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a) Happiness May Come With Age, Study Says
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/health/research/01happy.html
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Published: May 31, 2010
It is inevitable. The muscles weaken. Hearing and vision fade. We get wrinkled and stooped. We can’t run, or even walk, as fast as we used to. We have aches and pains in parts of our bodies we never even noticed before. We get old.
It sounds miserable, but apparently it is not. A large Gallup poll has found that by almost any measure, people get happier as they get older, and researchers are not sure why.
“It could be that there are environmental changes,” said Arthur A. Stone, the lead author of a new study based on the survey, “or it could be psychological changes about the way we view the world, or it could even be biological — for example brain chemistry or endocrine changes.”
The telephone survey, carried out in 2008, covered more than 340,000 people nationwide, ages 18 to 85, asking various questions about age and sex, current events, personal finances, health and other matters.
The survey also asked about “global well-being” by having each person rank overall life satisfaction on a 10-point scale, an assessment many people may make from time to time, if not in a strictly formalized way.
Finally, there were six yes-or-no questions: Did you experience the following feelings during a large part of the day yesterday: enjoyment, happiness, stress, worry, anger, sadness. The answers, the researchers say, reveal “hedonic well-being,” a person’s immediate experience of those psychological states, unencumbered by revised memories or subjective judgments that the query about general life satisfaction might have evoked.
The results, published online May 17 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were good news for old people, and for those who are getting old. On the global measure, people start out at age 18 feeling pretty good about themselves, and then, apparently, life begins to throw curve balls. They feel worse and worse until they hit 50. At that point, there is a sharp reversal, and people keep getting happier as they age. By the time they are 85, they are even more satisfied with themselves than they were at 18.
In measuring immediate well-being — yesterday’s emotional state — the researchers found that stress declines from age 22 onward, reaching its lowest point at 85. Worry stays fairly steady until 50, then sharply drops off. Anger decreases steadily from 18 on, and sadness rises to a peak at 50, declines to 73, then rises slightly again to 85. Enjoyment and happiness have similar curves: they both decrease gradually until we hit 50, rise steadily for the next 25 years, and then decline very slightly at the end, but they never again reach the low point of our early 50s.
Other experts were impressed with the work. Andrew J. Oswald, a professor of psychology at Warwick Business School in England, who has published several studies on human happiness, called the findings important and, in some ways, heartening. “It’s a very encouraging fact that we can expect to be happier in our early 80s than we were in our 20s,” he said. “And it’s not being driven predominantly by things that happen in life. It’s something very deep and quite human that seems to be driving this.”
Dr. Stone, who is a professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, said that the findings raised questions that needed more study. “These results say there are distinctive patterns here,” he said, “and it’s worth some research effort to try to figure out what’s going on. Why at age 50 does something seem to start to change?”
The study was not designed to figure out which factors make people happy, and the poll’s health questions were not specific enough to draw any conclusions about the effect of disease or disability on happiness in old age. But the researchers did look at four possibilities: the sex of the interviewee, whether the person had a partner, whether there were children at home and employment status. “These are four reasonable candidates,” Dr. Stone said, “but they don’t make much difference.”
For people under 50 who may sometimes feel gloomy, there may be consolation here. The view seems a bit bleak right now, but look at the bright side: you are getting old.
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b) It's never too late to right your wrongs, big or small
The author of a new book offers advice on how to make amends.
by Lee Kravitz • May 30, 2010
Lee Kravitz, author of Unfinished Business: One Man's Extraordinary year of Trying to Do the Right Things, shares some lessons that he has learned. (Comstock, Getty Images)
After I lost my job in October 2007, I took stock of my life and didn't like what I saw. Working as hard as I had over the years, I had become disconnected from the people who mattered most to me.
My wife and three young children were afraid to approach me. My daughter told people, “Daddy never smiles.” I hadn't talked to some of my closest friends in more than a decade.
Instead of rushing back into the job market, I decided to spend a year reconnecting with my friends and relatives and making amends. I devoted myself to tending to what I called “my unfinished business.” That has helped me become a more attentive husband, father, son and friend — and a happier, more energetic person.
In the crunch of our lives, we lose touch with relatives and friends. Kindnesses don't get reciprocated and thank-yous never get said. Our grudges and rivalries persist when it would be better to forgive, heal and move on.
Most of us will never have the luxury of a full year to close circles and make amends. Still, you can keep your unfinished business from accumulating, even while leading a busy, stressful life.
Now that I've had ample opportunity to revisit my past mistakes — and experience the rewards of fixing them — I'd like to share some of the lessons I learned:
Take stock of your life.
Have you lost touch with people who were important to you? Are there things you've done or not done that gnaw at you? Are there people in your life who could die tomorrow without knowing how much they meant to you? Keep a list of your unfinished business and chip away at it.
Start small.
Instead of trying to put an end to the cold war dividing your family, begin with a project you can control. Apologize to your brother for not attending his Super Bowl party. Respond to an e-mail you should have answered a week ago. Write a note or make a call.
Identify your fears.
Unfinished business often is the result of an underlying fear that needs to be addressed. For example, I wasn't able to express my condolences to a friend whose daughter had been killed in Iraq until I realized how afraid I was of intruding on his grief.
Reach out and reconnect.
Thanks to the Internet, it has never been easier to locate and communicate with people. (It took me just a few minutes to track down a friend who had changed his name and become a monk.)
Be sincere.
No matter what the wrong, the most important ingredient in making it right is your sincerity. If you reach out with a genuine heart, your friends will be delighted to hear from you again.
Reflect on your experience.
This is key to learning and growing. Keep a journal, or summarize what you've learned in e-mails to friends.
The hurdles we face in tackling our unfinished business can seem impossibly high, but the first step in clearing them can be simple: Again, write a note or make a phone call. Once you identify your fears and reach beyond them, you'll become a more complete and contented person.
LEE KRAVITZ is author of the new book Unfinished Business: One Man's Extraordinary Year of Trying to Do the Right Things. For more on how to right the wrongs in your life, go to www.MyUnfinishedBusiness.com.
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c) Moving frequently in childhood not good
ANI, Jun 4, 2010, 04.58pm IST
Moving frequently in childhood not good (Getty Images)
Frequent relocations in childhood are related to poorer well-being in adulthood, especially among people who are more introverted or neurotic, according to a new study.
The researchers tested the relation between the number of childhood moves and well-being in a sample of 7,108 American adults who were followed for 10 years.
"We know that children who move frequently are more likely to perform poorly in school and have more behavioural problems. However, the long-term effects of moving on well-being in adulthood have been overlooked by researchers," said the study’s lead author, Shigehiro Oishi, of the University of Virginia.
The study’s participants, who were between the ages of 20 and 75, were contacted as part of a nationally representative random sample survey in 1994 and 1995 and were surveyed again 10 years later.
They were asked how many times they had moved as children, as well as about their psychological well-being, personality type and social relationships.
The researchers found that the more times people moved as children, the more likely they were to report lower life satisfaction and psychological well-being at the time they were surveyed, even when controlling for age, gender and education level.
The research also showed that those who moved frequently as children had fewer quality social relationships as adults.
The researchers also looked to see if different personality types - extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness and neuroticism - affected frequent movers’ well-being.
