A new study shows that newspapers are truly listening to their own death rattle, but blog sites might not be far behind.  The Zogby Interactive survey found that the Internet is by far the most popular source for news and information, well ahead of television, radio, and traditional newspapers.  Social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter are actually less popular than previously thought, however.

More than half of the people questioned said they would choose the Internet if they could only pick one source of news, followed by 21 percent for television and 10 percent for both newspapers and radio.  Only 10 percent felt social websites were important for news, and more specifically–4% found Twitter useful.

About half of the 3,030 adults surveyed agreed that national newspaper websites were important, followed by 43 percent who preferred television websites.

Only 28 percent found blogs that shared their political viewpoint important.

“That the websites of traditional news outlets are seen by a wide margin as more important than blog sites–most of which are repositories of opinion devoid of actual reportage–could be seen as an encouraging development for the media at large,” Zogby said in a statement.

I can’t resist a news story that praises the benefits of the oh-so-wonderful art known as sleeping.  Much to my delight today, a study recently presented at the Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies found that sleep can actually improve athletic performance.

Cheri Mah and a team of researchers from the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic and Research Laboratory at Stanford Universit studied five members of the Stanford women’s tennis team.  For two to three weeks, the athletes maintained their regular schedules, sleeping and working out as usual. They took part in sprinting and hitting drills to measure their performance.  The players were then told to extend their sleep to 10 hours a night for five to six weeks.  After increasing sleep, the athletes performed better on all the drills.

According to the study:

“Sprinting drill times dropped on average to 17.56 seconds from 19.12 seconds. Hitting accuracy, measured by valid serves, improved to 15.61 serves, up from 12.6 serves, and a hitting depth drill improved to 15.45 hits, up from 10.85 hits.”

The study was small, and some of the improvements may have been the result of additional practice time. Though the size of the change suggets the athletes received a direct benefit from more sleep.

The study confirms a view by at least one health expert that was recently highlighted by The New York Times.  Katherine Hobson, who writes the “On Fitness” column for U.S. News and World Report, said she used a vacation to spend more time sleeping than running.  “I expected my first run back in Brooklyn to be a death march,” she wrote. “Instead, I felt the best and went the fastest that I have in weeks. One possible explanation came to mind: I erased my chronic sleep debt on vacation, thanks to sleeping in as long as I wanted in the mornings and napping most afternoons…”

The study raised attention at it’s first presentation last week, but the connection between sleep and physical wellness remains a complex and endless area for research.

Republicans fought long and hard, but the Democrats overruled in a new plan that the Obama Administration hopes will change America’s roads.  The new “cash for clunkers” program will provide incentives of $3,500 to $4,500 to motorists who trade in their gas guzzlers for more fuel efficient vehicles.

“This is an emergency for families and small businesses–for an industry that has been the backbone of our economy for a generation,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., who sponsored the proposal.

Obviously the program will only make financial sense to those with older vehicles, but supporters believe it will make a major step in ridding America’s roadways of heavy polluters.  The auto industry and its union lobbied heavily for it as well, as it’s likely to generate new car sales.

According to the Associated Press, The US industry is expected to generate about 9.5 million vehicle sales in 2009, compared with more than 13 million in 2008 and more than 16 million in 2007.

Republicans narrowly lost the vote on “cash for clunkers,” with the House voting 298-119.  Opponents say it will increase the federal debt without doing much to get expensive-to-operate vehicles off the road.  One Democrat, Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, originally opposed the bill because she thought it was inefficient in reducing the nation’s need to reduce foreign oil dependence.  She was eventually swayed; however, after President Obama assured her he will continue to work with Democrats to “maximize the number of efficient cars on America’s roads.”

Being as that its been the #1 movie in America for two weeks now, there’s a good chance you’ve already seen The Hangover. But this review is for the skeptical, the budget-minded, and the prudish–spend the ten bucks and see it now because Lord knows we need films as imaginitive and intelligently crass as this one.

The setup is simple enough–four buddies go to Vegas to have a bachelor’s party. There’s Doug (Justin Bartha), the sensible and all-around likeable groom-to-be; Phil (Bradley Cooper), the handsome and cocky self-loather; Stu (Ed Helms), the geeky and reserved ’straight’ man who rarely says or does what he feels, and Alan (Zach Galifianakis), the weird and awkward but loveable odd-man-out who guys tend to keep in their circles without knowing exactly why.  Of course it goes awry, but to the extent you’ll only even partially know until the credits are done rolling. 

