NEWS

2010-02-24T19:51:00.000-08:00

Can your stomach do this?

2010-02-22T15:10:00.000-08:00

this is what you can achieve with a bit of yoga exercises.....

Lamb with human-like face

2010-01-15T06:54:00.000-08:00

A SHEEP gave birth to a dead lamb with a human-like face. The lamb was born in a village not far from the city of Izmir, Turkey.

Erhan Elibol, a vet, performed a caesarean on the animal to take the lamb out, but was horrified to see that the features of the lamb's snout bore a striking resemblance to a human face.

“I’ve seen mutations with cows and sheep before. I’ve seen a one-eyed More..calf, a two-headed calf, a five-legged calf. But when I saw this youngster I could not believe my eyes. His mother could not deliver him so I had to help the animal,” the 29-year-old veterinary said.

The lamb’s head had human features on – the eyes, the nose and the mouth – only the ears were those of a sheep.

Vets said that the rare mutation most likely occurred as a result of improper mutation since the fodder for the lamb’s mother was abundant with vitamin A, CNNTurk.com reports.

A goat from Zimbabwe gave birth to a similar youngster in September 2009. The mutant baby born with a human-like head stayed alive for several hours until the frightened village residents killed him.

The governor of the province where the ugly goat was born said that the little goat was the fruit of unnatural relationship between the female goat and a man.

"This incident is very shocking. It is my first time to see such an evil thing. It is really embarrassing," he reportedly said. "The head belongs to a man while the body is that of a goat. This is evident that an adult human being was responsible. Evil powers caused this person to lose self control. We often hear cases of human beings who commit bestiality but this is the first time for such an act to produce a product with human features," he added.

The mutant creature was hairless. Local residents said that even dogs were afraid to approach the bizarre animal.

The locals burnt the body of the little goat, and biologists had no chance to study the rare mutation. Less..

Critical?

2009-11-04T17:28:00.000-08:00

The German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ, German only) today published an article on space junk. The shocking image is an eye opener. Humankind continues to repeat the mistake of strewing waste into common spaces (no pun intended) without a thought to the consequences, leaving costs we don't want to pay today for the future generations. The FAS article spurred our curiosity, leading us to find even more spectacular video and potential solutions to the problem (overleaf).

The ESA Space Debris Accumulation video depicts the tragic build up of space debris from 1957 through 2000. According to ESA's resident space debris expert, Walter Flury, the 10,000 pieces of space litter catalogued at the end of 2003 break into the following categories:

* 41% -- miscellaneous fragments

* 22% -- old spacecraft

* 13% -- mission related objects

* 7% -- operational spacecraft

* 7% -- rocket bodies

Doing the math, that is 93% pure junk and only 7% useful satellites circling the earth. More disturbing, 50,000 uncatalogued objects larger than 1 cm (the largest size which modern shielding can likely deflect) are estimated to be spinning through space at hypervelocities.

Real Damage from Space Debris

space debris damage to hubble high gain antenna panel So what, you say? There is a lot of space in Space...the images probably make it appear worse than it really is. Statistically, destructive collisions with operational satellites are predicted on average once every ten years. Nonetheless, as the image at left shows, the risk of damage is real. This hole over 1 cm in diameter penetrates the Hubble high gain antenna dish (the unit continued working in spite of the damage). The windows on the Space Shuttle have been replaced 80 times due to impacts with objects of less than 1 mm. And costly systems to track and issue daily emails warning of potential impacts must be maintained. The future impacts must also be considered. Space debris would be a severe hindrance to space-based solar projects. Last, but not least, there is the risk of space junk raining down on us: space junk hitting an Oklahoma woman is one of Space.com's top ten most memorable pieces of space junk .

Graveyards in Space

So what can be done? Guidelines do exist, published by the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC). The guidelines limit creation of debris in normal operations, and promote "disposal" either by deorbiting junk back towards earth, where it usually burns up in the atmosphere, or by putting space junk into "graveyard" orbits above the commercially important low-Earth and geostationary orbit zones. But more needs to be done. Some experts advocate for regulations. Live Science takes it a step farther, speculating on giant NERF balls, space lasers and cosmic collection vehicles among other imaginative ways to tackle the growing problem.

