On the Road: Travel part of surfing world titles for Stephanie Gilmore

Stephanie Gilmore doesnt have time for jet lag. Winning her sixth surfing world title has been keeping her too busy for that sort of thing.

The Australian riding atop the surfing world tells Edge that immediately falling into the routine of a regular dayat whichever time she arrives at a new destinationhelps her to adjust. I dont really believe in jet lagthats what I tell myself anywayit is all in your head, Gilmore says. When I take off, I set my mind to the time of my destination and work from there. I guess I travel so frequently that I'm just used to it.

While the 26-year-old surfer may be accustomed to travel fatiguedrinking tons of water is an extra tipand to winning surfing titles, getting used to packing never gets easy.

With trips varying in length anywhere from five days to three months for a surfer, Gilmore figures she averages a month gone per trip. And usually she has to make three stops before returning home, which can make packing a nightmare.

The most difficult trips are those that go from tropical surf [locales] that only require bikinis and then onto a winter city, she says, noting the weight and heft of a wetsuit. Variation of climate kills the packing process.

Stephanie Gilmore is a five-time champion on the ASP World Tour, claiming four of those titles consecutively (2007-2010). The Australian surfer has carved out a career that began with a 2005 Roxy Pro Gold Coast win, then she appeared in ESPN's Body Issue and won an ESPY in 2011 for Best Female Action Sport Athlete. For a look into the life of one of the most talented surfers in the sport, follow Stephanie Gilmore onInstagram @stephaniegilmore.

Along with the needed range of clothes, Gilmores must-haves include sun protection and different body creams, her Roxy bikinis and board shorts and her mix of Nikon cameras and lenses to document the crazy beautiful corners of the globe Im lucky enough to see.

Once on the ground, after adjusting to the new time of day, Gilmore says she keeps a tight diet. While she tries to eat local delicaciesone of her favorite things when travelingboth to eat local and in season to reduce her footprint and get the highest nutritional value, she has some supplemental nutrition along for the ride.

While she watches her diet closely and varies her meals based on her location, she does the same with workouts. If Gilmore finds herself near a beach, she surfs a couple of times a day for her workout. In a city? Find the hotel gym.

When I have time away from the beach I like to stretch a lot and give my body a rest, she says.

More here:

On the Road: Travel part of surfing world titles for Stephanie Gilmore

History of supercomputing – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The history of supercomputing goes back to the early 1920s in the United States with the IBM tabulators at Columbia University and a series of computers at Control Data Corporation (CDC), designed by Seymour Cray to use innovative designs and parallelism to achieve superior computational peak performance.[1] The CDC 6600, released in 1964, is generally considered the first supercomputer.[2][3]

While the supercomputers of the 1980s used only a few processors, in the 1990s, machines with thousands of processors began to appear both in the United States and in Japan, setting new computational performance records.

By the end of the 20th century, massively parallel supercomputers with thousands of "off-the-shelf" processors similar to those found in personal computers were constructed and broke through the teraflop computational barrier.

Progress in the first decade of the 21st century was dramatic and supercomputers with over 60,000 processors appeared, reaching petaflop performance levels.

The term "Super Computing" was first used in the New York World in 1929 to refer to large custom-built tabulators that IBM had made for Columbia University.

In 1957 a group of engineers left Sperry Corporation to form Control Data Corporation (CDC) in Minneapolis, MN. Seymour Cray left Sperry a year later to join his colleagues at CDC.[1] In 1960 Cray completed the CDC 1604, the first solid state computer, and the fastest computer in the world[dubious discuss] at a time when vacuum tubes were found in most large computers.[4]

Around 1960 Cray decided to design a computer that would be the fastest in the world by a large margin. After four years of experimentation along with Jim Thornton, and Dean Roush and about 30 other engineers Cray completed the CDC 6600 in 1964. Cray switched from germanium to silicon transistors, built by Fairchild Semiconductor, that used the planar process. These did not have the drawbacks of the mesa silicon transistors. He ran them very fast, and the speed of light restriction forced a very compact design with severe overheating problems, which were solved by introducing refrigeration, designed by Dean Roush.[5] Given that the 6600 outran all computers of the time by about 10 times, it was dubbed a supercomputer and defined the supercomputing market when one hundred computers were sold at $8 million each.[4][6]

