SEX


SEX
'06 & 07.

Also, of course, see the Socio-Biology file.
. . Also see the file for 06.
. . Also see the file for 05 & 04.
. . Also see the file for 03 & back.
Skip down to "STATS & STUDIES". (Not separated lately.)
Skip down to "BASIC IMPORTANT INFO".
.
  • Genitals are merely like belly-buttons; some are innies, some are outies!
  • Sex without committment feels like a bed without blankets; a saddle without a horse. (Or is it a horse without a saddle? Ya get a ride, but it hard to stay there!)
    . . I thot of removing the above, but... only 4 kinds of people notice it. 1: pre-teen boys, who snicker. 2: older immature boys, who nudge-nudge each other. 3: prissy women, who get huffy. 4: You (right?), who can see that, yes, exactly, it's hard to stay in a relationship w/o committment --if you're only there for the ride.

    Heard in a movie --"Good Advice": "She wanted one man to fulfill her every need. He wanted every woman to fulfill his one need."
    . . We're socially supposed NOT to do . what we're genetically supposed to do. Double-bind!

    "I believe in gettin' married... as many times as it takes!" ~ Billy B. Thornton
    . . ...my ex-wife... may she rest in peace... ... SOON. ~anon

    Mar 7, 05: Jon's realization: there must be quite an overlap between female sociopaths and nymphomaniacs --many Ns may be S's. They fail to see any reasons "why not". This gives normally-sexed women a bad name, as the socio's also fail to see why not to do a lot of *bad things.
    Absence makes the fond heart wander.
  • There's far less difference between people's sex-drives than there is in their different *suppressions* of drive.
    "Women look best once a month"

    . . In a study conducted at the University of Newcastle, 51-59% of male and female subjects preferred photos of women at their peak fertility in their cycle to photos of the same women 14 days later.
    Norway has allowed homosexuals to form marriage-like partnerships since 1993, & is one of the world's most liberal countries when it comes to gay rights.
    .
    July 14, 09: Living happily ever after needn't only be for fairy tales. Australian researchers have identified what it takes to keep a couple together, and it's a lot more than just being in love.
    . . A couple's age, previous relationships and even whether they smoke or not are factors that influence whether their marriage is going to last, according to a study by researchers from the Australian National U.
    . . The study, entitled "What's Love Got to Do With It", tracked nearly 2,500 couples --married or living together-- from 2001 to 2007 to identify factors associated with those who remained together compared with those who divorced or separated.
    . . It found that a husband who is nine or more years older than his wife is twice as likely to get divorced, as are husbands who get married before they turn 25. Children also influence the longevity of a marriage or relationship, with one-fifth of couples who have kids before marriage --either from a previous relationship or in the same relationship-- having separated compared to just 9% of couples without children born before marriage. Women who want children much more than their partners are also more likely to get a divorce.
    . . A couple's parents also have a role to play in their own relationship, with the study showing some 16% of men and women whose parents ever separated or divorced experienced marital separation themselves compared to 10% for those whose parents did not separate.
    . . Also, partners who are on their second or third marriage are 90% more likely to separate than spouses who are both in their first marriage.
    . . Not surprisingly, money also plays a role, with up to 16% of respondents who indicated they were poor or where the husband --not the wife-- was unemployed saying they had separated, compared with only 9% of couples with healthy finances.
    . . And couples where one partner, and not the other, smokes are also more likely to have a relationship that ends in failure.
    . . Factors found to NOT significantly affect separation risk included the number and age of children born to a married couple, the wife's employment status and the number of years the couple had been employed.
    July 8, 09: According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, masturbation is "intrinsically and gravely disordered." That's because "sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes." If you aren't making babies, you can't play with the equipment.
    . . But what if playing with the equipment helps you make babies? Research made public last week suggests precisely that. In a paper presented to the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, Dr. David Greening, reports that 81% of the men in his study significantly improved their sperm quality, as measured by DNA fragmentation, through a simple one-week program.
    July 7, 09: BarBe Q, the shapely mannequin outside KT's Barbecue restaurant in Reading, Ohio, can continue wearing her revealing halter top and short shorts. On May 13, the city's Design Review Board agreed to let BarBe Q remain on display outside as long as she dressed more modestly. But restaurant owner Kenny Tessel appealed, and Monday night Reading's Board of Zoning Appeals agreed with him 3-2. He had told the design review board that the advertising gimmick had increased his business by 40%.
    July 7, 09: 74% of South Korean male office workers feel uncomfortable when female colleagues show too much leg or cleavage in the workplace, a survey revealed. Some 56% of them cited micro-miniskirts as their chief complaint, while 51% objected to excessive cleavage. Low-rise trousers that reveal women's underwear, "killer heels" and flashy outfits in general were also cause for complaint.
    . . Women meanwhile complained mostly of stains on the shirts and ties of their male colleagues.
    Jun 30, 09: Having sex every day improves the quality of men's sperm and is recommended for couples trying to conceive, according to new research. He studied 118 men with above-average sperm DNA damage and found the quality of their sperm increased significantly after they were told to ejaculate daily for seven days. On average, their DNA fragmentation index --a measure of sperm damage-- fell to 26% from 34%.
    Jun 24, 09: Puzzling new research suggests women have a harder time than men looking at babies with facial birth defects. It's a surprise finding. Psychiatrists from the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital, who were studying perceptions of beauty, had expected women to spend more time than men cooing over pictures of extra-cute babies. Nope. Instead, the small study raises more questions than it can answer.
    . . First the background: The McLean team already had studied men and women looking at photos of adults' faces on a computer screen. They rated facial beauty, and could do various keystrokes to watch the photos longer. A keystroke count showed men put three times more effort into watching beautiful women as women put into watching handsome men.
    . . Lead researcher Dr. Igor Elman wondered what else might motivate women. Enter the new baby study. This time, 13 men and 14 women were shown 80 photos of babies, 30 of whom had abnormal facial features such as a cleft palate, Down syndrome or crossed eyes. Participants rated each baby's attractiveness on a scale of zero to 100, and used keystrokes to make the photo stay on the screen longer or disappear faster. Women pressed the keys 2.5 times more than men to make photos of babies with the facial abnormalities disappear.
    . . Both genders spent equal time and effort looking at photos of the normal babies. The study couldn't explain the gender disparity. Elman noted that previous work has linked child abandonment and neglect to abnormal appearance, and even asked if the finding might challenge the concept of unconditional maternal love.
    Naked mountain hikers in the Swiss canton will in future face on the spot fines of 200 Swiss francs ($170). A wave of naked hiking --particularly popular with German visitors-- outraged people last year in the traditionally minded canton, Switzerland's smallest by population, which gave women the vote only in 1990. It was not clear where the naked hikers would find the money.
    June 17, 09: President Obama signed a memorandum today granting health care and other benefits to the same-sex partners of federal employees.
    June 16, 09: Examples of same-sex behavior can be found in almost all species in the animal kingdom --from worms to frogs to birds-- making the practice nearly universal among animals, according to a new review of research on the topic.
    . . "It's clear that same-sex sexual behavior extends far beyond the well-known examples that dominate both the scientific and popular literature: for example, bonobos, dolphins, penguins and fruit flies." Male bottlenose dolphins engage in same-sex interactions to facilitate group bonding. Female Laysan Albatross can remain pair-bonded for life.
    May 1, 09: Maine's Senate passed a bill y'day that could make the northeastern U.S. state the fifth in the country to allow gay marriage, but the lower chamber and governor have yet to approve it.
    May 1, 09: Queen Elizabeth II was at home at Windsor Castle, the sentries who guard her were on duty, and the large park surrounding the magnificent building was full of tourists on a Sunday afternoon. So it didn't take long for people to realize that something was out of order when an inebriated couple arrived from a nearby restaurant and began having sex on a grass bank outside the castle, according to witnesses.
    . . "One window from the guardroom opened up and when a soldier saw what was going on he told his mates —-and lots of windows opened up. The couple did not care who was looking and just kept going as if they were in their own bedroom."
    . . Japanese tourists filmed the couple, who only stopped when police officers arrived on the scene, witnesses said. Thames Valley Police said the man and woman were arrested and given a written warning about outraging public decency.
    Couple fined for strolling naked in Singapore. A Swedish man and a Singaporean woman have been fined for strolling naked through a busy upscale bar and restaurant area of Singapore, for a stunt after a few drinks, local media reported.
    Apr 29, 09: How guilty would you feel if you cheated on your partner? The answer has a lot to do with the type of infidelity --and your gender.
    . . Men feel guiltier following sexual infidelity, while women feel guiltier after emotional transgression, a new study finds.
    . . The researchers had hypothesized the opposite. Men, they thought, would feel guiltier if they fell in love with someone else, as women place a high value on emotional loyalty and the resources it provides; similarly, because men's sex drive is considered to be more biologically hard-wired, it was assumed women would have more guilt knowing the pain that sexual infidelity would cause their partner.
    . . With this in mind, researchers told the study's 130 participants, selected from several public locations throughout Toronto, to think of a past, current or hoped-for relationship. They then asked the subjects to imagine they had become interested in someone else, and presented six dilemmas --with one emotional and one sexual option for each - to see which caused more guilt.
    . . Across the board, men felt guiltier about sexual cheating, while women felt guiltier about emotional infidelity. Particularly, women said they would feel guiltier after falling in love with someone, rather than trying different sexual positions with them; men said they would feel guiltier having sex without emotion rather than love without sex, even with a one-night stand.
    . . Why were the researchers proved wrong? The study, published recently in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, cites some possible reasons.
    . . * Men might believe their relationships to be more sexual than they are, thus giving more weight to sexual involvement in general.
    . . * Women, meanwhile, could feel levels of emotional investment that simply aren't there.
    . . * In addition, people might have an inherent inability to see one's values as different from that of a partner's.
    . . "If an individual assumes that everyone, regardless of their sex, is most concerned with the same form of infidelity that they themselves are most concerned about, this person would consequently make false inferences leading to feelings of guilt", writes study leader Maryanne Fisher, a professor at St. Mary's U in Halifax, Canada.
    . . A second part of the study finds that while both men and women think it would be harder for their significant other to forgive sexual, as opposed to emotional, infidelity, women --not men-- say that they'd be more likely to leave if they found out their partner was sleeping with someone else.
    . . Is it possible to cheat without feeling bad about it?
    . . When people behave in a highly motivated manner, "they experience less guilt", Fisher said. "In these instances, people seem more capable of justifying their actions to themselves, which reduces feelings of guilt."
    Apr 29, 09: New Hampshire's Senate passed a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage after an amendment was added that prohibits polygamy and marriage of family members, among other measures.[WHAT?! What's one got to do with the others?!]
    Apr 22, 09: Seventeen-year-olds will have access to the so-called "morning-after" pill without a prescription, U.S. health regulators said, allowing greater over-the-counter sales of emergency contraception.
    Apr 20, 09: Over 1,200 volunteers from the length and breadth of India had their penises measured precisely, down to the last millimeter. The scientists even checked their sample was representative of India as a whole in terms of class, religion and urban and rural dwellers. The conclusion of all this scientific endeavour is that about 60% of Indian men have penises which are between three and five centimeters shorter than international standards used in condom manufacture.
    . . The issue is serious because about one in every five times a condom is used in India, it either falls off or tears, an extremely high failure rate. And the country already has the highest number of HIV infections of any nation.
    Apr 15, 09: Tennessee Public schools are blocking students' internet access to pro-gay websites but *don't filter out sites preaching against homosexuality.
    Apr 14, 09: A professor dubbed "the love guru" is contesting India's elections on an unusual platform -- more freedom for lovers and standing up to vigilante groups who frown on public displays of affection. Matuk Nath Choudhary is promising that, if he wins, lovers of all ages will be encouraged to give free rein to their emotions wherever and whenever they please.
    . . "But my message --on love, education, improving society-- makes sense, which is why people are listening to me. Everyone is scared of talking about love and sex. I do this openly and that is why I appeal to the youth."
    . . Choudhary, 55, launched his manifesto last week with promises to bring in "adequate safeguards to lovers" including a "lovers' park" in Patna where couples could meet "away from the prying eyes of society." The idyllic setting --envisioned with plenty of trees and shrubs-- will have therapists and counsellors on hand to dispense advice on love, sex and relationships.
    . . Choudhary's words would appear to be music to the ears of India's amorous couples who often struggle to steal a kiss away from family chaperones, vigilante groups and traditionalists. India's public parks have become battlegrounds between lovers and the self-styled Hindu extremist "moral police" who have beaten up and publicly humiliated couples for sitting together or holding hands. Earlier this year, police arrested and charged a young married couple with obscenity for allegedly kissing at a railway station. They were later released, thanks to a court order.
    . . "We need to ensure our population is controlled. To do that I, propose all couples have just one child, whose education the state will take care of. "In case there are two or more children in families above the poverty line, I propose a tax on the second child and others born after that."
    Apr 13, 09: Scientists say they understand more about how the body responds to pleasurable touch. A team has identified a class of nerve fibers in the skin which specifically send pleasure messages. And people had to be stroked at a certain speed --4-5cm per second-- to activate the pleasure sensation.
    . . They identified "C-tactile" nerve fibers as those stimulated when people said a touch had been pleasant. If the stroke was faster or slower than the optimum speed, the touch was not pleasurable and the nerve fibres were not activated. The scientists also discovered that the C-tactile nerve fibers are only present on hairy skin, and are not found on the hand.
    . . Professor McGlone said it was part of the evolutionary mechanism that sustained relationships between adults, or with children. "Our primary impulse as humans is procreation, but there are some mechanisms in place that are associated with behavior and reward which are there to ensure relationships continue."
    Apr 10, 09: Antidepressant drugs, already known to cause sexual side effects, may also suppress the basic human emotions of love and romance.
    . . That SSRIs, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors — the most common type of antidepressant — cause sexual dysfunction is common knowledge. Of the 31 million adults in the US who take the SSRIs, about 30% are believed to experience sexual dysfunction.
    . . But a new theory suggests that SSRI antidepressants may also subtly alter the fundamental chemistry of love and romance, snuffing the first sparks between two people otherwise destined to become lovers, and preventing couples from bonding.
    . . SSRI antidepressants work by boosting circulating levels of serotonin, a mood-regulating neurotransmitter that also inhibits desire. The drugs also decrease dopamine, a neurotransmitter involved in a wide range of cognitive and behavioral processes, among them desire and arousal. The new research suggests that dopamine may also play a part in romance.
    . . During sex, a cocktail of hormones is released that appears to play important roles in fostering romantic attachment within the brain. Take away sex, and romantic love can dwindle. But this is just part of the problem, say Fisher and U of Virginia psychiatrist James Thomson. Dopamine also appears central to the neurobiology of romantic love and attachment, conditions that Fisher believes to be affected by —-but ultimately distinct from-— sexual love and its effects. She and Thomson say that SSRIs may do more than cause sexual dysfunction: They also suppress romance.
    Apr 8, 09: Love at first sight could be real, at least when it comes to genetics, a new study suggests.
    . . In research done with fruit flies (but which may have implications for humans) scientists found that females are biologically primed to sense which males are more genetically compatible with them, and to make more eggs after mating with good matches than they do with less compatible matches. The findings suggest that females can somehow judge a potential mate upon first meeting and biologically react to boost the chances of producing successful offspring.
    . . The researchers mated female fruit flies with males from the same strain, and from a different strain, and noted differences in reproductive attributes and behavior soon after mating. When females mated with males that were not of the same strain, they seemed to be able to tell that they were more genetically compatible, perhaps because their progeny would be less inbred, and produced more eggs and more offspring.
    . . It appears the females can sense which males are closely related to them --a factor that can lead to genetic defects - and respond better to males that are expected to produce healthier offspring.
    . . The scientists discovered that the females seemed to be in a primed state even before meeting the males, with the chemicals and proteins needed for their response already in place, without the need for new genes to be activated, as the researchers expected.
    Apr 8, 09: Chimpanzees enter into "deals" whereby they exchange meat for sex, according to researchers. Male chimps that are willing to share the proceeds of their hunting expeditions mate twice as often as their more selfish counterparts. This is a long-term exchange, so males continue to share their catch with females when they are not fertile, copulating with them when they are. "We looked at chimps when they were not in oestrus, this means they don't have sexual swellings and aren't copulating. The males still share with them --they might share meat with a female one day, and only copulate with her a day or two later."
    . . Dr Gomes thinks that her findings could even provide clues about human evolution. She suggests this study could lay the foundations for human studies exploring the link between "good hunting skills and reproductive success".
    Apr 7, 09: Body odor reveals more than when we last showered --it also packs important biological information. And apparently women are better at catching the scent of body odor than men, a new study found. "It is quite difficult to block a woman's awareness of body odor. In contrast, it seems rather easy to do so in men."
    . . The researchers think women are more attuned to underarm stink because the biological data it contains helps them choose mates. The fact that most women are even better at smelling male body odor than female body odor seems to support this idea. When the researchers combined the body odor with other fragrances, the smell was often masked for men, though women could usually still detect it.
    . . "Our studies indicate that human sweat conveys information that is of particular importance to females."
    . . The scent of a male, at least among mice, can reveal the state of his health and determine whether a female gets pregnant, a new study shows.
    . . The research suggests that other animals, perhaps even you, choose mates in part based on the strength of their immune systems. Previous research had shown mice prefer to breed with mates whose immune-system genes --which produce chemicals that help the body fight invading cells-- are different from their own. Such selective sex leads to healthier offspring.
    . . Researchers examined molecules known as peptides that come from the immune system and end up in urine. Each mouse's disease-fighting peptides are unique, like fingerprints. A female records and remembers the scent of a mate's peptides using its vomeronasal organ, inside the nose. "Exposure, during a critical period, to urine odor from another male, will prevent embryo implantation, leading to loss of pregnancy, while exposure to the familiar odor will not."
    Apr 3, 09: The Iowa Supreme Court cleared the way for gay marriage in the state by declaring a law that limits marriage to a man and a woman unconstitutional.
    Apr 2, 09: According to new research, women rate funny guys as more intelligent than guys who are not so funny. "Over the course of history, women actively look for signs that their man is intelligent, and I believe the ability to actively judge the situation and pull off a joke and make you laugh is an intelligent feat."
    . . Previous research in evolutionary psychology has indicated that for long-term mating, women value a man's likelihood of acquiring resources: for instance, someone likely to earn a good salary. That idea recalls the early days of humans, when women relied on men's resources during childbearing years.
    Mar 25, 09: The number of people in Britain with surnames like Cockshott, Balls, Death and Shufflebottom --likely the source of schoolroom laughter-- has declined by up to 75% in the last century.
    . . A study found the number of people with the name Cock shrank to 785 last year from 3,211 in 1881, those called Balls fell to 1,299 from 2,904 and the number of Deaths were reduced to 605 from 1,133. People named Smellie decreased by 70%, Dafts by 51%, Gotobeds by 42%, Shufflebottoms by 40%, and Cockshotts by 34%, said Richard Webber, visiting professor of geography at King's College, London.
    Mar 24, 09: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration must reconsider its decision under the Bush Administration to limit access to emergency contraception, a U.S. court ruled, saying the agency allowed politics to interfere with its usual decision-making. The U.S. District Court, in a 52-page ruling, also ordered the FDA to allow 17-year-olds to buy the drug, called Plan B, without a prescription.
    . . "The court recognized that the FDA favored politics over science, ideology over women's health, and violated the law in the process", said Nancy Northup, president of Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed suit against the FDA in 2005.
    Mar 23, 09: What one fertility expert calls "gourmet sex" --where both partners take time to ensure the other has a satisfying experience-- gives a couple the best chance of producing a baby.
    Mar 20, 09: Romeo and Juliet would approve: A new study found that romantic love can stand the test of time.
    . . Though it is widely held that romance and sex must ultimately yield to friendly companionship over time, new research found that's not the case. Instead about 13% of people reported high levels of romance in their long-term relationships.
    . . The scientists found that a surprisingly high number of people were still very much in love with their long-term partners, though the researchers drew a distinction between romantic love, which can endure, and passionate or obsessive love, which often fades after the beginning of a relationship.
    . . "I think generally, in the literature, love has been measured as passionate love, so I think that's one reason for this widely-held assumption that love had to fade in relationships."
    . . Romantic love has the same intensity, engagement and sexual chemistry as passionate love has, but without the obsession, Acevedo said. Passionate love, on the other hand, includes feelings of uncertainty and anxiety.
    . . The new findings could help inspire couples to strive for better relationships, rather than resigning themselves to the inevitability of falling out of love.
    . . Aron's previous studies suggest that couples who want to give romance a boost can benefit from doing new and challenging activities together. These novel experiences stimulate brains to create the neurochemicals dopamine and norepinephrine, which are also created during the early, exhilarating stages of romantic love.
    Mar 18, 09: For the past six years, New Zealand has treated prostitution as a normal business. Brothels operate legally, and sex workers are subject to ordinary employment and health and safety rules.
    . . Some European governments, by contrast, have chosen to restrict the trade. Sex workers are calling for New Zealand-style liberalization, but as Henri Astier reports in the second of two articles, they stand little chance of being heard. When Norway criminalized the purchase of sex services in January, it took its cue from next-door Sweden, which pioneered the policy in 1999, rather than far-off New Zealand.
    . . The total number of people picked up is not known, but assuming an average of four prostitutes per establishment --a figure commonly used by support groups-- this suggests that less than 5% meet the police definition of "trafficked". The number is no doubt disturbing, but a far cry from the most alarming figures. That proportion, incidentally, is not much more than the 4% share of New Zealand prostitutes which a 2008 parliamentary report estimated were being kept by force.
