2013年4月28日星期日

How to make the orange fleshed sweetpotato crisps taste good and be more nutritious



Today I read an article about how to make orange fleshed sweetpotato crisps at good nutrition.I think it is useful for foodies,share with you:

The study was carried out to determine the effect of salt on the sensory, nutritive and keeping quality of OFSP crisps. Crisps were made by deep frying slices of approximately 3.5 mm thickness treated with, 2% and 4% table salt. A control with no salt treatment was prepared alongside the treated ones. Two varieties of OFSP; Ejumula and Kakamega were used in the study. After deep frying, the crisps were cooled to room temperature, packed in paper-lined high density polythene pouches and stored in a dark cupboard at room temperature for three months. During the storage period, the crisps were analyzed for proteins, fat and carotenoid content. Changes in sensory attributes were analyzed using a semi-trained panel. Results indicated that freshly prepared crisps treated with 2% salt had the highest acceptability mean scores for all attributes while there was no significant difference (p > 0.05) between crisps made from either Ejumula or Kakamega variety. Carotenoid content decreased with increase in salt concentration in both OFSP varieties. Shelf-life studies showed that the decline in sensory attributes started after 2 months of storage. The study shows that OFSP crisps treated with 2% salt are more acceptable and reasonably stable during storage.

The above is the brief,and you can read the full article for more details.

2013年4月25日星期四

Children likes tease mother more than father , this is a phenomenon over the world




Do you often tease mother or father when you are a child?I think most people may tell me :It is mother. It is very common in our life.
A research made by Nerea Portu-Zapirain  explores representational models in a sample of 111 children aged between 3 and 6.Finally confirm that security in the representation of attachment is higher with mothers worldwide.
Why?I think it is may be when we are a child,mother takes care of us more.There has been a research indicated that the baby's conscious and memory starting around 5 months after birth.So at the age of 6 month’s old,the baby may have a certain sense.
Besides, “The older the child, the greater the security manifested in their relations, and the younger the child, the greater the insecurity. ” Nerea Portu-Zapirain wrote in his paper.










2013年4月24日星期三

How to deal with problem child?A case that Obama warns daughters on “family tattoo”




In order to discourage teen rebellionBarack Obama has warned his daughters that if they get tattoos, he and his wife will get matching ones on the same place on their bodies.As US PresidentObama also have to consider education of children.

Indeed,children's education is of great importance for parents, especially the problem children.When we found our children deviating from the right orbit,we are anxious.For some parents,they are helplessness. Not everyone is Obama.Some parents don’t know how to effectively prevent children do the wrong thing,and how to deal with their “problem child”.

There is an article introduces a method or makes a research on this common phenomenon.I hope it can be helpful for parents and the researchers in this field.More and more better researches are excepted .


2013年4月23日星期二

Studying gaze abnormalities in autism: Which type of stimulus to use?



Background: Eye-tracking has been used to investigate social perception in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with variable results. This heterogeneity may be due to the types of stimuli used. In this study, we investigated whether the use of moving vs static stimuli or human actors vs cartoons characters would be more sensitive in detecting gaze abnormalities and discriminating children with ASD from typically developing children.
Methods: We studied 18 children with ASD (mean age = 12.9 ± 2.9) and 21 typically developing controls (mean age = 11.3 ± 2.5). Gazes were tracked using Tobii-T120 eye-tracker. Four different types of stimuli were presented: movie with human actors, cartoon movie, picture with human actors and cartoon picture. To identify the type of stimuli that best discriminate the ASD group from the control group, a two-way ANOVA was performed using ecological dimension [human-actors/cartoon] and presentation form [movie/picture] as factors.
Results: Children with ASD presented significantly less fixations to eyes and faces in the movie with human actors and in the picture with human actors. Children with ASD also presented significantly more fixations to non-social backgrounds in the movie with human actors and in the cartoon movie. A significant ecological effect was observed for the reduction in fixations to the eyes [human-actors > cartoon]. A significant presentation form effect was observed for the increased fixations to the non-social background [movie > picture].
Conclusions: The direct comparison of gaze behavior across four different types of stimuli demonstrates that gaze abnormalities in ASD depend on the type of stimuli that is used. Our results suggest that general gaze abnormalities in children with ASD are better detected when using dynamic stimuli, and finer details of these abnormalities, especially looking less to the eyes, are better detected in a more ecologically relevant situation presenting human characters.
Full PDF:click here


