Men More Intelligent Than Women

Especially for the ladies :P

thanks ircspy.com (",)

The British Journal of Psychology claims that men are, on average, 5 IQ points smarter than women.
Research was based on IQ tests done on 80,000 people and 20,000 students.

Also noted from the study ... up to the age of 14, there was little difference between the two sexes.
Beyond that, it was found that twice as many men have an IQ of 125.

There were 5½ times as many men with IQ's of 155. The paper also points out that women at the same IQ are able to accomplish more than men "possibly because they are more conscientious and better adapted to sustained periods of hard work".

BBC

Apple hints at major iPod revamp

thanks ircspy.com (",)

Apple is hinting at a major revamp of its iPod music player range next week, after sending out invitations to an event in San Francisco on 7 September.
"One thousand songs in your pocket changed everything. Here we go again," the invitation stated.

The comment refers to the original launch of the iPod four years ago, which was one of the first hard disk-based digital music players at the time. Competing products used more expensive flash memory.
While the move resulted in mixed reactions, Apple has since conquered the market for digital media players.
Next week's event could see the launch of a video iPod, rumours of which have been circulating for some time.
Apple is said to have been talking to record companies about licensing music video downloads, and the company earlier this year equipped its iPod players with a colour screen.
An upgraded version of the flash memory-based iPod Shuffle could be another option. According to analyst firm iSuppli, Apple has recently signed a contract with Samsung Electronics to guarantee a steady flow of memory chips for the music player.

A third option would be the launch of the Motorola iPod mobile phone. The model's introduction has missed several deadlines and has been development for a long time. But things appear to be progressing after the handset received approval from the Federal Communications Commission.
The current version 4.9 of the iTunes media player also offers some support for mobile phones.
Industry insiders, however, maintain that operators are refusing to support the phone because it would force them to loosen control over the lucrative ring-tone business.
They also seek guarantees that the devices are synchronised over a cellular data connection rather than through a wire, ensuring them additional customers for data plans.
To circumvent the operators Apple could decide to set up a mobile virtual network operator where the company launches a new mobile brand and leases network capacity from an operator that owns a network.

Virgin Mobile already operates such a network in the UK and US, as does Disney in the US.

10 Years of Cell Phones show No Signs of Cancer

thanks to ircspy.com (",)

Using a mobile phone for up to 10 years seems to pose no extra risk of brain cancer, scientists said yesterday.

There is no substantial risk to phone users of developing acoustic neuroma, a rare tumour which occurs close to where mobiles are held to the head, according to the largest study so far.

Researchers could find no link between the risk of developing a tumour and the number of years for which mobile phones had been used, the time since their first use, or the total number of calls. Whether the phone was an analogue or digital model did not seem to matter either.

But increased risk after 10 years could not be ruled out because the technology was still so new, the team from the Institute of Cancer Research in London said in an article published online in the British Journal of Cancer.

Researchers collated data on adults from five countries - Britain, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden - where mobile phones were introduced particularly early.

One billion people use mobiles worldwide, and there remains concern that children may be more at risk of cancer because their nervous systems are still developing and they will be exposed to radiation for longer during their lives.

There is very little evidence of the effects on users aged under 16, although studies are planned.

The Department of Health said the latest report, which it part-funded, found "no hard evidence at present that the health of the public is being adversely affected by the use of mobile phone technologies".

But it advised people under 16 to keep calls short, not to use phones frequently, and to send text messages where possible.

This year Sir William Stewart, chairman of the Health Protection Agency, went further, suggesting parents should ban children under eight from using mobiles.

Eight studies on the risk of acoustic neuroma and mobile phones had been published before yesterday's, of which two suggested a significantly increased risk. One of the two concluded that this risk applied to relatively short-term users of analogue phones. Another, from Sweden, raised the possibility of risk for long-term users.

The latter research was subjected to fresh analysis for the results published yesterday. It compared mobile phone use among 144 people who had acoustic neuroma with that of others who did not.

But the "risk effect" was wiped out by the larger numbers of people examined by collating information from other countries. For yesterday's study, information was collected from 678 people with acoustic neuroma and 3,553 who did not have the tumour. All were questioned on their mobile use. Over the next year, data from another eight countries is expected to be added.

Acoustic neuromas are slow-growing tumours which affect the nerve that connects the ear and inner ear to the brain. They can cause loss of hearing in the affected ear and loss of balance but do not spread to other parts of the body.

Anthony Swerdlow, a professor who is senior investigator at the Institute of Cancer Research, said: "There has been public concern about whether there is a link between brain cancer risk and the use of mobile phones. The risk of acoustic neuroma is of particular interest in this context because of the proximity of the acoustic nerve to the handset.

"The results of our study suggest there is no substantial risk in the first decade after starting use. Whether there are longer-term risks remains unknown, reflecting the fact that this is a relatively recent technology."

The Mobile Operators Association said: "This study outcome is consistent with the significant body of research and expert reviews reporting no health effects from the use of mobile phones."

Scientists have yet to explain how radio-frequency fields from mobile phones might cause tumours. Unlike ionising radiation, the fields from handsets do not have enough energy to break chemical bonds or damage DNA.

Source: Guardian

Nano-material Harder Than Diamonds

thanks to ircspy.com (",)

A material that is harder than diamond has been created by packing together tiny "nanorods" of carbon.

The new material, known as aggregated carbon nanorods (ACNR), was created by compressing and heating super-strong carbon molecules called buckyballs or carbon-60. These molecules consist of 60 atoms that interlock in hexagonal or pentagonal shapes and resemble tiny soccer balls.

The super-tough ACNR was created by compressing carbon-60 to 200 times normal atmospheric pressure, while simultaneously heating it to 2226°C.

The properties of the resulting material were then measured using a diamond anvil cell at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in France. This instrument squeezes a material between two normal diamonds, enabling researchers to study it at high pressure using synchrotron radiation – extremely intense X-rays which reveal the material’s structure.

The researchers found their ACNR to be 0.3% denser than ordinary diamond and more resistant to pressure than any other known material.

While an ordinary diamond gets its hardness from the strong molecular bonds between each of its atoms, ACNR derives its strength from the fact that it is formed from interlocking nanorods.

"Our material actually scratches normal diamonds," says Natalia Dubrovinskaia, of the University of Bayreuth, in Germany, who led the research. Dubrovinskaia believes the material could offer a wide range of potential industrial applications. As it is stable at very high temperatures, she says it could be better than normal diamond for deep drilling and polishing abrasive materials. She also believes it will be easy to mass produce the super-tough material.

NewScientist