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55 Ways To Have Fun With Google
Buy, download, share. The book contains over 220 pages and is available to buy at Lulu.com for $16.50 or Amazon for $19.66. You can also download the full book as PDF (or Word). it's free to share & remix & do fun stuff with......... Posted by: Kevin Permalink Source Longest Running Scientific Experiment
The second oldest of the experiments is the Beverly Clock (shown at left) at the University of Otago in New Zealand, which draws its energy from ambient temperature fluctuations that cause the air inside an air-tight chamber to expand and contract. As per Beverly's calculations, "one can obtain more than sufficient energy to drive an efficient clock mechanism, typically a one pound weight falling one inch each day, from a volume of one cubic foot of air expanding under a 6 degree diurnal variation of temperature"......... Posted by: Kevin Permalink Source Three-clawed Crab
The crab is believed to have a genetic mutation
Fisherman Jeff Brown caught the 20cm (7.8in) edible crab three miles off Portreath and realising its rarity, handed it into a Newquay aquarium. The crab, christened Claudette by the Blue Reef aquarium staff, will be quarantined for several days before going on show. Manager David Waines said additional fully formed pincers on crabs were "incredibly rare"......... Posted by: Ashley Permalink Source Brazil Publishes Biodiversity Generic Name List
The Brazilian government has been, and is, involved in a number of trademark disputes with companies that, for example, take a name of a fruit in Brazilian Portuguese and trademark it to get exclusive rights to commercialise it under that name in a certain country or region. This hinders Brazilian exports, especially when it happens in larger markets, Cristiano Franco Berbert of the Permanent Mission of Brazil in Geneva told Intellectual Property Watch. Berbert said the mission has sent the list to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) to help raise awareness of the issue. The government also is looking into the possibility of the list being circulated at a future meeting of the WIPO Standing Committee on the Law of Trademarks, Industrial Designs and Geographical Indications, he said. WIPO members adopted a Revised Trademark Law Treaty in March of this year (IPW, WIPO, 5 April 2006). In addition, Brazil is looking into the list possibly being presented at the WTO Council on the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, Berbert said......... Posted by: Jessica Permalink Source All Our N-gram are Belong to You
We think that the entire research community can benefit from access to such massive amounts of data. It will advance the state of the art, it will focus research in the promising direction of large-scale, data-driven approaches, and it will allow all research groups, no matter how large or small their computing resources, to play together. That's why we decided to share this enormous dataset with everyone. We processed 1,011,582,453,213 words of running text and are publishing the counts for all 1,146,580,664 five-word sequences that appear at least 40 times. There are 13,653,070 unique words, after discarding words that appear less than 200 times......... Posted by: Kevin Permalink Source Broad Talk Illuminates Genetics
Photo / L. Barry Hetherington
David Altshuler Now, scientists are on the brink of identifying genes that play a major role in a variety of diseases, thanks to recent rapid advances in DNA sequencing technology, according to Dr. David Altshuler, director of the program in medical and population genetics at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Altshuler talked about "expectations for improved therapies in the era of genomic medicine" at the final installment of the "Midsummer Nights' Science" lecture series held at the Broad Institute on Aug. 1. Researchers at the Broad and around the world are using new sequencing technology to look for genes that are linked to the development of diseases such as diabetes, multiple sclerosis, lupus, bipolar disorder and autism, among many others. The new research builds on the 2003 completion of the human genome sequence, which showed that while most humans share the vast majority of their genetic sequence (about 99.9 percent), variations known as single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, occur within the other.1 percent of the genome. Those variations are what make each individual unique......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source Answer To A 20-year-old Metal Question
Novel 3-D microbeam experiment enables direct proof of the Mughrabi model of metal stress.
