NEW ORLEANS, LA – 17 Sep 2013: At LinuxCon 2013 today, IBM announced plans to invest $1 billion (USD) in new Linux and open source technologies for IBM’s Power Systems servers. The investment aims to help clients capitalize on big data and cloud computing with modern systems built to handle the new wave of applications coming to the data center in the post-PC era.
Two immediate initiatives announced, a new client center in Europe and a Linux on Power development cloud, focus on rapidly expanding IBM’s growing ecosystem supporting Linux on Power Systems which today represents thousands of independent software vendor and open source applications worldwide. Specific details of both initiatives include: (more…)
On Monday morning — Labor Day — first-year students gathered in classrooms around campus for their First Readings seminars. The program, initiated at Brown seven years ago, is designed to give new students a common reading experience and prepare them for college life.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Classes don’t officially begin until Wednesday, but first-year students got their first taste of academic life at Brown on the first Monday in September, when all 1,537 of them gathered in classrooms around campus for the annual First Readings seminars. (more…)
UA researcher Joseph Bonito is investigating the communication habits of decision-making groups, including North American Quitline staff members and youth involved in Lego robotics teams, to advance what is known about small group communication.
It is likely a daily occurrence: People hold well-intentioned meetings that ultimately turn out to be ineffective.
Why? The list of variables can be astonishingly long, said Joseph Bonito, a University of Arizona communication professor who specializes in small group communication. (more…)
With the 2015 sesquicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s death approaching, interest is rising, and with new tools, UA researchers have turned their attention to one of the last remaining mysteries about what reportedly was the largest traditional funeral in American history – the train’s color.
A trove of information exists about Abraham Lincoln’s funeral, which drew millions of mourners during a two-week railway procession across the Northern states.
But until now, the precise color of the president’s railcar had been lost to history. (more…)
Decreasing emissions of black carbon, methane and other pollutants makes a difference
With coastal areas bracing for rising sea levels, new research indicates that cutting emissions of certain pollutants can greatly slow sea level rise this century.
Scientists found that reductions in four pollutants that cycle comparatively quickly through the atmosphere could temporarily forestall the rate of sea level rise by roughly 25 to 50 percent.
The researchers focused on emissions of four heat-trapping pollutants: methane, tropospheric ozone, hydrofluorocarbons and black carbon. (more…)
The ancestor of all modern African monkeys was alive 3 million years earlier than previously thought and coexisted with members of a now-extinct branch of the monkey family tree, according to new evidence from anthropologists.
“We pushed back the origin of modern monkeys by a huge chunk of time,” said anthropologist Andrew Hill of Yale University, the senior researcher on the project. “This means there are all sorts of things we can think about. You can start to look at animal interactions that might have taken place.” (more…)
In January, 60 young Tanzanian children began attending school for the first time, thanks to a project led by Michigan State University.
MSU and its partners in the Tanzanian Partnership Program built a new schoolon 100 acres donated by two village elders in a sub-village of Milola known as Ngwenya. Construction funds were provided by the TAG Philanthropic Foundation, based in New York. (more…)
Microsoft BizSpark startup improves communication and provides easy access to administrative resources combined with an educational social network.
REDMOND, Wash. — March 7, 2013 — During a trip to his home town in St. Petersburg, Russia, Gabriel Levi noticed that his local school system could modernize its services for educators and students by streamlining communication and reducing manual tasks. Using his entrepreneurial instincts, he saw a need and created a solution. Now Levi is CEO and founder of Classed In, where he has turned his mission into a thriving business with a comprehensive educational social network that connects teachers, students, administrators and parents at approximately 27,000 K–12 schools in Russia — more than half the country’s schools.
Levi attended college at Columbia University in New York and studied economics and computer science, while he dreamed of starting a business. When a work assignment took him back to St. Petersburg a few years later, he was struck by how Russian schools were still relying on completely manual processes for everything from registration and grade reporting to class assignments and homework. His point of reference was personal: Levi’s mother was a university instructor, and his younger brother was in middle school at the time. (more…)