"Our uncertainty on future water levels which is considerable is a direct reflection of our uncertainty on future climates," Drew Gronewold, a hydrologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich., said in a news briefing today (April 23).

In January, average water levels in Lake Michigan andfell to 576.02 feet (175.57 meters), the lowest levels since 1964. Gronewold says these drops were largely due to warmer and dryer conditions the previous year, which produced less snowpack in the region.

Scientists monitor changes in the so-calledwater budget to make short- and long-term forecasts of water levels. This budget takes into account the water that comes into the Great Lakes basin through precipitation, ice cover and runoff, and the water that leaves through evaporation.

"The interplay between relative increases in precipitation and relative increases in evaporation are what will drive water levels," Gronewold said.

But, these calculations can be tricky because they incorporate so many different variables, including the , he added. Changes in solar energy, for example, which would increase or decrease evaporation, can affect how much rainfall eventually runs off into the lakes, or gets sent back into the atmosphere.

And whereas NOAA closely monitors the interplay between precipitation and evaporation for all the Great Lakes, Gronewold said it is difficult to know how these changes will play out over the next several decades.

In the meantime, the spring season may bring some short-term relief to the area. It is not unusual for springtime runoff, coupled with , to contribute 5 inches (12.7 centimeters) to the lakes, Gronewold explained.

"This is a time of year when water levels typically rise naturally," Gronewold said.

Follow Denise Chow . Follow LiveScience , & . Original article on.

Neighborhood/School Partnership

DPS has a shrinking student base, says the . In the last decade, two-thirds of students left, taking state per-student funding with them.seeks to boost enrollment and retention and improve services. A group of 600 people -- comprised of school staff, teachers, parents, students, clergy, civic leaders, community activists, and lawmakers -- spent five weeks putting together an operations reform plan. DPS Emergency Manager Roy Roberts spearheaded the strategic planning process, but input came from every sector. The purpose was to broaden DPS's service arm and turn schools into resource centers. The group identified 36 objectives in 12 major goal areas centering on five central themes.

Start Earlier; Work Longer

The biggest pieces are: free preschool for 4-year-olds; improved services for children 0-3; and extended school operation to 12 hours a day, seven days a week (following the "Community Schools Model"). As a community-schools enterprise, DPS will consolidate child services currently provided across multiple agencies within schools. The parent/neighborhood component will provide life skills and parenting classes and job training programs. Support staff and social workers will be placed at schools. Schools will facilitate parent involvement via incentives, transportation, and events.

Work Harder

DPS will expand academic opportunities, job-specific training, course offerings, and contact opportunities in high-demand content areas. The initiative looks to beef up art and music programs and career academy opportunities. Improvements will be made in safety and security. The group will consider whether to extend school to a year-round schedule. Training and reward programs will be established for staff.

Work Smarter

Using a customer service model, schools will upgrade personnel, human resources, procurement, and finance software. Technology and teacher professional development will be improved. Customer satisfaction surveys will be circulated.

Join Together

Schools will move toward autonomy using a self-directed approach. They'll develop marketing and branding plans to promote individual schools.

Expect More

The whole community is affected here. Some school buildings will be consolidated to cut costs, though fewer than expected. Only four of the slated 28 will be closed. Schools will seek business partnerships, volunteers, grant money, and pro-bono services. The Detroit Free Press says JPMorgan Chase has donated $1.5 million for schools in Southwest Detroit. Roberts hopes to announce other donations soon. Students will have higher attendance, performance, and disciplinary expectations.

A teacher and Michigan native, Marilisa Sachteleben writes about schools and education in her state's most pivotal city of Detroit.

Despite being ubiquitous, "Android" can be awfully hard to find. Many smartphones and tablets that use Google'ssuch as the Kindle Fire and Samsung's latest phones, barely mention this fact in a footnote.

Android phones often work very differently from each other, such as with the Windows Phone-style home screen on the HTC One. And most come with preinstalled "crapware," put there by the manufacturer or the wireless carrier, which can't be removed and might do things you don't want it to do.

Archos, formerly best known for its Android media player tablets, is making a series of smartphones which goes against that trend.

