My picks from ScienceDaily

Urbanization: 95% Of The World's Population Lives On 10% Of The Land:

A new global map released by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre and published in the World Bank's World Development Report 2009, measures urbanisation from the new perspective of Travel Time to 8,500 Major Cities. The map fills an important gap in our understanding of economic, physical and even social connectivity.

Girls Have Superior Sense Of Taste To Boys:

Girls have a better sense of taste than boys. Every third child of school age prefers soft drinks which are not sweet. Children and young people love fish and do not think of themselves as being fussy eaters. Boys have a sweeter tooth than girls. Teenagers taste differently. And finally, schoolchildren in northern Denmark have the best taste buds.

Truth About Give And Take In Social Situations: The More You Take The More You Lose:

In everyday social exchanges, being mean to people has a lot more impact than being nice, research at the University of Chicago has shown. Feeling slighted can have a bigger difference on how a person responds than being the recipient of perceived generosity, even if the net value of the social transaction is the same, the research on reciprocity--giving and taking--shows.

Sex Difference On Spatial Skill Test Linked To Brain Structure:

Men consistently outperform women on spatial tasks, including mental rotation, which is the ability to identify how a 3-D object would appear if rotated in space. Now, a University of Iowa study shows a connection between this sex-linked ability and the structure of the parietal lobe, the brain region that controls this type of skill.

'Gross' Messaging Used To Increases Handwashing, Fight Norovirus:

Research conducted by University of Denver (DU) Associate Professor Renée Botta suggests that it takes "gross" messaging to get undergraduate students to wash their hands more frequently after going to the bathroom. In fall quarter 2007, researchers posted messages in the bathrooms of two DU undergraduate residence halls. The messages said things like, "Poo on you, wash your hands" or "You just peed, wash your hands," and contained vivid graphics and photos. The messages resulted in increased handwashing among females by 26 percent and among males by 8 percent.

Exercise Suppresses Appetite By Affecting Appetite Hormones:

A vigorous 60-minute workout on a treadmill affects the release of two key appetite hormones, ghrelin and peptide YY, while 90 minutes of weight lifting affects the level of only ghrelin, according to a new study. Taken together, the research shows that aerobic exercise is better at suppressing appetite than non-aerobic exercise and provides a possible explanation for how that happens.