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Researchers figure out how galaxies like the Milky Way formed

In embryos and induced pluripotent stem cells, Nanog sets the ground state of pluripotency Nanog, named after the fountain of eternal youth, is considered the key to pluripotency, but its role is puzzling: it can be deleted from embryonic stem cells without causing them to differentiate, and it is not among the collection of genes that can induce specialized cells to become pluripotent. Nonetheless, it does help human cells reprogram and can be used to separate incompletely reprogrammed cells from fully reprogrammed ones.

Differentiated human cells have been reprogrammed to an embryonic-like state with the addition of only one gene rather than the standard four. This should advance techniques for the efficient production of high-quality patient-specific stem cells.

Looking almost 11 billion years into the past, astronomers have measured the motions of stars for the first time in a very distant galaxy and clocked speeds upwards of one million miles per hour, about twice the speed of our Sun through the Milky Way. The fast-moving stars shed new light on how these distant galaxies, which are a fraction the size of our Milky Way, may have evolved into the full-grown galaxies seen around us today. The results will be published in the August 6, 2009 issue of the journal Nature, with a companion paper in the Astrophysical Journal.

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/05/23/Marcus_Chown_in_Conversation_with_Fred_Watson Marcus Chown, author of Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You: A Guide to the Universe, discusses the mechanics behind quantum computers, explaining that they function by having atoms exist in multiple places at once. He predicts that quantum computers will be produced within 20 years. ----- The two towering achievements of modern physics are quantum theory and Einsteins general theory of relativity. Together, they explain virtually everything about the world in which we live. But almost a century after their advent, most people havent the slightest clue what either is about. Radio astronomer, award-winning writer and broadcaster Marcus Chown talks to fellow stargazer Fred Watson about his book Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You. - Australian Broadcasting Corporation Marcus Chown is an award-winning writer and broadcaster. Formerly a radio astronomer at the California Institute of Technology, he is now cosmology consultant of the weekly science magazine New Scientist. The Magic Furnace, Marcus' second book, was chosen in Japan as one of the Books of the Year by Asahi Shimbun. In the UK, the Daily Mail called it "a dizzy page-turner with all the narrative devices you'd expect to find in Harry Potter". His latest book is called Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You.

With its expansive range and unprecedented potential for anonymity, (the Internet gives voice to our deepest urges and most uninhibited thoughts. Inspired by the wealth of unfettered expression available online, neuroscientists Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam, who met as Ph.D. candidates at Boston University, began plumbing a few chosen search engines (including Dogpile and AOL) to create the world's largest experiment in sexuality in 2009. Quietly tapping into a billion Web searches, they explored the private activities of more than 100 million men and women around the world. The result is the first large-scale scientific examination of human sexuality in more than half a century, since biologist Alfred Kinsey famously interviewed more than 18,000 middle-class Caucasians about their sexual behavior and published the Kinsey reports in 1948 and 1953. Building on the work of Kinsey, neuroscientists have long made the case that male and female sexuality exist on different planes. But like Kinsey himself, they have been hampered by the dubious reliability of self-reports of sexual behavior and preferences as well as by small sample sizes. That is where the Internet comes in. By accessing raw data from Web searches and employing the help of Alexa-a company that measures Web traffic and publishes a list of the million most popular sites in the world-Ogas and Gaddam shine a light on hidden desire, a quirky realm of lust, fetish, and kink that, like the far side of the moon, has barely been glimpsed. Here is a sampling of their fascinating results, selected from their book, A Billion Wicked Thoughts.

DIGITAL LIBRARIES Capturing images of manuscripts, art, and artifacts, digital libraries are an excellent way of both preserving the past and sharing it with everyone.

