Canadian Netflix users get access to 'My List' feature

Canadian Netflix users are finally getting access to a feature many have been requesting since the video streaming service first launched here in 2010: the ability to build a list of movies and TV shows to watch later.

Now the question is, will they use it?

On Wednesday, Netflix began rolling out My List, which replaces a similar feature called Instant Queue that was previously available in the U.S.

A select number of users in Canada, the U.S. and Netflix's other markets had been testing My List for nearly two years. The long testing period was meant to refine My List as much as possible, given that users liked the idea of Instant Queue but didn't really use it very much, according to Netflix's director of product innovation Michael Spiegelman.

Users would populate their queues with tons of titles but didn't get around to watching most of them.

"What happened is a lot of the titles on the list would become quite stale and you'd end up looking at the same things again and again at the front of the list and as a result, it wasn't that useful to people and they'd tend to automatically scan by and start looking for other things," Spiegelman said.

"They wouldn't go to it first as a place to play titles, they wouldn't think of it as kind of their go-to location to find something to watch."

So Netflix took its time to ensure that My List was actually being used by the testers before releasing it widely. Spiegelman said they wanted to see how features are used over the long term.

"We would launch it, test it, see what happens, be able to make adjustments, retest those, see what happens, and then we're testing and refining things on the algorithm level — which feeds the personalization — as well as the interface level," he said.

Netflix thinks My List — which can store up to 500 films and TV titles for later viewing — will be more popular than Instant Queue because it now sorts and highlights bookmarked titles based on a user's viewing history and the service's recommendation engine.

"We sort the list using that personalization technology and promote the titles to the top of the list that we think will be most relevant to you," Spiegelman said.

"That kind of adds a lot more dynamism and freshness and personalization to the list than we had before."

On Netflix.com, My List will also highlight titles that are set to expire soon from the streaming service (that feature may be available on Netflix's other platforms eventually).

While My List is now available for some users, Netflix says it may take a couple of weeks until the feature is fully rolled out.

22.12 | 0 komentar | Read More

Fukushima plant likely leaking radioactive water into sea for weeks

Tokyo Electric Power Co. acknowledged on Wednesday a possible leak of highly radioactive water from the earthquake-ravaged Fukishima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the sea.

The operator of the plant said about 300,000 litres of contaminated water has leaked from one of hundreds of steel tanks around the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi plant.

The leak, the fifth since last year involving tanks of the same design, also raised concerns that this could be the beginning of a new disaster — contaminated water leaking from storage tanks one after another.

TEPCO said the leaked water is believed to have mostly seeped into the ground after escaping from the barrier around the tank.

It initially said the leak did not pose an immediate threat to the sea because of its distance — about 500 metres — from the coastline.

The company also said the tank may have been leaking slowly for weeks through a possible flaw on its bottom. That could create extensive soil contamination.

The Japanese nuclear watchdog said on Wednesday it is taking the leakage seriously, and proposed raising the rating to describe it from "an anomaly" to a "serious incident."

"That's what we fear the most. We must remain alert. We should assume that what has happened once could happen again, and prepare for more," watchdog chairman Shunichi Tanaka told a news conference. "We are at a situation where there is no time to waste."

Leak signs overlooked

The watchdog proposed at a weekly meeting to raise the rating of the leak to level three from an earlier level one on an International Nuclear and Radiological event scale of eight. The watchdog, however, plans to consult with the UN nuclear regulatory agency over whether it is appropriate to use the INES evaluation scale on the already wrecked Fukushima plant.

The watchdog urged TEPCO to step up monitoring for leaks and take precautionary measures.

During the meeting, officials also revealed that plant workers apparently have overlooked several signs of leaks, suggesting that their twice-daily patrols were largely just a walk. They have not monitored water levels inside tanks, obviously missed a puddle forming at the bottom of the tank earlier, and kept open a valve on the anti-leakage barrier around the tanks.

Four other tanks of the same design have had similar leaks since last year. The incidents have shaken confidence in the reliability of hundreds of tanks that are crucial for storing water that has been funnelled into the broken reactors to keep melted radioactive fuel cool.

The plant suffered multiple meltdowns following a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 — a level 7 "major accident," the highest on the INES rating and the worst since Chornobyl in 1986.

About 350 of some 1,000 steel tanks built across the plant complex containing nearly 300 million litres of partially treated contaminated water are less-durable ones with rubber seams.

