Scientists Claims Sugar Is As Harmful As Alcohol And Cigarettes

Those of you who can't do without sugar, this is a must read for you.

US scientists are claiming that, Sugar is so harmful to public health it should be controlled like alcohol and cigarettes.

Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, said last week that the public's excessive consumption of sugar is not only contributing to a global obesity pandemic but also is critically altering people's hormones, metabolism and blood pressure and causing "significant damage to the liver."

In an article titled: "The Toxic Truth About Sugar," published in the journal Nature, the scientists said sugar consumption tripled worldwide over the past 50 years and now is contributing to 35 million deaths a year.

The researchers said the effects of consuming an excess of sugary foods and drinks mimic the effects of drinking too much alcohol which, they pointed out, is made from distilling sugar.

Do you agree with them?

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Amazing! Recent Study Shows How Scientists Can Now 'Read Your Mind'

It sounds like a bit of science-fiction - but scientists say they have found a way to read the human mind. 

Researchers at University of California, Los Angeles have developed what they call a 'brain reading' that uses past history to determine future cognitive patterns and thought process.

They compare the results to Google's predictive search capability, when the website guesses what search terms users are typing before they finish.

The study, led by author Ariana Anderson, postdoctoral fellow in the Integrative Neuroimaging Technology lab at the university, was performed on smokers experiencing nicotine cravings.

Scientists exposed the test subjects to videos meant to induce cravings. Some smokers were presented 'neutral' videos and some watched no video at all. They were then instructed to attempt to fight off any nicotine cravings.

MRI brain wave data was analysed to determine which regions of the brain and which neural networks are responsible for resisting nicotine addiction.

A computer learning machine used a method based on the Markov processes, allowing scientists to predict cognitive behaviour much like in the way Google predicts search terms or a mobile device might predict a word the user is typing before he is finished.

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"100,000-Year-Old Shell" Found In Oldest Art Studio

It has been discovered that a coating of bright red powder on the insides of a pair of 100,000-year-old abalone shells is evidence of the oldest known art workshop.

The powder was found inside two shells in Blombos Cave near Still Bay, South Africa (map). The substance is the dried remains of a primitive form of paint made by combining colorful clay called ochre, crushed seal bones, charcoal, quartzite chips, and a liquid, such as water.

"A round [stone] covered the opening of one of the shells, and underneath it was absolutely bright red," said study leader Christopher Henshilwood, an archaeologist at the University of Bergen in Norway and the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.

In addition to the shells, the team also found grindstones, hammerstones, the remains of a small fire pit, and animal bones that were used to transfer small amounts of the paint.

Blombos Cave has been inhabited off and on by humans for at least 140,000 years, but the ochre-paint studio seems to have been active about 100,000 years ago. Prior to the new discovery, the earliest known ochre-making workshop was 60,000 years old, Henshilwood said.

The discovery is also proof that early humans were capable of long-term planning and had at least a rudimentary knowledge of chemistry, according to the study authors.

"They also knew to add charcoal to the mixture to bind and stabilize it, and a little bit of fluid, which could have been water or seawater or urine."

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Steve Jobs Dies At 56: His Lifetime And Impact On The World Of Technology

STEVEN Jobs, the man who single-handedly revolutionised the technology industry died at the age of 56 due to complications from his long battle with pancreatic cancer.

Politicians – including US President Barack Obama – and business leaders around the world mourned his passing in tributes hailing him as one of the greatest creative minds of his generation.

Apple fans, his co-workers and even his tech rivals paid tribute to Jobs, labeling him a "creative genius" and an "inspiring mentor" and saying his impact "will be felt for many generations to come."

Jobs was born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955 out of wedlock. He was adopted by Californians Paul and Clara Jobs.

He never met his biological parents and reportedly knew nothing about them until he was 27. His father, Syrian immigrant Abdulfattah John Jandali, reportedly sent him birthday cards every year.

Jobs had to be given up for adoption after Mr Jandali's girlfriend at the time – an American graduate student and now speech pathologist – refused to let her marry.

Jobs' biological father recently admitted regretting giving him up for adoption and said he longed to meet his son. "I honestly do not know to this day if Steve is aware of the fact that had it been my choice, I would have loved to have kept him," he told The Sun newspaper.

During his time at Apple, Jobs took three medical leave three times, underwent surgery in 2004 and received liver transplant surgery in 2009.

In August this year Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple handing over the reins to Timothy Cook, who was then Chief Operating Officer.

"I have always said that if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's C.E.O., I would be the first to let you know," Jobs wrote in a letter released by the company.

"Unfortunately, that day has come."

Jobs was a college dropout. He left Reed College in Portland, Oregon, after a single semester, but continued to take classes, including a calligraphy class he cited as the reason Macintosh computers were designed with multiple typefaces.

After returning from a spiritual trek to India in 1974, he worked as a technician for video game pioneer Atari and joined a club of computer hobbyists with Steve Wozniak, a fellow northern California college dropout.

Wozniak's homemade computer drew attention from other enthusiasts, but Jobs saw its potential far beyond the geeky hobbyists of the time. The pair started Apple Computer Inc in Jobs' parents' garage in 1976.

