10 Reasons Why Cats Are Better Than Dogs

If you happen to tell a cat lover that a dog makes a better pet, then be prepared for a heated debate. While it’s true that most pet lovers think that this is still an open question, there are several indisputable scientific facts that clearly show that cats have the edge. For instance, according to a recent research, the number of people who own pet cats in the United States is somewhat higher compared to the number of those with dogs as pets. Also, cats are currently the most popular pet in the entire world. In fact, it’s pretty fascinating to point out that good number of die-hard dog lovers have inched towards the light of the feline side. Basically, this means that you will stand a better chance of winning the argument that cats are indeed the most preferred furred companion, but if you base it on the following 10 reasons why cats are better than dogs. 

                              

1. Cats treat your guests politely: They won’t maul your guests

It is quite evident that the moment your guest steps through the door, a dog will start barking and pawing at him/her. As a matter of fact, your visitor’s clothes might become covered with dog hair and muddy paw prints that might make him/her feel offended. Fortunately, having a cat as your pet helps ensure that your guests will be treated more politely considering the fact cats often take time to observe new arrivals from afar before acknowledging them with a tail twitch and a cautious once-over.

2. Cats have immaculate hygiene: They are not filthy and smelly like dogs

There is nothing that can scare away your guests as well as your friends than a filthy and smelly dog. Unlike dogs that have a behavior of rolling around in piles of dirt and garbage, cats spend most of their time self-grooming. Ideally, they are fastidious self-groomers, and take care to be clean and odor-free at all times. Additionally, with daily shampooing and brushing, your pet cat can shed somewhat little fur. Essentially, this is one of the key reasons why most women believe that cats are better than dogs.

3. Silence is golden

A cat can save its precious meows to situations when it requires your attention. For instance, if a cat is feeling hungry or rather uncomfortable, it will tend to meow, but not loudly as a dog’s bark. However, this is not the case with a dog since it can bark hysterically at nearly everything or anyone causing distress to both your family and neighbors. With a pet cat, your neighbor will never call you in the middle of the night to complain that your cat is meowing loudly.

4. Cats do not need to be walked or exercised

A dog will tend to be more aggressive if it doesn’t get enough exercise, and to make it worse, it will try to resist any form of exercise like walking, especially if it’s not well trained. Nonetheless, cats can walk themselves, and hence you don’t have to drag your pet around the park when you have better things to do. Dogs must be walked or exercised several times in a day, no matter if it’s blazing hot, snowing, raining or sleeting.

5. A cats is a natural insect repellent

Cats are masters of extermination, particular when it comes to repelling insect or any other winged living things, and will tend to climb walls to dislodge them from their hiding places. It is quite fascinating to note that even lazy fly sneaking in via a screen door has limited chance of survival when you have a cat around your home. Dogs hardly earn their keep because they fail in keeping pests like insects and mice at bay.

6. Food costs: It costs less to feed a cat than a dog

Actually, the cost of pet food is one of the most important considerations that homeowners make nowadays when selecting a pet, especially if it entails a choice between a cat and a dog. Dogs must be fed on high-quality dog food and healthy dog treats, but cats only require a few cans of premium cat food that can last for several days. Basically, the cost of feeding a dog is usually very high depending on the size and energy level of your dog.

7. Cats are more independent than dogs

It is usually quite difficult for most homeowners to leave a dog alone at home without someone to keep an eye on it. This can be attributed to the fact that the dog’s aggressiveness might make it feel restless, and can even cause unnecessary damage to you property as a consequence of separation anxiety. Cats need less care, and thus you can leave them at home for long periods of time without having to worry about any damage to your property.

8. Cats make the best pets if you live in an apartment

Whether you live in a small or big apartment, cats need less space for their supplies, and it is intriguing to mention that you can even get along quite well with up to 3 cats in a small apartment. In fact, many landlords prefer tenants with cats than those with dogs. This can be attributed to the fact that less damage repair will be needed if you move out because of scratched walls and doors, stained carpet, and the need for a completes painting.

9. Cats enjoy bringing gifts to their loved ones

Cats are hunters at heart, and they are simply miniature versions of lions, cheetahs and tigers. As much as it’s true that a cat cant down a wildebeest, it can settle to smaller prey like mole, bird or unidentified critter part. The most interesting thing with a cat’s hunting is that it can bring their hunt to you as proof of its devotion to you. A dog can hunt a whole day, but it will present you with a loud bark.

