1.
Raton, New Mexico
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Raton is a city and the county seat of Colfax County in northeastern New Mexico. The city is located just south of Raton Pass, ratón is the Spanish term for mouse. The Raton Range and Raton Peak are located north of the town. The Raton Range is a 75-mile-long ridge that extends east from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Raton Pass and the Raton Basin are also named for the Raton Range. Raton Pass had been used by Spanish explorers and Indians for centuries to cut through the rugged Rocky Mountains, the post office at this location was named Willow Springs from 1877 to 1879, Otero from 1879 to 1880, then renamed Raton in 1880. Raton was founded at the site of Willow Springs, a stop on the Santa Fe Trail, the original 320 acres for the Raton townsite were purchased from the Maxwell Land Grant in 1880. In 1879, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway bought a local toll road, Raton quickly developed as a railroad, mining and ranching center for the northeast part of the New Mexico territory, as well as the county seat and principal trading center of the area. The city is mentioned in Jack Kerouacs novel On the Road, Raton is located at 36°53′49″N 104°26′24″W. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of 8.0 square miles. Raton is one of the sites for viewing the K-T Boundary, also known as the K-Pg Boundary or Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary. There is a sequence of rocks spanning the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary in Climax Canyon Park. Geographic Coordinates, 36°54′13. 99″N 104°27′0. 75″W The rocks have been studied for evidence of the iridium anomaly cited as evidence of a meteorite impact at the end of the Cretaceous. It is interpreted to have caused the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event which killed off non-avian dinosaurs, as well as other species of flora. The K-T Boundary is represented in the rock strata by a 1-cm thick tonstein clay layer which has found to contain anomalously high concentrations of iridium. As of the census of 2000, there were 7,282 people,3,035 households, the population density was 992.4 people per square mile. There were 3,472 housing units at a density of 473.2 per square mile. The racial makeup of the city was 78. 04% White,0. 23% African American,1. 59% Native American,0. 40% Asian,0. 01% Pacific Islander,16. 19% from other races, and 3. 53% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 56. 96% of the population,30. 6% of all households were made up of individuals and 14. 1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older
2.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
3.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, often cited as one of the worlds most prestigious universities. Researchers worked on computers, radar, and inertial guidance during World War II, post-war defense research contributed to the rapid expansion of the faculty and campus under James Killian. The current 168-acre campus opened in 1916 and extends over 1 mile along the bank of the Charles River basin. The Institute is traditionally known for its research and education in the sciences and engineering, and more recently in biology, economics, linguistics. Air Force and 6 Fields Medalists have been affiliated with MIT, the school has a strong entrepreneurial culture, and the aggregated revenues of companies founded by MIT alumni would rank as the eleventh-largest economy in the world. In 1859, a proposal was submitted to the Massachusetts General Court to use newly filled lands in Back Bay, Boston for a Conservatory of Art and Science, but the proposal failed. A charter for the incorporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rogers, a professor from the University of Virginia, wanted to establish an institution to address rapid scientific and technological advances. The Rogers Plan reflected the German research university model, emphasizing an independent faculty engaged in research, as well as instruction oriented around seminars, two days after the charter was issued, the first battle of the Civil War broke out. After a long delay through the war years, MITs first classes were held in the Mercantile Building in Boston in 1865, in 1863 under the same act, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts founded the Massachusetts Agricultural College, which developed as the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In 1866, the proceeds from sales went toward new buildings in the Back Bay. MIT was informally called Boston Tech, the institute adopted the European polytechnic university model and emphasized laboratory instruction from an early date. Despite chronic financial problems, the institute saw growth in the last two decades of the 19th century under President Francis Amasa Walker. Programs in electrical, chemical, marine, and sanitary engineering were introduced, new buildings were built, the curriculum drifted to a vocational emphasis, with less focus on theoretical science. The fledgling school still suffered from chronic financial shortages which diverted the attention of the MIT leadership, during these Boston Tech years, MIT faculty and alumni rebuffed Harvard University president Charles W. Eliots repeated attempts to merge MIT with Harvard Colleges Lawrence Scientific School. There would be at least six attempts to absorb MIT into Harvard, in its cramped Back Bay location, MIT could not afford to expand its overcrowded facilities, driving a desperate search for a new campus and funding. Eventually the MIT Corporation approved an agreement to merge with Harvard, over the vehement objections of MIT faculty, students. However, a 1917 decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court effectively put an end to the merger scheme, the neoclassical New Technology campus was designed by William W. Bosworth and had been funded largely by anonymous donations from a mysterious Mr. Smith, starting in 1912. In January 1920, the donor was revealed to be the industrialist George Eastman of Rochester, New York, who had invented methods of production and processing
4.
