| | | Find Boston University Tickets and more here for every game! | myLot Discussions| It's amazing! | | Have you ever seen this news?
Strippers, armadillos inspire Ig Nobel winners
By MARK PRATT
Associated Press Writer 14 hours ago BOSTON (AP) - Deborah Anderson had heard the urban legends about the contraceptive effectiveness of Coca-Cola products for years. So she and her colleagues decided to put the soft drink to the test. In the lab, that is.
For discovering that, yes indeed, Coke was a spermicide, Anderson and her team are among this year's winners of the Ig Nobel prize, the annual award given by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine to oddball but often surprisingly practical scientific achievements.
The ceremony at Harvard University, in which actual Nobel laureates bestow the awards, also honored a British psychologist who found foods that sound better taste better; a group of researchers who discovered exotic dancers make more money when they are at peak fertility; and a pair of Brazilian archaeologists who determined armadillos can change the course of history.
Anderson, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University's School of Medicine, and her colleagues found that not only was Coca-Cola a spermicide, but that... | |
| | Prashant Modi - President and COO of GEECL | | A successful Indian businessman, Prashant Modi is currently the President and Chief Operating Officer of GEECL - The Great Eastern Energy Corporation Limited, where he is responsible for day to day operations. Prashant Modi completed his education at St Columbus School, New Delhi, India, where he focused on business. Prashant holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Boston University. Thereafter, he completed an executive education course at Harvard Business School.e at peak fertility; and a pair of Brazilian archaeologists who determined armadillos can change the course of history.
Anderson, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University's School of Medicine, and her colleagues found that not only was Coca-Cola a spermicide, but that Diet Coke for some reason worked best. Their study appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1985.
"We're thrilled to win an Ig Nobel, because the study was somewhat of a parody in the first place," Anderson said, adding she does not recommend using Coke for birth control purposes.
A group of Taiwanese doctors were honored for a similar study that... | |
| | Here's one for sufferer's of hayfever ....... | | Are you a sufferer of hayfever? Is it getting worse?Did you know that it could actually be your car that is causing the sympton's to get worse.
Test's have carried out which show that Diesel fume's combined with pollen greatly increse the risk of allergic reaction's.Researcher's at the Boston university school of medicine found onion's conatin a plant chemical that switche's off allergie's.
Quercetin work's by blocking mast cell's, which are key player's in our immune system.So there we go, eating load's of onion's and having stinky breath can reduce hayfever caused by your diesel powered car. | |
| | Churches: Staying Revevant Without Selling Out | | ******************************************
Churches: Staying Relevant Without Selling Out During a recent church service, the speaker had just finished the opening paragraph of his sermon: a very serious and heavy introduction to his topic. He paused. A child let out a long, noisy yawn that was audible to the entire congregation. It was impossible not to laugh, it was so on-cue. Wisely, the minister, pausing another beat for the laughter to die down, said, "It's time for a story."Unfortunately, a giant yawn is the response of too much of society to the average church service. It's not so much that younger generations lack faith; they find church Boring."Our kids think in images... Electronic generations are wired differently..." so said a speaker at a recent communications conference I attended.When I go into a Best Buy or other huge electronics/music store. I feel bombarded by sound! If I go to the TV/DVD/video equipment section with huge images playing all around me and different sounds coming from many different quarters, I feel a little dizzy or at least overwhelmed. When I go back outside of the store, I feel relieved.Okay, so I'm showing my age. What... | |
| | Great competition... | | I read this information just now, thought of sharing with you all.
An animal rights group has nominated 40 U.S. colleges for a vegetarian cooking prize. The Northwestern University outside Chicago, is among the group, because here 'one out of five dishes served on campus is now vegetarian or vegan'.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals selected its list of finalists from online gossip on FaceBook and MySpace, from e-mailed comments sent in by students and by looking over campus menus. The nominees include the University of Montana and Boston University.
Northwestern's contract with its catering service, Sodexho, requires at least one vegetarian and one vegan choice at every meal. Vegetarian means no meat or fish, while vegan cooking bans animal products like eggs, milk and cheese.
A second-year undergraduate said, she often goes for vegetarian meals because she keeps kosher. At a lot of places, when you say you are vegetarian, they try to feed you eggplant. I donot like eggplant, she said. Here they will have veggie burgers, or they will replace normal meat with vegetarian options.
Should we be vegetarians or non veg? Please discuss.
DR.B.SARAF Ph.D.
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| | Best bet: Quitting on impulse. | | Smokers are often told the best way to nix their habit is to have a game plan, including a quit day and a quid strategy. But could that advice be counterproductive?In a recent study putting that question to the test, smokers who quit spontaneously without advance planning had a greater chance of succeeding than those who planned ahead. The results, published in the British Medical Journal, seem to flour traditional smoking cessation guidance.A professor of social and behavioral sciences at Boston University who examines tobacco control policies and smoking behavior, said the findings amke a lot of sense.Planned quit attempts are implemented gradually and thus the level of motivation is probably rather low. But these unplanned, sudden attempts probably reflect some sentinel even or great tension that precipitates a very high level of motivation to quit. And thus these tempts are mor successful.The study points to the need to focus on motivating smokers to want to quit. And there's been too much emphasis on promoting pharmaceutical aids to help people quit. | |
| | Some say schools giving Muslims special treatment | |
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-07-25-muslim-special-treatment-from-schools_N.htmBy Oren Dorell, USA TODAYSome public schools and universities are granting Muslim requests for prayer times, prayer rooms and ritual foot baths, prompting a debate on whether Islam is being given preferential treatment over other religions.The University of Michigan at Dearborn is planning to build foot baths for Muslim students who wash their feet before prayer. An elementary school in San Diego created an extra recess period for Muslim pupils to pray.At George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., Muslim students using a "meditation space" laid out Muslim prayer rugs and separated men and women in accordance with their Islamic beliefs.Critics see a double standard and an organized attempt to push public conformance with Islamic law."What (school officials) are doing...is to give Muslim students religious benefits that they do not give any other religion right now," says Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel at the Thomas More Law Center, an advocacy group for Christians. Advocates say the accommodations are legal."The whole issue is to provide for a... | |
| | Who should be fined? The creator or the user? What's your verdict? | | Recently, I read two related incidents where two people who downloaded music from the internet were fined outrageous sums of money. (Read stories below. You can also search their titles in the internet if you want to verify them. I don't want to put any links here because the discussion might be deleted.)What I can't understand is, why do those so-called "copyright police" going after the users of downloading software? Where in fact, these users won't be able to do that if nobody invented those software in the first place! Why don't they go after the Kazaa creators, for example, right?What is your take on this issue? Do you think the verdicts are reasonable? Or ridiculous?===FIRST STORY:Illegal Downloads Cost Mother $1.92 million
Home Theater News Music - Download Technology News
Written by AVRev.com
Tuesday, 23 June 2009Illegal Downloads Cost Mother $1.92 million
A court has ruled that Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a 32-year-old mother of four, must pay $1.92 million in damages to record companies for illegally downloading 24 tracks off of file-sharing services like Kazaa. This amounts to $80,000 per song. This is one of the last few lawsuits in the... | |
| | Do you drink Diet Soda? Diet sodas linked with health risks | | They found adults who drink one or more sodas a day had about a 50 percent higher risk of metabolic syndrome -- a cluster of risk factors such as excessive fat around the waist, low levels of "good" cholesterol, high blood pressure and other symptoms."When you have metabolic syndrome, your risk of developing heart disease or stroke doubles. You also have a risk of developing diabetes," said Dr. Ramachandran Vasan of Boston University School of Medicine, whose work appears in the journal Circulation.Prior studies have linked consumption of sugar-laden sodas with multiple risk factors for heart disease, but Vasan and colleagues also found the link extends to diet sodas.The study included about 6,000 middle-aged men and women who were observed over four years.Those who drank one or more soft drinks a day had a 31 percent greater risk of becoming obese.They had a 30 percent increased risk of developing increased waist circumference -- which has been shown to predict heart disease risk better than weight alone.They also had a 25 percent increased risk of developing high blood triglycerides as well as high blood sugar, and a 32 percent higher risk of having low... | |
| | 1 Daily Soda May Boost Heart Disease. How many do you drink? | | That is because a soda habit increases the risk of developing a condition called metabolic syndrome, according to the new research, and that in turn boosts the chance of getting both heart disease and diabetes."Even one soda per day increases your risk of developing metabolic syndrome by about 50%," says Ramachandran Vasan, MD, professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and the senior author of the study, published in the July 31 issue of the American Heart Association's journal Circulation.To be diagnosed with metabolic syndrome, three of five criteria must be met: a large waistline, elevated blood pressure, elevated fasting blood sugar, elevated fasting triglycerides, or reduced HDL or "good" cholesterol."This study adds to the wealth of scientific evidence that sugar-sweetened beverages increase the risk of metabolic syndrome," says Vasan. Already, he says, the rise in sugary drink consumption has been linked to the epidemic of obesity and diabetes among children and teens and to the development of high blood pressure in adults.Soda-Heart Disease Link Questioned
The food and beverage industry takes issue with the finding.Roger Clemens,... | |
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