Arizona to sport World’s largest Solar Power Plant

Arizona is going to add the largest solar jewel to the eco friendly crown of the planet as it is all set to build, own and operate what would be the largest solar power plant in the world if operating today. Abengoa Solar, a subsidiary of a multi-billion-dollar international technology company, has signed a contract with Arizona Public Service Co. (APS), one of Arizona’s leading energy utilities to makes sure that this amazing project actually crosses all the hurdles and materializes in to reality. The moment it is operational it will produce 280-Megawatts of energy and the plant will sell around $4 billion in clean electricity over 30 years.

A Lead on the Ark of the Covenant

The Ark of the Covenant is carried into the Temple

When last we saw the lost Ark of the Covenant in action, it had been dug up by Indiana Jones in Egypt and ark-napped by Nazis, whom the Ark proceeded to incinerate amidst a tempest of terrifying apparitions. But according to Tudor Parfitt, a real life scholar-adventurer, Raiders of the Lost Ark had it wrong, and the Ark is actually nowhere near Egypt. In fact, Parfitt claims he has traced it (or a replacement container for the original Ark), to a dusty bottom shelf in a museum in Harare, Zimbabwe.

As Indiana Jones’s creators understood, the Ark is one of the Bible’s holiest objects, and also one of its most maddening McGuffins. A wooden box, roughly 4 ft. x 2 ft. x 2.5 ft., perhaps gold-plated and carried on poles inserted into rings, it appears in the Good Book variously as the container for the Ten Commandments (Exodus 25:16: “and thou shalt put into the ark the testimony which I shall give thee”); the very locus of God’s earthly presence; and as a divine flamethrower that burns obstacles and also crisps some careless Israelites. It is too holy to be placed on the ground or touched by any but the elect. It circles Jericho behind the trumpets to bring the walls tumbling down. The Bible last places the Ark in Solomon’s temple, which Babylonians destroyed in 586 BC. Scholars debate its current locale (if any): under the Sphinx? Beneath Jerusalem’s Temple Mount (or, to Muslims, the Noble Sanctuary)? In France? Near London’s Temple tube station?

Parfitt, 63, is a professor at the University of London’s prestigious School of Oriental and African Studies. His new book, The Lost Ark of the Covenant: Solving the 2,500 Year Mystery of the Fabled Biblical Ark (HarperOne) along with a History Channel special scheduled for March 2 would appear to risk a fine academic reputation on what might be called a shaggy Ark story. But the professor has been right before, and his Ark fixation stems from his greatest coup. In the 1980s Parfitt lived with a Southern African clan called the Lemba, who claimed to be a lost tribe of Israel. Colleagues laughed at him for backing the claim; in 1999, a genetic marker specific to descendents of Judaism’s Temple priests (cohens) was found to appear as frequently among the Lemba’s priestly cast as in Jews named Cohen. The Lemba — and Parfitt — made global news.

Parfitt started wondering about another aspect of the Lemba’s now-credible oral history: a drumlike object called the ngoma lungundu. The ngoma, according to the Lemba, was near-divine, used to store ritual objects, and borne on poles inserted into rings. It was too holy to touch the ground or to be touched by non-priests, and it emitted a “Fire of God” that killed enemies and, occasionally, Lemba. A Lemba elder told Parfitt, “[It] came from the temple in Jerusalem. We carried it down here through Africa.”

That story, by Parfitt’s estimation, is partly true, partly not. He is not at all sure, and has no way of really knowing, whether the Lemba’s ancestors left Jerusalem simultaneously with the Ark (assuming, of course, that it left at all). However, he has a theory as to where they might eventually have converged. Lemba myth venerates a city called Senna. In modern-day Yemen, in an area with people genetically linked to the Lemba, Parfitt found a ghost town by that name. It’s possible that the Lemba could have migrated there from Jerusalem by a spice route — and from Senna, via a nearby port, they could have launched the long sail down the African coast. As for the Ark? Before Islam, Arabia contained many Jewish-controlled oases, and in the 500s AD, the period’s only Jewish kingdom. It abutted Senna. In any case, the area might have beckoned to exiled Jews bearing a special burden. Parfitt also found eighth-century accounts of the Ark in Arabia, by Jews-turned-Muslims. He posits that at some undefined point the Lemba became the caretakers of the Ark, or the ngoma.