TEPCO says the tanks that have leaked use rubber seams that were intended to last about five years. Ono said TEPCO plans to build additional tanks with welded seams that are more watertight, but will still have to rely on ones with rubber seams.

Cleanup expected to take decades

Figuring out what to do with the radioactive water is among the most pressing issues affecting the cleanup process, which is expected to take decades.

"The growing contaminated water has been one of our biggest concerns since the March 11 accident," said Zengo Aizawa, TEPCO's executive vice president. "The contaminated water remains a problem that could lead to a crisis."

The leaked water's radiation level, measured about 50 centimetres above the puddle, was about 100 millisieverts per hour — the maximum cumulative exposure allowed for plant workers over five years, Ono said.

Contaminated water that TEPCO has been unable to contain continues to enter the Pacific Ocean at a rate of hundreds of tonnes per day. Much of that is ground water that has mixed with untreated radioactive water at the plant.

Workers were pumping out the radioactive puddle on the plant and the remaining water in the tank and will transfer it to other containers. By Tuesday afternoon they had captured only about 4,000 litres, Ono said.

22.12 | 0 komentar | Read More

NASA space telescope rebooted as asteroid hunter

NASA will reactivate a mothballed infrared space telescope for a three-year mission to search for potentially dangerous asteroids on a collision course with Earth, officials said on Wednesday.

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, telescope also will hunt for targets for a future mission to send a robotic spacecraft to rendezvous with a small asteroid and relocate all or part of it into a high orbit around the moon.

Astronauts would then visit the relocated asteroid during a test flight of NASA's deep-space Orion capsule, scheduled for launch around 2021. Orion and a heavy-lift rocket called the Space Launch System are slated for an unmanned debut test flight in 2017.

NASA is spending about $3 billion a year for Orion and Space Launch System development.

All-sky map

Launched in December 2009, the WISE telescope spent 13 months scouting for telltale infrared signs of asteroids, stars, distant galaxies and other celestial objects, especially those too dim to radiate in visible light.

As part of its all-sky mapping mission, WISE observed more than 34,000 asteroids in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and another 135 asteroids in orbits that come close to Earth.

Overall, scientists cataloged more than 560 million objects with WISE.

Most of the telescope's instruments were turned off when its primary mission was completed in February 2011.

NASA plans to bring WISE out of hibernation next month and operate it for another three years, at a cost of about $5 million per year, said NASA spokesman Dwayne Brown.

"After a quick checkout, we're going to hit the ground running," WISE astronomer Amy Mainzer, with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.

NASA already has found about 95 percent of the near-Earth asteroids that are 1 kilometre or larger in diameter.

15-year asteroid project

The agency is about halfway through a 15-year effort to find 90 percent of all near-Earth objects that are as small as about 140 meters in diameter.

The search took on a note of urgency after a small asteroid blasted through the skies above Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February 2013 and exploded with 20- to 30 times the force of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. More than 1,500 people were injured by flying glass and debris.

Later that same day, a much larger but unrelated asteroid soared closer to Earth than the networks of communication satellites that ring the planet.

The events prompted Congressional hearings and new calls for NASA and other agencies to step up their asteroid detection initiatives.

The Obama administration proposes to double NASA's $20 million Near-Earth Objects detection programs for the 2014 fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

About 66 million years ago, an object 10 kilometres in diameter smashed into what is now the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, leading to the demise of the dinosaurs, as well as most plant and animal life on Earth.

22.12 | 0 komentar | Read More

Canadian Netflix users get access to 'My List' feature

Canadian Netflix users are finally getting access to a feature many have been requesting since the video streaming service first launched here in 2010: the ability to build a list of movies and TV shows to watch later.

Now the question is, will they use it?

On Wednesday, Netflix began rolling out My List, which replaces a similar feature called Instant Queue that was previously available in the U.S.

A select number of users in Canada, the U.S. and Netflix's other markets had been testing My List for nearly two years. The long testing period was meant to refine My List as much as possible, given that users liked the idea of Instant Queue but didn't really use it very much, according to Netflix's director of product innovation Michael Spiegelman.

Users would populate their queues with tons of titles but didn't get around to watching most of them.

"What happened is a lot of the titles on the list would become quite stale and you'd end up looking at the same things again and again at the front of the list and as a result, it wasn't that useful to people and they'd tend to automatically scan by and start looking for other things," Spiegelman said.

"They wouldn't go to it first as a place to play titles, they wouldn't think of it as kind of their go-to location to find something to watch."

