Culture

Boulder, CO, USA – A line of massive boulders on the western shore of Tonga may be evidence of the most powerful volcano-triggered tsunami found to date. Up to 9 meters (30 feet) high and weighing up to 1.6 million kilograms (3.5 million pounds), the seven coral boulders are located 100 to 400 meters (300 to 1,300 feet) from the coast. The house-sized boulders were likely flung ashore by a wave rivaling the 1883 Krakatau tsunami, which is estimated to have towered 35 meters (115 feet) high.

Mahmoud El-Gamal, chair of Rice University's economics department, is available for media interviews this week and into the weekend to discuss the current financial crisis and action Congress is likely to take.

El-Gamal and Amy Myers Jaffe of Rice University's Baker Institute are near completion of a forthcoming book, tentatively titled "Oil, Dollars, Debt and Crises." The book closely examines the world financial marketplace. "It's a book about the petrodollar and the worldwide financial system," said El-Gamal.

New York, N.Y. – September 24, 2008 – Divesting the right businesses at the right time is critical to maximizing shareholder value. However, even the most sophisticated companies encounter substantial barriers to good corporate portfolio management.

In the "Corporate Portfolio Management Roundtable" that appears in the Spring 2008 issue of Morgan Stanley's Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, a distinguished group of professionals review the main hurdles facing better portfolio management and identify some innovative best practices.

With the high cost of gasoline and diesel fuel impacting costs for automobiles, trucks, buses and the overall economy, a Temple University physics professor has developed a simple device which could dramatically improve fuel efficiency as much as 20 percent.

STANFORD, Calif. - Remember the glamour days of smoking when such stars as Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall puffed their way into Hollywood legend? When images of John Wayne and Gary Cooper, cigarette in hand, symbolized virility? And Joan Crawford lighting a cigarette was the epitome of elegance?

Today's movie industry still draws on those images to justify smoking in movies - even as public health experts call for smoking to be eliminated from youth-rated films. Last month the National Cancer Institute concluded that on-screen smoking causes youth to start smoking.

Kim et al proved the presence of DNP-like immunore activity in the rat colon, and that the DNP-like molecule may control colonic motility as a local regulator. Up to now, there is little research exploring the relationship between DNP and gastric motility. In the author's previous study, they demonstrated that DNP inhibited gastric motility. However, the mechanism remains unclear.

Montreal, Canada – September 24, 2008 – A new study in the journal International Studies Quarterly reveals that ethnic violence is actually much less likely in countries where the free market predominates than it is in countries where the government plays an extensive role in the economy.

Stephen Saideman, Ph.D., and David Steinberg, M.A., compiled data for a large number of countries on their levels of ethnic conflict and the extent to which the government versus the free market controlled the economy.

Toronto, Canada – September 24, 2008 – Transnational crime refers to crime that takes place across national borders. An article in the journal International Political Sociology shows that the significance of transnational crime is poorly understood but has had profound consequences for the ordering of the world system.

HILTON HEAD, SC—Anabolic steroids are synthetic hormones derived from the human male hormone testosterone. The use of steroids has been suspected in professional baseball and other sports where building muscle strength, rather than endurance, is paramount. Power lifting is such a sport. A team of researchers has examined the impact of anabolic steroid use on power lifters years after the athletes had ceased to take the drugs. The researchers found that while physical traces of the drug no longer remained, changes in the shoulder and quadriceps still gave lifters an advantage years later.

Today the new Global Carbon Budget was launched simultaneously by Global Carbon Project co-chair Michael Raupach in France at the Paris Observatory, and in the USA at Capitol Hill, Washington by GCP Executive Director Pep Canadell.

Four Cal Poly faculty members were recently awarded nearly $200,000 by the National Science Foundation’s ADVANCE Program to study the experiences of female faculty in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields at Cal Poly.

The NSF’s IT (Institutional Transformation) Start grant asks investigators to look at the problem of low numbers of female STEM faculty and develop a plan for improvement that is both institution-specific and sustainable over time.

STANFORD, Calif. - Remember the glamour days of smoking when such stars as Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall puffed their way into Hollywood legend? When images of John Wayne and Gary Cooper, cigarette in hand, symbolized virility? And Joan Crawford lighting a cigarette was the epitome of elegance?

Today's movie industry still draws on those images to justify smoking in movies - even as public health experts call for smoking to be eliminated from youth-rated films. Last month the National Cancer Institute concluded that on-screen smoking causes youth to start smoking.

Tobacco companies paid the Hollywood A-listers of the 1930s and 1940s millions of dollars in today's money to endorse particular brands of cigarette, under contract, reveals research in Tobacco Control.

The continued presence of on-screen smoking in today's mainstream films is rooted in these "studio era" deals, claim the authors.

The research team accessed cigarette endorsement contracts between tobacco companies and studio-controlled movie stars, as well as adverts of the period, from university and major US newspaper archives.

RICHMOND, Va. (Sept. 24, 2008) – An international research team studying sound production in deep-sea fishes has found that cusk-eels use several sets of muscles to produce sound that plays a prominent role in male mating calls.

These findings, published online today in the Royal Society journal, Biology Letters, may help researchers gain further insight into acoustic communication in the deep sea and the role of sound in fish behavior.

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Sept. 24, 2008 -- Despite widespread concern about climate change, annual carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels and manufacturing cement have grown 38 percent since 1992, from 6.1 billion tons of carbon to 8.5 billion tons in 2007.