The Indian Tech Blog..

Chinese military hacked Pentagon Network

2007-09-04T03:41:00.000-07:00

Sources in Washington have indicated that the cyber attack last June which targeted the office of US Defence Secretary Robert Gates was conducted by the Chinese military.

According to a report in the London Financial Times, "senior US officials" and "persons familiar with the event" have briefed that there is a “very high level of confidence...trending towards total certainty” within the Pentagon that the People's Liberation Army (PLA) carried out the June attack. That was seen as a particularly significant event, apparently, as it involved disruption of networks as well as passive snooping.

The FT quoted a former official as saying that:

“The PLA has demonstrated the ability to conduct attacks that disable our system...and the ability in a conflict situation to re-enter and disrupt on a very large scale.”

The US military has long warned of a rising cyber-warfare capability in the PLA, releasing a report earlier this year that China "is expanding from the traditional land, air, and sea dimensions of the modern battlefield to include space and cyber-space".

The document said that the inscrutable commies are also developing an "information warfare" force capable of "computer network attack," to achieve "electromagnetic dominance".

America has been far from idle in rising to meet this challenge; indeed there has been something of a scramble among the US military to gets its cyber boots on. The US Air Force has been particularly active, forming up a Cyber Command that may, in the future, be manned up at least in part by career net-combat specialists.

Quite apart from cyberspace, confrontation with China is one of the few justifications for much of America's huge panoply of ultra-high-tech air, maritime and perhaps space weaponry. This is stuff that many in the Pentagon love and believe in passionately, but which is occasionally threatened by the basic counter-insurgency wars the US is currently fighting. Huge amounts of money are being spent on things including armoured trucks, which could have gone on satellite-busters or energy weapons or something.

So leaks out of the Pentagon that big up China as a threat always need to be taken with a pinch of salt. It's a certainty that the PLA probes US networks, just as the US does Chinese ones. It's very likely that China is prepping some naughty network tricks for use in the event of a serious scuffle with America - and again, this will not be a one-sided effort.

But China doesn't want to fight the US - who would pay for all the iPods? And America doesn't really want to fight China - where would they get all the damn iPods made?

If the PLA really did shut down Robert Gates's unclassified email, it was a schoolboy error to show their hands so early. All they have achieved - if it was them - is give their adversaries ammo to use in demanding more resources to fight them with. And it seems exceptionally sloppy to get traced back, when it would be simplicity itself for government hats* to operate out of third countries.

But nobody's saying the PLA are all that clever, so it may well have been them. If it was, though, they evidently aren't as fiendishly cunning as all that.

Cellphone No 1 culprit for Sleep disorders..

2007-09-04T03:37:00.000-07:00

A good night's sleep is becoming ever more elusive for the average American — and it's a problem that plagues us at all ages, from infancy to adulthood. Now three new papers in the Sept. 1 issue of the journal Sleep tackle the question of sleeplessness: two studies illuminate the reasons why teens and adults don't sleep enough. With teens, a major culprit is cellphone use; with adults, it's work. Meanwhile, a third study of young children reveals that sleep deprivation in early life may lead to future behavioral and cognitive problems.

The study in children was conducted at the Sleep Disorders Center at Sacre-Coeur Hospital in Montreal, where researchers analyzed the sleep patterns of close to 1,500 children aged 2.5 to 6 years — the first detailed study on the effects of sleep in developing children. The youngsters� mothers were asked to record the amount of time the children slept each night and fill out questionnaires about their child's hyperactivity and impulsivity, inattention and daytime sleepiness. Half of the kids slept 10 hours a night on average — the recommended amount for preschool-aged children — while 6% slumbered for less than 10 hours each night. Those short-sleeping children, says lead author Dr. Jacques Montplaisir, performed poorly on vocabulary and cognitive development tests at age 5, compared with the more rested group. In fact, the study found that getting one fewer hour of sleep a night during early development can triple a child's chance of scoring low on such tests, underlining sleep's long-lasting effects on proper language and cognitive development.

