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WOW!I don't know how could she do this, Amazing.

Anyone Hungry? Six Strange Ready-to-Eat Canned Foods
The world is buying more and more food all the time. One hundred years ago it was being cooked by the family over the course of a day for some meals. Now we simply go to the store and buy canned or frozen food.

Here are 6 of the strangest canned foods you can find being distributed at your local supermarket. I left out food meant for animals as that is completely different.

1. France - Canned Duck Fat

This is a product that doesn't get much attention in the United States food markets. Canned duck fat is actually a rather rare treat for people in France. For 67.5 oz of duck fat you can expect to pay around $60. We usually cut the fat off of our meat which makes this a very weird canned food.




2. Sweden - Canned Cheeseburger


This delicious cheeseburger originates from Sweden. It is strange simply because of the pieces used to make the cheeseburger. I would be worried about the quality of the bread, cheese, and meat after getting this shipped across seas. For the price of $6 you can get a cheeseburger in a can, or you can head over to McDonalds and get 6 of them for the same price.




3. New Zealand - Canned Tongue

New Zealand lamb tongues are definitely something that is not seen in many American grocery stores. However in New Zealand this is a great delicacy that is a very common item at a dinner table. The prices range depending on the brand, expect to pay around $5 for this can of tongues.




4. Korea - Canned Silkworm Pupae

These silkworm pupae are very popular snacks in and around Korea. They are prepared simply by stewing and seasoning them. You can get these at just about any supermarket or gas station in Korea as they are to them as something like peanuts are to us. Silkworm pupae are generally a cheaper food, you can pick up a can like this for around $4.



5. Scandinavia - Canned Reindeer

This delicacy is actually very healthy for you compared to other red meats. Since reindeer are raised on a farm on diets of moss and lichen these animals have only a 2 percent fat content. Due to the time and costs in farming these animals you will have to dish out close to $30 for a can of this arctic delicacy.



6. Thailand - Canned Scorpion

Scorpions are a delicacy in most of Thailand. These are already cooked and they can be eaten whole without risk of poison from their venom. There are thousands of different species of scorpions and you can eat a good percentage of them. Expect to pay around $6 for a can of scorpions.

Most of these are delicacies from other countries that are available in the United States as well. They are all eaten without disease however they may not look that appetizing to us. Next time you go to the supermarket look at all the different kinds of canned food you see. Did I miss anything?

Washington, February 8: Researchers at the University of Washington and the University of Rochester Medical Center, have found that "good bacteria" or beneficial bacteria found in healthy women may help in reducing the amount of vaginal HIV among HIV-infected women and may also make it difficult for the virus to spread.

The findings may bolster the possibility that these "good bacteria", which are the Lactobacillus bacteria in the vagina, might one day be useful in combating HIV.

The study led by Jane Hitti, M.D., associate professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University Of Washington School Of Medicine, involved 57 women and was done in Seattle and Rochester through the Women's HIV Interdisciplinary Network (WHIN), based at the University of Washington.

The researchers studied the vaginal bacteria to look at the mix of bacteria that reside there and took many other factors in consideration. They tracked the level of HIV virus in the vagina, infection by common sexually transmitted diseases like trichomoniasis, gonorrhea and chlamydia, and other more common types of vaginal infections.

The researchers also examined the levels of Lactobacillus in the vagina, and also the hydrogen peroxide, which is produced by the bacteria and hinders the virus. The level on HIV in the women's blood and the rate of progression of the disease overall was also measured.It was discovered that women with hydrogen-peroxide-producing Lactobacillus in the vagina had lower levels of HIV virus in genital secretions, called the genital viral load in physicians' jargon. It is known that with lower level of HIV in the sexual tract, the virus will be less likely to spread from person to person through sexual contact.

In earlier studies, Lactobacillus was found to give women some natural protection against HIV. These bacteria, commonly found in most women, bind to the virus and secrete hydrogen peroxide.

