Colorado University will no longer allow concealed weapons in undergrad dormitories, but will continue to allow them elsewhere on campus. KUSA's Meagan Fitzgerald reports.
By Sevil Omer, NBC News
Updated at 4:57 p.m. ET: The University of Colorado will segregate students who have concealed-weapons permits in special dorms, but their firearms will have to be locked up before bedtime, according to campus police.?
University officials have amended their student housing contract at its Boulder and Colorado Springs campuses to accommodate students who are 21 years or older and have concealed-weapons carry permits, said Ryan Huff, public information officer with the University of Colorado's campus police?in Boulder.
"If you have a permit, you can carry a concealed weapon on campus,?as long as its hidden away from view,?and you can even have it with you in?class," Huff told NBC News. "What you can not do is?have it on you at a ticketed event, such as football games, or in any of the residence halls on campus."
The university?s policy change comes after the Colorado Supreme Court upheld an appeals-court decision in March that struck down the university?s ban on guns.
?I believe we have taken reasonable steps to adhere to the ruling of the Colorado Supreme Court, while balancing that with the priority of providing a safe environment for our students, faculty and staff,? CU-Boulder Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano said in a statement on the university?s website.
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University officials say both campuses will establish a residential area for students with permits but will ban guns in all other dormitories, according to the new policy.
Huff said those who live in residence halls will have to lock up their firearms with police, but can check out their weapon before and after they go to their residence hall. For those living in family housing units, he said, safes will be established and?supervised by the housing monitor.
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"Ultimately, CU-Boulder and Students for Concealed Carry have the same goal in mind, the safety of campus patrons," David Burnett, director of public relations for Students for Concealed Carry, said in an email to NBC News. "We feel that CU's previous policy of expecting criminals to comply with 'no-gun' stickers on the doors was absurdly ineffective, and are happy they have made the change to allow campus carry."?
The new policy, however,?isn?t sitting well with James Manley, a lawyer for the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a nonprofit group in Lakewood, Colo., that advocates liberty and freedom.
"We still need to see the actual language of the policy before we make a decision on how to proceed," Manley told The Daily Camera in Boulder.
University officials say less than 1 percent of its staff, faculty and students have concealed-carry permits, according?to the?Boulder newspaper.
Under Colorado law, to get a concealed-carry permit, a person must be 21 or older, get a federal background check and demonstrate competence with a firearm, including through a class, or military or police service.
On July 20, a mass shooting occurred at a midnight screening of "The Dark Knight Rises" in the suburb of Aurora. James Holmes, a 24-year-old former doctoral student at the University of Colorado,?is accused of killing 12 people and injuring 58 others in the spree.
Huff said there is no connection between the university's new policy and the Aurora shootings.
"The university wanted to make sure its new policy was in place before students returned for the school year," he said.
According to the university website, students will start returning to residence halls on Tuesday; classes begin for the semester on Aug. 27.
Do you have an education-related story or idea, contact NBC News' Sevil Omer at sevil.omer@msnbc.com
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ScienceDaily (Aug. 16, 2012) ? In the face of a changing climate many species must adapt or perish. Ecologists studying evolutionary responses to climate change forecast that cold-blooded tropical species are not as vulnerable to extinction as previously thought. The study, published in the British Ecological Society?s Functional Ecology, considers how fast species can evolve and adapt to compensate for a rise in temperature.
The research, carried out at the University of Zurich, was led by Dr Richard Walters, now at Reading University, alongside David Berger now at Uppsala University and Wolf Blanckenhorn, Professor of Evolutionary Ecology at Zurich.
?Forecasting the fate of any species is difficult, but it is essential for conserving biodiversity and managing natural resources,? said lead author Dr Walters. ?It is believed that climate change poses a greater risk to tropical cold-blooded organisms (ectotherms), than temperate or polar species. However, as potential adaptation to climate change has not been considered in previous extinction models we tested this theory with a model forecasting evolutionary responses.?
Ectotherms, such as lizards and insects, have evolved a specialist physiology to flourish in a stable tropical environment. Unlike species which live in varied habitats tropical species operate within a narrow range of temperatures, leading to increased dangers if those temperatures change.
?When its environment changes an organism can respond by moving away, adapting its physiology over time or, over generations, evolving,? said Walters. ?The first two responses are easy to identify, but a species? ability to adapt quick enough to respond to climate change is an important and unresolved question for ecologists.?
The team explored the idea that there are also evolutionary advantages for species adapted to warmer environments. The ?hotter is better? theory suggests that species which live in high temperatures will have higher fitness, resulting from a shorter generation time. This may allow them to evolve relatively quicker than species in temperate environments.
The team sought to directly compare the increased risk of extinction associated with lower genetic variance, owing to temperature specialization, with the lowered risk of extinction associated with a shorter generation time.
?Our model shows that the evolutionary advantage of a shorter generation time should compensate species which are adapted to narrow temperature ranges,? said Walters. ?We forecast that the relative risk of extinction is likely to be lower for tropical species than temperate ones.?
?The tropics are home to the greatest biodiversity on earth, so it imperative that the risk of extinction caused by climate change is understood,? concluded Walters. ?While many questions remain, our theoretical predictions suggest tropical species may not be as vulnerable to climate warming as previously thought.?
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Wiley, via AlphaGalileo.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Richard J. Walters, Wolf U. Blanckenhorn, David Berger. Forecasting extinction risk of ectotherms under climate warming: an evolutionary perspective. Functional Ecology, 2012; DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2435.2012.02045.x
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Unlike many media outlets covering the sport of football, we didn?t feel compelled to mention that Tuesday was Tim Tebow?s birthday (is it December already?), or that he appears on the cover of the new GQ magazine.
But then Tebow addressed the situation on Thursday (the GQ thing, not his birthday), saying he wasn?t aware he?d be on the cover.
?Honestly, I didn?t even know until ? actually probably most of [you] knew that I was on there before I knew, so it kind of was a shocker for me,? Tebow said in comments to the media, which were transcribed and distributed by the team.? ?It was something that I think I did maybe six years ago in college.? Honestly the first time I heard [it] was when we were in the cafeteria and it was on ESPN.? That?s when I found out, so it was kind of a shocker to me as well.?
It?s hardly obvious that the photos are outdated; the most controversial image appears to have Tebow in a crucifix pose, with the color dulled to the point where it creates the impression that the pants are Jet green and not Gator blue.
?Was I trying to do anything as far as the crucifix?? Tebow said.? ?Absolutely not.? I mean, I don?t know ? it was six years ago, I don?t even remember what I was doing, but I wasn?t trying to do anything like that though.?
The whole thing just seems odd.? Though GQ surely retained the rights to use the six-year-old photos (otherwise, Team Tebow already would have unleashed legal hell on the magazine, Reebok-style), GQ has created the false impression that it conducted a recent photo shoot with Tebow when the truth is it didn?t.? And the placement of his image on the cover implies that he was interviewed when the truth is he wasn?t.
The fact that GQ would bend reality just a bit (or more) demonstrates the power of Tebow.? That said, there will be plenty of Tebowmaniacs who may be disappointed that they purchased the magazine under somewhat false pretenses.
Unfortunately, many of them won?t be returning it because they will have ripped out the page with the crucifix photo and framed it as the centerpiece of a Jobu-esque shrine.
ScienceDaily (Aug. 16, 2012) ? Researchers have finally found a compound that may offer the first effective and hormone-free birth control pill for men. The study in the August 17th Cell, a Cell Press publication, shows that the small molecule makes male mice reversibly infertile without putting a damper on their sex drive. When the animals stop taking this new form of birth control, their sperm rebound and they are again able to sire perfectly healthy offspring.
"This compound produces a rapid and reversible decrease in sperm count and motility with profound effects on fertility," said James Bradner of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the lead author of the study.
A male birth control pill hasn't been easy to come by in large part because of the challenge of getting any drug across the blood:testis barrier, where it can reach the sperm-generating cells. That lack of contraceptive alternatives for men is partially responsible for the high rate of unplanned pregnancies. Despite the unsatisfactory options for male contraception, nearly one-third of couples rely on male-directed birth control methods.
Known as JQ1, the compound developed in the Bradner lab works by targeting a testis-specific protein called BRDT that is essential for fertility. When mice are given the BRDT-inhibiting molecule, they begin producing fewer sperm and those sperm they do produce don't swim as well.
"This is a good reason to get excited about low sperm counts," said Martin Matzuk of Baylor College of Medicine, another author of the report.
