We laugh now at medieval or early modern notions of medicine, the idea that a healthy body requires the ?four humours? ? yellow bile, black bile, phlegm, and blood ? to remain in balance, or the use of leeches as a cure for any number of ailments.
But think of being the first patient ever to learn about germs. Your doctor informs you that tiny beings, invisible to the naked eye, invade our bodies and are responsible for most diseases and infections. How is that any more believable than being told that what you need is a good bleeding? All most of us have to go on is what the experts of the time say.
So the women of Victorian England can be forgiven for accepting the diagnosis of ?hysteria,? a catch-all term used for the complaints of bored housewives, ranging from depression to nymphomania to just being too opinionated. It?s even more understandable when many of these women go along with the prescribed treatment of Dr. Robert Dalrymple (Jonathan Pryce): ?vulva massage.?
Hysteria, the doctor explains, is the result of an ?overactive uterus? and so he gets hands-on in the ladies? nether-regions to coax their organs back into place. The patient may sound as if she?s enjoying the experience, but it?s a well-documented fact (according to Dalrymple) that women are incapable of experiencing sexual pleasure without the firm participation of the male member. Weekly sessions will be required indefinitely, in most cases. Which can put a major strain on the doctor?s hands. Unable to keep up with the demends of his practice, Dalrymple hires a young associate, Dr. Granville (Hugh Dancy.)
Hysteria mostly treats its subject matter, based on the true story of the medicinal origin of the invention of the female vibrator, as a bit of cheeky fun. The sexual and medical ignorance of the time is played for many solid laughs, with the cast and screenplay seeming to wink at the audience through the naughtiest bits. In keeping with its Victorian setting, however, it remains relatively chaste in its depiction.
Where the movie falters is in the grafting onto this grand silliness of a standard romantic comedy formula: the handsome doctor (Dancy), the beautiful girl he has his eye on (Felicity Jones), the outspoken woman whom at first he can?t stand but soon finds he can?t get out of his mind (Maggie Gyllenhaal), and his saucy gay best friend (Rupert Everett). About 10 minutes in, every step of this plotline can be accurately forecast. I tired of watching it travel its course.
Much more enjoyable is seeing Granville and his pal Edmund (Everett) transform a rudimentary electric duster into a revolution in self-pleasure.
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Contact: Susan Hendrix Susan.m.hendrix@nasa.gov 301-286-7745 NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
On May 17, 2012 an M-class flare exploded from the sun. The eruption also shot out a burst of solar particles traveling at nearly the speed of light that reached Earth about 20 minutes after the light from the flare. An M-class flare is considered a "moderate" flare, at least ten times less powerful than the largest X-class flares, but the particles sent out on May 17 were so fast and energetic that when they collided with atoms in Earth's atmosphere, they caused a shower of particles to cascade down toward Earth's surface. The shower created what's called a ground level enhancement (GLE).
GLEs are quite rare fewer than 100 events have been observed in the last 70 years, since instruments were first able to detect them. Moreover, this was the first GLE of the current solar cycle--a sure sign that the sun's regular 11-year cycle is ramping up toward solar maximum.
This GLE has scientists excited for another reason, too. The joint Russian/Italian mission PAMELA, short for Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics, simultaneously measured the particles from the sun that caused the GLE. Solar particles have been measured before, but PAMELA is sensitive to the very high-energy particles that reach ground level at Earth. The data may help scientists understand the details of what causes this space weather phenomenon, and help them tease out why a relatively small flare was capable of producing the high-speed particles needed to cause a GLE.
"Usually we would expect this kind of ground level enhancement from a giant coronal mass ejection or a big X-class flare," says Georgia de Nolfo, a space scientist who studies high speed solar particles at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "So not only are we really excited that we were able to observe these particularly high energy particles from space, but we also have a scientific puzzle to solve."
The path to this observation began on Saturday, May 5, when a large sunspot rotated into view on the left side of the sun. The sunspot was as big as about 15 Earths, a fairly sizable active region, though by no means as big as some of the largest sunspots that have been observed on the sun. Dubbed Active Region 1476, the sunspots had already shown activity on the back side of the sunas seen by a NASA mission called the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) -- so scientists were on alert for more. Scientists who study high-energy particles from the sun had been keeping their eye out for just such an active region because they had seen no GLEs since December of 2006.
In addition, they had high hopes that the PAMELA mission, which had focused on cosmic rays from outside our galaxy could now be used to observe solar particles. Such "solar cosmic rays" are the most energetic particles that can be accelerated at or near the sun.
