January 2, 2007, 12:19 AM CT

Surfing Safer Than Soccer

While public perception may frame surfing as a dangerous sport, new research begs to differ. In the first study of its kind, scientists have computed the rate of injury among competitive surfers and found they are less prone to harm than collegiate soccer or basketball players. Led by scientists at Rhode Island Hospital and Brown Medical School, the findings of the study are reported in the January 2007 issue of the American Journal of Sports Medicine.

"We observed that competitive surfing has a relatively low risk of injury - 6.6 significant injuries per 1,000 hours of surfing - in comparison to other sports for which comparable data is available," says lead author Andrew Nathanson, MD, an emergency medicine doctor with Rhode Island Hospital's Injury Prevention Center. "However, the risk of injury more than doubled when surfing in large waves or over an area with a hard bottom".

The sport of surfing has rapidly grown in popularity since the 1960's, but little is known about surfing injuries - particularly the relative frequency, mechanisms and risk factors. Nathanson and his research team collected injury data from 32 surfing contests worldwide, both professional and amateur. Documentation of every acute surfing injury sustained during competition was recorded, as well as wave size, mechanism of injury and therapy. "Significant" injuries were qualified as those that prevented the surfer from surfing for one or more days, resulted in a hospital visit, or mandatory on-site suturing.........

Posted by: Jim      Read more         Source

December 31, 2006, 7:37 PM CT

Most Stunning Beauty Of All Times

As per a poll, Scarlett Johansson is the most stunning beauty of all times. What made her that are her youthful looks. Scarlett came ahead of the likes of Kylie Minogue and Liv Tailor in the poll. However, all three of them won accolades for their natural looks without the aid of heavy cosmetics or surgery.

The spokesperson for the site that had the poll conducted, Tina Reichards, said:

These celebrities are so beautiful they don't need to resort to heavy make-up or surgery.

Good going, Johansson. It pays to keeping away from those cosmetics, which are not healthy anyway.........

Posted by: Gina      Read more         Source

December 20, 2006, 5:02 AM CT

Volvo's New System to Avoid Rear-End Collisions

It was very recently that Volvo established a Safety center in China owing to the large number of accidental deaths which impressed me a lot as Volvo was really concerned about saving lives more than anything and this time around Volvo has devised another system which ensures that those day to day puny rear-end clashes are nullified.

Dubbed the City Safety system and rightly so , this technology enables the driver to avoid those collisions which happen in the daily urban driving routine by applying the brakes automatically in case the car senses a potential collision. Volvo has plans to launch this system in the market within the next two years.

Ingrid Skogsmo, director of the Volvo Cars Safety Centre said and I quote:.

The system offers benefits to all involved. For the occupants of the car in front, the risk of whiplash injuries is avoided or reduced. What is more, the system can help reduce or sometimes even eliminate the cost of repairs to both vehicles.

This is a much mandatory system keeping in view the urban traffic as a survey reveals that 75% of the collisions happen at speeds upto 30km/hr and this system has been to formulated to act at speeds upto 30 km/hr. If the relative speed difference between the two cars is, less than 15km/hr the system can help avoiding the collision completely. Between 15 to 30 km/hr, the system focuses more on maximum speed reduction before the impact, which gives the driver an opportunity to maneuver.........

Posted by: Jim      Permalink         Source

December 20, 2006, 4:45 AM CT

Is workers' comp fair?

People who receive higher disability ratings for work-related back injuries don't necessarily fare worse over the long term than those who get lower ratings, a Saint Louis University study finds.

The study, which reinforced prior research showing blacks receive less therapy for their back pain than whites, was published online this month in the Journal of Pain. The new research is among the first to examine the relationship between Workers' Compensation settlements for back pain and long-term functional outcomes.

"A disability rating is supposed to reflect the amount of impairment a person has at the time that a case is closed. The presumption is that levels of impairment are stable and correlation to day-to-day levels of function. I was shocked that the associations between disability rating and subsequent levels of function weren't stronger," said Raymond Tait, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry at Saint Louis University School of Medicine.

