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Facial recognition can help conserve seals, scientists say: here’s how KTLA Los AngelesCryptocurrency is a digital currency popularly used as an investment option nowadays. It is maintained and managed by a decentralized system; needless to say, the field of cryptocurrency investments is packed with scammers. Moreover, a lack of regulation provides fraudsters an opportunity to spread widely.
Steer clear of the threats a cryptocurrency scammer poses by taking appropriate countermeasures. Knowledge about the methods crypto scammers use can save you from future regrets. Some of the strategies owned by the perpetrators of cryptocurrency scams are discussed in this article.
Unlawful and corrupt scammers establish fictitious websites in order to deceive people into transferring crypto coins they own. Ingenious crypto scammers imitate the design and domain name of existing legitimate websites to trick investors. Through these websites, they garner investors’ information to get access to their accounts and sometimes directly steal their money.
A phishing scam occurs when scammers try to perpetrate mischief through emails. Crypto scammers target random people and disperse malicious links via emails. These links redirect them to their fraudulent websites, where they further carry on with the process of stealing cryptocurrencies.
The pump and dump scam is an ingenious strategy most popular among investment scammers. Scammers who perpetrate this scam first buy crypto in bulk to increase the value of the crypto. They sometimes even spread false news to do the same and then sell the coins all together when they have successfully hiked the price. This strategy leads the other investors into selling their crypto coin at a loss.
Affinity fraudulence is when a scammer targets a group or organization that is driven by a particular notion. They use such tactics to fool people in bulk. They find such groups and join one of them and start to manipulate the group members. Generally, scammers who own this strategy target the leader of the group as they believe that it will be easier to mold other members’ interests if they successfully manipulate the leaders into doing as they suggest.
Extortion scams can be considered blackmail as scammers here first garner their targets’ personal information and then threaten them. Scammers force them to transfer their crypto coins to scammers’ wallets and claim to make their private data public otherwise. Sometimes they do not even have private data, and they randomly message people claiming that they have it and compel them to transfer crypto coins.
Scammers who utilize impersonation strategies often pose as government agents as people easily trust the government and seldom think twice before handing over their private information and identifications. But the truth is government agencies are very less likely to call people randomly asking for this information, especially when it is a matter of cryptocurrencies. As mentioned earlier in this article, everything related to cryptocurrencies is maintained and managed by a decentralized system, and centralized systems like banks and governments have nothing to do with it.
A few cryptocurrency companies raise money when they decide to mine a new coin. To raise money, they generally offer tokens for investors to get high returns in exchange for advance payments. This process of raising money is known as Initial Coin Offering or, in short, ICO. Sadly, cryptocurrency scam perpetrators see this as an opportunity to earn benefits. They disguise themselves as such a company, contact their targets and ask for upfront money in the name of Initial Coin Offering. Crypto investors need to be aware of such offers, as it is hard to differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate companies.
Crypto scammers consider online dating sites as a great platform to perpetrate forgery. They approach random people as their admirers and mold their interests into cryptocurrency investments. Scammers approach them as investment enthusiasts and somehow convince them that their account is not secure. They ask them to give them access to their wallet for safekeeping, but instead of safeguarding it, they transfer their coins into their own account and cease contact from every communication platform.
Summary:
To stay ahead of extensive threats posed by scammers, a cryptocurrency investor needs to be more careful. Verify everything before you trust. Conduct independent research before transacting your crypto coins to someone unknown.
Last but not least, remember that there are plenty of fund recovery organizations you can find on the internet that help victims to recover their lost funds. You can easily contact them and seek their help for fund recovery.
The State of Alaska and the North Slope Borough have sued the federal government to remove ringed seals’ Endangered Species Act protections.
The lawsuit was filed Nov. 16 in U.S. District Court in Anchorage. It follows an unsuccessful attempt in 2020 to convince the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service to delist ringed seals administratively.
“NMFS’ decision to list ringed seals was not a rational application of the Endangered Species Act,” Alaska Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Douglas Vincent-Lang said in a statement.
The lawsuit is seeking to compel the NMFS to move forward with the delisting process to remove the threatened designation, Senior Assistant Attorney General Ronald Opsahl said by email.
The agency’s threatened listing for Alaska’s population of ringed seals was granted in 2012. Also granted Endangered Species Act protections then were bearded seals and, in 2010, a non-U.S. population of spotted seals.
Those seal populations are dependent on sea ice and, in the case of ringed seals, on snow accumulation atop sea ice. Loss of Arctic sea ice and an ongoing shift from snow to rain – products of climate change – have put those seal populations in jeopardy, NMFS determined.
Last spring, NMFS designated critical habitat off Alaska for both ringed and bearded seals. Critical habitat, an area where special protections are in place, is a requirement for all populations with Endangered Species Act listings. For ringed and bearded seals, the critical habitat comprises large swathes of the northern Bering Sea and Chukchi Sea and some nearshore portions of the Beaufort Sea.
The listings and critical habitat designations followed a lengthy legal administrative and legal process that started with listing petitions filed in 2008.
