Tag Archives: scale

NASA/WHOI Voyage Set to Explore Link Between Sea Saltiness and Climate

A NASA-sponsored expedition is set to sail to the North Atlantic’s saltiest spot to get a detailed, 3-D picture of how salt content fluctuates in the ocean’s upper layers and how these variations are related to shifts in rainfall patterns around the planet.

The research voyage is part of a multi-year mission, dubbed the Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study (SPURS), which will deploy multiple instruments in different regions of the ocean. The new data also will help calibrate the salinity measurements NASA’s Aquarius instrument has been collecting from space since August 2011. (more…)

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Advertisers Could Target Online Audiences More Efficiently with Personality Scale, MU Researcher Finds

COLUMBIA, Mo. ­— Online advertising has become prevalent in the past five years, and social media sites, such as Facebook, have played a major role. Now, a study at the University of Missouri School of Journalism has developed a method that could help advertisers target online audiences easier by knowing their personality types.

Using a new personality scale, researchers determine how people with certain personality types use social media websites. Heather Shoenberger, a doctoral student in the MU School of Journalism, found that those individuals who liked high-risk activity tended to update their status, upload photos and interact with friends frequently. Simultaneously, those individuals who were more reserved tended to merely scroll through Facebook’s “news feed”, and did not upload photos or actively engage with their friends frequently. (more…)

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Not Your Parents’ Chem Labs

‘Greener’ and more engaging experiments draw students in

As a college student, Michelle Driessen had an all-too-typical experience.

“I hated general chemistry,” she says. “I thought it was terribly boring.”

She had plenty of company. Experiments were all laid out in advance, and the goal seemed to be to get to a predetermined result without blowing up the glassware.

In the old days, “very few students appreciated the point of most general chemistry labs,” adds Driessen. “With cookbook chemistry, you couldn’t have anything go wrong or deviate [from what’s supposed to happen], but I find those things to be the most interesting part of science.” (more…)

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