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Intellectual work induces excessive calorie intake.

Quebec City, September 4, 2008—A Université Laval research team has demonstrated that intellectual work induces a substantial increase in calorie intake. The details of this discovery, which could go some way to explaining the current obesity epidemic, are published in the most recent issue of Psychosomatic Medicine.

The research team, supervised by Dr. Angelo Tremblay, measured the spontaneous food intake of 14 students after each of three tasks: relaxing in a sitting position, reading and summarizing a text, and completing a series of memory, attention, and vigilance tests on the computer. After 45 minutes at each activity, participants were invited to eat as much as they wanted from a buffet.

The researchers had already shown that each session of intellectual work requires only three calories more than the rest period. However, despite the low energy cost of mental work, the students spontaneously consumed 203 more calories after summarizing a text and 253 more calories after the computer tests. This represents a 23.6% and 29.4 % increase, respectively, compared with the rest period.

Blood samples taken before, during, and after each session revealed that intellectual work causes much bigger fluctuations in glucose and insulin levels than rest periods. “These fluctuations may be caused by the stress of intellectual work, or also reflect a biological adaptation during glucose combustion,” hypothesized Jean-Philippe Chaput, the study’s main author. The body could be reacting to these fluctuations by spurring food intake in order to restore its glucose balance, the only fuel used by the brain.

“Caloric overcompensation following intellectual work, combined with the fact that we are less physically active when doing intellectual tasks, could contribute to the obesity epidemic currently observed in industrialized countries,” said Mr. Chaput. “This is a factor that should not be ignored, considering that more and more people hold jobs of an intellectual nature,” the researcher concluded.

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In addition to Jean-Philippe Chaput and Angelo Tremblay, the study’s authors include Vicky Drapeau, Paul Poirier, and Normand Teasdale.

Information:
Angelo Tremblay, Ph.D.
Faculty of Medicine
Université Laval
Phone: 418 656-2131, ext. 7294

BBC NEWS | UK | UK ‘sex on beach’ trial delayed.

One witness, a 21-year-old Palestinian man, told police he saw them “start kissing” after getting out of a taxi.

Maybe you should think twice if you are planning to ever visit that shithole.

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Source: DailyTech

Former computer engineer Hans Reiser was today sentenced 15-to-life after a first-degree murder conviction after he strangled his wife and buried her in a ravine.

Reiser’s claim to fame in the computer world is the ReiserFS file system, a general-purpose file system used in the Linux operating system.  ReiserFS is still popular in Linspire, Xandros and other Linux distributions, but has lost support in Novell SUSE Linux and other distributions.

Source: http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2007/10/ion_propulsion#

The key: Ion propulsion only needs a tenth of the fuel of a chemical rocket system to reach the same destination, and that means a smaller rocket — and a lot less fuel — is needed to launch missions, such as the Dawn probe. The miserly use of propellant will allow the Dawn probe to become the first to orbit two separate objects — in this case, the asteroid Vesta in 2011 and the dwarf planet Ceres, where it’s expected to arrive in 2015.

Ion propulsion uses positively charged atoms, or ions, to propel a spacecraft. An electron gun is used to knock electrons from a reservoir of xenon atoms, turning them into ions. Then, two charged plates accelerate the ions and eject them from the back of the rocket engine at speeds of 35 kilometers per second, or about 77,000 mph. To avoid accumulating a negative charge, the probe shoots electrons back into the stream of xenon ions leaving the engine.

Pushing a probe farther into space on a light stream of atoms is a trade-off. While it is 10 times more efficient than chemical propulsion, and thus only requires a tenth of the fuel needed by a chemical thruster, it also lacks power. Marc Rayman, chief engineer on the Dawn mission, has dubbed ion propulsion “acceleration with patience.”

DailyTech – IBM Creates Tunable Nanolaser

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GoTopless

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Japan Net Cafe

Short article by DannyChoo about net cafes in Japan

I’ve been to a couple times myself but there was no bed:

Olympic Fail: Blue Screen of Death Strikes Bird’s Nest During Opening Ceremonies Torch Lighting

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DailyTech – China Blocks iTunes After Olympic Athletes Download Tibet-themed Album

.. LOL

On Monday China’s many internet users began to notice that they were unable to download songs from the popular Apple service iTunes.

Then someone noticed that was the day after Art of Peace Foundation announced the release of “Songs for Tibet,” with music by Sting, Alanis Morissette, Garbage and others along with a 15-minute talk by the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader.  Now Michael Wohl, executive director of the New York City-based group, claims he has inside information on why iTunes has mysteriously malfunctioned on Chinese networks.

Mr. Wohl states in a phone interview, “We issued a release saying that over 40 (Olympic) athletes downloaded the album in an act of solidarity, and that’s what triggered it. Then everything got blocked.”

DailyTech – Physicists Theorize New Method for Faster than Light Travel

he physicists — Gerald Cleaver and Richard Obousy — have theorized a new idea for faster than light travel that involves manipulating dark energy to propel a spacecraft. According to Space.com the universe — in theory — moved faster than light for a short time after the Big Bang, propelled by dark energy which represents about 74% of the mass energy budget in the universe. Space.com goes on to say that, 22% of the mass energy budget consists of dark matter and what remains of the mass-energy budget in the universe being made up of stars, planets and other things we see.

Some current evidence supports the theory that the fabric of space-time can expand faster than the speed of light. This is said to be because the reality which light travels is expanding itself.

R Todd King: China Photos 2003 – Northeast Winter

DailyTech – Cassini Spacecraft Investigates Saturn’s Enceladus

“Icy Jets” Suggest Liquid Water May Be Beneath Surface
New pictures taken by the Cassini Spacecraft of Saturn’s moon Enceladus have revealed stunning new features of the moon’s surface. The images display the so-called “tiger stripes” that span the south pole, and reveal the features to be V-shaped cracks a thousand feet deep. Seen for the first time are the sources of active jets inside the features, which are hurling plumes of ice particles high into space.