A Pill To Block Out The Bad Menories

There are some things everyone would rather forget – and scientists believe they may be able to help us do just that, with a pill that would block out painful memories.

In a medical breakthrough, researchers have discovered that proteins can be removed from the brain’s fear centre to wipe out traumatic memories.

Their findings could be of benefit to soldiers who have experienced distressing events and victims of violence. They could even help us get over the hurt of a painful break-up.

The U.S. research has parallels to the plot of the science fiction film Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, which starred Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey. 

In the 2004 film, a couple’s past is wiped in a fictional procedure called ‘targeted
memory erasure’. For the U.S. study, scientists at Johns Hopkins University used rats to try to focus on the part of the brain that copes with fear.

They discovered a ‘window of vulnerability’ when unique receptor proteins are created in the brain as painful memories are made.

Because the proteins are unstable, they could be removed with drugs to eliminate the memory forever.

‘When a traumatic event occurs, it creates a fearful memory that can last a lifetime and have a debilitating effect on a person’s life,’ said researcher Professor Richard Huganir. 

He said his findings ‘raise the possibility of manipulating those mechanisms with drugs to enhance behavioural therapy for such conditions as post-traumatic stress disorder’.

Although the scientists used mice in the tests, they believe the results would be the same in humans. 

Breakthrough: The idea of wiping out traumatic memories has parallels with the plot of the film Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

The rodents were conditioned using electric shocks so they would fear a tone. The sound then triggered the creation of the proteins, which formed for just a day or two in the fear centre, or amygdala, of the mice’s brains.

The Johns Hopkins scientists are working on re-opening the window by artificially recalling the painful memory and using drugs to get rid of the protein.

Professor Huganir believes the window may exist in other centres of learning in the brain and the treatment may one day be used to alleviate pain or combat alcohol or drug addictions.

However, Kate Farinholt, of a mental health support group in Maryland, warned there are still many unanswered questions. ‘Erasing a memory and then everything bad built on that is an amazing idea,’ she said.

‘But completely deleting a memory is a little scary. How do you remove a memory without removing a whole part of someone’s life, and is it best to do that, considering that people grow and learn from their experiences?’

Paul Root Wolpe, of the Centre for Ethics, at Emory University in Atlanta, said: ‘Human identity is tied into memory. It creates our distinctive personalities. It’s a troublesome idea to begin to be able to manipulate that, even if for the best of motives.’

Facebook to shops- An All New idea

Filling in a restaurant promotion form after a meal out with friends inspired serial entrepreneur Aneace Haddad to launch Taggo - a service that simplifies the process of collecting loyalty rewards in shops and restaurants.

"One day when I was having a meal nearby, near my place, they had a membership form to fill out to become a member of that retailer's programme," he recalls.

"They only had two restaurants and I was thinking you wouldn't fill out that form…just to have another card that's only for that retailer."

Mr Haddad was annoyed at the prospect of having yet another loyalty card stuffed into his wallet. So he dreamt up a service he calls Taggo - short for tap and go.

The idea he says is simple: take a plastic card with a unique identity number, one you use for everyday tasks such as contactless payments or paying for public transport. Next, register it with the online service. Then you can use your card to sign up as a fan on the Facebook pages of retailers or restaurants, and be in line to receive special offers and discounts.

"It's a substitute for coupons, it's a substitute for cards so the retailer doesn't have to issue his own loyalty card," he explains. "You just tap your transit card and on the screen the clerk sees whether or not you're a fan."

Taggo is currently undergoing what Mr Haddad calls "a soft launch", and he says Singapore is a good place to do this in: "Right now retailers are really going nuts about fan pages, about Facebook. I've met a surprising number of retailers here in Singapore that don't have web pages, websites, but they have Facebook fan pages…they're building fan pages faster than websites."

Aneace Haddad hopes his service has the capacity to one day become global - but he rejects the suggestion that he is tying his fate too closely to a single online platform, Facebook.

