By Arden Dier
If you’ve ever wondered about the most controversial topics on Wikipedia then you have that in common with Oxford University researchers. They’ve turned their interest into a full-blown study , analyzing millions of articles from 10 language editions of the site, the BBC reports. Rather than look at subjects updated regularly,… …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
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Google, Stanford University, and a few other institutions have been testing driverless cars on American roads for some time now. Soon, though, the autonomous vehicle will go across the pond for their first tests on the wrong side of public roads.
The BBC reports that the British government has approved testing of driverless cars, provided a real human being is riding along in the event that things go wonky. The okay came from the Department of Transport, which included the testing as part of a 28 billion pound ($42.5 million at today’s rates) investment to combat the notorious congestion on British roads.
The appeal of driverless cars is rather easy to see on the overused UK road network. As the DoT report states, driverless cars “maintain a safe distance from the vehicle in front at a set speed and without deviating from their lane – all without the driver’s input.” That means a smoother flow of traffic and a lower chance of accidents.
The cars will be operated by the brains at Oxford University, which had previously tested an autonomous Nissan Leaf. It’s unclear whether Oxford would continue to use the Leaf, or switch to the Toyota Prius favored by Google.
And before our British readers start worrying about driverless EVs hurtling down the M1, the testing will be done on lightly used roads, only.
UK to begin testing driverless cars in bid to ease congestion originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 18 Jul 2013 08:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Autoblog
A U.S. private equity tycoon announced Sunday the establishment of a $300 million endowed scholarship program in China for students from around the world, and billed it as a rival to the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship.
Stephen A. Schwarzman, founder of the private equity firm Blackstone, said he would give $100 million as a personal gift and raise another $200 million to endow the Schwarzman Scholars program at Beijing‘s Tsinghua University. It will be the largest philanthropic gift with foreign money in China‘s history, according to the tycoon and the university.
The Wall Street mogul said China‘s rapid economic growth and rising global influence would define the 21st century, as U.S. ties to Europe did to the 20th century — when the Rhodes Scholarship was created at Oxford University with the goal of producing outstanding leaders.
“China is no longer an elective course, it’s core curriculum,” he said in Beijing.
By partnering with the prestigious Chinese university, Schwarzman said he hoped the educational program would train future world leaders and play a positive role in relations between China and the United States.
“For future geopolitical stability and global prosperity, we need to build a culture of greater trust and understanding between China, America and the rest of the world,” he said.
Tsinghua — known for its engineering programs but in the midst of transforming itself to be more comprehensive in academic offerings — also has produced many of China‘s senior leaders, who have traditionally been technocrats. It is the alma mater for both President Xi Jinping and former President Hu Jintao.
The $300 million endowment will allow 200 students each year to take part in a one-year master’s program at Tsinghua — all expenses paid — in public policy, economics and business, international relations or engineering, beginning in 2016. Schwarzman said 45 percent of the students would come from the United States, 20 percent from China and the rest from other parts of the world.
Already, $100 million has been raised in the last six months from private donors, Schwarzman said.
Both President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping sent congratulatory letters, which were read out loud at the announcement ceremony at the Great Hall of People — China‘s symbolic heart of political power. “That was pretty remarkable to listen to,” Schwarzman said. “That was pretty awesome.”
Vice Premier Liu Yandong attended the announcement and gave a speech.
The announcement also was the top news on state-run China Central Television’s evening newscast, which is typically reserved for the activities of China‘s top leaders.
The program’s advisory board includes former world leaders such as France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, Britain’s Tony Blair, Canada’s Brian Mulroney and Australia’s Kevin Rudd. Former U.S. secretaries of state Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice are also on the board, as is renowned cellist Yo-yo Ma.
“The board shares my belief that fostering connections between Chinese students, American students and students from around the world is a critical aspect of ensuring geopolitical stability now, and into the future,” Schwarzman said.
He said the program would be jointly governed by the Schwarzman
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/national/~3/s3L7W_YZFLY/
Former Sen. Richard Lugar is being knighted on orders from the Queen of England, joining a select list of Americans to receive the distinction.
