Tag Archives: san francisco

Brick by brick

By Guest PostMay 17, 2013General, Sciencebionicles toy, blue hen, blue ocean, brick by brick, bruce weber, carpenter, chaplin tyler, China, copenhagen, danish toy company, darwin award winner, david robertson, Europe, evolution, Germany, godtfred, greek tragedy, guinness world record, harry potter, innovation, innovation matrix, leg godt, lego, lego education centers, lego like toys, lego story, legoland theme park, milan, newark campus, North America, ole kirk christiansen, plastic bricks, plastic toy production, rebuilding lego, red clay students, ryan maguire, san francisco, star wars, the uk, tokyo, toy, toys, university of delaware, university of pennsylvania, US, video games, wharton school, wild west

Professor, author Robertson discusses innovation evolution at Lego

When you hear Lego, if all you think about are shiny, plastic bricks and toys, think again. From a toy concept brought to life by a carpenter to tales of failed innovation truths that mirrored a Greek tragedy, the Lego story is about innovation and evolution, David Robertson told attendees at last week’s Chaplin Tyler Executive Leadership series lecture.

Robertson, professor of practice at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, presented “Rebuilding Lego” to 80 students, faculty, staff and community members on the University of Delaware’s Newark campus. (more…)

Highly logical: Microsoft and Paramount Pictures team up to promote new ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ film

By Guest PostMay 15, 2013Technologyaka scotty, australia, bad robot production, beam me up, bing, bing translator, canada, darkness, Facebook, film, imax, j j abrams, james doohan, jen buckmaster, klingon, leeanne stables, logical pairing, los angeles, Microsoft, movie adventure, msn, paramount pictures, rick rashid, san francisco, seattle, star trek, starfleet academy, toronto, trekker, Twitter, windows 8, windows phone, xbox, xbox live, xbox smartglass, xbox video awards

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.

Paramount Pictures thought so. (more…)

150 Years of Mexican, Mexican American History Now Online

By Guest PostApril 3, 2013Culture, Media150 years, alberto elías, arturo arte moreno, bracero program, chicano, chris kollen, civil rights movement, de occidente, digital collection, el paso, el tucsonense, gadsden purchase, guadalupe castillo, la estrella, los angeles, los angeles angels, mary feeney, mexican, mexican american history, mexican american journalism, mexican american press, mexican cultural, mexican repatriation, old pueblo printers, online, red brown journalism, roberto cintli rodriguez, san francisco, sonora, spanish language, the great depression, the mexican revolution, tucson, ua librarian, united states, university of arizona, veronica reyes escudero, world war

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…)

Within ‘Habitable Zone,’ More Planets than We Knew

By Guest PostJanuary 8, 2013Scienceamerican astronomical society, apollo moon, avatar, debra fischer, eric gershon, Galaxy, gas giant, giant planet, greenhouse atmosphere, habitable moon, habitable world, habitable zone, hospitable, ji wang, jupiter, kepler spacecraft, kian jek, life, liquid water, long beach, NASA, pandora, ph2 b, planet hunters, polyphemus, rocky planet, san francisco, solar star, star trek, sun, yale university

The number of known places in our galaxy theoretically hospitable to life may be significantly greater than previously thought, according to new research.

Researchers with Planet Hunters are reporting the discovery of a Jupiter-sized planet in the so-called “habitable zone” of a star similar to Earth’s sun, as well as the identification of 15 new candidate planets also orbiting within their star’s habitable zone. (more…)

Pronunciation of ‘s’ sounds impacts perception of gender, CU-Boulder researcher finds

By Guest PostJanuary 7, 2013General, Sciencebay area, biological difference, colorado boulder, female, high frequency s, kira hall, lal zimman, larynx, linguist, lower frequency, male, perception of gender, pitch, s sounds, san francisco, socio biological complexity, style of speech, throat, transgender people, university, voice, wenner-gren foundation

A person’s style of speech — not just the pitch of his or her voice — may help determine whether the listener perceives the speaker to be male or female, according to a University of Colorado Boulder researcher who studied transgender people transitioning from female to male.

The way people pronounce their “s” sounds and the amount of resonance they use when speaking contributes to the perception of gender, according to Lal Zimman, whose findings are based on research he completed while earning his doctoral degree from CU-Boulder’s linguistics department. (more…)

Experiencing Discrimination Increases Risk-Taking, Anger, and Vigilance

By Guest PostDecember 26, 2012Healthalzheimer's disease, behavior, black participants, black partners, brain aging, brain and body, cardiovascular activity, causal mechanism, cognitive decline, cross race partners, discrimination, experiencing rejection, false alarms, feedback, jeremy jamieson, katrina koslov, matthew k nock, negative statement, pattern of thoughts, physiological response, psychological factor, race and sex, risk taking behavior, san francisco, social interaction, university of california, wendy berry mendes, white partners

Experiencing rejection not only affects how we think and feel — over the long-term it can also influence our physical and mental health. New research suggests that when rejection comes in the form of discrimination, people respond with a pattern of thoughts, behaviors, and physiological responses that may contribute to overall health disparities.

“Psychological factors, like discrimination, have been suggested as part of the causal mechanisms that explain how discrimination gets ‘under the skin’ to affect health,” says psychological scientist and senior researcher Wendy Berry Mendes of the University of California, San Francisco. “We wanted to explore the behavioral consequences that follow experiences of discrimination to better understand these mechanisms.” (more…)

Search for Life Suggests Solar Systems More Habitable than Ours

By Guest PostDecember 7, 2012Sciencecayman unterborn, Chile, dataset, dynamic, earth, european southern observatory, Galaxy, geologically active, habitable, habitable zone, heat source, jennifer johnson, microbial form, Milky Way, ohio state university, planet, plate tectonics, potassium, radioactive decay, radioactive element, san francisco, search for life, solar systems, solar twin, subsurface heat, terrestrial planet, thorium, uranium, wendy panero

SAN FRANCISCO — Scattered around the Milky Way are stars that resemble our own sun—but a new study is finding that any planets orbiting those stars may very well be hotter and more dynamic than Earth.

That’s because the interiors of any terrestrial planets in these systems are likely warmer than Earth—up to 25 percent warmer, which would make them more geologically active and more likely to retain enough liquid water to support life, at least in its microbial form.

The preliminary finding comes from geologists and astronomers at Ohio State University who have teamed up to search for alien life in a new way. (more…)

Advocate for Women in STEM Disciplines Speaks on Today’s Barriers to ‘Breaking into The Lab’

By Guest PostNovember 30, 2012Media, Scienceadvancement, barrier, biomedical discovery, breaking, knapp center, male population, san francisco, scientific fields, state university, stem discipline, stem fields, sue rosser, the lab, women, women scientists

For Sue Rosser, the obstacles women in the STEM disciplines face today may be less obvious than they were 40 years ago, but they’re as real as ever.

“Today, barriers and discrimination are more subtle and there’s a different language, but it’s still going on,” Rosser said. “It’s old wine in new bottles.”

Rosser, the first woman to serve as provost and vice president for academic affairs at San Francisco State University, presented “Breaking into the Lab: Engineering Progress for Women in Science,” on Nov. 12, at the Knapp Center for Biomedical Discovery. Her talk outlined barriers to women’s advancement in scientific fields, and offered advice for women and academic mentors to avoid discrimination. The event, which is part of the annual lecture series, “How to Advance Women in Science and Engineering,” is a collaboration between the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality and the Office of the Provost at the University of Chicago. Rosser’s talk is the second annual colloquium on how to support and advance women in the STEM fields. (more…)