Carbon and platinum

According to the press release and device comparisonsArchos' new smartphones include the("May be good for a child's first smartphone"), the("actually pretty usable"), and the("the largest of the three"). The names indicate how high-quality they are, as well as their screen size; the 35 Carbon has a 3.5-inch screen, the same as the original iPhone, while the 53 Platinum has a 5.3-inch screen, larger than the Galaxy S 4's.

Not just prepaid, but SIM-free

Archos' Android smartphones will not be tied to any one wireless carrier, the way even the prepaid phones that you buy up front are. (In this respect, they'll be similar to unlocked phones like Google's Nexus 4.) They will also have two SIM card slots, so that you can switch between carriers without needing to pop the case open.

"Pure un-skinned Android OS"

The press release does mention that Archos' phones will include "ARCHOS Media Centre apps," but this is to be expected from a company that used to make media players. Since the "pure" Android experience is a selling point, though, any extra apps shouldn't be as invasive as the ones on (for instance) a Samsung device sold by Verizon.

What about the specs?

The 35 Carbon has entry-level hardware, with a 1 GHz processor and 512 MB of RAM. It only has 4 GB of storage, but has a microSD slot for a memory card. Surprisingly -- for a $99 smartphone -- it has a front-facing camera. But its rear-facing one has the same VGA resolution, which will make for fuzzy, low-res photos. It has a 320x480 screen, and runs Android 4.0 ("Ice Cream Sandwich").

And the Platinum smartphones?

The $200 50 Platinum has (as the name suggests) a 5-inch screen, plus a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor and 1 GB of RAM. The $250, 53 Platinum has the same internals, but a 5.3-inch "phablet"-sized screen.

Both have the same 4 GB of storage (plus microSD) that the 35 Carbon has, but have significantly better cameras. They also run Android 4.1.2 ("Jelly Bean"), a newer version with more features.

When will they be available?

The press release says they "will be available starting in Europe at the end of May." Since there's an American English web page up for each smartphone, a stateside release ought to follow.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

Central America's problems have directly impacted the U.S., as thousands from the region migrate north each year along increasingly deadly smuggling routes.

In a press conference late Friday with Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla, Obama said only a comprehensive approach will work to solve the region's problems, including stronger economies, better institutions, education and youth centers that give young people a sense of opportunity.

"Problems like narco-trafficking arise when a country is vulnerable because of poverty and institutions not working for people," he said. "The stronger the economy and institutions for individuals seeking legitimate careers, the less powerful these narco-trafficking operations are going to be."

Obama went on to a closed meeting with the eight-nation Central American Integration System, known by its Spanish initials SICA, which was formed to discuss regional issues.

He said he looked forward to the regional cooperation. But national rivalries that have often blocked cooperation.

Guatemala and Belize maintain a border dispute. Honduras and El Salvador are fighting over the use of the waters and shores of the Gulf of Fonseca, and a conflict between Nicaragua and Costa Rica has been escalating over the San Juan River border. On top of that, Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua often feel excluded because Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras get the bulk of U.S. security aid, said Eric Olson, associate director of the Latin American program at the Wilson Center think tank in Washington.

"SICA has tried to build itself as the place where all these countries can come together and that can be the distribution point for that aid," Olson said. "But I think the rivalry between these governments gets in the way."

Still, the Central American presidents have come manned to talk about security, an issue they see as directly related to drug consumption in the United States. Some Central American countries have the highest murder rates in the world, with Honduras often called the world's most dangerous country. Leaders here say they want the U.S. to take more responsibility in the fight against drug cartels.

"We need the decided support of the U.S. to attack our common enemy, drug trafficking," Honduran President Porfirio Lobo said Thursday. "Unfortunately, Honduras and the countries of the region bear the dead of a war that we didn't start and that we repudiate. It's time to renew our mutual political cooperation."

The White House doesn't plan to launch any new initiatives with this trip, said Ricardo Zuniga, the lead official for Latin America policy on the U.S. National Security Council.Rather, it wants to talk about better coordination and use of the aid that is already going to the region.

"Besides the United States expressing its deep worry over the deterioration of the region, there isn't much more to expect," said Cynthia Arnson, director of the Latin American program at the Wilson Center.

