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Theodore Berger and his team at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering's Department of Biomedical Engineering have developed a neural prosthesis for rats that is able to restore their ability to form long-term memories after they had been pharmacologically blocked. In a dramatic demonstration, Berger blocked the ability to rats to form long-term memories by using pharmacological agents to disrupt the neural circuitry that communicates between two subregions of the hippocampus, CA1 and CA3, which interact to create long-term memory, prior research has shown. The rats were unable to remember which lever to pull to gain a reward, or could only remember for 5-10 seconds, when previously they could remember for a long period of time. The researchers then developed an artificial hippocampal system that could duplicate the pattern of interaction between CA3-CA1 interactions. Long-term memory capability returned to the pharmacologically blocked rats when the team activated the electronic device programmed to duplicate the memory-encoding function. The researchers went on to show that if a prosthetic device and its associated electrodes were implanted in animals with a normal, functioning hippocampus, the device could actually strengthen the memory being generated internally in the brain and enhance the memory capability of normal rats. "These integrated experimental modeling studies show for the first time that with sufficient information about the neural coding of memories, a neural prosthesis capable of real-time identification and manipulation of the encoding process can restore and even enhance cognitive mnemonic processes," says the paper. Next steps, according to Berger and Deadwyler, will be attempts to duplicate the rat results in primates (monkeys), with the aim of eventually creating prostheses that might help human victims of Alzheimer's disease, stroke, or injury recover function. Ref.: "A Cortical Neural Prosthesis for Restoring and Enhancing

"There is a "significant credibility gap" between researchers' expectations and the likelihood of their forging long-term careers in higher education, a survey has found. More than three-quarters of research staff responding to the Careers in Research Online Survey 2013 said they aspired to a career in higher education and around two-thirds said they expected to achieve this. But it was "unrealistic to expect" that this number of research staff, or even half of those in the early stages of their career, would be able to secure a long-term research role in higher education, says the report, based on the survey produced by Vitae, the careers organisation for researchers."

ScienceDaily (Oct. 17, 2011) - Rising sea levels in the coming centuries is perhaps one of the most catastrophic consequences of rising temperatures. Massive economic costs, social consequences and forced migrations could result from global warming. But how frightening of times are we facing? Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute are part of a team that has calculated the long-term outlook for rising sea levels in relation to the emission of greenhouse gases and pollution of the atmosphere using climate models.

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.

As a subclass of agriculture, dairy farming is also a long-term enterprise that's producing milk and other dairy products. Farming a dairy involves heavy investment in terms of land, building, cows etc that's why supporting the movement of enterprising label the trivedi effect treated cows have shown an increase in milk production and reproduction too.

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The term Digital Library refers to a wide array of different organisations and collections that share the common trait of exposing digital content to a community of users. Digital libraries are applied in many different contexts ranging from academic institutions to public libraries, archives, museums and industries. The type of content that is stored in digital libraries varies depending on the organisation, it can either be reproduction of physical objects or content which is "born digital".

'The Exoplanet Exploration Program (ExEP) is responsible for implementing NASA's plans for the discovery and understanding of planetary systems around nearby stars. ExEP plays an important function in exoplanet research, by laying out a long-term view of the entire field and charting out a strategic timeline of missions and instruments."

We use data provided by the World Bank to show the main economic indicators of all countries. Each indicator is presented in comparison to several other countries and in terms of changes over time. We discuss the definitions of the various indicators and provide information about the ways in which one can interpret them. See for example, data for the U.S. economic indicators

Welcome to the future! Here you will find a speculative timeline of future history. Part fact and part fiction, the timeline is based on detailed research that includes analysis of current trends, projected long-term environmental changes, advances in technology such as Moore's Law, future medical breakthroughs, and the evolving geopolitical landscape. Where possible, references have been provided to support the predictions. FutureTimeline.net is intended to be an ongoing, collaborative project that is open for discussion - we welcome ideas from scientists, futurists, inventors, writers and anyone else interested in the future of our world.

