A.I algorithms in biologyThe most significant advancement in machine learning is that of “deep learning,” a subcategory of machine learning that attempts to mimic the way the human brain learns new concepts. A simple definition of deep learning is when a system or algorithm is given a large dataset, and told to look for patterns, without being programmed how to differentiate between the patterns. Through advances in AI and machine learning, computers are finally able to understand things at a much deeper level than humans ever could. So how can we apply engineering principles for better diagnostics, even engineer new biological circuits for example Learn more..
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what is a electric starter motoR?Why are we even calling it an “electric” starter motor? The answer to that is because, long time ago cars did not have electric starters you had to actually put a crank into front of the engine and you physically turn that crank and had to manually crank the car (which was attached to the crank shaft of the car which in turn produced enough momentum to start the car). The first electric starter motor was invented by GM engineers Clyde Coleman and Charles Kattering. The self-starting motor was first installed in a Cadillac ( Model 30 ) on February 17, 1911. Legend has it that the electric starter emerged from Charles "Boss" Kettering's workshop after a friend of his died as the result of a broken arm he incurred while crank starting his car. Charles Kettering's electric starter basically got rid of the crank and became standard equipment first in Cadillacs in 1912. Hand crank remained a feature of many cars into the 1930s, well after Cadillac had introduced Kettering's electric "self-starter" on the 1911 model. Some French cars still were able to be hand crank started through the 1960s. Kettering found the company Delco and headed R&D at General Motors from 1920 to 1947 Learn more..
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what is 'working memory' & can we improve it?We all have trouble with working memory sometimes (remembering information and doing things with it over a short amount of time). Working memory is said to be the most important aspect of our cognitive ability that we can train. Let's start by looking at the traditional view laid out by Baddeley and Hitch (1971) . So, they looked at memory as a whole by separating it into three different categories: long-term memory, short-term memory and working memory. Long term memory is storing your biographical information, old friends from pre-k. Short-term is storing the name of a character of a book you are reading or what you had for dinner yesterday. Working memory (traditionally) was thought to be like the RAM (Random-Access-Memory) in a computer which is the shortest term memory. It was thought to be the memory you use to hold numbers (carry over) when you are performing multiplication and addition its the memory you use to repeat a phone number to remember it when you want to go and grab a pen and to write it down Learn more..
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one good thing from 2020 ::We know for proteins, looks are everything a protein’s function is determined by its 3D shape. Early attempts to use computers to predict protein structures in the 1980s and 1990s performed poorly. Twenty-five years ago, scientists created an international competition to compare various methods of predicting protein structure — something of a "protein olympics," known as CASP, which stands for Critical Assessment of Protein Structure Prediction. An AI network developed by Google (offshoot of DeepMind) made a huge leap in solving one of biology’s greatest challenges, finding a protein’s 3D shape from its amino-acid sequence. The program AlphaFold, outperformed in a biennial protein structure prediction challenge CASP (Acronim for Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction. The results were announced one month ago. Scientists in some sense feel the problem is solved. The ability to accurately predict these protein structures from their respective amino acid sequence would accelerate efforts to understand the building blocks of cells and is a huge boon to biology and medicine. AlphaFold has already helped find the structure of a protein that has vexed labs for a decade. Scientists think AlphaFold might not obviate the need for existing laborious and expensive methods (like X-ray crystallography and, in recent years, cryo-electron microscopy) yet, but AI will make it possible to study living things in new ways Learn more..
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blast from the past: ( August 16th 1989 )Space storms crash a stock market's computers. All trading is halted on the Toronto Stock Exchange as three disc drives fail and computers crash. Scientists trace the failure to microchip interference from a geomagnetic storm caused by a massive solar flare, even larger than the one that took down Quebec's power grid months earlier.
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problem with headlinesThere’s often a disconnect between news headlines and the scientific research they cover. While headlines are designed to catch attention, many studies produce meaningful results when they focus on a narrow, specific question. Unfortunately, looking into studies is a lot easier said than done. IF you try reading studies to see how they came to their results and most are published in scientific journals that require us to pay money to see the whole contents. Most allow us to see the abstract, but not the actual contents of how the study was conducted. So how can you figure out what’s a genuine health concern and what’s less conclusive? Which leads us to the next question.. " how to choose our News?" in the first place Learn more..
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word of the day : endamicAn 'endemic' is a disease outbreak that is consistently present but limited to a particular region. This makes the disease spread and rates predictable. Malaria, for example, is considered an endemic in certain countries and regions. 'Sporadic' refers to a disease that occurs infrequently and irregularly. Endemic refers to the constant presence and/or usual prevalence of a disease or infectious agent in a population within a geographic area. Hyperendemic refers to persistent, high levels of disease occurrence. For instance pandemic like COVID 19 is expected to become a recurring part of our lives like its four cousins that cause common colds. It would be less of a problem, not because it had changed but because it is no longer novel and people are no longer immunologically vulnerable learn more..
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treat "failure" like a scientist: another "data point" ::How does a scientist treat failure? And what can we learn from their approach? When a scientist runs an experiment, there are all sorts of results. Some are positive and some are negetive. Each result is a piece of data that can ultimately lead to an answer and that’s exactly how a scientist treats failure: as another data point ( in statistics - a data point or observation is a set of one or more measurements on a single member of a population ). This is much different than how society often talks about failure. For most of us kids, failure feels like an indication of who we are as a person. In popular culture failing a quiz or a test means we are not smart enough. Failing to make a club or team means we are not talented or hardworking. Failing to get a grade often means we don’t have what it takes. Failing in a art class often means we are not creative. But for a scientist a negative result is not an indication that they are a bad scientist. In fact, it’s quite the opposite, proving a hypothesis wrong is just as useful as proving it right because you learned something along the way Learn more..
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It Takes Ganas !While working on Tabular Integration realized that the method was made famous by an awesome teacher, anyone who took a Calculus class from Mr. Jaime Escalante would name him as that teacher who taught them the real meaning of the word 'GANAS!". In English: Its Desire, urge ( from the Spanish verb ganar, to win or gain). The term was popularized among English speakers by the LA mathematics teacher Jaime Escalante. His high expectations of his LA barrio students changed the paths of their lives Learn more..
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Lets keep it real - calculus in action ::We see Math in real world first - when we go out to eat with our friends and try to figure out our portion of the bill and add a tip. Once you get into calculus though, it seems like the practicality of math declines but this is not true. There are many examples of calculus in real life. The relationships between limits, derivatives, integrals and series are everywhere. For example 'limits' are all about trends. What we really do in limits for a given model, is we graphically or algebraically analyze the trend to determine the value (if any) the function approaches. For instance, we can talk about end behavior, what number the model is approaching at large positive or negative values. We can also talk about what number the model approaches even if it isn’t defined Learn more..
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"easier" method to solve quadratic equations ::Quadratic equations are polynomials, meaning strings of math terms. An expression like “x + 4” is a polynomial. They can have one or many variables in any combination, and the magnitude of them is decided by what power the variables are taken to. So x + 4 is an expression describing a straight line, but (x + 4)² is a curve. Since a line crosses just once through any particular latitude or longitude, its solution is just one value. If you have x², that means two root values, in a shape like a circle or arc that makes two crossings. Dr. Loh’s method, which he also shared in detail on his website, uses the idea of the two roots of every quadratic equation to make a simpler way to derive those roots. He realized he could describe the two roots of a quadratic equation this way: Combined, they average out to a certain value, then there’s a value z that shows any additional unknown value. Instead of searching for two separate, different values, we’re searching for two identical values to begin with. This simplifies the arithmetic part of multiplying the formula out Learn more..
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real world use of conic sections ::We all ask ourselves after a math class if its going to be used in real life or have any impact on us as humans. Here is an example of one such question. We all know what a conic section is (it is the intersection of a "plane" and a "double right circular cone"). By changing the angle and location of intersection we can produce a circle, ellipse, parabola or hyperbola. Now, lets look at some real world applications of parabolas, hyperbolas, ellipses, and circles. lets looks at some real world applications Learn more..
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heads-up !Students like us across the globe have opportunities this week to hear from astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The Earth-to-space calls air live on NASA Television, as well as the NASA app, and the agency’s website, where they are also available on-demand. For example today at 10:25 a.m. - ISS Expedition 65 educational event with pre-recorded questions from students with the WEX Foundation in San Antonio, Texas and NASA astronaut Megan McArthur and astronaut Thomas Pesquet of ESA.
