http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/multimedia/meditation/vid-20084741/ |
quarta-feira, 26 de agosto de 2015
Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs)
| MAOIs — Learn about the benefits, side effects and risks of these older antidepressants. Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) were the first type of antidepressant developed. They're effective, but they've generally been replaced by antidepressants that are safer and cause fewer side effects. Use of MAOIs typically requires diet restrictions because they can cause dangerously high blood pressure when taken with certain foods or medications. In spite of side effects, these medications are still a good option for some people. In certain cases, they relieve depression when other treatments have failed. How MAOIs workAntidepressants such as MAOIs ease depression by affecting chemical messengers (neurotransmitters) used to communicate between brain cells. Like most antidepressants, MAOIs work by changing the levels of one or more of these naturally occurring brain chemicals. An enzyme called monoamine oxidase is involved in removing the neurotransmitters norepinephrine, serotonin and dopamine from the brain. MAOIs prevent this from happening, which makes more of these brain chemicals available. This is thought to boost mood by improving brain cell communication. MAOIs also affect other neurotransmitters in the brain and digestive system, causing side effects. MAOIs are sometimes used to treat conditions other than depression, such as Parkinson's disease. MAOIs approved to treat depressionThe Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved these MOAIs to treat depression:
Selegiline is available as a skin (transdermal) patch. Using a patch may cause fewer side effects than MAOIs taken by mouth. If you're using the lowest dose patch, you may not need diet restrictions, but ask your doctor. Side effects of MAOIsBecause of side effects and safety concerns, MAOIs are most often tried when other antidepressants don't work. The most common side effects of MAOIs include:
Other possible side effects include:
ReferencesJune 21, 2013
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/in-depth/maois/art-20043992
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College depression: What parents need to know
| College depression is a common problem. Understand why the transition to college makes young adults vulnerable to depression — and what you can do about it Helping your child make the emotional transition to college can be a major undertaking. Know how to identify whether your child is having trouble dealing with this new stage of life — and what you can do to help. What is college depression and why are college students vulnerable to it?Depression is an illness that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest. College depression isn't a clinical diagnosis. Instead, college depression is depression that begins during college. College students face many challenges, pressures and anxieties that can cause them to feel overwhelmed. They might be living on their own for the first time and feeling homesick. They're also likely adapting to a new schedule and workload, adjusting to life with roommates, and figuring out how to belong. Money and intimate relationships can also serve as major sources of stress. Dealing with these changes during the transition from adolescence to adulthood can trigger or unmask depression during college in some young adults. What are the impacts of college depression?Depression during college has been linked to:
What are the signs that a student is dealing with college depression?Many college students occasionally feel sad or anxious, but these emotions pass within a few days. Untreated depression persists and interferes with normal activities. Signs and symptoms that a student might be experiencing depression during college include:
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Tips and tricks to get more from Facebook
Gizmag breaks down some of the top tips for using the popular social network (Credit: Facebook)
Facebook opened its doors beyond academic institutions back in 2006, and it's changed a lot in those nine years. Mark Zuckerberg and his huge team of engineers are continually adding new features and tools to the site and the mobile apps, so you might not have come across everything that Facebook has to offer – follow these tips and tricks to get right up to speed again.
Prioritize your most important friends
Options for managing your News Feed are nothing new on Facebook, but they've recently been revamped again. If you choose News Feed Preferences from the main menu on desktop or mobile, the next screen lets you prioritize the people whose updates you don't want to miss. You can also unfollow people you'd rather not hear from.
Get notifications via RSS
If you're a fan of using RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to keep up to date with your favorite websites, you can use the same method for getting Facebook notifications: Choose See All from the bottom of the notifications pane on the Facebook website and you'll see an RSS link at the top. You might want to tweak your notification settings first.
Check for suspicious activity
Facebook offers a simple way of checking up on the activity associated with your account, which you can find by opening the Security page of Settings on the desktop website. Click the Edit link next to the Where You're Logged In and you can end any Facebook sessions you don't recognize, whether on desktops, laptops or smartphones.
Turn on two-step verification
For the best security, we recommend turing on two-step verification for as many web services as you can find who offer it. It means someone else needs more than just your username and password to log into your account (a code on your mobile phone is usually used, delivered via either text message or app).
To turn on Facebook's two-factor authentication, go to the Security page in Settings on the desktop, choose Edit next to Login Approvals.
Undo your Facebook mistakes
Click the Activity Log entry on the Facebook website menu and you can see everything you've done recently on the social network – the same page lets you take back likes, delete comments and posts, and even change the privacy settings on updates you've published yourself. If you post something you regret, this is where to correct it.
Stop your friends from tagging you
Trying to keep a low profile and tired of your friends tagging you in photos and at places? You can switch on a setting that lets you review all tags before they appear on your Timeline: from the Settings screen, click Timeline and Tagging and then activate the Review posts feature. Here you can also stop your friends from posting to your profile wall.
