"Memory can be improved simply by clenching the fists, a study suggests. Clenching the right hand for 90 seconds helps in memory formation, while the same movement in the left improves memory recall, say US psychologists…. The researchers think clenching a fist activates specific brain regions that are associated with memory processing."

"[A] new study showed young adults who text more than 100 times a day tend to be more interested in wealth, vanity and less so in leading a virtuous life. Led by psychology professors Paul Trapnell and Lisa Sinclair, the University of Winnipeg study suggested that students who text that much are 30 percent less likely to value living an 'ethical, principled life,' compared to those who texted 50 times or less a day. The study also showed that heavy texters exhibited higher levels of ethnic prejudice."

"Sex makes us happier as long as we think we're having more than our neighbours, according to a new scientific study."

"In the new study, Russell Clayton, now a doctoral student at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, found that anxiety and alcohol use significantly predicted emotional connectedness to Facebook. He discovered that students who reported higher levels of anxiousness and alcohol use appeared to be more emotionally connected with the social networking site. Clayton and his colleagues also found that students who reported higher levels of loneliness and anxiousness use Facebook as a platform to connect with others."

"Size really does matter, according to a study which found that a man's attractiveness is at least in part determined by what he carries in his trousers."

American straight ladies no longer wish for a white wedding dress the way they did when we had Traditional Values, before they were born, because "living in sin" is the new normal for a nation without a Vengeful God. Now that nobody believes in religion, U.S. women are shacking up at record levels—in the popular 30-and-under demographic, 77% of American girls have "shared an address" with their dudes.

While straight people have all but given up on marriage, gay people have become the only moral examples in a nation that has utterly turned its back on both decency and responsibility.

But some experts say it's not just the [...]

"Men are almost as likely as women to want children, and they feel more isolated, depressed, angry and sad than women if they don't have them, a new study says."

"Researchers concluded that a person was twice as likely to talk on a mobile, or check for messages, if a companion did the same."

"The results are interesting of themselves as they suggest an inherent hazard of a public career and that all that glitters is not necessarily gold." —Psychologist Honey Langcaster-James, on a study conducted by researchers at the University of Queensland and the University of New South Wales that shows that professional performers—actors, singers, musicians, athletes—tend to die younger than people in other fields of work. Everyone has know this for a long time, of course. Especially Bad Company and Bon Jovi. (And Led Zeppelin and Neil Young.)

"Researchers reveal the Beckhams have changed their accents to sound less working class"

"[N]ew research suggests that the shape of a man’s face can indicate whether he is likely to be a good sportsman. The study, carried out at Goldsmiths, University of London, found that Japanese baseball players with short, broad faces are more likely to display acumen on the sports field. It also showed that sportsmen with long faces are less likely to be successful baseball players."

Researchers have come up with a hilarious new way to keep Junior from getting larger: Just put your child's meals on very little plates, so the child cannot figure out she is getting a few spoonfuls of blanched kale for dinner, again.

The medical journal Pediatrics just released an exciting new study that proves kids can't tell the difference between plate sizes. Give them gigantic plates, like prop plates from movies about giants, and the youngster will eat enough for a week without noticing. Giving children small plates, like those used in popular Brooklyn restaurants, is an easy way to fake out the minds of our littlest ones.

"Researchers [...]

"The less hair a man has on the top of his head, the more likely he is to succumb to heart disease, a study has suggested."

Because of hormone-injected factory chicken corpses, radiation, gamma rays, vaccines, TV violence, Angry Birds, gay marriage, the Internet, Batman, sexting, the abandonment of religion, suburbs, diabetes and "writing for free," many children of 10 or 11 years old are gigantic sexually mature super-humans. These terrifying creatures try to sit at child-sized desks in elementary schools, but they're already taller than the teachers and also have bigger boobs. What to make of this new race of sex monsters?

Not much, experts say. We should just back away and let them do what they want— and "what they want" appears to not really be a lot of sex-humping, according to a [...]

"What is an itch? Scientists have speculated that it is a mild manifestation of pain or perhaps a malfunction of overly sensitive nerve endings stuck in a feedback loop. They have even wondered whether itching is mostly psychological (just think about bed bugs for a minute). Now a study rules out these possibilities by succeeding where past attempts have failed: a group of neuroscientists have finally isolated a unique type of nerve cell that makes us itch and only itch."

You know that uneasy feeling you get every time you suddenly remember that nothing really matters, that every second of pain and suffering you struggle through each day—and even those all-too-rare moments of feeling something like, if not joy, not complete and utter hopelessness—ultimately means nothing? That both the good you've done and the evil you do (and, of course, the stunning mediocrity and selfishness that make up the bulk of your achievements while that sack of meat you shuffle around takes up space here on Earth) will eventually count for zero, and almost certainly sooner rather than later? That from the moment you are born, every event you [...]

"Listening to great music is as good as sex, according to new research." This conclusion makes more sense when you realize that the study was conducted by Canadians.

Researchers cannot even believe what they're hearing from melanoma survivors these days, because a shocking 27.7% of survivors of the horrible skin cancer still aren't wearing sunscreen when they're out in the sun. But the ultimate thrill seekers are the 2% of melanoma survivors who continue to use tanning beds. There is something kind of fantastic about a melanoma patient paying money to a tanning salon—it's like those old dudes who smoke through the hole in their throat.

"That blew my mind," study author Dr. Anees Chagpar of Yale University told the Los Angeles Times. We hope he writes his science research papers like that, too.

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