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September 06 2011
150 Kids, Anyone? US Sperm Banks Overdoing It
Sperm banks are a pretty great idea: women who don’t have a male partner or whose partners aren’t fertile can choose a genetic father with characteristics they like, such as a certain height, eye color, hair color, hobbies, and so on. Thousands of children are born each year in the United States to mothers who like the sound of “tall, dark, enjoys astrophysics and Shostakovich” or “blond surfer, Ivy-League educated, great sense of humor.”
But something very strange has been going on over the last couple decades, and the New York Times covers it in a recent piece: some donors’ sperm has been used many, many times—so many times, in fact, that people are starting to get alarmed.
Up to 150 children each have been born from the sperm of popular donors, far more than donors and mothers had anticipated. American sperm banks don’t keep rigorous records of children born from donor sperm, nor do they limit the number of children born from a particular donor (a chance, some might say, for sexual selection to run out of control—those green-eyed geniuses can be mighty sought-after). Parents only find out that their child has dozens of half-siblings when they look up their ...
August 29 2011
Kinky Skinks Show That Size Matters in Speciation
When a male’s bits don’t fit with a female’s bits, you wind up with reproductive malfunction. But shape isn’t everything, as a team of researchers recently discovered while watching hundreds of skink lizards court and spark.
Most studies looking at how genitalia mismatch contributes to new species take the concept literally: if the bits don’t fit together like lock and key, matings will be unsuccessful. And if the mismatch between the gear of two groups is bad enough, they will form separate reproductive populations, and, eventually, species. But the idea, which was first tossed around more than 150 years ago, has been discounted as a possible source of new species. Differently sized or shaped genitalia is such a big change that it’s likely to come after many other speciation triggers, like mutations or long separations between populations divided by mountain ranges.
But, as this research team points out—and as anyone in the dating pool can tell you—there are other aspects of physical incompatibility that can have an effect on sex, and thus could get speciation started. If the mating posture, chemical cues, or timing are off, even having matching genitalia doesn’t mean a mating will work ...
August 26 2011
Bad News for Roosters: If You Aren’t King of the Henhouse, Your Ejaculate Will Be Ejected
WHAT? Noooooooo!
If you haven’t heard about the corkscrew kookiness that is duck genitalia by now, you need to check that stuff out ASAP.
Ducks’ twisting vaginas and telescoping penises are well-known part of an evolutionary arms race between the sexes that’s been going on for millennia, with each side trying to exert control over which males’ sperm fertilize the female’s eggs—a battle that, especially in birds, is fierce, occasionally violent, and weird as all-get-out. The most recently discovered example of what biologists deem “sexual conflict,” a little behavior hens have developed called sperm ejection, upholds that fine tradition.
Hens, like many female birds, don’t always have a lot of control over who mates with them. Roosters tend to resort to “sexual coercion,” aka rape, and so a female might have any number of sexual partners that she didn’t get to choose. What’s a hen to do? Well, according to a new study in The American Naturalist, evolve a method for getting rid of sperm from males she didn’t particularly like, thus making sure her offspring are of the best quality.
Scientists had already noticed that hens tended to squirt out semen after some acts ...
June 16 2011
“Mommy Tummy” Suit Gives Men a Chance to Feel Pregnant
For every expectant father who’s ever wished they, too, could feel a fetus kicking their bladder, science now has an answer. Researchers in Japan have put together a suit packed with balloons, sensors, and warm water so you can feel what it’s like to be pregnant.
The suit, called Mommy Tummy, mimics kicking with a system of 45 balloons that inflate and deflate, and movement sensors and accelerometers pick up on the wearer’s activities, so the “fetus,” represented by a four-liter bag of warm water, can respond to exercise or sudden movements with redoubled kicking. Vibrating actuators produce the illusion of wiggling, as New Scientist describes:
When two vibrating sources placed a distance apart move at the same time, it triggers a sensation in between the two points. So by varying vibrating pairs over time, the simulated fetus seems to squirm.
And, in a cool but somewhat unrealistic move, the scientists have hooked the suit up to a screen, so you can watch a simulation of the fetus’ response while you stroke your stomach or walk around. For the thrill-seekers out there, a 9-month pregnancy can be recapitulated in two minutes, or it can be spread out over a longer period for a ...
May 11 2011
If Drug-Slathered, Erection-Enhancing Condoms Won’t Lead Men to Safe Sex, Nothing Will
For men who find that condoms sometimes, um, lessens their enthusiasm, some good news: Durex may soon be selling erection-enhacing condoms with a pharmaceutical boost.