Parfitt’s final hunt for the ngoma, which dropped from sight in the 1940s, landed him in sometimes-hostile territory (”Bullets shattered the rear screen,” of his car, he writes). Ark leads had guided him to Egypt, Ethiopia and even New Guinea, until one day last fall his clues led him to a storeroom of the Harare Museum of Human Science in Zimbabwe. There, amidst nesting mice, was an old drum with an uncharacteristic burnt-black bottom hole (”As if it had been used like a cannon,” Parfitt notes), the remains of carrying rings on its corners; and a raised relief of crossed reeds that Parfitt thinks reflects an Old Testament detail. “I felt a shiver go down my spine,” he writes.

Parfitt thinks that whatever the supernatural character of Ark, it was, like the ngoma, a combination of reliquary, drum and primitive weapon, fueled with a somewhat unpredictable proto-gunpowder. That would explain the unintentional conflagrations. The drum element is the biggest stretch, since scripture never straightforwardly describes the Ark that way. He bases his supposition on the Ark’s frequent association with trumpets, and on aspects of a Bible passage where King David dances in its presence. Parfitt admits that such a multipurpose object would be “very bizarre” in either culture, but insists, “that’s an argument for a connection between them.”

So, had he found the Ark? Yes and no, he concluded. A splinter has carbon-dated the drum to 1350 AD — ancient for an African wood artifact, but 2,500 years after Moses. Undaunted, Parfitt asserts that “this is the Ark referred to in Lemba tradition” — Lemba legend has it that the original ngoma destroyed itself some 400 years ago and had to be rebuilt on its own “ruins” — “constructed by priests to replace the previous Ark. There can be little doubt that what I found is the last thing on earth in direct descent from the Ark of Moses.”

Well, perhaps a little doubt. “It seems highly unlikely to me,” says Shimon Gibson, a noted biblical archaeologist to whom Parfitt has described his project. “You have to make tremendous leaps.” Those who hope to find the original biblical item, moreover, will likely reject Parfitt’s claim that the best we can do is an understudy. Animating all searches for the Ark is the hope — and fear — that it will retain the unbridled divine power the Old Testament describes. What would such a wonder look like in our postmodern world? What might it do? Parfitt’s passionately crafted new theory, like his first, could eventually be proven right. But if so, unlike the fiction in the movies, it would deny us an explosive resolution.

Sorry, Boys, This Is Our Domain

THE prototypical computer whiz of popular imagination — pasty, geeky, male — has failed to live up to his reputation.

Adam Strange

 

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Natasha Calzatti for The New York Times

LAUREN RENNER, 16 On Agirlsworld.com, blogged about her daily life and worked on the site’s “My first prom” magic story that lets girls fill in blanks and make a tale about themselves.

Research shows that among the youngest Internet users, the primary creators of Web content (blogs, graphics, photographs, Web sites) are not misfits resembling the Lone Gunmen of “The X Files.” On the contrary, the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive teenage girls.

“Most guys don’t have patience for this kind of thing,” said Nicole Dominguez, 13, of Miramar, Fla., whose hobbies include designing free icons, layouts and “glitters” (shimmering animations) for the Web and MySpace pages of other teenagers. “It’s really hard.”

Nicole posts her graphics, as well as her own HTML and CSS computer coding pointers (she is self-taught), on the pink and violet Sodevious.net, a domain her mother bought for her in October.

“If you did a poll I think you’d find that boys rarely have sites,” she said. “It’s mostly girls.”

Indeed, a study published in December by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that among Web users ages 12 to 17, significantly more girls than boys blog (35 percent of girls compared with 20 percent of boys) and create or work on their own Web pages (32 percent of girls compared with 22 percent of boys).

Girls also eclipse boys when it comes to building or working on Web sites for other people and creating profiles on social networking sites (70 percent of girls 15 to 17 have one, versus 57 percent of boys 15 to 17). Video posting was the sole area in which boys outdid girls: boys are almost twice as likely as girls to post video files.

Explanations for the gender imbalance are nearly as wide-ranging as cybergirls themselves. The girls include bloggers who pontificate on timeless teenage matters such as “evil teachers” and being “grounded for life,” to would-be Martha Stewarts — entrepreneurs whose online pursuits generate more money than a summer’s worth of baby-sitting.

“I was the first teenage podcaster to receive a major sponsorship,” said Martina Butler, 17, of San Francisco, who for three years has been recording an indie music show, Emo Girl Talk, from her basement. Her first corporate sponsorship, from Nature’s Cure, an acne medication, was reported in 2005 in Brandweek, the marketing trade magazine.

