Author Archives: Guest Post

Researchers Report Potential for a “Moderate” New England “Red Tide” in 2012

New England is expected to experience a “moderate” regional “red tide” this spring and summer, report NOAA-funded scientists working in the Gulf of Maine to study the toxic algae that causes the bloom. The algae in the water pose no direct threat to human beings, however the toxins they produce can accumulate in filter-feeding organisms such as mussels and clams— which can cause paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) in humans who consume them. (more…)

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Microsoft’s Certifications Reinvented for the Cloud

*New program reflects changes coming to IT jobs.*

REDMOND, Wash. — April 11, 2012— Microsoft today announced that it has reinvented its certification program to directly address technology’s evolution to the cloud.

Organizations are increasingly turning to the cloud to improve productivity, cut costs and fuel business growth. By 2015 IT innovation produced by the cloud could create US$1.1 trillion a year in new business revenues according to a recent IDC study (1). As a result, top of mind for companies today is making sure they have the right skills and people in place to help them fully realize the benefits the cloud has to offer. (more…)

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Power of Possibility

ARAMARK executive, industry experts share entrepreneurial lessons with students

Believe in the power of possibility. “Possibility for success, possibility to impact others, possibility to create jobs and contribute to your communities – the possibility of successful business ownership is real for you,” Christina Estrada told students in a keynote address at the sixth annual Hospitality and Entrepreneurship Summit held recently on the University of Delaware campus in Newark.

For Estrada, global chief diversity officer for ARAMARK, possibility is rooted in an entrepreneurial spirit that sparks creative thinking into diversification.

“As an aspiring entrepreneur you need creative thinking after the big idea,” said Estrada. “You need to understand your industry and know what your customers need that is unique, as well as what they want consistently and that is reliable. As an aspiring entrepreneur, you need to believe in the power of possibility.” (more…)

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Exciting New Field of Bioorthogonal Chemistry Owes a Debt to Curiosity-Driven Research from Previous Eras

Carolyn Bertozzi’s Kavli Lecture Highlights Promise of Biorothogonal Chemistry and Its Links to Basic Research From the Past

“Bioorthogonal chemistry is literally chemistry for life,” said Carolyn Bertozzi, an internationally acclaimed leader and founder of this emerging and highly promising field of science that could fundamentally change drug development and disease diagnostics. In delivering the Kavli Foundation Innovations in Chemistry Lecture at this year’s Spring Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in San Diego, Bertozzi described how her own ground-breaking research made use of experiments nearly a century ago by two German chemists whose work was driven primarily by scientific curiosity as opposed to the more problem-driven research of today. (more…)

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Scientists Use PET to Predict Increased Survival in Cancer Patients After First Chemo Cycle

Researchers from UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have found that by administering a PET scan to individuals with soft-tissue sarcomas after just a single cycle of neoadjuvant chemotherapy, they can predict increased survival in these patients.

Prior research by this multidisciplinary team of physician-scientists had shown that a combined PET/CT scan using a glucose uptake probe called FDG allowed them to determine the pathologic response of patients’ tumors after the first dose of chemotherapy drugs. They then wondered if the patients who showed a significant PET response after the first round of chemotherapy also were surviving longer. (more…)

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Transactional Memory: An Idea Ahead of Its Time

Nearly 20 years ago, two Brown University computer scientists were working on a largely theoretical problem: How could multiple parallel processors make changes to shared resources safely and efficiently? Their proposal — transactional memory — is sparking fresh interest as a new generation of processors seeks improved power and speed.

In 1993, Maurice Herlihy and a colleague published a paper on transactional memory — a new, clever tactic in computing to deal with handling shared revisions to information seamlessly and concurrently. Few noticed.

Nearly 20 years later, transactional memory is an idea that’s now the rage in hardware computing, and Herlihy, computer science professor at Brown University, has morphed into a prophet of sorts, a computing pioneer who was far ahead of his time. Intel recently announced that transactional memory will be included in its mainstream “Haswell” hardware architecture by next year. IBM has adopted transactional memory in the Blue Gene/Q supercomputer. The original paper by Herlihy and Eliot Moss has been cited more than 1,300 times. (more…)

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The Weird World of “Remote Heating”

*UMD Researchers Discover Nanoscale Phenomena with Potential for Computer Speed Advances*

College Park, Md.– A team of University of Maryland scientists have discovered that when electric current is run through carbon nanotubes, objects nearby heat up while the nanotubes themselves stay cool, like a toaster that burns bread without getting hot. Understanding this completely unexpected new phenomenon could lead to new ways of building computer processors that can run at higher speeds without overheating.

“This is a new phenomenon we’re observing, exclusively at the nanoscale, and it is completely contrary to our intuition and knowledge of Joule heating at larger scales-for example, in things like your toaster,” says first author Kamal Baloch, who conducted the research while a graduate student at the University of Maryland. “The nanotube’s electrons are bouncing off of something, but not its atoms. Somehow, the atoms of the neighboring materials-the silicon nitride substrate-are vibrating and getting hot instead.” (more…)

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