Sperm Docs on Laptops: Legs Akimbo!

Laptop cooling pads may do little to help prevent raised testicular temperature — a potential cause of fertility problems — according to a new study. Instead the best policy may be for men to keep their legs apart.

The study, published in the Fertility and Sterility magazine, looked into ways of mitigating the effects of a laptop on scrotal temperature. Although there are no clear studies conclusively proving that laptops can damage fertility, it is known that a raised temperature can damage sperm.

Indeed, the need to keep sperm at the correct temperature is the reason why the testicles are outside the body and thus slightly cooler than the body’s usual internal temperature.

The study was carried out at the State University of New York. It involved 29 test subjects, meaning the precise details may not accurately represent the general public, but any clear general conclusions should be correct.

The participants used laptops in three different set-ups, each for 60 minutes of continuous use. The first set-up was to sit with legs together, the second with legs together while using a lap pad below the laptop, and the third to sit with legs at a 70 degree angle.

The changes in temperature on both sides of the scrotum were measured after each session. In all three cases there were increases: with legs together the average overall increase was 2.435 degrees Celsius; with legs together and a lap pad; the average increase was 2.1 degrees; and with legs apart and a lap pad, the average increase was 1.44 degrees.

All three figures raise concern as it’s believed a temperature increase of as little as one degree Celsius can affect sperm quality. The researchers timed how long it took to reach this one degree increase and found it was 11 minutes with legs together, 14 minutes with legs together and a lap pad, and 28 minutes with legs apart and a lap pad.

Yelim Sheynkin, who led the study, said people shouldn’t panic as using a laptop wouldn’t automatically make you infertile: rather, frequent use might contribute to problems. He said lap pads made little significant difference and could even lead to a false sense of security and cause users to keep laptops on their laps a longer time.

Instead Sheynkin’s advice is that there’s no way to avoid the fact that laptops cause heating, and men should mitigate the problems by keeping their legs apart and severely limiting the time they keep laptops on their laps.

(Image credit: Flickr user M.V. Jantzen)



Ender’s Game Fan-Made Movie Trailer

Youtube user stevendavishoops613 used audio and video clips from Star Trek, Star Wars episodes I and II, Starship Troopers, Serenity, Soldier, Tron: Legacy, and a bunch of other movies, to create this cool trailer for a fictional Ender’s Game movie. Check it out:

[Via Topless Robot]



Monsters Having Fun [Pics]

Monsters having fun: Because everybody needs to have fun sometimes, even bad guys.

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Kill Bill Cake [PIC]

Barbarann Garrad from Cake Rhapsody created this awesome Kill Bill-themed cake for her daughter’s 9th birthday. Check it out:

The bottom represents “the bride”… the scene in which Beatrice is gunned down in the opening scene. There is white bridal lace with blood and realistic chocolate bullets. The next tier is a Japanese pagoda. This represents the scene toward the end in which Beatrice fights the “crazy 88’s” and O-Ren Ishii. It has the traditional rooftiles and curves and bamboo of a pagoda, all edible. The top is yellow with a black stripe to represent the suit Beatrice wears when she is fighting O-Ren Ishii. It also features an edible piece of notebook paper made of fondant with Beatirice’s “death List five” , and katana.

[Source: Flickr]

Why You Should Only Buy Linux Pre-Installed on your Systems

By Mackenzie Morgan
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Many Linux users are geeks, and vice versa, and geeks can build their own systems or at least install an OS, so why should we buy systems with Linux pre-installed? Why is it so important if the OS is free? Let’s talk about a little thing called “market share.”

You’ll see a lot of talk about market share on the Internet, but usually it confuses market share and installed base. See, geeks tend to care about installed base. We’ll argue with the people quoting 1% market share that it can’t be right because how can companies know whether we reinstalled the OS or not? And that’s just the point. Generally, they can’t. But what changes when we change our OS isn’t the market share; it’s the installed base. The market share is still based flatly on the number of units sold—the thing business people care about.

Why should we care about the difference? Well, it’s really hard to get a good handle on the installed base of just about anything. Mozilla can tell us how many installers for Firefox were downloaded, and I can tell you that the Firefox_Setup.exe on my flash drive was used to install on at least 5 random people’s computers, but then the people who downloaded and never got around to finishing the install or went back to Internet Exploder get in the way, and it’s a big mess. It’s not hard to count the number of units bought or downloaded (“shipped”), though. Number of units shipped is what business people use to determine whether they’re doing a good job or a lousy job, too. That’s where we come in.

