A new smartphone app promises to make you slimmer

A new smartphone app promises to make you slimmer and smarter and that too without any interventions in your workout schedule!

Actually, the new "Visualize You" app is designed to encourage weight loss by processing your portrait-style photograph and generating an image of what you would look like minus 10 kg... or may be more.

The designers said the app uses proprietary algorithms based on "clinically verified weight change dynamics" to generate the image, reported Daily Mail.

As opposed to similar apps that basically stretch and pinch photos, Visualize You creates images determined by the precise amount of weight you hope to shed.

It is simple to use this app: Take a portrait-style picture of yourself, or grab one from your photo library, and drop it into the app along with your height, weight and desired target weight.

The app crunches the numbers and pops out an image of a slimmer you.

You can also set the app to go the other way, generating an image based on a heavier target weight. A series of exercise and diet guides is also included.

Visualize You is an attempt at sparking motivation via technology, according to the developers.

The company behind the app, Visual Health Solutions, developed the app in partnership with Cleveland Clinic and the University of Colorado.

The app is not free though. It costs two dollars and is available for both iOS and Android platforms.

Snake venom could provide answers for the treatment of AIDS

Snake venom could provide answers for the treatment of AIDS, claimed Indian researchers at the World Homeopathy Summit in the city on Saturday.

Research by doctors at the Hyderabad-based JSPS Government Homeopathic Medical College, and Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT), Hyderabad, on deriving a homeopathic medicine from snake venom, Crotalus Horridus, has shown that it can arrest the multiplication of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

Professor Dr Praveen Kumar, head of the department of practice of medicine at JSPS College, said, "Scientifically speaking, Crotalus Horridus has inhibited reverse transcriptase or RT, an enzyme which is utilized by viruses like HIV and Hepatitis-B to convert the viral RNA into viral DNA, so that they multiply into billions and wreck patients."

"Our experiment entails that the homeopathic drug has the capacity to act on HIV, Hepatitis-B and so on. Our work has certainly opened the floodgates of advanced research and clinical testing," he said.

"For years, homeopathy has been adapting the process of converting snake venom and poison from deadly scorpions, spiders and wild bees into medicinal substances by transforming them into nano-particles that have proved safe and effective for patients," Dr Rajesh Shah, organizing secretary, Global Homeopathy Foundation said.

"As a virologist, I was surprised to learn that homeopathy also sources medicines from virus, bacteria and parasites, long before microbiology was fully developed," said Dr Abhay Chaudhary, director of Haffkine Institute, which also manufactures polio vaccines in India.

The Central Council for Research in Homeopathy (CCRH), a premium government body under AYUSH and GHF, has organized the summit. "The summit should bring about a paradigm shift in the way the world looks at homeopathy and shock even some practicing homeopaths who believed that the medicines had some undetectable and unseen energy effect and acted as placebos," said Dr Rajesh Shah, organizing secretary, GHF.

-DNA