Exxxotica Expo: The good, the bad and the tawdry

The Exxxotica Expo, Miami Beach's annual convention for all things adult-industry related, celebrates its fifth anniversary this weekend. And we promise: this is the only 5-year-old's birthday party where you'll be leaving with a goody bag full of porn, pasties and sex toys. If only there were a bounce house.

You've got three days to navigate everything that's going on (and coming off). Here's what expo-goers need to know.

Who's appearing: All the current-day porntastic favorites, including Digital Playground's Jesse Jane; Adam & Eve stars Teagan Presley, Bree Olson and Alexis Ford; adult stars Jenna Haze, Sunny Leone, Gina Lynn and Alexis Texas, Ron Jeremy, Shauna Sand, Savanna Samson and tons more. Intermingling with the adult créme de la créme are plenty of wannabes, reality stars and company reps wearing little and eager to vie for your attention.

What's new: This will be the first of the conventions to feature Legends of Exxxotica, a lineup of the big-name adult film stars. Peter North, Jilly Kelly, Nina Hartley, Lisa Ann, Christy Canyon, Ginger Lynn and others will sign autographs and reminisce about the days of excessive body hair and terrible background music.

Entertainment: Exxxotica's main stage runs round the clock, featuring a combo of musical performances, bikini (or less) competitions and vaudevillian stage antics. Take part in ``So You Think You Can Do Porn?'' -- a physical challenge show where eager civilians are put into compromising positions that test their porn star skills. Or opt for ``How Deviant are You?''

Seminars: Education is the key to success, folks, and that's why Exxxotica delivers a full plate of industry-related seminars for its attendees. Learn how to get into the adult film industry, the legalities of starting an adult website or how to cajole your significant other into the swinging scene.

Exhibitors: Adult mags, websites and movie companies unabashedly display their wares alongside retailers of latex wear, toys, corsets and bondage gear. Vendors in the business of vanity are also abundant, so expect pitches for laser hair removal, airbrush tanning and other services that help you look better naked.

The VIP dealio: VIP status will get you access to a lounge where ``Exxxotica Hotties'' will mingle amidst free-flowing cash bars. Also included: admission to The Bedroom, where swingers club Miami Velvet will provide a bunch of cabanas.

Where: Miami Beach Convention Center, 1901 Convention Center Dr.

When: 4-11 p.m. Friday, 1-11 p.m. Saturday and noon-7 p.m. Sunday.

Tickets: General, single-day admission is $35; go all three days for $85. VIP admission is $65; weekend-long VIP pass is $150. Tickets can be purchased in advance or at the Convention Center; must be 18 for general admission, or 21 for VIP.

Parking: Park at the Convention Center for some solid moolah, or try to score a $1.25/hour meter nearby. Best bet: the 17th Street garage a few blocks away charges $1 an hour.

Togetherville - a Facebook 'for kids'

Kids under 13 aren't allowed on Facebook, but that hasn't stopped many of them from joining.

Togetherville, a social network for kids ages six to 10, hopes to lure them into a more age-appropriate setting. The site, whose founder has three children under 10, launches Tuesday night.

It's free to join, and kids' accounts must be created by their parents using their own Facebook logins. Parents can approve or reject their children's friends and see what types of activities or games their kids are up to.

"The adults participate directly," said CEO and co-founder Mandeep Dhillon, whose kids are eight, five and two. "Which is why this is not a digital babysitter."

Kids have separate logins to Togetherville, and the site looks different depending on whether a parent or a child is logged in. For kids, there are games, pre-screened YouTube videos and other activities, such as educational applications, but no ads.

There are even Facebook-style status updates, called "quips", with a twist: kids choose from a preselected menu of updates, which change daily. Dhillon says that's because when given a blank space to type in, kids tend to either write gibberish or get stumped by to say. But if they want to, they can send in their own "quips" for approval.

Parents can send their kids virtual gifts, review their activities on the site or look at virtual art they've created. Togetherville plans to make money by selling virtual goodies for its games.

The site taps into a growing trend of tech-savvy parents interacting with their kids online. Stephen Balkam, CEO of the Washington DC-based noprofit Family Online Safety Institute, said he hopes Togetherville will get parents to remove their young children from Facebook, calling it a "much safer environment".

