Difference Between the Male and Female Brain

Mark Kastleman

Significant differences exist between the male and female
 brains. Although what follows has been meticulously gathered 
from the research and writings of leading scientists and 
psychologists, it is by no means a hard and fast rule or 
description of every man and every woman. Every person is 
different and unique.

However, the facts clearly bear out that for nearly 
all men and women there are significant differences between
 the male and female brain. This means that in most cases, 
men and women do not behave, feel, think, or respond in the same 
ways, either on the inside or on the outside.

1.The male brain is highly specialized, using specific parts of one 

hemisphere or the other to accomplish specific tasks. The female brain

 is more diffused and utilizes significant portions of both hemispheres

 for a variety of tasks.

2.Men are able to focus on narrow issues and block out unrelated information

 and distractions. Women naturally see everyday things from a broader, 

"big-picture" vantage point.

3.Men can narrowly focus their brains on specific tasks or activities for

 long periods of time without tiring. Women are better equipped to divide

 their attention among multiple activities or tasks.

4.Men are able to separate information, stimulus, emotions, relationships, 

etc. into separate compartments in their brains, while women tend to link 

everything together.

5.Men see individual issues with parts of their brain, while women look 

at the holistic or multiple issues with their whole brain (both hemispheres).

6.Men have as much as 20 times more testosterone in their systems than 

do women. This makes men typically more aggressive and dominant .

6.In men, the dominant perceptual sense is vision, which is typically not 

the case with women. All of a woman's senses are, in some respects, more 

finely tuned than those of a man.

7.Pornographers incorporate male/female differences into the design and

 marketing of their wares. Just because something might not appeal to a

 man doesn't mean that a woman won't be attracted to it and vice versa.

Scientists discover new blood pressure genes

New genes affecting high blood pressure, a condition that causes more than 7 million deaths worldwide each year, have been uncovered by scientists at Queen Mary, University of London.

The study, published (17 November) in the American Journal of Human Genetics, reveals a new layer of understanding in the causes of high blood pressure, a major contributing factor towards the incidence of heart attacks and stroke.

Senior author on the paper, Professor Patricia Munroe from Queen Mary’s William Harvey Research Institute, said: “The new genes are an important discovery in tackling heart disease and stroke but now we need to further our understanding of the way these genes function.”

Professor Munroe, Dr Toby Johnson and others from Queen Mary, along with colleagues from other universities, analysed blood pressure measurements from 25,000 people. They used a custom designed DNA chip to study 50,000 sites along the human genome. By looking for sites where people with a particular DNA letter (A, C, G, or T) had unusually high or low blood pressure, they were able to identify genes that affect blood pressure.

“Although the number of people and the number of sites along the genome we studied might seem large, by contemporary standards this study was actually quite small. Nonetheless, we were able to make some very important discoveries,” she said. “We can say, therefore, that careful choices in our study design paid off, and as a whole the study was very cost-effective.”

The scientists identified a total of five new genetic variants associated with blood pressure, and also confirmed a number of previous discoveries.

First author on the study, Dr Johnson, also from the William Harvey Research Institute, said: “In discovering these genes we have taken another step towards understanding the biological mechanisms that affect blood pressure. Ultimately, this knowledge can lead to developing new treatments, or to help identify individuals who would benefit most from the treatments already available.”

One of the genes identified in the study is involved in the production of nitric oxide, a small molecule studied extensively by another group at the William Harvey Research Institute, for its blood pressure-lowering benefits.

Dr Johnson explains: “We found that the specific genetic variant identified in our study may affect how the nitric oxide-producing gene is turned on and off. In principle this could be used to develop alternative therapies for lowering blood pressure.”

This most recent work also revealed independent genetic effects at two of the genes previously identified in research led by the same team, indicating more complexities surrounding the role of genes in influencing blood pressure levels.

“We suspect that this might be the tip of the iceberg in terms of the role these genes play in affecting blood pressure,” Dr Johnson said. “We have a lot more work to do to get the complete picture of the way these specific genes function.”

Scientists Invent 'World's Lightest' Material

Researchers have created a material that's so light it can rest comfortably on a dandelion seed head without disturbing the fluffy, delicate structure of the plant. The "ultralight metallic microlattice" invented by scientists at UC Irvine, HRL Laboratories, and Caltech is described in the nov. 18 issue of science.

The new materials super lightness is due to the way it has been constructed using interconnecting hollow nickel-phosphorous tubes which create a micro-lattice. The nickel-phosphorous tubes have a wall thickness of 100 nanometers, which is the equivalent of 1,000 times thinner than a human hair.