Via ::Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and European Space Agency

New Stone Sphere Found in Bosnia

2009-01-04T06:27:00.000-08:00

New stone sphere was discovered in Brnjic, 11 miles from Kakanj in Central Bosnia. Just over 3 feet in diameter it has spherical shape and is built from sandstone. Archaeological Park: “Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun” has registered more than 20 such locations in Bosnia where we have these mysterious, prehistoric phenomenon of stone spheres.

There are three types of materials that these spheres were built from: sandstone, granite and volcanic stones. The largest stone sphere found so far in the village Slatina, near Banja Luka. Eight such spheres, all built from granite were found in Teocak near Tuzla, and individual ones were also found near Vareš, Kakanj, Srebrenik, Konjic, Trn, Mostar, Sanski Most…
The largest concentration, with over 40 stone spheres was discovered in Duboki Potok, near Zavidoviæi. On that location in 2006, Foundation founded Archaeological Park:”Bosnian Stone Spheres” which became tourist attraction.
Besides in Bosnia, stone spheres can be found in South Costa Rica, West Mexico, Easter Islands, central Serbia and couple of other locations.
Foundation team consisting of: Ahmed Bosniæ (chairman), Semir Osmanagiæ (founder), Zajim Ahmetspahiæ (executive director), Amila Omersoftiæ (member), Muhamed Pasiæ and others have visited the location joined by over one hundred local villagers. Nearby there is an old Ottoman cemetery, several tomb stones (stecak) and a very old church – built before Ottomans came here – which just shows a long continuity of life in this area. Professor Pašiæ took several samples from the sphere itself and the surrounding materials to be analyzed in Kemal Kapetanoviæ institute at Zenica University.
This is just another proof that central Bosnia is an archaeological sensation worldwide and deserves further and detailed exploration.
Source:http://www.pyramidsinbosnia.com/latest_news.php?a=74

2008-12-02T16:37:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama
aka Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.
(1961–)
Quick Facts
Born: August 4, 1961 (Hawaii)
Lives in: Chicago, Illinois
Zodiac Sign: Leo
Height: 6′ 1″ (1.87m)
Family: Married wife Michelle in 1992, 2 daughters Malia and Sasha
Parents: Barack Obama, Sr. (from Kenya) and Ann Dunham (from Kansas)
Religion: United Church of Christ
Drives a: Ford Escape hybrid, Chrysler 300C
Education:– Graduated: Columbia University (1983) - Major: Political Science– Law Degree from Harvard (1991) - Major: J.D. - Magna Cum Laude– Attended: Occidental College
Career: U.S. Senator from Illinois sworn in January 4, 2005
Government Committees:– Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee– Foreign Relations Committee– Veterans Affairs Committee– 2005 and 2006: served on the Environment and Public Works Committee » more
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Related People
Sarah Palin
Joe Biden
Michelle Obama
Hillary Clinton
John McCain
Bill Clinton
George W. Bush
Reverend Jeremiah Wright
Rahm Emanuel
Abraham Lincoln
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Timothy Geithner
Eric Holder
Susan E. Rice
Robert Gates
Related Works
Books
1995 Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
2006 The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
2006 It Takes a Nation: How Strangers Became Family in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina
Breaking News: President-elect Barack Obama is expected to announce his security team in a press conference scheduled for today (December 1st, 2008). Major players on his team include former Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, a selection that seemed unlikely even a few months ago.
In addition to the Clinton appointment, Obama is said to reveal that his choice of Robert M. Gates as Defense Secretary, who has run the Pentagon under President George W. Bush for the last two years, as well as Gen. James L. Jones as national security adviser. Former Arizona governor, Janet Napolitano, is said to serve as the head of homeland security.
Obama will also be bringing a few keys members of his 2008 presidential advisory team aboard as cabinet members, Eric Holder as U.S. attorney general and Susan Rice as U.N. Ambassador.
With this announcement, Obama will have half of his 15-member Cabinet assembled less than a month after the election, including the most prominent positions of State, Justice, Treasury and Defense.
Biography: Barack Hussein Obama was born Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father, Barack Obama, Sr., was born of Luo ethnicity in Nyanza Province, Kenya. He grew up herding goats with his own father, who was a domestic servant to the British. Although reared among Muslims, Obama, Sr., became an atheist at some point.
Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, grew up in Wichita, Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs during the Depression. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he signed up for service in World War II and marched across Europe in Patton’s army. Dunham’s mother went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, they studied on the G. I. Bill, bought a house through the Federal Housing Program, and moved to Hawaii.
Meantime, Barack’s father had won a scholarship that allowed him to leave Kenya pursue his dreams in Hawaii. At the time of his birth, Obama’s parents were students at the East–West Center of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Obama’s parents separated when he was two years old and later divorced. Obama’s father went to Harvard to pursue Ph. D. studies and then returned to Kenya.
His mother married Lolo Soetoro, another East–West Center student from Indonesia. In 1967, the family moved to Jakarta, where Obama’s half-sister Maya Soetoro–Ng was born. Obama attended schools in Jakarta, where classes were taught in the Indonesian language.
Four years later when Barack (commonly known throughout his early years as "Barry") was ten, he returned to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Dunham, and later his mother (who died of ovarian cancer in 1995).
He was enrolled in the fifth grade at the esteemed Punahou Academy, graduating with honors in 1979. He was only one of three black students at the school. This is where Obama first became conscious of racism and what it meant to be an African–American.
In his memoir, Obama described how he struggled to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage. He saw his biological father (who died in a 1982 car accident) only once (in 1971) after his parents divorced. And he admitted using alcohol, marijuana and cocaine during his teenage years.
After high school, Obama studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years. He then transferred to Columbia University in New York, graduating in 1983 with a degree in political science.
After working at Business International Corporation (a company that provided international business information to corporate clients) and NYPIRG, Obama moved to Chicago in 1985. There, he worked as a community organizer with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on the city’s South Side.

