Author Archives: Guest Post

What is data warehousing and how can it benefit my business?

By Guest PostJuly 4, 2013Economy, Generalblogger, business, current data, data storage center, data warehouse, data warehousing, freelance writer, heinz college, historical, information, intelligence data warehousing, level of productivity, seo, stock decisions, tina davis, warehouses

In business, information is going to be the key to improving your organization and heightening your levels of productivity. This is where data warehousing is incredibly useful. A lot of business leaders may not be entirely clear as to what data warehousing actually is. A data warehouse, often called an enterprise data warehouse, refers to a data storage center. The purpose of this center is to use data for reports and data analysis. “Warehouses” are going to store a range of different types of data. Both historical and current data is used in order to create reports of trends within the business. This could be to do with levels of productivity, sales and more. As a result, it is a good idea to look into data warehousing and see how it can end up affecting your business. You will be given more information on how your business runs and how you can end up improving it. (more…)

Altitude sickness may hinder ethnic integration in the world’s highest places

By Guest PostJuly 4, 2013General, Scienceabu dhabi, access to sea, altitude sickness, andes dwellers, biological tolerance, Bolivia, China, chinese province, chinese security forces, christopher paik, clinica chimica acta, demographic patterns, effect of elevation, enze han, ethnic demographics, ethnic friction, ethnic integration, ethnic segregation, gansu, han chinese, highest places, himalayas, life on high, low oxygen conditions, migration patterns, modern times, new york university, population, princeton university, qinghai, qinghai tibet railway, role of factors, Sichuan, soil quality, tibetan autonomous region, tibetan name, tibetan plateau, tibetan settlements, traditional han settlements, university of london, wangyal shawa, world, yunnan

Ethnic segregation in nations straddling the world’s highest terrains may be reinforced by the biological tolerance different peoples have to altitude, according to one of the first studies to examine the effect of elevation on ethnic demographics.

Research from Princeton University published in the journal Applied Geography suggests that people native to low-lying areas can be naturally barred from regions such as the Tibetan Plateau, the Andes or the Himalayas by altitude sickness, which is caused by low oxygen concentration in the air and can be life-threatening. As a result, the homogeny of the local population can increase with elevation. In nations shared by people of high- and lowland extractions, this separation can potentially increase ethnic tension. (more…)

Orbiting astronaut controls robot on Earth, testing feasibility of CU-Boulder project on far side of the moon

By Guest PostJuly 4, 2013Scienceantenna film, big bang, california, chris cassidy, earth moon, faint whispers, international space station, jack burns, k10 robot, kapton film, l2, lagrange point, laura kruger, lunar, moon, nasa rover, orbiting astronaut, orion spacecraft, robot on earth, surface telerobotics tests, terry fong

An astronaut orbiting Earth in the International Space Station has remotely directed a NASA rover in California to unfurl an “antenna film” that scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder are developing for use on the unexplored far side of the moon.

When astronaut Chris Cassidy used a Space Station computer to pilot the robot across a mock lunar surface at NASA’s Ames Research Center on June 17, he demonstrated for the first time that an astronaut in an orbiting spacecraft could successfully control a robot in real time on a planetary surface. The technique could have future applications for humans visiting Mars, an asteroid or the moon. (more…)

Researchers shed light on MERS Coronavirus transmission

By Guest PostJuly 3, 2013Healthabdullah al rabeeah, al hasa, alimuddin zumla, canada, coronavirus transmission, epidemiology, genbank database, gene sequencing, kingdom, mers, mers coronavirus genomes, middle east, new outbreaks, paul kellam, respiratory syndrome, saudi arabia, sequencing technology, spread of virus, transmission of virus, uk, university of colorado, university of toronto, US, viral genome, ziad memish

Epidemiology and gene sequencing technologies have been used by researchers in the UK, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the US and Canada to show that the novel Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus can spread between people in healthcare settings. The work is published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The scientists, from the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health, UCL, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, University of Toronto, University of Colorado and Johns Hopkins University, rapidly investigated and defined the epidemiology, transmission dynamics and genetic composition of the MERS-CoV cluster of 22 cases of healthcare-acquired MERS coronavirus infections from a recent outbreak in Al-Hasa, Eastern Province, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. (more…)

