Can Artificial Sweeteners Help you lose weight?
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Neanderthals who moisturised
Recent archeological research has turned up evidence that Neanderthals ground up shells to adorn their bodies.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/jan/11/caveman-neanderthal-makeup-spain
Contraceptive Pill alters the Kind of Man you find attractive
The kind of man that a woman finds attractive varies over her monthly cycle. During ovulation more masculine looking men are rated more highly. Also men with more dissimilar immune systems are more appealing. During the less fertile stages, less masculine and more similar men immunologically are the preference. It isn’t entirely clear why this disparity occurs. It might be as simple as being a mechanism that favours selecting partners from a wider gene pool. It works both ways too. Women are more atractive to men when at their most fertile. This can be detected in something as simple as that lap dancers get a higher level of tips when at this stage of their cycle. As often seems to be the case, the details of the science behind how females work is not easy to elucidate, what motivates the males is all too obvious.
We don’t yet know the details of how these differences are signalled, but they seem to involve smell and subtle changes in the voice. But whatever the details,something is going on.
A recent paper suggests that taking the contraceptive pill breaks this cycle. The preference shown for men with different immune systems is lost. So it is possible that being on the pill might lead you to select a different mate to the one you would have chosen if you weren’t on it. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? It is hard to tell, and probably we’ll never know. Looking at one facet of our biology in isolation is interesting, but we remain hugely complex organisms and we don’t really fully understand ourselves enough to make that kind of judgment.
Gruesome story from Peru
I am normally a bit of a news junkie but I have been traveling this week so I haven’t had my normal newspaper fix. As a result of this the first I heard about the rather gruesome story from Peru was from a briefing note from the cosmetic manufacturers trade association. The note was assuring people that cosmetics are made to high standards and are fully assessed for safety prior to release. It sort of assumed you had read the news story which I hadn’t, so I got the impression that there was some sort of Sweeney Todd type of arrangement going on where people were being processed into bars of soap or pots of cream.
It was quite a scary thought.
Now I have read the actual press coverage I am both horrified, like everyone else would be, but also rather baffled.
Objects of Desire
This week I heard for the first time about Google’s planned Chrome OS system. When I found out that it was planned to be a clean and quick operating system I knew straight away that I wanted it and that when it comes out I will get it. The interesting thing is that what I didn’t do was check out the price. I was going to pay whatever because it was something that I wanted. Well the price tag might be too high for me, but that would only mean it would be a unsatisfied desire- it would still be a desire.
This got me thinking. There are some things that are simply so desirable that you want them whatever the price tag. For me Google has that desirability – even though a lot of its products are free the fact that they are free isn’t what appeals about them. There is lots of free stuff on the net that I don’t want. The only thing that would come between you and owning one is simply whether or not you have the money. If you have the money you get, end of story. I think some people are like that about iPhones for example.
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Whatever next? A lip gloss with drug testing kit…
I really thought I had seen it all, but this really is a novel marketing angle. A UK company has launched a lip gloss product that includes a test strip so you can check if someone has doctored your drink with a date-rape drug. The idea is that it will be on sale in vending machines in night clubs.
So now you can feel safe while also making your lips look nice.
It sort of makes sense.
What the ASA said about Bio-Oil
The Advertising Standards Agency in the UK is charged with maintaining standards in advertising. On the whole, I think they do a good job. You don’t have to work in a consumer goods company to know that there are people about who will say almost anything to make a sale. If you spend any time on Twitter you’ll find plenty of so-called ‘internet marketers’ who seem to have no shame in pushing their products with the most outrageous statements.
Bio Oil
The cosmetics and personal care industry is a huge behemoth which takes in and spends billions and billions every year. A lot of its activity is focused on sales and marketing with the ultimate objective of getting money out of your pocket and into theirs. Sometimes this involves providing you with a good product that meets a genuine need or gives you a real benefit – but profit is the motive.
But sometimes a product becomes successful for no other reason than that people like it, tell their friends about it and create a word of mouth reputation. One example of this is the product Bio-Oil made by a relatively small Swiss company. The company makes a range of claims for their product, but the one that seems to have struck a chord is that it works for stretch marks.
Propylene Glycol -How Bad is it?
I was enjoying myself on Twitter the other day when I came across a company saying that propylene glycol was a bad thing because it modified the skin allowing toxins to penetrate it. This sounded a bit scary so I decided to look into it. My first step was to ask them what research their claim was based on. They didn’t answer — so I have investigated it myself
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Science Online London 2009
I went to the very wonderful Science Online London 2009 meeting yesterday at the Royal Institution. I couldn’t have enjoyed myself more.
second life interaction
