The Wing-Friends and Other Books

In Blogger's slideshows images are greatly reduced, so lose much of their impact. And captions added to them in Picasa Albums vanish, so the images shown above are: the Milky Way, the Orion Nebula, Earth, Earth with New Zealand circled, New Zealand, Auckland & the Hauraki Gulf, Waiheke Island, some native NZ forest, a Fantail and chicks, various doves, etc.

(If you want to see the first ten images in their original size, they are in a posting made on the 24th of November 2011.)

My book The Wing-Friends is an imaginative tale of a small brave boy, a magical adventure, a magnificent Pegasus and the wonderful Kingdom of the Pegasi. It has been given very good reviews, and virtually every reader on Goodreads has so far awarded it five stars. It is available here. Some of my other writings are available as e-books, such as The Lower Deck, which is an over-the-top take on Waiheke happenings--sort of.

Wednesday 12 June 2013

NET GLEANINGS 014

BPA linked to the risk of obesity in girls around the onset of puberty:

Girls between 9 and 12 with higher-than-average levels of bisphenol-A (BPA) in their urine had double the risk of being obese than girls with lower levels of BPA according to a Kaiser Permanente study.'

The study is the latest by the same researchers examining the effects of BPA in humans:
* A 2009 study found that exposure to high levels of BPA in the workplace increased the risk of sexual dysfunction in men.
* A 2010 study found that increasing BPA levels in urine were associated with worsening male sexual function.
* A 2011 study showed that increasing urine BPA levels were significantly associated with decreased concentration, total count, vitality and motility of sperm.
* A 2011 study showed that parental exposure to BPA during pregnancy was associated with decreased birth-weight in offspring.
* A 2011 study found that in-utero exposure to BPA was related to anogenital distance (the physical distance between the anus and the genitalia) in male offspring.
* A 2013 study showed that male workers exposed to BPA in a chemical plant for 6 months or more had lower testosterone levels in their blood than with those who were not exposed to BPA in the workplace.