Why does hair turn gray?

Wash away your gray? Maybe. A team of European scientists have finally solved a mystery that has perplexed humans throughout the ages: why we turn gray. Despite the notion that gray hair is a sign of wisdom, these researchers show that wisdom has nothing to do with it.

Going gray is caused by a massive build up of hydrogen peroxide due to wear and tear of our hair follicles. The peroxide winds up blocking the normal synthesis of melanin, our hair’s natural pigment.

“Not only blondes change their hair color with hydrogen peroxide,” said Gerald Weissmann, MD, Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. “All of our hair cells make a tiny bit of hydrogen peroxide, but as we get older, this little bit becomes a lot. We bleach our hair pigment from within, and our hair turns gray and then white. This research, however, is an important first step to get at the root of the problem, so to speak.”

The researchers made this discovery by examining cell cultures of human hair follicles. They found that the build up of hydrogen peroxide was caused by a reduction of an enzyme that breaks up hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen (catalase). They also discovered that hair follicles could not repair the damage caused by the hydrogen peroxide because of low levels of enzymes that normally serve this function (MSR A and B). Further complicating matters, the high levels of hydrogen peroxide and low levels of MSR A and B, disrupt the formation of an enzyme (tyrosinase) that leads to the production of melanin in hair follicles. Melanin is the pigment responsible for hair color, skin color, and eye color. The researchers speculate that a similar breakdown in the skin could be the root cause of vitiligo.

“As any blue-haired lady will attest, sometimes hair dyes don’t quite work as anticipated,” Weissmann added. “This study is a prime example of how basic research in biology can benefit us in ways never imagined.”

This story and others can be found here

Speed up your computer…

One of the easiest ways to boost overall performance from your PC is to do regular hard disk maintenance. It’s not glamorous or even exciting, as a matter of fact, it’s downright boring. However it is relatively painless and easy to do. In this article, I want to discuss defragmenting your hard drive. I’ll give you a moment to finish yawning before continuing…..OK feel better now? Let’s get to it. Most PC users, even a lot of beginners, know about the defrag utility built into Windows. Some people even use it occasionally. However, judging by my experiences in the field, even those who use it fairly regularly could use a few pointers on how to get the most out of it.

First of all, what is disk fragmentation? We could get really technical and discuss file systems, cluster sizes and the like but I doubt you want to read it anymore than I want to write about it (BORING!…). You don’t really need to understand all of the technical details to understand that fragmentation can and does have a big impact on overall computer performance. I should explain however, that of all the major components of your computer, the hard drive is far and away the slowest. Knowing this, it should make sense that anything we can do to help this “weak link” with performance will improve the the overall computing experience.

Without going into a lot of detail, I’ll start with a brief explanation of how a hard drive works and what causes data fragmentation. Ready? Here goes: The hard drive has a series of platters that contain all of the stored data on your PC (including the operating system, programs and all of your personal data). These platters rotate at a high rate of speed and as they rotate, a mechanical read/write head moves along the surface of the platters and… well, reads and writes data. Your data is stored on this disk in clusters. A single file usually consists of many of these clusters. Over time as you use the computer these clusters get scattered all over the drive and as a result, the files contained in the clusters become fragmented. The reason that this negatively affects performance is that when the read head looks for a particular file, it can find that information much faster and more efficiently if the clusters containing that file are in contiguous order as opposed to being scattered all over the drive. Think of it this way: If you have a stack of money in various bill denominations, how much faster and more efficiently could you count it if the bills are grouped according to denomination and placed in descending (contiguous) order! The process of defragmentation finds these scattered clusters of data and puts them back in order so that the read head can find them faster.

Now that you are familiar with that concept, let’s get going with the defrag. For those of you who aren’t familiar, the windows defrag utility is located under ‘Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools’. When you start the application, the user interface is pretty straightforward. You just select the drive that you want to defragment and click the button that says “Defragment”. If you don’t do any more than this, you’ll go a long way toward improving the responsiveness of your computer. However, there are a couple major limitations in the defrag utility that can easily be overcome if you know what to do. Here are a couple of tricks you can use to really get the most out of the defrag process.

