Monday, October 20, 2008
Saturday, October 18, 2008
tasty words
1. To throw something (someone) out of a window is to defenestrate
. I love this word because it immediately brings some interesting
memories to the front, not to mention makes me think of some new things
to toss out of a window.
Lee Nachtigal, West Hartford, Connecticut, USA
2. Poodle-faker - a young man too much given to taking tea
with ladies.
Jane, Pembroke
3. Omphaloskepsis (self-absorbed, navel-gazing). I'm not
really a selfish person, but I do occasionally need someone to remind
me to look up from my navel. Plus, things that have to do with
belly-buttons are generally pretty fun.
Anise Brock, San Francisco, USA
4. Mallemaroking - the carousing of seamen in icebound
ships. A wonderfully useful word! How many icebound ships do we all
know?
Sue H, Tiverton
5. Spanghew - to cause (esp. a toad or frog) to fly into the
air off the end of a stick. (In northern and Scottish use.) Why? Well,
all one has to do is imagine the myriad situations in which one might
use this word.
Michael Everson, Ireland
6. Scrimshanker - one who accepts neither responsibility nor
work.
Maurice De Ville, Chesterfield
7. Zareba - a protective hedge around a village or camp,
particularly in the Sudan. Used to great effect by PG Wodehouse in, for
example, The Clicking Of Cuthbert, with his description of a Russian
novelist: "Vladimir Brusiloff had permitted his face to become almost
entirely concealed behind a dense zareba of hair."
Peter Skinner, Morpeth, UK
8. I first heard Stephen Fry (of course!) use this on QI. Tmesis
- To break one word with another. For example:
dis-bloomin-graceful, un-flippin-believable. Use it mainly when talking
to British Gas.
Colin Rogers, Maidenhead, Berks
9. I love the word quidnunc , which means one who
gossips because it is a word I could use to describe a lot of people
who fit the definition and they wouldn't know what I was saying.
Katie, Hickory Hills, IL, USA
10. Ischial callosities is a great description, because of
its precision. It refers to the leather-like pads on a monkey's bum.
Paul Edward Hughes, Langley, Canada
11. One of my favourite words is cryptomnesia because
it captures the meaning of a whole process that I previously never
thought could make it into a single meaningful word. Of course it makes
sense, and literally means "buried memory". I first came across it
reading Jung when he described the process of forgetting the source of
some information and assuming you've known it all along. That's such an
ephemeral process, and I'm fascinated by it as much as the word used to
describe it.
Alan Languirand, Ypsilanti MI, USA
12. One of my favourite words is urt . Urt is
almost onomatopoeic, since an urt is a "leftover bit".
Eric McConnachie, Clear Lake, Ontario, CANADA
13. I like the word termagant meaning a quarrelsome
shrew of a woman - because it's just obscure enough to get mixed up
with "ptarmigan", a lovely bird.
Jan, Portland, Oregon, USA
14. Oxter - space under the arm (not the armpit) eg he
walked down the street with a copy of the Times under his oxter.
David McLoughlin, Dublin, Ireland
15. Spelunking - the hobby or practice of exploring caves.
The word just sounds good, I love it!
Rachel, Reading
16. Petrichor - the sweet smell of rain on dry earth.
Although I wouldn't consider myself enough of a lexiphane (another good
word, meaning "one who uses words pretentiously") to bring it up in
every day conversation. Plus, living in Scotland, dry earth isn't a
phenomenon I'm used to.
Natalie, Glasgow
17. Frippet (noun) - A flighty young woman prone to showing
off. Could be used for the vast majority of contestants on Big Brother.
Charley, Bristol
18. Panglossian - Excessively or naively optimistic. The
world needs more people like this now than ever!
VJ Patel, Luton, UK
19. I love the word proprioception (go ahead and
look it up - I define it as knowing where you are in the world, where
your body stops and everything else begins). I learned it in an
undergraduate psychology course, probably. One of my favourite things
about this word is that I can never remember it! I'll come across a use
for it and then rack my brain for several minutes before having to give
up and then of course suddenly remembering it (there's another word I
have the same experience with but I can't remember what it is just
now). There's a French term that I believe is tangentially relevant to
proprioception - "jusqu'au bout". It means "to the end" but it was
explained to me (by a nice young French man, many years ago!) in the
context of "je t'aime jusqu'au bout", as in to love someone all the way
to the ends of their fingers and tips of their ears (etc!).
Marni Law, Brisbane, Australia
20. If you ever fly into the US, then one of the questions
you're asked on the entry form you have to fill in is "Have you ever
been convicted of moral turpitude ?" What a great word
turpitude is! I've never heard it anywhere else, but I can guess what
it means and that the required answer is "NO". Just the sound of it is
faintly dubious, once you've realised that it's not something you use
to clean your paint brushes with.
Stevie, Brighton
21. I like the word discombobulated . It has a
staccato, mechanical sound and conjures up an image of a robot
scrabbling to hold itself together when all its nuts and bolts suddenly
start to fall out. Which is just how one feels when discombobulated!
Sally Ratapu, Auckland, New Zealand
22. Floccinaucinihilipilification - this word was used by
Bollywood star Amitabh Bachhan 20 years ago while giving an interview.
I was struck by his choice of word and the meaning of it!
Sudip Mazumder, London
23. Pusillanimous (lacking in courage or strength of
purpose) just sounds funny and derisive and insulting.
David Benning, Davis, CA USA
24. Sepulchral - of or pertaining to the tomb. I just love
the way it sounds and the movements my mouth must make to say it. To be
sure, I rarely have the opportunity to use it, except during Halloween.
Gregory Strucaly, Apollo, PA, USA
25. I love the word sphygmomanometer , which is the
medical instrument used to measure blood pressure. Try saying it after
a drink or two.
Lucy, Cambridge, UK
26. Crepuscular , which means "of or like twilight".
Sarah, Bedford, UK
27. Sinecure - a position or office that requires little or
no work but provides a salary.
Stephen Lynn, Antrim
28. Word: kakistocracy . Definition: The government
of a state by the worst citizens. A very useful word!
Helen Collins, London, England
29. Chthonic : first encountered in Philip Pullman, then in
the BBC series Rome, meaning dead, underground, of the nether world.
Mike Crompton, Hayfield, High Peak
30. Runcible as used in Edward Lear's poem The Owl and the
Pussycat - given in Chambers Dictionary as meaning a pickle-fork but
used in our household as anything, especially cutlery, which is
slightly ill-matched or bent/crooked.
Kirsty Harrison, Binfield, Berkshire
31. I very much enjoy palimpsest because you would
never think that there was a word for something so specific as that: "A
parchment or other writing surface on which the original text has been
effaced or partially erased, and then overwritten by another." Its
etymology is beautifully direct. From Ancient Greek "palin" meaning
"again" (as in palindrome) and "psen" which means "to rub smooth".
William Kraemer, London, UK
32. I like susurrus which means a soft murmuring or
rustling sound. Terry Pratchett used it to great effect in one of his
books, and I couldn't help hearing the sound of a gentle breeze on tree
leaves whenever I read it. Almost like magic.
Sarah, Woking
33. I just like the sound of the word tintinnabulation and
if you look it up in the OED, it simply describes a sound made by the
ringing of a bell. Imagine using such a word in everyday language.
Earl Okezie, Lokoja, Nigeria
34. Maieutic is one of my favourite obscure words. It means
pertaining to intellectual midwifery and describes as no other word
does a phenomenon that happens more often than you might think. It is
very rewarding when you can match the moment to the word.
Martin Ackland, London
35. Crenellate - to furnish a wall with crenels or
battlements, the rectangular "gaps" seen atop castle towers. For me,
this word conjures up images of seaside holidays and carefully
constructed sandcastles.
Simon Bonner, Liverpool, UK
36. Borborygmus - the rumbling sound that comes from an
empty stomach.
Rupam, Ashburn, VA USA
37. Fug . I love jazz and have always thought a cellar jazz
bar with a hazy atmosphere created through captivating music and hazy
smoke would be perfect if called "The Fug". However, the smoking ban
now prohibits any kind of fug. And "The Sanitary" just doesn't have the
right ring.
Julian Williams, Stourport-on-Severn
38. Metanoia - the act or process of changing one's mind or
way of life - is so beautiful.
Sa Smith
39. Estivate (the opposite of hibernate), because that is
what I do. With the onset of autumn, I am looking forward to awakening
from my summer torpor. The colder the day, the happier and more
energized I am.
DJ Leslie, Falls Church, Virginia, USA
40. Rodomontade is my favourite, meaning boastful. Difficult
to use in conversation though!
Kevin Murphy, Glasgow
41. Slubberdegullion is a favourite word of mine, meaning,
roughly ,a worthless person. Throw it in next time you're gossiping
about someone.
Bob Baker, Dunster, England
42. I like erythrismal , meaning "red by nature".
An example would be a fox or a robin's breast. However, I am a redhead,
so may be biased
Judith-Anne MacKenzie, London
43. Chatoyant is a word I learned from a poet/artist friend,
and I teach it, or use it, whenever possible, which is quite often. It
means something that glows from deep within, like a cat's eye (chat),
or star sapphires, or highly polished hard woods.
Roxann , Alexandria, MN, USA
44. I like enervating (to weaken physically)
because it sounds like it SHOULD mean the opposite to what it DOES
mean.
Bob, Edinburgh
45. Tatterdemalion - a person with tattered clothing or of
unkempt appearance. This word has, to my mind, a "bouncy" rhythm to it
and use it often. I know several people who could have this word
attributed to them...
Graham, Luton, England
46. Mellifluous - sweet, pleasant-sounding speech, words or
music - is a my favourite word, though I suppose it couldn't really be
classed as obscure. It's so beautifully onomatopoeic.
Maura Evans, Bradford
47. A word I recently learned and immediately liked, is ideation
. It's like you take a creative word and turn it into a verb, make
it creatING! Ideation means "the process of thought" or "the
conceptualization of a mental image".
Theresa, Rotterdam, the Netherlands
48. I used to love the word syzygy because, in the
Oxford Illustrated Dictionary, its definition (in the mathematical
sense) went something like: "A group of rational, integral functions,
which, when severally multiplied together, the sum of the products
vanishes identically."
Reggie Thomson, Cambridge, England
49. My favourite word is sesquipedalian . From the
Latin, sesquipedalis, meaning a foot-and-a-half, it means given to
using long words.
Chris Howard, Morden
...which is probably a fitting adjective for...
50. I'm disposed to immediately feel dyspathy with
a secretary like Shea, but after goving at his story for a
while, I begin to hansardize . There's no point in being philodoxical
just because an apparently mundane subject deeply happifies another.
I may stroke my natiform chin sceptically at Shea's cachinnations
, but if such things truly make him tripudiate , then who
am I to be the pejorist ?
Rob Stradling, Cardiff
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Ancient Beer
Fossil fueled beer? 45 million year-old yeast used to craft new ale
by Tina Kells | September 25, 2008 at 03:17 pm
You may want to call the Fossil Fuels Brewing Company's beers the mother of all ales; the company is crafting its German Lager and Pale Ale from 45 million year old yeast.
In a story straight from the movie Jurassic Park, Fossil Fuels Brewing Company extracts its special ingredient from ancient Burmese amber. But instead of the key to resurrecting dinosaurs, the amber contains a dormant yeast that hails back to the dawn-of-time.
That 45 million year-old yeast is now the cornerstone ingredient in a selection of modern era beer.
Trapped inside a Lebanese weevil covered in ancient Burmese amber, a tiny colony of bacteria and yeast has lain dormant for up to 45 million years. A decade ago Raul Cano, now a scientist at the California Polytechnic State University, drilled a tiny hole into the amber and extracted more than 2,000 different kinds of microscopic creatures.
Activating the ancient yeast, Cano now brews barrels (not bottles) of pale ale and German wheat beer through the Fossil Fuels Brewing Company.
"You can always buy brewing yeast, and your product will be based on the brewmaster's recipes," said Cano. "Our yeast has a double angle: We have yeast no one else has and our own beer recipes."
Sunday, October 12, 2008
the new nomads
Cool Tools: Boondock RVing
Best guide for nomadic RV life
10-08-08
Boondock RVing
Components of an RV electrical system.
With a little bit of gumption you can liberate your RV from the leash of the RV parks. Run it untethered, off the grid. Camp in a wild place, or in a parking lot. Takes some advance planning, maybe some more gear, certainly a change of spirit. This book will help. While its technical specs are out of date by a few years, the general drift of the book's advice is right on. Like in anything else off the grid, there's much talk about batteries, inverters and cables. There is not much here about mail forwarding, etc, which is best covered by hanging out on the forums at Escapees, the watering hole website for full-time RVers.
Escapees is a membership club for full time RVers which offers a popular mail forwarding service. You can get your postal mail and packages forwarded in a hundred different ways and schedules. Since it is based in Texas, your official residence can then be located in a state without income tax. Its 35,000 members are eager to share their knowledge of the RV life with newbies.
Also, Workamper is a good online bookstore full of RV-related titles. Guides to: Finding work on the road, cooking, repairs, shopping guides for new rigs, directories of camp grounds, Rving in Mexico and Alaska, dealing with insurance, etc.. Also a book that lists what stores lie at each exit of the interstates! Most of the published lore focuses on snowbirding, and RV parking, rather than boondocking.
Overall, Boondocking RVing is the best book about the logistics of long-term nomadic RVing.
-- KK
Escapees RV Club and Mail Forwarding
Workamper
boondock-2-book-sm.jpg
The Complete Book of Boondock RVing
Bill Moeller
2007, 176 pages
$12
Available from Amazon
Sample excerpts:
Additionally, the cost of staying in private campgrounds is increasing, going up by a dollar or more per night each year. We recently read an article in RVBusiness magazine, written by a campground spokesman, that stated the industry envisions campground prices will eventually reach a level of 50% the cost of a midlevel hotel or more. Consequently, if you would normally pay $100 a night for a hotel room, you would pay $50 a night in an RV park.
*
Retail Stores and Restaurants
Retail and chain stores often have large, well-lit parking lots. We have camped at Fred Meyer, Kmart, and Wal-Mart stores (or Camp Wally as they are more commonly called). In fact, Wal-Mart carries an edition of the Rand McNally road atlas with an insert that lists all of the U.S. and Canadian Wal-Marts. other options might include discount warehouses, such as Sam's Club, or restaurants, such as Cracker Barrel and McDonald's.
*
Casinos are excellent places for convenience camping. We don't know of any casinos that prohibit overnight camping, unless they have a commercial campground. Of course, they expect you to patronize the facilities, so at least eat in their restaurants, which often have excellent buffets at reasonable prices. ... With the profusion of casinos being built all over the country, they can make great overnight stops with good food and entertainment. Some casinos have regular RV parks, but still allow boondocking in certain areas of the parking lot.
*
boondock-3-sm.jpg
You can use flexible water tanks to transport water to the RV.
*
We have two catalytic heaters -- a small one (1,600 to 2,800 Btu), which is mounted on the wall, and a medium-sized one (3,200 to 6,000 Btu) we can move around as needed. We've kept warm in some below-freezing temperatures with the catalytic heaters as our only heat source.
boondock-4-sm.jpg
Our catalytic propane heater with the folding doors that we made to protect the cabinetry near it.
*
There is a bit of controversy over whether 6-volt or 12-volt batteries are better in a battery bank. Two of the arguments for using 6-volt batteries are (1) there are fewer cables involved in series wiring, so there are fewer connection to corrode; and (2) in 12-volt parallel wiring, one of the batteries in a two-battery bank will receive most of the load and most of the charge, and therefore will fail faster than the other.