2008-11-29T19:33:00.000-08:00

New Pyramid Found in Egypt: 4,300-Year-Old Queen's Tomb

Andrew Bossone in Cairofor National Geographic News
November 11, 2008

A new pyramid has been discovered deep beneath Egyptian sands, archaeologists announced today.

The 4,300-year-old monument is believed to be the tomb of Queen Sesheshet, the mother of Pharaoh Teti, the founder ancient Egypt's 6th dynasty.
Once nearly five stories tall, the pyramid—or at least what remains of it—lay beneath 23 feet (7 meters) of sand.
The discovery is the third known subsidiary, or satellite, pyramid to the tomb of Teti. It's also the second pyramid found this year in Saqqara, an ancient royal burial complex near current-day Cairo.
(See "'Lost' Pyramid Found Buried in Egypt" [June 5, 2008].)
"I always say you never know what the sands of Egypt might hide," said Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA).
"This might be the most complete subsidiary pyramid ever found at Saqqara," added Hawass, who is also a National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence. (The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News.)
Surprise in the Sand
Archaeologists also found remnants of a white limestone casing for the surviving, 16-foot-tall (5-meter-tall) pyramid base. The angle of the base helped them determine that the pyramid's walls stood at a 51-degree angle.
Based on that angle, the team determined that the pyramid was originally 46 feet (14 meters) tall and about 72 feet (22 meters) square at its base.
The researchers were somewhat surprised to find a pyramid at the Teti site, since they thought the area had been thoroughly searched. Archaeologists had already found subsidiary pyramids for Teti's two principal wives Iput I and Khuit, about a hundred years ago and in 1994, respectively.

Teams have been digging in the area for more than 20 years.
"One hundred years ago they used to take sand and put it in unexcavated areas," Hawass said.

