comScore Releases Latest Mobile Industry Insights from its MobiLens Product
Tokyo, Japan, February 25, 2011 – comScore Japan KK, a wholly owned subsidiary of comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, today released the latest insights into mobile usage in Japan from its comScore MobiLens product. The report found that Japanese users are continuing to adopt smartphone devices, with Apple and Google platforms seeing significant increases in subscribers.(more…)
LAUREL, Md. — Imagine spending your time feeding, nurturing, and teaching the daily tasks of survival to a baby who could never know your true identity.(more…)
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Think social network games are just for kids? A recent Michigan State University study found that many adults are playing games such as Facebook’s “Farmville” to help initiate, develop and maintain relationships.
The MSU team of researchers interviewed a number of Facebook users between the ages of 25 and 55, said Yvette Wohn, a doctoral student in the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media who led the study.
“The interesting thing is that we were asking people how they use Facebook to manage their different relationships,” she said. “Surprisingly, all but one person talked about playing games as one of their relationship-management strategies.” (more…)
For 30 years, two General Electric facilities released about 1.3 million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into New York’s Hudson River, devastating and contaminating fish populations. Some 50 years later, one type of fish—the Atlantic tomcod—has not only survived but appears to be thriving in the hostile Hudson environment.
Researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have joined colleagues from New York University (NYU) and NOAA to investigate this phenomenon and report that the tomcod living in the Hudson River have undergone a rapid evolutionary change in developing a genetic resistance to PCBs. (more…)
*Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie gathered with individuals from across the company this week for a day of futuristic demos showcasing natural user interfaces, 3D technologies and new ways to interact with computers. Get a behind-the-scenes look.*
REDMOND, Wash. – Feb. 24, 2011 – Microsoft provided a glimpse into computing’s future at the Microsoft Home this week, showing demos of 3D and virtual worlds, vision systems that create new models for interacting with computers, and research that explores potential scenarios for Kinect beyond gaming.
Mundie and Don Mattrick, president of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, also announced plans to make a Kinect for Windows software development kit (SDK) available this spring. The non-commercial SDK will be geared to academics and enthusiasts. (more…)
COLUMBIA, Mo. – Most people would never suspect that a “trash tree,” one with little economic value and often removed by farmers due to its ability to destroy farmland, could be the key to fighting a deadly bacterium. Now, a University of Missouriresearcher has found an antibiotic in the Eastern Red Cedar tree that is effective against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus(MRSA), a “superbug” that is resistant to most medications.
What is conformity? A true adoption of what other people think—or a guise to avoid social rejection? Scientists have been vexed sorting the two out, even when they’ve questioned people in private.(more…)
“Am I just a face in the crowd? Is that all I’ll ever be? … Do you think I stand out?”
—The Kinks, “A Face in the Crowd”
It may seem paradoxical, but being part of a crowd is what makes you unique, according to UCLA life scientists.
Biologists Kimberly Pollard and Daniel Blumstein examined the evolution of individuality —personal uniqueness — by recording alarm-call vocalizations in eight species of rodents that live in social groups of various sizes. They found that the size of the groups strongly predicted the individual uniqueness in the animals’ voices: The bigger the group, the more unique each animal’s voice typically was and the easier it was to tell individuals apart.(more…)