Photos - Ranibr Kapoor, Katrina Kaif in Spain

10:18 AM

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Live News

Rumoured lovers Ranibr Kapoor, Katrina Kaif always remain mum about their romance, but the couple has been caught red-handed on more occasions than one.

In Pics: Ranbir Kapoor, bikini clad Katrina Kaif's beach outing in Spain

And while pictures speak a thousand words, photographs of the duo holidaying in Spain were published in a leading magazine.

The couple, who were spotted at a music concert in Ibiza, were snapped enjoying a sunny day at the beach on their Spanish holiday, right before Katrina's birthday.

The pictures reveal a toned looking Katrina in a white and red bikini with Ranbir Kapoor cooling off in a pair of surfer shorts.

On their return from Spain, Ranbir and Katrina were spotted attending some film screenings together in Mumbai.

However, they have been photographed by fans yet again, at a coffee shop, this time in Sri Lanka.

Looks like the lovebirds have finally decided to come out in the open about their sizzling romance, which no doubt has everybody interested.

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Skipping Breakfast Increases Risk Of Heart Attack

10:33 AM

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study

Yet another reason to eat breakfast in the morning–doing so may prevent you from having a heart attack.

Skipping Breakfast Increases  Risk Of Heart Attack

A recent study of men aged 45-82 who regularly skipped breakfast demonstrated a 27% increase in risk of having a heart attack or developing coronary artery disease compared with those who ate breakfast daily. Although the research was done in older men, researchers believe the results may likely apply to the broader population as a whole.

It is important to note that this was an observational study, and cannot prove a cause and effect relationship between consumption of breakfast and risk of heart attack.

The research was published in the Journal, Circulation, July 22.

The researchers evaluated 27,000 men regarding their daily eating habits in 1992. Based on their results, 13% of the respondents stated that they routinely skipped breakfast. These men were all at least 45 years of age and had professional careers. Over the next 16 years, 1,527 suffered a heart attack-fatal or nonfatal.

After accounting for other variables such as smoking, alcohol use, diet, high blood pressure and diabetes, this equated to a 27% percent added risk for skipping breakfast.



More details of the study revealed that younger men were more likely to skip breakfast than older men. Other factors associated with skipping breakfast included smoking, drinking alcohol regularly, working full time, being unmarried, and being less physically active overall.

Of note, previous research has shown a relationship between skipping breakfast and developing high blood pressure, obesity, and diabetes—all a precursor to the development of the dangerous metabolic syndrome- an important risk for heart disease.

What distinguishes the current study is the role of skipping breakfast and its future relationship to having a heart attack.

So why does skipping breakfast lead to an increased risk for having a heart attack?

Researchers believe that people who skip breakfast tend to eat larger, more calorically dense meals later in the day, often late into the night, to compensate for the lack of an early morning meal. They also tend to eat more meals later into the night.

Eating later into the night–the case for a small number of men in the study who awoke after initally going to sleep– was associated with a 55 % increase in the incidence of developing coronary artery disease. The overall risk, however, was perceived to be small, since only a minority of men in this study exhibited this behavior.

Ultimately, however, this means fewer hours in the day to process additional, more calorically dense foods, which lead to higher levels of blood sugars and more intense and frequent insulin spikes. This process is thought to be a precursor to premature development of coronary artery disease, more commonly termed atherogenesis.

One drawback of the study was that researchers did not ask what participants actually ate for breakfast. So whether they ate sausage, biscuits with gravy, or a big stack of buttery pancakes was never investigated. The question is whether eating fat laden, highly caloric breakfast foods is better than skipping breakfast altogether.

The issue of when you eat, as well as the content of what you eat is currently a topic of debate. It is unclear what is more important, but it is likely a combination of both factors that is pivotal.

The bottom line is that people who eat breakfast generally eat fewer calories throughout the day, and are usually healthier than those who do not eat breakfast.

According to data from the NPD group, as many as 10% of US adults–30 million people–routinely skip breakfast.

The take home message is that eating breakfast is an important component of a healthy lifestyle.