Disability ratings also differed between African-Americans and Caucasians. As per Tait, those differences probably reflected differences in therapy: whites were four times more likely to have surgery than blacks. Thos who had surgery received larger settlements for their injuries, Tait said.

"While surgery inflated disability ratings, there appeared not relationship between surgery outcomes and how a person did thereafter," he said.........

Posted by: Tom      Permalink         Source

December 18, 2006, 9:41 PM CT

Ape-man Skeleton Is 2.2 Million Years Old

Liverpool scientists worked in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Leeds to analyse the skeleton, which was found in 1997 in Sterkfontein cave in South Africa. Known as 'Little Foot', it was known to be between two million and four million years old, but the team has now dated it precisely to 2.2 million years old.

These new findings reveal that the ape-like creature - part of the Australophithecus africanus family - may not be the immediate ancestor of human beings as some experts originally thought. This is because the team observed that 'Little Foot' lived after the arrival of the stone tool makers, Homo habilis, raising the possibility that this family was more of a side branch of the human evolutionary tree.

Dr Alfred Latham, from the University's School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology said: "'Little Foot' is known to have stood on two feet, standing approximately 130cm tall and having a brain not much larger than a modern chimpanzee. It was discovered cemented in layers of stalagmites and archaeologists are continuing to extract the skeleton from the hardened deposits. We think that 'Little Foot' either fell down a shaft or somehow got trapped in the cave and died there. The remains were preserved in the stalagmite layers and it is these layers that have helped our team to date the skeleton".........

Posted by: William      Permalink         Source

December 18, 2006, 4:48 AM CT

Christmas Dinners Depend On Control Of Plant Diseases

The British Society for Plant Pathology are asking you to spare a thought this Christmas for how plant diseases caused by pathogenic fungi, bacteria and viruses could affect your celebrations.

Why? Because the 12,000 tonnes or so of potatoes eaten have to be protected against the devastating potato blight, likewise Brussels sprouts from ring spot and white blister, carrots from cavity spot. Even the stuffing is under threat with blight of chestnut trees. Less obvious accompaniments include the wine (grape mildew), beer (barley mildew), coffee (coffee rust), and if there is any room left after the meal, the chocolates are from cocoa bushes that survived or were protected from the well-named witches broom or black pod diseases.

These "basics" are all taken for granted but are only there by controlling a whole range of diseases. Also our homes really wouldn't be complete at Christmas without the 'trimmings' of 7.5 million conifer trees, potentially susceptible to Dothistroma needle blight; this would cause needles to drop even before you collected the tree! These comments apply of course to any meal, celebratory or not and is applicable worldwide. A number of cultures are heavily dependent on rice for example, which succumbs to Magnaporthe rice blast, arguably of equivalent importance in those producing countries to potato blight. Our research makes sure that only high quality produce, free from diseases, makes it into your home and onto your plate.........

Posted by: Tom      Permalink         Source

December 17, 2006, 8:07 PM CT

Hilton Didn't Defend Britney on MySpace

Someone played a trick upon party girl Paris Hilton by writing a post on Hilton's name, defending best pal Britney Spear's 'partying ethics'.

But Hilton's rep Elliot Mintz dismissed the reports Friday insisting that Paris did not wrote the post and doesn't have a page on MySpace website.

Mintz said that whoever wrote the entry this week on Hilton's page on the popular social networking site MySpace.com "crafted a very nice piece and the sentiments that were expressed were extremely articulate".

He further stated,.

Did she write that piece? No, she did not. I have no idea who did. There are dozens and dozens of people that use the Web, that write things and post pictures and identify themselves as Paris. There are at least 80 of them. The Web is a bit like the Wild West - somewhat uncontrollable.

