iblog

Rushda: A new study from the University of Newcastle may finally reveal why many females prefer the colour pink. Preference for more “girly” colours was once thought to be influenced by social or cultural conventions, but now researchers say that it may all be down to genetic dispositions in women, and given a choice most women will always opt for redder shades than their male counterparts.

The study consisted of asking more than 200 men and women in their 20s to choose between different pairs of colours on a computer screen. The results, which appear in the scientific journal Current Biology, indicate that women were more likely to pick colours which had some red mixed in - even if they weren’t directly aware of it. For those who think that this may still be due to the “pink is for girls and blue is for boys” culture that we have in Britain, it is interesting to note that half the group were Chinese amongst whom the marketing divide isn’t so prevalent. Even Chinese women, however, tended to opt for redder shades.

Because of these striking results, researchers believe colour preference comes into the biology of the two genders. The reasons for this may be that, historically, having a preference for red meant women could find riper fruits and pick healthy mates. As head of the research Dr Anya Hurlbert says:

“Evolution may have driven females to prefer reddish colours - reddish fruits, healthy, reddish faces. Culture may exploit and compound this natural female preference.”

Virgil: Most of us will have heard of Google Earth, the neat application from search giant Google that lets you navigate around a 3D Earth, and zoom in to any point on the globe with impressive detail. Now Google have extended the same technology into the sky, providing amateur star-gazers with the best view of the heavens they’ve been able to get their hands on to date.

Google Sky is included with the latest version of Google Earth, adding a button to the interface which flips the camera up into the sky. Whilst the original Earth model looked down upon a sphere, the Sky model inverts this to look up onto the inside face of a much bigger sphere which the camera is inside. This inside face is plastered with thousands of images taken by agencies such as NASA, all compiled into a singular grand night sky. Dr John Mason, of the British Astronomical Association, praised the new application, saying:

“Light pollution and air pollution is now so bad in many areas that all you can see when you look up is a few dozen stars. If this helps people to realise just what they are missing, it is a jolly good thing.”

Whilst Google Sky isn’t the first program to offer stargazing, it appears to be all set to takeover the market. Whilst other options are also free, they do not provide the same interactive, free-moving camera that made Google Earth so popular, along with its rich integration of related data including routes and buildings. Sky offers clear views of over 300 million stars and galaxies, with various overlays to point out constellations and bring up further data relating to celestial bodies. Patrick Moore, the famed British astronomer, likewise sings the applications praises:

“This thing, Google Sky, seems to me the best way to learn your way around, and the stars become so much more interesting when you know which is which, and it’s a bloody good way to do it.”

The program goes alongside Google’s previous other forays into the heavens, Google Moon and Google Mars - I wonder how long it will be before we’re installing the seemingly inevitable Google Universe.

Rushda: The degree courses offered at some universities have always sparked a certain degree of controversy. Apparently there are hundreds of “non-courses” that are offered across the UK as degrees but which are so obscure or useless that some say they shouldn’t be offered at all. Often dubbed “Mickey Mouse” subjects, such courses cost around £40m a year to run, and many argue that students could be studying subjects which are more worthwhile.

A report from the Taxpayers’ Alliance has recently produced a list of over four hundred Mickey Mouse courses which should be abolished as they “lend the respectability of scholarly qualifications to non-academic subjects.” Some of the worst (and most amusing) offenders on the list include Equestrian psychology, at the Welsh College of Horticulture in Mold in Flintshire, Science: fiction and culture at the University of Glamorgan, and Outdoor adventure with philosophy, at Marjon, the College of St Mark and St John in Plymouth. The report argues that obtaining degrees in such subjects is not very respectable for any field and students would be better off studying more traditional subjects. As author of the report Peter Cuthbertson explains:

“Political priorities have led to a never-ending drive to increase the number of students in university. As a result, there has been a massive expansion of ‘non-degrees’ of little or no academic merit. The government has failed in its pledge to abolish ‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees. If ‘non-courses’ were abolished, all the other students could save over £100 on their tuition fees or buy an extra pint of beer a week.”

However, many believe that the attack is unfair. For example, Universities UK argues that these courses are in fact demanded by employers and there are many opportunities for those who obtain degrees in them. They also say that one of the reasons courses like “golf management” are so popular and oversubscribed is that students know what kinds of skills employers are looking for. To judge these courses as worthless is simply “academic snobbery” at best.

Personally I think it is a very tricky issue about whether such courses should be allowed to remain. On the one hand the odd combinations of subjects seems to be making a poor excuse for a degree, whilst on the other hand maybe there are some specific vocational skills that will allow young people to excel in a particular field which they couldn’t participate in otherwise. Whatever the case, surely there must be something to be said about the slippery slope these subjects have generated. Are we really going to have to allow institutions to offer degrees like Brick studies with fashion next?

