Day: 09/23/2015

Turmeric Lime Soda That Aids in Digestion and Smoothes Pain

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Turmeric may be the most effective nutritional supplement in existence. Curcumin in turmeric has been shown to have anti-inflammation ability, and has been closely associated with the inhibition of colon, skin, breast and gastric cancer. There are more evidence-based health benefits of turmeric:

  1. Curcumin Boosts Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor, Linked to Improved Brain Function and a Lower Risk of Brain Diseases
  2. Curcumin Leads to Various Improvements That Should Lower Your Risk of Heart Disease
  3. Curcumin May be Useful in Preventing and Treating Alzheimer’s Disease
  4. Curcumin is a potent anti-inflammatory, it makes sense that it could help with arthritis.
  5. Studies Show That Curcumin Has Incredible Benefits Against Depression
  6. Curcumin May Help Delay Ageing and Fight Age-Related Chronic Diseases

Turmeric is not easy for your body to absorb. So it’s essential to find an effective way to integrate turmeric into your diet to get its super benefits for health.

According to a study published in the International Journal of Food Science and Technology found that the bioavailability of turmeric increased in rats when it was fermented.

Here is a recipe for you to ferment turmeric, which will make the most of turmeric to pacify pain, promote digestion and reduce inflammation.

Ingredients for Turmeric Lime Soda

  • 1 cup unpeeled sliced turmeric
  • 3/4 cup raw honey
  • 2 organic lemons or limes (You can also use both lemon and lime)
  • 6 cups water

How to Prepare?

Add the turmeric in water and heat to boiling. Let it boil for 20 minutes until the water becomes yellow.
Simmer for another 15-20 minutes. Remove from heat and let it cool and then add the zest, lemon juice and honey. Transfer to a large mason jar.

Close the lid and leave it in a no sunlight place for 3 days in hot weather. If you are preparing it in the winter, then keep for 4-5 days.

Make sure to stir slightly from time to time. Strain off the fluid into bottles and let it carbonate for 3 days. Then you can put it in the refrigerator. It will last a week before tasting like vinegar.

It will slowly start fermenting. When you are ready to drink it, make sure to stir it properly. Your delicious, anti-cancer tonic is ready.

Ultrafast lasers offer 3-D micropatterning of biocompatible silk hydrogels

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Ultrafast lasers offer 3-D micropatterning of biocompatible silk hydrogels
Illustration of laser-based micropatterning of silk hydrogels. The transparent gels enable the laser’s photons to be absorbed more than 10 times deeper than with other materials, without damaging the cells surrounding the “Tufts” pattern.

Tufts University biomedical engineers are using low-energy, ultrafast laser technology to make high-resolution, 3-D structures in silk protein hydrogels. The laser-based micropatterning represents a new approach to customized engineering of tissue and biomedical implants.

The work is reported in a paper in PNAS Early Edition published September 15 online before print: “Laser-based three-dimensional multiscale micropatterning of biocompatible hydrogels for customized tissue engineering scaffolds.”

Artificial tissue growth requires pores, or voids, to bring oxygen and nutrients to rapidly proliferating cells in the tissue scaffold. Current patterning techniques allow for the production of random, micron-scale pores and the creation of channels that are hundreds of microns in diameter, but there is little in between.

The Tufts researchers used an ultrafast, femtosecond laser to generate scalable, high-resolution 3-D voids within silk protein hydrogel, a soft, transparent biomaterial that supports cell growth and allows cells to penetrate deep within it. The researchers were able to create voids at multiple scales as small as 10 microns and as large at 400 microns over a large volume.

Further, the exceptional clarity of the transparent silk gels enabled the laser’s photons to be absorbed nearly 1 cm below the surface of the gel – more than 10 times deeper than with other materials, without damaging adjacent material.

The laser treatment can be done while keeping the cell culture sealed and sterile. Unlike most 3-D printing, this technique does not require photoinitiators, compounds that promote photoreactivity but are typically bio-incompatible.

