The makers of a University of Southern California computer translation system consistently rated among the world’s best are teaching their software something new: English grammar.
Most modern “machine translation” systems, including the highly rated one created by USC’s Information Sciences Institute, rely on brute force correlation of vast bodies of pre-translated text from such sources as newspapers that publish in multiple languages.
Software matches up phrases
In a first study of its kind, researchers at the Mailman School of Public Health assessed the ability and willingness of healthcare workers to report to work in the event of disasters involving weapons of mass destruction or virulent infectious disease outbreaks. Eighty-seven percent of healthcare workers from 47 facilities in and around New York City, indicate that they would be able to report for work in the event of a mass casualty incident and 81% would be able to go to work if there was an e
PUMA travels from the nucleus to the cytoplasm to free p53 from the grip of Bcl-xL, allowing p53 to trigger signaling on mitochondria that leads to cell death, according to St. Jude
The discovery of how the activities of the protein p53 initiate signals that trigger cell suicide offers critical insights for developing new anti-cancer drugs, according to investigators from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. A report on this work appears in the September 9 issue of Science.
Why do estrogen-dependent breast-cancer cells grow and spread rapidly? Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign say it may be because estrogen virtually eliminates levels of a vitally important regulatory protein.
In a paper that will appear in the Sept. 13 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists report that human breast-cancer cells exposed to estrogen in their laboratory showed a dramatic reduction in numbers of a crucial
Researchers in the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley have simulated the process by which a quantum computer could calculate to high precision an important basic property of two small molecules. Simulated quantum calculations of the ground-state energies of water (H 2O) and lithium hydride (LiH) are the first of this kind ever done for specific molecules.
Alán Aspuru-Guzik, Anthony Dutoi, Peter Love, and Marti
Finding may significantly broaden understanding of how the brain selects and retains information
By examining how sounds are registered during the process of learning, UC Irvine neurobiologists have discovered a neural coding mechanism that the brain relies upon to register the intensity of memories based on the importance of the experience.
While neurobiologists have long hypothesized this type of neural coding, the study presents the first evidence that a “memory co
Astronomers Find Farthest Known Gamma-Ray Burst with ESO VLT
An Italian team of astronomers has observed the afterglow of a Gamma-Ray Burst that is the farthest known ever. With a measured redshift of 6.3, the light from this very remote astronomical source has taken 12,700 million years to reach us. It is thus seen when the Universe was less than 900 million years old, or less than 7 percent its present age.
“This also means that it is among the intrinsically brightest G
By turning-off 80 genes, one after the other, a Dutch research group has located the gene that is a precursor to a rare skin cancer. In addition, the research revealed that a medicine to treat this special disease already exists: Acetylsalisylsyre. A cream was developed, and it works.
This was explained to a full auditorium by professor René Bernards of the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam during the functional genomics conference, attended by more than 500 researchers, now ta
Who works together with whom? This is the question scientists at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch have investigated with regard to human proteins. The answer can be found within a map – the first one in international research – showing 3,186 interactions between 1,705 human proteins. Among them: 531 previously unknown interactions involving 195 disease proteins, highly relevant for medical research.
“We have laid the foundation for a comprehensive connect
New research challenges current public debate about teenage obesity on the grounds that it is too simplistic.
The research, which is due to be published in the journal of Social Science & Medicine, claims that BMI definitions of ‘normal’ weight, overweight and obesity do not take the complexity of feelings that teenagers have about their bodies into account.
The study, which was conducted by researchers at the University of Edinburgh and an academic now at the University of
Competence Center for Energy and Mobility (CCE)
The ETH Board is building up a Competence Center for Energy and Mobility (CCE), under the lead management of the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Villigen, Switzerland. The CCE will contribute significantly to sustainable energy solutions and strengthen the Swiss technical employment market. The new center combines research competence of Swiss technical universities and research institutes, namely the PSI, the two Swiss Federa
Metabolic syndrome is a combination of several individual metabolic problems that lead to high risk of atherosclerosis and heart problems. The disease has become a serious global problem in the last two decades with as much as 47 millions of cases in US and 25 million in Europe, and further understanding of its origin and mechanism is urgent. To that aim, in an article just published online in the International Journal of Obesity, a group of Portuguese scientists reports that patients suffering
A world-class research facility investigating diseases such as osteoarthritis, cardiovascular disease and cancer has been awarded a further £3 million to continue its groundbreaking work.
The University of Manchester’s Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell-Matrix Research has had its core grant renewed – securing infrastructure funding for the next five years.
The Centre, one of only five such Wellcome Trust-funded facilities in the UK and the only one in its field, is home to
The East Pacific Rise, a vast volcanic mountain range submerged in the eastern Pacific Ocean, is one of the fastest seafloor factories on the planet. Here, along a rocky spine that runs about 1,000 miles west of South America, oceanic crust is created from magma bubbling up from deep within Earth’s interior.
Forces that shape these young oceanic plates have come into clearer focus through research conducted by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Brown Univers
Emerging relationships between the two viruses could one day lead to a vaccine for human AIDS
A University of Florida researcher has discovered an unexpected link between the viruses that cause feline and human AIDS: Cats vaccinated with an experimental strain of the human AIDS virus appear to be at least as well-protected against the feline version of the disease as those immunized with the vaccine currently used by veterinarians.
The surprise finding may mean cats with f
Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered a discrete region of the monkey brain that processes pitch, the relative high and low points of sound, by recognizing a single musical note played by different instruments.
Given the similarities between monkeys and man, humans may have a similar pitch-processing region in the brain too, which might one day help those with hearing and speech problems. The paper appears in the Aug. 25 issue of Nature.
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