Books from the Michigan State University Libraries will soon be digitized by Google to become part of the Google Books website.
Google Books has digitized millions of titles from university libraries and indexed the contents so users can search across the entire set. MSU’s participation is part of Google’s contract with the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, a consortium of Midwestern universities. (more…)
China’s endangered wild pandas may need new dinner reservations–and quickly, based on models that indicate climate change may kill off swaths of bamboo that pandas need to survive
In this week’s Nature Climate Change, an international journal, scientists from Michigan State University (MSU) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences provide comprehensive forecasts of how changing climate may affect the most common species of bamboo that carpet the forest floors of prime panda habitat in northwestern China. Even the most optimistic scenarios show that bamboo die-offs would effectively cause prime panda habitat to become inhospitable by the end of the 21st century.
The scientists studied possible scenarios of climate change in the Qinling Mountains in Shaanxi Province. At the northern boundary of China’s panda distributional range, the Qinling Mountains are home to about 275 wild pandas, which account for about 17 percent of the remaining wild population. The Qinling pandas, which have been isolated because of thousands of years of human habitation around the mountain range, vary genetically from other giant pandas. The geographic isolation of these pandas makes them particularly valuable for conservation, but vulnerable to climate change. (more…)
Ruben Martinez is director of MSU's Julian Samora Research Institute. Image credit: Michigan State University
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Latinos still tend to favor Democratic candidates, although Latinos who identify themselves as Republicans are more likely to vote in the Nov. 2 midterm elections, a Michigan State University scholar says.
According to the 2010 National Survey of Latinos, 44 percent of Latino Republicans said they had given the election a lot of thought, compared to 28 percent of Latino Democrats.
“While Latinos in general are much more likely to support the Democratic Party, when it comes down to it, Latino Republicans may be more likely to show up at the polls on Tuesday,” said Rubén Martinez, director of MSU’s Julian Samora Research Institute.
According to the national survey data, Latinos generally favor Democrats, with nearly 66 percent of Latino registered voters saying they plan to support the Democratic candidate in their congressional district. In contrast, only 22 percent said they plan to support the Republican candidate in their district. (more…)
