Science News, Science Pictures
University of Auckland in New Zealand has received a grant to study pornography. The endowment, worth about $591,000 in US dollars, was originally described as “public engagement towards a more inclusive and equitable society.”
Further probing by news outlets revealed that the money was earmarked to study porn’s impact on society, how it affects young people, and also put up money to build a website to communicate the study’s results. [NZ Herald]
A new survey from Baylor University finds that reading the Bible and progressive politics are closely related. The survey found that even when controlling for political beliefs, gender, race and more – the association between reading the Bible and support for progressive views is strong. The study found heavy Bible reading was correlated with opposition to the death penalty, supporting economic justice and reducing materialism.
The study is currently undergoing peer review. [Faith In Public Life]
Woman Blowing Vuvuzela
“A short burst on the instrument creates a spittle shower similar to a sneeze, travelling at a four million droplets a second, a PLoS One journal study shows.”
“The little blue pills taken by hundreds of thousands of British men may cause deafness, doctors have warned.
Viagra and similar impotence drugs have been linked to hundreds of cases of sudden hearing loss around the world, including some in the UK.”
“Rising oral cancer rates among men has troubled doctors for a while, but tobacco might not be to blame for the increase.
The uptick could be linked to HPV, a sexually-transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer among women. Researchers say the virus can be transmitted through oral sex.”
“With its shuttles about to retire, the agency has offered $270m of funds to four firms to help them mature designs for new orbiting vehicles.
Blue Origin, Boeing, Sierra Nevada Corp and SpaceX hope to sell astronaut “taxi” services to Nasa by mid-decade.”
“Though he may be an ace in the operating room, Greenfield, a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, proved tone deaf — or worse — as a writer and editor. In a Valentine’s Day editorial for Surgery News, a publication affiliated with the ACS, Greenfield extolled the virtues of semen as a mood-enhancer for women. That editorial proved his undoing.”
“A new report from the Guttmacher Institute, the nonprofit sexual health research organization, shows that only 2 percent of Catholic women, even those who regularly attend church, rely on natural family planning.”
“The common view that drinking is bad for learning and memory isn’t wrong, says neurobiologist Hitoshi Morikawa, but it highlights only one side of what ethanol consumption does to the brain.
‘Usually, when we talk about learning and memory, we’re talking about conscious memory,’ says Morikawa, whose results were published last month in The Journal of Neuroscience. ‘Alcohol diminishes our ability to hold on to pieces of information like your colleague’s name, or the definition of a word, or where you parked your car this morning. But our subconscious is learning and remembering too, and alcohol may actually increase our capacity to learn, or ‘conditionability,’ at that level.’”
“In an attempt to encourage more research into the health and well-being of gay people, a California demographer has estimated that more than 9 million Americans are gay, lesbian or bisexual, a number equivalent to the population of New Jersey.
Gary Gates, who studies the demographics of the gay community for the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, said in a report released Thursday that about 3.5 percent of Americans identify themselves in surveys as being gay, lesbian or bisexual.”
“Add ‘Facebook depression’ to potential harms linked with social media, an influential doctors’ group warns, referring to a condition it says may affect troubled teens who obsess over the online site. Researchers disagree on whether it’s simply an extension of depression some kids feel in other circumstances, or a distinct condition linked with using the online site.”
“Sudden bursts of moderate to intense physical activity — such as jogging or having sex — significantly increase the risk of having a heart attack, especially in people who do not get regular exercise, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.”
“In the first comprehensive accounting of multiracial Americans since statistics were first collected about them in 2000, reporting from the 2010 census, made public in recent days, shows that the nation’s mixed-race population is growing far more quickly than many demographers had estimated, particularly in the South and parts of the Midwest. That conclusion is based on the bureau’s analysis of 42 states; the data from the remaining eight states will be released this week.”
“A paper published Wednesday in the Annals of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences describes a long-necked, plant-eating sauropod, among the largest creatures ever to have walked the earth. The international team that found and identified the fossilized forelimb bone say it is from a previously unknown dinosaur, citing unique skeletal characteristics.”
“Stringent federal testing laws only apply to seats that are designed to carry children who weigh less than 65 pounds. But with more than 10 per cent of two to three-year-olds now obese – and over that weight limit – it is feared federally accredited child seat tests and the dummies they use do not accurately reflect the bulging size of children today.”
“A space shuttle contract worker fell to his death Monday morning while working at the launch pad, preparing the space shuttle Endeavour for its final flight, according to a NASA official.”
