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Couples should consider sleeping apart for the good of their health and relationship, say experts. Sleep specialist Dr Neil Stanley told the British Science Festival how bed sharing can cause rows over snoring and duvet-hogging and robs precious sleep. One study found that, on average, couples suffered 50% more sleep disturbances if they shared a bed. Dr Stanley, who sleeps separately from his wife, points out that historically we were never meant to share our beds. He said the modern tradition of the marital bed only began with the industrial revolution, when people moving to overcrowded towns and cities found themselves short of living space. Before the Victorian era it was not uncommon for married couples to sleep apart. In ancient Rome, the marital bed was a place for sexual congress but not for sleeping. Dr Stanley, who set up one of Britain's leading sleep laboratories at the University of Surrey, said the people of today should consider doing the same. "It's about what makes you happy. If you've been sleeping together and you both sleep perfectly well, then don't change, but don't be afraid to do something different. "We all know what it's like to have a cuddle and then say 'I'm going to sleep now' and go to the opposite side of the bed. So why not just toddle off down the landing?" He said poor sleep was linked to depression, heart disease, strokes, lung disorders, traffic and industrial accidents, and divorce, yet sleep was largely ignored as an important aspect of health. Dr Robert Meadows, a sociologist at the University of Surrey, said: "People actually feel that they sleep better when they are with a partner but the evidence suggests otherwise." He carried out a study to compare how well couples slept when they shared a bed versus sleeping separately. Based on 40 couples, he found that when couples share a bed and one of them moves in his or her sleep, there is a 50% chance that their slumbering partner will be disturbed as a result. Despite this, couples are reluctant to sleep apart, with only 8% of those in their 40s and 50s sleeping in separate rooms, the British Science Festival heard. Source
ADELAIDE, Australia, Sept. 9 (UPI) -- Australian authorities said two girls lost in a drainage well system used their phones to update their Facebook statuses instead of calling police. Glenn Benham, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Fire Service in Adelaide, said the girls, ages 10 and 12, posted Facebook updates saying they were lost in a storm drain in the city's south suburbs and a friend who noticed the updates called police, Britain's The Daily Telegraph reported Tuesday. The girls were rescued at 7:30 p.m. and did not require medical attention, emergency responders said. "It is a worry for us because it causes a delay on us being able to rescue the girls," Benham told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. "If they were able to access Facebook from their mobile phones, they could have called 000 (the Australian emergency number), so the point being they could have called us directly and we could have got there quicker than relying on someone being online and replying to them and eventually having to call us via 000 anyway." Source
A groundbreaking electronic device will allow blind people to "see" using their tongues, scientists have claimed. The extraordinary technology takes pictures filmed by a tiny camera and turns the information into electrical pulses which can be felt on the tongue. Tests show that the nerves send messages to the brain which turn these tingles back into pictures. People using the device, which resembles a pair of sunglasses attached by cable to a plastic lollipop, say that with fewer than 20 hours training they can make out shapes and even read signs. Scientists say learning to picture images felt on the tongue is similar to learning to ride a bike. The BrainPort vision device is expected to be available for sale later this year. It collects visual data through a small digital video camera about 2.5cm in diameter that sits in the middle of a pair of sunglasses worn by the user. This information is transmitted to a hand-held control unit, which is about the size of a mobile phone. The unit converts the digital signal into electrical pulses and sends this to the tongue via the lollipop that sits on the tongue. The lollipop contains a grid of 600 electrodes, which pulsate according to how much light is in that area of the picture. The control unit allows users to zoom in and out and control light settings and electric shock intensity. William Seiple, research director at Lighthouse International, which has been testing it, said:"At first, I was amazed at what the device could do. One guy started to cry when he saw his first letter." Robert Beckman, president of US-based Wicab which is developing the BrainPort, said: "It enables blind people to gain perception of their surroundings, displayed on their tongue. "They cannot necessarily read a book but they can read a sign." Mr Beckman envisages the device being used to improve people's mobility and safety. Source