“Because the pulses allow us to target specific regions without any damage to the immediate surroundings, we can imagine using such micropatterning to controllably design around living cells, guide cell growth and create an artificial vasculature within an already densely seeded silk hydrogel,” said senior author Fiorenzo G. Omenetto, Ph.D. Omenetto is associate dean for research, professor of biomedical engineering and Frank C. Doble professor at Tufts School of Engineering and also holds an appointment in physics in the School of Arts and Sciences.

The research team reported similar results in vitro and in a preliminary in vivo study in mice.

Team links two human brains for question-and-answer experiment

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Researchers used a brain-to-brain interface they developed to allow pairs of participants to play a ’20 question’ style game by transmitting signals from one brain to another over the Internet. Their experiment is thought to be the first to demonstrate that two brains can be directly linked to allow someone to accurately guess what is on another person’s mind.
University of Washington graduate student Jose Ceballos wears an electroencephalography (EEG) cap that records brain activity and sends a response to a second participant over the Internet.

Imagine a question-and-answer game played by two people who are not in the same place and not talking to each other. Round after round, one player asks a series of questions and accurately guesses the object the other is thinking about.

Sci-fi? Mind-reading superpowers? Not quite.

University of Washington researchers recently used a direct brain-to-brain connection to enable pairs of participants to play a question-and-answer game by transmitting signals from one brain to the other over the Internet. The experiment, detailed today in PLOS ONE, is thought to be the first to show that two brains can be directly linked to allow one person to accurately guess what’s on another person’s mind.

“This is the most complex brain-to-brain experiment, I think, that’s been done to date in humans,” said lead author Andrea Stocco, an assistant professor of psychology and a researcher at UW’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences.

“It uses conscious experiences through signals that are experienced visually, and it requires two people to collaborate,” Stocco said.

Here’s how it works: The first participant, or “respondent,” wears a cap connected to an electroencephalography (EEG) machine that records electrical brain activity. The respondent is shown an object (for example, a dog) on a computer screen, and the second participant, or “inquirer,” sees a list of possible objects and associated questions. With the click of a mouse, the inquirer sends a question and the respondent answers “yes” or “no” by focusing on one of two flashing LED lights attached to the monitor, which flash at different frequencies.

A “no” or “yes” answer both send a signal to the inquirer via the Internet and activate a magnetic coil positioned behind the inquirer’s head. But only a “yes” answer generates a response intense enough to stimulate the visual cortex and cause the inquirer to see a flash of light known as a “phosphene.” The phosphene — which might look like a blob, waves or a thin line — is created through a brief disruption in the visual field and tells the inquirer the answer is yes. Through answers to these simple yes or no questions, the inquirer identifies the correct item.

The experiment was carried out in dark rooms in two UW labs located almost a mile apart and involved five pairs of participants, who played 20 rounds of the question-and-answer game. Each game had eight objects and three questions that would solve the game if answered correctly. The sessions were a random mixture of 10 real games and 10 control games that were structured the same way.

The researchers took steps to ensure participants couldn’t use clues other than direct brain communication to complete the game. Inquirers wore earplugs so they couldn’t hear the different sounds produced by the varying stimulation intensities of the “yes” and “no” responses. Since noise travels through the skull bone, the researchers also changed the stimulation intensities slightly from game to game and randomly used three different intensities each for “yes” and “no” answers to further reduce the chance that sound could provide clues.

The researchers also repositioned the coil on the inquirer’s head at the start of each game, but for the control games, added a plastic spacer undetectable to the participant that weakened the magnetic field enough to prevent the generation of phosphenes. Inquirers were not told whether they had correctly identified the items, and only the researcher on the respondent end knew whether each game was real or a control round.

“We took many steps to make sure that people were not cheating,” Stocco said.

