People who smoke only at weekends cause as much damage to their memory as those who smoke on a daily basis, according to research from Northumbria University. Academics from the Collaboration for Drug and Alcohol Research Group in Northumbria’s School of Life Sciences tested 28 social smokers – those who smoke around 20 cigarettes once or twice a week, typically when out at the weekend – 28 people who smoke 10-15 cigarettes daily and 28 people who had never smoked on a video-based prospective memory test.
Participants were asked to remember a series of pre-determined actions at specific locations when viewing a short clip of a busy high street. For example, they were asked to remember to text a friend when passing a particular store.
In the first study of its kind, researchers found that both groups of smokers performed worse than those who had never smoked, with no difference according to the pattern of smoking.
Dr Tom Heffernan, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, who conducted the research with Dr Terence O’Neill, said: “Smoking-related memory decline in general has been linked with increases in accelerated cerebral degeneration such as brain shrinkage.
“This new research suggests that restricting smoking to weekends makes no difference – smoking damages your memory.”
The study has been published in the Open Addiction journal.
Reducing Academic Pressure May Help Children Succeed
Children may perform better in school and feel more confident about themselves if they are told that failure is a normal part of learning, rather than being pressured to succeed at all costs, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.
"We focused on a widespread cultural belief that equates academic success with a high level of competence and failure with intellectual inferiority," said Frederique Autin, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Poitiers in Poitiers, France. "By being obsessed with success, students are afraid to fail, so they are reluctant to take difficult steps to master new material. Acknowledging that difficulty is a crucial part of learning could stop a vicious circle in which difficulty creates feelings of incompetence that in turn disrupts learning."
The study, published online in APA's Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, could have important implications for teachers, parents and students, said Jean-Claude Croizet, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of Poitiers who supervised the research based on Autin's doctoral dissertation. "People usually believe that academic achievement simply reflects students' inherent academic ability, which can be difficult to change," Croizet said. "But teachers and parents may be able to help students succeed just by changing the way in which the material is presented."
In the first experiment with 111 French sixth graders, students were given very difficult anagram problems that none of them could solve. Then a researcher talked to the students about the difficulty of the problems. One group was told that learning is difficult and failure is common, but practice will help, just like learning how to ride a bicycle. Children in a second group were just asked how they tried to solve the problems. The students then took a test that measures working memory capacity, a key cognitive ability for storing and processing incoming information. Working memory capacity is a good predictor of many aspects of academic achievement, including reading comprehension, problem solving and IQ. The students who were told that learning is difficult performed significantly better on the working memory test, especially on more difficult problems, than the second group or a third control group who took the working memory test without doing the anagrams or discussions with researchers.
A second experiment with 131 sixth graders followed a similar procedure with the difficult anagrams and discussions with a researcher. An additional group of students took a simpler anagram test that could be solved, and this group was not told that learning is difficult. All of the students then completed a reading comprehension test. The children who were told that learning is difficult scored higher than the other groups, including the students who had just succeeded on the simple test. How students think about failure may be more important than their own success when learning challenging skills, the study noted.
A third experiment with 68 sixth graders measured reading comprehension and asked questions that measured students' feelings about their own academic competence. The group that was told that learning is difficult performed better in reading comprehension and reported fewer feelings of incompetence.
The study noted that the students' improvement on the tests most likely was temporary, but the results showed that working memory capacity may be improved simply by boosting students' confidence and reducing their fear of failure. "Our research suggests that students will benefit from education that gives them room to struggle with difficulty," Autin said. "Teachers and parents should emphasize children's progress rather than focusing solely on grades and test scores. Learning takes time and each step in the process should be rewarded, especially at early stages when students most likely will experience failure."
"We focused on a widespread cultural belief that equates academic success with a high level of competence and failure with intellectual inferiority," said Frederique Autin, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Poitiers in Poitiers, France. "By being obsessed with success, students are afraid to fail, so they are reluctant to take difficult steps to master new material. Acknowledging that difficulty is a crucial part of learning could stop a vicious circle in which difficulty creates feelings of incompetence that in turn disrupts learning."
The study, published online in APA's Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, could have important implications for teachers, parents and students, said Jean-Claude Croizet, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of Poitiers who supervised the research based on Autin's doctoral dissertation. "People usually believe that academic achievement simply reflects students' inherent academic ability, which can be difficult to change," Croizet said. "But teachers and parents may be able to help students succeed just by changing the way in which the material is presented."
In the first experiment with 111 French sixth graders, students were given very difficult anagram problems that none of them could solve. Then a researcher talked to the students about the difficulty of the problems. One group was told that learning is difficult and failure is common, but practice will help, just like learning how to ride a bicycle. Children in a second group were just asked how they tried to solve the problems. The students then took a test that measures working memory capacity, a key cognitive ability for storing and processing incoming information. Working memory capacity is a good predictor of many aspects of academic achievement, including reading comprehension, problem solving and IQ. The students who were told that learning is difficult performed significantly better on the working memory test, especially on more difficult problems, than the second group or a third control group who took the working memory test without doing the anagrams or discussions with researchers.
A second experiment with 131 sixth graders followed a similar procedure with the difficult anagrams and discussions with a researcher. An additional group of students took a simpler anagram test that could be solved, and this group was not told that learning is difficult. All of the students then completed a reading comprehension test. The children who were told that learning is difficult scored higher than the other groups, including the students who had just succeeded on the simple test. How students think about failure may be more important than their own success when learning challenging skills, the study noted.
A third experiment with 68 sixth graders measured reading comprehension and asked questions that measured students' feelings about their own academic competence. The group that was told that learning is difficult performed better in reading comprehension and reported fewer feelings of incompetence.
The study noted that the students' improvement on the tests most likely was temporary, but the results showed that working memory capacity may be improved simply by boosting students' confidence and reducing their fear of failure. "Our research suggests that students will benefit from education that gives them room to struggle with difficulty," Autin said. "Teachers and parents should emphasize children's progress rather than focusing solely on grades and test scores. Learning takes time and each step in the process should be rewarded, especially at early stages when students most likely will experience failure."
Lack of Sleep May Increase Calorie Consumption
If you don't get enough sleep, you may also eat too much -- and thus be more likely to become obese. That is the findings of researchers who presented their study at the American Heart Association's Epidemiology and Prevention/Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism 2012 Scientific Sessions.
"We tested whether lack of sleep altered the levels of the hormones leptin and ghrelin, increased the amount of food people ate, and affected energy burned through activity," said Virend Somers, M.D., Ph.D., study author and professor of medicine and cardiovascular disease at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.. Leptin and ghrelin are associated with appetite.
The researchers studied 17 normal, healthy young men and women for eight nights, with half of the participants sleeping normally and half sleeping only two-thirds their normal time.
Participants ate as much as they wanted during the study.
Researchers found:
The sleep deprived group, who slept one hour and 20 minutes less than the control group each day consumed an average 549 additional calories each day.
The amount of energy used for activity didn't significantly change between groups, suggesting that those who slept less didn't burn additional calories.
Lack of sleep was associated with increased leptin levels and decreasing ghrelin -- changes that were more likely a consequence, rather than a cause, of over-eating.
"Sleep deprivation is a growing problem, with 28 percent of adults now reporting that they get six or fewer hours of sleep per night," said Andrew D. Calvin, M.D., M.P.H., co-investigator, cardiology fellow and assistant professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic.
The researchers noted that while this study suggests sleep deprivation may be an important part and one preventable cause of weight gain and obesity, it was a small study conducted in a hospital's clinical research unit.
"Larger studies of people in their home environments would help confirm our findings," Calvin said.
Co-authors are Rickey E. Carter, Ph.D. and James A. Levine, M.D., Ph.D. Author disclosures are on the manuscript. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, Minnesota Obesity Center and the Mayo Clinic.
"We tested whether lack of sleep altered the levels of the hormones leptin and ghrelin, increased the amount of food people ate, and affected energy burned through activity," said Virend Somers, M.D., Ph.D., study author and professor of medicine and cardiovascular disease at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.. Leptin and ghrelin are associated with appetite.
The researchers studied 17 normal, healthy young men and women for eight nights, with half of the participants sleeping normally and half sleeping only two-thirds their normal time.
Participants ate as much as they wanted during the study.
Researchers found:
The sleep deprived group, who slept one hour and 20 minutes less than the control group each day consumed an average 549 additional calories each day.
The amount of energy used for activity didn't significantly change between groups, suggesting that those who slept less didn't burn additional calories.
Lack of sleep was associated with increased leptin levels and decreasing ghrelin -- changes that were more likely a consequence, rather than a cause, of over-eating.
"Sleep deprivation is a growing problem, with 28 percent of adults now reporting that they get six or fewer hours of sleep per night," said Andrew D. Calvin, M.D., M.P.H., co-investigator, cardiology fellow and assistant professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic.
The researchers noted that while this study suggests sleep deprivation may be an important part and one preventable cause of weight gain and obesity, it was a small study conducted in a hospital's clinical research unit.
"Larger studies of people in their home environments would help confirm our findings," Calvin said.
Co-authors are Rickey E. Carter, Ph.D. and James A. Levine, M.D., Ph.D. Author disclosures are on the manuscript. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, Minnesota Obesity Center and the Mayo Clinic.
Eye Health Is Related to Brain Health
People with mild vascular disease that causes damage to the retina in the eye are more likely to have problems with thinking and memory skills because they may also have vascular disease in the brain, according to a study published in the March 14, 2012, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Damage to the retina is called retinopathy. In the study, the damage was mild enough to not cause significant symptoms.
"Problems with the tiny blood vessels in the eye may be a sign that there are also problems with the blood vessels in the brain that can lead to cognitive problems," said study author Mary Haan, DrPH, MPH, of the University of California, San Francisco. "This could be very useful if a simple eye screening could give us an early indication that people might be at risk of problems with their brain health and functioning."
The study involved 511 women with an average age of 69. The women took tests of their thinking and memory skills every year for up to 10 years. Their eye health was tested about four years into the study and scans were taken of their brains about eight years into the study.
A total of 39 women, or 7.6 percent, had retinopathy. The women with retinopathy on average had lower scores on the cognitive tests than the women who did not have retinopathy. The women with retinopathy also had more areas of small vascular damage within the brain, with 47 percent larger volumes of areas of damage than women who did not have retinopathy. In the parietal lobe of the brain, the women with retinopathy had 68 percent larger volumes of areas of damage.
The results remained the same even after adjusting for high blood pressure and diabetes, which can be a factor in vascular issues in the eye and the brain.
On a test of visual acuity, the women with retinopathy had similar scores as the women without the disease.
The study was supported by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and the National Institute on Aging.
Damage to the retina is called retinopathy. In the study, the damage was mild enough to not cause significant symptoms.
"Problems with the tiny blood vessels in the eye may be a sign that there are also problems with the blood vessels in the brain that can lead to cognitive problems," said study author Mary Haan, DrPH, MPH, of the University of California, San Francisco. "This could be very useful if a simple eye screening could give us an early indication that people might be at risk of problems with their brain health and functioning."
The study involved 511 women with an average age of 69. The women took tests of their thinking and memory skills every year for up to 10 years. Their eye health was tested about four years into the study and scans were taken of their brains about eight years into the study.
