Rapid H.I.V. Home Test Wins Federal Approval

OraSure Technologies, via Associated Press
The OraQuick test uses a mouth swab and gives users results at home in 20 to 40 minutes.
 
After decades of controversy, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new H.I.V. test on Tuesday that for the first time makes it possible for Americans to learn in the privacy of their homes whether they are infected.

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Kymatica (2009)

Evolution is a term to define only one organism and that’s the self. The self is the universe, the self is the alpha and omega, god, and infinity, and that’s the only thing that evolves because we are all part of the self. Nothing goes through an evolutionary process alone or without direct benefit to the whole. So when you begin to think that there’s this controlling elite, this controlling hand behind the curtains leading the planet to destruction…
When you think the end is near, the apocalypse, Armageddon, and when you think we as a species are doomed, it is not they, it is you that brought this about, and for a very good reason. You are evolving. Stop blaming everybody and everything else. Quit panicking about global tyranny and natural disaster and pay attention, because the world is telling you something; it’s tell you exactly what is wrong with you and how to fix it. (Excerpt from the film)

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COULD A MOUTHWASH DO AWAY WITH DENTAL VISITS?

One dental researcher thinks he's found a way to permanently stave off the cavity-causing bacteria that lead to expensive and costly trips to the dentist.

Wenyuan Shi of the University of California, Los Angeles, has led efforts to develop a mouthwash with technology that kills Streptococcus mutans, the bacteria responsible for cavities.

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Can a wristband make you thin? Jawbone's electric nagging bracelet might just do the trick

Jawbone's Up has a motion sensor that tracks how you sleep, how much exercise you do - and even tells you when you've been sitting still for too long

Jawbone are best known for their barely-there Bluetooth headsets - but their new product, the Up wristband, has much loftier goals. 

The £80 wristband tracks your eating habits, sleep and exercise - syncing with an app in your phone to offer advice about how to be healthier. 

From the moment it gets you up - by vibrating at the 'best' possible moment according to your sleep patterns - the machine monitors everything you do, prompting you to get up and move if you've been sat still, and even to 'log' everything you eat.

It's like having a nagging personal trainer who never goes away, and never shut up.

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Mummifying Alan: Egypt's Last Secret

It is a mystery that has baffled scientists for centuries: how were the Ancient Egyptians able to perfectly preserve their pharaohs for millennia?

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German forest boy is telling the truth, say police

The story of an English–speaking boy who emerged after five years living in a German forest is "credible" and his accent may prove the key to establishing his true identity, German police said.

The boy, 17, told police that his father had died and
he had buried him in a shallow grave in the woods

“His story is highly unusual and raises some questions,” a police spokesman told The Daily Telegraph. “But we believe it is credible – that is why we are investigating.”
The teenager, who gave his name only as Ray, turned up at Berlin’s City Hall on Sept 5 claiming to have been living in the forest with his father for five years.

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10 Symptoms He Shouldn't Ignore

Whenever I get sick, I have a conversation with my wife, Rachelle, that goes like this:

Her: “How are you doing?”
Me: “Fine.”
Her: “Are you sure?”

She just doesn’t trust me when I tell her nothing is wrong—a lack of faith she claims dates to an illness early in our marriage. “You wouldn’t take aspirin because you wanted to see how high your temperature could go,” she recalls. “It was the stupidest reason you ever gave me for not taking care of yourself.”

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The Sleepless Elite

Why some people can run on little sleep and get so much done

For a small group of people -- perhaps just 1% to 3% of the population -- sleep is a waste of time.
Natural "short sleepers," as they're officially known, are night owls and early birds simultaneously. They typically turn in well after midnight, then get up just a few hours later and barrel through the day without needing to take naps or load up on caffeine.

They are also energetic, outgoing, optimistic and ambitious, according to the few researchers who have studied them. The pattern sometimes starts in childhood and often runs in families.
While it's unclear if all short sleepers are high achievers, they do have more time in the day to do things, and keep finding more interesting things to do than sleep, often doing several things at once.
Nobody knows how many natural short sleepers are out there. "There aren't nearly as many as there are people who think they're short sleepers," says Daniel J. Buysse, a psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and a past president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, a professional group.
Out of every 100 people who believe they only need five or six hours of sleep a night, only about five people really do, Dr. Buysse says. The rest end up chronically sleep deprived, part of the one-third of U.S. adults who get less than the recommended seven hours of sleep per night, according to a report last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

To date, only a handful of small studies have looked at short sleepers -- in part because they're hard to find. They rarely go to sleep clinics and don't think they have a disorder.

Normal Sleeper Most adults have normal sleep needs, functioning best with 7 to 9 hours of sleep, and about two-thirds of Americans regularly get it. Children fare better with 8 to 12 hours, and elderly people may need only 6 to 7. Wannabe Short Sleeper One-third of Americans are sleep-deprived, regularly getting less than 7 hours a night, which puts them at higher risk of diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and other health problems. Short Sleeper Short sleepers, about 1% to 3% of the population, function well on less than 6 hours of sleep without being tired during the day. They tend to be unusually energetic and outgoing. Geneticists who spotted a gene variation in short sleepers were able to replicate it in mice -- which needed less sleep than usual, too.