Participants were able to guess the correct object in 72 percent of the real games, compared with just 18 percent of the control rounds. Incorrect guesses in the real games could be caused by several factors, the most likely being uncertainty about whether a phosphene had appeared.

“They have to interpret something they’re seeing with their brains,” said co-author Chantel Prat, a faculty member at the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences and a UW associate professor of psychology. “It’s not something they’ve ever seen before.”

Errors can also result from respondents not knowing the answers to questions or focusing on both answers, or by the brain signal transmission being interrupted by hardware problems.

“While the flashing lights are signals that we’re putting into the brain, those parts of the brain are doing a million other things at any given time too,” Prat said.

The study builds on the UW team’s initial experiment in 2013, when it was the first to demonstrate a direct brain-to-brain connection between humans. Other scientists have connected the brains of rats and monkeys, and transmitted brain signals from a human to a rat, using electrodes inserted into animals’ brains. In the 2013 experiment, the UW team used noninvasive technology to send a person’s brain signals over the Internet to control the hand motions of another person.

The first experiment evolved out of research by co-author Rajesh Rao, a UW professor of computer science and engineering, on brain-computer interfaces that enable people to activate devices with their minds. In 2011, Rao began collaborating with Stocco and Prat to determine how to link two human brains together.

In 2014, the researchers received a $1 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation that allowed them to broaden their experiments to decode more complex interactions and brain processes. They are now exploring the possibility of “brain tutoring,” transferring signals directly from healthy brains to ones that are developmentally impaired or impacted by external factors such as a stroke or accident, or simply to transfer knowledge from teacher to pupil.

The team is also working on transmitting brain states — for example, sending signals from an alert person to a sleepy one, or from a focused student to one who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.

“Imagine having someone with ADHD and a neurotypical student,” Prat said. “When the non-ADHD student is paying attention, the ADHD student’s brain gets put into a state of greater attention automatically.”

Many technological advancements over the past century, from the telegraph to the Internet, were created to facilitate communication between people. The UW team’s work takes a different approach, using technology to strip away the need for such intermediaries.

“Evolution has spent a colossal amount of time to find ways for us and other animals to take information out of our brains and communicate it to other animals in the forms of behavior, speech and so on,” Stocco said. “But it requires a translation. We can only communicate part of whatever our brain processes.

“What we are doing is kind of reversing the process a step at a time by opening up this box and taking signals from the brain and with minimal translation, putting them back in another person’s brain,” he said.

Other co-authors are UW computer science and neurobiology undergraduate student Darby Losey, UW bioengineering doctoral student Jeneva Cronin, UW bioengineering doctoral student Joseph Wu, and Justin Abernethy, a research assistant at the UW Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences.

20 Reasons Why Guava Is Truly The Ultimate Super Fruit.

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20 Reasons Why Guava Is Truly The Ultimate Super Fruit.

 

Guavas are plants in the Myrtle family (Myrtaceae) genus Psidium. The term “guava” appears to derive from the Arawak (indigenous peoples of the Caribbean) guayabo “guava tree”, via the Spanish guayaba. Another term for guavas is pera, derived from pear derived from Spanish or Portuguese common to regions around the western Indian Ocean. Amrood is another term used in Indian subcontinent and Middle East, possibly deriving from armoot meaning “pear” in Arabic and Turkish languages. In Egypt, it is called gawafa.

Classified as a berry by most botanists, each guava berry is covered by a rough green rind that turns yellow when ripe. The pulp inside occurs in colors of white, pink, or red with numerous tiny, semi-hard edible seeds, concentrated especially at its center. The fruit is soft when ripe with sweet musky aroma and creamy in texture. Ripe fruits have rich flavor with sweet-tart taste.

The early Spanish explorers of the 1500′s found Strawberry Guava, ‘Acca sellowiana O.,’ growing as a native tree in America, where they were firmly established from Mexico southward to Peru. They are native to Mexico, Central America, and northern South America. Guavas are now cultivated and naturalized throughout the tropics and subtropics in Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, subtropical regions of North America, Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia and Spain.