The new material is 100 times lighter than styrofoam,according to the reports. The secret to its lightness is a cellular architecture fabricated from hollow tubes that supports a material structure that is in reality 99.99 percent air, according to the research team that built it.

That means the material's density is less than one-thousandth that of water. And the stuff is pretty resilient as well—researchers said that when squashed to half its height, the material rebounds 98 percent of the way back.

"The trick is to fabricate a lattice of interconnected hollow tubes with a wall thickness 1,000 times thinner than a human hair," lead author Tobias Shandler of HRL said, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The new material uses weight efficient techniques, just like the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, using a hierarchical lattice design. As an example the team explains that if the 7,300 tonnes of metal used to construct the Eiffel Tower were melted down the result would fill just six centimeters (2.4 in) of the structure’s 125 m2 (1,345 square ft) base.

As well as its ultra-low density, the team of researchers also explain that micro-lattice architecture of their new material provides it with extraordinarily high energy absorption. Allowing it to completely recover from compression exceeding 50 percent strain.

The material seen resting on a dandelion seed head in the picture above is 90 percent nickel, according to the Times, but Bill Carter, manager of the architected materials group at HRL, told the newspaper that it can be made out of other materials as well.

One UC Irvine researcher involved with the project suggested the ultra-lightweight material might be used for impact protection, and might have applications "in the aerospace industry, acoustic dampening, and maybe some battery applications," according to the Times.

The material behaves somewhat like a feather when dropped, floating to the ground, Carter told the paper.

"It takes more than 10 seconds, for instance, for the lightest material we've made to fall if you drop it from shoulder height," he said.

New test finds neutrinos still faster than light

Finding that contradicts Einstein's theory of special relativity is repeated with fine-tuned procedures and equipment

The scientists who appeared to have found in September that certain particles that can travel faster than  light have ruled out one potential source of error in their measurements after completing a second, fine-tuned version of their experiment.

Their results, posted on the arvix preprint server on friday morning and submitted for peer review in the Journal of High Energy Physics, confirmed earlier measurements that neutrinos, sent through the ground from Cern near Geneva to the  Gran Sasso lab in Italy 450 miles (720km) away seemed to travel faster than light.

The finding that neutrinos might break one of the most fundamental laws of physics sent scientists into a frenzy when it was first reported in September. Not only because it appeared to go against Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity but, if correct, the finding opened up the troubling possibility of being able to send information back in time, blurring the line between past and present and wreaking havoc with the fundamental principle of cause and effect.

Around 20 neutrino events have been measured at the Gran Sasso lab in the fine-tuned version of the experiment in the past few weeks, each one precisely associated with a pulse leaving Cern. The scientists concluded from the new measurements that the neutrinos still appeared to be arriving earlier than they should.

"With the new type of beam produced by Cern's accelerators we've been able to to measure with accuracy the time of flight of neutrinos one by one," said Dario Autiero of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). "The 20 neutrinos we recorded provide comparable accuracy to the 15,000 on which our original measurement was based. In addition their analysis is simpler and less dependent on the measurement of the time structure of the proton pulses and its relation to the neutrinos' production mechanism."

In a statement released on Friday, Fernando Ferroni, president of the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics, said: "A measurement so delicate and carrying a profound implication on physics requires an extraordinary level of scrutiny. The experiment at Opera, thanks to a specially adapted Cern beam, has made an important test of consistency of its result. The positive outcome of the test makes us more confident in the result, although a final word can only be said by analogous measurements performed elsewhere in the world."

Since the Opera (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus) team at Gran Sasso announced its results, physicists around the world have published scores of online papers trying to explain the strange finding as either the result of a trivial mistake or evidence for new physics.

Dr Carlo Contaldi of Imperial College London suggested that different gravitational effects at Cern and Gran Sasso could have affected the clocks used to measure the neutrinos. Others have come up with ideas about new physics that modify special relativity by taking the unexpected effects of higher dimensions into account.

Despite the latest result, said Autiero, the observed faster-than-light anomaly in the neutrinos' speed from Cern to Gran Sasso needed further scrutiny and independent tests before it could be refuted or confirmed definitively. The Opera experiment will continue to take data with a new muon detector well into next year, to improve the accuracy of the results.

The search for errors is not yet over, according to Jacques Martino, director of the National Institute of Nuclear and Particle Physics at CNRS. He said that more checks would be under way in future, including ensuring that the clocks at Cern and Gran Sasso were properly synchronised, perhaps by using an optical fibre as opposed to the GPS system used at the moment.

This would remove any potential errors that might occur due to the effects of Einstein's theory of general relativity, which says that clocks tick at different rates depending on the amount of gravitational force they experience – clocks closer to the surface of the Earth tick slower than those further away.