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How to get good at estimating?The so-called “back of the envelope calculations ”, were an essential tool for scientists in the pre-computer era, they provided the means to keep track of exponents when using a slide rule. Calculations requires mathematical skills, logic, critical thinking, life experiences, and the ability to break down complex problems into smaller discrete, soluble parts. At some point in the solution process, the solver is expected to 'estimate' a value which is critical to obtaining an answer.The methodology, involved in making up a (Fermi) Question as well as calculating an answer. The Fermi Questions event in the Science Olympiad tests a team’s ability to estimate a solution to a problem by interpreting basic information, formulating a set of mathematical operations to provide an answer, and using mathematics to provide the answer to the question. Fundamental to the solution of these problems is a skill called critical thinking - essentially a method of attacking such problems in an orderly, logical way Learn more..
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Charles Darwin would be thrilled to read this because, in late October in 1832, he walked onto the deck of the HMS Beagle and realized that the ship had been boarded by thousands of tiny red spiders. The ship was 60 miles offshore, so the spiders probably flew over from the Argentinian mainland. “October 31st A beautiful day: but the wind has been steadily against us.— In the evening all the ropes were coated & fringed with Gossamer web. I caught some of the Aeronaut spiders which must have come at least 60 miles. How inexplicable is the cause which induces these small insects, as it now appears in both hemispheres, to undertake their aerial excursions.” he wrote in his diary. Spiders have no wings, but they can take to the air nonetheless. They’ll climb to an exposed point, raise their abdomens to the sky, extrude strands of silk, and float away, this behavior is called ballooning. It was believed that ballooning works because the silk catches on the wind, dragging the spider with it. Erica Morley and Daniel Robert have an explanation. The duo, who work at the University of Bristol, has shown that spiders can sense the Earth’s electric field, and use it to launch themselves into the air. Ballooning spiders operate within this planetary electric field. When their silk leaves their bodies, it typically picks up a negative charge. This repels the similar negative charges on the surfaces on which the spiders sit, creating enough force to lift them into the air. his idea—flight by electrostatic repulsion was first proposed in the early 1800s, around the time of Darwin’s voyage. Peter Gorham, a physicist, resurrected the idea in 2013, and showed that it was mathematically plausible. And now, Morley and Robert have tested it with actual spiders Learn more..
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how quantum computers can be used iN real world ::Right now it takes pharmaceutical companies a decade and billions of dollars to discover a new drug and bring it to market. Quantum computing can dramatically cut costs and time. In 1965, a relatively young Gordon Moore penned his now legendary paper with the scholarly title.. " Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits " That paper, by the future Intel co-founder, is widely celebrated as the original inspiration for Moore's Law, which states roughly that the number of transistors that can be installed on an integrated circuit doubles every two years. His breakthrough observation became a sort of guiding principle for the still very young computer industry. During the next 30 years, it was often difficult to tell if chip and computer manufacturers were proving Moore's theory, or following it like some kind of law.Moore's Law transformed computing through decreased costs, but Eroom’s Law ( “Moore” spelled backwards, is the opposite: Much of the costs in bio - drugs etc) have been exponentially increasing in cost. Eroom’s Law in a graph shows the skyrocketing Pharma R&D costs despite Quantum Leaps in technology Learn more..
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photonic quanT-computer achieves qUANT-supremacy ::In Dec 2020 Jiuzhang (a Photonic quantum computer named after Chinese sacred text) achieved quantum supremacy. (Photonic quantum computer include light sources, hundreds of beam splitters, dozens of mirrors and 100 photon detectors). Employing a process called boson sampling, Jiuzhang generates a distribution of numbers that is exceedingly difficult for a classical computer to replicate. Pan Jian-Wei, professor, University of Science and Technology of China, explains how the Jiuzhang quantum computer was used. Quantum supremacy, was met only once before, in 2019 by Google’s quantum computer (Sycamore) which is not based on photonics but is based on superconducting materials. Sycamore was able to compute something that would have taken a normal computer 10,000 years. In comparison, Jiuzhang has produced results in minutes which would have taken the world’s fastest supercomputer nearly 2.5 billion years to carry out the same calculation Learn more..
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why provE Quantum supremacy?
We all know that google (Sycamore took only 200 seconds to perform a calculation that researchers estimated would have taken a state-of-the-art supercomputer 10,000 years to compute) Alibaba & IBM spar over timeline for ‘quantum supremacy’. This phrase, coined by Physicist John Preskill in 2012, refers to the first use of a quantum computer to make a calculation much faster than we know how to do it with even the fastest supercomputers available. The calculation doesn’t need to be useful: much like the Wright Flyer in 1903, or Enrico Fermi’s nuclear chain reaction in 1942, it only needs to prove a point. Most of the time when people talk about quantum computing, classical computing is dismissed, like something that is past its prime. But that is not the case, this is an ongoing competition Learn more..
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understanding the ageing process ::Ever since the discovery of telomerase 35 years ago (which lead to a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine - 2009) the scientific community has been excited by the results of subsequent studies which showed that the enzyme could not only be a key to reversing aging but provide a possible treatment of diseases like cancer, where malignant cells continue to divide indefinitely. Research for treatment of telomere diseases lead to a major breakthrough in reversing aging. Our chromosomes have tiny caps on the ends, which are called telomeres, just like plastic tips on the end of our shoe-laces. These protective sequences of DNA prevent the fraying of the DNA code of the genome, but the problem is that they get a little shorter every time the cell divides, until the cell can no longer divide and dies. New technology in stem cell biology is to take skin cells from patients with genetic blood disorders and return them to an embryonic-like state, wherein they regain the ability to form any type of cell in the body. Scientists then study this process of going back to an embryonic-like state, and then see how the cells develop into different tissues (blood cells, muscle, nerves) will lead to a better understanding of what is going wrong in cells carrying these disease-causing mutations Lear more..
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single neuron (Human dendrites) "can" compute XOR (exclusive or) logical operation ::In the 1940s and ’50s, a picture began to dominate neuroscience: that of the “dumb” neuron, a simple integrator, a point in a network that merely summed up its inputs. around the same time, researchers realized that a single neuron could also function as a logic gate, similar to those in digital circuits. There is a connective in logic known as the "exclusive or," or exclusive dis-junction. It yields true if exactly one (but not both) of two conditions is true. Traditionally, the XOR logic operation has been thought to require a network solution. (Its output is only 1, when one of its input is 1). In their 1969 book Perceptrons - computer scientists Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert offered a proof that single-layer artificial networks could not perform XOR. That conclusion was so devastating that many computer scientists blamed it for the doldrums that neural network research fell into until the 1980s. Over the past few decades research has shifted to individual neurons, they seem to handle much more computational responsibility than what we thought it could. But, now it seems individual dendrite compartments can also perform a particularly complicated operation XOR (Exclusive OR). It was previously thought it was unsolvable by a single individual neuron. It may also prompt some computer scientists to reappraise strategies for artificial neural networks, which have traditionally been built based on a view of neurons as simple, unintelligent switches. The latest evidence comes from a new type of electrical signal from upper layers of the human cortex. Computational model studies show tiny compartments in the dendrite arms of cortical neuron can each perform complicated operations in mathematical logic. Intrigued? You can learn more about basic logic gates & their implications in computer science here..
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road to code :: Java july is on!There is no denying that computerscience is essential to our modern day lives whatever your future interests are Technology makes our lives easier and every where you turn you are surrounded by it, from our smart TV to our phone to smart home appliances. We as kids need to understand the importance of tech, and I think it’s helpful for us to understand how computer programs work, what coding is and how it works because learning to use code is really cool and it helps us develop important thinking and learning skills that have applications far beyond the reach of our keyboard (coding is the act of writing instructions for a computer to make it perform a task). Coding may also be called programming (a finished set of computer instructions is called a program) that said.. Java programming ‘Java July’ in on Learn more..
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solving a half-a-century old math problem in a week ::It took Dr. Lisa Piccirillo less than a week to answer a long-standing question about a strange knot discovered over half a century ago by the legendary John Conway..A mathematical knot is really a tangled shape that appears to be made from a "single, unbroken line". Knot theory is a subcategory of topology (the study of object's immutable geometric properties) and it examines how these shapes are possible. This theory of mathematics has real world applications in understanding things like the DNA double-helix and the shape of the universe. In February of last year UT Graduate student Lisa Piccirillo dusted off some long-known but little-utilized mathematical tools to answer a decades-old question about knots. A particular knot named after the legendary mathematician John Conway had long evaded mathematical classification in terms of a higher-dimensional property known as “sliceness.” But by developing a version of the knot that yielded to traditional knot analysis, Piccirillo finally determined that the Conway knot is not “slice.” The Conway Knot is one of the more notorious problems in knot theory, with a line that overlaps in 11 different places. In knot theory, some knots are "slices," which means they could be made by slicing a four-dimensional knotted sphere, and it was unclear whether the Conway Knot belonged in this category Learn more..
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William Hamilton's Quaternions ::William Rowan Hamilton was born in Dublin in 1805. He became interested in mathematics when he lost a competition against an American child, Zerah Colburn, who was incredibly quick at computing numbers. While Hamilton was interested in many subjects, this polymath pursued his interest in math and chose to study classics and science in Trinity College Dublin, where he later became a professor of astronomy. Hamilton was fascinated by the link between geometry and complex numbers. Complex numbers are numbers that are made up of a real number (numbers we’re used to dealing with in everyday life to count or measure, like a temperature of -4 degrees) and an imaginary number (which can be written as a real number multiplied by an “imaginary” part, symbolized by “i”) Learn more..
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what is an algorithm? examples of sorting algos ::Algorithm is just a list of instructions, most often used in solving problems or performing tasks. Sorting is the most heavily studied concept in Computer Science. Idea is to arrange the items of a list in a specific order. Though every major programming language has built-in sorting libraries, it comes in handy if you know how they work. Sorting is ordering a list of objects. In computer science, a sorting algorithm is an algorithm that puts elements of a list in a certain order. We can distinguish two types of sorting. If the number of objects is small enough to fits into the main memory, sorting is called internal sorting. If the number of objects is so large that some of them reside on external storage during the sort, it is called external sorting. The following are internal sorting algorithms: Bucket sort, Bubble sort, Insertion sort, Selection sort, Heapsort, Mergesort Learn more..
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DNA data storage is really music to our ears ::Hundreds of years from now, today’s DVDs, web servers, and flash drives will all be long dead. But one copy of a music video for alternative rock band OK Go’s song "This Too Shall Pass" could still be playing. The Rube Goldberg-inspired video is part of a 202-megabyte cache of data that University of Washington say they’ve written to DNA storage, the largest known DNA storage trove created. The world will generate 160 zettabytes of data in 2025. That’s more bytes than there are stars in the observable universe. Conventional storage media like flash-drives and hard-drives do not have the longevity, data density, or cost efficiency to meet the global demand. In order to write data to DNA, researchers translate the binary code of a file into the nucleotide molecules that form DNA’s building blocks, assigning different base pairs to represent ones and zeroes. The idea has been in the proof of concept stage for years, and so far, the information stored has been modest Learn more..
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smallest memory device created ::Last November an international team of scientist from the US, the UK & Taiwan developed the world’s smallest memristor (Memristors are electrical resistors with memory. They are advanced electronic devices that regulate current based on the history of the voltages applied to them. They can store and process data simultaneously, which makes them a lot more efficient than traditional systems). Their results appear in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. This version of the memristor promises capacity of about 25 terabits per square centimeter. That is 100 times higher memory density per layer compared with commercially available flash memory devices. Couple of years back in 2018 the thinnest memory storage device was created, dubbed ‘atomristor,’ with a single atomic layer of thickness.In the new work, the researchers reduced the size even further, shrinking the cross section area down to just a single square nanometer learn more about memristos here..
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Microsoft issues an update to fix a security flaw ::Microsoft is urging Windows users to immediately install an update after security researchers found a serious vulnerability in the operating system. The security flaw, known as PrintNightmare, affects the Windows Print Spooler service. Researchers accidentally published a how-to guide for exploiting it. Windows 10 is not the only version affected - Windows 7, which Microsoft has ended support for last year, is also subject to the vulnerability. The situation is confusing because it involves two different flaws, one of which has been patched and the other still waiting to be patched. Known as CVE-2021-1675, the first flaw was resolved through Microsoft's June 2021 security updates. Users and administrators who haven't yet applied the June updates are advised to do so to fix this vulnerability. Dubbed CVE-2021-34527, the second flaw is similar to the first in that it points to a security hole in the Windows Print spooler service. But this one, nicknamed PrintNightmare, involves a problem in RpcAddPrinterDriverEx(), a function that lets users install or update a printer driver on the print server. CVE-2021-34527 is the flaw that could allow an attacker to run code on a compromised PC to then install programs, modify data and create new accounts. If there's any good news - is that the current security update is cumulative, meaning it contains previous fixes for previous security issues too LEARN MORE..
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Program a living cell ::Bio-engineers couple of years back created a programming language for bacteria. It allows anyone to rapidly design complex, DNA-encoded circuits that add new functions to living cells. For example: design bacterial cells that can produce a cancer drug when they detect a tumor or create yeast cells that can halt their own fermentation process if too many toxic byproducts build up. The complexity of cells and their ability to process information has a lot in common with computers. Researchers are applying concepts of computer programming to biological research, creating a rigorous framework for triggering actions within a cell. Though the complexity of cells and their ability to process information has a lot in common with computers. Cells, unlike computers are not created by humans. So, better understanding of how they operate and how to program them will truly be a moonshot effort Learn more..
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what is blockchain technology ?Blockchain is expected to be so influential over the coming years that some technologists foresee it ushering in a new type of Internet, one that stores and authenticates information about every asset, device and individual, opening the door to a range of new technological capabilities. Besides simply being the backbone of cryptocurrency exchanges, the most powerful uses of blockchain technology are yet to emerge. It's envisioned by many to become a decentralized, real-time global distributed digital ledger of things for everything from tracking food supplies to managing identities Learn more..
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discovery of RNA interference: RNAiIn 1986 few researchers attempted to create an extremely dark purple petunia. They knew which gene controlled purple pigment in the flower, and were aware that petunias are very amenable to DNA transfection. The researchers logically deduced that additional copies of the purple gene should make petunias that were shades darker. However, to the investigator's surprise after they added an extra version of the purple gene to a petunia, the plant did not produce dark purple flowers, instead it had white flowers devoid of pigment ( the very gene they wanted to overexpress got turned off. This effect was later named "cosuppression") After they verified that the gene they had placed into petunias was correct, these scientists along with a horde of molecular biologists spent the next several years trying to figure out what went wrong. During this time, they had little idea they were doing work that would prove to be very significant. It not only won Nobel Prizes for two scientists (in 2006) , but it also led to a discovery that would spark a molecular revolution Learn more..
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dr. Youyou's Artemisinin discovery (191'st Trial) ::In 1967, a drug discovery project was set up in China, named Project 523, conducted by Prof. Youyou Tu at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in Beijing. Her team had screened over 2000 traditional Chinese recipes and made 380 herbal extracts which were tested on malaria-infected mice. A herbal extract used for over 1,600 years in traditional Chinese therapy for “intermittent fever” the hallmark symptom of malaria, was found effective. The extract from qinghao or huanghuahao (Artemisia annua L.), named qinghaosu, was isolated by low temperature ethyl ether extraction and chemically characterized in 1971. The active antimalarial moieties and the physicochemical properties were determined in vitro and in vivo in both animal models and in human. The drug was distributed to the rest of the world in 1979. In recent news a method known as 'chemoprophylaxis & vaccination' (using antimicrobial agents & vaccination) recently gave immunity against two very different strains of the mosquito-borne parasite. Couple of new vaccine study (R21 & RTS,S) which use the malaria protein called circumsporozoite protein trigger immune responses which can be used to shield against five different types of malaria circulating around the world Learn more..
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pseudoscience vs testable hypotheses of science ::In his book 'The Demon-Haunted World" astrophysicist Carl Sagan illustrates clearly the many and varied personal and societal benefits gained from applying the methods of science to every corner of our thinking. The methods are the important part, the findings are just icing on the cake. It covers the dangers of unchecked ideologies and the requirement for both objectivity and wonder. Almost no topic is left unexamined. In an age of ceaseless sensationalism, pseudoscience, and a relentless race for shortcuts, quick answers, and silver bullets, knowing "what to think" seems increasingly challenging. People have come up with tools like The Baloney Detection Kit and create wonderful animations to teach us kids about critical thinking, but the art of thinking critically is a habit that requires careful and consistent cultivation. In his remarkable essay titled “The Burden of Skepticism,” originally published in the Fall 1987 issue of Skeptical Inquirer, Carl Sagan (always the articulate and passionate explainer) has captured the duality and osmotic balance of critical thinking beautifully the Carl Sagan way Learn more..
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what is the human genome project really ::In the 1970s The Sanger sequencing method enabled scientists to read the genetic code for the first time. It is based on the natural process of DNA replication. DNA sequencing is the process of determining the order of bases in a length of DNA. Its development has helped to dramatically advance our understanding of genetics. Its the 20th anniversary of the publication of the draft of the human genome sequence. A genome is an organism’s complete set of DNA, including all of its genes. Each genome contains all of the information needed to build and maintain that organism. In humans, a copy of the entire genome more than 3 billion DNA base pairs is contained in all cells that have a nucleus. The Human Genome Project (HGP) was the international, collaborative research program whose goal was the complete mapping and understanding of all the genes of human beings Learn more..
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Sequencing LilBub's Magical Genome ::Daniel Ibrahim vividly remembers where he was the first time he came across this bug-eyed, toothless, tiny cat called Lil Bub, the internet-breaking Queen of Cute. It was September 2014, in Berlin, when the molecular geneticist found himself watching a documentary online. First thing the next morning he bounded over to the office of his fellow Max Plank Institute postdoc Dario Lupianez, who now heads a lab at the Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology. “You’ve got to see this,” Ibrahim told him, pulling up the video. Specifically, the part where Lil Bub’s veterinarian examines her X-rays and points to her dense leg bones, curving bizarrely like the contour of an Erlenmeyer flask. They looked exactly like a human case of osteopetrosis, a rare genetic limb malformation disorder that the pair of scientists were studying. “We should really sequence this cat,” said Lupianez Learn more..
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We think we are objective & smart. how to fix it?The truth is, we all are flawed, ignorant and deluded. We are victims of our own cognitive biases and prejudices. Critical thinking teaches us how to question things rigorously, how to form sound, well reasoned, coherent thoughts and arguments. Most importantly it teaches us that it is good to be wrong. Meaning the ideas that we hold are not us and 'we don't need to defend them to the death', in fact we can change those ideas and it is absolutely liberating to do so! Critical thinking is the ability to think 'clearly and rationally'. By understanding the logical connection between ideas. In essence, critical thinking requires you to use your 'ability to reason'. It is about being an active learner rather than a passive recipient of information. Critical thinkers rigorously question ideas and assumptions rather than accepting them at face value (even if it's their own). They will always seek to determine whether the ideas, arguments and findings represent the entire picture and are open to finding that they do not. Critical thinkers will identify, analyze and solve problems systematically rather than by intuition or instinct. Here is how they do it.. Learn more..
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what really shapes our perceptions ::While our sensory receptors are constantly collecting information from the environment, it is ultimately 'how we interpret' that information that affects how we interact with the world. What shapes our perceptions (and misperceptions). Bottom-up processing refers to the fact that perceptions are built from sensory input. On the other hand, how we interpret those sensations is influenced by our available knowledge, our experiences, and our thoughts. This is called top-down processing. In an eye-opening talk, meteorologist Dr. Shepherd explains how confirmation bias, the Dunning-Kruger effect and cognitive dissonance impact what we think we know and shares ideas for how we can replace them with something much more powerful: knowledge Learn more..
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what is ransomware ::Learn how pipeline companies and other agencies protect against security risks like terrorism and cyber attacks. There are many ways to protect yourself. If you are running Windows 10 just enable “Controlled folder access”. It is a security feature built-into Windows Defender designed to protect your files and folders from ransomware. This video, shows the basic steps needed to enable it on your PC Learn more..
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D.O.J to give ransomware hacks high priority ::The U.S. Department of Justice is elevating investigations of ransomware attacks to a similar priority as terrorism in the wake of the Colonial Pipeline hack and mounting damage caused by cyber criminals Learn more..
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Lets make a machine learN ::In 2019 UCLA researchers developed a deep learning GPU-powered device that can detect cancer cells in a few milliseconds, hundreds of times faster than previous methods. Earlier in 2019 Imperial College London announced a landmark use of AI to support the treatment of ovarian cancer, using data to develop more accurate prognoses. Here in America, year before that Facebook and NYU School of Medicine collaborated on the fastMRI project (aiming to make MRI scans up to ten times faster). AI has the potential to automate certain parts of the radiology process, playing the role of the second ‘reader’ of data once it has been scanned, alleviating staffing pressures and potentially narrowing the margin for error. So, are you ready to write your first lines of machine learning code? Six lines of Python is all it takes to write your first machine learning program! Lets see what machine learning is and why it's important. Then, we'll follow a recipe for supervised learning (a technique to create a classifier from examples) and code it up with Python Learn more..
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what is recursion & it's applications in Java ::Recursion is a widely used concept in computer science used to solve complex problems by breaking them down into simpler ones. Recursion is a process by which a function calls itself directly or indirectly'. The corresponding function is called as recursive function. Using recursive algorithms, certain complex problems can be solved quite easily. Base condition in recursion: In a recursive function, the solution to the base case is provided and the solution of the bigger problem is expressed in terms of smaller problems. The role of the base condition is to stop a recursive function from executing endlessly, once a pre-specified base condition is met, the function knows it’s time to exit. Every recursive program must have a base case to make sure that the function will terminate at some point. Missing the base case results in unexpected behavior. Simply put, the idea behind recursion is to represent a larger problem in terms of one or more smaller problems and add one or more base conditions that stop the recursion from looping endlessly Learn more..
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first women to jointly win the nobel prize ::CRISPR (CRISPR-CAS9 - Pronounced crisper) is acronym for "clusters of regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats". CRISPR technology was adapted from the natural defense mechanisms of bacteria and archaea (the domain of single-celled microorganisms). These organisms use CRISPR-derived RNA and various Cas proteins, including Cas9, to foil attacks by viruses and other foreign bodies. They do so primarily by chopping up and destroying the DNA of a foreign invader. When these components are transferred into other, more complex, organisms, it allows for the manipulation of genes, or "editing.". Simply put is a easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Scientists have long hoped CRISPR, a technology that allows scientists to make very precise modifications to DNA could eventually help cure many diseases. And now scientists are taking tangible first steps to make that dream a reality. What we heard earlier (that the U.S. CRISPR study that had been approved for cancer at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia) has finally started. Emmanuelle Charpentier (a French microbiologist) and Jennifer A. Doudna (an American biochemist)are the "first women" to "jointly" win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the sixth and seventh women to win the chemistry prize Learn more..
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Leveling the playing field ::Many of us grew up playing video games, but how often do we think about the people who make them? If your parents were gaming on an Atari in the 1980s, River Raid may sound familiar to you. But chances are you haven’t heard of the game’s designer, Carol Shaw. Carol Shaw, a microprocessor software engineer at Atari and later Activision, was one of the first female video game designer and developer and her career paved the way for other women and girls to study computer-science. Carol Shaw is believed to be the first professional female video game designer. She first used a computer while at high school in Palo Alto where she excelled at Math and enjoyed playing text-based games. She went on to gain degrees in Computer Science in the 1970s when there were few women in the field. At the time, developers created a whole game including the programming, sound and graphics. She said she joined the company because they paid her to play games! While at Atari, Carol also worked other titles, including 3-D Tic Tac Toe (1978), which took her six months to create, Video Checkers (1980), and Super Breakout (1982) Learn more..
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FDA approves first drug to slow cognitive decline
The medication, called aducanumab, is for people with mild cognitive impairment or early-stage dementia both caused by Alzheimer’s. It is the first drug cleared that is designed to alter the course of the disease by slowing the deterioration of brain function — not just to ease symptoms. No Alzheimer’s treatment has been approved since 2003, reflecting the "extraordinarily high failure rate of drugs" developed for the illness Learn More..
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dementia research (and there's an app for that too! )Alzheimer's disease is a massive global health threat. It currently affects 47 Million people worldwide, a number that will triple by 2050. No one has ever survived dementia, there is no cure and research on the condition is very far behind other diseases. Dementia attacks the brain and robs people of their navigational skills and their memories. Our ability to share language, moments and memories is what makes us who we are. Lets learn about what the 'Amylois cascade hypothesis' is, then learn the new study that links Porphyromonas gingivalis as the the root cause of Alzheimer’s disease and learn about this new game which diagnoses Alzheimer's disease using Big Data Learn more..
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JULIA ROBINSON AND HILBERT'S TENTH PROBLEM ::Inspiring life story of the pioneering American mathematician Julia Robinson (1919-1985) charts her major contribution to solving one of the 20th century's most vexing mathematical questions " Hilbert's Tenth ". For mathematicians, the only thing more exciting than proving a theorem is proving that it can never be proven. These anti-proofs, if you will, stand firmly against all future progress of humanity and state, “No matter how clever you become, what new branches of thought you invent, you’ll never be able to do this. Sorry about it.” The most famous of these is Kurt Gödel’s 1931 Incompleteness Theorem, but just behind it in the annals of mathematics is the 1970 proof by Yuri Matiyasevich that Hilbert’s famous Tenth Problem will never be solved, a proof that might never have happened without the almost other-worldly mathematical insight of Julia Robinson. Every December 8 for years, Julia Robinson blew out the candles on her birthday cake and made the same wish: that someday she would know the answer to Hilbert’s 10th problem. Though she worked on the problem, she did not care about crossing the finish line herself. “I felt that I couldn’t bear to die without knowing the answer,” she told her sister Learn more..
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prep for arrival of new lab mod underway @ I.S.S ::Two cosmonauts floated outside the International Space Station early Wednesday to wrap up preparations for detaching the two-decades-old Pirs airlock and docking compartment next month, making way for the long-planned arrival of a new laboratory module. The goals of Wednesday's spacewalk are to remove and jettison a failed flow-control regulator on the Zarya module and to install a replacement; to reposition an extendable boom now tethered to Pirs; to detach docking antenna cables from Pirs AND to install two experiment packages Learn more..
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what is captcha & The Turing test ::CAPTCHA is an acronym for " Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart ". It is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether or not the user is human. Luis von Ahn is a Guatemalan entrepreneur (About Country:Guatemala) and a Consulting Professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. He is known as one of the pioneers of crowdsourcing. Wartime code-breaker Alan Turing is crowned the most iconic figure of the 20th century. A Turing Test is a method of inquiry in artificial intelligence (AI) for determining whether or not a computer is capable of thinking like a human being. The test is named after Alan Turing, the founder of the Turning Test and an English computer scientist, cryptanalyst, mathematician and theoretical biologist. The Turing test was originally called the "imitation game" by Alan Turing in 1950 Learn more..
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what ARE optical tweezers?Optical Tweezers use light to manipulate microscopic objects as small as a single atom. The radiation pressure from a focused laser beam is able to trap small particles. In the biological sciences, these instruments have been used to apply forces in the sub pN-range (10 to the Power −14 to 10 to the Power −8 N) and to measure displacements in the nm range (0.1–10 to the power 5))of objects ranging in size from 10 nm to over 100 mm. A laser beam is focused by a high-quality microscope objective to a spot in the specimen plane. This spot creates an "optical trap" which is able to hold a small particle at its center. The forces felt by this particle consist of the light scattering and gradient forces due to the interaction of the particle with the light. Most frequently, optical tweezers are built by modifying a standard optical microscope. These instruments have evolved from simple tools to manipulate micron-sized objects to sophisticated devices under computer control that can measure displacements and forces with high precision and accuracy Learn more..
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meet the 2021 imagine cup's top 4 teams ::For the 19th annual Imagine Cup, thousands of student developers from around the world submitted impactful tech innovations. Teams were challenged to bring an idea to life that tackles a local or global issue in one of four competition categories: Earth, Education, Healthcare, and Lifestyle. Out of 40 World Finalists that pitched their projects at the World Finals, four teams were selected to advance. These teams have reimagined solutions for issues in sustainable farming, remote learning and teaching, access to healthcare, accessibility, and that brings purpose and meaning to our lives. At the core of the solutions is innovative and original use of Azure technology, including IoT, Artificial Intelligence, App Services, Visual Studio Code, and so much more Learn more..
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what is The meaning of Life?The meaning of life, or the answer to the question "What is the meaning of life?", pertains to the significance of living or existence in general. Many other related questions include: "Why are we here?", "What is life all about?", or "What is the purpose of existence?". Although, to be sure, creature comforts can be highly motivating from time to time, a life filled with nothing but the hedonistic search for feel-good experiences can leave people feeling empty. During a Q&A session Astrophysicist, Cosmologist Neil deGrasse Tyson answers six (and three-quarters) year old Jack's question, "what's the meaning of life?" Learn more..
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understanding past mass inoculation ::![]() An Egyptian pillar (1580-1350 BC) portrays a priest with a withered leg, suggesting that polio had existed for thousands of years before the polio pandemic (1916 - 1955). In mid 1950s a mass inoculation of school children against polio was made possible by Dr. Salk (using the vaccine he invented). It began in Pittsburgh as some 5,000 students were vaccinated. Polio is the common name for poliomyelitis, which comes from the Greek words for grey and marrow, referring to the spinal cord, and the suffix –itis, meaning inflammation. Poliomyelitis, shortened, became polio. For a time, polio was called infantile paralysis, though it did not affect only the young. Salk conducted the first human trials on former polio patients and on himself and his family, and by 1953 was ready to announce his findings. Adults were also often afflicted, including (that time) future president Franklin D. Roosevelt (served as the 32nd president from 1933 until his death 1945) who in 1921 was stricken with polio at the age of 39 and was left partially paralyzed. (After FDR's death, physicians argued that he actually suffered from Guillain-Barre Syndrome. It could be the most famous misdiagnosis in history). " To educate a man in mind, and not in morals is to educate a menace to society' said President Theodore Roosevelt (26th president from1901 to 1909 ). Without guiding principles one will not have a moral compass. With no moral compass, all paths will seem of near equal value. On the flip side: When asked who owned the patent on his vaccine against polio virus, Jonas Salk responded, " the people I'd say, there is no patent " Learn more..
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what are mrna vaccines ?In short mRNA (messenger RNA) is the short-lived middleman molecule that, in our cells, conveys copies of genes to where they can guide the making of proteins. We all know that a German company called BioNTech, and another one in Massachusetts called Moderna has made mRNA vaccine technology work (apparently the companies had built platforms that, theoretically, could be used to create a vaccine for any infectious disease simply by inserting the right mRNA sequence for that disease) But, what are mRNAs: Messenger RNA is a type of RNA that is found in the cell. This particular one, like most RNAs, are made in the nucleus and then exported to the cytoplasm where the translation machinery (the machinery that actually makes proteins) binds to these mRNA molecules and reads the code on the mRNA to make a specific protein. So in general, one gene, the DNA for one gene, can be transcribed into an mRNA molecule that will end up making one specific protein. In the near future, researchers believe shots that deliver temporary instructions into cells could lead to vaccines against herpes and malaria, better flu vaccines and, if the covid-19 germ keeps mutating, updated coronavirus vaccinations, too. But researchers also see a future well beyond vaccines. They think the technology will permit cheap gene fixes for cancer, sickle-cell disease, and maybe even HIV learn more..
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have I been pwned?Massive databases of user accounts seem to get hacked daily. The number of exposed accounts and passwords usually encrypted weakly has risen into the billions. That appears to be changing, in part due to new laws in effect or about to be in the European Union and some U.S. states, including California, that impose penalties on delays in notification. But it’s also due to one Australian man’s accidental rise to the top of the account disclosure hack ecosystem. Troy Hunt’s Have I Been Pwned has data from over 305 breaches and 77,000 selective dumps (called “pastes”) that total over 5.3 billion account records Learn more..
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math looks & feels the same ::Couple of years back a study (by CMU) found that children's brains function similarly regardless of their gender. CMU studied 104 children from ages 3 to 10 found similar patterns of brain activity in boys and girls as they engaged in basic math tasks. The new study came from earlier research by Cantlon that found boys and girls as old as 8 had very similar abilities when it came to perceiving numbers and grasping elementary mathematics concepts.
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what is cyber-security really?Cyber-security is the practice of defending computers, servers, mobile devices, electronic systems, networks, Internet Of Things and data from malicious attacks. It's also known as information technology security or electronic information security. CyberPatriot is the National Youth Cyber Education Program. At the center of CyberPatriot is the National Youth Cyber Defense Competition. In the rounds of competition, teams are given a set of virtual images that represent operating systems and are tasked with finding cybersecurity vulnerabilities within the images and hardening the system while maintaining critical services in a six hour period Learn more..
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happy earth dayEach year, Earth Day April 22, marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970.The height of counterculture in the United States, 1970 brought the death of Jimi Hendrix, the last Beatles album and Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” won the Album of the Year. War raged in Vietnam and students nationwide overwhelmingly opposed it. At the time, Americans were slurping leaded gas through massive V8 sedans. Industry belched out smoke and sludge with little fear of legal consequences or bad press. Air pollution was commonly accepted as the smell of prosperity. “Environment” was a word that appeared more often in spelling bees than on the evening news Learn more ..