Melatonin Linked to Seasonal Relapses of Multiple sclerosis

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Multiple sclerosis (MS) relapses are known to swing with the seasons. Scientists have attributed these fluctuations to the rise and fall of vitamin D production, which is triggered by exposure to seasonal sunlight. Now a new study suggests that melatonin, a hormone that regulates your internal body clock and sleep cycles, could also play a protective role.

MS is a disease of the central nervous system in which an abnormal immune response attacks the myelin sheath, or fatty protective layer, around neurons. The resulting degradation slows signaling between the brain and the rest of the body, potentially leading to a wide variety of symptoms that include weakness, vision problems and cognitive changes. The condition may affect as many as 2.3 million people worldwide. The cause of the disease remains unknown, although researchers have started to identify genetic risks and environmental factors, including smoking, viral infections and vitamin D levels in the bloodstream.

The latest environmental influence, observed by Mauricio Farez, a neuroscientist at the Raúl Carrea Institute for Neurological Research, and colleagues could involve peak melatonin levels in the body, which occur during the darker months. The researchers assessed a group of 139 multiple sclerosis patients in Buenos Aires and found a 32 percent reduction in the number of relapses in the fall and winter, when people living in the Southern Hemisphere produce more of the hormone, compared with summer and spring. The results are published on the September 10 Cell.

Past research has shown that melatonin can have a protective effect against MS and that shift work, which disturbs melatonin production, can increase the risk of developing the disease. According to the authors, this research is one of the first to bring together epidemiological evidence with results from both human cells and animal models.

To confirm melatonin’s protective effect in the lab, the team gave daily injections of the hormone to mice with autoimmune encephalomyelitis, a widely used animal model of MS. It worked—the animals showed reduced clinical symptoms and a restored balance of T cells, white blood cells that play a central role in a high-functioning immune system. Melatonin reduced the number of harmful T cells, which promote inflammation, whereas it increased regulatory T cells, defensive bodies that keep the immune system in check. The researchers observed comparable effects in a study of melatonin’s influence on human immune cells in a dish. Melatonin regulates pathways central to the immune response, so these results may pertain to other autoimmune diseases, particularly where seasonal flare-ups occur, such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, says study co-author Francisco Quintana, an immunologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Not everyone has agreed with this hypothesis. Alberto Ascherio, a Harvard University School of Public Health MS epidemiologist who studies MS and was not part of the research, asserts that vitamin D levels are actually still low in the spring, when MS relapses are found to peak. He points to the fact that the authors of the current study observed this dip in their own results. “MS relapses increase during winter and reach a peak in early spring,” Ascherio says, “and then start declining during summer and reaches a nadir in the fall, when they start rising again. There is no paradox as suggested by Farez and colleagues.”

Beyond this conflict, future studies could investigate how vitamin D and melatonin exert their effects and whether they interact. “Our data shows that melatonin might be one factor explaining the seasonal occurrence of relapses, in addition to infection and vitamin D,” Farez says, “and we need to further understand how they work together to fully understand the effect that we’re seeing.” Some researchers, including Jan Lünemann, a neuroscientist studying neuroinflammation at the University of Zürich, who was not involved in the study, caution overinterpretation of the results. “The findings clearly need to be confirmed in additional, independent cohorts of patients and experimental studies,” he says. “And whether the function of melatonin on T cells as observed in mice can be transferred to humans needs to be investigated.”

Bottom line: No one should take melatonin to mitigate their MS symptoms, and doctors should not prescribe it until researchers determine the mechanism and other details of its effects in patients, Farez says. His group is in the early stages of developing such a clinical trial to understand the effect of melatonin treatment. Until those results come in it is premature to conclude that melatonin will be effective in people with the disease.

Panchakarma – Ayurvedic Detox Program For Obesity

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Ayurveda recommends Panchakarma Treatments for obesity and weight loss. It is believed that in case of obesity or weight gain, fat accumulates as Ama in the body. These purification and detox procedures of Panchakarma help to remove this excess toxin (Ama) from the body. These are gentle treatments and easily manage the weight loss. The beauty of Ayurvedic treatment for obesity and weight loss is that it produces weight loss without adversely affecting the physiology and does not cause side effects.

Effective Ayurvedic Detox Program For Obesity And Weight Loss

The Ayurvedic weight loss detox program including Panchakarma Ayurvedic treatments of Basti andVamana and external Ayurvedic therapies like Udvartana and Swedana, besides providing immediate weight-loss, cleanses out toxins from your body and allows it to function more efficiently promoting an overall feeling of health and wellness. A special herbal massage called as Udvartana prevents sagging of the skin as it gradually regains its elasticity and adjusts to the weight loss. Whereas, other rapid weight loss programs with severe diet restrictions without adequate exercise programs and special massages have been known to be unsustainable. Most people regain the lost weight very soon and sometimes even gain more weight. Ayurveda specializes in detoxification. Some of the detoxification treatments involve a mild sweating action to help open the physical channels of the body and help to push out the toxins. The type of therapy that may be recommended varies.

Ayurvedic Case Study On Obesity With Success Story

A female patient aged 28 years hailing from Chennai working in the department of human resource (HR), a known case of hypothyroidism & polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) complained of nearly about 25 kg weight gain from April 2012. She was treated for infertility with hormonal therapies. On examination she had a BMI of 42.09 kg/ m­­2 and diagnosed as Atisthoulya (~obesity grade III). It was managed successfully based on the Ayurvedic principle of “Gu­ru Cha Atarpanam” which means the foods and medicines should be non-nourishing and give a sense of satiety.

Reviving The Gut Bacteria Helps In Obesity?

According to a leading researcher, junk food kills vital bacteria that help us stay thin. Professor Spector of King’s College London, who specializes in genetic epidemiology, says one reason that obesity levels have increased is because the range of bacteria in our guts has reduced. This is owing to eating of more processed food and fast foods. Although most of the weight-loss plans mainly focus on reduction in both calories and the amount of fat that is eaten, the researcher Professor Spector says that it is actually the junk food that kills vital bacteria that help us to stay thin.

6 Questions Successful People Ask Themselves Every Day

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Intelligent and successful leaders all do one thing better than anyone else. They are constantly asking themselves questions to stay relevant and insightful.

Career Guidance - 6 Questions Successful People Ask Themselves Every Day

Whether you’re running a company, heading up a startup, or leading a team, asking yourself these questions every day will help you get the most out of your work and leadership and make the difference in your success.

1. Did I Work Toward My Goals Today?

Successful leaders understand the importance of goal-setting in everything from long-term vision to short-term motivation. Focusing on your goals helps you to organize your actions and make the most of your ambition and aspirations.

2. What Bad Habits Do I Need to Stop?

Your bad habits—and we all have them in some form—may be damaging your credibility and your business. It is well worth putting in the daily time and effort to overcome them and replace them with things that will serve you better.

3. What Motivated Me Today?

Motivation is the force that keeps pushing you forward. It is your internal drive to achieve, produce, and develop—and it’s always to your benefit to pay attention to the things that feed your personal motivation.

4. Have I Been the Kind of Person I Want to Be?

Character rules. You’re not born with the qualities that make up your character, but they develop as you go through your experiences, your failures, and your wins. Govern your sense of responsibility and responses to events to develop the character you’d like to have.

5. What Mistakes Did I Make Today, and What Can I Learn From Them?

We all experience failures and mistakes; it’s how you respond that makes the difference. You can choose to see failure as proof of your inadequacy, or recognize it as an incredible learning experience.

6. What am I Grateful for Today?

There will always be bad days and good days, bad luck and good luck. Through it all, gratitude remains among the most useful tools you can have. It shows you what really matters and what’s important, and it keeps you level-headed and focused on what is important.

