According to reports, Toyota’s chief test driver, 67-year-old Hiromu Naruse, has died in a crash on highway 410 near the famed Nürburgring race track in Germany. He was driving the recently spied Lexus LFA Nürburgring Edition (above) at the time of the accident, and reports say he veered into oncoming traffic and collided head-on with two others test drivers in a BMW. The two BMW test drivers survived the crash, though one is reportedly still in critical condition. German video of the crash scene after the accident took place can be viewed below. Police are investigating the crash and have yet to determine its cause.

Hiromu Naruse was heavily involved with the development of the Lexus LFA he was driving, along with many other past sports cars from Toyota’s history since he joined the company in 1963. Enthusiasts today call him the “Godfather of the LFA,” though he was involved in the development of sports cars for Toyota going as far back as the storied 2000GT from the late 1960s. The prototype of a special edition version of the LFA that he was driving when the accident occurred was reportedly worth 1.5 million euro.

The research isn’t the first to find such a link, said Dr. Irwin Goldstein, director of sexual medicine at Alvarado Hospital in San Diego and a clinical professor of surgery at the University of California, San Diego. He has found the same link in his own research.

The new study, he said, is “more evidence that when you fool around with hormones, you fool around with your sex life.“

The study is published in the current issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine; Goldstein is the journal’s editor-in-chief.

“In general, hormonal contraceptives are well-tolerated and are the best noninvasive method to prevent pregnancy,” said study co-author Dr. Harald Seeger, a researcher at University Hospital Tuebingen in Germany.

He stressed that the study found a link, not cause-and-effect, and that many other factors come into play that can contribute to sexual problems.

The German research team evaluated 1,086 women, most in a stable relationship with the same partner for six months before answering questions about their sexual functioning and their contraceptive practices.

Using a standard index to measure female sexual function, the researchers found that nearly 33 percent of the women were at risk for female sexual dysfunction. The problems involved a range of factors, such as lack of orgasm, desire, satisfaction, arousal and lubrication.

Most of the women (87 percent) had used contraceptives in the past six months, and more than 97 percent had been sexually active in the past four weeks.

Oral contraceptives were the most popular, used by 69.5 percent of the women, followed by condoms (22.5 percent) and the vaginal contraceptive ring (7.3 percent). Others used a contraceptive implant, intrauterine methods, fertility awareness or other methods.

The researchers then zeroed in on the type of contraception and sexual functioning, excluding 11 women who used more than one type.

Women using non-hormonal contraceptives (such as condoms) were at lowest risk for sexual dysfunction. At next lowest risk were those using no birth control, the study authors found. At highest risk were those using non-oral hormonal contraception, followed by those using oral hormonal contraceptives.

When the researchers looked just at the desire and arousal parameters, both hormonal groups were at highest risk.

“Our data show that hormonal contraception in particular was associated with lower desire and arousal scores when compared with other contraceptives,” the authors wrote.

Researchers can’t explain the link, but one possibility is that oral contraceptives have been found to reduce circulating levels of androgens, perhaps leading to low circulating levels of testosterone, needed to trigger desire.

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Other factors found to affect sexual functioning, the researchers noted, included stress, which was linked with lower desire, and relationship stability, which was linked with higher orgasm scores but lower desire, at least in the short-term.

Denise Bradley, a spokeswoman for Teva Pharmaceuticals, which makes oral contraceptives, said the company had no comment.

Goldstein said the new research points to the need for physicians to warn their patients about the possibility of a sexual dysfunction risk with contraceptive use. “From my point of view, this is more evidence that physicians should spend one extra minute (to tell patients), ‘If you want contraception and want to use the oral pill, it may affect your sexual functioning.‘”

Teachers, principals, and tattletales: if you see a student squinting and fixated on a beverage during an exam…think twice.

While this video is fantastically creative, it is also questionable in many ways. The time wasted in Photoshop modifying the Coke label and gluing it to the bottle would be all the time needed to actually learn the darn material.

A promotional campaign took place in Sydney, Australia to mark the opening of a new clothing label. However, they made their debut in the most interesting and peculiar way.

Using a 400 pound block of ice with $1,000 Australian dollars frozen within it and placing it in the middle of Martin Place, people were invited to icepick it to their heart’s content for the cash.

Looking through the gallery of this event, this ice block of cash successfully attracted a lot attention and hardworking ice-pickers. Aside from being a creative debut, they also placed a different meaning to the phrase, “cold, hard cash.”

Bryan Berg broke the Guinness World Record for the World’s Tallest House of Freestanding Playing Cards in 1992 at the age of seventeen, with a tower fourteen feet, six inches tall. He has been commissioned to break his own record more than ten times. His latest structure in the category is over twenty-five feet tall. In 2004, Guinness created a new record category for the World’s Largest House of Cards to further recognize Berg’s work. He continues to hold both records, which require that the builder use no tape, glue, or tricks in his constructions. Touring regularly, Berg has stacked cards in virtually every major US and Canadian city, Europe, and Asia.

Berg was first inspired by his card-player grandfather to begin stacking cards, and is entirely self-taught in all of the techniques he uses today. Berg holds a Professional Degree in Architecture from Iowa State University, where he also served as faculty. He earned his Masters Degree in Design Studies from Harvard University.