Women in red drive the men crazy

If a woman wants to drive the men wild, she might want to dress in red.

Men rated a woman shown in photographs as more sexually attractive if she was wearing red clothing or if she was shown in an image framed by a red border rather than some other colour, US researchers have said.

The study led by psychology professor Andrew Elliot of the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, seemed to confirm red as the colour of romance - as so many Valentine's Day card makers and lipstick sellers have believed for years.
Although this 'red alert' may be a product of human society associating red with love for eons, it also may arise from more primitive biological roots, Elliot said.

Noting the genetic similarity of humans to higher primates, he said scientists have shown that certain male primates are especially attracted to females of their species displaying red. For example, female baboons and chimpanzees show red colouring when nearing ovulation, sending a sexual signal that the males apparently find irresistible.

"It could be this very deep, biologically based automatic tendency to respond to red as an attraction cue given our evolutionary heritage," Elliot, whose findings appear in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, said in a telephone interview.

The study involved more than 100 men, mostly college undergraduates, who were shown pictures of women and asked to rate how pretty they were, how much the men would like to kiss them and how much the men would like to have sex with them.

Men were shown a woman, with some of the pictures bordered in red and some bordered in white, gray or green. Even though it was the same picture of the same woman, when she was framed in red the men rated her as more attractive than when she was bordered by another colour.

Men were then shown photographs of a woman that were identical except that the researchers digitally made her shirt red in some versions or blue in others. And once again, the men strongly favoured the woman in red.

The men also were asked, "Imagine that you are going on a date with this person and have $100 in your wallet. How much money would you be willing to spend on your date?" When she was clad in red, the men said they would spend more money on her.

The researchers noted that the colour red did not alter how men rated the women in the photographs in terms of likability, intelligence or kindness - only attractiveness.

The researchers then had a group of young women rate whether the pictured woman was pretty. Red had no impact on whether women rated other women as pretty, they found.

Chandrayaan-1 launched successfully, PM congratulates scientists

PSLV-C11 carrying India's first unmanned moon spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 lifted off successfully from ISRO's Satish Dhawan Space Centre today.

At the end of the 49-hour countdown, the 44.4 meter tall four-stage PSLV-C11 blasted off from the second launch pad with the ignition of the core first stage.

Scientists cheered as the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle weighing 316 tonnes at the time of launch, soared majestically into partially cloudy sky at 6.22 am from the space port, 100 km north of Chennai.

This is the 14th flight of ISRO's workhorse PSLV, which had launched 29 satellites into a variety of orbits since 1993. This launch vehicle uses larger strap-on motors to achieve higher payload capability.

The Chandrayaan-1 is carrying 11 payloads, five entirely designed and developed in India, three from European Space Agency, one from Bulgaria and two from US, which would explore the Moon.

At the end of the 49-hour countdown, the 44.4 meter tall four-stage PSLV-C11 blasted off from the second launch pad with the ignition of the core first stage at 6.22 am.

"The successful launch of the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, India's first unmanned scientific mission to the moon, marks the first step in what we hope will be a historic milestone in India's space programme,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said.

In a message to the scientists of the Indian Space Research Organisation congratulating them on the successful launch, the prime minister said: 'I congratulate all the scientists associated with this mission for the successful completion of the first step. When completed, the mission will put India in the very small group of six countries which have thus far sent space missions to the moon. Our scientific community has once again done the country proud and the entire nation salutes them."

ISRO chief jubilant over successful launch of Chandrayaan-1

“My heartiest congratulations to you all for the remarkable job. A remarkable journey to the moon has begun,” a jubilant G. Madhavan Nair, chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), said on the successful launch of India's first mission to the moon on Wednesday morning.

“We have fought against many odds, including the weather in the last few days, to achieve this success.”
“We will be completing the second part of the journey in about two weeks time,” Nair said, referring to placing India's lunar spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 on an orbit just 100 km above the surface of the moon.

As soon as the 1.38-tonne Chandrayaan-1 carrying eleven payloads separated from ISRO's launch workhorse, PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) to orbit on its own, Nair and his colleagues shook hands and hugged one another to mark the successful launch.

The launch was described by scientists at the Sriharikota (SHAR) spaceport, 80 km from Tamil Nadu capital Chennai, as a “beautiful, textbook launch”.

Within seconds of blast-off in a sky that was only lightly speckled by clouds, the PSLV achieved a speed of one seven km per second and soared aloft, leaving behind a plume of fire and smoke, before it completed its mission.

