A.I for oceans by code.org![]() Computer science is about so much more than coding! Learn about artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, training data, and bias, while exploring ethical issues and how AI can be used to address world problems. Enjoy Code.org's first step in a new journey to teach more about AI. When you use the AI for Oceans activity you are training real machine learning models. This new activity engages students ages 8 and older to learn about artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, training data and bias, while exploring ethical issues and seeing how AI can be used to address global issues.To celebrate the #CSforGood theme, students will learn how artificial intelligence could be used to help classify fish from trash to clean our oceans. To start, the activity guides students to provide training data to teach a bot called “A.I.” to classify items as either fish or trash 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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adA the Countess of Lovelace![]() Our world is filled with new technological advances and groundbreaking discoveries. Have you ever wondered how these technologies started? Meet Ada Lovelace, the first software engineer / scientist. That is right boys the first one was a woman. This year's International Day of Women and Girls in Science has been dedicated to the ‘Women Scientists at the forefront of the fight against Covid-19’. It was created after the United Nations General Assembly decided in 2015 that an annual observance was needed to recognise the critical role women and girls play in science and technology. This year's event on February 11 is the fifth to be held and among the people who inspired it was Ada Lovelace. Over recent years her story and its importance to modern science has continued to grow. Up until about a decade ago she was better known, if known at all, as the only child of the romantic poet Lord Byron and Anne Isabella Milbanke, born in December 1815 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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Applying engineering principles in biology![]() The most significant advancement thus far in the field 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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prof.Youyou Artemisinin & the 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 Learn more..
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Landing Site: Jezero Crater Flyover |
Para nosotros que hablan español, podemos disfrutar de la transmisión en vivo aquí You can ask questions on any of NASA's social media feeds (@NASA) using the hashtag #CountdowntoMars. |
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An animated flyover of the Martian surface. Video explains why Mars’ Jezero Crater, a 28-mile-wide ancient lake-delta system, is the best place for the Mars 2020 rover to find and collect promising samples for a possible future return to Earth. |
The World of Molecular Machines
![]() Scientists at the University of Edinburgh have made the first reversible synthetic molecular motor. Like the molecular motors found throughout biology (e.g. to move muscles, power mechanical motion and pump ions), the synthetic motor works by capturing random displacements that occur during Brownian motion and directionally releasing them. The system consists of a small ring mechanically locked onto a larger ring – a catenane [image Credit : Nature]. The small ring can be made to move around the larger one by applying a series of chemical reactions. Remarkably, the sense of rotation (clockwise or counter-clockwise) is governed solely by the order in which these reactions are carried out Learn more..
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A journey to the bottom of the internet![]() A fiber-optic cable is made up of incredibly thin strands of glass or plastic known as optical fibers; one cable can have as few as two strands or as many as several hundred. Each strand is less than a tenth as thick as a human hair and can carry something like 25,000 telephone calls, so an entire fiber-optic cable can easily carry several million calls. The current record for a "single-mode" fiber (that's explained below) is 178 terabits (trillion bits) per second—enough for 100 million Zoom sessions. The internet allows us to see videos, photos, and news from anywhere in the world almost instantaneously. But how? Today we learn about the hundreds of underwater fiber optic cables that connect continents, cities, and data centers all over the world and investigate how these cables are made, how they’re installed, and more Learn more..
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what is a optical tweezer?![]() 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 pN-range and to measure displacements in the nm range 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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working towards optical integrated circuit
![]() Right now, computers process information via electrons. Data is moved around through nano-sized wires. Material recently invented allows computers to store and transfer information using light instead of electricity. Photonics is defined as the science of using light to generate energy, detect or transmit information. Another way to define Photonics is as the technology of generating and harnessing light and many other forms of radiant energy whose quantum unit is the photon. But despite years of effort and some progress in related areas such as plasmonics, such computing has remained largely just a promise. All-optical computing still needs some tools to make it into a reality. One key component of this toolbox will likely be all-optical logic gates, and researchers at Aalto University in Finland announced they have been able to fabricate such gates from nanowires in way that’s easier than ever before. The scientists believe that this represents a significant step in the development of on-chip, all-optical logic components that will serve as a key element in future photonic computing systems. In the research, described in the journal Science Advances, the Finland-based scientists managed to get their logic gate to perform AND, OR, NAND, and NOR binary logic functions—basic building blocks from which all other logic and mathematical functions can be built Learn more..
