More Asian Pacific Americans hold public office in the United States than at any other time in U.S. history, a sign of the community’s growing engagement with the political process, according to a newly released political almanac published by UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center.
The 14th edition of the National Asian Pacific American Political Almanac, first published in 1976, contains information on all 3,000 current elected and appointed officials. It also analyzes political trends and makes electoral projections of the nation’s 17 million Asian Pacific Americans. (more…)
Woolsey Hall was packed with his fans on Nov. 8 when Academy Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman took the stage for an “Actor’s Studio”-styled interview with Ron Gregg, a senior lecturer and programming director in Yale’s Film Studies Program.
Among those who came out to see the 74-year-old-actor — visiting the campus as a Chubb Fellow —was a 95-year old woman who listened as Freeman described his acting career and his history on television, in theater and in film. When given the opportunity to ask a question, she simply gushed, “Morgan Freeman, I love you. I’ve seen every movie you’ve been in.” She then told him, “I don’t want to show you any disrespect” for being so bold. (more…)
*Spread highest in urbanized and agricultural habitats*
After its initial appearance in New York in 1999, West Nile virus spread across the United States in just a few years and is now well established throughout North and South America.
Both the mosquitoes that transmit it and the birds that are important hosts for the virus are abundant in areas that have been modified by human activities.
As a result, transmission of West Nile virus is highest in urbanized and agricultural habitats. (more…)
Washington, DC — Scientists have long debated about the impact on global climate of water evaporated from vegetation. New research from Carnegie’s Global Ecology department concludes that evaporated water helps cool the earth as a whole, not just the local area of evaporation, demonstrating that evaporation of water from trees and lakes could have a cooling effect on the entire atmosphere. These findings, published September 14 in Environmental Research Letters, have major implications for land-use decision making.
Evaporative cooling is the process by which a local area is cooled by the energy used in the evaporation process, energy that would have otherwise heated the area’s surface. It is well known that the paving over of urban areas and the clearing of forests can contribute to local warming by decreasing local evaporative cooling, but it was not understood whether this decreased evaporation would also contribute to global warming (more…)
The Marcellus Shale contains about 84 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas and 3.4 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas liquids according to a new assessment by the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS).
These gas estimates are significantly more than the last USGS assessment of the Marcellus Shale in the Appalachian Basin in 2002, which estimated a mean of about 2 trillion cubic feet of gas (TCF) and 0.01 billion barrels of natural gas liquids. (more…)
Conventional wisdom has long held that Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, which advocated racial self-help and the unity of the African diaspora, grew out of the heady political and cultural environment of the Harlem Renaissance and benefited African Americans above all other black people. Any Caribbean role, according to this view, was separate and incidental to the primary legacy bequeathed to American race relations by the charismatic Jamaica native.
Now a UCLA historian argues the reverse in the first book of a multi-volume series on the Garvey movement and the Caribbean. From the UNIA’s organizational structure to its most valuable foot soldiers during its first half-decade, Garvey’s Caribbean links were indispensable to the movement’s success, and the region ultimately proved to be its most important theater, contends Robert A. Hill in “The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers: The Caribbean Diaspora 1910–1920.”(more…)
*Microsoft employee Carl Greninger helped a team of young students build a working nuclear reactor in his garage. He hopes the project can inspire a passion for physics in students around the country.*
REDMOND, Wash. – Sometimes you have to smash a few atoms to excite people about science.
So says Carl Greninger, a program manager in Microsoft IT Operations by day and full-fledged physics fanatic by night. That’s why he decided to help some young students get hands-on experience with something they couldn’t find in their classrooms: a working thermonuclear reactor.
For the past year, a group of local students – some as young as 13 years old – have met at Greninger’s garage every Friday night to build a type of fusion reactor known as a Farnsworth–Hirsch Fusor. Dubbed IEC-9000, their machine has been fusing atoms and producing neutrons since May. It cost about as much as a high-end SUV, weighs 1,400 pounds, and generates temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun. (more…)
*No. 1 online sports destination announces new relationship with leading sports radio network*
SUNNYVALE, Calif.– Yahoo!, the premier digital media company, and Gow Broadcasting, LLC (formerly Mission Media Group, LLC), today announced the launch of Yahoo! Sports Radio. The new, national sports radio network can be heard on over 180 affiliate radio stations across the country, Sirius Satellite Radio, and a number of digital and mobile partners. This partnership enables Yahoo! Sports — the No. 1 destination for online sports with more than 50 million monthly unique users — to reach its avid fans in the largest local sports markets across the country.
“Yahoo! Sports Radio builds on our leadership as the No. 1 sports site online and creates a national and local outlet for our brand and talent,” said Ken Fuchs, VP Yahoo! Media Network. “As Yahoo! Sports covers the biggest events, stories and athletes on and off the field, our partnership with Gow Broadcasting will provide more access to our users and solutions to our advertising partners that want to connect with them wherever they consume sports.” (more…)