A total of 39 women, or 7.6 percent, had retinopathy. The women with retinopathy on average had lower scores on the cognitive tests than the women who did not have retinopathy. The women with retinopathy also had more areas of small vascular damage within the brain, with 47 percent larger volumes of areas of damage than women who did not have retinopathy. In the parietal lobe of the brain, the women with retinopathy had 68 percent larger volumes of areas of damage.
The results remained the same even after adjusting for high blood pressure and diabetes, which can be a factor in vascular issues in the eye and the brain.
On a test of visual acuity, the women with retinopathy had similar scores as the women without the disease.
The study was supported by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and the National Institute on Aging.
SPRING EQUINOX GOOGLE DOODLE
It’s the first day of spring, and at Google, vernal and verdant creativity springs eternal. So today, the company’s homepage Doodle reportedly draws inspiration from a textile company to create a logo that warmly says farewell to winter with a light and bright tone.
Team Google Doodle tells Comic Riffs that for each special logo, its illustrators marry technique with topic — the style is summoned from the substance. And so it is today, Google reportedly draws from Marimekko, the half-century-old Finnish firm whose designs include brilliant blue flora and whimsically tinted fauna.
Scientists define the Northern Hemisphere’s vernal equinox as ”the point, lying in the constellation Pisces, at which the sun’s ecliptic intersects the celestial equator” — as the Sun’s path reaches the First Point of Aries, and day and night are of equal length.
Linguists define vernal equinox as being Latin for “of spring” and “equal night,” respectively.
Gardeners and artists define it as the first day of spring and a season of literal and creative budding, as vivid colors begin to burst forth.
And many celebrants know it as Nowruz, the Persian New Year that kicks off a 13-day festival.
No matter how you define it, here’s to the bright sights and bold hues and rejuvenating promise of the Equinox.
Joe Mays stays with Denver Broncos with three-year deal worth about $12 million
Linebacker Joe Mays was excited to get a three-year, $12 million deal to stay in Denver. After hearing Peyton Manning had chosen the Broncos over other suitors Monday, he was even more thrilled.
Mays canceled a trip to visit with the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday. He flew back to Denver and said he was overjoyed when he heard Manning, the four-time MVP, had chosen Denver as his next destination.
“Aw man, it’s going to be exciting just what he brings to a team, he brings his leadership, just the way he approaches the game,” Mays said. “He has the ‘it’ factor when it comes to winning games. He had it over his time with the Colts and now he’s got a chance to do it here. We’re all excited to have him on the team.”
Mays said Manning could open the free agent floodgates in Denver, too.
“There’s a chance. I’m not really sure what’s going to happen, but there’s definitely a chance that we’re going to bring some guys here who worked in Indianapolis with him. I’m looking forward to what the Broncos are going to do as far as free agency. I can’t wait to see the finished product and get a chance to go out there and hit the field.”
Mays has started 17 games since arriving in Denver from Philadelphia in 2010. He had 75 tackles and 12 starts last season, playing mostly on early downs.
He had visited with the New Orleans Saints and was on his way to talk with the Colts on Sunday, when the Broncos agreed to the three-year contract.
“I was on the plane and heading to Washington to go to Indianapolis and my agent gave me a call right before I turned my phone off and told me that he’d reached a deal with the Broncos,” Mays said. “I knew I had to get off that plane as soon as possible so I could sign this contract.”
He said he’ll sign the contract, which includes $4 million in guarantees the first year, later Monday.
Mays canceled a trip to visit with the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday. He flew back to Denver and said he was overjoyed when he heard Manning, the four-time MVP, had chosen Denver as his next destination.
“Aw man, it’s going to be exciting just what he brings to a team, he brings his leadership, just the way he approaches the game,” Mays said. “He has the ‘it’ factor when it comes to winning games. He had it over his time with the Colts and now he’s got a chance to do it here. We’re all excited to have him on the team.”
Mays said Manning could open the free agent floodgates in Denver, too.
“There’s a chance. I’m not really sure what’s going to happen, but there’s definitely a chance that we’re going to bring some guys here who worked in Indianapolis with him. I’m looking forward to what the Broncos are going to do as far as free agency. I can’t wait to see the finished product and get a chance to go out there and hit the field.”
Mays has started 17 games since arriving in Denver from Philadelphia in 2010. He had 75 tackles and 12 starts last season, playing mostly on early downs.
He had visited with the New Orleans Saints and was on his way to talk with the Colts on Sunday, when the Broncos agreed to the three-year contract.
“I was on the plane and heading to Washington to go to Indianapolis and my agent gave me a call right before I turned my phone off and told me that he’d reached a deal with the Broncos,” Mays said. “I knew I had to get off that plane as soon as possible so I could sign this contract.”
He said he’ll sign the contract, which includes $4 million in guarantees the first year, later Monday.
Tornado Hits Southwest Of City As Storms Sweep U.S.
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Residents and businesses from southeast Texas north through western Missouri braced for flooding Tuesday after a violent band of storms brought heavy rain, hail and at least one tornado, with more of the same forecast for the next several days.
Thousands of customers lost power in San Antonio and Dallas-Fort Worth, where strong winds and rain pelted the area, and power outages were reported in Oklahoma City and Tulsa County. Flights were stopped temporarily Monday night at Love Field airport and delayed an average of almost three hours at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
The National Weather Service said a tornado touched down Monday evening about 25 miles southwest of San Antonio. The twister damaged several homes, trapping some people inside their mobile homes, but no fatalities were reported, according to The San Antonio Express.
The fresh crop of storms comes after two tornadoes damaged homes and railcars in North Platte, Neb., on Sunday. The EF3 twister with winds up to 165 mph injured four people.
Flooding remains a serious concern across the affected areas.
Eight inches of rain was expected in southeastern Kansas, which has been unusually dry for nearly a year. The area has had less than three-fourths of the precipitation it typically gets since last April, state climatologist Mary Knapp said.
"We're looking at maybe a week of rain in that part of the state," she said. "That would be a very, very nice start to our spring season."
Emergency management officials said they're keeping an eye on the clouds but feel comfortable southeast Kansas can handle several days of rain.
In Arkansas, however, emergency management officials readied teams to respond to flash floods, especially in the western part of the state where the heaviest downpour was expected. The U.S. Forest Service closed campsites preemptively Monday, exercising caution after 20 people died in a flash flood at a remote campground in 2010.
Forecasters in Tulsa, Okla., said the slow-moving storm was expected to stall over the area, dumping up to 12 inches of rain in isolated areas.
"When rain falls in those terrain areas" — especially the hills and valleys — "it's quickly funneled into small rivers and streams," said B.J. Simpson, a National Weather Service meteorologist. "Those are the most dangerous areas."
Still, even flatlands could see the potential for runoff and flash floods if the rain comes too fast for the ground to absorb it.
"There's really no amount of dry ground that can take up to 10 inches of rain in a couple day timeframe," Simpson said.
___
Associated Press writers Bill Draper in Kansas City, Mo., Rochelle Hines in Oklahoma City, Nomaan Merchant in Dallas and Jeannie Nuss in Little Rock, Ark., contributed to this report.
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/20/san-antonio-texas-tornado_n_1366229.html
Thousands of customers lost power in San Antonio and Dallas-Fort Worth, where strong winds and rain pelted the area, and power outages were reported in Oklahoma City and Tulsa County. Flights were stopped temporarily Monday night at Love Field airport and delayed an average of almost three hours at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
The National Weather Service said a tornado touched down Monday evening about 25 miles southwest of San Antonio. The twister damaged several homes, trapping some people inside their mobile homes, but no fatalities were reported, according to The San Antonio Express.
The fresh crop of storms comes after two tornadoes damaged homes and railcars in North Platte, Neb., on Sunday. The EF3 twister with winds up to 165 mph injured four people.
Flooding remains a serious concern across the affected areas.
Eight inches of rain was expected in southeastern Kansas, which has been unusually dry for nearly a year. The area has had less than three-fourths of the precipitation it typically gets since last April, state climatologist Mary Knapp said.
"We're looking at maybe a week of rain in that part of the state," she said. "That would be a very, very nice start to our spring season."
Emergency management officials said they're keeping an eye on the clouds but feel comfortable southeast Kansas can handle several days of rain.
In Arkansas, however, emergency management officials readied teams to respond to flash floods, especially in the western part of the state where the heaviest downpour was expected. The U.S. Forest Service closed campsites preemptively Monday, exercising caution after 20 people died in a flash flood at a remote campground in 2010.
Forecasters in Tulsa, Okla., said the slow-moving storm was expected to stall over the area, dumping up to 12 inches of rain in isolated areas.
"When rain falls in those terrain areas" — especially the hills and valleys — "it's quickly funneled into small rivers and streams," said B.J. Simpson, a National Weather Service meteorologist. "Those are the most dangerous areas."
Still, even flatlands could see the potential for runoff and flash floods if the rain comes too fast for the ground to absorb it.
"There's really no amount of dry ground that can take up to 10 inches of rain in a couple day timeframe," Simpson said.
___
Associated Press writers Bill Draper in Kansas City, Mo., Rochelle Hines in Oklahoma City, Nomaan Merchant in Dallas and Jeannie Nuss in Little Rock, Ark., contributed to this report.
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/20/san-antonio-texas-tornado_n_1366229.html
Tornado Hits San Antonio as Severe Weather Rattles South and Midwest
Residents across this broad region were bracing for flooding Tuesday after the severe weather brought heavy rain and hail that is anticipated to continue for the next few days. With the storm system slowing significantly, tornadoes are becoming less likely but flash flooding becomes a major concern, forecasters said.
The slow-moving weather pattern will bring thunderstorms with heavy rain as it moves over the same area, according to the National Weather Service, which said that some locations will receive a foot of rain by midweek.
The NWS reported that the tornado touched down 25 miles southwest of San Antonio on Monday evening, and that parts of the city and surrounding areas were under a tornado warning. Although some were trapped inside their homes, no fatalities were reported by early Tuesday morning.
Tornado warnings across the San Antonio area were canceled around 11 p.m. Monday, according to ABC News affiliate KSAT. Crews began assessing damage to the area late Monday night.
The sheriff's office in Medina, Texas, reported multiple injuries, but do not have a count yet.
"Pretty much all" of the approximately 50 homes damaged were completely destroyed, a representative from the office said.
Interim Fire Marshal Craig Roberts reported heavily damaged homes and five injuries, and one reported missing, according to KSAT. He said none of the injuries were life-threatening.
Strong winds in the Dallas-Fort Worth area brought major power outages, while outages were reported in Oklahoma City and in Tulsa County. Heavy rains closed roads in Oklahoma, and roofs were reportedly blown off by high winds in Minnesota.
Eight inches of rain was expected in southeastern Kansas, according to The Associated Press.
"We're looking at maybe a week of rain in that part of the state," Kansas climatologist Mary Knapp said. "That would be a very, very nice start to our spring season."
Monday's severe weather follows an EF3 twister with winds up to 165 mph that struck North Platte, Neb., on Sunday.
Source: http://abcnews.go.com/US/tornado-hits-san-antonio-severe-weather-rattles-south/story?id=15959264#.T2hv8tnEzCM
David Garrard joins the Miami Dolphins
The Dolphins this evening added a 34-year-old veteran and prepared to cut a 34-year-old veteran.
David Garrard has agreed to a one-year contract with the Miami Dolphins various media outlets are reporting, led by Foxsports.com which broke the story on twitter.
