Catalytic Converter produces power from Sea Water

Are we close to a solution to Global Warming Crisis??

If the US Navy makes available its new invention to the world, sea water could be used to generate electricity.

Washington: 

The US Navy believes it has finally worked out the solution to a problem that has intrigued scientists for decades — how to take seawater and use it as fuel. The development of a liquid hydrocarbon fuel is being hailed as “a game-changer” because it would significantly shorten the supply chain, a weak link that makes any force easier to attack.

The US has a fleet of 15 military oil tankers and only aircraft carriers and some submarines are equipped with nuclear propulsion. All other vessels must frequently abandon their mission for a few hours to navigate in parallel with the tanker, a delicate operation, especially in bad weather.

The ultimate goal is to eventually get away from the dependence on oil altogether, which would also mean the navy is no longer hostage to potential shortages of oil or fluctuations in its cost. Vice Admiral Philip Cullom declared, “It’s a huge milestone for us.”

“We are in very challenging times where we really do have to think in pretty innovative ways to look at how we create energy, how we value energy and how we consume it,” he said. “We need to challenge the results of the assumptions that are the result of the last six decades of constant access to cheap, unlimited amounts of fuel,” added Admiral Cullom. 

“Basically, we have treated energy like air, something that’s always there and that we don’t worry about too much. But the reality is that we do have to worry about it,” he said.

US experts have found out how to extract carbon dioxide and hydrogen gas from seawater.

Then, using a catalytic converter, they transformed them into a fuel by a gas-to-liquids process. They hope the fuel will not only be able to power ships, but also planes.

That means instead of relying on tankers, ships will be able to produce fuel at sea. The predicted cost of jet fuel using the technology is in the range of three to six dollars per gallon, say experts at the US Naval Research Laboratory, who have already flown a model airplane with fuel produced from seawater.

Younger Fathers have better Children??

Father's age plays a role in the shape, health and form of the children. The study from Austria, suggests that younger the father, better the child's looks.

• Sperm less effectively copies DNA as men age, causes genetic mutation
• 'Errors' in men double every 16 years, women pass same genes at any age
• Follows research men over 45 increase risk of autism by 3.5 times
• Children with older fathers have chromosome construct linked to longevity

Does it Is it back to old days of early marriage and progeny?? Now a days, studies, career are centred on individual's efforts, responsibilities or aspirations; whereas older systems were dependent on the families and communities.

As the system envisaged completion of basic education till at least 16 at a distant places under different Guru, come back to home; continue education and learn responsibilities with practical training.

Marriage and bringing up next generation was the natural responsibility of the grand parents. It had two benefits. 

• Young parents can attend to their works/ education without being affected totally with the infants. 
• When the children grow up, their control would rest with grand parents, who are less aggressive and more affectionate, due to the factors of age and experience.
• Thus the bond between 1st and 3rd Generation would strengthen and old age homes were never thought about, unless the couple is issueless.

Ghee is not harmful to heart

Did you ever hear from your Cardiologists and Trainers warning you, not to consume Ghee, Butter, Cheese or such saturated fats/ oils???

Of late, we have been hearing many appeals from traditional scholars to modern scientists debunking the theory. Now Cambridge University study negates the benefits of Olive Oil, Corn Oil apart from absolving the worsening effects of Saturated Fats. However, some scientists warn us from resumption of uncontrolled consumption.

It is generally agreed that Carbohydrates and Sugars are more dangerous.

Oils are good source for Vitamin E and Ghee is said to be one of the important source for Good Intellect and sharpness. घृतेन वर्धते बुद्धिः। तेजो वै घृतम्।

However, the method of consumption which results in maximum benefit is different from the way we consume today. If practised in the traditional way of consuming fresh ghee with hot food, it could yield desired results.
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Many of us have long been told that saturated fat, the type found in meat, butter and cheese, causes heart disease. But a large and exhaustive new analysis by a team of international scientists found no evidence that eating saturated fat increased heart attacks and other cardiac events.

The new findings are part of a growing body of research that has challenged the accepted wisdom that saturated fat is inherently bad for you and will continue the debate about what foods are best to eat.

For decades, health officials have urged the public to avoid saturated fat as much as possible, saying it should be replaced with the unsaturated fats in foods like nuts, fish, seeds and vegetable oils.

