|
|
 
|
|
Author
|
Topic: Post your random news stories here
|
Brad Miller
Administrator
Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99
|
posted 08-02-2008 01:44 PM
Drug gives couch potato mice benefits of a workout
quote:
NEW YORK - Here's a couch potato's dream: What if a drug could help you gain some of the benefits of exercise without working up a sweat? Scientists reported Thursday that there is such a drug — if you happen to be a mouse.
Sedentary mice that took the drug for four weeks burned more calories and had less fat than untreated mice. And when tested on a treadmill, they could run about 44 percent farther and 23 percent longer than untreated mice.
Just how well those results might translate to people is an open question. But someday, researchers say, such a drug might help treat obesity, diabetes and people with medical conditions that keep them from exercising.
"We have exercise in a pill," said Ron Evans, an author of the study. "With no exercise, you can take a drug and chemically mimic it."
Evans, of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute reports the work with colleagues in a paper published online Thursday by the journal Cell.
They also report that in mice that did exercise training, a second drug made their workout much more effective at boosting endurance. After a month of taking that drug and exercising, mice could run 68 percent longer and 70 percent farther than other mice that exercised but didn't get the drug.
Both drugs have been studied by researchers for other uses. The no-exercise drug is in advanced human testing to see if it can prevent a complication of heart bypass surgery.
Evans noted the drugs might prove irresistible for professional athletes who seek an illegal edge. He said his team has developed detection tests for use by the World Anti-Doping Agency. Evans said he has no financial interest in either drug or the test.
Resveratrol, a substance being studied for anti-aging effects, has also been reported to enable mice to run farther before exhaustion without exercise training. But the drugs in the new study appear to act more specifically on a process in muscles that boosts endurance, the researchers said.
Still, it takes more than just altered muscles to turn a sedentary mouse into a distance runner, Evans said, and "honestly, I just don't know how that happens. Whether it would happen in a person, I don't know. I think it's a small miracle it happened at all."
In fact, Evans said that when the experiment with sedentary mice was suggested by an outside scientist who was reviewing the lab's research, "I didn't think it was going to work."
The no-exercise drug is called AICAR. Previous experiments suggest that it might protect against gaining weight on a high-fat diet, which might make it useful for treating obesity, Evans said. But it would have to be taken for a long time, he said, so its safety in people would have to be assured.
Experts who study muscle agreed that a drug like AICAR may prove useful someday in treating obesity and diabetes. Many drug companies are working on such drugs in diabetes because in animals, AICAR stimulates muscles to remove sugar from the blood, noted Laurie Goodyear of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston.
People who can't exercise because of a medical condition like joint pain or heart failure might also benefit from such a drug, experts said.
But Eric Hoffman of the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., noted that AICAR mimics only aerobic exercise, not the strength training that might be more useful to bedridden people or the elderly, for example. He also cautioned that it's not clear whether the new mouse results can be reproduced in people.
Goodyear said exercise has such widespread benefits in the body that she doubts any one pill will ever be able to supply all of them. "For the majority of people," she said, "it would be better to do exercise than to take a pill."
| IP: Logged
|
|
Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
|
posted 08-04-2008 09:12 AM
Even Hannibal Lecter didn't think of this...
quote: Daily Telegraph, 4 August 2008
Cook parades severed head of murdered girlfriend
A cook beheaded his girlfriend then paraded through a Greek village with her severed head before tossing it into a police car.
Athanassios Arvanitis, 31, carried out the gruesome act on the island of Santorini following a heated argument with partner Adamantia Karkali, 25, police said.
Neighbours claimed Arvanitis also beheaded his girlfriend's dog with a butchers knife before turning the blade on his victim.
He then picked up the severed head of Ms Karkali and roamed through the streets of Vourvoulos while villagers fled inside their homes and called the police.
When police attempted to arrest Arvanitis, he pulled a knife and stabbed one officer before flinging the head of his victim into a patrol car, local officials confirmed.
The cook then stole a second patrol car sparking a high-speed police chase in which he ran over two women doctors who were riding a motorcycle.
During the chase, Arvanitis was shot five times by police as he attempted to flee before he was finally forced to stop the car.
Arvanitis, who worked at a local restaurant suffered serious injuries and was undergoing surgery at a hospital on the island, said Chrysanthos Roussos, head of the Santorini district.