While previous studies also mentioned that Lactobacillus might be useful in preventing HIV infection in women, the current study establishes a link between decreased levels of the virus in the vagina with the presence of Lactobacillus that produce hydrogen peroxide there.

The researchers also discovered that the amount of the virus in the vagina changed with the presence of Lactobacillus. It was found that vaginal HIV levels drop in women who did not have the bacteria initially but had acquired it by a subsequent visit. On the other hand, vaginal HIV levels increased in women in whom the good bacteria had disappeared between visits.

"These findings underscore the importance of maintaining a healthy, Lactobacillus-dominant vaginal flora for HIV-positive women. I hope that we can explore Lactobacillus replacement in the future for women who do not have this bacteria, as a strategy to decrease the amount of HIV in the vagina," said Hitti.

The research was presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston.

Washington, February 8: University of Michigan scientists have found that a new energy-capturing knee brace has the potential to generate enough electricity from walking to operate a portable GPS locator or to charge a cell phone.

Arthur Kuo, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the university, has revealed that the wearable mechanism works much like regenerative braking charges a battery in some hybrid vehicles.

While regenerative brakes collect the kinetic energy that would otherwise be dissipated as heat when a car slows down, the knee brace harvests the energy lost when a human brakes the knee after swinging the leg forward to take a step.

"There is power to be harvested from various places in the body, and you can use that to generate electricity. The knee is probably the best place. During walking, you dissipate energy in various places, when your foot hits the ground, for example. You have to make up for this by performing work with your muscles," said Kuo, who called the device "a cocktail-napkin idea".

"The body is clever. In a lot of places where it could be dissipating energy, it may actually be storing it and getting it back elastically. Your tendons act like springs. In many places, we're not sure whether the energy is really being dissipated or you're just storing it temporarily. We believe that when you're slowing down the knee at the end of swinging the leg, most of that energy normally is just wasted," Kuo added.

During a study, reported in the journal Science, the scientists tested the knee brace on six men walking leisurely on a treadmill at 2.2 miles per hour. They measured the subjects' respiration to determine how hard they were working.

A control group wore the brace with the generator disengaged to measure how the weight of the 3.5-pound brace affected the wearer.

The study report reveals that in the mode in which the brace is only activated while the knee is braking, the subjects required less than one watt of extra metabolic power for each watt of electricity they generated.

By contrast, says the report, a typical hand-crank generator takes an average of 6.4 watts of metabolic power to generate one watt of electricity because of inefficiencies of muscles and generators.

"We've demonstrated proof of concept. The prototype device is bulky and heavy, and it does affect the wearer just to carry. But the energy generation part itself has very little effect on the wearer, whether it is turned on or not. We hope to improve the device so that it is easier to carry, and to retain the energy-harvesting capabilities," Kuo said.

The authors believe that a lighter version of the knee brace would be helpful to hikers or soldiers who do not have easy access to electricity. They also envision its application in implantable devices such as pacemakers or neurotransmitters, which today require a battery and periodic surgery to replace that battery.

"A future energy harvester might be implanted along with such a device and generate its own power from walking," Kuo said.

NEW YORK (AP) - Don't lick the walls. An all-chocolate room was unveiled in Manhattan on Tuesday - a pre-Valentine's Day creation complete with furniture and artwork made of the sweet stuff.

Actress Ali Larter, of the NBC "Heroes" television series, tastes a mantel made of chocolate during her appearance at the preview of the 2008 Godiva Decadence Suite, in New York, Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2008. The winner of the company's Valentine's Day promotion will get to stay in hotel room made of chocolate.

"It's the perfect bit of sin," said Ali Larter, star of TV's "Heroes," of the Godiva chocolate "pearls" that are her private daily indulgence.

Here, they were dripping off the chandeliers above the dining table, which was a sea of stars, truffles and crescents - all chocolate, of course, under glass.

Larter is the celebrity face hired by the Belgian chocolatier for its annual Valentine's Day promotion contest. This year, anyone who buys the winning box of chocolates - for $23 and up - may win the chocolate room. It is to be re-created in a suite of Manhattan's Bryant Park Hotel for a pampered getaway weekend for two in May.

The winning box - sold only in North America - will contain a note informing the buyer of his or her good luck.

Actress Ali Larter, of the NBC "Heroes" television series, admires a chocolate decorated chandelier during her visit to the preview of the 2008 Godiva Decadence Suite, in New York Tuesday Jan. 29, 2008. The winner of the company's Valentine's Day promotion will get to stay in a hotel room made of chocolate. On the wall behind her is a Jackson Pollock-inspired abstract made from chocolate.

While no doubt a shameless commercial promotion - created by Los Angeles designer Larry Abel - the demo chocolate room set up on the sixth floor of an East Village building packed a tasteful, artsy punch.

Hanging in the "living room" was a painting built entirely of multicolored chocolate pieces inspired by Gustav Klimt's painting "The Kiss." Above the dining table was a "canvas" dripping with brown and white chocolate - a takeoff on Jackson Pollock's signature "drip" paintings.

And instead of words, books opened to a mound of chocolates.

You could actually sit on the plush sofa, which was chocolate-graced only on its sides, and the walls are made of chocolate.

There were a couple of "dont's" in the room: lighting the fireplace (with its chocolate logs and mantle) and the candles (all chocolate).

In addition, sinking into the easy chairs was discouraged - unless you wanted to rise with a chocolate-covered derriere.

A British man trounced death after surviving a billion-volt lightning strike on his head.

Darren Milne was hit by a 14,000mph bolt that tossed him to the ground, shredded his shirt and destroyed his trainers.

Darren's wife Vicky rushed to him, and feared that he was dead after seeing blood oozing from an open wound on his head.

But, as she embraced Darren, shouting his name repeatedly, he opened his eyes and cried: "I can hear you."

And the 41-year-old left doctors shocked after making a full recovery in just a week.

"He is very lucky - he could have been boiled alive," The Sun quoted a doctor, as saying.

The lightning struck Darren when he and Vicky were exploring the weird 100ft Hoodoo rock formations at Bryce Canyon, Utah.

"Suddenly a storm blew in and it started to hailstone so I made a snowball out of the stuff. Then I heard this loud crack. I woke up on the ground in a complete daze," he said.

Vicky added: "I thought Darren was dead. There was a smell of burnt flesh and all his hair was singed. When he said 'I can hear you', I cried with relief."

These electric multi-purpose vehicles manufactured by Chinese based Li Shi Guang Ming Automobile Design Co., Ltd. are on display for the opening day of the North American International Auto Show, Saturday, January 19, 2008 in Detroit.



The Toyota Venza is introduced at the North American International Auto Show Monday, January 14, 2008 in Detroit.


The Lincoln MKT concept is introduced at the North American International Auto Show, Monday, January 14, 2008 in Detroit. The vehicle, which is partially made of plastic bottles and polyester waste, underscores Ford's hope to commercialize greener materials and appeal to more environmentally-minded drivers.


Chrysler introduces the Jeep Renegade concept vehicle at the North American International Auto Show Monday, January 14, 2008 in Detroit.


The Mazda Taiki concept is displayed at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Tuesday, January 15, 2008.


The Fisker Karma, a luxury plug-in car, is displayed at the North American International Auto Show Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2008 in Detroit.


Chrysler introduces the ecoVoyager concept vehicle at the North American International Auto Show Monday, Jan. 14, 2008 in Detroit.


Chrysler introduces Dodge ZEO concept vehicle at the North American International Auto Show Monday, January 14, 2008 in Detroit.


The Chevrolet Corvette ZR1, driven by NASCAR racer Jeff Gordon, is introduced at GM Style event Saturday, January 12, 2008 in Detroit as recording artist Kid Rock performs in the background.