10. Kittens are cuter than pups

It is pretty remarkable that both puppies and kittens are adorable, but the introduction of the “cute factor” puts more weight onto the latter. Actually, this explains why women most women prefer buying puppies for their children as gifts.

I personally love equally dogs and cats, as well as other pets! But I understand that sometimes cats are better than dogs. What do you think? Are there any other reasons cats are better than dogs? Please share your thoughts in the comments section!

Source: http://pets.amerikanki.com

A New Solution That Stops Snoring and Lets You Sleep

                                  

If you’re like most Americans you probably don’t get eight hours sleep each night.

But, if you also constantly feel exhausted, experience headaches for no obvious reason or have high blood pressure, you could have a more serious problem.

That’s because these can all be the result of snoring—which is, in turn, the most common symptom of a potentially serious health problem—obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).

While most people think of snoring as a minor annoyance, research shows it can be hazardous to your health.  That’s because for over 18 million Americans it’s related to obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). People who suffer from OSA repeatedly and unknowingly stop breathing during the night due to a complete or partial obstruction of their airway.  It occurs when the jaw, throat, and tongue muscles relax, blocking the airway used to breathe.  The resulting lack of oxygen can last for a minute or longer, and occur hundreds of times each night.  

Thankfully, most people wake when a complete or partial obstruction occurs, but it can leave you feeling completely exhausted.  OSA has also been linked to a host of health problems including:

• Acid reflux
• Frequent nighttime urination
• Memory loss
• Stroke
• Depression
• Diabetes
• Heart attack

People over 35 are at higher risk.

OSA can be expensive to diagnosis and treat, and is not always covered by insurance.  A sleep clinic will require an overnight visit (up to $5,000).  Doctors then analyze the data and prescribe one of several treatments.  These may require you to wear uncomfortable CPAP devices that force air through your nose and mouth while you sleep to keep your airways open, and may even include painful surgery.

Fortunately, there is now a comfortable, far less costly and invasive treatment option available.  A recent case study published by Eastern Virginia Medical School's Division of Sleep Medicine in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine concludes that wearing a simple chinstrap while you sleep can be an effective treatment for OSA.

The chin strap, which is now available from a company called MySnoringSolution, works by supporting the lower jaw and tongue, preventing obstruction of the airway.  It’s made from a high-tech, lightweight, and super-comfortable material.  Thousands of people have used the MySnoringSolution chinstrap to help relieve their snoring symptoms, and they report better sleeping, and better health overall because of it.

Source: http://knoworthy.com

Self-healing plastics that will repair your car

New York: A scratch on your car need no longer cause you distress - it will soon “heal” itself. 

Researchers have developed a plastic that “heals” on its own by restoring the initial molecular structure after any damage. 

The novel polymer network self-heals within a few minutes at relatively low temperatures, the researchers have contended. 

“Our method does not need any catalyst, no additive is required,” said professor Christopher Barner-Kowollik of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in the US. 

Barner-Kowollik’s researchers used the possibility of cross-linking functionalised fibres or small molecules by a reversible chemical reaction for the production of self-healing materials. The team took about four years to develop the novel polymer network. 

These so-called switchable networks can be decomposed into their initial constituents and re-assembled again after the damage, the researchers say in an article on their findings published in the journal Advanced Materials.

At comparably low temperatures from 50°C to 120°C, the network exhibits excellent healing properties within a few minutes, according to the study. 

Using the healing cycle developed by them, the KIT researchers have found a large number of intermolecular compounds that close again within a very short term during cooling. 

Mechanical tests, such as tensile and viscosity tests, confirmed that the original properties of the material can be restored completely.

“We succeeded in demonstrating that test specimens after first healing were bound even more strongly than before,” Barner-Kowollik was quoted as saying in the article.

Source: http://goo.gl/UDuUAV

Global warming is not due to natural factors

Expert Says ..



Washington: An analysis of temperature data since 1500 rules out the possibility that global warming in the industrial era is just a natural fluctuation in the earth's climate. 

