An Iranian news agency reports that more than 30 million people in the country have lost access to foreign email services such as Gmail, Yahoo mail and Hotmail.

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30 million Iranians said to lose email access

Continue reading ComScore report finds drastic shift from web-based to mobile email among younger users in past year

ComScore report finds drastic shift from web-based to mobile email among younger users in past year originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 11 Feb 2012 13:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ComScore report finds drastic shift from web-based to mobile email among younger users in past year

Vibram’s FiverFingers shoes creep me out, but I understand the appeal of footwear that feels like it’s barely there. The Swiss Barefoot Company thinks the same way, but has instead created an ultra-durable sock that’s worn like a shoe. More »

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Would You Wear An Extra Tough Pair Of Socks Instead Of Shoes? [Video]

This past Thursday scientists revealed that a skin cancer drug known as bexarotene, a drug used to treat a type of skin cancer called cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, had dramatically reversed Alzheimer’s in mice within 72 hours. In 3 short days, researchers noticed a 50% reduction in amyloid plaque — a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease — as well as huge improvements in memory. Scientists at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine made the discovery, and explained how mice with Alzheimer’s would return again and again to a cage which would jolt them with an electrical shock, but after treatment with bexarotene the mice would remember to avoid the cage. Another way the researchers mark the progress of the mice’s brains is through the use of tissue paper. When pieces of tissue paper are added to their environment, healthy mice always incorporate them into their nest, while Alzheimer’s mice are never able to make this simple intuitive leap. After treatment with the drug, the Alzheimer’s mice quickly began intelligent use of the paper once again.

The fact that bexarotene has been around for some time means that it can be used immediately in human trials for Alzheimer’s patients. With regards to the surprising discovery, Gary Landreth, the lead researcher at Case Western warned CNN: “I want to say as loudly and clearly as possible that this was a study in mice, not in humans,” he said. “We’ve fixed Alzheimer’s in mice lots of times, so we need to move forward expeditiously but cautiously.” Landreth said his lab had been working on other drugs for Alzheimer’s for 10 years when a graduate student, Paige Cramer, decided to try bexarotene, which works on a receptor involved in amyloid beta clearance. Some other drugs that worked in mice were too toxic to use in humans. “We’re really lucky that bexarotene is a great drug with an acceptable safety profile,” he said. “This doesn’t happen very many times in life.’”

In other interesting Alzheimer’s-related news, UCLA neuroscientists have demonstrated that they can strengthen memory in human patients by stimulating a critical junction in the brain known as the entorhinal cortex. This small area is considered the doorway to the hippocampus, which helps form and store memories, and the entorhinal cortex plays a crucial role in transforming daily experience into lasting memories. “The entorhinal cortex is the golden gate to the brain’s memory mainframe,” explained senior author Dr. Itzhak Fried, professor of neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “Every visual and sensory experience that we eventually commit to memory funnels through that doorway to the hippocampus. Our brain cells must send signals through this hub in order to form memories that we can later consciously recall.” The experiment that was designed by the researchers is absolutely fascinating — involving taxi cabs, video games, virtual cities, and subjects suffering from seizures, and you can read the amazing story in full by visiting Science Daily. To learn more about the bexarotene mice experiments be sure to visit CNN. For more incredible stories about the human brain simply head over to The Human Brain On FEELguide.

SEE ALSO: Did You Know: What Happens To Your Body And Brain On Pot
SEE ALSO: Nicotine Patches & Living A “Joyous Life” In Your 30s/40s Can Prevent Dementia
SEE ALSO: Forbes Looks At The Top 5 Mindblowing Developments In Neuroscience: From Erasing Memories To Moral Magnets

Sources: CNN and Science Daily

Excerpt from:
50% Reversal Of Alzheimer’s In Mice In 3 Days, And Boosting Memory By Stimulating Your “Golden Gate”

This past Thursday scientists revealed that a skin cancer drug known as bexarotene, a drug used to treat a type of skin cancer called cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, had dramatically reversed Alzheimer’s in mice within 72 hours. In 3 short days, researchers noticed a 50% reduction in amyloid plaque — a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease — as well as huge improvements in memory. Scientists at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine made the discovery, and explained how mice with Alzheimer’s would return again and again to a cage which would jolt them with an electrical shock, but after treatment with bexarotene the mice would remember to avoid the cage. Another way the researchers mark the progress of the mice’s brains is through the use of tissue paper. When pieces of tissue paper are added to their environment, healthy mice always incorporate them into their nest, while Alzheimer’s mice are never able to make this simple intuitive leap. After treatment with the drug, the Alzheimer’s mice quickly began intelligent use of the paper once again.

