Tag Archives: research project

Building a better mosquito trap: How a Microsoft research project could help track Zika’s spread

As the hot, humid weather descended on Houston’s Harris County this spring, the county’s mosquito surveillance team geared up for the busiest season in its fight to get ahead of dangerous mosquito-borne illnesses such as Zika. (more…)

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Microsoft research project puts cloud in ocean for the first time

In 2015, starfish, octopus, crabs and other Pacific Ocean life stumbled upon a temporary addition to the seafloor, more than half a mile from the shoreline: a 38,000-pound container. But in the ocean, 10 feet by 7 feet is quite small. The shrimp exploring the seafloor made more noise than the datacenter inside the container, which consumed computing power equivalent to 300 desktop PCs. (more…)

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Interstellar Travelers of the Future May be Helped by MU Physicist’s Calculations

University of Missouri’s Sergei Kopeikin may have solved the Pioneer anomaly

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Former President Bill Clinton recently expressed his support for interstellar travel at the 100 Year Spaceship Symposium, an international event advocating for human expansion into other star systems. Interstellar travel will depend upon extremely precise measurements of every factor involved in the mission. The knowledge of those factors may be improved by the solution a University of Missouri researcher found to a puzzle that has stumped astrophysicists for decades.

“The Pioneer spacecraft, two probes launched into space in the early 70s, seemed to violate the Newtonian law of gravity by decelerating anomalously as they traveled, but there was nothing in physics to explain why this happened,” said Sergei Kopeikin, professor of physics and astronomy in MU’s College of Arts and Science. “My study suggests that this so-called Pioneer anomaly was not anything strange. The confusion can be explained by the effect of the expansion of the universe on the movement of photons that make up light and radio waves.” (more…)

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Student Documentary Explores Facebook- and Fast-Food-Free Life

EAST LANSING, Mich. — In a society where people text rather than talk and eat out more than cook, community has been lost and necessities replaced by wants, says a group of Michigan State University students who recently released a documentary of their monthlong experiment in living with less. (more…)

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U.S. Students Need New Way of Learning Science

EAST LANSING, Mich. — American students need a dramatically new approach to improve how they learn science, says a noted group of scientists and educators led by Michigan State University professor William Schmidt.

After six years of work, the group has proposed a solution. The 8+1 Science concept calls for a radical overhaul in K-12 schools that moves away from memorizing scientific facts and focuses on helping students understand eight fundamental science concepts. The “plus one” is the importance of inquiry, the practice of asking why things happen around us – and a fundamental part of science. (more…)

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