Among introverts, the more moves participants reported as children, the worse off they were as adults. This was in direct contrast to the findings among extraverts.
"Moving a lot makes it difficult for people to maintain long-term close relationships. This might not be a serious problem for outgoing people who can make friends quickly and easily. Less outgoing people have a harder time making new friends," said Oishi.
The findings showed neurotic people who moved frequently reported less life satisfaction and poorer psychological well-being than people who did not move as much and people who were not neurotic.
Neuroticism was defined for this study as being moody, nervous and high strung. However, the number and quality of neurotic people’s relationships had no effect on their well-being, no matter how often they had moved as children.
In the article, Oishi speculates this may be because neurotic people have more negative reactions to stressful life events in general.
The findings are reported in the June issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , published by the American Psychological Association.
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d) Want to be happy? Have a conversation
http://www.usaweekend.com/article/20100604/HOME/6060310/Want-to-be-happy-Have-a-conversation
Sharon Jayson • June 6, 2010
SMALL TALK doesn't cut it. What's important to a happy life are meaningful conversations, say psychologists at the University of Arizona in Tucson and Washington University in St. Louis.
Their study, published online in the March issue of the journal Psychological Science, found greater well-being from spending less time alone and more time talking meaningfully to others.
To learn about differences in conversation, researchers had volunteers complete personality and well-being assessments. Then, over four days, they wore a recording device that sampled 30 seconds of sound every 121/2 minutes, providing more than 20,000 recordings. Researchers identified conversations as trivial or substantive. They found the happiest participants spent 25% less time alone and 70% more time talking than the unhappiest.
Researchers suggest deep conversations may give a sense of meaning in interactions with others, which may make people happier.
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http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/05/21/pac-man.game.anniversary/index.html?hpt=C1
Pac-Man, shown here in its championship version, was the biggest arcade-game craze of the early 1980s
By Larry Frum, Special to CNN
May 21, 2010 12:47 p.m. EDT
(CNN) -- A rotund, voracious figure follows a trail through a maze. As he rounds a corner, he is confronted by ghostlike monsters attempting to wipe him out. He turns and flees, but soon discovers an additional source of power that briefly turns him from hunted into hunter.
This simple premise gave birth to Pac-Man, the most successful coin-operated video game in history.
The pop-culture sensation, released in Japan 30 years ago this week, created millions of glazed-eye addicts and spawned more than 400 products, including a cartoon, a breakfast cereal and a hit song.
Many credit Pac-Man, an iconic symbol of the '80s, with expanding video gaming to a wider audience.
"Pac-Man's debut represents one of the earliest attempts to introduce casual gaming to a field that was already dominated by shooters and high-energy arcade experiences," said Scott Steinberg, head of video game consulting firm TechSavvy Global.
"The original arcade cabinet was able to strike the perfect balance between challenge and fun without sacrificing depth or scope."
The original arcade classic was imagined by Namco developer Toru Iwatani in 1979, although it didn't reach the U.S until the fall of 1980. As the legend goes, Iwatani was inspired by his partially eaten pizza pie and turned it into a gaming character: a big yellow dot that gobbled up smaller dots, and avoided four deadly ghosts, as it careened through a maze.
Pac-Man inspired hundreds of spin-off products, including board games, a cartoon and even a hit song.
"During the early stages of the arcade industry, where most games skewed towards a male audience, we saw the need to expand our appeal," explained Kenji Hisatsune, president, CEO and COO of Namco Networks America Inc. "In order to fill this void, Pac-Man was created as a 'cute' game with both good and bad characters that were colorful and endearing."
It took eight people 15 months to complete the orginal Japanese game, which was slightly different than the versions people would later play overseas. The ghosts were initially called monsters, and Pac-Man ate cookies instead of the familiar dots. Even his name was changed once he crossed the Pacific Ocean.
"The original Japanese name was Puckman, which evolved from the Japanese word paku, meaning 'chomp,' " Hisatsune said.”Given the closeness to a certain explicit four-letter word, a lot of arcade operators were worried that vandals would alter the letter P. Eventually, 'Pac' was suggested as an alternate name."
Developers also created the four colorful ghosts, Pinky, Blinky, Inky and Clyde, with distinct personalities. For example, Blinky likes to chase while Pinky lurks in ambush. It was a novel concept in gaming that wasn't being developed at that time.
Pac-Man was licensed for distribution in the U.S. by Midway, a division of Bally, and it reached American shores in October 1980, at a time when shooter games such as Space Invaders ruled the arcades.
Its light-hearted originality and simplicity -- players needed only to move a joystick -- made it an immediate hit. Some speculated that Pac-Man became popular in bars in part because gamers needed only one hand to play and could hold a drink in the other.
In the first 15 months after its release in the U.S., Namco sold more than 100,000 arcade units, while fans spent more than $1 billion in quarters to fuel what would become known as "Pac-Man fever."
Lisa Sharp, a 36-year-old finance director at Georgia Tech, remembers cashing her $10 weekly allowance into quarters to play Pac-Man for as long as the coins lasted. Her first taste of the game came from an unlikely place: her dentist's office.
"I hated going to the dentist, but he had Pac-Man and Centipede in his office where you could play for free," Sharp said. "It was the only thing that calmed me down, and I loved it."
As a child, Sharp would sneak away to her corner 7-Eleven with her pockets full of coins to pump into the arcade machine. She wasn't a gaming geek at the time, but Pac-Man gave her a sense of accomplishment.
"You keep going [throughout the levels of the game]. It gets harder, but it was a feeling of progress," she explained. "Plus, as a kid, I didn't want to get eaten by a ghost."
Pac-Man's appeal to kids was reinforced by a Saturday-morning animated TV series and a breakfast cereal with marshmallow ghosts. In all, Pac-Man has been licensed to more than 250 companies for products ranging from air fresheners to bed sheets to costumes.
An unlicensed sequel, Ms. Pac-Man, followed in 1981. Namco soon embraced the game and adopted it as an official title. In all, more than 30 official spin-offs, plus numerous clones, were inspired by Pac-Man's success.
"Pac-Man Fever," a novelty song by Jerry Buckner and Gary Garcia, reached No. 9 on the Billboard pop chart in early 1982.
Sharp said she tried sequels such as Ms. Pac-Man but always preferred the original game.
"I would play every chance I got," she said, although the game disappeared from many arcades by the 1990s. "It became harder to find Pac-Man [as I got older]."
Although the game is far removed from its 1980s heyday, Pac-Man's appeal continues to endure.
In 1999, Billy Mitchell of Florida became the first player to achieve a perfect Pac-Man score -- 3,333,360. And versions of the game remain popular on the iPhone and iPod Touch.
Google's logo, which often changes to reflect events of the day, became a playable Pac-Man game on Friday, spelling out the company's name. A Google spokeswoman said the game will be available over the weekend and gameplay reaches 256 levels.
Namco's Hisatsune believes Pac-Man's combination of cute characters and cat-and-mouse gameplay are at the core of its popularity. He also thinks Pac-Man's biggest legacy will be its pioneering status as the first game to appeal broadly to men and women.
Some even attribute today's wide variety of video games to Pac-Man's acceptance in the culture.
