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Science and Technology Directory - Comprehensive resource to help you find highly selected science and technology related sites. Covering the fields of astronomy, biology, computer science, engineering, mathematics, physics, social science, and information technology and more....
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Towards Loosely-Coupled Programming on Petascale Systems. (arXiv:0808.3540v2 [cs.DC]) - We have extended the Falkon lightweight task execution framework to make loosely coupled programming on petascale systems a practical and useful programming model. This work studies and measures the performance factors involved in applying this approach to enable the use of petascale systems by a broader user community, and with greater ease. Our work enables the execution of highly parallel computations composed of loosely coupled serial jobs wi...
Feed Source: arxiv.org

Scientific Workflow Systems for 21st Century e-Science, New Bottle or New Wine?. (arXiv:0808.3545v1 [cs.SE]) - With the advances in e-Sciences and the growing complexity of scientific analyses, more and more scientists and researchers are relying on workflow systems for process coordination, derivation automation, provenance tracking, and bookkeeping. While workflow systems have been in use for decades, it is unclear whether scientific workflows can or even should build on existing workflow technologies, or they require fundamentally new approaches. In th...
Feed Source: arxiv.org

Accelerating Large-scale Data Exploration through Data Diffusion. (arXiv:0808.3546v1 [cs.DC]) - Data-intensive applications often require exploratory analysis of large datasets. If analysis is performed on distributed resources, data locality can be crucial to high throughput and performance. We propose a "data diffusion" approach that acquires compute and storage resources dynamically, replicates data in response to demand, and schedules computations close to data. As demand increases, more resources are acquired, thus allowing faster resp...
Feed Source: arxiv.org

Realizing Fast, Scalable and Reliable Scientific Computations in Grid Environments. (arXiv:0808.3548v1 [cs.DC]) - The practical realization of managing and executing large scale scientific computations efficiently and reliably is quite challenging. Scientific computations often involve thousands or even millions of tasks operating on large quantities of data, such data are often diversely structured and stored in heterogeneous physical formats, and scientists must specify and run such computations over extended periods on collections of compute, storage and ...
Feed Source: arxiv.org

Market-Oriented Cloud Computing: Vision, Hype, and Reality for Delivering IT Services as Computing Utilities. (arXiv:0808.3558v1 [cs.DC]) - This keynote paper: presents a 21st century vision of computing; identifies various computing paradigms promising to deliver the vision of computing utilities; defines Cloud computing and provides the architecture for creating market-oriented Clouds by leveraging technologies such as VMs; provides thoughts on market-based resource management strategies that encompass both customer-driven service management and computational risk management to sus...
Feed Source: arxiv.org

What It Feels Like To Hear Voices: Fond Memories of Julian Jaynes. (arXiv:0808.3563v1 [cs.CL]) - Julian Jaynes's profound humanitarian convictions not only prevented him from going to war, but would have prevented him from ever kicking a dog. Yet according to his theory, not only are language-less dogs unconscious, but so too were the speaking/hearing Greeks in the Bicameral Era, when they heard gods' voices telling them what to do rather than thinking for themselves. I argue that to be conscious is to be able to feel, and that all mammals (...
Feed Source: arxiv.org

Offloading Cognition onto Cognitive Technology. (arXiv:0808.3569v1 [cs.MA]) - "Cognizing" (i.e., thinking, understanding, knowing, and having the capacity to do what cognizers can do) is a mental state. Systems without mental states, such as cognitive technology, can sometimes also do some of what cognizers can do, but that does not make them cognizers. Cognitive technology allows cognizers to offload some of the functions they would otherwise have had to execute with their own brains and bodies alone; it also extends cogn...
Feed Source: arxiv.org

Model-Based Compressive Sensing. (arXiv:0808.3572v1 [cs.IT]) - Compressive sensing (CS) is an alternative to Shannon/Nyquist sampling for acquisition of sparse or compressible signals that can be well approximated by just K << N elements from an N-dimensional basis. Instead of taking periodic samples, we measure inner products with M < N random vectors and then recover the signal via a sparsity-seeking optimization or greedy algorithm. The standard CS theory dictates that robust signal recovery is p...
Feed Source: arxiv.org

Classical Knowledge for Quantum Security. (arXiv:0808.3574v1 [cs.CR]) - We propose a decision procedure for analysing security of quantum cryptographic protocols, combining a classical algebraic rewrite system for knowledge with an operational semantics for quantum distributed computing. As a test case, we use our procedure to reason about security properties of a recently developed quantum secret sharing protocol that uses graph states. We analyze three different scenarios based on the safety assumptions of the clas...
Feed Source: arxiv.org

