London: Sexual minority boys and girls are more likely to purge or take laxatives, use diet pills, or fast to lose weight than their straight peers, and those disordered eating trends may not be improving, according to new research from the University of British Columbia.

Washington: Is your smart phone making you smarter? Does your car direction finder make you eligible for NASA training school, and your camera phone enables you to be a Walter Cronkite reporter-wannabe so savvy you can skip four years of journalism classes? Modern techie devices can be helpful and make life easier, but there are serious drawbacks, says a Texas A&M University professor who studies technology.

Binghamton: When it comes to messaging users on dating websites, men tend to be more aggressive and contact users they are interested in, whereas women tend to be more conscious of their own attractiveness to other users, according to new research.

London: New research into birth order effects has found that the last-born children of non-entrepreneurial parents are more likely to go into business than first-borns.

London: It’s official - mums are cooler and ‘more fun’ than dads - according to the UK’s children.

London: Driving while talking on a hands-free phone can be as distracting as talking on a hand-held mobile, psychologists at the University of Sussex say.

London: When it comes to marriage, it seems the over 50s are the generation to watch; with two thirds claiming they are in happy marriages with a third of them being together for a blissful 41-50 years, says a new Barometer Survey of the over 50s community of Silversurfers.com.

Brisbane: With commercial sperm banking giving women more opportunities to become mothers, a world-first QUT study has found the age and education of sperm donors are the most important characteristics considered.

Stirling: A psychology study by the University of Stirling has found that men think women with make-up on are more ‘prestigious’, while women think women who wear make-up are more ‘dominant’.

Bloomington: Biologists at Indiana University have significantly advanced understanding of the genetic pathways that control the appearance of different physical traits in the same species depending on nutritional conditions experienced during development.