(source:SCIRP/Psychiatry)

2013年4月22日星期一

Protein Quality Evaluation of Animal Food Proteins by In-Vitro Methodologies




Meat is a valuable food for human.It provides us complete protein, vitamin and all kinds of other nutrition.It also provides us some nutrition which is rare in vegetarian diet,such as zinc, vitamin B12, Calcium, iron.Besides,the meat quality is important.There is a research evaluat the protein quality of some animal food sources:
In this study, the protein quality evaluation of these animal food sources, highly produced and consumed in Sonora, is proposed, using in-vitro methodologies. Four different species, from each aquatic and terrestrial origin, were selected. Samples of lean muscle were used in all cases. Various in-vitro methodologies for protein quality evaluation were selected, alternatives to the animal bioassays: % digestibility, Total amino acid analyses (HPLC), PDCAAS, computerized PER calculations (C-PER and DC-PER) and total collagen contents. % in-vitro digestibility presented significant differences among samples from terrestrial species, but muscle from aquatic species did not showed significant differences. All sources of proteins, both aquatic and terrestrial proved to be rich sources of essential amino acids. PDCAAS was unable to establish significant differences in protein quality among sources of protein from different origin. Both methods C-PER and DC-PER were more exact in their results and were able to detect significant differences among samples of different origin. An important finding was the great difference in the total collagen content between aquatic and terrestrial sources of proteins, where terrestrial muscle proteins had almost 10-time more collagen than aquatic protein sources. However, these collagen contents did not seem to have a significant influence in the protein quality of these animal proteins. These muscle proteins, from both aquatic and terrestrial species, confirmed to have a high protein quality and some of the in-vitro methodologies used in this study represent a valuable alternative to the animal bioassays.








2013年4月21日星期日

Will human continue to live longer in future?



Recent discoveries show steady improvements in life expectancy during modern decades.Yes,better food supply and nutrition, better hygiene,the popularization of health knowledge does make me enjoy a longer life.According to Wikipedia,a French has ever lived for 122 years,a Japanese is 116 years old so far still alive.Will human continue to live longer in future?A research named < Predicting human lifespan limits>published in Nature Science takes industrialized countries as an example,and analyses the limits that will affect our “longevity”.You can read this research for more detail.



2013年4月18日星期四

Which city planning makes for reducing bicycle crash



Compared with cars,bike seems to have some advantages that cars can’t instead.Such as: environmental protection, save money , no traffic jams and good for health.Thus,some people prefers bikes.But there lies a big problem for riders: safety.A research from Scientific Research Publishing analyses 5 years of bicycle crash data from the city of San Francisco and make recommendations on how planners and design professionals can keep bicyclist safety considerations in mind.You can learn more by reading the full article.





Ricin, The Poison Mailed To President Obama



Ricin is one of the most poisonous substances on Earth, it's scarily easy to make, and somebody is mailing it to the President and at least one U.S. senator. What it is, how it works?

How poisonous is it?
Oh, man. Very. It's dangerous in just about any way it gets into your system, though ingesting (eating) it is about the least dangerous way. Injecting or inhaling requires about a thousand times less ricin to kill a human than ingesting, and that's a very small amount indeed. An average adult needs only 1.78mg of ricin injected or inhaled to die; that's about the size of a few grains of table salt--which ricin resembles visually.

