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by Michaelangelo

New drug restores lost synapses from Alzheimer’s Disease

June 19, 2013 in health, opinions, science

Science is making inroads into the biochemical mechanisms that lead to Alzheimer’s Disease. The consequence is a host of new drugs to deal with the damage done. An experimental drug, NitroMemantine, works to stop the cascade of damaging changes to the brain. Not a cure-all, and still in the research stage, NitroMemantine restores the synapses lost during the progression of the disease. Read “New Drug Reverses Loss of Brain Connections in Alzheimer’s” from Science Daily:

The first experimental drug to boost brain synapses lost in Alzheimer’s disease has been developed by researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute. The drug, called NitroMemantine, combines two FDA-approved medicines to stop the destructive cascade of changes in the brain that destroys the connections between neurons, leading to memory loss and cognitive decline.

The decade-long study, led by Stuart A. Lipton, M.D., Ph.D., professor and director of the Del E. Webb Center for Neuroscience, Aging, and Stem Cell Research, who is also a practicing clinical neurologist, shows that NitroMemantine can restore synapses, representing the connections between nerve cells (neurons) that have been lost during the progression of Alzheimer’s in the brain. The research findings are described in a paper published June 17 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The focus on a downstream target to treat Alzheimer’s, rather than on amyloid beta plaques and neurofibrillary tangles — approaches which have shown little success — “is very exciting because everyone is now looking for an earlier treatment of the disease,” Lipton said. “These findings actually mean that you might be able to intercede not only early but also a bit later.” And that means that an Alzheimer’s patient may be able to have synaptic connections restored even with plaques and tangles already in his or her brain.

Targeting lost synapses

In their study, conducted in animal models as well as brain cells derived from human stem cells, Lipton and his team mapped the pathway that leads to synaptic damage in Alzheimer’s. They found that amyloid beta peptides, which were once thought to injure synapses directly, actually induce the release of excessive amounts of the neurotransmitter glutamate from brain cells called astrocytes that are located adjacent to the nerve cells.

Normal levels of glutamate promote memory and learning, but excessive levels are harmful. In patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, excessive glutamate activates extrasynaptic receptors, designated eNMDA receptors (NMDA stands for N-methyl-D-aspartate), which get hyperactivated and in turn lead to synaptic loss.

How NitroMemantine works

Lipton’s lab had previously discovered how a drug called memantine can be targeted to eNMDA receptors to slow the hyperactivity seen in Alzheimer’s. This patented work contributed to the FDA approval of memantine in 2003 for the treatment of moderate to severe Alzheimer’s disease. However, memantine’s effectiveness has been limited. The reason, the researchers found, was that memantine — a positively charged molecule — is repelled by a similar charge inside diseased neurons; therefore, memantine gets repelled from its intended eNMDA receptor target on the neuronal surface.

In their study, the researchers found that a fragment of the molecule nitroglycerin — a second FDA-approved drug commonly used to treat episodes of chest pain or angina in people with coronary heart disease — could bind to another site that the Lipton group discovered on NMDA receptors. The new drug represents a novel synthesis connecting this fragment of nitroglycerin to memantine, thus representing two FDA-approved drugs connected together. Because memantine rather selectively binds to eNMDA receptors, it also functions to target nitroglycerin to the receptor. Therefore, by combining the two, Lipton’s lab created a new, dual-function drug. The researchers developed 37 derivatives of the combined drug before they found one that worked, Lipton said.

By shutting down hyperactive eNMDA receptors on diseased neurons, NitroMemantine restores synapses between those neurons. “We show in this paper that memantine’s ability to protect synapses is limited,” Lipton said, “but NitroMemantine brings the number of synapses all the way back to normal within a few months of treatment in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease. In fact, the new drug really starts to work within hours.”

To date, therapies that attack amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles have failed. “It’s quite disappointing because I see really sick patients with dementia. However, I’m now optimistic that NitroMemantine will be effective as we advance to human trials, bringing new hope to both early and later-stage Alzheimer’s patients,” Lipton said.
Citation: Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (2013, June 17). New drug reverses loss of brain connections in Alzheimer’s. ScienceDaily. Retrieved June 18, 2013.

This is a photomicrograph of nerve cell during an electrical recording (left), fluorescently labeled nerve cell (right). (Credit: Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute)

This is a photomicrograph of nerve cell during an electrical recording (left), fluorescently labeled nerve cell (right). (Credit: Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute)

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by Muse

From catwalk to red carpet

June 18, 2013 in opinions, style

French Vogue has captured the best looks of the season that have made their way from fashion showrooms and catwalks to the biggest events of the season. Stunning gowns from Chanel to Elie Saab. Shoes and accessories from Louboutin to Chopard. Notice colors and lines; these will filter down to department store racks next season. The fabrics are usually too dear to make the translation. For inspiration, or just for fun, watch the slideshow at “Le Festival de Cannes, du podium au tapis rouge” from French Vogue.

Photo credit: vogue.fr

Photo credit: vogue.fr

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Avatar of Suzzie

by Suzzie

A mathematician in his prime

June 17, 2013 in opinions, science

This is a moral tale about perseverance, wrapped in a number theory puzzle – the twin primes conjecture. Prime numbers have intrigued mathematicians for two millennia.  A prime number can only be evenly divided by itself and the number 1, numbers such as 2, 3 5, 7 and so forth. Twin primes are two consecutive primes that differ by a gap of 2, prime number pairs such as 5 and 7 or 11 and 13. And while boomer Zhang Yitang – born in China, educated in China and the United States and currently living in the United States – established the existence of a finite bound for prime gaps, resolving a weak form of the twin prime conjecture, his real accomplishment is his perseverance through epic financial and professional difficulties to solve the proof by night after night, day after day, year after year plugging away. Read “Unknown Mathematician Proves Elusive Property of Prime Numbers” by Erica Klarreich, Simons Science News:

On April 17, a paper arrived in the inbox of Annals of Mathematics, one of the discipline’s preeminent journals. Written by a mathematician virtually unknown to the experts in his field — a 50-something lecturer at the University of New Hampshire named Yitang Zhang — the paper claimed to have taken a huge step forward in understanding one of mathematics’ oldest problems, the twin primes conjecture.

Original story reprinted with permission from Simons Science News, an editorially independent division of SimonsFoundation.org whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.

Editors of prominent mathematics journals are used to fielding grandiose claims from obscure authors, but this paper was different. Written with crystalline clarity and a total command of the topic’s current state of the art, it was evidently a serious piece of work, and the Annals editors decided to put it on the fast track.

Just three weeks later — a blink of an eye compared to the usual pace of mathematics journals — Zhang received the referee report on his paper.

“The main results are of the first rank,” one of the referees wrote. The author had proved “a landmark theorem in the distribution of prime numbers.”

Rumors swept through the mathematics community that a great advance had been made by a researcher no one seemed to know — someone whose talents had been so overlooked after he earned his doctorate in 1991 that he had found it difficult to get an academic job, working for several years as an accountant and even in a Subway sandwich shop.