The condoms, developed by UK biotech company Futura Medical, are lined with a gel that increases blood flow. The gel’s active ingredient, glyceryl nitrate, has been used for as a vasodilator for over a century. The tricky part was getting the gel to stay in the condom without degrading the latex, but the company found a way (and quickly patented it).
Men who enrolled in the clinical trial took the condoms home and gave them a test run (the things we do for science!). Both they and their partners reported longer, larger, and harder erections, presumably while grinning.
The condoms are now being reviewed by European regulators, and if approved, they could be on shelves there later this year. The product is meant specifically for men who have trouble maintaining an erection while wearing a condom, but there’s no prescription required, so anyone will be able to pick up a box from the nearest drug store. No such luck for American consumers, who will be ...
January 14 2011
Study Says: Laugh Your Way to a Pregnant Belly
Whether you chortle, chuckle, or cackle, having a good laugh–as we’ve known for decades–reduces stress. And according to an Israeli study, it can also make you pregnant.
OK, that’s a slight exaggeration. But researchers who studied 219 women undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) discovered that women were more likely to become pregnant if they were paid a visit by a professional “medical clown” after the procedure. The numbers speak for themselves: 36 percent of the clowned women became pregnant, whereas only 20 percent of the un-clowned women conceived.
According to the study, led by Shevach Friedler and published in Fertility and Sterility, a medical merrymaker visited the fertility clinic regularly for a year. Half of the women studied were visited by the jester soon after they had received a fertilized embryo. Each time, the funny-bone tickler stayed for 15 minutes and acted through a set routine. As the Guardian reports:
The researchers found that, compared to women who came to the clinic on a “non-clown” day, those who’d had a laugh were more than twice as likely to become pregnant, when other factors such as age, type of infertility ...
December 22 2010
December 17 2010
Each Cell-Phone Tower Creates 18 Babies?! The Difference Between Causation & Correlation
Those people living in areas with higher numbers of mobile phone towers have more children, new research is showing (spreadsheet). Matt Parker at The Guardian’s Notes & Theories blog did the analysis of publicly available data and found the correlation:
Could it be possible that mobile phone radiation somehow aids fertilisation, or maybe there’s just something romantic about a mobile phone transmitter mast [aka tower] protruding from the landscape?
The data show that there is a very strong correlation between the number of cell phone towers and the birth rate in communities. For every additional phone tower, there are 17.6 more babies than the national average, Parker writes in his blog post:
When a regression line is calculated it has a “correlation coefficient” (a measure of how good the match is) of 98.1 out of 100. To be “statistically significant” a pattern in a dataset needs to be less than 5% likely to be found in random data (known as a “p-value”), and the masts-births correlation only has a 0.00003% probability of occurring by chance.
Many studies depend on this type of correlation. When we report on them, we try to remind readers that there is a big difference between correlation and causation. This is one of those times. The link between the birth rate and the towers isn’t causative, as Parker explains:
Both the number of mobile phone transmitters and the number of live births are linked to a third, independent factor: the local population size. As the population of an area goes up, so do both the number of mobile phone users and the number people giving birth.
The correlation between cell phone towers and birth rate is perfect fodder for neo-Luddites, many of whom, like the group of parents in Ontario fearing the school’s WiFi rays and pregnant women investing in “Belly Armor” to protect their unborn children, claim that wireless technology is harming our bodies. There is no good evidence that non-ionizing radiation causes anything of the sort.
Just because two events are positively correlated doesn’t mean they are necessarily linked via causation. In these types of studies, there is always a question of where the truth lies, like reports that Adenovirus 36 causes obesity in humans. The studies draw correlations between presence of antibodies to the virus and obesity, but if it is indeed causative, this link could go either way (obesity can cause immune dysfunction, making people more likely to have been infected with AD36), or the two could be completely causally unrelated, like many correlations, Parker explains:
While this does not cause a problem when using pattern-spotting as an evolved survival tool, it does cause severe problems when assessing possible health scares based on a recently uncovered correlation. For the majority of cases, correlation does not indicate the presence of causality.
Parker is releasing his data as a press release, so keep an eye on your favorite (or least favorite) news organizations to see who bites on the sham cell tower-fertility connection.
Related Content:
80beats: Bee Collapse May Be Caused by a Virus-Fungus One-Two Punch
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Does national IQ depend on parasite infections? Er…
Bad Astronomy: Jenny McCarthy still thinks vaccines cause autism
Gene Expression: Vitamin D deficiency & respiratory infections
Gene Expression: Fat men are dumber!
Gene Expression: Liberals & atheists are smarter than conservatives & very religious, but why?