"If you were a bacterium, the virus M13 might seem innocuous enough. It insinuates more than it invades, setting up shop like a freeloading houseguest, not a killer. Once inside it makes itself at home, eating your food, texting indiscriminately. Recently, however, bioengineers at Stanford have given M13 a bit of a makeover. The researchers, Monica Ortiz, a doctoral candidate in bioengineering, and Drew Endy, PhD, an assistant professor of bioengineering, have parasitized the parasite and harnessed M13's key attributes - its non-lethality and its ability to package and broadcast arbitrary DNA strands - to create what might be termed the biological Internet, or "Bi-Fi." Their findings were published online Sept. 7 in the Journal of Biological Engineering."

"Artificial Intelligence, AI, Machine Learning, digital assistant, AI algorithm (excluded terms: -weiwei, -las, -parrish), by Singularity Utopia."

ScienceDaily (Nov. 4, 2010) - Positive psychological changes that occur during meditation training are associated with greater telomerase activity, according to researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the University of California, San Francisco. The study is the first to link positive well-being to higher telomerase, an enzyme important for the long-term health of cells in the body.

A new study in The Lancet rates the harmfulness of 20 psychoactive drugs according to 16 criteria and finds that alcohol comes out on top. Although that conclusion is generating headlines, it is not at all surprising, since alcohol is, by several important measures (including acute toxicity, impairment of driving ability, and the long-term health effects of heavy use), the most dangerous widely used intoxicant, and its abuse is also associated with violence, family breakdown, and social estrangement. A group of British drug experts gathered by the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD) rated alcohol higher than most or all of the other drugs for health damage, mortality, impairment of mental functioning, accidental injury, economic cost, loss of relationships, and negative impact on community. Over all, alcohol rated 72 points on a 100-point scale, compared to 55 for heroin, 54 for crack cocaine, and 33 for methamphetamine. Cannabis got a middling score of 20, while MDMA (Ecstasy), LSD, and psilocybin mushrooms were at the low end, with ratings of 9, 7, and 6, respectively.

Free, research level articles in a variety of scientific fields. When one remembers that research journals often go for hundreds of dollars per year in hardcopy form, a resource like this is appreciated even more, in this time of widespread long term unemployment in the pure and applied sciences.

More than 6,000 different species living on the sea-floor have been identified so far and more than half of these are unique to the icy continent. A combination of long-term monitoring studies, newly gathered information on the marine life distribution and global ocean warming models, enable the scientists to identify Antarctica's marine "biodiversity hotspots". Researcher Griffiths describes how krill populations (the shrimp-like invertebrates eaten by penguins, whales and seals) are reducing as a result of a decrease in sea-ice cover. A much smaller crustacean (copepods) is dominating the area once occupied by them. This shifts the balance of the food web to favour predators, like jellyfish, that are not eaten by penguins and other Southern Ocean higher predators. Sea-ice reduction is also affecting penguins that breed on the ice.

Far fetched but interesting idea. Unlikely we will actually find out in the near term due to conditions in the atmosphere of these planets.

In what may feel like a flashback to the porn wars of the '60s, a new study investigates the link between a country's relative gender equality and the degree of female "empowerment" in the X-rated entertainment it consumes. Researchers at the University of Hawaii focused on three countries in particular: Norway, the United States and Japan, which are respectively ranked 1st, 15th and (yikes) 54th on the United Nations' Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM). To simplify their analysis, their library of smut was limited to explicit photographs of women "from mainstream pornographic magazines and Internet websites, as well as from the portfolios of the most popular porn stars from each nation." Then they set out to evaluate each image on both a disempowerment and an empowerment scale, using respective measures like whether the woman is "bound and dominated" by "leashes, collars, gags, or handcuffs" or "whether she has a natural looking body." Their hypothesis was that societies with greater gender equity will consume pornography that has more representations of "empowered women" and less of "disempowered women." It turned out the former was true, but, contradictory as it may sound, the latter was not. "While Norwegian pornography offers a wider variety of body types -- conforming less to a societal ideal that is disempowering to the average woman -- there are still many images that do not promote a healthy respect for women," the researchers explain. In other words, Norwegian porn showed more signs of female empowerment, but X-rated images in all three countries equally depicted women in demeaning positions and scenarios. This, the researchers surmise, "suggests that empowerment and disempowerment within pornography are potentially different constructs." So, gender equality is accompanied by sexual interest in a broader range of beauty types but not a decrease in porn's infantilization of females, use of dominating fetish gear on women or any of the other characteristics th