Charleston Animal Society was recently named a top-rated charity organization by Charity Navigator, the nation's largest charity watchdog organization.
Charity Navigator's "4 Star" designation is reserved for charities that exceed "industry standards and outperforms most charities in its cause." This makes Charleston Animal Society the only animal organization in South Carolina to attain this distinction.
Charity Navigator is the largest charity evaluator in America and its website attracts more visitors than all other charity rating groups combined. The organization helps guide intelligent giving by evaluating the Financial Health and Accountability and Transparency of 6,000 charities. Charity Navigator accepts no advertising or donations from the organizations it evaluates, ensuring unbiased evaluations, nor does it charge the public for this trusted data.
Founded 138 years ago in the heart of downtown Charleston, the mission of Charleston Animal Society is to prevent cruelty to animals by finding homes for homeless animals, containing outbreaks of rabies and other deadly diseases, reuniting lost pets with their families, fighting hunger when food is unaffordable, teaching children to be kind to animals and each other, and saving the lives of abused, abandoned and unwanted animals.
As Charleston's largest animal rescue organization, Charleston Animal Society cares for 90% of Charleston County's unwanted, abused and abandoned animals, yet continues to drive down the Charleston community's euthanasia rate. In 2012, it spent over $500,000 treating animals that were ill or injured, many times in dire health, and saved nearly 75% of all the animals that came to the shelter, making it the leader among large animal shelters in South Carolina and a national model.
Charleston Animal Society is also the state's largest spay/neuter provider. In 2012, its spay/neuter programs sterilized nearly 12,000 animals, which made a significant dent in the community's animal overpopulation problem.
Additionally, Charleston Animal Society is South Carolina's number one adoption provider, has the state's most successful Community Cat Trap-Neuter-Return Program, a nationally recognized Veterinary Science Initiative with high school students, and the largest hands-on humane education program in schools reaching over 15,000 kids each year. By staying firmly focused on its mission, Charleston Animal Society saves more animals than all other animal organizations in Charleston County combined.
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Charleston Animal Society was recently was selected Non-profit of the Year at the annual "Giving Back Awards" gala sponsored by Charleston Magazine and the Coastal Community Foundation.
Source: http://www.live5news.com/story/20523456/charleston-animal-society-dubbed-a-top-rated-charity
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Microsoft just announced a number of updates to its SkyDrive cloud storage service. SkyDrive users can now, for example, get a better overview of who they shared documents with and who currently has access to a file. In addition, SkyDrive now features some improvements for users on touch devices (including, of course, Windows 8) and improved drag-and-drop support for all users.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/5X5UrlxHTOo/
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Jan. 8, 2013 ? CO2 levels in fossil soils from the Late Jurassic confirm that climate, vegetation and animal richness varied across the planet 150 million years ago, suggesting future human changes to global climate will heavily impact plant and animal life.
In modern ecosystems, it's widely known that animals flourish in regions where the climate and landscape produce lush vegetation.
A new study set out to discover whether that same relationship held true 150 million years ago during the Late Jurassic when dinosaurs roamed Earth.
"The assumption has been that ancient ecosystems worked just like our modern ecosystems," said paleontologist and lead author Timothy S. Myers, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. "We wanted to see if this was, in fact, the case."
To test the theory, Myers analyzed fossil soils from the Late Jurassic by measuring the ratios of carbon isotopes. His analysis indicated that the Jurassic soils contained high levels of CO2 from vegetation.
From that, Myers was able to infer the presence of lush plant life in certain regions during the Jurassic. The soils came from locales where scientists previously have gathered animal fossils -- North America, Europe and Africa. Combining the data with the known fossil sampling allowed Myers to confirm that the modern relationship between animals and vegetation held true even millions of years ago.
"Our analysis represents the first time that anyone has tried to apply ecological modeling to this relationship in the fossil record," Myers said.
Relatively few places in the world are well-sampled for terrestrial fossils, so Myers' discovery of a new use for an already existing method represents a useful tool, he said. The new use allows scientists to tap the geochemical data of soils from anywhere in the world and from other geologic time periods to infer the relative abundance of plants and animals, particularly for areas where fossils are lacking.
"This not only provides a more complete picture of the ancient landscape and climate in which ancient animals lived," Myers said. "It also illustrates that climate and biota have been ecologically connected for many millions of years and that future human-caused changes to global climate will have profound impacts on plant and animal life around the world."
