Is the toilet seat really the dirtiest place in the home?

Would you chop your vegetables on your toilet seat? I think pretty much all of us would say No. But maybe we should think again.
Dr Chuck Gerba, professor of microbiology at the University of Arizona, studies how diseases are transferred through the environment. This involves swabbing household items and measuring how many bacteria - and what sort - develop.
He particularly looks for faecal bacteria such as E.coli and staphylococcus aureus.
His studies have found that on the average toilet seat there are 50 bacteria per square inch.

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A new benchmark

The toilet seat is now regularly used as a unit of dirt.
"Now hear this! Your cellphone is as dirty as a toilet seat," writes the New York Post.
"Which? found that the keyboards at its London offices contained up to five times more germs than a toilet seat," reports the Daily Mail.
"Keyboards can carry more than 200 times as many bacteria as a toilet seat," says USA Today.

"It's one of the cleanest things you'll run across in terms of micro-organisms," he says. "It's our gold standard - there are not many things cleaner than a toilet seat when it comes to germs."

We should be more worried about other household items, it seems.
"Usually there are about 200 times more faecal bacteria on the average cutting board than on a toilet seat," he says.
In the kitchen it doesn't necessarily get there through actual contact with faeces. It comes via raw meat products or the viscera from inside of the animal, where a lot of the faecal bacteria originate.

FROM : BBC NEWS

ADHD treatment 'may reduce risk of criminal behaviour'

Earlier studies suggest people with ADHD are more likely to commit offences than the general population.
Providing better access to medication may reduce crime and save money, experts and support groups say.
Researchers say the benefits of the drugs must be weighed against harms.
In the UK 3% of children have a diagnosis of ADHD, with half of them continuing to have the condition in adult life.
People with the disorder have to deal with problems with concentration, hyperactivity and impulsiveness.
Estimates suggest between 7-40% of people in the criminal justice system may have ADHD and other similar disorders, though in many cases the condition is not formally recognised.

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“Start Quote

We want people to have personal choice...no one is trying to force people to take drugs”

Prof Philip Asherson Psychiatrist

Researchers from the Karolinska Institute looked at data from over 25,000 people with ADHD in Sweden.

Less impulsiveness They found people with ADHD were more likely to commit crime (37% of men and 15% of women) than adults without the condition (9% of men and 2% women).
The study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found when people took their medication they were 32-41% less likely to be convicted of a crime than when they were off medication for a period of six months or more.
Dr Seena Fazel, an author of the study and from Oxford University, says medication may reduce impulsive choices and may enable people to better organise their lives - allowing them to stay in employment and maintain relationships.
Co-author Prof Paul Lichtenstein says: "It is said that roughly 30 to 40% of long-serving criminals have ADHD. If their chances of recidivism can be reduced by 30%, it would clearly affect the total crime numbers in many societies."
'Personal responsibility' Prof Philip Asherson, a psychiatrist and president of the UK Adult ADHD network, who was not involved in the study says: "We want people to have personal choice and personal responsibility - no-one is trying to force people to take drugs."
He points out it costs £100-£300 a month to provide medication for someone with ADHD, and taking into account the costs of unemployment and the criminal justice system, these would "vastly outweigh" the costs of medication, he says.
The authors caution that the side effects of the drugs used, such as Ritalin, must be taken into account.
"There are of course a lot of people with ADHD in the population who are not involved in crime.
"But for some people with the condition - if you don't treat them, they will try to treat themselves with street drugs," says Andrea Bilbow, founder of the National Attention Deficit Disorder Information and Support Service, Addis.
"A referral to specialist adult services can cost £1,500 - compare this with the amount of money you can save if you keep people out of prison - it's a no brainer."
'Better support' The researchers looked at a variety of crimes - from petty crime to violent crime, finding a reduction in all of these when people took medication.
They acknowledge when offered medication, individuals may also get more attention from other support services - this could contribute to the reduction in criminal behaviour.
Prof Sue Bailey, president of the Royal College of Psychiatry, welcomes the study saying it "reminds us in an era of psychological therapies that medication can have a positive impact too".
The authors of the study point out ADHD can exist alongside other conditions such as conduct disorders, calling for further work to untangle the contribution these may make to criminal behaviour.
They feel the Swedish findings are applicable to the UK and much of Western Europe where rates of ADHD in children and the medication prescribed are broadly similar.

Second coronavirus death reported

The WHO said three fresh cases had also been reported bringing the total to six.
All are linked to either Saudi Arabia or Qatar. However, one man has been transferred to the UK for treatment.
Doctors say the virus does not appear to readily spread from person to person.
Both reported deaths were in Saudi Arabia.
Coronaviruses are a group of viruses ranging from the common cold to the Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome) virus. They infect a wide range of animals.
In 2002 an outbreak of the Sars coronavirus killed about 800 people after it spread from Hong Kong to more than 30 countries around the world.
The WHO is still trying to work our where the infection came from. Studies show that the virus it is closely related to one found in some species of bats.
It said in a statement: "Until more information is available, it is prudent to consider that the virus is likely more widely distributed than just the two countries which have identified cases."
FROM :  BBC NEWS

Namib Desert beetle inspires self-filling water bottle

NBD Nano aims to mimic the way a beetle survives in an African desert to create a self-filling water bottle capable of storing up to three litres every hour.
The insect harvests moisture from the air by first getting it to condense on its back and then storing the water.
Using nature as an inspiration for technology, known as biomimicry, is increasingly widespread.
NBD Nano, which consists of four recent university graduates and was formed in May, looked at the Namib Desert beetle that lives in a region that gets about half an inch of rainfall per year.
Using a similar approach, the firm wants to cover the surface of a bottle with hydrophilic (water-attracting) and hydrophobic (water-repellent) materials.
The work is still in its early stages, but it is the latest example of researchers looking at nature to find inspiration for sustainable technology.
"It was important to apply [biomimicry] to our design and we have developed a proof of concept and [are] currently creating our first fully-functional prototype," Miguel Galvez, a co-founder, told the BBC.
"We think our initial prototype will collect anywhere from half a litre of water to three litres per hour, depending on local environments."

FROM :  BBC NEWS

Gangnam Style becomes YouTube's most-viewed video

Gangnam Style, the dance track by South Korean pop phenomenon Psy, has become YouTube's most-watched video of all time.

It has notched up more than 808m views since it was posted in July.
The video pokes fun at the consumerism of Gangnam, an affluent suburb of the South Korean capital Seoul.
In it, the portly Psy dances as though he is trotting on a horse, holding the reins and spinning a lasso in a manner that has sparked a global dance craze.
The video also features the 34-year-old singer reclining on a sun lounger in tight pink shorts, gazing longingly at a girl dancing on an underground train in tight shorts and gesticulating at a woman working out on a beach - in tight shorts.
The dance has sparked numerous copycat versions, being performed by a diverse fan-base including Filipino prison inmates, prominent Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and a Chinese robot.
Popular parodies include one performed by Eton College schoolboys and another in the Star Trek language Klingon.
Gangnam Style, which won best video at this year's MTV Europe Music Awards, has also been number one in 28 countries.
It holds the Guinness World Record for the most "liked" song ever - currently with a little under 5.4m likes on YouTube.
Previously, Justin Bieber's 2010 teenybopper hit Baby held the record for the most YouTube views.
Bieber's manager Scooter Braun was the first person in the US to tweet a link to the Gangnam Style video.
FROM: BBC NEWS

US school tag tracker project prompts court row

A court challenge has delayed plans to expel a Texan student for refusing to wear a radio tag that tracked her movements.

