New report from Midia Research firm looks at music fans' behavior in the third quarter of 2018. From the report: YouTube is the dominant music streaming platform, with 55% of consumers regularly watching music videos on YouTube, compared to a combined 37% for all free audio streaming services. YouTube usage skews young, peaking at nearly three quarters of consumers under 25. Although YouTube leads audio streaming in all markets -- even Spotify's native Sweden -- there are some strong regional variations. For example, emerging streaming markets Brazil and Mexico see much higher YouTube penetration, peaking at close to double the level of even traditional music radio in Mexico. Indeed, radio is feeling the YouTube pinch as much as audio streaming. 68% of those under 45 watch YouTube music videos compared to 41% that listen to music radio. The difference increases with younger audiences and the more emerging the market. For example, in Mexico YouTube music penetration is 84% for 20-24 year olds, compared to 37% for music radio. Streaming may be the future of radio, but right now that streaming future is YouTube.

Some Amazon stores have no cashiers, and Waymo is testing self-driving taxis. Are robots taking our jobs? It depends on what you do and where you do it, according to a new report by the World Bank released this week. From a report: "Advanced economies have shed industrial jobs, but the rise of the industrial sector in East Asia has more than compensated for this loss," said the report, titled "The Changing Nature of Work." That may seem like good news in a broad sense, but not to the people whose jobs are disappearing. Technological advances and automation are making the rich richer and the poor poorer. "Workers in some sectors benefit handsomely from technological progress, whereas those in others are displaced and have to retool to survive," the report said. "Platform technologies create huge wealth but place it in the hands of only a few people." The World Bank recommends a new social contract that includes investment in education and retraining. Would that help American workers? "Policy-makers in Washington may have talked about the need to better prepare lower-skilled workers for the future transition, but little has been done," Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington-based think tank, said Thursday.

Kenya runs on mobile phones. And yet, outside of major cities like Nairobi, the infrastructure for mobile telephony is lacking. That's why, in 2019, telecommunications provider Telkom Kenya will begin turning to high-altitude balloons built by the Alphabet subsidiary Loon to provide mobile phone service. From a report: "High-altitude balloons are actually a very reasonable way to approach this problem," says Sal Candido, Loon's head of engineering. "They're high, they cover a lot of ground, and there are no obstacles." It's simple "but for one thing," Candido adds -- each balloon needs to stay in place in the stratosphere, providing coverage for one area for hundreds of days before being replaced. Candido has been with Loon for five years, long before the effort -- then known as Project Loon -- graduated from X, the Alphabet research and development subsidiary, in July 2018. Candido initially worked on developing the balloons' navigation system, one of the key components needed to address the "one thing" keeping the idea from really lifting off. The challenge of how to navigate the balloons properly has changed drastically during Candido's time at Loon, because over the years the understanding of how Loon would operate has changed drastically as well. [...] As Loon launched more balloons for its test flights -- the company has now logged over 30 million kilometers -- the engineering team realized that they could control where the balloons would travel. "Sometimes the most obvious answer comes to you much later on," Candido says. "Why don't the balloons just not leave the coverage area?" It turns out that this is possible, at least in most places, for reasonable durations.

Marriott has downsized its original estimate on a major data breach, but the number of people affected is still historic. The hotel group announced Friday that it now believes hackers accessed the records of up to 383 million guests, following an investigation it conducted with a forensics and analytics team. In November, it had reported an estimate of as many as 500 million guests. From a report: Even at that lower figure, the Marriott incident remains one of the largest personal data breaches in history, more than double that of Equifax, which exposed the personal data of 147.7 million American. Data breaches have become a common issue for massive companies that collect and store information on millions of people. In 2018, tech giants like Facebook and Reddit have fallen victim to data breaches. Hackers look for poor protection that they can bypass to steal valuable details like Social Security numbers, birth dates, email addresses and credit card numbers.

Hyundai has become the latest car company to explore serious open source alternatives for developing its in-car services. From a report: Ahead of CES 2019, the South Korean automotive giant today announced that it has joined the Linux Foundation and the nonprofit's seven-year-old Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) effort as it looks to contribute to -- and reap benefit from -- software developed by over 140 companies. For Hyundai, open collaboration is crucial as it pursues a "connected car vision," Paul Choo, VP and head of Infotainment Technology Center at Hyundai, said in a statement. Car companies have traditionally taken three years or longer to develop in-vehicle services, such as infotainment systems. The bottleneck usually lies in the quality of code their in-house programmers create. According to a case study published by AGL, a connected car uses some 100 million lines of code, which is about 11 times more than the number that went into the F-35 fighter jet. Getting on AGL's bandwagon would also help Hyundai speed up development of its in-car technologies.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A Canadian biologist planted the seed of the idea more than a decade ago, but many plant biologists regarded it as heretical -- plants lack the nervous systems that enable animals to recognize kin, so how can they know their relatives? But with a series of recent findings, the notion that plants really do care for their most genetically close peers -- in a quiet, plant-y way -- is taking root. . Some species constrain how far their roots spread, others change how many flowers they produce, and a few tilt or shift their leaves to minimize shading of neighboring plants, favoring related individuals. "We need to recognize that plants not only sense whether it's light or dark or if they've been touched, but also whom they are interacting with," says Susan Dudley, a plant evolutionary ecologist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, whose early plant kin recognition studies sparked the interest of many scientists. Beyond broadening views of plant behavior, the new work may have a practical side. In September 2018, a team in China reported that rice planted with kin grows better, a finding that suggested family ties can be exploited to improve crop yields. "It seems anytime anyone looks for it, they find a kin effect," says Andre Kessler, a chemical ecologist at Cornell University.

A stolen cache of personal information belonging to nearly 1,000 German politicians -- including outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel -- has been leaked, according to a report published Thursday. From a report: The information includes everything from phone numbers and credit card details to private messages with family members, German media said. The hack has impacted national, regional and EU politicians from all major parties except for members of the far-right Alternative for Germany (Alternative fur Deutschland, or AfD) party. Journalists, musicians, comedians and activists were also targeted. There is currently no indication of who was behind the attack, but the hacker or hackers leaked information for more than a month on Twitter before the media picked it up. The scale of the hack was first reported by RBB, leading Justice Minister Katarina Barley to call it a "serious attack" Friday morning. "The people behind this want to damage confidence in our democracy and institutions," Barley said. The federal office for information security (BSI) said Friday it was investigating, adding that government networks had not been affected.

In 2018, Best Buy decided to stop selling CDs, with the change partly brought on by record labels' increasing reluctance to even issue them. Both choices are symptoms as well as causes of a seemingly inevitable trend: Buying music is now going out of style nearly as fast as streaming music is rising. From a report: In 2018, album sales fell 18.2 percent from the previous year and song sales fell 28.8 percent, according to U.S. year-end report figures from data company BuzzAngle, which tracks music consumption. Meanwhile, total on-demand music streams, including both audio and video, shot up 35.4 percent. Audio on-demand streams set a new record high in 2018 of 534.6 billion streams, which is up 42 percent from 2017's 376.9 billion streams. It's tricky to compare the specific unit numbers of sales to streams --since such a comparison would be pitting continuous playback of a certain piece of music against a one-time purchase of it -- but certain other milestones in the consumption market can help highlight just how much streaming is replacing physical sales and downloads in America. For instance: Even though total song downloads are still in the hundreds of millions, they're coming down in scale at the top. In 2018, there was not a single song that broke 1 million sales -- compared to 14 songs that reached that figure in 2017, 36 in 2016 and 60 in 2015. At the 2 million sales mark, two songs took that trophy in 2017, while five claimed it in 2016 and 16 songs made it in 2015, throwing the modest figures of this year's sales into even sharper relief.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Washington could become the first state to embrace another funerary practice by making it legal to compost the dead. The method is called "recomposing" and claims to be cheaper and more environmentally friendly than traditional burial or cremation. It involves rapidly decomposing a body and converting the remains into soil. That nutrient-rich material can then be used to grow trees, flowers, and other new life. The alternative practice hinges on a bill that state senator Jamie Pedersen plans to introduce next month, according to NBC. It would legalize recomposing in Washington where burial and cremation are currently the only acceptable ways to dispose of human remains. A public-benefit corporation, Recompose, is responsible for the actual composting. "The transformation of human to soil happens inside our reusable, hexagonal recomposition vessels," Recompose states in an FAQ. "When the process has finished, families will be able to take home some of the soil created, while gardens on-site will remind us that all of life is interconnected." "The process utilizes a 5-foot-by-10-foot pod full of organic 'tinder' such as straw and wood chips," reports Motherboard. "Thermophilic or heat-loving microbes then metabolize the remains, maintaining an internal temperature of 131 degrees Fahrenheit within the vessel. The entire ritual takes one month, and produces a cubic yard of compost, according to Recompose." Non-organic materials such as artificial hips will be screened for and recycled, and people will certain illnesses may be ineligible since some pathogens may be resistant to the composting process.

