I recently read a blog from Popular Science that claimed birth order could explain relationship compatibility. Prone to wanting to keep my mind as open as possible, I found some interesting truths behind the blogger’s descriptions. My focus remained on personality types until I discovered some fascinating research into the connection between birth order and testicular cancer, homosexuality and intelligence?

To begin, PopSci’s blog about personality types and birth order was based on the following descriptions:

Firstborns: Energetic, Logical, Ambitious, Enterprising, Scholarly.

Second Borns: Flexible, Diplomatic, Rebellious, Attention-seeking, Competitive, Peacemakers.

Last Borns: Risk takers, Idealists, Good sense of humor, Immature, Attention-seeking, Secretive, Sensitive.

Only Children: Mature faster, Get along well with older people, Responsible, Self-Centered, Perfectionists, Attention-seekers and Have difficulty sharing.

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According to the book ‘Birth Order Connection‘ by Dr. Kevin Leman, the different types of compatibility are as follows:

1. Eldest or only female child with a male who has older sisters – Let’s just say whoever this girl is, she’s able to manage her man’s ‘issues.’

2. Eldest female with eldest male – A combination destined to be explosive… but fun.

3. Last born female with last born male – Who’s going to wear the boots in this relationship?

4. Firstborn with middle child – This match could have all the right ingredients for stability. What do you think?

5. Firstborn with last born – A great combination where each member of the couple can learn from the other.

6. Middle child with middle child – This outcome of this match is laced with complexities and is certainly a hard once to predict… Just like all middle children, right?

7. Middle child and last born – In this case, the middle child must have some tendencies of a first born child in order for the best to come out of this relationship. Once again, it’s all down to the balance of personality types according to Dr Leman.

Do you agree? Give us your thoughts about birth order and compatibility!

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Next in my bundle of discoveries came some interesting, controversial research projects that attempt to confirm the evidence linking birth order with testicular cancer, intelligence and homosexuality.

1. Birth Order and Testicular Cancer

A Danish study from the mid 90s claimed that being fourth or more in the birth order of your family was positively related to a dramatic decrease in the risk of testicular cancer.

Testicular cancer is partially affected by the impact of estrogen on the developing testicular tissue in a fetus.

2. Birth Order and Intelligence

A study by American Association for the Advancement of Science, which tested 400,000 19-year-old Dutch men and that controlled for socio-economic status, found that firstborns performed better on intelligence testing than those who were not first born in their family. However as family size increased the results became inconsistent.

3. Birth Order And Homosexuality

Research about the causes of homosexuality is limited in terms of data and is also ripe with controversy.

The Fraternal Birth Order Effect (FBOE) was initially presented in 1996 by researcher Ray Blanchard. It is a theory that suggests the likelihood of a mother having a homosexual child increases around 33 per cent for every older brother that child has.

In 2000, University of New Orleans academic Edward Miller explored the connection between homosexuality and birth order.

He indicated that in evolutionary terms Blanchard’s theory was plausible given that the birth of a homosexual child into a family of brothers reduces competition between offspring. Birth order thus allows the older brothers, who take on a dominant role as leaders of the family and carriers of the family name, to be better prepared to attract and pursue a female counterpart.

Miller finally asks that if homosexuality was dependent solely on the environment that a child was raised in, how is it possible that such an advanced species (human beings) could allow environmental factors to produce men and women that work against evolution by not wanting to produce children with members of the opposite sex?

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One of Britain’s leading newspapers and online sources, the Daily Mail, claimed in April that there might be a case for mixed-race advantage in the UK.

Using data from from Cardiff University‘s study of just 40 female students, the Mail claims people of mixed-race in the UK might be considered more beautiful and more successful.

Chris Brown Barred From The UK!

Photos of more than 1,200 black, white and mixed-race Facebook users were used in the study. Over 50 per cent of the photos of mixed-race users were recognized as attractive.

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The article relates the prevalence of mixed-race celebrities in the UK, where the proportion of the population they occupy is comparatively small.

What are your thoughts on the article and, regardless of the merit of the study in question, do you agree that there is mixed-race advantage in this world?

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We’ve all heard the ideas that women dress to impress other women or that society dictates what is and isn’t attractive. But are you aware of the inner, biochemical workings of your body and how they attract members of the opposite sex? We explored some research about human chemistry and sex appeal to see whether there’s more than what you think to human attraction.

The revival of this topic came to me a few days ago when I remembered having seen a brilliant documentary on Discovery Channel called, ‘The Science of Sex Appeal‘. Along with all the usual trimmings about male/female social interaction, the program explored a range of research that shaped sexual attraction to be much more than just what society dictates.

