Eideard

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Egyptians voted Monday in the first election since a popular revolt toppled Hosni Mubarak’s one-man rule, showing new-found faith in the ballot box that may sweep long-banned Islamists into parliament even as army generals cling to power…

The ruling army council, which has already extended polling to a second day, kept voting stations open an extra two hours until 9 p.m. “to accommodate the high voter turnout…”

Parliament’s lower house will be Egypt’s first nationally elected body since Mubarak’s fall and those credentials alone may enable it to dilute the military’s monopoly of power.

A high turnout throughout the election would give it legitimacy. Despite a host of reported electoral violations and lax supervision exploited by some groups, election monitors reported no systematic Mubarak-style campaign to rig the polls…

Oppressed under Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist parties have stood aloof from those challenging army rule in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and elsewhere, unwilling to let anything obstruct a vote that may bring them closer to power…

Nevertheless, the Brotherhood has formidable advantages that include a disciplined organization, name recognition among a welter of little-known parties and years of opposing Mubarak…

Many voters engaged in lively political debate as they waited patiently in long queues…

The world is closely watching the election, keen for stability in Egypt, which has a peace treaty with Israel, owns the Suez Canal linking Europe and Asia, and which in Mubarak’s time was an ally in countering Islamist militants in the region…

Individual winners are to be announced Wednesday, but many contests will go to a run-off vote on December 5. List results will not be declared until after the election ends on January 11…

Egyptians seemed enthused by the novelty of a vote where the outcome was, for a change, not a foregone conclusion…

The army council has promised civilian rule by July after the parliamentary vote and a presidential poll, now expected in June — much sooner than previously envisaged.

It’s reasonable that many of those who fought to push Mubarak out the door are impatient about getting to a modern secular democracy. Perhaps they supported a boycott – as some did – because they felt the military was still too strong. Or perhaps they worried over their own inability to marshall an electoral struggle that would result in an appreciable voice in the new parliament. Not such a great reason.

As I’ve noted here in recent weeks, winning the revolution after the revolution is a lot more demanding than tearing down the walls of dictatorship. It may be less dangerous. It ain’t easier. The grunt work of building a democratic base is not only required – it’s how you guarantee democracy.

When it comes to improving bone health in postmenopausal women — and people of all ages, actually — a Florida State University researcher has found a simple, proactive solution to help prevent fractures and osteoporosis: eating dried plums.

“Over my career, I have tested numerous fruits, including figs, dates, strawberries and raisins, and none of them come anywhere close to having the effect on bone density that dried plums, or prunes, have,” said Bahram H. Arjmandi…”All fruits and vegetables have a positive effect on nutrition, but in terms of bone health, this particular food is exceptional.”

Arjmandi and a group of researchers from Florida State and Oklahoma State University tested two groups of postmenopausal women. Over a 12-month period, the first group, consisting of 55 women, was instructed to consume 100 grams of dried plums (about 10 prunes) each day, while the second — a comparative control group of 45 women — was told to consume 100 grams of dried apples. All of the study’s participants also received daily doses of calcium (500 milligrams) and vitamin D (400 international units).

The group that consumed dried plums had significantly higher bone mineral density in the ulna (one of two long bones in the forearm) and spine, in comparison with the group that ate dried apples. This, according to Arjmandi, was due in part to the ability of dried plums to suppress the rate of bone resorption, or the breakdown of bone, which tends to exceed the rate of new bone growth as people age…

In the United States, about 8 million women have osteoporosis because of the sudden cessation of ovarian hormone production at the onset of menopause. What’s more, about 2 million men also have osteoporosis.

Arjmandi encourages people who are interested in maintaining or improving their bone health to take note of the extraordinarily positive effect that dried plums have on bone density.

“Don’t wait until you get a fracture or you are diagnosed with osteoporosis and have to have prescribed medicine,” Arjmandi said. “Do something meaningful and practical beforehand. People could start eating two to three dried plums per day and increase gradually to perhaps six to 10 per day. Prunes can be eaten in all forms and can be included in a variety of recipes.”

Proactive – as always – is better than sitting and waiting for an accident to happen. The FSU department chaired by Dr. Arjmandi – Department of Nutrition, Food and Exercise Sciences – is pretty interesting btw. One of the 72 major schools I’d consider attending if I was a kid starting out all over again.

Investigators for the Department of Justice began asking questions about Apple’s business practices involving digital music at least three weeks ago, multiple music industry sources told CNET.