Religious reasons led Andrea Hernandez to stop wearing the tag that revealed where she was on her school campus.
The tags were introduced to track students and help tighten control of school funding.
A Texan court has granted a restraining order filed by a civil rights group pending a hearing on use of the tags.
ID badges containing radio tags started to be introduced at the start of the 2012 school year to schools run by San Antonio's Northside Independent School District (NISD). The tracking tags gave NISD a better idea of the numbers of students attending classes each day - the daily average of which dictates how much cash it gets from state coffers.
'Mark of the beast' Introducing the tags led to protests by some school students at John Jay High School - one of two schools out of 112 in the NISD catchment area piloting the tags.
Ms Hernandez refused to wear the tag because it conflicted with her religious beliefs, according to court papers. Wearing such a barcoded tag can be seen as a mark of the beast as described in Revelation 13 in the Bible, Ms Hernandez's father told Wired magazine in an interview.
NISD suspended Ms Hernandez and said she would no longer be able to attend the John Jay High School unless she wore the ID badge bearing the radio tag. Alternatively it said Ms Hernandez could attend other schools in the district that had not yet joined the radio tagging project.
The Rutherford Institute, a liberties campaign group, joined the protests and went to court to get a restraining order to stop NISD suspending Ms Hernandez.

Ms Hernandez refused to wear a name tag containing an RFID (radio-frequency identification) chip

A district court judge has granted the restraining order so Ms Hernandez can go back to school and ordered a hearing next week on the NISD radio tag project.
The Rutherford Institute said the NISD's suspension violated Texan laws on religious freedom as well as free speech amendments to the US constitution.
"The court's willingness to grant a temporary restraining order is a good first step, but there is still a long way to go - not just in this case, but dealing with the mindset, in general, that everyone needs to be monitored and controlled," said John Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute in a statement.
Mr Whitehead said student tagging and locating projects were the first step in producing a "compliant citizenry".
"These 'student locator' programmes are ultimately aimed at getting students used to living in a total surveillance state where there will be no privacy, and wherever you go and whatever you text or email will be watched by the government," he said.
From: BBC NEWS

Autorhythmic Deep into spinal nerve

Scientists from the University of Leicester have hit upon unique forms of spinal nerve activity that shape output of nerve cell networks controlling motor behaviours.
The breakthrough in the Department of Biology at the University of Leicester was announced Nov 8 in the journal Current Biology.
Although the neural basis of motor control has been studied for over a century, the processes controlling maturation of locomotor behaviours -- like walking and swimming -- are not fully understood.
The University of Leicester research into nerve cells responsible for motor behaviours was carried out on fish. The team aimed to understand how spinal networks produce rhythmic activity from a very immature stage -- and how such activity changes during maturation.
The team used zebrafish, a freshwater fish native to northern India and Bangladesh, because their motor networks are similar to humans. However, as they are fertilized outside the mother and their embryos are transparent, scientists can readily monitor motor network development from its onset -- something that is very difficult to do in mammals.
Lecturer in Neurobiology, Dr Jonathan McDearmid, who led the research, said: "What's unique about our work is the observation that a group of spinal nerve cells generate unusual forms of electrical activity that adapt to meet the changing requirements of the developing motor network.

Source: Science Daily

Entangled, Twisted Entanglement gets extra twist

Quantum physics is the science of the very small. But physicists are making it bigger, setting records for the size and energies of objects they can get to exhibit quantum effects.
Now physicists at the University of Vienna in Austria have "virtually intertwined" or entangled two particles spinning faster than ever in opposite directions. Entanglement occurs when two particles remain connected so that actions performed on one affect the other, despite the distance between them. (Einstein referred to this eerie connection as "spooky action at a distance.")
In the new study, Anton Fickler and his colleagues entangled two photons that had a high orbital angular momentum, a property that measures the twisting of a wave of light. In quantum physics, particles such as photons can behave as particles and waves.
"It's a stepping stone on the development of new technologies," said Anton Zeilinger, director of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information and a co-author of the study, which is detailed in the Nov. 5 issue of the journal Science.
Such entanglement experiments have been carried out for decades. In this case, though, the researchers did something a bit different. They created entangled photons and gave them lots of angular momentum, more than in any experiment before.
Usually the energy contained in a photon is very small: its quantum number is low. At higher energies, this changes. Quantum physics and "normal" or classical physics start to look similar when quantum numbers get high; this is called the correspondence principle, and it applies to many areas of physics.
To create entangled photons, Fickler and his team sent a laser through a beam splitter, dividing the laser beam into two. Two photons were sent down separate optical fibers and their waves were twisted, and twisted, and twisted some more, ramping up their angular momentum imagine a wave shaped like a spiral, spinning faster and faster. [Twisted Physics: 7 Mind-Blowing Findings]
Eventually, there was enough angular momentum in the photons that their quantum numbers the units their momentum is measured in differed by a factor of 600, a higher value than any seen previously. The photons spinning rapidly in opposite directions, meanwhile, were still entangled.
They knew this because when particles are entangled, measuring the quantum state (in this case the angular momentum and orientation) of one particle immediately tells you the quantum state of the other, no matter where it is. Since they had the ability to measure both the researchers could confirm entanglement.
(Though this transfer of information between the particles is instantaneous, entanglement can't be used for faster-than-light communication because it is impossible to set the quantum state beforehand, as you would in a message).
This shows that entanglement effects can be seen at high energies, meaning closer to the macroscopic world we all know and interact with. "It means we have to take the correspondence principle with a large grain of salt," Zeilinger said.
Just as importantly, the experiment shows that the only barrier to applying certain kinds of quantum effects ins technical there is no physical reason that one shouldn't be able to see quantum phenomena at high enough energies that they would bleed into the visible world, though that will take some time to do.

