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January 28 2012
NCBI ROFL: Probably the most horrifying scientific lecture ever.
How (not) to communicate new scientific information: a memoir of the famous brindley lecture
“In 1983, at the Urodynamics Society meeting in Las Vegas, Professor G.S. Brindley first announced to the world his experiments on self-injection with papaverine to induce a penile erection. This was the first time that an effective medical therapy for erectile dysfunction (ED) was described, and was a historic development in the management of ED. The way in which this information was first reported was completely unique and memorable, and provides an interesting context for the development of therapies for ED. I was present at this extraordinary lecture, and the details are worth sharing. Although this lecture was given more than 20 years ago, the details have remained fresh in my mind, for reasons which will become obvious.
The lecture, which had an innocuous title along the lines of ‘Vaso-active therapy for erectile dysfunction’ was scheduled as an evening lecture of the Urodynamics Society in the hotel in which I was staying. I was a senior resident, hungry for knowledge, and at the AUA I went to every lecture that I could. About 15 min before the lecture I took the elevator to go ...
January 27 2012
NCBI ROFL: Your rug is so ugly it makes me sick. Literally.
The sickening rug: a repeating static pattern that leads to motion-sickness-like symptoms.
“The nauseogenic properties of a patterned rug that reputedly caused motion-sickness-like symptoms in those who viewed it was the topic of this study. Naive observers viewed a 1:1 scale image of the black-and-white patterned rug and a homogeneous gray region of equivalent luminance in a counterbalanced within-subjects design. After 5 min of viewing, symptoms were assessed with the simulator sickness questionnaire (SSQ), yielding a total SSQ score and sub-scores for nausea, oculomotor symptoms, and disorientation. All four scores were significantly higher in the rug condition. Observers also reported significantly more self-motion perception in the rug condition, even though they were seated during the experiment. Results are consistent with findings that suggest that neurologically normal individuals who view a repeating static pattern can experience unpleasant symptoms, some of which are similar to motion sickness.”
Bonus quote from the full text:
“Bottom line: be careful what you buy. You might have to look at it for a while and
it might just make you feel sick.”
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January 26 2012
NCBI ROFL: Does it take one to know one? Endorsement of conspiracy theories is influenced by personal willingness to conspire.
“We advance a new account of why people endorse conspiracy theories, arguing that individuals use the social-cognitive tool of projection when making social judgements about others. In two studies, we found that individuals were more likely to endorse conspiracy theories if they thought they would be willing, personally, to participate in the alleged conspiracies. Study 1 established an association between conspiracy beliefs and personal willingness to conspire, which fully mediated a relationship between Machiavellianism and conspiracy beliefs. In Study 2, participants primed with their own morality were less inclined than controls to endorse conspiracy theories – a finding fully mediated by personal willingness to conspire. These results suggest that some people think ‘they conspired’ because they think ‘I would conspire’.”
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Photo: flickr/kyz
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January 25 2012
NCBI ROFL: The effect of women’s suggestive clothing on men’s behavior and judgment: a field study.
“Numerous studies have shown that men overestimate the sexual intent of women based on their clothing style; however, this hypothesis has not been assessed empirically in a natural setting. This small field study measured the time it took for men to approach two female confederates sitting in a tavern, one wearing suggestive clothes and one wearing more conservative clothes. The behavior of 108 men was observed over 54 periods on 16 different nights in two different taverns. The time it took for the men to approach after initial eye contact was significantly shorter in the suggestive clothing condition. The men were also asked by male confederates to rate the likelihood of having a date with the women, and having sex on the first date. The men rated their chances to have a date and to have sex significantly higher in the suggestive clothing condition. Results are discussed with respect to men’s possible misinterpretation that women’s clothing indicates sexual interest, and the risks associated with the misinterpretation.”
Photo: Flickr/philosophygeek
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January 23 2012
NCBI ROFL: Science brings hope for your ugly baby.
You must have been a beautiful baby: ratings of infant facial attractiveness fail to predict ratings of adult attractiveness.
“Facial attractiveness has been studied extensively, but little research has examined the stability of facial attractiveness of individuals across different stages of development. We conducted a study examining the relationship between facial attractiveness in infants (age 24 months and under) and the same individuals as young adults (age 16-18 years)using infant and adult photographs from high school yearbooks. Contrary to expectations, independent raters’ assessments of infant facial attractiveness did not correlate with adult facial attractiveness. These results are discussed in terms of the adaptive function of heightened attractiveness in infancy, which likely evolved to elicit and maintain parental care.”
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Photo: flickr/daveynin
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January 21 2012
NCBI ROFL: The best men are (not always) already taken: female preference for single versus attached males depends on conception risk.
