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Moderate Chocolate Consumption Is Good For Heart, Teeth And Asthma

February 14, 2015 By Janet Vasquez Leave a Comment

Valentine’s Day is here and as the celebration is mostly associated with flowers and chocolate it’s good to know that the sweet treat has a lot of health benefits. So, regardless of whether you got today’s box of chocolate from your Sweet Valentine or just decided to get it for yourself for a movies night, you have only benefits to gain. Moderate chocolate consumption is good for heart, teeth and asthma.

Chocolate fans can celebrate that science supports them when it comes to treating themselves to the cocoa sweets. Moderate chocolate consumption,of the right sort, can really be good for your health thanks to its compounds as indicated by The Economist’s YouTube feature, “Why Eating Chocolate Is Good For You.”

US residents eat an average of 9.5 pounds of chocolate annually. The quantity is smaller than half of what European Swiss eat. In Switzerland the common individual consumes 19.8 pounds every year. If weekly data is considered than the average American consumes chocolate twice a week, with 89 percent of ladies and 85 percent of men reporting they go for a chocolate occasionally, as indicated by the National Confectioners Association.

Moderate consumption of this cocoa-based treat can prompt various health benefits for your heart’s wellbeing. The cocoa beans in chocolate contain flavonoids, which are organic antioxidant agents. Epicatechin, specifically, can help the human organism dispose of free radicals and maintain cell walls while avoiding cardiovascular problems. But bear in mind that flavonoids degrade when they are warmed or processed. They are also taken out from branded chocolate due to the fact that they are rather bitter.

With regards to medical advantages, not all chocolate is the same. Crude cocoa and dark chocolate are the ones that can offer the most for heart wellbeing. They encapsulate a stimulant called theobromine. This one compound heightens the heart beat and expands the veins reducing blood pressure, as indicated by the YouTube video from The Economist. Furthermore, it can prompt “good” rather than “bad” cholesterol and block plaque developing on corridor artery membranes.

Theobromine likewise helps the lungs in terms of allaying manifestations of asthma and stopping coughs. A 10 years old report distributed in the FASEB Journal discovered theobromine in cocoa could likewise have a cough – blocking impact. The stimulant has the capacity stifle capsaicin-instigated cough without any side effects.

Most interestingly, chocolate may have the capacity to battle tooth rot better than fluoride. That is because it is more effective at re-mineralizing and strengthening tooth enamel. The chocolate extract could aid creating alternatives to fluoride-based teeth care items.

Image Source: One Green Planet

Significant Connection Between Sleeping Disorders and the Use of Gadgets that Emit Blue Light

February 4, 2015 By Janet Vasquez Leave a Comment

Scientists have recently discovered a significant connection between sleeping disorders and the use of gadgets that emit blue light. Developed mainly at adolescents, this issue made the subject of a survey that involved 10.000 teenagers, aged from 16 to 19 years old. Western Norway is the place where the experiment took place. The conclusion is simple: the blue light emitted by the screen has adverse effects on how people sleep, or the rapidity of their falling asleep.

Mari Hysing, is a lead author of the study and she works at the Uni Research Health in Bergen, Norway.

“There are probably many possible pathways between screen time and sleep, some of which are direct. The light from the screens may directly affect our circadian rhythms, and teenagers may be especially sensitive.”

The percentage of the girls that use their smartphones or tablets before going to sleep is bigger than that of the boys: 90% in comparison with 80%. However, the numbers are big.

When counting the hours spent in front of a blue light device screen, scientists have recorded 5.5 hours for the ladies, whether it is a cell phone, personal computer, tablet, game console, television or MP3 player. On the other hand, the gentlemen spend about 7 hours in front of their favorite technology. A great amount of this time is generously given to chatting, the most used feature of every app, program and device throughout the world. In addition, boys were found to spend a lot of that time playing games – more than one hour a day.

All these issues lead to a great difficulty in falling asleep: both boys and girls need more than 60 minutes to fall asleep, and the rate has risen to 13-52 percent in the last years.

“Use of electronics is an integral part of teenage life. However, teenagers can be aware of how much time [they] spend on screens, and try to log off at night to ensure a good night’s sleep. Parents could start with being good role models and restrict their media use both during day and nighttime. Helping the teenagers get good media and sleep routines is an important part of parenthood.”

Image Source: Capital Region Medical Center

Donating Your Poop Might Just Bring You Up To $13,000 a year

January 31, 2015 By Jack M. Robinson Leave a Comment

The old saying “ I don’t give a shit’ might get a totally new meaning as donating your poop might just bring you up to $13,000 a year. The first catch is you have to live in the Boston Area. That is where the company who needs it- OpenBiome -has its headquarters.

Individuals infected with a bacterium called C. difficile need fecal transplants to aid their stomach. Without consistent anti-toxins, those infected may experience compelling gastrointestinal pain and may not even be able to leave their house, according to The Washington Post reports. To aid these patients, an organization named OpenBiome performs frozen stool transplants to those who really need it.

The sound fecal transplants can be given to those with the C. difficile bacteria via endoscopy, nasal tubes, or capsules. As per the Post, Openbiome has officially delivered approximately 2,000 treatments to 185 healing centers across the nation. Also, it pays: Donors receive $40 for every specimen, with an additional $50 for the individuals who donate five days a week. A simple calculus shows that a constant donor can make as much as $13,000 annually.

However, the donations must be made on location in Medford, Massachusetts, and only around four percent of prospective benefactors pass the broad medical survey and stool testing, the Post notes. Nevertheless if you pass those , you will be aiding other while making some quick money.

OpenBiome co-founder Carolyn Edelstein was quoted by the post saying:

“Everyone thinks it’s great that they’re making money doing such an easy thing. But they also love to hear us say, ‘Look, your poop just helped this lady who’s been sick for nine years go to her daughter’s graduation.”

C difficile causes colitis or colon irritation. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that one develops the illness after coming in contact with surfaces or items tainted with fecal matter and then touching their noses or mouths.

OpenBiome researchers discovered that anti-microbial drugs had limited success rates when used to treat somebody infected with the bacterial disease. All the more essentially, they found that while the bacterium is present in stool, transferring healthy excrement into the stomach of colitis patients can dispense with C. difficile. It was not long until they were receiving poop donations at their headquarters.

OpenBiome I, as of now, welcoming new donors. Fox News notes from 1,000 enrolled donors only 4 percent have passed the medical tests and are currently donating their poop.

Image Source: Good Housekeeping

5 Hours of Active Usage Daily Promised by Apple Smartwatch

January 24, 2015 By Deborah Cobing Leave a Comment

The new smartwatch from Apple is planned to be a blast. Not only for its special features that are designed and gathered to fulfill all needs, but also for the battery, that is supposingly going to last 19 hours. This flattering news raised the interest of customers for Apple and came one step forward. The problem, however, show themselves when the processor, a high-speed one, meets halfway the touchscreen of profound sensitivity. How would this combination react to a single, small battery that has to do it all? Well, it wouldn’t.

Initially, the schedule of the watch would have been from 2.5 to 5 hours of functioning, when used actively. This fact would have happened if, after the first day with 5 hours of activity, the user would have let the watch in standby mode for three days and right afterwards, four days in sleep mode. The fact is that this statement sounds impossible, if the users were to do all these steps, but also the reality is that the battery doesn’t last more than two days, wither on standby or low-power mode. So the 5 hours of active usage daily promised by Apple smartwatch is a complicated resolution. These were observations that have been made by the company to contour a story in 9to5Mac.

Apparently, people who were interviewed about their intentions in using the smartphone, are ready to use it all day long, with all its apps and features, and evidently, charge it only once a day, every day. Moreover, if they watch if being used rarely, maybe not every day and not so many hours, the device wouldn’t have so many downsides. As a consequence, the creators of the watch intend to create a way of using it without draining so much power on the apps. For example, if you are not using or tapping the screen for three hours, it shuts down in order to preserve the battery; the fitness tracker must be used only during a workout or occasionally, if the user wants to check his health stats, otherwise, the application should be closed; the alerts send from the iPhone will ring only when the watch is turned on. If the customers don’t own an iPhone, they can’t use this smart device, because it only works through its direct connection with the iPhone.

The struggle for a better performance has also been the reason why Apple didn’t launch the watch at the end of 2014 and has postponed it to early 2015.

