Thank You, Ma'am, May I Have Another?
In order to avoid pains of the heart, men will suffer pains of pretty much every other body part. A new study out of Scotland's University of Stirling reports that men will withstand more pain without complaint when they are being tortured by a woman rather than a man. In the experimental setup, a 21-year-old woman dressed in a skirt and high heels put pressure on the chests of college males. The boys reported much higher pain thresholds than they did when a male researcher turned up the pressure. The researchers say the males may have been trying to appear macho in front of the woman. They also allow for the possibility that the men were just distracted from their suffering by a hot chick in skimpy clothing. The results worry the researchers, who said they are concerned male hospital patients may underreport their pain to female doctors and nurses.
(source: the Scotsman)
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Jamaican Me Crazy!
She went to sleep British and woke up Jamaican. Linda Walker, a 60-year-old woman from Northeast England, recently suffered a stroke, and when she came back into consciousness, doctors were startled to find her speaking with an accent somewhere in-between Jamaican and Eastern European, depending on who was asked. Researchers say foreign accent syndrome, which can occur in stroke victims who suffer damage to areas of the brain that affect speech, is not an extremely rare condition—Nick Miller, a speech therapist from Newcastle University, said he observes four or five cases every year. The syndrome was first identified during World War II when a Norwegian woman suffered shrapnel damage to the brain and developed a German accent.
(source: the Independent)
Put Down the Duckie
Be it handheld or hands-free, a cell phone is an instrument of death when it's on the ear of a driver. A new study out of the University of Utah suggests that drivers talking on cell phones are at least as impaired as those intoxicated at the minimum illegal level. The researchers found there was no significant difference in the impairment of those talking on handheld cell phones and those talking on hands-free sets—they say that the true cause of impairment is not the manipulation of the device but rather the attention focused on a phone conversation instead of on the road. Apparently, cell phone users are 5.36 times as likely to get in an accident as undistracted drivers.
(source: University of Utah)
Great Apes Greater With a Little A1
There is a black market for body parts in America, and it's not run by the people who cut out your kidneys and leave you in a bathtub of ice water. This illegal network sells the meat of wild primates killed in Africa to customers looking to buy dinner. University of California, Berkeley biologist Justin Brashares discovered conclusive evidence of these underground markets when a Ghanian taxi driver offered to show him one in Brooklyn. Brashares has since uncovered similar markets in Paris, Brussels, London, New York, Montreal, Toronto, Chicago and Los Angeles. He estimates that over 6,000 kg of bushmeat passes through these markets every month, and one third of that is from primates, including gorillas, chimpanzees, guenon monkeys and baboons. And the prices high: To eat baboon, you should be prepared to drop as much as you would for a filet mignon. You should also be prepared to be arrested.
(source: New Scientist)
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