Fancy a chancer?

THE GIDDY rush of passion that sweeps a love-hungry girl off her feet and into the arms of a rough diamond has been pinpointed at the riskiest part of the female brain.

Sex scientists at the Kinsey Institute in Indiana have discovered that when an ovulating woman sees a ruggedly masculine face, there is a particularly strong response in a region of her brain called the anterior cingulate cortex.

Scientists have long known that women's romantic preferences shift during their menstrual cycles, tending to go for softer, more feminine-looking men when at their least fertile, but switching their fancies to squared-jawed brutes when ovulating.

The Kinsey researchers report in the journal Evolution and Behavior how their brain-scan study found that this fickle behaviour is fired by a brain region that motivates people to take high-risk choices that promise to deliver substantial rewards.

The anterior cingulate cortex has been seen in other research to light up in habitual gamblers when they are presented with a risky game. The Kinsey scientists showed 56 photos of men to 12 heterosexual women and asked them to consider each man's potential as a sexual partner. The study found that the cingulate cortex became highly responsive to heavily blokish men during ovulation.

But why should ovulating women be driven to consider sexual risk-taking? The researchers say that an old evolutionary strategy may be at work. When women are not particularly fertile they seek safe, metrosexual company, but when they are fertile, they go after the most testosterone-charged company possible.

Masculine faces indicate high levels of testosterone. This, in turn, suggests high genetic quality because carrying high levels of testosterone places a high demand on an individual's immune system.

And of course, high testosterone can mean trouble, hence the potential for risk - not least the historic habit of alpha males to wander off and find themselves another partner when the excitement of a fling has fallen off.

But as the anterior cingulate cortex would say, high-stakes loving is always a bit of a gamble.

Listening pill

COULD a cocktail of basic vitamins prevent hearing loss? Michigan University doctors hope that tests on people in three countries will replicate the success they have seen in laboratory tests with a pill containing vitamins A, C and E plus magnesium.

The trials in Spain, Sweden and America involve students who habitually play their iPods too loudly and soldiers who are exposed to gun blasts.

The pill, called AuraQuell, has been found in lab tests to reduce noise-induced hearing damage by up to 80 per cent. Heavy noise causes the inner ear to produce molecules that damage its operation. The new supplement is thought to stave this off. Josef Miller, one of the lead researchers, hopes that the pills will cut damage by 40 per cent in humans.

Taste the bugs

THE NEXT time you taste something utterly scrummy, don't thank the cook, thank the bacteria in your mouth for imparting the flavour.

Swiss scientists have found that we don't directly experience the distinctive taste of many fruits and vegetables - we get their full flavour only up to 30 seconds after they enter our mouths.

Christian Starkenmann, an industrial scientist, reports in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry how his tests on 30 trained food-tasters show that we get some flavours only after the food has been swallowed.

And it's not the food that we taste - his studies show that we don't directly experience odourless compounds, called thiols, that are given off by grapes, onions and bell peppers. The taste is produced by bacteria in saliva, which give off odours when they process the thiols.

Future suture

STITCHES and sutures may be on their way out, thanks to a laser technique that promises to seal and heal wounds with minimal scarring. Tel Aviv University surgeons have discovered how to weld flesh together at exactly the right temperature, so that the skin will bond without burning.

Earlier attempts to use carbon dioxide lasers have proved messily unsuccessful, resulting in undercooking or overcooking patients' delicate tissues. Now a team headed by Professor Abraham Katzir has perfected an optical-fibre device that can ensure that laser and flesh are kept at the optimum temperature, so that tissues inside the body and on the skin can be repaired seamlessly.

Green-hearted

HEART pacemakers may be powered by the patient's own heart, thanks to an invention pioneered at Southampton University.

The microgenerator is powered by heartbeats and, in tests, has already produced almost 17 per cent of the energy needed to run a pacemaker, its inventor, Dr Paul Roberts, told the American Heart Association conference this week.

The generator, called the self-energising implantable medical microsystem (SIMM), is being developed by a consortium of companies.

Dr Roberts hopes the next prototype will produce far more power; at the moment the machine works best if the patient gets excited, as more beats per minute means more power generated.

Killer odds

VIVA Las Vegas? Hardly, a new study shows that your odds of committing suicide double if you visit the Nevada gambling attraction, says a report in Social Science and Medicine.

People who live in Las Vegas also have a higher risk of suicide, but it drops if they travel away. Matt Wray, the sociologist at Temple University, Philadelphia, who wrote the report, speculates that “gambler's despair” may be causing the deaths - but it may also be the “contagion effect” where people mimic others' life-losing ways.

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