Richard Ruiz, who heads the UA Department of Mexican American Studies, has turned to crossword puzzles to teach students about the implicit meaning of language.
Consider this crossword puzzle clue: The capital of Massachusetts? And know that while the answer contains six letters, it’s not Boston.
Give up? The answer: the U.S. “dollar.” (more…)
Charles Wright, hailed as one of the leading American poets of his generation, has been named the winner of Yale’s 2013 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry.
The Bollingen Prize in American Poetry is among the most prestigious prizes given to American writers. Established by Paul Mellon in 1949, it is awarded biennially by the Yale University Library to an American poet for the best book published during the previous two years or for lifetime achievement in poetry. The prize includes a cash award of $150,000. (more…)
Business promotional products are any items that may be used to promote something about a business. That might be the whole brand – or it might be a specific product or message from within that brand.
Promotional items may be anything at all, as long as they are either directly branded or used in a way that has immediate relevance to a promotion or campaign. Such a promotion or campaign can be targeted for immediate return (as in a product launch) – or it can be a long term promotion, like getting workers within a company to wear branded protective clothing when they do a job. (more…)
Berkeley Lab and JBEI Researchers Develop a Biology-Friendly Robot Programming Language
Teaching a robot a new trick is a challenge. You can’t reward it with treats and it doesn’t respond to approval or disappointment in your voice. For researchers in the biological sciences, however, the future training of robots has been made much easier thanks to a new program called “PaR-PaR.”
Nathan Hillson, a biochemist at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), led the development of PaR-PaR, which stands for Programming a Robot. PaR-PaR is a simple high-level, biology-friendly, robot-programming language that allows researchers to make better use of liquid-handling robots and thereby make possible experiments that otherwise might not have been considered. (more…)
What if the Ph.D. research becomes too complex for words? Dozens of candidates turned to the language of dance in the fifth annual national contest sponsored by Science Magazine. Diana Davis, a graduate student in mathematics, won the first-ever “Dance Your Ph.D.” prize in pure mathematics.
Math graduate student Diana Davis studies the symbolic dynamics that arise from cutting sequences on Veech surfaces and Bouw-Möller surfaces.
No idea what that means? It’s OK. She can show you. (more…)
A long campaign season with genuine gaffes and alleged misstatements began its culmination with the first presidential debate. Like many citizens, linguist Geoff Pullum, a visiting professor at Brown, was watching.
Grammarian Geoff Pullum is the Gerard Visiting Professor of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences at Brown University and professor of general linguistics at the University of Edinburgh. He is also a frequent blogger on language and politics on Language Log and Lingua Franca.
In a conversation with David Orenstein, he cited several specious analyses of word choice and syntax that have been used unfairly against candidates. The often ill-informed critiques stand in stark contrast to the way people are typically inclined to overcome the misstatements of others as they extract understanding from clumsy speech. Pullum will be listening closely to the presidential and vice presidential debates. (more…)
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Increasingly, U.S. firms are moving or considering moving their manufacturing operations back to domestic soil from overseas, finds a new study co-authored by a Michigan State University supply chain expert.
Fueling the trend are rising labor costs in emerging countries, high oil prices and increasing transportation costs, global risks such as political instability and other factors, said Tobias Schoenherr.
“Going overseas is not the panacea that it was thought of just a decade or so ago,” said Schoenherr, assistant professor in MSU’s top-ranked Department of Supply Chain Management. “Companies have realized the challenges and thus are moving back to the United States.” (more…)
*UCLA scientists identify 2,000 important genes*
Can the song of a small bird provide valuable insights into human stuttering and speech-related disorders and conditions, including autism and stroke? New research by UCLA life scientists and colleagues provides reason for optimism.
The scientists discovered that some 2,000 genes in a region of the male zebra finch’s brain known as “Area X” are significantly linked to singing. More than 1,500 genes in this region, a critical part of the bird’s song circuitry, are being reported for the first time. Previously, a group of scientists including the UCLA team had identified some 400 genes in Area X. All the genes’ levels of expression change when the bird sings. (more…)
