The study was published last week…” story continued here at ScienceDaily.

Make Grad School Suck Less

Pick your flavor of study, click on it, and choose from dozens of ways to proclaim your kinky science love. Don’t see your favorite science topic? Leave a comment telling me which field you want to see (e.g. “I want astrology!”) and I’ll make the inappropriate references happen, and you can get your swag.

Deal? Deal.

Now that we’re all on the same page, what if I told you that recent research suggests that some chubby chasers (i.e. EVERY RAPPER EVER) might just be stressed out? That is, what if psychological stress leads one to chase the chubby? Let’s explore this hypothesis further in today’s post.

So, if I don’t state upfront that women of all sizes are beautiful (and they are), then the people of the Internets will yell at me. That aside – let’s be real. As a woman, I can tell you that there’s a not-so-subtle message in society that goes something like this:

Feel free to get into some kind of deep philosophical debate in the comments section about your own convictions and opinions on this matter, but I basically just called it like it is.

Women should either be thin but not too thin, or thick but not too thick. For the sake of this post, however, let’s focus on the thick ones. Women like Kim Kadashian and Beyoncé Knowles have done much to put “thick” women on a bit of a pedestal. The field of rap music would appear to concur:

With the exception of Drake, whose lyrics aren’t always what I would call self-explanatory, these rappers are all obviously concurring that bigger is better when it comes to women’s bodies.

Now, because I spin this as a science blog, let’s talk about science: what factors are influencing whether men (or women) go for heroin chic or pleasingly plump? This is quite the burning question in today’s society and, lucky for us, researchers from London published the results of their experiments on this very matter last month.

British!

Eighty-one White British heterosexual males ranging from ages 18 to 42 were divided into two groups: Group One contained 41 men who would undergo a stressful experience, and Group Two contained 40 men who would not experience stress. And what exactly was the “stress” experience? It went like this:

You walk into a room where four people are sitting at a table with tape recorders and video cameras. Then you stand in front of them at a microphone and try to give a speech off the top of your head for five agonizingly long minutes, hoping to convince them that they should hire you for some fictional job. And, just in case this type of hideous task happens to be your thing, you have to stay up there at the mic and try to subtract 13 from 1022 over and over again (i.e. 1022, 1009, 996, 983…) as fast and as accurately as possible. I’m not making this up, kids; unrehearsed public speaking and mental math — if that doesn’t stress you out then I’d like to know what does.

Oh, and in the mean time, the Group Two guys were just sitting quietly and unknowingly while the Group One guys were being tortured. Unfair.

After all this stressing or not-stressing, all men in the study were told to look at women with body types covering everything in the range from emaciated to obese. The men had to rate the ideal body, and the thinnest and largest bodies that they would still consider physically attractive. Thus, the men established an “attractiveness range.”

The results were pretty straightforward: men who had been stressed gave significantly higher ratings to normal and overweight women’s figures, chose a significantly heavier women’s frame as their “ideal,” and reported a significantly wider attractiveness range, almost exclusively due to the inclusion of larger women. Awesome!

If I had to wave my hands around and explain this, I’d say: the male mind, being a product of evolution, knows that when things get tough, one needs a female who can handle the stresses of the environment. That is, women who have more fat deposits and can go longer with scarce food stores, women who are more physically apt to fight off bears and whatnot, women whose bodies are more likely to carry a fetus to term when the metaphorical, ecological s–t hits the fan.

I’m NOT saying that skinny women have any less inherent value than women of other sizes. Not even close. I’m just telling you the first thing that comes to my mind when I see an experiment that shows stressed guys preferring bigger girls. I’m not a medical doctor or a psychologist or anything beyond an overly flippant blogger and an MIT/Harvard trained biologist, ooooh snap.

In summary:

• A lot of rappers are probably really stressed out from all the gun violence and drug dealings so evident in their lyrics, inclining them to lust after women of the thicker type.
• Rosie O’Donnell could probably take down a bear before Lindsay Lohan could.
• If you ask your man whether you look fat in your outfit and he says “no,” he’s either being honest with you, lying to your face, or so stressed out at work that he sees your fatness as an evolutionarily sweet deal.

Stay nerdy!