A few studies have suggested that some short sleepers may have hypomania, a mild form of mania with racing thoughts and few inhibitions. "These people talk fast. They never stop. They're always on the up side of life," says Dr. Buysse. He was one of the authors of a 2001 study that had 12 confirmed short sleepers and 12 control subjects keep diaries and complete numerous questionnaires about their work, sleep and living habits.One survey dubbed "Attitude for Life" that was actually a test for hypomania. The natural short sleepers scored twice as high as the controls.
There is currently no way people can teach themselves to be short sleepers. Still, scientists hope that by studying short sleepers, they can better understand how the body regulates sleep and why sleep needs vary so much in humans.
"My long-term goal is to someday learn enough so we can manipulate the sleep pathways without damaging our health," says human geneticist Ying-Hui Fu at the University of California-San Francisco. "Everybody can use more waking hours, even if you just watch movies."
Dr. Fu was part of a research team that discovered a gene variation, hDEC2, in a pair of short sleepers in 2009. They were studying extreme early birds when they noticed that two of their subjects, a mother and daughter, got up naturally about 4 a.m. but also went to bed past midnight.
Genetic analyses spotted one gene variation common to them both. The scientists were able to replicate the gene variation in a strain of mice and found that the mice needed less sleep than usual, too.

News of their finding spurred other people to write the team, saying they were natural short sleepers and volunteering to be studied. The researchers are recruiting more candidates and hope to find more gene variations they have in common.

That All-Nighter Feels Good -- Temporarily Sleep deprivation makes most people grumpy. It's sometimes used as a form of torture. Oddly enough, it can also bring on temporary euphoria, according to a study in the journal Neuroscience last month. Researchers had 14 healthy young adults stay up all night and all the next day and then compared their reactions with 13 subjects who had slept normally. In one test, sleepless subjects asked to rate a series of images uniformly saw them as more pleasant or positive. "We saw this strange lopsided shift," says lead author Matthew Walker, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of California-Berkeley. Brain scans also showed that the subjects who had pulled all-nighters had heightened activity in the mesolimbic pathway, a brain circuit driven by dopamine, a neurotransmitter that typically regulates feelings of pleasure, addiction and cravings. The boost of dopamine after an all-nighter may help explain why sleep deprivation can alleviate major depression in about 60% of patients, although the effect is only temporary. "As soon as they get recovery sleep, all that mood elevation is lost," says Dr. Walker. Could the sleep-deprived brain be somehow compensating for the lack of downtime with a surge of dopamine to keep on going? Scientists don't yet know. Earlier studies have also shown that sleep deprivation amplifies activity in the amygdala, the primitive emotional center of the brain, and reduces it the prefrontal cortex, where higher, more rational thought occurs. It may be that the brain reverts to a more basic mode of operating when it is sleep deprived, Dr. Walker speculates. Alternatively, he says, "we know that different parts of the brain are more sensitive than others to sleep deprivation. It may be that the prefrontal cortex just goes down first." Although the feelings of euphoria sound great, Dr. Walker warns that operating more on emotion than reason can be very risky. "You are all gas pedal and no brake," he says. That can be dangerous, indeed, if you are in a job that requires both long hours and difficult decision making.

Potential candidates for the gene study are sent multiple questionnaires and undergo a long structured phone interview. Those who make the initial screening wear monitors to track their sleep patterns at home. Christopher Jones, a University of Utah neurologist and sleep scientist who oversees the recruiting, says there is one question that is more revealing than anything else: When people do have a chance to sleep longer, on weekends or vacation, do they still sleep only five or six hours a night? People who sleep more when they can are not true short sleepers, he says.
To date, Dr. Jones says he has identified only about 20 true short sleepers, and he says they share some fascinating characteristics. Not only are their circadian rhythms different from most people, so are their moods (very upbeat) and their metabolism (they're thinner than average, even though sleep deprivation usually raises the risk of obesity). They also seem to have a high tolerance for physical pain and psychological setbacks.
"They encounter obstacles, they just pick themselves up and try again," Dr. Jones says.
Some short sleepers say their sleep patterns go back to childhood and some see the same patterns starting in their own kids, such as giving up naps by age 2. As adults, they gravitate to different fields, but whatever they do, they do full bore, Dr. Jones says.

"Typically, at the end of a long, structured phone interview, they will admit that they've been texting and surfing the Internet and doing the crossword puzzle at the same time, all on less than six hours of sleep," says Dr. Jones. "There is some sort of psychological and physiological energy to them that we don't understand."
Drs. Jones and Fu stress that there is no genetic test for short sleeping. Ultimately, they expect to find that many different genes play a role, which may in turn reveal more about the complex systems that regulate sleep in humans.
Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Leonardo da Vinci were too busy to sleep much, according to historical accounts. Winston Churchill and Thomas Edison came close but they were also fond of taking naps, which may disqualify them as true short sleepers.
Nowadays, some short sleepers gravitate to fields like blogging, videogame design and social media, where their sleep habits come in handy. "If I could find a way to do it, I'd never sleep," says Dave Hatter, a software developer in Fort Wright, Ky. He typically sleeps just four to five hours a night, up from two to three hours a few years ago.
"It's crazy, but it works for me," says Eleanor Hoffman, an overnight administrator at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York who would rather spend afternoons playing mahjong with friends than sleep anymore than four hours. Sometimes she calls her cousin, Linda Cohen, in Pittsburgh about 4 a.m., since she knows she'll be wide awake as well -- just like they were as kids.
"I come to life about 11 at night," says Mrs. Cohen, who owns a chain of toy stores with her husband and gets up early in the morning with ease. "If I went to bed earlier, I'd feel like half my life was missing."
Are you a short sleeper? For more information on the genetic study, contact Dr. Jones at chris.jones@hsc.utah.edu
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Are you a health food junkie? How a dangerously obsessive quest for the perfect body has become the new middle-class eating disorder

We all know the type. They never let wheat, yeast or dairy pass their lips. They’ve cut out alcohol and caffeine. They’re obsessed with healthy eating — yet every day, they look more unwell and unhappier.
These are the symptoms of a condition called ‘orthorexia’ by dieticians. It is, apparently, on the increase — particularly in professional women in their 30s.
Orthorexia was coined in 1997 by Californian doctor Steven Bratman in his book Health Food Junkies, and means ‘correct appetite’ (from the Greek orthos for right and orexis for appetite). It is a fixation with eating ‘pure’ food that, far from doing you good, can become so extreme that it leads to malnutrition, chronic ill health and depression.

