Author Archives: Guest Post

The Relationship between Consumer Behavior and Facebook

We spend a lot of time on Facebook. No joke, right? So it should really come as no surprise that companies have turned to Facebook to appeal more directly to consumers. But how much does business marketing on Facebook affect us?  Recently Chadwick Martin Bailey, a custom market research company, teamed up with Constant Contact to conduct a study on the relationship between Facebook and consumer behavior, polling 1,491individuals 18 and older.

According to some of the highlights from the study:

1. 52% of Americans over 18 spend at least an hour on Facebook each week. That 52% can be further broken down into 29% spend 1-5 hours on the site each week, 11% spend 6-10 hours there, 6% spend 11-20 hours perusing the site, and 6% log 21+hours on Facebook each week. That’s a lot of time on Facebook! (more…)

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Meet the ‘Plumbers’ Powering ‘Halo 4’ Infinity Multiplayer

Members of 343 Industries talk to the Microsoft News Center about the infrastructure behind the “Halo 4” Infinity Multiplayer suite and the video game industry’s shift to a world of 24/7 live services.

REDMOND, Wash. — Oct. 31, 2012 — Meet Jerry Hook and Tamir Melamed, the hardest-working plumbers in the video game world not named Mario or Luigi.

Hook and Melamed lead the engineering team laying the subterranean IT structures that will power every pixel of the multiplayer experience in “Halo 4.” Everything fans experience online – stats, screenshots, the simple joy of blasting a friend or stranger to smithereens – depends on the infrastructure they’ve built over the past year and half. That infrastructure is supported by Windows Azure, which provides the team with the affordable scalability they need to keep a game like “Halo 4” running smoothly for fans. (more…)

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Medicare Policy: Barrier to Hospice Increases Hospitalization

Because of a Medicare policy that prevents simultaneous reimbursement for skilled nursing and hospice care, many families cannot choose hospice for loved ones who reside in nursing homes. The result, new research shows, is that residents with advanced dementia who have Medicare skilled nursing home care without any hospice care have a far greater likelihood of dying in the hospital and receiving aggressive treatments such as feeding tubes or physical therapy within weeks of death.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A Medicare rule that blocks thousands of nursing home residents from receiving simultaneous reimbursement for hospice and skilled nursing facility (SNF) care at the end of life may result in those residents receiving more aggressive treatment and hospitalization, according a new analysis. (more…)

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Medieval Manuscripts to Get Technological Makeover

The world’s largest collection of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) poetry may soon be available on a smart device App, as part of a project initiated by the University of Exeter.

The App is in its prototype stage of development but in time will introduce school age pupils to the world of medieval manuscripts and the history of the book.

The initial stage will be based around Exeter Cathedral’s famous Exeter Book (10th century) which features the Exeter Riddles, a collection of 96 literary mysteries. The University of Exeter’s Modern Languages department is working in collaboration with Antenna International to create the App which will reveal the secrets of medieval literature to a new audience. The research into the prototype model was initially funded by Research & Enterprise in Arts & Creative Technology (REACT) and Higher Education Innovation Funding (HEIF). (more…)

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Training Your Robot the PaR-PaR Way

Berkeley Lab and JBEI Researchers Develop a Biology-Friendly Robot Programming Language

Teaching a robot a new trick is a challenge. You can’t reward it with treats and it doesn’t respond to approval or disappointment in your voice. For researchers in the biological sciences, however, the future training of robots has been made much easier thanks to a new program called “PaR-PaR.”

Nathan Hillson, a biochemist at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), led the development of PaR-PaR, which stands for Programming a Robot. PaR-PaR is a simple high-level, biology-friendly, robot-programming language that allows researchers to make better use of liquid-handling robots and thereby make possible experiments that otherwise might not have been considered. (more…)

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“Nike+ Kinect Training” Provides World Class Athletic Training – at Home

Microsoft and Nike team up to make Nike’s elite athletic training – never before available to the public – available to everyone in the comfort of their living room with the power of Kinect for Xbox 360.

REDMOND, Wash. – Oct. 30, 2012 – Want to get athlete fit? With “Nike+ Kinect Training,” you can just do it in your living room. (more…)

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Transforming America by Redirecting Wasted Health Care Dollars

Eliminating excessive spending could mean windfall for U.S., study suggests

The respected national Institute of Medicine estimates that $750 billion is lost each year to wasteful or excessive health care spending. This sum includes excess administrative costs, inflated prices, unnecessary services and fraud — dollars that add no value to health and well-being.

If those wasteful costs could be corralled without sacrificing health care quality, how might that money be better spent? (more…)

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