“Basically, no one knows him,” said Andrew Granville, a number theorist at the Université de Montréal. “Now, suddenly, he has proved one of the great results in the history of number theory.”

Mathematicians at Harvard University hastily arranged for Zhang to present his work to a packed audience there on May 13. As details of his work have emerged, it has become clear that Zhang achieved his result not via a radically new approach to the problem, but by applying existing methods with great perseverance.

“The big experts in the field had already tried to make this approach work,” Granville said. “He’s not a known expert, but he succeeded where all the experts had failed.”

The Problem of Pairs

Prime numbers — those that have no factors other than 1 and themselves — are the atoms of arithmetic and have fascinated mathematicians since the time of Euclid, who proved more than 2,000 years ago that there are infinitely many of them.

Because prime numbers are fundamentally connected with multiplication, understanding their additive properties can be tricky. Some of the oldest unsolved problems in mathematics concern basic questions about primes and addition, such as the twin primes conjecture, which proposes that there are infinitely many pairs of primes that differ by only 2, and the Goldbach conjecture, which proposes that every even number is the sum of two primes. (By an astonishing coincidence, a weaker version of this latter question was settled in a paper posted online by Harald Helfgott of École Normale Supérieure in Paris while Zhang was delivering his Harvard lecture.)

Prime numbers are abundant at the beginning of the number line, but they grow much sparser among large numbers. Of the first 10 numbers, for example, 40 percent are prime — 2, 3, 5 and 7 — but among 10-digit numbers, only about 4 percent are prime. For over a century, mathematicians have understood how the primes taper off on average: Among large numbers, the expected gap between prime numbers is approximately 2.3 times the number of digits; so, for example, among 100-digit numbers, the expected gap between primes is about 230.

But that’s just on average. Primes are often much closer together than the average predicts, or much further apart. In particular, “twin” primes often crop up — pairs such as 3 and 5, or 11 and 13, that differ by only 2. And while such pairs get rarer among larger numbers, twin primes never seem to disappear completely (the largest pair discovered so far is 3,756,801,695,685 x 2666,669 – 1 and 3,756,801,695,685 x 2666,669 + 1).

For hundreds of years, mathematicians have speculated that there are infinitely many twin prime pairs. In 1849, French mathematician Alphonse de Polignac extended this conjecture to the idea that there should be infinitely many prime pairs for any possible finite gap, not just 2.

Since that time, the intrinsic appeal of these conjectures has given them the status of a mathematical holy grail, even though they have no known applications. But despite many efforts at proving them, mathematicians weren’t able to rule out the possibility that the gaps between primes grow and grow, eventually exceeding any particular bound.

Now Zhang has broken through this barrier. His paper shows that there is some number N smaller than 70 million such that there are infinitely many pairs of primes that differ by N. No matter how far you go into the deserts of the truly gargantuan prime numbers — no matter how sparse the primes become — you will keep finding prime pairs that differ by less than 70 million.

The result is “astounding,” said Daniel Goldston, a number theorist at San Jose State University. “It’s one of those problems you weren’t sure people would ever be able to solve.”

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Photo credit: Wikipedia

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by The Boss

Smart . . . lock

June 16, 2013 in business, opinions, technology

Locks may not be as sexy as a Porsche, but they are mechanical and in need of an update. There have been several notable additions in the marketplace over the past decade, including a couple of iPhone controlled models, but there is a new bad boy on the block that is sure to please. Read “Your Phone Is the Key to the New August Smart Lock” by Alexandra Chang for Wired Magazine:

Of all the mechanical gadgets in our homes that could be improved by adding an electronic component, the lowly door lock seems the most ripe for picking.

Evidence: the many companies that have developed “smart” locks, including the iPhone-controlled Kevo and Lockitron. And now, designer Yves Behar and serial entrepreneur Jason Johnson are the latest to join the lock business with the launch of their company, August, and its debut product, the August Smart Lock.

Much like the Kevo door lock or Lockitron, the August Smart Lock can be controlled using a smartphone. It pairs with your phone — and potentially other devices — over a Bluetooth low energy (BLE) connection to communicate with the lock and grant you keyless access. It’s as simple as walking up to a door and giving the lock a moment to recognize you. It then unlocks and lets you pass through the door, which auto-locks behind you.

Behar and Johnson spent the last year working on August, which will go on sale later this year for around $200. Their aim was to create a lock that is as simple and safe as possible — and naturally, given Behar’s pedigree, one that doesn’t sacrifice design.

You can grant keyless access to friends, family and visitors by inviting them through the accompanying app. You can also customize which days a person has access to your home, even during which hours, and revoke access whenever needed.

“Safer, simpler and more social are the areas we’ve focused on,” Behar says. “Just as we’re doing for fitness tracking, really changing access and managing guest entries into our home is the next stage.”

The result is a very pretty, circular, all-aluminum locking device that you put in place of the existing deadbolt on the inside of your door. A circular dot pattern of lights glows green when the lock is unlocked and red when it’s locked. Unlike the Kevo lock, you don’t have to replace the door’s entire locking system. The installation should take no longer than 10 minutes, according to Behar and Johnson, and you can still use a regular key on the August lock.

The lock comes with both a mobile app and a web app, so it can be used with all Bluetooth-LE-enabled smartphones. August will initially launch with iOS and Android apps. You can grant keyless access to friends, family and visitors by inviting them through the app. Then you can customize what days a person has access to your home, even during what hours, and revoke access whenever needed. The app also logs the time and date each user enters and exits through the door. This level of detail is handy especially when it comes to managing hired workers like dog-walkers, maids or contractors. You’re able to see whether they showed up on time, and how long they actually stayed in your house. Behar and Johnson are also already in talks with services like grocery delivery companies to implement August locks and apps.

As for the social aspect, the August app also includes a Guestbook function, which lets people leave comments and photos for their guests or hosts. This could be especially useful if you’ve listed a room or apartment on Airbnb. As soon as somebody enters your home, the app can send them a welcome greeting with some tips on the house. Guests can also leave their “Thank You” notes through the app.

Photo credit: August Smart Lock

Photo credit: August Smart Lock

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by Molly

Vrooooom!

June 12, 2013 in business, opinions, technology

When did a Volkswagen get so sexy? Sleek, ground-hugging and capable of getting up to 261 mpg, the Volkswagen XL1 diesel-electric hybrid looks and acts like a twenty-first century Porsche. Read “Driving Volkswagen’s 261-MPG Diesel-Electric Supercar Spacepod” by Damon Lavrinc for Wired Magazine:

At first glance, the Volkswagen XL1 is like any other supercar. It’s long and low — lower, even, than a Lamborghini Aventador — with the same alluring blend of science and art and physics. Getting in requires opening gullwing doors and oh-so-carefully climbing over a wide carbon fiber sill before sliding into a carbon fiber seat with just enough upholstery to approximate comfort.

