Tag Archives: Baltimore

Kepler Finds a Very Wobbly Planet

Imagine living on a planet with seasons so erratic you would hardly know whether to wear Bermuda shorts or a heavy overcoat. That is the situation on a weird, wobbly world found by NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler space telescope.

The planet, designated Kepler-413b, precesses, or wobbles, wildly on its spin axis, much like a child’s top. The tilt of the planet’s spin axis can vary by as much as 30 degrees over 11 years, leading to rapid and erratic changes in seasons. In contrast, Earth’s rotational precession is 23.5 degrees over 26,000 years. Researchers are amazed that this far-off planet is precessing on a human timescale. (more…)

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Sunny days

Alumna pairs passions for writing, science at Weather Channel website

Five years since graduating from the University of Delaware, Laura Dattaro is right where she belongs. Not playing the trumpet professionally, as she assumed she would be entering her freshman year of college, but writing for The Weather Channel at weather.com, immersed in the two things she loves most: writing and science.

Dattaro never thought she would be a journalist. Majoring in English and music and playing for the UD Marching Band, the Honors Program student had ambitions to make music her main career focus. That was until a fellow band member and city news desk editor at The Review, UD’s student run newspaper, gave her a story to work on.  (more…)

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‘Disposable Heroes’

UD sociologist writes book about ‘betrayal’ of African American veterans

For the University of Delaware’s Benjamin Fleury-Steiner, research for his new book Disposable Heroes: The Betrayal of African American Veterans was uncomfortable and disquieting.

An associate professor of sociology, Fleury-Steiner spent months interviewing black veterans of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan in the back streets of Wilmington, Del., to learn more about their service to their country and their experiences upon returning home.

The topic had long been on Fleury-Steiner’s mind, himself an Army veteran of Operation Desert Storm who had ducked Scud missiles in Saudi Arabia. (more…)

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Black Hole Caught Red-Handed in a Stellar Homicide

PASADENA, Calif. – Astronomers have gathered the most direct evidence yet of a supermassive black hole shredding a star that wandered too close. NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer, a space-based observatory, and the Pan-STARRS1 telescope on the summit of Haleakala in Hawaii were among the first to help identify the stellar remains.

Supermassive black holes, weighing millions to billions times more than the sun, lurk in the centers of most galaxies. These hefty monsters lie quietly until an unsuspecting victim, such as a star, wanders close enough to get ripped apart by their powerful gravitational clutches. (more…)

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Lecture or Listen: When Patients Waver on Meds

*According to a new analysis of hundreds of recorded office visits, doctors and nurse practitioners typically issued orders and asked closed or leading questions when talking to their HIV-positive patients about adherence to antiretroviral therapy. Attempts at problem-solving with patients who had lapsed occurred in less than a quarter of visits.*

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Take your medicine, Doctor’s orders. It’s a simple idea that may seem especially obvious when the pills are the antiretroviral (ARV) drugs that add decades to the lives of HIV-positive patients. But despite the reality that keeping up with drug regimens is not easy for many patients, a new analysis of hundreds of recorded doctor’s office visits finds that physicians and nurse practitioners often still rely on lecturing, ordering, and scolding rather than listening and problem solving with their patients. (more…)

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Yahoo! Names Top Fantasy Football Cities – Green Bay No. 1

*Four Quarters, Four Screens: Catch Yahoo! Fantasy Football on TVs, Tablets, Mobile Phones and Computers*

SUNNYVALE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)— Yahoo! named Green Bay — home to the reigning Super Bowl champions — the Official Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Football City of 2011, with one in 29 Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Football players per capita during the 2010 season. Yahoo! also announced that its No. 1 ranked fantasy football experience will be available across four screens in time for the first NFL regular season game.

Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Football is the No. 1 fantasy football platform in the industry — and not just in Green Bay. During the NFL season, Yahoo! Fantasy Sports alone receives more visitors than all of NYTimes.com, and more time is spent playing Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Football than is spent on sites such as NFL.com, FOX Sports, CBS Sports, NYTimes.com, Amazon.com, Netflix.com, Disney Online, and Wikipedia.* Fans can sign up at https://sports.yahoo.com/fantasy. And in 2011 Yahoo! Sports is ensuring that its games capture the changing trends as to how users access information by providing them with access to their teams regardless of device or location. (more…)

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IBM Turns 100

*Chairman and CEO Samuel J. Palmisano Says Managing for the Long Term Will Drive Growth for Next 100 Years*

ARMONK, N.Y., – 16 Jun 2011: IBM today is marking the 100th anniversary of its founding on June 16, 1911. To celebrate the milestone, the company is releasing a book, “Making the World Work Better: The Ideas That Shaped a Century and a Company,” debuting a new film, “Wild Ducks,” and ringing the Opening Bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

During its first century, IBM has played a leading role in transforming business, science and society. The company’s history can be seen as a succession of key milestones – from investing in a research lab in the depths of the Great Depression, to developing the first hard disk drive that created the data storage industry, to working with the U.S. government to develop the Social Security System. It continued with such “big bets” as a radical new computing model, the System/360 mainframe; the invention of the UPC code; the invention of the IBM Personal Computer that launched the PC revolution; and the recent development of Watson, the computer that triumphed on the TV game show Jeopardy!. (more…)

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Microsoft and NASA Bring Mars Down to Earth Through the WorldWide Telescope

*Dramatic imagery from NASA Mars missions creates new user experiences in the Microsoft Research WorldWide Telescope.*  

REDMOND, Wash. — Microsoft Research and NASA are providing an entirely new experience to users of the WorldWide Telescope, which will allow visitors to interact with and explore our solar system like never before.

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