American Drug Discovery

Poker and the Brain

Casper Botsford — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 10:11:11 +0000

Can playing poker improve your memory, problem solving ability, and other key cognitive functions? Of course it can! After all, there are no stupid champion poker players, as scientists have recently been able to prove. Here are just some of the ways in which playing poker sharpens the player’s mind.

Discipline

As the classic Kenny Rogers song The Gambler proclaims: “you have to know when to hold them/and know when to fold them”. Knowing when to place a bet and realizing it’s time to walk away requires a lot of mental discipline.

Concentration

Poker requires that a player makes use of all of their senses, deal with distractions, keep his or her adrenaline in check, carefully design a strategy, and observe the movements and moods of the other players.

Patience

Impulse control is a mental fortitude that is key to success in many different endeavours and poker is definitely no exception.

Logical Reasoning

Contrary to what the naysayers may believe, poker is not a game of luck. It’s a game of skill in which problem solving, probabilities, and analysis are all crucial components of success.

Set Reasonable Expectations

You aren’t going to win every hand you play, and so as an aspiring high-level player you need to learn to make smart decisions and manage risks.

Be Adaptive

Poker players need to be constantly able to change their strategies and adapt to situations. The player who always plays the same becomes predictable and easy prey for opponents.

Applied Psychology

If you can count cards then yes, you do have an adavantage in the poker playing arena. Nonetheless, even the most impressive mathematical savant will be absolutely useless in a game of Texas Hold’em (or any other popular variations of poker) if he lacks the ability to put himself into the mindset of his opponents. Thus, playing poker not only increases one’s IQ overall, but it also improves emotional intelligence, which is equally as vital.

Stay in control of your gambling with these top tips

Casper Botsford — Sat, 23 Feb 2019 11:43:51 +0000

Playing games that combine strategy and luck can be really beneficial for your health, allowing you to switch off from the stresses of the day, relax and enjoy yourself. For some though, the enjoyment of gambling becomes difficult to control. They begin to spend longer playing than they intended, and start to chase losses by gambling more. Follow these tips to keep your gambling within bounds, so it remains an enjoyable and beneficial pastime.

1. Set time boundaries

If you feel that your gambling is getting out of control, it’s important to set your own boundaries. Decide how long you’re going to play for. Some games and casinos have facilities for you to check how long your session has been. And when the time’s up – stop, whether you’re up or down.

2. Don’t chase losses

If you’ve been losing, don’t imagine that if you play for long enough, you’ll win it all back. The next spin on a slot for example, is not in any way influenced by what happened on previous spins. With games which have a larger strategy element, such as poker, it can be easier to manage a losing streak by following the rules of the game. That means only betting on strong hands, and folding early if you don’t have anything promising, so that you conserve cash.

3. Only play with spare cash

If you play with money that should be put aside for essentials such as your rent, you’ll panic if you lose the money. In any gambling game, losses are inevitable. You have to have enough of a bankroll that you’re only ever using about 5% or 10% in one session. That allows you to ride out a run of bad luck, without spending the rent money. So if you have $100, you should have a session limit of $5 to $10. Follow these rules, and gambling games should remain an enjoyable, relaxing entertainment.

