Technology – Page 1081 – Shamskm: A site to exchange knowledge and solutions

In Australia, Men Watch Twice the Amount of Online Video as Women

*Australians Watched Nearly 3 Hours of Online Video per Viewer at YouTube.com in October*

Sydney, Australia, December 6 , 2010 – comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its October 2010 rankings of the top video properties in Australia based on data from its comScore Video Metrix service. The report found that nearly 80 percent of Australia’s Internet population viewed video online in October, with an average viewer watching nearly 8 hours of video during the month. The report also revealed that male online video viewers in Australia spend nearly double the amount of time viewing video compared to women. (more…)

Amazon Web Services Launches Amazon Route 53, a New DNS Service in the Cloud Enabling Businesses to Direct Internet Traffic to Web Applications

AWS customers can now access a highly available DNS system with pay-as-you-go pricing and no minimum usage commitments

SEATTLE, Dec 06, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Amazon Web Services LLC (AWS), an Amazon.com company, today announced Amazon Route 53, a Domain Name System (DNS) web service giving developers and businesses a highly available and reliable way to route Internet traffic to web applications by translating human readable names into numeric IP addresses. Amazon Route 53 can be used to route end users to multiple AWS services including Amazon EC2, an Amazon Elastic Load Balancer or an Amazon S3 bucket, and to infrastructure outside of AWS. The Amazon Route 53 global network of DNS servers is designed to automatically respond from the optimal network location, resulting in low DNS query latency for end users. (more…)

Cyber Monday Hangover: U.S. Online Spending Growth Softens After Strong Early Week Performance

*Holiday E-Commerce Spending Growth Slows to 9 Percent for Most Recent Week*

RESTON, VA, December 5, 2010 – comScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, today reported holiday season retail e-commerce spending for the first 33 days of the November – December 2010 holiday season. For the holiday season-to-date, $16.8 billion has been spent online, marking a 12-percent increase versus the corresponding days last year. The most recent week saw four individual days eclipse $800 million in spending, led by Cyber Monday, which became the heaviest online spending day on record at $1.028 billion. Tuesday, November 30 reached $911 million, making it the third heaviest online spending day on record, while Wednesday ($868 million) and Thursday ($850 million) also reached high levels, although growth rates for the season subsided in the latter half of the week. (more…)

Close up of a cute baby 7-month old panda cub in the Wolong Nature Reserve in Sichuan, China. Image credit: Sheila Lau. Source: Wikipedia

Finally some good news on the environment, on ecology and on the Giant Panda: a revolutionary new technique developed by the PR China’s Chengdu breeding center seems certain to assure that greater numbers of this endangered species can be raised in thereby save it from extinction.

Just 1,600 Giant Pandas live in the wild, in 40 government-controlled panda reserves in the People’s Republic of China. The new breeding program has raised the number of animals bred in captivity to 300, while just this year 19 cubs have been born after artificial insemination programs in China’s two main breeding centers.

Breeding Giant Pandas in captivity is no easy task. They have the strangest gestation period which can range from eleven weeks to eleven months, they appear not to be sexually aroused by being held in captivity, females are on heat for 72 hours a year and are fertile during a 12 to 24-hour window inside that period. The small size of the male penis also means the mating position has to be exactly right, and this is not always possible in captivity. (more…)

New Report Summarizes Key Themes in American Doctoral Education

*Summary report, “Doctorate Recipients from United States Universities: 2009” is available online*

A new report recently released by the National Science Foundation, titled “Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities: 2009,” presents a statistical overview of the U.S. doctoral education system in snapshots and long-term trends.

It notes the American system of doctoral education is widely considered the world’s best, as evidenced by the large number of international students who choose to pursue a doctorate at U.S. universities. But this status is subject to the many factors that shape U.S. doctoral education. (more…)

MU Researcher Studies How Infants Compare Quantities

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Parents are often amazed at how fast their child grows and develops. New research at the University of Missouri has determined that the ability to quantify – even things that are hard to quantify, such as liquid – may develop much sooner than most parents realize.

University of Missouri researcher Kristy vanMarle, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences in the College of Arts and Science, has determined that contrary to what previous studies have shown, infants are able to quantify non-cohesive substances – like sand, water, or even Cheerios – as early as 10 months. As long as the difference between the two substances is large enough, vanMarle has found that infants will choose the larger amount, especially when it comes to food. (more…)

GPS Not Working? A Shoe Radar May Help You Find Your Way

The prevalence of global positioning system (GPS) devices in everything from cars to cell phones has almost made getting lost a thing of the past. But what do you do when your GPS isn’t working? Researchers from North Carolina State University and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) have developed a shoe-embedded radar system that may help you find your way. (more…)

Biodiversity Loss: Detrimental to Your Health

*Infectious diseases on the rise as species disappear*

Plant and animal extinctions are detrimental to your health.

That’s the conclusion of a paper published in this week’s issue of the journal Nature by scientists who studied the link between biodiversity and infectious diseases. (more…)