Cut down on mobile notifications
You don't necessarily want your phone beeping every time someone posts a funny video or likes one of your comments on Facebook, but managing these notifications is straightforward. Go to Notifications in Settings on Android or iOS to decide which activity types trigger an alert. You can also switch off notifications altogether if you want to.
Check into places as you go
Checking into places you visit could be well worth the effort, even if you keep the check-in post private and visible only to yourself. Once you check in, you'll see more information about the location in question, together with check-ins and photos posted by your friends; recent updates from the place's official Facebook page are shown as well.
Export Facebook events
You're probably going to plenty of events arranged on Facebook, and you can easily export upcoming events in a format recognized by Google Calendar, Outlook and Apple Calendar – from the Events page, click Upcoming Events (or Birthdays) from the right-hand column (underneath the boxes for birthdays and this week's events).
Tweak the visibility of your posts
Every time you post something to Facebook, you can choose who sees it via the audience selector drop-down box. You could set some posts just for friends and not work colleagues, for example, or keep baby pictures within the family. Click the More link next to Friends in the left-hand navigation pane to set up customized lists of contacts.
Save articles to read later
There are only so many hours in the day, which means you may not get to all of the links and posts your friends are sharing. Use the drop-down menu underneath the arrow on any post (on desktop or mobile) to save it to read later. You can then access all of your bookmarked content by choosing the Saved link from the left-hand navigation pane.
Choose who gets your Facebook account when you die
There's no getting away from death, and if you want to make sure your Facebook account is in good hands once your account is "memorialized," you can set up a Legacy Contact through the Security section of Settings: he or she can't get at all your messages and photos but will be able to update your Timeline.
You can also opt to have your account automatically deleted once you've shuffled off this mortal coil (Facebook marks an account as "memorialized" after friends and family report it as such).
"Voltaglue" sticks in the wet and hardens when voltage is applied
| NTU Asst Prof Terry Steele (right) with his researcher Gao Feng have developed a glue that hardens when an electrical voltage is applied A glue that performs at a high-level in wet environments could bring about all sorts of possibilities in areas like surgical care and ship maintenance. A somewhat common approach to this problem has been trying to replicate the freakish ability of mussels to bind themselves to boats and jetties, but a team from Singapore's Nanyang Technological University is coming at it from a slightly different angle by developing a glue that hardens when an electrical charge is applied. As the team's lead scientist Professor Terry Steele points out, most glues don't work when they're wet, in the same way that sticky tape won't stick to a wet surface because the adhesive will stick to the water rather than the surface. Steele and his team have been at work for more than a year, crafting a new form of adhesive that can perform its job in wet conditions, such as underwater or in the human body. They used hydrogels comprising carbon molecules known as carbenes, which are grafted onto tree-shaped plastic surfaces called dendrimers. Applying an electrical charge kicks the carbenes into action and sees them hook onto any nearby surfaces. A particularly promising aspect of this approach is that the length of time the voltage is applied to the gel dictates how many of these hooks the carbenes create. This means by controlling the charge you control the hardness of the glue, and in turn, its suitability for different applications. The team call this process "electrocuring." "For example, if we are gluing metal panels underwater, we want it hard enough to stick for a long time," says Steele. "However, for medical applications, we want the glue to be more rubber-like so it wouldn’t cause any damage to the surrounding soft tissues." Another attribute that could prove a huge plus of the glue, which the team has nicknamed "Voltaglue," may be the ability to reverse the process. That is, to cancel out the glue's adhesive properties to allow for simple dismantling of ship parts, for example, negating the need for nuts and bolts. Steele and his team are now working to reduce the time it takes for the glue to harden, from around half a minute down to just a few seconds. They will also conduct further research into the possibilities of making it "reversible." The research was published in the journal Nature Communications. Source: Nanyang Technological University
http://www.gizmag.com/voltaglue-adhesive-underwater-electricity-voltage/39107/
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Drones used to track wildlife
Researchers at The Australian National University (ANU) and The University of Sydney have developed a world-first radio-tracking drone to locate radio-tagged wildlife.Lead researcher Dr Debbie Saunders from the ANU Fenner School of Environment and Society said the drones have successfully detected tiny radio transmitters weighing as little as one gram. The system has been tested by tracking bettongs at the Mulligan's Flat woodland sanctuary in Canberra. "The small aerial robot will allow researchers to more rapidly and accurately find tagged wildlife, gain insights into movements of some of the world's smallest and least known species, and access areas that are otherwise inaccessible," Dr Saunders said. "We have done more than 150 test flights and have demonstrated how the drones can find and map the locations of animals with radio tags." Researcher Oliver Cliff, from the Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR) at the University of Sydney, said the technology had generated international interest. "Lots of people are trying to do this. It is not an easy process, but we believe we've come up with a solution," he said. "We've had interest in our system from all around the world. We are still doing some fine tuning but we've achieved more than has ever been done before, which is exciting." Dr Saunders, a wildlife ecologist, came up with the idea eight years ago to track small dynamic migratory birds such as the endangered swift parrot. The new system, funded