“Because men of higher genetic quality tend to be poorer partners and parents than men of lower genetic quality, women may profit from securing a stable investment from the latter, while obtaining good genes via extrapair mating with the former. Only if conception occurs, however, do the evolutionary benefits of such a strategy overcome its costs. Accordingly, we predicted that (a) partnered women should prefer attached men, because such men are more likely than single men to have pair-bonding qualities, and hence to be good replacement partners, and (b) this inclination should reverse when fertility rises, because attached men are less available for impromptu sex than single men. In this study, 208 women rated the attractiveness of men described as single or attached. As predicted, partnered women favored attached men at the low-fertility phases of the menstrual cycle, but preferred single men (if masculine, i.e., advertising good genetic quality) when conception risk was high.”
Photo: Flickr/MikeCrane83
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January 20 2012
NCBI ROFL: Apparently, jumping with a weighted vest or springs attached to your shoes is hard.
Effects of loading on maximum vertical jumps: Selective effects of weight and inertia.
“A novel loading method was applied to explore selective effects of externally added weight (W), weight and inertia (W+I), and inertia (I) on maximum counter-movement jumps (CMJ) performed with arm swing. Externally applied extended rubber bands and/or loaded vest added W, W+I, and I corresponding to 10-40% of subjects’ body mass. As expected, an increase in magnitude of all types of load was associated with an increase in ground reaction forces (GRF), as well as with a decrease in both the jumping performance and power output. However, of more importance could be that discernible differences among the effects of W, W+I, and I were recorded despite a relatively narrow loading range. In particular, an increase in W was associated with the minimal changes in movement kinematic pattern and smallest reduction of jumping performance, while also allowing for the highest power output. Conversely, W+I was associated with the highest ground reaction forces. Finally, the lowest maxima of GRF and power were associated with I. Although further research is apparently needed, the obtained finding could be of potential importance not only for understanding ...
January 18 2012
NCBI ROFL: And the And the January “no sh*t, Sherlock” award goes to…
Effects of heated seats in vehicles on thermal comfort during the initial warm-up period.
“Eight subjects participated in a subjective experiment of eight conditions to investigate the effects of heated seats in vehicles on skin temperature, thermal sensation and thermal comfort during the initial warm-up period. The experimental conditions were designed as a combination of air temperature in the test room (5, 10, 15, or 20 °C) and heated seat (on/off). The heated seat was effective for improving thermal comfort during the initial warm-up period when air temperature was lower than 15 °C. Use of heated seats prevented decreases in or increased toe skin temperature. Heated seats also increased foot thermal sensation at 15 and 20 °C. Optimal thermal sensation in contact with the seat was higher when air temperature was lower. Optimal skin temperature in contact with the seat back was higher than that with the seat cushion. Moreover, these optimal skin temperatures were higher when air temperature was lower.”
Photo: flickr/kjarrett
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January 17 2012
NCBI ROFL: [Ring ring] … Hello? … Hi! Are you a lesbian?
A brief telephone interview to identify lesbian and bisexual women in random digit dialing sampling.
“Lesbian health research has most often relied on nonprobability samples that are biased and restrict generalizability. Random sampling could reduce bias, but requires development of a method for fast and reliable screening of a large number of women. We tested the feasibility of using a brief telephone interview to assess sexual attraction, behavior, and identity. Using Random Digit Dialing in a neighborhood of Boston with a high density of lesbian residents, we interviewed 202 women aged 18 to 59. Of the respondents, 33% reported some sexual attraction to other women, 20% reported sex with women since age 18, and 14% identified as a lesbian. The high level of cooperation with the study among eligible women (94%) and the high proportion of women who disclosed homosexual attraction, behavior, or identity show that it is feasible to use a brief screening questionnaire about sexuality of women over the telephone even without building special rapport with the respondents.”
Photo: Flickr/MacKinnon Photography
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NCBI ROFL: How to improve your human random number generator.
Doing better by getting worse: posthypnotic amnesia improves random number generation.
“Although forgetting is often regarded as a deficit that we need to control to optimize cognitive functioning, it can have beneficial effects in a number of contexts. We examined whether disrupting memory for previous numerical responses would attenuate repetition avoidance (the tendency to avoid repeating the same number) during random number generation and thereby improve the randomness of responses. Low suggestible and low dissociative and high dissociative highly suggestible individuals completed a random number generation task in a control condition, following a posthypnotic amnesia suggestion to forget previous numerical responses, and in a second control condition following the cancellation of the suggestion. High dissociative highly suggestible participants displayed a selective increase in repetitions during posthypnotic amnesia, with equivalent repetition frequency to a random system, whereas the other two groups exhibited repetition avoidance across conditions. Our results demonstrate that temporarily disrupting memory for previous numerical responses improves random number generation.”
Photo: flickr/garryknight
Thanks to bboybutzemann for today’s ROFL!