Not surprisingly, the short-sleepers were also more likely to score higher on tests of hyperactivity and impulsivity at age six, highlighting the importance of consistent and sufficient sleep in promoting concentration and attention skills. Montplaisir's group found more hyperactivity even among youngsters who started out as short-sleepers but had normalized their sleeping patterns by preschool age, to 10 hours a night. That suggests that early childhood — before about 3.5 years of age — is a critical period during which parents should establish proper sleeping patterns, says Montplaisir, since lack of sleep during that stage can lead to detrimental effects on behavior and development later in life.

These results are the only the latest in a growing body of evidence that links good sleep habits to better cognitive development in children. But they don't necessarily mean that light-sleeping children are doomed to wearing the dunce cap. Jodi Mindell, professor of psychology at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, and an expert with the National Sleep Foundation, notes that Montplaisir's study doesn't establish a firm cause and effect between sleep and test performance. She notes that other factors can affect both how long children sleep and how they score on tests; youngsters with ADHD, for example, typically sleep less than other children and tend to score poorly on neuropsychological tests. "It could be that there are other variables here that could be impacting on both sleep and test performance," she says.

Unfortunately, sleep remains elusive for many adolescents and adults as well, and two other studies in Sleep reveal that cell phones and our jobs may be to blame. In one study of more than 1,600 13-to-15-year-olds in Belgium, scientists at Katholieke University Leuven found that almost 60% of students used their cell phones either to talk or text message after turning their lights out at bedtime. After following the kids for one year, the researchers report that teens who used their cell phone more than once a week after lights-out were five times more likely than kids who never used cell phones at bedtime to say they felt tired one year later. The later the teens stayed awake with their phones, the more tired they were. Most teens concentrated their phone use around midnight, but some continued communicating well past 3 a.m.

Among adults, sleep patterns aren't any better. Dr. Mathias Basner of the University of Pennsylvania plumbed a publicly available database of nearly 50,000 people questioned by the U.S. Census to find out exactly what short-sleepers — those who get four to five hours of sleep a night — did during waking hours. Since earlier surveys had linked less sleep with greater risk of disease and death, Basner was eager to tease apart whether it was the lack of sleep itself, or something else that the short-sleepers were doing while they were awake that was making them so unhealthy. He and his team were surprised to find that the main reason a person lost sleep at night was work. The more a person worked, the less he or she slept: compared with normal sleepers, people who slept 4.5 hours or less per night worked about 1.5 hours more per weekday and nearly two hours more on weekends. "The fact that work influences sleep time was not surprising, but we were amazed by the dominance of the work time effect," says Basner. "For every hour of sleep you lose, you work 30 minutes more." Previous surveys conducted over the past decade had found that for every hour of sleep lost, the average person worked seven to eight additional minutes, so these new results suggest a disturbing trend toward increased work-related sleeplessness.

Basner notes that his findings in no way suggest a causal relationship between work and the amount of sleep a person gets (or, for that matter, between work and the higher risk of health problems associated with less sleep), but they do suggest that in future sleep studies, researchers should ask about how much time their subjects spend at work, and control for the influence that work may have on sleep. Understanding why we don't sleep could lead to better ways of helping us get more z's — anything but counting sheep.

Scientists discover height gene

2007-09-04T03:33:00.000-07:00

The first gene which helps determine height has been found
Scientists have discovered the first gene that influences a person's height.
People who carry two copies of the "tall" version of the HMGA2 gene are up to 1cm taller than those who carry two copies of the "short" version.

The international team of researchers say the discovery could aid a greater understanding of the link between height and disease.

They predict in the journal Nature Genetics many other genes will now be uncovered that control height.

Although it has long been clear that genetics plays a key role in determining a person's height, the genes involved have remained a mystery.

The latest study is a collaboration between Harvard University, the Children's Hospital Boston, Oxford University and the Peninsula Medical School in Exeter.

They analysed the genomes of 5,000 white European patients, who gave DNA samples and details of their height and weight for medical studies into diabetes and heart disease.

They found just one tiny change in the HMGA2 gene had an impact on a person's height.

The finding was confirmed by searching for the same two key versions of the gene in a further 30,000 patients.

Cancer link

Around 25% of white Europeans carry two copies of the "tall" version of the gene, while a similar proportion have two copies of the "short" version.

Carrying one copy of the "tall" version of the gene adds around 0.5cm to a person's height, while two copies adds nearly a full centimetre.

Previous research has suggested that HMGA2 plays an important role in human growth.

Rare, severe mutations in the gene cause dramatic alterations of body size in mice and humans.

Researcher Dr Tim Frayling, of the Peninsula Medical School, said: "Height is a typical 'polygenic' trait, in other words many genes contribute towards making us taller or shorter.

"Clearly, our results do not explain why one person will be 6ft 5in (195.6cm) and another only 4ft 10in (147.3cm).

"This is just the first of many that will be found, possibly as many as several hundred."

A greater understanding of the genes behind height could also provide clues about risk of disease.

Taller people are statistically more likely to be at risk from prostate, bladder and lung cancer.

This suggests that the genes that regulate cell growth and division may also play a role in the uncontrolled cell proliferation characteristic of cancer.

Conversely, shorter people are known to have a higher risk of heart disease.

Professor Joel Hirschhorn, an expert in genetics at Harvard, said "This is the first convincing result that explains how DNA can affect normal variation in human height.

"Because height is a complex trait, involving a variety of genetic and non-genetic factors, it can teach us valuable lessons about the genetic framework of other complex traits, such as diabetes, cancer and other common human diseases."

He added: "By defining the genes that normally affect stature, we might someday be able to better reassure parents that their child's height is within the range predicted by their genes, rather than a consequence of disease."

Windows VISTA SP1 coming...

2007-09-03T05:54:00.000-07:00

Microsoft might release Windows vista SP1 Beta in a few weeks and targets the final release of SP1 in April- May 2008.
In the offering will be huge tinkering with driver support and some code cleanup to increase Boot up time and pesky Bugs showing up in a everyday users life with VISTA.
Microsoft has been forced to bring SP1 sooner mostly because of Business customers firm belief that any Microsoft OS becomes stable only after its SP1. We can expect more widespread adaptation of VISTA once the SP1 is out.

Youtube may ban your video..

2007-09-03T05:44:00.000-07:00

Youtube has promised British legislators that it will start systematically scan videos for any copyrighted material including songs,TV shows,movies. So all the videos already posted may be scanned and thrown out if found guilty.
Though youtube has its policy not to allow copy righted material, everyday thousands of users upload copyrighted material without any restriction as there is no way to filter the content.The scenario may change soon youtube may appoint more reviwers oroutsource the same for each language. But this will be one hell of a cleanup.

India plans five satellites a year

2007-09-03T05:40:00.000-07:00

India aims to launch five satellites a year in an apparent bid to compete for the 2.5-billion-dollar heavy satellite launch business, a news report said Monday.
"We want to capture five to 10 percent of the market (mid-range satellite segment of 2,000 kg and plus) in the next five years," the Hindu quoted Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) chairman G Madhavan Nair as saying.
His comments came as India sent into orbit a 49-meter rocket carrying the Insat-4CR satellite from the Sriharikota space station in its south.
Two Polar Satellite Launch Vehicles (PSLVs) will blast off this year, and another Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) next year, he said.
"We are getting enquiries from foreign customers," he said.
Indian satellites have been used for years for weather forecast, especially for the country's farmers, but the South Asian nation has recently moved toward commercial exploitation of space technology.

