Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Wild Fragaria on May 22, 2006, 02:22:05 pm
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Any one here has twin sibling? By the way, I think the proposal is pretty ****ty.
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Nature News Published online: 20 May 2006; | doi:10.1038/news060515-19
A diet of milk could bring twins
Eating milk and other dairy products could increase a woman's chance of having twins, a US doctor is proposing, based on a study of vegan women.
The rate of twin births in the United States rose by more than 75% between 1980 and 2003. Some of this can be explained by the use of fertility treatments, which ups the risk of multiple births. But that can't explain all of the jump, researchers say. Bearing twins is more risky for both mother and child than having a single baby, so scientists want to know what's causing the rise.
Gary Steinman of the Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, New York, carried out a simple comparison: he gathered together childbearing records for more than 1,000 vegan women who do not eat any animal products. He calculated that vegans were around five times less likely to bear twins than omnivorous women or vegetarians who eat dairy food. His study is published in the Journal of Reproductive Medicine1.
Steinman suggests that the difference in the rate of twin production boils down to the difference in diet. He suggests that animal-product foodstuffs, in particular dairy foods, could boost the production of a protein called insulin-like growth factor (IGF) in women. This could promote the release of eggs by the ovary, so that two are more likely to be fertilized at the same time. There has been an increased use of growth hormones in dairy cows, he says, which may have had an impact on this.
Although the study is preliminary, Steinman points to other evidence to back up his idea. Some research has shown that vegan women's levels of IGF are lower than those of other women2; another suggested that the rate of twin production is higher in countries that consume more milk3.
The hypothesis is interesting, says Paul Haggerty who studies nutrition, fertility and disease at the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, UK, but there are other reasons that vegan women might bear twins less frequently, he points out. Milk-drinking women could tend to be fatter or better nourished - and heavier women are also more likely to bear twins. Alternatively, there might be other nutrients that vegan women lack.
It is premature for women to change their diet in order to decrease their risk of having twins, Haggerty says: "There are a number of loose ends here."
Twins tend to run in families, showing that the chance of having them is partly determined by our genes. Older women also bear more twins, so the rise in older mothers, as well as fertility treatments, is pushing up the number of twins being produced.
The notion that diet may play a role is a relatively new one. Other studies have hinted that what we eat could affect twin production. Haggerty published a study earlier this month showing that higher levels of the B vitamin folic acid increases the likelihood of a twin birth among women undergoing in vitro fertilization4, perhaps because the vitamin increases the chance or two embryos surviving.
Pinpointing the nutrients that are most important in producing twins could help stem the rise in twin births. There is nothing women can do about their genetic make-up, but "you can do something about diet," Haggarty says.
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You can't make a topic called "Twin Peaks" and then have no boobs. It's just not cricket.
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Amazing what diet can do :)
My mother apparently didn't drink much milk, as while I have a brother, we're not twins and are in fact like night and day. I'm blonde, he's got dark hair, I've got blue-green eyes, he's got brown eyes, I'm lightly built, he's (kinda) heavily built, he goes instantly brown when exposed to the slightest smidge of sunlight, I take a full week to tan just slightly, it goes on and on. See us together, and you'd never think we were related :p About the only things we share are height (well, I do have 2cm on him), shoe size, and taste in movies...
Oh, and an entirely unhealthy interest in fast cars neither of us will ever be able to afford, but I think that's a pretty common condition ;)
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Seems like cart before the horse science to me. There are a ton of reasons why vegan women don't have twins including the fact that their body knows damn well that their undernourished, calcium deficient hips would crack under the strain :)
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You can't make a topic called "Twin Peaks" and then have no boobs. It's just not cricket.
Well, it's a boob related topic. Well, dairy --> mating --> babies --> breast milk --> boobs. See it all links up perfectly :P
Amazing what diet can do :)
My mother apparently didn't drink much milk, as while I have a brother, we're not twins and are in fact like night and day. I'm blonde, he's got dark hair, I've got blue-green eyes, he's got brown eyes, I'm lightly built, he's (kinda) heavily built, he goes instantly brown when exposed to the slightest smidge of sunlight, I take a full week to tan just slightly, it goes on and on. See us together, and you'd never think we were related :p About the only things we share are height (well, I do have 2cm on him), shoe size, and taste in movies...
Oh, and an entirely unhealthy interest in fast cars neither of us will ever be able to afford, but I think that's a pretty common condition ;)
You sound like a pretty good looking boy :D
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Well, it's a boob related topic. Well, dairy --> mating --> babies --> breast milk --> boobs. See it all links up perfectly :P
Don't encourage him!
You sound like a pretty good looking boy Big grin
Don't encourage him!
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Well, it's a boob related topic. Well, dairy --> mating --> babies --> breast milk --> boobs. See it all links up perfectly :P
Don't encourage him!
You sound like a pretty good looking boy Big grin
Don't encourage him!
Are you two encouraged? Maybe I should speak in public more often ;7
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You sound like a pretty good looking boy
Except for the fact that I mostly turn into various shades of red rather than brown during the summer months :p And when I said lightly built, I meant it - I'm 1.84 and only weigh about 65kg, so not exactly a muscle man here... whereas my brother is at about 80kg. Granted he's not a muscle man either, but he's just normal instead of a lightweight like me. Kills my beer drinking ability too, 3 bottles and I'm visibly drunk :( Though on the plus side, at least getting drunk is cheaper.
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Except for the fact that I mostly turn into various shades of red rather than brown during the summer months :p And when I said lightly built, I meant it - I'm 1.84 and only weigh about 65kg, so not exactly a muscle man here... whereas my brother is at about 80kg. Granted he's not a muscle man either, but he's just normal instead of a lightweight like me. Kills my beer drinking ability too, 3 bottles and I'm visibly drunk :( Though on the plus side, at least getting drunk is cheaper.
Oh my god, you're me! Give me back my life!
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It gets spookier... my parents worked for IBM in England for 3 years prior to me being born :p
Well, 2 years prior to me being born, so guess it's not that spooky.
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Maybe you do have a twin after all .... seperated at birth :drevil:
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I'm 1.93, 112kg, and weild a rather largish weapon of death. Oh, and I've never gotten drunk, either... of course, I've never really tried very hard...
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damn it, i thought this thread was about titties :D
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Seems like cart before the horse science to me. There are a ton of reasons why vegan women don't have twins including the fact that their body knows damn well that their undernourished, calcium deficient hips would crack under the strain :)
I don't think vegan women are physically fit enough to get pragnant, for the reasons you suggested and stated in the article. And the study proposal of IGF in dairy being the factor of causing women having twins is probably going to make some people go wild and say "See! I have told you organinc food is good for you!" Then, we will start a whole discussion on how organic food is not so good for you again.
damn it, i thought this thread was about titties :D
Well, it started more closely related to boobies but it drifts into a topic about height and weight of men; and aldo finding his long lost twin :D
You sound like a pretty good looking boy
Except for the fact that I mostly turn into various shades of red rather than brown during the summer months :p And when I said lightly built, I meant it - I'm 1.84 and only weigh about 65kg, so not exactly a muscle man here... whereas my brother is at about 80kg. Granted he's not a muscle man either, but he's just normal instead of a lightweight like me. Kills my beer drinking ability too, 3 bottles and I'm visibly drunk :( Though on the plus side, at least getting drunk is cheaper.
I'm a light weight (1.66m & 47kg) but you're a super light weight.
I'm 1.93, 112kg, and weild a rather largish weapon of death. Oh, and I've never gotten drunk, either... of course, I've never really tried very hard...
Wow, how many sandwishes do you eat a day to keep up with the height and weight?
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I can't decode this thread-- too many metric measurements.
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Ehh, let's see if I still remember my conversions. *maths*
WF is around 5'4" and 103 lbs if I did that right.
Enough math for one day for me.. someone else can convert the rest. :P
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Wait, the weight is correct, but I'm confused about the height. My sis is 1.60 (I think) and she says she's 5'4" and there's a woman in the lab saying that she's 5'5" but I am still an inche taller than her :rolleyes:
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I hate you all. I'm 12st 13lbs.
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I'm just over 11 Stone and just under 6ft tall, have been since I was around 20 :)
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I hate you all. I'm 12st 13lbs.
What do you mean by 12st 13lbs?
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I hate you all. I'm 12st 13lbs.
What do you mean by 12st 13lbs?
It is ~82 kg, I believe. I'm hovering around 11stone 8 or so at the moment FYI, which is about half a stone more than I'd like.
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I can't decode this thread-- too many metric measurements.
Same here, but I can't decode all these imperial units. :p
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I can't decode this thread-- too many metric measurements.
Same here, but I can't decode all these imperial units. :p
Use Google; "##stone ##pounds to kg"
:)
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2.2 pounds per kilogram.
2.54 cm per inch.
12 inches per foot.
We science majors go both ways. :p
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2.2 pounds per kilogram.
2.54 cm per inch.
12 inches per foot.
We science majors go both ways. :p
We graduates know there are more important things to remember
:p
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2.2 pounds per kilogram.
2.54 cm per inch.
12 inches per foot.
We science majors go both ways. :p
We graduates know there are more important things to remember
:p
Like losing weight?
Mongoose forgot to mention 1 stone = 6.35kg
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I didn't forget to mention it. I just have no idea what the hell a stone is (other than a rock). :p
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It just struck me that aldo sounds pretty heavy. How tall are you, aldo?
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It just truck me that aldo sounds pretty heavy. How tall are you, aldo?
I have no idea. 175-180cm, probably.
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Didn't the family doctor keep a record of your height and weight? :D
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Didn't the family doctor keep a record of your height and weight? :D
Hah! This is the NHS we're talking about here!
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Oh they'll have your details on your ID card ;)
Oddly enough, Sharon's Doctor refused to test what her blood group was during a blood test, she's epileptic, so can't give blood, and thus still doesn't know what group she is, I'm quite narked about it, that kind of information could save time and lives in an emergency.
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Oh they'll have your details on your ID card ;)
Oddly enough, Sharon's Doctor refused to test what her blood group was during a blood test, she's epileptic, so can't give blood, and thus still doesn't know what group she is, I'm quite narked about it, that kind of information could save time and lives in an emergency.
That's just bizarre - what possible justification could they have? (beyond 'oh, we can't afford it, because Mrs X from Kensington gets Ginseng injections to help cure here bunions')
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Wow, how many sandwishes do you eat a day to keep up with the height and weight?
It varies on the day. Today, for example, I had a simple bowl of granola for breakfast, with some veggies (cherry tomatoes, red peppers, & a cuccumber slice) mid-morning. In the afternoon I had like 4 pieces of beef jerky (mmmmmm). I finished off the day with a largish (250 gram) hamburger, fries, and a bottle o' coke. I'll probably have some peanut butter, honey, & milk before I try to get to sleep; caffiene doesn't help me feel more awake, but it does prevent me from falling asleep when I want to, unless I have some milk (which has a natural sedative).
Of course, I ate far less than usual today. Generally speaking, you could replace the measly bowl of granola with a couple pieces of french toast or pancakes, and the veggies + beef jerky with a more typical lunch (a salmon sandwich, hamburger, shawarma, Turkish boreakas, falafel... you name it). :)
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We science majors go both ways. :p
Not we science majors. Imperial measure is a waste of time.
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1.96cm and 85kg (mostly muscle :D) here
b.t.w. - this thread is screwy :p
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Imperial units are a waste of time, but we're stuck with them for at least a generation after the last country using them makes the switch.
I can usually do an approximate weight conversion to within 5% or so, but don't expect me to do distances unless they're large distances, ie. in km or miles.
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I've been using metric measurements for some time now, and I still have no intuitive grasp of them in the most fundamental sense. I mean, you tell me that something is 20 feet long, and I can get a good picture of it in my head. Twenty meters...forget it. The same goes for pounds vs. kilograms. It's not just about changing labeling on a few packages; hell, we sell soda by the liter already. You can't just flip a switch in someone's mind and get them acclimated to a system that they're not used to. Besides all of that, the contingent over here that wants the US to switch to all-out metric is about as influential as the contingent that wants to change our national symbol from the bald eagle to the fluffy little bunny rabbit from Holy Grail.
Personally, I love the imperial system; it's quirky, it makes no logical sense, it uses all kinds of bizarre names for measurements, but it's damn fun. Metric's too easy; where's the challenge? You'd better be damn sure that, even if every other person on this planet completely moves to SI, I'll still be the lone holdout, defiantly waving my yardstick and talking about how many MPG my car gets. :p
(Black Wolf, tell that to the boys at NASA who forgot to convert and wound up with a probe-sized hole on Mars.:p)
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Damned quote button...
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(Black Wolf, tell that to the boys at NASA who forgot to convert and wound up with a probe-sized hole on Mars.:p)
Their own stupid fault for using imperial measurements in the first bloody place.
There really is no excuse for that :p
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I thought metric was the scientific standard anyway, like Engineering?
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Exactly. That's why they had no business using it for anything to do with space exploration. :)
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LOL Thought so, same thing happened during the training exercises for D-Day landing, the British gave the Americans distances in feet, which were fed to offshore rocket boats. Due to the confusion, something like 4 Platoons of friendly Polish troops were wiped out.
The whole thing is based on Chemical measurements anyway iirc, 1 gramme is something like the weight of 10 Mole of Carbon or something?