Garrard, who played 10 seasons in Jacksonville and has been a solid performer, obviously brings veteran experience in a backup role, assuming he does not win the starting job. It is unclear if he's been told he will able compete for the starting job or simply be the backup.
This much seems clear: It makes sense for the Dolphins to add at least one more quarterback, with that player probably being a draftee that can be groomed as the club's future franchise quarterback. It is also possible the Dolphins are still talking to Alex Smith but this is much less likely -- indeed, unlikely -- as Smith seems to be a better fit back in San Francisco.
The Dolphins did for all intents and purposes clear $4.3 million of cap space this afternoon by outlining to agent Drew Rosenhaus its intent to cut strong safety Yeremiah Bell. Bell has led the Dolphins in tackles in recent years but was seen as declining last year. While widely expected, this move was a departure from two weeks ago when general manager Jeff Ireland told Rosenhaus the team did not intend to cut Bell.
Garrard undoubtedly takes up some of the cap space created by the Bell move.
The Dolphins did not announce any of these moves. In truth, the Dolphins declined to confirm the fact Garrard visited Monday because he is a street free agent and the club does not announce visit from street free agents -- players that hit the open market because they were cut by other teams.
Garrard last season declined a chance to join the Dolphins in October after he was waived in Jacksonville. Two weeks later, while waiting to join the Oakland Raiders, he learned that he had a bulging disc injury in his neck and required surgery.
One assumes the Dolphins both worked out and gave Garrard a full physical before offering a contract. I also further assume Garrard's head did not fall off his shoulders during the physical because that would mean the Dolphins signed a headless quarterback.
Kidding. I personally like the addition. Worst-case scenario, the Dolphins have a better, more experienced backup QB than anyone else in the AFC East.
David Garrard has agreed to a one-year contract with the Miami Dolphins various media outlets are reporting, led by Foxsports.com which broke the story on twitter.
Garrard, who played 10 seasons in Jacksonville and has been a solid performer, obviously brings veteran experience in a backup role, assuming he does not win the starting job. It is unclear if he's been told he will able compete for the starting job or simply be the backup.
This much seems clear: It makes sense for the Dolphins to add at least one more quarterback, with that player probably being a draftee that can be groomed as the club's future franchise quarterback. It is also possible the Dolphins are still talking to Alex Smith but this is much less likely -- indeed, unlikely -- as Smith seems to be a better fit back in San Francisco.
The Dolphins did for all intents and purposes clear $4.3 million of cap space this afternoon by outlining to agent Drew Rosenhaus its intent to cut strong safety Yeremiah Bell. Bell has led the Dolphins in tackles in recent years but was seen as declining last year. While widely expected, this move was a departure from two weeks ago when general manager Jeff Ireland told Rosenhaus the team did not intend to cut Bell.
Garrard undoubtedly takes up some of the cap space created by the Bell move.
The Dolphins did not announce any of these moves. In truth, the Dolphins declined to confirm the fact Garrard visited Monday because he is a street free agent and the club does not announce visit from street free agents -- players that hit the open market because they were cut by other teams.
Garrard last season declined a chance to join the Dolphins in October after he was waived in Jacksonville. Two weeks later, while waiting to join the Oakland Raiders, he learned that he had a bulging disc injury in his neck and required surgery.
One assumes the Dolphins both worked out and gave Garrard a full physical before offering a contract. I also further assume Garrard's head did not fall off his shoulders during the physical because that would mean the Dolphins signed a headless quarterback.
Kidding. I personally like the addition. Worst-case scenario, the Dolphins have a better, more experienced backup QB than anyone else in the AFC East.
Former Jaguars quarterback David Garrard signs 1-year deal with Miami Dolphins
Quarterback David Garrard signed a one-year contract Monday with the Miami Dolphins and said he was told he’ll be given a shot at the starting job.
He’s not sure yet who else will be part of the competition, though.
The Dolphins reached agreement with the former Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback after failed courtships with Peyton Manning and Matt Flynn. They also hosted San Francisco 49ers quarterback Alex Smith for a visit Sunday and may still consider signing him.
“They didn’t say for sure they were bringing another guy in, but they said it’s a possibility, whether in the draft or whatever,” Garrard said in a phone interview.
For now, Garrard and incumbent Matt Moore are the contenders for the job.
“It’s going to be a great competition, and I’m all about that,” Garrard said. “I’m going to do my best to make sure it’s me on opening day.”
The Dolphins also told safety Yeremiah Bell he’ll be released to create cap space, a person familiar with the discussions said. The person confirmed the discussions to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the Dolphins hadn’t announced a move.
By cutting Bell, the Dolphins save more than $4 million in cap space, which could be used in negotiations with Smith.
The 34-year-old Garrard, a starter for Jacksonville from 2005-10, didn’t play last season. He was released five days before the opener by the Jaguars, and Miami courted him last year after quarterback Chad Henne’s season was ended by a shoulder injury.
But Garrard didn’t sign, and instead underwent back surgery in October. He considered retirement, he said, but is now 100 percent and eager to extend his career another year.
“It was taken away from me, and it gave me a great perspective on life and this game,” he said. “I want to make sure when I leave this game, I do it when I’m ready to go, and there’s never any remorse or thought of, could I have done more?”
Garrard apparently impressed the Dolphins with his workout Monday, and he said he was impressed by new coach Joe Philbin and his staff.
“I just love the vibe,” Garrard said. “I love everybody’s mission and goal, and the purpose they have and the direction they’re heading.”
Garrard’s best season was in 2007, when he threw 18 touchdown passes and only three interceptions. He topped 3,500 yards passing in 2008 and 2009, and he’s 39-37 as a starter in nine seasons, all with Jacksonville.
He’s not sure yet who else will be part of the competition, though.
The Dolphins reached agreement with the former Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback after failed courtships with Peyton Manning and Matt Flynn. They also hosted San Francisco 49ers quarterback Alex Smith for a visit Sunday and may still consider signing him.
“They didn’t say for sure they were bringing another guy in, but they said it’s a possibility, whether in the draft or whatever,” Garrard said in a phone interview.
For now, Garrard and incumbent Matt Moore are the contenders for the job.
“It’s going to be a great competition, and I’m all about that,” Garrard said. “I’m going to do my best to make sure it’s me on opening day.”
The Dolphins also told safety Yeremiah Bell he’ll be released to create cap space, a person familiar with the discussions said. The person confirmed the discussions to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the Dolphins hadn’t announced a move.
By cutting Bell, the Dolphins save more than $4 million in cap space, which could be used in negotiations with Smith.
The 34-year-old Garrard, a starter for Jacksonville from 2005-10, didn’t play last season. He was released five days before the opener by the Jaguars, and Miami courted him last year after quarterback Chad Henne’s season was ended by a shoulder injury.
But Garrard didn’t sign, and instead underwent back surgery in October. He considered retirement, he said, but is now 100 percent and eager to extend his career another year.
“It was taken away from me, and it gave me a great perspective on life and this game,” he said. “I want to make sure when I leave this game, I do it when I’m ready to go, and there’s never any remorse or thought of, could I have done more?”
Garrard apparently impressed the Dolphins with his workout Monday, and he said he was impressed by new coach Joe Philbin and his staff.
“I just love the vibe,” Garrard said. “I love everybody’s mission and goal, and the purpose they have and the direction they’re heading.”
Garrard’s best season was in 2007, when he threw 18 touchdown passes and only three interceptions. He topped 3,500 yards passing in 2008 and 2009, and he’s 39-37 as a starter in nine seasons, all with Jacksonville.
10 Tips to Prevent Accidental Poisoning of Children
The ACEP wants the public to learn how to “prevent poison” during the 50th Anniversary of National Poison Prevention Week, March 18-24, 2012. The goal is to create national awareness about the risk of injury or death due to poisoning. From unintentional child poisonings with household products to prescription medicine abuse, poisonings and poisoning-related incidents affect every community. Even a swallowed button battery can be deadly for a child.
Child-resistant packaging on medicines and household products, as well as the ban on lead-based paint in the home are among poisoning prevention success stories. But emerging hazards involving pest control products, prescription medicine abuse, and button batteries have again reignited the need for increased awareness. Four million calls were placed to America’s poison control centers last year.
10 Tips to Prevent Accidental Poisoning of Children
1. Store all medicines — prescription and non-prescription — locked safely away from children.
2. Use child-resistant packaging properly by closing securely after use.
3. Never refer to medicines as “candy” when speaking to children.
4. Ask guests to keep purses, bags, or coats that have medicines in them away and out of sight when they are in your home
5. Keep cleaning supplies locked up and out of the reach of children.
6. Keep all products in their original containers with the original labels.
7. When products are in use, never let young children out of your sight, even if you must take the child or product along when answering the phone or doorbell.
8. Lamps or candles containing lamp oil should never be left within reach of a child.
9. Households with children should never use loose bait or loose pellet rodent control products.
10. Households with children should never use soft drink bottles or cups to hold paint thinner, turpentine, gasoline, or other household chemicals. Children may be tempted to drink them.
Children do act fast, and those under age five are particularly vulnerable to accidental poisoning because they learn by touching and putting things in their mouths. From crawling to learning to walk, they quickly learn to reach and explore new things. The best way to baby proof the home is to get down to a child’s eye view.
“Every household should have the national Poison Help Line phone number posted by the telephone,” said Dr. Seaberg. “The Help Line, 1-800-222-1222, connects you to your local poison center 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year.”
Source: PoisonPrevention.org
Source: http://www.care2.com/greenliving/10-tips-to-prevent-accidental-poisoning-of-children.html
5 Tips for Creating Hi-Res iPad Content
Designers and developers who create content for mobile devices with high-resolution screens often see the retina display as both a blessing and a curse. For instance, the new iPad, with its 2,048 x 1,536-pixel resolution, has a million more pixels than your 1080p HD television.
But while the new resolution affords stunning, visual experiences, the devices often require 4G Internet speeds, which aren’t available to everyone. Furthermore, designers are questioning how to start multi-screen projects in the first place.
Whether publishing digital content or building rich media display advertising, try these five tips.
1. If Designing for Multiple Devices, Start with the iPad.
Although historically the order of creating digital content has been desktop first, smartphone second, tablet third, you will need to port experiences to all screens eventually. Therefore, reverse the order and start with the highest resolution screen and the most interactive platform.
Start with the iPad, the device that can handle the best interactive ingredients in terms of features and resolution. Then, revise the idea when porting to more limited devices, like desktops, smart TVs, smartphones and less advanced tablets. This ensures the content will be optimized to its fullest extent on every device.
2. Use Web Fonts.
Web fonts allow you to use almost any font without having to render it as an image first. Download the font separately and render the text in the browser using the @font-face feature. This saves a lot of bandwidth on high-resolution screens.
Combine the web fonts with shading and masks for high-res, customizable results. This font example looks like a hand-painted sign on your new iPad. Access these fonts from various vendors, like Typekit.
Or apply compression technologies to an image that would normally create unwanted artifacts on your text. By keeping the text separate and using web fonts for design, you will always produce crisp, readable content.
3. Use CSS Instead of PNGs.
Web technologies like HTML5 and CSS3 help optimize high-resolution displays in a bandwidth-friendly way. Use progressive enhancement to mark up the content; that way, it will still look decent on browsers that don’t fully support the feature. Then, take advantage of colors, rounded corners, gradients and opacity to create common graphic elements. Don’t resort to PNGs for shape-based needs, such as buttons, lines, corners and tabs. It either won’t look crisp, or it will cost many more kilobytes than it’s worth.
