Sunscreen! You dutifully slather or spray it on before heading outside, but forget to reapply -- and you get burned. Or, you miss that spot on your back that's impossible to reach without asking for help -- and you get burned.

Now, researchers from King's College in London believe they they could create a sunblock pill from coral, something that could be available within five years, The Telegraph's website reports.

Coral protects itself from sunburn by converting compounds produced by the algae living inside it into a natural kind of "sunscreen," which protects both the coral and the algae from the sun's harmful UV rays. Scientists already knew that -- now, they are beginning to understand how this happens.

"What we have found is that the algae living within the coral makes a compound that we think is transported to the coral, which then modifies it into a sunscreen for the benefit of both the coral and the algae," lead researcher Dr. Paul Long explains. "Not only does this protect them both from UV damage, but we have seen that fish that feed on the coral also benefit from this sunscreen protection, so it is clearly passed up the food chain."

Testing on human skin may begin soon, but before that, the researchers plan to use those coral compounds to create a lotion. Long adds that the research, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, wouldn't use the coral, an endangered species, itself, but rather would attempt to synthetically copy those key ingredients.

But until sunblock comes in a pill, you can always stick to your SPF sauvignon blanc. 

Related sunny stories:

• Drink wine, don't get sunburned
• Can't stand the rain? Moods really are tied to the weather
• Real-life vampire, or is it just a sun allergy?

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Sorry to break it to you parents: But your cute-as-button baby is unlikely to appear in People magazine's Most Beautiful People or Sexiest Man Alive issues more than 18 years from now. 

When researchers put the idea behind the hit song "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby" to the test, it didn't hold up. Being a beautiful baby did not predict who would become the best-looking adults, a new study found.  

Facial attractiveness is not stable from infancy into adulthood, suggests research published in the journal Infant Behavior & Development. 

In one study, 253 college students rated the attractiveness of 40 infants (under age 2) and young adults (age 16 to 18) on a scale from 1 for "not that cute or attractive" to 7 for "very cute or attractive." Students evaluated each person's baby and high school yearbook photos. 

All the pictures were grayed head shots showing the face from ear to ear and hairline to chin. That way coloring preferences, bad hair or ugly clothes wouldn't sway the judges. 

In general, students rated more tykes as better looking than high school seniors. But the results showed there was no relationship between cuteness as a little one and attractiveness as a grown-up. A second study with 72 participants evaluating a different set of infant and adult photographs had similar findings. 

"At first we thought the old adage that an attractive adult 'must have been a beautiful baby' must be true due to the constancy of one's genetics," says Marissa Harrison, an assistant professor of psychology at Penn State Harrisburg in Middletown, Penn. But then we realized babies have likely evolved to be cute to elicit care from parents, she explains.  This improves their odds for survival and reproducing as adults. "Simply put, cute babies grew up and left more descendants than not cute babies," adds Harrison. 

Adorable babies might not turn into real lookers as men and women because hormones affect facial appearance. "The proportion of androgens and estrogens in our bodies as we grow can determine our brow and jaw structure, skin clarity, and facial hair," says Harrison, the study's lead author.  

So is there a better age during childhood that would give a better indication of adult attractiveness? According to Harrison, the hormones affecting facial structure and appearance kick in around puberty, so you'd probably have to wait until then to make a prediction. 

To be more scientifically correct, perhaps the lyrics need to be "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Teenager"? 

As parents and grandparents cradle their amazing bundles of joy wondering what the future holds, keep yet another popular saying in mind, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. 

What have you noticed, readers? Do irresistible infants become knockouts when they get older?

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Back in the day, our grandparents turned to their family doctor with questions about their health. These days, we turn to someone much closer -- our computers.

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, eight in ten Internet users look online for health information. But can Googling our symptoms actually provide not just us -- but medical researchers -- with crucial information about disease and its causes?

Dr. Benjamin Breyer, an assistant professor of urology at the University of California San Francisco, says yes.

"Search engines can help us see the patterns," says Breyer, lead author of a new study in the journal Urology entitled "Use of Google Insights for Search to Track Seasonal and Geographic Kidney Stone Incidence in the United States."  "There are all types of phenomena in the environment and compared to search data, we can see if any of these things influence disease."

In the study, Breyer took kidney stone patient data from hospitals around the country and compared it with people's Google searches for kidney stone-related terms.

"We looked at the data and lo and behold, the searches mirrored the known regional and temporal data," he says.

In other words, peoples' searches for information on kidney stones -- which affect 13 percent of men and 7 percent of women in the U.S. -- mirrored previous findings that show kidney stones to be more prevalent in the summer and in the so-called "stone belt":  the Southeast.

"It's partly related to dehydration," says Breyer regarding the summer-stone connection. "People are more active in the summer, plus it's hotter and they're sweating more. That precipitates the minerals that compose kidney stones."

As for the "kidney stone belt," Breyer says this could be temperature-related and/or be linked to the higher levels of obesity found in the region.

"It's one of those diseases that's multifactorial," he says.

But kidney stones aren't the only disease affected by the seasons, he says.

"Other diseases have temporal incidence," says Breyer. "Having a heart attack is more common in the winter, probably due to the effects of the cold on vasculature."

Breyer hopes that in the future, search data will allow researchers to explore new ideas about possible links between illnesses and changes in our surroundings.

"We can potentially collect data that's input from millions and millions of people in real time all over the country and the world and use that to study disease," he says.

 As for those concerned about a kidney stone attack in this summer of sizzling hot temperatures (and considering how painful these puppies can be, who wouldn't be?), Breyer recommends drinking lots of water and avoiding salt -- not just from the shaker but from processed foods and high-sodium restaurant meals.

"Staying hydrated and avoiding salt is the main adage for kidney stone prevention," he says. "People who eat a lot of salt are more prone to forming stones -- and to repeat stones."

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You know what's so much better than talking about your own most embarrassing moments? Talking about someone else's. On our Facebook page earlier today, we asked you to tell us the most embarrassing moments you'd ever witnessed. You guys are either making these up, or you hang around some disaster-prone people, because these are awesome.

Special props to Lisa Brown and Kevin Joshua for being brave enough to tell us about their own embarrassments:

"Picture this: 2nd grade, Jill holding one end of the jump rope, Kevin holding the other, me jumping rope. Underwear which had been previously held up by a safety pin, now around my ankles. The most embarrassing part was having to bend down and pull them back up in front of the whole playground while making sure I could find the safety pin !!" -- Lisa Brown

"Just yesterday I had a temperature of 39-degree, after waited for more than an hour, I saw the doctor and requested for an injection. The nurse who gave me the jab (on my bum) later asked if I ever taught History in one school. Apparently, she was my student! I thought that was so embarrassing!" -- Kevin Joshua

Keep reading for wardrobe malfunctions and a story about nosehairs (enticing, no?).

