Top 10 Future Food Sources

Future Food Sources

Credit: Joanne Q Escober via Flickr

 

Pills

For those of you who are not big on flavor, there is always food in pill form.  While a common detail in movies and books about the future, the ‘meal in a pill’ is actually already here, though probably not as you imagined it.

Researchers in the UK have developed a pill that provides the health benefits of eating a Mediterranean diet. According to the developers, each pill has the vitamins and minerals that you would get from eating six and a half pounds of tomatoes.

Memory-Erasing Drugs

Memory-Erasing Drugs Worries Are Overblown, Some Ethicists Say

Are ethicists' fears of memory manipulation drugs overblown? One researcher believes so and states his case praising memory altering research in this week's Nature commentary. CREDIT: Kreefax | Dreamstime View full size image

Memory-erasing drugs could do more than erase a bad memory; they could help treat mental ailments such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and one neuroethicist argues that these drugs should be developed and used, regardless of ethical concerns.

Though a magic bullet, erase-any-or-all-memory drug has yet to hit the market and is still decades away, scientists have made great strides in that direction, with one human trial under way for a drug called propranolol that can dampen post-traumatic-stress related negative memories. Other newly discovered brain pathways can be manipulated to ratchet memory up and down.

Icebergs Floated Solution for World's Water Woes

Solution for World's Water Woes

 

Credit: Dassault Systemes/Georges Mougin View full size image

"Iceberg, dead ahead!"

The cry that heralded the Titanic's doom may now signal hope for thirsty people around the world, if glaciologists and engineers can somehow harness flotillas of icebergs at the frozen corners of the Earth. Such a dream took a step forward recently when a French team simulated how to tow an iceberg from the Arctic to countries that need fresh drinking water.

Ambitions for making icebergs into the world's drinking fountains began with Saudi Prince Mohammed al Faisal in the 1970s. Al Faisal, nephew of Saudi Arabia's King Khalid, teamed up with French engineer Georges Mougin to create an ill-fated company based on tapping iceberg water. Since 2003, Mougin has resurrected the idea with the help of computer modeling from the French company Dassault Systemes.

X-Ray Microscope Enables Nanovision

X-Ray Microscope Enables Nanovision

Magnetic domains appear like the repeating swirls of fingerprint ridges. As the spaces between the domains get smaller, computer engineers can store more data. CREDIT: UC San Diego View full size image

Forget X-ray glasses. A new X-ray microscope can see details a small as a billionth of a meter — without even using a lens.

Instead, the new microscope uses a powerful computer program to convert patterns from X-rays bouncing off materials into images of objects as small as a one nanometer across, on the scale of a few atoms.

Unlike Superman's X-ray vision, which allows him to look through walls to see the bad guys beyond, the new technology could be used to look at different elements inside a material, or to image viruses, cells and tissue in great detail, said study researcher Oleg Shpyrko, a physicist at the University of California, San Diego. But one of the most important applications is in nano-sized engineering, Shpyrko said.

Why we're so fat

8 Reasons Our Waistlines Are Expanding

The government

Credit: dreamstime.com

In 1998, 29 million people suddenly became overweight without gaining an ounce. That summer, the U.S. government announced new guidelines lowering the threshold of what classifies a person as overweight. Previously, if your body mass index (BMI) was less than 28 for men, or 27 for women, you were considered "normal." Now only BMIs of 25 or below are considered healthy. (BMI is a ratio of weight to height, and is considered an indicator of how much body fat a person has.)

Sources of Vitamin D

9 Good Sources of Disease-Fighter Vitamin D

Credti: Jefferson Noguera | Stock Xchng

Sunlight: A whopping 80 percent or more of the vitamin D we need could come from the sun — if we let it. Sunscreen blocks about 97 percent of our body's vitamin D production, according to Dr. Mark Hyman, founder and medical director of the UltraWellness Center in Lenox, Mass. But we needn't endanger ourselves to take advantage of the sun's benefits: Fair-skinned people need less than 30 minutes of casual exposure on bright days to meet their daily requirement, while darker-skinned individuals need about two hours, Hyman said.

