AAHAAMEDIA

Our senses have difficulty parsing stimuli linked to a negative event By Janelle Weaver   Performance usually improves with practice, but not if training is a rotten time. A new study shows that people’s ability to identify noises declines when the sounds are paired with putrid smells—a phenomenon that may allow our brain ... Read More

By Michael Moyer   The universe has no center and no edge, no special regions tucked in among the galaxies and light. No matter where you look, it’s the same—or so physicists thought. This cosmological principle—one of the foundations of the modern understanding of the universe—has come into question recently as astronomers ... Read More

While recession bites elsewhere, sales of Wordsworth Editions' £1.99 classics have surged Alison Flood guardian.co.uk Robert Redford in the 1974 film of The Great Gatsby. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive As the winds of recession sweep across the UK, a story of the decadent rich in New York has beaten the gloom, with a ... Read More

The wartime history of London's big hotels is full of rogues and chancers A nurse at a first aid post in the Savoy Hotel in London during the second world war. Photograph: Felix Man/Getty Images Andrew Motion guardian.co.uk, In the acknowledgments to The West End Front Matthew Sweet thanks his editor and agent ... Read More

Award 'for modern gay writing' goes to The Proof of Love, beating work by Colm Tóibín and Jackie Kay Alison Flood guardian.co.uk Catherine Hall's "simmering, brooding" story of a young Cambridge mathematician in a hostile Lake District village, The Proof of Love, has won the Green Carnation prize. In its second year, the ... Read More

In his 1946 essay, The Moon Under Water, George Orwell wrote that a pub should should be a haven of serenity, community and great conversation. For their new book, The Search for the Perfect Pub, Paul Moody and Robin Turner scoured the country's watering holes to see if such a ... Read More

Zoe Williams The Guardian, When our daily news is apocalyptic, it's irresponsible to read made-up stories. It's time to start reading the serious stuff instead It's something that they say a lot in publishing, apparently, that once you turn 40, you start reading biographies. I do remember in my 20s, someone nearing 40 saying, ... Read More