The Skinny on Chronic Fat

Admission! This post was inspired by a FAT CHICK – a self confessed – apparently happy FAT CHICK!Chrissie Swan, ex-The Circle, and regular contributor to Melbourne’s The Age newspaper, penned a piece for the afore mentioned newspaper that has me ever so slightly incensed. The Age’s Sunday Life –  Life Matters - is all fluff, it’s meant to lighten up our Sunday read, feel good articles that mix well with coffee, bagels and balmy afternoons. What’s so standout about Ms Swan’s piece is that a half dozen people have so far had a good grizzle about what a trollish, trashy tale this happy fat chick has penned.

Clearly gnawing on fat isn’t a light hearted ramble.

“I’m overweight and happy” Chrissie Swan said “It hasn’t always been this way, I mean, I’ve always been happy, but I’ve lived with the dream of a goal weight hanging in front of me like a carrot (cake) since I was about 11 years old”

Shock Horror, it’s a hard concept to grasp, someone happy being a fatty!?

No one wants to be fat, it’s a myth, no one wants to feel unwanted or worse wanted for being a complete oddity. Being over weight is a complicated place to be. Losing weight is a massive chore, trust me inside this average body lurks a fat person trying to get out. Keeping that fat chick in check is a daily struggle. Emotions, Hormones, Food and even Genes all seem to be against us staying thin. Read the full article »»»»

REBLOG! Google to Open Online Tablet PC Store

Our favourite internet behemoth – Google – is planning to open an online store to sell tablet PCs directly to consumers, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. Google’s online store would offer tablets made by Samsung and Asus based on Google’s Android software, according to the WSJ report.

Google briefly sold a specially-designed Android smartphone – Nexus One – directly to consumers in 2010, but closed the store after four months saying it had not lived up to expectations. Google now relies on retail and carrier partners to sell Android smartphones made by a variety of handset makers and Android has become the world’s No.1 smartphone operating system, ahead of iPhone-maker Apple Inc. Read the rest of this entry »

Teamwork Made Homo Sapiens The Cerebral Giant

Learning to work in teams may explain why humans evolved a bigger brain, according to a new study. Compared to his hominid predecessors, Homo sapiens is a cerebral giant, a riddle that scientists have long tried to solve.

The answer, according to researchers in Ireland and Scotland, may lie in social interaction.

Working with others helped humans to survive, but he had to develop a brain big enough to cope with all the social complexities, they believe. In a computer model, the team simulated the human brain, allowing a network of neurons to evolve in response to a series of social challenges.

There were two scenarios. The first entailed two partners in crime who had been caught by the police, each having to decide whether or not to inform on the other. The second had two individuals trapped in a car in a snowdrift and having to weigh whether to cooperate to dig themselves out or just sit back and let the other do it. Read the full article »»»»

Music That Truly Moves & Sooths

It’s no secret that music is a feel good vibration, a human creation that has served our mood swinging species well as both a pick-me-up and as a basic communication tool. There is apparently, music, and then theres music, well more precisely, there are people who like music and then there are people who LIKE music. People who become euphoric over music apparently unleash dopamine, a brain chemical that also induces the sense of reward that comes from food, psychoactive drugs and money, an unusual Canadian study says.

McGill University researchers in Montreal, recruited eight volunteers aged between 19 and 24 among 217 people who responded to advertisements requesting people who experienced ‘chills’, a marker of extreme pleasure, when listening to music. The paper, headed by Valorie Salimpoor and Dr Robert Zatorre, is published online in the journal Nature Neuroscience. After careful selection, the volunteers were put into a positron emission tomography (PET) scanner, which is able to spot a tagged chemical, raclopride, that works on dopamine receptors in brain cells.

Subjects were also wired up to sensors that measured them for heartbeat, respiration, temperature and skin conductance. Listening to their favourite piece of spine-tingling music, the volunteers showed a rush of physical activity and also unlocked a release of dopamine in the striatum area of the brain. The effect occurred even in anticipation, before the chill peak occurred.Read the full article »»»»

REBLOG! Greening the Internet

If you thought we had safely passed through the Green stage of evolution, think again! Apparently the next thing to go green is the internet. Melbourne University’s Rod Tucker has a fairly balanced – for a greeny – view on how why and when. Tucker reckons today’s internet, including all of its add-on services like Google and Facebook, uses only a few per cent of the world’s electricity supply. The carbon footprint of the internet is roughly the same as the global airline industry. However, the internet is growing much faster than the airline industry, and is on track to be the world’s largest single greenhouse emitter.

