source:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/women_shealth/7549959/Cleverest-women-are-the-heaviest-drinkers.html

Women who went to university consume more alcohol than their less-highly-educated counterparts, a major study has found.

By Roger Dobson 
Published: 10:15AM BST 04 Apr 2010

source: http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/29/public-speaking-rules-leadership-managing-rein.html?boxes=Homepagetoprated

She was just shy of her 17th birthday. I was a year younger. It was my first time, but she was like a pro. When she started, my back stiffened and even my knuckles started to sweat. You see, my classmate and I were giving a presentation to our entire school. I was so nervous I had to clamp my hands to the lectern to steady my shaking body.

My only saving grace was so that no one heard the guttural sounds of fear groaning out of my mouth, because I was shaking so far from the microphone. Afterward, I was so embarrassed that I set myself a new goal. I would overcome my fear and become a proficient public speaker. I took a course in speaking, trained hard and even spoke in competitions at local Rotary clubs.

Now I travel the world from the U.S. to Thailand to Amsterdam doing several dozen paid speaking engagements a year. Public speaking is an invaluable skill no matter what your job is, whether you are in sales, need to talk to investors or just want to be better at getting buy-in from your colleagues. Considering how important a skill it is and how it scares so many people, it is amazing how few schools make it a course requirement. I assure you, though: If I could overcome my fears and get better at it, then you can, too.

Top Tips: Podium Tactics From 28 Public Speaking Pros

Here are three rules for successful public speaking that helped me:

source: http://www.economist.com/business-finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15772138

The giant drinks-and-snacks firm attempts to wean itself off sugar, salt and fat

COCA-COLA once famously defined its market as “throat share”, meaning its stake in the entire liquid intake of all humanity. Not to be outdone, Indra Nooyi, the boss of Coke’s arch-rival, PepsiCo, wants her firm to be “seen as one of the defining companies of the first half of the 21st century”, a “model of how to conduct business in the modern world.” More specifically, she argues that Pepsi, which makes crisps (potato chips) and other fatty, salty snacks as well as sugary drinks, should be part of the solution, not the cause, of “one of the world’s biggest public-health challenges, a challenge fundamentally linked to our industry: obesity.”

To that end, on March 22nd she unveiled a series of targets to improve the healthiness of Pepsi’s wares. By 2015 the firm aims to reduce the salt in some of its biggest brands by 25%; by 2020, it hopes to reduce the amount of added sugar in its drinks by 25% and the amount of saturated fat in certain snacks by 15%. Pepsi also recently announced that it would be removing all its sugary drinks from schools around the world by 2012.

Although Ms Nooyi talks about the need to “cherish” employees, and once wrote to the parents of her senior managers thanking them for bringing up such wonderful offspring, she rejects the notion that these goals are soft-headed or decorative. She argues that they are necessary to prevent food companies from going the way of tobacco firms, which are perennially held responsible by governments for the health problems associated with their products, and penalised accordingly. As it is, several countries in Europe and various localities in America have banned trans fats, a particularly unhealthy ingredient in much junk food. A bill introduced earlier this month in New York’s state assembly proposes banning salt in restaurants. Michelle Obama, America’s first lady, has launched a campaign against obesity among children.

In the 1990s virtually all of Pepsi’s products were bad for you—or “fun for you”, as the firm likes to put it. Under Ms Nooyi, who became boss in 2006, it has stepped up its diversification into products it calls “better for you” and “good for you”, including fruit juices, nuts and porridge (oatmeal, to Americans). Ms Nooyi does not see this as a case of trading profits for virtue. Instead, she insists both are possible—an idea expressed in the firm’s syrupy motto: “Performance with purpose.”

source: http://0rz.com/Zgo4

By Rebecca Kern

Posted March 23, 2010

The Flight of Jumbo stars a remote-controlled blue elephant helicopter created and flown by a high school student as an homage to Tufts University's school mascot. Whereas,GMU Song features a student singing an original song along with her ukulele about why she belongs at George Mason University. Then there's Math Dances, starring an energetic high schooler performing interpretive math dances for Tufts. The videos were part of these high school students' applications to the college of their choice, and they have received thousands of views on YouTube. Welcome to what could be the future of college applications.

source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7078019.ece

Space missions from Swindon lack the glamour of the Moon landings. I’d rather colonise the Red Planet

When Neil Armstrong took that first small step for Man four decades ago, it seemed that going to the Moon was merely a curtain raiser for an ever expanding human presence in space. Today, the dream has faded.

Nasa, the US space agency, remains stuck in low-Earth orbit, boldly going nowhere. President Obama has scrapped plans for a return to the Moon, the ageing space shuttle fleet is about to be retired, and the lion’s share of Nasa’s budget is going to support the white elephant known as the International Space Station, which just goes round and round, accomplishing very little. Clearly, the US space programme is not the stairway to the stars that visionaries such as Arthur C. Clarke once popularised.

Britain’s efforts in space, born in the heady days of postwar rocketry, and later melded into a European programme, received a welcome fillip with this week’s announcement of a new UK Space Agency, based in Swindon. The emphasis, however, will be on the commercial exploitation of space rather than exploration. Satellites are big business, finding applications in telecommunications, navigation, weather forecasting and resource monitoring.

Laudable though this practical slant may be, it lacks the drama and excitement of the Apollo Moon shots. What is needed to truly reinvigorate the space programme is an important new goal, a mission with lofty objectives that would serve as a focus for international collaboration and provide a grand vision. That goal should be the planet Mars.

source : http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1972553_1972551_1972393,00.html

Gendercide

Killed, aborted or neglected, at least 100m girls have disappeared—and the number is rising

Mar 4th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15606229

IMAGINE you are one half of a young couple expecting your first child in a fast-growing, poor country. You are part of the new middle class; your income is rising; you want a small family. But traditional mores hold sway around you, most important in the preference for sons over daughters. Perhaps hard physical labour is still needed for the family to make its living. Perhaps only sons may inherit land. Perhaps a daughter is deemed to join another family on marriage and you want someone to care for you when you are old. Perhaps she needs a dowry.

http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/57168/

Two hundred kilometers north of Hobart, Tasmania, on a late September afternoon in 2001, two men broke into the rural home of 71-year-old Fay Olson. The intruders—armed with sticks and wearing black hoods—ransacked Olson’s home, forced her to open a safe, stuffed AU$550 into a pillow sack, and fled into the bush surrounding the house. They left Olson tied up with a belt cinched around her ankles. The pair made off with their loot scot-free, but one of the perpetrators inadvertently left something behind that would spell his undoing 8 years later: a leech, swollen with his DNA-filled blood.

source : http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1968102-1,00.html

source :  http://wellness.blogs.time.com/2010/02/05/for-kids-high-sensitivity-to-stress-isnt-necessarily-bad/