Research

Studies from around the world on persuasion show that pestering and nagging are effective tactics for getting husbands to submit to the demands of their wives. According to the studies, it works because it leaves the targeted person too worn out to fight back.

The fatigue created by a non-stop flow of questions and demands thus makes people more vulnerable to pursuation. By simply wearing someone down, you're more likely to get your way.

The studies also showed other tactics that work for persuading someone, whichi nclude: providing few options, speaking in person, and not pausing when stating your demand.

According to the report, which was published in the New Scientist magazine, avoid engaging in an arguement or doing baattle with sales people when you're fatigued or your mental batteries are running low.

According to research by an American scholar, Larry Schaaf, a 200-year-old image of a leaf may be the world's oldest photograph. The image laid for years in an album, and was believed to have been dated 1839. However, Schaaf, believes it may have been made more than 30 years earlier by Thomas Wedgewood.

The photogenic drawing, which is a negative obtained by laying the leaf on light-sensitive paper and exposing it to the sun, was attributed to Henry Fox Talbot, one of the pioneers of early photography. Schaaf, an expert on Fox Talbot, says that a "W" on the image may refer to Thomas Wedgewood, who was a member of the Wedgewood china family.

200-year-old image of a leaf, which lay for years in an album, may be the world's oldest photograph, according to research by a scholar.

The photogenic drawing, a negative obtained by laying the leaf on light-sensitive paper and exposing it to the sun, has been attributed to Henry Fox Talbot, one of the pioneers of photography.

Hallmarks of British humor such as sarcasm and self-deprecation don't always travel well, and according to researchers, may be down to genetics.

Rod Martin, a psychologist at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, indicated that television shows such as The Office of Fawlty Towers show that people in Britain enjoy cruel and dark humor more than people from other countries. Briths may have a greater tolerance for a wide range of expressions of humor, said Martin.

For example, in the US version of The Office, the lead character is far less insensitive and intolerant the the one in the UK version.

Researchers studied 2,000 pairs of British twins and 500 pairs of American twins. What they found was that both groups enjoyed positive humor, but only the British appreciated sarcasm, self-depracation, teasing and ridicule, and the less pleasing aspects of racist or sexist humor.

"In North American families there was a genetic basis to positive humour, but negative humour seems to be entirely learnt," said Martin.

They also found that television humor in Britain was more biting, where as in the US it tended to be blander.

In 2005, President George W. Bush signed into law a broad energy bill that will extend Daylight Savings Time by four weeks. The United States had previously observed DST from the first Sunday in April through the last Sunday in October, however under the new law DST begins in March and ends in November. The new period of DST went into effect in 2007, and continues again this year.

In 2008, Daylight Savings Time will begin on 2:00 a.m. March 9, which is this upcoming weekend. At this time, you will need to turn your clocks ahead one hour.

In other Daylight Savings Time related news, a new study out of Indiana shows that while conventional wisdom has claimed that DST saves on energy, that's simply not the case.

According to the Wall Street Journal, who first reported on the Indiana study, springing forward may actually waste energy rather than save it.

The study, which was conducted by the University of California-Santa Barbara economics professor Matthew Kotchen and Ph.D. student Laura Grant, looked at how extending daylight savings time across Indiana worked out. What they found was that it mostly had negative results:

• Residential electricity usage increased between 1 percent and 4 percent, amounting to $8.6 million a year.

The how and why of how blue eyes arose has always been a bit of mystery in the world of genetics, but it appears that the mystery may have now been solved. According to a team of researchers from Copenhagen University, a single mutation that arose as recently as 6,000 to 10,000 years ago is responsible for all of the blue-eyed people of the world.

The team of researchers identified a single mutation in a gene called OCA2, which they believe arose by chance somewhere around the northwest coasts of the Black Sea in one individual around 8,000 years ago. The mutation does not "make" the eye blue in the iris, but rather, it turns off the mechanism which produces brown melanin pigment.

Dr. Hans Eiberg, who led the team, said "Originally we all had brown eyes."

It is believed that the mutation was dispersed genetically in the rapid wave of colonization that followed the end of the last ice age. The mutation also highlights another great mystery of human evolution, the oddness of Europeans.

Individuals from Europe and the Near-East have characteristics that set them apart from the rest of the human race. Europeans are not only far more likely to have blue eyes, but also have a greater range of skin tones and hair color than any other ethnic grouping.

Surgeons in training will increasingly be turning to video game consoles in order to hone their scalpel wielding skills, after a new study found that students are more proficient in making the delicate movements needed in surgery after playing specific games.

At the Banner Good Samaritan Medical Centre in Phoenix, Arizona, eight trainee doctors were asked to spend an hour playing video games on a console. After playing the games, surgeons "performed surgery" in virtual reality, utilizing a high-tech software system that recreates the human body in 3-D on a computer screen, and monitors the surgeons' hands as they conduct an operation electronically.

The virtual reality operation allowed Mark Marshall, director of simulation and training, to judge how good each of the surgeons were at a variety of procedures used in real-life operations.

What Marshall and his team of researchers found was that the students scored better in their virtual operations after playing games on the Nintendo Wii. They attribute the success to the wireless controllers that allow one to direct onscreen action.