As the various ground tracking stations of ISRO started receiving signals from the orbiting Chandrayaan-1 that all was well, the organisation also started receiving congratulatory messages from space agencies and scientists around the world.

World's Second Highest Airport at Kangding to open this month

The world's second highest airport, in an ethnically Tibetan part of China's southwestern province of Sichuan, will open this month, a Chinese newspaper said.

The airport, in the mainly Tibetan area of Kangding, is 4,280 metres (14,040 ft) above sea level, second only to Qamdo airport in Tibet at 4,334 metres.

The Chengdu Daily said China Eastern Airlines would start regular flights to Kangding before the end of October, flying from Yunnan's provincial capital Kunming to Kangding via Sichuan's capital, Chengdu.

The airport had originally been scheduled to open in May. The newspaper did not explain the delay, but Tibet and other Tibetan parts of China experienced violent unrest this spring.

The 960 million yuan ($140.6 million) airport is in a poor area near the scenic Gongga Mountains.

It is in an area so remote that Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai, writing more than 1,000 years ago, said it was easier to get to heaven.

The government hopes the airport will bring in much needed tourist dollars and investment.
The airport is designed to handle 330,000 passengers a year and can accommodate 120-seat Boeing 737s and Airbus A319s.

China has embarked upon a multi-billion-dollar programme in recent years to revamp old airports and build new ones, especially in the country's remote west, as a way of boosting the economy.

In 2006, China opened Tibet's third airport, in Nyingchi, which is nearly 3,000 metres above sea level.

Man Booker Prize 2008 goes to Aravind Adiga

First-time Indian novelist Aravind Adiga has won the Man Booker Prize, one of the world's most prestigious literary awards, with his debut novel The White Tiger.

The 33-year-old is only the third debut novelist to claim the award in the Booker's 40-year history and one of its youngest winners.

He receives a cheque for 50,000 pounds ($86,000) and can expect not only overnight literary fame but also a significant spike in book sales in the runup to Christmas.

Booker organisers say last year's winner, Anne Enright, has sold around 500,000 copies of The Gathering, largely due to the prize. The White Tiger is published by Atlantic Books.

Michael Portillo, chairman of the five-member judging panel, praised The White Tiger for tackling important social and political issues in modern-day India.

"What sets this one apart was it's originality," Portillo told reporters at a gala dinner in London announcing the winner. "For many of us this was entirely new territory – the dark side of India.

"It's a book that gains from dealing with very important social issues – the divisions between rich and poor and the impossibilty of the poor escaping from their lot in India.

"It tackles these global issues and social issues with tremendous humour, and it is a book which is extremely readable. It is his first novel, and I imagine (this prize) will come as rather good news to Aravind Adiga."

The White Tiger follows Balram Halwai, the son of a rickshaw puller whose dream of escaping poverty of his village takes him on a journey to the bright lights of Delhi and Bangalore, where he will do almost anything to get to the top.

Portillo said the central character was sympathetic while also being "absolutely vile and absolutely unrepenant", and likened him to Shakespeare's tragic hero Macbeth.

He added: "The overarching evil is poverty, the chicken coop from which the poor not only can't escape but have no wish or ambition to escape."

Adiga said his aim in writing The White Tiger was to represent the poor.

"Balram Halwai is a member of the invisible Indian underclass – one of the millions of poor Indians who have been bypassed by the economic boom," he said before the Booker Prize winner was announced.

"The novel attempts to give literary voice to those who are being written out of the narratives of our time – the poor."

Adiga was one of six novels on the shortlist for the prize, which rewards the best novel of the year by a citizen of the Commonwealth of former British colonies or Ireland.

He beat the bookmakers' favourite Sebastian Barry of Ireland The Secret Scripture.

Also nominated were India's Amitav Ghosh Sea of Poppies, Britons Linda Grant The Clothes on Their Backs and Philip Hensher The Northern Clemency and Australian-born Steve Toltz's A Fraction of the Whole.

Adiga is the third debut novelist to claim the prize, after Arundhati Roy in 1997 and DBC Pierre in 2003. He is the second youngest winner after Ben Okri, who won in 1991 at the age of 32.

Women prefer intelligent men

When it comes to picking up a bed-mate, women prefer intelligent men to dumb jocks, according to a new study of hundreds of university students.

The research led by Mark Prokosch, an evolutionary psychologist at Elon University in North Carolina suggests that women looking for both one-night stands and long-term relationships go for good looking and intelligent men.

"Women want the best of both worlds. Not only a physically attractive man, but somebody in the long term who can provide for them," New Scientist quoted Prokosch, as saying.

