The fifth season of "Jersey Shore" kicks off Jan. 5, and that means it's time for all the usual Seaside Heights fun, including hookups, fights and alcohol-filled parties ? most, if not all, of which will revolve around Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi, otherwise known as the unofficial star of the show.
That also means many viewers and even more non-viewers will resume their seasonal pastime of Snooki-bashing, which seems to involve criticizing the Princess of Poughkeepsie for almost every mundane move and outrageous act that she makes.
But why?
OK, sure. She can't hold her liquor, as evidenced by her boozy beach arrest in season three, repeated "kooka" flashings and nearly every fight she's ever had with her boyfriend, Jionni. And, yes, she's used the house minifridge to cool her itchy backside alongside the Cheez-its and Red Bull when a new tanning cream left her a little rashy. And it's true that even outside of "Shore" she's given dieting advice that's included drinking vodka and recommended kitty litter as a beauty product. But then again, aren't some of these things what make Snooki so great?
Great? Yeah, great. Well, not the public drunkenness maybe, but the general over-the-top behavior is part of?what makes Snooki worth watching. She's like a cartoon character come to life, ready to do and say what most others won't and probably shouldn't. It's part of her appeal, and it's part of why she's worth defending against her many detractors.
Besides, Snooki's appeal goes far beyond her diminutive, do-anything routine. Those who look past some of her embarrassing habits might just notice her winning qualities, such as the fact she's a loyal friend to the women in her life (minus the occasional Sammi mess and that whole thing with Angelina, but hey, they had it coming) and she won't let anyone tear her down.
The latter might just make up her best quality. See, despite all the requisite bashing, for the most part, Snooki takes it in stride. She doesn't get overly mad or offended. She refuses to be shamed for her behavior. And if a swipe is crafted with a sense of humor, she even seems to appreciate it. ??
If there's a Snooki-related joke to be made, she's either making it or she's among those laughing the loudest.
Heck, when Bobby Moynihan repeatedly poked fun?at her on "Saturday Night Live," she didn't simply approve of the send-up. She teamed up with him for some dueling-Snookis action on MTV.
And when South Park portrayed the "Shore" star as a rusty colored, hunched-back, whiskered beast who creeped around in constant pursuit of "smoosh-smoosh," she took it as a sign of her success.
"Snooki want smoosh smoosh," she tweetedthe night the episode aired. "I'm going to have nightmares tonight. lmao!!! We've officially made it. Goodnite my b----es ?"
That's an indomitable spirit, and it's all too rare in real life or reality TV.
See the latest from Snooki and the rest of the Seaside Heights gang when "Jersey Shore" returns to MTV Thursday, Jan. 5., at 10 p.m.
What do you think is the dumbest/funniest thing Snooki has ever done? Sound off on our Facebook page.
Two teams of Michigan State University researchers ? one working at a medieval burial site in Albania, the other at a DNA lab in East Lansing ? have shown how modern science can unlock the mysteries of the past.
The scientists are the first to confirm the existence of brucellosis, an infectious disease still prevalent today, in ancient skeletal remains.
The findings, which appear in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, suggest brucellosis has been endemic to Albania since at least the Middle Ages.
Although rare in the United States, brucellosis remains a major problem in the Mediterranean region and other parts of the world. Characterized by chronic respiratory illness and fever, brucellosis is acquired by eating infected meat or unpasteurized dairy products or by coming into contact with animals carrying the brucella bacteria.
Todd Fenton, associate professor of anthropology, said advanced DNA testing at MSU allowed the researchers to confirm the existence of the disease in skeletons that were about 1,000 years old.
"For years, we had to hypothesize the cause of pathological conditions like this," Fenton said. "So the era of DNA testing and the contributions that DNA can make to my work are really exciting."
Here's how the discovery came about.
Fenton and a group of MSU graduate students were serving as the bioarcheologists, or bone specialists, for a multinational team of archaeologists excavating sites in the ancient Albanian city of Butrint. Once a large Roman colony, Butrint in its final centuries served as an outpost of the Byzantine Empire until it was abandoned in the Middle Ages due to flooding.
Fenton and his team developed biological profiles of the human remains, which included determining sex, age and skeletal pathologies, or health histories. Vertebrae from two of the Byzantine-era skeletons ? both adolescent males from the 10th century to the 13th century ? had significant lesions, leading the researchers to theorize the boys had suffered from tuberculosis.
Samples of the ancient bone were sent to the forensic DNA lab in East Lansing, which is headed by David Foran, director of MSU's Forensic Science Program. Foran and his team of graduate students took tiny portions of the bone, extracted DNA and tested it for any residual DNA that might still exist from the expected pathogen.