The study, by McGill University physics professor Shaun Lovejoy, represents a new approach to the question of whether global warming in the industrial era has been caused largely by man-made emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

Rather than using complex computer models to estimate the effects of greenhouse-gas emissions, Lovejoy examines historical data to assess the competing hypothesis: that warming over the past century is due to natural long-term variations in temperature. 

"This study will be a blow to any remaining climate-change deniers," Lovejoy said. 

"Their two most convincing arguments - that the warming is natural in origin, and that the computer models are wrong - are either directly contradicted by this analysis, or simply do not apply to it," he said.

Lovejoy's study applies statistical methodology to determine the probability that global warming since 1880 is due to natural variability. 

His conclusion: the natural-warming hypothesis may be ruled out "with confidence levels great than 99 percent, and most likely greater than 99.9 percent." 

To assess the natural variability before much human interference, the new study uses "multi-proxy climate reconstructions" developed by scientists in recent years to estimate historical temperatures, as well as fluctuation-analysis techniques from nonlinear geophysics. 

The climate reconstructions take into account a variety of gauges found in nature, such as tree rings, ice cores, and lake sediments. And the fluctuation-analysis techniques make it possible to understand the temperature variations over wide ranges of time scales. 

For the industrial era, Lovejoy's analysis uses carbon-dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels as a proxy for all man-made climate influences - a simplification justified by the tight relationship between global economic activity and the emission of greenhouse gases and particulate pollution, he said. 

"This allows the new approach to implicitly include the cooling effects of particulate pollution that are still poorly quantified in computer models," he added.



Source: http://goo.gl/GOzDaF

NASA 'flying saucer' for Mars to land in Hawaii

In June, while beachgoers in Hawaii sit blissfully unaware, a flying saucer will descend over the island of Kauai. This is not a trailer for an alien invasion movie – NASA is gearing up to conduct the first test flight of a disc-shaped spacecraft designed to safely land heavy loads and one day people on the surface of Mars.

The Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) will be lofted into the stratosphere from the US Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai. The inflatable technology is intended to help slow down vehicles after they enter the thin Martian atmosphere at supersonic speeds.

"It may seem obvious, but the difference between landing and crashing is stopping," says Allen Chen at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who oversaw the successful landing of the one-tonne Curiosity rover in 2012. "We really only have two options for stopping at Mars: rockets and aerodynamic drag."

Inflatable spacecraft

Until recently, NASA had used parachutes and airbags for most robotic landings on Mars, starting with the Viking mission in 1976. But the heavier the load, the harder it is to come in softly. For the car-sized Curiosity, NASA invented an ambitious system called the sky crane, which combined parachutes with landing gear powered by retro-rockets that could lower the rover to the surface on tethers.

However, Curiosity pushed the weight limits of that technology, and future human missions could require 40 to 100 metric tonnes per mission. Such weight can't be adequately slowed by parachutes in the Martian air, which is just 1 per cent as dense as Earth's. Unfortunately, rocket-powered landings are out of the question, too, as the atmosphere is still just thick enough to buffet incoming spacecraft with more turbulence than thrusters can accommodate.

The LDSD design solves this quandary using a balloon-like decelerator and a giant parachute twice the size of Curiosity's. The decelerator would attach to the outer rim of a capsule-like entry vehicle. When the capsule is travelling at about Mach 3.5, the device would rapidly inflate like a Hawaiian pufferfish to increase surface area. The added air resistance would slow the capsule down to Mach 2, at which point the 33.5-metre parachute could safely deploy.

Bridge to Mars

To simulate Mars's thin atmosphere on Earth, the team in Hawaii will first lift a test vehicle fitted with the LDSD system to about 37 kilometres above the Pacific Ocean using a high-altitude balloon. The craft will detach and fire a small rocket to reach a height of 55 kilometres, about halfway to the edge of space. As it falls back to Earth, the system will inflate and moments later the parachute will fire. The saucer should gently splash down in open water.

NASA has three more test flights in Hawaii planned for the LDSD, and mission managers will review the results before deciding on next steps. In addition to landing human missions on Mars, the system could help robotic craft safely land in Martian mountains or highlands. These areas have even less air available for slowing down a spacecraft via drag and so have been inaccessible with current technology.