Since 2008, the United States has allocated $496 million in security cooperation to Central America, Zuniga said, and that number isn't expected to increase substantially.

The White House asked for $162 million for the fight against drug trafficking in its 2014 budget through the Central America Regional Security Initiative. That's $26 million more than what was allocated in 2012.

By comparison, Washington has allocated $1.9 billion to Mexico since 2008 for the fight against drug trafficking through the Merida Initiative.

Even on security issues, the countries have difficulty uniting.

"There is no effective cooperation because there is no trust," said Ignacio de Lucas, coordinator of the Network of Prosecutors against Organized Crime, an initiative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime that brings together 10 prosecutors from Mexico to Colombia. "Sometimes big projects arise, for example creating a database to cooperate with Interpol, but what information will go there? Without trust there will not be useful information."

The more relevant forum to discuss drug trafficking in the region will be the June general assembly of the Organization of American States, said Guatemalan Foreign Minister Luis Carrera Castro.

Aside from security concerns, Central American presidents also have agreed to prioritize economic issues in their meeting with Obama.

The SICA member governments, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Belize, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and the Dominican Republic, want to enhance the trade agreement they've hadsince 2006 with the United States, said Muni Figueres, Costa Rican Ambassador to the U.S.

Under the CAFTA-DR agreement, U.S. exports to the region have risen to $30 billion in 2012, up 25 percent from 2010 and 80 percent from 2005, according to her embassy's figures.

One of the specific goals for the Obama meeting is a commitment from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to actively participate in a commission tracking the performance of the trade agreement, Figueres said.

"The challenge now is how to facilitate trade to flow better and how to translate the agreement into more jobs and investment," she added.

[More from BGR: ]

Being slightly more successful than Nokia at creating iPhone apps is one of those honors that sounds vaguely like a punch line. And to add insult to injury, two of the hottest apps in the App Store right now are Robot Unicorn Attack 2 and Face Swap! Both are precisely as moronic as they sound. The latter was published by Iddiction, which looks suspiciously like a contraction of idiot addiction.

[More from BGR: ]

How can massive corporations run by highly sophisticated, middle-aged executives possibly comprehend the rules of the app market?

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And then there is the bigger picture: Time Warner's business model. Indeed, the relationship between HBO and its parent company hinders the chances, long term, of HBO Go being developed for those of us who pay for broadband Internet but not cable. Time Warner loves its Time Warner Cable bundle; it needs the bundle. Even if HBO could get enough money from streaming-only users to sustain its operations, its parent company wouldn't go for it, because its parent company is still in the business of selling cable TV packages. And the cable TV companies were not happy with HBO's Plepler even mentioning a future with HBO outside of the bunclde. One cable CEO called Time Warner up to complain, . And since Time Warner depends on the rest of the cable companies to pay a lot of money to buy content from its other divisions, there's not a chance the parent piss them off by letting the kids at HBO go rogue. In the meantime, cord cutters continue to make Game of Thrones thein television, even , and no matter .

Bieber, 19, has made headlines in the past two months for showing up late for his own London concert, walking shirtless through airport security in Poland, posting a cartoon of himself in bed with a young woman, and expressing the hope that Holocaust victim Anne Frank would have been a "belieber" like his millions of fans.

On Thursday, Swedish police said an officer smelled marijuana on an empty tour bus outside the hotel where Bieber was staying before his Stockholm concert on Wednesday.

They said they found a small amount of drugs but had no suspects and did not plan further action.

"Some of the rumors about me....where do people even get this stuff. whatever...back to the music," Bieber tweeted on Thursday to his 38 million Twitter followers after announcing he had arrived in Finland.

Representatives of the Canadian singer, who started his career as a squeaky-clean 15-year-old, had no comment.

In Stockholm, police spokesman Kjell Lindgren said the drugs were being sent for analysis. "We don't know who had the drugs or who smoked them, so it will be hard to link them with any individual," Lindgren said.

Bieber has been on the road with barely a break since September 2012 on his "Believe" world tour, where he has been greeted by screaming young girls and blaring headlines for some bizarre behavior.

In March, he abandoned a pet monkey at Munich airport because he did not have the right papers, and flew back to Los Angeles for 36 hours and into an altercation with a neighbor.