“Babies who are breastfed grow up to be more intelligent, scientists suggested yesterday. Just four weeks on their mothers’ milk can have a ‘significant’ effect on a child’s development in primary and secondary school, research has found.”
“A study has found that women who drink coffee are 25 percent less likely to die from heart disease, compared to those who avoid the beverage. The health benefits are enjoyed by women who down at least two or three cups of joe.”
“The ‘addiction’, in which sufferers have relentless sexual urges that feel out of one’s control, is being discussed by experts for inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.”
“The mythical, ancient city of Atlantis was probably located just north of what is now Cadiz, on the southern coast of Spain, before it was swamped by a massive tsunami, according to a team of American researchers.”
“A new analysis of the 8.9-magnitude earthquake in Japan has found that the intense temblor has accelerated Earth’s spin, shortening the length of the 24-hour day by 1.8 microseconds, according to geophysicist Richard Gross at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.”
Los Angeles city lawmakers voted unanmimously on an ordinance that requires condoms to be used on the set of porn movies shot in Los Angeles. The law came up after the only clinic monitoring porn stars for AIDs shut down.
Three cases of cholera have been identified in New York City. The infected people had all recently been in the Dominican Republic for a wedding. The Dominican Republic is adjacent to Haiti, which recently had a massive cholera outbreak.
Russian cosmonauts engaged in a 6 hour spacewalk outside of the International Space Station. Watch.
Woman Smoking picture
A new study has uncovered the fact that smoking cigarettes begins to damage the human body in minutes, not years. The study, published in Chemical Research in Toxicology, shows that cancer-causing chemicals begin to form quickly after smoking begins.
If a crying woman’s red nose isn’t a big enough turnoff to a man, a surprising experiment found another reason: Tears of sadness may temporarily lower his testosterone level. Those tears send a chemical signal as the man gets close enough to sniff them — even though there’s no discernible odor, say researchers from Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has begun the process of revoking approval of Avastin to treat advanced breast cancer
DOCTORS in Berlin, working with an American patient with HIV and leukaemia, have declared in a peer-reviewed journal they believe they have cured both illnesses.
It would be the first time a HIV patient has been cured. The procedure is creating a buzz among HIV academics in the US.
Experts call the development encouraging, but warn that years of work remain before the treatment could lead to a general therapy against HIV.
DOCTORS in Berlin, working with an American patient with HIV and leukaemia, have declared in a peer-reviewed journal they believe they have cured both illnesses.
It would be the first time a HIV patient has been cured. The procedure is creating a buzz among HIV academics in the US.
Experts call the development encouraging, but warn that years of work remain before the treatment could lead to a general therapy against HIV.
Does money really buy happiness? A recent study by the Wharton School suggests that in some cases, it does — though not necessarily the way one would think.
In a paper entitled “Subjective Well-Being, Income, Economic Development and Growth,” Wharton professors Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, along with first-year Applied Economics Ph.D. candidate Daniel Sacks, argue that “measured subjective well-being grows hand in hand with material living standards.”
Concussions are being reported at a much higher rate in the NFL this season, which the league considers evidence that players and teams are taking head injuries more seriously.
According to NFL data obtained by The Associated Press, 154 concussions that happened in practices or games were reported from the start of the preseason through the eighth week of the 2010 regular season.
For the first time, scientists have created functioning human intestinal tissue in the laboratory from pluripotent stem cells.
In a study posted online Dec. 12 by Nature, scientists from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center say their findings will open the door to unprecedented studies of human intestinal development, function and disease. The process is also a significant step toward generating intestinal tissue for transplantation, researchers say.
Navy scientists set a world record Friday during a test of an electromagnetic railgun, a tractor-trailer sized weapon that sends a 20-pound projectile rocketing through the air at seven times the speed of sound.
The futuristic gun was tested twice at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Va., and the first shot generated 33 megajoules of force out of the barrel, a world record for muzzle energy, the scientists said.
Dishing up fish and shellfish more often at meals could help some older adults protect their eyesight longer.
Eating more seafood rich in omega-3 fatty acids – such as oysters, crabs and tuna – appears to slow advanced macular degeneration, a common cause of age-related blindness, according to new research published in Ophthalmology.
One of the solar system’s most evocative mysteries — the origin of Saturn’s rings — may be a case of cosmic murder, new research suggests.
The victim: an unnamed moon of Saturn that disappeared about 4.5 billion years ago.
The suspect: a disk of hydrogen gas that once surrounded Saturn when its dozens of moons were forming, but has now fled the crime scene.
