Brian Dettmer Book Sculptures

Papercut Art by Peter Callesen

Scientists redraw the blueprint of the body's biological clock

This is a clock. Credit: Courtesy of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies

The discovery of a major gear in the biological clock that tells the body when to sleep and metabolize food may lead to new drugs to treat sleep problems and metabolic disorders, including diabetes.

Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, led by Ronald M. Evans, a professor in Salk's Gene Expression Laboratory, showed that two cellular switches found on the nucleus of mouse cells, known as REV-ERBα and REV-ERBβ, are essential for maintaining normal sleeping and eating cycles and for metabolism of nutrients from food.

The findings, reported March 29 in Nature, describe a powerful link between circadian rhythms and metabolism and suggest a new avenue for treating disorders of both systems, including jet lag, sleep disorders, obesity and diabetes.

"This fundamentally changes our knowledge about the workings of the circadian clock and how it orchestrates our sleep-wake cycles, when we eat and even the times our bodies metabolize nutrients," says Evans. "Nuclear receptors can be targeted with drugs, which suggests we might be able to target REV-ERBα and β to treat disorders of sleep and metabolism."

Nurses, emergency personnel and others who work shifts that alter the normal 24-hour cycle of waking and sleeping are at much higher risk for a number of diseases, including metabolic disorders such as diabetes. To address this, scientists are trying to understand precisely how the biological clock works and uncover possible targets for drugs that could adjust the circadian rhythm in people with sleep disorders and circadian-associated metabolic disorders.

In mammals, the circadian timing system is orchestrated by a central clock in the brain and subsidiary clocks in most other organs. The master clock in the brain is set by light and determines the overall diurnal or nocturnal preference of an animal, including sleep-wake cycles and feeding behavior.

Scientists knew that two genes, BMAL1 and CLOCK, worked together at the core of the clock's molecular machinery to activate the network of circadian genes. In this way, BMAL1 acts like the accelerator on a car, activating genes to rev up our physiology each morning so that we are alert, hungry and physically active.

Prior to this work REV-ERBα and β were thought to play only a minor role in these cycles, possibly working together to slow CLOCK-BMAL1 activity to make minor adjustments to keep the clock running on time.

However, genetic studies of two genes with similar functions can be very difficult and thus the real importance of REV-ERBα and β remained mysterious.

The Salk scientists got around this hurdle by developing mice in which both genes could be turned off in the liver at any point by giving them an estrogen derivative called tamoxifen. Now mice could develop normally to adulthood, at which point the scientists could turn off REV-ERBα and REV-ERBβ in their livers ---- an organ crucial to maintaining the correct balance of sugar and fat in blood ---- to see what effects it had on circadian rhythms and metabolism.

"When we turned off both receptors, the animal's biological clocks went haywire," says Han Cho, first author on the paper and a postdoctoral researcher in Evan's laboratory. "The mice started running on their exercise wheels when they should have been resting. This suggested REV-ERBα and REV-ERBβ aren't an auxiliary system that makes minor adjustments, but an integral part of the clock's core mechanism. Without them, the clock can't function properly."

Digging more deeply into the clockworks, the Salk scientists mapped out the genes that the REV-ERBs control to keep the body operating on the right schedule, finding that they overlap with hundreds of the same genes controlled by CLOCK and BMAL1. This and other findings suggested that the REV-ERBs, act as a break on the genes BMAL1 activates.

"We thought that the core of the clock was an accelerator, and that all REV-ERBα and REV-ERBβ did was to pull the foot off that pedal," says Evans. "What we've shown is that these receptors act directly as a break to slow clock activity. Now we've got a accelerator and a break, each equally important in creating the daily rhythm of the clock."

The scientists also found that the REV-ERBs control the activity of hundreds of genes involved metabolism, including those responsible for controlling levels of fats and bile. The mice in which REV-ERBα and REV-ERBβ were turned off had high levels of fat and sugar in their blood ---- common problems in people with metabolic disorders.

"This explains how our cellular metabolism is tied to daylight cycles determined by the movements of the sun and the earth," says Satchidananda Panda, an associate professor in Salk's Regulatory Biology Laboratory and co-author on the paper. "Now we want to find ways of leveraging this mechanism to fix a person's metabolic rhythms when they are disrupted by travel, shift work or sleep disorders."

Provided by Salk Institute

"Scientists redraw the blueprint of the body's biological clock." April 6th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-scientists-redraw-blueprint-body-biological.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Children perceive humanoid robot as emotional, moral being

A study participant and Robovie share a hug, one of the social interactions in the UW experiment. Credit: American Psychological Association

(PhysOrg.com) -- Robot nannies could diminish child care worries for parents of young children. Equipped with alarms and monitoring capabilities to guard children from harm, a robot nanny would let parents leave youngsters at home without a babysitter.

Sign us up, parents might say.

Human-like robot babysitters are in the works, but it's unclear at this early stage what children's relationships with these humanoids will be like and what dangers lurk in this convenient-sounding technology.

Will the robots do more than keep children safe and entertained? Will they be capable of fostering social interactions, emotional attachment, intellectual growth and other cognitive aspects of human existence? Will children treat these caregivers as personified entities, or like servants or tools that can be bought and sold, misused or ignored?

"We need to talk about how to best design social robots for children, because corporations will go with the design that makes the most money, not necessarily what’s best for children" said Peter Kahn, associate professor of psychology at the University of Washington. "In developing robot nannies, we should be concerned with how we might be dumbing down relationships and stunting the emotional and intellectual growth of children."

To guide robot design, Kahn and his research team are exploring how children interact socially with a humanoid robot. In a new study, the researchers report that children exchanged social pleasantries, such as shaking hands, hugging and making small talk, with a remotely controlled human-like robot (Robovie) that appeared autonomous. Nearly 80 percent of the children – an even mix of 90 boys and girls, aged 9, 12 or 15 – believed that the robot was intelligent, and 60 percent believed it had feelings.

The journal Developmental Psychology published the findings in its March issue.

The children also played a game of "I Spy" with Robovie, allowing the researchers to test what morality children attribute to the robot. The game started with the children guessing an object in the room chosen by Robovie, who then got a turn to guess an object chosen by the child.

But the humanoid robot’s turn was cut short when a researcher interrupted to say it was time for the interview part of the experiment and told Robovie that it had to go into a storage closet. Via a hidden experimenter's commands, Robovie protested, and said that it wasn't fair to end the game early. "I wasn't given enough chances to guess the object," the robot argued, going on to say that its feelings were hurt and that the closet was dark and scary.

When interviewed by the researchers, 88 percent of the children thought the robot was treated unfairly in not having a chance to take its turn, and 54 percent thought that it was not right to put it in the closet. A little more than half said that they would go to Robovie for emotional support or to share secrets.

But they were less agreeable about allowing Robovie civil liberties, like being paid for work. The children also said that the robot could be bought, sold and should not have the right to vote.

The findings show that the social interactions with Robovie led children to develop feelings for the robot and attribute some moral standing to it. This suggests that the interactions used in the study represent aspects of human experience that could be used for designing robots.

The researchers added that robot nanny design should also factor in how agreeable a robot should be with a child. Should a robot be programmed to give in to all the child's desires, play whatever game is demanded? Or should it push back, like Robovie did when the I Spy game ended early?

Kahn believes that as social robots become pervasive in our everyday lives, they can benefit children but also potentially impoverish their emotional and social development.

The National Science Foundation funded the study. Co-authors at UW are Nathan Freier, Rachel Severson, Jolina Ruckert and Solace Shen. Other co-authors are Brian Gill of Seattle Pacific University, and Hiroshi Ishiguro and Takayuki Kanda, both of Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute, which created Robovie.

More information: Learn more, watch videos at Kahn's lab website.

Provided by University of Washington

"Children perceive humanoid robot as emotional, moral being." April 6th, 2012. http://phys.org/news/2012-04-children-humanoid-robot-emotional-moral.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Cognitive therapy helps reduce severity of distress among psychotic patients

Cognitive therapy reduces the severity of psychotic experiences in adults who are at risk of developing conditions such as schizophrenia, a randomised controlled trial published in the British Medical Journal claims.

Authors from several UK universities (Birmingham, Glasgow, Cambridge, Manchester and UEA), led by the University of Manchester, set out to determine whether cognitive therapy, combined with monitoring, is effective in preventing the development and worsening of psychotic symptoms which can lead to schizophrenia, in young adults who were actively seeking help and were considered at high risk of developing schizophrenia and similar serious mental disorders. Risk factors included having intermittent or very mild symptoms suggesting psychosis, or schizophrenia-like personality problems, or having at least one close relative with psychosis. Monitoring was defined as aiming to provide warm, emphatic and supportive face-to-face contact.

The 288 young people in the trial were between the ages of 14 and 35 and came from across the UK: Manchester, Birmingham, Worcestershire, Glasgow, Cambridge and Norfolk. 114 were assigned at random to cognitive therapy and 144 to monitoring of mental state alone and were followed up for two years. Those in the cognitive therapy group had up to 26 weekly sessions over six months and all patients had access to a GP throughout the trial if they required.

Overall, fewer of the young people developed psychosis than expected over the next year (23/288, 8%), with no statistically significant difference between the two groups. Results show that although cognitive therapy is not effective in preventing the development of first episode psychosis for those few that transition, it does significantly reduce the severity, frequency and intensity of psychotic symptoms in this help-seeking population. And although cognitive therapy does not significantly affect distress, depression, anxiety and life satisfaction, these conditions did improve over time for all participants. This leads authors to believe that many patients recover naturalistically, or with minimal intervention. Based on these findings, the authors suggest that the proposed inclusion of an Attenuated Psychosis Syndrome as a new diagnostic category in the fifth edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (due in May 2013) needs to be reconsidered.

The study found that the effect of monitoring sessions were greater than originally expected, mainly because they provided regular contact for the patients. This is consistent with earlier findings that brief, simple psychological interventions that target worry have significant effect on psychotic experiences.

The authors suggest that depression and anxiety among this age group, in conjunction with psychotic experiences, are common, and should be considered as suitable treatment targets. They conclude the importance of "future research [which] examines the developmental process in the transition to psychosis" and that anti-psychotic medication should not be offered as the first option to people at risk of developing schizophrenia, since more benign options appear equally effective.

Provided by British Medical Journal

"Cognitive therapy helps reduce severity of distress among psychotic patients." April 5th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-cognitive-therapy-severity-distress-psychotic.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Tidbits

Sharing with you small incidence happened between the King and his Minister; which guides us lesson on �Anything that happens in our life affects us, and the outcome depends on us and how we choose to overcome the situation.�;

Why Die before Actual Death?

A King, annoyed with his Minister, ordered him to be hanged. A date was fixed for the execution.

Next day, the King came to know that there were celebrations in the Minister�s house, instead of gloom and sorrow.

On enquiring, about this strange behaviour, the Minister replied, �Why should I die before the actual death? I should make the best of the time I have left. When death comes, I will face it.�

The King was so pleased that he pardoned the Minister.

Message:

All of us have at a time lived negatively or are still living negatively.

There is a lot of negativity within us where people are afraid to express themselves as to being afraid of negative response.

Everything that we as human beings do is for ourselves and we can't afford to make anyone happy; if we are not happy.

It has to start with self-first and what we want in our life nobody can take away from us.

WITH REGARDS

ESHA SINGH

How Facebook "Contagion" Spreads

by Sarah C.P. Williams 

Plugged in. People are more likely to join Facebook if many groups of their friends also use the service.

Credit: Fotosearch

To join Facebook or not to join Facebook? You might think the decision depends on how many of your friends are already on the social-networking site. But a new study reveals that it's not the raw number of friends that matters but rather the types of friends who are signed up. The results are the first to show that groups of friends—rather than friend number—are important to how social trends spread.

Previous research on how people make decisions—whether to buy a product, attend a show, or pick up a new hobby—has concluded that the more people you know who do something, the more likely you are to do it. But that's not what computer scientist Jon Kleinberg of Cornell University and colleagues found when they started analyzing data on decisions to join social media networks.

The team collected data from 54 million Facebook invitation e-mails. When people sign up to use Facebook, they are given the opportunity to send invitations to anyone in their e-mail address book who is not already a member of the site. The invitation includes the name of the member who initiated the e-mail as well as any the names of Facebook user who has previously imported the recipient's e-mail address. So with each invitation someone gets, their list of potential friends on subsequent messages grows. The data the researchers—who included a collaborator within Facebook—analyzed included the friends listed, those friends' demographics and connections within the Facebook network, and whether the invitee joined the site. The team also used data on how frequently new Facebook members ended up using the site over the next 3 months.

