Boiling point of propanic acid is much more higher than that of n-butyl alcohol

Carboxylic acids have higher b.p than alcohols having comparable molcular weight for e.g propanic acid have much higher b.p (141 degree celcius) than  n-butyl alcohol (118), although both of them have same molecular weight.
A pair of alcohol (n-butyl alcohol) molecule are held toghter by only one hydrogen bond but a pair of  carboxalic acid (propionic acid) molecular are held toghter not by one but by two hydrogen bonds. More the number of hydrogen bonds between the molecules, more heat should be supplied to break them and the substance. So, b.p of carboxylic acid is higher than that of alcohol of comparable molecular weight.

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Computer AI passes Turing test in 'world first'

A computer program called Eugene Goostman, which simulates a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy, is said to have passed the Turing test at an event organised by the University of Reading.

The test investigates whether people can detect if they are talking to machines or humans.
The experiment is based on Alan Turing's question-and-answer gameCan Machines Think?
No computer has passed the test before under these conditions, it is reported.
The 65-year-old Turing Test is successfully passed if a computer is mistaken for a human more than 30% of the time during a series of five-minute keyboard conversations.
On 7 June Eugene convinced 33% of the judges at the Royal Society in London that it was human.
                                                               Man or machine? A glimpse at one of the conversations.

Other artificial intelligence (AI) systems also competed, including Cleverbot, Elbot and Ultra Hal.
Judges included actor Robert Llewellyn, who played an intelligent robot in BBC Two's science-fiction sitcom Red Dwarf, and Lord Sharkey, who led the successful campaign for Alan Turing's posthumous pardon, over a conviction for homosexual activity, in 2013.
Eugene was created by Vladimir Veselov, who was born in Russia and now lives in the United States, and Ukrainian-born Eugene Demchenko, who now lives in Russia.
Transcripts of the conversations are currently unavailable, but may appear in a future academic paper.
The judges and hidden human control groups were kept apart throughout the test.
The event was organised by Reading University's School of Systems Engineering in partnership with RoboLaw, an EU-funded organisation examining the regulation of emerging robotic technologies.
Alan Turing was an English mathematician, wartime code-breaker and pioneer of computer science.

Historic

The event has been labelled as "historic" by the organisers, who claim no computer has passed the test before.
"Some will claim that the Test has already been passed," said Kevin Warwick, a visiting professor at the University of Reading and deputy vice-chancellor for research at Coventry University.
"The words Turing test have been applied to similar competitions around the world. However, this event involved the most simultaneous comparison tests than ever before, was independently verified and, crucially, the conversations were unrestricted.
"A true Turing test does not set the questions or topics prior to the conversations. We are therefore proud to declare that Alan Turing's test was passed for the first time on Saturday."
Lord Sharkey, a leading expert in robotic technology and artificial intelligence, said: "It is indeed a great achievement for Eugene. It was very clever ruse to pretend to be a 13-year-old Ukranian boy, which would constrain the conversation. But these competitions are really great to push developments."

Sources: bbc technewa

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Vitamin D and the nursing mother

