Signs You're a Healthy Guy

In a society obsessed with health, it's almost impossible to escape health-related horror stories. From news of impending pandemics to symptoms of horrific diseases, health news is often tinged with a touch of fear. We spend so much time worrying about disease that we rarely ever question the flip side: What does it mean to be healthy? Thankfully, that's a question that AM can help answer. Check out the following signs to see if you are a healthy guy.

You have firm pink nails

While their probably not the first item you'd expect to see on a man's checklist of healthy markers, fingernails certainly can reveal a lot about someone's health. Generally, a healthy individual's nails will be pink, firm and smooth. Although subtle variations are common, a touch of white here or a few ripples there, any major changes in the nails should ring the alarm. Thick yellow nails that grow slowly may indicate a respiratory disease like chronic bronchitis.

Indentations across the nails, called Beau's lines, might point to diabetes, while spoon-like nails that curve outwards might be a sign of low iron. Although changes in the nails are rarely the first clue to an illness, if your nails don't appear healthy, it's best to raise this with your family doctor.
Your urine is the color of a manila folder

Ever think of checking your pee to see if you're healthy? If not, perhaps it's time you start since your urine may reveal important clues about your health. Preferably, your urine should be the color of a manila file folder — a pale yellow. You can take that as a sign that you’re a healthy guy. However, normal urine can vary in shades of yellow depending on how much water you drink. If you drink a lot of fluids your urine will likely be clear (and medically, that's no problem). If, however, you're dehydrated, your urine will have a dark, brownish tinge like ice tea. Beyond simple shades, be keen to notice any other major changes. A sweet smell, odd odor, a drop of red, or some other color change that seems unrelated to any food, medication or supplement you've recently consumed should not be ignored.

via : foxnews.com

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Tape Technology May Diagnose Melanoma Quicker

Tape has many useful purposes. It can help with wrapping presents, fixing a hole or hanging up a poster. Now, the sticky adhesive may have the potential to detect skin cancer. Instead of cutting samples of skin that could be malignant, there’s a new tape-stripping product on the horizon that could prevent painful incisions at the dermatology office.

The tape, based on EGIR™ technology (Epidermal Genetic Information Retrieval), takes surface level cells from the skin to check if there are any problems. While the tape is not currently being used on patients, it would make detecting melanoma easier.

“Tape stripping is like taking a small piece of scotch tape and literally stripping the mole or a lesion of concern,” said Dr. Orit Markowitz, assistant professor of dermatology at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. “It's a non- invasive way of looking at skin. You're not cutting. It's not painful to the patient.”

The very thin layer of skin left on the tape, what simply falls off naturally, is sent to a pathology lab to look at its genetic makeup and to determine if further testing or a biopsy should take place.

“This gives you more confidence before you go ahead and biopsy or potentially prevent something that doesn't need to be biopsied from being biopsied,” Markowitz said.

Melanoma, something the tape checks for, is a skin cancer most associated with too much sun, but is also prevalent in areas of the skin not exposed to the sun.

“Melanoma is the deadliest, most preventable, both skin cancer and cancer, in the sense that it's preventable,” Markowitz said. “If you protect yourself from the sun, you're at a much lower risk of developing a much more frequent type of melanoma, which is associated with sun exposure.”

According to the American Cancer Society’s website, 68,130 new cases of melanoma are detected each year, and 8,700 people die from it each year in the U.S.

According to Markowitz, those with fair skin, eyes, and hair, those who have a family history of skin cancer, and those who have numerous moles, are at a greater risk at getting melanoma.

The new tape-stripping technology makes determining whether or not a patient has melanoma quicker and more efficient. While the method has been looked at for a few years now, its recent success rates in determining the presence of melanoma prove to dermatologists and patients that the procedure has promise.

