There were two cows in a field.
One said: "Moo."
The other one said: "I was going to say that."

The Mind Game

Devin Moore was just 18 when he was taken to an Alabama police station for questioning about a stolen car. He was initially cooperative, but then lunged for his captor's gun. He shot the man twice and ran out into the hallway where he shot a second policeman three times. He let off five shots at a third man before making his escape in a police car. All three men died from shots to the head. When Moore was finally captured, he is reported to have said, "Life is like a video game. You have to die sometime." Two years on, he sits on death row.

The electronic age is changing our brains, but are we getting smarter, or dumb and dangerous?

@ NewScientist.com

Women & her best friend

How much pain would you put up with to help your friend? Less than you would for your close relatives, but more than you would for a charity, according to a study that looked at the basis of altruistic behaviour. There's an intriguing gender difference. Women tended to spread their efforts more equally among relatives than men did, as well as putting up with more pain for best friends than for cousins. This could be down to the fact that in many societies women tend to move away from their families. "Women have to get along with everybody - including their mothers-in-law," says Phyllis Lee of the University of Stirling, UK. The other possibility, says co-author Robin Dunbar of the University of Liverpool, UK, "is that females are just more social".

@ NewScientist.com

Hot and Spicy

What's the best way of impressing a member of the opposite sex? In April 2006 I teamed up with the Edinburgh International Science Festival in the UK to examine the science of speed-dating. A hundred single heterosexual men and women came to the Edinburgh hotel that had been turned into our love laboratory for the night. Each got 3 minutes with 10 partners each, and at the end of each chat they gave details of the talk and rated their date.
Surprisingly, although men have a reputation for judging women quickly, our findings suggested that women judged a partner much faster - 45 per cent in under 30 seconds. Because of the importance of opening comments, we turned our attention to the chat-up lines that had most and least people ticking the "Yes, I would like to see this person again" box.
The results showed that the secret of a good chat-up line is to encourage someone to talk about themselves in a quirky, fun way. So the best line from the top-rated man was "If you were on Stars In Their Eyes, which celebrity would you be?" On a similar theme, the top-rated female asked "If you were a pizza topping, what would you be?". And what shouldn't you say? One of the least successful lines was "I have a PhD in computing."

@ NewScientist.com

Oral sex can cause throat cancer

People who have had more than five oral-sex partners in their lifetime are 250% more likely to have throat cancer than those who do not have oral sex, a new study suggests. The researchers believe this is because oral sex may transmit human papillomavirus (HPV), the virus implicated in the majority of cervical cancers.

The new findings should encourage people to consistently use condoms during oral sex as this could protect against HPV, the team says. Other experts say that the results provide more reason for men to receive the new HPV vaccine.

@ NewScientist.com