dionysus1999 was just talking about this chemical!

Chocolate May Hold Cure for Coughs

An ingredient in chocolate could be used to stop persistent coughs and lead to more effective medicines, researchers said on Monday.

The study found that theobromine, found in cocoa, was nearly a third more effective in stopping persistent coughs than codeine, currently considered the best cough medicine.

[...] Ten healthy volunteers were either given theobromine, codeine or a dummy pill during the trial, which also involved Royal Brompton Hospital and St Bartholomew's Hospital.

To measure the effect of the different pill the researchers measured levels of capsaicin, which is used in research to cause coughing and as an indicator for the effectiveness of medicines.

The team found when the volunteers were given theobromine, the concentration of capsaicin needed to produce a cough was around a third higher than in the placebo group.

When they were given codeine they needed only marginally higher levels of capsaicin to cause a cough compared with the placebo.

(no subject)

Last night, we had fun at Thirteen Blackbirds. It was a very laidback, informal group (just dionysus1999, sarahmichigan, and myself). We were going to postpone the meeting again, but eventually we all just fell into talking about poetry. We read the poems by St. Vincent Millay, Pound, Fink, Nelson and Olds (I found her poem "Feared Drowned" with a little bit of digging). I hope the different poems illustrated how much of a range the term "voice" can cover. I meant to bring up some of my (slightly) prepared points, particularly that voice necessarily involves perspective, and it's through perspective (point of view) and word choice that tone is produced. And tone is utterly important if the reader is to know how to inflect the words upon reading, especially reading aloud.

But I guess I'll touch on those ideas in a different meeting. :)

The next meeting will be two weeks from now. Perhaps I will be more prepared.

stolen from rialian

Mysterious 'George W. Bush: Our Leader' Clear Channel political public service billboard graces Orlando freeway

I don't think "graces" is the right word.

all news, all the time

All About Chimeras

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Brain receptors could be responsible for nicotine dependence

Hey Magic geeks

( Check this deck out )