'Healthy' eating: But obsessing about eating a low fat diet can be bad for you (posed by model)

Plenty of celebrities are secret long-term orthorexics, passing off their limited diet of sashimi or steamed broccoli as ‘getting in shape for a part’.
But they’re not the only ones. Many of us have fallen into the same trap, believing that the more ‘bad’ foods we cut out, the healthier we’ll be. But it’s the start of a slippery slope.
And it doesn’t just stop at food — orthorexics are often gym bunnies, who’ll work out for two hours and then go for a ten-mile run.
The grim truth is that this level of health obsession is a potentially dangerous form of self-control. And it’s increasingly prevalent.
‘Women are much more likely today to become exercise and diet-addicted because of our celebrity-obsessed culture and the pressure to be  slim,’ says Lucy Jones of the British Dietetic Association.

‘While this condition is not as dangerous as anorexia, any obsession that cuts out entire food groups can lead to long-term health damage  such as a lack of bone density,  heart attacks, strokes and diabetes.’
It’s more difficult to spot than anorexia or bulimia because sufferers can simply insist that they’re ‘look-ing after themselves’, or ‘have a  wheat intolerance’.
But when the desire to be healthy moves from avoidance of junk food to a fear of perfectly healthy food groups such as dairy, carbs or wheat, it’s a warning sign of orthorexia.
‘I’ve always had a difficult relationship with food,’ says Judith Fine, 34, a freelance PA from Solihull.

Cost of living

The typical woman spends £336 a year on beauty products and £228 on vitamins and the gym

‘In my early 20s, I was diagnosed as coeliac, meaning I’m gluten intolerant. My allergy to wheat gave me such violent stomach cramps that I often felt faint.
‘At the time, I weighed 10st, but because I had to cut out so many different foods — bread, pulses and oat-based products — my weight fell to 6st 9lb in just three months, which was dangerously low for my height  of 5ft 3in.’
Judith realised she was becoming gaunt and her family feared she could be anorexic, so she attempted to add more foods to her diet.
‘But the fear of going back up to 10st has never left me,’ she says. ‘I used to be a classic pear shape. As the weight fell off, I looked so much better in clothes. I am now extremely disciplined about what I eat.’
While most of us might cut out potatoes or cake for a while to lose a few pounds, Judith eats only ‘pure’ food, containing no additives or fat.
‘If you put a roast dinner in front of me I’d feel faint,’ she says. ‘I couldn’t bear having so much food on my plate.
‘I never have cream, chips or bread. My typical day’s diet would be fat-free cereal for breakfast with skimmed milk and a black coffee or tea. I never use sugar or salt.
‘For lunch, I’d have plain salad, without dressing, followed by fresh fruit. Dinner is the same, with a piece of tuna, skinned chicken or a slice of lean meat.’
Though Judith is now 8st, she can’t simply relax and enjoy a balanced diet or an occasional treat. ‘I can’t bear any food that would bloat me. If you put fatty food in front of me I’d feel panic-stricken,’ she says.
‘I’ve been told I’m running the risk of arthritis or osteoporosis. My periods stopped for 18 months, too, and I often feel tired.’

Limited diet: Jodie Hart's three meals a day

But despite these disturbing warning signs, she admits she is committed to her extreme lifestyle.
‘Until recently, I put in two 90-minute sessions at the gym every day. While I’ve stopped going twice a day, I still go  daily and also run up to five miles  three times a week. I live on the buzz of endorphins.’
Judith’s obsession is not only affecting her health, it’s also having an impact on her relationship.
‘My boyfriend Mike, 44, is concerned about me. He says that I need more protein because I exercise so much.’
She insists on eating separately from him and, most worryingly, she says: ‘I don’t think I’ll have children because I’d feel out of control — I couldn’t bear not being able to go to the gym.
‘Yes, I do see how obsessive I’m being, but I am addicted to being slim and healthy.’
Sadly, she doesn’t see the irony in her statement. And she’s not alone. Karen Norris, 26, a nutritionist and personal trainer from Cambridge, has been orthorexic since her early 20s, when she cut out sugar, saturated fat and wheat, and began training.
‘I’m obsessed with my body and the food I put into it,’ she says. ‘I see food only as fuel — never as a treat — and I exercise compulsively.’
Karen’s daily diet is oats and blue- berries for breakfast, a few almonds as a snack, chicken or fish with salad for lunch and the same for dinner.
‘I also have protein drinks to build up my muscles,’ she says. ‘I’ve given up caffeine and drink lots of water. I try to eat little and often rather than three set meals. Occasionally I drink alcohol, but that’s a rare treat.’

Unfit for life

Six out of ten Britons say they would not be motivated to exercise -
even if their lives depended on it

