Gloria's Oversexed Mind

Fireflies demonstrate how to light up sex lives

....Every firefly species that flashes produces a unique pattern while courting. Males of some taciturn species flash just once; other kinds of males blink twice or several times. Males fly around advertising their identity to females in the grass below. A female recognizes her species' code and flashes back if she wants to mate. Still, even within a species, not all male flashes are exactly alike, and biologists are eager to learn more about what attracts a female to one flash more than another.

"For a group that is so well known by nonscientists and appreciated by people sitting outside on a warm summer evening, there's still so much that we don't know about fireflies," says Marc Branham, an entomologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville. He and Michael Greenfield, of the University of Kansas at Lawrence, deciphered the code of fireflies called Photinus consimilis, which range from the Ozarks to northern Florida. They emit several flashes in succession. Rapid flashers attract the most female attention, the researchers found. When a female likes a male's flash, she responds with more flashes, and her flashes are brighter.

Other males advertise their intentions succinctly. Male Photinus ignitus fireflies, for example, employ just a single flash.

Five years ago, Lewis and then-student Christopher Cratsley discovered that variations in the single flashes of Photinus ignitus do say something about a male's suitability. Males with longer flashes -- which females prefer -- were more generous with what biologists call their "nuptial gift," a coiled package of sperm and protein. During copulation, the male deposits the gift in the female's reproductive tract, where it provides nourishment for the female and her developing eggs.

By controlling fireflies' access to one another in the lab, Lewis demonstrated that a female who receives more nuptial gifts produces more offspring.....

June 2, 2005 in Pets and Animal Love, Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Watching New Love as It Sears the Brain

New love can look for all the world like mental illness, a blend of mania, dementia and obsession that cuts people off from friends and family and prompts out-of-character behavior - compulsive phone calling, serenades, yelling from rooftops - that could almost be mistaken for psychosis.

A new study suggests that an area of the brain known as the caudate is associated with passion.Now for the first time, neuroscientists have produced brain scan images of this fevered activity, before it settles into the wine and roses phase of romance or the joint holiday card routines of long-term commitment.

In an analysis of the images appearing today in The Journal of Neurophysiology, researchers in New York and New Jersey argue that romantic love is a biological urge distinct from sexual arousal.

It is closer in its neural profile to drives like hunger, thirst or drug craving, the researchers assert, than to emotional states like excitement or affection. As a relationship deepens, the brain scans suggest, the neural activity associated with romantic love alters slightly, and in some cases primes areas deep in the primitive brain that are involved in long-term attachment.

The research helps explain why love produces such disparate emotions, from euphoria to anger to anxiety, and why it seems to become even more intense when it is withdrawn. In a separate, continuing experiment, the researchers are analyzing brain images from people who have been rejected by their lovers....

(Thanks to Alain for sending this!)

May 31, 2005 in Science, Sex and Relationships | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Human Affection Altered Evolution of Flowers

Flowers make people happy. And while that might seem obvious, there hasn't been much research to prove the point until now.

A trio of new studies by Rutgers University scientists supports the notion pretty strongly, and the experts go on to speculate that flowers have flourished on this planet, with their beauty evolving in recent millennia, partly because humans are so attached to them.

The first study involved 147 women. All those who got flowers smiled. Make a note: all of them. That's the kind of statistical significance scientists love. Among the women who got candles, 23 percent didn't smile. And 10 percent of those who got fruit didn't smile.

Okay, that's just one study. Let's try another.

In an elevator, 122 men and women were given either a flower, a pen, or nothing. Those who got flowers smiled more, talked more, and -- here it gets interesting -- stood closer together.

Finally, in another test, bouquets were delivered by florists to 113 men and women in a retirement community. All 113 got flowers and a notebook, but some got them earlier and received a second bouquet when the others got theirs. By now you can guess the outcome. The more flowers, the more smiles.

....the results got the scientists to thinking about how the flower industry of today has evolved into growing things that serve no other purpose than emotional satisfaction. Nature won't even pollinate many of the domesticated flowers. Just among roses, there are so many types conjured by humans that, clearly, flowers aren't what they used to be. But it's likely our collective hand has played a role longer than you might think.

Rutgers geneticist Terry McGuire suggests that nature's prettier flowers got to survive and thrive because people didn't destroy them when they cleared land for agriculture. Instead, they cultivated them and have been doing so for more than 5,000 years.

"Our hypothesis is that flowers are exploiting an emotional niche. They make us happy," McGuire says. "Because they are a source of pleasure - a positive emotion inducer - we take care of them. In that sense they're like dogs. They are the pets of the plant world...."

May 27, 2005 in Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

French scientists shed light on mystery rubber disease

French experts said they had found the key to a disease that widely affects commercial rubber trees and hits producers deeply in the pocket.