"I was in a doctors office with my son and I saw a lady getting on an elevator and she had the back of her dress tucked into her underwear. So her whole back side was exposed. I thought to myself how does she not know. I didnt say anything to her, I didnt know what to say, or how to say it... and I was dealing with my sick little boy who did not want his blood taken." -- Lori Miroth

"I went to work with a pair of underwear stuck to the back of my sweatshirt...a guy was nice enough to point it out. That was the last time I didn't check before pulling clothes from the dryer, even if it was 4 am." -- Nikky Williamson

"One morning I was walking into work and was met by a friend of mine who asked me how I was doing. I said fine why? She then pointed out that my blouse was wrong side out. We both laughed and I went to change. I still laugh when I think about that day." -- Gayla Freeman

"I watched a woman walk down a city street seemingly proud of all the stares and attention. As she passed me, I saw that her rear skirt hem was caught at the top of her panty hose! I rushed over and yanked it out while breaking the bad news. Horrified, she whispered, "Thanks!" and ducked into the nearest building." -- Marilyn Novosel Pryor Osborne

"I stopped a lady one day who was dragging toilet paper around with her shoe, by gently going up to her and tapping on her shoulder then removing the paper with my own shoe..we then shoved the offending paper away with our shoes under a park bench..then we both laughed about it. Stuff happens, I don't embarrass easy, life is too short..and I would hope some one would definitely tell me if my dress was tucked in my undies and my backside was showing! (don't want to freak people out TOO much! lol)" -- Dora Nobbs

"I know two ladies who have had maxipad incidents - one stuck on the back of the pants and the other on a shoe! I have a worse incident, but too gross to share, lol, and thankfully it wasn't me. :-)" -- Vanessa Moody-Barnes

"Just yesterday I had a temperature of 39-degree, after waited for more than an hour, I saw the doctor and requested for an injection. The nurse who gave me the jab (on my bum) later asked if I ever taught History in one school. Apparently, she was my student! I thought that was so embarrassing!" -- Kevin Joshua

"Letting a co-worker (we are both women) that her skirt back was stuck up in the waist-band of her pantyhose. I know in my heart that others saw this before I did. *sigh*" -- Carole Barnett-Stopper

"Talking to a coworker with his nosehair sticking out like weeds on a golfcourse. Didn't have the guts to mention it but the next day it seemed like he trimmed the lawn." -- Christopher Hsu

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Whether you're a dude in sweat socks and sneakers or a lady in dainty ballet flats, once you take those shoes off -- ew. The whole room can smell your Kimmy Gibbler-style stinky feet. On this morning's TODAY, Women's Health magazine contributor Dr. Keri Peterson answered viewers' most embarrassing health questions -- including how to pretty up those foul feet.

"Smelly feet are from bacteria that thrive when your feet sweat," Peterson explains to Savannah Guthrie. "So the goal to get rid of it is either to decrease the sweat or decrease the bacteria."

To decrease bacteria, wash your feet with anti-bacterial soap, and try applying baking soda inthe shoe or sock. To decrease sweat, wear socks that have breathable material -- for instance, cotton instead of nylon. Wear shoes that are well-ventilated, and give each pair some time to dry out before you jam your feet back in there again. You could even try applying an antiperspirant -- yep, like the one for your underarms -- to the soles of your feet.

Got an embarrassing health question you're too sheepish to ask? Submit it here, and Peterson may answer your query on an upcoming TODAY segment.

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Do you let your BFF know when she has lettuce caught between her teeth? How about telling your buddy his fly is unzipped? Or pointing out that a coworker is dragging toilet paper on his shoe?

Whether you say something in these potentially awkward situations and how quickly you do reveals something about your personality.

Those who are the most afraid of being embarrassed are slower to point out an easily correctible flaw, if they even bother to say anything at all, a new study finds.

"People tend to underestimate how much our behavior is influenced by a fear of being embarrassed," says Melanie Green, one of the study's co-authors.

Researchers wondered if a fear of embarrassment makes a person hesitant to get involved in a "bystander intervention." Some studies have suggested that someone's willingness to help is influenced more by the situation rather than personality.

Studies looking at temperament have focused on qualities making people more inclined to act, whether it's a sense of responsibility or empathy toward others. In this study, researchers explored the flip side, whether one aspect of personality -- embarrassment-- inhibits the desire to help.

To test whether this behavior occurs, they looked at a "face-threatening situation," in which a person's appearance has a temporary flaw -- think mustard on your lips or the label sticking up from your shirt collar. Having someone point this out could help you save face.

The study, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, gave 84 college students an opportunity to help an experimenter by telling her she had ink on her face.

Some of the participants were told the ink-stained experimenter had an interview to go to afterward, and others were not. And some students shared the room with the experimenter and a confederate, someone who was in on the study, while others had a one-on-one interaction with her.

Volunteers also completed two tests measuring their tendency to feel embarrassed.

Bashful types were slower to point out the ink to the experimenter and less likely to do so with a confederate in the room. If they mentioned the ink with another person present, they did it quietly -- usually by whispering.

"People who are more concerned with embarrassment might take longer to work up the courage to engage in a potentially awkward interaction," says Green, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Having another person present makes the situation even trickier. 

Would sheepish people mention a flaw to someone they knew better rather than a stranger? Although Green suspects people are more comfortable pointing out a temporary shortcoming to friends over strangers, people who are more fearful of being embarrassed seem less likely to point out flaws. 

"Even though it can feel awkward, in most cases people really are being helpful by pointing out a correctable problem to someone, especially if they can do so in a discreet way," Green points out. 

What about you? Do you tend to tuck in someone's sticking-out tag, or tell someone when she's got something on her face? 

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A note to ladies with breast implants: Be careful when playing paintball.

The BBC reports that a 26-year-old woman's silicone breast implant burst after being hit with a paintball on Saturday, Aug. 20. The woman, whose name has not been released, visited her doctor the following Monday, where she learned that one of her implants had been torn apart by a paintball capsule, which travel at 190 miles per hour. 

Since the incident, UK Paintball has added a line to its website aimed at women with breast implants:

Due to an incident at our Croydon Paintballing centre on Saturday 20 August 2011 we respectfully ask that any ladies with surgical breast implants notify our team at the time of booking. You will be given special information on the dangers of paintballing with enhanced boobs and asked to sign a disclaimer. You will also be issued with extra padding to protect your implants while paintballing. 

A spokesman for UK Paintball told the BBC, "Part of the fun of paintball is that it hurts a bit when you get shot but in all the years we've been going we've never seen an incident like this.

"It came as a real surprise to hear that a woman had her implant burst at one of our centres and whilst she's going to make a full recovery, we want to ensure nothing like this happens ever again." The more you know!