Oh! And did you like what you read here today? Then click around, especially on those social media buttons! Over to the right, look, along the side of the page — there are buttons to get to us on Facebook or Twitter, or to grab our RSS feed. At the bottom of this post you can share it, like it, tweet it, dig it — so many options! Heck, go crazy, buy something from the online store! Use the Donate button in the sidebar and have a blast! Remember, I’m just a lowly graduate student who is about to go have a bag of popcorn for breakfast+lunch and who chooses to skip work to make blog posts just for the pure love and enjoyment of it. And for the entertainment and edification of my dear, dear readers.

We at TryNerdy thank you!

-K

P.S. That “we” is totally just for effect. There is no “we,” unless “we” is me and my three cats. Nothing like being painfully honest with your readership…love ya!

Swami V, & Tovée MJ (2012). The Impact of Psychological Stress on Men’s Judgements of Female Body Size. PloS one, 7 (8) PMID: 22905153

It happens to be one of many Awesome ThinkGeek Shirts. If you are reading this post, then A) you’ve probably already heard of ThinkGeek, and B) there’s a good chance you know what the molecule on that shirt is.

If neither A) nor B) applies to you, though – that’s okay! Because I plan to discuss 1) what the molecule represents, 2) which school I think the shirt is poking fun at, and why it’s of personal interest to me, and 3) what the molecule has to do with schooling, anyway.

This will be fun…

1. I don’t like to beat around the bush. The molecule is ethanol.
Look, Wikpedia says so: I’ll just hope that you, dear reader, have taken a chemistry class at some point in time, and I just want to remind you that anytime you have a bunch of carbons and hydrogens with an -OH sticking off of it (like in the figure below), it’s often an alcohol of some sort. And the name of the alcohol will very likely end with the suffix “-ol.”

But I want to be really clear on something: the only alcohol you should actually consume (if you choose to consume alcohol) is ethanol. ETHANOL, people. Drinking methanol can cause permanent blindness, unconsciousness, and death. Forty percent of the methanol in the world is used to make formaldehyde, which is the stuff used to embalm dead people and pets and such. So that’s not what you want. Propanol is thought to be 2-4 times as potent as ethanol, so I don’t think you want to go the propanol route either. Just…stick to ethanol, if anything. You don’t want to be this guy:

Shoulda stuck to ethanol, man.

2. Look at this logo again:

Observe the bold, striking crimson inside the oval. See the golden leaves of some sort, hugging the oval tenderly. Note, if you will, the abundance of H‘s, and how the letters are connected by cute little lines.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Well, now look at this logo:

Observe the bold, striking crimson inside the shield. See the golden leaves of some sort, hugging the shield tenderly. Note, if you will, that the school represented is the most popular school worldwide that starts with the letter H, and how the letters of the motto are connected with cute little lines.

Am I wrong in thinking that the Awesome ThinkGeek Shirt above is inspired in some part by the logo for Harvard University? I think not. And, well…this tickles me to no end because I’m currently a PhD candidate at Harvard (I refuse to accept any cool points for this). And although some might think there’s irony in using the symbol of hoity-toity Harvard to make a play on alcohol…it’s not as ironic as you might think.

Ever heard of “work hard, play hard”? From what I’ve observed, Harvard students party like students at most other campuses. As an example, I point you to this list of 15 Harvard Drinking Games. Yeah, so, we’re not the most uncool school in the world, and we’re not unfamiliar with the world of alcohol consumption and the concept of beer blankets and whatnot. I mean, you watched The Social Network , right?

3. Let’s talk about higher education and alcohol consumption. For many young people, going off to college is their first time being completely out from under Mom’s and Dad’s thumbs, and with that comes self-discovery, all types of life lessons, and a ridiculous amount of drinking. Beer pong. Flip cup. You know what I’m talking about.

Coming soon to an Olympics near you.

A study out of the University of Florida and Texas A&M found some strikingly obvious facts about what influences students to drink:

1. Emotional status. A “bad day at work” or “boyfriend or girlfriend broke up with them” can impact a student’s drinking behavior, particularly in the direction of drinking more.

2. Monetary considerations. Excess cash means more drinks; less cash means fewer drinks. (Mind. Blown.)

3. Surrounding environment. If you’re with your best buddies, you’ll drink more. If you’re with a bunch of sketchy strangers who might slip something into your drink, you’ll drink less.

4. Drinking games. As I alluded to before, drinking games go with the college drinking scene like brooms go with Quidditch. One student participant gives a poignant explanation, in his own words: “this person says that they can do this many shots, well then I have to one up that. I cannot let that person out show me.” No, he’d never live it down if someone got drunker than him.