Stanford University
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Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California, adjacent to Palo Alto and between San Jose and San Francisco. Its 8, 180-acre campus is one of the largest in the United States, Stanford also has land and facilities elsewhere. The university was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford in memory of their only child, Stanford was a former Governor of California and U. S. Senator, he made his fortune as a railroad tycoon. The school admitted its first students 125 years ago on October 1,1891, Stanford University struggled financially after Leland Stanfords death in 1893 and again after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Following World War II, Provost Frederick Terman supported faculty and graduates entrepreneurialism to build self-sufficient local industry in what would later be known as Silicon Valley. The university is one of the top fundraising institutions in the country. There are three schools that have both undergraduate and graduate students and another four professional schools. Students compete in 36 varsity sports, and the university is one of two institutions in the Division I FBS Pac-12 Conference. Stanford faculty and alumni have founded a number of companies that produce more than $2.7 trillion in annual revenue. It is the alma mater of 30 living billionaires,17 astronauts and it is also one of the leading producers of members of the United States Congress. Sixty Nobel laureates and seven Fields Medalists have been affiliated with Stanford as students, alumni, Stanford University was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford, dedicated to Leland Stanford Jr, their only child. The institution opened in 1891 on Stanfords previous Palo Alto farm, despite being impacted by earthquakes in both 1906 and 1989, the campus was rebuilt each time. In 1919, The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace was started by Herbert Hoover to preserve artifacts related to World War I, the Stanford Medical Center, completed in 1959, is a teaching hospital with over 800 beds. The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, which was established in 1962, in 2008, 60% of this land remained undeveloped. Besides the central campus described below, the university also operates at more remote locations, some elsewhere on the main campus. Stanfords main campus includes a place within unincorporated Santa Clara County. The campus also includes land in unincorporated San Mateo County, as well as in the city limits of Menlo Park, Woodside. The academic central campus is adjacent to Palo Alto, bounded by El Camino Real, Stanford Avenue, Junipero Serra Boulevard, the United States Postal Service has assigned it two ZIP codes,94305 for campus mail and 94309 for P. O. box mail
5.
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
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The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature, peace, and physiology or medicine. This award is administered by the Nobel Foundation and awarded by Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on proposal of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry which consists of five elected by Academy. The award is presented in Stockholm at a ceremony on December 10. The first Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded in 1901 to Jacobus Henricus van t Hoff, of the Netherlands, for his discovery of the laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions. From 1901 to 2016, the award has been bestowed on a total of 174 individuals, though Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime, the last was written a little over a year before he died, and signed at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris on 27 November 1895. Nobel bequeathed 94% of his assets,31 million Swedish kronor, to establish. Due to the level of surrounding the will, it was not until April 26,1897 that it was approved by the Storting. The executors of his will were Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist, the members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee that were to award the Peace Prize were appointed shortly after the will was approved. The prize-awarding organisations followed, the Karolinska Institutet on June 7, the Swedish Academy on June 9, the Nobel Foundation then reached an agreement on guidelines for how the Nobel Prize should be awarded. In 1900, the Nobel Foundations newly created statutes were promulgated by King Oscar II, according to Nobels will, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences were to award the Prize in Chemistry. The committee and institution serving as the board for the prize typically announce the names of the laureates in October. The prize is awarded at formal ceremonies held annually on December 10. The highlight of the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in Stockholm is when each Nobel Laureate steps forward to receive the prize from the hands of His Majesty the King of Sweden, the Nobel Laureate receives three things, a diploma, a medal and a document confirming the prize amount. Later the Nobel Banquet is held in Stockholm City Hall, a maximum of three laureates and two different works may be selected. The award can be given to a maximum of three recipients per year and it consists of a gold medal, a diploma, and a cash grant. The Nobel Laureates in chemistry are selected by a committee that consists of five elected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In its first stage, several people are asked to nominate candidates
6.