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what is hachi - moji dna ::
In 1942, Schrödinger predicted that no matter what genetic polymer life uses, its informational building blocks must all have the same shape and size. Hachimoji meets this prediction. Scientists have successfully added four new bases to create what they are calling “hachi-moji DNA”. The synthetic DNA includes the four nucleotides present in Earth life, but also four others that mimic the structures of the informational ingredients in regular DNA. Hachi-moji DNA uses hydrogen bonds just like natural DNA to link its two new pairs--S with B and P with Z—and the bases are also capable of appearing next to each other. Because DNA is read in triplets of bases called codons, each of which codes for a particular amino acid, this significantly increases the number of potential codons compared to the previous approach: 512 compared to conventional DNA’s 64. The bases pair reliably, the structure remains stable regardless of the sequence of bases, and they’ve demonstrated that it can be copied into RNA learn more..
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evo-devo ( Evolutionary developmental biology) ::Development is the process through which an embryo becomes an adult organism and eventually dies. Through development, an organism's genotype is expressed as a phenotype, exposing genes to the action of natural selection. It may come as a surprise, but the genetic ingredients that assemble us are strikingly similar to those that assemble a fly. So why do we and flies look so different as adults? The answer lies in where, how, and for how long those ingredients "turn on" during your embryonic development. The intricacies of this early stage of life are now being revealed thanks to the new field of "evo devo," short for evolutionary developmental biology. One of the titles of a well known Book in the field " Endless Forms Most Beautiful " is a direct quote from Charles Darwin's poem. Yes, you heard me right, he produced a lyrical crescendo in the last paragraph of "The Origin Of Species". The book by Sean Carroll as a whole is a popular writing, rather than a scientific journal. Good read for any one into developmental genetics. It provides a lucid account of the field about ten years ago. It clearly explains role played by the small number of master genes in the embryology of different life forms is just fascinating Learn More..
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Falcon 9 launch :: moved to 02.04.2021:: 01:19 hours
The next starlink mission launch (Starlink V1.0-L17) which was initially scheduled for Saturday morning from Cape Canaveral Florida - is now pushed to (targeting) 02.04.2021 - Thursday morning - after another forecast update today. Liftoff is scheduled for 01:19 Hours from Launch Pad LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center. The goal of the mission is to provide worldwide, space-based broadband internet coverage (Payload is a batch of 60 Starlink satellites). Meanwhile, NASA & SpaceX are still targeting no earlier than April 20th for the launch of the second crew rotation to the ISS watch launch live here if interested..
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happy groundhog Day!
We all know that groundhog day is a popular North American tradition observed in the United States & Canada on February 2nd (which supposedly predict the arriva of spring). Now, lets see how "seeing shadows or not" by a rodent stacks up against history and science. Lets find out the history behind the American tradition and its ties to weather and climate. Groundhog Day presents the perfect opportunity to take a look at global warming also known as Climate Change. Professor Richard Lindzen (MIT atmospheric physicist and one of the world's leading climatologists) summarizes the science behind climate change Learn more..
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first observations of biological magnetoreception
Few days ago on (Jan 6th 2021) Researchers at The University Of Tokyo - Japan have made the first observations of biological magnetoreception (in live unaltered cells) responding to a magnetic field in real time. This discovery is a crucial step in understanding how animals from birds to butterflies navigate using Earth’s magnetic field (and addresses the question of whether weak electromagnetic fields in our environment might affect human health). The mystery of how animals navigate using Earth's magnetic field is now one step closer to being solved. Scientists recorded live cells responding to a magnetic field in the lab. Statistical analysis of the light intensity in videos data revealed that the cell’s fluorescence dimmed by about 3.5% each time the magnetic field swept over the cells. © Ikeya and Woodward, CC BY, originally published in PNAS DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2018043118. Intrigued? You can learn more about a single protein - Cryptochrome 4 (Cry4) and navigation research in birds here at a old blog post
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are counting & memory: just "human" traits?
For human babies their parents use food and toys as a vehicle to get their children to count or recite numbers. As parents feed their children, they will refer to their actions as numbers, as they give their child another spoonful or another piece of food or when they refer to building blocks. All of this is fine, but counting requires more than a simple rote approach whereby children memorize numbers in a chant-like fashion. Turns out we are not the only species who count, birds like Pigeon have now shown that they can learn abstract rules about numbers, an ability that until now had been demonstrated only in primates. wild robins in New Zealand become noticeably bothered when they've been "cheated" out of a set number of promised worms Learn more..
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why lettuce keeps getting contaminated - e. colli
Couple of years back FDA believed that it had traced the source of E.Colli outbreak linked to romaine lettuce (this is the third outbreak in one year). Reasons :: 1. How its grown : Cross contamination in the farm (lettuce needs lots of water - water supports life). 2. How we consume it : Salmonella outbreak linked to cucumbers suggest the obvious (that we don't cook lettuce & cucumber before eating). Washing is not a reliable way to get rid of the bacteria (E. coli 0157:H7) even injecting a single bacteria is enough to produce the illness. Even double or triple washing before packaging doesn't help getting rid of E. Colli. End of the day E. coli 0157:H7 likes lettuce & scientists who work in this area have much work to do.
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word of the day " essential "
{ ADJECTIVE } Absolutely necessary; extremely important. From essential workers to essential businesses and all the essential travel inbetween. "essential" is a defining word that kept society safely functioning in 2020. Phonetic spelling :: uh-sen-shuhl - How to pronounce the word essential..
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NASA and SpaceX Crew-1 Flight Day 2 Highlights ::
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different ways to look at brain
Lets first try to understand how traditional EEGs, fMRIs, and PETs work? In 2015 a new method of microscopy was invented called expansion microscopy, put simply, it is a method of improving the final image resolution during regular light microscopy, by physically enlarging the organism itself. Earlier this year (Jan 2019) researchers have developed a new way to image the brain with unprecedented resolution and speed. Using this approach, they can locate individual neurons, trace connections between them, and visualize organelles inside neurons, over large volumes of brain tissue this microscopy technique is now known as lattice light-sheet microscopy
Learn more.. what is a ventilator really?A medical ventilator is a machine that helps the lungs work. It doesn’t treat any kind of condition or illness. Rather, it may be used during treatment of one. Other names for a ventilator are: respirator, breathing machine and mechanical ventilation. When breathing on your own is very difficult. A ventilator can help you breathe if you have lung disease or another condition that makes breathing difficult or impossible. They can’t treat or fix a health problem. But, they can do the breathing work for you while you’re being treated or recovering from an illness or health condition. Acronym A.R.D.S stands for Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, it is a condition that causes fluid to build up in the lungs as a result oxygen can’t get to your organs. Fluid leaks from small blood vessels and collects in tiny air sacs ( alveoli ) in your lungs so they can’t fill with enough air learn more..
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Connectomics and tasting light
There are totally only five tastes making up the human palette: sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and savory or umami ( Technically, umami refers to glutamate C5H8NO4- { anion of glutamic acid a aminoacid neurotransmitter} which occurs naturally in many foods such as meat, fish, vegetables and various dairy products ). Everything else about our experience of food is supposed to come from the texture, aroma, and aesthetics. A study from MIT has found a unique and potentially groundbreaking mechanism of photosensitivity in the lab-favorite roundworm c. elegans, as the simple organisms have been shown to detect light by tasting it. What does light taste like? Well, like bleach apparently. C. elegans tastes the light indirectly, by detecting the hydrogen peroxide and other reactive substances that often results when fragile molecules are damaged by light. This has implications not just for vision, but for our understanding of taste, overall Learn more..
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first time humans have been on a SpaceX vehicleWould you like to learn more about how the "geometry of return trajectory and reentry" into the Earth’s atmosphere works? or how Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson brilliant women working at NASA (in Mid 1950s) served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history: the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit Learn more..
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Flying NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to space aboard its Crew Dragon spacecraft using a Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX’s collaboration with NASA launch represents more than just a televised distraction for us kids in our country that is still largely stuck at home. It signals a renewal of American optimism and a reminder of what the country is capable of achieving when it works together Perhaps most significantly, it is the first time in 17 years that anyone has launched a new type of spaceship to carry humans to Earth orbit. Go here to watch continued coveratge..
Intrigued? would you like to know more about the " OTHER " privately owned aerospace company down under? Learn more..
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Heads-up dear peeps: the second part of " the gene " is airing today !
The Gene, is a two-part PBS documentary airing April 7th (today) and the 14th (next Tuesday), The documentary explores the benefits and risks that come with deciphering life’s code.
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mutation
Understanding the dynamics of mutations and the distribution of fitness effects is critical for most evolutionary models. Mutations have been investigated for more than a century but remain difficult to observe directly in single cells, which limits the characterization of their dynamics and fitness effects. By combining micro-fluidics, time-lapse imaging, and a fluorescent tag of the mismatch repair system in E coli, a team has visualized the emergence of mutations in single cells, revealing Poissonian dynamics Learn more..
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What is reproducibility/ replication crisis?
