Kissing Feels So Pleasurable Due To Hormone Surge, Find Scientists

From The Telegraph:

The reason that kissing feels so pleasurable is that sparks a surge of hormones in our brains, according to new research.

Couples who share a passionate kiss this Valentine's Day will enjoy sensations of relaxation and excitement because of a complex series of chemical processes, as well as their love for their partners.

The study showed that women need more than just a kiss to experience the same chemical high as men - with additional features such as a romantic atmosphere of dimmed lights and mood music also required.

Wendy Hill, professor of psychology at Lafayette College, Pennsylvania began the research to find out why the mundane physical activity of rubbing lips can elicit such a gratifying emotional response.

Her team tested the levels of two hormones, cortisol and oxytocin, in 15 couples before and after holding hands and kissing.

They found that kissing reduced the levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, in both sexes. But levels of oxytocin, a hormone linked to social bonding that they expected to be boosted by kissing, only rose among the men.

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New Science Could Defeat Food Crises

Wheat Fields (Image from Cutting Edge News)

From The Guardian:

Breakthroughs in microscopic engineering could boost shelf life of food and increase crop yields.

A controversial scientific revolution that could give packaged foods a dramatically longer shelf life and boost crop growth has "real potential" to help feed a fast-growing world, according to environment secretary Hilary Benn.

New developments in nanotechnology, engineering carried out at a microscopic level, could lead to plastic packaging designed to stop food and drink spoiling by killing bacteria or preventing oxygen getting through the container.

The technology could also be used to enrich food with supplements and preserve vitamins that would otherwise be destroyed as food aged. Farmers could also use it to ensure the slow release of fertilisers at the right time for crops, and to detect threats from pests or pollutants. The technology is, however, highly controversial, with green campaigners arguing that its effects on human health are unknown.

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The Look Of Love? Women Are Attracted To Men With Big Pupils, Says Study

Was Jennifer Aniston's character Beth in the film He's Just Not That Into You attracted to her boyfriend Neil, played by Ben Affleck, because of his big pupils?

From The Daily Mail:

Researchers have discovered what women are really thinking when they look into a man’s eyes – and it is all about the size of their...pupils.

Women become attracted to men with large pupils just as they are approaching their most fertile time of the month, the study at Edinburgh University found.

Scientists suggest that it may be because it indicates that the man is sexually interested in them and available for mating. Pupil size made no significant difference for the rest of the menstrual cycle.

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Global Warming Studies Often Depend On Average Citizens

Photo: From Care Global Warming.

From McClatchy:

WASHINGTON — It has to do with brown-headed cowbirds and clear-cut forests, lilacs and wildfires, vineyards in the Rhine Valley, marmots, dandelions, tadpoles, cherry trees around the Tidal Basin in Washington and musty old records stuffed in shoe boxes in people's closets and stacked on museum shelves.

As scientists track global warming, they're using sometimes centuries-old data to assess its impact on plants, animals, insects, fish, reptiles and amphibians. Increasingly, they're discovering that it can take only one seemingly insignificant change to disrupt an entire ecosystem.

"People talk about a 1- or 2-degree rise in temperature and it's inconsequential to us. Who cares?" said Greg Jones, an environmental studies professor at Southern Oregon University who's been studying wine grapes. "But in an ecosystem it can have dramatic effects."

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America’s Wind Corridor

New trade: A Clipper crew assembles the hub of a wind turbine in an Iowa factory
that formerly built printing presses. (Mark Clayton)

From The Christian Science Monitor:

From Minnesota to Texas, wind power sweeps new jobs into old-tech towns.

Cedar Rapids and Estherville, Iowa

Hundreds of workers lost their jobs after the Rockwell-Goss printing press factory closed here in Cedar Rapids in 2001. The hulking empty shell sat idle on the outskirts of the city for four years.

But that was before wind power blew into town, bringing thousands of clean-tech manufacturing jobs to Iowa and the Midwest.

In many cases, the new industry is setting up shop in defunct heavy manufacturing plants, bringing new economic life and vitality to old settings.

