By Tracie Strahan, NBCNewYork.com
Environmental officials are planning to survey a Central Park lake this week to search for an invasive type of toothy predator fish that threatens to disrupt the ecosystem.
The northern snakehead fish, native to China, Russia and Korea, has been spotted in Queens in recent years, and one was quietly observed in Harlem Meer several years ago.
The fish eats frogs and crayfish and has the ability to breathe air and live for days out of water in certain conditions.
It is so disruptive that the state prohibits possession, sale and transport of the live fish and its eggs.
Read more from NBCNewYork.com
Signs have recently gone up around the Harlem Meer warning anyone who catches one not to throw it back.
The signs warn anglers to "secure the fish" and "keep it in a secure container until it is picked up by officials."
If park officials cannot be found at the boathouse, the sign urges anyone with a snakehead fish to call 311 and report the catch.
The sign is "just to let people know that this fish is in there, if you find it please do not return it to the water and it also helps people become aware that there are things in the water that should not be there," said Melissa Cohen, Department of Environmental Conservation fisheries manager.
The man-made lake is located in Central Park's northeast corner between 106th and 110th streets.
Related:
'A slick mess': Slimy, giant snails invade South Florida
US moves to curb invading species hitching rides on ships
scotty mccreery megan fox pregnant metta world peace suspension apple earnings report john l smith apple earnings the glass castle
What a two weeks it’s been. Something happened that has been simmering for a while. The API market exploded. Intel bought Mashery for more than $180 million and CA acquired Layer 7. 3Scale received a new $4.5 million round of funding from Javelin Ventures. Programmable Web acquired Mulesoft. And then Facebook jumped in and bought Parse. The acquisitions and funding point to a maturing market that is reflected in the ubiquity of APIs across the application landscape. It’s not a new market by any means. The space is filled with companies that have leveraged the API build out that has happened over the past several years. Instead this is an inflection point. There are more than 30,000 APIs, according to Programmable Web, the leading API directory and blog. Javelin Ventures Managing Director Noah Doyle said to me in an interview that analysts see the API market growing five to ten times over the next five years. With that scaling in number of APIs comes a virtuous circle for the developers that build compelling apps and APIs. The APIs extend the apps reach as they become part of distributed data network. As more people use the APIs so the app developer generates more data. As the data increases in scope, often the service will become an API. Facebook needs new streams of data to keep rolling out new digital products. Back end as a service providers like Parse provide SDKs and APIs that give developers access to infrastructure for storing basic data types, locations and photos. How Facebook uses this data is a question mark. But regardless, Pare serves as a constant replenishing source, nourished by the apps on the Parse platform that use APIs. Facebook now will decide how to package and segment that data to push more relevant advertising to its 1 billion users. APIs Are Like Glue APIs will be the glue to the Internet, said Programmable Web Founder John Musser. Musser, like Doyle, sees a new generation of APIs emerging that are fueled by demand, triggered by mobile devices, which serve in many respects as the new client/servers. Apps are hosted on cloud services and distributed across mobile devices that read and write data, sending and receiving information, connecting via APIs. In the first generation, Mashery and companies like Apigee pioneered the API management space. Twitter and other web companies emerged in the second generation. In the
Eighty-seven percent of the nation’s top economists think that the digital currency, Bitcoin, has “limited usefulness.”?Given the growing popularity of the enigmatic currency, the University of Chicago conducted its famous Initiative on Global Markets (IGM) poll of?38 of the world’s top economists, to see how experts felt about its longterm future. By far the best response came from the former Chairman of the President?s Council of Economic Advisers, Austan Goolsbee, who simply wrote, “Hahahaha. ROTFL.” Bitcoin is a digital currency designed by an anonymous programmer that is produced by “miners” who contribute expensive computing power to solving the mathematical puzzles necessary to bring more of the scarce currency into existence. Early speculators and anarchy-friendly buyers gave the crypto-currency an early boost, eventually earning it mainstream acceptance at popular websites, including the home of lonely netizens, OkCupid. Even after?months of wild swings?in value (from $205 to $105 during one day), more and more shops are starting to accept bitcoins alongside dollars.?(for an awesome explanation, see the Colbert Report video below): The Colbert Report Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive The Colbert Report Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive It appears that the nation’s top economists don’t have the same faith in Bitcoin as the proprietors of the online dating service. The overwhelming majority surveyed felt that Bitcoin’s crazy fluctuations will inherently “limit its usefulness.” Former editor of the prestigious American Economic Review, Judith Chevalier, wrote: “Unlike government issued fiat money, there is no guarantee it can be used to pay taxes or settle other obligations.” Of course, the expert crowd wasn’t unanimous. Stanford’s Caroline Hoxby wrote: “First part is right: value derives from belief others want to use it for trade. Second part is not obvious: beliefs could stabilize or not.” While this isn’t a glowing endorsement of the nascent currency, it’s worth noting that economists occasionally have difficulty predicting events, such as the massive recession that almost tanked the global economy. Still, people are investing their own money in Bitcoin. Question is, do you want to bet against 87 percent of top economists?