Employee checks salary - and finds $3.2m in his account

What would you do if you found $3.2 million had been deposited in your bank account?

Would you (a) withdraw all the money and head to the Maldives? Or (b) tell the authorities you were wrongly paid?

A British engineer chose the honest option, repaying the £2 million mistakenly given to him by his employer in Exeter, the BBC reported.
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The man, who makes turbine blades, was shocked when his £2000 ($3200) monthly salary suddenly increased to £2 million.

He reported the mistake even before his employers, manufacturer Alcoa Howmet, realised the money was gone, drawing praise from them.

"We are obviously very pleased that the person acted in such an honest and immediate way and showed so much integrity," a spokesman for Alcoa Howmet said.

"It is a good example of the quality of people we have at our company. The sum of money involved was a significant amount.

"We are very happy that this employee acted so quickly but we are also looking into the incident."

Can't let an argument go? Blame your parents, not your partner

If a lovers’ tiff leaves your blood boiling for hours afterwards, don’t blame your partner. Blame your parents.

The better relationship you had with your mother and father as a child, the better you are at getting over arguments as an adult, scientists claim.

So whether you can’t help holding a grudge or are happy to bury the hatchet has more to do with your childhood than your partner’s failure to empty the bin.

Scientists from the University of Minnesota in the U.S. monitored a group of babies born in the mid-1970s until they reached adulthood.

They found that those who had a secure relationship with their parents or carers as infants were better at recovering from conflict 20 years later.

The researchers concluded that if a parent or carer helps regulate negative emotions in a young child, they will grow up to be more capable of regulating their own negative emotions after a disagreement or argument.

But even those who had an insecure upbringing can pick up these skills from an emotionally-equipped partner, the scientists claim.

Researcher Jessica Salvatore said: ‘We found that people who were insecurely attached as infants but whose adult romantic partners recover well from conflict are likely to stay together.

‘If one person can lead this process of recovering from conflict, it may buffer the other person and the relationship.’

The ‘most exciting finding’, she added, was the evidence that romantic partners may play a role in reducing the effects of negative experiences in early life.

During the study, researchers observed the participants with their parents in the 1970s, when they were between 12 and 18 months old. Once they reached the age of 20, they were asked how they dealt with conflicts in their relationships and what subjects they fell out with their partners about, the journal Psychological Science reports.

The researchers noted that some couples had intense conflicts, but made a clean transition to chatting about something they agreed on, while in other couples, one or both partners became stuck on the disagreement and were not able to move past it.

However, according to another study, it may be easier to let bygones be bygones if you’re a woman.
Though it may come as a shock to any husband who has ever forgotten an anniversary, women are more forgiving than men because they are more capable of empathising with others, according to research from the University of the Basque Country in Spain.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Man marries pillow

True love can take many forms. In this case, it has taken the form of a Korean man falling in love with, and eventually marrying, a large pillow with a picture of a woman on it.

Lee Jin-gyu fell for his 'dakimakura' - a kind of large, huggable pillow from Japan, often with a picture of a popular anime character printed on the side.

In Lee's case, his beloved pillow has an image of Fate Testarossa, from the 'magical girl' anime series Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha.

Now the 28-year-old otaku (a Japanese term that roughly translates to somewhere between 'obsessive' and 'nerd') has wed the pillow in a special ceremony, after fitting it out with a wedding dress for the service in front of a local priest. Their nuptials were eagerly chronicled by the local media.

'He is completely obsessed with this pillow and takes it everywhere,' said one friend.

'They go out to the park or the funfair where it will go on all the rides with him. Then when he goes out to eat he takes it with him and it gets its own seat and its own meal,' they added.

The pillow marriage is not the first similarly-themed unusual marriage in recent times - it comes after a Japanese otaku married his virtual girlfriend Nene Anegasaki, a character who only exists in the Nintendo DS game Love Plus, last November.

Docs Claim Transplant Cured Man of AIDS, But Experts Urge Caution

In a rare case, a man living in Germany who had both leukemia and AIDS no longer has any detectable HIV cells in his blood following a stem cell transplant for his leukemia three years ago.
Click here to find out more!

But experts were quick to caution that the case does not have practical implications for the treatment of AIDS worldwide.

As it turns out, the donor for that transplant carried a rare mutation in a gene that increases immunity against the most common form of HIV. First reported in 2009, this follow-up study, published online in the journal Blood, confirms that the recipient patient is still free of both leukemia and HIV three years after the transplant.

