GEN-ERIC News

A kilogram just isn’t what it used to be. A 118-year-old cylinder that has been the international prototype for the metric mass, and kept tightly under lock and key outside Paris, is mysteriously losing its weight - if ever so slightly. Physicist Richard Davis of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sevres, southwest of Paris, says the reference kilo appears to have lost 50 micrograms compared with the average of dozens of copies. “The mystery is that they were all made of the same material, and many were made at the same time and kept under the same conditions, and yet the masses among them are slowly drifting apart,” he said. “We don’t really have a good hypothesis for it,” Davis said in a phone interview Wednesday. But only the one in Sevres really counts. It is kept in a triple-locked safe at a chateau and only rarely sees the light of day - mostly for comparison with other cylinders shipped in periodically from around the world. “It’s not clear whether the original has become lighter, or the national prototypes have become heavier,” said Michael Borys, a senior researcher with Germany’s national measures institute in Braunschweig. “But by definition, only the original represents exactly a kilogram.”

The following was revealed on the POWER OF 10 episode broadcast on Tuesday, September 11
– 20% of Americans think their parents should not have gotten married
– 88% of Americans said they had sex on their wedding night
– 82% of Americans judge a book by its cover
– 21% of Americans said they double-dip when eating chips and dip at a party
– 30% of American men would not marry a woman who already had children with someone else
– 83% of married American women would keep their original engagement ring for sentimental reasons, instead of upgrading to a bigger diamond
– 28% of Americans have participated in a political rally at least once in their lives
– 18% of American women said they would get plastic surgery if their partner asked them to
– 53% of Americans said they would swim in a pool with someone who they knew was HIV-positive
– 12% of American women wear a thong on a regular basis
– 46% of American women said if they were being mugged, they would fight back
– 17% of Americans have visited an adult web site in the last six months
– 62% of Americans said they have found someone they considered their “soul mate”
– 66% of Americans think Idaho senator Larry Craig was lying when he said he wasn’t gay
– 28% of American women have caught the bride’s bouquet at a wedding
– 25% of Americans have left work for some “afternoon delight”
– 65% of Americans think America will have an African-American president by 2025
– 16% of American women said they have participated in a strip poker game
– 9% of Americans said at some point in their lives, they’ve wondered whether they were adopted
– 44% of Americans consider cheerleading to be a sport
– 23% of Americans have successfully performed the Heimlich maneuver
– 41% of Americans would trust their mother to set them up on a blind date

A Taiwanese woman’s breast implant was reportedly burst by a bee sting. The 31-year-old woman was wearing a low-cut dress while riding her motorcycle when her right breast was stung by a bee. “My right breast disappeared in only two days,” said the woman, who received the implant three years ago, according to Southern China City News. Surgeon Zeng Dingchang says the saline implant is supposed to resist pressure of up to 200 kg, and said it was “very strange” for one to deflate because of a bee sting. “She is very skinny, and the implant made the skin of her breast even thinner, and therefore easy to penetrate,” he said.

Whetu Barrett had no hang-ups when it came to his burglaries, spending two hours chatting on 0900 sex lines - as his 85-year-old victim slept soundly in a nearby room. When the victim woke in the morning she realised she had been robbed - but the real shock came weeks later when she received her phone bill, including a $138 charge for the burglar’s eight calls to adult chat lines. The following month he was doing it again, burgling another house and this time racking up a $115 bill during an hour of steamy chat sessions.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a prevailing issue in the United States, with millions of children getting diagnosed every year. A new study reveals that Pycnogenol, (pic-noj-en-all), an antioxidant plant extract from the bark of the French maritime pine tree, reduces ADHD in children. The study shows Pycnogenol balances stress hormones, which lowers adrenaline and dopamine, resulting in a decrease of ADHD. The findings, to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Nutritional Neuroscience is a spin-off of a 2006 study found in the journal of European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry that revealed Pycnogenol helped reduce hyperactivity and improve attention, concentration and motor-visual coordination in children with ADHD. The current study measures urine samples and blood samples of the children, which were not accounted for in the results of the original study. “Pycnogenol’s ability to naturally treat symptoms of ADHD is what makes this extract exceptionally pleasing to parents who may be uneasy about medicating their children with stimulant medications,"said Dr. Peter Rohdewald of the Institute of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at Germany’s University of Munster and one of the authors of the study.

“There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.”