"What jumped out at us was that someone's likelihood of joining really corresponded not to the number of friends represented, but to how many disconnected groups the friends listed on the e-mail fell into," Kleinberg says. "We were surprised by how clean the effect was."

If four people who were all connected via Facebook friendships were listed on the invitation, for example, the recipient was as likely to join the site as if one friend was listed. But if the message contained the names of four people who had no direct Facebook friendships between them, the odds of the recipient joining the site more than doubled. Moreover, new Facebook members whose first 20 friends fell into multiple distinct groups were much more likely to stay engaged with the site—visiting Facebook 6 of 7 days a week 3 months after registering—than those who had 20 friends all within one connected group, Kleinberg's team reports online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Researchers spend all this time studying what makes someone be an influencer, and this paper is great because it really turns that on its head to see what causes people to be influenced," says James Fowler, a social scientist at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the study.

As for why people are more likely to join Facebook if multiple groups of friends, rather than simply a large number of friends, already use the service, Fowler has a couple of ideas. Maybe, he says, one group is the most important in someone's decision on whether to join the site. In this case, listing friends from multiple groups increases the odds that this key group will be represented. "Maybe you don't care at all about whether your friends from high school are on Facebook, but when you see someone from your jujitsu club, that makes the difference."

Or, Fowler says, it could be that having more groups of friends using Facebook increases the pressure on a person to join, the same way having many friends doing something has been shown to have an effect on other behaviors. Either way, he says, future studies on how friends on social networks influence behavior will likely delve more into the effect of different friend groups.

"The biggest question remaining is whether this will translate into real-world behaviors," Fowler says. If multiple Facebook friends of a person show an interest in a product, for example, is that person more likely to buy the product if those friends belong to different social groups? And what about the world beyond Facebook? Fowler cautions against extrapolating the results: "I think that we're going to start seeing that the way online behavior is influenced is not always the same as how real-world behavior is influenced."

Source: Science
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/04/how-facebook-contagion-spreads.html?ref=em

My FaceBook consciousness Group Here:
http://www.facebook.com/groups/rks.consciousness/

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

THE OLDEST LOVE POEM

This is not only the world's oldest love poem, it's still smoking hot.

This inscription, dating from the 8th century BC and belonging to the Ancient Babylonian Era, is described as the world's oldest known love poem. According to the Sumerian belief, it was a sacred duty for the king to marry every year a priestess instead of Inanna, the goddess of fertility and sexual love, in order to make the soil and women fertile. This poem was most probably written by a bride chosen for Shu-Sin in order to be sung at the New Year festival and it was sung at banquets and festivals accompanied by music and dance.

Its translation:

Bridegroom, dear to my heart,
Goodly is your beauty, honeysweet,
Lion, dear to my heart, 
Goodly is your beauty, honeysweet.

.....................

Bridegroom, let me caress you,
My precious caress is more savory than honey,
In the bedchamber, honey-filled,
Let me enjoy your goodly beauty,
Lion, let me caress you,
My precious caress is more savory than honey.
Bridegroom, you have taken your pleasure of me,
Tell my mother, she will give you delicacies,
My father, he will give you gifts.

.....................

You, because you love me,
Give me pray of your caresses,
My lord god, my lord protector,
My SHU-SIN, who gladdens ENLIL's heart,
Give my pray of your caresses

Best Tourism Places in Hong Kong

Infrared Winter Photography

 

The Netherlands-based photographer travels the globe, capturing breathtaking shots of landscapes filled with promise. She takes a familiar environment and transforms it. You’ve never seen Miami like this!

In this series entitled IR, Netsounski snaps shots of tropical hotspots (no pun intended) and, using infrared technology, distorts the colors in a beautiful way. Vivid shades of green and yellow are muted in the photos, while retaining a strong blue tone. What’s left is a striking combination of icy whites and blues. The result is a fairy tale-like winter wonderland.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

அலையலையாய் அழகு கூந்தல் வேணுமா?