Rubber tree bark necrosis, which first came light in Cote d'Ivoire in 1983, causes the latex sap, tapped by a cut made on the tree's trunk, to dry up.

For years, scientists have wondered if the disease was caused by a germ or a virus, perhaps transmitted by an insect or even the blade used by plantation workers to make the tapping cut.

But a multi-discipline team from France's Institute for Development Research (IRD) and other agencies has found after exhaustive detective work that there is a far simpler but quite unexpected cause: the bulldozer.

The scientists noticed that trees with bark necrosis often had poorly developed root systems and were invariably located near plantation paths used by bulldozers, IRD said in a press release.

They discovered that the bulldozer tracks compacted the earth, often preventing water, which also carries vital salts, from seeping through the soil to reach the roots.....

March 25, 2005 in Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Another angle on the story, delving into the data this study revealed about variability in women's genetic make-up. This should be of particular interest to people who love unusual or unique women.

Women Are Very Much Not Alike, Gene Study Finds

Scientists have found genetic evidence for what some men have long suspected: It is dangerous to make assumptions about women.

The key is the X chromosome, the feminine sex chromosome that all men and women have in common.

In a study published today in the journal Nature, scientists said they had found an unexpectedly large genetic variation on the X chromosome among women. The findings were published in conjunction with the first comprehensive decoding of the chromosome, which appeared in the same journal.

Females can differ from each other almost as much as they do from males in the behavior of many genes at the heart of sexual identity, researchers said....

March 20, 2005 in Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Fantastic findings, with incredible implications for medical science and fascinating revelations about the differences between men and women.

For one, women are more complex--but we women already knew that, right?

X Chromosome Shows Why Women Differ from Men

Scientists have cracked the genetic code of the female X chromosome which is linked to more than 300 human diseases and may help to explain why women are so different from men.

It contains 1,100 genes, or about five percent of the human genome, along with information that may help to improve the diagnosis of illnesses ranging from hemophilia, blindness and autism to obesity and leukemia.

The discovery, by an international consortium of scientists, shows that females are far more variable than previously thought and, when it comes to genes, more complex than men.

"The X chromosome is definitely the most extraordinary in the human genome in terms of its inheritance pattern, its unique biology ... and in terms of its association with human disease," said Dr Mark Ross, of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Britain which led the consortium....

March 20, 2005 in Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Laughter's Link to Health May Be in the Blood

According to the Bible, "a merry heart doeth good like a medicine." Now, modern science may be validating that Old Testament proverb -- a good laugh may actually help fend off heart attacks and strokes.

"We believe laughing is good for your health," said Michael Miller of the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, who led the research. "And we think we have evidence to show why that's the case...."

Previous research has indicated that stress hormones may be the primary culprit by which negative emotions harm health. When a person is under stress, the body pumps out hormones such as adrenalin and cortisol. That is designed to prime the body for a fight or a flight, but the hormones can have detrimental effects on the body, including suppressing the immune system and constricting blood vessels.

Miller and his colleagues hypothesize that laughter may have a contrasting effect, causing the body to release other natural chemicals known as endorphins -- pleasure-producing agents best known for producing the "runner's high" -- that may counteract the effects of stress hormones and cause blood vessels to dilate....

Laughter may also use similar mechanisms to help boost the immune system and reduce the amount of inflammation in the body, which has been linked to an increased risk of a host of health problems, said Lee Berk, an associate professor of health promotion and education who studies laughter at Loma Linda University in California.

"Laughter is not dissimilar from exercise," Berk said. "It's not going to cure someone from stage three cancer, but in terms of prevention it does make sense. In a sense, we have our own apothecary on our shoulders. Positive emotions such as laughter affect your biology....."

March 14, 2005 in Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

So so sad, on so many levels.

Father of gene therapy faces sex charges

Dr. William French Anderson, 68, known as the "Father of gene therapy" was arrested Feb. 16 for the second time in less than a year on child sex abuse charges.

Anderson was charged with custodial abuse, second-degree sex offense, third-degree sex offense and unnatural and perverted sex practices from allegations dating back to Bethesda in the early 1980s....

Anderson is a world famous scientist in gene therapy. Gene therapy is a way to treat genetic diseases and other diseases like cancer and cardiovascular disease through gene delivery systems that inject gene transfers to treat such illnesses. Anderson was recently working with nanotechnology to construct a nanochip that could fabricate a cDNA library from a single cell.

Anderson was the Director of Gene Therapy laboratories at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine before being placed on administrative leave after the charges.....

February 26, 2005 in Science, Sex Laws and Crimes | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Doctors remove baby's second head

Egyptian doctors say they have removed a second head from a 10-month-old girl suffering from a rare birth defect.