But there was a hitch: the satellite carrying the PAMELA instruments were not currently usable since they were in calibration mode. Scientists including de Nolfo and another Goddard researcher, Eric Christian, let the PAMELA collaboration know that this might be the chance they had been waiting for and they convinced the Russian team in charge of the mission to turn the instruments back on to science mode.
"And then the active region pretty much did nothing for two weeks," says Christian. "But just before it disappeared over the right side of the sun, it finally erupted with an M-class flare."
Bingo. Neutron monitors all over the world detected the shower of neutrons that represent a GLE. Most of the time the showers are not the solar energetic particles themselves, but the resultant debris of super-fast particles slamming into atoms in Earth's atmosphere. The elevated levels of neutrons lasted for an hour.
Simultaneously, PAMELA recorded the incoming solar particles up in space, providing one of the first in-situ measurements of the stream of particles that initiated a GLE. Only the early data has been seen so far, but scientists have high hopes that as more observations are relayed down to Earth, they will be able to learn more about the May 17 onslaught of solar protons, and figure out why this event triggered a GLE when earlier bursts of solar protons in January and March, 2012 didn't.
###
PAMELA is a space-borne experiment of the WiZard collaboration, which is an international collaboration between Italian (I.N.F.N. Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare), Russian, German and Swedish institutes, realized with the main support of the Italian (ASI) and Russian (Roscosmos) Space Agencies.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: Susan Hendrix Susan.m.hendrix@nasa.gov 301-286-7745 NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
On May 17, 2012 an M-class flare exploded from the sun. The eruption also shot out a burst of solar particles traveling at nearly the speed of light that reached Earth about 20 minutes after the light from the flare. An M-class flare is considered a "moderate" flare, at least ten times less powerful than the largest X-class flares, but the particles sent out on May 17 were so fast and energetic that when they collided with atoms in Earth's atmosphere, they caused a shower of particles to cascade down toward Earth's surface. The shower created what's called a ground level enhancement (GLE).
GLEs are quite rare fewer than 100 events have been observed in the last 70 years, since instruments were first able to detect them. Moreover, this was the first GLE of the current solar cycle--a sure sign that the sun's regular 11-year cycle is ramping up toward solar maximum.
This GLE has scientists excited for another reason, too. The joint Russian/Italian mission PAMELA, short for Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics, simultaneously measured the particles from the sun that caused the GLE. Solar particles have been measured before, but PAMELA is sensitive to the very high-energy particles that reach ground level at Earth. The data may help scientists understand the details of what causes this space weather phenomenon, and help them tease out why a relatively small flare was capable of producing the high-speed particles needed to cause a GLE.
"Usually we would expect this kind of ground level enhancement from a giant coronal mass ejection or a big X-class flare," says Georgia de Nolfo, a space scientist who studies high speed solar particles at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "So not only are we really excited that we were able to observe these particularly high energy particles from space, but we also have a scientific puzzle to solve."
The path to this observation began on Saturday, May 5, when a large sunspot rotated into view on the left side of the sun. The sunspot was as big as about 15 Earths, a fairly sizable active region, though by no means as big as some of the largest sunspots that have been observed on the sun. Dubbed Active Region 1476, the sunspots had already shown activity on the back side of the sunas seen by a NASA mission called the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) -- so scientists were on alert for more. Scientists who study high-energy particles from the sun had been keeping their eye out for just such an active region because they had seen no GLEs since December of 2006.
In addition, they had high hopes that the PAMELA mission, which had focused on cosmic rays from outside our galaxy could now be used to observe solar particles. Such "solar cosmic rays" are the most energetic particles that can be accelerated at or near the sun.
But there was a hitch: the satellite carrying the PAMELA instruments were not currently usable since they were in calibration mode. Scientists including de Nolfo and another Goddard researcher, Eric Christian, let the PAMELA collaboration know that this might be the chance they had been waiting for and they convinced the Russian team in charge of the mission to turn the instruments back on to science mode.
"And then the active region pretty much did nothing for two weeks," says Christian. "But just before it disappeared over the right side of the sun, it finally erupted with an M-class flare."
Bingo. Neutron monitors all over the world detected the shower of neutrons that represent a GLE. Most of the time the showers are not the solar energetic particles themselves, but the resultant debris of super-fast particles slamming into atoms in Earth's atmosphere. The elevated levels of neutrons lasted for an hour.