Virgil: A man enters the bookmaker’s Ladbrokes holding what appears to be a gun inside a bag. He demands cash. The manager hands him over six hundred pounds while the customers shy into corners and stay clear, and then he leaves in a hurry. You move to leave yourself, but then he turns to point the gun at you and says “Back off”. What do you do?

Well, not much if you realise that inside the bag is no more than the robber’s girlfriend’s vibrator. This was the way that Nicki Jex, 27, tried to make away with £613 just after Christmas last year. When customer Wayne Vakani was told to “back off”, he kept his distance but followed the robber’s movements, ultimately providing the information that led to Jex’s arrest.

After initially denying any involvement, Jex later changed tact and pleaded guilty. But making reference to the ridiculous item being used for the hold-up, his defence in mitigation pointed out that the man was in a “fragile” state of mind and in the midst of drug addiction:

“One can be thankful that the item he had wasn’t a firearm. Frankly, he didn’t care less what happened to him at that time. He was falling into the abyss and that’s the root cause of drugs.”

Jex has now been jailed for five years, and Mr Vakani awarded £500 for his “very considerable courage”. Not bad for being threatened by a weapon that would have, at most, tickled.

Rushda: New research from the US has suggested a powerful link between eating dark fruits and lowering cancer risk. Scientists say that the compounds which are said to give dark fruits such as blueberries their colour may be able to fight cancer. The compounds, known as anthocyanins, are responsible for the colour in red, blue, and purple fruits, and results have shown that they slow the development of cancer cells.

The results of the research, which was carried out at Ohio State University and presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society, showed the remarkable effects of dark exotic fruits such as chokeberries. These fruits were not only seen to slow cancer development but even kill cancer cells whilst leaving healthy cells in tact. The health benefits of fruits such as blueberries was already known, but finally scientists are finding out what it is that makes these fruits so good for us. As Monica Giusti, head of research explains:

“These foods contain many compounds, and we’re just starting to figure out what they are and which ones provide the most health benefits”

The possibilities for medical progress are endless, and it is obvious there is a long way to go before results are more established and the benefits of different dark fruits can be compared. For now, readers will be pleased to know that it is not necessary to go hunting for obscure purplecorns and bilberries (two fruits which were found to be very potent in the fight against cancer) - indeed, blueberries are well-known to have the same effect and are widely available.

Rushda: Extreme sports enthusiasts and laymen alike will marvel at a new dangerous sport - Ice surfing - which is becoming more and more popular as global warming continues to melt glaciers. This activity consists of waiting till a huge piece of glacier breaks off and hits the water hundreds of feet down below. This sends up a huge wave of icy water, and it is at this point that you can get an exhilaratingly long period of time riding the ice-cold water which, it must be added, is filled with hundreds of small pieces of sharp ice.

It is undeniable that the pictures look really funky, but I can’t understand how besides it looking quite fashionable, ice surfing can be a very pleasant experience at all. Kealii Mamala who usually surfs in the exotic waves of Hawaii has recently broken a record for spending a whole minute surfing on a glacial tsunami in Alaska. He describes his experience:

“It wasn’t very big but it got the hairs on the back of my neck tingling. I felt myself at the barrel’s edge. It was a rush but it was a good feeling, all natural and super-powerful.”

Mamala and his fellow surfer Garrett McNamara had to wait for a month before their chosen glacier caved in and they could perform their surf. They towed towards the glacier on surfboards using jet skis and like Kealli, McNamara is thrilled with the experience. He says:

“It’s the heaviest thing I have ever done in my life. It’s like the Empire State Building about to come down on top of you.”

Well, congratulations to them for achieving something so new and different - though I’d rather them than me!

Virgil: You are presented with a Rubik’s Cube, disordered, and ordered to solve it. You twist and turn the thing for hours through thousands of rotations but get nowhere - it’s just become random and frustrating. As if only to make the defeat more cutting, a new bit of research has proved that at any given stage you are no more than 26 turns away from the solution.

But what if you were God? God would, for every Rubik arrangement, know exactly which twists to make - he’d be able to solve it in the minimum amount of moves. It’s this piece of speculation that has led to the number being called “God’s Number” - the minimum moves needed to solve any Rubik’s Cube if you are omniscient. Whilst the new proof tells us God’s Number is below 26, the truth of the elusive number remains to be discovered.

Why the number is so tantalising a prospect to figure out is anyone’s guess, but perhaps it’s the sheer difficulty of the problem compared to the simplicity of the solution - just an integer in its “low twenties”. Contrasted to the low solution are the 43 billion billion possible Rubik arrangements to plough through to get it - far too much even for a supercomputer.

Graduate student Daniel Kunkle and Gene Cooperman from Northeastern University in Boston thought of a clever way to get round cracking the problem. By telling their computers to only solve the different cube arrangements half-way - arriving at points where they knew only a few more moves would be needed, they came to the half-proof that most arrangements took 26 moves or less, but some were taking 29 or more. They were then able to focus all the computer’s energies on the problem cases above 26, which numbered significantly fewer, finally being able to resolve all of these cases.

Whilst the 21st century’s Rubik counterpart is something like Su Doku, easily solvable by most computers, the Rubik’s Cube of the 1980’s remains firmly mysterious and yet as ever a tantalisingly simple puzzle - if only you knew…

Rushda: A Chinese talent show similar to Pop Idol in Britain has been banned by the the state’s broadcasting watchdog for being tasteless and “vulgar”. The show, which is called The First Heartthrob had attracted about 100,000 Chinese contestants since it began last year, and was one of the few talent shows which got such high ratings. But after consideration, The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (Sarft) announced that it was unacceptable to air it any longer as it was only aiming at “the low-grade interests of a minority”.

It is difficult to know whether to be appalled or amused about the cancellation, as it would be unheard of for any popular shows in Britain, such as Big Brother or X Factor, to be banned because they do not match the artistic quality of Mozart. It is also unclear what exactly was wrong with The First Heartthrob for it to apparently show a lack of social responsibility. In their own words Sarft say:

“The design of the show is coarse. The judges’ behaviour lacks grace. The programming lacks artistic standards. The tone of the show has cheapened. The songs performed are vulgar.”

Apparently the decision might have something to do with a tightening of media controls due to the Chinese Communist Party’s congress. Alternatively, it is also speculated that it might have been prompted by a contestant making a judge cry. Either way, it’s quite a confusing issue that no doubt thousands are unhappy about. Perhaps this story will mean I end up watching the new series of X Factor with pride!

Rushda: A new online survey poll from Virgin Travel Insurance has revealed the tourist sites which Britons think are most overrated and left them feeling disappointed and uninspired. Topping the list are attractions such as Stonehenge and Angel of the North in Gateshead in the UK, and the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre in Paris.

It is probably not surprising that so many people voted for Stonehenge, given that ultimately it is really just a pile of stones, and as travel writer Felice Hardy described it, it is “an isolated pile of rocks in a usually muddy field”. It is also near a busy motorway and therefore not a very spiritual setting. The Stonehenge director explains that this is just an unfortunate coincidence and a bid has already been made to the government to divert the motorway. However, the numbers voting for the Eiffel Tower seem alarming given that it is one of the most well known sites in Europe. As one respondent on the poll said:

“So long to get to the top and when you get there it’s not even impressive. The queues are ridiculous and the lasers beamed from it at night just make it look super-tacky.”

What is most ironic about the poll results, particularly Stonehenge and the Eiffel Tower, is that they were recently among the top nominations in July’s announcement of the seven new wonders of the world. Interestingly, the poll also revealed the best things to see in Europe and none of these were included in the seven wonders of the world. In the UK the top results include the lesser well known sites such as Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, Shakespeare’s Globe theatre, and (I was pleased to see) The Backs in Cambridge. Overseas, favourites include Sydney Harbour Bridge and The Treasury at Petra in Jordan. Maybe our ideas of wonders of the world do not match what we’d truly like to see!

Rushda: Scientists are baffled by an incredible star which is speeding through space with a trail that is a huge 13 light years in length. Named Mira, the star was originally spotted by Nasa’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer space telescope, and is the first of its kind as the researchers have never seen any comet with such a huge tail. The paper which shows the findings is published in the journal Nature and the research was done at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena. As Mark Seibert, who co-authored the report says:

“This is an utterly new phenomenon to us, and we are still in the process of understanding the physics involved.”

Mira is a very interesting star that has intrigued astronomers for hundreds of years. It is about 350 light-years from Earth and is part of the star constellation known as Cetus. It is in fact part of a binary system of stars as it is accompanied by a smaller star, named Mira B. The star is travelling through space at an unimaginable speed of 80 miles per second. Only now, however, has its trail been detected using the special Galex telescope that detects ultra-violet light. As Barry Madore, another senior researcher and co-author of the paper explains:

“Galex is so exquisitely sensitive to ultraviolet light, and it has such a wide field of view, that it is uniquely poised to scan the sky for previously undiscovered ultraviolet activity.

What is especially fascinating about Mira is that billions of years ago, it would have resembled our own star. Now that it is dying it has enlarged to become a red giant and leaves behind a trail of dead star matter in its wake. Not only is the viewing of the star exciting in itself, but it will help scientists in their progress to find out what exactly happens to a star when it dies, and ultimately unlock yet more secrets of the universe, including the future of our own sun.