Car Guy Chronicles: MULLIN AUTOMOTIVE MUSEUM: FRENCH ...

Our Jim Palam visits one of the finest collections of classic French cars?

in the world.

?For me, French automobiles of the 1920s and 1930s, top, represent the pinnacle of 20th century art and design,? said mega classic car collector Peter Mullin. As an avid collector, the preservation of these rolling sculptures for the enjoyment of future generations is both a responsibility and a pleasure. I relish the stewardship and preservation of their exciting histories.? Silver blue '36 Bugatti Type 57SC, above, is one of four built, won Best of Show at 2003 Pebble Beach, powered by supercharged straight eight.

'38 Dubonnet Hispano-Suiza H6C Xenia, above, won Best in Show at Goodwood?

in 2009. Powered by an eight-liter Six, it rides on four-wheel independent?

Hyperflex coil spring suspension.

Stunning '35 Voisin Type C25 Aerodyne, above, one of six built, took?

Best of Show at Pebble Beach 2011.

The Mullin Automotive Museum, Oxnard, CA pays homage to art deco and the machine age ? eras that produced exquisite art and magnificent automobiles. The museum is home to?the finest?historic French automobiles, from the Bugatti to the Voisin, as well as significant?and representative decorative art from the 1920s and 1930s.

'34 Voisin Type C27 Aerosport coupe, above.

Photos: Jim Palam, http://www.jimpalam.com/

For more information about the Mullin Automotive Museum, please visit http://www.mullinautomotivemuseum.com/collection.html

Source: http://www.carguychronicles.com/2012/11/mullin-automotive-museum-french-curves.html

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Scientists rush to save iconic manta rays

By Rebecca Pilkington-Vincett

A feeding station popular with manta rays is not far from the Misool Eco Resort and Conservation Center in Raja Ampat, eastern Indonesia.

By Adrienne Mong, NBC News

RAJA AMPAT, Indonesia ?They?ve been described by one scientist as ?pandas of the ocean.?

?They?re such an iconic species, beloved by divers,? said Andrea Marshall, director of the?Marine Megafauna Foundation, who came up with the description during an interview with NBC News. ?They?re just amazing.??

Unlikely as it might seem, the panda and the manta ray have a lot in common.

Just as scientists still haven?t been able to confirm the number of pandas in the wild, they also have no idea how many manta rays exist.

?Globally we don?t know how many manta rays there are,? said Guy Stevens, director of the U.K.-based?Manta Trust,?whose research is largely based around manta populations in the Maldives.

But -- again, like the panda -- scientists think it?s a small population.

?If they?re lucky, (manta rays) have two pups (over several years).?That?s a very low reproductive rate, especially compared to your average fish,? said Dr. Heidi Dewar, a biologist at the?Southwest Fisheries Science Center, part of NOAA.

Anecdotal evidence suggests mantas are under threat, and China may be a major reason for it.

Manta rays are vulnerable on two fronts: as bycatch ? getting caught in industrial fishing nets targeting different types of tuna ? and, increasingly, because of traditional Chinese medicine, or TCM.?

Manta rays are abundant in the waters around Raja Ampat, eastern Indonesia.

Manta rays are harvested for their gill rakers, which allow the fish to filter food from water.? Some Chinese believe they have healing properties or are good at cleaning out toxins. One Chinese-language?website claims gill rakers enhance the immune system, promote blood circulation and aid in the treatment of cancer, skin disease and infertility.

?It?s just cartilage,? said Dewar, echoing skepticism expressed by many scientists.

Medicinal fad?
Conservationists say manta rays aren?t even considered ?traditional? medicine and argue no reference to the animal can be found in TCM books dating back a century. But with rising incomes that enable Chinese consumers to readily adopt medicinal fads, the impact on manta rays has accelerated over the past 10 to 15 years.?

?A lot of it is completely unrecorded,? said Stevens, who worked on a project founded by Shark Savers and WildAid to document the scope of gill-raker harvesting.?

Understanding the beauty and diversity of Raja Ampat, aka 'Underwater Eden'

Researchers looked at the location, value and species involved. ?It does seem the majority of all of those gills that are being traded are ending up in China,? Stevens said.

