Saturday, March 31, 2012

Art, Mind And Brain Intersect In Kandel's Vienna

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. My next guest won the Nobel Prize in 2000 for his work on learning and memory, and he really needs no introduction as a neuroscientist. But there is another side to Eric Kandel that you may not know. He is an art collector, an historian of early 20th-century art in Germany and Austria, and he says he could have seen that passion as an alternate career path.

Kandel's new book "The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind and Brain," takes us back to turn-of-the-century Vienna, the place of his birth, and he writes about the salons there, where artists could mingle with writers and physicians and scientists. Can you think of anywhere that happens today?

But this isn't just an art history book. Kandel also gets deep into the science of the mind, what happens in the brain when we see a beautiful work of art, how it affects our emotions, how we recognize objects and faces, too. It is written by a neuroscientist, after all.

Eric Kandel is a senior investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a university professor at Columbia University here in New York. And if I may add a personal note, he is one of the classiest scientists around. Thank you for joining us again, Dr. Kandel, good to see you.

ERIC KANDEL: Eric, Ira. It's always a pleasure for me to be here with you.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

FLATOW: This book is just terrific.

KANDEL: That's very kind of you.

FLATOW: Who knew that you had this whole side of you?

KANDEL: I didn't realize I had it in me.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

FLATOW: How long have you been collecting art, and...?

KANDEL: I've been collecting art for much of my adult life. I started around 1960. And my wife and I really enjoy art a great deal. We don't have a lot of money, so we have works on paper, but we enjoy them a great deal. And I come from Vienna, and I particularly like the period Vienna 1900. So this is what my book is about.

FLATOW: But let's just take a side trip about Vienna. I would think that you, who escaped Nazi Austria as a child, would be so interested in going back and collecting artwork about Vienna.

KANDEL: It's a post-traumatic stress disorder, Ira. It's the way I come to grips and try to master some of the painful moments in my life. But I do have enormous admiration for Vienna 1900, which is very different than Vienna 1938. It was a time when, as you indicated, there were no two cultures.

People interacted with each other freely. Science was part of the intellectual intercourse of the day. And Jews and non-Jews acted very productively. It was really a magical period. And my hope, and that of others, in bridging between art and science is to recreate a period like that.

Our president, Lee Bollinger, sees neuroscience as a bridging discipline. He argues that in a sense everybody at the university is working on the mind, and insofar as we understand the biology of the mind better, we can have an impact on economics and decision-making, on art and music, on many areas of the university.

FLATOW: And as you say in your book, you talk about unconscious emotions, conscious feelings, bodily expressions, that when people see a great piece of artwork, something's going on in their mind, right, and you want to know what that is.

KANDEL: Exactly, right.

FLATOW: Are we any closer to understanding what that is?

KANDEL: We're closer than we were before, but a long way from a really satisfying understanding. As you know, in most areas of science, there are long periods of beginning before we really make progress. But I think this is a very rich area, and one of the interesting things is that, even though you think what Gambridge(ph) and Riga(ph) called the beholder's share, how you and I respond to a work of art, is an extremely difficult problem in brain biology. And it is. One can, in principle, outline sort of a set of neural circuits that are critically involved and even identify disorders that affect different components of that neural circuit and see what happens if you knock out, for example, inability to recognize faces, how it affects your response to portraiture.

Obviously if you can't see it, your response is going to be very blunted. Or you can interfere with the emotional response to it or the empathic response to it, so different components of you can really dissect apart.

FLATOW: 1-800-989-8255, we're talking about Eric Kandel if you'd like to join us and ask him questions about his book. Also you can tweet us @scifri, @-S-C-I-F-R-I. Let's get into some of the details in your book because it's a quite fascinating book.

One of the things you write about is the - we talked about the salons, the Zuckerkandl salon. Did I get - did I pronounce that correctly?

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

KANDEL: You did very well. I like that for many reasons. First of all, it was characteristic of Vienna. It was characteristic of many cities in Europe, in which ladies, often Jewish ladies, ran salons that brought together people from all walks of life: artists, writers, scientists, businesspeople, politicians to get together over tea and cakes and talk to one another.

And I particularly like the Zuckerkandl family because Berta Zuckerkandl - for two reasons. Berta Zuckerkandl's grandson, Emil Zuckerkandl, is a major biologist at Stanford, and when I began to write about his grandmother, I called him, and he gave me a lot of useful information, invited me out to his house in Palo Alto, and I saw remnants of the Zuckerkandl salon.

He had a wonderful Rodin sculpture of Mahler you would kill for. He had some of the artists she had hanging on the wall. So that's one reason I like the Zuckerkandl salon so much. The other one is his name is Emil Zuckerkandl, and his grandfather's name was Emil Zuckerkandl, and Emil Zuckerkandl, the grandfather, was a close associate of a man called Rokitansky, who is one of the heroes of the book.

He was the dean of the University of Vienna Medical School from about - I'm sorry, 1945 to about 1878, and he revolutionized medicine. He put medicine on a scientific basis. And he had an enormous impact on all of the people I write about, on Freud, on Schnitzler and then the three artists, Klimt, Kokoschka and Schiele.

And he did it by pointing out that you really don't know anything about a disease state until you've explored it in enormous detail. So if you, particularly in the 1840s, if you examined a patient at the bedside, you would get his history or her history, and you'd listen to their heart and their chest, and you'd hear sounds, but you wouldn't know what was responsible for the sounds.

There was no correlation between that and the pathological anatomy. Rokitansky had a privileged position. He was head of pathology, and Vienna was the only hospital in Europe in which every single person who died was autopsied, and the autopsy was done by one person, the head of pathology. So Rokitansky did 30,000 autopsies not with his own little hands but with his colleagues.

And he collaborated with a great clinician, and so they took the clinical findings at the bedside, the peculiar sounds coming from the heart, and he showed which sounds came from the mitrovalve, which came from the tricuspid valve, and if they had any question, they would flow water through the valves and see where they could simulate the sounds they heard clinically.

So they were able to put medicine on a scientific basis through these clinical pathological correlations. And he enunciated a dictum that was really the leitmotif for everything there was to come. He said truths are hidden from the surface. You have to go deep below the skin in order to understand what's going on.

And this is what Freud tried to do. This is what Schnitzler tried to do. This is what Klimt and Kokoschka tried to do. And I argue that these five people independently discovered different aspects of the mind, of our unconscious mental processes.

Now Freud, you know, clearly was the leader. He outlined a coherent theory of mind, which was really quite interesting, original and fascinating, but he missed certain things. He did not know very much about female sexuality.

But Schniztler and Klimt knew an enormous amount. So Klimt, for example, in his drawings shows women pleasuring themselves. Without the need of a man, they can be in their own reveries. The historical nude of Western arts usually has a mythological woman, you know, Venus or something like that, looking out at the beholder as if she could only satisfy herself if she satisfies the viewer.

