WendSight

Omnivore to vegan - what does it take?

2011-08-20T04:44:00.001-07:00

Checking out today's health news, I found a feature on CNN about President Bill Clinton's journey to becoming a vegan.

Clinton's heart health history is well known, and now he is talking about the changes he has made to become more healthy. And, he likes his current diet of mostly veggies. You can watch a CNN video to see more about his story.

Dr. Sanja Gupta has a special on "The Last Heart Attack" on Sunday, Aug. 21, at 8 pm.

If you are interested in learning about delicious dishes that are healthy, there are thousands of ways to get this information. Here's one good web site - American Heart Association.

Scientists show longevity tied to genetic variants

2010-07-04T05:42:00.000-07:00

A new study is getting a lot of buzz in the media: genetic variants and longevity. In the press release from researchers reporting in science, word has it that while environment and family history are factors in healthy aging, genetic variants play a critical and complex role in conferring exceptional longevity.

Boston University Schools of Public Health and Medicine and the Boston Medical Center reported the study.

The research team identified a group of genetic variants that can predict exceptional longevity in humans with 77 percent accuracy – a breakthrough in understanding the role of genes in determining human lifespan.

Based upon the hypothesis that exceptionally old individuals are carriers of multiple genetic variants that influence their remarkable survival, the team conducted a genome-wide association study of centenarians. Centenarians are a model of healthy aging, as the onset of disability in these individuals is generally delayed until they are well into their mid-nineties.

The scientists built a unique genetic model that includes 150 genetic variants, known as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs).They found that these 150 variants could be used to predict if a person survived to very old ages (late 90s and older) with a high rate of accuracy.

In addition, the team's analysis identified 19 genetic clusters or "genetic signatures" of exceptional longevity that characterized 90 percent of the centenarians studied. The different signatures correlated with differences in the prevalence and age-of-onset of diseases such as dementia and hypertension, and may help identify key subgroups of healthy aging, the authors said.

Check out the New England Centenarian Study.

Making music via physics

2010-06-27T04:39:00.000-07:00

An exciting use of technology is in use by scientists "converting the cosmic phenomena they are chasing through the huge underground machine into musical sound in their state-of-the-art computers."

A Reuters story covers this, so read about it!

Reasearchers at the LHC Large Hadron Collider at the CERN uses particle physics to manage this and they are discussing this at The Sounds of Science web site - the LHCsound project [a fun blog!].

Apricots: learning how to find a good one

2010-06-21T12:17:00.000-07:00

I was scouting The New York Times health pages and found a story on apricots.

The photo of the apricots and strawberries is so beautiful I decided to post this story and link to it!

Explaining how to make it - the recipe - well, seems like this is easy to figure out on your own!

The story says, "...a truly ripe apricot is something else altogether; there is nothing quite like its intensity, its tart edge and almond-y overtones." I guess I will figure out how to find a local apricot!

I found on a web site this, "This is a very good question for the Atlanta Fruits yahoo group, because it is my understanding that NO apricot does well. Apricots are in the almond family, and most almond family plants do not like humidity to my understanding."

I found this on a web site, and it does not bode well for southern US apricot growing: "A sunny location is very important, and a north-facing slope is good because it warms up more slowly in the spring. An east-facing site is considered better than a west-facing site for somewhat the same reason, plus early sun on frosty April mornings. Cold air drainage is important; it’s best to plant on a slope, not in a hollow, but not on a windy hilltop either. The ideal climate would be uniform, moderately cold winters (to –10F is OK for any variety), mild dry springs, warm summers but high heat not required. In fact, Central Asia, Iran, Pakistan and Turkey with their mountainous terrain, moderately cold winters, hot dry summers, and brief springs are nearly ideal and are major producers."

Human genome's promise, complex information to review

2010-06-13T13:41:00.000-07:00

The story by Nicholas Wade in the NYT on the human genome research status is, no doubt, food for thought. With all the excitement that surrounded the mapping of the genome, it is now a challenge to take all of the information that can be obtained and make sense of it. If you want a snapshot of how complex information gathering and assessment has gotten, read the Wikipedia entry on bioinformatics.

"Ten years after President Bill Clinton announced that the first draft of the human genome was complete, medicine has yet to see any large part of the promised benefits. For biologists, the genome has yielded one insightful surprise after another. But the primary goal of the $3 billion Human Genome Project — to ferret out the genetic roots of common diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s and then generate treatments — remains largely elusive. Indeed, after 10 years of effort, geneticists are almost back to square one in knowing where to look for the roots of common disease."

Wade writes: "As more people have their entire genomes decoded, the roots of genetic disease may eventually be understood, but at this point there is no guarantee that treatments will follow. If each common disease is caused by a host of rare genetic variants, it may not be susceptible to drugs."

Watch for part two in the NYT on the work of drug companies in this area.

Acupuncture combo with adenosine shows promise

2010-05-31T05:49:00.000-07:00

Good news for pain management this week: researchers find that acupuncture studies in mice, using adenosine enhancement, may help reduce pain. Obviously there is a ways to go, years of study in humans at some point, before this would be in use at your local doctor's office.

Researchers published in Nature Neuroscience that they identified the molecule adenosine as a central player in parlaying some of the effects of acupuncture in the body. Building on that knowledge, scientists were able to triple the beneficial effects of acupuncture in mice by adding a medcation approved to treat leukemia in people.

You can read more in the press release from the University of Rochester and news coverage including the Boston Globe.

Refresher course on Neanderthals and humans

2010-05-07T11:47:00.000-07:00

Does everyone but me realize that Neanderthals and humans are/were different species. I always thought that Neanderthals were humans alive a long time ago.

But the news today that the two interbred over a 50,000 to 80,000 year period has me trying to thread back to what the differences between the two are. USA Today comments on the Science journal article saying, " Humans and Neanderthals likely interbred 50,000 to 80,000 years ago in the Near East, concludes the international genetics team's pair of studies."

So scouting around USA Today stories, I found a recent article that says, "In the Nature journal study, the pinky bone discovered in the Denisova cave archaeological site in southern Siberia yielded mitochondrial DNA — maternal genes inherited outside of the ones found in cell's chromosomes — unrelated to either humans or their extinct Neanderthal cousins."

Okay, this says Neanderthals were cousins to humans. We are getting somewhere. But now, this new article is telling me "although genetically distant from humans, the new species appears much more closely related to humans than apes." So there is another species.

Maybe I should refresh my memory on what "species"means. So, thank you Wikipedia, as always I can find a quick reference. It says, "There are many definitions of what kind of unit a species is (or should be). A common definition is that of a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring of both genders, and separated from other such groups with which interbreeding does not normally happen. Other debatable definitions may focus on similarity of DNA or morphology. Some species are further subdivided into subspecies, and here also there is no close agreement on the criteria to be used."

The San Francisco Chronicle has a good story pointing to the joining of DNA between modern humans and Neanderthals: "The sequencing of Neanderthal genetic material is real gold because we can now compare the Neanderthal genome with our own and pinpoint the genetic changes that have enabled humans to thrive, to spread across the entire globe, and to occupy every ecological niche that exists in the world," says Richard E. Green, about the Science report.

And: "The complete genomes of the Neanderthals and modern humans, whose lineages separated from some unknown common ancestor at least 400,000 years ago, are 99.5 percent identical. They are, in fact, our closest evolutionary relatives. By comparison, humans and chimpanzees share 98 percent of their genes."

Okay - I am getting this better now.

Restricting calories may boost immunity

2010-04-30T13:15:00.000-07:00

I have heard some friends say they will restrict calories so that they can live longer ... they have gotten this information anecdotally. A study today seems to lean in this direction.

Researches say in the Journal of Gerontology, Biological Sciences, that volunteers who followed a low-calorie diet or a very low-calorie diet not only lost weight, but also significantly enhanced their immune response. The study may be the first to demonstrate the interaction between calorie restriction and immune markers among humans, they say.

The lead researcher, Simin Nikbin Meydani, is director of the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University. The study is part of the "Comprehensive Assessment of Long-Term Effects of Reducing Intake of Energy" trial.

As people age, their immune response generally declines. Calorie restriction has been shown to boost these immune responses in animals.

For the study, the researchers looked at specific biologic markers. A skin test used called DTH (delayed-type hypersensitivity) is a measure of immune response at the whole body level. The researchers also examined effects of calorie restriction on function of T-cells--a major type of white blood cell--and other factors on the volunteer's immune system.

DTH and T-cell response indicate the strength of cell-mediated immunity. One positive was that DTH and T-cell proliferative response were significantly increased in both calorie-restrained groups. These results show for the first time that short-term calorie restriction for six months in humans improves the function of T-cells, say the researchers.

Epigenetics: how foods work to prevent disease

2010-04-28T11:22:00.000-07:00

The Experimental Biology 2010 meeting has a lot of interesting research being presented this week. An important area of study is understanding a person's risks from his or her genetic code. Now scientists are predicting with testing what risks are there and what prevention measures could be taken.

Today researchers from the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University talked about cancer, heart disease, neurological disorders and other degenerative conditions and say some scientists are moving away from the “nature-versus-nurture” debate and are finding you’re not a creature of either genetics or environment, but both – with enormous implications for a new approach to health.

The scientists say, "The new field of epigenetics is rapidly revealing how people, plants and animals do start with a certain genetic code at conception. But the choice of which genes are expressed, or activated, is strongly affected by environmental influences. The expression of genes can change rapidly over time, they can be influenced by external factors, those changes can be passed along to offspring, and they can literally hold the key to life and death."

In the case of cancer, tumor suppressor genes can cause cancer cells to die by acting as a brake on unrestrained cell growth. But too much of the histone deacetylases (HDAC) enzyme can switch off tumor suppressor genes, even though the underlying DNA sequence of the cell – its genetic structure – has not been changed or mutated.

“We already know some of the things people can do to help prevent cancer with certain dietary or lifestyle approaches,” says researcher Rod Dashwood. “Now we’re hoping to more fully understand the molecular processes going on, including at the epigenetic level. This should open the door for new approaches to disease prevention or treatment through diet, as well as in complementing conventional drug therapies.”

Read the whole story on the OSU web site. To learn more about "predictive health" visit this web site.

Study shows Vitamin D still key for health in aging

2010-04-27T08:05:00.000-07:00

The relationship between vitamin D status and physical function in a group of relatively healthy seniors was presented April 25 at the Experimental Biology 2010 meeting in Anaheim.

A press release posted on Eurekalert says that "participants with the highest levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D had better physical function. And, although physical function declined over the course of the study, it remained significantly higher among those with the highest vitamin D levels at the beginning of the study compared to those with the lowest vitamin D levels.

"The scientists were not surprised to learn that, in general, vitamin D consumption was very low in this group of otherwise healthy seniors. In fact, more than 90 percent of them consumed less vitamin D than currently recommended, and many were relying on dietary supplements."

The study was part of the Health, Aging, and Body Composition (Health ABC) study initially designed to assess the associations among body composition, long-term health conditions, and mobility in older adults.

"The researchers say it's impossible to tell from this type of research whether increasing vitamin D intake will actually lead to stronger muscles and preserve physical function. This is partly due to the fact that our bodies can make vitamin D if they get enough sunlight. So, it is possible that the participants with better physical function had higher vitamin D status simply because they were able to go outside more often," the press release notes.

Facinating: Hawking talks about life in the universe

2010-04-27T06:44:00.000-07:00

I am impressed with CNN seeking astronomer Jill Tarter, director of the Center for SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Research, to explain further what famed scientist Stephen Hawking was saying in a documentary about intelligent alien life and that it must exist. Go to Discovery Channel to learn more.

Hawking is known for his contributions to the fields of cosmology and quantum gravity, especially in the context of black holes. He has also achieved success with works of popular science in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general; these include the runaway best seller A Brief History of Time.

Wikipedia information says Hawking has indicated that he is almost certain that alien life exists in other parts of the universe and uses a mathematical basis for his assumptions. "To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational. The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like." He believes alien life not only certainly exists in planets but perhaps even in other places, like within stars or even floating in outer space. He also warns that a few of these species might be intelligent and threaten Earth. Contact with such species might be devastating for humanity. "If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," he said. He advocated that, rather than try to establish contact, man should try to avoid contact with alien life forms.

Tarter says at CNN that "SETI searches will succeed and that the civilization that's transmitting is using a technology that is older and more advanced than our own. Of course he's right, but there's a lot of room for different opinions about what contact with an advanced technology would mean." Read more.

Serious about veggies: study shows best phytonutrients

2010-04-27T06:25:00.000-07:00

This week's Experimental Biology 2010 meeting in Anaheim has a lot of health information pouring from studies. Some are from industry and some from academia, so be sure to sort through the intent for presenting the findings. The blueberry folks will want you to know about how healthy blueberries are - and I am sure this is true - just make sure you look closely. I think the following info is interesting and helps the consumer understand more specifically what is in certain foods.

The study from Nutrilite says Americans could improve their phytonutrient intake by choosing to eat more concentrated sources of phytonutrients as well as a wider variety of them. Nutrilite points to source of its study: dataset comes from National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, surveys that capture what Americans eat daily, supplemental nutrient concentration data from the United States Department of Agriculture and the published literature.

Some results: for 10 of the 14 phytonutrients included in the analysis, a single food type accounted for approximately two-thirds or more of an individual's intake of the specific phytonutrient, regardless of whether that person was a high or low fruit and vegetable consumer. Based on the current study, the top food sources consumed by Americans for some selected phytonutrients were as follows:

Beta-carotene – carrots
Beta-cryptoxanthin – oranges/orange juice
Lutein/zeaxanthin – spinach
Ellagic acid – strawberries
Isothiocyanates – mustard
For each of these phytonutrients, however, there is a more highly concentrated food that could be chosen instead:
Beta-carotene – sweet potatoes
Sweet potatoes have nearly double the beta-carotene compared to carrots in a single serving.
Beta-cryptoxanthin – papaya
A serving of fresh papaya has roughly 15 times the beta-cryptoxanthin of an orange.
Lutein/zeaxanthin – kale
By substituting cooked kale for raw spinach, it is possible to triple lutein/zeaxanthin intake.
Ellagic acid – raspberries
Serving per serving, raspberries have roughly three times the ellagic acid compared to strawberries.
Isothiocyanates – watercress
Just one cup of watercress as the basis for a salad has about the same level of isothiocyanates as four teaspoons of mustard.

Find more studies like this for EB 2010 at Eurekalert.

Does happiness grow with more Facebook use?

2010-04-24T07:46:00.000-07:00

Now and then I comment on happiness and latest info shared around the net.

I recalled a 2008 Harvard study on happiness and it says on a press release I reviewed just now that you should "thank your friends—and their friends. And while you’re at it, their friends’ friends.... [researchers] found that happiness is not the result solely of a cloistered journey filled with individually tailored self-help techniques. Happiness is also a collective phenomenon that spreads through social networks like an emotional contagion."

With the news this week that Facebook is expanding social connections with the transformation of the web, where you will be seen and heard everywhere you visit online, I started wondering if this new way of adding connections will expand our happiness!

Right now the reaction to the news from Facebook is mixed - read the Christian Science Monitor and ComputerWorld.

Divert from your real issues: Vatican shifts to stem cells

2010-04-23T15:46:00.000-07:00

This headline intrigued me: "Vatican to finance adult stem cell research."

According to AP, "The Vatican has drawn criticism for its opposition to embryonic stem cell research. But the Vatican insists there are scientifically viable alternatives and the efforts of the scientific community should go in that direction. Financing this project is part of those efforts. But while embryonic stem cells are especially prized for their pluripotency — meaning they can morph into any type of cell in the body — adult stem cells are not as pluripotent. For that reason, embryonic stem cells are considered to have more potential for the treatment of diseases such as Alzheimer's, diabetes and Parkinson's.

ABC News covers the story, too.

Sugar and heart disease now linked

2010-04-21T15:11:00.000-07:00

Emory University School of Medicine researcher Miriam Vos, MD, made a significant discovery about sugar - it increases the risk of heart disease.

A new study conducted by Emory, published in the Journal of American Medical Association, found that added sugars may increase cardiovascular disease risk factors.

The study analyzed U.S. government nutritional data and blood lipid levels in more than 6,000 adult men and women between 1999 and 2006. Participants were divided into five groups according to the amount of added sugar and caloric sweeteners they consumed daily.

Researchers found that people who consumed more added sugar were more likely to have higher cardiovascular disease risk factors, including higher triglyceride levels and higher ratios of triglycerides to HDL-C, or good cholesterol.

Volcano Facination 2010

2010-04-18T06:36:00.000-07:00

There is no doubt that the volcano in Iceland has captured the interest of people around the world. Its impact scientifically, socially and economically is facinating, and it is getting more complicated as the days continue with the eruption still under way today.

First, from scientific perspective, it is facinating and stokes our imaginations. This is a science lesson for everyone - how does a volcano decide to erupt after years of quietude. Go to Joe Palca's interview on NPR to learn from the Iceland scientists monitoring this volcano [there are more nearby].

And, it is beautiful and awesome to watch - images and video.

Air travel is halted and it is evident that we are more interdependent on movement than we pay attention to on a daily bais. The Times Online says airlines are looking for safe passages to use. The Dutch are testing normal flights, sans passengers except for crew.

Quiet watchfulness

2009-10-04T05:48:00.000-07:00

Buttermilk sky,

Layers over the morning sun,

The blue sky, almost October,

Shines a smiling light

So bright.

Life is shifting,

Calm and slow motion,

Of stillness and innerness,

Quiet watchfulness of Sophie and Dori,

Watching over the bed's foot,

Mac at the door.

Thanks to web shots for the image.

Morning sky after the storm

2009-10-04T05:13:00.000-07:00

Torrents of rain,

Saturated and flooding,

Many days of misery for many,

Sailing from homes.

Today awakes,
The world, my world,

Powder blue, amost October sky,

Dabs of white painted here.

On the hill, over the city,

Light of morning,

Cast shapes of gold and lemon,

Over sturdy skyscrapers.

Mist low in altitude,

Creates a pattern, a mosaic,

Exhaled air,

Against the vertical.

Thank you to Tim's pictures for the image.

Cancer discoveries everyday

2009-06-25T12:17:00.000-07:00

An exciting basic discovery in cancer research was communicated yesterday - including in an online story at the BBC: Olaparib is the first successful example of a new type of personalised medicine using a technique called "synthetic lethality" - a subtle way of exploiting the body's own molecular weaknesses for positive effect. In this case the drug takes advantage of the fact that while normal cells have several different ways of repairing damage to their DNA, one of these pathways is disabled by the BRCA mutations in tumour cells. Olaparib blocks one of the repair pathways by shutting down a key enzyme called PARP.

Robert Bazell at NBC says: "All this enthusiasm is based on a small report published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. It focuses on one clinical trial in its earliest stage in 60 patients with breast, ovarian and prostate cancer. Some — but not all — of the patients whose cancers seemed hopeless saw them shrink drastically or disappear. Many avoided the typical side effects — nausea, hair loss — associated with cancer treatment."

Advances on many cancer fronts are coming fast and furiously, so much so it is hard to keep up with them. This is great for patients who are trying to directly treat their cancers without harming themselves while trying.

Thanks to createmotions for the image.

Conversation on Competition in Science

2009-05-12T08:34:00.000-07:00

There is some conversation going on in the science world about competition, so you may want to follow this discussion in the NYT this week and last.

What if scientists, instead of rushing to publish or perish, chose to cooperate? Sean Cutler decided to do “a little experiment,” as he calls it, and you can see the results in the forthcoming issue of Science. "I can already anticipate that a lot of people will say, “This is a bad message. You are painting an unflattering portrait of scientists.” To this I respond: Most of the scientists I know are very good, passionate and ethical people who behave. But some don’t, and these unethical types gain an unfair advantage that needs to be addressed so that competitive forces can work their magic most effectively. Good ethics = good competition. They are not in opposition."

John Tierney asks in his NYT blog called TierneyLab: "How widespread do you believe this problem is? Have you seen this sort of unethical competition in your field? Ever engaged in it yourself?"

Journey to the Center of ....

2009-05-02T17:57:00.000-07:00

I just watched Journey to the Center of the Earth where the scientists fall through volcanic tubes... and then saw this story about being sucked into a black hole! This is a great story, so read A. Pawlowski's story on CNN. Thank you to UCLA for the image.

"To be sucked in by a black hole, you need to reach its event horizon, the one-way boundary beyond which nothing can escape. The more massive a black hole, the bigger this point of no return around it, said Jeff McClintock, a senior astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Scientists can try to simulate a trip inside with the help of equations in Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, which make predictions about black hole behavior, said Andrew Hamilton, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

"Black holes are some of the simplest things in the universe. We think of them as being complicated things because they're described by complicated mathematics," Hamilton said.

"But as a practical matter, they are, in fact, much simpler than the sun, far simpler than stars and infinitely simpler than human beings."

"The same force ripping you apart would also concentrate the view of the universe into a thin band around your waist. It would cause the scene above and below you to appear redshifted, or dimmer, and the light around your waist to become blueshifted, or very bright, Hamilton said.
You may also regret that you only have two eyes. In a strange twist, Hamilton and Polhemus argue that three eyes would be needed to properly judge distances inside a black hole, where space-time is highly curved and our binocular vision would become confused."

Short or Poor Sleep Can Lead to More Eating and Risk of Diabetes

2009-04-22T07:01:00.000-07:00

Studies continue to show that sleep curtailment or decreased sleep quality can disturb neuroendocrine control of appetite, leading to overeating, and can decrease insulin or increase insulin resistance, both steps on the road to Type 2 diabetes.

On April 22, at the Experimental Biology 2009 meeting in New Orleans, a panel of leading sleep researchers describes recent and new studies in this fast growing field. The session is part of the scientific program of the American Association of Anatomists (AAA).

Short sleep, poor sleep: novel risk factors for obesity and for type 2 diabetes.

Dr. Eve Van Cauter, University of Chicago, is a specialist in the effect of circadian rhythms on the endocrine system and has conducted several studies in which short-term sleep restriction damaged the body’s ability to regulate eating by lowering levels of leptin, the hormone that tells the body when it has had enough. In the AAA symposium, Dr. Van Cauter describes other recently published studies from her group, one showing that only three days sleep disruption is sufficient to increase insulin resistance in humans (thus causing the body to need higher levels of insulin) and a large epidemiological study showing that short sleep over a five year period causes an increase in systolic blood pressure.

Energy metabolism during chronic sleep deprivation: sleep less, eat more, don’t gain weight, yet show signs of progression toward diabetes.

Panel member Dr. Michael Koban, Morgan State University, reports a new study in which sleep restriction in rats led to glucose intolerance, a prediabetic state in which the blood glucose remains higher than normal after glucose challenge. Significantly, this is the first rodent study of sleep deprivation in which there was no association between glucose dysregulation and weight gain.

The researchers believe that extending sleep restriction will produce more pronounced glucose intolerance in which glucose levels do not return to normal levels for a longer period, thus providing more evidence that not sleeping enough could lead to diabetes in humans. The researchers also are looking for mechanisms to explain the change in metabolism related to sleep deprivation and the dissociation between weight gain and glucose dysregulation and insulin resistance.

Stress-related behaviors and hormone changes after prolonged sleep deprivation – and environmental factors that appear to modify them

Dr. Deborah Suchecki, Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo, describes how prolonged sleep deprivation activates the neuroendocrine stress response, as measured by increased blood levels of the stress-related hormones adrenaline, adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), and corticosterone. Earlier studies have shown that sleep restriction in animals can gradually change brain and neuroendocrine systems in ways similar to those seen in stress-related disorders such as depression, while epidemiological studies suggest that sleep restriction may be an important risk factor for cardiovascular and other diseases linked to stress.

CNS changes after chronic sleep deprivation have role in both food intake and metabolism.

Dr. Gloria Hoffman, also of Morgan State University, presents studies that explain the role of the central nervous system pathways in stimulating feeding and causing metabolic changes associated with progression to diabetes. Specifically, increased production of the neurotransmitter neuropeptide Y and decreased production of proopiomelanocortiini products in the hypothalamus explain the hyperphagic response.

Although the CNS’s role in regulating metabolic rate is not well understood, she believes that histamine might be involved. Histamine neurons not only affect the maintenance of wakefulness but also are regulators of peripheral metabolism. In sleep deprived rats, elevations in the glucose to insulin ratio were positively correlated with an increase in histamine expression that raises the possibility that a dysregulation of histamine function during impaired sleep might serve to trigger metabolic and other changes leading to diabetes.

The scientists agree that as sleep curtailment becomes more common in industrialized countries it becomes increasingly important to understand how limited or poor quality sleep produces changes that can lead to obesity and diabetes, both epidemic in the developed world. More and more scientists are jumping on board with these lines of investigation, says Dr. Hoffman, and there is an increased demand for information on the part of health professionals and members of the general public, many of whom consider themselves sleep deprived.

Kids Like Fruits and Veggies When Given a Chance

2009-04-20T11:44:00.000-07:00

The good nutrition news is that children in poor, rural parts of the Lower Mississippi Delta are a lot more willing to try fresh fruits and vegetables than generally believed, even by their parents or the kids themselves. The bad news is that such foods are often in short supply in an area where gas stations and convenience stores are the closest places to buy food and where growing family gardens has given way to long work commutes by parents – and that the situation is growing worse with a worsening economy.

Two presentations drawing from a multi-year nutrition research program in Delta summer camps and schools were presented on April 19 at the Experimental Biology 2009 meeting in New Orleans as part of the scientific program of the American Society for Nutrition. The ongoing research program is being conducted under the direction of research nutritionist Dr. Beverly McCabe-Sellers, US Department of Agriculture/Agricultural Research Service, Little Rock, Arkansas, and is part of the Delta Obesity Prevention Research Unit (OPRU) headed by Executive Director Dr. Margaret Bogle.

The research arm of the Delta OPRU works with local communities to understand obstacles to better nutrition in the Lower Delta (including rural parts of Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi), which leads the nation in the rising prevalence of obesity in both adults and children.

The challenge to having more fruits and vegetables in the diets of youngsters is not their unwillingness, she says, nor is it necessarily the admittedly low income in the area. Potato chips are not inexpensive, but the children often had small bags of them for every meal. The largest challenge, she believes from her experience, is the difficulty in obtaining quality fresh produce at a reasonable cost in these rural areas far away from distribution centers.

Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor Found for Pancreatic Cancers

2009-04-18T12:07:00.000-07:00

Finally some promising news about pancreatic cancer, one of the most fatal cancers, due to the difficulties of early detection and the lack of effective therapies: Johns Hopkins University pathologist Akhilesh Pandey has identified an epidermal growth factor receptor aberrantly active in approximately a third of the 250 human pancreatic cancers studied.

In a presentation April 18, at Experimental Biology 2009 in New Orleans, Dr. Pandey explained why this finding and related work in his Hopkins laboratory is promising in terms of both a new treatment for a large subset of pancreatic cancers and a potential blood or urine screening tool that might eventually do for pancreatic cancer detection what biomarkers like prostate-specific antigen levels have done for prostate cancer. His presentation was part of the scientific program of the American Society for Investigative Pathology.

Personalized treatment. Phosophorylated epidermal growth factor receptor (pEGFR), the receptor identified by Dr. Pandey, is closely related to HER-2, a growth factor receptor found and used as a drug target in a subset of breast cancers. After he found and profiled the pEGFR activated in the pancreatic cancers, Dr. Pandey realized the same receptor had been found by other researchers to be activated in a subset of lung cancers. And, most promising, an EGFR inhibitor named erlotinib already has been through the long and complex Food and Drug Administration approval process and is in use for treatment of these specific lung cancers.

But would the drug work in pancreatic cancers? Dr. Pandey’s group moved from studies of human cell lines to studies in mice in which human pancreatic tumor cells with activated EGFT had been placed. The tumors began growing. But when treated with erlotinib, they began to shrink. Other tumors without activated pECFR showed no response.

The promise – and the challenge – of using pEGFR is that of personalized medicine, says Dr. Pandey. Obviously a growth factor receptor that is activated only in a subset of all pancreatic cancers cannot be a one-size-fits-all target for treatment. Earlier studies in other laboratories and clinical trials already had tried EGF inhibitors as a treatment for pancreatic cancer and concluded that they did not work. When Dr. Pandey’s collaborators allowed them to re-examine their samples, they found that the only case in 12 cases that had responded to the EGF inhibitor was the only case with an activated EGF receptor. Dr. Pandey would like to see other researchers go back and re-analyze their data, separating patients with and without the activated receptor, and then determining the success rate. He believes it would tell a different, more hopeful story.

Screening for pancreatic cancer. Dr. Pandey’s other goal in his research is to use mass spectrometry to find additional markers of pancreatic cancer in the tumors themselves but also in blood and urine, which would avoid the problems of invasive biopsies. As a first step, his team has gone through the scientific literature to create a compendium of several hundred proteins and genes reported to be overexpressed in pancreatic cancers, making them excellent candidates for further study. The compendium already is being used by a consortium of investigators who are developing antibodies against the 60 most promising targets.

Brain Waves Synchronicity

2009-03-17T08:21:00.000-07:00

Scientific American continues to produce the best coverage of science and the mind. The story on musicians and how they sync efforts is interesting. Thank you to Movietome Beta for the image of the album by The Police called Synchronicity.

I like the description on Wikipedia on synchronicity: Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events which are causally unrelated occurring together in a supposedly meaningful manner. In order to count as synchronicity, the events should be unlikely to occur together by chance. The concept does not question, or compete with, the notion of causality. Instead, it maintains that just as events may be grouped by cause, they may also be grouped by their meaning. Since meaning is a complex mental construction, subject to conscious and subconscious influence, not every correlation in the grouping of events by meaning needs to have an explanation in terms of cause and effect.

Jordan Lite's 60-Second Science blog, says, "Ever wonder how musicians manage to play in unison? Credit their brain waves: they synchronize before and while musicians play a composition, according to new research. German scientists report in BMC Neuroscience that they measured the brain waves of eight pairs of guitarists using electroencephalography (EEG) while they played a modern jazz piece called Fusion #1 (by Alexander Buck). The researchers found that the guitarists' brain waves were aligned most during three pivotal times: when they were syncing up with a metronome, when they began playing the piece and at points during the composition that demanded the most synchrony."

Intellectual Property Rights - Legal Stays Busy

2009-01-24T10:05:00.001-08:00

Since I work in the medical discovery world I like to keep up with the business side of innovation, and this one hits home on a big issue of intellectual property rights for the new century.

Newsweek's Michael Heller covers the troubles in "Innovation Gridlock- Today's inventors need to put together many bits of intellectual property. Too bad they are all patented."

[Image from Vaugn Merlyn]

Newsweek writes, the first decade of the 21st Century has seen startling advances in biology. Scientists have cracked the genomes of humans and many plants, animals and microbes. They've uncovered new cellular processes affecting inheritance of diseases. Likewise, investment in biotech research and development has been steadily increasing. So what happened to all the lifesaving cures that were supposed to come our way as a result?

Read this story.

No Doubt Facinating - the Life of a Savant

2009-01-10T08:52:00.000-08:00

Scientific American is providing an interesting read this week with an interview with Daniel Tammet, a person SA says is an autistic savant. Read more. Also, while looking I came across this doctor who studies savants: Darold Treffert. He discusses Tammet here and many savants here. Photo credit.

Evidently the world has been aware of Tammet since 2004 when he one the Pi contest -Tammet's web site.

Good quote: "My brain has developed a little differently from most other people’s. Aside from my high-functioning autism, I also suffered from epileptic seizures as a young child. In my book, I propose a link between my brain’s functioning and my creative abilities based on the property of ‘hyper-connectivity’. "

Daniel Tammet is the author of two books, Born on a Blue Day and Embracing the Wide Sky, which comes out this month. He’s also a linguist and holds the European record for reciting the first 22,514 decimal points of the mathematical constant Pi. Mind Matters editor Jonah Lehrer chats with Tammet about how his memory works, why the IQ test is overrated, and a possible explanation for extraordinary feats of creativity.

LEHRER: Your recent memoir, Born on a Blue Day, documented your life as an autistic savant. You describe, for example, how you are able to quickly learn new languages, and remember scenes from years earlier in cinematic detail. Are you ever surprised by your own abilities?

TAMMET: I have always thought of abstract information—numbers for example—in visual, dynamic form. Numbers assume complex, multi-dimensional shapes in my head that I manipulate to form the solution to sums, or compare when determining whether they are prime or not. For languages, I do something similar in terms of thinking of words as belonging to clusters of meaning so that each piece of vocabulary makes sense according to its place in my mental architecture for that language. In this way I can easily discern relationships between words, which helps me to remember them. In my mind, numbers and words are far more than squiggles of ink on a page. They have form, color, texture and so on. They come alive to me, which is why as a young child I thought of them as my “friends.” I think this is why my memory is very deep, because the information is not static. I say in my book that I do not crunch numbers (like a computer). Rather, I dance with them. None of this is particularly surprising for me. I have always thought in this way so it seems entirely natural. What I do find surprising is that other people do not think in the same way. I find it hard to imagine a world where numbers and words are not how I experience them!

Finding Science Instruction on the Internet

2008-12-27T07:49:00.000-08:00

You knew it was just a matter of time until the Internet provided intellectual content at a level an industrious amatuer scientist could fiddle with. In Newsweek, an AP reporter Marcus Wohlsen writes about this endeavor.

The prospects could have major implications for NIH, major pharma, universities, and more. How will the money flow and what will the standards be in years to come?

Read more at Newsweek: "The Apple computer was invented in a garage. Same with the Google search engine. Now, tinkerers are working at home with the basic building blocks of life itself.
Using homemade lab equipment and the wealth of scientific knowledge available online, these hobbyists are trying to create new life forms through genetic engineering — a field long dominated by Ph.D.s toiling in university and corporate laboratories."

Thanks to Ingenuity Works for the image.

Hawking Continues his Universe Quest

2008-11-28T07:40:00.000-08:00

If anyone is looking for a hero, you can start with Stephen Hawking. News today says Stephen Hawking will become the first distinguished research chair at Canada’s leading scientific trust, the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario. Hawking will make regular visits to the institute, which focuses on quantum theory and gravity, beginning next summer. He will continue to hold his position as a professor of mathematics at Cambridge University.

Besides the fact that Hawking is brilliant, he is an amazing person for his perserverence against his disability from ALS. He says, "I am quite often asked: How do you feel about having ALS? The answer is, not a lot. I try to lead as normal a life as possible, and not think about my condition, or regret the things it prevents me from doing, which are not that many."

His web site says, "Hawking has worked on the basic laws which govern the universe. With Roger Penrose he showed that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity implied space and time would have a beginning in the Big Bang and an end in black holes. These results indicated it was necessary to unify General Relativity with Quantum Theory, the other great scientific development of the first half of the 20th Century. One consequence of such a unification that he discovered was that black holes should not be completely black, but should emit radiation and eventually evaporate and disappear. Another conjecture is that the universe has no edge or boundary in imaginary time. This would imply that the way the universe began was completely determined by the laws of science.

"His many publications include The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime with G F R Ellis, General Relativity: An Einstein Centenary Survey, with W Israel, and 300 Years of Gravity, with W Israel. Stephen Hawking has three popular books published; and his best seller A Brief History of Time."

How Does an Iconoclast Think?

2008-10-18T06:14:00.000-07:00

I like to cover stories about innovation on my personal blog, The Sky Badge Project, but I think this has interesting scientific merit so I am posting two places.

From an Emory University press release we learn about a new book: Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently (Harvard Business Press, 2008) - Gregory Berns, MD, PhD, shows us how the world's most successful innovators think and what we can learn from them.

Berns is distinguished chair of neuroeconomics, professor of economics at Emory University, and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, Emory University School of Medicine. He focuses his research on human motivation and decision-making through a blend of neuroscience, economics and psychology.

