Group items tagged

"Males and females differ in their biobehavioural response to stress, where males exhibit a heightened sympathetic response to stress compared with females. Specifically, Taylor et al. 1 propose that the classic "fight-or-flight" response to stress is adaptive for males, whilst females engage in a so-called "tend-and-befriend" response to stress. We propose that the Y-chromosome gene, SRY (sex-determining region on the Y chromosome), provides a genetic basis for the heightened sympathetic reactivity to stress and thus predominance of "fight-flight" response in males. Our idea is based on studies that demonstrate (i) the presence of SRY in brain regions and peripheral tissues abundant in catecholamines, (ii) the regulation of catecholamine synthesis and breakdown by SRY, and (iii) the role of SRY in voluntary movement and blood pressure in males"

Entropy can decrease, according to a new proposal - but the process would destroy any evidence of its existence, and erase any memory an observer might have of it. It sounds like the plot to a weird sci-fi movie, but the idea has recently been suggested by theoretical physicist Lorenzo Maccone, currently a visiting scientist at MIT, in an attempt to solve a longstanding paradox in physics.

The OCLC Developer Network is a community of developers collaborating to propose, discuss and test OCLC Web Services. This open source, code-sharing infrastructure improves the value of OCLC data for all users by encouraging new OCLC Web Service uses.

Current, partner and retired OKFN projects are listed below. These are projects that are actively being managed and fostered by the OKFN's staff and communities. To start a new project of your own, see our project proposal page.

The WikiEducator is an evolving community intended for the collaborative: planning of education projects linked with the development of free content; development of free content on Wikieducator for e-learning; work on building open education resources (OERs) on how to create OERs. networking on funding proposals developed as free content.

"Howard Rheingold offers a glimpse of the future of high-end online learning in which motivated self-learners collaborate via a variety of social media to create, deliver, and learn an agreed curriculum: a mutant variety of pedagogy that more closely resembles a peer-agogy. Rheingold proposes that our intention should be to teach ourselves how to teach ourselves online, and to share what we learn"

Solve for X is a place where the curious can go to hear and discuss radical technology ideas for solving global problems. Radical in the sense that the solutions could help billions of people. Radical in the sense that the audaciousness of the proposals makes them sound like science fiction.

"Since cancers have individual clonal karyotypes, are immortal and evolve from normal cells treated by carcinogens only after exceedingly long latencies of many months to decades-we deduce that carcinogenesis may be a form of speciation. This theory proposes that carcinogens initiate carcinogenesis by causing aneuploidy, i.e., losses or gains of chromosomes. Aneuploidy destabilizes the karyotype, because it unbalances thousands of collaborating genes including those that synthesize, segregate and repair chromosomes. Driven by this inherent instability aneuploid cells evolve ever-more random karyotypes automatically. Most of these perish, but a very small minority acquires reproductive autonomy-the primary characteristic of cancer cells and species"

In 1954, Alan Turing devised the Turing test as a way of verifying machine intelligence. The Turing test is a proposed a situation in which a human judge talks to both a computer and a human through a computer terminal. The judge cannot see the computer or the human, but can ask them questions via the computer. Based on the answers alone, the human judge has to determine which is which. If you're curious as to what constitutes a human poem, and what constitutes a computer poem, go to the submit page for the criteria or the what is computer poetry page for examples.

Many newly diagnosed prostate cancers present as low Gleason score tumors that require no treatment intervention. Distinguishing the many indolent tumors from the minority of lethal ones remains a major clinical challenge. We now show that low Gleason score prostate tumors can be distinguished as indolent and aggressive subgroups on the basis of their expression of genes associated with aging and senescence. Using gene set enrichment analysis, we identified a 19-gene signature enriched in indolent prostate tumors. We then further classified this signature with a decision tree learning model to identify three genes-FGFR1, PMP22, and CDKN1A-that together accurately predicted outcome of low Gleason score tumors. Validation of this three-gene panel on independent cohorts confirmed its independent prognostic value as well as its ability to improve prognosis with currently used clinical nomograms. Furthermore, protein expression of this three-gene panel in biopsy samples distinguished Gleason 6 patients who failed surveillance over a 10-year period. We propose that this signature may be incorporated into prognostic assays for monitoring patients on active surveillance to facilitate appropriate courses of treatment.