The conclusion, published in a report called?Manta Ray of Hope, found that roughly 3,400 manta rays and 94,000 mobulas?(related to the manta ray family) are caught each year, but the numbers reflect only reported catches. ?Unreported and subsistence fisheries will mean true landings are much higher,? the report said.?

On patrol with a shark ranger in Indonesia's marine treasure trove

Visits to random TCM shops in Beijing and Shanghai turned up no gill rakers. In fact, a veteran pharmacist at Tongrentang, a long-established purveyor of traditional Chinese and herbal medicines, said she had never heard of manta rays being used this way.

But the Manta Ray of Hope report estimates a mature ocean manta could yield up to 15 pounds of dried gills that can bring in as much as $230 a pound in a market in China.?

Australia moves to ban fishing trawler with 900-foot-long net

Marshall said she has noticed an uptick in manta fishing. ?I?ve been (in Mozambique) in the last decade ? and we?ve seen an 87 percent decline in the population because of the fishing.??

Unlike many shippers, Chinese merchants who transport cheap products from the mainland for export to Africa ?want to fill [their unloaded cargo vessels] with resources wherever they go.? In Africa, they fill it up with wood, fish or shark?s fin,? she said.??They?ll go out to the local fisheries along the coastline and scout for these products.??

The scientist has spoken to members of local communities, who say the Chinese offer ?new nets, new lines, new hooks.?(The Chinese traders) say to them, ?If you get the sharks or the mantas or the turtles, you get all the meat. You can keep all the meat. You just sell us the things you don?t normally eat.'??

Protecting a ?threatened? species
Mantas were listed last year as ?threatened? under the international Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species.

The?International Union for the Conservation of Nature?has classified the manta ray as ?vulnerable? to extinction.?

PhotoBlog: Raja Ampat archipelago: The world's last paradise

Chinese scientists have also weighed in.?

?In the last two years, we have conducted evaluations of the manta ray and submitted a recommendation to the government to list it as a protected species,? said Professor Wang Yanmin from Shandong University?s Marine College.

?There is no regulation for protecting the manta ray so sales of mantas are not illegal,? said Feng Yongfeng, founder of Green Beagle, a group that promotes environmental protection.

Groups like Manta Trust are focusing on getting manta rays listed by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). But scientists have their work cut out for them.?

?It?s very difficult to get listed on CITES.? They ask for a lot of detail that is difficult to pin down,? said Marshall. ??Maybe in the terrestrial world, biologists can provide those kinds of details. ?When you?re talking about the megafauna [or large marine species] world, it?s very difficult.??

Marshall ? who discovered a second type of manta ray in 2008 and is in the process of identifying a third -- acknowledges little is known about them.

AFP - Getty Images file

A huge manta ray weighing more than 2,200 pounds and measuring nearly 9 yards in length was caught off the eastern coast of China this past September.

Manta births a mystery?
Vexing questions include the manta?s life span, details of their reproductive ecology and migratory patterns.?

?I could wrap my life up in 20 minutes if I could talk to them,? she joked. ??It has been driving me insane for the last ten years because I haven?t been able to figure out where they give birth.? It?s 2012 and nobody has ever seen a manta give birth in the wild.??

And research is painstaking. For one, concentrations of the animal tend to be around far-flung islands.?Stevens of Manta Trust cited the costs of tracking mantas and the difficulty in locating and knowing how to study them.?

With technological improvements, however, scientists are gaining some ground. Satellite tags are one way to help the research.??What do they do when we can?t observe them? I?d love to follow an animal to find out how they spend their time,? said Stevens. ?The tagging gives you small glimpses of them.??

Two dive instructors at the Misool Eco Resort and Conservation Center in Raja Ampat have uncovered a revenue stream to offset research costs: tourism.

?One manta ray can raise $1 million (U.S. dollars) in tourism income over its lifetime,? said Rebecca Pilkington-Vincett, citing a figure contained in the Manta Ray of Hope?report.

PhotoBlog: Raja Ampat archipelago: The world's last paradise

With the blessing of the resort, Pilkington-Vincett and Calvin Beale launched a research project off the surrounding reefs. ?