But the new research, published on Monday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, did not find that people who ate higher levels of saturated fat had more heart disease than those who ate less. Nor did it find less disease in those eating higher amounts of unsaturated fat, including mono-unsaturated fat like olive oil or poly-unsaturated fat like corn oil.

“My take on this would be that it’s not saturated fat that we should worry about” in our diets, said Dr. Rajiv Chowdhury, the lead author of the new study and a cardiovascular epidemiologist in the department of public health and primary care at Cambridge University.

But Dr Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, said the findings should not be taken as “a green light” to eat more steak, butter and other foods rich in saturated fat. He said that looking at individual fats and other nutrient groups in isolation could be misleading, because when people cut down on fats they tend to eat more bread, cold cereal and other refined carbohydrates that can also be bad for cardiovascular health.

“The single macronutrient approach is outdated,” said Dr Hu, who was not involved in the study. “I think future dietary guidelines will put more and more emphasis on real food rather than giving an absolute upper limit or cut-off point for certain macronutrients.”

He said people should try to eat foods that are typical of the Mediterranean diet, like nuts, fish, avocado, high-fibre grains and olive oil. A large clinical trial last year, which was not included in the current analysis, found that a Mediterranean diet with more nuts and extra virgin olive oil reduced heart attacks and strokes when compared with a lower fat diet with more starches.

Alice H Lichtenstein, a nutritional biochemist at Tufts University, agreed that “it would be unfortunate if these results were interpreted to suggest that people can go back to eating butter and cheese with abandon,” citing evidence that replacing saturated fat with foods that are high in polyunsaturated fats — instead of simply eating more carbohydrates — reduces cardiovascular risk.

Dr Lichtenstein, who was not involved in the latest study, was the lead author of the American Heart Association’s dietary guidelines, which recommend that people restrict saturated fat to as little as 5 per cent of their daily calories, or roughly two tablespoons of butter or two ounces of Cheddar cheese for the typical person eating about 2,000 calories a day. The heart association states that restricting saturated fat and eating more unsaturated fat, beans and vegetables can protect against heart disease by lowering low-density lipoprotein or so-called bad cholesterol.

In the new research, Dr Chowdhury and his colleagues sought to evaluate the best evidence to date, drawing on nearly 80 studies involving more than a half million people. They looked not only at what people reportedly ate, but at more objective measures such as the composition of fatty acids in their bloodstreams and in their fat tissue. The scientists also reviewed evidence from 27 randomised controlled trials — the gold standard in scientific research — that assessed whether taking polyunsaturated fat supplements like fish oil promoted heart health.

The researchers did find a link between trans fats, the now widely maligned partially hydrogenated oils that had long been added to processed foods, and heart disease. But they found no evidence of dangers from saturated fat, or benefits from other kinds of fats.

The primary reason saturated fat has historically had a bad reputation is that it increases low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, or LDL, the kind that raises the risk for heart attacks. But the relationship between saturated fat and LDL is complex, said Dr. Chowdhury. In addition to raising LDL cholesterol, saturated fat also increases high-density lipoprotein, or HDL, the so-called good cholesterol. And the LDL that it raises is a subtype of big, fluffy particles that are generally benign. Doctors refer to a preponderance of these particles as LDL pattern A.

The smallest and densest form of LDL is more dangerous. These particles are easily oxidized and are more likely to set off inflammation and contribute to the buildup of artery-narrowing plaque. An LDL profile that consists mostly of these particles, known as pattern B, usually coincides with high triglycerides and low levels of HDL, both risk factors for heart attacks and stroke.

The smaller, more artery-clogging particles are increased not by saturated fat, but by sugary foods and an excess of carbohydrates, Dr Chowdhury said. “It’s the high carbohydrate or sugary diet that should be the focus of dietary guidelines,” he said. “If anything is driving your low-density lipoproteins in a more adverse way, it’s carbohydrates.”

While the new research showed no relationship overall between saturated or polyunsaturated fat intake and cardiac events, there are numerous unique fatty acids within these two groups, and there was some indication that they are not all equal.

When the researchers looked at fatty acids in the bloodstream, for example, they found that margaric acid, a saturated fat in milk and dairy products, was associated with lower cardiovascular risk. Two types of omega-3 fatty acids, the polyunsaturated fats found in fish, were also protective. But a number of the omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids, commonly found in vegetable oils and processed foods, may pose risks, the findings suggested.

