Founded at the dawn of the Space Race in 1958, Florida Tech is the only independent, technological university in the Southeast. The university has been named a Barron's Guide "Best Buy" in College Education, designated a Tier One Best National University in U.S. News & World Report, and is one of just nine schools in Florida lauded by the 2012 Fiske Guide to Colleges and recognized by Bloomberg Businessweek as the best college for return on investment in Florida. A recent survey by PayScale.com ranks Florida Tech as the top private university in Florida for return on investment. The university offers undergraduate, graduate and doctoral programs. Fields of study include science, engineering, aeronautics, business, humanities, mathematics, psychology, communication and education. Additional information is available online at www.fit.edu.
Scientists dispel myths, provide new insight into human impact on pre-Columbian Amazon River Basin
2012-06-15
(Press-News.org) About Florida Institute of Technology
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Physicists predict success of movies at the box office
2012-06-15
A group of Japanese scientists have surprised themselves by being able to predict the success or failure of blockbuster movies at the box office using a set of mathematical models.
The researchers, publishing their study today, 15 June, in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society's New Journal of Physics, used the effects of advertising and word-of-mouth communication to create a model that turned out to be successful in predicting how each movie fared once it hit the silver screen.
The only data the researchers needed to put into the model were the daily ...
The boys are bad: Older male ants single out younger rivals for death squad
2012-06-15
Male Cardiocondyla obscurior ants are diphenic (either winged or wingless). New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Ecology demonstrates that the dominant wingless (ergatoid) male is able to identify potential rivals before they emerge from their pupae. Constant patrolling of the nest ensures that this male is able to bite or chemically tag rivals as soon as they emerge from their pupae. Chemically tagged ants are quickly destroyed by workers.
When ants emerge from their pupae (eclosion) they are vulnerable to attack because their exoskeleton ...
Gene may link diabetes and Alzheimer's, CCNY researchers find
2012-06-15
In recent years it became clear that people with diabetes face an ominous prospect – a far greater risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. Now researchers at The City College of New York (CCNY) have shed light on one reason why. Biology Professor Chris Li and her colleagues have discovered that a single gene forms a common link between the two diseases.
They found that the gene, known to be present in many Alzheimer's disease cases, affects the insulin pathway. Disruption of this pathway is a hallmark of diabetes. The finding could point to a therapeutic target for both ...
Amazon was not all manufactured landscape, Smithsonian scientist says
2012-06-15
Population estimates for the Amazon basin just before Europeans arrived range from 2 to 10 million people. The newly reported reconstruction of Amazonian prehistory by Smithsonian scientist Dolores R. Piperno and colleagues suggests that large areas of western Amazonia were sparsely inhabited. This clashes with the belief that most of Amazonia, including forests far removed from major rivers, was heavily occupied and modified. The team's research is published in the June 15 issue of Science.
"Drawing on questionable assumptions, some scholars argue that modern Amazonian ...
Why doctors still rely on century-old heart test
2012-06-15
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When it comes to diagnosing heart disease, experts like Dr. Martha Gulati of the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center are cautioning against relying too heavily on high-tech imaging, and are...
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(COLUMBUS, Ohio) June 2012 – Most people might assume that technology first developed in 1928 would be obsolete by now. But from air conditioned buildings to sliced bread, many inventions of that era are still essential to our lives today. That ...
Child survival takes center stage as leaders convene to renew commitments
2012-06-15
With an unprecedented commitment that bridges the urgent need to address diarrheal disease with unique opportunities to overcome it once and for all, leaders in global health issued today's Declaration on Scaling-up Treatment of Diarrhea and Pneumonia. PATH joins the US Agency for International Development, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, the Micronutrient Initiative, and others in raising a collective voice, calling for investments to scale-up the use of proven tools, particularly oral rehydration solution, zinc, and amoxicillin.
"We call on all high-burden countries ...
Still capable of adapting: Research team studies genetic diversity of living fossils
2012-06-15
The morphology of coelacanths has not fundamentally changed since the Devonian age, that is, for about 400 million years. Nevertheless, these animals known as living fossils are able to genetically adapt to their environment. This is described by PD Dr. Kathrin Lampert from the RUB's Department of Animal Ecology, Evolution and Biodiversity along with colleagues from Würzburg, Bremen, Kiel and Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) in the journal Current Biology. "Coelacanths are rare and extremely endangered. Understanding the genetic diversity of these animals could help make preservation ...
European geneticists condemn use of testing to establish 'racial purity'
2012-06-15
The use of genetic testing to establish racial origins for political purposes is not only scientifically foolish, but also unethical and should be condemned, the European Society of Human Genetics (ESHG) said today (Thursday June 14). The society, which promotes research in basic and applied human and medical genetics and ensures high standards in clinical genetic practice, said that the use by a member of parliament from the Hungarian far-right Jobbik party of a genetic test to attempt to prove his 'ethnic purity' was ethically unacceptable.
The company Nagy Gén scanned ...
Training people to inhibit movements can reduce risk-taking
2012-06-15
New research from psychologists at the Universities of Exeter and Cardiff shows that people can train their brains to become less impulsive, resulting in less risk-taking during gambling. The research could pave the way for new treatments for people with addictions to gambling, drugs or alcohol as well as impulse-control disorders, such as ADHD.
Published today (14 June 2012), in the journal Psychological Science, the study assessed whether asking people to stop making simple movements while in a simulated gambling situation affected how risky or cautious they were ...
Training character strengths makes you happy
2012-06-15
Character strengths can be defined as traits that are rated as morally positive. That they are positively linked to life satisfaction has already been shown in many studies. That they have a causal effect on life satisfaction and that practicing them triggers an increase in the sense of wellbeing, however, has now been proved by Willibald Ruch, René T. Proyer and Claudia Buschor from the Department of Personality and Assessment at the University of Zurich for the first time.
Practice pays off
For their current study, the team of researchers randomly divided a sample ...