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.