I've soooooo many comments
...... but none of them appropriate :(
In a discovery sure to stir intense discussion, scientists in Canada say they have discovered a powerful chemical signal embedded in semen which acts directly upon the brains of female mammals - apparently including humans. In a just-released announcement arrestingly headlined "Team unlocks link between sex and the female …
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The hormone in question is not produced in the testes, but in glands that are located *well* past the cutoff point in an ordinary vasectomy, even past the prostrate. It's in the post on the uni of Saskatchewan page.
So a vasectomy would make no difference whatshowever as far as this effect is concerned.
PROSTATE... ~STATE... one 'R' in that word, and it's immediately after P.
Sorry, but in my daily job (Emergency Medicine) I hear "ProstRate" too many times, usually from the same people who wander in with wads of printout from homeopathy websites. Causes immediate loathing. Fucking learn to talk.
I'm done.
So let me get this straight, the University of Saskatchewan have taken some poor sucker's glands, and ... posted them? So they're lost somewhere in the mailing system of Saskatchewan? That is a long way from the normal cutoff point, you're right, I'm not surprised that a vasectomy made no difference.
"Does it matter which bit of a lady the semen is deposited in?
Do they get different emotions for each 'place'?"
Although I cannot give a citation for this, being a long way from access to my library or my study, IIRC it is the case that oral semen has been found to apparently have a good effect where depression is concerned. It is also the case that women who have eaten celery before 'full' oral sex report that semen tastes sweet. Just in case you needed to know this. They'll thank you for it. I know.
There has actually been some research on this. Women who shag with the use of condoms seem to be rather more pissed off about life than those who shag without them.
Not conclusive of course, for the next stage of the research would be to find out how pissed off women get about the STDs and pregnancies that non-condom use might lead to.
The research revealed a psychological element about reproduction, with unprotected sex carrying the real potential for reproduction, while one major point of protected sex is to minimise the reproduction. Subconsciously most females still have the base requirement to reproduce.
I'm fairly sure it was a reg article that revealed this last time.
I remember a film that came out years ago about the life of Joe Orton called Prick Up Your Ears. I like to imagine the letter E being blown off in high winds and being replaced by a workman, who after reading the review for the film, accidentally puts the replacement E on the wrong end of the word.
Mr. and Mrs. Whale are out on the ocean, when they espy a ship. "Let's sink it!!!"
OK, they fill up with air and release under the ship from their blow-holes. Water boyancy departs, boat sinks.
Mr. Whale: "Shall we eat the crew?"
Mrs. Whale: "Look, I do blow jobs, but I don't swallow sea men".
(Groan!)
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"I always knew that basting myself in man fat before going clubbing worked."
Some idiot wrote a novel called 'wetlands', which effectively was about her juices. Apparently the author used to smear them behind her ears to make herself more attractive to men. It was reviewed in the Grauniad, of course. ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/07/charlotte-roche-wetlands-lucy-ellmann )
A synchrotron is not really an atom smasher. It accelerates charged particles, typically electrons, to near the speed of light then forces them to turn tight corners, producing very intense, tightly focussed, beams of coherent light. It is this light, ranging from infrared to x-ray, that is used to investigate the structure of the target.
Please fill in your own "must get out more" comment.
Synchrotron light sources, such as used in this study, are not atom smashers. However, atom smashers can be synchrotrons in the case of LHC and Tevatron, for example. Apart from that, I was going to post exactly the same thing, hence the upvote.
The big atom smashers grab all the headlines and news whilst synchrotron light sources (also called radiation facilities) can often be overlooked. The amazing thing about these installations is how you can have well over 50 beamlines tangential to the ring all conducting their own experiments around the one light source. It really is a fantastic tool for science and engineering and well worth a visit to see the wide range of research conducted with it.
That stimulation with sex and semen is needed for some animals to ovulate is hardly new. Cats need several matings before they will ovulate for eg. That OIF and NGF are the same molecule is the new bit. However, you need to demonstrate.
1. That delivery by semen results in it being taken up and transported to the brain. That it's there is not enough.
2. That the dose is sufficient to have a significant effect.
1) That has already been established.
The effects of "both" substances were more or less known, and they do pass the blood-brain barrier, as they *must* to have an effect on wiggly bits like the hypothalamus and hypofysis when introduced during intercourse...
The "surprising" bit is that it's actually the same molecule that has effects in different parts of the brain.
Then again, if you consider things like g-protein coupled receptors even this is not really that surprising.
2) Given the likely mechanism of signal propagation (based on the pathway of similar substances), and the fact that you're talking about a behavioral response which is critical to species propagation the actual concentration needed to trigger the response may well be extremely low (<1ppb in blood plasma), especially for the species that ovulate "on demand"/ "in season", possibly a bit higher in continuous cycle mammals like us.
A "significant" effect would depend on the species and the way it's sexlife is organised, including things like secondary signals which may or may not increase/inhibit receptiveness of the receptors for this specific molecule in the target cells.
No-one ever said biology was easy, especially when you're dealing with hormones and neural networks... ;)
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