October 10, 2006, 10:29 PM CT

Decaffeinated coffee is not caffeine-free

Coffee addicts who switch to decaf for health reasons may not be as free from caffeine's clutches as they think. A new study by University of Florida researchers documents that almost all decaffeinated coffee contains some measure of caffeine.

Caffeine is the most widely consumed drug in the world. And because coffee is a major source in the supply line, people advised to avoid caffeine because of certain medical conditions like hypertension should be aware that even decaffeinated brew can come with a kick, UF researchers report in this month's Journal of Analytical Toxicology.

"If someone drinks five to 10 cups of decaffeinated coffee, the dose of caffeine could easily reach the level present in a cup or two of caffeinated coffee," said co-author Bruce Goldberger, Ph.D., a professor and director of UF's William R. Maples Center for Forensic Medicine. "This could be a concern for people who are advised to cut their caffeine intake, such as those with kidney disease or anxiety disorders".

Despite caffeine's widespread use, most medical texts have no guidelines for intake, Goldberger said, but even low doses might adversely affect some people. So UF researchers set out to conduct a two-phase study designed to gauge just how much caffeine is likely to turn up in decaffeinated coffees.........

Posted by: Sarah      Permalink         Source

October 10, 2006, 9:30 PM CT

Hispanic Heritage Winner Sets Sights High

Setting high goals and achieving them is crucial, says Freshman Eletha Flores of Maryland, the recipient of the 2006 Hispanic Heritage Foundation's National Youth Award for Engineering and Mathematics.

More than 13,000 high school students from across the country applied for the awards. Only nine students were selected in the various categories. MIT freshman Luis Flores (no relation) also received one of the awards in the sports category. The award winners receive $8,000 plus a laptop computer.

Eletha Flores' commitment to excellence started early. "Either I go all the way or I don't do it," said Flores, who set her sights on MIT at the beginning of her high school career. "I knew it was the top engineering school in the country".

Throughout high school, Flores maintained a 4.2 grade point average and consistently challenged herself with summer programs such as MIT's Minority Introduction to Engineering and Science (MITES) and an internship in space robotics at NASA.

As the middle child between two brothers and a child of divorce, her time at home was not always easy, Flores said, adding that her high school was not as challenging as she might have wished. Still, she found hardship motivating. "It gave me such a perspective on what life could be".........

Posted by: Tom      Permalink         Source

October 9, 2006, 8:59 PM CT

Why Unexpected Dennis Surge Occurred?

When Hurricane Dennis passed North Florida on July 10, 2005, it caused a 10-foot storm surge in some areas along Apalachee Bay -- about 3 to 4 feet more than forecasted-- that couldn't be explained only by the local winds that conventionally drive storm surge.

Now, researchers at Florida State University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have observed that the surge in Apalachee Bay was amplified by a "trapped wave" that originated off the southwest Florida coast. The discovery of this previously undocumented storm surge phenomenon has changed how NOAA's National Hurricane Center prepares storm surge models for the Gulf of Mexico. New modeling procedures will help improve the accuracy of storm surge forecasts for the entire Gulf coast from Florida to Texas.

Researchers Steven Morey, Mark Bourassa, Dmitry Dukhovskoy and James O'Brien of FSU's Center for Ocean Atmospheric Prediction Studies and Stephen Baig of NOAA's Tropical Prediction Center of the National Hurricane Center drew their conclusions after conducting numerical experiments with storm surge models. Their research was reported in the Oct. 4 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Hurricane Dennis formed from a tropical depression that originated near the southern Windward Islands on July 4, 2005. It strengthened as it traveled northwest through the Caribbean Sea until it made landfall in Cuba as a Category 4 hurricane. It then traveled west of the Florida Shelf, and the storm's maximum sustained winds weakened to 54 mph before it made landfall on the western Florida Panhandle.........

Posted by: Tyler      Permalink         Source

October 8, 2006, 6:32 PM CT

Champagne Unlocks The Secrets Of Bubble Formation

"I am drinking the stars," Dom Perignon, the monk credited with inventing champagne supposedly proclaimed upon taking his first sip of the bubbly wine. Researchers in France now report one of the most comprehensive explanations for those stars - the bubble trains that rise with that graceful sensuality from each fluted glass, which led poet Lord Byron to muse, "Champagne with foaming whirls, as white as Cleopatra's melted pearls".

The new study, conducted by the University of Reims' Gerard Liger-Belair and his colleagues, explains that the bubbles begin with minute cylindrical fibers deposited on champagne glasses from the air or towels used to dry the glasses. (For an extra bubbly experience, wipe the glass vigorously with a towel before pouring, the researchers advise. For fewer bubbles, avoid towel drying and keep the glass turned upside down.).

The report, in the current (Oct. 4) issue of the biweekly ACS Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, describes how interactions between tiny gas pockets near the fibers influence the bubble trains. The researchers state that their observations in a champagne glass could have broader applications in food processing, medicine and other fields where undesired bubbles form.........

Posted by: Sarah      Permalink         Source

October 8, 2006, 6:23 PM CT

Healthful Compounds In Native American Diets

California's role as a national "health food" trendsetter goes back farther than most people suspect -- way back, in fact, when it comes to consumption of a food particularly rich in healthy phytochemicals. In an advance toward understanding the early California Native American diet, food researchers have identified the full range of phytochemicals in tanoak acorns.

Acorns were a staple in the diet of early Native Americans in California, comprising up to 50 percent of total food intake, Alyson E. Mitchell and his colleagues note in a report in the current (Oct. 4) issue of the ACS biweekly Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Acorns are still used by Californian Native Americans -- special processing is needed to make the nuts edible -- to make acorn flour and soup.

Past research has indicated that acorns have higher levels of healthful tannin compounds than other nuts, so Mitchell's group set out to identify the specific hydrolyzable and condensed tannins in acorns. These same compounds are found in wine, cocoa and other foods with health benefits. Scientists identified more than two dozen specific compounds, in what they termed a first step toward understanding the role of those compounds in Native American diets.........

Posted by: Sarah      Permalink         Source

October 6, 2006, 5:09 AM CT

Emotionally Ambivalent Workers Are More Creative

People who experience emotional ambivalence -- simultaneously feeling positive and negative emotions -- are more creative than those who feel just happy or sad, or lack emotion at all, according to a new study.

That's because people who feel mixed emotions interpret the experience as a signal that they are in an unusual environment and thus respond to it by drawing upon their creative thinking abilities, said Christina Ting Fong, an assistant professor at the University of Washington Business School. This increased sensitivity for recognizing unusual associations, which happy or sad workers probably couldn't detect, is what leads to creativity in the workplace, she added.

"Due to the complexity of many organizations, workplace experiences often elicit mixed emotions from employees, and it's often assumed that mixed emotions are bad for workers and companies," said Fong, whose study appears in the recent issue of the Academy of Management Journal. "Rather than assuming ambivalence will lead to negative results for the organization, managers should recognize that emotional ambivalence can have positive consequences that can be leveraged for organizational success".

For her research, Fong conducted two studies. In the first, she asked 102 college students to write about certain emotional experiences in their lives with the goal of invoking in them feelings of happiness, sadness, neutrality or ambivalence. She then had them complete a commonly used measure of creativity called the Remote Associates Test that explored their ability to recognize common themes among seemingly unrelated words. The results demonstrated that while there were no differences among happy, sad and neutral individuals, people who were feeling emotionally ambivalent performed significantly better on this creativity task.........

Posted by: Tom      Permalink         Source

October 4, 2006, 4:51 AM CT

Sirius vs XM

Looking at the animated version of this graphic too long may make you ill, but it does nicely illustrate the very different schemes that Sirius and XM chose in their efforts to blanket North America in audio and data, including, of course, our recent obsession.live marine weather. Both schemes seem to work fine around the U.S., especially on boats with their naturally wide open sky views, but how far offshore, north, and south can you receive Sirius or XM? A lot of cruisers would like to know, but the company Web sites seem vague on the subject. For one thing, I don't think they themselves are positive about their footprint edges, and don't want to over promise.

Another issue is that XM and Sirius may broadcast into countries where they are not licensed to, and where someone thinks they should be. You may recall a long period when Canadians could only subscribe to satellite radio using U.S. addresses, even though most could get it fine. XM and Sirius were not bragging about their Canadian coverage then! Both Audio services are now licensed in Canada but, head's up, Sirius Weather isn't yet. Which brings us to some legalese in the Raymarine Sirius literature suggesting that your expensive weather receiver might not work if you go outside U.S. territorial waters. Not true; I checked!........