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Actually, if I recall the situation, it was actually a piece of software from a contractor that was using the imperial measurements. When the NASA engineers input the metric telemetry values, that's when things went belly-up. I fully agree with that point, though; I don't see what imperial measurements were doing anywhere near a science-related field. It made me chuckle this semester when the general chemistry class I'm taking as a side requirement for my physics major started off with a bunch of unit conversion problems, most of which involving imperial to SI somewhere along the line; as much as I say I enjoy working with the damn things, I was still wondering, "Wait...won't all these newbie chem majors compleely ignore the existence of the imperial system within a week or two?" :p
Edit: Actually, Flipside, one mole of Carbon-12 is exactly 12 grams; it's the standard for the periodic table. The official SI standard for the kilogram is, believe it or not, a precise platinum-iridium alloy somewhere in France. From what I remember, the meter is defined by the wavelength of a specific frequency of light, and the second by the distance light travels in 1/c seconds, so they're both intrinsically tied to the speed of light. Then you have non-SI but still metric units, like the calorie, which is defined as the amount of heat necessary to raise the temperature of a gram of water by 1 degree Celsius (about 4.184 Joules, if I remember correctly). And don't get me started on how many hogsheads equal a barrel; at least the only place you see those sorts of things are in those useless tables at the front of composition notebooks. :p
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LOL True, I'd forgotten calories, and I knew grammes had something to do with molecular weight ;)
Though, strictly speaking, even calories is not supposed to be used any more, it's joules now?
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Yep, calories will sooner or later be wiped out. The same way car motors are now rated in horse power and kW, with the tendency going to kW completely.
As for the kilogram master in Paris, that's actually the last master for a SI unit. It will sooner or later be replaced by a clean definition of how many atoms of some isotop make up one kg. All the other base SI units are already defined on some universal constant.
The meter is actually the distance light travels in 1/299.792.458 of a second through vacuum, and one second is the time some crystal needs to oscillate x many times.
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Wait, the weight is correct, but I'm confused about the height. My sis is 1.60 (I think) and she says she's 5'4" and there's a woman in the lab saying that she's 5'5" but I am still an inche taller than her :rolleyes:
It's probably just that I suck at math. :p My bad. I'm too lazy to actually google a converter thingie. I just remembered the conversion from class and used it, but I must've made a calculation error somewhere.
Anyway, I'll go imperial since there's too much metric in this thread already! ;) I'm around 135 lbs. and 5'8".
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LOL True, I'd forgotten calories, and I knew grammes had something to do with molecular weight ;)
Though, strictly speaking, even calories is not supposed to be used any more, it's joules now?
God, I hope not - my eccy bike only does calories.
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I really can't picture joules ever being used for something like nutritional facts on food packaging. I mean, the food Calorie (with a capital C) is technically a kilocalorie, or 4184 Joules. Imagine a would-be dieter's horror if they found out that their favorite brand of cookie contained 400,000 joules per serving. For that matter, try explaining to the average Joe what a joule even is. :p
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We use joules on our food nutritional info thingos here. Well, kilojoules actually, but same difference.
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Wait, the weight is correct, but I'm confused about the height. My sis is 1.60 (I think) and she says she's 5'4" and there's a woman in the lab saying that she's 5'5" but I am still an inche taller than her :rolleyes:
It's probably just that I suck at math. :p My bad. I'm too lazy to actually google a converter thingie. I just remembered the conversion from class and used it, but I must've made a calculation error somewhere.
Anyway, I'll go imperial since there's too much metric in this thread already! ;) I'm around 135 lbs. and 5'8".
Actually, I think you have got it pretty close (I am too lazy to do the proper convertion as well). I do not think my sis is 5'4" as she always says she is *shhh... don't tell her I said that* I was 1.66 when I was 16, but I grew at least anoher inch and a half since :D
LOL True, I'd forgotten calories, and I knew grammes had something to do with molecular weight ;)
Though, strictly speaking, even calories is not supposed to be used any more, it's joules now?
God, I hope not - my eccy bike only does calories.
There, you can give yourself an excuse to buy a new eccy toy :P
I really can't picture joules ever being used for something like nutritional facts on food packaging. I mean, the food Calorie (with a capital C) is technically a kilocalorie, or 4184 Joules. Imagine a would-be dieter's horror if they found out that their favorite brand of cookie contained 400,000 joules per serving. For that matter, try explaining to the average Joe what a joule even is. :p
Yeah, I can't imagine living in a 'joule system'. It's pain in the neck to live to count the calories, and I think many people will go crazy if we have to learn to do the convertion on top of counting and adding.
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It's probably just that I suck at math. :p My bad. I'm too lazy to actually google a converter thingie. I just remembered the conversion from class and used it, but I must've made a calculation error somewhere.
Uhm, Google is a converter - a natural language one, at that: http://www.google.com/search?q=1.60m+in+feet
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It's probably just that I suck at math. :p My bad. I'm too lazy to actually google a converter thingie. I just remembered the conversion from class and used it, but I must've made a calculation error somewhere.
Uhm, Google is a converter - a natural language one, at that: http://www.google.com/search?q=1.60m+in+feet
Ha ha, if my sis is really 1.6m, then she's not even 5'3" :D