Seven Days

Topics:
News
More Topics

Sat, Oct 6, 2012, 01:00

First published: Sat, Oct 6, 2012, 01:00

We now know

Once again, no Irish universities made the top 100 of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings ranking.

Vitamin D does nothing to prevent the common cold, according to research from New Zealand scientists.

Rory McIlroy doesn’t need to warm up, as he showed when turning up just 10 minutes before his Ryder Cup singles match last Sunday. He won, helping Europe to an unlikely comeback victory.

Next week you'll need to know about . . . the Nobel Prizes

This year’s Nobel winners will be revealed from Monday, with medicine first, followed during the week by physics, chemistry, literature and peace. The prize for economics – actually the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel – will be revealed on October 15th. Nobel was a Swedish industrialist and inventor most notable in his lifetime for inventing dynamite rather than for rewarding excellence in literature and the sciences, nevermind peacemaking. Today, each prize is about €1 million, along with the prestige of being a Nobel laureate.

Betting sites say the Chinese author Mo Yan and Japan’s Haruki Murakami are vying for the literature prize, although there’s a sentimental opinion that Chinua Achebe of Nigeria might finally get the nod. On the peace front, it’s usually anyone’s guess, but the US professor Gene Sharp, a theorist of nonviolent struggle, is tipped. Another rumoured nominee is the former German chancellor Helmut Kohl, whose health is ailing.

The prizes are awarded in Stockholm in December, except for the peace prize, which Nobel stipulated would be awarded by a committee chosen by Norway’s parliament. As a result, Oslo City Hall hosts that shindig. Davin O’Dwyer

The bald truth about hair loss

The multibillion-euro hair-loss industry is based on the premise that baldness is unattractive, and new research from the University of Pennsylvania in the US corroborates the that assumption a full head of hair is considered more attractive than a hairless pate. However, the experiments showed shaven-headed men are thought to be about 13 per cent stronger than their hirsute brethren, for some reason, as well as being more masculine and dominant. And despite the lack of a mop up top, bald men are also likely to be seen as an inch taller, on average.

The numbers

The percentage of the Great Barrier Reef that has died in the past 27 years

€764,000

The total of parliamentary allowances paid out in August, despite there being no Oireachtas sittings

Estimated number of years it could take the property market to fully recover, according to a Central Bank study

€26.1bn

The State’s total tax take so far this year, an increase of €2.02 billion, or 8.4 per cent, on the same period in 2011

85m

The number of Chinese people attempting to drive home during the Golden Week holiday, causing record traffic congestion.

Most read on irishtimes.com

1Facebook denies timeline rumours

2Inside the grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre, unprecedented events of 1982