Week ending 29.01.06
Stress relief
Forget learning lines or polishing jokes – having sex may be the best way to prepare for giving a speech. New Scientist magazine reports that Stuart Brody, a psychologist at the University of Paisley, found having sex can help keep stress at bay.
However, only penetrative intercourse did the trick – other forms of sex had no impact on stress levels at all. Professor Brody monitored how various forms of sex affected blood pressure levels in a stressful situation.
For a fortnight, 24 women and 22 men kept diaries of how often they engaged in various forms of sex. hen they underwent a stress test involving public speaking and performing mental arithmetic out loud.
Volunteers who had had penetrative intercourse were found to be the least stressed, and their blood pressure returned to normal faster than those who had engaged in other forms of sexual activity such as masturbation.
Those who abstained from any form of sexual activity at all had the highest blood pressure response to stress. Dr Brody found that the effect remained even after taking differences in personality and other health-related factors into account.
Now this is my kind of research. Although it is yet again, another example of people being paid very good money to state the obvious. Can you imagine being as participant in is research? ”Come on darling, I have a big presentation tomorrow”. Maybe it will filter down as a chat up line.
Cyber community
The internet has played an important role in the life decisions of 60 million Americans, research shows. Whether it be career advice, helping people through an illness or finding a new house, 45% of Americans turn to the web for help, a survey by US-based Pew Internet think-tank has found.
It set out to find out whether the web and e-mail strengthen social ties. The answer seems to be yes, especially in times of crisis when people use it to mobilise their social networks.
In the past, it has been suggested that the internet and e-mail could diminish real relationships. But the report, entitled The Strength of Internet Ties, found that e-mail supplements rather than replaces offline communications.
Again with people being paid for obvious research. This is a cyber age, one in which most people have at least two email addresses and three telephone numbers. I am going to propose some ‘stating the obvious’ research topics and present them to universities for funding
New Planet
An international team of astronomers has found the smallest Earth-like planet yet outside our Solar System. The new planet has five times the Earth’s mass and can be found about 25,000 light-years away in the Milky Way, orbiting a red dwarf star.
The discovery, reported in the journal Nature, was made using a method called microlensing, which can detect far-off planets with an Earth-like mass. The planet’s cold temperatures make the chance of finding life very unlikely.
The planet, which goes by the name OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb, takes about 10 years to orbit its parent star, a red dwarf which is similar to the Sun but cooler and smaller.
It is in the same galaxy as Earth, the Milky Way, but is found closer to the galactic centre. Like Earth, it has a rocky core and probably a thin atmosphere, but its large orbit and cool parent star mean it is a very cold world.
Predicted surface temperatures are minus 220 degrees Celcius (-364F), meaning that its surface is likely to be layer of frozen liquid. It may therefore resemble a more massive version of Pluto.
Another M class planet, this is great news. Mankind is moving ever closer to the time where we live off world or find that we are not alone in the Universe.
The internet search engine Google is resisting efforts by the US Department of Justice to force it to hand over data about what people are looking for. Google was asked for information on the types of query submitted over a week, and the websites included in its index.
The department wants the data to try to show in court it has the right approach in enforcing an online pornography law. It says the order will not violate personal privacy, but Google says it is too broad and threatens trade secrets.
Privacy groups say any sample could reveal the identities of Google users indirectly. And they say the demand is a worrying precedent, because the government also wants to make more use of internet data for fighting crime and terrorism.
However, the Department of Justice has said that several of Google’s main competitors have already complied. The department first issued a request for the data last August.
It wants: A list of terms entered into the search engine during an unspecified single week, potentially tens of millions of queries A million randomly selected web addresses from various Google databases.
The US government is seeking to defend the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, which has been blocked by the Supreme Court because of legal challenges over how it is enforced. Google’s refusal to comply prompted US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to ask a federal judge in the state of California on Wednesday for an order to hand over the records.
This has been morally a strange week for Google. Here they are in this story fighting for the rights of the common man to keep his privacy yet later on in the week, Google launched a new, self-censored search engine in China, a move regarded as a “black day” for freedom of expression, a leading international media watchdog says.
Reporters Without Borders joined others in asking how Google could stand up for US users’ freedoms while controlling what Chinese users can search for.
The Chinese government keeps a tight rein on the internet and what users can access through its so-called “Great Firewall”.
Now I have spent some time in China. I have had secret police making no secret of reading my emails over my shoulder. Google does not understand the large part it plays in freedom of information in China.
Tree house
An Indian man has been living in a tree for the past 15 years despite passionate appeals by his mother to return home. Kapila Pradhan, 45, a resident of Nagajhara village in the eastern Indian state of Orissa, left home after an apparent tiff with his wife.
“My son and daughter-in-law quarrelled constantly after their son was born and their relationship soured day by day,” says his mother Sishula. “One morning I found my son had left the house while everybody was still asleep.” A month later, villagers found him deep in the forest living in a tree.
“I went to the forest to bring him back home but he refused,” she adds. “Hurt and rejected I had to come back home. I cried a lot,” says Kapila’s mother.
Before he moved to the forest, he was married, and says he was overjoyed when his son was born. The family celebrated and the entire village was invited to dinner. But things soon soured.
His neighbours say Kapila’s wife, Tulasi, began having “illicit relations” with his younger brother Babuan. Soon after Kapila left home, Babuan moved in with Tulasi and they had a child a few years later.
Are you surprised tat the man lives in a tree. Would you want to live in a house where your brother is sleeping with your wife? At least this way every time someone sees him in the tree, they are reminded that his wife was having sex with his brother.
It is like a public service announcement.
Fish
Researchers have found the smallest known fish on record in the peat swamps of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Individuals of the Paedocypris genus can be just 7.9mm long at maturity, scientists write in a journal published by the UK’s Royal Society.
But they warn long-term prospects for the fish are poor, because of rapid destruction of Indonesian peat swamps. The fish have to survive in extreme habitats – pools of acid water in a tropical forest swamp.
Food is scarce but the Paedocypris – smaller than other fish by a few tenths of a millimetre – can sustain their small bodies grazing on plankton near the bottom of the water.
You can just see that in the Angling times. Try mounting that on your wall as a trophy. Fisherman everywhere will be saying “I caught one, this small.”
Orlando Speaks / Topcat's Blog 