Research // Current

Polar Bears Eating Each Other Due to Starvation

VIDEO REPORT: Scientists claim Arctic polar bears are so hungry they are eating other bears. ITN's Lawrence McGinty reports.... more

julesrs007
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TV sex linked to high rate of teen pregnancy

Teenagers who watch television programs with high sexual content double their risk of being involved in a pregnancy, according to... more

TravG73
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A 'smart' porta-potty?

Researchers have developed a self-sustaining, portable and "smart" wastewater treatment system that promises to take... more

TravG73
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Global warming could be costly for Calif

California could face as much as $3.9 billion in annual damages caused by wildfires, rising sea levels and extreme weather events... more

bmltv
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G-speak Is ‘Minority Report’ Style OS, We Always Wanted -

"We’ve seen a range of jaw-dropping models of interactive displays, yet we long to see some more. Since we saw... more

EddieStarr
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New 30-year study shows unhappy people watch more TV

Are happy or unhappy people more attracted to television? This question is addressed by a new 30-year analysis1 of US national... more

majmok
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100 Tips and Tools for Managing Your Personal Library

For many book lovers, it's hard to resist adding new volumes to a personal library, especially if they're at a bargain.... more

sunnyspeaks
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Love handles increase risk of early death

A study of almost 360,000 people from nine European countries has resulted in some fairly shocking news. Love handles, and extra... more

ClareW
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Invention: Excrement antibiotic

Muskrats are semi-aquatic rodents prized for their musk - a strong-smelling substance produced by specialised glands - which can... more

bedeboop
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Scientists discover gene for cocaine addiction

"It has become commonplace for people who are overweight to attribute their waistline to their DNA. Now, celebrities caught... more

DeliaTheArtist
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100 Amazing Web Tools for Hobbyist Scholars

If you love to do research but don't have the degree or credentials to be truly called a scholar, then you probably fall into... more

sunnyspeaks
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It's all in your DNA, your smelly DNA

According to scientists, every person's odour is distinctly different, so much so that your smell could be used as a way to... more

mattbrawn
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Foreplay is overrated, researchers claim

The duration of intercourse – 16.2 minutes on average – is the clincher, according to the research. The findings suggest that sex therapists, who emphasise the value of foreplay, may have that been getting it wrong.
"In contrast to the assumptions of many sex therapists and educators, more attention should be given to improve the quality and duration of intercourse rather than foreplay," say Professor Stuart Brody of the University of the West of Scotland, and Professor Peter Weiss, from Charles University, Prague.
In the study, reported in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, the academics quizzed a representative sample of 2,360 Czech women of all ages about details of their sex lives, including orgasmic consistency with a partner along with estimated duration of foreplay and intercourse.
Results show that for the women in the study, the average duration of foreplay was 15.4 minutes, and intercourse, 16.2 minutes.
The researchers point out that 16.2 minutes is considerably longer than reported in American studies, where intercourse was found to last on average seven minutes.
They added: "It could be that this reflects, a greater appreciation of intercourse and sensuality by Europeans than by Americans."
The researchers looked at frequency of orgasm in the women, and foreplay and intercourse data. They concluded the links with foreplay were insignificant. Instead they suggest that the longer intercourse lasts, the greater the probability of orgasm for the women.
"This was a large number of women and the results are robust," says Professor Brody. "Sex therapists and educators put the overwhelming emphasis on foreplay, but they need to be guided by the evidence which shows that it is not the case.
"Intercourse is significantly more important. Our findings should lead researchers, educators, and clinicians to reconsider the contributions of foreplay and intercourse."

[Original article from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3405928/Foreplay-is-overrated-researchers-claim.html]The duration of intercourse – 16.2 minutes on average – is the clincher, according to the research. The findings... more

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9 days ago

Bullies may get kick out of seeing others in pain

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Brain scans of teens with a history of aggressive bullying behavior suggest that they may actually get... more

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11 days ago

Brain scans find bullies enjoy inflicting pain on their victims

Bullies brains may be hardwired to have sadistic tendencies, US imaging research suggests. An area of the brain associated with... more

DonkeyPong
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11 days ago

Porn, sex, Arab girls... (Please visit our website!)