"The archaeologists in the past used this area as a location for the sand. No one could think there is anything here."
Tomb robbers, however, had known the pyramid was there—archaeologists found that a shaft had been created to allow access to Sesheshet's funerary chamber.
Due to those assumed tomb raids, archaeologists don't expect to find Sesheshet's mummy when they reach the burial chamber weeks from now. But they do anticipate finding inscriptions about the queen, whose name, perhaps coincidentally, evokes the goddess of history and writing, Seshat.
Mother Love
Starting from the 4th dynasty (2616 to 2494 B.C.), pharaohs often built pyramids for their wives and mothers.
"Mothers were revered in ancient Egypt," said Salima Ikram, a professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, who was not involved in the discovery.
"Building pyramids for one's mother in her dead state … was fairly emphasized in the whole vision of kingship that the ancient Egyptians had," Ikram said.
"That was something that was instituted during [a pharaoh's] lifetime and was a very public way of expressing his debt to her, his connection to her, and her importance in Egypt politically and as a symbol for kingship."
Sesheshet's son Teti might have been more motivated than the average pharaoh to pay homage to his mother. Sesheshet had come from a powerful family and probably supported his ascendancy to the throne during turmoil at the end of the 5th dynasty.
"She's one of the important ladies at that time," said Hakim Haddad, general director of excavations in Egypt.
"At the end of the 5th dynasty and the beginning of the 6th dynasty, there was a conflict between two branches of the royal families."
The American University's Ikram added, "I assume Teti thought it would be a good plan to make his mother a pyramid."
Regardless of Teti's motivations, SCA director Hawass says the newfound pyramid is special because of its association with a female ruler.
"You can discover a tomb or a statue, but to discover a pyramid it makes you happy. And a pyramid of a queen—queens have magic."

2008-11-29T18:47:00.000-08:00

Black Hole "Hearts" Warm Galaxies, Control Growth
Ker Thanfor National Geographic News
November 21, 2008

A colossal black hole nestled in the center of a distant galaxy controls its own growth and the growth of surrounding stars by pumping out energy at regular intervals, a new study says.
"It looks like a beating heart," said study team member Mateusz Ruszkowski, an astronomer at the University of Michigan.

The black hole resides in the center of the elliptical galaxy M84, 55 million light-years from Earth.
New images from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory reveal that with every beat, the black hole shoots twin jets of superheated gas, or plasma, into the galaxy.
The plasma jets warm the cool gas around them, creating bubbles of hot gas that swell until they are several thousand light-years across.
As the bubbles form they create a "Russian doll" effect, in which one bubble is nested inside a larger one, Ruszkowski said.
Because the bubbles grow at a constant rate, the team determined the age of each bubble, revealing that the black hole pumps out energy once every ten million years.
Scientists knew that black holes could eject energy in rare and violent outbursts, but the new finding is the first direct evidence that they are also capable of gentler and more consistent discharges.
"Just like our hearts periodically pump our circulatory systems to keep us alive, black holes give galaxies a vital warm component," study co-author Alexis Finoguenov of the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany, said in a statement.
(Interactive: Put a human heart though its paces.)
Cosmic Birth Control
Black holes are objects that have gravity so strong that not even light can escape.

Supermassive black holes have the same masses as up to a billion suns or more and have been detected at the center of many large galaxies, including our own Milky Way.
The plasma jets spotted in M84 are actually coming from the ring of gases and dust—called the accretion disk—that spirals into the galaxy's supermassive black hole, feeding its growth.

But as M84's bubbles expand, they prevent gases in the accretion disk from cooling and clumping together to form new stars or from sinking toward the center of the galaxy and into the black hole.
If galactic black holes did not disrupt their own intake from time to time like this, they would continually gain mass, and their borders—or event horizons—would creep ever outward.
"If you can eject energy from the central black hole, you can solve two problems at the same time: You can starve the black hole and also heat the gas so that stars will not be forming as efficiently," Ruszkowski told National Geographic News.
The research is detailed in a recent issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
Kevin Schawinski, an astrophysicist at Yale University who was not involved in the paper, said that "the really fascinating aspect of this [discovery] is that they see evidence of this happening repeatedly in the same galaxy, demonstrating that this is a periodic process."
It's still unclear, however, why the plasma jets are released at regular intervals.
One idea is that it takes time between each outburst for enough gas to cool and settle onto the black hole's accretion disk to trigger another outburst.