The first argument has some validity as there are fewer cables in series wiring, so there is less corrosion. The second argument is not necessarily true, if you wire the bank as shown above. if a battery goes bad in a 12-volt bank, you can just disconnect it and use the remaining one. You'll still be getting 12 volts. With a 6-volt bank, however, one bad battery means the loss of the whole two-battery bank.
*
Should you tilt your panels and follow the sun? ... We have seen rigs with their panels mounted on racks that allow them to swing around to track the sun. Frankly, this just seems like too much work to us, plus we don't really think it's necessary. Also, when panels are tilted up, they can be more easily damaged by the high winds that occur during the winter months, particularly i
n desert areas.
boondock-5-sm.jpg
Three 100-watt solar panels installed lengthwise on the roof of a friend's motorhome.
Friday, October 10, 2008
smok'em if ya got'em
Howstuffworks "How does your body digest a cigarette?"
How does your body digest a cigarette?
by Charles W. Bryant
Browse the article How does your body digest a cigarette?
How does your body digest a cigarette?
Kicking the Habit
* Is quitting smoking contagious?
* Why is it so hard to quit smoking?
* How Nicotine Works
Everybody knows now that smoking is bad for you. But that wasn't always the case. In the 1940s, '50s and '60s, Americans smoked with reckless abandon -- in their offices, in department stores, on elevators, planes and buses. In 1965, nearly half of all Americans smoked. The World Health Organization officially took a stance against smoking in the 1970s, and rates have dropped steadily ever since -- now down to 21 percent [source: AHA]. In today's society, it would be unthinkable for someone to light up at his or her office desk or in an elevator. Just try it and see what happens.
Nicotine Image Gallery
1950s smokers
Yale Joel/Getty Images
Smoking in the 1950s was a gas -- noxious, cancer causing gas. See more nicotine pictures.
Cigarette manufacturers were forced to list the ingredients in cigarettes in 1998, so the public is now aware that there are more than 4,000 chemicals in each and every smoke. More...
Here's a list of the 10 most dangerous:
* Ammonia -- used to increase the absorption rate of nicotine. It's also used to clean your toilet, helps to treat wastewater (poop and pee) and is a key ingredient in liquid fertilizer.
* Arsenic -- used as a pesticide on tobacco plants, it remains in the resulting cigarette. If you have a rat problem in your home, you can use arsenic to kill them.
* Cadmium -- a metallic compound that tobacco collects from acidic soil. Is the battery in your cell phone low? Use cadmium to recharge it!
* Formaldehyde -- a byproduct of cigarette smoke, this colorless gas is commonly used to preserve dead bodies for burial.
* Acetone -- another byproduct from burning a cigarette. It's also found in nail polish remover and, like ammonia, is used to clean toilets.
* Butane -- this byproduct is also used to help you light your cigarette, in the form of lighter fluid.
* Propylene Glycol -- added to cigarettes to keep tobacco from drying out. What it really does is speed up the delivery of nicotine to the brain.
* Turpentine -- used to flavor menthol cigarettes. This oil also can be used to thin paint and strip varnish from wood.
* Benzene -- another byproduct from burning a cigarette. You can find benzene in pesticides and gasoline.
* Lead and Nickel -- Yes, these are metals. Need we say more?
So how does your body digest these things? It really doesn't -- which is the problem with cigarettes.
What happens when you smoke?
The word digest implies something good. If you digest a thought, it means you carefully deconstruct it in your mind. This can lead to a better understanding. When you digest food, you break it down into a form your body can absorb and use as energy. The problem with cigarettes is that it's more about ingestion than digestion. Your body takes in a large amount of chemicals and carcinogens with each puff, and what doesn't leave your mouth or nose through exhalation stays there for a while. Our internal organs, blood and cells simply aren't built to process cigarette smoke.
Internal organs
Stockbyte/Getty Images
Cigarette smoke permeates every nook and cranny
of your body.
When you smoke, the first thing that happens is a mix of gases is released around your eyes, nose and throat. This happens within the first few seconds. Your eyes may water, your nose might run and your throat will most likely become irritated. Tiny hairs called cilia work to clean your bronchial tubes and lungs of nasty foreign matter. They're the street sweepers of the body. Smoking paralyzes and can even kill the cilia so they can't sweep. If you smoke, the cilia that you don't kill wake back up and get out the brooms. When smokers wake up coughing, it's because the cilia are hard at work again. Then the first cigarette of the day paralyzes the poor little guys again, and the hacking cough ceases. It's no wonder that smokers in the early days didn't realize it was bad for them. If a cigarette stops the morning cough, it must be a good thing, right?
Deep inside the lungs, cigarette smoke damages the floating scavenger cells that work to remove foreign particles from the lungs' tiny air sacs, called alveoli. A lot of what you inhale turns to tar. This tar isn't unlike what you might use to pave a road or shingle a house. Only about 30 percent of cigarette tar is sent back into the air through exhalation -- the rest sticks to your throat and lungs like saltwater taffy. Besides being disgusting, tar kills healthy lung cells. A pack-a-day smoker ingests a full cup of tar into his or her lungs every year.
The myth of low-tar cigarettes is just that -- a myth. Cigarette manufacturers poke tiny little holes in the filter to "reduce" the amount of tar you ingest. Sounds good, right? Unfortunately, your fingers block most of these holes when you hold a cigarette, and low-tar smokers end up inhaling more deeply to achieve the nicotine hit they crave.
The chemicals in cigarette smoke are pretty much immediately absorbed into your bloodstream. From here they go straight to your heart and from there, everywhere else in your body. Your heart begins to beat faster as soon as you light up, as much as 10 to 25 beats per minute. That adds up to 36,000 extra beats per day. Smoke can also cause an irregular heartbeat, or arrhythmia. The oxygen level in your blood is reduced because the carbon monoxide produced when you smoke tricks the body into thinking that it's oxygen. (For more on this trick, read How does smoking starve your heart of oxygen?.) Problem is, your body's cells still need oxygen, so your heart goes into overtime to supply it.
If you continue to smoke regularly, your senses of taste and smell will slowly fade, thanks to the tar that coats your tongue and nasal passages. You probably won't even realize it's happening and may only notice what you've been missing when you quit. Most smokers who quit report a noticeable change in how their food tastes and smells.
What else happens when you smoke?
Another thing that happens when you smoke is that your blood pressure rises by about 10 to 15 percent. High blood pressure means you have an increased risk of heart attack and stroke. Smoking not only affects the pressure, but it also damages the blood itself. As we mentioned before, when you smoke, carbon monoxide (CO) is created and ingested -- so much that smokers have about 4 to 15 times the amount of CO in the body than non-smokers. Carbon monoxide also is the same stuff that comes out of your car's tailpipe. When you smoke, it stays in your bloodstream for about six hours. This harmful chemical compound does its best to rob every cell in your body of oxygen, something cells need to function.
Crow's feet
Hans Neleman/Getty Images
Smoking causes wrinkles around the eyes,
called crow's feet.
Most smokers know the damage they're causing to their lungs, heart, blood vessels, and senses of taste and smell. Something many smokers may overlook is the damage being done to their skin. While many of smoking's negative effects are reversible once you quit, there's no way to undo the skin damage. The blood vessels in the skin constrict when you light up, limiting the amount of oxygen the skin gets. The intrusion of CO puts further limits on the oxygen the skin needs. What does this mean? Wrinkles. "Smoker's face" is a condition long-term smokers suffer from. What does it look like? Deep, dark lines around the eyes and the corners of the mouth, for starters. The skin may also appear gray in color, and facial features may appear gaunt. Not a pretty sight. One study shows that nearly half of all smokers get smoker's face.