5. Other people. If someone buys a round of shots for everyone at the bar, you’re more likely to drink (direct effect). If you’re at a frat party where you know that drinking is the theme of the general environment, you’re more likely to drink (indirect effect).

In summary:

Stay nerdy

Koehrer P, Creuzot-Garcher C, & Bron AM (2011). Methanol poisoning: two case studies of blindness in Indonesia. International ophthalmology, 31 (6), 517-24 PMID: 22200859

Rajamani A (2012). Two cases of toxic methanol ingestion, one leading to brain death: case reports and a brief review. Critical care and resuscitation : journal of the Australasian Academy of Critical Care Medicine, 14 (1), 56-9 PMID: 22404063

Cascallana JL, Gordo V, & Montes R (2012). Severe necrosis of oesophageal and gastric mucosa in fatal methanol poisoning. Forensic science international, 220 (1-3) PMID: 22398189

Barry AE, & Goodson P (2012). Contextual Factors Influencing U.S. College Students’ Decisions to Drink Responsibly. Substance use & misuse, 47 (10), 1172-84 PMID: 22662910

In my last post, I didn’t talk about Ebola. This is primarily because the Ebola virus plushy toy is nowhere near as cute as, say, Chlamydia or Herpes:

Chlamydia!

Herpes!

I mean, seriously…the Ebola virus just looks like an earthworm of some sort. But despite its unfortunate lack of cute, Ebola is a big deal. A really big deal. In this post, I’ll tell you what the big deal is, and why you just might have to start worrying about it.

First of all, the real Ebola virus is just as unimpressive-looking as the toy:

The reason Ebola is a big deal right now is that there’s been a recent outbreak of it in Western Uganda. And some of you might be all like, “That’s sad and everything, but I definitely don’t live anywhere close to Western Uganda.” And while that may be true, you should be aware that an Ebola-infected prisoner from Uganda has escaped…and no one knows where he is.

Ebola is highly infectious and contagious, so you should really be concerned if this man goes…well, anywhere, really. Europe, Australia, Peru, your backyard…an Ebola outbreak that isn’t properly contained has the potential to turn into a global epidemic.

Everyone would be wearing these super unfashionable hazmat suits.

The symptoms of Ebola are pretty nasty, so you should stay away from people with the following disturbing side effects (and make sure you don’t have them yourself):

• bloody diarrhea
• vomiting
• seizures
• bleeding from the eyes and mouth (and other mucous membranes)
• and more.

I have to imagine you would keep your distance from a person with these issues anyway, and that you’d get yourself to a doctor if you were experiencing them. The virus can spread through contact with bodily fluids, and there is no cure or vaccine for it.

That’s right, this thing is ugly. Sixty-eight percent of the infected die, and all doctors can really do is try to keep you hydrated as you bloody diarrhea yourself to death. Ignore the fact that “diarrhea” isn’t a verb.

Ebola is so bad, it’s made its way into multiple major motion pictures. Remember Osmosis Jones? That’s okay, no one really does.

The man himself.

Voiced by Chris Rock, Osmosis is an anthropomorphic white blood cell who’s trying to kill a virus that’s trying to kill Bill Murray. Okay. Now that you’ve taken all of that in, add the fact that the evil virus is named Thrax and looks like this:

Kind of bad-ass, actually.

Alright, the point of all this is that, even though Thrax can be quoted as saying “Ebola is a case of DANDRUFF compared to me!” Thrax is just some completely made-up guy with a long claw finger that sets cells on fire. There is no possible way for him to be worse than Ebola. That’s my take, anyway.

More on Ebola in movies: Have you heard of Outbreak? This is one you should actually watch — the cast includes Dustin Hoffman, Morgan Freeman, Cuba Gooding, Jr., and Kevin Spacey…wow. Well, in this movie, a fictional version of Ebola takes hold in Zaire, and all these actors try to do something about it. Random fact: A real outbreak of Ebola struck Zaire just a few months after the movie came out.

Point is, Ebola is featured as the biggest, baddest virus out there, and with good reason (refer to symptoms listed above). The outbreak in Uganda is a serious issue, drawing local, national, an international responses. Even if the outbreak doesn’t end up affecting you directly, and of course I hope it doesn’t, keep your eyes and ears on the situation in Uganda. Because even though you could say, “it’s not affecting me,” we all can and should show compassion for those suffering from a disease that causes this much misery, and in a community that doesn’t enjoy the medical facilities that we may have.