The 6600 gained speed by "farming out" work to peripheral computing elements, freeing the CPU (Central Processing Unit) to process actual data. The Minnesota FORTRAN compiler for the machine was developed by Liddiard and Mundstock at the University of Minnesota and with it the 6600 could sustain 500kiloflops on standard mathematical operations.[7] In 1968 Cray completed the CDC 7600, again the fastest computer in the world.[4] At 36MHz, the 7600 had about three and a half times the clock speed of the 6600, but ran significantly faster due to other technical innovations. They only sold about 50 of the 7600s, not quite a failure. Cray left CDC in 1972 to form his own company.[4] Two years after his departure CDC delivered the STAR-100 which at 100megaflops was three times the speed of the 7600. Along with the Texas Instruments ASC, the STAR-100 was one of the first machines to use vector processing - the idea having been inspired around 1964 by the APL programming language.[8][9]

In 1956, a team at Manchester University in the United Kingdom, began development of MUSE a name derived from microsecond engine with the aim of eventually building a computer that could operate at processing speeds approaching onemicrosecond per instruction, about onemillion instructions per second.[10]Mu (or ) is a prefix in the SI and other systems of units denoting a factor of 106 (one millionth).

At the end of 1958 Ferranti agreed to begin to collaborate with Manchester University on the project, and the computer was shortly afterwards renamed Atlas, with the joint venture under the control of Tom Kilburn. The first Atlas was officially commissioned on 7December 1962, nearly three years after the Cray CDC 6600 supercomputer was introduced, as one of the world's first supercomputers - and was considered to be the most powerful computer in England and for a very short time was considered to be one of the most powerful computers in the world, and equivalent to four IBM 7094s.[11] It was said that whenever England's Atlas went offline half of the United Kingdom's computer capacity was lost.[11] The Atlas Computer pioneered the use of virtual memory and paging as a way to extend the Atlas Computer's working memory by combining its 16 thousand words of primary core memory with an additional 96 thousand words of secondary drum memory.[12] Atlas also pioneered the Atlas Supervisor, "considered by many to be the first recognizable modern operating system".[11]

Read the rest here:

History of supercomputing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hands on with the super-thin Asus Transformer Book T300 Chi

It was the briefest of chances to pick up the new Asus Transformer Book T300 Chi, a laptop and tablet hybrid that looks to rival the Macbook Air for thinness, but it was the only all week to examine one of the hottest products to be revealed at Computex.

For a few minutes on Wednesday, a prototype of the machine was left unguarded on the Taipei stage where a Microsoft executive had just delivered a speech about Windows. Quickly, a representative from either Microsoft or Asus rushed over and pulled it out of our hands, telling us "Sorry, I can't let you touch that" -- but we already had.

The Transformer Book T300 Chi is sleeker, cooler and much more impressive than its unwieldy name.

When I picked it up, it reminded me of the first time I picked up a Macbook Air. It's so thin, it's surprising and it made me wonder, "Could they really fit everything in there?"

Of course, the answer is no. Thinness comes with some sacrifices, like the lack of pretty much any of the ports and connectors you'd expect on a laptop. There is a single, lonely micro USB connector and that's about it. But if you think of the machine as a tablet with attached keyboard -- rather than as a laptop with detachable screen -- the sacrifice doesn't seem that bad.

Compared to other similar machines, so called "2-in-1s," the Transformer Book T300 Chi is an impressive tablet on its own. Usually you'll find a little bit of bulk to the screen half of the combo but the Asus machine is surprisingly thin.

The keyboard is also very thin, but is a little heavier than it looks. That's not to say it's heavy. There's just a little extra weight towards the top of the keyboard that you wouldn't necessarily expect to be there.

It runs Windows 8.1 and in the moments before it was pulled from our hands, the interface seemed fast and responsive. Of course, new machines without any additional software often feel that way so it's perhaps not as good a judge as a proper benchmark.

Asus hasn't revealed many specifications about the computer. At a news conference this week, it said the computer is 14.3 millimeters thick in laptop mode, and 7.3 millimeters thick as a tablet.

The latest Macbook Air is 17 millimeters thick and an iPad Air is 7.5 millimeters thick, so if those specifications hold for the production model, Asus will have a device that's thinner than Apple's products.

Read more:

Hands on with the super-thin Asus Transformer Book T300 Chi

Stem Cell Therapy for MS Shows Promise

Experimental treatment kills off, then 'resets' the immune system

WebMD News from HealthDay

By Dennis Thompson

HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Dec. 29, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- An experimental therapy that kills off and then "resets" the immune system has given three years of remission to a small group of multiple sclerosis patients, researchers say.