Karen doesn’t believe she’s alone in her extreme behaviour.
‘More and more women of my age are becoming obsessed with health and fitness,’ she says.
‘I do at least an hour a day’s weight training, plus an hour’s cardio session. My body relies on the adrenalin rush and the endorphins that exercise releases, so if I don’t fulfil my craving, I feel anxious and angry.
‘I can’t bear the idea of putting on fat — I just can’t handle the thought of my body looking less then perfect.’
Yet despite her obsession, Karen doesn’t see herself as suffering from an eating disorder.
‘I look at what I eat as an experiment,’ she says. ‘It’s amazing how you can control how you look by exactly what you put into your body.
‘I would never eat biscuits or cakes, and fruit also bloats you, so I tend to avoid it. I don’t have children, so I can concentrate on myself and my body.’
Orthorexia seems to be a particular danger for women who have the time to focus on themselves and the way they look. For busy mothers, such a strict regime would be impossible, but for singletons, the quest for the perfect body can become an over-riding — and perhaps self-indulgent — passion.
‘This year, I stopped eating wheat, gluten, salt, sugar, caffeine and alcohol,’ says Jodie Hart, 24, from South London,  who is single and works in PR.
‘I wanted to get fit to run a marathon, so I’m running up to 12 miles three times a week. I’m also going to the gym three or four times a week for 90-minute sessions. I’ve lost so much weight — close to a stone — that people are beginning to worry about me.
‘Just recently, a colleague said: ‘‘You’re far too skinny.’’ But the more the weight drops off me, the better I feel.’
Unlike Karen and Judith, Jodie is able to admit she is orthorexic.
‘I clearly have the symptoms,’ she says. ‘I’ve started getting up at 6.30am to go running before work.
‘During the day I often feel exhausted. But once you’re locked on to a regime like this you feel powerless to stop.
‘My family and friends are worried about me, but I’m thrilled with my new physique and get a buzz out of being able to control my body. It’s easy to get hooked on the adrenalin.’
Jodie has controlled her food intake to the point of retraining her brain to reject anything she considers unhealthy.
‘I live on fresh fruit, salad, steamed vegetables and fish. I don’t eat fat at all,’ she says.
‘I can no longer bear the thought of eating anything like a doughnut or chocolate biscuits.
‘For breakfast, I have a bowl of fresh fruit. Lunch is soup or a bowl of salad, and the same for dinner. It is repetitious, but I am so proud that I can discipline myself in this way.’
In the same way anorexics swap tips on avoiding food, orthorexics set goals to keep themselves going. Jodie plans to run the Berlin Marathon this summer, even though she admits her punishing training regime leaves her exhausted.
‘Recently, when my mum saw me, she was really shocked,’ says Jodie.
‘She said: ‘‘You’re losing too much weight too quickly. You’re pushing yourself too hard.’’
‘The trouble is that once you start living like this, it’s very hard to stop.’
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Self Regression. Who were you in a Past Life?

First you need to save all three video's to you playlist so that they run continuously. I have tried this myself several times now and found it absolutely fascinating. It just seems to get better each time I do the regression. If it doesn't work for you the first time then please try again. Some of my friends said that they were a bit apprehensive the first time so it didn't work but has worked every time after that.
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Telomerase reverses ageing process

Dramatic rejuvenation of prematurely aged mice hints at potential therapy.

Ewen Callaway

 

Protecting chromosome tips doesn't just prevent ageing. It can reverse it. 

Peter Lansdorp/Visuals Unlimited/Corbis

Premature ageing can be reversed by reactivating an enzyme that protects the tips of chromosomes, a study in mice suggests.
Mice engineered to lack the enzyme, called telomerase, become prematurely decrepit. But they bounced back to health when the enzyme was replaced. The finding, published online today in Nature¹, hints that some disorders characterized by early ageing could be treated by boosting telomerase activity.
It also offers the possibility that normal human ageing could be slowed by reawakening the enzyme in cells where it has stopped working, says Ronald DePinho, a cancer geneticist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, who led the new study. "This has implications for thinking about telomerase as a serious anti-ageing intervention."
Other scientists, however, point out that mice lacking telomerase are a poor stand-in for the normal ageing process. Moreover, ramping up telomerase in humans could potentially encourage the growth of tumours.

Eternal youth

After its discovery in the 1980s, telomerase gained a reputation as a fountain of youth. Chromosomes have caps of repetitive DNA called telomeres at their ends. Every time cells divide, their telomeres shorten, which eventually prompts them to stop dividing and die. Telomerase prevents this decline in some kinds of cells, including stem cells, by lengthening telomeres, and the hope was that activating the enzyme could slow cellular ageing.
Two decades on, researchers are realizing that telomerase's role in ageing is far more nuanced than first thought. Some studies have uncovered an association between short telomeres and early death, whereas others have failed to back up this link. People with rare diseases characterized by shortened telomeres or telomerase mutations seem to age prematurely, although some tissues are more affected than others.

“They are not studying normal ageing, but ageing in mice made grossly abnormal.”

David Harrison
Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, Maine
 

When mice are engineered to lack telomerase completely, their telomeres progressively shorten over several generations. These animals age much faster than normal mice — they are barely fertile and suffer from age-related conditions such as osteoporosis, diabetes and neurodegeneration. They also die young. "If you look at all those data together, you walk away with the idea that the loss of telomerase could be a very important instigator of the ageing process," says DePinho.
To find out if these dramatic effects are reversible, DePinho's team engineered mice such that the inactivated telomerase could be switched back on by feeding the mice a chemical called 4-OHT. The researchers allowed the mice to grow to adulthood without the enzyme, then reactivated it for a month. They assessed the health of the mice another month later.
"What really caught us by surprise was the dramatic reversal of the effects we saw in these animals," says DePinho. He describes the outcome as "a near 'Ponce de Leon' effect" — a reference to the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon, who went in search of the mythical Fountain of Youth. Shrivelled testes grew back to normal and the animals regained their fertility. Other organs, such as the spleen, liver and intestines, recuperated from their degenerated state.
The one-month pulse of telomerase also reversed effects of ageing in the brain. Mice with restored telomerase activity had noticeably larger brains than animals still lacking the enzyme, and neural progenitor cells, which produce new neurons and supporting brain cells, started working again.
"It gives us a sense that there's a point of return for age-associated disorders," says DePinho. Drugs that ramp up telomerase activity are worth pursuing as a potential treatment for rare disorders characterized by premature ageing, he says, and perhaps even for more common age-related conditions.

