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New contest for Gods and Heroes offering a toga getaway
To look at most of the screenshots for Gods and Heroes, you might think that life in ancient Rome was nothing but gladiators fighting mythical monsters and one another. But if you went to college (or watched Animal House at some point), the first element of Roman culture that springs to mind is the toga. Heatwave Interactive is capitalizing on just that by offering fans a chance to spend a weekend in Las Vegas with all expenses paid -- just for wearing a toga. Running until June 6th, the contest asks for players to don a toga, upload a photograph to the official site, and then take part in the voting to determine who looks best in a tastefully arranged bedsheet. The full rules are naturally a bit more elaborate than that for legal reasons, but the important point is that you can get a free trip just for dressing up in a ridiculous but appropriate outfit. That's something any Gods and Heroes fan can get behind.
Satiety's transoral TOGa stomach stapling procedure
Satiety, Inc. has finally found the funding it needs to push forward with a radical new approach to assisting the obese, as it has rounded up $30 million in financing from a number of venture capitalists who dug the idea. Essentially, the TOGa procedure is a "completely transoral process designed to achieve similar weight loss to restrictive surgeries," and it also claims to be less invasive, require less recovery time, and should create a "dramatically reduced amount of complications." In this system, the physician would "introduce a stapling device transorally and create a restrictive pouch at the entry of the stomach," and moreover, it's considered "non-surgical" in nature, endoscopic, and can be performed by properly trained bariatric surgeons, general endoscopic surgeons, and gastroenterologists. Currently, the firm is moving forward with plans to get the procedure approved by the FDA, and while there's no telling how long such a convoluted process will take, stomach stapling could see an entirely different approach in the years to come if this proves effective.[Via CNET]