How does it work?
Ricin, a toxic protein, infects cells, blocking their ability to synthesize their own protein. Without cells making protein, key functions in the body shut down; even in survivors, permanent organ damage is often the result of ricin poisoning. It's a highly unpleasant way to be poisoned: within six hours, according to the Center for Disease Control, victims who have ingested ricin will feel gastrointestinal effects like severe vomiting and diarrhea, which can lead to serious dehydration. Then the ricin infects the cells of the vital gastrointestinal organs as they pass through the body, leading to the failure of the kidneys, liver, and pancreas.
Inhalation of ricin has a different effect, since the ricin proteins aren't interacting with the same parts of the body. Instead of gastrointestinal problems, you'll develop a vicious, bloody cough, your lungs will fill with fluid, and eventually you'll lose your ability to breathe, causing death. Injection, too, is different, depending on where you've been injected, but will generally result in vomiting and flu-like symptoms, swelling around the place of injection, and eventually organ failure as your circulatory system passes the protein around the body. Death from inhalation or injection usually occurs about three to five miserable, agonizing days after contact.
Interestingly, there aren't any immediate symptoms, and indeed there can be a significant delay before symptoms show themselves, up to a day or two.
Exposure on the skin is generally not fatal, though it may cause a reaction that can range from irritation to blistering.

How does it stack up against other poisons?
Well, that depends on what your aim is. Ricin is much easier to produce than other popular biological weapons like botulinum, sarin, and anthrax, but it is not as potent as any of those, which limits its effectiveness as a weapon. It also is not very long-lived; the protein can age and become inactive fairly quickly compared to, say, anthrax, which can remain dangerous for decades. There were experiments back around World War I attempting to make wide-scale ricin weapons, packaging it into bombs and coating bullets in it, but these proved not particularly effective and also violate the Hague Convention's agreements on war crimes, so the US discarded ricin.
It's much more effective, weapon-wise, as a close-contact, small-target weapon--by injecting, as with Georgi Markov, or by putting small particles into an aerosol spray and blasting a target. It's also not contagious, which limits its effectiveness as a tool of biological warfare. But it's considered highly dangerous partly because it's still outrageously toxic and partly because it takes no great skill to produce.

So it's not hard to make?
Well...no. Like, not at all. It's made from the byproduct of the castor oil manufacturing process. You take the "mash" of the castor oil seeds, which contain around 5-10 percent ricin, and perform a process called chromatography. Chromatography is a blanket term for a set of techniques used to separate mixtures, usually by dissolving in liquid or gas. The US government has done its best to eradicate recipes for ricin from the internet, sort of; a patent was filed back in 1962 for ricin extraction, and the Patent Office took it off the publicly available server in 2004 for safety reasons. That said, the recipe is super easy to find; here at the PopSci offices, I'm blocked from listening to Rdio on my work computer, but I found a recipe to make an outrageously deadly poison in about a minute.
The techniques involved are undergraduate-level chemistry, creating a slurry with the castor bean mash and filtering with water and then a few easily-found substances like hydrochloric acid.

It comes from castor beans?
Ricin is a highly toxic protein that's extracted from the seed of the castor plant, often called a "castor bean" or "castor oil bean," despite not technically being a bean. The castor plant is extremely common; it's used as an ornamental plant throughout the western world, prized for its ability to grow basically anywhere as well as its pretty, spiky leaves and weird spiny fruits. It's also an important crop; the seeds are full of oil, and castor oil is used for lots of legitimate purposes. It's a common laxative, for one thing, and since it's more resistant to high temperatures than other kinds of vegetable oils, it's a nice alternative to petroleum oil in engines.

Wait, but you can eat it? So how is this a poison?
Ah, yes. Castor oil is perfectly safe, according to the FDA and your grandma, but ricin is not castor oil. Castor seeds are still poisonous; a study says that a lethal dose of castor seeds for adults is about four to eight seeds. But the oil itself does not contain ricin; the ricin protein is left behind in the "castor bean mash" after the oil is extracted from the seed. Poisoning from eating the seed itself is rare.

Have there been cases of ricin poisoning in the past?
You mean, beyond the several times it's been featured as a major plot point in Breaking Bad? Sure! The most famous is probably the assassination of Georgi Markov in 1978. Markov was a Bulgarian novelist, playwright, journalist, and dissident, and was murdered by the Bulgarian secret service, with assistance from the KGB, by ricin injection. He was crossing a bridge when he was jabbed in the leg with an umbrella, which delivered a ricin pellet into his bloodstream. He died three days later of ricin poisoning.
There are plenty of incidents of people arrested for attempting (or, more often, succeeding) to make ricin; it's a pretty easy poison to make. In fact, there was even another ricin-in-the-envelope attempt made back in 2003--a person identifying as "Fallen Angel" sent letters filled with ricin to the White House, apparently as a result of some new trucking regulations (seriously). "Fallen Angel" was never found, but the letters were intercepted and did not cause any injury.

