Daily Intake of Diet Soda Could Increase Risk of Vascular Events

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Diet soda increases your risk of vascular events.

For years diet soda has been portrayed as the “healthier soda” choice because it has no calories. But zero calorie sweeteners like saccharin and aspartame come with risks including a link with bladder cancer, brain tumors, and osteoporosis. If that’s not reason enough to put down the frighteningly sweet bubbled beverage, new research recently presented at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference in Los Angeles found that daily intake of diet soda increases your risk of vascular events by 61 percent, according to a story on the Today Show.

 

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BMW Opens New Car Plant Where the Workforce is All Aged Over 50

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An employee at BMW rests between shifts at the plant in Dingolfing.

Its name is a byword for providing drivers with every comfort – and now it seems BMW is taking the same approach with its workforce.  A section of the luxury car manufacturer’s works at Dingolfing in Southern Bavaria has been nicknamed ‘Altstadt‘ – German for Old Town – by the grateful employees who say they might otherwise be on the job scrapheap. (Pics)

 

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BrainDriver – Researchers Drive Car with Their Minds

 

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDV_62QoHjY[/youtube]

 It’s not quite Professor Xavier-level mind control, but researchers at AutoNOMOS Labs in Germany have developed a system that drives a vehicle by reading a person’s brain waves. So this is what it feels like to watch the future.

 

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New Invention Converts Plastic Grocery Bags Into Fuel at Home

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Desktop machine turns plastic into fuel.

Plastic bags help you carry your groceries home, they make excellent liners for smaller-sized trash cans, and now they can help you to heat your home. A Japanese inventor has found a way to convert plastic grocery bags, bottles and caps into usable petroleum.

 

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Amazing Images From the 2010 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge

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The world’s most detailed 3D model of HIV.

We’re always suckers for a good art/science mashup, so perhaps it’s no surprise that we’re feeling pretty good about today’s release of the 2010 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge winners. This year’s winning entries included the most detailed 3-D model of the HIV virus ever made (above), a sweeping infographic primer on the many ways fungi impact our lives, and a non-interactive media project that tracked 3,000 pieces of garbage from their origins in Seattle to destinations across the U.S. (Pics)

 

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Official Teams Competing in the $30 Million Race to the Moon Announced by Google Lunar X Prize

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRe79QxzxWY[/youtube]

The X PRIZE Foundation has announced the official roster of 29 registered teams competing for the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE, an unprecedented competition to send a robot to the Moon that travels at least 500 meters and transmit video, images, and data back to the Earth. This group of teams signifies this new era of exploration’s diverse and participatory nature as it includes a huge variety of groups ranging from non-profits to university consortia to billion dollar businesses representing 17 nations on four continents. The global competition, the largest in history, was announced in September 2007, with a winner projected by 2015.

 

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Promiscuous Apes Make More Sperm

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Promiscuous ape species have bigger testicles

Chimpanzees produce 200 times more sperm than gorillas, the world’s largest primates, and 14 times more than orangutans, scientists based in Japan reveal.

Promiscuous ape species have bigger testicles, and the latest discovery finally provides evidence that they also produce more sperm.
Scientists previously proposed that chimps have large testicles because several males mate with a single female, and so have to produce more sperm in order to compete.

For their research, published in the American Journal of Primatology, scientists studied chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas from zoos in Japan and Indonesia.

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Demand for Mobile Data Overwhelming Cell Networks

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Popularity of smartphones continues to grow on a global scale.

At the Mobile World Congress, the industry’s largest annual gathering being held here this week, the corporate visionaries of the business agreed that a challenge they all would face was managing the avalanche of demand for mobile data services fueled by the growth in smartphones.

 

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Number of Smoke-free Hotels is Growing

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More than 12,900 lodgings serving the public in the USA are now smoke-free throughout.

Hotels, motels and other lodgings are following the trend of airlines and passenger-train operators by banning smoking throughout their premises. Some are doing it voluntarily, as public awareness about the health dangers of secondhand smoke grows. Others are being forced by a growing number of state and local laws.

 

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