6 Ways to Eat More Fruits and Vegetables

Ways to Eat More Fruits and Vegetables

Credit: Robert Michie | Stock Xchng

The new food plate unveiled by the Department of Agriculture today (June 2) sends a clear message: eat more fruits and vegetables. Chances are, you've heard this message before. And chances are, you're guilty of not heeding it. But meeting the daily requirement for fruits and vegetables need not be such a struggle.

Here are six easy ways to get more of these important foods into your diet, according to Heather Mangieri, a nutrition consultant and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association.

Exercise Routine

How to Stick to an Exercise Routine

Many people struggle to adhere to an exercise routine. Researchers are beginning to unravel what makes us more likely to stick to a workout regime and what strategies we can employ to boost our willpower.

A key is having the confidence that you can do it, a new study shows. The researchers call this type of focused confidence "self-efficacy."

"You can apply the concept of self-efficacy to every single health behavior you can think of, because in many ways that really is what gets us through the day, gets us through the tough times," said Edward McAuley, a University of Illinois kinesiology and community health professor who led the research. "People who are more efficacious tend to approach more challenging tasks, work harder and stick with it even in the face of early failures."

Radiation Exposure

Human Body Might Adapt to Radiation Exposure

Doctors who are regularly exposed to X-ray radiation may undergo changes in their cells that protect them from the radiation they encounter, a new study suggests.

These physicians have higher levels of a particular antioxidant called glutathione inside their red blood cells than physicians who don't use X-rays regularly, the study showed. In addition, some of these cells may be better able to self-destruct, which would be protective if they turned cancerous.

However, it's still not clear whether these changes will be beneficial in the long run, or reduce the physicians' cancer risk, said study researcher Dr. Gian Luigi Russo, a senior research scientist at the National Research Council (CNR) in Pisa, Italy. Instead, these alterations might be early indicators of a disease, Russo said.

Fighting Aging?

Fighting Aging? Skip the Botox and Go for the Face Cream

View full size image

People might like you more if you don't have surgery or get injections to look younger, a new study suggests.

The results show that study participants felt more warmth toward a woman, and said she was less vain, if they were told she fought the signs of aging by staying out of the sun or using face cream than if they were told she had used the cosmetic drug Botox or had a face-lift.

"This is important because it shows that despite the emphasis on looking younger in society, there are possible negative social consequences to fighting the signs of aging," using more extreme methods, said study researcher Alison Chasteen, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto.

Vitamin D

D for Vitamin D

First of all, vitamin D is very important for bone health. Vitamin D enhances calcium absorption. Together they keep bones strong and prevent breakdown of bone. Vitamin D decreases our risk for osteoporosis. Low blood values of vitamin D have been associated with hip fractures, vertebral fractures, and wrist fractures. With adequate calcium and vitamin D in all ages of people, bone loss would be prevented as well as tooth loss.

The Fail Collection--PICS

FUN PICS!!

Great Photos

HAVE A LOOK!!

Silent Sound Technology- The Future of Communication

Silent Sound Technology

 

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where, no matter how much you blare on the phone, the receiver at the other end can never hear you. It may be a busy street, a crowded bus or even a late night party at the pub, the biggest issue while talking over the phone is one just can’t be loud enough. So does that mean you stop receiving any calls in a crowded place? (Image taken from http://wn.com)

5 Ways To Avoid Rain Diseases

Avoid Rain Diseases

Rain diseases are a common seasonal inconvenience. Just as the first showers hit the earth, everybody starts saying 'now we are going to get sick!' However, there are ways to avoid these diseases. The rains are unpredictable and it is only human to forget your rain apparel once in a while. That does not mean that you will have to become a victim of rain diseases. You can actually prevent sickness if you take a few simple measures.

 

Ordinary vegetables with extraordinary benefits

Ordinary vegetables with extraordinary benefits

We absolutely love veggies here and we do have our reasons. And once you read this list of veggies and why you must have them, we are sure you'll agree.

Here are 10 anytime vegetables that are easy to cook, delicious, add colour to any meal and most importantly - provide you with the best of nutrition required in our daily lives. Here they are: 10 vegetables with extraordinary benefits.

