British Airways to allow in-flight texting

Posted by Kent German

Go ahead, send that all-important text.

(Credit: Airbus)

British Airways announced this week that it would initiate limited cell phone use on an upcoming route between London and New York City. Voice calls will not be permitted, but passengers will be allowed to send and receive text messages and e-mails.

The airline will limit the service to twice-daily flights between London City Airport and New York's JFK that are due to start in September. The all-business class route is flown by a narrow-body Airbus A318 aircraft that must make a stop in Ireland on the westbound leg. The configuration will allow for just 32 seats.

British Airways didn't disclose pricing for the service, but we wouldn't be surprised if it was included in the price of the business-class ticket. Though avoiding the trek to Heathrow may attract busy financial titans shuttling between The City and Wall Street, the price of a ticket is not expected to be cheap.

Other airlines have experimented with in-flight cell phone use, including Ryanair, Qantas, Air France, and Emirates. Only Emirates allows voice calls onboard, but other airlines, British Airways included, say they might permit in-flight talking, depending on passenger feedback.

(Source: Daily Telegraph via PhoneSccop)

Kent German is a senior editor for cell phone reviews at CNET. When he's not testing the newest handsets on the market, he's blogging about cell phone news for Crave. In his On Call column, he answers reader questions and gives his take on the rapidly changing mobile industry. E-mail Kent.

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Revealed: The 18th century guide to amputations, operations and other medical tips

A 300-year-old medical guide which provides an eye-watering insight into how operations were carried before anaesthetic was invented has been uncovered.

The pocket-sized book, which was written by French medical author Joseph Charriere in 1712, was regarded as a vital medical guide for surgeons in the 18th century.

The book, Treatise of the Operations of Surgery, sat gathering dust on a shelf in Staffordshire for years and was only re-discovered when handed into auctioneers last month.

The 300-year-old medical guide, which is up for auction next month, was regarded as a vital tool for surgeons in its day

One chapter gives graphic tips on what surgeons should do when amputating a leg and recommended patients bite down on a piece of wood for pain relief.

The book suggests that when operating on a leg to 'cut quick with a crooked knife before covering the stump with the remaining skin.'

And as surgeons didn't have the benefit of sophisticated medical research and MRI scans to determine how to proceed with surgery the book suggests letting the weather decide.

An extract reads: 'A favourable season for an operation is either Spring or Autumn. In the Spring, the blood is revived with greater heat whilst in the Autumn blood is calm.

'In the Winter the cold locks up the paws, hinders transpiration and the blood has not the vivacity required to animate our bodies.'

The rare guide also provided a lesson in stating the obvious, and advised that if the end of the tongue was cut off the patient would not be able to speak.

It was recently shown to an auctioneer at a book valuation day by a 70-year-old man whose grandfather had owned it in the 19th century.

The 6ins by 3ins book has been collecting dust on a shelf in the study of his home in Lichfield, Staffordshire.

It has been put up for sale at auction with a guide price of up to ?300 and is due to go under the hammer on February 19.

Surgery, such as this operation in the 1800s, would have been extremely painful and risky without the use of anestheic

Charles Hanson, of Hansons Auctioneers, said the book provided a fascinating insight into 18th century medical knowledge.

'The book was brought in to one of our valuation days,' he said.

'A member of the public came in with these old bibles and scriptures and encyclopaedia and at the bottom of the pile was this rather interesting little book.

'Given its age, its condition is superb. The book would have proved invaluable to surgeons in its day - it would have been like a bible for them to use and refer to when operating.'

Undergoing an operation was an extremely painful and deadly experience until ether anaesthetic was discovered in 1846.

The risk of dying from infection was greatly reduced from 1867 when Joseph Lister introduced carbolic acid as an effective anti-sceptic.

The book states: 'If the wound be only in the flesh you may bathe it with brandy and cover the part with a compressed dip in a warm wine quickened with spir vini.

'If the wound is to the nervous parts you can dissolve sugar candy, camphire and myrrh in it.'

Howard Ellis, professor of surgery at the Westminster Medical School and author of A History of Surgery, said having an operation was the very last resort for a patient in the 18th century.

He said: 'Back then you would only submit to an operation if you were in agonising pain or if you had something that was going to kill you. Most people just refused to have surgery.

'Having a limb sawn off without anaesthetic is just unimaginable. The surgeon would probably have just said "stick with it, this is going to hurt", they may have had some wood to bite down on.

'And yet having gone through that awful ordeal there was then a very high risk of death from infection.

'The dates of 1846 and 1867 represented a tremendous revolution in surgery and not very much has changed since then, it is just more refined.'