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how to estimate ::![]() 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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what are Morals according to scientific studies?![]() According to Cambridge Dictionary the word “moral” is "relating to the standards of good or bad behavior, fairness that each person believes in, rather than to laws". What are morals, according to scientific research? The scientific study of morals has been subject to a tremendous change throughout the past decades, eliciting various theoretical models, paradigms, and methodologies from disciplines as philosophy, social and developmental psychology, cognitive science, or anthropology. Are we born with morals or is it something we acquire? Babies at Yale University's Infant Cognition Center respond to "naughty" and "nice" puppets..
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What is really going on?![]() Technically The polar vortex exists near the poles. It often surfaces in the media when it reaches further south than it is supposed to. A strong polar vortex helps the circulating jet streams to stay strong and keeps them in shape. The “polar jet stream” forms the boundary between the cold polar vortex air and the warmer subtropical air. As long as the vortex remains strong, stable and doesn't loose its shape, it doesn't affect or pose a danger to sub-polar regions. Simply put, a strong polar vortex is a “safe polar vortex”. When the polar vortex is weak or “perturbed”, the flow of air is weaker and meanders north and south (rather than west to east). This allows a redistribution of air masses where cold air from the Arctic spills into the mid-latitudes and warm air from the subtropics is carried into the Arctic. We will be back to regular expected numbers in a week.
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what is recursion?
![]() 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 - 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. Kids like us who study digital coding will be by studying the code of life when we are at college next year. Emmanuelle Charpentier, a French microbiologist, and Jennifer A. Doudna, an American biochemist, are the "first women" to "jointly" win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry today and the sixth and seventh women to win the chemistry prize Learn more..
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gen-mod mosquitos approved to take flight![]() One mosquitoe (Aedes aegypti) is known for yellow fever also spread dengue as well as Zika and Chikungunya. The species is especially hard to control among about 45 kinds of mosquitoes that are common to the Florida Keys. Even the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District with six aircraft for spraying Miami has had zero kills only an estimated 30% to 50% of the local yellow fever mosquito population with its best pesticide treatments. The new application to test GM mosquitoes in Florida, however, got 5,656 comments, plus a petition against the project that drew more than 25,000 signatures. Even though people probably detest mosquitoes, the fact that the Florida Keys project involves genetic modification still stirs passion. An update: a plan to release over 750 genetically modified mosquitoes into the Florida Keys in 2021 received final approval from local authorities, against the objection of many local residents and a coalition of environmental advocacy groups. The plan had already won state and federal approval 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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use AP credit to skip 1-on-1 classes this fall![]() Entering college with credit we have already earned through AP can save us time and money for example, we might be able to skip introductory courses. Most U.S. colleges offer credit or advanced placement (or both) for a "qualifying AP score". Our AP scores could earn us college credit or advanced placement (meaning we could skip certain fundamental courses in college). Use this online tool (College Board's) to find colleges that really do offer credit or advanced placement for our AP scores, Compare Schools or search by AP Course Learn more..
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what are mrna vaccines really?
![]() 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, (also known as mRNA) 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 learn more..
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personalized approach to cancer therapy![]() Cancer is a collection of diseases with many causes. This heterogeneity (diverse in content) limits the efficacy of standard approaches that give the same treatment to large subpopulations of patients. The promise of a personalized approach to cancer therapy lies in expanding opportunities for treatment by identifying patients who are likely to respond but who do not meet the traditional selection criteria, and in predicting patients who will not respond so they do not endure unnecessary adverse effects or costs. Standard approaches to matching cancer patients with therapy have been coarse, relying on tumor histology (what the tumor looks like under a microscope), the tumor tissue-of-origin, and a handful of molecular markers. Making headway on the promise of personalized cancer therapy requires making connections between key problems in cancer biology, statistics, and computer science 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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understanding the ageing process
![]() Ever since the discovery of telomerase 35 years ago (which lead to a Nobel Prize in 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 leads 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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It's the 20th anniversary of the human genome project
![]() 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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Rutherford Engine is 3D printed and battery powered
![]() What rocket has 9 engines on its first stage, is built by a privately owned aerospace company? which uses the most advanced manufacturing techniques available? and is one of the cheapest rides to space and has a body made entirely out of carbon fiber? If you said Space X’s Falcon 9 rocket you’d be wrong! (its made out of aluminum) Move over Space X. Rocket lab has achieved orbit with their beautiful Electon rocket has the cheapest ride to space with a cost comparison to SpaceX. It has 3d-printed engines, battery powered pumps and composite fuel tanks. Today lets take a deep run down on some of the exciting features about the Electron rocket, then lets compare it to similar rockets (including other small sat rockets, and past small sat rockets like SpaceX’s Falcon 1). Lets throw in a Falcon 9 for comparison and see which rocket takes the cake for the cheapest ride to space with a cost per kilogram comparison 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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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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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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understanding a 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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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 that 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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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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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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It’s been 3,000 Martian days (or sols) since Curiosity touched down on Mars on Aug. 6, 2012, and the rover keeps making new discoveries during its gradual climb up Mount Sharp, the 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain it has been exploring since 2014. Geologists were intrigued to see a series of rock “benches” in the most recent panorama from the mission. Credit : mars.nasa.gov |
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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Wi-Fi 6E is almost here :: but what is it?