Enabling Loosely-Coupled Serial Job Execution on the IBM BlueGene/P Supercomputer and the SiCortex SC5832. (arXiv:0808.3536v1 [cs.DC]) - Our work addresses the enabling of the execution of highly parallel computations composed of loosely coupled serial jobs with no modifications to the respective applications, on large-scale systems. This approach allows new-and potentially far larger-classes of application to leverage systems such as the IBM Blue Gene/P supercomputer and similar emerging petascale architectures. We present here the challenges of I/O performance encountered in mak...
Feed Source: arxiv.org

Data Diffusion: Dynamic Resource Provision and Data-Aware Scheduling for Data Intensive Applications. (arXiv:0808.3535v1 [cs.DC]) - Data intensive applications often involve the analysis of large datasets that require large amounts of compute and storage resources. While dedicated compute and/or storage farms offer good task/data throughput, they suffer low resource utilization problem under varying workloads conditions. If we instead move such data to distributed computing resources, then we incur expensive data transfer cost. In this paper, we propose a data diffusion appro...
Feed Source: arxiv.org

On the Growth Rate of the Weight Distribution of Irregular Doubly-Generalized LDPC Codes. (arXiv:0808.3504v1 [cs.IT]) - In this paper, an expression for the asymptotic growth rate of the number of small linear-weight codewords of irregular doubly-generalized LDPC (D-GLDPC) codes is derived. The expression is compact and generalizes existing results for LDPC and generalized LDPC (GLDPC) codes. Assuming that there exist check and variable nodes with minimum distance 2, it is shown that the growth rate depends only on these nodes. An important connection between this...
Feed Source: arxiv.org

Jamming in Fixed-Rate Wireless Systems with Power Constraints - Part II: Parallel Slow Fading Channels. (arXiv:0808.3418v1 [cs.IT]) - This is the second part of a two-part paper that studies the problem of jamming in a fixed-rate transmission system with fading. In the first part, we studied the scenario with a fast fading channel, and found Nash equilibria of mixed strategies for short term power constraints, and for average power constraints with and without channel state information (CSI) feedback. We also solved the equally important maximin and minimax problems with pure s...
Feed Source: arxiv.org

Jamming in Fixed-Rate Wireless Systems with Power Constraints - Part I: Fast Fading Channels. (arXiv:0808.3431v1 [cs.IT]) - This is the first part of a two-part paper that studies the problem of jamming in a fixed-rate transmission system with fading. Both transmitter and jammer are subject to power constraints which can be enforced over each codeword short-term / peak) or over all codewords (long-term / average), hence generating different scenarios. All our jamming problems are formulated as zero-sum games, having the probability of outage as pay-off function and po...
Feed Source: arxiv.org

Codes on hypergraphs. (arXiv:0808.3453v1 [cs.IT]) - Codes on hypergraphs are an extension of the well-studied family of codes on bipartite graphs. Bilu and Hoory (2004) constructed an explicit family of codes on regular t-partite hypergraphs whose minimum distance improves earlier estimates of the distance of bipartite-graph codes. They also suggested a decoding algorithm for such codes and estimated its error-correcting capability. In this paper we study two aspects of hypergraph codes. First, w...
Feed Source: arxiv.org

Cooperative Protocols for Random Access Networks. (arXiv:0808.3502v1 [cs.IT]) - Cooperative communications have emerged as a significant concept to improve reliability and throughput in wireless systems. On the other hand, WLANs based on random access mechanism have become popular due to ease of deployment and low cost. Since cooperation introduces extra transmissions among the cooperating nodes and therefore increases the number of packet collisions, it is not clear whether there is any benefit from using physical layer coo...
Feed Source: arxiv.org

A model for reactive porous transport during re-wetting of hardened concrete. (arXiv:0801.3046v2 [cs.CE] UPDATED) - We develop a mathematical model that captures the transport of liquid water in hardened concrete, as well as the chemical reactions that occur between the infiltrating water and the residual calcium silicate compounds that reside in the porous concrete matrix. We investigate the hypothesis that the reaction product -- calcium silicate hydrate gel -- clogs the pores within the concrete thereby hindering water transport. Using numerical simulations...
Feed Source: arxiv.org

Analysis of the postulates produced by Karp's Theorem. (arXiv:0808.3222v3 [cs.CC] UPDATED) - This is the final article in a series of four articles. Richard Karp has proven that a deterministic polynomial time solution to K-SAT will result in a deterministic polynomial time solution to all NP-Complete problems. However, it is demonstrated that a deterministic polynomial time solution to any NP-Complete problem does not necessarily produce a deterministic polynomial time solution to all NP-Complete problems. ...
Feed Source: arxiv.org