“It's just like taking a little scotch tape and touching something with it,” said Markowitz, who is optimistic about future use of the tape. “Anything that can help us diagnose melanoma early or give us more confidence when we're looking at a lesion that is benign that it is in fact benign, is something that dermatologists are going to be very excited about.”

Currently, dermatologists will closely examine areas of concern on a patient’s skin, taking pictures and cutting skin samples for further evaluation. If something does appear to be irregular or cancerous, a biopsy may occur to remove the lesion.

While this new tool is useful for understanding how concerned a patient should be about a patch of skin, it does not eliminate the need for biopsies. If, for example, an area is determined to have melanoma, it should still be biopsied to find out its depth and severity.

Avoiding any type of physical incision when testing for skin cancer at the dermatology office is something patients look forward to.

“Not having to cut your skin is always going to be a plus,” said one patient, Kim Dooley of New York City. “It just seems a lot less sort of scary. It's like, ‘Oh, just tape it, and send it away.’ It’s a lot better than having to do the shot and the scalpel, and all that sort of thing, so I think it would be great.”

via: http://foxnews.com

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10 predictions for Windows 8

Although there have been numerous rumors regarding what we can expect from Windows 8, Microsoft has revealed very few concrete details. So I wanted to take the opportunity to present my predictions. Before I do however, I need to point out that most of these predictions are pure speculation on my part. I have no inside information from Redmond, nor do I claim to have a crystal ball.

1: ARM support

The one firm detail that Microsoft has released is that Windows 8 will support the ARM architecture. ARM processors are common in various consumer electronics devices, and it seems clear that Microsoft is positioning itself to allow Windows 8 to run on PCs, tablets, and cell phones.

2: Separation from the server

Before the days of Windows XP, Windows Server and the Windows desktop clients were two completely different operating systems. In recent years, Microsoft has tried to cut development costs by designing its desktop and server operating systems to use the same kernel. Even so, I think we may see Microsoft make a departure from the strategy. In my opinion, Windows client operating systems (especially with the newly announced ARM support) are simply becoming too different from Windows Server operating systems. I think Microsoft will eventually have no choice but to resume completely separate development cycles. Whether this happens in the Windows 8 timeframe remains to be seen, though.

3: OS on a diet

For as long as I can remember, people have complained that Windows is an overly bloated operating system. Since Microsoft is going to design Windows 8 to run equally well on PCs and devices with ARM processors, I think that it will have no choice but to trim down the operating system.

Consumers have been driven to adopt tablets and other mobile devices because of their speed, simplicity, and the fact that they boot instantly. Windows 7 is far too bloated to meet any of these expectations. Therefore, if Microsoft wants to use Windows 8 on mobile devices, it will have to get rid of many of the things that make Windows 7 so bloated and inefficient.

4: Goodbye to 32-bit support

Even though there are rumors to the contrary, I expect Microsoft to do away with 32-bit support in Windows 8. Every PC that has been manufactured in the last several years includes a 64-bit processor. There is absolutely no reason why a brand-new operating system needs to continue to support legacy 32-bit hardware.

Whether Windows 8 will support 32-bit applications remains to be seen. In the previous item, I mentioned that Microsoft needs to design Windows 8 to make it less bloated and more efficient. One of the easiest ways Microsoft could do this would be to design the kernel so that it runs only 64-bit applications. However, there are still so many 32-bit applications in use, I think Microsoft will continue to provide support for those applications, even if it’s not in a traditional way.

5: Virtual plug-ins

Believe it or not, I think that Windows 7 was actually a model for Windows 8 in some ways. As you will recall, Microsoft offers something called Windows XP mode in some editions of Windows 7. With Windows XP mode, Windows XP runs as a virtual machine, but in a rather unique way. Users can either use the Windows XP desktop or they can run applications transparently through the Windows 7 desktop, even though those applications are actually running on Windows XP.

