[PHOTO] Joe's Convenience, 1051 Ossington Avenue, August 2011

On a warm summer evening I faced south and looked across Dupont Street towards Joe's Convenience, located at 1051 Ossington Avenue on the southeast corner of Ossington Avenue and Dupont. Barely visible in this picture is the densely layered signs and posters that cover the windows and door of the store underneath the awnings.

Joe's Convenience has been photographed elsewhere on Flickr, obliquely from the west on the other side of Ossington Avenue by Bill Campbell and photographed head-on from the west by Patrick Cummins.

[ISL] “Complex effort to rid San Nicolas Island of cats declared a success”

It was a toss-up as to which tag I’d use, [ISL] or [CAT], but I settled on the former since Steve Chawkins' Los Angeles Times article describing the removal of feral cats from Californa's San Nicolas Island is representative of the vulnerability of island ecologies to imported animals. Cats are common, as are rodents. The apparent success of San Nicolas Island’s cat removal program stands out from the other programs I’m familiar with because of its success, all the more impressive since it was achieved without harming the cats in question.

The problem was daunting: Round up every last one of the who-knows-how-many cats living in the wild on wind-blasted San Nicolas Island, a 33-square-mile chunk of chaparral and jagged canyons off the Southern California coast.

And don't get in the way of the missiles that are launched from, and sometimes aimed at, the arid, Navy-owned island. And don't hurt the cats, the seabirds they feast on, the threatened island foxes, the native deer mice or, for that matter, anything else.

The solution was something a little more complicated than "Here, kitty kitty."

The effort involved six agencies, cost more than $3 million and entailed 18 months of trapping, though planning for it took much longer. Biologists brought in dogs, but soon shipped them out: Fido couldn't find Fluffy because he was too distracted by the island's hundreds of foxes. And the cats weren't falling for the scientists' "felid-attracting phonics" — digitally recorded meows that didn't work as well as they might in cartoons.

Ultimately, the job required the skills of a retired bobcat hunter as well as some 250 custom-built traps that flashed computer alerts to researchers miles away. Much of the funding came from the Montrose Settlements Restoration Program, a group formed in 2001 to aid the recovery of coastal areas hurt by decades of DDT dumping.

Earlier this month, biologists and Navy personnel gathered on the rain-swept island to celebrate their success. There wasn't a cat in sight.

"At first we didn't even know whether it was feasible," said Chad Hanson, leader of the effort for Island Conservation, a nonprofit that eradicates invasive species on islands around the world. "It took us quite a while to be able to look someone in the face and say it could be done."

Hanson, 28, was Island Conservation's project manager. A biologist who lives near Portland, Ore., he has helped remove goats from an island in the Galapagos and cats from Ecuador's Isla de la Plata.

San Nicolas had its own challenges, but a professional tracker named Bill Wood could read the terrain well enough to place traps scented with catnip, urine and excrement at just the right spots.

"He could predict just where cats would step and where they would sniff, how long their gait would be and where they'd stop," Hanson said.

Wood hiked the canyons and ridgelines, creating subtle cat trails with rocks and other obstacles. Weeks or even months after a trap was placed, a curious cat would follow the trail and set its paw on a sensor the size of a half-dollar, triggering a padded jaw that wrapped around its leg, and sending a message about the capture to Hanson's computers.

There were plenty of unanticipated problems. Crew members had to clear their radio channels with the Navy, Hanson said, "so we didn't accidentally set off munitions." They had to avoid disturbing the island's hundreds of Native American burial sites and midden heaps, consulting a Navy archaeologist before driving to far-flung traps.

[. . .]

In 2009 and 2010, planes ferried 59 cats, unharmed, from San Nicolas — where they were examined in a trailer clinic set up by the Institute for Wildlife Studies — to a shelter built specially for them by the Humane Society of the United States in Ramona, near San Diego.

Over the following year, scientists scoured the island 61 miles off Point Mugu for any wily lingerers. Meanwhile, volunteers at the Fund for Animals Wildlife Center in Ramona worked to acclimate the formerly feral critters to humans. Most will be put up for adoption over the next few months.

[CAT] "Japan's cat cafes hit with new curfew"

I'd noted the phenomenon of the Tokyo cat cafe, where people who unfortunately lacked cats could go and enjoy feline company for a time. Now, a Reuters report suggests that new regulations will make the cat cafe's situation more precarious, by limiting the amount of time that cats can be on display.

I'm not sure what I think about this. The cat cafe isn't as obviously abusive as the 24-hour pet shops that the regulations are targeted against, but is it reasonable to expect cats to enjoy the company of a large and semi-random gallery of human spectators?

Times are looking tough for Tokyo's cat cafes, where feline aficionados can drop in for tea and some time with a cat.

At most such establishments, it's the post-work rush that brings in the most cash, with tired and harried professionals dropping by on their way homes to pet and play with the animals as a way of relieving stress.

But now the purrs of delight may be getting quieter.

A revision to Japan's Animal Protection Law, due to come into force on June 1, will slap a curfew on the public display of cats and dogs, forcing cat cafes to shut up shop at 8 p.m.

"There's this new revision which says we should be open from eight in the morning until eight at night. After 8 p.m. we have to put the cats in the back, away from the customers, and close," said Hiromi Kawase, the owner of one Tokyo cat cafe.

"Everybody knows cats are really happy in the evening, with their big, cute eyes. So I just can't understand why the people at the top are ignoring this. It's really strange."

[. . .]

Visitors to Kawase's cafe pay about 1,000 yen ($12) an hour to play with any of her 24 cats, who dart around the room chasing toys or sleep in baskets set on tables. Drinks are priced from around 300 yen each.

The government says the real targets of the tighter animal protection law are late-night pet shops, which often sell dogs and cats around the clock. The animals are kept in small cages under bright lights that are never sitched off.

Kawase's establishment is far from a 24-hour operation. Her doors close at 10 p.m., but she says many of her customers only arrive around eight, after work, and stay through to the close.

"If I can't see the cats, well, I won't come. Of course I come here because they have cats," said Tatsuo Karuishi, 41.

[BRIEF NOTE] On the possible adoption of the Canadian dollar by Iceland

Barrie McKenna's Globe and Mail article discussing what seems to be growing discussion in Iceland about replacing the Icelandic króna with the Canadian dollar has gone viral across my Facebook feed.

For many Canadians who read this, learning that any country--even one as small as Iceland--wants to unite in some fashion with Canada on grounds of our economic strength is a massive ego boost. McKenna does highlight the importance that the extension of Canadian money elsewhere in the Arctic might have on Canadian heft, at least the perceived importance. As far as I can tell, the Icelanders are still debating the question (to put it mildly), while very few people in Canada have been thinking about Iceland at all since the stabilization of the economy.

One note: Adoption of the Canadian dollar would also complicate Iceland's emergent relationship with the European Union. How would it work for a European Union member-state that adopted the currency of a non-member, indeed, the currency of a non-European country? (I've joked in the past that maybe Canada should join the European Union since someone has to pay for Romania, but seeing what's going on with Greece takes the fun out of that joke.) nwhyte?

[T]iny Iceland, still reeling from the aftershocks of the devastating collapse of its banks in 2008, is looking longingly to the loonie as the salvation from wild economic gyrations and suffocating capital controls.

And for the first time, the Canadian government says it’s open to discussing the idea.

In brief remarks to be delivered Saturday in Reykjavik, Canadian ambassador Alan Bones will tell Icelanders that if they truly want the Canadian dollar, Canada is ready to talk.

But he will warn Icelanders that unilaterally adopting the loonie comes with significant risk, including complete loss of control over their monetary policy because the Bank of Canada makes decisions only for Canadians and the Canadian economy. He’ll caution, for example, that giving up the krona in favour of the Canadian dollar (CAD/USD-I1.01-0.004-0.36%) will leave the country with few levers, short of layoffs, to counter financial shocks and fluctuations in the loonie.

[. . .]

There’s a compelling economic case why Iceland would want to adopt the Canadian dollar. It offers the tantalizing prospect of a stable, liquid currency that roughly tracks global commodity prices, nicely matching Iceland’s own economy, which is dependent on fish and aluminum exports.

There’s also a more sentimental reason.

“The average person looks at it this way: Canada is a younger version of the U.S. Canada has more natural resources than the U.S., it’s less developed, has more land, lots of water,” explained Heidar Gudjonsson, an economist and chairman of the Research Center for Social and Economic Studies, Iceland’s largest think tank.

“And Canada thinks about the Arctic.”

In a recent Gallup poll, seven out of 10 Icelanders said they would happily dump their volatile and fragile krona for another currency. And their favoured alternative is the Canadian dollar, easily outscoring the U.S. dollar, the euro and the Norwegian krona.

Iceland is also in a bind. The country imposed strict currency controls after its spectacular banking collapse in 2008. Foreign-exchange transactions are capped 350,000 kronas (about $3,000). A major downside of those controls is that foreign investors can’t repatriate their profits, making Iceland an unattractive place to do business.

Those capital controls are slated to come off next year. And many experts fear a return to the wild swings of the past -- in inflation, lending rates and the currency itself. Iceland is the smallest country in the world still clinging to its own currency and monetary policy. The krona soared nearly 90 per cent between 2001 and 2007, only to crash 92 per cent after the financial crisis in 2008.

The official government plan is to go to the euro. Iceland has applied to join the European Union and eventually the euro zone. But that’s not looking like a very attractive option these days. And formal entry could take a decade, experts said.

The other options are to peg the krona to another currency, such as the yen, greenback or euro.

[LINK] "Estonia's Seto minority strive to protect traditions"

The Setos, a small Finnic group concentrated in southeasternmost Estonia and adjacent parts of Russia, are the subject of Anneli Reigas' Agence France Presse article. Existing on the fringes of the Estonian cultural area, the Setos both retained more pre-Christian traditions than other Estonians and were exposed to other cultural influences, especially from Russia.

Estonia's Seto, a group of only 15,000 in this Baltic nation of 1.3 million, are struggling to keep their way of life alive as young people leave their close-knit communities to seek new opportunities.

For many of the estimated 2,000 who live in what is known as Setoland, a cluster of villages in southeast Estonia, tradition is key.

[. . .]

Some suggest that the Seto were a separate group from among the Finno-Ugric tribes who settled across eastern Europe 5,000-8,000 years ago and gave birth to the modern Finns, Estonians and Hungarians.

But pointing to similarities between Seto and the southern Estonian Voru dialect, most experts consider them to be ethnic Estonians whom historical peculiarities formed into a distinct culture.

For example, the Seto are staunchly Orthodox, because their home region was under Russian rule for centuries.

Most of the rest of Estonia was long controlled by Catholic and Protestant Germans and Swedes, before being conquered by Tsarist Russia in the early 18th century.

The 20th century, Reigas notes, saw sharp assimilatory pressures, first from the young Estonian nation-state in the interwar period then from the Soviet Union, which--apart from annexing some Seto communities directly into the Russian republic--repressed Seto religious traditions. Independence led to a resurgence in Seto freedoms, but economic pressures in this rural area of Estonia remain significant. Seto identity seems to be morphing into something more associated with ancestral traditions than actively lived identities.

"The good thing is that since Estonia regained independence in 1991 the general attitude towards Setos has got better. While in Soviet time the word Seto seemed to mean you were a bit bizarre, today introducing yourself as a Seto sounds like an honour," said Aare Poolak, 46, head of the local administration.

"I'm fully Seto and very proud of it," Poolak told AFP.

But the post-Soviet freedom to flourish has been far from perfect.

"In 15 years the population of Mikitamae county -- one of the Setoland counties -- has decreased from 1,500 to 1,000," said Poolak.

"Many men from our county have to work in Finland, 400 kilometres away, because of a lack of jobs here. And many young people have left permanently because entertainment like theatres and cinemas are far away and expensive to reach," he added.

Seto living elsewhere in Estonia, or abroad, flock to their ancestral home for religious festivals and secular vacations./blockquote>

[CAT] "How Tortoiseshell Cats Show the Limits of Cloning"

io9 notes just how the very nature of tortoiseshell cat, illustrated by the below image taken from Wikipedia, defeats cloning.

In the early days of genetics, society had a pie-eyed optimism about the power it would soon wield. We thought everything about a creature could be catalogued in one string of information. This data could be translated, switched out, copied, and duplicated at will. It was just a matter of gathering enough information. We were wrong.

Genetics has thrown us for a loop over and over. Mutations, junk genes, extreme variation, and epigenetics have made it very clear that nothing was as easy as it first appeared. One of the most interesting limits of cloning is exemplified by the housecat. Some pets are clonable — and there have been businesses set up for just that — but tortoiseshell cats cannot be replicated, because part of their genes simply aren't there anymore.

Tortoiseshell cats are the result of two different genes teaming up. One gene will turn the cat red, a nice solid ginger. The other will make it a black cat. Each gene is inherited from one of the tortoiseshell's parents. Each is on one of the tortie's X chromosomes. The tortoiseshell look is produced because of a process called ‘X-linked inactivation.' The cells of developing embryo of the tortoiseshell cat randomly shut off one of the X chromosomes. And there's no general consensus among the cells about which one to switch off, so each cell simply picks one. This random shut-off is why tortoiseshells have an unpatterned mix of black and red hair over their bodies.

Cloning a tortoiseshell involves taking the DNA from one cell. Since each of the cells have only one active X chromosome, when a new tortoiseshell embryo is developing using the borrowed DNA, it only has one gene affecting its coloration.

Thus, a cloned tortoiseshell kitten will generally be either black or red. Even if someone were to nab a cell from a developing embryo before the X-linked inactivation happened, the new cloned kitten would also randomly inactivate its X chromosomes, leaving two cloned siblings that don't have the exact same color pattern.

[LINK] "Europa’s Acidic Oceans May Prohibit Life"

Tammy Plotner's Universe Today post manages to neatly link up the ongoing acidification of the oceans of Earth produced by the greenhouse effect with the possibility that the oceans of Europa may have been rendered sterile by the same sort of phenomenon.

Check out liquid water on Earth and you’ll find some form of life. As a given, scientists hypothesize other worlds which contain water should also support life. According to recent studies, Europa’s ocean might even be saturated with oxygen – further supporting these theories. However, there’s a catch. Like Earth, surface chemicals are continually drawn downward. According to researcher Matthew Pasek, an astrobiologist at the University of South Florida, this could constitute a highly acidic ocean which “is probably not friendly to life — it ends up messing with things like membrane development, and it could be hard building the large-scale organic polymers.”

According to Charles Choi of Astrobiology Magazine, “The compounds in question are oxidants, which are capable of receiving electrons from other compounds. These are usually rare in the solar system because of the abundance of chemicals known as reductants such as hydrogen and carbon, which react quickly with oxidants to form oxides such as water and carbon dioxide. Europa happens to be rich in strong oxidants such as oxygen and hydrogen peroxide which are created by the irradiation of its icy crust by high-energy particles from Jupiter.”

Although it’s speculation, if Europa produces oxidants, they may also be drawn toward its core from ocean motion. However, it might be infused with sulfides and other compounds creating sulfuric and other acids before supporting life. According to the researchers, if this has happened for just half of Europa’s lifetime, the result would be corrosive, with a pH of about 2.6, “about the same as your average soft drink,” Pasek said. While this wouldn’t prohibit life from forming, it wouldn’t make it easy. Emerging life forms would have to be quick to consume oxidants and build an acid tolerance – a process which could take as much as 50 million years.

Are there similar acid-lovin’ lifeforms on Earth? You bet. They exist in acid mine drainage found in Spain’s Rio Tinto river and they feed on iron and sulfide for their metabolic energy. “The microbes there have figured out ways of fighting their acidic environment,” Pasek said. “If life did that on Europa, Ganymede, and maybe even Mars, that might have been quite advantageous.” It is also possible that sediments at the bottom of Europa’s ocean may neutralize the acids, even though Pasek speculates this isn’t likely. One thing we do know about an acidic ocean is that it dissolves calcium-based materials such as bones and shells.

[. . .]

For now, we’ll look to Europa and wonder at what may exist below its frozen waves. Is there an acid-loving form of life just waiting to bubble to the surface for us to find? Right now researchers are developing a drill which could assist in looking for extreme forms of life. The “penetrator” could eventually be part of a Europa exploration mission which could begin as early as 2020.

[URBAN NOTE] "Getting Upfront with Empty Storefronts in Little India"

Torontoist's Rachel Lissner highlights a problem in Toronto's east-end neighbourhood of Little India that I'd noted before on my own walks along Gerrard Street: the abundance of empty storefronts.

Last Wednesday, a group of about 20 people got together to discuss the current state of things in and around Gerrard and Coxwell, an area commonly known as Little India that is home to a diverse and rapidly changing population. If you haven’t been there lately, this might be part of the reason: a significant number of the stores are empty.

The meeting, held in the back of Lazy Daisy’s Cafe, was attended by Councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon (Ward 32, Beaches-East York), local landscape architect Bryce Miranda, an artists’ collective led by Farhad Nargol-O’Neill, several community groups, a municipal lawyer, a few real estate agents, and Star columnist/reporter Catherine Porter, who previously wrote about the troubles that Lazy Daisy’s owner, Dawn Chapman, has faced in Little India.

Discussion about the state of Little India started when Chapman, who has lived in the neighbourhood for six years, saw a local store sign that was in poor shape and had rusty nails jutting out of it. She was concerned about the safety of her children, with whom she walked past the sign regularly, and also did not appreciate the eyesore on her street. A few phone calls to the City later, the sign was replaced. While Chapman celebrated her success, it also irked her that the general landscape of Gerrard Street around Coxwell included so many neglected and vacant storefronts. She wanted to know whether it was permissible for landlords to simply abandon their properties, contributing to a poor first impression of the neighbourhood that is unfair to residents and discourages development in the local economy.

The storefront at 265 Coxwell Avenue is where Chapman has set her sights on beginning community revitalization. It has been empty for at least four years and its landlord has all but disappeared. Recently, a Lazy Daisy’s regular said he had called the landlord at least 16 times about renting the space; he would like to open up a dance school and help bring some life back into the community. During the meeting, similar stories arose of landlords who were dismissive, untraceable, or uninterested in fixing up their storefronts.

While Toronto has some provisions that touch on the treatment of vacant properties in the Property Standards Bylaw [PDF], there are only minimal requirements when it comes to the appearance of vacant commercial properties. (The current provisions only require landlords to guard against accidents, fires, and squatting by boarding up windows and doors.)

One of the meeting’s goals was to consider what programs and bylaw changes might work for Toronto. The group looked particularly at examples from two other cities, Seattle and Winnipeg, that provide incentives for landlords to maintain certain standards of appearance in their storefronts. Seattle, for instance, has a program called Storefronts Seattle that leases vacant storefronts from property owners for a nominal rent, and uses those spaces for art installations and artists’ studios. Others preferred Winnipeg’s tough-love approach: in 2010, that city passed a bylaw that includes rigorous maintenance standards for vacant buildings.

Is this neighbourhood particularly hard hit? I'm not sure: there is an ongoing shift of South Asians from this downtown neighbourhood to points throughout the Toronto conurbation that has hit Little India, but this sort of thing is ongoing in many downtown neighbourhoods without quite the same concentration. The suggestion made in the comments that property owners are not renting out their properties with the hope of getting higher prices when the time comes to sell their land to condo developers does have a ring of veracity to it. Why else forego income?