Nerd News

During a breast MRI, a technician injects a contrast agent to the patient's arms, if some lesions in the breast are cancerous, the contrast agent flows out quickly and because of this, the lesions become difficult to classify and could lead to biopsy.

But according to biomedical engineers at the University of Wisonsin-Madison, with the right kind of MRI, radiologists can already identify a cancerous lesion based on its shape. The early identification of these lesions, thanks to this technique, could mean fewer biopsies for women since cancerous lesions can be identified early on in the MRI scan.

The researchers are still gathering data on the efficacy of the technique but they say they've already shared it with the University of Toronto for additional assessment. I wonder when would this technique reach any Vancouver MRI Clinic?

Via: ScienceDaily

Next time that you're itching to evict your tenant, be sure that you've read all the legal requirements for evicting your tenant and that you have valid grounds to do so. Evicting tenants on a whim could cause serious legal issues for you down the line. This was what happened to my brother-in-law in Philadelphia. His tenant has not been paying rent for some time now and I think non-payment of rent is a valid ground for eviction in any State.

However, he may have skipped a step or two in the eviction process in Philadephia County and now even though he's the one in the right, he had to consult a Philadelphia real estate lawyer to sort his problems out.

What could have been a simple process may now turn into a lenghty legal battle. So next time you want to evict someone, it's not as simple as kicking them to the curb...make sure you Google first.

Coffee drinkers thinking of cutting back on their caffeine because of studies showing caffeine may be hazardous to your health, well, here's another study that might give added bonus points to drinking coffee. According to the study by researchers at University of South Florida which was published on the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, caffeine significantly reduced the levels of protein associated with Alzheimer's disease in the brains and blood of mice exhibiting symptoms of Alzheimer's.

The researchers conducted their controlled study on 55 mice gentically altered to develop memory problems mimicking Alzheimer's. Half of the mice were given caffeine on their drinking, the equivalent of five 8 oz cups of coffee per day while the other half were given regular drinking water. After two months, the mice drinking caffeinated water performed better on memory tests compared with the mice drinking plain water.

The researchers' next goal is to obtain the needed funding for well-designed clinical trials. Now if only Starbucks could translate this news into an advertisement...

Here's an interesting piece of news for avid gardeners: the color or type of flower you grow adapt to what kind of birds are predominantly pollinating them. Scientists at UC Santa Barbara documented and studied columbine flowers in North America. The researchers believe that the columbine flowers shifted color from red to white or yellow happened five times in North America.

Their research showed that red columbines are pollinated by hummingbirds and white or yellow columbines are pollinated by hawkmoths. According to the researchers, when red columbines plant population shifts from being pollinated by hummingbirds to hawkmoth pollinated, natural selection works and change the flower color to white or yellow.

So if you ever plan to maintain those red columbines in your garden, be sure to get the best hummingbird feeders around.

My nephew just got himself a new Nintendo DSi and he has been pestering me nonstop to get online and buy him an r4 revolution for ds. I was like, what's that? So I googled it and these were what I came up with. Basically, an R4 card is a cartridge that supports microSD for the Nintendo DS gaming console. I think the first Nintendo DS has a built-in slot for microSD but it was left out on the second generation DS.

I honestly get confused with all the accessories. Back in the days of the old Gameboy, you just have the console and the cartridge and that's it, you're good to go. Now handheld consoles have TV-out cables, microSD cards, speakers, etc.

The R4 card enables the DSi to run MP3s and videos which would make it more competitive with the PSP. Wow, gaming consoles these days are so advanced. Me? I actually miss the old school super mario games. Maybe they have those old games which I can run on my nephew's DSi. Time to google again.

It's the rainy season in our area and I was a bit worried about mosquitos breeding and that it would bring different kinds of diseases to our family. This was the main reason why I felt the urge to buy mosquito magnet after seeing an ad about it. What the product claims to do seems promising, it sucks up mosquitos by luring the mosquito to the trap. There is science behind the product actually, mosquitos are attracted to the carbon dioxide we emit so what the mosquito magnet does is it emits higher amounts of carbon dioxide so the mosquitos would be attracted to it instead of humans and then it vacuums up those little bloodsuckers. HowStuffworks.com has a pretty funny and straightforward of of explaining how Mosquito Magnet works.

Anyways, so I was suckered to buy the product right? However, there's still the problem of setting the thing up. A manual could only teach you so much especially for a very non-techie person like me. Anyways, I thought I got a broken unit so I went online to their mosquito magnet repair support page. I'm glad that their support page is pretty straightforward and easy to use. Anyways, finding the solution to my problem was really easy considering that they have their product models listed and with pictures and they have a troubleshooting guide.

Anyways, after a false start, I got the thing running. Now hopefully the mosquito population near our yard should dwindle down and our family won't to worry about mosquitos when we're having our backyard barbecue.

Trekkie fans may have been delighted to see Star Trek on the big screen again. The movie has been so popular that Nokia even gave a dedicated special edition phone for it: The Nokia 5800 Star Trek Edition.