So besides wreaking havoc on your insides, cigarettes also ages you prematurely. If this isn't enough to inspire you to put down the pack, think about your sex life. Research conducted by Boston University's medical school has shown that when men smoke, it can lead to erection problems. Among the 1,011 men studied that had erectile dysfunction, 78 percent were smokers. The study found that the amount of blood flowing to the penis was directly proportional to the number of cigarettes smoked. Smoking also lowers sperm count and can even alter the shape of the little guys. So if you're looking to have kids, you may want to think about quitting. Women don't get a free pass in this department either. Ladies who smoke heavily show a 43 percent decline in fertility and reach menopause nearly two years earlier, decreasing their reproductive years.
So how does the body digest a cigarette? It really doesn't. There's the exhale, but that's simply because the body can't completely absorb every bit of smoke from the inhale. The harmful chemicals in cigarettes tear through every cell of your body like looters in a riot. The smoke affects the blood, skin, lungs, heart, your senses of taste and smell, and anything else it comes into contact with. Kicking the habit is a tough task, but it's one that's well worth the effort. You may not be able to reverse the effects of premature wrinkling, but you can help out the rest of your body. As soon as you stop, your body goes into fix-it mode. Your cilia wake up and start sweeping again, and your taste buds fight through the tar. Oxygen is again delivered in full supply to your heart and the rest of your body. The days turn into weeks and months and eventually years and before you know it, you may feel like you never lit up in the first place.
happy love
BBC NEWS | Technology | How to live and love online
How to live and love online
By Jason Palmer
Science and Technology reporter, BBC News
It has often been said that opposites attract but research suggests that initial spark of attraction soon fades and does not make for a long and happy married life.
That is one conclusion from a survey carried out by The Oxford Internet Institute which looked at the habits of 1,000 couples to find the secret of a happy relationship.
It found that couples in different nations have very diverse likes and dislikes when it comes to what keeps them together or drives them apart.
For instance, Britons are the least likely to complain if modern life leaves their partners too tired for sex. Australians are less worried by their spouse being less affectionate and Americans argue more.
Marriage machine
The OII survey was carried for online matchmaking service eHarmony which launched in the UK this week. The site claims that it is responsible for 43,000 marriages per year in the US.
EHarmony was founded by professional psychologist Dr Neil Clark Warren and puts potential members through a thorough grilling before their profile is allowed on the site. Those signing up complete a comprehensive questionnaire that plumbs their psyche via more than 200 questions and takes about an hour to complete.
"At the time that we launched in 2000, people were really sceptical that you could bring technology or scientific research to something that had always been attributed in these magical terms to some unknowable quality about why two people connect," says Greg Waldorf, eHarmony's chief executive.
The company's matching approach is based on results from surveys of both couples as well as individuals in each country. The matching process has lead eHarmony to claim that every day on average 118 US couples who met on eHarmony get married - 2% of the total number of marriages.
"What we've shown in our North American market is that we can bring a scientific approach to something that's still a deeply personal and highly emotional process," he said.
But there is not one formula for all couples. Analysis of the data gathered by eHarmony shows that across cultures couples value very different things.
The survey results that drive the matching service identify the major differences in personality types among individuals, and highlight the issues that are most important to couples that describe themselves as happy.
We find that 'opposites attract' is not a great long-term kind of compatibility
Greg Waldorf
The researchers change their matching model with those personality types and issues weighted differently until the model can successfully predict that the happy couples are a good match.
Paula Hall, a relationship psychotherapist at the UK relationship service Relate, says that she was a fan of online dating and matchmaking services such as Match or Direct Dating as they allow people to meet who otherwise wouldn't cross paths. But, she said, hooking up online is just the start.
"Compatibility is an essential ingredient in relationship happiness, but some differences are inevitable," she says. "How couples manage those differences is the key to long-term success."
Different strokes
With survey data from the US, Canada, Australia, and China also in hand, some cross-cultural trends are evident.
"Notwithstanding the major differences in these global markets, there's a high degree of commonality in how people describe feeling like they're in a successful relationship," Mr Waldorf says.
"Of course there are differences from market to market; the differences we found in the UK we've now adapted in our model in describing how we think about compatibility."
UK couples, the data show, consistently report greater satisfaction with the amount of consensus they experience in their relationship.
Relative to the US, for example, happily married people in the UK tend to agree more on how to make major decisions, how family finances are handled, the division of household tasks, and how to deal with parents and in-laws.
Compared to the US and Australia, UK couples are the least likely to be worried if their partner is regularly too tired for sex.
In the US, couples put more focus on the interpersonal facets of their relationships, reporting that they laugh together, exchange ideas, kiss, and confide in each other more often. However, they also have more arguments and are more likely to report that their partners annoy them.
In Australia, couples put a lot of stock in working on projects together, and it is the country where couples are least likely to be concerned that their spouse doesn't show enough love and affection.
China presents one significant difference relative to the English-speaking countries.
Couples in the US, the UK and Australia experience a dip in marital satisfaction around the birth of their first child, which Mr Waldorf attributes to a period of adjustment to the change in the relationship.
Chinese couples, by contrast, actually experience a rise in satisfaction, which Mr Waldorf suggests is due to a stronger immediate family support network.
The compatibility measure that ultimately comes from these survey results is totally distinct from similarity, Mr Waldorf says, and couples who are very similar or different are not necessarily compatible.
"We find that 'opposites attract' is not a great long-term kind of compatibility, even though it certainly does drive a lot of initial attraction," he says.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/7651293.stm
Published: 2008/10/07 12:49:55 GMT
hello > is anybody out there?
BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Is anybody listening out there?
Is anybody listening out there?
Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.
Gabriel Gatehouse looks around the giant radar telescope in Ukraine that will be beaming out Bebo messages.
Messages have been sent to a planet 20 light years from Earth in the hope they will reach intelligent alien life.
Some 501 photos, drawings and text messages were transmitted on Thursday by a giant radio-telescope in Ukraine normally used to track asteroids.
The target planet was chosen as it is thought capable of supporting life.
Any reply to the messages - collated through a competition by the social networking website Bebo - would not reach Earth for 40 years.
The competition - A Message From Earth - invited Bebo's 12m users to send in missives they would like extra-terrestrials to receive.
Topics submitted ranged from the environment, politics and world peace to family relationships and the sender's first kiss.
Having been translated into a binary format, the 500 selected will travel 120 trillion miles into space after being sent via high-powered radio waves from the National Space Agency of Ukraine's RT-70 radar telescope in Evpatoria.
Here we are
After being launched at 0600 GMT Bebo's mission commander Oli Madgett said the message "passed the Moon in 1.7 seconds, Mars in just four minutes and will leave our Solar System before breakfast tomorrow".
Organisers hope the hi-tech package will reach its target - the planet Gliese 581C - in early 2029.
Bebo spokesman Mark Charkin said: "A Message From Earth presents an opportunity for the digital natives of today... to reconnect with science and the wider universe in a simple, fun and immersive way."
If anybody's out there and they find that signal, they at least know it that... there must be a planet with some pretty clever things on it
Seth Shostak
SETI astronomer
Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer from the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence Institute in California, said whether aliens who might receive the messages would understand them was beside the point.
"The point might simply be: well, here we are; we're clever enough to build a radio transmitter," he told the BBC.
"So if anybody's out there and they find that signal, they at least know it that, in the direction of that star system over there, there must be a planet with some pretty clever things on it."
big brother's getting stoopider
BBC NEWS | Technology | Mobile tracking reveals spending
Mobile tracking reveals spending
UK company Path Intelligence has proved that the longer people spend in shops, the more they spend.
Not a shock result perhaps but the technology behind it has a range of other uses.
The company's system reads an anonymous identifier that mobile phones transmit and can then track their movements.
The approach will be useful for research, security and improving services in environments ranging from train stations to refugee camps.
Retail therapy
For their first commercial project, the company has studied the movements of shoppers in a UK shopping centre to determine the paths that shoppers take and how long they spend in the centre as a whole.
They found that for an increase of 1% of time spent, shoppers spend 1.3% more on purchases.
"The real problem is that it's been hard to quantitatively analyse this," says Toby Oliver, the company's chief executive. "People say, 'you know, I think this is the case' but what we're able to do now is put some numbers behind those behavioural effects."