The interior is more of the same supercar aesthetic. There’s a small, race car-inspired steering wheel (yes, also carbon fiber) framing the usual gauges. The cabin is minimalist and confined, but strangely comforting. It isn’t until you start the car that you sense it’s not what you think. Press the “Engine Start” button and… nothing. There is no engine noise. No chimes or beeps or bongs. The only indication that it’s running is a brief flash of lights on the gauges, the sat-nav blinking on, and the climate fans starting to whir. That’s it.

It’s time to redefine “supercar.”

I shift into drive, hang a right out of the parking lot and get on the gas. The speedometer needle crawls past 20, then 30, then 40 mph. It takes an almost agonizing amount of time to reach these speeds. In less than a minute, as I tool along at a leisurely 60 mph, it becomes obvious that the XL1, despite its sleek, futuristic appearance, has all the sporting pretenses of an asthmatic race horse sucking air through a coffee stirrer.

How could such a vehicle possibly be considered a supercar when it takes more than 12 seconds to reach 60 mph? Because once you’re there, it takes a scant 8.3 horsepower to maintain that speed — one-third that of a Jetta — and you can cruise along there all day while getting the equivalent of 261 mpg. That’s enough to go from San Francisco to Los Angeles and back on less than three gallons of fuel.

It’s time to redefine “supercar,” a term that now includes VW’s super-efficient diesel-electric hybrid, which goes on sale in Germany and Austria later this year.

VW’s “one liter” car — a vehicle capable of traveling 100 km on one liter of fuel — has been around since 2002. It started as an engineering exercise, a way for the wonks at VW to show off their hyper-efficiency chops. A draft concept debuted, with in-line seating for two — fighter jet-style — and a body that looked like metallic cigar sleeve with windows and wheels. VW followed up a few years later with another concept that was slightly more refined but still completely unfeasible.

Then Volkswagen got serious.

Volkswagen Group chairman and former Porsche engineer Ferdinand Piech decided the time was right to bring the car to market. It represents the culmination of his relentless campaign to build the most efficient automobile in the world, utilizing the latest and greatest technology the VW Group’s legions of engineers and designers could muster. If the Bugatti Veyron is a monument to Piech’s dedication to unfettered speed and unrivaled hedonism, the XL1 is its fuel-sipping anti-hero and proof that supercar engineering can maximize efficiency as easily as velocity. Piech is 75 and the XL1 is almost certainly his swan song, and the amount of money the VW Group has sunk into the technology underpinning this car approaches 10 figures.

The car, redesigned and repackaged around the latest diesel and hybrid technology, was christened the XL1 and made its debut two years ago at the Geneva Motor Show. In reworking the car, VW actually exceeded its goals by making what is actually a 0.9-liter car. But that doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

With the car set for production in very limited numbers, I got a chance to drive it in Germany. The engine wedged behind me is, essentially, half of the 1.6-liter turbodiesel you’d find under the hood of the Euro-only Golf hatchback. At a mere 800 cc, this two-cylinder engine is good for just 47 horsepower. The minuscule powerplant is mated to a 27 hp electric motor, which is in turn bolted to a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox similar to what you’ll find in a Porsche Carrera. This makes the XL1 the first mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive diesel-electric supercar.

Yes, it puts down just 68 hp and 103 pound-feet of torque, which is less than most motorcycles. But that’s where all the supercar-derived technologies come into play.

This makes the XL1 the first mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive diesel-electric supercar.

The body, chassis, and tub that makes up the passenger compartment are carbon fiber. So are the suspension sway bars. The magnesium wheels are wrapped in specially made tires by Michelin — which also makes the Veyron’s rubber — and they’re narrower than your palm. Even the dash is trick stuff: molded wood fiber (think balsa, but stronger) coated in a carbon-look applique.

All of this is meant to keep weight to an absolutely minimum. VW was so obsessed with keeping the tonnage in check that there’s no way to plug in an iPod. “That would add weight,” my engineer chaperone explained. “So… Bluetooth.”

Anywhere VW could shave an ounce, it shaved two. The result is a car that weighs just over 1,900 pounds, or about one-third less than the new 911. Yes, it’s safe. VW has crashed it, repeatedly, and the car passed Euro crash standards. Aluminum pillars reinforce the gullwing doors, the side windows are plexiglass and give on impact, and all that carbon fiber ensconcing the driver and passenger mean it would take a colossal high-speed crash to risk their life and limb. Not that such a scenario poses much threat, given that the car is governed to a top speed just shy of 100 mph.

Photo credit: Wired Magazine

Photo credit: Wired Magazine

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by Durante degli Alighieri

Grow your own website

June 12, 2013 in business, opinions, technology

Do you want your own website? Having a personal website is somewhat of a badge of honor for boomers. This is a generation openly mocked for its backward technology, so a personal or professional website goes a long way toward offsetting any prejudice, and having your own URL for Facebook or other social networks is a great way to further engage your friends, family and colleagues. There have long been ways to set up your own site, but now there are  better ways – free and with more features – to get started. Read “Building Your Own Web Site, Free” by Azadeh Ensha for The New York Times:

Personal Web sites have been around a long time. Just ask anyone with an old Angelfire or GeoCities page. But now, Internet users have a dizzying array of free, feature-rich services to choose from — no coding skills required.

“These days, personal site builders have a lot more functions, and they’re a lot better because of it,” said Brian Blau, a research director at Gartner, the technology research firm. Still, Mr. Blau noted, the free model has drawbacks. “It has little to do with helping people. It has to do with making money. The free is always the hook. What they’ll sell later is shopping carts and all these other add-on services, because once you’re hooked in, you’re not as motivated to change.”

The market is teeming with businesses based on the free model, which helps companies increase their users and in turn helps them secure financing and advertisers.

Still, for Web users seeking to promote their work or business on a small budget, these ready-made sites are useful. Below is a roundup featuring some free platforms, broken down by category.

QUESTIONS WORTH ASKING Having a wealth of services to choose from is both good and bad. Simply because a company offers 300 fonts doesn’t mean you need anywhere near that. So before you get started, ask yourself three questions: What am I looking to get out of the site? What features must I have? And which ones can I live without? Figuring out these answers before settling on a service can help you avoid potential pitfalls down the line, like dealing with outdated plug-ins and overly sophisticated tools.

GENERAL-PURPOSE WEB SITES When it comes to creating personal sites, the former AOL-owned About.me is a great first option. Like most others, About.me offers social media buttons, a mobile application and a simple sign-up. The free version of the site is also ad-free, with the exception of a company promotion positioned on your home page.

But if one of your must-haves is themes, look elsewhere. About.me doesn’t have them, relying instead on existing About sites (showcased under directories) to help inspire other users. “A lot of parallel products were focused on themes and rigid formats, and we’re more focused on user control,” said Ryan Freitas, the site’s co-founder. “Users don’t need as much hand-holding when they’re given examples.”

Weebly is a better alternative if you want themes. The company offers over 100 of them, from corporate to entertainment. More important, Weebly continuously adds themes and removes old and outdated ones. With Weebly, too, a large majority of its services, including domain name transfers, are free.

