| Forest Elephants on a Road to Ruin
For the African forest elephant, a road is a highway to death, says a team of researchers, who trekked more than 8000 kilometers in five African countries to assess the animals' populations. Logging roads have given poachers increased access to the elephants' dwindling sanctuaries in the Congo Basin, and the reclusive animals' numbers are plunging as they are slaughtered for their ivory, the team's 2-year survey shows. "Forests that were formerly safe havens for elephants, such as those in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, are now virtually empty," says Mike Fay, a biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in New York. Forest elephants (Loxodonta africana cyclotis) live only in the woodlands of West and Central Africa. In 1989, the last time a survey was made, scientists estimated the overall population at 172,400.
Outdoors extra: A cross-country obsession with quail, grouse
My father never meant to set any kind of record when he undertook to amass a mounted collection comprised of every upland game bird native to the continental United States and Alaska. The idea of a “gallinaceous grand slam" was a slow-dawning realization on his part, a recognition that his consuming love of bird hunting could also be an opportunity to permanently display these splendid animals for himself and his posterity. With the overall decline in southern quail populations, it may also come to serve as a silent tribute to a gracious culture that in his lifetime seems to have ground finally to an end.I grew up a quail hunter, as did my father and his father. The long love affair of the rural South with Colinus virginianus, the bobwhite quail, is as central to the culture as fried fish and Confederate memorials.
Microsoft Introduces Silverlight Plug-In at NAB
On Monday, Microsoft introduced video professionals attending the NAB conference Silverlight, a Mac and PC-compatible web browser plug-in similar to Adobe's Flash paired with what the company considered video streaming superior to Apple's QuickTime. The program, which is currently available as a public beta (or "technology preview"), is available for download with a general release planned later this month according to Macworld News. Previously known as WPF/E, Silverlight is designed around vector-based graphics, text, animation, media and overlays while using existing back-end web and infrastructure tools such as Apache, PHP, JavaScript and XHTML. On the Mac end, Microsoft has stated that the plug-in works with both Firefox and Safari while on the Windows end the plug-in is designed around Internet Explorer 7.
TODAY: Spring Fashion Do's And Don'ts
With so many new trends this spring, from patents to polka dots, it can be hard to coordinate it all. Alison Deyette of stylebakery.com explains the do's and don'ts of the latest looks. Brights
Brights are a big trend this season. The "don't" look is fun, but a little too runway for real life. Swap some pieces for neutrals like black, so a single color pops, making a more wearable look. .
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