Temporarily remove the pagefile. Windows uses a section of the hard disk as virtual memory to help speed up performance of the PC. This virtual memory space is known as the paging file or swap file. Windows uses this reserved space to move frequently accessed data into and out of as you work (or play) on your computer. Because this space is reserved as system file space, the defrag utility cannot defragment this section of the disk. This reserved space can be quite large and will become very fragmented over time and since this is the first area of the disk that is accessed by the system when requesting data, it goes without saying that it’s counterproductive for this file to be highly fragmented. So to get this file back in order you have to delete it. (?!) Don’t worry, you are not going to delete anything important and it’s only temporary. Here’s how to do it:

First, save all work and close all open windows. Once you have done this, go to ‘Start > Control Panel(Classic View) > System’. Select the ‘Advanced’ tab and click on the ‘Settings’ button under ‘Performance’. Again, select the ‘Advanced’ tab and under ‘Virtual memory’ click the ‘Change’ button. Click the radio button that says “No paging file” and click the ‘Set’ button. Now close each dialog box by clicking ‘OK’ on each one. You’ll get a message stating that the changes require the computer to be restarted. Click ‘OK’ and restart the PC. When the computer reboots it may seem a little sluggish, but that’s OK because when you’re finished with the defrag, you will restore the swap file and it will be one big contiguous file. That’s a VERY good thing!

Now, before you run the defrag utility, there is one more thing you can do to help optimize the defragmenting process. If your PC has hibernation enabled (it is by default), it uses a file called hiberfil.sys to store the current state of your PC before it “goes to sleep”. This file is then restored when the computer “wakes up” so that it is in the exact same state it was in before hibernating. The whole hibernation thing is a long story and the subject of another article, so for now just understand that hiberfil.sys is a very large file that becomes fragmented over time and because it is designated as reserved system space, can’t be defragmented. So again, the solution is to remove the file. Windows doesn’t need hiberfil.sys to run properly. It is only necessary if you want your computer to have the ability to hibernate when left unattended, so restoring hiberfil.sys is completely optional after you defragment the hard drive. To delete hiberfil.sys, right click any open area on the desktop and choose ‘properties’. Select the ‘Screen Saver’ tab and click the button toward the bottom labeled “Power”. When the ‘Power Options’ dialog box opens, select the ‘Hibernate’ tab. Remove the check from the box that says “Enable hibernation”. The hiberfil.sys file will automatically be deleted.

Now that you have removed these two rather large and uncooperative files run the defrag utility as described above. This time the ENTIRE hard drive will be defragmented! See now, that wasn’t so bad. After windows finishes defragging the disk, don’t forget to re-enable the paging file. Navigate to the virtual memory dialog as described above and this time click the radio button that says “System managed size”. Click ‘Set’ and close all the dialog boxes. Optionally, you can re-enable hibernation also, but it’s not necessary unless you use the hibernate feature.

Well there you have it! A completely defragmented and optimized hard drive and it didn’t cost you a dime. After following this procedure, you’ll definitely notice that your PC has a little more “spring in it’s step”. I certainly hope this article has been useful to you. If it has, be sure to visit my website at http://www.odessacomputerguy.com and while you’re there sign up for my newsletter. It’s free and full of useful tips and tricks you can use to get the most out of your PC.

Skype 4.0

For me, Skype is the best thing since sliced bread the cell phone!  As some of you may know, I am a brit, living in New York.  My parents are currently on their life travels and are currently in Cambodia, my sisiter Rachael lives in New Zealand with her Kiwi husband and two children, my brother Anthony is currently backpacking in Australia (www.TrailOfAnts.com), the only one of us left in the UK is my other sister Natalie, which makes for tough times when it comes to communicating with everyone.   Nowadays (even in remote areas of Cambodia), my family can find a computer and connect to me via Skype.  What makes internet calling so great is that it is mostly free, and even if you call a cell phone in another country, the cost is pennies as opposed to dollars (depending on how long you are connected), and these days, that helps a lot.

