LONDON and DUBLIN, February 5 /PRNewswire/ --
- Demand for videoconferencing surges as businesses implement cost containment strategies -
Business travelers are trading in their suitcases and boarding passes for a trip to a videoconferencing studio. The Regus Group, operator of the world's largest network of public access studios with 1,000 locations in 75 countries, reported a 40% spike in videoconferencing bookings as cutbacks in business travel forced companies to change the way they do business.
An unusual spiral galaxy in the Coma galaxy cluster has been imaged using data obtained by the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the Hubble Space Telescope. It reveals fine details of the galaxy, NGC 4921, and an extraordinary rich background of more remote galaxies stretching back to the early Universe.
The Coma galaxy cluster, in the northern constellation of Coma Berenices, the hair of Queen Berenice, is one of the closest, very rich collections of galaxies in the nearby Universe. The cluster, also known as Abell 1656, is about 320 million light-years from Earth and contains more than 1000 members. The brightest galaxies, including NGC 4921 shown here, were discovered back in the late 18th century by William Herschel.
One testament to the pervasive nature of evolution is that so many varied groups, even ones in opposition to each other, found an endorsement in his work. Proponents of eugenics, slavery and even Hitler could rationalize their views saying it was just evoluti0n while abolitionists saw just the opposite.
The simple recipe scientists earlier discovered for making adult stem cells behave like embryonic-like stem cells just got even simpler. A new report in the February 6th issue of the journal Cell shows for the first time that neural stem cells taken from adult mice can take on the characteristics of embryonic stem cells with the addition of a single transcription factor. Transcription factors are genes that control the activity of other genes.
Laboratory work in animals showed limited activity when statins were given to prevent breast cancer, according to a report in the February issue of Cancer Prevention Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Statins, sold under brand names like Lipitor and Zocor, are primarily given to lower cholesterol and prevent heart disease, and prominent cardiologists almost universally agree that their use has changed the landscape.
The use of these drugs in cancer prevention has been more controversial. Results of epidemiology studies, which rely on looking backward rather than forward and thus are subject to confounding factors, have yielded mixed results when examining breast cancer.
Emergence of black-colored wolves is the direct result of humans raising dogs as pets and beasts of burden, according to new research by a University of Calgary biologist in Science. The dark coloring may also aid the survival of the species as wolf habitat is affected by climate change in the future, the study suggests.
A missing link in the evolution of the front claw of living scorpions and horseshoe crabs was identified with the discovery of a 390 million-year-old fossil by researchers at Yale and the University of Bonn, Germany.
Show Me The Science Month Day 9
In what is now central Pakistan, an eight-and-a-half foot long, pregnant aquatic mammal went belly-up, and sank to the bottom of the shallow coastal waters. 47 million years later, a huckster by the name of Duane Gish denied that such mammals ever existed:
There simply are no transitional forms in the fossil record between the marine mammals and their supposed land mammal ancestors . . . It is quite entertaining, starting with cows, pigs, or buffaloes, to attempt to visualize what the intermediates may have looked like. Starting with a cow, one could even imagine one line of descent which prematurely became extinct, due to what might be called an “udder failure” (Gish DT. Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record. El Cajon (CA): Creation-Life Publishers, 1985 p.78-9, quoted at Talk Origins).
Gish may have found it entertaining to imagine what a half-whale, half-buffalo looked like, but today's scientists don't have to imagine the appearance of land-based ancestors of whales. The fossil series leading up to whales tells a very detailed and remarkable story of how furry, four-legged land mammals eventually gave rise to behemoth marine descendants. A spectacular fossil find,
reported yesterday in PLoS One, reveals some amazing details from the evolutionary history of whales.
Figure 5A from Gingerich, et al.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado, February 4 /PRNewswire/ --
- Report Sheds Light on Opportunity for Call Centers to Enhance the Customer Experience Through Better Tracking of Customer Satisfaction and Increased Agent Retention
Think Services' International Customer Management Institute (ICMI(R)) (http://www.icmi.com) announced the release of the industry's most comprehensive study of contact center people management and operations. The ICMI 2008 Contact Center Operations Report compiles responses from a critical mass of contact center professionals from around the world.
In physics classes, we are all taught that the acceleration due to gravity on Earth is 9.8 meters/second2. For the purpose of basic physics education, this value is fine - it represents the average value of the gravitational attraction every object experiences at sea level, and is always directed straight down toward the center of the planet. However, the actual gravitational attraction an object experiences is influenced by the presence of irregularities in the shape of the Earth, the non-uniform distribution of mass beneath the crust, and even large buildings.
