Lots of gentlemen still prefer blondes — and scientists with too much time on their hands have discovered why: they’re in relatively short supply.
Natural blondes, as opposed to the legions of “bottle blondes’’ who use dye, need 200 genes to create the color, the Sunday Times of London reports. That compares to 60 genes for brown tresses and only a handful for most redheads.
Naturally blonde hair is rare. Only 12.7 percent of women are born with it. For men, the figure is 9.9 percent.
Britain’s Medical Research Council conducted the study, looking only at white people of European descent.
My daughter is bright and animated but has been unsuccessful in finding employment. She had a good job for 10 years and is now working as a community activist with no pay. She has letters of recommendations from two members of Congress. Can you help?
Oh Mom, I know how hard it is to see your little girl (and no matter how old, she’ll always be your little girl) struggling. And of course you want to do everything you can to help. But there’s a right way and a wrong way, despite our best intentions. Parents reaching out to their own network of contacts on behalf of their adult children is common and appropriate, but outreach beyond that should be left to the young ’uns. From now on, your daughter must be the one applying for jobs and making the pitch herself to anyone outside of your network. I know it’s hard — I still cut the edges off my teenage daughter’s toast. What you can also do is help guide her to career resources that help her evaluate her approach to finding a job, her skills, interviewing preparedness, etc. Former schools and organizations where she has some contacts can certainly help.
I’m in a career rut and feel that the New Year is a perfect time to do something completely different, but I don’t know where or how to begin. Any tips?
Helping you change your life requires just a little bit more info, because I’m not a magician. (Actually, I contemplated pursuing magic as a career when I was in middle school until an unfortunate mishap with a hat and a bunny. Just kidding… not about the magician part, but about the bunny.) Making a change may seem so daunting that many people never try. Instead of getting overwhelmed, break it down into small steps. Do you need to go back to school, make a lateral move or even a step back to get on a new track? What are the monetary considerations? Can you pursue your new career while employed in your current one? Which skills and experiences are transferable, and who in your network can help? Make a list and resolve to do one thing in pursuit of your new path each day. Before long, as if by magic, you’ll find yourself in a new place.
Gregory Giangrande is a chief human resources and communications officer in the media industry. E-mail your career questions to gotogreg@nypost.com. Follow Greg on Twitter: @greggiangrande. His Go to Greg podcast series is available on iTunes.
As the New Year beckons so do the resolutions for the coming year. Like most people, losing those holiday pounds is a priority. This poses a challenge for many, unless, of course, you employ technology to aid you in your weight loss goals. Here are some technologies that you can use to help you shed the pounds in 2019.
Apple Watch
The Apple Watch is the ideal technology tool to help you stay motivated as you look to lose weight in 2019. The watch incorporates activity rings that show when you Move, Exercise, and Stand. The Move feature is based on the number of calories you burn in relation to your heart rate while the Exercise feature measures the number of minutes that your heart rate is elevated. The Stand option indicates the number of times you have stood up and moved around within an hour.
The three Apple Watch features use ringtones to let you know when you have completed your goal for the day. You can make your Move goal customized while the Exercise option is a fixed 30-minutes over the course of a day. The Stand goal takes approximately 12 hours to accomplish.
The Apple Watch can help you stay on track and give you the extra motivation you need to move around and hit your goals during your weight loss journey.
Fitbit Alta HR
Another motivational tech tool that can get you moving in the New Year is the Fitbit Alta HR. This handy device features an altimeter that tracks your steps and stair climbs. It will let you know how many floors you have descended and keeps you accountable for getting in your steps each day.
There is also a sleep tracker feature which can be an important component to weight loss too. The sleep tracker provides data on the number of hours you sleep as well as how restful your sleep was. You can upload your sleep data as well as all your movement activity on the Fitbit.com site and see graphs and charts of your daily exercise.
The device also lets you compare data with others, making it possible to lose weight with a friend at the same time. This is a great option for people looking to use the buddy system to keep themselves accountable.
Nike Training Club
By downloading the Nike Training Club app, you can track your activity and use one of its 185 plus workouts to keep you moving. The app comes fully loaded with all the workouts you need to stay interested in losing weight and even includes visual guidance to help you perform exercises properly.
The app allows you to receive credit for any type of activity you do, including shooting hoops or walking, so you know when you are burning calories and getting fitter.
To reach your weight loss goal, the Nike Training Club app provides recommended workouts and gives expert tips to help keep you on track. This is almost like having a coach by your side as you work your way to a fitter you.
My Fitness Pal
If you want to reduce and monitor your calorie intake, you will do well with the My Fitness Pal app. This app can be downloaded to your phone and will help you track the number of calories you eat each day.
