Schools 4 Online

Biomedical scientists from the University of Central Florida and Louisiana State University have identified a way to block a “cell death signal” that they believe triggers brain damage during strokes.
Strokes, also known as cerebral ischemia, are caused by inadequate blood flow to the brain and are the third-leading cause of death in the United States.

The team’s work focused on a neurotransmitter that typically plays an important role in communication among nerve cells in the brain and fosters learning and memory. This glutamate neurotransmitter opens the NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartate) receptors, allowing the entry of calcium into the nerve cells.

Under normal conditions, the activity of the NMDA receptors is tightly regulated to prevent nerve cells from becoming overloaded with calcium. During a stroke, however, that process of regulation breaks down. The excessive influx of calcium through NMDA receptors kills the nerve cells and can cause severe brain damage.
continue reading…

Bright Career Opportunities In 3d Animation And Visual Effects:
There is an increase in demand for 3D Animation and Visual Effects professionals. The growth of the Entertainment and Gaming industry led to this demand. Animation and Visual Effects have been embraced by technical areas like automobile engineering, aerospace engineering, civil, pharmaceutical, medicine and architecture as well.

A career in Animation and Visual effects is for those who have a creative mind and a soaring imagination. Besides being creative, one needs a professional degree in 3D Animation and Visual Effects. Courses are available world wide to pursue masters in this.

Some of the disciplines in this profession are visual effects artist, texture artist, technical director, lighting artist, pre-visualisation artist, character animator and modeller. Whatever area one chooses to pursue, knowledge in traditional arts and animation skills on computer is the foundation. So, one begins with these courses.
continue reading…

Let’s pick up where our last column left off. When we last left Rocky and President Obama (an old cartoon reference for you over-50 types… remember Rocky & Bullwinkle?), we were talking about the power of critical incidents as learning opportunities. At issue was whether the President and his team have forgotten to “turn around and see if anyone’s following” – a common leadership mistake (especially if you feel you’ve been given a mandate for change).

Seems to me what the President needs to do more of is “explain the why.” Explaining the why is one of the leader’s most valuable tools in the citizen or employee engagement game. Explaining the why pulls people in, creates a common understanding of the situation or crisis, and helps everyone absorb how the change relates to them. Sometimes there’s no real need to explain the why – it’s either plainly obvious why we all need to pitch in (disaster in Haiti) or the call to action is logical and produces a “of course we’re with you” type of response (creating a set of core values for the company).
continue reading…

TOEFL iBT was introduced in the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Puerto Rico in 2005. The second phase of the rollout began on March 25, 2006, when test centers in selected cities in Africa, the Americas, Europe, Eurasia, the Middle East, and North Africa offered TOEFL iBT for the first time.

A list of cities where TOEFL iBT is being introduced is posted in the Learners and Test Takers section of this Web site. This list is updated every week.

TOEFL iBT introduction dates have not yet been set for some countries (PDF). When these countries are ready to implement TOEFL iBT, a message will be posted on this Web site. To provide continued access for TOEFL and TSE test takers in these areas, ETS will offer the paper-based TOEFL test and the TSE test until TOEFL iBT can be delivered.

What Is Happening To The Current TOEFL Tests? The computer- and paper-based (CBT, PBT) versions of the TOEFL test will be given at a particular location until the Internet-based version is implemented.
continue reading…

The government has launched its latest weapon in the battle to wrest people away from their nicotine addiction
The NHS Stop Smoking Quit Kit hopes to tap in to New Year resolutions, with new research showing that 44% of smokers in England are attempting to quit from January.

Put together by smoking experts and smokers themselves, much of the new kit aims to combat stress and cravings, as well as giving tips on how to avoid the triggers that lead to sparking up a fag in the first place.

“We know that certain triggers and cravings can threaten a successful quit,” said Professor Robert West from the Health Behaviour Research Centre at University College London.

“People need to find their own personal combination of support and tools to help combat them.”
continue reading…

To hear Sally Field tell it, reversing bone loss with the drug Boniva is important because you have only “one body and one life.” And the 63-year-old actress—who looks around 45 in commercials for the bone-building drug—implies that many, if not most, healthy and fit middle-aged women are on the road to osteoporosis.

They’re not.

According to the National Osteoporosis Foundation, about 10 million Americans have osteoporosis, 80 percent of them women, but an additional 34 million have “low bone mass” that puts them at increased risk. Sally Field is in the former group, but many women in the latter category, experts contend, are being unnecessarily treated with bisphosphonate drugs like Boniva, Fosamax, or Actonel.
continue reading…

New reaction cleaves dinitrogen, brings carbon and nitrogen together
To break some chemical bonds you need to know a guy, who knows a guy who knows a compound. Scientists ordered just such a hit and have broken two of the toughest bonds in chemistry in the laboratory equivalent of broad daylight. The reaction yields a new chemical connection and could lead to more direct routes for making various drugs or other biologically important compounds.

In the new work, a metal complex and carbon monoxide conspire to cleave the triple bond that connects two nitrogen atoms, one of nature’s strongest chemical bonds. Busting apart bonded nitrogen has always been a daunting task. Even when accomplished, it hasn’t necessarily yielded useful products.
continue reading…

Pattern of chemical tags on DNA linked to the autoimmune disease
Lupus can tell identical twins apart by the distinguishing marks the pairs carry on their DNA.

Fewer DNA methylation marks may leave one twin vulnerable to the inflammatory autoimmune disease, even while the other sibling remains healthy, a new study appearing online December 22 in Genome Research shows.

The finding suggests that environmental factors determine whether genetically susceptible twins will contract lupus, or systemic lupus erythematosus, which is characterized by the immune system attacking the body’s own cells.

Researchers have previously identified at least 17 different genes involved in lupus. If genes alone were responsible for determining whether a person gets lupus, then every time one identical twin got the disease, the other should too.
continue reading…

Viral hitchhiker has been hanging on in mammalian genome for more than 40 million years
People may not be quite the humans they think they are. Or so suggests new research showing that the human genome is part bornavirus.

Bornaviruses, a type of RNA virus that causes disease in horses and sheep, can insert their genetic material into human DNA and first did so at least 40 million years ago, the study shows. The findings, published January 7 in Nature, provide the first evidence that RNA viruses other than retroviruses (such as HIV) can stably integrate genes into host DNA. The new work may help reveal more about the evolution of RNA viruses as well as their mammalian hosts.
continue reading…

WASHINGTON — Astronomers may have detected smoke signals generated by a group of supernovas that blew up when the universe was only about 1.2 billion years old. If correct, the researchers have detected would be one of the earliest known signs of supernova-produced dust in the universe and the very earliest detected by a gamma-ray burst.

The exploding stars are too faint and lie too far away to be seen directly. But the smoke, or star dust, they produced when they erupted now appears to have been detected. The brilliant afterglow of a much more powerful type of eruption, a gamma-ray burst, has revealed the dust’s existence, a new analysis shows.

The new finding “is exciting because gamma-ray bursts are showing themselves as a unique probe of the early universe that really hadn’t been considered,” said Joshua Bloom of the University of California, Berkeley, reporting the work January 4 at the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society. “We can now measure how matter in the [young] universe converts from stars into star dust,” the raw material for the next generation of stars, he added.
continue reading…