A typical first reaction is to associate marijuana consumption with its psychoactive effects. However, THC only becomes psychoactive when heated, like when traditionally smoked or cooked. When used raw, cannabis isn’t psychoactive. The marijuana’s abilities as a painkiller are generally perceived to be the result of its psychoactivity – so much so that the intensity of a plant’s psychoactive effects is often used as a gauge of its medical potency. Contrary to intuition, this isn’t true! The medical properties of marijuana are actually destroyed when heated or aged, as it becomes psychoactive. Heating converts 600mg of non-psychoactive THC acid into 10mg of psychoactive THC. Here’s where the exchange for medical effects occurs. While the 10mg retain some medicinal effects, there is only a fraction of the THC left. In simplified terms, in the raw plant, THC acid isn’t psychoactive, but acts as a very powerful medicine, up to 400 times more powerful than when smoked.

Healthful communication

Scientific American, in 2004, published an article called “The Brain’s Own Marijuana”, in which they asserted that the brain releases chemicals that are structurally and functionally similar to cannabinoids – the reactive property in marijuana. THC is the cannabinoid that people are most familiar with, but this is only one of 80. In normal synaptic nerve function, the signals are uni-directional, and the receiver forwards the signal, but never notifies the sender that the message has been received. Cannabinoids maintain communication with the original transmitter so that it is aware that the message has been received and is being worked on. For example, if a neuron sends a pain signal, normally it would just keep sending the message until the message becomes false. The cannabinoids turn every cell into a manager with increased oversight.

a puppy the size of a business card named Beyonce is hoping to gain the title of world’s smallest dog in the Guinness World Records.

When she was one day old, Beyonce was so small, she could fit in a spoon. At two weeks, she’s almost as big as an iPhone, The Grace Foundation of Northern California says. Vets thought Beyonce would be stillborn because of her size. She was the last of the five to be born, and wasn’t breathing at the time. The tiny puppy didn’t have a heartbeat, either.

A doctor performed chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth until Beyonce’s heart started, KCRA reported.

Now, despite her size, the foundation says she’s a normal puppy! :=)

First, Ogaki Kyoritsu Bank (Japanese site) customers will register their biometric information at a branch, according to Gizmag’s Darren Quick. Then they’ll be able to go to one of the new ATMs and get cash simply by scanning a hand, typing in their birthdate and a four-digit PIN.

Sometimes, an iPad just doesn’t have the hardware features for serious productivity work. When that’s the case, you need a case that turns your tablet into a notebook. Well stick your iPad here…

The NoteBook Case for iPad does this with Apple style. It essentially transforms your tablet into a device that looks like a MacBook Pro, complete with a brushed aluminum finish and black chiclet keyboard. It also adds a USB and mini-USB port, as well as a lithium-polymer battery for extra juice to your touchscreen tablet.

The keyboard, which doesn’t appear to feature the backlighting that an actual MacBook Pro does, connects to the iPad via Bluetooth.

We rarely come across iDevice cases that mimic Apple’s design aesthetic so closely. We’ve seen a MacBook Air-like keyboard case that your iPad slots into at an angle. And the ClamCase is another option that gives your iPad the notebook treatment, providing your Apple tablet with a more ultrabook-like look via an entirely black, matte frame and soft-touch surfaces.

So, could the manufacturer of the NoteBook Case for iPad be hit with a cease-and-desist letter from Apple legal, since the case is such a copy-cat of Apple style? No, it looks like it should be in the clear since the manufacturer wisely didn’t include Apple’s logo on the case, instead leaving a hole for the iPad’s own logo to peep through.

And there are plenty of actual notebooks — ultrabooks like the Acer Aspire S3 — that mimic the look and feel of products, such as the MacBook Air. They haven’t been the target of legal action yet. Apple has gone after Samsung for infringing on design patents for the iPhone and iPad, but aesthetic appropriation is a different matter entirely.

The NoteBook Case for iPad is only available in Japan right now, for about $75 (5,980 yen). It’s designed for the iPad 2, but we’ve found most iPad 2 cases tend to still fit the third-generation iPad since its 0.6 mm thicker frame is only negligibly larger.

Every December, you vow it’s not going to happen and yet, without fail, you return home from your Christmas shopping with far more than you intended. Do you ever wonder why? The answer might surprise you, because you’ve probably been seduced by something you can neither see nor hear.

In my attempt to understand, I went over the details of the days leading up to my own personal Christmas frenzy, and I tracked the origins of it back to a brief window of time as I changed flights in the Zurich airport. I noticed the duty free shops were already full of the colors of Christmas. To be more precise, carefully camouflaged tubes strategically placed amongst the tinsel and glitz were piping in the sumptuous smells of Christmas: a perfect mix of cinnamon and pine.