DOJ investigators have interviewed numerous executives at record companies and digital music stores and according to those with knowledge of the discussions, it is clear that investigators are interested in learning whether Apple has employed anticompetitive tactics.

The sources said that the department’s inquiry is just in a fact-finding stage and that there is nothing to indicate investigators have found any wrongdoing or would file a complaint against Apple…

Apple has a history of throwing its weight around the music sector. Apple’s iTunes accounts for 70 percent of all digital song sales and wields huge power. Apple has often used that clout to dictate terms to suppliers — that is, the major labels.

Here are just a few examples: The major labels wanted variable pricing on songs and albums and for years Apple resisted. In 2005, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said the top recording companies were “getting greedy”after music execs considered a music price hike. Last year, Apple finally gave the labels some additional control over song pricing.

The big record companies wanted the ability to sell albums that were unbundled, meaning they wanted Apple to sell hot LPs as a full package and refrain from selling individual songs from these works. Again, on this issue Apple hasn’t given much ground.

To iTunes’ fans, Apple was a freedom fighter. The perception was that Apple was standing up for consumers.

Apple’s refusal to force customers to buy full albums saved them from having to shell out money for songs they didn’t want. To them, Apple’s reluctance to raise the 99 cent song price was another way the company kept music costs down. And the government never made a peep about these practices.

Regardless of papier mache whines like this, the DOJ isn’t about to investigate the MPAA or RIAA. They aren’t even prepared to come down on the side of consumers and protect Fair Use – which has been eroded every year by greedy entertainment giants, pliable bureaucrats and judges.

Allergies have become a widespread in developed countries: hay fever, eczema, hives and asthma are all increasingly prevalent. The reason? Excessive cleanliness is to blame according to Dr. Guy Delespesse, a professor at the Université de Montréal Faculty of Medicine…

“There is an inverse relationship between the level of hygiene and the incidence of allergies and autoimmune diseases,” says Dr. Delespesse. “The more sterile the environment a child lives in, the higher the risk he or she will develop allergies or an immune problem in their lifetime.”

In 1980, 10 percent of the Western population suffered from allergies. Today, it is 30 percent. In 2010, one out of 10 children is said to be asthmatic and the mortality rate resulting from this affliction increased 28 percent between 1980 and 1994.

“It’s not just the prevalence but the gravity of the cases,” says Dr. Delespesse. “Regions in which the sanitary conditions have remained stable have also maintained a constant level of allergies and inflammatory diseases…”

Why does this happen? “The bacteria in our digestive system are essential to digestion and also serve to educate our immune system. They teach it how to react to strange substances. This remains a key in the development of a child’s immune system.”

Although hygiene does reduce our exposure to harmful bacteria it also limits our exposure to beneficial microorganisms. As a result, the bacterial flora of our digestive system isn’t as rich and diversified as it used to be.

My grandma always said kids should eat a pound of dirt, every week. Or something like that.

An amazing image of an ant lifting 100 times its body weight has won first prize in a science photography contest.

The image shows an Asian weaver ant hanging upside down on a glass-like surface and holding a 500mg (0.02oz) weight in its jaws.

It was taken by zoology specialist Dr Thomas Endlein of Cambridge University as he researched insects’ sticky feet…The research shows how ants change the size and shape of the pads on their feet to enable them to carry heavier loads…

“The pads on ants’ feet are self-cleaning and can stick to almost any type of surface,” he said.

“No man-made glue or adhesive system can match this. Understanding how animals can control their adhesive systems should help us come up with clever adhesives in the future.”

Wow! Give that ant an extra homoptera for dinner.

To truly appreciate how glass can be used structurally, make your way to 233 South Wacker Drive in downtown Chicago. More precisely, make your way 1,353 feet above South Wacker, to the 103rd floor of the Sears Tower.

Once there, take a few steps over to the west wall, where the facade has been cut away. Then take one more step, over the edge.

You’ll find yourself on a floor of glass, suspended over the sidewalk a quarter-mile below. If you can’t bear looking straight down past your feet, shift your gaze out or up — the walls are glass, too, as is the ceiling. You’ve stepped into a transparent box, one of four that jut four and a half feet from the tower, hanging from cantilevered steel beams above your head. The glass walls are connected to the beams, and to the glass floor, with stainless-steel bolts. But what’s really saving you from oblivion is the glass itself.

The boxes, which opened last week as part of an extensive renovation of the tower’s observation deck, are among the most recent, and more outlandish, projects that use glass as load-bearing elements. But all glass structures have at least a bit of daring about them, as if they are giving a defiant answer to the question: You can’t do that with glass, can you?