The Audi R8 V12 TDI concept is introduced at the North American International Auto Show Sunday, January 13, 2008 in Detroit.

* A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for approximately sixty-nine years.



* 1 out of every 4 kids in the USA is overweight.



* 41% of women apply body or hand moisturizer a minimum three times a day.



* 75-90% of primary physician visits are due to stress.



* A Russian man who wore a beard during the time of Peter the Great had to pay a special tax.



* A blink lasts approximately 0.3 seconds.



* A ear trumpet was used before the hearing aid was invented by people who had difficulty hearing.



* A fetus develops fingerprints at eighteen weeks.



* A fetus starts to develop fingerprints at the age of eight weeks.



* A fetus that is four months old, will becomes startled and turn away if a light is flashed on the mother's stomach.



* A headache and inflammatory pain can be reduced by eating 20 tart cherries.



* A human embryo is smaller than a grain of rice at four weeks old.
* A kiss for one minute can burn 26.



* A little under one quarter of the people in the world are vegetarians.



* A person infected with the SARS virus, has a 95-98% chance of recovery.



* A person who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day will on average lose two teeth every ten years.



* A person will burn 7 percent more calories if they walk on hard dirt compared to pavement.



* A sneeze can travel as fast as one hundred miles per hour.



* A study concludes that kids who snore do poorly in school.



* A study indicates that smokers are likely to die on average six and a half years earlier than non-smokers.



* A women from Berlin Germany has had 3,110 gallstones taken out of her gall bladder.



* A world record 328 pound ovarian cyst was removed from a woman in Galveston, Texas, in 1905.



* A yawn usually lasts for approximately six seconds.



* About twenty-five percent of the population sneeze when they are exposed to light.



* According to the American Institute of Stress, job stress approximately costs the U.S. industry over $300 billion dollars per year.



* After twenty-seven years, Betty Rubble made her debut as a Flintstones Vitamin in 1996.



* Air is passed through the nose at a speed of 100 miles per hour when a person sneezes.



* Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar were both epileptic.



* An adult esophagus can range from 10 to 14 inches in length and is one inch in diameter.



* An average adult produces about half a litre of flatulent gas per day, resulting in an average of about fourteen occurrences of flatulence a day.



* Approximately 1-2 calorie are burned a minute while watching T.V.



* Approximately 25,000 workers died during the building of the Panama Canal and approximately 20,000 of them contracted malaria and yellow fever.



* Asthma affects one in fifteen children under the age of eighteen.
* At least 7% of all health care costs in the United States are attributed to smoking.



* At one time it was thought that the heart controlled a person's emotions, Babies that are exposed to cats and dogs in their first year of life have a lower chance of developing allergies when they grow older.



* Babies' eyes do not produce tears until the baby is approximately six to eight weeks old.



* Being lactose intolerant can cause chronic flatulence.



* Between 12%-15% of the population is left-handed.



* Between 1997-2002, there was an increase of 228% in cosmetic procedures in the United States.



* Bile produced by the liver is responsible for making your feces a brownish, green colour.



* Brain damage will only occur if a fever goes above 107.6 degrees farenheit.



* By walking an extra 20 minutes every day, an average person will burn off seven pounds of body fat in an year.



* Carbon monoxide can kill a person in less than 15 minutes.



* Children grow faster in the springtime than any other season during the year.

Now that surgeons have operated on Stacey Gayle's brain, her favorite musician no longer makes her ill. Four years after being diagnosed with epilepsy, Gayle recently underwent brain surgery at Long Island Jewish Medical Center to cure a rare condition known as musicogenic epilepsy.



Gayle, a 25-year-old customer service employee at a bank in Alberta, Canada, was suffering as many as 10 grand mal seizures a day, despite being treated with medications designed to control them. The condition became so bad she eventually had to quit her job and leave the church choir where she sang.

Eighteen months ago, she began to suspect that music by reggae and hip-hop artist Sean Paul was triggering some of her seizures. She recalled being at a barbecue and collapsing when the Jamaican rapper's music started playing, and then remembered having a previous seizure when she heard his music.