Ever heard of “voting with your wallet”? The more of us buy our systems with Linux pre-installed, the more the market share percentages sway. What happens then? Then hardware manufacturers get more pressure put on them to play nice. Then ISPs get more pressure put on them to actually support Linux users. Then software developers (yes, game houses too) get more pressure put on them to port their programs. It might not be much pressure—yet—but the smart ones will see the writing on the wall. Already we’ve seen Dell pressured into selling machines with Ubuntu, and they, in turn, pressured Broadcom into releasing working drivers. It’s all fine and dandy for us to try to yell at various companies “please support us!!!”, but until there are signs in the market (you know, the one with money) that Windows’ share is shrinking, they can keep on ignoring us.

If you’re convinced that you need to do something about this market share issue with your next computer purchase, where do you actually find a hardware vendor offering Linux as an option? There is actually a handful of them. In the Ubuntu world, System76 is popular on the “support a small business” front. For those wanting a more mainstream brand, Dell, as mentioned above, is the way to go. Watch out though. Sometimes they put sales on some components on the Windows-equivalent systems and not on the Ubuntu ones. When this has been noticed before, they’ve promptly fixed it and applied the sales to the Ubuntu systems too, so just make sure you check so you can email them if they got it wrong again. I’m a repeat-customer of ZaReason, since they will ship Kubuntu, not just Ubuntu, and I like KDE. Really, they’ll ship just about any distro you request as long as the drivers are there. System76 and ZaReason tend to appeal more toward the quality-and-service-over-price buyer, so if budget is really your limiting factor, have a look at Sub300 (oddly with a URL of Sub500, go figure). It’s Linspire, but you were going to reinstall over Windows anyway, right? At least you can count into the market share game and try to influence the industry.

What do you think? If every system running a Linux distro had been purchased that way, and if no Linux users were using User Agent Switcher to masquerade as Windows and avoid silly webpage blocks, what sort of statistics would we see about operating systems? If I missed it, who is your favourite vendor for hardware running a Free Software OS?

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First Star Trek 2 Promo Pic?

A few days ago, Simon Pegg (Scotty from Star Trek 2009) tweeted this to his followers:

Could this possibly be the first promo picture for the upcoming Star Trek movie?

If it is, it’s kind of disappointing, don’t you think?

[Via]

Maths skills boosted by electrical impulse

Researchers at Oxford University have found that an electrical current applied to the brain could improve mathematical performance. It doesn’t mean we’ll all be zapping our brains and retraining as mathematicians, but it could bring new ways to treat the effects of strokes and degenerative conditions.

The study involved passing a one milliamp current through the parietal lobe, a current too small to be detected by the test subject. The parietal lobe (marked above in yellow) is the section of the brain most associated with processing information gathered through the senses, in turn providing such skills as spatial awareness and navigation. (It’s presumably the part of your brain that hurts while playing later levels of Portal.)

During the study, the test subjects carried out calculations in which the numbers had been replaced by artificial symbols, meaning that rather than merely testing calculation, the experiment tested “the mapping of number into space.”

Over a six-day testing and training period, participants showed a specific and significant improvement when the current passed from right to left. However, it also found a significant decrease in skills among those where the current was passed in the other direction.

Those subjects whose skills improved were tested again six months later and the benefits appeared to have remained in place. (Rather worryingly, the report on the results doesn’t mention retesting those who got the left-to-right current and showed decreased skills.)

The researchers believe the technique could potentially be used in two ways. First, it could treat dyscalculia, a learning difficulty that makes it harder to comprehend mathematics. Second, it could help reverse or limit the effects of medical conditions or events that lead to the relevant skills declining.

It also raises the possibility that the electrical stimulation could improve other areas of brain performance if applied to specific sections of the brain.

Super-Secret Delivery Procedures Document Revealed [PIC]

Ever wondered why when you’re expecting a package at home, you always seem to end up with a stupid indecipherable hand written note asking you to pick up your delivery at the neareast service point? Here’s why:

Thanks John!

Funny: Ian McKellen Reenacts The Bridge of Khazad-Dum [Video]

In the following video, Ian McKellen reenacts his experience filming the famous “You shall not pass!” scene in Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. Check it out, this is absolutely hilarious!