"I don't think that it's an understatement to say that today we would have no Mario, Master Chief or Lara Croft if it wasn't for the pioneering efforts of the grinning, little, yellow dot-gobbler," said Steinberg. "It remains as engaging, fresh and relevant as the day it first shipped."
Hisatsune has a message for today's game designers.
"Pac-Man has taught game makers to not be afraid, to take risks and strive to create games that bring the world closer together," he said.
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Understanding sensitivities key to China-India friendship: Patil
http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article440538.ece?homepage=true
Beijing, May 28, 2010
President Pratibha Patil - on a six-day visit to China - has said that that “mutual understanding of each other’s sensitivities” held the key to “deeper and sturdier friendship” between the two Asian giants.
PTI President Pratibha Patil visits the Temple of Heaven in Beijing on Friday. The President has said that mutual understanding of each other’s sensitivities” held the key to “deeper and sturdier friendship” between the two countries.
In her first public speech during her six-day State Visit, Ms. Patil spoke of the “time-tested” Sino-Indian friendship “forged in the crucibles of civilisation”. She saw growing scope for cooperation between the two countries.
Ms. Patil chose to underline, “Mutual awareness about each other and mutual understanding of each other’s sensitivities, will hold key to deeper and sturdier friendship.”
The Indian leader, who had said on her way here that “there is enough space in the world for both the countries to fulfil their aspirations for development,” said at her speech at the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries that the two governments were working together towards strengthening mutual cooperation.
The President was speaking a day after her wide-ranging talks with her Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, during which she sought Beijing’s backing for India’s aspirations to be a permanent member of the UN Security Council. She also pressed China to open up its market to Indian goods and services to address the adverse trade balance.
Ms. Patil summed up her discussions as “very positive and fruitful.”
“There is keenness on the part of both the countries to move forward,” she said.
The President, in her speech, said that her discussions with the Chinese leadership have emphasised the “noteworthy progress that cooperation has achieved in recent years and chartered the course for further progress.”
She said that “in the age of globalisation and seamless communication,” the “vibrant and enterprising” people of the two countries had to be at the centre of bilateral ties.
Ms. Patil, the first Indian head of state to visit China in a decade, also described China’s transformation as “amazing.”
“Even in my short stay, I have been impressed by the amazing achievements of China on many fronts,” she said.
“This only confirms the prevalent belief in India that much can be learnt from experiences of China, which is a similarly placed emerging economy, with similar aspirations,” she said.
Ms. Patil also spoke about the possibility of greater India-China cooperation in the international arena.
“In the international arena too, our common interests and shared concerns prove the basis for working together,” she said, adding that the two governments were working towards that objective.
Ms. Patil said her visit, which takes place as the two countries are celebrating the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties, brought back the memories of their “early solidarity and rewarding cooperation” as modern nations.
http://photogallery.sandesh.com/Pratibha-Patil-visit-on-China_3665.html
Chinese President Hu Jintao (R) and Indian President Pratibha Patil (L) listen to the national anthems during a welcoming ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on May 27, 2010. Patil is here to hold bilateral ties. ..........
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http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/27/news/companies/gold_atm/index.htm
A GOLD to go ATM debuts in Abu Dhabi's Emirates Palace Hotel
By Blake Ellis, staff reporter
May 28, 2010: 9:07 AM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- As economic fears drive gold prices to new highs, the creator of a gold-dispensing ATM is attracting attention around the globe.
Germany-based GOLD to go, which is currently churning out 50 gold machines a month to meet a recent jump in demand, launched its first ATM in Abu Dhabi's Emirates Palace Hotel earlier this month and opened its second in Germany last week.
The golden ATM's next destinations are the Bergamo Airport in Milan, Italy, all major airports in Malaysia, one of Russia's biggest banks and an undetermined location in Turkey.
By making gold investing as easy as buying a candy bar from a vending machine, GOLD to go hopes to attract average buyers to the gold market.
"We are going to make gold public with these machines," said Thomas Geissler, CEO of Ex Oriente Lux AG, which owns GOLD to go. "The prices are so easy to control that we're going to de-mystify gold and make it easier for anyone to buy it."
GOLD to go's ATM looks like a vending machine and dispenses gold coins and bars weighing up to one ounce at prices updated every 10 minutes based on the real-time spot price of gold.
ATM-owners can choose from a variety of other gold items, such as gold Canadian maple leaf coins, South African Krugerrands, and even some custom designs. For example, the special edition gold medallion it engraved with the Palace Hotel's logo was created for the United Arab Emirate debut.
Video
See the gold-vending machine in action
Earlier this month, gold prices hit an all time high of nearly $1,250 per ounce, and the precious metal has continued to climb as euro zone countries struggle with debt and investors worry that the region's problems could spread globally.
Until this uncertainty in the market eases, the demand for gold will only grow, said Carlos Sanchez, a precious metals analyst at CPM Group.
"[The ATM] is just a reflection of the demand from consumers and investors for exposure to gold," he said. "As long as prices continue to trend upward and investors remain concerned over economic and political conditions, I think we'll keep seeing strong demand for safe-haven assets like gold."
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The Scientific American Magazine is unique of its kind in the world. It contains lots of scientific articles, blogs, photo galleries, multimedia presentations, etc. The current issue (June 2010) contains multi-media presentation about 12 events that will change everything. It states:
“Key Concepts
- Several events, both natural and man-made, can happen suddenly and at any time, completely transforming societies.
- Many of these events will not unfold the way popular conceptions have imagined they will.
The best science transforms our conception of the universe and our place in it and helps us to understand and cope with changes beyond our control. Relativity, natural selection, germ theory, heliocentrism and other explanations of natural phenomena have remade our intellectual and cultural landscapes. The same holds true for inventions as diverse as the Internet, formal logic, agriculture and the wheel.
What dramatic new events are in store for humanity? Here we contemplate 12 possibilities and rate their likelihood of happening by 2050. Some will no doubt bring to mind long-standing dystopian visions: extinction-causing asteroid collisions, war-waging intelligent machines, Frankenstein’s monster. Yet the best thinking today suggests that many events will not unfold as expected. In fact, a scenario could be seen as sobering and disappointing to one person and curious and uplifting to another. One thing is certain: they all have the power to forever reshape how we think about ourselves and how we live our lives.”
You may open the multimedia link here.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=interactive-12-events&sc=WR_20100527
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Another multimedia presentation of interest is
8 Wonders of the Solar System, Made Interactive
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=8-wonders
What might future explorers of the solar system see? Find out by taking an interactive tour through the eyes of Hugo Award-winning artist Ron Miller. Text and narration by Ed Bell
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http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/06/06/uae.leaning.tower/index.html?hpt=Sbin
By the CNN Wire Staff
June 7, 2010 1:53 p.m. EDT
The Capital Gate building has been deliberately engineered to slant.
(CNN) -- Chalk another record to the United Arab Emirates' collection.
The Capital Gate building in the desert kingdom's capital, Abu Dhabi, has been certified by Guinness World Records as the "World's Furthest Leaning Man-made Tower."
How far does it lean? Nearly five times farther than the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy.
The 35-story Abu Dhabi building has an 18-degree slope, compared with four degrees for the freestanding bell tower.