It’s a seemingly familiar scenario and set of characters, but writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore use them to catch the audience off guard once the ‘hangover’ actually begins–approximately three seconds after the four guys toast their drinks in front of a panoramic shot of nighttime Vegas.

We cut to a destroyed hotel suite: a smoking chair after an apparent recent fire, blood-stained floors, a woman’s legs as she skurries out of the room, and eventually other living creatures besides the three guys.  Wait–weren’t there four?

Phil, Stu, and Alan spend the duration of the film searching for Doug, only by finding clues and meeting a slew of bizarre characters who make them realize what exactly happened the night before.  Every new discovery (none of which any critic should reveal in their review) provides another obstacle, and each one more ludicrous and hilarious than the last.  It’s a dark and unrelenting nightmare for these characters, which is precisely why it’s so much fun to watch.

The film isn’t so much about the hilarity that ensues when a group of buddies get wasted together, rather the struggle towards a goal and the attempt to fix mistakes well after the damage has been done.  These are real people in completely outrageous situations, and when the jokes involve tazers, kidnapping mafia members, inflicting light cruelty on babies, and upsetting former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson–let’s just say that the type of person who can’t laugh at these things probably isn’t much fun to be around anyway.

But the characters in The Hangover epitomize fun, and for as dark and profane as the humor gets, it never becomes mean-spirited or distracting to the heart of the story–which is that buddies stick together, whether it be in times of crisis, or literally on the alcohol soaked floor of a Vegas Casino hotel.  Eitherway, praise be to the filmmakers who can use both scenarious to create what will undoubtebly be one of the funniest movies of the year.

According to a new study, populations of reindeer and caribou around the world have plunged, thanks to global warming.

Reindeer and caribou are names for the same species. Liv Vors, a Ph.D. student at the University of Alberta who did the study with university biologist Mark Boyce, explains that reindeer are generally thought of as European, while caribou are North American.

“Their future is dubious if climate change and habitat disturbance continue at their current pace,” Vors told LiveScience. “We do not know how quickly they can adapt to this changing world.”

According to the study, several factors of climate change are responsible for the decline in population. These include:

An early spring greening, before migrating herds arrive north. This means that mothers and calves are deprived of quality feedings.

Warmer summers can increase insects. The insects may then harass the herds and interfere with feeding time.

Rather than snow, freezing rain is more common recently and has affected the growth of lichen, which reindeer feed on during cold months.

Justina Ray, executive director of Wildlife Conservation Society-Canada explains that caribou are also at the mercy of deforestation, natural resource extraction and accompanying road networks, and climate change.

She says, “The caribou is central to the normal function of northern ecosystems. With their huge range requirements and need for intact landscapes, these animals are serving as the litmus test for whether we will succeed in taking care of their needs in an area that is under intensifying pressure.”

According to Vors, the new study has provided sufficient information about the habits of caribou and what needs to be done to protect them. Now, countries that have the magnificent beasts living in their borders must do what they can to help them survive.

Pic Source: Reuters

As technology becomes ever more advanced and cellphones take heat for giving off heat, Nokia has introduced a wireless cellphone.

Because cellphone chargers in standby mode are notorious sources of power drainage, Nokia is working on a cellphone that could be recharged without being plugged in.

The new phone would be powered by ambient radiowaves, signals from TV, radio and mobile phone signals that constantly surround us. Most of these kinds of wasted are wasted energy that gets absorbed one way or the other. But the new cellphone model promises to utilize these forgotten and otherwise lost signals.

According to a blog by Christopher Null on Yahoo!Tech, “Nokia picks up all the bits and pieces of these waves and uses the collected electromagnetic energy to create electrical current, then uses that to recharge the phone’s battery.”

Previous wireless technology relies on having a transmitter and receiver configuration, while the Nokia version promises to utilize whatever waves are available.

In 1893, Nikola Tesla tried to use similar wireless technology to build a communication device that would cross the Atlantic.