“All of our growth has been through word of mouth,” David Rusenko, Weebly’s co-founder, said, noting that the site had an 80 percent Net Promoter Score, which measures how willing users are to recommend the service to others. “We spend an inordinate amount of time on the product, and, at the end of the day, this metric shows how users feel about it.”

If your top priority is social networking, consider Flavors.me. The site aggregates and posts photographs, blog posts, status and other updates from more than 30 services, including SoundCloud, Instagram and Tumblr. Like Flavors, DooID is big on social network integration. The site places your profiles on a single landing page, along with a vCard button on the Web version, so others can download and import your contact data.

If customer service support is high on your list, Wix is a great option. The company’s contact form offers support in nine languages. Additionally, Wix has a call center in San Francisco with over 70 agents to field questions from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern time. On the user end, Wix has an HTML 5 drag-and-drop editing tool, integration with the image editor Aviary and hundreds of fully malleable templates. “We give you templates, but they’re a jumping-off point. You place what you want, where you want,” said Eric Mason, the spokesman for Wix. On the downside, such malleability often comes with more upkeep.

Breezi is less laid back than Wix, which means that you can’t, say, drop an image anywhere you like. But this more restrictive model also makes it less likely that you’ll run into broken links and screen resolution issues. Most impressive is the company’s relatively new design engine, which generates designs on the fly.

“The real problem is that a lot of these sites can’t help a user design. That’s why you have the designer act as the middleman, because the real issue is the know-how,” said Navid Safabakhsh, a founder of Breezi. “You can waste a lot of time using the wrong tools.”

Breezi lets you select your category from among hotel/spa, pet services, consulting and other options. Then you can choose and lock in colors, fonts and other features until you’re happy with what you see.

SHOPPING AND SMALL BUSINESS For business or brand promotion, Facebook Pages is a popular option, mainly because of the social network’s built-in billion-plus users that page owners can turn into “likes” and dollars. Users can also create promotional discounts for their customers.

If you’re in the market for a fleshed-out online store to sell big-ticket items, but don’t want to pay for an e-commerce solution like Shopify, try Etsy. The site lets users create a store to sell handmade goods and vintage items, like furniture and greeting cards. Store owners pay 20 cents per listing, and Etsy takes a 3.5 percent cut of the item’s selling price. For smaller shops, Big Cartel also provides a similar service, with a clean, customizable interface, a one-time monthly fee instead of individual transaction charges and the ability to sell a wider range of goods. But its free version lets you post only five products, and you won’t get the built-in traffic base that comes with a community marketplace like Etsy.

If you want to create a site for a single item, there’s Gumroad. The site is especially good for independent artists seeking to sell their documentary films, songs and books. Like Etsy, Gumroad takes a cut of your proceeds, though it also accommodates deposits in over 190 countries and has a simple checkout process that makes buying easy.

To advertise a bake sale or create a lost dog flier, try Smore. The service is an easy way to create and publish posters online, with the ability to embed videos and Twitter posts.

PORTFOLIO SITES For professional or résumé sites, look into Zerply. Like LinkedIn, your Zerply page can highlight your education, experience and biography, and users can endorse others. For professional writers, two good sites are Muck Rack and Contently. Both sites allow journalists to showcase their work, including published articles. User profiles also display how many times a highlighted article has been shared on social sites like Twitter.

For graphic design and art portfolios, Carbonmade is a good way to show off your illustration skills, though its free version allows a maximum of only five projects and 35 images.

And that’s a small reminder that, ultimately, there’s no such thing as a full free lunch.

Photo credit: James Best Jr./The New York Times

Photo credit: James Best Jr./The New York Times

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Avatar of John Smythe

by John Smythe

On a need-to-know basis

June 12, 2013 in business, opinions, technology

Might I say . . . wow! Mashable never disappoints. All on one page – twenty-five great ways to up your web game. Even if you think you are up-to-date on everything web-technical, you can always learn a new thing or two. For the full list, read “25 Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed” by Taylor Casti for Mashable.com:

We understand; it’s been a busy week. Summer Fridays are starting, you had to put your AC unit back in the window, and you’re ready to catch some rays. So for those of you who just had to call your therapist for an emergency session after a certain Red Wedding last weekend, don’t worry. We’ve got you covered.

We at Mashable have rounded up the most important news of the week to keep you informed. Read below for 25 digital media resources, including a list of apps to help you renovate your freshly spring-cleaned apartment and a trick to up your LinkedIn networking game.

Editor’s Picks

Tech

Business

Social?

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

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Avatar of Suzzie

by Suzzie

Yippee . . . Yipit!

June 12, 2013 in business, opinions

You like sales, don’t you? Of course you do. But it is a pain in the neck to keep track of all those sites – Groupon and Living Social for example – and they will drop you if you do not convert an email to a sale. Enter Yipit! Yipit is an affiliate marketing program – a third party website that is paid for referring visitors. You sign up using your email address. Then you are asked to choose your location and deal categories (food, clothing. etc.). Et voila! You will start to receive emails with aggregated deals every day, sometimes twice a day. Great restaurants, travel deals, major retailer sales. Heaven :-)

yipit

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Avatar of Big Bug

by Big Bug

Password? What password?

June 11, 2013 in business, opinions, technology

Since the onset of the internet age, passwords have been the bane of our existence. We forget them. We are required to update them because they are not sufficiently complex, compounding the issue of forgetting them. Bad guys steal them. Well it was technology that brought this upon us, and now, it appears, it is technology that may be the solution. Read about Dashlane, the dedicated password memorization program, in “Remember All Those Passwords? No Need” by tech guru David Pogue for The New York Times:

“If you want to avoid having your identity stolen, use long passwords that contain digits, punctuation and no recognizable words. Make up a different password for every Web site. And change all of your passwords every 30 days.”

Have these security pundits ever listened to themselves?

That advice is clearly unfollowable. I currently have account names and passwords for 87 Web sites (banks, airlines, blogs, shopping, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter). How is anyone — even a security professional — supposed to memorize 87 long, complex password strings, let alone remember which goes with which Web site?

So most people use the same password over and over again, and live with the guilt.

There are solutions. Most Mac and Windows Web browsers now offer to memorize passwords for you. But that feature doesn’t work on all Web sites, and is generally of little help when you pick up your phone or tablet. At that point, the only person you’ve locked out of all your online accounts is you.

The only decent solution is to install a dedicated password memorization program (like Roboform, KeePass, LastPass, 1Password, and so on). Last week, one of the best was just improved: Dashlane, now at 2.0. It’s attractive, effective, loaded with timesaving features and available for Mac, Windows, iPhone and Android — and it’s free.

Installation is quick. Dashlane works in Safari, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Firefox. It can import existing password “vaults” from rival programs.

Dashlane has two primary features. First, yes, it’s a password memorizer. Every time you type your account name and password into a Web page and press enter, Dashlane pops up, offering to memorize that information and fill it in the next time.