Last week, he came under fire in the media on grounds of taste after he wrote in a guest book at the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam that the 15-year-old Holocaust victim and diarist was inspiring and "hopefully she would have been a belieber".

The museum later defended Bieber, saying they were delighted he had visited and that his comments were innocent.

(Reporting by Simon Johnson in Stockholm and Jill Serjeant in Los Angeles; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Obama spoke along with all four living former presidents in a rare reunion honoring one of their own at the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Center. "To know President George W. Bush is to like him," Obama said.

The presidents Bush, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter were cheered by a crowd of former White House officials and world leaders as they took the stage together to open the dedication. They were joined on stage by their wives the nation's current and former first ladies for the outdoor ceremony on a sun-splashed Texas morning.

It was a day for recollections and reveries, and no recriminations or remorse.

The five men have been described as members of the world's most exclusive club, but Obama said they are "more like a support group."

"Being president above all is a humbling job," Obama said. He there were moments that they make mistakes and wish they could turn back the clock, but "we love this country and we do our best."

He said Bush started an important conversation by speaking to the American people about the United States as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants and he hopes Congress will act this year to pass reform, which Bush wasn't able to achieve.

The leaders put aside the profound ideological differences that have divided them for years for a day of pomp and pleasantries. For Bush, 66, the ceremony also marked his unofficial return to the public eye four years after the end of his deeply polarizing presidency. "Oh happy day," Bush said as he took the stage.

President George H.W. Bush, who has been hospitalized recently for bronchitis, spoke haltingly for just about 30 seconds while seated in his wheelchair, thanking guests for coming out to support his son. A standing ovation lasted nearly as long as his comments, and his son and wife helped him to his feet to recognize the applause.

Clinton, too, was warmly received by the heavily Republican crowd, who applauded and laughed along with Clinton's joke-peppered speech. He concluded on a serious note about the importance of the leaders coming together. "Debate and difference is an important part of every free society," Clinton said.

President Jimmy Carter praised Bush for his role in helping secure peace between North and South Sudan in 2005 and his approval of expanded aid to the nations of Africa. "Mr. President let me say that I am filled with admiration for you and deep gratitude for you about the great contributions you've made to the most needy people on earth," Carter said.

Former first lady Laura Bush said the library isn't just about her husband, but reflects the world during his time as the first president as the 21st century. "Here we remember the heartbreak and heroism of Sept. 11 and the bravery of those who answered the call to defend our country," she said.

In a reminder of his duties as the current Oval Office inhabitant, Obama planned to travel to Waco in the afternoon for a memorial for victims of last week's deadly fertilizer plant explosion.

Presidential politics also hung over the event. Ahead of the ceremony, former first lady Barbara Bush made waves by brushing aside talk of her son, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, running for the White House in 2016.

"We've had enough Bushes," said Mrs. Bush, the wife of George H.W. Bush and mother of George W. Bush. She spoke in an interview with NBC's "Today" show.

Yet George W. Bush talked up the presidential prospects of his brother in an interview that aired Wednesday on ABC.

"He doesn't need my counsel, because he knows what it is, which is, 'Run,'" Bush said.

Key moments and themes from George W. Bush's presidency the harrowing, the controversial and the inspiring would not be far removed from the minds of the presidents and guests assembled to dedicate the center, where interactive exhibits invite scrutiny of Bush's major choices as president, such as the financial bailout, the Iraq War and the international focus on HIV and AIDS.

On display is the bullhorn that Bush, near the start of his presidency, used to punctuate the chaos at ground zero three days after 9/11. Addressing a crowd of rescue workers amid the ruins of the World Trade Center, Bush said: "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon."

"Memories are fading rapidly, and the profound impact of that attack is becoming dim with time," Bush told The Associated Press earlier this month. "We want to make sure people remember not only the lives lost and the courage shown, but the lesson that the human condition overseas matters to the national security of our country."

More than 70 million pages of paper records. Two hundred million emails. Four million digital photos. About 43,000 artifacts. Bush's library will feature the largest digital holdings of any of the 13 presidential libraries under the auspices of the National Archives and Records Administration, officials said. Situated in a 15-acre urban park at Southern Methodist University, the center includes 226,000 square feet of indoor space.