Though they are prohibited by the sites from joining, many of kids under 13 are already on MySpace and Facebook. They lie about their age, or get their parents to do so, Balkam said.

UK web users 'wary of revealing too much'

UK internet users have become significantly more cautious about how much personal information they reveal on social networking websites such as Facebook, according to a report by media regulator Ofcom.

The twice-yearly report, a survey of the internet habits of 1,824 people aged 16 and over, found that since 2007 users have become more savvy about online security and are now more reluctant to provide personal information online.

Ofcom's report found that 80% of those surveyed who have a social networking website are likely to only allow friends or family to see it. This is a significant seachange in attitude compared to 2007 when just 48% of those surveyed took such steps.

The report has been published in a climate where the practices of social networking sites – Facebook in particular – have come under scrutiny for privacy and security practices. Earlier this month, EU data protection officials called Facebook's latest privacy changes "unaceptable" and the world's biggest social networking site has been embroiled in a controversy over "panic buttons" for child users.

Almost half of adult internet users in Scotland say they have set up a social networking profile compared with 46% in Wales, 44% in England and 31% in Northern Ireland.

However, about a quarter of internet users say they "lack confidence" in installing filtering software or security features.

The report found that the Scottish were the least likely to worry about entering personal details online with 50% "happy" to enter their home address details on the internet, compared with 23% in Wales and Northern Ireland. More than 40% of Scottish adult internet users are also happy to enter credit card details.

When it comes to trust in media, just 31% of internet users believe web content to be "reliable and accurate". This compares to about 50% of adults that trust television and radio content. However, news sites are trusted by 58% of web users.

Adults in Scotland say they use the internet at home the most at 10.6 hours per week, with adults in England at 8.3 hours per week and those in Wales at 6.8 hours per week. Adults in Northern Ireland say they use the internet at home the least at 6.5 hours per week.

Teen risk-taking linked to hypersensitivity to reward signal

PARIS — Unprotected sex, wild rides on a motorbike, smoking, drugs or alcohol -- the litany of risk-taking by teenagers is famously long. But what drives it?

The answer could lie with adolescents' hypersensitivity to signals that unleash dopamine, a powerful brain chemical that underpins the pleasure from a reward, US psychologists suggest.

A team led by Jessica Cohen of the University of California, Los Angeles, recruited 45 people from three age groups -- children aged eight to 12, teenagers aged 14-19 and adults aged 25-30.

The volunteers were asked to look at pictures on a computer screen and say whether the images matched the pattern on T-shirts sold by either of two fictitious universities.

There was a financial carrot (either 25 US cents or five cents) for each answer that was right. The answer could be either predictable or random.

The task was performed while the volunteers were in a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner (fMRI), which measures blood flow in the brain in response to neural signals.

Among the teenagers, the striatal area of the brain, which is sensitive to dopamine, lit up more strongly than among children and adults when receiving the reward.

"Our research shows that when adolescents get a reward that they're not expecting, their brains are more responsive to that reward," Cohen said in a phone interview.

Dopamine levels were not measured, but "it's our guess that dopamine is the cause," Cohen said.

Previous research, among adult humans and monkeys, has found dopamine surges before an expected reward comes, she noted.

The findings, published by the journal Nature Neuroscience, could help parents, school teachers and others guide adolescents in the transition from childhood to adulthood, says Cohen.

Children are not fully sensitive to rewards, whereas adults are sensitive to rewards but also -- to varying degrees -- brake the urge.

"Some researchers have put forward a theory that striatal regions are fully developed in adolescents but the pre-frontal regions, which put the brakes on, are not," Cohen explained.

"As a result, adolescents get the sensitivity to reward that adults get too. But adults can suppress it and think before they act, or act more responsibly sometimes, whereas teenagers tend not to be able to do this as well."

No real saving with interconnect cuts

A survey conducted by voice-based telecommunications solutions company Du Pont Telecoms found that the average business person could expect to save only 2% on their cellphone bill following the almost 29% reduction in cellular interconnect charges in March.

Mobile operators implemented the first rate cut in March.

The Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) then surprised mobile operators recently by cutting mobile interconnect rates further.