    . . Both the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective and European organizations representing sex workers argue that the overwhelming majority of women in the industry have made a conscious choice, and that Swedish-type laws are addressing a largely non-existent problem.
    Mar 17, 09: An Italian porn actress stripped off in the Milan stock exchange in a protest at financiers she accused of mismanaging the country's savings, the market operator said.
    Mar 17, 09: Men with erectile dysfunction (ED) are 80% more likely to develop heart disease compared to men who do not have ED, a new Mayo Clinic study finds. Men ages 40 to 49 with ED are twice as likely to get heart disease. Some have theorized that erectile dysfunction and coronary artery disease may be caused by the same underlying problem. A buildup of plaque that can block arteries around the heart may plug the smaller penile arteries first. Another idea is that arteries may lose elasticity over time, affecting the penis first and the heart later.
    . . The prevalence of ED at the start of the study:
    . . * Age 40-49: 2.4%.
    . . * Age 50-59: 5.6%.
    . . * Age 60-69: 17%.
    . . * Age 70 and up: 38.8%.
    Mar 9, 09: Several years ago, biologists Robin Baker and Mark Bellis recruited women to collect the "flow back" that seeps out of the vagina after sex. They found that women retain only about 65% of an ejaculate after sex, and they can reject it all if they want. More interesting, the researchers found that if a woman has an orgasm (and that orgasm might indeed include uterine contractions) soon after her male partner, she literally sucks sperm into her reproductive tract.
    . . If she has no orgasm, or orgasms after the man, she retains much less sperm. In other words, women actually have the ability to accept or reject sperm to some degree, which gives them a powerful say in which genes have the opportunity to combine with her egg.
    Feb 27, 09: Australia's proposed censorship regime has been toppled by mass political opposition, which blocked any legislation required to start the scheme. The Australian Communications and Media Authority's blacklist already contains 1370 sites.
    Feb 25, 09: Cup size has more than one meaning at a new central Maine coffeehouse. Servers are topless at the Grand View Topless Coffee Shop, which opened its doors on a busy road in Vassalboro. A sign outside says, "Over 18 only." Another says, "No cameras, no touching, cash only." Two men sipped coffee at a booth while three topless waitresses and a bare-chested waiter stood nearby. Topless waitress Susie Wiley said men, women and couples have stopped by.
    . . The coffee shop raised the ire of dozens of residents when it went before the town planning board last month. Town officials said the coffee shop met the letter of the law.
    Feb 23, 09: The NHS has some new advice for people struggling to schedule a fitness routine into their daily lives --a workout between the sheets. According to the NHS Direct website, "sexercise" can lower the risk of heart attacks and helps people live longer. Endorphins released during orgasm stimulate immune system cells, which also helps target illnesses like cancer, as well as wrinkles, it states.
    . . "The longer the sperm hang around in the male reproductive tract, they begin to degenerate, die, and release free radicals, which will then damage other sperm. "It's a chain reaction --the fresh sperm coming down the tubes enter an environment of free radicals and get damaged."
    . . Like much of the body, the sex organs in men and women present a "use it or lose it" scenario. In endocrinology, the production of hormones oxytocin and prolactin --which occurs during sex-- will also be reduced. Studies have shown better track performance in post-orgasmic female runners.
    Feb 18, 09: New research shows that, in men, the brain areas associated with handling tools and the intention to perform actions light up when viewing images of women in bikinis. "This is just the first study which was focused on the idea that men of a certain age view sex as a highly desirable goal, and if you present them with a provocative woman, then that will tend to prime goal-related responses", she said.
    . . Although consistent with conventional wisdom, the way that men may depersonalize sexual images of women is not entirely something they control. In fact, it's a byproduct of human evolution, experts say. The first male humans had an incentive to seek fertile women as the means of spreading their genes.
    . . "They're not fully conscious responses, and so people don't know the extent to which they're being influenced", Fiske said. "It's important to recognize the effects."
    . . In the men who scored highest on hostile sexism, the part of the brain associated with analyzing another person's thoughts, feelings and intentions was inactive while viewing scantily clad women, Fiske said.
    . . Women may also depersonalize men in certain situations, but published research on the subject has not been done, experts say. Evolutionary psychology would theorize that men view women as objects in terms of their youth and apparent fertility, while women might view men as instrumental in terms of their status and resources, Fiske said.
    . . Another avenue to explore would be showing images of men's wives and girlfriends in bikinis, Raison said. He predicts the objectifying effect would not happen in this context.
    Feb 17, 09: A married Chinese businessman who could no longer afford five mistresses held a competition to decide which one to keep. But the contest took a fatal turn when one of the women, eliminated for her looks, drove the man and the four other competitors off a cliff, Chinese media reported. The spurned mistress died and the other passengers were injured.
    Feb 15, 09: Janel Tortorice at Rutgers U has measured finger ratios in gay women and found that their hands were significantly different from those of heterosexual women-in fact, they tend to resemble those of heterosexual men.
    . . But she has also found differences in the way these women's brains work. "They have more masculine fingers and more masculine cognition", she says. On tests of spatial and verbal ability, lesbian volunteers perform more like men than heterosexual women, she says.
    . . Janel Tortorice at Rutgers U, New Jersey, thinks they may. She has measured finger ratios in 40 gay women and found that their hands were significantly different from those of heterosexual women-in fact, they tend to resemble those of heterosexual men.
    . . But she has also found differences in the way these women's brains work. "They have more masculine fingers and more masculine cognition," she says. On tests of spatial and verbal ability, lesbian volunteers perform more like men than heterosexual women, she says.
    Feb 12, 09: A panel of scientists examined the mystery of what happens when hearts throb and lips lock. Kissing, it turns out, unleashes chemicals that ease stress hormones in both sexes and encourage bonding in men, though not so much in women.
    . . Chemicals in the saliva may be a way to assess a mate. In an experiment, Hill explained, pairs of heterosexual college students who kissed for 15 minutes while listening to music experienced significant changes in their levels of the chemicals oxytocin, which affects pair bonding, and cortisol, which is associated with stress. Their blood and saliva levels of the chemicals were compared before and after the kiss.
    . . Both men and women had a decline in cortisol after smooching, an indication their stress levels declined. For men, oxytocin levels increased, indicating more interest in bonding, while oxytocin levels went down in women. "This was a surprise", Hill said. Hill spoke at the session on the Science of Kissing, along with Helen Fisher of Rutgers University and Donald Lateiner of Ohio Wesleyan U.
    . . Fisher noted that more than 90% of human societies practice kissing, which she believes has three components —-the sex drive, romantic love and attachment. The sex drive pushes individuals to assess a variety of partners, then romantic love causes them to focus on an individual, she said. Attachment then allows them to tolerate this person long enough to raise a child.
    Feb 11, 09: The rate of illegitimate births in the British population is much lower than many people believe, a study says. It suggests an oft-quoted figure of one in 10 for the number of children fathered illegitimately is a myth. The real number is more likely to be less than one in 25, researchers say.
    . . The analysis looked at the connection between surnames and unique signatures on the male, or Y, chromosome in a sample of 1,678 British men.
    . . The Y chromosome is a package of genetic material that, like a surname, is inherited from father to son more or less unchanged. But over time, the Y chromosome accumulates small changes in its DNA sequence, allowing scientists to study the relationships between different male lineages.
    . . It follows that men with the same surname might have very similar Y chromosomes. But adoptions, infidelity, name changes and multiple founders for one surname can cloud the picture. However, for the 40 surnames included in the sample, the results show a strong relationship between a man's surname and the characteristic markers carried on his Y chromosome.
    . . The practice of using hereditary surnames filtered down from Norman noble families to all classes of society so that by the fourteenth century people in many classes had surnames and by the sixteenth century it was rare not to have one.
    Feb 11, 09: 40% of U.S. workers have dated an office colleague, with 31% of them going on to marriage, according to a survey. 10% work with someone they would like to date and 18% have dated a co-worker twice or more at some time in their careers. Those eyeing a co-worker was skewed between the sexes, with 14% of men but just 5% of women saying they would like to date a colleague.
    . . Of those who dated a co-worker in the last year, a third said it was someone with a more senior position in the company. Of those, 42% have dated their boss. Nearly three-quarters said they did not have to keep their romance a secret, but 7% said they had left a job due to an office romance.
    Two German tourists have been detained for taking their clothes off in the lobby of a Brazilian airport, authorities said.
    Jan 29, 09: Ancient Greek homes doubled as pubs & brothels. Domestic walls might have also hidden other dubious commercial activities. Indeed, drinking, eating and sex seemed to have gone hand in hand in the homes of ancient Greece.
    . . Presenting her research on prostitution in classical Athens, Allison Glazebrook of Brock U, agreed that interpreting the physical evidence of Greek remains is a challenge. In some cases, she argued, buildings believed to be simple homes were instead "porneia", dedicated to prurient activities.
    . . "There is no evidence of any purpose-built brothels for ancient Greece. We should not expect brothel spaces to look that different from houses in the material record because girls lived in brothels in which they worked", Glazebrook said.
    . . Hints to distinguishing a porneia, or brothel, from an ordinary house include not only the number of drinking cups, but also the presence of multiple entrances, the existence of oikemata or little rooms --working in a brothel is usually coined as "sitting in a little room" in ancient Greek texts-- and an abundance of cisterns and wells, since bathing after sex was customary in Greece.
    . . The new interpretation of Greek houses casts a new light on the economy in classical Greece. The Greeks simply did it all at home.
    Jan 28, 09: A couple treated open air diners to a 15-minute naked parade in Singapore, triggering both embarrassment and applause for a scene almost unheard of in the conservative city-state.
    Jan 28, 09: The woman who just became Iceland's interim prime minister is an openly gay former flight attendant who rose through the political ranks to lead a new leftist government. Johanna Sigurdardottir, the island nation's 66-year-old social affairs minister, began as an union organizer for flight attendants and is now among the country's longest-serving lawmakers.
    . . Both political parties forming Iceland's new coalition government support her appointment. "She is a senior parliamentarian, she is respected and loved by all of Iceland."
    Jan 22, 09: Is a woman's virginity worth $3.8 million? That's how much Natalie Dylan, a 22-year-old from San Diego, California, said she has been offered through an auction she announced in September.
    Jan 18, 09: The debate over the practice of men marrying children in Saudi Arabia was back in the spotlight this week, with the kingdom's top cleric refusing to annul the marriage of an 8-year-old girl to a 47-year-old man.
    . . "It is incorrect to say that it's not permitted to marry off girls who are 15 and younger", Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh, the kingdom's grand mufti, said. "A girl aged 10 or 12 can be married. Those who think she's too young are wrong and they are being unfair to her."
    . . The issue of child marriage has been a hot-button topic in the deeply conservative kingdom in recent weeks. In December, Saudi judge Sheikh Habib Abdallah al-Habib refused to annul the marriage of an 8-year-old girl to a 47-year-old man.
    . . The judge rejected a petition from the girl's mother, whose lawyer said the marriage was arranged by her father to settle a debt with "a close friend". The judge required the girl's husband to sign a pledge that he would not have sex with her until she reaches puberty.
    . . Christoph Wilcke, a Saudi Arabia researcher for Human Rights Watch, recently told CNN that his organization has heard many other cases of child marriages. "We've [heard] about these types of cases once every four or five months because the Saudi public is now able to express this kind of anger, especially so when girls are traded off to older men", Wilcke said. Wilcke explained that while Saudi ministries may make decisions designed to protect children, "It is still the religious establishment that holds sway in the courts, and in many realms beyond the court."
    Jan 7, 08: Oxytocin interacts with another transmitter, pleasure-inducing dopamine. In humans, brain regions associated with dopamine are activated in mothers looking at pictures of their children, and lovers at each other —0and, perhaps instructively, in drug addicts taking heroin or cocaine.
    . . Also, a gene associated with paternal care and long-term bonding in prairie voles led to the identification of a human gene variant that correlates loosely with the ability of men to form caring, stable relationships.
    . . To Young, all this means that science may soon treat lovelessness as easily as it now treats depression and anxiety. "Drugs that manipulate brain systems at whim to enhance or diminish our love for another may not be far away", he writes.
    . . Not so fast, said Fisher. The alterations required to manipulate love, she said, are likely so complex and far-reaching as to be unattainable in a pill. "There are cognitive processes and limbic reactions associated with basic emotions", said Fisher. "And you can change brain chemistry, but you're still not going to change memories and experiences in a human being."
    . . Fisher also disagreed with Young on the nature of biological love: Rather than a single reproductive imperative repurposed into other feelings, she believes there are three distinct brain systems for sex, romance and attachment.
    . . "The sex drive enables you to seek a range of partners", she said. "Romantic love allows you to focus mating energy. Attachment sustains that relationship as long as necessary to raise your baby."
    Jan 6, 08: The "love" hormone linked to feelings of sexual pleasure, bonding and maternal care also appears to help us recognize familiar faces, Swiss researchers said.
    . . Men given oxytocin --involved in nursing and childbirth-- more accurately recalled images of familiar faces but the hormone did not help them recognize inanimate objects.
    . . Their findings suggest the hormone somehow strengthens the brain's neural networks involved in social memory and may have implications for conditions such as autism. "This has important implications for such disorders, where social information processing is clearly impaired."
    . . Oxytocin was known for years to be involved in labor and it is the hormone that stimulates the production of milk for breastfeeding. Animal studies suggest it can help in bonding between mother and child and between mates. Only in recent decades has it been found to have a function in men --in sexual arousal and function.
    Jan 4, 08: Love that lasts a lifetime. Researchers at Stony Brook University in New York have discovered a small number of couples respond with as much passion after 20 years together as most people only do during the early throes of romance.
    . . The researchers scanned the brains of couples together for 20 years and compared them with results from new lovers. About 10% of the mature couples had the same chemical reactions when shown photographs of their loved ones as those just starting out.
    . . Previous research has suggested that the first stages of romantic love fade within 15 months and after 10 years it has gone completely.
    Jan 6, 08: VASSALBORO, Maine – A one-time motel in a small central Maine town could soon be offering an eye-opening way to start the day —-topless coffee shop waitresses. The Vassalboro Planning Board considered a business permit request for a topless coffee shop on busy Route 3.
    Dec 24, 08: A Saudi judge recently refused to annul a marriage between an 8-year-old girl and a 47-year-old man --a union apparently arranged by the girl's father to settle his debts. A group fighting for women's rights in Saudi Arabia condemned the judge for refusing to annul the marriage.
    Dec 23, 08: Scientists are developing an electronic "sex chip" that can be implanted into the brain to stimulate pleasure. The chip works by sending tiny shocks from implanted electrodes in the brain. The technology has been used in the US to treat Parkinson's disease.
    . . But in recent months, scientists have been focusing on the area of the brain just behind the eyes known as the orbitofrontal cortex --this is associated with feelings of pleasure derived from eating and sex.
    . . A research survey conducted by Morten Kringelbach, senior fellow at Oxford U's department of psychiatry, found the orbitofrontal cortex could be a "new stimulation target" to help people suffering from anhedonia, an inability to experience pleasure from such activities.
    . . The current technology, which requires surgery to connect a wire from a heart pacemaker into the brain, can cause bleeding and is "intrusive and crude". "When the technology is improved, we can use deep brain stimulation in many new areas. It will be more subtle, with more control over the power so you may be able to turn the chip on and off when needed. "In 10 years' time the range of therapies available will be amazing –-we don't know half the possibilities yet."
    . . An electronic machine, named the Orgasmatron, taken from the 1973 Woody Allen film Sleeper, is already under development by a North Carolina doctor, who is modifying a spinal cord stimulator to produce pleasure in women.
    Dec 18, 08: The belief that Coca-Cola works as an after-sex spermicide is nothing but urban legend, a scientist cautions.
    Dec 18, 08: A ruling issued by the Supreme Court of New South Wales, affirms that a cartoon can be prosecuted as child pornography.
    Dec 17, 08: Blame Bill Clinton: Ever since the former president confounded Congress --and the nation-- with his semantically driven definition of sex, the nature of the act has become increasingly vague.
    . . In 2005, the federal government released a study that found more than 50% of American teenagers had engaged in oral sex; furthermore, they considered oral sex a less-significant substitution for intercourse. And as the generation enters adulthood, this attitude toward sex is affecting its relationships.
    . . A recent study conducted by the U of Northern Iowa and Pennsylvania State U finds that undergraduates in relationships hold their significant others to a stricter definition of sex than they hold themselves. Participants were asked if their own involvement in several different sexual behaviors would count as sex; they were then asked if those same behaviors would be considered sex if their boyfriend or girlfriend were to engage in them outside of the relationship.
    . . The results point to a definite double standard. "Participants answering for themselves were less likely to indicate a behavior was having sex for all behaviors except penile-anal and penile-vaginal intercourse", researchers Gary Gute, Elaine M. Eshbaugh and Jacquelyn Wiersma write in the October 2008 issue of the Journal of Sex Research. In addition, "men were also more likely than women to indicate most behaviors were having sex."
    . . Why are people fudging the facts? Ilene Donin, a New York City therapist who was not involved in the study, says this murkiness allows women to maintain a perceived preservation of purity, one that has extended beyond the twenty-something set. "I have been told by women in their thirties and forties that they will 'do everything but' have intercourse", she says. "That, to them, is far more intimate and more of a commitment."
    . . Men, on the other hand, might have more hard-wired reasons for their willingness to view any indiscretion as cheating. "Men believe that when women have sex it is not just a pleasure-seeking behavior but an emotional experience, so it is very threatening", Donin says. "And I believe that on some very basic level, men still see women as their property."
    . . All of this makes the future of relationships seem pretty dismal - which, according to The New York Times, isn't a problem, as relationships are becoming a thing of the past, anyway. "Hooking up is a casual sexual encounter with no expectation of future emotional commitment. Think of it as a one-night stand with someone you know", writes Charles M. Blow in a Dec. 13 article. "Under [this] new model, you hook up a few times and, if you really like the person, you might consider going on a date."
    . . Just don't hook up behind your boyfriend's back. That's cheating. Maybe.
    Dec 10, 08: A new study suggests that anal sex is on the rise among teens and young adults, particularly among those who engage in unprotected sex.
    . . In the study, researchers assessed the sexual behavior of 1,348 adolescents and young adults between the ages of 15 and 21 who had unprotected sex in the previous three months. They found that 16% had engaged in heterosexual anal intercourse within the time frame, with condoms being used just 29% of the time.
    Dec 10, 08: ABC News reported, young adults have confirmed the rise in anal sex, including the perception that it is safe. Other teens said anal sex over vaginal is popular because it keeps them "technically" a virgin.
    . . A well-publicized 2005 study that used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health found that teenagers who take "virginity pledges" were more likely to engage in oral or anal sex than non pledging teens and were less likely to use condoms once they became sexually active.
    Dec 10, 08: One in five US teens has sent nude or partially clothed images of themselves to someone by email or mobile phone and twice as many have sent sexually suggestive electronic messages, a poll showed.
    Dec 9, 08: Men of higher intelligence tend to produce better quality sperm, UK research suggests. The latest study tested the gene theory by taking two characteristics that seemed unlikely to be associated with each other --intelligence and sperm quality.
    . . A team from the Institute of Psychiatry analysed data from former US soldiers who served during the Vietnam war era. They found that those who performed better on intelligence tests tended to have more --and more mobile-- sperm.
    . . The study appears to support the idea that genes underlying intelligence may have other biological effects too. Therefore, if tiny mutations impair intelligence, they might also harm other characteristics, such as sperm quality. Conversely, people with robust genes might be blessed with a biological "fitness factor" making them fit, healthy and smart.
    . . But brighter people may be less likely to smoke, and more likely to take exercise, both of which are known to impact on mental performance. They found a small, but statistically significant link, and were able to show that this could not be explained by unhealthy habits, such as smoking or drinking alcohol.
    Dec 3, 08: Past research has revealed that men prefer a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7 or lower when looking for a mate. The preference makes perfect sense, according to evolutionary psychologists, because the low ratio is a reliable signal of a healthy, fertile woman. Along those lines, Playboy centerfolds tend to have a ratio of 0.68 .
    Dec 1, 08: Britons may be tightening their belts to cope with the credit crunch, but their favorite free leisure activity involves whipping off their clothes, a new poll showed.
    . . The overall figure disguised a stark difference between men and women, with female respondents preferring a good gossip to a good time between the sheets.
    . . 37% of Britons rank having sex at the top of their list of activities that don't cost a penny. That was more than the next three highest options combined --gossiping with friends (18%), window shopping (9%) and going to a museum (6%).
    . . "During the credit crunch our famed British upper lip might not be as stiff as before but other parts still are", said Lisa Power, head of policy at the Terrence Higgins Trust, the sexual health charity that commissioned the poll.
    Nov 20, 08: The decision by a headmaster in Austria to ban kissing from his school made front-page news as outraged pupils and politicians slammed the move as medieval and excessive.
    Nov 20, 08: Australia's sex industry launched a political party today, vowing to fight what it called growing conservatism in a "nanny state".
    Nov 20, 08: Online dating site eHarmony.com has settled a lawsuit with the New Jersey attorney general's office and will start matching gay and lesbian customers by March 2009. Matching for gay couples, however, will be handled through a separate site, dubbed Compatible Partners.