Through those years, the state, North Slope Borough, oil industry and others have been working to prevent or overturn those listings, with last week’s lawsuit as the most recent step.
In the lawsuit, the state and borough argue that they have suffered “actual, concrete injuries” as a result of the listing. Those include interference with oil and gas activities, mining and mineral production, navigational dredging, construction activities, commercial fishing and subsistence hunting and fishing, the lawsuit said.
It contends that NMFS has used flawed reasoning concerning a Bering and Chukchi ringed seal population that numbered 470,000 as of a decade ago, the lawsuit said. The listing was approved and upheld despite “the Arctic ringed seal’s extremely large population and circumpolar range, as well as its documented resilience to historical habitat and climate variation,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit concerns only ringed seals, even though the state has attempted to overturn the bearded seal listing and the designation of bearded seal critical habitat. Unlike the case with ringed seals, “The State has not submitted a delisting petition for bearded seal,” Opsahl said.
A NOAA spokesperson said the agency declined to comment on the lawsuit.
There have been signs of trouble for ice seals in the Bering and Chukchi seas. Hundreds were found dead on beaches from 2018 to 2021 in what has been officially classified as an “unusual mortality event.” Scientists have cited warmer marine conditions as a possible factor.
Recent research has shown that various types of Alaska seals are being affected by climate change.
A 2021 study by scientists from NOAA’s Marine Mammals Laboratory in Seattle found that rapid iwarming in the Bering Sea has resulted in poorer body conditions for ice-dependent ribbon and spotted seals, as well as for harbor seals in the Aleutians Islands region.
A newly published study by other scientists from NOAA’s Marine Mammals Laboratory and the University of Washington found that bearded seals have shifted their distribution and changed their behavior in a region where sea ice is diminishing. That study used acoustic devices to track the seals’ movements through the seasons from 2012 to 2016.
Alaska Beacon is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com. Follow Alaska Beacon on Facebook and Twitter.
FREEPORT, Maine – Facial recognition technology is mostly associated with uses such as surveillance and the authentication of human faces, but scientists believe they've found a new use for it — saving seals.
A research team at Colgate University has developed SealNet, a database of seal faces created by taking pictures of dozens of harbor seals in Maine's Casco Bay. The team found the tool's accuracy in identifying the marine mammals is close to 100%, which is no small accomplishment in an ecosystem home to thousands of seals.
The researchers are working on expanding their database to make it available to other scientists, said Krista Ingram, a biology professor at Colgate and a team member. Broadening the database to include rare species such as the Mediterranean monk seal and Hawaiian monk seal could help inform conservation efforts to save those species, she said.
Cataloguing seal faces and using machine learning to identify them can also help scientists get a better idea of where in the ocean seals are located, Ingram said.
“Understanding their dispersal, understanding their patterns really helps inform any conservation efforts for the coast,” she said. “For mobile marine mammals that move around a lot and are hard to photograph in the water, we need to be able to identify individuals.”
SealNet is designed to automatically detect the face in a picture, crop it and recognize it based on facial patterns such as eyes and nose shape, as it would a human. A similar tool called PrimNet that is for use on primates had been used on seals previously, but SealNet outperformed it, the Colgate researchers said.
The Colgate team published its findings in April in the scientific journal Ecology and Evolution. They processed more than 1,700 images of more than 400 individual seals, the paper said.
The paper stated that the “ease and wealth of image data that can be processed using SealNet software contributes a vital tool for ecological and behavioral studies of marine mammals in the developing field of conservation technology.”
Harbor seals are a conservation success story in the U.S. The animals were once subject to bounties in New England, where they were widely viewed by fishermen as pests in the 19th and early 20th centuries. But the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which turned 50 in October, extended them new protections — and populations began to rebound.
Seals and other marine mammals have long been studied using satellite trackers. Using artificial intelligence to study them is a way to bring conservation into the 21st century, said Jason Holmberg, executive director of Wild Me, an Oregon-based company that works to bring machine learning to biologists. Wild Me is developing a potential partnership with SealNet.
“This is a shift and a lift of ‘big brother’ style technology to a very benevolent conservation-style goal," Holmberg said.
Harbor seals are now fairly abundant in New England waters, where they haul out on rocks and delight seal watch cruises and beachgoers. Other seal species, however, remain in jeopardy. The Mediterranean monk seal is thought to be the world's most endangered seal with only a few hundred animals remaining.
The use of facial recognition could provide more valuable data, said Michelle Berger, an associate scientist at the Shaw Institute in Maine, who was not involved in the SealNet research.
“Once the system is perfected I can picture lots of interesting ecological applications for it,” Berger said. “If they could recognize seals, and recognize them from year to year, that would give us lots of information about movement, how much they move from site to site.”
The Colgate researchers are also working with FruitPunch, a Dutch artificial intelligence company, to improve some aspects of SealNet to encourage wider use. FruitPunch is getting a few dozen scientists around the world to work on a challenge to streamline SealNet's workflow, said Tjomme Dooper, FruitPunch's head of partnerships and growth.