About eight in 10 patients given this treatment had no new adverse events after three years. And nine in 10 experienced no progression or relapse in their MS, said lead author Dr. Richard Nash of the Colorado Blood Cancer Institute at Presbyterian/St. Luke's Medical Center in Denver.

"I think we all think of this as a viable therapy," Nash said. "We still need to perform a randomized clinical trial, but we're all pretty impressed so far, in terms of what we've seen."

In multiple sclerosis, the body's immune system for some unknown reason attacks the nervous system, in particular targeting the insulating sheath that covers the nerve fibers, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. People with the more common form, called relapsing-remitting MS, have attacks of worsening neurologic function followed by partial or complete recovery periods (remissions).

Over time, as the damage mounts, patients become physically weak, have problems with coordination and balance, and suffer from thinking and memory problems.

This new therapy seeks to reset the immune system by killing it off using high-dose chemotherapy, then restarting it using the patient's own blood stem cells. Doctors harvest and preserve the patient's stem cells before treatment, and re-implant them following chemotherapy.

Read more:

Stem Cell Therapy for MS Shows Promise

Stem cell transplant may help patients with MS

An experimental treatment that uses a patient's own stem cells may offer new hope for people with multiple sclerosis.

In a small clinical trial, patients experienced long-term disease remission after undergoing a transplant of their own hematopoietic stem cells. This type of cell is responsible for the formation of blood in the body and are typically derived from bone marrow. The patients also took high-dose immunosuppressive drugs.

The paper, published Monday in JAMA Neurology, reports on the third year of a five-year study. A total of 24 patients with active relapsing-remitting MS were enrolled in the trial. With this type of MS, patients have points when their disease is active followed by periods when they do not experience any symptoms.

Play Video

Dr. Jon LaPook goes inside the trial and approval process for an experimental treatment using stem cells designed to make Multiple Sclerosis pati...

The researchers found that nearly 79 percent of the patients who underwent the procedure sustained full neurologic function for the three years following the treatment and symptoms of their disease did not progress. Additionally, patients in that time period did not develop any new lesions related to their disease.

More than 90 percent of patients did not experience disease progression, while 86 percent did not have any periods of relapse. Though a small number of patients did have side effects from the immunosuppressive drugs, they were no different than the side effects typically experienced by MS patients taking the drugs who haven't undergone stem cell therapy.

"Longer follow-up is needed to determine the durability of the response," the authors write in the study. "Careful comparison of the results of this investigation and other ongoing studies will be needed to identify the best approaches for high-dose immunosuppressive therapies for MS and plan the next clinical studies."

The authors of an accompanying editorial say the research indicates this type of therapy has potential to work on patients who do not experience disease remission with medications alone, such as immunosuppressive drugs and anti-inflammatory drugs such as corticosteroids.

However, they add that "the jury is still out regarding the appropriateness and indication" of stem cell transplants for MS patients. Stem cell therapy is not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of MS. The National Multiple Sclerosis Society currently funds 15 research projects on stem cell therapies that have the potential to prevent disease activity and repair nerve damage.

Read more here:

Stem cell transplant may help patients with MS

More about Gordie Howe's therapy

Stem cells grown under low oxygen. These stem cells from Stemedica are licensed to CardioCell.

Dr. David Gorski, a prominent skeptic of therapies offered outside the scientifically controlled clinical trial system, has published an extensive and critical look at the stem cell therapy Gordie Howe received in early December to help him recover from a serious stroke.

I had email exchanges with Gorski while writing my article last week on the treatment, which uses stem cells provided by San Diego-based Stemedica. Gorski, whose previous blog post at Science-Based Medicine on Howe's treatment caught my attention, follows through with an analysis of the clinical trial setup used by Novastem, a Mexican stem cell company licensed by Stemedica to use its cells.

Dr. Murray Howe and his hockey great father, Gordie Howe, on a fishing trip in Saskatchewan in 2013. / Courtesy Murray Howe

"As sympathetic as I am to the Howe family, Im sorry. I reluctantly have to say that Murray Howe really should know better," Gorski wrote. "If Gordie Howe was treated as part of a clinical trial, then Novastem should have treated him for free! Thats because if it is running a clinical trial, it should treat everyone on the trial for free. Thats the way its done ethically."

I asked Novastem president Rafael Carrillo about the financial issue for my article. Carrillo said Novastem doesn't have deep pockets like a big pharmaceutical company, so it needs to charge for the treatment to pay its expenses. Without that money, it can't afford the trial. Patients wouldn't get the opportunity to get care that could help them, Carrillo said. Moreover, this arrangement is legal under Mexican law.

Gorksi views this as unethical, even if it's legal. He objects to the free treatment given to Gordie Howe, because it amounts to publicity for Novastem that will attract paying customers. And even if Howe is doing better, as appears to be the case, it's not possible to tell definitively whether stem cells helped.

The U.S. system has its own flaws, Gorski says, because patient expenses not related to the clinical trial are not paid for.

"Patients who dont have health insurance will often have a huge difficulty paying for their care not related to the clinical trial and thus will have difficulties accessing cutting-edge clinical trials because they cant pay for their own regular care," Gorski wrote. "Yay, USA!"

Stemedica is offering its own U.S. trial of the therapy, but people must have had the stroke at least six months ago. That's because people make the most improvement within six months after a stroke. So delaying treatment until after that point will make it easier to detect improvement caused by the stem cell treatment.

More here:

More about Gordie Howe's therapy

Stem cell registry will make cancer treatment cheaper

NEW DELHI: India may soon have an official database on stem cell donors and recipients. The health ministry is evaluating a proposal along with All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) to create a donor registry as part of the National Health Mission (NHM), a senior official told TOI.

The proposal suggests enrolling all district hospitals in the first phase to seek stem cell details from across the country. "Once a stem cell donor registry is in place, a willing donor can be contacted and one can coordinate easily. Also, this would enhance access to safe blood," the official said.

Stem cells, found in bone marrow, are like building blocks which can grow into any normal cell of the body such as red blood cells to carry oxygen, white blood cells to fight infection, or platelets to stop bleeding.

Apart from the donor registry, the ministry is also looking at creating facilities for human leucocyte antigen (HLA) typing. HLA-typing is a process conducted for matching donors and recipients of stem cell. HLA-typing is necessary to minimize rejection of stem cell transplant, experts say.

Once created, this would be the first government registry in the country. Till now, such registries have been run in the country by a few NGOs such as Bharat Stem Cells.

According to Bharat Stem Cells, there is usually 25% chance of a patient finding a matching donor within the family. The rest depend on unrelated voluntary stem cell donors.

Stem cell therapy has been shown to be effective in various blood disorders and in treatment of cancer. It is widely used in bone marrow transplantation. However, stem cell treatment remains expensive because of limited research as well as unavailability and lack of coordination between donors and recipients. Some private hospitals charge as much as Rs 1 lakh per session for stem cell therapy. On an average, stem cell treatment is estimated to cost around Rs 15-16 lakh.

According to the official, the idea behind including stem cell into NHM is to make it affordable by creating records and providing facilities.

Stay updated on the go with The Times of Indias mobile apps. Click here to download it for your device.

Excerpt from:

Stem cell registry will make cancer treatment cheaper

Las Vegas Pain Management Clinic, Nevada Pain, Now Offering Over Ten Effective Treatments for Knee Arthritis with …

Las Vegas, Nevada (PRWEB) December 29, 2014

Top Las Vegas pain management clinic, Nevada Pain, is now providing over ten effective knee arthritis treatments. New treatments include regenerative medicine therapies such as PRP and stem cell therapy. Call (702) 323-0553 for more information and scheduling.

Knee arthritis affects tens of millions of Americans, often leading to significant disability. This may make it difficult to participate in recreational activities or play with one's kids or grandkids. While a total joint replacement typically has excellent outcomes, there are potential serious complications. Therefore, the procedure should be avoided or delayed until all other options have been attempted.

Nevada Pain offers the latest, cutting edge options for knee arthritis relief. This includes platelet rich plasma therapy, known as PRP therapy, along with stem cell therapy. The stem cell therapy is offered with either bone marrow derived stem cells or amniotic derived stem cells.

Additional treatments for knee arthritis include cortisone injections, which have been a gold standard for decades. They may provide months of consistent pain relief. Hyaluronic acid injections into the arthritic knee have been shown to offer six to twelve months of pain relief to most individuals.

Knee bracing is also offered along with TENS units, physical rehabilitation, pain medications and topical pain creams. Success rates are impressive for achieving pain relief and avoiding knee surgery.

Along with treating knee arthritis pain, Nevada Pain offers therapies for all types of back and neck pain, sciatica, scoliosis, neuropathy, RSD, spinal stenosis and much more. Treatment is offered by Board Certified, Award Winning providers.

Most insurance is accepted and there are multiple locations in the greater Las Vegas area. Call (702) 323-0553 for more information and scheduling.

More here:

Las Vegas Pain Management Clinic, Nevada Pain, Now Offering Over Ten Effective Treatments for Knee Arthritis with ...

