If a man wants to become a father, he should avoid long hot baths and stick to showers instead. Scientists say they have confirmed the ‘old wives’ tale’ that prolonged immersion in hot water affects male fertility. ¢ More fascinating health features Men used to spending half an hour or more in a bath or jacuzzi who gave up for three months were found to increase sperm production almost fivefold, according to research published in the journal of the Brazilian Society of Urology. Sperm needs cool surroundings to develop best, which is why the testicles are outside the body. Because of this, men who want to father a child are already advised not to wear tight clothing or underwear which causes too much heat to build up. In a pilot study involving men with fertility problems, half of those who refrained from baths saw their sperm count rise by an average of 491 per cent. The others failed to respond but they were all smokers. Tobacco has long been recognised as a major factor in infertility. Dr Paul Turek, who led the team from the University of California at San Francisco, said: […]
WASHINGTON — The probe into the Bush administration’s firings of U.S. attorneys intensified Monday as lawmakers ordered two more ousted officials to tell their stories and the Justice Department said Republican Sen. Pete Domenici had complained repeatedly to the attorney general about one of the prosecutors. The administration has said eight prosecutors were told to leave, all but one for performance-related reasons. However, Democrats have suggested ever more pointedly that politics was behind many of the dismissals, and the Domenici revelation fueled that idea. Six of those fired, meanwhile, issued a stiff defense of their conduct and implied that they had had differences with Justice Department officials in Washington. ‘We leave with no regrets, because we served well and upheld the best traditions of the Department of Justice,’ the group said in a joint statement released in advance of a Tuesday hearing by a House subcommittee. The Justice Department, besieged by charges of cronyism, acknowledged that lawmakers had complained about several of the eight. One, David Iglesias of New Mexico, was the subject of four phone calls from Domenici, R-N.M., to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his deputy questioning whether the prosecutor was ‘up to […]
LONDON — Israel, Iran and the United States are the countries with the most negative image in a globe-spanning survey of attitudes toward 12 major countries. Canada and Japan came out best in the poll, released Tuesday. The survey for the British Broadcasting Corp.’s World Service asked more than 28,000 people to rate 12 countries – Britain, Canada, China, France, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, North Korea, Russia, the United States and Venezuela – as having a positive or negative influence on the world. Israel was viewed negatively by 56 per cent of respondents and positively by 17 per cent; for Iran, the figures were 54 per cent and 18 per cent. The United States had the third-highest negative ranking, with 51 per cent citing it as a bad influence and 30 per cent as a good one. Next was North Korea, which was viewed negatively by 48 per cent and positively by 19 per cent. Canada had the most positive rating in the survey of 28,389 people in 27 countries, with 54 per cent viewing it positively and 14 per cent negatively. It was followed by Japan and France. Respondents were also asked their views of […]
Justice Thomas talks about the lasting influence of the man who guided him through his years at Holy Cross and why he’s not a beneficiary of affirmative action Of all the influences in the life of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, little attention has been paid to the Reverend John E. Brooks. During his time at Holy Cross and in the years since, the Jesuit priest has been, in Thomas’ words, ‘a combination of friend, uncle, priest, father, saint, Good Samaritan.’ In this exclusive interview with BusinessWeek senior writer Diane Brady, Thomas reflects on racial politics, his job, his college crowd, and the influence of Brooks on his life. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation: Thank you for meeting with me. Father Brooks asked me to do it. One of the reasons I don’t do media interviews is, in the past, the media often has its own script. One reason these stories are never told is that they are contrary to the script that people play by. The media, unfortunately, have been universally untrustworthy because they have their own notions of what I should think or I should do. Why is Father Brooks such an important […]
LONDON — A team of scientists has set sail on a voyage to examine why a huge chunk of the earth’s crust is missing, deep under the Atlantic Ocean — a phenomenon that challenges conventional ideas about how the earth works. The 20-strong team aims to survey an area some 3,000 to 4,000 metres deep where the mantle — the deep interior of the earth normally covered by a crust kilometres thick — is exposed on the sea floor. Experts describe the hole along the mid-Atlantic ridge as an ‘open wound’ on the ocean floor that has puzzled scientists for the five or so years that its existence has been known because it defies existing tectonic plate theories of evolution. ‘We know so little about it,’ said Bramley Murton, a senior research scientist at Southampton’s National Oceanography Centre. ‘It’s a real challenge to our established understanding of what the earth’s surface looks like underneath the waves,’ he told Reuters by telephone from the brand new, hi-tech research ship RRS James Cook. Mid ocean ridges are places where new oceanic crust is born, with red-hot lava spewing out along the seafloor. What scientists are keen […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