சினிமா நடிகைகள், விளம்பர மாடலிங் போன்றவர்களுக்கு மட்டும் கூந்தல் எப்படி பளபளப்பாக மின்னுகிறது என்பது புரியாத புதிர். சிலர் பணத்தை விரையம் செய்தும், மணிக்கணக்கில் செலவழித்தும், கூந்தலுக்கு உயிரோட்டமே இல்லை என்று குறைகூறுகின்றனர். இதற்கு காரணம் கூந்தலின் ஆரோக்கியம்தான். உங்களுக்கும் பட்டுப்போன்ற ஆரோக்கியமான கூந்தல் வேண்டுமா? அழகியல் நிபுணர்கள் கூறும் ஆலோசனைகளை பின்பற்றுங்களேன். சிக்கில்லாத கூந்தல் கூந்தலை எப்படித்தான் பராமரித்தாலும் சிக்கு ஏற்படுவது இயல்பு. எனவே தலைக்கு குளிக்கும் முன்பாக கூந்தலை நன்றாக சிக்கல் இல்லாமல் சீவவேண்டும். முடியை சீவுவதற்கு அகலமான பற்களைக் கொண்ட சீப்பு மூலம் சிக்கை அகற்றவும். நீங்கள் உபயோகிக்கும் சீப்புகளை அடிக்கடி சோப்புப் போட்டு நன்றாகக் கழுவவும். அதில் அழுக்கிருந்தால் உங்கள் முடியின் பளப்பளப்பை மங்கச் செய்யும். பளபளப்பான கூந்தல் நன்றாக மசித்த வாழைப்பழத்தை 15 நிமிடங்கள் முடியில் பூசி வைத்து பின்பு ஷாம்பூவால் அதை கழுவி விடவும். இது உலர்ந்த கூந்தல் இருப்பவருக்கு மிகவும் நல்லது. ஒரு முட்டை, ஒரு வெள்ளரிக்காய், மற்றும் இரண்டு தேக்கரண்டி ஆலிவ் ஆயில் இவற்றை நன்றாக மிக்ஸியில் அரைத்துக்கொண்டு, 10நிமிடங்கள் கூந்தலில் தடவி ஊறவைக்கவும். பிறகு தலைமுடியைக் கழுவவும். இது உங்கள் கூந்தலின் பளபளப்பை அதிகரிக்கும். தலைக்கு ஷாம்பு போடும்போது லைட்டாக உபயோகிக்கவும். நன்றாக நுரைபோக தண்ணீர்விட்டு அலசவேண்டும். இதில் முக்கியமானது ஷாம்பு போட்டு தலையை அலசும்போதெல்லாம் கண்டிஷனர் உபயோகிக்க வேண்டியது அவசியம் என்றும் அறிவுறுத்தியுள்ளனர். மென்மையாக கையாளுங்கள் தலைக்கு குளித்த பின்னர் ஈரமான கூந்தலை அடித்து உலர்த்தக்கூடாது. டவலால் கூந்தலை இறுக்கக்கட்டி தண்ணீரை உறிஞ்ச விடுங்கள். 5 நிமிடம் கழித்து மென்மையாக உலர்த்தவும். முக்கியமான அம்சம் முடி காயும் முன்பே விரல்களால் சிக்குகளை நீக்கவும். ஹேர் டிரையர் வேண்டாம் கூந்தலை காயவைக்க அடிக்கடி ஹேர் டிரையர் உபயோகிக்க வேண்டாம். ஒருவேளை உபயோகிக்க நேரும்பட்சத்தில் ஒரே இடத்தில் அதிக நேரம் காட்டுவதைத் தவிர்க்கவும். ஹேர் ட்ரையரை கீழ் நோக்கி பிடிக்கவும். முடியின் நுனிப்பாகத்தை விட, வேர்களில் ஹேர் ட்ரையரை நன்றாகக் காட்டுங்கள். நுனிகளில் காட்டுவதால் முடி உலர்ந்து உடையக் கூடும். தலைக்கு மசாஜ் செய்யுங்கள் உங்கள் தலையை நன்றாக மசாஜ் செய்யுங்கள். கைகளால், முடியைதலையில் தேய்ப்பதற்கு பெயர் மஸாஜ் அல்ல! உங்கள் விரல் நுனிகளால் தலையை மெதுவாக தேய்த்துவிடவும். இது உங்கள் தலையில் ரத்த ஓட்டத்தை அதிகரிக்கச் செய்கின்றது. இதனால் உங்கள் முடி நீண்டதாகவும்,ஆரோக்கியமாகவும்.