According to two year British study, fish oil may be good for your heart but it doesn’t appear to help out keep you slim & smart. Several studies have exposed that people who eat more fish have improved mental function, and are less likely to develop dementia. But after studying 748 men and women aged bracket of 70s, researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine cast some doubt on this link.

Dr. Alan Dangour a “researcher’ told that this is very paramount in finding because a lot of people are taking fish oil in anticipates that it will be good for their cognitive function. The problem with a lot of these studies of course is there are lots of causes why people eat more fish. Dr. Alan Dangour pointed out and added that he didn’t rule out the possibility that taking fish oil for a longer period of time might have valuable effects.
This study, printed in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, and having involved 748 men’s and women’s in their 70s, but none of whom had any dementia or other harm of mental function. The contributors took 200 milligrams of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) plus 300 mg docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) every day for two years or a placebo capsule enclosing olive oil. EPA and DHA are the two main omega-3 fatty acids set up in fish oil. Neither group showed any change in cognitive function over the 24-month trial, as gauged by a battery of tests of mental function they took at the beginning and end of the study. The percentage of people who died or dropped out was similar in both groups. We can clearly say that after two years there’s no evidence for an advantage in terms of cognitive function, Dr.Alan Dangour said.

He and his colleagues are reports that their study is the largest and longest randomized controlled trial to date investigating omega-3s and mental function in older people. This doesn’t mean that people might benefit their brains by taking fish oil capsules for longer than two years. There’s no good evidence at the moment from randomized controlled trials that it’s good for cognitive function.

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The most astonishing goals in the history of football. Most fascinating goals in the history of football. A game that thrilled everybody.

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On 19 September 2007 against England in the ICC World Twenty20 Super 8 match held at Kingsmead in Durban, he hit 6 sixes off one Stuart Broad’s over. This helped him to reach the fastest fifty ever in Twenty20 game, off just 12 balls and also the fastest in any form of international cricket. This was the fourth time that six sixes had been hit in one over in senior cricket, the first time in Twenty20 cricket, and the first time in any form of international cricket against a bowler from a test playing nation. (Garfield Sobers and Ravi Shastri did it in first class matches, and Herschelle Gibbs did it in a 2007 Cricket World Cup match against Dutch bowler Daan van Bunge.

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The 2008 Wimbledon Championships was a tennis tournament played on outdoor grass courts. It was the 122nd edition of the Wimbledon Championships, and the third Grand Slam event of the year. It took place at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in Wimbledon, London, England, United Kingdom, from June 23 through July 6, 2008.

Spanish player Rafael Nadal won the first Wimbledon title of his career; the first Grand Slam tournament he had won other than the French Open. Nadal defeated five-time defending champion Roger Federer in the final in what some regard as one of the greatest matches of all time.

The final Sunday, featuring the men’s singles final, saw Rafael Nadal win the first Wimbledon title of his career and fifth Grand Slam tournament. No. 1 seed and five time champion Roger Federer was aiming to equal William Renshaw’s record of six consecutive Wimbledon titles (1881–1886), and edge ever closer to Pete Sampras’s record of 14 Grand Slam titles, of which Federer had 12. Nadal, the No. 2 seed and four-time French Open champion was Federer’s challenger for the third consecutive year, and was aiming to become the first man since Björn Borg to win the French Open and Wimbledon in the same year. Nadal’s countryman, Manuel Santana, the last Spaniard to have won the Wimbledon title (in 1966), said Nadal could take inspiration from Spain’s victory in the recent European Championships, which Spain had last won in 1964.
Rafael Nadal climbs over a commentary box roof to receive the congratulations of Felipe, Prince of Asturias and his wife.

Rain and lightning delayed the final, scheduled for 14:00, until 14:35 (UTC+1). The final itself was a fragmented affair, with two rain delays removing the possibility of an uninterrupted final. However, the playing time made it the longest final in Wimbledon history, at four hours and 48 minutes.[85]

Nadal began well, winning the first set 6–4 in just under an hour, and taking the second by the same scoreline, despite having been down 4–1 at one point.[86] The third set was interrupted by rain delays but the players returned to finish the set with a tie break, which Federer won by seven points to five. The fourth mirrored the third by also going to a tie break, in which Nadal took a 5–2 lead. Nadal was on serve but served a double fault and then was forced by Federer in to a hitting a backhand into the net. Later in the tie break, Nadal had two championship points, including one on his serve, which he squandered, with Federer triumphing 10-8, and forcing a final set.[86] The fifth set went only four games before another rain delay; the score was 2–2 (40–40) when they returned. Nadal eventually prevailed, winning the final set 9–7, at 21:16 local time. Nadal celebrated his win by climbing to his family in the crowd, including coach Toni Nadal, and then traversed a roofed area to shake hands with members of Spanish royalty.[85] Pundit and three-time Wimbledon champion John McEnroe lauded it as “the greatest match I have ever seen.”