Prof Ellis said it was quite common for surgeons to write about their practises and medical students and fellow surgeons used their works as text books.

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How memories form, fade, and persist over time

By Elizabeth Landau

(CNN) -- What was the name of that guy with that stuff in that place with those things? Don't you remember?

Scientists have found mechanisms for how the brain creates short-term and long-term memories.

We all suffer occasional lapses in memory. Some people suffer severe neurological conditions, such as Alzheimer's, that rob them of their ability to form memories or remember recent events.

Three new studies shed light on the way the brain forms, stores and retrieves memories. Experts say they could have implications for people with certain mental disorders.

When did it happen?

Newly born brain cells, thousands of which are generated each day, help "time stamp" memories, according to a computer simulation by scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, and the University of Queensland in Australia. The research was published in the journal Neuron.

These cells do not record an exact, absolute date -- such as January 28, 2009 -- but instead encode memories that occur around the same time similarly. In this way, the mind knows whether a memory happened before, after or alongside something else.

Neuroscientists believe that if the same neurons are active during two events, a memory linking the two may be formed.

For example, you might remember that, on a day a few years ago, you went to a restaurant and then went to a baseball game. Researchers think the same neurons are active during both events, which results in an association with each other when you remember them.

In fact, the same young neurons respond to everything that happens for several weeks, said two of the study's co-authors, professor Fred Gage and graduate student Brad Aimone from the Salk Institute. While associations are known to form based on sight, smell, and other senses -- you may remember last year's baseball game through the taste of a hot dog today, for example -- their computer model shows that the young brain cells also link through time.

"Even though these young cells are only a small percentage of the overall circuit, we believe that their effect may be enough to give people the sense of "this happened around the same time as" something else, Gage and Aimone wrote in an e-mail.

The findings could have promising implications for diseases that involve a neurogenesis deficit -- in other words, a lack of new brain cells being born -- which happens in conditions such as depression, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, the authors said.

A therapy that boosts the creation of neurons may alleviate some memory problems. Potential therapies include medications, a special diet or even running, since previous research has shown that running increases the creation of neurons, Aimone said.

The computer simulation showing the time-stamp effect in the study is novel and original, said Joe Manns, assistant professor of psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. It also explains why, for example, you recognize your car both when it's very dirty and very clean, and why you can remember where you parked your car today even though you had a different space yesterday.

Storing in the short-term

You may remember reading this exact sentence in a few minutes, but not in a few days. That's because our brains handle both long-term memory, which enables us to recall events from the distant past, and short-term memory, also called working memory, which encompasses the most transient, fleeting memories.

Research in mice published in the February issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience found that an individual nerve cell in the front part of the brain can hold traces of memories on its own for as long as a minute, possibly even longer, said senior author Don Cooper, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

This idea, that an individual nerve cell can hold a trace memory, is also related to drug addiction, the study found. By giving cocaine to mice in the laboratory, the researchers explained why the drug impairs short term memory: Cocaine causes a buildup of dopamine, a brain chemical that decreases the individual nerve cells' ability to hold moment-to-moment information.

The study is an important contribution to the field of working memory because it shows the molecular mechanisms involved in the process, said Michael Kuhar, professor of neuropharmacology at Emory University, who was not involved with the research.

One distant but possible implication is that medication focusing on the neuron receptors investigated in this study would help someone who has serious problems with attention and executive decisions, he said.

Although the study was conducted on mice, when speaking about individual nerve cells, it's reasonable to say that an isolated mouse nerve cell is the same as a human one, Kuhar said. The two differ more markedly in complicated neural pathways and circuits, he said.

Holding for the long term

So, what about remembering things in the long run?

Research in the Journal of Neuroscience this week supports the idea that different brain structures are involved in forming short-term and long-term memories.

The authors took brain images of participants as they answered questions about events that happened in the last 30 years. The hippocampus, a brain region known to be involved in short-term memory, and related structures were most active when participants recalled recent events. Activity in these regions declined for events older than one year, and remained low for events 13 to 30 years old.

Meanwhile, as memories got older activity increased in the frontal, temporal, and parietal cortices, located on the surface of the brain, researchers found. That means these regions may serve as long-term memory storage.

This model of memory structures make sense in the context of Alzheimer's disease, said study co-author Larry Squire, professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego. Alzheimer's patients often have trouble forming short-term memories, but less difficulty recalling older memories.

"It helps us understand that Alzheimer's disease begins with memory problems because the very same structures we're talking about here [the hippocampus and related structures] are the ones affected in the disease," he said.

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