Bucking the idea that environmentalism hurts economic performance, a new UCLA-led study has found that companies that voluntarily adopt international “green” practices and standards have employees who are 16 percent more productive than the average. (more…)
Research finds infants classify faces by gender, race
Long before babies can talk — even before they can sit up on their own — they are mentally forming categories for objects and animals in a way that, for example, sets apart squares from triangles and cats from dogs, psychologists say.
Now, research conducted by the University of Delaware’s Paul Quinn, professor of psychology, and others indicates that babies as young as 3 months are also classifying faces by race and gender, showing a visual preference for the category they see most often in their daily lives, and that by 9 months they have difficulty recognizing the faces of people from less-familiar races. (more…)
A celebration of outdated, inconvenient sayings to leave in the past.
REDMOND, Wash. — Sept. 10, 2012 — Since the new Office launched on July 16, millions of people have downloaded the Customer Preview and likely updated their vocabulary to match the new things they’re doing, such as sharing links instead of attachments, moving documents from USB drives into the cloud and using a stylus that can’t run out of ink. Those who have already simplified their lives and speech with the new Office can celebrate with this PowerPoint slideshow, and others who want freedom from the following vernacular can download the Customer Preview at office.com/preview. (more…)
It is not often you think about how technology can affect an entire country, but the upsurge of affordable smart phones and portable internet have made a huge impact on the everyday lives on Kenyans. Not only do people now have access to things around the world, but they also have educational and health opportunities they have never had before. (more…)
Warmer air temperatures since the 1980s may explain significant increases in zinc and other metal concentrations of ecological concern in a Rocky Mountain watershed, reports a new study led by the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Colorado Boulder.
Rising concentrations of zinc and other metals in the upper Snake River just west of the Continental Divide near Keystone, Colo., may be the result of falling water tables, melting permafrost and accelerating mineral weathering rates, all driven by warmer air temperatures in the watershed. Researchers observed a fourfold increase in dissolved zinc over the last 30 years during the month of September. (more…)
Public Policy’s Philip Joyce Offers Election Policy Fact Check
COLLEGE PARK, Md. – From a public policy point of view, the national debt accumulation since President Obama took office is largely a result of policies put in place prior to his inauguration, says a new analysis by University of Maryland expert Philip Joyce. He adds that Obama’s policies will make little impact in the debt over the next decade.
“The best that can be said about presidential fiscal policies thus far is that they would slow the bleeding, but they neither would stop it nor would they do much to heal the patient,” Joyce says.
The size of the debt has been one of the biggest issues of the presidential campaign, with Republicans arguing that the President has allowed the debt to rise out of control and Obama saying that he inherited the policies that led to an increase in debt and deficits. (more…)
Synopsis
The epic love story between Bella Swan and Edward Cullen concludes in this final installment of Stephenie Meyer’s best-selling series. DREAMGIRLS’ Bill Condon directs this second segment of the two-film adaptation. (more…)
Analysis of data from the National Science Foundation’s South Pole Telescope, for the first time, more precisely defines the period of cosmological evolution when the first stars and galaxies formed and gradually illuminated the universe. The data indicate that this period, called the epoch of reionization, was shorter than theorists speculated — and that it ended early.
“We find that the epoch of reionization lasted less than 500 million years and began when the universe was at least 250 million years old,” said Oliver Zahn, a postdoctoral fellow at the Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics at the University of California, Berkeley, who led the study. “Before this measurement, scientists believed that reionization lasted 750 million years or longer, and had no evidence as to when reionization began.” (more…)
