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Cloud hack on celebrities
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Upfront
Reef dump scrapped NO SLUDGE for this reef. The planned dumping of 5 million tonnes of mud in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park has been cancelled. But scientists say they have little confidence that any new plan will be properly examined. The mud is due to be dredged up as part of the expansion of a port at Abbot Point in north-east Australia to support new coal mines. The sediment dump was approved by environment minister Greg Hunt and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. But following an outcry, the consortium behind the expansion has reportedly abandoned the offshore plan. A spokesperson for Hunt told New Scientist that they are expecting new proposals to dispose of the dredged sediment on land. Avoiding offshore dumping will be
an improvement, says Selina Ward of the University of Queensland, who spearheaded a petition of scientists against the plans. “But the vital question is where they dump it,” she says. It would be a disaster if it were dumped on crucial local wetlands. It’s not clear where they will dump the soil on land, says Jon Brodie of James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland. The port is surrounded by a mountain, wetlands and a beach, so there is nowhere to stockpile the soil before it is moved. Brodie says he has no confidence in the approval process. “They’ll come up with some other option that hasn’t been analysed properly,” he says. The best option for the reef, Brodie says, is a long jetty that ships can dock to, removing the need for dredging.
–Not to be dumped on–
Island brain drain TO SOME, it will smack of deserting a sinking ship. Young people are leaving their island homes in the Pacific and Caribbean in search of jobs and higher education. Without youthful citizens, small islands will struggle to cope with the effects of rising sea levels. So says a report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). “The lack of opportunity pushes the best and brightest to look elsewhere,” says the report. The exodus from islands
“Islands may struggle to manage the impacts of storms, hurricanes and tidal surges” including Samoa, Granada, Antigua and Dominica accounts for half the resident population, sometimes even exceeding it. Those left behind are mostly older people and children. “There’s a lot of migration away from small island, developing states, creating a brain drain,” says Melissa Gorelick, who is a UNEP 4 | NewScientist | 6 September 2014
information officer. The impact of the exodus was on the agenda this week in Apia, Samoa, where delegates from dozens of Pacific and Caribbean islands met at the Small Island Developing States conference to discuss the effects of climate change on small islands. Denied the energy and ingenuity of young people to help mitigate climate change, individual islands could struggle logistically to manage the impacts of storms, hurricanes and tidal surges. “It’s something of an ongoing concern,” says Ria Voorhaar of Climate Action Network International in Beirut, Lebanon. She says that incentive schemes to attract young doctors, researchers and teachers back to rural regions in Australia have worked well, so similar schemes might work on the islands. Delegates at the meeting also set up a new consortium, called the Pacific Ocean Alliance, to provide the island states with a united front in their efforts to persuade bigger countries to do more in the fight against global warming.
Welcome rust WATCH out Himalayan balsam, your days may be numbered. Introduced into the UK as a garden plant in 1839, Himalayan balsam (Impatiens glandulifera) outcompetes native flora. About one-eighth of all river banks in England and Wales are covered by the plant, and its shallow roots do little to prevent erosion. But the weed’s expansive UK territory could soon shrink, thanks to a fungus taken from its homeland. Scientists from UK-
based inter-governmental group CABI last week began releasing a type of rust fungus that they hope will be the plant’s downfall. The rust was tested against 74 plant species to avoid collateral damage, says Robert Tanner of CABI, including some of the UK’s native, ornamental and economically important plants. Fungal biological-control agents have been used globally before, but this is the first time in Europe that a fungus has been brought from an invasive weed’s homeland to bring it under control.
Cloud hack on celebrities HOW safe is the cloud? The release of private photographs of 101 female celebrities, including Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence (right), has raised the question. But the breach was probably due to poor password security than a flaw in the cloud itself. The intimate photos were posted by a hacker on 4Chan, an anonymous online forum, on 1 September. They appear to have been stolen from the users’ Apple iCloud backup accounts. The FBI and Apple are
now investigating the breach. It looks like the hackers found a way of cracking each celebrity’s password, says Jay Abbott of Advanced Security Consulting in Peterborough, UK. To keep iCloud data safe, he says it is vital to use complex, long and frequently changed passwords – and to strengthen those with two-factor authentication, in which users are sent a random code via SMS to enter in addition to a password.
