Year 2011 This is pretty interesting that insects reproduce asexually even for a long time in their species for instance some have done it for 2 million years đ Also this could lead to even humans asexual reproduce if properly done with crispr.
One hope of trying to understand why sex is so powerful and prevalent a mode of reproduction relies on the rare examples of animals that persist long-term without having sex. Now, several species of stick insects join that illustrious circle.
There was once a stigma attached to online dating: Less than a decade ago, many couples who had met online would make up stories for how they met rather than admit that they had done so via an app.
Not so anymore. Online dating is so mainstream that youâre an outlier if you havenât met your partner on Tinder, Grindr or Hinge.
We bring up online dating to show just how quickly conventions around romance can change. With rapid advances in AI technology over the past few years, these norms may well evolve to include sex, love and friendships with AI-equipped machines.
Exhaled breath VOCs showed variations in concentration associated with the different clips, even though the relative change was less distinguishable compared to the genital response (Fig. 3). For female participants, breath levels of CO2 and isoprene during the sex clip were significantly lower compared to the anxiety and sport clips (p 0.05, Table S2). For male participants, CO2, C2H4O2 and C6H6O were found to have a significantly lower, higher and higher breath level, respectively, for the sex clip comparing to the other two clips (p 0.05, Table S2). The relative change of CO2 during the sex clip was in general only 3â4% lower than that during the anxiety and sport clips but was significant for both genders (p 0.05). The minute-by-minute box plot (Fig. 2c) also shows that breath CO2 appears to lower slightly in concentration for both genders during the sex clip. Isoprene was significantly decreased during the sex clip compared to the sport clip for both genders (males:13%, females:15%, p †0.001). For women during the sex clip, the isoprene also had a significantly lower level compared to the anxiety clip (12%, p 0.01). For the 1-min data distribution shown in Fig. 2d, participants showed not only elevated isoprene concentration during the sport and anxiety clips but also larger variations among each other reflected by the length of the box representing 25â75% data distribution. Interestingly, isoprene level peaked at the beginning of the sex clip (the second minute) for both genders.
From Fig. 3, it can be seen that several other measured VOCs, C10 H14 O, C7H8O, C8H11 NO2 and acetaldehyde for female participants, and C8H7N for male participants showed large relative changes during the sex clip compared to the anxiety clip and the sport clip. However, no significant difference was identified between the sex clip and the other two clips (Table S2) for these VOCs, indicating the mean values were largely affected by outliers. In such cases, the VOCs identified as having a distinguishable change during the sex clip might be specific to an individual rather than being representative of the whole group of participants. Among the female participants, one subject (No. 39) had substantial elevation of C10 H14 O, C7H8O, C8H11 NO2 in her breath starting in the end of the sport clip until the end of the sex clip, which caused a significant deviation in terms of the mean values. While for acetaldehyde, subject No. 20 had a much higher relative increase compared to the first neutral clip in her breath than other participants, affecting the mean values. For male participants, two persons with a strong physiological response (No. 6 and 10) had substantial elevated breath levels of C8H7N, C6H6O and C7H8O during the sex clip.
Among all participants, several VOCs showed change according to the genital response of certain individual participants (1 female and 2 male participants). Although the data from those participants were considered as outliers in the previous section, as there were no experimental errors identified and the breath-genital related change occurred in different clip playing order, it is unlikely that those outliers coincidentally followed the genital response pattern. Furthermore, genital response and genital temperature data was rated highly in terms of quality for those individuals. Therefore, we may use these individuals to characterize the breath marker responses for each gender in real time.
Researchers from Zhejiang University, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Northwest University, and Yunnan University, Aarhus University, and BGI-Research have jointly led a series of significant new studies are published in a special issue of the journal Science, and in papers in Nature Ecology & Evolution and Science Advances.
Co-led by Guojie Zhang from Centre for Evolutionary & Organismal Biology at Zhejiang University, Dong-Dong Wu at Kunming Institute of Zoology, Xiao-Guang Qi at Northwest University, Li Yu at Yunnan University, Mikkel Heide Schierup at Aarhus University, and Yang Zhou at BGI-Research, the Primate Genome Consortium reported a series of publications from its first phase program. The program includes high quality reference genomes from 50 primate species, of which 27 were sequenced for the first time. These studies provide new insights on the speciation process, genomic diversity, social evolution, sex chromosomes, and the evolution of the brain and other biological traits.
The comparative analysis of primate genomes within a phylogenetic context is crucial for understanding the evolution of the human genetic architecture and the inter-species genomic differences associated with primate diversification. Previous studies of primate genomes have focused mainly on primate species closely related to humans and were constrained by the lack of broader phylogenetic coverage.
Alzheimerâs disease (AD) is a complex neurodegenerative illness with genetic and environmental origins. Females experience faster cognitive decline and cerebral atrophy than males, while males have greater mortality rates. Using a new machine-learning method they developed called âEvolutionary Action Machine Learning (EAML),â researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute (Duncan NRI) at Texas Childrenâs Hospital have discovered sex-specific genes and molecular pathways that contribute to the development and progression of this condition. The study was published in Nature Communications.