Replication (re-running studies to confirm results) and reproducibility (the ability to repeat an analyses on data) have come under fire over the past few years. The foundation of science itself is built upon statistical analysis and yet there has been more and more evidence that suggests possibly even the majority of studies cannot be replicated. This "replication crisis" is likely being caused by a number of factors which we'll discuss as well as some of the proposed solutions to ensure that the results we're drawing from scientific studies are reliable Learn more..
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kleptoplasty
The root word klepto- comes from the Greek word for thief. Costasiella kuroshimae, from the Costasiellidae family is otherwise known as the Sea Sheep. Organisms capable of kleptoplasty typically eat algae or aquatic plants and “steal” the undigested chloroplasts. These chloroplasts can continue to function and provide energy for their new host via photosynthesis. At only 1cm long these tiny slugs are arguably just as cute, and definitely just as cool as sea bunnies. Not only are these slugs absolutely adorable, they come with their own battery packs. Much like land sheep, kuroshimae love munching on greens. However, instead of grass they chew on algae Learn more..
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COVID‑19 information & resources
Google debuted an educational website on the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, which focuses on providing accurate information on education, prevention, and local resources. The site is designed to highlight information from "authoritative" sources at the front of the pandemic response, like the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization, to gather information on data visualization, safety and prevention, relief efforts, and resources for affected individuals and businesses.
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the serial killer inside of us a.k.a T-cells
T-killer cell is a T lymphocyte (a type of white blood cell) that kills cancer cells, cells that are infected (particularly with viruses), or cells that are damaged in other ways.Cytotoxic T cells are very precise and efficient killers. They are able to destroy infected or cancerous cells, without destroying healthy cells surrounding them. For years, the foundations of cancer treatment were surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. Over the last two decades, targeted therapies that target cancer cells by homing in on specific molecular changes seen primarily in those cells have also cemented themselves as standard treatments for many cancers. But over the past several years, immunotherapy therapies that enlist and strengthen the power of a patient’s immune system to attack tumors (Photo Source: Sloan Kettering Cancer Center) Learn More..
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medical research
Engineers are problem solvers, and our own health is full of problems to be engineered. Lets us find out what is drug discovery and what does drug delivery mean? why is it important? We’ll explore everything from classical and reverse pharmacology to the new field of synthetic biology. We’ll also look at how important good disease detection is and why we really need more targeted drug delivery systems. Let us find out what the drug approval process look like and what does the term 'personalized medicine' really mean Lean more ..
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Toxic Blister beetle blamed for deaths of 14 horses
It is hard to imagine the reason behind the recent news (deaths of more than a dozen horses) to be small beetle(s). Let us try to understand the science behind it: It might be hard to imagine that an essential part of the horse’s diet could contain potentially deadly hidden toxins. But it’s a hard truth that horse owners must be aware of: Alfalfa hay can harbor blister beetles (Epicauta spp), which can contain a harmful toxic substance called cantharidin (C10H12O4 IUPAC: 4,7-Epoxyisobenzofuran-1) A member of the Meloidae family, blister beetles live throughout the United States and Canada. Their average body length is about 0.3 to 1.3 inches. A blister beetle’s diet is mainly composed of pollen, blossoms, and leaves of flowering plants, making alfalfa the perfect meal for them. Most alfalfa infestation occurs during late summer and early fall, when the adult blister beetle population also peaks Learn more..
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FDA LIFTS romaine e.coli warning !
Caesar salad lovers rejoice! crispy romaine lettuce leaves are OK to eat now. Today The CDC said that consumers no longer have to avoid romaine lettuce grown in Salinas, California, though it continues to investigate the cause of three E. coli outbreaks that sickened nearly 200 people. Lettuce implicated in all the three outbreaks was traced back to 10 fields run by a single grower in the lower Salinas Valley. Water, soil and compost samples taken at the fields so far have come back negative for all three outbreak strains, and the investigation by the FDA, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and California health and agriculture authorities continues. The question is Why E. coli keeps getting into our lettuce? and how CDC tracks? (Public health investigators used the PulseNet system to identify illnesses that may be part of this outbreak. PulseNet is the national sub-typing network of public health and food regulatory agency laboratories coordinated by CDC. DNA fingerprinting is performed on E. coli bacteria (isolated from ill people) Learn more..
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Fantastic Voyage style!
In Fantastic Voyage (the 1966 movie novelized by Isaac Asimov) scientists shrank a submarine (with people inside) to the size of a microbe, enabling the humans in it to travel into the brain of a scientist with a life-threatening blood clot. That notion of performing medical procedures in microscopic scale is now slowly sneaking out of the realm of science fiction.. Scientists are combining living microbes (very small to begin with, no need for shrinking) with an additional cargo-carrying apparatus. These “hybrid biological microrobots” could deliver disease-fighting drugs, attack tumors or perform other helpful functions Learn more.. |
what does a memory really look like?
In the Harry Potter movies, they are silver streams that can be teased from the head with the tip of a wand. In the Pixar movie " Inside Out ", they are small glowing Orbs, stored in vast racks of shelving in our minds, in the movie memories are shown as translucent globes encapsulating events. Each globe takes on a different hue depending on the primary emotion of the event. A golden-hued joyful memory starts to turn blue when held by Sadness, showing the transformation of a previously happy memory to one that becomes bittersweet with the acknowledgment of loss. It’s well established in the movie that the emotional character of events is sometimes altered as we recall them. The events of Riley’s day are automatically encoded into a single globe. Each memory globe is stored on a shelf in a vast long-term storage library. That might be a handy visual metaphor for memory, it’s not actually how memory works. So, what does a memory really look like? and how are they stored? Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine developed a mouse model in which molecules crucial to making memories (beta-actin mRNA) were given fluorescent "tags" so they could be tracked
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hotelling's law of spatial competition
Harold Hotelling’s Law states that there’s a natural tendency for competitors to be pulled toward a common middle ground. Found a good clear explanation of the Hotelling model of spatial location in game theory. Has very good animation and discusses different scenarios to help understand how game theory and Nash equilibrium works Learn more..
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the paradox of value & tragedy of the commons
Imagine you’re on a game show and you can choose between two prizes: a diamond … or a bottle of water. It’s an easy choice – the diamonds are more valuable. But if given the same choice when you were dehydrated in the desert, after wandering for days, would you choose differently? Why? Aren’t diamonds still more valuable?
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science cannot be politicized :It's been an unprecedented year in politics leading up to Tuesday's midterm elections, with a historic number of women and minorities running for office. Scientists have typically steered clear of the political fray, but this year, more than 450 candidates with backgrounds in science, technology, engineering and math are also seeking state and federal offices Learn more..
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print it in spaceWhat happens when something breaks aboard the International Space Station? In the past, spare parts had to be sent on resupply missions, which were expensive and time-consuming. Former NASA intern Jason Dunn saw a better option and founded Made in Space. When most of us think of the new space race we think of the shipbuilders the renegade billionaires who poured their fortunes into opening up space we don't think of couple of 30 year olds who built the world's most advanced 3D printer, which prints in micro-gravity Learn more..
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what are biomAterials?
Biomaterials are those materials - be it natural or synthetic, alive or lifeless, and usually made of multiple components — that interact with biological systems. Biomaterials are often used in medical applications to augment or replace a natural function. As a science, biomaterials is about fifty years old. The study of biomaterials is called biomaterials science or biomaterials engineering. aditionally, care should be exercised in defining a biomaterial as biocompatible, since it is application-specific Learn more..
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gendered marketing: harm american & european girls
One of the world's largest engineering institutions is warning against gender sterotyping of toys concerned it could be discouraging girls from pursuing a career in engineeing, science and tech. Research by the Institute for Engineering and Tech (IET) found that toys with a Sciene, Engineering and Tech focus were three times as likely to be targered at boys than girls. Toys influence what a child does in later years, University of Washington study suggests Learn more.. .
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Wearables can now read your mind. When you think a sentence in your head, your brain sends signals to your mouth and jaw. MIT Media Lab's headset (AlterEgo) reads those signals with 92 percent accuracy. AlterEgo is developed by MIT Media Lab. You strap it to your face. You talk to it. It talks to you. But no words are said. You say things in your head, like "what street am I on," and it reads the signals your brain sends to your mouth and jaw, and answers the question for you. The institution explained in its announcement that AlterEgo communicates with you through bone-conduction headphones, which circumvent the ear canal by transmitting sound vibrations through your face bones Learn more..