The L3 protection level of Google's Widevine DRM technology has been cracked by a British security researcher who can now decrypt content transferred via DRM-protected multimedia streams. ZDNet's Catalin Cimpanu notes that while this "sounds very cool," it's not likely to fuel a massive piracy wave because "the hack works only against Widevine L3 streams, and not L2 and L1, which are the ones that carry high-quality audio and video content." From the report: Google designed its Widevine DRM technology to work on three data protection levels --L1, L2, and L3-- each usable in various scenarios. According to Google's docs, the differences between the three protection levels is as follows: L1 - all content processing and cryptography operations are handled inside a CPU that supports a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). L2 - only cryptography operations are handled inside a TEE. L3 - content processing and cryptography operations are (intentionally) handled outside of a TEE, or the device doesn't support a TEE "Soooo, after a few evenings of work, I've 100% broken Widevine L3 DRM," [British security researcher David Buchanan] said on Twitter. "Their Whitebox AES-128 implementation is vulnerable to the well-studied DFA attack, which can be used to recover the original key. Then you can decrypt the MPEG-CENC streams with plain old ffmpeg." Albeit Buchanan did not yet release any proof-of-concept code, it wouldn't help anyone if he did. In order to get the DRM-encrypted data blob that you want to decrypt, an attacker would still need "the right/permission" to receive the data blob in the first place. If a Netflix pirate would have this right (being an account holder), then he'd most likely (ab)use it to pirate a higher-quality version of the content, instead of bothering to decrypt low-res video and lo-fi audio. The only advantage is in regards to automating the pirating process, but as some users have pointed out, this isn't very appealing in today's tech scene where almost all devices are capable of playing HD multimedia [1, 2].

Conservation nonprofit Resolve is using AI-equipped cameras to act as remote park rangers and help spot wildlife poachers before they kill endangered animals. "Today, Resolve announced a new custom-made device called TrailGuard AI, which uses Intel-made vision chips to identify animals and humans that wander into view," reports The Verge. "The cameras will be placed on access trails used by poachers, automatically alerting park rangers who can check up on any suspicious activity." From the report: TrailGuard AI builds on past work by Resolve to create remote cameras to aid conservation. However, early devices were bulky, had limited battery life, and were unsophisticated, sending images to rangers every time their motion sensors were tripped. This resulted in lots of false positives, as the cameras would be triggered by non-events, such as the wind shaking tree branches. The new device, by comparison, is no thicker than a human index finger, has a battery life of a year and a half, and can reliably identify humans, animals, and vehicles. The chip used by Resolve is Intel's Movidius Myriad 2 VPU (or vision processing unit), which is the same technology that powered Google's automatic Clips camera.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: There's a big molecule, a protein, inside the leaves of most plants. It's called Rubisco, which is short for an actual chemical name that's very long and hard to remember. Rubisco has one job. It picks up carbon dioxide from the air, and it uses the carbon to make sugar molecules. It gets the energy to do this from the sun. This is photosynthesis, the process by which plants use sunlight to make food, a foundation of life on Earth. "But it has what we like to call one fatal flaw," Amanda Cavanagh, a biologist and post-doctoral researcher at the University of Illinois, says. Unfortunately, Rubisco isn't picky enough about what it grabs from the air. It also picks up oxygen. "When it does that, it makes a toxic compound, so the plant has to detoxify it." Plants have a whole complicated chemical assembly line to carry out this detoxification, and the process uses up a lot of energy. This means the plant has less energy for making leaves, or food for us. Cavanagh and her colleagues in a research program called Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE), which is based at the University of Illinois, have spent the last five years trying to fix Rubisco's problem. "We're sort of hacking photosynthesis," she says. They experimented with tobacco plants, just because tobacco is easy to work with. They inserted some new genes into these plants, which shut down the existing detoxification assembly line and set up a new one that's way more efficient. And they created super tobacco plants. "They grew faster, and they grew up to 40 percent bigger" than normal tobacco plants, Cavanagh says. These measurements were done both in greenhouses and open-air field plots. The scientists are trying to apply this technique to other plants, like tomatoes, soybeans, and black-eyed peas, which are a staple food crop for a lot of farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Cavanagh and her colleagues published their work this week in the journal Science.

According to new research from Rice University, Texas has enough natural patterns of wind and sun to operate without coal. "Scientists found that between wind energy from West Texas and the Gulf Coast, and solar energy across the state, Texas could meet a significant portion of its electricity demand from renewable power without extensive battery storage," reports Houston Chronicle. "The reason: These sources generate power at different times of day, meaning that coordinating them could replace production from coal-fired plants." From the report: Texas is the largest producer of wind energy in the United States, generating about 18 percent of its electricity from wind. Most of the state's wind turbines are located in West Texas, where the wind blows the strongest at night and in the early spring, when demand is low. The resource, however, can be complemented by turbines on the Gulf Coast, where wind produces the most electricity on late afternoons in the summer, when power demand is the highest. Solar energy, a small, but rapidly growing segment of the state's energy mix, also has the advantage of generating power when it is needed most -- hot, sunny summer afternoons. In the summer, Gulf Coast wind generation could overtake West Texas wind capacity from about 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. when sea breezes kick in, Rice research showed. From about 8 a.m. until 6 p.m., solar power average capacity also could exceed wind generation in West Texas, which increases as evening turns to night. In the winter, winds in West Texas strengthen and generation increases, dropping off about 9 a.m., when solar energy begins to ramp up. "It's all a matter of timing," said Dan Woodfin, senior director of system operations at the state's grid manager, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. Weather, however, remains unpredictable. Texas would still need battery storage and natural gas-fired power plants to fill in gaps when, for example, winds might slacken earlier than expected.

During the holiday season, Apple's App Store broke records with customers spending over $1.22 billion between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. On New Year's Day alone customers spent $322 million, setting a new record for the App Store's biggest single day. CNET reports: "The App Store had a record-breaking holiday week and New Year's Day. The holiday week was our biggest week ever with more than $1.22 billion spent on apps and games, and New Year's Day set a new single-day record at more than $322 million," said Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. Gaming and self-care were the most popular app categories over the holidays. The Cupertino tech company calls out Fortnite, PUBG, Brawl Stars, Asphalt 9 and Monster Strike as the top downloaded games.