Since then, more than half a dozen companies, including Go Daddy, the Internet domain and hosting provider, have paid to be mentioned in her podcasts, which are posted every Sunday on Emogirltalk.com.

“It’s really only getting bigger for me,” said Martina, an aspiring television and radio host who was tickled to learn about the Pew study.

“I’m not surprised because girls are very creative,” she said, “sometimes more creative than men. We’re spunky. And boys … ” Her voice trailed off to laughter.

The “girls rule” trend in content creation has been percolating for a few years — a Pew study published in 2005 also found that teenage girls were the primary content creators — but the gender gap for blogging, in particular, has widened.

As teenage bloggers nearly doubled from 2004 to 2006, almost all the growth was because of “the increased activity of girls,” the Pew report said.

The findings have implications beyond blogging, according to Pew, because bloggers are “much more likely to engage in other content-creating activities than nonblogging teens.”

But even though girls surpass boys as Web content creators, the imbalance among adults in the computer industry remains. Women hold about 27 percent of jobs in computer and mathematical occupations, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In American high schools, girls comprised fewer than 15 percent of students who took the AP computer science exam in 2006, and there was a 70 percent decline in the number of incoming undergraduate women choosing to major in computer science from 2000 to 2005, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology.

Scholars who study computer science say there are several reasons for the dearth of women: introductory courses are often uninspiring; it is difficult to shake existing stereotypes about men excelling in the sciences; and there are few female role models. It is possible that the girls who produce glitters today will develop an interest in the rigorous science behind computing, but some scholars are reluctant to draw that conclusion.

“We can hope that this translates, but so far the gap has remained,” said Jane Margolis, an author of “Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing” (MIT Press, 2002). While pleased that girls are mastering programs like Paint Shop Pro, Ms. Margolis emphasized the profound distinction between using existing software and a desire to invent new technology.

Teasing out why girls are prolific Web content creators usually leads to speculation and generalization. Although girls have outperformed boys in reading and writing for years, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, this does not automatically translate into a collective yen to blog or sign up for a MySpace page. Rather, some scholars argue, girls are the dominant online content creators because both sexes are influenced by cultural expectations.

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Natasha Calzatti for The New York Times

MARTINA BUTLER, 17 Stars in her own indie music podcast on Emogirltalk.com. Last Sunday’s episode included music by Sequoyah Prep School and Death Cab for Cutie.

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Natasha Calzatti for The New York Times

SARADA CLEARY, 14 On Agirlsworld.com helped create an online game for National Spay Day and contributes craft ideas like how to decorate jeans.

“Girls are trained to make stories about themselves,” said Pat Gill, the interim director for the Institute for Communications Research and an associate professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

From a young age they learn that they are objects, Professor Gill said, so they learn how to describe themselves. Historically, girls and women have been expected to be social, communal and skilled in decorative arts.

“This would be called the feminization of the Internet,” she said.

Boys, she added, are generally taught “to engage in ways that aren’t confessional, that aren’t emotional.”

Research by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, the result of focus groups and interviews with young people 13 to 22, suggests that girls’ online practices tend to be about their desire to express themselves, particularly their originality.

“With young women it’s much more about expressing yourself to others in the way that wearing certain clothes to school does,” said John Palfrey, the executive director of the Berkman Center. “It ties into identity expression in the real world.”

That desire is never so evident as when girls criticize online copycats who essentially steal their Web page backgrounds and graphics by hotlinking (linking to someone else’s image so it appears on one’s own Web page). Aside from depleting bandwidth, it is the digital equivalent of arriving at a party wearing the same dress as another girl, Professor Palfrey said.

No wonder that girls post aggressive warnings on their sites such as “Do not jock, copy, steal, or redistribute any of my stuff!” or, more to the point: “hotlink and die.”

While creating content enables girls to experiment with how they want to present themselves to the world, they are obviously interested in maintaining and forging relationships.

When Lauren Renner, 16, was in fifth grade, she and a friend, Sarada Cleary, now 14, both of Oceanside, Calif., began writing about their lives on Agirlsworld.com, an interactive e-zine with articles written for and by girls.

“Girls from everywhere would read it and would ask questions about what they should do with a problem,” Lauren said. “I think girls like to help with other people’s problems or questions, kind of, like, motherly, to everybody.”

Today Lauren and Sarada are among more than 1,000 girls who regularly submit content to Agirlsworld. They make a few extra dollars writing online articles and dreaming up holiday-related activities, like Mother’s Day breakfast recipes, which are posted on the site.