If results of the research examined here can be demonstrated in women, as well as among other races and ethnic groups, then eating breakfast may become an important preventive health measure for the public.


Of note, a January, 2013 New England Journal of Medicine article published this year called into question the concept that eating breakfast actually reduces obesity, examining various myths associated with gaining weight. The article evaluated data from two specific studies that demonstrated that breakfast eaters did not have a reduction in rates of obesity.

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3D printing, why it will work in fashion?

9:18 AM

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Lifestyle

In case you haven’t heard, 3D printing has entered the mainstream, and it will disrupt every industry’s manufacturing processes slightly differently. Let’s talk about why it will work in fashion.

3D printing is not entirely new to the fashion industry, as jewelry designers have for years outsourced quick modeling jobs to printing companies. But as 3D-printed pieces begin to pop up on the runway and in presentations outside of fashion week as the finished product, it’s worth asking why the method stands a chance of proliferating among designers.

It looks damn good.

Catherine Wales, a designer trained in classic garment cutting at Yves Saint Laurent and Emanuel Ungaro, is currently exhibiting a collection of masks, corsets and helmets at the Arnhem Mode Biennale in the Netherlands. Designers Frances Bitonti and Michael Schmidt collaborated with Shapeways to produce a 3D-printed gown modeled by the burlesque icon Dita Von Teese at a presentation in February.

The results are beautiful. Comprising 3,000 articulated joints and dotted with 12,000 Swarovski crystals, Dita’s gown fits her curves like a glittering Chinese finger trap. Wales’s feathered shoulder piece fluffs and falls like the real thing.

This is art. It isn’t wearable, but it suggests that 3D printing has the finesse necessary to break into an industry known for its attention to quality craft.

It is becoming more and more wearable. 

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Printers are getting closer to producing good fabric-like materials, using interlocking structures to create weaves and stitches. Duann Scott, Shapeways‘ “Designer Evangelist,” said that once more fashion designers start using 3D printing, it will make a case for 3D manufacturers to develop more breathable, wearable materials. This is, of course, a chicken and egg situation, as designers aren’t going to want to migrate to 3D printing until they know it’s as good if not better than their current methods.

At the moment, 3D printing may be most compelling to designers when used in conjunction with organic materials. Bitonti told me that he’s currently working on 3D-printed handbags finished with stingray leather, an idea that has a lot of potential. Designers and consumers have a strong historical and emotional affinity to non-synthetic materials like leather, silk and cotton, and they aren’t going anywhere. It wouldn’t be surprising to see designers incorporating complex printed elements with traditional materials in the near future.

It could save young designers.0050

If 3D printing disrupts mass fashion production, it will do so because it will have become cheaper and more efficient than current manufacturing methods. Ready-to-wear, however, with its smaller production runs, financial insecurity and impulse toward the artistic, is the ideal space for 3D printing to take root now.

The designer Kimberly Ovitz, who showed a small range of Shapeways-printed nylon jewelry with her ready-to-wear collection at New York Fashion Week in February, said that 3D printing revolutionized her production timetable. Consumers could buy the jewelry immediately after her show and receive the product in two weeks.

“I found that there are so many benefits for small designers. You don’t have to deal with minimum or volume issues. You can design as many prototypes as you want as intricately as you want, and it doesn’t affect anything the way it does with clothes.”

For small, young brands, which have a failure rate not unlike tech startups, 3D printing offers the previously unheard-of option to manufacture exactly to order. In a world where botched manufacturing runs and over-estimated interest in an item leads to unusable and unsold stock, printing minimizes risk in a way that never existed before for fashion designers.

It can find a happy medium with handmade.

One of the obvious challenges facing mainstream adoption of 3D printing in the clothing industry is a longstanding appreciation for handcrafted pieces. Would a Birkin bag cost as much as it does if it were not stitched by human hands?

Scott argues that the traditional idea of handcraft is romanticized. Manipulating code to make a dress flow and fall over the human form is the new craft, he said.

