News...for YOU!

Posts for 17-18 May, 2009

2009-05-18T12:19:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone! Didn't update yesterday. Didn't actually have anything to tell you guys about. And more importantly, Sunday is off right?

Posts for 17-18 May, 2009

Britain to be hit by bubonic plague soon?

Rivers on Mars sometime back?

Check if your honey is real or fake

Wondering what happened to Neanderthals? You ATE them!

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2009-05-18T12:18:00.000-07:00

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Posts for 7-18 May, 2009

Posts on 16 May, 2009

Posts for 12-15 May, 2009

Posts on 11 May, 2009

Britain to be hit by bubonic plague soon?

2009-05-18T12:11:00.000-07:00

A new breed of “super rat” with DNA that makes them resistant to poison and subsequently almost impossible to kill are evolving in the British corners, experts have warned. According to Professor Robert Smith at the University of Huddersfield, genetic mutations have led rats across the country to develop protection against standard toxins. If such rats or "super rats" as they are being called are not stopped from multiplying then there is a risk of another bubonic plague just like the one that caused The Black Death in Europe in 1340s.

Rivers on Mars sometime back?

2009-05-18T12:00:00.000-07:00

A new study has indicated that rivers might have flowed recently on Mars. The study has found some serious valleys carved by rivers within the last billion years, which is much sooner than most similar findings. That’s good news for biologists, as water is a key to life as we know it, and the more recently there was liquid water on Mars, the greater the chances for life to have arisen and endured.

Check if your honey is real or fake

2009-05-18T11:59:00.000-07:00

Researchers are developing a simple test that will tell natural honey from the adulterated or impure versions being increasingly foisted on consumers. Bernard Herbreteau and colleagues point out that the high price of honey and its limited supply has led some beekeepers and food processors to fraudulently make and sell impure honey doped with inexpensive sweeteners, such as corn syrup.

Wondering what happened to Neanderthals? You ATE them!

2009-05-18T11:53:00.000-07:00

Modern humans were responsible for butchering Neanderthals in the Stone Age, says a leading fossil expert. The controversial comment follows publication of a study in the Journal of Anthropological Sciences about a Neanderthal jawbone apparently butchered by modern humans. The bone was covered in cut marks similar to those found when humans stripped the flesh from animals, reports The Guardian. The study’s leader, now, believes that humans had eaten the flesh, while its teeth may have been used to make a necklace. Fernando Rozzi, of Paris’s Centre National de la Richerche Scientifique, said: “Neanderthals met a violent end at our hands and in some cases we ate them.” Neanderthals evolved in Europe around 300,000 years ago. It is believed that they survived several ice ages and interglacial periods before dying out around 30,000 years ago, at almost the same time as human beings arrived on the continent from Africa. Some scientists believe Neanderthals couldn’t compete with Homo Sapiens for the scarce resources of the times, whereas other researchers believe that Neanderthals were more susceptible to climate change.

Posts on 16 May, 2009

2009-05-16T10:14:00.000-07:00

Facebook HACKED!

An onion a day keeps hay fever away

Use ginger to ease nausea caused due to chemotherapy

Cancer wont be a killer after 20 years

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Facebook HACKED!

2009-05-16T10:07:00.000-07:00

Hackers launched an attack on Facebook’s 200 million users on Thursday, successfully gathering passwords from some of them in the latest campaign to prey on members of the popular social networking site. Facebook spokesperson Barry Schnitt said on Thursday that the site was in the process of cleaning up damage from the attack. He said that Facebook was blocking compromised accounts. Schnitt declined to say how many accounts had been compromised. The hackers got passwords through what is known as a phishing attack, breaking into accounts of some Facebook members, then sending e-mails to friends and urging them to click on links to fake websites. Those sites were designed to look like the Facebook home page. The victims were directed to log back in to the site, but actually logged into the one controlled by the hackers, unwittingly giving away their passwords. The purpose of such attacks is generally identify theft and to spread spam. The fake domains include www .151 .im, www .121 .im and www .123 .im. Facebook has deleted all references to those domains.

An onion a day keeps hay fever away

2009-05-16T09:57:00.000-07:00

Onion may hold the key to beating hay fever, says a new study. Dutch researchers say onion skins contain quercetin, a potent natural antihistamine and anti-inflammatory shown to help hay fever sufferers. According to the British Onion Producers’ Association, onions contain three times as much quercetin as kale — the next-richest source.

