Champagne fizzles out if served with a splash! For best results, tilt glass and pour.

Not the best way to pour champagne.
If you want to enjoy champagne to the full, pour it out as you would a beer.
Sommeliers and connoisseurs may find the suggestion hard to swallow, but the evidence published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry1 seems irrefutable. Pouring champagne into a tilted glass helps it to retain the dissolved gas that is vital for the gustatory experience, say Gérard Liger-Belair and his colleagues at the University of Reims in France.
The French team compared the amount of dissolved carbon dioxide in a fresh flute of champagne poured the traditional way — splashing it into a vertical glass — with that after pouring along the inside of a tilted glass, as one does with beer to avoid giving it too much frothy 'head'. The researchers found that champagne served chilled (at 4 °C) contains about twice as much dissolved CO2 using the beer-like method.
A typical 75-cubic-centimetre bottle of champagne contains five litres of dissolved CO2. When uncorked, the release of pressure means that the liquid becomes supersaturated with the gas, which then begins to escape as bubbles. These contribute to the pleasure of drinking champagne in several ways: they give it a lively appearance, release aromas (the 'nose'), produce the stimulating oral sensation of collapsing bubbles, and create sharp tang owing to the conversion of CO2 to carbonic acid inside the mouth.
"CO2 has a strong effect on the sensory experience and flavour of champagne," says Susan Ebeler, an analytical chemist and oenologist at the University of California, Davis. "Flavour is a multisensory experience, including aroma, taste, colour, mouth-feel and even auditory cues. CO2 can affect many of these senses."

Cold comfort

The slower a glass of bubbly releases its CO2, the longer it remains vivacious. Yet it turns out that most CO2 is lost not through bubbles bursting but by simple diffusion across the liquid surface. That is why flutes are used in the first place: the narrow neck reduces the surface area from which gas can escape.

Tilting the glass helps to keep more carbon dioxide in solution.

Pouring has a big influence on the gas content, both because the 'tongue' of liquid falling from the bottle to the glass exposes a large surface area and because turbulence and entrapment of air bubbles as the liquid hits the glass can speed up diffusion of CO2 out of solution.
The beer-pouring action should cut CO2 loss on both counts: the column of flowing liquid is less exposed to air, and the gentler impact reduces turbulence. Liger-Belair and his colleagues have confirmed this, using a standard method for measuring dissolved CO2 concentrations (based on the activity of the enzyme carbonic anhydrase, which reacts with carbonic acid), and using a method called thermography, which provides snapshots of CO2 levels in air based on how strongly it absorbs infrared radiation.
The researchers also show that both to maximize CO2 retention and to obtain the full benefits of the beer-pouring technique, the champagne must be chilled. When served at close to room temperature (18 °C), champagne served by the beer technique loses about two and a half times more CO2 than when chilled — almost as much as it loses when served in the traditional way at room temperature.
Liger-Belair and his team show that increased gas loss from warm champagne is mostly a result of two factors. First, the colder liquid is more viscous, and so gas-leaking turbulence is dampened more quickly. Second, CO2 molecules diffuse slowler in cold water, and so are unable to reach the surface as quickly.
Will champagne lovers be persuaded to alter their ways? "Champagne is a universe full of traditions," says Liger–Belair, who has worked as a consultant for the research department of Moët & Chandon. "But maybe champagne and science can mix to offer a better way of tasting," he says. He has at least one convert already. "Based on this paper, I probably will pour using the beer-like method now," says Ebeler.

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Basket-mouth

The law of the wild says kill only when you are hungry!

Photographer Michel Denis-Huot, who captured these amazing pictures on safari in Kenya 's Masai Mara in October last year, said he was astounded by what he saw:

"These three brothers (cheetahs) have been living together since they left their mother at about 18 months old,' he said. 'On the morning we saw them, they seemed not to be hungry, walking quickly but stopping sometimes to play together. 'At one point, they met a group of impala who ran away. But one youngster was not quick enough and the brothers caught it easily'".

These extraordinary scenes followed.