What that means for retailers is that dwindling numbers might be offset by simply keeping shoppers' attention longer.
Anonymous
Mobiles are assigned a temporary anonymous number by the network called a temporary mobile subscriber identity, or TMSI, which the phone periodically transmits to advise of its location.
As the phone moves through the different regions served by different base stations, that number changes.
Path Intelligence's approach, called FootPath, directly detects that TMSI transmission from phones. No access to the mobile networks themselves is necessary, so the information that they glean is specific to a user, but completely anonymous.
The TMSIs can only be associated with a number by the mobile operators and Path Intelligence encrypt the TMSIs that they acquire as an added level of security.
Sharon Biggar, chief operating officer of Path Intelligence, likens the approach to the way that online browsing is tracked: users are associated with a dynamic IP address which can be tracked as they visit online stores.
"Those websites will be following and understanding how you're using their site, which pages you're going to, how long you're spending on each page," she says.
"Our situation is almost completely analogous to that."
Refugee camps
A number of research projects have used mobile networks' data to track mobile users within about 50 metres in a process that has been dubbed "reality mining", and there are even commercial services that will do the tracking.
By contrast, depending on how many of their detectors they place in a given space, FootPath's tracking can be done to a precision of about a metre or two.
The company is presently involved in several market research projects.
It has been approached by humanitarian workers in refugee camps, where a lack of central planning means it is often difficult to site services such as clinics where they can be best used.
The system will also be useful for researching the layout of, for example, train stations.
Contraband mobiles operated from prisons are frequently used for crime organised from the inside, and jamming the signal within prisons presents problems for mobile users nearby.
The FootPath system could simply pinpoint the mobile's location.
hey guys, we're not finished with you yet
Technology Review: A Source of Men's Stem Cells
Thursday, October 09, 2008
A Source of Men's Stem Cells
Stem cells from human testes could be used for personalized medicine.
By Nora Schultz
Adult stem cells that behave much like embryonic ones have been isolated from human testes, raising hopes for a new source of versatile stem cells without genetic manipulation or the destruction of embryos. If the new stem cells can be used therapeutically, a simple testicular biopsy could provide the starting material for personalized regenerative medicine.
The new stem cells, known as human adult germline stem cells (GSCs), were grown by researchers in Germany and the U.K. by adding special growth factors to spermatogonial cells extracted from testes. Spermatogonial cells are stem cells in the adult testis that normally generate only one type of differentiated cell (sperm). But with the right growth factors, these spermatogonial cells can change to become pluripotent. They begin to produce proteins normally made by embryonic stem cells and acquire the ability to differentiate into many different cell types.
In a paper published today in Nature, Thomas Skutella of the University of Tübingen, in Germany, and his colleagues raise the possibility that adult GSCs could overcome many of the hurdles still facing alternative approaches.
Unlike embryonic stem cells, which require the destruction of human embryos and pose immunological challenges because a patient's body will reject foreign cells, adult GSCs do not require embryos and should be tolerated by patients because they are made from their own cells. Adult GSCs should also be more versatile than other types of adult stem cells, which typically can only give rise to one or a few types of differentiated cells.
Furthermore, in contrast with induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), which are made by engineering embryonic stem-cell genes into normal adult cells with the help of retroviruses, the adult GSCs do not require significant manipulations and therefore avoid the associated cancer risks.
Skutella says that his results are similar to those from recent experiments performed on mice, but that it was much trickier to isolate the right kind of cells in humans. "You can use the power of genetics to make transgenic mice with green spermatogonia to easily isolate these cells," he says. "But for regenerative medicine, it's essential to use the human system. We obviously cannot make transgenic humans, so we had to go back to the roots of cell biology, and try a mixture of things to isolate the stem cells."
Using 22 testis-tissue samples from men ages 17 to 81, the researchers isolated spermatogonial stem cells with the help of magnetic beads that physically pulled the right cells out of the cell mix. These beads were coated with an antibody that recognizes a surface molecule that is enriched on germline cells. The researchers followed this with two more rounds of purification: one that used culture-dish coatings that preferentially stick to germline cells, and a second one that used coatings that stick to somatic (nongermline) cells.
By adding leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF)--a molecule that is normally used to keep embryonic stem cells from differentiating--the team managed to transform the resulting spermatogonial stem cells into stem cells that much more closely resembled embryonic stem cells and can form a similar variety of cell types.
Skutella thinks that germ stem cells are fundamentally more amenable to reprogramming than cells that do not participate in the germline (the production of sperm or eggs). In support of this, a similar transformation into pluripotent cells had previously been observed with primordial germ cells--cells in the embryo that later go on to form sperm and egg precursors. But obtaining these germ cells requires destroying the embryo, while the testicular adult cells do not face this issue. "The DNA of germ cells is more open to manipulations, so they have advantages compared to other adult stem cells," says Skutella.
Fari Izadyar, director of scientific development for the germline stem-cell program at biotech company PrimeGen, says that his team has also had promising results with getting human testicular tissue to differentiate into cardiac, brain, bone, and cartilage cells, although the company has not yet published the data. "It has been difficult to produce consistent results without a steady supply of normal human testicular tissue," he says.
While the starting material is easy to obtain with small testicular biopsies, Skutella admits that his method of producing stable pluripotent germ stem-cell lines takes several months, and that this would need to be sped up if the cells are to be used therapeutically. "We are currently looking to improve our enrichment procedure by finding more-specific cell surface molecules which can be used to isolate the cells more quickly in the future," he says.
Another open question is whether and how women might be able to benefit from the discovery. Skutella argues that at the very least, male germ stem cells could be used to treat women in much the same way that bone marrow is used in cancer therapy: by finding a closely related male donor and treating the patient with immunosuppressants, to prevent the body from rejecting the cells.
But others are hopeful that similarly versatile stem cells can be obtained from the female reproductive tract. Antonin Bukovsky of the University of Knoxville, in Tennessee, has previously found stem cells on the surface of the ovary and managed to differentiate them into neuronal cells. "I think these cells might hold very similar potential to the testicular ones, and they would be just as easy to obtain," he says. "You would only have to brush the surface of the ovary, and we already know they still exist in women of advanced age."
walking the walls
Technology Review: Sticky Nanotape
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Sticky Nanotape
Carbon-nanotube adhesive outperforms gecko feet and could aid climbing robots.
By Katherine Bourzac
For years, materials scientists have been trying to catch up with geckos. Adhesives that, like gecko feet, are dry, powerful, reusable, and self-cleaning could help robots climb walls or hold together electrical components, even in the harsh conditions of outer space. But it's been difficult to design strong adhesives that can be lifted back up again. Now researchers have developed an adhesive made of carbon nanotubes whose structure closely mimics that of gecko feet. It's 10 times more adhesive than the lizards' feet and, like the natural adhesive, easy to lift back up. And it works on a variety of surfaces, including glass and sandpaper.
Developed by a group led by Liming Dai, a professor of materials engineering at the University of Dayton, and Zhong Wang, director of the Center for Nanostructure Characterization at Georgia Tech, the adhesive is not the first made from carbon nanotubes. However, it's much stronger than previous nanotube adhesives. Its branched structure more closely mimics the structures on gecko feet, which are covered with millions of microscale hairs that branch into many smaller hairs, each of which has a weak electrical interaction with a surface. These many weak interactions add up to strong adhesion over the area of the foot. Previously, researchers have shown that arrays of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes have similar interactions with a surface.
"People have tried to mimic the gecko structures, but it's not easy," says Dai. Using a silicon substrate, he and his group grew arrays of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes topped with an unaligned layer of nanotubes, like rows of trees with branching tops. The adhesive force of these nanotube arrays is about 100 newtons per square centimeter--enough for a four-by-four-millimeter square of the material to hold up a 1,480-gram textbook. And its adhesive properties were the same when tested on very different surfaces, including glass plates, polymer films, and rough sandpaper.
One advantage of this adhesive over others is that its strength is strongly direction dependent. When it's pulled in a direction parallel to its surface, it's very strong. That's because the branched nanotubes become aligned, says Dai. But when it's pulled up with little force, as one would peel a piece of Scotch tape, the nanotubes lose contact one by one.
The greater the adhesive strength, the better, says Ali Dhinojwala, a professor of polymer science at the University of Akron. However, says Dhinojwala, who works on carbon-nanotube adhesives as well, "we also need to solve other problems before they're commercially viable." Wall-climbing robots will require adhesives that work again and again without wearing out or getting clogged with dirt. "We want a robot to take more than 50 steps in a dirty environment," says Dhinojwala. No one has demonstrated strong gecko-inspired adhesives that can do this. And nanotube adhesives will need to be grown on different substrates than those used so far. Carbon nanotubes are easy to grow on silicon wafers; creating large areas of the adhesive wouldn't be a problem. But "we're not going to stick silicon wafers to robot feet," says Dhinojwala.
Dai says that carbon nanotubes' versatility may help overcome the dirt problem. These structures can readily be functionalized with proteins and other polymers. Dai is developing adhesive nanotube arrays coated with proteins that change their shape in response to temperature changes. A robot could have feet that heat up when they get clogged, shedding dirt so that it can keep walking.
Other applications of the adhesive may take better advantage of carbon nanotubes' properties than robotics would. Carbon nanotubes are highly conductive to electricity and have promising thermal properties, Dai notes. Nanotube adhesives created to replace solder for holding together electronics components could also act as heat sinks. Other gecko-inspired adhesives made of polymers can't hold up to high temperatures, says Metin Sitti, who heads the nanorobotics lab at Carnegie Mellon. Spacecraft using nanotube adhesives instead of polymers could go to hotter areas.
one world mind could use some help
Technology Review: Making Search Social
Narrow but deep: The Yotify search engine focuses on satisfying particular needs, such as finding the right product at the right price on eBay, rather than on searching the entire Web using keywords.
Credit: Yotify
Looking for an apartment online, day after day, can get tedious. Finding the right sofa at the right price can also be time consuming. A new search engine, called Yotify, is designed to make these kinds of persistent quests more tolerable, and hopefully more successful.
Much like Google Alerts and Yahoo Alerts, a Yotify search does not start and end in an instant. Instead, the search runs at regular intervals--either hourly or daily, depending on the user's preference--with results sent back to the user via e-mail.
But Yotify offers much more than the search giants' current alert tools, argues Ron Bouganim, CEO and cofounder of Branchnext, the San Francisco startup behind Yotify. Those alert tools, Bouganim says, are merely an afterthought for these huge companies, and they do not take into account important Web 2.0 developments, such as social networking.
"We want to create a richer experience," Bouganim says.
When users sign up for an account, they are given a personal profile page that lists, stores, and displays what they've searched for and where. That information can be made public as well, so that friends can share the results and help refine the search. This could be particularly useful for group projects such as apartment hunting with roommates, for example.
Meanwhile, Yotify is making it a point to closely integrate with the major social-networking sites, most notably Facebook and LinkedIn. "If people want to search through Facebook using our technology, we want to let them do it," claims Bouganim.
Another distinguishing characteristic of Yotify versus Google Alerts or Yahoo Alerts is its focus on shopping. Whereas Google Alerts is primarily concerned with retrieving news and other hard information, Yotify is setting up as more of a sales tool for its partner sites, which include general retailers such as Shopping.com as well as a host of niche players.
In this respect, Yotify does go above and beyond what Google Alerts currently provides. Say a user wants to buy a black futon, for example. The important aspect of the search is not that the user obtain the futon immediately, but that it's a certain price. Yotify will continually monitor its partner sites, then notify the user when a black futon is available at that particular price.
The main problem with Yotify is that, as of now, it only scans a small portion of the Web: users can only search among Yotify's partner sites. While the search engine has partnered with many key websites, such as Craigslist, the New York Times, and eBay, it certainly does not have the breadth of a search giant such as Google or Yahoo.
Who are the people in your (world) neighborhood?
Invest wisely. End poverty. | microfinance at MicroPlace
Your portfolio
is their livelihood
A billion people around the world work hard every day to lift themselves out of poverty. They don't want your charity. They want your investment. Invest today, earn a return, provide them with a livelihood.
See all Investments
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Latest Research Supports New AIDS Drug
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved maraviroc, known by
the brand name Selzentry, in August 2007 after a 24-week study showed
it had beneficial effects. It was the first new HIV oral medication approved in more than a decade.
The
new study followed the patients for another 24 weeks, and found that
more than 40 percent of them had reduced levels of the AIDS-causing HIV
virus in their blood.
"We're really able to do something we
haven't been able to do before, essentially rescue someone with
drug-resistant virus and gain control of their HIV infection," said
principal investigator Dr. Roy Gulick, director of the Cornell HIV
Clinical Trials Unit at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.
Since
the 1990s, new generations of drugs have made major strides in treating
the virus that causes AIDS. Patients are often able to control the
levels of the virus in their bodies and live for years.
However,
the virus has the ability to mutate and evolve, and it's often able to
adjust to resist the killing powers of medications. Some people also
become newly infected with strains of HIV that are already immune to
certain drugs.
"Roughly, between a quarter and a third of
patients [are resistant] to the classic classes of drugs," Gulick said.
"These are patients who really need treatment options."
The new study, published in the Oct. 2 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine,
followed 1,049 HIV patients who were resistant to three classes of HIV
drugs. Some patients received doses of maraviroc, while others received
a placebo. The study was funded by Pfizer Inc., the maker of the drug.
Between
42 percent and 47 percent of the patients taking maraviroc reached
reduced levels of the AIDS virus in their bodies, compared to 17
percent of the placebo group.
"There were no apparent side
effects or toxicity differences in patients that got maraviroc vs.
placebo," Gulick said. "It looked safe and generally well-tolerated
over 48 weeks."
The drug works by preventing the AIDS virus from
binding to a receptor on immune cells known as CCR5. Some people are
born without the receptor and are naturally resistant to the AIDS virus.
There
are caveats with maraviroc: Doctors must give a $1,900 test to patients
to make sure their strain of HIV would be susceptible to the drug,
Gulick said. Also, researchers must follow patients on maraviroc to see
if any unusual medical problems affect them over time, he said.
Latest Research Supports New AIDS Drug
By Randy DotingaHealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, Oct. 1 (HealthDay News) -- New research offers more evidence that a new class of AIDS drug can provide major benefits for certain patients who have become immune to existing medications.
Dr.
Barry S. Zingman, medical director of the AIDS Center at Montefiore
Medical Center in New York City, and one of the doctors taking part in
the study, said he has had good experiences prescribing maraviroc.
However,
"many patients who need a new treatment option cannot use it" because
they don't have the necessary strain of HIV, said Zingman, who has
received research grants to study the drug.
In addition, he said,
"there are significant interactions between maraviroc and other
medications for HIV infection, making it a bit complicated to prescribe
in the combination regimens that are standard around the world."