In fact, it also offers to log you in — not just to enter your password, but also to click “log in” for you. In effect, Dashlane has just removed the login blockade entirely. When you go to Facebook, Twitter or Gmail, you just click your bookmark, smile at the briefest flash of the login screen and arrive at the site.

Since Dashlane is now storing and auto-entering your passwords, you’re now free to follow the security experts’ advice. You can make up long, unguessable passwords — a different one for every Web site, since you don’t have to remember any of them. In fact, each time you sign up for a new account, Dashlane offers to make up such a password for you, and then, of course, to memorize it.

Dashlane’s second huge feature is even more amazing. It can also fill in other kinds of Web site forms: your name/address/phone number, and even your credit card information.

When you’re buying something online, and you click into the credit card number box, Dashlane displays pictures of your credit cards: Visa, MasterCard, American Express or whatever — even PayPal.

When you click the one you want to use, Dashlane instantly fills in the long card number, your name, the expiration date, even that accursed security code, in the right boxes. Every time you order something online, you save between 30 seconds and five minutes, depending on whether you have your card information memorized or have to go burrow through your wallet.

When you make a purchase, Dashlane even offers to store all the details in a digital receipt that you can call up later, along with a screenshot of the Web site where you shopped. This feature makes online shopping so frictionless, every dot-com retailer on earth ought to be promoting Dashlane as if its profits depended on it.

In fact, Dashlane can fill in all kinds of forms automatically: phone numbers, job titles, tax numbers and so on. If you’ve ever recorded multiple answers — you have two different Twitter accounts, say — two tidy buttons appear beneath the name box, bearing the account names. Click the one you want.

Unlike some rival programs, Dashlane doesn’t require you to associate one set of personal information to each “profile.” If you have three addresses, for example, you’re always offered those three when filling in a form. You don’t have to create three personalities’ worth of personal information.

So far, Dashlane probably seems designed for convenience, and that’s true. Behind the scenes, of course, its ultimate goal is security.

Image credit: The New York Times

Image credit: The New York Times

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by Muse

Woot! Interactive website for all ages

June 10, 2013 in opinions, style, technology

If there is a budding Picasso inside of you, bursting to self-express, wait no longer. One of the coolest interactive artist-in-waiting sites is at your service. “You Made That | An abstract-expressionist tool to create and share your own artwork” by Christoph Niemann and Jon Huang for The New York Times is the perfect medium to let your inner Picasso out. And then you can share it on Facebook and Twitter, to the delight of friends and family. Think of it as your one-man or one-woman show.

YouMadeThat

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Avatar of The Boss

by The Boss

Wry street photos . . . shopped

June 9, 2013 in opinions, technology

Put a smile on your face. Watch the video below from “Unsuspecting People Get a Live Photoshopped Surprise” by Charlie White for Mashable. Then pass it along. Too good not to :-)

Take a look at the priceless reactions of these people who are secretly photographed while waiting for a bus, and then Photoshopped into amusing positions and implied relationships. It’s part of a “street retouch” stunt by Adobe, featuring quick-draw Photoshop master Erik Johansson.

We especially liked the way people’s “street faces” turned to soft smiles and delight as soon as they realized what was going on.

This Photoshop trick, reminding us of both Candid Camera and Mission: Impossible, took place in Finland as part of a promotion for Adobe Creative Days, taking place live online beginning June 11.

Once you learn the basics of Photoshop, you can put together convincing composites rather quickly. This is a great demo of that, albeit done by an accomplished Photoshop magician.

Adobe’s goal here was obviously to highlight Photoshop’s magic, but if its stellar PR people are trying to convince me of the tremendous power of Photoshop — which I think is the best piece of software ever written — they’re preaching to the choir.

Which one of these Photoshop-enhanced scenarios was your favorite?

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by Michaelangelo

Medical device breakthrough . . . trekkie style

June 8, 2013 in business, health, opinions, science, technology, television

Perhaps you are not a trekkie. In the spirit of full disclosure, I am. And one of the most interesting Star Trek gadgets has at last come to the marketplace: the Tricorder. It is handheld device for taking vital signs, like the big monitors in hospital patient rooms, except you hold the Tricorder up to your temple, and almost magically, your vital signs appear. Read “Scanadu Builds a $149 Personal Tricorder for Non-Trekkies” by Nathan Hurst for Wired Magazine below, or watch the video. Scotty would be proud.

Scanadu is making fast progress in building one of the most mythical pieces of tech known to geekery. As an entrant in the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE, the health-tracking device is designed to read your temperature, blood pressure, respiration, and other vital signs, just by holding it to your temple. Last week, the Scanadu Scout finally launched on Indiegogo, and already has raised nearly $700,000–seven times its stated goal, with two weeks left to go.

The XPRIZE originally used the omni-informative tool as inspiration for a $10 million prize founded to make health analysis available to consumers at home. “Somebody will have to build the Tricorder one day,” says Walter De Brouwer, Scanadu’s co-founder.

His team originally bought a bunch of old Star Trek props for study, when they embarked on the project. But the Scout is notably updated from the Tricorder, too. The size, for example, is more appropriate to hold in a single hand — though still big enough that a child can’t swallow it. “It didn’t need to be so big. Some of the functions were already taken over by one chip,” says De Brouwer. “Some of the color schemes were also a bit what you would expect, in the 60s and the 70s, to be the future. Well now we are living in that future, our color schemes are of course different.”

And one more big difference is, while the Tricorder was used by doctors and other professionals (Beverly Crusher, Spock), you can get this one and see the data for yourself, on your smartphone. And on your smartphone, you can analyze your data over time.
It’s part of a rapidly growing cohort of devices that track personal information and make it actionable. From the simplest pedometers to FDA-approved medical devices, designers are building tools meant to be kept on or around the body. (Yves Behar, who designed the Jawbone UP, was also behind Scanadu.) But those trackers, worn on the body, don’t offer the opportunity to help other people, one of the Scout’s primary functions. “They do not bring out the empathy in us to help others,” says De Brouwer.

“I was more and more under the impression that, when you end up in an ICU, you become a sort of river of data,” says De Brouwer. “You are the sum of your data.” But, he adds, you need a tool to help you understand that data. And the era of the smartphone brought with it new opportunities to build those tools.

Another one of those tools is ScanaFlo, an at-home urine-testing device Scanadu will be releasing after the Scout. ScanaFlo can offer still more physiological information, from glucose and protein levels to pregnancy, but brings with it some unique design challenges — and opportunities — thanks to the intimate way users have to interact with it. “Basically, these things are hard to make glamorous,” says De Brouwer. “These are bodily fluids we are not, you know, very proud of.” But the device also offers an opportunity for privacy, allowing users to take metrics at home.

“You become like this big sheet of numbers,” says De Brouwer. “And once you understand these numbers, I think it has something hopeful, because if you know that you are data and you know what this data is, if you understand that you can change your future.”