And she is nude, but she's covering her genetalia, and you don't quite know if this is modesty or whether she's masturbating. With Klimt, there's absolutely no doubt what's going on. So - and it was done in an elegant, non-pornographic fashion. It's really quite marvelous the way these drawings are done.

And different aspects of unconscious mental processes were developed by both Klimt and his later disciples, Kokoschka and Schiele. For example, Klimt knew that if you liberate women's sexuality, you also in a sense are liberating their aggression. And the two can be fused.

And he has a wonderful painting of Judith and Holofernes, Judith a Jewish heroine trying to save her people from Holofernes, who has established a siege around him, gets him drunk, seduces him, and while he's in his drunken state, she cuts off his head.

And there are a number of historical depictions of this, and usually, you know, Judith, who is a young widow, a very modest woman did this out of heroism, was horrified by the deeds she did. But in Klimt's drawing, she's in a post-orgiastic phase. She's fondling the head. She's dressed in a beautiful, elegant gown. There's absolutely nothing widowish or modest about her.

So, I mean, his ability to really depict many aspects of women's life is fantastic.

FLATOW: Just fascinating. I mean, I'm talking with Eric Kandel, author of "The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind and Brain." And in fact, you use Klimt on the cover of your book.

KANDEL: Yes, yes, Adele Bloch-Bauer.

FLATOW: And she has a dress that's full of cells. The fabric, it's made out of cells, right?

KANDEL: You've picked it up. So Klimt went to the Zuckerkandl salon, and from Berta Zuckerkandl's husband, Emil Zuckerkandl, he became fascinated with biology. He began to read Darwin. There was a collection of Darwin books in his library. He looked under the microscope.

He saw the difference between sperm and eggs. He went to demonstrations, to dissections. And he incorporates these biological themes into his artwork, as you pointed out.

FLATOW: All right, we're going to take a break and come back and talk lots more with Eric Kandel, author of "The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind and Brain from Vienna 1900 to the Present," a side of Dr. Kandel we've never talked about before. And if you'd like to talk with him, our number 1-800-989-8255. He is an art collector, an art historian, and as well as being a Nobel Prize-winner, and so he's a neuroscientist - (unintelligible), we'll get into that, too. So stay with us. We'll be right back after this break.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

FLATOW: I'm Ira Flatow. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

FLATOW: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. We're talking this hour about neuroscience, art, the brain, the subject of the new book "The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind and Brain" with Nobel Prize-winner Eric Kandel, senior investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and university professor at Columbia University right here in New York.

Our number, 1-800-989-8255. It's hard to imagine the collection, you know, of all these people from different walks of life meeting in salons and discussing things. Today it's hard that that could happen. Is there any place that you know that - let me go - we have a suggestion on the phone here. Let me go to Christie(ph) in Center Ridge, Colorado, is it?

CHRISTIE: Yeah, it's Cedar Ridge, Colorado. I'm a science writer, and I wanted to say that I think there is something somewhat similar to these salons going on these days. It's happening online, on social media and whatnot. I'm a contributor to a science blog that's called LastWordonNothing, and we discuss a lot of this sort of...

FLATOW: We lost her. Sorry, Christie, just the phone dropped out. But would she be correct that this is where the new talent...?

KANDEL: I'm not sufficiently familiar with that, but I can well understand it. I mean, one of the wonderful things about Internet is it's like a salon. It brings people together from different intellectual walks of life. Also we're trying to recreate this at Columbia to some degree, and I think other universities will do it.

There will be programs that will bridge neuroscience to other disciplines.

FLATOW: Did these people all know each other?

KANDEL: Yes.

FLATOW: They did?

KANDEL: Yes, they all knew each other, and for example Freud said he purposely avoided Schnitzler even though he knew him, and he read his work, because he felt that Schnitzler through his intuition figured out a lot of the things that Freud discovered only after hard work with patients.

But he certainly knew him, and he knew of him, yes.

FLATOW: Why do scientists need to talk to artists, and why do artists need to talk to scientists?

KANDEL: Well, scientists certainly need to talk to artists because they want to fill their life with beauty, and it's inspiring to be able to go to a good exhibition and see great works of art, interact with artists, and also to try to understand the nature of art, how we respond to it, how the creative process works. It's one of the great goals of science.

In addition, one would like to think that artists also benefit from what neuroscientists can bring about. For example, they certainly learned a great deal when the nature of color was dissected, and we realized how colors are put together. They learned a great deal in the Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci studied the human body, did autopsies in order to see how the bones relate to one another so you can get a more realistic depiction.

And one would hope that as people understand what happens in the brain as one responds to art, as one creates art, they would be able to use those ideas to create new art forms or at least to more effectively influence certain emotional states in the brain.

FLATOW: Freud actually wrote about da Vinci.

KANDEL: Wrote about da Vinci, he wrote about Michelangelo. He wrote two very interesting papers, but they were really more fiction than they were fact. He himself said these were not his best works. He tried - rather than try to analyze the work of art, he tried to analyze the artist. The artist had been dead for some time, could not free associate to his interpretations and in any way falsify them.

And there were some instances in which Freud didn't quite know all the facts right. So these were not great works. What really happened, is a Freud contemporary, were the art historians got interested in the problem. And a guy called Alois Riegl who was the head of the Vienna School of Medicine - I'm sorry, of art history, argued we have to become more scientific in art history.

And he thought that psychology is the discipline that should be incorporated into it, and he thought what is the problem we want to solve. And then he realized the critical problem in art is how the person who views it responds to it.

If you think of it, it's the most obvious thing in the world. Why does the painter do it? He doesn't do it just for himself. He wants people to look at it. And Riegl pointed out that the beholder share is critical to the completion of a work of art.

And if you think of it, Ira, you look at a painting, it's two-dimensional. You know that it's two-dimensional. It's a flat surface. And yet your brain is willing to allow your imagination to wander to see it as three-dimensional. So you are being tricked by the artist to think there's a perspective there, a distance there. Even a head, when you look at it, you see it as a three-dimensional thing.

And there's a part of you that feels this to be completely real, but there's another part of you that knows this is what your brain is doing. I'll give you an example. If I paint you while I'm looking at you, and I put your painting up on the wall, and I walk around it, your eyes will follow me. It's a common experience. I'm sure you've had this from looking at certain works of art.

FLATOW: Sure, sure.

KANDEL: If I put up a sculpture of you in the same position and walk around it, your eyes will not follow me, and that is I create a fiction out of the painting because I have to in order to create Ira Flatow looking three-dimensional, and part of that is that the eyes follow you.

With a sculpture, it is three-dimensional. No fiction is necessary.

FLATOW: Quite fascinating, 1-800-989-8255. Let's go to Steve(ph) in Alexandria, Virginia. Hi, Steve.

STEVE: Hi.

FLATOW: Hi there.

STEVE: I was intrigued with this when you mentioned Vienna because some of the best science art that I've seen has been there, and that was at the Medical Museum from - which has a fantastic collection...

KANDEL: Fantastic collection.

STEVE: Of these wax...

KANDEL: Models, absolutely, yes.