“At school there’s just a certain type of people,” Sarada said. “They’re just local. Online you get to experience their culture through them.”

THE one area where boys surpass girls in creating Web content is posting videos. This is not because girls are not proficient users of the technology, Professor Palfrey said. He suggested, rather, that videos are often less about personal expression and more about impressing others. It’s an ideal way for members of a subculture — skateboarders, snowboarders — to demonstrate their athleticism, he said.

Zach Saltzman, 17, of Memphis, said content creation among his circle of male friends includes having a Facebook profile and posting videos of lacrosse games and original short films on YouTube.

“I actually really never thought about doing my own Web site,” said Zach after returning from an SAT class.

He hasn’t posted a video himself and doesn’t have a blog because, as he put it, “it really never interested me and I don’t have time to keep up with it.”

Zach does, however, have a Facebook profile where he uploads digital photographs.

“It’s really the only way I keep my pictures organized because I don’t make photo albums and stuff like that,” he said.

Asked whether the findings of the Pew study seemed accurate to him, he said: “That’s what I see happening. The girls are much more into putting something up and getting responses.”

Scientists Measure What It Takes to Push a Single Atom

Jenny Hunter, IBM

An illustration of the tip of an atomic force microscope, in brown, measuring the force it takes to move a cobalt atom, the yellow sphere, on a crystalline surface.

By KENNETH CHANG

Published: February 22, 2008

I.B.M. scientists have measured the force needed to nudge one atom.

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IBM

The tuning fork in the atomic force microscope, which measures the interaction between the tip and the atom.

About one-130-millionth of an ounce of force pushes a cobalt atom across a smooth, flat piece of platinum.

Pushing the same atom along a copper surface is easier, just one-1,600-millionth of an ounce of force.

The scientists report these minuscule findings in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

I.B.M. scientists have been pushing atoms around for some time, since Donald M. Eigler of the company’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., spelled “IBM” using 35 xenon atoms in 1989. Since then, researchers at the company have continued to explore how they might be able to construct structures and electronic components out of individual atoms.

Knowing the precise forces required to move atoms “helps us to understand what is possible and what is not possible,” said Andreas J. Heinrich, a physicist at Almaden and an author of the new Science paper. “It’s a stepping stone for us, but it’s by no means the end goal.”

In the experiment, Dr. Heinrich and his collaborators at Almaden and the University of Regensburg in Germany used the sharp tip of an atomic force microscope to push a single atom. To measure the force, the tip was attached to a small tuning fork, the same kind that is found in a quartz wristwatch. In fact, in the first prototype, Franz J. Giessibl, a scientist at Regensburg who was a pioneer in the use of atomic force microscopes, bought an inexpensive watch and pulled out the quartz tuning fork for use in the experiment.

The tip vibrates 20,000 times a second until it comes into contact with an atom. As the tip pushes, the tuning fork bends, like a diving board, and the vibration frequency dips.

A single atom does not roll, and even a perfectly smooth surface is not perfectly smooth. Instead, the atom rests in small indentations in the lattice, in effect like an egg in an egg carton. The resistance — what becomes friction when multiplied by millions and billions of atoms — comes from the energy needed to rearrange the bonds between the cobalt atom and surface.

When the tip pushes hard enough, the atom hops, almost instantaneously to the next indentation. “It’s not smooth,” said Markus Ternes, another Almaden scientist working on the research. “It’s faster than we can detect.”

From the changes in the frequency of the tuning fork vibrations, the scientists calculated the force that the tip applied to the cobalt atom.

Copper is less sticky than platinum, because of differences between the underlying bonds, and hence allowed the greater ease is pushing the cobalt atom along.

Kids Learn More When Mom Is Listening

New research from Vanderbilt University reveals that children learn the solution to a problem best when they explain it to their mom. “We knew that children learn well with their moms or with a peer, but we did not know if that was because they were getting feedback and help,” Bethany Rittle-Johnson, the study’s lead author and assistant professor of psychology at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of education and human development, said. “In this study, we just had the children’s mothers listen, without providing any assistance. We’ve found that by simply listening, a mother helps her child learn.”

Rittle-Johnson believes the new finding can help parents better assist their children with their schoolwork, even when they are not sure of the answer themselves. Although the researchers used children and their mothers in the study, they believe the same results will hold true whether the person is the child’s father, grandparent, or other familiar person.

“The basic idea is that it is really effective to try to get kids to explain things themselves instead of just telling them the answer,” she said. “Explaining their reasoning, to a parent or perhaps to other people they know, will help them understand the problem and apply what they have learned to other situations.”