But one expert issued strong words of caution in interpreting the finding.

"Our phones have been ringing off the hook," said Dr. Margaret Fischl, director of the AIDS clinical research unit at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. "We are having patients calling us and asking if they can stop their antiretroviral therapy -- and the answer is uncategorically no."

The theory is that if you could wipe out every infected cell you could cure HIV, Fischl said, but this is a unique case.

The patient had intense chemotherapy and radiation, then relapsed and was given a second transplant from the same donor. The donor was unique in that he had a gene that could fight the most common form of HIV. This mutation is seen in about one in every million people, Fischl explained.

"How much did a second transplant contribute to the slow takeover of the donor cells that are resistant to one form of HIV? The extent that that happened is remarkable," she said.

However, this patient also was infected with another form of HIV as well, Fischl said. "What they are hoping is that the chemotherapy and radiation therapy wiped out that form, too. Could that patient still rebound with HIV in the future? Yes," she said.

This treatment also carries with it a 30 percent risk of death, Fischl added.

"That he was young and got through it is quite remarkable," she said. "I would never give this to a healthy patient. I could never justify it. If you use this therapy, 30 percent of your patients could die from the intervention."

Fischl said the study does present new ways to look for an HIV cure, however. "This is leading to looking at gene therapy in a totally different way," she said.

"We tell our patients that this was a very particular situation. What made this work was that he got a very rare donor. It opens doors for us, but we are years away from potentially making gene therapy more broadly available," Fischl said. "It shows us the hurdles we have to get over to get to the cure."

Back in 2009, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the procedure was too expensive and risky to become either common practice or a "cure," but noted it might help in the development of gene therapies to treat HIV.

http://health.usnews.com

How to get rid of Paint Odors

A freshly painted fence or wall may look great, but the smell or odor of the paint is not very pleasant. Moreover, the smell of paint fumes may cause dizziness, burning eyes, nausea and headaches to some people.

Paint fumes are also toxic and can cause long-term pulmonary and respiratory damage. If you are wondering how to get rid of paint odors, I have some home tips which can help you in effectively removing the smell of paint from the premises.

* Leave a Bucket of water with several pieces of onion overnight in the freshly painted room to counteract with the smell of paint.

* Put salt all over the freshly painted room and remove them after a day to get rid of paint odor in the room.
* Place lemon slices all over the painted room and throw them out later to remove paint smell.

* Adding 1 tablespoon of pure vanilla extract per each gallon of paint and mixing well before using the paint for painting can make the paint smell differently. You may also use Peppermint oil instead of the expensive Vanilla Extract. Add lemon extract for white paint.

* Place chopped onions in a plate and leave it for 2-3 days till they are shriveled up and dry. After that ventilate the room well and clean up the room well.

* Placing tubs full of water with an ounce of vitriolic acid added to it in the freshly painted room and replacing it every day for 3 days should remove the paint smell completely.

* Crush some wood charcoal into small pieces and place it in a bucket together with some pieces of wet paper towels and keep the bucket in the middle of the room overnight. Clean up the room next day.

* Leave a burning candle in a small bowl of water in the middle of the freshly painted room and let it stay there for about three hours.

Hope these home remedies can help you in removing paint odors. You may also use Odor-free paints which are available from many household supply stores instead of the normal paints for painting.

www.theinfomine.com

Research Says Scent of Pumpkin Pie Sexually Arouses Men

According to a research study from the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago, men are more sexually aroused by the scent of pumpkin pie mixed with lavender, than any other fancy perfume.

Lead researchers, Dr. Alan Hirsch and Dr. Jason Gruss tested 24 different scents on men aged 18 to 64 and recorded their penile blood flow. Black licorice and doughnut, was the next highest sexually arousing scent and only garnered 31.5 percent response; pumpkin pie and lavender scored 40%. Perfume Lily of the Valley and buttered popcorn were at the bottom of the list.

The research team theorized that pleasant "food" odors, which tend to positively heighten behaviors, would likely increase penile blood flow in men, as the scent triggers positive relaxing and nostalgic reaction, particularly of past sexual partners or of their favorite foods.

For older men, the response to vanilla was stronger compared to younger men.

The research team have also theorized that the food odor acts neurophysiologically in that direct pathway connects the olfactory bulb to the septal nucleus, which in turn induces blood flow and erection.

