Arrive at your In-Law's unprepared at Christmas and you may find yourself sitting in someone else's living room, unable to get to the remote control, and nothing but "The Wizard of Oz" on the TV. Not that that could be bad (the movie), we're just saying.
A good majority of us end up away from home for at least one night staying with relatives. Like anything in life, Christmas is what you make it. So when packing your overnight bag for the festive season make sure you take enough entertainment of your own.
Here are our top survival tips to make it through Christmas:
1. Pack a book. Michael Parkinson's autobiography at 412 pages should take a couple of days even for the most prolific reader.
We all know how hard it is to avoid tasty treats such as chocolate and crisps but it is even more challenging over the festive season.
According to the British Heart Foundation, the average person will consume around 7000 calories on Christmas Day alone; the recommended daily intake for a woman is 2000 calories and 2500 for men.
Snacking is one of the biggest causes of overeating but there are ways in which we can combat this over Christmas and beyond. A recent hypothesis by Dr. James Painter of East Illinois University recommends adopting 'The Pistachio Principle'.
Dr Painter states that: "For example, people will eat larger portions when served food on a bigger plate, and will consume more alcohol when drinking from a wider glass.
PARSIPPANY, New Jersey, December 24 /PRNewswire/ --
- New Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone (GnRH) Receptor Antagonist Demonstrates Rapid, Long-term Suppression of Testosterone - a hormone that stimulates prostate cancer growth.
Scientists at The Babraham Institute have begun to unpick the complex mechanisms underpinning the development of drug resistant cancers. They have identified a novel target that may help to combat the growing problem of therapy resistant cancers and pave the way for innovative therapeutic approaches.
Their discovery, reported in the latest edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, centres on the significance of DNA damage for both normal cells and cancer cells. It reveals that a biochemical signalling pathway, that normally ensures damaged cells are diverted towards cellular suicide, is blocked in certain cancers, rendering them resistant to certain types of treatment.
The winter chill is upon us, and holiday songs put us all in the mood to snuggle by a warm fire with our loved ones... but in this new "environmental age", what should we be using to fuel our roaring fires? Tradition generates images in our minds of a large stone fireplace, ablaze with a fiery tower of wood - casting heat and light into the room where family and friends gather. It's warm, it's natural, it traditional... why should we consider anything else?
George Bush, he of the horned skull and demonic scowl, mortal enemy of all science, with the funding increases during his tenure being just a clever headfake so he could ruin science for everyone under the age of 30, has done something no one (well, no one who thinks Republicans are all evil and hate science) thought he would do; he gave a Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering
(PECASE) to Kevin Eggan, PhD, principal faculty member at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.
When many of us go to see a live performance of some kind, like a play or a concert, we are often mostly concerned with the quality of the performers. We've gone to hear the flowing sounds of the San Francisco Symphony or the clear voices of Broadway singers. But what many people overlook, and what may be the most expensive and time-consuming aspect of any musical or theater production, is the effect of room acoustics on the sound coming from the stage. Now, with the massive increases in computing power over the last decade or so, acousticians are able to predict far more accurately how a given space will respond to sound, paving the way to more optimized concert halls and theaters.
It was Christmas Eve, 1858 when “people who in the streets, on pathways and in the fields saw a magnificent ball of fire appear, which shone with a brilliant, blinding light and all the colors of the rainbow, obscured the light of the moon and descended majestically from the sky.”
This was the description of the meteorite that fell that evening, from a report commissioned by Rafael Martínez Fortún, of the town of Molina de Segura in Murcia, whose farm was struck by what is still the largest meteorite recovered in Spain. Since 1863, it has been exhibited in the National Museum of Natural Sciences.
New research by a Rice University psychologist clearly identifies the parts of the brain involved in the process of choosing appropriate words during speech.
When speaking, a person must select one word from a competing set of words. For example, if the speaker wants to mention a specific animal, he has to single out "dog" from "cat," "horse" and other possibilities. If he wants to describe someone's temperament, he has to choose whether "happy," "sad," "ecstatic" or some other adjective is more appropriate.
Tatiana Schnur, assistant professor of psychology at Rice, wanted to determine whether one particular part of the brain, the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG), is necessary for resolving the competition for choosing the correct word.
Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) have, for the first time in history, derived authentic embryonic stem (ES) cells from rats. This breakthrough finding will enable scientists to create far more effective animal models for the study of a range of human diseases.
The finding brings scientists much closer to creating "knockout" rats—animals that are genetically modified to lack one or more genes—for biomedical research. By observing what happens to animals when specific genes are removed, researchers can identify the function of the gene and whether it is linked to a specific disease.
