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Italy

New Study: A Yawn Is More Contagious From Someone You Love

LA STAMPA (Italy)

Worldcrunch

PISA - This story is a yawner.

You’ve been there before: standing in line or sitting around the conference table when some sleepy-eyed dude lets loose a big ol’ yawn, and you – tired or not – start yawning too.

Yes, yawns are indeed contagious. Research has shown that some 50 percent of humans who watch a video of someone yawning will quickly yawn in response. Sometimes just reading about it can set one off too. Did someone say: yaaaawn....??

Now a new Italian study digs deeper to find out just how contagious one yawn is from another, reports La Stampa.

Elisabetta Palagi, a zoologist at the University of Pisa’s natural history museum, notes that the causes of yawning are still not entirely clear, but that a yawn has developed a “social function,” and that people yawn more when they are in a group than by themselves.

The yawn, which is present in countless species, is only contagious amongst those with more advanced intelligence, where it has evolved into a mode of communication. More specifically, the follow-up yawn is an expression of empathy, Palagi says.

Tracking the yawning habits of both humans and Bonobo chimpanzees, Palagi’s team has concluded that the closer the relation to the yawner, the more likely that yawn will be contagious.

“The only important parameter of contagiousness is the type of relation that links the two subjects,” Palagi told La Stampa. “Nationality, gender, context are not important, only the quality of the link that unites the emitter and receiver (of the yawn).”

Thus yawns from close relatives are more likely to prompt empathetic yawns than from recent friends, and certainly from strangers, the study concludes.

An interesting finding in the study of the Bonobos is that the female chimpanzee species is more likely to let loose a yawn of empathy than the male counterparts. Initial conclusions on this front for humans are the same – women are more likely to yawn empathatically than men.

Needless to say, that conclusion is likely to provoke a different kind of yawn from some male readers.

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Society

How Argentina Is Changing Tactics To Combat Gender Violence

Argentina has tweaked its protocols for responding to sexual and domestic violence. It hopes to encourage victims to report crimes and reveal information vital to a prosecution.

A black and white image of a woman looking at a memorial wall in Argentina.

A woman looking at a memorial wall in Argentina.

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Mara Resio

BUENOS AIRES - In the first three months of 2023, Argentina counted 116 killings of women, transvestites and trans-people, according to a local NGO, Observatorio MuMaLá. They reveal a pattern in these killings, repeated every year: most femicides happen at home, and 70% of victims were protected in principle by a restraining order on the aggressor.

✉️ You can receive our LGBTQ+ International roundup every week directly in your inbox. Subscribe here.

Now, legal action against gender violence, which must begin with a formal complaint to the police, has a crucial tool — the Protocol for the Investigation and Litigation of Cases of Sexual Violence (Protocolo de investigación y litigio de casos de violencia sexual). The protocol was recommended by the acting head of the state prosecution service, Eduardo Casal, and laid out by the agency's Specialized Prosecution Unit for Violence Against Women (UFEM).

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