Scientist Professor Israel Abramov and colleagues at the City University of New York have discovered that men and women see colours differently! So says a fascinating article in National Geographic.

He found men tended to find it more difficult to make fine distinctions between colours in the middle of the visual spectrum, such as between greeny-blues (or bluey-greens). Men and women also perceived colours slightly differently.

He said, “Across most of the visible spectrum males require a slightly longer wavelength than do females in order to experience the same hue.”

So, a man would perceive a turquoise vase, for instance, as being a little more blue than a woman who was looking at it too.

This may explain why one of our team’s (no names!) fiancée refused to speak to him for 3 days after re-painting the entire apartment - he couldn’t see what was wrong with army-tank green!

According to an article in the BBC the Earth is getting lighter! Speaking to the  BBC’s Radio 4 programme ‘More or Less’, Dr Chris Smith, a medical microbiologist and broadcaster who tries to improve the public understanding of science, explained that there are factors that are causing Earth to both gain and lose mass over time.

Using some rough calculations Dr Smith thinks:

“[The dust] is basically the vestiges of the solar system that spawned us, either asteroids that broke up or things that never formed into a planet, and it’s drifting around.

“The Earth is acting like a giant vacuum cleaner powered by gravity in space, pulling in particles of dust,” says Dr Smith.

So taking into account the gains and the losses, Dr Smith estimates the Earth is getting about 50,000 tonnes lighter a year, which is just less than half the gross weight of the Costa Concordia, the Italian cruise liner that ran aground not too long ago.

Interesting article in the BBC showing that the adolescent brain undergoes massive changes and does not reach maturity until 20 or 30 years old.

Details of the study were reported at the British Association’s annual Science Festival.

“The brain is pre-programmed to undergo massive changes during adolescence,” Sarah-Jayne Blakemore of University College London told the meeting. ”If you’re making decisions about how you treat teenagers, socially and legally, you need to take this new research into account,” she said.

“The brain of, for example, a typical 15-year-old boy is very much still developing; he’s a very different person from himself at 25. His brain is very different.”

There may be plants on distant planets that have developed black foliage and flowers to survive, according to new research, reports the BBC.

Forms of vegetation that are black or grey, enabling plants to absorb more light to photosynthesise, could have evolved on planets orbiting dim “red dwarf” stars, according to the research which looked at many star systems.  The research is the combined work of scientists from St. Andrews, the University of Dundee and the Open University.

These dark colours would absorb light across the entire wavelength so that they would be able to use as much light as possible for an energy source, as well as blocking harmful UV light.

The star system was modelled with two or three stars with various combinations of Sun-like and dim stars. The researcher then added planets to these models, orbiting around one or more of the stars.

The model suggests that photosynthesis on these planets, albeit that plants would have to adapt to very different light conditions, would resemble that of our own planet, with plants using energy from the Sun to convert carbon dioxide and water into oxygen.

If the light source is from a dim star, then it is thought that plants would be black and grey, but there could be some other exotic outcomes which are unknown.  For example, plant life receiving light from dim stars and other suns could lead to difference colours on the spectrum.

Research at Keele University has recently demonstrated what we all probably practice (and would secretly argue we knew): that swearing can actually help to relieve pain on a psychological level. But before you start running your mouth, the results also show that those who curse more often in general everyday life do not benefit as much from the full pain-relieving effects.

In an interesting experiment, subjects were asked to place their hands in ice-cold water for as long as they could. As the pain got more and more unbearable, the findings showed that using curse words, as opposed to neutral ones, allowed the subjects to hold their hands in for longer.

Those who normally didn’t swear managed to reach 140 seconds while swearing during the experiment, which was twice as long as when they used a neutral word; however, the subjects that regularly used foul language (up to 60 times a day) could only muster 120 seconds and there was no difference when they repeated the test using neutral words.

The article in The Telegraph discusses the findings with the researchers involved, and it would appear that swearing is a way for humans to express strong emotions. As such, it can be a useful way to relieve short-term pain as it helps to induce an equally strong emotional response reminiscent of the “mind over matter” phenomenon.

If you swear regularly, it seems that the emotional response is somewhat desensitised as your brain is more emotionally engaged with this kind of language.

Don’t believe it? Check the results for yourself here, as published in The Journal of Pain.