How dangerous are these envelopes filled with ricin?
The envelope strategy has more to do with potential ease of getting the poison close to targets than its strength as a delivery system. If you're targeting the President of the United States, it's easier and more anonymous to mail a letter than to try to get close to him with an umbrella modified for ricin-stabbing. But it's not a great way to poison someone with ricin. Assuming the letter actually got into the target's hands, of the three ways ricin can get into a person's system (inhalation, injection, ingestion), only one--inhalation--is really possible, and it's not that likely.
Inhalation as a weapon is best accomplished through a mist, ideally delivered through an aerosol. But that's not possible in a letter full of powder. It's possible that small granules of ricin could be released into the air and inhaled when handling the letter, but it is not an effective way to poison someone. And whoever's sending these letters evidently doesn't know that the government set up an elaborate mail-screening system after the 2001 Anthrax scare.

(source:popsci)

2013年4月17日星期三

History, Present and Expected Future of Forests in Slovakia



Tree forests cover approximately 9.4 percent of the Earth's surface (or 30 percent of total land area), though they once covered much more (about 50 percent of total land area). They function as habitats for organisms, hydrologic flow modulators, and soil conservers, constituting one of the most important aspects of the biosphere.But it has been significantly harmed by human for all purposes.What the future forests will be like? Researchers from Forest Ressearch Institute of Zvolen made a guess in the paper published in American Journal of Plant Sciences:

In this paper, we briefly summarize the problems that have been affecting Slovakian forestry in the past, in the present and are expected in the future. In the past, the forests in Central Europe were significantly harmed by the development of mining, metallurgy, wood processing industry, agriculture and grazing of sheep and cattle. Many areas have been completely deforested. Fundamental change occurred in the 18th Century, when the regulations about forest management, declared by Empress of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy Maria Therese, came into force. With the changing level of forest cover, there have been changing as well the problems in the forestry. Forests in Slovakia are nowadays dealing with the climate change, which is causing extreme weather fluctuations. It is connected with the emergence of abiotic disturbances after which usually occurs activation of biotic harmful agents. We expect that the most serious problem of forests in the future will be their state of health. We expect an increase representation of thermophilic tree species (beech and oak) at the expense of upland trees such as spruce. An important role will be played by the invasive species of plants, fungi and animals that can compete with native species and their habitats or in the situation of the absence of their reducents these can cause serious economic and environmental damage.

(source:SCIRP/ Plant Sciences)

2013年4月16日星期二

How much does the Boston Marathon explosion affects global economy?



On 15 April afternoon ,US time,an explosion attacks Boston marathon.It is the largest terrorist attack after 911 in USA.This terrorist event occurs around 3 PM, local time,one hour before New York stock market close.
Affected by this, Europe and America financial market are hard hitted. U.S. stocks closed sharply lower on Monday, 3 major indexes fell more than 1.7%. The VIX index sharply rose 40%. Commodities such as gold and silver are bear raid. Gold prices steep falls 9.3% on Monday,which is the one-day drop in 30 years.
The United States as the world’s only economic, political and military superpower, U.S. stocks’s cold must cause turmoil in the world. Asian stock markets fell in early trading on the 16th. The 2 cities of Shanghai and Shenzhen in China are both low on April 17, 2013. The intraday market rebound, the two markets both meteoric rise, At the close, the stock index reported 2194.85 points, up 0.59%, Shenzhen Component Index closed at 8852.42 points, up 1.36%.

