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POPSSex, lies and some existential questions.. :-) So many orchids treat their pollinators so nastily, with false promises of food and sex or the occasional dunking of insect visitors into bucket-shaped petals full of liquid, that naturalists have puzzled over the relationship for more than a century. Darwin was so consumed by the odd interactions that after “The Origin of Species,” his next book was an entire volume on the subject, “The Various Contrivances by Which Orchids Are Fertilized by Insects.”
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POPSSexes need different dinners Crickets eat junk food! Maybe it's a matter of 'learning' to eat well. (good habits?) Often it can be a case of what is available, or easy to get, rather than what is good and nutritious. Sometimes a small change in diet can lead to a marked improvement in an aspect of the health of the consumer. Generally alongside overall improvement. A 'diet' doesn't have to be a revolution. It can be a replacement of a preference that is unhealthy, with one that is healthy. (Of course that's easy to write)
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POPSPopulate or perish: Pell Taking the racist line that we must breed up more soldiers to keep the infidel at bay. This at a time when David Attenburough regards overpopulation as the biggest of all the concerns for this planet ( and he is not the sole voice).
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POPSComic? "Get thy to the rear, Woman" Laugh or cry? Both? Count your blessings, girls? Check out the last image. They're swimsuits for 'modest' brain dead females used to being royally screwed by the males from the democratic state of the Middle East!
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POPSOuter-space sex For all these reasons, Logan said spontaneous sex in space could be "a little underwhelming." "It's a pretty messy environment, when you think about it," he said. "And for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. However ... I can well imagine how compelling, inspiring, and quite frankly stimulating choreographed sex in zero-G might be in the hands of a skilled and talented cinematographer with appropriate lighting and music." When the crowd tittered, Logan added, "I'm not kidding: Sex in zero-G is going to have to be more or less choreographed. Otherwise it's just going to be a wild flail."
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POPSMicrobicides could lead to tougher HIV
An estimated 33 million people have HIV. 66% in Africa. More than 61% of Africans with HIV are women who have been infected by their partners. They have found tougher HIV is not as likely to be transmitted. Microbicides work with consistent application, and in conjunction with anti HIV medication, which may not be taken. Reminds me of how Penicillin was once considered to be the the cure for many known diseases. It wasn't long before bacteria developed that were resistant, and the next generation of antibiotics needed to be developed. Now we have the top of the line Methycillin, and MRSA-Methycyllin resistant Staphylococcus Aureas -Golden Staph, and we're reaching the end of this line.. We tried to beat nature, and nature caught us and beat us back. As penicillin was a natural by product of a microorganism, it stands to reason that as many other species have natural antibiotics and defense mechanisms, we can find the next generation of antibiotics by following natures lead.
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POPSMale tuataras face dateless futures Like many reptiles the ratio of males to females depends on the temperature. Many more creatures depend on a relatively stable temperature range to remain viable. All are part of a food chain. If a link is knocked out, the predator can starve, and the prey overpopulate. Evolution is a relatively slow process. If change happens too quickly, the creatures don't have time to adapt, and the link is knocked out. This can lead to the collapse of the food chain.
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POPSFluoride of the Future: Population Level Cognitive Enhancement It seems likely that widespread population level cognitive enhancement will be irresistible. Studies based on removing lead, which reduces cognitive ability, from the water and paint, have estimated that a 3 point IQ increase would lead to: Poverty rate -25% Males in jail -25% High school dropouts -28% Parentless children -20% Welfare recipiency -18% Out-of-wedlock births -15%
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POPSHow do you masturbate an elephant Of course male elephants don't (ordinarily, so far as we know) have any trouble ejaculating when interacting sexually with other elephants, and may ejaculate prematurely during their efforts to achieve successful penetration (Bagemihl 1999). It can take (presumably inexperienced) males a bit of rooting around with the flexible penis before finding the vulva. As is well known, the elephant vulva is not located just beneath the tail as is the case in most mammals, but down on the ventral surface and well between the legs, meaning that the vagina is very long (70-90 cm). This unusual position means that pregnancies are sometimes unnoticed and even that females have on occasion been mistakenly identified as male: Shoshani (1991) wrote of a case where a female was thought to be a male throughout her 25 years of life and was only found to be female on her death. Why elephants are built like this has been a long standing question.
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POPSMen And Women Respond Differently To Stress The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine is reporting research that shows that different parts of the brain are activated in males and females when confronted with a stressful situation. The researchers examined the activity of participant's brains using fMRI while exposed to stress.
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POPSWhat's In A Name...?
The study then compared the names and their popularity ratings to the first names of male youth in the juvenile justice system from 1997 to 2005. Using regression models, Lee and co-author David Kalist found that regardless of race, the more unique, rare and unpopular the name is, the more likely it popped up in youth crime files 10 to 18 years later. While half of the names in the state population have a PNI of 20 or more, half the names of the juvenile population have a PNI greater than 11. Lee calculated that for every 10 per cent increase in the popularity of a name, there is an associated 3.7 per cent decrease in the number of troublemaking kids with that name. However, research also showed that the PNI of a juvenile's name is also associated with other factors, such as socio-economic conditions and family structure. ``The PNI is positively associated when the kid is living with both parents and negatively associated when living only with the mother,'' said Lee, add
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