No, the phone doesn't have features that would beam you up to the enterprise, in fact, it just seems like a regular Nokia 5800 but it just has some exclusive wallpapers, themes and ringtones.

Speaking of ringtones, wouldn't it be so cool to have Star Trek's famous phrases as your mobile ringtones? Phrases such as "beam me up, scotty", or "space, the last frontier" as your message tones would definitely turn heads. Of course, I don't know if the ringtones on the Nokia 5800 Star Trek special edition has phrases from the movie or just regular MP3 ringtones but the former would definitely be cooler than the latter.

Of course, even though I think that's cool, I don't think that alone would justify me buying a new phone.

It’s all too easy to get sucked in to buying an inkjet printer just because it seems like a bargain. What most people don’t realise is that when it comes to buying replacement ink cartridges for it the price of a black and colour cartridge can be more than the original purchase price of the printer. This is a common ploy by the printer manufacturers to sell you a printer as cheap as possible and then make their money back on the sale of ink cartridges.

This is basically why branded ink cartridges are so expensive and the inkjet printers themselves are so cheap. Before buying an inkjet printer it is best to find out what ink cartridges it uses by going to an internet retailer and selecting the printer model number and see how much the cartridges actually cost as well as how many pages they print. Don’t be put off if the genuine branded inks are expensive; simply look to see if cheaper compatible version are available.

Compatible ink cartridges are simply cartridges that are manufactured by a third party independent company and cost up to 75% less than the equivalent branded product. For example a set of compatible Epson Stylus SX405 ink cartridges cost 3 times less than that if the genuine Epson inks and print the same number of pages.

Ugh, I've been swamped at work these past couple of days. You'd think with the recession and all my boss would go easy on the projects he's been giving me but nooo, I have to work double but still have the same pay.

With all the projects I need to finish, it's hard to keep up with all of them. I thought I might actually try out a task software. I know Outlook has a To Do software built in but I don't actually have Outlook on my PC and I'm not planning on buying one just to get a simple To-do software.

I thought of trying out a task software since I've seen an officemate using one. She was using FruitfulTime and since the software offers a full trial, I thought I might try it out. The interface is very simple and just like any task software, you can prioritize your tasks. You can set reminders for due projects or assign tasks to other people (if you're the boss on your team). A really cool thing about this is if you try to use FruitfulTime with your team and have them access it on one PC, you can password protect certain tasks that you don't want other team members to see.

I'm actually getting used to FruitfulTime. I'll try to use this for the rest of the week and see how things go.

According to a research done by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, early diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer's can save the government and individuals millions of dollars while also improving care.

The research says that the key is to intervene decades before the symptoms are seen and with this, the government can save billions of dollars in health care if people can intervene at an early stage.

The researchers posits two types of interventions: Patient drug treatment and caregiver-support programs. Both types of interventions can provide positive net savings.

The researchers predict an even larger benefit if more effective drug treatments are developed and if policy supports caregiver benefits, such as counseling and support groups since currently, Medicare does not support caregiver-intervention programs.

The analysis also says that early detection could provide a lot of benefits for the patient as it empowers them to participate in decisions about their treatment and future care. They can participate in clinical trials or opt for family caregiver training .

If families are able to recognize Alzheimer's early on and provide their own caregiver training, it could reduce the burden on medical systems as well as give the patient more control about the kind of healthcare they're receiving.

I don't really believe in any herbal supplements unless they're backed by clinical trials. Anyways, also the phase 1 trials for Zyflamend, an herb-based therapeutic, seems promising it has still to undergo more clinical trials to say that findings are conclusive.

Anyways, the results of the phase 1 clinical trial shows that Zyflamend demonstrates minimal toxicity and no serious adverse events in men with high risk of developing prostrate cancer.

The study was conducted on 23 men, aged 40-75 who were diagnosed with HGPIN at biopsy, meaning they were at high risk for developing prostrate cancer. Zyflamend was ingested orally for 18 months and the results show that Zyflamend when taken in a dose of three times daily for 18 months, were well tolerated. Studies have already indicated that Zyflamend may have anti-inflammatory properties that have been shown to decrease the risk of prostrate cancer.

This study was published in the Journal of the Society for Integrative Oncology.

As I'm searching for interesting Science news, I always find the term "grants" whenever a study is involved so I always connote government grants with scientific studies. I never knew that there are a lot of government grants out there that ordinary people may find use for.

For example, there's the Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH) grant program which offers undergraduate as well as graduate students assistance in tuition fees, up to $4000 per year and in exchange, the student will have to serve as a full time teacher for four years in a low-income school. Not only would this kind of grant help ordinary students in their studies, it would also make finding a job easier for them.

Since the government has released a huge stimulus bill, expect that there are a lot of grants waiting to be given. In fact, if you're thinking of putting up a small business, I'm sure that there are already several million dollars ear-marked in the stimulus fund to help those starting out.

If you don't know where to start looking or Google just doesn't show the right results, try www.grants.gov