NCBI ROFL: What kind of erotic film clips should we use in female sex research? An exploratory study. | Discoblog

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2518795978_f11dbdce5c“INTRODUCTION: Erotic film clips are used in sex research, including studies of female sexual dysfunction and arousal. However, little is known about which clips optimize female sexual response. Furthermore, their use is not well standardized. AIMS: To identify the types of film clips that are most mentally appealing and physically arousing to women for use in future sexual function and dysfunction studies; to explore the relationship between mental appeal and reported physical arousal; to characterize the content of the films that were found to be the most and least appealing and arousing. METHODS: Twenty-one women viewed 90 segments of erotic film clips. They rated how (i) mentally appealing and (ii) how physically aroused they were by each clip… RESULTS: The most appealing and physically arousing films tended to exhibit heterosexual behavior with vaginal intercourse. The least appealing and least physically arousing films tended to depict male homosexual behavior, fellatio, and anal intercourse. CONCLUSIONS: Erotic film clips reliably produced a state of self-reported arousal in women. The most appealing and arousing films tended to depict heterosexual vaginal intercourse. Film clips with these attributes should be used in future research of sexual function and response of women.”

woman_porn

Photo: flickr/thebittenword.com

Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: The pressing question this Penis Friday: how hard is hard enough?
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: The logic of Ménage à Trois.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Boys and girls, please open your textbooks to page 69…


Same Test Results: 23andMe is Myriad is BRCA is Medicine

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Same Test Myriad 23andMe

Myriad’s BRCA breast cancer genetic test “Multisite 3 BRACAnalysis” is the same test as 23andMe’s BRCA breast cancer genetic test “BRCA Cancer Mutations (Selected).” Both services test for the same mutations to produce the same diagnosis medical diagnosis justified by the same medical research.

See the exhibit above which depicts genetic test results for 23andMe’s BRCA genetic test and Myriad BRCA genetic test.

The contested 23andMe claim is published by 23andMe online at 23andMe’s Terms of Service, Section 3.

Contested 23andMe Claim

23andMe Service Is For Research and Educational Use Only. We Do Not Provide Medical Advice, And The Services Cannot Be Used For Health Ascertainment or Disease Purposes.

The objections to this claim are that this same test is already defined for use as “health ascertainment or disease purposes” and that the use of this test is already included in standard medical practices in the United States. One implementation of this test for use as “health ascertainment or disease purposes” includes the Myriad “Multisite 3 BRACAnalysis” test.

Thus, either the 23andMe “BRCA Cancer Mutations (Selected)” test is medicine, or the the Myriad “Multisite 3 BRACAnalysis” test is not medicine.

Note: The 23andMe and Myriad reports depicted in this exhibit have been reformatted for publication on the Internet. Email me if you would like an unformatted copy of either report depicted in the display.

Spooky “Dark Flow” Tracked Deeper Into the Cosmos; No Word on What’s Tugging at Galaxies | 80beats

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ComaClusterA year and a half ago, the team led by Alexander Kashlinsky of NASA proposed the controversial and ominously named “dark flow,” a massive gravitational force that is tugging at galaxy clusters, and that Kashlinsky says could be coming from beyond the limits of our own visible universe. Now the team is back with a follow-up study in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, and Kashlinsky says the team has tracked the dark flow out twice as far as before.

A quick note on dark flow: The reason Kashlinsky noticed it thanks to the cosmic microwave background, a signature left over from 380,000 years after the Big Bang that permeates the universe. “The hot X-ray-emitting gas within a galaxy cluster scatters photons from the cosmic microwave background (CMB),” the NASA press release says. “Because galaxy clusters don’t precisely follow the expansion of space, the wavelengths of scattered photons change in a way that reflects each cluster’s individual motion.” Using data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which mapped the microwave background, the team managed to find this tiny effect when they looked at huge clusters of galaxies, and found something totally unexpected.

What the 2008 find showed was that these galaxies were moving in a way that the distribution of matter in our visible universe couldn’t explain, traveling a million miles per hour in a particular direction. Says Kashlinsky: “This is not something we set out to find, but we cannot make it go away” [US News & World Report]. The new study confirms this weird effect, and finds that it extends farther out, to at least 2.5 billion light years away. Where Kashlinsky’s first study relied upon three years of WMAP data and 700 galactic clusters, the new study grows those numbers to five years of data and double the number galactic clusters. The clusters appear to be zooming along on one particular line aimed at Hydra, Kashlinsky said, but “right now our data cannot state as strongly as we’d like whether the clusters are coming or going,” to or from Earth [USA Today].

