Painting roofs white and using light-coloured materials to surface roads and pavements would not only make cities cooler in summer, it would save the same amount of carbon as taking all the cars in the world off the roads for 50 years, a study has found.

One of the simplest, yet most effective, ways of engineering the urban environment to cope with global warming is to increase the reflectivity of the cityscape so that more of the incoming sunlight is directed back into space, scientists said.

Read more here [via The Independent]

Science suggests that Florence Colgate just might be.

The 18-year-old student is blessed with what is described as the perfect face. It matches an international blueprint for the optimum ratio between eyes, mouth, forehead and chin, endowing her with flawless proportions.

Florence, who has a Saturday job in a seaside chip shop in between studying for her A-levels, beat 8,000 entrants to win the title. Contestants were judged without make-up and were barred entry if they had had plastic surgery or chemical enhancement.

Read more here [via The Daily Mail]

While studies have long shown the role that birth order plays in a person’s personality, new research suggests it also helps shape individuals’ financial makeup.

A study by CouponCabin confirmed birth order theorist Alfred Adler’s beliefs that firstborns are likely to be power-hungry conservatives, highly responsible and organized, as they’ve been expected to lead by example during their formative years.

Read more here (via The Huffington Post)

There was a time when having a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree meant you’d be guaranteed a spot in the upper echelons of a company. But these days many of the world’s wealthiest people — including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg — are university dropouts and MBAs seem to have lost their luster.

(more…)

Yes, you heard right. Now you can inhale your coffee. Well, sort of.

According to The Associated Press, a Harvard scientist has created a new product  called Aeroshot that allows you to breath in your daily dose of caffeine. The small canisters carry 4-6 puffs of caffeinated powder, giving you about as much caffeine as a cup of coffee.

Several politicians have condemned the product, with New York Senator Charles Schumer calling it ‘nothing more than a club drug’ and warning the public of the product’s ability to enhance the user’s capacity for alcohol consumption.

Source: The Associated Press

Tell us, what do you think of this product? Would you try it? Share your thoughts with us by commenting below.

Getting hitched before you’re legal could up your chances of developing a mental disorder later on – a new study has revealed.

According to Time Magazine, the psychology journal Pedriatrics recently published a study that has linked early marriage to problems such as depression, bipolar disorder and substance abuse, among others.

Read the full story here.

For over ten years, Harvard professor Teresa Amabile and researcher Steven Kramer collected and analysed over 12 000 diary entries from 238 professionals in seven different fields. An analysis of their study features in the article “Do Happier People Work Harder?” – which was published in The New York Times over the weekend.

Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer – The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which has been polling over 1,000 adults every day since January 2008, shows that Americans now feel worse about their jobs — and work environments — than ever before. People of all ages, and across income levels, are unhappy with their supervisors, apathetic about their organizations and detached from what they do. And there’s no reason to think things will soon improve.       

Employee engagement may seem like a frill in a downturn economy. But it can make a big difference in a company’s survival. In a 2010 study, James K. Harter and colleagues found that lower job satisfaction foreshadowed poorer bottom-line performance. Gallup estimates the cost of America’s disengagement crisis at a staggering $300 billion in lost productivity annually. When people don’t care about their jobs or their employers, they don’t show up consistently, they produce less, or their work quality suffers. 

Read the full article here (via The New York Times)

How does the brain create the experience of joy and desire?

That’s the subject of David Linden’s new book, The Compass of Pleasure. A professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Linden studies memory. But here, he explores the basis of craving, addiction and satisfaction.

Read the full story here (via Time Magazine)

Bisexual men won’t likely be surprised — or feel particularly validated — to learn that a new scientific study confirms that their sexual attraction to both men and women is real.

For the new study, researchers at Northwestern University recruited a group of 100 Chicago-area men, identifying as heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual in roughly equal numbers.

Read the rest of this article here (via Time Magazine)

Jane Fonda was right! Elderly women really do age better if they have active sex lives

Elderly women with active sex lives are healthier, happier and cope better with ageing, reseachers have discovered.

Read the full story here (via The Telegraph)

Sexual relations between ancient humans and their evolutionary cousins are critical for our modern immune systems, researchers report in Science journal.

Mating with Neanderthals and another ancient group called Denisovans introduced genes that help us cope with viruses to this day, they conclude.

Read the full story here (via BBC News)

An international team of astronomers, led by Australia’s Swinburne University of Technology professor Matthew Bailes, has discovered a planet made of diamond crystals, in our own Milky Way galaxy.

Read the full story here (via Wired.com)

New research suggests that taking medicine for ear infections might be related to a reckless appetite.

Antibiotics have done wonders for extending human life by killing off deadly pathogens. But they target “a particular disease the way a nuclear bomb targets a criminal, causing much collateral damage,” says Karen Kaplan in the Los Angeles Times.

Read the full story here (via The Week)

Do you eat when you’re stressed? This new study knows why.

A new Canadian study has pinpointed how stress can temporarily rewire the nerve cells in the brain to ramp up hunger pangs. The findings finally put some science behind what people have thought for years.

Read the full story here (via The Globe and Mail)

Conventional wisdom may have men favoring blondes, but a new UK study shows that actually men prefer brunettes.

As reported by the Daily Mail, social networking site Badoo polled 2,000 British men, asking them the features they found most attractive in women.

Read the full story here (via the Huffington Post)

If you’re a chap looking for a fling, then dispense with the romance and the clever chat-up lines and get to the point.

Women likely to be interested in such an encounter apparently respond better to men with a direct “caveman” approach, say
scientists.

Read the full story here (via IOL)

Is it possible to work out which living athlete is the best?

Mathematician Rob Eastaway, co-author of The Hidden Mathematics of Sport, investigates.

Read the rest of this article here (via BBC News)

In a finding suggesting powerful psychiatric benefits for a component of fish oil, a study published Wednesday has linked military suicides to low levels of docosahexaenoic acid and found that service personnel with higher levels of DHA in their blood were less likely to take their own lives.

Read the rest of this article here (via The Week)

Why does one person die younger and another survive to old age?

Lifestyle and genetic factors play a role, but argues Prof David Barker, a better predictor of future health is our birthweight and what it tells us about our development in the womb.

Heart disease, cancer, diabetes. These are some of the chronic diseases that determine lifespan.

Read the rest of this article here (via BBC News)

Growing up starved of calories may give you a higher risk of heart disease 50 years on, research suggests.

Researchers in The Netherlands tracked the heart health of Dutch women who lived through the famine at the end of World War II. Those living on rations of 400-800 calories a day had a 27% higher risk of heart disease in later life.

Read the rest of this article here (via BBC News)