Molecular computer mimics human brain

Processor can solve complex problems, even heal itself

A superthin computer just two molecules thick can solve complex problems and, somewhat like the human brain, can evolve to improve and perform many operations simultaneously.

This molecular processor can also heal itself if there is a defect, researchers added.

Modern computers operate at staggering speeds, capable of carrying out more than 10 trillion instructions per second. However, they generally perform operations in sequence, one thing at a time. 

Brain cells or neurons, fire "only" 1,000 times per second or so, but the fact that millions of them simultaneously work in parallel means they can complete tasks more efficiently than even the fastest supercomputer.

The connections between neurons also evolve over time, growing stronger or weaker as the brain works out the best way to solve problems. In this way, such networks can learn over time.

A molecular computer
Now an international research team from Japan and the United States has created a computer just two molecules thick that can replicate these traits of the human brain to a certain extent.

The building block of this computer is an organic compound known as 2,3-dichloro-5,6-dicyano-p-benzoquinone, or DDQ for short. This molecule can basically switch between four different electrically conductive states — think of a ring with four spokes.

The scientists deposited molecules of DDQ onto a surface of gold, which then spontaneously assembled into two layers, each a hexagonal grid of molecules.

The researchers next used the electrically charged tip of a scanning tunneling microscope to individually set molecules in the top layer to a desired state, essentially writing data into the system. (A scanning tunneling microscope operates somewhat like a blind person's fingers do with Braille writing — moving over a surface to detect microscopic bumps and valleys.)

Each molecule could wirelessly interact with its neighbors via their electric fields. These molecules continuously exchanged information in the form of electrons among themselves, at times causing molecules around them to change states. This is similar to how electricity flowing down wires makes transistors in microchips switch back and forth to encode data as ones or zeroes.

The results were patterns such as lines, triangles, hexagons and rhombuses, where each molecule within is set to a certain state.

Massively parallel Altogether, at least 300 molecules in the system interact together like a massively parallel computer, each changing states when data is written into the system. The patterns or "cellular automata" that result among the molecules function much like circuits on chips to direct the flow of electricity. The difference is that in this system, the patterns can evolve over time as new data is entered.

Also, like the brain but unlike other existing manmade computers, this new system can heal itself because the molecules that make up the computer can automatically reorganize themselves.

"This is brain-like computing," said researcher Ranjit Pati, a physicist at Michigan Technological University.

To probe the molecular computer's power, the researchers used it to successfully simulate two natural phenomena: the way heat diffuses through a material, and the way cancers grow in the body.

In principle, this new computer could also serve as a means to solve problems that conventional computers find too hard to tackle, "intractable problems that are considered impossible to finish within a finite time," explained lead researcher Anirban Bandyopadhyay, a physicist at the Japanese National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba.

These might include predicting the behavior of systems with many interacting bodies — anything from disease outbreaks to the evolution of galaxies, Michigan's Pati said.

One important weakness of the system is how it depends on scanning tunneling microscopy, which is a slow process. In the future, it may be possible to use multiple tips to simultaneously scan many molecules at one time, Pati suggested.

Since these molecules assemble themselves into grids, scaling them up to a larger system will not be a problem. The team's next target is a computer employing 1,000 molecular switches.

 

Depressed? You must like chocolate

New study finds marked association between depression, eating chocolate

CHICAGO - People who are depressed eat more chocolate than people who are not, U.S. researchers said on Monday, in a study that puts numbers behind the link between mood and chocolate.

They said people who were depressed ate an average of 8.4 servings of chocolate per month, compared with 5.4 servings among those who were not.

And people who had major depression based on results of a screening test ate even more — 11.8 servings per month. A serving was considered to be one small bar, or 1 ounce (28 grams), of chocolate.

Depressed mood was significantly related to higher chocolate consumption," Dr. Natalie Rose of the University of California, Davis, and University of California, San Diego, and colleagues wrote in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Many people consider chocolate a mood-booster but few studies have actually confirmed the connection between the confection and mood. And most studies have looked only at women.

Rose and colleagues studied the relationship between chocolate and mood among 931 women and men who were not using antidepressants. People in the study reported how much chocolate they consumed and most also completed a food frequency questionnaire about their overall diet.

Their moods were assessed using a commonly used depression scale. What they found was a marked association between chocolate consumption and depression. And unlike other studies that looked only at women, the link was true of both men and women.

Depression may stimulate cravings
What the study could not say was why people who are depressed eat more chocolate.

It could be that depression stimulates chocolate cravings, and people eat chocolate as a sort of self treatment, confirming some studies on rats that suggest chocolate can improve mood, the authors said.

Or, it could be that depression may stimulate chocolate cravings for some other reason without providing any mood benefit. People in the study did not have any such "treatment benefit" from chocolate, the team said.

And they said it may be that eating a lot of chocolate actually causes people to feel depressed, another possible explanation for the association they saw in the study.