“9.11” terrorist attack has ever destroyed the economy all over the world
“9.11” terrorist attack is undoubtedly the biggest terrorist attack which affects global economy. It made the US stock market stopped 4 days which has never happened before. US President Barack Obama has ever said in the 9.11 memorial concert:” More than a decade ago, the United States has experienced the darkest day in the history.”
Stock market is a barometer of a country's national economy.9.11 terrorist attacks not only caused a huge blow to America's economy, it also caused serious influence on the rest of the world economy. Spooked investors Sell all kinds of stock, fear that there is so much pain in global stock markets.In fact, after 9.11 events, fall of stock markets in Europe, Japan, and South America is more larger than Wall Street stock market.
The United Nations has issued a report says:”3.11 terrorist attacks will make this year's world economic growth rate reduced by one percent,with a  loss of $350 billion.”


Boston Marathon explode:has lead at least three people death and 130 injured







Police have confirmed two explosions at the Boston Marathon. The Boston Police are reporting at least three people are dead. More than 130 others are injured.

The dead included an 8-year-old boy, according to two law enforcement sources, the Boston Globe is reporting.

Boston police say no suspect has been taken into custody in connection with the explosions near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, despite reports from the New York Post of a 20-year-old suspect under guard at an undisclosed Boston hospital.

Police Commissioner Edward Davis also says the fire at a library a few kilometres away and more than an hour later doesn’t appear to be related to the explosions at the race on Monday. He says the fire may have been caused by an incendiary device.

A searchable list of Canadians in the race is at the bottom of this story.

Police say it’s too early to get into specifics about the nature of devices or whether shrapnel was involved.

Bloody spectators near the finish line of the Boston Marathon were being carried to the medical tent that had been set up to care for fatigued runners. Police wove through competitors as they ran back toward the course. Many of the injured suffered devastating injuries.

“These runners just finished and they don’t have legs now,” Roupen Bastajian, 35, a Rhode Island state trooper and former Marine, told the New York Times. “So many of them. There are so many people without legs. It’s all blood. There’s blood everywhere. You got bones, fragments. It’s disgusting.”

“There are a lot of people down,” said one man, whose bib No. 17528 identified him as Frank Deruyter of North Carolina.

He was not injured, but marathon workers were carrying one woman, who did not appear to be a runner, to the medical area as blood gushed from her leg. A Boston police officer was wheeled from the course with a leg injury that was bleeding.

An image of a fireball and smoke were shared on Twitter as well as what appears to be blood on the ground at the site of the reported explosion.

“There are people who are really, really bloody,” said Laura McLean, a runner from Toronto, who was in the medical tent being treated for dehydration when she was pulled out to make room for victims of the explosions. “They were pulling them into the medical tent.”

2013年4月15日星期一

Whether your gonads will degenerate after 3 weeks of food deprivation



3 weeks without food,what will happen to your body?A research published in Food and Nutrition Sciences made a starvation trial to explore the changes of biochemical composition and the fatty acid dynamics in the triacylglycerol fraction of the digestive gland, gonads and adductor muscle of the scallop Flexopecten glaber.The following it the general ideas:

Results show that three weeks of food deprivation induce depletion of carbohydrates and a significant decrease in proteins and lipids. The noteworthy patterns recorded for the various classes of lipids were the increase of the amount of phosphatidylethanolamine against a strong decline of mono-diacylglycerols, triacylglycerol and phosphatidylserine classes in gonads. These results reflect the ability of Flexopecten glaber to remodel endogenous lipid classes in order to avoid the gonads deterioration. In the starved specimens, severe declines of the n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid group were recorded in the triacylglycerol fraction of digestive gland and adductor muscle against the increase of this group in gonads. These results confirm the role of triacylglycerol as a polyunsaturated fatty acids reservoir and pointed out to their mobilization from storage organs to the developing gonads during the food shortage trial. Examination of fatty acid data revealed that food deprivation lead Flexopecten glaber to invest in saving and accumulation of highly unsaturated fatty acids in go- nads. This applies mainly to the arachidonic acid (20:4n-6) and the docosahexaenoic acid (22:6n-3).

You can download and read the research for more details and surprise.

(source:SCIRP/doi: 10.4236/fns.2013.44052)



2013年4月14日星期日

A Nonlinear Electrical Resonator as a Simple Touch-Sensitive Switch with Memory



Today I read an article,it mainly introduce a new Touch-Sensitive Switch which use nonlinear electrical resonator.The following is the general:

We introduce a novel switching mechanism that relies on the bistability of a simple nonlinear electrical resonator which incorporates a varactor diode as its capacitive element. The switching action can be made fast and is self-contained in that no further circuitry is necessary. Unlike a flip-flop, whose state is flipped by applying a TTL pulse, this nonlinear switch can be engaged external to the circuit via magnetic, inductive or capacitive coupling; in this way, the switch becomes intrinsically touch-sensitive. Alternatively, the switching action can also be accomplished using frequency-shift-keying (FSK) modulation, which holds the promise of fast manipulation of the memory state. We demonstrate the potential application of these ideas by constructing a touch-sensitive LED lattice.

I have a doubt that is this kind of Touch-Sensitive Switch has any advantages over the present ones?


2013年4月11日星期四

Look out:'Apple shape' linked to higher risk of kidney disease



It was already known that being "apple-shaped", as opposed to "pear-shaped", added to the risk of developing cardiovascular problems.

This research, in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, found signs of kidney problems in even otherwise healthy apple-shaped people.

UK experts said people needed to take more care of their kidney health.

The research, by a team at the University Medical Center Groningen, in the Netherlands, looked at more than 300 people who had either a healthy bodyweight. or who were overweight.

They found that having a higher waist-to-hip ratio - seen in those who were more apple-shaped - was associated with lower kidney function, reduced kidney blood flow and higher blood pressure in the kidneys.

This was the case even in those who were otherwise healthy.

'Growing problem'
Arjan Kwakernaak, who led the study, said: "We found that apple-shaped persons - even if totally healthy and with a normal blood pressure - have an elevated blood pressure in their kidneys.

"When they are also overweight or obese, this is even worse."

The findings suggest that these individuals may benefit from treatments that reduce kidney blood pressure - such as cutting salt levels and targeted drug treatments.

A spokesman for Kidney Research UK said: "We understand already that central - 'apple' - obesity is associated with higher cardiovascular risk than peripheral - 'pear' - obesity.

"This demonstrates that the same is true for kidney disease."

He added: "This is further evidence that there is a link between obesity and the growing problem of kidney disease, and that more needs to be done to make people aware of the importance of protecting kidney function."


(source:bbc)

2013年4月10日星期三

Traveling At Warp Speed?Maybe You Will Experience Bones Ripped Apart,Scientist Says




If it were really possible to build a warp drive, using it wouldn’t make you fly back into your seat as in a science-fiction movie. “Inside the spaceship, it would feel absolutely normal,” says physicist Dave Goldberg of Drexel University. “You would be weightless, of course, because you wouldn’t have any acceleration on you at all.”
That assumes you’re on the inside of what’s known as an Alcubierre Bubble—a hypothetical construct that could allow a patch of space to travel at many times the speed of light. The crew of a spaceship that had entered such a bubble probably wouldn’t have any sense of traveling at warp speed—“once you’re in there, it’s the most blasé thing in the world,” says Goldberg—but crossing the bubble’s border would be gut-wrenching. It could be as violent as falling into a black hole: The space-time deformation at the edge of the bubble would create an enormous tidal effect, one strong enough to rip your bones apart.

(Scientific Research Publishing shares/source: popsci)

2013年4月9日星期二

See ,Hear,Read or Think of Yawn,You Yawn.Why?



We yawn when we are sleepy and wake up.Why we yawn?Have you ever thought it is a sign of sleepy or wakefulness? Dmitry ArbuckMeridian Health GroupIndianapolismade a research for this interesting phenomenon.You can read the research paper for more details.

Infectivity and social contact
Contagious is the most prominent characteristics of yawn.Yawn is too easy to infection. Nearly everything related to it could inspire more yawning,including see ,hear,read or even think of yawn.Some people has found that silent film which shows yawn can infect nearly 55audience in 5 minutes,even those people who didn’t yawn ,has admitted that they at least being tempted.

There is some thing more interesting: If we remove the yawning mouth from the video,it can also arouse the audience to  yawn. Although a suddenly open mouth is the most significant part of the yawn. And, in turn, the yawn caused by yawning mouth alone is not as much as smiley face.Maybe it is because the open mouth is not only stand for yawning,but also singing or crying.It is the while face which makes us yawn,including the eyes narrowed.