Icasa proposed a three-year glide-path for both mobile and fixed service licensees.

The cuts Mobile interconnect rates, currently set at R0.89 per minute, were proposed to be reduced to R0.65 from July 2010 and further reduced to R0.40 from July 2012.

Fixed termination rates were initially asked to reduced to R0.15 from July 2010, and further reduced to R0.10 from July 2010.

Du Pont Telecoms said it calculated the impact mobile telecommunications group Vodacom's (VOD) recently introduced revised call tariffs would have on business contract subscribers.

Graeme Victor, CEO of the group said: "Du Pont is in the business of managing and analysing cellphone packages on behalf of our customers, the majority of whom are large corporates running fleets of cellphones on business contracts.

"We were keen to see how much our customers who subscribe to Vodacom's two most popular business packages - Talk 500 S and Talk 1000 S - were likely to save with the new tariffs. We were hugely disappointed at what we found: an average saving of a mere 2%," he said.

Focus on retail costs Victor said that the evaluation exercise highlighted a need to move away from focusing on interconnect rates to putting pressure on networks to reduce the actual retail cost of calls.

Du Pont said it had previously warned that a drop in interconnect rates would not necessarily lead to a reduction in retail call charges. "This was the case in Kenya, Tanzania and Ghana, while in Israel, call charges actually increased," it said.

"So far we have unfortunately been proved correct. The networks have tinkered with some - but not all - pre-paid packages but we believe that the majority of pre-paid users have not benefited to any great extent by the lower interconnection rates," Victor said.

Free time?

The group noted that benefits for existing contact users had largely been limited to more off-peak 'free minutes' being bundled into their packages.

Victor said that as most businesses and high-volume contract users already wasted a high proportion of their off-peak 'free minutes', the availability of even more 'free minutes' for use outside of business hours was likely to exacerbate the wastage problem.

However with the elimination of off-peak rates by Vodacom in its new pricing structure, business contract consumers could find that they actually end up with less 'free' off peak talk time than they had before, Du Pont said.

It pointed out that neither MTN (MTN) nor Cell C had announced any reduction in the per-minute rate for contract subscribers since the lower interconnect rate came into effect.

"This clearly indicates that if the government and regulatory authorities are serious about reducing the cost of mobile telephony, they need to turn their attention to the retail costs of calls across the board - including for contract/post-paid subscribers," Victor concluded.

Tyra Banks tries hand at fantasy novels

Banks, the host of reality competition "America's Next Top Model" and whose own TV talk show is set to end this year, will write three books, Delacorte Press said.

She has already finished the first, called "Modelland", which is about a teen girl in a make-believe society at an academy for exceptional models called Intoxibellas. It will be published in the summer of 2011.

Writing on her web site, Banks said the book was "for all the girls and guys who want a lot more FANTASY in their lives … and some fierceness and magic, romance and mystery, crazy and wild adventures, and yeah, some danger too."

Publishers Delacorte Press described "Modelland" as showcasing issues ranging from relationships to body image and empowering women of all ages.

Banks, 36, announced in January that she would be ending the Emmy-award winning "The Tyra Banks Show" later this year after five seasons to launch her own production company Bankable Studios.

She is also the host, judge and executive producer of "America's Next Top Model."

Teen hookah smoking in Calgary surges

Hookah smoking is on the rise among Calgary teens, which supports the results of a University of Montreal study released this week.

Desiree Carlson, of the Hemporium located a couple of blocks from the city's Western Canada High School, said she's seen smoking hookah take off.

"Since I started in November, I've seen the craze of smoking shisha and hookahs go crazy," said Carlson. "Everybody's wanting it."

Hookahs or shishas are large communal water pipes designed to burn fragrant blends of tobacco or similar substances mixed with molasses. Smoking hookah is a centuries-old Middle Eastern tradition.

'I've seen the craze of smoking shisha and hookahs go crazy.'—Desiree Carlson, Hemporium

While it's illegal to sell tobacco-free hookah products to minors, the water-based pipes can be purchased by anyone.

Some of Calgary's hookah cafés offer in-house hookah smoking, circumventing indoor smoking bans by selling tobacco-free products to adults only.

"It's just a good relaxing environment and I like to smoke," said Mike Wilkie, a hookah café patron in Marda Loop. "It tastes good."

The Hemporium serves a lot of high school students with hookah-related products, said Carlson.

"There's a fair amount of younger kids that come in for the herbal," she said. "Probably because it's social, delicious and you get to smoke without harmful effects."
Not a safe alternative

Jennifer O'Loughlin, professor of medicine at the University of Montreal and co-author of the study, said smoking hookah is not a healthy alternative to cigarettes.

The study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, showed about 23 per cent of 871 youth aged 18 to 24 reported smoking a water pipe at least once in the previous year. Most reported smoking only on rare occasions, but five per cent had used water pipes once or more in the past month.

"It's been confirmed that the smoke does contain harmful constituents that do contain nicotine, carbon monoxide and carcinogens," said O'Loughlin. "Compared to cigarettes water pipe smoke might also contain greater amounts of tar and heavy metals such as cobalt, chromium and lead."

Researchers have also linked the product to lung cancer and heart diseaseA.

Carlson said fruit-flavoured shisha is most popular, but other flavours include coffee, cola and Earl Grey.

Hookah smoke 'major public health threat'

Smoking tobacco from hookahs or water pipes has become an unhealthy habit among some young adults, Quebec researchers suggest.

Hookahs are large communal water pipes designed to burn fragrant blends of tobacco. Hookah smoking may evoke images of the Mideast, where it has been practised for centuries.

The study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, showed about 23 per cent of 871 youth aged 18 to 24 reported smoking a water pipe, also known as shishas, at least once in the previous year. Most reported smoking only on rare occasions, but five per cent had used water pipes one or more times in the past month.

"The popularity of water pipes may be due in part to perceptions that they are safer than cigarettes," warned senior investigator Jennifer O'Loughlin, a professor at the University of Montreal department of social and preventive medicine and a scientist at the University of Montreal Hospital Research Center.

"However, water pipe smoke contains nicotine, carbon monoxide, carcinogens and may contain greater amounts of tar and heavy metals than cigarette smoke."

In some places, laws aimed to keep bars and restaurants cigarette-free don't ban the aromatic smoke swirling from water pipes. P.O.V.:

Hookahs: Should they be permitted indoors?

"From a public health standpoint, we really do need to nip this in the bud before we've got a hookah lounge on every corner," says Pippa Beck, a policy analyst with the Non-Smokers Rights Association.

Beck notes that the city of Ottawa, where she is based, has issued at least 15 licences to restaurants or bars that offer hookahs. Tobacco content varies

Some of the products contain no tobacco, but it's impossible to tell without laboratory testing, Beck said. The labels on smoking materials are often minimal to non-existent and may be Arabic, she said.

Hookah use is also on the rise throughout the United States and elsewhere, said Dr. Wasim Maziak, an epidemiologist who studies tobacco addiction at the University of Memphis in Tennessee.

"It's still under the radar currently. But I think there's a kind of major awakening," Maziak says, pointing to the fact that the U.S. National Institutes of Health have started funding research into hookah use.

"This is spreading so fast.… People now understand it's really a major public health threat."

Student Sarah Bergman of Concordia University in Montreal said smoking hookah offers an illusion it's not bad for you.

"It's not like cigarettes at all," said Bergman, who described a sweet flavour from inhaling the smoke. "In a way, people want to do it more often, and they think it is better for them."

"Water pipe users may represent an advantaged group of young people with the leisure time, resources, and opportunity to use water pipes. Evidence-based public health and policy interventions are required to equip the public to make informed decisions about water pipe use," the study's authors concluded.

Hookah users were more likely to report also using cigarettes, marijuana, illicit drugs and alcohol, the researchers found.

Soft-core porn still hot stuff on cable TV

There's one sector of the entertainment industry that has not been roiled by the Internet, the economy or ever-changing consumer tastes. Say hello to Hollywood's most stable business: Soft-core pornography.