Abla el-Alfy, a consultant in paediatric intensive care, told Reuters on Saturday at the hospital in Benha, near Cairo, that Manar Maged was in a serious but improving condition after the procedure to treat her for craniopagus parasiticus -- a problem related to that of conjoined twins linked at the skull.

"We are still working on the baby. After surgery ... you get unstable blood pressure, you get fever. But she is stabilising," Alfy said. "We have some improvement."

As in the case of a girl who died after similar surgery in the Dominican Republic a year ago, the second twin had developed no body. The head that was removed from Manar had been capable of smiling and blinking but not independent life, doctors said.

Video footage provided by the hospital, a national centre in Egypt for children's medicine, showed Manar smiling and at ease in a cot with the dark-haired "parasitic" twin, attached at the upper left side of the girl's skull, occasionally blinking....

February 19, 2005 in Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A dark sadomasochistic scenario.....they synthesize the smell of the female sex and then lure males to their death with it!

(Actually not at all a new idea in insect control but I guess new for cockroach extermination.)

Cockroach Sex Scent May Help to Locate, Kill Them, Study Says

The discovery of the chemical scent that female German cockroaches use to attract males may lead to better methods of detecting and killing the pests, according to a new study reported in the journal Science....

Researchers found that the female German cockroach emits an airborne, perfume-like chemical, or pheromone, when she is ready to mate, co-author Wendell Roelofs said in an interview. She then waits for males to come to her.

The researchers have submitted a patent application for a synthetic version of the sex chemical, said Schal, a professor of entomology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh....

February 19, 2005 in Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Non-sex genes 'link to gay trait'

A University of Illinois team, which has screened the entire human genome, say there is no one 'gay' gene.

Writing in the journal Human Genetics, they said environmental factors are also likely to be involved....

Much of the past genetic research into male homosexuality had focused solely on the X chromosome, passed down to boys by their mother, according to lead researcher Dr Brian Mustanski.

His team looked at all 22 pairs of non-sex chromosomes of 456 individuals from 146 families with two or more gay brothers.....

February 5, 2005 in Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Strictly for science lovers, a glimpse at new research into the evolution of reproduction.

Giardia Bares All: Parasite genes reveal long sexual history

While it hasn't yet been caught in the act, a single-celled parasite has been ready for sex for billions of years. A new research finding provides evidence that sexual reproduction started as soon as life forms that have nuclei and organelles within their cells branched off from their structurally simpler ancestors.

The parasite Giardia intestinalis is well known for causing a diarrheal disease that animals and people contract after drinking contaminated water. Many researchers consider this species to be one of the most ancient living members of the eukaryote, or true nucleus, lineage. However, unlike most eukaryotes, G. intestinalis and its relatives have been long considered to reproduce only asexually—by division into two identical cells....

February 3, 2005 in Science, Sexual Health | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

You learn something new everyday. For example--did you know that there is a museum in Iceland devoted to the penis--of animals, that is? Images snagged from EveAndersson.com

Below, Phallological Museum, sperm whale specimen

Below, a view of various specimens:

February 2, 2005 in Science | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Drug approvals have always been somewhat political, and very much influenced by whether pharmaceutical companies could schmooze all the right people to accelerate the approval of a new drug.

Long ago and far away, I worked as a financial analyst on Wall Street. Though I followed the Chemicals Industry, a couple of the companies had big pharmaceutical divisions. The topic of approvals and the FDA's occasionally whimsical and always phenomenally bureaucratic approach to new drugs was often
lamented loudly at industry meetings. The sheer volume of paperwork was daunting; the amount of time you had to wait for something to be approved was insane.

It was no secret that drug companies spent a chunk of their R&D on wooing doctors, politicians, analysts, and anyone else who could potentially smooth the way for approval and then ensure it got to the people it was developed for (i.e., you the patient). They spend big on conferences and junkets for medical professionals, sponsor studies and press conferences, and once the drug is out, pass around all kinds of knick-knacks and freebies (you've probably all seen the pen-holder, desk clocks, and other tchotchkas at your doctor's office advertising this depressant or that anti-cholesterol drug: the drug reps hand those out like jelly beans. What you don't see are the more expensive gifts they send directly to the doctors or the invitations to plush, all-expenses paid conferences).

All of these have long been a cost of doing business for drug companies, and usually figure into their overall budget, along with the actual research and development conducted by both their in-house scientists and the scientists they sponsor to do "independent" research.

When you pay $2-$5 per pill of your prescription medication, most of that staggering price doesn't pay for the drug itself but for the costs of bringing that drug to market--from the original research, to tooling their machines to produce the pill, to the immense costs of advertising, promoting, and schmoozing. And that includes the Prozac pencil-holder on your doctor's desk.

