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It happens to all of us: we stay out too late or we wake up in the middle of the night fretting about some thing or another and then we end up sleep deprived, and sure enough a few days later we come down with a cold or the flu. It's the reason our mothers used to hate letting us have sleepovers. It's why we spent so much of college feeling like shit. And it's probably the reason why those of us with young children catch every bug they bring home from school. But even though we intuitively understand that rest is important to our immune system, scientists are only just starting to figure out exactly why that is, and the answer is actually pretty cool. More »
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Have you ever tried to love someone as hard as you could for five minutes? It sounds like a strange thing to attempt, but that's exactly what the people in a study at the Stanford Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging were asked to do while they sat in an fMRI machine. They scanned people of varying ages, and the person whose brain registered the most love "won." There was no prize, other than bragging rights, but in watching these poignant, fascinating interviews that Brent Hoff did with all the subjects, it becomes clear that they all found the experience unexpectedly moving and learned something about what it means to love and be loved. More »
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We talk a lot about the discrimination women face in science and engineering, but a new study says there may be a bigger reason why women don't rise higher in these fields: motherhood. Right now, science and engineering departments don't know how to deal with profs, postdocs, and grad students who might also want to be moms. But there are some simple changes they could make that would help a lot. More »
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Bad news for all you people who think your babies don't have a clue what you're saying: A new study has found that infants as young as six months can understand words being spoken to them. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania conducted two picture tests with infants, using images of food and body parts. In each, they had the caregiver ask the infant where a given object was. They found, in both versions of the test, that the the six- to nine-month-old babies fixed their eyes more on the picture of whatever object was being named than on other objects, suggesting they understood the word being said to them. The babies held similar levels of comprehension up until about 14 months, when their understanding of language increased dramatically. No word on whether these tiny innocent babes can wrap their minds around more complicated concepts like "what the fucking fuck" — so you might still be safe on that kind of stuff until the one-year mark. More »
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By now, we've all heard of the powers of oxytocin, the much-vaunted "cuddle hormone" that makes people fall in love and hamsters kill each other. Well, now there's something else oxytocin can do: predict which couples will stay together. More »
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Ever have that problem where you don't know what your ponytail is going to look like on a given day? Well, science has just solved it for you—at least if you're willing to do a bunch of calculations first. British scientists say they've created a "Ponytail Shape Equation" which can predict the shape of any ponytail. The equation uses a measure of the curliness of hair, the stiffness of each hair, and something called the "Rapunzel number," which is a ratio that accounts for "the effects of gravity on hair relative to its length." Sounds a lot more complicated than just jamming your hair through a rubber band and seeing what comes out. More »
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Nature is capable of engineering some pretty crazy stuff, so maybe it shouldn't come as a surprise that many of us are infected with a parasite that has quietly invaded our brain and is probably, as we speak, affecting things like how we drive, whether we like the smell of cat pee, how social we are, and even how we see the world. When you put it like that, it sounds insane. If that were actually true, certainly we would already know about it, right? Nope. But now we do. More »
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Finally, some science we can use: researchers have found that your middle finger has slower reaction time than your other fingers, because of the way your nerves are wired. But never fear! The nervous system is a wonderful thing, and you can train your middle finger to respond more quickly — "if, for example, you stimulate one finger electrically or by means of vibration for two to three hours." Be careful, though — having your middle finger on hair-trigger may not be the best idea. It could cost you a lot of money. More »
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On a day when the rest of America is drunk on puppy, we should remind ourselves that the wide world is full of genuine cuddle monsters and that scientists have finally answered the baffling mystery that you probably think about on an average of 4.6 times a day without even realizing it: Do big cats purr? Maybe? Zoologists are giving a collective shrug on this one because there's still some disagreement as to what constitutes a purr and why, exactly, cats purr (and something about an important-sounding hyoid bone that I didn't pay attention to because the happy kitties distracted me). Purring is an involuntary reflex and, in addition to pleasure purrs, cats purr for such macabre reasons as traumatic injury or approaching death. Think about that the next time your tabby is curled up on your lap, purring softly, and you have the urge to congratulate yourself on your deep, abiding kinship with the animal kingdom. So purring remains a mystery, which means two things: science needs to take some risks by sending zoo interns into the big cat enclosures with over-sized cat toys, and until we have definitive proof that tigers don't purr, there's still hope that we can all have pet Rajahs. More »
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Now, that Susan G. Komen for the Cure has sufficiently pissed off progressives, they've changed course and reinstated existing grants to Planned Parenthood, pissing off the anti-abortion crew they'd initially been trying to appease. But before Komen was loudly defunding— and then reinstating funding for— Planned Parenthood, they were stealthily defunding organizations that associate with embryonic stem cell research. And the financial damage from this iteration of their pro-life ideology totals in the millions. More »