Everyone seems to agree that vitamin D is important for throughout our life. This is certainly as true in the first year of life as it is later on. For it is during the first year that in addition to its role in calcium metabolism, this critical nutrient reduces both the risk of current infections and the late-life development of such autoimmune diseases as multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes.
Both the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) agree that vitamin D intake during the first year of life should be 400 IU/d. My own estimation of the requirement (for different ages and body sizes) is 65-75 IU/kg body weight per day. For average body weights in infants during the first year of life that rule of thumb computes to somewhere between 300 and 500 IU/d for infants. So, while there is still contention with respect to the optimal intake for adults, there really is no disagreement about how much is needed for infants, either among various authoritative sources or arising from different approaches to the evidence. With respect to infants, 400 IU/d seems to be just about right.
The question is, how is the infant to get that vitamin D? Human milk, in most nursing mothers, contains very little vitamin D. Infant formulas, from various manufacturers, all contain some added vitamin D in amounts calculated to be sufficient to meet an infant's needs. But extensive studies during the first year of life reveal that less than one-fifth of all infants ever get as much as the recommended 400 IU/d from any source, and fewer than one out of 10 breast-fed infants meet the requirement. As a result, the AAP urges that all infants, regardless of whether they are breast or formula fed, receive their 400 IU/d as pediatric drops. Unfortunately, this recommendation, while appropriate, is not often followed. Most babies are just not getting the vitamin D they need. The late-life consequences of this shortfall could be enormous.
It must seem strange that on the one hand we stress that human milk is the best source of nourishment for our babies, and on the other seem to ignore the fact that human milk doesn't contain the vitamin D those babies need. The explanation, very simply, is that the disconnect is artificial. Nursing mothers have so little vitamin D in their own bodies that there is little or none left over to put into their milk. But it has not always been this way. We know that the vitamin D blood concentrations that are regularly found today in Africans living ancestral lifestyles are high enough to support putting into breast milk all the vitamin D an infant needs. But the bulk of the world's population today is not living on the high equatorial plains of East Africa nor exposing much of its skin for most of the day.
Fortunately, we don't have to return to East Africa. It turns out that, if we give nursing mothers enough vitamin D to bring their blood levels up to the likely ancestral levels, then they automatically put all of the vitamin D their baby needs into their own milk, thereby ensuring that the infant gets total nutrition without the need to resort to vitamin D drops.
How much vitamin D does the mother need so as to ensure an adequate amount in her milk? As with everything else related to vitamin D, there is a lot of individual variation, but it appears that the daily intake must be in the range of 5,000-6,000 IUs. As no surprise, that's just about the amount needed to reproduce the vitamin D blood levels in persons living ancestral lifestyles today. And while 5,000-6,000 IU may initially seem high, it is important to remember how much the sun produces for us. A single 15 minute whole body exposure to sun at mid-day in summer produces well over 10,000 IU.
There is one important proviso for nursing mothers concerning the needed intake. Those who live in North America and have to rely on supplements should be certain that they take their supplements every day. While for other purposes it is possible to take vitamin D intermittently (e.g., once a week), that doesn't work for putting vitamin D into human milk. The residence time of vitamin D in the blood is so short that, if the mother stops taking her vitamin D supplement for a day or two, vitamin D in her milk will be low (or absent altogether) on the days she skips.
There is a glaring disconnect here between these well-attested physiological facts and the official IOM recommendation for nursing mothers, i.e., only 400 IU/d -- the same intake for her as IOM recommends for her baby (whose body weight is less than 10% of her own). The IOM, if it were to be explicit about its current recommendations, would be telling nursing mothers something like this:
"The evidence we analyzed indicates that your own body needs only 400 IU of vitamin D each day. Unfortunately, that won't allow you to put any vitamin D into your breast milk. Sorry about that . . . So, if you want to ensure that your baby is adequately nourished, you are going to have to resort to giving your infant vitamin D drops."
That would be a hard message to sell, and clearly, it makes little sense on its face. As I have already noted, women living ancestral lifestyles (whether or not they are nursing an infant) have far higher blood levels of vitamin D than contemporary urban Americans. Milk production (and its optimal composition) are simply two of the many functions that vitamin D supports in a healthy adult. This breast-feeding example is not a special case; it is just one of the many pieces of evidence that point to the fact that current vitamin D recommendations for adults are too low -- way too low.
Vitamin D supplements -- and in this case vitamin D drops -- are literal lifesavers for infants today. But what about two or three generations back -- before nutritional supplements come into existence, but long after migration out of Africa? Ninety years ago vitamin D had not yet been discovered, and there certainly were no vitamin D supplements that could have been used. How did we get by through those thousands of years? There are two answers. Most of us, living in temperate latitudes, got a lot more sun exposure than we do today, and of course there were no sunscreens, so there was no blocking of the solar radiation that produces vitamin D in our skin. Those of us living in far northern latitudes survived mostly by depending upon diets that were very high in seafood, which is naturally a rich source of vitamin D. And those of us who got vitamin D by neither route were at increased risk of a whole host of vitamin D-related disorders, most obvious and most easily recognized being rickets.
The bony deformities of rickets were common a century ago in Europe, North America, and East Asia, and were largely eradicated in growing children by use of cod liver oil and, in the US, by the introduction of vitamin D fortification of milk in the 1930s. Fortunately, growing children can repair some of the bone deformities of rickets if they are given vitamin D soon enough. But, repairing rickets, while a good and necessary thing to do, is not sufficient. It is too late, by the time we recognize the deformities of rickets, to ensure maximal protection against the autoimmune diseases (for example), for which susceptibility is mainly determined in the first year of life.
To sum up, we now better recognize the importance of vitamin D in the earliest stages of life. Furthermore, there is, as noted earlier, quite good agreement on how much an infant needs. Where we lack consensus is how to make certain that all of our babies get the amount they need. Why not rely on giving nursing infants vitamin D drops, as the AAP recommends? Two reasons: 1) It's been tried and has failed; and, 2) When it does work in individual infants, it provides no benefit for the mother. By contrast, ensuring an adequate vitamin D input to the mother during pregnancy and lactation is almost certainly the best way to meet the needs of both individuals.
An "adequate" intake for nursing mothers, as noted earlier, is not the 400 IU/d the IOM recommends, but is instead in the range of 5,000-6,000 IU/d, taken daily. If they get that much, they will meet not only their own needs, but their infant's as well. And they will have the satisfaction of knowing that they are supplying all their baby's needs, the natural way.