The Indiana Republican, who this year left the Senate after serving 36 years, will receive the rank of honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire during a ceremony at the British Embassy in Washington on Tuesday. The British Ambassador, Sir Peter Westmacott, is set to preside.
Since leaving the Senate, Lugar has taken on various roles, including leading the Richard G. Lugar Institute for Diplomacy and Congress with the German Marshall Fund. He also serves as a distinguished scholar and professor at the Indiana University School of Global and International Studies.
Lugar said he is deeply honored to be knighted. “I will focus my service on solving our most serious challenges in a spirit of cooperation between our countries,” he said in a statement Monday.
He said he was first inspired by Queen Elizabeth‘s leadership “when she received me as the young Rhodes Scholar in London, 58 years ago and asked me about Indiana.”
Lugar’s studies at Oxford University were his first outside of the United States. He went on to become one of the Senate’s foremost foreign policy experts, focusing much of his work on nuclear proliferation issues and relations with Europe. Along with former Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., Lugar crafted legislation that helped eliminate nuclear warheads in the former Soviet Union.
Lugar will not be known as “sir” Lugar — only royal subjects can carry that title. But few Americans have received honorary knighthood, including Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
Lugar was defeated in a Republican primary in 2012, finishing his sixth term in office early this year. Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly won the race to replace him.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/national/~3/rZwhdEazrCA/
She was Britain’s first female leader, a strong woman who battled her way to the top of a male-dominated political system — but don’t call Margaret Thatcher a feminist.
The former prime minister, who died Monday aged 87, rejected the label — “I owe nothing to women’s lib,” she once said — and she leaves a contested legacy for women. For some, she was an inspiration who showed that anything was possible. For others, she was an individualist who got to the top and pulled the ladder up behind her.
Meryl Streep, who won an Academy Award last year for playing Thatcher in “The Iron Lady,” said that although some of Thatcher’s ideas could be seen as “wrongheaded or misguided,” her legacy for women was huge.
“To have given women and girls around the world reason to supplant fantasies of being princesses with a different dream: the real-life option of leading their nation; this was groundbreaking and admirable,” Streep said.
But Wendy Webster, professor of modern cultural history at the University of Huddersfield, said Thatcher regarded herself as a one-off who owed nothing to feminism.
“She didn’t see her career as having grown out of any kind of movements,” said Webster, author of a feminist analysis of the British leader, “Margaret Thatcher: Not a Man to Match Her.”
“She saw herself as a unique individual who had made it through her own talent and her own determination.”
Few would downplay the hurdles Thatcher overcame as a grocer’s daughter from a provincial town making her way in Britain’s macho, patrician Conservative Party. Though she was a graduate of Oxford University — in chemistry, then an unusual field for a woman — she had to fight to be selected as a parliamentary candidate, and her victory in a Conservative Party leadership contest in 1975 was a shock.
She wasn’t the first woman to head a modern government, but she was one of the first who was not the daughter or widow of a male leader.
“We should never forget that the odds were stacked against her,” Prime Minister David Cameron said Monday. “She was the shopkeeper’s daughter from Grantham who made it all the way to the highest office in the land.”
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
By The Huffington Post News Editors
* Experts in daily talks on risks posed by new China virus
* Researchers analysing samples to find vaccine candidate
* Decision to make vaccine depends on whether H7N9 spreads
By Ben Hirschler and Kate Kelland
LONDON, April 4 (Reuters) – Experts from around the world are in daily talks about the threat posed by a deadly new strain of bird flu in China, including discussions on if and when to start making a vaccine.
Any decision to mass-produce vaccines against H7N9 flu will not be taken lightly, since it will mean sacrificing production of seasonal shots. And scientists warn it will take months to get any finished bird flu vaccine to the market.
But the groundwork is being laid.
The virus has been shared with World Health Organization (WHO) collaborating centres in Atlanta, Beijing, London, Melbourne and Tokyo, and these groups are analysing samples to identify the best candidate to be used for the manufacture of vaccine – if it becomes necessary.
It is still a big “if”, even assuming the continued spread of the new disease, which has killed five of the 14 people that it has infected in China.
