Imperial Valley News Center
200th anniversary of Tambora eruption a reminder of volcanic perils
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- Written by Robert Sanders
Berkeley, California - The 2010 eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull grounded thousands of air flights and spread ash over much of western Europe, yet it was puny compared to the eruption 200 years ago of Tambora, a volcano that probably killed more than 60,000 people in what is now Indonesia and turned summer into winter over much of the Northern Hemisphere.
Goodbye, Range Anxiety? Electric Vehicles May Be More Useful Than Previously Thought
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- Written by Julie Chao
Berkeley, California - In the first study of its kind, scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) quantitatively show that electric vehicles (EVs) will meet the daily travel needs of drivers longer than commonly assumed. Many drivers and much prior literature on the retirement of EV batteries have assumed that EV batteries will be retired after the battery has lost 20 percent of its energy storage or power delivery capability.
Communicating climate change: Focus on solutions
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- Written by David L. Chandler
Cambridge, Massachusetts - Panelists at an MIT discussion yesterday on how to improve communication about climate change said that while serious obstacles remain in making the issues and potential solutions clear to the public and political leaders, there is some cause for optimism, especially when the messages focus on readily available solutions.
Diagnosis by Keyboard
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- Written by Anne Trafton
Cambridge, Massachusetts - Analyzing people’s keystrokes as they type on a computer keyboard can reveal a great deal of information about the state of their motor function, according to a new study from MIT.
Study on MOOCs provides new insights on an evolving space
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- Written by MIT
Cambridge, Massachusetts - Wednesday, a joint MIT and Harvard University research team published one of the largest investigations of massive open online courses (MOOCs) to date. Building on these researchers’ prior work - a January 2014 report describing the first year of open online courses launched on edX, a nonprofit learning platform founded by the two institutions - the latest effort incorporates another year of data, bringing the total to nearly 70 courses in subjects from programming to poetry.
The rapid rise of human language
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- Written by Peter Dizikes
Cambridge, Massachusetts - At some point, probably 50,000 to 100,000 years ago, humans began talking to one another in a uniquely complex form. It is easy to imagine this epochal change as cavemen grunting, or hunter-gatherers mumbling and pointing. But in a new paper, an MIT linguist contends that human language likely developed quite rapidly into a sophisticated system: Instead of mumbles and grunts, people deployed syntax and structures resembling the ones we use today.
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