A modified version of a popular low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet is nearly as effective at controlling seizures as the highly restrictive ketogenic diet, Johns Hopkins Children's Center researchers report.

"Our findings suggest relatively good efficacy compared to the ketogenic diet," said Eric Kossoff, M.D., a pediatric neurologist at Johns Hopkins Children's Center. "With 20 patients, our study wasn't large enough to say patients and physicians should replace the proven, but highly restricted ketogenic diet, but the results are encouraging and intriguing."

The common elements in both the ketogenic and Atkins diets are relatively high fat and low carbohydrate foods that alter the body's chemistry. The ketogenic diet mimics some of the effects of starvation, in which the body first uses up glucose and glycogen before burning stored body fat. In the absence of glucose, the body produces ketones, a chemical by-product of fat that can inhibit seizures. Children who remain seizure-free for two years on the ketogenic diet often can resume normal eating without the return of seizures.

Modified Atkins diet effectively treats childhood seizures

Some urban performing monkeys in Indonesia are carrying several retroviruses that are capable of infecting people, according to a new study led by University of Washington researchers. The results indicate that contact with performing monkeys, which is common in many Asian countries, could represent a little-known path for viruses to jump the species barrier from monkeys to humans and eventually cause human disease. Performing monkeys are animals that are trained to produce tricks in public.

While scientists have conducted extensive research on primate-to-human viral transmission in Africa, where they believe HIV originated, few have researched this topic in Asia.

"People aren't looking at Asia, and they need to do so, because viruses are emerging on that continent," explained Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel, leader of the study and a research scientist in the Division of International Programs at the UW's Washington National Primate Research Center. "There is a large, diverse population of primates there, and a huge human population in dense urban centers, so there's the potential for viral transmission across the species barrier."

The study's authors are urging more research on the different settings in Asia where people have contact with non-human primates – zoos, animal markets, monkey forests, pet ownership, and urban street performances. Most previous research on viral transmission has focused on bushmeat hunting and consumption, a practice in which local residents hunt wild monkeys for food. HIV, the virus that causes AIDS in humans, is believed to have originated as a primate virus and jumped the species barrier to humans when African bushmeat hunters came into contact with blood from infected animals.

Performing monkeys in Asia carry viruses that could jump species to humans

A brain chemical recently found to boost trust appears to work by reducing activity and weakening connections in fear-processing circuitry, a brain imaging study at the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has discovered. Scans of the hormone oxytocin's effect on human brain function reveal that it quells the brain's fear hub, the amygdala, and its brainstem relay stations in response to fearful stimuli. The work at NIMH and a collaborating site in Germany suggests new approaches to treating diseases thought to involve amygdala dysfunction and social fear, such as social phobia, autism, and possibly schizophrenia, report Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, M.D., Ph.D., NIMH Genes Cognition and Psychosis Program, and colleagues, in the December 7, 2005 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

"Studies in animals, pioneered by now NIMH director Dr. Thomas Insel, have shown that oxytocin plays a key role in complex emotional and social behaviors, such as attachment, social recognition and aggression," noted NIH Director Elias Zerhouni, M.D.. "Now, for the first time, we can literally see these same mechanisms at work in the human brain."

"The observed changes in the amygdala are exciting as they suggest that a long-acting analogue of oxytocin could have therapeutic value in disorders characterized by social avoidance," added Insel.

Tell the truth now... trust me... :)

Trust-building hormone short-circuits fear in humans

Neurobiologists have gained new insights into how neurons control growth of the intricate tracery of branches called dendrites that enable them to connect with their neighbors. Dendritic connections are the basic receiving stations by which neurons form the signaling networks that constitute the brain's circuitry.

Such basic insights into neuronal growth will help researchers better understand brain development in children, as well as aid efforts to restore neuronal connections lost to injury, stroke or neurodegenerative disease, said the researchers.

In a paper published in the Dec. 8, 2005, issue of Neuron, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Michael Ehlers and his colleagues reported that structures called "Golgi outposts" play a central role as distribution points for proteins that form the building blocks of the growing dendrites.

Besides Ehlers, who is at Duke University Medical Center, other co-authors were April Horton in Ehlers' laboratory; Richard Weinberg of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.; Bence R�cz in Weinberg's laboratory; and Eric Monson and Anna Lin of Duke's Department of Physics. The research was sponsored by The National Institutes of Health.