Simultaneously, PAMELA recorded the incoming solar particles up in space, providing one of the first in-situ measurements of the stream of particles that initiated a GLE. Only the early data has been seen so far, but scientists have high hopes that as more observations are relayed down to Earth, they will be able to learn more about the May 17 onslaught of solar protons, and figure out why this event triggered a GLE when earlier bursts of solar protons in January and March, 2012 didn't.
###
PAMELA is a space-borne experiment of the WiZard collaboration, which is an international collaboration between Italian (I.N.F.N. Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare), Russian, German and Swedish institutes, realized with the main support of the Italian (ASI) and Russian (Roscosmos) Space Agencies.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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This undated screen grab released by the Kaspersky Lab site shows code from the computer virus known as Flame.
By Bob Sullivan
Why would super-secret spy software be written in a video game language?? As security researchers continue to unpack the digital mystery that is the Flame virus, that's just one question looming over perhaps the world's most intriguing digital whodunit.
With all the talk about Flame being the most powerful, ingenious and stealthy computer virus ever written, some properties of the mysterious malicious software are causing confusion.
For one thing, the program takes up 20 megabytes of space on infected machines. That's not stealthy; large files usually indicate sloppy programming. Also, unlike Stuxnet, Flame didn't come with precision targeting, and hasn't yet been credited with doing anything as impressive as hacking nuclear power plant computers. But perhaps most mysterious of all: Part of Flame?s code was written in the Lua programming language, a simple language used almost exclusively by video game programmers.? Why would a nation-state trying to commit secret espionage toy with video game software?
"This is not a stealth operation," said Marcus Carey, who worked as?a security analyst at the National Security Agency for eight years before joining the security firm Rapid7 in Boston.
News of the Flame virus hit Monday, as multiple computer security firms claimed the program represented a huge escalation in cyberwarfare. Moscow-based Kaspersky Labs, among the first to analyze the virus, called it the most powerful malicious program ever.
?The complexity and functionality of the newly discovered malicious program exceed those of all other cyber menaces known to date,? it said.
Flame reportedly comes loaded with lots of capabilities, such as remotely turning on victims' PC microphones, but it's hardly the first virus to accomplish that.? And unlike Stuxnet, it's yet clear that?Flame used a series of so-called 0-day exploits -- ?vulnerabilities in software that are undiscovered by the security industry and for which there are no antidotes.? While initial reports immediately linked Stuxnet to Flame, primarily because they both seem to target Iran, skepticism is beginning to build that the two are directly linked.
That's partly because the two programs were written in very different ways. Flame?s authors used Lua, something that confuses observers.
"Lua in a spy tool is just ... weird," said one Israeli programmer who uses Lua and requested anonymity. "The little snippet I've seen of the code seems so ... ordinary ... really like the work of your average programmer.? Stuxnet sounded genius.?
Said another: "Lua is considered a kids language.... All I see around that is built with Lua are games. I mean, the syntax is very simple."
Not exactly the stuff of high-tech international espionage. Or is it?
Lua has been around since the 1980s, developed at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. It was created out of necessity; at the time, trade barriers made importing software development tools too expensive.? Development of Lua as a programming language remains centered in Brazil, where a small group of programmers make infrequent updates to the language.? But it's become a favorite platform for a few thousand devotees around the world, who are attracted to its simplicity, its ability to play well with other software and its tiny footprint, which makes it ideal for use on embedded devices or games, where memory and space are at a premium.
Unlike other programming languages that grow in size out of necessity over ?time, Lua has actually shrunken in recent years, as developers have revised and refined its architecture.
Its name ? Portuguese for ?moon? ? hints at Lua?s use as a subordinate language to attach satellite projects to larger pieces of software.
At the Lua-L discussion list, Flame talk was all the rage on Monday, as its users? small corner of the technology world was suddenly thrust into the limelight.
"In some morbid way this is an endorsement for Lua," wrote a poster identified as Enrico Colombini.? "Though I'm a bit perplexed about the alleged high sophistication of that malware, when I see unobfuscated Lua with self-descriptive names."
But longtime Lua programmer Erik Hougaard, based in Denmark, said such opinions show a fundamental misunderstanding of Lua's simple elegance as a programming tool.
"It's a well-kept secret, but it's everywhere. It's hard to pick up an Xbox game without it," said Hougaard, who now uses Lua to program robots but has also used it to create from-scratch accounting software and other financial tools at EFoqus Danmark A/S.? "It's not sexy, but it's unique. It's so small you can fit it onto a single chip."
That's essential, because Lua includes both program and programming language in one tidy package -- meaning programs written in Lua will run reliably on machines as diverse as PCs and iPhones.?
"Lua is quite common in the mobile application space. If someone has Angry Birds installed on their iPhone, they are using Lua," said Carey, the security analyst. In fact, thousands of iPhone apps are written with Lua, he said.
Hackers have taken notice. While security firms have said they can't think of another computer virus before Flame that used Lua, it is a fundamental part of a favorite hacker tool called "NMAP." NMAP is used to scan the Internet for computers with potentially exploitable vulnerabilities; it?s the first tool used by hackers looking for trouble, and by security professionals looking to plug holes. NMAP permits use of a scripting language that runs under Lua so hackers can adjust the tool as needed.
"People have been using Lua to hack networks for a while, so this shouldn't surprise anyone," Carey said.? "Attackers are just using what works."
Lua first came to hackers' attention about two or three years ago, roughly when some analysts believe Flame was written, Carey said.
As with most information about Flame, Lua's appearance in the virus can be interpreted in two ways:
Flame's writers may have been ahead of their time, using a unique programming language to create their cybermonster, and further confuse computer security professionals.
Or, Flame's writers may have been video gamers and relative amateurs who didn't bother to do much to cover their tracks.
Symantec Corp. believes the use of Lua supports the former theory. It?s one of many security firms calling Flame one?of the most powerful and complex virus ever written.
"Lua is scriptable, easy to understand, and easy to update. That said, it?s not used often," said Vikram Thakur, principal security manager at Symantec Security Response. "Anecdotally, we can?t think of another threat that is written in Lua..... The usage of the programming language is what makes the program, independent of the language, interesting."
But is it the work of genius, and a sign that cyberwar has escalated a new and dangerous level? Carey is not so sure.
"Saying this is the work of a nation-state is premature," he said. "This is not a particularly clever piece of malware or uber-elite." And despite the fact that it apparently operated in stealth for at least two years, many experts say it is too big to have been conceived as a spy tool.
"What's with the size?" said the anonymous Israeli Lua programmer. "It's like the trick they do in the movies of making a scene on the train/plane? to create a diversion while committing a crime.?
Colombini was even more direct in his assessment.
"I find it difficult to believe this to be the work of an intelligence service, at least of a decent one,? he said. ?Obfuscating ? the Lua code would have made analysis more difficult and above all slower. In the spying business gaining time has a very high value. ? No self-respecting intelligence service (would have neglected to do that)." ?
So far, most of the roughly 300 confirmed Flame infections have been in Middle Eastern countries that are natural enemies of Israel, including 189 in Iran, according to Kaspersky Lab. ?
?If it weren't for the peculiar geographical distribution, (which is) the only thing that makes one think of politically charged malware, I'd think of a sort of malware construction kit,? designed to simply collect a large series of attack tools in one place, Colombini said.? ?
Given that the subject is covert cyberwar, confusion, half-truths and disinformation are the rule rather than the exception. Already, an unnamed U.S. official has told NBC News that the U.S. government is probably responsible for it; while Israeli officials have hinted that their side developed it.
Something else concerns Carey about the way that the Flame narrative has progressed so far.? Much of what we know about Flame has come directly from Iran's Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center.
?"Generally, we don't believe anything Iran says. Here, we seem to be believing everything they say," he said. "But this incident reinforces a storyline for Iran playing the victim."
Symantec, and many other security organizations, have said the sheer size of Flame is making thorough analysis of the virus a slog. Early reports on the malicious program all came with warnings that findings were preliminary.? Symantec expects to issue a follow-up later this week.
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All WWE programming, talent names, images, likenesses, slogans, wrestling moves, trademarks, logos and copyrights are the exclusive property of WWE, Inc. and its subsidiaries. All other trademarks, logos and copyrights are the property of their respective owners. ? 2012 WWE, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This website is based in the United States. By submitting personal information to this website you consent to your information being maintained in the U.S., subject to applicable U.S. laws. U.S. law may be different than the law of your home country. WrestleMania XXIX (NY/NJ) logo TM & ? 2012 WWE. All Rights Reserved. The Empire State Building design is a registered trademark and used with permission by ESBC.