But this is so far beyond the pale that it's scary.

The National Institutes of Health: Public Servant or Private Marketer?

...At least 530 government scientists at the NIH, the nation's preeminent agency for medical research, have taken fees, stock or stock options from biomedical companies in the last five years, records show.

NIH Director Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni has told Congress that outside work should be allowed if "the scientist is giving advice in an area … that is not part of his official duties."

Information gathered by a congressional committee, in addition to company records and 15,000 pages of government documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times under the Freedom of Information Act, shows that NIH researchers have repeatedly crossed Zerhouni's line.

For example:

• Dr. P. Trey Sunderland III, a senior psychiatric researcher, took $508,050 in fees and related income from Pfizer Inc. at the same time that he collaborated with Pfizer — in his government capacity — in studying patients with Alzheimer's disease. Without declaring his affiliation with the company, Sunderland endorsed the use of an Alzheimer's drug marketed by Pfizer during a nationally televised presentation at the NIH in 2003....

December 22, 2004 in Science | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Not to worry--this isn't about a new breed of terrorists. It's about an archeological find that suggests that women in classical Iran (before the Christian era began) went to battle. Interesting to all who are fascinated by female power and its expression in ancient cultures....and particularly to those of us who believe so-called female "passivity" is more about cultural conditioning than biological drive.

Iranian Women Warrior in Ancient Iran Confirmed

These days Iranian women are not even allowed to watch men compete on the football field, but 2,000 years ago they could have been carving the boys to pieces on the battlefield.

DNA tests on the 2,000-year-old bones of a sword-wielding Iranian warrior have revealed the broad-framed skeleton belonged to woman, an archaeologist working in the northwestern city of Tabriz said on Saturday....

the tomb, which had all the trappings of a warrior's final resting place, was one of 109 and that DNA tests were being carried out on the other skeletons.

December 6, 2004 in Science | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Very interesting read.

New Method Helps Map Women's Happiness

Having sex is the high point of most women's' days, while commuting is the low point. And most women like being with their kids less than they will admit, according to a study published on Thursday.

While the results may not appear startling, the method used to assess mood represents a new and more accurate way of figuring out how happy people are, the researchers report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

They propose that their tool could be used to plan social policy.

"Current measures of well-being and quality of life need to be significantly improved," said Richard Suzman of the National Institute on Aging, which helped fund the study....

For the study, David Schkade of the University of California San Diego and colleagues at Princeton University, University of Michigan and elsewhere studied more than 900 women....

The new method, called the Day Reconstruction Method, involves breaking the day into a sequence of episodes....

December 4, 2004 in Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wow! Big news, fresh from Le Monde.

The original is in French.

Here's my translation:

Hemiplegic woman receives stem cells and regains movement

A 54 year old Brazilian woman, left paralyzed on one side and unable to speak by a cerebral hemorrhage, has benefited from the graft of stem cells in her brain and has begun to walk and speak again....

November 19, 2004 in Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

From Medical News Today, a new study on the children of same-sex couples.

Psychological & social adjustment in teens with same-sex parents

Current debates about marriage of same-sex couples often lead to discussions regarding the health and well-being of any children involved in such relationships. Although considerable research on young children of same-sex couples finds they fare as well as their peers with opposite-sex parents, there have been fewer studies of adolescents.

We examined romantic relationships, school adjustment, and psychological well-being among 44 adolescents whose mothers had same-sex romantic partners, comparing them to 44 adolescents whose mothers had opposite-sex partners.

Our study also examined the association between the quality of parental/adolescent relationships and school achievement and psychological well-being.

We drew information for our study from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, in which researchers conducted interviews with and collected information from thousands of American adolescents and their parents. The two groups we studied had several similar characteristics, including age, gender, ethnicity, level of parental education, and family income. There was an equal number of girls and boys, and an overall average age of 15.

We found that adolescents whose parents had same-sex romantic partners were developing in positive ways. We found no significant differences in their school achievement or psychological well-being when compared to their peers with male/female parents....

November 16, 2004 in Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Vitamin E May Do More Harm Than Good, Study Finds

....people taking high doses of vitamin E may in some cases be more likely to die earlier, although the reasons are not clear, said Dr. Edgar Miller of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who led the study.

"I think people take vitamin E because they think it is going to make you live longer, but this (study) doesn't support that," Miller told reporters.

Miller and colleagues re-analyzed 19 studies of vitamin E and health between 1993 and 2004. The trials involved more than 136,000 mostly elderly patients in North America, Europe and China.

People who took 200 international units of vitamin E a day or more died at a higher rate during the study, which lasted three years, than people who did not take supplements, they told a meeting of the American Heart Association....

