Mother's phone call as comforting as a hug, says oxytocin study

Hearing your mother's voice on the telephone has the same stress-busting effect as a cuddle, say US scientists. Children know that mum's got the words when life seems to be getting too much.

Now it seems her voice on the phone can work the same soothing magic as when she is there to give her offspring a comforting cuddle. US scientists believe hearing mother down the line produces the same stress-busting effect on her daughter as physical contact such as a hug or a loving arm round the shoulder.

In a study that will send phone companies into their own comfort zone, researchers found mothers' calls released similar levels of the social bonding hormone oxytocin in girls as when they were in close proximity.

Writing in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the scientists report how they deliberately raised the stress levels of 61 girls aged seven to 12. The children had to make an impromptu speech and solve maths problems in front of strangers. This sent their hearts racing and levels of stress hormone cortisol higher.

This is probably what all mothers instinctively know anyway and Freud no doubt understood this at a psychological level: that there are many unseen bonds that exist beyond the level of psychology e.g. what are often classified as the Oedipus and the Electra complexes.

We all know that the words that come from mum are soothing in ways we can't understand but which we feel as doing us the power of good when we are sick, or angry, stressed, or just simply in need of conversation and communication.

This is always comforting to know.

Life gambler finally dies of cancer

This is my favourite story of the week as an ex gambler myself. A British man with terminal cancer who won 10,000 pounds (15,000 dollars, 11,700 euros) by gambling on his own life has died, just weeks short of cashing in a third bet.

Jon Matthews, 60, from Milton Keynes north of London, was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a cancer linked to asbestos, in April 2006 and his doctor told him he would not be alive to see 2007.

The widower refused to accept the prognosis and placed a 100-pound bet with odds of 50-1 that he would survive until June 1, 2008 _ and cashed in 5,000 pounds when he made it, according to bookmakers William Hill.

The odds that he would stay alive another 12 months went up to 100-1 and he placed another 100-pound bet, which would have netted him 10,000 pounds if he survived until June 1, 2010, but he finally succumbed to his illness last week, the bookmakers said.

This is a great way to set yourself targets and by that very way, prolong your life when you have unfortunately gotten a terminal illness. Let's be honest - life is one big gamble anyway, so what's wrong with having a flutter where your life really does depend on it?

'Historic' day as first non-latin web addresses go live

Arab nations are leading a "historic" charge to make the world wide web live up to its name. Net regulator Icann has switched on a system that allows full web addresses that contain no Latin characters. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are the first countries to have so-called "country codes" written in Arabic scripts.

The move is the first step to allow web addresses in many scripts including Chinese, Thai and Tamil. More than 20 countries have requested approval for international domains from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann).

"All three are Arabic script domains, and will enable domain names written fully right-to-left," said Kim Davies of Icann in a blog post.

This has to be great news for countries which do not have English as their first language as there has been worries in some quarters that you were starting to see a kind of dominance of the world through the English language, and that those who could not read it, were increasingly being left behind in a kind of digital divide.

Now, whether you are Chinese, Thai, or an Arab, you will be able to have web sites specifically created to cater for you and thus act as a kind of mirror to the life that you yourself lead, not something that is reflected back at you through the medium of another language, with all the cultural baggage that inevitably goes with it, and which leads to a kind of cultural hegemony. Very welcome news for minority languages indeed!

'Cuddle hormone' makes men more empathetic

A nasal spray can make men more in tune with other people's feelings, say a team of German and UK researchers. They found that inhaling the "cuddle hormone" oxytocin made men just as empathetic as women. The study in 48 volunteers also showed that the spray boosted the ability to learn from positive feedback.

This is really interesting as women have long been known to be more empathetic than men and also able to learn from others especially from men, but this is not true the other way around.

Oxytocin is a naturally produced hormone, most well-known for triggering labour pains and promoting bonding between mother and baby. This study is the latest of several that suggest that intra-nasal oxytocin seems to 'sensitise' people to become more aware of social cues from other individuals said Professor Gareth Leng. But it has also been shown to play a role in social relations, sex and trust.

In terms of positive feedback, in a second experiment, the researchers measured "socially motivated learning" where the volunteers were asked to do a difficult observation test and were shown an approving face if they got the answer right and an unhappy face if they got it wrong.

In these types of experiments, people generally learn faster if they get positive feedback but those who had taken the oxytocin spray responded even better to facial feedback than those in the placebo group.

This is very interesting to all people, not just social researchers, as it sheds more light on the link between relationships and how people show emotion and are generally able or not to show empathy and identify with other people's feelings.

The Amazonian tribe that can only count up to five?

This an amazing story of the way humans use numbers. It's hard to believe that with I-pods, huge machines in Switzerland that can smash electrons to see what's inside them, and operations that can transplant pigs hearts to humans that there's still people out there who are oblivious to all of this?

"For the last 10 years, the focus of Pica's work has been the Munduruku: an indigenous group of about 7,000 people in the Brazilian Amazon whose language has no tenses, no plurals and no words for numbers beyond five. To get to the Munduruku, Pica had to wait for some locals to take him to their territory by canoe."

What kind of language must that be with none of the usual things like syntax, tenses for time, and only four numbers to count with? The funniest thing when reading this was when the scientist, after returning back from the Amazon rain forest, was asked how the indigenous people got by with such a limited set of numbers?

"Still, I thought it odd that numbers larger than five did not crop up at all in Amazonian daily life. What if you ask a Munduruku with six children how many kids they have? "He will say, 'I don't know,'" Pica said. "It is impossible to express."

It made me think of the man scratching his head and counting his six kids - "One, two, three, four, five, and...sorry don't know!" It makes you realise that without numbers we have very little and the question arises as to what you have if not the means to express it? It's a bit like the tree falling down in Sweden conundrum, and if there's nobody there to witness it, did it really happen?

Lip reading mobile promises end to noisy phone calls

This should help stop all those people on the train, bus and tube in the mornings who seem to think it perfectly acceptable to wax lyrical about the curry they had with their lover the evening before or the unbridled sex they had with their neighbour's husband or wife.

It will be great to still see those mouths opening and closing but not to have to endure any of this claptrap that comes out. It's so annoying to have to listen to some people who clearly have no sense of propriety or shame in telling everyone, complete strangers all, about their personal lives!!

Come on!! We actually would prefer not to know and listen to your drivel no matter how much you are prepared to spice it up for our apparent benefit!! Get a life will you!!

Switzerland referendum on providing lawyers for animals

While I agree that animals are not always treated all that well either by their masters or other members of the family, I do think this is somewhat of a step too far when animals are given their own lawyers? WTF?

When so many people in the world are disenfranchised and don't even have access to a good lawyer or even enough food and water to drink, can any country really justify spending all that money on protecting the so-called rights of a furry animal no matter how cute and innocent it is?

This is yet another sign that the world is completely out of sync and that capitalism gone mad results in this uneven distribution of wealth! This is clearly a sign where a country has too much of a resource, in this case money, and is distributing it in a bizarre and haphazard way!

I mean, what good has ever come out of Switzerland? Cuckoo clocks, chocolate, cheese, cantons, Swiss bank accounts, and Natzi blood money! Someone should tell them to give that money to people who need it rather than spending it on such frivolous activities!