The use of the internet now threatens the moral stability in the Middle East as internet access now brings porn to new customers.... more

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12 days ago

Antelopes click their knees to show sexual prowess

Scientists from the Zoological Society of London and the University of Copenhagen discovered that male antelopes click their knees... more

ClareW
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12 days ago

Researchers Create Clone From Frozen Mouse

Japanese scientists have cloned mice whose bodies were frozen for as long 16 years and said on Monday it may be possible to use... more

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14 days ago

Basics | Obama and McCain Walk Into a Bar ...

While Americans choose their next president, let us consider a question more amenable to science: Which candidate’s supporters have a better sense of humor? In strict accordance with experimental protocol, we begin by asking you to rate, on a scale of 1 (not funny at all) to 9 (hilarious) the following three attempts at humor:

A) Jake is about to chip onto the green at his local golf course when a long funeral procession passes by. He stops in midswing, doffs his cap, closes his eyes and bows in prayer. His playing companion is deeply impressed. “That’s the most thoughtful and touching thing I’ve ever seen,” he says. Jake replies, “Yeah, well, we were married 35 years.”

B) I think there should be something in science called the “reindeer effect.” I don’t know what it would be, but I think it’d be good to hear someone say, “Gentlemen, what we have here is a terrifying example of the reindeer effect.”

C) If you saw two guys named Hambone and Flippy, which one would you think liked dolphins the most? I’d say Flippy, wouldn’t you? You’d be wrong, though. It’s Hambone.

Those were some of the jokes rated by nearly 300 people in Boston in a recent study. (You can rate some of the others at TierneyLab, nytimes.com/tierneylab.) The researchers picked out a variety of jokes — good, bad, conventional, absurdist — to look for differences in reactions between self-described liberals and conservatives.

They expected conservatives to like traditional jokes, like the one about the golfing widower, that reinforce racial and gender stereotypes. And because liberals had previously been reported to be more flexible and open to new ideas, the researchers expected them to get a bigger laugh out of unconventional humor, like Jack Handey’s “Deep Thoughts” about the reindeer effect and Hambone.

Indeed, the conservatives did rate the traditional golf and marriage jokes as significantly funnier than the liberals did. But they also gave higher ratings to the absurdist “Deep Thoughts.” In fact, they enjoyed all kinds of humor more.

“I was surprised,” said Dan Ariely, a psychologist at Duke University, who collaborated on the study with Elisabeth Malin, a student at Mount Holyoke College. “Conservatives are supposed to be more rigid and less sophisticated, but they liked even the more complex humor.”

Do conservatives have more fun? Should liberals start describing themselves as humor-challenged? To investigate these questions, we need to delve into the science of humor (not a funny enterprise), starting with two basic kinds of humor identified in the 1980s by Willibald Ruch, a psychologist who now teaches at the University of Zurich.

The first category is incongruity-resolution humor, or INC-RES in humor jargon. It covers traditional jokes and cartoons in which the incongruity of the punch line (the husband who misses his wife’s funeral) can be resolved by other information (he’s playing golf). You can clearly get the joke, and it often reinforces stereotypes (the golf-obsessed husband).

Dr. Ruch and other researchers reported that this humor, with its orderly structure and reinforcement of stereotypes, appealed most to conservatives who shunned ambiguity and complicated new ideas, and who were more repressed and conformist than liberals.

The second category, nonsense humor, covers many “Far Side” cartoons, Monty Python sketches and “Deep Thoughts.” The punch line’s incongruity isn’t neatly resolved — you’re left to enjoy the ambiguity and absurdity of the reindeer effect or Hambone’s affection for dolphins. This humor was reported to appeal to liberals because of their “openness to ideas” and their tendency to “seek new experiences.”While Americans choose their next president, let us consider a question more amenable to science: Which candidate’s... more