Years of research have confirmed that our advanced brain development and intelligence in relation to other animals has steered us away from monogamy. According to “Science of Sex Appeal,”humans seek partners for the fulfillment of three stages of life: a) Choosing a partner, b) Keeping a partner and c) Building a home and raising children with that partner. How that comes to fruition varies.

In the documentary, a group of women are shown men of equal attraction and dress. Later, different groups are shown the same men and given information about their socio-economic situation. The results are unsurprising, revealing that women find higher socio-economic status attractive in a man. This in many ways is related to the protectionist tendencies of a woman stemming from evolution.

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What makes a man attractive to a woman can also often depend on her menstrual cycle. “Science of Sex Appeal” suggests that women are more attracted to men with masculine faces and bodies during ovulation. Meanwhile, women are more attractive to men when women are in their mid-cycle of menstruation because their bodies are releasing higher amounts of estrogen. This is perceived by men in the higher pitched voices of their female counterparts.

However, external appearance is clearly not irrelevant in our quest to find another partner. The study revealed that women with curves are genetically more attractive to men because of their childbearing capabilities. Curves also allow a woman to accentuate the way she moves her body. This is a particular trap for a man’s wondering eye.

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This month’s cover of Esquire magazine features the curvaceous Christina Hendrix, ranked most attractive woman in their latest survey.

What features do you think other people find attractive in you without you, yourself realizing?

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Hey working parents—ready for some good news? A study detailed in today’s New York Times bears the surprising news that contrary to popular belief, working parents are actually spending more time with their kids. A lot more.

After looking at a dozen surveys taken between 1965 and 2007 on how Americans say they use their time, the study concluded “that the amount of child care time spent by parents at all income levels…has risen “dramatically” since the mid-1990s.”

Specifics include a huge rise in the hours a week moms spend attending to their children. Estimated at 12 hours a week before 1995, those hours have risen to 21.2 hours a week for college educated women, and 15.9 hours for women with less education.

READ MORE OF THIS STORY HERE

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How to create an active lifestyle for your kids

(From shine.com)

If your paycheck doesn’t reflect the extra effort you’ve been expending, it may be time to take actions into your own hands.

Most organizations expect to pay workers a fare compensation, so if the reward for your hard work hasn’t been presented, ask for it. But, how do you go about asking for a raise? Here are a few suggestions for what to do, and what not to do.

Pay Raise Checklist

1. Do Your Research

Know what you’re worth. Pay rates for a given job can vary by region, type of company and the skill level of workers. Find out what your counterparts are making by reading online salary survey reports from websites like cbsalary.com. Knowing the range of salaries and where you currently stand will help determine how much extra pay to ask for. Take the time to understand your company’s salary or promotion rules. Is there a waiting period for salary increases? Who has the power to make decisions regarding salaries? Does everyone in your salary grade earn the same raise? Use this information as justification for increasing your pay.

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2. Build Your Case

The fact that you deserve a raise should not come as a shock to your boss. He should already see you working hard, overachieving and taking greater responsibility within the company. This is not the time to be modest. List your accomplishments and relate them to continued progression. Show that you are committed to continuing to delivering a high level of performance.

Click here for more of this story

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I grew up without cable. “There are better things to do than watch TV,” said my mother. So I read books, did arts and crafts, and found a lot of ways to be constructive without 790 channels standing in my way. Sure, I watched movies and the occasional TV show (I have babysitters to thank for the latter), but television was never a priority, and I think it’s been pretty beneficial in my adult life.

However, more and more often one hears, “My son/daughter LOVES [insert TV show]” and less and less often I hear “My son/daughter LOVES [insert book]!” What the hell? Where’d all the books go? They turned into educational DVDs, that’s where.

However, I’ve uncovered yet aNOTHER study (click here to read the first one) that says that the less time kids spend being couch potatoes, the smarter they are.  Says LiveScience,

Even infants zone out in front of the television, and it turns out this translates into less time interacting with parents and possible lags in language development, a new study finds.

“We’ve known that television exposure during infancy is associated with language delays and attentional problems, but so far it has remained unclear why,” said lead researcher Dimitri Christakis, director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Research Institute and professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics discourages television watching before the age of 2, a time when critical development, such as language acquisition, occurs. (Christakis said a baby’s brain triples in size during the first two years of life, so there’s a lot going on in that little noggin.)

Not popping in DVDs doesn’t mean you have to have a ton of time to spend with your kids, either. My mom was a single mom, and we got along just fine. Just let the kids do what you do! If you’re reading, read out loud and follow the words with your finger. Or let them read with you. If you’re cooking, let them stir. You’ll find that you have more time to spend with your kids than you thought, and eventually they might prefer a good book instead of another episode of Spongebob.

