Germans Using Video on their Smartphone Grows 70 Percent Year on Year Hamburg, Germany, 14 May 2012 – comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, today released data from the comScore Video Metrix service, indicating that 46.9 million German internet users viewed a video online in March 2012. The number of people viewing […]
Brittle stars and people have something in common: They move in fundamentally similar ways. Though not bilaterally symmetrical like humans and many other animals, brittle stars have come up with a mechanism to choose any of its five limbs to direct its movement on the seabed. It’s as if each arm can be the creature’s front, capable of locomotion and charting direction. Results appear in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — It appears that the brittle star, the humble, five-limbed dragnet of the seabed, moves very similarly to us.
In a series of first-time experiments, Brown University evolutionary biologist Henry Astley discovered that brittle stars, despite having no brain, move in a very coordinated fashion, choosing a central arm to chart direction and then designating other limbs to propel it along. Yet when the brittle star wants to change direction, it designates a new front, meaning that it chooses a new center arm and two other limbs to move. Brittle stars have come up with a mechanism to choose any of its five limbs to be central control, each capable of determining direction or pitching in to help it move. (more…)
Team members of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission took a test rover to Dumont Dunes in California’s Mojave Desert this week to improve knowledge of the best way to operate a similar rover, Curiosity, currently flying to Mars for an August landing.
The test rover that they put through paces on various sandy slopes has a full-scale version of Curiosity’s mobility system, but it is otherwise stripped down so that it weighs about the same on Earth as Curiosity will weigh in the lesser gravity of Mars. (more…)
A recently evolved pattern of gene activity in the language and decision-making centers of the human brain is missing in a disorder associated with autism and learning disabilities, a new study by Yale University researchers shows. (more…)
Board Announces Settlement with Third Point LLC
SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Yahoo! Inc. today announced that the Board of Directors has named Fred Amoroso as Chairman of the Board of Directors and Ross Levinsohn as interim Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately. The Company also announced that its Board has reached an agreement with Third Point LLC (“Third Point”) to settle its pending proxy contest related to the Company’s 2012 annual meeting of shareholders. (more…)
Sand dunes on Mars move not unlike those on Earth, despite a much thinner atmosphere and weaker winds, as revealed by images taken with the UA-led HiRISE camera.
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or MRO, has revealed that movement in sand dune fields on the Red Planet occurs on a surprisingly large scale, about the same as in dune fields on Earth.
This is unexpected because Mars has a much thinner atmosphere than Earth is only about 1 percent as dense, and its high-speed winds are less frequent and weaker than Earth’s.
For years, researchers debated whether or not sand dunes observed on Mars were mostly fossil features related to past climate, rather than currently active. In the past two years, researchers using images from MRO’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, camera have detected and reported sand movement. (more…)
U alum Maria Bamford gains fame as a comic, voice actress, and quirky commercial character
Sometimes it’s good to draw the long straw on work assignments. (more…)
COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new study provides the best evidence to date that higher levels of income inequality in the United States actually lead to more deaths in the country over a period of years.
The findings suggest that income inequality at any one point doesn’t work instantaneously – it begins increasing mortality rates 5 years later, and its influence peaks after 7 years, before fading after 12 years.
“This finding is striking and it supports the argument that income inequality is a public health concern,” said Hui Zheng, author of the study and assistant professor of sociology at Ohio State University. (more…)