Pregnant IVF women more at risk of death

Researchers believe the increased threat may come from the body rejecting donated eggs or underlying health problems that may come to the fore during artificial conception.
They want increased vigilance so that the exact nature of the risk can be calculated.
"Women should be counselled and made aware of the risks they are taking and deaths should be properly reported," Professor Didi Braat at Radboud University in the Netherlands told the Sunday Times.
Prof Braat looked at the deaths between 1984 and 2008 in the Netherlands but believes they will apply to any developed country.
She found 17 women who died in pregnancy who had had IVF treatment – a death rate of 42.5 for every 100,000 pregnancies.
The death rate is 12.1 in every 100,000 for women who conceived naturally.
The rising age of mothers may be increasing the number of complications. Last year nearly 27,000 women over 40 gave birth, a rise of 50 per cent in a decade.
The research was published in the journal Human Reproduction.

Mum heads to Thailand in bid for daughter

A Melbourne woman is flying to Thailand to circumvent Australian guidelines which prevent families from determing the sex of of IVF babies.

The woman, known as Olivia, has three sons and says she has a strong desire to have a daughter.

"It's just something deep in me that I can't shake. I just feel this really strong wish to have a daughter to raise with my sons in a balanced family," she said.

"We conceived naturally for our three sons. This is not something we've taken on lightly."

Families are not allowed to choose the sex of a child through IVF in Australia under current guidelines and that is why she has to travel to Thailand for the procedure, which she estimates will cost about $15,000.

She says the treatment should be available in Australia.

"To me it's about providing choice but with parameters," she said.

"I don't think there is going to be a flood of women because this doesn't affect a lot of women."

Olivia says she is in touch with a number of other women who are also going overseas to obtain gender selection treatment.

Professor Loane Skene, from the University of Melbourne and a member of the Australian Health Ethics Committee, supports the plan.

She says Australians are allowed to travel to the United States to have a surrogate baby and does not see why Olivia and her family should be prevented from doing what they want to do.

However, Professor Skene does not think the law needs to be changed.

"I think many people are going to have sympathy for this sort of thing because it is such a strong human urge," she told ABC Radio's Jon Faine.

"It seems to me that the kerfuffle of going through IVF with all of the ups and downs and heartache of it all is not something that people are going to take on lightly quite apart from the cost."

Victorian Premier John Brumby has ruled out relaxing restrictions on access to IVF treatment in the state.

"There might be some particular cases where there is a medical case for saying that it's important to have a boy or a girl, but where it is non-medical, the Law Reform Commission and indeed the overwhelming body of advice on this suggests that it is not a requirement or a priority, in terms of changing policy," he said.

Jailed welfare cheat granted access to IVF treatment

A jailed 45-year-old welfare cheat has won the right to IVF fertility treatment while living as a serving prisoner in Australia.
Kimberley Castles, an inmate at minimum-security Tarrengower Prison, had claimed in the Supreme Court that her human rights were breached because she was refused access to fertility treatment. Debbie Mortimer, SC, had told the Supreme Court that significant psychological harm had been caused to Castles, who was having self-financed IVF treatment before she was jailed last November. Ms Mortimer told Justice Karin Emerton her client wrote to prison authorities within days of being incarcerated asking to continue IVF.

Castles sued the Justice Department, seeking an injunction and a declaration she could continue treatment.Ms Mortimer said conjugal visits were allowed at Tarrengower and that time was running out for Castles - who has age-based infertility - because she turns 46 in December and that is the cut-off date for treatment from Melbourne IVF.

Justice Emerton said: “(The relevant section of the Corrections Act) confers on Ms Castles the right to continue to undergo IVF treatment for her infertility, although not necessarily at the Melbourne IVF Clinic.“IVF treatment is both necessary for the preservation of Ms Castles’ reproductive health and reasonable given the commitment to the treatment that Ms Castles has already demonstrated, her willingness to pay for further treatment, her age and the fact that she will become ineligible for further treatment before she is released from prison.”Justice Emerton said the prisoner’s request for a permit that would enable her to leave the prison to undergo required treatment over a number of months could not be accommodated, so she would have to apply for permits on a “visit by visit basis”. Castles is serving an 18-month minimum term for fraudulently claiming almost $140,000 in single-parent welfare benefits between 1984 and 1998, and then claiming further benefits under a false name between 2000 and 2006.