual permission; violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
It’s been two years since we first wrote aboutSpreecast, a startup that allows anyone to create live, social video broadcasts. After all that time, it’s finally coming out of beta, and doing so with a big new redesign.
Spreecast was launched as a platform for enabling users to quickly and easily create multi-user video broadcasts. As a free product, it provides all the producer tools necessary to invite multiple speakers into a broadcast, take questions and invite audience members to participate, and archive those conversations to be viewed later.
With the redesign, the new Spreecast is cleaner and more airy, cutting out all the jumble of logos and screenshots that used to dominate the homepage. With everything else in the world going flat — from iOS 7 to the New TechCrunch — Spreecast has followed in those footsteps, simplifying the product and making it easier for users to find what they’re looking for. Uh, yeah, it also has a new logo.
Besides the updated home page, Spreecast has made some changes to the way its player works, incorporating user feedback to improve the broadcasting experience. It changed the colors of its call-to-action buttons, for instance, to more clearly emphasize them and help its users along in creating and managing broadcasts as they happen.
While not entirely new with this release, Spreecast has also done a fair amount of work on the backend in order to add other features that broadcasters were requesting. For instance, it recently added new monetization features for its big media partners, which enables sponsorship placements and pay-per-view options. It also has a paid analytics offering and the ability to download archived videos for paying users, as well.
For Spreecast, the new monetization features are a way for it to cash in on a large number of serious media organizations who have begun using it for broadcasts. That includes partners like ESPN, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Oxygen, ABC, and ABC Family. The product is also used by organizations like LinkedIn, The Heritage Foundation, USC Athletics, Stanford Athletics, and Sesame Street to connect with users and fans.
With the launch of monetization features, as well as the availability of Spreecast’s mobile app and mobile web experience, the company decided it was finally time to pull off the beta tag. Spreecast was founded by Stubhub founder Jeff Fluhr, and has raised more than $13 million from investors that include Meakem Becker Venture Capital, GGV Capital, MentorTech Ventures, Stan Shuman, Frank Biondi, Gordon Crawford, Sandy Robertson and Edward W. Scott, Jr.
Microsoft yesterday published instructions for resurrecting a Surface RT that had been bricked by the Windows 8.1 update, along with a recovery image that must be loaded onto a USB flash drive.
The company released the instructions and image two days after it yanked the Windows RT 8.1 update from the Windows Store, the sole source for consumers and small businesses.
Some users had reported that their Surface RT tablets balked at the update, then displayed a an error message stating, "Your PC needs to be repaired. The Boot Configuration Data file is missing some required information." By corrupting the boot configuration data, the update effectively "bricked" the device, rendering it inoperable.
Microsoft was circumspect in the information it released about the snafu, saying only that it was "investigating a situation affecting a limited number of users updating their Windows RT devices to Windows RT 8.1."
The company's Surface RT tablet, which debuted a year ago, has been the only Windows RT-powered device that has sold in any meaningful quantity. The fact that its own tablet -- with a specific and unchangeable set of components -- was unable to perform the update was an embarrassment to Microsoft, with some customers angry enough to assert they would return their devices.
Although some users posted recovery suggestions to Microsoft's support forum -- with others chiming in that those recommendations had worked -- the from-the-horse's-mouth instructions were more thorough, and more likely to be viewed as trustworthy by Surface RT owners.
According to the instructions accompanying the disk image, users must have a 4GB-or-larger USB drive and access to a PC running Windows 7 or later to recover the Surface RT or other Windows RT tablet. Unlike Apple's iPad, Microsoft's Surface tablets include a USB port.
The instructions were involved, and required customers to type in several commands at the Windows RT Command Prompt, a DOS-like command-line interpreter tucked inside even the newest editions of Windows. Most users will be unfamiliar with the prompt, but Microsoft spelled out exactly what to do in 15 steps.
Microsoft has given no hint when it will restore the Windows RT 8.1 update to the Windows Store.
Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.
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