Her suspicions were confirmed on a visit to the Long Island medical center last February, when she played Paul's hit "Temperature" on her iPod for doctors. Soon after, she suffered three seizures.

"Being that the seizures could be triggered by the music, this was a very interesting opportunity to study Stacey's brain," said Dr. Ashesh Mehta, the hospital's director of epilepsy surgery.

During the first surgery, doctors implanted more than 100 electrodes in the right side of her brain to pinpoint the abnormal area of her brain.

The surgeons followed that procedure with a second surgery to remove the electrodes, along with parts of her brain suspected of causing the seizures.

"We used the latest techniques, including image guidance, to pinpoint the areas of abnormality, and the operating microscope to perform the procedure during a four-hour operation," Mehta said.

Within three days, the woman was released from the hospital and has not experienced a seizure since.

"I always live each day like it's my last," she said. "I want to show others that life does not end at epilepsy. I know I have what it takes to succeed."

1. Revenge on a dirty roommate - using a hairdryer blow flour or powder under their door to give everything an awesome white coat...

2. Revenge on a neighbor - write a nasty message on your target's lawn in weed killer, they'll never get rid of the bald patches...

3. Revenge on anyone who doesn't live with you - put gelatin down your target's toilet, in a few days it'll get solid...

4. When your roommate goes away, water his/her carpet and sow mustard and cress seeds for a lush shag pile...

5. Revenge on a neighbor - replace weed killer with plant food - they'll curse their green fingers...

6. Float unwrapped chocolate bars and toilet paper in your neighbor's pool...

7. Get as many alarm clocks as possible, set them for different times throughout the night and hide them on your roommate's room...

8. Fill your coworker's umbrella or coat hood with hole-punch waster, or even better four for a sudden blizzard...

9. Take your friend's bike, get a ladder and raise it over a lamppost so that it passes through the whole in the middle of the bike frame. Hide and witness their frustration...

10. Take your boyfriend's favorite clubbing shirt and use an ultraviolet pen and write what's on your mind, under any black light your message will appear...

11. Revenge on golfers - put dog crap in golf holes...

12. Make up elaborate flyers for a wild party at your enemy's home and wait for the guests to arrive...

13. Place a singles ad with your ex's phone number in newspapers and websites...

14. Subscribe your enemy to every form of junk mail you can lay your hands on, the more embarrassing the better...

15. Subscribe your ex to all sorts of weird sex magazines but send them to his neighbor's...

Melbourne, January 19 : Ever wondered why you catch your man when he lies to you? Well, that's because you have superior sensory equipment.

According to self-help authors and body language experts Allan and Barbara Pease, men and women think differently and have different behaviours.

The body language research of humans reveals, that in face-to-face communications, non-verbal signals account for around 60 per cent of the impact of the message, while vocal sounds make up around 30 per cent. The other ten per cent or so is words, said the authors.

While communicating, a woman's superior sensory equipment picks the information and analyses it, reports The Daily Telegraph.

Her brain's ability to transfer rapidly between hemispheres makes her more proficient at integrating and deciphering verbal, visual and other signals.

That is why, most men have difficulty successfully lying to a woman face-to-face.

But, lying to a man face-to-face is comparatively easy, as he does not have the necessary sensitivity to spot incongruities between her verbal and non-verbal signals.

Most men, if they were going to lie to a woman, would be far better off doing it over the phone, in a letter or with all the lights off, and a blanket over their heads.

New research suggests that we think not just with our brains, but with our bodies


WHEN YOU READ something confusing, or work a crossword puzzle, or try to remember where you put your keys, what do you do with your body? Do you sit? Do you stand? Do you pace? Do you do anything with your hands? Do you move your eyes in a particular pattern?

Discuss Do you use movement to think better?

How you answer questions like these, it turns out, may determine how long it will take for you to decipher what you're reading, solve your puzzle, or get your keys back.

