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A study conducted in the United States showed that women with big breasts are not necessarily less intelligent than those who are less endowed.

Instead, women with bigger breasts were found to be smarter.

It said the study was conducted in Chicago to find out whether the size of a woman’s bust affected her brain power.

The study, involving 1,200 women, was conducted by a female researcher. The subjects were divided into five groups, from extra small to extra big.

The report said it was possible such women were smarter due to the higher level of female hormones that could result in better development in the brain.

Washington: Mothers with young children and pregnant women are being turned away from swine flu vaccination clinics in the United States, some in tears, many utterly frustrated by the shortage of vaccine.

But it could have been much worse. The new strain of H1N1 flu could have been much more virulent, and it could even have been bird flu, which, because of the way the United States produces flu vaccine, could wreak havoc.

Months back, when a swine flu vaccine was still just a glimmer in scientists’ eyes, US health officials were driving home the message that children, and especially those with underlying health conditions like asthma and pregnant women were at great risk of dying from H1N1 influenza and should be first in line for innoculation.

But after rolling out the vaccine last month, the authorities ran into a problem: There wasn’t enough to go around. “The National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have done a very good job of emphasizing the importance of getting vaccinated. But then there’s no vaccine,” said Steven Salzberg, director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Maryland.

Salzberg’s wife and younger daughters were among thousands who queued last week in Rockville, a suburb of Washington, for swine flu vaccinations. “They left when they saw the line was about 1km long before the place was even open. There were many, many hundreds arriving by the second,” Salzberg said.

Last week, as child deaths spiked well above the annual toll for kids from seasonal flu, vaccination clinics in the county that includes Rockville were abruptly cancelled. The county’s supply of vaccine had run dry. So what if this had been the next “big one”, a flu on the scale of the pandemic that killed tens of millions around the globe in 1918? After all, the strain of flu that caused the 1918 pandemic was also H1N1, the grandfather of today’s swine flu pandemic.

“If we had a really virulent highly infectious influenza strain today, it could easily be as bad as 1918,” said Salzberg. But David Beshai, associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said progress in health care and nutrition mean “a replica of 1918 is not in the cards.

“When you really need vaccine quickly, we just can’t do it, and this has now been demonstrated,” Salzberg said. He said changing the way the United States makes flu vaccine was too costly for companies to put in place and would have to come from the highest political levels.

Countries far from war zones, including most Asean countries, have not been spared the effects of bombings that cause depleted uranium poison gas to be carried by air currents all over the world which, in turn, have caused a surge in diabetes and fertility problems.

At a panel discussion on War and Banned Weapons at the Criminalize War Conference, American radiation expert Dr Leuren Moret said based on her study on the average annual population rate in the world, the global average population declined when bomb testings were completed – more in developed countries than in less-developing countries.

She explained that the low, high and medium air currents from the areas where bombs are dropped travel to areas as far away as Punjab, the Himalayas and Southeast Asia and enters the environment and rivers in the region through rain. The effects will be felt globally, she said.

Moret said among the proven effects of uranium on the reproductive system are an increase in endometriosis and ovulation disorders in addition to causing changes in chromosomes that, in turn, will result in more instances of gender disorders, including hermaphroditism (having both, male and female sexual organs). This has already been detected in wildlife, especially fish which is an indication of the effects of water pollution.

She said the effects of uranium on diabetes has been known since studies on the effects of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Similarly, in December 2006, there was an increase in diabetes cases in northern Israel two months after bombings in the area. There were also negative effects on unborn children, especially in countries with poor healthcare facilities as there was a higher risk of autism.

Moret said there has also been a 40% drop in sperm quality among Israeli men over the past 10 years as a result of the use of depleted uranium weapons given to them by Americans. “You cannot use nuclear weapons without nuking yourself,” she said. “Israelis are actually sterilising themselves,” she said, adding that Palestinians are also affected, and that in time to come, artificial insemination will become much sought after as a result of depleted uranium poisoning.