Entangled, Twisted Entanglement gets extra twist

Quantum physics is the science of the very small. But physicists are making it bigger, setting records for the size and energies of objects they can get to exhibit quantum effects.
Now physicists at the University of Vienna in Austria have "virtually intertwined" or entangled two particles spinning faster than ever in opposite directions. Entanglement occurs when two particles remain connected so that actions performed on one affect the other, despite the distance between them. (Einstein referred to this eerie connection as "spooky action at a distance.")
In the new study, Anton Fickler and his colleagues entangled two photons that had a high orbital angular momentum, a property that measures the twisting of a wave of light. In quantum physics, particles such as photons can behave as particles and waves.
"It's a stepping stone on the development of new technologies," said Anton Zeilinger, director of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information and a co-author of the study, which is detailed in the Nov. 5 issue of the journal Science.
Such entanglement experiments have been carried out for decades. In this case, though, the researchers did something a bit different. They created entangled photons and gave them lots of angular momentum, more than in any experiment before.
Usually the energy contained in a photon is very small: its quantum number is low. At higher energies, this changes. Quantum physics and "normal" or classical physics start to look similar when quantum numbers get high; this is called the correspondence principle, and it applies to many areas of physics.
To create entangled photons, Fickler and his team sent a laser through a beam splitter, dividing the laser beam into two. Two photons were sent down separate optical fibers and their waves were twisted, and twisted, and twisted some more, ramping up their angular momentum imagine a wave shaped like a spiral, spinning faster and faster. [Twisted Physics: 7 Mind-Blowing Findings]
Eventually, there was enough angular momentum in the photons that their quantum numbers the units their momentum is measured in differed by a factor of 600, a higher value than any seen previously. The photons spinning rapidly in opposite directions, meanwhile, were still entangled.
They knew this because when particles are entangled, measuring the quantum state (in this case the angular momentum and orientation) of one particle immediately tells you the quantum state of the other, no matter where it is. Since they had the ability to measure both the researchers could confirm entanglement.
(Though this transfer of information between the particles is instantaneous, entanglement can't be used for faster-than-light communication because it is impossible to set the quantum state beforehand, as you would in a message).
This shows that entanglement effects can be seen at high energies, meaning closer to the macroscopic world we all know and interact with. "It means we have to take the correspondence principle with a large grain of salt," Zeilinger said.
Just as importantly, the experiment shows that the only barrier to applying certain kinds of quantum effects ins technical there is no physical reason that one shouldn't be able to see quantum phenomena at high enough energies that they would bleed into the visible world, though that will take some time to do.

Split Empire New emperor penguin colonies

Researchers have finally found a long-sought colony of emperor penguins in eastern Antarctica, but they say it's been split in two due to a glacier break. Moreover, a tally of the 6,000 chicks among these two populations suggests there are more emperor penguin parents in this part of the frozen continent than previously thought.
French scientists spied the waddling, flightless birds on winter sea ice near the Mertz Glacier while on their way to Dumont d'Urville Station. (The documentary "March of the Penguins" was filmed near this research base.)