Researchers have come to some data that suggests that there is a connection between drinking soft drinks and a medical condition known as Metabolic Syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is a condition that entails increased risk to heart disease, obesity and diabetes.

Although researchers have no concrete proof as of yet, they have a case on association. Even if soft drinks aren't the cause of metabolic syndrome, it may still be a sign of something else. Dr Ramachandran Vasan, professor of Medicine at the Boston University School of Medicine, believes that while drinking soft drinks is a marker or how a subject likes sweet foods, it is not necessarily the cause of the syndrome itself.

Other factors may be the culprits, ranging from other types of food intake, lack of exercise and smoking. The research consisted of more than 6,000 participants. Four years of studying this group has shown that those who drink even one can of soft drinks a day is 44% more likely to get metabolic syndrome.

While drink soft drinks may not be the cause, Dr. Suzanne R. Steinbaum, director of Women and Heart Disease at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, says that it certainly doesn't help avoid it.

If you can't get through a day without knocking back a cup or two of freshly-brewed joe, here's something to nibble on: more and more people in America today are turning to caffeine not only as something to perk them up, but also as something of a legal high, to the point that when deprived of their usual supply, 50% of regular caffeine drinkers suffer withdrawal symptoms.

So what's the real reason behind this dependency on caffeine? Common sense tells us that we need that boost to get us out of bed and be productive in the workplace - or, if one is still cracking books and taking tests, fuel for those last-minute cram sessions that burn the midnight oil.

And then there's the videogame-savvy of us, who need to stay up for nights on end during LAN parties or competitions - certainly, we need an edge, and caffeine more than happily gives us that with every gulp of Red Bull, Mountain Dew, or Diet Coke.

The question is, though - do we really need that extra jump? Government statistics have shown that men with children have been clocking the same hours for working and sleeping since 1960. Sure, pressures on the job have increased since then, but with caffeine having that nasty side effect of fraying your nerves when you've knocked back one cup too many clearly never helps.

And the need for the all-nighter cram sessions never help - as they usually stress a student out to the point that when the exam actually takes place, the student gets a mental block, ending up with no answers whatsoever. Ouch.

It's not that caffeine is all that harmful, really. Studies have shown that there's no real danger to being dependent on caffeine - just as long as you don't go over the recommended limit. That limit being 200 to 300 milligrams of caffeine per day, this amount equating to three cups of brewed coffee, a tall Starbucks coffee or 3.5 Red Bulls.

Benefits of a good dose of coffee include improved concentration, lifted moods and cured headaches. The downside of an overdose would typically be anxiety, nausea and heart palpitations - definitely not something you'd want to have at work or at school, if you're focused on being productive.

So the next time you take a sip, remember the rule: everything in moderation. That said, cheers!

Over at Smarthouse, they've written an interesting article on sodas and how it affects gamers. It's funny how that works though, since the information they've put in is applicable to most soda-drinkers.

The strangest thing about this article is how soda is presented much like a drug. While specifically mentioning Coke and how there used to be cocaine in it a very long time ago, they may have taken the angle a bit too far, even while trying to explain the problems with having too much sugar in your system. That being said, the article is insightful for showing what happens in one hour after grabbing that soda, but also makes it somewhat alarmist.

For instance, they mention that you take in your daily recommended allowance of sugar within the first ten minutes of drinking that one soda. "You don't immediately vomit from the overwhelming sweetness," the article continues, "because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor allowing you to keep it down."

Even more interesting here is their description at the forty-minute mark:

Caffeine absorption is complete. Your pupils dialate (sic), your blood pressure rises, as a response your livers dumps more sugar into your bloodstream. The adenosine receptors in your brain are now blocked preventing drowsiness.

So, are gamers taking drugs? Maybe, but then so is everyone else as far as this article is concerned. The sugar and caffeine crash they talk about here should happen to almost anyone who drinks a soda, but is probably more noticeable in people whose butts are parked around a PC or console, such as ourselves.

Still, it kind of explains why some gamers fall asleep during those eight-hour raids through Molten Core and still don't mind having gaming marathons. Maybe we should get more exercise besides DDR. What do you think?

Since virtually all American manufacturing has gone to Asia, it's really not an American issue.

It is, however becoming a big issue in China, where rapid industrialization has resulted in precipitous increases in air pollution, in fact it was reported earlier that one third of China is suffering from acid rain. And helping to solve the problem may give the U.S. a chance to revitalize its own industries.

The production of steel requires the smelting of iron, which is a very dirty process. Traditionally, iron ore is combined with a coal derivative known as "coke." It reacts with the iron, producing CO#@%!8
9#@%! and carbon monoxide as iron in its pure form is left behind. The bottom line: every ton of steel produced releases an equal amount of CO#@%!8
9#@%! into the air.

Donald Sadoway, a materials scientist at MIT is working on a method to produce iron using electrolysis to extract the metal from molten iron oxide.  A solvent of silicon dioxide  and calcium oxide is heated to 1600°C. Iron ore is then solved in this solution, then an electric current passes through it. Negatively-charged oxygen ions migrate to the positively charged anode, and the oxygen bubbles off.  Positively-charged iron ions migrate to the negatively-charged cathode where they are reduced to elemental iron which collects in a pool at the bottom of the cell and is siphoned off.

This method has long been used in aluminum production. So far, however, the steel industry has had little reason to use it. The difference lies in the way oxygen molecules bond with these respective metals. Because aluminum oxide is very stable,  the ore cannot be extracted by any other method, whereas iron is easily extracted from ore through the traditional heating method.

However, if world governments start imposing punitive taxes on polluting industries (something unlikely to happen in the U.S. under the current Administration), the world's steel industry may find it more cost-effective to switch to electrolysis. According to Lawrence Kavanagh of the American Iron and Steel Institute, "Things are going to take 10 to 15 years to develop and get to a commercial scale. Now is the time to be working on them."

There are several challenges to overcome, mostly economic. Finding a practical anode material is a problem, since graphite releases as much CO#@%!8
9#@%! into the air as conventional smelting, and platinum is too expensive to be practical for large scale operations.  The amount of electricity required is also huge - about a kilowatt hour per kilogram of iron produced. "The economics are just not there under the present circumstances. Carbon is cheap, and there's no [financial] cost associated with venting carbon dioxide. And electricity's expensive. So if you put those three factors on the table, this just isn't economically viable," Kavanagh
says.

Carbon taxes could change this, of course. Kavanagh also points out that electrolysis would eliminate the energy-intensive coke-making process, which requires baking coal at high temperatures. More research and development is needed before the iron industry can determine the economic feasibility of this method, however.