title: Bowfin

text: Females vacate the nest after spawning, leaving the male behind to protect the eggs during the eight to ten days of incubation. A nest may contain 2,000 to 5,000 eggs, possibly more. Fecundity is usually related to size of the fish, so it isn't unusual for the roe of a large gravid female to contain over 55,000 eggs. Bowfin eggs are adhesive, and will attach to aquatic vegetation, roots, gravel, and sand. After hatching, larval bowfin do not swim actively in search of food. During the seven to nine days required for yolk-sac absorption, they attach to vegetation by means of an adhesive organ on their snout, and remain protected by the parent male bowfin. Bowfin aggressively protect their spawn from the first day of incubation to a month or so after the eggs have hatched. When the fry are able to swim and forage on their own, they will form a school and leave the nest accompanied by the parent male bowfin who slowly circles them to prevent separation.


title: Bowfin

text: Bowfin reach sexually maturity at two to three years of age. They can live up to 33 years in the wild, and 30 years in captivity. Bowfin may live decades at adult size.


title: Bowfin

text: A common parasite of bowfin is the anchor worm ("Lernaea"). These small crustaceans infest the skin and bases of fins, with consequences ranging from slowed growth to death. The mollusk "Megalonaias gigantea" lays eggs in the bowfin gills, that are then externally fertilized by sperm passing in the water flow. The small glochidia larvae then hatch and develop in the gill tubes.


title: Bowfin

text: As a sport fish, bowfin are not considered desirable to many anglers. They were once considered a nuisance fish by anglers and early biologists who believed the bowfin's predatory nature was harmful to sport fish populations. As a result, efforts were taken to reduce their numbers. Research has since proven otherwise, and that knowledge together with a better understanding of maintaining overall balance of ecosystems, regulations were introduced to help protect and maintain viable populations of bowfin. Bowfin are strong fighters, a prized trait in game fish. However, they do have a jaw full of sharp teeth which requires careful handling. The current tackle record is


title: Bowfin

text: Bowfin were once considered to have little commercial value because of its poor-tasting meat which has been referred to as "soft, bland-tasting and of poor texture". However, it is considered quite palatable if cleaned properly and smoked, or prepared fried, blackened, used in courtbouillion, or in fishballs or fishcakes. Over the years, global efforts have imposed strict regulations on the international trade of caviar, particularly on the harvest of sturgeons from the Caspian Sea where the highly prized caviar from the beluga sturgeon originates. The bans imposed on Caspian sturgeons have created lucrative markets for affordable substitutes in the United States including paddlefish, bowfin, and various species of sturgeon. In Louisiana, bowfin are harvested in the wild, and cultured commercially in hatcheries for their meat and roe. The roe is processed into caviar, and sold as "Cajun caviar", or marketed under the trade name "Choupiquet Royale".


title: Bowfin

text: In some areas of the United States where aquatic environments have tested positive for elevated levels of toxins, such as mercury, arsenic, chromium, and copper, there are posted signs with warnings about the consumption of fish caught in those areas. Concentration of mercury biomagnifies as it passes up the food chain from organisms on lower trophic levels to apex predators. It bioaccumulates in the tissues of larger, long-lived predatory fish. When compared to smaller, short-lived fish, bowfin tend to concentrate mercury at higher levels thereby making them less safe for human consumption.


title: The Salisbury Poisonings

text: The Salisbury Poisonings is a fact-based television drama, starring Anne-Marie Duff, Rafe Spall and Annabel Scholey which portrays the 2018 Novichok poisonings and decontamination crisis in Salisbury, England, and the subsequent Amesbury poisonings. The series was broadcast in three parts on BBC One in June 2020, and has been shown in four parts elsewhere. It was created by Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn for Dancing Ledge Productions.


title: The Salisbury Poisonings

text: On 4 March 2018, emergency services receive a call to attend to Sergei and Yulia Skripal who have been found unconscious on a park bench in Salisbury city centre. Medical practitioners are initially puzzled by their illness, and police and the local public health department become involved. A national emergency is precipitated when it is learned that Skripal is a former Russian military intelligence officer who acted as a double agent for the UK's intelligence services during the 1990s and early 2000s. It emerges that he and his daughter were poisoned with a highly potent Novichok agent which was smeared on the front-door handle of their residence. The docudrama also deals with the incidental exposure of several other persons, including a police officer and an uninvolved couple who found a perfume bottle containing the nerve agent which they administered to themselves. At the end of the series, the real-life people involved in the story are pictured returning to the scene, and some film is shown of Dawn Sturgess, the only person to die from their exposure to the Novichok.


title: The Salisbury Poisonings

text: Writing in "The Guardian", Lucy Mangan praised the show's script and direction as being "admirably restrained", and compared the calm actions of its characters facing a "new normal" to the reactions of the public during the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: The Salisbury Poisonings

text: Worldwide distribution is handled by Fremantle. In June 2020 it was announced that AMC signed an agreement with Fremantle to exclusively broadcast the show in the United States. The AMC broadcast is slated to premiere 25 January 2021.


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: Cesare Lombroso (, ; ; born Ezechia Marco Lombroso; 6 November 1835 – 19 October 1909) was an Italian criminologist, phrenologist, physician, and founder of the Italian School of Positivist Criminology. Lombroso rejected the established classical school, which held that crime was a characteristic trait of human nature. Instead, using concepts drawn from physiognomy, degeneration theory, psychiatry, and Social Darwinism, Lombroso's theory of anthropological criminology essentially stated that criminality was inherited, and that someone "born criminal" could be identified by physical (congenital) defects, which confirmed a criminal as savage or atavistic.


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: Lombroso was born in Verona, Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, on 6 November 1835 to a wealthy Jewish family. His father was Aronne Lombroso, a tradesman from Verona, and his mother was Zeffora (or Zefira) Levi from Chieri near Turin. Cesare Lombroso descended from a line of rabbis, which led him to study a wide range of topics in university. He studied literature, linguistics, and archæology at the universities of Padua, Vienna, and Paris. Despite pursuing these studies in university, Lombroso eventually settled on pursuing a degree in medicine, which he graduated with from the University of Pavia.


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: Lombroso was initially an army surgeon, beginning in 1859. In 1866 he was appointed visiting lecturer at Pavia, and later took charge of the insane asylum at Pesaro in 1871. He became professor of forensic medicine and hygiene at Turin in 1878. That year he wrote his most important and influential work, "L'uomo delinquente", which went through five editions in Italian and was published in various European languages.


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: Three of his works had been translated into English by 1900, including a partial translation of "The Female Offender" published in 1895 and read in August of that year by the late nineteenth-century English novelist George Gissing. Lombroso later became professor of psychiatry (1896) and criminal anthropology (1906) at the same university.


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: Lombroso married Nina de Benedetti on 10 April 1870. They had five children together, one of whom—Gina—would go on to publish a summary of Lombroso's work after his death. Later in life Lombroso came to be influenced by Gina's husband, Guglielmo Ferrero, who led him to believe that not all criminality comes from one's inborn factors and that social factors also played a significant role in the process of shaping a criminal.


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: Lombroso's general theory suggested that criminals are distinguished from noncriminals by multiple physical anomalies. He postulated that criminals represented a reversion to a primitive or subhuman type of person characterized by physical features reminiscent of apes, lower primates, and early humans and to some extent preserved, he said, in modern "savages". The behavior of these biological "throwbacks" will inevitably be contrary to the rules and expectations of modern civilized society.


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: Through years of postmortem examinations and anthropometric studies of criminals, the insane, and normal individuals, Lombroso became convinced that the "born criminal" ("reo nato", a term given by Ferri) could be anatomically identified by such items as a sloping forehead, ears of unusual size, asymmetry of the face, prognathism, excessive length of arms, asymmetry of the cranium, and other "physical stigmata". Specific criminals, such as thieves, rapists, and murderers, could be distinguished by specific characteristics, he believed. Lombroso also maintained that criminals had less sensitivity to pain and touch; more acute sight; a lack of moral sense, including an absence of remorse; more vanity, impulsiveness, vindictiveness, and cruelty; and other manifestations, such as a special criminal argot and the excessive use of tattooing.


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: Besides the "born criminal", Lombroso also described "criminaloids", or occasional criminals, criminals by passion, moral imbeciles, and criminal epileptics. He recognized the diminished role of organic factors in many habitual offenders and referred to the delicate balance between predisposing factors (organic, genetic) and precipitating factors such as one's environment, opportunity, or poverty.


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: In "Criminal Woman", as introduced in an English translation by Nicole Hahn Rafter and Mary Gibson, Lombroso used his theory of atavism to explain women's criminal offending. In the text, Lombroso outlines a comparative analysis of "normal women" as opposed to "criminal women" such as "the prostitute." However, Lombroso's "obdurate beliefs" about women presented an "intractable problem" for this theory: "Because he was convinced that women are inferior to men Lombroso was unable to argue, based on his theory of the born criminal, that women's lesser involvement in crime reflected their comparatively lower levels of atavism."


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: Lombroso's research methods were clinical and descriptive, with precise details of skull dimensions and other measurements. He did not engage in rigorous statistical comparisons of criminals and non-criminals. Although he gave some recognition in his later years to psychological and sociological factors in the etiology of crime, he remained convinced of and identified with, criminal anthropometry. After he died, his skull and brain were measured according to his own theories by a colleague as he requested in his will; his head was preserved in a jar and is still displayed with his collection at the Museum of Psychiatry and Criminology in Turin.


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: Lombroso's theories were disapproved throughout Europe, especially in schools of medicine: notably by Alexandre Lacassagne in France. His notions of physical differentiation between criminals and non-criminals were seriously challenged by Charles Goring ("The English Convict", 1913), who made elaborate comparisons and found insignificant statistical differences.


