To Fight Global Warming

World is facing major problem in the form of climate change. People must be aware of the impact they generate in this earth. Planting trees is the order of the day but I don’t think people are realizing the importance of it. Recently scientists have come up with more information regarding this matter.  I hope you find it interesting. The threat of devastating climate change is now so great that some scientists say it is time to investigate a Plan B - geo-engineering on a planetary scale. Such methods of altering the world’s climate may become necessary, they say, unless emissions of greenhouse gases fall within five years. Ideas that were once the realm of science fiction - such as creating artificial trees to absorb carbon dioxide, or reflecting sunlight away from the Earth. One method is to make clouds brighter - especially in the Pacific where the ocean temperature has great influence on world climate.

If these clouds can be brightened so you increase the sunlight reflected it looks as though that could be enough to prevent most of the effects of global warming. The crystals would act as nuclei around which water vapor could condense and thus raise the clouds’ reflective power, bouncing more of the sun’s energy back into space. Critics warn that although such schemes might lower temperatures swiftly, they must be maintained for long periods and the side-effects are unknown.

It Makes Scratches Vanish!

For all those people who believe in science this is a must read post. I always had great respect for scientists because they are the one who creates the New World with comfort. I always get fascinated with new researches and inventions. Recently I read an interesting topic, which I thought of sharing in this post. I am sure that it will be interesting. Scientists have developed a polyurethane coating that heals its own scratches when exposed to sunlight, offering the promise of scratch-free cars and other products. They have developed a polymeric material that is able to repair itself by exposure to the sun. In essence, you create a scratch and that scratch will disappear upon exposure to the sun. The self-healing coating uses chitosan, a substance found in the shells of crabs and shrimp.

When a scratch damages the chemical structure, the chitosan responds to ultraviolet light by forming chemical chains that begin bonding with other materials in the substance, eventually smoothing the scratch. The process can take less than an hour. The polymer can only repair itself in the same spot once, and would not work after repeated scratches. Obviously, this is one of the drawbacks but the chances are low of having two scratches in exactly the same spot.

Brain Workouts!

Scans of the brains of child musicians before and after musical training have yielded compelling evidence that proficiency and skill relies on hard graft, not innate genius. Earlier studies have shown that adult musicians have different brains to adult non-musicians. But the latest results settle arguments about whether the brain differences were there from birth, or developed through practice. The team tested musically untrained six-year-olds from the Boston area, 15 of whom then received weekly keyboard lessons for 15 months, and 16 of whom didn’t. When they compared magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans taken before and after for both groups, they found that auditory and motor areas of the brain linked respectively with hearing and dexterity grew larger only in the trainee musicians.

At the end of the training period, the musicians also outperformed the others at specific tasks related to manual dexterity and discrimination of sounds. But the two groups were matched on more distantly related skills such as arithmetic. Other researchers welcomed the findings. This study shows, through a before and after design, that a particular set of learning activities is both the necessary and sufficient causal explanation for resulting differences in brain characteristics.

Traffic Jams Triple Heart Attack Risk

Being in heavy traffic triples your risk of heart attack within one hour, a new research warns. People who have had a heart attack are likely to report having been in traffic shortly before their symptoms began. In the study of patients who had a heart attack, it was found that the patients to be more than three times as likely to have been in traffic within an hour of the onset of their heart attack. Time spent in any mode of transportation in traffic was associated with a 3.2 times higher risk than time spent away from this trigger.

Females, elderly males, patients who were unemployed and those with a history of angina were affected the most by traffic. Driving or riding in heavy traffic poses an additional risk of eliciting a heart attack in persons already at elevated risk. The patients had a known date and time of heart attack and all had survived 24 hours after the heart attack. Participants were asked what they did the day of the heart attack, where they went, the means of transportation and time spent in traffic.

Rushing Surgery

As the recession deepens, doctors and hospitals are reporting that hard-pressed patients are deferring elective surgery, like knee replacements and nose jobs, even as others are speeding up non-urgent procedures out of fear that they may soon lose their jobs and health insurance. With unemployment still rising, there are wide variations by region and type of surgery. But even those whose operating rooms are booked months in advance say they anticipate a slowdown later this year.

Delaying elective procedures can have serious medical consequences, as when a detectable polyp develops into a tumor because a patient skips a colonoscopy. Some hospitals said their emergency rooms were already seeing patients with dire conditions that could have been avoided had they not deferred surgery for economic reasons. The slowdown is likely to have significant financial repercussions. Elective operations are typically covered by private insurance plans that tend to reimburse hospitals and doctors at higher rates than government insurance programs like Medicare and Medicaid. About one-third of hospitals had seen either a moderate or significant decrease in elective procedures in the previous three months.

Barcodes To Download Videos From Magazines

Scientists have developed what they claim are new barcodes big enough to hold images or video which can then be downloaded by camera phones. They are looking for a way out for multimedia data to be stored in barcodes and retrieved with a mobile phone camera snapshot, allowing software such as ringtones to be downloaded from mediums like magazines. They have named it the Mobile Multi-Color Composite 2DBarcode.

Mobile Multi-Color Composite 2DBarcode is a color two-dimensional barcode designed for storing high capacity data on printed media and displays, tailor made for camera mobile phone applications. Using this Barcode, the user can retrieve digital content to their camera mobile phone directly from the barcode by capturing an image of the barcode and decoding it on their mobile. By taking a photo of the barcode, users can download complex information, such as videos, voice recordings or text, directly to their mobile. This information will be transferred to the mobile regardless of whether it is connected to the internet or a mobile.

Social Networking Trumps Email

Are you spending hours and hours on Orkut? If so, you are not alone. Networking and blogging sites account for almost 10% of time spent on the Internet - more than on email. Time on social networking sites ranked fourth, after online searching, general interest sites, and software sites. While two-thirds of the global online population already accesses member community sites, their vigorous adoption and the migration of time show no signs of slowing. One in every 11 minutes spent online globally is on networking sites.

In the past year, the reach of online networking sites grew more than 5%. Brazilians are the most avid fans of networking sites, according to the report. Eighty per cent of online Brazilians visit networking sites. Although Facebook is the most popular networking site globally, with 108.3 million unique visitors, preferences differ by nationality. In Brazil, Google’s networking site, Orkut, is number one. Many social networking sites were originally geared toward younger audiences, but the sites are no longer just for kids.