2008-11-29T17:43:00.000-08:00

Crystal Palace
Cavers in Mexico confront extreme conditions and find extraordinary beauty.
In a nearly empty cantina in a dark desert town, the short, drunk man makes his pitch. Beside him on the billiards table sits a chunk of rock the size of home plate. Dozens of purple and white crystals push up from it like shards of glass. "Yours for $300," he says. "No? One hundred. A steal!" The three or four other patrons glance past their beers, thinking it over: Should they offer their crystals too? Rock dust on the green felt, cowboy ballads on the jukebox. Above the bar, a sign reads, "Happy Hour: 8 a.m. to 9 p.m."
This remote part of northern Mexico, an hour or so south of Chihuahua, is famous for crystals, and paychecks at the local lead and silver mine, where almost everyone works, are meager enough to inspire a black market. "Thirty dollars." He leans in. "Ten." It's hard to take him seriously. Earlier in the day, in a cave deep below the bar, I crawled among the world's largest crystals, a forest of them, broad and thick, some more than 30 feet long and half a million years old. So clear, so luminous, they seemed extraterrestrial. They make the chunk on the pool table seem dull as a paperweight.
Nothing compares with the giants found in Cueva de los Cristales, or Cave of Crystals. The limestone cavern and its glittering beams were discovered in 2000 by a pair of brothers drilling nearly a thousand feet below ground in the Naica mine, one of Mexico's most productive, yielding tons of lead and silver each year. The brothers were astonished by their find, but it was not without precedent. The geologic processes that create lead and silver also provide raw materials for crystals, and at Naica, miners had hammered into chambers of impressive, though much smaller, crystals before. But as news spread of the massive crystals' discovery, the question confronting scientists became: How did they grow so big?
It takes 20 minutes to get to the cave entrance by van through a winding mine shaft. A screen drops from the van's ceiling and Michael Jackson videos play, a feature designed to entertain visitors as they descend into darkness and heat. In many caves and mines the temperature remains constant and cool, but the Naica mine gets hotter with depth because it lies above an intrusion of magma about a mile below the surface. Within the cave itself, the temperature leaps to 112 degrees Fahrenheit with 90 to 100 percent humidity—hot enough that each visit carries the risk of heatstroke. By the time we reach the entrance, everyone glistens with sweat.

Preparing to enter the cave is like gearing up for a space walk. I pull on a vest with more than a dozen palm-size ice packs sewn into pockets across the chest and back. Then another vest to insulate the ice against the heat. Then, over everything, a bright orange caving suit. A helmet, a headlamp, a respirator mask blowing ice-cooled air. Gloves, boots. Even for cavers cocooned in all this protective gear, the heat is exhausting and dangerous; most trips inside last no more than 20 minutes. Giovanni Badino, a physicist from the Italian exploration group La Venta, leads us in.
Fallen obelisks, pillars of light, the crystals are enormous, some several feet thick. On the floor and walls are clumps of smaller crystals, sharp as blades and flawlessly transparent. Badino proceeds slowly, careful not to damage the crystals, which are made of selenite, a form of the common mineral gypsum. Selenite is translucent and soft, easily scratched by boot heels, even fingernails. Despite the ice suits, the heat and humidity are oppressive. I remove the mask for a moment and suck in wet, hot air. My lungs want to refuse it. There is a damp, heavy scent of earth and an absolute stillness. Miserable conditions for humans, a perfect nursery for crystals.
In their architecture crystals embody law and order, stacks of molecules assembled according to rigid rules. But crystals also reflect their environment. Spanish crystallographer Juan Manuel García-Ruiz was one of the first to study the Naica crystals beginning in 2001. More familiar with microscopic crystals, García was dizzied by the proportions of the Naica giants. By examining bubbles of liquid trapped inside the crystals, García and his colleagues pieced together the story of the crystals' growth. For hundreds of thousands of years, groundwater saturated with calcium sulfate filtered through the many caves at Naica, warmed by heat from the magma below. As the magma cooled, water temperature inside the cave eventually stabilized at about 136°F. At this temperature minerals in the water began converting to selenite, molecules of which were laid down like tiny bricks to form crystals. In other caves under the mountain, the temperature fluctuated or the environment was somehow disturbed, resulting in different and smaller crystals. But inside the Cave of Crystals, conditions remained unchanged for millennia. Above ground, volcanoes exploded and ice sheets pulverized the continents. Human generations came and went. Below, enwombed in silence and near complete stasis, the crystals steadily grew. Only around 1985, when miners using massive pumps lowered the water table and unknowingly drained the cave, did the process of accretion stop.
In the presence of such beauty and strangeness, people cast around for familiar metaphors. Staring at the crystals, García decided the cavern reminded him of a cathedral; he called it the Sistine Chapel of crystals. In both cathedrals and crystals there's a sense of permanence and tranquillity that transcends the buzz of surface life. In both there is the suggestion of worlds beyond us.

