First up is a Wired story that discusses recent research on the female orgasm with twins to see whether there is an enviro-genetic relationship pertaining to female orgasm. The male orgasm (of which there is at least one every 15 seconds, according to an ancient quote from Carl Djerassi) has an obvious evolutionary and practical reason for coming along, evolutionarily speaking. But, the female orgasm? Science isn’t so sure. It’s complicated, often elusive and difficult to pin down in terms of procreation (unless you’ve seen that cervical video that Robert Winston showed on the BBC after the 9 o’clock watershed many years ago) in which case it would seem obvious why it happens. Anyway, these scientists cannot put their finger on it, so we’ll leave them to it.
Second to come along is the revelation that one sperm donor might end up with 150 kids, according to the NYT it happened. The problem is, of course, that if they’re all living in the same town there’s a relatively high risk of inadvertent incest if any of those sons and daughters get together.
Then there’s the inevitable story about size. New research apparently explains the underlying genetic reason why men’s ring fingers are longer than their index fingers and it’s all tied in with exposure to sex hormones during fetal development and supposedly links libido, penis size, sexual orientation and prostate cancer risk to the ratio. CBS has the low down on the down below. However, if those characteristics are all related to one finger being bigger than the other, then how do you explain the fact tht studies show the full range of libido level and penis size across all sexual orientations if the latter is meant to display the opposite finger length ratio?
Finally, the advent and apparent acceptance of internet pr0n is allegedly leading to a growth area in cosmetic surgery for women. According to the BBC, yes good-old Auntie is not averse to discussing such matters, irreversible operations to give women a “designer vagina” on the National Health Service are entirely unwarranted and might even be dangerous. The British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons says medics need to determine whether a problem exists or whether an alternative solution may be preferable rather than scrubbing up and diving in with a scalpel.
I put this post together to “commemorate” the launch of the .xxx domain names, but no, I’m not registering sciencebase.xxx. Don’t worry, I thought I’d pull together a few of the sexier science stories from around the web. I’m not sure whether you’d ever class them as NSFW (not safe for work), but they are about sex, so keep your finger hovering over the boss button just in case.