The research is currently in press at the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.

Rittle-Johnson, along with co-authors Megan Saylor, assistant professor of psychology, and recent graduate Kathryn Swygert, set out to determine if 4- and 5-year-olds learn more when they have to explain the solution to a problem to someone else. They were shown a series of plastic bugs, and then had to say which bug should come next in the series based on color and type of bug, a problem that is challenging for 4- and 5-year-olds. The children were told to explain the solution to their moms, to themselves or to simply repeat the answer out loud.

The researchers found that explaining the answer to themselves and to their moms improved the children’s ability to solve similar problems later, and that explaining the answer to their moms helped them solve more difficult problems.

“We saw that this simple act of listening by mom made a difference in the quality of the child’s explanations and how well they could solve more difficult problems later on,” Rittle-Johnson said.

The researchers also found that children experience the benefit of explaining a solution at an earlier age than previously thought.

“This is one of the first studies to examine whether or not explanation is useful in helping children under 8 apply what they’ve learned to a modification of a task,” Rittle-Johnson said. “We found that even 4-year-olds can use explanation to help them learn and to apply what they’ve learned to other tasks.”

The new research was supported by funds from Peabody College. Rittle-Johnson and Saylor are Learning Sciences Institute and Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development investigators.

Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College was ranked as the No. 3 education school in the nation by U.S. News & World Report in 2007. To learn more about Peabody, visit peabody.vanderbilt.edu.

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Get your life back!

What is Your Healthy Body Weight

Everywhere we look in the western world we are inundated with pictures, images, icons and inferences of the ‘perfect’ female shape! The truth is that many of these images are altered or enhanced in some way and do not depict the typical female form. The pressure to lose weight is immense when we are bombarded every day with media selling products based on slimness, sex appeal and fashion. The constant message is that slimness will make you desireable.

With the current demographic trends in western countries, and faced with a sea of high fat, high sugar combined with physical inactivity; it is time to pay attention to our weight but not for any reasons of desirability. The most important reason for wanting to be a healthy body weight is for health rather than for how your body looks.

Overweight and obesity are major public health problems in western countries. Since the 1980s both adult men and women have become heavier, with obesity rates more than doubling in the last 20 years! Children are also becoming heavier. There is a growing concern that we are inadvertently training our overweight children to become obese adults. It has been said, we are digging our graves with out teeth! So just why should we be concerned with achieving a healthy body weight?

Overweight linked with diabetes.

In January 2003, the Journal of the American Medical Association featured two studies that highlighted the topic of obesity and its impact on health. The first study focused on the relationship between obesity and diabetes, as well as the growing concern of diabetes in the U.S. between the years 2000 and 2001. The numbers don’t look good, with an alarming 5.6% increase of obesity in both men and women-from all ethnic groups, age ranges and educational levels. The occurrence of diabetes also increased-up 8.2% from 2000.

Overweight linked with premature death.

The second study found that obesity appears to markedly lessen life expectancy, especially among young adults. The researchers compared Body-Mass Index (BMI) to longevity and found a correlation between premature death and higher BMIs. For example, a 20-year-old white male, 5′10″ weighing 288 pounds with a BMI of greater than 40 was estimated to lose 13 years of his life as a result of obesity. Findings were similar for women with higher BMIs, who were estimated to lose an average of eight years. While these studies reference extreme levels of obesity, there are still millions of overweight people in developed countries with a life expectancy rate that is three to five years less than their healthy-weight counterparts. Overweight linked with heart disease.

Overweight people tend to have higher blood pressure and higher blood cholesterol, which are major risk factors for heart attack and other blood vessel disease. Being overweight can contribute to problems in the joints, and is also associated with other serious diseases such as diabetes.

How you tell if you are overweight

As we are all different shapes and sizes, there is not one recommended weight for your height. Instead there is a range of weights that are healthy for your height. One way to check your weight is to calculate your Body Mass Index or BMI.

Your BMI is a ratio or comparison of your height and weight expressed in a number. To find out your BMI you need to divide your weight (measured in kg) by your height (measured in m) squared. If you do not know your measurements in the metric system you can find any number of BMI calculators online that will do the conversion for you into empirical measures. One such calculator is at the website listed below.