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Sleep's memory role discovered

The mechanism by which a good night's sleep improves learning and memory has been discovered by scientists.



The team in China and the US used more advanced microscopy to witness new connections between our brain cells - synapses - forming during sleep.

Their study is published in the journal Science, showed  that even intense training could not make up for lost sleep.

Experts said it was an elegant and significant study, which uncovered the mechanisms of memory.

It is well known that sleep plays an important role in memory and learning. But what actually happens inside the brain has been a source of considerable debate.

Researchers at Newyork University School of Medicine and Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School trained mice in a new skill - walking on top of a rotating rod.

They then looked inside the living brain with a microscope to see what happened when the animals were either sleeping or sleep deprived.

Their study showed that sleeping mice formed significantly more new connections between neurons  they were learning more.

And by disrupting specific phases of sleep, the research group showed deep or slow-wave sleep was necessary for memory formation.

During this stage, the brain was "replaying" the activity from earlier in the day.

Prof Wen-Biao Gan, from New York University, told the BBC: "Finding out sleep promotes new connections between neurons is new, nobody knew this before.

"We thought sleep helped but it could have been other causes, and we show it really helps to make connections and that in sleep the brain is not quiet, it is replaying what happened during the day and it seems quite important for making the connections."

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Is Your Computer Male Or Female ?

Are you want to know gender type of your computer ? let's start to know This is funny trick that let you know the gender of your computer whether it is male or female. This trick work on mostly all windows operating system. So let get started.
First of all  
1. Open Notepad and paste the following codes.

CreateObject("SAPI.SpVoice").Speak"i love you"

2. Go to save as and Save the file as gender.vbs 
   3. Then Now, open the save file
   4. If you hear male voice then your computer is male and if you hear female voice then its female.

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Werners Theory

In 1893, Alfred Werner developed a theory for complex compound. Werner was able to explain nature of bonding in complexes.

The important postulates of Werner coordination theory are as following.

1. In Coordination compounds, the metal atom posses two types of valencies primary valancy and secondary valency.

Primary valancy corresponds to oxidation number of metal ion is reffed as ionizable valancy. Secondary valancy is ion and is referred valency Is ionisable valency. It also more or less fixed depending upon central metal atom. A number of ligand surrounds the central metal atom. A number of ligand surrounds the central metal atom i.e. coordination number corresponds to the secondary valancy of metal.

2. Every metal atom or ion has more or less fixed number of coordination numbers.
3. Ligand donates electron pair to the central metal atom. Ligands are commonly negative ion such  as Cl^–or neutral molecule containing lone pairs of electron e.g NH3.
4. Secondary valences are directional in nature so that complex ions have a fixed shaped depending upon the coordination number. For eg. if coordination number is six, the geometry of complex is octrahedral like [Co(NH3)6]3+.

The most common coordination number to transition metal complex is 6 and the shape is usually octrahedral. The coordination number 4 is also common, and give rise to either tetrahedral or square planer complex.

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What is Buckminister fullerene ?

One of the most intresting development in late 20th century is the discovary of a new allotropic forms of carbonn, the fullerenc. It is the third form of pure crystaline form of the carbon after diamond and graphite. The new forms of carbon exist as C60 carbon cluster compound in the form of mustard coloured crystaline solid which dissolved in benzine to give magenta (Reddish purple) coloured solution. The molecule is of an extra ordinary structure consisting of C60 carbon atoms in a fused ring aromatic system which bends around and closer to form a "Soccer Ball" Shaped molecule with 20 six membred rings and 12 five membered rings and each carbon atom in it is sp2 hybridred and linked with three other carbon atom with one down and two single bond. It has been called Most Symmertical Molecule. The C60 molecule were first recognized and named as "Buckmiister fullerene" after the American architech enginear F.Buckminister (Bucky) Fuller. Who designed similar sheped down. More commenly, these molecules are now called fullerene and most informally "Bucky ball". This isomer of  carbon differ from diamond and graphite that diamond and graphite form lattice but fullerenes form discrete molecules.