It may be something physiological about chocolate, such as providing additional antioxidants. Or the mood-boosting effect of chocolate could be fleeting, like the temporary euphoria from drinking alcohol, leaving people feeling even lower after the brief euphoria has passed.

"Distinguishing among these possibilities will require different study designs," the team said.

They said future studies will be needed to determine whether chocolate is a cause of depression, or a temporary salve.

 

Weekend calories may wreck your diet

Weigh yourself before and after to stay on track

Calorie counting can be tricky, because calories can be sneaky things. Sometimes they hide in portion sizes that mislead us. Other times they're lurking in beverages that we gulp down without thinking. Now, a new study shows that unexpected calories can be a consequence not only of what we're eating and drinking, but also what day it is. And for dieters who aren't counting calories carefully on the weekend, a week of healthy eating can be wrecked before Monday morning.

The detailsA pair of marketing professors from the University of Pittsburgh and Quinnipiac University in Connecticut examined data collected in 1998 and 1999 by a market-research firm on the eating habits of roughly 600 men and women. Each participant kept track of the foods eaten by everyone in their household over a two-week period. The professors analyzed the data and found that people tended to eat more on weekends than they did during the week — particularly at breakfast, when they likely had more time to eat than on weekdays.

What it meansIf you're trying to maintain a healthy weight, weekend calories may be wrecking your diet without your realizing it. "Many dieters feels as though they're dieting all the time but not losing weight, when, in fact, they're creating a calorie deficit Monday through Friday but filling it — and more — during the weekend," says dietitian and exercise physiologist Kim Gorman, MS, RD, Weight Management Program director at the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado at Denver. Often the problem, says Gorman, is that weekends can lack structure; at the very least, they signify a change in routine. And lack of routine can be especially tricky for those who are consciously trying to break unhealthy eating patterns and establish a new, healthier eating routine.

1. Wake up at the same time on the weekends as you do during the week.That way, your eating times and conditions will be the same as well — and it will be easier to stick to the healthy eating pattern you established during the week. (Bonus: This is also classic advice for anyone who has trouble getting enough sleep, since it also helps synchronize your sleeping patterns.) Can't give up those weekend sleep-ins? Be extra diligent about the rest of these tips.

2. Eat breakfast.And, yes, that's breakfast, not brunch. Even if your morning agenda is just to lie around reading the paper, have a morning meal first. Research has proven that people who eat breakfast routinely eat healthier (and lighter) throughout the day than those who don't, says Gorman. Just be sure you're not eating a bigger breakfast than you do during the week.

3. Weigh in before and after."A great way to gain insight as to what's going on during the weekend is to weigh in on the Friday morning and then again on Monday morning," suggests Gorman. Numbers never lie.

4. Keep a log."Evidence shows that self-monitoring — whether it's routine weigh-ins or daily food logging — absolutely works as a tool for weight loss and weight maintenance," says Gorman, who notes that there's a wealth of free online food-tracking sites such as sparkpeople.com and slimfast.com that computer-savvy dieters might like. If it seems like a lot of data entry, "I recommend people identify the most difficult times to maintain their diets during the week and track only those days," Gorman says.

5. Be a teetotaler — or nearly one.Alcohol packs piles of empty calories. Make yourself happy on Sunday by sipping mostly good old H2O at happy hour on Friday.

6. Work out on the weekend.This may be your most powerful tool. "The majority of people in the National Weight Control Registry — a group of more than 5,000 people who have lost at least 30 pounds and kept it off for one year or more — don't continue to log food on a daily basis," explains Gorman. "What they do is use high levels of physical activity — 60 to 90 minutes a day — to maintain their weight loss." If you feel you consistently blow your diet on weekends, mimic their success by scheduling lengthy Saturday- and Sunday-morning workouts to balance any extra calorie gain with extra calorie burn.

 

One-child rule may be eased in China

Government policy no longer necessary, experts suggest

DAFENG, China - When asked why she and her husband don't want a second child, Shi Xiaomei smiles at her pudgy 9-year-old son and does a quick tally of the family budget.

Her salary as a cleaning lady and the income from a mahjong parlor in their spare room barely cover their son's school fees and other expenses.

"With just one, we can give him nicer things. But if you tried to split what we have between two or three, they would all end up with nothing," the 34-year-old says at her home in Dafeng, a prosperous but still-rural county 185 miles (300 kilometers) north of Shanghai.

For years, China curbed its once-explosive population growth with a widely hated one-child limit that at its peak led to forced abortions, sterilizations and even infanticide. Now the long-sacrosanct policy may be on its way out, as some demographers warn that China is facing the opposite problem: not enough babies.

A stroll down the dirt path linking Shi's close-knit neighborhood suggests why.

Though a little-known exception allows a second child when both parents are single children themselves, there are few takers.

"Why would we want another one? That's just looking for trouble," said Huang Xiaochen, 28, mother of a one-year-old son.

