What's in a name? Perhaps more (or less) money.  Before employers have a chance to judge job applicants on their merits, they may have already judged them on the sound of their names, says  a study published in the latest issue of the Journal of Labor Economics.  

Who hasn't tried to bleach their hair with hydrogen peroxide  in college?    I can't tell you how many young scientists we know who tried to go for that young Reed Richards look.

It turns out that hydrogen peroxide may be responsbile for bleached hair in aging also, though not intentionally.   

Researchers of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany nd the University of Bradford  say they have now unlocked the secret of hair turning white or gray in old age. According to them, free oxygen radicals are significantly involved in the loss of hair color.

Sulfuryl fluoride, a gas used for fumigation, has the potential to contribute significantly to future greenhouse warming, but because its production has not yet reached high levels there is still time to nip this potential contributor in the bud, according to an international team of researchers.

Their study of  sulfuryl fluoride this month in the Journal of Geophysical Research, measured the levels of the gas in the atmosphere and determined its emissions and lifetime to help gauge its potential future effects on climate.

If you want to perform at your peak, you should carefully consider how you discuss your past actions. In a new study in Psychological Science, psychologists William Hart of the University of Florida and Dolores AlbarracÃn from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign reveal that the way a statement is phrased (and specifically, how the verbs are used), affects our memory of an event being described and may also influence our behavior.

Polymorphisms are variations in genes which can result in changes in the way a particular gene functions and thus may be associated with susceptibility to common diseases.

In a new study in Psychological Science, psychologist Tina B. Lonsdorf and her colleagues from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and the University of Greifswald in Germany examined the effect of specific polymorphisms on how fear is learned and how that fear is subsequently overcome.

It seems that cherries are the new ‘super food’ to strike a craze in the US. Citing the effects of cherries to slow aging due to antioxidants, they contain a class of free-radical fighting agents called anthocyanins, which are not just found in cherries.

In 2004, the Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology dedicated an entire volume to the subject of anthocyanins, which are found not only in cherries, but in blueberries, pomegranates, cranberries, sweet potatoes, Elderberries, and grapes. Various berry juices also contain the antioxidants like grape juice, wine and other extracts.

The term “computer” was first used by Sir Thomas Browne in 1646 AD, or 329 BB (Before Bill) according to the Gatesian calendar. Coincidentally (perhaps?), the year zero of the Gatesian calendar, or 1975 AD, corresponds to Daniel Hillis and Brian Silverman’s sophomore years at MIT. And it was during this year the two had the retro idea of constructing a non-electronic computer—specifically, one made of Tinkertoys.

Four years later, after a somewhat disappointing version 1.0, the pair started work on what was to become the Great Tinkertoy Computer, which plays a mean game of tic-tac-toe and is now housed at the Mid-America Science Museum.

Here’s how it works:

You might think that predicting eye color is easy because we all learned in high school about recessive genes and eye color is a great example of those.    But it isn't easy.  In fact, human eye color, which is determined by the extent and type of pigmentation on the eye's iris, is what geneticists call a 'complex trait,  meaning that several genes control which color the eyes will ultimately have. Over the past decades a number of such 'eye-color genes' have been identified, and people with different eye color, will have a different DNA sequence at certain points in these genes. 

There's no question that employees at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have watched with some concern as the LHC got all the press about being the future of physics despite the fact it hadn't actually produced anything.    They have also quietly continued setting world records and are once again reminding people that Fermilab's Tevatron, currently the world's most powerful operating particle accelerator, is actually ahead, even in the race to find the as-yet undefined "Higgs particle."

Animals have an astonishing ability to develop reliably, in spite of variable conditions during embryogenesis. New research published this week  addresses how living things can develop into precise, adult forms when there is so much variation present during their development stages. A team led by John Reinitz at Stony Brook University, and funded by the National Institutes of Health, shows how fruit fly embryos can "forget" initial incorrect versions of their body plan and develop into recognizable adult flies.