On:

Oil is trading for between $47 and $44 a barrel, and someexperts think it will reach $50 in the near future. Thecauses are Iraq, Russia and hurricane Charley.

An attack on an Iraqi oil well, and the fact that oil fromIraq is still flowing at only half its former rate,contributed to this, but Iraq isn’t the main reason for theprice rise. And news from Venezuela that Hugo Chavez willremain as president actually caused prices to drop slightly,since he guaranteed oil market stability if he won (weimport about 15% of our oil from Venezuela). One majorfactor in the price rise is the dispute between the Russiangovernment and the giant oil company Yukos. Even tropicalstorm Charley had a hand in the price rise, since ittemporarily halted oil output in the Gulf of Mexico.
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Would changing your name change the way people think aboutyou? Linguist Amy Perfors put photos with fake names on a”Hot or Not” website and found that some names wereconsidered “hot”?while others definitely were not.

In case you’ve ever thought changing your name might improveyour social life, Perfors found that men with names that had”front vowels,” such as the “aaa” sound in Matt, were ratedas more attractive by website visitors than photos labeledwith “back vowel” names, such as the “aw” sound in Paul.Emily Singer writes in New Scientist that the opposite wastrue for women’s names, so we must perceive the “aaa” soundas masculine and the “aw” sound as feminine.
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Should Olympic, and other, athletes have sex before theircompetitions? Many coaches have banned it, saying it sapsathletes’ energy, but not everyone agrees. Baseball managerCasey Stengel said, “Being with a woman all night never hurtno professional baseball player. It’s staying up all nightlooking for a woman that does him in.”
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A giant 62-mile-long colony of ants from Argentina hasinvaded Melbourne, Australia. In their native country, theyform smaller groups, but in Australia, they’ve merged intoone huge super colony, killing off native insects.

Biologist Elissa Suhr says, “In Argentina, their nativehomeland, ant colonies?are genetically diverse and highlyaggressive towards one another, so population numbers neverexplode and they are no threat to other plants and animals.When they arrived in Australia, in 1939, a change in theirstructure occurred, changing their behavior so that they arenot aggressive towards one another. This has resulted in thecolonies becoming one super colony.
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