Hi, guys
This is Nakul  A. Dharia, You will going to see the new look of the "Techno Turks" in two days......
Thank you..........

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TECHNO TURKS presents..
SEMINAR ON : "CAREER ANALYSIS"
targeting : GRE, CAT , and guidelines on campus recruitment
BY PT EDUCATION.......(this friday last slot)
HURRY UP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! dont miss the chance...get registered now.........!!!!

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Your heartbeat could keep your data safe

HAVING trouble remembering your password? Perhaps you need to use your heart instead of your head. An encryption system that uses the unique pattern of your heartbeat as a secret key could potentially be used to make a hard drive that will only decrypt in response to your touch.

Our heartbeats follow an irregular pattern that never quite repeats and that is unique to everyone. Chun-Liang Lin at the National Chung Hsing University in Taichung, Taiwan, and colleagues used an electrocardiograph (ECG) to extract the unique mathematical features underlying this pattern. They then used the information to generate a secret key that forms part of an encryption scheme based on the mathematics of chaos theory, by which small changes in initial conditions lead to very different outcomes.

As a proof of concept, Lin's system currently takes the user's ECG reading from each palm once, and a key based on that reading is stored and used for all later decryptions. He says the goal is to build the system into external hard drives and other devices that can be decrypted and encrypted simply by touching them.

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Capsule endoscopy

Capsule endoscopy is a way to record images of the digestive tract for use in medicine. The capsule is the size and shape of a pill and contains a tiny camera. After a patient swallows the capsule, it takes pictures of the inside of the gastrointestinal tract. The primary use of capsule endoscopy is to examine areas of the small intestine that cannot be seen by other types of endoscopy such as colonoscopy or esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD). This type of examination is often done to find sources of bleeding or abdominal pain. The procedure was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2001.

What are the limitations of capsule endoscopy?

While the capsule provides the best means of viewing the inside of the small intestine, there are many inherent limitations and problems with its use, the most important of which is thatthe capsuledoes not allow for therapy. Other problems include:

1. Abnormalities in some areas of the intestine are missed because of rapid transit of the capsule and blurred, uninterpretable photographs. 
   
2. At times, transit is so slow that the capsule examines only part of the small intestine before the battery fails. 
   
3. If abnormalities are discovered that require surgical resection or further investigation, it may be difficult to determine where in the small intestine the abnormality is and thereby help direct therapy. 
   
4. If there are narrow areas due to scarring (strictures) or tumors in the small intestine, the capsule can get stuck in the narrow area and cause an obstruction of the intestine that requires surgical removal of the capsule. (For this reason, in patients who are suspected of having a stricture, a self-dissolving, dummy capsule is swallowed first. If the dummy capsule sticks, it can be seen on an x-ray of the abdomen and the location of the stricture determined. Because it dissolves with time, however, the obstruction will resolve without surgery, and the real capsule will not be swallowed.) 
   
5. Finally, reviewing the tens of thousands of photographs is very time consuming for the conscientious physician.

USES:

Capsule endoscopy is used to examine parts of the gastrointestinal tract that cannot be seen with other types of endoscopy. Upper endoscopy, also called EGD, uses a camera attached to a long flexible tube to view the esophagus, the stomach and the beginning of the first part of the small intestine called the duodenum. A colonoscope, inserted through the rectum, can view the colon and the distal portion of the small intestine, the terminal ileum. Unfortunately, these two types of endoscopy cannot visualize the majority of the middle portion of the gastrointestinal tract, the small intestine. Capsule endoscopy is useful when disease is suspected in the small intestine and can sometimes diagnose sources of occult bleeding [blood visible microscopically only] or causes of abdominal pain such as Crohn's disease, or peptic ulcers. Capsule endoscopy can be used to diagnose problems in the small intestine, but unlike EGD or colonoscopy, cannot treat pathology that may be discovered. The capsule endoscopy can use bluetooth to transfer the captured images.



If you want to know  more about  capsule endoscopy visit:   www.wolfsonendoscopy.org.uk/capsule-endoscopy-information.html 
watch video of  capsule endoscopy on this blog in downloads section.

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Sleeping Pills Tied To Higher Risk Of Death

Compared to never using sleeping pills, even using no more than 18 a year is tied to a more than threefold increased risk of death, according to researchers in the US who saw this result after controlling for every possible factor they could think of that might influence it. They also found a more than fourfold higher risk of death and a significant increase in cancer cases among regular pill users.

The findings are stark news for the growing number of people who rely on sleeping pills to get a good night's rest, especially as the results showed the link was the same for the newer, more popular sleeping pills such as zolpidem (Ambien) and temazepam (Restoril).

First author Dr Daniel F. Kripke, of the Viterbi Family Sleep Center at Scripps Health in San Diego, California, told the media:

"What our study shows is that sleeping pills are hazardous to your health and might cause death by contributing to the occurrence of cancer, heart disease and other ailments."

Kripke and colleagues write about their investigation in a paper published in the open-access online journal BMJ Open on 27 February.