STEVE: From the 1700s, I believe, and yet they - and what's so fascinating about some of them is that they represent the I guess very anatomically correct things like the lymph system, et cetera, in life-size images of human beings that look like they're in absolute agony because the skin has been ripped off of them.

And I just found it to be, you know, an absolutely spectacular use of art in combination with science, and actually I think it had a very practical value to them because they couldn't quite justify doing all the dissections of the human body I think at that time. I'm not sure. I was wondering if you had any insight into it.

KANDEL: Vienna was one of the places in which autopsy was permitted quite early. The church allowed this Austria, while it didn't in many countries of the world. But that museum is world-famous in large part because of its extraordinary collection, and people came from all over to see that, and some of those things were exported to other places.

They were just wonderful anatomical demonstrations that students used in order to study the body. I agree with you: It still is a very fine museum in the history of medicine.

FLATOW: You have a great collection in your book, and just gorgeous color in your book, also. Is there - are there places we can see this artwork, any collections or exhibits that...?

KANDEL: The Neue Gallery, of course, is, in New York, the best. There is - there are two museums in Vienna that specialize in this. One is called the Upper Belvedere, and I want to come back to that in a moment, and the other is the Leopold Museum. The Upper Belvedere is the upper story - not the upper story, the upper building of a beautiful property, which has a lower building, as well, lower down in the campus.

And the campus lower down has a fantastic, interesting connection - collection that actually ties in with the upper one. It has a collection of a sculptor by the name of Messerschmitt. Messerschmitt was a psychotic sculptor. In a period of about - I may have this a little bit wrong - about 1780 to 1790, he made one doesn't know how many, about 50 to 60 heads, most of them his own, looking in the mirror, of different facial expressions and distortions designed to ward off the evil spirits.

They made a fantastic impact. Berta Zuckerkandl had two of them. A number of people collected these, and they had an impact on expressionist painting. Expressionist painting takes images and distorts it. It's sort of a fusion of caricature and high art.

When you exaggerate something, you know, one responds more dramatically to it, and you see this in the Messerschmitt head. And Kokoschka started off as an art nouveau painter, like Klimt, but he did a sculpture called "Myself as a Warrior" that looks exactly like a Messerschmitt, and I would guess he may have been influenced by Messerschmitt, which was his first expressionist work of art, a powerful exaggeration of his face.

Not only that, but Kokoschka began to use, as Van Gogh had pioneered, the use of color in an arbitrary fashion so not just to depict nature but to depict emotion if you wanted to, to make the ears red or the fingers red or something like that. And it was a tremendous transformation.

And an architect by the name of Lowes(ph) saw this and saw a new art form emerging and told him: This is what you've got to do. Don't do any more Art Nouveau work. Klimt is great. He did it. You do something different. And for the next decade, he did magnificent portraits of other people that made a tremendous impact, in which he really developed his expressionist ideas of trying to see unconscious mental processes in other people.

FLATOW: How did you not go into this? The way - the passion, the knowledge.

KANDEL: I love it.

FLATOW: For 50 years you've been doing this.

KANDEL: I'm glad - there's nothing like science.

FLATOW: What was the decision? Did you actually have a crossroad, a point in the road you had to decide between...

KANDEL: Not between those two.

FLATOW: Yeah.

KANDEL: I'm saying this in retrospect...

FLATOW: Right.

KANDEL: ...that I could do it. But I think the time I made my decision, I was not as passionately involved in art as I am now. My choice was psychoanalysis versus neuroscience. And, my God, was that a wise decision. Yeah. Yeah.

FLATOW: Mm-hmm. Yeah. For all of us.

KANDEL: Well, I don't know for all of us. Certainly for me.

FLATOW: Well, you - anything learning - you've involved with sea slugs for so long. Is there anything new to learn about sea slugs?

KANDEL: Unending. I'm now studying how memories perpetuated, how you remember your first love experience for the rest of your life.

FLATOW: You learn that in a sea slug?

KANDEL: Why not?

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

KANDEL: They make love.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

KANDEL: How do they reproduce, right? In fact, they're hermaphrodites. They have the best of all possible worlds.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

FLATOW: So what are you studying there? Give us a little more about it.

KANDEL: There is a protein at the synapse that is thrown into activity when you remember something for the long term. And the function of that protein is to perpetuate that change indefinitely. And the way that protein works is that it's a self-perpetuating protein. This has been described by Stanley Prusiner. It's called prion mechanism. And in Stanley's case, it kills the cell.

So when it goes into a self-perpetuating state, it destroys the cell. Many other prion-like mechanisms have been described since then, and they either kill the cell or the protein becomes dead. This was the first description of a protein being thrown into the self-perpetuating state in which it's the normal - it is a normal function of the protein to be like this. It's completely healthy.

FLATOW: Wow.

KANDEL: It's quite interesting.

FLATOW: That is different, isn't it?

KANDEL: It is very interesting.

FLATOW: And how does that help with memory or remember what we're doing or...

KANDEL: What it does is it translates messenger RNAs at the synapse. So when you go into a synapse, you've got to continue to produce material to keep that synapse alive, that new synapse. And what you do is you have a machinery for local protein synthesis. This regulates that machinery. And if you keep it going indefinitely, which you need, this is the way you get it done.

FLATOW: Wow. I'm Ira Flatow. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. Learning all kinds of new things today, talking with Eric Kandel. "The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind and Brain." And this - it's a gorgeous book.

KANDEL: Thank you.

FLATOW: It's, you know, it's so filled with - they allowed you to do it the right way. You know, I talked to authors. They wouldn't let me do this. They wouldn't let me do that. Gorgeous photographs of the brain and the plates and things.

KANDEL: Random House did a fantastic job with this.

FLATOW: Yeah.

KANDEL: Yeah.

FLATOW: Yeah.

KANDEL: Kate Medina, my publisher, is just marvelous on this.

FLATOW: And is there a follow-up? We're going to have an act two to this? Is this - any more art and more writing about artwork or - in your mind?

KANDEL: Not at the moment.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

FLATOW: I can see the effort, how long it must have taken...

KANDEL: It took me a long time.

FLATOW: ...to go into it.

KANDEL: It actually has an interesting beginning.

FLATOW: Yeah?

KANDEL: This is a digression, if you don't mind.

FLATOW: Well, that's what we're here for.

KANDEL: So about 1982, I got an honorary degree from the University of Vienna Medical School. And they asked me to give a talk on behalf of the three of us who were getting an honorary degree. And I first thought I was going to relive '38, '39 period my dad was treated so terribly. And then I said to myself, don't be shmegegge. There's lots of time to express your disappointment. This is - they're honoring you. Be gracious. So I thought, what would I do? And I thought I would do something in the history of the Vienna School of Medicine, what they contributed. And this is where I discovered Rokitansky.

FLATOW: Mm-hmm.