CHILD SAFETY: A Guide

[From Daily Mail]

It’s an age-old debate that divides the sexes –do women feel pain more profoundly than men?

And now – although experts are still divided – new evidence is emerging that women may indeed be more long-suffering.

A study presented recently to the International Association for the Study of Pain in Glasgow concludes that women generally experience more recurrent pain, more severe pain and longer lasting pain than men.

Not only this, but they feel pain in different ways to the opposite sex, offering different symptoms for the same conditions.

For example, a study in Sweden last year showed that women having heart attacks presented generalised pain in their shoulders and back, rather than shooting pain in the chest and left arm.

But headache expert Dr Andrew Dowson of East Kent Headache Services, says that gender can influence how readily you will admit to pain.

‘Figures show women are three times as likely to suffer from migraines – a serious, debilitating headache – than men are, which is partly due to their monthly hormonal cycle,’ he says.

To read the rest of this article, click here.

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A new study claims that sad parents are more likely to give their kids bad food. Does this sound far-fetched, or right up your alley?

[From Science Daily]

Mothers with many negative thoughts and feelings are more likely to give their children unhealthy food. This is shown in a study from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) in collaboration with the University of Oslo.

This is the first research project in the world that analyses children’s diets combined with both psychological and sociodemographic variables in the mother. As part of the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study, a total of 27,763 mothers were asked how often and how much their 18 month old child ate of 36 types of food and drink. By this age, children learn to prefer sweet and fatty food over healthy food.

“We found that mothers who were emotionally unstable, anxious, angry, sad, had poor self-confidence or a negative view of the world were far more likely to give their child sweet and fatty foods. At the same time, there was no link between maternal personality and how healthy a diet the child got in the form of fruit and vegetables,” explains psychologist Eivind Ystrøm at the NIPH.

These maternal personality traits fall under a collective name of high negative affectivity (negative emotions). These people often have a lower stress threshold, giving up quicker when faced with obstacles – e.g. in a disagreement – and often experience lack of control of the child.

“I think that mothers compensate for this either by trying to force healthy food into their child or hold the sweet-bag strings extra tightly,” Ystrøm continues. “Paradoxically, they try to balance poor control by actually using more control. With force and restrictions they increase desire which quickly results in resistance in the form of tantrums which these mothers are also bad at resisting. Also, earlier studies have shown that controlling behaviour among parents is linked with a more sugar-rich diet among children.”

To read the rest of the article, click here.

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Putting on your makeup in the car is a total NO-NO, but a new study suggests that women who apply makeup in the morning have better balance and are overall less clumsy, which could therefore cause less accidents on the road! Says Telegraph,

Researchers believe that the time consuming act of slapping on lipstick or applying blusher could serve as a form of stretching exercise, improving people’s balance and co-ordination.

A study led by the research communications director from the cosmetics giant L’Oreal found that older women who applied make-up in the morning stood straighter and had fewer falls than those who did not.

Dr Patricia Pineau, of the University of St Etienne in France, claimed that the findings could help prevent many debilitating accidents.

Her team studied 100 women aged between 65 and 85 as part of a study originally intended to measure the effect of wearing make-up on self esteem.

They were fitted with belts to measure their posture and given special insoles to test their centre of gravity.

The team concluded that those who wore even a small amount of make-up appeared to be more stable on their feet.

“They held themselves differently to those who did not wear make-up,” Dr Pineau was quoted as saying.

While this study is pretty interesting, I honestly can’t say that it’s necessarily true – I’ve been wearing makeup since high school, and I’m just as clumsy and off-balance as I’ve ever been! But maybe I’m an exception. What about you?

There’s a difference between putting on a little makeup in the morning, and putting on a full clown face! It could be a huge turn-off.

When is it time to throw that old makeup out?

[From Daily Mail]

Anger really can kill, doctors have warned.

Feelings of rage can trigger potentially deadly irregular heart rhythms, research shows.

The finding, from a study of patients with cardiac problems, could explain other studies which have linked the anger sparked by world events – from the loss of a World Cup match to a war – with heart attacks.

‘When you put a whole population under a stress factor, sudden death will increase,’ said researcher Dr Rachel Lampert.

‘Our study starts to look at how does this really affect the electrical system of the heart.’

Dr Lampert, of Yale University in the U.S., studied 62 adults being treated for an irregular heartbeat – a common condition which raises the risk of heart attack.

She said: ‘We found in the lab setting that yes, anger did increase this electrical instability in these patients.’

To read the rest of this article, click here.

You can also avoid being angry by avoiding these!

