Can an App Improve Vision?

The Ache: In presbyopia, the eye's lens loses elasticity with age. The ability to focus on near objects deteriorates, resulting in the need for reading glasses.

The Claim: A 12-week, scientifically tested training program, newly available as an iPhoneapp, uses a technique called perceptual learning to reduce—or even eliminate—the need for reading glasses.

The Verdict: A 30-person study published in February 2012 in the journal Scientific Reports found that after trying the program—now on sale as an iPhone app calledGlassesOff GLSO -4.62% —participants on average could read letters 1.6 times smaller than they could previously. The program is much more likely to show improvement in adults 40 to 60 years old, scientists say.

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5 Health Tech Trends to Watch in 2014

2013 was a big year for consumer health technology. According to mobile tech consultancy Research2Guidance, there are now close to 100,000 mobile health apps in 62 app stores, with the top 10 apps generating over 4 million free downloads every day.

This year also saw increased adoption of wearable tech, such as the Nike+ FuelBand and Fitbit — a market that is expected to grow to 100 million units by the end of 2014.

So if 2013 was the year of wearables and health apps, what’s on tap for next year? Here are five exciting health tech trends to keep an eye on for the new year.

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What Does the Spleen Do?

Snacking Your Way to Better Health

The more often nuts were consumed, the less likely participants were to die of cancer, heart disease and respiratory disease, and not because nut eaters succumbed to other diseases. Their death rate from any cause was lower during the years they were followed. (The nuts in question were pistachios, almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, hazelnuts, macadamias, pecans, pine nuts, peanuts and walnuts.)

Those who ate nuts seven or more times a week were 20 percent less likely to die from 1980 to 2010; even among those who consumed nuts less often than once a week, the death rate was 11 percent lower than for those who did not eat them.

I know what you’re thinking: Aren’t nuts fattening? Yes, an ounce of nuts has 160 to 200 calories, nearly 80 percent from fat.

But in study after study, the more often people ate nuts, the leaner they tended to be.

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Your Contact Lens Might Someday Dispense Eye Drugs

Promising results in animal studies show they've delivered glaucoma meds continuously for a month

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Wasps and honeybees can remember individual faces

This blog is amazing for all who are fascinated by science... and this is an example of an article from it....
Uvealblues

When these insects view an individual (be it another insect or the person who just pissed them off by swinging a newspaper at them), their field of vision is broken up into hexagons from the thousands of ommatidia that make up the compound eye. Essentially, they process information based on these chunks from the structures in the eye that act as individual units and put the entire picture together. It might not be very clear compared to what we are used to since they don't have a pupil to regulate the amount of light coming in onto the retina, but it is good enough to allow wasps and bees to discern prominent facial features that can be used for identification. - 

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Photo credit: Hectonichus

Nelson Mandela and Freedom

Siri the Would Be Photographer

Most of you don’t know I grew up in Cupertino. Yep, graduated Cupertino High School class of 1970 (Go Pioneers!) Lived in Cupertino back when the big business in town was Mariani Brothers dried fruits. I had the pleasure of visiting again recently, and some of my Apple friends took me over to nearby Santa Cruz to show off some new photographic functions they’ve been working on. Here’s how it went:

Me: Siri, take a picture.

Siri: Here Thawm, I've found 242 things to take a picture of.

Me: Take a picture of the sunset.

Siri: Sure. Take a picture of the sunset. What would you like me to do with the dog in front of the camera?

Me: Silhouette the dog

For more--go to thegearophile.com  link

Malcolm Gladwell on the Advantages of Disadvantages

In his new bestseller, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, Malcolm Gladwell looks at what happens when ordinary people confront powerful opponents. He starts the book by dissecting the classic tale of David and Goliath, challenging our beliefs about what the story tells us regarding underdogs and giants, and ultimately, our fundamental assumptions about power.

Wharton management professor Adam M. Grant recently interviewed Gladwell about his new book when he visited campus as a guest lecturer in the Authors@Wharton series. Gladwell shared why he never roots for the underdog, where he comes up with the ideas for his books and sets the record straight on the biggest misunderstandings about his work.

An edited transcript of the conversation follows.

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The Most Commonly Awarded Grade at Harvard Is an A

Harvard students are enjoying some extreme grade inflation.
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13 Scientific Reasons To Drink Coffee

Coffee is actually very healthy. It is loaded with antioxidants and beneficial nutrients that can improve your health.

