Alli Sebastian Wolf | The Glitoris

100:1 scale model,

painted gold and covered in glitter and sequins

Alli Sebastian Wolf is an artist from Sydney, Australia. She says The Glitoris was made to educate people on a part of the body that is still greatly misunderstood. “It’s political and feminist, but also a celebration,” she said. “It’s a hell of a lot of playful fun. Under the surface it’s so much more. It’s a glorious spaceship-looking creature with 8,000 nerves that can swell to three times its size in moments.”

Wolf’s “Glitoris” is set to be exhibited in Sydney bar and art space The Bearded Tit. The exhibition will also feature performances by a group of “Clitorati”, described by Wolf as “bejewelled priestesses of the clit”.

Seems appropriate on the day Americans inaugurate a giant prick.

Source

Botox May Help Treat Depression

In the first randomized, controlled study on the effect of botulinum toxin—known commercially as Botox—on depression, researchers investigated whether it might aid patients with major depressive disorder who had not responded to antidepressant medications. 

Participants in the treatment group were given a single dose (consisting of five injections) of botulinum toxin in the area of the face between and just above the eyebrows, whereas the control group was given placebo injections. Depressive symptoms in the treatment group decreased 47 percent after six weeks, an improvement that remained through the 16-week study period. The placebo group had a 9 percent reduction in symptoms. 

The findings appeared in May in the Journal of Psychiatric Research. Study author M. Axel Wollmer, a psychiatrist at the University of Basel in Switzerland, believes the treatment “interrupts feedback from the facial musculature to the brain, which may be involved in the development and maintenance of negative emotions.” Past studies have shown that Botox impairs people's ability to identify others' feelings, and the new finding adds more evidence: the muscles of the face are instrumental for identifying and experiencing emotions, not just communicating them.

Scientific American

TED | Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are

Body language affects how others see us, but it may also change how we see ourselves. Social psychologist Amy Cuddy shows how “power posing” -- standing in a posture of confidence, even when we don’t feel confident -- can affect testosterone and cortisol levels in the brain, and might even have an impact on our chances for success. Amy Cuddy’s research on body language reveals that we can change other people’s perceptions — and even our own body chemistry — simply by changing body positions.

Link to site

Monkey Monday | Gibbons On Helium Sing Like Sopranos

Image: Takeshi Nishimura
Scientific American

Japanese researchers have shown that helium-huffing gibbons utilize the same vocal techniques as professional soprano singers.

The study reveals that gibbons, whose vocalizations are unique among non-human primates, share a physiological similarity to humans.

The unique project was led by Takeshi Nishimura from the Primate Research Institute at Kyoto University, Japan. The study, which was published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, analyzed the singing of white-handed gibbons at Fukuchiyama City Zoo, in northern Kyoto.

Link to article.

Via io9.

Monkey Monday | The Two Sides Of Using Chimpanzees In Research

Two letters regarding the use of chimpanzees in research were recently published in the Washington Post:

From Kathleen Conlee, Senior Director of Animal Research Issues at the Humane Society of the United States:

An Institute of Medicine committee met this month to debate whether U.S. scientists should continue conducting medical research on chimpanzees [“Advances in research may help spare medical chimps,”]. Those with a financial interest or self-interest in the research tried to argue for continued chimpanzee use, but when pressed by the committee they couldn’t defend their claim that chimpanzees are scientifically necessary.

Ethical and economic issues cannot be divorced from science. It is expensive to warehouse chimpanzees in laboratories and unethical to confine these magnificent, long-lived animals in barren cages.

Congress’s Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act, which would end invasive research on chimpanzees and retire government-owned chimpanzees to sanctuaries, would save taxpayers about $30 million annually and provide chimps the peaceful life they deserve. Let’s do right by the chimpanzees, taxpayers and medical research and pass this legislation.

From Alice Ra'anan and Claire Edwards, employees of the American Physiological Society:

The article on using chimpanzees for research noted that the United States is the only developed nation where this approach occurs. However, scientists from countries without chimpanzee research colonies regularly conduct such studies in the United States. In fact, when the Netherlands disbanded its colony, it explicitly cited research in the United States as a safeguard against future need.

