Beethoven's babies

CAREFUL what tunes you play baby: a new study shows how strongly we are born wired for sound. Infants as young as five months know what sort of music they like and can distinguish it from duller stuff, report psychologists at Brigham Young University, Utah.

Babies can pick the upbeat Beethoven melodies from a line-up of gloomier music at five months, and by nine months they can pick out the sad sound of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony from happier ones, says the report in the journal Infant Behavior and Development.

The scientists used a standard model for testing when a baby gets bored and stops paying attention: displaying an emotionally neutral face in front of it and timing how long it takes to look away. The babies' attention lasted about four seconds longer when the Beethoven changed from happy to sad, or vice versa, reflecting heightened interest in the change of musical mood.

The study reinforces the idea that music lies at the centre of our mental foundations. Tests by Peter Hepper, a psychologist, of Queen's University, Belfast, have shown that musical memory begins in the womb. In 1989 he asked a group of women to watch Neighbours regularly during pregnancy, but no other television soap. After birth the babies registered lower heart rates when the Neighbours theme was played, but themes from Coronation Street and EastEnders had no effect.

Playing tunes to a baby bump also boosts mum's morale, according to another new study this week. Taiwanese researchers who studied 236 expectant women found that playing them lullabies and birdsong for 30 minutes a day for a fortnight significantly reduced their levels of stress, anxiety and depression, reports the Journal of Clinical Nursing.

Charisma Curse

YOUR boss may well be a self-obsessed braggart with no ability to back his or her claims of superiority. But then, it might well be your fault, says an Ohio State University report.

The study of 432 people, put into leaderless groups of four, found that those who were rated most narcissistic in tests tended to take control.

Despite their high belief in their leadership ability, the study showed that they were no better than anyone else at heading groups. It's not only narcissists who get it wrong: the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin report says that the other group members saw them as the people who should be in charge. It hardly bodes well for democracy.

The white stuff

EGG whites could provide an extremely cheap solution to a costly problem confronting medical scientists working in the world's laboratories.

The problem is that cell dishes create two-dimensional cultures - but human cells live in our three-dimensional bodies. Cancer cells, for example, grow very differently in a 3-D environment, but scientists have been stymied by the fact that the only available fliuds for growing 3-D cultures are too costly to use. Now scientists at Baylor College of Medicine, Texas, have found that chicken egg whites do the job just as well. “A baby chick can grow in three dimensions without external support. Mother Nature has given us a valuable tool for medical research,” says Benny Kaipparettu, the study author, in BioTechniques.

Low-level alarm

SMOKE alarms should save thousands more lives if their ring tones are pitched lower, say Australian researchers.

The alarms commonly use the high-pitched three-beep pattern used on industrial alarms, as it is known to convey a sense of urgency.

But it doesn't work well at rousing sleepers - and many fatal house fires are at night, the Victoria University study has found. Dr Michelle Ball, the lead researcher, told the Australian Sleep Association of her discovery that pitching the alarms lower is far more effective.

Perhaps lower tones may work better with electronic alarm clocks as well.

Bad air days

TRAFFIC pollution may cause people to suffer attacks of appendicitis, says a Canadian study of more than 5,000 adults who were admitted to hospital with the condition.

Dr Gilaad Kaplan, of Calgary University, says his seven-year study shows that people are about 15 per cent more likely to be rushed into hospital with appendicitis on days with the highest ozone concentrations, compared with days of the lowest ozone concentrations. Similar rates were seen for sulphur dioxide, he told the American College of Gastroenterology.

He says the link may exist because air pollution causes inflammation in the body.

Pocket rocket

NOT all free publicity is good publicity, according to Pfizer, the maker of Viagra.

It is suing Ayre Sachs, from New York, for trademark infringement after he built a 25ft-long fake military missile, painted “Viva Viagra” on the side in blue paint, and towed it behind his car around the streets of Manhattan.

Sachs explained to a judge this week: “Once in a while you want to have fun, and that's what it's all about: fun.” But Pfizer can't raise a smile: it just wants him to keep his rocket out of the public eye.

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