During the two years of research for his new book, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character, Tough spent time at UChicago and in its surrounding neighborhoods.
States in need of best practices and flexible IT solutions that improve access, quality and efficiency in the financing and delivery of health and human services programs.
REDMOND, Wash., and WASHINGTON — Nov. 13, 2012 — The American Public Human Services Association (APHSA), in coordination with Microsoft Corp., today released the results of a new survey of health and human services departments and agencies nationwide. The report, “A Promising Future for HHS Transformation — The Real Impact of IT System Modernization,” includes survey findings that identify the expectations, strategies and practices that health and human services (HHS) agencies use for the planning, acquisition and implementation of their information technology (IT) systems.
APHSA and Microsoft surveyed 67 agency program leaders from 35 states at various stages of modernizing their HHS IT systems, from those who have implemented solutions for eligibility determination and benefit issuance, case management, and online self-service to those who had not yet modernized. The survey focuses on capturing the agencies’ experience with organizational transformation planning efforts, the agencies’ system life-cycle challenges, and the impact and benefits the agencies experienced from IT modernization. The results revealed that with dynamic executive leadership, due diligence and solid program management practices, departments are seeing incremental benefits expected of IT modernization, but a number of challenges remain. With those challenges, a bright path exists to achieve the desired business benefits for transformation through the promise of today’s technology. (more…)
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Why do so many beginning teachers quit the profession or change schools? Surprising new research finds it’s not a heavy workload or lack of resources that has the most significant effect, but instead the relationship between teachers and their principal.(more…)
On the night of Aug. 5, 2010, as residents slept, water began rushing through Leh, an Indian town in a high desert valley in the Himalayas.
Average total rainfall in the area for August is about a half-inch. During this 24-hour period more than 8 inches fell, causing severe damage and leaving 193 dead, hundreds missing and thousands homeless.
“Flash flooding events don’t happen often but when they do they are some of the scariest, most dangerous and quickest natural disasters that can happen,” said Kristen Rasmussen, a University of Washington graduate student in atmospheric sciences. “But now that we know what types of conditions to look out for, flash flood warnings in remote regions of India might be possible.” (more…)
ANN ARBOR — While most Americans look forward to eating turkey on Thanksgiving, Pacific Islanders in the U.S. and on the islands are most likely to eat a part of the bird few other Americans are familiar with: its tail.(more…)
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was in Europe and Israel last week to showcase Microsoft’s wave of newly updated products, including Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, and Surface with Windows RT. He reinforced to customers, developers, students and others that the company is moving into a new era.
REDMOND, Wash. – Nov. 13, 2012 – World, meet Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, and Surface. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer last week took Microsoft’s wave of new products on the road, visiting Europe and Israel.
He said the launch of Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, an upcoming new version Office, and updates to the company’s Xbox platform—all part of the biggest wave of updates in the company’s history—signify that Microsoft has entered a new era. (more…)
Joint BioEnergy Institute Researchers Find New Access to Abundant Biomass for Advanced Biofuels
After cellulose, xylan is the most abundant biomass material on Earth, and therefore represents an enormous potential source of stored solar energy for the production of advance biofuels. A major roadblock, however, has been extracting xylan from plant cell walls. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have taken a significant step towards removing this roadblock by identifying a gene in rice plants whose suppression improves both the extraction of xylan and the overall release of the sugars needed to make biofuels.
The newly identified gene – dubbed XAX1 – acts to make xylan less extractable from plant cell walls. JBEI researchers, working with a mutant variety of rice plant – dubbed xax1 – in which the XAX1 gene has been “knocked-out” found that not only was xylan more extractable, but saccharification – the breakdown of carbohydrates into releasable sugars – also improved by better than 60-percent. Increased saccharification is key to more efficient production of advanced biofuels. (more…)
A new study published online in the journal Human Reproduction finds that the greater the inconsistency in the length of sperm, particularly in the tail (flagellum), the lower the concentration of sperm that can swim well. The finding offers fertility clinicians a potential new marker for fertility trouble that might trace back to how a patient’s sperm are being made.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Perhaps variety is the very spice of life, but as a matter of producing human life, it could be the bane of existence. That’s the indication of a new study in the journal Human Reproduction that found men with wider variation in sperm length, particularly in the flagellum, had lower concentrations of sperm that could swim well. Those with more consistently made sperm seemed to have more capable ones.(more…)
