BLINDED ME WITH SCIENCE

LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX:

"Had sex"  is different between gay men in the United States vs. United Kingdom:

The Advocate reports  (this is wordy so we are pasting it directly):

According to a news release from the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction at Indiana University, the study consulted hundreds of self-identified gay men across a range of ages in the U.S. and the U.K. to ask whether they believed certain behaviors constituted having “had sex.” Findings were published in the journal AIDS Care in July.

While nearly 95% of participants believed that penile-anal intercourse constituted having “had sex,” the institute reports that significantly lower percentages believed the same about giving oral-genital stimulation, and giving and receiving manual-anal stimulation, oral-anal stimulation, and sex-toy stimulation. More gay men in the U.K. believed that the different behaviors constituted having “had sex,” although more gay men in both areas believed the behaviors constituted having “had sex” compared to heterosexual people in similar surveys.

The findings hold important implications for clinical and research settings, according to the institute.

“First, because an individual's definition of ‘sex’ influences the number of reported ‘sexual partners’ and frequency of ‘sexual activity,’ it is important for researchers and clinicians to be as behaviorally specific as possible when posing questions to their participants and patients during STI and HIV/AIDS risk assessments,” reports the institute. “Second, participants and patients might construct their definitions of having ‘had sex’ or their number of ‘sexual partners’ based on the perceived stigma of being labeled ‘at risk,’ ‘sexually compulsive’ or ‘promiscuous.’ Conversely, participants and patients also may construct their definitions of ‘sex’ based on the benefit of receiving the most accurate risk assessment and treatment.”

JUST QUACKY:

A duck's penis endowment may be directly related to the male ducks that they keep company with:

A duck's penis substantially wastes away at the end of one breeding season and then regrows as the next season begins. Among lesser scaup and ruddy ducks, the regrowth varies in length or timing depending on whether males have to compete with a bunch of other guys, said Patricia Brennan of Yale University. Her new measurements offer the first evidence in vertebrates that social circumstances influence penis growth, she reported July 29 at the annual meeting of the Animal Behavior Society.
In many bird species, males don’t grow specialized organs to deliver sperm. Ducks typically do, their penises sometimes reaching considerable lengths (9.8 inches for a ruddy duck, more than half its body length). That extra length may give a male a competitive advantage in delivering sperm when females have multiple mates. Brennan’s past research has documented strong sexual conflict in ducks, with males forcing copulation and females employing strategies such as corkscrew-shaped vaginas, developed over the course of duck evolution, that apparently thwart male control of reproduction.

via wired