Washington, September 16 : Republican U. S vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin had got a tanning bed installed at her gubernatorial residence in Juneau, Alaska, shortly after she declared May 2007 ‘Skin Cancer Awareness Month’.

The press materials at the time had proclaimed over-exposure to ultraviolet radiation from the sun and tanning beds overwhelming causes of skin cancer.

Washington, Sept. 16 : The financial crisis on Wall Street could derail Republican John McCain''s quest for the White House, even though he has recently called for regulatory reform.

“The fundamentals of our economy are strong, but these are very, very difficult times,” he told supporters in Florida, but added that he would take every step necessary to get Wall Street up and running again.

His Democratic opponent Barack Obama pounced on the suggestion that the American economy is strong and resilient.

Washington, Sept. 16: Polling in the five key battleground states shows John McCain and Barack Obama neck-and-neck with seven weeks left until Election Day.

According to a Rasmussen Poll, McCain holds a slight advantage over Obama in Colorado, Florida, and Ohio, while the candidates are tied in Pennsylvania and Virginia. In Florida, the gap between McCain and Obama exceeds three percentage points in polls with a four-and-a-half percentage point margin of sampling error.

The overriding message from these results is that the race remains very close.

Washington, September 16: NASA is aiming to power its planned base at the Moon with a nuclear reactor that will be part of a technology development program known as the fission Surface Power Project.

According to a report in Discovery News, the goal of the Fission Surface Power Project, which is based at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, is to produce a non-nuclear prototype unit within five years.

Washington, Sept 16: Usually an unfriendly and antisocial individual is described as a “cold” or “frosty” person in daily language of metaphors, however, a new study has shown that social isolation can actually generate a physical feeling of coldness.

Psychologists Chen-Bo Zhong and Geoffrey Leonardelli from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management wanted to test the idea that social isolation might generate a physical feeling of coldness.

For the study, the research team divided the volunteers into two groups. One group recalled a personal experience in which they had been socially excluded—rejection from a club, for example. This was meant to tap into their feelings of isolation and loneliness.

Washington, Sept 16 : A new study from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has revealed that even a brief interruption while making purchases can significantly effect purchasing decisions.

Lead researcher Wendy Liu of UCLA, conducted four different studies and examined the effects of interruption on purchase decisions and the preferences of decision-makers.

She found that even brief interruptions caused startling changes.

"This body of work forwards the view that people''s decisions are often a result of cognitions and information processing made on the spot, rather than simply reflecting their innate likes and dislikes,” said Liu.