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New Iran Scientific Plan Under Review
A draft for the scientific development of Iran plan has been upgraded in the form of PDF at the website of the High Council for Cultural Revolution, the secretary of the council said.
According to a report by the HCCR Public Relations Department, Negahdari said the plan, the third of its kind, solicits the views and vision of universities and scientific and research centers in the Islamic country, IRNA reported.
The latest plan of action is the result of concerted efforts by more than 1,000 academicians and seminarians in the past year.
The second version of the plan which is being prepared in 100 pages was reviewed and amended by the council and a special compilation commission.
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Third draft of IranŐs comprehensive scientific plan solicits the views and vision of universities and scientific and research centers in the Islamic country.
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It is believed that the final version will be presented in 20 pages to be reviewed and approved by the High Council of Cultural Revolution.
The third draft of the plan features the country’s short and long term prospects as well as strategic priorities in key areas of science, technology and innovation are outlined in the document.
Negahdari called on the elite and researchers to study the draft and submit their views to the council for the necessary considerations.
It is hoped the long-awaited national roadmap will play an effective role in the advancement of science and technology in Iran.
Iran has some of the best and brightest minds in the world. Its teachers are listed on prominent higher education centers and organizations around the world, including the famous universities in the western world. Iranian students are almost always the top winners in international Olympiads and other major scientific events.
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Human Memory Fragile, Inventive
Do you know someone who claims to remember their first day of kindergarten? Or a trip they took as a toddler? While some people may be able to recall trivial details from the past, laboratory research shows that the human memory can be remarkably fragile and even inventive.
In fact, people can easily create false memories of their past and a new study shows that such memories can have long-term effects on our behavior, Physorg reported.
Psychologists Elke Geraerts of the University of St. Andrews and Maastricht University, Daniel Bernstein of Kwantlen Polytechnic University and the University of Washington, Harald Merckelbach, Christel Linders, and Linsey Raymaekers of Maastricht University, and Elizabeth F. Loftus of University of California, Irvine, found that it is possible to change long-term behaviors using a simple suggestive technique.
In a series of experiments, the researchers falsely suggested that participants had become ill after eating egg salad as a child. Afterwards, the researchers offered different kinds of sandwiches to the participants, including ones with an egg salad filling.
Four months later, the participants were asked to be in a separate study in which they evaluated egg salad as well as other foods. They were then given the same kinds of sandwiches that had been offered to them four months earlier.
Interestingly, participants who were told they had become ill as a child after eating egg salad showed a distinct change in attitudes and behavior towards this food after the experiment.
They not only gave the food lower evaluations than participants who did not develop false memories or were in the control group, but they also avoided egg salad sandwiches more than any of the other participants four months later.
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Revolution in Producing Red Blood Cells
Scientists say they’ve found an efficient way to make red blood cells from human embryonic stem cells, a possible step toward making transfusion supplies in the laboratory.
According to AP, the promise of a virtually limitless supply is tantalizing because of blood donor shortages and disappointments in creating blood substitutes.
Red blood cells are a key component of blood because they carry oxygen throughout the body.
Experts called the new work an advance, but cautioned that major questions had yet to be answered.
The research, published online Tuesday by the journal Blood, was reported by scientists at Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass., the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
The researchers said the cells they made behaved like natural red blood cells in lab tests, and that their process could be used in large-scale production. The results suggest that embryonic stem cells could someday supply type O-negative “universal donor“ red cells for transfusion, they wrote.
Now it will be important to show that the complex lab process really can pump out red cells on a large scale, and that the cells will survive long enough in the human body to be useful, he said. Natural red cells circulate for an average of 120 days.
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Arsenic Risk
Even low-level exposure to arsenic in drinking water appears to be associated with increased prevalence of type 2 diabetes, researchers said in a new study.
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Nanotubes to Protect Cell Phones
Cell phones are fragile: One slip of the fingers and yours can be headed for a disastrous meeting with the sidewalk, leaving you headed to the store for a replacement. Once again, however, nanotechnology might be coming to our rescue.
Clemson University scientists led by Apparao Rao say they’ve created a new process to help make phones, car bumpers, or other often-broken items a little more resilient. The researchers built beds of tiny coiled carbon nanotubes that act as spring-like shock absorbers, protecting the object from a fall or collision, Discovermagazine said.
It was no secret that putting a slew of carbon nanotubes together could create this effect; Rao and his team say the difference in their process is that they can create a layer of shock-absorbing tubes in a single step.
Tail-Walking Tuition From Wild Dolphin!
A wild dolphin is apparently teaching other members of her group to walk on their tails, a behavior usually seen only after training in captivity.
The tail-walking group lives along the south Australian coast near Adelaide.
One of them spent a short time after illness in a dolphinarium 20 years ago and may have picked up the trick there, BBC reported.
Scientists studying the group say tail-walk tuition has not been seen before, and suggest the habit may emerge as a form of “culture“ among this group.
“We can’t for the life of us work out why they do it,“ said Mike Bossley from the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS), one of the scientists who have been monitoring the group on the Port River estuary.
“We’re doing systematic observations now to determine if there’s something that may trigger it, but so far we haven’t found anything,“ he said.
In the 1980s, Billie, one of the females in the group, spent a few weeks in a local dolphinarium recovering from malnutrition and sickness, a consequence of having been trapped in a marina lock.
She received no training there, but may have seen others tail-walking.
Now, other females in the group have picked up the habit. It is seen rarely in the wild, and the obvious inference is that they have learned it from Billie.
“This indicates that they do learn from each other, which is not a surprise really, but it does also seem that they exhibit elements of what in humans we would call ’cultural’ behavior,“ said Dr. Bossley.
Hand Animations to Assist Surgeons
Researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada, have developed new computer animated models of the hand which show how the muscles and tendons function while moving.
This new software uses “anatomical data from medical images to model the 17 bones and 54 tendons and muscles of the hand and forearm.“ With the help of this graphics software, surgeons will soon be able to reconstruct damaged hands more effectively, Ideaconnection wrote.
This work has been presented at the SIGGRAPH 2008 conference in Los Angeles on August 19, 2008.
This research work has been done at UBC’s Sensorimotor Systems Laboratory. The team was composed of Shinjiro Sueda and Andrew Kaufman, under the supervision of Professor Dinesh K. Pai.
Compose Music Anywhere
Have you ever caught yourself whistling a made up tune and thought to yourself, “hey this could be a hit song!“ Those moments of inspiration are fleeting but with the Compose Concept, you can compose anywhere.
The pen acts as a microphone you sing into. When docked into the digital paper tablet, your vocal harmonies are automatically transcribed into a score, Ideaconnection said.
For the old schooler, you can write directly on the display. It also contains libraries for an entire orchestra so once your composition is finished, just sit back and enjoy.
The Compose Concept was designed by Chinese designers, Ouyang Xi, He Binbin, and Zeng Li and Li Bo.
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