The cause of death: A forced plunge into Saturn.
One of the solar system’s most evocative mysteries — the origin of Saturn’s rings — may be a case of cosmic murder, new research suggests.
The victim: an unnamed moon of Saturn that disappeared about 4.5 billion years ago.
The suspect: a disk of hydrogen gas that once surrounded Saturn when its dozens of moons were forming, but has now fled the crime scene.
The cause of death: A forced plunge into Saturn.
Most consumers will probably never have a problem with exposure to formaldehyde, though it can have serious health implications for people who work with the chemical in factories. The biggest potential issue for those wearing wrinkle-resistant clothing can be a skin condition called contact dermatitis. It affects a small group of people and can cause itchy skin, rashes and blisters, according to a recent government study on formaldehyde in textiles. Still, some critics said more studies on a wider array of textiles and clothing chemicals were needed, including a closer look at the effects of cumulative exposure. At the very least, they said, better labeling would help
Researchers used the popular attractiveness-rating website HotorNot.com to gauge whether “hotness” scores would change when the same woman was shown with her natural complexion and then with a tan.
Using Photoshop, 45 photos of women aged 21 to 35 were doctored to look tan. The original photos and the doctored versions were posted to the site at different times. The researchers found that the darker version was twice as likely to be rated as more attractive.
New research shows that how we tilt our head can play a big role in how attractive we are to the opposite sex. The study, published in the latest issue of Evolutionary Psychology tested whether the angle people viewed each other from was a factor in determining masculinity, femininity and attractiveness.
Men, usually taller than women, view a woman’s face from above, and women view men’s faces from below. The research found that female faces are judged to be more feminine and attractive when tilted forwards – slightly tipping their chins down – and less feminine when tilted backwards. The opposite was true for men.
Scientists for the Food and Drug Administration said Friday a pill to treat obesity from Orexigen Therapeutics Inc. helped patients lose weight, though it didn’t meet all the criteria set forth by the agency.
The FDA’s review, posted online Friday, also raised questions about the pill’s effects on the heart, a perennial issue for weight loss drugs that have been plagued by safety issues.
A particular version of a dopamine receptor gene called DRD4 is linked to people’s tendency toward both infidelity and uncommitted one-night stands, the researchers reported Nov. 30 in the online open-access journal PloS One.
The same gene has already been linked to alcoholism and gambling addiction, as well as less destructive thrills like a love of horror films. One study linked the gene to an openness to new social situations, which in turn correlated with political liberalism.
Pushing life to extremes, researchers reported Thursday that they have discovered microbes able to subsist almost entirely on arsenic, which “very likely” incorporate it into their DNA. The finding may be the first exception to the formula long thought to govern the basic chemistry of life.
Force-grown in the laboratory, these bacteria use the notorious poison to replace molecules of the element phosphorus in critical parts of their working biology, including in the spiral backbone of DNA, which is a crucial component for all known life, the researchers said. By depending on an element so toxic to normal life, the microbes are a living demonstration of the exotic substances that alien biochemistry might, in theory at least, use on other worlds.
What’s Victoria’s Secret? It might be not feeding the models, say critics of the body images portrayed on Tuesday’s televised fashion show.
It’s “eating disorder porn,” says Harvard pediatrician Dr. Michael Rich. “They are a fantasy that drives you to extreme behaviors which require overcoming normal physiological and instinctual survival drive.”
Rich heads the Center on Media and Child Health at Children’s Hospital Boston, which studies how kids are affected by images in movies, television and the Internet. He and other health professionals interviewed by CBS News worry that the ultra-thin models like those who appeared on the Victoria’s Secret show are pushing young women into unrealistic ideals and, in some cases, eating disorders.
A team of physicists from the University of Toronto and Rutgers University have mimicked the explosion of a supernova in miniature.
A supernova is an exploding star. In a certain type of supernova, the detonation starts with a flame ball buried deep inside a white dwarf. The flame ball is much lighter than its surroundings, so it rises rapidly making a plume topped with an accelerating smoke ring.
“We created a smaller version of this process by triggering a special chemical reaction in a closed container that generates similar plumes and vortex rings,” says Stephen Morris, a University of Toronto physics professor.
A study presented November 15 at the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting finds that hamsters suffering extreme, chronic jet lag had about half the normal rate of new neuron birth in a part of the brain. What’s more, these animals showed deficits in learning and memory.
Jet lag poses a serious health threat, said study coauthor Erin Gibson of the University of California, Berkeley. Studies have shown that people with work schedules that require them to frequently change their sleep patterns have higher rates of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and cancer.
