Author Archives: Guest Post

12 Top Universities Partner with Coursera

If you were skeptical about the whole Ivy League online education thing catching on when you heard about edX, you may be surprised to learn that Coursera, an online education startup lead by two Stanford professors, just formed partnerships with 12 top universities to provide free online courses to the masses, according to The Huffington Post.

The universities that will now be providing free online courses to Coursera users are: Duke University, Johns Hopkins University, California Institute of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Rice University, University of Illinois, UC San Francisco, University of Virginia, University of Washington, University of Toronto, University of Edinburgh, and Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne. (more…)

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Mice Have System to Handle Smell of Fear

Mice appear to have a specialized system for detecting and at least initially processing instinctually important smells such as those that denote predators. The finding raises a question about whether their response to those smells is hardwired.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A new study finds that mice have a distinct neural subsystem that links the nose to the brain and is associated with instinctually important smells such as those emitted by predators. That insight, published online this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, prompts the question whether mice and other mammals have specially hardwired neural circuitry to trigger instinctive behavior in response to certain smells.

In the series of experiments and observations described in the paper, the authors found that nerve cells in the nose that express members of the gene family of trace amine-associated receptors (TAAR) have several key biological differences from the much more common and diverse neurons that express members of the olfactory receptor gene family. Those other nerve cells detect a much broader range of smells, said corresponding author Gilad Barnea, the Robert and Nancy Carney Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at Brown University. (more…)

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Going Big

UD researchers report progress in development of carbon nanotube-based continuous fibers

The Chou research group in the University of Delaware’s College of Engineering recently reported on advances in carbon nanotube-based continuous fibers with invited articles in Advanced Materials and Materials Today, two high impact scientific journals.

According to Tsu-Wei Chou, Pierre S. du Pont Chair of Engineering, who co-authored the articles with colleagues Weibang Lu and Amanda Wu, there has been a concerted scientific effort over the last decade to “go big” – to translate the superb physical and mechanical properties of nanoscale carbon nanotubes to the macroscale. (more…)

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Researchers Develop New Amp to Study the Universe

Researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology, both in Pasadena, have developed a new type of amplifier for boosting electrical signals. The device can be used for everything from studying stars, galaxies and black holes to exploring the quantum world and developing quantum computers.

“This amplifier will redefine what it is possible to measure,” said Jonas Zmuidzinas, chief technologist at JPL, who is Caltech’s Merle Kingsley Professor of Physics and a member of the research team. (more…)

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With Drug-Loaded Nanogel, Yale Researchers Attack Cancerous Tumors

Yale University scientists have developed a new mechanism for attacking cancerous tumors that intensifies the body’s immune response while simultaneously weakening the tumor’s ability to resist it.

“We believe this is a paradigm-changing immunotherapeutic method for cancer therapy,” said Tarek M. Fahmy, a bioengineer at Yale and the project’s principal investigator. “In essence, it’s a one-two punch strategy that seems to work well for melanoma and may work even better with other cancers.” (more…)

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Ancient Alteration of Seawater Chemistry Linked With Past Climate Change

Dissolution or creation of huge gypsum deposits changed sulfate content of the oceans

Scientists have discovered a potential cause of Earth’s “icehouse climate” cooling trend of the past 45 million years. It has everything to do with the chemistry of the world’s oceans.

“Seawater chemistry is characterized by long phases of stability, which are interrupted by short intervals of rapid change,” says geoscientist Ulrich Wortmann of the University of Toronto, lead author of a paper reporting the results and published this week in the journal Science.

“We’ve established a new framework that helps us better interpret evolutionary trends and climate change over long periods of time. The study focuses on the past 130 million years, but similar interactions have likely occurred through the past 500 million years.” (more…)

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