Mating studies confirm that JQ1 indeed works as effective contraception. Even better, those effects are complete and reversible and without adverse consequences for the animals' testosterone levels or behavior. The small molecule also comes without any apparent adverse effects on the males' future offspring.
"There has not been a new reversible contraceptive for men since the development of the condom, centuries ago," notes William Bremner from the University of Washington, Seattle in an accompanying commentary in which he refers to Matzuk and Bradner's contraceptive method as "a breakthrough new approach."
"We envision that our discoveries can be completely translated to men, providing a novel and efficacious strategy for a male contraceptive," the researchers wrote, noting the high degree of conservation between human and mouse BRDT proteins.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Cell Press, via Newswise.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal References:
Martin?M. Matzuk, Michael?R. McKeown, Panagis Filippakopoulos, Qinglei Li, Lang Ma, Julio?E. Agno, Madeleine?E. Lemieux, Sarah Picaud, Richard?N. Yu, Jun Qi, Stefan Knapp, James?E. Bradner. Small-Molecule Inhibition of BRDT for Male Contraception. Cell, 2012; 150 (4): 673 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2012.06.045
William?J. Bremner. Contraception for Men: A Breakthrough New Approach. Cell, 2012; 150 (4): 667 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2012.07.027
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
By Charles Moore, on August 16th, 2012 | Permalink
Car lovers and photography fans alike will enjoy a free new iPad app showcasing the beautiful automobile photography of Detroit photographer James Haefner. Rocket Garden Labs, developer of the Foliobook portfolio app popular among professional photographers, launched the James Haefner app as a way to show as many people as possible the gorgeous portfolios that can be created using Foliobook.
The James Haefner app delivers a free collection of Haefner?s work featuring beautiful cars. Rocket Garden Labs collaborated with Haefner to deliver a rich collection of automobile photographs ? from the phenomenally rare Corvette Shark to todays most luxurious vehicles.
Photographs in the James Haefner collection can be flipped through one-at-a-time, or run automatically as a slideshow. Each shot is a page from Haefner?s recent work formatted in a professional portfolio format.
Professional photographers can also benefit from this app by learning how a leading automotive photographer presents his work to art directors and prospective clients. This collection is both beautiful and instructive of the art and business process of a great photographer.
?Rocket Garden Labs feel privileged to be able to work with a photographer of Jim?s stature, so that the simplicity and clean lines of our app can be experienced with the highest quality photography,? says Paul Freeman, Rocket Garden Labs chief designer. ?The James Haefner app will appeal to car nuts everywhere as well as photographers and artists.?
Foliobook is unique among iPad portfolio apps in having slideshow transitions that include a signature transition resembling leafing through photographs in a portfolio print box. This transition particularly suited the presentation of Haefner?s work because the images represent the layouts of his printed professional portfolio. For this app, Rocket Garden Labs extended Foliobook to add more realism to the transitions. These improvements along with others will become a part of a forthcoming free update to Foliobook.
Foliobook was designed from the start to be suitable for photographers who are at the very top of the industry. It recently achieved greater notoriety after Scott Kelby, editor-in-chief of Photoshop User magazine, published on his blog that, ?with Foliobook, I have finally found my portfolio app for the iPad.?
James Haefner is a Detroit based automotive and architectural photographer, his work covers the vintage cool of mid-20th century design to the futuristic present exemplified by modern car design.
Rocket Garden is an interactive design house specialising in mobile and tablet media applications for photographers, designers and creative professionals, based in London, UK.
For more information, visit: http://www.rocketgardenlabs.com/
There are plenty of things to know about email marketing, and you?ll probably just scratch the surface even if you spend the rest of your career trying to keep up. Hence this Top 10 of 2012 list. We feel these are the 10 things you must commit to if ?you?re going to succeed.
The top 10 list was chosen by Google rankings, and are composed of our own tips with some advice from other top bloggers as well. If you?re only going to read one email marketing post all year, this is definitely the one. Email marketing is a major part of many businesses, so make sure you take a look to see if any of these articles catches your eye.
How does your email marketing data compare?
A look at recent email marketing data shares statistics on open rates and click-through rates.
Today we have more data to share on email marketing campaigns throughout 2011 and the first quarter of 2012. The findings come from more than 1,100 brands, sharing benchmark data related to their email marketing efforts. These numbers will help you compare your own email marketing statistics with those of other brands.