According to Wozniak, Jobs suggested the name after visiting an "apple orchard" that Wozniak said was actually a commune.

Though he did not invent the first personal computer, Jobs certainly made them easier to use. His vision of simple, effective technology came to define the computer industry.

Before the Apple II, one of the first successful mass-produced home computers, machines were typically clunky wooden boxes encased in metal.

With its sleek design the Apple II – encased in plastic – went on sale in April 1977, and earned the company $600 million in 1981, a $598 million increase on the previous year's sales.



By the end of 1983 Apple had earned a spot in the Fortune 500 list.

Unfortunately the hit product's successor, Apple III, did not earn the company the same success, after a host of technical problems and poor sales Jobs refocused on the "Lisa" – named after his daughter whose design was aimed at the corporate world.

But the Lisa project was short-lived.

In 1985 Jobs was fired as the head of Apple's Macintosh division following internal power struggles and a hostile working relationship with Apple's then CEO John Sculley.

Jobs later claimed that getting fired freed him "to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."

During his time away Jobs bought the graphics division of Lucas Film – Graphics Group - which would later be renamed Pixar.

Toy Story was produced under his supervision and earned the company more than US$362 million worldwide.

Ten years later Jobs was invited to rejoin the company which bought the NeXT computer he had been working on during his time away. It would come to be the framework for all Apple Mac computers. 

In 2001 Jobs would once again revolutionise the technology industry with the introduction of the first Apple iPod portable music player and the first iTunes store.

More than 20 updated models would follow.

In 2007 Apple launched the iPhone with the goal of selling 10 million handsets in 2008 - or 1 per cent of the global mobile phone market. The company sold 11.6 million.

In June 2010 Apple overtook Microsoft as the world's largest IT company, valued at US$222 billion.

Microsoft was then worth US$219 billion.

So much of what we know about computers is due to Jobs' vision.

Even the common computer mouse and the idea that users should be able to "click" on a computer icon to access the software came from him. 

The now commonplace structure of a laptop was Jobs' vision – with a scrolling pad located below the keyboard with space either side to rest your wrists. Before Jobs got his hands on laptop technology, computers looked completely different. The keyboard was lower down, with little or no space to rest your wrists.

What a genius! May his soul RIP, Amen.

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New Discovery: There Is Water In Planet Mars!

THERE is definitely water on Mars. That much has been known for years. The trouble is that most of it is ice, either buried beneath the surface, frozen in the depths of craters, or else locked up in ice caps at the planet's poles. What has intrigued astronomers recently is whether there might be liquid water on the surface.

At first glance, it seems unlikely: Mars is cold (the average temperature is around -60°C; only rarely does it venture into positive territory) and has a very thin atmosphere, with surface pressures well over a hundred times lower than those on Earth. Nevertheless, there have been occasional slivers of suggestive evidence, such as the supposed presence of briny droplets on the legs of the Mars Phoenix Lander, a NASA probe, which also discovered perchlorate, a chemical which can lower the freezing point of water, in the Martian soil.

On August 4th, though, NASA announced the strongest evidence yet for the existence of liquid water on the surface. A camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, another NASA spacecraft, found dark streaks on a few comparatively warm, equator-facing Martian slopes. The streaks—a few meters wide and hundreds of meters long (see picture)—appear in the late Martian spring and disappear by late autumn. The best explanation, NASA reckons, is that the streaks are the result of flowing, briny water, with about the same salinity as Earth's oceans (which have a freezing point well below 0°C).

The streaks are not dark because they are wet, though, says NASA, but for some other reason. Perhaps the flow of water rearranges dirt particles on the surface, or maybe the streaks are the residue left behind when the briny water evaporates. And Mars-watchers are still puzzled as to why the streaks brighten again during the Martian winter. So the photographs are not absolutely definitive evidence of liquid water flowing on Mars—but they are the closest thing yet.



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Scientists Found 20-Million Year-Old Ape Skull In Uganda!

Ugandan and French scientists have discovered a fossil of a skull of a tree-climbing ape from about 20 million years ago in Uganda's Karamoja region, the team said Tuesday.

The scientists discovered the remains on July 18 while looking for fossils in the remnants of an extinct volcano in Karamoja, a semi-arid region in Uganda's northeastern corner.

"This is the first time that the complete skull of an ape of this age has been found. It is a highly important fossil," Martin Pickford, a paleontologist from the College de France in Paris, told a news conference.

Pickford said preliminary studies of the fossil showed that the tree-climbing herbivore, roughly 10-years-old when it died, had a head the size of a chimpanzee's but a brain the size of a baboon's, a bigger ape.

Bridgette Senut, a professor at the Musee National d'Histoire Naturelle, said that the remains would be taken to Paris to be x-rayed and documented before being returned to Uganda.

"It will be cleaned in France, it will be prepared in France and then in about one year's time it will be returned to the country," Senut said.

Uganda's junior minister for tourism, wildlife and heritage said the skull was a remote cousin of the Hominidea Fossil Ape.


SOURCE

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