The brain is often envisioned as something like a computer, and the body as its all-purpose tool. But a growing body of new research suggests that something more collaborative is going on - that we think not just with our brains, but with our bodies. A series of studies, the latest published in November, has shown that children can solve math problems better if they are told to use their hands while thinking. Another recent study suggested that stage actors remember their lines better when they are moving. And in one study published last year, subjects asked to move their eyes in a specific pattern while puzzling through a brainteaser were twice as likely to solve it.

The term most often used to describe this new model of mind is "embodied cognition," and its champions believe it will open up entire new avenues for understanding - and enhancing - the abilities of the human mind. Some educators see in it a new paradigm for teaching children, one that privileges movement and simulation over reading, writing, and reciting. Specialists in rehabilitative medicine could potentially use the emerging findings to help patients recover lost skills after a stroke or other brain injury. The greatest impact, however, has been in the field of neuroscience itself, where embodied cognition threatens age-old distinctions - not only between brain and body, but between perceiving and thinking, thinking and acting, even between reason and instinct - on which the traditional idea of the mind has been built.

"It's a revolutionary idea," says Shaun Gallagher, the director of the cognitive science program at the University of Central Florida. "In the embodied view, if you're going to explain cognition it's not enough just to look inside the brain. In any particular instance, what's going on inside the brain in large part may depend on what's going on in the body as a whole, and how that body is situated in its environment."

Or, as the motto of the University of Wisconsin's Laboratory of Embodied Cognition puts it, "Ago ergo cogito": "I act, therefore I think."

The emerging field builds on decades of research into human movement and gesture. Much of the earlier work looked at the role of gestures in communication, asking whether gesture grew out of speech or exploring why people gestured when they were talking on the telephone.

But today, neuroscientists, linguists, and philosophers are making much bolder claims. A few argue that human characteristics like empathy, or concepts like time and space, or even the deep structure of language and some of the most profound principles of mathematics, can ultimately be traced to the idiosyncrasies of the human body. If we didn't walk upright, for example, or weren't warm-blooded, they argue, we might understand these concepts totally differently. The experience of having a body, they argue, is intimately tied to our intelligence.
Discuss Do you use movement to think better?
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"If you want to teach a computer to play chess, or if you want to design a search engine, the old model is OK," says Rolf Pfeifer, director of the artificial intelligence lab at the University of Zurich, "but if you're interested in understanding real intelligence, you have to deal with the body."

. . .

Embodied cognition upends several centuries of thinking about thinking. Rene Descartes, living in an age when steam engines were novelty items, envisioned the brain as a pump that moved "animating fluid" through the body - head-shrinkers through the ages have tended to enlist the high-tech of their day to describe the human cognitive system - but the mind, Descartes argued, was something else entirely, an incorporeal entity that interacted with the body through the pineal gland.

While a few thinkers, most notably the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty in the 1940s, challenged Descartes' mind-body separation, it remained the dominant model up through the 20th century, though its form evolved with the times. After the development of the modern computer in the years after World War II, a new version of the same model was adopted, with the brain as a computer and the mind as the software that ran on it.

In the 1980s, however, a group of scholars began to contest this approach. Fueled in part by broad disappointment with artificial-intelligence research, they argued that human beings don't really process information the way computers do, by manipulating abstract symbols using formal rules. In 1995, a major biological discovery brought even more enthusiasm to the field. Scientists in Italy discovered "mirror neurons" that respond when we see someone else performing an action - or even when we hear an action described - as if we ourselves were performing the action. By simultaneously playing a role in both acting and thinking, mirror neurons suggested that the two might not be so separate after all.

"You were seeing the same system, namely the motor system, playing a role in communication and cognition," says Arthur Glenberg, a professor of psychology and head of the embodied cognition laboratory at Arizona State University.