Research with chimpanzees is highly regulated. The animals have access to excellent veterinary care and are housed whenever possible in compatible social groups and in an enriched environment.

Many nuances emerged in the discussions with the Institute of Medicine panel. Several experts who said that chimpanzees were no longer a primary research model in their fields nevertheless noted that small-scale chimpanzee studies might still be needed to resolve specific problems, such as providing proof of concept that a new drug or delivery system is likely to work in humans.

While the need may be small, instances remain where no other research model can provide timely answers without undue risk to humans.

Read the referenced article here.

Test Your Reaction Time

Click here to test your reaction time

Test your reaction time with this quick game from BBC Science. Five sheep want to leave their flock and run for freedom. You click the tranquilizer button when you see a sheep moving. There's a three second penalty if you shoot a dart when no sheep are running. I'm a Bobbing Bobcat -- my average score was 0.2078 seconds. Not bad for someone of a "certain age."

The Presurfer

Moses Lanham, Jr., The Backwards Feet Man

Moses Lanham Jr., known as the "Backwards Feet Man" and "Mr. Elastic," has the unique ability to rotate his feet behind him. This week, the 49-year-old tax accountant and theater usher from Monroe, Mich., is heading overseas to Rome to set two new records on the Guinness World Records Show.

More about Mr. Elastic here.

Suren Manvelyan | Your Beautiful Eyes

Suren Manvelyan was born in Yerevan, Armenia in 1976. He received a PhD in theoretical physics in 2001 and has been a research scientist at the National Academy of Sciences since 1997. He became professional photographer in 2006.

Craving Romantic Rejection

Researchers have linked rejection by a romantic partner to brain activity associated with motivation, reward and addiction cravings, according to a study published in the July issue of the Journal of Neurophysiology. Lucy Brown, Ph.D., clinical professor in the Saul R. Korey Department of Neurology and of neuroscience at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, is the corresponding author of the study. This is the third publication in which Dr. Brown and her research group demonstrated that primitive reward and survival systems are activated in people who look at their beloved.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers recorded the brain activity of 15 college-age adults who had recently been rejected by their partners but reported that they were still intensely “in love.” Upon viewing photographs of their former partners, several key areas of participants’ brains were activated, including the ventral tegmental area, which controls motivation and reward and is known to be involved in feelings of romantic love; the nucleus accumbens and orbitofrontal/prefrontal cortex, which are associated with craving and addiction, specifically the dopaminergic reward system evident in cocaine addiction; and the insular cortex and the anterior cingulate, which are associated with physical pain and distress.

By tying these specific areas of the brain to romantic rejection, the research provides insight into the anguished feelings that can accompany a break-up, as well as the extreme behaviors that can occur as a result, such as stalking, homicide and suicide.

“Romantic love, under both happy and unhappy circumstances, may be a ‘natural’ addiction,” said Dr. Brown. “Our findings suggest that the pain of romantic rejection may be a necessary part of life that nature built into our anatomy and physiology. A natural recovery, to pair up with someone else, is in our physiology, too.”

Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Like Snowflakes, Only They Smell

Did you know that no two farts are exactly alike? It’s true. Farts are sort of like snowflakes in that regard. Little, invisible, smelly, snowflakes.

While everybody past the age of 10 is well-versed in the manifold variety of farts and their associated sounds and smells and sensations and sobriquets, precious few of us know anything at all about the sources of their great diversity. Can you, for instance, explain the lingering piquancy of the “hot fart” in any greater scientific detail than “that one was spicy”? I can’t. And that’s sad. In order to rectify this egregious oversight by the American public school system and get the straight poop on the basics of butt-gas, I had a little sit down with Dr. Lester Gottesman, a proctologist from St. Luke’s Roosevelt who bears an uncanny resemblance to Jerry Springer.

Read the rest of the interview with Dr. Gottesman at Vice

Via Jezebel

For tomB