"Iconoclasts are individuals who do things that others say can't be done," explains Berns. "An iconoclast defies the rules, but given the opportunity, can be an asset to any organization because of the skill to be creative and innovative despite adversity."

The book examines the stories of famous and not-so-famous iconoclasts to learn something about creative decision-making, innovation and creativity and the ability to control fear, and to look at the neuroscience behind those processes. Berns profiles people such as Walt Disney, the iconoclast of animation; Natalie Maines, an accidental iconoclast; and Martin Luther King, who conquered fear.

Berns says that many successful iconoclasts are made not born. For various reasons, they simply see things differently than other people do.

"Certainly there are people who are born this way, but what I have been able to learn about these individuals is that most successful iconoclasts are people who are skilled at handling failure and particularly at handling fear - fear of failure, fear of the unknown," says Berns.
He also discovered a trait that ultimately distinguishes the people who are really successful is social intelligence.

"A person can have the greatest idea in the world - completely different and novel - but if that person can't convince enough other people, it doesn't matter," says Berns.

Pluses for HRT in Postmenopausal Women

2008-08-22T06:39:00.000-07:00

American women can stay confused about hormone replacement for postmenopausal health with all of the reports talking about its benefits, but then warning of its harm.

Here is the latest news from a Eurekalert press release reporting on a study in the British Medical Journal. The photo comes from JAMD.

One of the world's longest and largest trials of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) has found that post-menopausal women on HRT gain significant improvements in quality of life.

The results of the latest study by the WISDOM research team (Women's International Study of long Duration Oestrogen after Menopause) are published today on the British Medical Journal website http://www.bmj.com/.

The study involved 2130 post-menopausal women in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, and assessed the impact of combined oestrogen and progestogen hormone therapy on the women's quality of life. The average age of women in this study was 13 years after menopause and most participants did not have menopausal symptoms.

"Our results show that hot flushes, night sweats, sleeplessness and joint pains were less common in women on HRT in this age group. Sexuality was also improved," says Professor Alastair MacLennan, leader of the Australian arm of WISDOM and head of Obstetrics & Gynaecology at the University of Adelaide, Australia.

"Overall, quality of life measures improved. Even when women did not have hot flushes and were well past menopause, there was a small but measurable improvement in quality of life and a noted improvement in sleep, sexuality and joint pains. HRT users also had more breast tenderness and discharge compared to those on a placebo," he says.

Dr Beverley Lawton, Head of WISDOM New Zealand, says: "These new data should be added to the risk/benefit equation for HRT. The quality of life benefits of HRT may be greater in women with more severe symptoms near menopause. New research suggests that HRT taken from near menopause avoids the cardiovascular risks seen when HRT is initiated many years after menopause."

Professor MacLennan says studies such as those conducted by WISDOM "enable the risks of HRT to be reduced and its benefits maximized when the treatment is individualized to each woman".

"Early start-up side effects can usually be alleviated by adjusting the treatment," he says. "For most women with significant menopause symptoms the benefits of HRT outweigh the risks. The latest analyses of the main long-term randomized control trial of HRT (The Women's Health Initiative) show that breast cancer is not increased by estrogen-only HRT and is only increased in women using combined oestrogen and progestogen HRT after seven years of use. This increased risk is less than 0.1% per year of use.

"If a woman feels that HRT is needed for quality of life, then doctors can find the safest regimen for her. She can try going off HRT every 4-5 years, and can then make an informed choice about whether she takes and continues HRT."

Gamma-Ray Bursts Give Awesome Afterglow

2008-07-12T14:22:00.001-07:00

I have been enjoying the Scientific American web site today, and always take a look at the physics section - written to help a non-physicist get it! I wanted to put the spectacular image in my blog, with credit, but I am not sure if this is allowed. So visit the story to see it! Instead I have used an image I found on Google and credit goes to scubagrl.

Writer JR Minkel says, "A new study casts doubt on a long-standing belief about the power behind gamma-ray bursts, the most energetic explosions in the universe. Researchers have found that short gamma-ray bursts—those that last a couple of seconds or less—have brighter afterglows than the simple, reigning model of afterglow emission predicts. Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are believed to occur when a star that has collapsed into a black hole or a neutron star whips a disk of gas and dust into a pair of powerful jets moving at nearly light speed. Like a lighthouse in fog, these so-called relativistic jets should cause whatever gas and dust that enshrouds the GRB source to glow brightly for hours after the burst's initial flash of energy."

North Pole's Changes Bring Grim News

2008-06-29T13:51:00.000-07:00

The headline in TIME really caught my eye because it was a big surprise even with all the news about ice at the earth's poles: An Ice-Free North Pole?

TIME writer Seth Borenstein says a scientist he talked with notes, "There's a 50-50 chance that the North Pole will be ice-free this summer, which would be a first in recorded history..... Preliminary February and March data from a NASA satellite shows that the circle of ice surrounding the North Pole is "considerably thinner" than scientists have seen during the five years the satellite has been taking pictures.... For the last couple of decades, there has been a steady melt of Arctic sea ice — which covers only the ocean and which thins during summer and refreezes in winter. In recent years, it has gradually become thinner because more of it has been melting as the Earth's temperature rises."

Of course, scientists are looking for solutions, but how could it possibly be in time to reverse these dramatic and fast-moving changes?

Fixing the Brain with new Technologies

2008-05-27T04:28:00.000-07:00

Now technology has moved well into the neuro business of health care. With money to be made on new advances in technology for problems of the brain and its workings, we will see more companies moving forward scientists' discoveries.

Conde Nast Portfolio has a nice summary - a lengthy piece describing the growth: "It seems far out even for the neurotechnology industry, a rapidly growing cluster of companies—small upstarts as well as pharmaceutical giants—that want to alter your gray matter and make billions of dollars in the process. These firms are trying to adapt groundbreaking research into the basic workings of the brain to new drugs for ailments ranging from insomnia to multiple sclerosis. Some companies are trying to regrow portions of the brain using stem cells. Others have developed implants to insert into a person’s head to control seizures and restore hearing."

Innovation in Many Places

2008-05-03T08:15:00.000-07:00

On the hunt for innovation, I bumped into this article from the Edmonton Journal. I am excerpting a lot of it, but you can read more on the web site. I like the quote below by the Xerox president of its Innovation Group.

Emerging new technology products were shown this week at PARC of Xerox Corp. The centre has long been part of a Xerox corporate strategy of investing in long-range research. PARC incubates ideas that have the potential to become marketable products because they are dreamed up with partners from business, government and schools.

"We strongly believe whatever we think of will work," said Sophie Vandebroek, Xerox chief technology officer and president of Xerox Innovation Group.

Rare cell detector
Tucked away in the farthest PARC basement corner, biomedical research manager Dr. Richard Bruce places a microscope-like slide containing millions of white blood cells on a special scanner. The device shines a modified print laser blue light on cells that have been stained with fluorescent material. An attached scanner reads reflected light. Normal cells are a uniform solid colour. But abnormal cells reflect a different colour. The new, highly sensitive instruments can find a single rogue cancerous cell in a sample of more than 10 million cells in less than 30 minutes. The system potentially enables accelerated diagnosis and treatment of quickly spreading cancer cells. The detector is scheduled for tests at Stanford Hospital later this year.

The detector also has the potential to replace an invasive and sometimes hazardous method of testing body fluids in babies before birth known as amniocenteses. The new technology instead zeros in on embryo blood cells floating around in a mother's blood sample.

Erasable paper
Dr. Paul Smith, laboratory manager for the Xerox Research Centre in Missassauga, Ont., couldn't contain his excitement over results of PARC work that started as a Canadian project. The copying technology wizards are developing printable paper that wipes itself clean in 24 hours, or sooner if you decide to reuse it. The yellow base paper - coloured to distinguish itself from traditional, permanently printed paper - does not use ink. Smith said the specially coated paper produces dark tones when exposed to a certain kind of light the laser printer produces.

The effect fades away in 24 hours. The new variety of copier paper can be used up to 100 times, saving money and reducing office and household trash. Smith said a special hand-writing stylus is also in the works.

Solar concentrator
Developed with partner SolFocus, Inc., this is an array of clear plastic paraboliclike mirrors that miniaturizes solar panels. An array of the new type that is only the size of a large button can concentrate sunlight 500 times. The invention means potentially drastic reductions in the size of conventional solar panels and in the use of expensive silicon. It integrates the optical, thermal, and electrical aspects of solar panels to a single, flat, solid piece of glass. Scott Elrod, manager of the Clean Technology Program, expects this technology to cut the costs of traditional methods of harnessing sun energy in half.

Water purifier
Xerox's experience in handling powder-like toner material for its printers has led to a simple but effective method of separating solid particles from water. Particle-laden water is flushed through a spiral tube. As the material flows, centrifugal force separates solids from water. Elrod said water treatment plants can use this technology to remove solids from water and save time and space.

Getting Credit Where Credit Is Due

2008-04-19T11:25:00.000-07:00

I am excerpting briefly from author Michael Domjan in the April 2008 Observer on the Psychological Science web site, but the article about credit for work in science in the age of interdisciplinary work is very interesting!

It says, "These days, the term “credit crisis” invokes thoughts of Wall Street and financial debt. But in the scientific enterprise, structural changes are affecting core issues of intellectual credit and indebtedness as well as taking responsibility when problems arise. Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary have almost become buzz words, but they signify much more than just fashionable labels. Their commonplace use reflects the fact that deep understanding of a problem often requires the coordinated efforts of a range of scientists who are expert at different levels of analysis and employ different specialized techniques. When teams apply for grants and research awards, it may be difficult to name the principal investigator (PI). Beginning in February 2007, the National Institutes of Health added a multiple principal investigator option for grant and award applications." Vist the web site to read more!

Tea Catechins Linked to Reduction of Cancers

2008-04-07T15:49:00.000-07:00

Increased consumption of teas rich in catechins is associated with reduced risk of stomach, colon, and other gastrointestinal cancers. However, the effects of digestion on the anticancer activity of tea catechins have largely been ignored. A study by nutrition researchers at The Ohio State University and Purdue University found that the digestive process could both alter the structure of the tea catechins and their anticancer activity.

Results were presented April 7 at Experimental Biology 2008 in San Diego.

Using a model simulating gastric and small-intestinal digestion, the researchers treated gastric cancer cells and colon cancer cell lines with digested and undigested (parent) extracts of green, tea, black tea, and a combination of the most active tea catechins (EGCG/EGC).
In colon cells, digestion of both the green tea extracts and the catechin combination significantly reduced anticancer activity compared to undigested parent extracts. Black tea, on the other hand, showed the same anticancer activity for both parent and digested extracts.

Digestion and the type of tea made a difference in terms of anticancer activity. In addition, the anticancer activity of the tea extracts differed between gastric and colon cancer cell lines. In gastric cancer cells, the undigested extracts were 50 percent less effective than in colon cancer cells.

What does the new study show us?

First, says Dr. Bomser, it points out that better understanding the impact of digestion on tea could lead to changes in how we formulate products in order to protect and enhance their anticancer activity. It also could change how we prepare tea now. In a study from Dr. Ferruzzi’s laboratory published last November, for example, he found that adding citrus (such as lemon juice) or ascorbic acid to green tea protected the catechins from digestive degradation. Lemon juice caused 80 percent of tea’s catechins to remain available for the body to absorb.

Second, say the researchers, some of the digestive changes may impact anti-cancer activities. Work in Dr. Ferruzzi’s laboratory has shown that digestion can alter the structure of polyphenols, degrading and destroying some while forming others. His laboratory is currently identifying these new compounds and testing their own anticancer activity.

Third, the findings of digestive impact on tea catechins are likely also true for other bioactive compounds in foods. Dr. Bomser points out that the active compound in broccoli, for example, is not released until chewing and the digestive process begins. How do we formulate food to prevent degradation and perhaps enhance anti-cancer activity?

And fourth, say the researchers, the epidemiological findings of protective impact of teas rich in the unstable, easily degraded catechins may indicate that other compounds in tea are responsible, in part, for this anticancer activity. Further research is necessary to identify these compounds and to understand the impact of digestion on their anticancer activity.

Experimental Biology 2008 - Freshman 15 Update

2008-04-06T11:36:00.000-07:00

The “freshman 15” - the rapid weight gain believed to afflict many new college students when they begin school - appears to be a bit of an urban legend: a cautionary tale often told but not well substantiated.

Now a study of 36 freshmen reports an average gain of only 1.9 pounds during the first semester, with women gaining slightly more than men, and an average gain of only 4.8 pounds for the entire freshman year (with males gaining an average of 5.4 pounds and women gaining an average of 3.2 pounds).

Some students lost weight. But even when only those who gained were considered, the average weight gain was 5.8 pounds, a long way from the often-popularized 15.

Dr. Sareen Gropper presented the study at the Experimental Biology 2008 meeting in San Diego.

The 36 freshman (26 females and 10 males) were weighed and their body composition and shape measured when they began college and then again at the end of the fall semester and the end of the spring semester. The urban legend is correct in the sense that a majority of freshmen in the study (71.4 percent) did gain weight, notes Dr. Gropper, but only 21 percent gained five pounds or more.

The largest gainers in the fall semester were a woman who gained nine pounds and a male who gained 10 pounds. For the academic year, the largest weight gains observed were 13 pounds for one male and 12 pounds for one female. No one gained the freshman 15. Dr. Gropper and colleagues have begun a larger study of 240 students who entered Auburn in the fall semester of 2007.

She and her colleagues are following the 240 students throughout their freshman and beginning of their sophomore years, with questionnaires that examine factors that might contribute to the gain, however small, that the majority of college freshman appear to experience. The researchers also are collecting data on weight changes throughout the year, including five, 10, even 15+ pound losses within the first year of school.

Unique to this study is a 3-D whole body scanner to collect information on body size and shape. This technology quickly captures exact body measurements, which can be visually displayed in cross sections of body areas like the bust, waist and hips to show where changes occur in measurements over time. Understanding where weight is deposited on the body helps assess the potential risk of diseases such as heart disease and metabolic syndrome.

Experimental Biology 2008: Ibuprofen Helps Build Muscle Mass

2008-04-05T09:29:00.000-07:00

Scientists say taking daily recommended dosages of ibuprofen and acetaminophen caused a substantially greater increase over placebo in the amount of quadriceps muscle mass and muscle strength gained during three months of regular weight lifting.

Dr. Todd Trappe reported study results at Experimental Biology 2008 in San Diego on April 6.

Participants took three months of weight training, 15-20 minute sessions in a Human Performance Laboratory three times per week. The researchers knew from their own and other studies that training at this intensity and for this time period would significantly increase muscle mass and strength. They expected the placebo group to show such increases, as its members did, but they were surprised to find that the groups using either ibuprofen or acetaminophen did even better.

Over three months, says Dr. Trappe, the chronic consumption of ibuprofen or acetaminophen during resistance training appears to have induced intramuscular changes that enhance the metabolic response to resistance exercise, allowing the body to add substantially more new protein to muscle. Read more.

Diseases in our New World Order

2008-03-23T14:57:00.000-07:00

I find this facinating, even though risk to others is low. The NYT says on Long Island Nassau County officials issued a health advisory on Saturday to anyone who had recently eaten at an Italian chain restaurant in Hicksville, after a worker there was found to have typhoid fever.

County health officials said a New York City man who is a food handler at Mama Sbarro’s, at 265 North Broadway, contracted typhoid fever, a bacterial infection that can be life-threatening if not treated.

New York City health officials informed the Nassau County Department of Health about the man’s infection on Friday night, a spokeswoman for the county health agency said.

The spokeswoman, Cynthia Brown, said that based on interviews with the man and two unannounced inspections of the restaurant on Friday and Saturday, the health risk to the public was low.

You really do not think about typhoid here in the States.

And this reported in Reuters: Brazil's military will help fight an outbreak of dengue fever in Rio de Janeiro, the defense ministry said at the weekend, after the disease killed 49 people and made more than 30,000 ill this year.

Public hospitals in the northern and western districts of the city were overwhelmed by the number of patients seeking treatment at the weekend. Many complained about long delays.
The defense ministry said Army, Air Force and Navy commanders would propose an action plan to Defense Minister Nelson Jobim as early as Monday on how to combat the disease in the famous beach and port city.

And, watch out for canteloupes on the west coast USA.

sxsw: 3.11.08 Peas in a Pod: Advertising, Monetization and Social Media

2008-03-11T09:43:00.000-07:00

sxsw: 3.11.08 Peas in a Pod: Advertising, Monetization and Social Media

Bottom line words: advertising ROI, social media

Tim Kendall is a Product Manager at Facebook, where he oversees revenue-generating products and leads new monetization initiatives including the company's new advertising solution, Facebook Social Ad system. Prior to Facebook, Tim worked in Amazon.com's digital media group as a Product Manager.

Ellen McGirt is Senior Writer at Fast Company magazine. She covers a range of business topics, but never stops looking for the writer's holy grail: The business ideas - and people - who are changing the world. McGirt joined Fast Company in February 2007 from Fortune, where she was a senior writer.

Kent Nichols is a storyteller, technology geek, and goofball. In 2003 his film "Baggage" won the International 48 Hour Film Project and Scott Billups called him the future of the entertainment industry in his book, "Digital Moviemaking." In 2005 Nichols, along with writing partner Douglas Sarine, created the Internet sensation AskANinja.com, which has been viewed over 20 million times. In 2006 Sarine and Nichols created HopeIsEmo.com, one of the most viewed and discussed series on the web.

Seth Goldstein is co-founder and chairman of Attentiontrust.org, and strongly advocates for the rights of individuals to their own data. He is creating services for turning passive data into active expression through a group called AttentionLab. I was the founder of one of the first Internet advertising agencies, SiteSpecific, in 1995, and was entrepreneur-in-residence at Flatiron Partners.

As the social web commands increasing user attention across diverse demographics, social media has begun to see a new wave of online advertising. As all kinds of marketers embark on this new media frontier, it's critical that their plans provide value for users while also creating demonstrating positive ROI - either for brand or direct marketers.

