Research Communicator - October 2010
By AlphaGalileo
Nobel Prize week at AlphaGalileo
The news about the Nobel Prize awards.
For the prizes, we have created a micro-site to gather all the research news that are been published at AlphaGalileo about Nobels. If you are one of our contributors, please be aware that you can also post your news about the Nobel Prize and be part of our micro-site. Just put a note to our editors when you post your news and our team will add it to the micro-site.
If you are a journalist, now you can check all the news at one glance.
All the Nobel Prize News here
Success stories: Northumbria University - Research that Media Loves
A research that unveils which male dance moves can catch a woman’s eye has great potential for the media. That is what press officers at Northumbria University thought so they made sure that all of the Northumbria University researchers involved in the study had cleared their diaries during the week that the press release was sent out.
The item was published in AlphaGalileo and was caught by media in numerous countries. BBC TV News, CNN News, ABC Coast Radio Australia, The Guardian, El Pais and Danish Broadcasting Corporation News are only a few of the media organisations that published the results of the research.
According to Shirley Morgan, a press officer dealing with the piece, they expected lots of interest so “we made sure that the researchers were willing and available for media interviews”. The massive success that has captured the public interest is a proof that they were right.
Click here for the full press release
VIP - User Profile: Edith Lackner, Austrian Press Agency
Our very important user featured this month is Edith Lackner, Editor at the Austrian Press Agency (APA), in Vienna. She says:
“Reporting research on health and medical issues as part of our sectoral services, immediate and accurate news as well as detailed background information is regarded as purely essential. At this AlphaGalileo`s press service provides me with an important source I use for my daily work.”
The Austrian Press Agency is the country’s national news agency and the leading information service provider for Austria. Austrian newspapers and the ORF TV and Radio network own the agency.
Source: www.apa.at
Hits Parade - AlphaGalileo Top 5
The most popular releases of last month.
1. Self-organizing traffic lights — ETH Zürich — 15 September 2010
To avoid a traffic jam you can either “build more roads” or develop a radical idea. Researchers of ETH Zürich in Switzerland decided to go for the second option. They started to re-think the ways traffic flows are controlled. Lämmer and Helbing wondered if traffic lights might devise better solutions on their own, if given some simple traffic-responsive operating rules and left to organise their own on-off schedules.
2. Thriving manufacturing industry in danger from skills shortage— The Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) — 02 September 2010
British manufacturing is thriving, not declining, but is at risk of collapse due to a severe shortage of skills, it was reported on the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)’s annual international conference.
3. Motivated workers perform better— BI Norwegian School of Management — 22 September 2010
Anders Dysvik explains different concepts of motivated workers. Employees can be motivated because they are taken good care of (Prosocial motivation), they can be motivated because they have a clear guideline and understanding about their tasks (Goal orientation). But he comes to the conclusion they perform best when they experience inner motivation and actually enjoy what they do (Inner motivation).
4. How Football Playing Robots Have the Future of Artificial Intelligence at Their Feet — Wiley – Blackwell - 13 September 2010
The new Premier League season has begun and in Madrid the World Cup celebrations are barely over, yet according to research in WIREs Cognitive Science the world's best players may soon be facing a new challenge from football playing robots, which their creators claim will be able to play and beat a human team. The research reveals how building robots to play football is driving the development of artificial intelligence and robotic technology which can be used for roles including search and rescue and home help.
credit: Aldebaran
5. Three quarters of new solar systems world-wide were installed in the EU in 2009 — European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC) - 06 September 2010
The findings of the ninth annual Photovoltaics Status Report published by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) report that newly installed photovoltaic (PV) cells world-wide produced a peak amount of electricity estimated at 7.4 GW in 2009, out of which 5.8 GW was located in Europe. By the end of 2009, Europe's cumulative installed PV electricity generation capacity (existing and newly installed) was 16 GW, which is about 70% of the world's total (22GW)
Image of the month
Les coraux réunionnais sont en mauvaise santé - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) - 15 September 2010
Pascale Chabanet - © IRD Hani Amir
Staff pick — Egyptian desert expedition confirms spectacular meteorite impact
Within the last several thousand years, a rare metallic meteorite travelling over 12 000 km/hour smashed into Earth's surface near what is today the border region between Egypt, Sudan and Libya. The impact of the 1.3 m, 10-tonne chunk of iron generated a fireball and plume that would have been visible over 1000 km away, and drilled a hole 16 m deep and 45 m wide into the rocky terrain. Since then, the crater had sat undisturbed by Earth's geological processes, which usually render all but the very largest terrestrial impact craters invisible. The impact as far as is recorded, was unseen by humans.
Full story here
The Savvy User's Corner— Copying the main text when you submit an item
We have updated the WYSIWYG editor version and you may have noticed some differences.
To copy/paste the main text of your item in the second step of the online form:
- With Mozilla Firefox you can use Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V.
- With Internet Explorer you might get a pop up window asking you if you allow the website to access your clipboard. It will work when you say yes. However, you may have a pop-up blocker. If that is the case and you do not know how to deactivate the blocker, or you have an older version of explorer, you would need to copy your text to a Word document, select the whole text and copy it using Word’s editing tools. Then you can use the paste button of the WYSIWYG editor or just Ctrl+V.
Social Media
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