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D-block element (Transition element)

D-Block elements :

The elements in which last electron enters d-orbital of the penultimate (inner to ultimate) shell, i.e last electron goes to (n-1)d orbital are called d-block elements. D-block elements are also defined as those elements whose two outermost shell are incomplete (i.e partially field)

The general valance shell electronic configuration of d-block elements are also called transition elements. d-block elements is also called transition elements.

(        Variableoxidation state :

One of the most striking feature of the d-block elements is that they exihibit variety of oxidation states in their compound with the exception of a few elements most of the d-block elements show more than one oxidation state (i.e variable oxidation state). The following two reasons have been given to explain why d-block elements shows variable oxidation state.

(i)                  (n-1)d and ns orbitals in the atoms of d-block elements have almost the identical energy and hence electron can be removed from (n-1)d orbital as easily as they can be take part in different hybridization situation.

(ii)                After removing ns electron (s) the remainder is called core or kernel. In case of most of d-block elements, the core is unstable and hence can lase one or more elements resulting in the formation of cation having different oxidation state i.e the removal of one  or more electrons from the unstable core gives several oxidation state to transition metals.

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What causes coronary heart disease?

Our heart is a always pump the size of a fist that sends oxygen-rich blood around our body. The blood travels to the organs of our body through blood vessels known as arteries, and then returns to the heart through veins.

Our heart needs its own blood supply to keep working. Heart disease occurs when the arteries that carry this blood, known as coronary arteries, start to become blocked by a build-up of fatty deposits.

The inner lining of the coronary arteries gradually becomes furred with a thick, porridge-like sludge of substances, known as plaques, and formed from cholesterol. This clogging-up process is known as atherosclerosis.

The plaques narrow the arteries and reduce the space through which blood can flow. They can also block nutrients being delivered to the artery walls, which means the arteries lose their elasticity. In turn, this can lead to high blood pressure, which also increases the risk of heart disease. This same process goes on in the arteries throughout the body, and can lead to high blood pressure which puts further strain on the heart.

If our arteries are partially blocked you can experience angina - severe chest pains that can spread across our upper body - as our heart struggles to keep beating on a restricted supply of oxygen. You are also at greater risk of a heart attack.

Some people have a higher risk of developing atherosclerosis due to genetic factors - one clue to this is a family history of heart disease in middle-age. Lifestyle factors that increase the risk include an unhealthy diet, lack of exercise, diabetes, high blood pressure and, most importantly, smoking.

However, in the past couple of decades deaths from coronary heart disease have nearly halved, thanks to better treatments.

What happens during a heart attack?

A heart attack happens when one of the coronary arteries becomes completely blocked. This usually happens when a plaque, which is already narrowing an artery, cracks or splits open. This triggers the formation of a blood clot around the plaque, and it is this blood clot that then completely blocks the artery.

With their supply of oxygen completely blocked, the heart muscle and tissue supplied by that artery start to die. Emergency medical intervention is needed to unblock the artery and restore blood flow. This may consist of treatment with drugs to dissolve the clot or thrombus, or a small operation done through the skin and blood vessels to open up the blocked artery.

The outcome of a heart attack hinges on the amount of the muscle that dies before it is corrected. The smaller the area affected, the greater the chance of survival and recovery.

While a heart attack will always cause some permanent damage, some areas may be able to recover if they are not deprived of blood for too long. The sooner a heart attack is diagnosed and treated, the greater the chance of recovery.

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Genepeeks firm to offer 'digital baby' screen for sperm donors

New York start-up Genepeeks will initially focus on donor sperm, simulating before pregnancy how the genetic sequence of a female client might combine with those of different males.
Donors that more often produce "digital children" with a higher risk of inherited disorders will be filtered out, leaving those who are better genetic matches.

Everything happens in a computer, but experts have raised ethical questions.
"We are just in the business right now of giving prospective mothers, who are using donor sperm to conceive, a filtered catalogue of donors based on their own underlying genetic profile," Genepeeks co-founder Anne Morriss told BBC News.
"We are filtering out the donor matches with an elevated risk of rare recessive paediatric conditions."
Ms Morriss, an entrepreneur, gave a presentation on the company at the Consumer Genetics Conference in Boston last week.

