Quirky Science

All it takes is a smile (for some guys)

Does she or doesn't she . . .? Sexual cues are ambiguous, and confounding. Men often read them wrong. "There are tons of studies showing that men think women are interested when they're not," writes Williams College psychologist Carin Perilloux, who conducted the research with University of Texas at Austin. "Ours is the first to systematically examine individual differences."
The results: Men looking for a quick hookup were more likely to overestimate the women's desire for them. Men who thought they were hot also thought the women were hot for them—but men who were actually attractive, by the women's ratings, did not make this mistake. The more attractive the woman was to the man, the more likely he was to overestimate her interest. And women tended to underestimate men's desire.
The research contains some messages for daters of both sexes, says Perilloux: Women should know the risks and "be as communicative and clear as possible." Men: "Know that the more attracted you are, the more likely you are to be wrong about her interest." Again, that may not be as bad as it sounds, she writes, "If warning them will prevent heartache later on."

Google searches may hold key to future market crashes, researchers find

Photo courtesy: www.businessinsider.com

A team of researchers from Warwick Business School and Boston University have developed a method to automatically identify topics that people search for on Google before subsequent stock market falls.
Applied to data between 2004 and 2012, the method shows that increases in searches for business and politics proceeded falls in the stock market. The study, "Quantifying the semantics of search behavior before stock market moves," was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Search engines, such as Google, record almost everything we search for," writes Chester Curme, Research Fellow at Warwick Business School and lead author of the study. "Records of these search queries allow us to learn about how people gather information online before making decisions in the real world. So there's potential to use these search data to anticipate what large groups of people may do.”

Attention, bosses: Web-surfing at work has its benefits

A new e-memo for the boss: Online breaks at work can refresh workers and boost productivity, according to a study by University of Cincinnati.  
Management might call it cyberloafing, but new research reveals how online breaks can benefit employees and employers. Authors say that workers engaged in online work breaks when they reported a high need for recovery (feeling frazzled from an intense work period, recovering from a reported significant loss of physical or emotional energy). Triggers also included breaking monotony or boredom, checking on demands at home and other personal demands, or emotional work-related events that triggered anger or frustration.

Hot pepper compound could help hearts

The food that inspires wariness is on course for inspiring even more wonder from a medical standpoint as scientists have reported the latest evidence that chili peppers are a heart-healthy food with potential to protect against the No. 1 cause of death in the developed world.
“Our research has reinforced and expanded knowledge about how these substances in chilies work in improving heart health," writes Zhen-Yu Chen, a professor of Food and Nutritional science at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who presented the study. "We now have a clearer and more detailed portrait of their innermost effects on genes and other mechanisms that influence cholesterol and the health of blood vessels. It is among the first research to provide that information."