Dropbox has picked up Sold, effectively shuttering the service in its current iteration. For further proof of this, consult the selling app's about page, which has been reconjugated to read in the past tense. Sold isn't accepting new items from sellers at the moment, but the site is happily assuring ...
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/SjVEoZP3zdA/With Activision's latest release, the "modern warfare" sub-moniker has been dropped and the setting is now considerably different. In the single-player campaign mode, instead of helping protect America from foreign threats, the player now must work to liberate the country and act as a freedom-fighter. This makes for a very different setting -- one that could be a major risk for Activision.
Activision on Tuesday released Call of Duty: Ghosts for the Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii U and PC. The game will be released later this month for the upcoming PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Ghosts is the latest arrival in the popular first-person franchise, which has generated billions of dollars in sales and has been an annual hit for the company.
"The launch of Call of Duty has become a pop-cultural event shared by millions around the globe," said Eric Hirshberg, Activision's CEO. "Call of Duty: Ghosts delivers on this promise with an epic thrill ride which takes the franchise to new heights on both current and next-gen consoles."
Activision has built a successful franchise with Call of Duty, including annual releases from different development studios, and the result has included various subfranchises with both historical and modern-day settings. While the World War II and even Vietnam-era games have been popular, it has been the modern-warfare titles that have scored best with fans.
With this latest release, the "modern warfare" sub-moniker has been dropped and the setting is now considerably different. In the single-player campaign mode, instead of helping protect America from foreign threats, the player now must work to liberate the country and act as a freedom-fighter. This makes for a very different setting -- one that could be a major risk for Activision.
"I hoped they would be taking risks," independent video game analyst Billy Pidgeon told TechNewsWorld. "They have to take risks if they want to keep the story fresh."
Moreover, "what could work in their favor is that some people will see this as just the latest Call of Duty," said Paul Semel, editor at Electronic Gaming Monthly. "What might actually be an issue is that there could be some fatigue because of the modern-day thing.
"While this doesn't have the 'modern warfare' name, it still feels very much like one," Semel told TechNewsWorld. "Given that this is an annual thing, there could be some fatigue. There was a different vibe when they went back and forth with the settings."
For gamers seeking the multiplayer experience, however, Ghosts could deliver. It offers a new create-a-soldier system that allows for serious customization with nearly 20,000 unique combinations.
The game tracks players' exploits and also has enhanced the perk-and-reward system.
"These games are still very much about the new environments and new weapons in the multiplayer mode," said Pidgeon. "The biggest risks are to the multiplayer component."
At the same time, "we're still only scratching the surface on what could be done," he added. "If the changes are too radical for gamers, you only show others how to make those changes more gradually while you drive away your fan base."
Given the game's annual release cycle, is it possible it could run out of steam?
"Call of Duty is a huge franchise for Activision Blizzard," video game analyst George Chronis of DFC Dossier told TechNewsWorld. "The company prides itself on being able to develop and profitably manage a small number of AAA game properties over time."
Of course, "nothing is forever -- as the Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk IPs will testify," Chronis added. "Yet there are no signs that consumers have tired of the Call of Duty formula,"he said. "We see nothing in Ghosts that consumers will openly dislike. Freshening the formula usually is a positive strategy when it does not completely overturn expectations."
Meanwhile, Ghosts has arrived weeks before the launches of the new Microsoft Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4. While it will appear on those systems when they debut later this month, it is still very much a current-generation title for good reason.
"As Grand Theft Auto V has shown, a major franchise can have its best payday on established platforms regardless of the imminent arrival of next-generation systems," said Chronis. "Ghosts has the same potential."
Typically, major releases will appear for prior-console generations "a year or so into the run of their replacements," he added. "A great deal depends on how well old and new systems are selling."
Indeed, "there are 100 million consoles out there with the existing systems, and if you want a million-seller, you need to reach out to the most customers," Pidgeon concurred. "You have the greatest chance to reach those customers by targeting those systems. While it is good to have your high-profile title on a new system, it isn't much of a business opportunity as the installed base isn't there."