Their work expands on previously published research linking higher mortality with use of sleeping pills.

However, Kripke said it is the first to show that eight of the most commonly used sleeping pills or hypnotic drugs, are linked to increased risk of death and cancer, including the popularly prescribed zolpidem (known as the brand Ambien) and temazepam (Restoril). These newer drugs were thought to be safer because their action is not as long-lasting as that of the older hypnotics.

Between 6 and 10% of adult Americans took a hypnotic drug for poor sleep in 2010.

This sector of the US pharmaceutical industry grew by 23% between 2006 and 2010, to an annual sales level of about $2 billion.

For their study, Kripke and colleagues examined data on nearly 40,000 patients of average age 54 cared for by a large integrated health system in the northeastern United States.

The data came from an electronic medical record that had been in place for over ten years. Participants included 10,529 patients who received hypnotic prescriptions, and 23,676 matched controls who received no hypnotic prescriptions. All were followed for an average of 2.5 years, from early 2002 to early 2007.

In their analysis, where they looked for links between sleeping pill intake, death by any cause, and cancer, compared to not taking sleeping pills, the researchers adjusted for the usual factors like age, gender, ethnicity, marital status, body mass index, smoking, alcohol use, and also took into account prior cancer and a large number of comorbidities, that is other illnesses and medical conditions that might influence the result.

The analysis split the participants into as many as 116 groups, which exactly matched cases and controls by 12 classes of comorbidity.

The results showed that, as expected, patients prescribed any hypnotic had "substantially elevated hazards of dying compared to those prescribed no hypnotics." write the authors.

They also found a dose-response effect, in that for those patients prescribed between 0.4 and 18 doses of hypnotics a year, the hazard ratio HR (95% confidence interval CI) was 3.60 (2.92 to 4.44); for those prescribed between 18 and 132 a year, it was 4.43 (3.67 to 5.36); and for those on more than 132 doses a year, it was 5.32 (4.50 to 6.30).

When they did separate analyses for the common hypnotics, including zolpidem, temazepam, eszopiclone, zaleplon, other benzodiazepines, barbiturates and sedative antihistamines, they found elevated HRs for each of these as well.

They also found a higher incidence of cancer cases among the patients in the upper third of hypnotic use (HR 1.35; 95% CI 1.18 to 1.55).

"Results were robust within groups suffering each comorbidity, indicating that the death and cancer hazards associated with hypnotic drugs were not attributable to pre-existing disease," write the authors, who conclude that:

"Receiving hypnotic prescriptions was associated with greater than threefold increased hazards of death even when prescribed <18 pills/year."

They write that the association was the same, even when they separately analyzed the commonly used types of sleeping pills, including the newer shorter acting drugs.

Also, when they took into account selective prescription for patients in poor health, this did not explain the higher risk of death.

Second author Dr Robert D. Langer, of the Jackson Hole Center for Preventive Medicine in Jackson, Wyoming, said:

"We tried every practical strategy to make these associations go away, thinking that they could be due to use by people with more health problems, but no matter what we did the associations with higher mortality held."

But third author, Dr Lawrence E. Kline, medical director of the Viterbi Family Sleep Center, said even though they tried to take as much into account as they could, we should note that the study is based on observational data (and not a clinical trial, for example), so "it's still possible that other factors explain the associations".

"We hope our work will spur additional research in this area using information from other populations," he urged.

Kline said he also hopes the study will nevertheless prompt doctors to consider alterantives to sleeping pills when they treat their patients.

He said at the Viterbi Family Sleep Center the clinicians use cognitive therapy to help patients understand more about sleep. For example, insomnia sufferers may not need the commonly recommended eight hours sleep every night.

Teaching good sleep habits and relaxation is another possible alternative, as is taking advantage of the body's natural rhythms, which follow the rising and setting of the sun.

"Understanding how to use the circadian rhythm is a very powerful tool that doesn't require a prescription," said Kline.

Sometimes sleep disorder stems from depression and emotional problems. Kripke said in such cases, doctors should treat those underlying causes and avoid prescribing sleeping pills that could make things worse.

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Implantable Pressure Sensor Powered By Musical Frequencies

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Scientists at Purdue University have designed a novel in-vivo pressure sensor which generates power by absorbing low frequency sounds, such as the bass frequencies of most music.
The sensor consists of an ultra-sensitive cantilever which vibrates at certain frequencies, generating an electric charge. This charge is stored within a capacitor until the vibrations stop, at which point the charge is used to transmit a signal through the tiny on board transmitter.  The signal is generated from a membrane based pressure sensor at the tip of the device. The absence of an internal power supply allows the device to be smaller and less intrusive, and alleviates the need for recharge or replacement. The current design is less than two centimeters in length.
This device would allow pressure measurements to be made continuously and transmitted to a nearby oscilloscope. It could be used in the urinary bladder to assist those suffering from incontinence, or in the blood sac of an aneurism to monitor blood pressure. A patent has been filed for this design, and it will be showcased in a paper presented at an international electrical engineering conference in Paris on February 2nd of this year.

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