All the statistics shared below come from?2012 Silverpop Email Marketing Metrics Benchmark Study.
Open rates
The unique open rates for the US, Canada, and EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) had a mean of 20.1%; a median of 15.0%; a top quartile of 43.7%; and a bottom quartile of 8.0%.
See full article here
Email marketing stats: How does your company rate?
Email marketing continues to be a valuable resource online and updated statistics helps email marketers prepare accordingly.
Every time I come across stats related to email marketing activity, I get excited to share them with the community. Recently I read a benchmark report from Emarsys, which looks at tens of thousands of email campaigns from over 1,000 companies. They?ve been updating this report over the past five years, so there?s comparison data included. Take a look at some of the findings below.
Bounce rate decreases
Over the course of the last few years, email marketers have been clearly paying more attention to improving bounce rates. As of 2009, the reported average bounce rate was 3.08%. In 2011, that number dropped to 1.84%. B2C companies have consistently reported lower bounce rates compared to B2B companies over this time (1.73% and 2.49%, respectively).
See the full article here
Simple email marketing tips & advice from top bloggers
Email marketing isn?t always easy. These days there?s so much junk email that it can be very hard to get your readers to open emails, let alone create a connection with them. Below are a few articles that should help improve your overall email marketing techniques to hopefully avoid people thinking your emails are a waste of time.
An insider?s guide to write powerful & simple emails
Many small businesses struggle with email marketing. Specifically, they often freak out at the idea of writing an email marketing campaign, let alone one email to their customers. I want to share how to get laser-focused on your target audience of your emails and offer several techniques to write simple and powerful emails that motivate your audience to act on your email marketing campaign.
The first thing I want to dispel is a myth that you?ve probably been told over and over again ? the myth is that you need a giant list in order to be successful. This simply isn?t true.
See the full article here
Email marketing focuses on engagement
Email marketing advice helps put actions in perspective.
I?ve been scouring the Internet for email marketing advice that focuses on the holistic approach. It?s nice to find a variety of opinions on an all-encompassing strategy for creating a database of email subscribers because it?s this information that will help publishers succeed in the digital age.
One recent?article compared email marketers to Olympic decathletes. As a fitting topic for this summer?s Olympic games, the author says, ?Top email marketers need to understand consumer behavior with social media, and how interplay between social and email can be used to create stronger email programs and enhanced social experiences.?
See the full article here
Email marketing tips for relationship-building
Are you having trouble gaining customers through email? Here are a few tips and advice from top bloggers on ways to communicate better through email.
To me, the hottest and sexiest social network right now is your inbox. Sure, I love Pinterest as much as the next guy (who likes Ryan Gosling?s abs), and I think it?s great that Zuck took the company public, made people angry for wearing a hoodie to Wall Street, and then got married. You already know I?m down with?Google+. But if you want to know the hottest opportunity in the world? It?s the inbox. Your inbox.
I?ve talked about this in speeches often, but I realize that I?ve not covered it on my site, so here you go.
See the full article here
Making waves with email marketing
Many people look at ?making waves? as a bad thing. It?s used to describe the creation of a disturbance or controversy. Today however, the only disturbance we?re discussing is the way to make favorable changes to your email marketing program.
Since the majority of email relationships begin at your website, there?s a need to not only have your landing pages designed with the intent of converting, it?s also important to have pages designed to facilitate the email relationship.
In this article I will discuss five areas of email marketing that represent a better user experience. These elements of email marketing are often website based, and will help email marketers develop better relationships with their audience members.
See the full article here
Using good journalism to build your email marketing list
With balanced content, audience members will be more apt to sign up for updates through email newsletters.
Google?s Penguin update, which rolled out in late April, brings a major question to mind: How balanced should my content creation be?
As we?ve seen, Google is hitting some websites hard, making them lose significant amounts of search traffic in the process. And in some of these instances, it doesn?t appear that black hat SEO is present. It does seem however, that Google is forcing content creators and digital publishers to go out and do a better job as a journalist.
For instance, one of the activities being penalized by Google is unnatural linking. This may include an excessive amount of affiliate links, exact match anchor text links, and cross-linking from your other sites.
These linking endeavors don?t really scream black hat SEO, but at the same time, they aren?t journalistically sound. Good journalists find multiple sources in their marketplace and they provide strong commentary on the breaking news that others share. They aren?t myopic.
See the full article here
The 14 best words that get people to open email
Last week I watched?The Science of Email Marketing hosted by an analytics nerd I admire, Dan Zarella.
In the webinar, he said bluntly, ?I would rather have an email?subscriber?than a Twitter follower.? We?d like to think it?s because email subscribers respond better to promotions, but according to Dan?s presentation, email and Twitter are almost equal in terms of lead generation. Still, our Twitter followers are often?fair weather?friends, aren?t they?
Dan reminded businesses that since 88% of people use their work email as their main email address, so email subject lines can?t be boring.??You?re competing with baby pictures and?invitations?to dinner,? he said.
Boring, jargon-y words like ?evaluation,? ?soon,? ?administration,? ?liked,? ?please,? ?minutes? and ?enjoyed? were the most common in top?unopened?emails.
See the full article here
15 email marketing tips from 3 top email gurus
Looking for some help with email marketing? Here are a few tips that may help you not only get your emails opened, but might also help capture your readers attention after opening.
The four words that will get your email opened:
?You are not alone??In
two and a half years of sending all kinds of emails to all kinds of lists, the simple phrase ?You are not alone? is the most-opened subject line I?ve ever seen ? by far.
Because Aweber counts each email that?s been opened, even if they?re from the same user, that single subject line has had an average open rate of?90%, and has surpassed the 100% mark?several times.
See the full article here
Using video in conjunction with email marketing
Email marketing is used by 78% of marketers. Similarly, email newsletters are used by 59% of marketers. These stats were reported by eMarketer, and they came from a survey from Chief Marketer, which was released in late April. Out of all the marketing efforts listed, email marketing and email newsletters were used the most.
The popularity of email marketing is clear. Marketers and consumers both use the medium. And as opportunities develop, email marketing takes on new potential.
One such opportunity is using email to share video content. Since videos are rarely, if ever, placed directly in emails, email marketers need to use another way to utilize the growing popularity behind video. As it currently stands, video is hovering on mass-market status.?eMarketer predicts spending on online video advertising alone will reach $3.12 billion in 2012. This is an increase of 54.7% since 2011.
See the full article here
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DALLAS (AP) ? Here's another reason to know your blood type ? it might be a clue to your risk of heart disease.
People who have blood types A, B, or AB have a slightly higher risk of heart disease compared to those with type O, the most common kind, according to research released Tuesday.
Those who know they are at higher risk may be more motivated to make changes to lower their chances of heart disease, said Dr. Lu Qi, senior author of the study from Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.
"We cannot change blood type but we can change lifestyle," said Qi, who led a study released last year that showed blood type may affect stroke risk.
The new study involved about 90,000 men and women in two observational health studies that cover more than 20 years. Combined, 4,070 people developed heart disease. The researchers considered age and other factors like diet, drinking, family history of heart attacks that could contribute to heart disease.
The increased risk for type A was 8 percent; type B, 11 percent; and type AB, 20 percent.
While the study did not examine how blood type may affect heart disease risk, it noted that research has shown some characteristics of different types may be a factor. For instance, some research suggests that blood types might affect cholesterol levels or the risk of developing blood clots.
The findings were published in the American Heart Association journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology.
A doctor not involved in the study cautioned that the increased risk for non-O blood types is modest, and that other risk factors like smoking have a bigger impact.
"Most of things that are this modest, most of the time they don't meaningfully change how you'd think about your risk overall," said Dr. Amit Khera, director of the Preventive Cardiology Program at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
"This shouldn't cause much alarm for most of the population," he added.
No matter what blood type, Harvard's Qi said everyone should pay attention to risk factors they can change, including smoking, weight, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and a sedentary lifestyle.
Type O is the most common blood type, followed by A, B and AB. About 45 percent of whites, 51 percent of blacks, 57 percent of Hispanics and 40 percent of Asians have blood type O, according to the American Red Cross.
Type A: 40 percent of whites, 26 percent of blacks, 31 percent of Hispanics and 28 percent of Asians.
Type B: 11 percent of whites, 19 percent of blacks, 10 percent of Hispanics and 25 percent of Asians.
Type AB: 4 percent of white and blacks, 2 percent of Hispanics and 7 percent of Asians.
