In the era of the informatics, computers will tell us who's beautiful and who is not. Biostatisticians at the University of Nebraska, at Lincoln, have developed a computer program that predicts how attractive a face will be considered. The research is published in "Pattern Recognition."

The software employs an array of measurements on the geometry and symmetry of the face, like the proportions between the eyes, nose, ears and lips, which so many studies connected to formulas of the beauty.

For developing the program, the researchers tested 18 men and 18 women aged 19 to 61. The subjects were presented images of 420 people randomly selected from the general population, 50% men and 50% women, and were put to mark the facial attractiveness on a scale of one to 10. All faces were Caucasian and were converted to the same grey scale, so that the skin color factor was eliminated. The subjects also watched images of 32 movie stars from the 1930s to our times, from Greta Garbo to Keanu Reaves.

Indeed, subjects confirmed preference for beautiful faces painted even by artists of the Renaissance, following "neo-classical canons." Amongst such rules are that stipulating the width of the face should be 4 times the width of the nose, or the height of the forehead, length of the nose and height of the lower face should be similar.

Only one of the 6 "neo-classical canons" did not match the subjects' preferences: the ratio between the mouth and width of the nose.

Overall, men and women regarded as beautiful the same faces, but men were less selective than women in assessing beauty. Female faces received higher scores from both sexes, fact pointing that feminine faces are overall perceived more attractive than masculine ones.

Attractive feminine faces had smaller chins, smaller noses and a larger inter-ocular distance. The data revealed that a smaller width of the mouth was perceived more attractive in women, challenging the "trout" lips preferred currently in the fashion world. Attractive male faces had equal vertical thirds and symmetry between the upper tips of the lips and the nose.