Women in skirt suits create better first impression

By Indo Asian News Service, IANS

London, Sep 19 - Women wearing skirts are perceived as more successful than those sporting trousers favoured by the likes of Hillary Clinton and Angela Merkel, research suggests.

They seem to be the attire of the high-flying career businesswoman, but trouser suits don't seem to be best way to make a favourable first impression.

Research has revealed women who wear skirts and jackets are viewed as more confident, higher-earning and more savvy than their trouser sporting peer, the Telegraph reports.

Scientists also found that opinions of others, based purely on the clothes they are wearing, are formed within seconds of first meeting.

Karen Pine, a psychologist who co-led the research at the University of Hertfordshire, said: "We make very rapid judgements about people within the first few seconds of meeting them based on their clothing. 

"'It was surprising that the skirt suit elicited more favourable attributes than the trouser suit as other studies have suggested that women who dress in a more masculine style were perceived as having greater professional status.

"What we found suggests women can still dress in a feminine way yet still be perceived as confident and successful. The skirt suit seems to balance professionalism with attractiveness,' concluded Professor Pine.

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Transport without drivers

Battery-powered pods launched at Heathrow airport in UK

By Gaby Leslie, Yahoo!
The UK’s biggest airport has launched the transport of the future – driverless battery-powered pods that provide hassle-free rides for passengers and their luggage.


A world’s first in modern transit technology, the Heathrow pod system is expected to carry 500,000 people every year on the five-minute journey between Terminal 5 and the car park.


A total of 21 Personal Rapid Transport (PRT) pods which use 70% less energy than a car will circulate around a 3.8km congestion-free track.


The vehicles can reach a top speed of 25mph and will eliminate the need for 50,000 yearly bus journeys around the airport.


It has taken 40 years to develop the concept of driverless vehicles and the technology piloted at Heathrow is expected to be rolled out across the world.




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Rabbit saves owner from house fire

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Sept. 20)  - A pet rabbit is being credited for saving its owners from a house fire in southeastern Alaska before it died of smoke inhalation, fire officials said on Friday.
The rabbit woke up the homeowner early on Tuesday morning by scratching on her chest, the Ketchikan Fire Department said in a statement.
The homeowner realized that the house was full of smoke, woke up her daughter and fled the house.
The fire was brought under control fairly quickly, with four engines, a ladder truck and 33 firefighters responding.
Damage to the house from flames, smoke and water was considered moderate.
While there were no injuries to the mother or daughter, the rabbit was not so lucky. The animal succumbed to smoke inhalation and did not survive, the fire department said. - Reuters

Facebook lets users tell life stories

SAN FRANCISCO (Sept 22, 2011) — Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday unveiled transformed profile pages that let members of the world's leading online social network tell the stories of their lives. Zuckerberg kicked off Facebook's annual f8 developers conference in San Francisco by introducing "Timeline" pages designed to let people digitally map everything they've ever done. "The heart of your Facebook experience, completely rethought from the ground up," Zuckerberg said. "Timeline is the story of your life." He demonstrated by showing his revamped profile page chronicled his experiences from meeting US President Barack Obama to baby photos. "The biggest challenge was to tell the story of your life in a single page," Zuckerberg said. "What Timeline does is show all the recent activity and then as you go back in time it starts summarizing the things you've done in your life." He also said the latest changes at Facebook include a new class of applications that will let people discover and share music, movies, books and other news as well as seemingly lightweight experiences like bicycle rides. "I am excited about what the latest wave of music companies is doing with the open graph," Zuckerberg said. Software apps made by more than a dozen developers, including Spotify, will let Facebook members share, discover and listen to music, he added. "It's a big day for everyone who loves music," Spotify chief executive Daniel Ek said after joining Zuckerberg on stage. — AFP

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Arkansas town searching for toe-sucking man

Sept. 17, 2011


LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas - There's nothing illegal about a foot fetish but police in Conway, Arkansas, are looking for a toe-sucking man they said has crossed the line into assault.

