Culture

Toronto – Be careful of that raunchy joke that gets all the laughs. As funny as folks at work may find it, it's probably hurting morale. That's one conclusion of a groundbreaking new paper from the Journal of Applied Psychology co-authored by researchers from the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management and the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Management. The study's authors looked at the effect of sexual behavior in the workplace such as sexual jokes, innuendo, discussions of sexual matters or flirtation. And in a research first, they investigated if men and women…

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Performance pay programs designed by teachers, for teachers, tend to offer small incentives to a large number of teachers, new research indicates. "We found that when teachers design performance pay programs they tend to be egalitarian, offering everyone a little bit of money," Matthew Springer, director of the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University and a co-author of the new research, said. The study drew data from Texas public schools participating in the Governor's Educator Excellence Grants Program, or GEEG. GEEG was a three-year program…

The following highlights summarize research papers that have been published or are "in press" (accepted, but not yet published) in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) or the Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres (JGR-D). In this release: Natural protector for Pacific reefs disputed Pacemaker of major climate shifts revealed How space dust vaporizes in the atmosphere Cyclone locations affect cooling or warming of poles Monitoring aerosols over the world's oceans Refined model mimics speeding ice streams Modeling magnetic humps and dips around planets Updated model offers aerosol…

"The 'foot' structures that we found in the Jordan valley are the first sites that the People of Israel built upon entering Canaan and they testify to the biblical concept of ownership of the land with the foot," said archaeologist Prof. Adam Zertal of the University of Haifa, who headed the excavating team that exposed five compounds in the shape of an enormous "foot", that it were likely to have been used at that time to mark ownership of territory. On the eve of the Passover holiday, researchers from the University of Haifa reveal an exceptional and exciting archaeological discovery that…

The 2008 presidential campaign season had the earliest statewide primaries and caucuses in memory, starting with the Iowa Caucus on Jan. 3. Now research from North Carolina State University shows that states may have good reason to push for an early contest. States that hold early presidential primaries or caucuses get a larger share of per capita federal procurement spending compared to other states, the new study says. But being early is not enough, study author Dr. Andrew Taylor says – states must also pick the winner. "Obviously this has real-world ramifications," Taylor says. "Here is…

In a breakthrough for applied physics, North Carolina State University researchers have developed a magnetic semiconductor memory device, using GaMnN thin films, which utilizes both the charge and spin of electrons at room temperature. This is a major breakthrough, as previous devices that used magnetic semiconductors (GaMnAs) and controlled electron spin were only functional at 100 K (or -173 Celsius). By controlling the spin of electrons, the new device represents a significant advance in semiconductor efficiency and speed. The new device is also an advance on earlier experimental models…

MADISON, WI, April 6, 2009 -- Which is a better strategy, specializing in one crop or diversified cropping? Is conventional cropping more profitable than organic farming? Is it less risky? To answer these questions, the University of Wisconsin's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Michael Fields Agricultural Institute agronomists established the Wisconsin Integrated Cropping Systems Trial (WICST) in 1990. This research is funded by USDA-ARS. Systems ranging from species-diverse pasture and organic systems to more specialized conventional alfalfa-based forage and corn-based grain…

If Isaac Newton had access to a supercomputer, he'd have had it watch apples fall – and let it figure out the physical matters. But the computer would have needed to run an algorithm, just developed by Cornell researchers, which can derive natural laws from observed data. The researchers have taught a computer to find regularities in the natural world that become established laws – yet without any prior scientific knowledge on the part of the computer. They have tested their method, or algorithm, on simple mechanical systems and believe it could be applied to more complex systems ranging from…

Using the digital mind that guides their self-repairing robot, researchers at Cornell University have created a computer program that uses raw observational data to tease out fundamental physical laws. The breakthrough may aid the discovery of new scientific truths, particularly for biological systems, that have until now eluded detection. Reporting in the April 3, 2009, issue of Science, Cornell University researcher Hod Lipson and his doctoral student Michael Schmidt report that their algorithm can distill fundamental natural laws from mere observations of a swinging double pendulum and…

Chemists at New York University and Harvard University have created a bipedal, autonomous DNA "walker" that can mimic a cell's transportation system. The device, which marks a step toward more complex synthetic molecular motor systems, is described in the most recent issue of the journal Science. For a video demonstration of the walker, go to http://www.nyu.edu/public.affairs/videos/qtime/biped_movie.mov. Two fundamental components of life's building blocks are DNA, which encodes instructions for making proteins, and motor proteins, such as kinesin, which are part of a cell's transportation…