A longstanding puzzle has been solved.

How do northern flying squirrels (Glaucomys sabrinus) locate truffles (Gautieria monticola) – bearing in mind that the truffles are a subterranean and ephemeral but primary food source?

Sanjay Pyare (Assistant Professor of GIS and Landscape Ecology, at the University of Alaska Southeast, ) and colleague William S Longland (at the Agricultural Research Service, Reno, NV) investigated this question back in 2001, and published the results of their observations in the Canadian Journal of Zoology, 2001, 79:1007-1015.

You know what happens to women when they watch Katherine Heigl movies or episodes of "The Bachelor"? 

Well, it happens to men also - when they think there might be beer nearby.

Really, it is almost Pavlovian, except the saliva is mental too. A PET scan study found that even when no alcohol was involved, the flavor of beer caused striatal dopamine release in men.(1) 

The striatum in men (and women - and all primates - but this particular study is about men, so, let's stay on message) consists of the caudate nucleus and the putamen and it gets input from the cerebral cortex and structures like the amygdala and hippocampus.

“Every day workers take time to shower, style their hair, select clothes and get dressed. Others spend additional time to shave, trim nails, apply makeup, polish shoes and iron clothes.”

Should they bother?

For, until recently, it was “…unclear whether such time-consuming activities are valuable in the labor market.” – explains Steve DeLoach, PhD., professor of economics at the The Love School of Business, Elon University, who has investigated the subject, and has published a paper entitled : ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall: The effect of time spent grooming on earnings’ (in the Journal of Socio-Economics, Volume 40, Issue 1, February 2011, Pages 26-34.)

A new paper has been published regarding the significance of 2D:4D (the length ratios of the 2nd (index finger) and 4th (ring finger).

A joint research team from the Kochi Branch of NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), the Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University and the Institute of Social and Economic Research, Japan, measured the finger lengths of 142 Japanese professional sumo wrestlers :

    “The heart is a muscular organ that pumps the blood and makes it circulates in the body. Figuratively it refers to sensibility, affection and love.”

- explain Maria do Carmo Araujo Palmeira Queiroz and Juliana Nascimento de Andrade Rabelo Caldas, the Brazilian authors of a recent paper in the journal Anais Brasileiros de Dermatologia.

Academics have been examining Barbie® for more than a decade now.

One of the first to do so was senior professor Albert Magro of Fairmont State University, who, in 1997 presented his paper ‘Why Barbie is perceived as beautiful.’ (Perceptual and Motor Skills, 85, 363-374) His experimental examination of evaluations involving 495 individuals came to the conclusion that Barbie® had the following attributes -

“A man walks into a men’s room…” No, it’s not the beginning of a joke, it’s the beginning of a scholarly paper presented in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2010, Volume 6099/2010, pp. 284-295.

To continue :

    “A man walks into a men’s room and observes n empty urinals. Which urinal should he pick so as to maximize his chances of maintaining privacy, i.e., minimize the chance that someone will occupy a urinal beside him?”

It was no less than Aristotle himself who wondered “Why are the stones on the seashore which are called pebbles round, when they are originally made from long stones and shells?” In typical Aristotlean fashion, he not only asked the question, but went on to provide a very plausible explanation (see appendix below) – one which lay untested for more than 2000 years. It now been verified in practice by professor Douglas Durian and his Durian Research Group at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, US.

Carbon Monoxide – dubbed “The Silent Killer” is a colourless and odourless gas – highly toxic to human beings. It’s a common pollutant in city air, coming mainly from vehicle exhaust emissions.

But what if “CO, in small doses, is a boon to the well-being of urbanites, better equipping them to deal with environmental stress”?