3 Ways Breakfast Can HelpLose Weight

Some people think skipping breakfast is a great weight-loss tactic. The logic being that they’re cutting calories out of their daily intake. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work out that way.
According to Shine.yahoo, most people will make up for the calories later on in the day. Eating a meal in the morning can actually help you reach your weight-loss goal, and here are three reasons why.
Breakfast jump-starts your metabolism: If you skip the first meal of the day, your metabolism actually slows down to conserve energy.
Studies show that those who eat breakfast regularly lose weight, keep it off and are less likely to be overweight. Breakfast eaters also more likely exercise regularly. So be sure you eat breakfast and enjoy it within an hour after waking up.
Protein reduces cravings for sweets: The high amount of protein in popular breakfast choices such as Greek yogurt, whole grains and eggs will give you energy, so you’ll be less likely to reach for sugary, high-calorie pick-me-ups like pastries and specialty coffee drinks.
Fiber satiates hunger and flattens your belly. Cereal, made from whole grains, and fresh fruit are both great breakfast choices because they’re high in fiber. Fiber not only keeps you feeling full longer so you’re less apt to go for a snack between meals, it also reduces the bloating associated with constipation, which makes your tummy appear flatter.

Black Death’s Genetic Code Cracked

Scientists have mapped out the entire genetic map of Black Death, a 14th-century bubonic plague that killed 50 million Europeans in one of the most devastating epidemics in history.
According to Reuters, the work, which involved extracting and purifying DNA from the remains of Black Death victims buried in London’s “plague pits”, is the first time scientists have been able to draft a reconstructed genome of any ancient pathogen.
Their result--a full draft of the entire Black Death genome--should allow researchers to track changes in the disease’s evolution and virulence, and lead to better understanding of modern-day infectious diseases.
Building on previous research which showed that a specific variant of the Yersinia pestis (Y. pestis) bacterium was responsible for the plague that ravaged Europe between 1347 and 1351, a team of German, Canadian and American scientists went on to ‘capture’ and sequence the entire genome of the disease.
“The genomic data show that this bacterial strain, or variant, is the ancestor of all modern plagues we have today worldwide. Every outbreak across the globe today stems from a descendant of the medieval plague,” said Hendrik Poinar, of Canada’s McMaster University, who worked with the team.
“With a better understanding of the evolution of this deadly pathogen, we are entering a new era of research into infectious disease.”
Major technical advances in DNA recovery and sequencing have dramatically expanded the scope of genetic analysis of ancient specimens, opening up new ways of trying to understand emerging and reemerging infections.
Experts say the direct descendants of the same bubonic plague still exist today, killing around 2,000 people a year.
A virulent strain of E. coli bacteria, which caused a deadly outbreak of infections in Germany and France earlier this year, was also found to contain DNA sequences from plague bacteria.
For this study, Poinar’s team analyzed skeletal remains from Black Death victims buried in London’s East Smithfield “plague pits”, which are located under what is now the Royal Mint.
By focusing on promising specimens from the dental pulp of five bodies, which had already been pre-screened for the presence of Y. pestis, they were able to extract, purify and enrich the disease’s DNA and at the same time reduce the amount of background non-plague DNA which might interfere.
Linking the 1349 to 1350 dates of the skeletal remains to the genetic data allowed the researchers to calculate the age of the ancestor of Y. pestis that caused the mediaeval plague.
Poinar, whose work was published in the journal Nature, said the team found that in 660 years of evolution, the genetic map of the ancient organism had only barely changed. “The next step is to determine why this was so deadly,” he said.
Johannes Krause Of Germany’s University of Tubingen, who also worked on the study, said the same approach could now be used to study the genomes of all sorts of historic pathogens.
“This will provide us with direct insights into the evolution of human pathogens and historical pandemics,” he said in a statement.

Gene Therapy, Stem Cells Unite

Two of the holy grails of medicine--stem cell technology and precision gene therapy--have been united for the first time in humans, say scientists.
It means patients with a genetic disease could, one day, be treated with their own cells, Timesoffindia wrote.
A study in Nature corrected a mutation in stem cells made from a patient with a liver disease.
Researchers said this was a “critical step” toward devising treatments, but safety tests were still needed.
At the moment, stem cells created from a patient with a genetic illness cannot be used to cure the disease as those cells would also contain the corrupted genetic code.
Scientists, at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge, were working on cirrhotic liver disease.
It is caused by a change to a single pair of letters, out of the six billion that make up the genetic code.
As a result, a protein that protects the body from damage, antitrypsin, cannot escape from the liver where it is made.
The illness is one of the most common genetic diseases, affecting one in 2,000 people in Europe.
The only solution is a liver transplant, but this requires a lifetime of drugs to prevent organ rejection.
The research group took a skin cell from a patient and converted it to a stem cell.
A molecular scalpel was used to cut out the single mutation and insert the right letter-- correcting the genetic fault.
The stem cells were then turned into liver cells. One of the lead researchers, Prof. David Lomas, said, “They functioned beautifully with normal secretion and function.”
When the cells were placed into mice, they were still working correctly six weeks later.

