hormones

The femme fatale is a staple of film noir. With gams to Cleveland and moxie to match, they lure men in before pulling the old 23 skidoo and pitching woo with the next Joe at the speakeasy. However, a new study claims both the hourglass figure and the readiness to cheat on a man both result from the hormone Estradiol.

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Hormones are no longer responsible just for teenage angst and questionable food cravings; new research shows these temperamental chemicals also dictate the type of person to which you are attracted. In the first study of its kind, Drs. Ben Jones, Lisa DeBruine, and Lisa Weeling at the University of Aberdeen demonstrated that hormones play a key role in determining who you are attracted to at any given time.

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Last January, an Australian engineer announced a bizarre new contraceptive for men: a radio-controlled implant that could block the flow of sperm with the click of a button. The device, which is still in the conceptual stages, is the latest in a growing number of experimental male birth-control methods—including sperm plugs, sperm dissolvers and heat-inducing gels—that don’t tinker with testosterone.

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As if fast food and TV werent enough to make and keep us fat, a new study from the University of Western Ontario has found that our fat may also be making us fat. Neuropeptide Y (NPY) is an appetite-stimulating hormone produced by our brains, which is responsible for a lot of our drive to eat. Scientists had previously thought that overweight people simply had more NPY flowing from their heads than they needed. As it turns out, the UWO study found that not only do our brains produce NPY, but our abdominal fat makes it as well.

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When financial-market traders start the day with high testosterone levels, they typically end the day with higher-than-average profits. That's the conclusion of researchers at the University of Cambridge who measured morning and afternoon levels of the hormone in 17 male City of London traders over eight consecutive business days. The findings were made public today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

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