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: Self-proclaimed the founder of modern scientific psychiatry, Lombroso is purported to have coined the term "criminology". He institutionalized the science of psychiatry in universities. His graduating thesis from the University of Pavia dealt with "endemic cretinism". ext several years, Lombroso's fascination with criminal behavior and society began, and he gained experience managing a mental institution. After a brief stint in the Italian army, Lombroso returned to the University of Pavia and became the first professor specializing in mental health. By the 1880s, his theories had reached the pinnacle of their fame, and his accolades championed them throughout the fields dedicated to examining mental illness. Lombroso differentiated himself from his predecessor and rival, Cesare Beccaria, through depicting his positivist school in opposition to Beccaria's classist one (which centered around the idea that criminal behavior is born out of free will rather than inherited physical traits). Lombroso's psychiatric theories were conglomerated and collectively called the positivist school by his followers. His school of thought was only truly abandoned in Italian universities' curriculum after World War II.


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: Through his various publications, Lombroso established a school of psychiatry based on biological determinism and the idea that mental illness was via genetic factors. A person's predisposition to mental illness was determinable through his appearance, as explained in the aforementioned criminal atavism segment. Lombroso's theory has been cited as possibly "the most influential doctrine" in all areas studying human behavior, and indeed, its impact extended far and wide. According to Lombroso, criminal appearance was not just based on inherited physiognomy such as nose or skull shape, but also could be judged through superficial features like tattoos on the body. In particular, Lombroso began searching for a relationship between tattoos and an agglomeration of symptoms eut (which are currently diagnosed as borderline personality disorder). He also believed that tattoos indicated a certain type of criminal.


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: Through his observations of sex workers and criminals, Lombroso hypothesized a correlation between left-handedness, criminality, and degenerate behavior. He also propagated the idea that left-handedness lead to other disabilities, by linking left-handedness with neurodegeneration and alcoholism. Lombroso's theories were likely accepted due to the pre-existing regional stigma against left-handedness, and greatly influenced the reception of left-handedness in the 20th century. His hypothesis even manifested in a new way during the 1980s and 1990s with a series of research studies grouping left-handedness with psychiatric disorders and autoimmune diseases.


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: Despite his stance on inherited immorality and biologically-destined criminal behavior, Lombroso believed in socialism and supposedly sympathized with stigmatization of lower socioeconomic statuses, placing him at odds with the biological determinism he espoused. His work stereotyping degenerates can even be seen as an influence behind Benito Mussolini's movement to clean the streets of Italy. Many adherents to Lombroso's positivist school stayed powerful during Mussolini's rule, because of the seamless way criminal atavism and biological determinism justified fascism. However, certain legal institutions did press back against the idea that criminal behavior is biologically determined.


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: Within the penal system, Lombroso's work led to new forms of punishment, where occasionally punishment varied based on the defendant's biological background. There are a few instances in which case the physiognomy of the defendant actually mattered more than witness testimony and the defendant was subjected to harsher sentences.


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: During the period in Italy between the 1850s and 1880s, the Italian government debated legislation for the insanity plea. Judges and lawyers backed Beccaria's classist school, tending to favor the idea that wrongdoers are breaking a societal contract with the option to exercise free will, tying into Beccaria's classist school of social misbehavior. Lombroso and his followers argued for a criminal code, in which the criminal understood as unable to act with free will due to their biological predisposition to crime.


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: Since his research tied criminal behavior together with the insane, Lombroso is closely credited with the genesis of the criminal insane asylum and forensic psychiatry. His work sponsored the creation of institutions where the criminally insane would be treated for mental illness, rather than placed in jails with their saner counterparts. One example of an asylum for the criminally insane is Bridgewater State Hospital, which is located in the United States. Other examples of these institutions are Matteawan State Hospital and Danvers State Hospital. Most have closed down, but the concept is kept alive with modern correctional facilities like Cook County Jail. This facility houses the largest population of prisoners with mental illness in the United States. However, criminal insane asylums did exist outside of Italy while Lombroso was establishing them within the country. His influence on the asylum was at first regional, but eventually percolated to other countries who adopted some of Lombroso's measures for treating the criminally insane.


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: In addition to influencing criminal atavisim, Lombroso wrote a book called "Genio e Follia", in which he discussed the link between genius and insanity. He believed that genius was an evolutionarily beneficial form of insanity, stemming from the same root as other mental illnesses. This hypothesis led to his request to examine Leo Tolstoy for degenerate qualities during his attendance at the 12th International Medical Congress in Moscow in 1897. The meeting went poorly, and Tolstoy's novel "Resurrection" shows great disdain for Lombroso's methodology.


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: Towards the end of his life, Lombroso began to study pellagra, a disease which Joseph Goldberger simultaneously was researching, in rural Italy. He postulated that pellagra came from a nutrition deficit, officially proven by Goldberger. This disease also found its roots in the same poverty that caused cretinism, which Lombroso studied at the start of his medical career. Furthermore, before Lombroso's death the Italian government passed a law in 1904 standardizing treatment in mental asylums and codifying procedural admittance for mentally ill criminals. This law gave psychiatrists free rein within the criminal insane asylum, validating the field of psychiatry through giving the psychiatrists the sole authority to define and treat the causes of criminal behavior (a position which Lombroso argued for from his early teaching days to his death).


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: Lombroso believed that genius was closely related to madness. In his attempts to develop these notions, while in Moscow in 1897 he traveled to Yasnaya Polyana to meet Lev Tolstoy in hopes of elucidating and providing evidence for his theory of genius reverting or degenerating into insanity.


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: Lombroso published "The Man of Genius" in 1889, a book which argued that artistic genius was a form of hereditary insanity. In order to support this assertion, he began assembling a large collection of "psychiatric art". He published an article on the subject in 1880 in which he isolated thirteen typical features of the "art of the insane." Although his criteria are generally regarded as outdated today, his work inspired later writers on the subject, particularly Hans Prinzhorn.


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: Lombroso's "The Man of Genius" provided inspiration for Max Nordau's work, as evidenced by his dedication of "Degeneration" to Lombroso, whom he considered to be his "dear and honored master". In his exploration of geniuses descending into madness, Lombroso stated that he could only find six men who did not exhibit symptoms of "degeneration" or madness; Galileo, Da Vinci, Voltaire, Machiavelli, Michelangelo and Darwin. On the other hand, Lombroso cited that men such as Shakespeare, Plato, Aristotle, Mozart and Dante all displayed "degenerate symptoms". In order to justify which geniuses were "degenerate" or insane, Lombroso judged each genius by whether or not they displayed "degenerate symptoms", which included precocity, longevity, versatility and inspiration. Lombroso supplemented these personal observations with measurements including facial angles, "abnormalities" in bone structure and volumes of brain fluid. Measurements of skulls taken included those from Immanuel Kant, Alessandro Volta, Ugo Foscolo and Ambrogio Fusinieri. Lombroso's approach in using skull measurements was inspired by the work and research in the field of phrenology by German doctor Franz Joseph Gall. In commenting on skull measurements, Lombroso would make observations such as "I have noted several characters which anthropologists consider to belong to the lower races, such as prominence of the styloid apophyses". This observation was recorded in response to his analysis of Alessandro Volta's skull. Lombroso connected geniuses to various health disorders as well, by listing signs of degeneration in chapter two of his work—some of which include abnormalities and discrepancies in height and pallor. Lombroso listed the following geniuses, among others, as "sickly and weak during childhood"; Demosthenes, Francis Bacon, Descartes, Isaac Newton, John Locke, Adam Smith, Robert Boyle, Alexander Pope, John Flaxman, Nelson, Albrecht von Haller, Körner and Blaise Pascal. Other physical afflictions that Lombroso connected with degeneracy included rickets, emaciation, sterility, lefthandedness, unconsciousness, stupidity, somnambulism, smallness or disproportionality of the body, and amnesia. In his explanation of the connection between genius and the "degenerative marker" of height, Lombroso cites the following people: Robert and Elizabeth Browning, Henrik Ibsen, George Eliot, Thiers, Louis Blanc and Algernon Charles Swinburne, among others. He continues by listing the only "great men of tall stature" that he knows of, including Petrarch, Friedrich Schiller, Foscolo, Bismarck, Charlemagne, Dumas, George Washington, Peter the Great, and Voltaire. Lombroso further cited certain personality traits as markers of degeneracy, such as "a fondness for special words" and "the inspiration of genius".


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: Lombroso's methods and explanations in "The Man of Genius" were rebutted and questioned by the American Journal of Psychiatry. In a review of "The Man of Genius" they stated, "here we have hypothesis claiming to be the result of strict scientific investigation and reluctant conviction, bolstered up by half-told truths, misrepresentations and assumptions. Lombroso's work was also criticized by Italian anthropologist Giuseppe Sergi, who, in his review of Lombroso's "The Man of Genius"—and specifically his classifications and definitions of "the genius"—stated "by creating a genius according to his own fancy, an ideal and abstract being, and not by examining the personality of a real living genius, he naturally arrives at the conclusion that all theories by which the origin of genius is sought to be explained on a basis of observation, and especially that particular one which finds in degeneration the cause or one of the causes of genius, are erroneous." Sergi continued by stating that such theorists are "like the worshippers of the saints or of fetishes, who do not recognize the material from which the fetish is made, or the human origin from which the saint has sprung".


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: Later in his life Lombroso began investigating mediumship. Although originally skeptical, he later became a believer in spiritualism. As an atheist Lombroso discusses his views on the paranormal and spiritualism in his book "After Death – What?" (1909) which he believed the existence of spirits and claimed the medium Eusapia Palladino was genuine. The article "Exit Eusapia!" was published in the "British Medical Journal" on November 9, 1895. The article questioned the scientific legitimacy of the Society for Psychical Research for investigating Palladino a medium who had a reputation of being a fraud and imposter and was surprised that Lombroso had been deceived by Palladino.


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: The anthropologist Edward Clodd wrote "[Lombroso] swallowed the lot at a gulp, from table raps to materialisation of the departed, spirit photographs and spirit voices; every story, old or new, alike from savage and civilised sources, confirming his will to believe." Lombroso's daughter Gina Ferrero wrote that during the later years of his life Lombroso suffered from arteriosclerosis and his mental and physical health was wrecked. The skeptic Joseph McCabe wrote that because of this it was not surprising that Palladino managed to fool Lombroso into believing spiritualism by her tricks.