CHINA'S military is harvesting organs from unwilling live prison inmates, mostly Falungong practitioners, for transplants on a large scale - including to foreign recipients- according to a study. The report's authors - Canada's former secretary of state for the Asia Pacific region David Kilgour and human rights lawyer David Matas - implicated dozens of hospitals and jails throughout China in July, after a two-month investigation. Chinese officials denied those allegations. Mr Matas and Mr Kilgour's second report, released today, includes interviews with organ recipients in 30 countries and Canadian hospital staff who cared for more than 100 patients who had undergone suspicious transplant surgeries in China. "The involvement of the People's Liberation Army in these transplants is widespread,'' Mr Kilgour said at a press conference. Like many civilian hospitals in rural China, military hospitals turned to selling organs to make up for government funding cuts in the 1980s, the report said. But military personnel could operate with much more secrecy, it said. "Recipients often tell us that even when they receive transplants at civilian hospitals, those conducting the operation are military personnel,'' the report said. Hospitals in Canada's biggest cities - Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto - confirmed "a substantial number'' of Canadians had travelled to China for dubious organ transplants, Mr Kilgour said. "We're in the three digits, up over 100 (from Canada each year), and the trend is accelerating,'' Mr Matas said. To curb what they called a "disgusting form of evil", the pair asked pharmaceutical firms to stop selling organ anti-rejection drugs to China. They also asked countries to post travel advisories warning about China's alleged organ harvest, asked states to cease offering follow-up care for patients who had dubious organ transplants in China and asked foreign doctors to cut ties with their Chinese counterparts suspected of such practices. The authors said states should enact legislation to ban citizens from traveling to China for organ transplants from unwilling donors, although they admitted that such cases would be difficult to prosecute. Source
Software giant Microsoft has apologized for editing a photo to change a black man's head to that of a white man. The picture, showing employees sitting around a desk, appeared unaltered on the firm's US website. But on the website of its Polish business unit the black man's head was replaced with a white face, although the color of his hands was unchanged. Microsoft said it had pulled the image and would be investigating who made the changes. It apologized for the gaffe. The altered image, which also featured an Asian man and a white woman, was quickly circulated online. Bloggers have had a field day with the story, with some suggesting Microsoft was attempting to please all markets by having a man with both a white face and a black hand. "The white head and black hand actually symbolize interracial harmony. It is supposed to show that a person can be white and black, old and young at the same time," said one blogger on the Photoshop Disasters blog. Others have suggested the ethnic make-up of the Polish population, which is predominantly white, may have played a part in the decision to change the photo. Source
Forests of "fake trees" should be planted across the country to reduce the impact of climate change, according to a study. Experts claim the devices would be able to soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. 100,000 of them would remove the carbon emissions of every car, lorry and bus in Britain. The scientists argue that a single synthetic tree, which would be two-thirds as tall as a wind turbine, could capture ten tons of carbon dioxide from the air every day, making it thousands of times more efficient at absorbing CO2 than a real tree. The study, by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, into how technology could prevent climate change argues that using technology to remove CO2 from the atmosphere could buy the world vital time. The trees, which would cost around £15,000, would be coated with synthetic materials that absorb CO2, which would then be removed and stored underground in depleted oil and natural gas reservoirs. The study also calls for pots of algae that absorb CO2 from the atmosphere to be used to line buildings. The algae could then be used as green biofuels for cars. Painting buildings white can also help reduce the amount of solar radiation absorbed by the Earth, keeping it cool. The institution wants millions of pounds to be invested in research on technology to beat the threat of global warming to Britain. Dr Tim Fox, one of the report's authors, said: "Geo-engineering may give us those extra few years of transition to a low- carbon world and prevent any one of the future climate change scenarios we all fear." The report also claims that unless we act soon global warming will continue unabated and predicts that global temperatures could increase as much as 6c by 2100, creating food and water shortages, sea level rises and massive refugee crises. Source
