Study Proposes, People Learn While They Sleep

People may be learning while they're sleeping -- an unconscious form of memory that is still not well understood, according to a study by Michigan State University researchers.

"We speculate that we may be investigating a separate form of memory, distinct from traditional memory systems," said Kimberly Fenn, assistant professor of psychology and lead researcher on the project. "There is substantial evidence that during sleep, your brain is processing information without your awareness and this ability may contribute to memory in a waking state."

In the study of more than 250 people, Fenn and Zach Hambrick, associate professor of psychology, suggest people derive vastly different effects from this "sleep memory" ability, with some memories improving dramatically and others not at all. This ability is a new, previously undefined form of memory.

"This is the first step to investigate whether or not this potential new memory construct is related to outcomes such as classroom learning," Fenn said.

Why Women Need Fitness Training?

Fitness is definitely needed for both men and women to maintain a healthy lifestyle. But when it comes to losing weight, both these genders have different requirements. Both men and women should not follow the same workout strategy because their body type is different.

Women can also go for strenuous types of workouts although their training requirement is different. Hence its important for women to undergo fitness training for weight loss purposes and also to lead a healthy lifestyle and body. Fitness training shapes your body and provides an excellent physique which makes you look more attractive than others and improves your confidence.

Apart from including cardiovascular exercises, their training should also include other types of exercises for muscles and abs. Fitness training should also be followed regularly by women in order to achieve their desired weight and to be fit. You will definitely experience tiredness on your muscle during the first time of your training and it means that your workout is effective. This would be the beginning of a new life for you and so start your fitness training and find the changes on your body.

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Cancer Smart Bomb Discovered from Crocus Flower

Scientists from the UK have figured out a way to turn chemicals found in the crocus flower which blooms throughout the UK into a ‘smart bomb’ of sorts when it comes to a new cancer medication. This new treatment may potentially create a drug that is capable of targeting cancerous tumors, such as associated with breast, colon, lung and prostate, without causing any side effects.

The researchers, led by Professor Laurence Patterson, have found a way around the toxic nature of the chemical when it comes to healthy tissue in the body and determined a way to focus the toxicity towards the cancerous tumor. By attaching a chemical 'tail' to the colchicine molecule, the researchers have been able to deactivate the toxic properties until it reaches the targeted cancer. Cancer tumors contain an enzyme called MMP and this enzyme effectively removes the ‘tail’ and activates the colchicine. Once activated, the colchicine goes into action breaking up the blood vessels that feed the tumor and essential starve it. Because the drug is activated in the tumor, it does not affect outside tissue and no side effects have been noted.

In mice testing, all mice have responded to the treatment and in as many as half of the studies, the mice appeared cured of the cancer. The drug is effective toward cancers that produce tumors and the researchers have tested breast, colon, lung, prostate and sarcoma tumors at this point.

The researchers hope that if the clinical trials prove successful, a new drug could be available within the next six to seven years.

Orange Corn holds Guarantee for Reducing Blindness and Child Death

Decreasing or increasing the function of a newly discovered gene in corn may increase vitamin A content and have significant implications for reducing childhood blindness and mortality rates, according to a Purdue University-led study.

Torbert Rocheford, the Patterson Endowed Chair of Translational Genomics and professor of agronomy at Purdue, led the study that made findings in yellow and particularly orange corn, a type he said likely originated in the Caribbean and is popular in some Asian and South American countries as well as in northern Italy.

The orange color comes from relatively higher levels of carotenoids, one of which is beta-carotene. Humans convert beta-carotene, which also is abundant in carrots, into vitamin A during digestion.

Between 250,000 and 500,000 children -- mostly in Africa and Southeast Asia -- go blind each year because of vitamin A deficiency, according to the World Health Organization. Half of those children will die within a year of going blind. Rocheford said increasing beta-carotene levels in cereal grains, such as corn, is an economical approach to addressing these deficiencies in developing countries.

Through a process known as hydroxylation, beta-carotene is converted into other carotenoids that can cut the amount of pro-vitamin A that is created through digestion in half, or eliminate it altogether.

Choose the Best Residential Weight Loss Programs

Residential weight loss programs allow you to spotlight on yourself and losing weight, along with educating the healthy habits that will aid you keep the weight loss. Unfortunately, the price of a residential weight loss program makes it complex for many people to listen. However, if you have the money, this can be a big way to jump-start your diet. Find the fit camp that's right for you.