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January 13 2012
NCBI ROFL: Sexual attitudes as correlates of sexual details in human figure drawing.
“The hypothesis that sexual attitudes, as measured by the Sexual Opinion Survey, are related to the explicitness with which nude figures are drawn was examined. The presence or absence of various sexual and nonsexual anatomical features, as well as length and width measurements, were assessed in the drawing of nudes by 17 male and 23 female undergraduates. Individuals with relatively positive sexual attitudes (erotophiles), as compared with individuals with relatively negative attitudes (erotophobes), were more likely to include such details as a glans, a urinary meatus, and chest hair on male figures and pubic hair and nipples on female figures. Positive sexual attitudes were also associated with drawing figures with longer and wider penises, breasts, testicles, and mons. Relationships between sexual attitudes and the drawing of nonsexual body parts were generally not significant. The results are discussed in terms of the pervasive generality of sexual attitudes in influencing quite varied sex-related behaviors.”
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Photo: flickr/quinn.anya
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January 12 2012
NCBI ROFL: Farts: an underappreciated threat to astronauts.
Intestinal hydrogen and methane of men fed space diet.
“Intestinal bacteria form two gases, hydrogen (H2) and methane (CH4), that could constitute a fire hazard in a closed chamber. So H2 and CH4 pass from the anus but these gases are also transported by the blood to the lungs and removed to the atmosphere. Several factors affect gas formation: 1) amount and kind of fermentable substrate; 2) abundance, types, and location of microflora; and 3) psychic and somatic conditions that affect the gut. We evaluated the first factor by studying men fed different diets and have also recorded influences of uncontrollable factors. One group of 6 men ate Gemini-type diet (S) and another received a bland formula (F), for 42 days. Breath and rectal gases were analyzed during the first and final weeks. Flatus gases varied widely within dietary groups but much more gas was generated with diet S than with F. In the first 12-hour collection, subjects fed S passed 3 to 209 ml (ATAP) of rectal H2 (avg 52) and 24 to 156 ml (avg 69) from the lungs (assuming normal pulmonary ventilation). With F, these values were 0 to 3 ml (avg ...
January 11 2012
NCBI ROFL: Do dogs really have a “guilty look”?
Disambiguating the “guilty look”: salient prompts to a familiar dog behaviour.
“Anthropomorphisms are regularly used by owners in describing their dogs. Of interest is whether attributions of understanding and emotions to dogs are sound, or are unwarranted applications of human psychological terms to non-humans. One attribution commonly made to dogs is that the “guilty look” shows that dogs feel guilt at doing a disallowed action. In the current study, this anthropomorphism is empirically tested. The behaviours of 14 domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) were videotaped over a series of trials and analyzed for elements that correspond to an owner-identified “guilty look.” Trials varied the opportunity for dogs to disobey an owner’s command not to eat a desirable treat while the owner was out of the room, and varied the owners’ knowledge of what their dogs did in their absence. The results revealed no difference in behaviours associated with the guilty look. By contrast, more such behaviours were seen in trials when owners scolded their dogs. The effect of scolding was more pronounced when the dogs were obedient, not disobedient. These results indicate that a better description of the so-called guilty look is that it is a response to ...
January 10 2012
NCBI ROFL: No. You will never be able to sleep through a sonic boom.
Disturbance of sleep by sonic booms.
“After a pilot study (2 subjects, 19 nights) we tested two different subjects during 57 nights, administering sonic booms (1 mb, 300 ms; sound level of sonic boom in the bedroom 80-85 dB (A) and recording EEG and peripheral blood volume. After 7 nights without noise, 30 nights with either 2 or 4 sonic booms (alternately) were applied. After 10 more nights without noise, four nights with 8 and 16 bangs followed alternately. The last 6 nights were used as a comparison phase. Results showed that distrubance was obvious during all periods of noise. No adaptation could be observed during any of the experiments. On the contrary, during the night with 4 bangs there was a tendency for compensation, e.g., in the last two thirds of nights with 4 bangs, the total time of deep sleep was comparable with the nights without any noise.”
Photo: flickr/GeoffGabriel
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January 09 2012
NCBI ROFL: Study proves guns make you an a**hole.
“We tested whether interacting with a gun increased testosterone levels and later aggressive behavior. Thirty male college students provided a saliva sample (for testosterone assay), interacted with either a gun or a children’s toy for 15 min, and then provided another saliva sample. Next, subjects added as much hot sauce as they wanted to a cup of water they believed another subject would have to drink. Males who interacted with the gun showed significantly greater increases in testosterone and added more hot sauce to the water than did those who interacted with the children’s toy. Moreover, increases in testosterone partially mediated the effects of interacting with the gun on this aggressive behavior.”
