NFL Junkies podcast: Denver's dominant defense delivers Super Bowl title

Super Bowl 50 ended with a triumphant Peyton Manning and a sulking Cam Newton.

Chris D'Amico is joined by Tom Pelissero, Martin Rogers and Lorenzo Reyes to discuss the Denver Broncos' winning formula of defense as the best offense, Newton's pouty postgame and how theCarolina Panthers were shell-shocked.

And will Peyton actually ride off into the sunset?

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Isipathana clinch Zahira Rugby Sevens Title

Isipathana College clinched the Rugby Sevens organized by the Zahira College Group of sixties at the Zahira College Grounds on Saturday by beating hosts Zahira College by 41 points (three goals, four tries) to nil in the finals after leading 17 - 0 at the breather.

In the semi-finals, Isipathana beat Prince of Wales by 36 - 7 while Zahira overcame Sarawak Combined Schools, Malaysia in extra time after the scores stood 19 all at the final whistle. Ranindu Pramodh of Isipathana was adjudged the best player for scoring four tries in the finals. Leading local schools in rugby and a foreign schools participated in this tournament.

The participaing schools were Isipathana College, Thurstan College, Lalith Athulathmudali College, Prince of Wales College, Royal College Panadura, St. Benedict's College, Veluwana Vidyalaya, Carey College, C.W.W. Kannangara Vidyalaya, Royal College Colombo , Zahira College and IM Sarawak Combined Schools in Malaysia.

Bowl Final Royal College Panadura beat St. Benedict College 17 - 7 Plate Final Thurstan College beat Royal College 15 - 12 Cup Final Isipathana College beat Zahira College 41 - 0 in this tournament.

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Drug for reducing domestic violence?

A drug that causes hallucinations may have therapeutic potential for reducing intimate partner violence, says a study.

"Although we are attempting to better understand how or why these substances may be beneficial, one explanation is that they can transform people's lives by providing profoundly meaningful spiritual experiences that highlight what matters most," said one of the researchers, Peter Hendricks from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in the US.

"Often, people are struck by the realisation that behaving with compassion and kindness toward others is high on the list of what matters," Hendricks noted.

The researchers explored the therapeutic potential for hallucinogens such as psilocybin or LSD.

The study looked at 302 men aged 17-40 in the criminal justice system. Of the 56 percent of participants who reported using hallucinogens, only 27 percent were arrested for later intimate partner violence (IPV) as opposed to 42 percent of the group who reported no hallucinogen use being arrested for IPV within seven years.

From the 1950s through the early 1970s, thousands of studies reported on the medical use of hallucinogens, mostly LSD.

Due to the classification of the most prominent hallucinogens as Schedule I controlled substances in 1970, research on health benefits was suspended, causing many of these studies to be forgotten.

However, research with hallucinogens has experienced a rebirth, the study pointed out.

"Recent studies have shown that psilocybin and related compounds could revolutionise the mental health field," Hendricks said.

"However, additional research is needed. This study suggests that hallucinogens could be a useful avenue for reducing IPV, meaning this topic deserves further attention

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Bilingual kids better at problem solving

Kids who can speak in two or more languages have a better command on routine functioning, reveals a study.

According to researchers, bilingual children are better than monolinguals at a certain type of mental control, and those children with more practice switching between languages have even greater skills.

“This switching becomes more frequent as children grow older and as their vocabulary size increases,” said senior author of the study Diane Poulin-Dubois from Concordia University in Montreal, published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.

“Therefore, the superior performance on these conflict tasks appears to be due to bilinguals’ strengthened cognitive flexibility and selective attention 
abilities as they have increased experience in switching across languages in expressive vocabulary,” Dubois added.

“For the most part, there was no difference between the bilingual and monolingual toddlers,” Poulin-Dubois stated.

It was not surprising to the researchers that the bilingual children performed significantly better on the conflict inhibition tasks than did their monolingual counterparts, the study found.

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Online shopping may not be as green as we think

Who does not love to sit at home in sweatpants and shop online? But it may not be as environment friendly option as often people think, new research suggests.

Scientists have found that the total number of vehicles miles travelled has not decreased at all with the growth of online shopping.
Home shopping has a greater impact on the transportation sector than the public might think in a study published in the International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology.
Though it’s true that e-stores require less space and use less energy, online shopping puts more delivery trucks on the roads, which translates into more wear-and-tear on pavements and increased environmental pollution, said lead author Arde Faghri from University of Delaware in the US.
“We found that the total number of vehicles miles travelled has not decreased at all with the growth of online shopping,” Faghri added.
The study included data collection through a survey to identify shopping behaviour and summary of the survey results by product category, followed by simulation and analysis.
“The increase in online shopping also affects land use patterns such as the number and size of stores in large shopping malls with vast parking spaces, as well as changes in labour markets, with, for example, less demand for sales personnel and more for truck drivers,” Faghri explained.

