'Love hormone' keeps committed men away from other women

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Agencies : New York , Sun Nov 18 2012, 19:51 hrs

The 'love hormone' oxytocin may encourage fidelity by prompting men in relationships to keep their distance from attractive women, a new study has found.
German researchers found that men in monogamous relationships who were given an oxytocinnasal spray stayed about four to six inches farther away from an attractive, woman they didn't know, compared with men in monogamous relationships who received a placebo.
The oxytocin spray had no effect on the distance that single men chose to keep between themselves and the attractive woman, MyHealthNewsDaily reported.
"The results suggest the hormone promotes fidelity in humans," said study researcher Dr Rene Hurlemann, of the University of Bonn.
The findings agree with previous research conducted on prairie voles, which suggested the hormone plays a role in pair-bonding.
In humans, oxytocin has been found to promote bonding between parents and children, increase trust, and reduce conflict between couples.
Earlier this year, a study found that couples with high levels of oxytocin in the early stages of a relationship were more likely to be together six months later than couples with lower levels of the hormone.
However, until now, there has been no evidence that a dose of oxytocin given after a couple gets together contributes to the maintenance of the relationship, the researchers said.
The study involved 57 heterosexual males, about half of whom were in monogamous relationships.
After receiving either a dose of oxytocin or placebo, participants were introduced to a female experimenter who they later described as "attractive".
During the encounter, the experimenter moved towards or away from the men, and they were asked to indicate when she was at an "ideal distance" away, as well as when she moved to a distance that felt "slightly uncomfortable".
The effect of oxytocin on the attached men was the same regardless of whether the female experimenter maintained eye contact, or averted her gaze.
Oxytocin also had no effect on the men's attitude toward the female experimenter - whether men received the oxytocin or the placebo, they rated her as being equally attractive.
In a separate experiment, the researchers found oxytocin had no effect on the distance men kept between themselves and a male experimenter.
The study was published in The Journal of Neuroscience.

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Clues to early human behaviour

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New York Times : Sun Nov 18 2012, 01:57 hrs

JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
At a rock shelter on a coastal cliff in South Africa, scientists have found an abundance of advanced stone hunting tools with a tale to tell of the evolving mind of early modern humans at least 71,000 years ago.
The discovery, reported in the current issue of the journal Nature, lends weight to the hypothesis that not only did anatomically modern Homo sapiens emerge in Africa but also, to a previously unsuspected extent, their cognitive capacity for abstract and creative thought and the conception of increasingly complex technologies associated with modern human behaviour.
The report describes the stone tools as microliths, thin blades about only an inch long that could be affixed to wood or bone. These tipped projectiles were either arrows propelled by bows or, more likely, spears launched by atlatls, wooden extensions of the throwing arm that act as a lever, imparting greater speeds and distances to the weapon. This technology, the researchers said, may have been pivotal to the success of Homo sapiens as humans left Africa and entered Eurasia some 50,000 years ago, encountering Neanderthals who were limited to hand-thrown spears.
The new evidence appeared to answer some critics who have contended that previous findings of early modern human behaviour in Africa have been spotty and short-lived. The rock shelter excavations at Pinnacle Point, near Mossel Bay, east of Cape Town, show that this micro-blade technology continued over 11,000 years, until 60,000 years ago. The report says the technology was also “typically coupled to heat treatment” processes in shaping sharp and durable blades that persisted for nearly 100,000 years.
One of the authors, Curtis W. Marean, director of the research and a paleoanthropologist at the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, said, “Every time we excavate a new site in coastal South Africa with advanced field techniques, we discover new and surprising results that push back in time the evidence for uniquely human behaviours.”
Prior investigations showed that this microlithic technology appeared briefly between 65,000 and 60,000 years ago and then seemed to vanish. Such thin blades had not been found in abundance until about 20,000 years ago.
Marean said in a telephone interview that while some archaeologists were still sceptical of a strong African role in modern human behaviour, there was diminishing support for the more Eurocentric “creative explosion” concept, born of bedazzlement over the cave art and fine tools of Upper Paleolithic Europe, which became widespread after the arrival of modern humans.
“Ninety per cent of scientists are comfortable that fully modern humans and human cognition developed in Africa,” Marean said. “Now they have moved on. The questions are, how much earlier than 71,000 years did these behaviours emerge?”
Like many other archaeologists, Marean and his team have concentrated their investigations in the caves and rock shelters overlooking the Indian Ocean. In a global ice age beginning 72,000 years ago, many Africans fled the continent’s arid interior, heading for the more benign southern shore. Access to seafood and more plentiful plant and animal resources may have increased populations and encouraged technological advances, Marean said.
Richard G. Klein, a paleoanthropologist at Stanford University who has favoured a more sudden and recent origin of modern behaviour, about 50,000 years ago, questioned the reliability of the dating method for the tools, noting that “there is another team that has already argued for a much longer” time period for the toolmaking culture.
The hypothesis of earlier African origins of modern human behaviour and cognition has been gaining strength over the past decade or two. Two archaeologists, Alison S. Brooks of George Washington University and Sally McBrearty of the University of Connecticut, led the charge with publications of their analysis of increasing evidence of African art and ornamentations expressing a modern cognitive capacity and symbolic thinking.
In a commentary accompanying the Nature report, McBrearty, who was not involved in the research, wrote that she believed that “modern cognitive capacity emerged at the same time as modern anatomy and that various aspects of human culture arose gradually” over the course of subsequent millenniums.

3D houses “grown” like bones

By Charlie Osborne | November 5, 2012, 2:47 AM PST

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Softkill has developed a 3D printing technique for large scale construction which mimics the growth process of bones.
A London-based team of architects and designers at studio Softkill have been researching new methods of generative design for additive manufacturing. In other words, this is the shape 3D printing could eventually take in the future — literally.
A new concept design called Protohome was presented at last week’s 3D Printshow. Taking the more “traditional” method of 3D construction and turning it on its head, the team tested how large-scale 3D printing could be made lighter, more flexible and created without the need for adhesives.
The result? A computer algorithm which transforms printed material into fibrous pieces that can be “grown” and twisted in the same way that human bone builds – reinforcing stress-prone areas to keep breaks to a minimum. This creates a “web” of material rather than solid mass, but does mean the material is permeable. Therefore, waterproof coating is placed inside.
Displaying a 3D printed house at 1.33 scale, each fiber that winds through one continuous cantilevered structure has a 0.7mm radius. A house built at scale would require 31 separate pieces to construct. The team says that the:

“Softkill house moves away from heavy, compression-based 3D printing of on-site buildings, instead proposing lightweight, high resolution, optimised structures which, at life scale, are manageable truck-sized pieces that can be printed off site and later assembled on site.”

Aaron Silver of Softkill Design told Dezeen that 3D printing could result in cheaper builds which require less material to construct. “I think there really is an interesting future for architecture and 3D printing,” he said, “You have great cost savings, material efficiency, things like that, which architects are vastly interested in.”

This research was founded at the Architectural Association School of Architecture’s Design Research Lab, and research prototypes were supported by Materialise.
Image credit: Softkill
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