Best of Web: Pippa Middleton goes global...

Pippa Middleton becomes the world's most eligible woman

(GETTY/GALLO)

BRITAIN: A life can change in a moment. And certainly something seismic happened to Pippa Middleton when she stepped out of the car at Westminster Abbey.

As far as the world is concerned, it was BC and AD. Before the Church, then After the Dress.

Yes, Kate’s glorious bridal gown rightly grabbed all the headlines. But smoking hot on her heels was lil’ sis, poured into a column of buttermilk satin, in a button-backed dress that was tighter than a coat of paint.

True, its unforgiving structure meant Pippa had to mince up and down the Abbey aisle like a geisha with corns, but it was worth it.

After all, her role as maid of honour was a secondary one. Hold the bouquet, keep smiling, don’t let the bride get spinach on her teeth.

Most importantly, she had to attend to a majestic bridal train that was almost nine feet long. A duty that required a lot of bending over.

So if you have to do this in front of a global audience of billions, you might as well bunny dip in an unforgettable frock that is going to maximise your best asset.

Mince, mince, mince, dip, dip, dip, she went; our glorious Pippa the Big Dipper. Not since the first Panzer tank turned and fled at the battle of El Alamein has a rear end made such an impression on the world.

The impact has been incredible. So much so it is no exaggeration to say everything has changed for Pippa.

In one shake of a tail feather, she has become a global celebrity, a household name and one of the most talked about people at the wedding of the century. More than that, she is now one of the most eligible women in the world.

From this moment on, Pippa can have her pick of the aristocracy, the landed gentry, the new rich, assorted gassy celebrities, the Chelsea back four.

Anyone really, up to and including Prince Harry, if his wolfish expression was anything to go by.

One could understand if her current beau, Alex Loudon, 30, starts to look worried. The lantern-jawed banker is the rich scion of a stately home, former cricket international and friend of Prince William’s since Eton. But will he be enough to keep Pippa?

For in the three days since the wedding, her stock has soared a million-fold. She’s in big, big demand.

American magazines will want to put her on their covers, fashion designers will want her to wear their creations and dukes will be queuing up to marry her.

Get your dabs on a phone for spies

(REUTERS)

UK: A mobile phone which works by James Bond-style fingerprint recognition goes on sale in the UK today.

The Motorola Atrix is the world's first to use the advanced technology, reports The Sun.

And manufacturers hope it will prevent the handset being stolen.

New owners set it up by pressing their index fingers from both hands into the phone's built-in scanner.

It is twice as fast as most other smartphones and it can be loaded up with a range of specialist apps.

They include a retinal scanner, Secure SpyCam or SpyBubble which tracks numbers called from any phone.

Left-handed people more fearful, study says

(AGENCY)

London: Left-handed people are more affected by fear than their right-handed counterparts, a study says.

Psychologists found that people who watched an eight minute clip from a scary movie suffered more symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress if they were left-handed.

When asked to recall events from the film clip, taken from near the tense climax of thriller 'Silence of the Lambs', left-handed volunteers gave more fragmented accounts filled with more repetition, the Telegraph reports.

This effect is common in people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

The scientists now believe their results could provide new insights into how people develop post traumatic stress and the way the brain deals with fear.

Carolyn Choudhary, who led the research at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh, said: "The prevalence of post traumatic stress disorder is almost double in left-handers compared to right-handers.

"We used a portion of film from 'Silence of the Lambs' that we know elicits fear, so we could check the recalled account against the film. People who were left-handed showed significantly more fragmentation in their memories and more repetition.

"It seems that after experiencing a fearful event, even on film, people who are left-handed had subtle behaviours that were like people suffering from post traumatic stress disorder."

"Silence of the Lambs", starring Anthony Hopkins as serial killer Hannibal Lector and Jodie Foster as a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent Clarice Starling, is widely regarded as one of the most tense thrillers ever made.

Too little sleep? You could age by seven years

(AGENCY)

London: Women and men who begin sleeping more or less than six to eight hours per night are likely to age by four to seven years.

Sleep deprivation and sleepiness have adverse effects on performance, response time, errors of commission and attention or concentration.

Furthermore, sleep duration has been found to be linked with a wide range of quality of life measures, such as social functioning, mental and physical health and early death, reports the journal Sleep.

"The main result to come out of our study was that adverse changes in sleep duration appear to be associated with poorer cognitive function in later-middle age," said Jane Ferrie, researcher at the University College London Medical School, who led the study.

The researchers also found that, in women, seven hours of sleep per night was associated with the highest score for every cognitive measure, followed closely by six hours of nightly sleep, according to a University College statement.

Among men, the cognitive function was similar for those who reported sleeping six, seven or eight hours; only short and long sleep durations of less than six hours or more than eight hours appeared to be associated with lower scores, according to a University College statement.

The study used data for 5,431 participants (1,459 women and 3,972 men) from Phase 5 (1997-1999) and Phase 7 (2003-2004) of the Whitehall II study, which included more than 10,000 London-based office staff aged 35-55 working in 20 civil service departments in 1985.

Although participants were mostly white-collar workers, the study group covered a wide socio-economic range with a 10-fold difference in salary across the occupational hierarchy.

The authors concluded that adequate, good quality sleep is fundamental to human functioning and well-being.

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