Police have received two complaints in the past week about a man who seems desperate to suck women's toes — whether they want him to or not.

"We want him off the streets," said Conway police spokeswoman LaTresha Woodruff.

Last Saturday, Ruth Harris, 83, told police she was sitting in a chair in front of her apartment when a man approached and said he liked her feet. According to a police report, the man took off one of her shoes and began sucking on her toe.

"The man then asked if he could kiss her and she had told him no and told him he was crazy," the report stated.

The man left quickly after people walked into the apartment complex's courtyard.

On Tuesday, police received another call from a woman who said that on Saturday she was shopping when she noticed a man staring at her.

The man then told the woman that he had a foot fetish and that "her toes are so long and succulent" and he wanted to suck them. When the woman's cell phone rang, the man retreated.

She told police the man had "messed up toes."

It is not the first time that Conway has dealt with this sort of complaint. In the 1990s, a man who was known as the "Toe Suck Fairy" kept Arkansans captivated with his foot fondling antics in Conway and Little Rock.

That assailant, Michael Robert Wyatt, pretended to be a podiatrist in order to fondle and suck a Conway woman's toes at a clothing store. He received probation, a fine and court-ordered therapy but his probation was revoked after he was arrested in another town on similar charges.

In 1991, he was convicted of making threats for telling a convenience store clerk that he wanted to cut off her feet and suck her toes while she bled to death.

Wyatt was sentenced to four years in state prison. He served just more than one year in prison, according to Conway police.

Some two decades later, police have not ruled out the possibility that the current toe-sucker could be the same man. - Reuters


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Dutch mull bringing the mountain to them

Vaalserberg

UTRECHT, The Netherlands - What started as a joke about creating an artificial mountain in the utterly flat Netherlands may actually be feasible.


This was not what semi-professional cyclist-cum-journalist Thijs Zonneveld had expected when he posted a column on a popular Dutch news website on Aug. 5 in which he laughingly urged his countrymen to create their own mountain with alpine slopes, meadows and villages.


"It was not serious but the next day there was such a serious response from people who had actually been thinking about it and calculating stuff that it made me realize I was not the only one who'd had that idea," Zonneveld said.


The highest natural ground in the Netherlands is at Vaalserberg, in the southern province of Limburg, with an altitude of just 323 metres, making it little more than a hill in the low-lying country in the eyes of most people.


But Zonneveld, 30, dreams of an artificial mountain 5 km (3.107 miles) wide and between 1 and 2 km in height, which would surpass the world's tallest man-made building, the 828-metre (yard) high Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai.


The idea of artificial mountains is not new.


In 2009, a German architect proposed erecting a 1,000 meter-high mountain at the site of the old Tempelhof Airport in Berlin, but had to settle for a 60-meter hill as the challenges set in.


Zonneveld has yet to figure out exactly how the Dutch mountain would be designed and built, what materials would be used, where it would be located, and, crucially, how much it would cost. He declined to put even a rough price tag on it.


Yet his call has resonated with the enterprising Dutch, whose engineering prowess has allowed them to defend land that lies below sea level from the raging waters and to engage in major engineering feats abroad, such as building artificial islands in Dubai.


On Tuesday, Dutch engineering groups such as Oranjewoud and Bartels, along with sport organizations, such as the Dutch skiing association and the Dutch climbing and mountaineering association, met to ponder the details.


"The project is feasible and we the Dutch have a lot of experience in moving soil and sand around for our land reclamation projects. It just needs to gather a snowball of support," said Oranjewoud project manager Anthony van Dongen.


Estimates of the cost range from a few billion euros all the way up to 200 billion euros. If and when the project takes off, it would therefore provide a major boost to the Dutch construction sector, which has been hit by a property downturn.


"Technically this can be done and the space can also be found. The biggest hurdles will be financing and environmental problems. But these will be tackled in the coming months by these companies," Zonneveld said.


Zonneveld said he had already spoken to several investors who saw commercial opportunities in offering sports, leisure resorts, developing real estate and even producing renewable energy by erecting wind mills on the mountain.