"There's nothing preventing someone like Google from creating a fan page concept," he says. "They have business pages in an embryonic form…those could easily grow and become bigger business pages, which could integrate Taggo as well"

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Repudiate being tracked by online programs

If you have ever worried about specifically aimed ads that seem aware of your private moments on the Web, such as looking at sites for kitten-heel pumps, eczema medications or how to get out of debt, here is something else to fret about.

Keeping your computer free of tracking programs is not easy because of the ad industry’s aggressive and sophisticated efforts, says Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. “It’s like trying to get the room of your teenager clean,” he said. “You have to do it all again the next day.”
A number of tools can minimize tracking, but using them requires considerable effort and tech know-how. “They’re for people with tinfoil hats,” said Pam Dixon, executive director of World Privacy Forum.
Indeed, the Federal Trade Commission is examining the effectiveness and usability of these tools. It is trying to determine whether something simpler for consumers, like a do-not-track registry akin to the federal Do Not Call Registry, is feasible. The agency’s commissioners plan to make their views known this fall, says Christopher N. Olsen, assistant director in the agency’s Division of Privacy and Identity Protection.
Until then, here’s a guide to keeping the snoops at bay.
Online publishers, retailers and other Web sites you visit often let advertising companies place cookies, a small bit of software, on your computer to track your online activity. You can remove standard cookies using the features of any major browser, but consider deleting these ad-related cookies manually to avoid trashing those set by your favorite Web sites intended to save passwords and personal preferences. We have the instructions online for blocking cookies on four popular browsers.
However, advertisers are increasingly using powerful software known as supercookies, such as so-called Flash and document object management (or DOM) cookies, which can hold more information, and Web bugs or beacons, which let sites record statistics like what ads attracted you to the site and whether you bought something. They are not removed when you clear out your cookies.
To remove Flash cookies, visit Adobe’s online Flash Player settings page at bit.ly/cw2roU, click on the “Website Storage Settings” panel and remove all or some of the files. Block or restrict future third-party Flash cookies by going to the “Global Storage Settings” panel.
To remove tracking programs and keep them out, it is better to enlist the help of specialized software, Ms. Dixon said.
She and other privacy advocates recommend a free plug-in known as Taco, available for both Firefox and Internet Explorer, from the privacy-software start-up Abine. Taco helps Web users manage and delete standard cookies, Flash and DOM supercookies and Web bugs. It also lets you see who is trying to follow your online movements and helps you decline targeted ads from more than 100 ad networks.
Other free browser plug-ins include: Better Privacy for Firefox, which removes supercookies every time you close your browser; Ghostery for Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer, which controls Web bugs; and CCleaner, for all major browsers, which removes cookies and surfing history. NoScript for Firefox and the similarly named NoScripts for Chrome can block supercookies, Web bugs and ads (and some security threats).
One way to stop ad networks from gathering data is to use a new feature introduced in the Internet Explorer 8 browser called InPrivate Filtering, which stops data from traveling between you and third parties who ask for it frequently. Note: InPrivate Filtering has to be turned on each time you fire up your browser; select InPrivate Filtering from the Safety menu. Firefox’s Private Browsing mode and Chrome’s Incognito will both block cookies and stop the browser from remembering the sites you visit.
And be careful what information you give out about yourself, whether on site registration forms, online surveys or on social networks. Interests you volunteer will undoubtedly be used to tailor ads you see around the Web.
Web searches can also be used to inform advertisers about your likely interests. Google says it does not use search history in directing specific ads, but both Microsoft and Yahoo do.
Slow down the marketers by spreading your searches among several engines, Ms. Dixon says. Also consider using different companies for search and Web-based e-mail. For instance, use Google for search if you use Yahoo Mail. Or sign-out of e-mail and clear your cookies and history before you search, so your search data and e-mail data are not connected.
Alternately, use a search engine that does not track users’ activity. Scroogle.org lets you search with Google without being tracked or seeing ads. Startpage runs simultaneous searches on multiple engines anonymously.
Your online activity is also tracked based on your the string of characters associated with your computer, known as an I.P. address. If your I.P. address never changes, advertisers can amass a large history.
If you do not get a dynamic, or regularly changing, I.P. address from your Internet service provider, reset it periodically by unplugging and then plugging in your modem. Or mask your I.P. address using Tor, a nonprofit service that makes online activity anonymous, or a virtual-private-network service, such as OpenVPN, which adds privacy and security by encrypting your Internet traffic, suggests Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy at Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.
The Network Advertising Initiative, an association of advertising networks, data exchanges and marketing analytics companies, helps consumers opt out of behavioral advertising from its 50 or so members. The service, which places opt-out cookies on your computer, does not stop tracking; it just stops ads tailored to your Web habits. The group’s Firefox browser plug-in can keep you from inadvertently erasing the opt-out cookies when clearing out other cookies.
Look out for a new icon that has begun appearing on some ads that, when clicked, provides information on how the ad was directed and how to stop getting them. The icon is an initiative of the Future of Privacy Forum that has been embraced by the advertising industry and is being managed by Better Advertising, the owner of Ghostery.
Exactly what information advertisers gather and use to direct ads is murky. In most cases it is innocuous. But a handful of companies provide consumers with some insight and control.
For instance, Google, Yahoo and online data exchanges BlueKai, Bizo and Rapleaf will show you what interests — such as cars, travel or beverages — they believe you have, and let you delete them. They also let you opt out of getting “interest-based” ads altogether.
Targeted ads might lead to good deals for a consumer, though, and a new initiative from the digital marketing firm Datran Media called PreferenceCentral aims to become an information hub where consumers can learn why they received particular ads and choose which advertisers they want to hear from.
For instance, you can specify that you want more travel ads and fewer finance ads. Its controls are based on more understandable brands and ad categories, rather than a jumble of obscure ad-network names.
Even if you do all this, it may not stop the snooping. But these tools may be able to help both deal seekers and privacy seekers alike.