Advancing technology
She was motivated in part by her own experience of starting a family. Her son was conceived with a sperm donor who happened to share with Morriss the gene for an inherited disorder called MCADD.
MCADD (medium-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase deficiency) prevents those affected from converting fats to sugar. It can be fatal if it is not diagnosed early. Luckily, in Ms Morriss's case, the condition was picked up in newborn screening tests.
"My son has a pretty normal life," Ms Morriss said, "but about 30% of children with rare genetic diseases don't make it past the age of five."
Genepeeks has formalised a partnership with a sperm bank - the Manhattan Cryobank - and has a patent pending on the DNA screening technology.
The start-up benefits from the rapid pace of change in genetic technology.
Indeed, six months ago, Genepeeks' founders decided it was able to use a superior system for DNA analysis (called "targeted exon sequencing") than the one originally envisaged - a result, says Anne Morriss, of falling costs and increased flexibility.
For couples planning babies, other companies already screen one or both partners for genes that could cause disease if combined with a similar variant - so-called "carrier screening".

Digital filter
One academic who studies the use of genetic technology commented: "This is like that, but ramped up 100,000 times."
Ms Morriss's business partner, Prof Lee Silver, a geneticist and expert on bioethics at Princeton University, New Jersey, told BBC News: "We get the DNA sequence from two prospective parents. We simulate the process of reproduction, forming virtual sperm and virtual eggs. We put them together to form a hypothetical child genome.
"Then we can look at that hypothetical genome and - with all the tools of modern genetics - determine the risk that the genome will result in a child with disease. We're looking directly for disease and not carrier status. For each pair of people that we're going to analyse, we make 10,000 hypothetical children."
The process will be run for the client and each potential donor one by one, scanning for some 600 known single-gene recessive conditions. In this way, the highest-risk pairings can be filtered out.
Anne Morriss added: "At this stage our clients won't be receiving any genetic information back. We're very much focused on the practical utility of helping prospective parents who want to protect their future kids, giving them the option of additional analysis to what is currently being offered in the industry."
But the company's founders have plans to expand the screening beyond single-gene recessive disorders to more complex conditions in which multiple genes play a part.
Indeed, going to the trouble of simulating thousands of digital children deliberately lays the ground for this: "[It's] impossible to get towards an accurate risk calculation in any other way," said Anne Morriss.
And in a video produced by the company, Prof Silver says: "My hope for the future is that any people who want to have a baby can use this technology to greatly reduce the risk of disease being expressed in their child."

Donor ethics

To some, such a prospect might appear like a step towards designer babies - until now the preserve of science fiction literature and films such as Gattaca, which envisaged a future of genetic "haves" and "have-nots".
Bio-ethicists approached by the BBC said Genepeeks was a logical outcome of the increasing demand for more information when making reproductive decisions.
However, some raised potential concerns about risk communication and the expansion of screening beyond rare single-gene disorders. But they suggested there were few, if any, regulatory barriers.
One ethicist told BBC News: "The biggest question for me, just from the outset, is the understanding of uncertainty. Even people who have been doing genomics for years still have a hard time figuring out exactly what a risk for a particular genetic predisposition really means for a family.
"Gene-environment interactions can lead to people either having disease or not having disease."
Dr Ewan Birney, associate director of the European Bioinformatics Institute in Hinxton, UK, echoed the point: "It's good that they're focusing on the carrier status of these rare Mendelian disorders where it's potentially more clear-cut. That said, these things are more complex than they first seem," he said.
"I'm sure the scientists appreciate that complexity. But when transmitting that complexity to everyday people, these things can sound more absolute than they really are."
He added: "The thing I would want to stress here is just how complex this is. It's great that people are thinking of using this technology in lots of different ways, but our knowledge gap is very large."
Risk communication to clients was, said Anne Morriss, "absolutely critical to anyone in this industry".
"We have to be crystal clear about what we're testing for, what risks we're helping to reduce; that there's no guarantee you won't give birth to a sick child," she said.
Prof Mildred Cho, associate director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics in California, raised questions over whether the sperm donor should also receive information about their genome gleaned from the screening process.
"Unlike hair colour, occupation or family history - those are things, presumably, the donor already knows - the thing that's different about this that I see is it could create information that the donor doesn't already have. It also has implications for the donor's other biological family members," Prof Cho told BBC News.

This week it also emerged that California-based consumer genetics company 23andMe had submitted the patent on a DNA analysis tool for planning a child.

Source bbc science news

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