We recently wrote about how drinking cola?whether regular, diet or decaf?is dangerous for women. Now the Coca-Cola company is launching a new brand of cola that is even more dangerous, because it’s essentially speed in a bottle!

Andrew Gumbel in the Independent the sales pitch for the new drink will be: drink cola and lose weight at the same time. This is different from regular diet drinks, that just claim to prevent you from gaining weight, in that the new drink, called Enviga, will actually burn calories, due to its high level of caffeine and other ingredients, which speed up the metabolism.
read more

Another mystery hum is driving people nuts, and this time it’s in New Zealand?and, yet again, the locals have no idea that this is a worldwide phenomenon.

Massey University researchers are investigating an unexplained hum that hundreds of people are reporting, but other people cannot hear. As usual with these hums, some people are actually being made ill by the incessant tone.

When you can’t get a song out of your head, US researchers call it an ear worm. But there’s no such term for a hum that won’t go away, despite the fact that many major US cities have been affected by such noise.

Art credit: gimp-savvy.com
read more

While scientists understand why the leaves on trees turn yellow and orange in the fall, they DON’T understand why some of them turn red, but they do know that it can be a sign of danger for the tree.

Cory Binns writes in LiveScience.com that leaves stop producing chlorophyll in response to colder weather and less daylight. Chlorophyll is what they use to create energy out of sunlight, but this substance is sensitive to cold temperatures. The orange and gold colors have been there all the time, UNDERNEATH the green?they just aren’t revealed until the green disappears.
read more

Chicago sociologist Walter Benn Michaels thinks the racial divide is REALLY based on money?who has it, and who doesn’t. He says, “We love race?we love identity?because we don’t love class. We love thinking that the differences that divide us are not the differences between those of us who have money and those who don’t but are instead the differences between those of us who are black and those who are white or Asian or Latino or whatever.”
read more