The accepted definitions of weight categories by BMI are:

Underweight - BMI less than 18.5
Healthy weight - BMI between 18.5 and 24.9
Overweight - BMI equal to or greater than 25 and up to 29.9
Obese - BMI equal to or greater than 30

These BMI values only apply to adults aged 18 years and over and are based on studies of Caucasian populations. Therefore, they are not applicable to children and adolescents and they may not be appropriate for people of other cultural backgrounds.

Another way to check your weight is to measure your waist circumference, using a tape measure. This gives you an idea of whether you have a lot of fat stored around your middle. Waist circumferences associated with increased health risk are:

For men Waist circumference greater than 94cm
For women Waist circumference greater than 80cm

Being a healthy weight can help:

- improve blood cholesterol levels, blood pressure and blood glucose levels
- reduce your risk of other health related problems
- improve self confidence and self esteem
- make it easier to be physically active.

If you are obese or overweight?try not to gain additional weight. This will help you in years to come as people tend to increase weight with age. Better still look after your body and follow a healthy lifestyle incorporating a nutritious, delicious, health enhancing weight loss program. Just by losing 10 pounds you can significantly improve your overall health.

Immune System Reactivated In Adults With HIV: Thymus Producing New T-cells

 

This highly magnified transmission electron micrographic image reveals the presence of mature forms of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in a tissue sample under investigation. (Credit: CDC)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 22, 200 — Scientists at the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have found that therapy can be used to stimulate the production of vital immune cells, called “T- cells,” in adults with HIV infection.

HIV disease destroys T-cells, leading to collapse of the immune system and severe infection. The thymus gland, which produces T-cells, gradually loses function over time (a process called “involution”) and becomes mostly inactive during adulthood. Because the thymus gland does not function well in adults, it is difficult for HIV-infected adults to make new T-cells. Thus, therapies that stimulate the thymus to produce new T-cells could help HIV-infected patients to rebuild their embattled immune systems.

Although it has been long assumed that the thymus cannot be reactivated in humans, new research shows that the thymus can be stimulated to produce more T-cells. This study is the first to show that pharmacologic therapies can be used to enhance human thymic function.

“These results represent new proof-of-principle findings that thymic involution can be reversed in humans” said Laura Napolitano, MD, lead author of the study, an Assistant Investigator at Gladstone and Assistant Professor of Medicine at UCSF. “Improved T-cell production may be helpful for some medical conditions such as HIV disease or bone marrow transplantation. These findings contribute new information to our understanding of T-cell production and are also an important step to determine whether immune therapies might someday benefit patients who need more T-cells.”

Based on promising animal studies suggesting that growth hormone (GH) enhances thymic function in aged mice, Gladstone and UCSF investigators conducted a prospective randomized research study that yielded an exciting observation: GH increased thymic mass and T-cells in humans.

The investigators studied 22 HIV-infected adults for 2 years. One half of study participants were randomly assigned to continue their usual HIV therapy and to receive GH in the first year (”GH Arm”), and the other half continued their usual HIV therapy without GH treatment (”Control Arm”). In the second year of the study, Control Arm participants received GH, and GH Arm participants were studied off GH. Immune analyses were performed regularly in all study participants. The thymus was assessed by computed tomography (CT) scans, and the numbers and types of immune cells in the blood were determined by an advanced method called multiparameter flow cytometry.

All study participants had been receiving effective HIV therapy for at least one year (average duration of HIV therapy was approximately 3 years) with good suppression of the virus. Despite effective therapy, they still had an unusually low number of “CD4″ T-cells, a type of T cell that is essential for normal immune function. At the start of the study, the patients in the two arms did not differ in average duration of effective HIV therapy, amount of HIV in the blood, age, thymic mass or in a large number of important immunologic measurements.

The results were very encouraging. Napolitano’s team found that GH treatment markedly increased thymic mass and appeared to double the number of newly made T-cells. On average, GH receipt was associated with a 30% increase in CD4 T-cells (2.4 fold higher than no GH). These gains continued to increase at least 3 months beyond GH discontinuation and appeared to persist for at least one year after GH discontinuation.

“The findings of this study are exciting,” said senior author Joseph M. McCune, a Professor of Medicine at UCSF, “and dispel the previously-held notion that the thymus cannot be summoned into action later in life. If these findings bear out in larger studies, this news should be of particular interest to those in need of new T-cells, for instance, adults with HIV disease or other forms of T cell depletion.”

“However,” both Napolitano and McCune cautioned, “GH should not be used as a treatment for immune purposes in HIV disease or in any other individuals at this time, unless this treatment occurs within a research study. More research is needed to learn whether stimulating the production of new T-cells actually provides a health benefit.

“We have shown an increase in the quantity of T-cells, but must also determine whether a recovered thymus produces good quality T-cells that provide satisfactory immune protection.” Napolitano added, “This was a relatively small study of carefully selected adults receiving effective therapy for HIV infection and our findings may not apply to the majority of individuals.”

While the sample in this study is relatively small, Napolitano said a larger, multi-center study conducted by the AIDS Clinical Trial Group (ACTG) has yielded similar results in preliminary analyses and is expected to report these results in the future. “The ACTG study will provide additional data that will add to our understanding of GH effects on the immune system,” said Napolitano who is also a member of the ACTG Team conducting the multi-center study.

“GH is a protein hormone that acts upon mosT-cells of the body, which can result in several side effects,” stated Napolitano. “We are interested in learning the specific way that GH affects the thymus so that therapy can be more narrowly directed to the thymus.

It should be noted that in an accompanying commentary in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Kiki Tesselaar and Frank Miedema, at University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands, warn that the long-term immunological and clinical benefits of growth hormone administration need to be thoroughly determined before this approach can be used more widely in the clinic.

Other participants in the research included Erin Filbert, Myra Ng, Julie Clor, and Kai Li of the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology; and Diane Schmidt, Michael Gotway, Niloufar Ameli, Lorrie Epling, Elizabeth Sinclair, Paul Baum, Marisela Lua Killian, and Peter Bacchetti of UCSF. Research was conducted in the Clinical Research Center at San Francisco General Hospital. Funding was provided by the National Institutes of Health, the Gladstone Institutes, Serono Inc., and the UCSF AIDS Research Institute

How to Quit Smoking in 2 Months

A lot of people want to quit smoking but few of them actually do. What if I told you 2 months from now you could be smoke free? This guide will show you day by day how to quit smoking with minimum withdraw symptoms.

Day - 1 This is the day YOU decide you’re going to stop smoking for good. Take this day to think about all the benefits of not smoking and really get yourself in the mindset to quit. You can smoke as much as you like today.

Day - 2 Today you’re going to make a plan. Most of the cigarettes you smoke are going to be at scheduled hours of the day. Just say you wake up at 6am and go to bed at 10pm thats 16 hours of smoking time. Today your allowed one cigarette an hour and 3 cigarettes you can have anytime. This equals about a pack a day. So if you wake up at 6am you can have a cigarette but can’t have one until 7am unless you use an anytime cigarette. Try to keep the spacing of cigarettes as close to an hour as possible.

Day - 3-4 Repeat what you did on day 2 this will get you used to your schedule of cigarettes.

Day - 5-6 Remove one anytime cigarette each day. This leaves you with 18 cigarettes a day. Thats 17 scheduled cigarettes and 1 anytime.

Day - 7 In order to start cutting down more your going to have to adjust your scheduled cigarettes. You can keep the same time of your morning and night cigarette but everything else I want you to move up 5 minutes. So if you smoke your morning cigarette at 6am you wouldn’t be allowed to smoke another until 7:05 but you also would have to move everything else up. It should look like this:

6:00am - cigarette 1
7:05am - cigarette 2
8:10am - cigarette 3
9:15am - cigarette 4
10:20am - cigarette 5
11:25am - cigarette 6
12:30pm - cigarette 7
1:35pm - cigarette 8
2:40pm - cigarette 9
3:45pm - cigarette 10
4:50pm - cigarette 11
5:55pm - cigarette 12
7:00pm - cigarette 13
8:05pm - cigarette 14
9:10pm - cigarette 15
10:00pm - cigarette 16

This leaves you with 16 scheduled cigarettes and 1 anytime.

Day- 8-9 Follow the same schedule as day 7 to get used to it.

Day - 10 This is going to be a bit harder this time. I want you the move your schedule up 10 minutes more and your morning cigarette will change.

6:10am - cigarette 1
7:20am - cigarette 2
8:30am - cigarette 3
9:40am - cigarette 4
10:50am - cigarette 5
12:00am - cigarette 6
1:10pm - cigarette 7
2:20pm - cigarette 8
3:30pm - cigarette 9
4:40pm - cigarette 10
5:50pm - cigarette 11
7:00pm - cigarette 12
8:10pm - cigarette 13
9:20pm - cigarette 14
10:00pm - cigarette 15

Day - 11-15 Get used to the schedule you set on day ten this will take some time.