Now, in the cave, a team of scientists and explorers is conducting research and working on a documentary. Stein-Erik Lauritzen, a professor of geology at the University of Bergen in Norway, is retrieving samples for uranium-thorium dating. His preliminary research suggests the largest of the crystals are about 600,000 years old. Penelope Boston, an associate professor of cave and karst science at New Mexico Tech, searches for microbes that might live among the crystals. In some of them, tiny bubbles of suspended fluid—the kind García studied—sparkle in our lights. They are little time capsules: Italian scientists led by Anna Maria Mercuri extracted pollen that may have been trapped within these inclusions. The grains appear to be 30,000 years old and suggest that this part of Mexico was once covered not by desert but by forest.
One long, slender beam bears a deep scar from where someone tried to cut through it. I imagine a miner dripping and alone in the smothering silence, his weak headlamp bouncing with each saw stroke. Collectors might pay tens of thousands of dollars for a crystal from this cave. Whoever he was, he quit before he could sever the crystal, and mine owners later installed a heavy steel door to deter looters. So far it has worked, but who knows if it will last. Miners, after all, have access to drills and explosives. And while mining and construction projects can be halted to save archaeological relics, minerals in Mexico have no such protection.
The crystals could also be threatened by the lack of water. When the cave was filled, water helped support and preserve the beams. Now, with the cave empty and open to air, they may over time bend or crack under their own weight and become dull, as gases such as carbon dioxide wash in. The director of the mine told me his company, Peñoles, is dedicated to preserving them, but the company's main interest isn't crystals, and the basic activities of mining—blasting, trucks stirring up dust—threaten the gallery. Badino and others hope to convince the company to do more (lobbying for UNESCO World Heritage status has been mentioned), but so far the crystals exist in limbo, probably more famous outside Mexico than within.
We stop for a moment to rest. Everything around us glitters; it is as though we are standing inside a star. Badino turns, and the lines crease at the corners of his eyes. He pulls his mask away. "You know," he says, smiling, "there would be worse places to die."
Cathedral, star, tomb. We look for something to anchor the otherworldly in the familiar. After half an hour we depart, soaked in sweat, our veins throbbing, and a visiting filmmaker asks what it was like. I have a little trouble. He nods, understanding.
"Es como un sueño de niño," he says. "It is like a child's dream."

By Neil Shea
National Geographic Staff
Photograph by Carsten Peter, Speleoresearch & Film

