Tag Archives: turkey

Economics successes

UD economics doctoral graduates share their accomplishments

Graduates of the University of Delaware’s doctoral program in economics have been making great strides in their chosen fields since graduation. 

Whether advising young entrepreneurs or improving methods for measuring important national statistics, these graduates have been impacting economics across the world and putting their UD doctorate degrees to good use. (more…)

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Statistical analysis unveils the hidden patterns in Eurovision voting

Voting for the Eurovision Song Contest has been scrutinised by statistics experts at UCL and Imperial College London, who have found that musical talent is unlikely to be the only element that wins scores – but that the contest is not ‘stitched up’ at the UK’s expense. 

The analysis of voting patterns over the past two decades suggests that widespread support for certain countries’ acts is, however, not driven by prejudice, as the media periodically suggests, but by positive loyalties based on culture, geography, history and migration. But these effects are relatively small – and the team found no evidence to support Sir Terry Wogan’s criticism that the contest is marred by blatant bias and discrimination. (more…)

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Mein Kampf worries fuel debate

More needs to be done to understand Hitler’s infamous autobiographical manifesto “Mein Kampf” to avoid a resurgence of anti-Semitism when its copyright expires in 2016, according to a holocaust historian.

Dr Jean-Marc Dreyfus, from The University of Manchester, says not enough is known about the book which preaches hatred against Jews, and why it is still popular in some parts of the world.

E-book sales of “Mein Kampf”, which gives a racist account of world history, have made the top spot on Amazon’s propaganda and political psychology chart and entered the top 20 bestselling iTunes politics and events titles. (more…)

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Further destabilisation in the Middle East possible according to new report

The crisis in Egypt is already having a negative effect on the Syrian civil war and contributing to further destabilisation of the wider Middle East according to a major new report. 

Professor Gareth Stansfield from the University of Exeter’s Strategy and Security Institute and the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies wrote the report, for the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), an independent think-tank for defence and security which advises governments and the wider policy community.

‘The Remaking of Syria, Iraq and the Wider Middle East’ report suggests that important as events in Cairo are, they distract Western attention from the much bigger game being played out in Syria which significantly risks changing the Levant after a century of relative territorial stability. Professor Stansfield who is also an RUSI’s senior associate fellow analysed the impact the Syrian civil war could have on the future of the Middle East state system across the Levant. (more…)

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NASA Satellites Find Freshwater Losses in Middle East

PASADENA, Calif. – A new study using data from a pair of gravity-measuring NASA satellites finds that large parts of the arid Middle East region lost freshwater reserves rapidly during the past decade.

Scientists at the University of California, Irvine; NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., found during a seven-year period beginning in 2003 that parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran along the Tigris and Euphrates river basins lost 117 million acre feet (144 cubic kilometers) of total stored freshwater. That is almost the amount of water in the Dead Sea. The researchers attribute about 60 percent of the loss to pumping of groundwater from underground reservoirs. (more…)

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A Family’s Lost Story Found, and the Sephardic Studies Initiative

For Devin Naar, the Sephardic Studies Initiative is not just a valuable historical archive; it has also been a personal journey revealing an untold family story from the years of the Third Reich.

Naar’s part of the story began about 10 years ago, when as an undergraduate at Washington University he grew interested in the history of Turkey and Greece, which for centuries until World War I was part of the Ottoman Empire. His family comes from Salonica, a port city in Northern Greece. (more…)

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IBM THINK Exhibit App for iPad and Android Tablets Traces Ancient Roots of Modern Innovation

ARMONK, NY – 26 Jul 2012: To celebrate centuries of science and technology innovations, IBM has reinvented its award-winning 2011 THINK exhibit at New York City’s Lincoln Center as a free interactive app for iPad and Android tablets. Geared to tech fans and educators, the IBM THINK exhibit app is an “innovation time machine” that shows how early tools have evolved into modern advances that create healthier populations, greener energy and safer, less congested cities.

Through interactive content and thousands of images and historical anecdotes, the IBM THINK Exhibit app is filled with stories of progress, from space exploration to weather prediction and medical advances. It documents the roots of Big Data, from early charts, clocks and scales to microscopes and telescopes, from RFID chips and biomedical sensors in clothing to breath-sensor diabetes detectors. (more…)

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