The regions of the face that redden during sexual stimulation also slightly heat up during innocent social interactions, a new study has revealed.
For the study, Amanda Hahn and colleagues at St Andrew’s University in Fife, UK, used a heat-sensitive camera to map small changes of temperature in the faces of young heterosexual women while an experimenter touched them with an instrument they were told was measuring skin colour.
Touching the palm or elbow had no effect, but contact with the cheek or top of the breastbone raised the temperature around the eyes, mouth and nose by 0.2-to 0.5 degrees centigrade on average, and by a full degree in certain spots.
An earlier study had found this area heats up in sexually aroused men.
The female subjects reported few or no feelings of arousal or embarrassment, but their facial temperature rose more when the experimenter was a young man.
"What is surprising is the magnitude," New Scientists quoted Hahn as saying.
A 16-year-old Indian origin schoolboy in Germany has managed to crack puzzles that baffled the world of maths for more than 350 years, it was reported here on Saturday.
Shouryya Ray, from Dresden, has been hailed a genius after working out the problems set by Sir Isaac Newton.
Ray solved two fundamental particle dynamics theories which physicists have previously been able to calculate only by using powerful computers, Daily Mail reported.
His solutions mean that scientists can now calculate the flight path of a thrown ball and then predict how it will hit and bounce off a wall.
Ray only came across the problems during a school trip to Dresden University where professors claimed they were uncrackable, the newspaper said.
"I just asked myself, 'Why not?'," explained Ray.
"I didn't believe there couldn't be a solution," he added.
Ray began solving complicated equations as a six-year-old but says he's no genius.
After arriving from Kolkata four years ago without knowing any German, Shouryya is now fluent in the language.
His intelligence was quickly noted in class and he was pushed up two years in school - he is currently sitting his exams early, the Mail said.
'Sexting' has become a favourite celebrity pastime, with everyone from Scarlett Johansson to Vanessa Hudgens having being caught in the act.
Now, however, scientists say that people may be predisposed to share naked picture of themselves with others.
Clinical psychologist Marta Meana, president of the Society for Sex Therapy and Research claims that "being desired is very arousing to women."
"An increasing body of data is indicating that the way women feel about themselves may be very important to their experience of sexual desire and subjective arousal, possibly even outweighing the impact of their partners' view of them," the Daily Mail quoted her as saying.
Recent studies have found that more than half of women's sexual fantasies reflect the desire to be sexually irresistible to men.
In one recent survey, 47 percent of women reported the fantasy of seeing themselves as a striptease dancer, harem girl, or other performer.
50 percent fantasized about delighting more than one man.
Meana of the Department of Psychology, University of Nevada, who analysed the research, admitted that more research was needed in the area, claiming scientists need to investigate eroticism.
"The little data we have indicate that eroticism just will not be told what to do," she said.
"Consequently, research and clinical forays into eroticism may go a long way toward facilitating inclusiveness and considering the diversity and full range of women's sexual desires," she said.
The research could explain the recent flood of celebrity picture leaks.
The popularity of smartphones with cameras has meant that over the past two years, more photographs of nude celebrity anatomy have been leaked to the public eye than over the previous two centuries.
The list of those who have had their raunchy snaps revealed includes Scarlett Johansson, Vanessa Hudgens, Congressman Wiener, Jessica Alba, Christina Aguilera, Miley Cyrus, Ron Artest, Charlize Theron, Chris Brown, Bret Favre, Rihanna, Pete Wentz, Ke$ha, and dozens more.
Many have even defended their actions.
"Look I'm human, and just like every girl in this world, I admire my body so i take pics," wrote singer Teyana Taylor after her graphic self-portraits were leaked.
Websites showing amateur self portraits have also become a huge success around the world, many using pictures taken from Facebook and other social networking sites.
The behaviour also appears in men, and some researchers believe they may have inherited the urges from primate ancestors.
Male monkeys and apes routinely display their penises to females to indicate sexual interest.
Many of us might have picked up a piece of dropped food from the floor, given it a quick blow and assumed it was still safe to eat.
It is second nature to apply the age-old pseudo-scientific 'three second rule' on such occasions, telling ourselves we're safe if the food hit the floor only momentarily.
The idea that food is not contaminated if it is retrieved quickly has been believed for many years - but there has not been extensive proof that this is the case.
Now though, the doubt is out as scientists have finally investigated the theory to discover whether the rule is fact or fiction.
Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) tested five food items to see whether the three-second rule could be trusted.
Bread with jam, cooked pasta, ham, a plain biscuit and dried fruit were all dropped on the floor and left for three, five and 10 second intervals.
These were selected as they are commonly eaten foods and all have different water activity levels; a key factor in whether items will sustain bacterial growth in the three seconds before they are picked up from the floor.
After the study, the foods were examined to ascertain whether or not harmful bacteria found on the floor was then found to be growing on the dropped food.
The study revealed that dropped foods with a high salt or sugar content were safer to eat after being retrieved, as is less chance of harmful bacteria surviving on such items.
Eating processed food from the floor poses the lowest risk - one of its few benefits - given that it generally contains such high levels of sugar and salt.
Both the ham, a salty product, and the sugary bread and jam fared well in the test. When retrieved from the floor within three seconds, the foodstuffs showed little sign of bacterial growth.
The dried fruit and cooked pasta, on the other hand, showed signs of klebsiella after three seconds - a bacteria which can potentially lead to a wide range of diseases such as pneumonia, urinary tract infections, septicaemia and soft tissue conditions.
Biscuits proved to be a food relatively safe to eat after being dropped on the floor for three seconds, five seconds or ten seconds, due to their low water content.
"No specific organisms were detected on the biscuit, which has a low water activity level and low adhesion ability," the Daily Mail quoted MMU technical officer Kathy Lees as saying.
"Ham is a processed meat preserved with salt and nitrates which prevents the growth of most bacteria.
"The cooked pasta had a slightly increased yeast count after five seconds and very low levels of Klebsiella were detected at all contact times, three, five and ten seconds," she said.
The dried fruit also displayed Klebsiella after five and ten seconds and the yeast count was too numerous to count.
"The bread and jam showed no bacterial growth after time on the floor, which can be linked to the high sugar content of the jam which makes it unlikely to support microbial growth," she added.