It's the age old question that every woman has put to her partner at one time or another - but now gals can make up their own minds. With those famous words "Does my bum butt look big in this?" in mind, retailer Jeans West has rolled out the first of its butt cams, The Daily Telegraph reports. The camera snaps an image of your backside on your own personal screen in the change room so you no longer have to venture into the main store and run the gauntlet of unflattering light and mirrors. Jeanswest CEO Stephen Younane said the camera was a "way to bring some fitting room fun to the experience of purchasing a pair of jeans"and alter the once daunting fitting room experience. But leading retail consultant Stephen Kulmar, of Retail Oasis, said change room novelties such as the butt cam have more to do with securing sales and offering service as retail stores cut down staff numbers. "For males the change room is where the sale is made," Mr Kulmar said. "Men don't like going shopping so if you can get them into the change room this is where the sale is made. And for women in particular, if they think their behind looks good in something, they'll buy it." Mr Kulmar said developments such as the butt cam also compensated for decreasing numbers of sales staff. "Instead of adding staff, they are re-organizing their service," he said. While Jeans West was the first to offer the service in Australia, technology has been lurking in change rooms internationally for several years. British chain Ted Baker installed cameras along with video screens showing films to coax its customers to buy up. US jeanswear giant GAP trialled clothes with a radio frequency that could be "read" when brought into the change room and then offered accessorizing suggestions on a personal video screen. Source
An elephant fitted with an artificial limb 10 years after stepping on a land mine has had a minor setback, damaging the device attached to her left front leg. Soraida Salwala of the private group Friends of the Asian Elephant said Thursday that 48-year-old Motola bent the prothesis when she lay down on it. Motola, who weighs three tons, was fitted with the custom-made device Sunday at the Elephant Hospital in Lampang, northern Thailand. Soraida said the device was removed for repair by its makers, the Prostheses Foundation, which also produces artificial limbs for human amputees. It will be reattached on Saturday. In 1999, Motola underwent amputation surgery after her left front foot was shredded by a land mine blast near a logging camp along the Myanmar-Thai border. Source, More About Motola
The first-ever video advertisement will be published in a traditional paper magazine in September. The video-in-print ads will appear in select copies of the US show business title Entertainment Weekly. The slim-line screens - around the size of a mobile phone display - also have rechargeable batteries. The chip technology used to store the video - described as similar to that used in singing greeting cards - is activated when the page is turned. Each chip can hold up to 40 minutes of video. The first clips will preview programmes from US TV network CBS and show adverts by the drinks company Pepsi. They will appear in 18 September editions of the magazine distributed in Los Angeles and New York. It's believed the new technology will cost much more than normal print ads. However, BBC correspondent Rajesh Mirchandani said that in an increasingly competitive market, advertisers have realized that it is more important than ever to create attention for their product. He likened the technology to the Daily Prophet - a newspaper with moving pictures described in the Harry Potter books. It is not the first time that publishers have experimented with digital technology in magazines. Last year, for example, men's lifestyle magazine Esquire published the first using e-ink technology, with a cover that flashed in alternating patterns. E-ink is the technology used in the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle electronic books. Americhip, the developer of video-in-print, has also created magazine technology that appeals to various senses, including smell. Source
The world's fastest fire engine - a Nissan GT-R car which can hit 190mph and does 0-60 in 3.5 seconds - has been delivered to the Nurburgring motor racing circuit in Germany. The Japanese mean machine has had a full fire-fighting make-over including a huge tank of fire retarding foam and a hose reel where the back seats used to be. The Ring's Klaus Hardt says the track needed a fire engine to match the cars that race the track everyday. "When your race track is the mecca for petrol heads there's going to be mishaps every now and then and we needed to make sure we don't lose a second getting to them," he said. One driver said: "The driver must have every bloke's dream job - a fire fighter that drives a supercar!" But Hardt insists the fire engine is for safety, not for fun. "Our response time is now under three-and-a-half minutes wherever you are on the track," "That gives our visitors the confidence they need to put in their best times as they know the GT-R will be with them in a flash if the worst happens," he said. And now track bosses plan to start a whole fleet of the supersonic fire fighters. Source