Illinois Rep. Greg Harris, D-Chicago, left, is congratulated by lawmakers as gay marriage legislation passes on the House floor during veto session Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2013, in Springfield Ill. Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, top center, looks on. Lawmakers voted 61-54 to send the measure back to the Senate to change the bill's effective date, just a technical change since the chamber already approved the measure in February. The measure will then head to Governor Quinn, who has pledged to sign it into the law. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman)
Illinois Rep. Greg Harris, D-Chicago, left, is congratulated by lawmakers as gay marriage legislation passes on the House floor during veto session Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2013, in Springfield Ill. Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, top center, looks on. Lawmakers voted 61-54 to send the measure back to the Senate to change the bill's effective date, just a technical change since the chamber already approved the measure in February. The measure will then head to Governor Quinn, who has pledged to sign it into the law. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman)
Illinois Rep. Greg Harris, D-Chicago, is congratulated by lawmakers as gay marriage legislation passes on the House floor during veto session Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2013 in Springfield Ill. Lawmakers voted 61-54 to send the measure back to the Senate to change the bill's effective date, just a technical change since the chamber already approved the measure in February. The measure will then head to Gov. Pat Quinn, who has pledged to sign it into the law. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman)
Illinois Rep. Greg Harris, D-Chicago, left, is congratulated by lawmakers as gay marriage legislation passes on the House floor during veto session Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2013, in Springfield Ill. Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, top center, looks on. Lawmakers voted 61-54 to send the measure back to the Senate to change the bill's effective date, just a technical change since the chamber already approved the measure in February. The measure will then head to Governor Quinn, who has pledged to sign it into the law. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman)
Supporters of same sex marriage legislation rally in the rotunda at the Illinois State Capitol during veto session Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2013 in Springfield Ill. Illinois lawmakers are expecting to consider gay marriage legislation during this week's veto session. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman)
Illinois Rep. Greg Harris, D-Chicago, speaks with lawmakers while on the House floor during veto session Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2013 in Springfield Ill. Illinois lawmakers are expecting to consider gay marriage legislation during this week's veto session. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman)
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — Historic votes Tuesday in the Illinois Legislature positioned that state to become the largest in the heartland to legalize gay marriage, following months of arduous lobbying efforts by both sides in President Barack Obama's home state.
Under the measure, which the state House approved 61-54 before sending it on to the Senate for technical changes, gay weddings could be held in Illinois starting in June. The bill heads next to Gov. Pat Quinn, who has pledged to sign it but didn't immediately indicate when.
Fourteen states plus Washington D.C., allow same-sex marriage. Most recently, New Jersey, Minnesota and Rhode Island have legalized it.
The road to the Illinois vote was long with stalled attempts earlier this year, something that frustrated activists in the state where Democrats lead the House, Senate and governor's office. Chicago Democratic Rep. Greg Harris, who is the sponsor of the bill, decided not to bring the bill for a vote in May because he said he simply didn't have the support.
Then the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to strike down a provision of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, something he said resonated with lawmakers. Backers also launched a furious campaign, hiring a lobbyist from the state's largest union, the former head of the Illinois Republican Party and field organizers spanning the state.
"To treat all our citizens equally in the eyes of the law we must change this," Harris said on the floor. "Families have been kept apart."
Debate lasted more than two hours, and the final roll call was met with hearty cheers and applause. Supporters' speeches echoed themes of equality and civil rights with mentions of Obama, Martin Luther King Jr. and Matthew Shepard, a gay college student whose 1998 death sparked numerous hate crime bills.
Polls show support for gay marriage has surged since 1996, when Gallup found that 27 percent of Americans backed it. Now Gallup finds the majority support giving gay and lesbian couples the right to marry.
"Today the Illinois House put our state on the right side of history," Quinn said in a statement. "Illinois is a place that embraces all people and today, we are an example for the nation."
However, opponents of the legislation — which included some of the most powerful religious leaders in the state — have said marriage should remain between a man and a woman. A group of Chicago areas pastors vowed to line up primary challengers against some Chicago area lawmakers who voted yes.
"This issue is not just about two adults and their emotional relational and financial commitment to another," said Rep. Tom Morrison, a Palatine Republican. "Redefining marriage has far reaching implications in our society."
Three Republicans joined those voting in favor, including former House Minority Leader Tom Cross of Oswego who had not revealed how he'd vote ahead of Tuesday. The representative stepped down from his leadership position earlier this year and is seeking statewide office as treasurer.
"For me, supporting marriage equality is not only the right decision, but also consistent with my belief in individual freedom, equality and limited government," Cross said in a statement. He declined to talk with reporters.
Other lawmakers also came forward for the first time Tuesday, including Democratic state Rep. Jehan Gordon-Booth of Peoria, who wrote a newspaper opinion piece expressing her support as a matter of equality. State Rep. Linda Chapa LaVia told House members on the floor that she'd support the measure too.
The bill first cleared the Senate on Valentine's Day with the support of 33 Democrats and a single Republican. Backers had expressed confidence that the bill would be approved by the House in mid-March. But it took the supporters months to secure enough yes votes to win the House's approval.
In September, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak even went to Chicago to encourage gay couples to hold their nuptials in his city if they were tired of waiting for Illinois lawmakers to act.
Although Illinois once appeared poised to become the first Midwestern state to approve gay marriage in the Legislature, Minnesota did it sooner and started holding its first same-sex weddings over the summer. Iowa allows gay marriages too because of a court ruling, not a legislative vote.
The issue caused internal conflict among Illinois Republicans as the party works to balance efforts to appeal more to younger voters, minorities and women with the more socially conservative positions of some party members.
For months, the leaders of several black mega-churches lobbied the districts of black House members with an aggressive robocall campaign against gay marriage, placing an uncomfortable spotlight on the mostly Democratic black caucus. Many remained undecided until the vote neared.
On Tuesday, the African American Clergy Coalition praised those who voted against the measure.
"We will always believe that marriage is between one man and one woman," said Bishop Larry Trotter of the coalition. "Yet we will still love the members of the LGBT community."
Illinois approved civil unions in 2011.
__
The bill is SB10
Online: http://www.ilga.gov
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-11-05-XGR-Gay%20Marriage-Illinois/id-ac71795f895145c292a0be85ca1e318e![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uv5p44_ANW189gje_Vs8RYqlUNjs1LjmUPU6Ffpo9NN0fH1LmlSX1RdBSShgNIqN68-n6HZahSmsxjBBKQQ33HCDS5J8kuXSqBRIOB2gg=s0-d){kind=small}
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 4-Nov-2013
ShareContact: William Raillant-Clark
w.raillant-clark@umontreal.ca
514-343-7593
University of Montreal
This news release is available in French.
Funding for SPIRou, a spectropolarimeter and a high-precision velocimeter optimized for both the detection of habitable Earth twins orbiting around nearby red dwarf stars and the study of the formation of Sun-like stars and their planets, was confirmed today by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) observatory. University of Montreal and France's Institut de Plantologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble lead the international consortium that manages the SPIRou project. "SPIRou is a spectropolarimeter it decomposes light from stars into elementary colors and vibration modes. It is also a high-precision velocimeter, capable of recording the tiny motions of a star that probe the presence of an orbiting planet," explained SPIRou premier investigator Ren Doyon, a University of Montreal professor and director of the Mont-Mgantic Observatory. "It's like a radar speed gun, but rather than detecting excess or unusual velocity of an observed star, it finds the regular and periodic variations of its velocity." The construction of SPIRou will start in 2014, for installation in Toulouse, France, in 2016 and the first light to result from the new tool will be perceived at the CFH telescope in 2017.
SPIRou will be able to hunt Earth-like planets orbiting in the habitable zones of nearby red-dwarf stars. The atmospheres of these Earth "twins" will then be scrutinized for the potential presence of water and other life-related molecules with instruments such as the James Webb Space Telescope that will be launched in 2018. "How do stars and planets come to life? How do magnetic fields impact their birth? Is our Earth one of the few planets in the Milky Way capable of hosting liquid water on its surface, or is it just one in a multitude? SPIRou, CFH Telescope's next-generation instrument, will investigate these astronomer-intriguing major questions over the coming decade," Doyon said. Doyon is in fact also the premier investigator of the FGS/NIRISS instrument that is being installed on the Webb telescope, an instrument dedicated to the search and the study of exoplanets and their atmosphere.
SPIRou: a major technical challenge.
To optimally observe celestial bodies as cool as red-dwarf stars (whose surface temperatures barely match that of standard halogen bulbs) SPIRou must work in the infrared, meaning that the heart of the instrument, the high-resolution spectrograph, must be installed within a cryogenic dewar and cooled down to the temperature of liquid nitrogen (-200C). This is to prevent the ambient thermal radiation from outshining the dim light from the red dwarf stars that SPIRou collects and deciphers. Moreover, the temperature within the cryogenic dewar will have to be exceptionally stable, to within a few thousandth of a degree, to enable SPIRou to detect the nanometric motions of stellar spectra that will reveal the existence of habitable Earth-like planets. Universit de Montral researchers have met this challenge, having designed SPIRou's camera and infrared detector. Their colleagues at Universit Laval contributed expertise in optical design.
SPIRou will be installed at the CFH Telescope, a sentinel of the starry skies atop the 4,200 m Maunea Kea extinct volcano on Hawaii's Big Island. Although the 3.6 m telescope boasts top-grade instrumentation and is located in one of the best astronomical sites in the world, competition is fierce and so the observatory has adopted an ambitious science policy in order to continuously innovate and remain in a leading position amongst the world's giant telescopes. SPIRou is one of the key instruments that should guarantee the future of the telescope over the next decade. In addition to the commitments that the CFHT has announced today, the SPIRou construction budget includes the support a large and international consortium of universities and research laboratories.
###
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 4-Nov-2013
ShareContact: William Raillant-Clark
w.raillant-clark@umontreal.ca
514-343-7593
University of Montreal
This news release is available in French.
Funding for SPIRou, a spectropolarimeter and a high-precision velocimeter optimized for both the detection of habitable Earth twins orbiting around nearby red dwarf stars and the study of the formation of Sun-like stars and their planets, was confirmed today by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) observatory. University of Montreal and France's Institut de Plantologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble lead the international consortium that manages the SPIRou project. "SPIRou is a spectropolarimeter it decomposes light from stars into elementary colors and vibration modes. It is also a high-precision velocimeter, capable of recording the tiny motions of a star that probe the presence of an orbiting planet," explained SPIRou premier investigator Ren Doyon, a University of Montreal professor and director of the Mont-Mgantic Observatory. "It's like a radar speed gun, but rather than detecting excess or unusual velocity of an observed star, it finds the regular and periodic variations of its velocity." The construction of SPIRou will start in 2014, for installation in Toulouse, France, in 2016 and the first light to result from the new tool will be perceived at the CFH telescope in 2017.
SPIRou will be able to hunt Earth-like planets orbiting in the habitable zones of nearby red-dwarf stars. The atmospheres of these Earth "twins" will then be scrutinized for the potential presence of water and other life-related molecules with instruments such as the James Webb Space Telescope that will be launched in 2018. "How do stars and planets come to life? How do magnetic fields impact their birth? Is our Earth one of the few planets in the Milky Way capable of hosting liquid water on its surface, or is it just one in a multitude? SPIRou, CFH Telescope's next-generation instrument, will investigate these astronomer-intriguing major questions over the coming decade," Doyon said. Doyon is in fact also the premier investigator of the FGS/NIRISS instrument that is being installed on the Webb telescope, an instrument dedicated to the search and the study of exoplanets and their atmosphere.
SPIRou: a major technical challenge.
To optimally observe celestial bodies as cool as red-dwarf stars (whose surface temperatures barely match that of standard halogen bulbs) SPIRou must work in the infrared, meaning that the heart of the instrument, the high-resolution spectrograph, must be installed within a cryogenic dewar and cooled down to the temperature of liquid nitrogen (-200C). This is to prevent the ambient thermal radiation from outshining the dim light from the red dwarf stars that SPIRou collects and deciphers. Moreover, the temperature within the cryogenic dewar will have to be exceptionally stable, to within a few thousandth of a degree, to enable SPIRou to detect the nanometric motions of stellar spectra that will reveal the existence of habitable Earth-like planets. Universit de Montral researchers have met this challenge, having designed SPIRou's camera and infrared detector. Their colleagues at Universit Laval contributed expertise in optical design.
SPIRou will be installed at the CFH Telescope, a sentinel of the starry skies atop the 4,200 m Maunea Kea extinct volcano on Hawaii's Big Island. Although the 3.6 m telescope boasts top-grade instrumentation and is located in one of the best astronomical sites in the world, competition is fierce and so the observatory has adopted an ambitious science policy in order to continuously innovate and remain in a leading position amongst the world's giant telescopes. SPIRou is one of the key instruments that should guarantee the future of the telescope over the next decade. In addition to the commitments that the CFHT has announced today, the SPIRou construction budget includes the support a large and international consortium of universities and research laboratories.
###
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 5-Nov-2013
ShareContact: Rob Gutro
robert.j.gutro@nasa.gov
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
NASA's Aqua satellite detected many bushfires in Wollemi National Park, located in the Australian state of New South Wales, outside of Sydney. Sydney is the state capital and the most populated city in Australia.
NASA's Aqua satellite passed over New South Wales, located in southeastern Australia on Nov. 4 at 03:40 UTC/Nov. 3 10:40 p.m. EST. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard Aqua satellite has infrared capabilities that can detect heat from the various wildfires. In the MODIS image the fire or hot spot appears red and smoke appears in light brown. The MODIS image showed that many fires and a large area of smoke from the combined fires were occurring in the Wollemi National Park, located northwest of Sydney. The MODIS image was generated at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
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Image: Jeff Schmaltz, NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team; Caption: Rob Gutro, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 5-Nov-2013
ShareContact: Rob Gutro
robert.j.gutro@nasa.gov
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
NASA's Aqua satellite detected many bushfires in Wollemi National Park, located in the Australian state of New South Wales, outside of Sydney. Sydney is the state capital and the most populated city in Australia.
NASA's Aqua satellite passed over New South Wales, located in southeastern Australia on Nov. 4 at 03:40 UTC/Nov. 3 10:40 p.m. EST. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard Aqua satellite has infrared capabilities that can detect heat from the various wildfires. In the MODIS image the fire or hot spot appears red and smoke appears in light brown. The MODIS image showed that many fires and a large area of smoke from the combined fires were occurring in the Wollemi National Park, located northwest of Sydney. The MODIS image was generated at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
###
Image: Jeff Schmaltz, NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team; Caption: Rob Gutro, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 5-Nov-2013
ShareContact: Katie Baker
katie.baker@sagepub.co.uk
020-732-48719
SAGE Publications
Muggers in London strike around two and half times more often during hours of darkness then in daylight, a new study shows.
The first study to look at the hourly pattern of street robbery in London found a 160% rise in the rate of muggings during the hours of darkness in the capital.
Lisa Tompson and Professor Kate Bowers, from the Department of Security and Crime, University College London, studied crime statistics over two years in order to calculate how much more at risk people were in darkness, even when they were in urban areas which often had street lighting.
Although researchers expected to find a rise in street robberies in darkness, the study is the first to calculate its precise extent.
The researchers examined 6,511 street robberies in Camden and Islington police areas during 2002 and 2003 for their analysis, published in the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency.
They also looked at 4,200 muggings in the Strathclyde Police region in Scotland, which includes Glasgow. There they found that darkness increased the rate of street robberies by 20%, a smaller figure than in London, which the researchers suggest might be because it is often too cold at night for robbers and potential victims to be outside.
"Darkness was significantly associated with an increase in the expected number of street robberies," the researchers say in their paper. "This result held over both study areas that have differing levels of darkness throughout the year.
"It is also interesting to note that the effects of darkness were more pronounced in London than in Glasgow. One reason for this might be variation in the comfort of the external conditions: the temperatures can become very cold at times in Glasgow and that it is more likely to rain in this area. Perhaps on occasion, more extreme conditions limit the number of suitable targets and offenders on the street."
The researchers also found that London street robberies rose by around 1% for each one degree Celsius the temperature rose, independently of how much daylight there was.
The research has been flagged up by the Campaign for Social Science as significant for helping understand crime patterns.
###
For more information, please contact:
Tony Trueman
Press Officer, Campaign for Social Science/ Academy of Social Science
07964 023392
t.trueman@acss.org.uk
twitter: @CfSocialScience
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/CfSocialScience
web: http://www.campaignforsocialscience.org.uk
Notes:
1. An online version of this article can be found at:
http://jrc.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/12/20/0022427812469114
(log-in needed for full paper)
2. Part of the Campaign for Social Science's role is to promote important social science research. It has no direct role as funder or partner in the current research. The Campaign is supported by 78 institutions, including universities, learned societies, publishers and a charitable trust. It receives no state funding. http://www.campaignforsocialscience.org.uk
3. Founded in 1826, UCL was the first English university established after Oxford and Cambridge, the first to admit students regardless of race, class, religion or gender and the first to provide systematic teaching of law, architecture and medicine. We are among the world's top universities, as reflected by our performance in a range of international rankings and tables. According to the Thomson Scientific Citation Index, UCL is the second most highly cited European university and the 15th most highly cited in the world. UCL has nearly 27,000 students from 150 countries and more than 9,000 employees, of whom one third are from outside the UK. The university is based in Bloomsbury in the heart of London, but also has two international campuses UCL Australia and UCL Qatar. Our annual income is more than 800 million.
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 5-Nov-2013
ShareContact: Katie Baker
katie.baker@sagepub.co.uk
020-732-48719
SAGE Publications
Muggers in London strike around two and half times more often during hours of darkness then in daylight, a new study shows.
The first study to look at the hourly pattern of street robbery in London found a 160% rise in the rate of muggings during the hours of darkness in the capital.
Lisa Tompson and Professor Kate Bowers, from the Department of Security and Crime, University College London, studied crime statistics over two years in order to calculate how much more at risk people were in darkness, even when they were in urban areas which often had street lighting.
Although researchers expected to find a rise in street robberies in darkness, the study is the first to calculate its precise extent.
The researchers examined 6,511 street robberies in Camden and Islington police areas during 2002 and 2003 for their analysis, published in the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency.
They also looked at 4,200 muggings in the Strathclyde Police region in Scotland, which includes Glasgow. There they found that darkness increased the rate of street robberies by 20%, a smaller figure than in London, which the researchers suggest might be because it is often too cold at night for robbers and potential victims to be outside.
"Darkness was significantly associated with an increase in the expected number of street robberies," the researchers say in their paper. "This result held over both study areas that have differing levels of darkness throughout the year.
"It is also interesting to note that the effects of darkness were more pronounced in London than in Glasgow. One reason for this might be variation in the comfort of the external conditions: the temperatures can become very cold at times in Glasgow and that it is more likely to rain in this area. Perhaps on occasion, more extreme conditions limit the number of suitable targets and offenders on the street."
The researchers also found that London street robberies rose by around 1% for each one degree Celsius the temperature rose, independently of how much daylight there was.
The research has been flagged up by the Campaign for Social Science as significant for helping understand crime patterns.
###
For more information, please contact:
Tony Trueman
Press Officer, Campaign for Social Science/ Academy of Social Science
07964 023392
t.trueman@acss.org.uk
twitter: @CfSocialScience
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/CfSocialScience
web: http://www.campaignforsocialscience.org.uk
Notes:
1. An online version of this article can be found at:
http://jrc.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/12/20/0022427812469114
(log-in needed for full paper)
2. Part of the Campaign for Social Science's role is to promote important social science research. It has no direct role as funder or partner in the current research. The Campaign is supported by 78 institutions, including universities, learned societies, publishers and a charitable trust. It receives no state funding. http://www.campaignforsocialscience.org.uk
3. Founded in 1826, UCL was the first English university established after Oxford and Cambridge, the first to admit students regardless of race, class, religion or gender and the first to provide systematic teaching of law, architecture and medicine. We are among the world's top universities, as reflected by our performance in a range of international rankings and tables. According to the Thomson Scientific Citation Index, UCL is the second most highly cited European university and the 15th most highly cited in the world. UCL has nearly 27,000 students from 150 countries and more than 9,000 employees, of whom one third are from outside the UK. The university is based in Bloomsbury in the heart of London, but also has two international campuses UCL Australia and UCL Qatar. Our annual income is more than 800 million.
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
In San Francisco, Jenny Haeg is known as the startup whisperer for commercial real estate. Whether you are a two person startup, or a multi-billion collar company, Haeg is the real estate agent most tech companies call in this city to find space that’s affordable (which is a big challenge these days). She’s been the broker behind a who’s who of new offices in tech world, including Square, Airbnb, Uber, Dropbox, Lookout, and Spotify. One challenge she’s witnessed in her dealings is that there isn’t a Houzz-like platform where startups and office managers can see pictures of other offices, and access the information of the contractors, architects and designers who created these spaces.
So Haeg decided to create this for her clients. Called Custom Spaces, It’s part inspiration board, part marketplace, she explains. It features pictures of the offices of Twitter, Airbnb, GitHub, Google, Stripe and Yammer, among others. And anyone interested in finding the vendors who created these spaces can easily access this information, and contact the vendors through the site.
For now, Haeg, who makes commissions off the sales/leases she brokers, explains that the site is completely free for anyone to use, and she’ll continue adding images and vendor listings gradually. While many of the companies listed have huge, spacious (and expensive) spaces, Haeg is also adding designs for the small, ten-person startup. She says designs can cost anywhere from $1,000 to millions of dollars but in the current world, there wasn’t a centralized place to find inspiration and designers that can fit any budget and size.
Maja Henderson, Square’s Global Facilities Manager explains, “The first time I needed to hire an architect I looked on Yelp…I had no idea how to find talented, local firms. Custom Spaces bridges the crucial gap between first-time clients and talented vendors making it simple to connect with the people who can turn your ideas into reality. This site is an equally invaluable tool for people seeking inspiration and information, as well as experienced firms looking to increase their client pool.”
Haeg says clients are already using the site, and finding vendors through Custom Spaces.
As for what she is seeing when it comes to trends in technology startups, she observes that many offices are creating open environments where there are several different workplace options. Most startups, big and small, are creating different locations within the office besides the desk or meeting room where people can work.
While the Mid-Market area is becoming to go-to Mecca for companies (Twitter, Square, Zendesk etc), startups are also thinking outside the box when it comes to finding real estate. Haeg recently worked with Instacart, who wanted a house as their new office. Homes converted into commercial spaces aren’t easy to find, she explained, so she approached a seller who has listed a home in South Park for sale, and convinced the seller to rent the house instead.
And the competition for space is real, she adds. There are a lot of startups looking for the 1,000-5,000 square-foot affordable space, and there are a handful of companies competing for the few 50,000 square-feet commercial spaces available in the city.
