{ Marilyn Monroe photographed by Bert Stern at the Bel-Air Hotel in LA six weeks before her death on Aug. 5, 1962 }

The photographs, which include some of the most explicit images taken of the actress, show her principally in three situations: naked on a bed, baring her shoulders, back and legs; holding a transparent chiffon scarf before her naked torso; and covering her breasts with paper flowers. In other images she wears black cocktail dresses or plays mischievously with necklaces.

Yet if some of these poses might once have been considered shocking (and were, in fact, not published until 20 years after her death), they seem tame today. So rather than being hypnotized by Monroe’s raw sexuality, visitors here are invited to study the pictures for what they reveal about her.

“She was going through a hard time with her health, her career and her men,” Mr. Stern said, recalling that she had just been fired from the set of George Cukor’s unfinished movie, “Something’s Got to Give.” “I thought the photo session would be uplifting for her.”

Mr. Stern was on assignment for Vogue, but he notes in the catalog that he had always hoped to photograph Monroe nude and brought only some chiffon scarves and jewelry as accessories. Monroe’s assistant told him to order three bottles of Dom Pérignon Champagne. Monroe arrived five hours late — Mr. Stern remembers the day as June 22 — and, he says, within 15 minutes she had agreed to pose “topless” with the scarves.

“We worked from about 4:30 p.m. to about 3 a.m.,” he said from New York. “But then Vogue decided the first session was too sexy, and they wanted me to go back two or three weeks later and do fashion. After a while, she said: ‘I’m tired of doing fashion. Can we go back to doing what we did the first day?’ That’s when we did the pictures of her on the bed. By then, she was pretty drunk.”

Vogue published eight pages of the fashion shoot the day after Monroe died; it ran 12 pages of the nude images only in 1982.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

bonus:

{ Michelle Jane Lee }

Astrophysicists think they know how to destroy a black hole. The puzzle is what such destruction would leave behind.

The idea of a body so massive that its escape velocity exceeds the speed of light dates back to the English geologist John Michell who first considered it in 1783. In his scenario, a beam of light would travel away from the massive body until it reached a certain height and then returned to the surface.

Modern thinking about black holes is somewhat different, not least because special relativity tells us that the speed of light is a universal constant. The critical concept that physicists focus on today is the event horizon: a theoretical boundary in space through which light and other objects can pass in one direction but not in the other. Since light cannot escape, the event horizon is what makes a black hole black.

The event horizon is somewhat of a disappointment to many astrophysicists because the interesting physics, the stuff beyond the known laws of the universe, all occurs inside it and is therefore hidden from us.

What physicists would like, therefore, is way to get rid of the event horizon and expose the inner workings to proper scrutiny. Doing this would destroy the black hole but reveal something far more bizarre and exotic.

Today, Ted Jacobson at the University of Maryland and Thomas Sotiriou and the University of Cambridge explain how this might be done in an entertaining and remarkably accessible account of the challenge.

{ The Physics arXiv Blog | Continue reading }

artwork { Ellsworth Kelly, Black Forms, 1955 | ink, graphite and collage on paper }

Female Viagra is ineffective at improving sexual desire in women, so FDA doesn’t approve the medicine.

After much review and public controversy, the FDA met this week and determined that flibanserin, a new medication that was hoped to be an effective treatment for female sexual arousal disorder, did not significantly improve symptoms of the disorder, and ruled against approving the medication.

Female sexual arousal disorder, also known as hypoactive sexual desire disorder, (HSDD) is a relatively new diagnosis. It was historically known as frigidity, and more attention was given to the concept of the lack of sexual desire or arousal as a biological disorder potentially treatable with pharmaceuticals. When Sildenifil (Viagra) appeared on the market with enormous publicity and profit for the pharmaceutical industry, a lack of desire in women came under consideration as a potentially treatable disease.

HSDD is often defined by a persistent lack of desire or a lack of sexual fantasies. Women with HSDD rarely initiate sex or seek sexual satisfaction. It is thought that as many as 10 percent of American women may suffer from HSDD.

Possible causes may include stress, relationship problems, anger, or a lack of intimacy with sex partners.  There are also known medical causes including side effects of certain medications including some antidepressants, blood pressure medications, and birth control pills. Menopause may also decrease sexual arousal and stimulation, as well as depression.

{ LiveScience | Continue reading }

The female-libido-boosting drug flibanserin proved marginally effective in two trials reported by the FDA on Wednesday. Still, its side effects may outweigh whatever benefits it offers: 15 percent of participants stopped taking the drug due to dizziness, nausea, anxiety, or insomnia. Why does it seem like every drug causes the same side effects?

