What good would This Week in Science be if we didn’t occasionally foray into foreplay and related racy goodness? With that in mind, we proudly present important info recently published on human sexuality:
The new work addresses what David Puts, a biological anthropologist at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, calls “one of the most contentious questions in the study of the evolution of human sexuality: whether women's orgasm has an evolutionary function." There are more than a dozen theories about the evolution of orgasms, most proposed decades or more ago. They include arguments that women have orgasms because their reproductive machinery has the same origins as those of men, who need to have orgasms to ejaculate sperm. Others think orgasms are an evolutionary novelty that persists because it helps foster loyal partners.
In an attempt to better understand neuromuscular conditions like ALS, engineers at MIT have developed a quarter-sized chip housing a muscle strip and some motor neurons. The setup is designed to recreate the neuromuscular junction, the bit of chemical synapse where neurons and muscle fibers meet.
- Our lovely blue-green world may be a bit of an early riser so to speak, which might help explain the Fermi Paradox and other features of our universe:
If you ask, ‘When is life most likely to emerge?’ you might naively say, ‘Now,’” says Avi Loeb in a press release. “But we find that the chance of life grows much higher in the distant future.”