If you want to create a shift in your business and your leadership, make a daily practice of asking yourself the right questions—because it is the right questions that lead us to the right answers.

The world’s nitrogen fixation, explained

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Yale University scientists may have cracked a part of the chemical code for one of the most basic, yet mysterious, processes in the natural world — nature’s ability to transform nitrogen from the air into usable nitrogen compounds.

The process is called nitrogen fixation, and it occurs in microorganisms on the roots of plants. This is how nature makes its own fertilizers to feed plants, which feed us.

The enzyme responsible for natural nitrogen fixation is called nitrogenase. Yale chemistry professor Patrick Holland and his team designed a new chemical compound with key properties that help to explain nitrogenase. The findings are described in the Sept. 23 online edition of the journal Nature.

“Nitrogenase reacts with nitrogen at a cluster of iron and sulfur atoms, which is strange because other iron-sulfur compounds typically don’t react with nitrogen, either in other enzymes or in the thousands of known iron-sulfur compounds synthesized by chemists,” Holland said.

Keeping that in mind, Holland and his team designed a new compound with two distinct properties found in nitrogenase: large shielding groups of atoms that prevented undesired reactions, and a weak iron-sulfur bond that could break easily upon the addition of electrons. The design proved successful because the compound binds nitrogen from the atmosphere, just as nitrogenase does.

With this insight into how nature fixes nitrogen, Holland and his colleagues hope to design synthetic catalysts that turn nitrogen into ammonia, the main fertilizer produced in the natural system. “Natural systems are much friendlier than the current industrial process for making ammonia, which uses very high temperature and pressure,” Holland said.

By making ammonia synthesis easier, it could be possible to make fertilizers on-site at farms, reducing transportation and production costs. “This work shows that carefully designed chemical compounds can help us figure out how natural systems use plentiful raw materials like the nitrogen in our atmosphere,” Holland said.

Co-authors of the paper are Ilija Čorić, Brandon Mercado, and David Vinyard of Yale, and Eckhard Bill of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion, in Germany. The National Institutes of Health and the Max Planck Society supported the research.

Scientists reveal when global warming began

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  • Scientists analysed computer simulations for changes in temperature
  • First signs seen in the 1940s in parts of Australia, south Asia and Africa
  • This is because these regions generally exhibited a narrow range of temperatures, making it easier to spot a trend of warming 

This year is tipped to be the hottest on record as global temperatures continue to soar.

Now researchers have revealed for the first time when and where signs of this global warming first appeared in the past, by analysing new computer simulations of the climate over more than a century.

By running simulations from as far back as the 1870s, the researchers detected what they believe to be the first signs as early as the 1940s in parts of Australia, south east Asia and Africa.

Researchers revealed global warming appeared in the 1940s in some parts of Australia, Asia and Africa. These charts show the time man-made pollutants began. A and B show the average air temperature, C and D the highest maximum temperature, E and F the lowest daily minimum temperature, and G and H total rainfall

Researchers revealed global warming appeared in the 1940s in some parts of Australia, Asia and Africa. These charts show the time man-made pollutants began. A and B show the average air temperature, C and D the highest maximum temperature, E and F the lowest daily minimum temperature, and G and H total rainfall

This is because these regions generally exhibited a narrow range of temperatures, making it easier to spot a trend of warming.

The study, by a team from Australia’s Arc Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science and the University of Reading, gives an insight into the global impacts that have already been felt by global warming, even at an early stage and possible effects that will be seen in the future, such as extreme rainfall.

To work out when global warming started, the team analysed simulated changes in average temperature.

They created 23 models based on temperature data to study past and future trends.

