Wednesday, November 30, 2005

ecology Pollutants link to diabetes risk. Exposure to high levels of a class of environmental pollutants may increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, research suggests. [BBC News | Science/Nature | UK Edition] 10:22:24 PM    comment

Alzheimer's Evidence suggests Alzheimer's may be a type of diabetes. Researchers at Rhode Island Hospital and Brown Medical School have discovered that insulin and its receptors drop significantly in the brain during the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, and that levels decline progressively as the disease becomes more severe, leading to further evidence that Alzheimer's is a new type of diabetes. They also found that acetylcholine deficiency, a hallmark of the disease, is linked directly to the loss of insulin and insulin-like growth factor function in the brain. [Science Blog -] 6:37:03 PM    comment

search podcasts Podcast Chaos Be Gone. The anarchic state of audio on the internet is about to become more organized. A handful of new technologies scan entire podcasts for specific words. By Kim Zetter. [Wired News] this will be disruptive big-time because now the oral traditions and the spoken word can be found and used much more easily.  Some of the obvious applications are digital meeting notes that are searchable and verifiable -- your really said that? Combine this with VoIP telephony and integrated information searching takes on new dimensions and conference calls may even become managable in real time with additional processing. 6:28:03 PM    comment