Health

How to escape from the caffeine trap

Caffeine is considered the most commonly used psychoactive drug in the world. It is estimated that approximately 80 per cent of the world's population consumes caffeine on a daily basis, but its excessive use is harmful for health.
The most common dietary sources of caffeine are coffee, soda, tea, and chocolate. After ingesting caffeine, it is completely absorbed within 30 to 45 minutes, and then its effects diminish within about three hours. As many caffeine drinkers can attest, when you ingest high levels of caffeine, you may feel your mood soar and then plummet, leaving you craving more caffeine to make it soar again.

While caffeine is eventually excreted — there is no accumulation in the body — it has been shown to adversely affect mood, stamina, stress levels, the cardiovascular system, and gastric health, to name a few.

The major harm of caffeine is that it is highly addictive. Like other drugs, caffeine causes a chemical addiction within the brain. Quitting coffee or soda can create withdrawal symptoms — headaches, sleepiness, irritability, anxiety — while the brain's chemistry readjusts.

Rather than increasing mental activity as many caffeine drinkers believe, it actually decreases blood flow to the brain by as much as 30 per cent and negatively impacts memory and mental performance.

Mood disturbances may appear after the stimulant effect of caffeine wears off — often about three hours later prompting many to consume more — and the disturbances may also appear during the recovery period after quitting caffeine.

It is said that caffeine increases the secretion of stress hormones - cortisol (adrenaline) from the adrenal glands — which can increase levels of anxiety, irritability, muscular tension, indigestion, insomnia, and decreased immunity.

Continued stimulation of the adrenal glands can ultimately lead to adrenal exhaustion, which leaves a person vulnerable to a variety of health problems including autoimmune and inflammatory disorders.

Because of chronically increased stress hormone levels, caffeine consumption can render some incapable of making healthy responses to the stressful situations that occur in their daily lives.

Caffeine also accelerates bone-loss, and causes the urinary excretion of calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron, and trace minerals, which can lead to osteoporosis. It also contributes to blood sugar problems since it stimulates a temporary surge in blood sugar creating a quick burst of energy. However, increased blood sugar triggers an insulin spike, which ultimately causes a sugar crash within hours. This blood sugar roller-coaster can contribute to diabetes, hypoglycemia, and weight gain because insulin triggers the body to store excess sugar as fat.

Furthermore, it acts as a stimulant and increases blood pressure. It also contributes to the development of heart disease because caffeine increases cholesterol levels as well as a chemical called homocysteine, which has been linked to heart attacks. Moreover, it affects stomach acid, and causes your stomach to produce extra hydrochloric acid (HCL), which creates an increased risk for ulcers, heartburn, and gastro-esophageal reflux.

It also increases the risk for male and female health problems. Studies show that caffeine increases the risk for prostate and urinary problems in men. In women, fibrocystic breast disease, PMS, osteoporosis, infertility problems, miscarriage, low birth-weight in infants, and menopausal problems such as hot flashes are aggravated by caffeine.

Kicking the caffeine habit requires patience and perseverance, just like detoxifying from any other drug addiction. While some people can successfully quit by eliminating caffeine all at once, most people will need to gradually reduce the amount of caffeine they consume in order to minimise suffering from withdrawal symptoms.

Here is an example of a gradual schedule three cups of coffee or soda per day in the first week; two per day during the second; one during the third; and none during the fourth. —PPI

Scientists reveal how a food-poisoning bug infects the foetus

Scientists in France said they have figured out how a germ that causes potentially lethal food poisoning can be transmitted from a mother to a foetus.

The discovery was made among lab animals but is likely to be valid for humans too, which opens up potential targets for drugs that could block the transmission pathway, they said. The listeria germ causes flu-like symptoms and can lead to meningitis and convulsions if it invades the nervous system.

Unpasteurised dairy products, contaminated meats and unwashed raw vegetables are possible sources of the bacterium, which enters the blood system through the intestine.

For reasons not fully understood, pregnant women are 20 times likelier than other healthy adults to contract the disease, called listeriosis. It affects eight in a million people in the US, and five per million in France.
Infection of a woman during pregnancy can cause miscarriage or stillbirth, and is often passed on to newborns, so scientists have sought to find out how the bacterium moves across the placenta.

A team led by Marc Lecuit of the Institut Pasteur in Paris identified two invasive proteins, called InlA and InlB, that are essential to the molecular mechanism that infects the foetus. Lecuit cautioned that his findings would not result in “immediate applications.” “When we fully understand the mechanism of a disease, we can devise a way to block it,” he said. “But for now, the best way to kill the bacteria is still antibiotics.” The study is published by the British-based science journal Nature.                                                                                                 —AFP

Astrophysics

What an anti-climax

It was the centre of attention for the entire world, until that is, it started with barely a whimper. And then it broke down.

On Friday, September 19, 2008, a malfunction in the Large Hadron Collider forced repairs to the giant machine, and it seems, a very large setback. The particle accelerator, the largest of its kind, had to be shut down for repairs.
An electrical link failure between the two 30-tonne superconducting magnets failed, causing a magnet quench. The failure raised the temperature from its operating temperature of -271°C up to 100 °C. Because of the sheer dimensions of the LHC, and the size of the superconducting magnets, the re-cooling and repairs are expected to take another two months.

The temperatures are colder than outer space, and take at least two months to be reached. Whereas, the repairs will only take a few days, and are necessary to steer particles along the speeds of light.

But time is not exactly what scientists have in great amounts. If the repairs and re-cooling is completed before winter, the first of the collisions can take place this year. During the winters, however, the LHC is shut down to save on energy costs and this would mean there will not be any collisions or experiments until 2009.

Scientists at CERN are not worried about this at all. Getting to this point in time, after more than 20 years and costing that reaches up to 8 billion dollars, this seems like an acceptable and expectable setback.

James Gillies, director of communications at CERN, spoke about the incident. “If you keep an eye on the big picture, weve been building the machine for 20 years. The switch-on was always going to be a long process,” said Gillies. “A year or two down the line, this moment will be a distant memory, and well be running smoothly.” —Khaver Siddiqi

Space

Mars rover could head to a new crater

The aging but intrepid Mars rover Opportunity is set to embark on a two-year mission it may never complete — a seven-mile (12-km) journey to a crater far bigger than one it has called home for two years, Nasa said.
The golf-cart-sized robot with a wobbly front wheel climbed out of Victoria crater earlier this month and scientists at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California are steering the probe toward a crater more than 20 times larger, dubbed Endeavour.

But with the rover able to travel only 110 yards (100 metres) per day, the mission control team at JPL said it could take two years for Opportunity to reach its destination. There is no guarantee the vehicle will survive the trip.

Opportunity, like its twin rover Spirit — semi-idle for the moment on the opposite side of Mars — is well past its original three-month life expectancy. The seven-mile stretch between Victoria and Endeavour craters matches the total distance the rover already has covered in the four-and-a-half years since landing on the planet.

The probes are equipped with a range of sophisticated laboratory equipment and cameras to explore rocks and soil on the Martian surface. Scientists are eager to get a glimpse into Endeavour, a bowl measuring 13.7 miles (22 km) across, where they expect to find a much deeper stack of rock layers than those at Victoria.

There are also, along the way, small rocks strewn about the surface that appear to have been dug up by meteor impacts farther away, giving scientists the chance to examine material that otherwise would be too deep to reach.                                      —Reuters

Technology

Google and GE ally in quest for clean energy

Internet titan Google and technology colossus General Electric said they are joining forces to promote a “smart” US electric power grid and clean energy.

The companies said they will work together on green energy technologies and lobby US political leaders to support “visionary policies” on renewable energy. “Both companies believe that our economic, environmental and security challenges require that we use electricity more efficiently, generate it from cleaner sources, and electrify our transportation fleet,” the US firms said in a joint release.

“This 21st century electricity system must combine advanced energy technology — a major GE focus — and cutting edge information technology, a major Google focus.”

The benefits of renewable electricity cannot fully be realised without updating the US power transmission lines into a “smart grid” that lets people track and control what types of power they use and when, according to Google.

Software can enable electric vehicles to feed power back to the grid during peak-demand periods and only charge themselves when demand is low. Google is aligning its computer programming acumen with GEs expertise as “a king of electronics hardware.“A smart grid is something we desperately need in this country and we humbly think we might have something to contribute,” said Google.org director of climate change and energy initiatives Dan Reicher.

Google's alliance with GE includes using the company's hardware for renewable energy research. For example, GE equipment will let engineers map fractures in the Earth's crust to “take advantage of deep-down heat” to make geothermal power. Google and GE say they are not aiming to form a huge coalition but expect other companies to join the alliance as interests and objectives overlap.             —AFP

iPhone 3G is named gadget of the year

Apple's iPhone 3G has won a public vote to find the year's best gadget, beating strong competition from three games consoles, a budget laptop and a balloon-shaped iPod speaker system.

The latest version of the mobile that combines a phone with a music and video player was chosen by readers of Stuff magazine in its annual Gadget of the Year awards.
The magazine described the iPhone 3G as “a faster, cleverer version of an already remarkable phone”. The phone's first incarnation, launched in Britain last year, won the coolest gadget prize at last year's ceremony.