Hotel heiress Hilton often enjoys Britney Spears pantiless company, Brit has been photographed without panties in the town with Hilton.

I must say that whosoever wrote the post, wrote with full emotions. If you read the post it seems that someone has penned down Hilton's real emotions for her new best buddy Spears.

Via........

Posted by: Gina      Permalink         Source

December 13, 2006, 7:52 PM CT

Soft Drink Ads In Schools May Discourage Healthy Nutrition

Commercial activity permitted in schools, such as soft drink ads; the use of Channel One broadcasts in classrooms; sales incentives from soft drink bottlers; and exclusive beverage contracts may discourage a "nutrition-friendly" environment for students, says researchers.

Dr. Claudia Probart, Penn State associate professor of nutritional sciences who led the study, says, "Schools' newly created wellness policies as mandated by the Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004 provide ideal opportunities to examine school environments for advertising that might conflict with their goals for a healthy climate for students".

The study is detailed in the current (December) issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association in a paper, "Existence and Predictors of Soft Drink Advertisements in Pennsylvania High Schools." The authors are Probart; Elaine McDonnell, project coordinator, Penn State; Lisa Bailey-Davis, director of operations, Pennsylvania Advocates for Nutrition and Activity; and J. Elaine Weirich, project manager at Penn State.

The researchers sent surveys to 271 school foodservice directors at high schools in Pennsylvania and received 84 percent participation. The schools were representative of the entire population of high schools in Pennsylvania.........

Posted by: Tom      Permalink         Source

December 13, 2006, 7:16 PM CT

Feet, rather than fists

Feet, rather than fists, are the most dangerous bodily weapon available, reveals research on violent assaults, published in the journal Injury Prevention.

The researchers base their findings on an assessment of nearly 25,000 people treated in emergency care in and around Cardiff, Wales between 1999 and 2005. All had sustained injuries during acts of violence.

Injury severity was scored using validated measures, and the mode of the injury recorded. More than 31,000 injuries were treated, with men accounting for three quarters of those requiring treatment. Most had one injury.

The age at which a person was most likely to sustain a serious injury peaked at 47.

Almost two thirds reported being attacked by just one assailant, but one in four said they had been assaulted by three or more people at the same time.

Around one in five injuries were inflicted using a weapon of some sort, more or less equally divided between sharp and blunt objects.

The use of weapons was significantly more likely to cause serious injury than the use of body parts, overall, the findings showed.

But, in descending order, feet, blunt objects, other body parts, and sharp objects were significantly more likely to inflict serious injuries than the use of fists, which were involved in over half of all injuries.........

Posted by: Tom      Permalink         Source

December 11, 2006, 5:10 AM CT

At the Bucharest Luxury Show 2006

The Rich Romanians could satiate their taste for luxury cars at the Bucharest Luxury Show 2006, as it is flooded with a jing-bang of Automotive Luxury at its best/worst. There are a number of things, which make a car standout from the crowd to get a dubbing of a luxurious Saloon. It could be the highest variants from any range of BMW, Mercedes, Rolls- Royce, Buggati Veyron etc. It could also be a high-price tag, eventhough I do not support this convention but this is the way luxury is defined by Baron Roth's elsewhere. Apart from these two ways to define luxury ,there is another one thatthough unconventional but still has the potential to turn the heads of few Richie-Riches.

How about gold plating your cars, well it is does not sound startling to me as we recently ran you guys through a diamond studded Merc. but then there is the difference of the material used this time around.This years Bucharest Luxury Show is hosting cars that are Gold Plated , courtesy : Real Gold Company. Following are few pictures of such gold plated cars, which were unveiled at the aforesaid venue.

These pictures may portray stupidity to a conventional Auto Geek but they would certainly allure the Rich, you can have my word on that as I have seen them owning stranger cars than this, such is the dexterity level of those rich people as they thrive on hype and such strange things definitely add to their hype feed!........

Posted by: Jim      Permalink         Source