Data analytics provides the city with actionable intelligence
ARMONK, N.Y. – 13 Dec 2010: IBM today announced that it is working with the city of Corpus Christi, Texas to continuously improve efficiency and sustainability for the city’s more than 280,000 residents. (more…)
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A wave of reptile extinctions on the Greek islands over the past 15,000 years may offer a preview of the way plants and animals will respond as the world rapidly warms due to human-caused climate change, according to a University of Michigan ecologist and his colleagues.
The Greek island extinctions also highlight the critical importance of preserving habitat corridors that will enable plants and animals to migrate in response to climate change, thereby maximizing their chances of survival. (more…)
Saturn’s rings. Image credit: NASA/JPL
A new study conducted by scientists at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, has this week posited that Saturn’s rings are the remnants of a massive moon that once orbited Earth’s distant neighbour.
According to study author and astronomer Robin Canup, the moon plunged into Saturn around 4.5 billion years ago due to a giant ring of hydrogen gas responsible for creating rocky satellites but also for dragging larger moons out of orbit.
The scientific theory centres on the predominantly icy composition of Saturn’s rings, The Tech Herald reports. (more…)
*New books by the author of “The War of the Roses” and “Random Hearts” available for Kindle and Kindle app customers in less than 60 seconds*
SEATTLE, Dec 13, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Amazon.com today announced that bestselling author Warren Adler has 
made five e-books, none of which have been previously published in any format, available in the Kindle Store (www.amazon.com/kindlestore). These books, all of which draw from Adler’s skill as a novelist and his keen insight into the nature of intimate human relationships, will also be available in print editions through CreateSpace. All five books in the series – “The David Embrace,” “Flanagan’s Dolls,” “The Womanizer,” “Residue” and “Empty Treasures”–are available for sale today for $7.95 with the e-books exclusive to the Kindle Store for two years. (more…)
Psychedelically colored wolves depicted by thermal imaging will shed light on how mange affects the survival, reproduction and social behavior of wolves in Yellowstone National Park. (more…)
COLUMBUS, Ohio – A preliminary look at an ice field atop the highest mountain in the eastern European Alps suggests that the glacier may hold records of ancient climate extending back as much as a thousand years. (more…)
A circular rainbow appears like a halo around an exploded star in this new view of the IC 443 nebula from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.
When massive stars die, they explode in tremendous blasts, called supernovae, which send out shock waves. The shock waves sweep up and heat surrounding gas and dust, creating supernova remnants like the one pictured here. The supernova in IC 443 happened somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago. (more…)
Right now, it looks a little like one of those plastic containers you might fill with gasoline when your car has run dry. But Scott Gallager is not headed to the nearest Mobil station. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) biologist has other, grander plans for his revolutionary Swimming Behavioral Spectrophotometer (SBS), which employs one-celled protozoa to detect toxins in water sources.
Not only is he working on streamlining the boxy-looking contraption—eventually even evolving it into a computer chip—but he sees it as a tool to potentially “monitor all the drinking water in the world.
“It has a unique utility.” (more…)