Even a tiny discrepancy between the clocks at Cern and Gran Sasso could be at the root of the faster-than-light results seen in September.

The team also rechecked their statistical analysis, confirming that the error on their measurements was indeed 10 nanoseconds. Some team members, including Stanco, had worried that the true error was larger. What they found was "absolutely compatible" with the original announcement, he says.

That was enough for Stanco to put his name to the paper, although he says six or seven team members are still holding out. The team was planning to submit the paper to a European physics journal on Thursday.

They are still running other tests, including measuring the length of a fibre-optic cable that carries information from the underground lab at Gran Sasso to a data-collection centre on the surface. The team is also trying to do the same test using another detector at the lab called RPC. That test will take another several months.

Even though he agreed to sign the paper, Stanco says: "I'm not so happy. From a theoretical point of view, it is not so appealing. I still feel that another experiment should make the measurement before I will say that I believe this result."

Skype Announces Facebook-to-Facebook Calling

Skype Thursday announced that Skype and Facebook can now be linked from Skype’s end. With Skype’s new 5.4 Beta for Mac and 5.7 Beta for Windows, users can conduct a “Facebook to Facebook” call from within the Skype platform. It’s a major component of  July’s announcement that Skype would be powering Facebook’s new video-chat feature.

Over the last year, the messages team has been working to make it easier to have one on one conversations with your friends. In November, we launched the new messages, which brings together your chats, texts, emails and messages all in one place.

Today I'm excited to introduce video calling and other improvements to chat.

To use the new feature, users must connect their Skype and Facebook accounts — this will upload all of your friends as contacts in Skype. Then it’s as easy as hitting “call” and connecting to your friends who are on Facebook chat. You can see their status updates, see if they are online, and also instant message them right from Skype.

Other features added on the new Beta versions of Skype include video rendering for Mac users and group sharing for Windows users with a Premium subscription. Users who are chatting-one on-one will also be able to screen-share while video streaming.

Skype announcement this morning said that this development is just another way to make it easier to connect to our friends, a way of “removing communication barriers.” While being able to import Facebook contacts effectively makes Facebook and Skype interchangeable as far as video-calling goes, if you are already Skyping, is connecting to Facebook just an extra step? If yes, it’s not a very big step, and does make sense if you are already logged into Skype. Connecting accounts gives users a lot more people to potentially chat with.

In the end, whether this feature is actually useful will depend on what you generally use the two different chat platforms for. Skype is usually used for voice/video calling, and people make “Skype dates,” where they open the application at the same time, and catch up this way. This is a long way of saying that Skype is used less spontaneously than Facebook for chatting/calling. Facebook’s chat is used more like AIM, where if you are on, you see who else is on, and go from there. If Skype is looking for a little more of that Facebook/AIM quality, this is a good move.

Google Music With Android Music Store, Artist Hub Launched.

Google’s music service has been in beta since last May, and Google has now opened Google Music to everyone and also added in a range of new features which include their own music store.

First up is the Google Music service, which will let you store up to 20,000 of your own tracks in the cloud and then stream them to any device, and Google Music will automatically sync all your music across all your devices.

Google announced a new online store and storage space yesterday called Google Music. The program, which has been compared to iTunes and Amazon mp3, is meant to be used on computers, phones and tablets.

Another huge part of the announcement yesterday was the Google Music Artist Hub, a music sharing network that has been drawing comparisons to BandCamp. In the announcement, Google representatives said that the market would be available to artists for a one-time fee of $25 with no annual fee to keep individual albums online.

Representatives also said the Artist Hub would give artists increased freedom by allowing them to change their album price at will. Artists will also be able to sell their tracks directly through their YouTube pages in the future.  Google will pay the artist 70 percent of all sales and take 30 percent.

New Contact Lens Developed To Deliver Eye Medication In Controlled Doses

A new type of contact lens has been created that has been designed to deliver eye medication to users in controlled doses. The new contact lenses have been developed by a team of biomedical and  chemical engineers from Alabama’s Auburn University.It is something very new and interesting.

Normally drugs which have been administered to patients eyes are washed out within around 3o minutes after being applied. To help by-pass this wash out problem, the team has developed a disposable contact lens that can administer medication you the wearers eye, such as antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and/or anti-allergy drugs several times a day.

The team leader and chemical engineer Mark Byrne explains:

“Results indicate that our lenses release a constant drug concentration for the entire time the lens is worn. This is about 100 times better than the conventional therapy, which consists of drug delivery via eye drops. With numbers that impressive, this technology is a real game-changer.” - ”Eye drops and ointments make up more than 90 percent market share, but are an inefficient, inconvenient method,” – “Our lenses offer the increased efficacy and efficiency of drug delivery, which translates to better eye health.”