Spontaneous yawning is very old  from the evolutionary point of view- most vertebrates have this behavior. While contagious yawning has a shorter history,it only appears in social mammals.Such as chimpanzee,maybe dog is included.

For human,we spontaneous yawn when we are still in the womb,but contagious yawning appears at the age of four or five.In this age,child can owe mental state  to itself or others.This further proves that the contagious yawning has something to do with social contact.



(source:SCIRP,guokr) 

Digression:When I completeed this artical,I have yawned heaps of times.

2013年4月8日星期一

Do you have a friend who needn’t to say ‘thanks’?- Self-determined friendship may be the development object



It is not easy to handed several friends who never need to say thanks. Maybe it is very easy to say”thanks” to your friends,but it is a rare state that you really needn’t to say thanks to each other.A true frirnd never say “thanks ”,but their affection and friendship won’t be inferior for lack of “thanks”, to the contrary, it will be more precious.

Whithout “thanks”,the friendship contains thick dear ones;without thanks”,the friendship appears to be more simple and natural.

Friends like this is hard to handed.But which friends have the potential to develop into this kind of friends?

Ryo Okada sheds light on this problem from the psychology perspective.He studies 262 Japanese university students,and concluded that “self-determined friendship motivation predicted lower levels of anger, hostility, and physical aggression and that hostility and anger predicted lower levels of self-esteem. Verbal aggression was found to be positively associated with self-determined friendship motivation and self-esteem.”

2013年4月7日星期日

Red meat chemical 'damages heart', scientist says



A study in the journal Nature Medicine showed that carnitine in red meat was broken down by bacteria in the gut.

This kicked off a chain of events which resulted in higher levels of cholesterol and an increased risk of heart disease.

Dieticians warned there may be a risk to people taking carnitine supplements.

There has been a wealth of studies suggesting that regularly eating red meat may be damaging to health.

In the UK, the government recommends eating no more than 70g of red or processed meat a day - the equivalent of two slices of bacon.

Saturated fat and the way processed meat is preserved are thought to contribute to heart problems. However, this was not thought to be the whole story.

Continue reading the main story

Gut bugs
Experiments on mice and people showed that bacteria in the gut could eat carnitine.

Carnitine was broken down into a gas, which was converted in the liver to a chemical called TMAO.

In the study, TMAO was strongly linked with the build-up of fatty deposits in blood vessels, which can lead to heart disease and death.

Dr Hazen, from the Cleveland Clinic, said TMAO was often ignored: "It may be a waste product but it is significantly influencing cholesterol metabolism and the net effect leads to an accumulation of cholesterol.

"The findings support the idea that less red meat is better.

"I used to have red meat five days out of seven, now I have cut it way back to less than once every two weeks or so."

He said the findings raised the idea of using a probiotic yogurt to change the balance of bacteria in the gut.

Reducing the number of bacteria that feed on carnitine would in theory reduce the health risks of red meat.

Vegetarians naturally have fewer bacteria that are able to break down carnitine than meat-eaters.

(source:bbc)

The Addition of Yoghurt Powder will Afftces the Properties of Probiotic Chocolates




Yoghurt is rich in potassium, calcium, protein and B vitamins, including B-12. The benefits if it is known to all: promotes good digestion, boosts immune function,lowers cholesterol, aids weight loss, builds strong bones, builds lactose tolerance, treats yeast infections, soothes sunburns, freshens breath.So probiotic chocolate emerged  in 2009.Is it really a good choice for consumers who love chocolates so much ?How does the quality?A study states that the addition(%) of yoghurt powder says.

“Rheological studies showed that milk chocolate prepared using yoghurt powder at 50% showed no significant changes in yield value compared to that of control, but at 100% addition a considerable decrease in yield value was observed. Microstructural properties of chocolate with 50% addition of yoghurt powder showed smaller particles adhering to the cocoa and sugar crystals but at 100% addition of yoghurt powder, the cocoa particles were completely covered by smaller yoghurt powder matrix. ”

In the end ,the research concluded that: milk chocolate with probiotic yoghurt powder was prepared without affecting the desirable quality of conventional chocolate.

(source:SCIRP)


2013年4月3日星期三

Lingerie with GPS to help fight sex crimes, the effect is questioned






Three automobile engineers from Chennai have come out with what they claim can check sexual offences in India — lingerie with GPS capable of sending alerts to the woman's parents and police.

"The lingerie with global positioning system (GPS), global system for mobile communications (GSM) and also pressure sensors, is capable of sending shock waves of 3,800 kV as well as alerts to parents and police," says Manisha Mohan, co-developer of the innovative product named Society Harnessing Equipment (SHE).However,this anti-rape lingerie is questioned:


A netizen from jiandan says:May be when the parents or police arrives as soon as they get the signal,the girl has been reped.

Another  netizen from timesofindia says: How much current it requires for the battery to produce shock waves of 3,800 kV and send gps and gsm signals.He also ridicules that: If it sends shock after getting pressure by touching her then she will also get the shock and what about if she forget to remove this lingere infront of her husband. Police and her parents will see all the seen of bedroom.

There are also some people worry about the price.” poor women cannot afford this expensive GPS fitted lingeries”

2013年4月2日星期二

Fukushima disaster may have affected American infants’ health, research shows


Substantial quantities of the radioisotope iodine-131 were produced by the meltdowns, then wafted over the Pacific Ocean and fell over Hawaii, the American West Coast, and other Pacific countries in rain and snow, reaching levels hundreds of times greater than those consideredsafe.

In fact,there is  alson data shows that its impact to US West Coast from Fukushima is likely larger than anticipated.

"Fukushima fallout appeared to affect all areas of the U.S., and was especially large in some, mostly in the western part of the nation,"wrote researchers with the Radiation and Public Health Project in  Open Journal of Pediatrics(peer-reviewed paper).They also offer correlation data of 2011 and 2012,and state that “The number of congenital hypothyroid(treatable when detected early) cases in these five states from March 17-December 31, 2011 was 16% greater than for the same period in 2010, compared to a 3% decline in 36 other US States (p < 0.03).”

The findings may be only a tip of an epidemiological iceberg.

Congenital hypothyroidism can be used as one measure to assess any potential changes in U.S. fetal and infant health status after Fukushima because official data was available relatively promptly,” the researchers wrote. “However, health departments will soon have available for other 2010 and 2011 indicators of fetal/infant health, including fetal deaths, premature births, low weight births, neonatal deaths, infant deaths, and birth defects.”

2013年4月1日星期一

Is French Canadians’Increased Tay-Sachs A Case of Gene-Culture Co-evolution?




Tay-Sachs is a rare autosomal recessive genetic disorder. Research in the late 20th century demonstrated that Tay–Sachs disease is caused by a genetic mutation in the HEXA gene on (human) chromosome 15.

In 1887, American neurologist Bernard Sachs of Mount Sinai Hospital, New York ,noted an increased disease prevalence in the Eastern European Ashkenazi Jewish population.

Peter Frost , Université Laval,Quebec City,Canada, questioned:Is the increased Tay-Sachs prevalence in the Eastern EuropeanAshkenazi Jewish population a case of gene-culture co-evolution?The following is the general ideas:

Tay-Sachs, an inherited neurological disorder, is unusually common among French Canadians from eastern Quebec. Two alleles are responsible, one being specific to the north shore of the St. Lawrence and the other to the south shore. This pattern of convergent evolution suggests the presence of a selection pressure limited to eastern Quebec. Both alleles probably arose after the British conquest of Quebec in 1759 or at least were uncommon previously. To explain the high incidence of Tay-Sachs among Ashkenazi Jews, some authors have invoked heterozygote advantage, i.e., heterozygous individuals enjoy a higher rate of neuronal growth, and thus greater learning capacity, without the neurological deterioration of homozygous individuals. Such an advantage would have helped Ashkenazim perform the mental effort required for work in trade and crafts. A similar situation may have developed in eastern Quebec, where the relative scarcity of British and American merchants made it easier for French Canadians to enter occupations that required literacy, numeracy, and future time orientation.

(source:SCIRP)