Confirmation Bias and the Open Access Advantage: Some Methodological Suggestions for the Davis Citation Study. (arXiv:0808.3296v2 [cs.DL] UPDATED) - Davis (2008) analyzes citations from 2004-2007 in 11 biomedical journals. 15% of authors paid to make them Open Access (OA). The outcome is a significant OA citation Advantage, but a small one (21%). The author infers that the OA advantage has been shrinking yearly, but the data suggest the opposite. Further analyses are necessary: (1) Not just author-choice (paid) OA but Free OA self-archiving needs to be taken into account rather than being co...
Feed Source: arxiv.org

This Week in Science - Black Hole Rising | Tibetan Uprising | Circulating More | Cs2 Unspun | Fine Wire Finesse | Jam the Signal | Fixed But Flexible | The Making of a Centromere | Sensing Alarm | To Divide or Not to Divide | Deciding the Undecided | A Stable Si(0) Dimer | Cobalt Catalyst for Oxygen Evolution | Cell Cycle Regulation by Adenovirus...
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Editors' Choice - BIOCHEMISTRY: An Endonuclease Tango | NEUROSCIENCE: Storing the Latest Update | SYSTEMS BIOLOGY: Be My Partner? | CHEMISTRY: Stable Pyramids | MATERIALS SCIENCE: An Inside View of Foam | IMMUNOLOGY: An Entrapment Defense | MICROBIOLOGY: Trawling Hidden Waters...
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Science Scope - Obama: Lunar Sooner | Plans for Nuclear Plant Proposed | Vioxx Trial Criticized...
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Random Samples - WHO ATE WHOM? | BATTERERS' BRAINS | SECRETS OF A GREEN SAHARA | MOTORMOUTH...
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Newsmakers - IN THE FIELD | CELEBRITIES | MOVERS | THREE Q'S...
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[EDITORIAL] Science and Security, Again - Author: Donald Kennedy...
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[NEWS] ANTHRAX INVESTIGATION: FBI Discusses Microbial Forensics--but Key Questions Remain Unanswered - Facing growing public skepticism, impatient politicians, and a blogosphere rife with conspiracy theories, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Monday sought to bolster its case that Army scientist Bruce Ivins was the perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attacks by extensively discussing the scientific evidence.Authors: Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, Martin Enserink...
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[NEWS] TECTONICS: Pumping Up the Tibetan Plateau From the Far Pacific Ocean - On page 1054 of this week's issue of Science, geoscientists argue that rock has flowed west to east beneath the Tibetan Plateau to inflate its eastern side and that the flow has been throttled by tectonic doings as far as thousands of kilometers away.Author: Richard A. Kerr...
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[NEWS] GENOMICS: 'Simple' Animal's Genome Proves Unexpectedly Complex - The flat marine organism Trichoplax adhaerens barely qualifies as an animal, yet the 98 million DNA base pairs of its genome include many of the genes responsible for guiding the development of other animals' complex shapes and organs, researchers report in the 21 August issue of Nature.Author: Elizabeth Pennisi...
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[NEWS] ENDANGERED SPECIES: New Regulation Would Lessen Influence of Fish and Wildlife Experts - The Bush Administration has proposed controversial rules that would exempt many projects from what the Administration says are unnecessary reviews of their potential impact on endangered species. The plan has left environmentalists sputtering.Author: Erik Stokstad...
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[NEWS] U.S. HIGHER EDUCATION: Departments Scramble to Find Math Education Faculty - According to a recent survey, 60% of 128 tenure-track academic jobs advertised last year in mathematics education went unfilled. Although that may be good news for job-seekers, it's another impediment for universities trying to improve U.S. science and math education.Author: Jeffrey Mervis...
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[NEWS FOCUS] CLIMATE SCIENCE: Turbulent Times for Climate Model - Researchers are running out of time to finish updating an important U.S. climate change model that has been hamstrung by the budget woes of its home institution, the National Center for Atmospheric Research.Author: Eli Kintisch...
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[NEWS FOCUS] CULTURAL HERITAGE: Shielding a Buddhist Shrine From the Howling Desert Sands - China is embarking on a major new effort to protect the Mogao Grottoes, a unique repository of murals and sculptures on the old Silk Road.Author: Richard Stone...