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We tend to think of the differences between men and women in broad, comprehensive terms. Women are more nurturing, men are more aggressive, and on and on. Of course we rationally understand that these traits are influenced by our sex hormones, but on a deeper level we seem to regard the differences in our behavior as somehow fixed. But now new research is showing that, in fact, there are very specific genes that regulate male or female behaviors, and they can be turned on and off at will—which could drastically alter the way we think about what drives us to be who we are. More »
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We've all heard plenty of hacky jokes made about the fact that women want to stop having sex after they've been in a relationship for a while, but men don't. Now there's some new research confirming that, in fact, there is a connection between the length of a relationship and the decline in a woman's desire for sex, but let's not abandon hope just yet. More »
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Here's some bad news for testosterone already somewhat damaged reputation: the hormone apparently makes people less cooperative in groups. But there's a catch — the effect has only been observed in women. More »
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You have to hand it to spiders, they're so crafty, building their fancy webs and always managing to crawl out of your shoe and spook you just when you're least expecting it. But there is one kind of spider that has really gone above and beyond the call of duty: The orb-web spider, ephilengys malabarensis, has a detachable penis—actually it has two of them. More »
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We hear a lot about ways moms can fuck up their kids for good, but here's some nice news for once: moms who support their kids can help them grow bigger brains. More »
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Today in awesome/awful things scientists make undergraduates do: psychologists have discovered that if you make the poor kids ponder their love for their girlfriends and boyfriends, they turn into jealous dicks who are eager to insult their supposed rivals and also blast them with loud noises. Effective! More »
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We so often go to great lengths to keep the fact that we're menstruating to ourselves. From hiding our tampons in our pockets on the way to the office restroom to bowing out on dates during inopportune times, we have perfected the art of pretending we never bleed. Uterine lining? What uterine lining? But now it turns out that our bodies are betraying our efforts: some guys can tell when it's that time of the month just by hearing us talk. More »
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New research has found that young women who drink caffeinated beverages on the daily experience changes in hormone levels. How much will your Starbucks and Diet Coke addictions affect your chemical ladyhood? Like being arrested in Arizona, the way caffeine treats your lady hormones depends on your race. More »
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The topic of women with two vaginas has been fertile (sorry) territory for Tyra Banks. But now it appears the condition may be pretty common. The World Health Organization says 1 in every 3,000 women has a double-vadge, and the director of maternal fetal medicine at a Philly hospital says, "We see many couples, maybe one a month or more" (I guess he means straight couples where the lady has two vaginas, although if two women who each had two got together, that would be sort of awesome). Maybe those of us with singleton ladybits (ladybit?) should consider ourselves poorly-endowed. More »
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You've always had an inkling that this might be true, and now here comes Science to validate your gut: children with low IQs tend to grow up to be prejudiced adults who often adopt socially conservative ideologies. The "liberal elite" is not in your imagination, friends. Fox News viewers really are that dumb! More »
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Are you one of those people who wears high heels so much that you put them on to walk to the bathroom in the middle of the night? Well then you might want to send a note of apology to your calves, because you could be fucking them up big time. More »
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Nobody likes getting the cold shoulder from someone they care about. But according to a new study, even being ignored by a stranger can make you feel slightly crappier about life. More »
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Our favorite scientist, Samantha Garvey, was on Today this morning, showing off her autographed copy of the State of the Union speech and telling Ann Curry: "My research, my science, has been my ticket out." Since becoming one of 300 semi-finalists in the annual Intel Science Talent search, the homeless teenager has received a $50,000 scholarship from Ellen DeGeneres and AT&T, attended the President's speech in Washington, DC (where she met a bunch of representatives and Nancy Pelosi), and applied to Yale and Brown. Garvey is not one of the 40 finalists in the Intel contest, but it's obvious she's winning anyhow. When asked about her future, Garvey said: "I want to work hard…Continue doing my science. Being at the State Of The Union last night, I got to meet all of these fantastic people, and I just thought, I kind of want to do what they do." Does anyone doubt Samantha Garvey can do whatever she sets her mind to? More »
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A large new study has found that eating fried foods doesn't increase your risk of heart disease. One caveat: the study was conducted in Spain, where people mostly fry stuff in olive or sunflower oil. So deep-frying a chicken in a bucket of lard could still be a no-no. More »
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It turns out it's hard out there for a narcissist — at least if he's a guy. A new study has found that men who are full of themselves may actually be stressed out by their own narcissism. More »