4. Use a CSS Media Selector to Deliver Correctly Sized Images.
When creating photos and graphics to port across devices, try using a responsive design approach that scales content to the size of the canvas or browser window. Some JavaScript techniques allow you to download a high-resolution image, but may actually add weight to the page. Instead, try the CSS @media selector to download a photo sized specifically for the device.
5. Borrow Some Tricks from Game Designers.
Making high-res graphics efficient is not new to game design. Common game development techniques, like texture maps or sprite maps, can be the best approach for your content on high-res mobile screens.
With these techniques, the designer puts many images and backgrounds in one single larger image to avoid downloading and drawing multiple images. Especially when dealing with animations or backgrounds — as is often the case when designing rich media advertisements or entertainment content — bandwidth and display performance improves.
All of these techniques have been valid and viable for awhile now. However, with the advent of high-resolution mobile devices, these optimizations are even more necessary. The high pixel density revolution is forcing designers and interactive developers to save bandwidth by advancing the sophistication of their markups.
Source: http://mashable.com/2012/03/19/hi-res-content-for-ipad/
3 Tips for Successful MCAT Preparation
The MCAT is a marathon, not a sprint. To be successful and get the absolute maximum score you can, preparation is paramount.
Many premedical students don't begin their MCAT preparation until three or four months before they take the exam. That may sound like a lot of time, but when you consider that most students are taking at least 12 academic credit hours, volunteering at a hospital or other extracurricular activity, are involved in research, and/or are working part time (at least), three or four months quickly becomes inadequate.
Six months is actually ideal. So how do you make the most of the time you have before your anticipated test date? Below are three tips to help you maximize your efforts and best prepare for the MCAT.
1. Know what you are facing: A great way to start your preparation is to see what you are up against. Taking a practice MCAT under test conditions before you've done any prep can be an effective, and sometimes jarring, way to jump-start your MCAT training. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) currently offers a free practice MCAT online. This is a perfect (and free) opportunity to familiarize yourself with the content and format of the test.
Practicing under test conditions is important because it provides that element of time pressure that should not be felt for the first time when you are a few weeks out from test day. Please remember not to beat yourself up if you don't do well during this practice test. Once you know what you are facing, you can hone your strategy and plan for success.
2. Don't simply memorize: By the time you are sitting down to take the MCAT, you have already demonstrated that you are capable of learning new information and using formulas. Therefore, those that create the MCAT are far less interested in your ability to memorize formulas than they are in your ability to understand the physical, biological, or chemical process they describe.
When reviewing the MCAT physical and biological sciences material, in addition to being able to answer the practice questions, ask yourself if you can explain it to a fifth grader in an understandable way. This may sound crazy, but if you understand the material well enough to teach it, you are probably ready to take the test.
3. Focus on your weaknesses: We all want to feel like we are smart, and consequently, many premedical students tend to focus on their strengths in their MCAT preparation and let their weaknesses fester. This is clearly not a good strategy!
Whether you choose to take an MCAT preparatory course or study on your own, use the practice tests and your demonstrated strengths and identified weaknesses as a guide to help you hone your study plan. The best plan is one that further develops your strengths while improving your weaker areas.
You shouldn't rely on just your strengths to pull you through. You need to be as solid as possible in all aspects of the exam to perform at the highest possible level.
Before the MCAT, most of us had never taken a test as comprehensive and impactful, but luckily there is an abundance of MCAT information and resources to help you prepare, as well as strategies like those above to help you get a handle on the exam. As long as you dedicate time to preparation, there shouldn't be any surprises come test day.
Mark D'Agostino, M.D., M.S., M.Sc. is a Brigade Surgeon in the United States Army. As a Marshall Scholar, he earned a master's degree in Biochemistry at the University of Nottingham Medical School, and a second master's in Health Policy, Planning and Financing from the London School of Economics (LSE) and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). After graduating from Brown Medical School, he trained at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
Source: http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/medical-school-admissions-doctor/2012/03/19/3-tips-for-successful-mcat-preparation
Many premedical students don't begin their MCAT preparation until three or four months before they take the exam. That may sound like a lot of time, but when you consider that most students are taking at least 12 academic credit hours, volunteering at a hospital or other extracurricular activity, are involved in research, and/or are working part time (at least), three or four months quickly becomes inadequate.
Six months is actually ideal. So how do you make the most of the time you have before your anticipated test date? Below are three tips to help you maximize your efforts and best prepare for the MCAT.
1. Know what you are facing: A great way to start your preparation is to see what you are up against. Taking a practice MCAT under test conditions before you've done any prep can be an effective, and sometimes jarring, way to jump-start your MCAT training. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) currently offers a free practice MCAT online. This is a perfect (and free) opportunity to familiarize yourself with the content and format of the test.
Practicing under test conditions is important because it provides that element of time pressure that should not be felt for the first time when you are a few weeks out from test day. Please remember not to beat yourself up if you don't do well during this practice test. Once you know what you are facing, you can hone your strategy and plan for success.
2. Don't simply memorize: By the time you are sitting down to take the MCAT, you have already demonstrated that you are capable of learning new information and using formulas. Therefore, those that create the MCAT are far less interested in your ability to memorize formulas than they are in your ability to understand the physical, biological, or chemical process they describe.
When reviewing the MCAT physical and biological sciences material, in addition to being able to answer the practice questions, ask yourself if you can explain it to a fifth grader in an understandable way. This may sound crazy, but if you understand the material well enough to teach it, you are probably ready to take the test.
3. Focus on your weaknesses: We all want to feel like we are smart, and consequently, many premedical students tend to focus on their strengths in their MCAT preparation and let their weaknesses fester. This is clearly not a good strategy!
Whether you choose to take an MCAT preparatory course or study on your own, use the practice tests and your demonstrated strengths and identified weaknesses as a guide to help you hone your study plan. The best plan is one that further develops your strengths while improving your weaker areas.
You shouldn't rely on just your strengths to pull you through. You need to be as solid as possible in all aspects of the exam to perform at the highest possible level.
Before the MCAT, most of us had never taken a test as comprehensive and impactful, but luckily there is an abundance of MCAT information and resources to help you prepare, as well as strategies like those above to help you get a handle on the exam. As long as you dedicate time to preparation, there shouldn't be any surprises come test day.
Mark D'Agostino, M.D., M.S., M.Sc. is a Brigade Surgeon in the United States Army. As a Marshall Scholar, he earned a master's degree in Biochemistry at the University of Nottingham Medical School, and a second master's in Health Policy, Planning and Financing from the London School of Economics (LSE) and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). After graduating from Brown Medical School, he trained at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
Source: http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/medical-school-admissions-doctor/2012/03/19/3-tips-for-successful-mcat-preparation
10 Tips For Mastering The Fine Art of Draw Something
This doesn't always mean coloring within the lines. You can be a pro at the game without being a pro artist. All you need is a comprehensible image, but you'd be surprised at how many players don't utilize even the most basic of tricks to help them in that goal.
Without further ado, I present to you 10 ways to improve your Draw Something skills.
1. The line thickness option is your friend
Neglecting this option is usually the sign of a first-time player. You hop in a game, excited to test the skills of your new opponent, and quickly realize that their next 20 or so drawings are only going to be using the default thickness setting before they realize that others exist. Blobs of drawings are hard to decipher. For the love of art, recognize that you can draw details more effectively with the thinnest option. The same goes for coloring in large areas of space with the thickets line option. Make use of these to help your drawing.
2. Diversify your color palette
This one is more for fun than for function. You don't necessarily need different colors to be able to portray your concept effectively, but it's helpful and it's fun. Draw Something isn't only about besting your opponent. It's about having fun while drawing something out for someone, even if it's a laughable piece of art. The game itself recognizes this. It's programmed to send you pop up notifications alerting you to a drawing that someone has sent you, rather than focusing on it being your turn like most app games do. Besides, using new colors increases your stats against the other player, too.
3. Don't be afraid of the harder options
Do you know how many times I've seen people draw out a heart or a circle? Too many. I can guess it before they even put index finger to screen. I'm bored of those. Let's move on. Don't be afraid to test your skills with some of the harder level words. While many of these happen to be celebrities—like Kanye West or Elton John—others are still fairly easy to draw if you know what cues to give your opponent. It results in more coins, higher stats, and a feeling of satisfaction. And, as a hint, if you're stuck on Kanye, everyone recognizes the shutter shades.
4. Use the shuffle button to examine the letters
If you can't immediately guess what your friend is drawing, take a minute to check out the letters. Undoubtedly you've played Words With Friends, scrabble, or some variation of the sort. Don't be afraid to take your time to see if you can't rearrange the letters to revive the mangled word.
5. Don't be tempted to use your bombs too quickly
Bombs are your friends. They eliminate a number of letters to help you guess what the word might be if you're really stuck. But you should only use this bonus feature when you're absolutely backed into a corner. Once you start throwing bombs down at every hint of hesitation, you'll run out before you know it. And you should really save those hard-earned coins for more colors rather than more bomb purchases.
6. Draw details
Help a brother out, people. As many details as you can think of to help your friend place context to your drawing will go a long way. Sure, you can draw a stick figure pretty quickly and be done with it, but a pair of glasses, some wrinkles, an umbrella or whatever makes sense for that round can help your Draw Something companion make sense of the sticks and blots of color.
7. Use arrows, circles, any form of indicator
Following in line with tip # 6, use an arrow, circle or any other indicator to tell your friend exactly what part of the drawing you're referencing. You might have drawn the most elaborate scenery possible just to show me one chair, but I need to know what I'm looking for amongst all the other details. But bravo for following rule # 6!
8. Resist the urge to Google
We've all been there. You're so close you can taste it. Just one little extra detail and you're as good as gold. A quick Google will just put your mind to ease, right? Wrong. It's not the same win unless you can decipher the drawing yourself. Don't cop out.
9. Use a tablet
If you can, I highly suggest using a tablet. The extra screen real estate really lends itself well to drawing with your index finger, which is usually a sloppy process. The roomier screen of an iPad would make it easier to draw more precisely. Bonus: A stylus helps tremendously if you're not too comfortable drawing with your index finger, but it does put you at a huge advantage over your opponent.
10. Don't cheat
This game is called Draw Something not "write out the word in a 2-year old's handwriting." You can't just spell out "soap" and feel victorious when I guess it correctly. It doesn't work that way. Writing a few vague words here and there as support is one thing, but flat out scribbling down the entire concept without so much as an ounce of effort is an insult to the game, your opponent, and yourself. Don't play the game if you feel compelled to cheat. I will delete you, every time.
Source: http://kotaku.com/5894449/10-tips-for-mastering-the-fine-art-of-draw-something
Tips to put a stop to early aging
Dermatologists can't stress it enough: How you treat your skin now will affect its future appearance. While it may seem silly to worry about wrinkles long before you have any, it's true that preparation pays off.
According to dermatologists, more women in their twenties are asking for anti-aging tips. So, what can you do keep your skin looking young and healthy? Kiehl's Since 1851, a company that specializes in skin and hair care formulas derived from natural ingredients, offers the following tips:
* Rest up. There's a reason "you look tired" and "you look great" aren't synonymous. But did you know that the position in which you sleep can also affect your looks? If you sleep face-down, fluid can collect beneath your eyes. Try sleeping face-up with your head slightly elevated with pillows. If you do wake up with facial swelling, try tapping the skin beneath your eyes or applying a cold compress.