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[NEWS FOCUS] NANOTECHNOLOGY: Can High-Speed Tests Sort Out Which Nanomaterials Are Safe? - A flood of strange new substances based on ultrasmall particles is forcing researchers to reinvent toxicology.Author: Robert F. Service...
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[LETTERS] An Editor's Checklist - Author: R. W. Guillery...
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[LETTERS] High-Profile Journals Not Worth the Trouble - Author: Joel L. Rosenbaum...
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[LETTERS] Taking Responsibility for Scientific Discourse - Author: Seth D. Friedman...
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[TECHNICAL COMMENT] Comment on ?Protein Sequences from Mastodon and Tyrannosaurus rex Revealed by Mass Spectrometry? - Authors: Pavel A. Pevzner, Sangtae Kim, Julio Ng...
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[TECHNICAL RESPONSE] Response to Comment on ?Protein Sequences from Mastodon and Tyrannosaurus rex Revealed by Mass Spectrometry? - Authors: John M. Asara, Mary H. Schweitzer, Lewis C. Cantley, John S. Cottrell...
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[LETTERS] The Carrageenan Diet: Not Recommended - Authors: Joanne K. Tobacman, Sumit Bhattacharyya, Alip Borthakur, Pradeep K. Dudeja...
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[BOOKS ET AL.] POLICY-MAKING: Cybernetic Birth Control - The author explores how in the late 1970s China's leadership decided to attempt to limit all couples to a single offspring.Author: Erik A. Mueggler...
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[BOOKS ET AL.] DEMOGRAPHY: A Polemic Against Control - A historian offers a sometimes angry and often critical account of 20th-century transnational efforts to limit population growth.Author: John C. Caldwell...
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[POLICY FORUM] ECOLOGY: Toward a Global Biodiversity Observing System - Tracking biodiversity change is increasingly important in sustaining ecosystems and ultimately human well-being.Authors: R. J. Scholes, G. M. Mace, W. Turner, G. N. Geller, N. Jurgens, A. Larigauderie, D. Muchoney, B. A. Walther, H. A. Mooney...
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[PERSPECTIVES] PSYCHOLOGY: The Unseen Mind - The human mind operates largely out of view, and yet people are unaware of their unawareness, confabulating reasons for their actions and preferences.Authors: Timothy D. Wilson, Yoav Bar-Anan...
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[PERSPECTIVES] ASTRONOMY: Stars in the Making - The observation of stars close to the galactic center requires a rethink of the star formation process.Author: Philip J. Armitage...
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[PERSPECTIVES] DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY: How Now, Brown Fat? - Brown adipose tissue is, surprisingly, more related to skeletal muscle than to white adipose tissue.Author: Mitchell A. Lazar...
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[PERSPECTIVES] CHEMISTRY: Soluble Allotropes of Main-Group Elements - Small clusters of main-group elements can be stabilized in the highly active zero oxidation state and used for reactions in solution.Authors: C. Adam Dyker, Guy Bertrand...
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[PERSPECTIVES] ECOLOGY: A Matter of Timing - The cues used by birds and other species to trigger reproduction determine how successfully they can respond to climate change.Authors: Bruce E. Lyon, Alexis S. Chaine, David W. Winkler...
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[PERSPECTIVES] PLANT SCIENCE: Using Tobacco to Treat Cancer - Plant biotechnology brings us closer to personalized therapies as tobacco plants are genetically reprogrammed to produce a vaccine to treat lymphoma.Author: Charles J. Arntzen...
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[REVIEWS] The Geological Evolution of the Tibetan Plateau - Authors: Leigh H. Royden, B. Clark Burchfiel, Robert D. van der Hilst...
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[BREVIA] N2O5 Oxidizes Chloride to Cl2 in Acidic Atmospheric Aerosol - Laboratory studies affirm that the oxidation of chloride ions in aerosols by N2O5 is a significant source of chlorine in the troposphere, a major reactant that helps form ozone.Authors: James M. Roberts, Hans D. Osthoff, Steven S. Brown, A. R. Ravishankara...
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[REPORTS] Star Formation Around Supermassive Black Holes - Simulations show that the disruption of a molecular cloud by a black hole can lead to the formation of nearby stars with eccentric orbits, explaining observations in our Galaxy.Authors: I. A. Bonnell, W. K. M. Rice...
