Thursday, February 25, 2010

Looking at a curvy women gives men same high as Erectile Dysfunction drugs

ccording to the study, men looking at an hourglass figure can activate the part of the brain associated with feelings of reward.
Scientists say their findings make sense of the view that curvier women, such as Jennifer Lopez and Beyoncé Knowles, are sexually appealing.

Researchers used a sample of 14 men with an average age of 25 and showed them pictures of the posteriors of seven women.
They then carried out cosmetic surgery on the women, redistributing fat from their waists to the backsides but not changing their overall weight.
Brain scans of the men revealed that looking at the women after surgery activated parts of the brain linked with rewards, including regions associated with responses to drugs and alcohol.

Researcher Steven Platek, an evolutionary cognitive neuroscientist at Georgia Gwinnett College, in Georgia, USA, said: "There's more to it than buying magazines.

"These findings could help further our understanding pornography addiction and related disorders, such as erectile dysfunction in the absence of pornography.
"The findings could also lend to the scientific inquiry about sexual infidelity."
The scientists also found that changes in a woman's body-mass index (BMI) only affected brain areas linked to simple visual appreciation of size and shape.

Mr Platek said this may be evidence that body fat influences judgments of female beauty due more to society's norms than the way the brain is wired.
Mr Platek and his colleague Devendra Singh detailed their findings in the journal PLoS ONE.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Pfizer's profit rise disappoints

Shares in Pfizer have fallen 2.3% after its latest quarterly profits and earnings target for 2010 both failed to meet market expectations.

The world's largest drugmaker made a net profit of $767m (£481m) in the last three months of 2009, almost triple the $266m it made a year before.

The profits were lifted by Pfizer's $67bn purchase of fellow US pharmaceutical group Wyeth in October.

Revenues at the group were up 34% to $16.5bn.

Excluding one-off items, Pfizer's profits equate to 49 cents per share. Analysts had expected them to total 50 cents per share.

Pfizer said it expects profits of between $2.10 and $2.20 per share for 2010, below market expectations of $2.27 per share.

Its profits for the October to December quarter were much lower in 2008 when it had to pay $2.3bn to settle government allegations that it improperly marketed some of its drugs.

Pfizer is best known for being the producer of the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra.