Preferred Women’s Waist-to-Hip Ratio (Variation over the Last 2,500 Years)

Researchers Jeanne Bovet, [left] and Michel Raymond [right] of the Institute of the Evolutionary Sciences department, University of Montpellier, France, have been examining pictures of Playboy models and winners of several Miss pageants from 1920 to 2014. They point out that : “The ratio between the body circumference at the waist and the hips (or […]

Computerised gender classification (part 1: eyebrows)

Can you tell a person’s gender from just a glimpse of their eyebrows? Could a computerised system do the same? To find out, a project was undertaken by Yujie Dong (of the Holcombe Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Clemson University) and Damon L. Woodard (now at the Biometrics and Pattern Recognition Lab, University of […]

Upside-down male/female swimwear/underwear picture recognition differences

Are there differences in the rapid-recognition (viz. 250 ms) of photos of men and women in swimsuits (or underwear) when they are presented upside-down? A 2011 paper in the prestige journal Psychological Science suggests the answer maybe yes. Inspired (in part) by a 1969 study from Dr. Robert K. Yin, which was entitled ‘Looking at […]

Squirting, Reviewed by Peering Physicians

Six French doctors took a squinting look at whether and how seven women squirt. The doctors published this study explaining, to some extent, what they did and why they did it: “Nature and Origin of ‘Squirting’ in Female Sexuality,” Samuel Salama, Florence Boitrelle, Amélie Gauquelin, Lydia Malagrida, Nicolas Thiounn, and Pierre Desvaux, Journal of Sexual […]

Count the tempestuous assumptions

Blustery academia sometimes coughs up a perfectly delight-filled storm of assumptions. With that quasi-thought in mind, can you count the assumptions in this new study? The study is: “Female hurricanes are deadlier than male hurricanes,” Kiju Jung, Sharon Shavitt, Madhu Viswanathan, and Joseph M. Hilbe, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), epub June 2, 2014. Here’s one, […]

Enhanced Men Seem Satisfied with Women’s Satisfaction with Enhanced Membership

Another study about enhanced membership and satisfaction in venues where males and females interact: “High Patient Satisfaction after Inflatable Penile Prostheses Implantation Correlates with Female Partner Satisfaction,” Ioannis Vakalopoulos, Spyridon Kampantais, Stavros Ioannidis, Leonidas Laskaridis, Panagiotis Dimopoulos, Chrysovalantis Toutziaris, Michail Koptsis, Gerard D. Henry, Vasileios Katsikas, Journal of Sexual Medicine, epub 2013.  The authors, at […]

Do Blondes Get More Funds?

Imagine that you’re female, and that you’re involved in door to door fundraising. Would it be best (purely from a financial returns viewpoint) to be blonde or brunette? Assistant Professor Michael K. Price at the Department of Economics, University of Tennessee, Knoxville has undertaken an investigation : “This study examines how a cosmetic attribute – […]

Self-stimulation on the brain, plus Maggie Gyllenhaal

“In this Curiosity video we follow Maggie Gyllenhaal in exploring how female brain activity changes as a woman reaches orgasm,” say the makers of the video. The investigation recalls the one personally documented (as the test subject) by Mary Roach in her stimulating book Bonk. (Thanks to investigator David Holzman for bringing the video to […]