The price of happiness? £50,000pa

Research shows that happiness increases with earnings – up to a point

Money can't buy you love, but it can make you happier if you are not a high earner, according to a Nobel prizewinning psychologist.

A survey of 1,000 Americans found that happiness rose in line with salary, but only until people earned $75,000 a year, the equivalent of around £50,000.

Earning more than this did nothing to boost how happy people were, according to Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist at Princeton University in New Jersey, who won the Nobel prize for economics in 2002.
Kahneman teamed up with Angus Deaton, an economist at Princeton, to analyse 450,000 responses to a daily survey on happiness and life satisfaction run by Gallup in 2008 and 2009.

The survey asked people to rate how happy they felt each day, based on their experiences of emotions such as joy, worry, sadness and fascination. They were then asked to rate their overall satisfaction with life, on a scale where zero was the worst they could imagine life to be and 10 being the best.

The researchers found that life satisfaction rose steadily the more people were paid. Happiness rose with income too, but plateaued when people reached an annual salary of $75,000. For those on more, happiness appeared to depend on other factors.

Describing their research in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors write: "Perhaps $75,000 is a threshold beyond which further increases in income no longer improve individuals' ability to do what matters most to their emotional well-being, such as spending time with people they like, avoiding pain and disease, and enjoying leisure."

The figure will make grim reading for the majority of people who work in Britain. According to the Office of National Statistics' annual survey of hours and earnings, half of people in full time jobs in 2009 earned less than £25,816. Some 90% earned less than £46,278 a year.

The researchers warn that the emotional strain of negative experiences, such as getting divorced or being ill, appear to be exacerbated by being poor. "More money does not necessarily buy more happiness, but less money is associated with emotional pain," they write.

www.guardian.co.uk

Only in Japan, Real Men Go to a Hotel With Virtual Girlfriends

This resort town, once popular with honeymooners, is turning to a new breed of romance seekers-virtual sweethearts.

Since the marriage rate among Japan's shrinking population is falling and with many of the country's remaining lovebirds heading for Hawaii or Australia's Gold Coast, Atami had to do something. It is trying to attract single men-and their handheld devices.

In the first month of the city's promotional campaign launched July 10, more than 1,500 male fans of the Japanese dating-simulation game LovePlus+ have flocked to Atami for a romantic date with their videogame character girlfriends.

The men are real. The girls are cartoon characters on a screen. The trips are actual, can be expensive and aim to re-create the virtual weekend outing featured in the game, a product of Konami Corp. played on Nintendo Co.'s DS videogame system.

"Atami has always been a romantic place, but it is now a romantic place for a modern generation," says Sakae Saito, Atami's mayor.

Love Plus+ re-creates the experience of an adolescent romance. The goal isn't just to get the girl but to maintain a relationship with her.

After choosing one of three female characters-goodie-goodie Manaka, sassy Rinko or big-sister type Nene-to be a steady girlfriend, the player taps a stylus on the DS touch-screen in order to walk hand-in-hand to school, exchange flirtatious text messages and even meet in the school courtyard for a little afternoon kiss. Using the device's built-in microphone, the player can carry on sweet, albeit mundane, conversations.

If the real-life Romeo earns enough "boyfriend power" points-by completing game tasks like homework or exercise to become smarter and more buff-the reward is a virtual trip to Atami.

In the game, the couple tours the local landmarks. The girlfriend changes into a yukata, a casual summer kimono, to go see the fireworks, and then they stay overnight at the Hotel Ohnoya. It is known for its cavernous, white-columned baths in the style of Ancient Rome.

In his first visit to the real-life Atami, Love Plus+ gamer Shunsuke Kato planned to walk around the city and see the sights familiar to him from playing the game. One small hitch: his girlfriend, Manaka, was giving him the silent treatment.

External source: To read complete article 'Click Here'.

Pea plant grows inside man's lung

A Massachusetts man who was rushed to hospital with a collapsed lung came home with an unusual diagnosis: a pea plant was growing in his lung.

Ron Sveden had been battling emphysema for months when his condition deteriorated.

He was steeling himself for a cancer diagnosis when X-rays revealed the growth in his lung.

Doctors believe that Mr Sveden ate the pea at some point, but it "went down the wrong way" and sprouted.

"One of the first meals I had in the hospital after the surgery had peas for the vegetable. I laughed to myself and ate them," Mr Sveden told a local Boston TV reporter.

Mr Sveden said the plant was about half an inch (1.25cm) in size.

