Not All Belly Fat Is Bad for the Heart

 Where a person stores body fat may be more important for heart disease risk than how big they are, a new study shows.

Doctors have long wondered why some obese people look metabolically normal; that is, they have normal cholesterol, blood sugar, and insulin levels, while others are insulin resistant, have high blood sugar, and high cholesterol -- a profile that puts them at high risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

Visceral fat, or fat that’s stored around the internal organs, has been thought to play a role in that difference. Waist size is a rough measure for the amount of visceral fat a person has.

But newer studies have suggested that visceral fat may not deserve all the blame.

“During the last 10 years, with advances in imaging techniques, we have been able to measure the fat content of non-adipose tissues like skeletal muscles and liver,” says Faidon Magkos, PhD, a research assistant professor of medicine in the department of nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis.

“And there’s an accumulating body of evidence over the last decade that shows that it really isn’t visceral fat that’s associated with dyslipidemia or insulin resistance or other cardiometabolic risk factors, but instead, it’s fat deposited in skeletal muscle and liver,” says Magkos, who studies metabolism but was not involved in the current research.

This Desktop runs on Solar Power, Courtesy Simmtronics Semiconductors

If you are interested in green technology, here is a company which has launched the very first solar powered desktop computer in the Indian market. The company is called Simmtronics Semiconductors and honestly, this is the first time I’m hearing about this company, but I feel great that a green desktop is finally available in my country.

As the desktop is powered by the sun, it is a computer mainly targeted for areas which have frequent power cuts or even villages, where electricity is still a mystery to many. This solar powered computer is priced at just INR 28,990, which includes the solar setup and one year on-site warranty. Well, it is about time computers hit our villages!

When being powered by the gigantic ball made up mainly of hydrogen and helium, the computer also saves up some power which allows it to run for another 10 hours in the absence of sunlight.

Obviously, at such an affordable price, you cannot expect a monster in terms of specs, but the device seems perfect for internet browsing (although this is another problem in areas where there is constant load shedding or electricity is absent most of the time), office work and probably listen to some music and watch a movie or two.

It is powered by a Via C7 1.6 GHz processor, 1GB RAM, includes 160GB HDD and a 15.6-inch LED monitor. The keyboard and mouse are included and the operating system on the computer is Linux. The solar kit includes a 74W solar panel with charge controller, SMF battery and AC inverter

Can WiFi compete with 3G?

Consumers are using WiFi wherever they can as 3G is too costly and 2G is too slow. Moreover, with only 5 MHz spectrum available, the 3G network will soon be overcrowded.

In India broadband access is still in its infancy but with 3G round the corner, the future seems to hold promise. However, 3G is a costly promise as operators have spent huge amounts to buy spectrum, and so prices of 3G services are unlikely to come down. And unlimited plans are a distant dream unlikely to be fulfilled since operators have got just 5 MHz of spectrum which cannot take the load of too many people using unlimited plans.

Therefore, both operators and users are looking at means to get broadband access at affordable costs without overloading the network. And it is here that WiFi has a role to play, so much so that a 3G operator is already planning to start a service that will automatically transfer a user to the WiFi network whenever he visits a partner WiFi hotspot. This, as stated earlier, will reduce both cost to the end user and congestion in the network.

"The next wave of WiFi is becoming a mobile operator phenomenon, and it is our business to help telecom operators enter the WiFi business with speed to market and a reduced cost and risk profile, without a need for additional capital investment," comments Evan Kaplan, president and chief executive officer of iPass, a global provider of WiFi solutions.

Computer Games: Better Than Sex?

A survey of 2052 people was commissioned by Doritos in advance of the launch of its new Doritos Dip Desperado Face book game, and it discovered some interesting facts about the game-playing habits of men and women.

For starters, 49 percent of the women in the survey said that they played "online games" -- though whether this was Star Craft II or City Ville wasn't clear. This 49 percent figure, however, is just 1 percent behind the figure for men.

Of these 49 percent of women who play online, 84 percent said they enjoy their gaming sessions. Compare that with the percentage who enjoyed working out (62 percent), shopping (71 percent), having a bath (75 percent) and doing the nasty (70 percent) and we can hastily jump to the astonishing (and possibly flawed) conclusion that women think games are better than sex. (No comment on some of the adult tweaks.)

Further interesting facts from the survey: 17 percent of women (about 1 in 5) admit to playing games in bed (fellas, you're clearly doing it wrong) and the fairer sex spends 23.1 percent of their time online playing games compared to 22.3 percent for the hairier sex.

Internet search engines cause poor memory, scientists claim

Widespread use of internet search engines and databases such as Google and IMDb.com to find information is making people lose their memory, scientists claim.

Researchers found increasing number of users relied on their computers as a form of “external memory” as frequent use of online information libraries "wired" human brains.

The study, examining the so-called "Google effect", found people had poor recall of knowledge if they knew where answers to questions were easily found.

The scientists from Columbia University, in New York, found people were increasingly bypassing discussions with friends to use the internet as their main source of information.

Experts blamed the findings, published online in this week in the journal Science, on popular search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo and databases such as Wikipedia and IMDb.com, the movie information site founded in Britain.

Prof Betsy Sparrow, who led the study, said such web tools were making information easy to forget and that if people could not find answers immediately it could feel like "going through withdrawal".

We are becoming symbiotic with our computer tools, growing into interconnected systems,” said Prof Sparrow, from Columbia's psychology department.

“We have become dependent on them to the same degree we are on all the knowledge we gain from our friends and co-workers — and lose if they are out of touch.

"Human memory is adapting to new communications technology."

She added: "We're not thoughtless empty-headed people who don't have memories anymore. But we are becoming particularly adept at remembering where to go find things. And that's kind of amazing."

Roddy Roediger, a psychologist at Washington University who was also involved in the study, added: "Why remember something if I know I can look it up again? In some sense, with Google and other search engines, we can off-load some of our memory demands onto machines."

In the study, titled “Google Effects on Memory: Consequences of having information at our Fingertips,” the researchers undertook four experiments involving student volunteers.

They firstly asked 46 students from the Harvard, the Ivy League university, a series of true-false questions based on trivia such as, ”An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain” before showing them words in different colours.

When the words could be linked to the internet, students responded more slowly and admitted they were contemplating searching for the answers on the web.

Another 60 students were then given 40 statements to type on a computer before being told that the information would either be saved or erased.

They discovered that people who believed the data would be saved were less likely to remember.

Another experiment involved 28 undergraduates from Columbia who were asked trivia questions. They were allowed to take notes and the researchers found they too struggled to remember information that would be saved.

Finally a further 34 Columbia students remembered where they stored their information in folders on their computers better than they were able to recall the information itself.

Prof Sparrow admitted it remained unclear what the effects of being so “wired” will be on people over the coming years.

She said the Internet had replaced a person's circle of friends where people would traditionally look for information.

"(They) did not make the effort to remember when they thought they could later look up the trivia statement they had read," she said.

"It may be no more than nostalgia at this point, however, to wish we were less dependent on our gadgets.

"(It shows) we must remain plugged in to know what Google knows."

Prof Sparrow said the idea for the study came as she watched the 1944 movie "Gaslight" one night with her husband and, after wondering who the actress was who played the maid, turned to her computer and Googled it.

The maid was thescreen debut of an 18 year-old Angela Lansbury, the British actress.