BAC-GROUND
Selected Archives
January 2002
Just Thought You'd Like to Know
Windows 2000
is being released with 63,000 known bugs.
An Apple A Day (Scary)
This site tells you the level of pesticides that one would be exposed to
by eating an apple a day for a full year.
Health effects are also noted. You can draw your own conclusions.
Eye Opening Book
I highly recommend Living Downstream,
a book about the link between chemicals in the environment and various types of cancer.
This book is full of personal anecdotes and scientific facts, but written in such a way that
it is easy to understand, even for the lay person.
Arsenic
Here is a very interesting site about naturally occurring Arsenic in groundwater.
A large area encompassing West Bengal, India and Bangladesh
has been mapped for the probability of finding arsenic in groundwater.
After seeing some discussion about ASTM Standards (Guidelines),
in one of the internet groundwater mailing list groups
(GROUNDWATER@ias.champlain.edu),
I have decided to give my opinion on this subject.
Smarter Runners?
Both, a scientific study on mice and a non-scientific study—by a 12-yr old New Jersey girl—on runners,
have shown that running makes you smarter. Mice that ran were able to learn a new maze faster than non-running mice.
In the second study, 50 out of 89 high school runners were found to be in the top 20% of their class.
Burfoot, Amby, "Does Running Make You Smarter?",
Runner's World, March 2000.
An Interesting Story
A group of 420 US Air Force recruits were asked "when would you get up if you were free to plan your day?"
Research psychologists Roberts and Kyllonen, found a positive correlation between their "eveningness"
and ablitity to score high in vocabulary, reading, and working memory tests.
Results were published in the December 1999 issue of Personality and Individual Differences.
"Are Night Owls Wiser?", Random Notes, ed. Constance Holden, SCIENCE, v. 286, 17 December 1999.