November 12, 2004 in Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wow, how cool and strange!

Scientists Find Prehistoric Dwarf Skeleton

In a breathtaking discovery, scientists working on a remote Indonesian island say they have uncovered the bones of a human dwarf species marooned for eons while modern man rapidly colonized the rest of the planet.

One tiny specimen, an adult female measuring about 3 feet tall, is described as "the most extreme" figure to be included in the extended human family. Certainly, she is the shortest.

This hobbit-sized creature appears to have lived as recently as 18,000 years ago on the island of Flores, a kind of tropical Lost World populated by giant lizards and miniature elephants....

October 28, 2004 in Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Platypus sex is XXXXX-rated?

The weird and wonderful duck-billed platypus just got even more weird and more wonderful.

Platypuses are famous for laying eggs yet producing milk, having a bird-like bill and a skeleton with reptilian features. Now it turns out that the mammal has an equally eye-catching way of deciding its sex, according to a study by Frank Gr? and Jenny Graves at the Australian National University in Canberra, and colleagues.

In most mammals, including humans, sex is decided by the X and Y chromosomes: two Xs create a female, while XY creates a male. In birds, the system is similar: ZW makes for a female, while ZZ makes for a male.

But in platypuses, XXXXXXXXXX creates a female, while XYXYXYXYXY creates a male. In other words, rather than a single chromosome pair, platypuses have ten-chromosome chains that determine their sex.....

October 27, 2004 in Pets and Animal Love, Science, Sexual Health | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

How strange!

Index Fingers Point the Way for Male Scientists

Male scientists are good at research because they have higher-than-average levels of the female hormone oestrogen which aids analytical skills, a study on Bath University academics today revealed.

The survey found that male scientists tended to have longer index fingers than other men, indicating high levels of oestrogen present in their bodies.

Men studied had levels of oestrogen as high as their testosterone levels, which caused the right side of their brains responsible for spatial and analytical skills, to develop more strongly.

Because of the high levels of oestrogen, male scientists, were less likely to have children and were more likely to have relatives with dyslexia which may be in part caused by hormonal levels.

Findings also revealed that female social scientists tended to have higher than average levels of testosterone, making their brains similar to those of males.....

A person whose index finger is shorter than their ring finger will have received more testosterone while in the womb than a person with a longer index finger who will have had more oestrogen....

October 21, 2004 in Science, Sexual Health | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thanks to Emi @ Intersex Initiative for commenting that the study results I posted the other day have since been discredited by the Intersex Initiative. And, while the article I cited showed a date of September 27, 2004 at the top, it appears they were reporting on an OLD study! Eek. I hate getting it so wrong... :-(

I will correct the old post. Meanwhile, here are snips from the article Emi is referring to:

Reuters Report About the UCLA "Brain Sex" Study Baseless

In the article titled "Sexual Identity Hard-Wired by Genetics," Reuters reported on October 20 that one's sexual or gender identity is "wired into the genes," citing the new research by UCLA geneticist Eric Vilain and colleagues. According to Vilain, the findings would suggest that "sexual identity is rooted in every person's biology before birth" and that this knowledge may be used to ensure that intersex babies are assigned the correct gender. "If physicians could predict the gender of newborns with ambiguous genitalia at birth, we would make less mistakes in gender assignment," Vilain said. However, none of this is actually established or discussed in the actual research paper this news report is based on.

The actual research published in Molecular Brain Research (Vol. 118, pgs. 82-90) is titled "Sexually dimorphic gene expression in mouse brain precedes gonadal differentiation," and this title summarizes the entire paper accurately: this study shows that female and male mice develop different brain structure even before their gonads are formed. The significance of this study is that sex differences in the brain have been traditionally said to be caused by the different levels of hormones produced by the gonads--testes for males, ovaries for females....

September 28, 2004 in Science, Sex and Sadomasochism, Sexual Health | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

This curriculum outline from the University of Plymouth (UK) offers an easy-to-follow annotated and illustrated analysis of gender differences and genetic disorders, including congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Highly recommended for students of sexuality, intersexed individuals, helping professionals, and others who are interested in the science of sex.

Biological perspectives on gender differences

September 28, 2004 in Science, Sex and Sadomasochism, Sexual Health | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

IMPORTANT UPDATE:

Despite the September 2004 date for this story on the source below, this is an old story which has since been discredited by the Intersex Initiative. I am leaving the following here but please follow up your reading by checking out: Intersex Initiative: UCLA study was hooey.

Study suggests gender

UCLA research shows 54 genes influence sexual identity; challenges idea of homosexuality as lifestyle choice

Questioning 30 years of research that attributes the differentiation between male and female brains to the influence of sex hormones, a study by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles claims to have identified 54 genes that may trigger the differences between male and female brain development long before birth.