KANDEL: Then, on a later occasion, I belonged to a very nice club in New York, called the Practitioners Club - I'm not a practitioner, but I somehow belonged - that meet six times a year in the wintertime for dinner. And we take turns giving talks. And I thought I would give it my passion, Viennese Expressionism. And the talk went over fairly well. When it's over, I realized there's a connection between my lecture in Vienna and this, and that got me going many years ago. And when I had a break more recently, I decided I would start in on that.

FLATOW: Mm-hmm. And you're still doing research with your wife also?

KANDEL: I started recently, after 55 years of marriage. We thought we'd put it in the line as we collaborate together. Not an easy thing to do, but very, very enjoyable for the two of us.

FLATOW: What are you looking into together?

KANDEL: Denise has pioneered the study of how kids get involved in drugs. She's a wonderful epidemiologist. And she was the first one to point out that kids don't get involved with heroin or cocaine. They start with smoking or drinking, which she called the gateway drugs.

And so she wanted, after a while, to know is this just a correlation, or is this a causative mechanism? So we explored it together. We used mice, and we asked, does it make a difference whether you give nicotine first and then cocaine, or cocaine first and then nicotine? So when we gave cocaine first, we found we dramatically enhanced the effect of cocaine.

FLATOW: Wow.

KANDEL: Give nicotine brrr, unbelievable. If you give cocaine first, no effect than nicotine. So it's unidirectional. The gateway drug tremendously enhances. And we think that one of the reasons people may get hooked on cocaine is because - Denise, when she examined the data, found that most of the people who start cocaine are smoking at that time. And this effect really catches you.

FLATOW: Wow.

KANDEL: Yeah, yeah. And we figured out how it works: in the behavioral sense, physiological sense, gene expression. We really analyzed it. Amir Levine was the guy who led this project in my lab. He did a superb job.

FLATOW: So nicotine is an entry level to cocaine.

KANDEL: Yes. Now, people are saying there's multiple reasons for giving up nicotine. Nora Volkow, for example, has really thought this is a key finding. She's head of NIDA.

FLATOW: Yeah, yeah. Eric, thank you.

KANDEL: Pleasure to be here as always.

FLATOW: Good luck to you.

KANDEL: Thank you.

FLATOW: Thank you. With a true renaissance man, Eric Kandel, author of "The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind and Brain, also senior investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, university professor at Columbia University here in New York. Happy holidays to you.

KANDEL: Happy holidays to you, and thank you very much. You're very gracious.

FLATOW: You're always welcome back any time you would like.

KANDEL: Thank you.

FLATOW: After the break, we're going to go deep down into the Pacific, to the bottom of the Marianna Trench. Wonder what it's like there, seven miles below the sea level. We're going to find out from the first person who was ever there, still around to tell us about it. So stay tuned. We'll be right back after this break. I'm Ira Flatow. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR.

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Once considered mainly 'brain glue,' astrocytes' power revealed

ScienceDaily (Mar. 29, 2012) ? A type of cell plentiful in the brain, long considered mainly the stuff that holds the brain together and oft-overlooked by scientists more interested in flashier cells known as neurons, wields more power in the brain than has been realized, according to new research published March 29 in Science Signaling.

Neuroscientists at the University of Rochester Medical Center report that astrocytes are crucial for creating the proper environment for our brains to work. The team found that the cells play a key role in reducing or stopping the electrical signals that are considered brain activity, playing an active role in determining when cells called neurons fire and when they don't.

That is a big step forward from what scientists have long considered the role of astrocytes -- to nurture neurons and keep them healthy.

"Astrocytes have long been called housekeeping cells -- tending to neurons, nurturing them, and cleaning up after them," said Maiken Nedergaard, M.D., D.M.Sc., professor of Neurosurgery and leader of the study. "It turns out that they can influence the actions of neurons in ways that have not been realized."

Proper brain function relies on billions of electrical signals -- tiny molecular explosions, really -- happening remarkably in sync. Recalling the face of a loved one, swinging a baseball bat, walking down the street -- all those actions rely on electrical signals passed instantly along our nerves like a molecular hot potato from one brain cell to another.

For that to happen, the molecular brew of chemicals like sodium, calcium and potassium that brain cells reside in must be just right -- and astrocytes help to maintain that balanced environment. For instance, when a neuron sends an impulse, or fires, levels of potassium surrounding the cell jump dramatically, and those levels must come down immediately for the brain to work properly. Scientists have long known that that's a job for astrocytes -- sopping up excess potassium, ending the nerve pulse, and restoring the cells so they can fire again immediately.

In the paper in Science Signaling, Nedergaard's team discovered an expanded role for astrocytes. The team learned that in addition to simply absorbing excess potassium, astrocytes themselves can cause potassium levels around the neuron to drop, putting neuronal signaling to a stop.

"Far from only playing a passive role, astrocytes can initiate the uptake of potassium in a way that affects neuronal activity," said Nedergaard. "It's a simple, yet powerful mechanism for astrocytes to rapidly modulate neuronal activity."

Nedergaard has investigated the secret lives of astrocytes for more than two decades. She has shown how the cells communicate using calcium to signal. Nearly 20 years ago in a paper in Science, she pioneered the idea that glial cells like astrocytes communicate with neurons and affect them. Since then, has been a lot of speculation by other scientists that chemicals call gliotransmitters, such as glutamate and ATP, are key to this process.

In contrast, in the latest research Nedergaard's team found that another signaling system involving potassium is at work. By sucking up potassium, astrocytes quell the firing of neurons, increasing what scientists call "synaptic fidelity." Important brain signals are crisper and clearer because there is less unwanted activity or "chatter" among neurons that should not be firing. Such errant neuronal activity is linked to a plethora of disorders, including epilepsy, schizophrenia, and attention-deficit disorder.

"This gives us a new target for a disease like epilepsy, where signaling among brain cells is not as controlled as it should be," said Nedergaard, whose team is based in the Division of Glia Disease and Therapeutics of the Center for Translational Neuromedicine. of the Department of Neurosurgery

The first authors of the paper are Fushun Wang, Ph.D., research assistant professor of Neurosurgery; and graduate student Nathan Anthony Smith. They did much of the work by using a sophisticated laser-based system to monitor the activity of astrocytes in the living brain of rats and mice. The work by Smith, a graduate student in the University's neuroscience program, was supported by a Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).

Other authors from Rochester include Takumi Fujita, Ph.D., post-doctoral associate; Takahiro Takano, Ph.D., assistant professor; Qiwu Xu, technical associate; and Lane Bekar, Ph.D., formerly research assistant professor, now at the University of Saskatchewan. Also contributing were Akemichi Baba of Hyogo University of Health Sciences in Japan, and Toshio Matsuda of Osaka University in Japan.

Nedergaard notes that the complexity and size of our astrocytes is one of few characteristics that differentiate our brains from rodents. Our astrocytes are bigger, faster, and much more complex in both structure and function. She has found that astrocytes contribute to conditions like stroke, Alzheimer's, epilepsy, and spinal cord injury.

"Astrocytes are integral to the most sophisticated brain processes," she added.

