Health & Science

Guys who cheat on their famous wives

Ever wonder why the husbands of gorgeous and successful women like Halle Berry and Sandra Bullock would cheat on them? Men with super-successful wives, a new study says, find financial dependency and secondary status to be a blow to their egos, and cheat as a way of reassuring themselves of their masculinity. In a study of couples in the 18- to 28-year-old age range, Cornell University researchers found a much higher infidelity rate among men who earn significantly less than their wives or live-in girlfriends. For stay-at-home husbands who are completely dependent on their wives’ income, the effect is even more pronounced, with the male being five times more likely to cheat. “Having multiple sexual partners may be an attempt to restore gender identity,” says researcher Christin Munsch. The phenomenon may become more common, she said, as more women take on roles as breadwinners. For women, economic dependency appears to have the opposite effect: The more dependent they are, the less likely they are to cheat. That may be because for women, getting caught is more likely to put one’s economic well-being at risk.

The sponge in us

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The common ancestor of all animals probably looked a lot like something you can find under a sink, says Nature News. Researchers compared the genetic blueprint of Amphimedon queenslandica, a sponge from the Great Barrier Reef, to those of humans, fruit flies, roundworms, and other animals, and were surprised by the similarities. Sponges, it turns out, have roughly the same number of genes as other animals and share about 70 percent of them in common; though they lack muscles and nerves, for instance, sponges carry analogs of genes that, in more complex animals, code for those structures. This leads scientists to suspect that the organism from which all multicellular life evolved 650 million years ago probably was a sponge.

A gut-level change

Our health depends on having the right collection of bacteria in our guts to break down and metabolize food. But the Western diet—low in fiber, rich in fat—is changing that biological environment, with troubling consequences. A team of Italian researchers compared the gut microbes of European children with those of children in Burkina Faso, whose high-fiber diet of legumes, millet, sorghum, and vegetables closely resembles what humans ate 10,000 years ago. The gut microflora of African children turn out to be both more populous and more diverse; they contain bacteria that protect them from allergies and from gut diseases such as inflammatory bowel disorder and Crohn’s disease, but they also harbor fewer bacteria that cause diarrhea. The finding “bears on how we should feed our children to make them healthy,” microbiologist and study co-author Duccio Cavalieri tells Science News. Gut flora, says evolutionary nutritionist Loren Cordain of Colorado State University, play “a huge role in our health and well-being,” affecting not only our intestinal tracts but our immune systems.

Turning up the heat

When women are ovulating, they unconsciously buy and wear sexier clothing, ScienceDaily reports. Researchers at the University of Minnesota asked 100 women at different stages in their menstrual cycles to pick out clothes to buy. They found that women in their most fertile phases unconsciously gravitated toward tighter, slinkier, and more revealing wear. If women sense that there are potentially attractive rivals nearby, the effect is even more pronounced. The researchers showed some of the ovulating women photos of other women who lived either nearby or more than 1,000 miles away; the subjects who viewed local rivals selected the sexiest clothes. “If you look more desirable than your competition,’’ explains study author Kristina Durante, “you are more likely to stand out.’’

That man in red

Red has long been considered a sexy color for women. But a new study finds that red clothes have the same stimulating impact when worn by men. Researchers showed a photo of a man in various clothes to women and men in Germany, China, and the U.S. When pictured in a red shirt, the man was deemed significantly more attractive by women and as someone with whom they were more likely to have sex. “The link between red and sex also applies to men,’’ study author Andrew Elliot tells the London Daily Telegraph. People seem to associate red with power and status, which is why the color red also confers advantages in athletic competitions. Studies have found that referees award more points to tae kwon do competitors who wear red rather than blue. And in the 2004 Olympics, competitors who wore red in one-on-one sports such as boxing and wrestling were more likely to win.