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Coming Soon: Apples That Don't Rot?

YumSugar — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 04:00:03 -0800

Can you imagine leaving a piece of fruit in the crisper and being able to take a bite out of it after four months? That's the idea behind a new variety of apple that's being tweaked by researchers at Queensland Primary Industries. The RS103-130, as it's called, can stay fresh for at least 14 days without refrigeration, and keep in a refrigerator for four months.

Scientists are touting many benefits behind the fruit's longevity, which comes from incorporating a gene from a black-spot resistant apple. For one, the RS103-130 requires less fungicides; it would also need less cold storage, cutting down on energy costs.

As far as the most important factor - taste - is concerned, developers say the fruit is very sweet, and has come out on top in preliminary taste tests. Does the RS103-130 apple sound convenient, creepy, or both?

Curmudgeons, Rejoice: Being Grumpy Might Be Good For You!

TresSugar — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:05:00 -0800

Australian psychology professor Joe Forgas has concluded through his research that grumpy people tend to think more clearly, and because of their skepticism, they also make better decisions than their more cheerful and gullible counterparts.

Cheerfulness isn't all bad, though. Forgas says it encourages creativity. Bad moods, however, incite "attentiveness and careful thinking."

How did he figure this out? He asked volunteers to watch films while thinking of either positive or negative events in their lives, in the hopes they'd be put into good or bad moods.

Then, to test their powers of analysis, he had them judge the truth of urban myths and provide eyewitness accounts of events. The results: the grumps made fewer mistakes and were better at communicating.

"Whereas positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, co-operation and reliance on mental shortcuts," said Professor Forgas, "negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking, paying greater attention to the external world."

If you see a smile on my usually grumpy face today, it's temporary - I'm just gloating.

Are People With Sensitive Noses More Empathetic?

TresSugar — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:00:00 -0700

Are you cursed and blessed with a good sense of smell? Cursed because you smell every ungodly stink no matter how far away, and blessed because lovely smells affect you deeply?

Psychology professor Denise Chen at Rice University thinks you may also be more empathetic than your olfaction-challenged neighbor.

Sense of smell and emotions come from the same area of the brain (the limbic system), and Chen set out to test their connection. In an experiment with 22 pairs of dorm-dwelling women, Chen asked them all to sleep in identical t-shirts. The next morning, she presented each person with three t-shirts: one worn by her roommate, and two others worn by other people in the dorm. The women who were able to identify their roommates' t-shirts by smell alone also scored high in emotional tests.

"The olfactory brain overlaps with the emotional brain," said Chen, "and is believed to have contributed to its evolution." Do you have a good sense of smell or wish you did?

Study Says: Single Women More Likely to Pursue Taken Men

TresSugar — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:00:00 -0700

As if single women were not stigmatized enough, researchers at Oklahoma State University, likening single women to certain species of "mate-poaching" birds and fish, claim that a study they conducted reveals that single women are more likely to pursue men who are taken than single.

Melissa Burkley, who conducted the study with her colleague Jessica Parker, told 184 heterosexual university student participants they would be involved in a study on sexual attraction. The volunteers (equal numbers men and women, half attached and half single), were told that a computer program would match them with an ideal partner.

The same photograph of Mr. Right and Ms. Right were presented to the respective groups. Half of them were told these ideal mates were single, the other half were told they were in romantic relationships. The results? When told Mr. Right was single, 59 percent of the single women were interested in pursuing a relationship, but a whopping 90 percent were interested when told he was attached. Men didn't seem to care either way, and the attached women in the groups seemed to slightly favor single men. To hear what the researchers had to say about the results, read more.

So what do researchers Burkley and Parker make of the results? They hypothesize that single women might be more drawn to attached men because they've been "prescreened' by other women.

Perhaps I don't know enough about research methods, but how does this speculation arise from the results? Also, although these researchers asked participants whether they'd actually pursue a relationship rather than merely ask if they found the ideal mates attractive as previous studies had, what does that mean exactly? They might consider it - but I find it hard to believe 90 percent of women would actually go after an attached man. What do you think about this study and whether or not it would actually translate into real-world action?

How Do You Feel About Having Children?

TresSugar — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 04:00:00 -0700

Maureen Dowd asks why women seem unhappier today than ever in her New York Times column over the weekend. Are they unhappier? Women today seem way happier than the defeated and bitter Betty Draper on Mad Men. But the General Social Survey, which has tracked Americans’ moods since 1972, along with five other major studies, show women have become more dissatisfied while men are becoming happier. (Black women, interestingly, are a little happier since 1972, but still not as happy as black men.)

The number of distractions we have today correlated with women's rising unhappiness. The biggest distraction? Children. “Across the happiness data, the one thing in life that will make you less happy is having children,” Betsey Stevenson, professor and coauthor of a paper called “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness" told Dowd. “It’s true whether you’re wealthy or poor, if you have kids late or kids early."

Stevenson concedes she doesn't know one mother who said she wished she never had kids, but knowing kids aren't all bundles of joy could make you feel more confident should you decide to opt out. How do you feel about having children?

Source: Flickr User Naso3

News Flash: Women Have a Hard Time Keeping Secrets

TresSugar — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:00:00 -0700

A new British study finds that about four in 10 women cannot keep a secret no matter how confidential the subject. What really surprised the researchers was the speed with which the confidantes spilled the beans: in less than 48 hours!

The study, which was commissioned by the UK Director of Wines of Chile (?!), involved 3,000 women between the ages of 18 and 65. The most common recipients of their secrets? Boyfriends, husbands, best friends, and their mothers.

I think there may be something to this last bit of information. I recently told a friend a secret, and she said, "I won't even tell my husband," which made me pause. I wonder if women tell themselves that those people don't count, whereas telling a co-worker, for example, would count. Do you have a hard time keeping secrets? If you're curious about some of the research's other fascinating (if not surprising) findings on women and secrets, read more.

Women hear an average of three items of gossip a week.
Three in 10 women have "the urge" to reveal secrets.
Two-thirds of women felt guilty after revealing a secret.
More than four in 10 women think it's OK to tell a friend's secret with someone who doesn't know them.
83 percent of women consider themselves 100 percent trustworthy.

Men Get Dumber Speaking to Attractive Women

TresSugar — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 02:00:00 -0700

In news that will surprise absolutely no one, researchers have found that men get so flummoxed when speaking to attractive women - using up most of their cognitive abilities trying to impress them - that they sometimes forget basic personal information like their own addresses!

Research showed that if (presumably straight) men spent even a few minutes with an attractive woman, they didn’t perform as well on tests that measure brain function than they did after speaking to someone they didn’t find attractive. Women didn’t seem to have this reaction in the presence of men they considered handsome.

Although psychologist Dr. George Fieldman of the British Psychological Society had a genetic/evolutionary explanation for this reaction, that men are “programmed to think about ways to pass on their genes,” I wonder how the study would have worked if they had gay men talking to men they found attractive. Would they be so flustered by their attraction they performed poorly on cognitive tests, too? Would researchers be able to argue that their distraction was “reproductively focused”?

Maybe men are just horndogs? (That's my unscientific conclusion.) What do you think?

Are You Afraid of Spiders?

TresSugar — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 01:00:00 -0700

About four percent of the adult, American population has arachnaphobia - a fear of spiders - and of that percentage, women are four times as likely to be afraid.

Researchers concluded that girls have a genetic predisposition to be afraid of dangerous animals like spiders. Coded into our DNA, apparently, is the desire to stay away from dangerous things and protect our children, where men are supposed to be risk-takers and generally less likely to be afraid of spiders. You know - they're the hunters.

The researchers' conclusion seems to be a huge leap to me, but then again, a lot of these studies feel that way! I happen to love spiders and think they're beautiful. If I see one - I consider it good luck and try not to accidentally squish it. Maybe I'm just Goth that way. What about you?

It's Complicated: How Women Determine Facial Attractiveness

TresSugar — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:00:00 -0700

It's no surprise that how women determine facial attractiveness is complicated. Unlike many men who may give a woman's body a once-over, and then look at her face, deeming her attractive or unattractive, women, when checking out a man's face, tend to evaluate it on two levels, according to a study that was just published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

The first level women use to evaluate men's faces is sexual: they zero in on features like the jawbone, cheekbones, and lips. Then, they look at the entire face for how pleasing the overall aesthetics of the face are.

Researchers set out to prove this dual-process theory by asking two groups of 50 heterosexual women to look at pictures of men's and women's faces.

The first group was given pictures of men and women and told that some of them would be hypothetical dates (sexual) and others hypothetical lab partners (aesthetic). They rated them as attractive accordingly.

For the second group of straight women, they were given the same images, but the faces were split in two with the upper and lower halves shifted in opposite directions. Even with the opportunity to view female faces sexually (that is, feature by feature), the women still rated the attractiveness of female faces aesthetically, and their ratings correlated with the hypothetical lab partner ratings of the first group. When images of men's faces were split in two, however, their rating's correlated with the hypothetical date of the first group, that is, sexually.

The next stop for researchers? Figuring out how cultural differences and hormones play a role in the mechanics of female sexual attraction.

Source

Do You Think You're Good at Media Multitasking?

TresSugar — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 07:00:00 -0700

If you do, that might mean you suck at it.

Although we hear all the time that women are better at multitasking than men, a new study says that regardless of gender, media multitaskers (those who simultaneously use their computers, watch TV or text on their phones, for example) aren't as good at doing several things at once as they think they are.

The study was initiated when researchers asked themselves what it was about "high multitaskers" that allowed them to do what they do so well. But in experiments designed to test the two groups’ attention and memories, the group that defined themselves as consumers of multiple media did worse than the lower multitaskers. Ironically, it was the low multitaskers who were convinced they weren't going to be good at doing several things at once.

"The shocking discovery of this research," says Professor Clifford Nass of Stanford, "is that high multitaskers are lousy at everything that's necessary for multitasking." Now researchers want to know whether or not it's people with low multitasking skills who are drawn to multitasking, or if perhaps their jobs dull their ability to be good at it.

Do you think you're good at media multitasking?