Improved automation of the facial recognition technology could make SealNet more useful to more scientists, Dooper said. That would open new opportunities to study the animals and help protect them, he said.
“What this does is help the biologists study the behavior of seals, and also population dynamics,” Dooper said. “Harbor seals are an important indicator species for the ecosystem around them.”
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Follow Patrick Whittle on Twitter: @pxwhittle
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Seal Beach didn’t go far to find a new police chief. The latest head of the city’s police force is Michael Henderson who, until Monday, was a captain in the department.
“It is an incredible honor to appoint him as our new Chief of Police,” Jill Ingram, Seal Beach’s city manager, said in a statement.
“Chief Henderson is highly respected within the Seal Beach Police Department and has earned the trust and respect of our community, and I look forward to working closely with him as he continues to lead the men and women of the Seal Beach Police Department with compassion and commitment to our community,” Ingram said.
Henderson started his job Tuesday, Nov. 22.
He replaces outgoing Chief Phil Gonshak, who recently stepped down from his post to accept a new job as an interim manager in Summit County, Colorado.
Henderson, a 30-year law enforcement veteran, has been with the Seal Beach police department since 2006 and has worked a variety of assignments, including patrol sergeant, SWAT team member, emergency services coordinator, public information officer and homeless liaison officer.
“I am humbled to be selected as the next Chief of Police and look forward to serving and protecting the Seal Beach community in this new role,” Henderson said, thanking Ingram and others for “entrusting me with this honor.”
Henderson has a bachelor’s degree in occupational studies from Cal State Long Beach and a master’s degree in homeland security studies from the American Military University.
He leads a department of approximately 39 sworn officers.
The outgoing chief congratulated Henderson on his promotion.
“Henderson has and will continue to honor our continued success for many years to come as your next Chief of Police,” Gonshak said in a statement.
Last week, Gonshak was lauded at a City Council meeting, where the mayor read certificates of recognition and community leaders thanked him for his work in the department.
“You’ll be sorely missed, but I’m happy for you for the next chapter of your life,” Mayor Joe Kalmick said at the Nov. 14 gathering.
Gonshak joined the department in 2007 and held numerous positions until his appointment as police chief in 2019.
Ingram highlighted some of Gonshak’s accomplishments: Under his tenure, the department equipped officers with body cameras and developed a canine program. The department also created a community-oriented team to focus on the town’s only school, McGaugh Elementary, during the school year and the beach and downtown during the summer months.
He also transitioned the city’s “very expensive” local jail from a pay-to-stay program into a temporary holding facility, re-allocating those officers to other areas. Ingram praised the chief for leading the department “through extremely difficult nationwide calls for police reform” while protecting demonstrators’ right to free speech at local protests.
In a press release last month, Gonshak said: “The decision to leave my career in law enforcement is all about my family and continuing on into the field of public administration management.”
Gonshak said he was “deeply saddened to leave such a wonderful community and organization.” The move, he said, works for his family, particularly with one daughter at a university in Boulder. It also offers him an opportunity to lead in a public administration job, he said.
Gonshak was scheduled to begin his new job on Monday, Nov. 21.
A man identified as a Seal Beach resident was arrested after allegedly making a false bomb threat and pulling the fire alarm at a large apartment complex.
On Sunday, Nov. 20, at about 11:35 a.m., the Seal Beach Police Department responded to a call of a structure fire at the Eaves Apartment Complex located at 333 First St. Officers arrived on scene and quickly determined that although the fire alarm was sounding, there was no fire. Officers detained a suspicious man they believed had allegedly intentionally pulled the fire alarm.
As officers continued to check the apartment building for fire, they discovered a suspicious package directly in front of the suspicious person’s apartment door. The man allegedly told officers that the package was a “gift for the bomb squad.” Fearing the package contained a hazardous object, the Orange County Fire Authority and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department Bomb Squad responded. Additional resources from the Los Alamitos, Cypress, and Huntington Beach Police Departments, along with the California Highway Patrol, and the Long Beach and Huntington Beach Fire Departments also responded. The two neighboring apartment buildings were evacuated out of an abundance of caution. Pacific Coast Highway was closed for approximately one hour while the buildings were evacuated.
Ultimately it was determined that the package did not contain any hazardous or explosive materials. The man’s apartment was also checked, and officers discovered no hazardous items or other people inside. Neighboring residents were allowed to return to their apartments.
The man was identified as Walter Dale Hunter, 40, of Seal Beach. He was placed under arrest on suspicion of violating California Pena Code §148.1(b) —making a false bomb threat—and 148.4(a)(2)—causing a false fire alarm. Hunter was later booked at the Orange County Jail.
According to the SBPD, there is no ongoing threat to the public; the investigation is ongoing. Seal Beach Police are asking anyone with information is to contact Detective Sgt. Chris Hendrix at chendrix@sealbeachca.gov or (562) 799-4100 ext. 1112.
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