2008-11-29T14:37:00.000-08:00

AGING BRAIN
The brain together with the spinal cord, constitutes the nerves system and controls everything we do, and every thought we have. The brain works all the time. It is responsible for monitoring and regulating unconscious and voluntary actions in the body. It is also the intellectual centre that allows thought, learning, memory and creativity. The spinal cord is a thick bunch of nerves running from the brain down the spine. Branching off from it, is a complex network of nerves that runs to every part of body which carry signals to the rest of the body and back to the brain, from inside and outside the body. The information from outside is gathered by our five senses, sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch.
Effects of AgingTwo thirds of all people eventually experience some significant loss of mental lucidity and independence as a result of aging. 60 years and older experience significant cognitive decline, including declines in memory, concentration, clarity of thought, focus and judgment with an increase in the onset of several neurological problems like Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, stroke etc
Research has shown that as brain ages or as people get older, there will be a decrease in brain weight and brain volume, widening of the grooves on the surface of the brain and enlargement of the ventricular system (ventricles- a cavity or hollow part of the brain).
The decrease in brain weight and brain volume are probably due to loss of neurons (specialized cells transmitting nerve impulses) and extra cellular fluid. Man may have a 20% reduction in brain weight between the ages of forty -five and eighty -five and lose thirty to fifty thousand neurons a day from the brain and nervous system as they age. Enlargement of the ventricular system may be probably due to loss of cells surrounding the ventricles (the spaces in the brain that contain cerebrospinal fluid).
Probable reasons for the change...
Surprisingly there is a certain percentage of people who function very normally even when they age. So the causes of loss of memory, concentration, focus and the inability to function independently as man ages may not be only due to the aging itself as previously thought. But may be due to a combination of other factors like Brain-unhealthy behavior and habits, insufficient mental stimulation, limited thought or response control strategies, brain unhealthy diet or inadequate supplements, lack of novel experience, lack of sufficient social interactions and cooperation etc.
Ways to delay effects of aging...
To stay mentally sharp, you need to work your mental muscles each and every day. Get involved in something that keeps your brain busy such as taking up a new class, exercise, martial arts, mind games etc. Any activity that involves concentration will help exercise the mind and keep it strong.
Mental stimulationAfter 40, taking up a new language or any new course or art classes, whether joining a formal class or learning on your own is beneficial. As long as you learn something new, the nerve cells in your brain will grow and the connection between them will continue to strengthen.
As you age, find time to take up any art lessons like painting, wood working etc. that you always wanted to pursue but never had the time earlier. These help strengthen the part of the brain that controls spatial relations, the ability to recognize how things piece together.
To sharpen the hand -eye coordination and reaction time reflex, getting involved in some sports like table tennis, badminton etc. or playing any music instruments and video games in the computer helps.
Get knowledge from books and try to keep remembering them to enhance your memory. Regular reading of a variety of news papers is also helpful. Keep your brain active and sharp by playing like chess, cards, scrabble and doing crossword puzzle, jigsaw puzzles etc.
Diet and supplements A deficiency in vitamin B-6, B-12 or folate (folic acid) can result in certain anemia and deterioration of the nervous system causing memory loss. So a diet high in Vitamin B-6, B-12 and Folate is essential especially after 40s. Natural sources of B-6 include beans, pulses and B-12 include seafood, meat, and dairy products. Folate is found in spinach, asparagus, beans, and fortified cereals.
Vitamin E, an antioxidant comprises several compounds that are essential for the maintenance of cell membranes. The main sources of vitamin E are cereal, grains, green vegetables and eggs. Recent research has proved that antioxidant compounds like alphalipoic acid and acetyl -L-carnitine will boost memory. Taking small doses of ginkgo biloba a potentially safe and inexpensive herb, is shown to improve blood flow to the brain as well as other organs.
For individuals who cannot or do not consume an adequate variety of foods, a multivitamin/multi-mineral supplement may be beneficial. Along with the multivitamin/mineral supplement, 400 IU of Vitamin E , 100-500 mg of Vitamin C and 500 mg of Calcium (for people under 50 years) or 1000 mg (for people over 50 years) would be beneficial.
Social InteractionsHaving a network of connections to other people is beneficial for brain health and well-being. Humans appear to benefit and function more optimally when connected to other humans in a socially organized network. It is seen that people with a strong support network of family, friends, and acquaintances are less susceptible to stress-related problems.
Exercise
Keeping your body fit also keeps your mind fit. Practicing yoga, long term aerobic exercise or martial arts regularly during middle age is beneficial for boosting the brain. Standing on one foot for as long as possible and then switching to the other foot and repeating is a best single exercise which improves motor coordination that can be done at any time and without any special equipment. Try and see whether you can stand for thirty seconds, then slowly for longer periods and so on.

Excess levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, may shrink the hippocampus, a part of the brain that's needed to form certain types of memory. Yoga, meditation and breathing exercises which help to increase the action of the immune system along with socializing (sharing with others) are effective in lessening stress.
Recent research suggest that estrogen therapy may improve both verbal and visual memory in postmenopausal women with Alzheimer's. Along with the above factors, avoiding smoking, abuse of drugs, excess alcohol and getting enough sleep goes a long way in keeping your brain healthy and young.

NEWS

Can your stomach do this?

Lamb with human-like face

Critical?

New Stone Sphere Found in Bosnia

Barack Obamaaka Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.(1961–)

New Pyramid Found in Egypt: 4,300-Year-Old Queen's Tomb

Crystal Palace

Barack Obama
aka Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.
(1961–)