The work was funded by the G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Charitable Foundation and NINDS.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Rochester Medical Center.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. A. Torres, F. Wang, Q. Xu, T. Fujita, R. Dobrowolski, K. Willecke, T. Takano, M. Nedergaard. Extracellular Ca2 Acts as a Mediator of Communication from Neurons to Glia. Science Signaling, 2012; 5 (208): ra8 DOI: 10.1126/scisignal.2002160

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

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News and Society Blog-Environmental Info: Can Agroforestry Save ...

Forestry funds have traditionally focused their resources on afforestation and reforestation as well as the production of timber and timber products. It isn't so common for forestry funds to choose projects that, besides trees, also incorporate crops. That can soon change, as there is a new investment opportunity, which may just be gaining momentum.

Starbucks, the largest U.S. coffee chain, announced last week that climate change could severely affect the world's coffee supply and, thus, put your morning caffeine fix in jeopardy. In an interview for The Guardian, Starbucks sustainability director Jim Hanna said: "What we are really seeing as a company as we look 10, 20, 30 years down the road - if conditions continue as they are - is a potentially significant risk to our supply chain, which is the Arabica coffee bean."

Hanna further explains that hurricanes, resistant pests, mudslides and soil erosion are causing significant decreases in crop harvest in coffee farms across Central America, where most of Starbucks' crop suppliers are located.

Unfortunately, Starbucks aren't the only ones, who are seeing the alarming trend regarding the future of the drinkable black gold and one of the world's most traded commodities. According to the Smithsonian, a study based on 7,000 farmers in Mexico and Central America predicts that global warming trends will shrink coffee supply by as much as 30 per cent by 2050.

There is, however, a simple solution, which, if not reverse, may at least slow down theeffects of climate change on world coffee supplies, and that solution is agroforestry. The method of agroforestry combines crop planting with species of trees, which mutually help each other grow, especially in severe environmental circumstances.

Agroforestry isn't a new phenomenon on coffee plantations. A report by the U.S. nonprofit and independent research organisation Resources for the Future, claims that, in 1998, 95 per cent of El Salvador's coffee was shade grown. And the benefits of shade-grown coffee seem to be pretty promising.

During research conducted in Sumatra, the World Agroforestry Centre observed that, while coffee does not have to be grown inside a forest, shading the bushes with trees protects coffee plants against too much sun. In full sunlight, the Centre claims, coffee plants get exhausted by their rapid bean production, while in the shade, they produce their fruit more gradually. At the same time, the lifespan of the bush is extended, prompting it to produce more coffee in the long run.

Moreover, the slower ripening of berries caused by tree shading is found to have positive influence on the flavour of coffee. There is also reduced weed pressure in coffee agroforestry plantations, because coffee is more shade tolerant than weeds are.

Trees are known to protect the topsoil and to facilitate the formation of soil organic matter. Certain leguminous tree species enrich the soil with nitrogen by obtaining it from the air and making it available in the soil. Coffee plants then use the nitrogen to grow and mature. Shading also provides for what the Centre calls "microclimate" similar to that of the forest, reducing the risks of disease and insect attacks.

Another report by The American Phytopathological Society explains that agroforestry systems "could also modify pests and disease incidence compared with monospecific plantations."

Probably the most comprehensive research was conducted by experts from the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center. By reviewing more than 50 studies on shade-grown coffee farms in regions ranging from Central and South America to Indonesia over the past 15 years, experts concluded that shade-grown coffee production had significant advantage to sun-grown coffee farms. Here are some key findings:

? Agroforestry increases soil carbon, soil nitrogen and enzyme activity - all essential for soil fertility and plant health. Nitrogen-fixing trees in shade-grown coffee can put up to 100 kilograms of nitrogen per hectare per year into the soil, potentially reducing the amount of fertilizer a farmer would have to apply by 25 to 30 per cent.

? In Venezuela, sun coffee systems suffered twice the soil loss from erosion compared to shaded systems.

? In Nicaragua, the carbon content in the soil (an indicator of soil fertility) of shaded coffee was found to be 18 per cent higher than that found in coffee with little or no shade.

? Soil moisture in sun coffee farms is 42 per cent lower compared to coffee farms that have leafy foliage as canopy.

? Agroforestry creates a hospitable environment for richer biodiversity, including bird species. A study in Guatemala found that birds can reduce herbivorous insect presence on coffee from 64 to 80 per cent, and excluding birds from coffee plants resulted in greater insect damage to coffee leaves.

? In a study in Jamaica, researcher excluded birds and saw a 70 per cent increase in the proportion of coffee fruits infested with the Coffee Berry Borer, coffee's most damaging insect pest.

Considering the above findings, why aren't more forestry funds investing in agroforestry coffee plantations? These mixed systems have all the benefits of forests in terms of land value, timber production and carbon sequestration, but they also incorporate the added financial benefits that come from growing coffee.

As most forestry funds have come to learn by now, project diversification in terms of geographic location and types of species planted is important for mitigating the risks associated with investing in forestry. Adding coffee crops to already existing forests, or vise versa will not only contribute to reducing investment risks. It might just be the solution to saving your steaming cup of coffee.

Article Source:http://EzineArticles.com/?expert

Source: http://newsandsocietyblog-environmentalinfo.blogspot.com/2012/03/can-agroforestry-save-your-cup-of.html

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Friday, March 30, 2012

Psychology of Hair Loss in Women

Hair loss is a devastating event for women. Hair has long been a symbol of beauty, sexuality, strength, and youthfulness in feminine culture. Hair color, length and texture carry identity and play a vital role in a woman's decided character and uniqueness. Blondes have a stigma, as do brunettes and redheads and those with wild curls, and those with straight tamed hairstyles. Women are known to spend great care maintaining a full, healthy, lustrous head of hair that others will find attractive. Less often recognized is the hair loss many women will face with age.

How Hair Loss in Women Occurs

Female pattern baldness is the leading cause of thinning hair in women. Also known as androgenic alopecia, this condition manifests in a diffuse thinning over the top of the scalp as a result of aging and the hormonal changes that come with life.

It does not have strong genetic ties, as does its male counterpart. Other causes of hair loss in women include:
  • Traction alopecia (especially African American women)
  • Telogen effluvium
  • Hormone imbalance
  • Pregnancy
  • Stress
  • Vitamin/Iron/Folic acid deficiency
  • Poor blood circulation
  • Trichotillomania
  • Untreated thyroid dysfunction

Any of these additional causes might also exacerbate an existing female pattern baldness diagnosis. By the age of forty, 50% of women will suffer some degree of hair loss.

Emotional And Psychological Outcomes of Hair Loss In Women

If the pressure society puts on being thin isn't enough, many women have to suffer the emotional and psychological consequences of losing their hair.

In accordance with the earlier acknowledgements about women's hair and identity, a woman losing her hair will often feel like she is losing a part of herself. She feels her beauty, sexuality, strength, and youthfulness become diminished. However, the truth is that her self-esteem is drastically lowered; she fears she is unattractive to others, she feels a loss of control, and she experiences unbearable anxiety. Hair loss in women often results in depression and impaired social functioning.