"People may think this is a publicity stunt but this is not true. Publicity is the means because if people don't know about it, it cannot be done. The goal however is to build this mountain," Zonneveld said.


Zonneveld said that even though his editorial kicked off the initiative and he was now devoting up to 16 hours a day working on the project, he does not care what the mountain is called, but suggested it could be named after the largest proprietor.


"The idea is now to use the name of a person or company that pays the most. I think it would be good to name the mountain after someone who can afford to contribute the most to make it happen," Zonneveld said.


Supporters of the idea hope they can appeal to Dutch national pride but also tap into the frustration of many of the country's holidaymakers who have to travel to neighbouring northern European countries to enjoy holidays with a bit of altitude.


"I'm realistic enough to know it will take a long time and that there will be a lot of obstacles to overcome, it will have to be taken step by step. But this is the moment to do this, I'm 100 percent confident," Zonneveld said. -- Reuters

Rare blue roses to be up for sale in US

Sept 16, 2011






By Indo Asian News Service, IANS

London, Sep 16 (IANS) Not naturally available, the mythical blue rose will be on sale in the US and Canada in November.


Named 'Applause,' the rose is the product of a genetic modification to synthesise a pigment found in blue flowers know as delphinidin.


And while it seems like purple, it is the nearest to a blue flower scientists have come so far.


The only blue roses available have been white coloured which are dyed blue. This is because nature is unable to produce blue pigments.


However after 20 years of trying, Japanese company Suntory Ltd finally made the breakthrough, the Daily Mail reports.


Since then the blue roses have been available to buy in Japan - although at 15-20 pounds for each stem, they are strictly for very special occasions.


Blue roses are also believed to have mythical qualities.

Space probe detects a planet with a double sunset

Sept. 14, 2011

By Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When the day ends on planet Kepler-16b there is a double sunset, scientists reported on Thursday in the journal Science.


In a scene reminiscent of science fiction, researchers using observations from NASA's Kepler spacecraft have detected a distant planet orbiting two waltzing stars, the first time such a phenomenon has been confirmed.


"This is really a stunning measurement by Kepler," said Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution for Science, a co-author of the study. "The real exciting thing is there's a planet sitting out there orbiting around these two stars."


Binary stars -- two suns turning around each other -- have been seen before, and astronomers have suspected planets exist around them, but Kepler's observations are the first to confirm it.


The gravitational pull of two stars, even stars like the relatively small ones at the heart of this stellar system, would be quite different from the gravity exerted by just one star, Boss said by telephone.


Kepler's mission is to scour our section of the Milky Way galaxy for Earth-like planets in the so-called "habitable zone" that is not too close and not too far away from the stars they orbit.


LIKE LUKE SKYWALKER'S HOME?


The spacecraft does this by finding stars whose light periodically gets dimmer, which means there is an orbiting astronomical body -- a planet -- passing between the star and Kepler's instruments. This is known as a planetary transit.


What made this find so eye-popping was that the stars were eclipsing each other as first one and then the other got in the way. And then a third eclipse indicated a planet was part of the system.


If the notion of a planet with two suns seems familiar, it may be because it was displayed in the earliest "Star Wars" film on the fictional planet Tatooine, home of Luke Skywalker.


Tatooine was a rocky, desert planet, but Kepler-16b is a cool gas giant, Boss and other researchers said.


Because both of its suns are smaller and cooler than our sun, Kepler-16b would be quite cold, with a surface temperature of around minus 100 to minus 150 degrees F (minus 73 to minus 101 degrees Celsius), the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said in a statement. The center's Josh Carter is co-author of the study.


Kepler-16b is similar to Jupiter in size and mass, a cold gas giant that orbits its two suns every 229 days at a distance of 65 million miles (104.6 million km). That is roughly the same distance as Venus' orbit, compared to Earth's 365-day orbit around the sun at a distance of about 93 million miles (149.7 million km).


This newly detected planet is 200 light-years from Earth and is not thought to harbor life. A light-year is about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km), the distance light travels in a year.