One of the two doctors hit by Arvanitis suffered multiple fractures in the collision. The other was uninjured.
A female bystander was also hit by a stray bullet as police fired at the suspect. She escaped serious harm.
Angelos Roussos, the mayor of Thira, the island's main town told TV station Antenna that Ms Karkali had worked as a teacher in a local village.
Santorini is a small, circular archipelago of volcanic islands located in the southern Aegean Sea, about 200 km southeast from Greece's mainland.
Its nightlife and physical beauty have made the island a tourist hotspot for European travellers.
"Its nightlife and physical beauty have made the island a tourist hotspot for European travellers." ... but not the local cuisine, I'd imagine, given the habits of the chefs there!
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
|
posted 08-06-2008 03:17 PM
quote: Daily Telegraph, 5 August 2008
Twenty-six cheerleaders rescued from lift
A group of 26 teenage cheerleaders from the University of Texas were trapped in a lift after trying to find out how many of them could squeeze inside.
The girls, aged between 14 and 17, managed to get into the lift on Tuesday night at the appropriately named Jester Residence Hall on the university campus. They had been attending a cheerleading camp - but its lessons on contortion did not include any advice on how to extract their tinsel pom poms from a difficult situation.
After taking deep breaths they managed to close the lift door and descend to the first floor - but when they touched down the doors refused to open, sending them into a panic. After the cheerleaders eventually contacted the outside world by calling from a mobile phone, repairmen were rushed to release them.
However, it took 25 minutes to fix the door and free the increasingly alarmed girls. One fainted and had to be treated in hospital.
The university authorities failed to see the funny side, however. "It's dangerous actually," said Rhonda Weldon, the university police spokeswoman. "They're lucky that that's all that happened. Take the sign seriously. There are signs everywhere: no more than 15 people or 3,000 pounds."
Maybe they were trying to gain valuable experience before applying for jobs with a low-budget airline?
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
|
posted 08-24-2008 03:16 PM
quote: Sunday Telegraph, 24 August 2008
Alligator on loose in city was just a soft toy
When an alligator was reported loose on the streets of Bristol, police and the RSPCA snapped into action.
Roads were sealed off as they staked out the creature, which appeared to be lying in garden bushes with the remains of a bird in its jaws. After a tense 30-minute stand-off, emergency workers used a camera to zoom in on the reptile – and discovered that it was a stuffed toy.
RSPCA chief inspector Richard Masling said: "We thought it would be a captive caiman which had escaped or been abandoned, then killed and eaten a wild bird and was laying on the grass digesting it. Caiman are part of the alligator family and have very sharp teeth, so it was very important that the police and RSPCA took all the necessary safety precautions to protect ourselves and the public. But in the end, as animal rescues go - this one really was child's play."
It is unclear if the emergency was a prank but the toy had fluff in its mouth to appear like feathers and an elastic band made to look like a muzzle was wrapped around its jaws. Chief Insp Masling added: "Although this turned out to be a funny call, the number of unwanted and abandoned exotic animals which the Society deals with is no laughing matter. That includes, on occasions, the odd caiman."
Caiman alligators are native to freshwaters in the United States but can be kept as pets.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
John Wilson
Film God
Posts: 5438
From: Sydney, Australia.
Registered: Dec 1999
|
posted 09-24-2008 07:39 PM
Headed for Sydney, Australia...ends up in Sydney, Nova Scotia.
Accidental tourist ends up in the wrong Sydney
September 25, 2008 - 5:59AM
An Argentine tourist got the city name right, but the continent wrong when she booked a vacation to Australia, and found herself in easternmost Canada this week, said local media.
Monique Rozanes Torres Aguero of Buenos Aires had wanted to travel to Sydney, Australia, but ended up instead in the former coal and steel mill town of Sydney, Nova Scotia.
The mix-up, due to inattention while booking flights online, became evident when she boarded a small propeller plane in Halifax that would take her on the last leg of her journey.
"She was taking pictures out the airplane window and said to herself, 'Something is not right,"' local resident Christiane Tanner, who befriended the accidental tourist, told the Cape Breton Post.
But rather than make a fuss, Torres decided to stay and make the best of her trip.
"When things happen, you let them happen," she said through an interpreter.
Apparently, it is not the first time Canada has welcomed tourists intended for Australia.
