PETERHEAD, Scotland, December 9 /PRNewswire/ -- After receiving several reports from angry customers about their insurer's cancellation charges, (some in excess of GBP140), http://www.noclaimsdiscount.co.uk researched some of the major insurers to find out what these charges were based on and why consumers were seemingly unaware of them prior to purchasing the policy -- in particular, the administration fee for cancelling your policy. The charges themselves proved concerning, though not as much the lack of clarity.

Elephant.co.uk has a cancellation administration fee of GBP47.50 - but this was only found out after some considerable digging.

LONDON, December 9 /PRNewswire/ --

- GSMA Encourages Industry to Experience the Mobile Future in Barcelona

The GSMA, the global trade body for the mobile industry, today announced that it is bringing together executives of the world's largest and most influential mobile operators, software companies, equipment providers, Internet companies and media and entertainment organizations at the 2009 GSMA Mobile World Congress to be held February 16-19, 2009 in Barcelona. CEOs from companies including ATT, Microsoft Corp., MySpace, Nokia, NTT DOCOMO, Telefonica, Telenor, Verizon Communications and Vodafone will address head-on the challenges presented by the global economic slowdown and will outline strategies for sustaining growth.

Everyone knows mountaineering can be dangerous and climbing Mt. Everest more dangerous than most. Counterintuitively, most deaths occur during the descent, in the so-called 'Death Zone' just above 8,000 meters. But why deaths happen hadn't really been explored until now. An international research team has conducted the first detailed analysis of deaths during expeditions to the summit of Mt. Everest. They identified factors that appear to be associated with a greater risk of death, particularly symptoms of high-altitude cerebral edema and published their results in the British Medical Journal.
Measures imposed to reduce exposure to nuts are often based on irrational fears of nut allergies and are becoming increasingly sensationalist, according to Professor Nicolas Christakis from Harvard Medical School on bmj.com today.

A peanut on the floor of a school bus leading to evacuation and decontamination for fear that it might be eaten by the 10 year old passengers, and schools declaring themselves "nut free" by banning nuts, peanut butter, homebaked goods and any foods without ingredient labels, are just some examples cited in the article.  According to Christaki, there is no evidence that any of these extreme restrictions work better than more circumscribed policies or that they are worth the money and disruptions they create.
U.S. Forest Service scientists at the Center for Urban Forest Research are providing online software that can show users how much carbon dioxide an urban tree in California has sequestered in its lifetime and the past year.   The Tree Carbon Calculator is free and programmed in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that provides carbon-related information for a single tree in one of six California climate zones.

It can be found at the U.S. Forest Service Climate Change Resource Center Web site, http://www.fs.fed.us/ccrc/topics/urban-forests/ or the Center for Urban Forest Research Web site, http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/programs/cufr/ 
A warm-up program that focuses on improving strength, balance, core stability and muscular awareness cuts injury in female footballers by a third and severe injuries by almost a half, according to research published on bmj.com today.

In an accompanying editorial, John Brooks an injury expert for the Rugby Football Union, says that people participating in any sport at all levels should adopt a warm-up program like this to reduce injury. Previous studies investigating the effect of warming up on the risk of injury have focused on key warm-up elements — raising the core temperature, stretching the muscles used, and conducting movement specific exercises — but the effect on injury has been unclear until now.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, December 9 /PRNewswire/ --

- Leading Swedish Employment Site Launches New Enhancements and Marketing Campaign -

Jobbguiden.se, a leading online employment site in Sweden and a subsidiary of the largest online job site in the U.S, CareerBuilder.com, announced it will assume the CareerBuilder name. Founded in 2004, Jobbguiden was one of the original online job sites in Sweden and has connected millions of job seekers and employers over the past several years. Johan Hjelte, former Director and one of the founders of Jobbguiden.se, will lead CareerBuilder.se as Managing Director.

Many people may not know that this past weekend marked the 400th anniversary of John Milton’s birth (he was born on December 9th, 1608). “But Milton remains incredibly relevant to us today,” says Shannon Miller, professor and chair of the English department at Temple University. 

Milton is the seventeenth-century English poet who is considered equal or superior to William Shakespeare. “He is important to us both for the issues of political revolution in which he was invested and for his poem Paradise Lost which explores issues of political revolution within a narrative about the fall from Eden,” says Miller.

Naturally, people found a way to link Milton to the recent election of Barack Obama - and one pundit even found a way to make John McCain into Satan.  

A supplement in the December 2008 edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that reviews the history and development of high fructose corn syrup finds no scientific support for the hypothesis that high fructose corn syrup is causally linked to obesity in the United States or globally any more or less than other caloric sweeteners.

We've all had it happen; you're sitting in class, hopelessly unprepared because you've been writing a D&D campaign or plotting ways to take over the world when, out of nowhere, the teacher calls upon you to come to the front the room and solve a math problem. In front of everyone.

How you respond to that says a lot about you, and 'math anxiety' may be a real phenomenon, according to a new report in Current Directions in Psychological Science.  University of Chicago psychologist Sian L. Beilock examines some recent research looking at why being stressed about math can result in poor performance in solving problems.