Stay strong, Uganda.

Kinsman J (2012). “A time of fear”: local, national, and international responses to a large Ebola outbreak in Uganda. Globalization and health, 8 (1) PMID: 22695277

Aren’t they the cutest?

So, if you’re STD savvy, you might have realized that all of the plush toys above are named after venereal diseases. These adorable little guys are the Venereals. I want to reiterate that these are cuddly toys that look like the actual infectious agents that give you these diseases. A little weird, maybe? Yes.

But I own them all. Can you imagine a better conversation starter? (“Oh that’s cute, what is that little star-shaped toy?” …”Herpes.” ). If you’ve ever wanted nerdy street cred, now is your chance. Just click the link for Venereals and these nasty little cuties can be all yours. Now let me explain myself….

1. Take pox for example. Pox also goes by the name syphilis, which you’ve probably heard of. Technically, the bacterium is called Treponema pallidum, but that’s not so catchy. But the plush toy for syphilis looks surprisingly similar to the actual bacterium:So these toys are the real deal. You could even call them learning tools, but something tells me that these should only belong to high school-aged and older individuals, despite how much a 5-year-old would want to cuddle them.

As cute as plushie syphilis is, you don’t want to get syphilis. You really don’t.

Syphilis gives you very un-sexy ulcers and a crazy amount of nodules all over the body:

Yup, definitely not cute. So have fun cuddling your syphilis plushie, but don’t actually, you know, come in contact with syphilis.

Luckily, if you’ve had syphilis for less than a year, penicillin should cure you right up. But, again, my advice is to avoid syphilis at all costs. And if you do end up with it, don’t spread it around.

2. Herpes is way too cute not to talk about. Look at this little guy:

Okay, so the actual herpes virus on the right isn’t nearly as lovable as the star-shaped, innocent-eyed, fluffy herpes on the left…. And many of us know what herpes looks like on someone’s face:

Ouch. Not a good look. And I’m betting it’s painful, too. Quite sadly, there isn’t actually a therapy to remove the herpes virus from the body. The best you can hope for are antiviral medications to reduce the frequency and severity of outbreaks for the rest of your life.

But again, the toy is too cute. And that’s what really matters.

3. Finally, it would be unforgivable if I didn’t feature chlamydia. LOOK at this face!

Despite the terrible letdown of the actual chlamydia bacterium’s appearance, the guys who designed this plushie toy deserve a lot of kudos. Look closely at the soft chlamydia. Look into its eyes. Those hopeful eyes that say, “I want to be your friend! Please be my loving friend.” And that hair! Timeless.

Oh yeah, but um, you don’t actually want to get chlamydia either. To my guy readers: you don’t want to have burning pee or unusual discharge from your penis or tender testicles. If chlamydia really takes hold in your testes, you can become sterile. I wouldn’t wish these things on my worst enemy.

And ladies: chlamydia likes to set up shop in your cervix, which can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, which can cause difficulty with getting pregnant. And your pee will burn too. So chlamydia is an all-around bad time for everybody. Take heart though: chlamydia can effectively be cured with antibiotics.

You still shouldn’t go getting it though. What you should get is the adorably cute cuddly Chlamydia doll. It’s a tough choice between chlamydia and Herpes though…so that’s why I got ALL the Venereals! They keep each other company, and I love each of them in my own little way.

I’m the talk of all my friends, and you can be too. Just imagine all the nerdy hipster points this will get you! Now get those Venereals! But not the diseases. In all seriousness, men and women should carry condoms.

Stay nerdy and safe!

P.S. If you’re a bit weirded out about cute STDs, or you don’t feel comfortable getting those for children, check out Black Death, E. coli, Common Cold, and other wonderful, cuddly microbes!

Thank me later.

Janier M, Libar E, Bonnet A, Meunier P, Tabet M, Mathourais M, Paterour C, & Porcher R (2012). Treatment of late syphilis with 2.4 million units benzathine penicillin G (BPG): tolerance of single versus divided doses. Sexually transmitted diseases, 39 (5), 359-60 PMID: 22504599

De Clercq E (2012). Human viral diseases: what is next for antiviral drug discovery? Current opinion in virology PMID: 22846888

I am back and ready to reclaim my title as Least Dependable Blogger ever!