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Avatar of Big Bug

by Big Bug

FreedomPop: Basic service pop!

June 7, 2013 in business, economy, opinions, technology

First adopters take notice! FreedomPop is new and untried, and there are no guarantees. Nevertheless, FreedomPop is launching a new mobile service that threatens – nay, promises – to upturn the giant telecom companies’ pricing, and you need to be aware.  Read an excerpt from “FreedomPop Announces Free Mobile Service” by Adam Popescu for Mashable.com:

If today’s move to offer free mobile service by an upstart mobile company gets the heavy adoption its creators expect, it may shake up the mobile ecosystem and force the big telecom companies to lower their rates and offer better deals to customers. It’s a big if, but that’s what seven-month-old FreedomPop is hoping for today as they launch a free package of user services that includes 500 MBs of 4G data, unlimited texting, and 200 monthly voice minutes.

FreedomPop, which offers cheap wireless broadband connections and for $99 turns your old iPod Touch into a virtual VoIP iPhone with its built-in 4G LTE hotspot case, is making a big play to increase their market share. The company is touting today’s release as a 100% free mobile service, and while that’s almost true, if enough people use the service, the Los Angeles based company may just make the dent in the industry it’s hoping for.

“It’s not a gimmick , it’s a new business model,” explains Stephen Stokols, FreedomPop’s chief executive and co-founder.

Stokols, who previously served as a high ranking executive for the British telecom company BT Group, and at Qwest Communications, thinks the push will skyrocket his burgeoning company and pressure other carriers to reduce prices. With its freemium model and pay as you go system, Stokols compares FreedomPop to Skype.

“You can’t afford to see Verizon or AT&T do this,” he says.

That’s in part because Stokols claims his company isn’t spending any money on marketing or customer acquisition, eliminating a huge swath of what comprises rival telecoms’ budgets and causing them to charge so much for service and devices. Plus he says FreedomPop doesn’t have to deal with any voice network providers.

Stokol calls his company a ‘webgo’ company as opposed to a traditional telecom company, because it’s all web based. FreedomPop uses free broadband service from Clearwire’s 4G network, and went live with Sprint in April. The company is backed by almost $9 million in investments from Mangrove Capital, DCM and Skype founder Niklas Zennstom.

He won’t divulge specifics of how many people are on his service, but Stokol says total users are in the six figures and should break one million later this year. The company is not yet profitable, he says, but it is growing, selling $1 million worth of devices in April. He predicts those numbers will go up this summer as FreedomPop will offer a trio of popular 4G phones at affordable prices, including the HTC Evo and the Samsung Galaxy 2, starting at $99 and capping at $199. And if they don’t want these, users can opt to bring any phone they want to the service. Stokol thinks this mix will attract users and force market prices for phones and plans to go down.

“It’s inevitable,” he says, comparing his company’s play to the industry shift about a dozen years ago wherein telecoms ditched copper wires for VoIP, and then the rise of Skype which essentially destroyed the landline market.

“Leveling the competition is good for everyone”, he says. And leveling that divide includes a partnership with the FCC to help government funded programs, and provide phones to low-income residents of the city of Chicago.

“The internet is a right, not a privilege,” he explains, calling his service the public solution barring the poor from online access, and saving them a lot of money on their monthly bills.. “Part of what we’re doing is providing enough requisite level of internet for free, truly for free, enough to get by…Dropping a bill 80% is a pretty big issue beyond the digital divide.”

Still, questions remain, as do complaints from users, issues Stokols admits.

“There’s some validity to it,” he says. “Our customer service operation has been treading water so to speak.” He rationalizes, saying this is the price for getting so much for so little. “Fifty-five percent of our users don’t pay us a penny.”

Users pay about $10 on an average bill, Stokol says, most opting for free service and about 30% of total customers forking over dollars for paid plans. Stokol says complaints are only from a minority of vocal users, and the company is actively hiring to fix this problem.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Photo credit: Wikipedia

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Avatar of Durante degli Alighieri

by Durante degli Alighieri

Graphene: Super-material

June 6, 2013 in opinions, science, technology

Why on earth should you be interested in the strongest material on earth? Because it is the material of the future. It is only one atom thick and, hence, capable of being used in situations where extreme thinness is desired; technology, science and medicine will be using it in critical areas. Read Even with defects, graphene is strongest material in the world from Science Daily:

In a new study, published inScience, Columbia Engineering researchers demonstrate that graphene, even if stitched together from many small crystalline grains, is almost as strong as graphene in its perfect crystalline form. This work resolves a contradiction between theoretical simulations, which predicted that grain boundaries can be strong, and earlier experiments, which indicated that they were much weaker than the perfect lattice.

Graphene consists of a single atomic layer of carbon, arranged in a honeycomb lattice. “Our first Science paper, in 2008, studied the strength graphene can achieve if it has no defects — its intrinsic strength,” says James Hone, professor of mechanical engineering, who led the study with Jeffrey Kysar, professor of mechanical engineering. “But defect-free, pristine graphene exists only in very small areas. Large-area sheets required for applications must contain many small grains connected at grain boundaries, and it was unclear how strong those grain boundaries were. This, our second Science paper, reports on the strength of large-area graphene films grown using chemical vapor deposition (CVD), and we’re excited to say that graphene is back and stronger than ever.”

The study verifies that commonly used methods for post-processing CVD-grown graphene weaken grain boundaries, resulting in the extremely low strength seen in previous studies. The Columbia Engineering team developed a new process that prevents any damage of graphene during transfer. “We substituted a different etchant and were able to create test samples without harming the graphene,” notes the paper’s lead author, Gwan-Hyoung Lee, a postdoctoral fellow in the Hone lab. “Our findings clearly correct the mistaken consensus that grain boundaries of graphene are weak. This is great news because graphene offers such a plethora of opportunities both for fundamental scientific research and industrial applications.”

In its perfect crystalline form, graphene (a one-atom-thick carbon layer) is the strongest material ever measured, as the Columbia Engineering team reported in Science in 2008 — so strong that, as Hone observed, “it would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of Saran Wrap.” For the first study, the team obtained small, structurally perfect flakes of graphene by mechanical exfoliation, or mechanical peeling, from a crystal of graphite. But exfoliation is a time-consuming process that will never be practical for any of the many potential applications of graphene that require industrial mass production.

Currently, scientists can grow sheets of graphene as large as a television screen by using chemical vapor deposition (CVD), in which single layers of graphene are grown on copper substrates in a high-temperature furnace. One of the first applications of graphene may be as a conducting layer in flexible displays.

“But CVD graphene is ‘stitched’ together from many small crystalline grains — like a quilt — at grain boundaries that contain defects in the atomic structure,” Kysar explains. “These grain boundaries can severely limit the strength of large-area graphene if they break much more easily than the perfect crystal lattice, and so there has been intense interest in understanding how strong they can be.”

The Columbia Engineering team wanted to discover what was making CVD graphene so weak. In studying the processing techniques used to create their samples for testing, they found that the chemical most commonly used to remove the copper substrate also causes damage to the graphene, severely degrading its strength.

