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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 20, 2014 at 8:20am

Did you know? What are some things that programmers know, but most people don't?

• Digital content can never be moved, only copied.
• You can never watch or listen to anything on the internet without having it copied to your computer first.
• You cannot password protect a computer from someone who has physical access to it, only encryption works.
• When you empty the trashcan, the files are not deleted.
• When you format your hard drive, the files are not deleted.
• Murphy was right.
• Your desktop computer can run advanced programs for free that used to be available only to big companies for $100,000. Like Unix, virtual machines and SQL servers.
• The Cloud simply means someone else's computer.
• That Office documents are actually ZIP files.
• 1. Programming is more about the art of problem solving with limited options than a science of understanding exact conditions to produce reliable results. 
  2. Programming is hard because users (including programmers) expect programs to work as essentially smarter, more knowledgeable humans. 
  3. Programs are workhorses with a set of prescribed instructions that can interact in surprising ways.  The universe works this way as well.  Think about the simplicity of gravity.  Gravity's force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between two objects centers of mass as well as their respective mass.  That's incredibly simple when you think about it.  Now, go watch a wobbling comet's orbit going through multiple overlapping gravitational fields and tell me you wouldn't think that's a bug in the system if you didn't already know that the universe is made of up simple rules interacting surprisingly.
  4. Bugs do not necessarily mean that the software is wrong; it may mean the programmer misunderstood what the user wanted, that the user misunderstood what they needed or the program illuminated an unknown problem with the process the software is trying to solve.
  
  Software is a possible solution to a stated problem.  Anything more is just dreaming of unicorns and fairy dust.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 20, 2014 at 8:07am

What makes dark chocolate healthy?

The precise reason for the health benefits of dark chocolate: mystery solved

After decades of scientific inquiry, John Finley from Louisiana State University and colleagues have found what makes dark chocolate good for you according to their presentation on March 18, 2014, at the National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Dallas, Texas. The researchers fund that Bifidobacterium and lactic acid bacteria in the lower digestive tract love dark chocolate. The bacteria metabolize chemical components in dark chocolate into anti-inflammatory agents that reduce cardiovascular inflammation and the risk of stroke and heart disease. The researchers proved their concept using cocoa powder and human fecal bacteria in a glass digestive tract that simulated the human lower gut. Cocoa powder contains antioxidants and fiber that are not acted on by digestive enzymes or digestive secretions in the upper digestive tract and are not absorbed in the upper digestive tract. Lower digestive tract bacteria convert the antioxidants and fiber into smaller molecules that can be absorbed and used as anti-inflammatory agents and digestive regulators in the lower digestive tract. The researchers add that eating a prebiotic like garlic can assist the bacteria that metabolize dark chocolate by increasing the rate and of conversion of anti-inflammatory agents in dark chocolate to compounds the human body can absorb.

http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2014/march...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 20, 2014 at 8:01am

Knowing whether food has spoiled without even opening the container!
Research paper presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society shows how.
A color-coded smart tag could tell consumers whether a carton of milk has turned sour or a can of green beans has spoiled without opening the containers, according to researchers. The tag, which would appear on the packaging, also could be used to determine if medications and other perishable products were still active or fresh, they said.

This report on the color-changing food deterioration tags was presented recently as part of the 247th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society.
Watch the video to know how:

More information could be found on their website:
http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2014/march...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 20, 2014 at 7:21am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 20, 2014 at 7:13am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 20, 2014 at 6:17am

When would people lie? Interesting Question. Phsycologists are trying to learn about it.

Psychologists Shaul Shalvi, Ori Eldar and Yoella Bereby-Meyer tested the hypothesis that people are more likely to lie when they can justify the deception to themselves in a 2013 paper entitled “Honesty Requires Time (and Lack of Justifications),” published in Psychological Science. Subjects rolled a die three times in a setup that blocked the experimenter's view of the outcome and were instructed to report the number that came up in the first roll. (The higher the number, the more money they were paid.) Seeing the outcomes of the second and third rolls gave the participants an opportunity to justify reporting the highest number of the three; because that number had actually come up, it was a justified lie.

Some subjects had to report their answer within 20 seconds, whereas others had an unlimited amount of time. Although both groups lied, those who were given less time were more likely to do so. In a second experiment subjects rolled the die once and reported the outcome. Those who were pressed for time lied; those who had time to think told the truth. The two experiments suggest that people are more likely to lie when time is short, but when time is not a factor they lie only when they have justification to do so.

“By lying, we deny our friends access to reality—and their resulting ignorance often harms them in ways we did not anticipate. Our friends may act on our falsehoods, or fail to solve problems that could have been solved only on the basis of good information.”

A practical solution is to think of a way to tell the truth with tact.

nearly all of us shade the truth just enough to make ourselves or others feel better. By how much do we lie? About 10 percent, says behavioral economist Dan Ariely in his 2012 book The Honest Truth about Dishonesty (Harper).

Lying, Ariely says, is not the result of a cost-benefit analysis. Instead it is a form of self-deception in which small lies allow us to dial up our self-image and still retain the perception of being an honest person. Big lies do not.

More can be found at:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-science-tells-us-abo...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 19, 2014 at 7:07am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 19, 2014 at 6:13am

The Inflation Debate Is the theory at the heart of modern cosmology deeply flawed?

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-inflation-summer/

Why I Still Doubt Inflation, in Spite of Gravitational Wave Findings

here is what I’d like to see: First, corroboration of the BICEP2 findings by other groups and observatories. Second, experiments from high-energy physics that provide some sort of corroborating evidence of the driving mechanism of inflation. Third, an explanation of why the Alice’s Restaurant Problem isn’t still a problem. Fourth, an explanation of why only inflation, and not other more conventional physical phenomena, can account for the gravity-wave findings.

When these conditions are met, I’ll be happy to admit I was wrong about inflation. But multiverses? Never!

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2014/03/17/why-i-st...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 18, 2014 at 8:47am

Honey is being used since ages in India to treat burns and various wounds that might harbour microbes that cause infection. Now researchers have found that
HONEY could be the key in the battle against antibiotic resistance. As well as being a tasty treat, honey could be used to help fight infections, they said.
Scientists at Salve Regina University in the US said that honey has a combination of weapons to beat infection including hydrogen peroxide, acidity, high sugar concentration and polyphenols – all of which actively kill bacterial cells.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 18, 2014 at 8:25am

Flowering Plants Need Sugar Transporter SWEET9 For Nectar Production
Nectar secretion requires sucrose phosphate synthases and the sugar transporter SWEET9

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13082...

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