I think that Microsoft may bring the same model to Windows 8. Rather than provide backward compatibility to legacy operating systems within the Windows a kernel, Microsoft may create virtual instances of legacy operating systems (including 32-bit operating systems) that function as plug-ins to Windows 8. This would be an ideal solution because this approach would help keep the Windows 8 kernel small and efficient, while still providing a means of achieving backward compatibility for those who need it.

6: Heavy reliance on the cloud

This past summer at TechEd in New Orleans, Microsoft placed extremely heavy emphasis on cloud computing. I don’t expect Microsoft to completely abandon its cloud focus just because it has a new desktop operating system on the horizon. Instead, I look for Windows 8 to include heavy cloud integration. For example, I think that Windows 8 will probably provide the ability to make cloud applications appear to users as if they are installed and running locally.

7: Native support for virtualized apps

I think we can expect Windows 8 to offer native support for virtualized applications. Among these applications, I think Windows 8 will be designed to run Internet Explorer in a sandbox. This would help put an end to all the security issues that Microsoft has previously had with the browser, because virtualizing and sandboxing Internet Explorer would prevent malicious Web sites from infecting the core operating system. It may even be possible to reset Internet Explorer to a pristine state after each use.

8: A bigger distinction between consumer and enterprise versions

Ever since Windows XP, Microsoft has offered different editions of its desktop operating systems with at least one version geared toward consumers and another toward businesses. I think that in Windows 8, we will see a greater distinction between the consumer and enterprise editions than ever before.

If my prediction about the core operating system being small and efficient holds true, I think that Microsoft will market the lightweight OS to businesses as being more secure than previous versions of Windows because of its smaller footprint. At the same time, though, I doubt that Microsoft will be able to resist the temptation to load up the consumer version with unnecessary software, such as software to provide native support for Zune.

9: Using hardware to drive sales

One thing that was abundantly clear from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this year is that the PC is in real trouble. Consumers have begun to shy away from purchasing desktops and laptops in favor of purchasing tablet devices. As a result, I look for Microsoft to use native operating system support for specialized hardware to try to woo customers back to the PC. For example, I think we will see an adaptation of Microsoft Kinect for the PC, which will allow interacting with the PC via hand gestures. Just how practical it will be to work with a PC in this manner remains to be seen, but I think it will make a great marketing gimmick.

10: Name change

Even though everyone has been using the name Windows 8, I don’t think that will be the official name of the new operating system. At the moment, Microsoft has a serious image problem. It’s perceived by many as being out of touch and late to the party. While other companies are focusing on tablets and mobile devices, Microsoft is still writing software for the PC. I think that in an effort to lose its dated image, Microsoft may rebrand Windows as something completely different. It might even lose the name Windows.

If you think this sounds farfetched, consider what recently happened with Microsoft Flight Simulator. Flight Simulator has been around for roughly 30 years, which puts its longevity more or less on par with Windows. Even so, Microsoft has announced that the next edition will be called Microsoft Flight. It is rebranding the product to try to change its image in order to attract gamers and not just pilots (or aspiring pilots). 




via : http://www.techrepublic.com

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Facebook's New HTTPS Mode May Break Facebook Syncing

If you want your Facebook pictures to sync, don't turn on HTTPS! Facebook has a new security feature that lets you use secure HTTPS protocols when possible in order to help keep your private data private. However, if you turn this option on, some Facebook app connectivity may be broken. For example, on Windows Phone 7, if you turn on HTTPS you may notice that your friends' photos no longer update, you will no longer see any images in your "What's New" Feeds, and you won't see Facebook photo libraries update in the Pictures hub. The same is true with the older HTC Sense UI installations in Windows Mobile 6.x as well as some Android Facebook integration customizations. Most native Facebook clients are unaffected by the change. 









You may see a note about the new HTTPS features when you log into Facebook at the top of your home page. To turn it off and get your Windows Phone 7 photos syncing back, go to Account > Account Settings > Account Security.




Did you turn on the Facebook HTTPS feature and then wonder why your Facebook news feeds weren't showing pictures anymore?

