Yahoo! Statement
SUNNYVALE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Yahoo!, Inc. today issued the following statement: (more…)
Technology
Flash Forward 100 Years: Climate Change Scenarios in California’s Bay-Delta
USGS scientists and academic colleagues investigated how California’s interconnected San Francisco Bay and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (the Bay-Delta system) is expected to change from 2010 to 2099 in response to both fast and moderate climate warming scenarios. Results indicate that this area will feel impacts of global climate change in the next century with shifts in its biological communities, rising sea level, and modified water supplies.
“The protection of California’s Bay-Delta system will continue to be a top priority for maintaining the state’s agricultural economy, water security to tens of millions of users, and essential habitat to a valuable ecosystem,” said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. “This new USGS research complements ongoing initiatives to conserve the Bay-Delta by providing sound scientific understanding for managing this valuable system such that it continues to provide the services we need in the face of climate uncertainty.” (more…)
Bing Social Search Team Makes Search ‘Less Lonely’
*Three members of Bing’s social search team chat with Microsoft News Center about working in the exciting technological frontier of search – and what they do when they’re not hard at work.*
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Sean Suchter’s last name is a misspelling of the German word for searcher, which has to be one of the greater aptronyms in the technology industry.
Suchter heads up Bing’s social search team on Microsoft’s Silicon Valley Campus, where he relishes his job as a frontiersmen in the field of search, particularly social search. (more…)
Dr. Livingstone’s Lost 1871 ‘Massacre’ Diary Recovered; Discovery Rewrites History
In Africa 140 years ago, David Livingstone, the Victorian explorer, met Henry M. Stanley of the New York Herald and gave him a harrowing account of a massacre he witnessed, in which slave traders slaughtered 400 innocent people. Stanley’s press reports prompted the British government to close the East African slave trade, secured Livingstone’s place in history and launched Stanley’s own career as an imperialist in Africa.
Today, an international team of scholars and scientists led by Dr. Adrian Wisnicki of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, publishes the results of an 18-month project to recover Livingstone’s original account of the massacre. The story, found in a diary that was illegible until it was restored with advanced digital imaging, offers a unique insight into Livingstone’s mind during the greatest crisis of his last expedition, on which he would die in 1873. (more…)
Berkeley Lab to Build Cost Model for Fuel Cells
*A $2-million award from DOE will help bring down the cost of next-generation fuel cells.*
Fuel cells seem like an ideal energy source—they’re clean, efficient, silent and don’t require transmission lines. The hitch? They can be costly. Now scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) hope to change that equation by building a sophisticated cost model that will take into account the total cost of ownership.
With a $2-million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, a team of scientists led by Eric Masanet will perform a detailed assessment of fuel cell design and manufacturing that takes into account both intrinsic and external benefits. The aim is to quantify not only traditional manufacturing costs but also benefits that may previously have been overlooked and may ultimately bring down the cost of fuel cells. (more…)
The Genographic Project Confirms Humans Migrated Out of Africa through Arabia
New analytical method approaches the unstudied 99% of the human genome
WASHINGTON, D.C., – 02 Nov 2011: Evolutionary history shows that human populations likely originated in Africa, and the Genographic Project, the most extensive survey of human population genetic data to date, suggests where they went next. A study by the Project finds that modern humans migrated out of Africa via a southern route through Arabia, rather than a northern route by way of Egypt. These findings will be highlighted today at a conference at the National Geographic Society. (more…)
Digital Media A Factor in Ferocity of Political Campaigns
MU researcher finds negative language inspires further viciousness
A University of Missouri study of recent political blogs indicates politics are getting nastier due to digital media, which are segmenting people into polarized interest groups. The researcher recommends a balanced approach to finding information in order to return civility to political discourse, which is at the heart of democracy. (more…)
Berkeley Lab Scientists Develop New Tool for the Study of Spatial Patterns in Living Cells
*Golden Membranes Pave the Way for a Better Understanding of Cancer and the Immune System*
Football has often been called “a game of inches,” but biology is a game of nanometers, where spatial differences of only a few nanometers can determine the fate of a cell – whether it lives or dies, remains normal or turns cancerous. Scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a new and better way to study the impact of spatial patterns on living cells.
Berkeley Lab chemist Jay Groves led a study in which artificial membranes made up of a fluid bilayer of lipid molecules were embedded with fixed arrays of gold nanoparticles to control the spacing of proteins and other cellular molecules placed on the membranes. This provided the researchers with an unprecedented opportunity to study how the spatial patterns of chemical and physical properties on membrane surfaces influence the behavior of cells. (more…)