"Leah Pyter: Well basically what we know is that patients with cancer have a higher likelihood of also developing depression at some point in their disease progression, so whether that occurred before and is predisposing them to cancer, or it's due to the tumours themselves, or other aspects of having the disease, we don't know. We were only studying right now whether the cancer itself can cause depression. Chris Smith: How could a tumour trigger depression, because a tumour can occur anywhere in the body, therefore at the remote sites in the brain, so how could it trigger changes in brain activity? Leah Pyter: Sure, well what we hypothesized was that the tumours themselves can produce cytokines which has been shown before. Chris Smith: These are inflammatory chemicals that drive the immune system? Leah Pyter: Right, exactly! And there is also a pile of research on how cytokines can access the brain specifically regions of the brain that are associated with depression and anxiety and emotional behaviours, and they can access the brain both tumourally through the blood, or neurally through the vegas nerves. "

"Die Geschichte, die aus Överkalix zu erzählen ist, hat mit Nahrung zu tun, genauer gesagt, mit einem zu viel oder zu wenig an Nahrung. Was wir essen, ist Privatsache und kommt nur uns selbst zu Gute. Denken wir zumindest. Wer sich ausreichend und gesund ernährt oder ernähren kann, profitiert davon. Wer Hunger leiden muss oder sich überfrisst, wer zuviel Fett oder Süßes zu sich nimmt, wer säuft und raucht, hat die gesundheitlichen Folgen selbst zu tragen. Die einzige Ausnahme sind die schwangeren und stillenden Mütter. Sie sind nicht nur für sich, sondern auch für ihre Kinder verantwortlich. Was aber wäre, wenn Ähnliches für alle Menschen gelten würde, ob Mann oder Frau, wenn der Glauben, Qualität und Quantität unserer Nahrung habe nur Konsequenzen für uns selbst, auf Sand gebaut wäre, wenn das, was wir zu uns nehmen, nicht nur Folgen für uns und unsere Kinder, sondern sogar für unsere Enkel hätte? Mit welchem Gefühl würden wir dann die Pommes in die Majonäse tunken? Normalerweise hatten Menschen, die vor hundert oder hundertfünfzig Jahren im äußersten Norden Europas das Licht der Welt erblickten, kaum Chancen in die Historie einzugehen. Dem Jahrgang 1905 ist dies jedoch in gewisser Weise gelungen, denn die Hälfte der 199 Menschen, die in diesem Jahr in der Gemeinde Överkalix geboren wurden, gelangten posthum in eine Zufallsstichprobe der Sozialmediziner Lars Olov Bygren und Gunnar Kaati, die Erstaunliches zu Tage beförderte und weit über Norrbotten hinaus Aufmerksamkeit erregte."

Three new genes associated with Alzheimer's have been discovered, to the delight of researchers in the field. In two papers published in Nature Genetics, two teams describe how they compared the genomes of sufferers to healthy controls to identify potential gene variations leading to the disease.

To try to illustrate the concept, the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics made the accompanying movie of "Quantum Spin Dynamics in Loop Quantum Gravity." It depicts the quantum evolution of geometry in Loop Quantum Gravity

A central point to understanding string theory is that it cannot be formulated the way all other fundamental theories are, by giving the dynamical variables and the equations they obey. We do not know what the fundamental dynamical variables of string theory are, nor the equations they obey.

As someone who's researched dark matter extensively, it is my determination that dark matter most likely exists, although explaining exactly what it is is a challenge. Over this next series, I would like to lead you through the evidence, observations and discoveries that have led me to this conclusion, and I hope that I explain this well enough that it leads you to draw the same ones for yourself.

We got the same measurement no matter which method we used, finding out that 25-30% of the total energy of the Universe is in some type of matter. But, only about 0.5% of the total energy is in stars, which means that nearly all of this matter doesn't give off light! So what is the rest of this matter?

Predictions by Mojib Latif that there may be a slow down in global warming over the next decade that could bely the overall trend.

People considered likeable by those that met them in real life have been found to make a similar impression on people who view their social networking

According to a new study in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, regular gamers are fast and accurate information processors, not only during game play, but in real-life situations as well.