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Looking in the mirror, you probably see features from both of your parents (and possibly the milkman). Perhaps you have your father's eyes and nose, but your mother's ears and lips. 

Scottish scientists have discovered that your face contains other subtle family clues -- your childhood socioeconomic status. Researchers found that to some degree people's early home life is detectable in their faces more than 70 years later. 

In the study, published in the journal Economics and Human Biology, scientists looked at 292 older adults who participated in the Lothian Birth Cohort 1921, a long-term research trial of Scottish children born in 1921 that tracks their health across a lifetime. 

Researchers wanted to see if the participants, who were now octogenarians, showed traces of their early upbringing in the symmetry of their faces or their bodies. 

To determine this, volunteers first completed questionnaires about their family's economic circumstances at age 11, including information about each parent's occupation, the number of family members living at home and sleeping in each room, and whether they had indoor plumbing. Participants were also asked about the job they held in middle age to determine the social class they attained as adults.  

At age 83, they measured each person's facial symmetry from a photograph by comparing the left and right sides for 15 pairs of facial features, such as the positions of the eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. More attractive people typically have more symmetrical faces and less facial symmetry may occur because of higher levels of stress, infections, toxins, or possibly genetic differences.   

At age 87, researchers measured body symmetry at 14 locations, including finger lengths, ankle, wrist, and elbow widths, and height of the ears. 

Scientists found a link between early life deprivation and facial -- but not body -- symmetry. This association, although weak, was stronger in men than in women. 

Researchers suggest that early environmental factors, such as childhood nutrition, illness, and parent's smoking and alcohol habits, can affect a child's health and development by leaving a lasting impression on the face. Men with poorer beginnings tended to have more asymmetrical features in older age -- despite improving their social standing as adults. 

"Our results show that symmetrical faces reflect better social and economic circumstances," says Timothy Bates, a professor of individual differences in psychology at the University of Edinburgh, and one of the study's co-authors.  "But we don't know the specific elements of these desirable circumstances that lead to more symmetrical development," he adds.  

Bates says the research team was surprised to find the influence of social status on symmetry was restricted to childhood, and that body symmetry was resilient to early life deprivation. 

"We think this is because body symmetry is more reflective of processes that are protected in development, whereas the softer facial features are more plastic and reflect stress to a greater degree," Bates explains.

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James Cheng / msnbc.com

And I was like, baby, baby, baby, ohhh!

They squeal, they scream, they burble and burp -- and according to popular culture (not to mention various episodes of "30 Rock" and "Sex and the City"), nearly every American female over the age of 30 is ga-ga to get their hands on one of them.

Now a new study in the psychological journal Emotion claims that "baby fever" -- that sudden, visceral, and almost irresistible urge to have a baby -- not only exists, it can be found in both men and women.

"Women reported that it happened more frequently and more strongly but it's there for both men and women," says Gary Brase, associate professor of psychology at Kansas State University who along with his wife Sandra Brase, spent nearly 10 years studying the phenomenon.

The researchers, who have two children, first looked at three theoretical viewpoints as to why baby fever might exist and where it could come from. One theory had to do with gender roles, i.e., women think they should have kids because that's what they're taught women are supposed to do. A second theory had to do with nurturing.

"Humans are biological organisms, we have a sex drive and we nurture once a child is born," says Brase. "We looked at whether baby fever was due to people looking at someone else's child and then having that trigger misplaced nurturance. But it wasn't that either."

A third theory had to do with timing -- the brain delivering a signal that this could be a good time to have a child. But when they talked to their test subjects (a total of 337 undergrad students and 853 general population participants gathered via the Web), none of these theories seemed to hold up.

Instead, three factors consistently predicted how much a person wanted to have a baby.

"The first two had to do with the visual sensory things," says Brase. "Seeing a baby, hearing a baby, smelling a baby led some people to want to have a baby."

Conversely, hearing a baby screaming, smelling a dirty diaper or being exposed to spit-up or other "disgusting" aspects of babies, led other people to not want a baby or come down with what you might call "anti-baby fever."

A third factor had to do with trade-offs that come with having children.

"People would say, 'I don't want to have a baby because I don't have money or I don't have time or I don't have a partner,'" he says. "All of the rational thoughts. That showed up as a third factor."

Rachel Kramer Bussel, a 35-year-old writer and editor from Brooklyn, has no doubt baby fever exists. In fact, she knows exactly when she caught it.

"I've wanted to have a baby for about five years, since I turned 30," she says. "I have to force myself to not stare at strangers' children when I'm out. It feels like both this physical tug and an emotional one. There's something about holding a baby close to me that makes me feel like everything is right with the world."

Russell Williams, a 39-year-old software engineer, says he, too, has been bitten by the baby bug.

"I don't get a yearning -- it's not a physical feeling -- but I love being around kids and get my baby fix by babysitting friends' kids," he says.

Williams says his baby jones has even led him to throw a birthday party for the 2-year-old daughter of a female friend, complete with decorations, activities and a Dora the Explorer cake, which he baked himself.

"I always assumed I'd have a family with a kid or two and a wife by now," says the Seattle bachelor. "I enjoy being around kids; it's fun to interact with them. Although it doesn't make my stomach do flip-flops. So maybe my baby fever is more of a cold."

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Hurricane Irene already has people fleeing their homes, stocking up on supplies -- and from the looks of it, falling victim to mondegreens, those goofy misheard song lyrics that have plagued mankind since before rock met roll.

New York Magazine's Daily Intel blog seems to have started it off with their flip "Come on, Irene!" at the end of a August 23 news story about how Hurricane Irene had the potential to become a category 4 storm. What they meant was "Come on, Eileen," a lyric (and title) taken from the 1982 platinum hit by Dexys Midnight Runners.

While the blog has since come clean about their error, others are sticking with the misheard version. So much so that we wouldn't be surprised if, any minute now, "Come on, Irene" was a trending topic on Twitter.

The Eileen/Irene confusion is understandable -- they're similar-sounding, old-fashioned names, and for some, the play on words might be intentional. But what drives us to mishear song lyrics, even to the point where we embarrass ourselves -- not just at karaoke, but in print?

According to Dr. Wei Ji Ma, assistant professor of neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Tex., it's extremely hard to understand what someone is saying (or singing) unless we're looking directly at the person's face.

"Understanding speech can be difficult, especially when it's noisy," Ma told The Body Odd in a 2009 interview regarding his research on the topic. "If you only have sound information, you will sometimes make mistakes."

Some of those mistakes can be found on websites like KissThisGuy, which gathers mangled song lyrics such as those found in Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love, or as someone once sang it: "Might as well face it, you're a dick with a glove."

Visual information helps us fill in the gaps, according to Ma. So much so that in a 2009 study he conducted, test subjects got the words right only 10 percent of the time when they relied on sound cues alone. But when they both watched and listened to videos of people saying various words, their understanding of those words went up to 60 percent.