![]() Wi-Fi 6E is such a huge upgrade. The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) voted April of last year to open up a plot of spectrum in the 6GHz band for unlicensed use (the same regulatory go-ahead that lets your router broadcast over the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands). That means there are more open airwaves now (a lot more) that routers can use to broadcast Wi-Fi signals. Once the new spectrum is officially opened for business later this year, that should translate to faster, more reliable connections from the next generation of devices. This is the biggest spectrum addition since the FCC cleared the way for Wi-Fi in 1989, so it’s a huge deal. Wi-Fi 6E will see rapid adoption in 2021 with more than 338 million devices entering the market 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 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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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
![]() { 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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smallest memory device created
Last month an international team of scientist from the US, the UK & Taiwan has 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.. (a old blog entry)
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today is winter solstice! ( but what is it? )
![]() The winter solstice is the day with the shortest period of daylight and longest night of the year, when the Sun is at its lowest daily maximum elevation in the sky. Technically, the summer solstice occurs when the sun is directly over the Tropic of Cancer, or 23.5° north latitude. In 2020, this occured on June 20th. The summer and winter solstices, the seasons, and the changing length of daylight hours throughout the year are all due to one fact: " Earth spins on a tilted axis ". " The tilt " possibly caused by a massive object hitting Earth billions of years ago means that for half the year, the North Pole is pointed toward the sun. For the other half of the year, the South Pole gets more light 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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letters to a young scientist
![]() What it is not: It is not a book about genetic mapping or computer modeling or how they are changing the ways research is done. It is an excellent guide to the love of research, the value and need for science study. This is kind of encouragement, empowerment we all need right now at an early age. The father of biodiversity Dr. E.O. Wilson's book consists of twenty letters addressed directly to young people who have chosen to enter a career in Science. The book gives brilliant advice in how to find your passion and do things you like and the creative element of science and its process and how to respect the ecosystems and human’s modest place in the planet. It takes a lot of dedication and determination, and oftentimes you fail. He does a fantastic job of helping others learn from his experience as a scientist. Enjoying this book is an opportunity to digest and lifetime worth of wisdom in a few short listens Learn more..
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photonic quantum computer achieves quantum supremacy
![]() Just few days back (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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what is ISING MODEL?
![]() Exactly 100 years ago in 1920 (in a world recovering from a global flu pandemic) a German physicist named "Wilhelm Lenz" set out to understand why heating a magnet past a certain temperature causes it to suddenly lose its attractive power (as Pierre Curie had discovered 25 years earlier). Lenz imagined a magnet as a lattice of little arrows, each pointing either up or down, representing atoms (atoms are intrinsically magnetic, with north and south poles, and thus can be thought of as having orientations). Arrows influence their neighbors, attempting to magnetically flip them to match their own orientation. The mathematical key to cracking “phase transitions” debuted exactly 100 years ago, and it has transformed the natural sciences. The "Ising model" as it’s known (was assigned as a problem to his student Ising. Ising then concluded that the model is uninteresting in one dimension and didn't bother to investigate other cases) was initially proposed as a cartoon picture of magnets. It’s now so commonly used as a simple model of physical systems that physicists liken it to the fruit fly, biology’s model organism. It has also penetrated far-flung disciplines well beyond physics, serving as a model of earthquakes, proteins, brains and even racial segregation ok now if you have few minutes learn more...
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what is Contact tracing ?