Not, but really though…I got engaged recently. It’s kind of a big deal! So between planning a wedding, seeing how much they cost (OMG), and bringing home a third kitten…blogging got pushed to the wayside. And I’m sorry but OH MY GOSH LOOK AT THE KITTY:

Awwwww!

In all honesty, I think the blog will be going in a very different direction. There are tons of sites that are juggernauts when it comes to science blogging (e.g. ScienceDaily.com). But, if I’m keeping it real, I like to think that my love of sarcasm sets my blog apart.

So I think I will maintain my wittiness, but try to get people to bring nerdy stuff into their homes….

And I will leave you on that cryptic note…

But it would also be cool if you tweeted the post, liked it on Facebook, submitted it to Reddit….

But I digress. You know how, sometimes, right before you fall sleep, you’ll have those weird hallucination-type things, and it’s somewhere in between waking and sleeping and feels surprisingly real? If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then this post may not make any sense to you.

For the rest of you, check out this research where people actually studied those hallucinatory moments right before sleep. By the way, being a participant in this study seems like it was equal parts awesome and annoying.

Who doesn’t like Tetris? (No one.) For this study, in which the participants were almost certainly financially compensated, researchers asked test subjects to play Tetris for two hours every morning for three consecutive days — sign me up! Here is a diagram, because this is the awesome part of the study:

Being woken up 15 seconds after falling asleep.

Then, the researchers told the subjects to take a nap in the afternoon (this study just keeps getting better). Here’s the catch: subjects were woken up either 15, 45, 75, 120 or 180 seconds after falling asleep. The subjects, after mumbling expletives to the scientists, then reported their “mental content” to three judges.

In what may or may not be a surprising result, 10% of the subjects (48 out of 485 people) reported experiencing exact replicas of the sights and sounds of Tetris. This was in contrast to two control groups: one in which the subjects played no games (sad face) and only 1 person in 107 reported Tetris-related hallucinations (ummm…Tetris fanatic much?); in the second group, participants played Tetris after the nap (still a sweet deal), and only 3 out of 112 of those guys pre-dreamed about Tetris (oh, the anticipation!).

So the key takeaway here is simply this: Don’t watch Nightmare on Elm Street films right before taking a nap. Not only because Freddy Krueger will enter your dreams and kill you (duh), but because you might vividly hallucinate about him right before you fall sleep. And no one wants that.

Stay nerdy

Kusse C, Shaffii-LE Bourdiec A, Schrouff J, Matarazzo L, & Maquet P (2012). Experience-dependent induction of hypnagogic images during daytime naps: a combined behavioural and EEG study. Journal of sleep research, 21 (1), 10-20 PMID: 21848802

Hmmm...I smell about 28 years old.

People frequently complain about that “old person smell.” Mothers often delight in that unique “baby smell.” And sometimes young 20-something guys smell kind of gross (just kidding! Sort of).

But does any of that have a basis in science?

Yes, yes it does. This post will describe the smelly, somewhat weird, yet informative study that proves that your odor might just give away your age (sorry, ladies).

First, researchers at the Monell Center divided participants of the study into three age groups: young (20-30 years old), middle-age (45-55), and old-age (75-95). Each group contained 12-16 individuals.

[Approximation of what the participants looked like.]

So this is where it gets weird. Each of the participants slept for five nights in a row with some kind of armpit pads that were later divided into four parts and put into jars by the researchers. Five nights sleeping with armpit pads.

(I have no idea what armpit pads look like, so let’s go with my best approximation.)

The scientists almost certainly did not use a dagger to cut up the armpit pads, but just go with me here.

Once the armpit pad pieces were placed in glass jars, 41 “young people” (20-30 years old) were given two jars in 9 different combinations and asked to indicate the smell that came from the older person. They also rated the intensity and pleasantness of the odor, and guessed the donor’s age.

And these 20-30 year-old folks were actually able to tell the three different donor age groups apart by smell. In fact, the old people’s odors were the ones that drove the ability to differentiate the ages, and old-people smell was considered less intense and less unpleasant than those of the other groups! Take THAT old-people-smell stigma!

Later on, researchers will try to figure out what molecules in our armpit smells make the odors different, and how our brain is able to figure out those differences. But for now, this is really kind of gross awesome.

Stay nerdy!

Mitro, S., Gordon, A., Olsson, M., & Lundström, J. (2012). The Smell of Age: Perception and Discrimination of Body Odors of Different Ages PLoS ONE, 7 (5) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0038110