As Ma explains it, the brain is like a police detective interviewing witnesses after a crime. Visual information is one witness; auditory information is another. But as with any criminal investigation, witnesses get mixed up. Ma says the brain basically weighs all the information it gathers, then comes up with its best guess.

Unfortunately, sometimes that guess results in laughably bad mondegreens like "wrapped up like a douche" (from Manfred Mann's "Blinded by the Light") or "Scallaboosh, Scallaboosh, will you do the banned tango?" (from Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody).

While there's still a bit of a question as to whether the Irene/Eileen swap-out is due to a mix-up or an intentional mash-up, there's no doubt that those living on the east coast will be happily bidding adieu to the storm in days to come.

Luckily, we've got the perfect song for them:  Good Night, Irene.

Related: 

• Song stuck in your head? You've got an earworm
• Blinded by the lyric? Study reveals why we get the words wrong

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If the prospect of calculating a tip on a dinner bill with family or friends looking on makes you panic, listen up: Your subpar knack for numbers might not always be the problem, suggests a new study. It may well be that your mind gets in the way of your true ability. Your fears of doing math in a pressure-filled situation cause you to worry and perform poorly.

The new report, published in the journal Emotion, looked at the reasons why some students succeed on a math test while others flounder. Scientists measured working memory capacity, a mental scratch pad that temporarily stores and processes information, in 73 college students with low and high levels of math anxiety. They also tested saliva for cortisol, a hormone produced in response to stress, before and after participants solved a tough series of math problems.

Researchers wanted to find out whether there was a link between math anxiety, cortisol levels and working memory.

The performance of students with a low working memory was not affected by stress hormone levels or by math anxiety. It appeared to make the most difference in participants with high working memory -- the most talented individuals. 

Students who had higher working memory and were more anxious about math had higher levels of stress hormones after the test and tended to do worse on it. In contrast, those with low levels of math-anxiety and had higher memory capacity also churned out increasing amounts of cortisol during the exam but they did better on it.

"We found that mindset really matters," says Sian Beilock, an associate professor in psychology at the University of Chicago and the study's lead author. If someone is anxious about math and approaches it with dread, that person is likely to interpret the body's physiological reaction to stress -- the racing heart, sweaty palms, and butterflies in the stomach -- as a sign of failure and performs poorly, she suggests.

When worries eat up working memory and when we don't have its full capacity at our disposal, performance suffers, Beilock explains. For highly math-anxious folks, physiological signs of stress send them into a more worrisome state, which deprives people of the brain power they need to excel.

"We were surprised, however, that the same physiological response could lead to excelling on a math test for those who were not anxious about math and looked at the situation in a positive way -- as a challenge," says Beilock, the author of "Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To."

If people who are math-anxious want to succeed under pressure, Beilock suggests students take 10 minutes to write down their worries on paper before a math test to download them from their minds so they don't pop into their heads during the exam and distract them.

Related: 

• Don't choke! Why we buckle under pressure
• Yipes, it's yips! Condition throws catcher's game

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Allure

She's a summer lover. How about you?

According to popular belief (not to mention popular music), there's long been a link between mood and weather. Some of us can't stand the rain. Others aren't happy unless we can feel the warm glow of sunshine on our shoulders.

But does rain really make us blue? And does the sun really cheer us up? A new study in the journal Emotion explored this popular belief by surveying nearly 500 adolescents and their mothers and found that for some of us, weather does indeed have a direct affect on our mood.

"We identified a group of 'Summer Lovers,' who were happier, less fearful and less angry on days with more sunshine and higher temperatures and less happy and more anxious and angry on days with more hours of precipitation," says Dr. Tom Frijns, a psychologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and co-author of the study.

Frijns and his colleagues also identified a group of so-called "Summer Haters," who were less happy and more fearful and angry when the temperature and the percentage of sunshine were higher and happier and less fearful and angry with more hours of precipitation.

Cue "Singing in Rain" for this group of rain lovers.

A third group, which Frijns called "Rain Haters" was also identified. As implied by the name, this group felt angrier and less happy on days with more precipitation.

Summer Lovers comprised 17 percent of the group of adolescents, while Summer Haters weighed in at 27 percent. Rain Haters made up 9 percent of the group with the rest of the test subjects falling into a group they labeled Unaffected, i.e., neither rain nor snow nor sleet nor sun seemed to affect the mood of this group of potential postal workers.

Interestingly enough, the study also found evidence that "weather reactivity" runs in families.

"Summer Loving mothers more often had children who were also classified as Summer Lovers than would have been expected by chance," he says. "Similarly, the observed frequency of Rain Hating mothers with a Rain Hating child was twice as high as the expected frequency on the basis of chance."

Frijns believes his own moods are affected by the weather, although he himself doesn't seem to fall into any of the four study categories.

"I feel better on warm sunny days than on the dark and rainy ones, which unfortunately outnumber the warm and sunny ones this summer here in the Netherlands," he says. "But then again, I can sometimes really enjoy a good rain shower or thunderstorm." 

The weather makes us do funny things. Examples: 

• SAD in the summer? Sunshine depression rare, but real
• Why some wear a sweater, no matter the weather

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No need to call a psychic hotline -- we're naturally clairvoyant as human beings.

With one of the first studies of its kind, researchers at Washington University say they are unlocking the process our brain uses to make these everyday near-future predictions. But hold on stockbrokers, Wall Street analysts and crystal ball readers: The study also discovered why we may not be as good at predicting events down the road.

It’s about what Jeffrey Zacks, associate professor of psychology at Washington University and lead study author calls our “stream of consciousness.” When his team focused on the mid-brain dopamine system, an evolutionary ancient system that signals the rest of the brain to predict events, they also found the brain encodes prediction error when we are forced to choose what happens next. That’s why we’re sometimes wrong.

“I can predict the future, and so can you,” says Zacks, “and it’s not extrasensory perception.  It’s just using the information in front of us to predict what’s happening all the time. It’s so ubiquitous that we don’t even notice. But from time to time, we mess up, and what we’ve found here is that messing up corresponds to a fundamental element in our stream of consciousness.”

However, not everyone has a good stream of consciousness, and that’s what happens to people who are aging, or suffering from early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, neurological diseases or brain injuries. Scientists believe they can use this information about how we segment events to figure out how to treat people who have trouble making these connections.

Predicting the near future is an important part of guiding behavior, language processing and learning, says Zacks, whose research will be published in the December edition of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

Zacks and other researchers asked a group of healthy, young volunteers to watch movies of everyday events such as someone washing a car and doing laundry. The volunteers were asked to predict what would happen next when the movie was stopped. When it was stopped in the middle of a scene, participants were more than 90 percent correct in predicting what would happen next. But when shown a completely new scene and asked to predict what would happen in the next five seconds, they were less than 80 percent correct, and much less confident in predicting the outcome.