![]() Contact tracing was used during the 2014 Ebola virus outbreak, as well as in the SARS outbreak in 2003. The technique is a “cornerstone” of preventative medicine. But, can technology really get us back to some resemblance of a normal life? Big tech giants like Apple & Google seem to think so. High tech version of a Low tech fighting tool called Contact tracing is being developed right now and will be on our phones in the next two weeks. It is a simple concept that is vital in stopping the spread of infectious diseases. When done correctly, contact tracing saves lives by helping us diagnose patients earlier improving the likelihood they'll be cured and reducing the chance they'll spread the virus to others. The purpose of contact tracing is to break chains of transmission. It is a very well-used public health intervention which has been used for decades to track a variety of infections Learn more..
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why ants don't need ant-man as their leader..
![]() In Ant-man Dr. Henry "Hank" Pym, remarks that ants can perform amazing feats, but they need a leader to tell them what to do. Pym wears a small device behind his ear that allows him to instruct the ants, it’s wrong. Ants don't march in lockstep, united in obedience to a single command. In the real world, the often random and apparently inept actions of individual ants, each without any sense of a common goal, combine to allow colonies to find and collect food, build nests, form trails and bridges, defend their host plants from herbivores or cultivate gardens-- all without supervision. Neither the queen nor any other ant can assess what needs to be done and give orders to others 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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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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the second brain
![]() Known as the ENS (enteric nervous system) the second brain consists of sheaths of neurons embedded in the walls of the long tube of our gut, or alimentary canal, which measures about nine meters end to end. The second brain contains some 100 million neurons, more than in either the spinal cord or the peripheral nervous system. Apparently the second brain informs our state of mind in other more obscure ways, as well. A big part of our emotions are probably influenced by the nerves in our gut. Our everyday emotional well-being may rely on messages from the brain below to the brain above. For example, electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve a useful treatment for depression may mimic these signals. Scientists are learning that the serotonin made by the enteric nervous system might also play a role in more surprising diseases. A recent study suggest that the enteric nervous system is “A little brain in the gut” Learn more..
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 vehicle![]() Would 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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What is Convalescent Plasma trans-fusion?
![]() The adjective " convalescent " means " recovering from sickness or debility ". Uncontrolled study entry in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that 5 critically ill corona-virus patients on ventilators in Shenzen, China, rapidly improved after treatment with plasma. Within a few days, they started getting better. Eventually, three of them were discharged and two were still hospitalized in stable condition. The idea of a treatment derived from recovering patients is not new. Doctors used serum -plasma with the clotting factors removed as far back as the 1890s. In fact, serum was the only treatment option for certain infectious diseases until antibiotics were introduced in the 1940s. In 1934, doctors used convalescent serum and successfully halted an outbreak of measles at a Pennsylvania school. Apparently right now Docs at any institution who are treating hospitalized patients with COVID-19 can register their patients' information at uscovidplasma.org. The national program is supported by the American Red Cross and the larger blood-banking community, which will work with physicians to collect and distribute the donor plasma Learn more..
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COVID-19 virus mutation rate calculator
![]() Created a COVID-19 Mutation Rate Calculator app for the COVID-19 Global Hackathon which compares the varying genomic sequences of different strains of the COVID-19 virus from around the globe. When Peking University in Beijing studied the viral genome taken from 103 cases, they found common mutations at two locations on the genome. The team identified two types of the virus based on differences in the genome at these two regions: 72 were considered to be the “L-type” and 29 were classed “S-type”. The program has two functions/methods: The comparison function iterates through both genomic sequences and compares each base to see if they are equal. If they are not, that position is added into an array that saves all the positions in the genomes where there are differences in the base pair. The MutationRate function calculates the mutation rate from the array generated before, by dividing the length of the arary which represents the total number of mutations by the length of the smallest genome or two times one of the genome's length if they are of the same length. The program then runs all various combinations of two genomic sequences from the eleven sequenced genomes available from the National Center for Biotechnology Information and outputs to the user the positions of where the base sequences were different along with the mutation rates calculated from such positions. The source code for my app is available here. Note: To abide by the rules of COVID-19 Global Hackathon: The video had to be completed in two minutes. Please use Settings - Playback speed - 0.75 to reduced playback speed.
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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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can we 3d print organs?
![]() There are currently hundreds of thousands of people on transplant lists, waiting for critical organs like kidneys, hearts and livers that could save their lives. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough donor organs available to fill that demand. What if, instead of waiting, we could create new, customized organs from scratch? Let's explores bio-printing, a new branch of regenerative medicine Learn more..