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An anonymous reader writes "Back in April, we discussed news of an anti-education attack on an Afghani school, which poisoned 150 Afghan schoolgirls. Now, a hospital in the same province has admitted 160 more girls who seem to have suffered a similar attack. 'Their classrooms might have been sprayed with a toxic material before the girls entered, police spokesman Khalilullah Aseer said. He blamed the Taliban. The incident, the second in a week's time, was reported at the Aahan Dara Girls School in Taluqan, the provincial capital. The girls, ages 10 to 20, complained of headaches, dizziness and vomiting before being taken to the hospital, said Hafizullah Safi, director of the provincial health department. More than half of them were discharged within a few hours of receiving treatment, Safi said. The health department collected blood samples and sent them to Kabul for testing.'"
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Online paid surveys pertaining to cash is definitely an exciting method to easy. But the whole procedure to begin making frequent income and also finding great paying surveys is surely an intriguing process loaded with both disillusionment and satisfying surprises. On one hand, you can come across frauds that spend you nothing for all your hard work and occasion, while a great gems pay back you with great affiliate payouts. You ought to must also learn the way to differentiate involving the two if you will make a number of serious cash flow from on-line paid research.
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Mobile technology, remote coaching, financial incentives may help improve diet, activity levelPublic release date: 28-May-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Marla Paul marla-paul@northwestern.edu 312-503-8928 JAMA and Archives Journals
CHICAGO The diet and activity levels of patients may be improved through use of mobile technology, remote coaching and financial incentives, according to a report of a randomized controlled trial published in the May 28 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication.
Not following a physician's lifestyle change advice is a major barrier to patients achieving effective preventive care. Many physicians are skeptical that patients will change their unhealthy behaviors, and physicians also report a lack of time and training to effectively counsel their patients, researchers write in the study background.
"This study's interventions leveraged handheld technology to create efficient interventions that make self-monitoring more convenient, extend decision support into life contexts where lifestyle choices are made, and convey time-stamped behavioral data to paraprofessionals who provide coaching remotely," the researchers note.
Bonnie Spring, Ph.D., of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, and colleagues randomly assigned 204 adult patients (48 men) with elevated intake of saturated fat and low intake of fruits and vegetables, and high sedentary leisure time and low physical activity into 1 of 4 treatments. The treatments were: increase fruit/vegetable intake and physical activity, decrease fat and sedentary leisure, decrease fat and increase physical activity, and increase fruit/vegetable intake and decrease sedentary leisure. Patients used personal digital assistant devices to record and self-regulate their behaviors.
During three weeks of treatment, patients uploaded their data daily and communicated as needed with their coaches by telephone or by email. The participants could earn $175 for meeting goals during the treatment phase. In addition, there was a 20-week follow-up during which patients could earn from $30 to $80 for continuing to record and transmit their data.
"The increase fruits/vegetables and decrease sedentary leisure treatment maximized healthy lifestyle change compared with the other interventions," the authors comment. They note that lifestyle gains diminished once treatment ended, as expected, but improvements persisted throughout the follow-up period.
From baseline to the end of treatment to the end of the follow-up, respectively, mean (average) servings per day of fruits/vegetables changed from 1.2 to 5.5 to 2.9, mean minutes per day of sedentary leisure from 219.2 to 89.3 to 125.7, and daily calories from saturated fat from 12 percent to 9.4 percent to 9.9 percent, according to the study results.
"This study demonstrates the feasibility of changing multiple unhealthy diet and activity behaviors simultaneously, efficiently and with minimal face-to-face contact by using mobile technology, remote coaching, and incentives," the authors comment.
(Arch Intern Med. 2012;172[10]:789-796. Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com.)
Editor's Note: The Make Better Choices trial was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
Invited Commentary: Using Technology for Interventions on Health Risk Factors
In an invited commentary, William T. Riley, Ph.D., of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md., writes: "Via technology, we will soon be able to deliver fully automated and configurable multiple risk factor interventions that monitor progress continuously and can be delivered throughout the day every day."
"It remains an empirical question, however, whether these technological advances improve outcomes, reduce costs or both," Riley continues.
"Spring et al have contributed to the empirical evidence of the value of these technologies, but many more research contributions such as this are needed to establish that technologically delivered multiple risk factor interventions improve outcomes," Riley concludes.
(Arch Intern Med. 2012:172[10]:796-798. Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com.)
Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
###
To contact Bonnie Spring, Ph.D., call Marla Paul at 312-503-8928 or email marla-paul@northwestern.edu. To contact commentary author William T. Riley, Ph.D., call the NHLBI Office of Communications at 301-496-4236 or email nhlbinews@nhlbi.nih.gov.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Mobile technology, remote coaching, financial incentives may help improve diet, activity levelPublic release date: 28-May-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Marla Paul marla-paul@northwestern.edu 312-503-8928 JAMA and Archives Journals
CHICAGO The diet and activity levels of patients may be improved through use of mobile technology, remote coaching and financial incentives, according to a report of a randomized controlled trial published in the May 28 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication.