The authors of the study claim that their findings may offer physicians a tool for gender assignment for babies born with ambiguous genitalia and may lend support to theories of biological determination of gay and lesbian identity.

The findings are included in the October issues of Molecular Brain Research, a scholarly journal....

"It's quite possible that sexual identity and physical attraction is 'hard-wired' by the brain," Vilain said.

Determining that sexual orientation is biologically controlled should lead to political and social changes, he said....

September 28, 2004 in Science, Sex and Sadomasochism, Sexual Health | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

An excellent summary of the issues specific to female depression, with self-diagnostic tools, from the Mayo Clinic.

Women and depression: Understanding the gender gap

The female body itself may influence the development of depression. That's because hormones may alter mood through various stages of life. In fact, before girls and boys reach puberty, they share similar rates of depression. It's only after puberty that the gender disparity in depression-related disorders truly becomes pronounced. By age 15, for example, girls are almost twice as likely as boys to have developed depression.

Because this gender gap coincides with puberty and disappears after menopause, some researchers believe that hormonal factors can increase a woman's risk of developing depression. On the other hand, puberty is also often associated with other changes that could play a role in depression, such as emerging sexuality and identity issues, parental conflicts and evolving social expectations. These psychosocial factors could interact with hormonal changes in women and result in an increased risk of depression.

Drastic fluctuations in hormones can have a profound effect on a woman's life. Coupled with personality factors, relationship issues, socioeconomic factors and other issues, women are more vulnerable to depression than men. Here's a look at how these factors influence depression in women.

September 26, 2004 in Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Men, Women More Different Than Thought

CHICAGO - Beyond the tired cliches and sperm-and-egg basics taught in grade school science class, researchers are discovering that men and women are even more different than anyone realized.

It turns out that major illnesses like heart disease and lung cancer are influenced by gender and that perhaps treatments for women ought to be slightly different from the approach used for men.

These discoveries are part of a quiet but revolutionary change infiltrating U.S. medicine as a growing number of scientists realize there's more to women's health than just the anatomy that makes them female, and that the same diseases often affect men and women in different ways.

September 26, 2004 in Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Pooch power: Clever dogs sniff out bladder cancer

PARIS (AFP) - Dogs have been trained to detect bladder cancer by sniffing urine, using their acute sense of smell to identify a tiny but characteristic odour released by tumours, a study says.

British scientists took six dogs of varying ages and breeds and trained them over six months to discriminate among dozens of samples of urine from patients with bladder cancer; from people with other urological diseases; and from healthy individuals.

The dogs were then put through their paces in a carefully-devised test. They had to detect a urine sample from a bladder-cancer patient among six "control" samples, nine times over.

Taken as a group, the dogs correctly spotted the positive sample 22 times out of 54 -- a success rate of 41 percent.

The performances ranged from one out of nine by a six-year-old male mongrel to five out of nine by two working-strain cocker spaniels, a male aged 18 months and a female aged two years....

September 23, 2004 in Pets and Animal Love, Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Found! The longest bird penis ever

North American scientists have discovered the longest bird penis ever - a 42.5cm organ belonging to a duck.

Dr Kevin McCracken of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and colleagues, report in this week's Nature that they have found a specimen of the Argentine lake duck (Oxyura vittata) that has a penis as long as its body - nearly half a metre long.

This has extended an earlier estimate of the length of the duck's corkscrew-shaped penis, which was 20cm.

"It's a fascinating bit of anatomy they've discovered here. It really is unusual," commented bird mating expert Dr Raoul Mulder from the University of Melbourne.

Photo: The male Argentine Lake Duck and his 42.5 cm penis (Pic: K. McCracken/Nature).

September 23, 2004 in Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Some excellent new studies into reproductive behaviors, both human and animal, are yielding important data on questions about monogamy, polygamy, asexuality, and reproduction. I'm snipping some excerpts but highly recommend these for the enlightened sexuality reader.

Genes Expose Secrets Of Sex On The Side

Men have been tomcatting around since time immemorial, and some traveled far from home to do it, new research suggests.

And there's no covering up even ancient sexual dalliances: the guys most successful in sowing wild oats passed on the proof in their genes.

By using those genetic smoking guns, researchers at the University of Arizona in Tucson have developed new insights into ancient mating and migration patterns in humans.

Men and women differed in their participation in reproduction, the researchers report. More men than women get squeezed out of the mating game. As a result, twice as many women as men passed their genes to the next generation....