To stem the greenhouse footprint of the internet, the GreenTouch global research consortium, an amalgamation of 60 industry organizations and universities, including the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Energy-Efficient Telecommunications (CEET), Alcatel-Lucent, the University of New South Wales and NICTA, is reinventing the underlying technologies and the structure of the internet in ways that make networks more energy efficient. GreenTouch aims to dramatically improve the energy efficiency of information and communications technology (ICT) networks by a factor of 1000 by the year 2020. Read Tucker’s Full Article »»»»

REBLOG! Sleeping With Pets Gives Better Rest Than Human Partner

Researchers at Central Queensland University say a new study has found people get a better night’s sleep with pets in their bed rather than a partner. The researchers undertook an online study into sleep patterns with more than 13,000 people earlier this year.

Professor Drew Dawson says about 70 per cent of respondents were regularly woken at night. ”Partners were more likely to be disruptive than pets, and particularly people reporting partners who snored and partners who got up to go to the toilet and therefore turned the lights on,” he said. ”Again, one of the things that is very interesting in the way bedrooms have changed in the last 20 or 30 years is the extent to which ensuite bathrooms have intruded into the bedroom.”

Professor Dawson also says the study found more than a third of all workers doze off on the job. ”Interestingly the more work you do – that is the more hours you work, the less sleep you believe you need,” he said. ”Also managers, the more senior they were, thought they needed much less sleep to perform well. I think there’s many people in workplaces that would agree with them.” For More Quirks of Research! Check >>www.cankler.com.au

CANKLER SCIENCE NEWS: Research Group Calls For Open Access Drug Trials

Researchers are pushing for pharmaceutical companies to make full data from their clinical trials publicly available, allowing risks and benefits of  drugs to be independently analysed. Currently drug research - clinical trial data – is considered commercial confidential information, not a public, social  or philanthropic interest. The researchers have documented a number of cases in which access to full trial data would “radically change public knowledge of safety and efficacy” of widely used drugs, including Vioxx and Tamiflu. The researchers point out that there is insufficient evidence that Tamiflu – stockpiled by governments around the globe in 2009, including the Australian Government, to quarantine swine flu – had any preventative effect.

REPORT: Consider the case of the influenza antiviral Tamiflu (oseltamivir). Prior to the global outbreak of H1N1 influenza in 2009, the United States alone had stockpiled nearly US$1.5 billion dollars worth of the antiviral. As the only drug in its class (neuraminidase inhibitors) available in oral form, Tamiflu was heralded as the key pharmacologic intervention for use during the early days of an influenza pandemic when a vaccine was yet to be produced. It would cut hospitalizations and save lives, said the US Department of Health and Human Services. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices – ACIP, the group the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention uses to form national influenza control policy – said it would reduce the chances of developing complications from influenza. So, too, did the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration  and the European Medicines Agency. Read the full article »»»»

CHINA: Feathered Tyrannosaurus Rex

Palaeontologists in China have uncovered a species of giant feathered dinosaur that was an ancient relative of Tyrannosaurus Rex. Scientists have known for over a decade that some small dinosaurs had bird-like feathers. But a report in the journal Nature says the new species of tyrannosaur, which was 9 metres long and weighed about 1.5 tonnes, provides direct evidence of the existence of gigantic feathered dinosaurs and has implications for early feather evolution.

The theropod, which was an ancient relative of Tyrannosaurus Rex, was 40 times larger than any previously known feathered dinosaur. It has been given the name Yutyrannus Huali, a combination of Latin and Mandarin, which means “beautiful feathered tyrant”. Read the full article »»»»

CHINA: Teen Sells Kidney For iPhone

Five people in the southern China province of Hunan have been arrested and charged with intentional injury in the case of a teenager who sold a kidney so he could buy an iPhone and an iPad. The five included a surgeon, who removed a kidney from the 17-year-old boy in April last year. The boy, identified only by his surname Wang, now suffers from renal deficiency, the government-run Xinhua News Agency quoted prosecutors in Chenzhou city, Hunan province as saying.