I mean, can a tube dispensing cinnamon and pine really compel me to embrace the Christmas spirit way ahead of time? Surprisingly, yes. Dr. Gemma Calvert, who is an expertin modern brain imaging based in Oxford, England, discovered the remarkable ability smells have. She exposed a group of volunteers to cinnamon and then viewed their reactions, using an fMRI scanner. As they breathed in the sweet spicy scent, their brains fired up — including the region responsible for authentic emotional engagement. It seems cinnamon is one of the main ingredients associated, over time, with baking and cider-making rituals and can kick-start an emotional journey

So while it might seem as though retailers are concentrating on everything that delights your eyes and ears, they also might be surreptitiously enticing you to buy more through your nose. And they might not even be doing it in a sneaky manner. This season, Trader Joe’s, Publix, and other supermarkets are prominently displaying heavily-scented “cinnamon brooms” by the check out — large, smelly bunches of twigs to hang inside your home and anoint with cinnamon oil when their pungency starts to fade. At Bed, Bath and Beyond, Home Depot, and other big-box stores, cinnamon-scented pine cones for sale greet you as you walk in the door. Take these items home and you might even get the urge to rush out shopping again.

A new study offers good news for women who unwind with a cocktail at the end of the day: light to moderate drinking is associated with lower stroke risk. The new report by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital involved 26 years of data on 83,578 women who were part of the long-running Nurses’ Health Study — a federally funded study of how such factors as diet, alcohol consumption and other lifestyle factors may influence women’s long-term health.

Over the follow-up period, there were 2,171 reported stroke events: 1,206 were ischemic strokes, which occur when a blood vessel supplying blood to the brain is blocked by a clot, and 363 were hemorrhagic strokes, when a blood vessel in the brain weakens and bursts. The rest were of an unknown type.

On average, about 35% of women reported very low levels of alcohol consumption — less than 4.9 grams, or less than half a glass of wine, a day. About 37% drank moderately — 5 to 14.9 grams daily, or a half to one and a half glasses of wine, one serving of a mixed drink, or one beer. Approximately 11% reported drinking more than the equivalent of one mixed drink per day and 30% reported abstaining from alcohol completely.

The researchers found that women who consumed low to moderate amounts of alcohol had a lower risk of stroke than women who never drank. Why would drinking lower stroke risk? “Alcohol has components that prevent blood clots and promote HDL (good) cholesterol,” says lead researcher Dr. Monik Jimenez. Fewer blood clots could account for fewer strokes. (And the boost in good cholesterol helps explain why moderate drinking may also lower the risk of heart disease.)

But keep in mind that heavy drinking can have adverse stroke effects. While the population of women in the study who drank heavily was too small to say much about their stroke risk, previous research has shown that overconsumption isn’t healthy. “Higher intake can lead to high blood pressure and atrial fibrillation which are both risk factors for stoke,” says Jimenez. “Our findings really stress moderation for women who do drink.”

But that’s not an invitation for women who don’t drink to start boozing now. Although the researchers found an association between stroke risk and alcohol, they did not find a cause-and-effect relationship. Also, the risk of stroke in women who abstained from alcohol was still relatively low. “We do not advocate alcohol consumption from those who abstain from drinking,” says Jimenez. “There are a lot of risks associated with drinking and there are other healthy lifestyle modifications women can make instead.”

Based on their findings, the researchers support the American Heart Association’s (AHA) message that men and women who consume alcohol should do so in moderation.

Now I’ll DRINK to that!

Among the app’s most-mentioned “enemies” so far are some familiar targets: politicians, teenybopper Justin Bieber, the Internet Explorer browser, pop group Nickelback, social game FarmVille and, yes, Crocs — those odd-looking plastic clogs that fashionistas love to hate.

Users of the app appear to largely be left-of-center politically. Near the top of the enemies’ list are GOP candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, Fox News, conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. President Barack Obama is the sole Democrat on the list.

Terry is an artist, technologist and director of the emerging media and communications program at the University of Texas at Dallas. EnemyGraph was developed in one of his classes. He credits grad student Bradley Griffith and undergraduate Harrison Massey with actually building the app.

The EnemyGraph app, or plug-in, is easily installed through Facebook. The idea behind it, Terry said, was to offset what he sees as Facebook’s enforced artificial culture of niceness, which encourages affinities but leaves less room for disagreement.

Say, for example, that you like Kanye West on Facebook but one of your friends lists the hip-hop star as an “enemy.” EnemyGraph will send you a “dissonance report,” pointing out the difference and offering it up for conversation.