Top 10 Strangest Things in Space

Strangest Things in Space

Credit: Penn State U. /NASA-MSFC

Antimatter

Like Superman's alter-ego, Bizzaro, the particles making up normal matter also have opposite versions of themselves. An electron has a negative charge, for example, but its antimatter equivalent, the positron, is positive. Matter and antimatter annihilate each other when they collide and their mass is converted into pure energy by Einstein's equation E=mc2. Some futuristic spacecraft designs incorporate anti-matter engines.

Huge 'Ocean' Discovered Inside Earth

Huge 'Ocean' Discovered

 

Scientists scanning the deep interior of Earth have found evidence of a vast water reservoir beneath eastern Asia that is at least the volume of the Arctic Ocean.

The discovery marks the first time such a large body of water has found in the planet’s deep mantle.

The finding, made by Michael Wysession, a seismologist at Washington University in St. Louis, and his former graduate student Jesse Lawrence, now at the University of California, San Diego, will be detailed in a forthcoming monograph to be published by the American Geophysical Union.

Gravity: You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone

Gravity

It's all in your head

Credit: © Paul Simcock | Dreamstime.com

Gravity may be pretty consistent on Earth, but our perception of it isn't. According to research published in April 2011 in the journal PLoS ONE, people are better at judging how objects fall when they're sitting upright versus lying on their sides.

The finding means that our perception of gravity may be less based on visual cues of gravity's real direction and more rooted in the orientation of the body. The findings may lead to new strategies to help astronauts deal with microgravity in space.

Weird! Our Universe May Be a 'Multiverse,' Scientists Say

Our Universe May Be a 'Multiverse,'

 

Is our universe just one of many? While the concept is bizarre, it's a real possibility, according to scientists who have devised the first test to investigate the idea.

The potential that we live in a multiverse arises from a theory called eternal inflation, which posits that shortly after the Big Bang that formed the universe, space-time expanded at different rates in different places, giving rise to bubble universes that may function with their own separate laws of physics.

Infinity Symbol Found at Center of Milky Way

Infinity Symbol

New image of a ring of gas and dust that lies at the center of the Milky Way. The ring has an unexplained twist in it. ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech

A twisted ring of gas stretching more than 600 light-years across the heart of the Milky Way galaxy has  been observed in its entirety for the first time. The gaseous ring, which gives birth to new stars, has a kink in the middle, such that it looks like a cosmic infinity symbol.

Parts of the ring have been seen before, but the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Telescope has just made unprecedented observations of the whole structure. The Herschel spacecraft is specially suited to peer into the Milky Way's center because it detects infrared and sub-millimeter light, which can penetrate through the dust hovering between here and there.

Missing 'Island' Floating In Earth's Atmosphere

Missing 'Island'

Illustration of the floating island of Laputa, a strange land in Jonathan Swift's 'Guliver's Travels.' CREDIT: Public domain image

A floating "island" is at large somewhere in the Earth's atmosphere.

The 23-foot-wide, helium-filled model of a desert island was constructed by two artists for a festival in Cambridgeshire, England. Tethered by ropes, it hovered above a lake on the grounds of the Secret Garden Party festival until the wee hours of July 24, when vandals let it loose. Reminiscent of the airborne island of Laputa in "Gulliver's Travels," it floated away.

Based on meteorological data, the inflatable's creators say "Is Land," as they call their art piece, may be hovering in the troposphere above the Czech Republic by now. They've asked for help retrieving it via their website.

Earth's Surface 'Recycled' Surprisingly Quickly

Earth's Surface 'Recycled'

The volcanic islands of Hawaii are thought to be fueled by a plume of hot rock that moves upward from the lower portions of the Earth's mantle. CREDIT: NASA

The ground we stand on seems permanent and unchanging, but the rocks that make up Earth's crust are actually subject to a cycle of birth and death that changes our planet's surface over eons. Now scientists have found evidence that this cycle is quicker than thought: 500 million years instead of 2 billion.

The tectonic plates that make up Earth's crust are constantly jostling against each other: brushing past one another in some places, moving apart in other areas, and butting head-on in still other places.

Coffee's Mysterious Benefits Mount

Coffee's Mysterious

Scientists have yet to determine what compounds are responsible for coffee's weird -but wonderful- health benefits. Credit: sxc.hu

From lowered cancer risks to a sharper memory, more studies are showing that coffee is good for you – but why?