Companies push and have opt-in actions but some you have to opt out without really realizing this – so Beacon takes data outside Facebook, so if you buy something at Zappos it can come into Facebook.

Info shared within Facebook is fair game for sharing – it is a social sharing environment. When you move data from Facebook outward it needs more controls.

Social advertising network discussion is underway, but this conversation by this group is very stream of consciousness and not easy to blog.

Going to close my blogging now for this conference and see what I can learn from this one!

sxsw: 3.11.08 Future of Corporate Blogs

2008-03-11T08:56:00.000-07:00

sxsw: 3.11.08 Future of Corporate Blogs

Bottom line words: corporate blogging, ROI, measurement, community, influence to change a company

Moderator Mack Collier is a social media consultant, and author of The Viral Garden, a blog focusing on marketing and social media. Known for his 'community-first' approach to blogging and social media, Mack focuses on teaching companies how they can use social media to excite and engage their customers.

Panelist Mario Sundar works for LinkedIn and is Community Evangelist with over 5 years experience in the high-tech industry developing marketing initiatives for Fortune 50 brands including Intel, Hitachi and Sun Microsystems. Currently, defining and implementing the social media and community strategy at LinkedIn.

Panelist Lionel Menchaca from Dell the digital media manager for Dell's corporate blog, Direct2Dell.

Panelist Kami Watson Huyse, APR, principal of My PR Pro, writes the blog, Communication Overtones, on the topic of public relations and social media strategy. Her ideas and work are featured in several books about social media including The New Rules of Marketing and PR, and Now is Gone. She is also a contributor to the PRSA Byline blogs.

The panel is looking at what it takes to be the most relevant and engaging corporate blogs in business. Are corporate blogs relevant is the next question.

Will the future see more corporations enter the blogosphere, or less?

What fears and misconceptions do companies have about blogging and are these fears justified?

The panel is discussing ways a blog can augment a corporation's marketing efforts and improve customer service.
More importantly now, what tool(s), if any, will replace blogging?

The panel discusses tracking and measure their blogging efforts, going beyond just tracking hits and visitors, to developing criteria to measure the true Return on Investment (ROI) for blogging.

Okay – Dell must have had major problems that its blogging somehow turned around because Lionel is he second person from Dell to say this.

LinkedIn’s Mario talks about being the community evangelist – knowing what consumers are thinking and representing them to his company. He works on the LinkedIn social media strategy. When you start a blog – are you ready and is it worth it. Comments allow real conversation and LinkedIn decided to do this. Corporate blogs still mixed on comments. Traffic at LinkedIn is growing and the blogging is sup

Kami says solving a communication problem is your first test. Where is your community you are you trying to reach? Are they reading blogs, are they on Facebook. It is about the community not the company and their interests – so find the way that they intersect. Blog, Facebook or Twitter how can you measure this – the relationships. What would be considered a success. What is competition doing, so benchmarking. What about tonality in the messaging how is that going. Engagement can be measured. Analytic tools are valuable. You can look at comments and number of posts on a blog. You can look at “sales”. What about surveys – the old fashioned measurement.

6 measures for relationship: go to delicious – Kami chat on sxsw to learn more on this.

Ask if you are trending in the right direction, are your relationships working? What about an online focus group? So be creative to see what your community wants.

Listening, analyzing, and then taking action are the three that Lionel uses. Monitoring the blogosphere is important. He uses Ideastorm to determine reaction to ideas at Dell. The core team looks at user ideas and they are vetted through the business channels at Dell. Dell also uses the blog to say it is working on the customer’s behalf – no buffer to tell customers directly what you are doing. The relationship grows with this new one-on-one – and you send up with loyalty from these customers.
So, all this discussion points the need for a social media team if you are going to invite this kind of relationship. The momentum gets going and changes the skeptics that think a negative comment cannot change things for the better.
Transparency – this is the future.

One small step by Emory Healthcare is to start a Care Pages [powered by Steve Case’s Revolution Heallth] relationship for its customers, but this does not engage our organization with our customers directly, it puts them closer together with family and friends and finding each other via a web page.

Now with easy ways to develop communications with a group like Twitter, how soon will this type of technology replace web site-based communications. For now, this is what the majority of healthcare seekers can understand and use, but as technology changes and younger users embrace its many advantages, an organization needs to be ready for this.

From Kami’s blog Communications Overtones http://overtonecomm.blogspot.com/:

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Blogs
Effectively communicating ideas and building relationships takes some discipline. I have always liked Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The principles make sense and are applicable both in your personal and professional life.

A blog is a highly personal refection of the people and/or companies writing it. These principles can be perfectly applied to blogging and other two-way communications.

1. Develop content based on principles and values. While a blog cannot deliver “key messages” in a canned and contrite manner (this isn’t a soundbite medium), it can be written from the values and principles of its writer or company. Knowing these values for yourself is the key to developing a “voice” for your communication. For example, I value honesty, building meaningful relationships, learning new things, and fun.

2. Have a vision or purpose statement. Part of my personal mission statement includes these action items that I developed in under four minutes at the Covey Website:
0. I will always seek to improve the depth and quality of my relationships in my personal and professional life
0. I will never be afraid to stand up for what I believe is right
0. I will be committed to lifelong learning and self improvement
0. I will seek to treat others as I would wish to be treated
0. I will not take myself too seriously and will have a life filled with laughter and fun
You can see how the values I have in #1 expand to become my action items. My mission statement, which could be lived out through my action items is to: “Explore how public relations can find an authentic voice in today's social media.”

3. Prioritize. Be sure to put first-things-first and don’t be driven by the agenda of forces around you. I notice that when I apply this principle regularly across-the-board I don’t have as much trouble with balance. My goal is to get one post out each weekday to “feed” my blog and extend the relationship with my readers. If I get that done, I don’t feel bad about turning my back on the blog for a few hours to get work done, spend time with my family, etc.

4. Think win-win. Blogs and other social media are meant to be a two-way conversation and that conversation often includes vehement disagreement. However, thinking win-win requires that we disagree with ideas and not the people that generated them. This helps to facilitate the discussion about the idea and possible come up with a solution that is better than the ideas of one person alone (see habit 6). This is the “magic” of social media.

5. Seek first to understand…then to be understood. This principle is best lived out in the comments section. Many blogs have the best discussions in the comments section include a back and forth between blog author and visitors that refines understanding of the idea. This is likely because the blog author seeks to understand the comments about his or her idea and incorporate them in the final.

6. Synergize. By building a community of respect, problems can be solved in a way that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. The refining of an idea by many can lead to the “magic” of social communication where 1+1=3.

7. Renew yourself. You don’t have much to offer if all you do is sit in front of a computer. We all need to renew in the areas of physical health, social networks, spiritual renewal and mental improvement. When you do this you have something new and interesting to bring to the conversation.

sxsw: 3.10.08 Transforming Hospital Systems: The Digital Future of Healthcare

2008-03-11T05:04:00.000-07:00

sxsw: 3.10.08 Transforming Hospital Systems: The Digital Future of Healthcare

I was interested to see what I could learn from this session on the digital future of healthcare - but it went over some fairly traditional concepts and I pretty much knew about it!

The moderator Grace Lanni is the director of Healthcare Partner Solutions at Motion Computing where she focuses on strategic software co-development partnerships. The intro says: Why can we move money anywhere quickly and easily, look up bank balances online and spit out cash at an ATM, but we can't access our own medical records? Worse, doctors can't access our records when it's critical to be sure that meds or procedures they prescribe won't kill us. That's changing -- learn how advanced digital technologies are transforming healthcare.

From the panel I was most interested in Michael Kennedy from Microsoft on HealthVault and would have liked for him to go into more detail about the concept and its development. He talked about products for health information – and discusses HealthVault by Microsoft. The search in HealthVault is very targeted and from authoritative sources he says. A platform for innovation and for connectivity says the tagline. HealthVault will take records from your hospital and your doctor. Your personal information is not datamined and privacy is key he says. Some organizations he works with includes CapMed – a PHR [personal health record] and you can have this portable and mobile or desktop.

A physician from Austin Dr. Lucksinger covered his experiences with beta-testing a new tablet for EMR. Psychcentral.com Dr. Grohol presented on health information. He said there are so many tools available for online assessments, for ratings and reviewing doctors, carepages, social networking sites, and phr/emr and the connections between the two.

sxsw: 3.10.08 Keynote by postsecret’s Frank Warren

2008-03-10T12:58:00.000-07:00

sxsw: 3.10.08 Keynote by postsecret’s Frank Warren

Bottom line words: authenticity, a very powerful presentation about expression

Frank Warren bio:
Called "the most trusted stranger in America," Frank Warren is the sole founder and curator of the PostSecret Project: A collection of nearly 200,000 highly personal and artfully decorated postcards mailed anonymously from around the world, displaying the soulful secrets we never voice, and the creator of the New York Times best-selling books: "PostSecret, The Secret Lives of Men and Women," "My Secret," and "A Lifetime of Secrets." Warren has appeared on the Today Show, Good Morning America, 20/20, CNN, MSNBC, CBC, NPR and Fox News. He graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in the Social Sciences and moved to the Washington D.C. area to start a business. Fifteen years later, Instant Information Systems, his small business, takes up less of his time as he devotes more time and energy on the project that thrust him into the public eye. Warren receives between 100 and 200 postcards everyday.

I am getting ready to hear Frank talk about his experiences and am clicking on www.postsecret.com which goes to http://postsecret.blogspot.com . It says:

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail
in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard. This is a very creative multimedia art project as well as social experiment. If you want to bookmark the page and share it you can go to http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php - it is amazing how the sharing world is growing – some you have known a while and many new ones:

Favorites Google Bookmarks Del.icio.us
Digg MySpace Facebook Furl Yahoo MyWeb
StumbleUpon Reddit Newsvine Live Bookmarks
Technorati Twitter Yahoo Bookmarks myAOL Ask
Fark Slashdot Propeller (Netscape) Mixx
Multiply Simpy Blogmarks Diigo
Faves (Blue Dot) Spurl LinkaGoGo
Mister Wong Feed Me Links Backflip
Magnolia Segnalo Netvouz Tailrank BlinkList

Sorry, I got sidetracked looking these over – now on to Frank and the secret to his secrets. You can also visit http://www.postsecretcommunity.com .

Frank starts off by saying everyone in the audience knows more about blogging and technology than he does. He says he has some secrets to read he has brought and ones that people put in the box in the back of the room. He talks about the emotion of the secrets.

Wedding announcements, Polaroid photos, report cards, Starbucks cups.
I am here for work but looking for a job – I am from a big company but I am here to steal startup secrets – I have a wife but I have a crush at sxsw.

Out of 200,000 secrets he got an email from Texas – a woman visited the web site and she wrote down her secret, but he felt terrible about the secret but he tore it up because he did not want to remember it. A secret can actually undermine us in ways that we do to realize. We all have the potential to change our lives after a secret is over.

How did it get started? What are some of the secrets he has? What does he know he can share?

Three years ago in Washington DC and put out 3,000 cards and asked people to send it in – strangers were asked to write something down. The cards kept coming in and then he posted them in an art exhibit. After four weeks he had 90 postcards. However, the secrets kept coming in via virually from the real world, all over the world. He started a blog so he could share this with everyone. He notes the art and humor in our everyday lives.

Some are searching for grace, for authenticity; some to express a sexual taboo. He reads many cards and they are very poignant and very funny and very sad.

He says his project has shown to him the courage people have – those who are artists and those who are not. His father visited an exhibit that Frank had with 2,000 cards in DC – and his father watched people come in and look at the postcards and finally understood. Then his father gave an important secret to him on the way to the airport and it changed the relationship they had for the better.

An audience member says people are becoming more authentic and sharing intimacies. Communications now available to everyone – this is outside of commerce now and the tools allows us to express ourselves.

sxsw: 3.10.08 Links to Coverage and Web Awards

2008-03-10T08:55:00.000-07:00

You can find a lot more here with podcasts and video coveage. Check out the web awards web page to see some amazing we work!

http://2008.sxsw.com/coverage/

http://2008.sxsw.com/interactive/web_awards/winners/

http://2008.sxsw.com/interactive/

sxsw: 3.10.08 Session on Going Social Now

2008-03-10T08:51:00.000-07:00

sxsw: 3.10.08 Session on Going Social Now

Bottom line words: business use of social media, social networking, word of mouth, new metrics

Shiv Singh, sponsored session by Avenue A | Razorfish

Shiv Singh has been with Avenue A | Razorfish since 1999 and has worked in its Boston, New York, San Francisco and London offices. He helps clients leverage digital technologies to develop meaningful and value driven customer and employee relationships. As Director, Global Strategic Initiatives, Shiv is tasked with building Avenue A | Razorfish's Social Media capabilities. He recently returned to Avenue A | Razorfish full time after having completed graduate work at the London School of Economics & Political Science where he researched social networks. Prior to that, he founded and led the Global Enterprise Solutions practice at Avenue A | Razorfish.

A very interesting web site can be found at www.goingsocialnow.com for trends, commentary and news affecting the social media landscape.

If you think social media is all about clever corporate marketing on Facebook or quirky videos on YouTube, you're missing an opportunity to change your company's entire culture and operations, says Shiv. In fact, social media can affect how companies innovate, test ideas, recruit talent, measure performance and interact with all their stakeholders.

Shiv explains how the enterprise can use social media to improve business practices. He talks about the rise of social media has created a new form of marketing altogether, referred to as social influence marketing.

Social influence marketing is about employing social media as part of the entire lifecycle of a marketing campaign, even beyond a campaign.

He says many people want to shop collaboratively now – so how can you create an environment so that a group can plan together. So at Emory we could apply this to shopping for healthcare services or looking for a university.

Compliance: an individual agrees with a point of view.

So the new marketing dimension looks at brand marketing [flooding mailboxes], then direct response, now social influence marketing. Social media is a means to an end.

How can we participate in this? He measures trust in advertising in an elaborate chart that cannot be easily repeated here – but essentially he says social influence is becoming more important than traditional advertising.

So, how does a company launch into this? What about the changes behind the scenes now moving to the next steps? You cannot drag users to a corporate web site any more. People are using web sites that aggregate choices and people discuss them. A corporate web site is just a quick stop in the decision-making process and not that important.

In the traditional world you left this to marketing but you cannot any longer. All departments in an organization have links with the customer – strategy, research, operators, marketing, HR, and corporate communications. It is not about a consistent voice, it is about multiple voices speaking to audiences.

If you are a company, says Shiv, building a blog needs to have a focus – once you know a real purpose for it, then you can move forward.

Today you need to let the customer shape the experiences. Many channels now in addition to your corporate web site.

Do this, says Shiv:
Become your consumer
aggregate information for your consumer
articulate product benefits better
amplify the favorite business stories
participate where your consumer are
don’t do it all at once
Social media has been around a while, so experiment and see what works.

Now to transition and theoretical:

How are online communities changing over time? Social networks matter because there is too much information and it helps to go to your network for filters to find what you want.

The “strength of weak ties” is more powerful than strong ties. Information diffused through weak ties; strong ties are insular; strong ties-weak ties- absent ties [the name is know but that is it] and they are useless.

Now Shiv talks about “centrality” is trying to determine the most influential people – so many people connecting through one person. Also, a person may not need to talk to any one person to gain information. When you talk about social influence, you need to understand who is influential. Now he discusses Singletons, Giant Components and Middle Regions. So how do networks grow over time? There is a large middle group.

Key points: people join networks if they have friends there; behavior is influenced by others; growth occurs in the centrality; people will disseminate information from social networks; trust is essential for information sharing; and user based evaluations are important to collaboration.

Okay, now back to the tactical tips:

Sheraton hotel brand allows user reviews on its web site because people are influenced by others and personal connection.
CNN has re-launched the web site after feedback about it and published all of the feedback on the design for a conversation with consumers ongoing.

Garnier Fructese created a viral campaign using a fake story and had a lot of fun with some ads as entertainment. Humor was important and a series of clips spead across the blogosphere and gained huge attention. Then the NYT covered it. The audience realized that the company had hair products based on this.

What about project runway? Shiv created a online site so users could create their own clothing. It was successful because consumers talked to each other and social influence affected the success.

Shiv gives more examples, but the blog is getting long to read, if you actually made it this far!

sxsw: 3.9.08 Keynote with Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg

2008-03-09T13:01:00.000-07:00

sxsw: 3.9.08 Keynote with Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg

Bottom line words: social network, privacy and trust, control, application platform development,

Does Mark Zuckerberg really need an introduction? Facebook’s founder and CEO, Zuckerberg is hosted today at sxsw by Sarah Lacy, author [shameless plug for book coming out on Zuckerberg], BusinessWeek columist and co-host of Yahoo Finance’s "TeckTicker." Zuckerberg is the 23-year-old who has emerged as one of the brightest young minds in the social media industry. With his direction, Facebook has grown from a college-networking tool to a global phenomenon. The site is now used by people of all ages with over 50 percent of users returning daily. Facebook continues to launch new innovations and expand functionality with Facebook Platform, and the number of users on the site is now more than 60 million at last count.

This session feels like a rock concert – music playing loudly awaiting the grand wizard of innovation and wise moves. We all want to be as smart as Zuckerberg, and of course, as rich as this new billionaire. Now the countdown, people cheering – there he is!

Why is the site so successful and the role it is playing – asks Lacy. Zuckerberg says at Facebook he is helping people communicate more efficiently. He has jumped into the use in Columbia and the way people are using Facebook to revolt against the government. Lacy asks why Facebook instead of many other ways the Internet could be used to bring revolutionaries together.

He is keeping it simple in some ways, the word efficient is very big. He also wants people to communicate in a more trusting way. Now he has mentioned Lebanon – and talking about a lack of empathy and understanding is related to terrorism, and growing up in poverty. Now, with Facebook there is a greater way to connect all people to better understand each other. Now Facebook is letting people stay connected with friends with the outside world and better understand outside of our own culture.

He is young!! He is kind of learning on the job about the grown-up world and how to talk to 1,000 people who consider him a genius buy do not get me wrong, he is very, very smart. Okay, brilliant now that I am looking at this paragraph after listening to him for 45 minutes.