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[REPORTS] Quantum Gas of Deeply Bound Ground State Molecules - A coherent Raman pumping scheme cools cesium molecules to a state with minimal rotational energy, needed for producing cold molecular Bose-Einstein condensates.Authors: Johann G. Danzl, Elmar Haller, Mattias Gustavsson, Manfred J. Mark, Russell Hart, Nadia Bouloufa, Olivier Dulieu, Helmut Ritsch, Hanns-Christoph Nägerl...
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[REPORTS] Observation of Atomic Diffusion at Twin-Modified Grain Boundaries in Copper - The presence of twinned grains at grain boundaries reduces current-induced diffusion of atoms in small copper wires, which can produce voids or even breaks.Authors: Kuan-Chia Chen, Wen-Wei Wu, Chien-Neng Liao, Lih-Juann Chen, K. N. Tu...
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[REPORTS] A Stable Silicon(0) Compound with a Si=Si Double Bond - Carbene ligands stabilize diatomic silicon without oxidizing it, an unusual motif for a light element.Authors: Yuzhong Wang, Yaoming Xie, Pingrong Wei, R. Bruce King, Henry F. Schaefer III, Paul von R. Schleyer, Gregory H. Robinson...
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[REPORTS] In Situ Formation of an Oxygen-Evolving Catalyst in Neutral Water Containing Phosphate and Co2+ - A catalyst that precipitates in situ when cobalt ions are reduced in a phosphate buffer efficiently forms oxygen from water needed for electrochemical applications.Authors: Matthew W. Kanan, Daniel G. Nocera...
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[REPORTS] The Global Atmospheric Circulation on Moist Isentropes - An analysis of global atmospheric circulation from 1970 to 2004 shows that more mid-latitude air rose into the upper troposphere than current models would suggest.Authors: Olivier Pauluis, Arnaud Czaja, Robert Korty...
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[REPORTS] Targeting QseC Signaling and Virulence for Antibiotic Development - A small, nontoxic antibiotic candidate interferes with bacterial detection of the host and inhibits infection, in a therapeutic approach that may avoid development of resistance.Authors: David A. Rasko, Cristiano G. Moreira, De Run Li, Nicola C. Reading, Jennifer M. Ritchie, Matthew K. Waldor, Noelle Williams, Ron Taussig, Shuguang Wei, Michael Roth, David T. Hughes, Jason F. Huntley, Maggy W. Fina, John R. Falck, Vanessa Sperandio...
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[REPORTS] Variability and Robustness in T Cell Activation from Regulated Heterogeneity in Protein Levels - Variations in component levels of the antigen-induced signaling pathway affect the final response of activated immune cells, conferring flexibility on the system.Authors: Ofer Feinerman, Joël Veiga, Jeffrey R. Dorfman, Ronald N. Germain, Grégoire Altan-Bonnet...
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[REPORTS] Adenovirus Small e1a Alters Global Patterns of Histone Modification - Authors: Gregory A. Horwitz, Kangling Zhang, Matthew A. McBrian, Michael Grunstein, Siavash K. Kurdistani, Arnold J. Berk...
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[REPORTS] Epigenetic Reprogramming by Adenovirus e1a - Upon infection, an adenovirus protein causes global epigenetic changes in the host that repress antiviral responses and differentiation and activate cell-cycle genes.Authors: Roberto Ferrari, Matteo Pellegrini, Gregory A. Horwitz, Wei Xie, Arnold J. Berk, Siavash K. Kurdistani...
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[REPORTS] Heterochromatin Integrity Affects Chromosome Reorganization After Centromere Dysfunction - When the centromere is removed from a yeast chromosome, a new one forms near the end of the chromosome, over a cluster of poorly expressed genes.Authors: Kojiro Ishii, Yuki Ogiyama, Yuji Chikashige, Saeko Soejima, Fumie Masuda, Tatsuyuki Kakuma, Yasushi Hiraoka, Kohta Takahashi...
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[REPORTS] Grueneberg Ganglion Cells Mediate Alarm Pheromone Detection in Mice - A mysterious ganglion at the tip of the nose is an olfactory subsystem that senses alarm pheromones in mice.Authors: Julien Brechbühl, Magali Klaey, Marie-Christine Broillet...
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[REPORTS] Control of the Reversibility of Cellular Quiescence by the Transcriptional Repressor HES1 - For quiescent cells to periodically divide and then rest, a member of the Notch signaling pathway HES1 must be present; this protein is also activated in some tumors.Authors: Liyun Sang, Hilary A. Coller, James M. Roberts...
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[REPORTS] Automatic Mental Associations Predict Future Choices of Undecided Decision-Makers - Unexpectedly, consciously expressed voting choices predict later unconscious preferences, showing that unconscious and conscious cognition is a two-way street.Authors: Silvia Galdi, Luciano Arcuri, Bertram Gawronski...
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