For the study, the research team asked 15 college men to perform a series of tasks on camera.
The volunteers read news reports, explained why they would be a good date, and what would be the ramifications of the discovery of life on Mars.

They were also made to play Frisbee show off their physical appeal. Each potential suitor also took a quantitative test of verbal intelligence.

Later, more than 200 women were made to watch the series of these videos before rating each man's intelligence, attractiveness, creativity and appeal for a short-term or long-term relationship.
The study showed that, in potential husbands, women look for signs that a man might be a good provider and father.

However in one-night stands, women are on the prowl for little more than good genes, not to mention a good time.

Women proved to be decent judges of intelligence, with their scores generally matching each man's intelligence test results.

But Martie Haselton, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of California in Los Angeles had a different view. He revealed that although women were good judges of intelligence, they weren't perfect.

In many cases, women rated good hook-ups as dunces, when their intelligence scores indicated otherwise.

"There could be aspects of intelligence that we pick up on when we interact with a person and that affect our assessment of them, even if we wouldn't label it as intelligence," she said.
Prokosch said that looks were still a much more powerful predictor of sex appeal than brains.
"Women are still going for the hunk," Prokosch said.

"If you had an option to pick from five different people, you would pick the most attractive one," he added.

The study appears in journal Evolution and Human Behavior.

Mother's fat diet make her kids obese

Female mice fed high fat diets were more likely to have oversized offspring, because fat causes the placenta to go into 'overdrive' by providing too many nutrients to the foetus.

The reverse may be equally true. High fat diets may help prevent undersized babies, according to a study by researchers from University of Cincinnati and Medical College of Georgia, said a joint press release from both.

'Our model may one day lead to dietary recommendations for mothers who are entering pregnancy overweight or obese,' said Helen N. Jones, co-author of the study.

'We hope this research will ultimately help reduce the number of babies suffering from birth injuries, decrease C-section rates, and lower the risk of babies becoming overweight or obese later in life.'

Researchers fed one group of mice a normal diet and another group a higher fat diet for eight weeks. Then the mice were mated. At the end of each mouse's pregnancy the offspring were delivered by C-section and weighed along with their placentas.

The scientists then took blood from the mothers and measured the ability of the placenta to transport nutrients to the babies.

'It's no secret that big women tend to have big babies,' said Gerald Weissmann, editor-in-chief of The FASEB Journal, 'but now we know that there's more at play than genetics. Cutting back on fatty foods during pregnancy might decrease the chance of having a baby that becomes overweight in the future.'

According to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, about a third of adult men and women, and 16.3 percent of children and youth in the US are obese.

High heels leave women low on health and wealth

High heels eventually leave women down at the heel, a new study says.

Spindly stilettos and towering wedges walk you ultimately to the podiatrist's parade of bunions, corns, bent toes, trapped nerves and disfigured feet.

Those who foot the bill annually in Britain alone add up to a few thousands, but the bills they foot are a bit high. Around 29 million pounds.

And mind you, free treatment through the National Health Service (NHS) means a lengthy waiting period. Private clinics are the only alternative for the impatient.

A study by shoe brand MBT claims nearly one in three foot operations on women are to straighten toes disfigured by ill-fitting shoes, mostly high heels.

The cost of each such non-NHS procedure is about 1,200 pounds. If all patients opted for private treatment, these operations would cost a total of 10.4 million pounds a year.

One in five feet operations are to remove bunions, which is a structural deformity of the bones and the joint between the foot and big toe. Based on the average cost of private treatment of about 4,000 pounds, this equates to 10.5 million pounds a year.

A further 3.3 million pounds a year would be spent on big toe joint replacement, 2.9 million pounds on operations for corns, 2 million pounds to remove trapped nerves, and 200,000 pounds to correct in-growing toe-nails, the study says.

Cosmetic surgery is also increasing in popularity with treatments including 'plumping' in which a dermal filler is injected into the ball of the foot to make walking more comfortable.

The survey of 1,000 women aged 15 and above found those in Liverpool and Manchester were most likely to end up with foot injuries. Nearly half of all women in the North-West of Britain said they wore high heels five days or more a week.

Forty-three percent of those in the South-East also chose heels five days a week.
Four in ten reported having an accident in their heels, with twisted ankles and tripping over the most common mishaps.

The Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists explains that because stilettos force the wearer to raise their heel, the lower back bends to compensate. This puts pressure on nerves in the back and can cause sciatica. Another common problem is damage to the Achilles tendon. Sticking to heels no higher than one and a half inches can help, the study advises.