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      Changes in Women’s Facial Skin Color over the Ovulatory Cycle are Not Detectable by the Human Visual System

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          Abstract

          Human ovulation is not advertised, as it is in several primate species, by conspicuous sexual swellings. However, there is increasing evidence that the attractiveness of women’s body odor, voice, and facial appearance peak during the fertile phase of their ovulatory cycle. Cycle effects on facial attractiveness may be underpinned by changes in facial skin color, but it is not clear if skin color varies cyclically in humans or if any changes are detectable. To test these questions we photographed women daily for at least one cycle. Changes in facial skin redness and luminance were then quantified by mapping the digital images to human long, medium, and shortwave visual receptors. We find cyclic variation in skin redness, but not luminance. Redness decreases rapidly after menstrual onset, increases in the days before ovulation, and remains high through the luteal phase. However, we also show that this variation is unlikely to be detectable by the human visual system. We conclude that changes in skin color are not responsible for the effects of the ovulatory cycle on women’s attractiveness.

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          NIH Image to ImageJ: 25 years of image analysis.

          For the past 25 years NIH Image and ImageJ software have been pioneers as open tools for the analysis of scientific images. We discuss the origins, challenges and solutions of these two programs, and how their history can serve to advise and inform other software projects.
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            Bayesian analysis of correlated evolution of discrete characters by reversible-jump Markov chain Monte Carlo.

            We describe a Bayesian method for investigating correlated evolution of discrete binary traits on phylogenetic trees. The method fits a continuous-time Markov model to a pair of traits, seeking the best fitting models that describe their joint evolution on a phylogeny. We employ the methodology of reversible-jump (RJ) Markov chain Monte Carlo to search among the large number of possible models, some of which conform to independent evolution of the two traits, others to correlated evolution. The RJ Markov chain visits these models in proportion to their posterior probabilities, thereby directly estimating the support for the hypothesis of correlated evolution. In addition, the RJ Markov chain simultaneously estimates the posterior distributions of the rate parameters of the model of trait evolution. These posterior distributions can be used to test among alternative evolutionary scenarios to explain the observed data. All results are integrated over a sample of phylogenetic trees to account for phylogenetic uncertainty. We implement the method in a program called RJ Discrete and illustrate it by analyzing the question of whether mating system and advertisement of estrus by females have coevolved in the Old World monkeys and great apes.
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              Methods for cosinor-rhythmometry.

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Academic Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                1932-6203
                2 July 2015
                2015
                : 10
                : 7
                : e0130093
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Psychology, Northumbria University, Newcastle, NE1 8ST, United Kingdom
                [2 ]Centre for Ecology & Conservation, University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Penryn, TR10 9FE, United Kingdom
                [3 ]Division of Psychology, Abertay University, Dundee, DD1 1HG, United Kingdom
                [4 ]School of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, KY16 9JP, United Kingdom
                [5 ]MRC International Nutrition Group, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, WC1E 7HT, United Kingdom
                [6 ]Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 3EJ, United Kingdom
                [7 ]Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London, London, NW1 4RY, United Kingdom
                Brock University, CANADA
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Conceived and designed the experiments: RPB JT RQ JP TKS HMR. Performed the experiments: RQ JP HMR. Analyzed the data: JT PGL AJCF MS HMR. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: JT PGL MS TKS HMR. Wrote the paper: RPB JT AJCF RQ JP HMR. Edited the manuscript: PGL MS TKS.

                Article
                PONE-D-14-56484
                10.1371/journal.pone.0130093
                4489916
                26134671
                ee39bc39-56cd-43e5-9702-2679b81ff71b
                Copyright @ 2015

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

                History
                : 16 December 2014
                : 15 May 2015
                Page count
                Figures: 2, Tables: 0, Pages: 16
                Funding
                RPB is supported by an Anniversary Research Fellowship at Northumbria University. MS and JT were supported by a David Philips Research Fellowship awarded to MS by the Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) (BB/G022887/1). HMR was supported by a Junior Research Fellowship at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, and is supported by an Institute Research Fellowship at the Institute of Zoology. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Research Article
                Custom metadata
                All relevant data (except photographs of participants from which the authors made measurements) are within the Supporting Information files.

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