Hectares of Spider web found in TEXAS

2007-09-03T05:35:00.001-07:00

TEXANS like to say everything in their state is bigger. They can now add spider webs to that list.
A monstrous network of sheet-like webs covering several hectares has been spun over trees in Lake Tawakoni State Park, 80 kilometres east of Dallas, baffling scientists, who say it is an almost unheard of occurrence in the region.
"The dominant spiders here seem to be long-jawed spiders, but this is unusual," said Mike Quinn, a Texas state biologist.
"Social spiders build communal nests in the tropics, but the long-jaws are not social. We still don't have a clear answer for what is going on here," he said as he stood beneath the ghostly canopy of webbing that shrouded a patch of oak and juniper trees.
The eerie scene evoked a B-grade horror movie. Thunder rumbled in the distance as spiders skittered across Mr Quinn's wide-brimmed hat.
He was collecting samples by using a metal rod to thrash branches over a "beat sheet" — a sheet nailed to criss-crossed pieces of wood into which bugs would fall.
A startling number of creepy-crawlies fell from a single branch, including several long-jawed spiders, also known as orb weavers.
"You would not want to be the prey item on the end of that," Mr Quinn said as he held one up. It was a spindly but sinister-looking thing with fangs jutting out from its raptor-like jaws.
There are 10 species of long-jaw in Texas and Mr Quinn said he needed to take the specimens to other experts to determine which they were. There were several other species of spider in the webs, including large garden spiders.

Google phone pictures.. Snapshots

2007-09-03T05:27:00.000-07:00

Some look placidly fake others are a worth having a look, well i wont mind taking some of these models. It could be one of these or totally different from all..

Google phone five things we guess it wud be..

2007-09-03T05:25:00.001-07:00

Is Google (GOOG) Phone fact or fiction? Engadget says Google’s entry into mobile phone business is for real, and the company is going to announce it soon. Scott Kirsner talked to a bunch of folks over who are intimately familiar with the effort and outlined his findings in an article for The Boston Globe.

The story talks about a handful of Boston entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who have seen the phone, but are under NDA and can’t talk about it. Rich Miner, a co-founder of Android, a mobile software company he started with Andy Rubin (formerly of Danger) is based in Boston.

Google bought Android in August 2005. Later Google snapped up Reqwireless and Skia, two tiny start-ups with mobile expertise, and since then has been hiring mobile-focused folks at a pretty steady clip.

The news (or rumors) were enough to get me dialing-for-dirt over the big holiday weekend. These are the tidbits I picked up from a reliable source:

Google Phone is based on a mobile variant of Linux, and is able to run Java virtual machines.
All applications that are supposed to run on the Google Phone are java apps. The OS has ability to run multimedia files, including video clips.
The user interface is similar to a UI typical of mobile phones, and the image (with red background) floating around isn’t representative of the Google Phone UI. The entire UI is said to be done in Java and is very responsive. The UI, of course has a “search box.”
There is a special browser which has pan-and-browse features that are common to modern browsers such as browsers for iPhone and Symbian phones. The entire browser is apparently written in Java.
Initially there was one prototype, but over past few months Google has the mobile OS running on 3-to-5 devices, most of them likely made by HTC, a mobile phone maker, and all have Qwerty apps. The model that folks have seen is very similar to the T-Mobile Dash. Around 3GSM, there were rumors that Google, Orange and HTC were working together on mobile devices.
These tiny-bits of information are pretty close to what Simeon Simenov, a VC with Polaris Venture Partners had very clearly outlined on his blog eons ago. I can’t seem to find that post, so here is is an alternate link. Simenov also wrote a pretty good post on what should be an ideal mobile stack. Google is pretty close to what Simenov had outlined.

We will post more details as they come our way. I had initially thought that it could be a more viable option to the $100 PC. While that argument still remains true, I think this is a strategic move by Google to keep Windows Mobile’s growing influence in check. Microsoft has spent billions on its mobile efforts including buying companies such as Tell Me Networks.