The fact that bexarotene has been around for some time means that it can be used immediately in human trials for Alzheimer’s patients. With regards to the surprising discovery, Gary Landreth, the lead researcher at Case Western warned CNN: “I want to say as loudly and clearly as possible that this was a study in mice, not in humans,” he said. “We’ve fixed Alzheimer’s in mice lots of times, so we need to move forward expeditiously but cautiously.” Landreth said his lab had been working on other drugs for Alzheimer’s for 10 years when a graduate student, Paige Cramer, decided to try bexarotene, which works on a receptor involved in amyloid beta clearance. Some other drugs that worked in mice were too toxic to use in humans. “We’re really lucky that bexarotene is a great drug with an acceptable safety profile,” he said. “This doesn’t happen very many times in life.’”

In other interesting Alzheimer’s-related news, UCLA neuroscientists have demonstrated that they can strengthen memory in human patients by stimulating a critical junction in the brain known as the entorhinal cortex. This small area is considered the doorway to the hippocampus, which helps form and store memories, and the entorhinal cortex plays a crucial role in transforming daily experience into lasting memories. “The entorhinal cortex is the golden gate to the brain’s memory mainframe,” explained senior author Dr. Itzhak Fried, professor of neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “Every visual and sensory experience that we eventually commit to memory funnels through that doorway to the hippocampus. Our brain cells must send signals through this hub in order to form memories that we can later consciously recall.” The experiment that was designed by the researchers is absolutely fascinating — involving taxi cabs, video games, virtual cities, and subjects suffering from seizures, and you can read the amazing story in full by visiting Science Daily. To learn more about the bexarotene mice experiments be sure to visit CNN. For more incredible stories about the human brain simply head over to The Human Brain On FEELguide.

SEE ALSO: Did You Know: What Happens To Your Body And Brain On Pot
SEE ALSO: Nicotine Patches & Living A “Joyous Life” In Your 30s/40s Can Prevent Dementia
SEE ALSO: Forbes Looks At The Top 5 Mindblowing Developments In Neuroscience: From Erasing Memories To Moral Magnets

Sources: CNN and Science Daily

See the original article here:
50% Reversal Of Alzheimer’s In Mice In 3 Days, And Boosting Memory By Stimulating Your “Golden Gate”

coondoggie writes “A former Internal Revenue Service employee this week got 105 months in prison for pleading guilty to theft of government property and aggravated identity theft in a case where the guy tried to get away with nearly $8 million in fraudulent tax returns. The U.S. Department of Justice said Thomas Richardson used his inside knowledge of IRS operations to commit his crime, which was pretty audacious. According to the DOJ, Richardson admitted that within a two-day period, April 15 to April 17, 2006, he filed or caused to be filed 29 fraudulent 2005 individual income tax returns totaling $7,922,657.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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IRS Employee Stole Data To Forge $8M In Fraudulent Returns

Mead is almost certainly the first beverage that got humans drunk (sorry, beer). It predates wine by ten to thirty thousand years. Hell, it predates the cultivation of soil. Best of all, you only need three common ingredients to whip up a batch. So let’s do that. More »

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Let’s Make Mead: The Ancient Berserker Crunk-Juice of Kings [Video]

Canonical has announced the availability of the Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix, a new variant of the popular Linux distribution that has been customized for use in enterprise environments. It is based on Ubuntu 11.10, the current stable version of the distro, but it offers a slightly different set of packages in the default installation.

The business remix omits Ubuntu’s standard games, multimedia applications, and social networking tools. Instead, it adds a handful of enterprise-relevant packages, such as VMware View. The remix is free (as in beer) to download, but users are required to fill out a registration form on the Web before they will get access to the ISO.

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Canonical aims for enterprise desktop with Ubuntu business remix

Enjoying your Spotify tracks on the go just got a little better, at least on iOS, where an app update to v0.4.23 gifts users “very high quality” 320kbps music streaming (for Premium subscribers) and syncing, up from the previous max of 160kbps. Enabling the higher quality streams — though heavy listeners may want to mind those bandwidth quotas — is as simple as ticking the “Extreme” box in the settings, as shown above by The Next Web to join in a quality that was previously only available via the desktop app or in the living room. If you’re just signing up or setting up the app again the one-tap Facebook log-in should also be a convenient addition (or not, if you don’t use Facebook and insist on telling everyone you don’t at every opportunity — we heard you the first ten times). There’s no word on updates for the other mobile platforms yet, but we’ll keep an eye out.

[Thanks, Pete]

Spotify iOS app update brings 320kbps music to mobiles originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | iTunes, The Next Web | Email this | Comments

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Spotify iOS app update brings 320kbps music to mobiles

There’s an exciting new material on the block, and it’s showing up in…luggage. Baggage manufacturer Tumi is now using Tegris, a polypropylene thermoplastic composite developed by textile and chemical giant Milliken, and is rolling it out in their new Tegra-Lite collection, starting with a carry-on.

So what is Tegris, and why is it better than, say, the polycarbonate used in Pelican cases? Here are the talking points we think will be of interest to product designers:

(more…)

Excerpt from:
Is That Carbon Fiber? Nope. Say Hello to Tegris