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: Historian Daniel Pick argues that Lombroso serves "as a curious footnote to late-nineteenth-century literary studies," due to his referencing in famous books of the time. Jacques in Émile Zola's "The Beast Within" is described as having a jaw that juts forward on the bottom. It is emphasized especially at the end of the book when he is overwhelmed by the desire to kill. The anarchist Karl Yundt in Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Agent", delivers a speech denouncing Lombroso. The assistant prosecutor in Leo Tolstoy's "Resurrection" uses Lombroso's theories to accuse Maslova of being a congenital criminal. In Bram Stoker's "Dracula", Count Dracula is described as having a physical appearance Lombroso would describe as criminal.


title: Cesare Lombroso

text: In 1906, a collection of papers on Lombroso was published in Turin as "L'opera di Cesare Lombroso nella scienza e nelle sue applicazioni".


title: History of Federal Open Market Committee actions

text: This is a list of historical rate actions by the United States Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). The FOMC controls the supply of credit to banks and the sale of treasury securities. The Federal Open Market Committee meets every two months during the fiscal year. At scheduled meetings, the FOMC meets and makes any changes it sees as necessary, notably to the federal funds rate and the discount rate. The committee may also take actions with a less firm target, such as an increasing liquidity by the sale of a set amount of Treasury bonds, or affecting the price of currencies both foreign and domestic by selling dollar reserves (such as during the Mexican peso bailout in 1994). Jerome Powell is the current chairperson of the Federal Reserve and the FOMC.


text: The Federal Open Market Committee action known as Operation Twist (named for the twist dance craze of the time) began in 1961. The intent was to flatten the yield curve in order to promote capital inflows and strengthen the dollar. The Fed utilized open market operations to shorten the maturity of public debt in the open market. It performs the 'twist' by selling some of the short term debt (with three years or less to maturity) it purchased as part of the quantitative easing policy back into the market and using the money received from this to buy longer term government debt. Although this action was marginally successful in reducing the spread between long-term maturities and short-term maturities, Vincent Reinhart and others have suggested it did not continue for a sufficient period of time to be effective. Despite being considered a failure since a 1966 near-term analysis by Franco Modigliani and Richard Sutch, the action has subsequently been reexamined and in a 2011 paper economist Eric Swanson of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco has suggested that "Operation Twist" was more effective than originally thought. Swanson suggested similar action as an alternative to quantitative easing by central banks; the FOMC did in fact take an analogous action in 2011.


text: Soon after becoming chairman, Paul Volcker's federal reserve increased the Fed Funds rate from 11% to 12% during the weekend (October 6, 1979).


text: "On November 25, 2008, the Federal Reserve announced that it would purchase up to $600 billion in agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and agency debt. However, these purchases were to have no impact on the balance sheet, and would have been sterilized by Treasury sales by the SOMA desk. On December 1, Chairman Bernanke provided further details in a speech. On December 16 the program was formally approved by the FOMC, however their approval was not required as the SOMA desk was already authorized to acquire Agency debt and MBS as part of their OMOs. On March 18, 2009, the FOMC announced that the program would be expanded by an additional $750 billion in purchases of agency MBS and agency debt and $300 billion in purchases of Treasury securities. These purchases would be unsterilized and this date more appropriately marks the beginning of QE in the US.


text: In August 2007, the Federal Open Market Committee's (FOMC) target for the federal funds rate was 5.25 percent. Sixteen months later, with the financial crisis in full swing, the FOMC had lowered the target for the federal funds rate to nearly zero, thereby entering the unfamiliar territory of having to conduct monetary policy with the policy interest rate at its effective lower bound. The unusual severity of the recession and ongoing strains in financial markets made the challenges facing monetary policymakers all the greater.


text: In the height of the financial crisis in 2008, the Federal Open Market Committee decided to lower overnight interest rates to zero to help with easing of money and credit. Over the past five years, the Federal Reserve has acted to support economic growth and foster job creation, and it is important to achieve further progress, particularly in the labor market. Taking due account of the uncertainties and limits of its policy tools, the Federal Reserve will provide additional policy accommodation as needed to promote a stronger economic recovery and sustained improvement in labor market conditions in a context of price stability.


text: On November 3, 2010, the Fed announced that it would purchase $600 billion of longer dated treasuries, at a rate of $75 billion per month. That program, popularly known as "QE2", concluded in June 2011.


text: The Federal Open Market Committee concluded its September 21, 2011 Meeting at about 2:15 p.m. EDT by announcing the implementation of Operation Twist. This is a plan to purchase $400 billion of bonds with maturities of 6 to 30 years and to sell bonds with maturities less than 3 years, thereby extending the average maturity of the Fed's own portfolio. This is an attempt to do what Quantitative Easing (QE) tries to do, without printing more money and without expanding the Fed's balance sheet, therefore hopefully avoiding the inflationary pressure associated with QE. This announcement brought a bout of risk aversion in the equity markets and strengthened the US Dollar, whereas QE I had weakened the USD and supported the equity markets.


text: Further, on June 20, 2012 the Federal Open Market Committee announced an extension to the Twist programme by adding additionally $267 billion thereby extending it throughout 2012.


text: On September 13, 2012, the Federal Reserve announced a third round of quantitative easing (QE3). This new round of quantitative easing provided for an open-ended commitment to purchase $40 billion agency mortgage-backed securities per month until the labor market improves "substantially". Some economists believe that Scott Sumner's blog on nominal income targeting played a role in popularizing the "wonky, once-eccentric policy" of "unlimited QE".


text: The Federal Open Market Committee voted to expand its quantitative easing program further on December 12, 2012. This round continued to authorize up to $40 billion worth of agency mortgage-backed securities per month and added $45 billion worth of longer-term Treasury securities. The outright Treasury purchases as part of the augmented program continued at a pace comparable to that under "Operation Twist"; however, the Federal Reserve could no longer sell short-dated Treasury securities to buy longer-dated ones since they had insufficient holdings of short-dated Treasuries.


text: On December 18, 2013 the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee announced they would be tapering back on QE3 at a rate of $10 billion at each meeting. The Federal Reserve ended its monthly asset purchases program (QE3) in October 2014, ten months after it began the tapering process.


text: On December 16, 2015 the Fed increased its key interest rate, the Federal Funds Rate, for the first time since June 2006. The hike was from the range [0%, 0.25%] to the range [0.25%, 0.5%].


text: In an emergency decision the rate was cut by half a percentage point on March 3, 2020 to 1–1.25% in response to the risk that the Coronavirus pandemic in the United States poses to the American economy. It was the first emergency cut since the financial crisis of 2007–08.


text: In an effort to calm markets and sustain market liquidity, the Federal Reserve announced to buy corporate debt in a series of emergency lending programs on March 23, 2020.


text: By July 2020, it has purchased $3 trillion financial assets, increasing its balance sheet from $4.2 trillion in February to $7 trillion.


text: Since August 2020, it was committed to monthly bond-buying program. By January 2021, its balance sheet stood at $7.3 trillion. It continued to pledge bond purchases in the pace of $120 billion a month to allow the economy to recover from the pandemic over the second half of the year as vaccinations against COVID-19 roll out.


text: Currently, this only shows meetings, both scheduled and unscheduled "emergency" meetings. The FOMC makes a number of other important pronouncements as well such as during testimony to Congress whose effects are harder to quantify.


title: Naruto: Shippuden (season 12)

text: The episodes for the twelfth season of the anime series "" are based on Part II for Masashi Kishimoto's manga series. It was directed by Hayato Date, and produced by Pierrot and TV Tokyo. The season follows Naruto Uzumaki controlling the power of the Nine-Tails at the start of the Fourth Shinobi World War, episodes 257 to 260 being a recap of the events of the Part I storyline. The season aired from January to August 2012.


title: Naruto: Shippuden (season 12)

text: The English dub of the season aired for Neon Alley on May 24, 2014 to January 3, 2015. The season would make its English television debut on Adult Swim's Toonami programming block and premiere from March 31 to November 17, 2019.


title: Naruto: Shippuden (season 12)

text: . Episodes 248 and 249 were released together under the title of on August 1, 2012. Episodes 257 to 260 were released on September 5, 2012 under the title of .


title: Naruto: Shippuden (season 12)

text: The season contains five songs between two openings and three endings. The first opening theme, "newsong" by tacica, is used from episode 243 to 256. The second opening theme, by The Cro-Magnons, is used from episode 257 to 275. The first ending theme, by Hemenway, is used from episodes 243 to 256. The second ending theme, by UNLIMITS, is used from episodes 257 to 268. The third ending theme, by AISHA, is used from episode 269 to 275. The sixth feature film, "" was released on July 28, 2012. The broadcast versions of the episodes 271 to 275 include scenes from the film in the opening themes, while retaining the music "Totsugeki Rock".


title: Pokpung-ho

text: The P'okp'ung-ho, officially the Chonma-215 and Chonma-216 are North Korean main battle tanks (MBT) developed in the 1990s. The tank may incorporate technology found in the T-62, T-72, and Ch'onma-ho MBTs. Outside parties codename the tank M-2002 because the tank went through performance trials on February 16, 2002 (therefore being officially confirmed by outside sources), although the tank may have been in existence since 1992.


title: Pokpung-ho

text: After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a significant number of T-72s were decommissioned from Soviet service and scrapped for metal. North Korea is believed to have acquired some of these scrapped T-72s and obtained core technology for use on the P'okp'ung-ho through reverse engineering. It is also believed North Korea acquired 3 samples of T-80 in early 1990s from Afghanistan. North Korea's interest in the T-90 was demonstrated in August 2001 when Kim Jong-il visited the Omsktransmash defense plant which builds the T-90 during his visit to Russia. However, North Korea failed to acquire T-90 since then, as South Korean and Russian governments agreed to cease supplying arms technology to North Korea since 1994.


title: Pokpung-ho

text: The destruction of Iraqi T-72s by western tanks such as the M1 Abrams during the Gulf War demonstrated the poor combat performance of the older export variants of T-72s against top-of-the-line Western models. North Korea decided to significantly modernize its tank fleet to bridge the performance gap between its Ch'onma-ho MBTs and the South Korean K1 MBTs, which has similar performance to the early models of the American M1 Abrams. However, economic struggles and a lack of several core technologies seem to have prevented North Korea from achieving high production numbers for the P'okp'ung-ho before the late 2000s.


title: Pokpung-ho

text: The first P'okp'ung-ho is believed to have been produced in 1992 in the Ryu Kyong-su Tank Factory, located in Sinhung, South Hamgyong province under the Second Economic Committee and Second Academy of Defense Science. The capabilities of later variants have been augmented significantly. Because of North Korea's limited industrial capability, compounded by the fact that North Korea has also spent most of the resources allotted for the development of the P'okp'ung-ho on its nuclear program, North Korea was believed to possess fewer than 250 of these tanks in 2007. However, production seems to have picked up starting in 2010. The tank was witnessed by parties outside of North Korea in 2002 and thus codenamed the M-2002. The P'okp'ung-ho was shown to the public during a North Korean parade in 2010, as well as during military exercises in 2012.


title: Pokpung-ho

text: Unclassified images of the P'okp'ung-ho finally surfaced in 2010, which showed the tank design appeared to be developed from the later models of the Chonma-ho and influenced by the T-72. The P'ok'pung-ho has better mobility, survivability and firepower than the Ch'onma-ho. Capabilities of the tank have been speculated to be nearly identical to T-90, however the limited access to technical information regarding the P'okp'ung-ho makes accurate comparisons difficult.


title: Pokpung-ho

text: The P'okp'ung-ho's primary armament was almost certainly the 2A20 115 mm gun in early examples; however, later versions seemed to be armed with the 2A26/2A46 125 mm smoothbore gun. which fires AP rounds produced in North Korea. The tank also has a heavy KPV anti-aircraft machine gun and a coaxial machine gun, as well as four smoke grenade launchers on the each side of the turret. The tank does not have the capability to fire ATGMs from its main gun. A model displayed at an April 2017 parade was equipped with two MANPADS launchers at the rear of the turret, two ATGM launchers mounted on the left side of the turret, and twin automatic grenade launchers mounted on the right side of commander hatch.


title: Pokpung-ho

text: Although the engine compartment and the layout show some resemblance to a T-72 hull, the chassis is basically a heavily modified version of T-62, with greater length and an additional pair of road wheels. The glacis plate of the Pokpung-ho is heavily sloped and protected by appliqué armor in the initial version with ERA added in later versions. The turret is reinforced with wedge-shaped armor modules in Pokpung-Ho I and seems to be protected by composite armour similar to the later export variant T-72M1 in Pokpung-Ho II with ERA added in Pokpung-Ho III. The panels along the tracks seem to be made of a light laminar armour.


title: Pokpung-ho

text: Although the horsepower of the P'okp'ung-ho's engine has been speculated to be as high as 1500, the engine is likely to have around 1000–1100 horsepower. It has been reported that North Korea rejected developing the turbine engine of the T-80, judging that it would not be suitable for a tank engagement within the narrow, mountainous terrain of Korea, and that it would prove to be of little difference on defensive missions. During aggressive missions, the P'okp'ung-ho can quickly engage the enemy due to its already excellent speed and acceleration, which is the basis of North Korean tank tactics.


title: Pokpung-ho

text: The fire control system of the P'okp'ung-ho is relatively modern and based on the presence of a meteorological mast is almost certainly computerized, and some reports claim that it may be based on the Chieftain FCS, which Iran may have illegally exchanged for North Korean technology. If the P'okp'ung-ho's FCS is based on the T-72's, it may implement the PNK-3 or PNK-4 day and night sighting system with the 1K13-49 periscope combined passive/active sight guidance system. However the night sighting system is most likely to be the same with obsolete T-62. The quality of the equipment are likely inferior to the South Korean counterparts.


title: Pokpung-ho

text: The P'okp'ung-ho also has an infrared sensor (TPN-3-49 or TPN-4), a laser rangefinder and a search light, all of which allow the P'okp'ung-ho to operate during the night. Although the quality of the equipment are likely inferior to the South Korean counterparts, the P'okp'ung-ho is believed to be a considerable threat at medium/short range engagements, although lacking when firing from long ranges at night.


title: Species II

text: Species II is a 1998 American science fiction horror thriller film directed by Peter Medak. The film is a sequel to "Species" (1995) and the second installment in the "Species" series. The film stars Michael Madsen, Natasha Henstridge, Marg Helgenberger, Mykelti Williamson, George Dzundza, James Cromwell and Justin Lazard. In addition to Madsen and Helgenberger reprising their roles, Henstridge also returned for the sequel as a new character. The plot has Patrick Ross, the astronaut son of a senator, being infected by an extraterrestrial organism during a mission to Mars and causing the deaths of many women upon his return. To stop him, the scientists who created the human-extraterrestrial hybrid Sil in the original "Species" try using a more docile clone of hers, Eve.


title: Species II

text: The film was theatrically released on April 10, 1998. It was both a commercial and a critical failure compared to its predecessor, only grossing $26.8 million while having the same production budget as its predecessor. Despite this, a sequel, "Species III", was released in 2004, though it was made-for-television.


title: Species II

text: Commander Patrick Ross leads a crewed mission to Mars. Soil samples collected by the astronauts contain an alien-based substance which thaws aboard their capsule and contaminates them, causing a seven-minute contact gap with mission control. With seemingly no subsequent negative effects, the three astronauts return to Earth to public celebration. Only an institutionalized former scientist, Dr. Cromwell, reacts to their return with violent panic. Meanwhile, Dr. Laura Baker has created a clone of Sil named Eve, whose alien DNA is suppressed to make her more docile. Her team conducts experiments on Eve, hoping to find a way to combat the alien species should it ever return to Earth. Every experiment is unsuccessful as Eve's biology adapts.


title: Species II

text: Upon their return, the team members are told to refrain from sexual activity for ten days. Patrick disregards this advice and has a threesome with two sisters Marcy and Lucy following a fundraiser. During sex with Lucy, he begins to sprout tentacles. Lucy notices his transformation while she is stroking his body and is horrified at the sight of him, whereupon she tries to free herself from his clutches. She pleads with him to stop but he ignores her pleas as he proceeds to climax. The hyper-fertile alien seed within Marcy and Lucy causes them both to experience accelerated pregnancies, culminating when the children violently burst from their abdomens. Patrick hides his rapidly growing sons on the property of his father, Senator Judson Ross. Each time Patrick has sex, Eve experiences sexual arousal. The next day, Patrick tells his father he cannot remember the previous night's events. Senator Ross indicates that he is aware of Patrick's behavior and tells him to focus on his political goals.


title: Species II

text: Dr. Orinsky, one of the NASA scientists who examined Patrick, discovers something amiss about his blood sample and desperately tries to contact Cromwell. However, Orinsky is ambushed and disemboweled by something formed from Patrick's blood. Laura discovers that the DNA in Orinsky's wounds is distinct from Eve's, making her an unlikely culprit in the murder. This prompts Colonel Burgess, the military commander in charge of her project, to reunite her with Press Lennox to contain the new threat. Press and Laura seek out Cromwell, Orinsky's former professor, and learn that he discovered that the alien species had attacked and destroyed Mars in ancient times. Because of his fears that alien DNA might remain on Mars to infect anyone who visited the planet in the future, Cromwell urged the government to abort the mission, but was committed to an institution to permanently silence him. Cromwell then states that the night Orinsky tried to contact him was to confirm that he was right all along.


title: Species II

text: Press and Laura identify the Mars astronauts as the prime suspects. Unable to find Patrick, they pursue the other astronauts, Anne Sampas and Dennis Gamble. They arrive too late to prevent Anne from making love with her husband, resulting in her impregnation with hybrid offspring. A tentacle-like creature bursts from Anne's abdomen and kills her husband before Press and Laura manage to kill the monster. Meanwhile, a second team of agents makes it in time to locate and examine Dennis, and confirm he is not infected. Laura discovers that Anne's hybrid DNA does not match that in Orinsky's wounds, meaning Patrick is the killer. Meanwhile, Patrick makes out with his girlfriend, resulting in her death through the birth of another hybrid son named Portus. Horrified at killing her, Patrick attempts suicide by shotgun, but the alien DNA regenerates his head and restores him back to life and temporarily destroys his human side, with the drive to mate with as many women as possible. Dennis witnesses this and tells Press and Laura what he saw, remembering what happened in the capsule and joining them in their mission. Patrick begins impregnating as many women as he can, hiding his victims and up to twenty children on his father's property.


title: Species II

text: Laura is ordered to activate Eve's alien DNA so she can telepathically track Patrick, but this makes her volatile and strengthens her alien instincts. Patrick surrenders to Press and Dennis after attempting to rape Darlene, whereupon he becomes aware of Eve; they take him to the lab despite their suspicion. As Patrick is taken to custody, Eve shows signs of being in heat. Patrick demands Laura open Eve's cell and nearly kills her when she refuses, but Press and Dennis drive him off with a special gaseous weapon. Burgess confronts Ross with irrefutable proof of Patrick's infection and demands help in detaining Patrick. Suspicious that Patrick will instead be killed, Ross deduces that he is at the property and apologizes for treating his son so coldly. Patrick's human side briefly returns, but while he tearfully embraces his father, the alien DNA suddenly violently reasserts itself and kills the Senator. Ross's death completely destroys Patrick's humanity, and he helps his hybrid children to cocoon, so they will soon begin mating themselves and prepare to eradicate humanity.


title: Species II

text: Back at the lab, Laura discovers Dennis was not infected because he is a carrier of sickle-cell disease, as the species lacks immunity to human genetic diseases. While they plan to weaponize this weakness, Eve breaks out of her confinement to find Patrick. Press, Laura and Dennis pursue her, with Burgess and the military following. At the shed, they kill Patrick's offspring while Eve and Patrick transform into their alien forms and begin to mate. The mating stops when Press and Dennis intervene, allowing Eve to break free; Patrick, transformed into another alien form, apparently attacks Eve by forcing his tongue-tentacle down her throat. Patrick attempts to attack the team, but Press impales him in the back with a pitchfork coated in Dennis' blood, causing him to disintegrate and die.


title: Species II

text: The military escorts Press, Laura and the injured Dennis away. Eve's seemingly lifeless body is loaded into an ambulance, but shortly after, her womb begins to swell rapidly—indicating her survival and impregnation by Patrick — while Portus, who somehow survived, watches. As the screen cuts to black, Eve's uterus bursts and her screaming is heard, leading into the events of the third film.


title: Species II

text: Writer Chris Brancato was working with MGM on "The Outer Limits", and knew the studio was interested in making a follow-up to "Species". He pitched an idea to executive Greg Foster where this time two hybrid alien women would strike. Foster liked it, but once Brancato went to "Species" producer Frank Mancuso Jr., he asked to "approach this from a different angle, so that we don't have a tired retread of the original, as sequels often are". So Brancato took inspiration from "The Manchurian Candidate", where "somebody on a mission comes back, apparently a hero, but actually with some terrible demon inside", and as "the notion of a grand, unexplored place was the planet Mars", he made the first astronaut on Mars – as according to NASA scientists consulted by Brancato, human exploration of Mars was "a possibility – just a very expensive one" – be infected by alien DNA. Mancuso approved the idea, and thus Brancato explored how this new villain was one "for whom we can briefly feel a strange, Wolf Man-like sympathy – he's not responsible for having been turned into a monster" and had him face an alien woman similar to Sil, raising the doubt on whether they would battle or mate. As Natasha Henstridge was unconfirmed to return, Brancato wrote the new female, Eve, as if it was "either Natasha or a similarly beautiful woman". Henstridge still liked the script enough and the idea of working with director Peter Medak to sign for the sequel. Brancato decided to bring back two of the surviving characters from "Species", Michael Madsen's Press Lennox and Marg Helgenberger's Dr. Laura Baker feeling they "were essential to bring the audience back in", but knowing Forest Whitaker was probably too busy to return as Dan Smithson, he wrote a similar African American character in the one eventually portrayed by Mykelti Williamson. Mancuso had another script done simultaneously to Brancato's, which reportedly explored the cliffhanger at end of "Species" where a rat was infected after eating Sil's remains. Mancuso brought in Peter Medak, responsible for the 1980 horror film "The Changeling".


title: Species II

text: The nature of the alien species is explored to a slightly greater extent in the second film. A professor claims that they originated in the Large Magellanic Cloud (also called the Magellanic Galaxy), due to it apparently being the only other place carbon-based life forms have been discovered. It is also stipulated that they were a "cancerous" race that visited Mars millions of years ago and annihilated all life on its surface (which is described in the film as being Earth-like at that time) before leaving a remnant of their own DNA in its soil. This DNA was intended to be picked up by other visitors so that their species could continue to infect other inhabited planets.


title: Species II

text: The Species basically appear to be bipedal (humanoid) forms. Unlike other aliens in the "Species" series, however, Patrick Ross has two types of alien forms: mating form and combat form. Patrick's alien form for copulation is bipedal, humanoid, and male version of Eve's, while Patrick's alien form for combat (so-called 'Fighting Patrick') is quadrupedal, bigger, and more 'brutish' in appearance than Eve. His second stage appearance is also similar to the xenomorphs of the "Alien" films; both were designed with input from H. R. Giger.


title: Species II

text: On April 10, 1998 in 2510 theatres, the film finished at $7.2 million, ranking number four on its opening weekend. Domestically, the film grossed only $19.6 million from its $35 million budget and $26,817,565 overseas, making the film average at the box office and therefore was a major critical and commercial failure.


title: Species II

text: The film received worse reviews than its predecessor. On Rotten Tomatoes it has an approval rating of 9% at based on 33 reviews. The site's critical consensus reads: "Clumsily exploitative and sloppily assembled, "Species II" fails to clear the rather low bar set by its less-than-stellar predecessor". On Metacritic the film has a score of 19% based on reviews from 13 critics. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale. At the 1998 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, the film was nominated for Worst Sequel but lost to "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer".


title: Species II

text: Dwayne E. Leslie from "Box Office Magazine" gave the film 1 out of 5 stars calling it "a sequel that doesn't measure up", also heavily criticizing the film's predictable and open ending. Joe Leydon from "Variety" magazine called the film "a half-baked rehash". He praised the special effects and technical aspects of the film but added "that's not nearly enough to camouflage the inherent crumminess". James Berardinelli described the film as awful but added "there's enough blood, gore, simulated sex, and bare flesh to prevent it from ever becoming boring".


title: Species II

text: In a 2004 interview, co-star Michael Madsen expressed his opinion on this film saying that ""Species II" was a crock of shit. There are a number I'm not very proud of. The movie studios can't mind that much, as they haven't contacted me to tell me off about it. I'm honest – if I've made a bad movie, I want my fans to know what they're letting themselves in for".


title: Species II

text: In the DVD commentary director Peter Medak praised the films' special effects. He expressed his opinion that audiences had too much expectation as this was a very different sequel due to not continuing from the story with the alien-infected rat that survived the finale, which hinted at a sequel in the 1995 original. Medak also admitted being uncomfortable with the amount of nudity in the film but said it was for the purpose of the story.


title: Species II

text: To coincide with the film, McFarlane Toys released an Eve and Patrick (in their alien form) action figure as part of their inaugural series of Movie Maniacs action figures. Both action figures came with a replica of the film's poster with skulls and bones base. Eve came with an alternate head. Two Eve action figures were produced which was dubbed the PG and R rated version. The R rated Eve action figure (in her alien form) had nipples on her breasts while the PG figure didn't. The R rated figure was released only in comic book and other collectable stores while the PG figure was released in toy stores.


title: Species II

text: The film's soundtrack on CD includes a track by B.B. King, one by Apollo 440, and 9 score pieces composed by Edward Shearmur.


title: Species II

text: As with the first film, Yvonne Navarro wrote a novelization based on the original screenplay which gives plot and character details not seen in the film. For example, the book tells how, due to limited knowledge of the outside world, Eve does not know if Superman is a real life personality or not. It is also hinted that she was able to learn a degree of martial arts by watching old action movies.


title: Species II

text: In the film, Eve is shot by soldiers, but after being briefly incapacitated her body regenerates and she continues to escape. Soldiers continue to shoot at her, but Eve manages to run past them; why she is unharmed is left unexplained. The book explains that her skin adapts (in a way similar to how her body adapts to the gas test earlier in the film), becoming bulletproof.


title: Species II

text: Other details in the book that do not appear in the film include an earlier escape attempt by Eve and Patrick discovering new senses in a restaurant with his fiancé. In the novel, the debutante is a young, sexy, brown-eyed blonde, whereas in the film, she is an older woman who is a brunette. The debutante's sister in the novel isn't her sister but her best friend from college that often engaged in sexual games that involved seducing men.


title: Species II

text: Other events that occurred in the novel that occurred in the movie happened before or after other events. For example, Patrick does not encounter the debutante at the fundraiser until after Orinsky is killed by him, and Cromwell is not visited by Laura and Press until they discover Orinsky's corpse.


title: Mendeley

text: Mendeley is a reference manager software developed by Elsevier. It is used to manage and share research papers and generate bibliographies for scholarly articles.


title: Mendeley

text: The company Mendeley, named after the biologist Gregor Mendel and chemist Dmitri Mendeleev, was founded in London in November 2007 by three German PhD students. The first public beta version of the software was released in August 2008. The company's investors included some people previously involved with Last.fm, Skype, and Warner Music Group, as well as academicians from Cambridge and Johns Hopkins University.


title: Mendeley

text: In 2009, Mendeley won several awards including Plugg.eu "European Start-up of the Year 2009", TechCrunch Europas "Best Social Innovation Which Benefits Society 2009", and The Guardian ranked it #6 in "Top 100 tech media companies".


title: Mendeley

text: In 2012, Mendeley was one of the repositories for green Open Access recommended by Peter Suber. The recommendation was revoked after Elsevier bought Mendeley.


title: Mendeley

text: Mendeley was purchased by the academic publisher Elsevier in early 2013. The deal price was speculated to be €50 million (US$65 million). The sale led to debate on scientific networks and in the media interested in Open Access, and upset members of the scientific community who felt that the Mendeley's acquisition by Elsevier was antithetical to Mendeley's open sharing model.


title: Mendeley

text: David Dobbs, in "The New Yorker", suggested Elsevier's reasons for buying Mendeley could have been to acquire its user data and/or to "destroy or coopt an open-science icon that threatens its business model."


title: Mendeley

text: This was contrasted to a non-profit service like Unpaywall, which marketed itself as not susceptible to a sell-out to Elsevier.


title: Mendeley

text: After the acquisition, the Mendeley team extended its product line while continuing to iterate on its core reference manager application (Mendeley Desktop).


title: Mendeley

text: On 23 September 2013, Mendeley announced iPhone and iPad apps. An Android app followed shortly after.


title: Mendeley

text: On 12 January 2015, Mendeley announced the acquisition of Newsflo, a service which provided links to press coverage of researchers' work. The functionality was subsequently incorporated into Mendeley Feed and Mendeley Profile.


title: Mendeley

text: In April 2016, Mendeley Data, a platform for sharing citable research datasets online, was promoted out of beta.


title: Mendeley

text: In October 2016, Mendeley Careers was launched. The service is intended help researchers locate job opportunities.


title: Mendeley

text: On March 15 2021, the Mendeley mobile app was removed from the Apple App Store and Google Play, leaving access via the web site or Mendeley Reference Manager on the desktop the only way to access the services. The literature search function in the desktop application had also been removed.