This realization has driven much of the recent work looking at how moving and thinking inform and interfere with each other. For example, a pair of studies published in 2006 by Sian Beilock, now an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, and Lauren Holt, one of her former students, examined how people who were good at certain physical activities thought about those activities.

In one study, Beilock and Holt had college hockey players, along with a non-hockey-player control group, read a sentence, sometimes hockey-related, sometimes not. Then the subjects would be shown a picture and asked if it corresponded with the sentence. Hockey players and non-hockey players alike almost invariably answered correctly, but on the hockey-related sentences the response times of the hockey players were significantly faster than the nonplayers. In a second study, the researchers found similar results with football players. According to Beilock, the difference in response time wasn't a matter of knowledge - after all, all of the subjects in the study got the vast majority of the questions right. What it suggested, Beilock argues, is that the athletes' greater store of appropriate physical experiences served as a sort of mental shortcut.
Discuss Do you use movement to think better?
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"People with different types of motor experiences think in different ways," she argues.

These sorts of results aren't simply limited to thinking about sports, or other highly physical activities. A 2003 study by Michael Spivey, a psychology professor at Cornell, and his student Elizabeth Grant, found that people who were given a tricky spatial relations brainteaser exhibited a distinctive and unconscious pattern of eye movements just before they arrived at the answer. The subjects seemed to unconsciously work through the problem by enacting possible solutions with their gaze.

A study published in August by Alejandro Lleras and Laura Thomas, two psychologists at the University of Illinois, built on those results by inducing the eye movements Spivey had discovered. Lleras and Thomas found that doing so greatly improved the rate at which people solved the problem - even though most never figured out that the eye movements had anything to do with it.

"The subjects actually think that the eye-tracking task is very distracting," Lleras says. "They think we're doing this to keep them from solving the problem."

Other studies have looked at non-spatial problems and at memory. Work led by Susan Goldin-Meadow, a psychology professor at the University of Chicago, has found that children given arithmetic problems that normally would be too difficult for them are more likely to get the right answer if they're told to gesture while thinking. And studies by Helga Noice, a psychologist at Elmhurst College, and her husband Tony Noice, an actor and director, found that actors have an easier time remembering lines their characters utter while gesturing, or simply moving.

The body, it appears, can subtly shape people's preferences. A study led by John Cacioppo, director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago, found that subjects (all non-Chinese speakers) shown a series of Chinese ideographs while either pushing down or pulling up on a table in front of them will say they prefer the ideographs they saw when pulling upward over the ones they saw while pushing downward. Work by Beilock and Holt found that expert typists, when shown pairs of two-letter combinations and told to pick their favorite, tend to pick the pairs that are easier to type - without being able to explain why they did so.

What's particularly interesting to neuroscientists is the role that movement seems to play even in abstract thinking. Glenberg has done multiple studies looking at the effect of arm movements on language comprehension. In Glenberg's work, subjects were asked to determine whether a string of words on a computer screen made sense. To answer they had to reach toward themselves or away from themselves to press a button.
Discuss Do you use movement to think better?
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What Glenberg has found is that subjects are quicker to answer correctly if the motion in the sentence matches the motion they must make to respond. If the sentence is, for example, "Andy delivered the pizza to you," the subject is quicker to discern the meaning of the sentence if he has to reach toward himself to respond than if he has to reach away. The results are the same if the sentence doesn't describe physical movement at all, but more metaphorical interactions, such as "Liz told you the story," or "Anne delegates the responsibilities to you."

The implication, Glenberg argues, is that "we are really understanding this language, even when it's more abstract, in terms of bodily action."

Some linguists, cognitive scientists, and philosophers go further - arguing that the roots of even the most complex and esoteric aspects of human thought lie in the body. The linguist George Lakoff, of the University of California, Berkeley, along with Rafael Nunez, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, San Diego, have for several years advanced the argument that much of mathematics, from set theory to trigonometry to the concept of infinity, derives not from immutable properties of the universe but from the evolutionary history of the human brain and body. Our number system, they argue, and our understanding of addition and subtraction emerge from the fact that we are bipedal animals that measure off distances in discrete steps.

