New research from the National Institute of Child Health finds that women's brains are hardwired to respond to a crying baby, while men's brains are not. To find this, scientists scanned the brains of 18 men and women who were told to let their minds wander. Researchers then played a recording of white noise interspersed with short clips of a baby crying. The scans showed that women became instantly more alert after hearing the baby crying while the brains of men remained in a resting state. The research found there was no difference in the brain patterns of parents and non-parents. Study co-autho Marc Bornstein said the research helps us understand instincts for caring for the very young. (Daily Mail)

New research finds that if your child drops their pacifier on the floor, you'll be doing them a bigger favor if you stick it in your own mouth before giving it back, rather than rinsing it in the sink. Researchers say they found a connection between parents licking kids' pacifiers and kids having lower risks of allergy-related conditions such as asthma. Researchers say this may happen because the action introduces harmless bacteria into the baby's body, which in turn will strengthen the baby's immune system. (Newser)

New research finds that if you want an e-mail you write responded to quickly, you should make it pessimistic. To find this, engineers from the software company Contactually studied 100-million e-mail conversations. They counted e-mails that contained words such as "care" and "amazing" as positive, and those that contained words such as "missed" and "stupid" as negative. Overall researchers found that negative emails were responded to more quickly than those that contained positive words, and that people who typically were negative in their conversations replied to 64-pecent of e-mails within a day, while their positive counterparts only replied to 47-percent of their e-mails within 24-hours. One researcher says this may happen because negative folks may be more active online in general. (Daily Mail)

Lawyers report that more and more couples are signing relationship contracts detailing how often they will have sex. These "lifestyle clauses" are utilized by married and unmarried couples and can include how often the couple is intimate, how they spend their leisure time, and how cheating is defined.