Other nominees included Sony's PlayStation 3, Microsoft's Xbox 360, Nintendo's Wii Fit and the B&W Zeppelin iPod speakers.

Stuffs Editor Fraser Macdonald said the nominated products were judged on their performance, design and value, as well as “that elusive cool factor.”

The magazine's own gadget of the year prize, chosen by its editorial staff, went to the Asus Eee PC, a no-frills laptop that costs less than 300 pounds. The judges said it had made more of an impact than any other device and marked the start of a “laptop for everyone” era.            —Reuters

Computers figuring out what words mean

The internet got smarter with the release of a semantic map that teaches computers the meanings behind words and gives the machines a vocabulary far larger than that of a typical US college graduate.

Cognition Technologies began licensing the map to software creators interested in having programmes “understand” words based on tenses and sentence context — in much the same way as the human brain does.

The semantic map is reportedly the world's largest, and gives computers a vocabulary more than 10 times as extensive as that of a typical US college graduate. The coming third generation of life online is predicted to feature intuitive artificial intelligence applications that work swiftly across broadband internet connections.

When applied to internet searches, semantic technology delivers results oriented to what people seem to be seeking instead of simply matching words used to online content.

For example, a semantic online search for “melancholy songs with birds” would know to link sadness in lyrics with various species of birds.

Cognition's semantic map is already used in a LexisNexis Concordance “e-discovery” software to sift through documents amassed during evidence phases of trials.

The semantic map is also employed in a widely-used medical database. Cognition says it has also “semantically enabled” globally popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

In July, the US software giant Microsoft bought San Francisco-based Powerset, a three-year-old start-up which specialises in interpreting the intent of people's internet searches instead of matching specific words they use.

Microsoft said it plans to use Powerset technology to enhance its free Live Search service, which has been mired in third place behind Google and Yahoo! in the lucrative internet search-related advertising arena. —AFP

At a glance

Saturn's rings may be older than believed

Saturn's rings may be more massive and older than previously thought, researchers said. Findings to be presented at the European Planetary Science Congress in Germany bolster the possibility that the rings were formed billions of years ago.

Stonehenge may have been pilgrimage site for the sick

Archaeologists probing the secrets of Stonehenge, Britains most famous prehistoric monument, said it may have been an ancient pilgrimage site for the sick who believed its stones had healing qualities. It has always been a mystery why bluestones, the smaller stones that form part of the circle, were transported around 155 miles from Preseli Hills in Wales to Wiltshire in southern England.

China goes for gold with third manned space launch

Astronauts readying for China's next leap into space have arrived at the launch site of the Shenzhou VII craft, official media reported, as enthusiasm grows over the Olympic host nation's next attention-grabbing feat. The Shenzhou VII is set to blast off on a Long March rocket later for China's third manned spaceflight. It will carry three astronauts, including one aiming to make China's first space walk.

Evolution fine, but no apology to Darwin

The Vatican said the theory of evolution was compatible with the Bible, but planned no posthumous apology to Charles Darwin for the cold reception it gave him 150 years ago. Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vaticans culture minister, was speaking at the announcement of a Rome conference of scientists, theologians and philosophers to be held next March marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwins The Origin of Species.

No such thing as a safe tan

There is no such thing as a safe tan, the US and British researchers said. They said in their review of published studies that tans and skin cancer both begin with DNA damage caused by exposure to ultraviolet light, but many people, especially the young, ignore or are unaware of this danger in a quest for a bronzed body.

Stressed plants release aspirin-like chemical

Plants stressed by drought or unseasonable temperatures squirt out an aspirin-like chemical, researchers reported in a finding that may some day help farmers watch for trouble. The chemical, methyl salicylate, may help plants resist the damage and may help them signal danger to one another, the team at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado said.

Sharks released off Sydney beach for study

A Sydney aquarium released seven sharks bred in captivity and tagged with acoustic tracking devices into the waters off a city beach to study if it is feasible to breed sharks to restock dwindling wild numbers. The two-year-old wobbegong, or carpet sharks, measuring up to 80cms in length, are bottom-dwelling sharks and regarded as harmless but can grow to three metres (10feet) in length.

Australia issues first licence to clone human embryos

The Australian government has issued its first license allowing scientists to create cloned human embryos to try and obtain embryonic stem cells. The in vitro-fertilisation firm Sydney IVF was granted the license and reportedly has access to 7,200 human eggs for its research.

Companies seek alternatives to plastic chemical

Health worries about a chemical found in many plastic products have created opportunities for companies catering to the growing market for products made without bisphenol A. But the plastic and food packaging industries, which defend the safety of bisphenol A or BPA, argue that particularly, for certain uses there are no alternatives which can do everything that BPA can do. —Reuters