Public authorities have long needed the equivalent of the enterprise management system – as used by leading companies around the world – but seldom had the resources to afford it. Now a new collaborative-working platform developed under the ICTE-PAN project may hold the solution.
Starting in the mid-1990s, public authorities began making significant investments into IT infrastructures capable of supporting their need to manage large amounts of relatively unstructured data. Howe
Added usability and intelligence has been brought to virtual assistants thanks to technology developed by European researchers, offering online users an entertaining, yet competent professional financial service.
“The interaction of natural language, online translation, 3D-avatar technology and artifical intelligence creates a powerful instrument that will find a wide acceptance among users,” says Ulrich Thiel at Germany’s Fraunhofer Integrated Publication and Information Systems
A Purdue University climatologist has found that vegetation can significantly affect extreme weather, a discovery that could add a new piece to the global warming puzzle.
Noah S. Diffenbaugh has found that extreme weather events, such as storms and heat waves, can vary substantially in frequency and severity in a region depending on how vegetation responds to global warming. This is believed to be the first study to indicate that as vegetation responds to climate change, tho
Cadmium, commonly considered a toxic metal and often used in combination with nickel in batteries, has been found to have a biological use as a nutrient in the ocean, the first known biological use of cadmium in any life form.
Scientists have discovered cadmium within an enzyme from a marine diatom, an algae or plankton common in the ocean and a major source of food for many organisms. The finding, reported in the May 5 issue of Nature, suggests that certain trace metals, found
University of Iowa Biological Sciences Professor Daniel F. Eberl and his colleagues at Duke University have uncovered genetic defects leading to deafness in fruit flies that may shed light on deafness in humans. Their research paper, “Myosin VIIA Defects, which Underlie the Usher 1B Syndrome in Humans, Lead to Deafness in Drosophila,” is scheduled for publication in the May 10 issue of the journal Current Biology.
Eberl says their recent work — showing that loss of function i
Team members are former senior energy or security advisors in Democratic and Republican administrations from Carter to Clinton
MIT faculty members and colleagues, all former senior energy or security advisors in Democratic and Republican administrations from Carter to Clinton, have proposed a pragmatic plan that would allow the world to develop nuclear power without increased risk of weapons proliferation.
Under their plan, which appears in the winter 2004-2005 issu
MIT and Dartmouth scientists have identified a previously unrecognized, active fault in the Nepalese Himalayas. The discovery, published in the April 21 issue of Nature, provides new insights into how the mountains evolved and helps explain why the transition between the high Himalayan Ranges and their gently sloping foothills is so abrupt.
“This project started with the simple observation that the landscape of the central Nepalese Himalaya seems to be telling us something about
Often considered a relic of the 1970’s culture, marijuana is no longer a baby boom generation issue. Today, nearly 50 percent of U.S. teenagers try marijuana before they graduate high school, and by 12th grade, about 21 percent are regular users.
Consequently, treatment for marijuana dependence is on the rise, but, researchers have discovered, there’s a catch – withdrawal symptoms, much like those experienced by people quitting cigarettes, cocaine or other drugs, may
Models with complete human immune system derived from hematopoietic stem cells produce functional white blood cells for studies of immune responses against cancer and infection with help from St. Jude
Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have joined with colleagues at several other institutions to develop a laboratory model of the human immune system. This model will allow scientists to study ways for improving the results of hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) trans
In a challenge to conventional wisdom, scientists have found that buckyballs dissolve in water and could have a negative impact on soil bacteria. The findings raise new questions about how the nanoparticles might behave in the environment and how they should be regulated, according to a report scheduled to appear in the June 1 print issue of the American Chemical Society’s peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science & Technology. ACS is the world’s largest scientific society.
Potential therapy for up to 30 percent of human tumors
By studying mice with skin cancer, researchers at the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah discovered a way to inhibit a mutant gene found in up to 30 percent of human tumors.
Called Ras, normal copies of this gene are important in cell signaling, or communication among cells. When mutated, however, Ras is an “oncogene” or cancer-causing gene that has been shown to promote the growth of cancers in the
Bacterial genome sheds light on synthesizing cancer-fighting compounds
Sea squirts around the world are breathing a sigh of relief, as they no longer run the risk of being harvested for their natural disease-fighting substances. Scientists recently discovered that the bacterium Prochloron didemnii, which lives symbiotically inside the sea squirt, actually produces the desired patellamides, compounds that may one day be used in cancer treatment.
Despite decades of attemp
A new blood screening test could help to identify ovarian cancer in its early stages when few symptoms are present, Yale School of Medicine researchers report in the May 10 issue of Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences (PNAS).
Epithelial ovarian cancer is the leading cause of gynecologic cancer deaths in the United States and three times more lethal than breast cancer. It is usually not diagnosed until its advanced stages and has come to be known as the “silent killer.
Mayo Clinic ophthalmologists have found commercially available Class 3A green laser pointers can cause visible harm to the eye’s retina with exposures as short as 60 seconds. The findings will be published in the May issue of Archives of Ophthalmology.
Dennis Robertson, M.D., Mayo Clinic ophthalmologist, conducted investigations with a green laser pointer directed to the retina of a patient’s eye; the eye was scheduled for removal because of a malignancy. The green laser damaged t
Microbe in sea squirts key to process
In a project that could have far-reaching implications for natural-product drug development, scientists have shown how a microbe that lives inside sea squirts could be used to biosynthesize a chemical compound that may help fight cancer. The photosynthetic microbe, Prochloron didemni, lives as an endosymbiont inside the sea squirt Lissoclinum patella. So far, scientists have not been able to culture the microbe anywhere else.
Groun
A biologist at Washington University in St. Louis has shown that for some fish species, females prefer males with larger sexual organs, and actually choose them for mating. That does not exclude males with an average-sized sex organ, called a gonopodium. These fish out-compete the larger-endowed males in a predator-laden environment because they have a faster burst speed than the males with larger genitalia, who lose out because the size of their organ slows them down, making them ripe for cap
Feedback