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human organs on a chip
![]() Microchips lined by living human cells that could revolutionize drug development, disease modeling and personalized medicine. Clinical studies take years to complete and testing a single compound can cost more than $2 billion. Meanwhile, innumerable animal lives are lost, and the process often fails to predict human responses, traditional animal models often do not accurately mimic human pathophysiology Learn more..
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first noise cancelling technology
![]() Dr. Amar Bose was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for more than 45 years. As a professor at MIT, he’d tell his engineering students the most important attribute an engineer can have is imagination. Bose’s personal imagination is legendary. Not only was he one of MIT’s most beloved professors, but he used his company, the Bose Corporation, to bring the world a long string of innovative products — including the first noise cancelling headphones.Those headphones are a good illustration of Bose’s theory about imagination. On a flight from Zurich to Boston in 1978, Bose encountered the first of a new generation of electronic headsets that replaced the older pneumatic tube headsets that had been previously used for in-flight entertainment. He realized that in 1978 aboard a flight from Zurich to Boston. Since 1963, airlines had been delivering in-flight audio entertainment to passengers via pneumatic headphones — tubular headsets that looked like stethoscopes. In the late 1970s, however, they began swapping pneumatic headphones for electronic ones. When Dr. Bose donned his first pair en route to Boston, he was both excited and disappointed. Electronic headphones could deliver superior sound to fliers, but airplane cabins were too noisy to hear it. Dr. Bose had an audio epiphany: Using physics, he conceived of a headset that uses a microphone to detect external noise, and electronics to generate an equal and opposite signal that cancels it out before it reaches the listener’s eardrums. Noise cancelling headphones were born Learn more..
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new species of ant!
![]() Texas rodeo ant new species #1 ( still to be formally named ) she’s a mouth-clamping Solenopsis ant, was reported on November 17 in St. Louis at Entomology 2019. The shape of her head and notched mouthparts allow a snug grip around the waist of the particular ant species she was riding. He was just stretching his legs at the Brackenridge Field Laboratory, an urban field station, reachable by Austin city bus. It was hardly unknown wilderness rustling with mysteries. Entomologists had worked over the ground for years. But, now Alex Wild is the one who discovered new rodeo ants in ( of course ) Texas. Rodeo ant queens avoid having to reproduce their own worker ants. Instead, they drop their eggs into the nests of other ants while riding on the back of that colony’s queen. Alex Wild is curator of entomology and a lecturer in the Department of Integrative Biology at UT. He says rodeo ants are “social parasites.”
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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 space![]() What 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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how does induction motor (and electric car) work?
![]() Unlike toys and flashlights, most homes, offices, factories, and other buildings aren't powered by little batteries: they're not supplied with DC current, but with alternating current (AC), which reverses its direction about 50 times per second (with a frequency of 50 Hz) Learn more..
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why being wrong is a desirable human trait:
![]() 1,200 years before Descartes said his famous quote "I think therefore I am," this guy, St. Augustine, sat down and wrote "Fallor ergo sum" translated to English its: "I err therefore I am." Augustine understood that our capacity to be wrong is NOT some kind of embarrassing defect in the human system, something we can eradicate or overcome. It's totally fundamental to who we are. Most of us will do anything to avoid being wrong. So why do we get stuck in this feeling of being right? Learn more..
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remembering Bob Dorough
![]() For many learning civics and math and grammar began early as they sat cross-legged on the floor in front of a big cathode ray tube on Saturday mornings between Scooby-Doo, Josie and the Pussycats and Super Friends, learned lessons from his fun, educational songs probably didn't know what a great jazz pianist, singer and songwriter he was. Learn more..
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happy earth day!
![]() Each 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.” 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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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 |
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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History vs. Napoleon Bonaparte
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for the love of science
![]() It's critical time in our history to inspire more girls and women to be technology innovators our world needs a new generation of female innovators to tackle its toughest challenges Learn more
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what adults can learn from kids:
![]() A prolific short story writer and blogger since age seven, Adora is a advocate for literacy. She says world needs "childish" thinking: bold ideas, wild creativity and especially optimism. Loved to watch see the confident 12-year-old, cracking jokes and striding around the stage in glasses that keep sliding down her nose and making very valid points. “A tiny literary giant.” says Diane Sawyer, of Good Morning America 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 history
![]() Unlike 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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