HIV/AIDS pandemic more than 100 years old
| New findings indicate HIV/AIDS pandemic began around 1900, earlier than previously thought |
New research indicates that the most pervasive global strain of HIV began spreading among humans between 1884 and 1924, suggesting that growing urbanization in colonial Africa set the stage for the HIV/AIDS pandemic. |
The estimated period of origin, considerably earlier than the previous estimate of 1930, coincides with the establishment and rise of urban centers in west-central Africa where the pandemic HIV strain, HIV-1 group M, emerged. The growth of cities and associated high-risk behaviors may have been the key change that allowed the virus to flourish. The research, led by Michael Worobey, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at The University of Arizona in Tucson, was co-sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. The findings are published in the current issue of the journal Nature. Worobey and his collaborators screened a number of tissue samples and uncovered the world's second-oldest genetic sequence of HIV-1 group M, which dates from 1960. They then used it, along with dozens of other previously known HIV-1 genetic sequences, to construct a range of plausible family trees for this viral strain. The lengths of the tree branches represent the periods of time when the virus genetically diverged from its ancestors. The timing and number of these genetic mutations enabled the scientists to calibrate the probable range of rates at which the trees have grown. That is, the probable rates of evolution of HIV-1 group M. Based on this range of rates, the scientists projected back in time to the period when the trees most likely took root: around the turn of the 20th century. This marks the probable time of origin of HIV-1 group M, according to Worobey and the others. Using newly developed techniques, the scientists recovered the 48-year-old HIV gene fragments from a wax-embedded lymph-node tissue biopsy from a woman in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The oldest known HIV-1 group M genetic sequence comes from a 1959 blood sample from a man, also from Kinshasa. A comparison of the same genetic region in the 1959 virus and the 1960 virus provided additional evidence that the common ancestor of both viruses existed around 1900. The comparison revealed that the amount of genetic divergence between these two HIV sequences took more than 40 years to evolve. Worobey, who teaches the evolution of infectious diseases and molecular phylogenetics at the UA, has spent several years studying how to recover the fragmented pieces of viral DNA and RNA from archival specimens, to track when the virus first jumped from chimpanzees to humans. "Previous work on HIV sequencing had been done on frozen samples and there are only so many of those samples available," Woroby said. The 1959 and 1960 samples are presently the oldest links to the HIV epidemic. "From that point on, the next oldest sequences that anyone has recovered are from the late 1970s and 1980s, the era when we knew about AIDS. Now for the first time we have been able to compare two relatively ancient HIV strains. That helped us to calibrate how quickly the virus evolved and make some really robust inferences about when it crossed into humans, how quickly the epidemic grew from that time and what factors allowed the virus to enter and become a successful human pathogen." Research shows that HIV spread from chimps to humans in southeastern Cameroon. Worobey said the resulting HIV epidemic among humans correlates to the growth of urban centers near this area, principally the present-day city of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which began as a colonial center for Belgium. Other countries ringing this area include the Central African Republic, Congo, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. By 1960 a large number of people in this region were infected with HIV, reflected by the considerable amount of genetic diversity of the virus. From there events seeded the epidemic in different parts of the world. By 1981, people started realizing that something was happening and the rest is history. Worobey said laying the technical groundwork for analyzing samples of HIV's ancient history was extraordinarily painstaking. "The DNA and RNA in these samples is in a really sorry state. It's highly fragmented, so instead of a nice, pearl-strand of DNA or RNA, you have a jumbled mass that's all jammed together. It's been gratifying, but a ridiculous amount of work." Worobey said his research in the near term will be on recovering more samples and assembling the fragmented DNA and RNA sequences to form a clearer picture of HIV's history. He said the Nature paper "does a lot to snap everything into sharp focus and allows us to understand the timing of these events and the growth of the epidemic." "There's still a lot of interesting work we can do with these techniques. We have lots more samples to analyze and hopefully recover nucleic acids from and it's pretty exciting to be in that position," Worobey said. "I think the picture that has emerged here, where changes the human population experienced may have opened the door to the spread of HIV, is a good reminder that we can make changes now that could help reverse the epidemic. If HIV has one weak spot, it is that it is a relatively poorly transmitted virus. From better testing and prevention, to wider use of antiretroviral drug therapy, there are a number of ways to reduce transmission and force this virus back into extinction. Our results suggest that there are reasons for such optimism." Source: University of Arizona |
Coke -the real thing -no really...
 |
Strippers, armadillos inspire Ig Nobel winners |
(AP) -- Deborah Anderson had heard the urban legends about the contraceptive effectiveness of Coca-Cola products for years. So she and her colleagues decided to put the soft drink to the test. In the lab, that is. |
For discovering that, yes indeed, Coke was a spermicide, Anderson and her team are among this year's winners of the Ig Nobel prize, the annual award given by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine to oddball but often surprisingly practical scientific achievements. The ceremony at Harvard University, in which actual Nobel laureates bestow the awards, also honored a British psychologist who found foods that sound better taste better; a group of researchers who discovered exotic dancers make more money when they are at peak fertility; and a pair of Brazilian archaeologists who determined armadillos can change the course of history. Anderson, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University's School of Medicine, and her colleagues found that not only was Coca-Cola a spermicide, but that Diet Coke for some reason worked best. Their study appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1985. "We're thrilled to win an Ig Nobel, because the study was somewhat of a parody in the first place," Anderson said, adding she does not recommend using Coke for birth control purposes. A group of Taiwanese doctors were honored for a similar study that found Coca-Cola and other soft drinks were not effective contraceptives. Anderson said the studies used different methodology. A Coca-Cola spokeswoman refused comment on the Ig Nobel awards. Duke University behavioral economist Dan Ariely won an Ig Nobel for his study that found more expensive fake medicines work better than cheaper fake medicines. "When you expect something to happen, your brain makes it happen," Ariely said. Ariely spent three years in a hospital after suffering third-degree burns over 70 percent of his body. He noticed some burn patients who woke in the night in extreme pain often went right back to sleep after being given a shot. A nurse confided to him the injections were often just saline solution. He says his work has implications for the way drugs are marketed. People often think generic medicine is inferior. But gussy it up a bit, change the name, make it appear more expensive, and maybe it will work better, he said. Charles Spence's award-winning work also has to do with the way the mind functions. Spence, a professor of experimental psychology at Oxford University in England, found that potato chips - "crisps" to the British - that sound crunchier taste better. His findings have already been put to work at the world-famous Fat Duck Restaurant in England, where diners who purchase one seafood dish also get an iPod that plays ocean sounds as they eat. Geoffrey Miller's work could affect the earning potential of exotic dancers everywhere. Miller, an associate professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico, and his colleagues knew of prior studies that found women are more attractive to men when at peak fertility. So they took the work one step further - by studying earnings of exotic dancers. In the 18 subjects Miller studied, average earnings were $250 for a five-hour shift. That jumped to $350 to $400 per five-hour shift when the women were their most fertile, he said. "I have heard, anecdotally, that some lap dancers have scheduled shifts based on this research," he said. Armadillos helped win an Ig Nobel for Astolfo Gomes de Mello Araujo, a professor of archaeology at the Universidade De Sao Paulo in Brazil, and a colleague earned. Pesky armadillos, they found, can move artifacts in archaeological dig sites up, down and even laterally by several meters as they dig. Armadillos are burrowing mammals and prolific diggers. Their abodes can range from emergency burrows 20 inches deep, to more permanent homes reaching 20 feet deep, with networks of tunnels and multiple entrances, according to the Humane Society of the United States' Web site. Araujo was thrilled to win. "There is no Nobel Prize for archaeology, so an Ig Nobel is a good thing," he said in an e-mail. --- On the Web: Ig Nobels: http://www.improbable.com |
high on luuuv
| Singing to females makes male birds' brains happy |
The melodious singing of birds has been long appreciated by humans, and has often been thought to reflect a particularly positive emotional state of the singer. In a new study published in the online, open-access journal PLoS ONE on October 1, researchers at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan have demonstrated that this can be true. When male birds sang to attract females, specific "reward" areas of their brain were strongly activated. Such strong brain activation resulted in a similar change in brain reward function to that which is caused by addictive drugs. |