For the second year in a row, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai will not be attending the annual Consumer Electronics Show. According to Politico Pro, Pai and Commissioner Brendan Carr are canceling their appearances at CES as a consequence of the ongoing partial government shutdown. Last year, Pai canceled due to death threats he received in the aftermath of the net neutrality rollback, which occurred just weeks prior to the conference. The Verge reports: Carr was expected to attend a roundtable session with Federal Trade Commission Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter to discuss regulatory and policy issues involving 5G, privacy and accessibly, along with other topics. Both events have been removed from the CES schedule, but organizers have yet to respond to requests for comment. As of Thursday afternoon, non-essential FCC employees were furloughed and âoemostâ operations were suspended as Congress battles it out over a funding package for the upcoming fiscal year. While the agency is shut down, consumer complaints will not be heard, consumer protection enforcement actions will be ceased, and licensing services will end until new funding is approved. CES 2018 begins on January 8th and runs through the 11th. Pai was scheduled to speak on opening day at 1:30PM PST.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: We've long suspected that Google's upcoming operating system, Fuchsia, would join the ranks of Chrome OS (and Android) in its support for Android apps. Today, that suspicion has been confirmed by a new change found in the Android Open Source Project, and we can say with confidence that Fuchsia will be capable of running Android apps using the Android Runtime. To make it simple, Fuchsia will use a specially designed version of the Android Runtime ("ART" above) to run Android applications. This version of ART will be installable on any Fuchsia device using a .far file, Fuchsia's equivalent of Android's APK. How exactly Fuchsia will use the Android Runtime from there is still unclear. This is includes whether the Android Runtime is able to work as expected to replace Linux kernel calls with equivalents from Fuchsia's Zircon kernel or if ART will run inside of a Linux virtual machine using Machina, Fuchsia's virtual machine system. Regardless, what is clear is that Fuchsia devices are intended to run Android applications.

hmckee writes: OSNews was offline for a few days for upgrades. It is now back up with a message that indicates they encountered a data breach and considered going offline for good due to maintenance and financial difficulties. "Our best guess is that someone was able to exploit a vulnerability in old, unmaintained code in the site's content management system, and made off with at least some user data, which may be as little as a few user records or, at worst, our entire database," writes Publisher David Adams. "Your email addresses were in there, and the encryption on the passwords wasn't up to modern standards (unsalted SHA1). [...] Other than potential spam, though, we're not aware of any other nefarious use of your data, we don't store much beyond email addresses and passwords..." David goes on to cite poor advertising revenues and a lack of time for reasons to throw in the towel and go offline permanently.

Qualcomm is enforcing a court order banning the sale of some iPhones in Germany that violate its patents on power-saving technology. As a result, Apple is likely going to pull some iPhone models from its German stores. Reuters reports: The chipmaker posted the [security] bonds of 1.34 billion euros ($1.52 billion) as part of a legal requirement by a German court, which found on Dec. 20 that Apple had infringed Qualcomm patents on power-saving technology used in smartphones. The iPhone maker had earlier said it would pull iPhone 7 and 8 models from its 15 stores in Germany when the order came into force. The order took effect when Qualcomm posted the bond. According to the court order, Apple has to stop the sale, offer for sale and importation for sale of all infringing iPhones in Germany. Apple had said it was appealing the decision. The court also ordered Apple to recall the affected iPhones from third-party resellers in Germany, according to a statement by Qualcomm.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A new lawsuit filed against Comcast details an extensive list of lies the cable company allegedly told customers in order to hide the full cost of service. Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson sued Comcast in Hennepin County District Court on December 21, seeking refunds for all customers who were harmed by Comcast's alleged violations of the state's Prevention of Consumer Fraud Act and Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act. The complaint alleges, among other things, that Comcast reps falsely told customers that the company's "Regional Sports Network (RSN)" and "Broadcast TV" fees were mandated by the government and not controlled by Comcast itself. These two fees, which are not included in Comcast's advertised rates, have gone up steadily and now total $18.25 a month. Comcast has responded to some lawsuits -- including this one -- by saying that the company had already stopped the practices that triggered the court actions. But Minnesota says that Comcast's lies about the sports and broadcast fees continued into 2017, which is after Comcast knew about identical allegations raised in a separate class action complaint filed in 2016. (That case was settled out of court.) When contacted by Ars, a Comcast spokesperson yesterday said that "our policy is to be very clear to our customers about the broadcast TV and RSN fees and [tell them] that these are not government-mandated fees." But employees make mistakes, the Comcast spokesperson said. "Employees may go off script and incorrectly characterize things, but that is not in line with our policy because [the broadcast TV and sports charges] are not government-mandated fees," Comcast said. According to Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, Comcast agreed in November to pay $700,000 in refunds "and cancel debts for more than 20,000 Massachusetts customers" to settle allegations that it used deceptive advertising to promote long-term cable contracts.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Still using your ex-roommates cable credentials to watch "Game of Thrones?" That may soon be getting a lot harder, thanks to new efforts to crack down on password sharing for pay TV and online video services. One of these efforts, launched by London-based Synamedia ahead of next week's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), even uses artificial intelligence to uncover notorious password sharers. Credentials Sharing Insight, as the new service is being called, targets both casual password sharing as well as criminal enterprises looking to resell pay TV login information. However, the focus clearly is on friends and family taking their generosity a bit too far, explained Symanedia chief product officer Jean-Marc Racine in an interview with Variety this week. [...] Most services have tried to curtail password sharing by limiting the number of simultaneous streams, with little else to go by to identify abuse. "Today, you are in the dark," he said. Synamedia's solution on the other hand digs through lots of data to cluster users based on their streaming behavior. This can include user's physical location (someone streaming from both coasts at the same time) as well as general usage patterns (someone streaming 24/7). The company can even take a look at the specific content streamed by a user to identify unusual patterns. Based on these clues, Synamedia trains models to score users on a scale of 1 to 10, indicating whether they are likely sharing their passwords or not.