Last season, the duo raised $32,000 from donations by recreational divers who accompanied them on dives to gather DNA samples and tag the mantas.?

With the money, they have bought three satellite tags and collected numerous DNA samples.? They are sending off the data to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography for analysis by a graduate student.?

With online databases such as the?Manta Research Project, where some of Pilkington-Vincett and Beale?s data are logged, or the?Manta Matcher, developed by Marshall and operating much ?like the FBI fingerprint online database,? research on the manta ray has become rooted in a global exchange among scientists and amateurs alike.?

Until its secrets are fully revealed, the manta?s mystique seems guaranteed.?

?I think it?s fascinating,? said Dewar of the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, ?that there is such a large and amazing creature that has so many mysteries attached to it.??

Additional research by Le Li, Johanna Armstrong and Yanzhou Liu.

More world stories from NBC News:

Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

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Source: http://behindthewall.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/24/15054305-scientists-rush-to-save-manta-rays-the-pandas-of-the-ocean?lite

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Apple HTC Deal To Be Closed To Samsung, Judge Rules

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. judge has ordered Apple Inc to disclose to rival Samsung Electronics details of a legal settlement the iPhone maker reached with Taiwan's HTC Corp, including terms of a 10-year patents licensing agreement.
The Korean electronics giant had earlier filed a motion to compel its U.S. rival -- with whom it is waging a bitter legal battle over mobile patents across several countries -- to reveal details of the settlement that was reached on November 10 with HTC but which have been kept under wraps.
In August, the iPhone maker won a $1.05 billion verdict against Samsung after a U.S. jury found that certain Samsung gadgets violated Apple's software and design patents.
Now, legal experts say the question of which patents are covered by the Apple-HTC settlement, and licensing details, could be instrumental in Samsung's efforts to thwart Apple's subsequent quest for a permanent sales ban on its products.
The Asian company has argued it is "almost certain" that the HTC deal covers some of the same patents involved in its own litigation with Apple.
The court on Wednesday ordered Apple to produce a full copy of the settlement agreement "without delay", subject to an Attorneys-Eyes-Only designation.
Representatives for the U.S. company could not immediately be reached for comment.
The settlement of Apple and HTC ended their worldwide litigation and brought to a close one of the first major flare-ups in the global smartphone patent wars.
Apple first sued HTC in 2010, setting in motion a legal conflagration that has since circled the globe and engulfed the biggest names in mobile technology, from Samsung to Google Inc's Motorola Mobility unit.
(Reporting By Edwin Chan; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

Earlier on HuffPost:

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/22/apple-htc-samsung_n_2174524.html

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Biomarking time

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Women live longer than men. Individuals can appear or feel years younger ? or older ? than their chronological age. Diseases can affect our aging process. When it comes to biology, our clocks clearly tick differently.

In a new study, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, with colleagues elsewhere, describe markers and a model that quantify how aging occurs at the level of genes and molecules, providing not just a more precise way to determine how old someone is, but also perhaps anticipate or treat ailments and diseases that come with the passage of time.

The findings are published in the November 21 online issue of the journal Molecular Cell.

"It's well known that people age at different rates," said Kang Zhang, MD, PhD, professor of ophthalmology and human genetics at the Shiley Eye Center and director of the Institute for Genomic Medicine, both at UC San Diego. "Some people in their 70s look like they're in their 50s, while others in their 50s look like they're in their 70s."

However, identifying markers and precisely quantifying the actual rate of aging in individuals has been challenging. For example, researchers have looked at telomeres ? repeating nucleotide sequences that cap the ends of chromosomes and which shorten with age ? but have found that other factors like stress can affect them as well.

In the new Molecular Cell paper, Zhang and colleagues focus on DNA methylation, a fundamental, life-long process in which a methyl group is added or removed from the cytosine molecule in DNA to promote or suppress gene activity and expression. The researchers measured more than 485,000 genome-wide methylation markers in blood samples of 656 persons ranging in age from 19 to 101.

"It's a very robust way of predicting aging," said Zhang, one that was subsequently validated on a second sampling of several hundred blood samples from another cohort of human individuals.