* Apply vitamin C. Your skin contains more vitamin C than any other antioxidant, including the much-touted vitamin E. To keep vitamin C at an optimal level, make sure you are applying a skincare formula that contains plenty of vitamin C.
"Vitamin C helps keep skin even and bright, and it offers potent antioxidant protection from environmental stressors, such as pollution and sunlight," said Dr. Adam Geyer, fellow of the American Academy of Dermatology, Instructor in Clinical Dermatology at Columbia University and Kiehl's Brand Ambassador.
Two of Kiehl's products, "Powerful-Strength Line-Reducing Concentrate" to improve tone and texture all over the face and "Line-Reducing Eye-Brightening Concentrate" formulated specifically for the eye area to boost radiance and minimize wrinkles, contain 10.5 percent vitamin C. Unlike many retinol products, they won't cause photosensitivity and irritation and are gentle enough for twice-daily use. Apply them after cleansing, both day and night to obtain the greatest results.
* Reduce your sodium intake. You can make your doctor and your skin happy at the same time! When you eat too much sodium, you can cause your body to shift fluid into extracellular spaces, especially beneath your eyes. Avoid excess sodium intake to benefit both your health and your skin.
Source: http://www.kxly.com/Tips-to-put-a-stop-to-early-aging/-/101300/9221576/-/153j9nv/-/
According to dermatologists, more women in their twenties are asking for anti-aging tips. So, what can you do keep your skin looking young and healthy? Kiehl's Since 1851, a company that specializes in skin and hair care formulas derived from natural ingredients, offers the following tips:
* Rest up. There's a reason "you look tired" and "you look great" aren't synonymous. But did you know that the position in which you sleep can also affect your looks? If you sleep face-down, fluid can collect beneath your eyes. Try sleeping face-up with your head slightly elevated with pillows. If you do wake up with facial swelling, try tapping the skin beneath your eyes or applying a cold compress.
* Apply vitamin C. Your skin contains more vitamin C than any other antioxidant, including the much-touted vitamin E. To keep vitamin C at an optimal level, make sure you are applying a skincare formula that contains plenty of vitamin C.
"Vitamin C helps keep skin even and bright, and it offers potent antioxidant protection from environmental stressors, such as pollution and sunlight," said Dr. Adam Geyer, fellow of the American Academy of Dermatology, Instructor in Clinical Dermatology at Columbia University and Kiehl's Brand Ambassador.
Two of Kiehl's products, "Powerful-Strength Line-Reducing Concentrate" to improve tone and texture all over the face and "Line-Reducing Eye-Brightening Concentrate" formulated specifically for the eye area to boost radiance and minimize wrinkles, contain 10.5 percent vitamin C. Unlike many retinol products, they won't cause photosensitivity and irritation and are gentle enough for twice-daily use. Apply them after cleansing, both day and night to obtain the greatest results.
* Reduce your sodium intake. You can make your doctor and your skin happy at the same time! When you eat too much sodium, you can cause your body to shift fluid into extracellular spaces, especially beneath your eyes. Avoid excess sodium intake to benefit both your health and your skin.
Source: http://www.kxly.com/Tips-to-put-a-stop-to-early-aging/-/101300/9221576/-/153j9nv/-/
New Antibiotic Could Make Food Safer and Cows Healthier
Food-borne diseases might soon have another warrior to contend with, thanks to a new molecule discovered by chemists at the University of Illinois. The new antibiotic, an analog of the widely used food preservative nisin, also has potential to be a boon to the dairy industry as a treatment for bovine mastitis.
The antibiotic nisin occurs naturally in milk, a product of bacteria resident in the cow's udder. It helps keep milk from spoiling and kills a broad spectrum of bacteria that cause food-borne illness, most notably listeria and clostridium. It was approved as a food additive in 1969, and since then has become prevalent in the food industry in more than 50 countries.
"It's good to know that there are natural products added to our food that protect us from diseases," said lead researcher Wilfred van der Donk, a chemistry professor at the University of Illinois. "Many people probably don't even realize that, or think it's some kind of a non-natural chemical. Last summer we had the listeria outbreak, and that's a good example of people dying from pathogens in food. You don't hear of such outbreaks often, and that's in part because of the compounds that are added to food to kill the pathogens."
Nisin also shows promise as a treatment for bovine mastitis, an infection in cows that costs the dairy industry billions each year since milk produced during and shortly after antibiotic treatment has to be thrown out. Since nisin already is present in low levels in milk, farmers using nisin to treat mastitis may not need to discard milk or meat from recently treated animals.
However, for all its utility, nisin has drawbacks. It's produced in an acidic environment, but it becomes unstable at the neutral pH levels needed for many foods or pharmaceuticals. It also becomes unstable at higher temperatures, limiting its uses.
While studying the genome of another bacterium that lives at high temperatures, van der Donk's group found genes to make a molecule with a similar structure and function to nisin, known as an analog. They isolated the genes and inserted them into E. coli so they could produce the new antibiotic, dubbed geobacillin, in large enough quantities to study its structure and function.
"As it turns out, geobacillin is more stable, both in respect to pH and temperature," van der Donk said. "We think this is good news for potential use of geobacillin in food."
Nisin, and presumably geobacillin, work by binding to a molecule the pathogen needs to build its cell wall and then poking holes in the bacterial cell's membrane, a one-two punch that quickly kills the invader. However, the two antibiotics have slight structural differences. Nisin's structure has five looped regions, formed by cross-links in the protein chain. Geobacillin has seven loops thanks to two additional cross-links, which give the protein added stability.
The team tested geobacillin against several foodborne and disease-causing bacteria and found it similarly effective or more effective than nisin, depending on the bacteria. Most significantly, it was three times more active against the main contagious bacteria responsible for bovine mastitis. Contagious mastitis is devastating for dairy farmers, as the bacteria can quickly spread throughout a herd. In addition, since mastitis could be caused by a number of different infections, geobacillin's broad-spectrum activity makes it a very attractive treatment option.
Next, the researchers plan to test geobacillin against a wider spectrum of disease-causing bacteria. Many tests of safety, efficacy and economic production lie ahead, although geobacillin has shown great promise in tests to date. The researchers hope that its greater stability will enable medicinal applications for geobacillin that nisin could not realize, both for bovine mastitis and possibly for human disease.
"Nisin was very promising in early preclinical trials in that it was very effective in killing multi-drug-resistant bacteria in mouse models," said van der Donk, "but because of its instability, it has a very short half-life in blood. So we're looking to see whether geobacillin has greater serum stability."
The researchers published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. The National Institutes of Health supported this work. Van der Donk is also a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120319163801.htm
The antibiotic nisin occurs naturally in milk, a product of bacteria resident in the cow's udder. It helps keep milk from spoiling and kills a broad spectrum of bacteria that cause food-borne illness, most notably listeria and clostridium. It was approved as a food additive in 1969, and since then has become prevalent in the food industry in more than 50 countries.
"It's good to know that there are natural products added to our food that protect us from diseases," said lead researcher Wilfred van der Donk, a chemistry professor at the University of Illinois. "Many people probably don't even realize that, or think it's some kind of a non-natural chemical. Last summer we had the listeria outbreak, and that's a good example of people dying from pathogens in food. You don't hear of such outbreaks often, and that's in part because of the compounds that are added to food to kill the pathogens."
Nisin also shows promise as a treatment for bovine mastitis, an infection in cows that costs the dairy industry billions each year since milk produced during and shortly after antibiotic treatment has to be thrown out. Since nisin already is present in low levels in milk, farmers using nisin to treat mastitis may not need to discard milk or meat from recently treated animals.
However, for all its utility, nisin has drawbacks. It's produced in an acidic environment, but it becomes unstable at the neutral pH levels needed for many foods or pharmaceuticals. It also becomes unstable at higher temperatures, limiting its uses.
While studying the genome of another bacterium that lives at high temperatures, van der Donk's group found genes to make a molecule with a similar structure and function to nisin, known as an analog. They isolated the genes and inserted them into E. coli so they could produce the new antibiotic, dubbed geobacillin, in large enough quantities to study its structure and function.
"As it turns out, geobacillin is more stable, both in respect to pH and temperature," van der Donk said. "We think this is good news for potential use of geobacillin in food."
Nisin, and presumably geobacillin, work by binding to a molecule the pathogen needs to build its cell wall and then poking holes in the bacterial cell's membrane, a one-two punch that quickly kills the invader. However, the two antibiotics have slight structural differences. Nisin's structure has five looped regions, formed by cross-links in the protein chain. Geobacillin has seven loops thanks to two additional cross-links, which give the protein added stability.
The team tested geobacillin against several foodborne and disease-causing bacteria and found it similarly effective or more effective than nisin, depending on the bacteria. Most significantly, it was three times more active against the main contagious bacteria responsible for bovine mastitis. Contagious mastitis is devastating for dairy farmers, as the bacteria can quickly spread throughout a herd. In addition, since mastitis could be caused by a number of different infections, geobacillin's broad-spectrum activity makes it a very attractive treatment option.
Next, the researchers plan to test geobacillin against a wider spectrum of disease-causing bacteria. Many tests of safety, efficacy and economic production lie ahead, although geobacillin has shown great promise in tests to date. The researchers hope that its greater stability will enable medicinal applications for geobacillin that nisin could not realize, both for bovine mastitis and possibly for human disease.
"Nisin was very promising in early preclinical trials in that it was very effective in killing multi-drug-resistant bacteria in mouse models," said van der Donk, "but because of its instability, it has a very short half-life in blood. So we're looking to see whether geobacillin has greater serum stability."
The researchers published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. The National Institutes of Health supported this work. Van der Donk is also a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120319163801.htm
Top 10 Green Spring Cleaning Tips
Since we survived winter -- if you can call it that -- and have already begun the transition to spring, I wanted to share some of my favorite green, spring cleaning tips. And of course, with Saint Patrick's Day just behind us... what better time to be green?
1. Give your home a check-up
After the relatively warm winter we just experienced, I'm bracing my home for a sticky summer. To keep the hot air out, consider a home energy assessment to make sure that your air conditioning doesn't seep through the cracks in your home. Follow the examples of folks from Energize New York, Connecticut's Neighbor to Neighbor Energy Challenge, or TC Saves in Traverse City, Michigan, and seal up those windows and doors! It'll keep you cool and save you money.
2. Turn off the TV and go outside
The flat-screen TV continues to be the biggest energy drain in the American home -- and that's just when you think it's off! So put the TV on a power strip and really turn it off. And at the same time, turn off that DVD player you haven't used since November and plug the Wii into that power strip too. Now, head outside and feel the flow of the sun, not the TV.
3. Reuse clothes as rags
Wash those windows, but rather than throwing out old t-shirts, use them as rags to avoid creating unnecessary waste from paper towels.
4. Plant a garden
The First Family inspired millions when they created The White House Kitchen Garden three years ago. And this week, the First Lady gave a tree to my alma mater, The American University here in Washington, D.C. So in that vein, go on and plant a tree or start a garden!
5. Open the windows
There's nothing better than waking up to a cool morning breeze. Turn off the heat and keep the AC off -- and let your house get air conditioned by Mother Nature. It will be a breath of fresh air for you and your wallet.
6. Take a walk
If you live near a grocery store, consider a family walk if you're just going for a few items. If you have school age kids, pick a day a week to walk them to school. If you have a dog, give him an extra block or two on your evening stroll. Or instead of heading to the recliner after dinner, head outside and walk. The stroll will help clear your head and the air.
7. Line-dry your clothes
Avoid the dryer when you can use the combined power of the sun and wind to dry your clothes. You'll save energy by using the most abundant energy resources we have!
8. Update those appliances
Small changes like upgrading to programmable thermostats will go a long way to save you money as temperatures soar this summer. Consider top-notch Energy-Star appliances if you're ready to replace old ones.
9. Recycle the old
Whether it's appliances, furniture or clothes that you need to ditch, be sure to recycle when possible. Consider joining an online community called Freecycle, which has localized chapters of members who let each other know what stuff they have hanging around that they would like to give away -- anything from kitchen appliances to bicycles, furniture to magazines, and clothing to diapers (unused, of course).
10. Help a neighbor
Share your best green practices with your community. With all of the outdoor options I've offered up, it's clear that springtime presents the perfect opportunity to get outside, talk to your neighbors and demonstrate how to be a good steward to your shared environment. In fact, get on Facebook or Twitter and tell your friends what you're doing to have a "Green" Spring Cleaning!
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-keane/green-cleaning-tips_b_1353255.html
1. Give your home a check-up
After the relatively warm winter we just experienced, I'm bracing my home for a sticky summer. To keep the hot air out, consider a home energy assessment to make sure that your air conditioning doesn't seep through the cracks in your home. Follow the examples of folks from Energize New York, Connecticut's Neighbor to Neighbor Energy Challenge, or TC Saves in Traverse City, Michigan, and seal up those windows and doors! It'll keep you cool and save you money.
2. Turn off the TV and go outside
The flat-screen TV continues to be the biggest energy drain in the American home -- and that's just when you think it's off! So put the TV on a power strip and really turn it off. And at the same time, turn off that DVD player you haven't used since November and plug the Wii into that power strip too. Now, head outside and feel the flow of the sun, not the TV.
3. Reuse clothes as rags
Wash those windows, but rather than throwing out old t-shirts, use them as rags to avoid creating unnecessary waste from paper towels.
4. Plant a garden
The First Family inspired millions when they created The White House Kitchen Garden three years ago. And this week, the First Lady gave a tree to my alma mater, The American University here in Washington, D.C. So in that vein, go on and plant a tree or start a garden!
5. Open the windows
There's nothing better than waking up to a cool morning breeze. Turn off the heat and keep the AC off -- and let your house get air conditioned by Mother Nature. It will be a breath of fresh air for you and your wallet.
6. Take a walk
If you live near a grocery store, consider a family walk if you're just going for a few items. If you have school age kids, pick a day a week to walk them to school. If you have a dog, give him an extra block or two on your evening stroll. Or instead of heading to the recliner after dinner, head outside and walk. The stroll will help clear your head and the air.
7. Line-dry your clothes
Avoid the dryer when you can use the combined power of the sun and wind to dry your clothes. You'll save energy by using the most abundant energy resources we have!
8. Update those appliances
Small changes like upgrading to programmable thermostats will go a long way to save you money as temperatures soar this summer. Consider top-notch Energy-Star appliances if you're ready to replace old ones.
9. Recycle the old
Whether it's appliances, furniture or clothes that you need to ditch, be sure to recycle when possible. Consider joining an online community called Freecycle, which has localized chapters of members who let each other know what stuff they have hanging around that they would like to give away -- anything from kitchen appliances to bicycles, furniture to magazines, and clothing to diapers (unused, of course).
10. Help a neighbor
Share your best green practices with your community. With all of the outdoor options I've offered up, it's clear that springtime presents the perfect opportunity to get outside, talk to your neighbors and demonstrate how to be a good steward to your shared environment. In fact, get on Facebook or Twitter and tell your friends what you're doing to have a "Green" Spring Cleaning!
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-keane/green-cleaning-tips_b_1353255.html
Tips to help extreme spring allergies
Atlanta, GA (WSB/CNN) - Allergy sufferers are having a tough time in Atlanta.
The city's pollen count has reached record-breaking levels.
Raymond Tsao of Castleberry has allergies so bad he says he was popping antihistamines like candy.
"I get a lot of congestion. My eyes would itch. They would water. So, I was constantly either blowing my nose or coughing," he said.
Tsao says he was allergic to everything, including tree pollen. And with the pollen count so high, a lot of people like him are at the doctor's office trying to get some relief.
"This is the highest level of pollen we've ever counted," said Dr. David Tanner with the Atlanta Allergy and Asthma Clinic.
Dr. Tanner has been measuring pollen counts for the state of Georgia for more than 20 years.
Normally, we would see levels of 2,500 to, maybe, 3,500 this time of year," he said.
Currently, the count is 8,164. You can see the pollen everywhere, especially on cars.
If tree pollen has your eyes watering and your nose running, there are some things you can do to ease your suffering.
"If you're out in the pollen, when you come home at night, shower, wash your hair. Get the pollen off your body so you're not carrying it to bed with you," said Dr. Tanner.
Also, keep your windows and doors closed.
As for the pollen-covered car, keep your windows rolled up, especially on these nice spring days.
Meteorologists say higher than normal temperatures are to blame for the increased pollen count.
And with no cooler weather in sight, the count is likely to go up.
Source: http://www.ksdk.com/news/article/311177/9/Tips-to-help-extreme-spring-allergies
Top social media tips for businesses
It’s fair to say Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and the rest attract a lot of hype. Every day it seems there’s another network you just HAVE to be on, and more self appointed gurus popping up insisting they’ve got the secret to helping you understand it all!
For a business it can all seem overwhelming. “It’s nonsense, it’s risky, it’ll take up too much time”, many think. Even worse, a few leap on ready to hard sell, shouting “What a great new way to advertise!”
The truth is social media for business is a skill you can develop and learn.
1. Set simple goals
Social media for business is very different from the way you might use these networks as an individual. Business owners don’t have time for idle chat. Any social media activity you do is likely in addition to everything else. You can’t stop answering the phone because you’re on Facebook! So think about what you want to achieve, pick and choose the networks you go on and use them accordingly.
Start small and keep things easy to manage. Hotel chain Four Seasons concentrated on Twitter at the beginning and didn’t say much themselves. Instead they monitored the space to “listen in” on what people were saying about them. Then they used that “chatter” to enhance the guest experience. Setting the right goals will give your activity a focus and help you decide what to say. Achieving these goals will make it clear that the time you spend on social media is paying off.
2. Interact, don’t preach
One of our favourite quotes in our Embrace The Space social media training sessions is from the cartoonist Hugh Macleod. “If you talked to people they way advertising talked to people, they’d punch you in the face”. So many businesses just don’t get this. The customers, the PEOPLE who use Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and the rest want businesses to chat with them.
They want to feel that they matter, that these companies actually listen. If all you do is promote offers and deals you’re going to leave people cold. It has to be a conversation so join in and don’t be too controlling. Look at the way Glasgow Airport chats to TV design gurus Colin and Justin on Twitter.
3. Censoring in a crisis adds fuel to the fire
Braehead shopping centre found this out the hard way. If people are saying things that aren’t true and giving you a hard time, politely put your point across and explain why you can’t say any more at the moment. In this brave new social media world, things can blow up very quickly when the masses get hold of something, especially if they think you’ve got something to hide or are trying to control free speech.
I consider deleting negative comments to be the single most damaging thing a business can do in social media. Instead, address them head on in an open and transparent way. If you need to clean up your Facebook wall for legal reasons write a comment underneath the original message explaining why you took that step and inviting the user to post again without the strong language or personal details.
4. You’re never too big to say sorry
We’re human beings, not robots. Sometimes we mess up. We meet businesses all the time who’ve been conditioned to “never apologise”, often because the legal department has told them it leaves them open to action. If this organisation can do it, in response to this incident, I think you can too. But only say it if you mean it, and issue the apology on the same platform that the original crisis occurred.
So a row on Facebook, should be answered on Facebook. And the same for YouTube and Twitter. Don’t think a statement on your official website will suffice - that comes across as cold and controlling.
5. Don’t waste your time
Let’s say you’re on Facebook. And Twitter. And now you’re thinking you should make more use of Linkedin. And maybe get started on Pinterest and Google+. Businesses that do social media wrong log into Facebook with their user name and password. Read some stuff, say some stuff and log out. Then do the same for Twitter, trawling through hundreds of messages trying to find something of value in amongst all the noise. You could use up half the day and get no benefits at all.
Smart businesses use tools like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck. Think of these free applications as “all your social media under one roof” allowing you to log in once and manage just about everything from one place. It’s incredibly powerful and with a bit of training to get the absolute best out of them, we think every business could get a return from social media for less than 20 minutes a day.
6. Don’t understand WHY they do it, just accept hundreds of millions of them do!
Why would I want everyone to know I just had a tuna sandwich for lunch? Or post pictures of my baby son in his bouncy chair for the world to see? Or announce to anyone in the world that I’m out at the cinema and my house is empty if they’d like to break in? Many of us worry about the direction this world is going in. We complain about “the kids” having no concept of privacy and possibly damaging their future employment prospects by sharing everything. We see people who’ve heard the bad stuff, particularly about Facebook and are put off because they don’t understand why anyone would use it so irresponsibly and give away so much information about themselves. Our message is - “Don’t try to understand it”. Just accept that many of your customers go on social networks every day and lay themselves bare. (Sometimes literally!).
If you know what to look for as a business, that gives you incredibly valuable information. The trick is learning how to filter out the noise and the nonsense and find the value for your organisation.
Source: http://www.thedrum.co.uk/opinion/2012/03/20/top-social-media-tips-businesses
Identifying Specific Cancers Using Molecular Analysis
Researchers from Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah report they have discovered a method to identify cancer-causing rearrangements of genetic material called chromosomal translocations quickly, accurately, and inexpensively. A description of the method and the research results appear online in this month's issue of the EMBO Molecular Medicine journal.
Many cancers result from chromosomal translocations in tumor cells. Hundreds of cancer-causing translocations have been discovered, but current methods for detecting them have significant shortcomings.
The technique, developed in the lab of Stephen Lessnick, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Center for Children's Cancer Research at HCI, combines microarray technology, which can look for thousands of translocations in a single test, with a novel antibody that is used to detect the presence of the translocation . "We're moving past the age when a pathologist looking through the microscope at a tumor sample is the best way to diagnose what type of cancer it is," said Lessnick. "The molecular tests currently available are slow, inefficient, and expensive, and one of the biggest issues is that you need high-quality tumor samples, not always available in the clinical setting, to do them." According to Lessnick, his method tolerates real-life specimens much better than the current standard techniques.
"Originally, this method was used in HCI's Cairns lab (headed by Bradley R. Cairns, Ph.D.) to study RNA in yeast. We took their method and applied it to our study of chromosomal translocations in human tissue," Lessnick said. He said the next task is to find a commercial partner to develop this research from a 'proof of principle' into a diagnostic test that doctors can use to help their patients.
"With this method, there's potential to develop a single array that could test for every known cancer-causing translocation simultaneously. Currently, a clinician has to decide beforehand which specific cancer to test," he said.
The research used Ewing's sarcoma (a rare childhood cancer) as the case study for developing the method, but Lessnick maintains that the technology can be easily applied to any type of cancer caused by a translocation.