Co-author Michael Hammer, a research scientist in UA's Arizona Research Laboratories, said, "We may think of ourselves as a monogamous species, but we're coming from an evolutionary history that's probably slightly polygamous. If we're shifting toward monogamy, it's so recent it hasn't left an imprint on our genome...."

And, a related story explores:

Why polygamous sex has its benefits

Three recent studies on sex reveal that polygamy holds biological benefits and dominated human history so much that it is imprinted in our genes.

But asexuality seems to be a relatively new evolutionary phenomenon that natural selection could, in the future, favour.

Together the studies help to explain why sexual reproduction is so widespread, yet why some animal, fish, bacteria and insects can reproduce asexually.

For the first study, Dr William Hughes of the University of Sydney and colleague Professor Jacobus Boomsma of the University of Copenhagen studied Panamanian ant colonies.

They told the recent annual meeting of the British Ecological Society that despite the costs of sex, such as risk of predation, female ants with many male partners had healthier offspring than monogamous females.

The scientists infected groups of young ants with a fungal parasite.

Ants with mothers who slept around a lot tended to survive better than those with a monogamous mum.

"The results of our study suggest that social insect queens may benefit from mating with multiple males by making their colonies more genetically diverse and therefore more resistant to disease," said Hughes.

Humans were at it too....

The article goes on to an interesting discussion of the results from the University of Arizona study cited above. The third study was conducted by Indiana University and yielded fascinating data on asexual v. sexual reproduction in the animal kingdom.

September 23, 2004 in Science, Sex and Sadomasochism, Sexual Health | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Maybe it's just me, but having a male nurse is pretty cool. Not that they are more competent than women nurses but if I have to be handled by a stranger, I'd just as soon that stranger was someone of the opposite sex. It isn't an erotic thing: for me, it's more of a comfort level thing.

Anyway, this is a great cause so instead of looking for the usual smutty or humorous image to illustrate the story, I found a serious poster to promote the cause.

Of course, you are still free to imagine one of those men shaving your genitals and giving you an enema. (Whatever makes you happy, dahlinks!)

Men Pose for Calendar to Promote Nursing

Twelve men — all nurses — were selected to grace the pages of the "Nebraska Men in Nursing 2005 Calendar."

Adam Hinrikus, a nurse at Grand Island's St. Francis Medical Center, is Mr. April. He works the night shift in the critical intensive care unit.

Mr. January is Todd Weldon — an acute care and emergency nurse at the Community Memorial Hospital in Syracuse. And he's heard it all before.

"You hear, `Oh, that's a girls' job,'" Weldon said. "But that doesn't bother me."

The Nebraska Hospital Association is using the calendars as a recruiting tool and to raise money for nursing scholarships for both sexes.

There's a severe shortage of nurses in the state, the association says. According to the Nebraska Center for Nursing, there are more than 26,000 Nebraska nurses, but only about 1,100 of them are men.

September 21, 2004 in Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Right Ear is from Mars

Belting out a few notes on key might take years of practice, and perfect pitch the right genetics, but when it comes to something as simple as telling noise from symphony, speech from music, all ears are created equal - or so it was once thought.

But in a new study, scientists have found that the left and right ears process sound differently. From birth, the right ear responds more to speech, while the left ear is more attuned to music, according to the study, published in Science on Sept. 10.

The findings could have substantial implications for deaf people who need cochlear hearing devices, which are implanted in only one ear, said Dr. Yvonne Sininger, a visiting professor of head and neck surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles and
lead author of the study.

September 15, 2004 in Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

'Dream centre' of the brain found

Scientists believe they have located the part of the brain where people's dreams are created.

A team from the University Hospital of Zurich, Switzerland, made the discovery after treating a woman who stopped dreaming after she had a stroke.

It had affected an area deep in the back of the brain - and they suggest this is the area controlling dreaming.

The researchers, writing in the Annals of Neurology, say the finding offers a new focus for dream research....

The researchers say their findings appear to confirm that dreaming and REM sleep are driven by independent brain systems.

Scans of the patient's brain showed the stroke had damaged areas located deep in the back half of her brain.

(Image: "Natasha" by Man Ray)

September 14, 2004 in Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Well gee. It's about time.

International science journals to make negative research public

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors will require, as a condition for publication, that researchers register their studies in a public repository before undertaking clinical trials on volunteers.

"Honest reporting begins with revealing the existence of all clinical studies, even those that reflect unfavorably on a research sponsor's product," the committee wrote in an editorial to appear simultanuously in its member journals.

"Unfortunately, selective reporting of trials does occur, and it distorts the body of evidence available for clinical decision-making."

September 9, 2004 in Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

This is an interesting but difficult conundrum. On one hand, most of us who rove the Internet want and expect information to be free. On the other, the studies themselves are often funded by the fees that scientific journals charge.