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Aditya gifts Katrina truck full of roses

Bollywood actor Aditya Roy Kapur gifted his “Fitoor” co-star actress Katrina Kaif, a truck full of roses on the occasion of International Rose Day on Sunday.

As International Rose Day is celebrated across the country exactly one week prior to Valentine’s Day, that falls on February 14, Aditya thought that this would be a perfect gesture of making Katrina feel special, said a statement.

The idea came to the actor a couple of days back and he immediately got on to make arrangements for it with the backdrop of Jai Mahal in the pink city, where the duo is promoting their forthcoming film, read a statement.

Directed by Abhishek Kapoor, “Fitoor” is set to release on Friday and also stars Tabu.

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Sapporo’s snow for economic benefits

With the population of almost 1.8 million, Sapporo is the fifth largest city of Japan and also the one with heaviest snowfall. The city, which is the capital of Japan’s largest and northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido, remains under a thick blanket of snow for almost four months.
This seasonal phenomenon no doubt turns out to be a big hassle for the city administration, as regular and timely measures are required to be taken to ensure the safety passage of people, as well as vehicles and other forms transportation. There is also the additional task of overseeing the normal functioning of a heating system, which, unlike in many other parts of the country, becomes essential for during the long winter.

All this is expensive and compels the city to bear an extra burden on its financial health. Hence, there always had been the need to find out possible ways of using the snow in a way that would eventually bring some kind of economic benefit. Sapporo had precisely been thinking on those lines for quite some time and a number of measures taken in the recent past are already bringing economic dividends.

One of the earliest among such initiatives is the Sapporo Snow Festival, which is held every year during the first half of February, where colourful displays in the forms of famous structures or installations depicting stories of events made from ice and snow are attracting more visitors every year and thus creating new economic opportunities for the local businesses.
Sapporo Snow Festival started in 1950 as a yearly event providing the rare opportunity of fun and festivity to the local population at a time when in post-world war II economic ruins there hardly had been any other recreation within the vicinity. It also allowed people to sustain the harsh winter by getting involved in outdoor activities. Over the period of more than six decades, the festival has expanded and has become one of the most colourful winter events in Japan. Every year preparation for the festival starts right after the New Year vacation when various groups and organisations start building snow structures to catch the attention of visitors. Some of the structures are massive in size. With illuminations at night accompanied by musical performances they turn the whole area a real festival arena. This year’s 67th festival kicked off on 5 February.
The number of people visiting Sapporo during the Snow Festival has been increasing in recent years and with that there is also a rising trend in economic benefits the festival is generating. In 2015, a total of 3.35 million people visited the festival, which is slightly lower than the figure recorded a year earlier.
But a significant shift is gradually being seen in the figure of foreign visitors who come to Sapporo during the festival time. Last year 128,000 foreigners visited the festival, of which majority came from countries and regions like Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan where there is no snowfall at all. For visitors from tropical regions of Southeast Asia, the attraction of Sapporo is two-fold as they can experience firsthand the snowfall while enjoying seeing the beautiful structures made of ice and snow. No wonder the Snow Festival last year generated the significant amount of 41.9 billion yen. The organisers of the festival are hoping for an even bigger turnover this year.
The snow structure that Sapporo city administration is building at the festival venue this year is that of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre cut in half through the middle to display the interior to the audience. A 15-minute stage performance of the romantic drama “A Winter’s Tale” by a Shakespearean drama troupe on a stage made of snow will add further to the attraction.
During a recent visit to Sapporo at the end of January, I had the opportunity of seeing the construction work of that huge snow structure. Takamoto Morioka of Tourism Planning Section of the Sapporo city government is a snow statue specialist involved in the festival preparations for more than three decades. With the structure gradually taking shape, he feels happy and content with the work and he is hopeful that what they had been making will become one of the main attractions of the festival.
But the sad side of his hard work is the relative short duration of snow structures. This year, for example, the festival will come to an end on 18 February and then with the approach of the spring in early March, all those lovely structures will start melting. This is the time when Morioka is usually laden with sadness and the people then wish it all comes to an end without further delay.
Another important aspect of using Sapporo’s heavy snowfall for generating economic benefits is winter sporting events. Sapporo has a relatively long history of such initiatives. As a host city of the 1972 Winter Olympic Games, Sapporo is already known to winter sports enthusiasts for its numerous world-class facilities.
The city is now getting ready to host the 2017 Asian Winter Games. This will be the 8th Asian winter games event in which 1,500 athletes and officials from 30 countries and regions are expected to participate. Talking to foreign reporters recently about various initiatives being taken by the city of Sapporo to revitalise the local economy, city mayor Katsuhiro Akimoto briefed them about the preparation of Asian Winter Games as well, and said that Sapporo has allocated roughly 6.4 billion yen for the 2017 event and is expecting economic benefits generating from the Games to be almost double of that amount.
The relative lower budgetary allocation for next year’s game was made possible due to the utilisation of already existing facilities. Though most of the games are scheduled to be held in Sapporo, a smaller number of events have already been allocated to the city of Obihiro, less than a four-hour drive from Sapporo.

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