Shiver, Linger, Forever sheds some hope

By: Unhopeless but #39;bye

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Shiver, Linger, & Forever sheds some hope - Video

Increasing numbers of birds are being packed into mass meat production facilities because high street retailers want smaller, younger chickens to sell to customers at lower prices. As many as 19 chickens or more are being squeezed into every square metre of floor space, which some experts say causes pain and stress.

Farmers and supermarkets, however, deny that their increasingly intensive production methods are cruel. They point out that animal welfare standards conform to the food industry's assurance scheme and are much better than they used to be.

But, according to Tim Lang, professor of food policy at London's City University and a former government adviser, chickens have the most miserable lives on farms. "Probably no animal farmed intensively has a shorter, more captive or controlled life than the broiler chicken," he said. "A luxury item six decades ago has become routine, tasteless, so-called meat today. And now we witness this new shift to even shorter lives, driven by market changes."

Lang urged people to question why mass-produced chicken has become so tasteless. "If you want to eat chicken, pay more," he suggested. "Eat it more infrequently to compensate for buying better quality."

Controversy has been sparked by a bid from a big farm in Fife to boost its production capacity by almost 50% from 340,000 to 500,000 chickens. In an application to the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Peacehill Farm on the Firth of Tay says this is because "the supermarkets are requesting lighter birds".

A farm spokesperson said: "The reason for increasing bird places is that due to customer requirements the birds will have a shorter productive life and will be slaughtered at a lighter weight."

The application says this will lead to more chickens in the same space, but promises that the stocking density will not exceed 38 kilogrammes per square metre. If the chickens weigh an average of 2kg each, that is 19 in every square metre.

According to Libby Anderson, policy director at OneKind, an Edinburgh-based animal rights group, this will inevitably cause the birds suffering. The European Union's scientific committee on animal welfare concluded that at more than 30kg per square metre there is a "steep rise in the frequency of serious problems".

Anderson added: "The demand for chicken seems to be limitless and we are concerned to see the drive towards greater intensification of this sort. The more densely they are stocked, the greater the risk of lameness and painful leg problems, hock and foot burns, and stress."

She urged people who buy chicken sandwiches from supermarkets to be aware that the meat comes from birds unable to move around freely. "Current guidance is for stocking densities to be lowered, not raised, when birds are being reared to lower slaughter weights, so we can't see a justification for increasing it here almost to the very upper limit."

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Demands of supermarkets force farms to cram more chickens into battery sheds

How often, and how well, do you remember your dreams? Some people seem to be super-dreamers, able to recall effortlessly their dreams in vivid detail almost every day. Others struggle to remember even a vague fragment or two.

A new study has discovered that heightened blood flow activity within certain regions of the brain could help explain the great dreamer divide. In general, dream recall is thought to require some amount of wakefulness during the night for the vision to be encoded in longer-term memory. But it is not known what causes some people to wake up more than others.

A team of French researchers looked at brain activation maps of sleeping subjects and homed in on areas that could be responsible for nighttime wakefulness.

When comparing two groups of dreamers on the opposite ends of the recall spectrum, the maps revealed that the temporoparietal junction - an area responsible for collecting and processing information from the external world - was more highly activated in high-recallers. The researchers speculate that this allows these people to sense environmental noises in the night and wake up momentarily - and, in the process, store dream memories for later recall.

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In support of this hypothesis, previous medical cases have found that when these portions of the brain are damaged by stroke, patients lose the ability to remember their dreams, even though they can still achieve the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep in which dreaming usually occurs.

The sleeping brain cannot store new information into long-term memory - for instance, if presented with new vocabulary words to learn while asleep, you will wake up completely unaware of what you heard. But this leaves open the question of how one is able to recall vivid nightly visions in the morning.

"If the sleeping brain is not able to memorise something, perhaps the brain has to awaken to encode dreams in memory," said study author and neuroscientist Perrine Ruby of Inserm, a French biomedical and public health research institution. If awakened during a dream, the brain has the chance to transfer its faint flashes - via reiteration of the memory in one's mind - into more long-term storage. This hypothesis has been dubbed the "arousal-retrieval model".

"There's a real question about the difference between dreaming, encoding memories of those dreams and being able to recall them," said Harvard Medical School's Robert Stickgold, a sleep researcher who was not involved in the study. "For someone to remember their dreams, all three of those things have to happen."

Dreams exist first in working memory, or the memory we use to hold and manipulate thought fragments. Stickgold gives the example of hearing a five-digit number and then reciting it backward. But, like a fleeting dream, the series of numbers will erase in a flash if not put away into longer-term memory.