"Kids are running in and out of here all the time," her husband Zhu Yingzhun said, pointing to his front door which, like many here, is often left open. "He doesn't need a sibling to have someone to play with."

Officially, the government remains committed to the one-child policy. But it also commissioned feasibility studies last year on what would happen if it eliminated the policy or did nothing. An official with the National Population and Family Planning Commission said privately that the agency is looking at ways to refine the limit — though not get rid of it.

A people shortage may seem unlikely in a country of 1.3 billion, the most in the world. The concern, though, is not with the overall number. Rather, as the population shrinks, which is projected to begin in about 15 years, China may find itself with the wrong mix of people: too few young workers to support an aging population.

It's a combination that could slow or, in a worst-case scenario, even reverse China's surging economic growth. The government and families will have to tap savings to care for the elderly, reducing funds for investment and driving up interest rates. At the same time, labor costs will likely rise as the work force shrinks, squeezing out some industries.

In a survey of 18,638 women in Dafeng and six other counties in Jiangsu province, 69 percent of those eligible to have a second child said they would stop at one, with economics being the major factor. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences survey did not calculate a margin of error.

"Government control is no longer necessary to maintain low fertility," Zheng Zhenzhen, who headed the study, wrote in the November issue of Asian Population Studies magazine. "A carefully planned relaxation of the birth-control policy in China is unlikely to lead to an unwanted baby boom."

Family size has dropped dramatically since the 1970s, when the average Chinese woman had five to six children. Today, China's fertility rate is 1.5 children per woman. Most families have just one, but exceptions allow multiple children for ethnic minorities and a second one for rural families whose first baby is a girl.

Surplus of malesIf that fertility rate holds, China's population will peak at 1.4 billion in 2026 and then start shrinking, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. By the end of this century, China's population would be cut almost in half to 750 million, according to a model developed by Wang Feng, a demographer at the University of California, Irvine. That would still be two and a half times bigger than the U.S. today.

Wang says the government's focus on slowing population growth has dangerous side effects.

In just 10 years, the age 20-24 population is expected to be half of today's 124 million, a shift that could hurt China's economic competitiveness by driving up wages. Over the same period, the proportion of the population over 60 is expected to climb from 12 percent — or 167 million people — to 17 percent.

"We feel like we're seismologists, you know," said Wang, who has helped lead a data-driven campaign to persuade the government to drop the one-child policy. "This earthquake is happening and most people don't see it. We feel we have the knowledge to detect this and we should tell the public."

Another concern is a surplus of males. Sonograms became more widely available in the 1990s, and some parents who wanted a son aborted their baby if they learned it was a girl.

Though the practice is illegal, statistics make clear that it is widespread. The male-female ratio at birth was 119 males to 100 females in 2009, compared with a global average of 107 to 100.

Experts fear that, in the years to come, the gender imbalance will create a frustrated generation of men unable to find spouses. That in turn could fuel the trafficking of women and girls to be sold as brides.

Still, not all experts agree the one-child rule should be dropped.

‘It's been a tragedy’
Li Xiaoping, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, welcomes the coming population decline, saying it will ease food and water shortages and limit pollution. Writing in the state-run China Daily newspaper, Li said the government should stand firm on the one-child limit while finding ways to boost the earning power of a smaller work force.

A change would mark a turnaround from a 30-year-old policy that dates from an era when the Communist Party controlled every aspect of peoples' lives: where they lived and worked, who and when they married, and how many children they could have.

The government credits the rule with raising millions out of poverty by preventing 400 million additional births. But the gains have come at a cost. Families who violated the one-child rule were fined. Some lost their jobs or homes.

Others underwent forced abortions or sterilizations — the subject of well-known author Mo Yan's latest book, "Frog," the tale of a rural midwife who struggles with an emotional breakdown after a 30-year career performing such brutal procedures.

"Yes, our slowed population growth delivered economic prosperity, but needless to say, we've paid a great price," said Mo, whose book was inspired by his aunt, a country doctor. "No matter how you look at it, it's been a tragedy."

 

Chimps 'feel death like humans'

Chimpanzees deal with death in much the same way as humans, studies suggest.

Scientists in Scotland filmed a group of chimps grooming and caressing an elderly female who died, and remaining subdued for several days afterwards.

Other researchers saw females carrying around the bodies of their dead children. Both studies are reported in the journal Current Biology.

The scientists say this suggests other species, particularly apes, are more like humans than we might think.

"Several phenomena have at one time or another been considered as setting humans apart from other species: reasoning ability, language ability, tool use, cultural variation, and self-awareness, for example," said James Anderson from Stirling University, who led the research team looking at the death of the elderly female.

"But science has provided strong evidence that the boundaries between us and other species are nowhere near to being as clearly defined as many people used to think.

"The awareness of death is another such psychological phenomenon."