China has come a long way since the founding of its space program in 1956. Shortly after the former Soviet Union launched Sputnik, Chairman Mao Zedong declared that China too should have an artificial satellite to keep up with the great powers. Now, being recognized as a galactic pioneer is once again part of China's national ambitions. "The space dream is part of the dream to make China stronger," President Xi Jinping said shortly after taking office in 2013. While China still lags behind the United States, which has a much larger space exploration budget, it has come out ahead in at least one arena after becoming the first country to make a landing on the far side of the moon Thursday. Here are some key milestones in China's space odyssey, and a look at the missions ahead: 1970s: Rockets The country introduced its Long March series of rockets in 1970. The program's success rate of about 95 percent makes it a cornerstone of China's space endeavors. It has had a few setbacks, notably a Long March 5 rocket that plunged into the Pacific minutes after takeoff in July 2017. 2003: First Astronaut Yang Liwei became the first Chinese astronaut in space in October 2003. China was only the third country, after Russia and the U.S., to conduct a crewed mission. The country has sent 11 astronauts, including two women, on six missions in all. 2011: Space Laboratory China was excluded from the International Space Station largely due to concerns over its space program's connections to the military and U.S. legislation barring such cooperation. That didn't stop China from launching in 2011 its own space laboratory, named Tiangong ("Heavenly Palace"), which orbited Earth until last April. The station hosted two crewed missions and served as a test platform for docking procedures and other operations. 2013: To The Moon And Back Chang'e 1, named after a mythological Chinese moon goddess, first circled the moon in 2007. Successive lunar missions have included a moon landing in 2013, the first since the former Soviet Union's Luna 24 in 1976. There are plans for a Chang'e 5 probe to reach the moon next year and return to Earth with samples. 2020: What's Next? The year 2020 promises to be a big one for China's space program. It plans to send its first probe to Mars and complete a homegrown global navigation network. The latter will link more than 30 satellites providing real-time geospatial information worldwide—China's answer to GPS. By 2022, China hopes to complete a space station fit for long-term habitation, with standards matching those of the International Space Station, though smaller in size. And moon development? The National Space Administration declared in a video last April, "China's dream of residing in a lunar palace will soon become a reality."

A pair of researchers, one with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the other Harvard University, has found evidence of deep ocean cooling that is likely due to the Little Ice Age. In their paper published in the journal Science, Jake Gebbie and Peter Huybers describe their study of Pacific Ocean temperatures over the past 150 years and what they found. Prior research has suggested that it takes a very long time for water in the Pacific Ocean to circulate down to its lowest depths. This is because it is replenished only from the south, which means it takes a very long time for water on the surface to make its way to the bottom—perhaps as long as several hundred years. That is what Gebbie and Huber found back in 2012. That got them to thinking that water temperature at the bottom of the Pacific could offer a hint of what surface temperatures were like hundreds of years ago. To find out if that truly was the case, the researchers obtained data from an international consortium called the Argo Program—a group of people who together have been taking ocean measurements down to depths of approximately two kilometers. As a comparative reference, the researchers also obtained data gathered by the crew of the HMS Challenger—they had taken Pacific Ocean temperatures down to a depth of two kilometers during the years 1872 to 1876. The researchers used the data from both projects to build a computer model meant to mimic the circulation of water in the Pacific Ocean over the past century and a half. The model showed that the Pacific Ocean cooled over the course of the 20th century at depths of 1.8 to 2.6 kilometers. The amount is still not precise, but the researchers suggest it is most likely between 0.02 and 0.08° C. That cooling, the researchers suggest, is likely due to the Little Ice Age, which ran from approximately 1300 until approximately 1870. Prior to that, there was a time known as the Medieval Warm Period, which had caused the deep waters of the Pacific to warm just prior to the cooling it is now experiencing.