    . . EHarmony will also pay $50,000 to the attorney general's office to cover expenses and $5,000 to Eric McKinley, who initiated the lawsuit. McKinley sued eHarmony in 2005 for violating the state's Law Against Discrimination (LAD) by refusing to offer its services to gay patrons.
    . . EHarmony was founded in 2000 by Dr. Neil Clark Warren, a former dean and psychologist at California's Fuller Theological Seminary who had ties to conservative Christian group Focus on the Family. Warren is currently the chairman of the board at eHarmony.
    . . Last year, Chemistry.com, which is owned by Match.com, capitalized on eHarmony's rejection of gay customers and produced a "Rejected by eHarmony" TV advertising campaign. "Who knows why eHarmony has rejected over a million people looking for love. But at Chemistry.com, you can come as you are", according to one Chemistry.com commercial.
    Nov 19, 08: The Paris City Hall launched a manual on forced marriages to help officials spot and prevent cases of young women being coerced into matrimony.
    Nov 17, 08: Australia is about to get a new entry into national politics --a party devoted to sex.
    . . The brains behind the Australian Sex Party believe that politics has become too stuffy and conservative Down Under. Describing itself as "serious about sex" the party sees itself as a political response to the sexual needs of Australians in the face of moral campaigners and prudish politicians.
    . . Party convenor Fiona Patten, who is head of the national adult retail and entertainment lobby group the Eros Association, said the trigger had been the government's decision to place a mandatory filter on the Internet.
    Nov 13, 08: An Australian holiday resort will hold a month-long, nude "anything goes" party to combat an expected economic downturn, media reports said.
    Nov 12, 08: The pastor of a mega-church says he will challenge married congregants during his sermon Sunday to have sex for seven straight days —-and he plans to practice what he preaches. He said he believes society promotes promiscuity and he wants to reclaim sex for married couples. Sex should be a nurturing, spiritual act that strengthens marriages, he said.
    . . But wait. Enlightened? Nope. Prob'ly wants more kids. "God says sex should be between a married man and a woman."
    . . Earlier this year, a southwest Florida pastor, perhaps having more faith in his congregants' stamina, issued a 30-day sex challenge.
    Nov 3, 08: Eland antelope bulls use the unusual tactic of clicking a tendon in their knees to demonstrate their sexual fitness.
    Oct 30, 08: South Korea's highest court upheld a decades-old adultery law that can send people to jail for having an extramarital affair that critics say is anachronistic and infringes on personal freedom.
    . . The fourth appeal made to the Constitutional Court since 1989 was brought by the lawyers for a popular actress who was charged under the law when her TV personality husband filed a criminal complaint against her for having an affair with an opera singer. "The adultery law ... has degenerated into a means of revenge by the spouse, rather than a means of saving a marriage", Ok's petition had said.
    . . Five judges found the law unconstitutional in three separate dissenting opinions, one short of the six needed to strike it down. Four voted to uphold.
    Oct 28, 08: If a woman wants to drive the men wild, she might want to dress in red.
    . . Men rated a woman shown in photographs as more sexually attractive if she was wearing red clothing or if she was shown in an image framed by a red border rather than some other color, U.S. researchers said.
    . . Although this "red alert" may be a product of human society associating red with love for eons, it also may arise from more primitive biological roots, Elliot said.
    . . Noting the genetic similarity of humans to higher primates, he said scientists have shown that certain male primates are especially attracted to females of their species displaying red. For example, female baboons and chimpanzees show red coloring when nearing ovulation, sending a sexual signal that the males apparently find irresistible.
    . . Men were shown a woman, with some of the pictures bordered in red and some bordered in white, gray or green. Even though it was the same picture of the same woman, when she was framed in red the men rated her as more attractive than when she was bordered by another color.
    . . Men were then shown photographs of a woman that were identical except that the researchers digitally made her shirt red in some versions or blue in others. And once again, the men strongly favored the woman in red. When she was clad in red, the men said they would spend more money on her.
    . . The researchers noted that the color red did not alter how men rated the women in the photographs in terms of likeability, intelligence or kindness --only attractiveness.
    . . The researchers then had a group of young women rate whether the pictured woman was pretty. Red had no impact on whether women rated other women as pretty, they found.
    Oct 27, 08: Australian researchers have identified a significant link between a gene involved in testosterone action and male-to-female transsexualism. DNA analysis from 112 male-to-female transsexual volunteers showed they were more likely to have a longer version of the androgen receptor gene. The genetic difference may cause weaker testosterone signals. However, other genes are also likely to play a part, they stressed.
    . . Increasingly, biological factors are being implicated in gender identity. Certain brain structures in male-to-female transsexual people are more "female like".
    . . In the latest study, researchers looked for potential differences in three genes known to be involved in sex development - coding for the androgen receptor, the oestrogen receptor and an enzyme which converts testosterone to oestrogen.
    . . This reduced action of the male sex hormone may have an effect on gender development in the womb, the researchers speculated. "We think that these genetic differences might reduce testosterone action and under masculinise the brain during fetal development."
    Oct 25, 08: Apple, long a proponent of gay rights, is putting its money where its mouth is, donating $100,000 to the group No on Prop 8. Proposition 8 is a ballot initiative in California that would deny the rights of same-sex couples to marry. A kudos, Apple. Apple is joining Google in publicly opposing proposition 8. It has a history of supporting same-sex couples, as well.
    Oct 23, 08: A contest that would pay $10,000 to an engaged couple, as long as they abstain from premarital sex, hasn't gotten any takers.
    Oct 21, 08: British women holidaying in Europe find German men the sexiest, while their male counterparts say Croatian women are the most attractive, according to a survey. Some 31% of women said the men in Germany were better looking than anywhere else. Croatian women scored 37% with British men.
    Oct 13, 08: Public school officials in Chicago, Illinois, are recommending approval of a "gay-friendly" high school because harassment and violence are causing gay students to skip class and drop out at alarming rates.
    . . The School for Social Justice Pride Campus, which officials say will not be exclusive to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students, is aimed at being safe and welcoming for any student looking for another school option. The curriculum would not rely on, but would incorporate lessons about, sexual identity in history and literature classes, officials said.
    . . Gay and lesbian students are three times more likely to miss school because they feel unsafe, according to a 2003 Chicago Public School District survey. And a study released Wednesday by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network showed similar trends across the country.
    . . 86.2% of those students reported being verbally harassed, 44.1% physically harassed and 22.1% physically assaulted at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation.
    . . This harassment, the study concludes, has affected students' ability to achieve success in school, causing their grade-point level to be, on average, half a point lower than that of heterosexual students nationwide.
    . . The Harvey Milk High School in the East Village was created because of similar fears. The school, which had been around since 1985, serving gay and lesbian students, expanded to a "gay-themed" school for 100 students in 2003. The Pride Campus is expected to serve 600 students.
    Oct 11, 08: The Connecticut Supreme Court overturned a ban on same-sex marriage in a victory for gay-rights advocates that will allow couples to marry, making the New England state the third in the nation to allow full-fledged marriage for same-sex couples.
    Oct 2, 08: Virgin Galactic has rejected a million-dollar offer to tape a sex video --I assume for the very first members of a "100-km-high Club". The private company is planning to take wealthy tourists to the edge of the atmosphere starting in late 2009 or early 2010.
    Sept 30, 08: A Chinese herbal remedy called horny goat weed is a promising alternative to Viagra for impotent men, Italian researchers said. But the medicines, which inhibit an enzyme called phosphodiesterase type 5 that restricts blood flow around the body, including to the penis, can have side effects ranging from headaches, upset stomach and visual problems including blindness.
    . . After homing in on horny goat weed, the researchers modified a compound in the plant called icariin and found it blocked the erection-inhibiting enzyme as well as Viagra did. Because the compound targets the enzyme more precisely, it may have fewer side effects than Viagra.
    Sept 24, 08: Common antidepressant drugs may reduce some men's fertility by damaging the DNA in their sperm, according to scientists.
    Sept 22, 08: Portland Police took a waterfront Lady Godiva down a notch this week. Barely. They were getting calls about a nude skater whizzing past tourists and rush-hour commuters.
    . . But you can do that in Oregon, where occasional nude bike rides draw police only for crowd control and shows featuring live sex acts are protected as free speech. The skater, Gennifer Moss, aka Earth Friend Gen, asked organizers for permission this summer to skate naked in the city of Ashland's Fourth of July parade. She didn't get it.
    . . Police told her to tone it down after construction workers complained. [say what?!] Moss donned a string bikini bottom for the nonce and skated on. Police say most callers are concerned about her safety.
    Sept 18, 08: South Korean police said they have seized beds and bathtubs weighing a total of 100 tons during a crackdown on prostitution in the capital Seoul.
    Sept 17, 08: About 1,000 Balinese dressed in traditional sarongs rallied to protest against a controversial anti-pornography bill that critics say could hurt local cultural traditions.
    Sept 15, 08: Hundreds of disco workers protested in Kathmandu against a government crackdown on "nude dancing" in its bid to improve the "deteriorating law and order".
    Sept 9, 08: A Nigerian court has granted temporary reprieve to an 84-year-old Muslim preacher with 86 wives after local leaders threatened to force him to leave the area unless he divorced all but four of them. some 170 children.
    Sept 2, 08: After tracking a herd of the deer from dawn until dusk for a month in Ireland, the researchers discovered the males with the deepest groans were typically luckiest at love. These bucks were not just the best lovers --they also were the best fighters in contests for dominance among the males (though they were not the always biggest in terms of body size).
    . . Calls also can signal dominance among primates --including humans. For example, men with deep voices are typically seen as more masculine, and even have more kids. The link between how dominant these bucks are and how deep their groans are might be hormones such as testosterone.
    Sept 2, 08: A group of gay and lesbian Republicans has traveled to the site of the GOP convention this week to help convince its party that it is time to stop being on the "wrong side" of the same-sex marriage question.
    Aug 28, 08: A condom lubricant designed for sex workers and gay men has become a popular acne cure among female Cambodians, women in the capital and local media said.
    Aug 25, 08: Few Americans (less than 20%) want to return to an America in which abortion is almost always illegal.
    61% of Americans thought adultery should not be a crime in the US; 35% thought it should; 4% had no opinion. 70% of married women and 54% of married men did not know of their spouses' extramarital activity. 75% of men and 65% of women admit to having sex with people they work with.
    . . A lesser known fact is that those who divorce rarely marry the person with whom they are having the affair. For example, Dr. Jan Halper’s study of successful men (executives, entrepreneurs, professionals) found that very few men who have affairs divorce their wife and marry their lovers. Only 3% of the 4,100 successful men surveyed eventually married their lovers.
    . . Affairs affect one of every 2.7 couples, according to counselor Janis Abrahms Spring, author of "After the Affair", as reported by the Washington Post on March 30, 1999. 10% of extramarital affairs last one day, 10% last more than one day but less than a month, 50% last more than a month but less than a year, but 40% last two or more years. Few extramarital affairs last more than four years.
    . . Frank Pittman has found that the divorce rate among those who married their lovers was 75%. The reasons for the high divorce rate include: intervention of reality, guilt, expectations, a general distrust of marriage, and a distrust of the affairee.
    . . Experts say that a gut instinct is the most powerful indicator of a cheating lover. Adultery statistics state that 85% of woman who feel their lover is cheating are correct. 50% of men who feel their lover is cheating are right. The first clue is seldom obvious. Typically, it's a "feeling" that something is different.
    . . Cheating spouse statistics confirm that 50 and 70% of married men (between 38 and 53 million men) have cheated or will cheat on their wives. One study found that 2/3 of the wives (26 to 36 million women) whose husbands were cheating had no idea their husbands were having an affair - largely because they failed to recognize the telltale signs.
    . . Conservative infedelity statistics estimate that "60% of men and 40% of women will have an extramarital affair. These figures are even more significant when we consider the total number of marriages involved, since it's unlikely that all the men and women having affairs happen to be married to each other. If even half of the women having affairs (or 20%) are married to men not included in the 60% having affairs, then at least one partner will have an affair in approximately 80% of all marriages. With this many marriages affected, it's unreasonable to think affairs are due only to the failures and shortcomings of individual husbands or wives."
    . . Note that the above adultery statistics of the prevalence of affairs were made more than a decade ago; so based on changes in society during the intervening years, the current percentage of the population who have had affairs is probably somewhat HIGHER. For instance, the continuing increase of women in the workplace and the increase of women having affairs on the Internet means that the numbers for women having affairs is probably similar to those for men—about 60%.
    July 28, 08: Massachusetts lawmakers cleared the way for out-of-state same-sex couples to marry in the state by voting to repeal a 1913 law.
    July 25, 08: NPR (NPR!) published an audio essay titled "Sex Without Condoms Is The New Engagement Ring". I’m mostly disappointed that the NPR story’s initial thesis —that deciding to go mano-a-mano with your partner can be considered a serious expression of commitment, especially when skyrocketing divorce rates mean that a marriage certificate isn’t the signifier it once was -—got lost in the shuffle. That idea has a kernel of weird, gross, uncomfortable truth about it.
    July 22, 08: An Athens court rejected a complaint by inhabitants of the Greek island of Lesbos who had wanted gay women to stop monopolizing the term 'lesbian'.
    July 10, 08: When it comes to one-night stands, men and women are poles apart. Guys just want, well, you know, while gals go to bed with the false impression of flattery and a craving for feeling desirable. The upshot, according to new research, is great for most men and the pits for most women.
    . . Among the findings: Women were not hooking up in an effort to secure a long-term beau, but because they felt flattered by the overnight proposition. They were mistaken. As the researcher points out, men lower their standards when it comes to one-night stands, so the presumed flattery is a fantasy or close to it. She added, "No woman should be flattered because a man wants to have sex with her once."
    . . Campbell says that the findings suggest women are not well adapted to promiscuity. Women have much more to lose, while men are in a win-win situation. For the ladies, a baby on the way is a huge responsibility, but a guy can just bail.
    . . However, promiscuity does offer natural advantages for women from an evolutionary perspective, Shackelford said. These advantages could explain why women participate in one-night stands even though they feel so lousy afterward. Flings provide women with the potential to snag the best genes for offspring or they could be spurred by a chemical nudge at the peak of the menstrual cycle.
    . . Women's morning-after feelings were more negative than men's. While 80 percent of men had overall positive feelings, just 54 percent of women had positive feelings.
    . . Contrary to popular belief, women said they didn't view casual sex as a prelude to a long-term relationship. So even if a woman can't score a lengthy relationship with a guy whose sperm could offer, say, disease-resistant genes or genes for a particular kind of intelligence, her thinking might be, "Why not grab the guy for sex? If you've got a Brad Pitt character --absolutely gorgeous and incredibly loaded with money and so on-- the chances of getting him to commit himself to you for the rest of your life are pretty slim", Campbell said. "But the chances of him giving you a half an hour on a Wednesday afternoon in a hotel are probably much better."
    July 8, 08: Obese men have poorer quality sperm, perhaps because too much fat around their testicles causes them to heat up, scientists have suggested.
    July 6, 08: Weddings in space could be right around the corner, and experts figure the inevitable cosmic consummation will be just around the next corner. The Japanese firm First Advantage and the U.S.-based private spaceflight firm Rocketplane Global, Inc., announced last week they will host weddings in space for about $2.3 million.
    . . For all we know, sex in space has already taken place. But NASA officials aren't talking about that much. "To say that astronauts are some superior beings who cannot have interests in any kind of sexual feelings for three years ... I just don't buy it", said Jason Kring of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida. Kring also pointed out the possibly negative consequences of pregnancies in a microgravity environment.
    . . Last month, before six months of winter darkness descended over Antarctica's McMurdo Station, the research base received a delivery of about 16,500 condoms. "There's an unspoken behavior there where you take a spouse for the time you're there —-you have an exclusive relationship with someone. It's understood that when you leave, that relationship is over. I don't know how it's going to work on a three-year mission to Mars."
    . . In "Sex in Space", Woodmansee describes several positions that might work, ranging from the modified missionary position to seated with "interlocking Y legs." Props also could come into play, including a shared elastic waistband or tethers to hold one partner to a stable structure, she writes.
    July 6, 08: Couples trying to have a baby when the man is over 40 will have more difficulty conceiving than if he is younger, French researchers said.
    Jun 25, 08: Gay couples can't have biological kids together. So if homosexuality is genetic, why hasn't it died out?
    . . A new study tackles the question. It starts with four curious patterns. First, male homosexuality occurs at a low but stable frequency in a wide range of societies. Second, the female relatives of gay men produce children at a higher rate than other women do. Third, among these female relatives, those related to the gay man's mother produce children at a higher rate than do those related to his father. Fourth, among the man's male relatives, homosexuality is more common in those related to his mother than in those related to his father.
    . . They conclude that only one theory fits the data. The theory is called "sexually antagonistic selection." It holds that a gene can be reproductively harmful to one sex as long as it's helpful to the other. The gene for male homosexuality persists because it promotes—and is passed down through—high rates of procreation among gay men's mothers, sisters, and aunts.
    . . This theory doesn't account for female homosexuality, which another new study (reviewed in Human Nature last week) attributes to nongenetic factors. It does explain the high similarity of sexual orientation between identical twins.
    . . The theory implies some testable predictions. One such prediction can be checked against existing data. The prediction is that on average, if you're a straight man, the reproductive pattern among your aunts will reverse the pattern seen among aunts of gay men. That is, your paternal aunts will produce children at a higher rate than your maternal aunts will. The authors check this prediction against the available data. Sure enough, it holds up.
    . . Sexually antagonistic selection is self-limiting and impervious to postnatal cultural factors. The authors' computations show no scenario in which male homosexuality spreads throughout a population.
    . . Second, by the same token, you can't culturally eradicate the gay minority. It's sustained by genetics and natural selection.
    . . Third, if the authors are correct, we're not really talking about genes for homosexuality. We're talking about genes for "androphilia", i.e., attraction to men.
    . . This larger phenomenon can't be dismissed as a disorder. The study's press release concludes that "homosexuality should not be viewed as a detrimental trait (due to the reduced male fecundity it entails), but, rather, should be considered within the wider evolutionary framework of a characteristic with gender-specific benefits."
    . . The benefits aren't really confined to women. They protect society as a whole. The authors' computations indicate that as a society's birthrate falls, female carriers of androphilic genes account for a larger share of the output. In short, the genes provide a "buffer effect" against extinction.
    Jun 18, 08: A woman seen frequently in Ashland, Oregon riding topless on her bicycle says she plans to be in Ashland's Fourth of July parade free and independent of all clothing but a hemp G-string. The Chamber of Commerce says that's contrary to the rules for the family celebration. She says she'll sue if she can't parade as she wishes.
    . . Jen Moss has been known as "The Naked Lady" since she moved to Ashland in May from Ojai, Calif., drawn by the town's nudity laws. They specify only that people must cover their genitalia in a city park or the downtown commercial district, which means Moss need not cover her breasts.
    Jun 18, 08: Female chimps keep quiet during sex to keep other females from finding out and punishing them for mating with the best males, British researchers said.
    . . The study of chimp copulation calls also found that females seem more concerned with having sex with as many mates as possible rather than just finding the strongest male as a way to confuse paternity and secure future protection for offspring. "They are trying to make the high-ranking males think they are the father. If you confuse paternity, they are more likely to provide that female with future support."
    . . The female chimps called out for sex partners for as many as 12 days during their reproductive cycle, even though they were only fertile for about 4 days of it.
    Jun 18, 08: Italy's highest court has ruled that the nation's paramilitary police, the Carabinieri, must not have extra-marital affairs to avoid sullying the force's name.
    Jun 17, 08: According to researchers at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, sexual response and desire reflect the relative power of two competing and relatively independent systems within the brain: an activating one and a suppressing one. The balance between the two determines a person's sexual response, something Kinsey's Erick Janssen likens to the gas and brake pedals in a car.
    . . One factor that presses on the gas to increase sexual desire and responsiveness is, not surprisingly, mood. For most people, negative mood --sadness, anxiety, anger-- acts as a sexual brake, leading to loss of sexual interest and impairment of arousability. Vacations tend to improve mood, if only because you have left the immediate demands of home and office behind; with the brake disengaged, interest and arousability rise like Fourth of July fireworks. Depression and anxiety lower sexual interest and arousability for women even more than they do in men; if the female half of the couple is feeling down in the dumps at home, a vacation that pushes sadness and anxiety aside will be an especially potent way to warm things up.
    Jun 17, 08: New research suggests that some people experience an increase in sexual interest when they're in a negative mood. About 9% of straight men are more rather than less interested in sex when they're depressed, Janssen and colleagues recently reported, while 21% are more rather than less interested when they're anxious. In the case of depression, the greater interest in sex may reflect the greater "need for intimacy, for self-validation, or simply for sexual pleasure" when you're feeling blue, the scientists speculate. Meanwhile, anxiety can fuel sexual desire in people for whom "the post-orgasmic calming effect" is Nature's own Valium. If you or your partner fit into either of these categories, then vacation sex will likely not be better than the at-home variety, where you're surrounded by stress.
    . . That reflects the sorry fact that sex --especially for long-term couples-- can get dull, predictable and boring when it happens within the same four walls and on the same bed year after year. "When your midcoital view changes from a grimy New York street to a sweeping Pacific horizon, it's hard not to sense an improvement."
    Jun 16, 08: Gay men and straight women share some characteristics in the area of the brain responsible for emotion, mood and anxiety, researchers said in a study highlighting the potential biological underpinning of sexuality.