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Fiery rings of ionized gas erupt from the sun in the first videos taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. The satellite is delivering unprecedented views of the star, which could help untangle the mysteries of its magnetic field and improve forecasts of solar storms on Earth. The observatory, which launched on 11 February, takes ultra-sharp images of the entire disc of the sun previous high resolution satellites could see only small portions of its surface at a time. “It is the most comprehensive view of the sun,” Madhulika Guhathakurta, the mission’s programme scientist at NASA, said at a press briefing on Wednesday. “When you see the whole sun, it is showing connections we have never seen before.” One of the probe’s instruments, the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA), uses four telescopes to study the sun’s surface and atmosphere. It caught a giant gas loop called a prominence shooting out from the sun on 30 March (first part of video). Prominences are confined by the sun’s magnetic fields, whose origin and behavior are not well understood.
Several regions of intense magnetic fields were measured by another instrument, the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager, on 8 April. One of these regions erupted in a burst of energy called a solar flare (bright spot near the upper left portion of the sun). A blast wave spread outward from the flare, heating and ejecting material from the sun’s outer atmosphere in an event called a coronal mass ejection (CME). If the Earth gets in the way of a CME, the particles can zap satellites, endanger astronauts and knock out power grids. This CME did not cause damage but shot a significant amount of material towards Earth. “What we’ve ejected here is an amount of mass about the same as contained in the whole Mississippi river, and we’ve ejected it at a speed of about a million miles per hour… in about 30 seconds,” said Alan Title, the instrument’s principal investigator at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in Palo Alto, California. The AIA instrument studied the eruption at a range of wavelengths, which correspond to temperatures ranging from 80,000 °C to 10 million °C. As the wave propagates across the sun, you can see the colors change, [which shows] how rapidly the gas is heating, Title said. “From this, we can begin for the first time to decode how this energy is released into the outer atmosphere, and… how it impacts us.” The $808 million observatory will operate for at least five years.

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Excess Alcohol use may Increase risk of cancer

A new research has suggested that too much consumption of alcohol may raise the risk of cancer and even cause premature aging. This is because of shortening of telomeres, an area of DNA successions at the end of a chromosome, which is vital for the genetic stableness of cells. As people grow old, telomere length reduces progressively. Too much use of alcohol has been linked to oxidative strain and swelling, two mechanisms, which speed up telomere shortening. Since telomere shortening is believed to raise the risk of cancer, the scientists speculated that those with shorter telomeres owing to heavy alcohol intake would have an increased cancer risk. Andrea Baccarelli who heads the Centre of Molecular and Genetic Epidemiology, Ca’ Granda Hospital Foundation, University of Milan, Italy, “Heavy alcohol users tend to look haggard, and it is commonly thought that heavy drinking leads to premature aging and earlier onset of diseases of aging. In particular, heavy alcohol drinking has been associated with cancer at multiple sites.” “All the cells in our body have a biological clock in telomeres,” Baccarelli added. The study scientists measured serum DNA among 59 partakers who ill-used alcohol and 197 partakers with variable alcohol ingestion habits. The two groups were similar in age and other components, which might have an effect on telomere length, like diet, workout, work-related tension and environmental exposures. The outcomes of the study showed that telomere length was noticeably shortened in those who had heavy amounts of alcohol. The study outcomes were released at the American Association for Cancer Research’s 101st annual meeting. If you have ever seen a person who has had too much to drink, you know that alcohol is a drug that has widespread effects on the body, and the effects vary from person to person. People who drink might be the “life of the party” or they might become sad and droopy. Their speech may slur and they may have trouble walking. It all depends on the amount of alcohol consumed, a person’s history with alcohol and a person’s personality. Even though you have seen the physical and behavioral changes, you might wonder exactly how alcohol works on the body to produce those effects. What is alcohol? How does the body process it? How does the chemistry of alcohol work on the chemistry of the brain? In this article, we will examine all of the ways in which alcohol affects the human body.­

The Effects of Alcohol

If you have seen someone who has had too much to drink, you’ve probably noticed definite changes in that person’s performance and behavior. The body responds to alcohol in stages, which correspond to an increase in BAC

1. Euphoria (BAC = 0.03 to 0.12 percent)

* They become more self-confident or daring.