A recent study led by researchers at UConn suggests that if Americans directed their food purchases away from meats and other animal proteins, they could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The complex industrial supply chain that produces food generates an estimated 16 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2013, according to the study, published in June in the journal Food Policy. "We found that households that spend more of their weekly food budget on beef, chicken, pork, and other meats are generating more greenhouse gas emissions," says Rebecca Boehm, the study's lead author, a former postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UConn. "Encouraging consumers to make food choices that are lower in greenhouse gas emissions can make a real difference addressing climate change." These choices focus on opting for less animal protein in the form of red meat and dairy, and instead choosing proteins that are less carbon-intensive, such as seafood, poultry, and legumes.

A 10-year study of proboscis monkeys in Borneo has revealed that forest conversion to oil palm plantations is having a significant impact on the species. Nearly half of all primate species are threatened with extinction, with habitat destruction acting as the key driving force. New research studied proboscis monkeys from 2004 to 2014, finding that the protection of swamp forests is vital for their survival. The study led by Cardiff University, Chubu University, Hokaido University, Sun Yat-sen University, Living Landscape Alliance, the NGO HUTAN, Sabah Wildlife Department and Danau Girang Field Centre, tracked changes in population sizes over a decade, revealing significantly reduced sizes of proboscis monkey groups. Dr. Benoit Goossens, Director of Danau Girang Field Centre and Reader at Cardiff University School of Biosciences, said: "We compared population sizes from 2004 and 2014, and it revealed subtle changes, where population densities fluctuated but had neither increased nor decreased. But importantly, we discovered that the sizes of the groups were significantly reduced. Mr Augustine Tuuga, Director of Sabah Wildlife Department, said: "Proboscis monkeys are endemic to the island of Borneo. They are classified as endangered and are also a Totally Protected species in Sabah. Despite these levels of protection, lowland swamp forest habitats that are important for this species are still decreasing, mainly through forest conversion to oil palm plantations. "Our analysis of the habitat changes showed that within protected reserves, there was relatively little forest loss in the potential range of the proboscis monkey, which mainly lies 800m from riverbanks." "This suggests that the protection of swamp forests can contribute immensely to the sustainability of proboscis monkeys within these important habitats. However, larger losses of interior forests meant that habitats had generally become more degraded and fragmented, and this could have contributed to reduced group sizes and limited population growth," added Dr. Marc Ancrenaz, Scientific Director at the NGO HUTAN. Dr. Benoit Goossens concluded: "Although the protection of forests within the proboscis monkeys' range had proved effective, this was not the case in unprotected forests, where 12 percent of the forest was lost and could eventually lead to 23 percent of the population being threatened. "At least a third of these forests has been allocated for oil palm cultivation. Further efforts must be undertaken to more effectively conserve high value habitats and to restore swamp forest areas – this is vital for ensuring the survival of this endangered species."