What's worse is that some treatments known to successfully stop hair loss in men are contraindicated in women or can't be used while pregnant. However, those suffering female pattern baldness or any hair loss condition must realize that there are other treatments remaining. There are temporary and permanent, non-surgical and surgical options for restoring hair or giving the illusion of a full head of hair. It may require time and research, but losing your hair doesn't have to inhibit your life.

Source: http://health.ezinemark.com/psychology-of-hair-loss-in-women-18e2ed31b30.html

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Thursday, March 29, 2012

Ways To Create Your Garden - How to improve your home ...

A garden can be an important part of any home both in terms of your spare time and how it can help to sell your house if you decide to move. If you consider yourself a skilled gardener, you almost certainly enjoy doing it on warm summer days while your family can relax in its beauty. This is quite possibly exactly why many people want to change the look of their garden and make it even more exciting. If you are thinking about doing a makeover of your garden, then this write-up can offer some tips. An excellent place to start is with your choice of plants and flowers mainly because can make a big difference to the look and feel of a garden. If you do some research, you can find out what colors, size and shape you want to have in your garden. You also need to think about how you want your garden to look all year round rather than the summer. This is where planning in addition to your creativity can help because you can think about areas such as borders and places where you put potted plants and flowers. Apart from color and form, you could also incorporate more fragrant plants and flowers like herbs to excite your sense of smell. If you want to encourage wildlife to visit, you can include plants and flowers that easily attract birds and bees. It will be possible to put together a garden that will have wildlife prospering plus help the environment if you do a little research in this area. With the help of water features, your garden can become quite relaxing to be in with the sound of the relaxing water. Your choice of garden furniture will come into play as you put together your new garden. A good set of table and chairs that blends in nicely with your new garden layout can enable you to enjoy what you have created as well as meaning you can relax with family and friends. If your garden includes a shed and fences, you might like to have them repainted to improve the effect of your new garden. In the event that you have the finances, you should also add garden ornaments, benches and maybe a summerhouse. When you like to have guests over frequently, you might also want to add a barbecue and some space for a patio. It is a good idea to include a play area when you?ve got young children and you want to be sure that your garden is safe for them to be in. A back garden can be remodeled based on your own circumstances and with creativity and some effort, you really can put new life into your own garden. It is always highly suggested that you get additional input on Amazing Resume Creator review, if needed. Both of us have to be careful about this because you need to make sure you are receiving the best information from qualified sources. There are simply too many factors involved and can produce any number of dynamic situations. What you will find at Amazing Resume Creator is a more fuller treatment of the material you just read about, here.

Source: http://robinson-construction.com/homeimprovement/ways-to-create-your-garden/

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Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Joking Romney has job for Santorum: press secretary

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/joking-romney-job-santorum-press-secretary-012201200.html

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News: New Verizon Offering Helps Enterprises Conduct Video ...

March 27, 2012

NEW YORK - The growing popularity of information technology innovation has accelerated demand from enterprises for the latest communications capabilities on a variety of devices, platforms and networks. To help meet this demand, Verizon is launching a new offering that enables businesses and government agencies to conduct secure, high-quality video meetings across private or public networks on multiple video platforms - including telepresence and video conferencing -- on desktops and tablets.

The innovative solution, Verizon Open Video Communications, makes it possible to link video systems that were previously incompatible and to create a virtually limitless open web of video communications and end points.

The solution, which will roll out in second-quarter 2012, will enable Verizon customers to communicate via video beyond corporate firewalls and proprietary video platforms and networks to a larger, community of business-to-business partners and customers. With Verizon Open Video Communications, businesses will be able to instantaneously add participants to a meeting and the service will be delivered with usage-based pricing.

"One of the biggest challenges in video adoption by large-business and government customers is the ability to communicate beyond the four walls of their business," said Mike Palmer, vice president of product strategy for Verizon Enterprise Solutions. "With the deployment of 4G LTE and a strong desire for workers to employ in the workplace commonplace apps such as video, this offering is an important step toward Verizon's goal of enabling our customers to use any device to connect to the people and information they need to work most effectively."

"Being able to connect across telepresence or traditional video conferencing networks to potentially millions of new locations greatly expands the value of video to customers, so they can more quickly see a return on their video investment," Palmer said.

The new capability expands the reach of Verizon's immersive video - or telepresence -- offering across the company's global Private Internet protocol networking platform, currently available in more than 170 markets across the globe. Telepresence replicates face-to-face interactions so realistically that it feels as though everyone is in the same room -- even though they may be thousands of miles apart.

(View a video of Verizon's visual communications solutions here.)

Verizon, including its predecessor companies, has more than 30 years of experience as a leading provider of unified collaboration and communications (UC&C) services, enabling organizations to effectively collaborate for increased productivity while reducing costs and carbon emissions associated with business travel. Verizon offers some of the most advanced meeting tools available today, as well as UC&C professional consulting services to help organizations tailor the best UC&C strategy to meet their specific goals.

Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE, Nasdaq: VZ), headquartered in New York, is a global leader in delivering broadband and other wireless and wireline communications services to consumer, business, government and wholesale customers. Verizon Wireless operates America's most reliable wireless network, with nearly 108 million total connections nationwide. Verizon also provides converged communications, information and entertainment services over America's most advanced fiber-optic network, and delivers integrated business solutions to customers in more than 150 countries, including all of the Fortune 500. A Dow 30 company with $111 billion in 2011 revenues, Verizon employs a diverse workforce of nearly 194,000. For more information, visit www.verizon.com.

VERIZON'S ONLINE NEWS CENTER: Verizon news releases, executive speeches and biographies, media contacts, high-quality video and images, and other information are available at Verizon's News Center on the World Wide Web at www.verizon.com/news. To receive news releases by e-mail, visit the News Center and register for customized automatic delivery of Verizon news releases.


Source: http://www.verizonbusiness.com/worldwide/about/news/pr-25906-en-Verizon+Business.xml

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Monday, March 26, 2012

How to Miss the Boat on LinkedIn | Small Business Branding

LinkedIn is a rapidly evolving social media platform that appeals more directly to business people than do Facebook and Twitter; specifically, business-to-business (B2B) possibilities. You undoubtedly know that. Most of those folks want to be successful with LinkedIn promotion and generate new leads, business, or career opportunities. What you might not know is how exceptionally you can fail on LinkedIn as a busy entrepreneur or small business owner. It?s easy! Just follow these 10 easy steps.

  1. Leave Your Profile Summary Blank
    This is crucial to failing on LinkedIn. Lots of people want to turn up in People searches, but not a radical like you. Leave that Summary section blank since it is the key area that the LinkedIn search, and Google for that matter, index to learn about your worth. Who wants it? Invisibility rules!
  2. Restrict who can contact you
    People can be completely bothersome, so keep your configurations such that you?ll decrease contact with them. Go to your privacy controls on the Settings tab and pick the most reducing restrictions, like switching off your activity broadcasts (you?re not doing them anyway!), making certain only you can see your activity and networks, and ensuring that you view other profiles anonymously. Victory is yours.
  3. Ignore past work experience
    Fact says that no one is bothered about your past work history anyway, so only write about your ongoing work. Remember the KISS principle, so keep it short and sweet and avoid using unnecessary phrases that these SEO types call ?keywords?. By uploading just one job, you won?t have to worry about having to both with the monotonous writing of keywords in your former roles either.
  4. Don?t post a photo
    Photos are for models. As an engineer, consultant or other business expert your work speaks for itself and your face ain?t your money-maker, so screw the personal comfort level that people since birth seem to feel when they see a real person?s face behind the computer terminology. This is work, not just socialization!
  5. Ignore References
    These are forged and everyone knows it, so why bother. Who cares if LinkedIn references really link back to the referrer for effortless proof of who?s doing the talking? If I ask other business schmos for references, they?ll just want something back from me, and who has that kind of time?
  6. Be Picky About Connections
    Hold your contacts close to your heart and only have that few of network associations that you currently do business with, that way you can contact any of them with a request and not feel guilty about it. What good can a large number of connections do for you anyway, they?ll just bother you for their little pet projects you have no interest in whatsoever. It?s not as if LinkedIn operates like Google and those connections are like backlinks that enhance your search relevance to get on page 1 when your keywords are? Ouch! No keywords written into our profiles in an user-friendly way.
  7. Don?t show your work
    LinkedIn provides Applications for you to post more info about you, theoretically to differentiate you from other experts. The ?idea? is that when people reach your profile, you stand apart by already showing what you flourish at via slide presentations, case studies, video (ah-hem!) et cetera. Poppycock! Just something else to maintain. Why put something up that only 10 or 20 people may read or look at.
  8. Don?t join groups
    Subject matter interest groups abound on LinkedIn, from job search groups to industry verticals. Who has the time to pay attention to a few ?professionals? spout off about one theme or another and post links to their websites to develop dialogues. Besides, why should I share my useful knowledge about my market for FREE? I?m not crazy! I get paid to offer expert discourse. Damn straight!
  9. Fill it out and quit it
    The charm of a LinkedIn profile or any site is that once you get it ?live?, you are done with it for good. The more you change it the more you can upset your search engine ranks, no? That is the perfect slogan for LinkedIn implosion. Don?t you wish you came up with it? Changing things around requires a lot of work on top of it all. Post the dang thing and be finished with it.
  10. SPAM your contacts
    If you?ve got a few contacts, you can make it even less by making regular inquiry or pitches to sell your product or service or go to your website. Connections will leave you faster than if you attempted to eliminate them, because they?ll do it in bulk, so send out a few extremely smarmy emails every week and your LinkedIn demise will be complete.

The reality is, you aren?t striving to fail on LinkedIn. You desire to succeed as well and develop more LinkedIn business leads and use LinkedIn as an authentic advertising tool for your website, but possibly you just don?t know how. If you?re like a lot of business owners, however, and can look at yourself under the microscope and see any of the Top 10 LinkedIn Failure Techniques listed above in your talk or actions, perhaps it?s time to question assumptions and alter your approach. It?s opposite day and this ain?t Seinfeld, so have a look at what NOT to do, and do something else and then notice your LinkedIn stats soar and your phone start to ring.

Source: http://www.smallbusinessbranding.com/4337/how-to-miss-the-boat-on-linkedin/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-to-miss-the-boat-on-linkedin

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godaddy domain coupons 2012 . Real Estate Agent Marketing: .tel ...

Five younger online marketing tactics a measure of Realtors With worldwide economies nevertheless hoping away from of crunch plus mantra furthermore household sales area however issue closer to fluctuating demand, at the moment ? additional than perpetuity ? of the islands the visit near craft from battle.Whether you?re brushing awaken onward your Realtor promo wisdom underneath lean times, currently taking near appreciate online solutions that will steering wheel just one toward a finish adolescent probable trade or learning how near strive below a cut-throat real estate hotspot, ?getting digital? destination now a crucial detail toward a Realtor?s advertising strategy.Realtors with the quaintest neighborhood with the country, as lively as those less than the ?up plus coming? neighbourhood according to ?pot of precious metal potential,? remain the whole thing hoping from small ways in the direction of stimulate their assistance online.Your probable residence buyers continue being taking more and deeper treatment online, additionally lots of of that spike is due on the way to lightweight devices.This solution that the toy isle changing: People remain books fewer moreover fewer newspapers.Magazines be but still emotion ingested yet still the sake very comes if 1 should afford the prices involving lustrous advertisements that continue to be of a ridiculous girth as well as energy towards capture a buyer?s attention.Potential clients are searching Google in addition Bing with content, wishing a measure of real-time information, having chat internet onward their possess time also generally eager in the direction of tie underneath like-minded staff involving industry or social purposes.So here continue being five fresh world-wide-web Realtor advertising and marketing guidelines that fluctuate underneath budget, clearly huge towards small.App Up Your Business Most of the important push less than the handset industry comes perfectly applications into the future hardware like iPhones.If a single may afford in the direction of sculpt exhaust of these, this is why sensible a measure of you! Make it beneficial plus remark just approximately the properties that you?re showing; maybe tone less than some worthwhile in close proximity perception beneath a press person that can yield goods close to neighborhood amenities, events calendars additionally social groups, using easy involving some branding.

While the payment of a second set of will probably continue being grasped in opposition to keep high, a set of two of respected commissions would perhaps spend regarding it.Make selected you work in a creator that has former are witness to of using applications into the iPhone apps stow as alternative might stick an challenging experience.Get Social There?s been a spike less than location-based system within the past six months, using a complete swathe of them cropping sharp connected with hybrid car convenient devices.It may reside worth analysis whether there?s the opportunity in opposition to generate or put advert one of a kind on the way to a regional region or present a burn passcode connected with coffee sponsored by way of your agency, now that team ?check in? in direction of positive places.Providing something low cost connected with save that?s topical cream plus that is going to tide something fanatical (?We source a good furthermore unexpected service?) will type you away your competition.Don?t, however, be connected the assist and then confirm less than at the time you?re going prospective properties ? that?s a sure-fire technique of giving the game well towards resistance furthermore early doors from spy activities, consequently stick warned! Be a Stream of Helpful Information While Really Simple Syndication (RSS) has been adjoining a measure of a while, it?s at this point a really of great benefit mark near please let team to observe youthful properties that you?ve just listed, huge residence meetings that they might warning sign up for, in addition so on.RSS tropical isle very good as it strategy that workforce remain proactively signing up near your service, which solution that they need on the way to respond away from you.It?s quite effortless toward change an RSS food furthermore feature it into your website, nonetheless Twitter too will sufficient really the same job under a lots of easier way.The right underneath Twitter isle that staff will certainly ?retweet? (re-post) your chat closer to their followers.