Use ginger to ease nausea caused due to chemotherapy

2009-05-16T09:55:00.000-07:00

Ginger, long used as a folk remedy for soothing tummyaches, helped tame one of the most dreaded side effects of cancer treatment — nausea from chemotherapy, the first large study to test the herb for this has found.
People who started taking ginger capsules several days before a chemo infusion had fewer and less severe bouts of nausea afterward than others who were given dummy capsules, the federally funded study found. “We were slightly beside ourselves” to see how much it helped, said study leader Julie Ryan of the University of Rochester in New York. But don’t reach for the ginger ale. Many sodas and cookies containonly flavoring — not real ginger, Ryan said. Still, ginger capsules may offer a cheap, simple way to fight nausea, which is far more than just a quality-of-life issue, doctors say.

Cancer wont be a killer after 20 years

2009-05-16T09:51:00.000-07:00

While the rate of cancer survival has been improving day by day, a British expert reckons that cancer will no longer be a killer in the next 20 years.
Karol Sikora, professor of Cancer Medicine at Imperial College London, has said that the treatments for the disease are undergoing a “revolution”, which means that within just two decades, “we will simply run out of things from which to die”.
And rather than facing a possible death sentence, cancer patients will be treated as if they have a long-term illness like diabetes, heart disease or asthma. Sikora said that better technologies, better delivery systems to treat the disease, and financial constraints are expected in the near future.
And as improved cancer care leads to better survival rates, higher prevalence of the disease in our populations will lead to greater societal pressures as people will be expecting much more from medicine. “Within 20 years cancer will be a chronic disease, joining conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and asthma,” the Daily Express quoted Sikora as saying.
“These conditions impact on the way people live and do not inexorably lead to death. The model of prostate cancer, where many men die with it rather than from it, will be common for most cancers.
“Even greater progress will be made in understanding myriad causes of cancer,” Silora added.
Hazel Nunn, health information manager at Cancer Research UK, said: “In recent decades cancer survival has been improving dramatically.” The Government’s cancer tsar, Mike Richards, said: “We will see more cancers being cured and some others may become more chronic illnesses.”

2009-05-15T10:44:00.000-07:00

Hey guys!! Sorry I haven't been on lately and not updating. Bad connection. Anyways, here are some interesting things that happened during the time.

Posts for 12-15 May,2009

RNA riddle finally solved!

Checklist to predict Alzeimer's risk

Meditate to become more intelligent!

Infrared rays will now check water purity

Gold mine found under Andean glaciers!

Take folic acid to reduce birth defects

Atlantis off to repair Hubble

Start daydreaming to increase problem solving skills

Start daydreaming to increase problem solving skills!

2009-05-15T10:09:00.000-07:00

Daydreaming might not be such a bad thing after all. It helps the brain tackle life’s more complex problems, a new study has found.
“Mind wandering is typically associated with negative things like laziness or inattentiveness,” said study coauthor, Kalina Christoff, psychologist at the University of British Columbia, who led the study. “But this study shows our brains are very active when we daydream — much more active than when we focus on routine tasks,” she added.
“When you daydream, you may not be achieving your immediate goal — say reading a book or paying attention in class — but your mind may be taking that time to address more important questions in your life, such as advancing your career or personal relationships,” said Christoff.
The quantity and quality of brain activity suggests that people struggling to solve complicated problems might be better off switching to a simpler task and letting their mind wander.
Until now, the brain’s “default network” — which is linked to routine mental activity was the only part of the brain thought to be active when our minds wander. However, the study finds that the brain’s “executive network” — associated with high-level, complex problem-solving, also becomes activated when we daydream.

Atlantis off to repair Hubble

2009-05-15T10:05:00.000-07:00

Space shuttle Atlantis blasted off on Monday with seven astronauts on an ambitious 11-day mission to refurbish the Hubble that has changed our understanding of the universe. Atlantis bolted off its seaside launch pad on Nasa’s 126th shuttle mission and the second of five planned for this year. Astronauts will try to equip Hubble with two new instruments, six positioning gyroscopes, batteries and fresh thermal insulation. The fate of Hubble’s final repair job was thrown into doubt after the loss of shuttle Columbia and its crew in 2003.