How the neuron sprouts its branches

London is completely blanketed by the black plume of smoke from Europe's worst peacetime fire in this Envisat image, taken within five hours of the blaze beginning.

This image was acquired at 10:45 GMT on Sunday morning by the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS), one of ten instruments aboard Envisat, Europe's largest satellite for environmental monitoring. This Reduced Resolution mode image has a spatial resolution of 1200 metres, and shows the cloud spread across a span of around 140 km.

The pall of smoke comes from a fire at Buncefield oil depot on the outskirts of Hemel Hempstead. Buncefield is the fifth largest fuel storage depot in the UK, distributing millions of tonnes of petrol and other oil products per year, including aviation fuel to nearby Luton and Heathrow Airports.

Envisat sees smoke from Europe's worst peacetime fire

nvasive bacterial pathogens, the Chlamydiae know us very, very well. The Chlamydiae learned to parasitize eukaryotic cells half a billion years ago by reprogramming cellular functions from within. In humans today, chlamydial infections are responsible for a range of ailments from sexually transmitted infections to atypical pneumonias to chronic severe disorders such as pelvic inflammatory disease and atherosclerosis. The Centers for Disease Control says that Chlamydia trachomatis is the most common sexually-transmitted infection in the US, with three million new cases a year.

Chlamydia gets around because it knows its hosts so well. It's an "obligate intracellular parasite" which means that it relies on its eukaryotic host for everything from reproduction to synthesizing ATP, all while living inside a membrane-bounded vacuole that provides a protected, fertile environment for the bacteria to grow and multiply. Because lipid acquisition from the host is necessary for chlamydial replication, these pathogens are essentially lipid parasites. So, to add insult to injury, Chlamydia apparently lives on our fat.

Chlamydia parasite lives off our fat...

It's a crank. Intel Chairman Craig Barrett has dismissed a WiFi-enabled, Linux-based, full-color, full-screen laptop aimed at bringing computers to developing economies as a "$100 gadget". The lime-green devices run on electromotive energy from a wind-up mechanism--thus allowing the machines to be used in areas lacking a regular power supply. But Barrett thinks a computer's features are more important than its price.

Decide for yourself. The One Laptop Per Child non-profit association, first announced by Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media lab at the World Economic Forum last January, claims the machine will "be able to do almost everything except store huge amounts of data". The current specifications of the rugged laptop, which has "USB ports galore", are 500MHz, 1GB, 1 Megapixel. The United Nations has heralded the cheap laptops--which will be shipped early next year to school children in Brazil, Thailand, Egypt and Nigeria--as an effective way to spread computers across the world.

Intel's Barrett Dismisses $100 Laptop As 'Gadget'

100 Oaks Mall: Nashville, TN
Bellevue Mall / Bellevue Center: Nashville, TN
Church Street Center: Nashville, TN

Harding Mall: Nashville, TN
Mall Of Memphis: Memphis, TN

Some dead malls of Tenessee... There is a website for everything...

deadmalls DOT com

Tucked away down a narrow driveway on a leafy, quiet street here is perhaps the most famous garage in the valley and, arguably, in all of the technology industry.
It is the garage in which David Packard and William Hewlett launched Hewlett-Packard, now the world's second-largest computer maker and the biggest printer maker, which they founded in 1939 and named with a coin toss.
Long considered the birthplace of Silicon Valley, the 12-by-18-foot garage was the initial spark for the now-thriving technology business in a region that has replaced the fruit orchards of the early 20th century with business parks, corporate campuses, suburbs and malls.
After HP came, other household tech names such as Intel, the world's biggest chipmaker (though not started in a garage), Sun Microsystems (again, no garage founding here), online media giant Yahoo, and many, many others.

But other garages did follow....

Garages hold mythic power in Silicon Valley...

The reverse thrusters that should have slowed a Southwest Airlines jetliner before it slid off a runway at Midway Airport and into the street didn't immediately kick in when the pilots tried to deploy them, federal investigators said Saturday after interviewing the crew.

How much of a role that braking equipment played in Thursday's deadly accident wasn't immediately clear, though, and the investigation is continuing.

The plane's flight attendants told investigators that the Boeing 737 didn't appear to slow after it touched down at Midway in a snowstorm Thursday, said Robert Benzon, the National Transportation Safety Board's investigator in charge.

Reverse Thrusters Eyed in Midway Accident