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A new project to create a 3D map of space so large that scientists can find a 500 million-light-year-size remnant from the early universe inside it began operation last month. The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey opened its eyes to the universe, taking in data from hundreds of galaxies and quasars in the constellation Aquarius, from its perch on the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico. Eventually, it will image two million galaxies and quasars.

An immune-suppressing drug called rapamycin could possibly treat Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome (HGPS), a rare genetic disease that causes premature aging, and advance biological understanding of the normal aging process, according to researchers from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) at the National Institutes of Health, the University of Maryland and Massachusetts General Hospital. Progeria is a genetic disorder characterized by dramatic premature aging. "Progerin that causes progeria also accumulates, although in very small amounts, in normal aging," said Dimitri Krainc, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. "However, if rapamycin proves to have beneficial effects in lifespan in humans it is safe to assume that it will not be just because it may clear progerin from cells, but also because it clears other toxic products that accumulate during aging." Ref.: Francis S. Collins, et al., Rapamycin Reverses Cellular Phenotypes and Enhances Mutant Protein Clearance in Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome Cells, Science, 2011; [DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3002346]

Difference between vapor and gas The term gas refers to a substance that is in its gaseous form or a substance that has a single defined thermodynamic state at room temperature whereas a vapor refers to a substance that is a equilibrium between two phases at room temperature, namely gaseous and liquid phase. All matter on earth exists in any of the three states: solid, liquid or gaseous. 'Gas' refers to a substance in the gaseous state. Gases do not have either shape or volume. However, the term 'vapor' or 'vapour' refers to a substance in equilibrium between two phases, usually liquid and gaseous. Vapor is not a state of matter but is a specific type of gas. Gases are in a gaseous state at room temperature. The molecules in a gas can expand to occupy any available volume as there is very little inter molecular attraction. On the other hand, the molecules of a vapor gain energy and vaporize from a substance which is either a solid or liquid at room temperature. For example, steam is a water vapor that turns into water at room temperature. Oxygen, which is a gas, will still be a gas at room temperature. Gas is a state of matter. Vapor is not, it is constantly in transition. An easy way to distinguish between vapor and gas is that vapor is something that can be seen or smelled or something that settles down on the ground, while one cannot see a gas but can only smell it. However, there are some exceptions to this classification, for example, water vapor. Water vapor cannot be smelt and it does not settle down on the ground.

A collection of IT training resources at UCLA. LearnIT is your one-stop shop for online IT training resources at UCLA. Please use the buttons on the right under the heading "IT Resources" to log in to the various websites anytime, anywhere.

The last thing hatchling dinosaurs might have seen were giant snakes, researchers say. Scientists found the nearly complete remains of an 11-foot-long, 67-million-year-old serpent coiled around a crushed dinosaur egg right next to a hatchling in the nest of a sauropod dinosaur, the largest animals to have ever walked the Earth. "We think that the hatchling had just exited its egg, and that activity attracted the snake," explained researcher Dhananjay Mohabey, a paleontologist at the Geological Survey of India. "It was such a thrill to discover such a portentous moment frozen in time."

Archive-It is a subscription web archiving service from the Internet Archive that helps organizations to harvest, build, and preserve collections of digital content. Through our user friendly web application Archive-It partners can collect, catalog, and manage their collections of archived content with 24/7 access and full text search available for their use as well as their patrons. Content is hosted and stored at the Internet Archive data centers.

Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) is an open source middleware system for volunteer and grid computing. It was originally developed to support the SETI@home project before it became useful as a platform for other distributed applications in areas as diverse as mathematics, medicine, molecular biology, climatology, and astrophysics. The intent of BOINC is to make it possible for researchers to tap into the enormous processing power of personal computers around the world.

The AIFB Web Portal is the public web site of the Institute of Applied Informatics and Formal Description Methods (AIFB) at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. It uses Semantic MediaWiki to provide a highly customised Content Management System. The site provides content in two languages (German and English), and it offers rich views for browsing different kinds of data. The content of the AIFB Web Portal is regularly edited by most members of the institute, from secretary to professor, but it is not open for public editing.

"However, anthropological datasets show enormous complexity in how and why men and women behave the ways that they do [vi]. Studies in human biology and anthropology regularly demonstrate a dynamic flexibility and complex biocultural context for all human behavior, and this is especially true for gender.... No matter how much some want it to be true, it is just not that simple; there are no clear cut and easy answers to why we do what we do, and why men and women sometimes have problems getting along. To ignore the enormous wealth of data on how men and women are similar AND different and to try to tackle this enormously complex reality via one-dimensional approaches is just poor science."

"In humans, physical stimulation, such as massage therapy, reduces stress and has demonstrable health benefits. Grooming in primates may have similar effects but it remains unclear whether the positive effects are due to physical contact or to its social value. Here we show that physical stimulation reduces stress in a coral reef fish, the surgeonfish Ctenochaetus striatus. These fish regularly visit cleaner wrasses Labroides dimidiatus to have ectoparasites removed. The cleanerfish influences client decisions by physically touching the surgeonfish with its pectoral and pelvic fins, a behaviour known as tactile stimulation. We simulated this behaviour by exposing surgeonfish to mechanically moving cleanerfish models. Surgeonfish had significantly lower levels of cortisol when stimulated by moving models compared with controls with access to stationary models. Our results show that physical contact alone, without a social aspect, is enough to produce fitness-enhancing benefits, a situation so far only demonstrated in humans"

"At least it doesn't when you practise over and over again without a break. Sydney scientists have found learning improves when students take a rest from continuous study or training. ''It seems intuitive that every minute of study should make you better, but, actually, if you do too much it might backfire and you end up wasting time,'' said the study's lead researcher, Joel Pearson."

"Dr Zbinden said that while the discovery of the bacterium is no cause for alarm, it is important that it is recognised and the risk is quantified. "This bacterium seems to have a natural potential to cause severe disease and so it's important that clinicians and microbiologists are aware of it"

The Hacker Academy takes its members on an impressive journey from the hacker's perspective. THA delves into the psyche of a hacker: what they want, how they will get it - and an "it takes one to know one mentality". Our philosophy at The Hacker Academy is that members will be armed with the knowledge necessary to practice, implement, and deploy what they have learned immediately and effectively. All training modules are available 24/7 and are perfect for any skill level.

"He then asked a bunch of radiologists to review the slides of lungs for cancerous nodules. He wanted to see if they would notice a gorilla the size of a matchbook glaring angrily at them from inside the slide. But they didn't: 83 percent of the radiologists missed it, Drew says. This wasn't because the eyes of the radiologists didn't happen to fall on the large, angry gorilla. Instead, the problem was in the way their brains had framed what they were doing. They were looking for cancer nodules, not gorillas. "They look right at it, but because they're not looking for a gorilla, they don't see that it's a gorilla," Drew says. In other words, what we're thinking about - what we're focused on - filters the world around us so aggressively that it literally shapes what we see"