Researchers then used MRI exams to watch midbrain activity, and discovered the brain responses “really light up at hard times, like crossing the event boundary and when the subjects were told they had made the wrong choice,” Zacks says.

“A big chunk of the brain is devoted to figuring out what is going to happen next,” he says. “These studies show that mechanisms operate when we understand everyday activities. The parts of the brain that are specialized for tracking predictions are on the job, and they tell us when a meaningful event has ended and a new one has started. When they go south, it has consequences for understanding and memory.”

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William B. Plowman / Getty Images file

Competitive Scrabble players are pushing brain boundaries, a new study shows.

A new study confirms what Scrabble players have long suspected: We really are smarter than the rest of you.

Researchers at the University of Calgary have discovered that competitive Scrabble players are able to increase visual word recognition -- the ability to read individual words -- well into adulthood.

“Visual word recognition is a difficult skill to master, and it develops from childhood through adulthood,” study author Ian Hargreaves, a graduate student from the University of Calgary, wrote in an e-mail. “Most of the previous research on word recognition has used adulthood (essentially, undergraduate students, as these are the participants in most research studies) as the model for the end-point of development.”

“Our study helps shine some light on how even in adulthood, visual word recognition is flexible, and can be modified with dedicated training.”

In one of the study’s tasks, research participants were presented with a series of words, oriented both vertically and horizontally. Subject participants were asked to guess which words were valid words, with their responses timed.

Other tasks included creating anagrams (A Manic’s Errant Gag?) and creating words beginning with a certain letter.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Scrabble players bested the control group in every category related to Scrabble.  Hargreaves noted that his group took great pains to make Scrabble experience the independent variable, accounting for a wide variety of factors including age, vocabulary, exposure to printed materials and speed of perceptual processing.

The findings are notable because little research has been done into progress in visual word recognition past early adulthood. (Most studies are completed using the most available of test subjects: undergrads.)  

The game of Scrabble, it appears, can actively improve word recognition in an adult mind. Hargreaves observed study participants of adult ages showing extraordinarily intellectual dexterity in the categories tested.

“I think that it's safe to say that there is plenty of evidence showing that exercising yourself, whether physically or mentally, can carry positive benefits,” Hargreaves added. “What these results suggest is that with dedicated practice, even seemingly basic skills (like deciding if something is a real word or not) can be shaped by experience.”

Hargreaves doesn’t necessarily believe this super-intelligence can be passed on to crossword aficionados and players of Words With Friends.

“The extent to which these Scrabble-specific skills transfer to other areas of reading and memory is something that we hope to continue investigating,” Hargreaves said.

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Focus Features

Roight, then! Oi'm Anne Hathaway. Pip pip cheerio.

No matter your opinion of "The Help's" take on 1960s social issues, we can likely all agree on this: Emma Stone's fake Southern accent is ... not great. Today, the similarly bad-accent-plagued Anne Hathaway film "One Day" opens -- a movie that owes much of its Internet buzz to Hathaway's dreadful attempt (so they say! We haven't seen the film) to sound British. 

But take it easy on Stone and Hathaway. Emerging research suggests that, at least for some, the ability to imitate an accent may be innate, related to the shape of the brain's auditory cortex. 

Neurologist Sophie Scott recently published a study that looked at images of the brains of phoneticians, specialists in phonetics who are able to pick up very subtle differences to regional accents. Through these brain scans, called magnetic resonance imaging, Scott and a team of neuroscientists found differences between the phoneticians and the non-phonetician control group in the shape of the left auditory cortex -- a part of the brain that's developed before birth. 

"So I'm sure we won't only find this with phonetics; it's possible that impressionists will have this as well," Scott told the Guardian last month. "It does suggest a biological explanation as to why some people might find the world of sound and speech more interesting."

It's true that with practice, almost anyone can at least improve their ability to imitate accents, says Dr. Amee P. Shah, associate professor and research director in Cleveland State University's speech and hearing program. But Shah, who has taught workshops on "accent modification," says some people she works with, who want a flat, "American" accent, easily pick it up within a few sessions; others struggle for weeks. 

Shah also points out that when we're talking actors, accent mimicry goes hand in hand with "how well they're imitating everything about a person. ... Research does show that (mimicry ability) correlates with someone's ability to do good acting," Shah says. Ouch, Stone and Hathaway. Ouch. 

What's the worst movie accent you can remember? Leave a comment complaining away. 

Related: 

• Teen has tongue surgery to speak Korean. Huh?
• Woman wakes from surgery speaking in vaguely European accent
• What iz zees? Head bonk causes foreign accent

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Mouth-breathers, eye contact avoiders and that girl who always stands way too close to whoever she's talking to: Come sit by me. A recent study suggests that the exact attributes that make the most awkward folks in your life so very, very awkward are the same traits that may enable them to save your life someday, reports MyHealthNewsDaily.

Anti-social people -- those who are especially insecure or anxious, or those who tend to avoid relationships -- were faster at detecting and responding to a potentially dangerous situation, according to the research, which was published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

In the new study, participants filled out a survey designed to assess their attachment style. Then they were invited, in teams of three, to play an Internet-based game, and were left to wait in a room for the game to start.

When the experimenter left the room,  the "computer" in the room began to emit smoke. The computer was actually a disguised smoke machine, and the researchers observed the team's response.

Teams with higher levels of avoidance responded faster — roughly 1 1/2 seconds faster for each point higher they scored on avoidance on their initial survey.

As social psychologist Tsachi Ein Dor explained to the health news site, "Anxiety, which is unpleasant to those who feel it and to other people in their surroundings, could be highly beneficial, as it enables early detection of threats." Likewise, avoidance "is also highly beneficial, because it enables rapid response to threat," says Ein Dor, who was one of the study researchers.

Socially-awkward types, we want to hear from you: Do you find you're especially quick to react in a crisis? And friends of the socially-awkward: Have you ever seen this in action? Leave a comment telling us about it.

More adventures in awkward:

• Four seconds is all it takes for silence to get awkward
• Urine doesn't ease jellyfish stings, after all
• Why watching 'The Office' makes us cringe
• Mouth-breathing gross, harmful to your health

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We ask a lot of weird questions here at The Body Odd. But so do you! Here's our answer to one of your latest queries. Got an inquiring mind? Head over to our Facebook page and ask us your oddest health, medical or human behavior question. We may answer it in an upcoming post.

Becky Coombs asks: Why/how does deja vu happen?

Maybe it's a short circuit in the brain. Or bit of far-off memory slipping into the present. Or perhaps it's both those things and something more.

Whatever the case, deja vu isn't just a strange but irrelevant fact of life (like, say, Snooki).  Better understanding of deja vu will almost certainly lead to better understanding of how our brains work.