But the results came back negative for tuberculosis.
Fenton's team re-examined the bones that tested negative for tuberculosis and concluded the disease might instead be brucellosis. The infection from brucellosis and tuberculosis causes similar damage ? basically eating away the bone ? although no one had ever confirmed brucellosis in human bone recovered from an archaeological site.
Foran's team then developed a different set of tests for detecting the brucella bacteria and undertook a new round of testing on the diseased vertebrae.
This time the results came back positive for brucellosis.
Foran said the collaboration on the project highlights the benefits of modern science and interdisciplinary research, even when the respective research teams are some 5,000 miles apart.
"In this case it was a combination of inquisitiveness, persistence and of course collaboration," Foran said. "It is amazing to find something brand new in something that is a thousand years old."
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Michigan State University: http://www.newsroom.msu.edu
Thanks to Michigan State University for this article.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) ? Oil prices surged on Tuesday, with U.S. crude hitting the highest settlement since May, fueled by strong economic data from the United States and China and mounting concern about supply disruption from Iran.
Brent crude jumped $5 in late activity as markets latched on to data showing U.S. construction spending near a 1-1/2 year peak in November and China manufacturing data that eased concerns of a slowdown in the world's No. 2 oil consumer.
Tuesday's gains on the first day of trading in the new year added to Brent's 13 percent rise in 2011, with support in recent weeks coming from Iranian threat's to choke of crude oil shipments through the strategic Strait of Hormuz in Tehran's ongoing standoff with the West.
"The supportive economic data and the geopolitical concerns are furthering the crude oil rally," said John Kilduff, partner at hedge fund Again Capital LLC in New York.
"The temperature is going up every day now on the Iran situation -- new sanctions, new missile launches, and saber rattling are all contributing," Kilduff added. (.N)
Brent February crude rose $4.75 to settle at $112.13 barrel, the highest close since the November 15 settlement at $112.39. It reached as high as $112.44 a barrel in post-settlement activity.
U.S. February crude rose $4.13 to settle at $102.96 a barrel, the highest close since May 10, after reaching a high of $103.37 earlier -- the highest intraday level since November 17.
Crude futures trading volumes rebounded after two weeks of thin holiday trading. Brent volume climbed 29 percent above its 30-day average, with U.S. volume 32 percent above its 30-day average.
U.S. heating oil jumped more than 4 percent and U.S. gasoline futures gained after European refiner Petroplus (PPHN.S) announced it may have shut down 3 refineries, with combined throughput capacity of nearly 340,000 barrels per day (bpd), after the company was hit by a credit freeze.
Workers at the Petroplus Petit Couronne refinery in France will meet union representatives from nearby refineries on Wednesday to decide whether to call for strike action after temporary shutdowns announced for the three plants.
THREATS TO OIL SUPPLY
Tensions between the West and Tehran, which stem from Iran's nuclear program, rose further as new U.S. and European Union financial sanctions began to take a toll on the OPEC member's economy.
Iran last week threatened to cut of oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, through which 35 percent of seaborne oil shipments travels. Iran on Tuesday threatened to act if the U.S. Navy carried through with plans to send an aircraft carrier back into the Gulf.
Trouble in fellow OPEC member added to oil market supply concerns. Nigeria's president declared a state of emergency in parts of the north affected by an Islamist insurgency after a series of bombs set off on Christmas Day.
In addition, Nigeria's fuel subsidies were ended on Sunday and prompted unions to call for strikes and protests.
U.S. OIL INVENTORIES
Weekly reports on U.S. oil inventories will be delayed by Monday's holiday. U.S. crude stocks were expected to have fallen, with distillate and gasoline stockpiles up last week, according to a preliminary survey of analysts on Tuesday.
The industry group American Petroleum Institute's inventory data is due at 4:30 p.m. EST (2130 GMT) on Wednesday, with the U.S. Energy Information Administration data following on Thursday morning.
(Additional reporting by Christopher Johnson in London and Florence Tan in Singapore; Editing by Alden Bentley; Marguerita Choy, Matthew Robinson and David Gregorio)
CHICAGO Different ingredients in marijuana appear to affect regions of the brain differently during brain processing functions involving responses to certain visual stimuli and tasks, according to a report in the January issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Sagnik Bhattacharyya, M.B.B.S., M.D., Ph.D, at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College in London, and colleagues studied 15 healthy men, who were occasional marijuana users, to examine the effects of ?9-tetrahydrocannabinol (?9-THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) on regional brain function during salience processing, which is how people perceive things around them.