Photo: Flickr/daveparker
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January 06 2012
NCBI ROFL: Surprise! A lower pitched voice doesn’t mean better semen.
Low Pitched Voices Are Perceived as Masculine and Attractive but Do They Predict Semen Quality in Men?
“Women find masculinity in men’s faces, bodies, and voices attractive, and women’s preferences for men’s masculine features are thought to be biological adaptations for finding a high quality mate. Fertility is an important aspect of mate quality. Here we test the phenotype-linked fertility hypothesis, which proposes that male secondary sexual characters are positively related to semen quality, allowing females to obtain direct benefits from mate choice. Specifically, we examined women’s preferences for men’s voice pitch, and its relationship with men’s semen quality. Consistent with previous voice research, women judged lower pitched voices as more masculine and more attractive. However men with lower pitched voices did not have better semen quality. On the contrary, men whose voices were rated as more attractive tended to have lower concentrations of sperm in their ejaculate. These data are more consistent with a trade off between sperm production and male investment in competing for and attracting females, than with the phenotype-linked fertility hypothesis.”
Photo: flickr/Alan Light
Thanks to bboybutzemann for today’s ROFL!
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January 05 2012
NCBI ROFL: Naturalistic observations of beer drinking among college students.
“We observed the beer drinking behavior of 308 university students in several bar and party settings. The following relationships were found: males drinking beer in bars consumed 0.92 oz per min; females drank less beer than males, and stayed in a bar for a longer time period; patrons drank significantly more beer when drinking in groups and when purchasing beer in pitchers versus cups or bottles; and intervals between party arrival and first drink and between party departure and last drink varied inversely with blood alcohol concentration. We discuss these findings with regard to developing interventions to prevent alcohol-impaired driving.”
Photo: Flickr/.A.A.
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NCBI ROFL: Knock knock! Who’s there? Some random statement that you won’t remember.
The effect of humor on memory: constrained by the pun.
“In a series of experiments, we investigated the effect of pun humor on memory. In all experiments, the participants were exposed to knock-knock jokes in either the original form retaining the pun or in a modified form that removed the pun. In Experiment 1, the authors found that pun humor improved both recall and recognition memory following incidental encoding. In Experiment 2, they found evidence that rehearsal is not the cause of the humor effect on memory. In Experiments 3 and 4, the authors found that the constraints imposed by puns and incongruity may account for the humor effects observed. Puns constrain and limit the information that can fit in the final line of a joke and thus make recall easier.”
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Bonus table from the full text:
Photo: flickr/sastafford
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January 04 2012
NCBI ROFL: Sneezing induced by sexual ideation or orgasm: an under-reported phenomenon.
“We describe a hitherto under-recognized curious response in some individuals: of sneezing in response either to sexual ideation or in response to orgasm. Our review suggests that it may be much more common than expected. We surmise that an indiscrete stimulation of the parasympathetic nervous system may be an underlying mechanism to explain this and other reported unusual triggers of sneezing.”
Bonus quote from the full text:
“From the sporadic reports in the medical literature, we surmised that the phenomenon of sneezing in response to sexual ideation or in response to orgasm is more common than recognized. As this is a problem that does not lead to morbidity and may be seen as embarrassing to discuss it may be under-reported. We performed a search of Internet ‘chat rooms’ where this problem may be discussed in an anonymous forum, using the Google search engine and with terms ‘sex, sneeze OR sneezing’. We searched in June 2007, and again six months later in December 2007. We found many discussions of the phenomena, with 17 people of both sexes reporting sneezing immediately upon sexual ideation, and three people after orgasm. Non-expert responses to the queries proposed all ...
January 03 2012
NCBI ROFL: Top 10 most popular posts of 2011!
11. NCBI ROFL: The Mere Anticipation of an Interaction with a Woman Can Impair Men’s Cognitive Performance.
“In everyday life, people frequently engage in pseudo-interactions with women (e.g., through the phone or the internet) or anticipate interacting with a woman later on. The goal of the present research was to investigate if men’s cognitive performance decreased in these types of situations…”
10. Why overheard cell phone conversations are extra annoying.
“Why are people more irritated by nearby cell-phone conversations than by conversations between two people who are physically present? Overhearing someone on a cell phone means hearing only half of a conversation–a ‘halfalogue.’”
9. What can 2,914 Australian twins tell us about the evolution of the female orgasm?
“We examined such correlations in a community sample of 2,914 adult female Australian twins who reported their orgasm rates during masturbation, intercourse, and other sexual activities, and who completed demographic, personality, and sexuality questionnaires.”
8. Cutting off the nose to save the penis.
“METHODS: Bicycle police officers from five U.S. metropolitan areas were recruited for this study. Officers completed: (i) the International Index of Erectile Function Questionnaire (IIEF); (ii) computerized pressure measurements at the points ...
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