Right now, Nokia has been able to 5 milliwatts from the air, a number they hope to increase to 20 milliwatts in the short term and 50 milliwatts in the long term. While it still won’t be enough to keep the phone functional for an entire call, the hope is that it would slowly recharge the cell phone battery while it’s in standby mode, hypothetically providing infinite power. It wouldn’t work underground or in other areas where radiowaves don’t penetrate.

According to the Technology Review magazine, the phone could be on the market in three to five years.

To learn more about the Nokia phone and its technology, click here to read the original article.

  Iranian citizens have been having problems communicating lately. Not only with people from around the world in regards to recent revolutionary events, but amongst themselves. In a shocking attempt by the Iranian government to ‘control’ protests, gatherings and information, cell phones have been meddled with, text messaging has been disabled, and foreign journalists have been forced to shut their cameras down. But they can’t stop Twitter!

Young members of the Islamic Republic who have been supporting the opposition have been using the social networking site to get in touch with people outside their country, and in doing so, have successfully transferred invaluable information to the all too curious West about their revolution. “The move illustrates the growing influence of online social-networking services as a communications media,” writes Mike Musgrove of The Washington Post, and he’s absolutely spot on. These sites, which were once thought of as a trivial and fun way to communicate, could effectively change the world, and eventually surpass the television media’s power to communicate information effectively and quickly, reforming the term ‘news.’ Apparently even the Iranian Ayatollah himself ‘tweets.’ And I doubt he often tunes in to CNN before bedtime milk and cookies.

The State Department itself specifically asked Twitter facilitators to delay a scheduled maintenance session to avoid disrupting incoming communication from Iranian citizens who were relaying information as hundreds of thousands protested the outcome of Iran’s re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Senior State Department official said in a conversation with reports that “They (Twitter) announced they were going to shut down their system for maintenance and we asked them not to.”

However, there is some doubt about sourcing, and whether or not this material on twitter is legitimate. Twitter does not support Farsi, Iran’s official language, so all information is coming from either expatriates of the West in Iran or university students, who, statistically belong to the opposition. It’s hard to say how bias or even true some of this information is. However, bias most certainly applies to other mediums of the media. Check out Fox News sometime and you’ll get what I mean.

According to Mehdi Yahyanejad, the manager of a Farsi-language news site based in Los Angeles, Twitter has no influence in Iran. However, certain Iranian-American activists believe Twitter has been essential in revealing otherwise classified information outside Iran. “The predominant information is coming from Twitter since foreign reporters’ movement has been limited,” one Iranian-American told the press. “A lot of people are coining what is happening in Iran as a Twitter revolution.” (Washington Post)

The Internet’s power is surpassing all other forms of intercommunication. Who knows, someday we may even be able to tweet our way towards world peace!

  As President Obama tries concentrating on healthcare reform on the domestic front, he’s, unsurprisingly, receiving backlash from Republican members of Congress, making it difficult to move his proposals forward. But a small victory was accomplished in yesterday’s announcement that the American Medical Association, who generally tends to be a conservative lot, has backed the president on his goals.

The AMA, the nation’s largest group of medical professionals, began their yearly meeting which started out as a “potential obstacle” (Lindsey Tanner, AP) to the president’s healthcare plan. But after a surprisingly successful speech given by Obama, many of the group’s members had effectively changed their minds about his public health insurance plan, which will inadvertently compete with private insurers.

The vote to ‘not block’ the president’s plans is a victory to be proud of for the White House team, though some would have preferred a direct endorsement. “They’re going to be at the table,” Paul Ginsburg, president of the Washington-based Center for Studying Health System Change,” told the press, which is indeed a positive step forward.

The AMA has clashed with executive authority in the past when they’ve attempted to reshape the healthcare system. The group used to have a much larger membership population, which has dropped in recent years to nearly a fourth of its original size, but remains “a visible lobbying presence in Washington.” (AP) The group, while responding in a cautious manner, indicated to the current administration that it wants to be involved in talks and will be team players. “The AMA did not close doors. The AMA said we will evaluate all proposals in light of our principles,” Dr. Nancy Nielsen, a former AMA president, told the press. The group did, however, avoid any direct language that would insinuate a full on endorsement.