But Scott is a Shapeways guy, and not all classically trained designers would agree. Anna Sheffield, a New York-based jewelry designer who experimented with printing finished products for an event sponsored by Shapeways at the Ace Hotel in February, told me that while she sees the advantages of using 3D printing to create a finished product, it’s not right for her brand. She likes the slivers of imperfections that can result from casting.

“In some ways it can be used to enhance the design,” she said. “But in other ways I think it leaves a generic motif on all of the goods, and to me it would be better to make the product and make a mold and cast it and finish or change it in some way. Hammer it. Something that gives it a more sensory feel. I’m a bit of a purist.”


3D printing is, however, part of Sheffield’s arsenal. While she often hand-makes wax models, Sheffield will go digital for repeating patterns, as on a ring of overlapping wheat sheaths. Scaling and altering designs on a CAD file reduces her workload by hours. For designers with an interest in preserving the uniqueness of handcrafted pieces, 3D printing could simply be a standard design tool to be used as needed.

If 3D printing is making moves on manufacturing in general, you can bet fashion won’t be exempt, even if it is initially treated by the press as a futuristic conceit. It’s dubious that the Fashion Institute of Technology and Parsons will start training their students as coders just yet, but printing could easily make inroads in accessories, shoes and non-fabric elements of clothing in the near future. It isn’t hard to imagine that some of fashion’s more avant-garde talents would be willing to experiment with printing in a more substantial way soon.

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Kate Middletonis giving birth to a future British monarch

10:27 AM

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Live world news

As of Wednesday, 78-year-old Terry Hutt had slept outside St. Mary’s Hospital for seven nights. He has been photographed in his Union Jack T-shirt, shorts and hat, under his Union Jack umbrella, holding handmade signs. He is participating in the #GreatKateWait, anticipating the arrival of Britain’s next prince or princess (if more enthusiastically than most).

Those of us not stalk- . . . er, staring in person at the maternity ward of the London hospital designated to deliver the first child of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge — better known as Prince William and Kate Middleton — have relied on the media circus outside, which has produced such voyeuristic aids as the Sun’s Royal Baby Monitor, a live stream of “all the comings and goings into and out of the Lindo Wing,” and Web and phone apps that combine live updates with royal and Middleton family histories.

The weeks-long Royal Baby Watch, punctuated by speculation that the duchess has in fact gone into labor or will be sneaked into another hospital, has engaged even the most eminent of relatives. In response to a child’s question this week about whether she preferred a great-grandson or great-granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II remarked: “I don’t think I mind.” Then the sovereign noted: “I would very much like it to arrive. I’m going on holiday. No sign yet.”

Kate Middleton is giving birth to a future British monarch.

We love her for this.

We love her for everything — even if we don’t always think about why.

During William and Kate’s years-long courtship, media coverage of the couple included intense speculation that Kate, a commoner by birth, might not have been a suitable partner for the future king. For Americans, it is easy to view the couple’s narrative in fairy-tale terms: Ordinary girl marries tall, handsome prince, leveling society’s class system. This makes sense when one gets to appreciate the monarchy’s pomp, circumstance and bling without any of its expense or constitutional details.

But that story line is not quite right. Kate might not have been aristocracy, but neither was she the typical girl next door. The daughter of self-made millionaires, she had flexible hours working for her parents’ party-supply business, or not working, which allowed her to focus her life around her prince. And William and Kate’s popularity ensures the continuation of the monarchy — reinforcing, not eliminating, Britain’s class system.

Kate and William radiate an ordinariness that endears them and the monarchy to their future subjects. He grew up standing in line at amusement parks and McDonald’s because his mother, Diana, the late Princess of Wales, wanted him to understand life beyond the palace walls. His wife is the first future queen to consistently shop off the rack, enabling copy-Kates the world over to emulate her style. They go to movies and meals out — all of which makes them feel accessible, in the tradition of Diana, the “people’s princess.” We feel welcome to continue calling her Kate, despite all the palace fuss about Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge. Even the publication of nude photos of the duchess last fall — the sort of scandal that blacklisted a royal just a generation ago — sparked more sympathy for the couple than criticism.