So if you?ve got stimulating properties ready toward view, you could rotate these (keeping the information in opposition to a small blocking there?s firmness ahead of time the premises) also touch a big audience.Don?t withhold it every thing when it comes to land listings, but still ? again, it?s estimated at affinity, believe moreover service.Show your businesses? persona plus it is worth within the community; address pretty locals (in a cozy way) also surrounding highest taker closer to yield your knowledge.The Bar Code Something that tropical isle revival according to standing of the islands the QR Code, or 2D Barcode.They continue task in direction of render awake onward everything nicely magazines marketing closer to material also groceries below the supermarket, enabling readers plus site visitors towards quick import as well as watch material pretty the item, want the price.This tropical isle a sport furthermore reasonably priced tactic of rapidly consuming information in the direction of staff members into the future moveable devices, as the popularity of downloading extra device isle resurgence (in fact, big brands such as Coca-Cola also Marks & Spencer under the U.K.are continuing on the way to use them indicative competitions).A QR Code will certainly remain pressured indicative save at sites wish http://qrcode.

kaywa.com moreover could idea either towards a telephone number, SMS selection or seemingly link.Blend second less than the future strategy also you?ve got a match method of knowledge from material rapidly furthermore at low cost toward both just one additionally your customer.An Online Address a measure of the Property It will be a small at the same time unknown like overkill near build a full-blown cyberspace associated with each alone land that an experience listed, yet there?s an unknown decreased choice that will now let an in the direction of give in all of the hint material involving your business as still living as a smart purchase of items about the property.It?s called a .tel domain.A .tel field concept expenses as little as $10 per year, underneath no added undetectable investment decision ? no hosting moreover no maintenance.These domain name continue being handheld sites created on the way to continue to be perfect from mobile devices (although it can stay observable shut off still living onward computers as in existence ? optimized involving every thing formats, beneath fact) as a consequence that potentially operating site visitors might enjoy the details of the acreage quickly, cheaply also go through everything of the feel goods in the template they will trawl easily.

Blending a .tel subject as well as a QR Code destination an easy way of choosing site visitors in the direction of rapidly monitor the junk and hold it if they?re according to a hurry.Additionally, need left over domains, .tel names keep noticeable underneath look engines like Bing and Google.And a particular could revamp it within seconds without problems (even shut off an iPhone) when it comes to send ?under offer? or ?sold? simply like a real-world sign.Simple! .

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Source: http://realbizzy.com/godaddy-domain-coupons-2012-real-estate-agent-marketing-tel-domains-and-other-ideas/

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Sunday, March 25, 2012

Apple TV, iCloud and iPhone remotes: Apple?s crazy plan to dominate your living room

Apple is going to launch a range of TV sets this year. Of this, everyone?s pretty certain. Thing is, where will that leave the Apple TV box? The current line of thinking is that it?ll act as a lesser-specced option. After all, why would you buy a new TV when you can get the same features for ?99? But if newly revealed Apple patent applications are anything to go by, this could be wrong. Allow us to explain?

Apple?s in a bit of a tough situation. It?s got to decide just how clever to make the Apple TV box, and where it lives in a world with real, proper Apple HD TV sets. What we can say with some confidence is that there?s more coming to the little black box then is currently offered. There?s something about the way the icons in the most recent update sit that suggests more functionality is on the way.

So, if Apple is ploughing on with the set top box and it becomes the default way in which we scour and watch TV, we?re going to need to be able to control it easily. And that?s where the patent application comes in.

Has Mountain Lion just saved Apple TV?

Patently Apple has uncovered a really inventive plan that incorporates several of Apple?s existing properties. So what?s the solution? Essentially, Apple wants your iPhone or iPad to? replace the remote control that came with your TV.

The patent application depicts a universal remote system. The idea is that you use the iSight camera on your iOS device take a photo of your TV?s remote. This flies up into iCloud where it?s stored and? ? just as with iTunes Match ? a rejigged, iOS-friendly version comes back down that nestles within the existing Remote app.

Elaborate, right? It really is, but it?s not the complexity of the patent application that?s interesting, it?s that Apple would even bother at all. It?s kind of like a backup plan for customers who don?t want to wade into the full experience that?ll be offered by the HD TV sets.

2012 Apple TV box finally rocks 1080p HD

Venturing down into the universal remote market is a weird move for Apple, because it?s the company acknowledging that other, non-Apple devices exist and are owned by its customers ? something that it?s never keen to do. Will the Apple HD TVs be an expensive, niche option rather than the mainstream, playing the Mac Pro to the Apple TV box?s iMac? Check out the full patent and let us know your thoughts below.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/electricpig/~3/982APhbV3I4/

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California Secures $100 Million for Electric Vehicle Chargers

A so-called electric expressway of vehicle charging stations is planned across populated swaths of California, with the help of $100 million secured by the state under a legal settlement that dates back more than a decade to the energy crisis.

Under the settlement agreement, announced Friday, NRG Energy Inc. will pay for the installation of 10,000 subscription-based electric vehicle chargers near hospitals, offices, multi-home buildings and other places. Additionally, 200 fast-charge stations ??capable of recharging a vehicle battery in less than an hour at a cost of $10 to $15???will be built in public places.

The work will begin as soon as the agreement is finalized and approved, and should take about four years to complete, said David Knox, a spokesman for?NRG.

The chargers will be installed in the San Francisco Bay Area, the San Joaquin Valley, in and around Los Angeles and in San Diego County.

Jay Friedland, legislative director for Plug In America, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that pushes for more electric vehicles on the streets, described the agreement as "historic."

Also Friday, Gov. Jerry Brown announced that he signed an executive order that directs state agencies to ensure that electric vehicle charging infrastructure is in place in all of the state's major cities by 2015, with a goal of bringing 1.5 million zero-emission vehicles to the roads by 2025.

?This executive order strengthens California?s position as a national leader in zero-emission vehicles,? Brown said in a statement, ?and the settlement will dramatically expand California's electric vehicle infrastructure, helping to clean our air and reduce our dependence on foreign oil."

In January, the?California Air Resources Board approved clean car regulations,?including a provision to ensure that one out of every seven cars sold in 2025 can run on electricity or fuel cells.

Friday's settlement agreement resolves claims against Dynegy Inc. over the price of power contracts signed in 2001,?during the California energy crisis. NRG took control of Dynegy's California assets and liabilities in 2006.

Under the deal, NRG will give the California Public Utilities Commission?an additional?$20 million, which will be used to reduce customers? electric?bills.

Correction: A previous version of this post incorrectly stated that Dynegy Inc. was 50 percent owned by NRG Energy Inc. in 2001.

Source: http://www.baycitizen.org/blogs/pulse-of-the-bay/california-secures-100-million-electric/

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Saturday, March 24, 2012

Missourinet: Mizzou wrestling coach picks up Big 12 honor http://t.co/0M8h2Dan

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Source: http://twitter.com/Missourinet/statuses/183182507443884033

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Core Strength Training | Bodybuilding, Supplements, Diets ...



Tom Eckersley, is a?Health & Fitness Coach.?Use these exercises with caution and use a spotter when you are not comfortable attempting them on your own.

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Source: http://stek.org/videos/core-strength-training/

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