A proposed experiment using ground-based telescopes, called BigBOSS, may be the most cost-effective way to study and measure the phenomenon called dark energy, which appears to be causing the universe to expand at an accelerating rate.

A discussion of the history of the solar neutrino problem. History of the development of the solar model. Measurement of neutrinos. Discrepancy between observed and predicted neutrino flux. Proposed solution. Experimental verification.

Interesting lecture on the solar neutrion problem and how it was "solved".

Based on a theory developed by Prof. Rosenberg and Dr. Ilana Zilber-Rosenberg, the scientists propose that the basic unit of natural selection is not the individual living organism, plant or animal, but rather a larger biological milieu called a holobiont. This milieu can include plant or animal life as well as their symbiotic partners. In the case of animals, these partners tend to be microorganisms like intestinal bacteria.

Purpose of review: Autism is a biologically based disorder of brain development. Genetic factors - mutations, deletions, and copy number variants - are clearly implicated in causation of autism. However, they account for only a small fraction of cases, and do not easily explain key clinical and epidemiological features. This suggests that early environmental exposures also contribute. This review explores this hypothesis. Recent findings: Indirect evidence for an environmental contribution to autism comes from studies demonstrating the sensitivity of the developing brain to external exposures such as lead, ethyl alcohol and methyl mercury. But the most powerful proof-of-concept evidence derives from studies specifically linking autism to exposures in early pregnancy - thalidomide, misoprostol, and valproic acid; maternal rubella infection; and the organophosphate insecticide, chlorpyrifos. There is no credible evidence that vaccines cause autism. Summary: Expanded research is needed into environmental causation of autism. Children today are surrounded by thousands of synthetic chemicals. Two hundred of them are neurotoxic in adult humans, and 1000 more in laboratory models. Yet fewer than 20% of high-volume chemicals have been tested for neurodevelopmental toxicity. I propose a targeted discovery strategy focused on suspect chemicals, which combines expanded toxicological screening, neurobiological research and prospective epidemiological studies.

Soon the word "hella" may not be associated with California surfers as much as with scientists in lab coats. A physics student is petitioning to add "hella" to the International System of Units (SI) as the official designation of 10 to the 27th power, or a trillion trillions.

Of the many ideas for new physics that can be tested at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), supersymmetry is one of the most promising. The theory proposes that each fundamental fermion particle has a heavier bosonic superpartner (and vice versa for each fundamental boson) and by doing so, offers an extension of the standard model of particle physics that fixes many of its problems. None of the known particles appear to be superpartners, however, which leads to the daunting conclusion that if supersymmetry is correct, there are more than twice as many fundamental particles as we thought, but we have only been left with the lightest partners; that is, supersymmetry is broken.

With this new experiment, the researchers have succeeded for the first time in experimentally reconstructing full trajectories which provide a description of how light particles move through the two slits and form an interference pattern. Their technique builds on a new theory of weak measurement that was developed by Yakir Aharonov's group at Tel Aviv University. Howard Wiseman of Griffith University proposed that it might be possible to measure the direction a photon (particle of light) was moving, conditioned upon where the photon is found. By combining information about the photon's direction at many different points, one could construct its entire flow pattern ie. the trajectories it takes to a screen.

ScienceDaily (May 13, 2011) - Parents know the unparalleled joy and wonder of hearing a beloved child's first words turn quickly into whole sentences and then babbling paragraphs. But how human children acquire language-which is so complex and has so many variations-remains largely a mystery. Fifty years ago, linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky proposed an answer: Humans are able to learn language so quickly because some knowledge of grammar is hardwired into our brains. In other words, we know some of the most fundamental things about human language unconsciously at birth, without ever being taught.

"(PhysOrg.com) -- Did the early universe have just one spatial dimension? That's the mind-boggling concept at the heart of a theory that University at Buffalo physicist Dejan Stojkovic and colleagues proposed in 2010."