The Intersection: Specter’s First Reply: Denialism Kills People
Image: Flickr/barryskeates
December 16 2010
Science of the Obvious: Beauty Sleep Is Real & Tired People Look Tired
Lack of sleep doesn’t just make you sluggish. It also makes you ugly, researchers say.
Sleep-deprived people look 4 percent less attractive, 6 percent less healthy, and 19 percent more tired than they usually do. This doesn’t bode well for the sex lives of insomniacs, study author John Axelsson told MSNBC:
“A good night’s sleep does not only improve your physiological health, it will also make you look healthier and more attractive, which in turn improves the chance of better treatments in a wide range of social situations.”
Two pictures of the volunteers were taken: One after a restful eight hours of sleep, and the other after five hours of sleep followed by being kept awake for 31 hours. Other volunteers rated the pictures for attractiveness and how healthy and tired the participants looked. Derk-Jan Dijk, who wasn’t involved in the current study, told BBC News that the effect is probably worse than the pictures show:
“The photographs were taken during the daytime when the biological clock promotes wakefulness. Can you imagine how sleep loss makes you look at night or early in the morning when the circadian clock (body clock) promotes sleep?”
While participants were taken to extreme levels of sleep deprivation, it’s likely that even losing a small bit of sleep can have deleterious effects on your attractiveness, Axelsson told ABC News:
“We cannot really say when the effects start … if it’s six hours or five hours, but it probably starts gradually,” Axelsson said. “It’s possible that you get these effects through chronic sleep deprivation as well.”
Related Content:
Discoblog: Proved by Science: Sleepy Bees Are Sloppy Dancers
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Writing emails as part of sleepwalking after increase in Zolpidem [Ambien].
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Sleep disturbances in Disney animated films
Not Exactly Rocket Science: To sleep, perchance to dream, perchance to remember
Science Not Fiction: Inception and the Neuroscience of Sleep
DISCOVER: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About… Sleep
Image: Flickr/Furryscaly
December 03 2010
Update: Is Discussing Bat Fellatio With Colleagues Sexual Harassment?
Bringing up a fruit bat’s oral sex habits with a colleague you don’t know very well may not be the best idea–but according to an Irish court, it doesn’t quite merit the extreme sanctions associated with more flagrant sexual harassment.
Back in May, Discoblog brought you news that a biology professor in Ireland was being charged with harassment by a female colleague after he read from and discussed a racy new paper about fruit bat fellatio. The biologist, Dale Evans, was ordered to attend two years of counseling to correct his attitudes and behavior, and was told that he would be monitored for those two years. But Evans claimed that he’d simply thought the paper was hilarious, had shown it to numerous people that day, and had zero intention of causing offense to his colleague, Rossana Salerno Kennedy. Now ScienceInsider gives us the update:
Evans challenged the ruling, and a judge has now ruled in favor of him, which means that he won’t have to do the counseling. The university’s sanctions on him were “grossly disproportionate,” the judge said. “I won my battle,” Evans tells ScienceInsider.
The High Court judge said that Evans should have received a verbal warning rather than the counseling and monitoring. Evans wasn’t vindicated completely, though. As the Irish Times reports:
The judge refused to grant orders overturning findings of an external investigation that, while Dr Evans had no intention to offend in showing the paper to his colleague, the incident fell within the definition of sexual harassment under UCC’s “Duty of Respect and Right to Dignity” policy.
Related Content:
Discoblog: Ig Nobel Awards Honor Pioneering Work on Bat Fellatio, Whale Snot, & More
Discoblog: A Scientist Finds out That Discussion of Bat Fellatio Is NSFW
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Holy Fellatio, Batman! Fruit Bats Use Oral Sex to Prolong Actual Sex
November 01 2010
Sexy Black Truffle Porn: Not as Exciting as You Hoped
Scientists are starting to unravel the sex secrets of the black truffle, that rare and expensive delicacy, in hopes of making its cultivation easier.
It turns out the fungus has two different sex-like states, and both must be present to reproduce. One truffle can only be one of the sexes, and while that may not sound odd to us humans, it’s very out of place in the fungus world. Fungi are usually able to reproduce asexually and self-fertilize, lead author of the paper Francesco Paolocci told The Telegraph:
“It was long assumed that the truffle was like other fungi, but we know now that it needs the help of a partner. It has members of two different sexualities, a bit like male and female.”
