“This research explored differences in how men and women approach “friends with benefits” (FWB) relationships. Specifically, this study examined sex differences in reasons for beginning such involvements, commitment to the friendship versus sexual aspects of the relationship, and partners’ anticipated hopes for the future. To do so, an Internet sample of individuals currently involved in FWB relationships was recruited. Results indicated many overall similarities in terms of how the sexes approach FWB relationships, but several important differences emerged. For example, sex was a more common motivation for men to begin such relationships, whereas emotional connection was a more common motivation for women. In addition, men were more likely to hope that the relationship stays the same over time, whereas women expressed more desire for change into either a full-fledged romance or a basic friendship. Unexpectedly, both men and women were more committed to the friendship than to the sexual aspect of the relationship. Although some additional similarities appeared, the findings were largely consistent with the notion that traditional gender role expectations and the sexual double standard may influence how men and women approach FWB relationships.”

Image: flickr/mando2003us

Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: The “Booty Call”: A Compromise Between Men’s and Women’s Ideal Mating Strategies.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Sex differences in Nintendo Wii performance as expected from hunter-gatherer selection
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Kiss my cytomegalovirus!

WTF is NCBI ROFL? Read our FAQ!

The latest episode of Point of Inquiry just went up, with Bill McKibben, the author most recently of Eaarth: Making Life on a Tough New Planet, a truly intense read (as I say on the show). You can download it here, and stream it here. Here's the show's description: Global warming, we're often told, is an issue we must address for the sake of our grandchildren. We need to cut carbon because of our moral obligation to future generations. But according to Bill McKibben, that's a 1980s view. As McKibben writes in his new book Eaarth: Making Life on a Tough New Planet, the increasingly open secret is that global warming happened already. We've passed the threshold, and the planet isn’t at all the same. It's less climatically stable. Its weather is haywire. It has less ice, more drought, higher seas, heavier storms. It even appears different from space. And that’s just the beginning of the earth-shattering changes in store—a small sampling of what it’s like to trade a familiar planet (Earth) for one that's new and strange (Eaarth). We'll survive on this sci-fi world, this terra incognita—but we may not like it very much. And we may have to change some fundamental ...

Artist Tim Knowles uses external forces to create his artworks through processes outside his direct control. About the “Tree Drawings” series Knowles writes: “These images are produced by trees, most of which are located in England’s Lake District. I attach artist’s sketching pens to their branches and then place sheets of [paper] in such a way that the tree’s natural motions–as well as their moments of stillness–are recorded. Like signatures, each drawing reveals something about the different qualities and characteristics of the various trees as they sway in the breeze: the relaxed, fluid line of an oak; the delicate, tentative touch of a larch; a hawthorn’s stiff, slightly neurotic scratches. Process is key to my work, so each Tree Drawing is accompanied by a photograph or video documenting the location and manner of its creation.”

Tim Knowles is one of the many thought-provoking artists featured in rich and satisfying new book from Gestalten, Data Flow 2.

Images courtesy Gestalten, “Data Flow 2″

Tree Drawing, Hawthorn on Easel #1 (part one of diptych)

I know I’ve been picking on Texas a lot lately, but c’mon guys, you keep electing people like this!

Joe Barton (R-TX) is the Representative for a landlocked (i.e., non-Gulf shore) district of Texas in the U.S. Congress, and happens to be the biggest recipient in that august body of money from the oil and gas industry ($1.7 million over the past 20 years). I’m sure that had no impact at all on his wanting to make the cringe-worthingly embarrassing apology to BP exec Tony Hayward when Hayward was getting his head handed to him by every other member of Congress yesterday. Barton said the $20 billion restitution fund was a White House "shakedown" and "a tragedy of the first proportion", and then clearly apologized to Hayward for it.

It’s hard to imagine a political low-point in this entire, vast environmental disaster, but I think Barton pretty much nailed it. In the most brain-asplodey way possible.

But wait! There’s less!

Barton, after getting eviscerated online and in the media, decided to apologize again. And for what did he apologize? Basically, he apologized because we — the public and the media — misunderstood what he said.

"I want to be absolutely clear that I think BP is responsible for this accident, should be held responsible and should in every way do everything possible to make good on the consequences that have resulted from this accident," he said. "And if anything I said this morning has been misconstrued to the opposite effect I want to apologize for that misconstrued misconstruction."

[Emphasis mine]

<sarcasm>Certainly, there was no way any rational person could possibly interpret what he said as Barton thinking BP wasn’t responsible for the accident. I’m glad he made that clear. And I’m glad he apologizes for the entire planet having misconstrued what he said.</sarcasm>

Sigh. Nothing makes insincerity more glaringly obvious than when someone says "I’m sorry you misunderstood me."^* Politicians, let me help you out here: that’s not an apology. In fact, it’s the exact opposite of an apology.

An apology, see, is when you say you’re sorry for something you did. In a very real way, it’s taking responsibility for that action. When you phrase it like Barton did, it’s actually a shifting of blame, and therefore you are not taking responsibility for that action.

I hope this helps y’all come re-election time. This has been a Public Service Announcement, brought to you by reality.

Tip o’ the top hat to Fark.

Sure, you’ve seen doctors use robots to perform surgeries, but how about robots to bring you your Jello afterward? That’s the plan at one Scottish hospital. Forth Valley Royal Hospital in Larbert, Stirlingshire is running final tests on a robot helper fleet that will deliver food, give drugs, and clean the OR–the first such system in the UK.

As the BBC reports, hospital staff can use PDAs to call the laser-guided robots, which will travel through the hospital via underground corridors and can open doors and operate elevators. The hospital will have some robots performing clean tasks (like prepping a room for surgery) and others dirty tasks (like removing clinical waste)–and believes this will reduce infection caused by the current human system.

The hospital claims that the system isn’t meant to replace people, only to give the staff more time with patients. The robot designers claim that the machines have programming to keep them from hitting people. No one claims that patients will be happy to be attended to by metallic minions, or that doctors and nurses won’t get annoyed by the robots rattling down the hallways.

Related content:
Discoblog: Robot Model Struts the Catwalk in Japan
Discoblog: Tiny Jumping Robot Can Find Enemies, Scale Fences
Discoblog: Update: “Corpse-Eating Robot” Actually a Vegetarian
Discoblog: Sweden Fines Factory After Near-Deadly Robot Attack

Image: flickr / davef3138

Subprime for Students – Why does so much federal money go to for-profit schools—and what happens when the system crashes? Steve Eisman, a Cassandra of the subprime meltdown in real estate, is now focused on the student loan & grant racket in the for-profit education industry. I have nothing against competition forcing the relatively static higher education complex to evolve. In fact I favor it. But with massive government subsidies with minimal oversight being directed toward higher education the market is producing entities which emerge not to provide a genuine service to potential students, but to capture as much of the cash flow from the feds as possible. Barring elimination of government subsidies more aggressive oversight seems the only avenue of correcting the problems in this sector.

Is Google Docs Destined To Be a Revolutionary or Footnote?. First, Google Docs lacks some of the power for presentations which desktop office packages have. Second, the flakiness of internet connections means that many people won’t use it for ‘mission critical’ tasks yet. But I assume that over the next ten years you will start to see a shift from desktop applications to web applications even in office productivity software.

Do Not Log-Transform Count Data, Bitches! R gives you no excuse.

The Essence of Pleasure. Human flourishing is more than “doing the sums.”

Anthropology, Primatology, and the Definition of Culture: Reply to Sperber. Eric Michael Johnson presents a powerful case. Though do note that in general Dan Sperber, the target of Johnson’s critique, views the overall research program he’s criticizing positively.

It’s still out there, you know.

A study out today in the journal Science tracks the path of swine flu, which may have receded from the forefront of humanity’s attention but hasn’t quit mixing and moving and making ready. The scientists led by virologist Malik Peiris say the flu virus that the world feared last year has gone back into pigs in China, where it’s laying down and recombining its genetics with other flu strains. And, they say, we’re not sufficiently monitoring the danger of a new strain jumping back to people.

“Just because we’ve just had a pandemic does not mean we’ve decreased our chances of having another,” said Dr. Carolyn B. Bridges, an epidemiologist in the flu division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We have to stay vigilant” [The New York Times].

Re-assortment, in which a virus picks up new genetic material, is scientists’ major worry. As I wrote during the swine flu scare last year, RNA viruses like the flu are especially prone to mixing. That’s what happened to produce the new strain Peiris and colleague Yi Guan found.

Peiris and Guan found the new strain in January in a Hong Kong slaughterhouse, where they regularly sample pigs arriving from farms in southeast China. It contains a gene from the pandemic swine flu, plus genes from the two strains that originally mixed to create the pandemic flu. Having sequenced the new strain’s genes, the researchers recreated it in a laboratory and exposed it to pigs. The strain proved contagious but only mildly virulent [Wired.com].

Peiris says we don’t know exactly what mixing is happening or if and when a new virus will jump back to people. But we can count on the fact that Hong Kong isn’t the only place it’s happening. That’s why we need to keep a closer eye on the world’s pigs than we are now.

“We’re not saying this particular virus is a huge threat or that people should stop eating pork,” he said, “but that this is likely happening in other places in the world. And there could be other combinations arising that could pose a threat to human health” [National Geographic].

Check out DISCOVER on Facebook.

Related Content:
DISCOVER Video: No Swine Flu Parties! (They don’t do any good)
80beats: Killer Flu Strains Lurk & Mutate for Years Before They Go Pandemic
80beats: Swine Flu Goes Deeper Into the Body Than Regular Flu–Even Into Intestines
DISCOVER: Swine Flu Was a Warning Shot. How Can We Do Better Against the Next Pandemic?

Image: CDC

This is simply a thing of beauty: what if sports news were reported like science?

HOST: In sports news, Chelsea manager Carlo Ancelotti today heavily criticised a controversial offside decision which denied Didier Drogba a late equaliser, leaving Chelsea with a 1-all draw against Sunderland.
INTERCOM: Wait. Hold it. What was all that sports jargon?
HOST: It’s just what’s in the script. All I did was read it – I’ve got no idea what it’s really on about.

Ha! It’s really a wonderful writeup. If only they had added a line saying "Referees are baffled" then it would’ve been perfect.

Tip o’ the red flag to Swoopy. Mmmmmm, Swoopy™.

A woman with kidney disease has died after receiving an experimental stem cell treatment at a private clinic in Thailand, and a postmortem examination of her kidneys revealed that the treatment was almost certainly responsible for her death. Last week we reported that Costa Rica’s health ministry had closed a stem cell clinic that catered to foreigners, which sparked lively debates around the Internet about whether patients should be able to willingly take on risks associated with experimental treatments. This new case offers a sobering reminder of what can happen when patients travel abroad looking for a miracle cure.

The woman suffered from lupus nephritis, a disease in which the immune system attacks the kidneys. When medications no longer controlled her disease, she went to a still-unnamed clinic in Bangkok where doctors said they could treat her disease using stem cells drawn from her own bone marrow. There was some medical rationale for this:

Bona-fide trials in European clinics about six years ago showed that some people with similar kidney disease benefited if stem cells from their own bone marrow were injected into their blood. The body’s immune system was first deliberately destroyed with powerful immunosuppressive drugs, then the reinjected stem cells helped to stop the attacks on the kidney by rebuilding and rebalancing the immune system. [New Scientist]

However, the Thai clinic didn’t inject the stem cells into the patient’s blood stream, instead they injected them directly into her kidneys. That means the stem cells did nothing to stop the immune system’s attack on the organs–and they instead produced never-before-seen side effects.

According to a paper about the case just published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, the woman went into a decline soon after her treatment. Within three months she required dialysis, within a year one kidney had failed, and within two years she was dead. A team of Thai and Canadian researchers performed a postmortem analysis of the kidneys, and found no evidence at all that the treatment had benefited the woman–and they found strange lumps and legions at the sites of injection. Further investigation revealed that the masses were tangled mixtures of blood vessels and bone marrow cells.

Dr Duangpen Thirabanjasak, from Chulalongkorn University, who led the research, said: “This type of lesion has never been described before in patients, and we believe that this is either formed directly by the stem cells that were injected or that the stem cells caused these masses to form.” [BBC]

Susan Quaggin, who wrote a commentary about the case for the same nephrology journal, says this tragic incident doesn’t cast a pall on reputable medical research on stem cell therapies, as animal trials and safety studies are built in to the system to protect patients.

But she says that the Thai results are yet another reminder that sick people should not gamble with their safety, and money, by turning to stem-cell tourism peddled by unscrupulous operators. “The sad part is that many people are desperate, and what makes it even worse is that it costs lots of money,” says Quaggin [New Scientist].

Related Content:
80beats: Stem Cell Tourists Denied: Costa Rica Stops Treatment at Top Clinic
80beats: Obama to Lift Bush’s Restrictions on Stem Cell Research Today
80beats: UK Aims to Create “Unlimited” Supply of Synthetic Blood from Stem Cells
80beats: FDA Approves the First Clinical Trials Using Embryonic Stem Cells
DISCOVER: Stem Cell Science Takes Off

Image: iStockphoto

We are planning some maintenance activities on Sunday June 20.

Hopefully the down time will be short, but one never knows.  If we disappear, we should return in short order (fingers crossed)