The authors used functional MRI images to study each participant on three occasions after administration of ?9-THC, CBD or placebo. Study participants performed a visual oddball task of pressing buttons according to the direction arrows on a screen were pointing, as a measure of attentional salience processing.
"Pairwise comparisons revealed that ?9-THC significantly increased the severity of psychotic symptoms compared with placebo and CBD whereas there was no significant difference between the CBD and placebo conditions," the authors conclude.
?9-THC had a greater effect than placebo on reaction time to nonsalient relative to salient stimuli. This was associated with modulation of both prefrontal and striatal function by ?9-THC, augmenting (increasing) activation in the former region and attenuating (weakening) it in the latter.
"Moreover, in the present study, the magnitude of ?9-THC's effect on response times to nonsalient stimuli was correlated with its effect on activation in the right caudate, the region where the physiological effect of ?9-THC was linked to its induction of psychotic symptoms," the authors write.
They conclude that "collectively, these observations suggest that ?9-THC may increase the aberrant attribution of salience and induce psychotic symptoms through its effects on the striatum and lateral prefrontal cortex."
When the effects of CBD were contrasted with ?9-THC and placebo with respect to the visual task there was a "significant effect" in the left caudate with CBD augmenting (increasing) the response and ?9-THC attenuating (weakening) it.
"These effects suggest that CBD may also influence the effect of cannabis use on salience processing and hence psychotic symptoms by having an opposite effect, enhancing the appropriate response to salient stimuli," the authors wrote.
###
(Arch of Gen Psychiatry. 2012;69[1]:27-36). Available pre-embargo to the media at www.jamamedia.org.)
Editor's Note: This work was supported by a Joint Medical Research Council/Priory Clinical research training fellowship from the Medical Research Council, United Kingdom, to Dr. Bhattacharyya and a grant from the Psychiatry Research Trust, United Kingdom. Jose Alexandre Crippa, M.D., Ph.D., is the recipient of a Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico (Brazil) productivity fellowship. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Study evaluates effects of marijuana ingredients on brain functioning during visual stimuliPublic release date: 2-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
CHICAGO Different ingredients in marijuana appear to affect regions of the brain differently during brain processing functions involving responses to certain visual stimuli and tasks, according to a report in the January issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Sagnik Bhattacharyya, M.B.B.S., M.D., Ph.D, at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College in London, and colleagues studied 15 healthy men, who were occasional marijuana users, to examine the effects of ?9-tetrahydrocannabinol (?9-THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) on regional brain function during salience processing, which is how people perceive things around them.
The authors used functional MRI images to study each participant on three occasions after administration of ?9-THC, CBD or placebo. Study participants performed a visual oddball task of pressing buttons according to the direction arrows on a screen were pointing, as a measure of attentional salience processing.
"Pairwise comparisons revealed that ?9-THC significantly increased the severity of psychotic symptoms compared with placebo and CBD whereas there was no significant difference between the CBD and placebo conditions," the authors conclude.
?9-THC had a greater effect than placebo on reaction time to nonsalient relative to salient stimuli. This was associated with modulation of both prefrontal and striatal function by ?9-THC, augmenting (increasing) activation in the former region and attenuating (weakening) it in the latter.
"Moreover, in the present study, the magnitude of ?9-THC's effect on response times to nonsalient stimuli was correlated with its effect on activation in the right caudate, the region where the physiological effect of ?9-THC was linked to its induction of psychotic symptoms," the authors write.
They conclude that "collectively, these observations suggest that ?9-THC may increase the aberrant attribution of salience and induce psychotic symptoms through its effects on the striatum and lateral prefrontal cortex."
When the effects of CBD were contrasted with ?9-THC and placebo with respect to the visual task there was a "significant effect" in the left caudate with CBD augmenting (increasing) the response and ?9-THC attenuating (weakening) it.
"These effects suggest that CBD may also influence the effect of cannabis use on salience processing and hence psychotic symptoms by having an opposite effect, enhancing the appropriate response to salient stimuli," the authors wrote.
###
(Arch of Gen Psychiatry. 2012;69[1]:27-36). Available pre-embargo to the media at www.jamamedia.org.)
Editor's Note: This work was supported by a Joint Medical Research Council/Priory Clinical research training fellowship from the Medical Research Council, United Kingdom, to Dr. Bhattacharyya and a grant from the Psychiatry Research Trust, United Kingdom. Jose Alexandre Crippa, M.D., Ph.D., is the recipient of a Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico (Brazil) productivity fellowship. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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Public release date: 2-Jan-2012
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