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POPSGenome-wide study of autism published in Nature "The biggest challenge to finding the genes that contribute to autism is having a large and well studied group of patients and their family members, both for primary discovery of genes and to test and verify the discovery candidates," said Aravinda Chakravarti, professor of medicine, pediatrics and molecular biology and genetics at the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins, and one of the study's senior authors. "This latest finding would not have been possible without these many research groups and consortia pooling together their patient resources. Of course, they would not have been possible without the genomic scanning technologies either."
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POPSHow Last.fm inspired a scientific breakthrough
How does it work? At the basic level, students can "drag and drop" research papers into the site at mendeley.com, which automatically extracts data, keywords, cited references, etc, thereby creating a searchable database and saving countless hours of work. That in itself is great, but now the Last.fm bit kicks in, enabling users to collaborate with researchers around the world, whose existence they might not know about until Mendeley's algorithms find, say, that they are the most-read person in Japan in their niche specialism. You can recommend other people's papers and see how many people are reading yours, which you can't do in Nature and Science. Mendeley says that instead of waiting for papers to be published after a lengthy procedure of acquiring citations, they could move to a regime of "real-time" citations, thereby greatly reducing the time taken for research to be applied in the real world and actually boost economic growth. There are lots of research archives. For the physica
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POPSTetris improves brain function? The study was funded by Blue Planet Software Inc., the sole agent for the Tetris Co. Dr. Richard Haier, the study’s lead author, is a consultant to Blue Planet. (see also: http://www.bizjournals.com/albuquerque/stories/2009/08/31/daily22.html)
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POPS'Tetris' can wipe out your traumas Then they asked half of them to play Tetris, while the other half apparently did nothing. In Oxford, that probably means reading a little Dostoyevsky while sipping a Pimms. The Tetris players apparently suffered significantly fewer nasty memories of those ugly images than did those who were left idle. The researchers are extrapolating that this might help people deal with post- traumatic stress disorder.
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POPSMolecular farming targets magic bullets It's a biotechnology enterprise, emerging after years of research that have established Guelph and Plantform's co-founder, University of Guelph environmental biologist professor Chris Hall and his research group, as leaders in molecular farming.
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POPSWorking night shifts raises cancer risk The report refers specifically to individuals who work nights in the fields of health care, security, transportation, media and the military. Some 10 percent of the population consistently works night shifts, according to the report, and 25 percent work such shifts occasionally.
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POPS Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings The Lindau meeting will have---so its organizers hope---a single leitmotif, namely the issue of the fundamental qualifications for training to be a researcher and the essential prerequisites for becoming a successful scientist.
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POPSMale monkeys prefer boys' toys To try and tease out the effects of nature over those of nurture, Wallen and his colleagues studied a group of captive rhesus monkeys. His team reasoned that the choices of the monkeys wouldn't be determined by social pressures. Video on source.
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POPSBiotech turns to hair-loss research Much is still unknown about the phenomenon of balding, a trait that only humans and some monkeys share, said Stanford University Professor Anthony Oro. It's not even clear why humans, over the course of evolution, shed most of their thicker body hair but kept a crop on the head.
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POPSDesign and the Elastic Mind Design and the Elastic Mind explores the reciprocal relationship between science and design in the contemporary world by bringing together design objects and concepts that marry the most advanced scientific research with attentive consideration of human limitations, habits, and aspirations. The exhibition highlights designers’ ability to grasp momentous changes in technology, science, and history—changes that demand or reflect major adjustments in human behavior—and translate them into objects that people can actually understand and use. This Web site presents over three hundred of these works, including fifty projects that are not featured in the gallery exhibition.
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POPSTear-free onions "By shutting down the lachrymatory factor synthase gene, we have stopped valuable sulphur compounds being converted to the tearing agent, and instead made them available for redirection into compounds, some of which are known for their flavour and health properties."
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POPSMind & Life Modern physics is perhaps where this second meeting ground is most visible. Physics is in the middle of a conceptual revolution pursuing the so-called unification efforts, in order to relate the minute universe of quantum mechanism to that of macrophysics and gravitation. As is well known, such research has opened numerous gaping epistemological questions; for example non-locality, the origin of the universe, and the role of the observer.
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POPSEat, Drink and Be Monitored Over the next 10 years, a team of more than 20 scientists, including psychologists and physicists, will be monitoring diners as they come for lunch each day.
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