SAN DIEGO — Already surrounded by machines that allow him, painstakingly, to communicate, the physicist Stephen Hawking last summer donned what looked like a rakish black headband that held a feather-light device the size of a small matchbox.
Posts tagged "health"
It turns out that the milk of human kindness is evoked by something besides mom’s good example.
Research by psychologists at the Univ. at Buffalo and the Univ. of California, Irvine, has found that at least part of the reason some people are kind and generous is because their genes nudge them toward it.
Michel Poulin, assistant professor of psychology at UB, is the principal author of the study “The Neurogenics of Niceness,” published in this month in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
The study, co-authored by Anneke Buffone of UB and E. Alison Holman of the Univ. of California, Irvine, looked at the behavior of study subjects who have versions of receptor genes for two hormones that, in laboratory and close relationship research, are associated with niceness. Previous laboratory studies have linked the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin to the way we treat one another, Poulin says.
Aristolochic acid (AA), a component of a plant used in herbal remedies since ancient times, leads to kidney failure and upper urinary tract cancer (UUC) in individuals exposed to the toxin. In a study of 151 UUC patients in Taiwan – where the incidence of UUC is the highest reported anywhere in the world and where Aristolochia herbal remedies have been widely used– Arthur Grollman, a Stony Brook Univ. School of Medicine professor, and an international team of scientists, conclude that exposure to AA is a primary contributor to the incidence of UUC in Taiwan. This finding, reported in PNAS, holds broad implications for global public health, as individuals treated with herbal preparations available worldwide that contain Aristolochia are at significant risk of developing chronic kidney disease or UUC.
- An average male spends during his entire life around 3100 hours shaving. It’s true!
- The average person eats 4 spiders every year in their sleep. Gross!
- Most people shed between 50 to 100 hairs every day. The question is, where do they go?
- The average human with a full head of hair contains between 85,000 to 150,000 hairs.
- Jupiter is the largest planet in the earths solar system. You should have known that one.
- Squirrels forget where 50% of the nuts they’ve hidden are. Useless, Hahaha.
Howard Guest/Reuters
COMMUNICATION Stephen Hawking’s glasses pick up twitches in his cheek.
Called the iBrain, this simple-looking contraption is part of an experiment that aims to allow Dr. Hawking — long paralyzed by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease — to communicate by merely thinking.
Why is sugar or glucose so important?
Many staple foods contain carbohydrate substances (glucose, white sugar sucrose, lactose, maltose, fructose, etc.). If glucose isn’t ingested via food, the liver will produce it from proteins, through a complex procedure called neo-glycogenesis. To better understand the importance of glucose, you just need to note that certain cells depend solely on it – for example, neurons (which is why glucose is known as “brain food”), immune system cells, the kidneys, etc. Under normal circumstances, the brain can’t function with any less than 100 to 120g of glucose per day. Let’s compare a human being to a car: when there is only a small amount of fuel (in this case glucose) left in the tank, the body sends out an alarm signal. The desire to eat originates in the brain, more precisely in the diencephalon (which protects numerous vital regulatory activity centres, such as sleep, metabolism, hunger, etc.). The blood glucose level (glycaemia) should never have a lesser value than 1 per 1000 (i.e. 1 molecule of sugar for 1000 molecules of blood). Any drop in these levels will immediately be detected by the diencephalon: if the alert is ignored (if we don’t react), the body will draw on other energy sources within the body, such as lipids. Which is why, when it has exhausted the immediate availability of glucose after a physical effort, it will mobilise the body fat deposits.
Scientists have discovered a protein linked to male baldness, which could pave the way for new treatments for hair loss in men.
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania found that men with male pattern baldness have three times more of a protein called prostaglandin D2 (PDG2) in the bald patches of their scalps compared with other parts still with hair.
The protein is thought to work by stopping the growth of hair follicle stem cells in the scalp, responsible for hair growth. This means that treatments to suppress the production of PDG2 could potentially be used to prevent hair loss in men.
LONDON: A broken heart can kill you, says a new study which has found that grief makes people vulnerable to infections from bacteria.
Researchers claim that the emotional stress of losing a loved one can lead to parts of the body’s immune system being suppressed, thus in turn weakening one’s ability to fight off infections, ‘The Sunday Telegraph’ reported.
In fact, the researchers from Birmingham University have found that increased stress levels and depression brought on by grief can interfere with the function of a type of white blood cell known as neutrophils, which are responsible for fighting bacterial infections like pneumonia.
The impact becomes more profound in older adults as, with age, they lose the ability to produce a hormone that can counteract this dampening affect, meaning even previously healthy elderly people can fall victim to disease following a bereavement, says the study.
1. If you fart consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb.
2. Excess gas in the intestinal is medically termed “flatulence.”
3. The word “fart” comes from the Old English “feortan” (meaning “to break wind”).
4. Farts are flammable.
5. Termites are the largest producers of farts.
6. Although they won’t admit it, women fart as much as men.
Everybody wants to look beautiful with a glowing and shining skin but very few people work towards in achieving it. If you came across a question how to get skin glowing forever? If yes this is the right place to start
Skin is considered to be the major organ that is associated with excretion. If you want to make your skin look healthy and shining then the best way is to lead a healthy life style. It includes regular diet, exercise and cleansing.
One of the best way to make your skin younger and beautiful is by the process of cleansing. All you need to do is to apply the cleanser with a little piece of cotton and clean your face. Cleanser has the property of removing dirt and impurities from the skin.
All of us can benefit from improved memory and concentration. Both long and short-term memory is required to learn, grow, integrate, and synthesize information. At its most basic level, understanding and learning rely heavily on memory and mental sharpness. Over time, however, our mental agility and memory skills can begin to deteriorate; Alzheimer’s and stroke are just a couple of examples, and and an increase in age also contributes to memory loss.
Memory is a skill; it is learned, developed, and maintained depending on the type of information and level of input received. As a result, you can train your memory and learning skills to encourage further growth and openness to learning. Key memory skills at a young age can lay the foundation for future potential; still, tapping into this fantastic resource may prove difficult for some.
Students of all ages can benefit greatly from sharpening their memory skills, and using specific strategies and techniques to encourage a strong memory. Whether in school, in a new environment, or simply taking a new perspective on a subject, we can all improve our retention, ability to integrate information, and grow our future learning capacity as a result! Sound too complicated? It really isn’t, especially when you can contribute to sharpening some key skills and areas. Your brain goes through a basic three-stage process when presented with new information: Registration, Retention, and Retrieval.
