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Asien zu teuer: Billigkleider bald aus Äthiopien

Textilunternehmen entdecken Äthiopien als billiges Produktionsland. Für stabile Rahmenbedingungen sorgt ein repressives Regime.

Die Regierung Äthiopiens lässt Oppositionelle und missliebige Journalisten systematisch misshandeln und foltern. Das schreibt die Menschenrechtsorganisation Human Rights Watch in einem kürzlich veröffentlichten Bericht. Laut Human Rights Watch sind unter den Gefangenen der Haftanstalt Maekelawi in der Hauptstadt Addis Abeba «Hunderte Oppositionspolitiker, Journalisten, Organisatoren von Protesten und angebliche Unterstützer von ethnischen Aufständen». Ihnen würden der Zugang zu Anwälten verweigert und Wasser und Nahrung entzogen, sie würden geschlagen und an den Handgelenken aufgehängt. (more…)

Martian moon samples will have bits of Mars

Science

A Russian mission to the Martian moon Phobos, launching in 2020, would return samples from Phobos that contain bits and pieces of Mars itself. A new study calculates how much Martian material is on the surface of Phobos and how deep it is likely to go.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A planned mission to return a sample from the Martian moon Phobos will likely be a twofer, according to a study by Brown University geologists. (more…)

Stress makes snails forgetful

Nature, Science

Snail study reveals that stress is bad for memory.

New research on pond snails has revealed that high levels of stress can block memory processes. Researchers from the University of Exeter and the University of Calgary trained snails and found that when they were exposed to multiple stressful events they were unable remember what they had learned.

Previous research has shown that stress also affects human ability to remember. This study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, found that experiencing multiple stressful events simultaneously has a cumulative detrimental effect on memory. (more…)

Abgeschmiert beim Palmöl-Test

Environment

Nachhaltigkeit verzweifelt gesucht: Null Punkte für Tengelmann, Aldi Nord und Rossmann. / WWF: Regenwald steckt noch immer in Pizza und Lippenstift.

Über 60 Prozent des in Deutschland verwendeten Palmöls stammt aus Produktion, die nicht einmal den Minimalanforderungen an ökologischer und sozialer Nachhaltigkeit genügt. Zu diesem Ergebnis kommt ein am Dienstag veröffentlichter WWF-Bericht. Insgesamt erreichten 72 von 157 befragten deutschen Unternehmen weniger als zwei Punkte und fanden sich damit am untersten Ende der Nachhaltigkeits-Skala wieder, darunter Aldi Nord, Tengelmann und Rossmann. Die vom WWF geforderten Zusatzkriterien, wie ein Umwandlungsverbot von kohlenstoffreichen Torfböden und ein Verzicht auf Pestizide, werden sogar nur von einer Handvoll Unternehmen nachgefragt. (more…)

IBM Launches Talent Assessment to Help Aspiring Data Crunchers and Academia Gauge and Enhance Skills

Technology

WASHINGTON – 12 Nov 2013: IBM today unveiled the IBM Analytics Talent Assessment, a first-of-its-kind online platform that provides university students with data-driven insights that aim to help narrow the Big Data and Analytics skills gap and foster talent for the next-generation workforce.

UsingIBM Analytics Talent Assessment, university students can gauge their readiness for public and private sector Big Data and analytics careers and gain guidance on ways to further develop and position themselves for these in-demand jobsthrough a simple online questionnaire. In addition to benefitting students and universities, talent assessments help organizations identify and hire the right candidate for the right job. They can also enable them to more accurately predict performance, thereby adding greater efficiencies to an organization’s human capital management strategy. (more…)

‘Freakish’ asteroid discovered, resembles rotating lawn sprinkler

Science

Astronomers have discovered a “weird and freakish object” resembling a rotating lawn sprinkler in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The find, reported online in the Nov. 7 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters, has left them scratching their heads and searching for an explanation for the strange asteroid’s out-of-this-world appearance.

Normal asteroids appear simply as tiny points of light. This bizarre asteroid has six comet-like tails of dust radiating from it like spokes on a wheel. (more…)

New Research from Sociologists Finds the Racial and Educational Preferences of Internet Daters

Culture, Technology

Study of nearly one million dating website users shows opportunities for white daters, hurdles for blacks

AMHERST, Mass. – New research from sociologists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has found specific racial patterns in the outreach and response habits of heterosexual men and women using online dating sites.

In a study published in the upcoming issue of the American Journal of Sociology, vol. 119, no. 1, UMass Amherst doctoral recipient Ken-Hou Lin and associate professor Jennifer Lundquist tracked the racial and educational characteristics of almost one million online daters searching for relationships from the 20 largest cities in the U.S. They then analyzed the inquiries sent and received by each dater, in order to gain an understanding of how members of each race interact with one another in an online dating setting. (more…)

Spitzer and ALMA Reveal a Star’s Bubbly Birth

Science

It’s a bouncing baby . . . star! Combined observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and the newly completed Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile have revealed the throes of stellar birth as never before in the well-studied object known as HH 46/47.

Herbig-Haro (HH) objects form when jets shot out by newborn stars collide with surrounding material, producing small, bright, nebulous regions. To our eyes, the dynamics within many HH objects are obscured by enveloping gas and dust. But the infrared and submillimeter wavelengths of light seen by Spitzer and ALMA, respectively, pierce the dark cosmic cloud around HH 46/47 to let us in on the action. (more…)