Washington, Internet giant Google has been by Fortune magazine as the best place to work in the US. The Mountain View, California-based company hired about 7,000 people in 2011, the most intense hiring spree in its 13-year history, which moved Google up from fourth to first on Fortune's annual list of the 100 best companies to work for, Xinhua reported. "Employees rave about their mission, the culture, and the famous perks of the Plex: bocce courts, a bowling alley, eyebrow shaping (for a fee) in the New York office," Fortune wrote. "What people often focus on are the flashy, showy things, like the massages and the food, which are important to us. But they are not the real story about what makes our culture work," Laszlo Bock, Google's senior vice president for people operations, told San Jose Mercury News, a daily newspaper in Silicon Valley. Larry Page, Google co-founder and chief executive officer, said in an interview with Fortune: "We've always been good at making sure we're treating employees flexibly. You treat people with respect. They tend to return the favor to the company. And that goes for ...
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Washington, Facebook has announced that its final wave of employees have moved into its new headquarters in the one million-square foot Menlo Park city of California. The world's largest social network is now officially headquartered at 1601 Willow Road in Menlo Park, Xinhua reported. The new campus consists of 10 eco-friendly buildings with no private offices and cubicles. Over 2,000 local employees moved to the campus from its previous location in Palo Alto, California, US. "This morning, the final wave of employees walked through the doors of the new Facebook Menlo Park campus," said the company Monday in its official blog. According to Facebook, the whole campus, featuring hallways with chalkboard paint, is connected through a central courtyard which will have cafes, coffee shops, on-site doctors, and gym after the construction is completed. The company said the current East campus could hold up to 9,400 staffers one day along with the West Campus that is still under construction. Facebook noted that it is relentlessly focused on minimising its impact on environment. It said it has reused as much of the existing structure as possible, noting all the doors ...
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Washington, A new study has found that drugs that affect the levels of an important brain protein involved in learning and memory reverse cellular changes in the brain seen during aging. The findings could one day aid in the development of new drugs that enhance cognitive function in older adults. Aging-related memory loss is associated with the gradual deterioration of the structure and function of synapses (the connections between brain cells) in brain regions critical to learning and memory, such as the hippocampus. Recent studies suggested that histone acetylation, a chemical process that controls whether genes are turned on, affects this process. Specifically, it affects brain cells’ ability to alter the strength and structure of their connections for information storage, a process known as synaptic plasticity, which is a cellular signature of memory. In the current study, Cui-Wei Xie, PhD, of the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues found that compared with younger rats, hippocampi from older rats have less brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) — a protein that promotes synaptic plasticity — and less histone acetylation of the Bdnf ...
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Washington, A cutting edge software, developed and tested by naval scientists, can help undersea robots become smarter at surveying large swathes of the ocean. "Using the new algorithms, the vehicle has a greater ability to make its own decisions without requiring a human in the loop," said Marc Steinberg, programme officer for Office of Naval Research's (ONR) multidisciplinary programme. With plans to deploy squadrons of air, surface and undersea robotic vehicles later this decade, the US Navy is investing in basic research programmes to improve autonomous system capabilities, according to an ONR statement. "Advancing autonomy for unmanned systems allows you the ability to do things that wouldn't be practical otherwise because we don't have enough warfighters or communication today," said Steinberg, who works in ONR's Naval Air Warfare and Weapons Department. ONR funded researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and University of Southern California to advance the intelligence of autonomous vehicles under its programmes for surveillance. They developed a persistent surveillance theory that provides a framework for decision making software that ...
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Washington, Using twin telescopes at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, astronomers have discovered 18 new Jupiter-like planets orbiting massive stars. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), surveyed about 300 stars, and focussed on those dubbed “retired” A-type stars that are more than one and a half times more massive than the sun. These stars are just past the main stage of their life hence, “retired”, and are now puffing up into what’s called a subgiant star. “It’s the largest single announcement of planets in orbit around stars more massive than the sun, aside from the discoveries made by the Kepler mission,” John Johnson, first author on the paper, said. The Kepler mission is a space telescope that has so far identified more than 1,200 possible planets, though the majority of those have not yet been confirmed. To look for planets, the astronomers searched for stars of this type that wobble, which could be caused by the gravitational tug of an orbiting planet. By searching the wobbly stars’ spectra for Doppler shifts, the lengthening and contracting of wavelengths due to motion away from and toward the observer, the team ...
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