With thousands of foods to select from, you can get an accurate and detailed account of what you are putting in your mouth. This can help you identify healthy food options and keep you determined to lose those extra pounds.
Plus, the My Fitness Pal app has the ability to track your activity, so you can monitor all the contributing factors to your weight loss strategy. This is a well-rounded tech tool that you can use to manage your calories as well as your fitness goals.
Lost It! Health-O-Meter
The Lose It! Health-O-Meter is a Bluetooth scale that can wirelessly measure body fat. It is designed to be used with the Lose It! app so you can track your body measurements, daily calories intake, food values, and exercise.
Using the Lose It! app, you can set your weight loss goals and send weigh-in information directly from your scale to the app. The scale measures weight, body fat, hydration, and BMI. Plus, there are thousands of foods to choose and track in the app, including popular restaurant menu items that you might come across.
The scale is only compatible with Apple products, but the company promises an Android version is coming soon. It can track up to four user profiles, measuring up to 400 pounds as well.
DietBet
If losing weight feels like an uphill battle, you may need a little more encouragement and the DietBet website can help. This site lets you enter into competitions with others to lose weight and win money at the same time.
By betting how much weight you will lose by a specific timeframe, you can be eligible to win the jackpot of that betting group. If you fail to lose the weight, you lose your money which will go to the winning member that reaches the group goal first.
The DietBet site can certainly motivate you to keep focused on your weight loss, especially if you are a competitive person as no one likes to lose money.
These six tech tools can keep you on track as you look to lose weight and get healthy in 2019. Fitbit unveils Alta HR, the world's slimmest fitness wristband with continuous heart rate, as well as two new sleep tracking features 'Sleep Stages and Sleep Insights ' at an event hosted by actress and dancer Julianne Hough on March 1, 2017 at SWERVE Fitness in New York. Photo: Getty Images/Dave Kotinsky
Some exotic "super-Earths" several light years away from our solar system likely contain high quantities of calcium, aluminum and their oxides, including sapphire and ruby, according to a team of researchers.
In a report published in the British journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Caroline Dorn and her colleagues at the Universities of Zurich and Cambridge said that there are three candidates likely to belong to a new, exotic class of exoplanets.
One of them has been given the designation HD219134 b and orbits its star with a year that is just three days long in the constellation Cassiopeia. It is one of the possible "super-Earths," which are planets with a mass almost five times that of our planet. However, unlike Earth, the exoplanet is likely to be rich in calcium, aluminum and their oxides, which include sapphires and rubies.
Dorn, an astrophysicist at the Institute for Computational Science of the University of Zurich, said that HD219134 b may "shimmer red to blue" as rubies and sapphires are aluminum oxides common on the super-Earth planet.
This is unusual since, according to Dorn, the building blocks of planets such as Earth are formed in regions where rock-forming elements like magnesium, iron and silicon have condensed. The planets born out of these regions are usually like Earth, which has an iron core. Most known super-Earths have been formed in such regions, but it seems that these exoplanets' composition is more diverse than scientists initially thought. And it all depends on how close to the star a planet is formed.
With their models, Dorn and her team calculated that a planet formed in a hotter region would be rich in calcium, aluminum, magnesium and silicon, but would barely have any iron. It is because of this that these exotic planets cannot have a magnetic field like Earth, according to Science Daily. The researchers theorized that their cooling behavior and atmospheres would also be different from that of normal super-Earths due to their unique inner structure, making them a new, exotic class.
In their paper, the researchers said that the probability of these exotic objects existing is "high" and that their densities are 10 to 20 percent lower than that of Earth. They observed other exoplanets with low densities and thought of different scenarios that could explain this.
The researchers noticed that 55 Cancri e and WASP-47 e, two of the exoplanets they observed, orbit their star so closely that their surface temperature is almost 3000 degrees and they would have lost this gas envelope long ago.
In the HD219134 b's case, the temperature is less hot, but the situation is "more complicated." Dorn and her team initially thought that the deep oceans were the main cause of the lower density. However, the second planet orbiting its star a little further away makes this theory unlikely as an inner planet cannot contain more gas or water than the outer one. Scientists were also unable to determine if magma oceans can result in lower density.
"So, we have found three candidates that belong to a new class of super-Earths with this exotic composition," the astrophysicist summarized.
An exotic class of super-Earths may contain sapphires and rubies. Pictured: In this NASA digital illustration handout released on February 22, 2017, an artist's concept allows us to imagine what it would be like to stand on the surface of the exoplanet TRAPPIST-1f, located in the TRAPPIST-1 system in the constellation Aquarius. Because this planet is thought to be tidally locked to its star, meaning the same face of the planet is always pointed at the star, there would be a region called the terminator that perpetually divides day and night.Photo: Getty Images/NASA