So what is deja vu in the first place? "It's the feeling that you have done this exact same thing before -- been to this place or performed this particular activity -- when you know that you haven't," says Colorado State University's Anne M. Cleary, a leading deja vu specialist. "Not everybody experiences it, but the majority of people do."

Young people, from the teenage years through the mid-20s,  experience deja vu the most, says Akira O'Connor, who studies deja vu at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Tired people also get it more often, as do those who travel a lot. Even though they have many more years stored in their memory banks, older people aren't as prone to deja vu.

When most of us feel deja vu, we think it's a little odd or even meaningful -- maybe a past life is coming through! -- and go on with our day. Others aren't so fortunate. Some people suffer from deja vecu, a feeling of having already lived.

"It sounds kooky and fun, like a 'Groundhog Day'-type experience, but in reality it's extremely unsettling and drastically changes people's behavior," O'Connor says. "People find that they experience it most strongly for novel experiences. As they find the experience unsettling, they tend to avoid novelty altogether, with the sad consequence that they can withdraw into a world of true familiarity, watching reruns of movies and TV shows over and over again because that brings them the least distress."

There's no good treatment for people with this condition, which is often related to the memory problems of aging. No wonder: there's no clear understanding of what causes deja vu and related feelings in the first place. 

Colorado State University's Cleary said some possible causes of deja vu include errors in the way the brain processes the world around us or "a brief neurological dysfunction, such as spontaneous brain activity that triggers an inappropriate sense of familiarity, or a brief minor seizure." It's possible that multiple causes are at work.

For now, researchers are finding new ways to analyze deja vu. Cleary is using virtual reality to see if they can trigger it in people and figure out exactly what in a "scene" makes it happen. (Vision isn't necessary, though. Blind people have deja vu too.)

"Researchers need to figure out what causes the disconnect between feeling that something is familiar, and knowing that it can't be," Scotland's O'Connor says. "I hope that in my lifetime we figure what parts of the brain are associated with 'feeling' familiarity and what parts are associated with 'knowing' that something should or should not evoke memories."

Just remember this: Maybe it's a short circuit in the brain. Or bit of memory slipping into the present. Or perhaps it's both those things and something more. (No, you're not having deja vu. You already read that. Or did you?)

Leave a comment telling us about the weirdest or most memorable time you experienced deja vu. We may use your answer in an upcoming post.

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A British teenager was so desperate to speak the Korean language with the proper accent that she had a surgery that lengthened her tongue, reports The Telegraph. Wait. What?

Nineteen-year-old student Rhiannon Brooksbank loves Korean culture and plans to study it in college. Her only problem: She struggled to correctly pronounce certain sounds in the Korean language, because of her shorter-than-average tongue, "caused by an unusually thick lingual frenulum – the flap of skin that joins the underside of the tongue to the floor of the mouth," the UK paper reports. More from The Telegraph:

Her parents agreed to her having a lingual frenectomy, a 15–minute operation under local anaesthetic that involved an incision in the flap of skin. Rhiannon admitted that it was "agony at first" but her tongue is now about 1cm longer and she can say words that were impossible before.

So is surgery the answer to shaking an unwanted accent? Not exactly, explains Dr. Amee P. Shah, associate professor and research director in Cleveland State University's speech and hearing program. Brooksbank likely had a condition called ankyloglossia, often nicknamed "tongue-tie," because it restricts the tongue's movement, keeping it tethered too close to the lower jaw -- which can result in in a number of speech problems, says Shaw.

Although Shah has not treated Brooksbank, she expects the teenager didn't just have problems correctly pronouncing Korean words -- she likely has had problems pronouncing English words, too. Shah explains that a "tongue-tied" person would have trouble pronouncing all vowels, and especially the consonants that are formed using the front and the top of the mouth, like T, D, L, R, S, Z, N and Y. But there's nothing unique about the Korean language that would require a lingual frenectomy. The Korean language doesn't "have an 'L' and 'R' distinction the way we do, but they do have a version that sounds like 'L' or 'R,' depending on the situation," Shah says. "They do have the vowels 'e' and 'ah' -- those would be affected."

The teenager's surgery sounds like an extreme measure, but Shah explains that a lingual frenectomy is actually a very common procedure, normally done in children who are born with a shorter tongue and thicker frenulum. But people like Brooksbank who have the procedure done later in life, usually require speech therapy in addition to the frenectomy to correct the pronunciation habits they've formed over the years to compensate for the shorter tongue.

Follow msnbc.com health writer Melissa Dahl on Twitter: @melissadahl.

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Charlie Riedel / AP

Oh, Tiger. Read on -- we can help.

Whether it's missing a golf putt, scoring poorly on a big test, or blowing a job interview or sales presentation, you've likely had some first-hand experience with choking under pressure. Performing below your abilities in a stress-filled situation happens in the workplace and at school, in sports and in the arts -- and it's not simply that your nerves get the better of you.

There are two main theories about why people choke: One is that thoughts and worries distract your attention from the task at hand, and you don't access your talents. A second explanation suggests that pressure causes individuals to think too much about all the skills involved and this messes up their execution.

Psychologists are hoping to understand when and why some people are more likely to succeed in high-stakes settings while others fail. But people usually think all high-pressure situations have the same effects on performance, says Marci DeCaro, an assistant professor in the department of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky.

DeCaro and a team of researchers recently published a study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology that found not all high-pressure situations are the same, and they looked at how different types of pressure influenced performance.

They compared "monitoring pressure" -- being watched by others, whether it's a teacher, audience, or video camera -- to "outcome pressure" -- seeking a high test score, prize money, scholarship, or title -- to lower-key situations.

In one experiment, scientists tracked 130 undergraduate students ability to complete two sets of tasks on a computer in which they were asked to correctly categorize shapes and symbols. One-third of the group was in a pressure-monitoring condition (they were told their performance was being videotaped), another group was in an outcome-pressure situation (they were told their accuracy on the first task had been determined, and they were offered a financial incentive to perform 20 percent better), and a third group was a low-pressure control.

Researchers found that tempting students with money hurt their performance by distracting them from an attention-demanding task, perhaps because they worried more and relied less on their working memory. Believing you're being watched caused students to focus their attention on the skills needed to complete a proceduralized task and less on the outcome, and their performance suffered. 

Pressure itself isn't always bad, DeCaro says, it depends on the task and type of pressure encountered.

"Pressure hurts performance if it leads you to pay attention in a way that is bad for the particular task you're doing," says DeCaro. Some skills are better performed when you devote a lot of attention to them, like solving math problems, she explains, while others (a well-learned sports skill like your golf putt) are performed better without thinking too closely about the steps you're taking.

Knowing what kinds of pressure situations lead you to focus too much or not enough, might help you find ways to overcome the problem. 

Have you discovered any secrets to prevent choking under pressure?