Keeping close

Staff at Blair Drummond Safari and Adventure Park in Stirlingshire used video cameras to document the death of a terminally ill female named Pansy, believed to be more than 50 years old.

When she became lethargic in the days leading up to her death, other members of the group became quieter than usual and stayed with her at nights, grooming her more than they did normally.

After her death, her daughter stayed near the body for an entire night, even though she had never slept on that platform before.

All of the group were subdued for several days afterwards, and avoided the place where she had died, spending long hours grooming each other.

In the second study, led by scientists at Oxford University, two mothers living in the wild at the Bossou site in Guinea were seen to carry around the bodies of their dead children - one of them for nearly 10 weeks.

This behaviour has been seen once before at the site, in 1992; and the researchers suggest it may be learned.

During the period, the babies' bodies slowly mummified as they dried out. The bereaved mothers used tools to fend off flies.

Religious beliefs

"Our observations confirm the existence of an extremely powerful bond between mothers and their offspring which can persist, remarkably, even after the death of the infant," said Oxford's Dora Biro.

"They further call for efforts to elucidate the extent to which chimpanzees understand and are affected by the death of a close relative or group-mate.

"This would both have implications for our understanding of the evolutionary origins of human perceptions of death and provide insights into the way chimpanzees interpret the world around them."

Chimpanzees and humans share about 99% of their DNA, and are so closely related that some academics have suggested they should be given rights similar to human rights.

Dr Anderson suggests the treatment of death marks another similarity.

"We found several similarities between the chimpanzees' behaviour toward the dying female and their behaviour after her death, and some reactions of humans when faced with the demise of an elderly group member or relative, even though chimpanzees do not have religious beliefs or rituals surrounding death," he said.

Male monkeys hold babies to make friends

A cute infant will apparently attract attention no matter what the species

It's easy to make friends when you are holding a baby, suggests a new study that found male Barbary macaques have a better chance of bonding with each other when at least one is hauling around an infant.

The study, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Animal Behavior, is among the first to demonstrate that infants likely serve as social tools for at least some primates. Like a human father pushing around junior in a stroller or walking a gentle dog, the presence of a cute, young, defenseless being seems to alleviate tension when meeting others.

When a Barbary macaque male encounters another male with an infant, a "bizarre ritual" takes place, co-author Julia Fischer told Discovery News.

Fischer said the males "sit together, embrace each other, then they hold up the infant and nuzzle it. Their teeth chatter and lip smack while making low frequency grumbling noises."

This can go on for quite a few minutes.

"Sometimes the males part," she added. "But sometimes they just sit there, holding the infant, and some time later proceed through this ritual once more. These interactions require an infant, so to speak, and the assumption is that carrying an infant is attractive because it allows you to interact with other males in this way."

Fischer and colleagues Stefanie Henkel and Michael Heistermann conducted the study at an outdoor enclosure at La Foret des Singes in Rocamadour, France. It's a park where the monkeys can range freely, with human visitors restricted to a path.

The researchers documented encounters between male macaques, and also took chemical samples from the males' feces to measure their physiological stress. The scientists found that males toting infants — not even always their own — had stronger ties with other males than non-carriers. Male relationships, as a result, tended to be stronger during the spring than during the autumn.

Males who worked their networks in such a way tended to rise up the monkey social ladder. For example, one male rose from fifth to second place after acquiring "the highest number of male partners."

Using infants as a "social tool," however, came with a cost. The researchers found the baby-hauling males were more stressed out because the often-crying infants got on the carriers' nerves.

Macaque infant crying "very much sounds like (human) baby crying," Fischer said. "The acoustic structure is very similar, just a little bit more high pitched, but very noisy and variable, so nobody can get used to it."

"It does not surprise me that using infants (as social tools) causes stress in males," Anthropologist Meredith Small at Cornell University told Discovery News. "I've seen it and it's intense."

 

‘Spectacular’ sights come from solar probe

Solar Dynamics Observatory's first images pose scientific puzzles

This full-disk multiwavelength extreme ultraviolet image of the sun was taken by the new Solar Dynamics Observatory on March 30. False colors trace different gas temperatures. Reds are relatively cool (about 110,000 degrees Fahrenheit); blues and greens are hotter (greater than 1.8 million degrees F).

The first images of the sun beamed home from NASA's newest solar observatory have wowed mission scientists with their extraordinary detail and unexpected findings.

NASA on Wednesday released the first new images from the Solar Dynamics Observatory, a probe launched on Feb. 11 to peer deep into the layers of the sun, monitor solar storms and investigate the mysteries of the sun's inner workings.

"The spacecraft and the instruments are working very well," said Richard Fisher, director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "What we've seen is truly, in my view, spectacular." 

The Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, carries three instruments that constantly stare at the sun, generating images that have a resolution 10 times better than high-definition television.

"I believe this is going to be a revolutionary view" of the sun, said Fisher, who likened the new observatory's impact to that of the Hubble Space Telescope.

SDO will be revolutionary to the study of the sun "in the same way Hubble was revolutionary for astrophysics," he told Space.com.

The young solar observatory will also be generating an astounding amount of data.

It will stream the equivalent of half a million songs per day down to a ground station from its geosynchronous orbit. That's about 150 million bits of data per second, 24 hours a day, seven days a week — almost 50 times more science data than any other mission in NASA's history.

Monitoring solar flares, stormsThe simultaneous monitoring of several wavelengths of the sun's light, coupled with the more rapid pace of observations, will give scientists an unprecedentedly detailed view of the features present on the sun. It will also help monitor the solar flares and storms that can impact Earth, as well as shed light on the influence of the sun's magnetic field on the processes that take place within the sun.

"The nice thing about SDO is that we have all of the sun all of the time," said Philip H. Scherrer the principal investigator for SDO's Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager instrument at Stanford University. Already observations of solar features and their evolution is showing that "the magnetic field is really much more dominant than we thought," Fisher said.

Video   Fireworks on Earth and in space April 21: Amazing views have come from Iceland's lightning-struck volcano and NASA's solar probe.

It's also very dynamic: "That magnetic field is never the same twice, it is always changing," said Dean Pesnell, SDO project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

And though the spacecraft is still in its commissioning phase — meaning all of the instruments are being properly calibrated and the probe is entering its final orbit — it has taken images that are already making unexpected revelations.

One particularly interesting observation, Fisher said, shows the evolution of an active region of the sun, also known as a sunspot. The dark spots on the sun's surface are connected to intense magnetic activity. SDO caught this sunspot in decline that didn't look quite how scientists expected it to.

"It's a little bit baffling about what happened," Fisher said.

Tiny changes, huge impact
SDO observed that tiny changes in the magnetic field due to the decline of the sunspot "have a huge impact on the upper solar atmosphere," Fisher said, likening that to a situation on Earth where a lightning bolt in Indiana would cause a hurricane on the East Coast.

The sunspot is associated with a blast of solar material out into space known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME. SDO was able to see the sunspot associated with this CME as well as the waves rippling across the sun's surface associated with it and the flare that caused it.

The CME ejected as much material as is contained in the entire Mississippi River at a speed of about a million miles per hour; the material was accelerated up to that speed in just one second, said Alan Title, the principal investigator of SDO's Atmospheric Imaging Assembly instrument at Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in Palo Alto, Calif.

That SDO is already stumping scientists with its findings even though it's not yet in full observing mode (which will happen sometime next month) shows what a useful spacecraft it is, Fisher said.

"The hallmark of a successful science experiment [is] that you don't understand what you've gotten back," he said.

Helping with predictionsSuch solar events aren't just interesting to scientists — they can have a major impact on the Earth by knocking out communication systems, GPS satellites and even electrical grids. Scientists hope that SDO will allow them to make better predictions on when solar flares and CMEs might erupt in Earth's direction.

Eight high-tech gadgets for dogs and cats

From robots that play fetch to GPS, these items await pets of the future

Meet the “Meowlingual,” a high-tech pet tool that is well before it’s time – at least in the United States. The computer-based, cat-to-human language translator purportedly converts cat vocalizations into one of around 200 phrases that are displayed on Meowlingual’s LCD.

Manufactured in Japan where it was an immediate a hit among pet people, “Meowlingual,” alas, never made it to America. It seems that the kitty translator’s expensive predecessor for dogs, “Bowlingual” ($120) didn’t sell too well when the English-version hit the U.S. market. “Please be nice to me" and "You can't beat me" apparently weren’t things we wanted to read on a wireless microphone hanging from Doggie’s collar.

Still, designers dream – and build prototypes – for high-tech devices to sell to the pet-owning public. Here’s a look at a few we may see in the near future. 

Mysterious desert lines were animal traps

Walls formed large funnels to direct gazelle and other large game animals 

British RAF pilots in the early 20th century were the first to spot the strange kite-like lines on the deserts of Israel, Jordan and Egypt from the air and wonder about their origins. The lines are low, stone walls, usually found as angled pairs, that begin far apart and converge at circular pits. In some places in Jordan the lines formed chains up to 40 miles long.

Were they made by some weird kind of fault? Ancient astronauts?

A new study of 16 of what are called desert kites in the eastern Sinai Desert confirms what many researchers have long suspected: The walls form large funnels to direct gazelle and other large game animals into killing pits. What's more, the kites are between 2,300 and 2,400-years-old, were abandoned about 2,200 years ago and are just the right size to have worked on local gazelles and other hooved game.

"The research shows that the construction of the kite was actually more sophisticated than it seemed before, their use was more diverse than we thought, and the ancients' knowledge of animal ethology was deeper and more intimate than one would think," said Uzi Avner of Ben-Gurion University-Eilat, in Israel.

"We have no doubt at all that the kites were built for hunting, not for any other suggested function."

