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Social Networking Accounts for 1 of Every 5 Minutes Spent Online in Australia

By Guest PostFebruary 18, 2011Technologyaustralia, Comscore, cudo, digital consumer behavior, digital environment, Entertainment, Facebook, google sites, market, microsoft sites, Social networking, sydney, the state of the internet in australia, will hodgman

*comScore Presents ‘The State of the Internet in Australia’*

Sydney, Australia, February 18, 2011 – comScore, Inc, a leader in measuring the digital world, today released The State of the Internet in Australia, which looks at the latest trends in digital consumer behavior in the market. The findings of the report were also recently presented at a comScore-hosted industry event in Sydney. Among the report’s key findings was that Social Networking now accounts for the largest amount of total time spent online at 22 percent, an increase of 5.3 percentage points from the previous year, as social media plays an increasingly prominent role in Australians’ digital lives. (more…)

Weather Extremes Are Growing Trend in Northern Australia, Corals Show

By Guest PostFebruary 10, 2011Environmentaims, annual bands, australia, australian institute of marine science, calcium carbonate skeletons, climate patterns, climate scientist, coast, coral colonies, cores, cyclone, dome shaped colonies, el niño southern oscillation, extreme rain, flooding, great barrier reef, growth patterns, janice lough, luminescence, luminometer, near shore corals, northeast queensland, northern australia, porites coral, precipitation, rainfall, summers, townsville, tropical climate pattern, weather extremes

WASHINGTON —The extreme rain events that have caused flooding across northern Australia may become an increasingly familiar occurrence, new research suggests. The study uses the growth patterns in near-shore corals to determine which summers brought more rain than others, creating a centuries-long rainfall record for northern Australia.

“This reconstruction provides a new insight into rainfall in northeast Queensland,” says Janice Lough, climate scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) in Townsville, Queensland, who authored the study. “These coral samples, which date from 1639 to 1981, suggest that the summer of 1973–1974 was the wettest in 300 years. This summer is now being compared with that record-setting one.” (more…)

Shark Attacks Increase Worldwide; Florida Continues Four-year Decline

By Guest PostFebruary 7, 2011Environment, Generalapex predators, australia, beach, economic downturn, egypt, fishing lines, florida, george burgess, hawaii, ichthyologist, native floridians, red sea, shark attacks, South Africa, tourists, united states, unusual shark incident, Vietnam, water temperatures, worldwide

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The number of reported shark attacks last year increased worldwide but declined in Florida, according to the University of Florida’s International Shark Attack File annual report released today.

Ichthyologist George Burgess, director of the file housed at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus, said Florida typically has the highest number of attacks worldwide, but 2010 marked the state’s fourth straight year of decline. Florida led the U.S. with 13 reported attacks, but the total was significantly lower than the yearly average of 23 over the past decade. (more…)

comScore Publishes White Paper on the Impact of Cookie Deletion on Website Audience Measurement in Australia

By Guest PostFebruary 3, 2011Technologyaustralia, brazil, Comscore, cookie deletion, france, Germany, internet users, new zealand, online audiences, serial cookie deleters, third party cookies, white paper

*Study Finds that Without Proper Adjustments, Site-Server Estimates can Overstate Audience Size by Factor of up to 2.7x*

Sydney, Australia, February 3, 2011 – comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its white paper, The Impact of Cookie Deletion on Site-Server and Ad-Server Metrics in Australia: An Empirical comScore Study. The study addresses the key sources of discrepancy between server-based and panel-based data and reveals that cookie deletion can lead to large overstatements in servers’ measurement of the size of online audiences. Without appropriate adjustments, site-server measurement of the size of website audiences in Australia can be inflated by up to 2.7 times the actual number of unique visitors. (more…)

NASA Satellite Tracks Menacing Australian Cyclone

By Guest PostFebruary 1, 20111 commentEnvironment, Science3d map, airs, anthony, aqua satellite, atmospheric infrared sounder, atmospheric temperature, australia, cairns, clouds, crippling floods, deep convective, earth, forecasters, heavy precipitation, infrared image, NASA, northeastern australia, queensland, saffir simpson scale, thunderstorm, tropical cyclone, water vapor, yasi

Fresh on the heels of a series of crippling floods that began in December 2010, and a small tropical cyclone, Anthony, this past weekend, the northeastern Australian state of Queensland is now bracing for what could become one of the largest tropical cyclones the state has ever seen.

