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Triptych had been in private hands since it was bought at auction in 1977 > A Francis Bacon masterpiece has broken the artist’s record at auction after selling for $86.3m (£43m) in New York.

The sale of Triptych (1976) beat the previous record of £27m paid for Study For Innocent X. The piece was sold at Sotheby’s by a private collector from Europe who had owned the work since it was first exhibited in Paris in 1977. Bacon used Ancient Greek legends as inspiration for the painting, which depicts disfigured human faces.

Alex Branczik, Sotheby’s London deputy director for contemporary art, described the work as a “totemic triptych”. “It created an overnight sensation when it was first exhibited in Paris in 1976,” he said. “It showed Bacon working in a new way. It is a watershed painting which sees him moving beyond personal grief on to a more universal scale. Bacon was heavily influenced by Greek tragedies where personal stories relate to grander, universal issues. He saw the large format triptych as the greatest vehicle for artistic vision and this work sees Bacon achieve a new level of complexity.”

Irish-born Bacon, one of the most prominent contemporary artists of his era, died from a heart attack in Madrid in 1992.

Related Links > http://www.sothebys.com

World must be more attentive to male virgins > In a film titled “The 40 Year Old Virgin” people treat the main character differently. They regard him either as a serial killer, or as a freak; some take pity on him and try to save him. Viewers are usually unanimous to judge old virgins as mad or weird, especially if it goes about a male virgin.

However, there are a number of factors that can change the general public’s attitude to late virginity among men. Reason One: it is not so easy for a man to lose virginity > Historically, the first sexual experience is a subject of extraordinary pride for men. That is why most boys grow up with the aim of losing virginity as soon as possible. According to France’s National Institute for Demographic Studies (INED), an average West European man has his first sex at age 17. If it takes longer, boys think that there is something amiss with them and unintentionally enhance the possibility of turning from a proud eagle into a timid sparrow.

There is another stereotype: men are the first to show an initiative. If they do not, they are automatically associated with a sniveler, a loser and an object of pity. It turns out that while a girl is waiting for a boy to take her flower, a boy should run goggling and searching for a sexual experience. It usually results in one of the three ways.

The first way is meeting a prostitute. The second one is casual sex with a curious classmate. The third one is the happy end of romantic relations with his girlfriend. The first two variants require confidence and persistence. With the third variant you may wait for your love throughout the entire lifetime. So if a man is shy for some reasons, and there is no love on the horizon, he may stay a virgin for a long time.

Some countries took a responsible attitude to the problem of male virginity. As a result, special facilities sprang up to help young men lose virginity. In Berlin there was a brothel for male virgins where experienced women tactfully help them in every aspect. In Holland there are special courses available for losing virginity. Men pay 3,500 euros, and then they get used to seeing their own naked body and learn the sexual intercourse theory and finally lose virginity with the help of their tutors. In May of 2007 Britain’s Channel 4 showed how the Dutch courses work in The Virgin School reality show. A 26-year-old man named as James, a participant of the show, confessed at the end of the program that he finally started feeling like everyone else. He also said that there would be no estrangement in his life any longer. One may assume that in Russia, where “there was no sex” for about 75 years during the Soviet era, such facilities could be highly sought after. But before it could happen prostitution should be legalized in the country.

Reason Two: virgins are different > “Is he normal or a freak?” Almost every woman will think so in case she hears a twenty-something man telling her that he is still a virgin. Moreover, the “freak” version will be more believable.

The group of potential long-standing virgins includes men who were overprotected in childhood. They are unable to take serious decisions and are panic-stricken about their future fatherhood. Another reason for male virginity is unattractive appearance combined with total self-consciousness and shyness. The very idea of the first step to sex frightens them. However, women are frightened off not by their appearance, but by their stiffness and quaint behavior.

However, we should not jump to conclusions, for an old virgin may turn out to be an incorrigible romantic who will hardly think of sex only. It may also be a rare specimen, a cute man without problems and romantic feelings. His late chastity is rather a passive attitude to life. Promises, religion or personal beliefs may be reasons for male virginity. Mathematician Isaac Newton and philosopher Immanuel Kant preserved their virginity, since they believed that it is worth wasting your energy on science, not on sex.

Reason Three: Male virginity may be a merit > India ’s weekly Outlook conducted an opinion poll among Indian women. The poll showed that 50 percent of them wanted to marry an innocent man. In Russia, online forums provide evidence to prove that Russian women are attracted to sexually inexperienced men. Posts from women may run as follows: “I have always wanted to have a virgin boy just for a change”, or “I am an independent personality. I am 25. I run my own business; I own a flat and a car. But I am very fastidious about my love life. I don’t need a “used” man. I want to be sure that I am his first woman. My current boyfriend is good-looking and clever. But I found out that he’d had affaires before our relationship. I don’t know whether I can forgive him. I have lots of men to choose from…But now it feels as if I picked him in a second-hand shop.”

Forum visitors who dream of a virgin are more likely to imagine an 18-year-old guy, but not a 30-year-old manager who starts to lose hair. However, old virgins may prove to be compassionate and grateful. After the age of 20 every year of virginity makes a person more obsessed with his problem, and it seems almost impossible to solve the problem. Such men learnt to live without sex, they do not show their “inferiority”. To say this out loud to a woman they like means an abrupt end of a relationship. That is why virgins keep silence till the decisive moment.

Naturally, there is a long way of errors from theory to practice. Even if partners are both experienced or both inexperienced, it takes several months. Thus it makes no difference how to spend your sex hours: whether to retrain a partner or to teach him from scratch. It is clear that sex with sexually inexperienced men will not seem to be pleasurable for every woman. However, if there are no feelings yet, and chastity does not arouse you much, but if the mystery of virginity has been already unveiled, do not hurry to turn up your nose at this man and label him as abnormal. You stand a chance to find a nice person, a lifetime partner. It is never late to learn, even to learn sex.

So Madonna hit the stage for Radio 1’s big weekend on Saturday.

And true to form, she wasn’t your average wallflower. In fact, she managed to stir up a bit of controversy. First off, Madge offended peeps by using the f-word twice during a broadcast of her singing stint, which went out live on BBC3.

The singer, wearing a titalicious top, introduced her song Hung Up by telling the crowd: “You guys are going to have to start f***king it up out there ‘cos I need to feel some love. I’m going to do an old song. But not too old. F*** the present. Let’s live in the past.”

This lil’ bit of excitement apparently prompted a bevy of viewer complaints, not forgetting the BBC have been warned before for allowing Madge to swear live at last year’s Live Earth gig. Meanwhile, backstage there was also a bit of a drama, as Madge and her entourage ruffled the feathers of rock band The Fratellis.

“Who does Madonna think she is?” Jon Fratelli ranted to the 3am Girls from the Daily Mirror, after she and her 70-strong crew reportedly held up rehearsals and hogged some of the food and drink backstage. “I’m not into all this,” he continued. “We’re all here to perform together. What happened to rock ‘n’ roll? Why is she (Madonna) even here?” he continued.

Oops. Sounds like Madge might have to mind her manners with her fellow musicians from now on. And her language as well, for that matter.

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.”