He talks about people having a voice without having a large organization doing this for them, and to go from the bottom up to reach out in the world to others via social media infrastructure. This is empowering people to do more.

Facebook has now launched in Spanish and German, and tonight launches in French. Why is Facebook navigating this so well, asks Lacy.

Z says this is fundamental, everyone needs relationships – it is very universal.

Now Lacy asks about how will Facebook make money. Z says valuation of Facebook is about a system that builds connection. Building a business is the way one must go about this – so a relationship with Microsoft is about sharing information. People expressing identify… monetization is about helping people share the information they want so it will overlap with income. Lacy asks about immediate revenue, but what about sustaining income for this in a few years? Z says the relationship with M is robust.

Facebook and advertising is about people endorsing products. We want to build a system that allows people who share their interests and this will endorse certain things.

Beacon is part of the platform group at Facebook, but the ecosystem will allow others to build platforms at Facebook and then outside on the web. Okay, this is where I am trying to keep up on this and the relationship with the ad system. Time for some homework on this. Z says this will help build social services. So the greater Facebook vision does it conflict with privacy? Z says that each person should control the information they share – but people have very granular control and personal information can be controlled. Facebook will achieve its goals by keeping this possible.

Lacy asks what tweaks will come to Facebook – as far as incentives. Z believes people are fundamentally good, thus giving a lot of services but once people get spammy they get controlled. The system is about trust – if you are sending a request to someone and they accept. So aligning the system will allow those who publish the most get most privileges. Lacy asks if Facebook is now creating too many rules, but he says no.

Asked about music vertical – he says he has not gone after this in the past, but once Facebook opened the platform for I like and other music venues. Lacy pursues this more, but he does not want to give specifics so he is dancing around this question.

When asked about being the youngest billionaire, he says his company is not focused on wealth – they just want flexibility in the ecosystem. He wants his company to change things and he is not working on ROI to make tons of money.

sxsw: 3.9.08 Social Strategies for Revolutionaries

2008-03-09T12:43:00.001-07:00

Sxsw: 3.9.08 Session on Social Strategies

Bottom line words: groundswell, revolution, business use of social media, social networking, culture change

Charlene Li
Charlene is Vice President, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research. Charlene primarily contributes to Forrester's offerings for the Interactive Marketing professional. She is one of the driving forces behind Forrester's Social Computing and Web 2.0 research, and examines how companies can use technologies like blogs, social networking, RSS, tagging, and widgets for marketing purposes. During her eight years at Forrester, Charlene has also led the marketing and media research team, and ran the San Francisco office.

Li will publish a book next month with Harvard Press called Groundswell: Winning In A World Transformed By Social Technologies.

She says that businesses are having trouble with the social networking concept because it can affect the bottom line – such as digg posting the code to break DVD codes. Jericho was put back on the air after an online talk show host wanted it back on the air.

With the groundswell – a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.

We know that it's essential for a company to be involved in social technologies -- but executives are too afraid to start. It is important to develop the strategic frameworks that will appeal to the logical, analytical side of executives, while tapping into the revolutionary spirit needed to create a groundswell of support for strategy.

Based on Li’s book, the role of the revolutionary --the key person inside an organization who leads the transformation – is key. She is interested in the employee’s ability to channel the tradition of radicalism into a force that can transform a company. She thinks these companies want to embrace this concept but just needs help.

Process – is called POST process. P is for people – the people you are trying to reach, the customer. O is for objectives where you decide what you want to accomplish. S is for strategy for how relationships with customers will change. T is for technology – select this last.

Social activities – what do we think of? The ladder of participation includes those who read blogs; then those who join social networks like bookmarking; then the critics who comment and are actively engaged. What is a spectator vs a creator? 48 percent of adults are spectators and about 25 percent are creators. You can go to slideshare.com to find more stats on this. Age is a major driver of spectators – they may begin to try their hand and participate.

Objectives – with a groundswell you listen differently than focus groups. Traditional marketing is like shouting and it will change with groundwell.

Research is listening; marketing is talking; sales is energizing; support is supporting; and development is embracing.
Talking objective being led by companies’ revolutionaries use blendtree where it talks with viral videos [more research needed to understand this!].

Dan Block of Ernest and Young is head of recruitment uses Facebook to reach college audience in a different way – he writes back to students about what they need to know about his company. More about a relationship than marketing your brand.
Best Buy Gary Koelling and Steve Bendt – blueshirtnation.com reaches employees and created a support system and a voice. Enable customers to even support customers.

Josh Bancroft at intel said I could start an internal Wikipedia for intel. He asked the CEO and got back to him and said do it – he said I already am and showed him what it was.

The platform at salesforce.com led by Steve Fisher – got a new tool to take user comments, the groundswell, and everyone did not like it. So what could he do to make it better – they made changes to improve the site.

Lionell Menchaca at Dell he was in charge of products at first. So how did he become a revolutionary there? He knew everyone after a very long time at the company – he started a customer service team to change the attitude and began a blog in 2006 and people thought it was terrible. Michael Dell said keep at this and keep talking and this eventually changed the blog and the conversation changed. A notebook caught on fire and the direct2dell blog covered this, and many inside were fearful for business. Actually this was a turning point for Dell. Person by person the company was transformed. Dell created ideastorm and got ideas for starting new products. The investor relations team even has a blog now called dellshares.

How can companies find and support their revolutionaries? Find the people most passionate about developing relationships. You need to educate your executives even if it is Facebook and how they meet real business objectives; put someone important in charge; define the box with policies and process; and make it safe[r] to fail.

Final words:
Making revolution stick will require framework and process
start small but think big
make social strategy the responsibility of every single employee
be patient – cultural change takes time
She says this is about relationships and it is never perfect, never comfortable – so feeling a tad queasy about your social networking is normal.

cli@forrester.com

Sxsw: 3.9.08 Session on Social Design Strategies

2008-03-09T09:06:00.000-07:00

Sxsw: 3.9.08 Session on Social Design Strategies

Bottom line words: social web site, transparency, symbiosis, causation, gardeners, private vs public

I am excited about learning more on social design strategies! I have included bios for speakers so you can see the kind of talent sxsw brings to this meeting.

Daniel Burke of Digg/Pownce
Daniel is the creative director at Digg, a co-founder of Pownce, and a co-founder of the Canadian web firm silverorange. As Digg's creative director, he has helped the site grow from a niche technology news site into one of the leading media services on the web with a massive and passionate community. This past year, Daniel helped found Pownce, a social network that lets you share files, events, messages, and links with your friends. Daniel works on feature development and the user interface of Pownce.

Joshua Porter of Bokardo Design
Joshua is the founder of Bokardo Design, a web design consultancy focused exclusively on social web applications. He has worked with clients such as MTV and Adobe on next generation social software. He is a passionate user advocate who fights for humane software and social design best practices. Josh also writes the popular blog Bokardo.com, where he follows the latest trends and topics in social design.

Also, last minute speaker adds – Chris Messina of Citizen Agency for social media strategies. He is interaction design. Daniel Burka of Digg and Pownce is here, too.

Here we go.

Now that social networks are pervasive and quickly becoming a regular feature set, designers need to understand the dynamics of creating experiences that encourage social behavior and public expression, while giving individuals a sense of privacy, personal gain and ownership.

The principles and practices of social design: How do you create a symbiotic relationship between people and data that maximizes discovery, game-play, connections, and communication? Counterintuitive and hard to predict are the ways users interact with your web site.

Presentations start first. Designing social web sites and how to encourage good behavior – not ethics – but how do you encourage the behavior to repeat. So tie the behavior to identity. So if not tied together the user is not accountable. Amazon asks for real name for user comments by customers. The real identity on eBay – core social challenge for people who never meet each other but must trust. A sophisticated design lets people make an assessment of the seller, for example scores. The depth of each transaction connected to the identity of authority and is tied to previous behavior in the system. eBay does not really show the real identity in the real world but the system identity so what ever they do there is measured. Good behavior is recognized.

Burka says Digg was concerned about a small group trying to get to the top of the list – so the list was taken down. Adapting as you grow is important.

Threadlist is a site for design t-shirts and then designers get recognition with voting but then is tapers off and they enter a new contest.

Netflix shows causation – everyone knows how it works because it tells you on every screen how it works. Rating movies is related to getting better recommendations, the more ratings the better they are. They are showing you how well it works. Pandora [music radio web site] plays more songs that people ask for.

Reciprocity leveraging is core to success so it will give you something to use a site. A strong link exists between causation and reciprocity. The reviews are public and then favor is returned. A threshold is reached after encouraging behaviors, but it can change. Usability for individual and then the group usability.

Privacy in community: when Burka signed up for Facebook and found all his friends. They started to write on his wall and he deleted it and it was antisocial because he used it like an email in box and finally learned it was a community build on trust.

Digg http://digg.com and Pownce http://pownce.com and examples of truthiness ☺ - from private to public – either or with this. A customer service site is very public called Satisfaction. Digg is very public. Pownce is more private. Facebook is in the middle. On either end of the spectrum there is clarity. But in the middle is could be blurry. On privacy you need to respect the user and online identity. Digg does not require first name and last name, but Pownce is on first name and last initial if you want to be private. Digg has a shout feature.

An issue of tracking people’s activity on Digg is controversial, more than having your friend see your activity. The interaction from site to site without you really knowing it is growing it. For example buying tickets for a movie then shows up on Facebook.

Personal act turns into a public act without your knowledge – if you know it is your intentional act that is fine. But when you think it is private and it is not, you will drive away users.

Transparency is important. On Pownce recipients are listed – only these people are shown your comments. But you can see if you are making a public reply. If your are building a site make it clear and be aware of what is shared.

Ma.gnolia adventures in spam control presented called weeding out worms. Spam is a problem - such as 80 percent of new accounts are spam. Tools for good are also used by spammers for bad. Methods for spam include use of bookmarks that point to specific sites. Ideas discussed include:

One site, many accounts
Too legit to quit; few legit links
Joe seo – getting rich quick
You can’t fool me: profile-aware
Had enough yet: importing volume links

Ma.gnolia http://ma.gnolia.com/tutorial/SocialBookmarking - worked around this. Concerns about social bookmarking disuse was a concern. Ma.gnolia says with social bookmarking thousands of people keep their bookmark collections on a website instead of on just one computer. Doing so brings several big advantages. And users can see what other people have found and share bookmarks with friends. Bookmarks can be kept private, but most are public and available for everyone to see. In social bookmarking, you only find the bookmarks that other people think are worth keeping. Ma.gnolia ratings and tags instantly give you an idea of what people think of a bookmark, making web searches more informed.

About gardeners: enabled trusted members to move accounts on and off a whitelist; not a job, contest or vendetta, and gardeners will make new gardeners using the network for good.

For more information on tagging for bookmark go to http://ma.gnolia.com/tutorial/Tagging

sxsw Interactive Web Conference Coverage

2008-03-09T04:45:00.000-07:00

sxsw: Austin opens its doors

I left Atlanta and the wind was blustery and blowing snow sideways, but the descent into Austin was sunny and smooth. I was suprised to find that my seatmate was an associate editor, online for Scientific American, coming in from NYC for the interactive web meeting. Turns out he went to Emory and his undergrad degree was neurosciences.

I am getting started and about to listen to the sxsw Interactive Web conference keynote speakers and the crowd grows with seekers. The energy here is always palpable because the 500, maybe 800, souls in this room are explorers and innovators! Remember that sxsw uses conversations and QA to drive its sessions - democracy and shared learning! Let’s go!

sxsw: Keynote Henry Jenkins and Steven Johnson

Session bottom line words: new generation experiences, measuring knowledge, the language of "we", neighborhoods of people and ideas

Let’s start with the speaker bios since the keynotes each day at 2 pm are well-known in interactive. Also, the format of this session is a conversation between the two.

Co-Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT, Henry Jenkins authored books including "Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide" and "Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture."

Steven Johnson is the author of "Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software," “Everything Bad Is Good for You”, "Interface Culture," “Mind Wide Open," and numerous other popular books about emerging technology. He recently started the web company outside.in, which he describes as "an attempt to collectively build the geographic Web, neighborhood by neighborhood."  
Session bottom line words: new generation experiences, measuring knowledge, the language of "we", neighborhoods of people and ideas

Steve asks Henry about backlash against the wave of young persons use of interactive web, and the affect of digital media on the generation. Young people are early adopters of new media and fascinated with the use of new media and how are older generations seeing this wave. IQ and school based worries by parents, but learning is coming in many new ways. They discuss standardized testing to measure the kinds of learning that is taking place with new media.

Steve asks Henry if he sees any new technology he thinks is stupid. He says it may look interesting but then crossing the comfort zone to learn this new media to better understand.

What about popular focus on TV shows. Looking at Lost, there is immense attention via multimedia and engaging with TV. Fan creation of social interaction represents creativity but unfortunately there is so little opportunity in the workplace – so little change to use their intellectual capacity to stretch them in new directions. How can we create a better society with play and apply it to serious undertakings. How can we live in a knowledge culture and social apparatus to trust each other, how can we transform the culture of America.

Harry Potter is an example of generating interest in reading and writing in young people. Wizard Rock is music based on Harry Potter and circulates outside the commercial sphere. Now young people are becoming political – global network. Harry Potter Alliance is focused on the world’s issues and young people are inspired. Illustrative of play and what we will do with this world – kids now play with information. They are adept at navigating and will change the world.

18-24-year-olds – what about them? Entrepreneurial, political, and more engaged. People are articulating their world and turn their attention to Obama. Yes We Can – what does this mean? What about the language of “we” – he uses this like young people on line. Social networks and collective intelligence has been captured by Obama with Yes We Can. So modeling society is changing – borrowing and pooling ideas and using others’ comments, it is about time to collect information from diverse communities to transform society – it is a Movement. Obama brings a democratic collective. The campaign and the political process is changing – we have been learning to get skills to deploy to reach people. Our institutions cannot keep up with this – they scratch their heads and cannot figure out what is going on.

What about civic engagement? Breakdown and decline of old society could be about leadership learned through gaming and other new media. The Knight is trying to interpret this and figure out how we feel as a community – not the Internet – but now our friendship networks are carried on our backs like a turtle everywhere we go and those we have a common interest with are always with us. What does this mean to our towns and information systems?

Steve says outside.in is about the digital revolution, a city is a device whereby many neighborhood communities where people care. This new service helps see this world with geotagging – everything in your zip code. Online Radar – working with Yahoo to launch – lets you see what conversations are taking place by zooming into a neighborhood, your actual hood or one you want to have a conversation in around the world. The geographic web is challenging – the pothole is interesting on your street but not anywhere else. The geographic web can build filters.

Henry says kids are using LiveJournal while schools are closing down programs – can young people be freed up to cover important things without censorship. They are trying to express their ideas.

Sxsw: 3.8.08 Managing the Media Blur

Session bottom line words: human conciousness, knowledge acquisition, finding

Douglas Merrill joined Google late in 2003 as Senior Director of Information Systems. In this capacity he led multiple strategic efforts including Google's 2004 IPO and its related regulatory activities. He holds direct line accountability for all internal engineering and support worldwide. Previously, Douglas was senior vice president at Charles Schwab and was responsible for such functions as information security, common infrastructure, and human resources strategy and operations. Prior to his tenure there, Douglas worked at Price Waterhouse as a senior manager, ultimately becoming a leader in security implementation practices. Before that, he was an information scientist at the RAND Corporation, where he studied topics such as computer simulation in education, team dynamics and organizational effectiveness. Douglas holds a BA from the University of Tulsa in Social and Political Organization, and an MA and Ph.D. in Psychology from Princeton University.

Quentin Hardy is the Silicon Valley Bureau Chief of Forbes Magazine. He joined the magazine in March 1999, and has written cover stories on Yahoo, Google, Hewlett Packard, telecommunications, and philanthropy, among others. He is a regular on "Forbes on Fox," a weekly show on the Fox Cable News Network. Prior to joining Forbes, Mr. Hardy spent eight years at The Wall Street Journal, covering the Japanese financial meltdown in Tokyo and the late-nineties boom in the Silicon Valley. Mr. Hardy also teaches at the Information School of the University of California, Berkeley, and has lectured at Stanford University's schools of Journalism and Computer Science.

Hardy starts with human consciousness and he says it is changing. He goes through a series of examples of how ideas and fact were changing. He covered some of what Journalism 101 might cover, so I am in a hurry for him to get to the profound ideas of the 21st century. Okay language and power – he is moving along with ideas about social change – but too much background with conversation about photography’s influence. Radio then gave voice to issues. Then TV covered relationships like families – but with TV in many rooms, even the family did not have to group for a show and interaction. I am getting very impatient….

Okay, now to connectivity with the Internet. Web 1.0 mimics publications and old media. Web 2.0 does its own thing. Now neighborhoods of trust, important part of who we are and we are trying to figure out where we are in the new blur.

Merrill starts off with people – he trained as a psychologist. Action on information is what is important – but information overload in nothing new. We have had it since the Gutenburg press started. We talk about this a lot now – about attention and whether we are aware of our surroundings. Working memory and coding and then recall. What is recall? We can recognize but not recall that easily. You elaborate what you might have been doing to figure out your memories.

By encoding your goals you are more likely to find it later – an intention to try to do something… elaboration is simpler and encoding is simpler. Get people to mark what they are doing.

Tools that we have built are now working. Knowledge acquisition should be active not passive. Raised journalists and consumers to be passive – an expert talks but can you really use that information? Telling a story and democratization of information. We should build tools across languages and to find it by what you are doing. This does not sync with the media market right now where someone talks and you listen.

The conversation that is somewhat off track for the media blur conversation …

A question comes about “authority” and emergent authority from groups is the answer. So does this mean that these speakers as well as the keynotes early are all saying the masses will speak and no authority will eventually rule what we know. Maybe this is a concept we find with the Wikipedia where anyone can provide facts and many can adjust this information. This is based on a communal effort.

