Black and white is not always a clear distinction

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Is race defined by appearance, or can a person also be colored by socioeconomic status? A new study finds that Americans who are unemployed, incarcerated or impoverished today are more likely to be classified and identified as black, by themselves or by others, regardless of how they were seen -- or self identified -- in the past.

Spotting the next great music superstar

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For every rock star who hits it big, there are thousands of artists who never make it out of their own back yards. Before Madonna was "Madonna," she was a local success in New York clubs. Until Britney Spears became a global pop superstar, she performed in dance revues in her native Louisiana.

Dune and dirty: Hurricane teaches lessons through ecosystem research

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Feagin, who admits a passion for coastal ecosystems, said four elements are impacted as a hurricane rolls over a barrier island: beaches erode, sand dunes "blow out," houses and buildings are damaged and, finally, the marshes receive sediment deposits from all the above.

Honey adds health benefits, is natural preservative and sweetener in salad dressings

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Antioxidant-rich honey is a healthy alternative to chemical additives and refined sweeteners in commercial salad dressings, said a new University of Illinois study.

"To capitalize on the positive health effects of honey, we experimented with using honey in salad dressings," said Nicki Engeseth, a U of I associate professor of food chemistry. "We found that the antioxidants in honey protected the quality of the salad dressings for up to nine months while sweetening them naturally."

Instore web 3.0 scouting

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Scientists at Toshiba's Corporate Research and Development Center, in Japan have developed a system that offers shoppers advice on what to buy based on the product barcode and the current weblog buzz around the gadget. The team describes the system WOM Scouter this month in the International Journal of Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies.

The crash of 2008: A mathematician's view

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Markets need regulation to stay stable. We have had thirty years of financial deregulation. Now we are seeing chickens coming home to roost. This is the key argument of Professor Nick Bingham, a mathematician at Imperial College London, in an article published today in Significance, the magazine of the Royal Statistical Society.

Are men hardwired to overspend?

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ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Bling, foreclosures, rising credit card debt, bank and auto bailouts, upside down mortgages and perhaps a mid-life crisis new Corvette---all symptoms of compulsive overspending.

University of Michigan researcher Daniel Kruger looks to evolution and mating for an explanation. He theorizes that men overspend to attract mates. It all boils down, as it has for hundreds of thousands of years, to making babies.

Frequent price promotions threaten quality brands, INFORMS study shows

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Frequent price cuts can have a major adverse effects on brand equity, even for well respected brands, according to a study published in a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®).

"A Dynamic Model of Brand Choice When Price and Advertising Signal Product Quality" appears in the current issue of the INFORMS journal Marketing Science. The study is by Tülin Erdem of NYU; Michael P. Keane of the University of Technology Sidney, Australia and Arizona State University; and Baohong Sun of Carnegie Mellon University.

Contraceptive methods shape women's sexual pleasure and satisfaction

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New data from The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University demonstrate that many women think condoms undermine sexual pleasure, but those who use both hormonal contraception and condoms report higher overall sexual satisfaction.

The study authors suggest that this inconsistency reflects how women think about their contraceptive method when asked questions about two different aspects of sexuality -- sexual enjoyment and overall sexual satisfaction.

New study finds not all fats are created equal

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Eating saturated fats from butter, cream and meat, as well as trans fats found in hydrogenated oils can boost our risk of cardiovascular disease, while consuming mono-unsaturated fat can be good for our heart.

Yet what's the effect of all these fats on our weight? Are some better than others?