Day - 16 Lets recap. So far you have 15 scheduled cigarettes and 1 anytime cigarette. Thats 4 cigarettes a day less then when you started a half a month ago. Want to smoke less? Then follow this schedule.

6:15am - cigarette 1
7:30am - cigarette 2
8:45am - cigarette 3
10:00am - cigarette 4
11:15am - cigarette 5
12:30pm - cigarette 6
1:45pm - cigarette 7
3:00pm - cigarette 8
4:15pm - cigarette 9
5:30pm - cigarette 10
6:45pm - cigarette 11
7:00pm - cigarette 12
8:15pm - cigarette 13
9:30pm - cigarette 14
10:00pm - NO cigarette

Since it’s already 9:30pm when you smoke cigarette 14 you don’t need to smoke one at 10:00pm. If you really wanted to you could skip the 9:30pm and wait until 10:00pm or use your anytime.

Day - 17-20 Keep with the schedule for these days because day 21 will cut your cigarette intake by almost half.

Day - 21 This is where you will see true results. You will be smoking a cigarette every 2 hours for this schedule and we’ll start at 6am just to make the times easier.

6:00am - cigarette 1
8:00am - cigarette 2
10:00am - cigarette 3
12:00pm - cigarette 4
2:00 pm - cigarette 5
4:00 pm - cigarette 6
6:00 pm - cigarette 7
8:00 pm - cigarette 8
10:00pm - cigarette 9

This is a huge step for you. It’s going to be hard adjusting to the 2 hour schedule but you can do it. Since I know it’s going to be difficult I’ll give you a little secret. If you can’t stand to wait 2 hours for each cigarette try smoking half a cigarette every hour. Cheating? Maybe a little but your still only smoking 10 cigarettes a day.

Day - 22-30 Congratulations! Your now smoking a half a pack of cigarettes a day. Thats a great accomplishment give yourself a pat on the back. It only took you a month to cut back half of your cigarette intake give it another month and you’ll be home free. REMEMBER stick to the schedule no matter what.

Day - 31 Time to start your new schedule! This time I want you to smoke a cigarette every 2 and a half hours.

6:00am - cigarette 1
8:30am - cigarette 2
11:00am - cigarette 3
1:30pm - cigarette 4
4:00pm - cigarette 5
6:30pm - cigarette 6
9:00pm - cigarette 7
10:00pm - cigarette 8

Notice at 10:00pm your allowed to smoke one even though it’s not a 2 and a half hour span. It’s good to give yourself a reward at the end of the day!

Day - 32-35 Stick to the same schedule as day 31. Remember what I said about smoking half a cigarette and saving it for other times of the day? You can do that here to.

Day - 36 I want you to smoke a cigarette every 3 hours the schedule is as follows:

6:00am - cigarette 1
9:00am - cigarette 2
12:00am - cigarette 3
3:00pm - cigarette 4
6:00pm - cigarette 5
9:00pm - cigarette 6
10:00pm - cigarette 7

Same thing as the last schedule. Reward yourself at 10:00pm by smoking another cigarette.

Day - 37-40 Follow the same schedule as day 36. Enough said.

Day - 41 This is going to be a big jump for you because your only allowed to smoke a cigarette every 4 hours.

6:00am - cigarette 1
10:00am - cigarette 2
2:00pm - cigarette 3
6:00pm - cigarette 4
10:00 pm - cigarette 5

Day - 42-48 Give this schedule some time trust me it will take some getting used to.

Day - 49 Yet again another schedule. I want you to smoke a cigarette every 6 hours and then smoke one at 10:00pm.

6:00am - cigarette 1
12:00am - cigarette 2
6:00pm - cigarette 3
10:00pm - cigarette 4

Day - 50-53 Follow the schedule that you made on day 49.

Day - 54 Since you’re so close and only have 5 cigarettes a day left ( 4 scheduled and 1 anytime) there will be no more schedules. It’s up to you now. I want you to get rid of 2 cigarettes leaving you with 3 a day. Your anytime cigarette doesn’t matter anymore because you can smoke them all anytime.

Day - 55-57 Keep smoking 3 cigarettes a day anytime.

Day - 58 I want you to only have 1 cigarette a day. If you have any problems with that like I said before you can always just smoke a little bit of the cigarette then put it out and smoke it later.

day - 59-60 This is when you quit smoking for good. Your down to only one cigarette a day but yet this could be the hardest one to give up. Give yourself some time and realize that you don’t need that cigarette. If your having trouble you can always pretend to smoke it but eventually you’ll have to let that go to.

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