Did you know that there is a drug that is 75 percent effective when taken within 24 hours and less likely to cause an adverse reaction than aspirin? Experts say this same drug could reduce the estimated annual 3 million unintended pregnancies in the United States by 50 percent and prevent as many as 800,000 abortions a year. The name of this drug is emergency contraception (EC).

Emergency contraception, also known as the "morning after pill" is a method of preventing pregnancy, which can be used up to 72 hours after unprotected sexual intercourse, contraceptive failure or rape. [Read article]

Cheers, jeers for students, administration, alumni

Nuclear engineering department needed to go

If ever there were a department ripe to be eliminated, the nuclear engineering department was it. Last week, the UA Faculty Senate voted to end the graduate program and decommission the nuclear reactor in the basement of the Engineering building.

Unlike previous attempts to eliminate departments, such as the strong backlash to the proposed elimination of the planning department, there will be hardly a peep with nuclear engineering. In fact, there's only one person in the program. [Read article]

Rec Center populated by roid freaks, girly men

The column on the Rec Center, Monday's "An Exercise in Exercise" was both amusing and insightful.

I worked at the UA from 2000 to 2004; in 2001 I joined the Rec Center at the ripe old age of 57.

Most of the big guys at the Rec Center, once you get to know them, admit to regular trips to Mexico for "gear:" steroids. Closer talk gets them to fess up about passing out, nosebleeds and a host of other problems associated with far too much synthetic testosterone use - high blood pressure being at the forefront. Some are using equipose, a steroid made for horses! While popular for decades with powerlifters, administration without medical monitoring is just plain stupid. Some of them rely upon popular folklore holding that smoking marijuana offsets the high blood pressure problem. In fact, it heightens other problems - aromatisation of testosterone to estradiols, and female hormones precipitating breast growth and prostate problems. Acne is another problem. The girls doing 'roids face even worse problems: aside from body hair, acne and deepening voices, they also face clitoral enlargement, and once off the 'roids those large (upwards of 4 inches) clits become ugly, insensitive masses of scar tissue, not removable without removing the seat of feminine pleasure at the same time. [Read article]