"If we had wheels, or moved along the ground on our bellies like snakes," Lakoff argues, "math might be very different."

These ideas have met intense opposition among mathematicians, but also among some cognitive scientists, who believe they reflect an overreaching reading of a promising but still sketchy set of experimental results.

"I think these findings are really fantastic and it's clear that there's a lot of connection between mind and body," says Arthur Markman, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas. He remains skeptical, though, that the roots of higher cognition will be found in something as basic as the way we walk or move our eyes or arms.

"Any time there's a fad in science there's a tendency to say, 'It's all because of this,"' Markman says. "But the thing in psychology is that it's not all anything, otherwise we'd be done figuring it out already."

While embodied cognition remains a young field, some specialists believe that it suggests a rethinking of how we approach education. Angeline Lillard, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia, says that one possibility is to take another look at the educational approach that Italian educator Maria Montessori laid out nearly 100 years ago, theories that for decades were ignored by mainstream educators. A key to the Montessori method is the idea that children learn best in a dynamic environment full of motion and the manipulation of physical objects. In Montessori schools, children learn the alphabet by tracing sandpaper letters, they learn math using blocks and cubes, they learn grammar by acting out sentences read to them.

To Lillard, the value of embodied cognition in education is self-evident.

"Our brains evolved to help us function in a dynamic environment, to move through it and find food and escape predators," she says. "It didn't evolve to help us sit in a chair in a classroom and listen to someone and regurgitate information."

Every man wants to know how to pleasure a woman in bed and satisfy her completely. It's very hard to pleasure a woman unless you know what she needs and wants in bed. Now such experience only comes with time spent with that specific woman. In this case it's always good to let the woman take over and have some control. Read what she is trying to do and try to give her the best of what she needs. Read on to discover some of the best kept secrets on how to pleasure a girl.

Talk dirty- Talking dirty is one of the best ways to pleasure a girl and get her ready for the main act. Women mostly tend to love naughty kinky talks but when it's within limits.

Discuss everything- Sometimes it tends to get into the awkward mode where you get an awkward feeling around someone. Women go through the same and it's extremely important to catch when they are actually going through this. Discuss what she prefers and how she likes it. Try to break all communication barriers and be open about this topic with her. There is absolutely nothing with talking about it with her. You want it and she wants it at the same time.

Transfer control- Women never feel pleasured unless they are given control occasionally. Make it a point to take control by turns and let her have her way once in a while. According to some males giving woman the control is like letting her take over. This has nothing to do with who controls whom rather all about pleasure. If you can't take turns you would never achieve optimum pleasure in bed.

Don't sleep- Most men tend to fall asleep instantly after sex. Women go through an emotional change the moment they orgasm. They feel the need to be more emotionally connected to you after sex. The best thing to do is to always pick a topic and talk about it. Don't let it be silent and don't go to sleep instantly.

A Chinese hospital has successfully removed the world's biggest tumour of its kind from a woman's buttocks.

The eight stone (45kg) tumour weighed more than patient Ahui, 36, of Guangzhou city, reports Guangzhou Daily.

Two teams of surgeons at Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital worked for more than eight hours to remove the 4ft 5ins tumour.

"We had to divide the surgeons into two teams, one cutting from the waist, the other from the lower right leg, then meeting in the middle," said chief surgeon Huang Guangxiang.

"This is the largest tumour we've ever seen, and medical reports show it was the biggest neurofibromatosis tumour in the world."

Ahui says the tumour started growing on her right buttock when she was 12.

"At that time, it was only the size of an egg, and my family had it cut off at the hospital," she said. "But after 10 years, a new tumour started growing like crazy where the old one had been."

"Because of this, I haven't had a bath in the past two years, and had to stay in bed all the time. My sister quit her job to take care of me."

Ahui inherited the disease, multiple neurofibromatosis, from her mother, who died of it in 1990.