There are signs of modernization: After the “wedding of the century” in 2011, Britain and the commonwealth countries updated their laws of succession, which had favored male heirs. Whatever the baby’s gender, the first Prince or Princess of Cambridge will be third in line to the throne (bumping Uncle Prince Harry down to fourth). The baby’s birth will be announced on Twitter and posted on a gilded easel at the Buckingham Palace gates.

But for all the talk of William and Kate as modern young royals, they have clearly fallen into step with centuries-old traditions. Kate might have allegedly joked while they were dating that the prince was lucky to be going out with her. But she has embraced an extremely traditional role, with her life largely defined by her marriage, man and family. She is a happy homemaker, shopping for groceries, cooking dinner and reportedly even making her own jam, which she gives out as gifts. She has taken to royal life with aplomb, rarely putting a (perfectly shod) foot wrong, even in the glare of unprecedented media coverage. It is a supporting role in which she is seen and rarely heard.

On a certain level, the #GreatKateWait is the product of a popular illusion. Dazzled by a beautiful couple, people see youth and presume fresh thinking and 21st-century mores. But this is not a modern partnership of equals. People may toast the next generation — more than $90 million is forecast to be spent on alcohol alone as part of royal baby celebrations — but underneath the glamour, William and Kate’s relationship is as traditional as the monarchy he is destined to lead.

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World’s First All-Diamond Ring

11:17 PM

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Live News

They say diamonds are a girl’s best friend. If that’s the case, this ring ought to provide a lifetime of companionship.

Swiss jewelry company Shawish has created a diamond ring from one massive hunk of rock. To be precise, this is 150 carats of pure bling we’re talking about. According to the Daily Mail, the ring, which is valued around $70 million, took one year to create, using special laser equipment.



(SPECIAL: How Diamonds Are Made)

The company is claiming it to be “the world’s first diamond ring,” and while that assertion isn’t backed up, it’s clear that the ring is no doubt impressive. Just to give perspective, Elizabeth Taylor’s famed ring was 33.19 carats while Kim Kardashian’s clocked in at 20.5 carats.

Either way, some lucky lady will be set for life.

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Parenting your child right

5:18 PM

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Report

How well parents work together and support each other when it comes to parenting duties is linked to fewer behavior problems among their adopted children and is more important than their sexual orientation, a new study suggests.

Rachel H. Farr at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Charlotte J. Patterson at the University of Virginia report their findings from this first empirical examination of differences and similarities in co-parenting among lesbian, gay and heterosexual adoptive couples and associations with child behavior.

Farr, who led the study, says, "While actual divisions of childcare tasks such as feeding, dressing and taking time to play with kids were unrelated to children's adjustment, it was the parents who were most satisfied with their arrangements with each other who had children with fewer behavior problems, such as acting out or showing aggressive behavior."

"It appears that while children are not affected by how parents divide childcare tasks, it definitely does matter how harmonious the parents' relationships are with each other," she adds. She and Patterson also observed differences in division of labor in lesbian and gay couples compared to heterosexual parents.

The study suggests that lesbian and gay couples may be creating new ways to live together and raise children outside of traditional gender roles, the authors say, and results are important to adoption professionals and others who work with adoptive families. Further, the research is informative for those debating legal, political and policy questions about family dynamics and outcomes for children raised by same-sex couples.

For this study, Farr and Patterson recruited families from five adoption agencies across the United States. In total, 104 families agreed to participate, 25 headed by lesbian partners, 29 by gay male partners and 50 by heterosexual couples. 

Their adoptive children had been placed with them at birth or within the first few weeks of life; at the time of the study the children were all around three years old.

Parents were asked to report on the division of child-related labor between them and on factors of their child's adjustment. They were also observed by researchers who coded their co-parenting behavior during videotaped parent-child play sessions along scales rated for "supportive" and "undermining" interactions, using an established test.

The researchers discovered that lesbian and gay couples were more likely to equally share childcare tasks, while heterosexual couples were likely to specialize, with mothers doing more work than fathers in these families. In addition, Farr says, from the videotaped observations of family interactions, "It was clear that other aspects of co-parenting, such as how supportive parents were of each other, or how much they competed, were connected with children's behavioral problems."

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