Stomach bug vaccine: A cure for stomach flu

January 30th, 2012 Jade

needleCause of Gastroenteritis: Gastroenteritis otherwise termed as stomach flu or gastric flu. It is an inflammation of stomach and intestine which causes vomiting, nausea and diarrhea.It is not a disease in itself but can be considered as a symptom of other diseases like shigellosis. The strain of norovirus- the bug is the most common cause of stomach flu.Norovirus is highly contagious and also known as ‘cruise ship virus’.

Adverse Effect of Norovirus: It has been estimated in United States of America that more than million cases of vomiting and diarrhea are due to the norovirus.Children under the age of 5 become an easy prey to this virus and the infection sometimes leads to their death. People acquire this deadly infection through food, water or unhygienic hands, contaminated by the infected feces.Young kids and elderly are at a particular threat because of dehydration. As dehydration is a complicated issue of this infection.The doctors advise the intake of electrolyle to resolve the issue. Read more »

Preparing Society for Ageing

September 7th, 2011 Jade

The Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health (ALSWH) has released its Women, Health and Ageing report and is warning that we must, as a community, be prepared for the changes that arise from ageing and that both individuals and health care systems will be forced to deal with the eventual health and social changes that come about in women as they age. It has been shown that there are increasing health risks, disabilities and illness that are sure to emerge in future generations of women.

Since 1996, over 40,000 women who were born between 1921 and 1926 were surveyed by the joint University of Newcastle and University of Queensland study. The surveys, and subsequent report, focused on the changes in the women’s health and found:

- Many of the women that participated in the study, particularly those at the higher end of the age scale, were living with multiple conditions and disabilities.
- Arthritis was one of the most common ailments affecting the women in the study. Sufferers were found to be leading a poorer quality of life due to pain and social limitations brought on by the arthritis.
- The highest use of health care services was by those women who had suffered a stroke or were living with cancer.
- Various conditions, like diabetes, weren’t being managed according to current guidelines.
- Surgical intervention may have a profound effect on the ongoing well-being of certain women.

It is thought that, with the high-risk behavior of some of today’s young women, the problems found in the study will be exacerbated as these young women age. Smoking, obesity and drug use all have a profound effect on the health of women as they face ageing.

The good news is that the study confirms that low risk behaviors in young adulthood contribute to a high quality of life in later years. By educating young and middle aged women, the perils of ageing may be lessened dramatically.

The Science of Radicalization

August 26th, 2011 Jade

As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 draws near, a decent respect for the sensibilities of those involved demands a renewed inspection of the motivations of the attackers. One cannot but wonder at the motivations of the perpetrators. To a large extent, they were trained in technical and scientific fields. In addition, compared to their peers, they generally enjoyed a relatively luxurious lifestyle.

In his book, “Human Being to Human Bomb: Inside the Mind of a Terrorist”, author Russell Razzaque, makes the point that, in every instance, these terrorists were academics trained in literalist, logic-based subjects. They were mathematicians, scientists and engineers. The disconnect between this formalist scientific training and their fundamentalist beliefs is quite striking.

Razzaque would elaborate on his critique. At a conference in Cambridge, entitled “After 9/11, he discussed his own dealings with on-campus Muslim organizations. His own association proved fruitless in a political sense but provided him with some insights into the minds of those enamored of radicalization.

To his mind, young people with a scientific bent are prone to seek black and white answers to all problems, even ones as intractable as “peace in the Middle East.” Spurred to conduct further research, he found, to his surprise, that those students following a decidedly liberal arts curriculum were more resistant to the terrorist group’s perorations.

Ultimately, he was shocked to see several of fellow students duped by the cult-recruiting techniques of these organizations. He watched as social alienation and personal marginalization were used to cull the most vulnerable members of the group.

Their protestations to the contrary, these groups, in no way, provided a free and open discourse. Instead, alternative opinions were actively discouraged. It was demanded that members devote inordinate amounts of time to the cause and unwaveringly believe in the simplistic, utopian ideas promulgated by their so called leaders. An unfortunate turn of events for the vulnerable.

At the end, Razzaque reiterates his final poignant point. Though in college and pursuing an advanced degree, some of our brightest students are subject to pressure that makes them vulnerable to terrorist organizations. It behooves all persons of responsibility to be aware of this threat and to take measures to countermand them.