* Their attention span shortens.

* They may look flushed.

* Their judgement is not as good — they may say the first thought that comes to mind, rather than an appropriate comment for the given situation.

* They have trouble with fine movements, such as writing or signing their name.

2. Excitement (BAC = 0.09 to 0.25 percent)

* They become sleepy.

* They have trouble understanding or remembering things (even recent events).

* They do not react to situations as quickly (if they spill a drink they may just stare at it).

* Their body movements are uncoordinated.

* They begin to lose their balance easily.

* Their vision becomes blurry.

* They may have trouble sensing things (hearing, tasting, feeling, etc.).

3. Confusion (BAC = 0.18 to 0.30 percent)

* They are confused — might not know where they are or what they are doing.

* They are dizzy and may stagger.

* They may be highly emotional — aggressive, withdrawn or overly affectionate.

* They cannot see clearly.

* They are sleepy.

* They have slurred speech.

* They have uncoordinated movements (trouble catching an object thrown to them).

* They may not feel pain as readily as a sober person.

4. Stupor (BAC = 0.25 to 0.4 percent)

* They can barely move at all.

* They cannot respond to stimuli.

* They cannot stand or walk.

* They may vomit.

* They may lapse in and out of consciousness.

5. Coma (BAC = 0.35 to 0.50 percent)

* They are unconscious.

* Their reflexes are depressed (i.e. their pupils do not respond appropriately to changes in light).

* They feel cool (lower-than-normal body temperature).

* Their breathing is slower and more shallow.

* Their heart rate may slow.

* They may die.

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A team of scientists have claimed that they have developed a brain implant that matches to the brain surface and melts into the place. Researcher David Kaplan who is the biomedical engineering at Tufts University says that the implant developed has ultra-thin electrode which are affixed to the film which is made from highly refined liquid silk. He explained that the implant is thin enough to follow the folds and curves of a human brain however is at the same time is strong enough to allow complex electronic circuitry to be embedded on it. These implants can be used to cure epilepsy, spinal cord injuries and other neurological disorders, according to Walter Koroshetz, M. D., deputy director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

At present thicker implants made with electrodes affixed to silicon grids are used. The new implants are more accurate in reading in recording brain activity. The implants are about 500 microns thick and flexible causing less damage to the brain tissues. The implants “better track brain function with higher resolution and sensitivity to determine where things are malfunctioning,” said Mr. Kaplan. He further said that the printed circuitry could be used for delivering the electrical stimuli to certain parts of the brain and improves treatment. Then, the implants could be used to first detect and then interrupt seizures by delivering electronic pulses that would stop the abnormal brain activity. The silk implants are optically clear and thus allow medical personnel to place it without having their vision blocked. The silk can be designed to dissolve leaving the printed electrodes. The study was published in Nature Materials and it was funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

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Shuttle Discovery and its astronauts returned safely to Earth on Tuesday after making a rare flyover of America’s heartland to wrap up their 15-day, 6 million-mile journey to the International Space Station. The touchdown was delayed by rain and fog that dissipated as the sun rose, allowing Mission Control to take advantage of the morning’s second landing opportunity. Discovery swooped through a hazy sky before landing on the Kennedy Space Center runway. NASA briefly considered bringing the shuttle in to the opposite end of the strip because of puffy clouds, but the glare from the sun was too great and flight controllers stuck to the original plan. In the end commander Alan Poindexter made a smooth touchdown, albeit a day late because of rain. Welcome home, Mission Control said, radioing congratulations on the entire flight. “It was a great mission. We enjoyed it,” Poindexter said. “And we’re glad that the International Space Station is stocked up again.”

NASA had promised a spectacular show, weather permitting, for early risers in Helena, Mont., and all the way along Discovery’s flight path through the Midwest and Southeast. With the space shuttle program winding down, there weren’t expected to be any more continental flyovers. This was, in fact, Discovery’s next-to-last flight. Only one more mission remains for NASA’s oldest surviving shuttle. As soon as it’s removed from the runway, it will be prepped for the final shuttle flight, scheduled for September.

Discovery zoomed over the North Pacific on its way home before crossing into North America over Vancouver, British Columbia. Then it headed toward the southeast, flying over northeastern Washington, Helena, Mont.; Wyoming; southwestern Nebraska; northeastern Colorado; southwestern Kansas; Oklahoma; Arkansas; Mississippi; Alabama; Georgia and finally Florida east of Gainesville. NASA had anticipated the sonic booms might be heard as far north as Kansas. There were no immediate reports. Before the shuttle began its descent, Mission Control described to the astronauts the route they would be taking to Cape Canaveral. “Sounds like a great ground track,” Poindexter observed. It was the first time since 2007 that a space shuttle descended over so much of the United States.

NASA typically prefers bringing a shuttle home from the southwest, up over the South Pacific, Central America and the Gulf of Mexico. That way, there’s minimal flying over heavily populated areas. In 2003, space shuttle Columbia shattered over Texas during re-entry, but no one on the ground was injured by the falling wreckage.

NASA wanted to maximize the crew’s work time in orbit, while minimizing fatigue. That resulted in this North American crossing. Before leaving the space station Saturday, Poindexter and his crew dropped off tons of supplies and equipment. The main delivery was a tank full of ammonia coolant, which took three spacewalks to hook up. A nitrogen pressure valve refused to open after the tank was installed, and for a day, NASA considered sending the shuttle astronauts out on a fourth spacewalk to fix the problem. But engineers concluded it was not an emergency and that the space station crew or future shuttle fliers could deal with it.

History, meanwhile, was made with the presence of four women in space: three on the shuttle and one at the station. Discovery returned with a couple tons of trash and discarded space station equipment. Most of that was jammed into a cargo carrier that rocketed away aboard the shuttle back on April 5. The carrier will be re-outfitted and fly back up on Discovery in September, and be installed permanently at the orbiting outpost.

Only three shuttle missions remain for NASA before the fleet is retired this fall after nearly 30 years of operation. Atlantis will carry up a small Russian lab and other equipment next month. The same bad weather that prevented Discovery from returning home Monday also stalled Atlantis’ trip to the launch pad. The three-mile move from the hangar has been rescheduled for Tuesday night. Liftoff is targeted for May 14

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Brace yourself for more winters like the last one, northern Europe. Freezing conditions could become more likely winter temperatures may even plunge to depths last seen at the end of the 17th century, a time known as the Little Ice Age. That’s the message from a new study that identifies a compelling link between solar activity and winter temperatures in northern Europe. The research finds that low solar activity promotes the formation of giant kinks in the jet stream. These kinks can block warm westerly winds from reaching Europe, while allowing in winds from Arctic Siberia. When this happens in winter, northern Europe freezes, even though other, comparable regions of the globe may be experiencing unusually mild conditions. Northern Europe freezes, even though comparable regions experience unusually mild conditions

Mike Lockwood at the University of Reading in the UK began his investigation because these past two relatively cold British winters coincided with a lapse in the sun’s activity more profound than anything seen for a century. For most of 2008-9, sunspots virtually disappeared from the sun’s surface and the buffeting of Earth by the solar magnetic field dropped to record lows since measurements began, about 150 years ago. Lockwood and his colleagues took average winter temperatures from the Central England Temperature dataset, which extends back to 1659, and compared it with records of highs and lows in solar activity. They found that during years of low solar activity, winters in the UK were far more likely to be colder than average. There is less than a 1 per cent probability that the result was obtained by chance, says Lockwood

Judith Lean, a solar-terrestrial physicist at the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC, says the analysis is statistically robust, and reckons it forms a piece in the larger puzzle of how solar activity influences weather. Often cited by climate-change sceptics as a cause of global warming (What are you up to, sunshine?), the effects of solar cycles have largely evaded the grasp of climate modellers. Lockwood found that when he removed 20th-century warming due to industrial emissions from his models, the statistical link between solar lows and extreme winters was stronger, suggesting the phenomenon is unrelated to global warming. But the sun undeniably has a big influence on weather systems: it is, after all, the energy source that powers them. All the little pieces are adding up into something much bigger,” says Lean. “People are beginning to realise that European weather is particularly susceptible to solar activity.” A study she published in 2008 found that warmer-than-average temperatures were more likely in northern Europe when solar activity is high

Lean says research like hers and Lockwood’s is helping to overcome a long-standing reticence among climate scientists to tackle the influence of solar cycles on the climate and weather. A big clue to the nature of this influence may lie in work published in 2008 by David Barriopedro at the University of Lisbon, Portugal, and colleagues. They investigated so-called “blocking events” in the mid-latitude jet stream during the winters of 1955-99. The jet stream brings winds from the west, over the Atlantic, and into northern Europe. Blocking occurs when the meanders in the jet stream become so large that they double back on themselves, halting the prevailing westerly winds and allowing cold north-easterlies to take control (see diagram). Barriopedro found that when solar activity is low, the blocking events move eastwards across the Atlantic towards Europe, effectively opening an atmospheric corridor to the frigid Siberian Arctic.