Still, that doesn’t sound too complicated, right? Well, what’s hard is getting close enough to your partner to “score” when you are stuck in single-sex colonies on oak trees that are yards away from each other (which bears a striking resemblance to my undergrad experience). The researchers were the first to find that truffles tend to grow in single sex bunches, Paolocci explained to The Telegraph:
“But we found that individual trees are only colonised by a single sex of the fungi. Even when we started with a mixed colony, it quickly became dominated by one sex or the other. To produce the truffles, you have to have the two different sexual strains meeting in some way, but they can be quite far away from each other.”
It is likely that in nature this meeting is accomplished via animals that dig in the dirt and transfer spores from one colony to the other. This could help explain why it is so difficult to cultivate the ridiculously expensive foodie-magnet; when trees are impregnated with the fungus, only about 30 percent of the colonies survive.
The truffles themselves are actually the fruiting body produced by the “female” sex, which is the sex that lives on the tree roots. The “male” truffle fungus is found in the soil, Paolocci told The Telegraph:
“In order to have a productive truffle ground we need to have both the male and female strains. We have genetic markers that help us identify the male and female strains, and this can be used to increase production. It could help bring the price of these fungus down.”
Related content:
Discoblog: To Satisfy Lust for Truffles, The French Will Try to Clone Them
80beats: How a Fungus Makes a Jet Stream to Carry Spores Abroad
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Who needs sex? – Rotifers import genes from fungi, bacteria and plants
The Loom: Respect For the Fungus Overlords
DISCOVER: The Biology of…Truffles
Image: Flickr/ Kjunstorm
October 19 2010
Ontario Parents Try to Protect School Kids From Dangerous WiFi Rays
A small town in Ontario has come down with a bad case of technophobia. The majority (88 percent) of an Ontario school’s parent group (which has 210 members) voted that they want the wireless Internet at their children’s school shut off, the group said in a press release:
“After learning the whole story about how risky WiFi is, parents voted to protect their children’s health and plug the computers back in with hardwires,” said Andrew Couper, a member of the elected School Council…. “This is something every school council across Canada should be questioning.”
After the wireless was installed, the parents of Meaford, Ontario say their children began complaining about symptoms ranging from headaches to nausea, which the children said struck while they were at school. In my day we called this illness “school-sucks-itis”. Well played, kids.
While the parent’s informal poll has made the news, the real decision lies with the Bluewater District school board. Couper said that the school trustee told him the decision process could take years, but the parents can present their views at the school board meeting next month. The board spokesperson didn’t express any opinion about the parent’s vote.
The Medford, Ontario school is only the latest in a string of schools who have considered banning wireless internet, said CBC News:
Health Canada issued an advisory in August, when the issue initially surfaced, stating that wireless internet is not harmful to anyone’s health. “Health Canada continues to reassure Canadians that the radiofrequency energy emitted from Wi-Fi equipment is extremely low and is not associated with any health problems,” the statement said. “Based on scientific evidence, Health Canada has determined that exposure to low-level radiofrequency energy, such as that from Wi-Fi equipment, is not dangerous to the public.”
If only Ferris Bueller’s school had WiFi, it could have saved him a lot of the trouble he went through (clammy hands, etc.) in order to ditch.
Related content:
Discoblog: Worst Science Article of the Week: Use a Cell Phone, Damage Your Baby
Discoblog: Pregnant Women Need Fear No Cell Phone Radiation: Belly Armor Is Here!
Discoblog: Death by Wifi? Wireless Medication Implant Could Get Hacked
80beats: Super Wi-Fi: Coming Soon to Airwaves Near You
80beats: Cancer Doctor Issues a Warning About Cell Phones, and Causes Panic
Image: Flickr/whiteafrican
October 01 2010
Ig Noble Awards Honor Pioneering Work on Bat Fellatio, Whale Snot, & More
The list of wacky science discoveries from the Ig Nobel awards announced last night includes teams who made strides in vital fields like bat fellatio and curing diseases via roller coaster rides.
The awards are given out every year for discoveries that made us both laugh and think. Here’s a full list of the winning teams and projects:
Physics: A group of researchers in New Zealand found that wearing your socks over shoes improves your ability to walk on ice. Team member Lianne Parkin explained to Fox News the reason for her work:
“We live in the south of New Zealand in a very hilly city (we have the steepest street in the world!), and intermittent icy conditions in winter can create major havoc,” she said.
Management: A mathematical study by researchers in Italy found that in some business situations, it is better to promote randomly than the choose the most qualified candidates.
Engineering: A team based in the UK and Mexico found the perfect way to collect whale snot–send a remote controlled helicopter in to do it for you. The team members explained the technique to ABC News:
“The technique involves flying a remote-controlled helicopter above a whale as it surfaces and catching the whale blow in petri dishes attached to the underside of the helicopter,” they said in a statement.