But unlike the tower in Pisa, the Capital Gate building has been deliberately engineered to slant.
The floor plates are stacked vertically up to the 12th floor, after which they are staggered over each other by between 300 mm to 1,400 mm -- giving the tower its lean, the owners said.
"It is a signature building which speaks to the foresight of the emirate," said Sheikh Sultan Bin Tahnoon al Nahyan, the chairman of the building's owner, Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company.
The mixed-use building will be ready for occupancy at the end of the year. It is featured in a new National Geographic documentary, called "Megastructures."
In January, Dubai -- one of seven emirates that make up the UAE -- unveiled the world's tallest skyscraper: the $1.5 billion, 160-story Burj Khalifa, which has a height of more than 800 meters (2,625 ft).
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/technology/08apple.html?src=busln
By MIGUEL HELFT and JENNA WORTHAM
Published: June 7, 2010
SAN FRANCISCO — Seeking to fend off intensifying competition from Google and others in the smartphone business, Apple introduced a new version of the iPhone on Monday that includes a front-facing camera for video chats.
The iPhone 4 is faster and thinner than previous models, with a crisper display and a more angular look. It has a 5-megapixel camera and can shoot and edit high-definition video.
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
The iPhone 4 contains a gyroscope. Analysts say this will allow developers to add motion input to games and other applications.
“This is our new baby,” said Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, as he presented the phone during the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference here. “I hope you love it as much as we do.”
Analysts said the new phone came at an opportune moment for Apple. While previous versions of the device continue to sell briskly, buyers have been faced with an increasingly large array of attractive smartphones.
Some phones powered by Google’s Android software match and in some cases exceed the capabilities and speed of the iPhone 3GS, the most recent model.
The iPhone 4 should help Apple re-establish its leadership, some analysts said.
“When it ships, it will be the best smartphone on the market,” said Tim Bajarin, an analyst with Creative Strategies, who has been following Apple for nearly three decades. “It gives Apple a year’s lead on competitors, if not more.”
A Google spokesman, Mike Nelson, declined to comment on the new phone.
The iPhone 4, priced at $199 for a model with 16 gigabytes of storage or $299 for one with 32 gigabytes with a two-year contract, will go on sale June 24 in the United States and four other countries. Apple plans an aggressive international rollout after that; Mr. Jobs said the phone would be on sale in 88 countries by September.
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Steven P. Jobs, Apple's chief executive, demonstrated the video chatting capabilities of the iPhone 4 in a presentation on Monday
While the iPhone 4 was greeted with cheers by the loyal Apple developers in the hall, Mr. Jobs’s presentation included few surprises. Some of the secrets of the iPhone 4 were revealed after a prototype, apparently left behind in a bar by an Apple engineer, ended up in the hands of reporters for the technology blog Gizmodo, which published details of the device’s hardware.
And Mr. Jobs did not introduce a new version of the Apple TV device or announce that the iPhone would be available on Verizon Wireless, despite speculation on technology blogs that he might do so.
Analysts and developers were particularly impressed by the iPhone’s video chat feature, called FaceTime. For now, however, chats can be conducted only with other iPhone 4 owners, and only over Wi-Fi networks. Mr. Jobs said Apple would work with carriers to bring video chats to cellphone networks.
“I think video chat is going to be something that really differentiates the iPhone from other devices,” said Charles Wolf, an analyst with Needham & Company.
The phone includes a new high-resolution display and is powered by Apple’s A4 chip, the same microprocessor that is in the iPad tablet computer. And Mr. Jobs said the phone’s battery life had been improved.
At 9.3 millimeters, it is 24 percent thinner than the iPhone 3GS, and Mr. Jobs called it “the thinnest smartphone on the planet.” A gyroscope inside the iPhone 4 will allow developers to add new motion input to games and other applications.
Much of Mr. Jobs’s presentation was dedicated to demonstrating how the new iPhone would work with the next version of Apple’s mobile operating system, now called iOS 4, which will be made available free to current iPhone owners.
There were signs of Apple’s intensifying rivalry with Google. At one point, Mr. Jobs showed an e-mail message from a developer who said that he had made more money in the first day of sales of his iPad application than in five years of selling Google ads on his Web site.
Mr. Jobs also said existing ads that appeared in applications on the iPad and the iPhone, many of which are sold by Google-owned AdMob, were not good because clicking on them took people out of the apps and onto the Web.
Mr. Jobs said Apple’s new iAds system, which is built into iOS 4, would keep users inside the apps and allow them to go back easily to what they were doing.
He said that major advertisers, including Nissan, Target, Sears and Best Buy, had agreed to spend about $60 million on iAds in the second half of the year.
Analysts said the iPhone 4 should help Apple sustain its sales momentum, appealing both to new iPhone customers and to owners of the two-year-old iPhone 3G who were looking to upgrade. They also said that less expensive plans from AT&T, which put caps on the amount of data that users can consume, would help sell the iPhone 3GS, whose price will drop to $99.
“I think they are going to sell a lot of new subscriptions to people who have held back on buying a smartphone with a data plan,” said Charles S. Golvin, an analyst with Forrester Research.
Apple shares fell $5.02, or 1.96 percent, to close at $250.94 on Monday amid a broad market drop.
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http://www.pcworld.com/article/198171/hp_enables_remote_printing_via_an_email_address.html
Jeremy Kirk, IDG News
Forthcoming Hewlett-Packard printers that are priced at more than US$99 will let users print remotely using mobile phones and other wireless devices, without needing a traditional PC, the company announced on Monday.
By next year, more printing will be done from the Web than traditional PC-based word processing programs, a trend that has pushed HP toward developing Web-friendly printing services, said Vyomesh Joshi, head of the HP's Imaging and Printing Group (IPG), during a press event in New York.
HP's Inkjet and Laserjet lines along with other consumer and enterprise-level printers will have the capability, called ePrint, to print from Web-connected devices. Joshi said customers would not pay a "premium" for ePrint.
Each printer with the ePrint capability will be assigned its own e-mail address. If someone wants to print a document from an iPhone, the document will go to HP's data center, where it is rendered into the correct format, and then sent to the person's printer. The process takes about 25 seconds.
The advantage for consumers is that the process does not involve a PC. No drivers have to be installed, Joshi said. The ePrint feature works with mobile devices from Apple, such as the iPad and iPhone, plus Palm, Android and Microsoft smartphone platforms. HP's technology holds a special advantage for iPad users since the device does not have native printing capabilities.
HP envisions scenarios where consumers send photos directly to a printing shop or use their printers -- some of which have scanning capabilities -- to scan documents and load them into Web-based productivity suites such as Google Docs. Those documents could then be accessed and printed by someone else using an HP printer's touchscreen interface.
The printers will also be able to support third-party applications. Live Nation, for example, will have a customized application to print items such as concert tickets and logistical information.
Google is also interested in Web-based printing and is working on Cloud Print, expected to be released by the third quarter. The feature will be designed to offer printer dialog interfaces for Web applications that let users send content directly to a printer over the Internet.
That is particularly important for Google, as it plans a third-quarter release for its Chrome OS, a browser-based operating system that will heavily rely on Web services.
"We want to make it easy for developers to add print capabilities to applications with just a few lines of code," said Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management for Chrome who spoke at the HP event.
