Individuals who have their first sexual experience later than average may have more satisfying romantic relationships in adulthood, according to a new study from The University of Texas at Austin. […]

“We still don’t understand precisely why delaying sexual intercourse is correlated with more satisfied adult relationships,” Harden said. […]

Harden also explains that delaying sexual intercourse isn’t always associated with more positive outcomes. In her previous work, she found that teenagers who were sexually active in romantic dating relationships had fewer delinquent behavior problems.

{ University of Texas at Austin | Continue reading }

The sort of person who says “free speech” when they mean “I like doing creepy things to other people without their consent and you can’t stop me so fuck you ha ha ha ha” is pretty clearly a mouth-breathing asshole who in the larger moral landscape deserves a bat across the bridge of the nose and probably knows it. Which is why - unsurprisingly - so many of them choose to be anonymous and/or use pseudonyms on Reddit while they get their creep on.

{ John Scalzi/Gawker | Continue reading }

In 1935, Erwin Schrödinger devised an insidious thought experiment. He imagined a box with a cat inside, which could be killed at any moment by a deadly mixture of radiation and poison. Or it might not be killed at all. Both outcomes were equally probable.

But the consequence of thinking through this situation was much more shocking than the initial setup. According to quantum theory, there wasn’t just one cat inside the box, dead or alive. There were actually two cats: one dead, one alive—both locked into a state of so-called superposition, that is, co-present and materially entangled with one another. This peculiar state lasted as long as the box remained closed.

Macrophysical reality is defined by either/or situations. Someone is either dead or alive. But Schrödinger’s thought experiment boldly replaced mutual exclusivity with an impossible coexistence—a so-called state of indeterminacy.

But that’s not all. The experiment becomes even more disorienting when the box is opened and the entanglement (Verschränkung) of the dead and the live cat abruptly ends. At this point, either a dead or a live cat decisively emerges, not because the cat then actually dies or comes to life, but because we look at it. The act of observation breaks the state of indeterminacy. In quantum physics, observation is an active procedure. By taking measure and identifying, it interferes and engages with its object. By looking at the cat, we fix it in one of two possible but mutually exclusive states. We end its existence as an indeterminate interlocking waveform and freeze it as an individual chunk of matter.

To acknowledge the role of the observer in actively shaping reality is one of the main achievements of quantum theory.

{ e-flux | Continue reading }

Othello Syndrome is a type of delusional jealousy, marked by suspecting a faithful partner of infidelity, with accompanying jealousy, attempts at monitoring and control, and sometimes violence. The problem is named for Shakespeare’s Othello, who murdered his beautiful wife Desdemona because he believed her unfaithful.

I came across Othello Syndrome because of a fascinating article at The Dana Foundation, When a drug leads to suspicions of infidelity. Here we have a mental illness induced as a side-effect in some patients as a result of taking dopamine to help with Parkinson’s disease.

In rare cases the treatment, which attempts to boost dopamine levels, brings on this stubborn delusion, which can transform a previously trusting relationship into a nightmare of suspicion, bitterness, and relentless accusations of infidelity.

{ PLoS | Continue reading }

Taphophobia means “fear of graves” (taphos = tomb, and phobia = fear of), but its common use is “fear of being buried alive.” Premature burial is not an urban legend, incidents have been documented in nearly every society. […]

Many cultures built time delays into their death rites to make sure someone was truly dead. Greeks washed the dead… and some would wake up. In more difficult cases, they would cut off fingers or dunk the bodies in warm baths. The custom of the Irish wake began with the Celts watching the body for signs of life. But mistakes were made, often in times of epidemic. The hopes of preventing the spread of infection often lead to burying the dead before they were quite dead. […]

In her 1996 book, The Corpse: A History, Christine Quigley documents many instances of premature burial and near-premature burial. Skeletons were outside their coffins, sitting up in the corner of their vault after being opened years later. Others were found turned over in their caskets, with tufts of their own hair in their hands.

How might this happen? What conditions might make it look so much like you were dead that even your loved ones would let them plant you in the ground? The list is long and varied, but here are some of the more common things that can make you look dead:

Asphyxiation […]

Catalepsy […]

Coma […]

Apoplexy

{ As Many Exceptions As Rules | Continue reading }

The notion of panspermia – the transferral of viable organisms between planets, and even between star systems, seems to be getting a bit more attention these days. […]

There is no doubt that planetary surface material is continually being shipped around between rocky planets and moons in our solar system. Ejected by high energy asteroid or comet impacts, chunks of stuff follow a range of orbital trajectories that result in both eventual return to their origins or transferral to the surfaces of other worlds. Increasing evidence suggests that a variety of (typically microbial) organisms could be carried along, surviving both the extremes of pressure and acceleration, as well as exposure to thousands to millions of years of interplanetary space. They need not do this in stasis, tucked well inside the interstices of rock and ice it’s not inconceivable that microbes could be passengers in the natural equivalent of the generation ships of science fiction.

It means that there is a real possibility for life to both cross-infect, and even to be ‘seeded’ from planet or moon to planet or moon. […] Enthusiasts for panspermia go further, and have been known to invoke these mechanisms for galaxy-wide dispersal of life – taking one rare occurrence of life and spreading it across the stars. […]

There is a factor about large-scale panspermia that to my knowledge is rarely considered, and that is natural selection. […] The sequence of events involved in panspermia will weed out all but the toughest or most serendipitously suited organisms. So, let’s suppose that galactic panspermia has really been going on for the past ten billion years or so – what do we end up with?

{ Scientific American | Continue reading }

photo { Adam Kremer }

{ A Canadian patent was filed for the exclamation comma and the question comma in 1992, but it lapsed in 1995 }

Neuroscientists from New York University and the University of California, Irvine have isolated the “when” and “where” of molecular activity that occurs in the formation of short-, intermediate-, and long-term memories. Their findings, which appear in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offer new insights into the molecular architecture of memory formation and, with it, a better roadmap for developing therapeutic interventions for related afflictions.

{ NYU | Continue reading }

When I wrote about the marshmallow test several years ago, it seemed so simple:

A child was given a marshmallow and told he could either ring a bell to summon the researcher and get to eat the marshmallow right away or wait a few minutes until the researcher returned, at which time the child would be given two marshmallows. It’s a simple test of self control, but only about a third of kids that age will wait for the second marshmallow. What’s more interesting, though, is that success on that test correlates pretty well with success later in life. The children who can’t wait grow up to have lower S.A.T. scores, higher body mass indexes, problems with drugs and trouble paying attention.

The initial finding hasn’t been overturned, but a new study in the journal Cognition is adding a layer of complexity to the test with the finding that whether the child perceives the researcher as trustworthy matters.

{ Smithsonian | Continue reading }

When humans evolved bigger brains, we became the smartest animal alive and were able to colonise the entire planet. But for our minds to expand, a new theory goes, our cells had to become less willing to commit suicide – and that may have made us more prone to cancer.

When cells become damaged or just aren’t needed, they self-destruct in a process called apoptosis. In developing organisms, apoptosis is just as important as cell growth for generating organs and appendages – it helps “prune” structures to their final form.

By getting rid of malfunctioning cells, apoptosis also prevents cells from growing into tumours. […]

McDonald suggests that humans’ reduced capacity for apoptosis could help explain why our brains are so much bigger, relative to body size, than those of chimpanzees and other animals. When a baby animal starts developing, it quickly grows a great many neurons, and then trims some of them back. Beyond a certain point, no new brain cells are created.

Human fetuses may prune less than other animals, allowing their brains to swell.

{ NewScientist | Continue reading }

When we read a text, we hear a voice talking to us. Yet the voice changes over time. In his new book titled Poesins röster, Mats Malm, professor in comparative literature at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, shows that when reading older literature, we may hear completely different voices than contemporary readers did – or not hear any voices at all.

‘When we read a novel written today, we hear a voice that speaks pretty much the same language we speak, and that addresses people and things in a way we are used to. But much happens as a text ages – a certain type of alienation emerges. The reader may still hear a voice, but will not understand it fully and therefore risks missing important aspects,’ says Mats Malm.

{ EurekAlert | Continue reading }

Bas Jan Ader (1942-1975) was a conceptual artist, performance artist, photographer and filmmaker. He lived in Los Angeles for the last 10 years of his life. […]

Ader was lost at sea while attempting a single-handed west-east crossing of the Atlantic in a 13 ft pocket cruiser, a modified Guppy 13 named “Ocean Wave.” The passage was part of an art performance titled “In Search of the Miraculous.” Radio contact broke off three weeks into the voyage, and Ader was presumed lost at sea. The boat was found after 10 months, floating partially submerged 150 miles West-Southwest of the coast of Ireland. His body was never found.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading | basjanader.com }

Once upon a time, a neurosurgeon named Eben Alexander contracted a bad case of bacterial meningitis and fell into a coma. While immobile in his hospital bed, he experienced visions of such intense beauty that they changed everything. […] Our current understanding of the mind “now lies broken at our feet”—for, as the doctor writes, “What happened to me destroyed it, and I intend to spend the rest of my life investigating the true nature of consciousness.” […]

Well, I intend to spend the rest of the morning sparing him the effort. […]

Everything—absolutely everything—in Alexander’s account rests on repeated assertions that his visions of heaven occurred while his cerebral cortex was “shut down,” “inactivated,” “completely shut down,” “totally offline,” and “stunned to complete inactivity.” The evidence he provides for this claim is not only inadequate—it suggests that he doesn’t know anything about the relevant brain science.

{ Sam Harris | Continue reading }

related { Have you ever noticed that more people come back from Heaven than from Hell? }

photo { Henry Peach Robinson, Fading Away, 1858 | more: Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art }

Cerebral cortex has a very large number of testosterone receptors, which could be a basis for sex differences in sensory functions. For example, audition has clear sex differences, which are related to serum testosterone levels. Of all major sensory systems only vision has not been examined for sex differences, which is surprising because occipital lobe (primary visual projection area) may have the highest density of testosterone receptors in the cortex. We have examined a basic visual function: spatial and temporal pattern resolution and acuity. […]

Across the entire spatio-temporal domain, males were more sensitive, especially at higher spatial frequencies; similarly males had significantly better acuity at all temporal rates. […]

We suggest that testosterone plays a major role, leading to different connectivities in males and in females. But, for whatever reasons, we find that males have significantly greater sensitivity for fine detail and for rapidly moving stimuli. One interpretation is that this is consistent with sex roles in hunter-gatherer societies.

{ Biology of Sex Differences/NCBI | Continue reading }

We examined the possible sex differences in color appearance of monochromatic lights across the visible spectrum. There is a history of men and women perceiving color differently. However, all of these studies deal with higher cognitive functions which may be culture-biased. We study basic visual functions, such as color appearance, without reference to any objects. […]

There were relatively small but clear and significant, differences between males and females in the hue sensations elicited by almost the entire spectrum. Generally, males required a slightly longer wavelength to experience the same hue as did females.

{ Biology of Sex Differences | PDF }

image { Jaymes Sinclair }

Kathryn Graham and her colleagues trained 148 observers and sent them out to 118 bars in early-hours Toronto where they recorded 1,057 instances of aggression from 1,334 visits. Where the majority of psychology research on aggression is based on laboratory simulations, Graham’s team collected real-life observational data to find out who gets aggressive and why.

The researchers followed the Theory of Coercive Actions, according to which aggressive acts have one or more motives: compliance (getting someone to do something, or stop doing something); grievance; social identity (to prove one’s status and power); and thrill-seeking.

Unsurprisingly, the vast majority (77.5 per cent) of aggressive acts were instigated by men. Men more than women were driven to aggression by identity and thrill-seeking motives; by contrast female aggression was more often motivated by compliance and grievance. This often had a defensive intent, as a reaction against unwanted sexual advances. […]

The researchers found that greater intoxication led to more serious aggression in women, but not men - perhaps because the latter were emboldened enough already.

{ BPS | Continue reading }

Bobbi Duncan desperately wanted her father not to know she is lesbian. Facebook told him anyway.

One evening last fall, the president of the Queer Chorus, a choir group she had recently joined, inadvertently exposed Ms. Duncan’s sexuality to her nearly 200 Facebook friends, including her father, by adding her to a Facebook Inc. discussion group. That night, Ms. Duncan’s father left vitriolic messages on her phone, demanding she renounce same-sex relationships, she says, and threatening to sever family ties. […]

Soon, she learned that another choir member, Taylor McCormick, had been outed the very same way, upsetting his world as well.

The president of the chorus, a student organization at the University of Texas campus here, had added Ms. Duncan and Mr. McCormick to the choir’s Facebook group. The president didn’t know the software would automatically tell their Facebook friends that they were now members of the chorus.

The two students were casualties of a privacy loophole on Facebook—the fact that anyone can be added to a group by a friend without their approval. As a result, the two lost control over their secrets, even though both were sophisticated users who had attempted to use Facebook’s privacy settings to shield some of their activities from their parents.

{ WSJ | Continue reading }

photo { Ray K. Metzker }

It was not until 1943, amid world war, that penicillin was found to be an effective treatment for syphilis. This study investigated the hypothesis that a decrease in the cost of syphilis due to penicillin spurred an increase in risky non-traditional sex.

Using nationally comprehensive vital statistics, this study found evidence that the era of modern sexuality originated in the mid to late 1950s. Measures of risky non-traditional sexual behavior began to rise during this period. These trends appeared to coincide with the collapse of the syphilis epidemic. Syphilis incidence reached an all-time low in 1957 and syphilis deaths fell rapidly during the 1940s and early 1950s. Regression analysis demonstrated that most measures of sexual behavior significantly increased immediately following the collapse of syphilis and most measures were significantly associated with the syphilis death rate. Together, the findings supported the notion that the discovery of penicillin decreased the cost of syphilis and thereby played an important role in shaping modern sexuality.

{ PubMed }

In the US, as elsewhere, it is becoming more common to see queues where one can pay to get to the front. […]

Some guests simply queue up for their rides. Those who purchase green-and-gold wrist bands - fitted with radio frequency technology - are able to swim in the pool or eat snacks before being alerted to their turn. Guests who pay an even higher fee - roughly double the price of admission - get the gold flash pass, cutting their waiting time in half. […]

In October 2011, Atlanta created a priority lane on the highway for drivers with a Peach Pass - the price of driving in the lane changes depending on how much traffic there is.

{ BBC | Continue reading }

lithograph { Robert Riggs, Psychopathis Ward, c. 1940 }

Generally, we think of children as having more supernatural beliefs. As they age and gain education and information (as well as brain development) they abandon the supernatural for science. Right? Apparently not. These researchers show that we retain both supernatural and scientific ideas–flexibly combining or interchanging them to explain various events.

For example, “a person might explain AIDS using witchcraft in one instance, biology in another, or combine the two in a third instance.” Indeed, say the researchers, the tendency to invoke the supernatural explanation increases with age rather than decreases.

{ Keene Trial | Continue reading }

Man cooking squirrel for lunch sparks fire that destroys eight apartments.

PETA Attacks Pokemon For Promoting Animal Abuse.

Entire cities in the World of Warcraft have been reportedly destroyed with no one spared. Hack suspected.

Always, always bribe the school directly. Can’t stress this enough.

Urinating Through Your Mouth Is Great. Ask This Turtle.

Asian Seafood Raised on Pig Feces Approved for U.S. Consumers.

Doctors and government health officials should set limits, as they do for alcohol, on the amount of time children spend watching screens – and under-threes should be kept away from the television altogether, say paediatricians.

Women try to look more masculine as they embrace the ‘lowbrow’ look and even turn to surgery to achieve it.

A problem shared is a problem halved.

Whether You Like Someone Affects How Your Brain Processes Their Actions.

Researchers find mechanism of opiate addiction is completely different from other drugs.

Similar Molecular Origins for Certain Breast and Ovarian Cancers. Therapeutics for one could work in the other.

Scientists have figured out how to remotely control a cell’s self-destruction. Cancer cells executed by magnet.

Needle-Free Injections Perfected Using Supersonic Liquid Microjets.

Maths overtakes the speed of light.

The more we depend on the Web, the more passwords we accumulate—and forget. Some startups think they have a solution.

Facebook “Want” Button: Collecting massive amounts of data about you has never been easier.

Facebook confirms researcher exploited privacy settings to quickly collect user phone numbers.

Instantly check your privacy settings across Facebook, Google and the other websites and companies collecting your data. Get to the fix with one click.

China’s greatest innovators are the people ripping off companies like Apple and Nintendo.

We may soon find ourselves living in a world where cheap 3-D printers allow the dissemination of designs for physical objects through the Internet.

About six months ago, I realized that I had no idea what the handwriting of a good friend of mine looked like. I had known him for over a decade, but somehow we had never communicated using handwritten notes.

Insane, crabby lesbian Jack Welch quits ‘Fortune’ like a little bitch.

Derailment is when a manager with a great track record hits the skids, often spectacularly. Tendency to ‘move against’ others predicts managerial derailment.

How a Teacher Made $1 Million Selling Lesson Plans.

Prof John Hagelin‘s decision not to run against Mitt Romney and Barack Obama left this year’s US presidential race without a major candidate who is a scientist and who acknowledges – publicly – his ability to both counteract gravity and prevent crime. The Natural Law party believes that yogic flying is the key to a happy, problem-free nation.

What’s the best way to sterilize myself without telling my wife?

Why do gangsters hold their guns sideways?

Why aren’t two-by-fours two inches by four inches?

It is estimated there are about 2,000 people signed up for cryonics and approximately 250 people currently cryopreserved. Over 100 pets have also been placed in vats of liquid nitrogen with the hopes of a future recovery.

All Nobel Peace Prizes.

Do you think humans will ever walk on the sun? like i kno its realy hot but i am thinking if they went in the winter time when the sun is only like 30 degrees i bet they could do it.

Octocat Adventures.

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Detroit Police Officer Angelica Robinson apparently tweeted a photo of herself with a gun in her mouth.

Mugshot.