New Year's Concert at Berlin's Iconic Brandenburg Gate to Feature Ben Jaimen Performance

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) December 29, 2014

Up-and-coming singer-songwriter Ben Jaimen has announced that he will perform on stage at one of the worlds biggest and most watched New Years Eve concert events, Berlins annual Brandenburg Gate New Years Eve celebration. This year marks Jaimens third invitation to perform for the crowd of over a million revelers for the live, nationally and internationally broadcast event, which lines more than one mile in front of the German national landmark.

Ben Jaimen will perform music from his recently released debut EP Through The Universe as well as a brand new song, 7 Billion People. 7 Billion People was inspired by Jaimens work with the childrens charity Spirituality For Kids. While working with SFK, Jaimen wrote the song for the children in the program, which promotes the ideals of unity, love and growth for kids around the world. The song then evolved into a larger statement and tribute to the goals of SFK to bring youth together.

7 Billion People will be performed live in a special collaboration with a pre-recorded childrens choir, creating a virtual chorus comprised of children from across the globe. The interactive experience is being curated in collaboration with Playing For Change, a multimedia movement created to inspire, connect, and bring peace to the world through music. 7 Billion People is available now for free download and suggested donation at childrens charity Spirituality For Kids, at http://www.spiritualityforkids.com/7billionpeople. Online, at a special page designed for children to watch a video of the song, they are able to study both the lyrics and dance moves. The page includes instructions on how to record and submit their own performance of the song for inclusion in the New Years Eve performance along with other children from around the world.

7 Billion People will be released for sale on December 31st at iTunes with a portion of all proceeds going to the charity. The song will be available via Ben Jaimens iTunes page: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/ben-jaimen/id475657708

Jaimens musical style blends catchy melodies and emotional lyrics to create a distinctive pop sound. Raised in Berlin, now living in L.A. by way of Bordeaux, Tel Aviv, London and Buenos Aires, the young artists cultural identity and musical tastes were shaped by this relentless globe-hopping. Influenced by popular culture and musical royalty such as The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Prince, Elton John, Bob Dylan and Burt Bacharach, Jaimens debut release Through The Universe sees the young artist establishing his vision of what pop means today. His passionate performance style has earned him praise as a natural performer and electric on stage.

For more information on Ben Jaimen please visit: http://benjaimen.com/

Download 7 Billion People Now At: http://www.spiritualityforkids.com/7billionpeople

Contact: Scoop Marketing for Ben Jaimen: Melissa Munafo / mmunafo(at)solters(dot)com / 818-761-6100 Brooke Paller / bpaller(at)solters(dot)com / 818-761-6100 Erik Stein / estein(at)solters(dot)com / 818-761-4645

See the original post:

New Year's Concert at Berlin's Iconic Brandenburg Gate to Feature Ben Jaimen Performance

Russell Crowe meets Archbishop of Canterbury to discuss Noah

Russell Crowe met The Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth Palace on Tuesday (April 1), following the London premiere of Noah earlier this week.

The two spoke about the film, faith and spirituality during a short private meeting, according to the Archbishop's office. Crowe plays the title role in the biblical epic, which is released on Friday (April 4) in the UK.

Crowe also managed to meet Pope Francis last month and spoke about the experience on Good Morning America.

"Look I'm not Catholic and I've never felt any connection with any previous Pope, but I like this guy," he explained.

"I like what he says... he's changing the tone of the way you regard the Pope and I think it is a magnificent thing. I was very privileged and humbled to be in that environment."

Noah, directed by Darren Aronofsky, had its big premiere at Odeon Leicester Square on Monday (March 31) as the movie's stars Crowe, Emma Watson, Jennifer Connelly and Ray Winstone all turned up.

The movie debuted in the number one spot at the US box office at the weekend.

Noah's London premiere in pictures

The rest is here:

Russell Crowe meets Archbishop of Canterbury to discuss Noah

Orlan-DMA space suit, Cit de l’espace, Toulouse, Midi-Pyrnes, France, Europe – Video


Orlan-DMA space suit, Cit de l #39;espace, Toulouse, Midi-Pyrnes, France, Europe
The Orlan space suit is a series of semi-rigid one-piece space suit models designed and built by NPP Zvezda. They have been used for spacewalks (EVAs) in the Russian space program, the successor ...

By: Pietro Pecco

Originally posted here:

Orlan-DMA space suit, Cit de l'espace, Toulouse, Midi-Pyrnes, France, Europe - Video