A full-scale replica of the Oval Office as it looked during Bush's tenure sits on the campus, as does a piece of steel from the World Trade Center. In the museum, visitors can gaze at a container of chads the remnants of the famous Florida punch card ballots that played a pivotal role in the contested 2000 election that sent Bush to Washington.

Former first lady Laura Bush led the design committee, officials said, with a keen eye toward ensuring that her family's Texas roots were conspicuously reflected. Architects used local materials, including Texas Cordova cream limestone and trees from the central part of the state, in its construction.

From El Salvador to Ghana, Bush contemporaries and former heads of state made their way to Texas to lionize the American leader they served alongside on the world stage. Among the foreign leaders set to attend were former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

The public look back on the tenure of the nation's 43rd president comes as Bush is undergoing a coming-out of sorts after years spent in relative seclusion, away from the prying eyes of cameras and reporters that characterized his two terms in the White House and his years in the Texas governor's mansion before that. As the library's opening approached, Bush and his wife embarked on a round-robin of interviews with all the major television networks, likely aware that history's appraisal of his legacy and years in office will soon be solidifying.

An erroneous conclusion that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, a bungling of the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina and a national debt that grew much larger under his watch stain the memory of his presidency for many, including Obama, who won two terms in the White House after lambasting the choices of its previous resident.

There's at least some evidence that Americans are warming to Bush four years after he returned to his ranch in Crawford, even if they still question his judgment on Iraq and other issues. While Bush left office with an approval rating of 33 percent, that figure has climbed to 47 percent about equal to Obama's own approval rating, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released ahead of the library opening.

Bush pushed forcefully but unsuccessfully for the type of sweeping immigration overhaul that Congress, with Obama's blessing, is now pursuing. And his aggressive approach to counterterrorism may be viewed with different eyes as the U.S. continues to be touched by acts of terrorism.

Although museums and libraries, by their nature, look back on history, the dedication of Bush's library also offers a few hints about the future, with much of the nation's top political brass gathered in the same state.

Clinton's wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, stoked speculation about her own political future Wednesday in a Dallas suburb when she delivered her first paid speech since stepping down as secretary of state earlier this year. Republican Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, another potential 2016 contender, flew to Texas to take part in the library dedication.

Obama, too, may have his own legacy in mind. He's just a few years out from making his own decision about where to house his presidential library and the monument to his legacy.

___

Associated Press writer Nomaan Merchant contributed to this report.

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Follow Josh Lederman on Twitter: http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP

Popular restaurants and high-end stores in Damascus have shut down as their owners move to Beirut and reopen there. They become the latest part of the flight of the Syrian upper class, thousands of whom are believed to have moved abroad over the past year, mainly to Lebanon, Turkey and the Gulf.

Syrian merchants and factory owners have rented apartments in the Lebanese capital as well as Dubai and Cairo. Many skyscrapers dotting Lebanon's famed Mediterranean corniche are known to have been rented out to Syrians at exorbitant prices.

Most still largely back Assad and hope to return, but their flight is a sign of the deep worry over the direction the fight has taken.

"Most people in Damascus have lost hope," said Reema, a chemical engineer. She fled the capital last summer and now lives in Beirut, managing a factory in one of Damascus' industrial zones remotely, via Skype. At first, "we could hear the bombs from around Damascus but we knew that they were far away so we got on with our lives ... Now, the war is everywhere."

She said she has seen a new influx of Damascus residents into Beirut and expects more to come once schools go on summer vacation and well-off Damascene families feel freer to pack up. Reema spoke on condition she be identified only by her first name for fear of reprisals against her business or collague still in Syria.

"Some who have been coming back and forth between Beirut and Damascus are giving up and want to stay to avoid the hassles of checkpoints and ID checks and fear of being taken by groups who just pick people up from the streets," she said, adding that residents blame both regime and opposition-linked groups for disappearances.

Several other businessmen who fled more recently to Beirut spoke to The Associated Press of growing numbers of the elite choosing to leave for the time being. But they refused to give details or be quoted because of worries over their enterprises back home.