The oft-mocked genre, which has given the world such memorable fare as "Witches of Breastwick" and "Tarzeena: Jiggle in the Jungle," is more visible — and valuable — than ever, even at a time when hard-core adult entertainment is easily accessible on every media device. Premium-cable TV networks such as HBO, Showtime and Cinemax — the channel nicknamed "Skin-emax" for its preponderance of sexy programming — continue to fill their late-night schedules with low-budget, nudity-filled films, and the adoption of video-on-demand and pay-per-view services has given soft-core content wider play. Several of the premium channels offer prominently displayed inventories of erotic entertainment via VOD, where there's no shortage of choices in the "After Hours" or "Midnight Movies" sections.

Soft-core porn "just keeps going, like a cockroach — you can't kill it," says Marc Greenberg, the 63-year-old founder of MRG Entertainment, the Santa Monica company that's one of the top producers of so-called "soft erotics," the industry term for toned-down pornography. MRG supplies between seven and 15 films a year to Showtime and a handful of movies to Cinemax, for whom it also produces "Co-Ed Confidential," a 13-episode, college-themed sex series that's now in its fourth season. "You're more likely to get your wife to watch my show — it's not so in-your-face," says Greenberg.

At the same time, premium channels have been upping the skin factor on their higher-profile, higher-brow series. Shows such as HBO's "True Blood," which debuts its third season next month, and Showtime's "The Tudors" and "Diary of a Call Girl" all showcase fairly graphic sex scenes that are often as explicit as what you would see in an R-rated movie in theaters. In one memorable scene from the first season of Showtime's Emmy-nominated " Californication," which stars David Duchovny as a lothario novelist living in Venice, his character engages in a ménage à trois with his agent, played by Evan Handler, and a beautiful 20-something woman. The romp climaxes just as their ex-wives walk in the door.

It's no secret, of course, that sex sells, and cheesy erotic content has been a constant on cable TV since its early days, long before premium networks expanded into multichannel behemoths. Showtime, for example, now offers eight channels on its "multiplex" package, including Showtime Women, a female-targeted channel that does not show soft porn. All of the premium channels will air films that are rated X by the Motion Picture Assn. of America, but they also adhere to certain self-imposed guidelines when it comes to sexy material. In general, cable channels won't show full male frontal nudity or extended close-up shots of female private parts. "Our producers know where the lines are," says Susan Ennis, executive vice-president of program planning for HBO Networks, which owns Cinemax. Erotic entertainment "is a staple of [Cinemax's] brand, it's in our DNA, we're not running away from it," Ennis says.. Cinemax's volume of soft porn has been steady for the last five years, and it continues to roll out one new sex-themed series per quarter, with the most recent being the second season of "Zane's Sex Chronicles," based on a bestselling series of erotic short stories written by Zane, the pen name of a female African American author from the Washington, D.C., area. Across all platforms, the series, which follows the romantic adventures of a group of professional women, attracts about 1.4 million viewers per episode, according to the network, which has nearly 12 million subscribers. "I don't think that sexuality should be separated from the rest of life — it can be fun, it can be painful, it can be kinky and it can be entertaining in a tasteful way," says the 43-year-old author known as Zane, who writes all the scripts for the series and is its executive producer. Adds Ennis: "We know our viewers embrace this kind of content." That content is particularly conspicuous now on VOD, which has unshackled soft-core from the boundaries of late-night. On Cinemax, erotic films and shows — what it calls "After Dark" content — make up just 8% of the channel's over-the-air schedule. But when it comes to VOD, nearly 20% of Cinemax's inventory is devoted to erotic entertainment, and 15% of the channel's overall on-demand orders are for "After Dark" programs. Ironically, the proliferation of hard-core porn in recent years seems to have made the softer stuff more appealing — or at least more palatable — to a wider audience, particularly among women, according to industry observers. While women who are now in their 20s and 30s have grown up in an era when adult entertainment has become increasingly mainstream and sex tapes helped launch the careers of celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton, many of them are still uncomfortable watching all-out porn, even if it's in the company of a partner. In contrast to hard-core pornography, which depicts full male nudity and actual sex, soft-core sex is more simulated than real, and the films usually attempt to have coherent storylines and dialogue. Many of the soft-core TV series also center around a female character, such as the madam in "Beverly Hills Bordello," a longtime cable-TV staple, or the pair of sisters — one a recent college graduate, the other an erotic model — who are the leads in "Life on Top," a Cinemax series that debuted last year. But while soft-core content may be less graphic than a Jenna Jameson film, it does not aspire to high art. "There's nothing creative about this — you're going to see sex in the first minute and you're going to see sex every seven or eight minutes after that," says Greenberg.

