“We investigated the mass concentration, mineral composition and morphology of particles resuspended by children during scheduled physical education in urban, suburban and rural elementary school gyms in Prague (Czech Republic). Cascade impactors were deployed to sample the particulate matter. Two fractions of coarse particulate matter (PM(10-2.5) and PM(2.5-1.0)) were characterized by gravimetry, energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry and scanning electron microscopy. Two indicators of human activity, the number of exercising children and the number of physical education hours, were also recorded. (more…)

Phallic Decoration in Paleolithic Art: Genital Scarification, Piercing and Tattoos

“Purpose: The primitive anthropological meaning of genital ornamentation is not clearly defined and the origin of penile intervention for decorative purposes is lost in time. Corporeal decoration was practiced in the Upper Paleolithic period. We discuss the existing evidence on the practice of phallic piercing, scarring and tattooing in prehistory. Materials and Methods: We studied the archaeological and artistic evidence regarding explicit genital male representations in portable art made in Europe approximately 38,000 to 11,000 years ago with special emphasis on decorations suggesting genital ornamentation. (more…)

A Face Only an Investor Could Love: CEOs’ Facial Structure Predicts Their Firms’ Financial Performance.

“Researchers have theorized that innate personal traits are related to leadership success. Although links between psychological characteristics and leadership success have been well established, research has yet to identify any objective physical traits of leaders that predict organizational performance. In the research reported here, we identified leaders’ facial structure as a specific physical trait that correlates with organizational performance. (more…)

A Vicious Cycle: A Cross-Sectional Study of Canine Tail-Chasing and Human Responses to It, Using a Free Video-Sharing Website
Figure 1. Screenshot of a video of a Golden Retriever chasing its tail on YouTube™.

“Tail-chasing is widely celebrated as normal canine behaviour in cultural references. However, all previous scientific studies of tail-chasing or ‘spinning’ have comprised small clinical populations of dogs with neurological, compulsive or other pathological conditions; most were ultimately euthanased. Thus, there is great disparity between scientific and public information on tail-chasing. I gathered data on the first large (n = 400), non-clinical tail-chasing population, made possible through a vast, free, online video repository, YouTube™. (more…)

Mona Lisa syndrome: solving the enigma of the Gioconda smile.

“The Mona Lisa smile is presented as a possible example of facial muscle contracture that develops after Bell’s palsy when the facial nerve has undergone partial wallerian degeneration and has regenerated. The accompanying synkinesis would explain many of the known facts surrounding the painting and is a classic example of Leonardo da Vinci as the compulsive anatomist who combined art and science.”

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Etiquette and effort: holding doors for others.

“Etiquette, the customary code of polite behavior among members of a group, provides a means of conveying respect for others, but what is the basis for etiquette’s unwritten rules? Here we show that one form of etiquette, holding a door open for another person, reflects the door holder’s expectation that the person for whom he or she holds the door shares the belief that the total effort expended by the two of them will be less than the summed efforts of the two individuals acting on their own. (more…)

“A commonplace observation in humans is that close genetic relatives tend to avoid one another as sexual partners. Despite the growing psychological research on how antierotic attitudes develop toward relatives, few studies have focused on actual behavior. One prediction, stemming from parental investment theory, is that women should be more vigilant of reproduction-compromising behaviors, such as inbreeding, during times of peak fertility than during times of low fertility. Indeed, females of other species avoid interactions with male kin when fertile-but the corollary behavior in humans has yet to be explored. Here we fill this gap. Using duration and frequency of cell-phone calls, an objective behavioral measure that reflects motivations to interact socially, we show that women selectively avoid interactions with their fathers during peak fertility. (more…)

“Many moral codes place a special emphasis on bodily purity, and manipulations that directly target bodily purity have been shown to influence a variety of moral judgments. Across two studies, we demonstrated that reminders of physical purity influence specific moral judgments regarding behaviors in the sexual domain as well as broad political attitudes. (more…)

I 5683 you: dialing phone numbers on cell phones activates key-concordant concepts.

“When people perform actions, effects associated with the actions are activated mentally, even if those effects are not apparent. This study tested whether sequences of simulations of virtual action effects can be integrated into a meaning of their own. Cell phones were used to test this hypothesis because pressing a key on a phone is habitually associated with both digits (dialing numbers) and letters (typing text messages). In Experiment 1, dialing digit sequences induced the meaning of words that share the same key sequence (e.g., 5683, LOVE). (more…)

An assessment of swinger techniques for the playground swing oscillatory motion.

Much attention has been devoted to how playground swing amplitudes are built up by swinger techniques, i.e. body actions. However, very little attention has been given to the requirements that such swinger techniques place on the swinger himself. The purpose of this study was to find out whether different swinger techniques yield significantly different maximum torques, endurance and coordinative skills, and also to identify preferable techniques. We modelled the seated swinger as a rigid dumbbell and compared three different techniques. (more…)