But how can solar variability influence the jet stream? One finger of suspicion is pointing at the stratosphere, the layer of the atmosphere that lies 20 to 50 kilometres above our heads. There, patterns of winds and temperature are known to be influenced by solar activity, says Lockwood. This is because peaks in ultraviolet radiation emitted by the sun boost ozone formation in the stratosphere, which in turn absorbs more ultraviolet and heats up. The heating is greatest in the region of the stratosphere nearest to the sun and so a temperature gradient appears across the stratosphere and winds are born. How this affects the weather below is still debated. Very little is known about the physics that governs the stratosphere, but one pattern that is emerging is that stratospheric “weather” is linked to the troposphere below it – where our everyday weather and currents like the jet stream reside. Edwin Gerber of New York University studies these interactions. He and colleagues showed in 2009 that upward movements of air in the troposphere can change the patterns of stratospheric winds. These changes, in turn, can be reflected back down to the troposphere and influence weather at the surface of the Earth changes in the stratospheric winds influence the path of winter storms across Europe,” Gerber says.

If researchers can prove that the sun can similarly induce changes in the troposphere via the stratosphere, which Gerber thinks they will, this could solve one of the biggest puzzles of the Little Ice Age – namely, that it appeared to have been a peculiarly European phenomenon, with other parts of the globe largely spared. The effects of the sun on the stratosphere are not global, says Lockwood. “They change the way the atmospheric energy is distributed around the world rather than change the total amount of energy being put into it. Future studies may show that the effects of changes in solar activity can be felt further afield, but for now it seems that Europe is particularly susceptible because it happens to sit under the northern jet stream at a longitude where its meanders can grow into kinks. Although sunspot activity is gradually returning, astronomers are not expecting it to reach its previously high levels. So if Lockwood is correct, while the general temperature trend in the northern hemisphere will increase in line with global warming over the coming decades, northern Europe can look forward to some more harsh winters. It may be time to buy some decent gloves.

What are you up to, Sunshine? How much influence solar activity wields over our climate has vexed scientists for centuries. Take the British astronomer William Herschel: in the late 18th century, he compared the price of wheat in England with the number of sunspots and suggested that years with more sunspots produced good harvests, keeping the price lower. Since the discovery of the 11-year solar cycle in the mid-19th century, many have sought to make links between different elements of solar variability and changes in climate. Here’s a snapshot of the arguments and the evidence. Cosmic rays: One persistent claim is that cosmic rays could affect cloud formation, influencing climate – but most analysis has found little or no correlation. CERN in Switzerland is running an experiment that will provide data about how likely such particles are to cause cloud formation. Sunspots: People have tried to link the number of sunspots during the 20th century with rising global temperatures. But average sunspot numbers have been dropping since the 1920s. Global mean temperatures, meanwhile, have risen over the same period.

Ultraviolet rays: Less easy to dismiss has been the idea that changes in ultraviolet radiation from the sun, a quantity closely linked to solar activity, could influence the climate. Direct measurements only began in 2003. However, average solar activity has fallen over the last two decades while temperatures have risen, making it unlikely that UV radiation is a dominant driver of global temperatures. Irradiance: Measurements of the sun’s brightness – an indicator of its energy output – only began in 1977. Irradiance rose between 1977 and 1985, but has been dropping since. Since about 1985, all the solar factors that could have warmed the climate have been going in the wrong direction, says Lockwood. “If they were really a big factor we would have cooling by now.

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David Robert Joseph Beckham, born 2 May 1975 is an English footballer who currently plays in midfield for Milan in Series. He is also an established member of the England national team and twice runner-up for FIFA World Player of the Year and in 2004 the world’s highest-paid footballer. David Beckham was the first British footballer to play 100 Champions League matches. David Beckham was captain of England from 15 November 2000 until the 2006 FIFA World Cup finals and during which he played 58 times. Since then he has continued to represent his country and earned his much-publicised hundredth cap for England against France on 26 March 2008. He is currently England’s most-capped outfield player with 115 appearances. In January 2007, it was announced that Beckham would leave Real Madrid and sign a five-year contract with Major League Soccer club Los Angeles Galaxy. Beckham’s contract with Los Angeles Galaxy became effective on 1 July 2007 and gave him the highest player salary in MLS history. His playing contract with Galaxy in 2007, 2008 and 2009 was worth $6.5m per year. He debuted for the team on 21 July 2007 in a friendly versus Chelsea at The Home Depot Center. Here you may enjoy best goals ever he made.

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