In spring a person’s thoughts turn to important matters, like how best to keep your drink cold on a hot day. Though this quest is probably as old as civilization, University of Washington climate scientists have provided new insight.
It turns out that in sultry weather condensation on the outside of a canned beverage doesn’t just make it slippery: those drops can provide more heat than the surrounding air, meaning your drink would warm more than twice as much in humid weather compared to in dry heat. In typical summer weather in New Orleans, heat released by condensation warms the drink by 6 degrees Fahrenheit in five minutes. (more…)
UD sociologist writes book about ‘betrayal’ of African American veterans
For the University of Delaware’s Benjamin Fleury-Steiner, research for his new book Disposable Heroes: The Betrayal of African American Veterans was uncomfortable and disquieting.
An associate professor of sociology, Fleury-Steiner spent months interviewing black veterans of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan in the back streets of Wilmington, Del., to learn more about their service to their country and their experiences upon returning home.
The topic had long been on Fleury-Steiner’s mind, himself an Army veteran of Operation Desert Storm who had ducked Scud missiles in Saudi Arabia. (more…)
During the 2010–11 academic year, more than one out of every three UD students (34.7 percent) studied abroad. Most pursued “short term” programs of eight weeks or less. (more…)
Ear-bone ‘tree rings’ provide evidence of connectivity
Ocean scientists have long known that juvenile coral reef fishes use coastal seagrass and mangrove habitats as nurseries, later moving as adults onto coral reefs. But the fishes’ movements, and the connections between different tropical habitats, are much more complex than previously realized, according to a study published September 3 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The findings have important implications for management and protection of coral reefs and other marine environments.
A number of studies have demonstrated a strong relationship between the presence of coastal wetlands and offshore fish abundance and fisheries yield, but it has proved difficult to develop quantitative assessment of habitat use by fish or their movement among different habitats. “The rationale for this study,”says Simon Thorrold, a biologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), “was to determine the relative importance of different nursery habitats to reef fishes that spend their adult lives on coral reefs but may spend at least part of their juvenile residency elsewhere.” (more…)
Majority of Egyptians Faults Brotherhood Fielding its Own Candidate
COLLEGE PARK, Md. – As Egypt prepares this week to elect its first president since the 2011 revolution, a new University of Maryland poll finds the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate tied for fourth place. Researchers describe the race as fluid.
The poll confirms the strategic damage inflicted by the Brotherhood’s decision to field its own candidate, after saying it would not. Nearly three-quarters of those surveyed (71 percent) called the decision a “mistake.”
The poll also shows Egyptians approaching the race differently from Parliamentary elections, focusing more on personal trust and the economy over party affiliation. (more…)
*First graders are using Kinect for Xbox 360 to get to places like Disneyland (on a map, at least), and high school students are graphing mathematical equations with their bodies.*
CRAIG, Colo. – March 6, 2012 – First-grade teacher Cheryl Arnett spent much of last summer playing Kinect for Xbox 360 with her grandkids.
For fun, yes, but the 19-year veteran teacher at Sunset Elementary School in Craig, Colo., also had an agenda. A longtime lover of technology, Arnett was looking for ways to teach with Microsoft’s controller-free device. When she brought Kinect to her classroom at the start of this school year, the reaction from her enthralled students was “over the top,” she said. (more…)
*A University of Exeter academic, who is an expert on Islam, has contributed to the new television series ‘The Life of Muhammad’ currently being broadcast on BBC Two. The three-part documentary, presented by journalist Rageh Omaar, charts the story of the Prophet who, in little more than 20 years, changed the world forever.*
The size and shape of the human cerebral cortex, an evolutionary marvel responsible for everything from Shakespeare’s poetry to the atomic bomb, are largely influenced by mutations in a single gene, according to a team of researchers led by the Yale School of Medicine and three other universities.
The findings, reported April 28 in the American Journal of Human Genetics, are based on a genetic analysis of in one Turkish family and two Pakistani families with offspring born with the most severe form of microcephaly. The children have brains just 10 percent of normal size. They also lacked the normal cortical architecture that is a hallmark of the human brain. This combination of factors has not been seen in other genes associated with the development of the human brain, the authors note. (more…)