Some members, of course, still oppose the idea of a government run healthcare program, calling it ‘communism’ or ‘socialism.’ Some also fear that in going along with Obama’s plan, it will eventually lead to ‘giving in’ to a single payer healthcare system, which Obama has denied trying to do. Another concern of AMA members are that doctors who aren’t paid well under two public programs, Medicare and Medicaid, who will get paid even less under government ownership. Obama has shunned all of these criticisms, saying in his speech, “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan, period.” (AP) His comment was met with applause.

His speech to the AMA was well received, except for his stance on how much action patients can take on doctors on the subject of medical malpractice lawsuits where he got booed. However, he had many standing ovations to balance that out. Dr. Nicholas Vedder, a plastic surgeon based in Seattle, admitted that many of his colleagues told him they’d changed their mind about the system just from listening to Obama speak for nearly an entire hour.

Vedder, who supported the idea before the speech, said “they’ve (the doctors) seen the writing on the wall. To the extent we can help shape the policy rather than oppose, American medicine will be better served.” (AP) Some were hoping for more. Dr. Ted Epperly was “philosophically troubled” that the AMA didn’t take a stronger stand, but it was better than nothing at all. Dr. Michael Goldrich, a former AMA board member, was pleased with the outcomes saying, “Everything that happened at this meeting really reflects AMA’s genuine desire…to try to achieve effective health system reform.” (AP)

Bedbugs are a notoriously inconvenient problem and the incidents of annoyance has risen recently. But now scientists are saying that they have found a way to beat bedbugs at their own game.

Scientists are now exploring using the bugs’ own alarm pheromones as a method of control.

Bedbugs release chemicals, called alarm pheromones, when they sense they are in danger. When their fellow bugs get a whiff, they also become alarmed and begin scurrying around.

Just scurrying around though isn’t necessarily a good thing, as bedbugs are notorious for getting into hard to reach places, like floorboards. So the pheromones had to be combined with another agent to be effective.

In a laboratory study, Joshua Benoit, an entomologist at Ohio State University in Columbus and his team, mixed synthetic versions of bed-bug alarm pheromones with desiccant dust, a pesticide that works by drying insects out. For the dust to work, the bugs must pass directly though it.

“To control bed bugs, there’s not going to be one easy solution,” said Joshua Benoit, an entomologist at Ohio State University in Columbus. “We are trying to encourage people to find new and creative ways to kill bed bugs.”

The results of the project were published in Journal of Medical Entomology and found that when combined with the alarm pheromones, the desiccant dust was 50 percent more effective.

While bedbugs don’t carry disease and aren’t deadly, their bites cause annoying and painful itching and even scarring in some people. In just one night, a single person can receive hundreds of bites. They spread quickly and easily, as a pregnant female hitching a ride in a suitcase can eventually spread bedbugs to an entire apartment complex.

While bedbugs have yet to be totally vanquished, the use of alarm pheromones seems to be a step in the right direction.

Pic Source: Discovery News

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has ordered Exxon Mobil Corp to pay $500 million in interest on punitive damages for the Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska. The ruling doubles the payment to Alaska Natives, fishermen, business owners and other affected or harmed by the 1989 disaster.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court set punitive damages at $507.5 million, but declined to rule on whether or not the corporation should also have to pay interest and sent it back to the appeals court.

The case is from the largest oil spill in US history, when the Exxon Valdez, a supertanker, crashed and dumped 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound, fouling 1,200 miles of coastline.

The original ruling for the incident awarded plaintiffs $5 billion in damages, but it was appealed by Exxon and cut down over the years: first to $2.5 billion in 1996 and then in half again to $507.5 million last June.

The spill killed thousands of birds and other marine animals and the region has not yet recovered from the total environmental damage, according to report.

Exxon countered with studies that found the area thriving and also said that paying more money on top of the $3.4 billion already spent on cleaning up and restoring the area was excessive.

The corporation has also maintained that they should not be liable for the action of the supertanker’s skipper, Joseph Hazelwood, who was in charge when the vessel ran aground. Prosecutors said that Hazelwood was drunk, but he has since been acquitted of wrong-doing.

The new ruling will double the average payout of about $15,000 for the nearly 33,000 claimants.

For more information on the ruling, read the original article on Yahoo! News.