Twine.com questioner asks about connections around interests – one way to cut back on the blur he says – can have a tagging element. Rather than making clutter, the autotagging feature will allow you to come in with your interests and it bubbles up your interests. Twine vs Google is more specific, speaker says.

Clouds and the Life of Microbes

2008-02-20T10:10:00.000-08:00

The New York Times has a very interesting story about clouds! Read lots more from Olivia Judson.

"But clouds present an extra difficulty. Most of the environments that we consider extreme — the icy, the acidic, the salty, the boiling, and so on — are fairly easy for microbes to adapt to, because the conditions remain relatively constant for long periods. The greater challenge comes when the environment contains extreme swings in conditions, as in a tide pool. Creatures that live here must be able to endure changes from wet to dry, cold to hot, as well as rapid fluctuations in how salty it is."

And:

"Mostly, the cloudy residents are bacteria of various kinds. Samples of clouds taken from a meteorological station at the summit of Puy de Dôme, a mountain in central France with an elevation of more than 1,400 meters (almost 5,000 feet), turned up more than 71 strains of bacteria, as well as a variety of fungi; owing to the way the sampling was done, this is a massive underestimate of who’s up there. Of the bacteria detected, many appear to have come from the oceans. More than half have shown themselves capable of growing in cold temperatures, and some are even officially psychrophiles — lovers of cold. Which is to say, they grow when it’s cold, and not when it’s a bit warmer — unlike the bacteria on your food, which slow down when you put them in the fridge. One of the bacteria most often detected was Pseudomonas syringae; intriguingly, this critter has the ability to make ice crystals form around it at relatively warm (-2C, or 28.4F) temperatures.

As to their metabolism — the question of what such microbes “eat” — clouds are, apparently, more nutritious than they look. More nutritious, even, than some freshwater lakes. Cloud water contains a slew of compounds, from different types of organic acids and alcohols, to elements such as nitrogen and sulfur. Laboratory experiments have shown that for a growing bacterium or fungus, cloud water contains plenty of potential food."

Only 5,000 Light-Years Away

2008-02-16T15:26:00.000-08:00

I love to learn what scientists are saying about what they find in the universe - today, reported in Scientific American: Astronomers have discovered a pair of planets around a star 5,000 light-years away that resemble smaller versions of Jupiter and Saturn, hinting that solar systems like ours may be unexpectedly common. As in our own solar system, the closer of the two planets to their star is the larger one, 70 percent as massive as Jupiter; the more distant planet has 90 percent the mass of Saturn.

Let's face it, in universe terms this is very close. Now I am wondering for real if other intelligent beings are out there!

Looking at the way we think about others

2008-02-06T14:59:00.000-08:00

I am interested in this study presented in Scientific American, but particularly in this part of the study mentioned below. Also, I could not resist using this image to illustrate the study, so I may as well be stereotyping groups just as the participants in this study.

"The experimenters used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of Harvard and other Boston-area students while showing them pictures of other college-age people whom the researchers randomly described as either liberal northeastern students or conservative Midwest fundamentalist Christian students.

The categories were a ruse. The pictures were actually downloaded from an online dating website and randomly assigned to the two groups (which were an invention of the researchers), with each group holding similar racial and gender mixes.

The experimental participants, however, thought each person pictured really was from one group or the other because the experimenters contrived demographic information about each photo; this information was randomly reassigned to different pictures with each new experimental subject. The participants, then, were confronted with pictures of people who had randomly generated but coherent cultural and political identities already attached to them."

What's Next in Physics - The Wait for the New Collider is Over

2008-01-20T14:20:00.000-08:00

I like to read Scientific American for its coverage of physics - it does it better for a non-physicist like me than any other publication... visit the web site for a special issue and some excellent graphics.

They call it the terascale. It is the realm of physics that comes into view when two elementary particles smash together with a combined energy of around a trillion electron volts, or one tera-electron-volt. The machine that will take us to the terascale—the ring-shaped Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN—is now nearing completion.

To ascend through the energy scales from electron volts to the terascale is to travel from the familiar world through a series of distinct landscapes: from the domains of chemistry and solid-state electronics (electron volts) to nuclear reactions (millions of electron volts) to the territory that particle physicists have been investigating for the past half a century (billions of electron volts).

What lies in wait for us at the terascale? No one knows.

But radically new phenomena of one kind or another are just about guaranteed to occur. Scientists hope to detect long-sought particles that could help complete our understanding of the nature of matter. More bizarre discoveries, such as signs of additional dimensions, may unfold as well.

Physicists are also drawing up plans for a machine intended to succeed and complement the LHC more than a decade hence, adding precision to the rough maps that will be deciphered from the LHC’s data.

At the end of this “journey” to the terascale and beyond, we will for the first time know what we are made of and how the place where we briefly live operates at bottom. Like the completed LHC itself, we will have come full circle.

Judah Folkman's Contribution to Medicine

2008-01-16T04:24:00.000-08:00

Today's news says that Judah Folkman dies at 74. His story is important in many ways, including how a scientist can be caught up in cancer politics. He remained steady and respected through it all.

Read more at The New York Times: says Folkman was a path-breaking cancer researcher who faced years of skepticism before his ideas led to successful treatments. Dr. Folkman, a professor at Harvard and director of the vascular biology program at Children’s Hospital Boston, is considered the father of the idea that tumors can be kept in check by choking off the supply of blood they need to grow. The approach is now embodied in several successful cancer drugs, most notably Avastin, by Genentech.

“His vision and ideas literally changed the course of modern medicine,” said Dr. William Li, a former student of Dr. Folkman’s, who is president of the Angiogenesis Foundation, an organization that promotes the promise of Dr. Folkman’s approach. Angiogenesis refers to the formation of new blood vessels.

Dr. Folkman’s work created a frenzy in 1998 when a front-page article in The New York Times reported how two drugs he had developed had eradicated tumors in mice. The article quoted Dr. James Watson, a Nobel laureate for discovery of the structure of DNA, as saying, “Judah is going to cure cancer in two years.”

But some other scientists had trouble replicating Dr. Folkman’s results, and the biotechnology company with rights to the drugs gave up on them to save money after the drugs did not seem to work as well in people as in mice.

For a Few Bucks: Your Genome

2007-12-22T14:18:00.000-08:00

I am intrigued by the new companies that will read your DNA for $1,000. I was first interested in 23andme - a web-based place that describes the process in a very user friendly way. A company just covered in Scientific American is deCODE's deCODEme. The story says: deCODE Genetics has launched a new service that, for a mere $985, will take your FedExed cheek swab and scan the enclosed DNA for a sprinkling of genetic variations linked with 20 or so diseases, as well as ancestry and physical traits such as eye color (in case you don't have a mirror handy). Not quite ushering in the eagerly awaited era of the $1,000 personal genome, the new service, called deCODEme, will cover less than 0.1 percent of the three billion units of the full genome, which remains a bit too pricey for most people to have sequenced—unless they are geneticist-entrepreneur J. Craig Venter. (See News Bytes of the Week—Popcorn lung leaves the factory.) An era it is, though. Hot on deCODE's heels came the Google-backed 23andMe, which offers a similar service for $999 that would cover 35 percent less of the genome, and a third company, Navigenics, is expected to launch a disease-focused scan.

Clarke Legacy: Space Elevators?

2007-12-16T14:53:00.000-08:00

I noticed the news today that Arthur C. Clarke is 90, and celebrated his birthday at his home in Sri Lanka. He listed three wishes: for the world to embrace cleaner energy resources, for a lasting peace in his adopted home, Sri Lanka, and for evidence of extraterrestrial beings.

I decided to check out Clarke's best-known accomplishments and was intrigued by a concept called space elevators. His novel The Fountains of Paradise, in which he first described a space elevator, he believes, ultimately will be his legacy, more so than geostationary satellites, once space elevators make space shuttles obsolete.

Wikipedia says that a space elevator is a proposed megastructure designed to transport material from a celestial body's surface into space. The term most often refers to a structure that reaches from the surface of the Earth to geosynchronous orbit (and beyond). The concept of a structure reaching to geosynchronous orbit was first conceived by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who proposed a compression structure, or "Tsiolkovsky tower." Most recent discussions focus on tensile structures (tethers) reaching from geosynchrous orbit to the ground. Space elevators have also sometimes been referred to as beanstalks, space bridges, space lifts, space ladders, skyhooks, orbital towers, or orbital elevators.

The most common proposal is a tether, usually in the form of a cable or ribbon, spanning from the surface near the equator to a point beyond geosynchronous orbit. As the planet rotates, the inertia at the end of the tether counteracts gravity, and also keeps the cable taut. Vehicles can then climb the tether and get in orbit without the use of rocket propulsion. Such a structure could theoretically permit delivery of cargo and people to orbit at a fraction of the cost of launching a payload into orbit, and without the substantial environmental harm caused by some rocket fuels.

Recent proposals for a space elevator are notable in their plans to incorporate carbon nanotubes into the tether design, thus providing a link between space exploration and nanotechnology.
Actual cable-scale technology is currently inadequate to build space elevators, but research is ongoing, and some people believe that technology to do this may soon exist.

Biodiesel: Hope for the Alternative

2007-12-02T15:22:00.000-08:00

The story in Scientific American points to work taking place to look at alternative fuels...let's see how easy it could be to switch from an oil economy!

Biodiesel may not become the airplane fuel of the future but it did prove effective enough to recently power a 1968 L-29 Czechoslovakian jet—dubbed BioJet 1—up to 17,000 feet (5,180 meters) over 37 minutes. A three minute, 15-second test the day before was the world's first flight entirely fueled by cooking oil.

"She flew and she flew just fine," says physicist Rudi Wiedemann, president and CEO of Biodiesel Solutions, Inc., whose company provided the fuel for the historic October flight: fresh canola oil refined into biodiesel. "We wanted to show that it was doable by just going out and doing it."

BBC Looks at Science of the Future

2007-11-05T04:41:00.000-08:00

I was intrigued by this series by the BBC, so I am sharing an excerpt and a link.

The reporter says, "To get the most authentic, authoritative view of the future, I spent several months travelling with a BBC film crew to visit the labs of the most influential scientists in the world. We began by flying down to North Carolina to drive the computerised "driverless car" that can actually travel on the highway without anyone behind the wheel. We flew to Tokyo and visited Asimo, one of the world's most advanced robots. We travelled to Silicon Valley, and met the gurus of the computer revolution, who envision a future with three-dimensional TV, fantastic virtual worlds, and the internet in our glasses.

Driverless cars: Some science fiction will soon become everyday factWe visited the laboratory in Vienna where physicists are "teleporting" photons and atoms, like in science fiction. We travelled to Dallas, Texas, and met with ranchers who routinely create herds of cloned cattle.
We went to Boston University and saw the "smart mice" which are genetically engineered to have better memory. This could help in the care of patients with Alzheimer's.
But one highlight of the trip was a visit to Dr Anthony Atala's lab in Wake Forest University, North Carolina, where he is unleashing a revolution in medicine: growing entire organs of the body from your own cells.

In the future, we might very well have a "human body shop" that can replace ageing and diseased organs at will.

Scientific American looks at neurotheology

2007-10-07T09:12:00.000-07:00

This is from Scientific American - again - but you cannot beat the topics and writing in this publication.

Searching for God in the Brain
Researchers are unearthing the roots of religious feeling in the neural commotion that accompanies the spiritual epiphanies of nuns, Buddhists and other people of faith
By David Biello

Such efforts to reveal the neural correlates of the divine—a new discipline with the warring titles “neurotheology” and “spiritual neuroscience”—not only might reconcile religion and science but also might help point to ways of eliciting pleasurable otherworldly feelings in people who do not have them or who cannot summon them at will. Because of the positive effect of such experiences on those who have them, some researchers speculate that the ability to induce them artificially could transform people’s lives by making them happier, healthier and better able to concentrate. Ultimately, however, neuroscientists study this question because they want to better understand the neural basis of a phenomenon that plays a central role in the lives of so many.

Perfect pitch: you got it or you don't

2007-08-30T04:23:00.001-07:00

This story caught my eye - so I am giving you a few details because a Scientific American story reports that you don't have to be Mozart to correctly identify a tone as A-sharp or D-flat. In fact, says a new report, perfect pitch may be genetic.

Says reporter Nikhil Swaminathan, "In the midst of recruiting subjects for a genetic study on perfect (absolute) pitch—the ability to discern a note from nearly any sort of sound without a reference tone—scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, discovered several interesting patterns among people who have the skill.

"Among the findings of the study published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA : 'Either you've got it or you don't," says senior report author Jane Gitschier, a professor of medicine and pediatrics at U.C.S.F. She says that data collected from more than 2,000 people aged eight to 70 years old during the study indicates that there is likely a genetic basis to perfect pitch—one she believes is activated by early music training "Absolute pitch almost certainly requires exposure to music at a young age," Gitschier notes. "You need to have some idea of the nomenclature.'"

Facebook shares photos from the unborn

2007-08-15T13:13:00.000-07:00

I was taken with this story, so I am sharing it - let's say social networking, new technology and communications makes it right for WendSight.

Says FOX News, "It already has its own Facebook page and more than 100 people want to be its friend — but Bubba Waring, described by its mother as "the world's most famous fetus," hasn't actually been born yet. Sydney couple Claire Gillis and Luke Waring, who are expecting their first child in three months, initially turned to the social networking site to keep their family and friends updated on the pregnancy. But instead of creating a profile under her own name, Gillis said she thought it would be better to do it from her unborn child's perspective.

Global warming - come on people wake up!

2007-08-13T14:12:00.000-07:00

Back to the same ol' same ol' - does global warming exist - you would think we were talking about extraterrestrial life or ET sightings.

SCIAM OBSERVATIONS Opinions, arguments and analyses from the editors of Scientific American: Newsweek denies the existence of global warming covers this this week.

Maybe it's because I don't have the faith in people that I should, but I find this Newsweek cover really irresponsible. Actually, it's due to the polls cited in the article--and those I have seen elsewhere--that suggest that the American public thinks, among other things, that scientists are still trying to determine if global warming is for real and that it's a major issue in the upcoming Presidential election.

Sure, the cover is provocative and gripping, but it also may be doing a disservice to the general public and the people working hard to develop new ways to combat what is realistically the greatest threat to our livelihood: climate change. In fact, global warming isn't just a threat. Combating it will require us to dramatically change the way we live. (But, you've heard this all before.)

Anyway, as a journalist and magazine junkie, I spend a lot of time combing newsstands for new reads, eye-catching designs and little bites of information that can be gleaned from a cover line, a headline or a quick turn through a publication. So, if I am scanning a magazine rack--assuming I am not a science writer--what am I going to think when I see this Newsweek cover.

Probably not much. The Internet hasn't killed all journalism, but it certainly has deeply wounded news-weeklies like Time, US News and Newsweek. Am I going to take the time to read what the asterisk is referencing? Maybe. Another plausible scenario could be: I just read the big print, forget about it and then three weeks later--while I am talking to someone about politics or energy policy or compact fluorescent light bulbs--blurt out, "I read somewhere that global warming is a hoax."

I know I am being a little dramatic, but I think this cover would better serve readers (or, more importantly, casual observers), if it said something like: "Minority Report: The Global Warming Deniers".

Hat tip to Charlie Petit over at the Knight Science Journalism Tracker for bringing this to my attention.

Science reporter seeks solar bomb experts

2007-07-22T09:19:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you just have to read a story because of its headline: "Does anyone know how to restart the sun with a bomb?"

On July 20, reporter Philip Yam of Scientific American said: Last month, I caught a preview screening of Sunshine, Danny Boyle's sci-fi psycho thriller flick that opens today. After watching the film, I couldn't help but wonder about the premise. The sun's about to die--but not the way conventional astronomy dictates, in which the sun consumes its supply of hydrogen in its core, swells out as a red giant (and boils away the earth's atmosphere), blows off its outer layer and turns into a white dwarf. Sunshine makes no attempt to say how the bomb would restart the sun's thermonuclear engine.

So I pose this question to all you who know more astrophysics than I: can you envision just how the sun's output might start declining suddenly and precipitously? And how a "solar bomb" might actually work to restart it? The moviemakers do say that the bomb has the mass of Manhattan, but I don't know if that helps or hurts.

Reading minds - scientists get closer

2007-07-04T06:54:00.000-07:00

You may have seen the movie Minority Report - think about the special people that the police used to read their minds about past experiences and memories. With today's science closing in on witnessing memories and reading the minds of mice, maybe we are not so far away from this becoming a reality - and you won't need special powers.

Scientific American says: Researchers are closing in on the rules that the brain uses to lay down memories. Discovery of this memory code could lead to the design of smarter computers and robots and even to new ways to peer into the human mind. For decades, neuroscientists have attempted to unravel how the brain makes memories. Now, by combining a set of novel experiments with powerful mathematical analyses and an ability to record simultaneously the activity of more than 200 neurons in awake mice researchers have the basic mechanism the brain uses to draw vital information from experiences and turn that information into memories.

Okay so far this sounds fine. Now think about this: Such understanding could allow investigators to develop more seamless brain-machine interfaces, design a whole new generation of smart computers and robots, and perhaps even assemble a codebook of the mind that would make it possible to decipher--by monitoring neural activity--what someone remembers and thinks.

Capillary image opens computer system

2007-06-17T07:01:00.000-07:00

From the TechDirt blog - this is interesting so I am pointing you to the web site:

In brief: TechDirt says it's becoming less unusual for devices like laptops, and even mobile phones, to feature fingerprint scanners for secure access.

The idea is that only the owner's fingerprint can unlock the device, so if it's stolen, it will be useless to a thief. This tends to help with most of your garden-variety theft, but as anybody who's watched a few action movies knows, fingerprint-based systems don't pose a problem for the really motivated thief, who can simply cut off their victim's finger and use it to access the device or secret lair or whatever.

Sony has a system that doesn't use fingerprints, but rather an image of the capillaries (via Network Computing) beneath the skin of a person's finger. The pattern in the image can only be captured when blood is pumping through the finger in question, so severing it from the rest of the victim would render it useless.

