Sixties pop icon Cher hitches a ride on an NYPD motorcycle en route to an appearance on NBC’s Today Show.KEITH BEDFORD/Reuters
FROG FAMILY GROWS
The animal kingdom has expanded ever so slightly with the discovery of three new species of tiny frogs in Papua New Guinea. Natureworldnews.com reports that the find was recently made by the University of Michigan's Dr. Fred Kraus, the same man who discovered the world's smallest frogs, known as Paedophryne dekot and Paedophryne verrucosa, in 2011. One year later, the smallest frog title was taken over by Paedophryne amanuensis, which is so tiny that two can fit within the circumference of a dime. All three of the new frog species – Oreophryne cameroni, Oreophryne parkopanorum and Oreophryne gagneorum – are tiny but belong to a different genus. Measuring 20 millimetres long, each of the new frog species is roughly the size of a quarter.
FLUSHED AWAY
It's time to rethink what you're flushing down the toilet. Salon.com reports that waste-water officials all over the U.S. are trying to get people to change their ways in regard to what they're dumping down the loo. A public-awareness campaign in Orange County, Calif., called "What 2 Flush" asserts that the average toilet is designed only for the three Ps (toilet paper is the third "P"; use your imagination on the first two). So what's causing the clogs? Among other things, condoms, dental floss and cat litter. The Salon report also references a 2011 study by the Portland Water District in Maine that credited 42 per cent of all sewer-pipe clogs to paper products, primarily paper towels, followed by baby wipes (24 per cent), hygiene products (17 per cent) and supposedly "flushable" body wipes.
BLAME YOUR STOMACH
People who drop weight and then gain it back have only their stomachs to blame. As reported by The Atlantic, a recent study conducted at the University of Adelaide in Australia shows that the yo-yo dieting effect may be partly caused by changes in gastrointestinal hormones that regulate appetite. Translation: After being obese for a while, the average person's stomach becomes less sensitive to being stretched out, hence the "I'm full" signal fades. The experiment showed that the desensitization of gut receptors in lab mice alternating between a normal diet and a high-fat diet didn't go away once they settled into a normal diet routine. The conclusion: Once the damage of obesity is done, it's done.
THOUGHT DU JOUR
"Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things."
Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish author (1850-1894)