Transportation: A team based in Japan and the UK used slime molds to optimize human-sized railroads. Team member Dan Bebber told the Boston Globe how he stumbled upon this:
“Just for fun, we wanted to see if a brainless organism will do as well as Japanese engineers,’’ Bebber said.
Public Health: A Fort Detrick study of bearded scientists working in microbial labs found that they carry along a hoard of microbes in their facial hair, and could literally be bringing their work home with them at the end of the day.
Medicine: A team based in the Netherlands has been experimenting with how roller coasters (and the emotions that come along with riding them) affect asthma sufferers. Team member Ilja van Beest explained to Fox News how difficult it is to study asthma:
“The lungs are difficult because you can’t just look down and see if your tubes are constricted,” van Beest said. “You have to rely on how you feel so a lot of our research has been looking at various ways people try to understand their symptoms.”
Peace: Researchers in the UK found that swearing really does reduce pain. Team leader Richard Stevens explained the finding to CBSNews.com:
“What we think is when you swear you produce an emotional reaction in yourself, you arouse your nervous system and you set off the fight or flight response,” Stephens said. “It gets the heart rate up, gets the adrenaline flowing.”
Chemistry: A team including BP were awarded an IgNobel for their studies over the summer of how oil, natural gas, and water interact. Yeah, that was a fun experiment.
Economics: The awards committee even congratulated the bigwigs of the financial industry for their efforts in creating and promoting new ways to invest money to “maximize financial gain and minimize financial risk for the world economy, or for a portion thereof.” Oddly, no one from Goldman Sachs or the other investment banks named came to pick up the award.
Biology: Studies of fruit bats engaging in oral sex to prolong their sexual encounters won the biology award for a team out of the UK. We’re glad those researchers have been rewarded for the hours they spent dutifully watching bat porn.
Related content:
Discoblog: Crunchy Chips and Smart Slime Mold Win 2008 Ig Nobel Prizes
Discoblog: It’s a Bra! It’s a Dust Mask! It’s Both! And Now, It’s for Sale
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Why Santa Claus shouldn’t work in a lab
Discoblog: Can You Cuss Away Your Pain? Study Says Yes
Discoblog: Touching a Boo-Boo Really Does Make It Feel Better
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Brainless slime mould makes decisions like humans
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Holy fellatio, Batman! Fruit bats use oral sex to prolong actual sex
Image: Flickr/Aiden Jones
September 17 2010
Scientist Dance Styles: Glee Episode, Spanish Whodunnit, Internet Love Orgy
In its third year, the Dance Your PhD contest is proving that maybe, just maybe, scientists can dance. From the contest’s website:
The dreaded question. “So, what’s your Ph.D. research about?” You take a deep breath and launch into the explanation. People’s eyes begin to glaze over…
At times like these, don’t you wish you could just turn to the nearest computer and show people an online video of your Ph.D. thesis interpreted in dance form?
Sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the competition has announced the judges-chosen finalists, chosen from the 45 entries in four science sections–and now the viewers get to choose their favorite from among them. Each finalist gets $500, and the crowd favorite gets an additional $500. The winner will be announced on October 19th, so go watch the finalists and get your vote in.
The chemistry category’s finalist, “Selection of a DNA aptamer for homocysteine using systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment,” is danced by Maureen McKeague and company with an accompanying pop soundtrack worthy of its own Glee episode. Stay tuned for an amusing interpretation of Taq polymerase doing its thing to “Safety Dance” at the 1:58 mark.
The physics finalist, Steven Lade and company, do a trippy interpretive dance of vesicle transport in his video, “Directed transport without net bias in physics and biology,” which seems to be a bit more “interpretive” than “dance,” but is still pretty rocking.
The biology finalist, “The influence of previous experiences on visual awareness,” is danced by Maartje C. de Jong and colleages. The Netherlands must really know their telemundo, cause I couldn’t tell if I was watching a PhD dance or a Spanish crime drama.
The social sciences finalist, Anne Goldenberg and company, gives a more artistic interpretation of her PhD, “The negotiation of contributions to public wikis.” Especially wonderful are the depiction of a flame war at the 1:40 mark and the wiki-love orgy at the end.
Watch the finalists and vote for your favorite one here, or read more about this mad-dancing-scientist project.
Related Content:
Science Not Fiction: “Going to the Board” in the 21st Century: Interpretive Dances of Dissertations
Discoblog: Dancing With the Scientists: Researchers Express Findings in Interpretive Dance
Image: Flickr/Emanuele Rosso
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