Not following a physician's lifestyle change advice is a major barrier to patients achieving effective preventive care. Many physicians are skeptical that patients will change their unhealthy behaviors, and physicians also report a lack of time and training to effectively counsel their patients, researchers write in the study background.
"This study's interventions leveraged handheld technology to create efficient interventions that make self-monitoring more convenient, extend decision support into life contexts where lifestyle choices are made, and convey time-stamped behavioral data to paraprofessionals who provide coaching remotely," the researchers note.
Bonnie Spring, Ph.D., of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, and colleagues randomly assigned 204 adult patients (48 men) with elevated intake of saturated fat and low intake of fruits and vegetables, and high sedentary leisure time and low physical activity into 1 of 4 treatments. The treatments were: increase fruit/vegetable intake and physical activity, decrease fat and sedentary leisure, decrease fat and increase physical activity, and increase fruit/vegetable intake and decrease sedentary leisure. Patients used personal digital assistant devices to record and self-regulate their behaviors.
During three weeks of treatment, patients uploaded their data daily and communicated as needed with their coaches by telephone or by email. The participants could earn $175 for meeting goals during the treatment phase. In addition, there was a 20-week follow-up during which patients could earn from $30 to $80 for continuing to record and transmit their data.
"The increase fruits/vegetables and decrease sedentary leisure treatment maximized healthy lifestyle change compared with the other interventions," the authors comment. They note that lifestyle gains diminished once treatment ended, as expected, but improvements persisted throughout the follow-up period.
From baseline to the end of treatment to the end of the follow-up, respectively, mean (average) servings per day of fruits/vegetables changed from 1.2 to 5.5 to 2.9, mean minutes per day of sedentary leisure from 219.2 to 89.3 to 125.7, and daily calories from saturated fat from 12 percent to 9.4 percent to 9.9 percent, according to the study results.
"This study demonstrates the feasibility of changing multiple unhealthy diet and activity behaviors simultaneously, efficiently and with minimal face-to-face contact by using mobile technology, remote coaching, and incentives," the authors comment.
(Arch Intern Med. 2012;172[10]:789-796. Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com.)
Editor's Note: The Make Better Choices trial was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
Invited Commentary: Using Technology for Interventions on Health Risk Factors
In an invited commentary, William T. Riley, Ph.D., of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md., writes: "Via technology, we will soon be able to deliver fully automated and configurable multiple risk factor interventions that monitor progress continuously and can be delivered throughout the day every day."
"It remains an empirical question, however, whether these technological advances improve outcomes, reduce costs or both," Riley continues.
"Spring et al have contributed to the empirical evidence of the value of these technologies, but many more research contributions such as this are needed to establish that technologically delivered multiple risk factor interventions improve outcomes," Riley concludes.
(Arch Intern Med. 2012:172[10]:796-798. Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com.)
Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
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To contact Bonnie Spring, Ph.D., call Marla Paul at 312-503-8928 or email marla-paul@northwestern.edu. To contact commentary author William T. Riley, Ph.D., call the NHLBI Office of Communications at 301-496-4236 or email nhlbinews@nhlbi.nih.gov.
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Un reporte surgido en la red menciona que Google podr?a entregar su muy rumorada tablet durante su conferencia Google I/O que ser? el 27 de Junio.? El reporte aparecido en el sitio TechnoBuffalo? mencionan que el informante fue una fuente confiable, que adem?s mencion? que a cada asistente al evento le dar?n una tablet.
Sobre el dispositivo se menciona que vendr? con un chip NVIDIA Tegra 3 y que el equipo ha sido desarrollado con Asus, sobre el sistema operativo no se preciso cual ser? aunque se presume que podr?a ser Android 5.0 Jelly Bean.
Desde hace ya un par de meses se han desatado una serie de rumores respecto a la entrega de esta tableta por parte de la Gran G, aunque se esperaba para el mes de mayo, ? se cambi? la fecha hasta que m?s rumores sugirieron que la? ver?amos? en el mes de junio.
V?a: CNET
Leer mas en Conecti.CA ..: Rumor: Google mostrar? su nueva tablet en el I/O
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Public release date: 31-May-2012
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