Cellphones' bad sides

WARNING: Holding a cellphone against your ear may be hazardous to your health. So may stuffing it in a pocket against your body.

Enlarge This Image

San Francisco officials voted to require retailers to display how much radiation each cellphone emits. A supporter of the rule wore a button at City 

I’m paraphrasing here. But the legal departments of cellphone manufacturers slip a warning about holding the phone against your head or body into the fine print of the little slip that you toss aside when unpacking your phone. Apple, for example, doesn’t want iPhones to come closer than 5/8 of an inch;Research In Motion, BlackBerry’s manufacturer, is still more cautious: keep a distance of about an inch.

The warnings may be missed by an awful lot of customers. The United States has 292 million wireless numbers in use, approaching one for every adult and child, according to C.T.I.A.-The Wireless Association, the cellphone industry’s primary trade group. It says that as of June, about a quarter of domestic households were wireless-only.

If health issues arise from ordinary use of this hardware, it would affect not just many customers but also a huge industry. Our voice calls — we chat on our cellphones 2.26 trillion minutes annually, according to the C.T.I.A. — generate $109 billion for the wireless carriers.

The cellphone instructions-cum-warnings were brought to my attention by Devra Davis, an epidemiologist who has worked for the University of Pittsburgh and has published a book about cellphone radiation, “Disconnect.” I had assumed that radiation specialists had long ago established that worries about low-energy radiation were unfounded. Her book, however, surveys the scientific investigations and concludes that the question is not yet settled.

Brain cancer is a concern that Ms. Davis takes up. Over all, there has not been a general increase in its incidence since cellphones arrived. But the average masks an increase in brain cancer in the 20-to-29 age group and a drop for the older population.

“Most cancers have multiple causes,” she says, but she points to laboratory research that suggests mechanisms by which low-energy radiation could damage cells in ways that could possibly lead to cancer.