Avner is a co-author of a paper on the new research which will appear in the July 2010 issue of the Journal of Arid Environments.

For a time, many researchers suspected the kites might be corrals for protecting domesticated animals, but that idea has fallen out of favor as more research has been done.

"The hunting theory is the most accepted, and it appears that for most kites this was indeed the use," said Dani Nadel, another kite researcher from the University of Haifa, Israel. "There are similar structures, either from wood or from stone, on most continents."

Interestingly, the walls of the kites are not high enough to actually block the animals. Rather, they just seem to channel herds in the right direction. Modern wildlife managers in the same region have used a similar approach by laying pipes on the ground to direct gazelles into a corral, Avner reports.

A careful examination of not just the kites but their locations in relation to pastures and migration routes makes it very clear that desert kites were specialized for specific types of animals. Before the 20th century the region was home to several different species of gazelle, wild asses, hartebeests, oryxes, ibexes, dorcas and onagers.

Some kites cleverly exploited low spots in the landscape to lure animals into the unseen killing pit.

"Indeed, the pit would have appeared to the animals in the funnel as an opening in the boundary walls of the kite through which they could flee,"

 Another sort of kite was found on steep slopes or ridges below a plateau or shoulder of a hill so that animals driven over the ridge would suddenly be confronted by the installation before and below them, Avner explained.

As for why the kites fell out of use, it's still a bit of a mystery, says Nadel.

"They were abandoned, in several south-Negev cases, by the beginning of the middle Bronze age," said Nadel. "This may suggest a climatic change and or a shift in subsistence strategies."

 

Egypt finds hoard of 2,000-year-old coins

Other artifacts unearthed included necklaces made of ostrich egg shell 

CAIRO - Archaeologists unearthed 383 bronze coins dating back to King Ptolemy III who ruled Egypt in the 3rd century B.C. and was an ancestor of the famed Cleopatra, the Egyptian antiquities authority announced Thursday.

The statement said one side of the coins were inscribed with hybrid Greek-Egyptian god Amun-Zeus, while the other side showed an eagle and the words Ptolemy and king in Greek.

Founded by one of Alexander the Great's generals, the Ptolemaic Dynasty ruled Egypt for some 300 years, fusing Greek and ancient Egyptian cultures.

The coins were found north of Qarun lake in Fayoum Oasis 50 miles (80 kilometers) southwest of Cairo.

Other artifacts were unearthed in the area included three necklaces made of ostrich egg shell dated back to the 4th millennium B.C. and a pot of kohl eyeliner from the Ottoman Empire.

The objects will all be displayed in the new Egyptian museum under construction near the pyramids of Giza.

 

When you’re diagnosed with a rare cancer

With few medical options, patients take their lives into their own hands

In New York City, indoor cycling is a contact sport. A few minutes before Spinning class at a midtown gym, most women are already on bikes and pedaling hard to warm up; those who didn’t sign up in advance jostle anxiously at the door, hoping for a no-show.

Amid this sea of black-clad intensity, Jennifer Goodman Linn stands out like a burst of sunlight. She has wrapped her hair with an orange bandanna emblazoned with the words Cycle for Survival and sports a bright lemon-yellow jersey. She breezes past the jockeying around her, stopping to give the instructor a hug, then smiles quietly as she settles on a bike and sets the resistance. Arms poised, she’s calm and happy as the first strains of Kanye West’s “Heartless” pulse, a woman exactly where she wants to be.

That she is here at all is some kind of a miracle. Five years ago, at age 33, the marketing executive learned she had soft tissue sarcoma, a type of cancer that attacks body tissues such as nerves and muscles and strikes only 10,000 Americans each year (compared with 200,000 breast cancer diagnoses). She has slogged through three heartbreaking recurrences, three courses of chemotherapy to shrink her tumors and four grueling surgeries to remove them. Cycling has been the one constant: She begged her doctors to set up a stationary bike in her hospital room, and when she returned to class after her first remission, bald and weakened, her instructor and fellow riders welcomed her with applause. Moved by how her sport had helped her heal, in 2007 she launched Cycle for Survival, an event in which teams of riders hit the gym and pedal for hours to raise money for rare cancers. “I realized that I could either admit defeat or use the cancer to do a good thing,” she says. “The choice seemed clear.” 

Linn’s medical journey, on the other hand, has been anything but. Her first symptoms were odd but not particularly alarming: night sweats, a chronic cough and a sudden, sharp pang in her abdomen one afternoon while she was playing tennis with her husband, Dave. “I was losing weight,” she recalls, “but my pants were tight.” Was she pregnant? No, although the newlyweds were trying. And when Linn began taking her temperature to see if she was ovulating, she found she had a fever. With her worry building after several weeks of symptoms, Linn saw her doctor, who ordered blood tests, followed by a series of scans.