DNA mismatch repair
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During DNA synthesis the newly synthesised strand will commonly include errors. In order to repair, the mismatch repair machinery distinguishes the newly synthesised strand from the template. In gram-negative bacteria, transient hemimethylation distinguishes the strands, however, in other prokaryotes and eukaryotes, the exact mechanism is not clear. It is suspected that, in eukaryotes, newly synthesized lagging-strand DNA transiently contains nicks and this implies that these nicks must be present in the leading strand, and evidence for this has recently been found. Oriented PCNA then directs the action of the MutLalpha endonuclease to one strand in the presence of a mismatch, any mutational event that disrupts the superhelical structure of DNA carries with it the potential to compromise the genetic stability of a cell. The fact that the detection and repair systems are as complex as the replication machinery itself highlights the importance evolution has attached to DNA fidelity. Examples of mismatched bases include a G/T or A/C pairing, mismatches are commonly due to tautomerization of bases during DNA replication. The removal process involves more than just the mismatched nucleotide itself, a few or up to thousands of base pairs of the newly synthesized DNA strand can be removed. Mismatch repair is a highly conserved process from prokaryotes to eukaryotes, the first evidence for mismatch repair was obtained from S. pneumoniae. Subsequent work on E. coli has identified a number of genes that, the gene products are, therefore, called the Mut proteins, and are the major active components of the mismatch repair system. Three of these proteins are essential in detecting the mismatch and directing repair machinery to it, MutS, MutH, MutS forms a dimer that recognises the mismatched base on the daughter strand and binds the mutated DNA. The DNA is looped out to search for the nearest d methylation site to the mismatch, upon activation by the MutS-DNA complex, MutH nicks the daughter strand near the hemimethylated site. MutL recruits UvrD helicase to separate the two strands with a specific 3 to 5 polarity, the entire MutSHL complex then slides along the DNA in the direction of the mismatch, liberating the strand to be excised as it goes. An exonuclease trails the complex and digests the ss-DNA tail, the exonuclease recruited is dependent on which side of the mismatch MutH incises the strand –5 or 3. If the nick made by MutH is on the 5 end of the mismatch, if, however, the nick is on the 3 end of the mismatch, ExoI is used. The entire process ends past the mismatch site - i. e. both the site itself and its surrounding nucleotides are fully excised. The single-strand gap created by the exonuclease can then be repaired by DNA Polymerase III, which uses the other strand as a template, DNA methylase then rapidly methylates the daughter strand. When bound, the MutS2 dimer bends the DNA helix and shields approximately 20 base pairs and it has weak ATPase activity, and binding of ATP leads to the formation of tertiary structures on the surface of the molecule
7.
Duke University
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Duke University is an American private research university located in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the town of Trinity in 1838. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James Buchanan Duke established The Duke Endowment, at time the institution changed its name to honor his deceased father. Dukes campus spans over 8,600 acres on three campuses in Durham as well as a marine lab in Beaufort. The main campus—designed largely by architect Julian Abele—incorporates Gothic architecture with the 210-foot Duke Chapel at the campus center, the first-year-populated East Campus contains Georgian-style architecture, while the main Gothic-style West Campus 1.5 miles away is adjacent to the Medical Center. Duke is the seventh-wealthiest private university in America with $11.4 billion in cash, Dukes research expenditures in the 2015 fiscal year were $1.037 billion, the seventh largest in the nation. In 2014, Thomson Reuters named 32 of Dukes professors to its list of Highly Cited Researchers, Duke also ranks fifth among national universities to have produced Rhodes, Marshall, Truman, Goldwater, and Udall Scholars. Ten Nobel laureates and three Turing Award winners are affiliated with the university, Dukes sports teams compete in the Atlantic Coast Conference and the basketball team is renowned for having won five NCAA Mens Division I Basketball Championships, most recently in 2015. Duke is consistently included among the best universities in the world by numerous university rankings, according to a Forbes study, Duke is ranked 11th among universities that have produced billionaires. Duke started in 1838 as Browns Schoolhouse, a subscription school founded in Randolph County in the present-day town of Trinity. Organized by the Union Institute Society, a group of Methodists and Quakers, the academy was renamed Normal College in 1851 and then Trinity College in 1859 because of support from the Methodist Church. Carr donated land in 1892 for the original Durham campus, which is now known as East Campus, in 1924 Washington Dukes son, James B. Duke, established The Duke Endowment with a $40 million trust fund, income from the fund was to be distributed to hospitals, orphanages, the Methodist Church, and four colleges. Duke thought the change would come off as self-serving. Money from the endowment allowed the University to grow quickly, Dukes original campus, East Campus, was rebuilt from 1925 to 1927 with Georgian-style buildings. By 1930, the majority of the Collegiate Gothic-style buildings on the one mile west were completed. In 1878, Trinity awarded A. B. degrees to three sisters—Mary, Persis, and Theresa Giles—who had studied both with private tutors and in classes with men. With the relocation of the college in 1892, the Board of Trustees voted to allow women to be formally admitted to classes as day students
8.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
