All About Women | Women

Updated on : Monday, December 14, 2009

LONDON: Despite worries about the damaging effects of the digital age on brain development, surfing the internet can, in fact, increase IQ and boost memory in adults, scientists have found.

Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles compared the brains of middle-aged participants who rarely used the internet to experienced internet users, as they conducted web searches for an hour each day.

After five days, areas of the prefrontal cortex, which controls the ability to make decisions and integrate complex information, had become significantly more active.

'These areas were fairly inactive at the beginning of our experiment,' says Gary Small,

Professor of Psychiatry and Bio-Behavioural Sciences at UCLA, who led the study. 'But after five days they were as active as regular internet users, showing that brain function can change and improve with internet use very fast. This research demonstrates that average IQ is steadily rising with the advancing of digital culture. The ability to process information fast and multitask without errors is improving too.'

Even dull activities, such as sorting through your emails, can boost decision-making ability.

'Selectively clearing your email in-box on a daily basis can help develop a better ability to sift through large amounts of information rapidly and decide what's important and what isn't,' says Professor Small.

'In this way, we are able to cope with massive amounts of information appearing and disappearing on our mental screens from moment to moment.'

But there is a downside. Prolonged computer use can have a profound effect on the way we think, feel and behave.

'While internet use can enhance information processing and rapid decision-making, excessive use can damage interpersonal skills, lead to attention deficit and reduced ability to form bonding, human relationships,' warns Professor Small.

'It's common sense - if you work all day at a computer, make sure you mix with real people as much as you can after work, rather than using social networking sites on the internet or playing computer games.'

This is your year to shine! How do you have the best year of your life?

Laugh harder

Feel it? Good!

In peace,
Coach Carolyn

Updated on : Friday, December 18, 2009

WASHINGTON: Beauty is not so much in the eye of the beholder as in the measurements between the eyes, mouth and ears of the woman being observed, US and Canadian researchers have found.

In four experiments aimed at finding "an ideal facial feature arrangement," US and Canadian researchers asked students to compare color photographs of the same woman's face, in which the vertical distance between the eyes and mouth, and horizontal distance between the eyes, had been doctored using Photoshop.

The features -- eyes, mouth, nose, contour and hair -- remained the same and a woman's face was only compared to her own, never to another's.

Students looked at different pictures of the same woman's face laid out side by side and selected the face they found more attractive.

In all four experiments, they chose the faces with specific proportions that the researchers have dubbed the "new golden ratio."

Two of the experiments tested for the ideal distance between the eyes and mouth as compared to total face length, measured from the hairline to the chin. Both came up with 36 percent as the golden ratio for "the maximally attractive face."

The other two experiments measured both the ideal length and width ratios.

They both confirmed 36 percent as the golden ratio for the length of the maximally attractive face, and 46 percent as the ideal width ratio -- where the distance between the eyes is 46 percent of total face width, measured between the inner edges of the ears.

Happily, the 36/46 percent ratios "correspond with those of an average face", the study said, meaning there's no pressing need to get out the measuring tape and calculator or to rush to the plastic surgeon.

The study looked only at white women. More research is needed to determine if the golden ratios for men's faces, the faces of people of other races, and children's faces, are the same as for the women's faces in the study.

LONDON: Slanket is the newest apparel that has become a craze this season.

The dress, which seems to be a cross between a hospital gown and a blanket, can be worn like an apron.

Lakeland, the kitchen and homewares store in America had come up with the item in September last year.

Since then, the dress that covers the wearer from neck to feet, has sold nearly a quarter of a million.

Even chat show hosts Jay Leno and Oprah Winfrey have worn it on their shows.

Also, Bruce Willis donned it on the David Letterman show.

“There is something very wrong about someone wearing a slanket. They are definitely not high fashion, but they’ve been an amazing phenomenon,” the Telegraph quoted Tom Dunmore of Stuff magazine, as saying.

Lakeland is offering it for 29.99 pounds, while Firebox, an online gadget retailer, is selling them for 25 pounds.

From the Guardian:

The fearsome northern woman of legend and cliche, broadchested and with a frying pan poised to whack sense into her man, has proved to have genuine historic origins.

Analysis of bones from Britain's biggest medieval excavation has unearthed a race of real-life Nora Battys, ruling a Yorkshire roost nearly 1,000 years ago.

Skeletons from Wharram Percy, a village on the Yorkshire Wolds abandoned after the 14th century Black Death, have much larger bones than those of contemporaries elsewhere.

Wharram's insights on the state of medieval Britain are set to continue, as work continues on hundreds of thousands of remains excavated between 1950 and 1990. The site, surrounding a lonely church in a remote grassy valley, is the best-preserved of Britain's 3,500 abandoned villages.