So Netflix took its time to ensure that My List was actually being used by the testers before releasing it widely. Spiegelman said they wanted to see how features are used over the long term.

"We would launch it, test it, see what happens, be able to make adjustments, retest those, see what happens, and then we're testing and refining things on the algorithm level — which feeds the personalization — as well as the interface level," he said.

Netflix thinks My List — which can store up to 500 films and TV titles for later viewing — will be more popular than Instant Queue because it now sorts and highlights bookmarked titles based on a user's viewing history and the service's recommendation engine.

"We sort the list using that personalization technology and promote the titles to the top of the list that we think will be most relevant to you," Spiegelman said.

"That kind of adds a lot more dynamism and freshness and personalization to the list than we had before."

On Netflix.com, My List will also highlight titles that are set to expire soon from the streaming service (that feature may be available on Netflix's other platforms eventually).

While My List is now available for some users, Netflix says it may take a couple of weeks until the feature is fully rolled out.

22.12 | 0 komentar | Read More

Fukushima plant likely leaking radioactive water into sea for weeks

Tokyo Electric Power Co. acknowledged on Wednesday a possible leak of highly radioactive water from the earthquake-ravaged Fukishima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the sea.

The operator of the plant said about 300,000 litres of contaminated water has leaked from one of hundreds of steel tanks around the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi plant.

The leak, the fifth since last year involving tanks of the same design, also raised concerns that this could be the beginning of a new disaster — contaminated water leaking from storage tanks one after another.

TEPCO said the leaked water is believed to have mostly seeped into the ground after escaping from the barrier around the tank.

It initially said the leak did not pose an immediate threat to the sea because of its distance — about 500 metres — from the coastline.

The company also said the tank may have been leaking slowly for weeks through a possible flaw on its bottom. That could create extensive soil contamination.

The Japanese nuclear watchdog said on Wednesday it is taking the leakage seriously, and proposed raising the rating to describe it from "an anomaly" to a "serious incident."

"That's what we fear the most. We must remain alert. We should assume that what has happened once could happen again, and prepare for more," watchdog chairman Shunichi Tanaka told a news conference. "We are at a situation where there is no time to waste."

Leak signs overlooked

The watchdog proposed at a weekly meeting to raise the rating of the leak to level three from an earlier level one on an International Nuclear and Radiological event scale of eight. The watchdog, however, plans to consult with the UN nuclear regulatory agency over whether it is appropriate to use the INES evaluation scale on the already wrecked Fukushima plant.

The watchdog urged TEPCO to step up monitoring for leaks and take precautionary measures.

During the meeting, officials also revealed that plant workers apparently have overlooked several signs of leaks, suggesting that their twice-daily patrols were largely just a walk. They have not monitored water levels inside tanks, obviously missed a puddle forming at the bottom of the tank earlier, and kept open a valve on the anti-leakage barrier around the tanks.

Four other tanks of the same design have had similar leaks since last year. The incidents have shaken confidence in the reliability of hundreds of tanks that are crucial for storing water that has been funnelled into the broken reactors to keep melted radioactive fuel cool.

The plant suffered multiple meltdowns following a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 — a level 7 "major accident," the highest on the INES rating and the worst since Chornobyl in 1986.

About 350 of some 1,000 steel tanks built across the plant complex containing nearly 300 million litres of partially treated contaminated water are less-durable ones with rubber seams.

TEPCO says the tanks that have leaked use rubber seams that were intended to last about five years. Ono said TEPCO plans to build additional tanks with welded seams that are more watertight, but will still have to rely on ones with rubber seams.

Cleanup expected to take decades

Figuring out what to do with the radioactive water is among the most pressing issues affecting the cleanup process, which is expected to take decades.

"The growing contaminated water has been one of our biggest concerns since the March 11 accident," said Zengo Aizawa, TEPCO's executive vice president. "The contaminated water remains a problem that could lead to a crisis."

The leaked water's radiation level, measured about 50 centimetres above the puddle, was about 100 millisieverts per hour — the maximum cumulative exposure allowed for plant workers over five years, Ono said.

Contaminated water that TEPCO has been unable to contain continues to enter the Pacific Ocean at a rate of hundreds of tonnes per day. Much of that is ground water that has mixed with untreated radioactive water at the plant.

Workers were pumping out the radioactive puddle on the plant and the remaining water in the tank and will transfer it to other containers. By Tuesday afternoon they had captured only about 4,000 litres, Ono said.