"Personally, I think it's a game-changer. You could take a mass to the surface equal to something like 1 to 10 Curiosities," says Robert Braun at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. "Think about it like a bridge for humans to Mars. This is the next step in a sequence of technologies that would need to be developed."

Source: http://goo.gl/r1YR90

Digitising cave art will prevent it being lost forever

Virtual records of fragile archaeological sites will preserve them for future generations when it's not possible to defend them from the elements

A RESCUE mission is underway on the Scottish coast north of Edinburgh. Jonathan's Cave, with its rare trove of 1500-year-old rock art, risks being flooded by the sea or buried in a landslide. But rather than fight the elements researchers have opted to save the cave by putting the whole thing on the internet.

A team led by Joanna Hambly, an archaeologist at the University of St Andrews, UK, is using a series of laser and visual scanning techniques to recreate a virtual cave in minute detail.

Starting last year, the team brought in a low-flying drone to shoot aerial footage of the outside of the cave and the surrounding land. Lasers then scanned the cave, both inside and out, to build a 3D model of the site on a millimetre-scale.

The team also scanned the carvings several times using a variety of techniques. In one, a camera snapped images of the walls as they were lit from many different angles. And another approach, called structured light scanning, projected different patterns onto the walls and then read distortions in the patterns caused by the rock surface. This method provides detail down to the level of 100 micrometres – fine enough resolution to examine each individual hammer blow that made up the carvings.

"We're throwing everything at it. There is a danger that we may lose these caves," says team member Tom Dawson of the non-profit trust Scottish Coastal Archaeology and the Problem of Erosion.

An online walk-through of Jonathan's Cave will go live later this month. As well as clicking to move through the cave, you will be able to use the mouse cursor like a torch to illuminate more than 30 different carvings left by the Picts, who lived in Scotland during the Iron Age. These include images of men and animals, Christian symbols and the earliest known depiction of a Scottish boat. If all goes well, the team hopes to recreate the process for other nearby caves that are also in danger of disappearing.

"One of the objectives is to see which technique is most effective at recording heritage like this," says Hambly.

The project is not the first to create a virtual record of fragile archaeological sites.

"This scarce resource is being lost forever," says Frank Weaver, a documentary filmmaker who has been using Microsoft's Kinect depth-sensing cameras to record rock art in Paraguay. "What better way to save it for future studies and appreciation than online?"

Katherine Tsiang, an art historian at the University of Chicago, has used similar methods to digitally record historic caves in China. But she cautions that even high-tech archives are vulnerable to becoming outdated, or simply forgotten about. "All of this digital stuff isn't permanent unless it's carefully maintained," she says.

Source: http://goo.gl/Zky8g1

Meet your unborn child

A service that creates digital embryos by virtually mixing two people's DNA will allow parents to screen out genetic disorders – and perhaps much more

WILL my baby be healthy? It's a question that concerns every prospective parent. Now a service that creates digital embryos by virtually mixing two people's DNA will give a clearer glimpse of their possible child's health, and perhaps much more – before it has been conceived.

The Matchright technology will be available in two US fertility clinics later this month, allowing people to screen out sperm donors who, when their genes are combined with those of the intended mother, could increase the risk of a child inheriting genetic diseases. The company that markets the technology, GenePeeks, hopes to expand worldwide.

But the technology's patent also includes a list of traits that aren't necessarily related to health – such as eye and skin pigmentation, height and waist size – raising concerns that it could be used to select embryos on the basis of more superficial characteristics. "It covers any disease or any trait that has a genetic influence," says Lee Silver at Princeton University, who co-foundedGenePeeks – even those where the genetic basis has yet to be discovered.

To find out how the technology may affect parents' future choices, New Scientist sent the patent to people working in reproductive health.

The priority should be medical problems, says Martina Cornel of the European Society of Human Genetics. This is what GenePeeks plans to do. It intends to use the system to identify rare conditions such as cystic fibrosis and Tay-Sachs disease, which are passed on to a child when both parents carry a mutation in a single gene.

Screening for genetic disorders usually involves sequencing the DNA of the prospective parents. GenePeeks takes this a step further: algorithms are fed this information and use it to digitally recreate the process of genetic recombination – the mixing of genetic information between a sperm and an egg. This allows them to look at the genetic make-up of the possible embryos.