CHEMISTRY! Simple as that.

[From Reuters]

Valentine Lotharios beware: There’s a lot riding on a kiss, new studies on the science of smooching suggest.

Researchers said kissing sets off a complex set of chemical reactions, and in some cases, a bad kiss could be the kiss of death for a burgeoning romance.

“A kiss is a mechanism for mate assessment,” said Helen Fisher of Rutgers University in New Jersey, who is presenting her findings on Saturday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago.

Fisher, an anthropologist, told a news briefing that kissing is something more than 90 percent of human societies practice, but scientists are just beginning to understand the science of kissing, which is known as philematology.

One theory of kissing is that it is intended to promote bonding. Wendy Hill, a researcher at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania who is presenting her findings at the meeting, set out to test this on college students.

She was looking for changes specifically in oxytocin, a “love” hormone linked to feelings of sexual pleasure, bonding and maternal care. Since oxytocin has been known to lead to decreases in the stress hormone cortisol, she decided to look at that as well, she told reporters on Friday.

The researchers studied 15 heterosexual college couples between 18 to 22 who were assigned to either go off and kiss in a room in the college health center or just hold hands and talk to each other for 15 minutes.

Blood and saliva tests showed that men in the kissing group had a burst of oxytocin, but in women, levels of this hormone fell. “Cortisol levels for everyone declined,” Hill said.

Curiously, she noticed that females using birth control pills had higher levels of oxytocin than those not taking the pills, which may been a factor in the findings in women.

Hill also said the atmosphere in the health clinic may have had something to do with the findings.

“We are exploring the possibility that the setting was not very romantic,” she said. The next study will take place in a secluded room at the back of an academic building with flowers, candles, a sofa and jazz music playing in the background…

To read the rest of the article, click here.

[From Science Daily]

Six studies published in the past year by a Cornell researcher add to growing evidence that an apple a day — as well as daily helpings of other fruits and vegetables — can help keep the breast-cancer doctor away.

In one of his recent papers, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (57:1), Rui Hai Liu, Cornell associate professor of food science and a member of Cornell’s Institute for Comparative and Environmental Toxicology, reports that fresh apple extracts significantly inhibited the size of mammary tumors in rats — and the more extracts they were given, the greater the inhibition.

“We not only observed that the treated animals had fewer tumors, but the tumors were smaller, less malignant and grew more slowly compared with the tumors in the untreated rats,” said Liu, pointing out that the study confirmed the findings of his preliminary study in rats published in 2007.

To read the rest of the article and find out what other fruits can help prevent breast cancer, click here.

News articles always suggest supplements, new pharmaceuticals, and other costly ways to prevent disease, but a new study shows that you can reduce your risk of colon cancer by 25% through good, old-fashioned exercise. And we don’t mean going for a 3-mile run every day, either – just a simple walk can reduce your risk of one of the deadliest diseases around!

Says Daily Mail,

Regular exercise can cut your risk of colon cancer by a quarter, a detailed analysis has revealed.

Even walking reduces the likelihood of developing one of the most common cancers, the review of 52 studies from the past 25 years found.

It showed that of the thousands of individuals examined, the most active ones were the least likely to develop the disease.

The protection remained even after risk factors linked to cancer, such as diet, obesity and smoking, were taken into account.

The British Journal of Cancer study combined results from research covering many kinds of physical activity, including manual labour, jogging, working out at the gym and brisk walking.

Those who took regular exercise cut their risk of colon cancer by 24 per cent.

No way! We’re putting our cross-trainers on right after work.

You know when you’ve just broken up with the person you thought you’d be with forever, then you see an elderly couple walking down the street and wonder how in the WORLD they made it work? Well, for the embittered souls that rely on science to confirm or disprove their beliefs, a recent study has showed that true love really can last a lifetime.

According to CNN Health,

Using brain scans, researchers at Stony Brook University in New York have discovered a small number of couples respond with as much passion after 20 years together as most people only do during the early throes of romance, Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper reported.

The researchers scanned the brains of couples together for 20 years and compared them with results from new lovers, the Sunday Times said.

About 10 percent of the mature couples had the same chemical reactions when shown photographs of their loved ones as those just starting out.

Previous research has suggested that the first stages of romantic love fade within 15 months and after 10 years it has gone completely, the newspaper said.

“The findings go against the traditional view of romance — that it drops off sharply in the first decade — but we are sure it’s real,” said Arthur Aron, a psychologist at Stony Brook, told the Sunday Times.

So what does this mean for the high divorce rate we’re facing today? Do you think people are just blindly jumping into commitments without feeling the actual love? Maybe some are more into the idea of being in love than actually being in it? Let us know what you think.