22.12 | 0 komentar | Read More

NASA space telescope rebooted as asteroid hunter

NASA will reactivate a mothballed infrared space telescope for a three-year mission to search for potentially dangerous asteroids on a collision course with Earth, officials said on Wednesday.

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, telescope also will hunt for targets for a future mission to send a robotic spacecraft to rendezvous with a small asteroid and relocate all or part of it into a high orbit around the moon.

Astronauts would then visit the relocated asteroid during a test flight of NASA's deep-space Orion capsule, scheduled for launch around 2021. Orion and a heavy-lift rocket called the Space Launch System are slated for an unmanned debut test flight in 2017.

NASA is spending about $3 billion a year for Orion and Space Launch System development.

All-sky map

Launched in December 2009, the WISE telescope spent 13 months scouting for telltale infrared signs of asteroids, stars, distant galaxies and other celestial objects, especially those too dim to radiate in visible light.

As part of its all-sky mapping mission, WISE observed more than 34,000 asteroids in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and another 135 asteroids in orbits that come close to Earth.

Overall, scientists cataloged more than 560 million objects with WISE.

Most of the telescope's instruments were turned off when its primary mission was completed in February 2011.

NASA plans to bring WISE out of hibernation next month and operate it for another three years, at a cost of about $5 million per year, said NASA spokesman Dwayne Brown.

"After a quick checkout, we're going to hit the ground running," WISE astronomer Amy Mainzer, with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.

NASA already has found about 95 percent of the near-Earth asteroids that are 1 kilometre or larger in diameter.

15-year asteroid project

The agency is about halfway through a 15-year effort to find 90 percent of all near-Earth objects that are as small as about 140 meters in diameter.

The search took on a note of urgency after a small asteroid blasted through the skies above Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February 2013 and exploded with 20- to 30 times the force of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. More than 1,500 people were injured by flying glass and debris.

Later that same day, a much larger but unrelated asteroid soared closer to Earth than the networks of communication satellites that ring the planet.

The events prompted Congressional hearings and new calls for NASA and other agencies to step up their asteroid detection initiatives.

The Obama administration proposes to double NASA's $20 million Near-Earth Objects detection programs for the 2014 fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

About 66 million years ago, an object 10 kilometres in diameter smashed into what is now the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, leading to the demise of the dinosaurs, as well as most plant and animal life on Earth.

22.12 | 0 komentar | Read More

Japan nuclear watchdog 'extremely concerned' over water leak

The Japanese nuclear watchdog on Wednesday said they are taking the leakage of highly radioactive water at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant seriously, and proposed raising the rating to describe it from "an anomaly" to a "serious incident."

The operator of the plant said about 300,000 litres of contaminated water has leaked from one of hundreds of steel tanks around the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi plant. Tokyo Electric Power Co. hasn't figured out how or where the water leaked, but suspects it did so through a seam on the tank.

The leak, the fifth since last year involving tanks of the same design, also raised concerns that this could be the beginning a new disaster — contaminated water leaking from storage tanks one after another.

"That's what we fear the most. We must remain alert. We should assume that what has happened once could happen again, and prepare for more," watchdog chairman Shunichi Tanaka told a news conference. "We are at a situation where there is no time to waste."

The watchdog proposed at a weekly meeting Wednesday to raise the rating of the leak to level three from an earlier level one on an International Nuclear and Radiological event scale of eight. The watchdog, however, plans to consult with the UN nuclear regulatory agency over whether it is appropriate to use the INES evaluation scale on the already wrecked Fukushima plant.

The watchdog urged TEPCO to step up monitoring for leaks and take precautionary measures.

During the meeting, officials also revealed that plant workers apparently have overlooked several signs of leaks, suggesting that their twice-daily patrols were largely just a walk. They have not monitored water levels inside tanks, obviously missed a puddle forming at the bottom of the tank earlier, and kept open a valve on the anti-leakage barrier around the tanks.

Tank about 500 metres from sea

TEPCO spokesman Masayuki Ono said the leaked water seeped into the ground after largely escaping piles of sandbags added to a concrete barrier around the tank. He said that because the tank is about 500 metres from the coastline, the leak does not pose an immediate threat to the sea.

But watchdog officials have cautioned that water could reach the sea via a drain gutter, urging the plant to step up water sampling.

Four other tanks of the same design have had similar leaks since last year. The incidents have shaken confidence in the reliability of hundreds of tanks that are crucial for storing water that has been funneled into the broken reactors to keep melted radioactive fuel cool.