Before a woman selects a donor from a participating fertility clinic, the Matchright algorithms, which Silver developed, are run thousands of times for each donor. This produces up to 10,000 simulated embryos per pairing. These are sequenced to look for mutations in single genes that can cause some 500 rare diseases, and then used to work out the disease risk in the hypothetical child that would develop from that particular partnership. The woman, who pays $1995 for the service, then gets a list of "safer" donors from which to choose.

To know which mutations to look for, the software searches databases of genes linked to different conditions. To validate the method, the company used the software to digitally pair anonymous men and women whose genomes were sequenced as part of the 1000 Genomes Project. GenePeeks then screened their virtual embryos and compared the incidence of predicated disease to that in the general population.

"These studies confirmed the system's ability to accurately predict a future child's risk profile," says co-founder Anne Morriss. However, only when a critical mass of children are born using the system will its true power become apparent. And even then it's still a game of probabilities – you might shift the likelihood of passing on traits by screening out certain donors, but it doesn't rule out the effect of spontaneous mutations that might arise during development.

Complex disorders

Most IVF clinics already test donors for about a dozen genetic disorders arising from single gene mutations, says Geeta Nargund, a fertility consultant at the Create Fertility clinic in London. They also take a family history and carry out general health checks.

The new technique will screen for more diseases, which everyone New Scientist spoke to agreed could be a lifesaver. "[These disorders] can be catastrophic not only for the child but also for the family," says Dagan Wellsat the University of Oxford.

But diseases caused by mutations to a single gene only affect 4 per cent of the population. Next, GenePeeks says it would like to use the software to screen for complex disorders that are affected by clusters of genes, such as schizophrenia, or complex diseases with a genetic basis, such as breast cancer.

Such conditions will be harder to predict, says Wells. "We don't always have a good understanding of how all these genes interact. And some are modified significantly by the environment."

Eventually the company would also like to offer the technology to couples hoping to conceive naturally, says Morriss. This means they could analyse their disease risk and make more informed decisions about their future, she says. The patent also includes the possibility it could be used by those sizing up potential partners on dating sites.

These intentions, coupled with the long list of traits on the patent rung alarm bells with some of the scientists we spoke to.

Whether or not the technology works for the more complex conditions and traits, the concern is that practices like this will change people's expectations about being able to select traits in their future children, says Marcy Darnovskyof the non-profit Center for Genetics and Society in Berkley, California. "It has the potential to change people's experience of what it means to be a parent."

But Hank Greely, a biomedical ethics specialist at Stanford Law School points out that just because certain traits are in the patent doesn't mean they will be used. Indeed, Morriss is adamant that the firm doesn't intend to use the system for non-medical purposes.

Last year, a similar patent was granted to personal genetics company 23andMe for their "inheritance calculator" – software that allows couples to see the traits they might pass on to their children. The patent specifically mentioned it could be used in fertility clinics to allow clients to select for certain non-medical traits in their donors. After a strong backlash, 23andMe stated it wouldn't be used in such circumstances.

However, there are situations where it might be helpful for parents to select certain physical traits. "It may be in the interest of the future child to resemble its social parents," Cornel says. For example, one part of the patent describes how the technology might be used by infertile or gay couples to get an idea of the traits their genetic children would have, allowing them to select a donor that produced the closest match.

"Where it is more ethically challenging is when you expand beyond couples in desperate need for a donor, to couples that are just interested in more trivial things," says Wells.

Silver says that what the patent is used for in future will be a business decision. He also says that owning the patent means the firm can prevent others from using the technology in unintended ways.

"This is such a sensitive issue because we are on the cusp of being able to do very extreme things with the biological knowledge that is being developed," says Darnovsky. "It is important that people understand what the technical possibilities are."

Because the simulated embryos are a new concept, it's not yet clear who will regulate the technology. "There need to be processes and specialists who can deal with it," says Nargund. Whatever happens, Darnovsky believes that the future of the technology should be open for discussion: "It depends a lot on how we approach it from a social perspective. If we want to go down that road we could find ourselves with new inequalities that are written into the genome."

Source: http://goo.gl/WmYbfV