Myers and his co-researchers reported the findings in Paleobiology, "Estimating Soil pCO2 Using Paleosol Carbonates: Implications for the Relationship Between Primary Productivity and Faunal Richness in Ancient Terrestrial Ecosystems."
Co-authors were SMU sedimentary geochemist Neil J. Tabor and paleontologists Louis L. Jacobs, SMU, and Oct?vio Mateus, New University of Lisbon, Portugal.
"Devising new and creative methods to understand how Earth and life have functioned together in the past is the foundation for predicting the future of life on our planet," said Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist and professor in SMU's Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences. "It is the only approach that provides a long enough perspective of what is possible."
New method applied to old hypothesis confirms regional variability
Typically researchers count the number of animal species discovered in a region to determine how many different types of animals once lived there. Scientists call that a measure of faunal richness.
Myers took a different approach. Using a traditional method typically used to estimate carbon dioxide in the ancient atmosphere, Myers instead applied it to estimate the amount of CO2 in ancient soils.
Measurements were taken from nodules of calcite that form in soil as a result of wet and dry seasons. These nodules take on the isotopic signature of the CO2 gas around them, which is a mixture derived from two sources: the atmosphere, which leaves a more positive isotopic signature, and plants decaying in the soil, which leave a more negative isotopic signature.
A higher volume of CO2 from plants indicates a lusher, wetter environment.
"There's a lot more litter fall in an environment with a lot of plants, and that produces a lot of organic material in the soil, creating CO2. So we see more soil-produced CO2, displacing the atmospheric CO2. These are established relationships," Myers said.
"Our method can be used to infer relative levels of richness for areas where soils have been preserved, but where fossils are lacking because conditions were unsuitable for their preservation," he said.
The research demonstrates creative use of existing geological data, said co-author Tabor, an expert in ancient soil in SMU's Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.
"Vertebrate paleontologists have been accumulating information about vertebrate fossils in the Jurassic for well over 100 years. In addition, geochemists have been systematically sampling the composition of ancient soils for several decades," Tabor said. "In these respects, the data that are the foundation of this study are not extraordinary. What is remarkable, though, is combining the paleontology and geochemistry data to answer large-scale questions that extend beyond the data points -- specifically, to answer questions about ancient ecosystems."
Data from Morrison Formation, Central Africa and Portugal
Myers tested Upper Jurassic soil nodules collected from the Morrison Formation in the western United States. The formation extends from Montana to New Mexico and has been the source of many dinosaur fossil discoveries.
He also analyzed Upper Jurassic soil nodules from Portugal, another location well-sampled for dinosaur fossils. The region's paleoclimate was broadly similar to that of the Morrison Formation.
In addition, Myers tested a small Upper Jurassic core sample from Central Africa, where there's no evidence of any major terrestrial life. Unique minerals in the rocks indicate that the region had an arid environment during the Late Jurassic.
Based on their hypothesis, the researchers expected to see regional variations in plant productivity -- the amount of new growth produced in an area over time, which is an indirect measure of the amount of plant life in an environment. Forests, savannas and deserts all have different amounts of plant productivity, although those specific ecosystems can't be identified on the basis of plant productivity alone.
The researchers expected to see higher plant productivity for Portugal than for the Morrison Formation, with the lowest productivity in Central Africa.
"Essentially that's what we found," Myers said. "We understand it's tenuous and not a trend, but few places in the world are well-sampled. However, it's still a useful tool for places where all we have are the soil nodules, without well-preserved fauna."
Soil nodules are fairly common, Myers said. They form as a result of seasonally dry conditions and may be preserved in all but the wettest environments. Since they harden into mineralized clods, they are easy to spot and sample as they weather out of ancient soil profiles.
CO2 in ancient calcite nodules offers key to ancient climate
From the analysis scientists can draw a more complete picture of the ancient landscape and climate in which prehistoric animals lived.
"The Jurassic is thought of as very warm, very wet, with lots of dinosaurs," said Myers, research curator for SMU's Shuler Museum of Paleontology. "But we see from our analysis that there was regional variability during the Late Jurassic in the climate and in the abundance of animals across the planet."
The Late Jurassic extended from 160 million years ago to 145 million years ago.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Southern Methodist University. The original article was written by Margaret Allen.