"Whether this would have gone full-term and I'd be working for the Jolly Green Giant, I don't know. I think the thing that finally dawned on me is that it wasn't the cancer," Mr Sveden said.

He is currently recovering at home with his wife Nancy, who joked that God must have a sense of humour.

www.bbc.co.uk

What lies beneath the sea?

Marine scientists have discovered strange new species, but their census also reminds us how little we know about the creatures of the deep, says Tim Ecott. 

Holidaymakers forced out of the water on the Costa Blanca this week by an "invasion" of jellyfish will probably not have had time to admire the creatures' bright purple hue or the way their luminous transparent bodies emit a ghostly, yellow glow at night. Seen from below, with a shaft of sunlight illuminating the purple veins of their pulsing domes, they are as beautiful as a Tiffany glass lampshade.

As the beach-bound swimmers gaze longingly at the sparkling but forbidden Mediterranean, they should take comfort that the Spanish environment ministry had been preparing for the arrival of hordes of "mauve stingers" for some weeks, as part of Plan Medusa. Like the hapless authorities in a Fifties' monster movie, they had produced posters and advertising campaigns warning swimmers to brace themselves for an onslaught of the purple jellies (Pelagia noctiluca), just one of the species posing a hazard to bathers this year, as well as the potentially deadly Portuguese Man o' War with its 100-foot tentacles and the box jellyfish, which leaves welts that burn for three weeks.

Some of those barred from the water may be gladdened by the news that the Mediterranean has been identified in the newly released Census of Marine Life as one of the world's top five areas for marine biodiversity. The others are the oceans off Australia, Japan, China and the Gulf of Mexico, each containing as many as 33,000 individual forms of life that can be scientifically classified as species. In total, the census now estimates that there are more than 230,000 known marine species – but that this is probably less than a quarter of what lives in the sea.

Enjoy a Stay at Cambridge University in England

Cambridge University, one of the oldest and most famous universities in the world, is giving travellers the chance stay on its historic grounds. The university opens its doors to visitors for bed and breakfast accommodation during the school holidays.

Visitors can choose from a range of room styles. Visitors can book online for rooms in 19 colleges, some of them dating from the 15th century or earlier. Thousands of visitors come to Cambridge each year, attracted by the historical architecture and unique atmosphere of the colleges. Now everyone can experience it first-hand.

A total of 550 function rooms and 6,500 bedrooms are available.

Cambridge, 80km (50 miles) north of London, has been a seat of learning for over 700 years. The oldest college, Peterhouse, was founded in 1284.

Wondering how much such a stay may cost? Purely as an example, but if you were to check in on 7 August 2010 rates start from around GBP 41 but vary depending on the room type and college chosen.

Women longing for a baby advised to opt for ugly men

Handsome men who are lucky in love may not be the best bet as a mate for women hoping to get pregnant, researchers have said.

Uglier men with fewer notches on their belts are likely to be more productive between the sheets, it is claimed.

Research suggests that in many species, the most desirable males restrict their "sperm load" with each mating to ensure enough to go around.

The same could be true of humans and other primates, say scientists.

If they are right, women looking for the best chance of getting pregnant might be advised to avoid handsome lotharios.

The theory proposes that males have evolved to look for the optimum "sperm load" per mating.

This varies depending on how many available females there are to mate with, and what the chances of mating with them are.

Males with the opportunity to mate with a lot of females would be likely to produce less sperm on each occasion than those making fewer sexual conquests.

A smaller "sperm load" reduces the chances of any individual female getting pregnant. However, this is outweighed by the fact that many different females can be impregnated.

Such a trade-off is seen in the wild and has been observed in chickens and fish.

Researchers modelled the concept of "spreading sperm" mathematically in a paper to be published in the journal American Naturalist.

One member of the team, PhD student Sam Tazzyman, from the Centre for Mathematics and Physics in the Life sciences and Experimental biology (CoMPLEX) at University College London, said: "In some species, females mate with many different males. Each male's sperm competes with that of other males in a process known as 'sperm competition'. Since males have finite resources to allocate to breeding, they allocate them carefully to each mating to maximise their number of offspring.

"If a male puts a lot of resources into each mating he will get more offspring per mating, but at the expense of fewer matings. If, on the other hand, a male puts few resources into each mating he will secure less paternity per mating, but will be able to carry out more matings overall. Thus, there is a trade-off between number of matings and success per mating.