Regular coffee drinkers have a 39 percent decreased risk of head and neck cancer, according to a new study published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. Those who drank an estimated four or more cups a day had significantly fewer cancers of the mouth and throat than non coffee drinkers, the study found.

Four Cups of Coffee a Day Slash Diabetes Risk in Half

Cups of Coffee a Day Slash Diabetes

Credit: Dreamstime

Drinking four cups of coffee every day can decrease a woman's risk of developing Type 2 diabetes by more than half, according to a new study.

And the researchers say they've uncovered the reason why the new findings and other research have suggested a link between java and diabetes. They found that coffee raises the amount of sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) in the blood, and higher levels of SHBG are known to lower the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.

It's likely something in the coffee besides the caffeine — or something about coffee drinkers that confers these protective effects, said James D. Lane, an associate research professor at Duke University Medical Center, who was not involved with the study.

Can Eating Less at Breakfast Help You Lose Weight?

Lose Weight

Credit: Dreamstime

We've heard time and time again about the importance of eating breakfast but a new study suggests cutting back on what you eat in the morning might help you eat less during the rest of your waking hours.

The results show that, the more calories people eat at breakfast, the higher their total daily calorie intake is. This finding was true of both obese and normal weight people.

Participants ate around 500 to 550 calories for lunch and dinner, regardless of how much they ate for breakfast — it didn't matter whether they skipped it entirely or had a hearty morning meal, the researchers said.

Vitamin D Levels Don't Decline During Progression of Parkinson's Disease: Study

Parkinson's Disease: Study

People recently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease are more likely than healthy people to have vitamin D insufficiency, but their vitamin D levels don't appear to decline during the progression of the disease as was previously thought, according to a new study.

At the beginning of the study, 69.4 percent of people with recently diagnosed Parkinson's disease had vitamin D insufficiency and 26.1 percent of people had vitamin D deficiency. (Vitamin D insufficiency was defined as having less than 30 nanograms of vitamin D per milliliter of blood, and vitamin D deficiency was defined as having less than 20 nanograms of vitamin D per milliliter of blood.)

5 Surprising Ways to Be Heart Healthy

Surprising Ways to Be Heart Healthy

Credit: sockexpert

Live away from the freeway

The sound of horns, sirens and noisy trucks may take a toll on your blood vessels, according to a recent study that found an association between traffic noise and risk of stroke.

The results, based on surveys of more than 51,000 people in Denmark, showed that for every 10-decibel increase in noise level, the risk of stroke increased by 14 percent. For those over 65, the risk of stroke increased 27 percent.

For Smokers, Vitamins Don't Cancel Out Harmful Habit

Vitamins Don't Cancel Out Harmful Habit

Credit: Sonbeam | Dreamstime

Taking vitamins gives smokers a false sense of safety when it comes to their health, a new study shows.

Smokers who took multivitamins believed they were reducing their risk of cancer, and therefore allowed themselves to smoke more, the study said.

"Smokers who take dietary supplements can fool themselves into thinking they are protected against cancer and other diseases," lead author Wen-Bin Chiou, of the National Sun Yat-Sen University in Taiwan, said in a statement.

A Hair-Raising Discovery: New Compound Regrows Hair

Hair-Raising Discovery

If you stress out so much  that your hair falls out, there could be hope for you — researchers have developed a compound that induces hair growth in mice by blocking a stress hormone, a new study has found.

Researchers found that mice engineered to overproduce a certain stress hormone were born bald, but grew back their hair when they were given a shot of the chemical compound astressin-B. When researchers gave the mice one shot a day for five days, their hair regrowth lasted four months, according to the study.

4 Common Skin Woes, and How to Fix Them

4 Common Skin Woes

To trim extra fat from the body, experts say exercise and a healthy, balanced diet is the best solution. But for cosmetic imperfections, like cellulite, spider veins and skin discoloration, the solution is less obvious.

Creams that claim to have a quick fix aren't always effective, and many times they just cover up the appearance of things like cellulite, said Dr. Shasa Hu, an assistant professor of dermatology at the University of Miami in Florida.

Hu explains why we get these common imperfections, and the best ways to be rid of them (or at least disguise them) in time for beach season.

The 5 Smartest Non-Primates on the Planet

Smartest Non-Primates on the Planet

 

A mother pig with piglet. Credit: Agricultural Research Service

Pigs

As it turns out, being piggy is actually a pretty smart tactic — pigs are probably the most intelligent domesticated animal on the planet. Although their raw intelligence is most likely commensurate with a dog or cat, their problem-solving abilities top those of felines and canine pals.

One study showed that domestic pigs can quickly learn how mirrors work and will use their understanding of reflected images to scope out their surroundings for food. The researchers cannot yet say whether the animals realize that the eyes in the mirror are their own, or whether pigs might rank with apes, dolphins and other species that have passed the famed “mirror self-recognition test” thought to be a marker of self-awareness and advanced intelligence.

Why is Quartz Used in Watches?

Why is Quartz Used in Watches?

 

Quartz, made up of silica and oxygen, is one of the most common minerals on Earth. Billions of people use quartz every day, but few realize it because the tiny crystals they use are hidden in their watches and clocks. But what do the clear or whitish crystal rocks found all over the world have to do with timekeeping?

How Are Fake Diamonds Made?

Fake Diamonds

Diamond particles are embedded in the teeth of this saw. Credit: Dreamstime

Diamonds are one of the world's most valuable commodities, the planet's hardest substance and perhaps the most symbolic expression of love and commitment found in nature. Except when they aren't.

While real diamonds form deep within the earth during geological processes spanning billions of years, so-called fake, or manmade, diamonds can be whipped up in a laboratory in no time at all, yet they look and act remarkably similar.

Why Do Batteries Go Bad?

Why Do Batteries Go Bad?

Credit: Morrhigan | sxc.hu

There's a reason behind that expiration date on a fresh package of batteries. Because batteries generate energy using a chemical reaction contained inside the battery cell, they use up energy, even if they haven't yet been snapped inside a remote control or toy.

Most batteries have a long shelf life that varies depending on their type and size, but they weaken over time due to the way they're constructed. Each battery contains electrodes, which are strips of metal tape coated with an oxide (a combination of oxygen and another chemical element) and rolled up like a jelly roll. Certain parts of batteries corrode over time, leaving them less effective or completely unusable.

How Does a Virus Infect Your Computer?

Virus Infect Your Computer

Though they're not a living thing like you and me, computers can get "sick" from viruses, too.

A computer virus is a software program designed to replicate itself and spread to other machines. In most cases, the program is "malicious," meaning its purpose is to cause the computer malfunction in some way.

In general usage, the term "computer virus" includes all forms of "malware," or malicious software.

Instead of sniffles and a fever, some common symptoms of a computer viral infection are slow performance, data loss and system crashes, all of which can make people using the machine feel ill as well.

Why Do Computers Crash?

Why Do Computers Crash?

 

It turns out that humans are to blame for computer crashes. These involuntary shutdowns typically result from glitches in software – code written by human programmers.

“This code can contain many, many bugs, and these bugs can manifest themselves every now and then to cause program crashes,” said Junfeng Yang, professor of computer science at Columbia University.

Software such as Microsoft Word contains code that gives the computer a set of instructions to, say, store data in a certain place. But if one of the memory cells is corrupt (for example, contains a scratch), and the computer doesn’t know what to do, it freezes up or crashes.

How Do Calculators Calculate?

How Do Calculators Calculate?

Electric currents, transistors and logic gates work together to put two and two together inside a calculator. Credit: sxc.hu

When you and I calculate two plus two, we imagine a number line, start at two and hop over a couple of spots to get to four (or at least we did until we memorized the answer). Simple — so simple, in fact, that "putting two and two together" is an analogy for deducing something obvious.

But what if you can't imagine a number line? What if you're a little, gray, button-covered box full of electrons? How, then, do you calculate that two plus two equals four?

The process itself is not so simple, but once you understand how this basic arithmetic operation works in a calculator, you can "put two and two together" as to how it performs much more complicated calculations.

How Are Voicemails Hacked?

How Are Voicemails Hacked?

 

Voicemail hacking is surprisingly easy — for low-brow tabloids desperate for stories, temptingly so.

Most mobile networks assign a default PIN (personal identification number) to customers that allows them to access their voicemail messages from anywhere. A cellphone user can simply dial his or her own phone number from another phone, let it go to voicemail, enter the PIN and listen away. Most users don't change their PIN from the default, and so hackers often need only dial in to a hacking victim's voicemail inbox remotely and try the handful of default PINs assigned by the major networks. Some networks use a generic number, such as 0000. Others use the last four digits of the corresponding phone number.

Can Animals Predict Earthquakes?

Can Animals Predict Earthquakes?

BEIJING (AP) - First, the water level in a pond inexplicably plunged. Then, thousands of toads appeared on streets in a nearby province. Finally, just hours before China's worst earthquake in three decades, animals at a local zoo began acting strangely.

As bodies are pulled from the wreckage of Monday's quake, Chinese online chat rooms and blogs are buzzing with a question: Why didn't these natural signs alert the government that a disaster was coming?

"If the seismological bureau were professional enough they could have predicted the earthquake ten days earlier, when several thousand cubic meters of water disappeared within an hour in Hubei, but the bureau there dismissed it,'' one commentator wrote.

What If Everyone On Earth Jumped at Once?

What If Everyone On Earth Jumped at Once?

If we all jumped at once, we could move the Earth a tiny bit. Credit: sxc.hu

There are roughly 7 billion people on Earth, with a total weight of approximately 800 billion pounds (363 billion kg). What if we all jumped at once?

Because people are spread somewhat equally around the planet's spherical surface, if we all jumped in place, nothing much would happen — all our lift-offs and impacts would, in effect, cancel each other out, resulting in zero net force on the Earth, according to work by physicist Rhett Allain.

Where Did Earth's Water Come From?

Where Did Earth's Water Come From?

The exact origin of our planet's water, which covers about 70 percent of Earth's surface, is still a mystery to scientists. Many researchers think that, instead of water forming at the same time as Earth, objects in the outer solar system delivered water to Earth in violent collisions shortly after its formation.

10 Medical Myths that Just Won't Go Away

Medical Myths that Just Won't Go Away

Myth: Vaccines can cause the flu (and autism).

While the body can react to any shot with a low-grade fever, rumors that a flu shot can cause the flu are "an outright lie," said Dr. Rachel Vreeman, co-author of “Don't Swallow Your Gum! Myths, Half-Truths, and Outright Lies about Your Body and Health” (St. Martin's Griffin, 2009).

10 Weird Things Humans Do

Weird Things Humans Do

Credit: naraosga | sxc.hu

Cry

How odd that sadness causes water to spill from our eyes! Among all animals, we alone cry tears of emotion.

Not only do they serve the purpose of communicating feelings of distress, scientists believe tears also carry certain undesirable hormones and other proteins that are produced during periods of stress out of the body, which may explain the cathartic effect of "a good cry."

Lose Weight Smartly: 7 Little-Known Tricks that Shave Pounds

7 Little-Known Tricks that Shave Pounds

Credit: Aprescindere | Dreamstime

Say no to numbers

When the ingredient list on packaged food includes numbers, put it down. Ingredients that include numbers as part of their names usually identify an item as a "convenience food" that’s full of fat and preservatives, said Dr. Carson Liu, a Los Angeles-based bariatric surgeon.

"If you're trying to lose weight, it's very, very difficult to do so with processed foods," Liu said, “because they have so many carbs, sugars and hidden ingredients."

Move It: Sitting Boosts Your Risk of Chronic Diseases

Sitting Boosts Your Risk of Chronic Diseases

Credit: Dreamstime

An inactive lifestyle may put you at risk for chronic diseases, even if you find time to hit the gym, researchers say.

"If people spend the majority of their time sitting, even with regular periods of exercise, they are still at greater risk for chronic diseases," said John Thyfault, assistant professor of nutrition and physiology at the University of Missouri. "If people can add some regular movement into their routines throughout the day, they will feel better and be less susceptible to health problems."

6 Foods That Are Good for Your Brain

Foods That Are Good for Your Brain

Credit: Andrzej Gdula | Stock Xchng

Walnuts

They even look like little brains, so maybe that's Mother Nature's way of telling us what walnuts are good for.

Indeed, a 2009 study in the Journal of Nutrition found that diets in which nuts made up as little as 2 percent reversed signs of aging in the brains of old rats, including the ability of the brain to function and process information.