There are some Happy Coffins from Singapore challenging death's taboos. Today, designer coffins deck a nursing home where three residents fulfill their pre-departure wishes about how their final resting places should look. 

"Without any fear," Elsie Chua said, "I am not afraid to talk about my eventual departure. It is very meaningful to be able to shape the design of my coffin and see it before I die.   I want to have a matching kebaya to go along."

 A kebaya is a traditional Straits Chinese garment for women. 

The art of dying

Elsie's wish was granted through an initiative between the Lien Foundation, a Singapore philanthropic house and St Joseph's Home and Hospice.

A group of scientists say they have conducted a comprehensive study of how different body measurements correspond with ratings of female attractiveness.

Even across cultural divides, women who are young, tall and long armed were considered the most attractive, they found, to little surprise.

According to the researchers, traditional studies of attractiveness used a natural selection framework - an individual will always choose the best possible mate that circumstances will allow (romance of the fitter?).   Those studies focused on torso, waist, bust and hip measurements.

In the Houston-Galveston Coastal Subsidence District, a group of researchers have found that a large section of northwestern Harris County, particularly the Jersey Village area, is sinking rapidly.  They analyzed a decade's worth of GPS data measuring ground elevation in the Houston area and found that some points in Jersey Village are subsiding by up to 5.5 centimeters (about 2 inches) a year.

A semiconductor material called gallium manganese arsenide has been shown to have an interesting new effect that converts heat into a quantum mechanical phenomenon – known as spin – in a semiconductor.   If developed, the effect could enable integrated circuits that run on heat, rather than electricity.

This research merges two new technologies, thermo-electricity and spintronics.   Researchers around the world are working to develop electronics that utilize the spin of electrons to read and write data - desirable because in principle they could store more data in less space, process data faster and consume less power.

A new study says sodium nitrate, like you get if you eat plenty of vegetables, reverses features of metabolic syndrome in mice.   

Metabolic syndrome is the list of risk factors of metabolic origin that increase likelihood of getting cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.

As obesity has increased, and the number of people with metabolic syndrome right along with it, various attempts have been made to identify a common underlying molecular mechanism for metabolic syndrome.   One group has pointed to a defect in endogenous synthesis and bioavailability of nitric oxide (NO) and their new study says one contributing issue in metabolic syndrome is a decrease in the amount of nitric oxide from endothelial NO synthase (eNOS).

We know people have positive social behavior in part because of emotional reactions to real or imagined social harm  - we may not like seeing others slighted or we may not want to be perceived as the kind of person who does that sort of thing.

But some are a lot more sensitive than others and a new study says that the neurotransmitter serotonin can directly alter both moral judgment and behavior through increasing our aversion to personally harming others, rather than just controlling violent impulses or helping you sleep.