COLUMBUS, Ohio – New research adds to the growing body of evidence suggesting that there’s a link between allergies and reduced risk of a serious type of cancer that starts in the brain. This study suggests the reduced risk is stronger among women than men, although men with certain allergy profiles also have a lower tumor risk. (more…)
comScore Introduces TabLens™ to Provide Insight into the U.S. Tablet Market
RESTON, VA, August 6, 2012 – comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, today announced the launch of comScore TabLens™, its 
monthly syndicated service providing insights into U.S. tablet ownership and usage. Based on a 3-month rolling sample of 6,000 U.S. tablet owners, TabLens provides insight into tablet audiences, including demographics, content consumption habits and device ownership, to provide the industry with the most up-to-date look at this expanding tablet market.
“comScore is pleased to announce the availability of TabLens to bring reliable monthly reporting and metrics around tablet devices and their owners,” said Mark Donovan, comScore SVP of Mobile. “TabLens delivers the critical market insights needed by publishers, advertisers, OEMs, and network operators as they attempt to capture value in one of the fastest-growing and most profitable technology markets of all time.” (more…)
COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Roughly half the aerosols that affect air quality and climate change in North America may be coming from other continents, including Asia, Africa and Europe, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Maryland, College Park, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, University of Maryland at Baltimore County and the Universities Space Research Association. (more…)
The phrase occurred to Joe Janes out of the blue one day and immediately appealed to him. From there, ideas began to flow quickly.
Janes, associate professor in the University of Washington Information School, had been a fan of the British Broadcasting Corp. radio series “A History of the World in 100 Objects” and thought those shows effectively blended history and storytelling.
He got to wondering, what if he took a similar approach to information, telling about the twists and turns of history — through documents? (more…)
Direct Imaging by Berkeley Lab Researchers Confirms the Importance of Electron-Electron Interactions in Graphene
Perhaps no other material is generating as much excitement in the electronics world as graphene, sheets of pure carbon just one atom thick through which electrons can race at nearly the speed of light – 100 times faster than they move through silicon. Superthin, superstrong, superflexible and superfast as an electrical conductor, graphene has been touted as a potential wonder material for a host of electronic applications, starting with ultrafast transistors. For the vast potential of graphene to be fully realized, however, scientists must first learn more about what makes graphene so super. The latest step in this direction has been taken by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley.
Michael Crommie, a physicist who holds joint appointments with Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and UC Berkeley’s Physics Department, led a study in which the first direct observations at microscopic lengths were recorded of how electrons and holes respond to a charged impurity – a single Coulomb potential – placed on a gated graphene device. The results provide experimental support to the theory that interactions between electrons are critical to graphene’s extraordinary properties. (more…)
If a group of tourists piled out of a transport vehicle onto the surface of Mars, they’d no doubt start snapping pictures wildly. NASA’s Curiosity rover, set to touch down on the Red Planet the evening of Aug. 5 PDT (early morning EDT), will take a more careful approach to capturing its first scenic views.
The car-size rover’s very first images will come from the one-megapixel Hazard-Avoidance cameras (Hazcams) attached to the body of the rover. Once engineers have determined that it is safe to deploy the rover’s Remote Sensing Mast and its high-tech cameras, a process that may take several days, Curiosity will begin to survey its exotic surroundings. (more…)
Professor and students study how microbial life changes along the river
The mercury is pushing 100, but professor Michael Sadowsky and two assistants leave the indoor coolness for the bank of the Mississippi River as it flows by the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus.
The three men send a bucket splashing into the current and haul back a water sample. That doesn’t affect the river much, but information locked away in bacteria from the sample may tell them a great deal about how the river’s microbial communities change along its course through Minnesota and how human activity affects them. (more…)
Fears of terrorism in Europe and the United States have deteriorated into an irrational suspicion of Muslims, which will continue until the West turns its critical eye inward, argues University of Chicago professor Martha Nussbaum in her new book, The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age.
While fear is an important natural emotion, its self-centered nature makes it susceptible to irrational distortions that are harmful to others, writes Nussbaum, the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics in the Law School and Philosophy. (more…)
