UCLA, McGill study also shows women fare worse than men in most countries
A new study by researchers at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and McGill University in Montreal reveals that the United States health care system ranks 22nd out of 27 high-income nations when analyzed for its efficiency of turning dollars spent into extending lives.
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University of Missouri researcher part of team that found the bone in Kenya
COLUMBIA, Mo. – Humans have a distinctive hand anatomy that allows them to make and use tools. Apes and other nonhuman primates do not have these distinctive anatomical features in their hands, and the point in time at which these features first appeared in human evolution is unknown. Now, a University of Missouri researcher and her international team of colleagues have found a new hand bone from a human ancestor who roamed the earth in East Africa approximately 1.42 million years ago. They suspect the bone belonged to the early human species, Homo erectus. The discovery of this bone is the earliest evidence of a modern human-like hand, indicating that this anatomical feature existed more than half a million years earlier than previously known. (more…)
Am 26. Dezember wäre der Grosse Steuermanns Mao Zedong 120 Jahre alt geworden. Mao ist umstritten und beliebt zugleich. Bis heute.
In Maos Geburtsort Shaoshan in der Provinz Hunan ist mit der ganz grossen Kelle angerichtet worden. Über zwei Milliarden Yuan – umgerechnet rund 300 Millionen Franken – gab man für verschiedene Erinnerungs-Projekte aus. Unter anderem wurde das Shaoshan-Mao-Museum, der dortige Mao-Platz oder Maos ehemaliges Wohnhaus zum 120. Geburtstag renoviert und herausgeputzt. Sowohl in Shaoshan als auch anderswo in China finden akademische Seminare, Gedenkfeiern, Kunstausstellungen, Sportveranstaltungen, Konzerte, Theateraufführubgen oder Postmarken-Ausgaben statt. (more…)
ANN ARBOR — An entrepreneur’s backstory plays a critical role in the success or failure of a fledgling venture, says Lianne Lefsrud, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan Ross School’s Erb Institute.
“Especially for entrepreneurs with limited financial resources, stories are a way to create resources if you can make sense of the world with your stories,” Lefsrud said. (more…)
High-Fiber Salad Bar May Help Lagomorphs Survive Climate Change
In some mountain ranges, Earth’s warming climate is driving rabbit relatives known as pikas to higher elevations or wiping them out. But University of Utah biologists discovered that roly-poly pikas living in rockslides near sea level in Oregon can survive hot weather by eating more moss than any other mammal.
“Our work shows pikas can eat unusual foods like moss to persist in strange environments,” says biology professor Denise Dearing, senior author of the new study, published online on Dec. 18, 2013 in the February 2014 issue of Journal of Mammalogy. “It suggests that they may be more resistant to climate change than we thought.” (more…)
WWF-Sonderpreis bei „GreenTec Awards 2014“ / Online-Voting für innovative Naturschutzprojekte
Im Rahmen der GreenTec Awards 2014 wird erstmalig ein WWF Sonderpreis für Naturschutzarbeit verliehen. Vom 04.01. bis 13.02.14 können User per Online-Voting unter www.greentec-awards.com aus zehn innovativen, deutschen Naturschutzprojekten den persönlichen Favoriten wählen. Von der Besenderung eines Wisents über den Schutz von Fledermauskolonien bis hin zur Teich-Renaturierung reicht die Bandbreite der Kandidaten. Das Gewinnerprojekt wird im Rahmen der GreenTec Awards-Gala im Mai 2014 ausgezeichnet.
„Naturschutz fängt vor der eigenen Haustür an und jedes der zehn Projekte hat einen Vorbildcharakter für ehrenamtliche Naturschutzarbeit in Deutschland und Europa“, sagt Marco Vollmar, Mitglied der Geschäftsleitung beim WWF Deutschland. (more…)
This holiday season, feast your eyes on images of Saturn and two of its most fascinating moons, Titan and Enceladus, in a care package from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. All three bodies are dressed and dazzling in this special package assembled by Cassini’s imaging team.
The new images are available online at: https://www.nasa.gov/cassini , https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and https://ciclops.org .
“During this, our tenth holiday season at Saturn, we hope that these images from Cassini remind everyone the world over of the significance of our discoveries in exploring such a remote and beautiful planetary system,” said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader, based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. “Happy holidays from all of us on Cassini.” (more…)
‘Asking is always cheaper than spying’
