Thursday, November 08, 2007

" Nature Creates a River "

I saw thes on a site and wanted to publish them for yall to enjoy!






These are cool!!
















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Twin Musical Tesla Coils playing Music...

This is WAY COOL. Have yourself a listen!!!

Twin Solid State Musical Tesla coils playing Mario Bros theme song at the 2007 Lightning on the Lawn Teslathon sponsored by DC Cox (Resonance Research Corp) in Baraboo WI. The music that you hear is coming from the sparks that these two identical high power solid state Tesla coils are generating. There are no speakers involved. The Tesla coils stand 7 feet tall and are each capable of putting out over 12 foot of spark. They are spaced about 18 feet apart. The coils are controlled over a fiber optic link by a single laptop computer. Each coil is assigned to a midi channel which it responds to by playing notes that are programed into the computer software.


Mario Bros


Sugar Plum Fairy


Tetris Theme


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5 healthy habits that can be damaging

These are very interesting to me as i have always heard "Eat a good breakfast" and because i work night-shift, my mother always says "that i am not getting enough sleep" that i should sleep in during the weekend. Well, this article tells different about several of thses old standards.

Work, worrying and waah-ing babies may not be to blame…

You try and get eight hours sleep, eat breakfast and exercise regularly. So why are you so tired? New research has found that it’s not just crying babies or long work hours that rob us of energy - healthy habits can be just as damaging. You hear about the benefits of a new diet or exercise and can take it to extremes.

Here’s how to stay fit but have more bounce.

Catching up on ZZZs
When there’s nothing to drag you out of bed on the weekend, it’s tempting to keep snoozing - but this can leave you groggy. ‘Sleeping more over the weekend won’t make up for lost slumber during the week,’ says Kathleen McGrath, an insomniac expert.

‘It’ll just interfere with your pineal gland’s ability to produce the sleep hormone melatonin - which is why you’ll spend Sunday night counting sheep.’Fight the fatigue: Stick to eight hours shut eye, even on the weekend. Still tired? Have a30-minute nap in the afternoon. It’ll help you produce more melatonin for a better night’s rest.

Your morning shower
There’s nothing like a steaming shower to make you feel refreshed first thing. So why is it that somewhere between towelling off and getting dressed you’re ready to crawl back under the doona? ‘A hot shower raises your body’s temperature,’ explains Kathleen.
‘When it drops back to hormal, the brain produces melatonin and tells your body it’s time to sleep.’
Fight the fatigue: Work the effect a hot soak has on your body by having your scrub two hours before bedtime. That way, you’ll be out like a light as soon as your head hits the pillow. If you can’t live without your morning rinse, hit the cold tap in the shower for just a few seconds before you jump out as this kick-starts your nervous system and makes you feel full of zing.

A hearty breakfast
Breakfast really is the most important meal of the day. But if it’s too big, you may feel sapped of energy before lunchtime. A large meal loaded with sugar and refined carbs like white bread and sugary cereals drives blood sugar levels up but then you get an energy dip a few hours after eating.Fight the fatigue: The trick here is to go for more protein at breakfast. It stabilises your blood sugar, which determines how peckish and energetic you feel. Have a slice of wholegrain toast with eggs or peanut butter. The proteins will give you 75% more energy.

Being a diet saint
While munching all day is not a good idea, not eating anything between meals isn’t either. Go for more than four hours without food and your blood sugar may drop and you’ll feel zonked. This can leave you cranky, lazy in the afternoon and ravenous by the time you get home.Fight the fatigue. Eat five small meals to keep your energy levels on an even keel. Good choices include a handful of almonds or Ryvita with hummus.

Your gym membership
Exercising intensively daily can cause your body’s glutamine - the most abundant amino acid in out bodies - to crash, which can weaken your immune system. You’ll just feel wiped out.

Fight the fatigue: Listen to your body. If it says ‘ouch’, slow down. Have a few sessions doing something gentle, like swimming. This gives our muscles time to rest and recover from the physical strain you’ve put them through and keeps exercise fun.

I hope this helps

Live life to its fullest,
Rowell Bulan M.D.Your Guide To HomeHealth Care


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Changes to brain after cocaine abuse

I saw this article while i was reading on Reddit. I thought that i was very interesting as i have done posts on the 12-Steps and my Recovery. It is a very interesting article.

Researchers have uncovered a key genetic switch that chronic cocaine or stress influences to cause the brain to descend into a pathological state. In studies with mice they showed how chronic cocaine changes gene activity to enhance the addictive reward from the drug. And they showed similarly how chronic stress induces the same kinds of changes that hypersensitizes the brain, causing depression-like symptoms.

The researchers said their basic finding in the animals could lead to better treatments for addiction, depression and other psychiatric disorders.

Eric Nestler and colleagues published their findings in the November 8, 2007, issue of the journal Neuron, published by Cell Press.

In their experiments, the researchers explored how chronic cocaine or stress exerts “epigenetic” control of genes in the brain. Such control involves repressing or activating genes by altering the structure of the chromatin that enwraps genes. Specifically, the researchers explored whether chronic cocaine or stress affect an enzyme called histone deacetylase 5 (HDAC5). Normally, HDAC5 represses specific genes by removing molecules called acetyl groups from the histone proteins that make up the chromatin surrounding them. The researchers’ previous studies had shown that chronic cocaine administration in mice caused an increase in acetyl groups in a brain region called the nucleus accumbens (NAc), known to be involved in response to cocaine or stress.

The researchers’ studies showed that giving mice chronic cocaine led to a reduction in HDAC5, allowing some 172 genes to be activated. What’s more, they found that this loss of HDAC5 in the NAc made the mice more sensitive to the reward of chronic cocaine. They determined the animals’ reward-sensitivity to cocaine by measuring the mice’s preference for an area of a box that they were taught to associate with receiving cocaine.

The researchers also studied whether the animals’ adaptation to chronic stress involved HDAC5 levels. In these experiments, they exposed mice to aggressive mice and measured the resulting depressive behavior. The researchers found that such stress also reduced HDAC5 function, although through a different mechanism than for chronic cocaine.

“These data demonstrate a crucial role for HDAC5 in regulating behavioral adaptations to chronic stress as well as chronic cocaine and suggest that HDAC5 contributes to a molecular switch between acute stress responses and more long-lasting depression-like maladaptations,” wrote the researchers.

“The functions of HDAC5 described here provide new insight into the pathogenesis of drug addiction, depression, and other stress-related syndromes,” they wrote. “This fundamentally new insight into the molecular underpinnings of chronic maladaptation in brain could lead to the development of improved treatments for addiction, depression, and other chronic psychiatric disorders.”


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Wednesday, November 07, 2007

The Time Change...

This mess is kicking my ass!! BIGTIME!!  Working nights lie I do and then loosing an hour has been very bad on me this week. I have been so freaking tired after I get home from work that I have been sleeping till 5 or so in the evening and I have not made it to the gym at all this week.  I did however, ride nearly 25 miles this weekend, so I hope that makes up for slacking at the gym…

 

RMStringer

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

"Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced

equation inherent to the programming of the matrix.

You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which despite

my sincerest efforts I have been unable to eliminate

from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision.

While it remains a burden assiduously avoided, it is not

unexpected, and thus not beyond a measure of control.

Which has led you, inexorably, here." - The Architect, The Matrix Reloaded

 

Shouldn't Life Be Easier?

Well shouldn't it be easier? It is a constant balancing act. Money, Gas, Bills, Happiness, all a balancing act with a very delicate equilibrium. IF you spend too much on a weekend, you are short for the week and that sucks. Spend too much during g the week and the weekend is shot. Have a car break down and you are just screwed! Most Americans are just 2, count it TWO, paychecks from financial ruin. With 100+ channels of crap on the TV, no one can decide on what to watch. You could have 10 TVs sitting beside each other and there would still be an argument on what to watch on 1 of them! That is just life I guess.

I am Tired…

You know what I am tired of? I am tired of people living in the past. I had a friend that he and I went way back together, back to the 11th grade. We became friends and did lots of stuff together. He would come over to my house and we would go to the lake and hang out or go the clubs in Beaumont or Louisiana. We were big party people back then. I was in college and so was he. He graduated and I did not. He then went to UT Galveston to get his PHD. I played around for several years. I would go to Galveston and we would party together or go to concerts and stuff like that. He started to mature and I did not at that point. He would call me in the middle of the night to talk about some of his projects dealing with the splicing of genes.

Now, he ended up in Baltimore working for the government and I did the "American dream: Married, kid, house" He stayed single but dated around. We would chat and talk, visit when we could as he was busy and we were moving around the country like always. Then it started. We would trade music, programs like always, and then he would lash out at me to be a responsible adult like him. He said that he wanted what was best for me and to stop being lazy, that he was always trying to help me. He would send me "gifts" in the mail and then later ask me to pay for a bit of them.

I was and had done a lot of maturing by this time and gotten my life straightened out, no drinking or the such. We would get into a fight over him trying to push his "high" morals onto me and act like a father to me. We really butted heads and would not speak for a while. Then without warning, I would get an instant message and he would want to talk and be friends again. This was the pattern that we had for about a year more and then we got into a huge fight. He would act like he was better than me and was on top of the world, but remember, we both used to party very hard in the past. I guess that he forgot about that. He wanted me to come to visit for the weekend and I did not want to.

As our "friendship" progressed, he got stranger and stranger, almost jealous of me being married. The huge fight was between my wife and him. It was very nasty and that was over a year ago. We have not spoken since then and I guess that we never will. Our lives took different paths, both good in their own rights. Do I miss talking to him sometimes, yes, In the beginning we had lots in common, music, mutual friends, partying, but in the end, all we had was music. I have not been able to find someone to discuss in person music to that extent and perhaps I never will; time will tell about that.

Ambient Massive - There Is Grace In Their Feelings

. Instruments used were: Kurzweil 2000vx Microfreak' Maschine 2 Wavestate Deepmind 12 Virus Ti2 Monotron and various VSTi synths. Releas...