The brain of humans and other animals is programmed to have a positive emotional response to rewarding stimuli, such as food or sex. A critical part of this reward signal is thought to be provided by increased activity of neurons containing dopamine in the brain ventral tegmental area, VTA. Along with natural rewards, the same brain circuits can also be strongly activated by artificial rewards such as addictive drugs. Previous studies in mammals have found that after animals are given drugs such as cocaine or amphetamine, the strength of synaptic connections onto dopamine neurons in VTA is strongly increased, or potentiated. Such potentiation has been suggested to be an important long-lasting adaptation of brain function caused by drug use, and involved in maintenance of addictive behavior. Whether such potentiation can also be caused by more natural rewards has been less studied. Social interactions with others are critical for normal healthy life, and therefore should be rewarding for humans and also for other animals. In the new study in PLoS ONE, Ya-Chun Huang and Neal Hessler of the Vocal Behavior Mechanisms Lab examined one specific social behavior, courtship singing of songbirds. In the zebra finch, an Australian songbird, males sing in two different situations. Most importantly, males sing "directed song" during courtship of females. When males are alone, they produce "undirected song", possibly for practice or to communicate with birds they can't see. A previous study by this research group showed that only when males sang to attract a female, but not when they sang while alone, many unidentified neurons in the VTA were strongly activated. Huang and Hessler now show, in the current study, that such a natural social interaction, singing to a female, can cause the same kind of synaptic potentiation of VTA dopamine neurons as use of addictive drugs, while singing solo did not affect these neurons. Further study of this system should give insight into how both natural and artificial rewards interact with each other, and specifically how damage to brain reward systems during addiction can disrupt processing of natural rewards such as social interaction. This study also provides the clearest evidence so far that singing to a female is rewarding for male birds. This may not be surprising, as such courtship is a necessary step in producing offspring, and so should be a positive experience. Other studies have provided some evidence that in mammals, including humans, sexual behavior and attachment (as well as rewarding aspects of video games and chocolate) also depend on the same brain reward areas and dopamine. So, despite the distant evolutionary relationship between birds and humans, it may be that during such intense social interactions as courtship, both share some similar emotional state. Citation: Huang Y-C, Hessler NA (2008) Social Modulation during Songbird Courtship Potentiates Midbrain Dopaminergic Neurons. PLoS ONE 3(10): e3281. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003281 http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0003281 Source: Public Library of Science |
molecular imaging breast cancer
SNM releases new fact sheet on breast cancer and molecular imaging |
Coinciding with the observance of Nuclear Medicine Week (October 5 to 11) and National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (October), SNM released today a new fact sheet highlighting recent developments in molecular imaging technologies that are dramatically improving the ways in which breast cancer is diagnosed and treated. |
Molecular imaging is a highly effective, safe and painless imaging tool for diagnosing and treating breast cancer. Physicians report that the information they have gained from molecular imaging technologies has resulted in decisions to change the course of treatment in between 24 and 48 percent of breast cancer cases. Breast cancer is just one of many types of cancer for which new and emerging molecular imaging techniques and therapies can significantly improve detection, diagnosis and treatment. "As a field, molecular imaging is evolving very rapidly," said SNM President Robert W. Atcher, Ph.D., M.B.A. "Each new discovery—whether through improved cancer diagnosis and treatment, increased understanding of the fundamental causes of Alzheimer's disease or strides in how we treat cardiovascular disease—brings personalized medicine one step closer to reality. Molecular imaging techniques and therapies allow us to understand what is happening at a cellular level. Physicians can actually see the precise location of disease, determine if other organs are being affected and then target treatment. It is about delivering the right treatment to the right patient at the right time." Molecular imaging has the power to: -- Diagnose cancer early on—at its most curable stage; -- Create a portrait of what cells are doing and how they function over time; -- Eliminate the need for unnecessary exploratory surgery or multiple surgeries; -- Provide a painless and cost-effective alternative to more expensive—and less accurate—diagnostic tests; -- Confirm and treat suspected recurrent cancers; -- Monitor an individual's response to treatment and make adjustments as necessary; -- Equip physicians and individuals with information to make informed decisions about the best courses of action. "Molecular imaging has the ability to detect abnormalities very early in the progression of disease, or even before symptoms occur—potentially saving countless lives," added Atcher. "Working together with patients and their caregivers, we can truly imagine the future." For more information about the benefits of molecular imaging for the treatment of breast cancer and other types of cancer, visit http://www.snm.org/facts. Source: Society of Nuclear Medicine |
not just for smoking...
Hemp Plastic ::
Oxford English Dictionary Definitions
hemp 1 (in full Indian hemp) Asian herbaceous plant. 2 its fibre used to make rope and stout fabrics.
plastic - capable of being moulded; pliant, supple.
The word plastic comes from the Greek "plastikos," meaning "moldable."
Conventional plastic is not biodegradable. This means that our landfills will grow and grow.
Plastic materials are based on a finite resource that will not be available to future generations.
Plastic has many uses, from packaging of food and industrial products, to insides of cars, casings of electronic items, film, storage bottles, containers and within a myriad of other industries
Oxford English Dictionary Definitions
hemp 1 (in full Indian hemp) Asian herbaceous plant. 2 its fibre used to make rope and stout fabrics.
plastic - capable of being moulded; pliant, supple.
The word plastic comes from the Greek "plastikos," meaning "moldable."
Conventional plastic is not biodegradable. This means that our landfills will grow and grow.
Plastic materials are based on a finite resource that will not be available to future generations.
Plastic has many uses, from packaging of food and industrial products, to insides of cars, casings of electronic items, film, storage bottles, containers and within a myriad of other industries
About Henry Ford's Car
In the 1910s Henry Ford experimented with using agricultural materials in the manufacture of automobiles. Ford was partly motivated by a desire to find nonfood applications for agricultural surpluses, which existed then as they do now. He tried out many agricultural crops, including wheat.
Coil cases for the 1915 Model T Ford were made from a wheat gluten resin reinforced with asbestos fibres. Eventually he focused on soybeans, and in the 1920s began promoting soybean products at every opportunity. He recruited Robert Boyer, a young chemist, to lead the research.In the following few years, uses were found for soy oil in automobile paints and enamels, in rubber substitutes, and in the production of glycerol for shock absorbers. Viscous solutions of soy protein were extruded and "set" in formaldehyde bath to form fibers for upholstery cloth. But Ford's special interest was in converting soy meal into plastics. Soy meal is what is left after soy-beans are crushed or ground into flakes and the soy oil extracted with a hydrocarbon solvent. Soy meal is about 50 percent protein and 50 percent carbohydrate- mainly cellulose.The compositions of Ford's soy plastics, and the methods of their processing, evolved over time and varied according to the application. In general the resin core was made of soy meal reacted with formaldehyde to produce cross-linked protein (reminiscent of casein plastics and animal horn), but for added strength and resistance to moisture, phenol or urea was cocondensed with the protein. The resulting resin was part phenol formaldehyde (or urea formaldehyde) and part cross-linked soy protein; the soy meal was not merely a filler.
More...
The condensation took place in the presence of the cellulose and other carbohydrates that were part of the soy meal. Fillers, up to 50 to 60 percent, provided additional cellulose fibres, from HEMP, wood flour or pulp from sprice or pine, cotton, flax, ramie even wheat. The final mix was about 70 percent cellulose and 10 to 20 percent soy meal. When additional strength became necessary, glass fiber was also used. Relatively low pressures and temperatures were used in the moulding process.Soy meal plastics were used for a steadily increasing number of automobile parts- glove-box doors, gear-shift knobs, horn buttons, accelerator pedals, distributor heads, interior trim, steering wheels, dashboard panels, and eventually a prototype exterior rear-deck lid. Finally Ford gave the go-ahead to produce a completely prototype "plastic car," including an entire plastic body. The body consisted of fourteen plastic panels fixed to a welded tubular frame (instead of the customary parallel I-beam frame). The panels and frame each weighed about 250 pounds. The total weight of the automobile was 2,300 pounds, roughly two-thirds the weight of a steel model of comparable size.
Ford, a master at generating publicity, exhibited the prototype with great fanfare in 1941. But then, by late 1941, Ford no longer publicized the "plastic car". The reasons for this are unknown, but his media contacts, the strength of the DuPont organisation and World War II are likely to have played a role. Also, technology was not yet well developed and limited options. Plastics have become more common, but plastics from renewable resources got sidetracked. This is where Hemp Plastics have continued with research projects and collaborations to re-visit and re-new the use of plant based plastics.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