According to Chinese news agency Xinhua, one of the defendants received about 220,000 yuan, $US35,00 to arrange the transplant. He paid Wang 22,000 yuan and split the rest with the surgeon, the three other defendants and other medical staff.

The report did not say who received and paid for the kidney.

The teen was from Anhui, one of China’s poorest provinces, where inhabitants frequently leave to find work and a better life elsewhere. He bought an iPhone and iPad, and when asked by his mother where he got the money, admitted selling a kidney. Apple products are hugely popular in China, but are priced beyond the reach of many Chinese.

Wang’s renal deficiency is deteriorating, Xinhua quoted prosecutors as saying. Only a fraction of the people who need organ transplants in China are able to get them, leading to “transplant tourism” where patients travel overseas for such operations, and to a black market for human organs. China banned the trading of human organs in 2007, Xinhua said. Several other suspects involved in the case are still being investigated. For More Technology! Check >> www.technoid.com.au

STANDOUT! GOOGLE LOSES AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL COURT APPEAL

The Australian Federal Court has ruled against Google, stating the search behomoth breached the law by displaying misleading sponsored links at the top of its search results. Last Year the court found that Google wasn’t liable for ads that appeared as search results. Consumers who used Google to search for Harvey World Travel, Honda, Just 4X4  Magazine and Alpha Dog Training were presented with ads that led to rival websites.

In appealing the Federal Court’s decision, The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission - ACCC – took the view that Google’s key word insertion system, plus the role of Google staff, were fundamental to the false representations being made. In a statement the ACCC said It was significant that the previous Federal Court decisions considered by Justice Nicholas related to publishers of advertisements in traditional forms of media, such as print and television. The reasoning in those cases is not easily translated to the practices of search engine providers such as Google in publishing sponsored entries as part of search results.

The ACCC appealed last year after Justice Nicholas ruled Google’s conduct had not been in breach of the Trade Practices Act. Justice Nicholas found that although a number of the advertisements were misleading or deceptive, Google had not made those representations.Read the full article »»»»

Burma Election in Words & Pictures

Our abc.net.ay has one of it’s superlatve collages, this week it’s on the sweeping changes taking place in democracy deprived Burma.  Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has hailed a “new era” for Burma after her party swept to victory in elections seen as a test of budding reforms. The Nobel peace laureate won her first seat in parliament and her National League for Democracy – NLD – party secured 40 of the 44 seats it contested, according to partial official results.

APPLE FAILS CHINESE LABOR AUDIT

An audit of three Foxconn factories by FLA, Fair Labor Association – pumping out coveted Apple gadgets – has found abuses of Chinese labour law, including employees working more than 76 hours a week and more than seven days straight without a required 24-hour break. Along with excessive overtime and not always compensating workers properly for extra hours that were put in, the nearly month-long investigation uncovered health and safety risks and “crucial communication gaps.”

“The Fair Labor Association gave Apple’s largest supplier the equivalent of a full-body scan through 3,000 staff hours investigating three of its factories and surveying more than 35,000 workers,” said the watchdog’s president Auret van Heerden. ”Apple and its supplier Foxconn have agreed to our prescriptions, and we will verify progress and report publicly.”

With 1.2 million workers, Foxconn, an affiliate of Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry, is by far Apple’s largest and most influential partner. While the audit found multiple violations of labour law at the Foxconn factories, it also found many of the workers would like to work more hours and make more money. Mr van Heerden says this sentiment is typical of migrant workers in China.

“Migrant workers go to find work with a view to make as much money as they can in the shortest time as possible,” Mr van Heerden said. ”So they do push for extra hours, especially overtime hours that are paid at a premium.” Read the full article »»»»

REBLOG! Apple FORCED To Offer iPAD Refunds 4G Non Compatibility

Our favourite tech behemoth Apple is once again in an übergadget pickle.  The beheomoth has been forced to offer a refund to people who bought its new iPAD, which it admits is not compatible with Australia’s Telstra 4G network. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission – ACCC – has taken legal action against Apple for what it claims are misleading statements over its new iPad.

Lawyers for the ACCC have accused Apple of breaching consumer law by promoting the device as being able to connect to high-speed 4G mobile networks using a sim card. The Australian Federal Court heard that Apple ignored warnings from the ACCC and was told the day before the iPad’s launch that it was misleading consumers. Read the full article »»»»