Published in : NewsWritten by Ana Galarraga on 2010-05-19 08:18
It’s no use looking for the best trainers. The fact is, as the magazine Nature pointed out, you run better barefoot than with the best trainers.
To reach this conclusion, researchers studied athletes from the United States and Kenya running in races. They said that when footwear is worn, each stride causes an impact on the ankle, and the force of that impact can be as high as three times the runner’s body weight! Even when the trainers have shock absorbers.
But when people run barefoot, on the other hand, the ball of the foot hits the ground first. Thanks to this, the impact suffered by the ankles is reduced to 60% of the body weight. But to do this the feet have to be strengthened and hardened.
Published in : NewsWritten by Ana Galarraga on 2010-05-12 00:00
At Barcelona’s Clinic hospital they have discovered what gives those people who succeed in controlling AIDS that special ability. In fact, a small percentage of those infected do not develop the disease, despite being infected with HIV. Researchers have now discovered that this capacity comes from alpha-defensins.
Alpha-defensins are produced in the body naturally, and their function is to regulate the immune system. So at the Clinic hospital they were able to prove that without taking any medication the people with AIDS under control had ten times more alpha-defensins that all the rest. It isn’t the only factor that provides protection against AIDS, but researchers believe the discovery could be useful in therapy or in producing vaccines.
Published in : NewsWritten by Ana Galarraga on 2010-04-21 15:13
"Can they hear what we tell them? Can they feel our caresses?" Relatives of anyone in a coma think about these questions again and again. Now, the neuroscientist Dr. Adrian Owen and his team at Cambridge have shown that it is possible to know whether a person is conscious or not thanks to a brain scanner. What is more, they have seen that some are capable of communicating.
The research began in 2006. Owen asked a 26-year-old woman who was in a coma following a road accident to imagine two situations: in one she had to imagine that she was playing tennis, and in the other that she was at home. The images obtained by the scanner were completely different in the two situations. That way they were able to show that she was conscious.
More recently, a patient who had been in a coma for five years was asked to imagine that he was playing tennis in order to say "yes", and to imagine that he was at home in order to say "no". He was then asked simple questions like: "Is your father’s name Alexander?" And the patient answered five out of six questions correctly; he did not answer the sixth one.
Published in : NewsWritten by Ana Galarraga on 2010-04-21 14:54
The third generation USB connection has been presented at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas. The previous version, the USB 2.0, has dominated the world’s computers for the last eight years, but experts expect the new version to replace it this year.
The biggest difference between the two versions is data transmission speed. The USB 2.0 version can transmit at a rate of 480 megabits per second, whereas the USB 3.0 version can do 4.8 gigabits; in other words, it’s ten times faster. For example, 40 films stored in DiVX format take up 25 GB of memory. Well, adverts claim that the new USB will transmit that in 70 seconds, while today’s USBs take about 14 minutes to do this, and the first version, 9 and a half hours.
To do this so fast, the USB 3.0 version uses a new data exchange protocol and optical fibre. However, it will only work in computers adapted to the 3.0 version; so most of us won’t be able to use it yet.
Published in : NewsWritten by Ana Galarraga on 2010-04-15 12:22
A slime mould is helping engineers design networks. It is called Physarum policephalum and is a specialist at using nutrition sources effectively.
It occurred to a group of Japanese engineers to make use of the capacity of the mould. So they put oat flakes around the mould representing the location of the districts around Tokyo! Using the way the mould grows from the centre to the “districts”, they have designed the railway network around Tokyo. This is not only strange, it’s also cheap because the moulds won’t be charging for their design!
At Barcelona’s Clinic hospital they have discovered what gives those people who succeed in controlling AIDS that special ability. In fact, a small percentage of those infected do not develop the disease, despite being infected with HIV. Researchers have now discovered that this capacity comes from alpha-defensins.
"Can they hear what we tell them? Can they feel our caresses?" Relatives of anyone in a coma think about these questions again and again. Now, the neuroscientist Dr. Adrian Owen and his team at Cambridge have shown that it is possible to know whether a person is conscious or not thanks to a brain scanner. What is more, they have seen that some are capable of communicating.
The third generation USB connection has been presented at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas. The previous version, the USB 2.0, has dominated the world’s computers for the last eight years, but experts expect the new version to replace it this year.
A slime mould is helping engineers design networks. It is called Physarum policephalum and is a specialist at using nutrition sources effectively.