Seeing your Niece and Nephew on the webcam is also a major plus, Christmas 08′ I got to watch my Neice and Nephew open their presents all the way over in New Zealand…. awesome. 

You can download Skype for free by clicking on the banner below.  You can sign up for a free account where you can call anywhere in the world to anyone of your friends or family that has also downloaded Skype to their home computer, or, as I have also done, to my Nokia E71 cell phone.

Download Here

Give your partner a goodnight kiss when they’re working away from home.  Check in with your family wherever you’re travelling to let them know you’re safe and well. Pick up your weekly call to your mom and this time, remember to ask for her knockout cheesecake recipe.

Bigger video
Feel like you’re talking face-to-face with great sound and picture. Fill your screen with the faces you love.

Best-ever sound
Calls are crystal clear and even more reliable. Plus our ’smart help’ picks up any sound issues and helps you fix them during a call.

Juggle conversations
Pick up and switch between conversations. Organize everything in one main screen or choose separate windows for each conversation.

Main features
Free Skype-to-Skype calls.  Call phones and mobiles, send SMS.  Free instant messaging.Voicemail.  Free video call.  Forward calls to a phone when you’re offline.

Skype-to-Skype calls, video calls and instant messaging are free, any time of the day or night, anywhere in the world.  Call phones and mobiles and send SMS messages at great value Pay As You Go rates, or call unlimited* to certain countries with a subscriptions.

Skype Screenshot

I had no idea!!!

Life changes so fast sometimes.  One minute the earth is flat, then it’s not.  One minute the Elvis dies, the next, he’s alive and well and works in a diner flipping burgers.  One minute Bill Gates is the richest man in the world, the next he’s not.  So many changes, I just cant keep up.  So I’ll write them down with hopes that it’ll keep you all up to date.

Bill Gates is no longer the richest man in the world.  He’s the third!!  See here

GM is no longer the largest seller of automobiles in the world.  Toyoto is.  On top of this, Toyota is no longer the man in charge.  It’s his Grandson Toyoda!!).  See here

Scientists have discovered that it may be possible to charge things wirelessly.  See here

OK, please bare with me, this list will grow.  Add any strange but true comments below.

Sales advice from a stripper

Like you, I like strippers.  However, I generally find myself leaving the strip club with an empty wallet. Any business that can get you to spend all of your money is a good one to be in. But while walking out of a club one evening, I realized that a big reason they have such a good business is because strippers are such great salespeople. It is not simply due to the fact that they are selling to stupid, horny men like myself, but because they use a lot of highly effective sales and marketing techniques.

You too can achieve great success by applying sales and marketing techniques of strippers.

Here are the 10 sales and marketing techniques I have learned from strippers:

Continue reading here

Stretchable Electronics

A new design for stretchable electronics that could be used to improve eye cameras, smart surgical gloves, body parts, airplane wings, back planes for liquid crystal displays and biomedical devices has been unveiled.

Jizhou Song, a professor in the University of Miami’s College of Engineering and his collaborators John Rogers, professor at the University of Illinois and Yonggang Huang, professor at Northwestern University have developed the new design that can be wrapped around complex shapes, without a reduction in electronic function.

Hydrogen Peroxide Benefits

I have always been interested in the use of ‘alternative medicines’. Recently I had to use some Hydrogen Peroxide 3% for a cut in my mouth. Now, forgive me for being hesitant, but putting the same stuff that is used to bleach hair, into my mouth just seemed wrong to me. I did some brief research and found that yes indeed, if diluted, I could use Hydrogen Peroxide 3% as an oral anesthetic. I was also amazed to hear that it is also regarded as a natural wonder drug. Below is one of the many articles I found regarding the use of Hydrogen Peroxide. Enjoy!.  Continue reading here