Incredibly Amazing Portraits Made With Lipstick Kisses

Using only her lips and a lipstick, Natalie Irish creates mind-blowing masterpieces. The Houston-based artist simply puckers her lips and kisses the paper canvas thousands of times, until she gets the desired result.

New Study Reveals We Are Happiest At Age 33

Forget the old adage that your schooldays are the happiest of your life - a study has found that 33 is the age at which people are most content. Seven out of 10 people over the age of 40 picked the year they turned 33 as their happiest in a survey by website Friends Reunited.

More than half of those surveyed - 53 per cent - said life was more fun and 42 per cent said they felt more optimistic about the future.

One in three said their happiness stemmed from having children while one in five said happiness came from success at work.

Having a Facebook 'friend' request turned down - or even just ignored, hurts just as much as real-life rejection, claim psychologists

Being ignored or snubbed online leads people to feel 'numb', 'distanced' and 'withdrawn', researchers found. The finding suggests that for many of us, the internet is as 'real' a place as the real world.

'Most people would probably expect that being ignored or rejected via a remote source like the Internet would not hurt as much as being rejected in person. Yet, our studies show that people may experience similar psychological reactions to online exclusion as they do with face-to-face exclusion. ‘ said Joshua Smyth, professor of biobehavioral health and of medicine at Penn State.

However, the researchers caution that these findings may be related to the types of individuals who participated in their study.

‘These studies were conducted with college-aged students who have grown up with the Internet and other related technology, ‘ Filipkowski said. ‘These findings may not apply to individuals who have much less experience with technology and remote communication.'

Chemical in fake tan and make-up is linked to obesity and diabetes

Chemicals called phthalates in plastics, cosmetics and toys are the latest reasons why one may have higher chances of developing diabetes, a study reveals. A study in Sweden has found that people with 'modest' levels of the chemicals in their blood are twice as likely to develop diabetes.

Phthalates are used as a softening agent in plastics but they can be used in cosmetics such as self-tan and perfumes.

The researchers analysed data from 1,000 people aged over 70, of which 114 developed diabetes. After taking into account factors known to cause type 2 diabetes, including obesity and high cholesterol, they found people with higher levels of phthalates were more likely to develop diabetes, the journal Diabetes Care reported.

Monica Lind, associate professor of environmental medicine at the Uppsala University, Sweden, said: "Although our results need to be confirmed in more studies, they do support the hypothesis that certain environmental chemicals can contribute to the development of diabetes," according to a university statement.

Sexually Rejected Alcohol-Drinking Flies

A new study at the University of California, San Francisco found that male fruit flies that had been rejected drank, on average, four times more than those that had successfully mated. In the experiment, 24 male fruit flies were put in one of two situations — either in a vial with female fruit flies ready to mate or in one with female fruit flies who already had. Then, after four days, they were given the opportunity to choose between plain food and food that had been spiked with alcohol.

Though researchers expected all of the flies to prefer alcohol-laced food, they found that the males who had successfully mated passed on the boozy food. The rejected males, however, displayed a clear preference for it. On average, the rejected male flies "drank" four times more alcohol than those that had mated.

Why you shouldn't even bother trying to remember last night!

Why you shouldn't even bother trying to remember last night: Drunken blackouts are caused by alcohol switching off brain’s memory function, study shows

It’s often said that alcohol killing off brain cells is behind the blackouts, but according to a study what’s actually happening is that booze is preventing new memories being recorded in the first place.

Yukitoshi Izumi, research professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, said: ‘We’ve found that exposure to alcohol inhibits some receptors and later activates others, causing neurons to manufacture steroids that inhibit memory formation.’

The brain cells affected by alcohol are found in the hippocampus and other brain structures involved in advanced cognitive functions. When the hippocampal cells are treated with moderate amounts of alcohol, the key areas for memory formation are unaffected, but exposing the cells to large amounts of alcohol inhibits the memory formation mechanism.

‘Some people may be more vulnerable to alcohol’s effects than others. In other words, just because your friend may be able to drink a certain number of drinks and appear to be functioning fine, it does not mean that you or everyone else can.’ said lead author Reagan R. Wetherill.

‘Blackouts’, where very heavy drinkers wake up and are unable to remember anything that happened, are quite rare, says Weatherill – but their cousin, the ‘brown out’, where details vanish, is much more common.

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You Won't Believe These Images Are Hand-Drawn!

Despite looking like they have been captured on a camera, these are actually hand-drawn images created by hyperrealist artist Paul Cadden. The 47-year-old, from Scotland, is able to recreate photos in amazing detail, often just using only a pencil.

Hyperrealism was born from the idea of photorealism, which are paintings based on photographs but created in a non-photographic medium. Taking an average of between three and six weeks to produce, Cadden creates about seven pieces each year - which usually come in A1 or A0 sizes - and sell at galleries for up to £5,000 ($7,855) each.