Author Archives: Guest Post

Meet the Team That Puts ‘Amazing Power’ at People’s Fingertips

*Members of the Windows Server team speak with Microsoft News Center about their groundbreaking work in moving customers to the cloud—and what else they find fascinating.*

REDMOND, Wash. – Start telling most people about the importance of servers and their eyes glaze over. They would much rather talk about some cool new smartphone app or the latest social networking site. Yet without servers, the things we value most about technology—from mobile devices to online shopping—would be impossible.

“It’s servers that enable us to do everything from email to eBay,” says Betsy Speare, a principle program manager lead in the Windows Server Manageability team. “Servers are making the world a smaller place by providing the backbone for communication and the integration of information.” (more…)

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Planck All-Sky Images Show Cold Gas and Strange Haze

New images from the Planck mission show previously undiscovered islands of star formation and a mysterious haze of microwave emissions in our Milky Way galaxy. The views give scientists new treasures to mine and take them closer to understanding the secrets of our galaxy.

Planck is a European Space Agency mission with significant NASA participation. (more…)

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Explosive Evolution Need Not Follow Mass Extinctions

In the wake of a mass extinction like the one that occurred 445 million years ago, a common assumption is that surviving species tend to proliferate quickly into new forms, having outlived many of their competitors.

But new research shows that tiny marine organisms called graptoloids did not begin to rapidly develop new physical traits until about 2 million years after competing species became extinct. (more…)

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Ethanol Mandate Not the Best Option

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Many people are willing to pay a premium for ethanol, but not enough to justify the government mandate for the corn-based fuel, a Michigan State University economist argues.

Soren Anderson studied the demand for ethanol, or E85, in the United States. He found that when ethanol prices rose 10 cents per gallon, demand for ethanol fell only 12 percent to 16 percent on average. (more…)

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As Next Supercontinent Forms, Arctic Ocean, Caribbean will Vanish First

Geologists at Yale University have proposed a new theory to describe the formation of supercontinents, the epic process by which Earth’s major continental blocks combine into a single vast landmass. The new model radically challenges the dominant theories of how supercontinents might take shape.

In a paper published Feb. 9 in the journal Nature, Yale researchers introduce a process called orthoversion, in which each succeeding supercontinent forms 90 degrees from the geographic center of its ancient predecessor. Under the theory, the present-day Arctic Ocean and Caribbean Sea will vanish as North and South America fuse during a mutual northward migration that leads to a collision with Europe and Asia. (more…)

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