The study, by a team from Australia’s Arc Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science and the University of Reading, gives an insight into the global impacts that have already been felt by global warming, even at an early stage. An aerial shot of wild fires around Sydney in New South Wales is shown

The study, by a team from Australia’s Arc Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science and the University of Reading, gives an insight into the global impacts that have already been felt by global warming, even at an early stage. An aerial shot of wild fires around Sydney in New South Wales is shown

‘Remarkably our research shows that you could already see clear signs of global warming in the tropics by the 1960s but in parts of Australia, South East Asia and Africa it was visible as early as the 1940s,’ Dr King said. These graphs show signs of global warming for the globe (a), west Africa (b) North Asia (c) and south Asia (d)

‘Remarkably our research shows that you could already see clear signs of global warming in the tropics by the 1960s but in parts of Australia, South East Asia and Africa it was visible as early as the 1940s,’ Dr King said. These graphs show signs of global warming for the globe (a), west Africa (b) North Asia (c) and south Asia (d)

‘We examined average and extreme temperatures because they were always projected to be the measure that is most sensitive to global warming,’ said Dr Andrew King of Arc, lead author of the study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

‘Remarkably our research shows that you could already see clear signs of global warming in the tropics by the 1960s but in parts of Australia, South East Asia and Africa it was visible as early as the 1940s.’

The reason the first changes in average temperature and temperature extremes appeared in the tropics was because those regions generally experienced a much narrower range of temperatures.

THE CITIES THAT COULD BE SUBMERGED UNDERWATER

Many of the world’s greatest cities – currently home to more than one billion people – will be underwater should we burn all of the planet’s available fossil fuels, scientists have warned.

Carbon emissions given off during the burning of oil, gas and coal will lead to further melting of the entirety of the Antarctic ice sheet and a destructive sea level rise, they claim.

While the west Antarctic sheet has formed the focus of most climate change studies, a new report published in Science Advances claims the continent’s east may also be under threat.

The study concluded that ‘unabated carbon emissions’, leading to sea-level rise, threatens the Antarctic Ice Sheet ‘in its entirety’.

It stated: ‘If we were to release all currently attainable fossil fuel resources, Antarctica would become almost ice-free.

‘With unrestrained future CO2 emissions, the amount of sea-level rise from Antarctica could exceed tens of meters over the next 1,000 years and could ultimately lead to the loss of the entire ice sheet.’

This meant smaller shifts in the temperature record due to global warming were more easily seen.

The first signal to appear in the tropics was the change in average temperatures.

Closer to the poles, the emergence of climate change in the temperature record appeared later, but by the period 1980 to 2000 the temperature record in most regions of the world were showing clear global warming signals.

Dr Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist at the University of Reading and an author of the study told MailOnline: ‘The simulations showed the earliest changes in extreme temperatures in tropical regions, such as Africa and south-east Asia.

‘Northern Europe also showed significant increases in hot temperatures, and the simulations suggest further increases in intense winter rainfall events in the coming decades for our part of the world.’

One of the few exceptions to this clear global warming signal was found in large parts of the continental United States, particularly on the Eastern coast and up through the central states.

The experts warned these regions can expect to see signs of global warming in the next decade and other parts of the world will likely see more extreme weather events too.

Dr Hawkins said: ‘The greatest impacts of climate change are likely to come as some extreme weather events, such as storms, floods, heatwaves and droughts get bigger and occur more often.

‘The latest state-of-the-art climate simulations show increases in temperature and rainfall extremes since the late 1800s, and these changes are larger than would be expected without an increase in global temperatures due to human activity.’

Large parts of the continental United States, particularly on the Eastern coast (a satellite images shows cities at night) and up through the central states have yet to see clear signs of global warming, the study said 

Large parts of the continental United States, particularly on the Eastern coast (a satellite images shows cities at night) and up through the central states have yet to see clear signs of global warming, the study said

Co-author Dr Ed Hawkins from the National Centre for Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading said: ‘We expect the first heavy precipitation events with a clear global warming signal will appear during winters in Russia, Canada and northern Europe over the next 10 to 30 years.