Their experiments demonstrated that CVD graphene with large grains is exactly as strong as exfoliated graphene, showing that its crystal lattice is just as perfect. And, more surprisingly, their experiments also showed that CVD graphene with small grains, even when tested right at a grain boundary, is about 90% as strong as the ideal crystal.

“This is an exciting result for the future of graphene, because it provides experimental evidence that the exceptional strength it possesses at the atomic scale can persist all the way up to samples inches or more in size,” says Hone. “This strength will be invaluable as scientists continue to develop new flexible electronics and ultrastrong composite materials.”

Strong, large-area graphene can be used for a wide variety of applications such as flexible electronics and strengthening components — potentially, a television screen that rolls up like a poster or ultrastrong composites that could replace carbon fiber. Or, the researchers speculate, a science fiction idea of a space elevator that could connect an orbiting satellite to Earth by a long cord that might consist of sheets of CVD graphene, since graphene (and its cousin material, carbon nanotubes) is the only material with the high strength-to-weight ratio required for this kind of hypothetical application.

The team is also excited about studying 2D materials like graphene. “Very little is known about the effects of grain boundaries in 2D materials,” Kysar adds. “Our work shows that grain boundaries in 2D materials can be much more sensitive to processing than in 3D materials. This is due to all the atoms in graphene being surface atoms, so surface damage that would normally not degrade the strength of 3D materials can completely destroy the strength of 2D materials. However with appropriate processing that avoids surface damage, grain boundaries in 2D materials, especially graphene, can be nearly as strong as the perfect, defect-free structure.”

The study was supported by grants from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation.

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Avatar of Molly

by Molly

More Street Fashion: PFW

June 5, 2013 in opinions, style, world

The boyfriend look is trending. Tailoring, button-downs, cuffed pants – all within a stone’s throw in your husband’s or boyfriend’s closet – set the tone. Be sure to add a quirky touch of your own style. Sexy, even. Phil Oh’s wonderful slide show in Vogue tells it all in “Paris Fashion Week Spring 2013 Street Style“:

Et, c’est la fin. If there’s one thing we can always count on in Paris, it’s the chic garçonnes who nail the boy-girl thing. And in the closing days of fashion week, women outside the shows did not disappoint. They seemed to take a cue from the immaculately tailored army at Saint Laurent, sporting menswear-inspired staples like blazers, button-downs, bouclé—and more than one wide-brimmed hat. So what’s the secret to gender play? A little touch of über-femininity—think Hanne Gaby Odiele’s doll-like Comme des Garçons shorts or a hot pink Chloé iPhone case purse.

Photo credit: Phil Oh/Vogue.com

Photo credit: Phil Oh/Vogue.com

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Avatar of Big Bug

by Big Bug

Is the PC dead?

June 4, 2013 in business, opinions, technology

One can reasonably argue that the greatest engine of change in the past twenty-five years has been the personal computer. Why on earth would technologists claim that the PC was obsolete? It is the box that is obsolete. That clunky metal box sitting on top of your desk is not portable. And it is tethered to your wall socket. The tablet is quickly overtaking the PC in sales. Storage and software are cloud-based, and casual data inputting can be done with a virtual keyboard or a clip-on. For large consumers of data – information and entertainment – the tablet is the machine du jour. Read an excerpt from “The PC May Be Dying, But Computing Lives Everywhere” by Michael V. Copeland for Wired Magazine:

The walloping the PC industry received in the first quarter of this year, down 14 percent according to IDC and the biggest decline since the research firm began tracking PC sales in 1994, was no fluke. IDC is now forecasting 2013 to be the second year in a row that overall PC sales will decline, by about 8 percent versus the 4 percent slide posted in 2012.

So the PC is doomed, but classic PC companies may not be.

In the place of the notebook in particular has arrived the tablet, which for the first time since Apple (or Microsoft if you are stickler for these things) launched the computing device to the masses will overtake the notebook computer in units shipped this year. IDC pegs the number of tablets that will ship in 2013 at just over 229 million. That compares to the 201 million “portable PCs” the firm expects to see ship this year. By 2015 IDC forecasts tablet shipments to outpace the entire PC market (portables and desktops combined), so somewhere north of 330 million machines shipped. “What started as a sign of tough economic times has quickly shifted to a change in the global computing paradigm with mobile being the primary benefactor,” says Ryan Reith, Program Manager for IDC’s Mobility Trackers.

Oh the horror, if you are Hewlett Packard, Dell, or Intel, those PC-reliant former tech stars, right?

Wrong. The decline of the PC is no different than the sun setting on mainframe computers when the microcomputer came along, or the end of the microcomputer when the PC ate its lunch. Yes, some companies like Burroughs, Univac, DEC and Wang failed to make their generation’s computing transition. But on the day that the death of the PC was all but declared, the share price of HP was up 2 percent. Intel was up 1 percent. Dell was basically flat.

The reason Wall Street is unimpressed by the end of the PC era is that the smart companies that ruled the PC-era have already moved on. HP and Dell don’t get much credit from Wall Street for their PC businesses already, it’s all about software and services in the cloud. Intel is running as fast as it can toward mobile (AMD too). So is Microsoft. Certainly all the companies mentioned have suffered mightily from their longstanding attachment to the PC, and there is plenty of work to be done if they are to regain any of their former stature, but they are already moving where computing is headed. The only pure-play PC companies left, like Acer, Asus and Lenovo, are either playing the commodity game or hiring software engineers as fast as they can to get into other parts of the food chain.

“We should look at tablets as part of the continuum of compute,” says Patrick Moorehead, a consultant and longtime industry analyst who runs Moor Insights & Strategy. “Compute is going on your wrist, in your phone, in your tablets, on your wall, in your car and in some cases inside your body,” Moorehead says. “It has been slowly spreading out and decentralizing for the last 50 years.”

Photo credit: Wired/Eddie Codel/Flickr

Photo credit: Wired/Eddie Codel/Flickr

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by Suzzie

Is your next job a blog away?

June 3, 2013 in business, economy, opinions, technology

Since at this very moment you are reading a blog, it stands to reason that you know what a blog is. Did you know that creating a blog is as simple as going to a blogging service like blogger and signing up? The hard part is figuring out what you want to say week after week. You have a lot to contribute, just make it interesting to people beyond your immediate circle of friends and family. Teach. Spark curiosity. Be a hub for ideas. Be funny. And put your blog on your resume. Read “Why You Should Blog to Get Your Next Job” by Jennifer Parris for Mashble.com:

Think of the word “blog” and what comes to mind? Mommy bloggers? People posting funny cat videos? Well, no more. Today’s savvy job seekers are putting their skills to the test and blogging their way to success and job opportunities. Here’s why a blog can get you your next job.

1. It’s your resume, only better: Everyone has a resume. But a blog allows you to highlight the skills on your resume, times ten. For example, if you’re a writer, you can flex your writing muscles and post examples of your creative writing. Even if you’re a tax accountant, you can write your thought-provoking opinions on some of the new tax laws or add a testimonial from a happy client. Just be sure what you write is accurate and well-supported.