Image Source: CDN

Eric Schmidt Predicts that Internet Will Come to an End

January 23, 2015 By Jack M. Robinson 27 Comments

Eric Schmidt predicts that internet will come to an end.The Internet era will no longer be present in anyone’s lives. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Google’s CEO intrigued everyone with his predictions about the web:” I will answer very simply that the internet will disappear.” The main reason of that disappearance is Millennials.

The Internet connection will be left behind because online connections have become widespread around all gadgets. All gadgets will be connected with its user and every man will be personalizing them as according to its needs and preferences. There has been reported an increased demand in Internet of Things.

Technology and innovation have both evolved in a remarkable manner. Every man has at least one gadget and he is thinking of purchasing the second one. Therefore, many devices mean many IP addresses and sensors which will be at all times with the people who owned them.

Eric Schimdt proposed its audience a visualization exercise. Reporters and attending interested people had to imagine a room filled with devices which was dynamic. When a person walks into that room what happens? The room will ask for permission to access all the devices there. So, anyone can benefit from an interactive environment where extraordinary and unique things happen.

The CEO continued with tech platforms’ development. So many platforms are fighting for leadership and many more will rise to challenge the older ones. There will be a constant shifting of leading places because smartphone applications are extremely popular among users.

One can only imagine how the smartphone infrastructure will look like in the following years. It will be once more a challenge between those who want to power smartphones. Why is that? It is commonly known that smartphones are similar to computers. Similar in the sense that they are improved versions of computers.

The following subject tackled by Google’s CEO was regarding mobile search market. Google Market confronted with an antitrust problem regarding this matter. This case led to a series of legal battles. However, Google is still the main leader on this market.

Other main participant in the discussions was Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s CEO. She feels optimistic regarding any increasing in global Internet. At this moment, only 40 percent of the world’s population is accessing the Internet.

Another key point tacked in the conference was regarding job appliance. Sheryl Sandberg claimed that all tech does is to create jobs for its fields, but in other fields as well.

The “Doomsday Clock” was moved ahead

January 23, 2015 By Janet Vasquez Leave a Comment

The “Doomsday Clock” was moved ahead. The end of life on Earth is getting closer. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reported that because of global warming and the so advanced and developed nuclear industry, human kind is much closer to its end than to its beginning.

On Thursday, “The Doomsday Clock” has been set two minutes ahead. The metaphoric clock has been designed 70 years ago as a reminder and alert to how close humanity comes to its end. The advocacy group which has founded the clock claims that Earth is three minutes from a catastrophic disaster. The previous clock settings were five minutes till doomsday.

The scientists who are a part of the board take into consideration the main threats to human kind. Each year they meet and decide whether it is necessary to reset the clock. The twenty members assess the information and act according to it. For example, the clock has been closer to midnight in 1953 when the hydrogen bomb began testing its products. The clock was set two minutes to midnight.

A conference in Washington has been held regarding this event. Kennette Benedict, the bulletin executive director affirmed that the event was to warn about the actual end of human kind. When the clock will reach midnight, the end of human kind will come. It has been the first time the clock was moved in the past three decades.

Because of latest weaponry development in nuclear fields and rapid climate change, Benedict stated that these are unbeatable threats to human kind. Taking these two major factors into consideration, the scientists who are part of the board took the decision to move it closer to midnight.

The “Doomsday Clock” has been set to a new hour. This action has several consequences. The most important and worth mentioning one is reducing the risk to catastrophic disasters. Therefore, actions will be needed to be taken soon. This decision comes a bit late, some say.

On the other hand, other people opinionate that human kind will find solutions to get through climate changes as well as nuclear weaponry. These scientists are not so pessimistic about the future of humans. Princeton University’s representant, Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of both geosciences and international affairs says that: “humans will ‘muddle through” these catastrophic factors. The climatic changes have been included in the bulletin for 8 years and people have managed to still live.
Image Source: fogcityjournal

The Sun Gets Its 100 Millionth NASA Photo Session

January 22, 2015 By Jack M. Robinson Leave a Comment

There are many stars but the celebrity of our Sun casts them into shade. On Monady, the Sun got its 100 millionth NASA photo session. The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA), which is one out of the three probes flying on the sun-researching Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), took the stunning 100 millionth picture of the sun on Monday, as indicated by authorities at NASA. On the off chance that you’re pondering, the dim areas in the photograph are regions of less thick gas, where NASA said solar material has moved away.

