Lovely personality

OUR CULTURE might seem superficial, shallow and image-obsessed, but a new study of sexual attractiveness reports that if you want to improve your looks, then working on your personality will achieve better results than any amount of lifts or lotions.

The study of 78 college students in the journal Personal Relationship found that strong personality traits can swerve people’s impressions of how good-looking you are.

Psychologists at the universities of New York State and Monmouth asked a mixed group of students to rate photographs of the opposite sex for their sexual attractiveness. They were then asked to complete a series of maths tasks, to distract them from their original impressions, and subsequently shown the photographs again – but this time they heard about each person’s personality.

The ones who were described as honest, amusing, mature, intelligent and polite, and who previously had scored only low or middling in the looks department, saw their physical attractiveness ratings boosted significantly.

Gary Lewandowski, one of the study authors, says the results were a little stronger for women but “personality was of great importance to both genders”. He adds: “These findings are particularly encouraging as cosmetic surgery becomes increasingly common.”

Cor, look at the morals on that.

Tattoo with a task

INVISIBLE tattoos could make the lives of insulin-dependent diabetics less painful, claims an American engineering professor.

Most methods for measuring blood-sugar levels need regular blood samples to be taken via pinprick tests. But Gerard Cote, of Texas A&M University, is developing a system that uses microscopic beads that are implanted just under a patient’s skin, like ink in a tattoo.

The experimental beads are too large to enter cells, unlike tattoo ink, which is absorbed by them. Instead the beads remain in the spaces between the cells, where they come into contact with glucose flowing through the bloodstream.

The fluorescent beads glow when laser light is shone on them through the skin. But the beads’ fluorescent colour changes in response to the level of glucose around them, offering a permanent, painless visual monitor for patients.

Cote says his initial lab tests show that the system can work in practice. He hopes that a wristwatch-like monitor can be developed to provide an easy way to translate the beads’ colour changes into an index of the wearer’s blood-sugar levels.

New fever pitch

HIGH fevers could offer a key to helping children with autism, says a study in the authoritative journal Pediatrics. The study of 30 children confirms anecdotal evidence that the behaviour of autistic children who get a fever may improve dramatically in terms of concentration, speech, eye contact and relationships.

The study indicates that metabolic changes in the brain may yield significant improvements, say doctors at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, Maryland. Their aim now is to trigger the changes, but without the fevers.

Buddy movies

DESPITE DVDs and flat screens, cinema-going is as popular as ever. The Journal of Consumer Research may explain why: watching films with pals boosts our responses to the action. Chicago University researchers say we reinforce each other’s reactions to films. So if we watch a movie alone, and like it, we will love that same film if we go out to see it with enthusiastic friends.

Superscanner

AN MRI brain scanner with three times the power of current hospital machines is about to open up new methods to combat brain cancer.

Illinois University’s scanner has passed its safety trials, reports the Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Its powerful magnet will enable doctors to track ions in the brain for the first time, enabling oncologists to tailor radiation therapy to a tumour’s real-time response to treatment. Human volunteers who tried the machine reported a few odd side-effects, such as vertigo and seeing sparks.

Wing nuts

THIS might just make long-distance travellers reconsider their planet-junking habits: a new study of airline pilots says that at least 90 per cent of them will suffer at some time from “spatial disorientation”, when they lose all sense of direction, height and speed. Some will even feel like they are sitting on the wing watching themselves in the cockpit, Australia’s Transport Safety Bureau says. This may be a big cause of crashes, adds the report, rather superfluously.

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