The extent of new departures was impossible to confirm. The Damascus area has seen some waves of violence previously over the past two years. But in the past few months it has intensified, with heavy fighting in towns and villages on the capital's outskirts and frequent barrages of rockets and mortars into the city itself. The industrial zones in Damascus are largely protected by government troops. But crippling security measures and a network of checkpoints slow down industry. Lack of electricity and a spike in kidnappings of wealthy residents is also prompting some to move abroad.

More than 1 million Syrians have fled the country to escape the civil war, now its third year. The bulk of them are poor, largely from the country's Sunni Muslim majority that makes up the backbone of the rebellion, leaving homes battered by fighting between rebels and regime forces around the country and crossing into Jordan, Turkey or Lebanon.

Syria's powerful and monied elite have long had a complicated history with the regime. The rich and powerful industrialists, merchants and factory owners are mostly secular Sunni Muslims, mainly from families who were largely allowed to operate in Aleppo, Syria's economic engine, and in Damascus, without government interference while the Assad family's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, kept its grip on political power.

When the uprising against his rule erupted in March 2011, most stuck by the president. That support has been strained by two years of bloodshed that has killed an estimate 70,000 people and disrupted business and life. But many deeply distrust the rebels because of the strength of Islamic hardliners and the lack of a cohesive leadership.

"With the fighting ripping apart the social fabric of cities, the elite is increasingly very confused because they can't support the regime any more but also cannot embrace the rebels, who are looking to take over their properties," said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma.

Syria's urban elite has been concentrated in the northern city of Aleppo and the capital Damascus. Most of the rebels come from the underdeveloped countryside poor, religiously conservative and angry over years of economic marginalization they say was enforced by the old merchant families and regime-linked industrialists.

The first waves of the elite leaving came last year, from Aleppo and the central city of Homs. Now, industrial zones in those cities packed with textile, plastics, pharmaceutical and cosmetics manufacturers stand virtually deserted.

Aleppo, the country's largest city, became a battle zone last summer when the rebels launched an offensive there. Since then, it has been torn apart by months of grinding urban warfare that has devastated the city and left it carved into rebel- and regime-held zones.

Even before the fighting started in Aleppo, businessmen say rebel fighters from the countryside came to factories demanding the owners pay up.

The owner of an Aleppo plastics factory said that about a year ago, rebels came and told him, "You need to support our revolution or your factory will burn down." He negotiated with them and they walked out with a safe containing 400,000 Syrian pounds, about $5,700.

Three months later, he locked the factory doors and moved to the United States, managing his businesses from there. He spoke on condition he be identified only by his first name, George, fearing harassment of his family and his associates, who still travel to Syria from Lebanon and Turkey.

George and his father, who has moved to Turkey to set up a business, pay rent on an apartment in Beirut for George's sister, he said.

George said the "class component" of the revolution became impossible to ignore. To the rebels, "there was 100 percent correlation between the regime and the rich," he said. "Having money meant you were in bed with the regime."

Few industrialists in Damascus and Aleppo have entirely shut down their business, choosing instead to run them remotely in hopes fighting will subside and they can return.

"For us to go back, the government would have to win this decisively and put business where they were," George said.

Most of the business community is in a "wait and see mode," said Ayham Kamel, a Middle East analyst at the Eurasia Group in London.

"The Syrian business community still views its role in the rebuilding Syria as vital," Kamel said. "There is a prevalent thought among the elite that they will return and re-establish their business enterprises once the war is over."

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Follow Barbara Surk at http://www.twitter.com/BarbaraSurkAP

Revis arrived in Tampa on Sunday hours after a person familiar with the situation told The Associated Press that the Jets granted their star cornerback permission to take a physical and negotiate a contract with the Buccaneers signaling a trade is imminent.

The source spoke on condition of anonymity because the teams have not spoken publicly about the potential deal.

Revis left New Jersey Sunday morning and arrived by private Jet in Tampa at about 2:30 EDT.

Trade rumors have been swirling for months involving Revis, with the Buccaneers thought all along to be the most serious suitor. New Jets general manager John Idzik is expected to want several high draft picks in any deal for Revis.