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There are two kinds of people in the world: The ones who blame themselves for setbacks and the ones who blame anyone but themselves.

So says psychologist Carsten Wrosch, anyway. He says the former live with regret and sadness, the latter with bitterness and anger. And, speculates Wrosch, over the long run, either regret or bitterness could make you sick -- unless you make lemonade out of the lemons life hands you or, in some cases, cut your losses and toss those lemons in the trash.

Wrosch, a professor at Montreal’s Concordia University, and coauthor Jesse Renaud contributed a chapter about their theories of bitterness across the lifespan to a recently published book, "Embitterment: Societal, psychological, and clinical perspectives."

Wrosch has already shown that people who have lived with regret for years have higher levels of the hormone cortisol, released in response to stress, which can increase their vulnerability to disease. He’s just starting to look at whether the same holds true for bitterness.

As if we didn’t already know, Wrosch notes that “blaming other people actually has short-term positive emotional effects. It protects a person’s self-esteem: It’s not me who did something wrong.” But bitterness over the long-term is probably another story, he says.

In fact, some German psychiatrists think bitterness itself is a disease and should be categorized as post-traumatic embitterment disorder, or PTED. Michael Linden, head of the psychiatric clinic at the Free University of Berlin, first described the concept in a 2003 paper.

Although PTED patients can’t stop thinking about the failed relationship, the job they didn’t get—whatever negative life event triggered the disorder—they look pretty normal, Linden wrote, noting that “patients can even smile when engaged in thoughts of revenge.”

Wrosch isn’t exactly buying into the notion of such a thing as PTED. But, based on his research, he does have some suggestions on how to minimize bitterness and regret in your life.

First, he says, you need to “disengage” from pie-in-the-sky goals, like thinking you’re going to steal your happily remarried ex away from his or her new spouse. “Quitting can be good if you have unattainable goals,” Worsch says. Research shows you’ll lower your cortisol levels and feel sick less.

Second, you have to reengage in other meaningful goals to help maintain a sense of purpose in your life. For example, pursue that hobby and get your mind off your ex. Not surprisingly, studies show that folks who do that tend to have greater feelings of well-being.

Wrosch recently received a grant to conduct a long-term study of bitterness and regret in 300 couples. One question he plans to investigate: When it comes to bitterness and regret, do opposites attract? What would you say to that?

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Luke, I am your father! Knowing the twist in a movie, book or TV show doesn't spoil the experience, a new study shows.

Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's dad. Rosebud is a sled. Soylent Green is PEOPLE. Kristin shot J.R. Maggie shot Mr. Burns. And Bruce Willis, a.k.a. child therapist Malcome Crowe? You guys, he was dead the whole time. 

We hate for the twist endings of movies, TV shows and books to be given away. But here's a bit of relief for those of you who are just now learning that Snape, in fact, killed Dumbledore: Spoilers don't really ruin stories for us. In fact, a new study suggests that we actually enjoy spoiled stories more than those left unspoiled. 

Tell me! No, wait, don't! TV spoilers tear at fans

"Writers use their artistry to make stories interesting, to engage readers, and tosurprise them. But giving away these surprises makes readers like stories better," write study author Jonathan Leavitt, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, San Diego. 

In an experiment, researchers gave away the endings for three different kinds of short stories -- those with an ironic twist ending, mysteries and tales Leavitt calls "more evocative literary stories." These were real short stories by authors such as John Updike, Roald Dahl, Anton Chekhov, Agatha Christie and Raymond Carver; none of the 30 undergrad study participants had read these stories before. 

The volunteers read three versions of four of those stories. One with a spoiler given in a paragraph that was independent to the story, another with the spoiler worked into the story's opening graph and a spoiler-free version of the narrative. They rated how much they enjoyed each version of the stories on a scale of 1 to 10. 

Spoilers ahead, in case you're intending to read the report when it's published in the September issue of Psychological Science! But people "significantly preferred" the spoiled versions of the ironic twist stories and the mysteries. (The so-called evocative stories were less appreciated in general, "likely due to their more expressly literary aims," Leavitt writes. No spoiler alert needed there.) But in all three kinds of short stories, people like the texts with the spoilers worked into the opening graphs about as much as they liked the unspoiled texts. 

Killed by pasta: Best 'Final Destination' deaths

Here's why you'll thank me later because you now know that Paul Bettany was just a figment of Russell Crowe's beautiful mind: Spoilers, Leavitt suggests, "may allow readers to organize developments in the story, anticipate the implications of events, and resolve ambiguities that occur in the course of reading." Previous studies have also proven the power of anticipation, including one that showed that people's happiness levels were as high pre-vacation as they were during the actual vacation. 

Spoilers are hard to avoid in our current age of tweets and blogs and Facebook statuses (and Google Pluses?) -- and this finding suggests that we should perhaps be a bit kinder to entertainment bloggers we've blamed for "ruining" TV shows or movies by posting things that are inherently spoiler-heavy, like news or reviews. “Perhaps," the report concludes, "birthday presents are better when wrapped in cellophane, and engagement rings are better when not concealed in chocolate mousse.”

Also, Amy marries Laurie, Gatsby is murdered and Einhorn is Finkle, Finkle is Einhorn and Einhorn is a man.

When's the last time -- or the most memorable time -- a movie, TV show or book was "spoiled" for you? And how did that affect your enjoyment of the story? 

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The more times you chew each bite, the fewer calories you'll consume, says new study that proves your mother correct.

If you’re trying to lose weight (and aren’t we all?), here’s a study to chew on:

The more your choppers mash up each bite of food, the less food you’re likely to eat at a meal, Chinese researchers reported recently in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

In other words, Mom was right again, although her advice on this subject might have stemmed more from an exaggerated fear of choking than of having to buy clothes for you in the chubby department. The new study confirms: Don’t wolf down your food. Chew it, then chew it some more.

The latest research involved 16 lean and 14 obese young men. After a 12-hour fast, the volunteers came to the laboratory to eat a typical Chinese breakfast— pork pie, not Cocoa Puffs — while a video camera recorded how frequently they chewed each bite. All of the men were given the same portion and told they could ask for more.

The scientists theorized that the obese men would chew less per bite and, indeed, they were right. And while the size of their bites was similar to that of the lean men, the obese men ended up consuming more calories.

So the researchers, who were from Harbin Medical University, tried another experiment. They brought the men back to the lab and served up pork pie again for breakfast, as much as the men cared to eat. But one day they asked the men to chew each bite 15 times, while another day they asked them to chew 40 times.

Didn’t matter whether the men were obese or lean: They consumed about 12 percent fewer calories when they chewed each bite 40 times than when they chewed 15 times, and they had lower levels of ghrelin, the so-called hunger hormone produced in the stomach.

