Comment

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 20, 2014 at 8:50am

A meta-analysis of papers published on diabetes shows that diabetic women are more susceptible to stroke than diabetic men, possibly because of obesity.
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2814...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 20, 2014 at 8:48am

Scientists: Don't pee in pools
Not only is peeing in the swimming pool antisocial, it could also harm your health, according to a study.
Scientists from China Agricultural University and Purdue University have found that uric acid in urine interacts with the disinfectants in swimming pools to produce harmful chemicals.

The study, published in Environmental Science and Technology, showed that uric acid becomes chlorinated and acts as a precursor to the formation of the toxic gases cyanogen chloride (CNCl) and trichloramine (NCl3).

At high concentrations, CNCl is known to cause immediate injury to the eyes and respiratory system upon contact, and longer term problems in the central nervous system and heart. NCl3 has been linked to chronic health problems in adults and asthma in children.

In the article, the authors noted that since urination is under the voluntary control of swimmers, improved hygiene habits are essential to keep swimming pool water safe.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es405402r

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 20, 2014 at 8:38am

Natural forests in the Amazon remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than they emit - Nasa-led study
This means that the 5.5 million square kilometer forest is a crucial factor in reducing global warming. The new study, published in Nature Communications on March 18, is the first to measure tree deaths caused by natural processes throughout the Amazon forest.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 20, 2014 at 8:34am

Evolution Of Conch Size Driven By Humans
The first humans to pluck a Caribbean fighting conch from the shallow lagoons of Panama’s Bocas del Toro were in for a good meal. Smithsonian scientists found that 7,000 years ago, this common marine shellfish contained 66 percent more meat than its descendants do today. Because of persistent harvesting of the largest conchs, it became advantageous for the animal to mature at a smaller size, resulting in evolutionary change.

Human-driven evolution of wild animals, sometimes referred to as “unnatural selection,” has only previously been documented under scenarios of high-intensity harvesting, like industrialized fishing. “These are the first evidence that low-intensity harvesting has been sufficient to drive evolution,” said lead author Aaron O’Dea of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. “The reason may be because the conch has been subjected to harvesting for a long period of time.” Published March 19 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the findings are based on a comparison of mature shell sizes prior to human settlement, from shells excavated from human trash heaps representing various points in the last few thousand years and from modern sites.

Source: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1782/20140159.ab...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 20, 2014 at 8:31am

New hypothesis explains earth's continued habitability
Researchers from USC and Nanjing University in China have documented evidence suggesting that part of the reason that Earth has become neither sweltering like Venus nor frigid like Mars lies with a built-in atmospheric carbon dioxide regulator -- the geologic cycles that churn up the planet's rocky surface. Scientists have long known that "fresh" rock pushed to the surface via mountain formation effectively acts as a kind of sponge, soaking up the greenhouse gas CO2. Left unchecked, however, that process would simply deplete atmospheric CO2 levels to a point that would plunge Earth into an eternal winter within a few million years during the formation of large mountain ranges like the Himalayas -- which has clearly not happened.

And while volcanoes have long been pointed to as a source of carbon dioxide, alone they cannot balance out the excess uptake of carbon dioxide by large mountain ranges. Instead, it turns out that "fresh" rock exposed by uplift also emits carbon through a chemical weathering process, which replenishes the atmospheric carbon dioxide at a comparable rate.

"Our presence on Earth is dependent upon this carbon cycle. This is why life is able to survive," said Mark Torres, lead author of a study disclosing the findings that appears in Nature on March 20. Torres, a doctoral fellow at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, and a fellow at the Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigations (C-DEBI), collaborated with Joshua West, professor of Earth Sciences at USC Dornsife, and Gaojun Li of Nanjing University in China.
Source: University of Southern California

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

The most difficult part of writing a program is not actually writing the program but rather determining what the client wants the program to do.
It is relatively easy to write the rules for what a program should do in cases where everything is working correctly; it is much more difficult to write the rules for what a program should do when things go wrong (see below).
A lot more can (and does) go wrong than you think: databases can become corrupt or lose their connection to your program; the connection between various computers may become unavailable due to networking issues; and the list goes on. This is largely due to the distributed nature of computer systems these days, in which multiple interconnected computers process what seems to you to be a single request.
A large part of what a program does is hide from you the gory details of when things go wrong (see above).
Good programming requires the ability to foresee what might go wrong and to account for it. Most non-programmers either don't believe what could go wrong or don't want to worry about it, and thus can get uncomfortable even thinking about the idea of things going wrong.
What may appear to be a very simple program (e.g. Google's site) may involve a huge, invisible supporting infrastructure that cost lots of time and money to build and maintain.
When you meet us at parties and learn what we do, we really don't want to hear the story about how you couldn't get a certain program to install/uninstall/run or how you might have a virus on your Windows PC. It would be like saying to a dentist you just met, "Oh, you're a dentist? I have this pain in my leg, what do you think is causing it?"
Just as you're usually not impressed when we brag about how much we know about computers, we're not impressed when you brag about how little you know about them.

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

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• …
• 870
• 871
• 872
• 873
• 874
• …
• 955
• Next ›
• Page