The scientists found that an individual's "methylome" ? the entire set of human methylation markers and changes across a whole genome ? predictably varies over time, providing a way to determine a person's actual biological age from just a blood sample.

"It's the majority of the methylome that accurately predicts age, not just a few key genes," said co-senior author Trey Ideker, PhD, a professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Medical Genetics in the UC San Diego School of Medicine and professor of bioengineering in the Jacobs School of Engineering. "The methylation state decays over time along the entire genome. You look in the body, into the cells, of young people and methylation occurs very distinctly in some spots and not in others. It's very structured. Over time, though, methylation sites get fuzzier; the boundaries blur."

They do not, however, blur at the same rate in everybody. At the molecular level of the methylome, the researchers said it was clear that individual bodies age at varying rates, and even within the same body, different organs age differently. Moreover, cancer cells age differently than their surrounding normal cells. The findings, according to the study authors, have broad practical implications. Most immediately, they could be used in forensics to determine a person's age based only upon a blood or tissue sample.

More profoundly, said Zhang, the methylome provides a measure of biological age ? how quickly or slowly a person is experiencing the passage of time. That information has potentially huge medical import. "For example, you could serially profile patients to compare therapies, to see if a treatment is making people healthier and 'younger.' You could screen compounds to see if they retard the aging process at the tissue or cellular level."

Ideker said assessing an individual's methylome state could improve preventive medicine by identifying lifestyle changes that might slow molecular aging. He noted, however, that much more research remains to be done.

"The next step is to look to see whether methylation can predict specific health factors, and whether this kind of molecular diagnosis is better than existing clinical or physical markers. We think it's very promising," Ideker said.

###

University of California - San Diego: http://www.ucsd.edu

Thanks to University of California - San Diego for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/125422/Biomarking_time

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Restaurant Franchising ? Getting Eco Friendly ? hot news

Environmentally sensitive practices are becoming increasingly important for many businesses and restaurant franchising is no exception. The environment is a hot topic and the public is becoming more vocal about what they expect from retailers, manufacturers and service providers alike. Environmental issues which are foremost in the public?s mind, and which restaurant franchises must now take into account, include energy conservation, recycling and organic locally sourced food.

In Britain, a government sponsored ?Green Achiever Scheme? has been created to enable companies to demonstrate their environmentally friendly credentials to suppliers, customers and other bodies interested in green business. In the United States, federal tax incentives and recycling programs have been set up to facilitate those companies wanting to improve their green credentials. The number of restaurant franchises opting into such schemes in both countries has been steadily growing, as business owners take note of the public?s demands when it comes to the environment.

Consumers are becoming more aware of the environmental impact of their personal choices and, when it comes to opting where to spend their cash, are increasingly influenced by ethical business practices. Restaurant franchises have started to realize how important green credentials are to customers and investors alike. Environmentally friendly practices are gradually being introduced into every aspect of the restaurant franchising businesses. These practices range from installing solar panels, reducing carbon emissions and using non-toxic cleaning products to eliminating non-recyclable packaging and reducing the amount of all packaging used, filtering cooking oil for reuse and sourcing local, fair trade or organic produce.

Although no official data yet exists on the number of green restaurant franchises, the green market is definitely growing, according to the International Franchise Association, the industry?s largest trade group. The association has seen an increase in inquiries about green restaurant franchises, as well as a bigger presence at trade events. The green phenomenon has been seen across the board, which is to say that existing franchises are becoming greener and also that new franchises are starting up who are basing their whole concept on being environmentally conscious. Although the green concept has been with us for at least 25 years, it is only in recent years that this trend has become mainstream.