Bob Loyd, who once oversaw crews manufacturing the last printing presses to leave the old Rockwell-Goss factory, now manages workers assembling the newest generation of giant wind turbines in the same building.

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Curing Baldness Could Be A Step To Organ Regeneration

Deep roots. For a hair follicle to begin a new phase of growth, an elusive group of cells called the hair germ (bright red) must be activated. This progression of images shows that the hair germ begins proliferating (green) before other cells do, suggesting a two-step mechanism.

From The Next Big Future:

Research from Rockefeller University reveals that a structure at the base of each strand of hair, the hair follicle, uses a two-step mechanism to activate its stem cells and order them to divide. The mechanism provides insights into how repositories of stem cells may be organized in other body tissues for the purpose of supporting organ regeneration.

So understanding and fixing the stem cells and the replenishment of stem cells in hair follicles could lead to a baldness cure and also to human regeneration of organs.

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Large Hadron Collider To Be Re-Started Later This Year

At Cern, the Large Hadron Collider could recreate conditions that last prevailed when the universe was less than a trillionth of a second old. Above is one of the collider's massive particle detectors, called the Compact Muon Solenoid. Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times

From The Telegraph:

Scientists are expected to make a decision within days on when the Large Hadron Collider, the broken "Big Bang" machine, will be re-started.

The LHC suffered a catastrophic malfunction soon after being switched on last September amid a fanfare of publicity.

Officials and scientists from the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which built the £4billion device, have been in talks this week about when to re-start it.

They have also discussed what caused the LHC to grind to a halt and how to prevent similar incidents happening in the future.

CERN have now said that they hope the machine will be up and running in time to deliver the first batch of data for experts to begin experiments by the end of the year.

A final decision on the exact date to switch it back on is expected following a meeting on Monday.

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Nearly A Billion People Go Hungry Every Day – Can GM Crops Help Feed Them?

A protester vandalises a GM crop trial. Qualms about GM food may be a luxury Africa can ill afford. Photograph: Barry Batchelor/PA

From The Guardian:

Leading scientists met last night to debate whether genetically modified crops can feed the world's hungry. The issue, it seems, is as divisive as ever

The Science Museum in London is running an exhibition until the end of May called Future Foods. It attempts to give a balanced view of the pros and cons of genetically modified crops, which are back on the agenda in the light of fears over a major food crisis. It does a good job too.

As part of the exhibition, the museum organised a debate at the Dana Centre to give the public a chance to debate GM crops and the food crisis with some key scientists. I chaired the event and picked up on a few issues I thought might be worth sharing.

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Study: How Money Can Buy Happiness

From Live Science:

You've heard many times that money can't buy happiness. That probably never stopped you from shopping. But a new study suggests you might want to spend more on doing things and less on stuff.

Buying life experiences rather than material possessions leads to greater happiness for both the consumer and those around them, researchers announced today at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

A meal out or tickets to the theater result in increased well-being because they satisfy higher order needs, specifically the need for social connectedness and vitality — a feeling of being alive, the researchers say.

"These findings support an extension of basic need theory, where purchases that increase psychological need satisfaction will produce the greatest well-being," said Ryan Howell, assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University.

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"Noah's Flood" Not Rooted In Reality, After All?

Some believe that Noah's Ark came to rest on Turkey's Mount Ararat, above. But the ancient flood that some scientists think gave rise to the Noah story may not have been quite so biblical in proportion, a January 2009 study says. Photograph by Melik Baghdasaryan/AP/Photolur

From National Geographic:

The ancient flood that some scientists think gave rise to the Noah story may not have been quite so biblical in proportion, a new study says.

Researchers generally agree that, during a warming period about 9,400 years ago, an onrush of seawater from the Mediterranean spurred a connection with the Black Sea, then a largely freshwater lake. That flood turned the lake into a rapidly rising sea.

A previous theory said the Black Sea rose up to 195 feet (60 meters), possibly burying villages and spawning the tale of Noah's flood and other inundation folklore.

