Eat tree nut to cut heart disease risk

"One of the more interesting findings was the fact that tree nut consumers had lower body weight, as well as lower body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference compared to nonconsumers," stated Carol O'Neil, PhD, MPH, RD, lead author on the paper and Professor atLouisiana State University Agricultural Center. "The mean weight, BMI, and waist circumference were 4.19 pounds, 0.9kg/m2 and 0.83 inches lower in consumers than non-consumers, respectively," O'Neil stated.

The study looked at 13,292 men and women (19+ years) participating in the 1999-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES). Intake was from 24-hour recall data and tree nut consumers were defined as those who consumed a quarter ounce/day.

Tree nut consumption was associated with a five percent lower prevalence of metabolic syndrome, a name for a group of risk factors that occur together and increase the risk forcoronary artery disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes.In addition, tree nut consumers had a lower prevalence of four risk factors for metabolic syndrome: abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, high fasting glucose (blood sugar) levels and low high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol levels.

Moreover, previous research by the same researchers showed that although tree nut consumption in the U.S. population is relatively low (mean intake of 1.19 ounces/day for nut consumers) nutrient intakes and diet quality were significantly improved when tree nuts were consumed.The latter appear to be associated with a greater intake of whole grains, fruits, and less saturated fatty acid, sodium and calories from solid fats, alcohol and added sugars.As a result, Dr. O'Neil recommends, "Tree nuts should be an integral part of a healthy diet and encouraged by health professionals-especially registered dietitians."

HP targets small & medium firms with converged cloud

HP is betting big on cloud adoption in India.The world’s number one PC vendor with a 16.9% global market share of shipments announced the launch of its HP Converged Cloud in Mumbai on Wednesday, a day after its US launch. Cloud is a model for delivering IT services in which resources are retrieved from the internet through web-based tools and applications, rather than a direct connection to a server. Converged cloud refers to combining traditional, private, public and managed clouds.

Targeting the $2-3 billion cloud market in India, which it expects to grow 30-33% yearly, HP believes its new cloud offering will drive its India revenues.Neelam Dhawan, managing director, HP India, said, “The cloud market is worth $69 billion globally and cloud contributes 0.5% of the total ICT spend in India. This is despite the general perception that cloud has not yet caught up in India. With our new converged cloud solution,we are expecting mass-scale cloud adoption in India, by simplifying the process of cloud adoption for SMEs.”HP has set up the maximum number of private clouds in India -70 in the last 18 months as against 575 private and public clouds globally.

Dipen Shah, head of fundamental research, Kotak Securities, said, “Cloud will be an important part of the delivery mechanism going ahead as it provides a change from fixed to variable costs - or capex to opex, besides greater efficiency. Thus, it will be a game-changer for companies in India and abroad.”Santanu Ghose, country head- converge infrastructure solutions, HP, said, “We are seeing significant cloud adoption in India from segments such as IT/ITeS, healthcare, education and retail. The recently launched 4G will also push cloud adoption as it will provide for converged flow of big data.”

A Deloitte TMT report released on Wednesday said, “The Indian cloud computing services market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 76% from 2010 to reach $15-18 billion by 2020. Growth is expected to be primarily driven by enterprises migrating workloads to virtualised cloud models. Adoption by SMB and individual users will also contribute to the growth.”

HP has set up a $2 billion global fund to provide flexible leasing options, asset management and staggered payments to companies looking to set up large clouds. It has partnered with Microsoft and Avaya, a global unified communications player, to offer enterprise cloud services that include setting up the cloud from scratch - something that makes HP differ from Google and Amazon.So will cloud become a game-changer for HP in India?Praveen Bhadada, director- market expansion, Zinnov, an IT consultancy firm, said, “Cloud is expected to make up 10-15% of the total India IT investments by 2015, so I believe this will be a game-changer for HP and contribute a large chunk to their revenues. The Indian market is now cloud-ready and IT departments believe its adoption will transform their business.”

HP is planning to launch its public cloud on May 10, which will allow developers to deploy services within minutes and pay only for the resources they use. Also on May 10, HP Cloud Services will introduce, as a private beta, two additional Infrastructure-as-a-Service offerings: a relational database service for MySQL, and a block storage service that supports movement of data from one compute instance to another. The company also plans to make a significant channel partner announcement in Mumbai in the next two weeks.

Scientists use brain activity analysis to reconstruct words heard by test subjects

Last September, scientists from the University of California, Berkeley announced that they had developed a method of visually reconstructing images from peoples' minds, by analyzing their brain activity. Much to the dismay of tinfoil hat-wearers everywhere, researchers from that same institution have now developed a somewhat similar system, that is able to reconstruct words that people have heard spoken to them. Instead of being used to violate our civil rights, however, the technology could instead allow the vocally-disabled to "speak."

Epilepsy patients were enlisted for the study, who were already getting arrays of electrodes placed on the surface of their brains to identify the source of their seizures. The scientists used these electrodes to monitor the electrical activity in a region of their brains' auditory system, known as the superior temporal gyrus (STG). From there, it was a matter of observing the specific activity patterns that occurred when the subjects heard certain words.

When the electrodes' data was applied to a computational model, the computer was able to actually reproduce the sounds that had been heard - sort of. Although the noises made by the computer were somewhat garbled, they were close enough to the original words that the scientists were better able to identify those words than would be possible otherwise.

According to study leader Brian N. Pasley, there is evidence that the perception of real sounds and imagined ones may result in similar STG activity. If so, then the technology could perhaps someday be used in a gadget that "vocalizes" words or sentences thought out by people unable to speak.

"This research is based on sounds a person actually hears, but to use this for a prosthetic device, these principles would have to apply to someone who is imagining speech," he explained. "If you can understand the relationship well enough between the brain recordings and sound, you could either synthesize the actual sound a person is thinking, or just write out the words with a type of interface device."