濮阳东方医院治疗阳痿评价好收费低(濮阳东方医院妇科网络挂号) (今日更新中)

WASHINGTON, April 20 (Xinhua) -- Those childhood music lessons could pay off decades later -- even for those who no longer play an instrument -- by keeping the mind sharper as people age, according to a preliminary study published by the American Psychological Association (APA).The study recruited 70 healthy adults age 60 to 83 who were divided into groups based on their levels of musical experience. The musicians performed better on several cognitive tests than individuals who had never studied an instrument or learned how to read music, according to the research findings published Wednesday online in the APA journal Neuropsychology."Musical activity throughout life may serve as a challenging cognitive exercise, making your brain fitter and more capable of accommodating the challenges of aging," said lead researcher Brenda Hanna-Pladdy, a clinical neuropsychologist at the University of Kansas Medical Center. "Since studying an instrument requires years of practice and learning, it may create alternate connections in the brain that could compensate for cognitive declines as we get older."The three groups of study participants included individuals with no musical training; with one to nine years of musical study; or with at least 10 years of musical training. All of the participants had similar levels of education and fitness and didn' t show any evidence of Alzheimer's disease.All of the musicians were amateurs who began playing an instrument at about 10 years of age. More than half played the piano while approximately a quarter had studied woodwind instruments such as the flute or clarinet. Smaller numbers performed with stringed instruments, percussion or brass instruments.The high-level musicians who had studied the longest performed the best on the cognitive tests, followed by the low-level musicians and non-musicians, revealing a trend relating to years of musical practice. The high-level musicians had statistically significant higher scores than the non-musicians on cognitive tests relating to visuospatial memory, naming objects and cognitive flexibility, or the brain's ability to adapt to new information.The brain functions measured by the tests typically decline as the body ages and more dramatically deteriorate in neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. The results "suggest a strong predictive effect of high musical activity throughout the lifespan on preserved cognitive functioning in advanced age," the study stated.Half of the high-level musicians still played an instrument at the time of the study, but they didn't perform better on the cognitive tests than the other advanced musicians who had stopped playing years earlier. This suggests that the duration of musical study was more important than whether musicians continued playing at an advanced age, Hanna-Pladdy says."Based on previous research and our study results, we believe that both the years of musical participation and the age of acquisition are critical," Hanna-Pladdy says. "There are crucial periods in brain plasticity that enhance learning, which may make it easier to learn a musical instrument before a certain age and thus may have a larger impact on brain development."The preliminary study was correlational, meaning that the higher cognitive performance of the musicians couldn't be conclusively linked to their years of musical study. More research is needed to explore that possible link.

SAN FRANCISCO, April 5 (Xinhua) -- The appeal of tablet computer and electronic-book reader (e-reader) has been giving a boost to semiconductor market as sales of chips for such devices surged in 2010 and keeps growing, market research firm International Data Corp. (IDC) said on Tuesday.A new IDC report showed that worldwide revenues for media tablet and e-reader semiconductors grew by over 2,000 percent to 3. 3 billion U.S. dollars in 2010 as semiconductor suppliers enabled original equipment manufacturers to bring new products to market less than 8 months after Apple Inc. launched its iPad tablet.According to IDC's definition, media tablets are devices with color displays larger than 5-inch and smaller than 14-inch, running lightweight operating systems and able to be based on either x86 or ARM processors."The opportunity for semiconductors in media tablets and e- readers has exploded and semiconductor suppliers are scrambling to bring to market semiconductor and software platforms to enable these products," Michael Palma, a senior research analyst at IDC, said in a statement.Looking forward, IDC said it expects media tablet and e-reader semiconductor revenues to grow by 120 percent year over year in 2011, predicting that the market will be boosted by the arrival of a new version of Google Inc.'s Android operating system, dual core processors and increased bandwidth."For the next several years, we will see rapid innovation cycles for products launched into the marketplace and semiconductor suppliers will continue to satisfy evolving end user requirements over the coming years," Palma noted.

WASHINGTON, May 2 (Xinhua) -- Rice originated in China, a team of U.S. genome researchers has concluded in a study tracing back thousands of years of evolutionary history through large-scale gene re-sequencing.Their findings, which appear Monday in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), indicate that domesticated rice may have first appeared as far back as approximately 9,000 years ago in the Yangtze Valley of China. Previous research suggested domesticated rice may have two points of origin -- India as well as China.Asian rice, Oryza sativa, is one of world's oldest crop species. It is also a very diverse crop, with tens of thousands of varieties known throughout the world. Two major subspecies of rice -- japonica and indica -- represent most of the world's varieties. Sushi rice, for example, is a type of japonica, while most of the long-grain rice in risottos are indica.Because rice is so diverse, its origins have been the subject of scientific debate. One theory -- a single-origin model -- suggests that indica and japonica were domesticated once from the wild rice O. rufipogon.Another -- a multiple-origin model -- proposes that these two major rice types were domesticated separately and in different parts of Asia. The multiple-origin model has gained currency in recent years as biologists have observed significant genetic differences between indica and japonica, and several studies examining the evolutionary relationships among rice varieties supported more than domestication in both India and China.In the PNAS study, the researchers re-assessed the evolutionary history, or phylogeny, of domesticated rice using previously published datasets, some of which have been used to argue that indica and japonica rice have separate origins. Using more modern computer algorithms, however, the researchers concluded these two species have the same origin because they have a closer genetic relationship to each other than to any wild rice species found in either India or China.In addition, the study's authors examined the phylogeny of domesticated rice by re-sequencing 630 gene fragments on selected chromosomes from a diverse set of wild and domesticated rice varieties. Using new modeling techniques, which had previously been used to look at genomic data in human evolution, their results showed that the gene sequence data was more consistent with a single origin of rice.In the study, the investigators also used a "molecular clock" of rice genes to see when rice evolved. Depending on how the researchers calibrated their clock, they pinpointed the origin of rice at possibly 8,200 years ago, while japonica and indica split apart from each other about 3,900 years ago. The study's authors pointed out that these molecular dates were consistent with archaeological studies.Archaeologists have uncovered evidence in the last decade for rice domestication in the Yangtze Valley beginning approximately 8, 000 to 9,000 years ago while domestication of rice in the India's Ganges region was around about 4,000 years ago."As rice was brought in from China to India by traders and migrant farmers, it likely hybridized extensively with local wild rice," explained New York University biologist Michael Purugganan, one of the study's co-authors. "So domesticated rice that we may have once thought originated in India actually has its beginnings in China."

SAN FRANCISCO, April 20 (Xinhua) -- Apple Inc. on Wednesday reported record second fiscal quarter results that blow out analysts'expectations, citing strong demands for its products.For its fiscal 2011 second quarter ended on March 26, Apple posted net income of 5.99 billion U.S dollars or 6.4 dollars per share, compared with 3.07 billion, or 3.33 dollars per share a year ago. Its revenue reached 24.67 billion dollars, compare with 13.5 billion in the same period a year earlier.Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters gave an average estimate of 5.35 dollars earning per share on revenue of 23.3 billion."With quarterly revenue growth of 83 percent and profit growth of 95 percent, we're firing on all cylinders," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We will continue to innovate on all fronts throughout the remainder of the year."As the most valuable business for the company, Apple sold 18.65 million iPhones in the second quarter, representing 113 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. In February, Apple announced that iPhone4 would come on Verizon network, enabling it to attract some 90 million Verizon subscribers to adopt the popular smartphone.The company sold 3.76 million Macs during the quarter, a 28 percent increase over the year-ago quarter, and 9.02 million iPods during the quarter, representing a 17 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.The company also sold 4.69 million iPads during the quarter, which is below analysts' projection. Analysts said Apple could have sold more tablets without supply constraints.Wall Street analysts estimated sales of iPad to reach about 6 million in the fiscal second quarter, alongside about 16 million iPhones and 3-4 million Macs.Apple also reported a gross margin of 41.4 percent compared to 41.7 percent in the year-ago quarter. Analyst said the decline of Apple's gross margins can be attributed to two reasons. One reason is the introduction of iPad in 2010 as it is a lower gross margin product than the iPhone. The other is the decline of iPhone margins over years.Supply chain related issues have been analysts' concern in the past quarter as Apple indicated in the Q1 earnings conference call that it could have sold more iPhones and faced some supply related issues. Meanwhile, the Japanese earthquake created more supply related issues for the company as its Japanese suppliers Mitsubishi Gas Chemical and Toshiba are both temporarily shut down to assess damage from the natural disaster.For the third fiscal quarter, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer gave an estimated revenue of about 23 billion and profit of 5.03 dollars per share.

来源：资阳报