According to NASA’s report the three instruments on board of the Observatory- AIA, Helioseismic Magnetic Imager and the Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment- collect and send an astounding 1.5 terabytes of information every day.

AIA submits about 50% of that. Each day it takes 57,600 nitty -gritty pictures of the sun that depict how sun based material influences and once in a while emits in the sun powered air, the crown, also named the corona.

AIA was constructed in Palo Alto, at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory, California. The device has 4 telescopes, which work jointly to gather 8 pictures of the star in 10 separate wavelengths at regular 12 seconds intervals.

SDO mission was propelled in February 2010 to Earth Orbit, with the financial backing of 850 million dollars. It is the first mission in NASA’s “Living with a star” project that aims to help researchers to gain an enhanced understanding of the solar changes and how they influences life on our planet.

The estimations and observations in SDO are made to give data about how the sun’s magnetic field is created, and why and how this field alters in the long run. The information gathered by the mission could aid researchers in gaining a better insight on space climate that can influence satellite operations in our orbit and power systems on Earth’s surface.

In the almost five years since its launch in 2010, the Solar Dynamics Observatory has caught pictures of the sun to help researchers better see how the crown gets to temperatures 1,000 times more sultry than the sun’s surface, what causes huge emissions like sun flares, according to NASA.

Sun based movement waxes and fades on an 11-year cycle. The sun is in a dynamic period of the current cycle, which is called Solar Cycle 24. Over the recent months, the star has ejected various solar flares and superheated billows of plasma named coronal mass ejections. However, researchers say that the Solar Cycle 24 has been a calm one generally, displaying the weakest “solar max” of any cycle in the last century.

Image Source: ABC News

Kids And Teens Eat Exaggerated Amounts Of Pizza

January 19, 2015 By Georgia Dawson Leave a Comment

Kids health is threatened by the most popular American food: Pizza. Numbers have shown that kids and teens eat exaggerated amounts of pizza. Apart from being delicious, pizza doesn’t really present other nutritional benefits, but on the contrary, it is high in fat and calories.

Just say out loud the word Pizza when being around kids and you will start a serious food revolution. What is about kids and pizza that bond so well?

Scientists had a curiosity about the amount of pizza consumed by American children and teenagers and took a peek at figures between 2003 and 2010. They researched the diets of kids and teens with the ages between 2 to 11 and 12 to 19.

The days the kids ate pizza, their body gained an extra of 84 calories, 3 grams of saturated fat and 134 mg of sodium. Teens gained 230 calories more, 5 grams of saturated fat and 484 mg of sodium. On the days they consumed pizza, the pizza nutrients stood for 20% of the kids daily caloric intake and 26% for the adolescents, which is a lot, coming from just one meal.

The caloric impact of pizza, increased when consumed between meals. Children added 202 calories and teens 365 just from snacking on pizza.

According to researches, pizza consumption hasn’t dropped during the period of the study. Between 2009 and 2010, pizza was classified as the second provider of fats in children’s diets, which they were eating in schools, and fast food places. The first place of fatty foods consumed by children being occupied by sugary goods, like cookies, cakes, pies, doughnuts.

Since the majority of the children were receiving their daily pizza from school cafeterias, health organisations, have insisted on changing its nutritive composition.

But these nutritional changes might have not been applied by all the fast food chains restaurants. Along 2003 and 2010, an analysis of the pizza nutrients, sold by the most known national fast food restaurants, proved high amount of sodium in the thin crust cheese pizzas.

Pizza consumption can become addictive, especially for the young ones who find it a very convenient food. But the effects of pizza is nothing to joke about. Kids should be informed on the dangerous nutritional facts and the quantities of pizza should be limited. Pizza is definitely an obesity factor food and it should be marketed under stricter health campaigns.

Image Source: Play Buzz

Every Time A Dolphin Dives Its Heart Goes Trough A Strange Process

January 19, 2015 By Sebastian Mc’Mannen Leave a Comment

Living under water is as challenging as it sounds even for seals and dolphins. Every time a dolphin dives its heart goes trough a strange process, that cannot yet be explained.

Deep diving can be life threatening not only for land animals but also for the ones build to live in the water. A research at the University of Santa Cruz, California, discovered that the body of marine mammals is suffering irregular heart beats when diving at high depths.

Two of the species studied for this research have been the bottlenose dolphin and the Weddell seals and both mammals showed signs of cardiac challenges while swimming inside the water.
When diving, marine mammals have to conserve oxygen and for this to happen, their body enters a stage called bradycardia, a process which diminishes the rhythm of the heart beats. The paradox rises when the animals have to increase their speed and exercise, the automatic reaction of the body would to speed up its heart rates, process known as tachycardia.
This slow vs. fast beatings, provoke arrhythmia, an unbalance and irregular heart beating. What really happens inside their body, is still unclear.

Until this discovery, bradycardia in marine mammals seamed a logic reaction of the body, but now the process has to be reanalysed. The heart starts to receive conflicting signals, slower or faster which can cause a certain sensitivity of their hearts, said professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz, Terrie Williams.
Scientists arrived to this conclusion after an experiment on a bottle head dolphin, using a new device that measured its heart rate, the diving depth, the time and frequency of swimming strokes and swimming time. The dolphins were tested in pools and open waters but also on some Weddell seals swimming freely in Antarctica.

Arrhythmia, irregular beatings of the heart have been noted in over 70% of the mammals’s dives. The hearts beats were influenced both by the depth of the water and by the speed and intensity of their movements. Certain times, the heart would alternate very fast between states of bradycardia and tachycardia. This is just proof that not even marine animals are fully adapted the under water environment and the system has flaws, said professor Terrie Williams.
The heart beat contradiction happening inside their system doesn’t necessarily affect their health condition. This research is more the first steps of a broader subject, explaining what happens to diving animals, that get stranded on land.

Similar reflexes with the ones found in dolphins and seals has been found in human heart beats when the body gets in contact with cold water. Swimming in cold water has proved to be the cause of 90% of the deaths among triathletes during the race.
Image Source: The Guardian

How Do Sea Turtles Know Their Way Back Home?

January 17, 2015 By Georgia Dawson Leave a Comment

Can sea turtles read Earth’s magnetic field? Adult sea turtles would leave their birth place, migrate thousands of miles n the ocean and still know to come back to the exact location. But how do sea turtles know their way back home?

Sea turtles have a complex life system that has bee triggering the curiosity of scientists, for over 50 years. After hatching, baby sea turtles, appear to be programmed to know, they have to go into the ocean. The ones who make it to grown ups, they swim thousands of miles in the ocean before returning to the exact beach and location where they first start from.
Study results, implied that sea turtles are able to imprint the exact magnetic field of the beach they were born on and this information helps them to return, said researcher J. Brothers of the University of North Carolina.

One thing that previous studies has proved, was that sea turtles take use of Earths magnetic field to know they way out of the ocean. But their knowledge of returning to their natal beach, which before them was chosen by their mother, remaines unknown.

Some scientists actually said that sea turtles and other animals like salmon, imprint on magnetic fields from the early stages of their lives, but this opinion has been quite impossible to test in the open waters.

New studies has taken a different approach of the matter, and said that if indeed turtles use the magnetic field to return to their birth place, this means the natural changes of the planet’s magnetic field could affect the where sea turtles nest, said J. Brothers.

They investigated a data base consisting out of 19 years of studying turtle nesting along Florida’s eats coast. There was a slight correlation between the small changes of Earth’s magnetic field and how turtles distributed their space.

When the magnetic field shifted, the magnetic prints of surrounding location, along the beach moved closer. This process lead the turtles to get more compact and moved to a shorter piece of coastline. In the areas were the magnetic prints were more apart, the turtles spread around and laid eggs in nests that were located at greater distances from one another.

How sea turtles are able to detect the frequency of the magnetic field is still unknown. It could be that, their brain’s small magnetic particles are programmed to correlate with Earth’s which provides them the basic answers, still this remains a simple assumption.
Image Source: Hawaii Aloha Travel

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