Eideard

Men may think about sex more often than women do, but a new study suggests that men also think about other biological needs, such as eating and sleep, more frequently than women do, as well.

And the research discredits the persistent stereotype that men think about sex every seven seconds, which would amount to more than 8,000 thoughts about sex in 16 waking hours. In the study, the median number of young men’s thought about sex stood at almost 19 times per day. Young women in the study reported a median of nearly 10 thoughts about sex per day.

As a group, the men also thought about food almost 18 times per day and sleep almost 11 times per day, compared to women’s median number of thoughts about eating and sleep, at nearly 15 times and about 8 1/2 times, respectively…

“If you had to know one thing about a person to best predict how often they would be thinking about sex, you’d be better off knowing their emotional orientation toward sexuality, as opposed to knowing whether they were male or female,” said Terri Fisher, professor of psychology at Ohio State University’s Mansfield campus and lead author of the study. “Frequency of thinking about sex is related to variables beyond one’s biological sex…”

Before the thought-tracking began, the participants completed a number of questionnaires. These included a sexual opinion survey to measure a positive or negative emotional orientation toward sexuality (erotophilia vs. erotophobia); a sociosexual orientation inventory measuring attitudes about sex and tracking sexual behavior and levels of desire; a social desirability scale to measure respondents’ tendency to try to appear socially acceptable; and an eating habits questionnaire and sleepiness scale. They also were asked to estimate how many times in an average day that they thought about sleeping, eating and sex…

And when all of those thoughts were taken into account in the statistical analysis, the difference between men and women in their average number of daily thoughts about sex wasn’t considered any larger than the gender differences between thoughts about sleep or thoughts about food.

I joke that I don’t differentiate much between food and sex. Folks always chuckle – for the wrong reason. They think I mean food is as important as sex when what I mean is that sex is as important as food.

Researchers recently isolated 63 unique dust particles from their laboratory – and that’s just the beginning.

The chemists were testing a new kind of sensor when dust got stuck inside it, and they discovered that they could measure the composition of single dust particles…

Most dust is natural in origin, explained James Coe, professor of chemistry at Ohio State University. The 63 particles they identified were mainly irregular blobs containing bits of many different ingredients.

The most common ingredient of the dust particles was organic matter, Coe said. “Organic” indicates some kind of plant or animal material, though the researchers can’t yet say precisely what kinds of organic matter they found. They are about to do an in-depth analysis to find out.

Quartz was the second-most common ingredient. Both quartz and organic matter were found in more than half of the dust particles the researchers classified. Man-made chemicals from air pollution, fertilizers, and construction materials were also present in small amounts.

“In that way, a single dust particle is like a snapshot of mankind’s impact on the environment,” Coe said…

The patented sensor that Coe’s team was testing – a type of metal mesh that transmits infrared light through materials caught in the holes – is ideal for picking up minute details in the composition of single dust grains.

“We can separate particles by size to isolate the ones that are small enough to get into people’s lungs, and look at them in detail,” he added…

Eventually, researchers in public health could use the sensor as a laboratory tool to analyze dust particles. It could also enable studies in astronomy, geology, environmental science, and atmospheric science.

Love it. Time and again scientists set off to investigate a single phenomenon and find they’ve access to a broad reservoir of information – capable of aiding knowledge in many more fields than originally posited.

The northernmost mummified forest ever found in Canada is revealing how plants struggled to endure a long-ago global cooling.

Researchers believe the trees — buried by a landslide and exquisitely preserved 2 to 8 million years ago — will help them predict how today’s Arctic will respond to global warming.

They also suspect that many more mummified forests could emerge across North America as Arctic ice continues to melt. As the wood is exposed and begins to rot, it could release significant amounts of methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — and actually boost global warming…

Over the summer of 2010, the researchers retrieved samples from broken tree trunks, branches, roots, and even leaves — all perfectly preserved — from Ellesmere Island National Park in Canada.

“Mummified forests aren’t so uncommon, but what makes this one unique is that it’s so far north. When the climate began to cool 11 million years ago, these plants would have been the first to feel the effects,” Joel Barker said. “And because the trees’ organic material is preserved, we can get a high-resolution view of how quickly the climate changed and how the plants responded to that change…”

Bravo! It’s a treat to watch scientists reverse engineering the climate change processes we’re going through now.

The newly exposed wood rotting contributes only a tiny portion of greenhouse gases, say, compared to methane released from thawing permafrost. But, it’s all part of a process reversed in a geologic instant compared to the millions of years required for this previous serious cooling.

So-called “personal drones” mounted with cameras have already been used by police in crime fighting and photographers believe they could also be used to track stars.

Remote controlled flying devices about the size of pizza boxes are being developed by several companies and universities in the US and could be in use by the end of next year…

Ken Rinaldo, an associate professor at Ohio State University, is working on the “Paparazzi Drone.” At the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada earlier this year he deployed “Paparazzi Bots,” human-sized robots which followed athletes and spectators and took photographs of them…

The US Federal Aviation Administration advises that only the government should use unmanned drones over US airspace.

However, it does not have rules prohibiting the flying of mini-drones for recreational purposes, and only advises that such aircraft be flown at low altitude and away from airports.

The FAA said if paparazzi began using the drones the “primary concern with that would be safety issues.” Supporters of the idea suggest that stars could benefit because they would no longer be followed by photographers in cars. However, lawyers suggested celebrities would fight any use of drones on privacy grounds.

And privacy is defended by whom – or what. Get your skeet gun ready.

With more and more students and universities getting into the fight for establishing a new land speed record for battery electric powered vehicles, we are likely to receive more and more news like this one here.

For now however, a team of students from the Ohio State University leads this race, after their battery electric vehicle smashed the records on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.

The streamliner in question is called Buckeye Bullet and it managed to run at averages speeds of 495 km/h (307 mph), way faster than the previous record of 395 km/h (245 mph) set in 1990s by Pat Rummerfield in his White Lightning.

Although not yet certified by the International Automobile Federation, such an outcome is expected over the next few weeks. Pat Rummerfield already admitted his record has been broken and congratulated the team…

Buckeye Bullet is powered by a 600-kilowatt lithium-ion battery pack sourced from A123 Systems. The battery packs contains 1600 compact lithium-ion batteries just like the ones used in laptops.

They’re already preparing to break their own record. I expect they will.

Disclaimer: I own enough shares in A123 to power my iPad.

Thousands of years of data recorded in ice

Researchers here are hopeful that the new core they drilled through an ice field on the Antarctic Peninsula will contain ice dating back into the last ice age. If so, that record should give new insight into past global climate changes.

The expedition in early winter to the Bruce Plateau, an ice field straddling a narrow ridge on the northernmost tongue of the southernmost continent, yielded a core that was 445.6 meters long, the longest yet recovered from that region of Antarctica. And while remarkably successful, the field work tested the researchers’ resilience more than most of their previous expeditions.

“It was the field season from hell,” explained Ellen Mosley-Thompson, professor of geography at Ohio State University and leader of the project. “Everything that could go wrong did, and almost everything that could break did.”

Bad weather delayed their transport to the remote drill site and snowstorms were a recurrent problem, preventing support flights in to the team. Twice, their drills became stuck deep in the ice, a drill motor broke and all three of the drill gearboxes failed, causing them to cannibalize those devices to construct a new one.

RTFA. It would make a fine documentary of the dedication and inventive spirit required of researchers working in the extremes our planet offers. The questions asked are as important as the ingenuity needed to get the samples.

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