While the universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding in all of the directions it can whiz, no one direction should be preferred, which is why the dark flow is to damned interesting. According to our best understanding of how the matter in the Universe was distributed, there’s no way of accounting for this flow. The obvious alternate explanation is a little unnerving: something outside of our visible universe is pulling on the matter that we can see [Ars Technica].

For another explanation of dark flow, check out Phil Plait’s at Bad Astronomy, written after the initial 2008 study.

Related Content:
80beats: Mysterious “Dark Flow” Is Tugging Galaxies Beyond the Universe’s Horizon
Bad Astronomy: Trans-Cosmic Flow Broadens Our Horizon

Image: NASA, the Coma Galaxy Cluster


The Enlightenment Goes Dark | The Loom

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jeffersonToday the Enlightenment and Thomas Jefferson were disappeared from Texas.

Here’s a live blog from this morning’s hearings at the Texas State Board of Education. (Emphasis mine.)

9:30 – Board member Cynthia Dunbar wants to change a standard having students study the impact of Enlightenment ideas on political revolutions from 1750 to the present. She wants to drop the reference to Enlightenment ideas (replacing with “the writings of”) and to Thomas Jefferson. She adds Thomas Aquinas and others. Jefferson’s ideas, she argues, were based on other political philosophers listed in the standards. We don’t buy her argument at all. Board member Bob Craig of Lubbock points out that the curriculum writers clearly wanted to students to study Enlightenment ideas and Jefferson. Could Dunbar’s problem be that Jefferson was a Deist? The board approves the amendment, taking Thomas Jefferson OUT of the world history standards.

9:40 – We’re just picking ourselves up off the floor. The board’s far-right faction has spent months now proclaiming the importance of emphasizing America’s exceptionalism in social studies classrooms. But today they voted to remove one of the greatest of America’s Founders, Thomas Jefferson, from a standard about the influence of great political philosophers on political revolutions from 1750 to today.

9:45 – Here’s the amendment Dunbar changed: “explain the impact of Enlightenment ideas from John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson on political revolutions from 1750 to the present.” Here’s Dunbar’s replacement standard, which passed: “explain the impact of the writings of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and Sir William Blackstone.” Not only does Dunbar’s amendment completely change the thrust of the standard. It also appalling drops one of the most influential political philosophers in American history — Thomas Jefferson.

Incidentally, Thomas Jefferson was arguably America’s first paleontologist. Which certainly didn’t help his case in Texas.


General Material Selection Guides for Manufacturing?

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Working for a steel company, I regularly come into contact with customers who aren't familiar enough with different metals to make an informed decision on the best grade or temper for the job that they're working on. I don't have the education or experience required to give them detailed technical

RadioLab Wants Your Extinct Tattoo | The Loom

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Here’s a message from Radiolab to my tattoo’d readers (you know who you are):

Hi, all, I’m with the National Public Radio-syndicated science show ‘Radiolab,’ that has a large national and international following (http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/). Mr. Zimmer appeared on our show last season, in the ‘Parasites’ episode.

I’m in search of people who have tattoos of extinct species of plant or animal, ideally people in the greater New York City area. We’re trying to gauge the feasibility of doing a video piece on this subject for Radiolab. Please let us know via radiolab@wnyc.org if you are itching to share your extinct species tattoo story with our funky radio show!

Perhaps we’ll be calling it VideoLab soon?

Update: Be sure to send a copy to me, too, for the Tattoo Emporium.


……..DTC Genomic Medicine?

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Back in February of 2009 23andMe/Serge decided to do testing for genetic founder mutations.........


Yet they claimed it wasn't medicine and should not be used for medicine.


BRCA Ashkenazi Jewish founder mutations offer information that can confer an elevated risk of Breast, Ovarian, possibly melanoma, Pancreatic and maybe blood cancer.


There really isn't any other thing that these tests can be used for other than medical decision making and diagnosis. The diagnosis would be Genetic Risk for Cancer. There is a medical code for it in the International Classification of Diseases 9th Edition. In fact there are multiple codes. The v84.0 super family of codes.


Granted this presentation was a bit manic and the iPhone volume control was horrible (turn down your speaker volume). But the point is clear. Either founder mutation testing is a medicine or it is not.


You cannot have it both ways. Say what it means. If that means your state requires physician consultation or ordering, do it.


If it doesn't, well, I strongly recommend you receive that healthcare provider service.