Upfront
Reef dump scrapped NO SLUDGE for this reef. The planned dumping of 5 million tonnes of mud in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park has been cancelled. But scientists say they have little confidence that any new plan will be properly examined. The mud is due to be dredged up as part of the expansion of a port at Abbot Point in north-east Australia to support new coal mines. The sediment dump was approved by environment minister Greg Hunt and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. But following an outcry, the consortium behind the expansion has reportedly abandoned the offshore plan. A spokesperson for Hunt told New Scientist that they are expecting new proposals to dispose of the dredged sediment on land. Avoiding offshore dumping will be
an improvement, says Selina Ward of the University of Queensland, who spearheaded a petition of scientists against the plans. “But the vital question is where they dump it,” she says. It would be a disaster if it were dumped on crucial local wetlands. It’s not clear where they will dump the soil on land, says Jon Brodie of James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland. The port is surrounded by a mountain, wetlands and a beach, so there is nowhere to stockpile the soil before it is moved. Brodie says he has no confidence in the approval process. “They’ll come up with some other option that hasn’t been analysed properly,” he says. The best option for the reef, Brodie says, is a long jetty that ships can dock to, removing the need for dredging.
–Not to be dumped on–
Island brain drain TO SOME, it will smack of deserting a sinking ship. Young people are leaving their island homes in the Pacific and Caribbean in search of jobs and higher education. Without youthful citizens, small islands will struggle to cope with the effects of rising sea levels. So says a report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). “The lack of opportunity pushes the best and brightest to look elsewhere,” says the report. The exodus from islands
“Islands may struggle to manage the impacts of storms, hurricanes and tidal surges” including Samoa, Granada, Antigua and Dominica accounts for half the resident population, sometimes even exceeding it. Those left behind are mostly older people and children. “There’s a lot of migration away from small island, developing states, creating a brain drain,” says Melissa Gorelick, who is a UNEP 4 | NewScientist | 6 September 2014
information officer. The impact of the exodus was on the agenda this week in Apia, Samoa, where delegates from dozens of Pacific and Caribbean islands met at the Small Island Developing States conference to discuss the effects of climate change on small islands. Denied the energy and ingenuity of young people to help mitigate climate change, individual islands could struggle logistically to manage the impacts of storms, hurricanes and tidal surges. “It’s something of an ongoing concern,” says Ria Voorhaar of Climate Action Network International in Beirut, Lebanon. She says that incentive schemes to attract young doctors, researchers and teachers back to rural regions in Australia have worked well, so similar schemes might work on the islands. Delegates at the meeting also set up a new consortium, called the Pacific Ocean Alliance, to provide the island states with a united front in their efforts to persuade bigger countries to do more in the fight against global warming.
Welcome rust WATCH out Himalayan balsam, your days may be numbered. Introduced into the UK as a garden plant in 1839, Himalayan balsam (Impatiens glandulifera) outcompetes native flora. About one-eighth of all river banks in England and Wales are covered by the plant, and its shallow roots do little to prevent erosion. But the weed’s expansive UK territory could soon shrink, thanks to a fungus taken from its homeland. Scientists from UK-
based inter-governmental group CABI last week began releasing a type of rust fungus that they hope will be the plant’s downfall. The rust was tested against 74 plant species to avoid collateral damage, says Robert Tanner of CABI, including some of the UK’s native, ornamental and economically important plants. Fungal biological-control agents have been used globally before, but this is the first time in Europe that a fungus has been brought from an invasive weed’s homeland to bring it under control.
Cloud hack on celebrities HOW safe is the cloud? The release of private photographs of 101 female celebrities, including Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence (right), has raised the question. But the breach was probably due to poor password security than a flaw in the cloud itself. The intimate photos were posted by a hacker on 4Chan, an anonymous online forum, on 1 September. They appear to have been stolen from the users’ Apple iCloud backup accounts. The FBI and Apple are
now investigating the breach. It looks like the hackers found a way of cracking each celebrity’s password, says Jay Abbott of Advanced Security Consulting in Peterborough, UK. To keep iCloud data safe, he says it is vital to use complex, long and frequently changed passwords – and to strengthen those with two-factor authentication, in which users are sent a random code via SMS to enter in addition to a password.