"How a male negotiates this trade-off depends on how easy he finds it to attract females. The more attractive a male is, the more females will be willing to mate with him, reducing the value of each mating to him.

This means it is optimal for him to contribute fewer sperm per mating. Although this reduces fertility per mating, it maximises the number of offspring he sires overall. Less attractive males secure fewer matings but value each of them more highly, and by allocating more sperm to each mating make the most of their meagre opportunities.

"This leads to the rather paradoxical prediction that matings with attractive males may be less fertile than those with unattractive males."

Whether or not the same principle applied to humans and other primates was still unknown, said the researchers – but there every possibility that it did.

"Human attractiveness is complicated and influenced by a number of factors, including cultural preferences," said Mr Tazzyman.

"Nonetheless, ejaculate size and sperm quality are likely to have been moulded by similar forces, like attractiveness and the number of sexual partners, that are important in other species."

Why women can wear high heels for hours 'solved by scientists'

Women who claim they can wear high heels all day but only experience pain when they take them off can prevent the problem by using a simple exercise technique, according to scientists.

Researchers found women who regularly wore high heels for extended periods suffered more aches because their muscles were overstretched and could not relax.

They found that wearing a pair of shoes shortened fibres in their calve muscles as the heel of the foot was elevated.

The scientists at Manchester Metropolitan University then discovered the Achilles' tendon became thicker and stiffer meaning it was harder to stretch the feet out to walk.

They said it could explain why women could wear high heels for hours but experience feet aches after removing them.

In their study, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, the team used volunteers aged between 20 and 50 who had regularly worn 5cm high heels for two years or more.

They tested a final group of 11 who felt uncomfortable walking without their heels and recruited a second group of women who did not wear high heels.

Using ultrasound to measure the length of muscle fibres in the women's calf muscles, they found high heel wearers were 13 per cent shorter than those who wore flat shoes.

"This confirmed the hypothesis that when you place the muscle in a shorter position, the fibres become shorter,” said Prof Marco Narici, who led the study.

"We found the Achilles' tendon was the same length in the two groups, but in women who wore high heels it was much thicker and stiffer, making it harder for them to stretch their feet out when they were on the flat."

But this problem can be overcome by doing simple stretching exercises throughout the day.

"If you stand on your tip toes and lower your heels up and down again it will stretch out the tendons making it easier to walk without heels,” he said.

“If you do this about 20 times a day it should be sufficient to prevent this happening.”

www.telegraph.co.uk

Scientists prove that women are better at multitasking than men

Psychologists have proven that men really are worse at multitasking than women, although it does depend on the task.

It is an age old complaint - that men are incapable of doing more than one thing at once.

Researchers decided to test the truth of the commonly held belief after discovering that no scientific research had ever been done into it.

They found that when women and men work on a number of simple tasks - such as searching for a key or doing easy maths problems - at the same time, the women significantly outperformed the men.

Scientists believe that the results show that females are better able to reflect upon a problem, while continuing to juggle their other commitments, than men.

Professor Keith Laws, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire, who led the research, said: "We have all heard stories that either men can't multitask or that women are exceptionally good at multitasking.

"But there didn't appear to be any empirical evidence for this. It was all based upon folklore and hearsay when I looked through the scientific literature."

Prof. Laws gave 50 male and 50 female students eight minutes to perform three tasks at the same time: carrying out simple maths problems, finding restaurants on a map and sketching a strategy for how they would search for a lost key in an imaginary field.

As they performed the tasks, the volunteers also received a phone call that they could either chose to answer or not. If they did answer, they were given an additional general knowledge test while they continued to carry out their other activities.

While women were able to preform well in all four activities at once, men performed, on average, worse when it came to planning to search for the key.

Professor Laws said: "Men are supposed to have better spatial awareness than women, so they should have outperformed the women on the map task and the key task.

"But of all the tasks we gave, the key searching task also requires planning and some kind of strategy.

"Men tended to start their search in a less logical place such as the centre of the field and they would not cover the whole area when they were outlining their search. women tended to enter in one corner and search in concentric circles or lines.

"It shows that women are better at being able to stand back and reflect for a moment while they are juggling other things."

www.telegraph.co.uk

Women have better memories than men, say scientists

WOMEN'S brains function better at remembering information than men's, researchers have confirmed.

A Cambridge University study of 4407 men and women from East Anglia, southeastern England, discovered gender plays a clear difference in memory function.

