As the nation recognizes the 150th anniversary of the Civil War’s start, public interest has been rekindled in the war and the numerous memorials and monuments marking historic figures, sites and battlegrounds in states around the country.
South Carolina militiamen fired the first shots of the Civil War at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, and over the next four years more than 10,000 military engagements between the North and South took place. In the end more than 600,000 soldiers died. (more…)
ANN ARBOR, Mich.— This year marks a full century that instructors at the University of Michigan Biological Station on Douglas Lake near Pellston have been teaching students about northern Michigan’s birds. The station was established in 1909, and two years later a course titled “The Natural History of Birds” first appeared in the summer bulletin.(more…)
Southern California’s high desert has been a stand-in for Mars for NASA technology testing many times over the years. And so it is again, in a series of flights by an F/A-18 aircraft to test the landing radar for NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission.
The flight profile is designed to have the F/A-18 climb to 40,000 feet (about 12,000 meters). From there, it makes a series of subsonic, stair-step dives at angles of 40 to 90 degrees to simulate what the Mars radar will see while the spacecraft is on a parachute descending through the Martian atmosphere. The F/A-18 pulls out of each dive at 5,000 feet (about 1,500 meters. Data collected by these flights will be used to finesse the Mars landing radar software, to help ensure that it is calibrated as accurately as possible.(more…)
*Organizations should monitor online comments from victims during crises, MU researchers say’
COLUMBIA, Mo. – With the increasing pervasiveness of social media and online communication in the operation of most organizations and corporations, little is known about the potential effects of public expressions of anger displayed throughout various online sources. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have found that angry user-generated comments on Internet sites can further perpetuate negative perceptions of an organization undergoing the crisis.
Based on her findings, Bo Kyung Kim, a doctoral student in the University of Missouri School of Journalism, urges public relations practitioners to consider angry user-generated messages as critical crisis information that has a direct impact on the public in general. She says evaluation is particularly crucial because of how much the public relies on unsubstantiated web-based information. (more…)
*Physicists at the UA have achieved a breakthrough toward the development of a new breed of computing devices that can process data using less power.
In a recent publication in Physical Review Letters, physicists at the University of Arizonapropose a way to translate the elusive magnetic spin of electrons into easily measurable electric signals. The finding is a key step in the development of computing based on spintronics, which doesn’t rely on electron charge to digitize information.
Unlike conventional computing devices, which require electric charges to flow along a circuit, spintronics harnesses the magnetic properties of electrons rather than their electric charge to process and store information. (more…)
Astronomers at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa have discovered a new comet that they expect will be visible to the naked eye in early 2013.
Originally found by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope on Haleakala, Maui, on the night of June 5-6, it was confirmed to be a comet by UH Mānoa astronomer Richard Wainscoat and graduate student Marco Micheli the following night using the Canada-France-Hawaiʻi Telescope on Mauna Kea.(more…)
*Yahoo! to premiere select short films from the Festival online and launch online audience award*
SUNNYVALE, Calif.-– To further demonstrate the company’s commitment to the creative community, Yahoo!, the premier digital media company, today announced it is the Official Sponsor of the Short Film Program at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, which runs January 19-29, 2012 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah.
As a sponsor, Yahoo! will premiere a select number of short films from the Festival on Yahoo! Movies, a leading online movie destination that reaches 27.5 million users per month. Consumers will also be able to vote for an audience award, which will be presented to the winning filmmaker at the Short Film Awards party taking place during the Festival. (more…)
Researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) have developed a novel iPhone application that may enable persons with Parkinson’s disease and certain other neurological conditions to use the ubiquitous devices to collect data on hand and arm tremors and relay the results to medical personnel.
The researchers believe the application could replace subjective tests now used to assess the severity of tremors, while potentially allowing more frequent patient monitoring without costly visits to medical facilities. (more…)