‘This is likely to bring pronounced precipitation events on top of the already existing trend towards increasingly wet winters in these regions.’

The study echoes data used in the IPCC’s recent report. It said global warming over the last century occurred in two phases – from the 1910s to 1940s, with a rise of 0.35°C – and from the 1970s to the present, with a rise of 0.55 °C.

Its latest report also noted that 11 of the 12 warmest years have occurred in the past 12 years.

It is not the first time the globe has warmed up, but this is the latest trend and the first since records began.

 

Shades of ‘Star Trek’? Quantum Teleportation Sets Distance Record

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A record-breaking distance has been achieved in the bizarre world of quantum teleportation, scientists say.

The scientists teleported photons (packets of light) across a spool of fiber optics 63 miles (102 kilometers) long, four times farther than the previous record. This research could one day lead to a “quantum Internet” that offers next-generation encryption, the scientists said.

Teleporting an object from one point in the universe to another without it moving through the space in between may sound like science fiction pulled from an episode of “Star Trek,” but scientists have actually been experimenting with “quantum teleportation” since 1998.

Quantum teleportation depends on capturing the fundamental details of an object — its “quantum states” — and instantly transmitting that information from one area to another to recreate the exact object someplace else.

Quantum teleportation relies on the strange nature of quantum physics, which finds that the fundamental building blocks of the universe can essentially exist in two or more places at once.

Specifically, quantum teleportation relies on an odd phenomenon known as “quantum entanglement,” in which subatomic particles can become linked and influence each other instantaneously, regardless of how far apart they are. Scientists cannot distinguish the state of either particle until one is directly measured, but because the particles are connected, measuring one instantly determines the state of the other.

Currently, physicists can’t instantly transport matter (say, a human), but they can use quantum teleportation to beam information from one place to another. In a recent experiment, scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) were able to teleport photons farther across an optical fiber than ever before.

“What’s exciting is that we were able to carry out quantum teleportation over such a long distance,” study co-author Martin Stevens, a quantum optics researcher at the NIST in Boulder, Colorado, told Live Science.

The new distance record was set using advanced single-photon detectors made of superconducting wires of molybdenum silicide that were about 150 nanometers (or billionths of a meter) wide and cooled to about minus 457 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 272 degrees Celsius), or about 1 degree above absolute zero. The experiment involved a near-infrared wavelength commonly used in telecommunications, the researchers said.

Quantum Teleportation Experiment
Colorized micrograph of one of the single-photon detectors made of superconducting nanowires patterned on MoSi used in the experiment.

“Only about 1 percent of photons make it all the way through 100 kilometers (60 miles) of fiber,” Stevens said in a statement. “We never could have done this experiment without these new detectors, which can measure this incredibly weak signal.”

The detectors used in this new experiment could record more than 80 percent of arriving photons, according to the scientists. In comparison, the previous record-holder had detectors that operated with about 75 percent efficiency at best. Moreover, the new experiment detected 10 times fewer stray photons than the previous record-holder.

Prior research did achieve quantum teleportation over longer distances over open air — a span of 89 miles (144 kilometers) between the two Canary Islands of La Palma and Tenerife, located off the northwest coast of Africa.

“However, the experiment at the Canary Islands involved a telescope on top of one mountain and a telescope on top of another mountain, with the telescopes pointed at each other at night, since background light during the day would interfere with the experiment,” Stevens said. “If you wanted quantum teleportation in the real world — say, from one city to another — you might not necessarily have a direct line-of-sight between two locations, and you wouldn’t want to be limited to working at night, so fiber optics might be more feasible.”

Quantum teleportation could enable the development of a “quantum Internet” that allows messages to be sent more securely, Stevens said.

“A quantum Internet could allow you to establish communications channels that are much more secure than what we have with the standard encryption protocols we use everyday nowadays,” Stevens said.

The researchers now plan to develop even better single-photon detectors to push distances for quantum teleportation even farther, Stevens said.