Acts of terrorism are harrowing and can cause extensive damage and tragic deaths, and they have been occurring with alarming frequency over the last decade. On Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida executed a series of coordinated attacks against the United States, killing close to 3,000 people and injuring over 6,000. On March 11, 2004, an extremist Islamist group bombed four commuter trains in Madrid during morning rush hour, killing 191 people and injuring another 2,000. On July 7, 2005, Islamist suicide bombers attacked London's public transport system, killing 52 people and injuring more than 700 others. The list goes on. From 2000-2016, global deaths from terrorism increased eight-fold. Seventy-seven countries experienced at least one death due to terrorism in 2016, more than any year since 2000. Scholars, governments and analysts have spent a lot of time exploring individual motivations of terrorists. However, terrorist activities are typically performed by groups, not isolated individuals. Examining the role of team dynamics in terrorist activities can elucidate how terrorist teams radicalize, organize and make decisions. There is a common misconception in the West that leaders of al-Qaida and, more recently, Daesh (ISIS) are recruiting and brainwashing people into giving up their lives to establish a new political order. This is an incorrect model that has been vastly exaggerated in the media, based on a western understanding of leadership. My recent research with Guihyun Park of Singapore Management University seeks to provide a better understanding of what motivates terrorist teams and how they make their decisions. How do terrorist teams combine their local identity with a global mission? How do they organize themselves and co-ordinate attacks in the presence of this fluidity, yet maintain a high level of cohesiveness? Islamist terrorist teams Conceptualizing terrorist teams as loosely coupled structures can help us answer these questions. The term loosely coupled systems refers to structures in which the entire system represents a holistic unit, while still preserving the unique identity of the components that make up the entire system. In other words, team members enjoy a great deal of autonomy, without losing sight of the objectives of the team as a whole. Terrorist teams as systems demonstrate both loose vertical coupling —self-management —and loose horizontal coupling —little interdependence between team members. Loosely coupled systems bear a number of advantages: they allow individuals to retain their own identity and self-determination; they are highly effective at sensing and responding to changes or opportunities in the environment; and they are better able to respond to breakdowns in the subcomponents of the system. Our research focused on extremist Islamist terrorist attacks from the last 15 years and built on previous work conducted with researcher John R. Hollenbeck. Drawing on the theories of American organizational scholar Karl Weick, we looked at the literature on group behaviour and team decision-making and leveraged the theories of "loose coupling" in terrorist teams. Random leadership An emergent rather than top-down leadership structure is a defining structural feature of extremist Islamist terrorist teams. Scott Atran and Marc Sageman's analysis of the March 11, 2004, Madrid train bombings which killed 191 people and injured another 2,000 shows how random the leadership structure was among the affiliated terrorist network. The individuals that gravitated toward a leadership role in the network simply emerged as being the most effective in facilitating the logistics and communication demands of the group. The social system determines the objectives and missions, not the individual leaders. The strength of terrorist teams does not reside in their leaders, but rather in their complexity. Despite a high degree of familiarity among some team members, connections among the larger network are typically quite loose. In the case of the terror attacks on four commuter trains in Madrid, a diverse group of individuals was ultimately involved, from the Islamist terrorist team that carried out the attacks and its wider social support network, to petty criminals, Spanish miners and two police informants. Implications for counterterrorism efforts The fluid nature of terrorists teams, together with their lack of a traditional leader, make their activities hard to combat. Loosely coupled terrorist teams have a tremendous ability to adapt to local circumstances. For example, prior to the 2004 Madrid train bombings, Spanish authorities knew the terrorist group involved had been discussing and praising extremist operations worldwide. They also knew the same group had voiced their intent to conduct their own attack on Spanish soil. However, because no ties to al-Qaida could be established, none of the team members were brought in and detained. This suggests that counterterrorism efforts should focus less on external ties to terrorist organizations and more on the actual operations of the terrorist teams. Leveraging the advantages of loose coupling The ways in which terrorist teams organized themselves represent one of the best examples we've seen of loose coupling. Many of these same principles can be applied to organizations seeking to be more agile and innovative. An organization, for instance, could assemble a team that has no formal leader. Team members would step up, but then also step back when they may not be the best individual to lead the group in a particular initiative. Establishing fluid boundaries, which let in resources and information from outside the group, could also prove effective, as well as bringing together people from different parts of the organization. Thankfully, the majority of terrorist teams fail. They either disband before they launch an attack, are discovered during preparations, or the attack itself is not successful. That said, violent group actions have had a profound effect on our world over the last 15 years. Thus, their impact cannot be evaluated by looking at the successes or failures of individual teams, but rather the potential success of the combined attacks.