NIH proposal would free up funded research

WASHINGTON -- The National Institutes of Health has proposed a major policy change that would require all scientists who receive funding from the agency to make the results of their research available to the public for free.

The proposal, posted on the agency's Web site late Friday and subject to a 60-day public comment period, would mark a significant departure from current practice, in which scientific journals that publish those results retain control over that information.

Subscriptions to those journals can run into the thousands of dollars. Nonsubscribers typically pay about $30 for each individual article - fees that can quickly add up. Although patient advocacy groups and other organizations have been lobbying hard for the proposed shift, the scientific publishing industry and related interests are crying foul. The move could drive some journals out of business, they say, and bankrupt some scientific societies that are dependent on journal profits to fulfill their research and education missions.

September 7, 2004 in Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Pollution triggers bizarre behaviour in animals?

Hyperactive fish, stupid frogs, fearless mice and seagulls that fall over. It sounds like a weird animal circus, but this is no freak show. Animals around the world are increasingly behaving in bizarre ways, and the cause is environmental pollution.

The chemicals to blame are known as endocrine disruptors, and range from heavy metals such as lead to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and additives such as bisphenol A.

For decades, biologists have known that these chemicals can alter the behaviour of wild animals. And in recent years it has become clear that pollutants can cause gender-bending effects by altering animals' physiology, particularly their sexual organs.

But now two major reviews have revealed that the chemicals are having a much greater impact on animal behaviour than anyone suspected. Low concentrations of these pollutants are changing both the social and mating behaviours of a raft of species. This potentially poses a far greater threat to survival than, for example, falling sperm counts caused by higher chemical concentrations.

September 3, 2004 in Pets and Animal Love, Science, Sexual Health | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Anti-Addiction Drug Treats Teen Sex Offenders

Naltrexone has proven to be an effective agent for combating alcoholism, bulimia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, drug abuse, and impulse-control disorders, but it was unclear if the drug could reduce sexual arousal in teen sex offenders, according to the report in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

To investigate, Dr. Ralph S. Ryback, from Potomac Ridge Behavioral Health in Rockville, Maryland, assessed the outcomes of 21 adolescent sexual offenders who were treated with naltrexone for at least two months.

Naltrexone therapy was deemed successful in 15 patients -- it decreased sexual fantasies and masturbation by more 30 percent for at least 4 months.

This is one of the drugs which is both useful in preventing crime yet potentially dangerous if used for the wrong reasons. As blogged a couple of weeks ago, researchers have already engineered a drug that can turn primates into workaholics. Imagine combining a drug that makes you work like a machine and relieves you of the need for sex. The scenario will soon be scientifically attainable. Maybe Orwell should have called his book 2084.

August 27, 2004 in Science, Sex and Sadomasochism, Sexual Health | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A thought-provoking piece exploring why drug-makers have waited 30 years to develop known treatments for inorgasmia and lack of sexual desire.

Lustful men are little devils, but women are often tramps
by Brian Alexander

For a few years now, some women have been using testosterone gels and creams obtained from compounding pharmacies in an effort to boost a waning sex drive, often brought on by menopause. And recently, Proctor & Gamble announced data from clinical trials of its Intrinsa patch for women. Seems the patch gave women a bit more octane in the old engine. Should the patch be approved for sale, making it the first drug treatment for female sexual dysfunction on the market, P&G and likely other companies to follow will reap huge economic rewards.

All well and good, but here’s a question: Why did it take so long? Way back when, like about 30 years ago, doctors noticed that women given testosterone-related steroids for treatment of medical conditions reported a sex drive boost as a side effect. During these intervening three decades, as many as half of all women are estimated to have been suffering from low libido and other sexual problems. Yet only now is anybody trying to do something about it.

...“It’s been almost a social taboo,” argues Dr. Crista Johnson, a fellow at UCLA’s Female Sexual Medicine Center. “You didn’t want to talk about these things. Women were not supposed to [have desire].”

(Image: Female Nude Study by Gustav Klimt)

August 26, 2004 in Science, Sex and Sadomasochism, Sexual Health | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Phone therapy seen as anti-depression aid

For many of us, a phone call from a trusted friend can make the world feel a little more in our favor. Now research out of Seattle suggests that phone calls from a therapist can do the same thing for patients with depression.

The study, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, is the first major look at treating depression with psychotherapy over the phone.

"This treatment adds significantly to the benefit of antidepressants," said Dr. Gregory Simon, the psychiatrist who led the research on 600 patients at Group Health Cooperative.

He reports 80 percent of patients who received phone therapy along with antidepressants said their depression was "much improved" six months later, compared to 55 percent of those who received the pills alone.

August 25, 2004 in Science, Sex and Sadomasochism | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack