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Isang Litrong Liwanag ADVERTISEMENT. The Caligula Effect: Why Powerful Men Compulsively Cheat. Human males have never been thought of as models of sexual restraint — and with good reason. From the moment the adolescent libido begins to boot up, boys seem to enter an ongoing state of emotional — if not literal — priapism, from which they never fully emerge. As far as nature is concerned, this is just fine. The goal of any organism, after all, is to ensure the survival and propagation of its genes, and males — far more so than females — are eminently equipped to do that. Even the world’s most reproductively prolific mothers rarely produce more than eight or nine children in a lifetime. Part of the reason they don’t, apart from the impracticality of trying to raise a brood of 200 children, is that they just don’t get that many mating opportunities.

(More on TIME.com: Sex and Politics: Are Powerful Men Really More Likely to Cheat?) But what happens when the lid comes off? (More on TIME.com: The Case for Letting Your Partner’s Eye Wander) 6 Insane Discoveries That Science Cant Explain. We like to feel superior to the people who lived centuries ago, what with their shitty mud huts and curing colds by drilling a hole in their skulls. But we have to give them credit: They left behind some artifacts that have left the smartest of modern scientists scratching their heads.

For instance, you have the following enigmas that we believe were created for no other purpose than to fuck with future generations. The Voynich Manuscript The Mystery: The Voynich manuscript is an ancient book that has thwarted all attempts at deciphering its contents. It appears to be a real language--just one that nobody has seen before. Translation: "...and when you get her to put the tennis racket in her mouth, have her stand in a fountain for a while. There is not even a consensus on who wrote it, or even when it was written.

Why Can't They Solve It? Could you? Don't even try. As you can imagine, proposed solutions have been all over the board, from reasonable to completely clownshit. Our Guess: The 6 Creepiest Things Hiding in Your DNA. We're all just one impulsive Google images search away from facing the unblinking darkness that lurks within the heart of man. But that black pit of twisted evil and decay shouldn't surprise anybody; it's rooted in our genetic makeup. Literally. Back in biology class, you were probably taught that DNA was a sensible, organized system. When they called it "the building blocks of life," you probably pictured DNA as a series of neatly edged Legos snapping together to form a cohesive whole. When in reality, DNA is more like an old scrapbook that someone has torn up, pasted back together, filled with old newspaper clippings about murder and then taken into the bathroom with them.

Photos.comShe knows what she did. A large part of this internal mess comes from the endogenous retrovirus. In the distant past, retroviruses picked up by our ancestors would occasionally find their way into the sex organs, and the newly virused-up DNA was passed along to their children. Via Yikrazuul"Get in the car. Political views are reflected in brain structure. Public release date: 7-Apr-2011 [ Print | E-mail Share ] [ Close Window ] Contact: Elisabeth Lyonselyons@cell.com 617-386-2121Cell Press We all know that people at opposite ends of the political spectrum often really can't see eye to eye.

Now, a new report published online on April 7th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, reveals that those differences in political orientation are tied to differences in the very structures of our brains. Individuals who call themselves liberal tend to have larger anterior cingulate cortexes, while those who call themselves conservative have larger amygdalas. Based on what is known about the functions of those two brain regions, the structural differences are consistent with reports showing a greater ability of liberals to cope with conflicting information and a greater ability of conservatives to recognize a threat, the researchers say.

And, indeed, that's exactly what they found. . [ Print | E-mail AAAS and EurekAlert! 36 Bizarre Group Names For Animals: Pics, Videos, Links, News. Holistic Futsal. 6 cancer-fighting superfoods on Shine. Zap of electricity makes you a brighter spark. Mammoth 'could be reborn in four years' Russians Will Be First To Explore Untouched Antarctic Lake Vostok, In Hunt For Weird Life Forms.

An oxygen-rich lake, unreachable for the past 14 million years and buried beneath a thick sheet of ice, is about to be penetrated by a drill bit from a faraway place. It's possible that special life forms have adapted to live in this extreme environment, and scientists hope to learn more once they can analyze water samples. No, sorry, it's not on Europa — it's in Antarctica. But the environment of Lake Vostok, which Russian scientists are about to drill open, is very similar to that Jovian moon and to Enceladus, a frozen satellite of Saturn.

Astrobiologists are among those eager to uncover Lake Vostok's Miocene-era secrets. The Antarctic Treaty Secretariat, a body set up to protect the frozen continent, approved a Russian team's process to extract water from the lake while preventing contamination, according to New Scientist. The lake's water pressure will push the drilling fluid up into the borehole, where it will freeze. [New Scientist via Wired UK] Health | 'Sarcasm' brain areas discovered. Scientists say they have located the parts of the brain that comprehend sarcasm - honestly. By comparing healthy people and those with damage to different parts of the brain, they found the front of the brain was key to understanding sarcasm. Damage to any of three different areas could render individuals unable to understand sarcastic comments. The Israeli team from Haifa University told Neuropsychology how their findings might help to explain autism features.

Autistic children can have problems interpreting sarcasm as well as other social cues such as emotions. This same skill is sometimes lost in people with brain damage, suggesting similar brain regions may be involved in autism. Brain scan studies of autistic children have shown that they have different activity in the frontal lobe to other children. Dr Simone Shamay-Tsoory and colleagues studied 25 people with prefrontal lobe damage, 16 with damage to the posterior lobe of the brain and 17 healthy volunteers. Anatomy.