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/s-sil_IL_g8/130108132051.htm
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My ds had this when he was a baby and we used hydrocortisone.
Now dd has it or at least I think so. She has patches of breakouts on her face and neck and ears and she is always rubbing at it. At her month appt the dr said I could use lotion, Vaseline or over the counter hydrocortisone. Well I have used lotion and Vaseline but it still seems to bother her. I haven't gotten out to the store yet to buy something.
Does anyone's LO have it? What works best? Any home remedies?
Source: http://community.thebump.com/cs/ks/forums/thread/71039078.aspx
SEATTLE ? A dive to the undersea cliff where a famous Roman shipwreck rests has turned up either evidence that the wreck is enormous ? or a suggestion that, not one, but two sunken ships are resting off the Greek island of Antikythera.
"Either way, it's an exciting result," said study researcher Brendan Foley, an archaeologist at Woods Hold Oceanographic Institution who presented the findings here today (Jan. 4) at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America.
The Antikythera wreck is famed for the massive number of artifacts pulled from the site over the past century. First discovered in the early 1900s by local sponge divers, the wreck is most famous for the Antikythera mechanism, a complex bronze gear device used to calculate astronomical positions (and perhaps the timing of the Olympic games). Numerous bronze and marble statues, jars and figurines have also been pulled from the wreck. The ship went down in the first century B.C.
Remote wreck
The wreck is perched on a steep undersea cliff in water too deep for standard scuba gear. The undersea landscape also makes deploying remotely operated submersibles impossible, Foley said. In 1976, Jacques Costeau led a diving expedition to the site. Since then, it has been unexplored, thanks in part to its remote location in the strait between Crete and Peloponnese.
"This place is absolutely unspoiled," Foley said.
Led by Aggeliki Simossi, the director of the Greek Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities, Foley and colleagues from Greece and Woods Hole watched footage and pored over logs from the 1976 dive. With so many artifacts already taken from the site, they knew there would be little evidence of the shipwreck exposed on the ocean floor. They'd have to match the underwater geology to find the wreck.
In October, diving with technical scuba gear and diver propulsion vehicles that look like underwater fans, the team found the sweet spot, marked by a scattering of amphora, or large curved jars. [See Photos of the Antikythera Shipwreck]
Intact artifacts from the wreck were spread over a huge area, about 197 feet (60 meters) long at depths ranging from 114 feet to 197 feet (35 to 60 m), Foley said. That's large for an ancient shipwreck, Foley said, suggesting either a huge ship or perhaps more than one wreck. The findings are preliminary, Foley said, but the team may have ultimately been excavating 984 feet (300 m) away from the site explored by Cousteau. If that's the case, he said, they may have found a separate wreck ? likely part of the same fleet as the original wreck that went down in the same storm.
More secrets
One reason for the researchers' uncertainty is the fact that they used Costeau's Antikythera expedition videos to gauge where to anchor their boat. Since some of the shots in the video were almost certainly staged, the researchers can't be sure they weren't diving at a site hundreds of yards away from the site explored in 1976.
Either way, the wreck site has many more artifacts to offer, the researchers found. They pulled one jar to the surface, which will undergo DNA testing to determine its contents. They also recovered two components of a lead anchor, which itself was resting on top of other artifacts, suggesting it was on deck when the ship went down.
"What else could be down there?" Foley said. "Are there more pieces of the known Antikythera mechanism? Is there another mechanism down there?"
The researchers plan to return to the area next year and will use metal detectors to check the site almost 1,000 feet away where Costeau's team may have really been, he said. There are no artifacts visible on the ocean floor other than the spot that Foley and his colleagues explored, but metal detectors should pick up on any remnants under the sand at the other site if there are in fact two wrecks. [The 7 Most Mysterious Archaeological Finds]
What's more, the technical scuba gear may also allow archaeologists to dive deeper and more extensively in the future, Foley added. The dream, he told LiveScience, is to find an "undisturbed Antikythera," or a significant wreck that hasn't been disrupted for decades.
"Because the site has been so intruded upon for more than a century it gets really hard to disambiguate what's myth and what's fact," Foley said.
Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas or LiveScience @livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+.
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Source: http://news.yahoo.com/famed-roman-shipwreck-could-two-192818118.html
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