Scientific American's Best Photos

2007-06-03T09:53:00.000-07:00

I am a big fan of the Scientific American web site - check out the photo gallery there for the most awesome photos! The message at the bottom of the page says I cannot provide the photo here - so go to the link and check it out!!

Scientific American looks at baseball

2007-05-28T10:51:00.000-07:00

In a Q&A by SA:

Does the length of a baseball player's arm affect the distance of his throw? If so, how?

Mike Marshall, the 1974 National League Cy Young Award winner and an associate professor of physical education, most recently at West Texas A&M University, winds up and delivers an answer to this one.

When baseball pitchers with various length pitching arms apply the same amount of force, the ones with shorter arms actually achieve higher release velocities. The muscles of players with shorter pitching arms apply their force with greater leverage—so, in order for pitchers with longer arms to achieve the same release velocity, they have to apply a greater force.

To understand how this happens requires knowledge of how muscles move the bones to which they are attached.

As with any human movement, an athlete creates a desired motion by first using some muscles to stabilize the position of one of the bones involved in the action. Then when muscles contract, he or she moves the bone, which is to be put in motion, closer to the one that is stabilized in relation to the body.

In baseball pitching, to achieve their maximum release velocity, a baseball pitcher "locks"—or, stabilizes—the bone in his upper pitching arm (the humerus) to the bones in his shoulder. Then, after rotating his hips, shoulders and upper pitching arm as far as possible toward home plate, he contracts the muscles that move the bones in his pitching forearm, wrist, hand and fingers straight toward home as powerfully as he can.

How fast these bones move toward home plate then determines the release velocity of the baseball. Because shorter forearm, wrist, hand and finger bones have less inertia to overcome, a baseball pitcher can move them faster through release. As a result, with the same amount of force applied, a baseball pitcher with shorter bones in his lower pitching arm can achieve higher release velocities.

Bats in flight - two vortices

2007-05-11T16:41:00.000-07:00

I have always been facinated with bats ever since I saw a large gray bat hanging on a stone wall next to my grandparents' house in Harrodsburg, Ky. This is very interesting from Scientific American:

Bats seem to be adapted for slow speed and high maneuverability in the same way as hummingbirds whereas most flying birds are optimized for high speed. As birds swing their wings upward, the feathers separate like window blinds to let air through, which prevents the lift-reducing currents that the bats experienced. The two creatures also leave different wakes: A bat's stretchy wings churn up two separate vortices—one behind each wing—but a pair of relatively rigid bird wings produces one vortex for the whole bird.

Scientists are advising people who build small flying machines to see if the wind tunnel results can help out, giving detailed information about how a small autonomous flying system works. More here.

Experiemental Biology 2007 - Final Coverage

2007-05-06T04:43:00.000-07:00

This is my last update from Experimental Biology 2007 - a meeting too vast to cover all, but here are some last snippets getting news coverage:

* Dr. Martha Payne reported as part of the American Society for Nutritionthat elderly men and women who consumed higher levels of calcium and vitamin D are significantly more likely to have greater volumes of brain lesions, regions of damage that can increase risk of cognitive impairment, dementia, depression and stroke.

Dr. Payne and her co-investigators from Duke and the University of North Carolina examined magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans from 232 men and women (79 men, 153 women) between the ages of 60 and 86 (average age 71). All the subjects had at least some brain lesions of varying sizes, including the extremely miniscule ones often seen in even healthy older persons, but those who reported consuming more calcium and vitamin D were markedly more likely to have higher total volume of brain lesions as measured across numerous MRI scans.

“At this point,” says Dr. Payne, “we do not know if high calcium and vitamin D intake are involved with the causation of brain lesions, but the study provides support to the growing number of researchers who are concerned about the effects of too much calcium, particularly among older adults, given the current emphasis on promoting high intakes of calcium and vitamin D.”

* By giving ordinary adult mice a drug - a synthetic designed to mimic fat - Salk Institute scientist Dr. Ronald M. Evans is now able to chemically switch on PPAR-d, the master regulator that controls the ability of cells to burn fat. Even when the mice are not active, turning on the chemical switch activates the same fat-burning process that occurs during exercise. The resulting shift in energy balance (calories in, calories burned) makes the mice resistant to weight gain on a high fat diet.

The hope is that such metabolic trickery will lead to a new approach to new treatment and prevention of human metabolic syndrome. Sometimes called syndrome X, this consists of obesity and the often dire health consequences of obesity: high blood pressure, high levels of fat in the blood, heart disease, and resistance to insulin and diabetes. Dr. Evan’s presentation was part of the scientific program of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

* Being obese increases the risk of breast cancer in post-menopausal women, shortens the time between return of the disease and lowers overall survival rates. Researchers now report evidence on how leptin, a hormone found in fat cells, significantly influences breast cancer development and progression in mice. This new understanding, says Dr. Sebastiano Ando, establishes a new mechanism for the link between obesity and breast cancer and suggests new targets for drugs that could intervene in that mechanism.

Dr. Ando’s presentation was part of the scientific program of the American Society of Investigative Pathology.

* Recent findings that the widely-used herbal supplement Saint John’s wort could dramatically affect the absorption and metabolism of many prescription and non-prescription drugs raised concerns that other popular herbal supplements might cause similar changes, thus significantly altering drugs’ therapeutic or toxic effects. What, for example, about ginseng and ginkgo biloba, two of the most widely used herbal supplements in this and other countries?

Speaking at Experimental Biology 2007 in Washington, DC, Dr. Gregory Reed reported a study that found daily use of ginseng or ginkgo biloba supplements at the recommended doses, or the combination of both supplements, are unlikely to alter the pharmacokinetics - by which drugs are absorbed, distributed, metabolized, and eliminated by the body - of the majority of prescription or over-the counter drugs. Dr. Reed’s presentation was part of the scientific program of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.

Smelling for the first time

2007-05-01T07:14:00.000-07:00

Experimental Biology 2007 update:

New discoveries about the biochemical basis of the majority of cases of the congenital inability to smell any odor, no matter how strong, have enabled their discoverer, Dr. Robert I. Henkin, director of The Taste and Smell Clinic in Washington, DC, to treat such patients, enabling them to smell something for the first time in their lives.

These patients respond with amazement, Dr. Henkin told fellow scientists .

“Until the treatment began to take effect, they had never experienced the olfactory world that surrounds us all, and it is with excitement that they quickly begin to learn what different things smell like and to relate those odors to objects they have known all their lives,” says Dr. Henkin.

His study is the first to characterize the biochemical abnormalities in these patients and the first to successfully treat patients using this new understanding. Dr. Henkin’s presentationwas part of The American Physiological Society.

In the United States alone, there are about 400,000 people who have never smelled anything in their lives. This does not include those who lose their once normal smell function because of illness or accident. A relatively small percentage - 12 percent - of individuals with congenital smell loss have multiple anatomical abnormalities of the brain and other organs. The vast majority - 88 percent - of individuals with congenital smell loss, however, do not have any such obvious organ abnormalities and their olfactory nerves and the brain regions that process olfactory information are intact.

Why, then, have they never been able to smell?

After determining the family of enzymes to which the growth and death factors belong and defining the biochemical pathway responsible for these factors, Dr. Henkin was able to treat these patients with PDE inhibitors that increase the concentration of growth factors and inhibit the secretion o death factors in nasal mucus. The treatment has been successful in restoring smell function in some of these patients, with the higher the dose and longer the use having the greatest effect.

Runners change faulty gait to reduce shock

2007-04-30T11:33:00.000-07:00

Experimental Biology 2007 update:

More than seven out of 10 runners will sustain an injury over the course of a year, many of these injuries preventable without any adverse effects on running distance or performance, according to Dr. Irene Davis, director of the Running Injury Lab at the University of Delaware, and director of Research for Drayer Physical Therapy Institute.

In earlier studies, Dr. Davis identified the specific gait mechanics associated with common injuries. Now, in a study reported at the Experimental Biology meeting in Washington, DC, she explains how she successfully retrained runners to change their faulty gaits in eight half hour sessions, reducing leg shock by 50 percent and completely eliminating pain under the kneecap.

Her Experimental Biology presentation on April 30 is part of the scientific program of the American Association of Anatomists.

In the laboratory, Dr. Davis uses sophisticated biofeedback devices and monitors, but she says she does similar - and also effective - retraining in the physical therapy clinic at the University of Delaware using basic mechanical information, mirrors and advice to listen to the sound of one’s own feet hitting the ground.

The two studies underway in Dr. Davis' laboratory now are with runners who were selected for the study because they were experiencing or had been identified as high risk for one of the two most common running-related injuries: tibial stress fractures (microfractures of the lower leg bone) and patellofemoral pain syndrome (pain under the kneecap).

Coffee linked to risk reduction in some diseases

2007-04-30T10:46:00.000-07:00

Today's update from Experimental Biology 2007:

Coffee is among the most widely consumed beverages in the world, and a scientist at the EB meeting says that the preponderance of scientific evidence - some by the panelists - suggests that moderate coffee consumption (3-5 cups per day) may be associated with reduced risk of certain disease conditions, such as Parkinson’s disease. The American Society for Nutrition’s popular “controversy session” was presented at the meeting.

Some research in neuropharamacology suggests that one cup of coffee can halve the risk of Parkinson’s disease. Other studies have found it reduces the risk of Alzheimer's disease, kidney stones, gallstones, depression and even suicide.

A second scientist discussed the link between diet and the development of type 2 diabetes. Worldwide, an estimated 171 million persons have diabetes, mostly type 2 diabetes, and an alarming increase to 366 million persons is expected for the year 2030. While increased physical activity and restriction of energy intake can substantially reduce risk of type 2 diabetes, he believes insight into the role of other lifestyle factors may contribute to additional prevention strategies for type 2 diabetes.

Free weight training helps rotator cuff injuries

2007-04-29T07:56:00.000-07:00

News from Experimental Biology 2007:

Resistance training, some of it job-specific, was successful in getting 90 percent of workers with severe rotator cuff injuries back to work, the majority (75 percent) at their previous job, after traditional physical therapy had failed to do so. Furthermore, all but one of the 42 employees in the study (98 percent) reported satisfaction with the resistance-training program and its outcome.

Dr. Jamie Stark described this and five related studies of workers suffering work-related rotator cuff and lumbar fusion injuries April 29. His presentations were part of the scientific program of The American Physiological Society.

Participants in the rotator cuff study represent a class of “worse-case-scenarios” of work-related injuries. Rotator cuff injuries involve those muscles and tendons that stabilize the shoulder and can be caused by pulling the arm out of place, by falls and other accidents. All 42 of the employees had been through surgery to repair their torn muscles or ligaments. All had already gone through weeks of traditional rehabilitation and physical therapy. Even so, none had been judged capable of going back to work and thus were eligible for disability and workmen’s compensation settlements.

Dr. Stark says, “We are at a new era in which we can develop standardized exercise prescriptions that produce desired, achievable functional goals.”

Experimental Biology 2007 Underway

2007-04-28T07:02:00.000-07:00

More than 12,000 biological and biomedical scientists will gather for the Experimental Biology 2007 meeting at the Washington Convention Center, Washington, DC, April 28 through May 2.

This annual meeting brings together scientists from dozens of different disciplines, from laboratory to translational to clinical research, from throughout the United States and the world.

Through thousands of lectures, symposia, research presentations, and exhibits, Experimental Biology provides scientists and clinicians an unparalleled opportunity to step outside the boundaries of their own fields and share information with colleagues looking at similar biomedical problems through the lens of different disciplines. The meeting also offers a wide spectrum of professional development for scientists, as listed below.

The theme of this year’s meeting, “Today’s Research: Tomorrow’s Health,” speaks to Experimental Biology’s mission to share the newest scientific concepts and research findings shaping future and current clinical advances.

The six sponsoring societies for Experimental Biology 2007 are: American Association of Anatomists (AAA); American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB); American Society for Nutrition, Inc. (ASN); American Society for Investigative Pathology (ASIP); American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET); and The American Physiological Society (APS). Experimental Biology includes the annual meetings of all sponsoring societies.

Eighteen U.S. and international guest societies further broaden the scope of the meeting, adding expertise in biomedical engineering, behavioral pharmacology, veterinary pathology, biological chemistry, informatics and other areas of investigation.

Bioscrypt's 3D Device Recognizes Your Face

2007-04-09T15:48:00.000-07:00

A blog called Notes from the Digital Frontier says: "Bioscrypt, a Toronto-based company who has pioneered the field of visual recognition and authentication, has developed a new product to use a users’ face as the access control tool.

This new webcam-type device utilizes 3D face recognition technology to authenticate users. So in order to access someone else’s computer, I simply need to make a rubber mask of their face, right?

Maybe it’s not quite that easy. Bioscrypt has developed their system to use 40,000 points of recognition in a 3D mesh. It will also accommodate varying head positions and a wide range of lighting conditions. But just how accurate can this technology be?

I have doubts that this technology could recognize my face on a fairly consistent basis without telling me that I am not an authorized user. And what happens if I my facial expression is different from uninterested and mundane expression that has been recorded in the database? Will the system be able to tell the difference?"

Read more.

Physicist Quantifies Poker Tournament

2007-04-08T11:52:00.000-07:00

I enjoy looking at the intersection of physics and everyday matters, such as this story in Scientific American by Christopher Mims:

Clément Sire isn't just a statistical physicist -he's also a champion bridge player. Combining his love of physics and games, he has created a model of the poker variant Texas hold 'em that enables him to do everything from predicting the length of a tournament to figuring out his ranking simply by assessing the average size of his opponents' fortunes.

It may seem like an odd way to spend his time. After all, isn't physics supposed to be about particle colliders and superconductivity? "Physicists," Sire explains, "are now more than ever involved in the study of complex systems that do not belong to the traditional realm of their science."

Poker is an especially attractive subject, because it's one of the few truly isolated systems. Unlike, say, the stock market, which is often governed by factors such as politics, war and weather, poker tournaments are not affected by external phenomena. As a result, even Sire's simplified model of Texas hold 'em appears to mathematically express many features of the game that experienced players would recognize.

It turns out that the distribution of the "stack," or fortune, of the chip leaders across tournaments mirrors the pattern found in the distribution of maximum temperatures during every August in history or countless other natural phenomena where physicists have attempted to predict the nature of extreme values. This pattern, called the Gumbel distribution, means that the frequency with which chip leaders accrue fortunes of any given size is, in a way, a natural phenomenon that arises as much from the characteristics of the game being played as from the dispositions and abilities of those playing it.

Memories, past lives and recollection

2007-04-01T04:43:00.000-07:00

I like to check out Scientific American every week - it has the most interesting and innovative coverage of science and medicine, and the best writing.

Today's list of stories includes one on memories, so I have pulled the first of it and you can read the whole story at Scientific American.

Says SciAm: Do you sometimes have memories of a mysterious past life? Recall odd experiences such as being abducted by aliens? Wonder where these memories come from and if, in fact, you were really once whisked off in a flying saucer by ETs?

Seems the answer may be simpler than you think—or remember. A new study shows that people with memories of past lives are more likely than others to misremember the source of any given piece of information.

Study author Maarten Peters of Maastricht University in the Netherlands tested patients of "reincarnation therapists," who use hypnosis to help their patients remember "past lives," which the clients believe are at the root of their current problems.

"Once familiarity of an event is achieved, this can relatively easily be converted into a belief that the event did take place," Peters says. "A next possible step is that individuals interpret their thoughts and fantasies about the fictitious event as real memories."

Happiness and the Search

2007-03-18T05:45:00.000-07:00

Check out continuing coverage about "happiness" in Scientific American. This is by Marina Krakovsky.

An experimental psychologist investigating the possibility of lasting happiness, Sonja Lyubomirsky understands far better than most of us the folly of pinning our hopes on a new car--or on any good fortune that comes our way. We tend to adapt, quickly returning to our usual level of happiness.

The classic example of such "hedonic adaptation" comes from a 1970s study of lottery winners, who a year after their windfall ended up no happier than nonwinners. Hedonic adaptation helps to explain why even changes in major life circumstances--such as income, marriage, physical health and where we live--do so little to boost our overall happiness. Not only that, but studies of twins and adoptees have shown that about 50 percent of each person's happiness is determined from birth.

This "genetic set point" alone makes the happiness glass look half empty, because any upward swing in happiness seems doomed to fall back to near your baseline.

Graffiti's beauty - flickr gives us a look

2007-03-11T06:31:00.000-07:00

A day for WendSight to look at graffiti on flickr. Thank you Brian from The Curse of Brian.

Spooky quantum link - photons fly far

2007-03-09T12:37:00.000-08:00

The reach of the spooky quantum link called entanglement keeps getting longer. A team has transmitted entangled photons some 144 kilometers (89 miles), reports Scientific American.

The distance achieved is 10 times farther than entangled photons have ever flown through the air. When two photons or other particles are in this state, what happens to one determines the fate of the other, no matter how far apart they are. Physicist Anton Zeilinger compares the phenomenon with throwing a pair of dice that land on matching numbers every time.

Using a laser, the researchers created entangled pairs of photons on La Palma and fired one member of each pair to a European Space Agency (ESA) telescope on Tenerife, which had to make rapid, small adjustments to receive the photons, Zeilinger says. In another presentation, physicist Richard Hughes of Los Alamos National Laboratory described recent experiments in which his group fired a series of nonentangled photons 185 kilometers down a conventional optical fiber.

In both cases, researchers demonstrated that they could transmit randomly oriented, or polarized, photons, which are suitable for sending messages that cannot be intercepted without garbling the information. Called quantum keys, such transmissions could allow users to scramble messages in a way that is potentially unbreakable.

Shortcut communications in today's world

2007-02-24T14:49:00.000-08:00

A press release says that particularly among close associates, sharing even a little new information can slow down communication.

Some of people’s biggest problems with communication come in sharing new information with people they know well, newly published research at the University of Chicago shows.

Because they already share quite a bit of common knowledge, people often use short, ambiguous messages in talking with co-workers and spouses, and accordingly unintentionally create misunderstandings, said Boaz Keysar, Professor in Psychology at the University of Chicago.