title: Mendeley

text: In September 2022, Elsevier discontinued the downloads of Mendeley Desktop as part of a transition to the new web-based solution (Mendeley Reference Manager). The company plans to permanently stop the signs-in to Mendeley Desktop in a longer term.


title: Mendeley

text: The software can track reader counts, a readership statistic which has been asserted to predict citation impact, whereas journal-level metrics are poor predictors of reliability. An automatic metadata extraction from PDF files is also available. The platform can integrate with Microsoft Word, OpenOffice and other platforms. The platform intends to be copyright-compliant by allowing users to share files in private groups.


title: Mendeley

text: In 2018, an update to Mendeley resulted in some users losing PDFs and annotations stored in their accounts. Elsevier fixed the issue for most users after a number of weeks.


title: Seabird

text: Seabirds (also known as marine birds) are birds that are adapted to life within the marine environment. While seabirds vary greatly in lifestyle, behaviour and physiology, they often exhibit striking convergent evolution, as the same environmental problems and feeding niches have resulted in similar adaptations. The first seabirds evolved in the Cretaceous period, and modern seabird families emerged in the Paleogene.


title: Seabird

text: In general, seabirds live longer, breed later and have fewer young than other birds do, but they invest a great deal of time in their young. Most species nest in colonies, which can vary in size from a few dozen birds to millions. Many species are famous for undertaking long annual migrations, crossing the equator or circumnavigating the Earth in some cases. They feed both at the ocean's surface and below it, and even feed on each other. Seabirds can be highly pelagic, coastal, or in some cases spend a part of the year away from the sea entirely.


title: Seabird

text: Seabirds and humans have a long history together: they have provided food to hunters, guided fishermen to fishing stocks and led sailors to land. Many species are currently threatened by human activities, such as from oil spills, getting trapped in nets, and by climate change and severe weather. Conservation efforts include the establishment of wildlife refugees and adjustments to fishing techniques.


title: Seabird

text: There exists no single definition of which groups, families and species are seabirds, and most definitions are in some way arbitrary. Elizabeth Shreiber and Joanne Burger, two seabird scientists, said, "The one common characteristic that all seabirds share is that they feed in saltwater; but, as seems to be true with any statement in biology, some do not." However, by convention all of the Sphenisciformes (penguins) and Procellariiformes (albatrosses and petrels), all of the Suliformes (gannets and cormorants) except the darters, and some of the Charadriiformes (the skuas, gulls, terns, auks and skimmers) are classified as seabirds. The phalaropes are usually included as well, since although they are waders ("shorebirds" in North America), two of the three species (Red and Red-necked) are oceanic for nine months of the year, crossing the equator to feed pelagically.


title: Seabird

text: Loons and grebes, which nest on lakes but winter at sea, are usually categorized as water birds, not seabirds. Although there are a number of sea ducks in the family Anatidae that are truly marine in the winter, by convention they are usually excluded from the seabird grouping. Many waders (or shorebirds) and herons are also highly marine, living on the sea's edge (coast), but are also not treated as seabirds. Sea eagles and other fish-eating birds of prey are also typically excluded, however tied to marine environments they may be.


title: Seabird

text: German paleontologist Gerald Mayr defined the "core waterbird" clade Aequornithes in 2010. This lineage gives rise to the Gaviiformes, Sphenisciformes, Procellariiformes, Ciconiiformes, Suliformes and Pelecaniformes. The tropicbirds are part of a lineage—Eurypygimorphae—that is a sister group to the Aequornithes.


title: Seabird

text: Seabirds, by virtue of living in a geologically depositional environment (that is, in the sea where sediments are readily laid down), are well represented in the fossil record. They are first known to occur in the Cretaceous period, the earliest being the Hesperornithiformes, like "Hesperornis regalis", a flightless loon-like seabird that could dive in a fashion similar to grebes and loons (using its feet to move underwater) but had a beak filled with sharp teeth. Flying Cretaceous seabirds do not exceed wingspans of two meters; any sizes were taken by piscivorous pterosaurs.


title: Seabird

text: While "Hesperornis" is not thought to have left descendants, the earliest modern seabirds also occurred in the Cretaceous, with a species called "Tytthostonyx glauconiticus", which has features suggestive of Procellariiformes and Fregatidae. As a clade, the Aequornithes either became seabirds in a single transition in the Cretaceous or some lineages such as pelicans and frigatebirds adapted to sea living independently from freshwater-dwelling ancestors. In the Paleogene both pterosaurs and marine reptiles became extinct, allowing seabirds to expand ecologically. These post-extinction seas were dominated by early Procellariidae, giant penguins and two extinct families, the Pelagornithidae and the Plotopteridae (a group of large seabirds that looked like the penguins). Modern genera began their wide radiation in the Miocene, although the genus "Puffinus" (which includes today's Manx shearwater and sooty shearwater) might date back to the Oligocene. Within the Charadriiformes, the gulls and allies (Lari) became seabirds in the late Eocene, and then waders in the middle Miocene (Langhian). The highest diversity of seabirds apparently existed during the Late Miocene and the Pliocene. At the end of the latter, the oceanic food web had undergone a period of upheaval due to extinction of considerable numbers of marine species; subsequently, the spread of marine mammals seems to have prevented seabirds from reaching their erstwhile diversity.


title: Seabird

text: Seabirds have made numerous adaptations to living on and feeding in the sea. Wing morphology has been shaped by the niche an individual species or family has evolved, so that looking at a wing's shape and loading can tell a scientist about its life feeding behaviour. Longer wings and low wing loading are typical of more pelagic species, while diving species have shorter wings. Species such as the wandering albatross, which forage over huge areas of sea, have a reduced capacity for powered flight and are dependent on a type of gliding called dynamic soaring (where the wind deflected by waves provides lift) as well as slope soaring. Seabirds also almost always have webbed feet, to aid movement on the surface as well as assisting diving in some species. The Procellariiformes are unusual among birds in having a strong sense of smell, which is used to find widely distributed food in a vast ocean, and help distinguish familiar nest odours from unfamiliar ones.


title: Seabird

text: Salt glands are used by seabirds to deal with the salt they ingest by drinking and feeding (particularly on crustaceans), and to help them osmoregulate. The excretions from these glands (which are positioned in the head of the birds, emerging from the nasal cavity) are almost pure sodium chloride.


title: Seabird

text: With the exception of the cormorants and some terns, and in common with most other birds, all seabirds have waterproof plumage. However, compared to land birds, they have far more feathers protecting their bodies. This dense plumage is better able to protect the bird from getting wet, and cold is kept out by a dense layer of down feathers. The cormorants possess a layer of unique feathers that retain a smaller layer of air (compared to other diving birds) but otherwise soak up water. This allows them to swim without fighting the buoyancy that retaining air in the feathers causes, yet retain enough air to prevent the bird losing excessive heat through contact with water.


title: Seabird

text: The plumage of most seabirds is less colourful than that of land birds, restricted in the main to variations of black, white or grey. A few species sport colourful plumes (such as the tropicbirds and some penguins), but most of the colour in seabirds appears in the bills and legs. The plumage of seabirds is thought in many cases to be for camouflage, both defensive (the colour of US Navy battleships is the same as that of Antarctic prions, and in both cases it reduces visibility at sea) and aggressive (the white underside possessed by many seabirds helps hide them from prey below). The usually black wing tips help prevent wear, as they contain melanins to make them black that helps the feathers resist abrasion.


title: Seabird

text: Seabirds evolved to exploit different food resources in the world's seas and oceans, and to a great extent, their physiology and behaviour have been shaped by their diet. These evolutionary forces have often caused species in different families and even orders to evolve similar strategies and adaptations to the same problems, leading to remarkable convergent evolution, such as that between auks and penguins. There are four basic feeding strategies, or ecological guilds, for feeding at sea: surface feeding, pursuit diving, plunge-diving, and predation of higher vertebrates; within these guilds, there are multiple variations on the theme.


title: Seabird

text: Many seabirds feed on the ocean's surface, as the action of marine currents often concentrates food such as krill, forage fish, squid, or other prey items within reach of a dipped head.


title: Seabird

text: Surface feeding itself can be broken up into two different approaches, surface feeding while flying (for example as practiced by gadfly petrels, frigatebirds, and storm petrels), and surface feeding while swimming (examples of which are practiced by fulmars, gulls, many of the shearwaters and gadfly petrels). Surface feeders in flight include some of the most acrobatic of seabirds, which either snatch morsels from the water (as do frigate-birds and some terns), or "walk", pattering and hovering on the water's surface, as some of the storm-petrels do. Many of these do not ever land in the water, and some, such as the frigatebirds, have difficulty getting airborne again should they do so. Another seabird family that does not land while feeding is the skimmer, which has a unique fishing method: flying along the surface with the lower mandible in the water—this shuts automatically when the bill touches something in the water. The skimmer's bill reflects its unusual lifestyle, with the lower mandible uniquely being longer than the upper one.


title: Seabird

text: Surface feeders that swim often have unique bills as well, adapted for their specific prey. Prions have special bills with filters called lamellae to filter out plankton from mouthfuls of water, and many albatrosses and petrels have hooked bills to snatch fast-moving prey. On the other hand, most gulls are versatile and opportunistic feeders who will eat a wide variety of prey, both at sea and on land.


title: Seabird

text: Pursuit diving exerts greater pressures (both evolutionary and physiological) on seabirds, but the reward is a greater area in which to feed than is available to surface feeders. Underwater propulsion is provided by wings (as used by penguins, auks, diving petrels and some other species of petrel) or feet (as used by cormorants, grebes, loons and several types of fish-eating ducks). Wing-propelled divers are generally faster than foot-propelled divers. The use of wings or feet for diving has limited their utility in other situations: loons and grebes walk with extreme difficulty (if at all), penguins cannot fly, and auks have sacrificed flight efficiency in favour of diving. For example, the razorbill (an Atlantic auk) requires 64% more energy to fly than a petrel of equivalent size. Many shearwaters are intermediate between the two, having longer wings than typical wing-propelled divers but heavier wing loadings than the other surface-feeding procellariids, leaving them capable of diving to considerable depths while still being efficient long-distance travellers. The short-tailed shearwater is the deepest diver of the shearwaters, having been recorded diving below .