Merck has a potential blockbuster in anacetrapib, an experimental cholesterol drug that dramatically increases HDL, or “good” cholesterol even as it lowers LDL, also known as “bad” cholesterol.
But don’t hold your breath. Cardiologists, patients and investors will have to wait until at least 2015 to find out whether the drug protects the heart by reducing heart attacks and other cardiovascular problems, Merck said.
The makers of the drink, Chicago-based Phusion Projects, maintain their product is safe, but say they’re removing the caffeine “after trying unsuccessfully to navigate a difficult and politically-charged regulatory environment at both the state and federal levels,” in a statement posted on their website.
According to statistics released by the Haitian Ministry of Health Sunday morning, 917 people have died from the bacterial infection, while there have been some 14,642 hospitalizations.
In a study of more than 200 college students, 25 percent of men and half of the women reported that they’d acted out an orgasm during sexual activity. The biggest motivation to fake it? Wanting sex to end without the awkwardness of hurting their partner’s feelings.
Findings from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition, which included some 126,920 post-menopausal women, were presented at a conference of the American Association for Cancer Research this week in Philadelphia.
After nine years of follow-up, 424 ovarian cancers had been diagnosed. Even after controlling for body mass index, smoking, and several other risk factors, researchers found that women taking post-menopausal hormone therapy had a 29 percent greater risk of ovarian cancer, compared with women who did not use hormones.
NASA engineers have discovered a third small crack in the aluminum skin of the huge external fuel tank for space shuttle Discovery while tackling repair work ahead of the spacecraft’s final spaceflight.
Engineers at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida were already studying two 9-inch (23-centimeter) cracks discovered on the shuttle’s 15-story fuel tank earlier this week.
Dr. David C. Ring picture
Dr. David C. Ring, a hand and arm surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital, described in the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine how a series of personal and system-wide mistakes led him to operate on the right hand instead of the left hand of a 65-year-old woman with a painful “trigger finger.”
“Just imagine the worst thing that’s ever happened to you and that’s how it feels,” said Ring, 42, of the botched surgery that occurred about two years ago. “I don’t want anybody to make the same mistake I made.”
Teens who text 120 times a day or more are more likely to have had sex or used alcohol and drugs than kids who don’t send as many messages, according to provocative new research.
The study’s authors aren’t suggesting that “hyper-texting” leads to sex, drinking or drugs, but say it’s startling to see an apparent link between excessive messaging and that kind of risky behavior.
The team at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital did a national survey of 1,900 primary care doctors in 2009 about their contacts with drug companies.
They found 84 percent reported some type of relationship with drug companies, compared with 94 percent in 2004.
About two thirds accepted drug samples, 70 percent accepted food or beverages from drug companies and 14 percent accepted payment in exchange for their professional services, they reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Large Hadron Collider picture
Scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva say they have recreated mini versions of the ‘Big Bang’ which is thought to have formed the universe some 14 billion years ago.
The giant machine, the world’s largest and most complicated scientific instrument, has been plagued by faults.
Mobile phones and computers will soon be able to diagnose sexually transmitted diseases under innovative plans to cut the UK’s rising rate of herpes, chlamydia and gonorrhoea among young people.
Doctors and technology experts are developing small devices, similar to pregnancy testing kits, that will tell someone quickly and privately if they have caught an infection through sexual contact.
The German drug maker Boehringer Ingelheim announced Friday that it had stopped work on a pill for low libido in women, the latest setback in the controversial efforts to produce a “female Viagra.”
The Boehringer drug, originally discovered as an antidepressant, had gone through years of testing and clinical trials. After a publicity campaign, the drug was submitted to the Food and Drug Administration earlier this year. But it was rejected by an advisory panel in June and by the F.D.A. staff in August because Boehringer failed to prove the drug would increase the level of a woman’s sexual desire.
“A well-preserved tomb believed to be the final resting place of an ancient Mayan king has been discovered in Guatemala, scientists announced last week. The 1,600-year-old tomb was discovered on May 29 beneath the El Diablo pyramid in the city of El Zotz. It is packed with carvings, ceramics, textiles, and the bones of six children, who might have been sacrificed at the time of the king’s death.” [Link]
“Women in their late 20s and early 30s are considered more attractive than fresh-faced eighteen and nineteen year olds, researchers found. The findings, from a survey of the opinions of over 2,000 men and women, found that beauty was as much rooted in personality as appearance.” [Link]
“A range of supplements – including those based on cabbage, fibre and plant extracts – are no better than ‘fake’ dummy pills in helping people slim, they said. Presenting their findings, which have yet to be peer-reviewed, experts from the Peninsula Medical School at the universities of Exeter and Plymouth said there is no evidence the drugs work.” [Link]
“A study of 35,000 women found that those who regularly took the supplements were 32 per cent less likely to develop the disease. Researchers from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle suggested the omega-3 fatty acids contained in supplements could reduce the risk of developing the most common form of the illness, invasive ductal breast cancer.” [Link]
Kirkland Signature Natural Fish Oil Concentrate with Omega-3 Fatty Acids
“Young women are becoming more and more dependent on social media and checking on their social networks, according to a new study released earlier today by Oxygen Media and Lightspeed Research. In fact, as many as one-third of women aged 18-34 check Facebook when they first wake up, even before they get to the bathroom.” Link
Lady Gaga Eyes picture
“Lady Gaga’s got style. She’s a trend-setter, but one trend could be dangerous. In her video ‘Bad Romance,’ Gaga’s wearing contact lenses designed to enlarge the iris of her eye. The style is catching on with fans. However, these cosmetic lenses have a few drawbacks: they’re illegal in the U.S. and they could cause severe damage to your eyesight. ” [Link]
“The treatment, which dramatically shrinks the tumour without harming surrounding healthy cells, could eventually be used instead of chemotherapy, radiotherapy or surgery. Early trials have shown that the drug, called Olaparib, also fights ovarian cancer. ” [Link]
“Men aged 40 or older who use Pfizer Inc.’s Viagra and Eli Lilly & Co.’s Cialis to boost sexual potency have higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases, a Harvard study found. Men who took the impotence pills were almost three times more likely to have a sex disease, particularly HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, in the year before and after they started the drugs, according to research published today in the Annals of Internal Medicine.” [Link]
Sperm Whale picture
“A report released Thursday noted high levels of cadmium, aluminum, chromium, lead, silver, mercury and titanium in tissue samples taken by dart gun from nearly 1,000 whales over five years. From polar areas to equatorial waters, the whales ingested pollutants that may have been produced by humans thousands of miles away, the researchers said.” Link
VW Beetle picture
“Volkswagen’s Beetle was the auto most likely to be purchased by a woman. Just over 56% of the buyers registering a new Beetle were women, the study found.” [Link]
Aurora picture
The International Space Station took a picture of an aurora from space on May 24, 2010. The ISS was above the Southern Indian Ocean.
“The pill, called ella, sprang from government labs and appears to be more effective than Plan B, a morning-after pill now available over the counter to women 18 and older that gradually loses efficacy after intercourse and can be taken at latest three days after sex. Ella, by contrast, works just as well on the fifth day as the first after sex.” [Link]
“An expert U.S. Food and Drug Administration panel at a hearing Friday did not recommended approval for a German drug company’s pill aimed at premenopausal women distressed by low sexual desire.” [Link]
“New research has found that women with low IQs are more likely to pursue rich men than females who have higher intellects. And experts say the reason is not so much naked greed, but more an instinctive urge to guarantee a secure financial future for any potential children.” [Link]
Lisa Rinna picture
“Boehringer developed the drug, flibanserin, as an antidepressant, but it failed to lift depression. The company says it learned serendipitously that the pill, taken daily for weeks, could restore female libido. Dr. Peter J. Piliero, Boehringer’s director of medical affairs in the United States, says the lack of libido to the point of distress is a serious problem for some women. “This is a real disease,” Dr. Piliero said in an interview. “There’s an unmet medical need among premenopausal women to have a treatment.”” Link
“A new, longer-lasting ‘morning-after’ pill to prevent unwanted pregnancy appears to work with no unexpected side effects, U.S. health regulatory staff said in documents released on Tuesday. Data shows the one-pill treatment, called ella and made by French drugmaker HRA Pharma, is effective when taken as many as five days after unprotected sex, Food and Drug Administration staff reviewers said in documents released ahead of a public meeting on the drug scheduled for Thursday.” Link
“Researchers studied the effects of tranexamic acid, or TXA, in more than 10,000 adult trauma patients in 40 countries who received the drug within 8 hours of being injured. They compared those patients’ outcomes to more than 10,000 accident victims who got a placebo treatment. The study was published online Tuesday in the medical journal Lancet.” [Link]
