Blog

10 Things You’ll Never Have to Say With the new Office

Technology

A celebration of outdated, inconvenient sayings to leave in the past.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…)

Read More

How Technology is Changing Kenya

Economy

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…)

Read More

Increase in Metal Concentrations in Rocky Mountain Watershed Tied to Warming Temperatures

Environment

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…)

Read More

National Deficit Outlook Unchanged Under Obama: UMD Policy Analysis

Politics

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. (more…)

Read More

First Stars, Galaxies Formed more Rapidly than Expected

Science

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…)

Read More

That Giant Tarantula Is Terrifying, But I’ll Touch It

Science

Expressing your emotions can reduce fear, UCLA psychologists report

“Give sorrow words.”

—Malcolm in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”

Can simply describing your feelings at stressful times make you less afraid and less anxious?

A new UCLA psychology study suggests that labeling your emotions at the precise moment you are confronting what you fear can indeed have that effect.

The psychologists asked 88 people with a fear of spiders to approach a large, live tarantula in an open container outdoors. The participants were told to walk closer and closer to the spider and eventually touch it if they could. (more…)

Read More