    . . Brain scans also showed the same symmetry among lesbians and straight men, the researchers wrote. Brain scans of 90 volunteers showed that the brains of heterosexual men and homosexual women were slightly asymmetric with the right hemisphere slightly larger than the left, Ivanka Savic and Pers Lindstrom wrote. The brains of gay men and heterosexual women were not.
    . . Then they measured blood flow to the amygdala --the area key for the "fight-or-flight" response-- and found it was wired in a similar fashion in gay men and heterosexual women as well as lesbians and heterosexual men. This is something they plan to look at in a further study of newborn babies to see if it can help predict future sexual orientation.
    Jun 16, 08: Austria won today when their topless women's soccer team beat Germany 10-5.
    An Italian man was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping his ex-girlfriend from a pub, taking her home and forcing her to iron his clothes and wash the dishes, police said.
    Jun 12, 08: A human egg has been filmed, in close-up, emerging from the ovary --the first time such an event has been captured.
    Jun 11, 08: A top federal judge who is presiding over an obscenity trial in Los Angeles has been caught posting explicit photos and videos to his web site. The judge told the Los Angeles Times that he didn't think the site was publicly accessible.
    . . Alex Kozinski, a conservative appointee of former president Ronald Reagan who is chief of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, posted a photo of naked women standing on all fours and painted to look like cows, as well as a video of a half-naked man with a farm animal. A step-by-step pictorial depicted a woman shaving her pubic hair and other images showed masturbation and what the Times called "contortionist sex."
    Jun 10, 08: An Indonesian city is offering more than 1,000 boys a free circumcision as part of celebrations for the 58th anniversary of its foundation, a report said.
    Jun 10, 08: A major Iranian state-owned company has told its single employees to get married by September or face losing their jobs, the press reported. "As being married is one of the criteria of employment, we are announcing for the last time that all the female and male colleagues have until September 21 to go ahead with this important and moral religious duty."
    . . Sexual relations outside of marriage are illegal in Iran --for the most part a traditional society where young people normally are encouraged by their families to marry in their 20s and swiftly bear children.
    . . The country is also in the midst of an unprecedented moral crackdown which has seen tens of thousands of women warned by the police for dress deemed to be unIslamic.
    Jun 9, 08: Antarctic base will get 16,500 condoms. One of the last shipments to a U.S. research base before the onset of winter darkness was a year's supply of condoms, a New Zealand newspaper reported.
    To rework Winston Churchill's line: monogamy is the worst form of sexual relationship, except all the others.
    Jun 2, 08: Prehistoric man may have executed rivals from neighboring tribes to steal their women, research has found. The findings are from a burial pit in Talheim, Germany. A study of 7,000-year-old skeletons, led by Durham U scientists, found that one of the burial groups consisted only of men and children. This indicated that the women were spared and their capture could have been the motive for the attack.
    Jun 2, 08: Dying the red breast feathers of barn swallows not only won the birds more mates --it made their testosterone levels shoot up, U.S. researchers reported. The dye itself did not change biology --but it did change the way other birds reacted to the enhanced males
    . . They received more attention from females and got into more fights with other males when their reddish breast feathers were intensified, Safran found. This, in turn, caused levels of the "male" hormone testosterone to rise.
    . . Her team showed in 2005 that male barn swallows given darker breast colors bred earlier in the season and fathered more young. Their mates also cheated less often with other male suitors.
    . . Even human males may be affected --for instance, a man who wears an expensive new suit. "When he says he feels like a million bucks, there probably is some biochemical feedback going on," said Safran.
    May 31, 08: Think you have what it takes to become a masturbating champion? Can you endure longer than 8 hours and 40 minutes?
    May 30, 08: Johns Hopkins U Professor Jonathan Zenilman reports that both the adults and the teenagers who come to his clinic are engaging in much more oral sex than in 1990. For men and boys as recipients, it's up from about half to 75 to 80%; for women and girls, it's risen from about 25% to 75- 80%.
    May 29, 08: New York state has instructed government agencies to recognize same-sex marriages conducted out of state or abroad, renewing debate on an issue that was used to rally conservatives in the last U.S. general election.
    May 16, 08: Conservatives protested, arguing that gay parents are bad for kids. But dozens of studies compiled by the American Psychological Association showed otherwise. In some studies, lesbians score better than straight parents on affection, active caretaking, and parenting skills. It isn't because they're lesbians. It's because two moms are better than one.
    . . "I used to brush off polygamy as an anti-gay scare tactic. But now there's a real connection: The U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 ruling in favor of a right to private homosexual conduct encouraged an emerging détente between Mormon polygamists and state governments. According to the Washington Post, state officials "offered a deal: Marry however often you want, but don't marry children." A spokesman for Utah's attorney general tells the Post, "We're not going to prosecute people solely for adult bigamy."
    . . In other words, polygamy now has the same legal status as homosexuality in most jurisdictions: Your second marriage won't carry any legal weight, but it'll be tolerated.
    . . In a sample of Pakistanis, first-cousin couples accounted for around 60% of all marriages. In a sample of Indians, first-cousin couples accounted for one-third of the marriages, and uncle-niece couples accounted for one-fifth.
    . . Do cousin marriages lead to genetic disease? Generally, no. Six years ago, a study by the National Society of Genetic Counselors found that having a child with your first cousin raised the risk of a significant birth defect from about 3% to 4% to about 4% to 7%. The authors concluded that this difference wasn't enough to justify genetic testing of cousin couples, much less bans on cousin marriage. Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, and Rudy Giuliani married their cousins.
    . . Women are increasingly having babies in their 30s, which multiplies the chance of Down syndrome. Why tolerate one risky choice but not the other?
    May 15, 08: The California Supreme Court ruled today the state cannot bar same-sex marriages, marking a major victory for gay rights advocates that may have national implications.
    . . "Under these circumstances, we cannot find that retention of the traditional definition of marriage constitutes a compelling state interest", the court said in a majority decision. "Accordingly, we conclude that to the extent the current California statutory provisions limit marriage to opposite-sex couples, these statutes are unconstitutional."
    . . Massachusetts is now the only U.S. state to allow gay marriage. Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Vermont permit same-sex civil unions that grant largely the same state rights as married couples but lack the full, federal legal protections of marriage.
    May 7, 08: An Antarctic fur seal has been observed trying to have sex with a king penguin. The South African-based scientists who witnessed the incident say it is the most unusual case of mammal mating behavior yet known. The incident, which lasted for 45 minutes and was caught on camera, is reported in the Journal of Ethology. The bizarre event took place on a beach on Marion Island, a sub-Antarctic island that is home to both fur seals and king penguins.
    . . The 100kg seal first subdued the 15kg penguin by lying on it. The seal then alternated between resting on the penguin, and thrusting its pelvis, trying to insert itself, unsuccessfully. After 45 minutes, the seal gave up.
    May 6, 08: Breastfeeding in the US is at a 20-year high, with more than three out of four mothers now breastfeeding their infants at least occasionally, according to a report.
    . . Breastfeeding won’t make a new mom’s breasts sag, but having more babies might, a new study indicates. "A lot of times, if a woman comes in for a breast lift or a breast augmentation, she'll say 'I want to fix what breastfeeding did to my breasts'", said U of Kentucky plastic surgeon Brian Rinker. So he decided to study any possible connection.
    . . Rinker and his colleagues interviewed 132 women who came in for breast lifts or augmentation between 1998 and 2006. On average, the women were 39 years old, and 93% had experienced at least one pregnancy. Among the mothers, 58% had breastfed at least one of their children. The average duration of breastfeeding was nine months. The researchers evaluated the womens' medical history, body mass index (BMI), pre-pregnancy bra cup size and smoking status.
    . . The results of the study, presented this week at a conference of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, showed no difference in the degree of breast ptosis (or sagging) between women who breastfed and those who didn't. The main factors that did affect sagging were age, smoking status and the number of pregnancies a woman has had.
    . . Rinker noted that the smoking connection made sense because "smoking breaks down a protein in the skin called elastin, which gives youthful skin its elastic appearance and supports the breast."
    May 5, 08: All Michael Buday wanted to do was take the last name of his wife, Diana Bijon, when they married. But it took two years, a lawsuit alleging sex discrimination and a change in California law before he picked up his new drivers license in the name of Michael Bijon.
    . . After months of frustration, the Los Angeles computer programmer and his ER nurse wife Diana, 29, took their problem to the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.
    . . A double barrel name would have been no problem, nor would Diana and Michael deciding to each keep their birth names. But California and some 40 other U.S. states provided no place on the marriage license application, and driving license, for the groom to choose the bride's surname.
    . . A subsequent lawsuit led to a new California state law guaranteeing the rights of both married couples and registered domestic partners to choose whichever last name they prefer on their marriage and driving licenses.
    May 1, 08: A woman's voice becomes more alluring when she is at her most fertile, according to US research. Recordings of women taken at different points in their menstrual cycle were played to people of both sexes. The study suggests sex hormones can alter the workings of the voice box, but the change may be too subtle to pick up in many situations.
    . . Human reproduction differs from reproduction in other mammals in that there are no obvious signs that a woman is at her fertile phase. However, scientists have suggested that very subtle changes caused by the rise and fall of different sex hormones can be detected by men, who then perhaps find a woman more attractive without necessarily even realising why.
    . . The latest research involved taking recordings of women counting from one to 10 at four points during the menstrual cycle and then played them back to male and female students. The other issue is that women do have mood changes across their menstrual cycle, and people might just be attracted to a happy-sounding woman, rather than a fertile one."
    May 1, 08: Men aren't all from Mars when it comes to their sexuality, a new study from Kinsey Institute researchers shows.
    . . Among the revelations from their focus groups in which men talked about what influenced their sexual desire and arousal: one man's turn-on is often another's turn-off; an erection doesn't always signal arousal; and not every guy wants to jump into bed at the drop of a hat.
    . . Men reported getting erections without necessarily being aroused, while some men, especially older men, said they might become aroused without having an erection. Some used masturbation as a way to "fix" it "when something just feels off", or as a "great way" to get out of a funk.
    . . Many men said feeling confident and good about themselves often led to feeling sexually aroused (while "feeling scruffy" had the opposite effect). And for many men, a self-confident partner was also more desirable than one who didn't feel good about herself. In addition to a nice body and a pretty face, many men found intelligence "really attractive" and "a big turn on."
    . . Mood and feeling emotionally connected also influenced arousal for men, while a woman's scent was key for some men, but not others. However, an "overwhelming majority" said that being outdoors, for example on a camping trip or having a picnic, boosted their sexual desire and arousal.
    A governor in northern Saudi Arabia has ordered authorities to punish men who flirt with women in public places by cutting their hair, local media said.
    Apr 23, 08: Programs teaching U.S. schoolchildren to abstain from sex have not cut teen pregnancies or sexually transmitted diseases or delayed the age at which sex begins, health groups told Congress.
    Apr 5, 08: A new brain-scan study may help explain what's going on in the minds of financial titans when they take risky monetary gambles —-sex. When young men were shown erotic pictures, they were more likely to make a larger financial gamble than if they were shown a picture of something scary, such a snake, or something neutral, such as a stapler, university researchers reported. The arousing pictures lit up the same part of the brain that lights up when financial risks are taken.
    . . "You have a need in an evolutionary sense for both money and women. They trigger the same brain area", said Camelia Kuhnen, a Northwestern U finance professor who conducted the study with a Stanford U psychologist. Kuhnen said the same link could hold true for women, but they didn't test it because it is more difficult to find an erotic image that would appeal to many different heterosexual women compared to heterosexual men.
    . . The link between sex and greed goes back hundreds of thousands of years, to men's evolutionary role as provider or resource gatherer to attract women, said Kevin McCabe, professor of economics, law and neuroscience.
    . . The erotic pictures experiment was designed to find which was the cause and which was the effect. The answer: Lighting up the reward area, in this case with soft-core pictures, caused the risk-taking, Kuhnen said. "The more activation there you have, the more prone you are to taking more risk", Kuhnen said. "It could be a feedback loop."
    Apr 14, 08: Scientists say it is unlikely same-sex couples would be able to use artificial eggs and sperm as a way to create their own biological child.
    Apr 10, 08: Women seeking a lifelong mate might do well to choose the guy a notch below them in the looks category. New research reveals couples in which the wife is better looking than her husband are more positive and supportive than other match-ups.
    . . The reason, researchers suspect, is that men place great value on beauty, whereas women are more interested in having a supportive husband. Researchers admit that looks are subjective, but studies show there are some universal standards, including large eyes, "baby face" features, symmetric faces, so-called average faces, and specific waist-hip ratios in men versus women.
    . . Past research has shown that individuals with comparable stunning looks are attracted to each other and once they hook up they report greater relationship satisfaction. These studies, however, are mainly based on new couples, showing that absolute beauty is important in the earliest stages of couple-hood.
    . . The new study reveals looks continue to matter beyond that initial attraction, though in a different way. Men who are more attractive than their partners would theoretically have access to partners who are more attractive than their current spouses, McNulty said. The "grass could be greener" mentality could make these men less satisfied and less committed to maintain the marriage.
    . . Physical attractiveness of husbands is not as important to women, the researchers suggest. Rather, wives are looking for supportive husbands, they say. So it seems the mismatch in looks is actually a perfect match.
    Apr 10, 08: An Egyptian court convicted five men on charges of homosexual behavior and sentenced them to three years in prison, officials said. Defense lawyer, Adel Ramadan, said the judge found the men guilty of the "habitual practice of debauchery" —-a term used in the Egyptian legal system to denote consensual homosexual acts.
    Apr 9, 08: Members of the opposite sex can spot whether someone is after a one-night stand or something more permanent just by looking at their face, scientists said.
    . . On men, a square jaw, large nose and small eyes are more likely to betray the look of lust than of love. Women found men with softer features more likely to opt for commitment. But the Durham U-led research found that while men can judge whether a woman is footloose-and-fancy-free or not, there is no common facial detail to explain it.
    . . In one study, 72% of the 153 participants correctly identified the sexual attitudes of a group of men and women in their 20s after being shown photographs or facial images. The research also showed that women who were open to short-term sexual relationships were usually seen as more attractive. They tended to have wide eyes and large lips, such as the actress Angelina Jolie. Women were usually interested in men who appeared to be more likely to want a long-term relationship.
    . . The research tended to confirm earlier findings which found that women see masculine men as more likely to be unfaithful and worse at parenting. The men and women also tended to opt for complete opposites.
    A bid by a local government in Indonesia's East Java province to curb prostitution by asking masseuses to wear a padlock on their pants was an insult, a newspaper quoted the minister for women's empowerment as saying.
    Best-selling author Mary Roach: her new book "Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex."
    . . "Women get nocturnal clitoral erections. The clitoris is sort of like a little tiny penis … I just love that they actually studied it, that they found women with especially big clitorises and got a big strain gauge and figured it out.
    . . Roach: Sexual response is such an individual thing: There are people who have orgasms when they brush their teeth. There's so much individual difference that it's hard to do what science likes to do and make conclusive statements.
    . . Now they're looking at central nervous-system drugs for low libido. There's one called Flibanserin that's making its way through the FDA pipeline now."
    Apr 2, 08: Thailand's health chiefs barred hospitals and clinics from castrating would-be "ladyboys" amid growing concern about the operation being seen as a cheap and quick alternative to a full sex-change.
    . . In a letter to 16,000 private health units, the Public Health Ministry said doctors performing the operation outside formal sex-change therapy --which requires rigorous physical and mental evaluation of the patient-- faced up to six months in jail.
    . . However, senior health official Tara Chinakarn admitted that policing the temporary ban might be difficult as cosmetic removal of the testicles was such a quick operation and easy to conduct in secret. "It's hard to track them down as it takes only 15-20 minutes to have the surgery."
    . . Thailand is home to a large number of "ladyboys", or "katoey" in Thai, a term that covers anything from a transvestite to a man who has undergone a full sex change. The tolerance shown towards the "third sex", as it is often referred to, has led to the country becoming a world leader in sex-change surgery.
    Apr 2, 08: When Roslan Ngah took a second wife, he might have wondered if she would get along with his first. He need not have worried. The two women got on so well they decided to leave him at the same time. According to Islamic law, a woman can submit a request to leave her husband, but the pronouncement of divorce must come from the man or a court. Islam allows a man to have four wives.
    Mar 20, 08: More often than not, guys interpret even friendly cues, such as a subtle smile from a gal, as a sexual come-on, and a new study discovers why: Guys are clueless. More precisely, they are somewhat oblivious to the emotional subtleties of non-verbal cues, according to a new study of college students.
    . . "Young men just find it difficult to tell the difference between women who are being friendly and women who are interested in something more", said lead researcher Coreen Farris. About 70% of college women reporting an experience in which a guy mistook her friendliness for a sexual come-on.
    . . Some might think the results come down to "boys being boys", and so even the slightest female interest sparks sexual fantasy. But the study also found that it goes both ways for guys --they mistake females' sexual signals as friendly ones. The researchers suggest guys have trouble noticing and interpreting the subtleties of non-verbal cues, in either direction. So ladies trying to brush off a guy at work or the gym may need to be, uh, more direct. Men in the study also had more trouble than women distinguishing between sadness and rejection.
    . . Following this idea, men and women would be aware of the same behavioral cues, but men would have a lower threshold for what qualifies as sexual interest. In contrast, women would wait for compelling evidence before labeling a behavior as sexual interest.
    . . However, Farris and her colleagues didn't find this to be the case. Rather than seeing the world through sex-colored glasses, men seemed just to have blurry vision of sorts, overall.
    . . That doesn't mean such men can't learn to read cues or that all men are clueless decoders of women's gestures. "These are average differences. Some men are very skilled at reading affective cues", Farris said, "and some women find the task challenging."
    Mar 20, 08: Studies have found that children born to single mothers are vastly more likely to be poor, have behavioral and psychological problems, drop out of high school, and themselves go on to have out-of-wedlock children.
    Mar 20, 08: Teenagers account for only 23% of current out-of-wedlock births. That means the vast majority of unwed mothers are old enough to know what they're doing: Unwed births are surging among women ages 25 to 29.
    . . In the last 50 years, there has been an extraordinary decoupling of marriage and procreation. In 1960, about 5% of births were to unwed mothers; that figure is now a record high of nearly 40%.
    Mar 19, 08: When it comes to resisting sexual temptation and remaining faithful to one's partner in life, The Beatles got it right: All You Need Is Love. A new study said that people who are in love with their partners are less attracted to other people. Numerous studies have shown that humans are not especially self-restrained when it comes to gratification. We prefer to indulge in pleasure when opportunity arises.
    . . But when it comes to love and lust, this otherwise reliable human trait --get it while you can-- leads to a paradox: Why do people in stable relationships so often pass up the chance for a little sexual gratification on the side, even if they can get away with it?
    March 05, 2008: The best sex should last between seven and 13 minutes, and even three-minute sex is "adequate", a major survey of US experts found.
    Mar 7, 08: Swedish pharmacies, which are run under a state monopoly chain called Apoteket, will begin selling sex toys such as dildos in June, a spokeswoman for the chain said.
    Mar 4, 08: Four years after San Francisco ignited a heated national debate by briefly allowing gay marriage, California's top court hears arguments about whether matrimony should be limited to a man and a woman.
    . . The hearing brings into focus the highest-profile U.S. fight over gay rights in recent years and the outcome could end up influencing legislation and litigation in other states on a matter that has been a hot-button issue in election campaigns.
    . . San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom forced the issue by suddenly issuing gay marriage licenses in February 2004. More than 4,000 homosexual couples took him up on the offer, before a lower court halted the process. California's Supreme Court ruled later that year that Newsom, mayor of a city long at the forefront of the fight for gay rights, had no authority to perform weddings for same-sex couples and voided the marriages.
    . . Gay marriage supporters won an initial battle when a Superior Court judge ruled in their favor in 2005. The following year a state appeals court judge overruled that decision and backed existing state law. Californians in 2000 approved a ballot measure defining marriage as the union of man and woman. But domestic partnership legislation as of 2005 gave registered gay couples many of the same privileges enjoyed by married couples.
    . . California's legislature has voted twice since 2005 to allow gay marriages, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, vetoed the bills, saying voters or the courts should decide the issue.
    . . It now falls to the seven justices of the California Supreme Court to resolve the matter, and they have 90 days from the hearing to issue an opinion. Six of the judges were appointed by Republican governors and one by a Democrat and the panel is considered politically moderate.
    On Feb. 13, sex-toy retailers in Texas rejoiced when a federal appeals court ruled -—just in time for Valentine's Day—- that a Texas prohibition against the sale of dildos and pocket pussies violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
    Feb 20, 08: After more than half a century of debate and bedroom exploration, a row about the location of the fabled G spot may be settled at last. The G spot, named after a German gynaecologist called Ernst Graefenberg who first mooted its existence in 1950, is said to be a highly sensitive area in the vagina that, when stimulated, gives a woman a powerful orgasm. Some experts have even concluded that it does not exist.
    . . The answer, according to Italian researcher Emmanuele Jannini, is that, yes, the G spot does exist, but only among those women who are lucky enough to possess it. Jannini, of the U of L'Aquila, used ultrasound to scan a key vaginal area among nine women who claimed to experience vaginal orgasms and 11 who said they didn't.
    . . The target was an area of tissue on the front vaginal wall located behind the urethra. Tissue was notably thicker in this space among the first group of women compared with the second, the scans revealed. Jannini says the evidence is clear: "Women without any visible evidence of a G spot cannot have a vaginal orgasm."
    . . Some experts question whether what Jannini calls the G spot is a distinct structure or the internal part of the clitoris, whose size is highly variable. Others say more work is needed to confirm Jannini's belief that the G spot is missing in women who don't experience vaginal orgasm. The G spot could be there in all women, but with differing degrees of sensitivity, they believe.
    Feb 19, 08: While many misguided designers think that creating gadgets for women involves merely making a phone pink or giving it a makeup mirror, Suart Meloy knows what ladies are really looking for: orgasms at the push of a button. And that's just what his Orgasmatron does.
    . . The Orgasmatron, which is currently awaiting approval by the FDA for the treatment of "female orgasm dysfunction", is a box about the size of an Altoids tin (although he's working on shrinking it to the size of a couple sticks of gum) that has two thin wires that attach to the nerves in your spine responsible for sexual pleasure. You then hit a button on the remote and hocus pocus, you get yourself one 100% real orgasm. How's it feel?
    . . Women who have used the device say they feel as if their clitoris and vagina are actually being stimulated, to quite realistic effect. ("One woman asked me, 'Would it be considered adultery if I gave the remote control to someone other than my husband?' " Meloy says.)
    . . Some volunteers also report fleeting episodes of clenched foot muscles, Meloy says, probably a result of electrical pulses leaving the spine and stimulating nearby motor nerves. (He wonders if the phenomenon might somehow be related to a common orgasm description: "My toes curled.")
    . . And when the device's pulse intensity is cranked up to maximum, Meloy says, some women find their vaginal and rectal muscles squeezing rhythmically in time with the pulses, even before the orgasmic finale.
    . . Meloy says he has also implanted two impotent men with the device. Both volunteers were able to achieve an erection, he says, and reportedly had powerful ejaculations. Unfortunately for the orgasm-deprived, when the Orgasmatron comes to market in two or three years, it'll probably cost about $12,000.
    Feb 18, 08: A southwest Florida church issued a challenge for its married members this past Sunday: Hanky panky every day. Relevant Church head pastor Paul Wirth says the 50% divorce rate was the catalyst for The 30-Day Sex Challenge.
    Feb 18, 08: When Ali started blogging that he was Sudanese and gay, he did not realize he was joining a band of African and Middle Eastern gays and lesbians who, in the face of hostility and repression, have come out online. But within days the messages started coming in to black-gay-arab.blogspot.com.
    . . Kenya's "Rants and Raves" reported that gay people were targets in the country's election violence, while blogger Gukira focused on claims that boys had been raped during riots. Afriboy organized an auction of his erotic art to raise funds "to help my community in Kenya."
    . . There was also widespread debate on the comments made by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last September about homosexuals in his country.
    . . There are blogs bridging the Arabic-speaking world from Morocco in the west to the United Arab Emirates in the east. There is a self-sustaining circle of gay bloggers in Kenya and Uganda together with a handful of sites put up by gay Nigerians.
    . . And then there is South Africa, where the constitutional recognition of gay rights has encouraged many bloggers to come wholly into the open.
    . . Gug, the writer behind the blog GayUganda: "Oh yes, I do love the Internet, and I guess it is a tool that has made us gay Ugandans and Africans get out of our villages and realize that the parish priest's homophobia is not universal opinion. Surprise, surprise!"
    Feb 14, 08: An underground movement of gay Orthodox Jews in Israel has created a Web site to help homosexuals cope with living in a strict, religious community that is often hostile to their lifestyle.
    Feb 13, 08: Love really is blind, at least when it comes to looking at others, U.S. researchers reported. College students who reported they were in love were less likely to take careful notice of other attractive men or women.
    . . "Feeling love for your romantic partner appears to make everybody else less attractive, and the emotion appears to work in very specific ways in enabling you to push thoughts of that tempting other out of your mind", said Gian Gonzaga of eHarmony.
    Feb 12, 08: The best "catches" in dating land may be the worst choices in the long-run, new research shows. Popular people who monitor themselves carefully in social situations and thereby appear to be the most socially appropriate are often highly sought after as romantic partners, a study finds, but these people show less satisfaction and commitment in relationships than socially-awkward people.
    . . "High self-monitors are social chameleons", said Northwestern U professor of communication studies Michael E. Roloff."And, because they're quick to pick up on social cues, are socially adept and unlikely to say things upsetting to others, they are generally well-liked and sought after. Research finds [self-monitors] to be excellent negotiators and far more likely to be promoted at work than their low self-monitoring peers”, Roloff said.
    . . But there’s a downside for high self-monitors when it comes to their romantic relationships. "High self-monitors may appear to be the kind of people we want to have relationships with, but they themselves are less committed to and less happy in their relationships than low self-monitors", Roloff said.
    . . The problem seems to be that they can't turn the self-monitoring off. "It's not that high self-monitors are intentionally deceptive or evil", Roloff said. "They appear to have an outlook and way of achieving their goals that makes them attractive to us socially but that prevents them from being particularly happy or loyal in their romantic relationships."
    . . Conversely, the researchers found that low self-monitors — people who are the least concerned with social appropriateness and are unlikely to mask their feelings or opinions to avoid confrontation or preserve their self-image — are more committed to and more satisfied with their relationships.
    . . Those awkward people who always seem to be sticking their feet in their mouths may ultimately be more genuine and capable of intimate relationships. However, their honesty and loyalty can extract a price from their partners, because they may be more likely to say blunt and hurtful things.
    Feb 11, 08: Saudi Arabia's religious police have banned red roses ahead of Valentine's Day, forcing couples in the conservative Muslim nation to think of new ways to show their love.
    Feb 10, 08: In the 1960s, British zoologist and author Desmond Morris first proposed that kissing might have evolved from the practice in which primate mothers chewed food for their young and then fed them mouth-to-mouth, lips puckered. Chimpanzees feed in this manner, so our hominid ancestors probably did, too. Pressing outturned lips against lips may have then later developed as a way to comfort hungry children when food was scarce and, in time, to express love and affection in general. The human species might eventually have taken these proto-parental kisses down other roads until we came up with the more passionate varieties we have today.
    . . Silent chemical messengers called pheromones could have sped the evolution of the intimate kiss. Many animals and plants use pheromones to communicate with other members of the same species. Insects, in particular, are known to emit pheromones to signal alarm, for example, the presence of a food trail, or sexual attraction.
    Jan 18, 08: Talk about "gaydar." In just a fraction of a second, people can accurately judge the sexual orientation of other individuals by glancing at their faces, according to new research. The finding builds on the growing theory that the subconscious mind detects and probably guides much more of human behavior than is realized.
    . . Ambady and colleague Nicholas Rule, both at Tufts U in Medford, Massachusetts, wondered about sexual orientation. They showed men and women photos of 90 faces belonging to homosexual men and heterosexual men for intervals ranging from 33 milliseconds to 10 seconds. When given 100 milliseconds or more to view a face, participants correctly identified sexual orientation nearly 70% of the time. Volunteers were less accurate at shorter durations, and their accuracy did not get better at durations beyond 100 milliseconds.
    . . Romantic attraction likely works just as fast, notes psychologist Paul Eastwick of Northwestern U in Evanston, Illinois. "If people make accurate judgments about sexually relevant aspects of a person this quickly", he says, "you have to stop and wonder how we size up one another's romantic potential in a matter of milliseconds."
    . . Psychologist David Kenny of the U of Connecticut, Storrs, says the finding demonstrates the brain's remarkable ability to make fast yet accurate appraisals. Still, he notes that with some of the images, accuracy regularly fell below 50%. It's possible that some faces are just hard to read.
    A German travel agency, citing "a gap in the market", offers nude flights to a Baltic resort. The crew will remain clothed "for safety reasons."
    According to Sweden's Sex Purchase Law --the Sexkopslagen-- it is a crime to pay for sex, though selling sex remains legal! Paying for sex is not currently outlawed in the UK. But trafficking people for sex, running a brothel, street soliciting and kerb-crawling are illegal.
    Jan 21, 08: Two in three Australian travelers are either members of the notorious Mile High Club or would like to be a member, a survey showed.
    Jan 11, 08: A couple discovered after they had married that they were twins who had been split up at birth and adopted by separate families, according to a member of Britain's House of Lords. He urged more information be provided on birth certificates for adopted children.
    Jan 15, 08: Republicans and Democrats may be dominating the US presidential race, but when it comes to the bedroom, it is independents who have better sex, according to Playboy magazine's Politics of Sex survey.
    Jan 2, 08: Selling sex is said to be humankind's oldest profession but it may have deep evolutionary roots, according to a study into our primate cousins which found that male macaques pay for intercourse by using grooming as a currency. Michael Gumert of Nanyang Technological U in Singapore made the discovery in a 20-month investigation into 50 long-tailed macaques.
    . . On average, females had sex 1.5 times per hour. But this rate jumped to 3.5 times per hour immediately after the female had been groomed by a male --and her partner of choice was likely to be the hunky monkey that did the grooming.
    . . Market forces also acted on the value of the transaction. If there were several females in the area, the cost of buying sex would drop dramatically --a male could "buy" a female for just eight minutes of nit-picking. But if there were no females around, he would have to groom for up to 16 minutes before sex was offered.
    . . The work supports the theory that biological market forces can explain social behavior. "There is a very well-known mix of economic and mating markets in the human species itself", said Ronald Noe of France's U of Strasbourg. "There are many examples of rich old men getting young attractive ladies."
    Jan 2, 08: The head of the Anglicans in the US has accused other churches, including the Church of England, of double standards over sexuality. The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church is Katherine Jefferts Schori. Her church is paying the price for its honesty over sexuality.
    . . The threat of schism in the Anglican Communion was prompted by the appointment of a gay bishop. She said other Anglican churches also have gay bishops in committed partnerships and should be open about it. "There's certainly a double standard."
    Dec 17, 07: The city of Amsterdam announced plans to clean up its infamous "red light" district to fight human trafficking, money laundering and drug abuse and replace prostitutes' windows with upmarket boutiques.
    . . Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen told a news conference he wanted to clamp down on the organized criminals whose growing influence has corrupted the historic city center. "The romantic picture of the area is outdated if you see the abuses in the sex industry and that is why the council has to act", he said. "We don't want to get rid of prostitution, but we do want to cut crime significantly."
    . . The city wants to fight forced prostitution by clamping down on pimps and demanding that brothel owners, escort agencies and those who protect prostitutes apply for permits. It also wants the minimum age for prostitutes lifted to 21 from 18. "You can be assured that those prostitutes who remain are not working involuntarily."
    . . While legalization was supposed to turn prostitutes into self-employed taxpayers who did not need pimps for protection, the city said the industry is still dominated by criminals attracted by the 370 euros each woman can earn a day.
    Nov 28, 07: Scans have shown that pedophilia may be the result of faulty connections in the brain. Researchers used sophisticated MRI scans to compare the brains of pedophiles and non-sexual criminals. Pedophiles had significantly less of a substance called "white matter", responsible for wiring the different parts of the brain together. The study follows work by Yale U which uncovered differences in the thought patterns of pedophiles.
    . . The team found activity in parts of pedophiles' brains were lower than in other volunteers when shown adult, erotic material.
    . . It had been widely thought that pedophilia was triggered by childhood trauma or abuse. However, the condition has also been linked to low IQ, suggesting a possible link to brain development. Pedophiles are also three times more likely to be left-handed.
    . . His theory is that the lack of adequate wiring between the different centers results in pedophiles not being able to differentiate between appropriate and inappropriate sexual objects.
    . . However, Dr Cantor stressed the latest study did not suggest that pedophiles could not be held criminally responsible for their actions. He said: "Not being able to choose your sexual interests doesn't mean you can't choose what you do."
    Nov 28, 07: A Chilean prostitute has auctioned 27 hours of sex to raise money for the country's largest charity during an annual fund-raising campaign.
    Nov 21, 07: Stravinsky regarded natural sounds as merely hints while real music required a human agent to order its tones. The great ornithologist, Charles Hartshorne, disagreed and found in birdsong every familiar musical feature, including accelerando, crescendo, diminuendo and changes of key and tone. Studies of nightingales show that their song, when recorded and broken down, is composed of hundreds of distinct notes in a five-second burst.
    . . The singer Angela Gheorghiu claims that sex immediately before a performance improves her coloratura. Led Zeppelin's singer Robert Plant said that in all his music he was "on my way to love".
    Nov 21, 07: A group of Swedish women is making waves by taking their tops off at public swimming pools in a protest against what they call gender-biased rules on swim wear.
    . . About 40 women have joined the network and staged topless protests in at least three cities, said Sanna Ferm, 22, one of the founders of the group called Bara Brost, or Bare Breasts. "The purpose of the campaign is to start a debate about why women's bodies are sexualized", Ferm said.
    . . Women can sunbathe topless in the summertime at beaches around Sweden, which is known for its relaxed attitude toward nudity, but they are required to wear tops at public swimming pools.
    . . Inger Groteblad, a manager at the swimming facility in Uppsala, said it was a matter of security. "We want to make sure that girls don't get subjected to sexual harassment", she was quoted as saying.
    . . The women have filed a complaint against the facility to Sweden's Equal Opportunities Ombudsman.
    A Chinese moviegoer is suing China's film watchdog in frustration with the censored version of Ang Lee's steamy World War Two drama "Lust, Caution", Beijing media reported.
    Nov 13, 07: Decades after some women cast aside their bras as an act of feminist radicalism, a group of Swedish women have launched a campaign to go topless in local swimming pools. The Bara Brost (Bare Breast) campaign began two months ago in the south of the country.
    . . Already about 50 women supported the campaign, she said, and a vanguard of 15 women had started direct action, swimming topless in local pools. "Our aim is to start a debate about the unwritten social and cultural rules that sexualize and discriminate against the female body", said Hellroth, a 21-year-old student.
    . . They also had a blog, she added: barabrost.blogg.se. Their site links to a Canadian sister organization, the Topfree Equal Rights Association. "It's important that women have the same rights as men", said another campaigner, 22-year-old Ragnhild Karlsson. "When you say we are more attractive topless, we say men should not be able to abuse women because they are topless."
    . . The new campaign has been closely followed by the Swedish sex education journal, Ottar. It recorded the launch of the campaign in September in Uppsala, 50 km from the capital, Stockholm, when two young women left their bikini tops in the dressing room.
    . . When the lifeguard at the leisure center challenged them, they refused to cover up and were told to leave the premises. In October, the campaign switched to a swimming pool in the southern town of Malmo. Another attempt in the southern town of Lund also failed. This month, the local ombudsman will decide whether or not to mediate in the matter.
    Nov 8, 07: A Roman Catholic bishop in the southern English port city of Portsmouth is backing a campaign to legalize brothels without in any way condoning them. The Right Reverend Crispian Hollis supported the local branch of the Women's Institute which wants to license brothels.
    . . "If you are going to take a pragmatic view and say prostitution happens, I think there is a need to make sure it's as well regulated as possible for the health of people involved and for the safety of the ladies themselves", Hollis said. "But it's going to be there whatever we do and it has been from time immemorial. So I think that is something we have to be realistic about."
    Nov 6, 07: Women in a Nepal mountain village have been mailing condoms to their husbands working overseas to protect them from sexually transmitted diseases [or from starting new families!], a news report said.
    Nov 1, 07: A woman who doesn't want her breast milk to go to waste has taken out a newspaper ad in hopes of selling it. Martha Heller, 22, of Tiffin, took out the ad in The Gazette, offering 100 ounces of her breast milk for $200.
    Oct 31, 07: A jury today ordered a Kansas church to pay $2.9 million in compensatory damages to relatives of a gay U.S. Marine after church members cheered his death at his funeral.
    Oct 29, 07: A family values campaigner accused of taking pornographic photographs of himself has been dumped as a candidate for Australia's November election by the Christian-values Family First Party.
    QUOTEs from Playboy article, 11-07: Donald Symons: "The more powerful a feeling has evolved to be, the more difficult the goal it must be trying to achieve." Stephen Duncombe: "Reality needs fantasy to render it desireable, just as fantasy needs reality to make it believable." "A true asexual has never been identified, but scientists have found the rare male ram, rat, or gerbil who shows no interest in mating, and 1% of respondents in a survey of 18,000 adults claimed never to have felt sexual desire. ... Climax appears to stimulate production of oxytocin and vasopressin, two hormones associated with bonding. "Apparently, a general lack of fear is necessary for ejaculation." [So the fear-reaction is suppressed.]
    To paraphrase my ninth-grade sex-ed teacher, "Hope is not a birth-control method."
    Oct 25, 07: Altering a gene in the brain of female worms changed their sexual orientation, researchers said, making female worms attracted to other females. The study reinforces the notion that sexual orientation is hard-wired in the brain, said Erik Jorgensen, scientific director of the Brain Institute at the U of Utah.
    . . Researchers in Jorgensen's lab switched on a gene in female worms that makes the body develop male structures, but they only activated the gene in the brain. As a result, the female worms still had female bodies, but they behaved like males.
    . . Animals such as nematodes, fruit flies and mice share many of the same genes as humans and are often used as models to understand human genetics. But Jorgensen said the study is not likely to resolve the burning question about the genesis of sexual orientation in humans. Jorgensen said the study is interesting because it suggests rather than being caused by extra, sex-specific nerve cells, attraction behaviors are part of the same brain circuit.
    . . The finding was part of a study looking at areas in the worms' brains involved in sexual attraction. The researchers were trying to understand the underpinnings of sexual attraction in the male nematodes. They reasoned it could arise from four extra smell-related nerve cells found only in male worm brains, from four core nerves found in both males and females or from a mix of both. When they systematically neutralized the male-only neurons, mature male worms still responded to the females.
    . . The findings imply nerve cells common to both male and female worms are central to sexual attraction and sexual orientation. "They have genes for both male behavior and female behavior in them", Jorgensen said. "It suggests the brain determines behavior."
    Oct 24, 07: Judges say adults have a right to produce porn anonymously, and to take sexually explicit photos in their own homes without keeping records for Justice Department inspection.
    Oct 18, 07: Feminism boosts sexual satisfaction for both men and women, a new study suggests. Busting stereotypes that peg feminists as ugly lesbians, a new study shows that having a feminist partner is linked with healthier, more romantic heterosexual relationships. They found that women with egalitarian attitudes do find mates and men do find them attractive. In fact, results reveal they are having a good time, maybe a better time than the non-feminists.
    . . . Among the findings:
    . . * College-age women who reported having feminist male partners also reported higher quality relationships that were more stable than couples involving non-feminist male partners.
    . . * College guys who were themselves feminists and had feminist partners reported more equality in their relationships.
    . . * Older women who perceived their male partners as feminists reported greater relationship health and sexual satisfaction.
    . . * Older men with feminist partners said they had more stable relationships and greater sexual satisfaction.

    Overall, feminism and romance do go hand in hand, the scientists say. While they aren't sure how feminism works to enhance relationship health, the researchers have some ideas. Feminist men might be more supportive of their female partner's ambitions than are traditionalists. Men with feminist partners may enjoy the extra breadwinner to share the economic burden of maintaining a household.

    Oct 16, 07: Vienna is to host what organizers have dubbed the world's first "divorce fair" this month, aimed at couples whose wedding dreams have turned sour and who need help in untying the knot as painlessly as possible.
    Oct 16, 07: Julio and Mauricio Cabrera are gay brothers who are convinced their sexual orientation is as deeply rooted as their Mexican ancestry. They are among 1,000 pairs of gay brothers taking part in the largest study to date seeking genes that may influence whether people are gay. The Cabreras hope the findings will help silence critics who say homosexuality is an immoral choice.
    . . If fresh evidence is found suggesting genes are involved, perhaps homosexuality will be viewed as no different than other genetic traits like height and hair color, said Julio, a student at DePaul U in Chicago.
    . . The federally funded study, led by Chicago-area researchers, will rely on blood or saliva samples to help scientists search for genetic clues to the origins of homosexuality. Parents and straight brothers also are being recruited. While initial results aren't expected until next year —-and won't provide a final answer-— skeptics are already attacking the methods and disputing the *presumed results. [!]
    . . Previous studies have shown that sexual orientation tends to cluster in families, though that doesn't prove genetics is involved. Extended families may share similar child-rearing practices, religion and other beliefs that could also influence sexual orientation. Research involving identical twins, often used to study genetics since they share the same DNA, has had mixed results.
    . . One widely cited study in the 1990s found that if one member of a pair of identical twins was gay, the other had a 52% chance of being gay. In contrast, the result for pairs of non-twin brothers, was 9%.
    . . Dr. Alan Sanders of Evanston Northwestern Healthcare Research Institute, the lead researcher of the new study, said he suspects there isn't one so-called "gay gene." It is more likely there are several genes that interact with nongenetic factors, including psychological and social influences, to determine sexual orientation, said Sanders, a psychiatrist. Still, he said, "If there's one gene that makes a sizable contribution, we have a pretty good chance" of finding it.
    . . Many gays fear that if gay genes are identified, it could result in discrimination, prenatal testing and even abortions to eliminate homosexuals, said Joel Ginsberg of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association.
    . . However, he added, "If we confirm that sexual orientation is an immutable characteristic, we are much more likely to get the courts to rule against discrimination." There is less research on lesbians, Sanders said, although some studies suggest that male and female sexual orientation may have different genetic influences.
    . . If these markers appear in gay brothers but not their straight brothers or parents, that would suggest a link to sexual orientation. The study is designed to find genetic markers, not to explain any genetic role in behavior.
    . . Jones acknowledged that he's not a neutral observer. His study involved 98 gays "seeking help" from Exodus International, a Christian group that believes homosexuals can become straight through prayer and counseling. Exodus International funded Jones' study. [!] The group's president, Alan Chambers, said he is a "former homosexual" who went straight and believes homosexuality is morally wrong.
    Oct 13, 07: The Vatican has confirmed local newspaper reports that a high-ranking Catholic priest has been suspended. The man, who works in the department in charge of clergy around the world, appeared on Italian TV earlier this month admitting that he was gay.
    Oct 9, 07: A lousy marriage might literally make you sick. Marital strife and other bad personal relationships can raise your risk for heart disease, researchers reported. What it likely boils down to is stress --a well-known contributor to health problems, as well as a potential byproduct of troubled relationships, the scientists said.
    . . In a study of 9,011 British civil servants, most of them married, those with the worst close relationships were 34% more likely to have heart attacks or other heart trouble during 12 years of follow-up than those with good relationships. That included partners, close relatives and friends.
    . . "OK, being married is in general good, but be careful about the kind of person you have married.' The quality of the relationship matters", said lead author Roberto De Vogli.
    . . Another recent study did find, over a 10-year follow-up, that women who keep silent during marital arguments had an increased risk of dying compared with wives who expressed their feelings during fights. What appeared to matter more for men was just being married; married men were less likely to die during the follow-up than single men.
    Oct 8, 07: Sibu the Orangutan has miffed his Dutch keepers by refusing to mate with females and showing sexual interest only in tattooed human blondes. [Like those who raised him.]
    Oct 6, 07: Alabama is about to enforce a law making it illegal to sell, market or distribute any device intended for stimulating the human genitals, thanks to a nine-year-old case intended to shut down strip clubs.
    Oct 1, 07: Once-puritan South Africa holds its first sex fair. South Africans queued to learn about sex toys and pole-dancing this weekend, at the first sex fair ever held in a country founded by conservative Christians and still home to many sexual taboos.
    . . The exhibition, modeled on a show running in Australia since 1996, would have been unthinkable 15 years ago when South Africa was still ruled by Afrikaners, the white descendants of the original, largely Puritan Dutch and French settlers. During the apartheid era, customs officials not only confiscated pornography brought from abroad by travelers, but sometimes detained those trying to import it. Strip clubs did not exist.
    Sept 25, 07: Scientists say distinct differences in the brain activity of pedophiles have been found using scanning technology. A Yale U team found activity in parts of pedophiles' brains were lower than in other volunteers when shown adult, erotic material. The journal Biological Psychiatry said this was the first real-time evidence of differences in thought patterns. A forensic psychologist from the UK said drug treatments for paedophilia might be possible.
    . . There is increasing evidence that problems in certain areas of the brain may contribute to feelings of sexual attraction towards children. In a few cases, patients with a brain tumor in a particular part of the brain have developed such feelings, only for them to go away when the tumor was removed.
    . . The Yale study used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), a technique which allows the activity within the brain to be recorded as the patient is thinking. They found that when known patients with paedophilic feelings were asked to look at adult pornography, a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, which is known to be involved in arousal and hormone release, was less active than in other volunteers. More generally, the more extreme the pedophilic behavior was rated, the lower the activation in a part of the brain called the "frontal cortex".
    . . However, Dr John Krystal, the journal's editor, said he didn't know whether this particular pattern of brain activity could be used to predict someone's risk of pedophilia.
    . . In the UK, many experts are looking to the biology of the brain to explain not just pedophilia, but other types of compulsive criminality. Dr Keith Ashcroft, a forensic psychologist: "I am campaigning for the use of anti-schizophrenia drugs in paedophilia, as these act on a similar part of the brain and may be useful."
    Sept 20, 07: Bavaria's most glamorous politician --a flame-haired motorcyclist who helped bring down state premier Edmund Stoiber-- has shocked the Catholic state in Germany by suggesting marriage should last just 7 years.
    . . Gabriele Pauli, who poses on her web site in motorcycle leathers, is standing for the leadership of Bavaria's Christian Social Union --sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats-- in a vote next week.
    . . She told reporters at the launch of her campaign manifesto that she wanted marriage to expire after seven years, and accused the CSU, which promotes traditional family values, of nurturing ideals of marriage which are wide of the mark.
    Sept 19, 07: A conservative German politician [a woman] proposed making marriage contracts expire after seven years, with the option to renew for those not feeling the proverbial itch.
    Sept 19, 07: Maryland's highest court ruled that marriage is between a man and a woman, overturning a lower court ruling and dashing the hopes of nine same-sex couples who wanted legal protection for long-term partners.
    OAK PARK, Ill. - If you need a hug, you won't get it at Percy Julian Middle School. Principal Victoria Sharts banned hugging among the suburban Chicago school's 860 students anywhere inside the building. She said students were forming "hug lines" that made them late for classes and crowded the hallways.
    I'd like a car loan and 20 condoms, please. A Thai bank is pitching into the battle against HIV/AIDS and handing out condoms to customers too shy to get them at the shop.
    Oct 3, 07: An Indonesian businessman's bid to make polygamy easier was rejected by the country's constitutional court.
    Sept 13, 07: Two decades after a nude photo scandal helped cost a Miss America her title, Americans may be adopting a more ho-hum attitude toward people who bare it all for the cameras. Some experts say the Internet and more explicit TV are fostering a more relaxed response by Americans to public displays of bare flesh, even if many people profess to be more conservative.
    . . Take, for example, the muted reaction to nude photos of 18-year-old Vanessa Hudgens, the star of Walt Disney Co.'s squeaky clean "High School Musical" franchise. One day after the photos surfaced on the Web, Hudgens issued an apology and family-friendly Walt Disney Co. said it would continue negotiating her appearance in the third installment of the hugely popular series.
    . . Some lashed out at her critics. Robert Thompson, professor of media and popular culture at Syracuse U: "While filling in a survey, people will always check off with one hand that there's too much sex and violence in the media, while using the other hand to search for that kind of material", he said. He cites the furor over Janet Jackson's breast being exposed for a fraction of second at the 2004 Super Bowl as an example of this hypocrisy.
    Sept 12, 07: [HORRORS!] Officials in the Russian province of Ulyanovsk urged residents to take the day off work and make patriotic love, with prizes for producing a child on the country's national day nine months hence.
    Sept 13, 07: Having an older sibling, particularly a brother, can stunt growth, work suggests. The study of 14,000 families was presented at the BA Festival of Science.
    . . The research, by David Lawson, of University College London, also showed children in larger families were likely to be shorter than average. Researchers found that children with three siblings were 2.5cm or one inch shorter than the average height for their age. It was suggested siblings may dilute resources --time, money or love-- that parents are able to invest in children.
    . . The effect of older sisters was more mild. One explanation put forward is that boys are more demanding to raise, and so stretch the resources of parents more than daughters. Experts also said the condition of the womb after the first pregnancy may be a factor.
    Sept 11, 07: Another Egyptian girl has died from female genital mutilation. This is the second death in three months. Six years ago, according to a survey, nearly every Egyptian woman of childbearing age had been subjected to the procedure. The usual lethal risks are hemhorraging, infection, and childbirth complications—did we mention the mutilation? This time the cause of death was apparently related to anesthesia. It's been nine years since the government officially banned the practice and two months since it issued a similar decree, but apparently it's not doing the job. Legislation is in the works to stiffen the penalties.
    Sept 9, 07: A corrupt senior Chinese official was denounced by his 11 mistresses after some of their husbands were sentenced to death for graft, state media said.
    A Chinese woman is suing her former employer after falling victim to the company policy of firing staff who contradict their boss three times.
    Sept 5, 07: A State U of New York team quizzed over 1,000 students, finding women place a big emphasis on kissing. They use kissing as a way of assessing the recipient as a potential partner, and later to maintain intimacy and to check the status of a relationship.
    . . But men placed less importance on it, using it to increase the likelihood of sex. The questionnaires revealed men were less discriminating when it came to deciding who to kiss or who to have sex with. They were more willing to have sex with someone without kissing, to have sex with someone they are not attracted to and agree to have sex with someone they considered to be a bad kisser.
    . . But kissing was more important as a bonding mechanism to women. In long-term relationships, females not only rate kissing as more important than men, but they indicated that kissing was important throughout a relationship.
    . . Meanwhile, men placed less importance on kissing as the relationship progresses. There was also a difference in the sort of kisses the two sexes preferred, with men liking wet, tongue kisses.
    Sept 1, 07: Iowa. Same-sex marriage was legal here for less than 24 hours before the county won a stay of a judge's order, a tiny window of opportunity that allowed two men to make history but left dozens of other couples disappointed after a frantic rush to the altar.
    . . Judge Robert Hanson ordered Polk County officials to accept marriage license requests from same-sex couples, but he granted the stay at about 12:30 p.m. Friday. By then, 27 same-sex couples had filed applications, but only Sean Fritz and Tim McQuillan of Ames had made it official by getting married and returning the signed license to the courthouse in time.
    . . In the front yard of the Rev. Mark Stringer, pastor of the First Unitarian Church of Des Moines, they become the only same-sex couple wed in the U.S. outside of Massachusetts, where some 8,000 such couples have tied the knot. Stringer concluded the ceremony by saying, "This is a legal document and you are married."
    Sept 1, 07: People who smoke are more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia than people who have quit or have never smoked, Dutch researchers reported.
    Sept 1, 07: China has punished three policemen for detaining and fining two young lovers $660 for hugging in public on the Chinese version of Valentine's Day.
    Aug 29, 07: Married men do less housework than live-in boyfriends, finds an international survey. But married women do more housework than their live-in counterparts. “Marriage as an institution seems to have a traditionalizing effect on couples—even couples who see men and women as equal,” said co-researcher Shannon Davis, a sociologist.
    . . Understanding the dynamics of couples who live together but are not married has become more important as cohabitation around the globe increases. More than 5 million unmarried partner households (more than 10 million individuals) currently exist in the US, according to a 2006 report by the U.S. Census Bureau.
    . . They found men spent about 9 hours a week on housework compared with women, who spent more than 20 hours.
    . . Regardless of the couples' relative earnings or work hours, cohabiting males reported more household hours than did their married counterparts, while the opposite was true for women, with wives picking up the broom less often than live-in girlfriends.
    . . Other factors also came into play. Men who raked in more earnings than their partners did fewer hours of housework than men with lower relative incomes.
    Aug 28, 07: Civil unions between male couples existed around 600 years ago in medieval Europe, a historian now says. Historical evidence, including legal documents and gravesites, can be interpreted as supporting the prevalence of homosexual relationships hundreds of years ago, said Allan Tulchin of Shippensburg U in Pennsylvania.
    . . If accurate, the results indicate socially sanctioned same-sex unions are nothing new, nor were they taboo in the past. He found legal contracts from late medieval France that referred to the term "affrèrement", roughly translated as brotherment. Similar contracts existed elsewhere in Mediterranean Europe, Tulchin said.
    . . In the contract, the "brothers" pledged to live together sharing "un pain, un vin, et une bourse", (that's French for one bread, one wine and one purse). The "one purse" referred to the idea that all of the couple's goods became joint property. Like marriage contracts, the "brotherments" had to be sworn before a notary and witnesses. "They loved each other, and the community accepted that.”
    Aug 22, 07: An unprecedented study of sex and seniors finds that many older people are surprisingly frisky --willing to do, and talk about, intimate acts that would make their grandchildren blush. That may be too much information for some folks, but it comes from the most comprehensive sex survey ever done among 57- to 85-year-olds in the US.
    . . Sex and interest in it do fall off when people are in their 70s, but more than a quarter of those up to age 85 reported having sex in the previous year. And the drop-off has a lot to do with health or lack of a partner, especially for women, the survey found.
    . . The federally funded study, done by respected scientists, overturns some stereotypical notions that physical pleasure is just a young person's game. More than half of those aged 57 to 75 said they gave or received oral sex, as did about a third of 75- to 85-year-olds.
    . . People whose health was excellent or very good were nearly twice as likely to be sexually active as those in poor or fair health.
    . . -Half of people having sex reported at least one related problem. Most common in men was erection trouble (37%); in women, low desire (43%), vaginal dryness (39%) and inability to have an orgasm (34%).
    . . -One out of seven men used Viagra or other substances to improve sex.
    . . -Only 22% of women and 38% of men had discussed sex with a doctor since age 50.
    . . The survey had a remarkable 75% response rate. Only 2% to 7% did not answer questions about sexual activities or problems, although a higher percentage declined to reveal how often they masturbate. Most participants were married. But by the time they were 75 to 85, only 37% of women had spouses compared to 71% of men.
    . . The proportion of each gender reporting giving and receiving oral sex "matched up perfectly", Lindau said. "This gives us pretty good reassurance that men and women are telling the same story."
    . . The survey bolsters the "use it or lose it" factor seen in previous studies. "If you are doing it, you keep doing it. If you slack off in marriage like when you're in your 40s, it's hard to pick it up when you are older", he said.
    . . Only 13% of men but 35% of women said sex was "not at all important." Menopause has a big effect on women, and the drop-off of estrogen makes many of them less interested in sex.
    . . But menopause also means women no longer have to worry about getting pregnant, and many have more time and feel freer after children are gone, notes Westheimer, the sex adviser.
    Aug 22, 07: Vermont's clothing-optional capital is stripping off its temporary ban on public nudity. A month after passing the temporary ban, the Brattleboro Selectboard voted 3-2 on Tuesday to reject a proposed ordinance that would have made it permanent. When the emergency temporary ordinance expires next month, public nudity will no longer be illegal. It's all about tolerance, one board member said.
    A Malaysian villager who took a second wife has been ordered by a court to compensate his first wife and their children with a buffalo and a pig.
    A cell phone that lets ladies know if they're running a higher-than-normal chance of getting pregnant is the latest idea from Samsung.
    Aug 9, 07: Forget the square jaw, rugged complexion and tough-guy macho attitude --what women really want is a man with full lips and feminine features, according to a British study. The findings add to previous research about masculinity and offer further insight into what people look for in others when choosing potential partners, said evolutionary psychologist Lynda Boothroyd, who led the study.
    . . The researchers asked more than 400 British men and women to judge digitally altered pictures of male faces made to look more masculine or feminine. The participants were then asked to predict personality traits such as dominance, ambition, wealth and whether a person would be faithful or make a good parent
    . . It wasn't the macho men who came out ahead. The study showed these masculine types with larger noses, smaller eyes and thicker eyebrows were viewed as less faithful and worse parents.
    . . It was the "feminine" faces with wide eyes, finer features and thinner, more curved eyebrows that were chosen as the best potential long-term mates. Faces that also appeared healthier --like those with better complexion-- were also seen as more desirable in all personality traits. This helps to counter claims that masculinity is best viewed as an indicator of genetic fitness and immunity to disease.
    Aug 6, 07: Female mice became sexually voracious and tried to mate like males after scientists disabled a small sensory organ, casting fresh light on how gender-specific behavior develops in animals.
    . . The difference seems to lie in how male and female mice use the vomeronasal organ to process pheromones, said Catherine Dulac, a Harvard biologist. The vomeronasal organ, found in the noses of some animals but not in people or higher primates, is a key processing center for pheromones. Scientists had long attributed aggressive male mating tactics to a testosterone-induced hard-wiring of male brains.
    . . In female mice, pheromones normally suppress male sex behaviors and activate female ones, the research suggests. "This comes as a surprise, to think that the neural circuitry for male behavior had been sitting in the female brain all this time", said Mark Breedlove, a neuroscientist.
    . . The researchers said they bred female mice without a gene critical to the vomeronasal organ's function. They also sliced the organ from otherwise normal adult females. In both cases, the females pursued cage mates aggressively, sniffing their rears and mounting them. They turned to other male mating behaviors, such as pelvic thrusts, while eschewing typically female roles like nesting and nursing.
    . . The females did not limit themselves to males, with some trying to mate with other females. It turns out female mice need the vomeronasal organ to tell the sexes apart, just as males have in earlier studies, the researchers said.
    . . "On the other hand, it does make you wonder if humans also contain both sets of neural circuitry in the brain, and if something other than odors is responsible for determining which set we'll use as we grow up."
    Aug 3, 07: German workaholics may be suffering from a lack of sex, according to a university study published.
    . . A survey of 32,000 men and women by researchers at the U of Goettingen found over 35% of those reporting unsatisfying sex lives tended to use hard work as a diversion. Some 36% of men and 35% of women surveyed for the "Apotheken Umschau" newsletter said they were likely to put in extra time at the office and volunteer for extra assignments.
    . . The hard work ethic was even more pronounced among those who reported having no sex --45% of men and 46% of women said they voluntarily took on more responsibilities.
    Aug 1, 07: After exhaustively compiling a list of the 237 reasons why people have sex, researchers found that young men and women get intimate for mostly the same motivations. It's more about lust in the body than a love connection in the heart.
    . . College-aged men and women agree on their top reasons for having sex - they were attracted to the person, they wanted to experience physical pleasure and "it feels good", according to a peer-reviewed study in the August edition of Archives of Sexual Behavior. Twenty of the top 25 reasons given for having sex were the same for men and women. Expressing love and showing affection were in the top 10 for both men and women, but they did take a back seat to the clear No. 1: "I was attracted to the person."
    . . "It's refuted a lot of gender stereotypes ... that men only want sex for the physical pleasure and women want love", said U of Texas clinical psychology professor Cindy Meston, the study's co-author. "That's not what I came up with in my findings."
    . . Forget thinking that men are from Mars and women from Venus, "the more we look, the more we find similarity", said Dr. Irwin Goldstein, director of sexual medicine at Alvarado Hospital in San Diego. Goldstein, who wasn't part of Meston's study, said the Texas research made a lot of sense and adds to growing evidence that the vaunted differences in the genders may only be among people with sexual problems.
    . . She predicted huge differences when older groups of people are studied.
    China has ordered all hotels, holiday resorts and public showers to provide condoms, part of nationwide efforts to fight the spread of AIDS, a newspaper said.
    July 16, 07: James Holsinger, Bush's tap for surgeon general, is grilled on birth control, sex education, his condemnation of male homosexuality and his ability to stand up to political pressure by Sen. Patty Murray.
    July 15, 07: The Archdiocese of Los Angeles said it would pay people who were sexually abused by priests as children a record $660 million, although some victims regretted it meant church leaders would not face questioning in court.
    July 12, 07: Vietnam, too, is experiencing a "quiet" sexual revolution. A young woman lives with her boyfriend but hides it from her family, girls write blogs about love and relationships and couples seeking privacy cuddle in public parks at nightfall.
    Malaysia's religious police detained a Muslim singer at a popular club, saying too much of her *back was exposed by a sleeveless blouse she wore while performing.
    China plans to sack all officials found to have secretly "kept and supported" mistresses, in a move aimed at raising social morals, state media reported.
    Jun 22, 07: 4% of US adults have never had sex in their lives, and the figure climbs to 12% in the case of Mexican-Americans [!], according to an official survey. "Approximately 96% of adults age 20-59 years have had sex, with the age group 20-29 having the lowest percent (91%)", the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a report.
    . . The report also said 16% of adults first had sex before the age of 15, while 15% abstained from sex until age 21 or older.
    Jun 29, 07: Police in Indian Kashmir usually accustomed to fighting separatist militants have a new target in their sights --teenagers canoodling in parks, restaurants and at Internet cafes. The crackdown aims to curb "immoral activities", a senior police officer said.
    . . Restaurant and Internet cafe owners had also been asked to get rid of cabins and cubicles as they were being "misused" by teenagers in the Muslim-majority region.
    . . Srinagar, the center of a 17-year revolt against Indian rule, has seen women separatists raid restaurants, Internet cafes, liquor shops and suspected brothels in the past to stop what they say are immoral and un-Islamic activities.
    . . More than 42,000 people have since been killed in separatist violence, officials say. Human rights activists put the toll at 60,000 dead or missing. However, overall violence levels have fallen since India and Pakistan --both of whom claim Kashmir in full but rule it in parts-- launched a peace process in 2004.
    Jun 28, 07: Britain is proposing to remove the term "prostitute" from the criminal statutes because it carries too much stigma. Instead, a new bill that the Justice Ministry has drafted refers simply to persons who sell sex persistently --defined as twice or more in three months.
    Jun 20, 07: A Latvian town will mark summer solstice with naked run. Revellers will be able to streak with impunity in a Latvian town this weekend, as the community holds a naked run to mark the midsummer festival, organizers said.
    Jun 20, 07: Bachelors might have sex on their minds more than their single female counterparts, but once in a committed relationship, men and women have similar attitudes toward the act, a new study finds.
    . . The results reveal how sexual stereotypes, in which guys want to go for it and gals tend to resist, don’t hold when romantic feelings come into play. “Men experience a lot of pressure in our society to have sex with a number of different partners,” said one of the study’s researchers, Paul Perrin, a graduate student in psychology at the U of Florida, “the opposite of what women experience as kind of the gatekeepers of sexuality.”
    . . Past studies, the scientists point out, have shown that compared with women, men are more sexually permissive, endorse casual sex at higher rates and masturbate more often. A recent study showed men were more than twice as likely as women to report dreams about multiple sex partners.
    . . Thoughts often turn into actions. “Sexually restrictive gender roles too often become self-fulfilling prophecies because women know that they are expected to be less sexual than men”, the scientists write, “and men know that they are expected to be more sexual than women.”
    . . When Mr. Right shows up, however, women ditch society-imposed gender roles, warming up to sexual pleasures, the researchers found. In the context of an intimate relationship, both genders expressed that sex was important as a way to bring couples closer, to help maintain healthy relationships and to increase one’s self confidence.
    Jun 20, 07: Contrary to popular opinion, men are more likely to look at a female's face before other areas when looking at pictures of naked women, according to a study by Emory U researchers. And women will gaze at pictures of heterosexual sex longer than men, the study found.
    . . Both findings, published in the journal Hormones and Behavior, shed light on sexual attitudes that really aren't all that mysterious when considered in a scientific light, Emory psychologist Kim Wallen said.
    . . Men went straight to the face and lingered awhile, but most of the women were more interested in the sexual activity. How much so depended on whether they were taking hormone-filled birth control pills. Those who were, Wallen said, were interested in the overall view of the photos and "background" items like jewelry, but women not on the pill were more interested in areas normally covered by clothing.
    . . Wallen and Rupp said their study suggests that men's increased attention to faces may be related to higher activation in the amygdala, a portion of the brain that processes emotional information and excitement.
    . . Women can tell by looking at naked men whether they are aroused, Wallen said, but female bodies don't reveal much. "It's cryptic, but facial expression is one way of showing an indication of interest in and enjoyment of sex", Wallen said. [Ahhh...!]
    Jun 18, 07: A woman arrested for exposing her breasts has accepted a $29,000 settlement from the city, her lawyer said. Jill Coccaro, 27, was arrested on a topless stroll two years ago, despite a 1992 state appeals court ruling that concluded women should have the same right as men to take off their shirts. "We hope the police learn a lesson and respect the rights of women to go topless", Rothman said.
    . . Feeley told the New York Post that she was not treated well after her Aug. 4, 2005, arrest in Manhattan's Lower East Side section. She claimed in an October lawsuit that a police officer yanked her out of a patrol car by her hair and police took her to a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.
    . . She told the newspaper she had gone bare-breasted after running the 2004 city marathon without police bothering her. "I've always just felt that was something natural."
    Jun 16, 07: A Malaysian appeals court declared in a landmark ruling that mistresses have rights and should not be treated as mere chattel. Judge Gopal Sri Ram overturned a previous court decision which had allowed a Singaporean tycoon, Goh Koon Suan, to reclaim a house that he had given to his mistress Heng Gek Kiau when they were lovers.
    . . Sri Ram said the decision was "ground breaking" as this was the first time a court of law has ruled that a mistress has rights.
    Jun 12, 07: Polygamy, once hidden in the shadows of Utah and Arizona, is breaking into the open as fundamentalist Mormons push to decriminalize it on religious grounds, while at the same time stamping out abuses such as forced marriages of underage brides.
    . . It come at an awkward moment, as Republican Mitt Romney, a prominent Mormon, seeks the U.S. presidency. Romney, whose great-grandfather had five wives and whose great-great-grandfather had a dozen, has dismissed the practice.
    . . "I don't think the revelation that Joseph Smith received came from Christ", said John Llewellyn, a retired Salt Lake County policeman who once practiced polygamy but now campaigns against it. "I think it came from his Y (male) chromosome."
    Jun 9, 07: With strategically placed helmets and slogans painted on bare skin, scores of people shed their clothes and rode through this seaside resort on their bicycles Saturday to promote cycling as an environmentally friendly mode of transport. "It is time more motorists stripped off their armor plating and moved around more gently on this earth."
    . . More than 200 cyclists in various stages of undress took part in the World Naked Bike Ride in Brighton and Hove. Cyclists met with police chiefs ahead of the seven-mile ride to seek their advice about avoiding problems or formal complaints about the nudity.
    . . Similar events took place in the cities of Manchester, York and Southhampton, and were expected in other countries, too. Authorities generally turned a blind eye to one of the world's more outlandish environmental protests.
    . . In London, 700 cyclists. "We are seeing an increasing number of stories of melting ice caps and Antarctica crumbling away and no government is doing anything serious about this", said Martin Ireland, one of the riders. "They are paying lip service to the problem, so people have been taking to their bikes, unclothed, to express their feelings about it."
    . . In Madrid, about 300 cyclists. In Montreal's central Parc Laurier, hundreds turned out to witness the spectacle as a few dozen cyclists, unhampered by clothers, set off down the streets.
    . . Some 100 riders braved the roads of Mexico City.
    Jun 6, 07: Supermodel Gisele Bundchen stepped into the debate over birth control and sexual behavior in Brazil on Tuesday, saying Church opposition to condom use was ridiculous and women should have the right to choose on abortion.
    . . Gisele is idolized by many young women in Brazil, the world's largest Roman Catholic country, where debate over sexual issues has intensified around a visit by Pope Benedict last month. The Pope stressed the Church's firm opposition to abortion and contraception and railed against sex outside of marriage.
    . . The Brazilian beauty, one of the world's top models, told Folha de S.Paulo newspaper in an interview that when the Church made its laws centuries ago, women were expected to be virgins. Asked about abortion, she said a woman should have the right to choose what is best for her.
    . . The Brazilian government has clashed with the church over anti-AIDS programs in which it distributes millions of free condoms and Health Minister Jose Temporao has called for a national referendum on abortion.
    . . Other Brazilian celebrities have challenged the Vatican over sex issues. Singer Daniela Mercury was banned from performing at a Vatican Christmas concert in 2005 because she took part in a campaign promoting condom use to prevent AIDS.
    South African workers striking over pay and benefits have a new complaint --they no longer have the energy for sex. Monroe Mkalipi, a regional chairman of the powerful COSATU federations of trade unions, complained that work conditions are so tough workers can't perform in the bedroom.
    Jun 1, 07: Gay and lesbian couples in New Hampshire took a step closer to gaining official recognition of their relationships when the state's Democratic governor, John Lynch, said last week he would sign legislation to establish civil unions in the Granite State. "I believe it is a matter of conscience, fairness and preventing discrimination", he said.
    . . Massachusetts is the only state in the union to make gay marriage legal. Vermont, Connecticut and New Jersey have instituted civil unions. New Hampshire will do the same this week if its state Senate follows the House's approval of legislation.
    . . Limited domestic partnerships are provided for in Maine, Hawaii and the District of Columbia. California has domestic partnership that offers almost all the state-level benefits of marriage.
    Jun 1, 07: The popular online dating service eHarmony was sued for refusing to offer its services to gays, lesbians and bisexuals. A lawsuit alleging discrimination based on sexual orientation was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of Linda Carlson, who was denied access to eHarmony because she is gay.
    . . Lawyers bringing the action said they believed it was the first lawsuit of its kind against eHarmony, which has long rankled the gay community with its failure to offer a "men seeking men" or "women seeking women" option. They were seeking to make it a class action lawsuit on behalf of gays and lesbians excluded from the dating service.
    . . eHarmony was founded in 2000 by evangelical Christian Dr. Neil Clark Warren and had strong early ties with the influential religious conservative group Focus on the Family.
    Jun 1, 07: People who are socially dominant and either very friendly or very antagonistic tend to be more sexually promiscuous, according to a new study.
    . . Friendly, warm people may enjoy sharing their warmth with others by sleeping with them, whereas antagonistic people may sleep around to avoid having a monogamous relationship. And having a dominant personality makes it easier to approach potential partners.
    . . Past studies have suggested that people who are dominant tend to have more sexual partners than people who are submissive, but there has been little research into whether a person’s level of interpersonal warmth --the way in which they interact with others-- affects their sexual actions.
    . . So Patrick Markey, a psychologist at Villanova U, and his wife Charlotte Markey, a psychologist at Rutgers U, asked 210 adults to take a test to measure their interpersonal characteristics. They also asked the subjects to indicate with how many people they had engaged in certain sexual activities.
    . . When they compared the subjects’ responses, they were able to confirm that dominance is a key trait of people who have a lot of sexual partners. They also found that people who are either extremely warm or extremely cold toward others tend to be promiscuous -- and that people who are just moderately warm have the fewest sexual partners.
    . . Antagonistic people might prefer to have multiple sex partners in order to avoid being in a monogamous relationship, out of fear of being poorly treated or being later rejected by a committed partner, the authors noted.
    . . Patrick Markey says it’s particularly interesting that warm people tend to be promiscuous, because in some ways, it conflicts with the moral thinking that promiscuity is bad.
    May 28, 07: Just weeks after Pope Benedict XVI denounced government-backed contraception in a visit to Brazil, the president unveiled a program to provide cheap birth control pills at 10,000 drug stores across the country. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the plan will give poor Brazilians "the same right that the wealthy have to plan the number of children they want."
    . . Brazil already hands out free condoms and birth control pills at government-run pharmacies. But many poor people in Latin America's largest country don't go to those pharmacies, so Silva's administration decided to offer the pills at drastically reduced prices at private drug stores
    . . The price for a year's supply of birth control pills under the new program would be $2.40, and anyone — rich or poor — can buy the pills by simply showing a government-issued identification card that almost all Brazilians carry. Each government-subsidized package —-with enough pills to last a month-— will cost 20 cents. They now retail for $2.56 to $25.60.
    . . Brazil already distributes 254 million free condoms a year, many as part of an anti-AIDS program, with a special push just before the nation's Carnival celebrations. Temporao also said the government plans to increase the number of free vasectomies performed at state hospitals.
    . . During his visit to Brazil earlier this month, Benedict repeatedly railed against legalized contraception as a threat to "the future of the peoples" of Latin America [tho the truth is quite the opposite]. But advocates for women's rights applauded Silva's decision, saying it was long overdue in the world's largest Roman Catholic country.
    . . Benedict also harshly criticized abortion during his visit, just weeks after Mexico City lawmakers legalized it. While abortion is illegal in most situations in Brazil, Silva said shortly before the pope's visit that it should be considered as a public health issue.
    May 25, 07: Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called on Africa's Anglican church to overcome its "obsession" with the issue of gay priests and same-sex marriages. He said they should spend time on more pressing issues in the region.
    . . The South African bishop said Zimbabwe, HIV/Aids and the crisis in Darfur were not getting sufficient attention. Zimbabwe's Anglican church also lacked courage to stand up to President Robert Mugabe's regime, he said.
    May 22, 07: A Gay U.S. bishop was snubbed by an Anglican conference. The archbishop of Canterbury, spiritual head of 77 million Anglicans worldwide, has not invited two wayward bishops to a major conference next year, a move likely to stir controversy in the deeply divided communion.
    May 21, 07: A pair of gay flamingos have adopted an abandoned chick, becoming parents after being together for six years, a British conservation organization said. Carlos and Fernando had been desperate to start a family, even chasing other flamingos from their nests to take over their eggs. But their egg-sitting prowess made them the top choice for taking an unhatched egg under their wings when one of the Greater Flamingo nests was abandoned.
    . . The couple, together for six years, can feed chicks by producing milk in their throats. Gay flamingos are not uncommon, she added.
    May 17, 07: A debate raging over the morals of Hong Kong's racy media took a bizarre twist with revelations that a decency watchdog had been flooded with obscenity complaints about the Bible.
    . . The Television and Entertainments Licensing Authority (Tela), which oversees the publishing industry, said it had received 208 complaints that text within the holy book was indecent. "I can confirm that the complaints were received", said a Tela spokeswoman. "The thrust of the complaints was that the Bible was obscene, that different parts of the Bible were offensive to readers."
    . . Tela refused to divulge details of the complaints, but local media reported that they referred to acts of violence, rape and cannibalism reputedly contained in the Old and New Testaments.
    May 17, 07: Spring has arrived in this southeastern Vermont shire town. The trees are less bare, and some local residents are more so. Brattleboro has no ordinance, and Vermont no law, against public nudity. Some of the people who caused a stir last year when they began appearing downtown as nature made them are back.
    . . Not everyone is happy. Resident Theresa Toney said she was dining at a downtown restaurant when she spotted her first naked person of the spring.
    A nude car wash offering an X-rated sideshow and topless cleaning in Australia's tropical Queensland state has been given the all-clear after police and officials said they were powerless to scrub it.
    . . The Bubbles 'n' Babes car wash in Brisbane prompted a flood of complaints with a topless car wash for A$55 ($45) and a nude car wash with X-rated lap-dance service for A$100. "If it was approved for a car wash then I can't imagine how we can stop them", Lord Mayor Campbell Newman told a council meeting with worried local lawmakers.
    May 15, 07: Trolley-bus drivers in a Lithuanian town refused to drive their vehicles while they were carrying advertizements promoting tolerance toward gay men and women, a company official said.
    May 14, 1939: A 5-Year-Old Becomes Youngest Mother on Record. Precocious puberty is an exceedingly rare condition, but Lina has it and becomes the youngest mother in recorded history. [BUT remember, there's a little more to the story than the medical aspect!]
    May 6, 07: A record 18,000 people took off their clothes to pose for U.S. photographic artist Spencer Tunick Sunday in Mexico City's Zocalo square, the heart of the ancient Aztec empire.
    May 7, 07: A leading Indian painter is losing his home and other properties after failing to appear before a court trying him for hurting religious sentiments by painting "Mother India" as a naked woman.
    May 3, 07: The White House issued a veto threat Thursday against legislation that would expand federal hate crime law to include attacks motivated by the victims' gender or sexual orientation.
    . . The hate crimes bill, with strong Democratic backing, is expected to pass the House Thursday. Similar legislation is moving through the Senate. But the legislation, which also would increase the penalties for bias-based violence, has met outspoken resistance from conservative groups and their Republican allies in Congress, who warn that it undermines freedom of speech, religious expression and equal protection under the law.
    May 4, 07: Men in South Africa say they cheat instead of taking second or third wives, Americans lament that love has died in their marriages, and the Japanese believe ex-marital sex isn't adultery if they pay for it.
    . . These are just a few of the cultural excuses for cheating on one's spouse as recorded by Pamela Druckerman, author of a new comparative look at infidelity titled "Lust in Translation: The Rules of Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee."
    . . On a world scale, men in African countries from Togo to Mozambique were most likely to have taken another sexual partner in the last 12 months, with as many as 37% saying they had been unfaithful in that time.
    . . While the French may be the first to eroticize illicit sex in movies and books, only 3.8 of married men and 2% of women in France admitted to having affairs. They were outdone by the strait-laced citizens of the US, where acknowledged rates of cheating came to 3.9% of men and 3.1% of women. But on a national average, U.S. adulterers were much more likely to beat themselves up over it.
    . . While some 6% of Americans in one survey said it was acceptable to cheat in some or all circumstances, nearly 40% of Russians polled saw no problem with it.
    . . On a broad scale, men in poorer countries were the most likely to cheat, or in places rife with political and economic upheaval such as Russia or China. But within countries, rates of cheating varied hugely within sub-cultures or even city neighborhoods. "Much more important than any religious law or law of the land is what your friends and colleagues are doing", she said.
    . . In particular, Americans seem to adhere to a well-defined script on adultery in which sex outside the marriage amounts to the ultimate act of dishonesty, one that could require years of repentance and therapy to resolve, Druckerman said. "The message is even a one-night stand can paralyze a marriage", she said. "Then you have this idea in America that you're sort of bursting with this knowledge of the affair and can never be whole until you confess. I tend to be sympathetic to the French idea that some truths are better left unspoken."
    Villagers at a wedding in eastern India decided the groom had arrived too drunk to get married, and so the bride married the groom's more sober brother instead.
    May 4, 07: In Brisbane, capital of the "Sunshine State" of Queensland on the east coast, drought led to water restrictions, including a ban on residents washing their own cars.
    . . The result was a boom in carwash services, a phenomenon which caught the eye of strip club entrepreneur Warren Armstrong. He set up "Bubbles 'n Babes", where customers can have their cars washed by a topless woman for 55 dollars (45 US), or a nude woman for 100 dollars.
    . . Armstrong told the City paper the operation was above board. Police said no complaints had been received and, as the washing took place out of public view, no criminal offence was being committed.
    Apr 26, 07: New Hampshire lawmakers authorized same-sex civil unions today, in a bill that will complete New England's transformation into a unique U.S. region where gay and lesbian couples have some form of legal recognition and conjugal rights.
    . . The Democratic-controlled Senate voted 14-10 along party lines to give gays and lesbians nearly the same rights as married couples. The bill sailed through the House, and Democratic Gov. John Lynch said last week he would sign it.
    . . New Hampshire, known for its official motto "Live Free or Die", will become the fourth U.S. state to allow same-sex civil unions when the law takes effect on Jan 1. The law marks a shift in the state's traditionally conservative politics.
    . . Rhode Island's attorney general said in February his state will recognize any marriage performed in another state --effectively recognizing the marriage of same-sex couples who are wed in neighboring Massachusetts. Mass. is the only state where gay marriage is legal. In December, New Jersey became the third U.S. state to provide for gay civil unions. California, the District of Columbia and Hawaii each offer gay couples some legal rights as partners.
    . . New Hampshire will be first state to introduce same-sex civil unions without pressure from a court, but some locals said they expected the law to eventually end up in court.
    A woman pleaded guilty to using a false ID badge to enter a corrections facility while posing as an attorney so she could have sex with an inmate, state prosecutors said.
    Apr 26, 07: An Indian court ordered the arrest of Hollywood star Richard Gere today for kissing Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty at an AIDS campaign event this month saying it was an obscene act committed in public.
    . . Gere's repeated kisses on Shetty's cheeks at an event to promote AIDS awareness in New Delhi sparked protests in some parts of India, mostly by Hindu vigilante groups, who saw it as an outrage against her modesty and an affront to Indian culture.
    . . The judge watched a video recording of Gere kissing Shetty and found him guilty of violating Indian laws against public obscenity. Gere can be sent to jail for up to three months or fined or both for the crime if he is arrested. He is not in India now but can be held if he visits the country again.
    . . The Hollywood star is a devout Buddhist and a vocal supporter of the Tibetan cause and visits India frequently to meet the Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in northern India. He is also involved with charities looking after HIV-infected people and orphans, as well as AIDS prevention groups in the country.
    . . Shetty, the winner of the "Celebrity Big Brother" reality TV show in Britain this year had said the kiss may have gone a "little overboard" but it was not obscene and the protests made India look regressive. She said Gere was only re-enacting his moves from the film "Shall We Dance" to entertain the audience.
    . . Many commentators had subsequently expressed their unhappiness at what they said were fringe groups making a mountain of a harmless peck on the cheek.
    Apr 24, 07: The Mexican capital legalized abortion today, defying the church and delighting feminists in the world's second-largest Roman Catholic country. The ban will remain in force in the rest of the country. Mexico City lawmakers voted 46 to 19 to pass a bill allowing women to abort in the first three months of pregnancy.
    . . The vote split Mexico and prompted a letter last week from Pope Benedict urging Mexican bishops to oppose it.
    . . Opinion polls show Mexico's population of 107 million, of whom some 90% are Catholic, is split over the issue. Supporters of abortion rights, who are well represented in the liberal-minded capital, say 2,000 women die each year in Mexico due to abortions, often poor women who have to resort to unhygienic back-street clinics. "We don't want any more women to die in clandestine abortions", said local deputy Agustin Guerrero.
    Apr 18, 07: A closely divided U.S. Supreme Court upheld for the first time a nationwide ban on a specific abortion procedure, a ruling critics denounced as undermining 30 years of precedent protecting women's health.
    . . By a 5-4 vote, the high court ruled that the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act that Pres. Bush signed into law in 2003 after its approval by the Republican-led U.S. Congress does not violate a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.
    . . The ruling could open the door to further abortion restrictions and it came in the first full term of Bush's two Supreme Court appointees, signaling a possible new direction on a divisive social issue that could continue long after Bush leaves office.
    Apr 20, 07: A Montreal woman has frozen her eggs so they can someday be used by her seven-year-old daughter, who cannot have children because of a genetic condition.
    Apr 18, 07: Returning a TV because you don't like the quality is one thing, but it's a little bit harder to return a pair of breast implants. All too often in both breast reconstruction and breast augmentation (over 300,000 of which are performed per year) the patient is unsatisfied with the size or shape of their implant. So why not let the patient come in for a little "adjustment"?
    . . Adjustable implants have been gaining traction of late. The implant consists of a "port" that is left exposed after the implant is inserted (usually subcutaneously) under general anesthesia. Then the surgeon takes the patient in front of a mirror and inflates the implant to the desired size, and can adjust the implant over a period of weeks. Supposedly this can be used with skin stretching techniques to make a more natural "hourglass" shape.
    Apr 16, 07: British researchers said they were stunned to discover that people get more of a buzz from eating chocolate than passionately kissing their lovers.
    . . "These results really surprised and intrigued us", said psychologist David Lewis, who led a study that recorded brain activity and heart rate from volunteers who tasted pieces of dark chocolate or kissed their partners. "There is no doubt that chocolate beats kissing hands down when it comes to providing a long-lasting body and brain buzz --a buzz that, in many cases, lasted four times as long as the most passionate kiss."
    . . While researchers expected chocolate, especially dark chocolate, to raise heart rates, he said, "both the length of this increase together with the powerful effects it had on the mind were something none of us had anticipated."
    . . The study found that --at the point chocolate melts in the mouth-- all areas of the brain are stimulated far more intensely and for longer than from from kissing. Chocolate also made the heart beat faster, according to the study supervised by Lewis, a formerly University of Sussex psychologist.
    . . Some people saw the number of heart beats per minute rise from a resting rate of about 60 to as high as 140. Kissing also made the couples' hearts pound, but not for as long. Both sexes showed the same responses in the tests.
    Apr 16, 07: Richard Gere's repeated kisses on the cheeks of Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty in an event to promote AIDS awareness sparked protests in India, with demonstrators burning effigies of the actors.