âWe have developed a unique machine-learning software that uses an advanced computational predictive metric called the evolutionary action (EA) score as a feature to identify genetic factors that influence AD risk separately in males and females,â Dr. Olivier Lichtarge, MD, Ph.D., professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Baylor College of Medicine, said. âThis approach lets us exploit a massive amount of evolutionary data efficiently, so we can now probe with greater accuracy smaller cohorts and identify genes involved in sex-specific differences in AD.â
EAML is an ensemble computational approach that includes nine machine learning algorithms to analyze the functional impact of non-synonymous coding variants, defined as DNA mutations that affect the structure and function of the resulting protein, and estimates their deleterious effect on biological processes using the evolutionary action (EA) score.
Language impairment is comorbid in most children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) but its neural basis is poorly understood. Using structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the present study provides the whole-brain comparison of both volume-and surface-based characteristics between groups of children with and without ASD and investigates the relationships between these characteristics in language-related areas and the language abilities of children with ASD measured with standardized tools. A total of 36 school-aged children participated in the study: 18 children with ASD and 18 age-and sex-matched typically developing controls. The results revealed that multiple regions differed between groups of children in gray matter volume, gray matter thickness, gyrification, and cortical complexity (fractal dimension).
When people pay for sexual media, theyâre seeking more than an anonymous image. AI cannot replicate the underlying desires that drive sex work.
As one of the OMICS in systems biology, metabolomics defines the metabolome and simultaneously quantifies numerous metabolites that are final or intermediate products and effectors of upstream biological processes. Metabolomics provides accurate information that helps determine the physiological steady state and biochemical changes during the aging process. To date, reference values of metabolites across the adult lifespan, especially among ethnicity groups, are lacking. The ânormalâ reference values according to age, sex, and race allow the characterization of whether an individual or a group deviates metabolically from normal aging, encompass a fundamental element in any study aimed at understanding mechanisms at the interface between aging and diseases.
Chronic anxiety is prevalent and associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Prior studies that have reported a relationship between muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) and anxiety have focused on participants with anxiety disorders and/or metabolic syndrome. The present study leverages a large cohort of healthy adults devoid of cardiometabolic disorders to examine the hypothesis that trait anxiety severity is positively associated with resting MSNA and blood pressure. Resting blood pressure (BP) (sphygmomanometer and finger plethysmography), MSNA (microneurography), and heart rate (HR; electrocardiogram) were collected in 88 healthy participants (52 males, 36 females, 25 ± 1 yr, 25 ± 1 kg/m2). Multiple linear regression was performed to assess the independent relationship between trait anxiety, MSNA, resting BP, and HR while controlling for age and sex. Trait anxiety was significantly correlated with systolic arterial pressure (SAP; r = 0.251, P = 0.018), diastolic arterial pressure (DAP; r = 0.291, P = 0.006), mean arterial pressure (MAP; r = 0.328, P = 0.002), MSNA burst frequency (BF; r = 0.237, P = 0.026), and MSNA burst incidence (BI; r = 0.225, P = 0.035). When controlling for the effects of age and sex, trait anxiety was independently associated with SAP (ÎČ = 0.206, P = 0.028), DAP (ÎČ = 0.317, P = 0.002), MAP (ÎČ = 0.325, P = 0.001), MSNA BF (ÎČ = 0.227, P = 0.030), and MSNA BI (ÎČ = 0.214, P = 0.038). Trait anxiety is associated with increased blood pressure and MSNA, demonstrating an important relationship between anxiety and autonomic blood pressure regulation.
NEW & NOTEWORTHY Anxiety is associated with development of cardiovascular disease. Although the sympathetic nervous system is a likely mediator of this relationship, populations with chronic anxiety have shown little, if any, alteration in resting levels of directly recorded muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA). The present study is the first to reveal an independent relationship between trait anxiety, resting blood pressure, and MSNA in a large cohort of healthy males and females devoid of cardiometabolic comorbidities.
Listen to this articleâs corresponding podcast at https://ajpheart.podbean.com/e/anxiety-and-muscle-sympathetic-nerve-activity/.
Functional movement/conversion disorder (FMD), part of the spectrum of Functional Neurological Disorder (FND), is a neuropsychiatric condition marked by a range of neurological symptoms, including tremors, muscular spasms and cognitive difficulties. Despite being the second-most common cause of referrals to neurology outpatient clinics after headache, scientists have struggled to pin down the disorderâs root cause. Female sex and a history of childhood trauma are factors associated with higher risk of developing FMD, but itâs been unclear why.
A new study from investigators of the Brigham and Womenâs Hospital, in collaboration with researchers at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, demonstrated that FMD is characterized by epigenetic changes, and that women and childhood abuse survivors with FMD have different epigenetic profiles linked to this condition. Their study, which examined the genomes of over 100 individuals and was recently published in Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry, is the first to demonstrate the occurrence of epigenetic changes in FMD.
âThis study finally takes FMD out of a cloud of confusion and provides a neuroscientifically grounded explanation for why childhood trauma and female sex are associated with this disorder,â said lead author Primavera A. Spagnolo, MD, Ph.D., scientific director of the Mary Horrigan Connors Center for Womenâs Health and Gender Biology and assistant professor of psychiatry at HMS.