Take folic acid to reduce birth defects

2009-05-15T10:04:00.001-07:00

ortifying flour and pasta products with folic acid appears to cut the number of babies born with congenital heart disease, the most common of all birth defects, Canadian researchers said.
While food fortification is not mandatory in Europe, a 1998 Canadian requirement has led to a 6% drop each year in the number of such defects in Quebec, they reported in the British Medical Journal.
“These findings support the hypothesis that folic acid has a preventive effect on heart defects,” Louise Pilote of McGill University in Montreal and colleagues wrote. “Public health measures to increase folic acid intake were followed by a decrease in the birth prevalence of severe congenital heart defects.”
Currently 67 countries fortify wheat flour, 47 of them by mandate, Helena Gardiner of Imperial College in London and Jean-Claude Fouron of CHU Sainte-Justine University Hospital Centre in Montreal noted in an editorial. Folic acid helps the body make healthy new cells. It is important that women get enough of it before and during a pregnancy to prevent major birth defects involving a baby’s brain or spine. Leafy green vegetables, fruits, dried beans peas and nuts contain folic acid.
Even with fortification, many women do not get enough folic acid. Pilote and colleagues identified all infants born in Quebec with severe congenital heart defects between 1990 and 2005. Their analysis showed no change in how many babies were born with severe heart defects in the nine years before fortification. But there was a 6% decrease annually for each of the seven years after fortification began.

Gold mine found under Andean glaciers!

2009-05-15T10:01:00.000-07:00

An ambitious gold mining project in northern Chile, high up in the Andes close to ancient glaciers, is finally getting under way amid the economic downturn despite fears from environmentalists. Assurances the vast project will create some 5,000 badly needed jobs, have failed to overcome skepticism that the project, more than 16,000 feet above sea level, could impact on the vast mountain wilderness. Mining officials have said glaciers Toro 1, Toro 2 and Esperanza will not now be removed, as had been called for in the initial proposal put forward some 15 years ago by Canadian company Barrick Gold. The glaciers cannot be “moved, displaced, destroyed or physically altered” under the conditions set by the Chilean authorities when they approved the plan. But Barrick still plans to construct one of the world’s biggest gold mines straddling the Chilean-Argentine border, and has just began construction at the Pascua Lama site on the $3 billion project. Gold production is set to begin in 2013, and have a lifespan of some 25 years. Chilean Environment Minister Ana Lya Uriarte portrayed the project as a delicate balancing act. “We will not allow damage to our glaciers,” she said. “The project was approved with a series of conditions and demands whose importance is tantamount.” But environmentalists are unconvinced. “This begins the plundering of our mountains,” said one of the protesters, Mauricio Rios, leader of the Huasco Valley Defense Council. The gold seam is estimated to hold 17.8 million ounces in reserves. At a production cost of $20 to $25 an ounce, it will be one of the most cost-effective gold mines in the world, Barrick says.

Infra-red rays will now check water purity

2009-05-15T10:00:00.001-07:00

An expert from the Tel Aviv University has developed a new system using infrared spectrum that can help monitor the safety of a building’s water supply by watching it in the same way as a snake does. Abraham Katzir points out that this spectrum is not visible to the naked eye, and it can be seen only by snakes or vampire bats, to track down prey.

Meditate to become more intelligent!

2009-05-15T09:55:00.000-07:00

ush-ups, crunches and gyms are fine for building bigger muscles and stronger bones. But meditation seems to be the way to a bigger brain. A new study has established that certain regions in the brains of those meditating for a long period were larger than in a similar control group. A group of researchers at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), used highresolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan the brains of people who meditate. Specifically, such people showed significantly larger volumes of the hippocampus and areas within the orbitofrontal cortex, the thalamus and the inferior temporal gyrus-regions known for regulating emotions. “We know that people who consistently meditate have a singular ability to cultivate positive emotions, retain emotional stability and engage in mindful behaviour,” said Eileen Luders, study co-author and postdoctoral fellow at the UCLA Lab of Neuro Imaging. Luders and colleagues examined 44 people, 22 control subjects and 22 who had practised Zazen, Samatha and Vipassana meditation, among others. They had devoted an average of 24 years to the practice. More than half of all the people who meditate said that deep concentration was an essential part of their practice, and most meditated between 10 and 90 minutes daily, said an UCLA release. The researchers used a high-resolution, three-dimensional form of MRI and two different approaches to measure differences in brain structure. These findings were published in NeuroImage.

Checklist to predict Alzheimer’s risk

2009-05-15T09:54:00.001-07:00

US researchers have developed a checklist that can accurately predict whether a person over 65 is at high risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease within six years. The checklist of risk factors like slowness of mind or movement predicted about half the cases of dementia that developed in a group of elderly people over a six year period, the researchers reported in the journal Neurology. Over 26 million people globally have Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia.

RNA riddle finally solved!