“It is an incredibly difficult decision because once you make it you have to change from making seasonal flu vaccines and go to making a vaccine for this virus,” said Jeremy Farrar, a leading expert on infectious diseases and director of Oxford University’s research unit in Vietnam.
That could mean shortages of vaccine against the normal seasonal flu which, while not serious for most people, still costs thousands of lives.
Sanofi Pasteur, the world’s largest flu vaccine manufacturer, said it was in continuous contact with the WHO through the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA), but it was too soon to know the significance of the Chinese cases. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post
A custom-built programmable 3D printer can create materials with several of the properties of living tissues, Oxford University scientists have demonstrated. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
Could a Roman gold ring linked to a curse have inspired J.R.R. Tolkien to create The One Ring?
Britain’s National Trust and the Tolkien Society are putting the artifact on display Tuesday for fans of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” to decide for themselves whether this was Tolkien’s precious ring of power.
Found in a field near a historic Roman town in southern England in 1785, the gold ring is inscribed in Latin, “Senicianus live well in God,” and inset with an image of the goddess Venus. It is larger than average, weights 12 grams, and is believed to date from the 4th century.
The ring is believed to be linked to a curse tablet found separately at the site of a Roman temple dedicated to a god named Nodens in Gloucestershire, western England. The tablet says a man called Silvianus had lost a ring, and it asks Nodens to place a curse of ill health on Senicianus until he returned it to the temple.
An archaeologist who looked into the connection between the ring and the curse tablet asked Tolkien, who was an Anglo-Saxon professor at Oxford University, to work on the etymology of the name Nodens in 1929.
The writer also visited the temple several times, and some believe he would have been aware of the existence of the Roman ring before he started writing “The Hobbit.”
“The influences most often cited for Tolkien’s creation of The One Ring usually take the form of literary or legendary rings,” said Lynn Forest-Hill, education officer for the Tolkien Society.
“It is, then, particularly fascinating to see the physical evidence of the [ring], with its links to Tolkien through the inscription associating it with a curse,” she said.
The gold ring is displayed at The Vyne, a historic mansion in southern England, starting Tuesday.
Poor no more?
A new report from Oxford University‘s poverty and human development initiative says some of the world’s most impoverished people are becoming significantly less poor.
The study also predicts that countries with the most poor, including Nepal, Rwanda and Bangladesh, could see acute poverty erased within 20 years if development continues at current rates, the Guardian reports.
Oxford University‘s study uses a measure called the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which includes indicators such as years of schooling, water availability, nutrition and child mortality.
“As poor people worldwide have said, poverty is more than money – it is ill health, it is food insecurity, it is not having work, or experiencing violence and humiliation, or not having health care, electricity, or good housing,” said Dr. Sabina Alkire, who co-developed the system for the organization in 2010. “Maybe we have been overlooking the power of the people themselves, women who are empowering each other, civil society pulling itself up.”
Last week, the UN‘s latest development report said the world is experiencing a “global re-balancing,” with higher growth in at least 40 poor countries, the Guardian reports.
A human liver was kept alive outside a human being and then transplanted into a recipient patient who required a new liver, researchers from Oxford University and King’s College Hospital reported. The scientists added that the procedure has been successfully performed on two patients who are currently recovering well… …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Medical News Today
Breast cancer patients who undergo radiation therapy have an increase risk of ischemic heart disease within five years; the risk persists for at least twenty years, researchers from Oxford University, England, the Karolinska Institute, Sweden, and Copenhagen University Hospital, Denmark, reported in NEJM (New England Journal of Medicine)… …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Medical News Today
By Matthew Herper, Forbes Staff On Saturday researchers from Oxford University presented data from a 25,673 patient clinical trial funded by Merck that many doctors say should probably end the widespread use of the B vitamin niacin as a heart drug, both because a pill containing extended-release niacin didn’t prevent heart attacks and strokes and because it caused increases in diabetes complications, bleeding, and infections. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
How would you look for something that can be in two ‘places’ at once? The answer, according to Oxford University research into a quantum phenomenon called superposition, seems to be to ask where it isn’t rather than where it is. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
By Jon LeSage
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“Siri, drive me home.”