For example, a PDF (Portable Document Format) file could be opened in a Web-based viewer such as Google Docs, which would have a printer dialog box embedded. The document could then be sent to a remote HP ePrint printer via its e-mail address.
HP is also pushing a service called Scheduled Delivery, where people can set up a daily feed of content that will be printed at a regular time, such as news content from msnbc.com or kids' activities from Disney.
http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/hp-eprint-web-connected-printer-service-launches-07-06-201/
HP has also launched four new printers which are compatible with the service, and prices start at just $99,
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Additional links:
Video about new HP ePrint printer
http://h30429.www3.hp.com/?fr_story=946de0f1602dcf2c15848df6711229bdb410321d&rf=sitemap
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Brennon Slattery, PC World
Jun 9, 2010 10:47 am
Google search results are now fresher and faster, according the company that just gave its search indexing technology a jolt of Caffeine. On Tuesday Google announced an overhaul of its search indexing technology that it calls Caffeine.
Google claims Caffeine delivers 50 percent fresher search results. Google also notes that Caffeine signifies the "largest collection of web content we've offered." Caffeine is an under-the-hood alteration -- not an app -- that you won't see, and can't drink, but should feel.
How Fast is Fast?
Prior to Caffeine, Google's search index worked in batch processes. It'd sop up a site's data and add it to the index. "While this system was continuous, all the documents in the batch had to wait until the whole batch was processed to be pushed live. Now, when Google crawls a page, it processes that page through the entire indexing pipeline and pushes it live nearly instantly," Search Engine Land explained.
In terms of actual zoom, PCWorld conducted a side-by-side comparison test when Caffeine was still in development and found that results took 0.15 seconds on the regular Google search and 0.09 seconds on Caffeine. Since Caffeine is now live across all data centers, regions, and languages, it's hard to gauge the increase in speed.
How Big is Big?
"Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles," according to Carrie Grimes, a Google software engineer. That would put you back $155,625,000 (but with free shipping!).
The Impetus for Change
Because the Web has become so multifaceted and our expectations for the freshest results have risen, Google adapted to the evolution -- a fish that walks. "Content on the web is blossoming. It's growing not just in size and numbers but with the advent of video, images, news and real-time updates, the average webpage is richer and more complex," Grimes wrote.
Matt Cutts, the head of Google's webspam team, told ITWorld that our demands amplified from our collective need for the latest news about the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Google built Caffeine with "the future in mind" -- as always. Google is dedicated to progression, improving not only its origins in search but creating innovative products. "So stay tuned, and look for more improvements in the months to come," Grimes wrote. Will do!
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/27/x51_first_shot/
Boffins still 'ecstatic' after 3-minute strato-streak
By Lewis Page • Get more from this author
Posted in Space, 27th May 2010 10:21 GMT
US government aerospace agencies have achieved the world's first hypersonic scramjet flight using hydrocarbon fuel. The test did not go perfectly, but further flights will follow; organisers said they were "ecstatic" with progress thus far.
Shockwave riding supersonic-combustion-ramjet hypersonic hotness.
The X-51A "Waverider" craft was dropped from a modified B-52 bomber test mothership 50,000 feet above Point Mugu sea firing range off the California coast at about 6pm last night UK time (10am local). Four seconds later a rocket booster taken from a tactical missile fired, accelerating the Waverider to Mach 4.5 before being jettisoned. The airframe doesn't work like a normal aeroplane: it actually surfs on the sonic shockwaves trailing back from its nose, hence its name.
The hypersonic X-51A ignited, burning a mixture of ethylene and JP-7 jet fuel, and once well alight switched over to all-jetfuel operation. Normal turbojets can't operate at hypersonic speeds; the Waverider is a ramjet, whose intake air is simply scooped in at the front due to its speed rather than being crammed in by compressor blades.
But normal ramjets have to slow that air down to subsonic speed inside themselves so as to avoid blowing out the flame in their combustion chamber. This limits them to a top speed of perhaps Mach 3.5. The Waverider, though, is a scramjet - a supersonic combustion ramjet - which lets the air blow through it supersonically. It is thought by its designers to be capable of burning for 300 seconds to reach Mach 6.
The X-51A didn't fulfil that potential yesterday, however. Having lit up it burned for around 200 seconds, reaching approximately Mach 5 and climbing to 70,000 feet. According to a statement issued by Boeing (whose Phantom Works plant built the Waverider):
Something then occurred that caused the vehicle to lose acceleration. At that point, the X-51A was terminated as planned.
It's possible to speculate that the flame in the Waverider's SJY61 scramjet, built by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, simply blew out. Project officials are still happy with the test, and seem confident that they will be able to achieve the designed speed before running out of test craft - there are three more.
"We are ecstatic to have accomplished most of our test points on the X-51A's very first hypersonic mission," said Charlie Brink, X-51A honcho at the US Air Force Research Laboratory.
"No test is perfect," he added. "But anyone will tell you that we learn just as much, if not more, when we encounter a glitch."
If they can sort it, we may see Son of Blackbird (SR-71) return
The test is significant aerospace news, as it is the first hypersonic flight by a hydrocarbon-fuelled scramjet as opposed to one running on hydrogen. Hydrogen scramjets have achieved Mach 10, but they are less likely to develop into practical aerospace craft as hydrogen is bulky and difficult to store in large quantities. Any hydrogen-fuelled aircraft, missile etc would be almost entirely fuel tank.
The technologies in the Waverider, however, might see the appearance of hypersonic missiles in the near future, able to travel huge distances quickly and close in on their targets so fast they would be almost impossible to defend against.
In the longer term, those involved in the X-51A hope that it might give birth to new and impressive aerospace craft. Brink, for instance, has speculated in the past that it might be possible to get the scramjet to fire up initially at speeds low enough to be reached by regular afterburning turbojets rather than booster rockets.
This would open up the prospect of a plane able to take off from a runway and accelerate to scramjet ignition speed using jets, then switch into scramjet mode and surge forward into the hypersonic regime. This would essentially be a modern, hypersonic update of the legendary SR-71 Cold War turbo/ramjet spyplane, the famous Mach-3.5 "Blackbird".
Military crazytech agency DARPA (partnered with the airforce lab on X-51A) tried to get funding for such a super-Blackbird - dubbed "Blackswift" - a couple of years back but sceptical Washington politicos refused to fund it, doubting that it could be built. Success for the Waverider might revive such ideas, however.
Mach 6 hypersonic turbo/scramjets running on regular jet fuel would be impressive enough. They might also serve in turn as stepping stones to still greater things.
Turbo/scram craft might be still further enhanced by the addition of a rocket mode. They would be able to take off from a runway, gain a lot of speed and height still burning air, and then make the final climb and acceleration to Mach-25 orbital velocity as rockets. The fact that they would need to carry significantly less oxidiser than conventional launch rockets might mean that they could get into space with a useful payload and not need to throw large parts of themselves away in the process; nor would there be the expense and trouble of pointing them vertically into the sky for launch as with today's space shuttles.
"This is a new world record," enthused Joe Vogel of Boeing, speaking of yesterday's X-51A flight. "[It] sets the foundation for several hypersonic applications, including access to space, reconnaissance, strike, global reach and commercial transportation."
