Daily masturbatory activity associated with long-term weight reduction.
“Obesity is a growing cause of mortality worldwide. High cortisol levels are associated with weight gain, and previous studies indicate that sexual activity induces hormonal responses that can reduce cortisol levels in healthy adults. Furthermore, pleasurable activities, such as orgasm, have been proven to reduce caloric intake. Here, we test the hypothesis that masturbation, or firsthand autonomous pleasure (FAP), when performed on a daily basis, can directly lead to weight loss. Read More >>
While perusing your Facebook news feed, have you ever wondered why some people’s babies are adorable, while others are butt ugly? To find out why, these scientists digitally manipulated baby photos to determine what features influence baby cuteness. Turns out that round faces and high foreheads are key for cuteness, and the cuter the baby, the more willing people are to take care of it. Fortunately for those ugly babies, they are not necessarily doomed to become ugly adults.
Baby Schema in Infant Faces Induces Cuteness Perception and Motivation for Caretaking in Adults.
“Ethologist Konrad Lorenz proposed that baby schema (‘Kindchenschema’) is a set of infantile physical features such as the large head, round face and big eyes that is perceived as cute and motivates caretaking behavior in other individuals, with the evolutionary function of enhancing offspring survival. Previous work on this fundamental concept was restricted to schematic baby representations or correlative approaches. Here, we experimentally tested the effects of baby schema on the perception of cuteness and the motivation for caretaking using photographs of infant faces. Read More
You know when you come up with a really really good analogy, and you try to explain it to someone, and the more you say about it, the more you realize how awesome it is, until you look up and your friend has that WTF look? Well, here are a few definitions to help you through this abstract:
Intrauterine- within the uterus.
Hypoxic- not having enough oxygen.
Hyperoxic- having too much oxygen.
Good luck, and God speed.
Interplanetary space flight compared with fetal/neonatal motor strategy: Theoretical and practical implications.
“The condition of simulated or real manned spaceflight, i.e. thermally comfortable microgravitation (G∼0), is very similar to the intrauterine immersion to the amniotic fluid. Domination of fast muscle fibers and phasic movements forms the fetal strategy to survive in heating, strongly hypoxic, albeit normal for fetus, immersion. In adults, the adaptive response separately to microgravitation, heat stress and hypoxia also shifts muscle fiber properties to faster values. That allows to speculate about specific motor strategy induced by micro-or hypogravitation (fetal/microgravitation, or FM-strategy). After birth the newborn is subjected to a combined ‘sensory attack’ of Earth gravitation, cooler ambient temperature and normoxia which is actually hyperoxic for fetus. Read More
“An emergency department audit of horse-related injury presentations alerted researchers to a hitherto uninvestigated source of childhood harm: non-equine horses. A search for the term “horse” in the database of the South Australian Injury Surveillance and Control Unit was performed for presentations of horse-related injuries to a paediatric emergency department of an Australian tertiary teaching hospital over a 5-year period. Read More
Message from the gals of NCBI ROFL: One of us will be reproducing imminently, so NCBI ROFL will be on hiatus for a short while. In the meantime, please procrastinate by exploring our archives, containing over 900 ROFL-worthy posts!
NCBI ROFL categories:
analysis taken too far – things that probably didn’t need to be studied
batman! – an accidental category that became about bats and superheroes!
duh – obvious studies are obvious
eat me – mostly refers to food
ethanol – boozin’ it up…for science!
feelings shmeelings - psychology studies are funny
fun with animals - mostly dogs! in pants!
ha ha poop – if you like reading about the various things people stick up their butts, click here
health issues I wish I didn’t know about – see above
holy correlation – another accidental category that became about when science meets religion! lol!
holy correlation batman! - correlation may not equal causation, but who cares!
how is babby formed? – how girl get pragnent?
old-skool - PubMed goes back to the 40’s and 50’s, and they did some crazy science back then
penis friday – we dedicated one day a week to penis- (and sometimes vagina-) related science. You’re welcome, Discover Magazine!
playing with balls – mostly refers to sports
rated G – SFW and cute studies about kittens and sh*t like that
reinforcing stereotypes - no-one said science has to be politically correct!
ridiculous titles – sometimes scientists have no self control
science or human rights violation? – some studies are just plain wrong
scientist…or perv? – lots of studies about boobs
smell you later – some research just stinks… or at least it’s subject matter does
super powers – science of awesome-ness!
teh interwebs – science of the computer tubes
told you so - turns out that some of those “old-wives tales” are true!
Why Medical Hypotheses should not be a journal – less relevant now that it’s peer-reviewed :/
WTF? – self-explanatory
“Maternal determination of progeny body size and coloration in the desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria, depends on the crowding conditions experienced during the short sensitive period that occurs two to six days before the deposition of the egg pod. Solitarious (isolated-reared) females produce relatively small eggs that yield solitarious green hatchlings but, females that are exposed to crowded conditions during the sensitive period, produce larger eggs that yield the dark-colored hatchlings characteristic of gregarious forms. Read More
“BACKGROUND: Fetal facial development is essential not only for postnatal bonding between parents and child, but also theoretically for the study of the origins of affect. However, how such movements become coordinated is poorly understood. 4-D ultrasound visualisation allows an objective coding of fetal facial movements. Read More
“Anecdotal evidence suggests that a disliked food can act as a contaminant to liked food during childhood. While this has been investigated in an infant sample, the current paper presents the first study to investigate this phenomenon in a sample of young children (4 years 5 months-6 years 1 month old, N=30). Children were shown a liked food at different stages of being contaminated by a disliked food. Read More
“Even after they have taken all reasonable measures to decrease the probability that their spouses cheat on them, men still face paternal uncertainty. Such uncertainty can lead to paternal disinvestment, which reduces the children’s probability to survive and reproduce, and thus the reproductive success of the fathers themselves. A theoretical model shows that, other things being equal, men who feel confident that they have fathered their spouses’ offspring tend to enjoy greater fitness (i.e., leave a larger number of surviving progeny) than men who do not. Read More
“The evolutionary origins of music are much debated. One theory holds that the ability to produce complex musical sounds might reflect qualities that are relevant in mate choice contexts and hence, that music is functionally analogous to the sexually-selected acoustic displays of some animals. If so, women may be expected to show heightened preferences for more complex music when they are most fertile. Read More