It's important to note, however, that not every game had benefit to the surgeons.

"You don't gain a lot from swinging an imaginary tennis racket," said Kanav Kohel, another researcher on the project. "The whole point about surgery is to execute small, finely controlled movements with your hands, and that is exactly what you get with the Wii."

For example, the fine control needed to move a virtual marble around a 3-D maze in one game was particularly applicable to laparoscopy, a type of keyhole surgery. Researchers emphasized that trainees be given specific exercises to focus on while playing games, in particular ones that would relate to surgical skills, and fine, controlled movements.

The study also found out that those who played the Wii games scored 48% higher than those who had not practiced on the game console first.

"Our trial shows this improves the skills of the surgeons when they are told to pick exercises within the games. It makes their training much, much quicker. How long depends on the surgical speciality, but usually it's somewhere between four to six years," said Marshall.

When the Quedagh Merchant sailed the world's seas more than 300 years ago, it was one of the greatest treasure ships of the time. The ship featured 50 cannons, and was overflowing with tempting booty that included gold, silks, and opium. But then the Quedagh Merchant fell into the hands of the infamous pirate Captain William Kidd, and then soon after, disappeared. For 300 years the lost ship has been the subject of countless rumors and treasure hunts, and as it turns out, the ship may have been laying in less than 10 feet of water in the Caribbean sea.

Indiana University archaeologists believe that they have stumbled on the sunken Quedagh Merchant, and announced their find on Thursday. Charles Beeker, director of academic diving and underwater science programs at IU, described the scene as pratically untouched by humans since the 400-ton vessel sank in 1699 off what is now the coast of the Dominican Republic. Beeker said that all the other gold seekers over the years "just missed it."

The wrecked ship was first spotted by Ferruccio Fiorucci, the Italian owner of a local resort. Fiorucci alerted authorities, which thus led to an IU expedition which began this past summer. News of the discovery has since spread, and treasure hunters have flocked to the site in hopes of snagging some of the ship's booty for themselves.

Indiana University officials were set to meet with the U.S. Embassy in the Dominican on Thursday to ask for help in protecting the site.

Beeker said, "The word is out. There were treasure hunters on it two weeks ago. So if we just ignore it, it will be destroyed."

Indiana University was granted a license to study the shipwreck, as well as to convert the area into an underwater marine attraction that will one day be open to the public. IU is also the only university in the U.S. to offer undergraduate coursework in underwater archaelogy. Beeker and his students conduct archaeology work in other Caribbean locations at the sites of more shipwrecks.

South Korean officials say that scientists in their country have successfully cloned cats by manipulating a florescent protein gene. The side effect to the procedures is that the cloned cats glow in the dark when exposed to ultraviolet beams. Nevertheless, scientists hope that this procedure may help develop treatments for human genetic diseases.

The South Korean Ministry of Science and Technology confirm that a team of scientists, led by Kong Il-keun, have produced three cats with altered fluorescence protien (RFP) genes. Kong Il-keun is an internationally recognized cloning expert at the Gyeongsang National University.

The ministry issued a statement which said:

"It marked the first time in the world that cats with RFP genes have been cloned. The ability to produce cloned cats with the manipulated genes is significant as it could be used for developing treatments for genetic diseases and for reproducing model (cloned) animals suffering from the same diseases as humans."

All three of the cats were born in January and February. One of the cats was stillborn, while the other two cats grew to become glow in the dark adult Turkish Angoras.

Scientists, and particularly biologists, have been intrigued with the ability of newts and salamanders to regenerate injured or damaged body parts, but until now it wasn't quite clear how they did it. Now, British scientists have found a key protein that helps newts regrow severed limbs, which may help guide future research into human regenerative medicine.

Research shows that a protein known as nAG, which is secreted by nerve and skin cells in newts, plays a key role in the production of a clump of immature cells (called a blastema), which is what regrows the missing limb. Researchers stumbled upon the importance of nAG when they found that even when a nerve was severed below the stump tip, which typically prevents regrowth, the researchers were able to coax the regeneration by artificially making cells produce the protein.

The research is being conducted at University College London (UCL) by Anoop Kumar and colleagues, who said that the finding "may hold promise for future efforts to promote limb regeneration in mammals."

David Stocum at the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis said the discovery of the importance of the nAG protein could help explain why mammals have limited regrowth capabilities, and may thus help direct the future and field of regenerative medicine.

Lung cancer takes the lives of more Americans each year than any other cancer, and while we know that smokers and ex-smokers are at the greatest risk of developing lung cancer, it's not often detected in early, more curable stages. But now it looks like there is some good news coming out of Gaithsburg, Maryland where researchers at Panacea Pharmaceuticals claim that they have found that 99 percent of patients with all stages of lung cancer have detectable levels of a particular protein in their blood that is not present in healthy individuals.

Such a discovery could revolutionize the detection and early treatment of lung cancer, and as more cases are caught early on, the more likely patients are to survive. Panacea reported these encouraging preliminary results this week at an American Association for Cancer Research conference.

Panacea is working toward federal approval that would allow them to market the blood test for high-risk patients.

David Carbone, director of Vanderbilt University's Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center's research program in lung cancer, says:

"Lung cancer is the only major cancer with no approved screening procedure."