It's probably a bit early to say most of that, but it will certainly be very interesting to see how the rest of the X-51A tests turn out. Scramjet enthusiasts may want to watch the recent vid on the Waverider below, offered by the Hypersonic Combined Test Force at Edwards airforce base. ®
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_spelling_bee
By LAUREN SAUSSER, Associated Press Writer Lauren Sausser, Associated Press Writer – Sat Jun 5, 9:15 am ET
WASHINGTON – Shantanu Srivatsa and Anamika Veeramani sat nervously, side by side on stage.
AP – Anamika Veeramani, 14, of North Royalton, Ohio, competes in the 2010 National Spelling Bee, before winning
Once again, an Indian-American was going to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee. It was just a matter of what word and what time on Friday.
Shantanu, 13, an eighth-grader from West Fargo, N.D., stepped to the microphone first and couldn't spell "ochidore."
Anamika — showing the cool demeanor she kept throughout — kept her hands behind her back and rattled off the correct letters for the medical term "stromuhr." She didn't crack a smile until the trophy was presented.
"It was too surreal," she said. "It was an amazing experience. I usually have a poker face, so that's what that was."
The 14-year-old girl from North Royalton, Ohio, won the 83rd bee, claiming the trophy and more than $40,000 in cash and prizes — some of which she says she intends to spend.
She also became the third consecutive Indian-American bee champion.
Indian-Americans comprise less than 1 percent of the U.S. population according to 2000 census data, but they have an impressive bee winning streak — taking the trophy in eight of the past 12 years.
"All of the past champions inspire me, they all have something different and they're all amazing people," Anamika said after the prime-time finals on Friday.
She survived the round by spelling "juvia" — a Brazil nut — and then had to sit through a tense 3 1/2-minute commercial before spelling the championship word.
"It was just really nerve-racking," Anamika said. "The commercial breaks didn't really help."
The finals were preceded by an unpopular move that had some spellers and parents claiming the bee was unfair and had kowtowed too much to television.
Concerned that there wouldn't be enough spellers left to fill the two-hour slot on ABC, organizers stopped the semifinals in the middle of a round Friday afternoon — and declared that the 10 spellers onstage would advance to the prime-time broadcast, including six who didn't have to spell a word in the interrupted round. Essentially, the alphabetical order of the U.S. states helped determine which spellers got to move on the marquee event.
It's one of the pitfalls of the growing popularity of the bee, which has to yield to the constraints of its television partners. There were 19 spellers left at the start of the round, which was too many for prime-time. But when the round turned out to be brutal — nine of the first 13 misspelled — ABC was on the verge of having too few.
"I don't feel bad at all for giving these children the opportunity," bee director Paige Kimble said. "Do I wish we could give it to 19? Yes, certainly, but that's not practical in a two-hour broadcast window. We know it's unpopular and we don't like to do it, but sometimes you can get into a position where that's exactly what you have to do."
The Indian-American winning streak began with Nupur Lala, a 2007 graduate of the University of Michigan, who became famous for her 1999 win after the 2002 release of the Academy Award-nominated documentary "Spellbound."
By then, George Abraham Thampy had won in 2000. Pratyush Buddiga took the title two years later. The streak continued through the decade: Sai Gunturi won in 2003, Anurag Kashyap in 2005, Sameer Mishra in 2008 and Kavya Shivashankar in 2009. Kavya, now 14, returned this year to watch her sister Vanya, 8, compete in her first national bee. She was eliminated before the televised semifinals.
After Kavya congratulated Anamika onstage, she said winning the bee has less to do with nationality and more to do with a passion for words.
"I can't really speak for other people, but, for me, it was just enjoying spelling," Kavya said.
Kavya's father, Mirle Shivashankar, was hesitant to draw any firm conclusions, but pointed out the chain of events can lead to one speller inspiring the next.
"Kavya's role model was Nupur Lala," Mirle Shivashankar said. "And now there are a lot of girls who look up to Kavya."
Anamika's father, Alagaiya Veeramani, a civil engineer, said he had no clue why Indian-Americans seem to do so well at the competition. He guessed it has something to do with a hard-work ethic.
"This has been her dream for a very, very long time. It's been a family dream, too," said Veeramani, explaining that his daughter studied as many as 16 hours on some days. "I think it has to do with an emphasis on education."
Anamika has yet to start high school, but already envisions attending Harvard University and becoming a cardiovascular surgeon. She also wants to spend more time golfing, dancing and writing.
All of which, she'll now have time to do. Spelling, at least competitively, is over for this eighth grader. Students are not eligible once they win the national competition.
"I've been doing spelling for such a long time. After eighth grade, there are no more spelling opportunities. It's kind of sad," she said.
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Associated Press Writer Joseph White contributed to this report.
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Additional Links:
* Scripps National Spelling Bee, USA
Official website
Scripps National Spelling Bee in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scripps_National_Spelling_Bee
* 2010 Scripps National Spelling Bee Competition Video
http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=5254335
*Merriam-Webster Spell It! practice words
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http://www.latimes.com/news/health/la-he-in-the-works-20100621,0,1401671,full.story
Gut bacteria may affect your weight
Don't go searching for a bacteria shake just yet — scientists are still investigating which bacteria do what in humans.
 Between 10 trillion and 100 trillion microbes, mainly bacteria, dwell in a person's colon and small intestine. (Alex Nabaum / For The Times) |
By Amber Dance, Special to the Los Angeles Times
June 21, 2010
Something in your gut could be making you fat — and it isn't just last night's pizza.
The vast, diverse community of microbes inhabiting the intestines, scientists are finding, can influence metabolism and weight.
Between 10 trillion and 100 trillion microbes, mainly bacteria, dwell in a person's colon and small intestine. They function together almost like another of the body's organs, influencing, among other things, how many calories we extract from our food and whether we make or burn fat. Researchers have discovered significant links between gut bacteria and weight and metabolism in mice — and are starting to find similar associations in people.
The story in humans is far from certain, though, and scientists say it's too soon to concoct microbe-filled "stay-slim" beverages — a fact that has not prevented some companies from promoting their bacteria-laden products as helpful for weight loss.
Bacteria that draw the maximum calories from our food would have been useful to our hunter-gatherer ancestors but are less beneficial for modern people eating an American fast-food diet. In addition to our ready access to high-calorie eats, the bacteria we carry around have changed, says Andrew Gewirtz, an immunologist at Emory University in Atlanta, through antibiotic use, improved hygiene and cleanliness in the food supply.
This, he believes, could be one environmental cause for obesity and related conditions such as diabetes.
On the whole, our gut bacteria are beneficial, says Ruth Ley, a microbial ecologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. They prevent disease-causing bacteria from taking hold in our body simply by filling up all the available space. And they help us digest foods, such as some starches, that we cannot break down ourselves, producing vitamins and energy sources we can use.
"You might just generally be sicklier without them," Ley says.
Babies are born bacteria-free but start to pick up bacteria during and after birth. Infants mostly collect bacteria from their mothers and others around them; in a sense, the gut community is inherited from family members. If the gut-obesity theory proved correct, that would suggest obesity risk could be passed along with them.
"If a person has changes in their gut bacteria — and that could be due to anything, to diet, to antibiotic use — if that person has kids, then they can transfer those gut bacteria and maybe transfer the problem," Gewirtz says.
Because people pick up different bacteria from their environments, people have different gut communities. For example, in a study published in the journal Nature in April, scientists reported that some Japanese people could digest compounds in nori, the seaweed in sushi, because they hosted the right bacteria for the job.
Every person carries at least 160 different kinds of gut bacteria, scientists estimated in another Nature study published in March. Most fall into two divisions, or phyla: the bacteroidetes and the firmicutes. Both of these groups are found in soil and water as well as in animals. Some cause disease, but many in the intestine are beneficial. The firmicutes, in particular, are good at digesting our food. The more firmicutes in a person's intestines, the more calories they can collect from a meal.
This is where the obesity link comes in.
In 2005, Ley and colleagues at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, where she worked at the time, studied the gut bacteria found in mice, hoping to use them as a model to study obesity. They compared normal, lean mice with ones that were genetically obese because they had a mutation in the hormone leptin, which normally controls appetite and metabolism.
As in people, the main intestinal inhabitants of mice were bacteroidetes and firmicutes. But the researchers discovered that obese and lean mice had different proportions of each. In particular, fat mice tended to have more firmicutes, and fewer bacteroidetes, in their guts than lean mice.
In another study, Ley and colleagues worked with sterile mice that have no gut bacteria. These mice eat a lot, but don't get fat, presumably because they don't have the bacteria to extract the full complement of calories from their food. But when the scientists transferred the bacteria from fat mice to bacteria-free mice, the recipient mice gained weight. This result, reported in a 2006 Nature paper, directly suggests there's something about the bacterial community in the obese mice that contributes to weight gain.
What about human beings? Ley and co-workers examined the proportion of firmicutes and bacteroidetes in 12 people, in a study they also reported in Nature in 2006. They examined bacteria samples from obese people as they followed a yearlong diet program. Before the diet, the subjects had more firmicutes and fewer bacteroidetes than healthy-weight people. As the year progressed and the dieting continued, the bacteroidetes numbers went up, and the firmicutes numbers went down.
In addition to squeezing every last available calorie out of the food we eat, bacteria can also influence metabolism by signaling the body to store fat or burn less of it, and slow down food moving through the intestine so there is more time to collect calories.
The exact nature of the bacterial signals that influence metabolism is unclear, but in a March article published in the journal Science, Gewirtz and his colleagues reported that bacteria can cause inflammation that alters appetite and weight.
Normally, the immune system and gut bacteria maintain a kind of peace, Gewirtz says. But the mutant mice in this experiment were not normal: They lacked a protein needed to keep bacteria in the intestine where they belong, and out of the bloodstream. In these mice, gut bacteria leak out of the intestines and cause inflammation as the immune system responds to the intruders.
That inflammation, the scientists found, altered the body's sensitivity to insulin, a hormone that normally suppresses appetite and regulates blood sugar and fat storage. With the insulin system out of whack, the brain doesn't receive the crucial "I'm full! Put the fork down!" signal it needs to stop us chowing down.
This, in turn, led to a sort of "pre-diabetes" condition in the mice — and by the time they were 20 weeks old, they weighed approximately 5 grams more than normal animals.
Gewirtz's team took the bacteria from the fattened mice and transplanted them into sterile, nonmutant mice. These mice then gained weight. Again, it seemed like just having the wrong bacteria can pack on the pounds.
Scientists have plenty of data that gut bacteria affect weight in mice, but their understanding of the effects in humans remains hazy. For example, not all human studies have shown that firmicutes go hand-in-hand with obesity in people, cautions Margaret Zupancic, a microbial genomicist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.
In part, that is because it's much more difficult to study people in a carefully controlled way. People, after all, are out and about in the world and have a variety of food and exercise regimes, unlike genetically similar mice living in identical cages eating identical mouse chow.
Another fact hampering scientific study is that intestinal bacteria are difficult to grow in a laboratory setting. Thus, scientists must study the entire community from stool samples and try their best to figure out from those which bacteria serve specific functions.
To get a better handle on the human situation, Zupancic and others are now working with people in a variety of settings, collecting stool samples to further analyze the human gut community and how it interacts with our genetics and lifestyles.
If certain bacterial communities do cause obesity in people, replacing the bad bacteria with the good ones seems like a possible route to weight loss. The idea is not wholly unprecedented. Doctors occasionally treat debilitating diarrhea with a transplant of bacteria from healthy stool, for example. And there is certainly evidence that products called probiotics (see the sidebar) may improve health via a spoonful or swig of bacteria-laden foods. Even simply changing your diet might sway the bacterial community in a different direction, Ley says.
Next steps
Gewirtz says that someday it might be possible to swap obesity-linked bacteria for skinny-jean microbes. But scientists caution that a nice bacterial cocktail is not the next big weight-loss drink.
For one thing, they don't yet know what bacteria to use if they were to try and concoct such a drink. It is difficult to sort out the relationships between all the factors that lead to obesity, including diet, exercise, genetics — and now, possibly, bacterial inhabitants.
And then, for a bacterial-replacement therapy to really work, doctors would first need a way to get rid of less desirable bacteria already in residence in someone's gastrointestinal tract. The right combination of antibiotics might do the job, Gewirtz says, but there are no well-defined methods for creating such a treatment.
Some companies, meanwhile, already are claiming that the right probiotics can slim you down. This month, researchers from the Japanese company Snow Brand Milk Products reported that people who drank a probiotic milk drink for 12 weeks lost weight. For their study, published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, they offered the probiotic drink or a bacteria-free concoction to 87 people. The subjects were slightly heavy, with an average BMI (body mass index) of 24.2. (A BMI of 25 and above is considered to be overweight.)
Over the course of the study, people drinking the probiotic lost an average of 1.5% of their BMI and, on average, 1.4% of their body weight.
That's about 2 pounds for a 150-pound person.
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/fiber-health-the-super-fi_b_594153.html
 | ||
Practicing physician and pioneer in functional medicine
Posted: May 29, 2010 08:30 AM
Imagine eating 12 pounds of food a day -- and still staying thin and healthy. That may sound crazy, but it's exactly what our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate for millennia! And they didn't have any obesity or chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, cancer, or dementia.
Of course, I wouldn't advise anyone today to eat 12 pounds of food, because the food in our society lacks one major secret ingredient that our ancestors ate in nearly all their food -- fiber!
Fiber has so many health benefits that I want to focus on it in this week's blog. I'll explain some of its benefits and give you nine tips you can begin using today to get more fiber in your diet. I'll also tell you about my favorite "super-fiber" that can help you increase your total fiber intake overnight.
But before I tell you about what fiber can do for you, let's a look a little more at the history of fiber.
Why Bushmen are Healthier than the Average Westerner
Dr. Dennis Burkitt, a famous English physician, studied the differences between indigenous African bushmen and their "civilized" western counterparts. The bushmen seemed to be free of the scourges of modern life -- including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity.
Dr. Burkitt found that the average bushman had a stool weight of two pounds and the "civilized" men had a stool weight of only four ounces - that's 87.5 percent smaller! The difference was in the amount of fiber they ate.