by an ARC Linkage Project Grant and Loro Parque Foundacion, has been built and tested over the past two and a half years with Dr Robert Fitch and his team at the ACFR at the University of Sydney. The robot consists of an off-the-shelf drone or unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The custom-built miniature receiver and antenna provide real-time information on radio-tracked wildlife, which are mapped live on a laptop. ANU Associate Professor Adrian Manning, also from the Fenner School of Environment and Society, has helped the team by attaching VHF and GPS collars on bettongs at Mulligan's Flat. "Radio tracking of collars manually is very time consuming," Associate Professor Manning said. "Early indications are that the drones could save a huge amount of time. If you have two operators working and they can put the drone up in two bursts of 20 minutes, they can do what would take half a day or more to do using ground methods." Details of the new research tool were presented at Robotics: Science and Systems. Story Source: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Australian National University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Australian National University. "Drones used to track wildlife." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 25 August 2015. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150825103118.htm
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Single-crystal phosphors suitable for ultra-bright, high-power white light sources
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YAG single-crystal phosphor ingot. Credit: Image copyright NIMS Researchers in Japan successfully developed single-crystal phosphors that use a blue LD (laser diode) as an excitation light source, are suitable for ultra-bright, high-power white lighting, and have outstanding temperature characteristics. The Optical Single Crystals Group at National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) led by Group Leader Kiyoshi Shimamura and Senior Researcher E. Garcia Villora, in collaboration with Tamura Corporation (President, Naoki Tamura) and Koha Co., Ltd. (President, Yasuhiro Nakashima), successfully developed single-crystal phosphors (based on (Y1-xLux)3Al5O12 oxide-garnets) that use a blue LD (laser diode) as an excitation light source, are suitable for ultra-bright, high-power white lighting, and have outstanding temperature characteristics. In line with environmentally conscious efforts to promote power-saving and mercury-free products, white lighting that uses blue LEDs as an excitation light source has grown rapid in popularity in recent years. At the same time, products that use blue LDs as an excitation light source have also been commercialized to meet the needs of certain light-p rojectors and car headlights. These require a high-brightness that is difficult to attain with LED light sources. Due to its optical properties, LD light can be easily collected with a lens or mirror, and it is feasible to focus 100-watt-equivalent LD light on an area as small as several millimeters in diameter. However, as the power density of the LD excitation light increases, the heat generated by the lighting device also increases proportionally. The use of conventional phosphors, with low thermal conductivities and a decreasing internal quantum efficiency with the temperature, requires complex cooling techniques and critically limits the applicable LD power. Further, non-oxide based powder phosphors degrade irreversibly with the temperature. In this study, the developed single-crystal phosphors, grown from the melt by the Czochralski technique, exhibit superior temperature characteristics, overcoming mentioned difficulties. On the one hand, due to the higher thermal conductivity (over two orders of magnitude) they can be cooled much more efficiently, avoiding overheating and enabling downsizing and cost reduction of lighting products. On the other hand, their quantum efficiency does not drop with the temperature, exhibiting an efficiency over 0.9 till 300 °C in either plate or powder form. These two features, high thermal conductivity and quantum efficiency, are so remarkable that when the emission of conventional phosphors is already quenched by the temperature rise, under the same nominal conditions the temperature of single-crystal phosphors barely increases. Thus, in contrast with conventional powder phosphors, single-crystal phosphors will allow the fabrication of brighter and more powerful lighting products. Based on this study, we have already acquired two patents in Japan, and have applied for five additional patents in Japan and abroad. We are aiming at stablishing the growth methods for the efficient mass production of single-crystal phosphors for laser lighting products such as laser projectors and laser headlights by the end of FY2015 in collaboration with Tamura Corporation. Story Source: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by National Institute for Materials Science. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. National Institute for Materials Science. "Single-crystal phosphors suitable for ultra-bright, high-power white light sources." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 25 August 2015. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150825115150.htm.
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Migraine treatment: Can antidepressants help?
My doctor prescribed an antidepressant for my migraines. Is this an appropriate migraine treatment? I don't have depression.Answers from Jerry W. Swanson, M.D. Certain antidepressants can help reduce the frequency and severity of some types of headaches, including migraines. You don't have to be depressed to benefit from these drugs. Tricyclic antidepressants, such as amitriptyline, are most effective and likely work by affecting the level of serotonin and other chemicals in your brain. There is little evidence that other classes of antidepressants, such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs), are effective for migraine prevention. Side effects of antidepressants vary from one medication to another and from person to person. Side effects may include weight gain, fatigue, constipation and dry mouth. Such side effects can make it difficult to stick with treatment. If the medication doesn't seem to be working or is causing bothersome side effects, talk to your doctor. Don't stop taking a prescribed medication without talking to your doctor first. May 14, 2015 ReferencesProducts and Services
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