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3D Virtual Human Anatomy Studio 0.9.1

• License: Shareware $79.99
• OS: Windows Vista/XP/2000/98/Me
• Requirements: DirectX8.1 and above
• Publisher: Cloudstars Software 

What is 3D Virtual Human Anatomy Studio :Highly detailed and accurate 3D Virtual human anatomy reference application .Reveal both superficial and deep muscles, tendons, and bones. Perfect for learning and teaching for all levels. Why 3D Virtual Human Anatomy Studio : Save you time and effort from confusing carts, expensive books, OCZThe greatest problem in learning anatomy is piecing together a three dimensional mental image in the brain. Not many people could do that by piecing together flat images from books or even videos. What s more, once we ve seen that three-dimensional object, any two dimensional image of the object that we see later makes three-dimensional sense to us.The best experience in learning this is from seing the subject in all it s 3Dimensional glory. Who uses 3D Virtual Human Anatomy Studio : Artists : Sculptors, Comic Artist, CG Artist, Fine Artists. Anatomy is the structural foundation, the basis of what make every physical characters believable, be it cartoons or sci-fi monsters! Having a strong grounding in the fundamental of human form and anatomy , separates you from the rest. Sports : Dancers, Pilate s, Bodybuilders, Athletes of all level, medical students etc. The ability to truly visualize and understand the key muscles during movement and to feel the kinesthetic of your own body is very important. It is there for important for each individual to understand their bodies, to help work at their optimum performance and most of all to avoid injury. . After all the body is the instrument of your success.

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The Coffin Returned Home!!!

It's Canadian actor Charles Francis, In Texas, USA, in 1899, Canadian actor Charles Francis Coghlan became ill and died whilst he was in Galveston. Because it was too far to return his remains to his home on Prince Edward Island, 3500 miles away, he was instead buried in a lead coffin inside a granite vault. A year after his death, in September 1900, a hurricane hit Galveston, killingt 6000 people, flooding the cemetary, shattering Charles Coghlan's granite vault. Some caskets were recovered and reinterred, while some were never found. That much is undisputed.

Charles Francis Coghlan Photo Wikipedia Commons

It's Canadian actor Charles Francis, born in Paris to English and Irish parents in 1841. Coghlan took to the stage in 1860 and became a well-regarded actor and playwrite especially noted for his Shakespearian roles. He came to the United States in 1876 and never left. While no stranger to Broadway, he travelled widely with theatrical troupes. In 1898, he produced a play called “The Royal Box” and took it on the road with himself as one of its stars. in 1899, Canadian actor Charles Francis Coghlan became ill and died whilst he was in Galveston. Because it was too far to return his remains to his home on Prince Edward Island, 3500 miles away, he was instead buried in a lead coffin inside a granite vault. A year after his death, in September 1900, a hurricane hit Galveston, killing 6000 people, flooding the cemetary, shattering Charles Coghlan's granite vault. Some caskets were recovered and reinterred, while some were never found. When the Coghlan family were informed about the tragedy, they offered a huge reward to anyone who could find the coffin of Charles Coghlan, but no one came forward in the years that followed. In October 1908, eight years and one month after the Galveston hurricane, several fishermen on Prince Edward Island found a huge burial casket coated with barnacles floating to the shore of the island. According to the silver plate on the casket, it was the long-lost coffin of Charles Coghlan. The coffin had made a journey of several thousand miles from the Galveston cemetery to reach the birthplace of Charles Coghlan, just as the gypsy had foretold it would ten years before. It is one of the strangest true stories on record.

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Beware: New Facebook virus - "look at you haha:P

It appears that there is a new Facebook virus that is going around that may be causing problems.  Unwitting Facebook users are writing on friends' walls with a "Heyy [friend], look at you in this video.. What are you doing?" and attached is a picture with the caption "Look at you haha:P" which is really a link to a Facebook app, not a video.  The picture doesn't have a 'play' button like videos on Facebook. 