Funding for this project came from the National Institutes of Health's Innovative Molecular Analysis Technology program. The program focuses on rapid movement of new ideas from basic science labs (such as the Cairns lab) out into the clinical realm. "They were willing to fund this idea without a lot of preliminary data because it showed good potential to move toward clinical uses," said Lessnick.
Lessnick is a Jon and Karen Huntsman Presidential Professor in Cancer Research, and a professor in the Division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at the University of Utah. Other HCI investigators participating in the research include Bradley R. Cairns, Ph.D., HCI Senior Director of Basic Science, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, and professor in the Department of Oncological Sciences at the University of Utah, as well as Brett Milash, Ph.D., and Brian Dalley, Ph.D., of the Microarray and Genomic Analysis Core Facility.
This work was supported by the NIH via R21 CA138295 to SLL, T32 GM007464 to ND, and P30 CA042014 to Huntsman Cancer Institute. Cairns is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Additional work in the Lessnick lab is supported by Sidney's Incredible Defeat of Ewing's Sarcoma (SIDES).
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120319194041.htm
Many cancers result from chromosomal translocations in tumor cells. Hundreds of cancer-causing translocations have been discovered, but current methods for detecting them have significant shortcomings.
The technique, developed in the lab of Stephen Lessnick, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Center for Children's Cancer Research at HCI, combines microarray technology, which can look for thousands of translocations in a single test, with a novel antibody that is used to detect the presence of the translocation . "We're moving past the age when a pathologist looking through the microscope at a tumor sample is the best way to diagnose what type of cancer it is," said Lessnick. "The molecular tests currently available are slow, inefficient, and expensive, and one of the biggest issues is that you need high-quality tumor samples, not always available in the clinical setting, to do them." According to Lessnick, his method tolerates real-life specimens much better than the current standard techniques.
"Originally, this method was used in HCI's Cairns lab (headed by Bradley R. Cairns, Ph.D.) to study RNA in yeast. We took their method and applied it to our study of chromosomal translocations in human tissue," Lessnick said. He said the next task is to find a commercial partner to develop this research from a 'proof of principle' into a diagnostic test that doctors can use to help their patients.
"With this method, there's potential to develop a single array that could test for every known cancer-causing translocation simultaneously. Currently, a clinician has to decide beforehand which specific cancer to test," he said.
The research used Ewing's sarcoma (a rare childhood cancer) as the case study for developing the method, but Lessnick maintains that the technology can be easily applied to any type of cancer caused by a translocation.
Funding for this project came from the National Institutes of Health's Innovative Molecular Analysis Technology program. The program focuses on rapid movement of new ideas from basic science labs (such as the Cairns lab) out into the clinical realm. "They were willing to fund this idea without a lot of preliminary data because it showed good potential to move toward clinical uses," said Lessnick.
Lessnick is a Jon and Karen Huntsman Presidential Professor in Cancer Research, and a professor in the Division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at the University of Utah. Other HCI investigators participating in the research include Bradley R. Cairns, Ph.D., HCI Senior Director of Basic Science, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, and professor in the Department of Oncological Sciences at the University of Utah, as well as Brett Milash, Ph.D., and Brian Dalley, Ph.D., of the Microarray and Genomic Analysis Core Facility.
This work was supported by the NIH via R21 CA138295 to SLL, T32 GM007464 to ND, and P30 CA042014 to Huntsman Cancer Institute. Cairns is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Additional work in the Lessnick lab is supported by Sidney's Incredible Defeat of Ewing's Sarcoma (SIDES).
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120319194041.htm
Most Weight Loss Supplements Are Not Effective
An Oregon State University researcher has reviewed the body of evidence around weight loss supplements and has bad news for those trying to find a magic pill to lose weight and keep it off -- it doesn't exist.
Melinda Manore reviewed the evidence surrounding hundreds of weight loss supplements, a $2.4 billion industry in the United States, and said no research evidence exists that any single product results in significant weight loss -- and many have detrimental health benefits.
The study is online in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism.
A few products, including green tea, fiber and low-fat dairy supplements, can have a modest weight loss benefit of 3-4 pounds (2 kilos), but it is important to know that most of these supplements were tested as part of a reduced calorie diet.
"For most people, unless you alter your diet and get daily exercise, no supplement is going to have a big impact," Manore said.
Manore looked at supplements that fell into four categories: products such as chitosan that block absorption of fat or carbohydrates, stimulants such as caffeine or ephedra that increase metabolism, products such as conjugated linoleic acid that claim to change the body composition by decreasing fat, and appetite suppressants such as soluble fibers.
She found that many products had no randomized clinical trials examining their effectiveness, and most of the research studies did not include exercise. Most of the products showed less than a two-pound weight loss benefit compared to the placebo groups.
"I don't know how you eliminate exercise from the equation," Manore said. "The data is very strong that exercise is crucial to not only losing weight and preserving muscle mass, but keeping the weight off."
Manore, professor of nutrition and exercise sciences at OSU, is on the Science Board for the President's Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition. Her research is focused on the interaction of nutrition and exercise on health and performance.
"What people want is to lose weight and maintain or increase lean tissue mass," Manore said. "There is no evidence that any one supplement does this. And some have side effects ranging from the unpleasant, such as bloating and gas, to very serious issues such as strokes and heart problems."
As a dietician and researcher, Manore said the key to weight loss is to eat whole grains, fruits, vegetables and lean meats, reduce calorie intake of high-fat foods, and to keep moving. Depending on the individual, increasing protein may be beneficial (especially for those trying to not lose lean tissue), but the only way to lose weight is to make a lifestyle change.
"Adding fiber, calcium, protein and drinking green tea can help," Manore said. "But none of these will have much effect unless you exercise and eat fruits and vegetables."
Manore's general guidelines for a healthy lifestyle include:
Do not leave the house in the morning without having a plan for dinner. Spontaneous eating often results in poorer food choices.
If you do eat out, start your meal with a large salad with low-calorie dressing or a broth-based soup. You will feel much fuller and are less likely to eat your entire entrée. Better yet: split your entrée with a dining companion or just order an appetizer in addition to your soup or salad.
Find ways to keep moving, especially if you have a sedentary job. Manore said she tries to put calls on speaker phone so she can walk around while talking. During long meetings, ask if you can stand or pace for periods so you don't remain seated the entire time
Put vegetables into every meal possible. Shred vegetables into your pasta sauce, add them into meat or just buy lots of bags of fruits/vegetables for on-the-go eating.
Increase your fiber. Most Americans don't get nearly enough fiber. When possible, eat "wet" sources of fiber rather than dry -- cooked oatmeal makes you feel fuller than a fiber cracker.
Make sure to eat whole fruits and vegetables instead of drinking your calories. Eat an apple rather than drink apple juice. Look at items that seem similar and eat the one that physically takes up more space. For example, eating 100 calories of grapes rather than 100 calories of raisins will make you feel fuller.
Eliminate processed foods. Manore said research increasingly shows that foods that are harder to digest (such as high fiber foods) have a greater "thermic effect" -- or the way to boost your metabolism.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120306131646.htm
Melinda Manore reviewed the evidence surrounding hundreds of weight loss supplements, a $2.4 billion industry in the United States, and said no research evidence exists that any single product results in significant weight loss -- and many have detrimental health benefits.
The study is online in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism.
A few products, including green tea, fiber and low-fat dairy supplements, can have a modest weight loss benefit of 3-4 pounds (2 kilos), but it is important to know that most of these supplements were tested as part of a reduced calorie diet.
"For most people, unless you alter your diet and get daily exercise, no supplement is going to have a big impact," Manore said.
Manore looked at supplements that fell into four categories: products such as chitosan that block absorption of fat or carbohydrates, stimulants such as caffeine or ephedra that increase metabolism, products such as conjugated linoleic acid that claim to change the body composition by decreasing fat, and appetite suppressants such as soluble fibers.
She found that many products had no randomized clinical trials examining their effectiveness, and most of the research studies did not include exercise. Most of the products showed less than a two-pound weight loss benefit compared to the placebo groups.
"I don't know how you eliminate exercise from the equation," Manore said. "The data is very strong that exercise is crucial to not only losing weight and preserving muscle mass, but keeping the weight off."
Manore, professor of nutrition and exercise sciences at OSU, is on the Science Board for the President's Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition. Her research is focused on the interaction of nutrition and exercise on health and performance.
"What people want is to lose weight and maintain or increase lean tissue mass," Manore said. "There is no evidence that any one supplement does this. And some have side effects ranging from the unpleasant, such as bloating and gas, to very serious issues such as strokes and heart problems."
As a dietician and researcher, Manore said the key to weight loss is to eat whole grains, fruits, vegetables and lean meats, reduce calorie intake of high-fat foods, and to keep moving. Depending on the individual, increasing protein may be beneficial (especially for those trying to not lose lean tissue), but the only way to lose weight is to make a lifestyle change.
"Adding fiber, calcium, protein and drinking green tea can help," Manore said. "But none of these will have much effect unless you exercise and eat fruits and vegetables."
Manore's general guidelines for a healthy lifestyle include:
Do not leave the house in the morning without having a plan for dinner. Spontaneous eating often results in poorer food choices.
If you do eat out, start your meal with a large salad with low-calorie dressing or a broth-based soup. You will feel much fuller and are less likely to eat your entire entrée. Better yet: split your entrée with a dining companion or just order an appetizer in addition to your soup or salad.
Find ways to keep moving, especially if you have a sedentary job. Manore said she tries to put calls on speaker phone so she can walk around while talking. During long meetings, ask if you can stand or pace for periods so you don't remain seated the entire time
Put vegetables into every meal possible. Shred vegetables into your pasta sauce, add them into meat or just buy lots of bags of fruits/vegetables for on-the-go eating.
Increase your fiber. Most Americans don't get nearly enough fiber. When possible, eat "wet" sources of fiber rather than dry -- cooked oatmeal makes you feel fuller than a fiber cracker.
Make sure to eat whole fruits and vegetables instead of drinking your calories. Eat an apple rather than drink apple juice. Look at items that seem similar and eat the one that physically takes up more space. For example, eating 100 calories of grapes rather than 100 calories of raisins will make you feel fuller.
Eliminate processed foods. Manore said research increasingly shows that foods that are harder to digest (such as high fiber foods) have a greater "thermic effect" -- or the way to boost your metabolism.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120306131646.htm
6 Tips to Help Ignite Your Creativity and Increase Your Success
When it comes to achieving success on the Internet or anything in life for that matter, it probably isn’t a secret that having some capacity of creative spark or talent can increase your chances of attaining your goals.
But what makes some people more creative and successful than others? Is creativity something genetic and does that mean those who aren’t blessed with this gene are doomed to never be creative or successful?
Well the simple answer is that creativity is something which we are ALL born with but some people lose it more than others as they grow older. If you observe young children playing you’ll know what I mean when I say we all start with a propensity for some kind of creativity which is usually fueled by curiosity.
Many people lack a creative spark because they stopped doing the simple things which leads to creative ideas in the first place.
Most people, as they grow older start to develop bad habits or a limited mindset maybe because they are in a job they don’t like or a difficult financial situation. As time goes by, the curiosity they had when they were children diminishes and with that so does creativity.
Instead of using their curiosity and creativity to investigate ways to improve their lives these people give up trying but they also wish things could be different.
