Author Archives: Guest Post

Go Inside ‘The Hunger Games’ Movie with Groundbreaking New IE9 Site

*Fans of the upcoming movie “The Hunger Games” can visit the fictional nation of Panem and immerse themselves into its futuristic Capitol city by visiting a new Internet Explorer 9 website powered by HTML5.*

REDMOND, Wash. – March 20, 2012 – The pages of the bestselling trilogy “The Hunger Games” introduced readers to a captivating set of characters living in a post-apocalyptic world, and on Friday the movie adaptation of the first book will bring that world to life.

Thanks to a partnership between Microsoft’s Internet Explorer team and Lionsgate, fans of The Hunger Games can dive in and experience the world of Panem and its opulent and oppressive Capitol city today. (more…)

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Exposed To Phthalates as Fetuses, Female Mice Have Altered Reproductive Lives

Many environmental and public health officials are concerned about the potential health effects of phthalates, which are common chemicals used to make plastics softer and more pliable. In the first study to examine what effect in utero doses of phthalates have on the reproductive system of mice, Brown University toxicologists found that extremely high doses were associated with significant changes, such as a shortened reproductive lifespan and abnormal cell growth in mammary glands.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Female mouse fetuses exposed to very high doses of a common industrial chemical that makes plastics more pliable develop significant reproductive alterations and precancerous lesions as they grow up, according to a new toxicology study conducted at Brown University. (more…)

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IBM Introduces New Predictive Analytics Services and Software to Reduce Fraud, Manage Financial Performance and Deliver Next Best Action

NEW YORK and LONDON – 20 Mar 2012: IBM today announced new consulting services and software that take the power of predictive analytics to new levels of impact for the highest-priority issues of C-suite decision makers. The new analytic offerings address the emerging opportunities of big data to manage financial operations, decrease fraud and nurture next-generation customer relationships.

Based on experiences drawn from more than 20,000 analytics engagements, the new solutions combine innovations developed by IBM Research with new predictive technologies from dozens of companies IBM has acquired. (more…)

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Ultracold Experiments Heat Up Quantum Research

University of Chicago physicists have experimentally demonstrated, for the first time, that atoms chilled to temperatures near absolute zero may behave like seemingly unrelated natural systems of vastly different scales, offering potential insights into links between the atomic realm and deep questions of cosmology.

This ultracold state, called “quantum criticality,” hints at similarities between such diverse phenomena as the gravitational dynamics of black holes or the exotic conditions that prevailed at the birth of the universe, said Cheng Chin, associate professor in physics at UChicago. The results could even point to ways of simulating cosmological phenomena of the early universe by studying systems of atoms in states of quantum criticality. (more…)

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Yale Research Offers New Way To See Inside Solids

Researchers at Yale University have developed a new way of seeing inside solid objects, including animal bones and tissues, potentially opening a vast array of dense materials to a new type of detailed internal inspection.

The technique, a novel kind of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), creates three-dimensional images of hard and soft solids based on signals emitted by their phosphorus content. (more…)

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Confidence in Climate Data: Using 3 Million-Year-Old Records

How do we understand what’s happening today by looking back millions of years?

Scientists are looking at what climate conditions were like 3.3 to 3 million years ago, during a geologic period known as the Pliocene, and they are confident in the accuracy of their data.

The Pliocene is the most recent period of sustained global warmth similar to what is projected for the 21st century. Climate during this time period offers one of the closest analogs to estimate future climate conditions. (more…)

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Brazil’s Social Networking Activity Accelerates in the Past Year Fueled by Facebook Growth

Online Video Takes Off in Brazil as Total Video Views Jump 74 Percent in 2011

comScore Presents Complimentary Webinar on the 2012 Brazil Digital Future in Focus

São Paulo, Brazil, March 19, 2012 – comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its annual report on Brazil’s key digital trends of the past year and what they mean for the year ahead. The 2012 Brazil Digital Future in Focus examines how the prevailing trends in social media, online video, digital advertising, mobile and search are defining the current marketplace and how they are likely to shape the coming year. The results of the study will be presented via a complimentary, live webinar on Wednesday, March 21. For more information and to register, please visit: https://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Events_Webinars/Webinar/2012/2012_Brazil_Future_in_Focus_Webinar (more…)

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Scholars Say Global Governance Overhaul Needed For Earth’s Sustainability

A group of the world’s leading environmental scholars are sounding the alarm that human societies need to transform their national and international environmental institutions into a more coherent and robust planetary stewardship model to steer away from rapid and irreversible changes to the Earth’s subsystems.

University of Toronto political scientist Steven Bernstein is one of the authors of a paper which appears in Science on March 16, 2012. (more…)

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