In 2002, two Britons also mistakenly landed in Canada's sleepy Sydney, instead of Australia's bustling metropolis, a Cape Breton tourism spokeswoman said.
And Sidney, British Columbia, in westernmost Canada has reportedly received stray tourists too from Germany and the Czech Republic.
AFP
---------------------
quote:
"She was taking pictures out the airplane window and said to herself, 'Something is not right,"'
Well, ain't THAT the understatement of the year... ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
| IP: Logged
|
|
Brad Miller
Administrator
Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99
|
posted 09-27-2008 12:18 PM
Does Thinking Make Us Fatter?
Mental Tasks Cause People to Eat More, Researchers Find
By LEE DYE
Sept. 10, 2008 —
Angelo Tremblay noticed something odd every time he worked up a grant application for his research program in a Quebec university. He had a craving for chocolate chip cookies.
Now, thanks to research in his lab at the Universite Laval, he has a better understanding of why. It turns out that performing mental tasks, like trying to solve problems while working at a computer, stimulates the appetite so much that people tend to eat significantly more calories than they burned while performing the "knowledge-based" tasks.
In a study published in the current issue of Psychosomatic Medicine, researchers found a physiological basis for the spike in appetite. Mental work "destabilizes" the levels of insulin and glucose, two critical components in the body's regulatory and energy machinery, thus stimulating the appetite, said Jean-Philippe Chaput, lead author of the study.
"The brain uses only glucose for energy," unlike the "muscles, which use fat and glucose," Chaput said in a telephone interview. So when the level of glucose, or sugar, becomes unstable, the brain demands more.
According to the research, participants consumed far more calories after performing mental tasks than they consumed after relaxing for the same period of time.
The study is quite small, involving only 14 women, so the results are only tentative, but Chaput said he and his fellow researchers have already embarked on a larger study involving 50 men and 50 women. Only women were used in the pilot study because it has been well established that men and women react differently to stress, and the researchers did not want to cloud the results.
At this point, however, the study indicates that a rapidly changing lifestyle toward "knowledge-based work," like time spent at the computer or trying to solve mental challenges, may be a significant factor in the current obesity epidemic, Chaput said.
"There are a lot of people doing this kind of work now, compared to physical work in the past, so we postulate that it can explain in part" why so many people in so many countries are getting fat, he said.
As the researchers put it in their paper, "knowledge-based work represents the main working modality in a context of modernity." In other words, many are spending fewer calories, but taking more in, because of changes in the work environment.
That's true not only in the world of employment, but in the world of entertainment as well. Many people are spending more time playing computer games, some of which can be intellectually challenging, than playing tennis, for example.
The researchers are members of the university's department of medicine, and they specialize in kinesiology, the mechanics and anatomy of human movement. The 14 women in the study were all students, ranging in age from 20 to 30 years. All were in good health, with no eating disorders, normal weight, and free of food allergies.
During a two-month period they were each required to participate in three 45-minute exercises consisting of relaxing in a chair, reading a document and writing a summary of 350 words, and "a cognitive task consisting of a comprehensive battery of computerized tests."
Each participant was tested separately from the others.
Each "came into the lab at 8 a.m., and we gave each participant a standardized breakfast," Chaput said. "After that we started the exercise at 10:30 a.m., one participant at a time, and they came every two weeks. At about 11:30 a.m. we gave them a buffet type of meal, comprising a lot of food."
The food in the buffet was weighed and analyzed before and after the lunch, so researchers knew precisely how much and which type of food each participant had eaten. Various tests during each exercise also told the researchers precisely how many calories the participants were burning at the time.
The participants burned only about three calories more during each of the two "knowledge-based" experiments than during the 45 minutes when they rested in a comfortable chair. So the caloric expenditures were relatively quite low for mental tasks compared to the period spent relaxing.
But the intake was significantly higher. Participants consumed 203 more calories after the reading experiment, and 253 more calories after the computer tests, than the resting participants. That's an increase of 23.6 percent and 29.4 percent, respectively.
Measurements of glucose and insulin became quite erratic during the mental tests. Glucose soared almost immediately when the participants were reading and then dropped dramatically. It dropped and remained below normal during the computerized tests. Insulin rose slightly during the reading test, and then dropped, and it dropped steadily during the computer tests.