Posted by: Gina      Permalink         Source

October 4, 2006, 4:47 AM CT

Vancouver Dispatch

For all its natural beauty, Vancouver is famously non-descript in the numerous Hollywood movies that shoot here on the cheap, invariably relegating the city to a stand-in for Anytown, USA (recent examples include the X-Men films, Firewall, The Exorcism of Emily Rose and the remake of The Fog).

While the locals rather like having movie stars in their midst (and you can be sure the local media resent their absence from VIFF), there is something belittling about this enforced anonymity. Gallingly, Hollywood is making jokes about it: "Why would we want to shoot in Vancouver?" someone rails in the pilot for Aaron Sorkin's new show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. "Vancouver doesn't look like anywhere. Vancouver doesn't even look like Vancouver."

Well, Vancouver never looked more like itself than in Everything's Gone Green, based on the first original narrative screenplay by the novelist and multi-media artist Douglas Coupland. Coupland is Vancouver born and bred, and several of his books take place in the immediate vicinity (Life After God, Girlfriend in a Coma and Hey Nostradamus!, for starters); he even wrote a typically gnomic A-Z of his hometown, City of Glass.

Everything's Gone Green might be City of Glass: The Movie for the way it goes out of its way to foreground the location. It even begins with a bike ride around the Seawall. But this is not mere travelogue; Coupland is exploring the way the environment conditions a certain culture, in this case a psyche of west coast capitalism that is at once attractively laid back and morally inert (not to say corrupt).........

Posted by: Gina      Permalink         Source

October 4, 2006, 4:43 AM CT

Remake of Friday the 13th should be out by 2007

Jason lives! Or at least he will once all of the litigations are finished. The folks over at bloody-disgusting.com gave us this, but please be aware the information is of the hearsay variety:

B-D reader 'xerotheory7803' sent in this little update on New Line Cinema and Platinum Dunes' delayed Friday the 13th project. Xero tells B-D, "I just got back from the Fangoria Weekend of Horrors in Jersey and got a little bit of news to share with you. After the 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning' Panel, I was talking with Andrew Form, one of the producers who is also producing the new 'Friday The 13th', and he said that the remake, which is tied in a rights battle right now, should be in theaters by July 2007. He also exclaimed that they will fight to the bitter end to make sure it is released with an R rating, no PG-13 bullshit for Jason Voorhees." We've also heard some positive rumbling here in Los Angeles and hope to have some big news for you soon!.

Wow has it been that long already? Well the original Friday the 13th was made in 1980, and yeah, I am going to go out on a limb here and say that twenty six years may in fact be long enough for a remake.

This is a classic horror movie and I am curious to see if the movie makers can do it justice. It's going to be difficult, to me the eighties had a real lock on fear and tension. But if this movie is made I will watch it.........

Posted by: Gina      Permalink         Source

October 3, 2006, 10:07 PM CT

Robot Wheelchair Gives Patients More Independence

Engineers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are in the process of developing a robotic system that may offer wheelchair-dependent people independent, powered mobility and the ability, depending on patient status, to move to and from beds, chairs and toilets without assistance.*.

The lifting ability of the system, which is called the "HLPR Chair" (for Home Lift, Position and Rehabilitation), also should significantly reduce caregiver and patient injuries.

The HLPR chair draws on mobile robotic technology developed at NIST for defense and manufacturing applications. It is built on an off-the-shelf forklift with a U-frame base on wheel-like casters and a rectangular vertical frame. The frame is small enough to pass through the typical residential bathroom. The user drives the chair using a joystick and other simple controls.

The HLPR chair's drive, steering motors, batteries and control electronics are positioned to keep its center of gravity-even when carrying a patient-within the wheelbase. This allows a person, weighing up to 300 pounds, to rotate out, from the inner chair frame, over a toilet, chair or bed while supported by torso lifts. The torso lifts lower the patient safely into the new position. The chair frame can even remain in position to continue supporting the patient from potential side, back or front fall.........

Posted by: Kevin      Permalink         Source