The studies show that coffee drinkers have a much lower risk of several serious diseases. Here are the top 13

Read more: http://authoritynutrition.com/top-13-evidence-based-health-benefits-of-coffee/#ixzz2lijmk0vC

This Insane 3-D Printed Toothbrush Cleans Your Teeth In Just Six Seconds

Brushing your teeth is one of those pesky but important tasks that too many people skimp on--it's just so easy to brush for a couple seconds and wait for the consequences to set in later. A new 3-D-printed toothbrush, designed by dentists and engineers, can supposedly clean your teeth in just six seconds. It's almost too convenient to believe.
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Sweat Your Way To A Healthier Brain

Moving your body may be the best way to protect your brain.
Physical exercise can ease depression, slow age-related memory loss and prevent Parkinson-like symptoms, researchers reported at the Society for Neuroscience meeting underway in San Diego.
The findings — some in animals, some in people — suggest that people may be making a mistake if they're relying primarily on crossword puzzles and brain-training games for mental wellness.

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New Study Shows Brain Benefits Of Bilingualism

The largest study so far to ask whether speaking two languages might delay the onset of dementia symptoms in bilingual patients as compared to monolingual patients has reported a robust result. Bilingual patients suffer dementia onset an average of 4.5 years later than those who speak only a single language.
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Only when I read the research report itself, though, published in the journal Neurology and written by Suvarna Alladi and 7 co-authors, did I realize fully the brilliance of conducting this study in Hyderabad, India.
That choice of location, I believe, lends extra credibility to the study's results.
Here's why. India, as the researchers note, is a nation of linguistic diversity. In the Hyderabad region, a language called Telugu is spoken by the majority Hindu group, and another called Dakkhini by the minority Muslim population. Hindi and English are also commonly spoken in formal contexts, including at school. Most people who grow up in the region, then, are bilingual, and routinely exposed to at least three languages.
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The sounds of multiple languages swirling around me when I visit New York or Paris are enchanting, and I enjoy discussing with bilinguals the claims that switching between languages allows different personality traits to emerge within a single individual.
Being bilingual opens up new worlds of global connection and understanding, and almost certainly allows some degree of flexibility in personal expression, too.
Now we know, more concretely and convincingly than before, that there's a brain benefit to bilingualism, too.
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How Incredibly Lazy People Can Form Productive Habits

If you want to change your behavior but not try that hard, then pay attention to the friction involved.
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That focus on friction is something that leaders understand. President Obama, for instance, keeps a deliberately minimalist wardrobe, as he unpacked to Vanity Fair:

"You'll see I wear only gray or blue suits," [Obama] said. "I'm trying to pare down decisions. I don't want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make." He mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one’s ability to make further decisions. It’s why shopping is so exhausting. "You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can't be going through the day distracted by trivia."

The takeaway, then: rather than spending your energy on trivia, invest it in deep work or other productive habits--which reducing friction helps us do.

Harvard Yoga Scientists Find Proof of Meditation Benefit

Scientists are getting close to proving what yogis have held to be true for centuries -- yoga and meditation can ward off stress and disease.
John Denninger, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, is leading a five-year study on how the ancient practices affect genes and brain activity in the chronically stressed. His latest work follows a study he and others published earlier this year showing how so-called mind-body techniques can switch on and off some genes linked to stress and immune function.
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Unlike earlier studies, this one is the first to focus on participants with high levels of stress. The study published in May in the medical journal PloS One showed that one session of relaxation-response practice was enough to enhance the expression of genes involved in energy metabolism and insulin secretion and reduce expression of genes linked to inflammatory response and stress. There was an effect even among novices who had never practiced before.

Harvard isn’t the only place where scientists have started examining the biology behind yoga.

In a study published last year, scientists at the University of California at Los Angeles and Nobel Prize winner Elizabeth Blackburn found that 12 minutes of daily yoga meditation for eight weeks increased telomerase activity by 43 percent, suggesting an improvement in stress-induced aging. Blackburn of the University of California, San Francisco, shared the Nobel medicine prize in 2009 with Carol Greider and Jack Szostak for research on the telomerase “immortality enzyme,” which slows the cellular aging process.

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How Doctors Die: Showing Others the Way

BRAVE. You hear that word a lot when people are sick. It’s all about the fight, the survival instinct, the courage. But when Dr. Elizabeth D. McKinley’s family and friends talk about bravery, it is not so much about the way Dr. McKinley, a 53-year-old internist from Cleveland, battled breast cancer for 17 years. It is about the courage she has shown in doing something so few of us are able to do: stop fighting.
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The Power of Quiet

via Fast Company

Your face may have been sculpted by junk DNA

Even the prettiest faces are built using junk. In mice, the shapes of the face and skull are finely tuned by junk DNA, so called because it was initially thought to lack function since it doesn't encode proteins. The same junk DNA sequences are found in humans, so they are probably also shaping our faces.

This finding could help us make sense of some congenital conditions, such as cleft palates, that can develop even when the genes that shape the face appear to be working normally

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Slow metabolism 'obesity excuse' true

The mocked "obesity excuse" of being born with a slow metabolism is actually true for some people, say researchers.

A team at the University of Cambridge has found the first proof that mutated DNA does indeed slow metabolism.

The researchers say fewer than one in 100 people are affected and are often severely obese by early childhood.

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