"People are so used to talking with those with whom they already share a great deal of information, that when they have something really new to share, they often present it in away that assumes the person already knows it," said Keysar, who with graduate student Shali Wu tested Keysar’s communication theories and presented the results in an article, "The Effect of Information Overlap on Communication Effectiveness," published in the current issue of Cognitive Science.

"Sharing additional information reduces communication effectiveness precisely when there is an opportunity to inform—when people communicate information only they themselves know," the researchers said.

On a professional level, brief e-mails between colleagues can cause miscommunication, Keysar has learned from personal experience. "I once was scheduled to speak and had gotten the day of my talk mixed up. I received an e-mail from the host asking me if I was ok. I wrote back and said I was and didn’t find out until later that what he really wanted to know was where I was, as they were waiting for me to talk," Keysar said.

Intelligent design under scrutiny

2007-02-22T16:47:00.001-08:00

I have taken this from a press release on Eurekalert, issued by the University of Chicago - it was so interesting I am posting the whole release.

In a thought-provoking paper from the March issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology , Elliott Sober (University of Wisconsin) clearly discusses the problems with two standard criticisms of intelligent design: that it is unfalsifiable and that the many imperfect adaptations found in nature refute the hypothesis of intelligent design.

Biologists from Charles Darwin to Stephen Jay Gould have advanced this second type of argument. Stephen Jay Gould's well-known example of a trait of this type is the panda's thumb. If a truly intelligent designer were responsible for the panda, Gould argues, it would have provided a more useful tool than the stubby proto-thumb that pandas use to laboriously strip bamboo in order to eat it.

ID proponents have a ready reply to this objection. We do not know whether an intelligent designer intended for pandas to be able to efficiently strip bamboo. The "no designer worth his salt" argument assumes the designer would want pandas to have better eating implements, but the objection has no justification for this assumption. In addition, Sober points out, this criticism of ID also concedes that creationism is testable.

A second common criticism of ID is that it is untestable. To develop this point, scientists often turn to the philosopher Karl Popper's idea of falsifiability. According to Popper, a scientific statement must allow the possibility of an observation that would disprove it. For example, the statement "all swans are white" is falsifiable, since observing even one swan that isn't white would disprove it. Sober points out that this criterion entails that many ID statements are falsifiable; for example, the statement that an intelligent designer created the vertebrate eye entails that vertebrates have eyes, which is an observation.

This leads Sober to jettison the concept of falsifiability and to provide a different account of testability. "If ID is to be tested," he says, "it must be tested against one or more competing hypotheses." If the ID claim about the vertebrate eye is to be tested against the hypothesis that the vertebrate eye evolved by Darwinian processes, the question is whether there is an observation that can discriminate between the two. The observation that vertebrates have eyes cannot do this.

Sober also points out that criticism of a competing theory, such as evolution, is not in-and-of-itself a test of ID. Proponents of ID must construct a theory that makes its own predictions in order for the theory to be testable. To contend that evolutionary processes cannot produce "irreducibly complex" adaptations merely changes the subject, Sober argues.

"When scientific theories compete with each other, the usual pattern is that independently attested auxiliary propositions allow the theories to make predictions that disagree with each other," Sober writes. "No such auxiliary propositions allow … ID to do this."

In developing this idea, Sober makes use of ideas that the French philosopher Pierre Duhem developed in connection with physical theories – theories usually do not, all by themselves, make testable predictions. Rather, they do so only when supplemented with auxiliary information. For example, the laws of optics do not, by themselves, predict when eclipses will occur; they do so when independently justified claims about the positions of the earth, moon, and sun are taken into account.

Similarly, ID claims make predictions when they are supplemented by auxiliary claims. The problem is that these auxiliary assumptions about the putative designer's goals and abilities are not independently justified. Surprisingly, this is a point that several ID proponents concede.

Intel heads the pack on fast computing

2007-02-12T04:53:00.000-08:00

Business Week reports that computing took a leap forward when chipmakers started putting more than one core, or central brain, on a single chip.

Chipmaker Intel says it has successfully produced a chip capable of processing 1 trillion calculations a second. The chip, which Intel claims is the fastest ever made, could start being used commercially in five years.

The huge processing power each chip would provide will dramatically change the the way we work and how we spend our leisure time. Financial analysis that takes days to perform in back offices could be done in seconds at a trader's terminal on Wall Street - says Business Week.

Wired explores what we don't know

2007-02-04T04:24:00.000-08:00

Is the universe actually made of information? I am taking the intro to this sub-section of Wired Magazine's wonderful section this month called "What we don't know" - check it out.

Humans have talked about atoms since the time of the ancients, and ever-smaller fundamental particles of matter followed. But no one even conceived of bits until the middle of the 20th century. The bit is a fundamental particle, too, but of different stuff altogether: information.

It is not just tiny, it is abstract - a flip-flop, a yes-or-no. Now that scientists are finally starting to understand information, they wonder whether it’s more fundamental than matter itself.

Perhaps the bit is the irreducible kernel of existence; if so, we have entered the information age in more ways than one.

Wired says the quantum pioneer John Archibald Wheeler, perhaps the last surviving collaborator of both Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, poses this conundrum in oracular monosyllables: “It from bit.”

For Wheeler, it is both an unanswered question and a working hypothesis, the idea that information gives rise, as he writes, to “every it - every particle, every field of force, even the spacetime continuum itself.”

This is another way of fathoming the role of the observer, the quantum discovery that the outcome of an experiment is affected, or even determined, when it is observed. “What we call reality,” Wheeler writes coyly, “arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions.” He adds, “All things physical are information-theoretic in origin, and this is a participatory universe.”

Nanotechnology gets spicy

2007-01-28T05:38:00.000-08:00

Nanotechnology research is always intriguing - here are some Indian researchers working on helping deliver tumeric via nanos... I guess we will be using this technology for everything in the future!

From an article on nanowerk: The Chemistry Department at Delhi University has developed a nano-particular vehicle for helping turmeric get absorbed in the body.

“The nano-particular vehicle for turmeric which is being developed by experts at Delhi University is under testing in different in-vitro culture and animal modules and will finally be used for human trials,” said Dr. A.K. Dinda.

Turmeric has a therapeutic effect. The medicinal properties of turmeric, a spice commonly used in curries and other South Asian cuisine, have for millennia been known to the ancient Indians and have been expounded in the Ayurvedic texts. It is only in recent years that Western scientists have increasingly recognised the medicinal properties of turmeric.

Times Square - ever facinating to see

2007-01-15T08:39:00.000-08:00

itsNano - Never Sleeping

Photos of Times Square are always amazing to look at - like a jigsaw puzzle with 1000 tiny pieces assembled into a beautiful picture.

Theory of gravity and quantum field theories compared

2007-01-15T08:20:00.000-08:00

I thought this meeting looked interesting - I am intriqued by the scope of it and new questions raised to understand Einstein's theory of gravity vs quantum field theories.

A press release says, "More than three dozen leading physicists and astrophysicists will convene for the conference, "Rethinking Gravity: from the Planck scale to the size of the Universe."

Scientists will meet to discuss their common goal - to probe and test gravity at all scales, from the subatomic level to the entire universe.

"Scientists have understood for several decades that Einstein's theory of gravity, which describes our universe at astronomical scales, is incompatible with quantum field theories, which describe phenomena at atomic scales," says physicist Dimitrios Psaltis. "Despite numerous efforts, scientists have yet to come up with a satisfactory quantum theory of gravity. But our quest has become intensely exciting for two reasons. First, new ideas are challenging our previous notions of how the gravitational force works and pervades spacetime itself. And second, it is astonishing to realize that even though most of these ideas were unheard of a mere decade ago, they can be tested using present-day astronomical and cosmological observations."

Scientists look at a fifth force of nature

2007-01-08T04:23:00.000-08:00

Read on the Scientific American blog about the conference of the American Astronomical Society and hints of a fifth force of nature, on top of: electromagnetism, gravity, and the two forces that govern atomic nuclei. The idea of a fifth force has a checkered history, and experiments seem to rule it out. But those experiments apply only to ordinary matter. They say nothing about dark matter.

Dark matter is the unknown substance that provides the gravitational glue holding together large cosmic structures such as galaxies and clusters of galaxies. The poster child for dark matter, which got a lot of attention last summer, is the Bullet Cluster of galaxies. It is actually a pair of clusters that have rammed into each other. The center of mass of each cluster (pinpointed by seeing how the cluster affects light from bodies in back of it) is offset from the bulk of the ordinary matter -- so most of the mass of the clusters must be un-ordinary.

But its source could be vastly different -- the result, perhaps, of a property akin to electric charge which only dark matter possesses. Proposed new theories of physics such as string theory predict new energy fields that might generate novel forces, but in the past physicists have generally supposed that these forces would make themselves felt only over sub-subatomic distances.

Solar outburst aggravates global systems

2006-12-18T04:59:00.000-08:00

A press release this week says that a solar outburst, which can play havoc with global positioning systems and cell phone reception, bombarded Earth, Dec. 6, 2006, with a record amount of radio noise. Dale Gary, who just confirmed the news, is a professor and chair of the department of physics at New Jersey Institute of Technology.

"Reports of significant events worldwide are still coming in as late as yesterday afternoon," said Gary. Due to a computer software failure, initial research reports in the U.S. downplayed the outbursts.

"The odd thing about this outburst was that the Sun is supposed to be at the minimum phase of its 11-year cycle," said Gary. "Nevertheless, the disruption lasted more than an hour, produced a record amount of radio noise, and caused massive disruptions of Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) receivers world wide."

Nanoparticles get drugs closer to the problem

2006-11-19T15:37:00.000-08:00

Scientific American has covered the latest advance with nanoparticles for brain tumors. Researchers at the University of Michigan have tested a drug delivery system that involves drug-toting nanoparticles and a guiding peptide to target cancerous cells in the brain.

This study finds that using the nanoparticles the drug can be delivered to a tumor's general vicinity [reported in Clinical Cancer Research]. The researchers used a pharmaceutical called Photofrin, which is photodynamic, meaning it is activated by a laser after it has entered the bloodstream. This new system, which uses intravenous delivery of 40-nanometer-wide particles to carry the drug, may actually avoid much of the unwanted photosensitivity, because less Photofrin circulates in the bloodstream.
It also avoided crossing the blood-brain barrier, which keeps many substances from entering the brain from the bloodstream.

Go to flickr for a great fall sky photo

2006-11-05T05:07:00.000-08:00

There is a beautiful fall sky photo on flickr today, and other gorgeous fall photos, but they are copyrighted so I am sending you there to view them!

sky photo

Mercury eclipses the sun on Nov. 8

2006-11-05T04:59:00.000-08:00

This kind of story makes me want to be a space scientist every time - I am either channeling an astrophysicist or just want to be one in my next life!

According to a press statement, "When Mercury goes in front of the Sun on Wednesday, Nov. 8, a rare event, scientists from Williams College and the University of Arizona will be observing it from vantage points on earthbound mountains and with orbiting spacecraft. Among planets, only Mercury and Venus can go in transit across the face of the Sun, as seen from the Earth, since they are the only planets whose orbits are inside that of Earth's. Transits of Mercury occur a dozen times a century, most recently in 2003. The next won't occur until 2016."

Background includes, "Scientists have already used the 1999 transit of Mercury to unravel a centuries-old mystery known as the black-drop effect. (Their analysis was published in the journal Icarus and in the proceedings of an International Astronomical Union symposium on the transit of Venus.) This blurring of the distinction between a planet's silhouette and the edge of the Sun prevented accurate knowledge of the size of the solar system for hundreds of years. It had been seen at the very rare transits of Venus, which occur in pairs separated by over a century, and often falsely attributed to Venus's atmosphere. Pasachoff and Schneider, on the other hand, by observing and explaining a black-drop effect at a transit of Mercury observed from NASA's TRACE spacecraft, showed that no atmosphere was necessary, since Mercury's atmosphere is negligible and the spacecraft was outside Earth's atmosphere."

See more: NASA Eclipse Page and Transit of Venus Page

Parkinson's may include problems with touch

2006-10-19T05:06:00.000-07:00

News from an Emory University press release says that although Parkinson's disease is most commonly viewed as a "movement disorder," scientists have found that the disease also causes widespread abnormalities in touch and vision.

Scientists studying Parkinson's disease previously have focused on the brain's motor and premotor cortex, but not the somatosensory or the visual cortex. But Emory neurologist Krish Sathian had earlier discovered, through tests of tactile ability, that these patients have sensory problems with touch.

Dr. Sathian believes the study shows that the traditional boundaries between brain systems involved in touch and vision, and between those involved in sensation and movement, are artificial constructs that break down with more in-depth study. From a practical standpoint, it shows that patients with PD and other movement disorders have considerable problems in addition to movement control.

Scientific American Mind covers innovation

2006-10-08T07:35:00.000-07:00

In a new report in Scientific American Mind, writers Guenther Knoblich and Michael Oellinger cover "The Eureka Moment." They pose, .... "people who possess the least possible knowledge are in the best position to crack the case. And, ... "Yet although knowledge and experience in the problem area are indispensable, they can be a hindrance if they become so fixed that they block new ideas."

Read more by going to Scientific American Mind online, but you will need to buy a subscription to read the whole article - the publication is worth much more than the low price.

Hubble finds 16 extrasolar planet candidates

2006-10-08T05:20:00.000-07:00

I am intrigued by adventures and discovery in space, and this story attracted me. As I may have mentioned before, I hope to be an astrophysicist in my next life.

The European Space Agency says in a recent press release, "The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has discovered 16 extrasolar planet candidates that are orbiting a variety of distant stars. In accomplishing this, Hubble looked farther into our Milky Way galaxy than has ever successfully been done before in searching for extrasolar planets.

The Hubble observations reach all the way into the central bulge of our galaxy, 26,000 light-years away, or one-quarter the diameter of the Milky Way’s spiral disk.

This tally is consistent with the number of planets expected to be uncovered from such a distant survey, based on previous exoplanet detections made in our local solar neighbourhood that only encompasses six percent of the Milky Way’s disk.

Study looks at security wait time in airports

2006-09-26T05:19:00.000-07:00

I like how we study everything in the US with big studies at universities. Here is a study on security wait time in airports - seems mundane at first, but has some interesting facts including some socioeconomic factors.

A press release from Purdue says the "new study finds that people are willing to endure the wait for airport security screening, especially if delays are consistent among airports and at different times of day.

Findings also show that preferences vary between men and women, travelers in different income groups and other categories.

'The most fundamental finding was that wait time is important, but not the only major factor determining how well airline customers tolerate airport-security screening procedures,' said Fred Mannering, a professor of civil engineering at Purdue University. 'Another important finding is that passengers are more likely to be satisfied if wait times are consistent from airport to airport and at different times of day at the same airport.'

A paper detailing findings from the study appear in the Journal of Air Transportation Management.

The researchers used mathematical formulas in a "multinomial logit model" to calculate various probabilities based on data collected in national surveys. The surveys polled 828 air travelers in 2002 and 1,079 in 2003, after which the surveys were discontinued. The data were collected as part of the Omnibus Household Surveys, conducted every two months from January 2002 through October 2003 by the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

The new study, however, suggests that travelers be surveyed annually because customer preferences may vary drastically from year to year.

Some specific probabilities detailed in the research paper regarding 2003 survey results showed that:

• Men were 3.9 percent less likely than women to be satisfied with the speed of airport-security screening;
• Passengers with a four-year college degree or a master's degree were 23 percent more likely to be satisfied;
• People earning more than $75,000 per year were 5 percent more likely to be satisfied; and
• Customers indicating that they were reluctant to travel after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were 17.9 percent less likely to be satisfied."

Cancer genetic discovery breaks new ground

2006-09-09T04:35:00.000-07:00

It is only a matter of time until genetic discoveries help in the prevention of disease - predictive health.

According to a study published in Science and covered by Healthday, researchers have sequenced the genetic "blueprints" of two major cancer killers - breast and colon cancer.

Identifying nearly 200 genes thought responsible for these diseases, the work gives researchers new insight into these malignancies and lays the foundation for the gene-targeted therapies that may one day cure them."Only by understanding this blueprint of cancer will we be fully able to understand the mechanism of what makes a cancer a cancer and to think about strategies for diagnosis, prevention and therapy," explained Dr. Victor Velculescu at Johns Hopkins University's Kimmel Cancer Center.

Just as the human body has its genetic code, so, too, do cancer cells. "Work from the past two decades has shown us that cancer is a genetic disease," said Velculescu.

He explained that a malignancy occurs when specific genes in healthy cells undergo unhealthy mutations. He says that the research approach holds great promise for providing an understanding of the genomic contributions to cancer. A mutation is really like a typo in a blueprint that's 3 billion letters long, according to the researcher.

Velculescu's team outlined the findings in the Sept. 8 issue of the journal Science.

A new $100 million federal initiative, The Cancer Genome Atlas project, seeks to change all that by mapping the myriad genetic "typos" that cause specific tumor types to form. The project described in Science is the first major step in that effort, according to the Healthday coverage.

Berlin at night

2006-09-03T10:53:00.000-07:00

Take a look at photos from flickr: Berlin at night.

Orange juice for health

2006-08-31T05:00:00.000-07:00

Sometimes people chuckle over the simplicity of a study the federal government supports, but when you think about this finding it really supports empowering individuals to manage their health.

Researchers, using a grant from the National Institutes of Health [does not look like the orange juice industry was behind this from what I can tell], found that a daily glass of orange juice can help prevent the recurrence of kidney stones better than other citrus fruit juices such as lemonade.

The findings indicate that although many people assume that all citrus fruit juices help prevent the formation of kidney stones, not all have the same effect. The study can be found in Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

Press materials say that medically managing recurrent kidney stones requires dietary and lifestyle changes as well as treatment such as the addition of potassium citrate, which has been shown to lower the rate of new stone formation in patients with kidney stones.

Because some patients cannot tolerate potassium citrate because of gastrointestinal side effects, and in those cases, dietary sources of citrate, such as orange juice, may be considered as an alternative to pharmacological drugs.