Global decline in capacity of coral reefs to provide ecosystem services

Coral reefs worldwide are facing impacts from climate change, overfishing, habitat destruction, and pollution. The cumulative effect of these impacts on global capacity of coral reefs to provide ecosystem services is unknown. Here, we evaluate global changes in extent of coral reef habitat, coral reef fishery catches and effort, Indigenous consumption of coral reef fishes, and coral-reef-associated biodiversity. Global coverage of living coral has declined by half since the 1950s. Catches of coral-reef-associated fishes peaked in 2002 and are in decline despite increasing fishing effort, and catch-per-unit effort has decreased by 60% since 1950. At least 63% of coral-reef-associated biodiversity has declined with loss of coral extent. With projected continued degradation of coral reefs and associated loss of biodiversity and fisheries catches, the well-being and sustainable coastal development of human communities that depend on coral reef ecosystem services are threatened

Fast texture synthesis by feature matching

Texture synthesis has been an active and important research area in computer graphics. In this paper, we present an efficient and simple enough technique for synthesizing textures. The synthesizing process generates an initial texture block from the texture sample and subsequently all other texture blocks by measuring the joint occurrence of texture discrimination features. A final texture image is then synthesized by sampling consecutive spatial frequency bands from the texture sample. Based on the assumption of spatial locality, textures synthesized with this method are visually indistinguishable from the texture samples while preserving local patterns for a wide variety of deterministic and stochastic textures

Newspaper editorial discourse and the politics of self-censorship in Hong Kong

In transitional societies where political pressure on the press is coupled with a commercial media system and a professional journalistic culture, the politics of self-censorship is likely to involve a strategic contest between the media and political actors. Language plays a significant role in this contest. The present study focuses on the case of Hong Kong. It analyzes how two local newspapers, facing an important yet sensitive political issue, constructed two different overall storylines and used two different sets of discursive strategies in their editorials to handle political pressure, market credibility, and journalistic integrity simultaneously. The elite-oriented Ming Pao constructed a storyline of the debate as a factional struggle in order to posit itself as an impartial arbitrator. This approach was further sustained and justified by the discursive strategies of balanced and qualified criticisms and the rhetoric of rational discussion. The mass-oriented Apple Daily, on the other hand, constructed a storyline of a sovereign people whose rights are encroached upon by a powerful entity. The paper was therefore much more critical towards the power center. Nevertheless, it also appropriated the dominant discourse, constructed internal contradictions, and decentralized the Chinese central government to smooth out the radicalism of its criticisms. Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publication.postprin