EAST LANSING, Mich. — Foreign policy has taken center stage in the presidential campaign as Barack Obama and Mitt Romney tout their differing plans – and take aim at one another’s vision for international security.
Unfortunately, voters pay little attention to these issues when electing a president, said Matt Zierler, associate professor of international relations at Michigan State University’s James Madison College.
“Foreign policy does matter, but voters traditionally don’t pay much attention to it,” Zierler said. (more…)
New Offering Allows Quality Web Publishers to Generate Incremental Advertising Revenue
SUNNYVALE, Calif. & AUSTIN, Texas — Yahoo! and Media.net today announced a long-term agreement to launch Yahoo! Bing Network Contextual Ads, powered by Media.net. The program aims to provide web publishers with a powerful and effective new solution for earning advertising revenue. Publishers can now use the Media.net platform to create and customize ad units that display relevant text ads from across the Yahoo! Bing Network.
“Since its inception, Media.net has invested tremendous resources — people, capital and time — to build what Yahoo! identifies to be a terrific monetization solution for web publishers,” said Al Echamendi, Vice President, Business Development, Yahoo!. “During our evaluation process, we recognized Media.net as a technology and innovation leader, with a strong management team that has a significant business track record and industry experience.” (more…)
Pancreatic cancer is highly lethal and difficult to detect early. In a new study, researchers report that people who had high levels of antibodies for an infectious oral bacterium turned out to have double the risk for developing the cancer. High antibody levels for harmless oral bacteria, meanwhile, predicted a reduced pancreatic cancer risk.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A new study finds significant associations between antibodies for multiple oral bacteria and the risk of pancreatic cancer, adding support for the emerging idea that the ostensibly distant medical conditions are related.
The study of blood samples from more than 800 European adults, published in the journal Gut, found that high antibody levels for one of the more infectious periodontal bacterium strains of Porphyromonas gingivalis were associated with a two-fold risk for pancreatic cancer. Meanwhile, study subjects with high levels of antibodies for some kinds of harmless “commensal” oral bacteria were associated with a 45-percent lower risk of pancreatic cancer. (more…)
ANN ARBOR, Mich.— Childhood vaccines do not cause autism. President Obama was born in the United States. Global warming is confirmed by science. And yet, many people believe claims to the contrary.
In a study appearing in the current issue of Psychological Science in the Public Interest, researchers from the University of Michigan, University of Western Australia and University of Queensland examined factors that cause people to resist correcting misinformation.
Misinformation can originate from rumors but also fiction, government and politicians, and organizations, the researchers say. (more…)
Only 1 in 5 firms excels at supporting new regulation and responding rapidly to client demands
Leading firms are rethinking their operations, forming external partnerships
NEW YORK, N.Y. – 21 Sep 2012: A new report released by IBM in collaboration with Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. reveals that increasing regulatory pressures and shifting customer demands are forcing financial markets firms to transform how they operate. Forward-thinking firms are breaking away from the industry’s long-held “not invented here” approach to managing operations to create a more open, agile and customer-focused model that expands the traditional boundaries of collaboration with external partners.
In a survey of 133 senior business executives and top IT decision makers from large and small firms located in the world’s trading centers – the United States, United Kingdom, Singapore and Hong Kong – 77 percent cite regulatory requirements and 59 percent point to more demanding customers as the top external market drivers triggering changes in their operating models. Only 22 percent of the firms currently excel at meeting both. (more…)
A new University of Colorado Boulder-led study that ties forest “greenness” in the western United States to fluctuating year-to-year snowpack indicates mid-elevation mountain ecosystems are most sensitive to rising temperatures and changes in precipitation and snowmelt.
Led by CU-Boulder researcher Ernesto Trujillo and Assistant Professor Noah Molotch, the study team used the data — including satellite images and ground measurements — to identify the threshold where mid-level forests sustained primarily by moisture change to higher-elevation forests sustained primarily by sunlight and temperature. Being able to identify this “tipping point” is important because it is in the mid-level forests — at altitudes from roughly 6,500 to 8,000 feet — where many people live and play in the West and which are associated with increasing wildfires, beetle outbreaks and increased tree mortality, said Molotch. (more…)
Hospitals that continue CPR longer have better survival rates from cardiac arrests, according to a study published online Sept. 5 in The Lancet. The findings challenge the assumption that, if a pulse is not restored soon, continuing resuscitation efforts is futile.
The results also showed that patients who recovered after an extended CPR effort were no more likely to suffer brain damage than are patients revived after a shorter effort. (more…)
Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new method for forecasting seasonal hurricane activity that is 15 percent more accurate than previous techniques.
“This approach should give policymakers more reliable information than current state-of-the-art methods,” says Dr. Nagiza Samatova, an associate professor of computer science at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the work. “This will hopefully give them more confidence in planning for the hurricane season.” (more…)