    Apr 14, 07: From the editors of Scientific American: Presumably the masculinization of the brain shapes some neural circuit that makes women desirable. If so, this circuitry is wired differently in gay men. In experiments in which subjects are shown photographs of desirable men or women, straight men are aroused by women, gay men by men.
    . . Such experiments do not show the same clear divide with women. Whether women describe themselves as straight or lesbian, "Their sexual arousal seems to be relatively indiscriminate --they get aroused by both male and female images", Dr. Bailey said. "I'm not even sure females have a sexual orientation. But they have sexual preferences. Women are very picky, and most choose to have sex with men."
    . . It's clear that Dr. Bailey is something of a controversial figure in his field. Later in the piece, in a passage that seems to muddy the waters more than it boosts Dr. Bailey's hypothesis, we get:
    Sexual orientation, at least for men, seems to be settled before birth. "I think most of the scientists working on these questions are convinced that the antecedents of sexual orientation in males are happening early in life, probably before birth", Dr. Breedlove said, "whereas for females, some are probably born to become gay, but clearly some get there quite late in life."
    Apr 14, 07: Abstinence-only education programs meant to teach children to avoid sex until marriage failed to control their sexual behavior, according to a U.S. government report. Teenagers who took part in the programs as elementary and middle school students were just as likely to have sex as those who did not take part in them, the survey found.
    . . The report, ordered by Congress, was not released by the Health and Human Services Department, but by activists and by California Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman's office. An HHS spokeswoman did not answer a request for a comment.
    . . "For both the program and control group youth, the reported mean age at first intercourse was identical, 14.9 years", says the report. Teens in both groups were just as likely to use condoms or birth control, the report found -- countering the fears of critics of abstinence-only education, who say children ignorant of how to protect themselves from pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases will simply have more unprotected sex.
    . . "Over the last 12 months, 23% of both groups reported having had sex and always using a condom; 17% of both groups reported having had sex and only sometimes using a condom; and 4% of both groups reported having had sex and never using a condom", the researchers wrote. About 25% in both groups had already had sex with three or more partners.
    . . "In short, American taxpayers appear to have paid over one billion federal dollars for programs that have no impact." Activists said the findings showed that children need more comprehensive education about abstinence, contraception and sex in general. We have been promoting ignorance in the era of AIDS, and that's not just bad public health policy, its bad ethics", added James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth.
    Apr 5, 07: Uganda scrapped an adultery law today that campaigners said discriminated against women. Uganda's Constitutional Court ordered the changes to the Penal Code, under which it was legal for a married man to have an affair with an unmarried woman but against the law for a married woman to have an affair with an unmarried man.
    Mar 22, 07: A 1998 law designed to block children from viewing pornography Web sites violates free speech rights, a U.S. federal court ruled today.
    A brothel in Germany hopes to capitalize on the growing number of retirees by offering them a 50% discount for sex in the afternoon.
    Mar 15, 07: The president of the leading Southern Baptist seminary has incurred sharp attacks from both the left and right by suggesting that a biological basis for homosexuality may be proven, and that prenatal treatment to reverse gay orientation would be biblically justified.
    . . The Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., one of the country's pre-eminent evangelical leaders, acknowledged that he irked many fellow conservatives with an article earlier this month saying scientific research "points to some level of biological causation" for homosexuality.
    . . Proof of a biological basis would challenge the belief of many conservative Christians that homosexuality —which they view as sinful— is a matter of choice that can be overcome through prayer and counseling.
    . . Dr. Jack Drescher, a New York City psychiatrist, is critical of those who consider homosexuality a disorder. He commended Mohler's openness to the prospect that it is biologically based. "This represents a major shift", Drescher said. "This is a man who actually has an open mind, who is struggling to reconcile his religious beliefs with facts that contradict it."
    Being openly gay in Mexico is probably a challenging experience. And now the capital city has finally recognized the phenomenon. It is allowing same-sex civil unions. Not quite marriage, but official acceptance of a relationship between two men or two women.
    . . Unlike national governments, cities in Mexico tend to be run more by left-wing parties who take a more liberal view on social matters. But even in the capital, convincing doubters has been difficult.
    . . Buenos Aires, Argentina's capital, has legalized same-sex unions. So too has a state in southern Brazil.
    Mar 9, 07: "The demographic with the most education and the highest income, the same group that has the most high-speed internet access at home, tended to be less likely to declare a behavior unilaterally "wrong" than other groups.
    . . Yet on the question of extramarital affairs, the answers line up almost exactly across all ages, genders, marital statuses and political and religious affiliations. 88% of respondents said adultery is morally wrong.
    . . That doesn't stop us from doing it, in some form or another. Surveys suggest that 20 to 50% (and up) of married folk stray at least once during their marriage. I think all we've lost by this transparency is our innocence. Or more accurately, our hypocrisy.
    . . Perhaps I'm simply in a whimsical mood, but it makes me think that something will have to change, profoundly, to align our cultural standards and our actual behaviors more closely, lest we implode. And that the change that is happening, slowly and subtly and inexorably, and so frightening to the conservative religious, is a recognition that there are other possibilities around love and sex than our one-size-fits-all tradition." ~Regina Lynn
    How the Hayes Code impacted cartoons in 1939 -- male characters couldn't be effeminate, kids had to behave and Flossie the cow's sexy udders had to be clothed.
    Mar 4, 07: A Chinese province has taken the unusual step of fining hotels and bars more than $600 if they do not provide condoms, part of efforts to fight the spread of AIDS, a newspaper said.
    A German man who spent 10 days in a self-made box atop a 72-foot-tall pole to protest a looming jail term was lured off his perch by his wife --who sent up a topless picture of herself in his lunch box.
    Australia's porn industry began a court challenge to the country's film ratings on Thursday in a test case which family groups said could lead to explicit sex movies being sold openly in shops and gas stations.
    Lawmakers in Ohio said they want to force convicted sex offenders to use a fluorescent-green license plate on their cars so they can be easily identified.
    Feb 27, 07: Police are seeking 10 men, including several tribal elders, accused of pressuring a Pakistani woman to hand over her teenage daughter as payment for a 16-year-old poker debt, officials said.
    . . In the latest case highlighting how conservative customs threaten women's rights in Pakistan, Nooran Umrani alleges that, despite paying off her late husband's debt of $165, she was threatened with harm if she failed to hand over her daughter
    . . In December, President Musharraf signed into law a bill that makes it easier to prosecute rape cases in the courts, and the country's ruling party recently introduced a bill to outlaw forced marriages, including under tribal custom in which women are married off in order to settle disputes.
    Mexican men who display extreme jealousy or avoid sex with their wives could be tried in court and punished under a new law, the special prosecutor for crimes against women told a local newspaper.
    A teenage girl in southern Pakistan, whose late father lost her in a poker game when she was 2 years old, has asked authorities to save her from being handed over to a middle-aged relative.
    A Chinese businessman has advertised on the Internet for a stand-in mistress to be beaten up by his wife to vent her anger and to protect his real mistress.
    Feb 23, 07: A federal judge in Boston has dismissed a suit by two families who wanted to stop a Massachusetts town and its public school system from teaching their children about gay marriage, court documents show.
    Feb 20, 07: Horrors! A Malaysian state plans to recruit "spies" from the public to snoop on unmarried lovers and report them to Islamic religious authorities, a newspaper said.
    Feb 16, 06: A respected Malaysian Muslim religious advisor has suggested that women wear chastity belts to thwart "sex maniacs" who rape and commit incest.
    Love at the office. Nearly 40 percent of Americans date their coworkers.
    Feb 12, 07: Nearly one in three Britons think that if a woman jumps up and down, washes or urinates immediately after sex, she can prevent pregnancy, a survey revealed
    . . The survey was carried out by the Family Planning Association at the start of Contraceptive Awareness Week.
    . . It showed that half the 500 people questioned did not know that a woman's most fertile time is between 10 and 16 days before her next period. 89 percent of respondents were unaware that it is possible for sperm to live inside a woman's body for up to seven days. Nearly 25 percent incorrectly thought that the fluid a man produces before he ejaculates does not contain sperm.
    . . Most blamed their ignorance on a lack of sex education at school, with 18 percent of the 18 to 65-year-olds questioned saying they never had any such lessons. Myths start getting into circulation and people end up not being able to tell fact from fiction.
    Feb 12, 07: As millions of revelers across Brazil prepare for Carnival festivities, the country's health ministry began on Sunday its yearly safe-sex campaign and the distribution of free condoms.
    Feb 12, 07: Scientists in Japan claim to be able to increase the size of a woman's breasts using fat and stem cells. The technique uses fat from the stomach or thigh which is then enriched with stem cells before being injected. It is hoped the method could prove a more natural-looking alternative to artificial implants filled with salt water or silicone.
    Feb 12, 07: Men will be able to buy impotence treatment Viagra over the counter in Britain for the first time from Valentine's Day.
    Feb 9, 07: Olive Watson, daughter of a wealthy computer magnate, adopted her 44-year-old lesbian lover, Patricia Spado, in a Maine courtroom in 1991 to provide her partner with greater financial security.
    . . Fast-forward 16 years. The two have split up and the Watson family is seeking to annul the adoption in a complex legal case that provides a glimpse into efforts by same-sex couples to use adoption laws to establish legal rights including inheritance.
    . . Gay-rights advocates say it illustrates the difficulties homosexuals in the United States face in protecting the financial interest of their partners, defending the use of adoption as a last-ditch effort to provide protections otherwise unavailable to many gay and lesbian couples.
    . . Massachusetts is the only U.S. state where gay marriage is legal. Vermont, New Jersey and Connecticut recognize same-sex civil unions, giving gay and lesbian couples some of the protections of marriage including inheritance.
    . . She added that when gay partners are unable to marry, such blatant end-runs around the law are inevitable.
    Feb 7, 07: Researchers at the U of California at Berkeley said women who sniffed a chemical found in male sweat experienced elevated levels of an important hormone, along with higher sexual arousal, faster heart rate and other effects. They said the study represents the first direct evidence that people secrete a scent that influences the hormones of the opposite sex.
    . . The study focused on androstadienone, considered a male chemical signal. Previous research had established that a whiff of it affected women's mood, sexual and physiological arousal and brain activation. Its impact on hormones was less clear. A derivative of testosterone, it is found in male sweat as well as in saliva and semen. It smells somewhat musky. Cortisol is secreted by the body to help maintain proper arousal and sense of well-being, respond to stress and other functions.
    . . Cortisol levels in the women who smelled androstadienone shot up within roughly 15 minutes and stayed elevated for up to an hour. Consistent with previous research, the women also reported improved mood, higher sexual arousal, and had increased blood pressure, heart rate and breathing. This was the first time that smelling a specific chemical secreted by people was shown to affect hormonal levels, the researchers said.
    . . For comparison's sake, women also smelled baking yeast, which did not trigger the same effects. The researchers used only heterosexual women in the study out of concern that homosexual women may respond differently to this male chemical.
    . . Their findings suggest a better way to stimulate cortisol levels in patients who need it, such as those with Addison's disease. Instead of giving cortisol in pill form, which has side effects such as peptic ulcers, osteoporosis, weight gain and mood disorders, smelling a chemical like androstadienone could be used to affect cortisol levels.
    Feb 3, 07: ORANGO ISLAND, Guinea-Bissau - He was 14 when the girl entered his grass-covered hut and placed a plate of steaming fish in front of him. Like all men on this African isle, Carvadju Jose Nananghe knew exactly what it meant. Refusing was not an option. His heart pounding, he lifted the aromatic dish, prepared with an ancient recipe, to his lips, agreeing in one bite to marry the girl.
    . . "I had no feelings for her", said Nananghe, now 65. "Then when I ate this meal, it was like lightning. I wanted only her." To have refused, remembering the day half a century ago, would have dishonored his family —-and in any case, why would he want to choose his own wife? "Love comes first into the heart of the woman", he explained. "Once it's in the woman, only then can it jump into the man."
    . . Records are not readily available, but islanders agree that there are significantly more divorces now than in the years when men waited patiently for a proposal on a plate.
    Feb 3, 07: Male sheep exhibit homosexuality at least as often as humans: roughly 8% of rams turn out to have sex exclusively with other rams. (ewegenics!) Scientists are conducting basic research into the nature of sexuality by manipulating hormones in animals.
    . . In its most recent experiments, the group used drugs to block the action of a hormone thought to play a role in making most sheep straight (in other words, this test was designed to produce more homosexual sex, not less). But the results were inconclusive.
    . . The Oregon group's work has shown, however, that gay rams have different brain structures from heterosexual ones, news that should cheer those who see homosexuality and heterosexuality as mere biological variations. (Another small but fascinating finding: all gay rams are butch --none present themselves sexually the way ewes do.)
    Feb 3, 07: Sex is not a taboo subject at Yale, home to Sex Week, a biennial celebration that's one of the most provocative campus events in the nation. But a randy couple's frolic in a shower at one of Yale's undergraduate residential colleges prompted a professor to issue an e-mail of protest, which in turn has sparked debate on the Internet.
    Jan 31, 07: A police officer in the northeastern Spanish region of Catalonia reportedly faces a fine and having to pay damages to a nudist he forced to cover up.
    . . Ribas, who accused the officer of "abusing his authority", has chaired the nudist association for 10 years and once wrote to the Catalan regional parliament to complain of similar incidents involving other nudists. On that occasion, he pointed out local by-laws stipulated that nudism is not illegal in certain delineated zones of the city and he wanted to underline his "democratic" right to go clothes-free. "There is no law or legal precept allowing the policeman to stop Ribas from going around in the nude through the streets of Barcelona", Ribas' counsel said. "As such, (the officer's) action was clearly illegal."
    Jan 18, 07: Philanderers beware: spouses caught cheating in Michigan could end up spending the rest of their life in prison. And not the emotional kind.
    . . The state's appeals court recently ruled that extramarital flings can be prosecuted as first-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony punishable by up to life in jail.
    . . "We cannot help but question whether the Legislature actually intended the result we reach here today", Judge William Murphy wrote in a unanimous Court of Appeals panel, "but we are curtailed by the language of the statute from reaching any other conclusion."
    . . Michigan still lists adultery as a felony, although no one has been convicted of the offense since 1971. Nobody really expects prosecutors to go after cheating spouses. But the ruling has the local legal community twittering about its genuine intended target.
    . . One theory floating around the courthouse is that the judges were taking a jab at the state Supreme Court, which has decreed that judges must interpret statutory language adopted by the Legislature literally, whatever the consequences. Many other states allow judges to reject a literal interpretation if they believe it would lead to an absurd result.
    . . A spokesman for the attoney general, who publicly admitted to adultery in November, declined to say whether they would press for legislative amendments
    Jan 20, 07: Bare breasts, cigarettes, a pole-dancing freedom fighter, Paris Hilton and sexy adverts are just some of things the Indian government has tried to hide from its citizens in the last few months.
    . . Lawmakers say they are simply shielding people from corrupting influences. But critics say Indian sensibilities are made of sterner stuff, and warn against the country becoming a "nanny state." "Dasmunsi must be told he can't go about treating us like impressionable children", the Indian Express editorial said, referring to the broadcasting minister who banned a channel for airing "The World's Sexiest Advertisements."
    . . The ban has upset the Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF), a grouping of India's major broadcasters including Sony. India last year also tried to ban smoking scenes in films, reasoning that cigarette-wielding Bollywood stars were influencing people to take up the habit.
    Amsterdam's red light district is reportedly to receive a bronze statue dedicated to prostitutes around the world. Majoor was quoted as saying by ANP that the statue would be a first of its kind and that it had received the blessing of the city authorities.
    Jan 13, 07: More than half of China's high school students find nothing wrong with one-night stands and an overwhelming majority of girls would not reject a boyfriend's demands for sex, a poll suggests.
    . . Some 6.2% of the survey's 2,300 high school students in Xuanwu, a downtown district in the Chinese capital of Beijing, had already had a sexual experience and the average age of students losing their virginity was 15, the China Daily said.
    . . China's traditional culture sanctifies abstinence and the ruling Communist Party is also officially puritanical, but three decades of market reforms have brought forth an ever more rebellious and diverse urban youth culture. Of the 1,300 girls asked if they would agree to sex when asked by a boyfriend, only six gave a definite "no."
    . . Such liberal attitudes to sex have sparked concerns over safe sex, with more than 40% of respondents who had had sex saying they did not use contraceptives for their first time. Underage girls accounted for about a quarter of the 1.5 million abortions in mainland China every year, and teenage pregnancies were on the rise.
    Jan 13, 07: More Internet sex please, we're Croatian. A majority of Croatians say they find the Internet to be a useful tool in improving their sex lives, according to a survey.
    Jan 11, 07: Taiwan's parliament is just saying "no" to a sex education bill because of a chastity clause some deputies say smacks of sexism. Critics say the abstinence clause puts the burden of avoiding sex on girls but lets boys do as they wish in a society that promotes gender equality.
    Jan 10, 07: Researchers use a vaginal stimulator --essentially, a high-tech dildo-- to study sexual response. It measures the force women use to stimulate the walls of the vagina.
    Jan 10, 07: Three of the leading lights in sex research have compiled several decades' worth of knowledge into a new book called The Science of Orgasm. The authors are Rutgers University professor emeritus Beverly Whipple (who helped popularize the "G-spot" in the '70s), Rutgers psychology professor Barry Komisaruk, and Carlos Beyer-Flores, head of the Laboratorio Tlaxcala in Mexico.
    . . "We recognize four different nerve pathways that carry sensory signals from the vagina, cervix, clitoris and uterus, and they all can contribute to orgasms.
    . . Even women with no feeling below the waist can have genital orgasms through genital stimulation. People have described orgasms through imagery, nose orgasms, knee orgasms. Although it sounds strange, the reports are believable. Women who have complete transection --interruption of the spinal cord-- can experience orgasms.
    . . Men and women have described an orgasmic experience from stimulation of the skin region around the level of the spinal cord injury. The injury creates an area of heightened sensitivity. They've told us if the right person stimulates that skin in the right way, it can produce very pleasurable sensation, including what they describe as orgasms. We studied one such woman who had a spinal cord injury near her shoulders. She stimulated her neck with a vibrator, and she said that elicited an orgasm for her. We observed her blood pressure and heart rate, and they became elevated just as if it were a genital orgasm.
    . . A third orgasm-activated brain component we see in women --the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus-- produces oxytocin, which is secreted in peak amounts during orgasm in women and stimulates uterine contractions.
    . . Another brain component --the nucleus accumbens-- which we see activated during orgasm in women has been shown by others to be activated by pleasure-producing drugs."
    A federal court says virtual porn and real porn are not the same thing, that computer-generated images cannot violate federal laws against child porn.
    . . Excerpts from Judge Gertner's November opinion: The government suggests that the Supreme Court has already resolved the issue in the case at bar. It did not. In Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, the Court was addressing a hypothetical question and one from 2002 to boot. The Supreme Court did no more than assume that if the government's position were true, that virtual images are indistinguishable from real ones, that would be irrelevant to a constitutional analysis. The fact that it would be difficult to tell the real images --which are not protected-- from the virtual images --which are protected-- is not a basis for suppressing lawful speech, i.e. the virtual images.
    . . The argument, in essence, is that protected speech may be banned as a means to ban unprotected speech. This analysis turns the First Amendment upside down. The Government may not suppress lawful speech as the means to suppress unlawful speech. Protected speech does not become unprotected merely because it resembles the latter. The Constitution requires the reverse. The possible harm to society in permitting some unprotected speech to go unpunished is outweighed by the possibility that protected speech of others may be muted.
    Jan 3, 07: A common parasite can increase a women's attractiveness to the opposite sex but also make men more stupid, an Australian researcher says. About 40% of the world's population is infected with Toxoplasma gondii, including about eight million Australians. Human infection generally occurs when people eat raw or undercooked meat that has cysts containing the parasite, or accidentally ingest some of the parasite's eggs excreted by an infected cat.
    . . The parasite is known to be dangerous to pregnant women as it can cause disability or abortion of the unborn child, and can also kill people whose immune systems are weakened. Until recently, it was thought to be an insignificant disease in healthy people, Sydney Uof Technology infectious disease researcher Nicky Boulter said, but new research has revealed its mind-altering properties.
    . . "Interestingly, the effect of infection is different between men and women", Dr Boulter writes in the latest issue of Australasian Science magazine. "Infected men have lower IQs, achieve a lower level of education and have shorter attention spans. They are also more likely to break rules and take risks, be more independent, more anti-social, suspicious, jealous and morose, and are deemed less attractive to women.
    . . "On the other hand, infected women tend to be more outgoing, friendly, more promiscuous, and are considered more attractive to men compared with non-infected controls. "In short, it can make men behave like alley cats and women behave like sex kittens".
    . . Rodents treated with drugs that killed the parasites reversed their behavior, Dr Boulter said.
    . . Another study showed people who were infected but not showing symptoms were 2.7 times more likely than uninfected people to be involved in a car accident as a driver or pedestrian, while other research has linked the parasite to higher incidences of schizophrenia.
    . . "The increasing body of evidence connecting Toxoplasma infection with changes in personality and mental state, combined with the extremely high incidence of human infection in both developing and developed countries, warrants increased government funding and research, in particular to find safe and effective treatments or vaccines", Dr Boulter said.
    Jan 2, 07: Massachusetts lawmakers approved a measure that could give voters a chance next year to ban gay marriage in the only U.S. state where it is legal and overturn a historic ruling by the state's highest court.
    .
    If you got here from the GAIA HOME PAGE, click on
    "minimize" or "eXit". (upper right browser buttons)
    If you didn't: the site.)