The plant suffered multiple meltdowns following a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 — a level 7 "major accident," the highest on the INES rating and the worst since Chornobyl in 1986.

About 350 of some 1,000 steel tanks built across the plant complex containing nearly 300 million litres of partially treated contaminated water are less-durable ones with rubber seams.

TEPCO says the tanks that have leaked use rubber seams that were intended to last about five years. Ono said TEPCO plans to build additional tanks with welded seams that are more watertight, but will still have to rely on ones with rubber seams.

Cleanup expected to take decades

Figuring out what to do with the radioactive water is among the most pressing issues affecting the cleanup process, which is expected to take decades.

"The growing contaminated water has been one of our biggest concerns since the March 11 accident," said Zengo Aizawa, TEPCO's executive vice president. "The contaminated water remains a problem that could lead to a crisis."

The leaked water's radiation level, measured about 50 centimetres above the puddle, was about 100 millisieverts per hour — the maximum cumulative exposure allowed for plant workers over five years, Ono said.

Contaminated water that TEPCO has been unable to contain continues to enter the Pacific Ocean at a rate of hundreds of tonnes per day. Much of that is ground water that has mixed with untreated radioactive water at the plant.

Workers were pumping out the radioactive puddle on the plant and the remaining water in the tank and will transfer it to other containers. By Tuesday afternoon they had captured only about 4,000 litres, Ono said.

22.11 | 0 komentar | Read More

NHL 14 video game embraces fighting

At a time when some are shying away from fighting in hockey, EA Sports is embracing the rough stuff.

NHL 14, the latest version of the hit video game franchise developed by EA Canada in Vancouver, features an "enforcer engine" that the studio promises will produce "the most authentic and electrifying fighting experience" in the history of the title.

Should fighting be allowed in NHL-themed video games?

"We're really excited about the way it turned out," NHL 14 producer Sean Ramjagsingh said. "For us this year it was all about capturing the big hits, real fights and unbelievable speed and skill of hockey."

In recent years, EA developers had been looking to get the right balance of speed, skill and aggression.

"When I look back at NHL 13,I feel like we fell short a little bit on the aggression piece of it," said Ramjagsingh.

That meant upping the ante on big hits and fights.

"There is a code in hockey and when it's broken, you have to respond," EA notes in a press release.

Critics may decry the improved fighting component. Fans will celebrate that the game, already a marvel in recreating the one-ice product, is even more authentic. Take a run at Sidney Crosby and there will be Penguins payback.

"For us, it's a part of the sport, it's an authentic part of the sport," said Ramjagsingh. "We work very closely with our partners at the NHL and NHLPA, make sure that they understand we're telling the story of their sport. That's why the speed and skill part is just as important as the aggression piece.

"The game is about the Datsyuks [Detroit star forward Pavel Datsyuk] and showing off their skill and their speed, as well as the aggression piece. And why the aggression piece is so important to allowing the skill piece to happen ... Fighting is a little bit controversial to some people but for hockey fans out there, and casual hockey fans, it's an important part of the sport."

Staged fights stay

The previous fighting engine, used from NHL 10 through 13, was seen as dated by gamers, according to Ramjagsingh.

"It really felt like a one-off mini-game, It took you out of the experience. It didn't really capture the essence of why fights happen in hockey and why it's such an authentic part of the sport."

In the old engine, you essentially triggered a fighting by mashing a button. The screen then turned into a first-person camera view and the other players on the ice, other than your assailant, disappeared.

In NHL 14, the goal was to show "why fighting is important to hockey."

So the fighting is more organic. Lay out one of your opponent's star players during the game and there are consequences. It's the first time the game's CPU has ever initiated fights based on events during the game.

You can still try to provoke a staged fight, by hitting a button. So if your tough guy lines up against their enforcer at a faceoff, you can tap him on the shinpads and he has the option to accept or decline the challenge.

It's all shown via a third-person camera view so you can see the other players on the ice pair up or watch the fight.

If the tussle is on, the two players will step back, drop the gloves, adjust elbow pads and then go at it. You can initiate a series of moves — from throwing a punch to dodging one — before entering into a clinch. And once the two players tie up, there is a whole series of new moves available.

To do that, the game developers turned to their brethren from the Fight Night boxing franchise — whose technology has already leaked into the pending EA Sports UFC game — to overhaul the fighting mechanics.

"The less time that we spend worrying about tech, what tech to use and the implementation of the tech, the more time it allows for us to innovate on the other parts of the game and other parts of mechanics for fighting specifically," said Ramjagsingh.