In tests on participants aged between 48 to 90 years, women made an average of 5.9 fewer errors than men, regardless of age.

Education was also found to play a significant part in memory function.

Participants who left education after the age of 18 were found to make an average of 20 fewer total errors than those who left education before the age of 16.

“Although the links between sex and education and cognitive function have been explored before, this very large dataset provides striking evidence that these factors play a major role in determining how good our memory function is as we age," Dr Andrew Blackwell, Chief Scientific Officer at Cambridge University's Department of Psychiatry, said.

“Using these data, we can determine whether or not an individual’s memory function is normal or not for people of their age, sex and education level.

“A body of scientific literature has demonstrated that women typically outperform men on test of verbal function, whereas men tend to outperform women on tasks of spatial function.

"However, in this study, we used a measure of memory that is spatial and women consistently outperformed men.

“There are many possible explanations for this, including both neurobiological and environmental differences.”

Researchers hoped the findings may help scientists further understand the causes of Alzheimer’s disease.

Further research was planned and it was estimated that the final study will reach approximately 10,000 participants.

www.theaustralian.com.au

Sea levels rising in parts of Indian Ocean, according to new study

Greenhouse gases are playing a role in changes, say scientists

Newly detected rising sea levels in parts of the Indian Ocean, including the coastlines of the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, Sri Lanka, Sumatra and Java, appear to be at least partly a result of human-induced increases of atmospheric greenhouse gases, says a study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The study, which combined sea surface measurements going back to the 1960s and satellite observations, indicates anthropogenic climate warming likely is amplifying regional sea rise changes in parts of the Indian Ocean, threatening inhabitants of some coastal areas and islands, said CU-Boulder Associate Professor Weiqing Han, lead study author. The sea level rise -- which may aggravate monsoon flooding in Bangladesh and India -- could have far-reaching impacts on both future regional and global climate.

The key player in the process is the Indo-Pacific warm pool, an enormous, bathtub-shaped area of the tropical oceans stretching from the east coast of Africa west to the International Date Line in the Pacific. The warm pool has heated by about 1 degree Fahrenheit, or 0.5 degrees Celsius, in the past 50 years, primarily caused by human-generated increases of greenhouse gases, said Han.

"Our results from this study imply that if future anthropogenic warming effects in the Indo-Pacific warm pool dominate natural variability, mid-ocean islands such as the Mascarenhas Archipelago, coasts of Indonesia, Sumatra and the north Indian Ocean may experience significantly more sea level rise than the global average," said Han of CU-Boulder's atmospheric and oceanic sciences department.

What's the secret to running and swimming faster? The position of your belly button, say scientists

The reason why black people make better sprinters and white people dominate swimming races has been explained by scientists - it's down to their belly buttons.

Whether it sticks in or out is not relevant but researchers found that the position of the navel in relation to the rest of their body affects athletic ability. This is because the naval is the body's centre of gravity.

A higher naval means a higher centre of gravity - so your body is pulled forward faster - while a lower navel means a longer torso which makes for a better swimmer.

The researchers say their findings prove why black people are more likely to sprint faster while white people make swifter swimmers.

Duke University professor Andre Bejan, the lead author of the study published in the International Journal of Design and Nature and Ecodynamics, explains: 'What matters is not total height but the position of the belly-button, or centre of gravity.

'It so happens that in the architecture of the human body of West African-origin runners, the centre of gravity is significantly higher than in runners of European origin which puts them at an advantage in sprints on the track.

'Individuals of West African-origin have longer legs than European-origin athletes, which means their belly-buttons are three centimeters (1.18 inches) higher than whites.'

That means the black athletes have a "hidden height" that is three percent greater than whites', which gives them a significant speed advantage on the track.

Professor Bejan adds: 'Locomotion is essentially a continual process of falling forward, and mass that falls from a higher altitude, falls faster.'

In the pool, meanwhile, whites have the advantage because they have longer torsos, so their belly-buttons sit lower on the body.

Swimming is the art of surfing the wave created by the swimmer,' said Prof Bejan. 'The swimmer who makes the bigger wave is the faster swimmer, and a longer torso makes a bigger wave. Europeans have a three-percent longer torso than West Africans, which gives them a 1.5-percent speed advantage in the pool,' he said.

Asians have the same long torsos as Europeans, giving them the same potential to be record-breakers in the pool.

But they often lose out to whites because whites are taller, said Prof Bejan.