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A new study shows that for people with heart disease, "sexual activity generally is safe and no more strenuous than golf." That's provided that you do it "with a familiar partner in a familiar setting," so sex on the golf course is apparently out (unless that's your regular thing). Still, this is a study that's veritably begging for its corresponding Viagra commercial. More »
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Sometimes our planet's constant wars can seem as senseless and brutish as a bunch of Neanderthals throwing rocks at each other, and according to one team of scientists, that's what they are: an outgrowth of men's instinct to defend their mates and territories against outsiders. Are you skeptical? Good. More »
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A depressing new study has found that when they solve problems in groups, women tend to do worse than their IQ would suggest. The researchers aren't sure why this is, but we have some theories. More »
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Gaydar — the ability to be able to tell who's gay just by looking or talking to them — is a "skill" of debatable merit, but many people like to brag about having finely calibrated systems of working out who's gay and who's not. Of course, when pressed, nobody can ever really put their finger on why exactly they sense someone might be gay. Moreover, people are often wrong, which can lead to all manner of unfortunate situations. But luckily, science has taken it upon itself to study some of the inner workings of gaydar. (Maybe they had a slow week in between trying to cure cancer and figuring out whether wine is killing us or saving us?) More »
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Members of the scientific community have marveled for years at the Australian bowerbird's elaborate courtship ritual, in which the male bowerbird builds an elaborate edifice of a twig canopy arching over an avenue (called a "gesso") of stones, bones, and shells in order to impress on a female bowerbird that he is dexterous and, therefore, a good lay. Female bowerbirds are attracted to the biggest structures containing the shiniest pebbles, — a fact that ornithologists seem to find hilarious — but research has revealed that males have employed an optical illusion in order to avoid the hard work of finding and arranging paving material for their avenues. Using a forced perspective trick that even medieval painters couldn't quite figure out, male bowerbirds arrange stones at the avenue's entrance from smallest to largest, thus making it appear more like a Champs-Elysees and less like a seedy alley in Perth (Perth, I'm sure, is a wonderful city). More »
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In my opinion, there is no way to administer a math test that will identify inborn ability. So people who think the greater presence of men in high-end math and science positions is a result of the distribution of inborn abilities generally rely on the observation of (a) big gender gaps, (b) long-standing gender gaps, or (c) widespread gender gaps, to make their case. More »
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Research has already shown that guys do worse on cognitive tests when they're forced to interact with a lady beforehand. Now a new study reveals that all you need to render guys brainless is a woman's name on an instant message screen. More »
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There are many factors that define a hipster in our minds. Glasses always seem to be at the top of the list, but clothing matters too, and, of course, there is their obsession with the latest, coolest music. And it's that quality that a new study from Harvard University sheds a little light on. The researchers found that it's a quest to have unique tastes that drives people into being hipsters. They analyzed the Facebook pages of 200 college students over four years, and they concluded that "students who shared similar tastes in music bonded, instead of those students passing on tastes to each other." More »
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A new study purports to find that scarcity of women turns dudes into spendthrifts. So should sex ratio be a new economic indicator? More »
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Here's your inspiring story for the day: 17-year-old Samantha Garvey of Long Island moved into a homeless shelter with her family a year ago, but she still managed to become one of 300 semi-finalists for the annual Intel Science Talent Search. Garvey conducted a two and a half year study on aquatic ecosystems, which she describes in the video above. She says her family's situation "motivates me to do the work I do. I want a better life. I want a home. I want to show other people that even though you're going through something bad, there's a brighter side to everything." More »
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Who doesn't love a new study about drinking? You can feel superior to all those other sloppy drunks, until you read the fine print and realize that what you think of as a normal glass of wine actually counts as five drinks or whatever. Here to make you feel briefly good about yourself and then bad again are five fun facts from the CDC's freshly-released study on Americans' binge-drinking habits. More »
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Young people with cancer have a lot to contend with, and one major issue is the potential effect of treatment on their fertility. But young female patients say doctors are failing to discuss potential fertility problems with them. More »
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Apparently scientists in Montréal no longer need to put rats in a maze to conduct experiments, because they have shopping malls. Bonnie Swaine and Eva Kehayia, researchers at the Centre de recherche interdisciplinaire en réadaptation du Montréal (CRIR), turned the Alexis Nihon Plaza shopping center into a "living laboratory." According to the Montreal Gazette, "Kehayia and Swaine note that 17 per cent of Quebecers deal with some kind of physical handicap (48 per cent of those over age 65), so public spaces need to be better designed to accommodate them." What do these accommodations entail? Well, the researchers will be testing: More »
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You know how a deep voice in a man is a surefire sign of his ability to impregnate you with lots of his genetically-fit babies, which is exactly what you, as a woman, are hardwired to want? Yeah, no. Turns out, dudes with deep voices actually have substandard sperm. More »
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