Okay, so it’s not quite that simple (yet) but Oxford University is testing out a driverless version of the Nissan Leaf electric car using technology controlled from an Apple iPad on the dashboard. The car is guided by a low-cost navigation system that gauges its surroundings through small cameras and lasers discreetly built into the body of the car and does not rely on GPS. The iPad flashes up a prompt offering the driver the option of taking over a portion of the route. Touching the screen can switch back to “auto drive” where the robot system takes over.
The system is currently being tested at Begbroke Science Park, near Oxford. The next stage of the research will work on enabling the new robotic system to understand complex traffic flows and to make decisions on the best routes to take, said Dr. Ingmar Posner, who is co-leading the project.
It’s estimated that the current prototype navigation systems costs around 5,000 pounds (about $7,625 US) but, “Long-term, our goal is to produce a system costing around 100 (pounds) [$151 US],” said Professor Paul Newman, the other co-leader. A series of videos about the Robot Leaf is available below.
Speaking of driverless Nissan Leafs, you can view another video showing a prototype of a self-parking Leaf here. A right-hand Nissan backs itself at a 90-degree angle into a striped parking car so it can be wirelessly recharged. Drivers might soon be able to do quite a lot from the driver’s seat of the Leaf without ever having to steer.
Continue reading Self-driving Nissan Leaf controlled from iPad
Self-driving Nissan Leaf controlled from iPad originally appeared on Autoblog Green on Mon, 25 Feb 2013 15:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Autoblog
(Phys.org)—A group of scientists at Oxford University in the UK have demonstrated their version of the self-driving car, which promises to be much cheaper than similar cars being developed elsewhere. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
(Phys.org)—Being able to choose the sex of their babies may be the key to the complex societies built by ants, bees, and wasps, according to Oxford University scientists.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
(Phys.org)—The atomic structure of a zinc-based material has a surprising amount in common with the tentacles of an octopus, Oxford University researchers have found.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
(Phys.org)—Social networks can be used to describe the sexual interactions in animal populations and reveal which individuals are directly competing in the ‘mating game’, according to new Oxford University research.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
Steven Muller, who led Johns Hopkins University during a period of tremendous growth and also served as president of The Johns Hopkins Hospital for a decade, died Saturday at his Washington home. He was 85.
University spokeswoman Tracey Reeves said Muller died of respiratory failure. His wife, Jill McGovern, was at his side.
Muller had been provost of Johns Hopkins for 10 months when was tapped by trustees in 1972 to lead the Baltimore-based university, staying at the helm until 1990. He also served as hospital president from 1972 to 1983.
University officials said Muller led highly successful fundraising campaigns that raised hundreds of millions of dollars for Hopkins. Under Muller, the university broke off nursing and engineering studies into standalone schools, brought the Space Telescope Science Institute to Baltimore, and established the Johns Hopkins-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies.
Muller also created an affiliation with the Peabody Institute, helping put the well-known music school on stronger financial footing, and helped to restore and reopen the Homewood Museum and Evergreen Museum and Library.
He also presided over the expansion and modernization of Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center and the establishment of the Krieger Mind-Brain Institute.
University president Ronald J. Daniels praised Muller as “a remarkable leader whose vision and determination enhanced dramatically the institution’s national and global prominence.”
“A man of both substance and impeccable style, Dr. Muller is credited with moving the university into a new era while preserving its tradition of leadership among research institutions,” Daniels wrote in an email to the university community. “As many of you who knew him can attest, he was a no-nonsense leader who was more formal than informal. More bold than quiet. More personable than pushy.”
Born in Hamburg, Germany, Muller was a child when his family fled Nazi Germany. He spent his teenage years in Los Angeles, even acting in several Hollywood movies before enrolling at the University of California, Los Angeles, from which he graduated in 1948. He earned a degree in politics from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and received a doctorate from Cornell University. Before his tenure at Hopkins, Muller served as a vice president of public affairs at Cornell and as director of its Center for International Studies.
After his retirement. Muller remained active in the Hopkins community and was awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters in 2000.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