Many scientists have avoided studying why blacks make better sprinters and whites better swimmers because of what the study calls the "obvious" race angle.

But Prof Bejan said the study he conducted with Edward Jones, a professor at Howard University in Washington, and Duke graduate Jordan Charles, focused on the athletes' geographic origins and biology, not race, which the authors of the study call a "social construct."

They charted and analyzed nearly 100 years of records in men's and women's sprinting and 100-meters freestyle swimming for the study.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Tourists beware: London voted 'Europe's worst city for food'

London is the worst place in Europe to find something tasty to eat, a new Europe-wide survey has found.

In fact, Britain is the last place you should visit if you're looking for good food, according to the travel poll - Liverpool was voted as having the second-worst cuisine and Birmingham the third worst.

Although our capital city was voted the most exciting European city, it was also considered the most expensive and there was bad news for Birmingham too, which was voted the second-most unattractive city, with Krakow in Poland being the least attractive.

However, London was considered the easiest city to get around and having been voted the dirtiest city in a similar survey last year, it was considered one of the cleaner cities this year.
London was also rated the third-safest city, with the Swiss cities of Geneva and Zurich taking the top two positions in the poll by TripAdvisor.

Rome was considered to have the best cuisine and the Italian capital was also voted the most attractive and the worst to get around.

The most dangerous city was Istanbul, the cleanest was Zurich, the best value was Lisbon and the dirtiest was Athens.

TripAdvisor spokesman Emma O'Boyle said: 'Europe's cities all have their highs and lows, but it's great that London has been crowned the most exciting.

'And with the London Olympics only two years away it's encouraging to see the fundamental issues of safety and transport already scoring highly with visitors.'

Sally Chatterjee, CEO of Visit London, said: 'We're delighted that London has been voted the most exciting city in Europe.

'Whilst old perceptions remain about British cuisine, they don't reflect the reality which is that London is now home to the best chefs and restaurants on the planet.

'The hugely successful London Restaurant Festival was a big hit with Londoners and visitors alike last year and will hit the same heights again this autumn.'

www.dailymail.co.uk

The incredible 'bendy bicycle': British designer, 21, invents a bike you can FOLD around a lamp post

A young designer has invented a revolutionary folding bicycle that will stop thieves in their tracks.

Kevin Scott, 21, designed the space-age bike that wraps around a lamp post so it can be locked-up safely - without the need for a lock or chain.

The De Montfort University graduate used a ratchet system built into the frame of the bike to allow it to wrap around a pole, enabling the lock to be wrapped through both wheels and the frame.

Securing all the bike's components within the lock was his aim in creating the new bike. It also allows the bike to be stored in small spaces.

The frame can be ratcheted tight to allow the bike to be ridden like a normal bike, but it can be quickly loosened to allow the frame to be bent back on itself.



As such, finding a spot to lock it up on London's busy streets is a cinch - you simply wrap it around the nearest lamppost.


Mr Scott's creation is currently on show at the New Designers show at the Business Design Centre in Islington, north London.


He is hoping that his unusual cycle will catch the eye of a bike loving backer who will enable him to develop it further.


More than 52 bikes are stolen in London every day, according to official figures.
A total of 23,748 bikes were reported stolen in London in 2009-10 — up 27.8 per cent on the previous financial year — but police believe that the true figure could be double that.


Experts recommend that users should spend around 10 per cent of their bike's value on a decent lock  - ideally two - and always lock it to a solid object through the frame.




 

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Study: Fish-oil supplements may cut breast-cancer risk

Fish-oil supplements may lower your risk of breast cancer, according to a newly published study, but don't run out and stock up on pills quite yet.

Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center surveyed more than 35,000 postmenopausal women in Western Washington and found that those who took omega-3 fish-oil supplements had a 32 percent lower incidence of breast cancer, but senior author Emily White doesn't recommend that women begin taking the highly touted capsules.

"The evidence is intriguing, but it's not definitive," said White, a University of Washington epidemiologist.
The survey-based study targeted people already taking supplements, which may introduce a bias.
"Supplement users may have healthier lifestyles," she said. "Or they may have other underlying health conditions."

To confirm the cancer-fighting benefits of fatty-acid supplements, researchers would need a rigorous and costly randomized clinical trial comparing fish-oil pills and placebos.

This would also reveal any potential side effects of taking omega-3 supplements, which contain five to 10 times more fatty acids than are naturally found in a serving of fish.