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What's the secret to remembering dreams?

Why Men Have Sheds Internet #39;s best Amazing Video
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By: Internet #39;s Best Videos

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Why Men Have Sheds Internet's best Amazing Video - Video

Yanukovych Leaks sheds light on Ukraine #39;s high-living ex-leader
When Viktor Yanukovych was driven out of power and he fled Ukraine, people discovered he had left with a lot of loot.They also found a lot he couldn #39;t take w...

By: euronews (in English)

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Yanukovych Leaks sheds light on Ukraine's high-living ex-leader - Video

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

28-Feb-2014

Contact: A'ndrea Elyse Messer aem1@psu.edu 814-865-9481 Penn State

Three dimensional imaging of two different mouse models of Apert Syndrome shows that cranial deformation begins before birth and continues, worsening with time, according to a team of researchers who studied mice to better understand and treat the disorder in humans.

Apert Syndrome is caused by mutations in FGFR2 -- fibroblast growth factor receptor 2 -- a gene, which usually produces a protein that functions in cell division, regulation of cell growth and maturation, formation of blood vessels, wound healing, and embryonic development. With certain mutations, this gene causes the bones in the skull to fuse together early, beginning in the fetus. These mutations also cause mid-facial deformation, a variety of neural, limb and tissue malformations and may lead to cognitive impairment.

Understanding the growth pattern of the head in an individual, the ability to anticipate where the bones will fuse and grow next, and using simulations "could contribute to improved patient-centered outcomes either through changes in surgical approach, or through more realistic modeling and expectation of surgical outcome," the researchers said in today's (Feb. 28) issue of BMC Developmental Biology.

Joan T. Richtsmeier, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Penn State, and her team looked at two sets of mice, each having a different mutation that causes Apert Syndrome in humans and causes similar cranial problems in the mice. They checked bone formation and the fusing of sutures, soft tissue that usually exists between bones n the skull, in the mice at 17.5 days after conception and at birth -- 19 to 21 days after conception.

"It would be difficult, actually impossible, to observe and score the exact processes and timing of abnormal suture closure in humans as the disease is usually diagnosed after suture closure has occurred," said Richtsmeier. "With these mice, we can do this at the anatomical level by visualizing the sutures prenatally using micro-computed tomography -- 3-D X-rays -- or at the mechanistic level by using immunohistochemistry, or other approaches to see what the cells are doing as the sutures close."

The researchers found that both sets of mice differed in cranial formation from their littermates that were not carrying the mutation and that they differed from each other. They also found that the changes in suture closure in the head progressed from 17.5 days to birth, so that the heads of newborn mice looked very different at birth than they did when first imaged prenatally.

Apert syndrome also causes early closure of the sutures between bones in the face. Early fusion of bones of the skull and of the face makes it impossible for the head to grow in the typical fashion. The researchers found that the changed growth pattern contributes significantly to continuing skull deformation and facial deformation that is initiated prenatally and increases over time.

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3-D imaging sheds light on Apert syndrome development

Sheds, Garden Buildings Garages - The Shed Factory

By: yell

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Sheds, Garden Buildings & Garages - The Shed Factory - Video

Top Technology Stocks:

MSFT: flat

AAPL: -0.39%

IBM: flat

CSCO: flat

GOOG: -0.18%

Technology shares were generally mixed in pre-market trade Thursday.

In technology stocks news, ANSYS ( ANSS ) reported Q4 revenue of $236.7 million, about in line with the analyst consensus of $237 million on Capital IQ. EPS was $0.96, a dime better than the Street view.

For Q1, the company guided for revenue of $212 to $220 million and EPS of $0.73 to $0.76, vs. Street estimates of $217 million in revenue and earnings of $0.76 per share.

And, IT services company ACI Worldwide Inc. ( ACIW ) reports Q4 2013 non-GAAP diluted EPS of $1.41, up from $1.37 a year earlier. On average, analysts polled by Capital IQ called for non-GAAP diluted EPS of $1.42.

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Sector Update: Technology Shares Flat to Lower Pre-Market; Tower Sheds 3% on Q4 Results

Fun photo: Praying mantis sheds its skin
Here #39;s something you don #39;t see everyday. Maui resident Jen Tom got up close to a praying mantis in Kaanapali just moments after it had shed its skin and snap...

By: KHON2 News

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Fun photo: Praying mantis sheds its skin - Video

In The Sheds with SBW
I DO NOT OWN THE RIGHTS TO THIS VIDEO. GO EASTS! Roosters TV caught up with Sonny Bill Williams following last night #39;s World Club Challenge victory to chat a...

By: Roosters Rule

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