Children are more vulnerable to radiation than adults, Ms. Davis and other scientists point out. Radiation that penetrates only two inches into the brain of an adult will reach much deeper into the brains of children because their skulls are thinner and their brains contain more absorptive fluid. No field studies have been completed to date on cellphone radiation and children, she says.

Henry Lai, a research professor in the bioengineering department at the University of Washington, began laboratory radiation studies in 1980 and found that rats exposed to radiofrequency radiation had damaged brain DNA. He maintains a database that holds 400 scientific papers on possible biological effects of radiation from wireless communication. He found that 28 percent of studies with cellphone industry funding showed some sort of effect, while 67 percent of studies without such funding did so. “That’s not trivial,” he said.

The unit of measurement for radiofrequency exposure is called the specific absorption rate, or SAR. The Federal Communications Commission mandates that the SAR produced by phones be no more than 1.6 watts per kilogram. One study listed by Mr. Lai found effects like loss of memory in rats exposed to SAR values in the range of 0.0006 to 0.06 watts per kilogram. “I did not expect to see effects at low levels,” he said.

The city of San Francisco passed an ordinance this year that requires cellphone retailers to post SARs prominently. This angered the C.T.I.A., which announced that it would no longer schedule trade shows in the city.

The association maintains that all F.C.C.-approved phones are perfectly safe. John Walls, the association’s vice president for public affairs, said: “What science tells us is, ‘If the sign on the highway says safe clearance is 12 feet,’ it doesn’t matter if your vehicle is 4 feet, 6 feet or 10 feet tall; you’re going to pass through safely. The same theory applies to SAR values and wireless devices.”

The association has set up a separate Web site, cellphonehealthfacts.com. Four attractive young people are seen on the home page, each with a cellphone pressed against the ear — and all four are beaming as they listen. By this visual evidence, cellphone use seems to be correlated with elation, not cancer.

The largest study of cellphone use and brain cancer has been the Interphone International Case-Control Study, in which researchers in 13 developed countries (but not the United States) participated. It interviewed brain cancer patients, 30 to 59 years old, from 2000 to 2004, then cobbled together a control group of people who had not regularly used a cellphone.

The study concluded that using a cellphone seemed to decrease the risk of brain tumors, which the authors acknowledged was “implausible” and a product of the study’s methodological shortcomings.

The authors included some disturbing data in an appendix available only online. These showed that subjects who used a cellphone 10 or more years doubled the risk of developing brain gliomas, a type of tumor.

The 737 minutes that we talk on cellphones monthly, on average, according to the C.T.I.A., makes today’s typical user indistinguishable from the heavy user of 10 years ago. Ms. Davis recommends keeping a phone out of close proximity to the head or body, by using wired headsets or the phone’s speaker. Children should text rather than call, she said, and pregnant women should keep phones away from the abdomen.

The F.C.C. concurs about the best way to avoid exposure. It is not by choosing a phone with a marginally lower SAR, it says, but rather by holding the cellphone “away from the head or body.”

It’s advice that I find hard to put into practice myself. The comforting sight of everyone around me with phones pressed against their ears, just like me, makes the risk seem abstract.

Green Float: The bizarre new concept that sees humans in the future live in giant skyscraoers on floating water lillies

Humans in the future could live in mini floating cities that drift across the Pacific as if on giant water lilies.

The startling new concept has been dreamed up by Japanese technology firm Shimizu and is designed to be a way of harnessing green technologies and creating carbon-neutral cities.

The Green Float concept involves a number of cells, each one kilometre wide, that house between 10,000 and 50,000 people.

The majority of people on the cells would live in huge towers 1km high surrounded by lush green fields

The majority of people on the cells would live in huge towers 1km high surrounded by lush green fields

Each individual cell would be free to float on the Pacific Ocean near the equator but could also be joined together with other cells to form larger towns and even cities.

A group or modules, a collection of cells, would become a country in its own right.

Most people in this brave new world would live in a 1 kilometre-high ‘City in the Sky’ at the centre of each cell. More people would live in residential areas around the edge of the cell.

The central towers would be surrounded by grassland and forests and be self-sufficient in terms of food, while livestock and other farming would take place in 'plains' also surrounding the tower - all built on a lattice of 7,000-tonne honeycomb pontoons.

The towers would be built from super-light alloys with the metal deriving from magnesium in seawater.

The imaginative plan is designed to create a future carbon-neutral society and the Shimizu developers claim that living on cells in this way would cut carbon emissions by 40 per cent.
The floating cells

The floating cells, each with a City in the Sky structure at its centre, can join together to form larger modules

The City in the Sky skscrapers are designed to be carbon negative

The City in the Sky skscrapers are designed to be carbon negative with extensive environmental technologies and recycling facilities built in

The cells would create zero waste and recycle every product and covert waste into energy using new green technologies. Islands of waste would drift around the ocean and could be ‘harvested’ to provide energy

The location of the islands is key to their success too, the designers claim.

Each group of cells would be near the equator where the climate is at its most stable and a range of technologies would be used to protect the floating cities from tidal waves and extreme weather.

To protect the inhabitants from large waves, strong elastic membranes would be attached to the lagoons around the outer edge of the cells, with the shallows above the membranes standing 30 feet above sea level.

Shimizu scientists calculate that the water pressure difference between the lagoons and the ocean would limit the movement of the membranes and buffer the force of the open sea waves.

Seawalls as high as 100 feet could also be constructed. And tsunamis in the open sea are far less dangerous than those that hit coastal areas, the designers say.
Enlarge A country consisting of one million people would be formed after modules joined together one by one

A country consisting of one million people would be formed after modules joined together one by one

Lightning rods would be fitted around the circumference of the towers and mesh lightning conductors will be placed on the exterior walls to protect against lightning strikes.

Shimizu wants to develop the first cells by 2025 and is concentrating on developing the technologies to make it happen. The concept was displayed at a recent Japanese university conference.

This is the not the first outlandish idea that Shimizu has come up with. The firm also proposes encircling the moon in a belt of solar collectors that would collect solar energy and transmit it to Earth.

Facebook launches Email service

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said last night email would go the way of the letter because it is too slow and informal.

The 26-year-old made the claim as he launched the social networking site's new messaging service, which integrates all web and text-based communications and works instantaneously.

The service, perceived as a direct rival to Google's Gmail, marks a new front in the ongoing and increasingly bitter battle between Facebook and Google to gain the loyalty of users.

Domination: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg talks about the new messaging service rumoured to be a 'Gmail-killer'

Mr Zuckerberg revealed that, as rumoured, the 500million people signed up to Facebook will have access to a ‘Facebook.com’ email address.

Entire conversation histories going back years will also be saved into users’ accounts and Spam will be completely filtered out, he claimed.

'We don’t think that a modern messaging system is going to be email,'
Zuckerberg said at a press conference in San Francisco.

'We want people to be able to communicate in whatever way they choose: email, text or Facebook message.'

Speculation had been mounting that Facebook’s email account would be a ‘Gmail Killer’, in reference to Google’s successful email service

Facebook’s new email system is modelled on instant messaging and on-line chat and will allow people to simplify their communications regardless of how they choose to do it.

Texts, email or instant messages will all come into one ‘feed’ and users can respond in any way they want.

One person could text a friend, for example, who will see the message come up on their Facebook page instantly and respond via an instant message or email.

Battling Google: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, pictured earlier this year, has launched a new messaging service which could rival Google's Gmail

Mr Zuckerberg said that he was changing Facebook because young people found email was too much of a ‘cognitive load’.

He said of the new programme: ‘It’s not email. It handles email... along with all the different ways you want to communicate.

'It’s true people are going to be able to have Facebook.com email addresses but this is not email. Email is one way people are going to use this system, but we don’t even think it’s going to be the primary way.

‘The goal of this product is to make it that we can seamlessly integrate across all of these different products very easily.’

Facebook's director of engineering Andrew Bosworth said that, over the course of time, users could look back on their relationships with friends going back years in a modern-day version of keeping letters in a box.

The changes will be rolled out over the coming months on an invite-only basis before being offered to all users worldwide.

Commenting on the launch, Eden Zoller, principal analyst at Ovum, said: 'An email service from Facebook makes a lot of sense. 

'It has a huge base of 500 million users that already love to communicate and share, and Facebook is giving them richer ways to do this through virtual gifts, games, location and even voice thanks to the recent integration deal with Skype.

'Adding email to the mix is a logical step and Facebook could tap into user data to provide an attractive, highly personalised service. You would also expect it to push mobile features given its big move in this direction. '

Ease of access: Facebook aims to integrate text, web and email services for its 500million users

The move will certainly alarm Facebook's nearest rivals such as Yahoo and Google.

In recent months the relationship between Facebook and Google has become increasingly fraught amid the poaching of staff and efforts to throw up barricades to prevent users from easily shifting information, such as email contact lists, between the two platforms.

The changes to Facebook have been under development for more than a year and will be rolled out over the forthcoming months on an invite-only basis before going worldwide.

Last week, Google began blocking a Facebook feature that allows users to automatically import Gmail contact data into the social networking service.

Google accused Facebook of siphoning up Google data without allowing for the automatic import and export of Facebook users' information.

They are also increasingly vying for engineering talent in Silicon Valley. This week, Google internally announced plans to boost salaries by 10 per cent, according to media reports, in a move viewed as an effort to staunch an exodus of engineers and managers to Facebook.

Google has banned Facebook from importing its users' email contacts, a move it says it made because Facebook refused to allow the export of contact and friend data from within user profiles.

A new style of messaging: Mark Zuckerberg unveils Facebook's newest feature in San Francisco

The expected announcement by Facebook comes as former internet big-hitter AOL is opening the doors to its new web-based email program, code-named Project Phoenix, for a limited number of users. Starting next year, anyone will be able to sign up for access to a beta test site.

The Project Phoenix inbox page was designed to make it easier to fire off a quick email, text or instant message with just a few clicks on a ‘quick bar’ at the top of the page.

People can also send short replies directly from the inbox page, without having to click on a message first. The new design displays thumbnails of recent photo attachments at a glance, and lets people toggle between several open emails at a time.

Browse Fast and FREE Facebook through mobile

We all know there wont be even a child in this world who doesn’t have a Facebook account. Facebook has become one of our necessities. Facebook’s recent statistics say that there are more than 100 million people actively using Facebook from their mobile device.

Facebook has launched another way for people to access Facebook anytime, 
anywhere: 0.facebook.com. 
0.facebook.com is a new mobile site that includes all of the key features of Facebook but is optimized for speed. It initially was available through more than 50 mobile operators in 45 countries and territories with zero data charges.

• It’s fast: 0.facebook.com includes all the key features of our standard mobile site m.facebook.com. Users can update their status, view their News Feed, like or comment on posts, send and reply to messages, or write on their friends’ Wall just as they do on Facebook.com. Rather than making photos viewable on 0.facebook.com, they have put the photos one click away so they don’t slow down the experience. You can still view any photos on Facebook if you want but your regular data fees will apply.

• It’s free: Using 0.facebook.com is completely free. People will only pay for data charges when they view photos or when they leave 0.facebook.com to browse other mobile sites. When they click to view a photo or browse another mobile site a notification page will appear to confirm that they will be charged if they want to leave 0.facebook.com

This is the preview of 0.facebook.com:

The below given are list of mobile operators which initially supported with 0.facebook.com

Facebook is day by day developing and the 0.facebook will be available in other mobile operators also. It is also available on Safaricom in Kenya.