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POPSGoogle Offices. Oh my god! Oh my god... I wish I could get a job there. I can say I would be the happiest dude in the whole world. :) Lol, someday I'll get there... :P
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POPSSo cute friendship. =) This is so cute. Too sad that they'll have to be separated, it's really rare to see something like this, and the good part is that people can learn with this too. No differences, friendship is above it all. :)
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POPSEver wondered what's the origin of Zero? This was a good find, to me. Very interesting and made me feel a lot better to know these things. :) Zero, a hard worker that went from a mere placeholder to what it is today. A winner in life. Example of a fighter! See http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=history-of-zero for more.
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POPSMolecules revealed in all their glory by microscope
Gross revealed to physicsworld.com that there was an element of luck in discovering that carbon monoxide makes for a highly effective AFM tip because they had picked up the CO molecule by accident during routine use of their conventional AFM. The researchers were quick, however, to realize that the observed improvement in resolution made scientific sense because CO has been used in scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM), for many years, to improve resolution for the same reason. Now, this is funny how we can discover things even if we're not trying to. Gross says that he and his team intend to develop their research with the short term goal of improving resolution and building up a catalogue of chemical signatures for a range of different atoms and molecules. Eventually the CO-tipped AFM could be used to determine the identity of unidentified familiar molecules for use in chemical analysis. In the longer term, new forms of AFM such as this could be applied to the study of chemical rea
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POPSNew quantum algorithm helpes solving big problems. “Large-scale linear systems of equations exist in many fields, such as weather prediction, engineering, and computer vision”, says Harrow. “Quantum computers could supply serious improvements for these and many other problems. For example, a trillion-variable problem would take a classical computer at least a hundred trillion steps to solve, but using the new algorithm, a quantum computer could solve the problem in just a few hundred steps”. The solution could also be applied to other complex processes such as image and video processing, genetic analyses and even Internet traffic control. Sounds pretty good to me!
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POPSTrapped girls raised alarm on Facebook Now come on, it is a nice story and everything but as said, if they had access to facebook, why not just dial 000 for the Fire Service? Endangering their lives just for a story to tell their friends?
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POPSNew form of carbon created. This is a very nice one. And high speed transistors from MEG? This would provide many changes in all the electronic equipment we use daily.
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POPSInvisible hand in invisible matter. Dark matter might not exist. Dr Famaey added, "If we account for our observations with a modified law of gravity, it makes perfect sense to replace the effective action of hypothetical dark matter with a force closely related to the distribution of visible matter." The implications of the new research could change some of the most widely held scientific theories about the history and expansion of the universe. Lead researcher Dr. Gianfranco Gentile at the University of Ghent concludes, "Understanding this puzzling conspiracy is probably the key to unlock the formation of galaxies and their structures." What about NASA's direct proof on dark matter's existance? Broken study? This is actually makes sense, but so far is a little hard to accept. Does anyone have any ideas about this?
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POPSDeath rays from space
"Every square centimeter on the top of the Earth's atmosphere is hit by several cosmic rays per second," Fields says. "This is forever going on." At present, the average human receives the equivalent of about 10 chest X-rays per year from cosmic rays. We shouldn't be alarmed by this, since it is just part of the natural background radiation under which humans and our ancestors have been exposed to for eons. Indeed, cosmic-ray-induced mutations may sometimes be beneficial. "It is clear that in some way cosmic rays shaped evolution of organisms on Earth," says Franco Ferrari from the University of Szczecin in Poland. Although 30 light-years is small on a galactic scale, Fields thinks it likely that Earth has been caught in a supernova "kill radius" as many as a dozen times over our 4.5-billion-year history. However, a nearby supernova is not the only way to increase the cosmic ray intensity. As our Sun orbits around the galactic center, it regularly passes through one of th
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POPSCreating fat that burns calories Understanding how brown fat develops may ultimately lead to better ways to treat diseases like diabetes. This research is still in its early days, Celi says. “At the present time, this is not an immediate intervention , but it is definitely something to look forward to in the long run.” Awesome news, hope they can really develop this research to help at least diminish this huge problem that obesity and diabetes are today.
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POPSScientists are to turn chickens into dinosaurs. Now, a quote from the classic Jurassic Park movie: Dr. Ian Malcolm: God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs... Dr. Ellie Sattler: Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth... Is this really a good idea?
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POPSThe revolution in Nanophotonics Future work may involve creating a spaser-based nanolaser that uses an electrical source instead of a light source, which would make them more practical for computer and electronics applications. Awesome news. I can only think how great it's going to be for other projects and researches, speeding up the discoveries. :)
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POPSEarly Risers Crash Faster Than People Who Stay Up Late More important, these regions included the suprachiasmatic area, which is home to the body’s circadian clock. This area sends signals to boost alertness as the pressure to sleep mounts. Unlike night owls, early risers didn’t get this late-day lift. Peigneux says faster activation of sleep pressure appears to prevent early birds from fully benefiting from the circadian signal, as evening types do. Wait wait, did he just say the night owls showed no difference in attention-related brain activity and instead, after 10 hours they had grown more alert? This is great! I always worried about that, now seems like I don't have to, anymore. :D
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POPSCould we create quantum creatures in the lab? By impinging on the virus, it forces it into a superposition of both its ground state and next vibrational energy state. Now the virus should be doing two different things at once " the equivalent of you simultaneously mowing the lawn and doing the shopping. "They have come up with a really neat experiment " inventive and I think feasible," says Peter Knight of Imperial College London. You can read the full article for more details on the process. It's worth reading if you care enough or are just curious. :)
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POPSNanodiamonds Advance Anticancer Gene Therapy Dr. Ho and his research team engineered surface-modified nanodiamond particles that successfully and efficiently delivered DNA into mammalian cells. The delivery efficiency was 70 times greater than that of a conventional standard for gene delivery. That's just great! :D
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POPSDitching binary will make quantum computers more powerful Brilliant! Jonathan Home at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, says Neeley's team needs to extend its basic system in such a way that two or more qudits can transport information between them, which would allow more complex computational operations to be undertaken. "Designing the sort of system where two qudits interact, but still retain the interesting properties of a five-level system, will be a major challenge," Home says. Did he say "challenge"? I bet we're going to see this working anytime soon.
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POPSStrategically Placed Obstacle Near an Exit Can Speed Evacuations Andreas Schadschneider, a professor at the University of Cologne's Institute of Theoretical Physics in Germany who has studied pedestrian and traffic flows, says that the obstacle effect has popped up occasionally in the literature for several years. But the new work is, to his knowledge, the first time it has been empirically tested. "So, it no longer remains a vague theoretical prediction, but should be considered a serious effect that might be used for substantial increase in the safety of sports arenas and other large public buildings," Schadschneider says. This is interesting, but the man's got a point when he says: "For one thing, real-world evacuees might be discouraged by the appearance of an obstacle and retreat toward a different exit, which could negate the obstacle's benefits." Indeed, it's a hard thing to simulate. Just hope they're right.