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how does P.C.R work? ( Mini or classic )
PCR is acronim for a simple but very useful procedure in molecular biology called the polymerase chain reaction. A PCR machine (or a thermocycler) has test tubes (the DNA mixture of interest are put into these test tubes) and the machine changes the temperature to suit each step of the process. It is a technique used to amplify a segment of DNA of interest or produce lots and lots of copies. In other words, PCR enables you to produce millions of copies of a specific DNA sequence from an initially small sample – sometimes even a single copy. It is a crucial process for a range of genetic technologies and, in fact, has enabled the development of a suite of new technologies Learn more..
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smart profiling and psychometric manipulation
The phrase “you’re the product” first appeared in a 1986 speech by President Reagan about the drug war. Perhaps the most disturbing elements of data collection and use are the gray areas, where the morality of how data is being used is questionable and only seem legal because law enforcement is yet to catch up. By now I'm sure you have heard of the University of Cambridge researcher's app called "This is your digital life" which collected information on millions of Americans through Facebook for Cambridge Analytica, the maker of the application Dr Aleksandr Kogan says he did not know his work for Cambridge Analytica in 2014 violated any policies. Let us back track to see what Facebook and Cambridge Analytica's data scandal is all about, what Data Scientist Christopher Wylie exposes? what really is " Psychographic profiling " which is behind false advertising Learn more..
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Jeeves, a programming language with privacy baked in.
When programmers create a feature for an app or a website, even something as simple as a calendar, they should code in protections so the personal information that the feature needs to access such as your location doesn’t slip out onto the Internet. Needless to say, they sometimes fail, leaving our data to be exploited by hackers. There is a new programming language ( created by Jean Yang Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University) with privacy baked in called Jeeves. With Jeeves, developers don’t necessarily have to scrub personal information from their features, because Yang’s code essentially does it automatically. Learn more..
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Resolved: US ought to provide a universal basic
That was the LD debate topic for the National qualifiers. Pilot programs are in the works at Oakland, Ontario and Finland. It was Thomas More, an English counselor to King Henry VIII who first advocated in his 1516 novel Utopia that a basic income be used to redistribute wealth during the transition from public land ownership to private land ownership. The idea rose to relative prominence in the United States, and the Nixon administration even commissioned experiments on UBI in a number of states between 1968 and 1971. Nixon ended up unsuccessfully pushing for a UBI Learn more..
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did you experience the (near) future?
Technology companies brought 5G technology platforms to life with industry leaders for the world's largest 5G showcase, setting the stage for the global deployment of 5G. At PyeongChang 2018, Intel, KT and ecosystem collaborators delivered a 5G showcase in Gangneung Olympic Park, in Gwanghwamoon, Seoul, and at other Olympic venues across South Korea. Today’s mobile users want faster data speeds and more reliable service Learn more..
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net neutrality explained by kids (react to), hank &
"Net neutrality" prevents Internet providers like Verizon and Comcast from dictating the kinds of content you're able to access online. Instead, Internet providers have to treat all traffic sources equally. Net neutrality is enforced by the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC Learn More..
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heal with a cell not a pill:
Current medical treatment boils down to six words: Have disease, take pill, kill something. But physician Siddhartha Mukherjee points to a future of medicine that will transform the way we heal. Turns out he had severe osteoarthritis the ''wear-and-tear'' type, in one of his knees Learn more..
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One Touch
Researchers at the Center for Regenerative Medicine and Cell-Based Therapies at The Ohio State University have developed a portable, thumbnail-sized silicon chip that can, in a fraction of a second, reprogram skin cells so that they transform into just about any other cell type in the body. Learn more..
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the declaration of sentiments
At the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, N.Y., a woman’s rights convention–the first ever held in the United States–convenes with almost 200 women in attendance. The convention was organized by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton Learn more..
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Researchers say they've managed to create a potentially revolutionary material that has only been imagined in theory for the past several decades: solid metallic hydrogen Learn More..
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are you taking A.P U.S History: 8/9 grade
What can you do against Gilded Age greed? Use the Sherman Antitrust Act against them. Doesn't hurt to have Teddy Roosevelt on your side. The Sherman Antitrust Act, the first federal antitrust law, authorized federal action against any "combination in the form of trusts or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade." Learn More..
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how playing sports benefit our brain: growth mindset
The victory of the underdog. The last minute penalty shot that wins the tournament. The training montage. Many people love to glorify victory on the field, cheer for teams, and play sports. But should we be obsessed with sports? Are sports as good for us as we make them out to be? Learn More..
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how they Put the false in falsetto:
Lets look at the origins of autotune software. Andy Hildebrand, the inventor of autotune, once said "My thinking was, ok, I'll put that setting in the software. But I didn't think anyone in their right mind would ever use it." Thus was born the "Cher effect", and one of the biggest hits of the 1990s , the Cher effect also known as the autotune a pitch-correcting software designed to smooth out any off-key notes in a singer's vocal track Learn More..
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Dirty Dancing
I hear the Dung Beetle was all the rage in ancient Egypt. They were even worshiped as one of their Gods. Did the ancient Egyptians knew something about the dung beetle, that we are still figuring out? .. the fact that dung-beetles can navigate using polarized light of the milky way. Learn more..
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germ theory
For several centuries, people thought diseases were caused by wandering clouds of poisonous vapor, work of several scientists who discredited a widely accepted theory in a way that was beneficial to human health. Learn more..
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women explorers
During the Victorian Age, women were unlikely to become great explorers, but a few intelligent, gritty and brave women made major contributions to the study of previously little-understood territory. Marianne North, Mary Kingsley and Alexandra David-Néel who wouldn't take no for an answer Learn More
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kids publish scientific study
Eight and Ten year old British Elementary school kids may be the youngest scientists ever to have their work published in a journal. 25, 8- to 10-year-old children from Blackawton Primary School report that buff-tailed bumblebees can learn Learn More
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game based learning: physics & math
Parents who are passion pushers try to make something out of nothing every time their kids show the slightest interest in an activity (by mislabeling it passion) that does not involve a game console. Most of us are lucky to have parents who nurture exploration and not put an end to it. Game based learning is one such fun activity to explore Learn More..
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how brain receive & deliver impulses
As grad students at the University of Michigan, Tim and Greg (now a Neuroscientist) often interacted with schoolchildren during neuroscience outreach events. We often wanted to show real "spiking" activity to students, but this was impossible due to the high cost of equipment. By using off-the-shelf electronics, we designed kits that could provide insight into the inner workings of the nervous system Learn More..
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history of the 'study of the brain'
Brain surgeons, long burdened with the onerous reputation of being among the smartest people in the world, are expressing relief that this educational video is shattering that stereotype once and for all. Western ancient medical practitioners had conflicting views of the significance of the brain Learn More..
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the science of skin color
When ultraviolet sunlight hits our skin, it affects each of us differently. Depending on skin color, it’ll take only minutes of exposure to turn one person beetroot-pink, while another requires hours to experience the slightest change. What’s to account for that difference, and how did our skin come to take on so many different hues to begin with? Learn More..
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girls who build: m.y.o (Make your own) with/at M.i.T
The Make Your Own Wearables Workshop introduces girls to computer science and electrical and mechanical engineering through wearable technology. This one-day workshop, developed by MIT Lincoln Laboratory, consists of hands-on projects in manufacturing and wearable electronics. Prerequisites: None, Upcoming Workshop Offerings: December 2015, Spring 2016 Learn More..
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cosmic triangle
Jupiter, Venus and Mars create a cosmic triangle in morning sky this week Bundle up and get outside early about an hour before dawn this week to see a potentially incredible grouping of bright planets in the eastern sky Learn more..
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physics behind the Fosbury flop
When Dick Fosbury couldn't compete against the skilled high jumpers at his college, he tried jumping in a different way, backwards! know more about the physics behind the success of the now dominant Fosbury Flop Learn more..
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celebrating women in tech and science
Sure, you've heard of Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison, but what about Martha Coston, Mary Anderson, and Sarah Mather? In honor of International Women's Day, the campaign highlights the main problem surrounding the gender gap in technology education. We know about famous male creators, but our knowledge of the women who have spearheaded the development of things such as the computer algorithm and satellite propulsion ( Ada Lovelace and Yvonne Brill, for the record ) remains limited, to say the least Learn More..
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6th grade world historyUnlike his mentor Socrates, Plato was both a writer and a teacher. His writings are in the form of dialogues, with Socrates as the principal speaker. In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato described symbolically the predicament in which mankind finds itself and proposes a way of salvation. The Allegory of the Cave can be found in Book VII of Plato's best-known work, The Republic, a lengthy dialogue on the nature of justice Learn More..
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Science
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Technology
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Engineering
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Mathematics
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Empowerment
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