Friday, September 11, 2009 LONDON: Tall people lead happier lives than their more vertically challenged peers, according to a new study which found that most miserable men are almost an inch shorter than average.Researchers found that shorter people tended to be more dissatisfied with their lot in life. The study interviewed more than 450,000 adults about how they viewed their life. The volunteers were asked to place themselves somewhere on a “life ladder” and asked about their emotions. According to the findings, people who were taller were also more likely to be positive about their life and were more likely to judge themselves a happy. They were also less likely to feel a range of negative emotions, including sadness and physical pain, although they were more likely to experience stress and anger, and if they were women, to worry. Men who reported that their lives were the "worst possible" were in general more than eight tenths of an inch, or two centimetres, shorter than the average height. Women who viewed themselves as "on the bottom step" on the life ladder were shorter than the average woman by half an inch, or 1.3 centimetres. There was also a link between height and education, the findings, published in the journal Economics and Human Biology, found. Men who did not finish secondary school were found to be half an inch, or 1.27 centimetres, shorter than average and more than an inch, or 2.54 centimetres, shorter than the average height of those who had gone on to graduate from university. However, there was no such clear link when it came to women, with just small differences in height. The authors of the report, from Princeton University in New Jersey, conclude that the link between education, income and height mostly explained the link with happiness and life satisfaction. The data was taken from the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index daily poll of the American population. The survey interviewed adults aged 18 or between January 2008 and April 2009.
Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in
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