Low-voiced men love ’em and leave ’em, yet still attract more women: study

Low-voiced men have an edge in attracting women, even though women know they’re unlikely to stick around long, according to researchers.

The scientists found in a study that women were more attracted to men with masculine voices, at least for short-term relationships. Those men were also seen as more likely to cheat and unsuitable for a longer relat­ionship and marriage.

The study, published online in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, offers insight into the evolu­tion of the voice and how we choose our mates, there searchers said.

“The sound of some one’s voice can affect how we think of them,” explained lead author Jil lian O’ Connor, a post doctoral fellow at McMaster University in Canada. “Until now, it’s been unclear why women would like the voices of men who might cheat. But we found that the more women thought these men would cheat, the more they were attracted to them for a brief relationship when they are less worried about fidelity.”

For the study, 87 women listened to men’s voices that were manipulated electronically to sound high er or low­er, and then chose who they thought was more likely to cheat on their romantic partner.

Researchers also asked the participants to choose the voice they thought was more attractive for a long-term versus a short-term relationship.

“From an evolutionary perspective, these perceptions of future sexual infidelity may be adaptive,” that is, they may have been useful for human an cestors whose reproductive behavior shaped our species, said Mc Mas ter’s David Fein berg, who collaborated with O’ Con nor.

“The consequences of infidelity are very high whether it is emotional or financial and this research sug gests that humans have evolved as a protection mechanism to avoid long-term partners who may cheat,” he said.


Courtesy of McMaster University
and World Science staff

Your brain cells may be capable of outliving you

Some brain cells of mam mals can long out live the an i mal to which they orig i nally be longed, if trans planted in to a dif fer ent brain, new re search sug gests.
Some brain cells of mam mals can long out live the an i mal to which they orig i nally be longed, if trans planted in to a dif fer ent brain, new re search sug gests.

The find ings are raising scientists’ hopes that if they find a way to greatly in crease hu man life span, brain cells will co op erate by work ing long er accord ing ly.

In mam mals, neu rons, the main type of in forma t ion-processing brain cells, can last a whole life span in the ab­sence of brain dis ease. But it has been un clear wheth er neu rons have a max i mum life span, si m i lar to oth er types of cells in the body which, un like neu rons, nor mally can rep li cate.

To find out, Lo ren zo Ma grassi of the Uni vers ity of Pa via in Italy and col leagues trans planted pre cur sor neu rons from the de vel op ing mouse in to rat em bryos. They used a strain of rat that can live on av er age nearly twice as long as the do nor mouse strain. The cells came from, and were trans planted to, a part of the brain known as the cer e bel lum.

The trans planted cells de vel oped in to nor mal neu rons that made them selves at home in the rat brains, though they re tained a mouse-like size and shape, the re search ers said. More o ver, these cells sur vived for as long as their rat hosts, or up to 36 months, roughly twice as long as the av er age life span of the do nor mice.

The find ings sug gest that the life span of the trans planted neu rons is not ge net ic ally fixed and may have been de ter mined by the rat brain “mi croen vi ron ment,” Ma grassi and col leagues wrote. They re ported their find ings in this week’s early on line is sue of the jour nal Pro ceed ings of the Na tio n al Aca de my of Sci en ces.

The re sults, they added, al so sug gest that in creas ing longe vity—a hall mark of tech no log ic ally ad vanced so ci­eties—won’t nec es sarily sad dle longer-lived peo ple with a prob lem of many dy ing brain cells.

“Our re sults sug gest that neu ronal sur viv al and ag ing are co in ci den t but sep a ra ble pro cess es,” they wrote. This in creases “our hope that ex tend ing or gan is mal life span by di e tary, be hav ior al, and phar ma co logic in ter ven­tions will not nec es sarily re sult in a neu ronally de plet ed brain.”
The find ings are raising scientists’ hopes that if they find a way to greatly in crease hu man life span, brain cells will co op erate by work ing long er accord ing ly.
Some brain cells of mam mals can long out live the an i mal to which they orig i nally be longed, if trans planted in to a dif fer ent brain, new re search sug gests.

The find ings are raising scientists’ hopes that if they find a way to greatly in crease hu man life span, brain cells will co op erate by work ing long er accord ing ly.

In mam mals, neu rons, the main type of in forma t ion-processing brain cells, can last a whole life span in the ab­sence of brain dis ease. But it has been un clear wheth er neu rons have a max i mum life span, si m i lar to oth er types of cells in the body which, un like neu rons, nor mally can rep li cate.

To find out, Lo ren zo Ma grassi of the Uni vers ity of Pa via in Italy and col leagues trans planted pre cur sor neu rons from the de vel op ing mouse in to rat em bryos. They used a strain of rat that can live on av er age nearly twice as long as the do nor mouse strain. The cells came from, and were trans planted to, a part of the brain known as the cer e bel lum.

The trans planted cells de vel oped in to nor mal neu rons that made them selves at home in the rat brains, though they re tained a mouse-like size and shape, the re search ers said. More o ver, these cells sur vived for as long as their rat hosts, or up to 36 months, roughly twice as long as the av er age life span of the do nor mice.

The find ings sug gest that the life span of the trans planted neu rons is not ge net ic ally fixed and may have been de ter mined by the rat brain “mi croen vi ron ment,” Ma grassi and col leagues wrote. They re ported their find ings in this week’s early on line is sue of the jour nal Pro ceed ings of the Na tio n al Aca de my of Sci en ces.

The re sults, they added, al so sug gest that in creas ing longe vity—a hall mark of tech no log ic ally ad vanced so ci­eties—won’t nec es sarily sad dle longer-lived peo ple with a prob lem of many dy ing brain cells.

“Our re sults sug gest that neu ronal sur viv al and ag ing are co in ci den t but sep a ra ble pro cess es,” they wrote. This in creases “our hope that ex tend ing or gan is mal life span by di e tary, be hav ior al, and phar ma co logic in ter ven­tions will not nec es sarily re sult in a neu ronally de plet ed brain.”
In mam mals, neu rons, the main type of in forma t ion-processing brain cells, can last a whole life span in the ab­sence of brain dis ease. But it has been un clear wheth er neu rons have a max i mum life span, si m i lar to oth er types of cells in the body which, un like neu rons, nor mally can rep li cate.

To find out, Lo ren zo Ma grassi of the Uni vers ity of Pa via in Italy and col leagues trans planted pre cur sor neu rons from the de vel op ing mouse in to rat em bryos. They used a strain of rat that can live on av er age nearly twice as long as the do nor mouse strain. The cells came from, and were trans planted to, a part of the brain known as the cer e bel lum.

The trans planted cells de vel oped in to nor mal neu rons that made them selves at home in the rat brains, though they re tained a mouse-like size and shape, the re search ers said. More o ver, these cells sur vived for as long as their rat hosts, or up to 36 months, roughly twice as long as the av er age life span of the do nor mice.

The find ings sug gest that the life span of the trans planted neu rons is not ge net ic ally fixed and may have been de ter mined by the rat brain “mi croen vi ron ment,” Ma grassi and col leagues wrote. They re ported their find ings in this week’s early on line is sue of the jour nal Pro ceed ings of the Na tio n al Aca de my of Sci en ces.

The re sults, they added, al so sug gest that in creas ing longe vity—a hall mark of tech no log ic ally ad vanced so ci­eties—won’t nec es sarily sad dle longer-lived peo ple with a prob lem of many dy ing brain cells.

“Our re sults sug gest that neu ronal sur viv al and ag ing are co in ci den t but sep a ra ble pro cess es,” they wrote. This in creases “our hope that ex tend ing or gan is mal life span by di e tary, be hav ior al, and phar ma co logic in ter ven­tions will not nec es sarily re sult in a neu ronally de plet ed brain.”

Courtesy of PNAS and world of Science

Alternative Fuel Microbes

Imagine a world where high-efficiency, low-cost alternative fuels were as easy to obtain as the oxygen in the air around us. Well, thanks to the collaboration of the US Department of Energy and a team of researchers at Duke University, we might have a microorganism that can make this dream a reality. Recent years have seen great strides in the area of alternative fuels (like ethanol from corn and sugar cane). Unfortunately, these methods have proven inefficient and given rise to a lot of criticism like cutting into the food and land supply. Recently, scientists have been able to come up with electrofuels that are designed to harness solar energy without cutting into the food, water, or land supplies as most of the existing alternative fuels do.In addition to its low energy need, tiny microbes can efficiently and effectively synthesize these electrofuels in a lab. These electrofuel microbes have been isolated and found living in non-photosynthetic bacteria. Using the electrons in the soil as food, the microbes eat up the energy to produce butanol when exposed to electricity and carbon dioxide. Using this knowledge, scientists extract the genes to complete this photosynthesis substitute and inject them into lab-grown bacteria allowing them to produce butanol in large amounts. Butanol is now being seen as the better alternative to both ethanol and gasoline for a variety of reasons. As a much larger molecule, butanol has a larger energy-carrying capacity than ethanol and doesn’t absorb water, so it can be placed directly in the gas tanks of any car and transported through the existing gasoline pipelines. These butanol microbes are very promising for the future of alternative fuels.