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite, built and managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., captured this infrared image of Yasi on Jan. 31, 2011, at 6:29 a.m. PST (9:29 a.m. EST). The AIRS data create an accurate 3-D map of atmospheric temperature, water vapor and clouds, data that are useful to forecasters. The image shows the temperature of Yasi’s cloud tops or the surface of Earth in cloud-free regions. The coldest cloud-top temperatures appear in purple, indicating towering cold clouds and heavy precipitation. The infrared signal of AIRS does not penetrate through clouds. Where there are no clouds, AIRS reads the infrared signal from the surface of the ocean waters, revealing warmer temperatures in orange and red. (more…)

What “Pine” Cones Reveal About the Evolution of Flowers

By Guest PostDecember 15, 20101 commentScienceafrica, angiosperms, arabidopsis, australia, avocado flowers, bees, bottlebrush, california poppy, conifers, cycads, doug soltis, floral organ, flowering plants, flowers, genetic fossils, genetic origin, gymnosperms, pine cone, pineapple lily, plant life, pollination agents, seed bearing plants, tepals, zamia, zamia furfuracea

*Research genetically traces flowers to a single common ancestor*

From southern Africa’s pineapple lily to Western Australia’s swamp bottlebrush, flowering plants are everywhere. Also called angiosperms, they make up 90 percent of all land-based, plant life.

New research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides new insights into their genetic origin, an evolutionary innovation that quickly gave rise to many diverse flowering plants more than 130 million years ago. Moreover, a flower with genetic programming similar to a water lily may have started it all. (more…)

Invisible Invasive Species Altering Ecosystems

By Guest PostDecember 10, 2010Environmentair temperatures, asian carp, australia, blue green algae, brackish diatom, climate change, cyanobacteria, dramatic fashion, ecology, ecosystems, elena litchman, european lakes, global change, great lakes, gypsy moths, invasive microbes, invasive species, lake michigan, macroorganism, malaria, microbial invaders, nitrogen fixing rhizobium, nonpathogenic microbes, north american, pathogenic parasitic fungus, portugal, scientific research, subtropical, temperate latitudes, tropical, zebra mussels

Elena Litchman, associate professor of ecology, who works at MSU's Kellogg Biological Station. Image credit: Michigan State University

EAST LANSING, Mich. — While Asian carp, gypsy moths and zebra mussels hog invasive-species headlines, many invisible invaders are altering ecosystems and flourishing outside of the limelight.

A study by Elena Litchman, Michigan State University associate professor of ecology, sheds light on why invasive microbial invaders shouldn’t be overlooked or underestimated.

“Invasive microbes have many of the same traits as their larger, ‘macro’ counterparts and have the potential to significantly impact terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems,” said Litchman, whose research appears in the December issue of Ecology Letters. “Global change can exacerbate microbial invasions, so they will likely increase in the future.” (more…)

In Australia, Men Watch Twice the Amount of Online Video as Women

By Guest PostDecember 6, 2010Technologyamy weinberger, australia, australians, Comscore, comscore video metrix, content on the web, dailymotion, Facebook, females, Google, internet population, males, Microsoft, new zealand, online video, vevo, video online, video properties, YouTube

*Australians Watched Nearly 3 Hours of Online Video per Viewer at YouTube.com in October*

Sydney, Australia, December 6 , 2010 – comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its October 2010 rankings of the top video properties in Australia based on data from its comScore Video Metrix service. The report found that nearly 80 percent of Australia’s Internet population viewed video online in October, with an average viewer watching nearly 8 hours of video during the month. The report also revealed that male online video viewers in Australia spend nearly double the amount of time viewing video compared to women. (more…)

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