Revealed: Why beer bellies make men bend over

Pregnant women may stand out a mile away with their characteristic backward-leaning stance, but that clumsy-looking position is a unique adaptation that evolved over millennia, anthropologists said on Wednesday.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for men with large beer bellies!
Pregnant pre-humans appeared to have stood the same way. And it may save women from even more back pain than they already have, the researchers report in this week's issue of the journal Nature.
The bodies of women do two things when they are pregnant -- they adjust their stance to move the center of gravity to accommodate the growing fetus, and the lower vertebrae have evolved a distinct shape to allow this shifting to take place without damaging the spine, Katherine Whitcome of Harvard University and colleagues found.
"It was one of these things like, 'Oh my god, no one's ever thought of this,' and it looks so obvious," Liza Shapiro of the University of Texas at Austin, who helped supervise the work, said in a telephone interview.
Whitcome and Shapiro followed 19 women through their pregnancy, using digital cameras and motional analysis equipment to map the changes in stance and movement as the months passed.
"What women do when their pregnancy reaches about half of the expected mass ... they shift backwards," Shapiro said.
"If you didn't have any of those mechanisms, the only way to offset a load in front of you is to contract your back muscles. The more you have to use your muscles, the more discomfort you would have. It would be worse otherwise, and there would be more potential damage to the vertebrae."
Without this change in shape, the vertebrae could be subject to shearing forces, with one sliding over another, damaging the fluid-filled discs in between or pulling on ligaments and muscles.
"The shape of the vertebrae allows her to rotate the upper body," Shapiro said.
When she moved to Harvard, Whitcome continued the study and looked at the fossils of pre-humans known as australopithecines, as well as at the bone structure of our nearest living relatives, the chimpanzees.
"These differences are absent in the chimpanzee. So there is something unique about humans," Whitcome said. "We also see some evidence for these adaptations in early australopithecines."
Men do not have this adaptation, either, Shapiro said.
"We can only conclude that men can't resist the forces of their big bellies as well as women. They are at a disadvantage," she said.
"They probably lean back the same way to try and balance that load, but they are kind of putting their vertebrae more at risk. I am sure there has got to be a correlation between having a big beer gut and having back pain," Shapiro laughed.

Wikipedia faces Google-y, rival Knol launched

Web search leader Google Inc is testing an Internet site for sharing knowledge about any subject under the sun, one that could eventually compete with the popular user-edited encyclopedia Wikipedia.
Google's "knol" project started earlier this week and is working with a group of writers by invitation only, Google vice president of engineering Udi Manber wrote in a company blog post.
"There are millions of people who possess useful knowledge that they would love to share, and there are billions of people who can benefit from it," Manber said in the post.
"The goal is for knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information ... to how-to-fix-it instructions."
The word "knol" is used to refer to the project and to an entry on the shared website.
Google's site will identify the authors posting the information. It will not serve as an editor of the information or endorse what is written on the site.
The site will eventually be opened to the general public and allow users to submit comments, questions or edits, as well as rate posts.
Knol writers will be able to include ads in their posts, sharing the revenue with Google.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is working on a community- developed Web search service that would compete with search engines such as Google and Yahoo Inc.

Weekend wine fiesta in Pune for Rs 250

With Christmas round the corner, the coming weekend will see wine lovers across Maharashtra getting together in Pune for a one-of-a-kind festival.
Being organised by the Pune Gourmet Club at Koregaon Park, the wine tasting fiesta will be a standalone event.
"Wine tasting festivals are always a part of an agri-fest or some other festival, so we thought it would be a good idea to have an exclusive wine tasting event," says B Shankarnarayanan, an organiser.
More than 40 types of wines from Indian wineries like Chateau Indage, Vindura and ND Wines will be available for tasting.
According to Shankarnarayanan, the fest will give wine lovers an opportunity to taste even the smaller and the rarer brands for a one-time cost of Rs 250.
"In many places, for Rs 150 you get to taste only six wines, so one only tastes the best brands, and the other smaller bands lose out on the opportunity. So this time we thought by fixing the price and not the number of wines, the smaller players too will have a good opportunity," says Shankarnarayanan.
More than 10 wineries from different parts of the country have already registered. Wine expert Marie Juhasoo from Sula Wines will participate and offer her comments on various wines. Chef Parag Kanhere from Nasik will have a live cookery show with Indian wine.
Food stalls with delicious gourmet recipes paired with free exotic wines will be part of the festival. The event has no sponsors - it's purely the voluntary effort of 200-odd members of this club who are fond of good food and some tangy wine.

How to compose music on your computer

New Delhi: Can't carry a tune if your life depended on it? Well, you can still groove, with a little help from technology. Making music on your computer is now easy. You don't need to play any musical instruments to do it, just some snazzy software.
If you want a really easy way to make music without knowing how to play a musical instrument, here's Fruity Loops software.
The software is basically a collection of loop sounds and instruments, which can be manipulated with absolute ease. It's a great software to learn the basics of music production. And it's so easy anyone can use it. Just click on the sound you want and press play.
When it comes to video editing, it can't get any easier than window's movie maker. Put in a video clip and the software allows you to make whatever cuts you want.
The on board effects in this software look really cool. And you just have to drag and drop to apply even beginners can use this to produce professional looking clips.
To record vocals, use any good mike and you can use the software on windows to record voice. So now you can make your own song and video without any professional know how whatsoever.