Research of iPS Cells and Inflated Expectations

August 16th, 2011 Jade

For the present time used mainly as research tools, induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells are an exciting feature on the science news front. Containing many of the same benefits of embryonic stem cells, they are not obtained by destroying embryos and do not carry the ethical questions raised with the use of embryonic stem cells. The iPS cells are obtained through skin or other cells from any adult by careful reprogramming. This method works even on patients with nervous systems disorders. Though iPS cells may be used as treatments at some point in the future, for now they remain a researchers tool only.

Ricardo Dolmetsch of Stanford has been vocal about his group’s work to create iPS cells. Using patients patients suffering from a range of autism-related disorders, Dolmetsch’s group has been looking for abnormal gene expression, electrophysiology and fine-scale anatomy. Dolmetsch’s groups efforts revolve around creating iPS cells from patients with a variety of autism-related disorders and examine the resulting neurons for abnormalities in gene expression, fine-scale anatomy, and electrophysiology.

Unfortunately, there are many neurodevelopmental disorders that simply have no good animal model. At John Hopkins University, fifth-year graduate student Jason Chiang, has been working with iPS cells from two patients with trisomy 13, one of those disorders with no animal model suitable for study. Evidence has been presented that shows cell signaling pathways involving defects within Wnt proteins, and may be one aspect of the neurological disorder.

Numerous recent research papers from Allison Ebert of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, outlined the integration of iPS cells obtained from neurological patients. In her first paper, skin cells from an 82-year-old woman with amyotophic lateral sclerosis was used to create iPS cells, which were then manipulated into separating into motor neurons. Ebert and her colleagues have also been studying these cells in an attent to find out why some motor neurons die off in patients suffering from SMA. One theory is that the genetic sequence of genes in apoptosis, or programmed cell death, are uncontrolled in these types of cells.

EPA Receives Criticism

August 9th, 2011 Jade

Republican lawmakers at a hearing addressing the way that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) performs its assessment and evaluation of chemicals to determine their safety, leveled criticism at the agency for their methods of evaluation, the lack of clarity and the length of time it takes to get regulations passed.

The EPA relies on the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), a database containing assessments by EPA scientists of over 540 chemicals, when determining what regulation is required for chemicals and their effect on the quality of drinking water, air quality or other environmental standards. The problem is that these assessments are sometimes quite controversial politically as with the assessment of formaldehyde, a preservative widely used by the chemical industry, and this can cause significant delays in passing regulations.

In a July 12, 2011 press release issued on the EPA website, EPA science adviser Paul Anastas outlined changes that were recommended to streamline the assessment process by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and received by the EPA on April 8, 2011. In response to the NAS recommendations, the EPA, working with their Science Advisory Board, will focus on “quality, transparency and scientific rigor” in IRIS assessments and that a peer consultation will be implemented to lend additional scientific input during the early stages of the process. It will also create an IRIS scientific advisory committee.

Although the improvements met with broad approval, there are still questions about how much additional peer review is necessary to properly prepare IRIS assessments for use as guidelines in establishing regulations.

In 2009, some progress was made to streamline the process after a U.S. Government Accountability Office call for broad transformation of IRIS. Prior to 2009, it was not unusual for assessments to take 5 years or longer. As a result of the changes implemented at that time most assessments are now completed in 23 months or less.

House of Representatives Votes to Increase Energy Research Budgets

July 25th, 2011 Jade

While it is much less than the $550 million that the Obama Administration originally wanted, a recently passed amendment adds $80 million to the budget of the ARPA-E, the Department of Energy’s blue-sky research branch that focuses on paradigm-shifting energy research. The vote was a narrow 214-213. This amendment ups the total budget to $180 million for the ARPA-E in 2012. Decided by a margin of 212-210, another vote also gives the Department of Energy $10 million to boost its solar energy research. Thirty-three Republicans and 197 Democrats helped pass the amendment that gives the project a budget of $173 million.

Representative Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, the longest-serving woman in the U.S. House of Representatives, was one of the people who supported the budget increases. The Democratic representative’s deputy chief of staff Nathan Facey said, “There is a small majority in the House that continues to support these programs.” While some amendments in the House of Representatives looked to cut the budgets of renewable energy programs, fossil fuel research and energy efficiency research, they all failed. Many amendments suggesting increasing the budgets for the programs failed as well, but Facey called the successful solar energy amendment a “vote of confidence in the program.” At this point, many feel the worst these programs have to fear are flat budgets for next year if they don’t get the benefits of the high budgets requested by the Obama Administration.