A lot of people also believe that to achieve true financial or other success you need to invest a lot of money in the first place or have to go to a top university so that you get the right job in the right company.
The reality is, that at this point in time in the evolutionary scale of technology, everything you need to make you successful is readily available at your finger tips from the Internet in the comfort of your own home. We can even go so far as to say that the Internet is the new “UniversityofSuccess”.
A little over a decade ago you could be excused for believing that you needed to attend some sort of college or university to learn the necessary skills to help you succeed, but now that’s not true anymore.
For a fraction of the cost of a regular university or college course, now you can teach yourself a new skill or get full guidance and coaching online without having to leave your home.
All that is needed on your part initially is some curiosity and action to get you started.
The list of 6 pointers below which I’ve compiled from various successful people will help ignite your creativity and re-charge your motivation:
Try something new for 30 days
This is a great suggestion which I recently heard in a presentation from Matt Cutts who is a search optimization engineer at google. Trying something new for a month is a fantastic way to re-build your creativity and whet your curiosity. This can also help you discover the thing that you love doing in case you weren’t sure what it was to begin with.
In terms of the Internet there are countless of free and premium courses and products available in which you can learn or discover a new skill which you can use to enhance your creativity.
Do what you love
People who make a living from doing what they love instantly have a head-start on those who hate or are indifferent to their jobs. Apart from the fact that you feel good doing what you love, you also have no negative baggage which comes from the stress and resentment of doing something you don’t like.
If you don’t know what you love doing, then maybe applying point 1 above might help you.
Keep your goals to yourself – at least in the beginning
Sometimes when you decide to muster up the courage to try something new it’s a good idea to keep your goals a secret initially. This may sound counter-intuitive because most people think that by making their intentions known they can increase their visibility and hence their chances of success because somebody out there might offer some help. Well that’s true to an extent but in a lot of cases the people you might be sharing your goals with might not have the same enthusiasm and mindset as you, and quite often they will try to talk you out of your “crazy ideas” and tell you that it’s just too hard.
Therefore, unless you’re certain that you are talking to people with a similar attitude as yours, hold on to your goals and plans until you’ve put them into practice.
Be curious
When you start digging deeper into something out of curiosity, you usually find that not only do you enhance your knowledge about that thing, but sometimes you might come up with creative ideas which you would never have thought of if you hadn’t indulged your curiosity.
So next time you are reading or watching a tutorial about how to do something for your blog, why not delve deeper and experiment with what you’ve learnt and see what happens.
Improve
Improving yourself both in terms of knowledge and in general can only serve to benefit you and those around you. Most of us are increasingly becoming aware of the huge economic changes sweeping the world’s societies in terms of employment and what it means to be financially secure. Having a regular job for 20, 30 or 50 years until you retire is a thing of the past. The new reality is that people who can re-skill quickly and who regularly add to their existing skills will be better off in today’s economic climate.
Focus
The ability to focus determines the outcome of the task you are trying to accomplish. Therefore whenever you set yourself a task, see it through to completion by doing regular highly focused little chunks at a time. Doing small manageable chunks can make the highest mountain seems like a mole hill.
Creativity and success are not just something necessarily reserved for a special few and now with information and knowledge so readily accessible from the Internet, cultivating your creativity has never been so easy. Therefore applying some of the ingredients above to your life will go a long way in maximizing your chances of reaching your goals.
Source: http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/6-tips-to-help-ignite-your-creativity-and-increase-your-success-4119
But what makes some people more creative and successful than others? Is creativity something genetic and does that mean those who aren’t blessed with this gene are doomed to never be creative or successful?
Well the simple answer is that creativity is something which we are ALL born with but some people lose it more than others as they grow older. If you observe young children playing you’ll know what I mean when I say we all start with a propensity for some kind of creativity which is usually fueled by curiosity.
Many people lack a creative spark because they stopped doing the simple things which leads to creative ideas in the first place.
Most people, as they grow older start to develop bad habits or a limited mindset maybe because they are in a job they don’t like or a difficult financial situation. As time goes by, the curiosity they had when they were children diminishes and with that so does creativity.
Instead of using their curiosity and creativity to investigate ways to improve their lives these people give up trying but they also wish things could be different.
A lot of people also believe that to achieve true financial or other success you need to invest a lot of money in the first place or have to go to a top university so that you get the right job in the right company.
The reality is, that at this point in time in the evolutionary scale of technology, everything you need to make you successful is readily available at your finger tips from the Internet in the comfort of your own home. We can even go so far as to say that the Internet is the new “UniversityofSuccess”.
A little over a decade ago you could be excused for believing that you needed to attend some sort of college or university to learn the necessary skills to help you succeed, but now that’s not true anymore.
For a fraction of the cost of a regular university or college course, now you can teach yourself a new skill or get full guidance and coaching online without having to leave your home.
All that is needed on your part initially is some curiosity and action to get you started.
The list of 6 pointers below which I’ve compiled from various successful people will help ignite your creativity and re-charge your motivation:
Try something new for 30 days
This is a great suggestion which I recently heard in a presentation from Matt Cutts who is a search optimization engineer at google. Trying something new for a month is a fantastic way to re-build your creativity and whet your curiosity. This can also help you discover the thing that you love doing in case you weren’t sure what it was to begin with.
In terms of the Internet there are countless of free and premium courses and products available in which you can learn or discover a new skill which you can use to enhance your creativity.
Do what you love
People who make a living from doing what they love instantly have a head-start on those who hate or are indifferent to their jobs. Apart from the fact that you feel good doing what you love, you also have no negative baggage which comes from the stress and resentment of doing something you don’t like.
If you don’t know what you love doing, then maybe applying point 1 above might help you.
Keep your goals to yourself – at least in the beginning
Sometimes when you decide to muster up the courage to try something new it’s a good idea to keep your goals a secret initially. This may sound counter-intuitive because most people think that by making their intentions known they can increase their visibility and hence their chances of success because somebody out there might offer some help. Well that’s true to an extent but in a lot of cases the people you might be sharing your goals with might not have the same enthusiasm and mindset as you, and quite often they will try to talk you out of your “crazy ideas” and tell you that it’s just too hard.
Therefore, unless you’re certain that you are talking to people with a similar attitude as yours, hold on to your goals and plans until you’ve put them into practice.
Be curious
When you start digging deeper into something out of curiosity, you usually find that not only do you enhance your knowledge about that thing, but sometimes you might come up with creative ideas which you would never have thought of if you hadn’t indulged your curiosity.
So next time you are reading or watching a tutorial about how to do something for your blog, why not delve deeper and experiment with what you’ve learnt and see what happens.
Improve
Improving yourself both in terms of knowledge and in general can only serve to benefit you and those around you. Most of us are increasingly becoming aware of the huge economic changes sweeping the world’s societies in terms of employment and what it means to be financially secure. Having a regular job for 20, 30 or 50 years until you retire is a thing of the past. The new reality is that people who can re-skill quickly and who regularly add to their existing skills will be better off in today’s economic climate.
Focus
The ability to focus determines the outcome of the task you are trying to accomplish. Therefore whenever you set yourself a task, see it through to completion by doing regular highly focused little chunks at a time. Doing small manageable chunks can make the highest mountain seems like a mole hill.
Creativity and success are not just something necessarily reserved for a special few and now with information and knowledge so readily accessible from the Internet, cultivating your creativity has never been so easy. Therefore applying some of the ingredients above to your life will go a long way in maximizing your chances of reaching your goals.
Source: http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/6-tips-to-help-ignite-your-creativity-and-increase-your-success-4119
Green Tea Helps Mice Keep Off Extra Pounds
Obese mice that were fed a compound found in green tea along with a high-fat diet gained weight significantly more slowly than a control group of mice that did not receive the green tea supplement, said Joshua Lambert, assistant professor of food science in agricultural sciences.
"In this experiment, we see the rate of body weight gain slows down," said Lambert.
The researchers, who released their findings in the current online version of Obesity, fed two groups of mice a high-fat diet. Mice that were fed Epigallocatechin-3-gallate -- EGCG -- a compound found in most green teas, along with a high-fat diet, gained weight 45 percent more slowly than the control group of mice eating the same diet without EGCG.
"Our results suggest that if you supplement with EGCG or green tea you gain weight more slowly," said Lambert.
In addition to lower weight gain, the mice fed the green tea supplement showed a nearly 30 percent increase in fecal lipids, suggesting that the EGCG was limiting fat absorption, according to Lambert.
"There seems to be two prongs to this," said Lambert. "First, EGCG reduces the ability to absorb fat and, second, it enhances the ability to use fat."
The green tea did not appear to suppress appetite. Both groups of mice were fed the same amount of high-fat food and could eat at any time.
"There's no difference in the amount of food the mice are eating," said Lambert. "The mice are essentially eating a milkshake, except one group is eating a milkshake with green tea."
A person would need to drink ten cups of green tea each day to match the amount of EGCG used in the study, according to Lambert. However, he said recent studies indicate that just drinking a few cups of green tea may help control weight.
"Human data -- and there's not a lot at this point -- shows that tea drinkers who only consume one or more cups a day will see effects on body weight compared to nonconsumers," said Lambert.
Lambert, who worked with Kimberly Grove and Sudathip Sae-tan, both graduate students in food science, and Mary Kennett, professor of veterinary and biomedical sciences, said that other experiments have shown that lean mice did not gain as much weight when green tea is added to a high fat diet. However, he said that studying mice that are already overweight is more relevant to humans because people often consider dietary changes only when they notice problems associated with obesity.
"Most people hit middle age and notice a paunch; then you decide to eat less, exercise and add green tea supplement," said Lambert.
The National Institutes of Health supported this work.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111004123824.htm
Charles Barkley has always been a big mouth and always has been blood on and off the field. And the story told by Scott Brooks at the All Star weekend is the best proof.
The current coach of the Thunder's rookie when he arrived in Philadelphia in 1988. In the locker room a young Charles Barkley, difficult to fit by his coach, Jim Lynam, despite his enormous talent.
"Charles was one of the toughest players to coach because he was talented, stubborn and unpleasant," says the coach of the Thunder. "Jimmy was challenged to fight," we put our wallets on the floor. Whoever wins wins money. "He then launched a 'Charles, put your wallet on the ground, you're not as hard as you do not think' "
Barkley has not responded to the challenge, and that day, Brooks took a lesson in NBA coaching.
"I've always remembered this episode as how to coach an NBA player. It was not supposed to coach Barkley because he was an All-Star but because it was just part of the 12 players of the workforce. "
Ironically, Brooks told this story to Dei Lynam, the daughter of his former coach and now journalist for CSN Philly.
The current coach of the Thunder's rookie when he arrived in Philadelphia in 1988. In the locker room a young Charles Barkley, difficult to fit by his coach, Jim Lynam, despite his enormous talent.
"Charles was one of the toughest players to coach because he was talented, stubborn and unpleasant," says the coach of the Thunder. "Jimmy was challenged to fight," we put our wallets on the floor. Whoever wins wins money. "He then launched a 'Charles, put your wallet on the ground, you're not as hard as you do not think' "
Barkley has not responded to the challenge, and that day, Brooks took a lesson in NBA coaching.
"I've always remembered this episode as how to coach an NBA player. It was not supposed to coach Barkley because he was an All-Star but because it was just part of the 12 players of the workforce. "
Ironically, Brooks told this story to Dei Lynam, the daughter of his former coach and now journalist for CSN Philly.
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