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Akhenaten wasn’t the most manly pharaoh, even though he fathered at least a half-dozen children. In fact, his form was quite feminine. And he was a bit of an egghead.

So concludes a Yale University physician who analyzed images of Akhenaten for an annual conference Friday at the University of Maryland School of Medicine on the deaths of historic figures. The female form was due to a genetic mutation that caused the pharaoh’s body to convert more male hormones to female hormones than needed, Dr. Irwin Braverman believes. And Akhenaten’s head was misshapen because of a separate condition in which skull bones fuse at an early age.

The pharaoh had “an androgynous appearance. He had a female physique with wide hips and breasts, but he was male and he was fertile and he had six daughters,” Braverman said. “But nevertheless, he looked like he had a female physique.” Braverman, who sizes up the health of individuals based on portraits, teaches a class at Yale’s medical school that uses paintings from the university’s Center for British Art to teach observation skills to first-year students. For his study of Akhenaten, he used statues and carvings.

Akhenaten (ah-keh-NAH-ten), best known for introducing a revolutionary form of monotheism to ancient Egypt, reigned in the mid-1300s B.C. He was married to Nefertiti, and Tutankhamun, also known as King Tut, may have been his son or half brother. Egyptologist and archaeologist Donald B. Redford said he supports Braverman’s belief that Akhenaten had Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder marked by lengthened features, including fingers and the face. Marfan syndrome would not have been responsible for his feminine appearance, however.

Visiting clinics that treat those with the condition has strengthened that conviction, “but this is very subjective, I must admit,” said Redford, a professor of classic and ancient Mediterranean studies at Penn State University. Others have theorized Akhenaten and his lineage had Froehlich’s Syndrome, which causes feminine fat distribution but also sterility. That doesn’t fit Akhenaten, who had at least six daughters, Braverman said. Klinefelter Syndrome, a genetic condition that can also cause gynecomastia, or male breast enlargement, has also been suggested, but Braverman said he suspects familial gynecomastia, a hereditary condition separate from Marfan syndrome that leads to the overproduction of estrogen and the development of breasts.

The Yale doctor said determining whether he is right can easily be done if Egyptologists can confirm which mummy is Akhenaten’s and if Egyptian government officials agree to DNA analysis. Braverman hopes his theory will lead them to do just that. “I’m hoping that after we have this conference and I bring this up, maybe the Egyptologists who work on these things all the time, maybe they will be stimulated to look,” he said.

Previous conferences have examined the deaths of Edgar Allan Poe, Alexander the Great, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Florence Nightingale and others.

An Antarctic fur seal has been caught on camera trying to have sex with a penguin.

This seems to be the first known example of a sexual escapade between a mammal and another kind of vertebrate such as a bird, reptile or fish, “although some mammals are known to have attempted sexual relief with inanimate, including dead things, objects,” said researcher Nico de Bruyn, a mammal ecologist at the University of Pretoria in South Africa.

One summer morning, scientists observing elephant seals on a beach on Marion Island near the Antarctic spotted a young male Antarctic fur seal subduing a king penguin. “At first we thought it was hunting the penguin, but then it became clear that his intentions were rather more amorous,” de Bruyn recalled. The roughly 240-pound fur seal, in fact a species of sea lion, rather than a true seal, subdued the 30-pound adult penguin by lying on it. The hapless bird of unknown sex struggled, rapidly flapping its flippers and attempting to stand and flee, without luck. The fur seal then alternated between resting on the penguin and thrusting its pelvis at the bird in vain attempts to insert its penis for 45 minutes.

Natural, unsuccessful sexual escapades by this variety of fur seal with members of its own species may last as long as this penguin assault did, “but yes, it is quite a long time and thus unusual,” de Bruyn told LiveScience. The fur seal then abruptly gave up, moving to sea and completely ignoring the target of its affections. The penguin apparently did not suffer any injury. The scientists detailed their findings in the May issue of the Journal of Ethology.

Sexual harassment is common in the animal kingdom. “Homo sapiens are often testimony to that,” de Bruyn said. Many species perform some form of sexual harassment on members of their own species, “for a variety of reasons many of which are hotly debated,” he added. Many species of seals and sea lions are polygynous , where one male mates with many females. The males often fight each other to control females. “This system thus promotes extreme aggression in males towards each other, and if a male cannot control a beach, this aggression may spill over to sexual aggression directed at outlying females, pups or even in rare cases other seal species,” de Bruyn said.

And this sexual aggression apparently might leap well beyond the species gap. The Antarctic fur seals of Marion Island are the only ones known that eat king penguins. The thrill of the hunt felt by the seal the researchers saw may have channeled into its sex drive, as the mating season had just come to an end. “It may have wanted to eat [the penguin] and half-way through the chase changed its mind,” de Bruyn speculated. “I personally believe the link between aggressive and sexual behavior is evolutionarily far closer linked than we currently believe. This has obvious implications for humans.”

On the other hand, the amorous fur seal may simply have been sexually inexperienced and playful, and wanted practice, the researchers conjectured. “There are many things that we do not understand about ourselves that are mirrored in other species,” de Bruyn said. “Thus by continuing with research efforts on other vertebrates we could learn a great deal about the whys behind human behaviors.”

Young adults in Europe deliberately binge on drink and drugs to improve their sex lives, research suggests.

The UK has one of the worst reputations for binge drinking and underage sex but there are striking similarities between countries, a study found. A third of 16 to 35-year-old men and 23% of women questioned said they drank to increase their chance of sex. The study of 1,341 young people in nine countries including the UK, is published in BMC Public Health. Young people were also more at risk of unsafe sex while under the influence of alcohol or drugs, the study found.

The researchers said although it was well known that use of alcohol and drugs was linked to risky sexual behaviour, this study showed many young people were “strategically” binge drinking or abusing drugs to improve their sex lives. They questioned young people in nine cities, one each in the UK, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Slovenia, who all routinely went to pubs, bars and nightclubs.

Early use of alcohol and other drugs was closely linked to having sex under the age of 16 years, in all countries, especially in girls. Almost half of participants in Vienna, Austria had drunk alcohol and had sex by the time they were 16 compared with 36% in Venice, Italy, 37% in Palma, Spain and 30% in Liverpool, UK. The same was true for those who took drugs under the age of 16 but there were variations in popularity of different drugs among different countries. More than a quarter of youngsters taking cocaine said they used it to prolong sex and drug use in general was linked to having multiple partners.

Drunkenness and drug use were found to be strongly associated with an increase in risk taking behaviour and feeling regretful about having sex. Those who had been drunk in the past four weeks were more likely to have had five or more partners, sex without a condom and to have regretted sex after drink or drugs in the past 12 months. Cannabis, cocaine or ecstasy use was linked to similar consequences.

Study leader Professor Mark Bellis, director of the Centre for Public Health at Liverpool John Moore’s University said: “Millions of young Europeans now take drugs and drink in ways which alter their sexual decisions and increase their chances of unsafe sex or sex that is later regretted. Yet despite the negative consequences, we found many are deliberately taking these substances to achieve quite specific sexual effects.” He added that strategies to reduce substance abuse and encourage safe sexual behaviour needed to take into account the fact that the two were inextricably linked.

Simon Blake, chief executive of Brook, said: “When it comes to drugs and alcohol young people learn from us, the adults who help determine the culture in which young people are learning about sex, and learning about drugs and alcohol. “Sex and relationships education also needs to include more discussion about the association between alcohol, drugs and unsafe sex.”

Frank Sodeen from Alcohol Concern said: “The report is a good reminder of the multiple dimensions of drink-related harm.” He added local authorities need to think as broadly as possible about projects to reduce alcohol use and incorporate issues such as sexual health.

The Russians made sandwiches shaped like sailing ships

From Cold War to cold meats… sailors from the US and Russian navies have tested their culinary skills in a sandwich-making competition.

The contest was held during a visit by the US destroyer Stethem to the eastern Russian port of Vladivostok to mark Victory Day. Officers also joined in.

A Russian cook took the prize for best-tasting sandwich while an American came top for most original presentation. Sandwiches topped with cucumber sails were among the Russian offerings. The ingredients included peppers, smoked ham, lettuce, cheese, mayonnaise, olives, cherry tomatoes and gherkins.

The US winner in the individual contest got a bottle of vodka, and presented his Russian rivals with USS Stethem caps and sweatshirts in return. Earlier, the Russians had laid on a traditional welcome for the Americans, with vodka and appetisers such as bliny (buckwheat pancakes) with smoked salmon and pickled green tomatoes. Yet a traditional Russian restaurant is hard to find in Vladivostok, where Chinese and Japanese restaurants are much more common.

The crew of the Stethem were taking part in a military parade in Vladivostok for Victory Day, which marks the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945.

Following Facebook and Myspace, Google will join the social network data portability crowd to allow its users to port user data to partner sites, media reported Monday.

Google’s Friend Connect will be a set of “APIs for Open Social participants to pull profile information from social networks into third party websites,” speculated TechCrunch.

Google has been taking a more open and distributed approach with its OpenSocial API, which allows compliant applications to work across any social network. By extension, Friend Connect would provide glue to allow any site to add a social dimension and build connections to other social networks.

Facebook Connect announced on Friday it would make it easier for people to share their favorite pictures, information and applications with family and friends anywhere on the Internet. MySpace on Thursday announced Data Availability, with Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket, and Twitter as initial partners for its effort to let members port their data.

The key for all the data portability efforts is that users have granular controls to manage their data and to maintain privacy and security. Facebook and MySpace have not fully disclosed how their privacy controls will work yet.

David Glazer, Google director of engineering, said in March the big challenge isn’t the technology but applying existing and emerging standards, such as OATH (secure API authentication), OpenID (identity management) and OpenSocial APIs (application integration).