TAIPEI (Reuters Life!) – A plastic bottle thrown into a Taipei recycling bin could be reincarnated as a blanket to warm disaster victims in any of the 20 countries affected by calamity, thanks to a unique project by the world's largest Buddhist charity.

The Taiwan Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation will be taking plastic bottles from the waste stream of Taipei for three years to convert them into about 244,000 polyester blankets intended for disaster zones.

Tzu Chi recently expanded its one-of-a-kind recycling effort to begin making shirts, scarves and cloth shopping bags. Based on an idea developed by a Taiwan entrepreneur, Tzu Chi sends the plastic bottles to a factory that breaks them down into a polyester fabric, which is then sent to crew of volunteers who fashion it into blankets or garments.

Crabs 'prostitute' selves to survive

SYDNEY (AP) – In the world of fiddler crabs, the best form of protection is, apparently, prostitution, according to an Australian study.

Researchers from the Australian National University in Canberra found that male fiddler crabs will happily defend a female neighbor against intruders, partly because the females will dole out sex in return.

“The fact that the neighbor comes over and helps to defend another territorial individual is pretty unusual,'' said Michael Jennions, who helped conduct the study. The results were published in the journal Biology Letters.

Jennions and fellow ANU researchers Richard Milner and Patricia Backwell studied the behavior of fiddler crabs living in mud flats off the African country of Mozambique in October and November 2008.

Desert cracks to form oceans?

A 56-kilometer rift in the desert of Ethiopia will likely become a new ocean eventually, researchers now confirm. The crack, 20 feet wide in spots, opened in 2005. Geologists believed then that it would spawn a new ocean.

While the old view was controversial and not well developed, a new study involving an international team of scientists which was reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters found that the processes creating the rift were nearly identical to what goes on at the bottom of oceans, a further indication that a sea is in the region's future. The same rift activity is slowly parting the Red Sea, too.

Tango dancing a cure for waning love life

FRANKFURT (DPA) – Tango dancing could help patch up troubled relationships, according to the German Society for Sports Medicine and Prevention.

The group cited a study done at Frankfurt University in which levels of the stress hormone cortisol and the sex hormone testosterone were measured in the saliva of 22 couples both before and after doing the sensual dance.

The couples were also given questionnaires and asked to describe their feelings. The study found that tango dancing lowered levels of cortisol and raised those of testosterone. It pointed to three factors being responsible for the psychobiological effects – the music, movement with one's partner and physical contact – which it tested separately and in various combinations.

Texting fad reveals new 'metrosexuals'

LONDON (Reuters Life!) – Men have become so openly affectionate with each other using mobile technology that they've taken to signing off text messages to male friends with a kiss (x), giving rise to a new generation dubbed ''Metrotextuals.''

New research from mobile phone firm T-Mobile revealed that nearly a quarter of men (22 percent) regularly include a kiss on texts to their male mates, T-Mobile said in an emailed statement.

“Metrotextuality” is most widespread among 18-24 year-old males with three quarters (75 percent) regularly sealing texts with a kiss and 48 percent admitting that the practice has become commonplace among their group of friends. Nearly a quarter of this age group (23 percent) even appreciate an “x” in a text exchange from people that aren't close friends. But it's not just younger men that have become Metrotextuals – one in 10 men over 55 often completes a text to another male with a kiss, according to the poll.