title: Seabird

text: Some albatross species are also capable of limited diving, with light-mantled sooty albatrosses holding the record at . Of all the wing-propelled pursuit divers, the most efficient in the air are the albatrosses, and they are also the poorest divers. This is the dominant guild in polar and subpolar environments, but it is energetically inefficient in warmer waters. With their poor flying ability, many wing-propelled pursuit divers are more limited in their foraging range than other guilds.


title: Seabird

text: Gannets, boobies, tropicbirds, some terns, and brown pelicans all engage in plunge diving, taking fast-moving prey by diving into the water from the flight. Plunge diving allows birds to use the energy from the momentum of the dive to combat natural buoyancy (caused by air trapped in plumage), and thus uses less energy than the dedicated pursuit divers, allowing them to utilise more widely distributed food resources, for example, in impoverished tropical seas. In general, this is the most specialised method of hunting employed by seabirds; other non-specialists (such as gulls and skuas) may employ it but do so with less skill and from lower heights. In brown pelicans the skills of plunge-diving take several years to fully develop—once mature, they can dive from 20 m (70 ft) above the water's surface, shifting the body before impact to avoid injury.


title: Seabird

text: It may be that plunge divers are restricted in their hunting grounds to clear waters that afford a view of their prey from the air. While they are the dominant guild in the tropics, the link between plunge diving and water clarity is inconclusive. Some plunge divers (as well as some surface feeders) are dependent on dolphins and tuna to push shoaling fish up towards the surface.


title: Seabird

text: This catch-all category refers to other seabird strategies that involve the next trophic level up. Kleptoparasites are seabirds that make a part of their living stealing food of other seabirds. Most famously, frigatebirds and skuas engage in this behaviour, although gulls, terns and other species will steal food opportunistically. The nocturnal nesting behaviour of some seabirds has been interpreted as arising due to pressure from this aerial piracy. Kleptoparasitism is not thought to play a significant part of the diet of any species, and is instead a supplement to food obtained by hunting. A study of great frigatebirds stealing from masked boobies estimated that the frigatebirds could at most obtain 40% of the food they needed, and on average obtained only 5%. Many species of gull will feed on seabird and sea mammal carrion when the opportunity arises, as will giant petrels. Some species of albatross also engage in scavenging: an analysis of regurgitated squid beaks has shown that many of the squid eaten are too large to have been caught alive, and include mid-water species likely to be beyond the reach of albatrosses. Some species will also feed on other seabirds; for example, gulls, skuas and pelicans will often take eggs, chicks and even small adult seabirds from nesting colonies, while the giant petrels can kill prey up to the size of small penguins and seal pups.


title: Seabird

text: Seabirds' life histories are dramatically different from those of land birds. In general, they are K-selected, live much longer (anywhere between twenty and sixty years), delay breeding for longer (for up to ten years), and invest more effort into fewer young. Most species will only have one clutch a year, unless they lose the first (with a few exceptions, like the Cassin's auklet), and many species (like the tubenoses and sulids) will only lay one egg a year.


title: Seabird

text: Care of young is protracted, extending for as long as six months, among the longest for birds. For example, once common guillemot chicks fledge, they remain with the male parent for several months at sea. The frigatebirds have the longest period of parental care of any bird except a few raptors and the southern ground hornbill, with each chick fledging after four to six months and continued assistance after that for up to fourteen months. Due to the extended period of care, breeding occurs every two years rather than annually for some species. This life-history strategy has probably evolved both in response to the challenges of living at sea (collecting widely scattered prey items), the frequency of breeding failures due to unfavourable marine conditions, and the relative lack of predation compared to that of land-living birds.


title: Seabird

text: Because of the greater investment in raising the young and because foraging for food may occur far from the nest site, in all seabird species except the phalaropes, both parents participate in caring for the young, and pairs are typically at least seasonally monogamous. Many species, such as gulls, auks and penguins, retain the same mate for several seasons, and many petrel species mate for life. Albatrosses and procellariids, which mate for life, take many years to form a pair bond before they breed, and the albatrosses have an elaborate breeding dance that is part of pair-bond formation.


title: Seabird

text: Ninety-five percent of seabirds are colonial, and seabird colonies are among the largest bird colonies in the world, providing one of Earth's great wildlife spectacles. Colonies of over a million birds have been recorded, both in the tropics (such as Kiritimati in the Pacific) and in the polar latitudes (as in Antarctica). Seabird colonies occur exclusively for the purpose of breeding; non-breeding birds will only collect together outside the breeding season in areas where prey species are densely aggregated.


title: Seabird

text: Seabird colonies are highly variable. Individual nesting sites can be widely spaced, as in an albatross colony, or densely packed as with a murre colony. In most seabird colonies, several different species will nest on the same colony, often exhibiting some niche separation. Seabirds can nest in trees (if any are available), on the ground (with or without nests), on cliffs, in burrows under the ground and in rocky crevices. Competition can be strong both within species and between species, with aggressive species such as sooty terns pushing less dominant species out of the most desirable nesting spaces. The tropical Bonin petrel nests during the winter to avoid competition with the more aggressive wedge-tailed shearwater. When the seasons overlap, the wedge-tailed shearwaters will kill young Bonin petrels in order to use their burrows.


title: Seabird

text: Many seabirds show remarkable site fidelity, returning to the same burrow, nest or site for many years, and they will defend that site from rivals with great vigour. This increases breeding success, provides a place for returning mates to reunite, and reduces the costs of prospecting for a new site. Young adults breeding for the first time usually return to their natal colony, and often nest close to where they hatched. This tendency, known as philopatry, is so strong that a study of Laysan albatrosses found that the average distance between hatching site and the site where a bird established its own territory was ; another study, this time on Cory's shearwaters nesting near Corsica, found that of nine out of 61 male chicks that returned to breed at their natal colony bred in the burrow they were raised in, and two actually bred with their own mother.


title: Seabird

text: Colonies are usually situated on islands, cliffs or headlands, which land mammals have difficulty accessing. This is thought to provide protection to seabirds, which are often very clumsy on land. Coloniality often arises in types of bird that do not defend feeding territories (such as swifts, which have a very variable prey source); this may be a reason why it arises more frequently in seabirds. There are other possible advantages: colonies may act as information centres, where seabirds returning to the sea to forage can find out where prey is by studying returning individuals of the same species. There are disadvantages to colonial life, particularly the spread of disease. Colonies also attract the attention of predators, principally other birds, and many species attend their colonies nocturnally to avoid predation. Birds from different colonies often forage in different areas to avoid competition.


title: Seabird

text: Like many birds, seabirds often migrate after the breeding season. Of these, the trip taken by the Arctic tern is the farthest of any bird, crossing the equator in order to spend the Austral summer in Antarctica. Other species also undertake trans-equatorial trips, both from the north to the south, and from south to north. The population of elegant terns, which nest off Baja California, splits after the breeding season with some birds travelling north to the Central Coast of California and some travelling as far south as Peru and Chile to feed in the Humboldt Current. The sooty shearwater undertakes an annual migration cycle that rivals that of the Arctic tern; birds that nest in New Zealand and Chile and spend the northern summer feeding in the North Pacific off Japan, Alaska and California, an annual round trip of .


title: Seabird

text: Other species also migrate shorter distances away from the breeding sites, their distribution at sea determined by the availability of food. If oceanic conditions are unsuitable, seabirds will emigrate to more productive areas, sometimes permanently if the bird is young. After fledging, juvenile birds often disperse further than adults, and to different areas, so are commonly sighted far from a species' normal range. Some species, such as the auks, do not have a concerted migration effort, but drift southwards as the winter approaches. Other species, such as some of the storm petrels, diving petrels and cormorants, never disperse at all, staying near their breeding colonies year round.


title: Seabird

text: While the definition of seabirds suggests that the birds in question spend their lives on the ocean, many seabird families have many species that spend some or even most of their lives inland away from the sea. Most strikingly, many species breed tens, hundreds or even thousands of miles inland. Some of these species still return to the ocean to feed; for example, the snow petrel, the nests of which have been found inland on the Antarctic mainland, are unlikely to find anything to eat around their breeding sites. The marbled murrelet nests inland in old growth forest, seeking huge conifers with large branches to nest on. Other species, such as the California gull, nest and feed inland on lakes, and then move to the coasts in the winter. Some cormorant, pelican, gull and tern species have individuals that never visit the sea at all, spending their lives on lakes, rivers, swamps and, in the case of some of the gulls, cities and agricultural land. In these cases it is thought that these terrestrial or freshwater birds evolved from marine ancestors. Some seabirds, principally those that nest in tundra, as skuas and phalaropes do, will migrate over land as well.


title: Seabird

text: The more marine species, such as petrels, auks and gannets, are more restricted in their habits, but are occasionally seen inland as vagrants. This most commonly happens to young inexperienced birds, but can happen in great numbers to exhausted adults after large storms, an event known as a "wreck".


title: Seabird

text: Seabirds have had a long association with both fisheries and sailors, and both have drawn benefits and disadvantages from the relationship.


title: Seabird

text: Fishermen have traditionally used seabirds as indicators of both fish shoals, underwater banks that might indicate fish stocks, and of potential landfall. In fact, the known association of seabirds with land was instrumental in allowing the Polynesians to locate tiny landmasses in the Pacific. Seabirds have provided food for fishermen away from home, as well as bait. Famously, tethered cormorants have been used to catch fish directly. Indirectly, fisheries have also benefited from guano from colonies of seabirds acting as fertilizer for the surrounding seas.


title: Seabird

text: Negative effects on fisheries are mostly restricted to raiding by birds on aquaculture, although long-lining fisheries also have to deal with bait stealing. There have been claims of prey depletion by seabirds of fishery stocks, and while there is some evidence of this, the effects of seabirds are considered smaller than that of marine mammals and predatory fish (like tuna).