Ask about the food supplied. Diverse weight loss programs offer different types of diets. For example, you may see that few camps will have you following a firm vegan diet and lets you to eat as much as you want, few another camp offers a limited range of foods, but controls how much you eat. Some short-period weight loss centers supply only liquid diet.



Focus at the activity offerings. Learning exercise is going to be another big division of a weight loss program. If you like to spend more time there, you need to search one or more activities you like.



Find an effective weight loss camp with people like you. Evaluate the fee per day. To exactly compare the cost, you should calculate it on a single basis, because the duration of the program varies.

Effective Fat Burning Workouts for all Ages

Weight Gain nightmare always starts from belly, while weight loss success also starts there. There is a scientific saying that "fat people gain belly fat first". It's always easier to attack an enemy's weak point and the same thing applies here too. Your abdomen should be your first target to lose weight.



There are three categories of fat in our body:



1. Blood fat

2. Subcutaneous fat

3. Omentum fat



Omentum fat is the reason for the increasing waistline because it's closer to the stomach and other organs. Since its closer, the excess fat is always supplied to Omentum fat. Apart from changing our body shape, it also affects our stomach, lungs, heart and other organs. That is the reason that most of the health professionals advice us to manage our middle section. Omentum fat starts reducing once we start losing weight.



Aerobic exercise and sit-ups would be the best combination to get rid of Omentum fat. Sit-ups helps to reduce your abdominal muscles and produce a sexy stomach. Some might think that in order to reduce weight, we need to do fat burning workouts. So the perfect approach would be a combination of sit-ups + aerobic exercise. Sit-ups strengthens your abdominal muscles, increases flexibility and improve your posture. Aerobic exercise is one of the best fat burning

workouts that burns lots of calories and reduces fat. Some other fat burning workouts are:



Table Tennis: The swing motion of racket is driven by the waist and abdominal muscles, which burns 192 calories every 30 minutes.



Yoga: Yoga posture shapes your back and abdominal muscles, burns 200 calories every 30 minutes.



Taekwondo: Taekwondo kicks helps you shed waist and abdominal fat, burns 312 calories every 30 minutes.



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New Device to Cut down Dialysis Risk

Johns Hopkins University graduate students have invented a device to reduce the risk of infection, clotting and narrowing of the blood vessels in patients who need blood-cleansing dialysis because of kidney failure.



The device, designed to be implanted under the skin in a patient's leg, would give a technician easy access to the patient's bloodstream and could be easily opened and closed at the beginning and end of a dialysis procedure.



The students learned about the need for such a device last year while accompanying physicians on hospital rounds as part of their academic program. They watched as one doctor performed a procedure to open a narrowed blood vessel at a kidney patient's dialysis access site. They learned that this narrowing was a common complication facing kidney patients.



To address these problems, the students developed an access port that can be implanted in the leg beneath the skin, reducing the risk of infection. The Hemova Port's two valves can be opened by a dialysis technician with a syringe from outside the skin. The technician can similarly close the valves when the procedure is over, an approach that helps avoid infection and clotting. The device also includes a simple cleaning system, serving as yet another way to deter infections.



Currently, most dialysis access sites are in the arm or the heart. The Hemova device instead is sutured to the leg's femoral vein, avoiding the unnaturally high blood flows that cause vessel narrowing when dialysis machines are connected to veins and arteries in the arm.

Cooking with Oil is Healthiest or Not

Almost everyone uses oil in some sort of meal. Although there are a variety of types to choose from, depending on the food and flavor of your dish, most oils can come with an additional fatty side and are not necessarily healthy for your body. Also, due to each oil having a different smoking temperature, to reap the benefits some oils are best used in salads. Below are a list of popular oils and the ones you should stay away from.



Canola oil: This oil is made from the seeds of genetically modified rapeseed. Initially designed for routine use of herbicides during production, Canola generally won’t be labeled organic. The high level of monounsaturated fats found in its base helps to reduce “unhealthy” LDL cholesterol and instead increase “healthy” HDL cholesterol.



Olive oil: By mechanically pressing olives this oil is produced in large quantities. It offers great protection against heart disease by raising HDL cholesterol. Olive oil should not be used for cooking because it has a low smoking temperature, which means it can alter the flavor of the food.



Peanut oil: Unfortunately many brands are chemically processed, but if you are interested, expeller-pressed brands can be found at specialty stores and online. The high smoke point makes it great for frying and the nutty taste leaves a delicate flavor in many dishes. Peanut oil is also high in monounsaturated fats like olive oil.