When the radiologist saw the results, he bluntly informed her, “You have a big tumor in your abdomen.” Referred to a surgeon who would remove the mass — which was the size of a cantaloupe — Linn learned it could be sarcoma. Yet, like many people, she had never heard of the word sarcoma and didn’t grasp what it meant. “I know it sounds strange, but because the surgeon never used the word cancer, and because I was so young, fit and healthy, I assumed it wasn’t even a possibility. My main concern was that they take [the growth] out without doing a hysterectomy, so I could still have a baby someday,” she says. “I was in deep denial.”

Watching and waitingEven as she was wheeled into surgery, she still hoped the mass would turn out to be a uterine fibroid. Only in recovery did Linn learn that it was indeed cancer; the medical team had removed it as best they could, along with part of her colon, appendix and abdominal tissue. When she and Dave arrived for her first oncologist appointment a few weeks later, reality finally hit full-force. It was, Linn says, “the first time I had an out-of-body-scared moment.” That doctor told Linn and her husband that her odds of surviving five years were 50 percent — no better than a coin flip. Worse, there was no medical protocol for how to proceed.

“When Dave and I found out I had a rare cancer, we immediately wanted as much information as possible,” Linn says. But facts were in short supply. As with all orphan cancers, the term used for any type that affects fewer than 200,000 Americans at one time, research was limited. The “big four” cancers — breast, lung, colon and prostate, which together account for about half of all new cancer cases in the United States — receive the lion’s share of funding and attention. “With common cancers, there is more data, along with collective experience, to develop guidelines for treating these diseases,” says David G. Pfister, M.D., chief of head and neck oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. “The more you see something, the more experienced you get at dealing with it. We know if one drug works better than another and are able to understand the course of the disease.” With orphan cancers, most physicians and patients have no blueprint. “In terms of treatment, there aren’t many patients going through what I am,” Linn says. “And with such a small pool, there isn’t much incentive for drug companies to invest in research.”

Getting a cancer diagnosis is an isolating experience under the best of circumstances. But minimal medical options and few support groups mean people with orphan cancers are apt to feel especially singled out. “It’s lonely and frustrating,” admits Linn, who has gone through a series of different chemotherapies at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. Recently, her oncologist told her she is free of measurable disease. Remission is normally cause for celebration, but Linn has been given good news three times before, only to see the cancer return each time. When she asked what came next, the answer was less than reassuring. “I don’t know,” the doctor told her. “There’s a 50-50 chance that it’s coming back. We’ll keep scanning you every 10 weeks, and if something turns up, we’ll deal with it.”

It’s the uncertainty patients with orphan cancers find most agonizing — “Watching and waiting is the hardest part,” Linn says — especially coming on the heels of baffling symptoms and catch-as-catch-can treatments. Yet despite the challenges, people with orphan cancers are working urgently — swapping advice online, pushing for more clinical trials and raising awareness through efforts such as Cycle for Survival, which is now run by Memorial Sloan-Kettering. “I needed an outlet, but I also created the organization selfishly,” Linn says. “If I leave it up to someone else to develop new therapies, it might never happen.”

Awareness brings money, which in turn fuels research, and last year’s federal stimulus package spurred new grants for the study of orphan cancers. “This is the era of orphan diseases, in large part because of the patients,” says Alexandria T. Phan, M.D., associate professor in the department of gastrointestinal medical oncology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. “Their voices are even more important than doctors’, because it’s the patients who get the rest of the world excited.” In the process, they are changing the destiny of almost anyone with cancer, uncommon or not, creating new treatments and forging a path to survival where none existed before.

 

Calcium may help you live longer

Men with higher intake 25 percent less likely to die over 10 years

Getting a bit more calcium in your diet could help you live longer, new research suggests.

Swedish researchers found that men who consumed the most calcium in food were 25 percent less likely to die over the next decade than their peers who took in the least calcium from food. None of the men took calcium supplements.

The findings are in line with previous research linking higher calcium intake with lower mortality in both men and women, the researchers point out in a report in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

While many researchers have looked at calcium and magnesium intake and the risk of chronic disease, less is known about the association between consumption of these nutrients in food and mortality.

To investigate, Dr. Joanna Kaluza of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm and her colleagues looked at more than 23,000 Swedish men who were 45 to 79 years old at the study's outset and were followed for 10 years. All had reported on their diet at the beginning of the study. During follow-up, about 2,358 died.

The top calcium consumers had a 25 percent lower risk of dying from any cause and a 23 percent lower risk of dying from heart disease during follow-up relative to men that had the least amount of calcium in their diet. Calcium intake didn't significantly influence the risk of dying from cancer.

Men in the top third based on their calcium intake were getting nearly 2,000 milligrams a day, on average, compared to about 1,000 milligrams for men in the bottom third. The US Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for calcium intake is 1,000 milligrams for men 19 to 50 years old and 1,200 milligrams for men 50 and over.

