'More Women Over 70 Now Sexually Active'

Older single women may be more sexually active than thought, even beyond the seventh decade of their life, a new study has claimed. However, at least one in seven women aged 65 to 79 years have hypoactive sexual desire dysfunction (HSDD) – lack or absence of sexual desire. In the questionnaire-based study, published in the journal Menopause, more than 1,500 Australian women were assessed for sexual function and sexual distress. The group consisted of 52.6% partnered women with a mean age of 71 years. Within this group,88% were found to have low sexual desire, 15.5% had sexually related personal distress and 13.6% had HSDD, which is defined as the presence of both low sexual desire and sexually related personal distress. This percentage was higher than what had previously been reported for women in this age group and similar to the prevalence reported for younger women. The study confirmed that unpartnered older women are sexually active and may be distressed by low sexual desire.

Why We Buy Phones We Don't Really Need

Did you recently buy a new iPhone? You may be programmed to upgrade your smartphone irrespective of whether you need it or not. Decades of research supports the theory that people tend to rely on comparisons when making decisions, researchers said. However, when one of their options is perceived upgrade over the status quo, consumer’s rationality disappears. Marketing professor Aner Sela from the University of Florida and Robyn LeBoeuf of Washington University in the US examined the phenomenon of “comparison neglect”, where people favour an upgraded product without evaluating the one they own. The researchers conducted studies of more than 1,000 smartphone users aged between 18 and 78. “We were not asking people to recall existing features from memory. We put then in front of them, but unless we tell them to compare, they do not do it. They do not use the information in the way they themselves say they should be using it. That’s what makes this so surprising,” Sela said, adding that comparison neglect only occurs when a perceived upgrade is one of the options.