The importance of natural sunlight

Casper Botsford — Wed, 09 Jan 2019 09:34:22 +0000

Our increasingly busy lives tend to keep us indoors a lot. During the winter months, it’s common for people to be indoors under artificial light from before dawn to after sundown. This can have a number of negative health effects. We need natural sunlight to stimulate the production of certain hormones, especially those involved in the sleep-wake cycle.Humans also need sunlight in order to produce sufficient vitamin D; this can be particularly difficult to achieve in colder climates. While artificial lighting systems have been deveopled that help replicate some of the effects of sunlight, they can’t do everything that sunlight does.Fortunately, there are solutions. The right lighting system can make a significant difference to your wellbeing; because of this, architects and designers are trying to incorporate new technologies into their buildings that allow sunlight to be used for lighting even in spaces with limited access to natural light. Simpler solutions include heliostats — essentially large mirrors that reflect light into gloomy spaces via windows or skylights. More sophisticated concepts include fibre-optic cables, leading from the exterior to the interior of the building or embedded in building materials. Parans, a Swedish company, is in the vanguard of these new technologies.Products offered by Parans include their SP4 sunlight collector system. This uses banks of lenses that collect even weak sunlight and channel it inside a building via fibre-optic cables. To make the most of every moment of natural light, the sunlight collectors move around to track the sun across the sky. Their Lumiere system uses fibre optic cables to create a hidden light source to brighted up rooms and corridors. Parans also offer hybrid solutions which combine natural light with an artificial boost for maximum effect. Using these innovative products, it’s hoped that more and more people will enjoy improved mood levels, better concentration and enchanced general health through the benefits of natural sunlight.

The Benefits of a Vegetarian Diet

Casper Botsford — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 08:19:05 +0000

Many individuals look for a healthier way of life, possibly due to stress or a busy lifestyle. There are easy ways to begin being healthier, such as: walking a few blocks extra each day, cycling to work or the shops, going swimming once a week and also opting for a healthier diet. Sometimes individuals start a healthier diet by replacing meat with vegetarian options several times a week.It is important when considering a change in diet to talk it through with a health professional such as your doctor, especially if you have any health issues to begin with, as they will know if the diet you are planning on trying out, is best for you.Everyday diets can often contain too many wrong fats, not enough wholegrains, and only a sparse amount of green leafy vegetables and fruit. Eating a properly balanced vegetarian diet can often help individuals feel and look healthier. Many diets these days include too much omega-6 compared to omega-3. Excessive amounts of omega-6 can contribute to depression, inflammation, and various diseases such as heart disease, asthma and more.Omega-6 can easily be found in beef, chicken and other meat, eggs, nuts, and vegetable oils. Omega-3 can be found easily in rapeseed oil, olive oil, peanut oil, walnuts and other nuts, chia seeds and other seeds, green leafy vegetables, and oily fish.If you look at where you can find omega-6 and where you can find omega-3 you begin to get a clearer picture of why a vegetarian or vegan diet can help maintain the right ratio of more omega-3 to omega-6.

Working Out to Become Happier

Casper Botsford — Sat, 27 Oct 2018 08:13:12 +0000

There’s plenty of information around about the physical benefits of exercise, but did you know that working out can also improve your mood and happiness?

How Does Working Out Make You Happier?

When you exert yourself, your brain makes chemicals called endorphins that give you an instant good feeling. This is because exercise places a certain amount of stress on your body, and your body releases endorphins to balance it out.Working out can also make you feel good in the longer term. First of all, a workout plan gives you goals to work towards do you want to be able to run a mile in five minutes? Do you want to improve your coordination? Achieving your workout goals feels great. Working out can also help you meet people, change up your routine and learn more about yourself.

How Do You Choose the Right Workout?

Everyone is different, so it’s very important to choose the workout that suits you best (and make sure you’ve cleared anything new you try with your doctor). Plenty of people give up on exercise because they think it has to be difficult and painful, but once you find the right thing, exercising will feel more like play than work.If you want to feel strong and powerful, try something like weight training or rowing. If you spend a lot of time sitting at a desk and you want to get outdoors more, try walking, running or cycling. If you love music, try dancing, synchronised swimming or ice skating. If you like working out with others, try joining a sports team.Whatever you try, start small and work up gradually, and you’ll soon see an impact on your mood and happiness.

Healthy Habits – How to Change

Casper Botsford — Wed, 24 Oct 2018 08:10:27 +0000

When you’re busy with work, family and other commitments, it’s easy to neglect your health, and developing healthy habits can feel daunting. Here are a few tips to make a change:1) Don’t try to change everything at once. If you start every January by deciding to eat better, drink less and exercise more, and slip back into your old ways by February, you’re not alone. Making lifestyle changes is difficult, and if you do too much at once you’re setting yourself up to fail. Choose one area to focus on each month, get good habits established, then focus on something else the next month.2) Don’t try to stop bad habits try to start good ones. It’s discouraging to feel like you’re always punishing yourself. See if you can frame your attempts positively instead of negatively. If you want to eat better, congratulate yourself when you eat more vegetables, instead of beating yourself up when you eat candy. If you’d like to stop smoking, see how long you can go without a cigarette. If you crack, just start the counter again and try to beat your record.3) Don’t hold yourself to impossible standards. The point of good habits is that you should be able to incorporate them into your lifestyle to feel better overall. If you’re juggling work and kids, it might be unrealistic to work out every single morning for an hour, and failing will just make you feel bad. A ten-minute workout might seem less impressive, but it’s much easier to maintain, and long-term healthy habits are much more important than occasional bursts of activity.

Safer Ways to Pay Online – Using Your Money in a Healthy and Safe Way When Shopping or Playing Online

Casper Botsford — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 09:10:56 +0000

Being that we live in a tech-driven world, digital payments have been on the rise. They are fast, convenient, not to mention, most online services and products come at a higher discounted price. Given how common security breaches have become, people are constantly looking for ways to stay safe when paying online, especially when it comes to online gambling. Some of the safer ways to pay online include:

Prepaid Credit Cards

A prepaid credit card requires you to load it with certain amounts of cash, after which it functions as a regular debit card. It can’t be traced back to you, plus, since they aren’t linked to your bank, any form of theft won’t drain your checking account.

Online Payment Services

As opposed to providing your bank account and credit card information to every website, you can keep all the information in one central place using third-party payment services. This reduces the number of places hackers can access your information, especially if you do business with numerous sites, including online stores, casinos, etc. There are plenty reputable online payment services such as PayPal, Google wallet, Payoneer, Amazon Pay, and Stripe. Most of these services offer buyer protection, making them just as safe as credit cards.

Mobile-payment Apps

Mobile-payment apps don’t require you to directly share credit card information with merchants. They work by creating a one-time digital token for each transaction. The unique token is only used once, which means that even if a hacker is able to monitor your transaction and steal the token, they can’t use it to drain your entire account.

Cryptocurrencies

The very nature of blockchain technology is to safeguard information. It not only decrypts data, which protects your information from cybercriminals, but it’s also a decentralized system, which means, no third party is involved. This makes using Cryptocurrencies a safe way to pay online. The only downside is that, so far, they are not widely acceptable.

Games That Improve your Memory

Casper Botsford — Fri, 05 Oct 2018 14:17:19 +0000

Maintaining a strong mind is just like staying in shape, especially as you grow older. It involves continually practicing memory exercises to build your mental muscles. There are many techniques for enhancing cognitive function, including memory games. These games are designed to train your brain, sharpen your short and long-term memory, and even prevent cognitive diseases, all while having fun. They include:

Chess

Chess is often associated with hyper-intelligent individuals. This is because experienced players have stored strategies in their long-term memory, which helps them retain information for longer periods of time. On the other hand, newer players can rely on their short-term memory to analyze the board and make their next move immediately. Playing chess improves your cognitive function as a whole, including improving analytical growth, your IQ, creativity/originality, problem-solving skills, not to mention it also builds new memory paths.

Crossword Puzzles

Crossword puzzles have been the go-to cognitive exercise for a long time. The only problem is you can get too good at this game. Therefore, switch up the games you play to include other word-search games like Sudoku. These games constantly stimulate your mind and increase active brain cells, promoting a healthy mind.

Lumosity

Lumosity improves your memory by stimulating different parts of the brain. Lumosity is scientifically designed to help you pay more attention to the right things and ignore those that don’t help, allowing you to solve problems at hand much faster. This game has been shown to improve memory retention as one grows older. It’s available free on the Android Play Store and the iOS Store.

Poker

It takes a lot of study and alertness playing poker to actually be good at it. Imagine a player on Poker Rooms playing anywhere between 6–15 tables or even more at a time. His thinking is simply straight and to the point as he has to remember hand rankings for a better game. If you can be a successful poker player, then you are capable of bigger things in life since the game improves your long-term thinking abilities.

Snus – A Way to Quit Smoking

Casper Botsford — Mon, 13 Mar 2017 08:13:32 +0000

Many people the world over struggle to quit smoking. Over the years there have been many methods to teach or trick people into quitting which all work to varying degrees. In recent times there have been more advances made in this area with the introduction of the Swedish developed Snus.Snus is a wet tobacco powder that is similar to snuff. Placed under the lip for extended periods of time, it absorbs the nicotine in a smoke free -way. However, Swedish scientists have now developed a nicotine free Snus, which could potentially revolutionize the market for those trying to quit smoking.Originally Snus has already been considered to be vastly less harmful than smoking cigarettes and now with this new tobacco and nicotine version, it will soon be seen to be even more so.

Cut the Smoke

Snus has already cut down the amount of smokers in many countries and this new version is sure to continue this trend. Made of herbs and other special flavours there are already a huge range of brands on offer.In addition to no longer smoking, Snus users will also enjoy that fact that it is tax-free as all products contain no nicotine. While there seems to be some success with Snus in Sweden and a huge boom in the market, the US has not been so fortunate neither financially lucrative. Lax laws have meant that Snus produced there is still filled with nicotine making it just as addictive as smoking. It also has just not received the same level of popularity.Overall, as with everything there are good points and bad. But Snus, at least in Scandinavia is having remarkable success in reducing smoking around these countries and the nicotine free version is continuing in this trend.

Research in medical drugs for cancer patients

Casper Botsford — Mon, 12 Jan 2015 08:00:07 +0000

Research is vital in the fight against cancer. Clinical trials are underway across the globe in their thousands, and groundbreaking discoveries are made every day. The race is on to deliver that universal solution to this problem that has been gnawing at the core of humanity for decades. Scientists have started thinking so far outside the box, that conventional medical drugs don’t seem to have a place in the cancer treatments of tomorrow.More recently, scientists at Harvard Medical School have developed toxin-resistant stem cells that can be used to fight brain cancer, among others. Studies on mice show that these stem cells can secrete toxins that destroy brain tumours without harming any of the healthy cells, or the stem cells themselves, for that matter.Whereas cancer-killing cells have been used to target blood cancers quite effectively to date, they couldn’t be used for solid tumours. However, with the advent of the toxin-resistant stem cell, brain tumours could become a thing of the past in only a decade or two, as stem cells will be used not only to replace the healthy cells that have been destroyed, but also to administer the ‘medicine’ in the form of a toxin. If successful, this technique would literally eliminate the need for chemotherapy or radiation therapy.At Yale University, the chase is on to deliver herbal adjuvants to radiation or chemotherapy. Dr. Yung-Chi Cheng, inventor of many drugs used in cancer treatment, is performing research on PHY906, a drug made of Chinese peony, Chinese jujube, Chinese liquorice and Baikal skullcap extracts, among others. The drug not only lessens the effect of radiation and chemotherapy on the body, but also enhances the potency of conventional drugs, like irinotecan and etoposide.Researchers at the University of Leeds have also come up with a synthetic drug that can be used in patients with cancer. Granted, the drug has thus far only been applied in Triple Negative Breast Cancer studies, and has been shown to prolong the lives of the patients by 5 months, on average, but not treat the cancer, per say. It can be used for patients who have stopped responding to conventional drugs, and are in the later stages of their treatment. Still, in the case of patients who have few options left, such as those with recurring cancer, the drug, eribulin, which can prevent a cancer cell from dividing and thus spreading, can be a life-saver, literally. A surprising factor is that eribulin was developed from a type of sea sponge, not your typical go-to creature for cancer drugs.