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The Howard Hughes Medical Institute is an American non-profit medical research organization based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It was founded by the American businessman Howard Hughes in 1953 and it is one of the largest private funding organizations for biological and medical research in the United States. HHMI spends about $1 million per HHMI Investigator per year, which amounts to annual investment in research of about $825 million. The institute has an endowment of $18.2 billion, making it the second-wealthiest philanthropic organization in the United States, HHMI is the former owner of the Hughes Aircraft Company - an American aerospace firm which was divested to various firms over time. The institute was formed with the goal of research including trying to understand, in Hughess words. Despite its principles, in the days it was generally viewed as a tax haven for Hughess huge personal fortune. Hughes was HHMIs sole trustee and transferred his stock of Hughes Aircraft to the institute, for many years the Institute grappled with maintaining its non-profit status, the Internal Revenue Service challenged its charitable status which made it tax exempt. The institute was initially in Miami, Florida in 1953, Hughess internist, Dr. Verne Mason, who treated Hughes after his 1946 plane crash, was chairman of the institutes medical advisory committee. The institute moved to Coconut Grove, Florida, in the mid-1970s and then to Bethesda, Maryland, in 1993 the institute moved to its headquarters in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It was not until after Hughess death in 1976 that the institutes profile increased from a budget of $4 million in 1975 to $15 million by 1978. In this period it focused its mission on genetics, immunology, since Hughes died without a will as the sole trustee of the HHMI, the institute was involved in lengthy court proceedings to determine whether it would benefit from Hughess fortune. In April 1984, a court appointed new trustees for the institutes holdings, in January 1985 the trustees announced they would sell Hughes Aircraft by private sale or public stock offering. On June 5,1985 General Motors was announced as the winner of a secretive five-month, sealed-bid auction. The purchase was completed on December 20,1985 for an estimated $5.2 billion, $2.7 billion in cash, the proceeds caused the institute to grow dramatically. HHMI completed the building of a new campus in Ashburn. It is modeled after AT&Ts Bell Labs and the Medical Research Councils Laboratory of Molecular Biology, with a main laboratory building nearly 1,000 feet long, it contains 760,000 square feet of enclosed space, used primarily for research. The campus also features apartments for visiting researchers, the agreement takes effect for articles published after September 1,2007. In 2008, the Trustees of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute selected Dr. Robert Tjian as the new president of HHMI, in 2009, HHMI awarded fifty researchers, as part of the HHMI Early Career Scientist Competition
9.
University of California, Berkeley
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The University of California, Berkeley, is a public research university located in Berkeley, California. In 1960s, UC Berkeley was particularly noted for the Free Speech Movement as well as the Anti-Vietnam War Movement led by its students. S, Department of Energy, and is home to many world-renowned research institutes and organizations including Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and Space Sciences Laboratory. Faculty member J. R. Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, Lawrence Livermore Lab also discovered or co-discovered six chemical elements. The Academic Ranking of World Universities also ranks the University of California, Berkeley, third in the world overall, in 1866, the private College of California purchased the land comprising the current Berkeley campus. Ten faculty members and almost 40 students made up the new University of California when it opened in Oakland in 1869, billings was a trustee of the College of California and suggested that the college be named in honor of the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkeley. In 1870, Henry Durant, the founder of the College of California, with the completion of North and South Halls in 1873, the university relocated to its Berkeley location with 167 male and 22 female students and held its first classes. In 1905, the University Farm was established near Sacramento, ultimately becoming the University of California, by the 1920s, the number of campus buildings had grown substantially, and included twenty structures designed by architect John Galen Howard. Robert Gordon Sproul served as president from 1930 to 1958, by 1942, the American Council on Education ranked UC Berkeley second only to Harvard University in the number of distinguished departments. During World War II, following Glenn Seaborgs then-secret discovery of plutonium, UC Berkeley physics professor J. Robert Oppenheimer was named scientific head of the Manhattan Project in 1942. Along with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley is now a partner in managing two other labs, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, originally, military training was compulsory for male undergraduates, and Berkeley housed an armory for that purpose. In 1917, Berkeleys ROTC program was established, and its School of Military Aeronautics trained future pilots, including Jimmy Doolittle, both Robert McNamara and Frederick C. Weyand graduated from UC Berkeleys ROTC program, earning B. A. degrees in 1937 and 1938, in 1926, future fleet admiral Chester W. Nimitz established the first Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps unit at Berkeley. The Board of Regents ended compulsory military training at Berkeley in 1962, during the McCarthy era in 1949, the Board of Regents adopted an anti-communist loyalty oath. A number of faculty members objected and were dismissed, ten years passed before they were reinstated with back pay, in 1952, the University of California became an entity separate from the Berkeley campus. Each campus was given autonomy and its own Chancellor. Then-president Sproul assumed presidency of the entire University of California system, Berkeley gained a reputation for student activism in the 1960s with the Free Speech Movement of 1964 and opposition to the Vietnam War. In the highly publicized Peoples Park protest in 1969, students and the school conflicted over use of a plot of land, then governor of California Ronald Reagan called the Berkeley campus a haven for communist sympathizers, protesters, and sex deviants. Modern students at Berkeley are less active, with a greater percentage of moderates and conservatives
. PMID 3014530.
