About 14, 000 times a walking day, your eyes blink and you are totally blind during the blinks. However, the world doesn’t disappear during the eye blinks because of a special sensory memory, which is called iconic memory.
    Iconic memory is a form of sensory memory that automatically holds visual information for about a quarter of a second or more; as soon as you shift you attention, the information disappears.
    You don’t go blind when both eyes closed completely during a blink which is about one-third of a second because the visual scene is briefly held in iconic memory. When your eyes reopen, you don’t realized that your eyes were completely closed that was briefly stored in iconic memory. With out iconic memory, your world would disappear into darkness during eye blink.

Memory is the ability to retain information over time through the three processes: encoding (forming), storing, and retrieving. Memories are not copies but representation of the world that in accuracy and are subject to error and bias.
1. Encoding – refers to making mental representations of information so that it can be placed into our memories.
2. Storing – is the process of placing encoded information into relatively permanent mental storage for later recall. New information that is stored by making associations with old or familiar information’s is much easier to remember or retrieve.
3. Retrieving – is the process of getting or recalling information that has been placed into short-term or long-term storage.

Adlington breaks 19-year-old WR in Women’s 800m Freestyle

Updated: 2008-08-16 10:36:17

(BEIJING, August 16) — After winning gold in Women’s 400m Freestyle, Rebecca Adlington of Great Britain claimed a second gold medal in Women’s 800m Freestyle with a new world record time of 8:14.10. Alessia Filippi of Italy took the silver medal, clocking 8:20.23. Lotte Friis of Denmark was third in 8:23.03.

The former WR of 8:16.22 was set by Janet Evans of the United States in Tokyo on August 20, 1989

Smoking is very closely related to Buerger’s disease and smoking history is one of the criterion for diagnosing the disease. In general if the patient absolutely abandons smoking the course of the disease will be invariably benign, but if smoking continues any treatment will ultimately be futile. Though "passive smoking" has adverse effect on cardiovascular system, non smokers should never develop the disease. Active smokers can be indentified by measuring levels of continine, the major metabolite of nicotine in urine. Since all smokers do not develop the disease an immunopathogenesis is considered probable. It has been proposed in Japanese that presence of a gene linked to some HLA antigens might control the susceptibility to the disease.

Socioeconomic conditions, work environment may also play in etiology as the disease is seen more in out door and manual workers. Hypercoagulable state has been observed in association with the disease. Hepatitis B Virus and rickettssiosis may contribute to pathogenesis, but this role is uncertain.

Buergers disease is an inflammatry occlusive disease which involves all layers of medium sized and small arteries of the extremitiles. Involved superficial veins bear a close resemblance to those in the affected artery. Majority of the patients develop critical limb ischemia with trophic lesions are distal to ankle, the anklebrachial doppler index could be normal in early stage. Toe pressures can be measured and if it is less than 30 mm Hg, the healing of ulcers is unlikely. The disease though commences peripherally, may gradually extend proximately occluding the larger arteries.

VASCULAR ASSOCIATES OF BANGALORE NEWSLETTER