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Amazon.ca Closes the Holiday Shopping Season with Exciting Boxing Week Deals

By Guest PostDecember 21, 2010TechnologyAmazon, boxing week, Christmas day, deals store, electronics, garden products, garmin, john nemeth, kitchenaid

*Beginning Dec. 25, customers can take advantage of a week’s worth of amazing deals*

SEATTLE, Dec 21, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Amazon.ca today announced that beginning Dec. 25, customers can take advantage of amazing Boxing Week promotions on everything from electronics and books to home and garden products and men’s watches. Beginning on Christmas Day, customers can explore The Deals Store (www.amazon.ca/deals) to find the full list of Boxing Week special promotions. Customers are encouraged to shop early as these offers are only available while supplies last. (more…)

Meteorite Just one Piece of an Unknown Celestial Body

By Guest PostDecember 20, 2010Sciencecar sized asteroid, meteorite fragments, nubian desert, proto planet, ureilite parent body

Image credit: Carnegie Institution for Science

Washington, D.C.

— Scientists from all over the world are taking a second, more expansive, look at the car-sized asteroid that exploded over Sudan’s Nubian Desert in 2008. Initial research was focused on classifying the meteorite fragments that were collected two to five months after they were strewn across the desert and tracked by NASA’s Near Earth Object astronomical network.

Now in a series of 20 papers for a special double issue of the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science, published on December 15, researchers have expanded their work to demonstrate the diversity of these fragments, with major implications for the meteorite’s origin. (more…)

Free Shipping Day Punctuates Heaviest Week of U.S. Online Spending in History as Four Individual Days Eclipse $900 Million

By Guest PostDecember 19, 2010Technologyapple ipads, computer hardware, Comscore, free shipping day, friday, gian fulgoni, green monday, holiday season, retail e-commerce spending, thanksgiving

*Cyber Monday, Which Remains Only Billion Dollar Day on Record , Likely to Become Heaviest Spending Day of the Year for First Time*

RESTON, VA, December 19, 2010 – comScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, today reported holiday season retail e-commerce spending for the first 47 days of the November – December 2010 holiday season. For the holiday season-to-date, $27.46 billion has been spent online, marking a 12-percent increase versus the corresponding days last year. The most recent week (week ending Dec. 17) reached $5.15 billion in spending, an increase of 14 percent versus the corresponding week last year, with four individual days surpassing $900 million, led by Green Monday (Monday, December 13) with $954 million and Free Shipping Day (Friday, December 17) with $942 million. Free Shipping Day achieved a 61-percent increase versus the corresponding shopping day last year, highlighting the appeal and success of the promotion in which more than 1,500 merchants offered free shipping. (more…)

Study Shows Wind Turbines on Farmlands May Benefit Crops

By Guest PostDecember 19, 20101 commentEnvironmentatmosphere, carbon dioxide, corn, crop, crops, domestic source of energy, earth surface, electricity, fungal infestations, gene takle, generate, laser, lidar, midwestern farm, moisture levels, photosynthesis, renewable energy, research, soybean, takle, turbine blades, wind turbines

Wind turbines in Midwestern farm fields may be doing more than churning out electricity. The giant turbine blades that generate renewable energy might also help corn and soybean crops stay cooler and drier, help them fend off fungal infestations and improve their ability to extract growth-enhancing carbon dioxide from the air and soil.

The preliminary findings of a months-long study that examines how wind turbines on farmlands interact with surrounding crops were presented on December 16 at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. The presentation was made by researcher Gene Takle of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory and Julie Lundquist, assistant professor in the University of Colorado at Boulder’s atmospheric and oceanic studies department. (more…)

Citizen Scientists Join Search for Earth-like Planets

By Guest PostDecember 19, 2010Scienceastronomers, citizen science project, constellation, cygnus, debra fischer, dimming of light, earth, earth like planets, exoplanets, galaxy zoo, galaxy zoo project, global network, globe, human computing power, jupiter, kepler mission, kevin schawinski, large gas giants, meg schwamb, NASA, planet candidates, planet hunters, solar system, space telescope, sun, web users, yale astronomer, zooniverse

Web users around the globe will be able to help professional astronomers in their search for Earth-like planets thanks to a new online citizen science project called Planet Hunters that launched Dec. 16. at www.planethunters.org.

Planet Hunters, which is the latest in the Zooniverse citizen science project collection, will ask users to help analyze data taken by NASA’s Kepler mission. The space telescope has been searching for planets beyond our own solar system—called exoplanets—since its launch in March 2009. (more…)

Individuals Who Are Victimized Especially in Childhood Likely to Abuse Alcohol and Other Drugs

By Guest PostDecember 19, 2010Healthchildhood sexual abuse, physical violence, substance use disorders, victim experiences, victimization experiences

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—A new study finds strong associations between victims’ experiences—such as unwanted sexual activity, neglect and physical violence—and substance use disorders. (more…)

Colossal Fossil: Museum’s New Whale Skeleton Represents Decades of Research

By Guest PostDecember 18, 2010Natureextinct whale, fossil preparation, fossil whale discoveries, whale evolution, whale skeleton

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—There’s a whale of a new display at the University of Michigan Exhibit Museum of Natural History, a leviathan that represents a scientific saga of equally grand proportions. (more…)

Microsoft Vice President Margo Day Helps Build Girls’ School, Safe Haven in Kenya

By Guest PostDecember 18, 2010Culture, Technologyafrica, amsft, claire mungai, elephants, gail, go to africa, Kenya, kihanya, life changing experience, lions, margo day, microsoft employees, nairobi, philanthropic work, pokot region, redmond, safari, st elizabeth school, Tanzania, the africans at microsoft, united states, us small and midmarket solutions, wildebeests, world vision

*An encounter with 35 young girls in Kenya prompted Margo Day to start a secondary school there. The school will also be a refuge for girls who fled their homes to avoid the traditional practice of female genital mutilation.*

REDMOND, Wash. — When Margo Day went on a safari last year in Africa, she more or less knew what to expect. She had traveled in Kenya and Tanzania 16 years earlier, where she had what she calls a life-changing experience watching lions, elephants and wildebeests roam the plains. She returned to Kenya last fall to share that experience with her 19-year-old niece, Gail.

What Day didn’t expect was meeting 35 young girls who would change her life. But Day, who serves as West regional vice president of U.S. Small and Midmarket Solutions and Partners at Microsoft, had also wanted to do some philanthropic work on her trip. So she and her niece spent the last four days of their tripin remote northern Kenya with a team from World Vision, an international nonprofit that helps children, families and communities overcome poverty and injustice. The day before Day and her niece flew back to the U.S., they visited a primary school that also housed a rescue center run by World Vision. (more…)

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