“Chewing less is a risk factor for obesity,” the scientists conclude, perhaps because increased chewing releases nutrients from food more efficiently. Encouraging people to chew more, they write, could be a valuable tool--along with diet and exercise--for helping people lose weight.

I wondered if that might be biting off more than many people could chew, so I asked Mauro Farella of New Zealand’s University of Otago how hard it would be to get folks to masticate more.

Farella was the senior author on a chewing paper posted Aug. 1 by the Journal of Dental Research. He and his coauthors had theorized that people chew at their own consistent pace, part of their unique “fingerprint of masticatory behavior.” His study didn’t find a link between the pace at which people chewed and how thoroughly they chewed.

“I have no idea about whether it would be possible to teach an individual to slow down or up the chewing pace or to change the duration of chewing before swallowing,” Farella says. In principle, though, he says it might be possible to get people to chew each bite more, because, as Mom knows, we at least have partial control over it.

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Michael Probst / AP

No one wants to see their broker doing this.

We've seen the facepalm in the now all-too-familiar images of woeful stock brokers, hands on their faces as they receive news of the plummeting stock market. (There's even a Tumblr, The Brokers With Hands on Their Faces Blog, devoted to cataloging images of, well, brokers with hands on their faces.) We witnessed it when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton covered her mouth as she watched Navy Seals execute Osama bin Laden (although she blamed it on allergies) -- and we even see this gesture when beauty pageant contestants are crowned.

When humans are scared or shocked, we tend to put our hands over our mouths, hold our foreheads or place our hands over our cheeks. But why?

“It’s called the pacifier gesture,” says Janine Driver, president of the Body Language Institute in Washington, D.C. “It’s like a kid sucking his thumb. When our hands go up and touch our faces, it’s saying to ourselves ‘It’s OK, it’s safe.’ It’s like our mother giving us hug. It says we’ll get through this.”

Driver explains that when we witness a terrible accident, hear bad news or are in disbelief, putting our hands over our mouths is physically expressing that we can’t emotionally take anything else in.

But as common as it seems, body language researchers have found not everyone around the world covers their mouths when they are shocked, scared or surprised, and women tend do palm their faces more than men.

"The softer version of this is a man in the boardroom who puts his pointy finger over his lips and his hands on his chin,” says Driver, who became a body language expert while working as an investigator for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and is the author of the book "You Say More Than You Think."

Other gestures expressing fear or surprise include grabbing our wrists like Martha Stewart did each day as she went to trial or covering our top lip with an index finger and putting our hand over our chin.

But the body language gesture universally used around the world when we are scared is opening our mouths in an oval shape and raising our eyebrows, Driver says.

“This is in our DNA,” she says. “It doesn’t matter if you’re black, white or Hispanic, from Iraq, Zimbabwe or Chicago.”

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American Journal of Human Genetics

Look, ma, no fingerprints!

The upside of adermatoglyphia: You may have a bright future in crime.

The rare skin condition causes some people to be born without fingerprints, and it’s the subject of a new study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics. The report explores the underlying cause of the condition and underscores the usefulness of rare genetic mutations as a tool for investigating unknown aspects of biology. 

Adermatoglyphia “is apparently exceedingly rare, although it may be under-diagnosed due to the fact it does not affect, significantly, the health status of the patients,” explains senior study author, Dr. Eli Sprecher from Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center in Israel.

Human skin has ridges, called dermatoglyphs, that are present on the fingers, palms, toes and the soles of our feet. The dermatoglyphs on the finger tips are better known as fingerprints.

You may not know it, but fingerprints help us perceive fine sensations at the tips of our fingers. You’re probably more familiar with the “CSI” aspect of finger prints, their importance in establishing identity. In some circles, adermatoglyphia has been nicknamed "immigration delay disease" since affected individuals report difficulties entering countries that require fingerprint recording.

To better understand the genetics of fingerprint formation, Dr. Sprecher and his colleagues studied a large Swiss family with adermatoglyphia. Affected members of the family had displayed an absence of fingerprints since birth and, according to the study, this absence was associated with a reduced number of sweat glands.

Researchers pinpointed a mutation in the gene SMARCAD1 as the root cause. The protein encoded by the gene is thought to control the expression of a large number of target genes associated with development. More specifically, the group demonstrated the existence of a short version of SMARCAD1 that was exclusively expressed in the skin and was mutated in individuals with the disease.

"Taken together, our findings implicate a skin-specific version of SMARCAD1 in the regulation of fingerprint development," concludes Dr. Sprecher, who goes on to say SMARCAD1 may target genes involved in both fingerprint and sweat gland development. He continues, "Further, as abnormal fingerprints are known to sometimes herald severe disorders, our finding may also impact the understanding of additional diseases affecting not only the skin."

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Chocolate is better than carrots, for more reasons than the obvious one.

Next time you board a plane, you might want to hand the pilot a chocolate bar, just in case.

That’s because a recent study found that dark chocolate might improve your ability to see in low-contrast situations, such as poor weather.

Not only that, this study adds to previous research that suggests eating chocolate can make your brain sharper. (Don’t you just love these chocolate-is-good-for-you studies? Sign me up.) You may have already heard that dark chocolate can lower your blood pressure and also appears to have a favorable effect on cholesterol levels, platelet function and insulin sensitivity.

The authors of the latest study, from England’s University of Reading, enrolled 30 men and women ages 18 to 25 and tested their vision and thinking skills a couple of hours after they ate a regular-sized chocolate bar.

They took the tests twice, once after eating a dark chocolate bar, and once after eating a white chocolate bar. The difference between the two chocolate bars was the amount of flavanols -- a natural compound in cocoa -- they contained. Of course, the dark chocolate bar contained loads of cocoa flavanols, the white chocolate bar only a trace.

Flavanols, found in high levels in grapes, green and black teas, red wine and apples as well as cocoa, have been getting a lot of good press lately as scientists study their health benefits. Ahh, a jug of red wine, a bar of dark chocolate and thou beside me.

To avoid skewing their results, the researchers fudged when they told their subjects the purpose of the study: If the volunteers knew the focus was on cocoa flavanols, they might do better after eating the dark chocolate because they figured they were supposed to. Instead, study participants thought the researchers were investigating the impact of different kinds of fats.

Turns out the study participants did perform better on the vision tests and on some of the brain function tests after eating the dark chocolate, the authors report in the June issue of Physiology & Behavior.  They attribute their findings to cocoa flavanol’s known ability to increase blood flow to the brain, and they speculate that the stuff might also increase blood flow to the retina of the eye.

The good news is that other research suggests cocoa flavanol’s positive impact on blood flow is even greater in us folks over age 25. So the Reading researchers are conducting a similar study in older volunteers. This time they’ll add caffeine and theobromine to the white chocolate bars to make sure those stimulants from the cacao plant aren’t the real reason for dark chocolate’s brain and vision benefits.

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