The researchers then looked at data from the randomised trials to see if taking supplements like fish oil produced any cardiovascular benefits. It did not.

But Dr Chowdhury said there might be a good explanation for this discrepancy. The supplement trials mostly involved people who had pre-existing heart disease or were at high risk of developing it, while the other studies involved generally healthy populations.

So it is possible that the benefits of omega-3 fatty acids lie in preventing heart disease, rather than treating or reversing it. At least two large clinical trials designed to see if this is the case are currently underway.

How did the Universe form?

Bicep Experiment supports the theory that tiny atom became a massive universe by INFLATION. 

Theoretical Physics, championed by our seers has their latest pioneers vying for a moment of excitement with the latest discovery about INFLATION. 

This is what myriad sentences of Veda said. For an example - Asad Vaa Idamagra Aaseet. Tato Vai Sadajaayaata; Tadaikshata, Bahu Syaam Prajaayeya etc.

Bicep Experiment supports the theory that tiny atom became a massive universe by INFLATION. 

BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) is an experiment designed to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) to unprecedented precision, and in turn answer crucial questions about the beginnings of the Universe.)

BICEP Observatory on South Pole

Why was the telescope positioned on the South Pole??

The team examined spatial scales on the sky spanning about 1 to 5 degrees (two to 10 times the width of the full moon). To do this, they set up an experiment at the South Pole to take advantage of its cold, dry, stable air, which allows for crisp detection of faint cosmic light.

"The South Pole is the closest you can get to space and still be on the ground," said BICEP2 co-principal investigator John Kovac, an associate professor of astronomy and physics at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who led the deployment and science operation of the project. "It's one of the driest and clearest locations on Earth, perfect for observing the faint microwaves from the Big Bang."

Stanford physicist Andrei Linde's theory of how universe began

The detection of gravitational waves by the BICEP2 experiment at the South Pole supports the cosmic inflation theory of how the universe came to be. The discovery, made in part by Assistant Professor Chao-Lin Kuo, supports the theoretical work of Stanford's Andrei Linde.

Almost 14 billion years ago, the universe we inhabit burst into existence in an extraordinary event that initiated the Big Bang. In the first fleeting fraction of a second, the universe expanded exponentially, stretching far beyond the view of today's best telescopes. All this, of course, has just been theory.

Researchers from the BICEP2 collaboration today announced the first direct evidence supporting this theory, known as "cosmic inflation." Their data also represent the first images of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time. These waves have been described as the "first tremors of the Big Bang." Finally, the data confirm a deep connection between quantum mechanics and general relativity.

"This is really exciting. We have made the first direct image of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time across the primordial sky, and verified a theory about the creation of the whole universe," said Chao-Lin Kuo, an assistant professor of physics at Stanford and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and a co-leader of the BICEP2 collaboration.

These groundbreaking results came from observations by the BICEP2 telescope of the cosmic microwave background – a faint glow left over from the Big Bang. Tiny fluctuations in this afterglow provide clues to conditions in the early universe. For example, small differences in temperature across the sky show where parts of the universe were denser, eventually condensing into galaxies and galactic clusters.

Because the cosmic microwave background is a form of light, it exhibits all the properties of light, including polarization. On Earth, sunlight is scattered by the atmosphere and becomes polarized, which is why polarized sunglasses help reduce glare. In space, the cosmic microwave background was scattered by atoms and electrons and became polarized too.

"Our team hunted for a special type of polarization called 'B-modes,' which represents a twisting or 'curl' pattern in the polarized orientations of the ancient light," said BICEP2 co-leader Jamie Bock, a professor of physics at Caltech and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Gravitational waves squeeze space as they travel, and this squeezing produces a distinct pattern in the cosmic microwave background. Gravitational waves have a "handedness," much like light waves, and can have left- and right-handed polarizations.

"The swirly B-mode pattern is a unique signature of gravitational waves because of their handedness," Kuo said.

The team examined spatial scales on the sky spanning about 1 to 5 degrees (two to 10 times the width of the full moon). To do this, they set up an experiment at the South Pole to take advantage of its cold, dry, stable air, which allows for crisp detection of faint cosmic light.

"The South Pole is the closest you can get to space and still be on the ground," said BICEP2 co-principal investigator John Kovac, an associate professor of astronomy and physics at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who led the deployment and science operation of the project. "It's one of the driest and clearest locations on Earth, perfect for observing the faint microwaves from the Big Bang."

The researchers were surprised to detect a B-mode polarization signal considerably stronger than many cosmologists expected. The team analyzed their data for more than three years in an effort to rule out any errors. They also considered whether dust in our galaxy could produce the observed pattern, but the data suggest this is highly unlikely.

"This has been like looking for a needle in a haystack, but instead we found a crowbar," said co-leader Clem Pryke, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Minnesota.

Physicist Alan Guth formally proposed inflationary theory in 1980, when he was a postdoctoral scholar at SLAC, as a modification of conventional Big Bang theory. Instead of the universe beginning as a rapidly expanding fireball, Guth theorized that the universe inflated extremely rapidly from a tiny piece of space and became exponentially larger in a fraction of a second. This idea immediately attracted lots of attention because it could provide a unique solution to many difficult problems of the standard Big Bang theory.

However, as Guth, who is now a professor of physics at MIT, immediately realized, certain predictions in his scenario contradicted observational data. In the early 1980s, Russian physicist Andrei Linde modified the model into a concept called "new inflation" and again to "eternal chaotic inflation," both of which generated predictions that closely matched actual observations of the sky.

Linde, now a professor of physics at Stanford, could not hide his excitement about the news. "These results are a smoking gun for inflation, because alternative theories do not predict such a signal," he said. "This is something I have been hoping to see for 30 years."

BICEP2's measurements of inflationary gravitational waves are an impressive combination of theoretical reasoning and cutting-edge technology. Stanford's contribution to the discovery extends beyond Kuo, who designed the polarization detectors. Kent Irwin, a professor of physics at Stanford and SLAC, also conducted pioneering work on superconducting sensors and readout systems used in the experiment. The research also involved several researchers, including Kuo, affiliated with the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), which is supported by Stanford, SLAC and the Kavli Foundation.

BICEP2 is the second stage of a coordinated program, the BICEP and Keck Array experiments, which has a co-principal investigator structure. The four PIs are Jamie Bock (Caltech/JPL,) John Kovac (Harvard), Chao-Lin Kuo (Stanford/SLAC) and Clem Pryke (UMN). All have worked together on the present result, along with talented teams of students and scientists. Other major collaborating institutions for BICEP2 include the University of California, San Diego; University of British Columbia; National Institute of Standards and Technology; University of Toronto; Cardiff University; and Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique.

BICEP2 is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). NSF also runs the South Pole Station where BICEP2 and the other telescopes used in this work are located. The Keck Foundation also contributed major funding for the construction of the team's telescopes. NASA, JPL and the Moore Foundation generously supported the development of the ultra-sensitive detector arrays that made these measurements possible.

Technical details and journal papers can be found on the BICEP2 release website:http://bicepkeck.org

Reaction of the Russian Theoretical Physicist Prof. Andrei Linde, who is the Founding father of the Gravitational Waves INFLATION Theory, when the news broke by Prof Kuo.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2014/03/18/the-most-heartwarming-moment-from-yesterdays-groundbreaking-physics-discovery/

Vitamins - History

Carl Zimmer, explains the history of Vitamins and their composition and necessity. Incidence of Scurvy Disease among sailors led to the discovery of Vitamin C.

What is the history behind vitamins? And how did we come to realise that these nutrients are vital for us? Carl Zimmer takes us through its story and reveals the intricacies involved.
In 1602, a Spanish fleet was sailing up the Pacific coast of Mexico when the crew became deathly ill. “The first symptom is pain in the whole body that makes it sensitive to touch,” wrote Antonio de la Ascensión, a priest on the expedition. “Purple spots begin to cover the body, especially from the waist down; then the gums become so swollen that the teeth cannot be brought together, and they can only drink, and finally they die all of a sudden, while talking.”

The crew was suffering from scurvy, a disease that was then both bitterly familiar and deeply mysterious. No one knew why it struck sailors or how to cure it. But on that 1602 voyage, Ascensión witnessed what he considered a miracle. While the crew was ashore burying the dead, one sick sailor picked up a cactus fruit to eat. He started to feel better, and his crewmates followed his example.

“They all began to eat them and bring them back on board so that, after another two weeks, they were all healed,” the priest wrote.

Over the next two centuries, it gradually became clear that scurvy was caused by a lack of fruits and vegetables on long-distance voyages. In the late 1700s, the British navy started supplying its ships with millions of gallons of lemon juice, eradicating scurvy. But it wasn’t until 1928 that Hungarian biochemist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi discovered the ingredient that cured scurvy: Vitamin C.

Szent-Gyorgyi’s experiments were part of a wave of early-20th-century research that pulled back the curtain on vitamins. Scientists discovered that the human body required minuscule amounts of 13 organic molecules. A deficiency of any of the vitamins led to different diseases - a lack of vitamin A to blindness, vitamin B12 to severe anaemia, vitamin D to rickets.

Today, a huge amount of research goes into understanding vitamins, but most of it is focused on how much of them people need to stay healthy. This work does not address a basic question, though; How did we end up so dependent on these peculiar little molecules?

Recent research is providing new answers. It appears that vitamins were essential to life from its earliest stages some 4 billion years ago. Early life-forms could make their own vitamins, but some species - including ours later lost that ability. Species began to depend on each other for vitamins, creating a complex flow of molecules that scientists have named “vitamin traffic.”

A universal chemistry

Every vitamin is made by living cells – either our own, or in other species. Vitamin D is produced in our skin, for example, when sunlight strikes a precursor of cholesterol. A lemon tree makes vitamin C out of glucose. Making a vitamin is often an enormously baroque process. In some species, it takes 22 proteins to craft a vitamin B12 molecule.

While a protein may be made up of thousands of atoms, a vitamin may be made up of just a few dozen. And yet, despite their small size, vitamins expand our chemical versatility. A vitamin cooperates with proteins to help them carry out reactions they couldn’t manage on their own. Vitamin B1, for example, helps proteins pull carbon dioxide from molecules.

Vitamins carry out these chemical reactions not just in our own bodies but in all living things. 

The ability we lost

Once the ability to make vitamins evolved, some species became especially good at making them. Plants, for example, evolved into vitamin C factories, packing their leaves and fruits with the molecule. At first, vitamin C probably defended plants against stress – a function it carries out in other species, including us. But over time, the vitamin took on new jobs in plants, like helping control the development of fruit.
Many vertebrates can make vitamin C, and use an identical set of genes to do so. “We should be able to make it, too, since we have all the genes,” said Rebecca Stevens of the French National Institute for Agricultural Research.

Unlike a frog or a kangaroo, however, we have crippling mutations in one of those genes, known as GULO. Unable to make the GULO protein, we cannot produce vitamin C.

“It’s not just us – it goes back a long time,” said Guy Drouin, a molecular evolutionary biologist at the University of Ottawa. He and other researchers have found that apes and monkeys, our closest primate relatives, have disabled GULO genes, with many of the same mutations. Drouin has concluded that the common ancestor we share with those other primates lost the ability to make vitamin C around 60 million years ago.

It wasn’t just us

Now that scientists can scan genomes of thousands of species, they’re discovering many more cases in which vitamin genes have either decayed or disappeared altogether. Sergio Sanudo-Wilhelmy of the University of Southern California and his colleagues recently surveyed the genomes of 400 of the most abundant species of bacteria in the oceans. As they report in a paper to be published in the Annual Review of Marine Science, 24 percent of the bacteria lack genes to make B1, and 63 percent can’t make B12.

These recent studies are especially surprising because bacteria have long been considered self-sufficient when it comes to vitamins. Now scientists need to figure out why many species of bacteria in the ocean aren’t dead from a microbial version of scurvy.

Only recently have scientists made measurements of vitamins in the sea. They are finding some places that are abundant with them and others that are vitamin deserts. It is possible that the difference influences not just bacteria and algae, but the animals that feed on them.

Vitamins flow in complex routes, not just in the ocean, but on land. We humans can’t make our own supply of vitamin B12, for example, so we need to get it from food. One way is to eat meat like beef, which contains B12. It turns out that the cows and other animals that we consume don’t make B12 in their own cells. Instead, the bacteria in their guts manufacture it for them.