You can. Engineers, architects and fabricators, aided by materials scientists and software designers, are building soaring facades, arching canopies and delicate cubes, footbridges and staircases, almost entirely of glass. They’re laminating glass with polymers to make beams and other components stronger and safer — each of the Sears Tower sheets is a five-layer sandwich — and analyzing every square inch of a design to make sure the stresses are within precise limits. And they are experimenting with new materials and methods that could someday lead to glass structures that are unmarked by metal or other materials.

Read the rest of this entry »

Civil engineers using a specialized laboratory at Purdue University have demonstrated the effectiveness of a simple, inexpensive method to strengthen buildings that have a flaw making them dangerously vulnerable to earthquakes. The flaw is widespread in China, Latin America, Turkey and other countries. The buildings have too many “partial-height” walls between structural columns and could be easily strengthened by replacing some windows with ordinary masonry bricks, said Santiago Pujol, an assistant professor of civil engineering at Purdue.

Partial-height walls do not extend all the way to the ceiling, sometimes causing structural columns to fail during powerful quakes. The strengthening would not only be low-cost but also easy to install, Pujol said.

“There are countries where there is a huge gap between the building codes and what is actually being built,” he said. “Sure, government enforcement is lax, but I would like to think that if we engineers made the standards easier to apply they would also be easier to enforce. That’s where we have an obligation to find solutions that are simple, affordable and effective.”

The researchers built an entire three-story building inside Purdue’s Robert L. and Terry L. Bowen Laboratory for Large-Scale Civil Engineering Research in work led by former Purdue civil engineering doctoral student Damon Fick, who is now an assistant professor in civil and environmental engineering at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology.

RTFA. I know I’m a science and engineering nut; but, I ain’t gonna change after all these years. Folks at Purdue are doing something worthwhile with their research – and given the climate of spookiness and anti-scientific silliness we live in here in the GOUSA, take the time to applaud what we still manage to invent.

High impact activities such as jumping and skipping that can easily be incorporated into warm-ups before sports and physical education classes, have been shown to benefit bone health in adolescents.

The 10 minute school-based intervention, provided twice a week for about eight months, significantly improved bone and muscle strength in healthy teenagers compared to regular warm-ups.

Physiotherapist Ben Weeks said the warm-up which included tuck jumps, star jumps, side lunges and skipping with gradually increasing complexity and repetitions, was specifically designed to apply a bone-stimulating mechanical load on the skeleton. Students worked up to about 300 jumps per session by the end of the study.

“Eighty per cent of bone mass is accrued in the first 20 years and especially around puberty due to the circulating hormones. This study targets a window of opportunity in adolescence to maximise peak bone mass with high-intensity, weight-bearing activity.”

Along with the process of dumbing-down American students, when was it that we lost simple attention to exercise like this?

I won’t drive you nuts with the [true] tale of walking forth-and-back to school, every day. Frankly, it was fun. The disciplined exercise that was part of every gym class in elementary school wasn’t fun; but, it obviously had good results.

I’d like to know why it disappeared – so, we don’t repeat the mistake.

Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have identified two signaling pathways that are activated in response to exercise and converge to dramatically increase endurance. The team of scientists report that simultaneously triggering both pathways with oral drugs turned laboratory mice into long-distance runners and conferred many of exercise’s other benefits.

In addition to their allure for endurance athletes, drugs that mimic the effects of exercise have therapeutic potential in treating certain muscle diseases, such as wasting and frailty, hospital patients unable to exercise, veterans and others with disabilities as well as obesity and a slew of associated metabolic disorders where exercise is known to be beneficial.

Previous work with genetically engineered mice in the Evans lab had revealed that permanently activating a genetic switch known as PPAR delta turned mice into indefatigable marathon runners. In addition to their super-endurance, the altered mice were resistant to weight gain, even when fed a high-fat diet that caused obesity in ordinary mice. On top of their lean and mean physique, their response to insulin improved, lowering levels of circulating glucose…

Then came the ultimate couch potato experiment. The researchers fed untrained mice AICAR, a synthetic AMP analog that directly activates AMPK. After only four weeks and without any prior training, these mice got up and ran 44 percent longer than untreated, untrained mice. “That’s as much improvement as we get with regular exercise,” says Narkar.

The research team is also smart enough to initiate parallel development of tests to detect these drugs – to stop drug cheats from using them in sport.