Testing Artificial Photosynthesis

By Guest PostJuly 3, 2013Scienceanode, artificial photosynthesis, atmospheric carbon dioxide, berkeley lab, caltech, camilo diaz botia, cathode, charge carriers, diesel, earth abundant elements, energy conversion, fossil fuel energy, gasoline, h2, hydrocarbon, hydrogen, jcap, jcap north, jcap south, joel ager, mean concentration, membrane cap, micro scale, microfluidic test bed, miguel modestino, o2, optimization, rachel segalman, rafael gomez sjoberg, sophia haussener

Berkeley Lab Researchers Develop Fully Integrated Microfluidic Test-bed for Solar-driven Electrochemical Energy Conversion Systems

With the daily mean concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide having reached 400 parts-per-million for the first time in human history, the need for carbon-neutral alternatives to fossil fuel energy has never been more compelling. With enough energy in one hour’s worth of global sunlight to meet all human needs for a year, solar technologies are an ideal solution. However, a major challenge is to develop efficient ways to convert solar energy into electrochemical energy on a massive-scale. A key to meeting this challenge may lie in the ability to test such energy conversion schemes on the micro-scale.

Berkeley Lab researchers, working at the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP), have developed the first fully integrated microfluidic test-bed for evaluating and optimizing solar-driven electrochemical energy conversion systems. This test-bed system has already been used to study schemes for photovoltaic electrolysis of water, and can be readily adapted to study proposed artificial photosynthesis and fuel cell technologies. (more…)

Cloud modeling expands estimate of life-supporting planets

By Guest PostJuly 2, 2013Sciencebrazil, cloud cover, cloud modeling, dark side, dorian abbot, dwarf stars, earth like planets, earth size planet, global climate simulation, indonesia, james webb, jun yang, kepler mission, larger habitable zone, life supporting planets, milky way galaxy, NASA, nicolas cowan, northwestern university, one dimensional, space telescope, sub stellar region, thermostat, university of chicago

Larger habitable zone suggests 60 billion planets could sustain water, life

A new study that calculates the influence of cloud behavior on climate doubles the number of potentially habitable planets orbiting red dwarfs, the most common type of star in the universe. This finding means that in the Milky Way galaxy alone, 60 billion planets may be orbiting red dwarf stars in the habitable zone.

Researchers at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University based their study, which appears in Astrophysical Journal Letters, on rigorous computer simulations of cloud behavior on alien planets. This cloud behavior dramatically expanded the estimated habitable zone of red dwarfs, which are much smaller and fainter than stars like the sun. (more…)

Boat noise stops fish finding home

By Guest PostJuly 2, 2013Environment, Natureacoustic cues, andy radford, background noise, boat noise, bristol, coastal environment, coral reef fish, french polynesia, human activities, invertebrate, larval, liege, orientation behavior, pollutants, protected areas, sophie holles, steve simpson, traffic noise, universities of exeter, university of bristol

Boat noise disrupts orientation behaviour in larval coral reef fish, according to new research from the Universities of Exeter, Bristol and Liège.

Reef fish are normally attracted by reef sound but the study, conducted in French Polynesia, found that fish are more likely to swim away from recordings of reefs when boat noise is added.

Co-author, Dr Steve Simpson, a marine biologist at the University of Exeter, said: “Boat noise may scare fish, affecting their ecology. Since one in five people in the world rely on fish as their major source of protein, regulating traffic noise in important fisheries areas could help marine communities and the people that depend on them.” (more…)

Big feet preference in rural Indonesia defies one-size-fits-all theory of attractiveness

By Guest PostJuly 2, 2013Scienceanthropologist, big feet preference, brazil, cambodia, cultural transmission, culture, genetics, geoff kushnick, human evolution, India, indonesian island, iran, journal human nature, karo batak, lithuania, mate attractive, northern part, papua new guinea, recent evolution, rural indonesia, sexual selection, sumatra, Tanzania, theory of attractiveness, united states, university of washington, urban ecology, villages, western media

People in most cultures view women with small feet as attractive. Like smooth skin or an hourglass figure, petite feet signal a potential mate’s youth and fertility.

Because they signal reproductive potential, a preference for mates with these qualities may have evolved in the brains of our Pleistocene ancestors and are viewed by evolutionary psychologists as evidence that the preference is hard-wired into our genetic makeup. (more…)