But the measurements also show that averages can be deceiving. They mask extremely large variations in stresses that, until now, had gone on undetected. The experiments have implications for important practical problems in sheet metal forming and control of metal fatigue, which is responsible for a number of structural materials failures. When metals deform, the neat crystal structure breaks into a complex three-dimensional web of crystal defects called "dislocation walls" that enclose cells of dislocation-free material. The effect is like micron-sized bubbles in foam. These complex dislocation structures are directly responsible for the mechanical properties of virtually all metals, and yet they remain very poorly understood in spite of decades of research. Twenty years ago, the German researcher Häel Mughrabi theorized that the stresses in the dislocation walls and the cell interiors would be different and have opposite signs--an important result for modeling the effects of shaping and working metal on its properties. Until now there has only been indirect evidence for Mughrabi's model because of the problem of precisely measuring stress at the micron level in individual cells in the dislocation structure......... Posted by: Sarah Permalink Source Searching For A Woodpecker
An artist's image of what an ivory-billed woodpecker looks like. Credit: George M. Sutton/Cornell Lab of Ornithology
But last month scientists from NASA and the University of Maryland, College Park, Md., launched a project to identify possible areas where the woodpecker might be living. Finding these habitat areas will guide future searches for the bird and help determine if it is really extinct or has survived an elusive existence. The question of whether the species still exists started when a kayaker reported spotting the woodpecker along Arkansas' Cache River in 2004. That sighting spawned an intensive search for the species by wildlife conservationists, bird watchers, field biologists and others. In June a research aircraft flew over delta regions of the lower Mississippi River to track possible areas of habitat suitable for the ivory-billed woodpecker, one of the largest and most regal members of the woodpecker family. The project is supported by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey. Scientists from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., and the University of Maryland used NASA's Laser Vegetation Imaging Sensor (LVIS) onboard the aircraft. The instrument uses lasers that send pulses of energy to the Earth's surface. Photons of light from the lasers bounce off leaves, branches and the ground and reflect back to the instrument. By analyzing these returned signals, scientists receive a direct measurement of the height of the forest's leaf covered tree tops, the ground level below and everything in between......... Posted by: Ashley Permalink Source Links between DNA damage and breast cancer
In the United States, breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related death in women. Breast cancer detection and treatment generally target epithelial cells, the primary locus of breast cancers, but in recent years evidence has accumulated that genetic mutations that develop into cancer may occur initially in a deeper layer of breast tissue, called the stroma. Genetic changes in this connective tissue that supports the breast's network of glands and ducts have been reported to precede the cancerous conversion of tumor cells, but the actual role of stromal cells in the early stages of breast cancer initiation and progression is not well understood. In two recent papers*, the PNRI/NIST team explored the occurrence of damage to stromal DNA caused by free radicals and other oxidants. NIST scientists used a high-precision chemical analysis technique (liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry with isotope dilution) to identify specific DNA lesions, while the PNRI team used a spectroscopic technique (Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy) to reveal subtle conformational changes to DNA base and backbone structures. Such alterations to the molecular structure can change or disrupt gene expression......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source A Summertime Air Quality Exam
NASA's Aura satellite can see several different forms of air pollution worldwide. This image shows high levels of nitrogen dioxide on the U.S. East Coast in 2005. Credit: NASA
But since early July Washington area skies have been put under a unique microscope as researchers from NASA and around the country assembled a powerful array of scientific instruments -- in space and on the ground -- to dissect the region's atmosphere. The result will be not only a better understanding of intense urban air pollution episodes but also a better toolkit to track and probe air pollution worldwide from space. Two years ago NASA launched the third of its major Earth Observing System satellites -- Aura -- carrying a group of instruments designed to take global measurements of air pollution on a daily basis. Aura sensors can detect five of the six air pollutants regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But to make these 400-mile-high readings as accurate as possible, data from the sophisticated Aura instruments need to be in comparison to data from tried-and-true sensors on Earth. NASA is sponsoring just such a "ground-truth" experiment this summer. Howard University Research Campus, Beltsville, Md., is hosting visiting scientists, graduate students and instruments for a six-week-long series of intensive observations. The experiment is also evaluating the next generation of instruments used in daily weather forecasting, as well as tracking one of the strongest greenhouse gases involved in climate change: water vapor, which at increased levels we feel as humidity......... Posted by: Tyler Permalink Source |
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