2009-05-15T09:48:00.000-07:00

An English chemist has found the hidden gateway to the RNA world, the chemical milieu from which the first forms of life are thought to have emerged on earth some 3.8 billion years ago.
He has solved a problem that for 20 years has thwarted researchers trying to understand the origin of life — how the building blocks of RNA, called nucleotides, could have spontaneously assembled themselves in the conditions of the primitive earth. The discovery, if correct, should set experts on the right track to solving many other mysteries about the origin of life. It will also mean that for the first time a plausible explanation exists for how an information-carrying biological molecule could have emerged through natural processes from chemicals on earth.
The author, John Sutherland, from the University of Manchester, likened his work to a crossword puzzle in which doing the first clues makes the others easier. “Whether we’ve done one across is an open question,” he said. “Our worry is that it may not be right.”
Other researchers say they believe he has made a major advance in prebiotic chemistry, the study of the natural chemical reactions that preceded the first living cells. “It is precisely because this work opens up so many new directions for research that it will stand for years as one of the great advances in prebiotic chemistry,” Jack Szostak of the Massachusetts General Hospital wrote in Nature, where the work is being published on Thursday.
Scientists have long suspected that the first forms of life carried their biological information not in DNA but in RNA, its close chemical cousin. Though DNA is better known because of its storage of genetic information, RNA performs many of the trickiest operations in cells. RNA seems to have delegated the chore of data storage to the chemically more stable DNA eons ago. If the first forms of life were based on RNA, then the issue is to explain how the first RNA molecules were formed.

Posts on 11 May, 2009

2009-05-11T21:59:00.000-07:00

Posts on 11 May,2009

Harry Potter's tracking device in your hands

In-built computer to restrict car speeds

NASA set for most dangerous mission to repair the Hubble Telescope

World's smallest bulb created

Plan your next honeymoon on stars

200,000 year old human hair found in dung

African tribals colonized the world 70,000 years ago

Harry potter's tracking device in your hands!

2009-05-11T21:46:00.000-07:00

Trials of a Harry Potter-inspired tracking device which can monitor movements of family members through their cell phones have been completed. Microsoft’s Whereabouts Clock features a screen which has the ability to show the approximate location of an individual — such as “school”, “work” or “gym”. It works by identifying which cell of a cell phone network a family member is in at any given time.

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In-built computer to restrict car speeds

2009-05-11T21:33:00.000-07:00

Scientists have developed an in-car computer that they claim could soon make it impossible for motorists to speed beyond the permissible limit.
A team of experts in Britain has developed the Intelligent Speed Adaption system that detects the speed limit and automatically slows the car if it is being driven too fast on a busy road, the Daily Mail reported on Monday.
According to its developers, the computer pinpoints a vehicle’s exact location via satellite and accesses a database of every road’s speed limit to determine how fast the vehicle should be travelling.
In fact, the system works by preventing the speeding vehicle’s accelerator from crossing the permissible limit no matter, how far it is depressed. It doesn’t affect the brakes. If an ISA-equipped car is driven from a 40 mph to a 30 mph or 20 mph zone, it is automatically and gradually slowed down.
The Transport for London which runs buses, trains, the Underground and major roads in London, is currently carrying out a trial of the system to evaluate the technology’s impact on road safety and congestion.

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Nasa set for most dangerous mission to repair the Hubble Telescope

2009-05-11T21:20:00.000-07:00

The US space agency said it was on target to launch on Monday the space shuttle Atlantis on its high-risk final mission to service the Hubble telescope. “Atlantis is ready to fly,” said Nasa test director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, adding that the countdown to launch was proceeding on schedule, with liftoff expected Monday at 1801 GMT. Weather forecasters said there was a 90% chance of favorable conditions for the launch from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The 11-day shuttle mission aims to provide the fifth and last maintenance operation to the Hubble before the shuttle fleet is retired, and if successful Nasa has said the mission would extend the star-gazer’s life by at least five years. Launched in 1990, Hubble has long been considered the greatest tool in the history of astronomy. Using powerful instruments to peer into deep space, it has provided profound insights into the origins and evolution of the universe. But Nasa experts stressed that the Atlantis mission carries heavy risks. “This will be the most challenging servicing mission that’s been faced by our astronauts in terms of the total amount of work,” said Preston Burch, mission manager. A journey to the Hubble carries more risk of being hit by space debris or micrometeorites than a flight to the International Space Station, as the telescope orbits at almost twice the height of the ISS.

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World’s smallest bulb created

2009-05-11T12:26:00.000-07:00

A team from the University of California Los Angeles has created the world’s smallest incandescent lamp. The UCLA team is using it to study physicist Max Planck’s black-body radiation law, derived in 1900. The lamp uses a filament made from a carbon nanotube only 100 atoms wide. To the unaided eye, the filament is invisible when the lamp is off, but it appears as a tiny point of light when the lamp is turned on.

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