Cancer link

The downside is that telomerase is often mutated in human cancers, and seems to help existing tumours grow faster. But DePinho argues that telomerase should prevent healthy cells from becoming cancerous in the first place by preventing DNA damage.
David Sinclair, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, agrees there is evidence that activating telomerase might prevent tumours. If the treatment can be made safe, he adds, "it could lead to breakthroughs in restoring organ function in the elderly and treating a variety of diseases of aging."

 Other researchers are less confident that telomerase can be safely harnessed. "Telomere rejuvenation is potentially very dangerous unless you make sure that it does not stimulate cancer," says David Harrison, who researches ageing at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine.

Harrison also questions whether mice lacking telomerase are a good model for human ageing. "They are not studying normal ageing, but ageing in mice made grossly abnormal," he says. Tom Kirkwood, who directs the Institute for Ageing and Health at Newcastle University, UK, agrees, pointing out that telomere erosion "is surely not the only, or even dominant, cause" of ageing in humans.
DePinho says he recognizes that there is more to ageing than shortened telomeres, particularly late in life, but argues that telomerase therapy could one day be combined with other therapies that target the biochemical pathways of ageing. "This may be one of several things you need to do in order to extend lifespan and extend healthy living," he says. 

References

Jaskelioff, M. et al. Nature doi:10.1038/nature09603 (2010). 

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Eating persimmon leaves inhibits weight gain and lowers lipid levels

Supplementing a high-fat diet with powdered leaves taken from Native American persimmon trees can inhibit weight gain and lower both food intake and plasma lipid levels, research shows.
Scientists believe that the rich fiber and phenolic content of persimmon leaves, which are commonly used to make tea in India, increases the amount of lipids removed from the body as feces.
"Since the persimmon leaves have beneficial effects on hemostatsis, constipation, hypertension, apoplexy, and atherosclerosis, they have been broadly applied in food and medicine," says J Lee, from the Ottogi Research Center in Kyonngi-do, The Republic of Korea and colleagues.
To investigate if the leaves also improved metabolism and lipid levels, the team fed three groups of rats either a normal control, high-fat, or high-fat with powdered whole persimmon leaf diet, for 6 weeks.
Eating the high-fat diet without persimmon leaves increased the rats' body weight by an average 114% in comparison with those fed the normal control diet.
However, rats eating the persimmon leaf supplemented high-fat diet had a final body weight similar to that of the normal control group after 6 weeks.
"Thus indicating that persimmon leaf supplementation suppressed the excess body weight gain that could be induced by high-fat feeding," say the authors in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology.
They added that these rats gained less weight because persimmon leaf consumption suppressed their food intake, perhaps via the hormone leptin, levels of which were higher in the leaf-supplemented group than the high-fat only group.
Eating persimmon leaves with a high-fat diet also created a less atherogenic lipid profile by lowering plasma total cholesterol and triglyceride concentrations, while increasing the ratio of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol to total cholesterol.
Finally, the researchers say the fact that rats eating persimmon leaves had a higher daily fecal weight than the high-fat only group, shows that the "combined effect of high-fiber and high-phenolic content in persimmon leaf itself could enhance the fecal excretion of neutral and acidic sterol."
They conclude: "Efficacy tests of lipid-lowering action of persimmon leaf suggest that this whole persimmon leaf food would be beneficial for regulation of lipid metabolism or prevention of hyperlipidemia in an experimental animal model."

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7 Best Stress-Fighting Foods

Papaya
Wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a magic nutrient that could stop the flow of stress hormones—the very hormones that make your body superefficient at storing fat calories? Wouldn’t you want to gobble that food up like crazy, especially if it tasted great? Half a medium papaya carries nearly 75 percent more vitamin C than an orange, and provides potent protection against stress. Researchers at the University of Alabama found 200 milligrams of vitamin C—about as much as you’ll find in one large papaya—twice a day nearly stopped the flow of stress hormones in rats. It should work for you, too. 
Other smart sources of vitamin C: Red bell peppers, broccoli, oranges 
Bonus Tip: The closer an ingredient is to its original form, the healthier it is for you. Avoid the worst side of the nutritional spectrum by familiarizing yourself with this shocking list of The 15 Worst Food Creations of 2010.

Peppermint Tea
The mere scent of peppermint helps you focus and boosts performance, according to researchers. Another study discovered that peppermint tea makes drivers more alert and less anxious. 
Other smart sources of peppermint: Peppermint candy and peppermint oil 
Bonus Tip: Beware of disastrous drinks that only pretend to be healthy. Avoid 2,000-calorie shakes, 1,500-calorie smoothies,  and other big offenders in this eye-popping list of The 20 Worst Drinks in America in 2010.

Pumpkin Seeds
Pumpkin seeds are loaded with stress-busting potential thanks to high levels of magnesium. Only about 30 percent of us meet our daily magnesium requirements, placing the rest of us at a higher risk for stress symptoms such as headaches, anxiety, tension, fatigue, insomnia, nervousness and high blood pressure. (Basically we’re frayed wires, and magnesium is the electrical tape that can pull us back together.) A quarter cup of pumpkin seeds gives you half your day’s magnesium requirements.
Other smart sources of magnesium: Spinach, Swiss chard, black beans, soybeans, salmon

Avocados
The healthy fats buried in the avocado’s flesh make it an ideal choice when you’re craving something rich and creamy. The reasons? Monounsaturated (healthy) fatty acids, and potassium--both of which help combat high blood pressure. Avocado fat is 66 percent monounsaturated, and gram-for-gram, the green fruit has about 35 percent more potassium than a banana. Whip up a fresh guacamole or slice a few slivers over toast and top with fresh ground pepper.
Other smart sources of potassium: Squash, papaya, spinach, bananas, lentils
Bonus Tip: Learn how to put these and other health-promoting foods to work in your daily diet to lose weight fast and look and feel better. Sign up for the free Cook This, Not That! newsletter. You’ll have quick and delicious recipes delivered right to you inbox.

Salmon
Not only does omega-3 fat protect against heart disease and cognitive decline, but according to a study from Diabetes & Metabolism, the wonder fat is also responsible for maintaining healthy levels of cortisol. And what’s the world’s best source of omega-3s? Salmon. But there’s another trick in salmon’s arsenal—a sleep-promoting amino acid called tryptophan. One salmon filet has as much tryptophan as you need in an entire day, and if there’s one remedy for stress, it’s a good night of blissful Zs.  
Other smart sources of omega-3 fats: Flaxseeds, walnuts, sardines, halibut
Other smart sources of tryptophan: Chicken, tuna, beef, soybeans
Bonus Tip: The favorite trick of your friendly neighborhood restaurant? Substituting salt for flavor. Studies have linked high-salt foods to increased risk of high blood pressure, stroke, and even heart disease--and experts recommend getting no more than 2,300 milligrams of sodium in your diet each day. Keep your salt intake in check by cooking with high-quality, locally sourced ingredients—and by dodging the salty disasters in this list of the 30 Saltiest Foods in America.

Almonds
The almond's first stress-buster is the aforementioned monounsaturated fats, but at risk of belaboring that point, let’s look at another almond-centered, mind-calming nutrient: vitamin E. In one study, Belgium researchers treated pigs with a variety of nutrients just before sticking them in a transportation simulator (basically a vibrating crate). After 2 hours of simulation, only those pigs treated with tryptophan and vitamin E had non-elevated levels of stress hormones. Almonds, thankfully, are loaded with vitamin E. To reach your day’s requirement from almonds alone, you need to eat about 40 to 50 nuts. Or you can mix them with other vitamin-E rich foods to save calories and add more dietary variety.
Other smart sources of vitamin E: Sunflower seeds, olives, spinach, papaya

Oatmeal
A biochemical effect of stress is a depleted stock of serotonin, the hormone that makes you feel cool, calm, and in control. One reliable strategy for boosting serotonin back to healthy levels is to increase your intake of carbohydrates. That said, scarfing down Ding Dongs and doughnuts isn’t a sustainable solution. Rather, to induce a steady flow of serotonin, aim to eat fiber-rich, whole-grain carbohydrates. The slower rate of digestion will keep seratonin production steady and prevent the blood sugar rollar-coaster that leads to mood swings and mindless eating.
Other sources of fiber-rich carbohydrates: Quinoa, barley, whole-wheat bread, Triscuits
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Panoramic Wall Mounted Aquariums from AquaVista

The AquaVista 500 just got super sized and now comes in a panoramic 20 and 25 gallon version. Measuring only 6" deep, it'll accommodate all but the chubbiest fish and comes complete with an automatic feeder, filtration, heater, air pump, light and touchscreen control panel.
Fairly plug and play, the Aquavista Panoramic comes with 2 steel reinforced mounting brackets which allow you to hang the aquarium like a flat screen TV, add water, and your water loving friends. It comes in black or silver and is available in two dimensions: 5 ft or 6 ft wide.

Product Highlights:

• Low Maintenance, requires less than 15 minutes per month
• No Daily Care – complete with embedded Automatic Feeder
• Pre-assembled
• Dual filtration system
• Heater
• Air pump
• Lighting
• Easy to use control that simplifies all functions.
• Carbon Dioxide Generator
• Programmable touch-screen

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After Armageddon

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3


Part 4


Part 5


Part 6


Part 7


Part 8


Part 9


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Does my bum look big in this? 'It better be... because it's good for your health

By Fiona Macrae
When a woman asks: 'Does my bum look big in this?' she should hope the answer is yes, according to health experts.
That's because having a big bottom is good for your health - or at least better than having a big tummy.
Studies show that having a generous rear end and thighs, rather than a pot belly, cuts levels of 'bad' cholesterol and raises levels of the 'good' cholesterol that protect against hardening of the arteries.
It also cuts the risk of diabetes, a review in the International Journal of Obesity reports. The findings add to a welter of research on the benefits of having a pear-shaped body.

The Oxford University researchers gathered together various studies on the health benefits of lower body, or ' gluteofemoral' fat, then tried to work out why it is better for us than fat stored around the middle.

Ideas include it acting as a 'buffer', mopping up fats which could have dangerous effects elsewhere in the body. It may also make higher levels of hormones known to affect appetite and weight.
Finally, it breaks down more slowly than belly fat. While this makes it harder to shift, it also means it produces fewer chemicals called inflammatory cytokines which have been linked to heart disease, diabetes and obesity.
Researcher Konstantinos Manolopoulos said: 'The fat around our thighs and hips is different to the fat we accumulate around our tummy.

'There is "good" fat and "bad" fat - just like there is good and bad cholesterol.
The cells in lower body fat work differently from the cells in upper body fat.'
The findings tie in with studies showing that the ratio of a person's waist to their hips is a better predictor of heart disease than BMI, the GPs' rule of thumb for judging healthy weights.
In future, drugs that alter the way fat is stored around the body could be used to combat heart and other diseases.
Fotini Rozakeas of the British Heart Foundation said: 'This research helps us better to understand how fat acts in the body in order to develop new approaches in reducing heart and circulatory disease.
'If you are overweight, obese, or if your waist size has increased, it is important to make changes to your lifestyle, such as eating a healthy diet and doing regular physical activity, to reduce your risk of heart health problems.'


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Inside the Mars-500 'spaceship'

Russia's ambitious plan to put a group of prospective cosmonauts in isolation for 17 months, as a potential first step of a mission to Mars, will start in a year's time.

Richard Hollingham of BBC World Service's Discovery programme gained rare access to the Mars-500 project's home at the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow, to take a look at the preparations under way there.

Special exercise pulleys will prevent muscle wastage in space

Early next year, six Russian cosmonauts will climb through the hatch of the Mars-500 "spaceship" and not come out for over 500 days.
The mock-up of a Martian craft is the first part of an ambitious project to send humans to Mars.
"The Mars-500 project is envisaged as an answer to the big question of whether a human being can realise a Martian flight - taking into account all the limitations and restrictions which are characteristic of this flight," says deputy director of the institute, Dr Viktor Baranov, who has overall responsibility for the Mars 500 experiment.
"We need to understand that in a manned flight, the people are the most vulnerable thing."

Napkin shower
The institute is very busy. Because not all aspects of the Mars mission can be simulated in the ground-based Mars-500 project, other experiments are being conducted in parallel.
Obviously, once any real mission to Mars got under way, a crew member could not simply leave when they felt like it - so Mars-500 will involve numerous studies of autonomy and isolation.

Scientists will constantly monitor the health of the 'cosmonauts'

The scientists will also be watching the crew's psychological response to being confined, in order to watch for conflicts.
And they will study the effectiveness of telemedicine, as there will be no hospital on the ship.
The Mars-500 mock-up features the cramped personal quarters that would be an inevitable part of a real craft. Each cosmonaut has a narrow bed, some small shelves, a desk and a wardrobe.
There is no shower - instead, the cosmonauts clean themselves in a heat chamber like a sauna, and use napkins to scrape off the dirt.
Scientists here are keen to stress, however, that the Mars-500 craft is not a prison and that if a crew member wants to leave they can do so.
It also may be the case that doctors recommend a person leaves based on their medical data, or if the state of the facility drops to a level where it is affecting health and safety.
However, ultimately the institute does want people who can last the full 500 days - which means it takes a special kind of person to volunteer.
They are looking for highly-motivated people to form a team which will include a physician, a biologist, an IT specialist and engineer.

'One organism, one body'
Sergei Ryazansky is a young cosmonaut who works at the Institute of Biomedical Problems. He has not yet been into space, but has been in the simulation - and would like to be one of the first to put his name forward for a real mission to Mars.
"Training of crew members - especially their personal and psychological training - must be at a really high level," he said.

The government wants to be on the safe side; it wants to know what technologies we have Anatoly Grigoriev, director of the Institute of Biomedical Problems

"In the Autumn we had a technical crew that I commanded for two weeks. We were testing all the equipment of the module. One day I saw one guy not acting like usual. He was missing his girlfriend.
"It is really important to see such things and help; to give him work to keep him busy. The only way to survive such an extreme flight will be working as one organism, one body; helping each other, discussing everything."
To make the training exercise more realistic, the designers have brought in a time delay.
Because it can take around 20 minutes for a message to travel from Mars to Earth, it takes this amount of time in the simulation.
This means there can be no real-time conversations with friends and family - and that, in moments of crisis, the crew will have to make crucial decisions themselves.
Meanwhile, the cosmonauts will also have to deal with the impact of prolonged weightlessness on the human body.
Inesa Koslovska from the department of Sensory, Motor and Physiology and Countermeasures has been tracking what happens when people spend long periods away from gravity.
"Muscles immediately start to deteriorate" she says.
This is followed by changes in cardio-vascular function and all metabolic processes, she says.
"Then our bones start to deteriorate, because they get their signals from the muscles," she adds.
In space all of this would not matter - but as soon as the cosmonauts returned to Earth, they would be so weak they would not be able to stand.

First step
Dr Koslovska found that the main trigger for these changes is muscular unloading, so she developed a number of counter-measure exercises to allow the cosmonauts to keep muscle tone in space.
The most important is a specially-developed treadmill, on which a suit is attached via elastic pulleys. Instead of gravity, the runner has to strain against the tension of the pulleys.

Russia has continued space launches from bases in Kazakhstan

"We don't have weight in space - but in this suit, you do," Dr Koslovska says.
Of course, Mars-500 remains only the first step - the decision to commit so much time and energy to a Mars mission has not been explicitly backed by the Kremlin.
But as Anatoly Grigoriev - director of the Institute of Biomedical Problems - points out, neither has it been discouraged.
"The government wants to be on the safe side; it wants to know what technologies we have," he says.
"When these factors are gathered, it will be easier to convince taxpayers at large that there is a possibility of success for such a mission.
"The time has come now when the knowledge has been gathered. The mission can be undertaken with a possibility of success."
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Five laws of human nature

You're so predictable.           

Offended? We're used to the idea that nature is governed by laws that spell out how things work. But the idea that human nature is governed by such laws raises hackles. Perhaps because of this, they have often been proposed with tongue in cheek – which makes it all the more disconcerting when they turn out to be backed up by evidence.

One such law is the Peter principle, which states that in any organisation "people reach the level of their own incompetence". As we report this week, physics-based simulations suggest that this is more than just a cynical snipe at our bosses' competence. And that means we might have to rethink our ideas about who to promote to what jobs.

So what other laws of human nature might we have to reluctantly accept? Here are five that may – or may not – govern our lives.

Parkinson's law

Why is there always so much work to do? Anyone searching for an explanation might find one in Parkinson's law. Civil servant, historian and theorist Cyril Northcote Parkinson suggested in a 1955 article that work expands to fill the time available for its completion – backed up with statistical evidence drawn from his historical research. More recent mathematical analyses have lent support to the idea.

Parkinson also came up with the "law of triviality", which states that the amount of time an organisation spends discussing an issue is inversely proportional to its importance. He argued that nobody dares to expound on important issues in case they're wrong – but everyone is happy to opine at length about the trivial.

This in turn may be a result of Sayre's law, which states that in any dispute, the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the stakes at issue.

Parkinson also proposed a coefficient of inefficiency, which attempts to define the maximum size a committee can reach before it becomes unable to make decisions. His suggestion that it lay "somewhere 19.9 and 22.4" has stood the test of time: more recent research suggests that committees cannot include many more than 20 members before becoming utterly hapless.

Student syndrome

"If it weren't for the last minute, I wouldn't get anything done." So said an anonymous wit, and none but the most ferociously well-organised can disagree.

In fact, procrastination is a major problem for some people, especially those who are easily distracted or are uncertain of their ability to complete a task.

One of the most well-known examples of vigorous procrastination is student syndrome. As anyone who has ever been (or known) a student will know, it is standard practice to apply yourself to a task only at the last possible moment before the deadline.

Student syndrome is so common that some experts in project management recommend not assigning long periods of time to particular tasks, because the people who are supposed to do them will simply wait until just before the deadline to start work, and the project will overrun anyway (International Journal of Project Management, vol 18, p 173).

Some of the blame for student syndrome may be laid at the feet of the planning fallacy: the tendency for people to underestimate how long it will take to do something.

If you often get caught out by how long things take, we recommend considering Hofstadter's law, coined by the cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter: "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's law."

Pareto principle

The rich have a lot more money than you. That might sound like a statement of the obvious, but you may be surprised by just how much richer than you they are. In fact, in most countries 80 per cent of the wealth is owned by just 20 per cent of the population.

This was first spotted by the economist Vilfredo Pareto in the early 20th century, and it seems to be a universal rule in societies – although the precise nature of the distribution has been revised over the years.

But the Pareto principle is not just about money. For most systems, 80 per cent of events are triggered by just 20 per cent of the causes. For instance, 20 per cent of the users of a popular science website are responsible for 80 per cent of the page clicks.

Businesses often use the Pareto principle as a rule of thumb, for instance deciding to do the most important 20 per cent of a job in order to get 80 per cent of the reward.
 
Salem hypothesis

First proposed by Bruce Salem on the discussion site Usenet, the Salem hypothesis claims that "an education in the engineering disciplines forms a predisposition to [creationist] viewpoints". This was rephrased somewhat by P. Z. Myers as "creationists with advanced degrees are often engineers".

Is there any evidence to back this up, or is it just a gratuitous slander against engineers? A 1982 article in the Proceedings of the Iowa Academy of Science suggested that many leading creationists trained as engineers, notably Henry Morris, one of the authors of the key creationist book The Genesis Flood. But the article did not present any figures.

More recently, Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog have noted a preponderance of engineers among Islamic extremist groups. They suggested that engineers may be at greater risk of being recruited by such groups than other graduates.

Obviously creationism is not the same thing as violent activism, but Gambetta and Hertog's analysis may be useful nevertheless because they discuss the engineering mindset in some detail. They show, for instance, that engineers are more likely to be religious than other graduates (PDF).

None of this is anywhere near enough to prove the Salem hypothesis, but it does provide some intriguing circumstantial evidence.

Maes-Garreau law

Everyone loves predicting the future, and some make a career out of it. These futurists often present detailed, authoritative claims about what is going to happen, though their success rate isn't always exemplary.

A common theme in futurist predictions is that revolutionary technology of one sort or another is just around the corner, and that this technology will allow people to live forever. This can mean physical immortalityMovie Camera or some more abstracted technique like downloading one's personality into a computer. The "singularity", which Ray Kurzweil says will arrive "by 2045 or thereabouts", is a prime example.

And thus we come to the Maes-Garreau law, which states that any such prediction about a favourable future technology will fall just within the expected lifespan of the person making it.

Pattie Maes, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, observed in the late 1980s that many of her male colleagues were interested in these ideas, and tabulated when they expected the miracle technology to arrive. Sure enough, she found that the dates they predicted for the singularity were always on or around their 70th birthdays.

She mentioned her findings in a talk, but did not write them up. Subsequently, the journalist Joel Garreau made similar observations in his book Radical Evolution, which looked at the implications of such "transhumanist" ideas.

The Maes-Garreau law was finally coined, and given its name, by Wired editor Kevin Kelly. Kelly informally repeated Maes's analysis, confirming her findings. He then defined the "Maes-Garreau point" as the latest possible date a prediction can come true and still remain in the lifetime of the person making it.
by Michael MarshallSource

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Vitamin supplements are largely a waste of money, says professor

Healthy people are wasting money on vitamin supplements and at worst may be harming their health, according to a leading nutritionist.

Brian Ratcliffe, of the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, said that most of those taking the supplements were among the “worried well” and would be unlikely to gain any appreciable health benefits from taking vitamin and mineral tablets or fish oil capsules.

They would be better advised simply to improve their diets, he said, adding, however, that supplements could be valuable for elderly people.

Professor Ratcliffe told the British Science Festival: “A lot of people are taking a belt-and-braces approach to their health but they often don’t need these supplements. My biggest worry is that they’re wasting their money and fuelling an industry that’s exploiting their fears.”

A common misconception is that if something is good for you, more of it is better, he said. The body has a limited capacity to metabolise nutrients such as vitamin C. The recommended daily intake of is 60mg, yet tablets can contain up to 3g. “If you take 1.5g of vitamin C in one go, 75 per cent of it will go straight through you and end up in the toilet. These large doses are just a waste of money.”

Supplements could even be detrimental to health, he said. At particular risk are those taking a daily cocktail of supplements.

Taking a multi-vitamin tablet along with cod liver oil capsules, for instance, could mean exceeding the recommended daily dose of vitamin A, which is 0.7mg for men and 0.6mg for women.

This could result in headaches and nausea and in the long term be harmful to the liver and increase the risk of osteoporosis. “There’s a chance of people dabbling in areas where there is potential for harm,” he said.

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