The appropriations committee had proposed a $163 million budget for the solar research program. That figure would have meant a cut of $97 million, which would have been far below the $433 million suggested by the Obama Administration for 2011. However, the Democratic-controlled Senate, which is next to take up the legislation, is likely to keep supporting increases in the budgets for energy research programs such as the ARPA-E in the future.

Web Performance Optimization

April 27th, 2011 Jade

There are a few different things you can do to speed up your website. This is referred to as web performance optimization.

  • The first thing you should always do when creating your website is ensure that your pictures are not too large for the space they are going in. If you have to resize your images to fit them onto the screen, they are too big. Use a tool like Microsoft Paint to reduce the actual size of the picture. This will significantly reduce loading time.
  • Use external Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) and JavaScript files. Studies have shown that this improves the speed at which the page loads. This is partially due to the fact that these files are cached by the browser and don’t have to be downloaded again.
  • Combine external files of the same type to reduce the number of requests sent out. Since a request is sent out for every CSS file, it is important to try to keep this number to a minimum. Combining all external CSS to a single file solves this problem.
  • Control how long certain components remain in the computer cache. This can be done with an Expires header. This helps repeat users load the page much faster for content-rich websites.
  • Allow compression for transfers over slow connections. This can be done by setting the Content-Encoding to gzip or any other compression method that is supported. Gzip is the most popular and most effective method for compression currently.

What is viral marketing and when to use it?

April 26th, 2011 Jade

We’ve all heard about the term viral marketing. But what does it exactly mean? Actually, it’s a concept of selling some product or service by creating a hype or buzz which then spread like a virus in all possible directions so as to increase the sales.

Viral marketing actually guarantees you a vast exposure and tons of traffic once it starts working in your favor. It can be used by new startups and existing businesses to expand their market reach by opening several new frontiers. One need not work within specific set of rules when working with viral marketing as almost anything can happen anytime.

You need to have thorough knowledge of basic before you can effectively use viral marketing concept for your marketing products or services. You should always keep in mind that market alone can decide as to what actually will go viral and not you.

Viral marketing can be done in many ways. It can be started by posting a blog which talks about some upcoming event. It can also be about some event posting on sites like Twitter, Facebook or MySpace. People will read it and then share it when they find the information useful. Therefore, each such blog that get read and then shared becomes an important viral marketing tool for your business.

You can get significant success with your viral marketing campaign by making it fun filled and engaging. Just see some of the fun or comedy videos on YouTube and see how many views they get. People never like getting bored and to keep them engaged is quite challenging but it is also your gateway to immediate success. If you can succeed in capturing the attention of people and take them along with your views, then you surely have your foot in the door.

Good example is Heineken commercial with Jennifer Aniston, you can see it bellow:

Article sponsor: Dejan SEO team.

Sony: Computers with 3D image

March 21st, 2011 Justin

Japanese electronic giant Sony announce begining of selling a new model computers with 3D image.

This model is so-called F-serie, which allows the image in 3D format, and approximate price is slightly higher than $ 3.000, said company representative.

Users must use special glasses for watching images in 3D format which are an integral part of computer equipment. This model will be marketed and available in other countries, especially in the United States.

Japanese corporations Fujitsu already start selling computers for which users do not need special glasses to enjoy 3D images.

Fast data transfer arrives rapidly

March 2nd, 2011 Justin

Intel has designed a super-fast universal access to peripheral devices which first appeared on the new MacBook Pro laptops.

Intel’s technology Thunderbolt enables data transmission between computers and peripheral devices at speeds of 10 gigabits per second. New interface delivers more than 20 times the speed compared to USB 2.0 and 12 times compared to FireWire 800th The first computer on which the Thunderbolt was built new MacBook Pro.

It is interesting that the Thunderbolt’s interface can be connected to monitors, and thanks to the adapters will not matter what kind of connector used. In preparing the adapters for DisplayPort, HDMI, DVI and VGA connectors.

Adapters for USB, Firewire and SATA connectors are expected, which will be provided connecting external drives on older computers with Thunderbolt. Enormous bandwidth will enable high-speed connection drives, and even devices with RAID disk array to be in this case behave as if they were integrated into the computer.

The new interface can supply power to peripheral devices connected to it, making it suitable for connecting external hard drives without a separate power supply. Thunderbolt is able to deliver 10W of energy connected device.

Intel hopes that Thunderbolt will replace plenty of older technologies such as USB or FireWire. The rejection of a number of different connections will solve users concerns about how the merger of computer peripherals and computer manufacturers would save the space for the connectors, which will lead to smaller and cheaper laptops motherboards for desktop computers.

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