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BEIJING, July 19 (Xinhuanet) -- Lifestyle changes such as exercise, eating healthily and not smoking could reduce the chances of having Alzheimer’s disease by half, researchers said in a study quoted by news reports Tuesday.Hundreds of thousands of patients could potentially avoid the devastating illness by simply changing bad habits, according to the study published in the journal Lancet NeurologyFor the first time, scientists have calculated the extent to which certain lifestyle traits -- including lack of exercise, smoking and obesity -- all contributed to the disease.Researchers found that in the Western world, an inactive “couch potato” lifestyle was the most important possible cause.Smoking, obesity in middle-age, high blood pressure and diabetes all increased the risk as they cause damage to blood vessels in the brain, leading to death of brain cells. Together, the modifiable risk factors contributed to 50 percent of Alzheimer’s cases worldwide.The researchers want to carry out more work to find out how many people can prevent the disease by making small changes to their lifestyle.

BEIJING, Sept. 20 (Xinhuanet)-- Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt is to face a Senate hearing on whether the company is abusing its dominance in Internet search, according to media reports on Tuesday.At the Wednesday's hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel, Schmidt will argue that critics are wrong to say Google gives preference to its own products, instead, Google is just trying to deliver the best-cultivated search results for users. The issue of search ranking is a touchy subject with Google, which says its algorithm is devised to give users the most useful result so they will come back.Another focal point of the hearing, which Schmidt concerned most is "scrapers", those who game its search algorithm, for example, taking commonly searched words, combine them into a nonsensical block of text and throw it up on the Web to grab eyeballs and advertising dollars.Google believes that, if scrapers succeed too often, consumers will lose confidence in search and turn to other resources, thus posing an existential threat to the company.Regulators in the U.S. and abroad have been looking into various aspects of Google's business practices since the company's 2007 purchase of ad firm DoubleClick. At the moment, European regulators are conducting an antitrust inquiry into Google's search business while the Federal Trade Commission is doing likewise. Google relies overwhelmingly on its core product, Internet search, and dominates the market for that product. It handles around two-thirds of U.S. Internet searches and more than 80 percent in many European countries, according to comScore Inc.

PARIS, Sept. 21 (Xinhua) -- European heavy-lift launcher Ariane 5 lifted off two communication satellites Wednesday from the Kourou launch centre in French Guiana, live broadcast of the launching process showed.The rocket, carrying the two communication satellites Arabsat 5C and SES-2, was launched at GMT 2138.This was the fifth heavy-lift mission of Ariane 5 in 2011. Arianespace had planned six Ariane 5 missions through 2011.The satellite Arabsat-5C was developed for the Arab Satellite Communications Organization (Arabsat) to provide satellite capacity in both C-band and Ka-band frequencies for a wide range of communications services.Jointly produced by Europe's EADS Astrium and Thales Alenia Space, it will be positioned at 20 degree East orbital location to cover the Middle East and Africa.Manufactured by Orbital Sciences Corporation of the United States, SES-2 will join the fleet of European satellite telecommunications operator SES, and is to be positioned at 87 degree West for coverage over North America and the Caribbean.Both Arabsat-5C and SES-2 have life-spans as long as 15 years.This Ariane 5 dual-passenger mission was postponed from Tuesday due to local strikes of French Guiana workers.Founded in 1980 as the world's first launch service and solutions company, Arianespace planned to achieve six Ariane 5 missions through 2011. Through 2010, heavy-lift workhorse Ariane 5 finished six missions, sending a dozen spacecraft into expected orbits.The next mission from Arianespace centre in Kourou was scheduled for Oct. 20 by medium-lift vehicle Soyuz. It will be Soyuz' first mission from French Guiana with a pair of satellites for Europe's Galileo satellite navigation system.

WASHINGTON, June 8 (Xinhua) -- Hundreds of small genetic variations are associated with autism spectrum disorders, including an area of DNA that may be a key to understanding why humans are social animals, according to a multi-site collaborative study led by researchers at Yale University.To be published Thursday in the journal Neuron, the study reinforces the theory that autism, a disorder that develops in early childhood involving impairments in social interaction, language deficits and distinctive behaviors, is not caused by one or two major genetic defects, but by many small variations, each associated with a small percentage of cases.The study looked at more than 1,000 families in which there was a single child with an autism spectrum disorder, an unaffected sibling and unaffected parents. The team compared individuals with autism to their siblings to determine what types of genetic changes distinguished the affected child from the unaffected child.One of the most intriguing of these findings points to the same small section of the genome that causes Williams syndrome -- a developmental disorder marked by high sociability and an unusual aptitude for music.In autism, there is an increase in the chromosomal material, an extra copy of this region, and in Williams syndrome, there's a loss of that same material," said lead author Matthew State. "What makes this observation particularly interesting is that Williams syndrome is known for a personality type that is highly empathetic, social, and sensitive to the emotional state of others. Individuals with autism often have difficulties in the opposite direction. This suggests that there is an important key in that region to understanding the nature of the social brain."State and his team also found about 30 other regions in the genome that are very likely contributing to autism and are focused on about six of those regions that showed the strongest evidence."We're now moving on to a second phase of the study looking at an additional 1,600 families and should be able to identify multiple new regions that are strongly implicated in autism," he said.

SAN FRANCISCO, June 15 (Xinhua) -- As social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter grow worldwide, more Internet retailers are beefing up their efforts to add social twists to their business, trying to define the idea of "social commerce" and capitalize the opportunity.On Wednesday, online auction giant eBay revealed some of the social features it is planning to launch later this year, while Copious, a San Francisco-based startup, launched its online social commerce marketplace with a slogan of "buying from and selling to people, not strangers."Copious asks users to log in through their Facebook accounts and allows buyers and sellers to see if they have friends in common in their social networking sites. Buyers can see more information about a seller and also see whether anyone in their networks has purchased, shared or commented on an item from a specific seller, rather than anonymity or simple profiles on sites like eBay and Craigslist.As for sellers, Copious has a social pricing mechanism that enables a seller to offer buyers discounts for sharing listings on Facebook and for following the seller on Copious.Jonathan Ehrlich, Copious co-founder and former Facebook head of marketing, told technology blog TechCrunch that the site is centralized around using social data as a signal to help users understand and trust other parties.According to Copious, the startup founded in January 2011 has raised two million U.S. dollars in funding from Foundation Capital, Google Ventures, Blackberry Partners Fund and a number of Silicon Valley angel investors.Also on Wednesday, Christopher Payne, vice president and head of eBay North America, delivered a keynote speech at the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition 2011 in San Diego, revealing some features eBay is launching during the social trend.One feature will enable users to log in their Facebook account on eBay's homepage to get product recommendations based on one's purchasing history and things they have "liked" on their Facebook page. Another feature will allow users to post multiple products on their Facebook page to get their friends' opinions and ask them to vote for the final purchase.EBay has been stepping up its social efforts, and Payne said on Wednesday that social is a top-level initiative for Internet retailers. Last month, eBay hired former Yahoo executive Don Bradford to lead its social commerce efforts. Last November, it launched Group Gifts service, enabling users to chip in to buy a gift for someone.A research by Adgregate Market in March showed that more brand websites are losing traffic to their Facebook pages. The study revealed that the "Facebook stores" of most Internet retailers are more efficient at acquiring visitors, indicating social commerce is poised to take off.Although the idea of social commerce is still new, more companies are trying to seize the opportunity in their own moves.There are many other companies taking the social commerce model. Oodle, the exclusive provider of classified ads on the Facebook Marketplace, rolled out a series of social features last December to make more money from social classifieds.In February, Payvment Inc. launched a Facebook Mall, where consumers can shop for more than 1.2 million products among 60,000 retailers in a single shopping cart.Yardsellr, which is often called "an eBay for Facebook," allows sellers to list items at fixed prices in different categories called "blocks," such as jewelry and purses. Prospective buyers can "like" the "blocks" they are interested in on the Yardsellr website or its Facebook page, and then they will get Facebook news feed if a seller has something to offer in the category.Yardsellr said 1.5 million people were following its "blocks" by late December 2010 and the number of new followers is growing by 20,000 daily.

来源：资阳报