ANN ARBOR — Andrew Hoffman, a University of Michigan professor who teaches and researches business sustainability at the U-M Stephen M. Ross School of Business, frequently wades into the controversial debate over climate change.
Knowing how and when to do so is something he has figured out through trial and error. Why more academics don’t speak up and what the ground rules should be for those who do is a little hazy. (more…)
The Calaveras County Jumping Frog Jubilee has entered the scientific record via a new paper in the Journal of Experimental Biology. Experienced bullfrog ‘jockeys’ at the event routinely get their frogs to jump much farther than researchers had ever measured in the lab. How? Decades of refined technique, uncommonly motivated humans and herps, and good old-fashioned large sample size.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — One day, amid his decades-long study of how animals move, including how frogs jump, Brown University biologist Thomas Roberts found himself and colleague Richard Marsh puzzling over the Guinness Book of World Records. A bullfrog named Rosie the Ribiter reportedly had jumped more than 2.1 meters in a single hop at the Calaveras County Jumping Frog Jubilee in 1986, but scientific studies had never reported a bullfrog jump beyond 1.3 meters. (more…)
Doing paperwork has proven to be unsustainable but also entirely cumbersome in recent years given the multiplication of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. From Australia to America, Canada to Kenya, a paradigm shift towards cloud computing is being felt in the world and this could only expedite the clamor for less paper consumption.
Tradespersons have progressively depended on cloud-based applications to manage invoicing, bookkeeping and other jobs instead of filling their dashboards with unnecessary clutter. In particular, most farmers have looked and used the Cloud for a chance to turn a profit and save the earth all at the same time. (more…)
Berkeley Lab Facility Provides Unique Capabilities for the Synthesis of New Crystals and Materials
Talk with material scientist Edith Bourret-Courchesne about what it takes to grow and develop useful crystals and a word you will hear repeated often is “patience.” As the leader of a unique crystal growth facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) dedicated to the synthesis of crystals and new materials, patience is more than a virtue, it’s a necessity.
“The growth of every crystal is unique, like the formation of a snowflake, and since we work with compounds that have never before been crystallized the processes by which we grow our crystals are also unique,” she says. “As a result, a lot of our research is aimed at understanding why something didn’t work.” (more…)
*Berkeley Lab Researchers Show the Way Forward for Improving Organic and Molecular Electronic Devices*
Future prospects for superior new organic electronic devices are brighter now thanks to a new study by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Working at the Lab’s Molecular Foundry, a DOE nanoscience center, the team has provided the first experimental determination of the pathways by which electrical charge is transported from molecule-to-molecule in an organic thin film. Their results also show how such organic films can be chemically modified to improve conductance.
“We have shown that when the molecules in organic thin films are aligned in particular directions, there is much better conductance,” says Miquel Salmeron, a leading authority on nanoscale surface imaging who directs Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and who led this study. “Chemists already know how to fabricate organic thin films in a way that can achieve such an alignment, which means they should be able to use the information provided by our methodology to determine the molecular alignment and its role on charge transport across and along the molecules. This will help improve the performances of future organic electronic devices.” (more…)