However, it would be hard to beat the eco-friendly credentials of one new restaurant franchise, which has taken the whole green concept to a new level. All of its fixtures and fittings are environmentally friendly, from seat cushions made from soybean oil to counter-tops made from recycled detergent bottles. Utensils are made from potatoes and containers from cornstarch, both of which biodegrade in 30 days. Ninety-eight per cent of all food served is organic and discounts are offered to customers who return pizza boxes for recycling. The building even meets environmental standards created by the US Green Building Council. Whilst this may be an extreme example of eco-friendly restaurant franchising, all the trends point to more businesses following eco-friendly policies.

restaurant franchise

Source: http://hotnews.blogspages.com/2012/11/23/restaurant-franchising-%E2%80%93-getting-eco-friendly-2/

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Video: Egyptian president played pivotal role in cease-fire

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Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/49923908/

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Eating right key to survival of whales and dolphins: UBC research

Public release date: 21-Nov-2012
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Andrew Trites
a.trites@fisheries.ubc.ca
604-822-8182
University of British Columbia

In the marine world, high-energy prey make for high-energy predators. And to survive, such marine predators need to sustain the right kind of high-energy diet. Not just any prey will do, suggests a new study by researchers from the University of British Columbia and University of La Rochelle, in France.

Published today in the online journal PLOS ONE, the study is the first to show that the survival of whales and dolphins depends on the quality of their diets and this plays an important role in conservation.

"The conventional wisdom is that marine mammals can eat anything," says co-author Andrew Trites, a marine mammal expert at UBC. "However, we found that some species of whales and dolphins require calorie rich diets to survive while others are built to live off low quality preyand it has nothing to do with how big they are."

The team compared the diets of 11 species of whales, dolphins and porpoises in the Northeast Atlantic Ocean, and found differences in the qualities of prey consumed that could not be explained by the different body sizes of the predators. The key to understanding the differences in their diets was to look at their muscle performance.

"High energy prey tend to be more mobile, and require their predators to spend more energy to catch them," says Trites. "The two have co-evolved."

Jrme Spitz, the study's first author, says the research will help better assess the impact of resource changes to marine mammals.

"Species with high energy needs are more sensitive to depletion of their primary prey," says Spitz, a post-doctoral fellow at ULR in France, who completed the research while a visiting scholar at UBC. "It is no longer a question of how much food do whales and dolphins need, but whether they are able to get the right kinds of food to survive."

###

CONTACT:

Andrew Trites
UBC Fisheries Centre
Tel: 604.822.8182
Cell: 604.209.8182
E-mail: a.trites@fisheries.ubc.ca

Heather Amos
UBC Public Affairs
Tel: 604.822.3213
Cell: 604.828.3867
Email: heather.amos@ubc.ca

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 21-Nov-2012
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Andrew Trites
a.trites@fisheries.ubc.ca
604-822-8182
University of British Columbia

In the marine world, high-energy prey make for high-energy predators. And to survive, such marine predators need to sustain the right kind of high-energy diet. Not just any prey will do, suggests a new study by researchers from the University of British Columbia and University of La Rochelle, in France.

Published today in the online journal PLOS ONE, the study is the first to show that the survival of whales and dolphins depends on the quality of their diets and this plays an important role in conservation.

"The conventional wisdom is that marine mammals can eat anything," says co-author Andrew Trites, a marine mammal expert at UBC. "However, we found that some species of whales and dolphins require calorie rich diets to survive while others are built to live off low quality preyand it has nothing to do with how big they are."

The team compared the diets of 11 species of whales, dolphins and porpoises in the Northeast Atlantic Ocean, and found differences in the qualities of prey consumed that could not be explained by the different body sizes of the predators. The key to understanding the differences in their diets was to look at their muscle performance.

"High energy prey tend to be more mobile, and require their predators to spend more energy to catch them," says Trites. "The two have co-evolved."

Jrme Spitz, the study's first author, says the research will help better assess the impact of resource changes to marine mammals.

"Species with high energy needs are more sensitive to depletion of their primary prey," says Spitz, a post-doctoral fellow at ULR in France, who completed the research while a visiting scholar at UBC. "It is no longer a question of how much food do whales and dolphins need, but whether they are able to get the right kinds of food to survive."

###

CONTACT:

Andrew Trites
UBC Fisheries Centre
Tel: 604.822.8182
Cell: 604.209.8182
E-mail: a.trites@fisheries.ubc.ca

Heather Amos
UBC Public Affairs
Tel: 604.822.3213
Cell: 604.828.3867
Email: heather.amos@ubc.ca

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-11/uobc-erk111912.php

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