Author Archives: Guest Post

The Internet is Increasing the Speed we all Learn

As we all know the Internet is full of information, advice, media and commentary. It is often hard to sift through all the information that can be found on a subject to find what is important and factual. However, there are many good sources of information that can be trusted, with people putting their reputation on the line and regularly delivering high quality educational material.

You may have heard of TED.com, which is a collection of videos from excellent speakers across the world, all giving talks at the TED Foundation conferences. These talks are recorded, uploaded and freely available for anyone to stream or download to their PC. Many of the speakers are famous people and some are leaders in their field, however even with some of the most obscure topics there are often points raised that will benefit nearly everyone. The top three videos ordered by the amount of views are:

1 – Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity – 11,213,898 views

2 – Jill Bolte Taylor’s stroke of insight – 8,856,587 views

3 – Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology – 8,451,852 views (more…)

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Copper Kills Harmful Bacteria, UA Researchers Find

Copper alloys may make more hygienic cooking surfaces than stainless steel, according to a recent study by Sadhana Ravishankar of the UA department of veterinary science and microbiology. Her lab group discovered that copper alloys have antimicrobial effects against the foodborne pathogen Salmonella enterica.

Each year a tiny, rod-shaped species of bacteria with a fondness for proliferating on human food causes numerous cases of food poisoning around the world, sometimes leading to severe illness and even death. (more…)

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Advertisers Could Target Online Audiences More Efficiently with Personality Scale, MU Researcher Finds

COLUMBIA, Mo. ­— Online advertising has become prevalent in the past five years, and social media sites, such as Facebook, have played a major role. Now, a study at the University of Missouri School of Journalism has developed a method that could help advertisers target online audiences easier by knowing their personality types.

Using a new personality scale, researchers determine how people with certain personality types use social media websites. Heather Shoenberger, a doctoral student in the MU School of Journalism, found that those individuals who liked high-risk activity tended to update their status, upload photos and interact with friends frequently. Simultaneously, those individuals who were more reserved tended to merely scroll through Facebook’s “news feed”, and did not upload photos or actively engage with their friends frequently. (more…)

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Chicken with Plums

Synopsis

Teheran, 1958. Since his beloved violin was broken, Nasser Ali Khan, one of the most renowned musicians of his day, has lost all taste for life. Finding no instrument worthy of replacing it, he decides to confine himself to bed to await death. As he hopes for its arrival, he plunges into deep reveries, with dreams as melancholic as they are joyous, taking him back to his youth and even to a conversation with Azraël, the Angel of Death, who reveals the future of his children… As pieces of the puzzle gradually fit together, the poignant secret of his life comes to light: a wonderful story of love which inspired his genius and his music… (more…)

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New Technique Controls Crystalline Structure of Titanium Dioxide

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new technique for controlling the crystalline structure of titanium dioxide at room temperature. The development should make titanium dioxide more efficient in a range of applications, including photovoltaic cells, hydrogen production, antimicrobial coatings, smart sensors and optical communication technologies.

Titanium dioxide most commonly comes in one on of two major “phases,” meaning that its atoms arrange themselves in one of two crystalline structures. These phases are “anatase” or “rutile.” The arrangement of atoms dictates the material’s optical, chemical and electronic properties. As a result, each phase has different characteristics. The anatase phase has characteristics that make it better suited for use as an antibacterial agent and for applications such as hydrogen production. The rutile phase is better suited for use in other applications, such as photovoltaic cells, smart sensors and optical communication technologies. (more…)

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Ribbeting Research

Studies of frogs may lead to better hearing aids

When Mark Bee talks to his 106-year-old grandmother alone, her two enormous hearing aids enable her to understand him well.

“But at a table at Thanksgiving, with everybody talking, the devices don’t do well,” says Bee, an associate professor of ecology, evolution and behavior at the University of Minnesota.

Her difficulty in a noisy situation is called the cocktail party problem, after the background babble that stymies many hearing-impaired people trying to pick out individual voices at a party. But in ponds all over the world, frogs handle a similar problem, and Bee hopes to learn enough about how they do it to put the principles to work helping people like his grandmother. (more…)

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