Today, the average American eats about 8 grams of fiber a day. But the average hunter and gatherer ate 100 grams from all manner of roots, berries, leaves and plant foods. And the fiber is what helped those ancestors of ours stay healthy. Just take a look at all the good things that fiber can do for your body.
You need fiber to keep you healthy from top to bottom, as well as to provide food for the healthy bacteria that work within you to promote health.
In fact, fiber can actually prevent obesity(i) and all the chronic disease of aging. This is because fiber slows the rate at which food enters your bloodstream and increases the speed at which food exits your body through the digestive tract. (ii) That keeps your blood sugar and cholesterol in ideal balance -- and quickly eliminates toxins from your gut and reduces your appetite,
There's good science to back this up. Research shows that fiber can lower blood sugar as much as some diabetes medications,(iii) lower cholesterol(iv), and promote weight loss.(v)
It's clear, fiber is a great ally in the battle of the bulge.
But it's also a hero in more serious battles.
For example, one recent study showed how butyrate made by gut bacteria from certain types of fiber acts as a switching molecule that turns on an anticancer gene -- and turns OFF colon cancer. In fact, fiber has been shown to reduce the risk of colon cancer by as much as a third and breast cancer by almost 40 percent.
It also lowers cholesterol and reduces the risk of heart disease by as much as 40 percent.(vi) And if you have diabetes, adding fiber to your diet may even help you use less insulin. Plus, it's a great natural cure for constipation and irregularity.(vii)
Now that you know how beneficial it is, let's look at how you can begin taking advantage of fiber's health benefits.
Getting Enough Daily Fiber
You should shoot to get 30 to 50 grams of fiber into your diet every day.(viii) The type of fiber you choose is important, too.
Most people think that bran is the best type of fiber to eat. But bran (wheat fiber) is mostly insoluble and doesn't get digested. Think of it as more of a scouring pad for your intestines. That's good for getting you regular, but it just can't help your health the way that soluble fiber can.
You'll find soluble fiber in fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, seeds and most whole grains. The bacteria in your gut metabolizes the soluble fiber in these foods, and that's when the benefits start.
Soluble fiber can help lower cholesterol, blood sugar, and insulin, prevent cancer, balance hormone levels, remove excess estrogen and reduce the risk of breast cancer, make vitamins and minerals, provide food for the colon cells, and more. So it's easy to see just how crucial soluble fiber is to good heath!
In just a minute, I'm going to tell you how to increase your fiber intake. But first, I want to tell you about some recent discoveries regarding an ancient fiber source that can help you lose weight, lower your cholesterol, reduce your appetite and lower your blood sugar more effectively than ANY other fiber. It's called glucomannan, but I call it super fiber!
Glucomannan: The Benefits of Super Fiber
Glucomannan (GM) is a soluble, fermentable, and highly viscous dietary fiber that comes from the root of the elephant yam, also known as konjac (Amorphophallus konjac or Amorphophallus rivieri), native to Asia. The konjac tuber has been used for centuries as an herbal remedy and to make traditional foods such as konjac jelly, tofu, and noodles. More recently, purified konjac flour, or GM, has been used as a food stabilizer, gelling agent, and supplement.
What makes this fiber so super is the fact that it can absorb up to 50 times its weight in water -- making it one of the most viscous dietary fibers known.
That means that GM can help you shed pounds. In many studies, doses of two to four grams of GM per day were well-tolerated.(ix),(x) This amount also resulted in significant weight loss in overweight and obese individuals.(xi)
GM works by promoting a sense of fullness.(xii),(xiii) Plus, it pushes more calories out through your colon, rather than letting them be absorbed.(xiv) It also lowers the energy density of the food you eat. In other words, it bulks up food in your gut -- creating a lower calorie content per weight of food you eat.(xv)
And since fiber has almost no calories but a lot of weight, adding it to your diet lowers the energy-to-weight ratio of the food that you eat. Studies show that the weight of food controls your appetite, so the fiber increases the food's weight WITHOUT increasing calories -- a critical factor in weight control.
This powerful fiber may also control your appetite in other key ways.
For example, it sends signals to your brain that there is a lot of food in your gut and tells it to slow down on stuffing food in there.
GM also leaves your stomach and small bowel slowly because it is so viscous. By slowing the rate of food absorption from the gut to the bloodstream, GM reduces the amount of insulin produced after a meal, which also controls your appetite.
It may also increase the level of hormones in the gut (such as cholecystokinin), which is another way to control your appetite.(xvi)
And finally, you lose more calories through stool because GM soaks up all those extra calories!
GM can also help your health in other ways. In addition to weight reduction, GM has been studied for its effects on constipation, serum cholesterol,(xvii) blood glucose,(xviii) blood pressure,(xix) and insulin resistance syndrome.(xx)
With all those benefits, there's no doubt you should eat more fiber. No, you probably won't be eating 12 pounds of food like your ancestors did! But you can increase your fiber intake, just by being smart about what you eat. Here are some simple suggestions for increasing fiber in your diet.
9 Tips for Increasing the Fiber in Your Diet
1. Get the flax. Get a coffee grinder just for flax seeds, grind 1/2 cup at a time, and keep it in a tightly sealed glass jar in the fridge or freezer. Eat 2 tablespoons of ground flax seeds a day. Sprinkle it on salads, grains, or vegetable dishes or mix it in a little unsweetened applesauce.
2. Load up on legumes. Beans beat out everything else for fiber content!
3. Bulk up on vegetables. With low levels of calories and high levels of antioxidants and protective phytochemicals, these excellent fiber sources should be heaped on your plate daily.
4. Go with the grain. Whole grains like brown rice or quinoa are rich in fiber, too.
5. Eat more fruit. Include a few servings of low-sugar fruits to your diet daily (berries are the highest in fiber and other protective phytochemicals).
6. Go nuts. Include a few handfuls of almonds, walnuts, pecans, or hazelnuts to your diet every day.
7. Start slowly. Switching abruptly to a high-fiber diet can cause gas and bloating. Increase your fiber intake slowly till you get up to 50 grams a day.
8. Consider a good fiber supplement. If you're have trouble getting your fill of fiber, choose a supplement that contains both soluble and insoluble fiber and no sweeteners or additives.
9. Choose GM. By now, you know that my favorite kind is glucomannan (GM), or konjac. Many companies sell it in capsule form. Although I don't normally recommend specific brands, I like the one produced by Natural Factors called WellBetX. You can take 2 to 4 capsules with a glass of water, 30 to 60 minutes before eating. Don't take any medications within 1 hour before or 2 hours after taking it because the fiber may absorb the medication.
As you can see, fiber has big benefits for your health -- from encouraging weight loss to preventing chronic diseases. I hope you'll start adding more of this important compound into your diet today!
To your good health,
Mark Hyman, M.D.
Mark Hyman, M.D. practicing physician and founder of The UltraWellness Center is a pioneer in functional medicine. Dr. Hyman is now sharing the 7 ways to tap into your body's natural ability to heal itself. You can follow him on Twitter, connect with him on LinkedIn, watch his videos on Youtube and become a fan on Facebook.
Follow Mark Hyman, MD on Twitter: www.twitter.com/markhymanmd
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Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University
Varanasi 221005, UP