2. It gives you a positive digital footprint: Whenever you apply for a job, the first thing a recruiter will do is investigate you online. Having a blog will give potential employers a fuller (and positive) picture of who you are and how you carry yourself, both personally and professionally. And unlike being tagged in an unflattering — and public — image of yourself on Facebook, your blog contains content that you can completely control to project yourself in the best light possible.

3. It helps you build a network: Employers are not only looking for employees who bring knowledge and a superior skill set to the table, but they also want someone who is well connected. So while you might have 500+ connections on LinkedIn, having a blog that has a dedicated readership shows that you know how to create — and keep — connections, both in the digital world and the real world.

4. It keeps you current — and sharp: If you’ve been scanning and searching the Internet for job postings for a while, it’s easy to let your skills slip a little. Blogging will not only keep your knowledge current, but it will also keep your skills sharp as you create cool new content for your readers on a consistent basis. It can also help you stand out as a career expert in your industry.

5. It makes you interesting to employers: When hiring managers read resumes every day, it can get really boring, really fast. If you have a blog that represents not only your skills but also (hello!) your personality, that makes you stand out more than the other seekers who submitted their resumes on fine linen watermarked paper. Suddenly, you become a person — and a possible job candidate they’ll call in for an interview.

Creating and customizing a blog makes you attractive to potential employers. It will help set you apart from other candidates and give you that added edge in finding a job.

blogger

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by The Boss

Skin cancer: Be aware

June 2, 2013 in health, opinions, science

At the ripe old age of 29, I had my first basal cell carcinoma removed. Basal cell carcinoma is the least fatal type of skin cancer. At the time I thought that I was very unfortunate, primarily because I was warned in strongly phrased language by my dermatologist to stay out of the sun. Previously I had been a beach baby. However, it turns out that my youthful misfortune was actually a gift in disguise. Now in my 60′s, I have nary a wrinkle. More importantly, while a sibling has had a melanoma removed, I remain skin-cancer-free, post age 40. We all must be diligent. Read  “The New Rules for Sunscreen” in The New York Times Consumer blog by Roni Caryn Rabin:

There is no question most skin cancers are related to sun exposure, yet even with sunscreen sales approaching $1 billion a year, skin cancer rates continue to climb. Melanoma diagnoses have risen nearly 2 percent a year since 2000 and are increasing even more among young white women.

Some experts blame inappropriate use of sunscreen, saying that people do not apply enough lotion (a golfball-size dollop) or do not reapply it every two hours as instructed. But there’s another major concern: Until recently, many sunscreens with a high sun protection factor, or SPF, were designed primarily to protect people from ultraviolet B rays, the main cause of sunburn. These sunscreens may have enabled users to stay out longer but did not necessarily protect them from ultraviolet A rays. These are associated with aging and skin damage, but some experts believe they may also be implicated in skin cancer.

Experts are urging people to limit their time in the sun, especially at midday, and protect their skin with hats, shirts and cover-ups instead of relying exclusively on sunscreen.

“Sunscreen is not a magic bullet,” said Dr. Steven Q. Wang, director of dermatologic surgery and dermatology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Basking Ridge, N.J., and a spokesman for the Skin Cancer Foundation, which receives funding from sunscreen manufacturers. “It’s just one of the defenses against the harmful effect of UV radiation, and that message gets lost.”

This summer, most of the sunscreen on store shelves must conform to new Food and Drug Administration labeling rules that may help remedy consumer misperceptions. Still, concerns remain about ingredients in some sunscreens.

Use of the label “broad spectrum protection” now means the sunscreen has been proved to protect against both UVA and UVB rays, although the UVA protection may be comparatively weaker. Any product with an SPF lower than 15 must carry a label warning that it will not protect against skin cancer. Products cannot claim to be waterproof, only water-resistant, and labels must note a time limit of either 40 or 80 minutes before the sunscreen is ineffective. Manufacturers can still sell sunscreens with SPFs that exceed 50, though F.D.A. officials are evaluating whether they should remain on the market, said Reynold Tan, a scientist in the agency’s Division of Nonprescription Regulation Development. It’s not clear that sunscreens with higher SPFs actually are more effective, and consumers may not apply them as frequently.

Advocates like Sonya Lunder, a senior analyst for the Environmental Working Group and an author of its report on sunscreen, have criticized the F.D.A. for backing away from some of its own proposals, like putting in place a star system that would give consumers more information about UVA and UVB protection, capping the SPF values allowed on the market at 50, and banning sunscreen sprays, which may not work as well to prevent sunburn.

Europe and Canada have tougher standards, Ms. Lunder said. “In the U.S., you can make a bad sunscreen and just not call it ‘broad spectrum,’ but still sell it,” she said. “In Europe, the pass-fail test is stronger, and it must protect against both UVA and UVB.”

Here is some advice to bear in mind when selecting sunscreen:

■ Look for products with an SPF of 15 to 50, and that are labeled “broad spectrum protection,” meaning they protect against both UVA and UVB rays. Higher SPF values are misleading. “It’s like the gas mileage sticker on a car. It’s based on test conditions that you’ll never achieve in the real world,” said Ms. Lunder.

■ Keep babies younger than 6 months out of the sun, as their skin is especially sensitive. Sunscreen should not be used on infants. If they are outdoors, keep them completely covered and in the shade.

■ Try to keep older children inside when the sun is harshest, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. A bad sunburn in childhood or adolescence doubles the risk of melanoma later in life, according to the Skin Cancer Foundation.

■ Avoid sunscreen sprays. The F.D.A. has banned sunscreen powders (though some products may still be available) and has asked for more data on sprays. The concern is twofold: that not enough sunscreen makes it onto the skin, and that the spray may be inhaled into the lungs.

■ Avoid products with vitamin A, retinol or its derivatives, such as retinyl palmitate and retinyl acetate. At the moment, the F.D.A. says there isn’t enough evidence to suggest these are harmful, but the Canadian health authorities appear to be concerned that the additives increase sun sensitivity. They have proposed requiring that sunscreens with retinyl palmitate carry a warning saying they can increase the possibility of a sunburn for up to a week.

■ The Environmental Working Group recommends avoiding products with oxybenzone, a chemical that may disrupt hormones. Though research has found this effect, many scientists say the effect is so weak as to be insignificant. The advocacy group, however, recommends products that use zinc oxide and titanium dioxide as active ingredients. (These products may leave a milky white film on the skin.)

■ Look for fragrance-free products. Scents bring more unnecessary chemicals and potential allergens to the mix.

■ Take endorsements and seals of approval with a grain of salt. The Skin Cancer Foundation gives a “seal of recommendation” to sunscreens, but only if their manufacturer has donated $10,000 to become a member of the organization.

Photo credit: Tim Robinson/The New York Times

Photo credit: Tim Robinson/The New York Times

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