“When I saw the first friends list at the beginning of the social media era the first thing I thought was, “where’s the enemies list?” No one ever made one, so we did,” Terry said in his post. He calls EnemyGraph “a kind of social media blasphemy” and predicts Facebook will try to shut down his subversive project.

GIVE ME A BREAK!! ~~ Now we have another way to promote bullies! SMH!!

The resulting “mini-liver” is the size of a small coin; the same technique will be further developed to create a full-size liver. The world’s first artificial liver has been grown from stem cells by British scientists.

The mini-liver is useful as it is; within two years it can be used to test new drugs, reducing the number of animal experiments as well as providing results based on a human (rather than animal) liver.

Researchers Dr. Colin McGucklin, Professor of Regenerative Medicine at Newcastle University, and Dr. Nico Forraz, Senior Research Associate and Clinical Sciences Business Manager at Newcastle University, say that pieces of artificial liver could be used to repair livers injured by injury, disease, alcohol abuse or other causes in the next five years. These artificial livers could also be used outside the body in a manner analogous to the dialysis process used to keep alive patients whose kidneys have failed.

In fifteen years’ time, entire livers could be grown in the lab and then be transplanted into human beings.

The stem cells used by Drs. McGucklin and Forraz in this research are gathered from umbilical cords (“cord blood”), seen by some as a more ethical alternative to stem cells created from human embryos.

The cells are then placed in a Bioreactor, a device developed by NASA to simulate the weightless environment of space. The cells are situated in a growth medium that is constantly rotated, putting the cells in an endless state of free-fall. Ordinary cell growth in a nutrient medium in a dish does not provide a culture environment that supports three-dimensional tissue assembly. Epithelial cells without a three-dimensional assembly environment lack the proper clues for growing into the variety of cells that make up a particular tissue. Epithelial cells are the basic cells that differentiate tissue into specific organ functions. In a rotating Bioreactor, scientists can fool cells into behaving as though they are in a body.

The need for an additional source of livers for transplantation is acute. In the United States, more than 17,000 people are currently on liver transplantation lists, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS).

Since 1921 the American people have been registering the births and names of their children with the government of the state in which they are born, even though there is no federal law requiring it. The state tells you that registering your child’s birth through the birth certificate serves as proof that he/she was born in the United States , thereby making him/her a United States Citizen. For the past several years a social security number has been mandated by the federal government to be issued at birth. In 1933, bankruptcy was declared by President Roosevelt. The governors of the then 48 States pledged the “full faith and credit” of their states, including the citizenry, as collateral for loans of credit from the Federal Reserve system. To wit:”Full faith and credit” clause of Const. U.S. article 4. sec. 1, requires that foreign judgement be given such faith and credit as it had by law or usage of state of its origin. That foreign statutes are to have force and effect to which they are entitled in home state. And that a judgement or record shall have the same faith, credit, conclusive effect, and obligatory force in other states as it has by law or usage in the state from whence taken.

The state claims an interest in every child within it’s jurisdiction. The state will, if it deems it necessary, nullify your parental rights and appoint a guardian (trustee) over your children. The subject of every birth certificate is a child. The child is a valuable asset, which if properly trained, can contribute valuable assets provided by its labor for many years. Why do you think they teach teachers to not only teach their students, but their parents that their child needs a good education so that they can grow up and get a good job? Lol they been making the people slaves for years and no one has ever stopped to question them on it? The child itself, when born, is the asset of the trust established by the birth certificate, and the social security number is the numbering or registration of the trust, allowing for the assets of the trust to be tracked, thus making whomever gets a birth certificate owned by the state. Everyone who has a birth certificate, are considered assets of the bankrupt United States of America, which makes them designated by this government as “HUMAN RESOURCES”. Again, ask yourself, why do you think when you call to see if a company is hiring, you have to go through a division known as Human Resource? Better wakeup folks!

Today we are defined as human resources, believed to be owned by the government. The government now wants us, as individuals, to be tagged and tracked. Government mandated or legislated National I.D. is unconstitutional anyway you look at it. Federal jurisdiction to legislate for the several states does not exist. They have no legislation for ordering you to have a identification card, health card, and so forth, but they know the people are ignorant to the Law, so therefore by ignorance of the people, the government is allowed to freely at will keep coming up with forms of taxation against the American people. Birth Certificates proves that you are national property of the International Banks. The birth certificate thus becomes a form of theft, the theft of the child’s true identity as a free child of God to a servant of the State. By affixing a national seal of approval to a child, the state denies the freedom, rights, and dignity that God has ordained in the scriptures. You don’t need proof that you were born, you breathing is proof enough for these hypocrites. By requiring a license, the state is claiming complete control and ownership over your liberty, and property. Because there is no breath of Life from God in such pieces of paper, we should not look to them for any authority for doing anything.