{ Slate | Continue reading }

Sizing Up the Nightlife. A study of status distinction.

Sociologist Lauren Rivera knows what it takes to get behind the velvet rope. She recommends, “Know someone. Or know someone who knows someone. If you’re a guy, bring attractive women—ideally younger women in designer clothes. Don’t go with other dudes. And doormen are well versed in trendiness, so wear Coach, Prada, Gucci—but don’t show up in a nice suit with DSW shoes.”

No, Rivera doesn’t write an advice column for the rich and the restless. But the Kellogg School of Management professor did go undercover to expose how people evaluate status in a glimpse. Specifically, she wanted to know how the meaty doormen positioned outside exclusive clubs—bouncers in nightlife language—determine who enters.

Sociologists have been studying the dynamics of power relations in social life for decades. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu saw that society was not only stratified by wealth, but also by symbols of status—the valued estimation of one’s honor and worth. Status distinctions between people can create sustaining inequalities by excluding those deemed as lower status from positions of prestige. Through surveys and experiments, sociologists have identified cues people use to evaluate status. The cues include one’s social class, social circles, displays of wealth, gender, race, accent, and taste in food and art. (…)

Yet the qualities people think they look for may not be what they actually react to at the office, at dinner parties, or on the street. Therefore, answers to a sociologist’s interview questions may not reflect real life. Furthermore, when a job, date, or club access is at stake, the terms one uses to judge competence or worthiness may change. “The laboratory is a great place to parse out variables, but in real life, status is complex and the way people draw distinctions is different in a natural setting,” says Rivera.

{ Kellogg Insight | Continue reading }

image { Bela Borsodi, Cat flaps }

Q: You’ve devoted your career to studying hormonal effects on the brain, including sex differences. What surprises you most about how male and female brains differ?

McEwen: There are fundamental sex differences between males and females that go well beyond reproduction. The more people look, the more differ­ences are found in both the structure and function of cells throughout the brain. It’s just mind-boggling when you see the complexities. There is recent data suggesting that glial cells from male and female neonates respond differently to estrogen, as if there’s already been some programming that keeps the male glial cells from responding to estrogen the same way as the female cells. We have evidence, as do others, that the hippocampus, a memory-related organ unrelated to reproduction, responds differently to estrogens. The female responds to estrogen by forming new synaptic connections in the hippocampus, while the male does not. But if you block the actions of testosterone in the male at birth, then the male will respond to estrogens to induce these synapses. There are many other examples. The differences include cerebellum, the autonomic nervous system, cerebral cortex, and hypothalamus. The more we look, the more sex differences we discover.

Q: Has science done enough to take into account sex differences in basic and clinical research?

McEwen: Science has not done enough to take into account sex differences in either basic or clinical research. It’s very clear, for example, that psychotropic medications and many other drugs work differently in males and females. Some of it is related to sex differ­ences in how the liver clears drugs from the body, but almost any drug that affects the brain is going to work somewhat differently in the male and female, depending on the gender first and secondly on the hormonal status. The NIH now has an office of Women’s Health Research and there are a number of private and university-sponsored programs in women’s health research. This has revitalized the study of sex differences, meaning, in large part, the study of whole animals and how they differ behaviorally and physiologically. You can’t just assume that what works in the male is going to work the same way in the female.

{ Sex Differences in the Brain, Inetrview with Bruce McEwen | The DANA Foundation | Continue reading }

unrelated bonus:

Few studies have examined the differences between spirituality and religion in adolescents. Now, a University of Missouri researcher is exploring these differences by determining how youth define and practice spirituality separate from religion. Defining spirituality can help reveal its impact on adolescent development. (…)

Anthony James, a graduate student in the MU Department of Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS), examined adolescents’ responses to the question, “What does it mean to be a spiritual young person?” The responses reveal that youth describe their spiritual behavior in terms of seven categories related to personal and social development, including:

• To have purpose
• To have the bond of connections, including those to a higher power (typically God), people and nature.
• To have a foundation of well-being, including joy and fulfillment, energy and peace
• To have conviction
• To have self-confidence
• To have an impetus for virtue; for example, having motivation to do the right thing and tell the truth

{ University of Missouri | Continue reading }

One of the problems with the rise of behavioral economics is that too often behavior is defined as irrational, the result of cognitive screwups. I’ve dealt with this issue before, but James Kwak convincingly argues that the BP oil disaster is not due to a cognitive failure to assess risk. (…) this is the key point:

The problem isn’t that people have cognitive biases in assessing unlikely events. When you’re dealing with a big company like Citigroup or BP, you have many people applying lots of clever thinking to these problems. The problem is that there is a systematic bias within these companies against certain assessments and in favor of others. That is, the guy who shouts, “Danger! Danger!” will be ignored (or fired), and the guy who says, “Everything’s fine, the model says disaster can strike only happen once every hundred million years” will get the promotion — because the people in charge make more money listening to the latter guy. This is why banks don’t accidentally hold too much capital. It’s why oil companies don’t accidentally take too many safety precautions. The mistakes only go one way. You have executives assessing complex situations they don’t even begin to grasp and making the decisions that maximize their corporate and personal profits. (Is BP’s CEO going to give back years of bonuses now?)
…This isn’t inability to quantify the likelihood of unlikely events; this is willfully looking the other way.

{ ScienceBlogs | Continue reading }

ceramic { Takashi Hinoda }

General “Buck” Turgidson: Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching a moment of truth both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always a pleasant thing. But it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless *distinguishable*, postwar environments: one where you got twenty million people killed, and the other where you got a hundred and fifty million people killed.

President Merkin Muffley: You’re talking about mass murder, General, not war!

General “Buck” Turgidson: Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.

{ Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, 1964 | imdb | Continue reading }

Lithium has been established for more than 50 years as one of the most effective treatments for manic depression, clinically termed bipolar disorder.

However, scientists have never been entirely sure exactly why it is beneficial.

Now, new research from Cardiff University scientists suggests a possible mechanism for why Lithium works, opening the door for better understanding of the illness and potentially more effective treatments.

{ EurekAlert | Continue reading }

photo { Anthony Suau }

{ Weegee }

{ The causes of logistics uncertainty | Full story }

{ Nietzsche’s ‘last days’ in Weimar in the summer of 1899. Whether these clips are authentic has been debated. }

An empirical test of ideas proposed by Martin Heidegger shows the great German philosopher to be correct: Everyday tools really do become part of ourselves.

The findings come from a deceptively simple study of people using a computer mouse rigged to malfunction. The resulting disruption in attention wasn’t superficial. It seemingly extended to the very roots of cognition.

“The person and the various parts of their brain and the mouse and the monitor are so tightly intertwined that they’re just one thing,” said Anthony Chemero, a cognitive scientist at Franklin & Marshall College. “The tool isn’t separate from you. It’s part of you.”

{ Wired | Continue reading }

photo { Richard Kalvar }

For a brief instant, it appears, scientists at Brook­haven National Laboratory on Long Island recently discovered a law of nature had been broken.

Action still resulted in an equal and opposite reaction, gravity kept the Earth circling the Sun, and conservation of energy remained intact. But for the tiniest fraction of a second at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), physicists created a symmetry-breaking bubble of space where parity no longer existed.

Parity was long thought to be a fundamental law of nature. It essentially states that the universe is neither right- nor left-handed — that the laws of physics remain unchanged when expressed in inverted coordinates. In the early 1950s it was found that the so-called weak force, which is responsible for nuclear radioactivity, breaks the parity law. However, the strong force, which holds together subatomic particles, was thought to adhere to the law of parity, at least under normal circumstances.

Now this law appears to have been broken by a team of about a dozen particle physicists, including Jack Sandweiss, Yale’s Donner Professor of Physics. Since 2000, Sandweiss has been smashing the nuclei of gold atoms together as part of the STAR experiment at RHIC, a 2.4-mile-circumference particle accelerator, to study the law of parity under the resulting extreme conditions.

The team created something called a quark-gluon plasma — a kind of “soup” that results when energies reach high enough levels to break up protons and neutrons into their constituent quarks and gluons, the fundamental building blocks of matter.

{ Suzanne Taylor Muzzin/Yale Bulletin | Continue reading | Thanks John-Anthony! }

photo { Isabelle Pateer }

With the warnings this week in Canada and the United States about the risks of dosing errors with vitamin D drops, I thought it was an appropriate time to discuss dose measurement as barrier to science-based care. Dosing errors are among the most common and most preventable causes of adverse drug events in children.

Why children? Drugs for children are often in liquid form for ease of measurement and administration. Typically dosed based on milligrams per kilogram, liquid formulations allow us to (in theory) deliver the exact dose that’s appropriate. But measurement isn’t always easy or intuitive. What’s the best way to measure 2.5mL (half a teaspoon)? How easy is it to confuse teaspoons (5mL) and tablespoons (15mL)? And what instructions should health professionals give parents and caregivers to ensure they can measure and administer a dose accurately?  Despite the prevalence of dosing errors, there is little evidence telling us what health professionals, or parents, can do better. Until now.

In a study by Yin et al in Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, the authors set out to determine what works, and what doesn’t, when it comes to measuring liquid medications for children.

{ Science-Based Pharmacy | Continue reading }

{ Anna Witt }