If you have seen this, add a comment below with your location so we can see how widespread this is. 

You may get this from friends, and before you realize what it is, you click on it.  Be careful because it is likely not really from your friend.  If you're not careful, you may be sending this app to your friends. 

Malicious people do these things to get attention, They put captions on the messages that make us want to click on them.  Before we realize what they really are, we click on the link.  It is best to always be cautious, even if you know the sender. 

So be careful - don't just click on a link even if you know who sent it to you. 

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Software to predict 'March Madness' basketball winner

(Image: Jonathan Daniel/Getty)

Fine, computers, you can beat us at chess and Jeopardy!, just please let us keep March Madness. With the US National Collegiate Athletic Association's basketball tournament starting today, contestants in the second annual March Madness Predictive Analytics Challenge are attempting to build software that can pick winning teams better than humans.

The contest pits machine against machine to find out which algorithm can correctly predict the outcome of the 64-team contest. Tournament brackets must be chosen entirely by computer algorithm, and no specific team-based rules, such as "always pick Duke over North Carolina", are allowed. All contestants are restricted to using the same data set - team and player statistics from the 2006 season until last month.

Contest organiser Danny Tarlow's own entry started out as a movie recommendation engine similar to those used on sites like Netflix. He says that predicting what movie a particular person would like to see is similar to predicting how well a basketball team's attack will do against their opponent's defence: both interactions are driven by unknown rules.

To predict the result of a basketball game, his algorithm chews through loads of regular season data and uses probabilities to find equations that fit the outcomes of each game. It then uses these equations to pick which teams will win in tournament match-ups. "The algorithm knows nothing about basketball or details about any team. It just sees the outcome of each game in the season, and it tries to discover latent characteristics that best explain the outcomes," he says.

Other entries range from using genetic algorithms to evolve equations that can pick winners to more straightforward attempts to boil down a team's strengths and weaknesses to a single number, then pick the team with the higher number in each match-up.

Last year's contest had 10 entries, including a "pace" bracket that simply picked the higher-seeded team in each matchup. Six of the entries did better than this baseline, one even predicting underdog Butler University's surprising ascent to the final four.

Tarlow hopes for a better performance this year, but is well aware of the difficulty of predicting the outcome of an entire basketball tournament. "There's clearly a lot of luck that goes into having a successful bracket."

We'll know how the software programs fare soon - the round of 64 begins today.


source:http://www.newscientist.com

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Mystical Monk

Joseph Matthaus Aigner, an Austrian painter, attempted to hang himself when he was just 18 year old but he was interrupted by a

Joseph Matthaus Aigner, an Austrian painter, attempted to hang himself when he was just 18 year old but he was interrupted by a Joseph Matthaus Aigner, an Austrian painter, attempted to hang himself when he was just 18 year old but he was interrupted by a mysterious Capuchin monk. At the age of 22, he once again tried to himself but the same monk appeared on the spot and stopped him to do so. Due to his radical political activities, the Austrian government sentenced him to death but again he was survived by the same monk. Finally, at age of 68, he committed suicide by his personal pistol. Shockingly, the very same monk conducted his funeral ceremony.

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STMIK AMIKOM

STMIK AMIKOM is a private university in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. STMIK is a kind of
'academy' in the four-tier post-secondary system of universities, institutes, academies
and polytechnics. STMIK stands for 'schools for technology, management, information
and computers'. The academy concentrates on innovative technologies. It has an
enrolment of more than 7,600 students, which compares strongly with nearby
institutions that are closing because of a shortage of students. The academy produces
graduates who are very popular in the labour market. The academy also runs several
commercial enterprises: television channels, radio channels, cartoon production,
software design, internet services, advertising, computer systems, consultancy and
mobile networks. These commercial setups also provide valuable ground for student
internships. The academy claims to produce 'graduates with global qualities,
productive, entrepreneurial, professionals, especially in knowledge based on
computer and informatics

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Interesting Facts You Didn't Know About Dreams

Dreaming is one of the most mysterious experiences in our lives. The content and purpose of dreams are not yet understood, though they have been a topic of speculation and interest throughout recorded history. But what do we actually know about dreams? Here are some interesting simple facts that you probably didn't know. 