title: Seabird

text: Some seabird species have benefited from fisheries, particularly from discarded fish and offal. These discards compose 30% of the food of seabirds in the North Sea, for example, and compose up to 70% of the total food of some seabird populations. This can have other impacts; for example, the spread of the northern fulmar through the United Kingdom is attributed in part to the availability of discards. Discards generally benefit surface feeders, such as gannets and petrels, to the detriment of pursuit divers like penguins and guillemots, which can get entangled in the nets.


title: Seabird

text: Fisheries also have negative effects on seabirds, and these effects, particularly on the long-lived and slow-breeding albatrosses, are a source of increasing concern to conservationists. The bycatch of seabirds entangled in nets or hooked on fishing lines has had a big impact on seabird numbers; for example, an estimated 100,000 albatrosses are hooked and drown each year on tuna lines set out by long-line fisheries. Overall, many hundreds of thousands of birds are trapped and killed each year, a source of concern for some of the rarest species (for example, only about 2,000 short-tailed albatrosses are known to still exist). Seabirds are also thought to suffer when overfishing occurs. Changes to the marine ecosystems caused by dredging, which alters the biodiversity of the seafloor, can also have a negative impact.


title: Seabird

text: The hunting of seabirds and the collecting of seabird eggs have contributed to the declines of many species, and the extinction of several, including the great auk and the spectacled cormorant. Seabirds have been hunted for food by coastal peoples throughout history—one of the earliest instances known is in southern Chile, where archaeological excavations in middens has shown hunting of albatrosses, cormorants and shearwaters from 5000 BP. This pressure has led to some species becoming extinct in many places; in particular, at least 20 species of an original 29 no longer breed on Easter Island. In the 19th century, the hunting of seabirds for fat deposits and feathers for the millinery trade reached industrial levels. Muttonbirding (harvesting shearwater chicks) developed as important industries in both New Zealand and Tasmania, and the name of one species, the providence petrel, is derived from its seemingly miraculous arrival on Norfolk Island where it provided a windfall for starving European settlers. In the Falkland Islands, hundreds of thousands of penguins were harvested for their oil each year. Seabird eggs have also long been an important source of food for sailors undertaking long sea voyages, as well as being taken when settlements grow in areas near a colony. Eggers from San Francisco took almost half a million eggs a year from the Farallon Islands in the mid-19th century, a period in the islands' history from which the seabird species are still recovering.


title: Seabird

text: Both hunting and egging continue today, although not at the levels that occurred in the past, and generally in a more controlled manner. For example, the Māori of Stewart Island/Rakiura continue to harvest the chicks of the sooty shearwater as they have done for centuries, using traditional stewardship, "kaitiakitanga", to manage the harvest, but now also work with the University of Otago in studying the populations. In Greenland, however, uncontrolled hunting is pushing many species into steep decline.


title: Seabird

text: Other human factors have led to declines and even extinctions in seabird populations and species. Of these, perhaps the most serious are introduced species. Seabirds, breeding predominantly on small isolated islands, are vulnerable to predators because they have lost many behaviours associated with defence from predators. Feral cats can take seabirds as large as albatrosses, and many introduced rodents, such as the Pacific rat, take eggs hidden in burrows. Introduced goats, cattle, rabbits and other herbivores can create problems, particularly when species need vegetation to protect or shade their young. The disturbance of breeding colonies by humans is often a problem as well—visitors, even well-meaning tourists, can flush brooding adults off a colony, leaving chicks and eggs vulnerable to predators.


title: Seabird

text: The build-up of toxins and pollutants in seabirds is also a concern. Seabirds, being apex predators, suffered from the ravages of the insecticide DDT until it was banned; DDT was implicated, for example, in embryo development problems and the skewed sex ratio of western gulls in southern California. Oil spills are also a threat to seabirds: the oil is toxic, and bird feathers become saturated by the oil, causing them to lose their waterproofing. Oil pollution in particular threatens species with restricted ranges or already depressed populations.


title: Seabird

text: Climate change mainly affect seabirds via changes to their habitat: various processes in the ocean lead to decreased availability of food and colonies are more often flooded as a consequence of sea level rise and extreme rainfall events. Heat stress from extreme temperatures is an additional threat. Some seabirds have used changing wind patterns to forage further and more efficiently.


title: Seabird

text: The threats faced by seabirds have not gone unnoticed by scientists or the conservation movement. As early as 1903, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was convinced of the need to declare Pelican Island in Florida a National Wildlife Refuge to protect the bird colonies (including the nesting brown pelicans), and in 1909 he protected the Farallon Islands. Today many important seabird colonies are given some measure of protection, from Heron Island in Australia to Triangle Island in British Columbia.


title: Seabird

text: Island restoration techniques, pioneered by New Zealand, enable the removal of exotic invaders from increasingly large islands. Feral cats have been removed from Ascension Island, Arctic foxes from many islands in the Aleutian Islands, and rats from Campbell Island. The removal of these introduced species has led to increases in numbers of species under pressure and even the return of extirpated ones. After the removal of cats from Ascension Island, seabirds began to nest there again for the first time in over a hundred years.


title: Seabird

text: Seabird mortality caused by long-line fisheries can be greatly reduced by techniques such as setting long-line bait at night, dying the bait blue, setting the bait underwater, increasing the amount of weight on lines and by using bird scarers, and their deployment is increasingly required by many national fishing fleets.


title: Seabird

text: One of the Millennium Projects in the UK was the Scottish Seabird Centre, near the important bird sanctuaries on Bass Rock, Fidra and the surrounding islands. The area is home to huge colonies of gannets, puffins, skuas and other seabirds. The centre allows visitors to watch live video from the islands as well as learn about the threats the birds face and how we can protect them, and has helped to significantly raise the profile of seabird conservation in the UK. Seabird tourism can provide income for coastal communities as well as raise the profile of seabird conservation, although it needs to be managed to ensure it does not harm the colonies and nesting birds. For example, the northern royal albatross colony at Taiaroa Head in New Zealand attracts 40,000 visitors a year.


title: Seabird

text: The plight of albatross and large seabirds, as well as other marine creatures, being taken as bycatch by long-line fisheries, has been addressed by a large number of non-governmental organizations (including BirdLife International, the American Bird Conservancy and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds). This led to the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, a legally binding treaty designed to protect these threatened species, which has been ratified by thirteen countries as of 2021 (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, France, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, South Africa, Spain, Uruguay, United Kingdom).


title: Seabird

text: Many seabirds are little studied and poorly known because they live far out at sea and breed in isolated colonies. Some seabirds, particularly the albatrosses and gulls, are more well known to humans. The albatross has been described as "the most legendary of birds", and have a variety of myths and legends associated with them. While it is widely considered unlucky to harm them, the notion that sailors believed that is a myth that derives from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's famous poem, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", in which a sailor is punished for killing an albatross by having to wear its corpse around his neck. Sailors did, however, consider it unlucky to touch a storm petrel, especially one that landed on the ship.


title: Seabird

text: Gulls are one of the most commonly seen seabirds because they frequent human-made habitats (such as cities and dumps) and often show a fearless nature. Gulls have been used as metaphors, as in "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" by Richard Bach, or to denote a closeness to the sea; in "The Lord of the Rings", they appear in the insignia of Gondor and therefore Númenor (used in the design of the films), and they call Legolas to (and across) the sea. Pelicans have long been associated with mercy and altruism because of an early Christian myth that they split open their breast to feed their starving chicks.


title: Murder of Breck Bednar

text: Breck Bednar (17 March 1999 – 17 February 2014) was an English teenager of American descent from Caterham, Surrey, who was murdered by 18-year-old Lewis Daynes on 17 February 2014, at Daynes' flat in Grays, Essex. Bednar knew Daynes only through online gaming, and had never met him in person until he visited Daynes' flat on the day of the murder. Daynes pled guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 25 years.


title: Murder of Breck Bednar

text: Bednar was born on 17 March 1999. He was a student at St Bede's School in Redhill in Surrey, and a member of the Air Training Corps 135 Squadron also in Redhill. He attended St John the Evangelist church in Caterham. His mother described him as relaxed and warm-hearted, with many friends with whom he played games online after school, and passionate about computing. He enjoyed creative play growing up.


title: Murder of Breck Bednar

text: Bednar's parents, Barry Bednar and Lorin LaFave, were born in the United States. The family moved to England from the United States three years before Breck's birth. Barry Bednar, 49, is an oil trader and shipping consultant, described by some sources as a millionaire. Lorin LaFave, 48, is a teaching assistant. In 2014, the "Evening Standard" reported that the family lived with their three children – Breck's younger siblings – in a family home in the affluent town of Caterham.


title: Murder of Breck Bednar

text: Bednar's mother, Lorin LaFave, was reported to have "limited his access to electronics, installed parental controls and forbade him from using the same server as a boy she had grown suspicious of." She recalled, "His personality was changing and his ideology was changing and he was starting to refuse to attend church with us. I felt like it was because of the negative influence of this person."


title: Murder of Breck Bednar

text: On 17 December 2013, LaFave called Surrey Police expressing concerns about online grooming; she said she warned police that her son was in danger. Nonetheless, it was reported, "The teenagers had been playing games online for several months, despite LaFave's efforts to put an end to their relationship."


title: Murder of Breck Bednar

text: On 17 February 2014, Bednar travelled by taxi to Daynes' flat. Later that day, his father, with whom he had been expected to spend the weekend, sent a text message to tell LaFave that Breck had not arrived. A few hours later his siblings, 12-year-old triplets, began to receive messages that their brother had been murdered, describing photos of Bednar that had been posted on social media, which were soon confirmed by the police.


title: Murder of Breck Bednar

text: The photos, showing Bednar's body, were posted to other members of the six-person online gaming group. Word spread, leading to a friend's text message to one of the triplets, "Is it true about your brother? If it's true, it's so sad." At the same time, police were telling Bednar's parents the news that their son had been murdered.


title: Murder of Breck Bednar

text: Police and paramedics were called to the flat where Bednar was found with stab wounds to his neck, but were unable to prevent him from dying at the scene.