Our friends at LiveScience love Garth's stuff so much (*) they threw out the idea for a nifty widget that will give you a little drop-down tool and let you see lots of his equations.

So if you are unsure whether or not to bluff in Texas Hold 'Em, simply stop the game, pull out your iPhone, and plug in the numbers.

Likewise if you are standing in line at Starbucks and unsure how many cups of coffee you should have, this widget can tell you.

Basically, you can completely abdicate responsibility for your own decisions. Leave it to Garth. He knows what he's doing.

Mood—itude

Mood—itude

Jul 23 2008 | comment(s)

On July 18, “Naked Nelson” was detained for stripping off his clothes and trying to open an emergency exit on a flight from Boston to Oklahoma City. Athletes from the New England Revolution, a Major League Soccer team, helped apprehend the man and detained him until officials arrived at the scene. Yet it is unclear what sort of mood “Naked Nelson” was in to drive him to such extremes.

Robert E. Thayer who is a professor of psychology at California State University Long Beach has written several books regarding moods. In his 1989 book "The biopsychology of mood and arousal" he defines a mood simply as a relatively long lasting, affective or emotional state. The state of mind of the nude man on the airplane therefore qualifies. Yet his mood, like an increasing number of other mental states, from attention deficit disorder to social anxiety disorder, would be classified as other than normal.

In a world in which such classified moods are often medicated, understanding factors that contribute to certain degrees of emotional states may be helpful in dictating a more positive mood. In the hunt for contributing factors that influence the mood food, sleep and exercise are among the most commonly referenced.

Ronald B. Herberman, MD, the director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and UPMC Cancer Centers, issued the following directive to thousands of University of Pittsburgh employees:

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FROM: Ronald B. Herberman, MD

Recently I have become aware of the growing body of literature linking long-term cell phone use to possible adverse health effects including cancer. Although the evidence is still controversial, I am convinced that there are sufficient data to warrant issuing an advisory to share some precautionary advice on cell phone use.

An international expert panel of pathologists, oncologists and public health specialists recently declared that electromagnetic fields emitted by cell phones should be considered a potential human health risk (see The Case for Precaution in Cell Phone Use, attached). To date, a number of countries including France, Germany and India have issued recommendations that exposure to electromagnetic fields should be limited. In addition, Toronto’s Department of Public Health is advising teenagers and young children to limit their use of cell phones, to avoid potential health risks.

Often people taking antidepressants - or really any drug - have to balance side effects versus benefit overall. Those crippled by depression and/or anxiety may be willing to give up a few things to dispel the gray clouds. For example, sex.

Doctors in a study published in JAMA estimate antidepressant treatment-associated sexual dysfunction occurs in 30 percent to 70 percent of people treated for major depression. Also, women experience major depressive disorder at nearly double the rate of men and also experience greater subsequent sexual dysfunction.

A group of scientists who set out to study sex pheromones in a tiny worm found that the same family of pheromones also controls a stage in the worms' life cycle, the long-lived dauer larva. The findings in Nature represent the first time that reproduction and lifespan have been linked through so-called small molecules.

Where scientists once focused on DNA and proteins as the major players in an organism's biology, they are now realizing that smaller, but more structurally diverse chemicals - simply called "small molecules" - are a significant part of a living thing's biology. "They're as important to biology as the genes are," says Frank Schroeder, last author of the paper and a scientist at the Boyce Thompson Institute.

SENSOPAC, an EU-funded project whose goal is to create a robotic arm, hand and brain with human-like physical and cognitive capabilities, is bringing human-like robots closer to reality - their newest electronic brain is modelled on the human cerebellum.

Existing robots, such as those that help assemble cars or computers, can perform repetitive actions quickly and precisely. However, says Patrick van der Smagt, the coordinator of SENSOPAC, “they are not very intelligent or flexible and they don’t do very much sensing.”

While the movies have convinced many people that humanoid robots, such as C-3PO or WALL-E are realistic, van der Smagt knows all too well how difficult it is to build robots with even basic human abilities.

For the first time, a team of international researchers has found a way to view the accretion disks surrounding black holes and verify that their true electromagnetic spectra match what astronomers have long predicted they would be.

A black hole and its bright accretion disk have been thought to form a quasar, the powerful light source at the center of some distant galaxies. Using a polarizing filter, the research team, which included Robert Antonucci and Omer Blaes, professors of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, isolated the light emitted by the accretion disk from that produced by other matter in the vicinity of the black hole.

A recent study shows that popular fish oil supplements have an effect on the healing process of small, acute wounds in human skin. But whether that effect is detrimental, as researchers initially suspected, remains a mystery.

The omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oils are widely considered to benefit cardiovascular health and other diseases related to chronic inflammation because of their anti-inflammatory properties. But insufficient inflammation during the initial stage of wound healing may delay the advancement of later stages.

Wealthy nations willing to collectively spend about $1 billion annually could prevent the emission of roughly half a billion metric tons of carbon dioxide per year for the next 25 years, says a new study. It would take about that much money to put an end to a tenth of the tropical deforestation in the world, which would lead to lower greenhouse gas emissions, they say, and reduce global carbon emissions by between 2 and 10 percent.

The calculation is one of several estimates described by a team of scientists and economists this week in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The calculations, based on three different forestry and land-use models, provide the best estimates so far of how much it would cost developed nations to participate in a program called "avoided deforestation" to reduce worldwide carbon emissions.

A report by scientists from The Netherlands published in The FASEB Journal identifies a compound in human saliva that greatly speeds wound healing. This research may offer hope to people suffering from chronic wounds related to diabetes and other disorders, as well as traumatic injuries and burns.

In addition, because the compounds can be mass produced, they have the potential to become as common as antibiotic creams and rubbing alcohol.

Specifically, scientists found that histatin, a small protein in saliva previously only believed to kill bacteria was responsible for the healing.