Access Any Website Or Forum Without Registering

Site of the day: http://www.visualshare.com/

Visit any forum or website to find something useful and they will ask you to register. Every time a forum asks me to register, I simply close the site. You would probably do the same. But this time, lets face it.

Before I begin, you should know how things work. All websites and forums will block unregistered users, but they won’t block Google Bot. What we will do is to switch our User Agent to that of Google Bot and freely browse any website or forum without registering.

First grab the add-on for Firefox called ‘user agent’ here and install it. Now go to Tools > User Agent Switcher > Options and then again to Options.

Select User Agent from the left sidebar and click Add. Now in the description field type:

crawl-66-249-66-1.googlebot.com

and in user agent field type:

Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)

Read more...

Omega Fatty Acid Balance Can Alter Immunity And Gene Expression

Site of the day: http://www.visualshare.com/

For the past century, changes in the Western diet have altered the consumption of omega-6 fatty acids (w6, found in meat and vegetable oils) compared with omega-3 fatty acids (w3, found in flax and fish oil). Many studies seem to indicate this shift has brought about an increased risk of inflammation (associated with autoimmunity and allergy), and now using a controlled diet study with human volunteers, researchers may have teased out a biological basis for these reported changes.
Anthropological evidence suggests that human ancestors maintained a 2:1 w6/w3 ratio for much of history, but in Western countries today the ratio has spiked to as high as 10:1. Since these omega fatty acids can be converted into inflammatory molecules, this dietary change is believed to also disrupt the proper balance of pro- and anti- inflammatory agents, resulting in increased systemic inflammation and a higher incidence of problems including asthma, allergies, diabetes, and arthritis.
Read More...

Caltech Scientists Reveal How Neuronal Activity Is Timed In Brain's Memory-making Circuits

Site of the day: http://www.visualshare.com/

Study shows theta oscillations move across the hippocampus as traveling waves

PASADENA, Calif.—Theta oscillations are a type of prominent brain rhythm that orchestrates neuronal activity in the hippocampus, a brain area critical for the formation of new memories. For several decades these oscillations were believed to be "in sync" across the hippocampus, timing the firing of neurons like a sort of central pacemaker. A new study conducted by researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) argues that this long-held assumption needs to be revised. In a paper published in this week's issue of the journal Nature, the researchers showed that instead of being in sync, theta oscillations actually sweep along the length of the hippocampus as traveling waves.

"It was assumed that activity in the hippocampus is synchronized throughout," says Evgueniy Lubenov, a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Biological Circuit Design at Caltech. "But when we looked simultaneously at many different anatomical locations across the hippocampus, we found instead a systematic delay in neuronal activity from site to site. Instead of the whole structure oscillating at once, we see traveling waves that propagate across the hippocampus in a consistent direction, along its long axis."

"In other words, the hippocampus has a series of local time zones, just like we have on Earth," adds Athanassios Siapas, associate professor of computation and neural systems and Bren Scholar at Caltech.

The hippocampus has long been known to be critical for the formation and maintenance of episodic memories—i.e., memories of experiences. In the rat, hippocampal neurons also function as "place cells," only firing when the animal is in a particular spot in its environment. Lubenov and Siapas began to analyze the theta oscillations generated when rats move around and explore their environment. They watched how—and when—the rat's neurons fired relative to the rat's position and to the phase of the theta oscillations. They did these studies using multiple tetrodes—electrodes with four recording sites—that allowed them to simultaneously isolate the spiking of many individual neurons.

"Each of these neurons fires only in a restricted region of space," Lubenov says. "Furthermore, the spikes don't just happen any time—they pay attention to the phase of the ongoing theta oscillation. If you have access to the phase at which the neuron fired, you have additional information about where the rat was in space."

When the data about neuronal firing, oscillation phase, and rat location were combined, the researchers were able to show that neuronal activity indeed sweeps across the hippocampus in a wave, with its peak appearing in one region, then another, then another, rather than hitting the entire hippocampus in one synchronized pulse.

"This changes our notion of how spatial information is represented in the rat brain," notes Lubenov. "It was believed that the firing of hippocampal neurons encodes the physical location of the rat in its environment—in other words, a point of physical space. Our findings suggest that what is encoded is actually a portion of the rat's trajectory—that is, a segment of physical space."

"Such segments may be the elementary unit of hippocampal computation," adds Siapas. "Assume the path a rat takes in an environment is represented and stored as a sequence of point locations. If the rat visits the same location more than once, the representation becomes ambiguous. Representing the rat trajectory as a sequence of segments oriented in space resolves such ambiguities."

This finding may also have significant implications for understanding how information is transmitted from the hippocampus to other areas of the brain. "Different portions of the hippocampus are connected to different areas in other parts of the brain. The fact that hippocampal activity forms a traveling wave means that these target areas receive inputs from the hippocampus in a specific sequence rather than all at once," explains Siapas.

In addition, Siapas notes, it's unlikely that this behavior is found only in rat brains; after all, theta oscillations are ubiquitous in mammalian brains. "I would expect the traveling-wave nature of theta oscillations to be a general finding, applicable to humans as well," he says.

And while it is not known whether human hippocampal cells function as place cells, as they do in rats, "it may turn out to be the case that the human hippocampus plays a role in providing spatial cues that are important to episodic memory," Lubenov speculates. "We don't know yet."

What we do know is that, by showing that theta oscillations travel across the hippocampus, the Caltech team will likely change the way neuroscientists think about how the hippocampus works.
###

The work described in the Nature paper, "Hippocampal theta oscillations are travelling waves," was supported by the Caltech Information Science and Technology Center for Biological Circuit Design, a 21st Century McDonnell Foundation Award, the Bren Foundation, and the McKnight Foundation.

The paper's abstract can be accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature08010.

Visit the Caltech Media Relations website at http://pr.caltech.edu/media.

(From http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-05/ciot-csr052909.php)

Charity

Site of the day: http://blog.biowww.net/

I think the only real charity now is investment into scientific research, especially in Space Program. Because it is the only real way to make life of future generations easier. Other ways to make a life bit easier can be funding research on automatization and molecular biology.
Space Program can, no doubts, open for humanity new resources in geology and energetics, so does molecular biology. Automatization can optimize our everyday processes, which now produce significant losses of energy and resources. Not to mention all that this sciences do to humanity today.
Oh wait, I just forgot about education. Funding education is also good charity. For most of our problems in the world today, are the result of total ignorance.

Ultrasound Regrows Damaged Teeth

Site of the day: http://www.openmind.org/

University of Alberta scientists have developed a wearable microminiature ultrasound generator that causes damaged teeth to generate more tooth material.

Hockey players, rejoice! A team of University of Alberta researchers has created technology to regrow teeth--the first time scientists have been able to reform human dental tissue.

Using low-intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS), Dr. Tarak El-Bialy from the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry and Dr. Jie Chen and Dr. Ying Tsui from the Faculty of Engineering have created a miniaturized system-on-a-chip that offers a non-invasive and novel way to stimulate jaw growth and dental tissue healing.

"It's very exciting because we have shown the results and actually have something you can touch and feel that will impact the health of people in Canada and throughout the world," said Chen, who works out of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the National Institute for Nanotechnology.

The wireless design of the ultrasound transducer means the miniscule device will be able to fit comfortably inside a patient's mouth while packed in biocompatible materials. The unit will be easily mounted on an orthodontic or "braces" bracket or even a plastic removable crown. The team also designed an energy sensor that will ensure the LIPUS power is reaching the target area of the teeth roots within the bone. TEC Edmonton, the U of A's exclusive tech transfer service provider, filed the first patent recently in the U.S. Currently, the research team is finishing the system-on-a-chip and hopes to complete the miniaturized device by next year.
"If the root is broken, it can now be fixed," said El-Bialy. "And because we can regrow the teeth root, a patient could have his own tooth rather than foreign objects in his mouth."

The device is aimed at those experiencing dental root resorption, a common effect of mechanical or chemical injury to dental tissue caused by diseases and endocrine disturbances. Mechanical injury from wearing orthodontic braces causes progressive root resorption, limiting the duration that braces can be worn. This new device will work to counteract the destructive resorptive process while allowing for the continued wearing of corrective braces. With approximately five million people in North America presently wearing orthodontic braces, the market size for the device would be 1.4 million users.

This would allow more rapid realignment of teeth for those undergoing orthodontic therapy.
El-Bialy had previously demonstrated this effect using a larger ultrasound generator. He teamed up with other faculty and developed a wearable device so that the benefit could be had more easily. His previous research showed that the ultrasound also helped cause damaged bones to repair.

El-Bialy has shown in earlier research that ultrasound waves, the high frequency sound waves normally used for diagnostic imaging, help bones heal and tooth material grow.
"I was using ultrasound to stimulate bone formation after lower-jaw lengthening in rabbits," El-Bialy said in an interview Tuesday.

To his surprise, not only did he help heal the rabbits' jaws after the surgery, but their teeth started to grow as well.
He foresees the day when people with broken bones will wear ultrasound emittters wrapped into the bandages.

This approach by itself probably can't solve the problem of growing replacements for entirely missing teeth. However, ultrasound might help stimulate tooth building cells once scientists develop techniques for creating suitable cells. Still, additional problems must be solved to get tooth building cells to produce the particular tooth shape desired.

By Randall Parker
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/003556.html

New genetic discovery may help people to regrow teeth

Site of the day: http://www.cycfoundation.org/

Geneticists at the University of Rochester said Thursday their discovery could spur work to help adults one day grow new teeth when theirs wear out.

The researchers said people and most other mammals have a gene that prevents additional tooth formation.

When the scientists bred mice that lacked that gene, the rodents developed extra teeth next to their first molars - backups like sharks and other nonmammals grow.

If wondering about shark teeth seems rather wonky, consider: Tooth loss from gum disease is a major problem, and dentures or dental implants are far from perfect treatments.

If scientists knew what triggers a new tooth to grow, it's possible they could switch that early-in-life process on again during adulthood to regenerate teeth.

"It's exciting. We've got a clue what to do," said Dr. Songtao Shi of the University of Southern California School of Dentistry, who said the Rochester discovery will help his research into how to grow a new tooth from scratch.

Also intriguing: All mice born without this gene, called Osr2, had cleft palates severe enough to kill. A better understanding of this gene might play a role in efforts to prevent that birth defect.

From Daily News:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2009/02/26/2009-02-26_new_genetic_discovery_may_help_people_to.html

I also decided to put it here, because this is important news:
http://nsnewtech.blogspot.com/2009/04/new-genetic-discovery-may-help-people.html

How To Plan Costs And Save Your Money In Time Of Crisis

Site of the day: http://neomedicina.blogspot.com/

Without doubt, one of the most reliable ways to start a fight at home is accidentally saying the word ‘budget‘ (or ‘tracking income and expenses‘). At times, an innocent question like ‘Honey, how much money have we got left till the next paycheck’ could ruin your deserved family evening.
Discussions like this one take place when financial problems already exist and they’re starting becoming visible - either because the checkbook for some reason can’t be balanced, or credit card repayments doubled all of a sudden, or a UPS delivery person became your daily visitor. Anyway, families lose control over their spending and budget and try to talk their way out of “inquisitive” (but very reasonable) questions from their members. What causes such unpleasant discussions and how can families stay out of trouble?
I’ve listed several most frequently cited excuses that are used to confuse a partner and change the subject instead of stepping out of a comfort zone, admitting the financial mess and trying to find ways out.
I’m offended because you don’t believe me. (Or, Do I have to inform you about my every expense?) This is the most popular manipulative excuse (or accusation) used by both family members. The only reasonable (and as emotionless as possible) answer is: “Over the last couple weeks you’ve purchased a lot of stuff we could easily live without, and so we may need to carry some balance on a credit card this month” or “Every week you buy clothes we haven’t budgeted, so we have to gid into savings to fund your purchases”. Facts, not emotions, work best on such manipulative techniques.
Tracking expenses is so embarassing. How could we reach the rock bottom when we have to know where every penny is spent? This question is usually asked in a whining voice in response to a suggestion to define a budget and stick to it. One of the right answers is: “There are ways to avoiding counting every penny and still not spending more than a budgeted amount. Knowing how much money we’ve spent and deliberately resisting the temptation to buy stuff is way less embarassing than getting into debt without any plan to repay it”.
We earn more than we spend. Right? Why bother counting? (Also known as: We’ve never had financial problems before, so we won’t have them in the future.) However, this is likely to be a pleasant but unsustainable illusion when financial troubles are right around the corner. Again, no emotions: “We’re only relying on our home equity and credit card limits to deal with the unexpected. Last month servicing our car cost $400 more than we expected. We always hope that we’ll always have money when we need it but we don’t base this hope on anything. Starting an emergency fund will bring us some peace of mind. And let’s make a simple budget, which will tell us how much money we can safely spend without compromising our short to mid-term goals”.
Also, you need to agree on the three major rules of avoiding conflicts regarding money:
1. Both of you need to define the maximum amount you can spend per week (this amount may vary depending on your utility bills, loan repayments and other obligations). The most important element of this exercise is joint effort. The budget needs to be agreed on by both parties.
2. Both of you need to define the maximum amount each of you can spend without consulting a partner. Buying a CD for $15 might be OK but buying iRobot Roomba without talking to your partner is NOT OK.
3. Avoid lying about money. You might’ve gone a long way towards building trust, but such a simple thing like saying that your new watch costs $100 instead of $500 you’ve actually paid is capable of bringing you back square one. However, show compassion when your partner admits impulse buying instances - but be vary of the trend.

http://weeklyenvelope.com/