A new Star Trek app for Windows 8 and Windows Phone kicked off an unprecedented cross-company partnership to promote “Star Trek Into Darkness,” the new film from Paramount Pictures. Star Trek movie-themed content will materialize across Microsoft’s consumer products and services leading up the May 16 release of the highly anticipated new movie.
REDMOND, Wash. – May 15, 2013 – Star Trek and Microsoft — a logical pairing, Spock might say.
PASADENA, Calif. – New insights into two factors that are creating a potentially volatile Southern California wildfire season come from an ongoing project using NASA and Indian satellite data by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; and Chapman University, Orange, Calif.
The scientists tracked the relationship between rainfall and the growth and drying-out of vegetation in recent months, during an abnormally dry year. They found the timing of rains triggered regional vegetation growth in January and early February, which then dried out faster than normal during a period of low rainfall, strong winds and high temperatures in March and April. The combination likely elevates wildfire risks by increasing available fuel. (more…)
The UA Libraries has just made 150 years of regionally published newspapers documenting the voice of Mexican and Mexican American communities digitally available for the first time.
A new digital collection at the University of Arizona Libraries makes accessible more than 150 years of news coverage documenting the voice of the Mexican and Mexican American community.
Curated, researched and digitized by librarians and archivists, in consultation with UA professors, the collection features 20 significant Mexican and Mexican American publications, many in Spanish. (more…)
A genetic pathway involving proteins in the endosomes of cells appears to be misregulated in the brains of children with autism, according to a newly published statistical analysis in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. Previously the genes were shown to cause rare forms of the disease but the new study suggests they have a wider role.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A new study finds that two genes individually associated with rare autism-related disorders are also jointly linked to more general forms of autism. The finding suggests a new genetic pathway to investigate in general autism research. (more…)
Bullet trains fuel real-estate booms, improve quality of life and create other unintended consequences by sharply reducing commute times from smaller cities to large megacities, economists from UCLA and China’s Tsinghua University observed in a new study in China. A similar dynamic, they said, could play out as California builds its own high-speed rail system. Because high-speed rail effectively brings cities closer together by reducing travel times, it allows people to enjoy many of the benefits of big cities while living in “second-tier” cities far from the pollution and congestion. By making second-tier cities attractive to those who would otherwise flock to global hubs, bullet trains could act as a safety valve for crowded megacities in the developing world and ease the effects of overpopulation, the study authors report. (more…)
Study of seventh and eighth graders finds no difference between boys, girls
Bullying, whether it’s physical aggression or spreading rumors, boosts the social status and popularity of middle school students, according to a new UCLA psychology study that has implications for programs aimed at combatting school bullying. In addition, students already considered popular engage in these forms of bullying, the researchers found.
The psychologists studied 1,895 ethnically diverse students from 99 classes at 11 Los Angeles middle schools. They conducted surveys at three points: during the spring of seventh grade, the fall of eighth grade and the spring of eighth grade. Each time, students were asked to name the students who were considered the “coolest,” the students who “start fights or push other kids around” and the ones who “spread nasty rumors about other kids.” (more…)
COLLEGE PARK, Md. – You may not know Lee Berger by name, but you may have seen the work of his production teams in many of 2012’s biggest movies: “Django Unchained,” “The Hunger Games,” “Life of Pi” and “Snow White and the Huntsman.”
Berger ’76 is president of the film division of Rhythm & Hues Studios, a Los Angeles-based company that does everything from animating the Chipmunks to creating fantastic worlds (“The Chronicles of Narnia”).
“This is a very competitive industry,” says Berger. “We don’t normally get to pick and choose, and we’re lucky that Ang Lee chose us (for ‘Life of Pi’).” (more…)
More than half a million adults in California seriously thought about committing suicide during the previous year, according to a new study from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.
The study, which uses data from the 2009 California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), is the first by the center to focus on suicide ideation.
In California, suicide is the 10th leading cause of death, the researchers noted. An average of nine deaths by suicide occur each day in the state. (more…)