"Intake of calcium above that recommended daily may reduce all-cause mortality," Kaluza and her colleagues conclude.

Calcium could influence mortality risk in many ways, they note, for example by reducing blood pressure, cholesterol, or blood sugar levels. For the men in the study, the main sources of calcium in the diet were milk and milk products and cereal products.

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In contrast to calcium, there was no relationship between magnesium consumption and overall mortality or deaths from cancer or heart disease. Study participants' intakes ranged from around 400 milligrams per day to around 525 milligrams; the RDA for magnesium is 420 milligrams for men 31 and older.

This analysis, the researchers say, may have found no effect for magnesium because all of the men in the study seemed to be getting enough of the mineral in their diet. "Further studies are needed in other populations with lower dietary magnesium intakes to address this issue," they say.

Future research should also look into calcium and magnesium intake from drinking water, they add, which can be a significant source of these minerals.

 

Walking shrinks women's stroke risk

Study: 2 hours a week lowers stroke chance by 30 percent

DALLAS - Women can lower their stroke risk by lacing up their sneakers and walking, a new study suggests.

Women who said they walked briskly had a 37 percent lower risk of stroke than those who didn't walk. Women who reported walking at least two hours a week at any pace had a 30 percent lower risk, according to a study published online Tuesday in the American Heart Association journal Stroke.

While previous studies have shown that physical activity decreases the chances of having a stroke, the new study focused on what kind of exercise might be most beneficial for women.

"This certainly speaks to walking for a certain amount of time and walking briskly as well," said Jacob Sattelmair, lead author of the study and a doctoral student at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

Those walking at a brisk pace should be able to talk — but not sing, he said.

The research involved about 39,000 female health workers 45 or older enrolled in the Women's Health Study. The women were periodically asked about their physical activity. During 12 years of follow-up, 579 had strokes.

Besides walking, the study looked at vigorous activities like running, swimming and biking, but researchers didn't find a link between those vigorous activities and a reduced stroke risk. The researcher said there may not have been enough women in that group to show a difference. It's also possible, they said, that moderate activity is better at lowering blood pressure, a strong risk factor for stroke.

The researchers took into account age, aspirin use, smoking and other things that could influence stroke risk.

"I think what's encouraging is that moderate activities are powerfully effective in reducing the risks of stroke," said Dr. Anand Rohatgi, a cardiologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

In addition to high blood pressure, risk factors for stroke include heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and obesity.

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"The things that directly correlate with stroke are improved with physical activity," Rohatgi said. "They all line up."

Dr. Tracy Stevens, director of Saint Luke's Muriel I. Kauffman Women's Heart Center in Kansas City, Mo., said people can see the benefits of exercise by taking their blood pressure after exercising to see how much lower it is.

"It takes hard work," she said, adding, "It doesn't have to be anything fancy."

The American Heart Association recommends that adults do 2½ hours a week of moderate-intensity or 75 minutes a week of vigorous aerobic activity or a combination.

 

Call to cut number of children's heart surgery centres

Several children's heart surgery units across England should be closed with operations done by fewer, specialised centres, according to an expert review.

It was launched after the 1990s Bristol heart babies scandal when children having heart surgery died needlessly.

The BBC has learned that all 11 paediatric heart centres are being assessed to decide which to keep open.

The intention is to improve care, but patients' groups say long journeys could put pressure on families.

There are currently 31 surgeons in 11 centres across England carrying out heart operations on children.

Their work first came under the spotlight after it emerged that children had died unnecessarily following heart surgery at the Bristol Royal Infirmary between 1991 and 1995.

Experts have already advised that fewer, larger centres of excellence would provide better care for children needing heart surgery.

The NHS National Specialised Commissioning Group is now assessing which centres should stop doing surgery, and which should be expanded to provide the best, most specialised care.

Balance

A report by the group says a balance has to be struck between services that are close to home and services that provide enough specialist skills to provide the highest standards of care.

At the moment, four children's heart surgery centres have only one or two paediatric surgeons. The report says this means there are times when a surgeon is not available to deal with routine cases or emergencies, and that they may have more limited expertise.

There are no plans to cut the overall number of surgeons, but it is likely some would have to move to different centres.

Each would have a minimum of four surgeons. The centres that stopped doing surgery could continue doing non-surgical treatments like diagnostics out-patient care.

Long journeys

NHS medical director Sir Bruce Keogh said the proposals put the interests of children first.

"If we don't address this issue we will put some of the most critically ill children at risk and fail in our duty to ensure these NHS services are fit for the future," he said.

The Patients Association said it was not opposed to reorganisations of specialist services when there were good clinical reasons, but it said if surgical units were closed, patients and their families could face long journeys for treatment.

"Some people have friends and family they can call on for support, but not everybody does," said spokeswoman Katherine Murphy.

"If the NHS is to be a truly comprehensive health service it needs to be mindful of these needs and help families and carers cope with the very real difficulties that can be created."