One theory put forward by the team of Italian doctors who carried out the study is that chemical compounds found in red wine may improve sexual functioning by increasing blood flow to key areas of the body.

So, to put it another way, a bunch of Italian doctors took a bunch of women out on the piss, and the ones who they’d fed more red wine to seemed keener to want to shag them.  A further conclusion was:

The researchers, who reported their findings in the Journal of Sexual Medicine last week, say the outcome is even more striking because the red wine drinkers were, on average, older than the other two groups, and age tends to be associated with a declining sex drive.

One can safely conclude therefore that the doctors were young & naive, and consequently surprised to find that if you give a bunch of older ladies a load of red wine they’ll enthusiastically try to latch on to any high-income-earners in the room.

[thanks Bruce]

Dr Stephens, from Keele’s school of psychology, came up with the idea for the study after swearing when he accidentally hit his thumb with a hammer as he built a garden shed.

It’s not all free-licence for Messrs Ramsey, Connolly, and Bloody-Wilson, as the study suggests that frequent casual swearers will gain less benefit than people who ordinarily mind their P’s and Q’s.

The scientific method was described, thus:

He recruited 64 volunteers to take part and each individual was asked to submerge their hand in a tub of freezing water for as long as possible while repeating a swear word of their choice.

They were then asked to repeat the experiment, this time using a more commonplace word that they would use to describe a table.

The article doesn’t mention how many swearwords Dr Stephens heard when he went around asking people if they’d submerge their hand in a tub of freezing water.  It’s a shame that frequency of casual swearing has a dilutive effect on the efficacy of the phenomenon, because it would be disadvantageous to all those people who commonly refer to a table as a “cock-platform”.

You know who you all are…

Surely in order to be an effective scientific exercise they should have filmed a control group of girls without bras?  This would serve 2 purposes:

1. give an idea of the relative improvements in support that each brassiere offered
2. provide an opportunity for scientists to look at boobies

I’m only thinking of the importance of methodical rigour.

Part of me thinks it’s undeniably awesome, but part of me is a little disappointed that the article’s been up for 2 days now and yet not one of the comments has included the phrase “pork sword”.

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[via BoingBoing]

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On the balance of it, it’s got to be said that this would make quite an irritating ringtone.

[Singing Tesla Coils via BoingBoing]

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Visual representation of soundwaves using fire via a Rubens Tube

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Surface properties of non-newtonian fluids demonstration – running and jumping on custard

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Professor Julius Sumner Miller getting excited about Bernoulli’s theorem

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Paul Hewitt demonstrating pressure via the bed of nails concept

[ball set into motion by Isacc Newton, and in this case, Steve Tilling]