ANN ARBOR — Funneling a steady stream of diversions straight to your pocket, smartphones are often cast as the ultimate distractors. But a University of Michigan engineering professor sees potential for them to be something quite the opposite.
What if they could act as mentors in mindfulness, helping users stay attentive in order to achieve particular goals? (more…)
New power plant design to expand use of geothermal energy in the U.S.
Video: Gilley, S., and Bielicki, J (2013). “Geothermal Energy: Enhancing Our Future.” Online video. www.energypathways.org and YouTube. YouTube , 1 Dec. 2013. Web. (more…)
UD Consumer Analytics and Industry Applications conference discusses big data
In the era of big data come big questions about how to use it. These questions and more were the backdrop of the recent Consumer Analytics and Industry Applications conference, put on by the University of Delaware’s Institute for Financial Services Analytics (IFSA).
“We are living in a big data world,” said IFSA director and professor of business administration, Bintong Chen. The institute is a collaboration between UD’s Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, the College of Engineering and JPMorgan Chase. (more…)
AUSTIN, Texas — In a finding of relevance to the search for life in our solar system, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Geophysics, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research have shown that the subsurface ocean on Jupiter’s moon Europa may have deep currents and circulation patterns with heat and energy transfers capable of sustaining biological life.
Scientists believe Europa is one of the planetary bodies in our solar system most likely to have conditions that could sustain life, an idea reinforced by magnetometer readings from the Galileo spacecraft detecting signs of a salty, global ocean below the moon’s icy shell. (more…)
Washington, D.C.— Around 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, there was a mass extinction so severe that it remains the most traumatic known species die-off in Earth’s history. Some researchers have suggested that this extinction was triggered by contemporaneous volcanic eruptions in Siberia. New results from a team including Director of Carnegie’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism Linda Elkins-Tanton show that the atmospheric effects of these eruptions could have been devastating. Their work is published in Geology.
The mass extinction included the sudden loss of more than 90 percent of marine species and more than 70 percent of terrestrial species and set the stage for the rise of the dinosaurs. The fossil record suggests that ecological diversity did not fully recover until several million years after the main pulse of the extinction. (more…)
UD faculty use Twitter to enhance classroom experience
The University of Delaware’s Alexander Brown, instructor of business administration, and Anuradha Sivaraman, assistant professor of business administration, believe that using Twitter for their courses helps keep the classroom discussions contemporary and increases class participation.
“It’s a good way to source material for classroom discussions,” Brown explains. “If you run a class where you want to engage students with current content and keep things contemporary, Twitter is the way to go.” (more…)
Small and Midsize Businesses Outperform Competitors By Fusing the Physical with Big Data, Mobile and the Cloud
ARMONK, N.Y – 21 Nov 2013: An IBM global study of C-Suite leaders uncovers a surprising fact about small and midsize companies: they may not be as digitally savvy as they’d like.
The survey’s top findings include:
Boston Consulting Group research highlights potential for technology to help drive significant revenue and job growth by SMEs.
JOHANNESBURG — Nov. 5, 2013 — Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner on Tuesday unveiled an online hub that will give South African small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) access to a range of free products and services from Microsoft and other partners.
The hub, at https://southafrica.biz4afrika.com, is specifically designed to aggregate all the best resources — both IT and non-IT — available to local SMEs. The baseline services offered are free and highly relevant for South African SMEs looking to bring their business online and improve their general competitiveness. The launch offer will provide SMEs with the opportunity to get their businesses online for free for the first year. This includes a free .co.za domain, a free website, as well as free email and collaboration tools.* (more…)