The GPhone.. Google phone

2007-09-03T05:23:00.000-07:00

Cambridge has a chocolate factory, and a Willy Wonka. The chocolate factory is Google's local research lab, located on the seventh floor of a Kendall Square office tower, and the resident Wonka is Rich Miner, a Google executive sometimes described as the company's vice president of wireless but officially a "technical staff member," according to a Google spokesman.

The golden ticket is a chance to see a prototype of Google's new mobile phone, which Miner has shown to a handful of Boston entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, some of whom have signed nondisclosure agreements and some of whom haven't.

Dan Roth, president of VoiceSignal, a division of Nuance Communications Inc. which makes speech recognition technology for cellphones, is under NDA. Mike Phillips, founder of Vlingo Inc., a speech recognition start-up, has seen the phone - but neither company would say whether they're working with Google. Paul Ferri, a founder of the Waltham venture capital firm Matrix Partners, has seen it, as has Murali Aravamudan, founder of a start-up called Veveo that is building a video search engine especially for phones. "We'd love to support a Google phone, if and when it becomes available," Aravamudan says, adding that there isn't yet a deal in the works.

Miner and Google are saying next to nothing about the work they're doing in Cambridge - nor are they commenting on the speculation about what Google's phone strategy will be, which has been spreading across the Net this summer.

"I have been having a lot of fun at Google, including helping to build the Boston office," Miner writes via e-mail. (He later sent out an e-mail to a large number of his contacts advising them not to talk with me for this column.)

Google spokeswoman Erin Fors wouldn't confirm whether software for mobile phones was being developed in the Cambridge office, where there are more than 50 employees.

"Mobile is an important focus for Google globally, and the team is reflective of that focus - there are people around the world working on a variety of Google mobile products," she wrote.

Here's what I've learned about Miner, and some of the scenarios for Google's imminent entry into the wireless market.

Miner was codirector of the Interactive Media Group at Lowell University (before it was part of UMass), which conducted research for local companies like Apollo Computer and Avid Technology.

In 1991, Miner was a cofounder of Wildfire Communications Inc., a Waltham company that developed a software-based virtual receptionist that could screen incoming calls and either take messages or route calls to the recipient, wherever he was. Orange plc, a European wireless carrier, bought Wildfire in 2000 for $142 million, but later killed the services.

Maasai man eating raw flesh..

2007-08-11T11:25:00.000-07:00

A Maasai man eats raw bone marrow during preparations to celebrate the International Day of World’s Indigenous People in Oloonong'ot, some 100 km west of Nairobi. (Reuters Photo)

As weights rise, US sees fat as normal

2007-08-11T11:24:00.001-07:00

Carrying a spare tire or two around the waist has become socially acceptable in the United States as the population's waistlines have expanded, according to a study released on Tuesday.

Economic researchers from Florida State University and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston found the weight of the average woman rose by or 13.5% between 1976 and 2000 - but their ideal weight also edged up.

In 1994 the average woman tipped the scales at 147 pounds but she wanted to weigh only 132 pounds - but less than a decade later the average woman weighed 153 pounds but said her desired weight was 135 pounds.

"This is a social force that we are trying to document because the rise in obesity has occurred so rapidly over the past 30 years," Frank Heiland, an assistant professor of economics at Florida State University, said in a statement.

"Medically speaking, most agree this trend is a dangerous one because of its connection to diabetes, cancer and other diseases. But psychologically, it may provide relief to know that you are not the only one packing on the pounds."

Heiland and Federal Reserve Bank of Boston economist Mary Burke, who reported their findings in the journal Economic Inquiry, said people had adjusted their perceptions of what is normal body weight as the population's weight ballooned.

They said this was one of the first studies to suggest that weight norms may change and are not set standards based on beauty or medical ideals.

Heiland said according to 2001-2004 data, 33.2% of American women over the age of 20 are classified as obese. But he said the fact that even women's ideal weight had increased suggested there was less social pressure to lose weight.

He cited a previous study in which 87% of Americans, including 48% of obese Americans, believed their body weight fell in the "socially acceptable" range.

The researchers believe a combination of social, economic and biological factors have contributed to the expanding size of Americans.

Lifestyle changes coupled with lack of physical exercise is contributing to the obesity epidemic, which in turn is triggering a host of diseases like diabetes.

Their findings are based on information from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Even Bush’s bodyguards can’t stop a tick biting

2007-08-11T11:23:00.000-07:00

Tim Reid in Washington

Think ticks are bad? Here are the top 5 political ailments

President Bush was treated for Lyme disease after he developed the characteristic “bull’s-eye” rash that marks the beginning of the tick-borne infection.

The disclosure, which the White House had kept secret for nearly 12 months, was made in Mr Bush’s annual medical report. It also stated that he has suffered mild vertigo in recent weeks, but that he was otherwise in excellent health.

Lyme disease is transmitted through tick bites. If left untreated it can lead to arthritis and neurological disorders, but if diagnosed early it is treated easily with antibiotics. The White House said that Mr Bush received the standard treatment for the rash on his left shin and developed no other symptoms.

Doctors believe that Mr Bush received the tick bite while on a mountain bike, his main form of exercise. He has been advised to wear trousers and long-sleeved shirts, and to apply insect repellant before biking, especially in risk-prone areas such as Maine, where he is spending this weekend at his parent’s coastal summer house in Kennebunkport.

Scott Stanzel, a White House spokesman, said that because the Lyme disease incident did not affect Mr Bush’s duties or his schedule, it was not disclosed to the public at the time. Mr Bush discovered the circular rash below his left knee soon after last year’s medical report had been made public. He was aware of Lyme disease, which is common on the east coast of the US. Mr Stanzel said that doctors had decided not to perform blood tests because the treatment worked on the one area in which the President had suffered a rash.

The dizzy spells, which doctors said had not affected his work, began after Mr Bush contracted a viral infection at the G8 summit in Germany in June. Mr Bush also has sinusitis and has recovered from an ear infection in recent days.

Doctors said that Mr Bush, 61, who smokes an occasional cigar and enjoys coffee and diet fizzy drinks, remains in the “superior” fitness category for a man of his age. They placed him in the leading 3 per cent of the population, thanks in part to his six-day-a-week exercise regime.

Mr Bush had a colonoscopy last month at the presidential retreat at Camp David. Five growths were removed from his colon but doctors determined that none was cancerous.

Mr Bush, who is 5ft 11½in (180cm), has lost 4lb since his annual medical examination last August. He now weighs 192lb (87kg). His body fat percentage fell from 16.8 to 16.6. The President has skin lesions consistent with sun damage and has been advised to wear sunscreen and a hat when in the sun.

“Doctors have determined that the President remains in superior fitness for a man of his age - anybody who has seen him on the bike or out and about certainly knows that - and he is fit for duty,” said Tony Snow, Mr Bush’s spokesman.

Do Diet Foods Lead to Weight Gain?

2007-08-11T11:22:00.000-07:00

If you think you're cutting calories by eating diet or low-calorie versions of your favorite foods, think again. A new study by Canadian scientists published in the journal Obesity suggests that our bodies can't be fooled that easily.

Led by David Pierce, researchers at the University of Alberta studied the eating habits of young rats, and found that they tended to overeat when they were fed "diet" foods. Though the new study was conducted in animals, it adds to a growing body of research in humans that suggests a diet-foods paradox: the more low-calorie (or even zero-calorie) sodas and foods you consume, the more your body demands payback for the calories it was deprived.

Pierce and his team started with the assumption that animals, and young animals in particular, are adapted to crave high-calorie foods that are packed with fat and carbohydrates, the crucial biological fuel that rapidly growing juveniles need. Using classic Pavlovian conditioning techniques, Pierce trained his rats to associate low-calorie foods with a "diet" taste, and high-calorie foods with a different taste.

So, when the rats were fed a high-calorie food that had been flavored with the diet taste, their brains assumed that their bodies were running low on calories. These animals then overate at their next meal in an effort to refuel and make up for the lost energy. "Animals have the ability to sense the caloric value of food they take in," says Pierce. "We found out that an animal can learn to use flavors to predict calories in an attempt to achieve energy balance."

This same phenomenon could explain similar results in recent studies of dieters, says Pierce. Two years ago, scientists at the University of Texas reported in an eight-year study that for every can of diet soda that a person drank, he raised his risk of being overweight by 41%, compared to a 30% increase in drinkers of regular, sugared drinks.

Earlier this year, another study of diet-soda drinkers came to a similar conclusion, this time about metabolic syndrome, the dangerous constellation of risk factors, such as obesity, high cholesterol and insulin resistance, that increases the likelihood of heart disease. In this report, part of the 60-year-old Framingham Heart Study, researchers found that soda drinkers, regardless of whether they consumed diet or regular beverages, had a 48% higher risk of metabolic syndrome than non-soda drinkers.

Coffee Break: Does Caffeine Perk Up Memory?

2007-08-08T01:35:00.002-07:00

A new study finds that loading up on the stimulant may enhance the thinking of older women

Trying to cut down on your coffee consumption, ladies? Well if you're of a certain age, you might want to reconsider. A new study from France found that women—especially those 65 and over—who reported drinking three-plus cups of java daily did better on memory tests than compeers who drank one or fewer cups a day.
"Caffeine is a psychostimulant which appears to reduce cognitive decline in women," study author Karen Ritchie of INSERM, the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research in Montpellier, France, said in a statement.

Scientists tested 7,000 people over four years; they adjusted for other factors that might affect memory such as age, education, depression, medication and chronic illness. Their findings, published in the new issue of Neurology: Women who drank over three cups of Joe a day were less likely to experience as much memory decline as those who downed a cup or less. And benefits seemed to increase with age: the mega–coffee drinkers were 30 percent less likely to suffer memory loss at age 65 and 70 percent less likely over age 80 than non–coffee drinkers.
But researchers say that doesn't mean you should start guzzling café aux laits or espressos. "While we have some ideas as to how this works biologically, we need to have a better understanding of how caffeine affects the brain before we can start promoting caffeine intake as a way to reduce cognitive decline," Ritchie said. "But the results are interesting—caffeine use is already widespread and it has fewer side effects than other treatments for cognitive decline, and it requires a relatively small amount for a beneficial effect."
So could this be a way to stave off dementia? Alas, although the quaffers in the bunch excelled on memory tests, they did not appear to have lower rates of dementia. "We really need a longer study to look at whether caffeine prevents dementia," Ritchie said. "It might be that caffeine could slow the dementia process rather than preventing it."
One other interesting note: for some reason, men apparently do not receive the same caffeine memory boost as women. Ritchie said researchers are not sure why but speculate that it may be because women are "more sensitive to the effects of caffeine…. Their bodies may react differently to the stimulant, or they may metabolize caffeine differently."

Falling in love can hurt too

2007-08-08T01:35:00.001-07:00

LONDON: Scientists in Britain have warned failing in love triggers a range of physical reactions in the body that can seriously damage health. The ups and downs of romance cause physical reactions like dilation of eyes, sweating of palms and increase in heart rate. It leads to high secretion of the hormone adrenaline and that harms the body, researchers said. Martin Cowie, professor, Imperial College, said stress related illnesses at work arose from near-identical physical phenomena, reported Daily Mail’s online edition. “We have seen a big rise in people complaining of flu-like symptoms over a long period of time. That is simply due to stress,” he said. He added the inability to acknowledge the effects of emotion on our health makes things worse. “If people are suffering from emotional problems, they need to acknowledge the effect on their health. There is a feeling that talking about emotions somehow makes you weak, but there is a real link between emotions and health. “We know, for instance, newly widowed men have a 50% higher chance of serious heart problems,” he said.

Foods Tastes Better With McDonald's Logo, Kids Say

2007-08-08T01:15:00.000-07:00

Source Courtesy : Forbes

MONDAY, Aug. 6 (HealthDay News) -- Most 3- and 5-year-olds who taste-tested a variety of foods said they preferred the ones in the McDonald's wrapper -- even though the foods were exactly the same, a new study finds.
The study suggests that, like adults, young children are highly influenced by branding, experts say.
"This study demonstrates simply and elegantly that advertising literally brainwashes young children into a baseless preference for certain food products," said Dr. David Katz, the director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Conn.
"Children, it seems, literally do judge a food by its cover. And they prefer the cover they know," said Katz, who was not involved in the research.
The study was led by Dr. Thomas Robinson, the director of the Center for Healthy Weight at Packard Children's Hospital and associate professor of pediatrics and of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, in Stanford, Calif. His team had 63 children, ages 3 and 5, sample five foods: chicken nuggets, a hamburger, french fries, baby carrots and milk.
The chicken nuggets, hamburger and french fries were all from McDonald's; the carrots and milk were from a grocery store.
Each sample was divided into two portions: one wrapped in a McDonald's wrapper or placed in a McDonald's bag and the other in a wrapper without the McDonald's logo.
After taste-testing, the children more often said the chicken nuggets, fries, carrots and milk wrapped in the McDonald's logo tasted better, even though the foods were exactly the same.
"Kids don't just ask for food from McDonald's," Robinson said in a prepared statement. "They actually believe that the chicken nugget they think is from McDonald's tastes better than an identical, unbranded nugget."
Further research revealed that one-third of the children ate at McDonald's more than once a week, and more than three-quarters had McDonald's toys at home. In addition, the children in the study had an average of 2.4 televisions in their homes. More than half the kids had a TV in their bedrooms.
"We found that kids with more TVs in their homes and those who eat at McDonald's more frequently were even more likely to prefer the food in the McDonald's wrapper," Robinson said. "This is a company that knows what they're doing. Nobody else spends as much to advertise their fast-food products to children." It is estimated that McDonald's spend more than $1 billion dollars per year on U.S. advertising.
"It's really an unfair marketplace out there for young children," Robinson said. "It's very clear they cannot understand the persuasive nature of advertising."
The report is in the August issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
McDonald's responded by saying that it is dealing with the problem.
"This is an important subject, and McDonald's has been actively addressing it for quite some time," said McDonald's spokesman Walt Riker. "In fact, McDonald's is only advertising Happy Meals with white meat McNuggets, fresh apple slices and low-fat milk, a right-sized meal of only 375 calories," he said.
"The fact is, parents make the decisions for their children, and our research confirms that we've earned their trust as a responsible marketer based on decades of delivering the safest food, the highest quality toys and the kind of choice and variety today's families are looking for," Riker said.
Last December, McDonald's and nine other food companies announced the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative. The company's agreed to devote at least half their advertising to promoting healthier choices for children.
But many experts remain unimpressed.
"There is general consensus among those of us in public health that the marketing of foods of poor nutritional quality to children should be regulated, if not abolished," Katz said.
Children in the United Sates are already subject to epidemic obesity and rising rates of what used to be adult onset diabetes, Katz said. Even greater threats, such as heart disease in adolescence, could become common should current trends persist, he added.
"We have a clear and compelling mandate to eliminate any influence we find that is propagating current trends," Katz said. "The branding of fast foods and junk foods into the minds of young children is one of those influences. When product familiarity is breeding ill health, it is time to put a stop to it."