But the new study—largely focused on relatively undisturbed underwater fossils—suggests a rise of no more than 30 feet (10 meters).

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Neanderthal Genome To Be Unveiled

Image: Neanderthals are the closest hominid relatives of modern humans. The two species co-existed in Europe and western Asia as late as 30,000 years ago. (American Museum of Natural History). (Image from Berkley Lab)

From Nature:

Draft sequence opens window on human relatives.

The entire genome of a 38,000-year-old Neanderthal has been sequenced by a team of scientists in Germany. The group is already extracting DNA from other ancient Neanderthal bones and hopes that the genomes will allow an unprecedented comparison between modern humans and their closest evolutionary relative.

The three-year project, which cost about €5 million (US$6.4 million), was carried out at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. Project leader Svante Pääbo will announce the results of the preliminary genomic analysis at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Chicago, Illinois, which starts on 12 February.

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Are We Bringing Our Germs to Mars?

From Time Magazine:

Star Trek fans know it as the Prime Directive: that there should be no interference with the internal affairs of other civilizations. (Given the frequency with which captains Kirk, Picard, et. al., violate it, however, the Prime Directive seems more like a Prime Suggestion.) Since human beings have yet to explore very far beyond Earth, pondering an interplanetary noninterference policy of our own may seem a little premature — at least until we've mastered warp drives and phasers.

But in fact, such a directive already exists in some form — the international Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which governs the legal framework for activities in space. Best known for banning governments from putting nuclear weapons into orbit, the treaty also requires space-faring nations to avoid "harmful contamination" of other worlds while exploring the solar system. Human beings have yet to set foot on other planets, so the risk today comes from bacteria that can hitch a ride on unmanned spacecraft like NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander, which arrived on the red planet's surface last May.

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Plumbing The Planet: The 5 Biggest Projects Taking On The World's Water Supply

An Israeli employee inspects membranes that extract salt from the water at Ashkelon's seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) plant, south of Tel Aviv. Ashkelon's desalination plant is one the biggest in the world. (Photograph by David Buimovitch/AFP/Getty Images)

From Popular Mechanics:

As nations and regions all over the globe face too much polluted water and too little fresh water, they are turning to some of the largest, most technologically complex projects the world has ever seen. Here, we have compiled five of the biggest and most ambitious. But are they big enough to keep the taps flowing?

The dire statistics are well-known, but deserve repeating: One in six people in the world live without regular access to clean water, according to the United Nations, and one in three lacks access to decent sanitation. Even countries with good water supplies—like the U.S.—will experience trouble sustaining them in the near future, as panelists discussed at the water roundtable PM hosted last fall.

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TED: Change The World With $100,000

From CBS News:

CBS Technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg is reporting from the TED conference in Long Beach, Calif.

The concept is simple; it's the execution that requires global collaboration and commitment. Not to mention some serious cash. Along those lines, TED prizes are an award of $100,000 given to a select group of recipients looking to change the world with one idea or "wish." They can use the money as they choose, and at a ceremony here Thursday night the three winners expressed their hopes for the future.

Jill Tarter, founder of SETI or the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Life, encouraged TED attendees and others to imagine ways that every "earthling" could contribute to a growing database of life beyond our planet or our "cosmic company." In real terms, Tarter wants kids to be more involved in the experience of searching or studying the universe, and improve the way information from space is stored and shared with astronomers. Her announcement was preceded by a taped introduction from Sir Richard Branson, who is actively pursuing commercial space travel through his Virgin Galactic project.

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Top 5 Most Extreme Exoplanets

From Wired Science:

Searching for planets beyond our solar system is a bit like playing Goldilocks — we keep looking for that one that will be just right to host life. While astronomers haven't found a perfect fit yet, they have found plenty that are too big, too hot, too cold, too dense, too close to their star, or too distant.

The first exoplanet discovery was in 1988, though it was controversial at the time and wasn't officially confirmed until 2003. Over the years, more than 330 extrasolar planets have been found, nearly all of them using indirect methods such as detecting the wobble of a star due to the gravitational pull of an orbiting planet or the slight dimming of the star's light as a planet passes in front of it.

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Welcome To Cyber-London (But You Can Only Visit The Posh Bits)

The virtual recreation of London includes Big Ben
though curiously not the Houses of Parliament

From The Daily Mail:

A virtual recreation of London is attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors every day.

An online version of the capital, complete with Big Ben and Marble Arch, is featured on the 3D virtual world website Second Life.

The online city boasts five areas of London - Mayfair, Kensington, Chelsea, Westminster and Hyde Park. All of which are known for the high price of their property and exclusive eateries.

Users who sign up free of charge can create an avatar of themselves, and can walk or fly around while interacting with other users via text or speech.

From today, it will be available from the home page on Second Life, which was set up in 2003 and now has two million avatars.

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Key Insights Into How New Species Emerge

A female apple maggot fly, Rhagoletis pomonella, implants an egg into an apple. Wasps that attack the flies and eat their larvae appear to be changing on a genetic level in the same way that the flies themselves appear to be changing genetically. (Credit: Rob Oakleaf)

From Science Digest:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 6, 2009) — A team of researchers are reporting the ongoing emergence of a new species of fruit fly--and the sequential development of a new species of wasp--in the February 6 issue of the journal Science.

Jeff Feder, a University of Notre Dame biologist, and his colleagues say the introduction of apples to America almost 400 years ago ultimately may have changed the behavior of a fruit fly, leading to its modification and the subsequent modification of a parasitic wasp that feeds on it.

The result is a chain reaction of biodiversity where the modification of one species triggers the sequential modification of a second, dependent species.

"It's a nice demonstration of how the initial speciation of one organism opens up an opportunity for another species in the ecosystem to speciate in kind," said Feder. "Biodiversity in essence is the source for new biodiversity."

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Man Runs 7 Marathons In 5 Days

Photo: Richard Donovan in action in the Himalayan 100 mile race. From RTE.

From Live Science:

Richard Donovan, a 42-year-old from Ireland, is as close to being the real Forrest Gump as anyone.

Running to raise money for a charity called Goal, which works to ease suffering in Darfur, Donovan ran seven marathons on seven continents. If you know your continents, you know that's a challenge. More: He did it in 5 days.

The order of Donovan's insanity, which began Jan. 31:

* Antarctica
* Cape Town, South Africa
* Dubai
* London
* Toronto
* Santiago, Chile
* Sydney, Australia

"What he did was staggering, quite remarkable," John O'Shea, the charity's founder and chief executive, told the news agency AFP.

To prove he's human, Donovan took airline flights between destinations. To keep it real, he flew coach.

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My Comment: As someone who has run a few marathons in his life .... I am impressed.

Reading This Will Change Your Brain

Jeff Sherman / Taxi-Getty Images

From Newsweek:

A leading neuroscientist says processing digital information can rewire your circuits. But is it evolution?

Is technology changing our brains? A new study by UCLA neuroscientist Gary Small adds to a growing body of research that says it is. And according to Small's new book, "iBRAIN: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind," a dramatic shift in how we gather information and communicate with one another has touched off an era of rapid evolution that may ultimately change the human brain as we know it. "Perhaps not since early man first discovered how to use a tool has the human brain been affected so quickly and so dramatically," he writes. "As the brain evolves and shifts its focus towards new technological skills, it drifts away from fundamental social skills."

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How You Can Tell A Person's Class: The Wealthy Fidget, Yawn And Generally Appear Rude, Say Researchers

Photo: Body language: Those from wealthier backgrounds tend to appear more distracted than their less well off counterparts

From The Daily Mail:

Fidgeting, yawning and doodling have long been equated with boredom.

But if the person you're speaking to isn't paying attention, they may be rich rather than rude, a study has revealed.

It found that posh people fidget more - making it possible to tell a person's social class by their body language.

Researchers said those born into privilege may feel less of a need to make a good impression and so are more inclined to fidget when talking to other people.

In contrast, their poorer counterparts are anxious to make a good impression and so are more attentive.

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