The system is so exacting that a big player like hulking Bruins defenceman Zdeno Chara can use his size to ragdoll opponents in a fight.

Punches on offer include overhands, uppercuts and counter-punches.

"NHL fighters, NHL tough guys, they talk about waiting for the guy to thrown a punch, looking to dodge the punch and then pull that guy when he's off-balance," said Ramjagsingh. "So we have that in there too."

And for the first time, players as disparate as the six-foot-nine Chara and Daniel Briere, listed at 5-10, can fight "and actually have the punches connect."

Previously the game "kind of squished everyone down to the same height."

You will also see "real-time damage" in a fight. Connect and your opponent's face will reflect damage suffered during a tussle as he skates to the penalty box.

Tough guys consulted

The development teams has talked to a variety of NHL tough guys over the years, including Zack Stortini, Darcy Hordichuk and most recently George Parros.

Goalies can — and will — fight in the game.

"Again it's part of hockey. It happens every once in a while," said Ramjagsingh.

Hit the goalie and he has the option of whether to drop his gloves, although it will likely only happen if he has a history of a shorter fuse.

"More often than not though, just like in real hockey, if you touch the goalie, you can expect a tough guy to come over and take the fight for him," Ramjagsingh said.

There are also modes where every player in the game is user-controlled. If you have two user-controlled goalies, if a fight breaks out, they can skate to centre ice and go at it.

With the NHL having grandfathered in the use of visors, Ramjagsingh says future versions of the game will reflect any changes in rules for removing visors to fight.

No matter how many changes are made, not everyone is happy with the final product, Ramjagsingh concedes.

"Every player out there that I talk to wants to be a little bit faster, a little bit stronger and a little bit tougher."

Other additions to the game include an NHL 94 anniversary mode, celebrating the popular version of 20 years ago. NHL 14 also improves the way gamers can deke opponents and gives defencemen more speed, ability and agility.

The new version, which features veteran New Jersey netminder Martin Brodeur on the cover, also makes goalies play more realistically according to their preferred stance.

NHL 14 comes out Sept. 10 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

22.11 | 0 komentar | Read More

Rise in shark attacks around Hawaii spark study

Hawaii officials plan to spend the next two years studying tiger shark movements around Maui amid what they call an unprecedented spike in overall shark attacks since the start of 2012.

Chairman William Aila of the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources said that Hawaii waters are safe if swimmers are cautious. However, he said prevailing opinion is that there are more sharks and more people in Hawaiian waters, creating more chances for bites.

"We know that the impression is that there is an inordinate amount of shark attacks that have happened recently," Aila said. "We just want to make it clear that within the history of the state of Hawaii, the number of shark attacks have gone up, and they've gone down, and there have been some years we've actually had no shark attacks.

There have been eight attacks statewide this year and 10 in 2012. Hawaii usually sees only three to four attacks each year, and saw one or zero attacks in 11 years between 1980 and 2012, according to state data.

A 20-year-old German tourist lost her arm in an attack last week as she snorkeled off the coast of Maui. Four days later, a 16-year-old surfer suffered injuries to both legs after a shark bite in waters off the Big Island. There have been four attacks in the last month, though it's not clear what type of shark was involved in each incident.

During a news conference, Aila said Hawaii doesn't know as much as it should about shark movements in waters around Maui and the Big Island. That's why it's planning a two-year study to tag and track tiger sharks, which will begin next month.

Dr. Carl Meyer, a marine biologist with the University of Hawaii, said the study will focus on tiger sharks because they move around frequently and have been known to travel all around the islands' waters.

Meyer, who is leading the study, said tiger sharks can travel up to 160km in a day, don't stay in one area very long and can swim in very shallow waters if they choose to.

Aila said the study will help determine if signs, closures or other measures are needed to minimize encounters between sharks and humans.

"We have to have empirical data" before taking action, Aila said.

22.11 | 0 komentar | Read More

AECL, Nordion settle medical isotopes fight

Nordion Inc. will drop about $244 million of claims against Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. as part of its settlement of a years-long legal battle over medical isotopes produced by AECL and distributed around the world by Nordion.

The settlement includes a new supply agreement that will run until October 2016.

In addition, AECL will pay $15 million in cash to Nordion and drop about $127 million in claims it had sought — $47 million for arbitration costs and $80 million for damages.

Nordion says the agreement will provide clarity for its operations.

22.11 | 0 komentar | Read More