That erratic performance by both glucose and insulin caused the appetite to rise, apparently in response to a need to restore the energy balance, the researchers conclude. The results probably would have been different if men had been included in the study, as they will be in future research. That's because mental challenges provoke stress, and it "is expected to be higher in females than in males," according to Chaput. That is also reflected in many other studies. He said women also tend to eat more following stress than men do, although "we don't know why yet."
Although the first study was limited to college-aged participants, Chaput said other research in his lab suggests that the same findings will apply to children as well as to older adults.
But if mental challenges cause people to eat more food, why aren't nearly all college professors fat?
Simple, Chaput said. Eating is only part of the weight control "package," he added. It's possible to spend a lot of time working out problems at the computer if that is balanced with a reasonable amount of time working out, literally.
Some college professors, of course, are fat. Maybe the skinny ones use their computers on the treadmill.
Lee Dye is a former science writer for the Los Angeles Times. He now lives in Juneau, Alaska.
Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures
| IP: Logged
|
|
Drew Daniluck
Film Handler
Posts: 12
From: Frederick, MD, United States
Registered: Feb 2008
|
posted 09-30-2008 09:26 PM
Latest News from the LHC (Large Hadron Collider)
Restart for LHC scheduled for spring 2009, following a technical failure (more...) .
What had been an exceptionally smooth early commissioning phase for the LHC, following first injection of proton beams on the 10th September (more...), was dramatically de-railed by a technical failure on the 19th September (more...). The first few days of commissioning beams in the LHC had encountered some technical problems, which had been resolved (more...). However, the damage caused by the melting of a faulty electrical connection (during a test) has required that the affected sector be warmed up for repair.
The extensive preparations for the start of LHC experiments have included exhaustive safety assessments, including the potential risk of creating new particles, black holes etc.
From the official website: www.lhc.ac.uk/
-I edited some of the article for length reasons, it was all television advertisements, but in response to Joe, yes I am very interested in this matter, considering the possibility of Black Holes being created...im no expert in the field, but im pretty sure thats a bad thing. Google this and you can see the theories of evidence that these blackholes won't "harm" anything. Considering that their machine broke upon its first run, doesn't make feel to good about their "theories".-
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
Brad Miller
Administrator
Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99
|
posted 10-01-2008 12:18 AM
Woman In Cow Suit Arrested For Creating Chaos
32-year-old Michelle Allen of Middleton, Ohio was just minding her business, urinating on a neighbor’s porch while dressed as a cow, when cops told her to please go home. Later that day, cops were called once again as Allen was blocking traffic and chasing terrified children. It was at this point that cops went ahead and decided to arrest her. Cows > The Pigs, motherfuckers:
The arresting officer says Allen smelled of alcohol, slurred her speech, and was belligerent. She also alleged cussed at the officer.
Allen informed police that, if brought to jail, she would “cause problems.” She did manage to put on a suit for her court hearing, but not before leaving us with the finest mug shot in the history of the world.
| IP: Logged
|
|
Brian Michael Weidemann
Expert cat molester
Posts: 944
From: Costa Mesa, CA United States
Registered: Feb 2004
|
posted 10-01-2008 01:33 AM
quote: Drew Daniluck
the possibility of Black Holes being created...im no expert in the field, but im pretty sure thats a bad thing. Google this and you can see the theories of evidence that these blackholes won't "harm" anything. Considering that their machine broke upon its first run, doesn't make feel to good about their "theories"
The black holes the machine could create won't harm anything in the same way that the dew on your windshield in the morning won't flood the coastline and sink California. The black holes, as far as my understanding goes, are only technically black holes, and are merely artifacts of the process, and are relatively weak. Now, those HUGE black holes, the ones that notoriously "gobble up" everything and the light with it ... well, those are made up of more densely packed matter than we have in our solar system, and since you can't physically CREATE matter out of nothing, we have nothing to fear (in this regard) out of Geneva. ![[thumbsup]](graemlins/thumbsup.gif)
Heating a lamphouse with a 4000 watt xenon lamp, however, "in theory", shouldn't burn down the building ... but if you have a brainwrap during your theatre's opening weekend, then how can the folks who built the projection booth be credible? Their theories can't be trusted! ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classicTM
6.3.1.2
The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion
and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.
|
Home
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic