Confirmed Deadly Flu Cases in USA and Canada

According to CDC, Canada’s first cases of swine flu have been confirmed. Nova Scotia and British Columbia have both discovered cases of unidentifiable influenza A viruses.

There are 20 cases of swine flu have been discovered in the United States. Since the swine flu is so new, most of the labs don’t have tests to identify them, therefore they are considered as untypeable influenza A.

More than a thousand people have been infected with swine flu in Mexico, and more than 80 deaths have been cofirmed due to this virus infection.

Excercise After Heart Failure

Scientists believe that regular exercise is safe for people who survive heart failure. It lowers their risk of death and another hospitalization. Studies shows that heart failure patients who regularly do moderate physical activity report to have a higher quality of life compared to patients who receive medical therapy only.

Caffeine Makes Men More Active

A research performed in University of Barcelona on 668 university students in order to study the effect of caffeine.  Measurements were taken before and after the caffeine intake. Although both men and women  activity levels improved, researchers  observed a greater impact among the males than females.

Although there are many researches performed to prove the benefits and risks related to caffeine ingestion, none of these researches have looked at the effects in terms of the gender.

Love and Hate: Not Your Fault

Studies showed that part of the brain putamen (connected to the perception of contempt and disgust) and the insula activated when people see someone they hate. These parts of the brain also activated by romantic love. The putamen could also be involved in the preparation of aggressive acts in a romantic context during the rival situation. It is fascinating to see how both hate and love lead one to make irrational, heroic and evil decisions. The two opposite sentiments lead to the same behaviour because they are triggered from the same part of the brain.

Want to be Green This Christmas?

1) Switch to LED (light emitting diode) lights : You can drop your energy bill and do not throw away your old incandescent light strands, recycle them.

2) Plant a tree: You can purchase a potted living tree and replant it in your house. Do you know that a single tree can absorb more than one ton of CO2 over its lifetime?

3)Rent a Christmas tree: Find a place where you can rent a Christmas. In some places sellers deliver a potted living tree to you, and then they pick it up and replant.

4) Create or buy recycled ornaments : Handmade Christmas ornaments can be made with pine cones, pieces of cloth, wood carvings, fruit and berries. Avoid purchasing plastic or glass ornaments from your retailer.

You Can Spot More Aggressive Men By Their Faces

According to Canadian scientists, men with wider faces are more aggressive. Men have wider faces than women, and the differences start emerge at puberty when testosterone levels increases. Testosterone is tied with aggression, which led to a link between aggression and wide faces. But the face width is not linked with aggression in women. The size of the faces have been shaped by evolution to signal aggressiveness to others.

2100 year old City Wall Found in Jerusalem

In Israel, archaeologists have discovered a 2,100-year-old Jerusalem wall along with beer bottles. These bottles were left behind by 19th century researchers who first discovered the stone defenses. The wall of Jerusalem dates back to the Second Jewish Temple. But it was destroyed in by the Romans in AD 70. According to archaeologists, the wall indicates that Jerusalem had expanded to the south, and it is the largest size in biblical times.

Image Credit : www.travel-images.com

Bacteria: Alternative Energy Source in Future

Hydrogen is the environmentally cleanest and most abundant fuel. But extracting it from other organic materials or  water,  needs significant amount of energy, and it is currently not an efficient process. Fortunately, scientists are have discovered certain bacteria that exhale hydrogen during the normal metabolism.

These particular microbes grow in hot temperatures nearly boiling point of water. These thermophilic (heat-loving) bacteria is known as Caldicellulosiruptor saccharolyticus found in a hot spring in New Zealand. Hydrogen Fuel cell vehicles are available in California and the New York area. These vehicles run off of hydrogen gas and emit only water vapor. Therefore in future, Caldicellulosiruptor saccharolyticus microbes can be used as an alternative energy source to power our vehicles.

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Human Remains In Sahara

Remains of a tiny woman and 2 children were found in Sahara desert. These skeletons are 5,000 years old and provided clues to two civilizations who lived there, a thousand years apart, when Sahara region was moist and green. Paul Sereno and colleagues from University of Chicago were searching for the remains of dinosaurs in the African country when they came across these skeletons. This hot desert was moist and green at the time people lived there. The first group of people known as the Kiffian, hunted wild animals and colonized the region between10,000 and 8,000 years ago. The second group, Tenerians, lived here between 7,000 and 4,500 years ago. They were smaller and did hunting, fishing and cattle herding. But now Sahara is a desert occupied with hot blowing wind.

Photo Source: http://scienceguy288.files.wordpress.com

Allow Producers to Irradiate Your Vegetables?

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved food producers to irradiate vegetables such as spinach and iceberg lettuce to increase the shelf life and also to limit the growth of pathogens especially Salmonella and E. coli.

Although there are many other effective ways available,  Irradiation is considered to be safe and effective by FDA. But this may contaminate the mass distribution of food. The irradiation is a Band-Aid solution to keep a broken system in place, but not an ultimate solution. Some consumer groups are worried that irradiated vegetables are inferior, contaminated and unhealthy. But studies done by the FDA showed no relationship between radiation and long-term health risks such as cancer.

Cattle Have Sense Of Direction

Google Earth satellite images helped researchers, and revealed that cattle tend to face north-south direction while grazing or resting. Other field observations of red and roe deer also revealed this. Both cattle and deer faced a more magnetic north-south direction rather than geographic north-south.

Other animals such as birds, turtles and salmon migrate using a sense of magnetic direction. Small mammals such as rodents and bats also have inner magnetic compass.

Cure For Tuberculosis

According to a research, Tuberculosis is resistant to many current treatments, but now, it can be overcome with aggressive therapy. TB is associated with high rates of mortality and it is responsible for at least 7% of cases of the infection worldwide. Researchers have proved that the cure is possible with a combination of at least 5 drugs. MDR TB is a Multi-drug resistant TB, and it  is resistant to the commonly used treatments such as isoniazid and rifampin. With this treatment almost half of XDR-TB patients and 67% of MDR-TB patients had treatment cure or completion.

Monkey Helps Relatives and Friends, So Do You

Capuchin monkeys try to choose options that get food for others. When they are paired with relative or friend, the monkeys choose double reward “prosocial” choice than ” Self-fish” choice. But when it comes to strangers, they choose “self-fish” option. In the study monkeys were given tokens to exchange for food. One token got them a slice of apple. The other also got an apple slice, plus a similar slice to another monkey. When it comes to partner or familiar monkey from the same social group, the one choosing the token moved closer to the other monkey and choose the token that got them both food. But when the other monkey was a stranger, they choose selfish token to get food just for them.

Cell Phones For Hearing Impaired

Researchers from University of Washington has created a  software that for the first time helps deaf and hard-of-hearing people to use sign language over a mobile phone.

Imagine A World Without Wires

The power is everywhere, like god. You wouldn’t know where the power is coming from. You don’t need cords or batteries for your gadgets and computers. The laptop could be recharged when the machine gets within several feet of a transmit resonator. This reasoner could be embedded in tables, work surfaces, and even behind walls. This is one of the Intel’s technology which relies on an idea called magnetic induction. A principle similar to the way a trained singer can shatter a glass using the voice (frequency). Power can be put into magnetic fields at a transmitting resonator at the wall socket. The receiving resonator is tuned to absorb energy from the magnetic field.

In this research, Intel has built a sample light bulb to make a 60-watt glow from an energy source 3 feet away. This was achieved with high efficiency and only a quarter of the energy has been lost. Researchers admitted the technology will be on market in at least five year.

Image Credit: www.boisepubliclibrary.org

The World’s Cheapest Car At Risk

The Tata group is  threatened to move an important auto factory out of India. This  move could delay the debut of the world’s cheapest car, pint-sized Nano, priced at $2,500. It was scheduled to go on sale by the end of the year.

Protesters are angry farmers who claim not to have received proper compensation for the 997 acres Tata acquired. The opposition party, which has led the fight against Tata, requested the company to return 400 acres to the farmers. Company chairman Ratan Tata said that he is prepared to leave West Bengal if the protests continue.

61 Year Old Woman Had A Baby

A Japanese woman aged 61 gave birth to her grandchild. Her daughter donated an egg a clinic said on August 22, 2008. Surrogate births are rare in Japan and banned by industry groups, but it is not illegal. The Clinic refused to provide information regarding the baby. This procedure has been done because the woman’s daughter has no uterus. Both surrogate mother and baby were fine.

Image Credit: www.solarnavigator.net

Reason For Peacock’s Colorful Tail

Even Charles Darwin struggled to explain why the bird should have this burdensome trait. When there are many potential danger related to the colourful tail, why this bird got this trait. Darwin finally got the idea of sexual selection, which provides an advantage in the competition for mates and that outweighed other disadvantages. While humans  are attracted to symmetrical faces and other outward signs of fitness, these birds are attracted to colourful tails. The male specific traits are evolved with the changing preferences of females. When the female tastes change, these traits go away.

Image credit : http://blog.oregonlive.com

Face Recognition Can Vary From One Culture To Another

The way we recognize faces can say a lot about what culture we come from. This finding change the concept of the capability of face recognition is universal across the globe. According to this study, Westerners often concentrate on individual details of face, while East Asians focus on how details relate to each other.

When reading the expression Americans focus expression of a central figure and Japanese focus behind that central figure to gauge that person’s emotional state. Scientists used eye-tracking systems  to monitor eye movements of participants. They have observed the difference in eye movements in Westerners and East Asian participants. They found that Westerners look at specific features on face such as the eyes and mouth and East Asian focus on the nose or the centre of the face. This allows them to get a general view of all the features.

When Something In Your Eye

How to get dust, an eyelash or other particles out of your eye without hurting yourself:

• First wash your hand before examining your eyes.
• To examine the eye in a mirror to locate the particle, look up, down and side to side
• avoid rubbing your eyes
• if you can’t see the particle, pull the lower lid and lift the upper lid as well
• Rinse the eye or eyelid with fresh water
• If any damage occurred seek immediate medical attention.