Sesame oil: This oil is high in polyunsaturated fats and Vitamin E. Although it is used primarily for cooking it can also be used for skin and hair care. Sesame oil also contains two powerful antioxidants, sesamol and sesamin.



Ghee: This Indian staple is used in many dishes and makes a great alternative to other oils. The clarified butter is a wonderful source of beta-carotene and vitamins A, D, E, and K.



Coconut oil: people tend to rave over the benefits of Coconut oil and it’s for good reason. By stimulating the thyroid gland, the oil helps to lower cholesterol, making it essential for preventing disease and slowing the way our body’s age. Coconut oil has 40% of lauric acid, human body takes this acid and fights bacterial and viral infections in infants and also can help strengthen the immune system in adults.

Researchers Discover New Drug to Treat Diabetes-Related Vision Loss

A team of engineers and scientists at the University of British Columbia has developed a device that can be implanted behind the eye for controlled and on-demand release of drugs to treat retinal damage caused by diabetes.

Diabetic retinopathy is the leading cause of vision loss among patients with diabetes. The disease is caused by the unwanted growth of capillary cells in the retina, which in its advanced stages can result in blindness.

The lead authors are recent PhD mechanical engineering graduate Fatemeh Nazly Pirmoradi, and Mechanical Engineering Assoc. Prof. Mu Chiao, who studies nanoscience and microelectromechanical systems for biological applications. The co-authors are Prof. Helen Burt and research scientist John Jackson at the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences researched,

A current treatment for diabetic retinopathy is laser therapy, which has side effects, among them laser burns or the loss of peripheral or night vision. Anti-cancer drugs may also used to treat the disease. However, these compounds clear quickly from the bloodstream so high dosages are required, thus exposing other tissues to toxicity.

Key to UBC's innovation is the ability to trigger the drug delivery system through an external magnetic field. The team accomplished this by sealing the reservoir of the implantable device -- which is no larger than the head of a pin -- with an elastic magnetic polydimethylsiloxane (silicone) membrane. A magnetic field causes the membrane to deform and discharge a specific amount of the drug, much like squeezing water out of a flexible bottle.

Thyroid Hormone Controls the Eye‘s Visual Pigments

Thyroid hormone is crucially involved in controlling which visual pigment is produced in the cones. Previously, it was assumed that the colour sensitivity of the cones is fixed in the adult retina.

Children born with a thyroid hormone deficiency have serious defects of physiological and mental development, hence newborns are routinely checked for thyroid hormone deficiency, and hormone substitution therapy is given when indicated.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt/M., together with colleagues at the University of Frankfurt and universities in Vienna, have now been able to show that in mature cones of mice and rats the production of visual pigment is regulated by thyroid hormone. It is assumed that this mechanism exists in all mammals, including humans. If so, the adult-onset of thyroid hormone deficiency would affect colour vision.

Studies in mice have shown that thyroid hormone also plays an important role in the development of the eye and particularly the cone visual cells. In the retina of the eye, the cones are the visual cells responsible for colour vision. Most mammals have two spectral cone types containing either of two visual pigments (opsins), one sensitive to shortwave light (UV/blue opsin), and the other to middle-to-longwave light (green opsin). Cones express a thyroid hormone receptor. Its activation by the hormone suppresses the synthesis of UV/blue opsin and activates the production of green opsin.

6 Nutrients for Veg-Eaters

B12 Complex



A deficiency in B12 can also cause depression, mood issues, vision problems, low blood pressure, and dementia amongst a host of other issues. According to Vegetarian Savvy, besides animal products, many fortified vegan foods and supplements contain this crucial vitamin. Vegetarians can also get their fill from raw cow's milk or organic milk, organic cheese, and organic eggs.


Iron



The daily recommendation is 18 mg of iron a day. Iron intake requirements are 1.8 times higher for vegetarians because nonheme iron is not absorbed as well as heme iron. You can find it in pumpkin seeds, tofu, and sun dried tomatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, pine nuts, and sunflower seeds.


Iodine



Iodine is necessary for the production of a thyroid hormone. A deficiency in iodine can lead to the enlargement of the thyroid gland as well as mental retardation in unborn babies. Iodine can be found in a number of foods including eggs, milk, some breads, iodine salt, ice cream, nori, soy milk, soy sauce, and yogurt.


Omega 3 Fatty Acids



An imbalance in the body's fats with a shortage of essential fatty acids is linked to cancer, asthma, depression, accelerated aging, diabetes, and ADHD to name a few. An adult needs 1.4 to 4.6 grams of Omega 3 per day. Omega 3 can be found in hemp seeds, flax seeds, chia seeds, and algae (spirulina, blue-green algae, and chlorella).


Zinc



Zinc is crucial for growth and immune function. Men require 11 mg/day and women need 8 mg/day). Get zinc from whole grains, beans, yogurt, shiitake mushrooms, and sesame seeds.


Protein

Alzheimer's Prevention in your Pantry

Alzheimer's, the degenerative brain disorder that disrupts memory, thought and behavior, is devastating to both patients and loved ones. According to the Alzheimer's Association, one in eight Americans over the age of 65 suffers from the disease. Now Tel Aviv University has discovered that an everyday spice in your kitchen cupboard could hold the key to Alzheimer's prevention.

An extract found in cinnamon bark, called CEppt, contains properties that can inhibit the development of the disease, according to Prof. Michael Ovadia of the Department of Zoology at Tel Aviv University. After discovering that the cinnamon extract had antiviral properties, Prof. Ovadia empirically tested these properties in both laboratory and animal Alzheimer's models.

The researchers isolated CEppt by grinding cinnamon and extracting the substance into an aqueous buffer solution. They then introduced this solution into the drinking water of mice that had been genetically altered to develop an aggressive form of Alzheimer's disease.

After four months, the researchers discovered that development of the disease had slowed remarkably and the animals' activity levels and longevity were comparable to that of their healthy counterparts.

Vaccine Supports Immune Targeting of Brain Tumors

An experimental vaccine developed by researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center's Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute targets overactive antigens in highly aggressive brain tumors and improves length of survival in newly diagnosed patients, according to new data that was presented in a poster session at the 47th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

Patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma multiforme, the most common and aggressive type of tumor originating in the brain, typically live only 12 to 15 months after diagnosis even with standard treatments: surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.

ICT-107 is a product of the biotechnology company ImmunoCellular Therapeutics, Ltd. Keith L. Certain rights in the dendritic cell vaccine technology and corresponding intellectual property have been exclusively licensed by Cedars-Sinai to ImmunoCellular Therapeutics, including subsequently developed versions of the vaccine investigated in this clinical study.

Foods for Healthy and Glowing Skin

You cannot just imagine keeping your skin healthy and glowing by using expensive lotions, creams, moisturizers or sunscreens, but essentially by eating right. You can found out by making tiny alterations to your diet and adding these foods to keep your skin healthy & glowing.

Berries

Berries like strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and plum have antioxidant properties. These antioxidants prevent skin damage and when skin cells are protected from damage and disintegration, they look youthful and younger for longer.

Spinach & Carrots

Carrots & spinach are excellent sources of vitamin A, which is a required nutrient for healthy skin. You should eat these vegetables for a healthy body and skin. You can have them raw, in salads or cooked with omelets and other dishes.

Green Tea

This drink contains antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties. It has been proven to reduce the damage of sunburns and overexposure to ultraviolet light, which, in turn, reduces the risk of skin cancer.

Almonds

Essential fatty acids found in nuts and seeds help to keep the skin soft and supple. Almonds are amazingly healthy and full of Vitamin E which gives the skin that glory look. Vitamin E also helps in repairing skin tissues and maintaining skin moisture.

Water

Last, but certainly not the least, is water. Good hydration is our skin’s best friend. Water both hydrates the skin and moves toxins out and nutrients in. Also, if you are properly hydrated, you sweat more which, in turn, helps keep your skin clean and clear.

Babies Perform Sophisticated Analyses of Physical World

Over the past two decades, scientists have shown that babies only a few months old have a solid grasp on basic rules of the physical world. They understand that objects can't wink in and out of existence, and that objects can't "teleport" from one spot to another.

Now, an international team of researchers co-led by MIT's Josh Tenenbaum has found that infants can use that knowledge to form surprisingly sophisticated expectations of how novel situations will unfold.

Furthermore, the scientists developed a computational model of infant cognition that accurately predicts infants' surprise at events that violate their conception of the physical world.

Infant cognition by studying babies at ages 3-, 6- and 12-months (and other key stages through the first two years of life) to map out what they know about the physical and social world.

Elizabeth Spelke, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, demonstrated that infants' level of surprise can be measured by how long they look at something: The more unexpected the event, the longer they watch.