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Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2016 April 15 Mercury and Crescent Moon Set Image Credit & Copyright: Miguel Claro (TWAN, Dark Sky Alqueva)
Rosetta@home Fluorescent proteins designed from scratch Congrats to all Rosetta@home volunteers who contributed to a recent report in Nature describing the design of a completely artificial fluorescent beta-barrel protein. As described by one of the main authors, Anastassia, in this forum post: The paper presents many “firsts” in computational protein design. It is the first de novo design of the beta-barrel fold (one of the most described folds in the past 35 years, yet mysterious until now). CUDA Zone The first GPUs were designed as graphics accelerators, becoming more programmable over the 90s, culminating in NVIDIA's first GPU in 1999. Researchers and scientists rapidly began to apply the excellent floating point performance of this GPU for general purpose computing. In 2003, a team of researchers led by Ian Buck unveiled Brook, the first widely adopted programming model to extend C with data-parallel constructs. Ian Buck later joined NVIDIA and led the launch of CUDA in 2006, the world's first solution for general-computing on GPUs. Since its inception, the CUDA ecosystem has grown rapidly to include software development tools, services and partner-based solutions. The CUDA Toolkit includes libraries, debugging and optimization tools, a compiler and a runtime library to deploy your application.
News Blog: Quantum weirdness wins again: Entanglement clocks in at 10,000+ times faster than light No matter how many times researchers try, there's just no getting around the weirdness of quantum mechanics. In the latest attempt, researchers at the University of Geneva in Switzerland tried to determine whether entanglement—the fact that measuring a property of one particle instantly determines the property of another—is actually transmitted by some wave-like signal that's fast but not infinitely fast. Their test involved a series of measurements on pairs of entangled photons (particles of light) that were generated in Geneva (satellite view at left) and then split apart by optical fiber to two villages 18 kilometers (11 miles) apart where the team had set up photon detectors. (In 2007, researchers transmitted entangled light 144 kilometers between two of the Canary Islands.) The idea in the new experiment is that the photons in each entangled pair are hitting the distant detectors simultaneously, so there's no time for them to exchange a signal. What might such a theory look like?
Gaming the System: Video Gamers Help Researchers Untangle Protein Folding Problem What if the brainpower used playing video games could be channeled toward something more productive, such as helping scientists solve complex biological problems? A team of biochemists and computer scientists from the University of Washington (U.W.) in Seattle now reports that they have successfully tapped into this human problem-solving potential. Their competitive online game "Foldit," released in 2008, enlists the help of online puzzle-solvers to help crack one of science's most intractable mysteries—how proteins fold into their complex three-dimensional forms.
State of the Nation If possible, the first images in each set will be true-color, as you would see them with your own eyes. Most images will either be true-color or monochrome (black and white), unless stated otherwise. Many images can be vastly enlarged by clicking on them and choosing a larger size from the Flickr page. Gamers beat algorithms at finding protein structures Today's issue of Nature contains a paper with a rather unusual author list. Read past the standard collection of academics, and the final author credited is... an online gaming community. Scientists have turned to games for a variety of reasons, having studied virtual epidemics and tracked online communities and behavior, or simply used games to drum up excitement for the science.
Sonoluminescence Single-bubble sonoluminescence - A single, cavitating bubble. Video of synthetic wound cavity collapsing creating sonoluminescence. Long exposure image of multi-bubble sonoluminescence created by a high-intensity ultrasonic horn immersed in a beaker of liquid History[edit] NASA-funded game aims to make science more appealing Last week a curious, free release popped up on Steam: Moonbase Alpha, a NASA-funded game where up to six players can team up in order to save a near-future Lunar base crippled by a meteor strike. The game is just the first release from NASA's Learning Technologies program, which aims to help raise interest in the space program through gaming. Ars spoke with Daniel Laughlin, project manager of Learning Technologies, to learn more about the game and what we can expect to see in the future. The game was codeveloped by Army Game Studio and Virtual Heroes, two of the leading developers of "serious games."
Practical Physics This website is for teachers of physics in schools and colleges. It is a collection of experiments that demonstrate a wide range of physical concepts and processes. Some of the experiments can be used as starting-points for investigations or for enhancement activities. Many have links to carefully selected further reading and all include information and guidance for technicians. ScienceBlogs, we have a problem Much consternation over at the home of science blogging, ScienceBlogs. The forum for the brilliant Orac, Pharyngula, Molecule of the Day, and countless other insightful, funny and informative blogs has decided upon a bizarre new strategy in sourcing new posts. As of yesterday, the platform will host a new blog written by food giant PepsiCo, all about the company's specialist subject of refreshing sugary drinks and their benefits for dental and dietary health. Sorry, no, PepsiCo's scientific staff will be writing about nutrition on the new Food Frontiers blog. I'll give you a moment to get back on your chair.
The Speed of God : Uncertain Principles Over in Twitter-land, Eric Weinstein is visiting the AMNH at the same time as a bunch of Orthodox Jews, and takes the opportunity for a little Q&A: Me: Excuse me, but how is the phylogenetic tree reconciled with Torah.Modern Orthodox Man: Lorentzian time dilation. It’s a head hurter. This is an interesting attempt to square the six-day creation story with modern science, and raises one obvious question: How fast must God have been moving for the six days of creation to last 13.7 billion years?
citizenscience projects Bay Area Would you like to have a wetland at your school? SAVE THE FROGS! is looking for a school within a two-hour drive of Berkeley, California, that would like to have a wetland. The wetland would be designed to help frogs and provide for outdoor education. It would be shallow, less than 18-inches deep in the middle, and have gradual slopes.