*UD Confucius Institute director answers questions about Chinese New Year*
The Year of the Dragon is now under way. What does this new year mean, and how do Chinese families typically celebrate it?
Jianguo Chen, associate professor of Chinese and director of the Confucius Institute at UD, shares his insights with UDaily. (more…)
Scientists have long known that large volcanic explosions can affect the weather by spewing particles that block solar energy and cool the air.
Some suspect that extended “volcanic winters” from gigantic eruptions helped kill off dinosaurs and Neanderthals.
In the summer following Indonesia’s 1815 Tambora eruption, frost wrecked crops as far away as New England, and the 1991 blowout of the Philippines’ Mount Pinatubo lowered average global temperatures by 0.7 degrees F — enough to mask the effects of greenhouse gases for a year or so. (more…)
One of the most terrible consequences of offshore quakes is giant tsunami waves, sweeping everything on their way. Until now, scientists cannot answer a simple question: why in some cases they happen, and in others they do not? If it was established, then a tragedy like the one that has recently occurred in Indonesia could have been avoided.
An earthquake measuring 7.5 points, which occurred late on Monday, October 25 in Indonesia, caused a tsunami, which affected Mentawai islands in the western part of the country. Interestingly, the epicenter of the aftershocks of this earthquake was located 78 km west of the South Island Pagai of the Mentawai archipelago, at a depth of 20 km below the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Apparently, this is why the first few minutes after the earthquake the Indonesian government reported the tsunami threat, but later canceled the alert. (more…)
*Global Audience to Twitter.com Doubles in Past Year, as Latin American Audience Grows Fourfold*
Reston, VA – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, on Aug 11. released a report on Twitter.com growth worldwide. The study found that in June, nearly 93 million Internet users visited Twitter.com, an increase of 109 percent from the previous year, as the social networking site achieved strong gains across all global regions. Indonesia reported the highest penetration, with 20.8 percent of Internet users in the country visiting Twitter.com that month, followed by Brazil and Venezuela, with Venezuela’s growth fueled in large part by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s decision to join Twitter in late April.
WARSAW, Poland – July 9, 2010 – Christian Hood and Eric Lo already knew that they had won the contest to see who had built the best application for the new Windows Phone 7, so they didn’t think it would be any big deal when they walked on stage to get their prize.
Scientists in the Foja Mountains of the Indonesians province Papua have discovered two mammals – a giant rat and a pygmy possum (a nocturnal arboreal marsupial) in June this year. (more…)