Boomers: Is The Economy Ruining Your Sex Life?

Layoffs, unemployment and economic uncertainty can affect middle-aged and older Americans in many ways. Have you noticed that your sex life has taken a turn for the worse? We'd love to hear from you for a future story. An ABCNews.com reporter may contact you.

Kendra Wilkinson fights sex tape release

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Stomach Cancer increasing in surprising number in Young White Adults

According to the National Cancer Institute Researchers and colleagues have examined new cancer in young white adults, while rates in all other American adults have declined and the chances for developing stomach cancer are still very low in young adults while all rates in all other American adults have declined. There were 39,003 cases detected in a surveillance program that covers about one fourth of the U. S population. It focused on lowerstomach cancer not cancer of the upper stomach, which has been linked with gastric reflux.

A senior investigator at he U. S National Cancer Institute said "We confirmed what had been previously understood about gastric cancer, that in most groups it has been declining over the last 30 years". Dr. Jaffer A. Ajani, an oncologist in the Department Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology at the University of Texas M. D Anderson Cancer Center and co author of an accompanying journal editorial said, "One possibility is that these are Eastern Europeans, who have come to the United States. Eastern Europeans have gastric cancer in different places. My personal opinion is that it is just among Eastern Europeans". A strategic director for cancer occurrence at the American Cancer Society said, "This probably needs further investigation. Anything that occurs in the younger age group indicates a burden in the future. So, it is important to find out what is contributing to this increase so you can avert the future cancer burden."

In U. S men, stomach cancer is among the top 10 most common cancers in blacks, Asian Americans, Hispanics and American Indians and it's also among the most common cancers in Asian American women. It may be noted that the report is published in the May 5 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

TV Ratings: 'Dancing,' 'House' lead ABC, FOX Monday split

"Dancing with the Stars" delivered another strong Monday to push ABC to a win overall, while "House" (and a two-hour primetime programming window) pushed FOX to another demo win.

Meanwhile, "Chuck" dropped against increased competition, while a special 9 p.m. airing of "Big Bang Theory" suggested that the comedy isn't quite ready to lose its "Two and a Half Men" lead-in just yet.

Among adults 18-49, FOX averaged a 3.4 for the night, nipping the 3.3 rating for ABC and the 3.2 rating for CBS in the key demographic. NBC wasn't part of the logjam, finishing fourth with a 1.6 rating, beating the 0.9 rating for The CW.

Overall, ABC dominated with an estimated 15.02 million viewers and a 9.6 rating/15 share. CBS' 5.9/9 was a distant second, with FOX's 5.7/9 in a close third. NBC's 3.5/6 was fourth, still comfortably ahead of the 1.3/2 for The CW.

In the 8 p.m. hour, ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" ruled with an 11.8/19 and tied for first in the demo with a 3.8 rating. FOX's "House" was second overall with a 6.0/10 and tied for first in the demo. CBS' "How I Met Your Mother" and "Rules of Engagement" were third with a 4.7/7, beating the 3.2/5 for "Chuck," which also fell to a 1.9 demo rating. The CW's "One Tree Hill" was fifth, steady from last week.

At 9 p.m. "Dancing with the Stars" (13.3/20 and a 4.5 demo) and "Romantically Challenged" (6.8/11 and a 2.5 rating) were first overall. CBS' new "Big Bang Theory" and a "Big Bang Theory" repeat finished second overall with a 6.7/10 and won the demo with a 4.1 rating. FOX's "24" had a 5.4/8 for third. A repeat of "Law & Order" was fourth for NBC. The CW's "Gossip Girl" had a 1.2/2 for fifth.

Overall, "Castle" won the 10 p.m. hour with a 7.0/12, beating the 6.3/11 for CBS' "CSI: Miami," though CBS' procedural had a slim advantage in the 18-49 demo. NBC's new "Law & Order" was well back in third.