Lance Armstrong, the seven-time Tour de France winner, has been stripped of his victories by the US Anti-Doping Agency for using illicit performance-enhancing drugs. This is happening in almost every sport and in Wired.com, Ian Steadman asks, "Why don’t we accept doping will always happen and legalize it?"

As training, coaching, nutrition and equipment have been improved, athletes will eventually reach a "wall," where further improvement isn’t possible, and then, Steadman says, "we face the question of how to keep sport interesting."
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The Antarctic Ice Sheet may be a major source of the potent greenhouse gas methane. Old organic matter frozen beneath it may have been converted to methane by micro-organisms living there under oxygen-deprived conditions, and as the ice melts, the methane will be released.

Planetary scientist Slawek Tulaczyk says, "It is easy to forget that before 35 million years ago, when the current period of Antarctic glaciations started, this continent was teeming with life. Some of the organic material produced by this life became trapped in sediments, which then were cut off from the rest of the world when the ice sheet grew. Our modeling shows that over millions of years, microbes may have turned this old organic carbon into methane."
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Lots of us daydream about how different the world would be if the 9/11 attacks had never happened (or maybe only happened in a parallel universe). Is daydreaming a sign of intelligence or creativity? It turns out that it’s a sign that our memories are working just fine.

Studies have found that our minds are wandering half the time, drifting off to thoughts unrelated to what we’re doing–did I remember to turn off the light? What should I have for dinner? In fact, you’re probably not going to make it all the way through this story without thinking about something else.
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Not the awful stress that so many people encountered on 9/11 (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to these shows) but just a LITTLE anxiety–it may help you focus and perform at your peak.

In the June 19th edition of the Wall Street Journal, Melinda Beck quotes psychologist Stephen Josephson as saying, "Coaches and sports psychologists have always known that you don’t want your athlete to be relaxed right before an event. You need some ‘juice’ to go fast."
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