Duke University and the University of Michigan performed a joint study showing that the testosterone levels of male John McCain and Bob Barr supporters plummeted after the results of the 2008 election.

Females and Obama supporters did not show a change in hormone levels.

"This is a pretty powerful result," said Duke neuroscientist Kevin LaBar. "Voters are physiologically affected by having their candidate win or lose an election."

The tests were performed on 183 college-aged men and women on election night. They each chewed a piece of gum and spit it into a sample tube when the polls closed. They provided a second sample after the results came in, and then two more in 40 minute span. The spit was later tested for hormone levels.

"Voters participate in elections both directly by casting their ballots, and vicariously because they don’t personally win or lose the election," said researcher Steven Stanton. "This makes democratic political elections highly unique dominance contests."

Did the guys wimp out because Obama won, or because they realized that Sarah Palin wouldn’t be on television as much anymore? I’ll let you be the judge.

Blackburn accepted the award, along with two of her colleagues, for discovering that chromosomes are protected during cell division by their ends, called telomeres, and the enzyme they’re composed of, called telomerase.

Their discovery is yet another clue to the cause of aging.

“Many scientists speculated that telomere shortening could be the reason for ageing, not only in the individual cells but also in the organism as a whole. But the ageing process has turned out to be complex and it is now thought to depend on several different factors, the telomere being one of them,” said the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute in yesterday’s press release.

Before making her prize-winning discovery, Blackburn served on the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001-04. In 2004, she was let go after criticizing the council as a political tool for President Bush in The New England Journal of Medicine (subscription required), in particular, for pushing his position on embryonic stem cell research.

Teknocratix wishes to congratulate Blackburn, as well as her colleagues Carol Greider, and Jack Szostak for their discovery and award.