New Form of Superhard Carbon Discovered

Carbon is the fourth-most-abundant element in the universe and comes in a wide variety of forms, called allotropes, including graphite, graphene and the hardest natural material known to man, diamonds.
Now scientists have discovered a new form of carbon that is capable of withstanding extreme pressure stresses previously only observed in diamond, EurekAlert reported.
Unlike crystalline forms of carbon such as diamonds, whose hardness is highly dependent upon the direction in which the crystal is formed, the new form of carbon is amorphous, meaning it could be equally strong in all directions.
A team, including scientists from Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution for Science, started with a form of carbon called glassy carbon.
Glassy carbon was first synthesized in the 1950s and was found to combine glassy and ceramic properties with those of graphite, including high temperature resistance, hardness, low density, low electrical resistance, low friction and low thermal resistance. To create the new carbon allotrope, the team compressed glassy carbon to above 400,000 times normal atmospheric pressure.
The resultant new form of carbon was capable of withstanding the types of pressure stress that no other substance other than diamond had been able to withstand. It was able to withstand 1.3 million times normal atmospheric pressure in one direction while confined under a pressure of 600,000 times atmospheric levels in another direction.

3 Ways Breakfast Can HelpLose Weight

Some people think skipping breakfast is a great weight-loss tactic. The logic being that they’re cutting calories out of their daily intake. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work out that way.
According to Shine.yahoo, most people will make up for the calories later on in the day. Eating a meal in the morning can actually help you reach your weight-loss goal, and here are three reasons why.
Breakfast jump-starts your metabolism: If you skip the first meal of the day, your metabolism actually slows down to conserve energy.
Studies show that those who eat breakfast regularly lose weight, keep it off and are less likely to be overweight. Breakfast eaters also more likely exercise regularly. So be sure you eat breakfast and enjoy it within an hour after waking up.
Protein reduces cravings for sweets: The high amount of protein in popular breakfast choices such as Greek yogurt, whole grains and eggs will give you energy, so you’ll be less likely to reach for sugary, high-calorie pick-me-ups like pastries and specialty coffee drinks.
Fiber satiates hunger and flattens your belly. Cereal, made from whole grains, and fresh fruit are both great breakfast choices because they’re high in fiber. Fiber not only keeps you feeling full longer so you’re less apt to go for a snack between meals, it also reduces the bloating associated with constipation, which makes your tummy appear flatter.

T-Rex Even Bigger Than Thought

The mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex may have been much bigger and hungrier than people thought, say experts.
Scientists in Britain and the USA have used 3D scans to measure the size of T-Rex skeletons and found they were far bigger than people had thought, AFP wrote.
They found that T-Rex would’ve weighed about 10 kg when it was born, about the same as a six-month-old baby.
But then over the next 17 years, it would boom in size up to nine tons, about as heavy as nine small cars. That’s about twice as heavy as experts had thought up to now.
The old way to figure out dinosaur sizes was to build scale models, but now the 3D laser scans have made the measurements far more accurate.
Because the T-Rex skulls were so huge, the team had to borrow special scanners normally used by Chicago Police and the Ford Motor Company in America.
Dr. John Hutchinson of the Royal Veterinary College told us that T-Rexes “would have been extremely hungry, like ravenous teenagers”.
Hutchinson said he now wants to find even more fossils to prove that T-Rex was even bigger and heavier than nine tons.

7 Foods for Fighting Pain
1. Ginger
Ginger’s been used for thousands of years to help with a variety of ailments from stomachaches to heart conditions. This anti-inflammatory add-in is excellent on a variety of foods, even tea.

2. Sage
This anti-inflammatory herb has also been shown in some research to boost memory. Perfect in poultry dishes, sage has been used for centuries and contains flavonoids that help reduce swelling, Shine.yahoo wrote.

3. Coffee
One cup of black coffee can provide relief from headaches and provide more antioxidants than a serving of berries. Preliminary research has also shown that drinking coffee may reduce the risk of some cancers.

4. Salmon
Filled with Omega-3s, salmon provides an excellent source of protein and antioxidants. The fatty acids from this fish can help lubricate tight joints in the body.

5. Green Tea
Used for centuries for a variety of medicinal purposes, green tea is an excellent source of polyphenols that may help reduce free radicals in the body, which can cause inflammation.

6. Olive Oil
Here’s a powerful anti-inflammatory ingredient that’s comparable to over-the-counter pain medications. A staple of the Mediterranean diet, olive oil helps reduce the risk of strokes and some cancers.

7. Cherries
Cherries help reduce inflammation by neutralizing free radicals in the body. These tart, sweet treats can also help stop tissue inflammation.


Facial Recognition System
To Help Catch Criminals
Chances are, you’ve seen at least one or two TV shows in which the police examine news footage shot at several different crime scenes, and recognize the same person’s face showing up repeatedly in the crowds of onlookers--the “criminal returning to the scene of the crime” scenario.
Realistically, it’s pretty hard to believe that one person could look through all that footage, and remember all those faces, Gizmag said.
It turns out that a computer could do it, however, as scientists at Indiana’s University of Notre Dame have illustrated with their “Questionable Observer Detector” or QuOD.
The system was developed by a team led by Kevin Bowyer, Patrick Flynn and Jeremiah Barr, of Notre Dame’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Bowyer was inspired to invent QuOD, when he heard military and national security experts describing how they needed a way of identifying IED bombers in the Middle East--such individuals are known to come back to bombing sites, to assess the aftermath of their work.
While most facial recognition systems match faces in footage to those in an existing database, there is no such database for QuOD. Instead, it creates a separate “face track” for each individual appearing in a video clip.
For each new clip that it analyzes, it compares the face tracks created from that clip with those created from all the previous clips. Any time that matching tracks are discovered, they are grouped together so that a human operator can then view all the appearances of that one person.
One of those images could then possibly be matched to a photo in a database, or at the very least circulated in the form of a “WANTED” poster.

Epilepsy Surgery

Almost half of the people who undergo surgery for epilepsy remain free of seizures 10 years later, a new study finds.