We are also home to thousands of species of bacteria, which synthesise vitamins as they eat our food. Does that mean we depend on our internal vitamin traffic? “It’s still theoretical,” said Douwe van Sinderen, a microbiologist at University College Cork in Ireland. “But evidence is building that bacteria can provide some vitamins that we need.”

If that’s so, we may need to think of our bodies as self-contained oceans of vitamin traffic – a continuation of the traffic that has occurred on Earth for 4 billion years.

Vegetarians have better chances of health

Our Sages have demonstrated long ago.

Kanda Moola Phala Bhakshanam (Eating Plant based food such as Roots, Fruits and Vegetables) leads to longevity of life.

Vegetarian diet may help lower your BP

Tokyo, Feb 25, 2014

Vegetarians rejoice! Eating a vegetarian diet may lower your blood pressure (BP), a long-term research has claimed.

Factors such as diet, body weight, physical activity and alcohol intake play a role in the risk of developing hypertension, researchers said.

Dietary modifications have been shown to be effective for preventing and managing hypertension, according to research author Yoko Yokoyama, of the National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center, Osaka, Japan, and colleagues.

The authors analysed seven clinical trials and 32 studies published from 1900 to 2013 in which participants ate a vegetarian diet.

Net differences in BP associated with eating a vegetarian diet were measured, researchers said.

In the trials, eating a vegetarian diet was associated with a reduction in the average systolic (peak artery pressure) and diastolic (minimum artery pressure) BP compared with eating an omnivorous (plant and animal) diet.

In the 32 studies, eating a vegetarian diet was associated with lower average systolic and diastolic BP, compared with omnivorous diets.

"Further studies are required to clarify which types of vegetarian diets are most strongly associated with lower BP. Research into the implementation of such diets, either as public health initiatives aiming at prevention of hypertension or in clinical settings, would also be of great potential value," researchers said.

The research was published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

Voice - its impact in attracting people

Why do we like the baritone voice?

• Men with deeper voices and women with slightly higher voices were thought to sound more attractive, because they suggest a bigger or a smaller body.
• "There is more complex mechanism at play," said Molly Babel from University of British Columbia. "The voice is an amazingly flexible tool that we use to construct our identity," he added.
• Men with deeper voices and women with slightly higher voices were thought to sound more attractive, because they suggest a bigger or a smaller body.
• "There is more complex mechanism at play," said Molly Babel from University of British Columbia. "The voice is an amazingly flexible tool that we use to construct our identity," he added.
• "There is more complex mechanism at play," said Molly Babel from University of British Columbia. "The voice is an amazingly flexible tool that we use to construct our identity," he added.
• A creaky voice, suggesting a person has a cold, is tired or smokes, was seen as unattractive.
• But the new study, published by a linguistics expert in Canada, suggests there is a more complex mechanism at play.
• The participants in the study preferred men who spoke with a shorter average word length and deeper voices.
• The scientists found that what is attractive to people is how much they sound like a typical male or a typical female from their own community.
• "We seem to like people who sound like we sound, we like people who fit within what we know," Babel added.
• A creaky voice, suggesting a person has a cold, is tired or smokes, was seen as unattractive.
• But the new study, published by a linguistics expert in Canada, suggests there is a more complex mechanism at play.
• The participants in the study preferred men who spoke with a shorter average word length and deeper voices.
• The scientists found that what is attractive to people is how much they sound like a typical male or a typical female from their own community.
• "We seem to like people who sound like we sound, we like people who fit within what we know," Babel added.
• But the new study, published by a linguistics expert in Canada, suggests there is a more complex mechanism at play.
• The participants in the study preferred men who spoke with a shorter average word length and deeper voices.
• The scientists found that what is attractive to people is how much they sound like a typical male or a typical female from their own community.
• "We seem to like people who sound like we sound, we like people who fit within what we know," Babel added.
• The participants in the study preferred men who spoke with a shorter average word length and deeper voices.
• The scientists found that what is attractive to people is how much they sound like a typical male or a typical female from their own community.
• "We seem to like people who sound like we sound, we like people who fit within what we know," Babel added.
• The scientists found that what is attractive to people is how much they sound like a typical male or a typical female from their own community.
• "We seem to like people who sound like we sound, we like people who fit within what we know," Babel added.
• "We seem to like people who sound like we sound, we like people who fit within what we know," Babel added.
• The attraction lies in the voice, not the face. People prefer those who have a similar accent and voices that sound like their own, say researchers.

• The breathy tone, caused by younger and thinner vocal cords, implied youthfulness and health.

Skin Colour and Tanning

SKIN TAN

Have you ever wondered how your skin gets a nice tan after a week of frolicking in the sun-kissed beaches and how it fades in a month?
Indian biologists now claim to know the answer, which may lead to the development of a therapy against leprosy. Besides, it would strengthen the ongoing battle against skin cancer. “Our aim would be to research on a new therapy for leprosy, exploiting the pathway we found,” Rajesh S Gokhale, director of Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), Delhi, which led the study, told Deccan Herald.

One of the indications of leprosy is white patches on the skin, which happens when cells producing skin pigment melanin stop functioning. This is where the Indian team wants to chip in. Human skin gets its characteristic colour from melanin, packed in small granules that serve as soldiers shielding the DNA from harmful rays of the sun.

It is required in the body because too much sun can cause sunburn and cancer.

Whenever our body is exposed to the sun, these granules increase in number, strengthening the protective shield. It results in skin tanning. The tan remains for 28 days after which the skin gets back its colour. 

“Our study shows a protein named interferon-gamma is a crucial factor secreted by immune cells that maintains these checks and balances in human skin. It helps bring back pigmentation to a normal state,” said Gokhale. The research findings were published in the January 28 issue of “Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences”.

The IGIB team, along with researchers from National Institute of Immunology, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital here, besides National Chemical Laboratory, Pune found that the interferon pathway was involved in maintaining pigmentation balance in the skin. 

Yoga Meditation Benefit Research

Though for different reasons (300 Billion Loss per annum due to Stress and Desease); scientists are showing conclusive proof over its efficacy. 

London: 

Scientists are getting close to proving what yogis have held to be true for centuries—yoga and meditation can ward off stress and disease.

John Denninger, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, is leading a five-year study on how the ancient practices affect genes and brain activity in the chronically stressed. His latest work follows a study he and others published earlier this year showing how so-called mind-body techniques can switch on and off some genes linked to stress and immune function.

While hundreds of studies have been conducted on the mental health benefits of yoga and meditation, they have tended to rely on blunt tools like participant questionnaires, as well as heart rate and blood pressure monitoring. Only recently have neuro-imaging and genomics technology used in Denninger’s latest studies allowed scientists to measure physiological changes in greater detail.

“There is a true biological effect,” said Denninger, director of research at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, one of Harvard Medical School’s teaching hospitals. “The kinds of things that happen when you meditate do have effects throughout the body, not just in the brain.”

The government-funded study may persuade more doctors to try an alternative route for tackling the source of a myriad of modern ailments. Stress-induced conditions can include everything from hypertension and infertility to depression and even the aging process. They account for 60-90% of doctor’s visits in the US, according to the Benson-Henry Institute. The World Health Organization estimates stress costs US companies at least $300 billion a year through absenteeism, turn-over and low productivity.

Seinfeld, Murdoch

The science is advancing alongside a budding mindfulness movement, which includes meditation devotees such as Bill George, board member of Goldman Sachs Group and Exxon Mobil Corp., and comedian Jerry Seinfeld. News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch recently revealed on Twitter that he is giving meditation a try.

As a psychiatrist specializing in depression, Denninger said he was attracted to mind-body medicine, pioneered in the late 1960s by Harvard professor Herbert Benson, as a possible way to prevent the onset of depression through stress reduction. While treatment with pharmaceuticals is still essential, he sees yoga and meditation as useful additions to his medical arsenal.

Exchange programme

It’s an interest that dates back to an exchange programme he attended in China the summer before entering Harvard as an undergraduate student. At Hangzhou University, he trained with a tai chi master every morning for three weeks.

“By the end of my time there, I had gotten through my thick teenage skull that there was something very important about the breath and about inhabiting the present moment, he said. I’ve carried that with me since then.”

His current study, to conclude in 2015 with about $3.3 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health, tracks 210 healthy subjects with high levels of reported chronic stress for six months. They are divided in three groups.

One group with 70 participants perform a form of yoga known as Kundalini, another 70 meditate and the rest listen to stress education audiobooks, all for 20 minutes a day at home. Kundalini is a form of yoga that incorporates meditation, breathing exercises and the singing of mantras in addition to postures. Denninger said it was chosen for the study because of its strong meditation component.

Participants come into the lab for weekly instruction for two months, followed by three sessions where they answer questionnaires, give blood samples used for genomic analysis and undergo neuro-imaging tests.

‘Immortality enzyme’

Unlike earlier studies, this one is the first to focus on participants with high levels of stress. The study published in May in the medical journal PloS One showed that one session of relaxation-response practice was enough to enhance the expression of genes involved in energy metabolism and insulin secretion and reduce expression of genes linked to inflammatory response and stress. There was an effect even among novices who had never practiced before.

Harvard isn’t the only place where scientists have started examining the biology behind yoga.

In a study published last year, scientists at the University of California at Los Angeles and Nobel Prize winner Elizabeth Blackburn found that 12 minutes of daily yoga meditation for eight weeks increased telomerase activity by 43%, suggesting an improvement in stress-induced aging. Blackburn of the University of California, San Francisco, shared the Nobel medicine prize in 2009 with Carol Greider and Jack Szostak for research on the telomerase immortality enzyme, which slows the cellular aging process.

Build resilience

Not all patients will be able to stick to a daily regimen of exercise and relaxation. Nor should they have to, according to Denninger and others. Simply knowing breath-management techniques and having a better understanding of stress can help build resilience.

“A certain amount of stress can be helpful,” said Sophia Dunn, a clinical psychotherapist who trained at King’s College London. “Yoga and meditation are tools for enabling us to swim in difficult waters.” Bloomberg

Petrol Diesel Pumping tips

Petrol Diesel Pumping tips

(DO NOT DONATE FUEL to Service Stations)

Recently I came across a very useful tip. 

I was surprised to know it but had a doubt so I talked to one of the pump technicians and he too accepted it as a fact. 

1) Do not fill up the tank to the brim, with automated pumps with sensors fitted to the nozzles.

I think apart from providing space for the gas generated inside the petrol tank this is yet another reason why we fill the tank to the brim. Many of us are not aware that the petrol kiosk pump has a return pipe-line (in Pink). When the petrol tank (in the car) reaches full level, there is a mechanism to trigger off the pump latch and at the same time a return-valve is opened (at the top of the pump station) to allow excess petrol to flow back into the pump. But the return petrol has already pass through the meter, meaning you are donating the petrol back to the Oil Dealer. 

2) Fill up, when it is cold.

Also only fill up your car or truck in the early morning when the ground temperature is still cold. Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground. The colder the ground the more dense the petrol, when it gets warmer petrol expands, so buying in the afternoon or in the evening....your liter is not exactly a liter. In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and the temperature of the petrol, diesel and jet fuel, ethanol and other petroleum products plays an important role. 

A 1-degree rise in temperature is a big deal for this business. But the service stations do not have temperature compensation at the pumps. 

3) For Self Servicing pumps, slow pumping maximises benefit by reducing Vapours.

 

When you're filling up do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to a fast mode If you look you will see that the trigger has three (3) stages: low, middle, and high. You should be pumping on low mode, thereby minimizing the vapours that are created while you are pumping. All hoses at the pump have a vapour return. If you are pumping on the fast rate, some of the liquid that goes to your tank becomes vapour. Those vapours are being sucked up and back into the underground storage tank so you're getting less worth for your money. 

One of the most important tips is to fill up when your Petrol tank is HALF FULL. The reason for this is the more Petrol you have in your tank the less air occupying its empty space. petrol evaporates faster than you can imagine. petrol storage tanks have an internal floating roof. This roof serves as zero clearance between the Petrol and the atmosphere, so it minimizes the evaporation. Unlike service stations, here where I work, every truck that we load is temperature compensated so that every litre is actually the exact amount. 

4) Do not fuel, if the storage tank is being filled up - to avoid dirt

Another reminder, if there is a petrol truck pumping into the storage tanks when you stop to buy Petrol, DO NOT fill up; most likely the petrol is being stirred up as the Petrol is being delivered, and you might pick up some of the dirt that normally settles on the bottom. 

To have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Petrol buyers. It's really simple to do.