Coach Rex Ryan's Jets currently have the ninth overall pick in the draft that starts Thursday, while the Buccaneers have the No. 13 pick a selection that could potentially be included for Revis.

It was not clear if the sides have already agreed to compensation for a trade, but the fact the Jets allowed Revis to meet with the Buccaneers means they could have the framework of a deal in place. A trade would leave Antonio Cromartie as the team's top cornerback, a role he flourished in last season with Revis sidelined by a knee injury. And 2010 first-rounder Kyle Wilson mostly likely would be stepping in as the other starter.

The Jets could also target a cornerback perhaps Alabama's Dee Milliner or Florida State's Xavier Rhodes in the first round of Thursday night's draft.

For the Bucs, adding Revis would improve a secondary that already includes cornerback Eric Wright and safeties Mark Barron and recently signed Dashon Goldson. Tampa Bay finished last in pass defense last season.

The 27-year-old Revis is entering the last season of his four-year contract signed in 2010, but is looking for a big payday that would make him one of the highest-paid defensive players in the league. A clause in that deal prevents the Jets from using the franchise or transition tag on him next year, so if he remains unsigned, he would become a free agent in 2014.

As the Jets weighed whether to try to sign him to a contract extension, lose him to free agency next offseason or deal him for high draft picks, Revis has been the subject of rampant trade rumors since last season ended.

Complicating things has been the fact Revis is coming off a serious injury. Revis tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee last September against Miami, and underwent surgery the next month. He has been rehabbing since, and has indicated in interviews that he fully expects to be ready for the start of the regular season.

Revis reported Monday for the first day of the team's voluntary offseason conditioning program, a few hours after having an MRI exam with Dr. Russell Warren, the Giants' team orthopedist, at a hospital in Manhattan. The exam results were positive, and ESPN New York reported that Revis was cleared by Warren to begin running without restrictions.

Revis and Idzik also met and had what the general manager called "a nice talk."

Revis had been rehabilitating in Arizona, and would have preferred to return there, but was staying in New Jersey because his contract includes a clause for three $1 million bonuses that are tied together, including a workout bonus.

In an interesting twist, if a trade is made, Revis and the Jets would see each other again in Week 1 of the regular season as New York hosts Tampa Bay.

It would also be the first significant trade pulled off by Idzik, who is reshaping New York's roster after a 6-10 season and this move likely wouldn't sit well with many of the team's fans.

Revis was New York's first-round pick in 2007 after then-GM Mike Tannenbaum traded up to No. 14 to draft the former University of Pittsburgh star. Revis quickly established a reputation on the field as a shutdown cornerback, routinely holding wide receivers to quiet games and causing quarterbacks to shy away from his side of the field. He was considered by many to be so dominant at his position that he earned the nickname "Revis Island" for leaving opposing wide receivers "stranded."

Now, Ryan might have to go into this season without one of the players he has called one of the best he has ever coached.

"When the first trade thing came up, I connected it to someone that clearly made it up; there was no factual basis," Ryan said at the NFL meetings in Phoenix in March. "On the first day John Idzik is named general manager and he doesn't even know where his office is, we're trying to trade Darrelle? This is all speculation like it's a foregone conclusion. I don't believe it.

"With that, I am not naive enough to understand several people would be interest in a player like Darrelle Revis."

And, the Buccaneers' offer might ultimately be too good to pass up for the Jets. Even if it means saying goodbye to a player who had already been considered by many to be one of the greatest players in franchise history.

"We coach the guys that we have," new defensive coordinator Dennis Thurman said recently. "I was always taught not to get over emotional about losing a guy. In terms of Darrelle Revis (being placed on injured reserve) last year, we had to move on and we had to continue to play. They're not going to cancel games, so our mindset is we coach who's here."

The Jets hoped Revis would always be here, though. After making $32.5 million in the first two years of the front-loaded deal, Revis made $7.5 million last season far below his market value.

He considered holding out for the third time in his career before training camp last summer, but then decided to report with the rest of his teammates and play out the season. But then came the first serious injury of Revis' career, the torn anterior cruciate ligament in Week 3 that ended his season and likely his tenure with the Jets.

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AP sports Writer Fred Goodall in Tampa contributed to this story.