     1. You Forget  90% of Your Dreams

 Within 5 minutes of waking, half of your dream if forgotten. Within 10 minutes, 90% is gone. The famous poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, woke one morning having had a fantastic dream, he put pen to paper and began to describe his “vision in a dream” in what has become one of English's most famous poems: Kubla Khan. 






     2.  Men and Women Dream Differently

Every human being dreams but men and women have different dreams and different physical reactions. Men tend to dream more about other men, while women tend to dream equally about men and women. In addition, both men and women experience sexually related physical reactions to their dreams regardless of whether the dream is sexual in nature; males experience erections and females experience increased vaginal blood flow.

      3. You Can Experience an 0rgasm in Your Dream

 

You can not only have s e x as pleasurable as in your real life while dreaming, but also experience an o r g a s m as strong as a real one without any wet results. The sensations felt while lucid dreaming can be as pleasurable and strong as the sensations experienced in the real world. 




     4.  We Only Dream of What We Know

 

Our dreams are frequently full of strangers who play out certain parts – did you know that your mind is not inventing those faces – they are real faces of real people that you have seen during your life but may not know or remember? We have all seen hundreds of thousands of faces through our lives, so we have an endless supply of characters for our brain to utilize during our dreams.






       5. Not Everybody Dreams in Color

full 12% of sighted people dream exclusively in black and white. The remaining number dream in full color. Studies from 1915 through to the 1950s maintained that the majority of dreams were in black and white, but these results began to change in the 1960s. Today only 4.4% of the dreams of under-25 year-olds are in black and white. Recent research has suggested that those changing results may be linked to the switch from black-and-white film and TV to color media.






       6. Dreams Prevent Psychosis

In a recent sleep study, students who were awakened at the beginning of each dream, but still allowed their 8 hours of sleep, all experienced difficulty in concentration, irritability, hallucinations, and signs of psychosis after only 3 days. When finally allowed their REM sleep the student's brains made up for lost time by greatly increasing the percentage of sleep spent in the REM stage.






        7. Animals Dream Too

Studies have been done on many different animals, and they all show the same brain waves during dreaming sleep as humans. Watch a dog sleeping sometime. The paws move like they are running and they make yipping sounds as if they are chasing something in a dream.






          8. Body Paralysis

During REM sleep the body is paralyzed by a mechanism in the brain in order to prevent the movements which occur in the dream from causing the physical body to move. However, it is possible for this mechanism to be triggered before, during, or after normal sleep while the brain awakens. 






       9. Dream Incorporation

Our mind interprets the external stimuli that our senses are bombarded with when we are asleep and make them a part of our dreams. This means that sometimes in our dreams we hear a sound from reality and incorporate it in a way. For example you may be dreaming that you are in a concert while your brother is playing a guitar during your sleep. 






        10. Precognitive Dreams

Results of several surveys across large population sets indicate that between 18% and 38% of people have experienced at least one precognitive dream and 70% have experienced déjà vu. The percentage of persons that believe precognitive dreaming is possible is even higher – ranging from 63% to 98%.








       11. If You Are Snoring, Then You Can Not be Dreaming

This fact is repeated all over the Internet, but I'm a bit suspicious whether it's really true as I haven't found any scientific evidence to support it.

Note: Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is a normal stage of sleep characterized by rapid movements of the eyes. REM sleep in adult humans typically occupies 20-25% of total sleep, about 90-120 minutes of a night's sleep) 

from: http://www.mediadump.com

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