Chocolate Makes You Skinny; Plastic That Fixes Itself

Rebecca Greenfield

Discovered: Eating chocolate keeps you thin, a type of plastic that fixes itself, an incredible facial transplant and machines can tell if you're lying. 

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  • Eating chocolate "may help keep people slim." Holy god yes, great news. Love chocolate. But there must be fine print, right science? Ah, here we go: Looking at almost 1,000 people the research found that those who ate chocolate a few times a week were, on average, slimmer than those who ate it less than that. Wait, that's still good news. That means eating chocolate sometimes is better than each chocolate not very often. How can this be? Science says there's something about the stuff in chocolate that trumps the calories. "Our findings appear to add to a body of information suggesting that the composition of calories, not just the number of them, matters for determining their ultimate impact on weight," explains researcher Dr Beatrice Golomb. Okay, cool. But, one more question: does this apply to multiple-times-a-day chocolate eaters? We hope so. [BBC]

  • Plastic that fixes itself. Exciting discovery for careless (or accident prone?) among us. This new type of plastic heals like skin with exposure to light. "Our new plastic tries to mimic nature, issuing a red signal when damaged and then renewing itself when exposed to visible light, temperature or pH changes," explains researcher Marek W. Urban.  Imagine fixing a scratched whatever just by letting it sit outside in the sunshine. Sounds like magic. [American Chemical Society]

  • 'The most extensive full face transcript' ever. Just looking at the photos, we're impressed -- that's a pretty incredible transformation. It took doctors 72 hours (three days!) to perform a vascularized composite allograft. "We utilized innovative surgical practices and computerized techniques to precisely transplant the mid-face, maxilla and mandible including teeth, and a portion of the tongue. In addition, the transplant included all facial soft tissue from the scalp to the neck, including the underlying muscles to enable facial expression, and sensory and motor nerves to restore feeling and function," explains Dr. Eduardo Rodriquez. "Our goal is to restore function as well as have aesthetically pleasing results," he continues. [University of Maryland]

  • Machines can tell if you're lying just by looking at your face. Even more perceptive than lie detectors, which rely on stress indicators, just by looking at the smirk on ones face, certain machines can detect deceit. "What we wanted to understand was whether there are signal changes emitted by people when they are lying, and can machines detect them?" explains researcher Ifeoma Nwog. "The answer was yes, and yes," he continued. For question number one, this research confirms that shifty-eyes mean lies. As for question two the machines got it right 82.5 percent of the time. [SUNY Buffalo]

Image via Shutterstock by Wallenrock.

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