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Living-Today: Issues of modern living

By United Press International
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BUSINESS TRAVEL

Economic factors as well as personal reasons have caused many business travelers to fly less frequently since Sept. 11.

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Forty percent of people who took part in a survey conducted by WorldCom cite the slowing economy as the primary reason for reduced business travel. Thirty percent say personal safety or concerns expressed by family members have influenced their travel plans. Travelers with children living at home are even more likely to have reduced their number of trips, according to the poll.

Kevin Mitchell of the Business Travel Coalition said this is changing the way businesses communicate.

"Major corporations are substituting air travel with conferencing products for a variety of factors," he said. "Skyrocketing business airfares, a slowing economy and heightened security concerns have converged for the first time, this has encouraged many businesses to rethink how they best use the variety of communication tools that are currently available to them."

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The WorldCom survey also found that of those traveling less as a result of September's events, 62 percent say they will use conferencing more in 2002 -- with videoconferencing leading the way.


SKI DEATHS

A record 13 skiers have been killed on Colorado slopes this season, but an expert says there's no common factor to explain the toll.

The latest was a 63-year-old Texas woman who died of internal injuries two days after taking a spill on a beginner's trail Feb. 24 at a northern Colorado resort. The youngest victim was a 5-year-old student skier from Florida who hit a tree.

"I very much regret these deaths and if we can find a pattern to them maybe that would help us out," said Hap Burnham, director of the Rocky Mountain Division of the National Ski Patrol. "It's not that we are not aware of the incidents but so far I have no factional connection between them."

Burnham said the national ski patrol and the ski resorts association are very concerned about every accident and injury. "When we see some factor emerge that is controllable than we do something about it," said the 38-year ski patrol volunteer.

This season's 13 deaths surpasses the previous Colorado record of 12 killed in the 1998-99 season, according to Colorado Ski Country USA.

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More skiers visit Colorado than any other state. Last year, 11.5 million people skied in Colorado, far more than California in second place with 7.4 million. The industry generates $4.2 billion annually in revenue for the state.


THOSE LUSTY CAVEMEN

Humanity's early ancestors as they traveled the road out of Africa apparently were bent more on making love than war.

Investigators from Washington University in St. Louis say they found DNA evidence for at least two major waves of migration from Africa, some 600,000 and 95,000 years ago, marked by the assimilation with -- not the defeating of -- people the wanderers encountered along the way, they report in the British journal Nature.

"Humans expanded again and again out of Africa," said biology Professor Alan Templeton, leader of the team that conducted the most thorough and expansive genetic analysis of its kind to date. "But these expansions resulted in interbreeding, not replacement, and thereby strengthened the genetic ties between human populations throughout the world," he added.

The findings beg for more research, scientists said.

"There is much future potential for extending the analysis. More and more DNA regions are being sequenced, and sample sizes are increasing," Templeton told UPI. "I therefore regard the current analysis as providing only a rough framework of recent human evolution. As more and more of human DNA regions are sampled, more and more insights are bound to follow. Hence, this analysis is just a beginning, not the end, of our work on recent human evolution."

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(Thanks to Lidia Wasowicz, UPI Senior Science Writer)


COFFEE BEATS CAVITIES

Dentists and mothers may have a new weapon in the battle against tooth decay: coffee. Well, mothers may not want to enlist it, but new research published in the Feb. 27 issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry indicates that roasted coffee beans have antibacterial properties effective against Streptococcus mutans, which is a major cause of dental cavities. The molecules appear to prevent adhesion of S. mutans on tooth enamel.

"All coffee solutions have high anti-adhesive properties due to both naturally occurring and roasting-induced molecules," said the study's lead author, Gabriella Gazzani of the University of Pavia.

Other samples of green and roasted arabica and robusta coffee from different countries had similar properties, but unroasted samples were less active than roasted ones. Instant coffee was more effective than ground coffee, and caffeine apparently does not play a role. Instead, trigonelline, a water-soluble compound in coffee that contributes to the aroma and flavor of the beverage, may be the key ingredient.

(Thanks to UPI Science Writer Jim Kling)


CELEBRITY SPOTTINGS

A new handbook offers advice from stars, publicists and agents on the proper etiquette for dealing with celebrities that you just happen to bump into in public places.

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Say you run into Tom Cruise or Julia Roberts at the mall or the library. This book tells you how to behave in a way that maximizes your chance of getting an autograph and minimizes your chance of making a complete fool of yourself.

"A Visitor's Guide to Celebrity Etiquette" was mainly written by Mike Sington, director of studio guide casting and development at Universal Studios Hollywood. "We really wrote the book kind of tongue-in-cheek as a public service," he said. "When people come to Los Angeles ... everybody wants to see a star. We want it to be a positive experience for them and the stars."

Proper etiquette when encountering a celebrity pretty closely resembles the basic rules of politeness most of us learned as children. Don't point. Don't stare. Don't ask someone how much money they make.

The book goes a little deeper than that, though.

Jamie Lee Curtis advises against telling stars they look better in person than on the screen. "Since they're supposed to look good on the screen," she said, "it makes them feel like they're not doing their job well."

You're not supposed to move a celebrity's child aside to get to the celebrity. The book tells about the daughter of a big star who remembers her childhood as one big photo session, and now pays $300 an hour for therapy.

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A lot of people might be nervous encountering a star, but Sington said most stars understand that being recognized comes with the territory. "They are smart enough business people to understand that the folks on those trams are the ones who watch their shows and buy tickets to their movies," he said.

(Thanks to UPI Hollywood Reporter Pat Nason)

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