Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Comment Adult mammalian neurogenesis observed in the 40s? (Score 1) 59

by seminumerical (#43936161) Attached to: Atomic Bombs Help Solve Brain Mystery
My very elderly Canadian neighbour, at one time associated with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and retired from teaching at an American medical school more than 15 years ago, told me that a scientist at her university came up with photo micrographic evidence of of adult mammalian neurogenesis in the late 1940s. This caused some eye rolling and denial of tenure for heresy, and the fellow eventually disappeared. It had to wait 'til the sixties to be rediscovered by Altman.
The Military

Scientists Turn T-Shirts Into Body Armor 213

Posted by timothy from the will-stick-with-the-regular-kind-for-now dept.
separsons writes "Scientists at the University of South Carolina recently transformed ordinary T-shirts into bulletproof armor. By splicing cotton with boron, the third hardest material on the planet, scientists created a shirt that was super elastic but also strong enough to deflect bullets. Xiaodong Li, lead researcher on the project, says the same tech may eventually be used to create lightweight, fuel-efficient cars and aircrafts."
Government

Submission + - Military enlists open source community (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
jmwci1
jmwci1 writes: "The U.S. Defense Department is enlisting an open source approach to software development — an about-face for such a historically top-down organization.

In recent weeks, the military has launched a collaborative platform called Forge.mil for its developers to share software, systems components and network services. The agency also signed an agreement with the Open Source Software Institute to allow 50 internally developed workforce management applications to be licensed to other government agencies, universities and companies."

Comment Re:How you get hooked (Score 1) 700

by seminumerical (#27499509) Attached to: Beware the Perils of Caffeine Withdrawal

The 4 one minute sprints twice a week is not, that I know, of a recommended form of exercise. The researchers were interested in the minimum amount of exercise out of scientific curiosity.

As you can imagine they experimented with other schedules less than and greater than 4 min x 2 time per week. Blood sugar was under excellent control with the minimum stated.

Strength, flexibility, co-ordination, fat loss, etc. are other considerations: but they did demonstrate their hypothesis that you need to deplete energy from your muscles to make room to sop up glucose in the blood.

p.s., you can imagine the horror we will soon face on late night TV as an infomercial selling a cheap exercise bike promises you CONTROL DIABETES AND LOSE WEIGHT WITH 8 MINUTES EXERCISE A WEEK. NO MONEY DOWN, PAY IN 8 EASY INSTALLMENTS, IF YOU ORDER NOW YOU GET A FREE ABERCISER. ORDER NOW OPERATORS ARE STANDING BY ...
Earth

Submission + - Powerful Sonar Causes Deafness in Dolphins 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Mass strandings could be caused because dolphins are rendered temporarily deaf by military sonar, experiments have shown. Tests on a captive dolphin have demonstrated that hearing can be lost for up to 40 minutes on exposure to sonar and may explain several strandings of dolphins and whales in the past decade. Most strandings are still thought to be natural events, but the tests strengthen fears that exercises by naval vessels equipped with sonar are responsible for at least some of them. For example, in the Bahamas in March 2000, 16 Cuvier's beaked whales and Blainville's beaked whales and a spotted dolphin beached during a US navy exercise in which sonar was used intensively for 16 hours (pdf). "The big question is what causes them to strand," says Dr. Aran Mooney, of the University of Hawaii. "What we are looking at are animals whose primary sense is hearing, like ours is seeing. Their ears are the most sensitive organ they have." In the experiment scientists fitted a harmless suction cup to the dolphin's head, with a sensor attached that monitored the animal's brainwaves and when the pings reached 203 decibels and were repeated, the neurological data showed the mammal had become deaf, for its brain no longer responded to sound. "We definitely showed that there are physiological and some behavioral effects [from repeated, loud sonar], but to extrapolate that into the wild, we don't really know," said Mooney."
Idle

Submission + - Chimpanzees exchange meat for sex (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
the_therapist
the_therapist writes: "A team from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, studied chimps in the Tai Forest reserve in Ivory Coast and discovered that chimpanzees enter into "deals" whereby they exchange meat for sex.

Among the findings are that "male chimps that are willing to share the proceeds of their hunting expeditions mate twice as often as their more selfish counterparts". They also found this to be "a long-term exchange, so males continue to share their catch with females when they are not fertile, copulating with them when they are"."

Comment Re:How you get hooked (Score 1) 700

by seminumerical (#27496833) Attached to: Beware the Perils of Caffeine Withdrawal

Yes. If you are addicted to caffeine, although a large amount of caffeine will keep you awake, a small amount can promote sleep.

Despite my claim to never drink tea or coffee after 4 p.m. I occasionally take a 1/4 cup of tea before bed if I need to get to sleep quickly because I'll be rising early.

This is in proportion to how much tea/coffee I drink during the day: 2 or rarely 3 cups. I've known 6 cup a day coffee drinkers to drink an entire cup of coffee before bed. (I've also known them to have anxiety, shaky hands, and logorrhea)

Comment Re:How you get hooked (Score 5, Interesting) 700

by seminumerical (#27491663) Attached to: Beware the Perils of Caffeine Withdrawal
Yes I have 2 citations. This is an informal setting so I didn't go looking for them just now. One is the Berkeley Wellness Letter (a monthly publication associated with the Berkeley School of Public Health). There have been numerous references to keeping blood sugar from spiking and on the types of sugar that are worse for you, e.g., fructose. The other was from a Science podcast (or was it Nature?) on research on the "minimum" amount of exercise needed for health. In it they remarked that the longer sugar remains in your bloodstream the more cumulative damage it does to your arteries.

The minimum amount of exercise was, interestingly enough, 4 one minute sprints on an exercise bicycle, all out, as hard as you can go with no holding back. You can take a break after each sprint for a short while to catch your breath. Do this twice a week.

The test subject and controls were from time to time given a glass of glucose water, and the experimenters measured how long it took to clear the sugar from the blood.

The theory was this. The muscles have a ready reserve of energy and resist taking more from the blood unless you deplete some of it. Experiments indicate that the benefits of this "minimum" exercise program last for weeks after ceasing it.

This is not my field and I could not tell you why sugar in the blood is bad for you, or why certain sugars are worse. However, I understand that the Berkley Wellness Letter and Science/Nature are evidence based publications. Anyone not credulous can spend about an afternoon looking these things up, though a library is probably better than the internet because many relevant publications are not free.

Comment Re:How you get hooked (Score 3, Interesting) 700

by seminumerical (#27490809) Attached to: Beware the Perils of Caffeine Withdrawal
Four hours is probably not enough lead time before sleep. I was taught years ago to never take caffeine after the traditional English "tea time." Tea time is around 4 or 4:30. For the last decade or more I've taken tea or coffee as I pleased up until 4 and then cut it out. Nobody in their right mind should ever drink soda/cola/pop. Forget the caffeine, it is the high fructose corn syrup, or the artificial sweeteners that cause problems. Diabetes in a bottle.
The Internet

Submission + - Happy 40th Birthday Internet R.F.C.s

Submitted by WayHomer
WayHomer writes: Stephen Crocker in the New York Times writes, "TODAY is an important date in the history of the Internet: the 40th anniversary of what is known as the Request for Comments (RFC)." "RFC1 — Host Software" was published 40 years ago today, establishing a framework for documenting how networking technolgies and the Internet itself work. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Slashdot Top Deals

Friction is a drag.

Close