“Dr Arthur Brennan of Kingston University, London, studied 282 fathers-to-be. He found that 55 per cent of them were experiencing symptoms that most of us associate with pregnant mothers. Mr Brennan believes that this was caused by elevated levels of the mothering hormone prolactin. Customarily associated with breast-feeding mothers, it was also present in these fathers.” [Link]
“US scientists have created working liver grafts in the lab, and say the research could one day allow the growth of livers for transplant. There is a shortage of liver donors, but so far it has been difficult to grow replacement organs.” Link
“Scientists have found that the average age that breast development begins is now nine years and 10 months – almost a year earlier than a previous study in 1991. They have yet to discover the reason behind the phenomenon but believe it could be linked to unhealthy lifestyles or exposure to chemicals in food. The study was carried out in Denmark in 2006, the latest year for which figures were available, but experts believe the trend applies to Britain. Data from America also points to the earlier onset of puberty.” Link
“The link between animal abuse and interpersonal violence is becoming so well established that many U.S. communities now cross-train social-service and animal-control agencies in how to recognize signs of animal abuse as possible indicators of other abusive behaviors. In Illinois and several other states, new laws mandate that veterinarians notify the police if their suspicions are aroused by the condition of the animals they treat.” [Link]
“Printed on the waistband and in constant contact with the skin is an electronic biosensor, designed to measure blood pressure, heart rate and other vital signs. The technology, developed by nano-engineering professor Joseph Wang of University of California San Diego and his team, breaks new ground in the field of intelligent textiles and is part of shift in focus in healthcare from hospital-based treatment to home-based management.” [Link]
“Rozonno McGhee of Columbus says he’s a proud and happy new dad. The 30-year-old carpet cleaning specialist spoke Wednesday, hours after his wife Mia gave birth by cesarean section to four boys and two girls at Ohio State University Medical Center.” [Link]
Ella picture
“Child-bearing women in the United States may soon have a new contraceptive that will prevent unwanted pregnancy after unprotected sex, UPI reports. The ‘new’ morning after pill, called ella, is manufactured by HRA Pharma of Paris; the company hopes it can get Food and Drug Administration approval soon. The contraceptive is similar to RU-486 in that both can abort the pregnancy after unprotected intercourse.” [Link]
Naomi Campbell & World Cup Trophy picture
“A British chemistry professor has calculated that if the World Cup trophy was really solid gold it would be too heavy for footballers to lift. Martyn Poliakoff of Nottingham University estimates that a solid gold trophy of its size – 36cm (14 in) high – would weigh at least 70kg (154lb).” [Link]
SpaceX Falcon 9 picture
“SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket achieved Earth orbit nine minutes into the flight as planned, drawing praise from NASA, the White House and others eager for the company to start resupplying the International Space Station. “This has really been a fantastic day,” said an exuberant Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder. He said Friday’s launch helps vindicate President Barack Obama’s plan to give private companies the job of ferrying cargo and ultimately people to the space station, freeing up NASA to aim for true outer space.” Link
Woman With Coffee picture
“The Bristol University researchers found little variance in levels of alertness among the volunteers, says a report published online in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology. Peter Rogers, from the university’s department of experimental psychology and one of the lead authors of the study, said: ‘Our study shows that we don’t gain an advantage from consuming caffeine - although we feel alerted by it, this is caffeine just bringing us back to normal. ‘On the other hand, while caffeine can increase anxiety, tolerance means that for most caffeine consumers this effect is negligible.’ ” [Link]
“According to clinical trials, a substance called —a lidocaine- and prilocaine-based spray—may expand your tour de force timings by a factor of 5.5. The drug, which is being developed by Shionogi Pharma, has been tested with 556 men, with a total of 23,000 exposures during a period of three months.” [Link]
“According to clinical trials, a substance called —a lidocaine- and prilocaine-based spray—may expand your tour de force timings by a factor of 5.5. The drug, which is being developed by Shionogi Pharma, has been tested with 556 men, with a total of 23,000 exposures during a period of three months.” [Link]
“Eating food in the middle of the night can seriously damage your teeth, experts warn. Researchers have found midnight snacking ups the risk of tooth loss, regardless of the type of food that is eaten.” Link
Pregnant Woman picture
“Research suggests the ‘boring and repetitive’ nature of household chores raises the odds of giving birth prematurely. Exercise, however, is good for both mother and unborn child. ” [Link]
“The massive earthquake that struck Chile last week might have shifted the Earth’s axis and created shorter days, scientists at NASA say. The change is negligible, but permanent: Each day should be 1.26 microseconds shorter, according to preliminary calculations. A microsecond is one-millionth of a second.” [Link]
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